on the other hand, i've seen cases where an old 12 Volt fan or a crappy harddisk either shorts out or worse induces a lot of noise into the line.
With a power supply per server, this usually affects only that one machine. Now, if you have a power supply per rack, this might affect all servers in that rack. Especially with the noise-on-the-line problem, this might not actually shut down or crash the servers, it might make them unreliable -> much harder to find the bad component!
I'*d say, rather than changing the power supply, we should focus on the power consumption. From what i've seen, most servers in a company are completly over-sized in terms of capabilities because "at some point in the next 5 years (well after the next upgrade...) we'll need that resources". In many of these cases, the companies could save a lot of energy and money by buying slower and "greener" servers without really reducing service.
In one case, i've seen a top-notch AMD Quad-Core Dual-Processor Machine with 8 Gig RAM used as an Email-Server for about 10 people. And yes, it also had a top-notch graphics card, too. Hooked up to a DSL-Line. In this case, a 5 Watt Soekris would have been enough and it probably even would not have slowed email transfer...
You're right. Hadn't thought it through. A small antenna should be enough.
Anyway, making more local contacts is more interesting in this case anyway (for everything else: HAM sats are available and should work with a small, hendheld yagi)
That's why you probably wont need a big antenna. One of this mobile ones with the magnet on the bottom should be really enough.
May also take a few meters of cable, some solder and a soldering iron with you... if need be, you can put together a simple handheld yagi and call you beloved ones via HAM satellite. And that's what your internet connection comes into play: Spend a few minutes looking up the up-to-date comm passes. Even just listening in could be a very exiting experience for you and your shipmates.. with any luck, you might even make contact with the International Space Station (Callsign: NA1SS)
A paper journal also gives (at least) me more time to think about what i'm actually writing, because it's a much slower, more intense process than typing on a keyboard.
When you come home. you can always take the text you have written, put it into a text editor and expand on it before putting it on the web... (but: add the scans too!)
Get a HAM radio license and a portable radio (like the VX-7R or whatever works for you).
While you likely wont be able to make worldwide contacts (unless you bring a 30+ meter long antenna with you as well), you should be able to contact many people while you are near the shore.
Believe me, it's much more interesting than surfing the web. And in case of an emergency, you have some means of backup communication.
About blogging: Don't blog. At least not "online". If you really want to blog (a some sort of diary), do it offline but spend as little time as possible on it; just take quick notes. When the semester is over, take that notes, refine them into articles and release them part-by-part over some time. This way, you don't waste precious time of your semester AND you have much more leisure time to really release refined articles.
...i hereby invite you to join our Jump'n'Run game project "BlinkenSisters". I think, participating in an already working project makes quite a lot of sense, because there's already a team that can help you out when you're stuck.
We do the core engine in C/C++ with the SDL library, use CMake as our *nix build system and also have (a few) Perl scripts around.
As for writing portable code: The game is supposed to run everywhere, my team and i can show you many pittfalls of non-portable programming (yeah, we done them all). We have a wide range of sub-projects: From enhancing the engine to scripting to writing new, small tools.
If you're interested, email us at: team AT blinkensisters DOT org
Proprietary OS, difficult to reverse-engineer or predict.
See, now that is EXACTLY the problem when trying to cooperate with male co-workers: They require predictable results, especially when dealing with technical stuff.
Technical matters require precision and repeatability; that includes the team working on it.
And to all the comments about sexual harassment: If you are a commited, gifted geek your fellow male geeks might not notice that you have breasts at all... much to your own annoyment when the time comes to flirt your way out of a sticky situation:-P
While there may be certain situations that require distributed versioning, for my main project (the BlinkenSisters Jump'n'Run) subversion does its job perfectly. Combined with an IRC autobuild bot, automated checkin-reporting to our central mailinglist and not having to merge branches all the time, subversion is a very handy tool. A central repository also forces the combined team to fix bugs quickly.
Also, the windows explorer integration with TortoiseSVN is very nice for developing on the windows side of life.
