Wouldn't most of those pieces be small enough to burn up in the atmosphere?
Using our current 300m body as an example. If we fragmented it into 100 pieces of (on average) equal size wouldn't the majority burn up in the atmosphere and the remainder perhaps level a couple of houses each?
The difference is its a set of kernel patches. You can read them and see if there is anything improper going on..
Re:Skimming by employees
on
Gift Card Hacking
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
most retailers are setup to deal with employee fraud. Next time you're in a big grocery store or department store look up above the register. you'll likely see camera pods/windows. If they are using a flat scan barcode reader there will also likely be a light that flashes each time an item is scanned.
This is designed to prevent "sweethearting" by employees. This is where and item is waved across the scanner, but doesn't actually scan, and is then placed in the bag. Ever wonder why Best Buy (and others) check the contents of your bag against your receipt within 30ft of the register? It's not to stop independent shoplifters, it's to catch/prevent sweethearting.
What you suggest is even more difficult. The gift card is only loaded by the POS system with the amount punched into the register. Now unless the store doesn't have a total display that can be seen by the customer (or the customer has the IQ of a brick) there is no way the customer will hand over $100 when $50 is shown on the display. If the clerk tries to pocket cash that is properly shown on the display then the drawer will be short.
You don't need broadband. Just the GPS. The GPS itself will read out all the required info. Add a couple stored waypoints and you're all set to fly the aircraft to any point you like.
As for folks on the ground you can just listen to the ACARS frequencies and track all the aircraft around you (usually 100-200miles)
Simply from the physical construction and security perspective:
EXTERNAL---
1 - Parking lot is too close to the building (a reasonably sized car/truck device could do serious structural damage.
2 - "ram proof"??? Not hardly. I don't see a double berm system. Some of those nice decorative tree planters that are actually 2 foot thick reinforced concrete might help
3 - No view of the perimeter. Does it have a ditch, double fence line, k-rails to require a zigzag entrance.
(plenty more)
INTERNEL ---
1 - From what I can see all conduits are directly attached to unistrut on the ceilings. Big problem if you take a good shock to the building (ie - it's rigid)
2 - Equipment is not isolated by springs/rubber mounts from the floor. Same shock damage possibilities as above.
3 - No water collection trough around the sides of each room. I don't see floor water sensors either.
4 - Water drip pans under all chilled water and condensate lines.
5 - *1* generator? For the cost of the facility it would have been a pittance to go with two and have full redundancy when running on local generation.
All in all it's a decently engineered place. It just needs the final touches...
As a male alpha-geek with "cabbage patch geek" wife. (she's trying, just not a full geek yet".
The first key is to get away from "who don't know how to treat their women". The "their" in that sentence implies posession. I didn't get married to posesss something. I got married to have a partner. Somone to kick me in the head when I need it, provide comfort when I'm down, support me in my dreams and let me do all the same for her.
What you study for a degree (if anything) depends greatly on what your career goals are. I've been in the workplace for 12 years (just turned 31). That time has been evenly split between telecom and networking positions.
My experience is that director level is where lack of a degree really becomes a hinderance. At this level firms begin looking for someone who is more of a line-of-business manager than an uber-geek. It's important to be able to interact effectively with other segments of the firm.
At the director level I spent the majority of my time working on non-technical issues. Budget creation and management, personnel development, customer service, sales support, and overall group leadership took the lion's share of my time. My strong technical base was important for all these things. It also gave me a logical and methodical way to approach all of these things rather than the emotional responses of my peers brought up in other areas.
What are your goals? Do you see yourself as the uber-coder, design consultant, systems architec,etc? If so then a CS degree is the right track for you. If you see yourself as a director, vice president, CxO, other corporate line of business manager, or perhaps owning your own company then another degree track may be a better idea. You might consider a BS in business management. If you watch your electives carefully and take a minor in MIS (CS if you must) then you can be well prepared for a CS masters program.
