... it sems like that part of the problem isn't necessarily fitting in more transistors and complexities, but trying to do it in roughly the same size chips. Like personally, I wouldn't care if the chips got substantially bigger if that would help with this power leaking problem and made them easier and cheaper to build for the companies.
--on another side though, is it really "the chip" problem, or is it a 'computer" problem? Multiple processors still seem to have a long way to go to be more universally used and taken advantage of by the code itself. Computers at the consumer and prosumer level are rarely dual, single chipped models are still the most common, I think having a cheap 4 processor model that took advantage of having the multiples, plus having a LOT more ram being standard,combined with better coding will have us enjoying better computers for years to come.
On cars there's different ways to do it, have seen it comparing hotrods. Can have a big detroit machine of roughly 300 cubes has one or two 4 barrels, and I've seen a friends old v-12 ferrari boxer of roughly 300 cubes (hazy memory here now) have 6 two barrels. Most impressive. Guess which one had the better horsepower to weight ratio? Of course, one costs a LOT more money, well, ya, superior engineering works that way, and it just depends on exactly what kind of machine you want, what it's designed for, the task should determine that more than anything else..
--don't know about IT contracting, but in construction we just do a pay as you build deal. You set a level of completetion on the project, you get paid to that point, and so on. It works out OK then. Also make sure to get finite details of what is actually required in advance written down and that the client understands that changes and additions will cost substantially more. I'd say ion your case that bi-weekly payment plateaus would be probably safe enough if it really is this multiple-month project, but that really depends on how much money you could stand to lose if the foreign company just decided to not pay you or whatever.
I habe a basic rule of thumb I use just generally speaking, try to spec a job as accurately as possible, then add 15% to the bid figure, this I call the stupid factor, or you could term it the murphy's law factor, it seems it's quite common for there to be the possibility of changes, slowdowns, customer changes, hard to find materials or increased unexpected cost of materials, etc, etc, "whatevers" that seem to creep into larger projects. That 15% comes in handy sometimes, tell ya whut! I bet this is similar in IT contracting.
--all you have to be is in any area that is infested with criminal alien invaders. The payphones are used extensively because they purchase prepaid international calling cards. They also get jammed all the time from the same criminals stuffing them with non US coins in an attempt to beat the cost by using cheaper foreign money.
As to the wireless concept, good for them, at least they are trying to come up with something useful, a new business model. Now I *prefer* to see wireless more take off as enthusiasts making their own nets, but it's all good until the bandwith get's hijacked completely by the larger corporations. It's a race now I guess.
--ok, this makes sense. Hmm, seems like a nice business though if there was a machine that was affordable by at least some of the more upscale white box shops where they could do this as a service, perhaps one of those boxes with the integrated gloves. You put the hard drive in there, evacuate all the air-and dust presumably then- replace the platters, then re seal it back up. Just a thought. It sounds like a decent idea if those engineering details could be solved somewhat cheaply. I honestly don't know how the various data recovery outfits do this currently, maybe they already do similar? I had a neighbor try to get a price on recovering some financial data from a failed drive and it was way expensive they were telling me, so expensive they didn't do it but I have forgotten what they said they were quoted for the attempt.
--couldn't you get just another dedicated computer for archiving and burn the data to a cd or dvd? Maybe a little slower but won't it last longer? the blanks are cheap, last a long time, when it comes to to re-archive I imagine the tech will be even cheaper and faster. Basically, I don't trust mechanical devices to last, wheras something like a cd should last for years.
Totally unrelated though, but I am wondering why someone doesn't make a modular hard drive where the platters themselves are removable semi-easily. If/when the mechanical parts of the drive crap out, you just place the platters into a new drive. Why isn't this done? I really don't know, not an engineer but it seems at least reasonable on the surface to ask.
--reality is *some* places it's real hard to lay fiber or cable, other areas it's just nota all that hard. I watched them bury new phonelines here at the house, roughly a 1/3 mile up the driveway, didn't take them 15 minutes from pulling up with the truck, off loading the trencher and having that new line right to the box on the house. The extension around 100 yards out to the RV space they did with a smaller walk behind trencher, that took around 10 minutes. We had the entire road out front about 1.5 miles worth get tore up this summer for widening, it trashed the buried phone line, I kept a piece I found as a souvenir, heh, anyway the telco came out the next day and had the total distance completely re-run and connected and I was back online in a coupla hours. They ran right down the side of the road with the big driveable trencher, it's fast, it's just not a big deal in some situations.
It just depends where ya are. The bottom line is the fiber is there and needs to be lit up. Local governments could decide to seize it eminent domain, then put it up for bid. I understand the equipment can be pricey, well, so is everything else that is only made in limited runs. I got old computers here cost thousands in 80's dollars, computers got cheap from orders and demand, this fiber optic stuff won't get cheap until there's some demand, and the demand won't get there until this fiber becomes available for outside companies to use. Catch 22 there. With all the tech industry layoffs, seems like maybe someplace somewhere some company can come out with the model T version of the equipment to use fiber optics. That part I don't know but electronics have gotten to the point it's ridiculous cheap, VERY generally speaking, all it needs is scale. People would buy it if it was there, you can't buy what ISN'T being offered, so there's no way to tell what the real demand is. I'd love to have a broadband offering that does it all, TV, telephone, net access, letting me host at home, etc, it's just not avaialble. As it is now got separat telco bill, separate dial up modem bill, want any decent tv you have to get a satellite system, like why? If I could get all that one one decent cable line somehow, it would be worth buying and I bet there's millions of more people out there could see that as well. The bulk of the nation still has about zip for ANY kind of broadband. I'm right at the last few feet for *possible* dsl copper service, but at 300$ install and no way to guarantee it will even work then another 100$ for an alleged "sorry, windows only" modem (they are clueless at local telco, origianlly they had the nerve to insist I couldn't connect to their dialup on a mac! for real! I had to tell their "tech support" how to do it) and then 80$ a month for real slow kbps they can byte me. Theyare gonna lose a customer to wireless as soon as I can get it, so instead of maybe 100$ a month for a total integrated broadband package that really is decent that they might can get from me they are gonna get *zero*. Great forward thinking business plan on their part. Uh huh.
--going on memory here, but seems to me they got a get out of jail free card in the latest punishment ruling. Microsoft doesn't have to release any code if-in THEIR opinion- it would open up security vulnerabilities. All they'd have to do to release a closed source linux is state thusly. "We can't release the source code due to security issues". Their lawyers could claim they were following the court's mandates, which they could easily interpret as superceding any GPL "license".
Anyone please feel free to correct this if I am understanding the ruling incorrectly.
I agree, granting "personhood" to artifical created corporations is obscene, it just is. Pure scam, top to bottom.
Your #2-this is the reason for the weird "justice" system we have in part. In the US at least, ALL higher level appointed, and most of the elected, judges have gotten there because they have played ball for their entire careers with one of the two controlling private criminal cartel political gangs that have seized control of the government and run the government as a for-profit ongoing criminal eneterprise. In other words "the fix is in". You don't get to be a high level judge without being a gang member. Pick your flavor, crips or bloods, two gangs, no difference except in what criminality they specialise in. Bribery and blackmail rulez the so called "justice" system.
