However, when you look at it in the other direction, not all innovations are related to inventions, as an invention would be an object of some form or another, and well, software, for one, is not an object.
Now, something that's hardware, that uses software or firmware might qualify as an invention. But when we start getting to 'innovative business practices' or 'innovative billing techniques' or 'innovative ways to force your competitors out of business', there's no particular object, and hence no invention involved. [Now, that's not to say that your business process, billing technique, or whatever may depend on an invention, but it is not, in itself, an invention].
We'll start seeing more and more product placement in the computer games to offset the cost of the games, and for the companies to improve their bottom line.
(advertisements in the background, as in sports arenas; billboards in the background of driving games, and then they'll start working the occassional coke or budweiser can in the hand of one of the main characters).
Sooner or later, I wouldn't be surprised if more and more non-game companies start getting into the video game business to push more product. Right now, the only one that I can think of is Lego, who has quite a variety of games out there, and from what I've seen, some of them are quite decent. [Didn't Six Flags do a tie in with Roller Coaster Tycoon? I envision more stuff along those lines...]
I for one would rather die than be slaved to a machine for the rest of my life. Or living as a head in a brain like on Futurama. [although, I guess I could use it to annoy people, but I don't have the taste for fish flakes particularly].
Would you be willing to extend your life if it meant a 100% chance of having to go through some form of cancer treatment? [which well, almost all males will end up with prostate cancer unless they find a cure for it...which, although it can be treated to some degree of success, it may mean that you have severe hormone therapy, and get emotional all the time, or radiation, which can ruin your bladder and colon [nothing like a bathroom break every 20-30 minutes].]
The rest would be hit with Alzheimers. Which, although they've found that watching fish helps patients regain their appetite, I'm not looking forward to sitting around in a nursing home unable to care for myself. [Especially when I forget about the prostate treatment, and forget about the need to go to the bathroom every 20 minutes].
Then we start getting into the issues with overcrowding, lack of food to supply the population, issues with people having four kids before they're 20....[which would mean that 600 years down the road, that family would have had 30 generations, and each new generation would be double the size of each earlier generation]. Add a few septuplets in there, and other freaks of fertility clinics, and who knows what we'll end up with.
I had actually labeled my chair 'Joe hates Banner' at one point. My final breaking point was after the 4.x upgrade, when I had asked the SCT contractors to make a change to their system -- wrap some tags around the output, so that I could make all of the info text italic (wasn't my idea...the registrar wanted it). I was told to change the data, rather than the program, so they wouldn't have to keep changing it every upgrade.
Unfortunately, the standard SCT upgrade procedures are to completely wipe the existing database, replacing it with what they call 'SEED', and then reapply every change made. This includes changes made through Web Tailor, which would be all of the changes that I spent a week making.
If the problem is Banner, however, that's more than just a student issue, as it also handles salary information at some places.
Oh...and if it's not Blackboard or Banner, it might be Prometheus, which was bought by Blackboard last year.
The SOG Power Pliers Deluxe (SOG model S45) has a robertson drive on it. They also have a hex bolt to hold the tools in, and I switched out my hack saw with a line cutter.
Unfortunately, I can't find places online selling the replacement kits. [I got mine when I was still a student, and had access to military bases, as I was a dependant.... the line cutter is used in the paratool to cut yourself down if you land in a tree]
It also has a philips #1 on it, which is useful for pulling cards out of computers... I also carry a Gerber, as it has a philips #2, which are useful when racking systems.
Of course, you'd have to find one that actually fit your keyboard.
I've been debating on getting a waterproof keyboard, for the computer in my kitchen. [so that I can have easy access to recipies online and/or watch movies while cooking]
I've had those days after you've been working non-stop 12-16hr days, and you get to the point where you're less productive than before.
My dad gave me a book recently on the connections between adrenaline and stress. Basically, it talks about handling stress so you don't let it get out of hand, as stress triggers adrenaline, which affects your sleep patterns and causes you to make snap decisions without thinking things out or being creative.
I've had depressive fits where I haven't left my place for weeks at a time, but now that I reflect on it, they were all triggered by times of high stress. So now, before I get to far in, I try to relax. Unfortunately, saturday morning cartoons have really sucked in the past few years, so I don't have that 3-4 hrs of relaxation per week.
If you're not getting stuff done, set a timer, wait, relax for an hour or so, then press back in on it. Personally, I find that I do some of my best work near 6am.... no matter if I got up early to do it [working right after I get up, or until I've been up all night and start to get tired]. Tired is actually a sign of being relaxed, as if you're pumping with adrenaline, you won't fall asleep.
It reminds me of a bit from Beavis and Butthead -- they're talking about having 200 channels ot TV, and one of them suggests what if they just had one channel that didn't suck.
I mean, hell, I admit, I keep on the TV as background noise, but there's just some stuff I have to change the channel for. It's hard finding something on at 5pm EST that isn't an infomercial. If it weren't for FoodTV, BBC America, TLC, Discovery and similar channels, there'd be many more hours of the day when I wouldn't be able to find something worth watching.
When a good program does finally make it to the air, they cancel it after a season (Mad Jack the Pirate) or two (Invader Zim). They put things in bad time slots (Futurama, always pre-empted by sports when it was in first run). If it weren't for the random stuff that somehow manages to make it on the air -- Good Eats, Coupling, Monster Garage, we'd be in even more trouble.
So, anyway, this brings up the real question -- is 'the Internet' winning because it's better than TV, or is TV losing because it's worse than 'the Internet'?
