Improving training and certification requirements..
Increasing the network's physical and cyber security.
Does anyone feel the task force is attempting the wrong solution? They seem to feel only they know what all the players need to do to make the system more robust. To that end, they are recommending new regulations. The are not, of course, recommending how to go about enforcing thoes regulations, nor are they recommending how to prevent companies from getting around them.
Chances are, those very same players already know what needs to be done, but until now it wasn't finnancially worth making those changes.
Perhaps the task force only needs to give companies the finnancial incentive they need to fix the problem? Something simple, like making the company have to award every affected customer with X dollars if a power outage lasts for more than Y hours when more than Z customers are affected at once. I'm thinking X=$1000 longer than Y=12 hours, and more than X=10,000 customers, but perhaps there is a better set of numbers.
This would be easily enforced (if even needed) with the given legal infrastructure, puts the money in the hands of those directly affected, and simultaneously gives the power companies the finnancial incentive they need to justify the upgrades (not only having to award their customers, but having to pay the costs associated with seeing all those customers get awarded). It also allows the power companies to decide what methods works best for them to avoid having it happen -- some might go for the expense of a fully automated system while others opt for a more human-involved aproach.. which system works best in the majority of cases is a competitive advantage between infrastructures.
On second thought, never mind.. the task force members, being politicians and industry experts, clearly know more about how to fix the problem than the hordes of people making sure we have electricity all day, every day.
the Internet may well be what Vernor Vinge memorably termed "the Net of a Thousand Lies."
Just to set the record straight, I believe Vinge's quote is "Net of a million lies", not merely a thousand.
That said, yes, I think a thousand does fit the non-interplanetory, single-species Internet of today. Which probably explains why I've been calling the 'net the "net of a thousand lies" ever since reading his book.
For those interested, it is from Vinge's book "A Fire Upon the Deep", one of my favorite (well written, interesting story, unique aliens, not too overdone on the tech,...). Over the years since I read this book, I've been constantly amazed at how much of the backdrop of the story is coming true. The "hexopodia" sub-sub-thread in the book has always been my personal favorite and suprisingly, is particularily relevant given the recent interest in hooking up automatic translators to instant messaging services.
$300,000 for three years of serving the web page -- far, far more than the actual costs
How do you figure this is more than his actual costs? 300k/33 months is ~$10k/month. That does seem a bit over the top for bandwidth, but the FA doesn't say what his actual costs were nor how he justified $300k.
Anyway, I'd be more inclined to think it's a crappy test than to think they've explicitly coded this as some incredibly obscure means of spiting XFree8
True. I suppose that somewhere they also have a list of search terms that do, or did, or are considered likely to, return porn sites. Perhaps somehow XFree86 ended up on that list. Perhaps it was via a complaint someone filed. Or perhaps it was entered with some other search term where the whole query returned porn sites. Or perhaps someone decided to spite a competitor to MS by getting the term on the porn list. Spite seems doubtful since most of the customers MS is trying to prevent from moving to Linux wouldn't know XFree86 from a hole in the ground.. meaning it was a pretty amusing attempt if it was meant intentionally.
I prefer to get a chuckle off MS's inadvertant blunder (as would anybody who ran into it accidently) and be amused that they think their search engine is serious competition for anybody else's.. yet.
Morning simulators ramp the light up from nothing (or very low). I've been doing this for years using ordinary light timers.. but I'm not affected by SAD significantly, just find it hard to wake up.
My current setup is a digital light timer ($15?) and a light with compact fluorscent lights in it. The digital timer is better than the mechanical ones as it doesn't drift randomly around the setting and it doesn't change timing when the power goes out. The CF lights I'm using are significant because they simulate a bit of the (tail end of the) dawn ramp-up owing to their behavior of taking a couple of minutes to warm up to full brightness.
This makes for a simple setup if there's anyone out there that wants to try it to see if it helps. Start with a small light and beware.. since the lights come on suddenly, expect to be jolted awake. I used to set mine for 30 minutes after the alarm clock tried to wake me up.. if I wasn't awake by then, well, then I'd been warned.
