IIRC, cars are required to have mechanical links to things like steering and braking, for the simple reason that if the computer controls fail, you would still have some measure of control over your vehicle.
Not only that, this comes from the company that brought us the Corvair, Fiero and countless other goodies...
I don't want to be in the first model year, that's for sure.
If he wanted to not have Microsoft control his coporate survival, he should have found someone else to be a customer. Depending on a single client as your sole revenue stream is a trap
Fact: RealNames had thousands of customers. RealName's customers were the people buying keywords. Unless they were buying keywords, Microsoft was not a customer. They were, however, RealName's primary vendor and a significant shareholder..
I live in the hills above Riverside, California. We can't get DSL, cable or really anything useful. Technically we can get ISDN, but PacBell was a major pain in the butt about it.
We had 160K iDSL service for a few years until our provider (Zyan communications) went tits-up. Nobody else offers iDSL service in this area.
So, we got Starband.
I wouldn't recommend this thing to my worst enemy.
Download speeds can vary a great deal. Sometimes I get 100K/second, sometimes I get 2. Sometimes it can vary by that much in just a five minute period for accessing the same site.
Upload speeds suck. We are lucky to get 5k/second.
It goes down constantly, although usually just for a little bit here and a little bit there. Very annoying.
Gaming? Forget about it. P2P? Forget about it (they block it).
To clear up some of the misconceptions that have been spreading here... The only modem they support on the network now is the 360-series. The 360 has a USB and an ethernet port. Don't touch the USB with a ten foot pole. Using their USB port resulted in all kinds of short delays and needs to reboot the machine.
There are a bunch of "hacks" running around for modifying the old 180-series modem. Forget about it. The 180's are not allowed on the network anymore.
Just because it has ethernet, do not think of the ethernet port as anything other than a fast serial cable. In order to utilize the product, you *must* run their windows-based software.
If you just hook up to it and DHCP your way into supposed bliss, it is slower than a dial-up modem.
They use proprietary TCP/IP extensions (GRE and tunneling related stuff).
Normal internet sharing does not work properly. The NAT included with 2000 Server will kind of work, but it can be really flakey (I have run this same NAT with a cable modem and it worked flawlessly).
The starband edition of WinProxy is the only reliable way to share the connection. If you try anything else, you will just be unhappy.
Sending files via FTP will often result in the file to be corrupt on the receiving side. I don't know why, but it has a tendency to cut the first character of a file when I transmit it. When I take this machine to the office, I ftp with the same machine with no problems.
Using any sort of remote control software will make you want to off yourself. X through it sucks, as does VNC, terminal services, and Citrix. Citrix worked the best out of those (it has some built in latency-correction via local echo'ing, etc.).
The "real world" latency is often far worse than the theoretical sat latency. Don't even get me started on that.
Support is useless and rude and looks for excuses to not help you, since they simply want to get you off the line.
Whatever you are looking for, this isn't it. Stick with dial-up until hell freezes over and you can get something better.
I spent six months of my life working as a contractor at a postal data center in California (right across the street from Conectix of all places).
It was interesting. I do not plan to work on-site at a government site ever again (besides, I would rather not have to piss in a cup again).
The software developers at this facility had very little interest in actually developing and completing software, which was a good thing, since most of them could not program their way out of a paper bag.
The developers were unionized and advancement was based almost solely on seniority, not ability. The people who were competent would quit to get 30-50% more money in the private sector.
The people who stuck around and actually got these promotions into positions of power were the ones who wouldn't stand a chance of survival in the "real world" and had about as much software development knowledge as my Rottweiler does from watching me every day.
As far as the hours were concerned, that was one of the good points (from the worker's perspective). I was a contractor and was paid for every moment on their campus, so it didn't really matter to me. Under rules instituted in the union's bargaining agreement virtually nobody was allowed to be in the building after 6 PM (there were some exceptions for a few mission critical staff).
