There are many commercial cd-rom jukeboxes out there. I know Pioneer make good ones, there were about 50 of them driving Music Choice Europe last time I looked. That's how I know they're very good at digital ripping.
These things are pretty cool, they have up to 4 drives per box, all SCSI and a cool robot arm that whizzes around changing disks (think the movie Eraser). They also provide good support, and I believe Linux support for the robotics.
The price is the sticking point, although not for everyone. I'm guessing you could pick up an old model used for under $1k.
Are you really sure that competing ISPs over there are not advertising others routes?
I've just had some first-hand experience of this with Worldcom, ESpire and AT&T. Worldcom were more than happy to allocate us a 'class C' so we could run BGP without getting filtered upstream. (This appears to be the smallest block that gets routed these days.)
Each and every one of these ISPs sold us dedicated connections boasting how many peering arrangements they had with each other and when it came time to route, no problem.
Maybe that's the cutthroat ISP biz in the US, I'm quite surprised that it's not the case in NZ.
The size of routing tables is quite big. In fact you generally require the entire use of a T1 just to manage the updates of a full table. That's why it's typically ISPs that do this kind of thing.
One other solution they all put forward was to purchase connectivity from each of them and let them do the BGP over the lines. I thought this was quite cooperative of them, to send your traffic via another provider if their link went down.
I personally think a better punishment for Microsoft and a solution to balance the monopolgy they've been found guilty of is for Microsoft to buy $1bn worth of Redhat (why not split between similar companies also to keep a balance) software and support and be forced to use their extensive programming resources to port the top 500 educational titles as voted by the school boards.
Of course the old spy game still has a few twists. Try this on a proper hacker and it'd be very interesting to see the results.
I for one would enjoy spending quite a bit of my time reverse engineering the thing just so I could send them dummy information.
It's an old war trick. Break their code and feed them iffy information. They're so trusting of their technology most of those idiots wouldn't even see it coming.
I was wondering if at that height they'd be floating about with or without a balloon due to lack of gravity. This is from the site:
It is a popular myth that weightlessness is caused by the lack of gravity in space. In fact, the apparent weightlessness is a consequence of astronauts and their surroundings all moving together without resisting gravity. Satellites and spacecraft are still subject to gravity, but because they are moving fast enough horizontally, gravity pulls their path into a circle or orbit. The balloon itself will float with the wind and will travel at no more than 10-15 mph in an upward or downward direction. So the weight of the pilots will not be affected by the height they reach.
I can just about buy the bit about spacecraft, centrifugal forces or whatnot, but I'm still trying to figure out if they're trying to imply that these balloonists will have sea-level like weight at that height. Anyone?
Anyone know how 'high' you've got to get before you do float about because of a lack of gravity (oh my, what have I asked;-)
Are you nuts? Did you watch the video? You'd be damn lucky not to lose your motherboard. If your machine is in a regular room having an electrical meltdown at over 300 degrees might not concern you, but I'm not into the burnt down house look.
Those tests were done in a lab in a safe controlled envoronment. How many people here have cables and wires draped all about inside their cases. Nasty.
I part own an e-commerce company that's partly built with Apache/mod_perl/MySQL. We crank millions of dollars through those servers every week (porn still pays, what can you say;-). The compile time of a script that pulls in libraries with 200k+ lines of code without mod_perl is several seconds. With, it's < 1sec. True we have/need 4GB RAM/server, but it does allow us to scale to whatever we want.
I often read articles saying perl/mysql can't handle enterprise solutions. Well, it can, does and is doing so in our case. Like any tool, it's as effective as the people wielding it.
We also have a huge codebase in C/C++, Java, Python and a few others. There's even a few NT boxes thrown in for dealing with some obscure hardware. I'm not particularly bias one way or the other, I just need the results.
By the by, I do have one solution for ensuring my programmers don't take sloppy shortcuts and write obviously quick and dirty code. It's the pink slip method. I find it works equally well in any language;-)
Of course a really good RAID controller has chunks of RAM doing just this. I've got one in the next office and it kicks butt. These have been around for ages, but of course the cost is the main barrier.
It's interesting that the article talks of the wonder of RAM prices and can we do away with HDD. I'm rather more amazed at the engineering of HDD and the fact that you can get 100GB+ in something you can fit in your pocket. As soon as they come up with some mechanism for removing seek time (lasers and mirrors instead of metal arms for example) you might be wondering if it's possible to replace your RAM entirely with a HDD;-)
MS insist on building software that is one big complex lump that tries to be everything and is less flexible for it.