Here's asome relevant links for anyone to checkout
--thanks for your post. Don't get rounded up, fight back! All of us certainly need to be doing more to stop this insane march to a global two class society with masters and serfs. It's coming to the US with the on purpose destruction of the middle class via economic warfare and destruction of industries and unrestricted illegal immigration. It's coming with the poison mandated smallpox vaccinations. It's coming with the nutso terminator seeds destroying FOOD avaialablity. It's coming with sezing and metering all the water, even from private wells. It's coming with the databases, universal tracking and monitoring, internal passports, military troops at checkpoints-it's all there, the last push for the "final solution". The end of freedom as we know it.
I'd invite anyone to visit Infowars.com. Great collated articles archive and the videos there are great as well. I have a copy of 9-11 Road to Tyranny-just outstanding! It WILL wake people up to what's going on. And here's the cool part, the producer-Alex Jones, AUTHORIZES you to feel free, make VCR tape or VCD disk copies and give them away! There are some teaser downloadable video clips for a lot of his videos on the site, and a bit more looking will take you to the entire video.
Another link, Genesis Communications , check them out for IMPORTANT freedom oriented internet radio and check for local affiliates for over the air broadcasts, and satellite and shortwave schedules.
--about time. Before I just didn't understand. I keep reading about open bsd being a server distro, very secure. Well, duh, servers are where you see multiple processors more than cheap(er) desktops. and if all it is is to be some sort of minimum home brewed gateway router thing, they can stop now, it's "done", go on to some other project.
All in all, though, I'd say adding multiple processor support is a good thing. I wish them well, and perhaps I'll try it someday once this is more stable.
--interesting stat I heard on the radio the other day, might answer your last question. The US currently is running around 67 million laws/regulations/edicts/whatevers on the books. It's close to impossible for any one person to know all of them off the top of their head. I would imagine you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who *isn't* guilty of something.
--check it oput sometime, you can get 12 vdc and 24 vdc appliances. A lot of times as close as your nearest marina boat store or RV place. We keep trying to gradually change over to all dc appliances, or if they were already dc to get better ones. Example, we had 12 volt incadescents, we switched to fluorescents. Next step is LED strip lighting. The vacuum cleaner, switched from a 110 AC to a smallish but still "good enough" 12 volt vac I found, a small step up from a normal car vac. Our tvs are 12 volt, but the color/vcr combo one crapped out on the dc part so had to switch that one back to AC, (well, that's for the girlfriend here, she's the movie nut), I have a small 12 vdc black and white I use whenever I really want to follow a breaking news story as I sit at the computer. I've got laptops and desktops, but this project I just thunked up is intriguing me now, laptops just got too small of a screen, and 99.99% of the time they sit around for me as a desktop, so I just use the energy hog desktop so I can have a bigger monitor. I know I could run the monitor from the laptop, but the desktop is a bigger better computer.
If this littlepc was cheaper-down to 500$ maybe- I'd consider it, but a grand right now..well..guess I'd still go a hundred bucks more and get an iBook. I mean, you still need to get the LCD monitor, and they *ain't* cheap.
As to the solar itself, going on 4 years now for us, my only regret is not doing it a decade earlier. I'd encourzge anyone to at least start on it, decent battery bank storage, a panel or two and a charge controller and possibly an inverter. I'd size the components in advance so you could add extra PV panels as you want to and can afford it. I'd start with the solar rig running the computer in the home as it makes a *nifty* UPS system, beats the pants off buying a dedicated UPS. all ya got to do is check the battery size difference, heh, my "backup" batteries would run this desktop for days and days without any solar input from a decent full charge. Also note this last ice storm, millions still without ANY power. Having guaranteed SOME all the time is a lot better than ZERO when you really WANT some power.
--hey, check out the other slashdot story today about the "littlepc". It's 12 volt dc! Just the ticket for your solar cabin. You could probably even modify any old case, the littlepc fits in one of the larger drive bays. You could cut it open and make it so the lcd screen and keyboard fit inside for traveling. Granted, not a laptop, but still,a possible nifty project. We run on solar and watch our watts as well, the deal with laptops is the stupid adapters waste watts converting the juice, tons of waste heat off those things. Hmm, for that matter you might be able to adapt a small UPS battery inside your project case as well, so you'd have a built in "emergency power".
If I was going to do it, I'd use an old busted mac 6400 tower case, for the killer built into the case sound system. I had one, just amazingly good sound from the internal speakers.
Of course if you really want to run this other OS, oh well...carry on
--no idea of europe or asia, etc, but in the US our government and our corporations are infested with peter principle managers. People who have gotten promoted to that position where they can't get promoted any longer, ie, they suck at that level but were probably great one level below. The deal is they don't get put back at the level of their competence.
funny story kinda. Once I was made city manager of this company. I hated it. I was great and quite happy at my previous position, acting as a project strawboss/hands on worker. Loved it. Was offered the management position, significant more money at salary so I tried it. It was terrible. So many times it was quicker for me-on the clients nickle-to just "do" a problem rather than try to explain to someone how to do it. I thought this was good customer service, granted, it dropped our billable hours slightly and occassionally, but the industry we were in was/is extremely competitive and it helps to retain established customers and keep them happy. The customers loved it, my bosses hated it, sometimes I would cost the company x amount small bucks on a particular job, but to me at least the brownie points seemed like a decent tradeoff. We lost zero customers under my watch and I got all good reviews and feedback. The bosses hated it ordered me to "manage" only which was a useless expenditure on a lot of smaller jobs, it meant standing around doing nothing a lot of the time. I hated it, prefer working to slacking. Anyway, after a couple of months I went in and demanded my old job back, and they did it for me but were amazed, I mean dumbfounded that anyone wouldn't just keep the superior paid position, it was such an alien concept to the "money is god" types. They had never even seen anyone do that. In short I demanded to not be a peter principle victim, or to participate in it.
Oh ya, the company basically collapsed a coupla years later, none of the bosses got along with each other, they kept losing customers, etc. I was right, they were wrong, but they were the owners. Ho hum I found other work same field easily.
How this applies to bell south and these other ISP's is-this is *probably* what's happening. Internal politics and back stabbing and greed lead to too many rank foul bosses in levels of decision making where they have no ability, no skill and cause problems. I mean, for real, harassing employees for trying to help customers on their own time and for free? ISP's don't charge for tech support as far as I know, seems to me these employees were saving the company money, and also creating more satisfied customers. And this is wrong?
There were many reasons the grand telephone monopoly was broken, customer complaints were right up there, and the baby bells are apparently infected with the same retarded mindset and lack of intelligence. Too many bosses in positions of incompetence.
