- Seen from the point of view of the company, they probably are the cheapest personnel around. They don't have the bureaucracy to deal with. They don't have to equip cubicles or expand parking. It keeps them ready to compete (especially as a small company).
- Seen from the point of view of the coders, this is probably as close to heaven as they can get. They get paid hard dollars, withour having to apply for visas, green cards, etc. They can stay home in their social environment to support their relatives. They can deliver their highquality work to someone who appreciates.
In the german army, some "mission-critical" servicemen (such as divers or snipers) have to get their natural teeth removed and replaced with high-quality implants.
This makes sense in a military point of view: there is one potential risk eliminated, namely that of developing teeth problems during wartime and spoiling critical stuff due to not being 100% fit.
I am sure that certain parts of the US army use this as well. Why not NASA? I suppose an astronaut just having pain in one tooth during that never-ending flight to mars could account for a lot of problems among the crew... Killing for someone's ration of painkillers or something.
Flying there is a big psychological challenge for any individual, so it make sense to have that problem solved...
It kinda reminds me of the ISS crew pestering about their lack of shampoo awhile back.
This is very clearly a product aimed towards users of 9x versions of the popular Redmond based OS. No one else will get a kick or efficiency boost out of (re-)booting that fast.
If it's been said before, well d'uh. I ain't got no karma to lose.
First of, I am not in Essen nor am I a potential customer of rwe-powerline.
Then again, nothing could interest me less, because our local power company (RWE is kind of a german-wide conglomerate) has taken their time to actually rewire out city (Norderstedt, near Hamburg, >50.000 inhabitants) to turn it into a multimedia-city. Here is their story.
As much as I hate big fuzzy terms, I love well-provided service at cheap rates. That is what I am getting right now. The german Telekom is busting lawsuits at these guys for some time now, so you gotta know the service *must* be good. Wilhelm-tel got me hooked up within 4(!) working days after applying for service. I could take my old number from the Telekom phone line. I got a Motorola cable modem *free* of charge along with a NIC to ram into my machine and connect the cablemodem to. I have free phone service for local calls within the wilhelm-tel net. When testing the pipe i got bursts of up to 20 (!) Megabits (before the cablemodem throttled down) showing me that the net is not designed tight but redundant. At max. 8 people are connected to a 20MBit circuit, so with everyone surfing like mad, you still get the 2MBit you pay for at minimum. Nothing the Telekom could offer.
But first things first. wilhelm-tel (www.wilhelm-tel.de), our local power provider established a glass fibre backbone around Norderstedt and is currently wiring up individual households. Which means that you get a new wall plug for your tv connection. On this plug there is another connector which plugs in a Motorola cable modem and later even the set top box (they're planning to deliver digital tv later on) and a new phone jack. I had the opportunity to change my provider for phone over to wilhelm-tel which i gladly did. It has been a dream of mine to stop giving money to the Telekom monopoly for a long time. Now it's true.
Telekom is pushing DSL like mad everywhere (768down/128up). What they don't mention is the fact that out of a "userbase" of 400.000 customers, only 150.000 are already connected. The dirty rest (mostly individuals, not businesses) are waiting, some for more than 2 years by now. Their DSL flatrate also requires you to rent ISDN phone service and therefore all in all becomes a pricey thing. Overall it is a pretty scam, as people around here in Norderstedt have been waiting for DSL a very long time. After changing to wilhelm-tel they all (including me, who had not signed up for DSL but only cancelled his usual phone service) got called by Telekom reps trying to persuade us to get DSL instead of this lame 2MBit up/down wilhelm-tel with free local calls and all that. Asked if they had a better offer they said DSL could be up and running at normal rates for you in 2 weeks. AHH! ALl of sudden there is availability in my area. Strange. Smells like fear of competition.
power line technology will mean that RWE PowerNet can deliver data at a rate of two million bytes per second.
Outright wrong, they offer two million BITS a sec.
Then you have to choose a service with RWE, which is basically a volume-cap thing. Go for 250, 1000 or 2000 megabytes a month and pay whatever you exceed with 7, 3.5 or 2 cents per MEGABYTE. This stinks of rip-off to me. Your monthly base price is $25, $35 or $50 depending on the tariff you sign up for. It also requires a one-time setup fee of roughly $50 and the modem has to be bought for $178, $152 or $127 (again depending on tariff).
What we have here is a monopolist (RWE=power) trying to get into another monopoly structure. Wilhelm-tel offers their service for $25 flat (including an undisclosed traffic amount for "fair private use", but my 10-15GB a month have not stirred anything there). You rent the modem for just 5 Marks ($2,50). No setup fees. Âlso, I can cancel anytime. RWE requires you to close a contract for 12 months, or 24 months if you want to save the one-time setup fee.
All the prices and conditions were taken from http://www.rwe-powerline.de/relaunch/preise/preise.htm and rudely converted to US-dollars to interest even the US-centric slashdotters.