I mean, hell, you want friends, it helps to have something in common with them. Personally, I was a military brat, and the military folks tend to be much more welcoming of any new person, as they're used to being the new person themselves, but most people aren't so used to getting thrown in a new place every few years.
If you're in any professional/hobbyist/whatever organizations, look to see if there are any chapters where you're going...for those geeks, maybe a linux users group, perl mongers, whatever. There might be a lego users group, or something else where you can meet people, if that's what you're trying to do. Of course, there's also the chance that these people are obsessive freaks.
Do some research before you go... for all you know, you have relatives living in that same town, or friends from high school or college who are only an hour or two away from where you're going. Ask your friends if any of them have been there, any maybe they have recommendations on things to do, places to go, whatever. Check online... look for a local newspaper, and see what sort of things there are going on in the town. If it's a big city, look for an independant newspaper, like the Baltimore or Washington City Papers. You might also check colleges in the area, and see what sort of events their student papers have listed.
You can also check out DMOZ by region, and you might be able to find something of interest. You might check the local phone book for independant bookstores, comic book / game shops, whatever sparks your interest.
Without knowing what sort of people you're trying to meet, it's hard to give any useful suggestions as to where to find them.
There are quite a few 'Smithsonian' museums that aren't the American History or Air & Space. [Although, they both do have some nice stuff in 'em]. There's also plenty of stuff in DC that's not run by the Smithsonian.
If you prefer the European style air museums (a hanger, lots of planes) , the Air & Space had an annex, they're working on building a new building out near Dulles Airport, and they're moving the stuff.
Oh...and if you want to see the monuments, and it's the summer, take the night tour. You can't go up the Washington, but the Jefferson and Lincoln are much better when they're lit up, it's not crowded, and you're not melting in crappy DC weather.
I'm not quite there on the 'largest collection of beer on the planet', but then again, I'm a military brat, and spent some time in Europe. The couple of times I've been to The Brickskeller, they've been surprisingly out of a number of things. They stock the stuff people drink on a regular basis, and they keep a token bottle up there so they can claim they have a lot of variety.
I was more impressed with Marikkas, in Lexington, Kentucky, which seemed to have a larger selection when I was there. [And good German food, too]. Of course, geek wise, there's not much reason to go to Kentucky, unless you're looking for alcohol, as there's not much else there but horses and basketball. Except for Lexmark, I guess... and the place they used to make the old heavy duty IBM keyboards.
Personally, by watching my calorie intake, without exercising, I've lost about 30 pounds since April, and I'm trying to shed another 10-20 to get back to the 150-160lb range. I'm guessing that cutting out sodas has has the most profound impact on what I've changed, diet wise. Of course, I had to slowly cut back... It's not like I was drinking 3L of Mt. Dew per day, as I was in college, but I was probably drinking a good 1.5L of sodas per day. Oh...and you do have to drink water, or as a compromise, sports drinks, as fruit juices tend to have just as mushc sugar as sodas.
The only downside to Nukes is a Chernobyl-like operating mess. But that has proved extremely rare (one such event in the history of Nuclear Power, 50+ years)
Well, I guess it depends on what you consider 'chernobyl like'.
1961 - SL-1 -- 500rems/hr radiation leak
1966 - Enrico Fermi -- core partially melted
1979 - Three Mile Island -- meltdown
1986 - Chernobyl -- meltdown, explosion
So, how many people have to die before it's not considered cost effective? What value have you applied to a human life in your benefit/cost analysis?
If you don't practice writing, you'll get screwed when it comes to the 1.5hr essay-based final (and maybe multiple during the course of the same day).
So you're sitting at the test, trying to put the answers down on paper, and your hand starts cramping up. Not to mention that you have to write slower than you normally do, so that it's actually legible for the teacher to grade. And your spelling sucks, as you've gotten so dependant upon spell check.
Some people forget about the features in a pad. And although the teacher may put all of his powerpoint slides online, it's the teacher who writes the tests, so pay attention to him, not the slides.
Well, first the fact that I don't handle networking, and only have access to the information which is made available by our networking group, not the raw data itself to attempt to analyze it.
Second, the method of calculation was from periods when our organization was able to rate limit, at what time we were able to determine the trends of different types of network traffic, as compared to the current traffic, in which we are not able as well to split everything out.
Part of the problem is in the total volume of traffic -- although we're in a summer lull right now, it was not uncommon for our outbound connections to be over 110Mb/sec over the course of the last school year. [we have about 2Gb/s capacity, after the addition of some additional circuits this year, as we had reached saturation on some of our links].
Of course, some of those connections are to Internet2, so the load pattern on those lines is different from the connections to the commercial Internet.
So anyway, the point is -- yes, you could put up a machine to handle the workload, and have people maintain it, and constantly tune it, but you have to weigh the costs of the hardware, software, and human resources to just upgrading your lines and hardware. I'm not saying that the management made the best decision, but well, I can actually get into work from home and visa-versa without it really sucking like it did last September, and we don't have issues with increased latency, which would affect some of the ongoing research projects.
(I think that they have adjusted some of the rules in the routers, but they don't want to drive the CPU utlization too high, or it'd keep us from being able to maximize our bandwidth)
As an employee at a university, I can tell you that in fact, those numbers are realistic.
Unfortunately, with the port-hopping ability of some of the newer p2p networks, restricting their usage, or giving them a lower class of service than other protocols is exceedingly difficult.
The real problem in our case is not so much the people downloading, but as we have a rather fat pipe to the internet, we're seen as very favorable download farm for people to grab files from.
