Quite simply, any jurisdiction that even has a fraction of a brain will not use an electronic toll system to issue tickets. If they do, people will stop using the electronic toll system. It's just that simple. The toll authority has just as much of an interest in having people use the electronic toll system as people do in using it to save time. More people using the electronic system means fewer people employed taking tolls and less traffic. They won't jeopardize that.
As far as tracking people using the transponders, I don't know that it's that bad a thing. Like they said, you can always avoid tracking by putting your transponder in a foil bag, and they're even going to provide them upon request (It's not a pain in the ass. I have two transponders, and they're only on the windshield when I am going through a tollbooth, because I have a convertible). That should show goodwill, at the very least. And California does have some of the worst traffic in the country. Any additional info on how it moves (or doesn't) is probably going to go a long way towards making it better.
Possibly. Like I said, I've only started evaluating options. I was pointed at Eclipse, and a quick look at it looked like it might be both an app server and an IDE.
Thanks for the pointers however. More work, more fun. More acclaim when I save us hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Their software is way overpriced. And it's not like they provide support to make up for it. Every time I've had to deal with their support people, they're incredibly braindead.
I'm actually starting to evaluate Eclipse as a replacement for Weblogic Server (BEA's software) across our organization. Should save something like $17k per installation. Anyone have any experience using Eclipse?
What I don't understand is why the court did not rule that the legislation that President Eisenhower passed in 1954, which added the words "under God" to the pledge of allegiance, was itself unconstitutional. This would have been more correct, because the separation of church and state never should have allowed this to stand. This would have reduced the pledge back to its original form, which would not have been objectionable.
Of course, any pledge like that, recited by rote without understanding the meaning, quickly loses any meaning. If you don't know what you're saying, or you're saying it only because you've been forced, what's the point? I think it's just as well that it was removed from the schools for that reason. But this wasn't the right way to accomplish it.
Actually, Verisign recently acquired Illuminet, which is the largest independant carrier switching network. So they do have a pretty big investment in telecom that plays into this pretty well.
You didn't expect to receive email at the administrative contact's address when transfering a domain?!
Not after I received and responded to the approval request from Gandi. Considering that everything I've done with domains in the past has notified all contacts to the change, I expected that anything important would get sent to all the contacts.
Wasn't a big deal, however. Gandi lets you restart the transfer at no cost if it fails.
Aside from their sleazy methods of stealing customers, they're a shitty company to deal with (as an intentional customer) as well. A friend of mine got a (real) renewal notice from them (for a domain actually registered with them), and decided he was tired of their fees so he wanted to switch elsewhere. Turns out, you can't transfer a verisign domain in the last 90 days of registration. So to move it away, he had to pay for another whole year.
Just going to comment on this. While this may have been true in the past, I think that they changed their tune on this item. I just transferred 3 domains away from NetSol to Gandi in the last 45 days of the registration period, and I didn't have any problems. Two of the transfers actually had to be redone in the last 30 days of the registration because of an unrelated problem with the transfer.
The problem was NetSol's extra confirmation step that they have (they send out an email to the administrative contact once their receive the transfer request from your "new" registrar, and give you 96 hours to respond or they reject the transfer). Personally, I wish that step was more standard across the registrars (it prevents slamming like this), but since it's not, I wish NetSol had it documented a little better. My transfers failed the first time around because I neglected to check and respond to that message (my administrative contacts are an email address I don't usually use).
Bah. I worked both sides of the fence. I worked in the computer center maintaining the labs for more than 3 years. It was never that bad. That's the nice part of having a few people who were "responsible" for installing the game and making sure it stayed there, and letting anyone else know where it was when they wanted it. We didn't end up with multiple copies of games on the system.
Oh, and we never did have a problem with people wanting to do work and not having a computer. At least not that I knew of (and as I said, I was one of a few people "responsible" for the games). Mostly because use game players were polite and understood that the games always came second.
It's interesting, though. For some reason, Bolo on the Macintosh side was more or less sanctioned. Not sure why.
The university I went to had a similar policy. No games on the lab computers. Of course, as you said, around finals, most of us needed a break, and at the time the game of choice was Doom (damn, I've been out of school for a while). The problem we had wasn't really with people walking in and catching us. We played in the lab in the freshman dorm, and noone ever checked on that lab unless there was a problem.
Our problem was with storage of the game so that it could be accessed by the computers in the lab. I was making a hobby out of finding places on the network to hide the game where we actually had write privileges. We had a big Novell network running all the systems, and it was amazing how many places we had write privileges. We started, of course, with storing it on the local systems, but that didn't last long. So we started finding all the little nooks on the network where we could store something. Naming and renaming directories. Making hidden directories.
Damn, I miss that time. Well, not really.
-Todd
They're not preventing AIM integration
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AOL vs. Trillian
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· Score: 5, Informative
For the millionth time, AOL is not preventing 3rd party clients from interoperating with the AOL Instant Messenger system. What they are doing is preventing 3rd party clients from using OSCAR, which is AOL's "private" protocol for AIM. They're not touching TOC, which is the protocol which AOL makes available for 3rd party clients to use.
Sure, flame me because:
1) TOC doesn't have all the features of OSCAR
2) TOC (might) use more resources than OSCAR on AOL's side, so you're doing them a favor.