The key is to use a degree to fill in what an organization may see as the holes in your resume. Do they see an uber tech with little in the way of business skils? Do they see an excellent coder who needs system design experience? If your resume stresses only a single skill set then you are limiting your competitiveness for many positions.
Take the time to analyze your long term career goals. Find someone (preferably 2-3 someones) at the VP/SVP level who will critically analyze your resume and give you their opinion of what they see lacking. Take them out to dinner and explain in advance that you are looking for some overall career guidance. I've had it done for me and I've done it for members of my teams.
Don't look for the 1-year solution because you don't want to spend too much time and/or its what you need to get ahead in your current position. You're 24 years old. Assuming retirement at 65 you've got 40 more years in the workplace. Take the time now to assess where you want to be in 1-5-10 year time intervals and start doing what it takes to get there.
Perhaps significant/insignificant is a bad term. I think a better thing to understand is our place in the universe and our importance to its function.
If the mountains were suddenly removed from the earth we would feel a great loss. If the sun suddenly went dark all human life would be extinguished.
If all of humanity were removed from the earth, the earth, much less the solar system or universe would never notice. The wind would still blow, rain would still fall, and all would continue.
Human civilization has existed for but a blink of an eye in the life of the universe. We have grown much and learned much, but we still have far to go in our understanding of the natural world and how to live in it.
Before his death Carl Sagan convinced the Voyager team to turn the cameras on earth for a last picture of home. In that picture earth is but a small point of light in the star field.
It matters not whether you believe the universe is the creation of physics or of a supreme being (or somewhere in between). The universe a palace of wonders. Perhaps the "significance" of the human race is that we can see all these things and at least attempt to understand them while still maintaining our sense of wonder. As long as that sense of wonder remains there is hope for the human race.
I would find it more likely the RedHat delays placing the software on the Ximian feed. This makes their RHN/up2date offering which places money in RedHat's pocket look better.
You mean besides a couple international treaties that forbid nuclear detonations in space?
The little EMP event you mention would be quite damaging. Take a look at every electronic device around your home. (Including your car). Now imagine it as a paperweight.
Do you really need to vaporize it? If you hit as its coming towards the laser would it be possible the take off enough forward velocity that it would drop into a low enough orbit to be affected by enough atmospheric drag to decay?
It would seems with things the size of bolts, straps, gloves, torque wrenches, etc that you could safely depend on them burning up in the atmosphere instead of crashing into an inhabited area.
Yes and no. The B-52s (probably G and H models) now flying are mostly the same airframe that entered service back in 1962. I would hazard a guess that from an avionics and weapons targetting perspective they are very different beasties.
What was likely once an analog POI computer is now a digital unit. Inertial navigation has been augmented with GPS. The original HF/VHF/UHF radio suites have probably been updated to include a limited digital messaging capability over those means. You could relatively easily add UHF satellite capabilities, but I don't recall hearing of any such upgrades.
The 70K lbs payload is today likely up to 100-1400 500lb GP or cluster munitions. When you start thinking about all that ordanance falling on your head it can get quite scary.
It's a big ugly bomb truck. Where we own the skies and have adequately supressed SAMs it works great. The airframe may be the same, but as long as we keep upgrading the avionics and weapons delivery systems there is no reason it can't keep flying until 2050.
A more important issue it getting all that power to the equipment. Before moving in you need to get an electrician to come in and wire at least 2 if not 4 dedicated lines from the distribution center to the server room. Make sure they are balanced across the phases (I can't remember if Canada is 120 or 240V).
While you are running this have them run the lines on at least 12 gauge nomex. Terminate each one in a quad box and go from there.
If you don't do this you'll very quickly tire of resetting breakers everytime someone plugs a clothes iron in across the hall.
The audit the poster is referring to is the one required to get a device certified at a certain government security level. The most talked about one is "C2" but the levels go all the way up to "A1".
IIRC, WinNT was C2 certified at one point, but it got yanked..
The key here is "nexus". It's a legal term of where a company has a business operation. It gets pretty complex fast though.
