I'm glad they made this it isn't a terribly difficult hack, but it certainly requires a lot of detail and time. Perfect for a Laserhead! Thanks.
But if you read the FAQ pages for the project, you see the other unfortunate side of Laserheads. They REALLY REALLY hate anyone who isn't near their level of knowledge on laserdisc stuff.
But you are free to denounce pornography all you want, with all the vivid examples you wish to use, while using Front Page 2002. Just say, "This is bad, look!";)
Just wanted to give you something to compare to. I administrate and have administrated quite a number of UNIX servers. The largest having 24 CPUs and 24GB of RAM. (Smallest is 1 CPU, 64mb of RAM.)
In the corporate UNIX world, you still want a swap device to act (depending on OS flavor) as your primary dump device. So when the OS panics, it has a place to write the kernel to for later analysis.
As well, having a swap device can give you some extra breathing room. If you've got alarms to measure your memory utilization, that's great, but if you have a good array of swap devices to rely on, you're in even better shape because you can take a transient spike in memory usage.
Say, for instance, on Solaris, where/tmp is a memory based filesystem. A user decides to put lots of log files and binaries in there. Or, the usual rampant unpredicted memory bloat of an application. Or more processes of a memory intensive application running simultaneous (without the benefit of shared memory).
To translate that over into the PC world, I'd say a swap device would be a good buffer just in case you try to do something with a program that decides it needs lots and lots of memory to do the task. (Or you've gotten so comfortable, you're running 50 applications at once.)
The number one concern of your boss is that if you are working at home, they have no idea what you are doing, if anything at all. Where I worked, telecommuting was originally an impossibility.
Then, with a strong amount of pressing, one employee got senior management to agree to one day a week of telecommuting. (Over the head of my boss, I'll admit.) Great. Then others were soon after able to telecommute one day a week, if they chose.
If it isn't significantly abused, and they feel like you are doing work at home, and doing a good job, then they'll open up the doors. You've GOT to do staff notes, and you've GOT to be available the entire time you are working at home. Only a half of a year later, the attitude is closer to, "We don't care where you work from."
And, in fact, we have people in our group that aren't even in the same part of the country as we are. As long as we can get ahold of the other team members (telephone, AIM, emails), we're fine.
Also, it has become more commonplace at our work because of the corporate environment. After the mergers and acquisitions, things are fairly mixed around.
I could be the system administrator for some boxes in Omaha, with the application support people in another state, my project manager in the office in my city, a networking project manager at another major site in another city, a performance analysis specialist in yet another city, and the users all over the US.
It doesn't matter if we work together. Probably the key part of this for a systems administrator was trashing the policy that an SA at a site must administrate only the boxes at that site. It also helped that we had a dedicated hardware group created that was responsible for the hands-on work at the site.
But really, it is all perception. If you can make them believe that they're not losing anything, they'll go for it. But I'd have to say, if you are not in the office, you probably have to kick ass even more than other employees to remain visible.
VISIBLE=pay increase, recognition, etc.
FWIW, not all digital picture frames require Internet access. I purchased a Kensington Photo Album Plus off of eBay for $115 new in box. (Normally $199.)
You load pictures onto it with a USB cable. Then you place it on your desk.
Here is one artistic idea I came up with (albiet, somewhat expensive):
Purchase 20 picture frames so that you can have a 4x5 array of them. Place them on a wall, and use them to make a collage art that changes, say, every hour, or every day. It would make for some cool artwork.
You got my vote this time, Commander.
on
Handling the Loads
·
· Score: 2
I'm normally one of the first to rant against Slashdot when it is hosed. (Kind of like upgrading to the new version of Slash when I said it really wasn't ready for prime time?) I mainly get bent out of shape because I expect this to be treated like a production site.
You did great this time. Much better than I would ever have expected. Grats, and thanks for the level of service.
No travel, domestic or international. Wust wear badges. Leaders must account for whereabouts of employees at all times. No visits to government buildings. Employees not allowed to leave.
