Are you a fool? Only you can truly decide that.;-)
I will say that there are, IMO, many factors that should go into any judgment call on any job, and that different people have different priorities and needs. If your priorities and needs were not being met by the job you were at, then you were absolutely right to move on.
For my part, I look for a number of things in a job that I've found the private sector can rarely provide any more. That, and my priorities for a job are what many people would consider backwards. Salary, for example, is about fourth down on my list after long-term stability, the opportunity to make a real and positive difference in people's lives, and the chance to use ALL my skills.
Civil service is the only spot I've found that I'm truly happy with, but I will add that it takes a very speficic mindset to do well in such an environment. My only regret is that I didn't do it long ago.
I wish you happy hunting in your job-search. Should you get frustrated, and be tempted to take something that you know you really won't like, just for the paycheck, keep in mind that I surived for a full year and two months on nothing but unemployment bennies, my wife's job, and my side business before I found the slot with the State Patrol.
[bleep!][select_voice,feminine_vague_electronic]"I 'm sorry, but your message has exceeded the maximum number of Buzzwords allowed under International Law and the Genetic Contention. Please re-edit and attempt to re-send."[deselect_voice]
[Muffled cursing, and intense sounds of retyping follow, sounds which make it clear the user is employing a classic IBM 'clicker' keyboard. After a few minutes, it starts sounding like a roomful of frantic castanet players. The clicking finally dwindles down and stops with one, final, definitive TICK!]
[bleep!][select_voice,feminine_vague_electronic] "I'm sorry, you are attempting to send a blank message. Do you really want to do this?"[deselect_voice]
[A not-so-muffled scream is heard, followed by sounds of breaking glass and high-voltage arcs]
I don't think the complaints or threats of lawsuits were at all valid. They're your servers, your bandwidth allocation, your routers. You have total authority to configure them however you please.
The ONLY legal obligations you have to your users are those that are spelled out in your Terms of Service agreements that said users accept when they sign up with you.
Now, this doesn't mean that widespread blocking won't cost you some users if you do it. The decision point is what's going to cost you more: Dealing with the spammer spew, or losing a few users because they're pissed off at you for dealing with said spew.
The Industrial Revolution period of the 20th Century saw plenty of raw innovation and creativity, in the form of putting critical infrastructure (like our nationwide power grid, highways, and railroads) together, so I don't see any reason to limit such innovation to the IT field.
I'd much prefer to see some of those challenges include things like, say, finding a permanent replacement (or set of replacements -- I have my doubts that there's a single solution) for petroleum-based energy sources and, as a direct result, eliminating our dependence on oil completely.
Finding a way to create a room-temperature superconductor could go a long way towards that. While such a challenge would certainly have applications within the IT field, it's certainly not directly related.
How about finding ways to keep the South American rainforests intact, but still support agriculture efforts? Seems to me that if the rainforests go, so does a big chunk of our world's breathable atmosphere, not to mention losing one of the biggest natural pharmaceutical sources on the planet.
Anyway... Yes, physical security tops the list. The 'Lab' area of our home, where I do 95% of my work for both home-based business and hobby, is heavily alarmed with PIR motion and door sensors. Visitors are never left alone in the area, and computers are logged off or locked except when they're in immediate use at that moment.
All the systems are secured with difficult-to-guess passwords, and the main house entry itself is protected with electronic access control (proximity cards) and a Medeco high-security mortise lock. The alarm system fires off a notification of intrusion or panic to the monitoring center within ten seconds of being triggered.
Our 'net presence has a hardware firewall (a Watchguard Firebox series unit) that provides NAT and other protections too numerous to go into here.
Our wireless access point runs WPA with a huge key and MAC-address filtering, and is on a separate subnet off of the Firebox. The only stations permitted to even try to connect are those who have their MAC address in our ACL. In addition, I'll be setting up a RADIUS server soon, so the WPA keys get rotated regularly.
All the workstations have current antivirus packages that update regularly (thank you, AVG Antivirus!)
NO ONE is permitted to connect to our LAN from the inside without my express consent, and this means that I check out the system they're proposing to use thoroughly before they hook up. If they don't want to allow me access for an anti-spyware and anti-virus scan, I'm happy to point them towards the free wireless access at the Covington Library.
If all else fails, we turn the dragons loose. If the Knights of Olde didn't so well in their armor, what chance do you think some hapless script-kiddie wannabe is going to have?
After all, dragons need junk food too...
Do you think I'm paranoid? Who wants to know? And why?
Got a surprise for you. When we first moved into the place, well before I became self-hosted and created my local 'server farm,' our monthly power bill ran about $130.
