You know what's interesting...I have read all these posts in this thread declaring how this is a great reason to not buy a Zune, and how dare Microsoft take away their rights, etc. etc.
However, what is the real issue here? I mean I don't get why this upsets everyone? If you take the time to research and read what the information is on this, basically they're saying you can't download ripped/crippled or illegally copied versions of video and play it on a Zune. Who cares!?
In the end, I can still download real, valid content. I wouldn't expect a Zune or iPod to allow playing not gathered via a "valid" distribution channel. As a consumer and practical person, I know that in order for me to enjoy content that's well produced, it's not free. So if I pay for Marketplace, iTunes or subscribe to a free podcast, then I'm happy because I know that (a) I'm supporting content I want instead of getting forced to buy channels or content I don't want (i.e. cable or directv) and (b) I'm doing it legitimately without any worries.
In the end, if all I want to do is rip cd's and listen to them, neither Zune nor iPod or any other player is stopping me from doing that. So I fail to see why this is "the death of the Zune". I think this is more just a reason to bash Microsoft, when really you could find this type of issue with iPod or anything else.
Let's make no mistake, Apple isn't really a saint in similar regards here either. While they might wish for DRM free content they can sell, they still want to sell it. They still want you locked in to the iPod and more importantly iTunes. All businesses who are developing content and marketplaces around content want this. The player is just a delivery device. So really the question is if you're happy with content delivery by the maker of your device and are you ok with how portable that content is (or isn't).
Let's stop kidding ourselves here, anyone can find a reason why this is a bad idea and/or find the evil in MSFT's interest in doing this, however if you really look at the underlying motive for hating this it's simply because many of you railing against this don't want any restrictions on what you play/view/copy to your device. And frankly, I think this has alot to do with the fact that many people are downloading content from torrents or other places that violates copyright. So this "how dare they not let me get my content for free" attitude is mis-guided. In order to have devices like this out there, there has to be a compelling reason to make them. Just making devices isn't profitable and so in order to make good devices (and honestly the Zune, especially the 4GB little one, is not a bad device) there needs to be a profit model that will both deliver a good experience and make it worth it.
Each company doing this wants you locked in to their delivery mechanism and they want to make money from it, if you don't like that, then iPod and Zune both aren't for you. So whatever you do don't sit here and righteously declare how evil this is on one hand and then turn and download the last episode of The Office from a torrent site.
Now, go ahead and flame away, but you guys know I'm right and if you look close enough you can see the hypocrisy in the reactions here.
Btw, I own an ipod, I don't work for MS and I don't like the music industry. But I do have an appreciation and understanding of how innovation, capitalism and my world all interact. So frankly, I'm not pissed about Zune users missing out on illegal copies of NBC shows and am quite happy to participate in iTunes by buying what I use. Do I think the artists get a fare shake for my downloaded music I buy? not really, but then again, maybe the artists need to change the game...
...and just about every company on the planet does it in one form or the other and it's not that bad as long as it's done within reason and this doesn't seem that unreasonable to me. I think it's worth pointing out that this type of behavior is no different than negotiating a lease, in fact I'd say these deals are a necessity in some places of the US given the taxes and regulations that companies have to put up with. I'm all for moderate regulation and a reasonable tax on business, but this is the type of thing (high taxes) that drives companies to do this type of deal making. If states and counties got their taxes under control then this would become less common place.
In the end, high taxes, over regulation and unwillingness to soften those issues are what's going to drive more business out of a particular state, county, or even country because otherwise it's hard to compete when your competition has lower costs than you.
It maybe off for some reason or another, but I have recently started doing fiber and wireless install projects at several major ports and we're looking at using direct burial fiber from Corning. Instead of spending $1mil on trenching and conduit that doesn't exist on some of these facilities, we're able to use a saw and just cut an 8" saw cut and then just drop the fiber in, foam it, seal it and then polish. Costs about $32 per foot installed and at once facility we saved about $750k doing this instead of conduit.
"... or to the full satisfaction of the business executive."
I've been working in IT for quite a while and of course projects run late (they do in every area of business), many posters have noted it's because of change, unreal expectations to begin with or sales/marketing folks who are afraid to tell the truth to the customer.
Regardless, I think the quote that strikes me the hardest is the one above regading "to the satisfaction of business execs". One area that I think *everyone* in IT and on the business management side of any organization need to work on is sitting down and creating real expectations that will lead to satisfaction. All too often I hear execs complaining about why we can't get ALL of the projects done NOW! or I hear "this isn't what I wanted!" or they come down hard on managers for delivering something late when in fact it's the execs inability to properly set his expectations clearly.