I hope the "not allowed to leave" the building is temporary.;)
If you're going to hook a monitor up, don't let the proprietary video connector fool you into thinking you can't hook up a standard VGA monitor. Simple adaptors exist which convert it to a standard VGA pinout. A place that has a lot of Sun boxes probably have a few laying around. Otherwise, they can be a bit pricy. But probably better than purchasing a Sun monitor, still.
Sun has released a technical bulletin on this. It doesn't appear to be NDA or confidental, but then again, they don't always label their stuff. (I had a problem with that once. Not even a copyright notice. They screamed and yelled when the document hit the net.)
They do, however, reference the following URL at the end of the bulletin --
"The ReplayTV 4000 is so connected it allows you to share recorded programs with other friends and family that have ReplayTV 4000s. And with its broadband connectivity, sending and receiving programs is a breeze. So, if you forgot to record the last Friends episode, just ask your Mom to send it to you!"
Start with the closest standalone TiVo model, the 30 hour HDR312 from Philips. It is $300 (list). Add in TiVo's lifetime subscription fee. It is $249. You're already at $550. Add in an Ethernet kit from 7thTee that you have to install yourself. That is $100. Now you're at $650 and you've got a TiVo that has 10 hours less, and an unsupported ethernet connection with a minimum of useful software.
Shell out $700 for the low-end ReplayTV (40 hours), and it has the lifetime subscription at no charge. Ethernet is built in. You've got USEFUL networking apps that are SUPPORTED by the company. And you can download (via iChannels) content over the web so you've got a new content provider for non-mainstream media.
I think it is almost a no-brainer for advanced TiVo users to get one of these. I really hope it takes off. Or TiVo gets their act in gear.
Yes, but boxes like this and TiVo exist for a reason. Simplicity and integration. They integrate standard television with VCR like functions and an online guide. And now they've integrated file sharing (HURRAY!) into the deal. And it is simple to use.
Sure, you could do the same thing with a PC. But you're always going to have to be futzing with it. The 'barrier to entry' for a normal consumer to make his own device is the convenience factor.
They quote the most agression compression rate in these hour ratings.
And the most aggressive compression rates, too! But being able to select the compression rate you want really is a big win for the consumer and manufacturer. The manufacturer doesn't get flamed that they've made a hard choice which either makes a poor quality video, or doesn't have enough recording space.
Get the cheap version. Hack on another disk.
FWIW... Compaq is a Slashdot Sponsor! DOH!
on
HP Buys Compaq
·
· Score: 1
Of course, I really don't see any bias on Slashdot's part. Errrr, well... come to think of it, that is kind of unusual. Where is the smart comment at the end of the submitter's quote? Timothy didn't say a word. Anyone else would have slammed HP!
A veteran's view of corporate mergers.
on
HP Buys Compaq
·
· Score: 2
From the corporate press release:
The transaction is expected to be substantially accretive to HP's pro forma earnings per share in the first full year of combined operations based on achieving planned cost synergies. Cost synergies of approximately $2.0 billion are expected in fiscal 2003, the first full year of combined operations. Fully realized synergies are expected to reach a run rate of aproximately $2.5 billion by mid-fiscal 2004.
Translation:
We're going to start, even before we merge, by getting rid of redundant departments. Expect marketing, legal, human resources, and the usual suspects to be significantly reduced before the merger on one side of the house (can you guess which side is most likely?), and then to be completely shut down afterwards. Reducing the headcount is going to save us a lot of money.
Oh! Did I forget about the Compaq executives who won't play ball that we'll shove out the airlock? Getting rid of those troublemakers will save us some money in the process, thank goodness.
As well, we're going to squeeze some of our vendors just a little bit more to get some deeper discounts off of list price. "We'll give you more volume for a bigger discount. Otherwise, we'll drop you like a rock" is what we'll tell them. That'll give us a bit more money.
