Final Fantasy 13 will be the next PS3 console mover. However, this will only happen IF the PS3 breaches the $199/console barrier.
Why do I choose that barrier? $249 and $199 seem to have been historically numbers to shoot for in the console market. The $249 barrier seems to be the barrier at which the console is perceived as accessible, and is purchased mostly by people with disposable income (usually, singles, married couples, college students, and some households with children.) The $199 barrier seems to be the barrier at which the console is percieved as affordable, and is purchase by all the above in addition to larger numbers of households with children.
The $249 barrier is usually hit about 6 months after the console is introduced. The $199 barrier is usually hit about 1-2 years after the console is introduced, and usually conincides with the holiday shopping season.
I would add $149 and $99 there. $149 is usually hit about 6 months to 1 year prior to a console's successor coming out, and $99 is usually hit right about when the successor is introduced.
None of these numbers are based on any official research, just my own observations of price points at gaming stores, big box stores, and the electronics dept of places such as Target, Wal-mart, and others. I'm basing this from what I've seen of each of the consoles since about Super Nintendo.
Right now, looking at Gamestop.com, the lowest priced barebones PS3 system (which appears to be a 20GB console with 1 wireless controller) is going for $449. This is about 1 year after release. At this point in time, they should have introduced the $249 price point for their least featured device.
I realize Sony is trying to push the PS3 to be a family entertainment center, focused around the BlueRay DVD player, but I believe that this is one of the biggest contributors to their current pricing issue.
The price where I am (Connecticut, USA, www.filmsinfo.com) is $8.75/person for a evening or night showing.
Yes... 25 minutes of ads, or more. Thats 25 minutes of ads after the film starts rolling... but theres more ads you don't take into account (and I don't just mean the ones that are inserted into the movie.... or in the case of Transformers, the ones that the movies plot is built around.)
From the time the film actually starts rolling (the advertised start time of the movie) to the time the actual opening credits begin, there are usually about 5 or 6 trailers, each about 3-4 minutes long. There are also a couple advertisements for commercial brands (soda, jeans, vehicles, etc), and an advertisement soliciting donations for a charity organization. The movie actually starts about 20-30 minutes after the advertised start time.
If you think of it, the movie theater is being paid by the national brands of the movies or the commercial products a figure for x-number of people shown advertisement impressions, so they're making an additional money off that above and beyond the pricing of the ticket they sold.
However, thats not to mention the local advertising that is also shwon on the screen BEFORE the film starts rolling. My local theater is also showing several 30-second clips from about 10-20 local restaurants/pet stores/automotive shops. So, even more money in their pocket.
By the way, have you also noticed all the advertising you are exposed to before you even set foot into the screening area? Plenty of posters lining the outside of the theater, and many decorations inside (and in some theaters, LCD-TV's showing trailers non stop, or in my theater, a LCD projector projecting them onto a empty section of wall above the concession booth.) They are definitely also getting paid to advertise those in prominent positions too.
I wonder, if a movie theater was not permitted to show advertisements prior to the movie, what the price per ticket would be... 20-25 percent more? Probably even more if they also allowed us to bring in reasonable size beverages instead of the over priced concession stand.
Well, hopefully the next President will stop some of this zany antics that have been going on. I really want to know how they would handle things for people who are having family emergencies and their parents/family live abroad in places like London or Israel, and they need to hop a plane fast.... Nope, sorry, gotta wait 48 hours for your registration to go through and be approved.
As far as the next president growing cajones.... One of the front runners right now.... well, need I say if they grew some LITERAL cajones, would be quite the scandal.
And before anyone comments on the panels of electic being next to the comm jacks... they do make wall plates that take that into account. Just look around for them.
I think you're talking about http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4852739/ something like this. To me, sounds like a good idea, as long as everyone else in the neighborhood does it too. See the link a few down for the Google Map picture about houses that didn't have a limit on how far they could float.
Someone want to refresh on the worst water level in residential New Orleans during Katrina? Make sure you build your float poles so the house can float a few feet higher than the old flood line if need be, and make sure to put a hard stopper at the top of the poles so the house doesn't float off them. Look into how Venice does their construction in their houses too...
