I do work for a company that does market-research. Read the law - there are reasonably strict restrictions on what counts as charities, surveys, etc. I may be in the minority but I have done focus groups and do reply to some surveys if I'm not otherwise occupied (well, I used to - working for a research company disqualifies me for most of the now). I hardly think that sending a FREE product, gift certificate, etc. as a thank-you makes a survey somehow evil. (I should note, we hardly do any call-out work and on the rare occasions we do we adhere strictly to the allowed hours and other restrictions.)
Now, you want to see a loophole - how about the exemption for anyone with whom you have a "business relationship". Bought a widget from me in the last 18 months - I'm exempt. I called you for product info in the last three months - you can feel free to start calling me whether I'm listed or not. Fortunately even in those cases (and I think with charities as well) you can tell that specific business/charity to stop calling and they must honor it.
Better still, they must start transmitting caller ID info - no more "ID unavailable" and must have a person on the line within 2 seconds of your answer (the telemarketers hate this since they can't cram in as many calls per person per hour with their predictive dialers).
The other giant loophole is that there are a variety of exemptions for financial institutions, airlines and telecom companies but it appears from the FTC web site that this could be just procedural in that they are already regulated by other agencies and it just needs some interagency coordination to bring those into the fold as well. Still, those exemptions bear watching. Perhaps someone more familiar than I am with the laws would care to comment.
Here in California we are old hands at eco-political ranting that disregards science. So what if diesel can make great strides in reducing polution - is it zero emmissions? No? We can't support it.
At least California recently backed off it's requirement for a certain percent of all new vehicles to be zero-emmissions (where zero means we moved the emmissions out of our neighborhood and over to the poor area where the power plants are located). The argument was that a better reduction would be had for lower cost by pushing for hybrids. Reaction was swift with the eco-types crying foul even though the switch to hybrid will yield far better results (ie. we can do it on a far larger scale sooner and using our existing infrastructure and it will yield great results).
A similar "get the cars off highways" by expanding the ferry fleet on the San Francisco bay movement has sprung up and they are trying every trick in the book to prevent acknowledging the fact that the ferrys burn more and pollute more than if every person they carry drove in a single car instead.
So kudos to MIT for following the science instead of the politics - I just hope they are wearing their asbestos underpants.
Seriously, as cool as a big laser is it seems as though the defense to this multi-billion-dollar system is to polish the outside of the missile to reflect the beam.
As other posters have mentioned, the lumens/watt for LED is about the same as for standard incandescent. There are a couple of places where LEDs shine (so to speak).
One is in very low power systems where the LED's output/watt remains fairly constant but the lumens/watt for incandescent is extremely poor. The PALlight flashlight can run in "off" which is actually "very dim" mode for over a year with no problem.
Another is where you want long life and/or color such as in signal lamps. To explain: the lumens/watt for incandescent goes up dramatically with higher voltage but the lamp life decreases in a similarly dramatic fashion. That's why the bulbs on small flashlights where available power is a limiting factor often last only 4-6 hours compared to a standard bulb at nearly a thousand. Signal lamps are at the other end of the spectrum - they need to last a very long time but do so at the expense of efficiency. In addition, much of the light they produce is filtered out to get the necessary green, yellow or red. LEDs produce just the color you want so there are no filtering losses and they don't need to run at reduced efficiency to give long life.
LEDs beat flourescent where you need point-sources of light for focused applications like headlights. Some LEDs are now starting to get somewhat above the efficiency of incandescent and you may see them soon in auto headlights (I've seen a couple of prototypes - tiny led and big-a** copper heatsink).
Finally, LEDs are good in rough-service and high-vibration applications.
For general use around the house flourescent is far, far more efficient and currently far less expensive (last home LED light I saw was well over $100) and the new flourescents put out a very nice light - far nicer than any LED lamp I've seen. With the exception of a reading lamp my wife owned before we got married, every light in our house is flourescent and it really does make a difference on the power bill.
As Bruce Perens and others have pointed out, SCO just wants to get bought. They are suing for (raising pinky to side of mouth) "one billion dollars". But their market cap is 25 million dollars so they are suing for 40 times their current market value. Even adjusting for today's stock price their market value is less than $40 million. Most recent quarter per-share data: cash on hand=$0.92, earnings=-0.26. They better get bought quick.