I think, the main difference between central SCM and decentral SCM is how the developers work: Subversion is for teams, GIT is for individuals working on a common project. Sound similar, but it's quite different: A team lives primarilly through communicating with each other, a group of individual coders by creating patches (which does *not* help getting into team spirit).
If you're interested in applying for a job in europe, you might want to consider trying a multi-national company first. They usually handle all the paperwork for you (Visa, customs, Taxes, etc)
Well, in my case it makes more sense to leave my company cell phone at home. While we have a spare one for IT that works perfectly well, its phone number mysteriously fails to show up in the company phone book and/or transmit the correct caller id....
At work i'm one of the sysadmin, and so have a nice fat workstation and a few beefy "test" servers at hand.
But sometimes i bring my personal laptop to work (which, by the way, is my only machine at home that does have a display). Twice in the last two years i left it in my office after my workday. Given that i can't even watch TV without it, i have to return to work to fetch it. Luckily, it's only 2.5km between home and work and my access card is (naturally) a 24/7 one.
Nowadays, i always put my access card into my laptop bag when i took it to work. Without the card, i'm physically unable to leave the office (except in case of fire), so i'm very unlikely to leave my laptop behind...
However, the counter arguement here is that anything they can do to the LAN cables
What do you mean by LAN cables? Like CAT5 through the ocean? While the mediteranean sea isn't exactly huge, i wouldn't call it a "local area network".
This pretty much only isolates the European world from the internet,
Really? When did this happen? I didn't notice it happening to me....
Anyway, a big blackout would likely isolate the US from the rest of the world, given most network infrastructure goes through europe anyway and the network in europe is more interlinked than that in the US.
Also note: US citizens are still quite a minority seen globally: 300 million versus roughly 6 billion which is about 5 percent (calculating body weight will more likely end up to be 7-8%... SCNR).
Europe, with its roughly 710 mill. people is about 11.8 percent of world population, Asia is 4 billion/60 percent, africa 900 mill./14 percent, just to give you a perspective. Details can be found at wikipedia; just search for the continent of your choice or "world population".
Acts of war against other continents may lead to a major conflict where that end with the US completly devastated. The sheer numbers of available menpower virtually guarantees that: Just think of 4 billion asians waging war against the US. Even if the US military wipes out 80%, the asians are still ahead in numbers and can overcome US citizens by sheer force.
The reason why the Internet was design the way it was so that it could survive an nuclear war even if the networks became fragmented.
And the networks hold up quite well. The bandwith may be down, but nothing a few well-placed proxies and some traffic-shaping firewalls (prioritize surfing and mail over filesharing for example) couldn't mitigate for the most part.
These days, it takes a lot of effort on the attackers side (and some stupidity and short-sightness on behalf of the country) to take out a countries network connections.
Ok, I don't know how paranoid you are but give me a break!!! FOUR times!!! That's simply beyond probabilities as a natural occurence.
Actually, no it isn't if i googled correctly.
The region is historically known for earthquakes and plate tectonics where one plate goes below the other, see:
http://scicom.ucsc.edu/scinotes/0101/egypt.htmlOn May 22, the last day of the spring 2000 field season, Goddio turned his attention to the second area with an odd magnetic pattern. He suspected that Herakleion, Menouthis's sister city, lay here. Preliminary surveys showed the sand had buried ruined houses, temples, a port, and large statues. What divers could uncover in that short time revealed statues that had all tumbled towards the south-southwest.
These statues reminded Goddio of fallen columns he had found during the past four years while excavating a sunken section of Alexandria, 15 miles to the west. Since geophysicist Amos Nur of Stanford University had studied fallen columns in Israel, Goddio asked for his help. Nur vividly recalls Goddio's phone call: "I was sitting here at home. I just came back from Alexandria when Franck Goddio called me at 3:00 in the morning and said 'Guess what? Remember when we talked about Herakleion? We just checked it out today. We removed some of the sand and we found these five statues--red granite statues--and they look like they've fallen in the same direction as we see in Alexandria. I think it's an earthquake.'"