(yeah, I know it's humor, but well, for those that don't understand the concepts)
It's up to your organization to define what the scale for each each measure is, but you want them to all be positive for it to work. (non-zero, and all that). If you use 1-10, or 1-5 for 'em, it doesn't matter, so long as that you're consistant in all af your risk evaluations.
Typically, risk evaluations are considered point in time, as the company's goals and objectives might have changed, or other factors which would affect someone's ranking of the values. [for instance, you might consider the loss of a person's life to be more significant than system downtime... but due to a change in business processes, it might no longer be true].
Ideally, one should define what your rankings are, and work from there, so that even if people disagree with them, they still know what you were using as your criteria.
Once you have everything defined, you can then work on comparing like things, and determine which issues are considered to be higher risk, so that management can decide what issues they can best mitigate with their resources (being either money, or people, as necessary), to get a good return on investment.
First, this is off topic, as is commonly associated with HTML, not HTTP, which this guide is about.
Second, has never been in HTML. Netscape supported it, but it's never made it to the HTML standard, just like tag from IE. (See the Bare Bones Guide to HTML (not related to Bare Bones Software)
Applications change with time, but the basic concepts stay the same.
When you're dealing with risk analysis, it doesn't matter what protocol or application you're protecting. You only have to deal with your definition of risk. Typically, something like:
Risk = ( (Threat x Vulnerability) x Impact ) / Countermeasures
If you're dealing with human threats, then you might use MOMM (Motive, Opportunity, Means, Method) to break it down.
You should also learn other ways of breaking down the anslysis, like the McCumber Cube, the laws that you can use to prosecute perpetrators, oand what you need to do so that you're not sued for monitoring your users (which might be a violation of various privacy acts).
Applications aren't nearly as useful, as well, they might help you on that whole 'detect/protect/correct' front, but they rarely lock down a system completely -- you need multiple layers of protection, from not only technology, but you need the policies so you can actually implement good security practices, and you need to train your employees so they aren't creating security problems. [quite a few books claim that the majority of security incidents come from inside a company, and users will give up authentication information with minimal prompting].
blah, blah, blah...you get the idea... take a general overview, and work from there. .
There's always other alternatives, although, there may be other restrictions on entry -- for instance, there's always broadband over satellite... however, it's costly, and the latency sucks for interactive sessions. You do not have a right to broadband, just as you don't have a right to eat out.
As for water and telephone being an unrestricted pipe, you may think it is, but it's not.
Water -- ever lived in an area with a drought? We had one just last year in Maryland. What happened? You weren't allowed to use water for all sorts of things -- watering lawns, washing cars. [When I lived in Kentucky in 1998?99?, we had a drought, and someone had to go to the local government to get permission to water their house, as the clay soil was drying up, and their house was sinking]
The phone company is regulated, but they're also a bunch of bastards. They might have these great deals on long distance, but if you start abusing 'em, so they're losing money, they'll sell you off to someone else. They also don't like it much when you start making lots of local calls to other exchange carriers, as they get hit with reciprocal charges (remember that whole thing about how calls to ISPs were no longer considered local calls, so they could stop hemmoraging money to the CLECS that actually provided good service and low pricing on PRIs?)
Telecom also will meter usage, if you ask them. Personally, I don't make a whole lot of phone calls, so I have a limited line...calls in are free, but if I make more than 50 calls out per month, I get charged a few cents a call...of course, I'd have to make over 100 calls out per month to hit the same cost as an unlimited line. What's profitable is not telling people that this option is out there, so all of those people who only make a few calls a week from their land line (such as myself), think they have to pay more than they really do.
Oh...and that whole TV not being metered thing -- it's called pay-per-view. The thing is, they give you unlimited on some channels, so that they can then advertise the stuff that's more profitable to them. [and it's easy to only meter one part of the pipe, as this isn't like water... you're sending many differet signals over the same physical line, but that doesn't mean that someone can't tell the difference between 'em, or that they get mixed together].
Content providers want to make sure that the FCC doesn't do something which allows cable or telephone companies to set up rules which prohibit people from connecting to their content, which makes them revenue.
Hardware manufacturers want to make sure that the FCC doesn't do something which allows cable or telephone companies to set up rules which prohibit people from connecting the hardware they sell to a consumer's home network.
This isn't about the internet -- it's about the ISPs. Yes, the ISPs are connected to the internet, but this is just a peripheral thing. The FCC couldn't stop you if you signed up with a foreign company to get access over satellite, [phone calls would go through them, but this way, to avoid that part of the loop].
As for the bit about companies prohibiting WiFi, it was probably against the TOS or AUP for the ISP.... Most residential accounts don't allow sharing of connections to multiple systems. This just means that the consumer should go with an ISP that doesn't place this restriction on their account. [I use Speakeasy, personally... and before that, I was paying more for a business class line, until CAIS went under, and the company that bought them out tried screwing me over by doubling my rates on me].
As with anything else, you are buying a service from someone -- they might have conditions on that service, and if you violate it, they have the right to refuse you service. [ie, the 'no shoes, no shirt, no service' thing at most fast food establishments... although, why they don't require pants or some other similar covering, I have no idea].
Part of the issue may come from downstream liability issues -- if you put up a mail server, and you don't secure it, and become a third party relay for a spammer, they might get backlisted....if you connect up an unsecured WiFi node, and someone spams through your connection, they might get blacklisted, just the same. Personally, I'm okay with the companies putting restrictions on accounts so that they can remain profitable. It keeps them from having to raise prices for everyone else... And if they can't stay competitive, I'm sure there's other folks that aren't bloated and scamming their users, and provide better service, who can do it.
