It's not the underlying tech that the two countries you specified are lacking, it's the communication and control networks and experience that would be needed to deploy the anti-stealth cell phone network, not to mention the immense cost of doing so.
I seriously doubt that buying Playstations to run a military computer network is the answer to Iraq's problems either. Also, the plan doesn't address the problem of directing weapons to shoot down the stealth aircraft. So instead of knowing that the stealth aircraft is there after getting bombed, the cell-enabled anti stealth country has a few minutes warning.
I suppose that such a thing could make a difference when considering the fact that other aircraft could be used to intercept the stealth aircraft, but that is also difficult without accurate information.
I guess what I should say is that intercepting a stealth aircraft is not going to be an easy proposition any time soon. The "in the neighborhood" solution that this technology provides is not going to be good enough to make a significant difference. Even if you do manage to get fighter interceptors up "in the neighborhood" of the stealth aircraft, finding an aircraft within a few miles with the naked eye is a difficult process at best. Especially at night.
This isn't even going to remotely affect any county's military for a couple of decades at best. Aside from the fact that most countries where military action is taking place at all, have sketchy cell phone networks at best, there is hardly a military that has the command and control facilities available to use the kind of information that would be collected by cell phone towers efficiently. Other than those militaries who already rely upon stealth aircraft.
And this still isn't going to make that huge of a difference, because I seriously doubt that the technology could be used with the pinpoint accuracy needed to direct weapons fire.
You know, I'm trying to remember the bookstore where I bought it. It was in Chambana, IL, and it was very Barnes and Noble-esque, but not a B&N...hmmm...it was more like a Barques & Naders...
I know this isn't going to apply to everyone reading this, but maybe a few. Quite a few countries have citizenship and emigration rules that allow second generation "citizens" to emigrate "back" to the home country. Please correct me on this one, but I believe Ireland has instituted a program trying to lure Irish tech workers back from their overseas jobs. I believe this also includes, say, an American, born of Irish parents.
It is a bit of a shot in the dark, but it isn't too uncommon, citizenship wise. I do remember hearing of Americans conscripted into the Iraqi army because they were in Iraq visiting their parents as the Gulf War broke out.
They're already risking having a competitor do better than they. They are porting Linux to just about everything with a CPU that they manufacture. What is going to happen when 51% of S/390 (or whatever the heck they're called now) orders request Linux instead of OS/390? I'd call that an embarrasment.
I also think they've prolly spent more money on a new version of O/S2 than they would have with making their own Linux distro. But that is strictly an opinion...
Why does everybody keep on insisting on keeping dead operating systems lying around? I mean, aside for the fact that I can get a little nostalgic about my Commodore 64 emulator, it doesn't do a wholehelluvalot for me. Just the statement about the lack of driver support should preclude IBM from wasting money on this venture.
Now that I'm done ranting, I'll say something (I hope) semi-intelligent. IBM could have easily used Linux for something like this. They could have even used a flavor of BSD. Either way that would be better in the driver department.
In fact, when is IBM going to get around to publishing their own Linux distro? Are they even thinking about something like this? Why not, Linux is halfway to usurping OS/390 and AIX (not to mention Solaris, Winblowz, IRIX, et al.)?
I would certainly love to see big blue put the moves on a Linux distro. Not only would that give IBM a good reason to start putting a lot of effort into driver creation for Linux, but it would also give their Linux initiative a lot more clout, and it would allow IBM to take Microsoft on directly with a quality and widely used operating system.
I'm surprised that more big software companies haven't put out their own distros. Oracle comes to mind. Why don't they make a linux distro that is specifically for installing Oracle on top of? I think it would be great if I no longer had to deal with all the crap that Redhat introduces into their distro that effectively breaks Oracle. Ugh....
Commercial-Free Conundrum
John C. Dvorak, Forbes.com, 04.16.01, 2:30 PM ET
...posted here:
http://www.forbes.com/2001/04/16/0416dvorak.html
...and would like to ask you to please get a real columnist to write for your publication. I've known Dvorak's work on the tech trades for many years now, and I've always known he's a blowhard, but this latest column is ridiculous. For instance:
In many ways the device is similar to MP3 technology: It's a way to steal programming. This has gone unnoticed because PVRs haven't caught on, yet.