The ingenious thing you probably didn't realize about your patent description: If someone places a flat slab of ice somewhere for an ice skating competition, you can still demand money
1) It's flat
2) It's horizontal
3) It's used to demonstrate ice skating skill
Now, that's what i call a really well formulated patent:-)
Given the average software quality out there, the plugin would probably detect that it can't connect to a server (ignoring that it failed on the error server) and contact the error server "instead".
The most probable error message would be something in the spirit of "You just transfered huge amounts of data on your non-flatrate account. Your account has been suspended."
The article states: "And Microsoft fixed 36 vulnerabilities in Vista, versus 65 for XP, according to the report." So what they essentially did, was *fixing* less bugs in Vista than in XP.
They also say "Microsoft notes that there were more vulnerabilities fixed in other OSes in their first years than in Vista". So other OSes where more active than Microsoft in fixing potential security flaws?
Since when is Microsoft actually telling the truth to its customers? Did i miss something???
> As a self-proclaimed hacker, I maintain that the best way to learn programming is by writing programs.
Exactly. The more you practise, the better you get. While theory is important, in real-life it's often just that: a theory how stuff is supposed to work.
And thats - at least for me when dealing with freshly finished students - the biggest problem. They usually do things by the book; which is ok if you're dealing with a long-haul development process. But when you're dealing with production-level systems, not so.
When the customer calls you because a critical system is malfunctioning or needs a really urgent design change, no expirienced developer should need to initiate a a month-long development lifecycle iteration. You just go in, fix the problem and inform your superior. While this may not get you some shiny ISO certificates, you can count on a happy (and therefore: paying) customer to back you.
Also, at least here in Austria, i have the impression that CS students aren't teached even the basics of computer hardware maintenance, which should be a requirement for any software developer. If the software you designed starts to behave abnormal, you should be able to at least check that it's not a hardware fault.
Well, i haven't been outside the EU since 2000 or so by plane, so i'm not up-to-date. Now that there are essentially no inner-european borders every few hundred kilometers, visiting other europeans countries by car has become much more fun (no hour-long traffic jams at the borders anymore. YES!!!)
Also, having a common currency made inner-european travel quite a bit cheaper, cause it did get rid of that exchange rates. As an Austrian visiting for example the Netherlands, you had to change Austrian Schillings to German Marks ('cause you will have to buy gas) and Netherland Gulden. After your travel, you'll have to change the rest of money back (paying fees twice). At exchange shops you normally could only exchange paper money. So you usually ended up with useless coins unless you visited that country again or had a friend that did.
Driving from Vienna/Austria to Lissabon/Portugal through Swiss (a 3000km drive, most direct route) would have you cross 5 borders, have 6 different currencies and an estimated total 10-20 hours waiting in traffic jams at the borders during hollyday season...
I don't mean to sound rude, but i've given up traverling to the US, i don't like to be viewed as a "stupid foreigner" by the authorities.
Last time i was in NY (pre 2001, though), it was "US citizens and greencard holders first, europeans last". Maybe we should have something similar at EU airports, to make us EU citizens feel smug and let US citizens stand around for long hours for a change...
All in the name of "security", 'couse, naturally, non-EU-citizens will have to fill in pointless imigration forms, answer stupid questions like "Are you a terrorist" to armed security guards while everybody is watching and generally made of fool of yourself. After all, the EU has to bring up its security standard to US levels...
If you modify an embedded system in a non-vendor approved way and then install a vendor update and the update brakes cause you did something incompatible.... Then it's your fault, not the vendors...
While i agree that Apple should be forced to sell unlocked phones, modifying a product in a non-approved way DOES invalidate your waranty. Why should the vendor be held reliable if YOU break his software?
Slashdot Mirror
on the other hand, i've seen cases where an old 12 Volt fan or a crappy harddisk either shorts out or worse induces a lot of noise into the line.
With a power supply per server, this usually affects only that one machine. Now, if you have a power supply per rack, this might affect all servers in that rack. Especially with the noise-on-the-line problem, this might not actually shut down or crash the servers, it might make them unreliable -> much harder to find the bad component!
