The Mortal Engines series by Philip Reeve is a great take, if not an English language definition of the steampunk genre. Someone had mentioned it to me before and upon getting the the library found it it's actually a series of childrens books.
I've found in my workings with billing systems, that the problem usually isn't in the billing system itself, but with extensions to it, like payments via an IVR, grafting on some sort of web interface to an old school AS/400 based billing system in a horrendous way, or any number of other "bad" ways of extending the system.
For instance, a friend of mine was signed up for automatic credit card billing for one of her bills. The credit card in this case was her debit card. Because of glitch in the switch of the core system some customers who had disconnected service during say a weeks time frame of the switch, those customers continued to have their accounts debited until the end of time. The company didn't have contracts with the old 3rd party automated debiting system, and the company said pretty much that to her. She had to manually stop payment on each months debit until she eventually got a hold of a 3rd party vendor to the credit card billing vendor.
Well, yes. But no. After you get your realtime requirements for your streamer going, you get all the bugs in your encoder patched up, get your own scheduler working, you'd have been better off dumping $40k in better equipment.
Another problem lies in digital conversion. Eventually (not very far down the road) you're going to be broadcasting MPEG2, not NTSC video, but I'm assuming you're somewhere where this applies. When you go down that road, you need to extend your system out further than a video output, and go straight to QAM encoders. Your system at that point will be such a cluster (read: not beowulf) that no one who comes in will understand it.
What I would do (and have done), is have your storage attached over FC or some other SAN solution, have redundant streaming boxes running a RT Kernel with GbE outputs, and run said GbE outputs into something fun from RGB Networks to take the digital back to analog. As far as content scheduling and replication across storage, I'd make sure it was independent from the streamers. With a setup like this, you're good to switch to digital broadcasting someday with minimal future expense (comparatively speaking). There's a million fine points I'm missing, but you should get the drift.
No, they got the parts and did the design on the day before, built it mostly with duct tape after trekking up a mountain on a rainy desert day. The rain was COLD and these guys were dedicated.
All the winning teams at DEFCON this year seemed to have overcome crazy odds to come out on top. It was my first con, but it won't be my last.
Seriously, how much money does slashdot get for every NYT signup? &partner=GOOGLE, yes, I know, but It's getting rediculous. I'll just have to be one of the millions who don't actually read the article and post anyway.
If your goal is to be a cobbler, make the best damn shoes you can make, and they'll far exceed the quality of anything coming out of asia or the carribean.
Maybe you'll sell some of those shoes in your store even (from asia), and make money off that too.
If people are afraid of losing their jobs to foreigners, it sounds more of a personal problem, and y'all could use some self esteem.
From a management perspective, everyone can be replaced, no matter how smart you are. And 9 out of 10 times, the person has no idea how to replace you, and probably will never equal you. Really, your boss could care less if you exist, and prefers it if you didn't, because you're just a pain in his ass. If your boss doesn't think this way, his does.
The broadjump software is great. If you don't want it, uninstall it. As a former tech support rep, I'd love something like this. Most people will go braindead if you ask them what kind of ethernet card they have. Let alone if they have two or some other proprietary network adapter. You have NO IDEA how many people don't know how to even double click and call up and say "The Intarnet is Broke".
I have been working 24 hours solid at my admin job. My brain hurts. Don't give me any pain receptor bullshit. I have evolved pain sensors in my brain from days like this.
I think tommorrow I might ask slashdot "how sambah wurks".
Ignore me. I am the most overworked person in IT today.
htdig has support for msoffice docs and pdf's, and sounds a little cheaper than a google search appliance (although I'm sure a shiny yellow solution does a good job).
I've never used a modem in linux, so I have no idea what the telephony capabilities are.
I tend to agree with most of the replies here however. I tried my hardest to save a tree here and there and the other system administrator here prints EVERYTHING out. Until you can fire all the idiots and be left working alone, I'd skip on the "paperless office" idea and spend more time working on projects.