Hope the fired techs start their own businesses (community WISPSs perhaps?), bell south doesn't deserve quality employees. Let them hire and keep on the clock drones and robots, lead by drones and robots, then let them go broke and collapse and be sold off for pennies on the dollar, let someone else give it a try. the techs actually got a good headsup of who they work for, now they can start looking for better quality humans to work for.
--it sure would be economical to us once ya'all start really paing what the food and water and natural resources we deliver you is really worth. Just like during the original opec embargo, the cry went out "no crude? NO FOOD" How about the rural folks just shut your taps off to the cities? How about you got to your deli and one meal's worth of food run ya 100$? What's that, some over stuffed IT guy hasn't broke sweat for over a decade is worth 100 grand a year but the guy who feeds him can't even afford spare parts for his worn out equipment? Too bad ya say? Would you like that or think it's"fair"? Or did maybe a national go almost everywhere public road system that brings you your food and humongous pipelines that bring you your water and natural gas sorta make it "nicer" to live in the city? Where did the money come for all that stuff? Oh, I see, as long as everything flows INTO the cities then it's affordable. I understand now.
Phooie.
What goes around comes around, keep having the mindset of "screw the rural people, we can't afford them, it costs too much to give them what we already have...", that they aren't worth any "investment", and one day you just might find out how wrong you really are.
Enjoy your urban lifestyle while you still can, it's been massively subsidised by basically stealing from other folks via legislative fiat and urban/corporate centrism. You don't want to "invest" in your rural neighbors, but keep "investing" in high rise dot bomb electron shuffling skim based middleman industries, and urban oriented entertainments? HAHAHA! Eventually you'll find out what REAL human priorities are. Have fun!
--my default belief is, along with the public roads, that some sort of nationwide broadband would be SO USEFUL that it would wind up paying for itself over and over again in increased US business productivity, along with just a bettering of quality of life. We have the model of the fuel tax, which to me is equitable and fair as opposed to a generic "income" tax which is a destructive convulted joke. Some other sort of user based fee at a minimum level could pay for this nation wide fiber or cable laying, the so called "last mile". Eventually, the initial cost would be PAID OFF, then it would just be maintenance and any new cable required. I doubt it will happen though. Government is despartely trying to stuff the free and open internet jenni back into the bottle, as now people can share info about them and government really doesn't like to be found out and embarassed in scams now they have lost the information lock they used to have, and the already existing big corporations don't want it to change into anything but them still getting more and more money to the point that all your internet 'content' comes in an expensive package from them. with nationwide broadband, and everyone being 'allowed' to host, then no monopolies could exist, and information could be shared with little or no censorship. So, my guess is it won't happen, UNLESS all the people can do it themselves with cheap and pervasive wireless.
--generic rants---
--rural people wouldn't need a subsidy if our tax money wasn't siphoned off to pay for urban areas that are no longer are needed as much as in the past when we didn't have personal easy transportation or communications like we have now. There is no longer such a "need" to have congested over built and extremely expensive cities and "urban lifestyle". And 1/2 my tax disappears into the vast wasteland that is called 'government' bureaucracy,it gets taken and never returns, barely 50 cents on the dollar, the rest for "overhead", this bloated government growth industry that is setup in the various major urban areas, and in paying ridiculously high prices by the trickle down phenomena of urban areas driving up the prices of everything. Just in my county property prices have almost doubled in the past few years, primarily from city people driving up the prices as they buy second honmes, and from government not enforcing our border control and illegal immigration laws. Property taxes up, taxes to the state and feds up, and I sure ain't seeing any benefit coming from all that, it's the reverse actually. Let us keep our money more, then it becomes affordable. Stop the mandated government schools scam, let people home school without harassment, encourage that instead of the massive almost yearly increases in local property taxes to pay for sub par mediocre government brainwashing facilities that churn out students with lower over-all knowledge at greatly increased cost. That's more money saved to pay for it. Fire 90% of the federal command and control bureaucrats, that's a LOT of money saved that could pay for it. Stop encouraging sloth and vote buying with the nanny welfare state, save billions. Stop invading other nations on a whim at the behest of international arms, energy, and construction corporations, turn the US back into more like a big neutral switzerland like it was originally designed as, instead of the worlds bully. Lot of tax money back in everyone's pocket then, could pay for a variety of projects, including a nation wide broadband infrastructure.
--beyond that I would have to get into a rant on the stock market and the greed and "something for nothing" gambling mentality that takes people over, leading to such gross wastes as the dot bomb scams with the 1500$ chairs and parties. Basic good quality infrastructure FIRST, then comes mega-profit and extravagance, right now, that's been reversed. The money is there if it wasn't wasted. Give people some true capitalism options, right now you are stuck. Look at all the posts from people here, they would gladly pay some more for better home pipes, or to be allowed to host at home. And like my original thought, vast areas of the nation have zero hope right now of getting broadband of ANY kind, ATT and some of these other companies need to go out there and offer broadband, not just reinforce a few core areas that already HAVE broadband, and usually in multiple forms. The nation is "all of us" not just "city people". The rural people of this nation provide the food, the water, the raw materials, everything that's required so that "cities" can exist, all we are asking is some kind of normal choices in the matter, it's just not that much to ask, especially from the companies that have already made billions and billions and from urban-centric "government".
--I'm not an engineer so can't answer this question. I was wondering why exactly no one has adapted thermocouples to this heat problem? Seems like a dandy idea to get some electricity back into the batteries. I've seen running an old kerosene lamp from russia that used a surrounding thermocouple that was adequate to run a normal radio. It looked like a normal kero lamp with fins around it, sort of like an air cooled cylinder on a small engine, kinda sorta. My boss at a dairy I worked at brought it back from a trip he made in the merchant marine to russia during ww2, it worked great! Just took waste heat, made electric, poof, done. Why can't something like this be done with hot chips? Seems like a decent way to help extend battery life and remove heat, the old two birds with one stone concept.
--once again the red zones are being ignored. Take away whether or not this conglomerate bid for nation wide wireless is a good idea in general, the bottom line is ONCE AGAIN technology is not being planned to be deployed over vast areas of 'the nation". Last I knew "the nation" was the sum total of everywhere, not "just" the core urban areas that already have bunches of broadband options compared to 90% of the rest of the nation.
Enoughs enough, we managed to get electric wires to homes all over, then we got copper telephone wires, next step is fiber optics everywhere or cable. Wireless with competing products and frequencies and etc, swell, but for true nation wide broadband (commercial that is) we just need to put hardwires every place electric lines go.
To answer in advance who should do it? That's easy, the government MANDATES that the old monopolies who made billions and billions and billions of dollars over the generations "do it", they take some of that profit and put it back.That's ATT, the baby bells and the off shoots now. The right of ways already exist, the telephone poles already exist. They either add on to what's there or replace the twisted pair, one or the other or both. I just don't want to hear they don't have the money. I remember one time I was installing modular office walls in an ATT building north metro atlanta, an entire building, a big one, that was being upgraded then sat EMPTY unused. I even asked, "why are we here, why is this company doing this, why did they build this building and do all this work to not use it?" Obvious millions of bucks being spent. I asked our ATT "tour guide" who was there to oversee us sub contractor workers. No rational answer, the ATT dude didn't know or wouldn't say. Nuts. Cable monopolies granted in city after city after city across the US, but they aren't required to deliver cable everywhere in those cities, just wherever they felt like it. Nuts. Same companies way back then claimed you woukld pay for cable and be commercial-free. Nuts.