I've always found the method most large hosting companies use to charge for bandwidth very reasonable. Most of the ones I've dealt with use a variation of the following:
1) Total the bytes every 5 minutes (basically average usage in 5 minute groups).
2) Sort all the samples from highest to lowest for the month.
3) Throw away the top samples - usually contracts specify something like 5% or 10%.
4) Bill based on the highest remaining sample
It is quite logical - once you have installed the infrastructure to support the bandwidth it doesn't matter if you push one bit or a billion over that. In other words, the relevant cost is to support a large enough pipe (which is determined by peak usage) for the customer. Pushing 1megabit 24/7 takes the same pipe as pushing it for an hour a day.
Remember that the typical connection to a cage is 100Mb so you can really push bits for a few seconds as long as you don't get too many high 5-minute samples.
Commentary: I feel that the same logic should apply elsewhere - if I have a 384k DSL then I'm automatically capped to that bandwidth and should be allowed to use it for brief periods or constantly. Fortunately that's exactly how my local home ISP sees things as well - static IP for everyone, no restriction on # of computers, servers, etc.
Back to the original discussion: if the hosting company offers to the customer to set a rate limit then I think the customer loses otherwise there is some culpability on the part of the ISP.
In reality the current business climate will mean the ISP eats it if they want to keep their customers. The ISP is probably not out any money anyway since (see above) the cost is in the pipe, not the usage (unless, of course, they buy their bandwidth using similar contracts from an upstream provider).
Don't attack, don't complain, simply state that one important part of your role as sysadmin is network security. It is your understanding that the system being installed will house sensitive data such as..., the damage or release of which could cause competetive harm and/or legal liability to the company. It is your understanding that the product has certain security features but that these are not being used for reasons that the manufacturer has failed to specify.
Avoid the jargon - non-techies just hear "risk of a frammywhatzit snort-spoof relay attack" and think "that sounds complicated and exotic - it's probably not something we need to worry about."
Offer your assistance to explain the problems and/or test for vulnerabilities.
You might also suggest that those responsible for managing the project state to PeopleSoft the nature of the data on the system, state that security is a priority and that the company expects PeopleSoft to make use of any available features of their product to increase security.
Demand from PeopleSoft a memo confirming that all of their conduct will be in conformance with "best practice" for information security. Then document anything that fails to meet that criteria.
Whatever you do don't come across as a whiner - where there is a problem, state the solution and offer your help.
ImageMagick seems to read the map files fine. It may take a bit of scripting but you can probably get it to slice and dice the map in whatever way you want.
Is it a scary time for a techie like me? Yes. But overall this is a good thing.
Because Japan (and now Korea, etc.) started making cars many US employees were initially displaced. But we now enjoy cars (from all countries including the US) which are far better and lower priced than we would have had without competition. (My 18 year old Tercel just crossed 200,000 miles but when I was a kid they didn't even bother with the sixth digit on the odometer.)
We have also enjoyed all sorts of inexpensive goodies like toys, home electronics and clothing that would have cost far more if all made here.
So the Indian programmer makes "only" $10,000 - that's still 20 times the average. His standard of living is probably pretty good. Outsourcing hurts our income but helps keep our costs down.
But there are bigger gains:
Peace - countries with close business ties almost never go to war.
Population - the wealthier a country gets, in general, the lower its birthrate.
Environment - of course the "first world" has a far from perfect environmental record but it is WAY ahead of the third world where fishing by pouring poison or tossing dynamite in the ocean is an accepted method, where "recycling" involves open fires to burn the plastics off of wire and electronics, and where the air is many times worse than in the worst US city. Something about not having to worry about the next meal allows one to consider the environment more seriously.
When you finish your UFO, be sure to make yourself an alien. Seriously, this is a fun read by some FX experts that really destroys that alien autopsy stuff.
Hey, mod this back up. Did you actually look at these "letters to the editor"? They are examples of exactly what the topic discusses - identical or virtually identical "letter" in different papers and signed by different people.
