Yeah, you can call 911 on Vonage. But calling is not my point. Receiving that call is.
Do you really want the 911 receiver on wireless? The 911 stations are going to require the high-availability mandated by regulation. And wireless is very far from providing that.
The reliability of wireless is not sufficient for critical services like 911. You are not going to see copper disappear, but some of its utility will (in part) be replaced by wireless.
Kind of like saying that the internal combustion engine offers so much mobility and personal choice that in ten years we'll be pulling up all the railroad tracks. Sure, it replaced a lot of rail traffic but we still need rail for mass transit and really heavy hauling (e.g. coal).
Learn a little bit of self-discipline if you are a work time web junkie. Do you really need this on your machine? Sure, lots of safeguards to prevent it from irretrievably changing your root password (yeah, I RTFA'd), but how about this for two last sentences:
"Worst case scenario is that you have to reboot your computer. Well, that's not really true: worst case scenario is that things fail badly and you end up not knowing your root password. "
Well, you won't be browsing the web for quite some time while you restore from backup. Ooops, I forgot, you don't have enough self-discipline to keep from browsing the web and need a script to lock you out. Guess backing up would be asking way too much.
As long as the IETF maintains a global perspective, it can not accept standards encumbered by IP more restrictive than the GPL. It seems obvious -- we've all benefited by open standards on the Internet. But who knows, stranger things have happened.
This could be a good test case. MS may continue to pursue its IP Holy Grail business model, but if the IETF can stand firm and refuse restrictive licensing, they will not be able to force it down the world's throat. On the other hand, if the IETF does accept these kinds of IP restrictions, MS may have a path forward in pursuing its new business model of patents and copyrights for obvious and trivial ideas.
"I" being the key word in your assessment. Fine for the home user, not so good for a business.
Maintaining an enterprise mail system based upon user-controlled spam filtering software is not practical. That small percentage of users with consistent ID 10T errors adds up fast. Try correcting false positives for a user-configured filter. It's time-consuming.
The better approach from an administrative standpoint is controlling spam at the MTA- and MDA- levels of the mail server. I use postfix checks with MDA-level Bayesian filtering with reasonable success. The spam mbox is comprised of user-submitted and administratively approved mail. The user submits it, and the admin checks for things like filter poisoning text before moving it to the real spam mbox.
Most importantly, my false-positive rate is extremely low -- probably 10's of thousandths of a percent.
79 stories posted (with obligatory, self-promoting links) this year. That's about one every three days. What does this blog offer besides copy and paste links to the original articles? Advertising!
This is pathetic, and it's obvious there is some kind of monetary link between Roll 'Em and the/. editors.
Way back in 1999, this was funny. Now, it's just sadly true:
You can earn $50,000 or more in next the 90 days. Seem impossible? Read on for details.
This message has been targeted to webmasters of Linux-related sites. You are probably familiar with the Slashdot.org "News for Nerds" site. You've probably heard about the "Slashdot Effect". Now, we want to introduce a new term that could change your life: "Slashdot Baiting".
As shown by the investigation of the Slashdot Effect by Stephen Adler, this force can be a significant source of traffic. Lots of traffic. Thousands of visitors within hours. Thousands of eyeballs looking and clicking at YOUR banner advertisements. In short, the Slashdot Effect, if properly utilized, can produce a significant amount of advertising revenue.
That's where we at MoneyDot Lucrative Marketing International Group, Inc. come in. We know how to exploit the Slashdot Effect. We call our strategy "Slashdot Baiting".
The process is simple:
Move your site (if you haven't already) to a host that offers unlimited bandwidth.
Put lots of advertisements and other marketing fluff on your website. "Bait" one of the Slashdot posters to link to your site. Receive thousands of visitors within hours; show lots of banners.
Cash the checks from your sponsors. Repeat the process.
Step #3 is the tough part -- if you don't have our help. We here at MoneyDot Lucrative Marketing (MLM) have studied the process by which Rob Malda, Sengan, Hemos, and the other Slashdot contributors decide which links to feature. We know what they will, and won't publish. We know exactly what to do to get them to hit your site with the Slashdot Effect.
