On broadcast radio _you_ are the product. The customer is the advertiser. The broadcaster offers to attract certain listeners for the customer. They differentiate themselves from their competition by the types of listeners they attract.
On Satellite radio the _music_ is the product. You are the customer.
It is a world of a difference. I find it somewhat painful to go back and listen to broadcast radio now that I'm hooked on satellite.
Systems may be geting smaller, but they are also putting out more heat and using more power. Rarely do I see data centers running out of physical space, instead almost everywhere I've been over the past few years the data centers are running out of power and cooling capacity.
Solaris 10 is light years ahead of Linux in terms of reliability, fault tolerance, and scalability.
Their support infrastructure is amongst the best in the industry.
Where it lags is in easy, quick, cutting edge and fancy little tools (of which Linux has more than its share).
This is mostly the result of a stabilizing bureaucracy and carefully directed architecture.
It sure ain't "SVR4" any more though.
For years it hasn't been very clear where they are going with the OS. With Solaris 10 we are starting to see.
Where else are you going to turn, when you've got to run big jobs - HP? AIX? Mainframes?
I'd consider rolling out Linux or BSD on the little servers.
But for the big boys, Solaris is the way to go.
So then as a technology manager you would have to wonder, why deal with different support contracts, different vendors, different employee skill sets and development tools - when you can get everything from one place?
Besides, once the Linux standards are finally cast, Sun promises "Solaris will be Linux", that it will meet all of the standards.
Cool stuff.
OpenSourcing it further strengthens the product, if for no other reason, than allowing their user community the ability to go in and see what is under the covers for themselves.
I'm glad they were able to finally follow through with the promise to open this up.
There is the old quote that a sufficiently advanced technology might appears as "magic" to those not literate in the technology.
In this case we have:
"Here is a complicated and logical explanation for the way things work, or you could think of it as 'magic'".
It seems there are a lot of people who not only believe in magic, but want to make sure that everyone else's kids have the brain-dead option of believing it is all magic too.
Although not necessarily efficient to produce, you could run the vehicle, with probably few modifications, on alcohol.... And if you crash, you could pop open the tank for a swig to help kill the pain...
I could also imagine this being used as a cache server. If you are collecting data of some sort much faster than your disks can absorb it, you might need a lot of RAM (but not a lot of CPU) to take in the data (bursts?).
The thing I really like about news.google.com is that you can get a variety of perspectives on a story. You can also quickly tell which stories are "canned press releases" and which are originals.
I can't imagine a corporate media company wanting you to see that. Surely they would only aggregate unique stories, or ones that agree nicely with their own spin on events. (with the possible exception of contradictary stories to their own that have no credibility)
An effective news aggregator, by definition, should be independent and not responsible for any of the actual stories or editorial content themselves.
On the other hand there are a lot of folks out there who don't want to know there are often contradictory and different interpretations of world events. Google's service may be shaking their world view and blowing gaskets, so there probably is a market for lopsided aggregation.
Probably a huge market actually. Just don't count me amongst them.
Actually a cheaper solution (than batteries) for a startup current is to use something called an "ultra capacitor". They charge up faster, last longer, and can provide very high currents for short durations.
I agree. Sun's Support model continues to be one of the best in the industry. What we see is a "risk level" versus "cost" battle. Sometimes cost wins, sometimes risk wins. When you get into the old school managment ranks, risk almost always wins.
Sun == lower risk. RH or MS sometimes equals lower cost, but I'm not even convinced that is always true.
Why do you think Sun is always a few years behind Linux in innovation?
Lower Risk.
The products are consistently released tested, documented, and supported.
It is frustrating, and there is bureaucracy mixed in there to further complicate things, but they offer a lower risk solution and sometimes cost isn't the only factor in the decision making processes.
There already are numerous RFID tricks you can play. These things are not designed for security at all.
You can even make up your own RFID tags.
Even embedded in the flesh, you could still make up a few that return your buddies ID code.
Worst case you can build a jammer. Set it up to turn on and off intermittantly. School officials will think something is wrong with their system. After the 20th time in a week they call for tech support they'll just shut the system down, the taxpayers will be out a truckload of cash, and some sales guy somewhere will be driving home in a new Porsche.