And the rainforest destruction is caused by vegatarians. It's true! Vegetarians have to eat much more food than than the average omnivore to survive, and that extra food comes from Central and South America where 3rd world peasants are cutting down the rainforests to farm. So, in fact, vegetarians are entirely responsible for global climate changes.
Well, as far as the system I work with, there is no easy way to trend what someone is watching more than once or twice a day. This isn't enough data to build any effective marketing data. You'd need to impliment any sort of change to aquire this data quicker on a set top level, which would require months of rework.
This is all hype, and it quite frankly angers me as a cable engineer. To effectively use this with more than one ad at a time, you'd need dozens of channels running these MPEG streams in real time -- Space that no cable company has to give. The article is filled with terms that mean NOTHING, digital ad insertion has been around for years, and this company has done nothing to perfect the technology. Companies like Terrayon and SeaChange International have been doing this for a long time on a broadcast level (every subscriber in a system) and narrowcast (parts of a system) level for quite some time.
Now, here's what really irked me about the whole thing to begin with: They say you're not tracked by address or any other personal information for that matter. They're not tracking what you watch (which is another engineering nightmare and also reasonably infeasable to do with any precision - an article I should probably write).
If they're not tracking any personal information about you and your viewing habits, WHAT'S THE USE OF THE SYSTEM!?!
Silicon Snake Oil that could only be dreamed up by some marketing idiot.
I don't think code quality is even a concern. For SaG (sh**** and giggles) I watch the customer service department stats at my company, and even the folks just answer the phones suffer after 6 hours. It's probably time we re-think the work week in corporate america, but it'll never happen.
Slashdot Mirror
The Mortal Engines series by Philip Reeve is a great take, if not an English language definition of the steampunk genre. Someone had mentioned it to me before and upon getting the the library found it it's actually a series of childrens books.
I've found in my workings with billing systems, that the problem usually isn't in the billing system itself, but with extensions to it, like payments via an IVR, grafting on some sort of web interface to an old school AS/400 based billing system in a horrendous way, or any number of other "bad" ways of extending the system.
For instance, a friend of mine was signed up for automatic credit card billing for one of her bills. The credit card in this case was her debit card. Because of glitch in the switch of the core system some customers who had disconnected service during say a weeks time frame of the switch, those customers continued to have their accounts debited until the end of time. The company didn't have contracts with the old 3rd party automated debiting system, and the company said pretty much that to her. She had to manually stop payment on each months debit until she eventually got a hold of a 3rd party vendor to the credit card billing vendor.
Well, yes. But no. After you get your realtime requirements for your streamer going, you get all the bugs in your encoder patched up, get your own scheduler working, you'd have been better off dumping $40k in better equipment.
Another problem lies in digital conversion. Eventually (not very far down the road) you're going to be broadcasting MPEG2, not NTSC video, but I'm assuming you're somewhere where this applies. When you go down that road, you need to extend your system out further than a video output, and go straight to QAM encoders. Your system at that point will be such a cluster (read: not beowulf) that no one who comes in will understand it.
What I would do (and have done), is have your storage attached over FC or some other SAN solution, have redundant streaming boxes running a RT Kernel with GbE outputs, and run said GbE outputs into something fun from RGB Networks to take the digital back to analog. As far as content scheduling and replication across storage, I'd make sure it was independent from the streamers. With a setup like this, you're good to switch to digital broadcasting someday with minimal future expense (comparatively speaking). There's a million fine points I'm missing, but you should get the drift.
This isn't a weekend project.
Did anyone read the headline and think of Robocop 2?
No, they got the parts and did the design on the day before, built it mostly with duct tape after trekking up a mountain on a rainy desert day. The rain was COLD and these guys were dedicated. All the winning teams at DEFCON this year seemed to have overcome crazy odds to come out on top. It was my first con, but it won't be my last.
I'm assuming it's Multistate Anti-Terrorism InfoRmation eXchange, but you know what happens when you assume.
