Make no doubt about it, MS can afford to and will make drastic price cuts and offer free upgrades if Linux becomes a serious competitor.
One of the interesting comments in the article was that MS's cash reserves are big enough that they can operate for 5 years with zero revenue. That means they could give away Windows (competeing with open source), probably not run into antitrust problems since they're matching competition prices, and at the same time wipe out any other vendors that are selling at a non-zero price.
Imagine the uphill battle in several years to get businesses off 2000...
I have no plans to EVER upgrade to any other version of Windows from 2000. My next desktop change will be moving to a Linux-based platform.
I moved our NT4 server to a Linux/Samba system in January, and at that time, I made sure I did it in a way that made everything compatible with Linux workstations. It was a pretty seamless switch. The only thing the users notice now is that the network file shares respond faster.
I have totally given up on Windows. I've completely stopped caring at all. They can release Longhorn whenever the hell they want, it won't affect me at all. I've never even run XP on a system I own. What's the point?
ride one of these and get to go down 20 or 30 feet without any discomfort and weight of scuba gear on my body.
And instead be comfortable straddeling this huge scooter thing underwater, with a limited field of view and awkward mobility? Please..
With a good instructor, you'd probably be able to go underwater on scuba with about 30 minutes of training (obviously they're not going to teach you everything, but enough fundamentals to be able to do it fairly safely). You don't really notice the gear at all, its definately not uncomfortable.
As far as weight.. that's an important thing to have to be able to go under. Without that feeling of 'weight' on your body, you'll be stuck floating at the surface. In reality, you just become neutrally bouyant underwater, so don't notice it. It's only once you get out of the water that the gear is heavy.:)
Although I've never used one, I've heard DPV's are great fun. Just by looking at one, I would bet that it's a hell of a lot cooler than this ScubaDoo contraption.
If you're going to do scuba though, do it right. I just started this year (PADI), and I love it.
This is why this happens in the UK and not in America. You see us free Americans have a right to carry guns, lots of em, thats why muggings dont happen in America.
And the thing you don't realize is this also means the muggers have guns. And guess what? Having a gun is useless when a mugger pulls one on you first. Do you think he's just going to sit there and let you pull out your gun? In fact, at the end of it all, you'll probably be out an iPod AND a gun.
Either way, isn't it still illegal to carry around a gun? I thought you could have them in your houses, but that was it.. ?
Or you could find a real-world, emotion-having, NOT-concerned-about-what-idiots-think women who shares your values. Do you really want to spend your life with someone who throws ethics out the window for a sparkly piece of junk?
Speaking of real-world, where are you living? All women will do that. Don't believe me? How many women do you know that are engaged that don't have a diamond ring?
Too bad the guys with Jolt, anime, and useless PC mods are the ones powering the next generation. The old way of life is dying slowly and thankfully.
If the 'old way of life' - in this case eating and procreating - is dying off, then it seems to me there won't be a next generation to power..
Without the innovative ideas coming from people such as basement dwelling computer geeks, you wouldn't be typing your moronic post on Slashdot right now.
The hardcore geeks - you sound like you'd fit in that camp - aren't the only ones 'innovating' (the merits of putting a PC in a cardboard box are probably discussed in other comments, so I won't comment on that). There are lots of people that build cool and innovative software and hardware, and still lead an active social life, with lots of beer drinking and sex.
I normally wouldn't reply to such an OT post but you make some stupid comment like that, and I just can't resist.
This is a good point that often seems to escape the microsoft camp. Open source is NOT flawless. In fact, go look at any of the security sites.. you'll find lots of bugs and possible exploits for almost any server. However, in every case, there's a fix. Now, if an admin doesn't apply it, obviously they'll be vulnerable to any exploits created for that hole. This is no different from Microsoft - or any other company's - products.
The problem with Microsoft (or any closed) code is that if there is a bug, and their small (compared to the OSS world) and non-diverse (as in, they've all been hired by the company, and probably have roughly the same credentials and experience) QA team doesn't find it, then it's likely that a cracker will find it and create an exploit before there is a fix.
With OSS, most of the problems are found much earlier (many eyes.. yadayada), and so a fix is created before a cracker can create an exploit.
If we would get report of all the windows servers that are getting hacked everyday, we'd here much more news like this. We are hearing about this because GNU, Gnome, Debian, etc. are public projects... othewise, this would be just another hacked site.
This is also true of pretty much any software/site. Lots of companies using Microsoft software get hacked (not counting the thousands of virus-infected servers sitting on the net), and don't announce it. Lots of companies using Linux and other OSs get hacked too, and don't announce it. Often they don't even know about it.