Google for an RFID Jammer, or for the RFID reader wrist watch, or RFID Hacker.
Re:Two Words
on
Solar Shingles
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Unisolar panels are made in Michigan. They have been out for several years. They withstand Hail.
They're actually flexible and look like regular tar roofing tiles except instead of being coated with little "pebbles" they are smooth and black.
They also offer a solution for standing seam roofs which are basically big rolls of "tape" that you stick down between the seams.
Keep in mind that these things (amorphous silcon panels) have lower power densities than tradtional glass and crystal silicon panels.
They are also a lot more work to wire up.
The technology keeps improving however.
They offer significant ascetic advantages which are important to a lot of people.
They can also be mass produced in much larger batches than the other technology. (And therefore will eventually be much cheaper. That is if the increasing demand for them ever levels off...)
I am a candidate for State Representative (Green Party) and the first thing I did when I decided to run was to register a bunch of domains to minimize chances of this happening to me.
Unfortunately it is impossible to think of all the possibilities, and the more you think of the more it costs.
There is some sort of tradeoff and risks you have to take in this sort of battle. The campaign doesn't really have a lot of time to worry about shutting these things down (with election deadlines looming), and certainly as a third party candidate we don't have any money.
Also, web sites are still not terribly effective ways to market to most voters. For example, in the district I'm running in, there are 110,000 voters (plus who knows how many new ones?).
My website draws maybe 100 hits on a good day.
Even if I got that hit rate for an entire year, and even if we assumed they were all hits from people in my district, that would still leave over 95% of the voters who didn't bother to check it out.
An even smaller percentage might hit anti-me campaign sites....
You may have a zoning ordinance which requires you to have a lawn and mow it and keep it green. Many, many towns do. They even have "weed ordinances" which fine you if you have native plants. Too bad because native plants are better adapted to your soil and climate conditions, and some are quite attractive.
I am actually running for office as a third party candidate. I can tell you that there are a scary awful lot of people here in the midwest that honestly don't believe in democracy nor much of the constitution.
The Royalists, Fascists, Right of the Rich to Rule, and theocracy advocates are not a wacko fringe, but bordering on mainstream.
Freedom has been sold out, and belief in the freedoms our country was founded on just doesn't exist any more.
My campaign has gotten me out there talking to people about politics every day, and every day I get more and more discouraged.
Some of the comments I've picked up:
"I think we really only need one party in government. Opposing views and debate are destroying our ability to have an effective government"
"No, I don't think you should be on the ballot because I am loyal to my party."
"Don't you think we have to sacrifice our rights and freedoms in order to catch terrorists?"
"They should ban all religions except and force people to follow the BIBLE. If they don't like it, call it tough love. People who don't interpret the BIBLE our way are simply wrong."
"Better our troops are getting blown up in Iraq than those crazies come over here and blow us up here."
"The rich have earned their wealth, the powerful know what they are doing. We have to trust them when they tell us what is good for us."
"If poor people have lousy school systems it is their own fault. There is nothing stopping them from sending their kids to private schools, or building quality public schools in their neighborhood."
"If people are poor, it is their own fault, they are lazy and stupid. It serves them right."
(on healthcare) "I don't want the government to give me anything. I don't think it should be giving anything to anyone else either - they'll never appreciate it."
"Don't you think that the right to vote should be restricted only to people who have money and education?" [poor people will make stupid choices and try to take our money]
Slashdot Mirror
Another way to look at it is this:
On broadcast radio _you_ are the product. The customer is the advertiser. The broadcaster offers to attract certain listeners for the customer. They differentiate themselves from their competition by the types of listeners they attract.
On Satellite radio the _music_ is the product. You are the customer.
It is a world of a difference. I find it somewhat painful to go back and listen to broadcast radio now that I'm hooked on satellite.
Systems may be geting smaller, but they are also putting out more heat and using more power. Rarely do I see data centers running out of physical space, instead almost everywhere I've been over the past few years the data centers are running out of power and cooling capacity.
I wonder if porn stars suffer from these repetitive motion syndromes?
No doubt pr0n surfers probably do!
Solaris 10 is light years ahead of Linux in terms of reliability, fault tolerance, and scalability.