What is important under the Washington law is that it permits the individual to go after the party the authorized the spam. The slimeball company and servers actually sending the spam may be in Elbonia, but you'll find most of the companies/products solicited do business right here in the USA.
ie - an advertised web site might be in the Caymans. If they accept credit cards they likely have a US merchant account, which means a US bank, which means (likely) a US legal address.
Almost all spam is designed to sell you something. That means they must include a way to contact them. It also means they want it to be easy to buy from them.
Now if I can just figure out how to claim residency in WA state.......
Start out with municipal and commercial local fleets. A few stations for the city/county and 1-3 across the city for the commercial fleets.
I would hope they won't even try to make it widely available for the first few years. If the government/fleet users use it and work the kinks out (while collecting some type of incentive/tax break) on alternative fuels then once could start looking at spreading out distribution.
Cable modem bandwidth and RF spectrum management have almost nothing in common. With RF you've got all manner of network design tricks available to you. You can choose frequencies for various reasons (propogation, building penetration, atmospheric disturbance, maximum channel bandwidth, permissible modulation, etc). You can choose cells or single large area tower based on cost and user demand. You can choose simple simplex systems for mobile ad-hoc activities. You can choose modulation methods based on your requirements (voice, data, cost, graceful vs abrupt degradation, etc)
You can build a device to monopolize any RF network type you choose. Now if it's an FCC regulated frequency block then the FCC or some company hired by the users of that block of frequencies can monitor for it. Just because the users are unlicensed doesn't mean the equipment doesn't have to be type-accepted. Part of the type acceptance process can be certain caps on bandwidth usage.
If you look at the FCC's SDR (software defined radio) initiatives you can see where this is going eventually. It's not going to work everywhere (ie - we still need a government only band for safety of life comms), but in the majority of cases FHSS systems degrade relatively gracefully in the face of interference from either fixed channel or other FHSS users.
Now is the time to discuss it and have a reasoned plan out so that as the HDTV conversion occurs over the next 5-6 years we can have a reasoned approach to refarming all the vacated spectrum. The current "land grab" approach just isn't going to cut it.
Now what does irk me is Nextel. In several markets I've been in they bought up all the private trunked systems and shut them down to drive sales of their own networks. All that 800/900Mhz spectrum is currently sitting idle in those markets. Take a look at a wideband RF survey of almost any metropolitan area. You'll find vast gulfs of spectrum that are almost totally empty. Then go do a search on licensees in that frequency range. Part of this stems from the way the FCC auctions are run (BTAs usually).
I'd like to see more use-it-or-lose-it requirements from the FCC on licensees. If they can't measure significant use within the intended service class within 24 months then the licensee can kiss the frequencies good-bye.
It's called "statistical multiplexing" (statmuxing). It's the concept that not everyone will be simultaneously fully loading their pipe at 100% of available bandwidth. Depending on the user mix statmuxing ratios of 30:1 (30K subscribed bandwidth to 1K continuous stream averaged over a minute or two) to 150:1 can be acheived.
The broadband ISPs built their business models around the 30-50:1 statmuxing model. Unfortunately the ways they have often chosen to implement their networks just don't make that a reality. This flawed implementation rather than any nefarious doings by users is much more to blame for their bandwidth consumption.
A few examples:
1. DNS - Does you provider operate a sensible DNS structure? IE - seperate internal DNS servers (for customer resolvers) and external (for queries from outside the network) DNS servers? Are all the DNS servers for a city network pointed at 2-3 in-city "core" DNS servers to build up a large local cache? Are they using insanely long host names for each IP in their network?
2. Cache - Does your provider run some honking huge cache servers? Yes, they will require tuning to make sure they don't break some things. I recall running some numbers that showed (with all the specific variables plugged in) that a cache farm produced 100% ROI in 30 days of operation.
3. News Servers - yeah, here's a great idea! Let's have each of our 10K users read the same ~500 newsgroups and each one can pull them all down individually! Yeah, that's a great idea. Seriously, supernews/giganews/etc just doesn't make much sense for a citywide broadband network of any real size.