After I got ALL the servers and workstations installed and operating (we're talking ten systems, including the 'server beast,' powered and running 24/7/365), and got the network hardware, alarm, and access control set up, our monthly went up to about $180.
That works out to about $600 per year -- for EVERYTHING, including the monster.
The Dell idea is a good one, but I would wonder if that server you suggest:
--Has SCSI RAID-5... --Can accept a minimum of five 9 or 18GB SCSI drives... --Is built anywhere near as well as the old Compaq.
One other thing I didn't mention at first that probably saved a bunch of power is that I pulled out two of the three CPUs, and just ran on one. That might have been a problem for Windows. However, I'm running NetBSD so it's not an issue.
The other factor: Much of WA state is supplied by hydroelectric dams, power-wise. This means relatively inexpensive electricity.
So, while you may be absolutely correct for some environments, and some areas of the country, you would not be in my case. Also, I tend not to think of $$ first when buying/using electronics. The cost is often the third or fourth item down on the list, after quality of construction, reliability, etc.
...on what you're looking for. I'm no expert on putting together big systems for enterprise environments, so I'll leave that type of reply to others.
However, I do know a great deal about digging around on the surplus market. If you're looking to put together your own servers, perhaps for self-hosting of your Internet presence, you can save tons of $$ by hitting up used-computer stores and electronic surplus places.
As just one example: My former employer (Boeing) retired a number of enterprise-class servers a few years back. Among these was a Compaq ProLiant 6500, tricked out with triple Pentium Pro 200 CPU's, twin redundant power supplies, a RAID controller, two-port Ethernet card, and the front-panel diagnostic display.
That system probably had a five-figure price tag when it was first sold. I picked it up for about $150, and spent another $100 or so on enough nine-gigger drives to create a RAID-5 stack. I added on another external RAID bay, with drives, for about another $100, and had one heck of a reliable FTP archive and database system for less than $400.
At the risk of Slashdotting my own site, I've got listings of electronic and computer surplus places in California, Oregon, and Washington up at this link.
An article on blogging, as contained in the Dec. 27th issue of 'Time' magazine, made a reference to ham radio as a "faintly embarassing" hobby.
I wonder if the operators of that station find it so? Especially since they're providing a most valuable service that the (supposedly) much tougher public infrastructure failed to?
The same thing happened with the Nisqually Quake in 2001. Within minutes after the shocks subsided, landline phones and cellphone networks alike were overwhelmed into non-functionality.
Guess what stayed up and working through the whole affair? Yep. Ham radio VHF and UHF repeaters, and HF nets.
At least that's how I see it. And I'm not even a file trader.
Consider: The industry has been utterly unable to stop P2P to date, and a whacked-out move like this will probably be countered in a matter of days as the authors of SpyBot and AdAware catch on and release updated signature files.
Why go to the trouble of doing something that at least some in the industry know will be easily counteracted unless they're so flustered that they're not thinking straight?
The other indicator that makes me think this is sheer desperation are the comments from Marc Morgenstern. "Just deserts?" Criminys... He sounds like a grumpy kid who got his favorite marbles taken away or something.
Remember that at least one legislator, under pressure from the RIAA, once floated the idea of hiring system crackers to do their level best to try to sabotage P2P networks. The idea withered at the time, mainly because it would have run afoul of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
However, it is evident that the RIAA was not so easily dissuaded. They've found a sneaky way to deliver what they, in their deluded way, think is going to be a knockout punch. Adware and spyware are not (yet) illegal that I know of. What better loophole to try and pull the stunts the industry's been wanting to pull all along?
How's it all going to end? Well, this kind of move will make all the file sharers and sharing networks even more mad at the industry than they were before (assuming that's possible). It will serve as yet another wedge driven between an industry that is clearly too greedy to see past the end of its collective noses, and God knows how many people who might have been customers under different conditions.
The biggest irony to me is that they STILL haven't gotten it through their thick skulls that their music sales are down mainly because they're putting out slop that no one really wants to buy.
Example: I used to buy at least a dozen CD's a month in the early-to-mid 90's. However, in the last six years, I've bought maybe half a dozen. If that. I'm just not hearing the raw talent that I used to.
Seems to me that the industry is a victim of their own delusions. I think a line from Adam Savage, found in the opening credits for Mythbusters, hits the issue spot on: "I reject your reality, and substitute my own!"
I predict an entertainment industry implosion, due primarily to pissed-off customers and a consequent reduction in sales, within the next decade.
...At a lonely and near-deserted monitoring station hooked up to the VLA, a single technician jerks out of his half-asleep doze in utter amazement.