And we'll be comparing similar manufacturing plants, engineering departments, etc within the combined company. We'll be pretty fair about this and not just pick everything on the HP side. The most expensive producers will be eliminated. The best cost performers will be rewarded.
We're going to lose some customers and some revenue in the process. Our level of support is going to drop as we lose disenfranchised employees and shift the responsibilities of some of our groups with little or no training. Training really costs too much to invest in. And we're going to have a slight dip in revenue when we dump our unprofitable products. But that is to be expected. We're really riding on the cost savings to make up for it.
It really is too bad we don't have a great deal of time to sort this all out. We're going to be really busy for some time sorting this all out and trying to find the new HP. Hopefully, we won't lose site of ourselves, the market, and the customer (oops! consumer!) and let things slip.
There are a number of things we really haven't thought through, like what we're going to do with our midrange products. Hopefully a middle manager somewhere will come up with a good idea. But we'll probably have to depend on the usual sources -- those industry pundants in the trade rags. After all, they're the ones that gave us the idea of the merger in the first place! They really have their finger on the pulse of our company.
Wow. This is going to be all figured out by the end of 2004. That's not a lot of time! I wonder how things are going to turn out?
Re:Ravages of the new economy
on
HP Buys Compaq
·
· Score: 1
I agree that ten years out, HP looks strong. Let's hope they survive that long, that's all. Their short-mid term looks pretty bleak.
I've submitted a SegFault story.
on
HP Buys Compaq
·
· Score: 2
Compaq for $25B? Actually, the purchase of Atari for $2M makes a whole lot more sense if you think about it. Hopefully it'll make SegFault soon.;)
Re:Bruce Perens And Debian @ HP & Compaq
on
HP Buys Compaq
·
· Score: 2
Could go either way. HP could have too much on its plate to even being worrying about Linux, or it might see it as a perfect integration tool.
I don't think it is too hard to say that Digital UNIX should be thrown away in the merger. It doesn't have a future.
Hate to say, sounds like a dot-bomb strategy...
on
HP Buys Compaq
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
If I remember correctly, Compaq had eaten up a lot itself. Didn't it do Tandem (high end corporate mainframe like machines) and whoever did the Alpha (Digital, right)? I don't see how those have really grown, but maybe they've got some eye on some of Tandem's technologies for their midrange line. But you'd have to think that Compaq has a bit of indigestion from it.
Now, here comes HP, buying up Compaq? Well, at least Alpha/Tandem seems like a better fit for HP than it ever did for Compaq.
Anyhow, it seems like HP is picking up a LOT of baggage that they're going to end up throwing away. Sounds like an awfully risky business venture.
With this one, I'd have to say that Fiorina has some balls
I'll admit, as a TiVo owner, the thought of having a dual tuner would be really nice. A few times it is a problem, but I haven't ran into anything so serious that I would record on TiVo while watching another program on another channel on another TV. Of course, this isn't the same for all people.
For those of you who MUST have this functionality, you've got to decide if you're going to swap for a DirecTivo/UltimateTV (where possible --- major markets), or buy another standalone TiVo aka a "conflict TiVo" with limited storage.
Conflict TiVos are somewhat popular, and you only need a 15gb drive to handle the cases (typically prime time) where it happens. And TiVos are running REALLY CHEAP right now!
Nice to hear about TiVo's cash burn rate. As a *subscriber*, that is good news. If it didn't have a service element to it, and I wasn't dependent upon TiVo, personally, I'd go for a company that has a very high cash burn rate and get all the goodies I can below cost.
My current favorite is "1-800-555-TELL" (YES, an ACTUAL REAL telephone number... try it, especially the "phone booth" option). I'm calling an 800 number for free to get news/weather/games and to make a free 1 minute telephone call. I'm attracted to companies that have a high burn rate. Except, of course, ones that I am dependent upon.
Hmmmm... maybe it won't give the final number, but it must still be easy to calculate. "I have the bus speed set to 133mhz. The CPU:bus clock ratio is 10:1. I wonder how many Mhz my processor is running at?";)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm glad they made this it isn't a terribly difficult hack, but it certainly requires a lot of detail and time. Perfect for a Laserhead! Thanks.