The most common things that need to be done are done on all OSs - it's just frustrating to do the translation (I'm sure there's a way to add a user but what is it??). You won't be much, if any, good in 4 days but one useful tool is a book like the "Universal Command Guide" (www.ucgbook.com). Unfortunately while it bills itself as "Every Command, Every OS" that must be for limited values of "Every" since VMS, Plan9, OS370, VxWorks, etc. are not mentioned.
Still, it is a handy, if imperfect, reference if you mostly use one of [Windows, *nix, Netware, Macintosh, MSDOS] but sometimes need to recall how to do something on other than your primary OS.
I remember reading an article way back when about the attorney at Rolls Royce whose only job was to go after trademark infringement. He was proud of the fact that he never had to file suit - often a friendly call was all that was needed to get someone to stop using the term "Rolls Royce". Usually the infraction was some advertising claim like "...the 'Rolls Royce' of chairs/towels/toilet plungers/etc..."
If a trademark is allowed to be used as a common term and the company doesn't take steps to protect the trademark then they can lose it. Witness "elevator", "escallator", "aspirin", etc. Reminding people that a word/phrase is a trademark is just part of the cost of having and keeping one.
This appears to be a similar case but instead of a friendly call to someone who is supporting the PCI cause but perhaps using a trademark without permission, they sic an a**h*** attorney on him - at least that is how it has been presented.
We have no way of knowing that this was the first contact. Perhaps all prior communications had been ignored. I'd like to see "the truth and ALL the truth" before judging.
I don't see the big fuss from a tax perspective - the paperwork is the problem. Of course the level of government waste and high rates of tax are a disgrace but this is not really a new tax, just a shift in enforcement of an existing one.
Not wanting to give the money grabbers any ideas, but I have not been directly taxed for viewing a web page, sending an email, etc. Sure, I pay lots of indirect taxes related to connecting to the internet (just try to make sense of all those charges on you phone bill sometime), sales tax on my hardware, utility tax on my power bill, etc.
The so-called internet tax is not a new tax. Most states require the purchaser of out-of-state goods to pay a "use" tax on those items. Of course most people don't. Note, this also means that out-of-state sellers have an unfair advantage over local businesses.
The real shift of the "internet tax" is to place the burden of collecting the tax on the sellers. This is a real burden as it could dealing with 50 (or more considering local tax districts) rates, returns and such. The overhead of dealing with the government could be far more damaging than the effect of the tax itself.
Of course (as always) someone will build a business around handling the government overhead for you but that'll cost, too.
Final comment on taxes:
"If you could steal all the money you want and print all the money you want, don't you think you could stay out of debt?"
Just trying to say analog vs. digital misses the fact that there are several types of digital - the most common in the US being CDMA and TDMA. I have no scientific surveys but it seems that my friends on CDMA systems are much less happy than those with TDMA.
It's true that quality vs. signal strength on analog is, well, analog. It gets worse and worse as the strength goes down. On digital it's digital. Once you reach a certain threshold you are suddenly screwed. I have had times where I could converse, however poorly, on analog when I could not at all on digital (just select analog only on the phone's menu in those cases).
Overall, I think the quality committment of the company (enough capacity, well-placed sites, proper maintenance, etc.) is a much bigger factor than analog or digital.
The microwave comparison is bunk. First, microwave frequencies are chosen to be those best absorbed by food (ie. resonant with molecules such as H2O). Second, the power level of your phone is, at max output, a bit over a watt. The microwave is 600 to 1000 watts beamed into an enclosed space. It's like saying that you shouldn't play with a nerf launcher because getting hit with a rocket-propelled grenade is dangerous.
In it's heyday the U.S. Navy's Naval Ordnance Test Station at China Lake (NOTS) was known for outstanding engineering and a just-get-it-done attitude. The guys were real hackers (analog circuits and machinery but they had the knowhow and the facilities to hack together all sorts of stuff). Perhaps the most famouse is the Sidewinder (good read by the way) missile.
Less known is that just after Sputnik was launched a bunch of the engineers grabbed whatever they could lay their hands on and attempted to orbit their own satellite dubbed NOTSnik. They made six launches and while they were unable to prove a successful orbit many believe that one launch did make it all the way around. Doubt any remain as space junk, though.
