I have to say that this type of competition is really out-of-touch with reality.
Every year we see these ridiculous efforts put into creating a vehicle that has so little value to a mass audience. This *thing* they created has such little value to the practical day-to-day person. Now, before I get slammed on this...I will agree with those who claim that you have to support cutting edge research that eventually filters down to the consumer product...but...year-after-year, these sorts of gimmiky challenges are put on, and so seldom do you see *challenges* that have a more practical, obtainable, goal that would make a real difference.
I, for one, would rather see challenges that match real world conditions...how about requisites of:
A 4 passanger vehicle with cruising speeds of 65-75 mph.
Look at the darpa challenge to create an autonomous vehicle that can travel 300+ miles off-road. Great idea...sure, the first year was a complete failure...but eventualy it will get better and someone will achieve the results.
This article, or challenge seems focused on the same stuff we've been doing for years, except only slightly better.
For 20 or more years I have been hearing about these challenges to make solar cars, or ultra-high-efficiency vehicles...and its been done...over and over again. Sure, every year they get better, but look at what they've built...something that no one could use in the short run.
I drive a honda hybrid...its better than a non-hybrid...but still...far from being what I expect our technology today to support. I get 45mpg...but by now, shouldn't we have consumer oriented, practical vehicles that easily achieve 60-80mpg or more??? 20 years ago, there were german diesels that were getting better than 50mpg.
Isn't this just another pissing match? Where is the real innovation that will ultimately filter down to you and I?
I already know that if I make a car for a single passenger with a high efficiency, aerodynamic design, it will get great mileage...who cares now...show my something better...show me something practical.
Stop wasting time on something thats been proven before...lets focus on more practical gains.
>Even if it looks like the eye will hit KSC dead-on, they've still got enough > time to stick an orbiter on the 747 and get one of them out of there...
>It's looked like that for several days now, and they haven't done this. A good reason is that the shuttles are being >retrofitted with safety improvements, and aren't really in a state to be put on a 747, >let alone flown hundreds of miles away.
Furthermore, at a cost of about $1 million dollars, and a weeks worth of time, I don't think there is time or money to afford the effort.
Wow...as if much of this stuff wasn't already available through other "dot-bomb" crashes. Like I'm going to bid on it just because it was property of 'enron'...hah...what a sham.
In general, I am against mixing family and business. I am a partner in a network computing consultancy. For one, I never sell or do work for family and friends. Its not the fact that they always want the "family-discount-plan", so much as the implied lifetime warranty that pursues.
In regards to working with family, I've seen it fail more times than it works. Having seen my wife work for a friend, and the subsequently starting her own business and hiring other friends...I've seen many relationships too easily soured by the friendship-employment misunderstandings.
Anyhow, with that said, I'm a partner in a company, 14 years, with my brother and mother.
Now the key to our success is that we each brought unique talents. My brother is business sales and marketing, while my mother is business finance and accounting...me? of'course, I'm technical...why else would I be on/.
So my secret, if I had one...but I don't, because I openly share it, is don't mix if you bring similar skills. I think unique skills are required...then the family factor adds some value to it.
-mgeneral
That XP Powertoys app really stinks too. I was amazed at how useless it really was. I tried to use it for about two weeks, but apps kept moving back to the current window, and wouldn't stick in their respective desktop.
Now...if I had a seperate monitor for each desktop, that would be cool.
I hire all of the technical talent at my company. We are a small systems integration and consulting firm doing about 6 million a year in revenue. Here is my bottom line response to Monster. It looks great, but is priced WAY out of my range. I can't afford the thousands of dollars they want for posting my open positions. Even there economy option is to restrictive. One job post, 60 days, no changes to the verbage, under one position heading...$500. So Monster simply isn't an option for us. Sure, if I am ebay or some other mega-sized corporation hiring tens or hundreds of people, then one of those boards may be an option, but my guess is that most small business under 100 people find that it is priced out of their range. Where do I post now? Craiglist
I read a lot of resume's, and this sort of stuff is very common...particularly during the dotcom boom/bust. I really don't pay attention to the history so much any more (as job loyalty and employer stability has been blurred with other less fortunate outcomes) and I really focus on someones character, attributes, and contributions. These things all promote your experience and talk a lot more about someone than what an employer can reasonably gather from the employment history.