The bottom line is this: a server running 3 year old versions of everything, no matter what OS, likely has problems. If you don't keep patches up to date, you are going to have holes. Generally speaking though, an up-to-date linux box is going to be more secure than an up-to-date windows box.
We could also mention the quality of updates: breaking other services, causing unexpected problems because of strange inter-dependencies (gee, guess which platform I'm talking about..), but thats a whole different can of worms.
An unpatched IE is the only culprit IMO besides people leaving the preview pane enabled.
Like the grandparent post, I also use Thunderbird (and Firefox). I personally like the functionality of the preview pane, it saves an extra step while using email and makes my life easier. But I guess it's easier to have to double-click on every single message you want to read (and still get infected with a virus if you happen to open one with a virus) than it is to just install a better mail client...
are you willing to take the performance hit to convert it to another language though?
Take the performance hit and get the security increase? Hell yes.
I can buy a faster CPU for a whole lot cheaper than I can pay a programmer to go through and audit thousands of lines of code, with no guarantee they'll even be able to catch all the problems.
Of course, this doesn't get around have problems in the language you're using to write the application - but the benefit is, if there is a bug, it is more likely to be found (because so many people are using the same code for so many purposes), and fixing it will fix any instance of that bug in every application built on that language.
Or maybe having 5% less CPU utilization is more important than preventing someone from exploiting your server?
It's only older (5-10+ years old) medical equipment that *may* be affected, and usually only if the cell phone is placed in very close proximity (2-4 inches away) from said device.
This is also very similar to the ban on cell phones at gas stations. Most have signs up showing a red X through a cell phone. In reality, there are no documented cases of a cell phone causing any kind of accident whatsoever at a gas station. What is far more common is static discharge, which happens when you are statically charged (ie, from sliding across the seat) and touch metal near the tank opening, while filling it, and cause a spark. Even this is extremely rare, and is only a problem when the person freaks out and pulls the gas nozzle out, causing flaming gas to shoot everywhere.
In fact, it takes very specific conditions for gas to even ignite from a spark (just the right percentage of vapour, temperature, etc). There was a geat episode of MythBusters where they tried the cell phone myth. They created a sealed chamber and had the gas under the exact correct conditions, and couldn't get it to do anything - with a cell phone, or with a device they rigged up to simulate static from sliding across the seat. (They did show some neat fire dept. video of the static discharge igniting the gas, so it is possible). IIRC, the only way they even ended up blowing up the chamber was by using a giant telsa coil or something that caused a really big spark.
Apparently that whole situation was also caused by some study that was summarized somewhere else, with the statements about how rare and unlikely it is removed. But pratically every gas station bans cell phones.
I certainly didn't blow up the other day when someone called me while I was filling my tank. Hell, I even had a conversation with them.
I mean, choice is a good thing, but, to me, debian is a case study in what can go wrong if the ability to choose every aspect is taken to the extreme. Just shut up and install.
I've recently switched to using debian. I used to always use redhat (ya ya..) but the horrible package management was irritating (to the point I was pretty much doing everything from tarballs), and I heard many good things about apt, so I decided to give it a shot. Installed it on my desktop, and the install was a horrible experience, I have to say. Figuring "hey, I know linux decently well, I'll do stuff myself" I chose "medium" level questions (or whatever is a notch above the default level). Big mistake. It was at the point where I was so annoyed while installing that I was just pressing enter blindly, figuring it would be less work to fix the broken stuff AFTER rather than read through so many pages of info I didn't really care that much about.
I also was equally annoyed at dselect. What a hard to use interface. It's supposed to be the easy way to install packages? The default sorting of "newest packages" at the top is pointless - when I'm installing a new system, there are certain things I want (say, xwindows), I don't even know if they're "new" or not. Also, the apt repository's large size is both it's biggest asset and biggest downfall. On one hand, there's lots and lots of stuff, and I've discovered programs in apt I've never heard of before. On the other hand, it makes dselect a nightmare to lose, because you end up scrolling through 1000 entries with only a vague idea of what you want.
Anyways, all that said, I use debian on what is now the 'main' network server at work (samba, ldap, dns, dhcp, web, mysql, etc..). I also use it as the base for a remote monitoring (SCADA) system at small water treatment facilities (actually, none running debian are online yet, but there will be two by the end of next week). I really love it for both of these applications, but what I ended up doing was just using apt-get on command line to install everything, and let it resolve dependencies. Hm, I need a web server. "apt-get install apache", bang, it installs a whole ton of libraries and such that are needed. That method has worked out very well so far. I actually use my own packages for the software that runs my SCADA systems, but all the libraries are from apt, which makes updating very simple.
