Perhaps there is an ISP in your area (wherever that is) who operates a wireless network already?
For instance, this is a local company who provides wireless TV and internet (competing head-to-head with the local cable companies). Something like that would take care if the internet feed for relatively cheap, if it's available wherever you are. (My parents are using this service for TV and internet on their farm, which as about 30Km from the main tower.)
Heh... We're seriously considering standing outside of CompUSA one day and handing out Knoppix CDs and pamphlets. Spread the word. Vive la revolution! Blah blah blah....
Would you stick a disk in your computer that some strange guy on the street handed you?
How do most people react when someone is standing on the street corner handing out panphalets? Isn't the usual reaction is about the same as the guy with the "The World Is Ending" sign gets?
Folks already think us geeks are a bit strange, whaddya want to make them think we are completely insane for?
We had one guy bring in a laptop (beacuse it was running "slow") which had a ton of spyware, a keylogger and an FTP server running on it. He had no idea how any of it got there.
I shudder to think what is on some of the other laptops that are floating around here.
Internal IT for these people isn't a cost center. Its a piece of critical infrastructure, one that has to be carefully tied and responsive to their core business.
Of course that's obvious to us, but have you ever tried explaining it to someone who only believes what he sees on a spreadsheet?
I maintain cellular telephone switches (not for ATTWS, or even in the USA) and sit in front of 3 486s and a 386 most days. The top 2 layers of our corperate structure are populated by people who rose through the ranks of the accounting department.
The network is held together by shoestrings, yet the sales department gives away BMWs to sales people who meet 100% of their quarterly targets - that's right, a bonus for just completing their assigned tasks. (what, me bitter?)
Geek culture will take over the WWF,
So far it looks like it's still going the other way.
Didya happen to notice who was hosting the americanized Robot Wars? Some wrestler guy! (no I have no idea what his name is)
Just when something suitably geeky and new comes on TV, they dumb it down and add some trash-talk^H^H^H^H yelling jock.
If they had to have a host with no 'funny accent' why not stay with the theme and get someone likeBrent Spiner or John DeLancie?
And Junkyard Wars too. In the more recent seasons there has been more focus on WWF style trash talk, and less on *why* the machines work.
Just when geekiness starts encroaching on mainstreamedness, the mainstream trys to sap teh life out of it.
If all the high paying jobs go somewhere else, you better set up a marketing department in that "somewhere else".
Except "over there" what is a relatively high paying job pays 1/3 what it would have payed "over here". To make your product affordable to that worker, you have to drop your sell price 1/3 (or so) as well. (ferinstnce, if a widget sells for $600 "here",and 'decent' jobs pay $1500/mo (example numbers..just keep reading) it won't sell "there" at the same rate unles it sells for roughly $200 "there" (wages 1/3 remember). What happens to the profits?)
The real issue is gross domestic salary. Is the buying power of American consumers at large at least remaining steady or is it in rapid decline?
Exactly. If these companies want to keep selling their hi-tech goodies, they need a consumer base who can afford them. If they (the corperations) lay off all their domestic employees, who is going to be able to afford to buy their stuff?
Henry Ford figured this out when he started paying his employees more than the competition they could afford to start buying (Fors) cars for themselves.(and it increased employee productivity, and reduces turnover at the same time)
Sure, it looks good on the books in the short term (and ain't that all that really matters.. getting the next quarter's numbers to look better than the last). What about the long term, when most of the local population can't afford to buy stuff, and all the expertise is half a world away (and agitating for more money/power/whatever). Where do you think the creative, agile up-and-comming competitors will start springing up?
So, by the same logic(?) will they also be taxing the volunteer labours of organizations such as Habitat for Humanity or the Red Cross or any of the hundereds of other organizations who give freely of their time and resources, and might be donating something that some other company sells?
Consider:
The changes you have entered will cause 911 calls to be routed to Citibank (or wherever)
Fine, but when you dial 911 (or any of the 3 digit short numbers, or any 1-800 type thing) the call is translated to a standard 7 digit number, and that number belongs to the 911 center. Actually it is the main number in a rotary group, but it could just as easily be any single phone (like on the sherrif's desk in Shelbyville).
