I really like this idea. Wireless equipment providers take note, there's a possible market opportunity here.
A microcell base station sized to cover only the theater or specific theatre rooms
A method to notify patrons and employees when they enter (SMS message or call upon entry)
A method for patrons and employees to authorize call-through (callback number to verify silent-mode)
A choice of options for unauthorized calls (announcement, ring-back, out-of-area, busy, etc.)
An optional method to limit actions per theatre so calls before and after a show are handled normally
Revenue options for calls that are cut through or placed during the show (otherwise why the theatres buy?)
...
A threater advertising this type of system would be more attractive to those that don't like their shows interrupted by rude patrons. Such attendees would also probably show more indignation towards a rude patron who chooses to receive audible calls anyway. They would be more likely to insist that the ushers throw such a person out, discouraging repeat offenders.
1. Develop theater base-station
2. Create brand-awareness
3. Market to theaters
4. Profit! Note that there's no elipsis between the first and last steps.
I suspect it would be a waste of your time. Lets look at a bit of history.
There used to be a kernel-space HTTP server. It was integrated into the kernel for a specific reason: zero-copy access to the network interface memory. It was fast and relatively feature-poor. If it crashed (fortunately, a rare occurance), you got a kernel panic.
Along came a user-space, zero-copy HTTP server. It was faster and had a few more features to boot. Being a user-space program, if it crashed, you got a core-dump. It could also be run in a chroot jail, a gigantic step more secure than running in ring-0.
Two lessons can be read from this:
1. Don't integrate something with the kernel unless there is a specific advantage you hope to gain from it. Will making a JVM part of the kernel really speed it up? Are you sure?
2. Don't under-estimate the speed of a properly designed user-space Linux program. The kernel developers have done a magnificant job tuning the kernel and providing APIs for performance-critical apps.
A point worth noting when making such comparisons is that public key cryptography requires more bits than symetric cryptography for equivalent security levels. A 1024 bit public key is considered by most scholars to be roughly equivalent to a 128 bit symetric cipher key. In a symetric cipher, every possible bit combination is a valid key. In PKI, you've got a smaller starting set, since certain components must be prime. Not all bit combinations would make a valid key.
The innovative 100 MIPS 32-bit RISC design delivers compact code and exceptional price/performance at low power consumption. An 8-kbyte on-chip cache helps to take full advantage of the CPU performance.
It runs at a cycle frequency of 100 MHz, giving a peak performance of 100 MIPS.
Maybe its just me, but it looks like a 100 MIPS CPU to me!
Additionally, since it has a built-in MMU, the normal PC-centric view of the FSB being the bottleneck for memory doesn't apply. It supports PC100 SDRAM at 100MHz. Its just generating that 100MHz using a PLL and an external 20MHz clock.
(Said kind of slow, like I'm talking to a 3rd grader) Think of it as a "System on a Chip" (lets call it an SoC) where the northbridge and southbridge chipsets are integrated into the core CPU. The FSB you're envisioning is actually entirely internal to the chip. All you have is the interfaces that would normally come out of the chipsets.
I guess I'll just bite at all the flamebait that gets thrown my way...
First, imagine that you have a bootload of cash that you don't know what to do with.
Next, imagine this:
You wake up in the morning and smell the coffee brewing in your networked coffeemaker. Its smart enough to know not to make coffee if you're not home, or make it a bit later during the weekends. Unless you've got something scheduled earlier than normal on a Saturday morning and your home controller told it to start the brew a bit earlier.
You stumble down to the kitchen, pour yourself a cup and reach into the refrigerator for some milk and english muffins. The refrigerator scans the muffin bag as you pull it out and tells your toaster what type of bread to expect. You pop in both halves of the english muffin and put the remaining ones back in the fridge.
You notice that the milk is getting low. Since the fridge also scanned the milk as you took it out, it popped that item up on the door display. With one touch, you can either add milk to your grocery list, or scheduled delivery of a new gallon from your local online grocer such as Publix Direct.
All it takes is a little imagination. These little things aren't extremely useful by themselves, and are definitely not necessities, but they all add just a little to the quality of life. As the rich get richer, you'll see more and more smart-homes like the above appearing. As that happens, the technology to enable it will get cheaper and cheaper, enabling those slightly less affluent to afford it as well.
