Are you sure the exit sensors are [not] just simply infrared motion sensors that detect when a warm body has moved to within 2-3 feet of the door, and then simply unlock the door if so?
Yes. The idea in the case of the exit readers is that people without a proxy card (guests, contractors, etc.) should not be able to exit a building unescorted, lest they be trying to walk off with something important, or perhaps having just tampered with something important.
The exit readers are located only in "sensitive" areas. Places like avionics, the engine repair shop, or the Global Ops bunker, where it's just as important to know if someone is going out without authorization as it is to know if someone is trying to come in without authorization. That is, if someone who doesn't belong there is trying to get out, what did they just do and why are they trying to leave without the company of someone who's supposed to be opening the door?
Less critical facilities, such as the training building, the mailroom, etc. don't have the exit readers. However, you can still trigger an alarm at these facilities, even with the entry readers, if the building is marked "closed" in the system.
On federal holidays, when other folks aren't working, I've tripped alarms just by entering (legitimately, and with a valid proxy card), only to see security swarming the place when I drive by a few minutes later. Wasted man-hours, for sure, but I'm just doing my job and so are they. Ain't my fault the alarm went off.
They state proximity RFIDs...just how far does this proximity go?
At work, we use proximity readers and cards manufactured by Casi-Rusco, which was apparently rolled into GE.
Typically, readers are mounted next to a door at waist or shoulder height, and you must wave your card within 2-3 inches in order for it to be detected so that you can gain entry. It makes a faint beep and displays a green LED if you're allowed in, or a double-beep with a red LED if you're not.
There's a second type of reader which is used to detect when someone exits certain doorways. These are mounted on the ceiling, right next to the emergency "EXIT" sign, and can detect your proxy card from 3-4 feet away. This type of reader makes an audible ticking noise when it successfully reads a prox card.
The second type of reader is annoying, not because it's more pervasive, but because it's less accurate. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to exit a building and wound up setting off an alarm because the reader didn't sense my card.
FWIW, I've ordered from TigerDirect on 6 or 8 occasions. Two full systems (including the one I'm typing on now, which arrived on Friday), and various upgrades e.g. RAM, routers, hard drives, etc. I haven't had a single problem. These days they're the first place I look if I need something computer-related, stuff is often cheaper elsewhere, but I wind up ordering from Tiger anyway because they've done me right in the past.
I have no affiliation with TigerDirect aside from being a happy customer.
The inconvienece is that Magnetic card readers wear quickly and everyone gets mad at a multiple swipe purchases, or when it doesn't even work at all.
Maybe I've come across some bionic credit cards, but I've never run into a problem with scanning any of my cards. My Capital One MasterCard was issued in 1999 and still scans just fine whenever I want to use it. My MBNA and Fleet cards are replacements which were automatically sent. And now I have an Amex "Blue" card which is practically see-through, replacing the "Blue" card I got in 2001.
In any case, I've never had a problem swiping any of my credit or debit cards, even the ones that are quite literally 5 years old. I'd still rather be in line behind the guy with a card that takes two or three swipes to recognize, than be in line behind the woman who's wanting to write a check.
How much more efficient is it really to put a card an inch next to a pad merchants will have to buy instead of swiping it through a card reader that already exists everywhere?
I really have to agree here. "They tout the convenience of no more swiping or giving your card to cashiers." What the heck? Swiping my credit card is supposedly "inconvenient?" I don't think so. I can't remember the last time I shopped anywhere that I had to physically hand my card to a cashier, every retail store seems to have the self-swipe card reader. Swiping my own card takes, what, 2 seconds? Entering the PIN (if I'm using a debit card) takes another 2 seconds.
What's the "inconvenience" that RFID is trying to solve here? Why can't some company concentrate on making it faster for Ms. Soccer Mom to write her $300 check at the grocery store, when she's one of 4 Ms. Soccer Moms in line in front of me?
I agree, this is a solution looking for a problem, and it's going to die a quick death.
platypussrex described the situation that was most fitting for the sites I lost from Google... Affiliate sites. Among other things I operate a variety of e.g. "webmaster book sites," "programmer book sites," etc. We'd set up several sites using the same general content with differing headers/footers. It seems that Google has gotten wise to the fact that our sites were using the same text and item descriptions for books, and dropped some of the "dupe" sites from their index.