Dvorak might as well say that VCR's steal programming. VCR's have had commercial skipping functions for some time now, and so do some televisions, which allow you to flip channels for exactly 30 seconds, and at the end of that 30 seconds, it automatically changes the channel back to the original program, thus "skipping" the commercial. PVR's are not devices used to steal programming.
These devices cost around $500, which is not a mass-market price.
I paid $350 for my UltimateTV AND RCA dual tuner satellite dish system. He is flat wrong about the up front pricing.
And let's not ignore the complexity of these systems. The remote control for PVRs has more buttons than a TV control room.
Huh? Electronic remote controls have come a long way since "channel up, channel down, power on/off, volume". You'd think that since Dvorak is a technology writer, that he wouldn't have such a hard time figuring out how to use it. Add that to the fact that PVR's are soooo much easier to program than VCR's. All one has to do to record a show with a PVR is point it to the show on the program guide, and press "record".
Apparently, 30 hours of available storage slowly shrinks to nil after a while, making the unit relatively useless.
Okay, lets examine this statement. This is just flat out wrong. I've read the discussion groups he is referencing. Some people have lost recording time because of a software bug that Microsoft has acknowledged and is fixing, but I have heard of no one with a "useless" UltimateTV system. Either Dvorak is lying or too lazy to do real research.
This guy (Dvorak) is obviously trying to get by on his name alone, because responsible journalism seems to be a foreign concept to the man.
Oh, and it is about advertising rates, but what really pisses me off, and you can see that at www.poliglut.org, is that SAG/AFTRA is trying to get money for distribution of commercials that radio stations are not charging more for. WGN radio would have a helluva time trying to get Old Style (obscure Wisconsin/Chicago beer) to pay for one of their commercials streamed to Thailand.
SAG/AFTRA are trying to get money from a revenue source that does not exist, and therefore shutting down a free service.
Oh, and yeah, I don't believe in residual payments to actors. That is, I think SAG/AFTRA is wrong to insist upon such a ridiculous payment scheme. But anyway, go to the link above if you are interested in more debate...
As far as I know, Ulitmate TV doesn't have a box for regular cable. I bought it because for the price of a 20 hour Tivo, I get a 35 hour Ultimate TV recorder, a dual tuner satellite television system, and a usb port in the back of the box to connect my cable modem to (eventually).
As soon as there is a non MSFT option, I'll gladly throw the Ultimate TV thingy out the door, but until then, I'll be able to record NOVA and Tales of the Gun at the same time, and then watch whenever I want.
Actually, the bastards that came to install the dish (so called "free install") tried to rip me off, so I plan to install it myself this weekend. I haven't encountered the problem yet, nor have had the opportunity to download the patch.
Considering they fscked up Ultimate TV...
on
No X Box for Xmas?
·
· Score: 3
I'm not proud of buying a Micro$oft product, but in the PVR market, I was led to believe they had the best product/service combination.
Ultimate TV is a service offering from Microsoft, that like the X-box, has little to do with PC software. Well, I found out today that they fscked that up too.
I think this is great. Perhaps a little expensive, but good none-the-less. I happen to like Salon very much, they have very good writing and the site is updated very often. It's like getting Time or Newsweek, but I get to read new stories every day.
I think a lot of people will pay for the service, if for no other reason than to support the magazine. I, for one, will be one of those folks.
...but this is stupid. If I can't trade games with my friends, then screw this. I'll just go out and buy a DVD player and keep buying used games for my PS1.
You've got to be kidding me? Another format? Of course, I know the RIAA doesn't "get it", and they probably never will. This new format is ridiculous. So you've got these little discs now. Great. What ever happened to the mini-disc, what was wrong with that? It was small, it was recordable...oh, wait, the record cartels did not control the distribution media of the mini-disc.
My advice to all of you who own stock in any of the big five cartels...sell it. You're revenue streams will evaporate. Face it, if you make money from a record company and you are not a recording artist, than you are a parasite. Don't try and justify it, just accept it and move on, because the new methods of music distribution are like a flea & tick collar and you are going to lose. Get out while you can.