As far as wiring...
Networking: If you're expecting the house to get flooded, I'd suggest a main fiber switch and router at your DSL/Cable demarc, then fiber to each room and a switch there to convert down to gig Ethernet copper. Expensive, but it will avoid rusted copper in the walls in the event of a flood.
Phone: Really nothing you can do here to prevent rusted copper... except to use cordless phones with a multi-handset 5 GHz system, which many people here will naysay because of privacy issues (although with frequency hopping, that's usually not too awful of an issue. If someone wants to spy on you, all they REALLY have to do is open the client side of your outside Customer Access box and put a tap there, which is as easy as a splitter and a normal wired phone if they want to sit there.) Alternately, you could look into a Vonage or similar VOIP system to avoid the box-tap, but same note about the wiring. Regadless of what happens, if you run wire, make it Cat5 (or 6 even).
If you go the old fashioned way of running wire to every room from a central comm closet, I'd suggest the following, which is what I learned from a cable running company that serviced an old business I worked at:
A panel consists of 2 electric, 2 network, 1 phone, and 1 coax, and the panel is recessed in the wall. All cable is run via conduit to the main patch location. The 2 network and 1 phone, run those all as Cat5 or 6. Plenum if you can, but not REALLY necessary unless fire codes really require it.
Each wall in a room gets at least one panel, centered on the wall if possible. Do this only on your major walls... if a wall is a minor wall in a oddly shaped room, don't bother. In your kitchen, make sure outlets are located at least 6 inches above the work counters, and the electrical outlets are kitchen approved with Test/Reset... same with the bathroom ones. Yes, put network and TV in your kitchen... the wife or girlfriend will thank you... and when recessed monitors in counters with a transparent countertop become a reality, you're already set.
If the wall is longer than 6 feet, give it an additional panel, adding an additional one for every additional 6 feet of wall. Make sure panels are at least one foot from the nearest corner. For example, a 6 foot wall would get a panel one foot in from each corner... a 12 foot wall would get a panel each one foot in at each corner, and one in middle of wall.
This allows you to move your computers/TV's/phones easily from one location to another. in a room, along all walls. Yes, its overkill, but its better than stringing those pesky extension cords (of all varieties... phone, Cat5, coax, or electrical) on a semi-permanent basis, which fire inspectors frown on.
Thats what I was wondering. Whatever happened to the concept of a hot spare? In the server and networking industries, people would be hopping mad if you didn't have a spare standing by to put in place at a moments notice. A spare switch, spare router, spare hard drive, even spare server.
Granted, yes, $5 million is a substantial chunk of change for something that MAY never be used... but that is the exact reason for the hot spare. To have a qualified working piece of equipment as spare, put the spare in place, and send the broken piece out for repair or replacement so that the hot spare item is ultimately replenished.
Biggest questions with switching to Linux, from a firm of 3000+ computers. This is all written from the standpoint of a discussion I, the IT director, has had with my current staff and my direct manager, the CFO. These are honest questions raised by the CFO and myself, who don't know enough about Linux yet to answer them.
Application compatibility - Most applications that our users currently run have been written for Windows. How do I run those inside Linux, without resorting to a Windows emulation program? (Not just talking about Office, but also about client-server accounting/payroll program from a vendor, HR software, federal and state government tax and retirement plan submission software, video editing, photo editing, and more). If I have to use an emulation program, how seamlessly does it emulate the speed and functionality of the real Windows application? (If we have an attendance secretary who inputs 2000 students attendance a day, and each entry takes her 2 seconds longer to do, that adds another 5 hours to her work week... Expand that across the board to the other positions, and I start having a lot of decreased productivity)
Do I still need to pay Microsoft for the yearly licenses for Windows, or is the emulation program running on just a emulation layer that does not require a full install of Windows?
If I have to look at conversion to separate packages of software, including retraining of employees and support staff on new packages and dealing with missing functionality, that severely impacts the morale and productivity of employees in company in supporting the new software.