The general idea is to only take content across your external infrastructure bandwidth once. If you can keep it on the local links you save big bucks.
A city-wide cable modem network isn't governed by the same statistical metrics as a big modem pool. It's governed by the statistical metrics as large LANs.
How many of the broadband ISPs take a 24 hour sampling period each month and record SoureIP.Port/DestIP.Port on their external infrastructure bandwidth and do some data mining magic to see where it is being consumed?
I've worked the telco (CLEC and LD) side and the Internet side. We did traffic studies on the telco side at least once a month to see where calls were going. Based on that we knew where to augment trunk groups based on growth patterns, identified ILEC end-offices that needed dedicated trunk groups, and generally had a very good idea of how our calls were flowing. I just never saw it happen effectively on the ISP side. I did it a couple times, but it seems to fall on deaf ears at a corporate level.
It's time for broadband ISPs to wake up and realize that most all this math has been done already. Read up on telco traffic engineering, mix well with data from your network monitoring, and we might all just get a network that works well and can be profitable!!!!
Pennsylvania survived the war. You are thinking of Indianapolis (Heavy Cruiser). IIRC, there was much nastiness over the incident.
The fire control that would have been on the bridge of that era was probably a gun fire control director, or a set of instrument repeaters for az/el of turrets and ranging from the directors. There would have been another gunnery plotting area for the calculations required to put rounds on target.
It's actually a bit more complicated than that. There is typically "the bridge" which is the navigation brige used to steer the ship. What is of more interest (to a geek) is the Combat Information Center (CIC). The CIC is where the military power of a vessel/taskgroup/battlegroup is controlled.
A civillian tour is cool, but to really get a sense of it you need to be in one during operations underway.
All that being said the more current setups (I'm not old enough to remember the WWII and immediate post-war CIC's) Are actually pretty well setup.
It's also totally windowless, dark, and a bit cramped. On the Aegis ships depending on your position you can take the 25+deg rolls forward/backward or left/right. Great way to get seasick
You can probably find some pictures of a CIC online.
This announcement is talking about doing the modifications in the pre-blastocyst (sp?) stage. At this point you just have a bunch of non-differentiated cells. They are also working with non-fertilized eggs. Even if you believe that life begins at conception there is no conception here.
Everyone here is getting way to wrapped around the axle by considering the pre-blastocyst cell mass the same as a fertilized, viable, n-stage human embryo. These two things are light years apart.
Might it be a good idea to have some legislation preventing cloning work beyond an n-stage (what "n" is will surely be a lively debat) human embryo? Yes, until we have the process down better and more fully understand the dangers and pitfals we need some boundaries here. Should we outlaw any type of cloning work on human egg cells? No, there is much too much good which can come from it, and as long as reasonable limits are observed the moral and ethical questions can be managed.
Spend some time building a plan and make damn sure you have a single reporting line. The dotted-line/solid-line/dual-reporting scenarios are just a great way to get yourself used as a pawn in a power game.
How independent the team is all depends on how integrated the web site will be with county operations. Is it generally just a static window on the county or can folks actually lookup info, search jobs, read government reports, etc, etc, etc?
I'd say the web team should be an independent entity of the IT department. The web team would be responsible for the servers, security, processes, and base content. They would also be responsible for the style-guide (and the gloriously fun task of getting it fully approved).
Each county department/division gets their own standard 5-page setup (mission, history, news, blah, blah). Additional content is reviewed and billed back to the request department to keep from overextending the IT/web group with the demands of each department. Since each department typically has their own budget lines (and cost centers) this might work well for you.
Slashdot Mirror
Wouldn't most of those pieces be small enough to burn up in the atmosphere?
Using our current 300m body as an example. If we fragmented it into 100 pieces of (on average) equal size wouldn't the majority burn up in the atmosphere and the remainder perhaps level a couple of houses each?