It's quite painless. We have formulated 101 easy ways to get your site mentioned on Slashdot
Let's take an example, Bait Tactic #65: "If you write for a mainstream media source, mention Slashdot in one of your articles. One of your readers is bound to be a Slashdot regular, and is likely to tell one of the Slashdot contributors about your article." This worked for the New York Times. They mentioned the uproar on Slashdot in response to a patent on real-time gaming. Soon thereafter, the Times article was mentioned on Slashdot, resulting in thousands of visitors. If Slashdot Baiting works for the New York Times, it can work for you.
Interested in pursuing Slashdot Baiting and obtaining financial independence? Want to make $50,000 (or more!) within 90 days?
Then purchase MLM's "Slashdot Baiting Kit", which will contain everything you need to know to put this powerful marketing force to work for YOU! This Kit contains all 101 Bait Tactics, information on how to attract lucrative sponsors, pointers to website hosting services known to handle the stress of the Slashdot Effect, along with other important information you need to get started! We also throw in a warranty: if your site isn't mentioned on Slashdot within 90 days of using this Kit, we'll give you your money back [minus processing fees], guaranteed!
Purchase the SLASHDOT BAITING KIT today for only $49.95! Don't delay! Call 1-877-SLSH-DOT toll-free now! Serious inquiries only; please have your credit card handy when calling.
Why does/. keep posting articles submitted by this guy? He has a shabby blog on radio.weblogs.com and does a poor job stealing other writers work; the site is a blatant commercial effort. Yet/. keeps putting Roland's stuff up and linking to it.
What's the deal? Is there some kind of commercial payola a la 1970's radio? Maybe the editor has a thing going with Roland, in a Clinton-McGreevy-esque way.
*Cringe* I didn't need any of those mental images.
You work for a company that is miles behind and has a culture that is out of touch with the kinds of clients it needs to grow -- private enterprise. Unisys has never adapted to cultures that are anything but huge bureaucracies, and that is not where the new investments the company needs will come from. Basically, they have all the government -- megacorporate contracts they will ever see and are not going to win new ones; they are not tolerated by companies where rapid solutions, fast and intelligent responses matter.
Not that I'm questioning your qualifications, but I have a cousin who works there, too. The toughest question he had in the interview was "tell me how to improve server performance." The intelligent answer is a dissertation. His response "add more memory or buy a new server" was considered right on the mark. Yeah, don't benchmark the subsystems to identify the bottleneck, tell 'em they need a new server.
That doesn't cut it when the competition is IBM, with more experience dealing with real business and a 6-year Linux head start. Polish up the resume, because your co-workers do not have the skill sets to compete.
What can I say, they managed to pull off the only Y2K problem I encountered.
Seems they had a "mainframe" Windows system that only their team -- of three clueless fossils -- were authorized to service. I gave them the minimum list of patches, and they certified the system Y2K compliant.
Sure enough, on January 1, the system had WINS resolution problems and applications broke. So the system was reliant upon a kluge name resolution method that was -- you guessed it -- still on non-Y2K compliant SP3.
Well, I confronted the three fossils when they finally showed up (January 3), and they told me I did not know what I was talking about, turned around and walked out. I yelled down the hall after them that I was going to report each of them to their supervisor and would go after their jobs. They weren't impressed and left.
They must have gotten scared, because they came back 45 minutes later with coffee and donuts for the department VP, and tried to pin the blame on me. Well, the VP was a PHB-extrordinaire, but even HE understood only Useless-sys was authorized (under an expensive contract) to service the ancho -- er, server. He then invited me into the office to answer the charges they leveled against me.
Two days later they finally patched the server, because "applying SP4 to an NT server is very serious business and requires a great deal of advanced planning."
And this is the company you want to go to for a Linux solution? Umm, they have a long heritage of milking government contracts, but those worthless government contractor types are now the guys out there servicing businesses that rely on software to MAKE MONEY.
No thanks. Even without the legacy of the gif shakedown, the company chased me away long ago.
Why does/. keep posting articles submitted by this guy? He has a shabby blog on radio.weblogs.com and does a poor job stealing other writers work; the site is a blatant commercial effort. Yet/. keeps putting Roland's stuff up and linking to it.
What's the deal? Is there some kind of commercial payola a la 1970's radio? Maybe the editor has a thing going with Roland, in a Clinton-McGreevy-esque way.
*Cringe* I didn't need any of those mental images.
Some people who deal with him say he is difficult and arrogant.