I also lots of issues with a fundamental understanding of the business goals and requirments by the IT side and vice versa where the business folks have no idea what they really want from the IT side. In "theory" business analysts are supposed to fill that gap but in reality it's all too often that some exec says "we need e-commerce! now!" and expects that in a month they'll have a fully functional catalog and website w/ b2b portals and automated billing, etc. Even more realistic they don't even know what that means but they read it in the airplane magazine and so they feel they need it. Even if it was built fast and exactly how they wanted (assuming they could describe it), I also see that they (the business side) rarely are prepared to alter their operating or business process to meet the new technology. Thus I think many feel "unsatisfied" with the technology projects they commissioned.
It's a mentality that IT (or better said "technology") will solve all the business problems and instantly make the company or department more streamlined and thus more effecient. While this isn't a myth and is achievable, I think the expectations of the business side rarely match the ability of technology and the people delivering it.
As an IT manager I expect the dead on truth in terms of schedule, timing, effort, etc. no matter how bad it is or how much I won't like it. If I ever step in to the executive role, my philosophy will not change. I will expect perfection but demand reality. My technical prowess easily exceeds the executives I work with now, but coming soon are younger and more adept executives who I think begin to change the tone. However, that doesn't mean the demands will be less, in fact it could be greater upon the IT staff, because the IT managers of today who move to exec roles will know what an IT shop is capable of.
I think the art of meeting the business goal is just that, an art. One hand it's hard science of scheduling and measuring, but it's also managing the people involved. If your IT project is late, it's maybe because you, your group or your boss isn't very good at what you do (unlikely) but more than likely it's because no one was able to set the expectations up front or as things changed and thus the projects slide in to a murky hole of blame shifting and cover-up all to appease some exec who didn't really have a clear idea of what they wanted in the first place and who isn't really ready to cope with the new IT beast they're about to unleash anyway.
Since some may wish to get in to management, this dinner/review party could be a good chance to backstab your boss(es) and therefore open a clear road to the top.
don't let your backstabbing peers get there first either, make sure you name them as culprits in corporate ineffeciency and the reason your IT dept is so messed up, before they name you.
-s
(p.s. At dinner, don't talk about golf with these people unless you know your stuff. I found this out the hardway once, just wow them with archane references to programming languages which aren't in use any more, they'll think you're a god).
Second, it will take less than a week for someone to figure out how to access the new BIOS and make linux bootable
Third, there will be plenty of chipset/mb makers who won't do it and you will see "linux" bioses or switchable bios chipsets depending on what the user wants. Linux has enough of a movement that chipmakers and bios makers probably won't ignore them.
Re:RFID on Container Terminals
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NYT on RFID
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Sure, I should've provided links to begin with. As far as the TOS systems go, they are proprietary usually and don't necessarily relate to your field anyhow. They're usually Oracle DB's with some type of application that sits on top of that.
As far as RFID goes, there are various vendors doing things for container terminal tracking, I don't know if they have technology that would apply to lab work or "smaller" and less rugged tagging needs:
RFID on Container Terminals
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NYT on RFID
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· Score: 2, Informative
I have some comments on the use of RFID, since I'm currently researching them now. I don't have too much to say about consumer rights on the issue, but thought my work is relavant to the topic of RFID in general.
I'm in the shipping industry and although we're not the end-consumer, I can tell you that many container terminals in the US (and probably overseas) will likely be looking to RFID to further automate the process of container tracking and increase effeciency in yard operations.
I'm working on investigating them now in terms of feasability, etc. It's very interesting to look at the productivity and error reduction advances that can be made using RFID. The only challege we have is getting the container owner/leasors to put them on the containers and keep them there (i.e. they get damaged easily with the use of heavy machinery on the docks). Plus the longshoremen don't like the automation because it threatens their jobs and they'll try to damage the system if possible.
The biggest gain is reducing mistakes, which relates to how many retail places are looking at using them. I doubt anyone wants to track your sofa to you, but Ikea probably wants to know the history of that piece of furniture in terms of returns, etc. Plus they'd like to know where it is in their warehouse. There are some cool triangulation technologies out there which can find an RFID tag in a 3-dimensional space.
For us, we use what are called "top-picks" which are these wheeled or track based container lifts that can move over the top of a stack of containers and lift them and move them around. There is a terminal operator in LA who has a real-time 3d view of the stack for the operator, all based on what their TOS (terminal operating system) knows about that stack. They have errors, and they're thinking they can reduce the error rate to less than.05% if they used RFID in combo with their current tracking system. You can't imagine the cost of placing the wrong container on the wrong ship; we're talking easily 6 figures or more.