What appears to have happened in this case is that the 7 digit number for the bank was substituted for the 7 digit number for the 911 center. It could be as little as one digit difference.
Depending on the telephone switch, it may have asked a generic "are you sure?" or it may have trusted that the human knows what he is doing (as the parent suggested).
Shouldn't the interface for the system prevent you from accidentally modifying similar but unrelated numbers when you're modifying a set of numbers?
I suppose it could be done, but that adds a lot of code (and the increased chance of errors that goes along with that). How many conditions that may-or-may-not be legit or not do you want to test for?
Usually whan a large change is being done it is scripted ahead of time, and the script file is audited by at least one other tech/engineer (at least where I work). The system does checks for syntax/format errors, but it doesn't check for logic errors in the instructions it is given. Or typos that happen to be in the correct format for a parameter.
If you want to cause the switch to do something dangerous, and you give it the right commands in the right order (with the correct password authority) it will follow your instructions, just like any other computer.
communism and facism. Those are the only other modern economic structures where profit (at least for the company) isn't the primary motive
There is, though, a difference between "reasonable profit" and "maximizing profit".
How it looks to me, reasonable profit is more sustainable over the long term (both for the buisiness as an entity, and for the employees). Many of the things that are done in the name of MaxProfits look pretty unsustainable. Sure the company shows huge profits this quarter, but there is no capacity left to do anything next year.
here (and the linked PDF)is a report done on just this topic, recently. It specifically talks about rural Manitoba, but it probably translates pretty well to rural anywhere, at least in North America.
Many of the case studies in the report are towns under 10 000 people. At least 2 of the towns are under 2000. Is that rural enough for you?
The voting machines that my city uses (Winnipeg, MB) have the voter use a pencil to shade the appropriate box on the paper ballot, then the ballot is fed into an optical reader (by an election official, in the presence of the voter). The optical reader deposits the read ballots into a locked balot box.
The computer tallied results are available the second the poll closes, and the paper ballots are available for hand scrutiny any time they are required. IIRC, a random sampling of ballot boxex are hand counted as a matter of course, and compared to the electronic tally on the night of the election.(just to be sure)
If you are going to be buying new machines anyway, how hard is it to get something like that? Why do we need fancy colour touch screens, and sound effects?
Shouldnt we have laws protecting people who want to modify something they own?
I'm a little concerned that we have come to the point where anyone has to consider a law to specifically allow me to do whatever I want to something I own. (as long as it's not directly harming anyone else - the old "your right to swing your arm stops at my nose" thing)
If nobody ever responded to spam, spammer wouldn't bother. ...and if no one clicked on executable attachment viruses/worms would stop dead in their tracks.
User education is obviously the answer to both problems, but for all the information that is thrown at users, these are still running rampant.
If anyone has a solution to get people to actually *pay attention* to the information they are given, then maybe we would have a solution .
Just to clarify, 900 and 1800 are used in most non-North American countries. IIRC, GSM was first introduced on the European continent on 900Mhz, and 1800 in the UK (because 900 was already in use at the time GSM was being introduced).
When GSM was introduced in Canada and the USA, it was on 1900, and mostly limited to urban areas. As GSM moves into the rural areas (and secondarily, as more bandwidth is required) the carriers are adding GSM 850.
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Perhaps there is an ISP in your area (wherever that is) who operates a wireless network already?
For instance, this is a local company who provides wireless TV and internet (competing head-to-head with the local cable companies). Something like that would take care if the internet feed for relatively cheap, if it's available wherever you are. (My parents are using this service for TV and internet on their farm, which as about 30Km from the main tower.)
Heh... We're seriously considering standing outside of CompUSA one day and handing out Knoppix CDs and pamphlets. Spread the word. Vive la revolution! Blah blah blah....
Would you stick a disk in your computer that some strange guy on the street handed you?