Great pix but I could also use a little more commentary on what to watch out for
This would only be useful until the theifs changed their ways (assuming they di it the same way where you live). Also, perhaps the guy didn't want to be too helpful to would-be theifs.
Perhaps the best defense is to pick a small subset of ATMs to use and stick to them. That way, you'll have the best chance of noticing that the ATM is different and getting your saving throw.
automatically checking to see if an email came from where it claims it did
Won't this just result in increased net traffic and not a reduction of spam? It does help trackability. but legitamate email, spam or otherwise, will still get through.
Also, diving into possible implementation space.. in order to not be trivially defeatable, won't it have to authenticate both ends of the verification transaction. Otherwise, spammers will just include a copy of the verification information off some legitimate piece of email for whatever machine they are pretending to send from. Even if the verification is on a per-piece-of-email basis, won't it still have to stay active for a while to allow for resend due to failures? That's a lot of data for an active sitee like Hotlink, AOL and MSN to save.
I'm not talking about linux, I'm talking about windows
As am I. But I'm talking about it in a bigger context. Specifically, the context of how Windows and Linux are connected.
But why throw money at an OS that doesn't have a consistent desktop experience?
Simple. Because AMD's processor is useless unless people can take advantage of it's power. If MS is indeed delaying for Intel, then AMD could at least help other OSs become able to use their processor. Linux is a good choice for several reasons. First, MS perceives it as competition (so it might light a fire under them). Another is that there's a lot of heavy computing done with Linux that could benefit from 64-bit processors (e.g. 3D render farms).
they could have improved the kernel for the opteron to get some more server market share... but I don't see them doing that for the desktop
True. However, desktop machines are pretty much as powerful as the users need them to be these days. Could they use to be more powerful, certainly. However, for the bulk of users out there, the current 32-bit offerings are perceived as plenty powerful enough. Servers however, are where more power is needed, and especially in heavy compute-bound tasks. It only makes sense to go for the easy target first. And again, Linux is the right choice here since it has a significant percentage of the server market. The fact that MS perceives Linux as a threat is gravy.
In theory, I ought to be able to store all these ISOs on one of the rather large disk drives, then mount the file as a drive, and boot the live CD in VMware
I've been thinking somethign similar to solve another problem, so I went and tried it with the odd few ISOs I have lying around. Yes, it does seem to sort of work. However, I found a bug in my rather old version of VMWare when trying to boot disk 1 of the Fedora core, so it might not work for all the distros.
There are also other problems. One I know if is that VMWare doesn't emulate 3D accelleration in their virtual video hardware, so that won't be available. Then there's also the issue of needing VMWare installed, and runnnable (given how brittle it's configuration, it isn't likely to be runnable at a moments notice if you tend to change HW or SW often).
So yes, you probably could do this, at least with some of the distros. However, wouldn't it just be easier to burn them all to a CD and reboot the hardware? It's not like it causes significant wear and tear on it to boot from a CD. Disruption yes, wear and tear, no.
I had a bad feeling that Microsoft was holding out on windows until Intel could catch up
Nothing was stopping Linux from supporintg AMD and releasing it early. As pointed out, BSD did. In fact, AMD probably could have thrown some engineers at Linux and helped it progress to release a bit faster. Imagine that.. MS's perceived competition releasing an OS that takes advantage of faster processors before MS does. Can't imagine MS would let themselves get left in the dust.. Intel conspiracy or not. So, if you want to believe in a MS/Intel conspiracy, then you also have to include AMD in it for going along with it.
I know.. an AMD/MS/Intel/SCO conspiracy agasint Linux.. yeah, that's the ticket. And the only ones fighting the good fight are OSS developers and.. IBM?
They had planned on Itanium taking the 64-bit market over
I don't see it this way. Intel has a long history of on again/off again with the Itanium. I figured out a long time ago that a serious blow was dealt to the architecture when Intel claimed the original wouldn't be faster than their 32-bit offerings. And another occured when Intel decreed that it wasn't an appropriate processor for the desktop.