Next thing you know you'll be playing stratego with all the other nerds.
That's insane. Isn't the cost of living in Japan like 187% of what it is here?
Actually, the public owns the lines. Do some research.
Seriously, how much money does slashdot get for every NYT signup? &partner=GOOGLE, yes, I know, but It's getting rediculous. I'll just have to be one of the millions who don't actually read the article and post anyway.
Topic is enough said. G-Dub is actually the anti-fascist, who will be our savior?
There's nothing lame about it. I mean, wouldn't YOU love to make a living from doing that?!?
If your goal is to be a cobbler, make the best damn shoes you can make, and they'll far exceed the quality of anything coming out of asia or the carribean. Maybe you'll sell some of those shoes in your store even (from asia), and make money off that too. If people are afraid of losing their jobs to foreigners, it sounds more of a personal problem, and y'all could use some self esteem.
From a management perspective, everyone can be replaced, no matter how smart you are. And 9 out of 10 times, the person has no idea how to replace you, and probably will never equal you. Really, your boss could care less if you exist, and prefers it if you didn't, because you're just a pain in his ass. If your boss doesn't think this way, his does.
I've always heard "Liquor, you brought her!"
The broadjump software is great. If you don't want it, uninstall it. As a former tech support rep, I'd love something like this. Most people will go braindead if you ask them what kind of ethernet card they have. Let alone if they have two or some other proprietary network adapter. You have NO IDEA how many people don't know how to even double click and call up and say "The Intarnet is Broke".
I have been working 24 hours solid at my admin job. My brain hurts. Don't give me any pain receptor bullshit. I have evolved pain sensors in my brain from days like this.
I think tommorrow I might ask slashdot "how sambah wurks".
Ignore me. I am the most overworked person in IT today.
and the tape is where?
htdig has support for msoffice docs and pdf's, and sounds a little cheaper than a google search appliance (although I'm sure a shiny yellow solution does a good job).
I've never used a modem in linux, so I have no idea what the telephony capabilities are.
I tend to agree with most of the replies here however. I tried my hardest to save a tree here and there and the other system administrator here prints EVERYTHING out. Until you can fire all the idiots and be left working alone, I'd skip on the "paperless office" idea and spend more time working on projects.
And the rainforest destruction is caused by vegatarians. It's true! Vegetarians have to eat much more food than than the average omnivore to survive, and that extra food comes from Central and South America where 3rd world peasants are cutting down the rainforests to farm. So, in fact, vegetarians are entirely responsible for global climate changes.
Well, as far as the system I work with, there is no easy way to trend what someone is watching more than once or twice a day. This isn't enough data to build any effective marketing data. You'd need to impliment any sort of change to aquire this data quicker on a set top level, which would require months of rework.
This is all hype, and it quite frankly angers me as a cable engineer. To effectively use this with more than one ad at a time, you'd need dozens of channels running these MPEG streams in real time -- Space that no cable company has to give. The article is filled with terms that mean NOTHING, digital ad insertion has been around for years, and this company has done nothing to perfect the technology. Companies like Terrayon and SeaChange International have been doing this for a long time on a broadcast level (every subscriber in a system) and narrowcast (parts of a system) level for quite some time.
Now, here's what really irked me about the whole thing to begin with: They say you're not tracked by address or any other personal information for that matter. They're not tracking what you watch (which is another engineering nightmare and also reasonably infeasable to do with any precision - an article I should probably write).
If they're not tracking any personal information about you and your viewing habits, WHAT'S THE USE OF THE SYSTEM!?!
Silicon Snake Oil that could only be dreamed up by some marketing idiot.
I don't think code quality is even a concern. For SaG (sh**** and giggles) I watch the customer service department stats at my company, and even the folks just answer the phones suffer after 6 hours. It's probably time we re-think the work week in corporate america, but it'll never happen.
I remember some MIT students doing this years ago. IBM are just slow children at play in this case.