the missing concept behind solar power is that it doens't have to be distributed. As it is, power distribution system lose a bulk of their power on the way to your house. This is why solar panels are sucha good idea: the power loss is minimal when traveling from your roof to your AC inverter in the basement.
The major problem with solar power is that it isn't economical to buy a solar power system: the cost of the solar cells, inverters, and batteries is too much compared to what the power company would charge you (unless you live in rural areas where power hasn't been connected to your house).
As a full time computer engineering student, I believe that instant messanging would be a terrible thing for the classroom. People would talk about what they will be doing the upcoming weekend, play games, talk abotu other classes, and genereally not pay attention. Only two or three students in a lecture of 120 people usually have a laptop in my electrical/computer engineering class. The real value of IM/email/general internet connectivity comes after class when people need help, need to collaborate, or need to communicate. IM is an invaluable tool for this.
Some classes have mandatory message boards (read: graded) where you have to post your own opinion, then respond to someone elses.
I think if you were to run a real-time system during a lecture, you should have a chatroom where the professor can see what people are typing, so he or a TA could clear up points of confusion. This would avoid the problems of the people who ask questions that everyone in the room already knows. Too often people ask questions that are redundant, time consuming, and can be easiliy anserwed by someone sitting near them. A chatroom would be all inclusive, and that would keep people from feeling excluded.
But, most teaching trends are heading away from the lecture model. The lecture is highly ineffective becuase many professors can't relate to the students, who are seeing the material for the first time. A chat room would allow professors to receive some realtime feedback (like many in class voting systems do without the added distraction). This keeps the professor from teaching to a level that is above most students capabilies.
but i'm all for any system that keeps me focused on the material (read: not on a laptop) and keeps the professor down to earth.
if robots take over 50% of the jobs, the robot industry will need millions of workers who performed these simple to complex tasks to program/design/manufacture their replacements, thus creating a multibillion dollar robot industry which will create millions of new jobs (maybe not 50% as much).
Companies should be concerned about their employees health without being concerned about their increased productivity as a result. I wouldn't mind this article if the message was "yoga reduces stresss" but in stead the message is "lets work these people an extra hours, but send them yoga so they'll be artificially more productive." Most execs (especially those of large corporations) need to learn how to treat employees like something other than cattle.
Also, Doing anything relaxing for an hour(in the middle of work) increases productivity and intuition. Thats why they invented the lunch break | coffee break | slashdot break !
Over 40% of the US population has smoked marajuana, but that doesn't stop the War on Drugs.
If this escalates, some political figure will have to declare "War on P2P filesharing". Unfortunately, probably a quarter of people in the US (probably mostly seniors citizens who vote)don't even know what that is, and consequently won't give a shit about another war on american people.
The US has the third highest incarceration rate in history, after hitler's germany and stalin's russia, mostly due to the drug war.
What P2P users must do is hire some lobyists in washington so they can get what they want. Unfortunately, P2P users like to get something for nothing, so this will never happen . ..
I can see it now: thousands of people fleeing the subway when a sensor trips because someone lit up a cigarette underneath one. Now every ignores it when a real NBC attack comes around, just like the tsunami early warning systems in the pacific.
This IS a gov't project, and this one is only getting funding because of people who watch the news too much and are becoming exactly what terrorists want: afraid.
Also, politicians are aching to to jump on the "spend money on homeland security" bandwagon. 2004 is just around the corner . ..
Carriers will often time keep their billing systems highly firewalled, so it shouldn't be too much trouble to protect CALEA. There is no excuse for exposing this system. If kevin mitnick was still around, CALEA would be just as recognized as "carnivore"
I've worked on a carrier VoIP solution for CALEA before, and the version i ran actually ran apache for the administrative side. Most telcos run solaris on Sun Netras for most of their applications, so their employees should know how to secure a Solaris box.
Interesting note: Level3 communications used to run a custom version of solaris (encrypted and secured up the ass), but it just made it a pain in the ass to run any additional applications on the server.
Every carrier (land based or cellular) in the united states MUST be FBI compliant. That means if the FBI wants to tap your phone, all they need is a court order. And the carrier must own equipment capable of intercepting calls.