Anyway, RFID tags have a role in manufacturing and operations such as ours. The cost is worth it (we estimate currently at $1-$2 per tag) because the gain in enormous. Additionally the optical technologies our there (OCR and such) just can't achieve the success rates (trying writing software to read the trucks beat up old license place). I think we'll see more and more of them, especially in the warehousing and retail world, as well as in the heavy industries like mine. I don't know about the whole "walk out the door checkout", thing as I think there's some margin of error there that the store won't want to take, plus the privacy issues (as pointed out over and over in other users posts) are of course a factor. However, consumers, espically in the US, continue to be blind to them for other technologies such as the grocery store "cards". However I don't believe poeple will willing get an RFID card for a store unless they have a financial incentive to do so, like the discounts the grocery cards bring to them.
...that Sony or DirecTv would buy TiVo before it goes under. Sony could easily prop it up and any patents and intellectual property would be valuable to an electronics maker like Sony.
Side (but relevant) note, I just got a notice from DirecTv saying they are now "responsible" for my TiVo service, not TiVo. I have a lifetime with TiVo for my "Direct Tivo" reciever and I was wondering if this was the beginnings of a shift in TiVo to outsource managment of services to the vendors who resell their stuff to reduce the cost of doing biz for them (TiVo). Could be...
Ok, so my spelling was the greatest. But, my use of "resume's" was to simulate the accent, not poor english/french.
My point to everyone was that there are tools out there to creat a presentable cover letter and resume (sorry no accent this time). I abuse my english and I misspell occasionally, but my resume is flawless.
I can't tell you how many resume's we see that have *gross* spelling errors or serious grammar issues. Plus, we get a ton of resume's without cover letters. I know some companies don't require this, but when you read that a job description says "send resume and cover letter to..." then it's a good idea to include it.
People aren't handing jobs out anymore and there's alot of competition for them now, even for really qualified and experienced people, so that means you have to compete for the job, which also means you have to actually put effort in to getting it.
We just filled a sys admin job where we interviewed almost 30 candidates. We actually had guys showing up in shorts, torn jeans and t-shirts. I mean come on folks, even though many west coast jobs aren't "tie required" most employers like to see candidates who look presentable.
Just check your work. If you don't care about the job you're applying for, don't waste everyone's time.
I don't think they meant "small" in terms of revenue or application size, I took it to mean size of deployment. The number of WebLogic users is relatively small because the number of possible customers is relatively small, they just pay alot of money for it. Sure the Enterprise Application Server market maybe 2 billion a year, that doesn't mean a company that makes products for it isn't in a niche. Niche just means you specialize for a specific industry and market and nothing else.
Put a plasma monitor in front of that X-box or PS2 and it'll be a whole different world compared to that 640x480 60hz screen, especially since most flat lcd and plasma's support SVGA graphics with high resolutions. Granted this is a VERY expensive alternative right now, but in the future this will change. And as others have pointed out, X-box, ps2, etc. are just small PC's, are becoming less gaming platform and more of a specialized PC.
I saw an ad for a camera called an "X10", I've never heard of them before...I've always wanted to catch those hot girls that break in to my living room and steal stuff;-)
...for someone to start the "Pr0n Flix" chain of movie stores where they *add* sex, violence and language to films.
I always felt that Disney films lacked some of those qualities. Beauty and The Beast would really be a smash hit they just had a little more sex it in it.
> Sadly, unless you are an ISP or other mail service provider, filtering does nothing
Oh, I don't think that's fair statement. What if I'm a company and I have 1000 employees all recieving email and using my internal mail servers resources. So I put in a mail gateway that filters email up front before is passes through my firewall and in to my Exchange/Lotus/ system. I get a big resource savings by just filtering the email at the gateway and my users are happy.
Too many Slashdot readers only seem to think in terms of their personal mail box on this issue of SPAM, when the problem must be dealt with in a much larger scope. Personal level spam filtering is great and something that has it's place and these systems can be applied for that, but really make an impact on spammers it takes an ISP or many companies to drop their connections because the message they are transferring is spam, or they are known as a spammer.
That's why I like RBL's to some extent. They aren't the single silver bullet and are perfect by far, but I get a relatively high percentage of accurate blocks and I don't even have to take in all the email data at my mail server. I just find out who the sending host is and "blam" see ya later, very little bandwidth is used.