The only package I find to be a pain is installing kernel images.. there's a whole manual thing you have to do with editing lilo.conf and setting up initrd.img. Maybe this is just because I installed woody with the 2.4 kernel and then changed to testing? I dunno.
Hm, I haven't read about Anaconda for Debian for a while. I actually might try this out tommorow.. if I remember (and have time to do it), I'll try to post a follow-up..
But that's definately the direction to go. Redhat is very easy to install, but a pain to maintain (install new software) and keep up to date (up2date is ok.. but not as extensive as apt). I don't even have to mention rpm dependency hell (mm.. circular dependencies are fun). Debian is a pain to install, but extremly easy to maintain and keep up to date. Combining the two could be a very good thing..
In 1st year university in res, a friend of mine used to sleep with the ear muffs on all the time, they make things amazingly quiet. The plugs are almost as good, but more comfortable to wear.
You can also get special plugs made up by audiologists, that are custom-molded to your ears, and only let certain frequencies through. Musicians use them a lot, for example, bass players standing next to the drums: they get them to filter out all the high frequencies from the cymbals.
Although, I do think that $125/hour is a bit much.
Remember, it also depends what it's worth to the technician. I would charge at least $125/hr to someone to fix their computer, simply because I don't WANT to fix their computer, and it's not worth any less to me to do it. They can always find someone else.
One of our contractors was just in a similar situation. He used to always do a week-long government job calibrating some insturments way up north. Normally, he was charging something like $30k to do it. This year, he didn't want to do it, so he quoted them $70k. They decided to do it anyways (apparently he's one of the only people with the equipment needed) and so he went along and got paid more than twice what he did before, for doing the same thing.
Of course, all that said, usually when I do end up looking at a computer, it's for a friend that knows I can do it (I pretty much never volunteer that I can do it, because I absolutely hate fixing hardware problems) and I do it for free, or cost of parts.
We use hylafax quite extensively at the office. We are not into phase 2 yet which aims at removing all incoming hard copy. Pretty much when I get time to finish the roll out we should move to this.
I'm still setting up for phase 1 of my hylafax rollout, which is basically setting up a print-to-fax gateway. I don't like any of the existing solutions, so I basically started from scratch. The fax capture runs as a samba print share, when you print to it, it spools it into an 'outbox'. This spool service will also connect back to the sender's PC and make a program popup (which I haven't written yet) asking for the phone number, cover page notes, etc, much like Respond, except in a non-ugly interface that includes cover page options. If it can't connect, or the user doesn't fill it out, it will just sit in the outbox with a 'pending' status (since it has no fax destination).
Phase 2 will be the same as yours, removing incoming hardcopy, putting faxes into a similar 'inbox' spool. Think webmail, but for faxes. Eventually, I'd also like to do OCR that gets run through filters which can hopefully match things like "Attn: bob" and send an email to bob telling him he has a new fax. I doubt I'll be able to replace the actual fax with OCR due to quality, but we'll see.
The Digium cards seem a mght expensive, but there are definately cheaper then channel banks.
More importantly, the digium cards, plus computer hardware, plus voip phones running with Asterisk all together is still far cheaper than a normal VoIP system (say, 3Com or NEC), or a voicemail-equiped digital (non-voip) phone system. Plus you get a ton more features and flexibility than you could ever possibly have in a closed system.
The idea that a C/C++ program is more likely to be buggy than a VM that is also a C/C++ program is a bit off. They are both C/C++ programs...
Yes. But, lets take the example of writing a simple web server. If you do it in C, you have to write functions for reading from disk, handling tcp connections, etc etc, and be worried about things like buffer overflows with something you missed.
If you write the same thing in a VM, then you still have to write these pieces, but at a higher level. You write code that says readFile(), you don't have to write the part that says how to read the file. Basically, it saves a crapload of writing and debugging code (since it's already been done, and is well tested in many other situations), and you can concentrate on programming, not memory mangement.
I have a theory that programmers should understand memory.
See, I have this theory that it depends what you're programming. When I write a high level application that a user is going to work with, then no, I don't really care at all where or how something is stored in memory, I just want it to get stored and be able to pass it around as I like. This is not to say that programmers don't need to know memory management - for the people writing the VM, it's very important - but not all of them do.
I've always been taught code reuse is a good thing. For some reason, I guess a lot of programmers thing that doesn't apply if you're reusing code from a VM (via abstraction)?
Maybe they think it runs slower - which is true - but for the past couple years, it's been my opinion that it's cheaper to pay a small amount for a faster processor than it is to pay for the time to code in a low level language like C, and for the time to debug all this code.
Comcast wants over $200 a month for a commercial service that offers 256kbps up.