3) AOL's required by the court to let us play in their sandbox.
4) AOL's a big bully.
5) Information wants to be free, man!
If AOL wants to make a subset of the features available to 3rd party clients, it's their prerogative. They own the servers, they wrote the service, they pay for the people to maintain the servers. And if TOC uses more resources than OSCAR on AOL's servers (which is just a rumor, and not confirmed from anyone with any authority), that's AOL's business, not yours. And no, AOL is not required by any court to let 3rd party clients play with AIM. They're only required to make the "next generation" AIM available to 3rd parties.
If you use OSCAR to connect to AIM and you don't use AOL's clients to do it, you don't get to complain when they change OSCAR around, regardless of whether they're deliberately blocking someone or just making modifications to the protocol for something else. Use TOC, or use another IM service.
Actually, it wasn't so much an undisclosed location as it was the only reasonable place to keep it. At least when I left, it was being kept at the Springfield Post plant. They had space there, and it was fairly secure. Plus it had the added bonus of being close to the Metro and not too far from the Post.com offices in Arlington.
I'd really be interested to find out what has happened to it, anyways. That satellite dish alone and the associated equipment was really expensive, and quite reusable. Not to mention the big-ass generator and the sound gear.
On the sunlight. Yeah, unfortunately, not much we could do about that. We actually thought about putting an extension to the "wings" that would slot into them, so that when you put up the wings, you would then pull an additional sunshield out of them. Part of the problem with this was the added weight for the doors (they were already stressing the actuators, and they were the biggest we could get for this application). The other part of the proble was supporting them. We would have had to have poles on the corners, which would have been a pain.
The lack of interest. Yeah, unfortunately that was somewhat characteristic at a lot of Washingtonpost.com's events, regardless of how we presented the computers. The computer setups were more popular at inside events (like conferences) where the Glamvan (I still refuse to call it WoW:) could not go. At the outside events, like the Vintage Virginia wine festival, not many people wanted to sit and use a computer. When I saw the Glamvan at Vintage Virginia, it did seem to be more popular than the stationary cybercafe was the year before, but that still wasn't much. Thankfully, what was proposed in the article is a little different than Glamvan, so I think it will be more popular.
Yeah, it was an engineering marvel. And a nightmare. The build process was very painful, and I had to spend a lot of time in Missouri (at the limousine shop that was building it) to make sure everything went right. There wsa nothing like this out there at the time, so we had nothing to build from. There were a lot of things that were jury-rigged, like the keyboard trays (cut & bent from sheet metal. They could have used a little more polish). Part of this was because everything was so custom, and part of it was because outside of the "sponsored" items like the car and computers, Washingtonpost.com didn't want to spend much money on this.
That's one more thing. It will help your budget on this a lot if you can get sponsors to donate parts. Like approach Dell or Gateway for computers, someone else for the vehicle, a third party for the Internet access.
Thanks for the praise:) I had a lot of fun building it.
I wish they would have kept it running longer. I left washingtonpost.com shortly after it was done, moving on to bigger and better things. But while I was doing it, they wouldn't give me another person to make intimately familiar with how it worked. Then the marketing director that I designed and built it with left the company after I did, and I think they mothballed the thing. I have no idea what happened to it after that point.
Oh yeah, it was also painted a really cool color, called Dupont Chromalusion True Blasberry. Changed colors depending on the angle that you looked at it from. Blues, purples, reds, oranges, greens, etc. It was especially cool because they painted the satellite housing, which has lots of angles.
-Todd
Did something like this (roaming cafe)
on
Mobile IT Education?
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· Score: 5, Informative
I did something similar when I was at Washingtonpost.com. They wanted to simplify their show setups, so we came up with the idea for a "roaming cybercafe". It was very much a prototype, but I the tech was sound.
Our vehicle was a stretch Lincoln Navigator. It won't work for what you want, but it was good for us. It was a Navigator SUV, cut and stretched 10 feet. Each side had a 10 foot "gull wing" door at the top which swung up on actuators. Underneath each door was a actuator-mounted table with 3 systems on it. In the back of the thing was the generator, and there were 2 seats up front (driver and passenger) with the bulk of the backend gear mounted in a small rack between and just behind the seats. If I did it again with more money, I would have used flat panels because they are lighter and wouldn't have needed the motorized tables.
First, the internet connection. We used a 2-way satellite dish mounted on the top of the vehicle. The dish we purchased was specifically designed for ease-of-use mobile mounts. It had its own compass and GPS unit, and a motorized turntable. Inside the vehicle, we had the equipment for it mounted. All the driver had to do was select the deploy options from the menu on the device, and it would deploy the dish, track it to the correct rough position, then use the satellite signal to finetune the positioning. A unit like this was very important for making setup go smoothly.
Second, our "backend" servers. Since we were using satellite, we decided to set up a proxy server on the vehicle to try and make the satellite lags a little better. This worked very well for us, since all of the people surfing were supposed to be on the same website. But I think it would be a good idea regardless. You can also run a local website on this box (maybe a portal-type page for your homepage). And this is a good place for a DHCP server.
Third, the workstations themselves. We used NT Workstation installs, for at least marginal security. Used policies to lock down the systems a little bit and make sure that people couldn't cause too much damage. It helped us that we only had 6 computers, and usually 3 or 4 people on staff to watch them.