What I have issue with is the way that the ILECs aren't allowing Covad and other CLECs access to their facilities (it took multiple tries to get a damned pair of copper for when I went from SDSL to ADSL, because the CO was 'at capacity'... I'm just not buying it).
It's easy, I've just given it to you. Will it cost? yes. Will it be less to maintain and actually more cost saving down the road? yes
Will it work? (probably not)
Before you go providing 'easy' solutions, and talk about how simple it is, you have to actually have testing to backup your claims. There's this little place called NIST (National Instititutes of Standards and Technology) that actually tries to prove their theories before telling everyone how great of a solution it is.
You've never seen how much power there is behind a backhoe, have you? (and in correlation, just how much damage it can do). First, we have to consider that concrete is brittle in tension. (according to the BOCA code (sorry, I got out of civil engineering before the ICC formed), for concrete construction, you assume that the concrete takes no load in tension. You also assume, in the case of shear, that the concrete fails as a diagonal break, and can't hold up under the tension along the break... so, you'd have to allocate enough coating to provide for say, 17,000 pounds of force... and when you consider there's typically a 30 year life cycle for public works projects, the rate of increase in the power of backhoes over that period. [or, even better, you'd want to use LRFD to find the acceptable failure incidence so you don't go overdesigning everything and wasting money, as there is a point when overdesign wastes money, and you want to maximize your ROI (Return on Investment)
Now let's look at your 'road' example...
If you build a larger road, will there be more capacity? (yes)
If there's more capacity, will more people opt to use public transportation? (no)
If there's more capacity, will there be an easier commute? (for a while)
If there's more capacity, will it spur greater development? (yes)
If there's more development, will there be more people on the roads? (yes)
If there's more people on the roads, will we need more capacity? (yes)
If we spend more money on this one project now, can we meet the rest of our goals? (maybe)
If we overbuild on every project, can we stay within our budget? (not unless you want to give us more money)
If there's more development, will we need to increase other infrastructure (schools, police, fire, etc)? (yes)
It's easy to quote just the facts and figures that you want to, especially when you lack any imperical data to back you up. Of course, even with statistics, it's easy to come up with numbers that support your arguments -- 85% of traffic isn't work related, so I heard on the news two weeks ago... But how is that number determined? (man-hours, man-miles, car-hours, car-miles). What was the region they looked at? How did they perform their sampling?
Yes, sometimes, there are easy solutions... And many times, what's believed to be easy, isn', and just as many times, what's believed to be a solution, isn't.
There's been some GELFs that weren't so bad. Remember the Pleasure Gelf (Camile?)
CAT: Hey! What's going on, buddy? Eraserhead tells me she's a mechanoid, and Captain Sadness makes out she's a hologram.
LISTER: Oh, well, she's _both_ of those, and _neither_ of those. She's a GELF. CAT: GELF? LISTER: Yeah. A Genetically Engineered Life Form. She's a Pleasure GELF. Created to be everyone's perfect companion. Everyone who looks at her perceives her differently. You see what you wanna see, guy. What you most desire.
Of course, then there was also the Polymorph:
CAT: What is it? Some kind of alien?
HOLLY: No, it's from Earth -- man made. I checked out its DNA profile. Some kind of genetic experiment that went wrong. KRYTEN: Apparently, it was an attempt to create the ultimate warrior -- a mutant that could change shape to suit its terrain and deceive its enemies. CAT: So what did go wrong? KRYTEN: It's insane! HOLLY: It feeds off the negative emotions -- fear, guilt, anger, paranoia -- drains them out of its prey. KRYTEN: It's a sort of emotional vampire. It changes shape to provoke a negative emotion -- in Lister's case, it took him to the very limit of his terror, then sucked out his fear.
And there were the Psirens...
UNKNOWN: Oh God, you're so beautiful, I can't resist you. But I have to be strong. I know what you want.
INSECTOID: (Insect talk.) UNKNOWN: No, you don't. You want to love me. You want to suck out my brains with a straw, like you did the rest of them. INSECTOID: (Insect talk.) UNKNOWN: I'm different? Is that what you said to Jeff? Just before you slurped up the contents of his skull, like it was a double-thick brain shake? Get away from me.
But the big furry ones weren't so bad...well, they insisted that Lister marry the chief's daughter, but that was about it. (the books also made references to a GELF revolution of some sort...something about they were making furniture that was really GELFs, or something like that)
Personally, I still have a VCR.... three of 'em, in fact, and I use them quite often for making copies of things for other people.
However, I get much better quality making the original dub using a digital recording (well, I've had a few times where it's gone odd, but typically it's a much higher quality, and I don't end up introducing macrovision in there 'till the final run to tape). It's easier to edit out the commercials once, if I'm going to be making multiple copies to tape, or even just changing the playback order.
Oh..and let's not forget storage... I'm recording at about 1G/hr... so with 2x120G drives in my system, I don't have to worry about changing tapes every few hours. [and actually, every show, as when I used to send everything straight to VHS, I tried to keep shows in order on each tape, so some nights, I'd be switching tapes every hour or 30 minutes, and having to get the next one queued up and wait for my VCR to to its recording calibration test in just a minute or so.
Now, I can collect up a few shows, and when I want to dump to tape, I just prep a job to run overnight, or do it right before I leave for work....
hmmm...that reminds me...I was supposed to dub a new copy of Invader Zim for a friend who wore our her tape. (she has a TiVo, but well, she doesn't have enough space on it to keep all of her Zim)
First off, I'd like to say that as someone who works for a university, and still takes classes (not quite free, but they're damned cheap), it pisses me off to see people teaching classes who shouldn't be.