The difference is its a set of kernel patches. You can read them and see if there is anything improper going on..
most retailers are setup to deal with employee fraud. Next time you're in a big grocery store or department store look up above the register. you'll likely see camera pods/windows. If they are using a flat scan barcode reader there will also likely be a light that flashes each time an item is scanned.
This is designed to prevent "sweethearting" by employees. This is where and item is waved across the scanner, but doesn't actually scan, and is then placed in the bag. Ever wonder why Best Buy (and others) check the contents of your bag against your receipt within 30ft of the register? It's not to stop independent shoplifters, it's to catch/prevent sweethearting.
What you suggest is even more difficult. The gift card is only loaded by the POS system with the amount punched into the register. Now unless the store doesn't have a total display that can be seen by the customer (or the customer has the IQ of a brick) there is no way the customer will hand over $100 when $50 is shown on the display. If the clerk tries to pocket cash that is properly shown on the display then the drawer will be short.
Actually I come from the hyper paranoid military intel world. If it's an orifice it's a weakness. We had motion detectors in our air ducts.
I was just doing a quick back-of-the-envelope job from what I could see in the pictures.
You don't need broadband. Just the GPS. The GPS itself will read out all the required info. Add a couple stored waypoints and you're all set to fly the aircraft to any point you like.
As for folks on the ground you can just listen to the ACARS frequencies and track all the aircraft around you (usually 100-200miles)
Simply from the physical construction and security perspective:
EXTERNAL---
1 - Parking lot is too close to the building (a reasonably sized car/truck device could do serious structural damage.
2 - "ram proof"??? Not hardly. I don't see a double berm system. Some of those nice decorative tree planters that are actually 2 foot thick reinforced concrete might help
3 - No view of the perimeter. Does it have a ditch, double fence line, k-rails to require a zigzag entrance.
(plenty more)
INTERNEL ---
1 - From what I can see all conduits are directly attached to unistrut on the ceilings. Big problem if you take a good shock to the building (ie - it's rigid)
2 - Equipment is not isolated by springs/rubber mounts from the floor. Same shock damage possibilities as above.
3 - No water collection trough around the sides of each room. I don't see floor water sensors either.
4 - Water drip pans under all chilled water and condensate lines.
5 - *1* generator? For the cost of the facility it would have been a pittance to go with two and have full redundancy when running on local generation.
All in all it's a decently engineered place. It just needs the final touches...
As a male alpha-geek with "cabbage patch geek" wife. (she's trying, just not a full geek yet".
The first key is to get away from "who don't know how to treat their women". The "their" in that sentence implies posession. I didn't get married to posesss something. I got married to have a partner. Somone to kick me in the head when I need it, provide comfort when I'm down, support me in my dreams and let me do all the same for her.
What you study for a degree (if anything) depends greatly on what your career goals are. I've been in the workplace for 12 years (just turned 31). That time has been evenly split between telecom and networking positions.
My experience is that director level is where lack of a degree really becomes a hinderance. At this level firms begin looking for someone who is more of a line-of-business manager than an uber-geek. It's important to be able to interact effectively with other segments of the firm.
At the director level I spent the majority of my time working on non-technical issues. Budget creation and management, personnel development, customer service, sales support, and overall group leadership took the lion's share of my time. My strong technical base was important for all these things. It also gave me a logical and methodical way to approach all of these things rather than the emotional responses of my peers brought up in other areas.
What are your goals? Do you see yourself as the uber-coder, design consultant, systems architec,etc? If so then a CS degree is the right track for you. If you see yourself as a director, vice president, CxO, other corporate line of business manager, or perhaps owning your own company then another degree track may be a better idea. You might consider a BS in business management. If you watch your electives carefully and take a minor in MIS (CS if you must) then you can be well prepared for a CS masters program.
The key is to use a degree to fill in what an organization may see as the holes in your resume. Do they see an uber tech with little in the way of business skils? Do they see an excellent coder who needs system design experience? If your resume stresses only a single skill set then you are limiting your competitiveness for many positions.