The miscellaneous is all fairly important as well. We used a 12kw gasoline generator which was mounted in the back of the vehicle and drew off the same tank as the engine (which was expanded). I think we had it set up so that we could get 8 hours of 75% load. We also had a connection so that we could connect to a power source at the setup site. This required a decent power management system, but it worked just fine. We did have problems with the exhaust from the generator (because it was so close to the workstations) and ended up having to do some custom work to vent it out the top of the vehicle. But surprisingly enough, the sound wasn't that bad when it was running.
We also had a sound system installed, so that we could do presentations/classes. Just microphone hookups in the front, a rack-mount DJ quality CD player, small amp, and a few speakers around the thing. I think it's not a bad idea for any application, because there's always going to be a use, even if it's just background noise.
All told, I designed the system so that it could be setup by any marketing droid that took it out. Flip a few switches to power gear up, deploy the satellite, power up the workstations, and that's it. And for the few times I saw it in operation before I moved out of the area, it worked nicely. There were a few bugs, but like I said, it was a prototype.
Things I would have done differently this time? First, flat panels. They take up less space. This may or may not work for you, depending on the vehicle you use and how many workstations you want to get in there (and your budget). Second, for your application I might also set up a wireless network. It wouldn't cost that much to add, and while your customers probably don't have laptops with wireless NICs, it would give you a little flexibility for use, as well as letting you roam around with a troubleshooting laptop, if need be.
Hope that helps a little. If you have any questions about what we did, post a followup to this.
-Todd
Re:Wait for Final Preempt patch
on
Kernel 2.4.17 Out
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· Score: 5, Informative
Actually, there is a final 2.4.17 patch, but it's not on the page linked to. Go to http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/rm l/ preempt-kernel/v2.4/ and grab it from there (or use a mirror).
1) The list price is $140, not $399
2) It's not a hub. It's a switch. There's a difference.
Other than that, I somewhat agree with you. If you're working with a cabling architecture that you want to be flexible enough to be able to do other things than plain old ethernet, it's probably not a good choice for you.
But on the other hand, if you just need 4 network ports at a location, it could be very useful. It's one less box sitting around on or under your desk. And just because you have 4 devices that need network, doesn't mean they're computers. 1 computer, 1 networked printer, 1 wireless access point, and perhaps your cable modem/DSL/whatever. Yes, sure, there are other solutions to do this (like the Linksys cable/DSL router with a 4-port hub and a WAP that I have on my desk right now), but the point is that this is another option. And it might offer a certain kind of flexibility depending on the situation. I'd actually consider it to be more useful as a home device, rather than an office device. Though it would be nice if they had the ability to power it from behind the wall.
So it's no use to you. Doesn't mean that it's no use to everyone.
So the legislation states that representatives of the digital device manufacturers and representatives of copyright holders have to get together and work out the standards. Who are these representatives supposed to be, and how are they going to be selected?
I'm a copyright holder, so am I going to get to vote to select a representative? Or can I represent myself? I doubt it. They'll only allow the MPAA and RIAA and maybe a couple other token people in. So how is that supposed to represent all copyright holders? Because they sure don't have my interests in mind.
Wow, Michael. Could you post a few more spoilers on the top of the front page? I don't think there are enough.
Seriously. Not everyone watched or even *could* watch Enterprise tonight. You could have at least had the courtesy to hide the spoilers "under the fold", so to speak.
Now, for my opinion (some spoiler content).
It looks good as far as a stand-alone show is concerned. But it seems to break from the "known" Star Trek history, as described by the other shows and movies (not books and fanfic). For instance, we're looking at the later appearance of the Klingons, when Worf told us that something happened to change their appearance that "we don't like to talk about". And Picard told us that the war with the Klingons was sparked by a botched first contact with them. But that contact didn't seem to be botched.
I'm a little disappointed with how contrived the disinfectant scene was. And the way the camera paused during it was just silly. And Archer's whole thing with staying on the station after he set the maglock charge was pointless. First, it should have been longer than 5 seconds. Second, there was noone shooting at him, so there wasn't really a reason to set it and stand there, rather than setting it and running.
I think I'll wait for a couple more episodes to reevaluate that and see if I really care about this series. As it is, I can take it or leave it.
The Big Dig in Boston is causing major problems and cost overruns, and that's just an unpressurized underground street system, for chrissakes! And you think we can manage to build a tunnel across the country? And keep it in a vacuum? Hah!
This is very true. However, the Big Dig also has the problem of being completely located in a highly populated area with many drivers who are agressive in the extreme. It's also disrupting almost every major artery, both raised and surface, in downtown Boston. And the roads that are still available to drive on are in horrible disrepair.
A low-pressure tunnel from NYC to LA would be primarily built under areas that are not densely populated. Also, if you're just building a single, very straight tunnel, I would think that you could start at one end, drop a subterranean drill in, and work your way along underground, building support structures behind the drill as you go. Your problems there, of course, include: getting through all sorts of materials; clearing anything buried and in the way like cables, wells, etc.; getting permission from everyone; building neccessary above-ground support buildings and connecting them; and keeping the whole thing straight and on the appropriate curvature. No simple feat.
Questions: What happens if a large rock is placed on the track by a terrorist group?