Training of New OS - How high is the learning curve (and by that, I mean users who are very reluctant to major software changes, such as most secretaries of executive-level officers) of switchng from a Windows 2000 to Linux, as opposed to the learning curve of switching from Windows 2000 to Windows Vista? How much will I need to do to retrain my support staff to handle these issues?
Support by established company - There are multiple brands of Linux (Ubuntu, Redhat, Slackware, Suse, Fedora, Debian, Knoppix, and many more). How many of the brands offer same business day support via call-in phone number, similar to a Microsoft support incident contract? Is there a single established site that contains an exhaustive knowledge base for incidents?
Upgrading of new OS versions: How different is the versioning of OS's like Redhat, or Ubuntu, or SUSE, from that of Windows? Is the Redhat of 3, or 5, or 7 years ago essentially unchanged from that of today? Could the Redhat of today run on a computer of 5 or 7 years ago without the disabling of any functionality? Can the OpenOffice of today run on the RedHat of 5 years ago? We're looking for uniform versioning across all our computers. One of Linux's big points that we keep seeing toted, anecdotally, is the ability to run it on a P3-600 without any degrading, and we need to know how true that is. If we're making a decision to install an OS that will run for the next 5 years with no upgrade, we need to answer these questions now.
Peripheral compatibility - Yes, Linux supports printers. But does it support existing and future peripherals, (such as Paperport single sheet scanners, business card scanners, PDA synchronization, digital camera synchronization, dv camera importing and editing, etc) for peripheral companies that do not and will not provide Linux drivers, and are in some cases the best of breed or the only company that supplies these peripherals? I do not want to hire on an additional staff member to program drivers for these.
Employee Use at home rights: How much of this software is available under use at home rights? How will an employee purchasing a new computer for home get Redhat, or Slackware, or whatever, installed on their new computer from Gateway, or HP, or Dell?
And since our company is also in charge of supporting computers inside a college computer environment:
Most theaters right now are not using cell phone jammers. They are, however, taking advantage of construction materials that diminish the signal strength of cell signals, such as double layer cinder block walls with a thick steel plate between the layers.
Card printers with stripe encoders are fairly inexpensive. In 2000, picked one up for a previous employer for $400.
However, also being the guy who ran the prox card access system, I can tell you this: Prox cards are not easy to reprogram. They are usually hard coded with technology that resembles a primitive form of a RFID chip and small battery that only energizes when in the prescence of a mildly strong magnetic field (more than kitchen refrigerator magnets, but not as strong as the rare earth magnets you can buy for cheap), has a transmit range of 6 inches, and is attached to a antenna/induction coil loop that circles the length of the card about 5-10 loops.
Theres a reason you don't leave a prox card on top of a unchielded stereo speaker... Not only does the stripe become scrambled over time, but the battery, which is constantly in the range of the magnetic field, will stay energized and keep broadcasting the signal untill.... well, until its dead. Typical prox cards are specced for about 10-20 access per day, with a usable lifespan of 5 years.
Prox cards from HID (one of the biggest manufacturers of prox security equipment) are sold with a two-fold identifier: 4-digit site ID, and 6-digit card number. Yes, these are both printed on the card. Yes, HID keeps track of which company owns which site ID, so they can sell further stock in the future with the same site number...and also so they don't sell the same site number to someone else in the same region.
Prox reader controllers (a closet component that is what the readers are wired to, each controller capable of holding a token-style chain of 127 modules that can each control up to 8 doors on each module) are programmed to accept only a certain set of site ID's. They keep a local database, updated at regular intervals from the master controller, a server (anywhere from 15 mins to an hour) of what card numbers within each site are allowed to access a specific reader/door combo.
If the communications to the server is down, the controller tries to contact the nearest controllers it knows about (up to 255), which also keep the same database. If no redundundant communication to other controllers or to server is available either, the controller maintains its current memory and security settings for 72 hours from last communication. After that, no access is allowed at readers until communications are enabled again and a database synch is performed.
Of course, this info is all dated to 2002, for Andover Controls security systems... but is pretty much standard to all prox systems.