Made me wonder just which market they were trying to pursue with the chip. They decreed that it wasn't the desktop, and admitted it wasn't the performance market. Without those markets, what's left to drive the product? I couldn't think of any major market, which meant it probably wasn't a big one. This all happened back before Merced was ever released too.
The simple fact that Intel hasn't backpedaled on those market claims, nor stopped spending on the product, says that either they can't admit to a mistake or (perhaps more likely) they see a significant enough upside out a ways. Either way, its a gamble, and I hope they win it mainly because I don't want to see the processor market fragment -- having a big player everybody has to stay compatible to helps create a (albeit defacto) standard, which gives us all more viable choices in compatible HW and SW.
Put in a new spool of Al wire, change out the aluminum oxide collector for a new one - maybe free with exchange to encourage recycling
Sounds like a trade-in model is the best bet for this -- like car batteries and propane tanks, one trades their old, exhausted H2 generator for a refueled one. Some company gets to break the old reactors down for recoverable materials and "refill" them. Implies a bit of standardization in H2 generator design and capacity though, something I think auto manufactuers have difficulty doing.
Now, if the deisgn allowed easy and quick replacement of just the reactants by the user, and they were in a design that that allowed them to be one-size-fits-all from motorcycles through Hummers, then it becomes another type of fuel the filling station carries. The limitation to adoption of something like that is probably more dependant on supply/demand and profit margin for the individual stations.
a procedure and mechanism to use plain old aluminum welding wire as a storage medium for hydrogen
Well, that was an interesting read.. I hadn't run across this idea before, but it isn't exactly rocket science:-). I knew lots of metals would react with water and produce hydrogen gas given the right conditions (sodium and potassium being among the more well known). I particularly liked the simplicity with which he obtained the right conditions. Add a circulating water bath (which I think he already has) to flush the aluminum oxide out of the reactor and a plate separator to settle it out of the water and it might run a bit longer between degoopings.
However, my main concern would be the energy conversion efficiency in such a system. Not just Al->H2, which is clearly positive, but the whole cycle of bauxite->Al->H2. From old school movies, I recall that a lot of electricity is used to create aluminum metal from bauxite (which is essentially aluminum oxide). There may be more efficient ways to store that energy than as a pure Al. Heck, even with losses, H2 gas might be more efficient.
About 6 or so years ago I saw a children's trackball at the local CompUSA. It had maybe a 5" ball (painted to look like a basketball) and just one button. Probably PS/2 connector given the times. They carried it for about a year and then stopped. Of all the input devices in the kids area, this one must have been pretty indestructible because it was the only one I never saw broken, and the wear on it suggested heavy use.
Unfortunately, I can't remember brand names or anything. Perhaps someone else remembers those details?
As for more available, we have a (mil-spec?) one around work -- Model DT225 from CH Products (PS/2 connector). Not something I'd want to use to replace the one on my desk (nice feel but ergonomics all wrong for me) but definately on the sturdy side. As an advantage, the ball sits proud of the buttons by about an extra inch (2.5cm), leaving lots of clearance for spinning it without accidently bumping buttons (therein my ergonomics gripe with it).
The term windows by itself does predate windows 1.0 since it was used commonly to refer to macintosh folders
Doesn't X-Windows predate MS's usage of the brand? I thought X predated MS's usage of the brand. If so, then MS can't claim that a windows GUI interface being called windows is a problem.
The US Government: Adding a bit of Peach to the new $20, eh? How about this... a thin VISIBLE foil strip... or some silver or other metallic print?
You mean.. like printing a large irridescent denomination number on the bill? Perhaps like the one that's already on the bills? You're absolutely right, I'm amazed they never thought of that either:-)
They're going to go to your local McDonalds
You got that right. I was talking to a local restaurant cashier the other day and they've already caught someone trying to pass a counterfit of the new money to them. She said in the past they had even caught someone trying to pass a counterfit 5 dollar bill.
And that would change things how exactly? As I see it, the students would simply be charged "full price" for an electronic copy of a textbook, and then not be able to sell back as used. Or were we thinking that the textbook publishers would give students a break on the price of a mandatory book purchase simply because the publisher didn't have to manufacture paper copies but copies on some sort of electronic media?