He has been debating the issue for 30 years, and only now has he changed his mind. It took a lot of other evidence for him to change his theory, and it was a hot debate all the way. Hey, he made a bet of honor and stood by his opinion until others proved (to his own satisfaction) he was wrong.
That is what dealing with people in his realm of intelligence can be like. It may not always be pleasant and it may take a long time to get them to admit they are wrong.
We have about 5% Mac users in my organization. All run Firefox as a browser and a few run Mozilla products as IMAP mail clients.
It's an apples and oranges comparison, because the Mac users are a bit more the geek than Windows users; they are capable of understanding a browser interface and I don't have to walk them through the most basic end user tasks. Not a blanket endorsement of Mac, simply because those users are (as previously stated) a bit more the geek.
I'm trying to get all the applications we develop web-standardized so I can eventually ditch the whole MS schtick -- accessible from compliant browsers an linked to open formats.
I agree with the overall objectives outlined in the article -- a respoitory of usability recommendations, teaching tools and manuals, etc -- one thing that open source development offers is the ability to get user input early in the process. Open source development tends to be more incremental and open to review at early stages, and this offers the ability to get early user involvement.
I'm responsible for the IT department at my company and have had ideas for certain tools in mind. The developers are excellent and can put together something usable. However, by involving end-users early in the process, we've been able to develop applications that are tailored specific to the industry's needs. Not only the direct end-users, but potentially offering the applications as services to customers.
Open source has a better potential to evolve more usable applications IF (and that's a big IF) developers can target communities of end users early in the process and seek their "non-technical" input. Some of the larger projects out there (and I won't name names) suffer usability issues precisely because they do not have that kind of end-user interaction; they tend to be fiefdoms of a select group of developers who know how to code, but lack experience with diverse groups of end-users. Even those users with little coding and systems knowledge can be quite beneficial to making software usable by the masses, precisely because they lack technical expertise.
The mail system I manage gets 30 GB per month of non-valid e-mail address spam. They originally had it set up on Exchange, but that server puts non-deliverables into a Bad Mail directory. Puts a quick hurting on a server. Now that I set up postfix on a secure mail relay, the number of non-valid address messages is no longer a problem.
My advice -- don't do it. But, it's your domain and if it gets targeted, have fun trying to manage that mail box, let alone deal with your hosting company.
I fully agree with your comments. The oil fields have microbes that are hundreds of millions of years old, uniquely evolved to their environment and may have evolved from the microbes that were in the original, surficial organic muck.
My original point was that/. editors tend to have a point of view that coincides with NASA funding requests based upon a search for life as justification. Describing a 500,000 year-old environment as "ancient" suggests something unique.
Is that in human terms (thousands of years) or microbe terms (billions of years)?
All I got reading the article was that the fresh water has been isolated for 500,000 years and the ridge that separates them limits water exchange, resulting in isolated environments in which two different biomes may have formed.
Isn't the wording of the post a bit along the lines of NASA polit-speak? Unique environments, geothermal heating -- voila NEW LIFE FORMS! Let's submit a budget request for a probe to an ice world to look for life!
The first page of the article sums it up
on
The 3Com Saga
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
They lost in the enterprise. 3Com networking gear (switches and routers) was too unreliable to run even a small enterprise. Cisco, Bay, Cabletron and the likes (many also now dead) beat them there, and even Intel switches were much better. 3Com now has decent switches, but they don't offer big, bad core gear a large business needs.
Conversely, some of the wineries in California have labs to run GC/MS, etc. on their pressed grapes and fermenting wines to blend and adjust balance, temerature, etc. All to get the best flavor and aroma from a batch of juice.
But there is also the yeast and wood used to age wine. Even though the yeast is carefully cultured in labs, small variations in yeast strains and the fermentation temperature make a big differnence in the final wine's esters, fusel alcohols, phenols, etc. Wood varies from year to year, too. Nature just isn't entirely controllable, so vive la difference and enjoy what you get.
Another readily- (and cheaply) tested example of your point would be comparing the plastic jug of $0.79 grocery store vinegar to good red wine (better still, authentic Italian balsamic) vinegar. The jug at the grocery is made from soulless corn industrial ethanol, red wine vinegar from tolerable grapes, while the balsamic is made from fine wine grapes and aged in wood. No comparison, never will be. That's why the balsamic starts at $75 per bottle.
