I remember a modem with a translucent cover across a small panel. The modem just showed a power and an error light but if you flipped up the cover, you had diagnostic switches and lights. Through the lowered the cover the lights were only just visible. It was a nice idea on an expensive modem (think about a dollar and a half per b/s).
To put it into context, Edison's efforts to protect his licenses on Motion Picture technology created Hollywood.
Yes, there was land and light a plenty in Hollywood but there was elsewhere too. LA was also the other side of the country to his enforcers. We can comfortably postulate that Hollywood was therefore created by a bunch of patent pirates.
At least one major Dutch bank outsource's its IT support and all desktops are locked down with the supported configuration only. Even different versions of IE are a major issue. On the other hand, a major German bank had no issues with Firefox and/or Opera. I believe they even had a deployable build of Firefox (also used for Internet banking support). That German bank also seems more generally friendly towards open source at the back end too.
Nah, pour a few beers into a Scandi/Nordic male and those Viking genes start activating again - they get very loud and very drunk. They certainly haven't stopped being sea-faring either (Viking ferries, anyone). The raping and pillaging doesn't seem to happen any more though.
The funny things is that at least one airline was happy with Connexion (Lufthansa). The extra install time wasn't an issue as they rolled the kit out during one of the major checks.
They put it onto some 400s doing the long hops, i.e. Europe to Asia and did quite well. The idea is that shorter journeys don't get so much interest. The Aircell system also relies on ground infrastructure, which limits its use to within a certain distance of land. Great for the continental US or even North America, but less great for overwater flights.
In another customer service environment involving a well known airline, I was specifically requested not to let their supervisors know anything about what they had done unless I was surveyed and then to say the minimum possible. Going the extra mile to help a customer can do wonders for high level staff but for lower level drones it can bring on more trouble than its worth. However, it is always good to ask.
I'm not sure whether Fortran predated COBOL or vice versa. However, it was out there as one of the first two languages. If you wrote to a subset, it was even quite portable, more so than COBOL which tended to have some very specific file handling. A number of the high-end vectorising compilers were first written for Fortan so that with everything else meant that there were a lot of numerical libraries out there (and still are).
To heck with just statistics. Fortran is alive and well at the heart of some major airline reservations, checkin and cargo systems. yes, they tried to move to newer technologies but they couldn't handel the load, particularly at points when there is a lot of rescheduling such as during bad weather.
GPS accuracy is a function of how many satellites you can track for and how long at any one location. You solve for, say up to 12 visible satellites and then average out the position. If you stay long enough in one place then you will end up with a very accurate average position in 3D to mm level. Even a hiking model GPS can give better positions when the results are averaged. However the units for static/base station use tend to be built for better stability.
Which is a shame. I guess that Kraft argued that their product name had wider recognition and thus a better argument for a domain name. Note that the example of Mrs McDonald was that it was a name of a tea room. She may have had another problem if she went for the associated domain name!!
You are quite right and I'm doubly embarrased as that particular purveyor of burgers is about two minutes from the door to this office.
As for your comment about US Bud vs Czech Bud, yes that is an interesting one. Especially given the fortune that Anheuser-Busch spends on advertising (they certainly don't spend anything on brewing beer). Budweiser Budvar, OTOH does produce something quite drinkable but they clearly are not on the scale of AB. The interesting thing is that since the accession of the Czech republic to the EU, the recognition of their rights is now backed there which helps them somewhat in their dispute
There are usually very few individuals squatting on names. If you have a name, it is often linked to something you are or what you do. It is the big guys who can buy names wholesale and really cheap who managed to pollute the namespace. The thing is they don't even want to do anything with the name just squat and maybe advertise/launch some pop-ups.
I actually hold a couple of names as a community service. There was no overall constant governing body so the names had been lost before I we had been quoted about $50K to get them back. Luckily the idiot holding them went bust and the names were available from the general pool. I just point them at whoever are hosting the events concerns, which changes every other year.
However dubious, Mike Rowe has the right to use his name to create a company called MikeRoweSoft. Once there is a legal entity registered with that name then what is the issue? Even when it comes to a personal name like Macdonalds. I believe a lady with that name operates a tea-room in Scotland which was contested by the 'other' one. Macdonalds challenged her in court for the right to use the name but they lost as it was her real surname and there was no intent to deceieve. In fact, the clan chieftain apparently testified pointing out that as a real Macdonald she actually had more right to the name than the Macdonalds company.
Microsoft may be able to afford that but what about the rest of the world. You can't 'squat' Microsoft's telephone number in your area even if they have no office there. You must have some right to the name, either personally or for business. I believe that the same should apply to domain names. Typosquatting is more of a grey area, but it is fscking annoying mistyping a name and then ending up with a load of porn.