Take the time to analyze your long term career goals. Find someone (preferably 2-3 someones) at the VP/SVP level who will critically analyze your resume and give you their opinion of what they see lacking. Take them out to dinner and explain in advance that you are looking for some overall career guidance. I've had it done for me and I've done it for members of my teams.
Don't look for the 1-year solution because you don't want to spend too much time and/or its what you need to get ahead in your current position. You're 24 years old. Assuming retirement at 65 you've got 40 more years in the workplace. Take the time now to assess where you want to be in 1-5-10 year time intervals and start doing what it takes to get there.
Perhaps significant/insignificant is a bad term. I think a better thing to understand is our place in the universe and our importance to its function.
If the mountains were suddenly removed from the earth we would feel a great loss. If the sun suddenly went dark all human life would be extinguished.
If all of humanity were removed from the earth, the earth, much less the solar system or universe would never notice. The wind would still blow, rain would still fall, and all would continue.
Human civilization has existed for but a blink of an eye in the life of the universe. We have grown much and learned much, but we still have far to go in our understanding of the natural world and how to live in it.
Before his death Carl Sagan convinced the Voyager team to turn the cameras on earth for a last picture of home. In that picture earth is but a small point of light in the star field.
It matters not whether you believe the universe is the creation of physics or of a supreme being (or somewhere in between). The universe a palace of wonders. Perhaps the "significance" of the human race is that we can see all these things and at least attempt to understand them while still maintaining our sense of wonder. As long as that sense of wonder remains there is hope for the human race.
I would find it more likely the RedHat delays placing the software on the Ximian feed. This makes their RHN/up2date offering which places money in RedHat's pocket look better.
You mean besides a couple international treaties that forbid nuclear detonations in space?
The little EMP event you mention would be quite damaging. Take a look at every electronic device around your home. (Including your car). Now imagine it as a paperweight.
Do you really need to vaporize it? If you hit as its coming towards the laser would it be possible the take off enough forward velocity that it would drop into a low enough orbit to be affected by enough atmospheric drag to decay?
It would seems with things the size of bolts, straps, gloves, torque wrenches, etc that you could safely depend on them burning up in the atmosphere instead of crashing into an inhabited area.
Yes and no. The B-52s (probably G and H models) now flying are mostly the same airframe that entered service back in 1962. I would hazard a guess that from an avionics and weapons targetting perspective they are very different beasties.
What was likely once an analog POI computer is now a digital unit. Inertial navigation has been augmented with GPS. The original HF/VHF/UHF radio suites have probably been updated to include a limited digital messaging capability over those means. You could relatively easily add UHF satellite capabilities, but I don't recall hearing of any such upgrades.
The 70K lbs payload is today likely up to 100-1400 500lb GP or cluster munitions. When you start thinking about all that ordanance falling on your head it can get quite scary.
It's a big ugly bomb truck. Where we own the skies and have adequately supressed SAMs it works great. The airframe may be the same, but as long as we keep upgrading the avionics and weapons delivery systems there is no reason it can't keep flying until 2050.
A more important issue it getting all that power to the equipment. Before moving in you need to get an electrician to come in and wire at least 2 if not 4 dedicated lines from the distribution center to the server room. Make sure they are balanced across the phases (I can't remember if Canada is 120 or 240V).
While you are running this have them run the lines on at least 12 gauge nomex. Terminate each one in a quad box and go from there.
If you don't do this you'll very quickly tire of resetting breakers everytime someone plugs a clothes iron in across the hall.
The audit the poster is referring to is the one required to get a device certified at a certain government security level. The most talked about one is "C2" but the levels go all the way up to "A1".
IIRC, WinNT was C2 certified at one point, but it got yanked..
The key here is "nexus". It's a legal term of where a company has a business operation. It gets pretty complex fast though.