Start reducing your DNS time-to-live. If it is now a week, set it to a day. A couple of days ahead set it to an hour. A few ours ahead set it to 5 minutes (do consider your traffic and make sure that you won't swamp your DNS server - if you are planning a move at night then load should be low and even setting ttl to a minute or two should be fine). Note: there are broken name servers out there and you will get requests to the old address for many hours. Also most browsers don't seem to ask based on DNS TTL so they may not get the new IP until they at least leave your site or perhaps close their browser.
(Note: I'm assuming you have duplicate equipment since that's the only way to physically move with no downtime unless your configuration allows you to remove half of your stuff and still keep running.)
Depending on your needs and current design you can also play NAT/Proxy games. Ie. set up a proxy server or use NAT to make your old IP contact your new servers to catch all the misdirected traffic until DNS propogates.
Last couple of times I did this it was fun to watch. I pulled the trigger on the DNS and could watch the load flow from the old to the new site (we were in the top 500 sites in traffic and did the move during the day so there was a statistically valid sample to work with).
I remember a few years back when there was a big roasting facility (Hills Bros. ??) at the San Francisco end of the Bay Bridge. The smell was quite strong (and not as pleasant as the smell of a brewing cup). Other than being annoying to some, I have no idea about the health effects of coffee-roasting byproducts.
A number of bakeries were required by the Bay Area air folks to add pollution controls. Everyone likes the smell of baking bread but baking drives off the alcohol created by the yeast and the quantity of alcohol being released into the air was really surprising.
Still, I'd rather go after bad-smelling pollution first - I'm willing to take the risk from bread baking and fireplaces as they bring me sufficient pleasure.
This is further proof that mathematicians live in that interesting other-world where shoes are laced in a perfect plane, eyelets are precisely aligned and friction does not exist. The rest of us live in reality.
In "real" mail unsolicited mail (including not only letters but any other items sent) become the property of the receipent. As far as I know this law does not currently apply to email but I don't see any reason it shouldn't.
Slashdot Mirror
I do work for a company that does market-research. Read the law - there are reasonably strict restrictions on what counts as charities, surveys, etc. I may be in the minority but I have done focus groups and do reply to some surveys if I'm not otherwise occupied (well, I used to - working for a research company disqualifies me for most of the now). I hardly think that sending a FREE product, gift certificate, etc. as a thank-you makes a survey somehow evil. (I should note, we hardly do any call-out work and on the rare occasions we do we adhere strictly to the allowed hours and other restrictions.)
Now, you want to see a loophole - how about the exemption for anyone with whom you have a "business relationship". Bought a widget from me in the last 18 months - I'm exempt. I called you for product info in the last three months - you can feel free to start calling me whether I'm listed or not. Fortunately even in those cases (and I think with charities as well) you can tell that specific business/charity to stop calling and they must honor it.
Better still, they must start transmitting caller ID info - no more "ID unavailable" and must have a person on the line within 2 seconds of your answer (the telemarketers hate this since they can't cram in as many calls per person per hour with their predictive dialers).
The other giant loophole is that there are a variety of exemptions for financial institutions, airlines and telecom companies but it appears from the FTC web site that this could be just procedural in that they are already regulated by other agencies and it just needs some interagency coordination to bring those into the fold as well. Still, those exemptions bear watching. Perhaps someone more familiar than I am with the laws would care to comment.
Here in California we are old hands at eco-political ranting that disregards science. So what if diesel can make great strides in reducing polution - is it zero emmissions? No? We can't support it.
At least California recently backed off it's requirement for a certain percent of all new vehicles to be zero-emmissions (where zero means we moved the emmissions out of our neighborhood and over to the poor area where the power plants are located). The argument was that a better reduction would be had for lower cost by pushing for hybrids. Reaction was swift with the eco-types crying foul even though the switch to hybrid will yield far better results (ie. we can do it on a far larger scale sooner and using our existing infrastructure and it will yield great results).
A similar "get the cars off highways" by expanding the ferry fleet on the San Francisco bay movement has sprung up and they are trying every trick in the book to prevent acknowledging the fact that the ferrys burn more and pollute more than if every person they carry drove in a single car instead.