If you know you are going to have a 3rd party audit, and you know there are holes. DOCUMENT EVERYTHING YOU KNOW AND REPORT IT TO YOUR MANAGEMENT BEFORE THE AUDIT OCCURS. The fact is, most of us probably know of a small issue or two that we would like to have fixed, but have a lack of time or budget to patch/repair/upgrade or tighten down. Cover your ass so that when the audit comes back, you can at least say, "hey, I knew about all of that crap before the audit, but lack of funds/time prevents me from tightening things down."
...If they ported over VMWare to run on this bad boy? Imagine the number of guest OS's you could run. This thing could be the data center of all data centers. But otherwise, for all intents and purposes, its extremely proprietary and will ultimately run just a few specialized applications. Never-the-less, with virtualized computing and beheamoth systems like these, the future of data centers is sure to change.
$23 mil is cheap when you have several billion in the bank. This is chump change. They wiped out a competitor, and it's more like adding insult to injury. Think of it like handing a bum, a panhandler, a nickel and telling him to shut up and go away. A very small price to get a nuisance off your back.
It's going to require more than just new laws and legislation. To fix the spam problem, you need to fix the SMTP protocol. At one time it may have seemed ok to allow anonymous, unverified mail services, but today, it is unpractical. A lot can be done to diminish spam if we can improve the SMTP protocol. Source address verification and usable certificate services wouldn't take that long to implement and would drastically reduce the quantities of SPAM.
Years of experience have shown me that having the right tool for the job may require an initial investment, but always pays off.
But its more than an initial investment. I use several systems, my notebook, my office computer, my home computer, my wife's computer, etc...Each of these systems cause that initial investment to be multiplied. On top of that, if I make a change to my preferences, rules, or configuration, then I have to change it on each of those systems.
I totally agree with you...use the right tool for the job. But wouldn't you agree that a single tool that does the job of several is sensible alternative?
Yes, I have a tool box in my workshop with hundreds of different tools, but I don't lug that into the house when I need to tighten the screw on my door hinge. Instead, I leave a Leatherman in the accessory drawer in the kitchen. Its handy for most of the routine tasks around the house. (I'd highly recommend you check out the Leatherman over you Swiss Army Knife, much better tool for the job you mentioned)
Small apps that do one job and do it well load quickly and have simple interfaces.
Historically, most small apps, regardless of how good they are, get wrapped up into other, more robust interfaces. For example, I used to use command line ftp, but now I use my web browser for basic ftp functionality. True, its an inferior ftp client, but the trade off of simplicity and convenience prevail when I need to upload or download a single file.
You have been misled into believing that one desktop application should do all these things.
No, years of experience have shown me that one application that does my routine email, calendaring, note taking, tasks, public folders, and group discussion threads saves time. The fact is, if I had a different app for each of these functions, imagine how much time it would take to get into the apps, learn different interfaces, reload apps when I get a new system, etc... Frankly, I don't get my kicks out of installing apps, managing back-ends, and have 16 different programs to do the job one can.
I generally agree, because I am a big proponent of standards, but look at how many different standards have become wrapped up into a single desktop application that is crucial to so many end users. The fact is, people want a robust mail client, and all of these different standards detract from the single, solid, look and feel of an integrated application. So long as one vendor/group can wrap up all of the standards into one back-end, I'll at least evaluate it. But as it stands now, look how many different back-end servers have to be administered for one front-end application.