Take it from a home ale, wine and vinegar maker -- you can't fool mother nature.
This idea isn't really new, but it is interesting to see it applied to metals in soil. Fast-growing trees with tap roots have been used to extract contaminants from groud water for years.
The thing the article does not mention is how many harvests it takes to remove metals and the final concentration left in soil. Neither does it mention the processes effectiveness at removing other harmful metals frequently associated with gold deposits (silver, arsenic, lead, etc.). Metals like mercury and lead have human health and environmental impacts in very low concentrations. I'm not sure I would return this land to farming use without adequate analysis of post-remedial soils, but forestry may well be viable.
There isn't any kind of evidence there ever was life on Mars, yet this article raises the speculation that life from Mars survived a high temp impact, ejection through the harsh radiation and temperatures of space and "cross-polinated" earth?
This is not supported by any facts and is pure speculation. It doesn't even qualify as junk science.
The authors should wait until we get some data back from Mars confirming that life was even present there before publishing these kind of claims.
Why? Because the audit and tax divisions sign off on the "validity" of their SEC filings. The IT divisions are just facades for shovelling money into the Final Four partnerships.
I spent some time at a Final Four consulting division and the incompetence was astounding. People lacking experience were billed out well over the $100 you quote. Some went as high as $250 and the implementations never really ended or accomplished the goals. But it was OK, because the companies never gave them business-critical work, anyways.
Never finishing and continuing to bill is the whole point though.
The quality of the noise source is as important as its intensity (i.e. decibels). Some noise patterns are just plain annoying. For instance, in noise studies, helicopters are considered more annoying and have lower acceptable decibel thresholds; the old Hueys are a prime example.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, you can call 911 on Vonage. But calling is not my point. Receiving that call is.
Do you really want the 911 receiver on wireless? The 911 stations are going to require the high-availability mandated by regulation. And wireless is very far from providing that.
The reliability of wireless is not sufficient for critical services like 911. You are not going to see copper disappear, but some of its utility will (in part) be replaced by wireless.
Kind of like saying that the internal combustion engine offers so much mobility and personal choice that in ten years we'll be pulling up all the railroad tracks. Sure, it replaced a lot of rail traffic but we still need rail for mass transit and really heavy hauling (e.g. coal).
Learn a little bit of self-discipline if you are a work time web junkie. Do you really need this on your machine? Sure, lots of safeguards to prevent it from irretrievably changing your root password (yeah, I RTFA'd), but how about this for two last sentences:
"Worst case scenario is that you have to reboot your computer. Well, that's not really true: worst case scenario is that things fail badly and you end up not knowing your root password. "
Well, you won't be browsing the web for quite some time while you restore from backup. Ooops, I forgot, you don't have enough self-discipline to keep from browsing the web and need a script to lock you out. Guess backing up would be asking way too much.
As long as the IETF maintains a global perspective, it can not accept standards encumbered by IP more restrictive than the GPL. It seems obvious -- we've all benefited by open standards on the Internet. But who knows, stranger things have happened.
This could be a good test case. MS may continue to pursue its IP Holy Grail business model, but if the IETF can stand firm and refuse restrictive licensing, they will not be able to force it down the world's throat. On the other hand, if the IETF does accept these kinds of IP restrictions, MS may have a path forward in pursuing its new business model of patents and copyrights for obvious and trivial ideas.
"I" being the key word in your assessment. Fine for the home user, not so good for a business.
Maintaining an enterprise mail system based upon user-controlled spam filtering software is not practical. That small percentage of users with consistent ID 10T errors adds up fast. Try correcting false positives for a user-configured filter. It's time-consuming.
The better approach from an administrative standpoint is controlling spam at the MTA- and MDA- levels of the mail server. I use postfix checks with MDA-level Bayesian filtering with reasonable success. The spam mbox is comprised of user-submitted and administratively approved mail. The user submits it, and the admin checks for things like filter poisoning text before moving it to the real spam mbox.
Most importantly, my false-positive rate is extremely low -- probably 10's of thousandths of a percent.
79 stories posted (with obligatory, self-promoting links) this year. That's about one every three days. What does this blog offer besides copy and paste links to the original articles? Advertising!
This is pathetic, and it's obvious there is some kind of monetary link between Roll 'Em and the /. editors.