Personally, I found being escorted out by security at 6 PM to be almost degrading. Other than that they were six-to-six flex time (work any eight hours between 6 AM and 6 PM). I took advantage of that to work 6->2:30 (with a 30 minute "terminal lunch":)
I wouldn't do it again, at least not on-site. At that time (early '95) the bay area market for SQL/VB/C++/ORACLE/NETWARE people was fairly good. Most of the contractors they got in there were people who had just moved to the area (such as myself). They worked until something better came up in the private sector, a lot of them didn't even finish out their six month contract.
I left after five months. When the start of my fifth month rolled around I started sending out Resume's. Within a few days I had an offer on the table for 80% more money so I took it and never looked back.
Irony of all ironies, I am working on a government project right now. This time around I am telecommuting for a firm that actually holds the contract (with a large agency in one of the more populated counties in California). I have never met the end client and hope it stays that way; I just sit here in my cave writing code, just as it should be:)
Oh, and incidentally. We used private delivery services all the time due to the unreliability of sending stuff from data center to data center. Anything that we did send on the postal trucks would always be marked in such a way as to not indicate that it was computer equipment. Workers would often damage or steal the equipment because stealing postal property was treated as an employment issue and the union would fight to death for these thieves. On the other hand stealing or damaging packages destined for the private sector was turned over for criminal proceedings.
Re:Concerning the US, DMCA and ATSC
on
PVR For Linux
·
· Score: 1
there are very few DVB transmissions in the US
Bullshit
5 Million of us receive several hundred channels from Dish Network (EchoStar), which uses DVB.
I don't know if they are compatible with the DVB receiver cards or not, but it is DVB.
Here in San Diego, our cable company carries a couple of LA channels.
When they are playing the network shows, they replace the KTLA programming with infomercials.
I'm not really in favor of infomercials, but I can hit the channel [-] button twice and view the network feed from the SD channel.
Given that about 80% of the content is not network feed (I don't usually watch WB shows, anyway) I find it rather nice to be able to watch the news and the syndicated programming, sports, etc.
Although it *sounds* great, an ISP installing VNC is not going to be very productive.
The purpose of an ISP (most at least) is to provide you with a functioning internet connection.
If your connection isn't working, VNC is going to do you no good. If your customer can't connect to you, you can't connect to them.
If the connection is good enough to use VNC, the tech support call should be pretty close to over, yes?
Obciously, there are situations where it would be useful (help configuring email clients, etc.), but let us remember that the goal (and most of the support calls) is about connectivity.
Western Union acts even more like a bank, they even offer Visa debit cards.
WU passes the duck test with a few more quacks and they rip consumers off in a way that makes Paypal look like saints, Yet I don't hear the same discussions.....
Since this naming convention needs to scale nicely to thousands of boxen, you need a naming system that is structures and denotes geography rather than purpose.
I would number the rack cabinets and then assign a number or letter to each machine in the rack.
Subdomains make for a reasonably easy to organize larger scope (room, bldg, location, etc.) and allow you to circumvent some of the naming restrictions (e.g. 8 chars on hpux)
Thus, the third machine in the 3rd rack in room 5 of the phoenix data center could be something like...
R003M001.R5.PHXAZ.XYZZY.COM
In this system, there is never any question as to where a machine is or what to name it. It also gives you opportunities in methods to label your cables.
Rather than paying through the nose for a commercial account, you may want to seriously consider having *both* DSL and a cable setup.
Make sure the cable company and your chosen DSL ISP are not on the same backbone/noc.
Although this is not perfect, I think the chances of *both* the cable and DSL being out at the same time is pretty slim and you are still going to keep it at a hundred bucks a month.
If you use a linux/bsd box for nat/masq, you can even plug the two devices in on seperate ethernet cards and write a fairly simple shell script to change your routing rules when a ping to yahoo/whatever fails.
so client OS won't really matter all that much with a Terminal Server
From a purely technical standpoint, you are correct.
Although, I believe Terminal Services is only licensed for access from Windows-based clients. I realize that this isn't a factor for your average Slashdot reader playing around in his parent's basement, license compliance is a major issue for the corporate/business/educational worlds... Like it or not, violating the license in that way is no different from simply pirating the software to begin with.