;)
But if you read the FAQ pages for the project, you see the other unfortunate side of Laserheads. They REALLY REALLY hate anyone who isn't near their level of knowledge on laserdisc stuff.
Don't expect support!
But you are free to denounce pornography all you want, with all the vivid examples you wish to use, while using Front Page 2002. Just say, "This is bad, look!" ;)
Sorry, can't do that. The agreement says that you cannot use the licensing agreement to disparage itself.
It is from Sigma Designs. They make PC cards, too, but none yet with this particular chip. And, oh, yes, they support Linux. Read the specs, though.
Just wanted to give you something to compare to. I administrate and have administrated quite a number of UNIX servers. The largest having 24 CPUs and 24GB of RAM. (Smallest is 1 CPU, 64mb of RAM.)
/tmp is a memory based filesystem. A user decides to put lots of log files and binaries in there. Or, the usual rampant unpredicted memory bloat of an application. Or more processes of a memory intensive application running simultaneous (without the benefit of shared memory).
In the corporate UNIX world, you still want a swap device to act (depending on OS flavor) as your primary dump device. So when the OS panics, it has a place to write the kernel to for later analysis.
As well, having a swap device can give you some extra breathing room. If you've got alarms to measure your memory utilization, that's great, but if you have a good array of swap devices to rely on, you're in even better shape because you can take a transient spike in memory usage.
Say, for instance, on Solaris, where
To translate that over into the PC world, I'd say a swap device would be a good buffer just in case you try to do something with a program that decides it needs lots and lots of memory to do the task. (Or you've gotten so comfortable, you're running 50 applications at once.)
Necessary? No.
The number one concern of your boss is that if you are working at home, they have no idea what you are doing, if anything at all. Where I worked, telecommuting was originally an impossibility.
Then, with a strong amount of pressing, one employee got senior management to agree to one day a week of telecommuting. (Over the head of my boss, I'll admit.) Great. Then others were soon after able to telecommute one day a week, if they chose.
If it isn't significantly abused, and they feel like you are doing work at home, and doing a good job, then they'll open up the doors. You've GOT to do staff notes, and you've GOT to be available the entire time you are working at home. Only a half of a year later, the attitude is closer to, "We don't care where you work from."
And, in fact, we have people in our group that aren't even in the same part of the country as we are. As long as we can get ahold of the other team members (telephone, AIM, emails), we're fine.
Also, it has become more commonplace at our work because of the corporate environment. After the mergers and acquisitions, things are fairly mixed around.
I could be the system administrator for some boxes in Omaha, with the application support people in another state, my project manager in the office in my city, a networking project manager at another major site in another city, a performance analysis specialist in yet another city, and the users all over the US.
It doesn't matter if we work together. Probably the key part of this for a systems administrator was trashing the policy that an SA at a site must administrate only the boxes at that site. It also helped that we had a dedicated hardware group created that was responsible for the hands-on work at the site.
But really, it is all perception. If you can make them believe that they're not losing anything, they'll go for it. But I'd have to say, if you are not in the office, you probably have to kick ass even more than other employees to remain visible.
VISIBLE=pay increase, recognition, etc.
FWIW, not all digital picture frames require Internet access. I purchased a Kensington Photo Album Plus off of eBay for $115 new in box. (Normally $199.)
You load pictures onto it with a USB cable. Then you place it on your desk.
Here is one artistic idea I came up with (albiet, somewhat expensive):
Purchase 20 picture frames so that you can have a 4x5 array of them. Place them on a wall, and use them to make a collage art that changes, say, every hour, or every day. It would make for some cool artwork.
I'm normally one of the first to rant against Slashdot when it is hosed. (Kind of like upgrading to the new version of Slash when I said it really wasn't ready for prime time?) I mainly get bent out of shape because I expect this to be treated like a production site.