I'm in Ontario, Canada, and the typical DSL account around here, up until a few weeks ago was 1.5mbps/384kbps. I pay $35CDN/month for that at home, but at most you pay $45 (including modem rental). At the office, we pay $59/month (including modem) for 1.5mbps/640kbps.
A couple weeks ago, Bell Nexxia (who owns and operates the physical network, and wholesales to other ISPs) upgraded the whole network. Former 1.5mbps accounts are now 3mbps, and 3mbps accounts are now 4mbps. At the office, the upload speed is now 800kbps, I'm not sure what it is at home now. This changed happened at no extra cost.
for 3mb down / 384 up they want $325.00
That sounds espessially crazy. In Ottawa and downtown Toronto, you can get SDSL, at 2mbps/2mbps, for around $350CDN. Unfortunately I don't live there.. but when SDSL comes here, I will most definately switch.
My only experience with Fedora is through my roommate, who recently installed it as his first try into linux. Instantly, it reminded me of the old rpm hell i used to go through with redhat 7 and 8 (although once i was using 8, i was pretty much doing everything by source, because it was easier than dealing with rpm circular dependencies and such nonsense).
Anyways.. he was having some issues trying to get some software to install, and was getting very frustrated. I took a look at it, and eventually installed apt4rpm, and it instantly fixed all the problems he was having. I know up2date and yum are both supposted to be able to update software.. but I don't know, they just don't seem to work nearly as nicely as apt.
Two of the huge benefits he sees from linux are this (and I agree): ease of installation (as in, so many apps preinstalled), and ease of update (one button to update every single application installed on your system, without having to reboot? Eat your heart out, windowsupdate).
I'm not sure what exactly fedora is doing with their update/install features, but apt makes things so much easier. Come on fedora guys - you're known to be user-friendly, why are your update/install utilites so lacking?
You must't understand. If you just push the floor key you want to go to, it doesn't go there. But if you HOLD IT DOWN for several seconds, the door gradually closes and you go to the floor you want.
That's the way "service" mode works on pratically all elevators.
On a lot of elevators, you can do something else similar: hold down the button to the floor you want to go to (the whole time) - it will bypass floors with people waiting. I believe this is intended to be used for emergencies...
My car doesn't have keyless entry so the idea of using the key to open the door setting off an alarm seems ridiculous to me.
Mine does, and it makes perfect sense.
I mean, if the lock could detect tampering like from a pick or a jiggler and THAT set off the alarm, it would seem reasonable to me. But if the person has a key that will open the door easily, doesn't the same key work in the ignition?
The point is, it's not going to be a key. It's going to be a coat hanger or one of those devices tow trucks have with them. I'll explain the way my car works (2001 Sunfire) and it'll probably make sense:
If you lock the doors with the FOB, the alarm is armed. If the door opens without unlocking with the FOB, the horn honks quietly for 10 seconds, then the alarm goes off.
Thing is, a jammer doesn't have to be held up against your head and shouted into to make it work, so you won't know who's doing it. Anyone nearby with their hand in their pocket could be doing it.
This opens up another market, doesn't it? - the cell-phone-jammer-detector. Signal fading out? Just whip out your detector, and locate the source. Maybe they could build in a taser, too.
For a business, having a cool number that spells something or references the business in a memorable way makes sense only when you need to get people to call you after seeing an advertisement.
My phone number is xxx-GREG. My name is Greg. It's pretty simple to tell my people my number. I think most people probably remember it that way (or use speed dial..) but for the ones that remember it by the actual numbers, why does it matter? They still know the number, and so the whole point of having an easy-to-rememeber number (having them remember it) works.
Furthremore, what happens when you lose your cell phone?
Well, as I found out a few months ago, you lose a lot of phone numbers. It's a huge pain in the ass, but in a couple of days, you get all the ones that you call on any kind of regular basis back. On the plus side, you get rid of all the old entries you never use anymore.
BUT, you can:
1) Complain to your ISP about opening port 25 (which will have some success once SPF widely adopted).
2) Use AOL's webmail interface (or telnet, ssh, etc. for other email providers)
3) Complain to your email provider to add port 2525 as a mirror of port 25. (hopefully with SSL)
Naturally, this would only be done on a server with SMTP authentication anyways, so the ISP is not bothered and your email works perfectly.
ttyl, greg
Why waste time with all this computer stuff? It just complicates things. Use the simplest solution.
Yes, it does complicate things. And complication is a very bad thing in theater: if something CAN go wrong, it will. And theres enough that can already go wrong when you're doing a show.. if your communications goes wrong, it makes all those other problems that much more difficult to solve.