Sure, if SCO can win they'll win big by giving a serious blow to obsolete versions of Linux and make IBM etc. pay a royalty, but what if they don't win? When are the shareholders in SCO going to wake up and realize that a settlement is probably in the best finnancial interest of the company?
the camera would have been calibrated before launch
Color reference cards are used even by photographers on earth to allow them to correct colors. It all has to do with how human eyes and brains perceive color -- seems they filter out color casts. For example, when was the last time you remmeber a Coke can looking a different color of red? It does under different lighting sources, but most people don't notice it until it is pointed out to them. Cameras, howebver, don't compensate for color casts like that, so the images we get back from them look wrong until we adjust the image.
If there is enough dust suspended in the atmosphere to cause a pink tint to the sky, doesn't it seem like the quality of images taken from orbit through this dust would be significantly degraded?
It is. However, how small of an object is it resolving? Remember, the orbiter that the ESA sent recently couldn't even see the failed lander, despite making a low pass over it, which would have allowed it to pick up the smallest details it was going to be able to (when you can't zoom with your lens, zoom with your feet:-).
Also, how much dust would it take to obscure something like a football field-sized rock? Yeah, a lot. It would look significantly darker at the surface under that storm due to all the sunlight being reflected away from the ground. I think Mars does get these sorts of surface-obscuring storms, but nobody likes to try to get their landers in the path of any (wreaks havoc on them and they only take boring pictures during such storms, and, of course, landing in one might be unwise).
the first Viking lander beamed back an image of a blue sky on Mars
Wasn't this the image that also showed a piece of one of the cables of the lander.. which was supposed to be orange in the image and wasn't, causing them to color correct the image until it was orange, thus making the sky pink? Or maybe that was some other Mars lander image.
Either way, most landers with cameras now have a color calibration target somewhere in view to help fix those sorts of problems. Heck, even the Soviet Venus lander images referneced in this/. article have a color target, and for them the affects of temperature and pressure had to be adjusted for too.
But if the cable lay is this cheap, and it really only costs a few thousand dollars to get running, then why don't local ISPs start to run their own fibers between themselves and set up what amounts to a parallel backbone?
The obvious answer is that the entry cost into that space is actually prohibitive, whether it be monetary, manpower (to manage the effort) or regulatory. Either way, since the telco has surmounted those roadblocks and others cannot for less than the telco charges, perhaps they deserve the amount they charge.
To be sure any successful telco has done whatever they can to eliminate any new competition from starting up. However, it is probably only a matter of years before some competing technology comes along and out-competes them into extinction.
Slashdot Mirror
impending intersection collisions,
"Warning! Warning! You are about to collide in an intersection!"
rollovers,
"Warning! Warning! You are about to roll over!"
weather-related road hazards,
"Warning! Warning! You are about to be struck by lightning!"
or warning a driver that his vehicle is going too fast to safely negotiate an upcoming curve.
"Warning! Warning! You are about to careen off the road and crash!"
Ok, ok, I'm joking. 'nuff said. :-)
don't you mean CyberSamurai.. or perhaps CyberMercenary?
Strengthening the institutional framework...
Addressing deficiencies at FirstEnergy..
Improving training and certification requirements..
Increasing the network's physical and cyber security.
Does anyone feel the task force is attempting the wrong solution? They seem to feel only they know what all the players need to do to make the system more robust. To that end, they are recommending new regulations. The are not, of course, recommending how to go about enforcing thoes regulations, nor are they recommending how to prevent companies from getting around them. Chances are, those very same players already know what needs to be done, but until now it wasn't finnancially worth making those changes.
Perhaps the task force only needs to give companies the finnancial incentive they need to fix the problem? Something simple, like making the company have to award every affected customer with X dollars if a power outage lasts for more than Y hours when more than Z customers are affected at once. I'm thinking X=$1000 longer than Y=12 hours, and more than X=10,000 customers, but perhaps there is a better set of numbers.