Gentlemen, the Martians have attacked our spy sattelite. Attack now... We will impress them with our Shock and Awe strategy!
Behold, Our Superior airpower... What do you mean, we only have a couple light armament sattelites? Wasn't that what daddy's president made Star Wars for, and Empire Strikes back? Send out the X-Wings!
Guess we'll have to resort to the secondary Shock and Awe strategy... Moon them, then shower them with cute teddy bears.
Also, if you're dealing with a lot of users across a slow connection (ie 200 users who access their e-mail on the Exchange server across a T1), you get some bandwidth savings using cached mode.
With Outlook 2000/XP and Exchange 2000, you keep a constant RPC connection open (for mail notification and transfer) and you transfer mail at full size.
With Outlook 2003 (using cached mode) and Exchange 2000, you contact the server once every 45-90 seconds (rand) and check for new messages. Messages transfer in a burst, but at full size.
With Outlook 2003 and Exchange 2003, you get same as above, but the messages are actually compressed before the burst.
Yes, you get a 30-60 second delay that you didn't have with Outlook 2000/XP, but the bandwidth savings help quite a bit. Especially when the people in that building are using other applications across that link too (Web, constant telnet, Terminal Services).
I wonder... Would magnetized boots on a asteroid with a high metal content (preferrably a metal that is metallic in nature as well) and low-dust surface help any? I realize the ground won't be flat, so the boots will need a stronger magnet to hold them down...
You'd also have to put the astronauts on a tether to their craft, or put a booster pack on their back... or both.
Slashdot Mirror
I noticed, one of the options there in that pic was death by Pastry. What a horrible way to go...
There is absolutely NO place in the article or the related 2:54 video that even states this. False quotation if you ask me.
Final Fantasy 13 will be the next PS3 console mover. However, this will only happen IF the PS3 breaches the $199/console barrier.
Why do I choose that barrier? $249 and $199 seem to have been historically numbers to shoot for in the console market. The $249 barrier seems to be the barrier at which the console is perceived as accessible, and is purchased mostly by people with disposable income (usually, singles, married couples, college students, and some households with children.) The $199 barrier seems to be the barrier at which the console is percieved as affordable, and is purchase by all the above in addition to larger numbers of households with children.
The $249 barrier is usually hit about 6 months after the console is introduced. The $199 barrier is usually hit about 1-2 years after the console is introduced, and usually conincides with the holiday shopping season.
I would add $149 and $99 there. $149 is usually hit about 6 months to 1 year prior to a console's successor coming out, and $99 is usually hit right about when the successor is introduced.
None of these numbers are based on any official research, just my own observations of price points at gaming stores, big box stores, and the electronics dept of places such as Target, Wal-mart, and others. I'm basing this from what I've seen of each of the consoles since about Super Nintendo.
Right now, looking at Gamestop.com, the lowest priced barebones PS3 system (which appears to be a 20GB console with 1 wireless controller) is going for $449. This is about 1 year after release. At this point in time, they should have introduced the $249 price point for their least featured device.
I realize Sony is trying to push the PS3 to be a family entertainment center, focused around the BlueRay DVD player, but I believe that this is one of the biggest contributors to their current pricing issue.
Ahhh, so your iPod touch has songs by Divinyls on it?
The price where I am (Connecticut, USA, www.filmsinfo.com) is $8.75/person for a evening or night showing.
Yes... 25 minutes of ads, or more. Thats 25 minutes of ads after the film starts rolling... but theres more ads you don't take into account (and I don't just mean the ones that are inserted into the movie.... or in the case of Transformers, the ones that the movies plot is built around.)
From the time the film actually starts rolling (the advertised start time of the movie) to the time the actual opening credits begin, there are usually about 5 or 6 trailers, each about 3-4 minutes long. There are also a couple advertisements for commercial brands (soda, jeans, vehicles, etc), and an advertisement soliciting donations for a charity organization. The movie actually starts about 20-30 minutes after the advertised start time.
If you think of it, the movie theater is being paid by the national brands of the movies or the commercial products a figure for x-number of people shown advertisement impressions, so they're making an additional money off that above and beyond the pricing of the ticket they sold.