We used to use private-band UHF radios with headsets, or at least headphones. My dad's company had a pair of these, and we'd go and rent a few more that were tuned to our frequency when we needed them. I don't know about pricing (ie, if it comes out close to say, clearcom, go with clearcom). But theres no interference (since it is a private, licenced band) and they go through walls etc with no problems.
Slashdot Mirror
Make no doubt about it, MS can afford to and will make drastic price cuts and offer free upgrades if Linux becomes a serious competitor.
One of the interesting comments in the article was that MS's cash reserves are big enough that they can operate for 5 years with zero revenue. That means they could give away Windows (competeing with open source), probably not run into antitrust problems since they're matching competition prices, and at the same time wipe out any other vendors that are selling at a non-zero price.
Imagine the uphill battle in several years to get businesses off 2000...
I have no plans to EVER upgrade to any other version of Windows from 2000. My next desktop change will be moving to a Linux-based platform.
I moved our NT4 server to a Linux/Samba system in January, and at that time, I made sure I did it in a way that made everything compatible with Linux workstations. It was a pretty seamless switch. The only thing the users notice now is that the network file shares respond faster.
I have totally given up on Windows. I've completely stopped caring at all. They can release Longhorn whenever the hell they want, it won't affect me at all. I've never even run XP on a system I own. What's the point?
ride one of these and get to go down 20 or 30 feet without any discomfort and weight of scuba gear on my body.
.. that's an important thing to have to be able to go under. Without that feeling of 'weight' on your body, you'll be stuck floating at the surface. In reality, you just become neutrally bouyant underwater, so don't notice it. It's only once you get out of the water that the gear is heavy. :)
And instead be comfortable straddeling this huge scooter thing underwater, with a limited field of view and awkward mobility? Please..
With a good instructor, you'd probably be able to go underwater on scuba with about 30 minutes of training (obviously they're not going to teach you everything, but enough fundamentals to be able to do it fairly safely). You don't really notice the gear at all, its definately not uncomfortable.
As far as weight
Although I've never used one, I've heard DPV's are great fun. Just by looking at one, I would bet that it's a hell of a lot cooler than this ScubaDoo contraption.
If you're going to do scuba though, do it right. I just started this year (PADI), and I love it.
This is why this happens in the UK and not in America. You see us free Americans have a right to carry guns, lots of em, thats why muggings dont happen in America.
And the thing you don't realize is this also means the muggers have guns. And guess what? Having a gun is useless when a mugger pulls one on you first. Do you think he's just going to sit there and let you pull out your gun? In fact, at the end of it all, you'll probably be out an iPod AND a gun.
Either way, isn't it still illegal to carry around a gun? I thought you could have them in your houses, but that was it.. ?
Or you could find a real-world, emotion-having, NOT-concerned-about-what-idiots-think women who shares your values. Do you really want to spend your life with someone who throws ethics out the window for a sparkly piece of junk?
Speaking of real-world, where are you living? All women will do that. Don't believe me? How many women do you know that are engaged that don't have a diamond ring?
Too bad the guys with Jolt, anime, and useless PC mods are the ones powering the next generation. The old way of life is dying slowly and thankfully.
If the 'old way of life' - in this case eating and procreating - is dying off, then it seems to me there won't be a next generation to power..
Without the innovative ideas coming from people such as basement dwelling computer geeks, you wouldn't be typing your moronic post on Slashdot right now.
The hardcore geeks - you sound like you'd fit in that camp - aren't the only ones 'innovating' (the merits of putting a PC in a cardboard box are probably discussed in other comments, so I won't comment on that). There are lots of people that build cool and innovative software and hardware, and still lead an active social life, with lots of beer drinking and sex.
I normally wouldn't reply to such an OT post but you make some stupid comment like that, and I just can't resist.
Nobody said open source software were flawless
This is a good point that often seems to escape the microsoft camp. Open source is NOT flawless. In fact, go look at any of the security sites.. you'll find lots of bugs and possible exploits for almost any server. However, in every case, there's a fix. Now, if an admin doesn't apply it, obviously they'll be vulnerable to any exploits created for that hole. This is no different from Microsoft - or any other company's - products.
The problem with Microsoft (or any closed) code is that if there is a bug, and their small (compared to the OSS world) and non-diverse (as in, they've all been hired by the company, and probably have roughly the same credentials and experience) QA team doesn't find it, then it's likely that a cracker will find it and create an exploit before there is a fix.
With OSS, most of the problems are found much earlier (many eyes.. yadayada), and so a fix is created before a cracker can create an exploit.
If we would get report of all the windows servers that are getting hacked everyday, we'd here much more news like this. We are hearing about this because GNU, Gnome, Debian, etc. are public projects... othewise, this would be just another hacked site.