Now implementing something like Paul suggests in his article has it's place too. I think if you are a spammer and manage to get through the black/white lists, RBL's and other measures up front, then it's time to filter and a good, solid statistical filtering method is going to really do the trick. Especially when I get a consistently large sample of SPAM, like I do for my 1200 users I have to deal with.
I don't think 1/2 of 1/16th of the people here read the article he wrote, or at least understood it. This item is timely and worthy because it's a different approach, anyone who took time to read the article would realize why SpamAssign is workable but not the greatest implementation and why a statistical model is probably the way most spam filtering will go. He explains, quite correctly, that scoring spam on word scores alone isn't a viable method for the future. Read it, it's worth a look over if you're interested in Spam filtering.
It's not the end all be all of filtering methods, but the whole idea of blacklists/whitelists just isn't practical in the real world, same for word score filtering methods. It's fine for my home/personal mail and domains, but try implementing a whitelist or word score system in a 10,000 user organization and you'll learn what pain is.
I think the motives are fairly transparent here, or am i just being crazy?
Microsoft, has a sizable and well funded anti-linux campaign, we all know this. Microsoft is officially afraid Linux in the server market. Microsoft sees the Linux desktop as viable contender in the near future. Microsoft has been hit with an overhelming number of bug and security holes in their products. The Film and Music industry is floundering around trying to figure out how to solve their pirating woes and I'm sure they see alot of the *nix world as sophisticated hacker types willing to steal their stuff.
It all adds up to Microsoft finding a way to convince corporate America and the world that Linux, Open Source products and all of their *nix based competition are the bad guys because you can't "trust" their software.
DRM with Windows is a way for Microsoft to further the campaign against Linux. It seems obvious to me. I mean what better way to deter people from using Linux, but to blame viruses and security holes on "untrusted" software as well as push for hardware and software based DRM where their CD's and DVD's can only be used on DRM enabled platforms.
The idea is how can you trust software that is made by a community of people? It must be prone to security problems because there's no one accountable, and they must all be pirates because they know how to program. We all know this is crap, but Microsoft probably sees a huge opportunity to please Hollywood, RIAA, the government and at the same time weaken the advance of Linux by creating doubt about what is trust-worthy and what OS environments you can use your CD's and DVD's in. There's little or no incentive for the Film or Music industries to push to have Linux support their CD's/DVD's because they will look at the numbers of how many people have Windows and Mac desktops. Why should they want to allow Unix people to use their items? Especially since we represent a relatively small number of desktop users.
just my thoughts, some probably wrong, some probably right,
Why not just mirror a port on a switch? I don't believe (and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong) that a mirrored port does not show the connecting host on the switch fabric since it's a replication of the mirrored port. I think this avoids having to "stealth" the host to any degree. Since we're looking for traffic to/from a firewall interface (for example), it's simple enough just mirror the port that that FW interface is plugged in to, then you'll be capturing all in/out traffic of your network. simple.
In order to really do NIDS right, you need a NIDS host at every gateway in/out of your network, plus possibly some on remote segments, then collect all the alerts back to a central DB that can be correlated and alerted on. One NIDS host can't "see" everything if you have many switched or routed segments, or multiple WAN links, etc.
But, that transparent impedence matching tap is pretty cool though. Hmmmmm....donuts....
#2 - I'm not unemployed and have a successful job in the industry. Not as a sys admin, but as a technical production manager.
#3 - I don't think you are giving the artists enough credit. Almost all of the artists I know, and have had the pleasure to work with, are killer script writers, know perl very very well, usually know C/C++, and write really advanced shaders. They are not point and click toads like graphic designers in some NY ad agency. You think these guys only composite and animate with a mouse? You ever done any real rendering with a large render queue? Or just with After Effects on your little G4. Jeez, take a seat until you know what you're talking about.
#4 - If you've ever used Shake or any real animation or compositing package you would know that the power is in the API and backend of the program, not just in the UI. So even on OSX, you'll need a shell or some type of programming/scripting to do any work and extend the program beyond it's GUI. That's where the real work is done and where the real innovation can take place.
-s
"Everything I know, I learned from my dad He learned it all from his And his dad just happened to be Wrong about everything" -Dan Bern
Slashdot Mirror
here here! The great irony of this debate
You know what's interesting...I have read all these posts in this thread declaring how this is a great reason to not buy a Zune, and how dare Microsoft take away their rights, etc. etc.
However, what is the real issue here? I mean I don't get why this upsets everyone? If you take the time to research and read what the information is on this, basically they're saying you can't download ripped/crippled or illegally copied versions of video and play it on a Zune. Who cares!?