Having flirted with Ubuntu, Gentoo and earlier Debian, personally, I still like my Fedora. However I wouldn't wish it on Dell due to the frequency of change. It would be murder to support. An approach like RHEL or Centos would be better due to better baseline stability. RHEL is fine for commercial users with support etc and costing extra and a more or less identical Centos for the low-end, low-cost user.
The same could be done for a dist like Suse but what is very important to keep costs down is a base release with a long update cycle. If you want bleeding edge Ubuntu/Fedora/Whatever, you can reinstall. What is most important for me though is a good set of drivers for all the major releases.
Much of the early part of CS dealt with the scarcity of computing - how to make use of the limited resources of memory, computation. We don't need this anymore - there is an abundance of computing.
Really. We tie up a network of computers every night calculating consolidated Value-at-Risk. Our traders want the analytics to run a tick or two faster than the opposition so they can trade faster.
It isn't just finance where fast computation is important. Other stuff includes meteorology, hydrodynamics and so on. Also remember that a high end processor isn't always possible due to power constraints.
I know someone studying languages at a university, i.e. not a technical department.
The presentations are made from a university PC with PowerPoint. Unfortunately OO's equivalent, Impress, is mostly compatible but some bugs remain with the special effects when written in PP format. Ok, maybe this person shouldn't use so many transition effects, but that is unfortunately the norm in that class.
They have to use a translation tool which they are given a free license to. It doesn't seem much better than OmegaT but unlike OmegaT it insists on plugging into Word (and won't play with Writer).
The end result is that this person is being forced into using MS when for the functionality, OO would be fine.
Real-time video monitoring from space is basically a no-no. You need low-altitude satellites and these are not geo-stationary and the possible coverage would be in the order of minutes. What is more realistic is real-time monitoring from a UAV. They can be very quiet and can remain for lengthy periods on-target.
I know of a UK company that was raided by government officials (DTI) on instruction by the EU after it colluded with others on the price of monomers. Yes, you can get bitchslapped even if you are in the EU. The EU has a responsibility to step in when there is an abuse of the normal market system and to monitor things when there are only a few suppliers.
Where Microsoft went wrong was not just effectively ignoring the EU at the earlier stages but then repeat offending. If you ignore a legislator they don't tend to be happy.
On Jutland, I seem to remember that the RN created impressive warships but with two major faults:
The explosive (Picric Acid) in the major ordinance exploded with shock so that the shells didn't penetrate before detnonating with the initial impact. In those days, armour-piercing rounds depended on a very slight delay and a nose that would physically penetrate the outer few cm of the armour
There is a complex series of hoists and conveyors to move shells and propellant from the magazine. Like a production line there may be several items being carried at a time. The problem is if, say the turret is hit (or an accident occurs), the propellant and ordinance in the delivery system may be detonated, detonating the next in line all the way back to the magazine. This can be prevented by the use of flash doors, but in those days, the British would have left them open whilst in action because they would seriously reduce the firing rate and increase the weight.
The first was a design failure whilst the second was, I believe, a conscious design decision as the British favoured manouverability and firing rate.
National identity cards are now valid for border crossings throughout the EEA + Switzerland. Passports are only needed from EEA countries that lack identity cards (UK + Eire) or from other countries where visas are required. The checks on identity when flying seem quite inconsistent between Schengen countries, particularly if you check in electronically.
Wifi generally cannot be used for voip at all. This isn't necessairly crippling, but a complete oversight of what consumers want. I have a wireless network at home, why can't my phone support using it instead of a per-minute rate when I'm here, or at work, or at the bookstore.
One of the short-comings of GSM TDMA-type modulation is that the coverage of a basestation is limited by the timing requirements. Some places such as Finland don't have much of a population density but they still have people wanting to use mobiles at remote farms (for example). Nokia tried to build a mini base station but it was still to expensive so they started to get interested in VOIP and WiFi as an access method.
In Europe, some phones have been released by Nokia (E61, for example) that support VOIP in addition to the regular GSM. Regrettably there is no STUN so NAT traversal is a problem. If you have your own WiFi enabled PABX then they work fine.
BT is now marketing WiFi/GSM phones/plans with a clincher of an access point for home use or the ability to use BT OpenZone HotSpots (typically at stations and major airports). The idea is that if you use a WiFi connection then you get 75% off your mobile plan's minute price (or burn prepaid minutes at 25% of the normal price).
None of this is happening in the US, at least not yet. I cannot see this situation lasting for long though.
No, I differentiate between intelligence and convictions. You can be very intelligent but totally ignore something that contradicts a belief. Remember that Tony Blair is also a born-again christian. He also seems to like to surround himself with people that are sympathetic to his beliefs rather than people who could present alternate points of view.
The end result is that he attempts to bring in legislation without the correct safe-guards to satisfy short-term goals that may have very bad long-term implications.