Please don't flame me, I'm not trying to stick up for them, nor do I care for this myself, but simply to point out cold, hard business details.
Remember, what, exactly about the Pentium Pros? That the Pentium Pro was the first product based upon the P6 core? That this same P6 core powers the entire Pentium II, Pentium III, Xeon, and Celeron product lines? This generation has easily been Intel's most successful to date.
Remember what? Remember that the PPro was a stop-gap that was directly replaced by the P2 and Xeon (depending on the market segment).
Given that the Pentium Pro technology begat product lines that made Intel Billions of dollars, trying to imply it was less than a success is very short-sighted and foolish!
If this weren't Slashdot, I would guess you an MBA
Journalists still use them
on
Tandys Never Die
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
A fair number of journalists *still* use these little gems.
Why, you ask? Besides the fact that they have a very useable word processor and run for weeks on a handful or batteries, there is a biggie.
You can type quite quickly on them with one hand without having to set it down on something. That is something that you simply cannot say about a modern clam-shell laptop.
Kernel versions with an odd number in the second position are development versions. This is where risky and innovative new technology can be introduced and experimented with.
Kind of like Microsoft versions that contain alphanumeric characters! You know, 9's, 2's, X's, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, Imagine in the investment world, if the underwriter, broker and analyst all worked for the same company.
Oh Wait . . .
IIRC, cars are required to have mechanical links to things like steering and braking, for the simple reason that if the computer controls fail, you would still have some measure of control over your vehicle.
Not only that, this comes from the company that brought us the Corvair, Fiero and countless other goodies...
I don't want to be in the first model year, that's for sure.
Don't forget about...
kill killall join
Well... I guess we know it's Y2K compliant!
A few facts you forgot to mention about the USS Bill Clinton.
It's long, hard, and full of seamen.
(hint: say it outloud)
If he wanted to not have Microsoft control his coporate survival, he should have found someone else to be a customer. Depending on a single client as your sole revenue stream is a trap
Fact: RealNames had thousands of customers. RealName's customers were the people buying keywords. Unless they were buying keywords, Microsoft was not a customer. They were, however, RealName's primary vendor and a significant shareholder..
Ughgh.
I live in the hills above Riverside, California. We can't get DSL, cable or really anything useful. Technically we can get ISDN, but PacBell was a major pain in the butt about it.
We had 160K iDSL service for a few years until our provider (Zyan communications) went tits-up. Nobody else offers iDSL service in this area.
So, we got Starband.
I wouldn't recommend this thing to my worst enemy.
Download speeds can vary a great deal. Sometimes I get 100K/second, sometimes I get 2. Sometimes it can vary by that much in just a five minute period for accessing the same site.
Upload speeds suck. We are lucky to get 5k/second.
It goes down constantly, although usually just for a little bit here and a little bit there. Very annoying.
Gaming? Forget about it. P2P? Forget about it (they block it).
To clear up some of the misconceptions that have been spreading here... The only modem they support on the network now is the 360-series. The 360 has a USB and an ethernet port. Don't touch the USB with a ten foot pole. Using their USB port resulted in all kinds of short delays and needs to reboot the machine.
There are a bunch of "hacks" running around for modifying the old 180-series modem. Forget about it. The 180's are not allowed on the network anymore.
Just because it has ethernet, do not think of the ethernet port as anything other than a fast serial cable. In order to utilize the product, you *must* run their windows-based software.
If you just hook up to it and DHCP your way into supposed bliss, it is slower than a dial-up modem.
They use proprietary TCP/IP extensions (GRE and tunneling related stuff).
Normal internet sharing does not work properly. The NAT included with 2000 Server will kind of work, but it can be really flakey (I have run this same NAT with a cable modem and it worked flawlessly).
The starband edition of WinProxy is the only reliable way to share the connection. If you try anything else, you will just be unhappy.
Sending files via FTP will often result in the file to be corrupt on the receiving side. I don't know why, but it has a tendency to cut the first character of a file when I transmit it. When I take this machine to the office, I ftp with the same machine with no problems.