In the end, I can still download real, valid content. I wouldn't expect a Zune or iPod to allow playing not gathered via a "valid" distribution channel. As a consumer and practical person, I know that in order for me to enjoy content that's well produced, it's not free. So if I pay for Marketplace, iTunes or subscribe to a free podcast, then I'm happy because I know that (a) I'm supporting content I want instead of getting forced to buy channels or content I don't want (i.e. cable or directv) and (b) I'm doing it legitimately without any worries.
In the end, if all I want to do is rip cd's and listen to them, neither Zune nor iPod or any other player is stopping me from doing that. So I fail to see why this is "the death of the Zune". I think this is more just a reason to bash Microsoft, when really you could find this type of issue with iPod or anything else.
Let's make no mistake, Apple isn't really a saint in similar regards here either. While they might wish for DRM free content they can sell, they still want to sell it. They still want you locked in to the iPod and more importantly iTunes. All businesses who are developing content and marketplaces around content want this. The player is just a delivery device. So really the question is if you're happy with content delivery by the maker of your device and are you ok with how portable that content is (or isn't).
Let's stop kidding ourselves here, anyone can find a reason why this is a bad idea and/or find the evil in MSFT's interest in doing this, however if you really look at the underlying motive for hating this it's simply because many of you railing against this don't want any restrictions on what you play/view/copy to your device. And frankly, I think this has alot to do with the fact that many people are downloading content from torrents or other places that violates copyright. So this "how dare they not let me get my content for free" attitude is mis-guided. In order to have devices like this out there, there has to be a compelling reason to make them. Just making devices isn't profitable and so in order to make good devices (and honestly the Zune, especially the 4GB little one, is not a bad device) there needs to be a profit model that will both deliver a good experience and make it worth it.
Each company doing this wants you locked in to their delivery mechanism and they want to make money from it, if you don't like that, then iPod and Zune both aren't for you. So whatever you do don't sit here and righteously declare how evil this is on one hand and then turn and download the last episode of The Office from a torrent site.
Now, go ahead and flame away, but you guys know I'm right and if you look close enough you can see the hypocrisy in the reactions here.
Btw, I own an ipod, I don't work for MS and I don't like the music industry. But I do have an appreciation and understanding of how innovation, capitalism and my world all interact. So frankly, I'm not pissed about Zune users missing out on illegal copies of NBC shows and am quite happy to participate in iTunes by buying what I use. Do I think the artists get a fare shake for my downloaded music I buy? not really, but then again, maybe the artists need to change the game...
s
...and just about every company on the planet does it in one form or the other and it's not that bad as long as it's done within reason and this doesn't seem that unreasonable to me. I think it's worth pointing out that this type of behavior is no different than negotiating a lease, in fact I'd say these deals are a necessity in some places of the US given the taxes and regulations that companies have to put up with. I'm all for moderate regulation and a reasonable tax on business, but this is the type of thing (high taxes) that drives companies to do this type of deal making. If states and counties got their taxes under control then this would become less common place.
In the end, high taxes, over regulation and unwillingness to soften those issues are what's going to drive more business out of a particular state, county, or even country because otherwise it's hard to compete when your competition has lower costs than you.
-c
It maybe off for some reason or another, but I have recently started doing fiber and wireless install projects at several major ports and we're looking at using direct burial fiber from Corning. Instead of spending $1mil on trenching and conduit that doesn't exist on some of these facilities, we're able to use a saw and just cut an 8" saw cut and then just drop the fiber in, foam it, seal it and then polish. Costs about $32 per foot installed and at once facility we saved about $750k doing this instead of conduit.
t index.nsf/0/e7454c9c1dff36e886256cda00808c2f/$FILE /004-089.pdf
Here's a link:
http://www.corningcablesystems.com/web/library/li
"... or to the full satisfaction of the business executive."
I've been working in IT for quite a while and of course projects run late (they do in every area of business), many posters have noted it's because of change, unreal expectations to begin with or sales/marketing folks who are afraid to tell the truth to the customer.
Regardless, I think the quote that strikes me the hardest is the one above regading "to the satisfaction of business execs". One area that I think *everyone* in IT and on the business management side of any organization need to work on is sitting down and creating real expectations that will lead to satisfaction. All too often I hear execs complaining about why we can't get ALL of the projects done NOW! or I hear "this isn't what I wanted!" or they come down hard on managers for delivering something late when in fact it's the execs inability to properly set his expectations clearly.