This is also true of pretty much any software/site. Lots of companies using Microsoft software get hacked (not counting the thousands of virus-infected servers sitting on the net), and don't announce it. Lots of companies using Linux and other OSs get hacked too, and don't announce it. Often they don't even know about it.
The bottom line is this: a server running 3 year old versions of everything, no matter what OS, likely has problems. If you don't keep patches up to date, you are going to have holes. Generally speaking though, an up-to-date linux box is going to be more secure than an up-to-date windows box.
We could also mention the quality of updates: breaking other services, causing unexpected problems because of strange inter-dependencies (gee, guess which platform I'm talking about..), but thats a whole different can of worms.
An unpatched IE is the only culprit IMO besides people leaving the preview pane enabled.
Like the grandparent post, I also use Thunderbird (and Firefox). I personally like the functionality of the preview pane, it saves an extra step while using email and makes my life easier. But I guess it's easier to have to double-click on every single message you want to read (and still get infected with a virus if you happen to open one with a virus) than it is to just install a better mail client...
are you willing to take the performance hit to convert it to another language though?
Take the performance hit and get the security increase? Hell yes.
I can buy a faster CPU for a whole lot cheaper than I can pay a programmer to go through and audit thousands of lines of code, with no guarantee they'll even be able to catch all the problems.
Of course, this doesn't get around have problems in the language you're using to write the application - but the benefit is, if there is a bug, it is more likely to be found (because so many people are using the same code for so many purposes), and fixing it will fix any instance of that bug in every application built on that language.
Or maybe having 5% less CPU utilization is more important than preventing someone from exploiting your server?
It's only older (5-10+ years old) medical equipment that *may* be affected, and usually only if the cell phone is placed in very close proximity (2-4 inches away) from said device. This is also very similar to the ban on cell phones at gas stations. Most have signs up showing a red X through a cell phone. In reality, there are no documented cases of a cell phone causing any kind of accident whatsoever at a gas station. What is far more common is static discharge, which happens when you are statically charged (ie, from sliding across the seat) and touch metal near the tank opening, while filling it, and cause a spark. Even this is extremely rare, and is only a problem when the person freaks out and pulls the gas nozzle out, causing flaming gas to shoot everywhere. In fact, it takes very specific conditions for gas to even ignite from a spark (just the right percentage of vapour, temperature, etc). There was a geat episode of MythBusters where they tried the cell phone myth. They created a sealed chamber and had the gas under the exact correct conditions, and couldn't get it to do anything - with a cell phone, or with a device they rigged up to simulate static from sliding across the seat. (They did show some neat fire dept. video of the static discharge igniting the gas, so it is possible). IIRC, the only way they even ended up blowing up the chamber was by using a giant telsa coil or something that caused a really big spark. Apparently that whole situation was also caused by some study that was summarized somewhere else, with the statements about how rare and unlikely it is removed. But pratically every gas station bans cell phones. I certainly didn't blow up the other day when someone called me while I was filling my tank. Hell, I even had a conversation with them.
I mean, choice is a good thing, but, to me, debian is a case study in what can go wrong if the ability to choose every aspect is taken to the extreme. Just shut up and install.
I've recently switched to using debian. I used to always use redhat (ya ya..) but the horrible package management was irritating (to the point I was pretty much doing everything from tarballs), and I heard many good things about apt, so I decided to give it a shot. Installed it on my desktop, and the install was a horrible experience, I have to say. Figuring "hey, I know linux decently well, I'll do stuff myself" I chose "medium" level questions (or whatever is a notch above the default level). Big mistake. It was at the point where I was so annoyed while installing that I was just pressing enter blindly, figuring it would be less work to fix the broken stuff AFTER rather than read through so many pages of info I didn't really care that much about.
I also was equally annoyed at dselect. What a hard to use interface. It's supposed to be the easy way to install packages? The default sorting of "newest packages" at the top is pointless - when I'm installing a new system, there are certain things I want (say, xwindows), I don't even know if they're "new" or not. Also, the apt repository's large size is both it's biggest asset and biggest downfall. On one hand, there's lots and lots of stuff, and I've discovered programs in apt I've never heard of before. On the other hand, it makes dselect a nightmare to lose, because you end up scrolling through 1000 entries with only a vague idea of what you want.