To sum it up: RWE is a step somewhere but not quite the CORRECT direction. Most hardcore surfers in the area will be glad to get it. But wilhelm-tel is cheap and good enough to even interest the "unwashed masses" for broadband.
Now, you go to your local service provider and tell him to sink some glassfibre when he digs out the water pipes for checkup next time. That is basically what wilhelm-tel did in order to minimize infrastructure costs.
for a very beautiful and inspiring tale by Steve Meretky (THE Infocom Meretzky) which was an introduction to his game "A mind forever voyaging". It is damn beautiful and thought-provoking as it raises social and ethical problems that may arise from such "machines".
Can you sue you energy provider with "AI torture" when there are power spikes in your line? Could it be "murder" if you erased a "database backup" that was already beyond a certain maturity? When they come built like humans, will they "Blue Face of Death" when they need a reset ?
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dsinclair/amfv/amfv.h tm l
The story (which was a intro to the game storyline) was written by Steve Meretzky himself and makes a great short story as well as a great inspiration.
If you've got a bunch of stuff you need to carry, get a satchel, fanny pack, shoulder bag, backpack, sporanz or whatever...
If you consider geekiness a factor, leave the expensive stuff at home. Just go carrying a towel. Everyone then knows that you`re a geek who knows where his stuff is.
"Using an area of the Internet the size of Ireland, pedophiles can make your keyboard release toxic vapors that can make you more suggestible," said Syd Rapson, a Labor member of Parliament. Playing an anti-pedophile recording by the made-up rock group Smash My Brother's Face In, he looked at the camera and said, "If you listen to this at night, behavioral psychology tells us that in the morning you'll be 17.8 percent safer."
The second part is even better. It kinda reminds me that with a pretty statistic und some funky numbers, anything can be proven true and/or reasonable.
Damn, and I thought germany (where I live) was braindead to the core. But now, the UK looks even worse to me.
If you fly there for two years straigt you at least *want* to believe in a chance to take shower upon arrical.
Also, if they replaced the terms "water" and "H2O" with "alcohol" or "ethanol" it would lead to a dangerous surge in civilian manned space exploration (read: rednecks building rockets).
(And yes, clouds of "alcoholic" compounds have (supposedly) been found in space. This is significant in a way as it tells us that there isn't just Hydrogen and Oxygen out there, but on occasion you can also find Carbon... primal soup anyone?)
One study says playing games makes kids intelligent. Other studies have found it makes 'em critters aggressive. Now, i let's hope we can build enough jails for all those upcoming ultra-intelligent psychopathic serial killers(tm).
Slashdot Mirror
I'd like to point out that (slashdot.org == goatse.cx) by now...
- Seen from the point of view of the company, they probably are the cheapest personnel around. They don't have the bureaucracy to deal with. They don't have to equip cubicles or expand parking. It keeps them ready to compete (especially as a small company).
- Seen from the point of view of the coders, this is probably as close to heaven as they can get. They get paid hard dollars, withour having to apply for visas, green cards, etc. They can stay home in their social environment to support their relatives. They can deliver their highquality work to someone who appreciates.
I am bit astonished...
In the german army, some "mission-critical" servicemen (such as divers or snipers) have to get their natural teeth removed and replaced with high-quality implants.
This makes sense in a military point of view: there is one potential risk eliminated, namely that of developing teeth problems during wartime and spoiling critical stuff due to not being 100% fit.
I am sure that certain parts of the US army use this as well. Why not NASA? I suppose an astronaut just having pain in one tooth during that never-ending flight to mars could account for a lot of problems among the crew... Killing for someone's ration of painkillers or something.
Flying there is a big psychological challenge for any individual, so it make sense to have that problem solved...
It kinda reminds me of the ISS crew pestering about their lack of shampoo awhile back.
This is very clearly a product aimed towards users of 9x versions of the popular Redmond based OS. No one else will get a kick or efficiency boost out of (re-)booting that fast.
If it's been said before, well d'uh. I ain't got no karma to lose.
Then again, nothing could interest me less, because our local power company (RWE is kind of a german-wide conglomerate) has taken their time to actually rewire out city (Norderstedt, near Hamburg, >50.000 inhabitants) to turn it into a multimedia-city. Here is their story.
As much as I hate big fuzzy terms, I love well-provided service at cheap rates. That is what I am getting right now. The german Telekom is busting lawsuits at these guys for some time now, so you gotta know the service *must* be good. Wilhelm-tel got me hooked up within 4(!) working days after applying for service. I could take my old number from the Telekom phone line. I got a Motorola cable modem *free* of charge along with a NIC to ram into my machine and connect the cablemodem to. I have free phone service for local calls within the wilhelm-tel net. When testing the pipe i got bursts of up to 20 (!) Megabits (before the cablemodem throttled down) showing me that the net is not designed tight but redundant. At max. 8 people are connected to a 20MBit circuit, so with everyone surfing like mad, you still get the 2MBit you pay for at minimum. Nothing the Telekom could offer.