The terrorist "what if" is a factor in just about any endeavor. In this case, yeah, if that happened and the train hit it there would definitely be massive problems including the destruction of the tunnel, probably the destruction of the train, and possibly the destruction of anything above the tunnel. However, I would think that there would be numerous systems to detect and prevent something like this.
Of course you're going to have to have periodic airlocks for maintenance and safety. But those airlocks should be reasonably secured on the outside and wired up so that a thousand alarms go off if someone so much as opens the outside door. But let's say someone manages to get around this and get into an airlock without being detected.
An airlock opening into the tunnel is probably going to cause a very slight, localized pressure change. More sensors and alarms hooked up to something like this. You might even design a slight difference in, as extra security. OK, so somehow you've managed to get around this as well.
The inside of the tunnel would be lined with sensor packs, including cameras, IR detectors, and possibly laser nets. And the wiring and apparatus would be completely within the tunnel, such that you'd have to be inside, or at one end or the other, in order to screw with them. Humans would be watching these, as well as a dedicated computer system running custom image recognition software to detect unexpected changes. OK, somehow you got around this too.
I'd also expect there would be some sort of "sweeper" apparatus, or roving scanners that would constantly patrol up and down the tunnel looking for anything out of the ordinary. You managed to get around this too? Congratulations. It probably would have been a lot easier to pick a convenient spot at surface level, drill down to just above the tunnel, and drop some explosive in there timed to go off when the train passes underneath. Wouldn't take much.
Like in the Massachussetts-Burma example, the Mass government decided that they wouldn't buy products or services from Burmese companies or from companies who do business with Burma. It was a purchasing policy descision that was internal to the Mass state govenment that had strong public support. Mass citizens and companies could do buisiness with Burma all they wanted, they just wouldn't win any contracts from the state govenment. The EU and Japan then whined to the WTO who had some sort of WTO trial. Eventually, under pressure from the Executive and Legislative branches (who were under pressure from the WTO) our "conservative" Supreme Court put the smack down on Mass and it's state's rights - IIRC the reasoning was something about the constitution not explicitly granting states the power to engage in foriegn policy and not wanting to dimishing the president's power to negotiate for the country.
Yes, but you are neglecting that the circumstances are different. In the situation you cite, MA not only decided not to do business with Burma, they also extended that to not doing business with companies do business with Burma. It was the second part of that which raised the ire of the judiciary and WTO. By adding that on, it was no longer just a purchasing decision by a government agency. Had it just been a purchasing decision, there would have been no need for a state law, and hence no outside interference.
I actually tend to agree with the Supreme Court in that case. MA is part of the USA, and as such cedes certain rights to the federal government, and some of those deal with foreign relations. The reasons for this make sense. Imagine if you were doing business, personal or otherwise, with many people in France, and every town had a different set of foreign policies as pertains to the town that you lived in? The bureaucracy and red tape become a nightmare. This is also where the USA gets its "power", whether used properly or improperly, in the foreign arena.
Anyways, in this case we're talking about purchasing decisions (at least as I understand it), and your example includes a little more than that.
I think you missed the point. This is not (for example) Brazil saying that noone in Brazil can use M$ software. This is (again, for example) a Brazilian government agency, like their Commerce agency, saying that the Commerce agency will only use free software.
It would be like the US State Department announcing that the State Department will no longer use M$ products and they're going to be installing Linux. The WTO, or any other global organization, has no place to step in and say "You can't do that." It's the internal choice of a goverment agency.
Imagine, you do a search, and while you're sitting there looking at the search results, you get popup ads being generated by the sites in your results list. Now imagine that the search hit a lot of porn sites. And they have exit traps.
Hopefully, the search engines get this remedied quickly. I imagine they'll just filter out javascript.
It's true that trademarks usually are restricted to one domain of goods and services, but sufficiently strong trademarks can gain protection across trademark domains. For example, if a surgical tools company called its new tool "LEGO", don't you think the LEGO Group would have a right to sue?
Nope, I don't think that they should have a right to sue in that case, because it's the same thing. AIM is a strong trademark, given the installed base. Does that mean AOL should have the right to sue the Aim Recording Company, or Automated Information Management, or American Image Marketing? No. The AIM trademark, just like the LEGO trademark and the "light saber" trademark, is for a specific category. It prevents Apple Computer from harassing every orchard owner in the US (apart from basic common sense, which we all know is severely lacking in most of corporate America).
Oh, and by the way, Lego Irrigation is the name of a company that makes irrigation systems valves and nozzles and such. For one example.
Lucas has 1 trademark for the term "light saber", number 1126220. It's stated very carefully that it is a toy sword, and it is categorized under toys and recreation. He also has another trademark application, serial number 76072226, filed in June of 2000, for the "lightsaber" with the same categorization.
Minrad has one trademark application for the term "light saber", filed in April of 2000. It's categorized under medical equipment. Not anything remotely connected to toys.
This is why the trademark system has categories, and why two people can own the same trademark in different categories. Yeah, Lucas made the term popular. But unless some other toymaker uses the term, he shouldn't have a leg to stand on in a trademark dispute.