What is important under the Washington law is that it permits the individual to go after the party the authorized the spam. The slimeball company and servers actually sending the spam may be in Elbonia, but you'll find most of the companies/products solicited do business right here in the USA.
ie - an advertised web site might be in the Caymans. If they accept credit cards they likely have a US merchant account, which means a US bank, which means (likely) a US legal address.
Almost all spam is designed to sell you something. That means they must include a way to contact them. It also means they want it to be easy to buy from them.
Now if I can just figure out how to claim residency in WA state.......
Start out with municipal and commercial local fleets. A few stations for the city/county and 1-3 across the city for the commercial fleets.
I would hope they won't even try to make it widely available for the first few years. If the government/fleet users use it and work the kinks out (while collecting some type of incentive/tax break) on alternative fuels then once could start looking at spreading out distribution.
Although it would be interesting to see the DoD response the someone not playing well with the other children.
BTW, it's called a HARM missile or a cluster bomb. It's known to be *VERY* effective in shutting down a problem transmitter.
Cable modem bandwidth and RF spectrum management have almost nothing in common. With RF you've got all manner of network design tricks available to you. You can choose frequencies for various reasons (propogation, building penetration, atmospheric disturbance, maximum channel bandwidth, permissible modulation, etc). You can choose cells or single large area tower based on cost and user demand. You can choose simple simplex systems for mobile ad-hoc activities. You can choose modulation methods based on your requirements (voice, data, cost, graceful vs abrupt degradation, etc)
You can build a device to monopolize any RF network type you choose. Now if it's an FCC regulated frequency block then the FCC or some company hired by the users of that block of frequencies can monitor for it. Just because the users are unlicensed doesn't mean the equipment doesn't have to be type-accepted. Part of the type acceptance process can be certain caps on bandwidth usage.
If you look at the FCC's SDR (software defined radio) initiatives you can see where this is going eventually. It's not going to work everywhere (ie - we still need a government only band for safety of life comms), but in the majority of cases FHSS systems degrade relatively gracefully in the face of interference from either fixed channel or other FHSS users.
Now is the time to discuss it and have a reasoned plan out so that as the HDTV conversion occurs over the next 5-6 years we can have a reasoned approach to refarming all the vacated spectrum. The current "land grab" approach just isn't going to cut it.
Now what does irk me is Nextel. In several markets I've been in they bought up all the private trunked systems and shut them down to drive sales of their own networks. All that 800/900Mhz spectrum is currently sitting idle in those markets. Take a look at a wideband RF survey of almost any metropolitan area. You'll find vast gulfs of spectrum that are almost totally empty. Then go do a search on licensees in that frequency range. Part of this stems from the way the FCC auctions are run (BTAs usually).
I'd like to see more use-it-or-lose-it requirements from the FCC on licensees. If they can't measure significant use within the intended service class within 24 months then the licensee can kiss the frequencies good-bye.
And if I recall correctly they tried to court martial some of the Indy crew over it. Not a good thing ...
It's called "statistical multiplexing" (statmuxing). It's the concept that not everyone will be simultaneously fully loading their pipe at 100% of available bandwidth. Depending on the user mix statmuxing ratios of 30:1 (30K subscribed bandwidth to 1K continuous stream averaged over a minute or two) to 150:1 can be acheived.
e t"
The broadband ISPs built their business models around the 30-50:1 statmuxing model. Unfortunately the ways they have often chosen to implement their networks just don't make that a reality. This flawed implementation rather than any nefarious doings by users is much more to blame for their bandwidth consumption.
A few examples:
1. DNS - Does you provider operate a sensible DNS structure? IE - seperate internal DNS servers (for customer resolvers) and external (for queries from outside the network) DNS servers? Are all the DNS servers for a city network pointed at 2-3 in-city "core" DNS servers to build up a large local cache? Are they using insanely long host names for each IP in their network?
"dslblah-blah-blah-blah.f01.blah.someprovider.n
2. Cache - Does your provider run some honking huge cache servers? Yes, they will require tuning to make sure they don't break some things. I recall running some numbers that showed (with all the specific variables plugged in) that a cache farm produced 100% ROI in 30 days of operation.