Why, you may ask? Well, you'd be amazed too if you were in a similar situation, and you suddenly heard, emanating from the ether in the general direction of Mars, a bunch of reedy chipmunk-pitched voices raised in a glorious chorus of --
"Car Wash.... Workin' at the Car Wash, yeah..." (Work, And Work) "Keep those NASA Rovers comin!" (Work, And Work) Keep those dusty panels comin..."
Back around 1998 or so, when I was still at Boeing, the Commercial Avionics department had built, and was experimenting with, a prototype system that would provide Dish Network service to every seat.
It was pretty amazing stuff. For the antenna, they had a rectangular slab about five feet by three that contained the electronic equivalent of hundreds of individual "dish" antennas in a phased array. The idea was to give each seat the equivalent of its own dish so that each passenger could be watching a different channel.
This monstrosity was designed to be mounted on the top of the fuselage, about mid-body. It was aimed electronically, based on latitude/longitude info gathered from the ADIRU (Air Data Inertial Reference Unit), a 'black box' that contained (among other things) an inertial navigation computer.
The idea was to have a six-inch LCD active-matrix panel in each seat back, with the audio piped over one of the existing channels in the aircraft's audio entertainment system.
The entire system was a marvel of engineering, and I consider myself fortunate enough to have watched the prototype undergoing testing. Unfortunately, I don't think it ever made it into production -- the costs were just too high.
I'm sorry you think it is a waste. Permit me to disagree with you most strongly. I speak from the perspective of being married to a wonderful lady, who also happens to have lost most of her sight. She is considered legally blind to the point that she cannot drive, and to where she needs adaptive technology to use a computer. I am often called upon to be her eyes.
Regular CD's may seem like a good idea at first. However, as was noted by another poster, they can only hold 80 minutes per disc, tops, and that's assuming that the player knows how to handle the extended-length discs.
When you pack that much data onto a CD, you run the risk of making it even more susceptible to scratches and similar damage than they already are. Take a look at some of the discs that are available for checkout at your local library sometime. See how beat up they are? And that's from FULLY SIGHTED people (mis)handling them. How well do you think someone who has little or no vision is going to do with it?
As for Braille "displays:" I really don't think you have any idea what you're asking for, and I know for certain from that comment that you've never seen a true Braille terminal.
I have seen them. They're almost as clunky, complex, and expensive as the old Teletype machines were, and they are incredibly difficult to learn how to use (it can take someone more than a year to fully master Braille 2, the most popular format). For someone who still has partial sight, as my wife does, Braille is often more difficult to deal with than simply getting something in high-contrast/large print.
The only merit I can see in your idea for the players is the large buttons. That's certainly helpful, though keep in mind said buttons also need large, easily-distinguished tactile shapes on them (as my wife's current cassette player does).
As for the rest of your tirade, I really don't have a clue what you're on about. "Social interaction?" Get real. Every vision or hearing-impaired person I've met to date has been just as nice to get to know, if not nicer, than many of the folks I've met who have all their faculties.
If you would really like some perspective as to what vision-impaired folk go through, I suggest you go volunteer to get yourself trained as a sighted guide. I think you'll find it to be a real eye-opener (pun intended, with no apology whatsoever).
"We send drug dealers and drug buyers to jail, we should treat spam the same way..."
"Oh, so the government should set up an arbitrary and updatable list of email content and bust anyone with possession of email with said content. Good call..."
Spam is not now, never has been, and never will be about CONTENT. It is now, always has been, and always will be about CONSENT.
As in: Having an E-mail address DOES NOT in ANY way imply CONSENT to be sent unwanted spew.
Hope that clarifies things. If Ohio is serious about this, great! They should go for it. They've gotta do SOMEthing to make up for Nov. 2...
I used to be in IT. Spent about 14 years in the field, in fact. The reason I left the field as a career is twofold: First, I made the mistake of overlapping work and hobby too far (I was living and breathing computer hardware and software day and night, and it eventually overwhelmed me).
Second, I discovered that I really prefer doing hands-on with actual hardware. I get a particular kick out of building equipment, then being able to point to it and say "I made that."
While it's true that this can easily be done in the world of programming, I just don't have the patience to sit in front of a screen for 8+ hours a day coding. In fact, I do as little code as possible these days, and most of that has to do with microcontrollers.
The only "IT" stuff I do now consists of keeping our home-based 'net presence and workstations running. My primary career is now civil service (state government), keeping the radios and other electronics for the WA State Patrol running.
My side business is along the same lines, but just different enough to keep me from burning out altogether. I specialize in conversion of commercial 2-way radios to amateur ("ham") service, and I also do memory and PLD device programming and mil-spec electrical connectors.