His arguments though are compelling and the questions his government asks the focus groups and on the opinion surveys are carefully chosen so that the reasonable respondent must agree with him.
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I remember a modem with a translucent cover across a small panel. The modem just showed a power and an error light but if you flipped up the cover, you had diagnostic switches and lights. Through the lowered the cover the lights were only just visible. It was a nice idea on an expensive modem (think about a dollar and a half per b/s).
To put it into context, Edison's efforts to protect his licenses on Motion Picture technology created Hollywood.
Yes, there was land and light a plenty in Hollywood but there was elsewhere too. LA was also the other side of the country to his enforcers. We can comfortably postulate that Hollywood was therefore created by a bunch of patent pirates.
At least one major Dutch bank outsource's its IT support and all desktops are locked down with the supported configuration only. Even different versions of IE are a major issue. On the other hand, a major German bank had no issues with Firefox and/or Opera. I believe they even had a deployable build of Firefox (also used for Internet banking support). That German bank also seems more generally friendly towards open source at the back end too.
No, I'm wrong. There is still plenty of pillaging but that has been nationalised and is the province of the tax inspector!
Nah, pour a few beers into a Scandi/Nordic male and those Viking genes start activating again - they get very loud and very drunk. They certainly haven't stopped being sea-faring either (Viking ferries, anyone). The raping and pillaging doesn't seem to happen any more though.
The funny things is that at least one airline was happy with Connexion (Lufthansa). The extra install time wasn't an issue as they rolled the kit out during one of the major checks.
They put it onto some 400s doing the long hops, i.e. Europe to Asia and did quite well. The idea is that shorter journeys don't get so much interest. The Aircell system also relies on ground infrastructure, which limits its use to within a certain distance of land. Great for the continental US or even North America, but less great for overwater flights.
In another customer service environment involving a well known airline, I was specifically requested not to let their supervisors know anything about what they had done unless I was surveyed and then to say the minimum possible. Going the extra mile to help a customer can do wonders for high level staff but for lower level drones it can bring on more trouble than its worth. However, it is always good to ask.
I'm not sure whether Fortran predated COBOL or vice versa. However, it was out there as one of the first two languages. If you wrote to a subset, it was even quite portable, more so than COBOL which tended to have some very specific file handling. A number of the high-end vectorising compilers were first written for Fortan so that with everything else meant that there were a lot of numerical libraries out there (and still are).
To heck with just statistics. Fortran is alive and well at the heart of some major airline reservations, checkin and cargo systems. yes, they tried to move to newer technologies but they couldn't handel the load, particularly at points when there is a lot of rescheduling such as during bad weather.
GPS accuracy is a function of how many satellites you can track for and how long at any one location. You solve for, say up to 12 visible satellites and then average out the position. If you stay long enough in one place then you will end up with a very accurate average position in 3D to mm level. Even a hiking model GPS can give better positions when the results are averaged. However the units for static/base station use tend to be built for better stability.
Which is a shame. I guess that Kraft argued that their product name had wider recognition and thus a better argument for a domain name. Note that the example of Mrs McDonald was that it was a name of a tea room. She may have had another problem if she went for the associated domain name!!
You are quite right and I'm doubly embarrased as that particular purveyor of burgers is about two minutes from the door to this office.
As for your comment about US Bud vs Czech Bud, yes that is an interesting one. Especially given the fortune that Anheuser-Busch spends on advertising (they certainly don't spend anything on brewing beer). Budweiser Budvar, OTOH does produce something quite drinkable but they clearly are not on the scale of AB. The interesting thing is that since the accession of the Czech republic to the EU, the recognition of their rights is now backed there which helps them somewhat in their dispute
There are usually very few individuals squatting on names. If you have a name, it is often linked to something you are or what you do. It is the big guys who can buy names wholesale and really cheap who managed to pollute the namespace. The thing is they don't even want to do anything with the name just squat and maybe advertise/launch some pop-ups.
I actually hold a couple of names as a community service. There was no overall constant governing body so the names had been lost before I we had been quoted about $50K to get them back. Luckily the idiot holding them went bust and the names were available from the general pool. I just point them at whoever are hosting the events concerns, which changes every other year.
However dubious, Mike Rowe has the right to use his name to create a company called MikeRoweSoft. Once there is a legal entity registered with that name then what is the issue? Even when it comes to a personal name like Macdonalds. I believe a lady with that name operates a tea-room in Scotland which was contested by the 'other' one. Macdonalds challenged her in court for the right to use the name but they lost as it was her real surname and there was no intent to deceieve. In fact, the clan chieftain apparently testified pointing out that as a real Macdonald she actually had more right to the name than the Macdonalds company.