This would be easily enforced (if even needed) with the given legal infrastructure, puts the money in the hands of those directly affected, and simultaneously gives the power companies the finnancial incentive they need to justify the upgrades (not only having to award their customers, but having to pay the costs associated with seeing all those customers get awarded). It also allows the power companies to decide what methods works best for them to avoid having it happen -- some might go for the expense of a fully automated system while others opt for a more human-involved aproach.. which system works best in the majority of cases is a competitive advantage between infrastructures.
On second thought, never mind.. the task force members, being politicians and industry experts, clearly know more about how to fix the problem than the hordes of people making sure we have electricity all day, every day.
Thanks.. I've added that one to my list of books to read :-)
-- patbob
Just to set the record straight, I believe Vinge's quote is "Net of a million lies", not merely a thousand.
That said, yes, I think a thousand does fit the non-interplanetory, single-species Internet of today. Which probably explains why I've been calling the 'net the "net of a thousand lies" ever since reading his book.
For those interested, it is from Vinge's book "A Fire Upon the Deep", one of my favorite (well written, interesting story, unique aliens, not too overdone on the tech, ...). Over the years since I read this book, I've been constantly amazed at how much of the backdrop of the story is coming true. The "hexopodia" sub-sub-thread in the book has always been my personal favorite and suprisingly, is particularily relevant given the recent interest in hooking up automatic translators to instant messaging services.
What's hexopodia got to do with anything?
How do you figure this is more than his actual costs? 300k/33 months is ~$10k/month. That does seem a bit over the top for bandwidth, but the FA doesn't say what his actual costs were nor how he justified $300k.
True. I suppose that somewhere they also have a list of search terms that do, or did, or are considered likely to, return porn sites. Perhaps somehow XFree86 ended up on that list. Perhaps it was via a complaint someone filed. Or perhaps it was entered with some other search term where the whole query returned porn sites. Or perhaps someone decided to spite a competitor to MS by getting the term on the porn list. Spite seems doubtful since most of the customers MS is trying to prevent from moving to Linux wouldn't know XFree86 from a hole in the ground.. meaning it was a pretty amusing attempt if it was meant intentionally.
I prefer to get a chuckle off MS's inadvertant blunder (as would anybody who ran into it accidently) and be amused that they think their search engine is serious competition for anybody else's.. yet.
My current setup is a digital light timer ($15?) and a light with compact fluorscent lights in it. The digital timer is better than the mechanical ones as it doesn't drift randomly around the setting and it doesn't change timing when the power goes out. The CF lights I'm using are significant because they simulate a bit of the (tail end of the) dawn ramp-up owing to their behavior of taking a couple of minutes to warm up to full brightness.
This makes for a simple setup if there's anyone out there that wants to try it to see if it helps. Start with a small light and beware.. since the lights come on suddenly, expect to be jolted awake. I used to set mine for 30 minutes after the alarm clock tried to wake me up.. if I wasn't awake by then, well, then I'd been warned.
This would only be useful until the theifs changed their ways (assuming they di it the same way where you live). Also, perhaps the guy didn't want to be too helpful to would-be theifs.
Perhaps the best defense is to pick a small subset of ATMs to use and stick to them. That way, you'll have the best chance of noticing that the ATM is different and getting your saving throw.
Won't this just result in increased net traffic and not a reduction of spam? It does help trackability. but legitamate email, spam or otherwise, will still get through.
Also, diving into possible implementation space.. in order to not be trivially defeatable, won't it have to authenticate both ends of the verification transaction. Otherwise, spammers will just include a copy of the verification information off some legitimate piece of email for whatever machine they are pretending to send from. Even if the verification is on a per-piece-of-email basis, won't it still have to stay active for a while to allow for resend due to failures? That's a lot of data for an active sitee like Hotlink, AOL and MSN to save.
I'm not talking about linux, I'm talking about windows
As am I. But I'm talking about it in a bigger context. Specifically, the context of how Windows and Linux are connected.
But why throw money at an OS that doesn't have a consistent desktop experience?