TVs weren't always considered necessities... but cable is now considered one of the basics when calculating the poverty level.
I may just be responding to flamebait here, but...
A Beowolfe cluster is designed to disribute processing power over several CPUs with only modest bandwidth connecting them. This little bugger is optimized for network connectivity, which is good. However, at an estimated MIPS of only 100, you're distributing your Beowolfe load to a bunch of underpowered ants. Considering that you'd have additional overhead in distributing the workload to all the CPUs, it would take an army of them to surpass the processing power of a single Opteron CPU, which, incidentally, will also run the standard 2.4 kernel...
How many MIPS are the Opterons estimated to debute at?
The overall approach is one suited for connectivity rather than computation, supports data transfer rates of up to 200 Mbit/s (100 Mbit Ethernet full duplex), as well as a wide range of network device applications.
At only 100MIPS, I wouldn't want to use it in a laptop/notebook. Intel, AMD and Transmeta make better chipc for that. This one wouldn't have the computational power.
Great technology, yes. It would make a rockin' embedded system, and could serve up static web pages fast enough to saturate a 100MB pipe. I'll be keeping an eye on it for any future applications I can dream of..
Combined with another vulnerability, sure. But then this is just another way of transporting or hiding shellcode.
If you'll read your comment again, you said "run" mplayer2 bad.mp3. If you have the power to run arbitrary commands, why not just download and run your own exploit instead of having mplayer2 run some shellcode out of an MP3?
This cannot be a self-propagating worm ala Nimda or Code Red. Simply put, it requires user interaction. A user must browse to an infected folder in order for the shellcode to be executed.
Since a properly administered server is not also a client, it should not be affected, even if a rogue client dumps an infected MP3 onto one of its shares. That is until the admin logs in via TermServ and starts poking around.. but that's still user interaction.
Hmm.. I wonder. If a person does a search of MP3's, does viewing it in the search window run the exploit? I bet it does..
Long ago, I've decided that Windows 2000 was going to be my last mainline MS operating system. Since Linux is making great strides towards usability on the desktop, it looks like I'll never have to rely on having XP on my PC. Now, I just have to make sure I keep Winamp current along with all my other applications.
However, this brings up an interesting question. Short of modifying the registry entries in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, is there any way to avoid all the cutsie stuff MS has been doing with file associations? I seem to remember a Win95/NT/2k shell extension that did something similar to the MS code that's being exploited. It popped up an additional property sheet with all the ID3 tag info. Could someone use that instead of the Windows shell without severely hacking the registry?
It also reopens an old sore. If the Windows Media Player were installed as an "application," not as "part of the operating system," this shell code would not be needed until WMP is installed. Those smart enough to search for better media-playback solutions would not be subjected to this vulnerability. Thanks, Microsoft! DOJ, are you paying attention?
And one more observation: now that MP3 files can carry shellcode, the virus scanners will have to start scanning them too. More processor overhead, longer scantimes, moan, gripe,...
Anyone remember rocketmail? I had a great email address on rocketmail about a decade ago. Yahoo bought them out, and urged everyone to switch. I didn't.. until they forced it. One day I logged in and my rocketmail account was just a profile under my Yahoo account. They said I could receive mail on it, but it would just be forwarded to my Yahoo mail. Grrr!
I still use Yahoo, but had to compromise on my email handle since the one that I had in rocketmail was already taken. Now, I'm going to start using my own domain for email. They make a good portal, but they're rather obtrusive. And they haven't learned yet how annoying popups are to their users...
Re:Waste processing?
on
Tornado in a Can
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I would love to see this used on process mechanically reclaimed meat. I understand that it breaks things up to the molecular level. This means it would break apart those nasty prions that survive autoclaving. Note that prions are organic molecular compounds, meaning that they consist of more than one molecule.
I can no longer donate blood due to the FDA's concern about nvCJ. All for being in the U.S. Army in Europe during the 80's when they imported their beef from the UK.
The largest reason for dark fiber is the emergence of Dense Wave Division Multiplexing aka DWDM. In simple terms, it allows one fiber to carry many times the normal bandwidth by combining different wavelengths of light at the source and splitting them out at the destination.