I also lots of issues with a fundamental understanding of the business goals and requirments by the IT side and vice versa where the business folks have no idea what they really want from the IT side. In "theory" business analysts are supposed to fill that gap but in reality it's all too often that some exec says "we need e-commerce! now!" and expects that in a month they'll have a fully functional catalog and website w/ b2b portals and automated billing, etc. Even more realistic they don't even know what that means but they read it in the airplane magazine and so they feel they need it. Even if it was built fast and exactly how they wanted (assuming they could describe it), I also see that they (the business side) rarely are prepared to alter their operating or business process to meet the new technology. Thus I think many feel "unsatisfied" with the technology projects they commissioned.
It's a mentality that IT (or better said "technology") will solve all the business problems and instantly make the company or department more streamlined and thus more effecient. While this isn't a myth and is achievable, I think the expectations of the business side rarely match the ability of technology and the people delivering it.
As an IT manager I expect the dead on truth in terms of schedule, timing, effort, etc. no matter how bad it is or how much I won't like it. If I ever step in to the executive role, my philosophy will not change. I will expect perfection but demand reality. My technical prowess easily exceeds the executives I work with now, but coming soon are younger and more adept executives who I think begin to change the tone. However, that doesn't mean the demands will be less, in fact it could be greater upon the IT staff, because the IT managers of today who move to exec roles will know what an IT shop is capable of.
I think the art of meeting the business goal is just that, an art. One hand it's hard science of scheduling and measuring, but it's also managing the people involved. If your IT project is late, it's maybe because you, your group or your boss isn't very good at what you do (unlikely) but more than likely it's because no one was able to set the expectations up front or as things changed and thus the projects slide in to a murky hole of blame shifting and cover-up all to appease some exec who didn't really have a clear idea of what they wanted in the first place and who isn't really ready to cope with the new IT beast they're about to unleash anyway.
-s
...that one of the largest computers in the world is used for entertainment...love the movies tho, so I guess I can't complain too much :-)
-c
Since some may wish to get in to management, this dinner/review party could be a good chance to backstab your boss(es) and therefore open a clear road to the top.
don't let your backstabbing peers get there first either, make sure you name them as culprits in corporate ineffeciency and the reason your IT dept is so messed up, before they name you.
-s
(p.s. At dinner, don't talk about golf with these people unless you know your stuff. I found this out the hardway once, just wow them with archane references to programming languages which aren't in use any more, they'll think you're a god).
First, this is different from Apple?
Second, it will take less than a week for someone to figure out how to access the new BIOS and make linux bootable
Third, there will be plenty of chipset/mb makers who won't do it and you will see "linux" bioses or switchable bios chipsets depending on what the user wants. Linux has enough of a movement that chipmakers and bios makers probably won't ignore them.
Sure, I should've provided links to begin with. As far as the TOS systems go, they are proprietary usually and don't necessarily relate to your field anyhow. They're usually Oracle DB's with some type of application that sits on top of that.
As far as RFID goes, there are various vendors doing things for container terminal tracking, I don't know if they have technology that would apply to lab work or "smaller" and less rugged tagging needs:
Texas Instruments has a division:
TI-RFID at Texas Instruments
SAIC, really big contractor, interesting docs:
SAIC
The RFID Journal:
RFID Journal
Wherenet (RFID vendor):
Wherenet RFID Products
Transcore (RFID vendor):
These are just a small handful of those I've seen. A search un 'rfid' in google always turns up fun things too. Enjoy, -sTranscore Products, Services
Which one is SCO? :-)
-s
I have some comments on the use of RFID, since I'm currently researching them now. I don't have too much to say about consumer rights on the issue, but thought my work is relavant to the topic of RFID in general.
.05% if they used RFID in combo with their current tracking system. You can't imagine the cost of placing the wrong container on the wrong ship; we're talking easily 6 figures or more.
I'm in the shipping industry and although we're not the end-consumer, I can tell you that many container terminals in the US (and probably overseas) will likely be looking to RFID to further automate the process of container tracking and increase effeciency in yard operations.
I'm working on investigating them now in terms of feasability, etc. It's very interesting to look at the productivity and error reduction advances that can be made using RFID. The only challege we have is getting the container owner/leasors to put them on the containers and keep them there (i.e. they get damaged easily with the use of heavy machinery on the docks). Plus the longshoremen don't like the automation because it threatens their jobs and they'll try to damage the system if possible.
The biggest gain is reducing mistakes, which relates to how many retail places are looking at using them. I doubt anyone wants to track your sofa to you, but Ikea probably wants to know the history of that piece of furniture in terms of returns, etc. Plus they'd like to know where it is in their warehouse. There are some cool triangulation technologies out there which can find an RFID tag in a 3-dimensional space.