However, thats not to mention the local advertising that is also shwon on the screen BEFORE the film starts rolling. My local theater is also showing several 30-second clips from about 10-20 local restaurants/pet stores/automotive shops. So, even more money in their pocket.
By the way, have you also noticed all the advertising you are exposed to before you even set foot into the screening area? Plenty of posters lining the outside of the theater, and many decorations inside (and in some theaters, LCD-TV's showing trailers non stop, or in my theater, a LCD projector projecting them onto a empty section of wall above the concession booth.) They are definitely also getting paid to advertise those in prominent positions too.
I wonder, if a movie theater was not permitted to show advertisements prior to the movie, what the price per ticket would be... 20-25 percent more? Probably even more if they also allowed us to bring in reasonable size beverages instead of the over priced concession stand.
Can I have 169.254.*.* ?
Yes, there is a certain resemblance...
Indeed...
Well, hopefully the next President will stop some of this zany antics that have been going on. I really want to know how they would handle things for people who are having family emergencies and their parents/family live abroad in places like London or Israel, and they need to hop a plane fast.... Nope, sorry, gotta wait 48 hours for your registration to go through and be approved.
As far as the next president growing cajones.... One of the front runners right now.... well, need I say if they grew some LITERAL cajones, would be quite the scandal.
And before anyone comments on the panels of electic being next to the comm jacks... they do make wall plates that take that into account. Just look around for them.
I think you're talking about http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4852739/ something like this. To me, sounds like a good idea, as long as everyone else in the neighborhood does it too. See the link a few down for the Google Map picture about houses that didn't have a limit on how far they could float.
Someone want to refresh on the worst water level in residential New Orleans during Katrina? Make sure you build your float poles so the house can float a few feet higher than the old flood line if need be, and make sure to put a hard stopper at the top of the poles so the house doesn't float off them. Look into how Venice does their construction in their houses too...
As far as wiring...
Networking: If you're expecting the house to get flooded, I'd suggest a main fiber switch and router at your DSL/Cable demarc, then fiber to each room and a switch there to convert down to gig Ethernet copper. Expensive, but it will avoid rusted copper in the walls in the event of a flood.
Phone: Really nothing you can do here to prevent rusted copper... except to use cordless phones with a multi-handset 5 GHz system, which many people here will naysay because of privacy issues (although with frequency hopping, that's usually not too awful of an issue. If someone wants to spy on you, all they REALLY have to do is open the client side of your outside Customer Access box and put a tap there, which is as easy as a splitter and a normal wired phone if they want to sit there.) Alternately, you could look into a Vonage or similar VOIP system to avoid the box-tap, but same note about the wiring. Regadless of what happens, if you run wire, make it Cat5 (or 6 even).
If you go the old fashioned way of running wire to every room from a central comm closet, I'd suggest the following, which is what I learned from a cable running company that serviced an old business I worked at:
A panel consists of 2 electric, 2 network, 1 phone, and 1 coax, and the panel is recessed in the wall. All cable is run via conduit to the main patch location. The 2 network and 1 phone, run those all as Cat5 or 6. Plenum if you can, but not REALLY necessary unless fire codes really require it.
Each wall in a room gets at least one panel, centered on the wall if possible. Do this only on your major walls... if a wall is a minor wall in a oddly shaped room, don't bother. In your kitchen, make sure outlets are located at least 6 inches above the work counters, and the electrical outlets are kitchen approved with Test/Reset... same with the bathroom ones. Yes, put network and TV in your kitchen... the wife or girlfriend will thank you... and when recessed monitors in counters with a transparent countertop become a reality, you're already set.
If the wall is longer than 6 feet, give it an additional panel, adding an additional one for every additional 6 feet of wall. Make sure panels are at least one foot from the nearest corner. For example, a 6 foot wall would get a panel one foot in from each corner... a 12 foot wall would get a panel each one foot in at each corner, and one in middle of wall.
This allows you to move your computers/TV's/phones easily from one location to another. in a room, along all walls. Yes, its overkill, but its better than stringing those pesky extension cords (of all varieties... phone, Cat5, coax, or electrical) on a semi-permanent basis, which fire inspectors frown on.