As an example, suppose you set up an affiliate site to sell books through Amazon.com. You call it books1.com. Then you make a site called books2.com with the same books for sale, and then you make a books3.com with those books as well. What Google seems to be doing is keeping books1.com, since it was around first, but deleting books2.com and books3.com from its database. As in, not only do books2.com and books3.com not show up in search results, but even if you search for books2.com or books3.com directly (or through "site:books2.com" etc) there are no results.
It goes without saying that a number of other sites were also using the same description copy, trying to sell the same books. Some of them got dropped, some of them didn't. It looks like a case of first-come, first-served; where the sites that were around first are still there; some of my sites got dropped, some are still in the index.
I lost a couple of sites from Google this month, presumably due to duplicate content; they were nearly verbatim clones of some of my other sites. The original sites are still there, the "clones" vanished from Google. As in, even if I search for those domains directly, I get nothing, where I used to get a cached copy of the sites. They've quite literally vanished from Google's database.
Can you back up your assertions that Google's index is full? It's a rather interesting theory, and perhaps an explanation for all the tweaking they've done lately.
Ah well, I'll just move abroad with my girlfriend and take our 30 000 of student loan with us.
Come on over to the US, we don't have biometric ID's yet (for once, the UK beats us to something!). You can even stay at my place for free, if you let me use your girlfriend every now and then...
Try this page instead. The "Print" in "Google Print" refers to dead trees, as in print editions. Google is testing the ability to return book excerpts in search results.
The upside is obvious: it would mean that Apple's music format, AAC, would become ubiquitous
I thought that AAC was already well on its way to becoming ubiquitous, without Apple having to license it to every up-and-coming online music retailer?
I was just thinking last year how stupid these insurance companies were for always sending cancellation notice as opposed to a bill. (I live in Michigan.) So when I actually get a cancellation notice I don't know if its simply a bill, or an actual cancellation notice.
I have never received a bill from an insurance company, only cancellation notices, and I've been with at least 5 different ones.
I did RTFA (and a more detailed one at MSNBC).
Not being a resident of Michigan, I'm interested, could you elaborate a bit here? You state that when your insurance company sends you something, you don't know whether it's a bill or a cancellation notice. Then you seem to contradict that by saying you've had at least 5 insurance companies, and none of them have ever sent you a bill. Doesn't it stand to reason, then, that if you receive something from your insurance company, it's probably a cancellation notice?
I've only dealt with four insurance companies. My life insurance is through Prudential, and once a year, they send me a bill along with a statement of my policy. My car insurance used to be through Farmer's, who would send me a bill every month, but when I happened to be a Bad Consumer(TM) and paid late twice within a 12 month period (G-d forbid!), even though I'd been insured with them for years, they dropped me like a bag of hot rocks. Most recently, I've dealt with Geico, which I prepaid for a 6 month car insurance term. They haven't sent me anything.
I don't have the luxury of health, medical, or dental insurance at this point. Those used to go through Blue Cross Blue Shield, but it came straight out of my paycheck, so I never heard anything from them aside from the "OK, we paid $X on your appointment, you owe $Y" letters I'd get after going to the doctor.
When any of my insurance companies send me something, I open it up, and look to see whether it's a bill or a cancellation notice. This is a serious question, is there something unusual about the insurance laws in Michigan? Do they not have to bill you?
I hate insurance companies just as much as you do, but something just sounds weird about your post. If they send you something and you don't know what it is, why not open it and find out?
Well, I can't disagree with that. However, I would imagine that the OP and anyone savvy enough to be similarly curious is probably the type who runs chkdsk/r and defragments fairly often. At least I do;)
The general advice that I've picked up is that, at least in the *n?x world, you should create a swap partition which is double the size of the machine's physical RAM. For example, if you're sitting on 512MB of RAM, a 1GB swap partition is appropriate.
You only mention Windows towards the end of your question so I can't tell whether or not you're looking for a Windows answer. I've always allowed Windows to resize its swap file, but within a small window. This machine (Win2K) has 640 megs of physical RAM, and the swap file is set at 1280 minimum, 1960 maximum; that gives Windows "double the real RAM," but not a license to take over the whole drive. Seems to work well for me.