...By pushing the money that went into this project into school literacy and children's reading programs. It's critically important for kids and adults alike to be able to effectively read, write, and (perhaps most important) apply critical thinking, logic, and analysis to what they're reading and writing. However, how often have you seen real debate being taught (or even encouraged) in any classroom outside of college level?
In other words: Teach 'em how to ask the right questions, and look carefully at the answers they get back. The rest will follow easily enough.
For those who I know will promptly claim that a system like this can serve as an educational tool, well, that's true to some degree. However, I gained my reading skills (I was reading at college level by the time I was eight), and my love of books, from the fact that my parents took the time to introduce me to the world of printed media early on (including maps and basic geography -- fascinating stuff!)
There's no way that a computer can ever replace the experience of a parent reading to you, encouraging you to read right along with them, giving you the meaning and context of the words on the spot, or pointing to a spot on a world globe and telling you about the different cultures that live there.
PGP was available to protect sensitive text since at least 1991. I have no doubt that some variant of it, or perhaps an entirely new encryption scheme, will be developed for VoIP phones in response to this.
If nothing else, the business world will probably demand it.
If I recall correctly, it's only a problem if you charge an admission fee. If the owner of the player and projector also bought the DVD, and all they're doing is showing it to a bunch of other people, it could be claimed that they're merely showing a movie they've already bought and paid for to a bunch of friends.
I'm no lawyer, but I think the movie studios are going to have real trouble prosecuting stuff like this.
With that said, I think it's a great idea! It definitely 'tweaks the nose' of "established authority," and the Trickster in me thinks highly of such things.
One of the first things I was taught in Triage and Disaster Medical, during my CERT class, was 'ABC.' Airway, Breathing, Circulation.
In other words, when you've got someone who's apparently down for the count, you check FIRST that their airway is clear and open. Second, you check for breathing. Then, and only then, do you worry about blood flow.
I wouldn't be too worried about this. EMT and paramedic training programs will certainly be updated once this sort of thing becomes mainstream.
I suppose I could also make some silly line about zombies, but I'll leave that to others.;-)
When I was building the GPS receiver module for the 'Techmobile,' I was working with an old Trimble six-channel unit that was originally part of a system they made for the military. Said receiver was built into a very nice machined-aluminum housing, designed explicitly for mobile use, and I really wanted to make use of at least the housing and its connectors.
I ended up doing a little more than that, as the web page mentions. There were two original circuit boards inside the Trimble receiver, one for the power supply side and the second for the actual receiver and logic. It took me about two hours to literally slice all the original PLCC surface-mount chips off the old board, clip off some through-hole components, drill mounting holes for the new board, and get everything mounted. In essence, the old board became nothing more than a physical substrate to mount the new module.
Since the upper board had such a nice, heavily-filtered, ready-made DC/DC converter on it (9-32V in, 5V out), I wanted to use it. The challenge I faced was to cut enough traces to isolate the converter's output side from the original circuitry (which was now presenting a solid short, thanks to the mounting screws punched through a four-layer PC board), but not enough to disable it.
The challenge was met, and the new receiver still works like a champ. In fact, last year, I upgraded the original GPS-25 module to a WAAS-enabled module, the GPS-15LV.
Like I said in the 'Subject' line: I'm not sure if this counts as "abuse" or simply "modification" (probably a bit of both), but I had fun doing it.
My own view is that short-term profit is NEVER as important as long-term survival. So many companies and so many people, though, rarely look beyond the next quarter's profits.
Until that attitude changes WORLDWIDE -- until money itself is seen merely as the tool that it is, not as some sort of object of worship -- I think we'll continue to see this sort of insanity in terms of hemorrhaging jobs overseas.
I fully expect that such a radical view will get moderated down as 'flamebait' or 'troll' or something similar. So be it. No amount of Slashdot moderation will change the truth.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you a fool? Only you can truly decide that. ;-)
I will say that there are, IMO, many factors that should go into any judgment call on any job, and that different people have different priorities and needs. If your priorities and needs were not being met by the job you were at, then you were absolutely right to move on.
For my part, I look for a number of things in a job that I've found the private sector can rarely provide any more. That, and my priorities for a job are what many people would consider backwards. Salary, for example, is about fourth down on my list after long-term stability, the opportunity to make a real and positive difference in people's lives, and the chance to use ALL my skills.
Civil service is the only spot I've found that I'm truly happy with, but I will add that it takes a very speficic mindset to do well in such an environment. My only regret is that I didn't do it long ago.