I love it... but doesn't look like they've gotten the road directions to Australia, New Zealand, Japan, or Antarctica up yet.
Thats what I was wondering. Whatever happened to the concept of a hot spare? In the server and networking industries, people would be hopping mad if you didn't have a spare standing by to put in place at a moments notice. A spare switch, spare router, spare hard drive, even spare server.
Granted, yes, $5 million is a substantial chunk of change for something that MAY never be used... but that is the exact reason for the hot spare. To have a qualified working piece of equipment as spare, put the spare in place, and send the broken piece out for repair or replacement so that the hot spare item is ultimately replenished.
Just move them behind your neightbors house... the comet will take care of the rest.
where's the obligatory joke about Iraqis?
Somehow, I'm thinking that K5 or D**g might be the replacements... not necessarily WORTHY ones, but...
Methinks the Girlfriend is insecure? Seems she is easy to root.
Since the girlfriend takes commands over the air, that makes her an open access point?
Biggest questions with switching to Linux, from a firm of 3000+ computers. This is all written from the standpoint of a discussion I, the IT director, has had with my current staff and my direct manager, the CFO. These are honest questions raised by the CFO and myself, who don't know enough about Linux yet to answer them.
Application compatibility - Most applications that our users currently run have been written for Windows. How do I run those inside Linux, without resorting to a Windows emulation program? (Not just talking about Office, but also about client-server accounting/payroll program from a vendor, HR software, federal and state government tax and retirement plan submission software, video editing, photo editing, and more). If I have to use an emulation program, how seamlessly does it emulate the speed and functionality of the real Windows application? (If we have an attendance secretary who inputs 2000 students attendance a day, and each entry takes her 2 seconds longer to do, that adds another 5 hours to her work week... Expand that across the board to the other positions, and I start having a lot of decreased productivity)
Do I still need to pay Microsoft for the yearly licenses for Windows, or is the emulation program running on just a emulation layer that does not require a full install of Windows?
If I have to look at conversion to separate packages of software, including retraining of employees and support staff on new packages and dealing with missing functionality, that severely impacts the morale and productivity of employees in company in supporting the new software.
Training of New OS - How high is the learning curve (and by that, I mean users who are very reluctant to major software changes, such as most secretaries of executive-level officers) of switchng from a Windows 2000 to Linux, as opposed to the learning curve of switching from Windows 2000 to Windows Vista? How much will I need to do to retrain my support staff to handle these issues?
Support by established company - There are multiple brands of Linux (Ubuntu, Redhat, Slackware, Suse, Fedora, Debian, Knoppix, and many more). How many of the brands offer same business day support via call-in phone number, similar to a Microsoft support incident contract? Is there a single established site that contains an exhaustive knowledge base for incidents?
Upgrading of new OS versions: How different is the versioning of OS's like Redhat, or Ubuntu, or SUSE, from that of Windows? Is the Redhat of 3, or 5, or 7 years ago essentially unchanged from that of today? Could the Redhat of today run on a computer of 5 or 7 years ago without the disabling of any functionality? Can the OpenOffice of today run on the RedHat of 5 years ago? We're looking for uniform versioning across all our computers. One of Linux's big points that we keep seeing toted, anecdotally, is the ability to run it on a P3-600 without any degrading, and we need to know how true that is. If we're making a decision to install an OS that will run for the next 5 years with no upgrade, we need to answer these questions now.
Peripheral compatibility - Yes, Linux supports printers. But does it support existing and future peripherals, (such as Paperport single sheet scanners, business card scanners, PDA synchronization, digital camera synchronization, dv camera importing and editing, etc) for peripheral companies that do not and will not provide Linux drivers, and are in some cases the best of breed or the only company that supplies these peripherals? I do not want to hire on an additional staff member to program drivers for these.
Employee Use at home rights: How much of this software is available under use at home rights? How will an employee purchasing a new computer for home get Redhat, or Slackware, or whatever, installed on their new computer from Gateway, or HP, or Dell?