I agree with the other poster, people need ad-hoc personal wireless and mesh networks and by pass these monopolies, by pass the government, by pass echelon and carnivore and whatever other voodoo censorship command and control nonsense is coming down the pike, by pass the commercial offerings. You can smell what's coming, an internet totally pay-per view for every byte with complex "packages" and pricing scams like what has happened with cell phones and cable TV. Maybe that would work, I don't know, but something has to be done to get broadband all over, not just core concentrated dense metro areas.
--I can see where both ways have potential downsides. The deal is, anyone "you" using the software has zero way to know-unless you are told in advance or actually hacked, then it's semi too late. There's no easy answer. I see your point clearly. but again, one of my points was the exploit might already be in the wild, as in who knows? Just because the white hats know there is a potential doesn't mean the blackhats haven't alreadydiscovered it and deployed it stealthily through obscure and arcane channels with each other. It's a matter of degree I guess, is it better to temporarily stop the service until such a time as a patch is released, or wait a month while who knows who is aware of the vulnerability? Waiting this up to one month time frame might leave you open for that month, because the white hats themselves just *might not know* who else knows what they know.
Personally, I think it's better to leave it up to the customer to decide "when" they are to be notified about any vulnerabilities, then whatever happens, the white hats and vendors are off the hook (merely ethically after all with free/open source) and can proceed at their own pace. Of course that would open up another set of problems, as you couldn't be sure that someone who wanted immediate notification would keep it secret. Closed source propietary for cash software-I gots no sympathy anymore. I am usually against more laws but something has to be done about massive mega for-profit corporations and their products that have ZERO warranties with them. No other consumer product enjoys that status, it needs to be altered to some sort of guarantee with liability. They want it both ways, pay for our stuff, but too bad if you are snafued and screwed blued and tatooed. That's a side issue but dang if I think it's any sort of "fair" now or even remotely ethical or equitable. Bet a buck that if commercial closed source had to carry normal consumer warranties that it would be written a LOT better, with a lot less conflicts or security vulnerabilities. If it means those various companies make slightly less profits or maybe release less-too bad.
Oh well. Guess I just liked it the way it was before, it was an "almost" immediate public release on security vulnerabilities. A full month in computer time for unpatched vulnerabilities and no notification gives me the buckwheats. And I don't even run servers or anything. I also understand this "month" is the outside limit, but still--seems sorta excessive.
--honestly, I have no idea *how* to do this, but could you adopt a wireless mouse instead of a keyboard? Scroll or middle button to tracks, forward to play from right button, left button pause or stop? Something like that? That way can keep eyes on road, not even need letters or numbers.
--we run on solar here, primarily from fixed rigid normal solar panels. I DO own two lightweight flexible portable panels that work great, they are my emergency bugout backpack panels. The company that makes them is Unisolar. Like almost all PV panels they dump whatever voltage they can get within two extremes of zero and around 20 volts, so for exact charging you would also need a "charge controller". The ones we use come from trace engineering, I have c-12's and c-40's, you could easily get by with their smallest cheapest offering, whatever that is "currently" pun intended. Now note, a carry around with you sized panel is NOT going to keep your laptop running like all day long,, just not happening, but to keep the batts topped off for a quick session then back to charging it's OK. The unisolar panels have grommets on the sides, easy enough to figure out some way to clip them on your back or even across your chest somehow depending on where the sun is as you are hiking.
I primarily have mine to recharge nicad radio and flashlight batts as I wouldn't plan on really humping a laptop in any emergency, but electric is electric, they'll charge batteries if you adjust the voltage output accordingly, ie, adjust charge controller to approximately 14 volts to charge a 12 volt batt, etc. Right now I use them to trickle charge/top off various equipment batteris we have occassionally
My vendor is Four-Winds-Energy
http://www.four-winds-energy.com
The owner Roy is a personal meatworld friend of mine, he has a form on his mainpage you can request any info you might want. He carries these flexible panels, three sizes. Good luck on your trip!
If you want to see some pics of the main solar rig bragger here, goto this other link
http://www.four-winds-energy.com/about.html
scroll down to middle of page see a few pics of "mountaintop in georgia". Nifty stuff!
--it's a bad idea. for two reasons, one, it allows a vulnerability to exist WAY too long potentially, and there is NO guarantee that the exploit hasn't been spread around extremely sub rosa by blackhats. People running the software DESERVE to know if it's vulnerable, in a timely manner, not some arbitrary picked point in the future that one month" represents. The time to announce a vulnerability is when it's found, period. If my car springs a fluid leak I want to know about it now, if a fire starts I want to know about it now, if a manufacturer discovers a safety issue I want to know about it now, right after they find out, this gives me a CHOICE of what do I want to do.
Two, the companies NEED to keep getting hammered with emergency DO IT NOW-NOW-NOW work, because EVENTUALLY it will sink in to code once, troubleshoot, audit, bugfix, do it again, do it again, THEN release it. It won't eliminate all bad code, that isn't happening, but it sure will slow it doen to a manageable level. We need bored maytag repairmen security guys because stuff is "a lot more secure outta the box", not this make work growth industry model we have now, releasing buggy stuff to create jobs is what it looks like to me. We need FEWER releases of BETTER audited code, not faster releases of still buggy stuff. I could care less if releases of this or that software were once a year, or once every two years, and extremely robust and stable and secure, as compared to willy nilly constantly needing bugfix after bugfix. Closed source or open source. Hardware or software. Less releases of much better quality.
--generic rant--
Same with detroit and tokyo, new models every other year, or even 5 years, not every single year, and I don't care what happens to the evolution of that industry either, there's too much crapola gets released all across the manufacturing spectrum, throw-away-itis and almost constant obsolesence is not a good idea, it simply costs too much in terms of money and resources. The world is credit-maxed out from this push to constantly throw away still useful stuff for "new and improved". It's ridiculous. Here's an example, I got a pile of older cellphones, the reason? Because they have made it so it costs twice as much for a new battery as buying yet again another phone! ALL my old phones still work swell, if they only had a battery that worked for more than 30 seconds. It's silly. Durable goods and software is the same. Yes, I know that at some point older stuff just needs to get chunked by geez loweez it's gotten out of hand with stuff only two years old being classed as antique worthless throw it away and replace it.
man, I've used them booth-side juke boxes a lot in the past. Along with nickle telephones and quarter movies (like in grade school days). Too bad about the little juke boxes,shows ya how much I get out, didn't even realise they were gone!
--if anyone from redhat(or someone else knowledgeable) would care to comment if/when they'll be official RPM's available for the 7.x series releases, I'd appreciate it. Thanks in advance!