I wish you happy hunting in your job-search. Should you get frustrated, and be tempted to take something that you know you really won't like, just for the paycheck, keep in mind that I surived for a full year and two months on nothing but unemployment bennies, my wife's job, and my side business before I found the slot with the State Patrol.
Take away the fan and disk noises, and what do you have left to fall asleep to?!
Fan noise is one of the best sedatives I know of, and it's non-addictive...
[bleep!][select_voice,feminine_vague_electronic]"I 'm sorry, but your message has exceeded the maximum number of Buzzwords allowed under International Law and the Genetic Contention. Please re-edit and attempt to re-send."[deselect_voice]
] "I'm sorry, you are attempting to send a blank message. Do you really want to do this?"[deselect_voice]
[Muffled cursing, and intense sounds of retyping follow, sounds which make it clear the user is employing a classic IBM 'clicker' keyboard. After a few minutes, it starts sounding like a roomful of frantic castanet players. The clicking finally dwindles down and stops with one, final, definitive TICK!]
[bleep!][select_voice,feminine_vague_electronic
[A not-so-muffled scream is heard, followed by sounds of breaking glass and high-voltage arcs]
I don't think the complaints or threats of lawsuits were at all valid. They're your servers, your bandwidth allocation, your routers. You have total authority to configure them however you please.
The ONLY legal obligations you have to your users are those that are spelled out in your Terms of Service agreements that said users accept when they sign up with you.
Now, this doesn't mean that widespread blocking won't cost you some users if you do it. The decision point is what's going to cost you more: Dealing with the spammer spew, or losing a few users because they're pissed off at you for dealing with said spew.
Keep the peace(es).
The Industrial Revolution period of the 20th Century saw plenty of raw innovation and creativity, in the form of putting critical infrastructure (like our nationwide power grid, highways, and railroads) together, so I don't see any reason to limit such innovation to the IT field.
I'd much prefer to see some of those challenges include things like, say, finding a permanent replacement (or set of replacements -- I have my doubts that there's a single solution) for petroleum-based energy sources and, as a direct result, eliminating our dependence on oil completely.
Finding a way to create a room-temperature superconductor could go a long way towards that. While such a challenge would certainly have applications within the IT field, it's certainly not directly related.
How about finding ways to keep the South American rainforests intact, but still support agriculture efforts? Seems to me that if the rainforests go, so does a big chunk of our world's breathable atmosphere, not to mention losing one of the biggest natural pharmaceutical sources on the planet.
Other non-IT ideas? Anyone?
Or something along those lines. ;-)
Anyway... Yes, physical security tops the list. The 'Lab' area of our home, where I do 95% of my work for both home-based business and hobby, is heavily alarmed with PIR motion and door sensors. Visitors are never left alone in the area, and computers are logged off or locked except when they're in immediate use at that moment.
All the systems are secured with difficult-to-guess passwords, and the main house entry itself is protected with electronic access control (proximity cards) and a Medeco high-security mortise lock. The alarm system fires off a notification of intrusion or panic to the monitoring center within ten seconds of being triggered.
Our 'net presence has a hardware firewall (a Watchguard Firebox series unit) that provides NAT and other protections too numerous to go into here.
Our wireless access point runs WPA with a huge key and MAC-address filtering, and is on a separate subnet off of the Firebox. The only stations permitted to even try to connect are those who have their MAC address in our ACL. In addition, I'll be setting up a RADIUS server soon, so the WPA keys get rotated regularly.
All the workstations have current antivirus packages that update regularly (thank you, AVG Antivirus!)
NO ONE is permitted to connect to our LAN from the inside without my express consent, and this means that I check out the system they're proposing to use thoroughly before they hook up. If they don't want to allow me access for an anti-spyware and anti-virus scan, I'm happy to point them towards the free wireless access at the Covington Library.
If all else fails, we turn the dragons loose. If the Knights of Olde didn't so well in their armor, what chance do you think some hapless script-kiddie wannabe is going to have?
After all, dragons need junk food too...
Do you think I'm paranoid? Who wants to know? And why?
You really think it's that much?
Got a surprise for you. When we first moved into the place, well before I became self-hosted and created my local 'server farm,' our monthly power bill ran about $130.
After I got ALL the servers and workstations installed and operating (we're talking ten systems, including the 'server beast,' powered and running 24/7/365), and got the network hardware, alarm, and access control set up, our monthly went up to about $180.
That works out to about $600 per year -- for EVERYTHING, including the monster.
The Dell idea is a good one, but I would wonder if that server you suggest:
--Has SCSI RAID-5...
--Can accept a minimum of five 9 or 18GB SCSI drives...
--Is built anywhere near as well as the old Compaq.