Apparently there are less than 100 wiretaps every year, but compliance was mandated by the FCC sometime in late 2001, early 2002. I know this because I worked on carrier class VoIP equipment that needed to meet this FCC requirement. (We ended writing up a perl script).
This means the FBI might not be able to listen to you speak on your cell phone from across the street, but they can listen sitting at their desk in their office.
Peace in the middle east would also solve a good portion of the problem (from an engineering perspective) and it doesn't cost millions of dollars. AND it is immune to hacking.
can you sail upwind in a sailboat?
Yes, but thats only becuase you have a keel to keep the boat moving straight. There is no "space keel" , so you'd never be able to sail back towards the sun without momentum gained from another star that is close enough by.
-n
First, use visio to design your CORE network. This would include all your high bandwidth, long haul fibre links. Choose a routing protocol (ISIS and OSPF are what most carriers use). If you want to implement newer protocols like MPLS, you still need OSPF or ISIS to run underneath it. Your core network should be layer three only. Avoid using ATM links becuase they add an extra "layer 2.5".
Then, off of each core router, drop gig-e links off to your layer 2/3 routers. If redundancy is a huge issue (which is probabally is), you will probabally have two core layer 3 routers (probably cicso, juniper) with a small number of ports, and two layer 2/3 routers (riverstone, foundry, extreme) with a large number of layer two ports at each major location with gig-e multimode links btween them to provide extra redundancy. Before you go and buy everything, spend time testing this four router configuration (see how long it takes to reroute traffic when links go down). This is especially important if you ever intend on implementing VoIP on your new network.
All critical systems (DNS servers, domain controllers, application servers, VoIP gateways, database servers) should be on the layer 2/3 routers, not on the smaller routers underneath that most "end users" will be connected to throughout each location. Essentially the layer 3 routers are just for core routing, and the layer 2/3 routers will provide most of your functionality.
Once you have everything up and running, use SNMP to monitor your links (most SNMP management software draws your network for you, and it will draw nice broken links when links go down). Good SNMP software will map every network device on you network, as long as you configure SNMP on all your new nodes. Also, make sure you have a really cool NOC (Network Operations Center) with lots of LCD projectors and linux/unix workstations. Make sure you have a good naming convention for all your network links and routers.
Don't deploy at 100% capactiy immediately, run at 10% capacity then work your way up.Many unforseen problems WILL come up (Routers have more bugs than you can imagine). In the end, you will probably have a nice buildingwide, statewide, nationwide, or worldwide modern next-generation (VoIP etc) capapable network.
Make sure/. posts where/when you can sign up!
or at least a link to the pictures they DON'T want you to see. (flash mountain [flash mountain.com] anyone ?)
everyone knows some of the most enjoyable pr0n is the funny stuff
-n
1. Apollo1 - blew up on the launchpad 2. Challenger - blew up in the air 3. Concorde: blew up during takeoff 4. Columbia - blew up landing 5. Helios - "broke apart" (aren't we glad we have next generation renewable energy that doen't blow up/cost lives ? )
Does is disturb anyone else that the CEO's name is Kurtz ? Heart of darkness, apocolypse now, anyone else get the feeling this man is a genius who has become evil from spending too much time in the jungle ?
from the ironic names in the news dept.
At University of Massachusetts amherst, i have a total of 4 nics in two boxes. I've run full time ftp servers. All the sudden one day last year, the office of Information Technology decided to start cracking down on bandwidth usage. And me, uploading 15-25 gig/day was one of their first targets. Instead of shutting down, i setup an ftp redirecter that made it look like all the bandwidth i was using went through the student webserver using a simple application level unix program.
Unfortunatly, one day that program crashed and spawned a million broken proccesses, and i got shut off again.
Then i realized all i needed to do is use more nics, register them under different names, and voila, i can run 5 gig/day/nic. Becuase university policy states that content shouldn't be monitored, they can only guess at what i'm serving.
This year, they bought more bandwidth and shut off all the kazaa users who leave kazaa running all day while they are at class. We pay 30 dollars/semester for a 10mbit jack, of which i've been able to download from other universities at up to 9mbits/sec.