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... it sems like that part of the problem isn't necessarily fitting in more transistors and complexities, but trying to do it in roughly the same size chips. Like personally, I wouldn't care if the chips got substantially bigger if that would help with this power leaking problem and made them easier and cheaper to build for the companies.
--on another side though, is it really "the chip" problem, or is it a 'computer" problem? Multiple processors still seem to have a long way to go to be more universally used and taken advantage of by the code itself. Computers at the consumer and prosumer level are rarely dual, single chipped models are still the most common, I think having a cheap 4 processor model that took advantage of having the multiples, plus having a LOT more ram being standard,combined with better coding will have us enjoying better computers for years to come.
On cars there's different ways to do it, have seen it comparing hotrods. Can have a big detroit machine of roughly 300 cubes has one or two 4 barrels, and I've seen a friends old v-12 ferrari boxer of roughly 300 cubes (hazy memory here now) have 6 two barrels. Most impressive. Guess which one had the better horsepower to weight ratio? Of course, one costs a LOT more money, well, ya, superior engineering works that way, and it just depends on exactly what kind of machine you want, what it's designed for, the task should determine that more than anything else..
--don't know about IT contracting, but in construction we just do a pay as you build deal. You set a level of completetion on the project, you get paid to that point, and so on. It works out OK then. Also make sure to get finite details of what is actually required in advance written down and that the client understands that changes and additions will cost substantially more. I'd say ion your case that bi-weekly payment plateaus would be probably safe enough if it really is this multiple-month project, but that really depends on how much money you could stand to lose if the foreign company just decided to not pay you or whatever.
I habe a basic rule of thumb I use just generally speaking, try to spec a job as accurately as possible, then add 15% to the bid figure, this I call the stupid factor, or you could term it the murphy's law factor, it seems it's quite common for there to be the possibility of changes, slowdowns, customer changes, hard to find materials or increased unexpected cost of materials, etc, etc, "whatevers" that seem to creep into larger projects. That 15% comes in handy sometimes, tell ya whut! I bet this is similar in IT contracting.
--all you have to be is in any area that is infested with criminal alien invaders. The payphones are used extensively because they purchase prepaid international calling cards. They also get jammed all the time from the same criminals stuffing them with non US coins in an attempt to beat the cost by using cheaper foreign money.
As to the wireless concept, good for them, at least they are trying to come up with something useful, a new business model. Now I *prefer* to see wireless more take off as enthusiasts making their own nets, but it's all good until the bandwith get's hijacked completely by the larger corporations. It's a race now I guess.
--ok, this makes sense. Hmm, seems like a nice business though if there was a machine that was affordable by at least some of the more upscale white box shops where they could do this as a service, perhaps one of those boxes with the integrated gloves. You put the hard drive in there, evacuate all the air-and dust presumably then- replace the platters, then re seal it back up. Just a thought. It sounds like a decent idea if those engineering details could be solved somewhat cheaply. I honestly don't know how the various data recovery outfits do this currently, maybe they already do similar? I had a neighbor try to get a price on recovering some financial data from a failed drive and it was way expensive they were telling me, so expensive they didn't do it but I have forgotten what they said they were quoted for the attempt.
--couldn't you get just another dedicated computer for archiving and burn the data to a cd or dvd? Maybe a little slower but won't it last longer? the blanks are cheap, last a long time, when it comes to to re-archive I imagine the tech will be even cheaper and faster. Basically, I don't trust mechanical devices to last, wheras something like a cd should last for years.
Totally unrelated though, but I am wondering why someone doesn't make a modular hard drive where the platters themselves are removable semi-easily. If/when the mechanical parts of the drive crap out, you just place the platters into a new drive. Why isn't this done? I really don't know, not an engineer but it seems at least reasonable on the surface to ask.
--reality is *some* places it's real hard to lay fiber or cable, other areas it's just nota all that hard. I watched them bury new phonelines here at the house, roughly a 1/3 mile up the driveway, didn't take them 15 minutes from pulling up with the truck, off loading the trencher and having that new line right to the box on the house. The extension around 100 yards out to the RV space they did with a smaller walk behind trencher, that took around 10 minutes. We had the entire road out front about 1.5 miles worth get tore up this summer for widening, it trashed the buried phone line, I kept a piece I found as a souvenir, heh, anyway the telco came out the next day and had the total distance completely re-run and connected and I was back online in a coupla hours. They ran right down the side of the road with the big driveable trencher, it's fast, it's just not a big deal in some situations.
It just depends where ya are. The bottom line is the fiber is there and needs to be lit up. Local governments could decide to seize it eminent domain, then put it up for bid. I understand the equipment can be pricey, well, so is everything else that is only made in limited runs. I got old computers here cost thousands in 80's dollars, computers got cheap from orders and demand, this fiber optic stuff won't get cheap until there's some demand, and the demand won't get there until this fiber becomes available for outside companies to use. Catch 22 there. With all the tech industry layoffs, seems like maybe someplace somewhere some company can come out with the model T version of the equipment to use fiber optics. That part I don't know but electronics have gotten to the point it's ridiculous cheap, VERY generally speaking, all it needs is scale. People would buy it if it was there, you can't buy what ISN'T being offered, so there's no way to tell what the real demand is. I'd love to have a broadband offering that does it all, TV, telephone, net access, letting me host at home, etc, it's just not avaialble. As it is now got separat telco bill, separate dial up modem bill, want any decent tv you have to get a satellite system, like why? If I could get all that one one decent cable line somehow, it would be worth buying and I bet there's millions of more people out there could see that as well. The bulk of the nation still has about zip for ANY kind of broadband. I'm right at the last few feet for *possible* dsl copper service, but at 300$ install and no way to guarantee it will even work then another 100$ for an alleged "sorry, windows only" modem (they are clueless at local telco, origianlly they had the nerve to insist I couldn't connect to their dialup on a mac! for real! I had to tell their "tech support" how to do it) and then 80$ a month for real slow kbps they can byte me. Theyare gonna lose a customer to wireless as soon as I can get it, so instead of maybe 100$ a month for a total integrated broadband package that really is decent that they might can get from me they are gonna get *zero*. Great forward thinking business plan on their part. Uh huh.
--going on memory here, but seems to me they got a get out of jail free card in the latest punishment ruling. Microsoft doesn't have to release any code if-in THEIR opinion- it would open up security vulnerabilities. All they'd have to do to release a closed source linux is state thusly. "We can't release the source code due to security issues". Their lawyers could claim they were following the court's mandates, which they could easily interpret as superceding any GPL "license".
Anyone please feel free to correct this if I am understanding the ruling incorrectly.
I agree, granting "personhood" to artifical created corporations is obscene, it just is. Pure scam, top to bottom.
Your #2-this is the reason for the weird "justice" system we have in part. In the US at least, ALL higher level appointed, and most of the elected, judges have gotten there because they have played ball for their entire careers with one of the two controlling private criminal cartel political gangs that have seized control of the government and run the government as a for-profit ongoing criminal eneterprise. In other words "the fix is in". You don't get to be a high level judge without being a gang member. Pick your flavor, crips or bloods, two gangs, no difference except in what criminality they specialise in. Bribery and blackmail rulez the so called "justice" system.