How do most people react when someone is standing on the street corner handing out panphalets? Isn't the usual reaction is about the same as the guy with the "The World Is Ending" sign gets?
Folks already think us geeks are a bit strange, whaddya want to make them think we are completely insane for?
Yeah, that happens all too often.
We had one guy bring in a laptop (beacuse it was running "slow") which had a ton of spyware, a keylogger and an FTP server running on it. He had no idea how any of it got there.
I shudder to think what is on some of the other laptops that are floating around here.
Why not just take a look out of the window? :-)
Because this is much cooler!
Internal IT for these people isn't a cost center. Its a piece of critical infrastructure, one that has to be carefully tied and responsive to their core business.
Of course that's obvious to us, but have you ever tried explaining it to someone who only believes what he sees on a spreadsheet?
I maintain cellular telephone switches (not for ATTWS, or even in the USA) and sit in front of 3 486s and a 386 most days. The top 2 layers of our corperate structure are populated by people who rose through the ranks of the accounting department.
The network is held together by shoestrings, yet the sales department gives away BMWs to sales people who meet 100% of their quarterly targets - that's right, a bonus for just completing their assigned tasks. (what, me bitter?)
Geek culture will take over the WWF,
So far it looks like it's still going the other way.
Didya happen to notice who was hosting the americanized Robot Wars? Some wrestler guy! (no I have no idea what his name is)
Just when something suitably geeky and new comes on TV, they dumb it down and add some trash-talk^H^H^H^H yelling jock.
If they had to have a host with no 'funny accent' why not stay with the theme and get someone likeBrent Spiner or John DeLancie?
And Junkyard Wars too. In the more recent seasons there has been more focus on WWF style trash talk, and less on *why* the machines work.
Just when geekiness starts encroaching on mainstreamedness, the mainstream trys to sap teh life out of it.
...Or reading Asimov on my PDA
However, digital billboards can save a lot of costs after as taking down and putting up new billboards.
Oh, sure, now even the guys who change billboard messages can be outsourced to India.
If all the high paying jobs go somewhere else, you better set up a marketing department in that "somewhere else".
Except "over there" what is a relatively high paying job pays 1/3 what it would have payed "over here". To make your product affordable to that worker, you have to drop your sell price 1/3 (or so) as well.
(ferinstnce, if a widget sells for $600 "here",and 'decent' jobs pay $1500/mo (example numbers..just keep reading) it won't sell "there" at the same rate unles it sells for roughly $200 "there" (wages 1/3 remember). What happens to the profits?)
Isn't that where this planet started, anyway? With a bunch of exiled middle-managers from the planet Golgafrincham
The real issue is gross domestic salary. Is the buying power of American consumers at large at least remaining steady or is it in rapid decline?
Exactly. If these companies want to keep selling their hi-tech goodies, they need a consumer base who can afford them. If they (the corperations) lay off all their domestic employees, who is going to be able to afford to buy their stuff?
Henry Ford figured this out when he started paying his employees more than the competition they could afford to start buying (Fors) cars for themselves.(and it increased employee productivity, and reduces turnover at the same time)
Sure, it looks good on the books in the short term (and ain't that all that really matters.. getting the next quarter's numbers to look better than the last). What about the long term, when most of the local population can't afford to buy stuff, and all the expertise is half a world away (and agitating for more money/power/whatever). Where do you think the creative, agile up-and-comming competitors will start springing up?
So, by the same logic(?) will they also be taxing the volunteer labours of organizations such as Habitat for Humanity or the Red Cross or any of the hundereds of other organizations who give freely of their time and resources, and might be donating something that some other company sells?
I want to apply just to have access to the "innumerable arrays of massively parallel lava lamps".
...by having the roads underground. Far enough down that you could also have your hanging trains above the car roads, still below street level
And exhaust shafts rising up to above rooftop level about every hundred meters or so.
Or did you mean using 100% electric vehicles in the SteetWarren?