One other thing I didn't mention at first that probably saved a bunch of power is that I pulled out two of the three CPUs, and just ran on one. That might have been a problem for Windows. However, I'm running NetBSD so it's not an issue.
The other factor: Much of WA state is supplied by hydroelectric dams, power-wise. This means relatively inexpensive electricity.
So, while you may be absolutely correct for some environments, and some areas of the country, you would not be in my case. Also, I tend not to think of $$ first when buying/using electronics. The cost is often the third or fourth item down on the list, after quality of construction, reliability, etc.
Keep the peace(es).
...on what you're looking for. I'm no expert on putting together big systems for enterprise environments, so I'll leave that type of reply to others.
However, I do know a great deal about digging around on the surplus market. If you're looking to put together your own servers, perhaps for self-hosting of your Internet presence, you can save tons of $$ by hitting up used-computer stores and electronic surplus places.
As just one example: My former employer (Boeing) retired a number of enterprise-class servers a few years back. Among these was a Compaq ProLiant 6500, tricked out with triple Pentium Pro 200 CPU's, twin redundant power supplies, a RAID controller, two-port Ethernet card, and the front-panel diagnostic display.
That system probably had a five-figure price tag when it was first sold. I picked it up for about $150, and spent another $100 or so on enough nine-gigger drives to create a RAID-5 stack. I added on another external RAID bay, with drives, for about another $100, and had one heck of a reliable FTP archive and database system for less than $400.
At the risk of Slashdotting my own site, I've got listings of electronic and computer surplus places in California, Oregon, and Washington up at this link.
Keep the peace(es).
An article on blogging, as contained in the Dec. 27th issue of 'Time' magazine, made a reference to ham radio as a "faintly embarassing" hobby.
I wonder if the operators of that station find it so? Especially since they're providing a most valuable service that the (supposedly) much tougher public infrastructure failed to?
The same thing happened with the Nisqually Quake in 2001. Within minutes after the shocks subsided, landline phones and cellphone networks alike were overwhelmed into non-functionality.
Guess what stayed up and working through the whole affair? Yep. Ham radio VHF and UHF repeaters, and HF nets.
At least that's how I see it. And I'm not even a file trader.
Consider: The industry has been utterly unable to stop P2P to date, and a whacked-out move like this will probably be countered in a matter of days as the authors of SpyBot and AdAware catch on and release updated signature files.
Why go to the trouble of doing something that at least some in the industry know will be easily counteracted unless they're so flustered that they're not thinking straight?
The other indicator that makes me think this is sheer desperation are the comments from Marc Morgenstern. "Just deserts?" Criminys... He sounds like a grumpy kid who got his favorite marbles taken away or something.
Remember that at least one legislator, under pressure from the RIAA, once floated the idea of hiring system crackers to do their level best to try to sabotage P2P networks. The idea withered at the time, mainly because it would have run afoul of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
However, it is evident that the RIAA was not so easily dissuaded. They've found a sneaky way to deliver what they, in their deluded way, think is going to be a knockout punch. Adware and spyware are not (yet) illegal that I know of. What better loophole to try and pull the stunts the industry's been wanting to pull all along?
How's it all going to end? Well, this kind of move will make all the file sharers and sharing networks even more mad at the industry than they were before (assuming that's possible). It will serve as yet another wedge driven between an industry that is clearly too greedy to see past the end of its collective noses, and God knows how many people who might have been customers under different conditions.
The biggest irony to me is that they STILL haven't gotten it through their thick skulls that their music sales are down mainly because they're putting out slop that no one really wants to buy.
Example: I used to buy at least a dozen CD's a month in the early-to-mid 90's. However, in the last six years, I've bought maybe half a dozen. If that. I'm just not hearing the raw talent that I used to.
Seems to me that the industry is a victim of their own delusions. I think a line from Adam Savage, found in the opening credits for Mythbusters, hits the issue spot on: "I reject your reality, and substitute my own!"
I predict an entertainment industry implosion, due primarily to pissed-off customers and a consequent reduction in sales, within the next decade.
Keep the peace(es).
...At a lonely and near-deserted monitoring station hooked up to the VLA, a single technician jerks out of his half-asleep doze in utter amazement.
Why, you may ask? Well, you'd be amazed too if you were in a similar situation, and you suddenly heard, emanating from the ether in the general direction of Mars, a bunch of reedy chipmunk-pitched voices raised in a glorious chorus of --
"Car Wash.... Workin' at the Car Wash, yeah..."
(Work, And Work)
"Keep those NASA Rovers comin!"
(Work, And Work)
Keep those dusty panels comin..."