This isn't that the bandwidth isn't necessary. It isn't corporate profiteering. Its simply VCs investing in infrastructure without realizing that technology advances would soon render it useless.
Back when the Intel 4004 was the cool new thing and electronic calculators were first appearing, my father told me of one such product.
His company had just purchased one of these new calculators with a red LED display. They came in three models, ranging from around $50 to $200. The more expensive models had more features (buttons) available, such as square roots and log/exp functions. His company got the cheapest model.
My dad is the type that likes to know how things work (I inherited that from him). So, he immediately disassembled it, only to discover that even the cheapest model had all the features. There were just no buttons on the face for accessing them. Well, a drill, a toothpick and a little glue, and a magic marker later, they had the expensive version!
Yeah, it almost certainly voided any warranty, and they didn't have any stupid DMCA laws back then, but it worked.
Re:IDE Raid, inexpensive but major hassle
on
IDE RAID Examined
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I've got a friend that has a FileZerver NAS device. Does RAID0/1/5/JBOD on up to 12 IDE devices. As easy to use as a toaster.
He initially bought it with six 100GB drives, giving him a formatted capacity of 477GB using RAID5. Ripped his CD collection, restored all his scanned images and textbooks and filled the sucker up to about 75% capacity.
The only problem is that he used only 3 of the 6 channels to connect his 6 drives; 3 as master, 3 as slave. One controller had a momentary glitch and 2 of the 6 drives dropped out of the RAID. Can anyone tell me what happened next? Anyone? Anyone?
After a bit of investigation, we found out the Zerver sled runs a version of Linux and uses the same md drivers modern Linux distros use. We pulled the drives out, and one by one slapped them into a spare Linux PC to update the superblocks. Brought it back up, and after a 24-hour fsck, the system was back up and stable. And each drive had its own IDE channel!!!
One application I've heard about is a VOM/tester that used an FPGA for its main processing unit. When you switched the unit's function from one application to another, it would reload the FPGA with the appropriate 'stuff' and run.
I don't recall the manufacturer, but seem to remember they're no longer around.
Given: After a period of time, Linux kernels are no longer supported by the majro distros.
Given: After a period of time, Microsoft operating systems are no longer supported by Microsoft.
Given: Windows 2000 will no longer be supported by Microsoft in about 2-1/2 years.
Given: The study was for five years.
Since the front end costs are greater for Windows 2000, their study claims to show that, over five years, the backend costs (administration) overcome the frontend savings.
Now, shave off the backend by cutting the case study to half the length: the front end costs become a much more significant portion of the TCO. </obvious>
In OSX, do you still drag a floppy or CD-ROM to the trash in order to eject it?
Re:autoratation
on
Fanwing Planes?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
And yes; it's as reliable as the lift you get from a fixed wing. In fact, Rotorcraft are classified into two groups: helicopters and gyroplanes. Gyroplanes are esentially like weight-shift hang-gliders except that they have a rotory wing controlled by a stick instead of a movable wing. They require forward movement (i.e. an engine and propeller) to provide the auto-rotational lift on their rotary wing.
Re:autoratation
on
Fanwing Planes?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I went through military flight training in the late 80's. We would autorotate to the ground, not only in UH-1H (Hueys), but the little TH-55's as well (military name for a Hughes/Schweitzer 300).
There's two basic flavors of autorotation; from a hover and from forward flight. There's a whole range of the flight envelope that is unrecoverable, basically anything low and slow. Autorotation from a hover is simple. You let the thing settle towards the ground and just pull up before you collide with it. From forward flight is when you have to declutch and "glide" down with a flare at the end.
The TH-55's were light enough that we could pretty much stop our forward momentum before touching down, but the Hueys, being a bit heavier, would land with a fair amount of forward momentum left. They strapped these inch-thick steel bars to the bottoms of the skids for us students to grind off on the landing strips. Hours of fun!
You'll find that a large chunk of time is spent in system libraries that you can do nothing about, and maybe a greater chunk spent in kernel mode.
and moments later:
The crux of this argument is not to choose a language based on its speed. Most of the time it just doesn't matter,....
If a large chunk of the time is spent in the libraries of the high-level language you've chosen, perhaps that an indication that you've made an erroneous choice.