Everyone else builds systems from lots of simple parts that work together.
Kids lego wouldn't be any fun/use if it came ready assembled and glued solid, no matter how cool the design.
You can't have total control to manipulate the pieces unless you can see all the pieces. If they're hidden under the hood of 'auto everything' and a compiled binary you lose the advantage.
Do I think that crypto backdoors would have helped catch the terrorists?
Course not, especially after the CIA finished training them how to use full strength crypto so the Russians couldn't listen in when we helped liberate them.
With the general abuse of the top level domains they hardly mean anything anyway. I can see it reaching a point where they do away with.com.org etc and we just end up with www.slashdot instead. I remember a time you used to need company documents to register a.co.uk, now 15 quid and no questions asked.
Anyhow, what with all the 'dot gone bankrupts' and 'dot can't be bothered to cough up $35 again this year for each of the 200 domains I thought would be popular' we're seeing a lot of domains becoming available again.
I believe that cctv managed to record the face of an IRA member dropping a bomb into a rubbish bin outside of Harrods many years back. Based on this they arrested and jailed him. Hardly petty crime.
Firstly it's already been done. There are X versions of many programs which are nicely bloated to include all of the GUI gumpf and you have a choice to install them, or not.
So why don't so many people install or use them? Why isn't there a massive effort under way (some may argue there is) to create such a thing? Perhaps it's because it isn't nescessary to accomplish the tasks that users are presented with today.
There are generally two types of tasks that people use computers for. The first is to set a computer up to automate a tasks such as serving documents, switching transactions etc. You set it in motion and you leave it alone.
The second is to get the computer to aid you in creating information. It requires constant user interaction.
*nix does a good job with the first, WinX does a good job with the second. They both cross boundaries but they both start getting more complex as they do. There is room for both, there is a need for both.
Slashdot Mirror
There are many commercial cd-rom jukeboxes out there. I know Pioneer make good ones, there were about 50 of them driving Music Choice Europe last time I looked. That's how I know they're very good at digital ripping.
These things are pretty cool, they have up to 4 drives per box, all SCSI and a cool robot arm that whizzes around changing disks (think the movie Eraser). They also provide good support, and I believe Linux support for the robotics.
The price is the sticking point, although not for everyone. I'm guessing you could pick up an old model used for under $1k.
Of course it's only a matter of time before some clever people do port Linux to XBox. You can hear it now, all the way from the halls of Redmond.
Arrrrrrggggggggghhhhhh! (thud)
Are you really sure that competing ISPs over there are not advertising others routes?
I've just had some first-hand experience of this with Worldcom, ESpire and AT&T. Worldcom were more than happy to allocate us a 'class C' so we could run BGP without getting filtered upstream. (This appears to be the smallest block that gets routed these days.)
Each and every one of these ISPs sold us dedicated connections boasting how many peering arrangements they had with each other and when it came time to route, no problem.
Maybe that's the cutthroat ISP biz in the US, I'm quite surprised that it's not the case in NZ.
The size of routing tables is quite big. In fact you generally require the entire use of a T1 just to manage the updates of a full table. That's why it's typically ISPs that do this kind of thing.
One other solution they all put forward was to purchase connectivity from each of them and let them do the BGP over the lines. I thought this was quite cooperative of them, to send your traffic via another provider if their link went down.
Hmmm.
I personally think a better punishment for Microsoft and a solution to balance the monopolgy they've been found guilty of is for Microsoft to buy $1bn worth of Redhat (why not split between similar companies also to keep a balance) software and support and be forced to use their extensive programming resources to port the top 500 educational titles as voted by the school boards.
Might make them think twice next time.
Of course the old spy game still has a few twists. Try this on a proper hacker and it'd be very interesting to see the results.
;-)
I for one would enjoy spending quite a bit of my time reverse engineering the thing just so I could send them dummy information.
It's an old war trick. Break their code and feed them iffy information. They're so trusting of their technology most of those idiots wouldn't even see it coming.