(You get the idea. I'm going to go to bed now...)
Interesting... The very fact that you mention that tells me that the units, or something very similar to them, did indeed make it into production.
Thanks for the heads-up. I'll try to dig up some details (I'm curious now...)
Keep the peace(es).
Back around 1998 or so, when I was still at Boeing, the Commercial Avionics department had built, and was experimenting with, a prototype system that would provide Dish Network service to every seat.
It was pretty amazing stuff. For the antenna, they had a rectangular slab about five feet by three that contained the electronic equivalent of hundreds of individual "dish" antennas in a phased array. The idea was to give each seat the equivalent of its own dish so that each passenger could be watching a different channel.
This monstrosity was designed to be mounted on the top of the fuselage, about mid-body. It was aimed electronically, based on latitude/longitude info gathered from the ADIRU (Air Data Inertial Reference Unit), a 'black box' that contained (among other things) an inertial navigation computer.
The idea was to have a six-inch LCD active-matrix panel in each seat back, with the audio piped over one of the existing channels in the aircraft's audio entertainment system.
The entire system was a marvel of engineering, and I consider myself fortunate enough to have watched the prototype undergoing testing. Unfortunately, I don't think it ever made it into production -- the costs were just too high.
Now, though, perhaps the idea will be revived...?
Keep the peace(es).
...without going through that silly registration business...
User name: flooby5
Password: duste
Use that, and their database will think you're a 40-something female Algerian actress, working in the education system.
Keep the peace(es).
I'm sorry you think it is a waste. Permit me to disagree with you most strongly. I speak from the perspective of being married to a wonderful lady, who also happens to have lost most of her sight. She is considered legally blind to the point that she cannot drive, and to where she needs adaptive technology to use a computer. I am often called upon to be her eyes.
Regular CD's may seem like a good idea at first. However, as was noted by another poster, they can only hold 80 minutes per disc, tops, and that's assuming that the player knows how to handle the extended-length discs.
When you pack that much data onto a CD, you run the risk of making it even more susceptible to scratches and similar damage than they already are. Take a look at some of the discs that are available for checkout at your local library sometime. See how beat up they are? And that's from FULLY SIGHTED people (mis)handling them. How well do you think someone who has little or no vision is going to do with it?
As for Braille "displays:" I really don't think you have any idea what you're asking for, and I know for certain from that comment that you've never seen a true Braille terminal.
I have seen them. They're almost as clunky, complex, and expensive as the old Teletype machines were, and they are incredibly difficult to learn how to use (it can take someone more than a year to fully master Braille 2, the most popular format). For someone who still has partial sight, as my wife does, Braille is often more difficult to deal with than simply getting something in high-contrast/large print.
The only merit I can see in your idea for the players is the large buttons. That's certainly helpful, though keep in mind said buttons also need large, easily-distinguished tactile shapes on them (as my wife's current cassette player does).
As for the rest of your tirade, I really don't have a clue what you're on about. "Social interaction?" Get real. Every vision or hearing-impaired person I've met to date has been just as nice to get to know, if not nicer, than many of the folks I've met who have all their faculties.
If you would really like some perspective as to what vision-impaired folk go through, I suggest you go volunteer to get yourself trained as a sighted guide. I think you'll find it to be a real eye-opener (pun intended, with no apology whatsoever).
Keep the peace(es).
"We send drug dealers and drug buyers to jail, we should treat spam the same way..."
"Oh, so the government should set up an arbitrary and updatable list of email content and bust anyone with possession of email with said content. Good call..."
Spam is not now, never has been, and never will be about CONTENT. It is now, always has been, and always will be about CONSENT.
As in: Having an E-mail address DOES NOT in ANY way imply CONSENT to be sent unwanted spew.
Hope that clarifies things. If Ohio is serious about this, great! They should go for it. They've gotta do SOMEthing to make up for Nov. 2...
I used to be in IT. Spent about 14 years in the field, in fact. The reason I left the field as a career is twofold: First, I made the mistake of overlapping work and hobby too far (I was living and breathing computer hardware and software day and night, and it eventually overwhelmed me).
Second, I discovered that I really prefer doing hands-on with actual hardware. I get a particular kick out of building equipment, then being able to point to it and say "I made that."
While it's true that this can easily be done in the world of programming, I just don't have the patience to sit in front of a screen for 8+ hours a day coding. In fact, I do as little code as possible these days, and most of that has to do with microcontrollers.
The only "IT" stuff I do now consists of keeping our home-based 'net presence and workstations running. My primary career is now civil service (state government), keeping the radios and other electronics for the WA State Patrol running.