Here's asome relevant links for anyone to checkout
Skolnick's Report,CITIZENS' COMMITTEE TO CLEAN UP THE COURTS. check out a guy who's helped put federal judges in the slammer
Jail 4 Judges website, see what you can do to help put crooked judges away
Fully Informed Jury Association, you as a juror have MORE power than the judge, you can actually rule on the law itself as a juror, but "they" don't want you to know your rights as a juror
George Gordon School of Law, Biblical, Common, Constitutional -check it out, catch his radio show
I'd invite anyone to visit Infowars.com. Great collated articles archive and the videos there are great as well. I have a copy of 9-11 Road to Tyranny-just outstanding! It WILL wake people up to what's going on. And here's the cool part, the producer-Alex Jones, AUTHORIZES you to feel free, make VCR tape or VCD disk copies and give them away! There are some teaser downloadable video clips for a lot of his videos on the site, and a bit more looking will take you to the entire video.
Another link, Genesis Communications , check them out for IMPORTANT freedom oriented internet radio and check for local affiliates for over the air broadcasts, and satellite and shortwave schedules.
--about time. Before I just didn't understand. I keep reading about open bsd being a server distro, very secure. Well, duh, servers are where you see multiple processors more than cheap(er) desktops. and if all it is is to be some sort of minimum home brewed gateway router thing, they can stop now, it's "done", go on to some other project.
All in all, though, I'd say adding multiple processor support is a good thing. I wish them well, and perhaps I'll try it someday once this is more stable.
--interesting stat I heard on the radio the other day, might answer your last question. The US currently is running around 67 million laws/regulations/edicts/whatevers on the books. It's close to impossible for any one person to know all of them off the top of their head. I would imagine you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who *isn't* guilty of something.
--check it oput sometime, you can get 12 vdc and 24 vdc appliances. A lot of times as close as your nearest marina boat store or RV place. We keep trying to gradually change over to all dc appliances, or if they were already dc to get better ones. Example, we had 12 volt incadescents, we switched to fluorescents. Next step is LED strip lighting. The vacuum cleaner, switched from a 110 AC to a smallish but still "good enough" 12 volt vac I found, a small step up from a normal car vac. Our tvs are 12 volt, but the color/vcr combo one crapped out on the dc part so had to switch that one back to AC, (well, that's for the girlfriend here, she's the movie nut), I have a small 12 vdc black and white I use whenever I really want to follow a breaking news story as I sit at the computer. I've got laptops and desktops, but this project I just thunked up is intriguing me now, laptops just got too small of a screen, and 99.99% of the time they sit around for me as a desktop, so I just use the energy hog desktop so I can have a bigger monitor. I know I could run the monitor from the laptop, but the desktop is a bigger better computer.
If this littlepc was cheaper-down to 500$ maybe- I'd consider it, but a grand right now..well..guess I'd still go a hundred bucks more and get an iBook. I mean, you still need to get the LCD monitor, and they *ain't* cheap.
As to the solar itself, going on 4 years now for us, my only regret is not doing it a decade earlier. I'd encourzge anyone to at least start on it, decent battery bank storage, a panel or two and a charge controller and possibly an inverter. I'd size the components in advance so you could add extra PV panels as you want to and can afford it. I'd start with the solar rig running the computer in the home as it makes a *nifty* UPS system, beats the pants off buying a dedicated UPS. all ya got to do is check the battery size difference, heh, my "backup" batteries would run this desktop for days and days without any solar input from a decent full charge. Also note this last ice storm, millions still without ANY power. Having guaranteed SOME all the time is a lot better than ZERO when you really WANT some power.
--hey, check out the other slashdot story today about the "littlepc". It's 12 volt dc! Just the ticket for your solar cabin. You could probably even modify any old case, the littlepc fits in one of the larger drive bays. You could cut it open and make it so the lcd screen and keyboard fit inside for traveling. Granted, not a laptop, but still,a possible nifty project. We run on solar and watch our watts as well, the deal with laptops is the stupid adapters waste watts converting the juice, tons of waste heat off those things. Hmm, for that matter you might be able to adapt a small UPS battery inside your project case as well, so you'd have a built in "emergency power".
If I was going to do it, I'd use an old busted mac 6400 tower case, for the killer built into the case sound system. I had one, just amazingly good sound from the internal speakers.
Of course if you really want to run this other OS, oh well...carry on
--no idea of europe or asia, etc, but in the US our government and our corporations are infested with peter principle managers. People who have gotten promoted to that position where they can't get promoted any longer, ie, they suck at that level but were probably great one level below. The deal is they don't get put back at the level of their competence.
funny story kinda. Once I was made city manager of this company. I hated it. I was great and quite happy at my previous position, acting as a project strawboss/hands on worker. Loved it. Was offered the management position, significant more money at salary so I tried it. It was terrible. So many times it was quicker for me-on the clients nickle-to just "do" a problem rather than try to explain to someone how to do it. I thought this was good customer service, granted, it dropped our billable hours slightly and occassionally, but the industry we were in was/is extremely competitive and it helps to retain established customers and keep them happy. The customers loved it, my bosses hated it, sometimes I would cost the company x amount small bucks on a particular job, but to me at least the brownie points seemed like a decent tradeoff. We lost zero customers under my watch and I got all good reviews and feedback. The bosses hated it ordered me to "manage" only which was a useless expenditure on a lot of smaller jobs, it meant standing around doing nothing a lot of the time. I hated it, prefer working to slacking. Anyway, after a couple of months I went in and demanded my old job back, and they did it for me but were amazed, I mean dumbfounded that anyone wouldn't just keep the superior paid position, it was such an alien concept to the "money is god" types. They had never even seen anyone do that. In short I demanded to not be a peter principle victim, or to participate in it.
Oh ya, the company basically collapsed a coupla years later, none of the bosses got along with each other, they kept losing customers, etc. I was right, they were wrong, but they were the owners. Ho hum I found other work same field easily.
How this applies to bell south and these other ISP's is-this is *probably* what's happening. Internal politics and back stabbing and greed lead to too many rank foul bosses in levels of decision making where they have no ability, no skill and cause problems. I mean, for real, harassing employees for trying to help customers on their own time and for free? ISP's don't charge for tech support as far as I know, seems to me these employees were saving the company money, and also creating more satisfied customers. And this is wrong?
There were many reasons the grand telephone monopoly was broken, customer complaints were right up there, and the baby bells are apparently infected with the same retarded mindset and lack of intelligence. Too many bosses in positions of incompetence.
Hope the fired techs start their own businesses (community WISPSs perhaps?), bell south doesn't deserve quality employees. Let them hire and keep on the clock drones and robots, lead by drones and robots, then let them go broke and collapse and be sold off for pennies on the dollar, let someone else give it a try. the techs actually got a good headsup of who they work for, now they can start looking for better quality humans to work for.