It seems that, for years, I swore our IT department would not convert off of Groupwise until we had an open-standards alternative that gave us the same integrated mailbox, public information store, and calendar solution. That was back in '97. When nothing prevailed to grasp as an integrated standard, the pressure finally caved when we had to make the choice between upgrading Groupwise or migrate to Exchange. As we reviewed the options, we noticed that the only reason we were still using Novell servers was to support Groupwise. It was at this point that we did a cost-of-ownership study and found that supporting aging Novell servers was going to cost us more over time than a single platform solution from M$. The choice was made to convert. Our conversion was very successful, and recieved much praise from the end users. Why? Because they all wanted to use Outlook. No one really cared that we were using Exchange, what they really wanted was Outlook. (Btw, the Groupwise plug-in to Outlook sucked at the time, maybe better now, but back then it was terrible) As an Outlook user myself, I have to say that it is a great application. It works well, provides many options, and integrates with everything. With that said, I believe our IT team would readily accept an opensource alternative, particularly if we could cut down on the cost for licenses. Not only that, but many of our partners and clients would convert too if they didn't lose Outlook. Honestly, I think fewer and fewer people outside of IT even know what Exchange is. All they want is outlook. I can't offer much to the development of an Open Source Exchange replacement, but I sure would love to see one sprout up.
Yeah, that bothers me too. Even if I wanted to use the Treo, or the Tungsten, or the Sony/Ericson, etc...my cell phone provider doesn't support them. It has become iritating to find compatible devices and carriers, and I live in a major metropolitan area, too!
To some degree, I think you are right. I think the carriers like have a stranglehold on the products that are available verse what they allow you to use.
I am really tired of seeing PDA's that are being crammed into a phone. It really doesn't work. The phone ends up being to big, and the PDA is barely usable.
Instead, put a phone into a PDA. Yes, thats right, take our best PDA's, the Zaurus, the IPAQ's, Palms's, etc...and add a phone into them. Now I know that sounds odd at first. How does it differ.
First, get over the idea of holding a phone to your ear. Its simply not practical anymore. PDA's don't fit your head. And before you know it, most states will outlaw using a handheld phone in the car anyway.
Instead, use a headset that attaches to the PDA. For instance a Jabra , or Jabra-like device. Ideally, using Bluetooth built into the PDA for wireless headset convenience.
IMHO, the combo PDA with a built in phone and wireless headset would make the ideal solution. In the meantime, I'm through with these so-called integrated devices that are barely usable.
I think the point is, the number of peering points, hasn't increased porportionately to the number of users. As a result, more people rely on a less resilient architecture. I don't think they are refering to one or two ISP's going out of business as much as they are looking at the major peering points. More users all tie into the same peering points, and if one of those goes down, then a large number of users and sites go down with it. The reason we haven't established more peering points is simply the cost. A NAP (network access point) has millions of dollars in gear, not to mention the costs for line connections. The economies demand cheaper Internet access, while the demand increases costs to build in redundancy. These two points work against each other and result in monumental discoveries about "Risk of internet collapse rising."
What is it with the bashing of successful companies??? Ok, so at one time, Microsoft was a little startup...without much technical inguinuity...albeit...but they were the underdog against the bohemeth IBM. Now they are they enemy. So another underdog comes to the table, and they are becoming enormesly successful in their industry. And we have to bash them? Calling them the "microsoft" of their industry? This is riduculous. Redhat is a great company. They adhere to standards. They continue to release GPL code. They have introduced more people to Linux than probably all other players combined. In fact, in my industry (systems integration), 3 or 4 years ago, my customers wouldn't touch Linux. Now, when I tell them I'm installing RedHat, they can put a name behind the product and somehow they feel better about it. Today, in certian situations, I can bring Linux in-house to organizations that would have otherwise balked at my proposals a few years ago. In fact, I attribute this to the success of Redhat for creating a solid organization that backs the very code so many of you are working on. A company that the "C" people (ceo's, cfo's, etc) can identify with and trust. Just because they are successful doesn't mean that they are evil.
CDPD was great 5 years ago, but today, GSM/GPRS is spreading out and I wouldn't recommend investing in the older, slower technology. CDPD has a data rate of 19.2kb/s, but with error correction and overhead, the users throughput is more like 10 to 15kb/s. Versus GSM, which operates at 40 to 50kb/s and is found throughout the world.