I've never tried putting the swap on its own channel or controller - or even on its own drive - under any OS. Like you, I'd be interested in hearing whether or not this is worth the trouble.
The RIAA ought to keep on doing this until the public gets either so fed up with these antics or simply doesn't have enough money to buy the CDs altogether.
The public is already getting fed up.
Have you seen the latest Pepsi commercial? It starts out with a girl sitting at a computer, then she says "I'm one of the kids the recording industry sued for sharing music on the internet." (At this point I was thinking to myself, oh great, now the anti-piracy ads are on TV too...) Then she says something like "and even after being sued, I'm still downloading music for free on the internet!" Then up comes some animation of a Pepsi bottle being opened, with the free iTunes download code inside the cap. The spot ends with her saying something like, "the record companies can't stop us from getting free music."
Fucking brilliant. And now that a company with the bucks to send a message (e.g. Pepsi, with Apple's help) is sending out that message, people are only going to get more fed up with RIAA.
Imagine distributed.net being a CPU co-op. They take problems from clients in need of a ton of CPU, farm it out to distributed.net members, and at the end of the month/year you get a small check for all the CPU cycles you spent helping solve problems.
This was already tried, by a company called ProcessTree. The idea was that they'd sell your CPU cycles out and you'd get a cut. They also had it set up in a pyramid fashion, so that you also got an extra few cents for each person you referred to the program.
The best I could find was this mirror of the FAQ. Since ProcessTree.com now belongs to a domain poacher, I'm guessing they never did find a paying client...
Slashdot Mirror
The exit readers are located only in "sensitive" areas. Places like avionics, the engine repair shop, or the Global Ops bunker, where it's just as important to know if someone is going out without authorization as it is to know if someone is trying to come in without authorization. That is, if someone who doesn't belong there is trying to get out, what did they just do and why are they trying to leave without the company of someone who's supposed to be opening the door?
Less critical facilities, such as the training building, the mailroom, etc. don't have the exit readers. However, you can still trigger an alarm at these facilities, even with the entry readers, if the building is marked "closed" in the system.
On federal holidays, when other folks aren't working, I've tripped alarms just by entering (legitimately, and with a valid proxy card), only to see security swarming the place when I drive by a few minutes later. Wasted man-hours, for sure, but I'm just doing my job and so are they. Ain't my fault the alarm went off.
Fun times!
Typically, readers are mounted next to a door at waist or shoulder height, and you must wave your card within 2-3 inches in order for it to be detected so that you can gain entry. It makes a faint beep and displays a green LED if you're allowed in, or a double-beep with a red LED if you're not.
There's a second type of reader which is used to detect when someone exits certain doorways. These are mounted on the ceiling, right next to the emergency "EXIT" sign, and can detect your proxy card from 3-4 feet away. This type of reader makes an audible ticking noise when it successfully reads a prox card.
The second type of reader is annoying, not because it's more pervasive, but because it's less accurate. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to exit a building and wound up setting off an alarm because the reader didn't sense my card.
I have no affiliation with TigerDirect aside from being a happy customer.
In any case, I've never had a problem swiping any of my credit or debit cards, even the ones that are quite literally 5 years old. I'd still rather be in line behind the guy with a card that takes two or three swipes to recognize, than be in line behind the woman who's wanting to write a check.
What's the "inconvenience" that RFID is trying to solve here? Why can't some company concentrate on making it faster for Ms. Soccer Mom to write her $300 check at the grocery store, when she's one of 4 Ms. Soccer Moms in line in front of me?
I agree, this is a solution looking for a problem, and it's going to die a quick death.
As an example, suppose you set up an affiliate site to sell books through Amazon.com. You call it books1.com. Then you make a site called books2.com with the same books for sale, and then you make a books3.com with those books as well. What Google seems to be doing is keeping books1.com, since it was around first, but deleting books2.com and books3.com from its database. As in, not only do books2.com and books3.com not show up in search results, but even if you search for books2.com or books3.com directly (or through "site:books2.com" etc) there are no results.