You did great this time. Much better than I would ever have expected. Grats, and thanks for the level of service.
And the date is "911". 09/11/01.
No travel, domestic or international. Wust wear badges. Leaders must account for whereabouts of employees at all times. No visits to government buildings. Employees not allowed to leave.
;)
I hope the "not allowed to leave" the building is temporary.
If you're going to hook a monitor up, don't let the proprietary video connector fool you into thinking you can't hook up a standard VGA monitor. Simple adaptors exist which convert it to a standard VGA pinout. A place that has a lot of Sun boxes probably have a few laying around. Otherwise, they can be a bit pricy. But probably better than purchasing a Sun monitor, still.
Sun has released a technical bulletin on this. It doesn't appear to be NDA or confidental, but then again, they don't always label their stuff. (I had a problem with that once. Not even a copyright notice. They screamed and yelled when the document hit the net.)
l
They do, however, reference the following URL at the end of the bulletin --
http://www.mitre.org/research/y2k/docs/TIME_T.htm
Read the features page.
"The ReplayTV 4000 is so connected it allows you to share recorded programs with other friends and family that have ReplayTV 4000s. And with its broadband connectivity, sending and receiving programs is a breeze. So, if you forgot to record the last Friends episode, just ask your Mom to send it to you!"
THIS ROCKS!
Start with the closest standalone TiVo model, the 30 hour HDR312 from Philips. It is $300 (list). Add in TiVo's lifetime subscription fee. It is $249. You're already at $550. Add in an Ethernet kit from 7thTee that you have to install yourself. That is $100. Now you're at $650 and you've got a TiVo that has 10 hours less, and an unsupported ethernet connection with a minimum of useful software.
Shell out $700 for the low-end ReplayTV (40 hours), and it has the lifetime subscription at no charge. Ethernet is built in. You've got USEFUL networking apps that are SUPPORTED by the company. And you can download (via iChannels) content over the web so you've got a new content provider for non-mainstream media.
I think it is almost a no-brainer for advanced TiVo users to get one of these. I really hope it takes off. Or TiVo gets their act in gear.
Yes, but boxes like this and TiVo exist for a reason. Simplicity and integration. They integrate standard television with VCR like functions and an online guide. And now they've integrated file sharing (HURRAY!) into the deal. And it is simple to use.
Sure, you could do the same thing with a PC. But you're always going to have to be futzing with it. The 'barrier to entry' for a normal consumer to make his own device is the convenience factor.
They quote the most agression compression rate in these hour ratings.
And the most aggressive compression rates, too! But being able to select the compression rate you want really is a big win for the consumer and manufacturer. The manufacturer doesn't get flamed that they've made a hard choice which either makes a poor quality video, or doesn't have enough recording space.
Get the cheap version. Hack on another disk.
Here is the proof:
http://images.slashdot.org/banner/cpaq0010en.gif
Of course, I really don't see any bias on Slashdot's part. Errrr, well... come to think of it, that is kind of unusual. Where is the smart comment at the end of the submitter's quote? Timothy didn't say a word. Anyone else would have slammed HP!
From the corporate press release:
The transaction is expected to be substantially accretive to HP's pro forma earnings per share in the first full year of combined operations based on achieving planned cost synergies. Cost synergies of approximately $2.0 billion are expected in fiscal 2003, the first full year of combined operations. Fully realized synergies are expected to reach a run rate of aproximately $2.5 billion by mid-fiscal 2004.
Translation:
We're going to start, even before we merge, by getting rid of redundant departments. Expect marketing, legal, human resources, and the usual suspects to be significantly reduced before the merger on one side of the house (can you guess which side is most likely?), and then to be completely shut down afterwards. Reducing the headcount is going to save us a lot of money.
Oh! Did I forget about the Compaq executives who won't play ball that we'll shove out the airlock? Getting rid of those troublemakers will save us some money in the process, thank goodness.