Slashdot Mirror
I have to say that this type of competition is really out-of-touch with reality. Every year we see these ridiculous efforts put into creating a vehicle that has so little value to a mass audience. This *thing* they created has such little value to the practical day-to-day person. Now, before I get slammed on this...I will agree with those who claim that you have to support cutting edge research that eventually filters down to the consumer product...but...year-after-year, these sorts of gimmiky challenges are put on, and so seldom do you see *challenges* that have a more practical, obtainable, goal that would make a real difference. I, for one, would rather see challenges that match real world conditions...how about requisites of: A 4 passanger vehicle with cruising speeds of 65-75 mph. Look at the darpa challenge to create an autonomous vehicle that can travel 300+ miles off-road. Great idea...sure, the first year was a complete failure...but eventualy it will get better and someone will achieve the results. This article, or challenge seems focused on the same stuff we've been doing for years, except only slightly better. For 20 or more years I have been hearing about these challenges to make solar cars, or ultra-high-efficiency vehicles...and its been done...over and over again. Sure, every year they get better, but look at what they've built...something that no one could use in the short run. I drive a honda hybrid...its better than a non-hybrid...but still...far from being what I expect our technology today to support. I get 45mpg...but by now, shouldn't we have consumer oriented, practical vehicles that easily achieve 60-80mpg or more??? 20 years ago, there were german diesels that were getting better than 50mpg. Isn't this just another pissing match? Where is the real innovation that will ultimately filter down to you and I? I already know that if I make a car for a single passenger with a high efficiency, aerodynamic design, it will get great mileage...who cares now...show my something better...show me something practical. Stop wasting time on something thats been proven before...lets focus on more practical gains.
>Even if it looks like the eye will hit KSC dead-on, they've still got enough
> time to stick an orbiter on the 747 and get one of them out of there...
>It's looked like that for several days now, and they haven't done this. A good reason is that the shuttles are being
>retrofitted with safety improvements, and aren't really in a state to be put on a 747,
>let alone flown hundreds of miles away.
Furthermore, at a cost of about $1 million dollars, and a weeks worth of time, I don't think there is time or money to afford the effort.
"...bolt the spaceplane to the back of a 747 and ferry it cross-country, an exercise that costs about $1 million and a week's worth of time" http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/dis
So can someone help me clarify this GNU/GPL licensing stuff.
Since Sony is using some port of Linux, don't they have to post the source code for it too?
Wow...as if much of this stuff wasn't already available through other "dot-bomb" crashes. Like I'm going to bid on it just because it was property of 'enron'...hah...what a sham.
We don't have a democracy, we have an auction.
In general, I am against mixing family and business. I am a partner in a network computing consultancy. For one, I never sell or do work for family and friends. Its not the fact that they always want the "family-discount-plan", so much as the implied lifetime warranty that pursues.
/.
In regards to working with family, I've seen it fail more times than it works. Having seen my wife work for a friend, and the subsequently starting her own business and hiring other friends...I've seen many relationships too easily soured by the friendship-employment misunderstandings.
Anyhow, with that said, I'm a partner in a company, 14 years, with my brother and mother. Now the key to our success is that we each brought unique talents. My brother is business sales and marketing, while my mother is business finance and accounting...me? of'course, I'm technical...why else would I be on
So my secret, if I had one...but I don't, because I openly share it, is don't mix if you bring similar skills. I think unique skills are required...then the family factor adds some value to it.
-mgeneral
That XP Powertoys app really stinks too. I was amazed at how useless it really was. I tried to use it for about two weeks, but apps kept moving back to the current window, and wouldn't stick in their respective desktop.
Now...if I had a seperate monitor for each desktop, that would be cool.
I hire all of the technical talent at my company. We are a small systems integration and consulting firm doing about 6 million a year in revenue.
Here is my bottom line response to Monster. It looks great, but is priced WAY out of my range. I can't afford the thousands of dollars they want for posting my open positions. Even there economy option is to restrictive. One job post, 60 days, no changes to the verbage, under one position heading...$500. So Monster simply isn't an option for us.
Sure, if I am ebay or some other mega-sized corporation hiring tens or hundreds of people, then one of those boards may be an option, but my guess is that most small business under 100 people find that it is priced out of their range.
Where do I post now? Craiglist
I read a lot of resume's, and this sort of stuff is very common...particularly during the dotcom boom/bust. I really don't pay attention to the history so much any more (as job loyalty and employer stability has been blurred with other less fortunate outcomes) and I really focus on someones character, attributes, and contributions.