Anyways, all that said, I use debian on what is now the 'main' network server at work (samba, ldap, dns, dhcp, web, mysql, etc..). I also use it as the base for a remote monitoring (SCADA) system at small water treatment facilities (actually, none running debian are online yet, but there will be two by the end of next week). I really love it for both of these applications, but what I ended up doing was just using apt-get on command line to install everything, and let it resolve dependencies. Hm, I need a web server. "apt-get install apache", bang, it installs a whole ton of libraries and such that are needed. That method has worked out very well so far. I actually use my own packages for the software that runs my SCADA systems, but all the libraries are from apt, which makes updating very simple.
The only package I find to be a pain is installing kernel images.. there's a whole manual thing you have to do with editing lilo.conf and setting up initrd.img. Maybe this is just because I installed woody with the 2.4 kernel and then changed to testing? I dunno.
Hm, I haven't read about Anaconda for Debian for a while. I actually might try this out tommorow.. if I remember (and have time to do it), I'll try to post a follow-up..
But that's definately the direction to go. Redhat is very easy to install, but a pain to maintain (install new software) and keep up to date (up2date is ok.. but not as extensive as apt). I don't even have to mention rpm dependency hell (mm.. circular dependencies are fun). Debian is a pain to install, but extremly easy to maintain and keep up to date. Combining the two could be a very good thing..
Its like those amazing bose noise cancelling headphones.
Or the same sort of thing, except requires no batteries.
Or with no headgear.
In 1st year university in res, a friend of mine used to sleep with the ear muffs on all the time, they make things amazingly quiet. The plugs are almost as good, but more comfortable to wear.
You can also get special plugs made up by audiologists, that are custom-molded to your ears, and only let certain frequencies through. Musicians use them a lot, for example, bass players standing next to the drums: they get them to filter out all the high frequencies from the cymbals.
Although, I do think that $125/hour is a bit much.
Remember, it also depends what it's worth to the technician. I would charge at least $125/hr to someone to fix their computer, simply because I don't WANT to fix their computer, and it's not worth any less to me to do it. They can always find someone else.
One of our contractors was just in a similar situation. He used to always do a week-long government job calibrating some insturments way up north. Normally, he was charging something like $30k to do it. This year, he didn't want to do it, so he quoted them $70k. They decided to do it anyways (apparently he's one of the only people with the equipment needed) and so he went along and got paid more than twice what he did before, for doing the same thing.
Of course, all that said, usually when I do end up looking at a computer, it's for a friend that knows I can do it (I pretty much never volunteer that I can do it, because I absolutely hate fixing hardware problems) and I do it for free, or cost of parts.
We use hylafax quite extensively at the office. We are not into phase 2 yet which aims at removing all incoming hard copy. Pretty much when I get time to finish the roll out we should move to this. I'm still setting up for phase 1 of my hylafax rollout, which is basically setting up a print-to-fax gateway. I don't like any of the existing solutions, so I basically started from scratch. The fax capture runs as a samba print share, when you print to it, it spools it into an 'outbox'. This spool service will also connect back to the sender's PC and make a program popup (which I haven't written yet) asking for the phone number, cover page notes, etc, much like Respond, except in a non-ugly interface that includes cover page options. If it can't connect, or the user doesn't fill it out, it will just sit in the outbox with a 'pending' status (since it has no fax destination). Phase 2 will be the same as yours, removing incoming hardcopy, putting faxes into a similar 'inbox' spool. Think webmail, but for faxes. Eventually, I'd also like to do OCR that gets run through filters which can hopefully match things like "Attn: bob" and send an email to bob telling him he has a new fax. I doubt I'll be able to replace the actual fax with OCR due to quality, but we'll see.
The Digium cards seem a mght expensive, but there are definately cheaper then channel banks.
More importantly, the digium cards, plus computer hardware, plus voip phones running with Asterisk all together is still far cheaper than a normal VoIP system (say, 3Com or NEC), or a voicemail-equiped digital (non-voip) phone system. Plus you get a ton more features and flexibility than you could ever possibly have in a closed system.
The idea that a C/C++ program is more likely to be buggy than a VM that is also a C/C++ program is a bit off. They are both C/C++ programs...
Yes. But, lets take the example of writing a simple web server. If you do it in C, you have to write functions for reading from disk, handling tcp connections, etc etc, and be worried about things like buffer overflows with something you missed.
If you write the same thing in a VM, then you still have to write these pieces, but at a higher level. You write code that says readFile(), you don't have to write the part that says how to read the file. Basically, it saves a crapload of writing and debugging code (since it's already been done, and is well tested in many other situations), and you can concentrate on programming, not memory mangement.
I have a theory that programmers should understand memory.
See, I have this theory that it depends what you're programming. When I write a high level application that a user is going to work with, then no, I don't really care at all where or how something is stored in memory, I just want it to get stored and be able to pass it around as I like. This is not to say that programmers don't need to know memory management - for the people writing the VM, it's very important - but not all of them do.