Slashdot Mirror
Quite simply, any jurisdiction that even has a fraction of a brain will not use an electronic toll system to issue tickets. If they do, people will stop using the electronic toll system. It's just that simple. The toll authority has just as much of an interest in having people use the electronic toll system as people do in using it to save time. More people using the electronic system means fewer people employed taking tolls and less traffic. They won't jeopardize that.
As far as tracking people using the transponders, I don't know that it's that bad a thing. Like they said, you can always avoid tracking by putting your transponder in a foil bag, and they're even going to provide them upon request (It's not a pain in the ass. I have two transponders, and they're only on the windshield when I am going through a tollbooth, because I have a convertible). That should show goodwill, at the very least. And California does have some of the worst traffic in the country. Any additional info on how it moves (or doesn't) is probably going to go a long way towards making it better.
-Todd
Possibly. Like I said, I've only started evaluating options. I was pointed at Eclipse, and a quick look at it looked like it might be both an app server and an IDE.
Thanks for the pointers however. More work, more fun. More acclaim when I save us hundreds of thousands of dollars.
-Todd
Their software is way overpriced. And it's not like they provide support to make up for it. Every time I've had to deal with their support people, they're incredibly braindead.
I'm actually starting to evaluate Eclipse as a replacement for Weblogic Server (BEA's software) across our organization. Should save something like $17k per installation. Anyone have any experience using Eclipse?
-Todd
What I don't understand is why the court did not rule that the legislation that President Eisenhower passed in 1954, which added the words "under God" to the pledge of allegiance, was itself unconstitutional. This would have been more correct, because the separation of church and state never should have allowed this to stand. This would have reduced the pledge back to its original form, which would not have been objectionable.
Of course, any pledge like that, recited by rote without understanding the meaning, quickly loses any meaning. If you don't know what you're saying, or you're saying it only because you've been forced, what's the point? I think it's just as well that it was removed from the schools for that reason. But this wasn't the right way to accomplish it.
-Todd
Actually, Verisign recently acquired Illuminet, which is the largest independant carrier switching network. So they do have a pretty big investment in telecom that plays into this pretty well.
-Todd
You didn't expect to receive email at the administrative contact's address when transfering a domain?!
Not after I received and responded to the approval request from Gandi. Considering that everything I've done with domains in the past has notified all contacts to the change, I expected that anything important would get sent to all the contacts.
Wasn't a big deal, however. Gandi lets you restart the transfer at no cost if it fails.
-Todd
Aside from their sleazy methods of stealing customers, they're a shitty company to deal with (as an intentional customer) as well. A friend of mine got a (real) renewal notice from them (for a domain actually registered with them), and decided he was tired of their fees so he wanted to switch elsewhere. Turns out, you can't transfer a verisign domain in the last 90 days of registration. So to move it away, he had to pay for another whole year.
Just going to comment on this. While this may have been true in the past, I think that they changed their tune on this item. I just transferred 3 domains away from NetSol to Gandi in the last 45 days of the registration period, and I didn't have any problems. Two of the transfers actually had to be redone in the last 30 days of the registration because of an unrelated problem with the transfer.
The problem was NetSol's extra confirmation step that they have (they send out an email to the administrative contact once their receive the transfer request from your "new" registrar, and give you 96 hours to respond or they reject the transfer). Personally, I wish that step was more standard across the registrars (it prevents slamming like this), but since it's not, I wish NetSol had it documented a little better. My transfers failed the first time around because I neglected to check and respond to that message (my administrative contacts are an email address I don't usually use).
-Todd
Bah. I worked both sides of the fence. I worked in the computer center maintaining the labs for more than 3 years. It was never that bad. That's the nice part of having a few people who were "responsible" for installing the game and making sure it stayed there, and letting anyone else know where it was when they wanted it. We didn't end up with multiple copies of games on the system.
Oh, and we never did have a problem with people wanting to do work and not having a computer. At least not that I knew of (and as I said, I was one of a few people "responsible" for the games). Mostly because use game players were polite and understood that the games always came second.
It's interesting, though. For some reason, Bolo on the Macintosh side was more or less sanctioned. Not sure why.
-Todd
The university I went to had a similar policy. No games on the lab computers. Of course, as you said, around finals, most of us needed a break, and at the time the game of choice was Doom (damn, I've been out of school for a while). The problem we had wasn't really with people walking in and catching us. We played in the lab in the freshman dorm, and noone ever checked on that lab unless there was a problem.
Our problem was with storage of the game so that it could be accessed by the computers in the lab. I was making a hobby out of finding places on the network to hide the game where we actually had write privileges. We had a big Novell network running all the systems, and it was amazing how many places we had write privileges. We started, of course, with storing it on the local systems, but that didn't last long. So we started finding all the little nooks on the network where we could store something. Naming and renaming directories. Making hidden directories.
Damn, I miss that time. Well, not really.
-Todd
For the millionth time, AOL is not preventing 3rd party clients from interoperating with the AOL Instant Messenger system. What they are doing is preventing 3rd party clients from using OSCAR, which is AOL's "private" protocol for AIM. They're not touching TOC, which is the protocol which AOL makes available for 3rd party clients to use.
Sure, flame me because:
1) TOC doesn't have all the features of OSCAR
2) TOC (might) use more resources than OSCAR on AOL's side, so you're doing them a favor.
3) AOL's required by the court to let us play in their sandbox.
4) AOL's a big bully.