So kudos to MIT for following the science instead of the politics - I just hope they are wearing their asbestos underpants.
Shiny missile.
Seriously, as cool as a big laser is it seems as though the defense to this multi-billion-dollar system is to polish the outside of the missile to reflect the beam.
As other posters have mentioned, the lumens/watt for LED is about the same as for standard incandescent. There are a couple of places where LEDs shine (so to speak).
One is in very low power systems where the LED's output/watt remains fairly constant but the lumens/watt for incandescent is extremely poor. The PALlight flashlight can run in "off" which is actually "very dim" mode for over a year with no problem.
Another is where you want long life and/or color such as in signal lamps. To explain: the lumens/watt for incandescent goes up dramatically with higher voltage but the lamp life decreases in a similarly dramatic fashion. That's why the bulbs on small flashlights where available power is a limiting factor often last only 4-6 hours compared to a standard bulb at nearly a thousand. Signal lamps are at the other end of the spectrum - they need to last a very long time but do so at the expense of efficiency. In addition, much of the light they produce is filtered out to get the necessary green, yellow or red. LEDs produce just the color you want so there are no filtering losses and they don't need to run at reduced efficiency to give long life.
LEDs beat flourescent where you need point-sources of light for focused applications like headlights. Some LEDs are now starting to get somewhat above the efficiency of incandescent and you may see them soon in auto headlights (I've seen a couple of prototypes - tiny led and big-a** copper heatsink).
Finally, LEDs are good in rough-service and high-vibration applications.
For general use around the house flourescent is far, far more efficient and currently far less expensive (last home LED light I saw was well over $100) and the new flourescents put out a very nice light - far nicer than any LED lamp I've seen. With the exception of a reading lamp my wife owned before we got married, every light in our house is flourescent and it really does make a difference on the power bill.
As Bruce Perens and others have pointed out, SCO just wants to get bought. They are suing for (raising pinky to side of mouth) "one billion dollars". But their market cap is 25 million dollars so they are suing for 40 times their current market value. Even adjusting for today's stock price their market value is less than $40 million. Most recent quarter per-share data: cash on hand=$0.92, earnings=-0.26. They better get bought quick.
I've always found the method most large hosting companies use to charge for bandwidth very reasonable. Most of the ones I've dealt with use a variation of the following:
1) Total the bytes every 5 minutes (basically average usage in 5 minute groups).
2) Sort all the samples from highest to lowest for the month.
3) Throw away the top samples - usually contracts specify something like 5% or 10%.
4) Bill based on the highest remaining sample
It is quite logical - once you have installed the infrastructure to support the bandwidth it doesn't matter if you push one bit or a billion over that. In other words, the relevant cost is to support a large enough pipe (which is determined by peak usage) for the customer. Pushing 1megabit 24/7 takes the same pipe as pushing it for an hour a day.
Remember that the typical connection to a cage is 100Mb so you can really push bits for a few seconds as long as you don't get too many high 5-minute samples.
Commentary: I feel that the same logic should apply elsewhere - if I have a 384k DSL then I'm automatically capped to that bandwidth and should be allowed to use it for brief periods or constantly. Fortunately that's exactly how my local home ISP sees things as well - static IP for everyone, no restriction on # of computers, servers, etc.
Back to the original discussion: if the hosting company offers to the customer to set a rate limit then I think the customer loses otherwise there is some culpability on the part of the ISP.
In reality the current business climate will mean the ISP eats it if they want to keep their customers. The ISP is probably not out any money anyway since (see above) the cost is in the pipe, not the usage (unless, of course, they buy their bandwidth using similar contracts from an upstream provider).
Why is it called Squid
Write a carefully crafted and supported memo.
..., the damage or release of which could cause competetive harm and/or legal liability to the company. It is your understanding that the product has certain security features but that these are not being used for reasons that the manufacturer has failed to specify.
Don't attack, don't complain, simply state that one important part of your role as sysadmin is network security. It is your understanding that the system being installed will house sensitive data such as
Avoid the jargon - non-techies just hear "risk of a frammywhatzit snort-spoof relay attack" and think "that sounds complicated and exotic - it's probably not something we need to worry about."