I've always been taught code reuse is a good thing. For some reason, I guess a lot of programmers thing that doesn't apply if you're reusing code from a VM (via abstraction)?
Maybe they think it runs slower - which is true - but for the past couple years, it's been my opinion that it's cheaper to pay a small amount for a faster processor than it is to pay for the time to code in a low level language like C, and for the time to debug all this code.
I'm in Ontario, Canada, and the typical DSL account around here, up until a few weeks ago was 1.5mbps/384kbps. I pay $35CDN/month for that at home, but at most you pay $45 (including modem rental). At the office, we pay $59/month (including modem) for 1.5mbps/640kbps.
A couple weeks ago, Bell Nexxia (who owns and operates the physical network, and wholesales to other ISPs) upgraded the whole network. Former 1.5mbps accounts are now 3mbps, and 3mbps accounts are now 4mbps. At the office, the upload speed is now 800kbps, I'm not sure what it is at home now. This changed happened at no extra cost.
for 3mb down / 384 up they want $325.00
That sounds espessially crazy. In Ottawa and downtown Toronto, you can get SDSL, at 2mbps/2mbps, for around $350CDN. Unfortunately I don't live there.. but when SDSL comes here, I will most definately switch.
My only experience with Fedora is through my roommate, who recently installed it as his first try into linux. Instantly, it reminded me of the old rpm hell i used to go through with redhat 7 and 8 (although once i was using 8, i was pretty much doing everything by source, because it was easier than dealing with rpm circular dependencies and such nonsense).
Anyways.. he was having some issues trying to get some software to install, and was getting very frustrated. I took a look at it, and eventually installed apt4rpm, and it instantly fixed all the problems he was having. I know up2date and yum are both supposted to be able to update software.. but I don't know, they just don't seem to work nearly as nicely as apt.
Two of the huge benefits he sees from linux are this (and I agree): ease of installation (as in, so many apps preinstalled), and ease of update (one button to update every single application installed on your system, without having to reboot? Eat your heart out, windowsupdate).
I'm not sure what exactly fedora is doing with their update/install features, but apt makes things so much easier. Come on fedora guys - you're known to be user-friendly, why are your update/install utilites so lacking?
That's the way "service" mode works on pratically all elevators.
On a lot of elevators, you can do something else similar: hold down the button to the floor you want to go to (the whole time) - it will bypass floors with people waiting. I believe this is intended to be used for emergencies...
Mine does, and it makes perfect sense.
I mean, if the lock could detect tampering like from a pick or a jiggler and THAT set off the alarm, it would seem reasonable to me. But if the person has a key that will open the door easily, doesn't the same key work in the ignition?
The point is, it's not going to be a key. It's going to be a coat hanger or one of those devices tow trucks have with them. I'll explain the way my car works (2001 Sunfire) and it'll probably make sense:
If you lock the doors with the FOB, the alarm is armed. If the door opens without unlocking with the FOB, the horn honks quietly for 10 seconds, then the alarm goes off.
This opens up another market, doesn't it? - the cell-phone-jammer-detector. Signal fading out? Just whip out your detector, and locate the source. Maybe they could build in a taser, too.
My phone number is xxx-GREG. My name is Greg. It's pretty simple to tell my people my number. I think most people probably remember it that way (or use speed dial..) but for the ones that remember it by the actual numbers, why does it matter? They still know the number, and so the whole point of having an easy-to-rememeber number (having them remember it) works.
Well, as I found out a few months ago, you lose a lot of phone numbers. It's a huge pain in the ass, but in a couple of days, you get all the ones that you call on any kind of regular basis back. On the plus side, you get rid of all the old entries you never use anymore.
BUT, you can: 1) Complain to your ISP about opening port 25 (which will have some success once SPF widely adopted). 2) Use AOL's webmail interface (or telnet, ssh, etc. for other email providers)
3) Complain to your email provider to add port 2525 as a mirror of port 25. (hopefully with SSL)
Naturally, this would only be done on a server with SMTP authentication anyways, so the ISP is not bothered and your email works perfectly. ttyl, greg
Yes, it does complicate things. And complication is a very bad thing in theater: if something CAN go wrong, it will. And theres enough that can already go wrong when you're doing a show.. if your communications goes wrong, it makes all those other problems that much more difficult to solve.
We used to use private-band UHF radios with headsets, or at least headphones. My dad's company had a pair of these, and we'd go and rent a few more that were tuned to our frequency when we needed them. I don't know about pricing (ie, if it comes out close to say, clearcom, go with clearcom). But theres no interference (since it is a private, licenced band) and they go through walls etc with no problems.