I'm reminded of an ugly piece of bloatware that our division's tool group came out with. There were numerous non-standard behaviours, constant crashes and odd corruptions. Their platform choice: VB6 with DCOM and MSMQ. They were trying to write an enterprise-quality distributed app with a toy language. It sucked!! And, to prove the point, when asked about the bugs, their standard response was, "It's a library problem; I can't do anything about it!"
This guy's "guide" isn't worthy of a/. posting. This guy is just an overly opinionated blowhard. Show me a meaningful article with some real tips on how to make secure code.
Other systems such as the playstation2 or the gamecube have been sucessful because they have a large amount of propreitary games and use propreuitary hardware. For instance you can't buy a gamecube or playstation2 to and run linux on it, but on the x-box you can.
Its good to see someone doing a complete cost analysis, but I have a question. Why would you need to have someone lurking in the boards for the next eight years?
I can see being heavily involved on the boards during development. I can see it too if you're doing a feature upgrade that involves upgrading the engine or using new capabilities of it. However, if they're really currently running a system that's a generation old, I'm guessing that that system is rather poorly suupported today. I'm also guessing that it doesn't need much support.. development ended several years ago. Maintenance support is much less than integration and first deployment.
At some point, all products reach end-of-life and require personalized support. Fortunately, by the time that happens, the products that use them have been deployed so long that they're either replaced or the customers have been happy with the stability and feature-level and don't want to touch it. There are still some holdouts that are sticking with their favorite 24x80 text editor on DOS simply because, "It ain't broke!"
Instead of $8000/yr for the next eight years, I'd use a logarithmic scale that tapers down rapidly as the bugs are hammered out in the version you're using and active development shifts on to the newer versions. There will simply be less and less things for your support engineer to watch the boards for.
Slashdot Mirror
A microcell base station sized to cover only the theater or specific theatre rooms
A method to notify patrons and employees when they enter (SMS message or call upon entry)
A method for patrons and employees to authorize call-through (callback number to verify silent-mode)
A choice of options for unauthorized calls (announcement, ring-back, out-of-area, busy, etc.)
An optional method to limit actions per theatre so calls before and after a show are handled normally
Revenue options for calls that are cut through or placed during the show (otherwise why the theatres buy?)
...
A threater advertising this type of system would be more attractive to those that don't like their shows interrupted by rude patrons. Such attendees would also probably show more indignation towards a rude patron who chooses to receive audible calls anyway. They would be more likely to insist that the ushers throw such a person out, discouraging repeat offenders.
1. Develop theater base-station
2. Create brand-awareness
3. Market to theaters
4. Profit!
Note that there's no elipsis between the first and last steps.
I suspect it would be a waste of your time. Lets look at a bit of history.
There used to be a kernel-space HTTP server. It was integrated into the kernel for a specific reason: zero-copy access to the network interface memory. It was fast and relatively feature-poor. If it crashed (fortunately, a rare occurance), you got a kernel panic.
Along came a user-space, zero-copy HTTP server. It was faster and had a few more features to boot. Being a user-space program, if it crashed, you got a core-dump. It could also be run in a chroot jail, a gigantic step more secure than running in ring-0.
Two lessons can be read from this:
1. Don't integrate something with the kernel unless there is a specific advantage you hope to gain from it. Will making a JVM part of the kernel really speed it up? Are you sure?
2. Don't under-estimate the speed of a properly designed user-space Linux program. The kernel developers have done a magnificant job tuning the kernel and providing APIs for performance-critical apps.
- Its 2048bit encryption. Thats 2 megabits.
ahem..*cough*.. Kilobits!! *cough*
Excuse me.
A point worth noting when making such comparisons is that public key cryptography requires more bits than symetric cryptography for equivalent security levels. A 1024 bit public key is considered by most scholars to be roughly equivalent to a 128 bit symetric cipher key. In a symetric cipher, every possible bit combination is a valid key. In PKI, you've got a smaller starting set, since certain components must be prime. Not all bit combinations would make a valid key.
From the second link in the article:
Performance:
The innovative 100 MIPS 32-bit RISC design delivers compact code and exceptional price/performance at low power consumption. An 8-kbyte on-chip cache helps to take full advantage of the CPU performance.