Way back in 1999, this was funny. Now, it's just sadly true:
http://humorix.org/articles/1999/02/slashdot-bait/
Subject: MAKE MONEY FAST FROM SLASHDOT!!!!!!
Date: February 2, 1999
From: friend@public.com
To: humorix@i-want-a-website.com
Dear Friend,
You can earn $50,000 or more in next the 90 days. Seem impossible? Read on for details.
This message has been targeted to webmasters of Linux-related sites. You are probably familiar with the Slashdot.org "News for Nerds" site. You've probably heard about the "Slashdot Effect". Now, we want to introduce a new term that could change your life: "Slashdot Baiting".
As shown by the investigation of the Slashdot Effect by Stephen Adler, this force can be a significant source of traffic. Lots of traffic. Thousands of visitors within hours. Thousands of eyeballs looking and clicking at YOUR banner advertisements. In short, the Slashdot Effect, if properly utilized, can produce a significant amount of advertising revenue.
That's where we at MoneyDot Lucrative Marketing International Group, Inc. come in. We know how to exploit the Slashdot Effect. We call our strategy "Slashdot Baiting".
The process is simple:
Move your site (if you haven't already) to a host that offers unlimited bandwidth. Put lots of advertisements and other marketing fluff on your website. "Bait" one of the Slashdot posters to link to your site. Receive thousands of visitors within hours; show lots of banners. Cash the checks from your sponsors. Repeat the process.
Step #3 is the tough part -- if you don't have our help. We here at MoneyDot Lucrative Marketing (MLM) have studied the process by which Rob Malda, Sengan, Hemos, and the other Slashdot contributors decide which links to feature. We know what they will, and won't publish. We know exactly what to do to get them to hit your site with the Slashdot Effect.
It's quite painless. We have formulated 101 easy ways to get your site mentioned on Slashdot
Let's take an example, Bait Tactic #65: "If you write for a mainstream media source, mention Slashdot in one of your articles. One of your readers is bound to be a Slashdot regular, and is likely to tell one of the Slashdot contributors about your article." This worked for the New York Times. They mentioned the uproar on Slashdot in response to a patent on real-time gaming. Soon thereafter, the Times article was mentioned on Slashdot, resulting in thousands of visitors. If Slashdot Baiting works for the New York Times, it can work for you.
Interested in pursuing Slashdot Baiting and obtaining financial independence? Want to make $50,000 (or more!) within 90 days?
Then purchase MLM's "Slashdot Baiting Kit", which will contain everything you need to know to put this powerful marketing force to work for YOU! This Kit contains all 101 Bait Tactics, information on how to attract lucrative sponsors, pointers to website hosting services known to handle the stress of the Slashdot Effect, along with other important information you need to get started! We also throw in a warranty: if your site isn't mentioned on Slashdot within 90 days of using this Kit, we'll give you your money back [minus processing fees], guaranteed!
Purchase the SLASHDOT BAITING KIT today for only $49.95! Don't delay! Call 1-877-SLSH-DOT toll-free now! Serious inquiries only; please have your credit card handy when calling.
Thank you for your time.
Why does /. keep posting articles submitted by this guy? He has a shabby blog on radio.weblogs.com and does a poor job stealing other writers work; the site is a blatant commercial effort. Yet /. keeps putting Roland's stuff up and linking to it.
What's the deal? Is there some kind of commercial payola a la 1970's radio? Maybe the editor has a thing going with Roland, in a Clinton-McGreevy-esque way.
*Cringe* I didn't need any of those mental images.
http://slashdot.org/search.pl?tid=&query=roland+pi que&author=&sort=1&op=stories/
78 stories posted (with obligatory, self-promoting links) this year. That's about one every three days.
He even has the audacity to advertise [smartmobs.com] that most of his traffic comes from Slashdot!
"This blog, Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends attracts about 150,000 visitors per month, of which 60% come from Slashdot"
You work for a company that is miles behind and has a culture that is out of touch with the kinds of clients it needs to grow -- private enterprise. Unisys has never adapted to cultures that are anything but huge bureaucracies, and that is not where the new investments the company needs will come from. Basically, they have all the government -- megacorporate contracts they will ever see and are not going to win new ones; they are not tolerated by companies where rapid solutions, fast and intelligent responses matter.