I'*d say, rather than changing the power supply, we should focus on the power consumption. From what i've seen, most servers in a company are completly over-sized in terms of capabilities because "at some point in the next 5 years (well after the next upgrade...) we'll need that resources". In many of these cases, the companies could save a lot of energy and money by buying slower and "greener" servers without really reducing service.
In one case, i've seen a top-notch AMD Quad-Core Dual-Processor Machine with 8 Gig RAM used as an Email-Server for about 10 people. And yes, it also had a top-notch graphics card, too. Hooked up to a DSL-Line. In this case, a 5 Watt Soekris would have been enough and it probably even would not have slowed email transfer...
Think "Sex, Drugs and Rock'n'Roll". Well, drugs are probably not available and you're too young for Rock'n'Roll. So, that leaves just one thing...
You're right. Hadn't thought it through. A small antenna should be enough.
Anyway, making more local contacts is more interesting in this case anyway (for everything else: HAM sats are available and should work with a small, hendheld yagi)
That's why you probably wont need a big antenna. One of this mobile ones with the magnet on the bottom should be really enough.
May also take a few meters of cable, some solder and a soldering iron with you... if need be, you can put together a simple handheld yagi and call you beloved ones via HAM satellite. And that's what your internet connection comes into play: Spend a few minutes looking up the up-to-date comm passes. Even just listening in could be a very exiting experience for you and your shipmates.. with any luck, you might even make contact with the International Space Station (Callsign: NA1SS)
Check this http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/reference/radio/ and this http://www.issfanclub.com/taxonomy/term/6 out.
A paper journal also gives (at least) me more time to think about what i'm actually writing, because it's a much slower, more intense process than typing on a keyboard.
When you come home. you can always take the text you have written, put it into a text editor and expand on it before putting it on the web... (but: add the scans too!)
Get a HAM radio license and a portable radio (like the VX-7R or whatever works for you).
While you likely wont be able to make worldwide contacts (unless you bring a 30+ meter long antenna with you as well), you should be able to contact many people while you are near the shore.
Believe me, it's much more interesting than surfing the web. And in case of an emergency, you have some means of backup communication.
About blogging: Don't blog. At least not "online". If you really want to blog (a some sort of diary), do it offline but spend as little time as possible on it; just take quick notes. When the semester is over, take that notes, refine them into articles and release them part-by-part over some time. This way, you don't waste precious time of your semester AND you have much more leisure time to really release refined articles.
Put the BlinkenSisters Jump'n'Run on it:
http://www.blinkensisters.org/
I'll be glad to give support via email if required :-)
...i hereby invite you to join our Jump'n'Run game project "BlinkenSisters". I think, participating in an already working project makes quite a lot of sense, because there's already a team that can help you out when you're stuck.
We do the core engine in C/C++ with the SDL library, use CMake as our *nix build system and also have (a few) Perl scripts around.
As for writing portable code: The game is supposed to run everywhere, my team and i can show you many pittfalls of non-portable programming (yeah, we done them all). We have a wide range of sub-projects: From enhancing the engine to scripting to writing new, small tools.
If you're interested, email us at:
team AT blinkensisters DOT org
Proprietary OS, difficult to reverse-engineer or predict.
See, now that is EXACTLY the problem when trying to cooperate with male co-workers: They require predictable results, especially when dealing with technical stuff.
Technical matters require precision and repeatability; that includes the team working on it.
And to all the comments about sexual harassment: If you are a commited, gifted geek your fellow male geeks might not notice that you have breasts at all... much to your own annoyment when the time comes to flirt your way out of a sticky situation :-P
I agree.
While there may be certain situations that require distributed versioning, for my main project (the BlinkenSisters Jump'n'Run) subversion does its job perfectly. Combined with an IRC autobuild bot, automated checkin-reporting to our central mailinglist and not having to merge branches all the time, subversion is a very handy tool. A central repository also forces the combined team to fix bugs quickly.
Also, the windows explorer integration with TortoiseSVN is very nice for developing on the windows side of life.
I think, the main difference between central SCM and decentral SCM is how the developers work: Subversion is for teams, GIT is for individuals working on a common project. Sound similar, but it's quite different: A team lives primarilly through communicating with each other, a group of individual coders by creating patches (which does *not* help getting into team spirit).