Or, from the top of Chapter 2 [PDF] of the Designer's Reference
It runs at a cycle frequency of 100 MHz, giving a peak performance of 100 MIPS.
Maybe its just me, but it looks like a 100 MIPS CPU to me!
Additionally, since it has a built-in MMU, the normal PC-centric view of the FSB being the bottleneck for memory doesn't apply. It supports PC100 SDRAM at 100MHz. Its just generating that 100MHz using a PLL and an external 20MHz clock.
(Said kind of slow, like I'm talking to a 3rd grader) Think of it as a "System on a Chip" (lets call it an SoC) where the northbridge and southbridge chipsets are integrated into the core CPU. The FSB you're envisioning is actually entirely internal to the chip. All you have is the interfaces that would normally come out of the chipsets.
I guess I'll just bite at all the flamebait that gets thrown my way...
First, imagine that you have a bootload of cash that you don't know what to do with.
Next, imagine this:
You wake up in the morning and smell the coffee brewing in your networked coffeemaker. Its smart enough to know not to make coffee if you're not home, or make it a bit later during the weekends. Unless you've got something scheduled earlier than normal on a Saturday morning and your home controller told it to start the brew a bit earlier.
You stumble down to the kitchen, pour yourself a cup and reach into the refrigerator for some milk and english muffins. The refrigerator scans the muffin bag as you pull it out and tells your toaster what type of bread to expect. You pop in both halves of the english muffin and put the remaining ones back in the fridge.
You notice that the milk is getting low. Since the fridge also scanned the milk as you took it out, it popped that item up on the door display. With one touch, you can either add milk to your grocery list, or scheduled delivery of a new gallon from your local online grocer such as Publix Direct.
All it takes is a little imagination. These little things aren't extremely useful by themselves, and are definitely not necessities, but they all add just a little to the quality of life. As the rich get richer, you'll see more and more smart-homes like the above appearing. As that happens, the technology to enable it will get cheaper and cheaper, enabling those slightly less affluent to afford it as well.
TVs weren't always considered necessities... but cable is now considered one of the basics when calculating the poverty level.
I may just be responding to flamebait here, but...
A Beowolfe cluster is designed to disribute processing power over several CPUs with only modest bandwidth connecting them. This little bugger is optimized for network connectivity, which is good. However, at an estimated MIPS of only 100, you're distributing your Beowolfe load to a bunch of underpowered ants. Considering that you'd have additional overhead in distributing the workload to all the CPUs, it would take an army of them to surpass the processing power of a single Opteron CPU, which, incidentally, will also run the standard 2.4 kernel...
How many MIPS are the Opterons estimated to debute at?
Also from the article..
The overall approach is one suited for connectivity rather than computation, supports data transfer rates of up to 200 Mbit/s (100 Mbit Ethernet full duplex), as well as a wide range of network device applications.
At only 100MIPS, I wouldn't want to use it in a laptop/notebook. Intel, AMD and Transmeta make better chipc for that. This one wouldn't have the computational power.
Great technology, yes. It would make a rockin' embedded system, and could serve up static web pages fast enough to saturate a 100MB pipe. I'll be keeping an eye on it for any future applications I can dream of..
Combined with another vulnerability, sure. But then this is just another way of transporting or hiding shellcode.
If you'll read your comment again, you said "run" mplayer2 bad.mp3. If you have the power to run arbitrary commands, why not just download and run your own exploit instead of having mplayer2 run some shellcode out of an MP3?
This cannot be a self-propagating worm ala Nimda or Code Red. Simply put, it requires user interaction. A user must browse to an infected folder in order for the shellcode to be executed.
Since a properly administered server is not also a client, it should not be affected, even if a rogue client dumps an infected MP3 onto one of its shares. That is until the admin logs in via TermServ and starts poking around.. but that's still user interaction.
Hmm.. I wonder. If a person does a search of MP3's, does viewing it in the search window run the exploit? I bet it does..
Long ago, I've decided that Windows 2000 was going to be my last mainline MS operating system. Since Linux is making great strides towards usability on the desktop, it looks like I'll never have to rely on having XP on my PC. Now, I just have to make sure I keep Winamp current along with all my other applications.