Their support infrastructure is amongst the best in the industry.
Where it lags is in easy, quick, cutting edge and fancy little tools (of which Linux has more than its share).
This is mostly the result of a stabilizing bureaucracy and carefully directed architecture.
It sure ain't "SVR4" any more though.
For years it hasn't been very clear where they are going with the OS. With Solaris 10 we are starting to see.
Where else are you going to turn, when you've got to run big jobs - HP? AIX? Mainframes?
I'd consider rolling out Linux or BSD on the little servers.
But for the big boys, Solaris is the way to go.
So then as a technology manager you would have to wonder, why deal with different support contracts, different vendors, different employee skill sets and development tools - when you can get everything from one place?
Besides, once the Linux standards are finally cast, Sun promises "Solaris will be Linux", that it will meet all of the standards.
Cool stuff.
OpenSourcing it further strengthens the product, if for no other reason, than allowing their user community the ability to go in and see what is under the covers for themselves.
I'm glad they were able to finally follow through with the promise to open this up.
Ooh. The idea of a CRT being used like this just sounds perfect for Big Brother applications.
Yes, your TV is watching you.
There is the old quote that a sufficiently advanced technology might appears as "magic" to those not literate in the technology.
In this case we have: "Here is a complicated and logical explanation for the way things work, or you could think of it as 'magic'".
It seems there are a lot of people who not only believe in magic, but want to make sure that everyone else's kids have the brain-dead option of believing it is all magic too.
Although not necessarily efficient to produce, you could run the vehicle, with probably few modifications, on alcohol. ... And if you crash, you could pop open the tank for a swig to help kill the pain ...
I could also imagine this being used as a cache server. If you are collecting data of some sort much faster than your disks can absorb it, you might need a lot of RAM (but not a lot of CPU) to take in the data (bursts?).
The thing I really like about news.google.com is that you can get a variety of perspectives on a story. You can also quickly tell which stories are "canned press releases" and which are originals.
I can't imagine a corporate media company wanting you to see that. Surely they would only aggregate unique stories, or ones that agree nicely with their own spin on events. (with the possible exception of contradictary stories to their own that have no credibility)
An effective news aggregator, by definition, should be independent and not responsible for any of the actual stories or editorial content themselves.
On the other hand there are a lot of folks out there who don't want to know there are often contradictory and different interpretations of world events. Google's service may be shaking their world view and blowing gaskets, so there probably is a market for lopsided aggregation.
Probably a huge market actually. Just don't count me amongst them.
No, I think he meant on-grid.
In this scenario you use Solar when it is available, but when it isn't you use grid power, and if it isn't available you use batteries.
If you have grid, but no sun, you can charge your batteries from the grid.
The SunnyBoy that he referred to is typically configured as a "grid-tie" inverter.
I've created all possible user accounts on the system, each with all possible passwords.
I can't tell you who is logged on, you may or may not be, if I looked, then we'd know, but it would defeat the point.
I think your disk is full and empty at the same time.
We reached a CPU resource bottleneck, or then again, maybe we haven't.
I'd like to say I got a good backup, what do you think?
The story on NPR tonight about the pediatrician who figured out how to save her is really an amazing work of doctoring.
You can listen to it here.
Maybe this is why so many jocks are so dumb.
Actually a cheaper solution (than batteries) for a startup current is to use something called an "ultra capacitor". They charge up faster, last longer, and can provide very high currents for short durations.
Here is one manufacturer's ultra capacitor FAQ: Maxwell Technologies FAQ
I agree. Sun's Support model continues to be one of the best in the industry. What we see is a "risk level" versus "cost" battle. Sometimes cost wins, sometimes risk wins. When you get into the old school managment ranks, risk almost always wins.
Sun == lower risk.
RH or MS sometimes equals lower cost, but I'm not even convinced that is always true.
Why do you think Sun is always a few years behind Linux in innovation?
Lower Risk.
The products are consistently released tested, documented, and supported.
It is frustrating, and there is bureaucracy mixed in there to further complicate things, but they offer a lower risk solution and sometimes cost isn't the only factor in the decision making processes.
There already are numerous RFID tricks you can play. These things are not designed for security at all.