Hi!
If you're interested in applying for a job in europe, you might want to consider trying a multi-national company first. They usually handle all the paperwork for you (Visa, customs, Taxes, etc)
Well, in my case it makes more sense to leave my company cell phone at home. While we have a spare one for IT that works perfectly well, its phone number mysteriously fails to show up in the company phone book and/or transmit the correct caller id....
At work i'm one of the sysadmin, and so have a nice fat workstation and a few beefy "test" servers at hand.
But sometimes i bring my personal laptop to work (which, by the way, is my only machine at home that does have a display). Twice in the last two years i left it in my office after my workday. Given that i can't even watch TV without it, i have to return to work to fetch it. Luckily, it's only 2.5km between home and work and my access card is (naturally) a 24/7 one.
Nowadays, i always put my access card into my laptop bag when i took it to work. Without the card, i'm physically unable to leave the office (except in case of fire), so i'm very unlikely to leave my laptop behind...
...for making the world a better place!
Arthur, you may be gone from this world, but you won't be forgotten!
However, the counter arguement here is that anything they can do to the LAN cables
What do you mean by LAN cables? Like CAT5 through the ocean? While the mediteranean sea isn't exactly huge, i wouldn't call it a "local area network".
This pretty much only isolates the European world from the internet,
Really? When did this happen? I didn't notice it happening to me....
Anyway, a big blackout would likely isolate the US from the rest of the world, given most network infrastructure goes through europe anyway and the network in europe is more interlinked than that in the US.
Also note: US citizens are still quite a minority seen globally: 300 million versus roughly 6 billion which is about 5 percent (calculating body weight will more likely end up to be 7-8%... SCNR).
Europe, with its roughly 710 mill. people is about 11.8 percent of world population, Asia is 4 billion/60 percent, africa 900 mill./14 percent, just to give you a perspective. Details can be found at wikipedia; just search for the continent of your choice or "world population".
Acts of war against other continents may lead to a major conflict where that end with the US completly devastated. The sheer numbers of available menpower virtually guarantees that: Just think of 4 billion asians waging war against the US. Even if the US military wipes out 80%, the asians are still ahead in numbers and can overcome US citizens by sheer force.
Note to self: Be more nice to my asian co-workers
The reason why the Internet was design the way it was so that it could survive an nuclear war even if the networks became fragmented.
And the networks hold up quite well. The bandwith may be down, but nothing a few well-placed proxies and some traffic-shaping firewalls (prioritize surfing and mail over filesharing for example) couldn't mitigate for the most part. These days, it takes a lot of effort on the attackers side (and some stupidity and short-sightness on behalf of the country) to take out a countries network connections.
Ok, I don't know how paranoid you are but give me a break!!! FOUR times!!! That's simply beyond probabilities as a natural occurence.
Actually, no it isn't if i googled correctly.
The region is historically known for earthquakes and plate tectonics where one plate goes below the other, see:
http://scicom.ucsc.edu/scinotes/0101/egypt.html On May 22, the last day of the spring 2000 field season, Goddio turned his attention to the second area with an odd magnetic pattern. He suspected that Herakleion, Menouthis's sister city, lay here. Preliminary surveys showed the sand had buried ruined houses, temples, a port, and large statues. What divers could uncover in that short time revealed statues that had all tumbled towards the south-southwest.
These statues reminded Goddio of fallen columns he had found during the past four years while excavating a sunken section of Alexandria, 15 miles to the west. Since geophysicist Amos Nur of Stanford University had studied fallen columns in Israel, Goddio asked for his help. Nur vividly recalls Goddio's phone call: "I was sitting here at home. I just came back from Alexandria when Franck Goddio called me at 3:00 in the morning and said 'Guess what? Remember when we talked about Herakleion? We just checked it out today. We removed some of the sand and we found these five statues--red granite statues--and they look like they've fallen in the same direction as we see in Alexandria. I think it's an earthquake.'"
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_of_Alexandria
This *may* be a quiet event with gradually shifting plates that damaged the cables. It *may* even be a prelude to some bigger event(s).