...
However, this brings up an interesting question. Short of modifying the registry entries in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, is there any way to avoid all the cutsie stuff MS has been doing with file associations? I seem to remember a Win95/NT/2k shell extension that did something similar to the MS code that's being exploited. It popped up an additional property sheet with all the ID3 tag info. Could someone use that instead of the Windows shell without severely hacking the registry?
It also reopens an old sore. If the Windows Media Player were installed as an "application," not as "part of the operating system," this shell code would not be needed until WMP is installed. Those smart enough to search for better media-playback solutions would not be subjected to this vulnerability. Thanks, Microsoft! DOJ, are you paying attention?
And one more observation: now that MP3 files can carry shellcode, the virus scanners will have to start scanning them too. More processor overhead, longer scantimes, moan, gripe,
Anyone remember rocketmail? I had a great email address on rocketmail about a decade ago. Yahoo bought them out, and urged everyone to switch. I didn't.. until they forced it. One day I logged in and my rocketmail account was just a profile under my Yahoo account. They said I could receive mail on it, but it would just be forwarded to my Yahoo mail. Grrr!
I still use Yahoo, but had to compromise on my email handle since the one that I had in rocketmail was already taken. Now, I'm going to start using my own domain for email. They make a good portal, but they're rather obtrusive. And they haven't learned yet how annoying popups are to their users...
I would love to see this used on process mechanically reclaimed meat. I understand that it breaks things up to the molecular level. This means it would break apart those nasty prions that survive autoclaving. Note that prions are organic molecular compounds, meaning that they consist of more than one molecule.
I can no longer donate blood due to the FDA's concern about nvCJ. All for being in the U.S. Army in Europe during the 80's when they imported their beef from the UK.
The largest reason for dark fiber is the emergence of Dense Wave Division Multiplexing aka DWDM. In simple terms, it allows one fiber to carry many times the normal bandwidth by combining different wavelengths of light at the source and splitting them out at the destination.
This isn't that the bandwidth isn't necessary. It isn't corporate profiteering. Its simply VCs investing in infrastructure without realizing that technology advances would soon render it useless.
Back when the Intel 4004 was the cool new thing and electronic calculators were first appearing, my father told me of one such product.
His company had just purchased one of these new calculators with a red LED display. They came in three models, ranging from around $50 to $200. The more expensive models had more features (buttons) available, such as square roots and log/exp functions. His company got the cheapest model.
My dad is the type that likes to know how things work (I inherited that from him). So, he immediately disassembled it, only to discover that even the cheapest model had all the features. There were just no buttons on the face for accessing them. Well, a drill, a toothpick and a little glue, and a magic marker later, they had the expensive version!
Yeah, it almost certainly voided any warranty, and they didn't have any stupid DMCA laws back then, but it worked.
I've got a friend that has a FileZerver NAS device. Does RAID0/1/5/JBOD on up to 12 IDE devices. As easy to use as a toaster.
He initially bought it with six 100GB drives, giving him a formatted capacity of 477GB using RAID5. Ripped his CD collection, restored all his scanned images and textbooks and filled the sucker up to about 75% capacity.
The only problem is that he used only 3 of the 6 channels to connect his 6 drives; 3 as master, 3 as slave. One controller had a momentary glitch and 2 of the 6 drives dropped out of the RAID. Can anyone tell me what happened next? Anyone? Anyone?
After a bit of investigation, we found out the Zerver sled runs a version of Linux and uses the same md drivers modern Linux distros use. We pulled the drives out, and one by one slapped them into a spare Linux PC to update the superblocks. Brought it back up, and after a 24-hour fsck, the system was back up and stable. And each drive had its own IDE channel!!!
BTW, may I recommend the following optimization to your sig...
2 87578439ddlbx'|dc
echo '[q]sa[0=alc%Plc/ddlbx]sb256sc3135071790101768542
In fact, since you're not using extended ASCII, you could use 127sc, or even base c off of the highest value you're using plus one.
Yeah, I know.. I really need one! *sigh*
One application I've heard about is a VOM/tester that used an FPGA for its main processing unit. When you switched the unit's function from one application to another, it would reload the FPGA with the appropriate 'stuff' and run.