However, it pisses me off even more when there are people expecting an education, and they don't get it...
So well, as we've already had the obligatory 'we want free music' post, how about spam? But then of course, it depends on how you word the questions --
Should e-mail be free?
Should sending e-mail be free?
Should sending spam be free?
Is it okay for someone to block spam?
Is it okay for a system administrator to block spam?
Is it okay for a system administrator to block e-mail?
Is it okay for a system administrator to block suspected spam?
Is it okay for a system administrator to block mail based on where it originates?
Is it okay for a system administrator to block e-mail based on someone else's list of bad originating addresses?
It it okay to block IP addresses because they've propogated spam before?
Is it okay to block IP addresses based on the possibility of spam progation?
Is it okay to block IP addresses based on a system being open to relaying?
Is it okay to scan systems to determine if they are open to relaying?
Is it okay to actively scan systems to determine if they are open to relaying, without any indication that they plan on sending you e-mail?
If you maintain an RBL, is it okay manually add IP addresses?
And well, at this point, you start to realize that if you don't understand the concepts, debating these questions won't be possible, as well, there is no 'right' answer.
Slashdot Mirror
However, when you look at it in the other direction, not all innovations are related to inventions, as an invention would be an object of some form or another, and well, software, for one, is not an object.
Now, something that's hardware, that uses software or firmware might qualify as an invention. But when we start getting to 'innovative business practices' or 'innovative billing techniques' or 'innovative ways to force your competitors out of business', there's no particular object, and hence no invention involved. [Now, that's not to say that your business process, billing technique, or whatever may depend on an invention, but it is not, in itself, an invention].
We'll start seeing more and more product placement in the computer games to offset the cost of the games, and for the companies to improve their bottom line.
(advertisements in the background, as in sports arenas; billboards in the background of driving games, and then they'll start working the occassional coke or budweiser can in the hand of one of the main characters).
Sooner or later, I wouldn't be surprised if more and more non-game companies start getting into the video game business to push more product. Right now, the only one that I can think of is Lego, who has quite a variety of games out there, and from what I've seen, some of them are quite decent. [Didn't Six Flags do a tie in with Roller Coaster Tycoon? I envision more stuff along those lines...]
I for one would rather die than be slaved to a machine for the rest of my life. Or living as a head in a brain like on Futurama. [although, I guess I could use it to annoy people, but I don't have the taste for fish flakes particularly].
Would you be willing to extend your life if it meant a 100% chance of having to go through some form of cancer treatment? [which well, almost all males will end up with prostate cancer unless they find a cure for it...which, although it can be treated to some degree of success, it may mean that you have severe hormone therapy, and get emotional all the time, or radiation, which can ruin your bladder and colon [nothing like a bathroom break every 20-30 minutes].]
The rest would be hit with Alzheimers. Which, although they've found that watching fish helps patients regain their appetite, I'm not looking forward to sitting around in a nursing home unable to care for myself. [Especially when I forget about the prostate treatment, and forget about the need to go to the bathroom every 20 minutes].
Then we start getting into the issues with overcrowding, lack of food to supply the population, issues with people having four kids before they're 20....[which would mean that 600 years down the road, that family would have had 30 generations, and each new generation would be double the size of each earlier generation]. Add a few septuplets in there, and other freaks of fertility clinics, and who knows what we'll end up with.
I had actually labeled my chair 'Joe hates Banner' at one point. My final breaking point was after the 4.x upgrade, when I had asked the SCT contractors to make a change to their system -- wrap some tags around the output, so that I could make all of the info text italic (wasn't my idea...the registrar wanted it). I was told to change the data, rather than the program, so they wouldn't have to keep changing it every upgrade.
Unfortunately, the standard SCT upgrade procedures are to completely wipe the existing database, replacing it with what they call 'SEED', and then reapply every change made. This includes changes made through Web Tailor, which would be all of the changes that I spent a week making.
If the problem is Banner, however, that's more than just a student issue, as it also handles salary information at some places.
Oh...and if it's not Blackboard or Banner, it might be Prometheus, which was bought by Blackboard last year.
The SOG Power Pliers Deluxe (SOG model S45) has a robertson drive on it. They also have a hex bolt to hold the tools in, and I switched out my hack saw with a line cutter.
Unfortunately, I can't find places online selling the replacement kits. [I got mine when I was still a student, and had access to military bases, as I was a dependant.... the line cutter is used in the paratool to cut yourself down if you land in a tree]
It also has a philips #1 on it, which is useful for pulling cards out of computers... I also carry a Gerber, as it has a philips #2, which are useful when racking systems.
Of course, you'd have to find one that actually fit your keyboard.
I've been debating on getting a waterproof keyboard, for the computer in my kitchen. [so that I can have easy access to recipies online and/or watch movies while cooking]I've had those days after you've been working non-stop 12-16hr days, and you get to the point where you're less productive than before.
My dad gave me a book recently on the connections between adrenaline and stress. Basically, it talks about handling stress so you don't let it get out of hand, as stress triggers adrenaline, which affects your sleep patterns and causes you to make snap decisions without thinking things out or being creative.
I've had depressive fits where I haven't left my place for weeks at a time, but now that I reflect on it, they were all triggered by times of high stress. So now, before I get to far in, I try to relax. Unfortunately, saturday morning cartoons have really sucked in the past few years, so I don't have that 3-4 hrs of relaxation per week.