These things all promote your experience and talk a lot more about someone than what an employer can reasonably gather from the employment history.
If you know you are going to have a 3rd party audit, and you know there are holes. DOCUMENT EVERYTHING YOU KNOW AND REPORT IT TO YOUR MANAGEMENT BEFORE THE AUDIT OCCURS.
The fact is, most of us probably know of a small issue or two that we would like to have fixed, but have a lack of time or budget to patch/repair/upgrade or tighten down.
Cover your ass so that when the audit comes back, you can at least say, "hey, I knew about all of that crap before the audit, but lack of funds/time prevents me from tightening things down."
...If they ported over VMWare to run on this bad boy? Imagine the number of guest OS's you could run. This thing could be the data center of all data centers.
But otherwise, for all intents and purposes, its extremely proprietary and will ultimately run just a few specialized applications.
Never-the-less, with virtualized computing and beheamoth systems like these, the future of data centers is sure to change.
$23 mil is cheap when you have several billion in the bank.
This is chump change. They wiped out a competitor, and it's more like adding insult to injury.
Think of it like handing a bum, a panhandler, a nickel and telling him to shut up and go away.
A very small price to get a nuisance off your back.
It's going to require more than just new laws and legislation. To fix the spam problem, you need to fix the SMTP protocol. At one time it may have seemed ok to allow anonymous, unverified mail services, but today, it is unpractical. A lot can be done to diminish spam if we can improve the SMTP protocol. Source address verification and usable certificate services wouldn't take that long to implement and would drastically reduce the quantities of SPAM.
But its more than an initial investment. I use several systems, my notebook, my office computer, my home computer, my wife's computer, etc...Each of these systems cause that initial investment to be multiplied. On top of that, if I make a change to my preferences, rules, or configuration, then I have to change it on each of those systems.
I totally agree with you...use the right tool for the job. But wouldn't you agree that a single tool that does the job of several is sensible alternative?
Yes, I have a tool box in my workshop with hundreds of different tools, but I don't lug that into the house when I need to tighten the screw on my door hinge. Instead, I leave a Leatherman in the accessory drawer in the kitchen. Its handy for most of the routine tasks around the house. (I'd highly recommend you check out the Leatherman over you Swiss Army Knife, much better tool for the job you mentioned)
Historically, most small apps, regardless of how good they are, get wrapped up into other, more robust interfaces. For example, I used to use command line ftp, but now I use my web browser for basic ftp functionality. True, its an inferior ftp client, but the trade off of simplicity and convenience prevail when I need to upload or download a single file.
No, years of experience have shown me that one application that does my routine email, calendaring, note taking, tasks, public folders, and group discussion threads saves time. The fact is, if I had a different app for each of these functions, imagine how much time it would take to get into the apps, learn different interfaces, reload apps when I get a new system, etc... Frankly, I don't get my kicks out of installing apps, managing back-ends, and have 16 different programs to do the job one can.
I generally agree, because I am a big proponent of standards, but look at how many different standards have become wrapped up into a single desktop application that is crucial to so many end users. The fact is, people want a robust mail client, and all of these different standards detract from the single, solid, look and feel of an integrated application. So long as one vendor/group can wrap up all of the standards into one back-end, I'll at least evaluate it. But as it stands now, look how many different back-end servers have to be administered for one front-end application.
It seems that, for years, I swore our IT department would not convert off of Groupwise until we had an open-standards alternative that gave us the same integrated mailbox, public information store, and calendar solution. That was back in '97. When nothing prevailed to grasp as an integrated standard, the pressure finally caved when we had to make the choice between upgrading Groupwise or migrate to Exchange.
As we reviewed the options, we noticed that the only reason we were still using Novell servers was to support Groupwise. It was at this point that we did a cost-of-ownership study and found that supporting aging Novell servers was going to cost us more over time than a single platform solution from M$. The choice was made to convert.