Thankfully, umass is somewhat intelligent, and allowed an on-campus P2P filesharing system to be setup so the border routers are constantly hammered by 10,000 people all downloading the same linkin park album. RIT and other major universities also have direct connect hubs that limit usage to on-campus students. And they rely on people who have connections to actually bring in the newest material the latest. Wtih a fiber backbone, who cares who many people are sharing things locally.
The important thing to realize is that 30,000 students and faculty aren't goign to just shut off kazaa. And 2 gb/month is ludacris, especially for an elite private school that costs $30,000+/month to attend.
Universities also host a plethora of hacked nodes that are transformed to XDCCs on IRC channels to server 1337 goods to the hungry masses
Maybe is cornell took better care of securing their library and faculty computers, they wouldn't have sucha huge bill to pay every month. My guess is the majority of the traffic doesn't come from resnet.
Most next generation telcom equipments (softswitches etc.) currently run on Sun Netra servers running solaris, which are really one of the few NEBS compliant choices available. Sun has little competition in the telco-sever business, and its good to see UnitedLinux get their hands dirty.
At my educational institution (Umass Amherst) all i have to do is swipe my student ID and the washer tells me how long it will be until my laundry is ready.
BUT, if this system can call my room/cell phone when my loads are finished, it sounds like a definate improvement. After all, if i leave my clothes in a washer/dryer un finished & unattended for more than a few minutes, then some asshole will come along and dump my clothes on the ground.
So whats the advantage? I'll be alerted when my laundry is finished? This system is only good for video game addicts and other people who have no sense of time . . .
Slashdot Mirror
the missing concept behind solar power is that it doens't have to be distributed. As it is, power distribution system lose a bulk of their power on the way to your house. This is why solar panels are sucha good idea: the power loss is minimal when traveling from your roof to your AC inverter in the basement.
The major problem with solar power is that it isn't economical to buy a solar power system: the cost of the solar cells, inverters, and batteries is too much compared to what the power company would charge you (unless you live in rural areas where power hasn't been connected to your house).
-n
As a full time computer engineering student, I believe that instant messanging would be a terrible thing for the classroom. People would talk about what they will be doing the upcoming weekend, play games, talk abotu other classes, and genereally not pay attention. Only two or three students in a lecture of 120 people usually have a laptop in my electrical/computer engineering class. The real value of IM/email/general internet connectivity comes after class when people need help, need to collaborate, or need to communicate. IM is an invaluable tool for this.
Some classes have mandatory message boards (read: graded) where you have to post your own opinion, then respond to someone elses.
I think if you were to run a real-time system during a lecture, you should have a chatroom where the professor can see what people are typing, so he or a TA could clear up points of confusion. This would avoid the problems of the people who ask questions that everyone in the room already knows. Too often people ask questions that are redundant, time consuming, and can be easiliy anserwed by someone sitting near them. A chatroom would be all inclusive, and that would keep people from feeling excluded.
But, most teaching trends are heading away from the lecture model. The lecture is highly ineffective becuase many professors can't relate to the students, who are seeing the material for the first time. A chat room would allow professors to receive some realtime feedback (like many in class voting systems do without the added distraction). This keeps the professor from teaching to a level that is above most students capabilies.
but i'm all for any system that keeps me focused on the material (read: not on a laptop) and keeps the professor down to earth.
-n
if robots take over 50% of the jobs, the robot industry will need millions of workers who performed these simple to complex tasks to program/design/manufacture their replacements, thus creating a multibillion dollar robot industry which will create millions of new jobs (maybe not 50% as much).
-n
I thought all our fast food workers already were robots.
-n
Companies should be concerned about their employees health without being concerned about their increased productivity as a result. I wouldn't mind this article if the message was "yoga reduces stresss" but in stead the message is "lets work these people an extra hours, but send them yoga so they'll be artificially more productive." Most execs (especially those of large corporations) need to learn how to treat employees like something other than cattle.
Also, Doing anything relaxing for an hour(in the middle of work) increases productivity and intuition. Thats why they invented the lunch break | coffee break | slashdot break !
-n
its actually 2^128 or about 3.403x10^38 address available for IPv6
-n
Don't think that will stop them:
Over 40% of the US population has smoked marajuana, but that doesn't stop the War on Drugs.