For us, we use what are called "top-picks" which are these wheeled or track based container lifts that can move over the top of a stack of containers and lift them and move them around. There is a terminal operator in LA who has a real-time 3d view of the stack for the operator, all based on what their TOS (terminal operating system) knows about that stack. They have errors, and they're thinking they can reduce the error rate to less than
Anyway, RFID tags have a role in manufacturing and operations such as ours. The cost is worth it (we estimate currently at $1-$2 per tag) because the gain in enormous. Additionally the optical technologies our there (OCR and such) just can't achieve the success rates (trying writing software to read the trucks beat up old license place). I think we'll see more and more of them, especially in the warehousing and retail world, as well as in the heavy industries like mine. I don't know about the whole "walk out the door checkout", thing as I think there's some margin of error there that the store won't want to take, plus the privacy issues (as pointed out over and over in other users posts) are of course a factor. However, consumers, espically in the US, continue to be blind to them for other technologies such as the grocery store "cards". However I don't believe poeple will willing get an RFID card for a store unless they have a financial incentive to do so, like the discounts the grocery cards bring to them.
Cheers,
Colin
...that Sony or DirecTv would buy TiVo before it goes under. Sony could easily prop it up and any patents and intellectual property would be valuable to an electronics maker like Sony.
Side (but relevant) note, I just got a notice from DirecTv saying they are now "responsible" for my TiVo service, not TiVo. I have a lifetime with TiVo for my "Direct Tivo" reciever and I was wondering if this was the beginnings of a shift in TiVo to outsource managment of services to the vendors who resell their stuff to reduce the cost of doing biz for them (TiVo). Could be...
-s
Shit, I still can't spell !!! I meant to say, "so my spelling wasn't the greatest"...
sorry.
Ok, so my spelling was the greatest. But, my use of "resume's" was to simulate the accent, not poor english/french.
My point to everyone was that there are tools out there to creat a presentable cover letter and resume (sorry no accent this time). I abuse my english and I misspell occasionally, but my resume is flawless.
-s
I can't tell you how many resume's we see that have *gross* spelling errors or serious grammar issues. Plus, we get a ton of resume's without cover letters. I know some companies don't require this, but when you read that a job description says "send resume and cover letter to..." then it's a good idea to include it.
People aren't handing jobs out anymore and there's alot of competition for them now, even for really qualified and experienced people, so that means you have to compete for the job, which also means you have to actually put effort in to getting it.
We just filled a sys admin job where we interviewed almost 30 candidates. We actually had guys showing up in shorts, torn jeans and t-shirts. I mean come on folks, even though many west coast jobs aren't "tie required" most employers like to see candidates who look presentable.
Just check your work. If you don't care about the job you're applying for, don't waste everyone's time.
-s
You know, change the world like Amazon.com and Microsoft ;-)
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I don't think they meant "small" in terms of revenue or application size, I took it to mean size of deployment. The number of WebLogic users is relatively small because the number of possible customers is relatively small, they just pay alot of money for it. Sure the Enterprise Application Server market maybe 2 billion a year, that doesn't mean a company that makes products for it isn't in a niche. Niche just means you specialize for a specific industry and market and nothing else.
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Put a plasma monitor in front of that X-box or PS2 and it'll be a whole different world compared to that 640x480 60hz screen, especially since most flat lcd and plasma's support SVGA graphics with high resolutions. Granted this is a VERY expensive alternative right now, but in the future this will change. And as others have pointed out, X-box, ps2, etc. are just small PC's, are becoming less gaming platform and more of a specialized PC.
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I saw an ad for a camera called an "X10", I've never heard of them before...I've always wanted to catch those hot girls that break in to my living room and steal stuff ;-)
...for someone to start the "Pr0n Flix" chain of movie stores where they *add* sex, violence and language to films.
I always felt that Disney films lacked some of those qualities. Beauty and The Beast would really be a smash hit they just had a little more sex it in it.
-s
> Sadly, unless you are an ISP or other mail service provider, filtering does nothing
Oh, I don't think that's fair statement. What if I'm a company and I have 1000 employees all recieving email and using my internal mail servers resources. So I put in a mail gateway that filters email up front before is passes through my firewall and in to my Exchange/Lotus/ system. I get a big resource savings by just filtering the email at the gateway and my users are happy.
Too many Slashdot readers only seem to think in terms of their personal mail box on this issue of SPAM, when the problem must be dealt with in a much larger scope. Personal level spam filtering is great and something that has it's place and these systems can be applied for that, but really make an impact on spammers it takes an ISP or many companies to drop their connections because the message they are transferring is spam, or they are known as a spammer.