Not that I'm questioning your qualifications, but I have a cousin who works there, too. The toughest question he had in the interview was "tell me how to improve server performance." The intelligent answer is a dissertation. His response "add more memory or buy a new server" was considered right on the mark. Yeah, don't benchmark the subsystems to identify the bottleneck, tell 'em they need a new server.
That doesn't cut it when the competition is IBM, with more experience dealing with real business and a 6-year Linux head start. Polish up the resume, because your co-workers do not have the skill sets to compete.
What can I say, they managed to pull off the only Y2K problem I encountered.
Seems they had a "mainframe" Windows system that only their team -- of three clueless fossils -- were authorized to service. I gave them the minimum list of patches, and they certified the system Y2K compliant.
Sure enough, on January 1, the system had WINS resolution problems and applications broke. So the system was reliant upon a kluge name resolution method that was -- you guessed it -- still on non-Y2K compliant SP3.
Well, I confronted the three fossils when they finally showed up (January 3), and they told me I did not know what I was talking about, turned around and walked out. I yelled down the hall after them that I was going to report each of them to their supervisor and would go after their jobs. They weren't impressed and left.
They must have gotten scared, because they came back 45 minutes later with coffee and donuts for the department VP, and tried to pin the blame on me. Well, the VP was a PHB-extrordinaire, but even HE understood only Useless-sys was authorized (under an expensive contract) to service the ancho -- er, server. He then invited me into the office to answer the charges they leveled against me.
Two days later they finally patched the server, because "applying SP4 to an NT server is very serious business and requires a great deal of advanced planning."
And this is the company you want to go to for a Linux solution? Umm, they have a long heritage of milking government contracts, but those worthless government contractor types are now the guys out there servicing businesses that rely on software to MAKE MONEY.
No thanks. Even without the legacy of the gif shakedown, the company chased me away long ago.
Yeah, it's in poor form to answer myself, but just read and weep... http://slashdot.org/search.pl?tid=&query=roland+pi que&author=&sort=1&op=stories
Why does /. keep posting articles submitted by this guy? He has a shabby blog on radio.weblogs.com and does a poor job stealing other writers work; the site is a blatant commercial effort. Yet /. keeps putting Roland's stuff up and linking to it.
What's the deal? Is there some kind of commercial payola a la 1970's radio? Maybe the editor has a thing going with Roland, in a Clinton-McGreevy-esque way.
*Cringe* I didn't need any of those mental images.
Some people who deal with him say he is difficult and arrogant.
He has been debating the issue for 30 years, and only now has he changed his mind. It took a lot of other evidence for him to change his theory, and it was a hot debate all the way. Hey, he made a bet of honor and stood by his opinion until others proved (to his own satisfaction) he was wrong.
That is what dealing with people in his realm of intelligence can be like. It may not always be pleasant and it may take a long time to get them to admit they are wrong.
But he is probably a nicer person than Newton.
We have about 5% Mac users in my organization. All run Firefox as a browser and a few run Mozilla products as IMAP mail clients.
It's an apples and oranges comparison, because the Mac users are a bit more the geek than Windows users; they are capable of understanding a browser interface and I don't have to walk them through the most basic end user tasks. Not a blanket endorsement of Mac, simply because those users are (as previously stated) a bit more the geek.
I'm trying to get all the applications we develop web-standardized so I can eventually ditch the whole MS schtick -- accessible from compliant browsers an linked to open formats.
It ain't easy Ringo, but I'm trying.
I agree with the overall objectives outlined in the article -- a respoitory of usability recommendations, teaching tools and manuals, etc -- one thing that open source development offers is the ability to get user input early in the process. Open source development tends to be more incremental and open to review at early stages, and this offers the ability to get early user involvement.
I'm responsible for the IT department at my company and have had ideas for certain tools in mind. The developers are excellent and can put together something usable. However, by involving end-users early in the process, we've been able to develop applications that are tailored specific to the industry's needs. Not only the direct end-users, but potentially offering the applications as services to customers.
Open source has a better potential to evolve more usable applications IF (and that's a big IF) developers can target communities of end users early in the process and seek their "non-technical" input. Some of the larger projects out there (and I won't name names) suffer usability issues precisely because they do not have that kind of end-user interaction; they tend to be fiefdoms of a select group of developers who know how to code, but lack experience with diverse groups of end-users. Even those users with little coding and systems knowledge can be quite beneficial to making software usable by the masses, precisely because they lack technical expertise.