If this escalates, some political figure will have to declare "War on P2P filesharing". Unfortunately, probably a quarter of people in the US (probably mostly seniors citizens who vote)don't even know what that is, and consequently won't give a shit about another war on american people.
The US has the third highest incarceration rate in history, after hitler's germany and stalin's russia, mostly due to the drug war.
What P2P users must do is hire some lobyists in washington so they can get what they want. Unfortunately, P2P users like to get something for nothing, so this will never happen . .
-n
I can see it now: thousands of people fleeing the subway when a sensor trips because someone lit up a cigarette underneath one. Now every ignores it when a real NBC attack comes around, just like the tsunami early warning systems in the pacific.
This IS a gov't project, and this one is only getting funding because of people who watch the news too much and are becoming exactly what terrorists want: afraid.
Also, politicians are aching to to jump on the "spend money on homeland security" bandwagon. 2004 is just around the corner . .
-n
Carriers will often time keep their billing systems highly firewalled, so it shouldn't be too much trouble to protect CALEA. There is no excuse for exposing this system. If kevin mitnick was still around, CALEA would be just as recognized as "carnivore"
I've worked on a carrier VoIP solution for CALEA before, and the version i ran actually ran apache for the administrative side. Most telcos run solaris on Sun Netras for most of their applications, so their employees should know how to secure a Solaris box.
Interesting note: Level3 communications used to run a custom version of solaris (encrypted and secured up the ass), but it just made it a pain in the ass to run any additional applications on the server.
-n
Every carrier (land based or cellular) in the united states MUST be FBI compliant. That means if the FBI wants to tap your phone, all they need is a court order. And the carrier must own equipment capable of intercepting calls.
Apparently there are less than 100 wiretaps every year, but compliance was mandated by the FCC sometime in late 2001, early 2002. I know this because I worked on carrier class VoIP equipment that needed to meet this FCC requirement. (We ended writing up a perl script).
This means the FBI might not be able to listen to you speak on your cell phone from across the street, but they can listen sitting at their desk in their office.
-n
RIAA: ignored music piracy until it was too late. now is trying to regain ground.
SCO: Missed the technology boom, now trying to regain ground.
How do EITHER of these mindless organizations think they will succeed?
-n
Peace in the middle east would also solve a good portion of the problem (from an engineering perspective) and it doesn't cost millions of dollars. AND it is immune to hacking.
-n
can you sail upwind in a sailboat? Yes, but thats only becuase you have a keel to keep the boat moving straight. There is no "space keel" , so you'd never be able to sail back towards the sun without momentum gained from another star that is close enough by. -n
First, use visio to design your CORE network. This would include all your high bandwidth, long haul fibre links. Choose a routing protocol (ISIS and OSPF are what most carriers use). If you want to implement newer protocols like MPLS, you still need OSPF or ISIS to run underneath it. Your core network should be layer three only. Avoid using ATM links becuase they add an extra "layer 2.5".
Then, off of each core router, drop gig-e links off to your layer 2/3 routers. If redundancy is a huge issue (which is probabally is), you will probabally have two core layer 3 routers (probably cicso, juniper) with a small number of ports, and two layer 2/3 routers (riverstone, foundry, extreme) with a large number of layer two ports at each major location with gig-e multimode links btween them to provide extra redundancy. Before you go and buy everything, spend time testing this four router configuration (see how long it takes to reroute traffic when links go down). This is especially important if you ever intend on implementing VoIP on your new network.
All critical systems (DNS servers, domain controllers, application servers, VoIP gateways, database servers) should be on the layer 2/3 routers, not on the smaller routers underneath that most "end users" will be connected to throughout each location. Essentially the layer 3 routers are just for core routing, and the layer 2/3 routers will provide most of your functionality.
Once you have everything up and running, use SNMP to monitor your links (most SNMP management software draws your network for you, and it will draw nice broken links when links go down). Good SNMP software will map every network device on you network, as long as you configure SNMP on all your new nodes. Also, make sure you have a really cool NOC (Network Operations Center) with lots of LCD projectors and linux/unix workstations. Make sure you have a good naming convention for all your network links and routers.