And since our company is also in charge of supporting computers inside a college computer environment:
Application compatibility: Many educational CD's
Most theaters right now are not using cell phone jammers. They are, however, taking advantage of construction materials that diminish the signal strength of cell signals, such as double layer cinder block walls with a thick steel plate between the layers.
Legal? Yes.
Costly? Probably.
you can never be certain when duplicate events can occur
Card printers with stripe encoders are fairly inexpensive. In 2000, picked one up for a previous employer for $400.
However, also being the guy who ran the prox card access system, I can tell you this: Prox cards are not easy to reprogram. They are usually hard coded with technology that resembles a primitive form of a RFID chip and small battery that only energizes when in the prescence of a mildly strong magnetic field (more than kitchen refrigerator magnets, but not as strong as the rare earth magnets you can buy for cheap), has a transmit range of 6 inches, and is attached to a antenna/induction coil loop that circles the length of the card about 5-10 loops.
Theres a reason you don't leave a prox card on top of a unchielded stereo speaker... Not only does the stripe become scrambled over time, but the battery, which is constantly in the range of the magnetic field, will stay energized and keep broadcasting the signal untill.... well, until its dead. Typical prox cards are specced for about 10-20 access per day, with a usable lifespan of 5 years.
Prox cards from HID (one of the biggest manufacturers of prox security equipment) are sold with a two-fold identifier: 4-digit site ID, and 6-digit card number. Yes, these are both printed on the card. Yes, HID keeps track of which company owns which site ID, so they can sell further stock in the future with the same site number...and also so they don't sell the same site number to someone else in the same region.
Prox reader controllers (a closet component that is what the readers are wired to, each controller capable of holding a token-style chain of 127 modules that can each control up to 8 doors on each module) are programmed to accept only a certain set of site ID's. They keep a local database, updated at regular intervals from the master controller, a server (anywhere from 15 mins to an hour) of what card numbers within each site are allowed to access a specific reader/door combo.
If the communications to the server is down, the controller tries to contact the nearest controllers it knows about (up to 255), which also keep the same database. If no redundundant communication to other controllers or to server is available either, the controller maintains its current memory and security settings for 72 hours from last communication. After that, no access is allowed at readers until communications are enabled again and a database synch is performed.
Of course, this info is all dated to 2002, for Andover Controls security systems... but is pretty much standard to all prox systems.
Yes.
Please specify male or female, and age range. Default is Male, 73-85.
I can see Bush now....
Gentlemen, the Martians have attacked our spy sattelite. Attack now... We will impress them with our Shock and Awe strategy!
Behold, Our Superior airpower... What do you mean, we only have a couple light armament sattelites? Wasn't that what daddy's president made Star Wars for, and Empire Strikes back? Send out the X-Wings!
Guess we'll have to resort to the secondary Shock and Awe strategy... Moon them, then shower them with cute teddy bears.
Also, if you're dealing with a lot of users across a slow connection (ie 200 users who access their e-mail on the Exchange server across a T1), you get some bandwidth savings using cached mode.
With Outlook 2000/XP and Exchange 2000, you keep a constant RPC connection open (for mail notification and transfer) and you transfer mail at full size.
With Outlook 2003 (using cached mode) and Exchange 2000, you contact the server once every 45-90 seconds (rand) and check for new messages. Messages transfer in a burst, but at full size.
With Outlook 2003 and Exchange 2003, you get same as above, but the messages are actually compressed before the burst.
Yes, you get a 30-60 second delay that you didn't have with Outlook 2000/XP, but the bandwidth savings help quite a bit. Especially when the people in that building are using other applications across that link too (Web, constant telnet, Terminal Services).
I wonder... Would magnetized boots on a asteroid with a high metal content (preferrably a metal that is metallic in nature as well) and low-dust surface help any? I realize the ground won't be flat, so the boots will need a stronger magnet to hold them down...
You'd also have to put the astronauts on a tether to their craft, or put a booster pack on their back... or both.
Not all cables... power cabling still there, unless you use tons of batteries.
Now wireless power... or inductive power, where the whole countertop is a power loop...