If you're not getting stuff done, set a timer, wait, relax for an hour or so, then press back in on it. Personally, I find that I do some of my best work near 6am.... no matter if I got up early to do it [working right after I get up, or until I've been up all night and start to get tired]. Tired is actually a sign of being relaxed, as if you're pumping with adrenaline, you won't fall asleep.
It reminds me of a bit from Beavis and Butthead -- they're talking about having 200 channels ot TV, and one of them suggests what if they just had one channel that didn't suck.
I mean, hell, I admit, I keep on the TV as background noise, but there's just some stuff I have to change the channel for. It's hard finding something on at 5pm EST that isn't an infomercial. If it weren't for FoodTV, BBC America, TLC, Discovery and similar channels, there'd be many more hours of the day when I wouldn't be able to find something worth watching.
When a good program does finally make it to the air, they cancel it after a season (Mad Jack the Pirate) or two (Invader Zim). They put things in bad time slots (Futurama, always pre-empted by sports when it was in first run). If it weren't for the random stuff that somehow manages to make it on the air -- Good Eats, Coupling, Monster Garage, we'd be in even more trouble.
So, anyway, this brings up the real question -- is 'the Internet' winning because it's better than TV, or is TV losing because it's worse than 'the Internet'?
I mean, hell, you want friends, it helps to have something in common with them. Personally, I was a military brat, and the military folks tend to be much more welcoming of any new person, as they're used to being the new person themselves, but most people aren't so used to getting thrown in a new place every few years.
... look for a local newspaper, and see what sort of things there are going on in the town. If it's a big city, look for an independant newspaper, like the Baltimore or Washington City Papers. You might also check colleges in the area, and see what sort of events their student papers have listed.
If you're in any professional/hobbyist/whatever organizations, look to see if there are any chapters where you're going...for those geeks, maybe a linux users group, perl mongers, whatever. There might be a lego users group, or something else where you can meet people, if that's what you're trying to do. Of course, there's also the chance that these people are obsessive freaks.
Do some research before you go... for all you know, you have relatives living in that same town, or friends from high school or college who are only an hour or two away from where you're going. Ask your friends if any of them have been there, any maybe they have recommendations on things to do, places to go, whatever. Check online
You can also check out DMOZ by region, and you might be able to find something of interest. You might check the local phone book for independant bookstores, comic book / game shops, whatever sparks your interest.
Without knowing what sort of people you're trying to meet, it's hard to give any useful suggestions as to where to find them.
There are quite a few 'Smithsonian' museums that aren't the American History or Air & Space. [Although, they both do have some nice stuff in 'em]. There's also plenty of stuff in DC that's not run by the Smithsonian.
If you prefer the European style air museums (a hanger, lots of planes) , the Air & Space had an annex, they're working on building a new building out near Dulles Airport, and they're moving the stuff.
For geeks, there's the International Spy Museum, theNational Building Museum and the Arts and Industry building of the Smithsonian.
Oh...and if you want to see the monuments, and it's the summer, take the night tour. You can't go up the Washington, but the Jefferson and Lincoln are much better when they're lit up, it's not crowded, and you're not melting in crappy DC weather.
I'm not quite there on the 'largest collection of beer on the planet', but then again, I'm a military brat, and spent some time in Europe. The couple of times I've been to The Brickskeller, they've been surprisingly out of a number of things. They stock the stuff people drink on a regular basis, and they keep a token bottle up there so they can claim they have a lot of variety.
I was more impressed with Marikkas, in Lexington, Kentucky, which seemed to have a larger selection when I was there. [And good German food, too]. Of course, geek wise, there's not much reason to go to Kentucky, unless you're looking for alcohol, as there's not much else there but horses and basketball. Except for Lexmark, I guess... and the place they used to make the old heavy duty IBM keyboards.
It hasn't even been three months since the Hacker's Diet was mentioned.
Basically, one of the points made is that it takes a lot of exercise to lose weight. Although John Walker (the author) does suggest exercise, he recommends using a 10-15 minute a day program based off that of the Royal Canadian Air Force.
Personally, by watching my calorie intake, without exercising, I've lost about 30 pounds since April, and I'm trying to shed another 10-20 to get back to the 150-160lb range. I'm guessing that cutting out sodas has has the most profound impact on what I've changed, diet wise. Of course, I had to slowly cut back... It's not like I was drinking 3L of Mt. Dew per day, as I was in college, but I was probably drinking a good 1.5L of sodas per day. Oh...and you do have to drink water, or as a compromise, sports drinks, as fruit juices tend to have just as mushc sugar as sodas.
Well, I guess it depends on what you consider 'chernobyl like'.
So, how many people have to die before it's not considered cost effective? What value have you applied to a human life in your benefit/cost analysis?
If you don't practice writing, you'll get screwed when it comes to the 1.5hr essay-based final (and maybe multiple during the course of the same day).
So you're sitting at the test, trying to put the answers down on paper, and your hand starts cramping up. Not to mention that you have to write slower than you normally do, so that it's actually legible for the teacher to grade. And your spelling sucks, as you've gotten so dependant upon spell check.
Some people forget about the features in a pad. And although the teacher may put all of his powerpoint slides online, it's the teacher who writes the tests, so pay attention to him, not the slides.
Well, first the fact that I don't handle networking, and only have access to the information which is made available by our networking group, not the raw data itself to attempt to analyze it.
Second, the method of calculation was from periods when our organization was able to rate limit, at what time we were able to determine the trends of different types of network traffic, as compared to the current traffic, in which we are not able as well to split everything out.