But the record cartels can force consumers NOT to buy other products. There was recently an anti-trust lawsuit that the big five cartels lost (and had to pay a measley couple of hundred million USD) because they were forcing record stores to set prices artificially high. If they refused to set the prices high, then the record stores wouldn't get the advertising money from the cartels and Best Buy would put them out of business in a month.
The record cartels can also force bands not to go anywhere by burying them beneath contractual obligations. Why on earth would the cartels want to cannabalize the Backdoor Boys record sales with a good band's record sales when it costs more money to pay a good band, and that band doesn't actually sell that many record albums compared to the Backdoor Boys.
Do you play shows? If so, you should hand out little cards with your band's MP3.com web site and tell everyone they can download your music there. Especially if you play in a large, plugged-in venue, a la, Chicago, Noo Yawk or Lost Angeles.
The guy that posted below has a good point about the commute. Time on a plane is commuting, and I've done that for programming work too. Road time is just that, road time. No way around it.
I'm still trying to figure out exactly what my opinions on copyright and intellectual property are, but the $20,000,000 USD figure comes from an album such as Sgt. Pepper's. I'm sure the Beatles, perhaps collectively, have made roughly that from the sales of that album. At least half that.
I know this thread is dying, but here's another bit: I'm starting to believe that if you can't make money in a certain time period off of a song, or you make a certain amount of money off of a song, than that song ought to be placed in the public domain.
Why shouldn't Sgt. Pepper's be placed in the public domain? It's great music, the only people that album is supporting now is record cartel execs. It's not like Paul, George, George and Ringo need the money. I suppose ultimately it'd be up to Micheal Jackson (right?).
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, they aren't exactly invulnerable to, say, HARM missles...
It's not the underlying tech that the two countries you specified are lacking, it's the communication and control networks and experience that would be needed to deploy the anti-stealth cell phone network, not to mention the immense cost of doing so.
I seriously doubt that buying Playstations to run a military computer network is the answer to Iraq's problems either. Also, the plan doesn't address the problem of directing weapons to shoot down the stealth aircraft. So instead of knowing that the stealth aircraft is there after getting bombed, the cell-enabled anti stealth country has a few minutes warning.
I suppose that such a thing could make a difference when considering the fact that other aircraft could be used to intercept the stealth aircraft, but that is also difficult without accurate information.
I guess what I should say is that intercepting a stealth aircraft is not going to be an easy proposition any time soon. The "in the neighborhood" solution that this technology provides is not going to be good enough to make a significant difference. Even if you do manage to get fighter interceptors up "in the neighborhood" of the stealth aircraft, finding an aircraft within a few miles with the naked eye is a difficult process at best. Especially at night.
This isn't even going to remotely affect any county's military for a couple of decades at best. Aside from the fact that most countries where military action is taking place at all, have sketchy cell phone networks at best, there is hardly a military that has the command and control facilities available to use the kind of information that would be collected by cell phone towers efficiently. Other than those militaries who already rely upon stealth aircraft.
And this still isn't going to make that huge of a difference, because I seriously doubt that the technology could be used with the pinpoint accuracy needed to direct weapons fire.
You know, I'm trying to remember the bookstore where I bought it. It was in Chambana, IL, and it was very Barnes and Noble-esque, but not a B&N...hmmm...it was more like a Barques & Naders...
You can prolly get it at your local library.
Why People Believe Weird Things ?
Immortality devices? What is your scientific proof? Scientific, not pseudo-scientific. You are a charlatan, sir.
I know this isn't going to apply to everyone reading this, but maybe a few. Quite a few countries have citizenship and emigration rules that allow second generation "citizens" to emigrate "back" to the home country. Please correct me on this one, but I believe Ireland has instituted a program trying to lure Irish tech workers back from their overseas jobs. I believe this also includes, say, an American, born of Irish parents.
It is a bit of a shot in the dark, but it isn't too uncommon, citizenship wise. I do remember hearing of Americans conscripted into the Iraqi army because they were in Iraq visiting their parents as the Gulf War broke out.