Offer your assistance to explain the problems and/or test for vulnerabilities.
You might also suggest that those responsible for managing the project state to PeopleSoft the nature of the data on the system, state that security is a priority and that the company expects PeopleSoft to make use of any available features of their product to increase security.
Demand from PeopleSoft a memo confirming that all of their conduct will be in conformance with "best practice" for information security. Then document anything that fails to meet that criteria.
Whatever you do don't come across as a whiner - where there is a problem, state the solution and offer your help.
ImageMagick seems to read the map files fine. It may take a bit of scripting but you can probably get it to slice and dice the map in whatever way you want.
1) Block Kazaa port
2) Watch for Kazaa connection switching to port 80
3) Sue under DMCA for circumventing your protection
Is it a scary time for a techie like me? Yes. But overall this is a good thing.
Because Japan (and now Korea, etc.) started making cars many US employees were initially displaced. But we now enjoy cars (from all countries including the US) which are far better and lower priced than we would have had without competition. (My 18 year old Tercel just crossed 200,000 miles but when I was a kid they didn't even bother with the sixth digit on the odometer.)
We have also enjoyed all sorts of inexpensive goodies like toys, home electronics and clothing that would have cost far more if all made here.
So the Indian programmer makes "only" $10,000 - that's still 20 times the average. His standard of living is probably pretty good. Outsourcing hurts our income but helps keep our costs down.
But there are bigger gains:
Peace - countries with close business ties almost never go to war.
Population - the wealthier a country gets, in general, the lower its birthrate.
Environment - of course the "first world" has a far from perfect environmental record but it is WAY ahead of the third world where fishing by pouring poison or tossing dynamite in the ocean is an accepted method, where "recycling" involves open fires to burn the plastics off of wire and electronics, and where the air is many times worse than in the worst US city. Something about not having to worry about the next meal allows one to consider the environment more seriously.
When you finish your UFO, be sure to make yourself an alien. Seriously, this is a fun read by some FX experts that really destroys that alien autopsy stuff.
Hey, mod this back up. Did you actually look at these "letters to the editor"? They are examples of exactly what the topic discusses - identical or virtually identical "letter" in different papers and signed by different people.
The most common things that need to be done are done on all OSs - it's just frustrating to do the translation (I'm sure there's a way to add a user but what is it??). You won't be much, if any, good in 4 days but one useful tool is a book like the "Universal Command Guide" (www.ucgbook.com). Unfortunately while it bills itself as "Every Command, Every OS" that must be for limited values of "Every" since VMS, Plan9, OS370, VxWorks, etc. are not mentioned.
Still, it is a handy, if imperfect, reference if you mostly use one of [Windows, *nix, Netware, Macintosh, MSDOS] but sometimes need to recall how to do something on other than your primary OS.
I remember reading an article way back when about the attorney at Rolls Royce whose only job was to go after trademark infringement. He was proud of the fact that he never had to file suit - often a friendly call was all that was needed to get someone to stop using the term "Rolls Royce". Usually the infraction was some advertising claim like "...the 'Rolls Royce' of chairs/towels/toilet plungers/etc..."
If a trademark is allowed to be used as a common term and the company doesn't take steps to protect the trademark then they can lose it. Witness "elevator", "escallator", "aspirin", etc. Reminding people that a word/phrase is a trademark is just part of the cost of having and keeping one.
This appears to be a similar case but instead of a friendly call to someone who is supporting the PCI cause but perhaps using a trademark without permission, they sic an a**h*** attorney on him - at least that is how it has been presented.
We have no way of knowing that this was the first contact. Perhaps all prior communications had been ignored. I'd like to see "the truth and ALL the truth" before judging.
I don't see the big fuss from a tax perspective - the paperwork is the problem. Of course the level of government waste and high rates of tax are a disgrace but this is not really a new tax, just a shift in enforcement of an existing one.
Not wanting to give the money grabbers any ideas, but I have not been directly taxed for viewing a web page, sending an email, etc. Sure, I pay lots of indirect taxes related to connecting to the internet (just try to make sense of all those charges on you phone bill sometime), sales tax on my hardware, utility tax on my power bill, etc.