All mass transit will be high speed conveyer belts!
because remarks like that are required in any article representing Linux in positive light.
And then, just like any good Linux 'Zine, you sell the advertising space on the page to...Microsoft.
Did anyone else find it strange that Linuxworld Australia sold all the ads on that page to Microsoft?
Consider: The changes you have entered will cause 911 calls to be routed to Citibank (or wherever)
Fine, but when you dial 911 (or any of the 3 digit short numbers, or any 1-800 type thing) the call is translated to a standard 7 digit number, and that number belongs to the 911 center. Actually it is the main number in a rotary group, but it could just as easily be any single phone (like on the sherrif's desk in Shelbyville).
What appears to have happened in this case is that the 7 digit number for the bank was substituted for the 7 digit number for the 911 center. It could be as little as one digit difference.
Depending on the telephone switch, it may have asked a generic "are you sure?" or it may have trusted that the human knows what he is doing (as the parent suggested).
Shouldn't the interface for the system prevent you from accidentally modifying similar but unrelated numbers when you're modifying a set of numbers?
I suppose it could be done, but that adds a lot of code (and the increased chance of errors that goes along with that). How many conditions that may-or-may-not be legit or not do you want to test for?
Usually whan a large change is being done it is scripted ahead of time, and the script file is audited by at least one other tech/engineer (at least where I work). The system does checks for syntax/format errors, but it doesn't check for logic errors in the instructions it is given. Or typos that happen to be in the correct format for a parameter.
If you want to cause the switch to do something dangerous, and you give it the right commands in the right order (with the correct password authority) it will follow your instructions, just like any other computer.
communism and facism. Those are the only other modern economic structures where profit (at least for the company) isn't the primary motive
There is, though, a difference between "reasonable profit" and "maximizing profit".
How it looks to me, reasonable profit is more sustainable over the long term (both for the buisiness as an entity, and for the employees).
Many of the things that are done in the name of MaxProfits look pretty unsustainable. Sure the company shows huge profits this quarter, but there is no capacity left to do anything next year.
And the Hudson's Bay Company, established in 1670, and still going strong.
here (and the linked PDF)is a report done on just this topic, recently. It specifically talks about rural Manitoba, but it probably translates pretty well to rural anywhere, at least in North America.
Many of the case studies in the report are towns under 10 000 people. At least 2 of the towns are under 2000. Is that rural enough for you?
That right there is your proof that you voted.
The voting machines that my city uses (Winnipeg, MB) have the voter use a pencil to shade the appropriate box on the paper ballot, then the ballot is fed into an optical reader (by an election official, in the presence of the voter). The optical reader deposits the read ballots into a locked balot box.
The computer tallied results are available the second the poll closes, and the paper ballots are available for hand scrutiny any time they are required. IIRC, a random sampling of ballot boxex are hand counted as a matter of course, and compared to the electronic tally on the night of the election.(just to be sure)
If you are going to be buying new machines anyway, how hard is it to get something like that? Why do we need fancy colour touch screens, and sound effects?
Shouldnt we have laws protecting people who want to modify something they own?
I'm a little concerned that we have come to the point where anyone has to consider a law to specifically allow me to do whatever I want to something I own.
(as long as it's not directly harming anyone else - the old "your right to swing your arm stops at my nose" thing)
If nobody ever responded to spam, spammer wouldn't bother.
...and if no one clicked on executable attachment viruses/worms would stop dead in their tracks.
User education is obviously the answer to both problems, but for all the information that is thrown at users, these are still running rampant.
If anyone has a solution to get people to actually *pay attention* to the information they are given, then maybe we would have a solution .
Just to clarify, 900 and 1800 are used in most non-North American countries. IIRC, GSM was first introduced on the European continent on 900Mhz, and 1800 in the UK (because 900 was already in use at the time GSM was being introduced).
When GSM was introduced in Canada and the USA, it was on 1900, and mostly limited to urban areas. As GSM moves into the rural areas (and secondarily, as more bandwidth is required) the carriers are adding GSM 850.