--it sure would be economical to us once ya'all start really paing what the food and water and natural resources we deliver you is really worth. Just like during the original opec embargo, the cry went out "no crude? NO FOOD" How about the rural folks just shut your taps off to the cities? How about you got to your deli and one meal's worth of food run ya 100$? What's that, some over stuffed IT guy hasn't broke sweat for over a decade is worth 100 grand a year but the guy who feeds him can't even afford spare parts for his worn out equipment? Too bad ya say? Would you like that or think it's"fair"? Or did maybe a national go almost everywhere public road system that brings you your food and humongous pipelines that bring you your water and natural gas sorta make it "nicer" to live in the city? Where did the money come for all that stuff? Oh, I see, as long as everything flows INTO the cities then it's affordable. I understand now.
Phooie.
What goes around comes around, keep having the mindset of "screw the rural people, we can't afford them, it costs too much to give them what we already have...", that they aren't worth any "investment", and one day you just might find out how wrong you really are.
Enjoy your urban lifestyle while you still can, it's been massively subsidised by basically stealing from other folks via legislative fiat and urban/corporate centrism. You don't want to "invest" in your rural neighbors, but keep "investing" in high rise dot bomb electron shuffling skim based middleman industries, and urban oriented entertainments? HAHAHA! Eventually you'll find out what REAL human priorities are. Have fun!
--my default belief is, along with the public roads, that some sort of nationwide broadband would be SO USEFUL that it would wind up paying for itself over and over again in increased US business productivity, along with just a bettering of quality of life. We have the model of the fuel tax, which to me is equitable and fair as opposed to a generic "income" tax which is a destructive convulted joke. Some other sort of user based fee at a minimum level could pay for this nation wide fiber or cable laying, the so called "last mile". Eventually, the initial cost would be PAID OFF, then it would just be maintenance and any new cable required. I doubt it will happen though. Government is despartely trying to stuff the free and open internet jenni back into the bottle, as now people can share info about them and government really doesn't like to be found out and embarassed in scams now they have lost the information lock they used to have, and the already existing big corporations don't want it to change into anything but them still getting more and more money to the point that all your internet 'content' comes in an expensive package from them. with nationwide broadband, and everyone being 'allowed' to host, then no monopolies could exist, and information could be shared with little or no censorship. So, my guess is it won't happen, UNLESS all the people can do it themselves with cheap and pervasive wireless.
--generic rants---
--rural people wouldn't need a subsidy if our tax money wasn't siphoned off to pay for urban areas that are no longer are needed as much as in the past when we didn't have personal easy transportation or communications like we have now. There is no longer such a "need" to have congested over built and extremely expensive cities and "urban lifestyle". And 1/2 my tax disappears into the vast wasteland that is called 'government' bureaucracy,it gets taken and never returns, barely 50 cents on the dollar, the rest for "overhead", this bloated government growth industry that is setup in the various major urban areas, and in paying ridiculously high prices by the trickle down phenomena of urban areas driving up the prices of everything. Just in my county property prices have almost doubled in the past few years, primarily from city people driving up the prices as they buy second honmes, and from government not enforcing our border control and illegal immigration laws. Property taxes up, taxes to the state and feds up, and I sure ain't seeing any benefit coming from all that, it's the reverse actually. Let us keep our money more, then it becomes affordable. Stop the mandated government schools scam, let people home school without harassment, encourage that instead of the massive almost yearly increases in local property taxes to pay for sub par mediocre government brainwashing facilities that churn out students with lower over-all knowledge at greatly increased cost. That's more money saved to pay for it. Fire 90% of the federal command and control bureaucrats, that's a LOT of money saved that could pay for it. Stop encouraging sloth and vote buying with the nanny welfare state, save billions. Stop invading other nations on a whim at the behest of international arms, energy, and construction corporations, turn the US back into more like a big neutral switzerland like it was originally designed as, instead of the worlds bully. Lot of tax money back in everyone's pocket then, could pay for a variety of projects, including a nation wide broadband infrastructure.
--beyond that I would have to get into a rant on the stock market and the greed and "something for nothing" gambling mentality that takes people over, leading to such gross wastes as the dot bomb scams with the 1500$ chairs and parties. Basic good quality infrastructure FIRST, then comes mega-profit and extravagance, right now, that's been reversed. The money is there if it wasn't wasted. Give people some true capitalism options, right now you are stuck. Look at all the posts from people here, they would gladly pay some more for better home pipes, or to be allowed to host at home. And like my original thought, vast areas of the nation have zero hope right now of getting broadband of ANY kind, ATT and some of these other companies need to go out there and offer broadband, not just reinforce a few core areas that already HAVE broadband, and usually in multiple forms. The nation is "all of us" not just "city people". The rural people of this nation provide the food, the water, the raw materials, everything that's required so that "cities" can exist, all we are asking is some kind of normal choices in the matter, it's just not that much to ask, especially from the companies that have already made billions and billions and from urban-centric "government".
--I'm not an engineer so can't answer this question. I was wondering why exactly no one has adapted thermocouples to this heat problem? Seems like a dandy idea to get some electricity back into the batteries. I've seen running an old kerosene lamp from russia that used a surrounding thermocouple that was adequate to run a normal radio. It looked like a normal kero lamp with fins around it, sort of like an air cooled cylinder on a small engine, kinda sorta. My boss at a dairy I worked at brought it back from a trip he made in the merchant marine to russia during ww2, it worked great! Just took waste heat, made electric, poof, done. Why can't something like this be done with hot chips? Seems like a decent way to help extend battery life and remove heat, the old two birds with one stone concept.
--once again the red zones are being ignored. Take away whether or not this conglomerate bid for nation wide wireless is a good idea in general, the bottom line is ONCE AGAIN technology is not being planned to be deployed over vast areas of 'the nation". Last I knew "the nation" was the sum total of everywhere, not "just" the core urban areas that already have bunches of broadband options compared to 90% of the rest of the nation.
Enoughs enough, we managed to get electric wires to homes all over, then we got copper telephone wires, next step is fiber optics everywhere or cable. Wireless with competing products and frequencies and etc, swell, but for true nation wide broadband (commercial that is) we just need to put hardwires every place electric lines go.
To answer in advance who should do it? That's easy, the government MANDATES that the old monopolies who made billions and billions and billions of dollars over the generations "do it", they take some of that profit and put it back.That's ATT, the baby bells and the off shoots now. The right of ways already exist, the telephone poles already exist. They either add on to what's there or replace the twisted pair, one or the other or both. I just don't want to hear they don't have the money. I remember one time I was installing modular office walls in an ATT building north metro atlanta, an entire building, a big one, that was being upgraded then sat EMPTY unused. I even asked, "why are we here, why is this company doing this, why did they build this building and do all this work to not use it?" Obvious millions of bucks being spent. I asked our ATT "tour guide" who was there to oversee us sub contractor workers. No rational answer, the ATT dude didn't know or wouldn't say. Nuts. Cable monopolies granted in city after city after city across the US, but they aren't required to deliver cable everywhere in those cities, just wherever they felt like it. Nuts. Same companies way back then claimed you woukld pay for cable and be commercial-free. Nuts.