The mail system I manage gets 30 GB per month of non-valid e-mail address spam. They originally had it set up on Exchange, but that server puts non-deliverables into a Bad Mail directory. Puts a quick hurting on a server. Now that I set up postfix on a secure mail relay, the number of non-valid address messages is no longer a problem.
My advice -- don't do it. But, it's your domain and if it gets targeted, have fun trying to manage that mail box, let alone deal with your hosting company.
I fully agree with your comments. The oil fields have microbes that are hundreds of millions of years old, uniquely evolved to their environment and may have evolved from the microbes that were in the original, surficial organic muck.
/. editors tend to have a point of view that coincides with NASA funding requests based upon a search for life as justification. Describing a 500,000 year-old environment as "ancient" suggests something unique.
My original point was that
Is that in human terms (thousands of years) or microbe terms (billions of years)?
All I got reading the article was that the fresh water has been isolated for 500,000 years and the ridge that separates them limits water exchange, resulting in isolated environments in which two different biomes may have formed.
Isn't the wording of the post a bit along the lines of NASA polit-speak? Unique environments, geothermal heating -- voila NEW LIFE FORMS! Let's submit a budget request for a probe to an ice world to look for life!
They lost in the enterprise. 3Com networking gear (switches and routers) was too unreliable to run even a small enterprise. Cisco, Bay, Cabletron and the likes (many also now dead) beat them there, and even Intel switches were much better. 3Com now has decent switches, but they don't offer big, bad core gear a large business needs.
Conversely, some of the wineries in California have labs to run GC/MS, etc. on their pressed grapes and fermenting wines to blend and adjust balance, temerature, etc. All to get the best flavor and aroma from a batch of juice.
But there is also the yeast and wood used to age wine. Even though the yeast is carefully cultured in labs, small variations in yeast strains and the fermentation temperature make a big differnence in the final wine's esters, fusel alcohols, phenols, etc. Wood varies from year to year, too. Nature just isn't entirely controllable, so vive la difference and enjoy what you get.
Another readily- (and cheaply) tested example of your point would be comparing the plastic jug of $0.79 grocery store vinegar to good red wine (better still, authentic Italian balsamic) vinegar. The jug at the grocery is made from soulless corn industrial ethanol, red wine vinegar from tolerable grapes, while the balsamic is made from fine wine grapes and aged in wood. No comparison, never will be. That's why the balsamic starts at $75 per bottle.
Take it from a home ale, wine and vinegar maker -- you can't fool mother nature.
Two words: Charles Whitman.
This idea isn't really new, but it is interesting to see it applied to metals in soil. Fast-growing trees with tap roots have been used to extract contaminants from groud water for years.
The thing the article does not mention is how many harvests it takes to remove metals and the final concentration left in soil. Neither does it mention the processes effectiveness at removing other harmful metals frequently associated with gold deposits (silver, arsenic, lead, etc.). Metals like mercury and lead have human health and environmental impacts in very low concentrations. I'm not sure I would return this land to farming use without adequate analysis of post-remedial soils, but forestry may well be viable.
There isn't any kind of evidence there ever was life on Mars, yet this article raises the speculation that life from Mars survived a high temp impact, ejection through the harsh radiation and temperatures of space and "cross-polinated" earth?
This is not supported by any facts and is pure speculation. It doesn't even qualify as junk science.
The authors should wait until we get some data back from Mars confirming that life was even present there before publishing these kind of claims.
Why? Because the audit and tax divisions sign off on the "validity" of their SEC filings. The IT divisions are just facades for shovelling money into the Final Four partnerships.
I spent some time at a Final Four consulting division and the incompetence was astounding. People lacking experience were billed out well over the $100 you quote. Some went as high as $250 and the implementations never really ended or accomplished the goals. But it was OK, because the companies never gave them business-critical work, anyways.
Never finishing and continuing to bill is the whole point though.
Why not just set up a PC with a burner, post instructions and allow people to burn to their own CDs?
It would save the hassle of checking out a CD (like the music ones) and the software provided would, by definition, be legal to copy.
The quality of the noise source is as important as its intensity (i.e. decibels). Some noise patterns are just plain annoying. For instance, in noise studies, helicopters are considered more annoying and have lower acceptable decibel thresholds; the old Hueys are a prime example.