It goes without saying that a number of other sites were also using the same description copy, trying to sell the same books. Some of them got dropped, some of them didn't. It looks like a case of first-come, first-served; where the sites that were around first are still there; some of my sites got dropped, some are still in the index.
I lost a couple of sites from Google this month, presumably due to duplicate content; they were nearly verbatim clones of some of my other sites. The original sites are still there, the "clones" vanished from Google. As in, even if I search for those domains directly, I get nothing, where I used to get a cached copy of the sites. They've quite literally vanished from Google's database.
Can you back up your assertions that Google's index is full? It's a rather interesting theory, and perhaps an explanation for all the tweaking they've done lately.
And now you can also check your AOL email via Mail2Web, with a much cleaner interface than AOL's own webmail.aol.com. I'm not complaining...
No, his name is Johnny Wi-Five...
So, you were watching the "COPS" marathon on FX the other day, too? :)
Try this page instead. The "Print" in "Google Print" refers to dead trees, as in print editions. Google is testing the ability to return book excerpts in search results.
Sample result here.
I had planned on washing my car today. Now, I'm going to spend the rest of the afternoon playing "Sheep Wars."
Not being a resident of Michigan, I'm interested, could you elaborate a bit here? You state that when your insurance company sends you something, you don't know whether it's a bill or a cancellation notice. Then you seem to contradict that by saying you've had at least 5 insurance companies, and none of them have ever sent you a bill. Doesn't it stand to reason, then, that if you receive something from your insurance company, it's probably a cancellation notice?
I've only dealt with four insurance companies. My life insurance is through Prudential, and once a year, they send me a bill along with a statement of my policy. My car insurance used to be through Farmer's, who would send me a bill every month, but when I happened to be a Bad Consumer(TM) and paid late twice within a 12 month period (G-d forbid!), even though I'd been insured with them for years, they dropped me like a bag of hot rocks. Most recently, I've dealt with Geico, which I prepaid for a 6 month car insurance term. They haven't sent me anything.
I don't have the luxury of health, medical, or dental insurance at this point. Those used to go through Blue Cross Blue Shield, but it came straight out of my paycheck, so I never heard anything from them aside from the "OK, we paid $X on your appointment, you owe $Y" letters I'd get after going to the doctor.
When any of my insurance companies send me something, I open it up, and look to see whether it's a bill or a cancellation notice. This is a serious question, is there something unusual about the insurance laws in Michigan? Do they not have to bill you?
I hate insurance companies just as much as you do, but something just sounds weird about your post. If they send you something and you don't know what it is, why not open it and find out?
Well, I can't disagree with that. However, I would imagine that the OP and anyone savvy enough to be similarly curious is probably the type who runs chkdsk /r and defragments fairly often. At least I do ;)
The general advice that I've picked up is that, at least in the *n?x world, you should create a swap partition which is double the size of the machine's physical RAM. For example, if you're sitting on 512MB of RAM, a 1GB swap partition is appropriate.
You only mention Windows towards the end of your question so I can't tell whether or not you're looking for a Windows answer. I've always allowed Windows to resize its swap file, but within a small window. This machine (Win2K) has 640 megs of physical RAM, and the swap file is set at 1280 minimum, 1960 maximum; that gives Windows "double the real RAM," but not a license to take over the whole drive. Seems to work well for me.
I've never tried putting the swap on its own channel or controller - or even on its own drive - under any OS. Like you, I'd be interested in hearing whether or not this is worth the trouble.
Have you seen the latest Pepsi commercial? It starts out with a girl sitting at a computer, then she says "I'm one of the kids the recording industry sued for sharing music on the internet." (At this point I was thinking to myself, oh great, now the anti-piracy ads are on TV too...) Then she says something like "and even after being sued, I'm still downloading music for free on the internet!" Then up comes some animation of a Pepsi bottle being opened, with the free iTunes download code inside the cap. The spot ends with her saying something like, "the record companies can't stop us from getting free music."
Fucking brilliant. And now that a company with the bucks to send a message (e.g. Pepsi, with Apple's help) is sending out that message, people are only going to get more fed up with RIAA.
The best I could find was this mirror of the FAQ. Since ProcessTree.com now belongs to a domain poacher, I'm guessing they never did find a paying client...