5) Information wants to be free, man!
If AOL wants to make a subset of the features available to 3rd party clients, it's their prerogative. They own the servers, they wrote the service, they pay for the people to maintain the servers. And if TOC uses more resources than OSCAR on AOL's servers (which is just a rumor, and not confirmed from anyone with any authority), that's AOL's business, not yours. And no, AOL is not required by any court to let 3rd party clients play with AIM. They're only required to make the "next generation" AIM available to 3rd parties.
If you use OSCAR to connect to AIM and you don't use AOL's clients to do it, you don't get to complain when they change OSCAR around, regardless of whether they're deliberately blocking someone or just making modifications to the protocol for something else. Use TOC, or use another IM service.
-Todd
Actually, it wasn't so much an undisclosed location as it was the only reasonable place to keep it. At least when I left, it was being kept at the Springfield Post plant. They had space there, and it was fairly secure. Plus it had the added bonus of being close to the Metro and not too far from the Post.com offices in Arlington.
I'd really be interested to find out what has happened to it, anyways. That satellite dish alone and the associated equipment was really expensive, and quite reusable. Not to mention the big-ass generator and the sound gear.
-Todd
Hehe, always good.
:) could not go. At the outside events, like the Vintage Virginia wine festival, not many people wanted to sit and use a computer. When I saw the Glamvan at Vintage Virginia, it did seem to be more popular than the stationary cybercafe was the year before, but that still wasn't much. Thankfully, what was proposed in the article is a little different than Glamvan, so I think it will be more popular.
:) I had a lot of fun building it.
On the sunlight. Yeah, unfortunately, not much we could do about that. We actually thought about putting an extension to the "wings" that would slot into them, so that when you put up the wings, you would then pull an additional sunshield out of them. Part of the problem with this was the added weight for the doors (they were already stressing the actuators, and they were the biggest we could get for this application). The other part of the proble was supporting them. We would have had to have poles on the corners, which would have been a pain.
The lack of interest. Yeah, unfortunately that was somewhat characteristic at a lot of Washingtonpost.com's events, regardless of how we presented the computers. The computer setups were more popular at inside events (like conferences) where the Glamvan (I still refuse to call it WoW
Yeah, it was an engineering marvel. And a nightmare. The build process was very painful, and I had to spend a lot of time in Missouri (at the limousine shop that was building it) to make sure everything went right. There wsa nothing like this out there at the time, so we had nothing to build from. There were a lot of things that were jury-rigged, like the keyboard trays (cut & bent from sheet metal. They could have used a little more polish). Part of this was because everything was so custom, and part of it was because outside of the "sponsored" items like the car and computers, Washingtonpost.com didn't want to spend much money on this.
That's one more thing. It will help your budget on this a lot if you can get sponsors to donate parts. Like approach Dell or Gateway for computers, someone else for the vehicle, a third party for the Internet access.
Thanks for the praise
-Todd
I wish they would have kept it running longer. I left washingtonpost.com shortly after it was done, moving on to bigger and better things. But while I was doing it, they wouldn't give me another person to make intimately familiar with how it worked. Then the marketing director that I designed and built it with left the company after I did, and I think they mothballed the thing. I have no idea what happened to it after that point.
Oh yeah, it was also painted a really cool color, called Dupont Chromalusion True Blasberry. Changed colors depending on the angle that you looked at it from. Blues, purples, reds, oranges, greens, etc. It was especially cool because they painted the satellite housing, which has lots of angles.
-Todd
I did something similar when I was at Washingtonpost.com. They wanted to simplify their show setups, so we came up with the idea for a "roaming cybercafe". It was very much a prototype, but I the tech was sound.
Our vehicle was a stretch Lincoln Navigator. It won't work for what you want, but it was good for us. It was a Navigator SUV, cut and stretched 10 feet. Each side had a 10 foot "gull wing" door at the top which swung up on actuators. Underneath each door was a actuator-mounted table with 3 systems on it. In the back of the thing was the generator, and there were 2 seats up front (driver and passenger) with the bulk of the backend gear mounted in a small rack between and just behind the seats. If I did it again with more money, I would have used flat panels because they are lighter and wouldn't have needed the motorized tables.
First, the internet connection. We used a 2-way satellite dish mounted on the top of the vehicle. The dish we purchased was specifically designed for ease-of-use mobile mounts. It had its own compass and GPS unit, and a motorized turntable. Inside the vehicle, we had the equipment for it mounted. All the driver had to do was select the deploy options from the menu on the device, and it would deploy the dish, track it to the correct rough position, then use the satellite signal to finetune the positioning. A unit like this was very important for making setup go smoothly.
Second, our "backend" servers. Since we were using satellite, we decided to set up a proxy server on the vehicle to try and make the satellite lags a little better. This worked very well for us, since all of the people surfing were supposed to be on the same website. But I think it would be a good idea regardless. You can also run a local website on this box (maybe a portal-type page for your homepage). And this is a good place for a DHCP server.
Third, the workstations themselves. We used NT Workstation installs, for at least marginal security. Used policies to lock down the systems a little bit and make sure that people couldn't cause too much damage. It helped us that we only had 6 computers, and usually 3 or 4 people on staff to watch them.