3. News Servers - yeah, here's a great idea! Let's have each of our 10K users read the same ~500 newsgroups and each one can pull them all down individually! Yeah, that's a great idea. Seriously, supernews/giganews/etc just doesn't make much sense for a citywide broadband network of any real size.
The general idea is to only take content across your external infrastructure bandwidth once. If you can keep it on the local links you save big bucks.
A city-wide cable modem network isn't governed by the same statistical metrics as a big modem pool. It's governed by the statistical metrics as large LANs.
How many of the broadband ISPs take a 24 hour sampling period each month and record SoureIP.Port/DestIP.Port on their external infrastructure bandwidth and do some data mining magic to see where it is being consumed?
I've worked the telco (CLEC and LD) side and the Internet side. We did traffic studies on the telco side at least once a month to see where calls were going. Based on that we knew where to augment trunk groups based on growth patterns, identified ILEC end-offices that needed dedicated trunk groups, and generally had a very good idea of how our calls were flowing. I just never saw it happen effectively on the ISP side. I did it a couple times, but it seems to fall on deaf ears at a corporate level.
It's time for broadband ISPs to wake up and realize that most all this math has been done already. Read up on telco traffic engineering, mix well with data from your network monitoring, and we might all just get a network that works well and can be profitable!!!!
Pennsylvania survived the war. You are thinking of Indianapolis (Heavy Cruiser). IIRC, there was much nastiness over the incident.
The fire control that would have been on the bridge of that era was probably a gun fire control director, or a set of instrument repeaters for az/el of turrets and ranging from the directors. There would have been another gunnery plotting area for the calculations required to put rounds on target.
It's actually a bit more complicated than that. There is typically "the bridge" which is the navigation brige used to steer the ship. What is of more interest (to a geek) is the Combat Information Center (CIC). The CIC is where the military power of a vessel/taskgroup/battlegroup is controlled.
A civillian tour is cool, but to really get a sense of it you need to be in one during operations underway.
All that being said the more current setups (I'm not old enough to remember the WWII and immediate post-war CIC's) Are actually pretty well setup.
It's also totally windowless, dark, and a bit cramped. On the Aegis ships depending on your position you can take the 25+deg rolls forward/backward or left/right. Great way to get seasick
You can probably find some pictures of a CIC online.
I think you're still missing the idea.
This announcement is talking about doing the modifications in the pre-blastocyst (sp?) stage. At this point you just have a bunch of non-differentiated cells. They are also working with non-fertilized eggs. Even if you believe that life begins at conception there is no conception here.
Everyone here is getting way to wrapped around the axle by considering the pre-blastocyst cell mass the same as a fertilized, viable, n-stage human embryo. These two things are light years apart.
Might it be a good idea to have some legislation preventing cloning work beyond an n-stage (what "n" is will surely be a lively debat) human embryo? Yes, until we have the process down better and more fully understand the dangers and pitfals we need some boundaries here. Should we outlaw any type of cloning work on human egg cells? No, there is much too much good which can come from it, and as long as reasonable limits are observed the moral and ethical questions can be managed.
Spend some time building a plan and make damn sure you have a single reporting line. The dotted-line/solid-line/dual-reporting scenarios are just a great way to get yourself used as a pawn in a power game.
How independent the team is all depends on how integrated the web site will be with county operations. Is it generally just a static window on the county or can folks actually lookup info, search jobs, read government reports, etc, etc, etc?
I'd say the web team should be an independent entity of the IT department. The web team would be responsible for the servers, security, processes, and base content. They would also be responsible for the style-guide (and the gloriously fun task of getting it fully approved).
Each county department/division gets their own standard 5-page setup (mission, history, news, blah, blah). Additional content is reviewed and billed back to the request department to keep from overextending the IT/web group with the demands of each department. Since each department typically has their own budget lines (and cost centers) this might work well for you.