They're already risking having a competitor do better than they. They are porting Linux to just about everything with a CPU that they manufacture. What is going to happen when 51% of S/390 (or whatever the heck they're called now) orders request Linux instead of OS/390? I'd call that an embarrasment.
I also think they've prolly spent more money on a new version of O/S2 than they would have with making their own Linux distro. But that is strictly an opinion...
Why does everybody keep on insisting on keeping dead operating systems lying around? I mean, aside for the fact that I can get a little nostalgic about my Commodore 64 emulator, it doesn't do a wholehelluvalot for me. Just the statement about the lack of driver support should preclude IBM from wasting money on this venture.
Now that I'm done ranting, I'll say something (I hope) semi-intelligent. IBM could have easily used Linux for something like this. They could have even used a flavor of BSD. Either way that would be better in the driver department.
In fact, when is IBM going to get around to publishing their own Linux distro? Are they even thinking about something like this? Why not, Linux is halfway to usurping OS/390 and AIX (not to mention Solaris, Winblowz, IRIX, et al.)?
I would certainly love to see big blue put the moves on a Linux distro. Not only would that give IBM a good reason to start putting a lot of effort into driver creation for Linux, but it would also give their Linux initiative a lot more clout, and it would allow IBM to take Microsoft on directly with a quality and widely used operating system.
I'm surprised that more big software companies haven't put out their own distros. Oracle comes to mind. Why don't they make a linux distro that is specifically for installing Oracle on top of? I think it would be great if I no longer had to deal with all the crap that Redhat introduces into their distro that effectively breaks Oracle. Ugh....
...sent to letters@forbes.com:
l
I am looking at your story:
Commercial-Free Conundrum
John C. Dvorak, Forbes.com, 04.16.01, 2:30 PM ET
...posted here:
http://www.forbes.com/2001/04/16/0416dvorak.htm
...and would like to ask you to please get a real columnist to write for your publication. I've known Dvorak's work on the tech trades for many years now, and I've always known he's a blowhard, but this latest column is ridiculous. For instance:
In many ways the device is similar to MP3 technology: It's a way to steal programming. This has gone unnoticed because PVRs haven't caught on, yet.
Dvorak might as well say that VCR's steal programming. VCR's have had commercial skipping functions for some time now, and so do some televisions, which allow you to flip channels for exactly 30 seconds, and at the end of that 30 seconds, it automatically changes the channel back to the original program, thus "skipping" the commercial. PVR's are not devices used to steal programming.
These devices cost around $500, which is not a mass-market price.
I paid $350 for my UltimateTV AND RCA dual tuner satellite dish system. He is flat wrong about the up front pricing.
And let's not ignore the complexity of these systems. The remote control for PVRs has more buttons than a TV control room.
Huh? Electronic remote controls have come a long way since "channel up, channel down, power on/off, volume". You'd think that since Dvorak is a technology writer, that he wouldn't have such a hard time figuring out how to use it. Add that to the fact that PVR's are soooo much easier to program than VCR's. All one has to do to record a show with a PVR is point it to the show on the program guide, and press "record".
Apparently, 30 hours of available storage slowly shrinks to nil after a while, making the unit relatively useless.
Okay, lets examine this statement. This is just flat out wrong. I've read the discussion groups he is referencing. Some people have lost recording time because of a software bug that Microsoft has acknowledged and is fixing, but I have heard of no one with a "useless" UltimateTV system. Either Dvorak is lying or too lazy to do real research.
This guy (Dvorak) is obviously trying to get by on his name alone, because responsible journalism seems to be a foreign concept to the man.
Oh, and it is about advertising rates, but what really pisses me off, and you can see that at www.poliglut.org, is that SAG/AFTRA is trying to get money for distribution of commercials that radio stations are not charging more for. WGN radio would have a helluva time trying to get Old Style (obscure Wisconsin/Chicago beer) to pay for one of their commercials streamed to Thailand.
SAG/AFTRA are trying to get money from a revenue source that does not exist, and therefore shutting down a free service.