But first things first. wilhelm-tel (www.wilhelm-tel.de), our local power provider established a glass fibre backbone around Norderstedt and is currently wiring up individual households. Which means that you get a new wall plug for your tv connection. On this plug there is another connector which plugs in a Motorola cable modem and later even the set top box (they're planning to deliver digital tv later on) and a new phone jack. I had the opportunity to change my provider for phone over to wilhelm-tel which i gladly did. It has been a dream of mine to stop giving money to the Telekom monopoly for a long time. Now it's true.
Telekom is pushing DSL like mad everywhere (768down/128up). What they don't mention is the fact that out of a "userbase" of 400.000 customers, only 150.000 are already connected. The dirty rest (mostly individuals, not businesses) are waiting, some for more than 2 years by now. Their DSL flatrate also requires you to rent ISDN phone service and therefore all in all becomes a pricey thing. Overall it is a pretty scam, as people around here in Norderstedt have been waiting for DSL a very long time. After changing to wilhelm-tel they all (including me, who had not signed up for DSL but only cancelled his usual phone service) got called by Telekom reps trying to persuade us to get DSL instead of this lame 2MBit up/down wilhelm-tel with free local calls and all that. Asked if they had a better offer they said DSL could be up and running at normal rates for you in 2 weeks. AHH! ALl of sudden there is availability in my area. Strange. Smells like fear of competition.
Let's take a look at the rwe-powerline offer...
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?Article
Then you have to choose a service with RWE, which is basically a volume-cap thing. Go for 250, 1000 or 2000 megabytes a month and pay whatever you exceed with 7, 3.5 or 2 cents per MEGABYTE. This stinks of rip-off to me. Your monthly base price is $25, $35 or $50 depending on the tariff you sign up for. It also requires a one-time setup fee of roughly $50 and the modem has to be bought for $178, $152 or $127 (again depending on tariff).
What we have here is a monopolist (RWE=power) trying to get into another monopoly structure. Wilhelm-tel offers their service for $25 flat (including an undisclosed traffic amount for "fair private use", but my 10-15GB a month have not stirred anything there). You rent the modem for just 5 Marks ($2,50). No setup fees. Âlso, I can cancel anytime. RWE requires you to close a contract for 12 months, or 24 months if you want to save the one-time setup fee.
All the prices and conditions were taken from http://www.rwe-powerline.de/relaunch/preise/preis
To sum it up: RWE is a step somewhere but not quite the CORRECT direction. Most hardcore surfers in the area will be glad to get it. But wilhelm-tel is cheap and good enough to even interest the "unwashed masses" for broadband.
Now, you go to your local service provider and tell him to sink some glassfibre when he digs out the water pipes for checkup next time. That is basically what wilhelm-tel did in order to minimize infrastructure costs.
check out a complete mirror with all the html and pictures in context on http://web.intru.de/mylinkz/retrocasemirror
after i spend 15 minutes trying to get them, i might as well post them again - the server seems to be suffering bad.
...and there is another cheap rip on http://web.intru.de/mylinkz/retrocasemirror.
Has all the html pages and the pictures in context as compared to google.
While you are in that reading seat, check out
www.crosswinds.net/~dsinclair/amfv/amfv.html
for a very beautiful and inspiring tale by Steve Meretky (THE Infocom Meretzky) which was an introduction to his game "A mind forever voyaging". It is damn beautiful and thought-provoking as it raises social and ethical problems that may arise from such "machines".
Can you sue you energy provider with "AI torture" when there are power spikes in your line? Could it be "murder" if you erased a "database backup" that was already beyond a certain maturity? When they come built like humans, will they "Blue Face of Death" when they need a reset ?
...check out that story on:
h tm l
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dsinclair/amfv/amfv.
The story (which was a intro to the game storyline) was written by Steve Meretzky himself and makes a great short story as well as a great inspiration.
If you consider geekiness a factor, leave the expensive stuff at home. Just go carrying a towel. Everyone then knows that you`re a geek who knows where his stuff is.
The second part is even better. It kinda reminds me that with a pretty statistic und some funky numbers, anything can be proven true and/or reasonable.
Damn, and I thought germany (where I live) was braindead to the core. But now, the UK looks even worse to me.
Also, if they replaced the terms "water" and "H2O" with "alcohol" or "ethanol" it would lead to a dangerous surge in civilian manned space exploration (read: rednecks building rockets).
(And yes, clouds of "alcoholic" compounds have (supposedly) been found in space. This is significant in a way as it tells us that there isn't just Hydrogen and Oxygen out there, but on occasion you can also find Carbon... primal soup anyone?)
One study says playing games makes kids intelligent. Other studies have found it makes 'em critters aggressive. Now, i let's hope we can build enough jails for all those upcoming ultra-intelligent psychopathic serial killers(tm).