This game works both ways
I was wondering if at that height they'd be floating about with or without a balloon due to lack of gravity. This is from the site:
;-)
It is a popular myth that weightlessness is caused by the lack of gravity in space. In fact, the apparent weightlessness is a consequence of astronauts and their surroundings all moving together without resisting gravity. Satellites and spacecraft are still subject to gravity, but because they are moving fast enough horizontally, gravity pulls their path into a circle or orbit. The balloon itself will float with the wind and will travel at no more than 10-15 mph in an upward or downward direction. So the weight of the pilots will not be affected by the height they reach.
I can just about buy the bit about spacecraft, centrifugal forces or whatnot, but I'm still trying to figure out if they're trying to imply that these balloonists will have sea-level like weight at that height. Anyone?
Anyone know how 'high' you've got to get before you do float about because of a lack of gravity (oh my, what have I asked
Cheaper to replace your Athlon than your P4?
Are you nuts? Did you watch the video? You'd be damn lucky not to lose your motherboard. If your machine is in a regular room having an electrical meltdown at over 300 degrees might not concern you, but I'm not into the burnt down house look.
Those tests were done in a lab in a safe controlled envoronment. How many people here have cables and wires draped all about inside their cases. Nasty.
I part own an e-commerce company that's partly built with Apache/mod_perl/MySQL. We crank millions of dollars through those servers every week (porn still pays, what can you say ;-). The compile time of a script that pulls in libraries with 200k+ lines of code without mod_perl is several seconds. With, it's < 1sec. True we have/need 4GB RAM/server, but it does allow us to scale to whatever we want.
;-)
I often read articles saying perl/mysql can't handle enterprise solutions. Well, it can, does and is doing so in our case. Like any tool, it's as effective as the people wielding it.
We also have a huge codebase in C/C++, Java, Python and a few others. There's even a few NT boxes thrown in for dealing with some obscure hardware. I'm not particularly bias one way or the other, I just need the results.
By the by, I do have one solution for ensuring my programmers don't take sloppy shortcuts and write obviously quick and dirty code. It's the pink slip method. I find it works equally well in any language
Robert Nice
WebsiteBilling.com Inc.
Of course a really good RAID controller has chunks of RAM doing just this. I've got one in the next office and it kicks butt. These have been around for ages, but of course the cost is the main barrier.
;-)
It's interesting that the article talks of the wonder of RAM prices and can we do away with HDD. I'm rather more amazed at the engineering of HDD and the fact that you can get 100GB+ in something you can fit in your pocket. As soon as they come up with some mechanism for removing seek time (lasers and mirrors instead of metal arms for example) you might be wondering if it's possible to replace your RAM entirely with a HDD
MS insist on building software that is one big complex lump that tries to be everything and is less flexible for it.
Everyone else builds systems from lots of simple parts that work together.
Kids lego wouldn't be any fun/use if it came ready assembled and glued solid, no matter how cool the design.
You can't have total control to manipulate the pieces unless you can see all the pieces. If they're hidden under the hood of 'auto everything' and a compiled binary you lose the advantage.
They still don't get it.
Do I think that crypto backdoors would have helped catch the terrorists?
Course not, especially after the CIA finished training them how to use full strength crypto so the Russians couldn't listen in when we helped liberate them.
Honestly...
With the general abuse of the top level domains they hardly mean anything anyway. I can see it reaching a point where they do away with .com .org etc and we just end up with www.slashdot instead. I remember a time you used to need company documents to register a .co.uk, now 15 quid and no questions asked.
Anyhow, what with all the 'dot gone bankrupts' and 'dot can't be bothered to cough up $35 again this year for each of the 200 domains I thought would be popular' we're seeing a lot of domains becoming available again.
I believe that cctv managed to record the face of an IRA member dropping a bomb into a rubbish bin outside of Harrods many years back. Based on this they arrested and jailed him. Hardly petty crime.
Firstly it's already been done. There are X versions of many programs which are nicely bloated to include all of the GUI gumpf and you have a choice to install them, or not. So why don't so many people install or use them? Why isn't there a massive effort under way (some may argue there is) to create such a thing? Perhaps it's because it isn't nescessary to accomplish the tasks that users are presented with today. There are generally two types of tasks that people use computers for. The first is to set a computer up to automate a tasks such as serving documents, switching transactions etc. You set it in motion and you leave it alone. The second is to get the computer to aid you in creating information. It requires constant user interaction. *nix does a good job with the first, WinX does a good job with the second. They both cross boundaries but they both start getting more complex as they do. There is room for both, there is a need for both.