That's why I like RBL's to some extent. They aren't the single silver bullet and are perfect by far, but I get a relatively high percentage of accurate blocks and I don't even have to take in all the email data at my mail server. I just find out who the sending host is and "blam" see ya later, very little bandwidth is used.
Now implementing something like Paul suggests in his article has it's place too. I think if you are a spammer and manage to get through the black/white lists, RBL's and other measures up front, then it's time to filter and a good, solid statistical filtering method is going to really do the trick. Especially when I get a consistently large sample of SPAM, like I do for my 1200 users I have to deal with.
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I don't think 1/2 of 1/16th of the people here read the article he wrote, or at least understood it. This item is timely and worthy because it's a different approach, anyone who took time to read the article would realize why SpamAssign is workable but not the greatest implementation and why a statistical model is probably the way most spam filtering will go. He explains, quite correctly, that scoring spam on word scores alone isn't a viable method for the future. Read it, it's worth a look over if you're interested in Spam filtering.
It's not the end all be all of filtering methods, but the whole idea of blacklists/whitelists just isn't practical in the real world, same for word score filtering methods. It's fine for my home/personal mail and domains, but try implementing a whitelist or word score system in a 10,000 user organization and you'll learn what pain is.
-s
Microsoft + DRM = No Linux
I think the motives are fairly transparent here, or am i just being crazy?
Microsoft, has a sizable and well funded anti-linux campaign, we all know this. Microsoft is officially afraid Linux in the server market. Microsoft sees the Linux desktop as viable contender in the near future. Microsoft has been hit with an overhelming number of bug and security holes in their products. The Film and Music industry is floundering around trying to figure out how to solve their pirating woes and I'm sure they see alot of the *nix world as sophisticated hacker types willing to steal their stuff.
It all adds up to Microsoft finding a way to convince corporate America and the world that Linux, Open Source products and all of their *nix based competition are the bad guys because you can't "trust" their software.
DRM with Windows is a way for Microsoft to further the campaign against Linux. It seems obvious to me. I mean what better way to deter people from using Linux, but to blame viruses and security holes on "untrusted" software as well as push for hardware and software based DRM where their CD's and DVD's can only be used on DRM enabled platforms.
The idea is how can you trust software that is made by a community of people? It must be prone to security problems because there's no one accountable, and they must all be pirates because they know how to program. We all know this is crap, but Microsoft probably sees a huge opportunity to please Hollywood, RIAA, the government and at the same time weaken the advance of Linux by creating doubt about what is trust-worthy and what OS environments you can use your CD's and DVD's in. There's little or no incentive for the Film or Music industries to push to have Linux support their CD's/DVD's because they will look at the numbers of how many people have Windows and Mac desktops. Why should they want to allow Unix people to use their items? Especially since we represent a relatively small number of desktop users.
just my thoughts, some probably wrong, some probably right,
-s
Why not just mirror a port on a switch? I don't believe (and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong) that a mirrored port does not show the connecting host on the switch fabric since it's a replication of the mirrored port. I think this avoids having to "stealth" the host to any degree. Since we're looking for traffic to/from a firewall interface (for example), it's simple enough just mirror the port that that FW interface is plugged in to, then you'll be capturing all in/out traffic of your network. simple.
In order to really do NIDS right, you need a NIDS host at every gateway in/out of your network, plus possibly some on remote segments, then collect all the alerts back to a central DB that can be correlated and alerted on. One NIDS host can't "see" everything if you have many switched or routed segments, or multiple WAN links, etc.
But, that transparent impedence matching tap is pretty cool though. Hmmmmm....donuts....
-s
Hey bucko-
#1 - Too bad you should choose post anonymously
#2 - I'm not unemployed and have a successful job in the industry. Not as a sys admin, but as a technical production manager.
#3 - I don't think you are giving the artists enough credit. Almost all of the artists I know, and have had the pleasure to work with, are killer script writers, know perl very very well, usually know C/C++, and write really advanced shaders. They are not point and click toads like graphic designers in some NY ad agency. You think these guys only composite and animate with a mouse? You ever done any real rendering with a large render queue? Or just with After Effects on your little G4. Jeez, take a seat until you know what you're talking about.
#4 - If you've ever used Shake or any real animation or compositing package you would know that the power is in the API and backend of the program, not just in the UI. So even on OSX, you'll need a shell or some type of programming/scripting to do any work and extend the program beyond it's GUI. That's where the real work is done and where the real innovation can take place.
-s
"Everything I know, I learned from my dad
He learned it all from his
And his dad just happened to be
Wrong about everything" -Dan Bern