The so-called internet tax is not a new tax. Most states require the purchaser of out-of-state goods to pay a "use" tax on those items. Of course most people don't. Note, this also means that out-of-state sellers have an unfair advantage over local businesses.
The real shift of the "internet tax" is to place the burden of collecting the tax on the sellers. This is a real burden as it could dealing with 50 (or more considering local tax districts) rates, returns and such. The overhead of dealing with the government could be far more damaging than the effect of the tax itself.
Of course (as always) someone will build a business around handling the government overhead for you but that'll cost, too.
Final comment on taxes:
"If you could steal all the money you want and print all the money you want, don't you think you could stay out of debt?"
Just trying to say analog vs. digital misses the fact that there are several types of digital - the most common in the US being CDMA and TDMA. I have no scientific surveys but it seems that my friends on CDMA systems are much less happy than those with TDMA.
It's true that quality vs. signal strength on analog is, well, analog. It gets worse and worse as the strength goes down. On digital it's digital. Once you reach a certain threshold you are suddenly screwed. I have had times where I could converse, however poorly, on analog when I could not at all on digital (just select analog only on the phone's menu in those cases).
Overall, I think the quality committment of the company (enough capacity, well-placed sites, proper maintenance, etc.) is a much bigger factor than analog or digital.
The microwave comparison is bunk. First, microwave frequencies are chosen to be those best absorbed by food (ie. resonant with molecules such as H2O). Second, the power level of your phone is, at max output, a bit over a watt. The microwave is 600 to 1000 watts beamed into an enclosed space. It's like saying that you shouldn't play with a nerf launcher because getting hit with a rocket-propelled grenade is dangerous.
OK, i meant famous not famouse - I think I have holiday desserts on my mind. :)
Less known is that just after Sputnik was launched a bunch of the engineers grabbed whatever they could lay their hands on and attempted to orbit their own satellite dubbed NOTSnik. They made six launches and while they were unable to prove a successful orbit many believe that one launch did make it all the way around. Doubt any remain as space junk, though.
Start reducing your DNS time-to-live. If it is now a week, set it to a day. A couple of days ahead set it to an hour. A few ours ahead set it to 5 minutes (do consider your traffic and make sure that you won't swamp your DNS server - if you are planning a move at night then load should be low and even setting ttl to a minute or two should be fine). Note: there are broken name servers out there and you will get requests to the old address for many hours. Also most browsers don't seem to ask based on DNS TTL so they may not get the new IP until they at least leave your site or perhaps close their browser.
(Note: I'm assuming you have duplicate equipment since that's the only way to physically move with no downtime unless your configuration allows you to remove half of your stuff and still keep running.)
Depending on your needs and current design you can also play NAT/Proxy games. Ie. set up a proxy server or use NAT to make your old IP contact your new servers to catch all the misdirected traffic until DNS propogates.
Last couple of times I did this it was fun to watch. I pulled the trigger on the DNS and could watch the load flow from the old to the new site (we were in the top 500 sites in traffic and did the move during the day so there was a statistically valid sample to work with).
I remember a few years back when there was a big roasting facility (Hills Bros. ??) at the San Francisco end of the Bay Bridge. The smell was quite strong (and not as pleasant as the smell of a brewing cup). Other than being annoying to some, I have no idea about the health effects of coffee-roasting byproducts.
A number of bakeries were required by the Bay Area air folks to add pollution controls. Everyone likes the smell of baking bread but baking drives off the alcohol created by the yeast and the quantity of alcohol being released into the air was really surprising.
Still, I'd rather go after bad-smelling pollution first - I'm willing to take the risk from bread baking and fireplaces as they bring me sufficient pleasure.
Doesn't everyone start counting at zero? :)
This is further proof that mathematicians live in that interesting other-world where shoes are laced in a perfect plane, eyelets are precisely aligned and friction does not exist. The rest of us live in reality.
In "real" mail unsolicited mail (including not only letters but any other items sent) become the property of the receipent. As far as I know this law does not currently apply to email but I don't see any reason it shouldn't.