Just my 2 cents...
The ingenious thing you probably didn't realize about your patent description: If someone places a flat slab of ice somewhere for an ice skating competition, you can still demand money
:-)
1) It's flat
2) It's horizontal
3) It's used to demonstrate ice skating skill
Now, that's what i call a really well formulated patent
Given the average software quality out there, the plugin would probably detect that it can't connect to a server (ignoring that it failed on the error server) and contact the error server "instead".
The most probable error message would be something in the spirit of "You just transfered huge amounts of data on your non-flatrate account. Your account has been suspended."
The article states: "And Microsoft fixed 36 vulnerabilities in Vista, versus 65 for XP, according to the report." So what they essentially did, was *fixing* less bugs in Vista than in XP.
They also say "Microsoft notes that there were more vulnerabilities fixed in other OSes in their first years than in Vista". So other OSes where more active than Microsoft in fixing potential security flaws?
Since when is Microsoft actually telling the truth to its customers? Did i miss something???
> As a self-proclaimed hacker, I maintain that the best way to learn programming is by writing programs.
Exactly. The more you practise, the better you get. While theory is important, in real-life it's often just that: a theory how stuff is supposed to work.
And thats - at least for me when dealing with freshly finished students - the biggest problem. They usually do things by the book; which is ok if you're dealing with a long-haul development process. But when you're dealing with production-level systems, not so.
When the customer calls you because a critical system is malfunctioning or needs a really urgent design change, no expirienced developer should need to initiate a a month-long development lifecycle iteration. You just go in, fix the problem and inform your superior. While this may not get you some shiny ISO certificates, you can count on a happy (and therefore: paying) customer to back you.
Also, at least here in Austria, i have the impression that CS students aren't teached even the basics of computer hardware maintenance, which should be a requirement for any software developer. If the software you designed starts to behave abnormal, you should be able to at least check that it's not a hardware fault.
Hmm, just thought: It wouldn't be hard to set up a geek dating service online.
:-)
Post your requirements and i'll see what i can do
Some obvious requirements:
Anonymity, Messaging, Searching by typical geek attributes (using geek-code and such as basis for the categories?)
What about RSS-Feeds and email notification?
Well, i haven't been outside the EU since 2000 or so by plane, so i'm not up-to-date. Now that there are essentially no inner-european borders every few hundred kilometers, visiting other europeans countries by car has become much more fun (no hour-long traffic jams at the borders anymore. YES!!!)
Also, having a common currency made inner-european travel quite a bit cheaper, cause it did get rid of that exchange rates. As an Austrian visiting for example the Netherlands, you had to change Austrian Schillings to German Marks ('cause you will have to buy gas) and Netherland Gulden. After your travel, you'll have to change the rest of money back (paying fees twice). At exchange shops you normally could only exchange paper money. So you usually ended up with useless coins unless you visited that country again or had a friend that did.
Driving from Vienna/Austria to Lissabon/Portugal through Swiss (a 3000km drive, most direct route) would have you cross 5 borders, have 6 different currencies and an estimated total 10-20 hours waiting in traffic jams at the borders during hollyday season...
I don't mean to sound rude, but i've given up traverling to the US, i don't like to be viewed as a "stupid foreigner" by the authorities.
Last time i was in NY (pre 2001, though), it was "US citizens and greencard holders first, europeans last". Maybe we should have something similar at EU airports, to make us EU citizens feel smug and let US citizens stand around for long hours for a change...
All in the name of "security", 'couse, naturally, non-EU-citizens will have to fill in pointless imigration forms, answer stupid questions like "Are you a terrorist" to armed security guards while everybody is watching and generally made of fool of yourself. After all, the EU has to bring up its security standard to US levels...
If you modify an embedded system in a non-vendor approved way and then install a vendor update and the update brakes cause you did something incompatible.... Then it's your fault, not the vendors...
While i agree that Apple should be forced to sell unlocked phones, modifying a product in a non-approved way DOES invalidate your waranty. Why should the vendor be held reliable if YOU break his software?