As well, we're going to squeeze some of our vendors just a little bit more to get some deeper discounts off of list price. "We'll give you more volume for a bigger discount. Otherwise, we'll drop you like a rock" is what we'll tell them. That'll give us a bit more money.
And we'll be comparing similar manufacturing plants, engineering departments, etc within the combined company. We'll be pretty fair about this and not just pick everything on the HP side. The most expensive producers will be eliminated. The best cost performers will be rewarded.
We're going to lose some customers and some revenue in the process. Our level of support is going to drop as we lose disenfranchised employees and shift the responsibilities of some of our groups with little or no training. Training really costs too much to invest in. And we're going to have a slight dip in revenue when we dump our unprofitable products. But that is to be expected. We're really riding on the cost savings to make up for it.
It really is too bad we don't have a great deal of time to sort this all out. We're going to be really busy for some time sorting this all out and trying to find the new HP. Hopefully, we won't lose site of ourselves, the market, and the customer (oops! consumer!) and let things slip.
There are a number of things we really haven't thought through, like what we're going to do with our midrange products. Hopefully a middle manager somewhere will come up with a good idea. But we'll probably have to depend on the usual sources -- those industry pundants in the trade rags. After all, they're the ones that gave us the idea of the merger in the first place! They really have their finger on the pulse of our company.
Wow. This is going to be all figured out by the end of 2004. That's not a lot of time! I wonder how things are going to turn out?
I agree that ten years out, HP looks strong. Let's hope they survive that long, that's all. Their short-mid term looks pretty bleak.
Compaq for $25B? Actually, the purchase of Atari for $2M makes a whole lot more sense if you think about it. Hopefully it'll make SegFault soon. ;)
Could go either way. HP could have too much on its plate to even being worrying about Linux, or it might see it as a perfect integration tool.
I don't think it is too hard to say that Digital UNIX should be thrown away in the merger. It doesn't have a future.
If I remember correctly, Compaq had eaten up a lot itself. Didn't it do Tandem (high end corporate mainframe like machines) and whoever did the Alpha (Digital, right)? I don't see how those have really grown, but maybe they've got some eye on some of Tandem's technologies for their midrange line. But you'd have to think that Compaq has a bit of indigestion from it.
Now, here comes HP, buying up Compaq? Well, at least Alpha/Tandem seems like a better fit for HP than it ever did for Compaq.
Anyhow, it seems like HP is picking up a LOT of baggage that they're going to end up throwing away. Sounds like an awfully risky business venture.
With this one, I'd have to say that Fiorina has some balls
Cox, Comcast End Pacts with ExciteAtHome
It goes on to name the new alliances for Cox and Comcast, along with some other details.
I'll admit, as a TiVo owner, the thought of having a dual tuner would be really nice. A few times it is a problem, but I haven't ran into anything so serious that I would record on TiVo while watching another program on another channel on another TV. Of course, this isn't the same for all people.
For those of you who MUST have this functionality, you've got to decide if you're going to swap for a DirecTivo/UltimateTV (where possible --- major markets), or buy another standalone TiVo aka a "conflict TiVo" with limited storage.
Conflict TiVos are somewhat popular, and you only need a 15gb drive to handle the cases (typically prime time) where it happens. And TiVos are running REALLY CHEAP right now!
Nice to hear about TiVo's cash burn rate. As a *subscriber*, that is good news. If it didn't have a service element to it, and I wasn't dependent upon TiVo, personally, I'd go for a company that has a very high cash burn rate and get all the goodies I can below cost.
My current favorite is "1-800-555-TELL" (YES, an ACTUAL REAL telephone number... try it, especially the "phone booth" option). I'm calling an 800 number for free to get news/weather/games and to make a free 1 minute telephone call. I'm attracted to companies that have a high burn rate. Except, of course, ones that I am dependent upon.
Hmmmm... maybe it won't give the final number, but it must still be easy to calculate. "I have the bus speed set to 133mhz. The CPU:bus clock ratio is 10:1. I wonder how many Mhz my processor is running at?" ;)