I don't recall the manufacturer, but seem to remember they're no longer around.
Given: After a period of time, Linux kernels are no longer supported by the majro distros.
Given: After a period of time, Microsoft operating systems are no longer supported by Microsoft.
Given: Windows 2000 will no longer be supported by Microsoft in about 2-1/2 years.
Given: The study was for five years.
Since the front end costs are greater for Windows 2000, their study claims to show that, over five years, the backend costs (administration) overcome the frontend savings.
Now, shave off the backend by cutting the case study to half the length: the front end costs become a much more significant portion of the TCO. </obvious>
Draw your own conclusions...
Oh for crying out loud, please stick to Pascal if the intricacies of C are beyond your reach. You might also enjoy Visual Basic or HyperCard.
Well put! And worth viewing from other than an AC.
Speaking of counter-intuitive...
In OSX, do you still drag a floppy or CD-ROM to the trash in order to eject it?
And yes; it's as reliable as the lift you get from a fixed wing. In fact, Rotorcraft are classified into two groups: helicopters and gyroplanes. Gyroplanes are esentially like weight-shift hang-gliders except that they have a rotory wing controlled by a stick instead of a movable wing. They require forward movement (i.e. an engine and propeller) to provide the auto-rotational lift on their rotary wing.
I went through military flight training in the late 80's. We would autorotate to the ground, not only in UH-1H (Hueys), but the little TH-55's as well (military name for a Hughes/Schweitzer 300).
There's two basic flavors of autorotation; from a hover and from forward flight. There's a whole range of the flight envelope that is unrecoverable, basically anything low and slow. Autorotation from a hover is simple. You let the thing settle towards the ground and just pull up before you collide with it. From forward flight is when you have to declutch and "glide" down with a flare at the end.
The TH-55's were light enough that we could pretty much stop our forward momentum before touching down, but the Hueys, being a bit heavier, would land with a fair amount of forward momentum left. They strapped these inch-thick steel bars to the bottoms of the skids for us students to grind off on the landing strips. Hours of fun!
Here's another contradiction:
....
/. posting. This guy is just an overly opinionated blowhard. Show me a meaningful article with some real tips on how to make secure code.
You'll find that a large chunk of time is spent in system libraries that you can do nothing about, and maybe a greater chunk spent in kernel mode.
and moments later:
The crux of this argument is not to choose a language based on its speed. Most of the time it just doesn't matter,
If a large chunk of the time is spent in the libraries of the high-level language you've chosen, perhaps that an indication that you've made an erroneous choice.
I'm reminded of an ugly piece of bloatware that our division's tool group came out with. There were numerous non-standard behaviours, constant crashes and odd corruptions. Their platform choice: VB6 with DCOM and MSMQ. They were trying to write an enterprise-quality distributed app with a toy language. It sucked!! And, to prove the point, when asked about the bugs, their standard response was, "It's a library problem; I can't do anything about it!"
This guy's "guide" isn't worthy of a
Other systems such as the playstation2 or the gamecube have been sucessful because they have a large amount of propreitary games and use propreuitary hardware. For instance you can't buy a gamecube or playstation2 to and run linux on it, but on the x-box you can.
Actually, you can run linux on a PS2. Here's the FAQ.
Its good to see someone doing a complete cost analysis, but I have a question. Why would you need to have someone lurking in the boards for the next eight years?
I can see being heavily involved on the boards during development. I can see it too if you're doing a feature upgrade that involves upgrading the engine or using new capabilities of it. However, if they're really currently running a system that's a generation old, I'm guessing that that system is rather poorly suupported today. I'm also guessing that it doesn't need much support.. development ended several years ago. Maintenance support is much less than integration and first deployment.
At some point, all products reach end-of-life and require personalized support. Fortunately, by the time that happens, the products that use them have been deployed so long that they're either replaced or the customers have been happy with the stability and feature-level and don't want to touch it. There are still some holdouts that are sticking with their favorite 24x80 text editor on DOS simply because, "It ain't broke!"
Instead of $8000/yr for the next eight years, I'd use a logarithmic scale that tapers down rapidly as the bugs are hammered out in the version you're using and active development shifts on to the newer versions. There will simply be less and less things for your support engineer to watch the boards for.