Simple. Because AMD's processor is useless unless people can take advantage of it's power. If MS is indeed delaying for Intel, then AMD could at least help other OSs become able to use their processor. Linux is a good choice for several reasons. First, MS perceives it as competition (so it might light a fire under them). Another is that there's a lot of heavy computing done with Linux that could benefit from 64-bit processors (e.g. 3D render farms).
they could have improved the kernel for the opteron to get some more server market share... but I don't see them doing that for the desktop
True. However, desktop machines are pretty much as powerful as the users need them to be these days. Could they use to be more powerful, certainly. However, for the bulk of users out there, the current 32-bit offerings are perceived as plenty powerful enough. Servers however, are where more power is needed, and especially in heavy compute-bound tasks. It only makes sense to go for the easy target first. And again, Linux is the right choice here since it has a significant percentage of the server market. The fact that MS perceives Linux as a threat is gravy.
I've been thinking somethign similar to solve another problem, so I went and tried it with the odd few ISOs I have lying around. Yes, it does seem to sort of work. However, I found a bug in my rather old version of VMWare when trying to boot disk 1 of the Fedora core, so it might not work for all the distros.
There are also other problems. One I know if is that VMWare doesn't emulate 3D accelleration in their virtual video hardware, so that won't be available. Then there's also the issue of needing VMWare installed, and runnnable (given how brittle it's configuration, it isn't likely to be runnable at a moments notice if you tend to change HW or SW often).
So yes, you probably could do this, at least with some of the distros. However, wouldn't it just be easier to burn them all to a CD and reboot the hardware? It's not like it causes significant wear and tear on it to boot from a CD. Disruption yes, wear and tear, no.
Nothing was stopping Linux from supporintg AMD and releasing it early. As pointed out, BSD did. In fact, AMD probably could have thrown some engineers at Linux and helped it progress to release a bit faster. Imagine that.. MS's perceived competition releasing an OS that takes advantage of faster processors before MS does. Can't imagine MS would let themselves get left in the dust.. Intel conspiracy or not. So, if you want to believe in a MS/Intel conspiracy, then you also have to include AMD in it for going along with it.
I know.. an AMD/MS/Intel/SCO conspiracy agasint Linux.. yeah, that's the ticket. And the only ones fighting the good fight are OSS developers and.. IBM?
I don't see it this way. Intel has a long history of on again/off again with the Itanium. I figured out a long time ago that a serious blow was dealt to the architecture when Intel claimed the original wouldn't be faster than their 32-bit offerings. And another occured when Intel decreed that it wasn't an appropriate processor for the desktop.
Made me wonder just which market they were trying to pursue with the chip. They decreed that it wasn't the desktop, and admitted it wasn't the performance market. Without those markets, what's left to drive the product? I couldn't think of any major market, which meant it probably wasn't a big one. This all happened back before Merced was ever released too.
The simple fact that Intel hasn't backpedaled on those market claims, nor stopped spending on the product, says that either they can't admit to a mistake or (perhaps more likely) they see a significant enough upside out a ways. Either way, its a gamble, and I hope they win it mainly because I don't want to see the processor market fragment -- having a big player everybody has to stay compatible to helps create a (albeit defacto) standard, which gives us all more viable choices in compatible HW and SW.
Sounds like a trade-in model is the best bet for this -- like car batteries and propane tanks, one trades their old, exhausted H2 generator for a refueled one. Some company gets to break the old reactors down for recoverable materials and "refill" them. Implies a bit of standardization in H2 generator design and capacity though, something I think auto manufactuers have difficulty doing.
Now, if the deisgn allowed easy and quick replacement of just the reactants by the user, and they were in a design that that allowed them to be one-size-fits-all from motorcycles through Hummers, then it becomes another type of fuel the filling station carries. The limitation to adoption of something like that is probably more dependant on supply/demand and profit margin for the individual stations.
Well, that was an interesting read.. I hadn't run across this idea before, but it isn't exactly rocket science :-). I knew lots of metals would react with water and produce hydrogen gas given the right conditions (sodium and potassium being among the more well known). I particularly liked the simplicity with which he obtained the right conditions. Add a circulating water bath (which I think he already has) to flush the aluminum oxide out of the reactor and a plate separator to settle it out of the water and it might run a bit longer between degoopings.