My side business is along the same lines, but just different enough to keep me from burning out altogether. I specialize in conversion of commercial 2-way radios to amateur ("ham") service, and I also do memory and PLD device programming and mil-spec electrical connectors.
Keep the peace(es).
...By pushing the money that went into this project into school literacy and children's reading programs. It's critically important for kids and adults alike to be able to effectively read, write, and (perhaps most important) apply critical thinking, logic, and analysis to what they're reading and writing. However, how often have you seen real debate being taught (or even encouraged) in any classroom outside of college level?
In other words: Teach 'em how to ask the right questions, and look carefully at the answers they get back. The rest will follow easily enough.
For those who I know will promptly claim that a system like this can serve as an educational tool, well, that's true to some degree. However, I gained my reading skills (I was reading at college level by the time I was eight), and my love of books, from the fact that my parents took the time to introduce me to the world of printed media early on (including maps and basic geography -- fascinating stuff!)
There's no way that a computer can ever replace the experience of a parent reading to you, encouraging you to read right along with them, giving you the meaning and context of the words on the spot, or pointing to a spot on a world globe and telling you about the different cultures that live there.
Keep the peace(es).
PGP was available to protect sensitive text since at least 1991. I have no doubt that some variant of it, or perhaps an entirely new encryption scheme, will be developed for VoIP phones in response to this.
If nothing else, the business world will probably demand it.
Keep the peace(es).
Craenor wrote...
;-)
"That if you leave it in suspend the whole time, or bettery yet HIBERNATE...you can get it to last for days."
I'm going to assume that "Bettery" is the new composite word for a better battery.
If I recall correctly, it's only a problem if you charge an admission fee. If the owner of the player and projector also bought the DVD, and all they're doing is showing it to a bunch of other people, it could be claimed that they're merely showing a movie they've already bought and paid for to a bunch of friends.
I'm no lawyer, but I think the movie studios are going to have real trouble prosecuting stuff like this.
With that said, I think it's a great idea! It definitely 'tweaks the nose' of "established authority," and the Trickster in me thinks highly of such things.
One of the first things I was taught in Triage and Disaster Medical, during my CERT class, was 'ABC.' Airway, Breathing, Circulation.
;-)
In other words, when you've got someone who's apparently down for the count, you check FIRST that their airway is clear and open. Second, you check for breathing. Then, and only then, do you worry about blood flow.
I wouldn't be too worried about this. EMT and paramedic training programs will certainly be updated once this sort of thing becomes mainstream.
I suppose I could also make some silly line about zombies, but I'll leave that to others.
Keep the peace(es).
When I was building the GPS receiver module for the 'Techmobile,' I was working with an old Trimble six-channel unit that was originally part of a system they made for the military. Said receiver was built into a very nice machined-aluminum housing, designed explicitly for mobile use, and I really wanted to make use of at least the housing and its connectors.
I ended up doing a little more than that, as the web page mentions. There were two original circuit boards inside the Trimble receiver, one for the power supply side and the second for the actual receiver and logic. It took me about two hours to literally slice all the original PLCC surface-mount chips off the old board, clip off some through-hole components, drill mounting holes for the new board, and get everything mounted. In essence, the old board became nothing more than a physical substrate to mount the new module.
Since the upper board had such a nice, heavily-filtered, ready-made DC/DC converter on it (9-32V in, 5V out), I wanted to use it. The challenge I faced was to cut enough traces to isolate the converter's output side from the original circuitry (which was now presenting a solid short, thanks to the mounting screws punched through a four-layer PC board), but not enough to disable it.
The challenge was met, and the new receiver still works like a champ. In fact, last year, I upgraded the original GPS-25 module to a WAAS-enabled module, the GPS-15LV.
Like I said in the 'Subject' line: I'm not sure if this counts as "abuse" or simply "modification" (probably a bit of both), but I had fun doing it.
73 de KC7GR
--Jimmy Hoffa's tomb!
--Bill Shatner's lost hairpiece!
--The Lost City of Sitnalta!
--The True Location of the Firesign Theater!
--Osama!
...And MANY MORE!!!
Money is not an end. It is a means to an end.
My own view is that short-term profit is NEVER as important as long-term survival. So many companies and so many people, though, rarely look beyond the next quarter's profits.
Until that attitude changes WORLDWIDE -- until money itself is seen merely as the tool that it is, not as some sort of object of worship -- I think we'll continue to see this sort of insanity in terms of hemorrhaging jobs overseas.
I fully expect that such a radical view will get moderated down as 'flamebait' or 'troll' or something similar. So be it. No amount of Slashdot moderation will change the truth.