Part of the problem is in the total volume of traffic -- although we're in a summer lull right now, it was not uncommon for our outbound connections to be over 110Mb/sec over the course of the last school year. [we have about 2Gb/s capacity, after the addition of some additional circuits this year, as we had reached saturation on some of our links].
Of course, some of those connections are to Internet2, so the load pattern on those lines is different from the connections to the commercial Internet.
So anyway, the point is -- yes, you could put up a machine to handle the workload, and have people maintain it, and constantly tune it, but you have to weigh the costs of the hardware, software, and human resources to just upgrading your lines and hardware. I'm not saying that the management made the best decision, but well, I can actually get into work from home and visa-versa without it really sucking like it did last September, and we don't have issues with increased latency, which would affect some of the ongoing research projects.
(I think that they have adjusted some of the rules in the routers, but they don't want to drive the CPU utlization too high, or it'd keep us from being able to maximize our bandwidth)
As an employee at a university, I can tell you that in fact, those numbers are realistic.
Unfortunately, with the port-hopping ability of some of the newer p2p networks, restricting their usage, or giving them a lower class of service than other protocols is exceedingly difficult.
The real problem in our case is not so much the people downloading, but as we have a rather fat pipe to the internet, we're seen as very favorable download farm for people to grab files from.
(yeah, I know it's humor, but well, for those that don't understand the concepts)
It's up to your organization to define what the scale for each each measure is, but you want them to all be positive for it to work. (non-zero, and all that). If you use 1-10, or 1-5 for 'em, it doesn't matter, so long as that you're consistant in all af your risk evaluations.
Typically, risk evaluations are considered point in time, as the company's goals and objectives might have changed, or other factors which would affect someone's ranking of the values. [for instance, you might consider the loss of a person's life to be more significant than system downtime... but due to a change in business processes, it might no longer be true].
Ideally, one should define what your rankings are, and work from there, so that even if people disagree with them, they still know what you were using as your criteria.
Once you have everything defined, you can then work on comparing like things, and determine which issues are considered to be higher risk, so that management can decide what issues they can best mitigate with their resources (being either money, or people, as necessary), to get a good return on investment.
First, this is off topic, as is commonly associated with HTML, not HTTP, which this guide is about.
Second, has never been in HTML. Netscape supported it, but it's never made it to the HTML standard, just like tag from IE. (See the Bare Bones Guide to HTML (not related to Bare Bones Software)
When you're dealing with risk analysis, it doesn't matter what protocol or application you're protecting. You only have to deal with your definition of risk. Typically, something like: If you're dealing with human threats, then you might use MOMM (Motive, Opportunity, Means, Method) to break it down.
You should also learn other ways of breaking down the anslysis, like the McCumber Cube, the laws that you can use to prosecute perpetrators, oand what you need to do so that you're not sued for monitoring your users (which might be a violation of various privacy acts).
Applications aren't nearly as useful, as well, they might help you on that whole 'detect/protect/correct' front, but they rarely lock down a system completely -- you need multiple layers of protection, from not only technology, but you need the policies so you can actually implement good security practices, and you need to train your employees so they aren't creating security problems. [quite a few books claim that the majority of security incidents come from inside a company, and users will give up authentication information with minimal prompting].
blah, blah, blah...you get the idea...
take a general overview, and work from there. .
There's always other alternatives, although, there may be other restrictions on entry -- for instance, there's always broadband over satellite ... however, it's costly, and the latency sucks for interactive sessions. You do not have a right to broadband, just as you don't have a right to eat out.
As for water and telephone being an unrestricted pipe, you may think it is, but it's not.
Water -- ever lived in an area with a drought? We had one just last year in Maryland. What happened? You weren't allowed to use water for all sorts of things -- watering lawns, washing cars. [When I lived in Kentucky in 1998?99?, we had a drought, and someone had to go to the local government to get permission to water their house, as the clay soil was drying up, and their house was sinking]
The phone company is regulated, but they're also a bunch of bastards. They might have these great deals on long distance, but if you start abusing 'em, so they're losing money, they'll sell you off to someone else. They also don't like it much when you start making lots of local calls to other exchange carriers, as they get hit with reciprocal charges (remember that whole thing about how calls to ISPs were no longer considered local calls, so they could stop hemmoraging money to the CLECS that actually provided good service and low pricing on PRIs?)
Telecom also will meter usage, if you ask them. Personally, I don't make a whole lot of phone calls, so I have a limited line...calls in are free, but if I make more than 50 calls out per month, I get charged a few cents a call...of course, I'd have to make over 100 calls out per month to hit the same cost as an unlimited line. What's profitable is not telling people that this option is out there, so all of those people who only make a few calls a week from their land line (such as myself), think they have to pay more than they really do.
Oh...and that whole TV not being metered thing -- it's called pay-per-view. The thing is, they give you unlimited on some channels, so that they can then advertise the stuff that's more profitable to them. [and it's easy to only meter one part of the pipe, as this isn't like water... you're sending many differet signals over the same physical line, but that doesn't mean that someone can't tell the difference between 'em, or that they get mixed together].
Let's look at the issues, shall we?
Content providers want to make sure that the FCC doesn't do something which allows cable or telephone companies to set up rules which prohibit people from connecting to their content, which makes them revenue.
Hardware manufacturers want to make sure that the FCC doesn't do something which allows cable or telephone companies to set up rules which prohibit people from connecting the hardware they sell to a consumer's home network.