Don't deploy at 100% capactiy immediately, run at 10% capacity then work your way up.Many unforseen problems WILL come up (Routers have more bugs than you can imagine). In the end, you will probably have a nice buildingwide, statewide, nationwide, or worldwide modern next-generation (VoIP etc) capapable network.
-n
I personally won't read it because the last thing I want to spend time on when I get home is . . . more work related reading material.
I don't want to read "about myslf", but rather about something much more entertaining that I don't experience every day.
-n
Make sure /. posts where/when you can sign up!
or at least a link to the pictures they DON'T want you to see. (flash mountain [flash mountain.com] anyone ?)
everyone knows some of the most enjoyable pr0n is the funny stuff
-n
Famous AirCrafts in history:
1. Apollo1 - blew up on the launchpad
2. Challenger - blew up in the air
3. Concorde: blew up during takeoff
4. Columbia - blew up landing
5. Helios - "broke apart" (aren't we glad we have next generation renewable energy that doen't blow up/cost lives ? )
-n
Cellular access right now is like (early) dialup:
-slow transfers
-disconnects often
-high latency
-expensive
I have a brand new phone (it says 3G and GPS on the back) but if i use any of these features i get charged up the ass!
my mother can't stay awake for a whole movie, let alone try and learn a "new" OS
Does is disturb anyone else that the CEO's name is Kurtz ? Heart of darkness, apocolypse now, anyone else get the feeling this man is a genius who has become evil from spending too much time in the jungle ?
from the ironic names in the news dept.
The UCITA is a wick pissa! Keep that lawr outta haaavaaad yaaaad!
At University of Massachusetts amherst, i have a total of 4 nics in two boxes. I've run full time ftp servers. All the sudden one day last year, the office of Information Technology decided to start cracking down on bandwidth usage. And me, uploading 15-25 gig/day was one of their first targets. Instead of shutting down, i setup an ftp redirecter that made it look like all the bandwidth i was using went through the student webserver using a simple application level unix program.
Unfortunatly, one day that program crashed and spawned a million broken proccesses, and i got shut off again.
Then i realized all i needed to do is use more nics, register them under different names, and voila, i can run 5 gig/day/nic. Becuase university policy states that content shouldn't be monitored, they can only guess at what i'm serving.
This year, they bought more bandwidth and shut off all the kazaa users who leave kazaa running all day while they are at class. We pay 30 dollars/semester for a 10mbit jack, of which i've been able to download from other universities at up to 9mbits/sec.
Thankfully, umass is somewhat intelligent, and allowed an on-campus P2P filesharing system to be setup so the border routers are constantly hammered by 10,000 people all downloading the same linkin park album. RIT and other major universities also have direct connect hubs that limit usage to on-campus students. And they rely on people who have connections to actually bring in the newest material the latest. Wtih a fiber backbone, who cares who many people are sharing things locally.
The important thing to realize is that 30,000 students and faculty aren't goign to just shut off kazaa. And 2 gb/month is ludacris, especially for an elite private school that costs $30,000+/month to attend.
Universities also host a plethora of hacked nodes that are transformed to XDCCs on IRC channels to server 1337 goods to the hungry masses
Maybe is cornell took better care of securing their library and faculty computers, they wouldn't have sucha huge bill to pay every month. My guess is the majority of the traffic doesn't come from resnet.
Most next generation telcom equipments (softswitches etc.) currently run on Sun Netra servers running solaris, which are really one of the few NEBS compliant choices available. Sun has little competition in the telco-sever business, and its good to see UnitedLinux get their hands dirty.
Bin Laden Liquors is one of my favorites . . .
At my educational institution (Umass Amherst) all i have to do is swipe my student ID and the washer tells me how long it will be until my laundry is ready.
BUT, if this system can call my room/cell phone when my loads are finished, it sounds like a definate improvement. After all, if i leave my clothes in a washer/dryer un finished & unattended for more than a few minutes, then some asshole will come along and dump my clothes on the ground.
So whats the advantage? I'll be alerted when my laundry is finished? This system is only good for video game addicts and other people who have no sense of time . . .