I agree with the other poster, people need ad-hoc personal wireless and mesh networks and by pass these monopolies, by pass the government, by pass echelon and carnivore and whatever other voodoo censorship command and control nonsense is coming down the pike, by pass the commercial offerings. You can smell what's coming, an internet totally pay-per view for every byte with complex "packages" and pricing scams like what has happened with cell phones and cable TV. Maybe that would work, I don't know, but something has to be done to get broadband all over, not just core concentrated dense metro areas.
--I can see where both ways have potential downsides. The deal is, anyone "you" using the software has zero way to know-unless you are told in advance or actually hacked, then it's semi too late. There's no easy answer. I see your point clearly. but again, one of my points was the exploit might already be in the wild, as in who knows? Just because the white hats know there is a potential doesn't mean the blackhats haven't alreadydiscovered it and deployed it stealthily through obscure and arcane channels with each other. It's a matter of degree I guess, is it better to temporarily stop the service until such a time as a patch is released, or wait a month while who knows who is aware of the vulnerability? Waiting this up to one month time frame might leave you open for that month, because the white hats themselves just *might not know* who else knows what they know.
Personally, I think it's better to leave it up to the customer to decide "when" they are to be notified about any vulnerabilities, then whatever happens, the white hats and vendors are off the hook (merely ethically after all with free/open source) and can proceed at their own pace. Of course that would open up another set of problems, as you couldn't be sure that someone who wanted immediate notification would keep it secret. Closed source propietary for cash software-I gots no sympathy anymore. I am usually against more laws but something has to be done about massive mega for-profit corporations and their products that have ZERO warranties with them. No other consumer product enjoys that status, it needs to be altered to some sort of guarantee with liability. They want it both ways, pay for our stuff, but too bad if you are snafued and screwed blued and tatooed. That's a side issue but dang if I think it's any sort of "fair" now or even remotely ethical or equitable. Bet a buck that if commercial closed source had to carry normal consumer warranties that it would be written a LOT better, with a lot less conflicts or security vulnerabilities. If it means those various companies make slightly less profits or maybe release less-too bad.
Oh well. Guess I just liked it the way it was before, it was an "almost" immediate public release on security vulnerabilities. A full month in computer time for unpatched vulnerabilities and no notification gives me the buckwheats. And I don't even run servers or anything. I also understand this "month" is the outside limit, but still--seems sorta excessive.
--honestly, I have no idea *how* to do this, but could you adopt a wireless mouse instead of a keyboard? Scroll or middle button to tracks, forward to play from right button, left button pause or stop? Something like that? That way can keep eyes on road, not even need letters or numbers.
--hey thanks! You are correct, the 7.x series rpms are on their ftp site but not listed on the main web page. Downloading right now!
--we run on solar here, primarily from fixed rigid normal solar panels. I DO own two lightweight flexible portable panels that work great, they are my emergency bugout backpack panels. The company that makes them is Unisolar. Like almost all PV panels they dump whatever voltage they can get within two extremes of zero and around 20 volts, so for exact charging you would also need a "charge controller". The ones we use come from trace engineering, I have c-12's and c-40's, you could easily get by with their smallest cheapest offering, whatever that is "currently" pun intended. Now note, a carry around with you sized panel is NOT going to keep your laptop running like all day long,, just not happening, but to keep the batts topped off for a quick session then back to charging it's OK. The unisolar panels have grommets on the sides, easy enough to figure out some way to clip them on your back or even across your chest somehow depending on where the sun is as you are hiking.
I primarily have mine to recharge nicad radio and flashlight batts as I wouldn't plan on really humping a laptop in any emergency, but electric is electric, they'll charge batteries if you adjust the voltage output accordingly, ie, adjust charge controller to approximately 14 volts to charge a 12 volt batt, etc. Right now I use them to trickle charge/top off various equipment batteris we have occassionally
My vendor is Four-Winds-Energy
http://www.four-winds-energy.com
The owner Roy is a personal meatworld friend of mine, he has a form on his mainpage you can request any info you might want. He carries these flexible panels, three sizes. Good luck on your trip!
If you want to see some pics of the main solar rig bragger here, goto this other link
http://www.four-winds-energy.com/about.html
scroll down to middle of page see a few pics of "mountaintop in georgia". Nifty stuff!
--it's a bad idea. for two reasons, one, it allows a vulnerability to exist WAY too long potentially, and there is NO guarantee that the exploit hasn't been spread around extremely sub rosa by blackhats. People running the software DESERVE to know if it's vulnerable, in a timely manner, not some arbitrary picked point in the future that one month" represents. The time to announce a vulnerability is when it's found, period. If my car springs a fluid leak I want to know about it now, if a fire starts I want to know about it now, if a manufacturer discovers a safety issue I want to know about it now, right after they find out, this gives me a CHOICE of what do I want to do.
Two, the companies NEED to keep getting hammered with emergency DO IT NOW-NOW-NOW work, because EVENTUALLY it will sink in to code once, troubleshoot, audit, bugfix, do it again, do it again, THEN release it. It won't eliminate all bad code, that isn't happening, but it sure will slow it doen to a manageable level. We need bored maytag repairmen security guys because stuff is "a lot more secure outta the box", not this make work growth industry model we have now, releasing buggy stuff to create jobs is what it looks like to me. We need FEWER releases of BETTER audited code, not faster releases of still buggy stuff. I could care less if releases of this or that software were once a year, or once every two years, and extremely robust and stable and secure, as compared to willy nilly constantly needing bugfix after bugfix. Closed source or open source. Hardware or software. Less releases of much better quality.
--generic rant--
Same with detroit and tokyo, new models every other year, or even 5 years, not every single year, and I don't care what happens to the evolution of that industry either, there's too much crapola gets released all across the manufacturing spectrum, throw-away-itis and almost constant obsolesence is not a good idea, it simply costs too much in terms of money and resources. The world is credit-maxed out from this push to constantly throw away still useful stuff for "new and improved". It's ridiculous. Here's an example, I got a pile of older cellphones, the reason? Because they have made it so it costs twice as much for a new battery as buying yet again another phone! ALL my old phones still work swell, if they only had a battery that worked for more than 30 seconds. It's silly. Durable goods and software is the same. Yes, I know that at some point older stuff just needs to get chunked by geez loweez it's gotten out of hand with stuff only two years old being classed as antique worthless throw it away and replace it.
man, I've used them booth-side juke boxes a lot in the past. Along with nickle telephones and quarter movies (like in grade school days). Too bad about the little juke boxes,shows ya how much I get out, didn't even realise they were gone!
--if anyone from redhat(or someone else knowledgeable) would care to comment if/when they'll be official RPM's available for the 7.x series releases, I'd appreciate it. Thanks in advance!