Oh, and yeah, I don't believe in residual payments to actors. That is, I think SAG/AFTRA is wrong to insist upon such a ridiculous payment scheme. But anyway, go to the link above if you are interested in more debate...
Have a look here. SAG is involved in this.
That's where the satellite system comes in. I'll be able to get WGBH out of Boston...
NOVA.
As far as I know, Ulitmate TV doesn't have a box for regular cable. I bought it because for the price of a 20 hour Tivo, I get a 35 hour Ultimate TV recorder, a dual tuner satellite television system, and a usb port in the back of the box to connect my cable modem to (eventually).
As soon as there is a non MSFT option, I'll gladly throw the Ultimate TV thingy out the door, but until then, I'll be able to record NOVA and Tales of the Gun at the same time, and then watch whenever I want.
Actually, the bastards that came to install the dish (so called "free install") tried to rip me off, so I plan to install it myself this weekend. I haven't encountered the problem yet, nor have had the opportunity to download the patch.
I'm not proud of buying a Micro$oft product, but in the PVR market, I was led to believe they had the best product/service combination.
Ultimate TV is a service offering from Microsoft, that like the X-box, has little to do with PC software. Well, I found out today that they fscked that up too.
Whaddyagonnado?
If you want to call up SAG and voice your concern about their greediness, have a look here.
http://www.sag.com/whoswho.html
I think this is great. Perhaps a little expensive, but good none-the-less. I happen to like Salon very much, they have very good writing and the site is updated very often. It's like getting Time or Newsweek, but I get to read new stories every day.
I think a lot of people will pay for the service, if for no other reason than to support the magazine. I, for one, will be one of those folks.
I'm James Burke, and you're watching, Connections.
Absolutely one of the best shows ever made.
...but this is stupid. If I can't trade games with my friends, then screw this. I'll just go out and buy a DVD player and keep buying used games for my PS1.
You've got to be kidding me? Another format? Of course, I know the RIAA doesn't "get it", and they probably never will. This new format is ridiculous. So you've got these little discs now. Great. What ever happened to the mini-disc, what was wrong with that? It was small, it was recordable...oh, wait, the record cartels did not control the distribution media of the mini-disc.
My advice to all of you who own stock in any of the big five cartels...sell it. You're revenue streams will evaporate. Face it, if you make money from a record company and you are not a recording artist, than you are a parasite. Don't try and justify it, just accept it and move on, because the new methods of music distribution are like a flea & tick collar and you are going to lose. Get out while you can.
Great rant!
But the record cartels can force consumers NOT to buy other products. There was recently an anti-trust lawsuit that the big five cartels lost (and had to pay a measley couple of hundred million USD) because they were forcing record stores to set prices artificially high. If they refused to set the prices high, then the record stores wouldn't get the advertising money from the cartels and Best Buy would put them out of business in a month.
The record cartels can also force bands not to go anywhere by burying them beneath contractual obligations. Why on earth would the cartels want to cannabalize the Backdoor Boys record sales with a good band's record sales when it costs more money to pay a good band, and that band doesn't actually sell that many record albums compared to the Backdoor Boys.
Do you play shows? If so, you should hand out little cards with your band's MP3.com web site and tell everyone they can download your music there. Especially if you play in a large, plugged-in venue, a la, Chicago, Noo Yawk or Lost Angeles.
The guy that posted below has a good point about the commute. Time on a plane is commuting, and I've done that for programming work too. Road time is just that, road time. No way around it.
I'm still trying to figure out exactly what my opinions on copyright and intellectual property are, but the $20,000,000 USD figure comes from an album such as Sgt. Pepper's. I'm sure the Beatles, perhaps collectively, have made roughly that from the sales of that album. At least half that.
I know this thread is dying, but here's another bit: I'm starting to believe that if you can't make money in a certain time period off of a song, or you make a certain amount of money off of a song, than that song ought to be placed in the public domain.
Why shouldn't Sgt. Pepper's be placed in the public domain? It's great music, the only people that album is supporting now is record cartel execs. It's not like Paul, George, George and Ringo need the money. I suppose ultimately it'd be up to Micheal Jackson (right?).