However, my main concern would be the energy conversion efficiency in such a system. Not just Al->H2, which is clearly positive, but the whole cycle of bauxite->Al->H2. From old school movies, I recall that a lot of electricity is used to create aluminum metal from bauxite (which is essentially aluminum oxide). There may be more efficient ways to store that energy than as a pure Al. Heck, even with losses, H2 gas might be more efficient.
Unfortunately, I can't remember brand names or anything. Perhaps someone else remembers those details?
As for more available, we have a (mil-spec?) one around work -- Model DT225 from CH Products (PS/2 connector). Not something I'd want to use to replace the one on my desk (nice feel but ergonomics all wrong for me) but definately on the sturdy side. As an advantage, the ball sits proud of the buttons by about an extra inch (2.5cm), leaving lots of clearance for spinning it without accidently bumping buttons (therein my ergonomics gripe with it).
hope that helps
Doesn't X-Windows predate MS's usage of the brand? I thought X predated MS's usage of the brand. If so, then MS can't claim that a windows GUI interface being called windows is a problem.
You mean.. like printing a large irridescent denomination number on the bill? Perhaps like the one that's already on the bills? You're absolutely right, I'm amazed they never thought of that either :-)
They're going to go to your local McDonalds
You got that right. I was talking to a local restaurant cashier the other day and they've already caught someone trying to pass a counterfit of the new money to them. She said in the past they had even caught someone trying to pass a counterfit 5 dollar bill.
And that would change things how exactly? As I see it, the students would simply be charged "full price" for an electronic copy of a textbook, and then not be able to sell back as used. Or were we thinking that the textbook publishers would give students a break on the price of a mandatory book purchase simply because the publisher didn't have to manufacture paper copies but copies on some sort of electronic media?
Sure, if SCO can win they'll win big by giving a serious blow to obsolete versions of Linux and make IBM etc. pay a royalty, but what if they don't win? When are the shareholders in SCO going to wake up and realize that a settlement is probably in the best finnancial interest of the company?
Color reference cards are used even by photographers on earth to allow them to correct colors. It all has to do with how human eyes and brains perceive color -- seems they filter out color casts. For example, when was the last time you remmeber a Coke can looking a different color of red? It does under different lighting sources, but most people don't notice it until it is pointed out to them. Cameras, howebver, don't compensate for color casts like that, so the images we get back from them look wrong until we adjust the image.
If there is enough dust suspended in the atmosphere to cause a pink tint to the sky, doesn't it seem like the quality of images taken from orbit through this dust would be significantly degraded?
It is. However, how small of an object is it resolving? Remember, the orbiter that the ESA sent recently couldn't even see the failed lander, despite making a low pass over it, which would have allowed it to pick up the smallest details it was going to be able to (when you can't zoom with your lens, zoom with your feet :-).
Also, how much dust would it take to obscure something like a football field-sized rock? Yeah, a lot. It would look significantly darker at the surface under that storm due to all the sunlight being reflected away from the ground. I think Mars does get these sorts of surface-obscuring storms, but nobody likes to try to get their landers in the path of any (wreaks havoc on them and they only take boring pictures during such storms, and, of course, landing in one might be unwise).
Wasn't this the image that also showed a piece of one of the cables of the lander.. which was supposed to be orange in the image and wasn't, causing them to color correct the image until it was orange, thus making the sky pink? Or maybe that was some other Mars lander image.
Either way, most landers with cameras now have a color calibration target somewhere in view to help fix those sorts of problems. Heck, even the Soviet Venus lander images referneced in this /. article have a color target, and for them the affects of temperature and pressure had to be adjusted for too.
But if the cable lay is this cheap, and it really only costs a few thousand dollars to get running, then why don't local ISPs start to run their own fibers between themselves and set up what amounts to a parallel backbone?
The obvious answer is that the entry cost into that space is actually prohibitive, whether it be monetary, manpower (to manage the effort) or regulatory. Either way, since the telco has surmounted those roadblocks and others cannot for less than the telco charges, perhaps they deserve the amount they charge.
To be sure any successful telco has done whatever they can to eliminate any new competition from starting up. However, it is probably only a matter of years before some competing technology comes along and out-competes them into extinction.