The miscellaneous is all fairly important as well. We used a 12kw gasoline generator which was mounted in the back of the vehicle and drew off the same tank as the engine (which was expanded). I think we had it set up so that we could get 8 hours of 75% load. We also had a connection so that we could connect to a power source at the setup site. This required a decent power management system, but it worked just fine. We did have problems with the exhaust from the generator (because it was so close to the workstations) and ended up having to do some custom work to vent it out the top of the vehicle. But surprisingly enough, the sound wasn't that bad when it was running.
We also had a sound system installed, so that we could do presentations/classes. Just microphone hookups in the front, a rack-mount DJ quality CD player, small amp, and a few speakers around the thing. I think it's not a bad idea for any application, because there's always going to be a use, even if it's just background noise.
All told, I designed the system so that it could be setup by any marketing droid that took it out. Flip a few switches to power gear up, deploy the satellite, power up the workstations, and that's it. And for the few times I saw it in operation before I moved out of the area, it worked nicely. There were a few bugs, but like I said, it was a prototype.
Things I would have done differently this time? First, flat panels. They take up less space. This may or may not work for you, depending on the vehicle you use and how many workstations you want to get in there (and your budget). Second, for your application I might also set up a wireless network. It wouldn't cost that much to add, and while your customers probably don't have laptops with wireless NICs, it would give you a little flexibility for use, as well as letting you roam around with a troubleshooting laptop, if need be.
Hope that helps a little. If you have any questions about what we did, post a followup to this.
-Todd
Actually, there is a final 2.4.17 patch, but it's not on the page linked to. Go tom l/ preempt-kernel/v2.4/ and grab it from there (or use a mirror).
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/r
-Todd
Just a couple of points of information....
1) The list price is $140, not $399
2) It's not a hub. It's a switch. There's a difference.
Other than that, I somewhat agree with you. If you're working with a cabling architecture that you want to be flexible enough to be able to do other things than plain old ethernet, it's probably not a good choice for you.
But on the other hand, if you just need 4 network ports at a location, it could be very useful. It's one less box sitting around on or under your desk. And just because you have 4 devices that need network, doesn't mean they're computers. 1 computer, 1 networked printer, 1 wireless access point, and perhaps your cable modem/DSL/whatever. Yes, sure, there are other solutions to do this (like the Linksys cable/DSL router with a 4-port hub and a WAP that I have on my desk right now), but the point is that this is another option. And it might offer a certain kind of flexibility depending on the situation. I'd actually consider it to be more useful as a home device, rather than an office device. Though it would be nice if they had the ability to power it from behind the wall.
So it's no use to you. Doesn't mean that it's no use to everyone.
-Todd
So the legislation states that representatives of the digital device manufacturers and representatives of copyright holders have to get together and work out the standards. Who are these representatives supposed to be, and how are they going to be selected?
I'm a copyright holder, so am I going to get to vote to select a representative? Or can I represent myself? I doubt it. They'll only allow the MPAA and RIAA and maybe a couple other token people in. So how is that supposed to represent all copyright holders? Because they sure don't have my interests in mind.
-Todd
Wow, Michael. Could you post a few more spoilers on the top of the front page? I don't think there are enough.
Seriously. Not everyone watched or even *could* watch Enterprise tonight. You could have at least had the courtesy to hide the spoilers "under the fold", so to speak.
Now, for my opinion (some spoiler content).
It looks good as far as a stand-alone show is concerned. But it seems to break from the "known" Star Trek history, as described by the other shows and movies (not books and fanfic). For instance, we're looking at the later appearance of the Klingons, when Worf told us that something happened to change their appearance that "we don't like to talk about". And Picard told us that the war with the Klingons was sparked by a botched first contact with them. But that contact didn't seem to be botched.
I'm a little disappointed with how contrived the disinfectant scene was. And the way the camera paused during it was just silly. And Archer's whole thing with staying on the station after he set the maglock charge was pointless. First, it should have been longer than 5 seconds. Second, there was noone shooting at him, so there wasn't really a reason to set it and stand there, rather than setting it and running.
I think I'll wait for a couple more episodes to reevaluate that and see if I really care about this series. As it is, I can take it or leave it.
-Todd
The Big Dig in Boston is causing major problems and cost overruns, and that's just an unpressurized underground street system, for chrissakes! And you think we can manage to build a tunnel across the country? And keep it in a vacuum? Hah!
This is very true. However, the Big Dig also has the problem of being completely located in a highly populated area with many drivers who are agressive in the extreme. It's also disrupting almost every major artery, both raised and surface, in downtown Boston. And the roads that are still available to drive on are in horrible disrepair.
A low-pressure tunnel from NYC to LA would be primarily built under areas that are not densely populated. Also, if you're just building a single, very straight tunnel, I would think that you could start at one end, drop a subterranean drill in, and work your way along underground, building support structures behind the drill as you go. Your problems there, of course, include: getting through all sorts of materials; clearing anything buried and in the way like cables, wells, etc.; getting permission from everyone; building neccessary above-ground support buildings and connecting them; and keeping the whole thing straight and on the appropriate curvature. No simple feat.
Questions: What happens if a large rock is placed on the track by a terrorist group?