This isn't about the internet -- it's about the ISPs. Yes, the ISPs are connected to the internet, but this is just a peripheral thing. The FCC couldn't stop you if you signed up with a foreign company to get access over satellite, [phone calls would go through them, but this way, to avoid that part of the loop].
As for the bit about companies prohibiting WiFi, it was probably against the TOS or AUP for the ISP.... Most residential accounts don't allow sharing of connections to multiple systems. This just means that the consumer should go with an ISP that doesn't place this restriction on their account. [I use Speakeasy, personally... and before that, I was paying more for a business class line, until CAIS went under, and the company that bought them out tried screwing me over by doubling my rates on me].
As with anything else, you are buying a service from someone -- they might have conditions on that service, and if you violate it, they have the right to refuse you service. [ie, the 'no shoes, no shirt, no service' thing at most fast food establishments... although, why they don't require pants or some other similar covering, I have no idea].
Part of the issue may come from downstream liability issues -- if you put up a mail server, and you don't secure it, and become a third party relay for a spammer, they might get backlisted....if you connect up an unsecured WiFi node, and someone spams through your connection, they might get blacklisted, just the same. Personally, I'm okay with the companies putting restrictions on accounts so that they can remain profitable. It keeps them from having to raise prices for everyone else... And if they can't stay competitive, I'm sure there's other folks that aren't bloated and scamming their users, and provide better service, who can do it.
What I have issue with is the way that the ILECs aren't allowing Covad and other CLECs access to their facilities (it took multiple tries to get a damned pair of copper for when I went from SDSL to ADSL, because the CO was 'at capacity'... I'm just not buying it).
Before you go providing 'easy' solutions, and talk about how simple it is, you have to actually have testing to backup your claims. There's this little place called NIST (National Instititutes of Standards and Technology) that actually tries to prove their theories before telling everyone how great of a solution it is.
You've never seen how much power there is behind a backhoe, have you? (and in correlation, just how much damage it can do). First, we have to consider that concrete is brittle in tension. (according to the BOCA code (sorry, I got out of civil engineering before the ICC formed), for concrete construction, you assume that the concrete takes no load in tension. You also assume, in the case of shear, that the concrete fails as a diagonal break, and can't hold up under the tension along the break... so, you'd have to allocate enough coating to provide for say, 17,000 pounds of force... and when you consider there's typically a 30 year life cycle for public works projects, the rate of increase in the power of backhoes over that period. [or, even better, you'd want to use LRFD to find the acceptable failure incidence so you don't go overdesigning everything and wasting money, as there is a point when overdesign wastes money, and you want to maximize your ROI (Return on Investment)
Now let's look at your 'road' example...
- If you build a larger road, will there be more capacity? (yes)
- If there's more capacity, will more people opt to use public transportation? (no)
- If there's more capacity, will there be an easier commute? (for a while)
- If there's more capacity, will it spur greater development? (yes)
- If there's more development, will there be more people on the roads? (yes)
- If there's more people on the roads, will we need more capacity? (yes)
- If we spend more money on this one project now, can we meet the rest of our goals? (maybe)
- If we overbuild on every project, can we stay within our budget? (not unless you want to give us more money)
- If there's more development, will we need to increase other infrastructure (schools, police, fire, etc)? (yes)
It's easy to quote just the facts and figures that you want to, especially when you lack any imperical data to back you up. Of course, even with statistics, it's easy to come up with numbers that support your arguments -- 85% of traffic isn't work related, so I heard on the news two weeks ago... But how is that number determined? (man-hours, man-miles, car-hours, car-miles). What was the region they looked at? How did they perform their sampling?Yes, sometimes, there are easy solutions... And many times, what's believed to be easy, isn', and just as many times, what's believed to be a solution, isn't.
Of course, then there was also the Polymorph:
And there were the Psirens...
But the big furry ones weren't so bad...well, they insisted that Lister marry the chief's daughter, but that was about it. (the books also made references to a GELF revolution of some sort...something about they were making furniture that was really GELFs, or something like that)
Personally, I still have a VCR.... three of 'em, in fact, and I use them quite often for making copies of things for other people.
However, I get much better quality making the original dub using a digital recording (well, I've had a few times where it's gone odd, but typically it's a much higher quality, and I don't end up introducing macrovision in there 'till the final run to tape). It's easier to edit out the commercials once, if I'm going to be making multiple copies to tape, or even just changing the playback order.
Oh..and let's not forget storage... I'm recording at about 1G/hr... so with 2x120G drives in my system, I don't have to worry about changing tapes every few hours. [and actually, every show, as when I used to send everything straight to VHS, I tried to keep shows in order on each tape, so some nights, I'd be switching tapes every hour or 30 minutes, and having to get the next one queued up and wait for my VCR to to its recording calibration test in just a minute or so.
Now, I can collect up a few shows, and when I want to dump to tape, I just prep a job to run overnight, or do it right before I leave for work....
hmmm...that reminds me...I was supposed to dub a new copy of Invader Zim for a friend who wore our her tape. (she has a TiVo, but well, she doesn't have enough space on it to keep all of her Zim)
First off, I'd like to say that as someone who works for a university, and still takes classes (not quite free, but they're damned cheap), it pisses me off to see people teaching classes who shouldn't be.
However, it pisses me off even more when there are people expecting an education, and they don't get it...
So well, as we've already had the obligatory 'we want free music' post, how about spam? But then of course, it depends on how you word the questions --
And well, at this point, you start to realize that if you don't understand the concepts, debating these questions won't be possible, as well, there is no 'right' answer.