Our conversion was very successful, and recieved much praise from the end users. Why? Because they all wanted to use Outlook. No one really cared that we were using Exchange, what they really wanted was Outlook. (Btw, the Groupwise plug-in to Outlook sucked at the time, maybe better now, but back then it was terrible)
As an Outlook user myself, I have to say that it is a great application. It works well, provides many options, and integrates with everything.
With that said, I believe our IT team would readily accept an opensource alternative, particularly if we could cut down on the cost for licenses. Not only that, but many of our partners and clients would convert too if they didn't lose Outlook. Honestly, I think fewer and fewer people outside of IT even know what Exchange is. All they want is outlook.
I can't offer much to the development of an Open Source Exchange replacement, but I sure would love to see one sprout up.
Yeah, that bothers me too. Even if I wanted to use the Treo, or the Tungsten, or the Sony/Ericson, etc...my cell phone provider doesn't support them. It has become iritating to find compatible devices and carriers, and I live in a major metropolitan area, too!
To some degree, I think you are right. I think the carriers like have a stranglehold on the products that are available verse what they allow you to use.
I am really tired of seeing PDA's that are being crammed into a phone. It really doesn't work. The phone ends up being to big, and the PDA is barely usable.
Instead, put a phone into a PDA. Yes, thats right, take our best PDA's, the Zaurus, the IPAQ's, Palms's, etc...and add a phone into them.
Now I know that sounds odd at first. How does it differ.
First, get over the idea of holding a phone to your ear. Its simply not practical anymore. PDA's don't fit your head. And before you know it, most states will outlaw using a handheld phone in the car anyway.
Instead, use a headset that attaches to the PDA. For instance a Jabra , or Jabra-like device. Ideally, using Bluetooth built into the PDA for wireless headset convenience.
IMHO, the combo PDA with a built in phone and wireless headset would make the ideal solution.
In the meantime, I'm through with these so-called integrated devices that are barely usable.
If there wasn't spam, we wouldn't need anti-spam utilities...so wouln't you say that the excesive queries are, IN FACT, caused by SPAM?
I think the point is, the number of peering points, hasn't increased porportionately to the number of users. As a result, more people rely on a less resilient architecture. I don't think they are refering to one or two ISP's going out of business as much as they are looking at the major peering points. More users all tie into the same peering points, and if one of those goes down, then a large number of users and sites go down with it. The reason we haven't established more peering points is simply the cost. A NAP (network access point) has millions of dollars in gear, not to mention the costs for line connections. The economies demand cheaper Internet access, while the demand increases costs to build in redundancy. These two points work against each other and result in monumental discoveries about "Risk of internet collapse rising."
Torn over which format to choose for your 3000+ CD collection?
Well this settles it!
Now you can load up your hard drive with BOTH formats!
(And still have some space left over for that pr0n)
Ignorance plays the chief part among men, and the multitude of words; but opportunity will prevail.
-Diogenes Laërtius
What is it with the bashing of successful companies???
Ok, so at one time, Microsoft was a little startup...without much technical inguinuity...albeit...but they were the underdog against the bohemeth IBM. Now they are they enemy.
So another underdog comes to the table, and they are becoming enormesly successful in their industry. And we have to bash them? Calling them the "microsoft" of their industry?
This is riduculous.
Redhat is a great company. They adhere to standards. They continue to release GPL code. They have introduced more people to Linux than probably all other players combined. In fact, in my industry (systems integration), 3 or 4 years ago, my customers wouldn't touch Linux. Now, when I tell them I'm installing RedHat, they can put a name behind the product and somehow they feel better about it. Today, in certian situations, I can bring Linux in-house to organizations that would have otherwise balked at my proposals a few years ago. In fact, I attribute this to the success of Redhat for creating a solid organization that backs the very code so many of you are working on. A company that the "C" people (ceo's, cfo's, etc) can identify with and trust.
Just because they are successful doesn't mean that they are evil.
CDPD was great 5 years ago, but today, GSM/GPRS is spreading out and I wouldn't recommend investing in the older, slower technology. CDPD has a data rate of 19.2kb/s, but with error correction and overhead, the users throughput is more like 10 to 15kb/s. Versus GSM, which operates at 40 to 50kb/s and is found throughout the world.