The terrorist "what if" is a factor in just about any endeavor. In this case, yeah, if that happened and the train hit it there would definitely be massive problems including the destruction of the tunnel, probably the destruction of the train, and possibly the destruction of anything above the tunnel. However, I would think that there would be numerous systems to detect and prevent something like this.
Of course you're going to have to have periodic airlocks for maintenance and safety. But those airlocks should be reasonably secured on the outside and wired up so that a thousand alarms go off if someone so much as opens the outside door. But let's say someone manages to get around this and get into an airlock without being detected.
An airlock opening into the tunnel is probably going to cause a very slight, localized pressure change. More sensors and alarms hooked up to something like this. You might even design a slight difference in, as extra security. OK, so somehow you've managed to get around this as well.
The inside of the tunnel would be lined with sensor packs, including cameras, IR detectors, and possibly laser nets. And the wiring and apparatus would be completely within the tunnel, such that you'd have to be inside, or at one end or the other, in order to screw with them. Humans would be watching these, as well as a dedicated computer system running custom image recognition software to detect unexpected changes. OK, somehow you got around this too.
I'd also expect there would be some sort of "sweeper" apparatus, or roving scanners that would constantly patrol up and down the tunnel looking for anything out of the ordinary. You managed to get around this too? Congratulations. It probably would have been a lot easier to pick a convenient spot at surface level, drill down to just above the tunnel, and drop some explosive in there timed to go off when the train passes underneath. Wouldn't take much.
-Todd
the way that we have to be absolutely sure that 2 + 2 = 4 (which can be derived from the Completeness property of the Real number Set).
:)
Wait! 2 + 2 = 3, not 4
Bleem lives on
-Todd
Like in the Massachussetts-Burma example, the Mass government decided that they wouldn't buy products or services from Burmese companies or from companies who do business with Burma. It was a purchasing policy descision that was internal to the Mass state govenment that had strong public support. Mass citizens and companies could do buisiness with Burma all they wanted, they just wouldn't win any contracts from the state govenment. The EU and Japan then whined to the WTO who had some sort of WTO trial. Eventually, under pressure from the Executive and Legislative branches (who were under pressure from the WTO) our "conservative" Supreme Court put the smack down on Mass and it's state's rights - IIRC the reasoning was something about the constitution not explicitly granting states the power to engage in foriegn policy and not wanting to dimishing the president's power to negotiate for the country.
Yes, but you are neglecting that the circumstances are different. In the situation you cite, MA not only decided not to do business with Burma, they also extended that to not doing business with companies do business with Burma. It was the second part of that which raised the ire of the judiciary and WTO. By adding that on, it was no longer just a purchasing decision by a government agency. Had it just been a purchasing decision, there would have been no need for a state law, and hence no outside interference.
I actually tend to agree with the Supreme Court in that case. MA is part of the USA, and as such cedes certain rights to the federal government, and some of those deal with foreign relations. The reasons for this make sense. Imagine if you were doing business, personal or otherwise, with many people in France, and every town had a different set of foreign policies as pertains to the town that you lived in? The bureaucracy and red tape become a nightmare. This is also where the USA gets its "power", whether used properly or improperly, in the foreign arena.
Anyways, in this case we're talking about purchasing decisions (at least as I understand it), and your example includes a little more than that.
-Todd
I think you missed the point. This is not (for example) Brazil saying that noone in Brazil can use M$ software. This is (again, for example) a Brazilian government agency, like their Commerce agency, saying that the Commerce agency will only use free software.
It would be like the US State Department announcing that the State Department will no longer use M$ products and they're going to be installing Linux. The WTO, or any other global organization, has no place to step in and say "You can't do that." It's the internal choice of a goverment agency.
-Todd
Imagine, you do a search, and while you're sitting there looking at the search results, you get popup ads being generated by the sites in your results list. Now imagine that the search hit a lot of porn sites. And they have exit traps.
Hopefully, the search engines get this remedied quickly. I imagine they'll just filter out javascript.
-Todd
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It's true that trademarks usually are restricted to one domain of goods and services, but sufficiently strong trademarks can gain protection across trademark domains. For example, if a surgical tools company called its new tool "LEGO", don't you think the LEGO Group would have a right to sue?
Nope, I don't think that they should have a right to sue in that case, because it's the same thing. AIM is a strong trademark, given the installed base. Does that mean AOL should have the right to sue the Aim Recording Company, or Automated Information Management, or American Image Marketing? No. The AIM trademark, just like the LEGO trademark and the "light saber" trademark, is for a specific category. It prevents Apple Computer from harassing every orchard owner in the US (apart from basic common sense, which we all know is severely lacking in most of corporate America).
Oh, and by the way, Lego Irrigation is the name of a company that makes irrigation systems valves and nozzles and such. For one example.
-Todd
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Lucas has 1 trademark for the term "light saber", number 1126220. It's stated very carefully that it is a toy sword, and it is categorized under toys and recreation. He also has another trademark application, serial number 76072226, filed in June of 2000, for the "lightsaber" with the same categorization.
Minrad has one trademark application for the term "light saber", filed in April of 2000. It's categorized under medical equipment. Not anything remotely connected to toys.
This is why the trademark system has categories, and why two people can own the same trademark in different categories. Yeah, Lucas made the term popular. But unless some other toymaker uses the term, he shouldn't have a leg to stand on in a trademark dispute.
-Todd
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