Using any sort of remote control software will make you want to off yourself. X through it sucks, as does VNC, terminal services, and Citrix. Citrix worked the best out of those (it has some built in latency-correction via local echo'ing, etc.).
The "real world" latency is often far worse than the theoretical sat latency. Don't even get me started on that.
Support is useless and rude and looks for excuses to not help you, since they simply want to get you off the line.
Whatever you are looking for, this isn't it. Stick with dial-up until hell freezes over and you can get something better.
While I'm not in favor of any of this copy protection crap, bear one thing in mind.
If the CD clearly indicates on the package that it will not play on a PC or DVD player, you are not going to get them to take it back.
You may consider it defective because it does not meet Red Book standards. Best Buy doesn't really care.
When a game label says it requires a Playstation , I can't very well bitch at BB when it fails to work in my Nintendo Gamecube.
Of course they are hacker free, at least in the U.S., you have to be 21!
They don't call 'em Script Kiddies for nothing.
I spent six months of my life working as a contractor at a postal data center in California (right across the street from Conectix of all places).
:)
:)
It was interesting. I do not plan to work on-site at a government site ever again (besides, I would rather not have to piss in a cup again).
The software developers at this facility had very little interest in actually developing and completing software, which was a good thing, since most of them could not program their way out of a paper bag.
The developers were unionized and advancement was based almost solely on seniority, not ability. The people who were competent would quit to get 30-50% more money in the private sector.
The people who stuck around and actually got these promotions into positions of power were the ones who wouldn't stand a chance of survival in the "real world" and had about as much software development knowledge as my Rottweiler does from watching me every day.
As far as the hours were concerned, that was one of the good points (from the worker's perspective). I was a contractor and was paid for every moment on their campus, so it didn't really matter to me. Under rules instituted in the union's bargaining agreement virtually nobody was allowed to be in the building after 6 PM (there were some exceptions for a few mission critical staff).
Personally, I found being escorted out by security at 6 PM to be almost degrading. Other than that they were six-to-six flex time (work any eight hours between 6 AM and 6 PM). I took advantage of that to work 6->2:30 (with a 30 minute "terminal lunch"
I wouldn't do it again, at least not on-site. At that time (early '95) the bay area market for SQL/VB/C++/ORACLE/NETWARE people was fairly good. Most of the contractors they got in there were people who had just moved to the area (such as myself). They worked until something better came up in the private sector, a lot of them didn't even finish out their six month contract.
I left after five months. When the start of my fifth month rolled around I started sending out Resume's. Within a few days I had an offer on the table for 80% more money so I took it and never looked back.
Irony of all ironies, I am working on a government project right now. This time around I am telecommuting for a firm that actually holds the contract (with a large agency in one of the more populated counties in California). I have never met the end client and hope it stays that way; I just sit here in my cave writing code, just as it should be
Oh, and incidentally. We used private delivery services all the time due to the unreliability of sending stuff from data center to data center. Anything that we did send on the postal trucks would always be marked in such a way as to not indicate that it was computer equipment. Workers would often damage or steal the equipment because stealing postal property was treated as an employment issue and the union would fight to death for these thieves. On the other hand stealing or damaging packages destined for the private sector was turned over for criminal proceedings.
there are very few DVB transmissions in the US
Bullshit
5 Million of us receive several hundred channels from Dish Network (EchoStar), which uses DVB.
I don't know if they are compatible with the DVB receiver cards or not, but it is DVB.
Hardly sounds like "very few" to me.
You could watch the Simpson's from three different timezones, but they would all be playing the same episode!
A VCR, Tivo or a TV tuner card and a cron job would give you better flexibility, minus the commercials
Here in San Diego, our cable company carries a couple of LA channels.
When they are playing the network shows, they replace the KTLA programming with infomercials.
I'm not really in favor of infomercials, but I can hit the channel [-] button twice and view the network feed from the SD channel.