You can even make up your own RFID tags.
Even embedded in the flesh, you could still make up a few that return your buddies ID code.
Worst case you can build a jammer. Set it up to turn on and off intermittantly. School officials will think something is wrong with their system. After the 20th time in a week they call for tech support they'll just shut the system down, the taxpayers will be out a truckload of cash, and some sales guy somewhere will be driving home in a new Porsche.
Google for an RFID Jammer, or for the RFID reader wrist watch, or RFID Hacker.
I recall reading somewhere a couple of years ago (here on slashdot, I think) that Microsoft had trademarked the lower case letter 'e' however.
Armed Robbery without the risk?
Unisolar panels are made in Michigan.
They have been out for several years.
They withstand Hail.
They're actually flexible and look like regular tar roofing tiles except instead of being coated with little "pebbles" they are smooth and black.
They also offer a solution for standing seam roofs which are basically big rolls of "tape" that you stick down between the seams.
Keep in mind that these things (amorphous silcon panels) have lower power densities than tradtional glass and crystal silicon panels.
They are also a lot more work to wire up.
The technology keeps improving however.
They offer significant ascetic advantages which are important to a lot of people.
They can also be mass produced in much larger batches than the other technology. (And therefore will eventually be much cheaper. That is if the increasing demand for them ever levels off...)
Software doesn't SPAM people, people SPAM people.
Well, whats an order of magnitude here or there? I'm a politician after all... ;-)
Actually I'm a mathematician by training.
Sorry about that.
I am a candidate for State Representative (Green Party) and the first thing I did when I decided to run was to register a bunch of domains to minimize chances of this happening to me.
Unfortunately it is impossible to think of all the possibilities, and the more you think of the more it costs.
There is some sort of tradeoff and risks you have to take in this sort of battle. The campaign doesn't really have a lot of time to worry about shutting these things down (with election deadlines looming), and certainly as a third party candidate we don't have any money.
Also, web sites are still not terribly effective ways to market to most voters. For example, in the district I'm running in, there are 110,000 voters (plus who knows how many new ones?).
My website draws maybe 100 hits on a good day.
Even if I got that hit rate for an entire year, and even if we assumed they were all hits from people in my district, that would still leave over 95% of the voters who didn't bother to check it out.
An even smaller percentage might hit anti-me campaign sites....
And another czar. The "Spam Czar".
Great.
More wars and more czars. Just what this country needs.
You may have a zoning ordinance which requires you to have a lawn and mow it and keep it green. Many, many towns do. They even have "weed ordinances" which fine you if you have native plants. Too bad because native plants are better adapted to your soil and climate conditions, and some are quite attractive.
I am actually running for office as a third party candidate. I can tell you that there are a scary awful lot of people here in the midwest that honestly don't believe in democracy nor much of the constitution.
The Royalists, Fascists, Right of the Rich to Rule, and theocracy advocates are not a wacko fringe, but bordering on mainstream.
Freedom has been sold out, and belief in the freedoms our country was founded on just doesn't exist any more.
My campaign has gotten me out there talking to people about politics every day, and every day I get more and more discouraged.
Some of the comments I've picked up:
"I think we really only need one party in government. Opposing views and debate are destroying our ability to have an effective government"
"No, I don't think you should be on the ballot because I am loyal to my party."
"Don't you think we have to sacrifice our rights and freedoms in order to catch terrorists?"
"They should ban all religions except and force people to follow the BIBLE. If they don't like it, call it tough love. People who don't interpret the BIBLE our way are simply wrong."
"Better our troops are getting blown up in Iraq than those crazies come over here and blow us up here."
"The rich have earned their wealth, the powerful know what they are doing. We have to trust them when they tell us what is good for us."
"If poor people have lousy school systems it is their own fault. There is nothing stopping them from sending their kids to private schools, or building quality public schools in their neighborhood."
"If people are poor, it is their own fault, they are lazy and stupid. It serves them right."
(on healthcare) "I don't want the government to give me anything. I don't think it should be giving anything to anyone else either - they'll never appreciate it."
"Don't you think that the right to vote should be restricted only to people who have money and education?" [poor people will make stupid choices and try to take our money]