Microsoft may be able to afford that but what about the rest of the world. You can't 'squat' Microsoft's telephone number in your area even if they have no office there. You must have some right to the name, either personally or for business. I believe that the same should apply to domain names. Typosquatting is more of a grey area, but it is fscking annoying mistyping a name and then ending up with a load of porn.
Having flirted with Ubuntu, Gentoo and earlier Debian, personally, I still like my Fedora. However I wouldn't wish it on Dell due to the frequency of change. It would be murder to support. An approach like RHEL or Centos would be better due to better baseline stability. RHEL is fine for commercial users with support etc and costing extra and a more or less identical Centos for the low-end, low-cost user.
The same could be done for a dist like Suse but what is very important to keep costs down is a base release with a long update cycle. If you want bleeding edge Ubuntu/Fedora/Whatever, you can reinstall. What is most important for me though is a good set of drivers for all the major releases.
Really. We tie up a network of computers every night calculating consolidated Value-at-Risk. Our traders want the analytics to run a tick or two faster than the opposition so they can trade faster.
It isn't just finance where fast computation is important. Other stuff includes meteorology, hydrodynamics and so on. Also remember that a high end processor isn't always possible due to power constraints.
I know someone studying languages at a university, i.e. not a technical department.
The presentations are made from a university PC with PowerPoint. Unfortunately OO's equivalent, Impress, is mostly compatible but some bugs remain with the special effects when written in PP format. Ok, maybe this person shouldn't use so many transition effects, but that is unfortunately the norm in that class.
They have to use a translation tool which they are given a free license to. It doesn't seem much better than OmegaT but unlike OmegaT it insists on plugging into Word (and won't play with Writer).
The end result is that this person is being forced into using MS when for the functionality, OO would be fine.
Maybe a better method for cracking image attachment spam. What is good for one is also good for the other.
Real-time video monitoring from space is basically a no-no. You need low-altitude satellites and these are not geo-stationary and the possible coverage would be in the order of minutes. What is more realistic is real-time monitoring from a UAV. They can be very quiet and can remain for lengthy periods on-target.
I know of a UK company that was raided by government officials (DTI) on instruction by the EU after it colluded with others on the price of monomers. Yes, you can get bitchslapped even if you are in the EU. The EU has a responsibility to step in when there is an abuse of the normal market system and to monitor things when there are only a few suppliers.
Where Microsoft went wrong was not just effectively ignoring the EU at the earlier stages but then repeat offending. If you ignore a legislator they don't tend to be happy.
- The explosive (Picric Acid) in the major ordinance exploded with shock so that the shells didn't penetrate before detnonating with the initial impact. In those days, armour-piercing rounds depended on a very slight delay and a nose that would physically penetrate the outer few cm of the armour
- There is a complex series of hoists and conveyors to move shells and propellant from the magazine. Like a production line there may be several items being carried at a time. The problem is if, say the turret is hit (or an accident occurs), the propellant and ordinance in the delivery system may be detonated, detonating the next in line all the way back to the magazine. This can be prevented by the use of flash doors, but in those days, the British would have left them open whilst in action because they would seriously reduce the firing rate and increase the weight.
The first was a design failure whilst the second was, I believe, a conscious design decision as the British favoured manouverability and firing rate.National identity cards are now valid for border crossings throughout the EEA + Switzerland. Passports are only needed from EEA countries that lack identity cards (UK + Eire) or from other countries where visas are required. The checks on identity when flying seem quite inconsistent between Schengen countries, particularly if you check in electronically.
One of the short-comings of GSM TDMA-type modulation is that the coverage of a basestation is limited by the timing requirements. Some places such as Finland don't have much of a population density but they still have people wanting to use mobiles at remote farms (for example). Nokia tried to build a mini base station but it was still to expensive so they started to get interested in VOIP and WiFi as an access method.
In Europe, some phones have been released by Nokia (E61, for example) that support VOIP in addition to the regular GSM. Regrettably there is no STUN so NAT traversal is a problem. If you have your own WiFi enabled PABX then they work fine.
BT is now marketing WiFi/GSM phones/plans with a clincher of an access point for home use or the ability to use BT OpenZone HotSpots (typically at stations and major airports). The idea is that if you use a WiFi connection then you get 75% off your mobile plan's minute price (or burn prepaid minutes at 25% of the normal price).
None of this is happening in the US, at least not yet. I cannot see this situation lasting for long though.
No, I differentiate between intelligence and convictions. You can be very intelligent but totally ignore something that contradicts a belief. Remember that Tony Blair is also a born-again christian. He also seems to like to surround himself with people that are sympathetic to his beliefs rather than people who could present alternate points of view.
The end result is that he attempts to bring in legislation without the correct safe-guards to satisfy short-term goals that may have very bad long-term implications.
His arguments though are compelling and the questions his government asks the focus groups and on the opinion surveys are carefully chosen so that the reasonable respondent must agree with him.