Given that about 80% of the content is not network feed (I don't usually watch WB shows, anyway) I find it rather nice to be able to watch the news and the syndicated programming, sports, etc.
Although it *sounds* great, an ISP installing VNC is not going to be very productive.
The purpose of an ISP (most at least) is to provide you with a functioning internet connection.
If your connection isn't working, VNC is going to do you no good. If your customer can't connect to you, you can't connect to them.
If the connection is good enough to use VNC, the tech support call should be pretty close to over, yes?
Obciously, there are situations where it would be useful (help configuring email clients, etc.), but let us remember that the goal (and most of the support calls) is about connectivity.
Western Union acts even more like a bank, they even offer Visa debit cards.
WU passes the duck test with a few more quacks and they rip consumers off in a way that makes Paypal look like saints, Yet I don't hear the same discussions.....
Since this naming convention needs to scale nicely to thousands of boxen, you need a naming system that is structures and denotes geography rather than purpose.
I would number the rack cabinets and then assign a number or letter to each machine in the rack.
Subdomains make for a reasonably easy to organize larger scope (room, bldg, location, etc.) and allow you to circumvent some of the naming restrictions (e.g. 8 chars on hpux)
Thus, the third machine in the 3rd rack in room 5 of the phoenix data center could be something like...
R003M001.R5.PHXAZ.XYZZY.COM
In this system, there is never any question as to where a machine is or what to name it. It also gives you opportunities in methods to label your cables.
Just my two cents.
Solaris, BSD, and Linux are all perfectly viable
Viable? Their combined desktop market share is?
Enlighten you? Sure, embedded is spelled with an E
Rather than paying through the nose for a commercial account, you may want to seriously consider having *both* DSL and a cable setup.
Make sure the cable company and your chosen DSL ISP are not on the same backbone/noc.
Although this is not perfect, I think the chances of *both* the cable and DSL being out at the same time is pretty slim and you are still going to keep it at a hundred bucks a month.
If you use a linux/bsd box for nat/masq, you can even plug the two devices in on seperate ethernet cards and write a fairly simple shell script to change your routing rules when a ping to yahoo/whatever fails.
Citrix metaframe and Windows Terminal Services are not licensed the same.
My comment pertained to WTS only.
so client OS won't really matter all that much with a Terminal Server
From a purely technical standpoint, you are correct.
Although, I believe Terminal Services is only licensed for access from Windows-based clients. I realize that this isn't a factor for your average Slashdot reader playing around in his parent's basement, license compliance is a major issue for the corporate/business/educational worlds... Like it or not, violating the license in that way is no different from simply pirating the software to begin with.
Please don't flame me, I'm not trying to stick up for them, nor do I care for this myself, but simply to point out cold, hard business details.
Only time will tell. Remember the Pentium Pros..
Remember, what, exactly about the Pentium Pros? That the Pentium Pro was the first product based upon the P6 core? That this same P6 core powers the entire Pentium II, Pentium III, Xeon, and Celeron product lines? This generation has easily been Intel's most successful to date.
Remember what? Remember that the PPro was a stop-gap that was directly replaced by the P2 and Xeon (depending on the market segment).
Given that the Pentium Pro technology begat product lines that made Intel Billions of dollars, trying to imply it was less than a success is very short-sighted and foolish!
If this weren't Slashdot, I would guess you an MBA
A fair number of journalists *still* use these little gems.
Why, you ask? Besides the fact that they have a very useable word processor and run for weeks on a handful or batteries, there is a biggie.
You can type quite quickly on them with one hand without having to set it down on something. That is something that you simply cannot say about a modern clam-shell laptop.
Kernel versions with an odd number in the second position are development versions. This is where risky and innovative new technology can be introduced and experimented with.
Kind of like Microsoft versions that contain alphanumeric characters! You know, 9's, 2's, X's, etc.
A slashbot actually complaining that there isn't enough advertising.
Hang on while I scrape this ice off satan's windshield.
Come now, Everyone knows that there is no such thing as a flying machine.
Next thing, you are going to try and tell us that the earth is round or that you can split an atom.
Preposterous, I say.