In energy companies, there are a lot of things that have to happen that create no competitive advantage, such as energy scheduling. It's just something that has to be done. And then there are the regulatory requirements, where the vertical market vendors really make bank. Organizations like NERC (the National Electric Reliability Council) put out fully documented requirements for software, vendors code to it, wrap it in promises of end-to-end solutions for business-specific needs, and charge through the nose for it. Half of it turns out to be vaporware, and the only parts that work well are the ones that had to adhere to NERC specs.
I work for a small utility company, in the IT department, and I started talking to management recently about the possibility of open sourcing some of our apps. I think they're a little scared of being the first ones in our industry to do it (we haven't heard of any others, and I've done some searching). I tried to get a project going, but it faltered due to lack of resources. I sure would like to see a good project get off the ground for e-Tagging, energy scheduling, OASIS (the subject of my project), outage management, or any of the other non-competitive things we have to do.
This is going to sound like a joke, but I wonder if SETI@Home is geared to ignore signals from Voyager. I can just see it (from 2015): "Ooh, I've got something. It looks like a probe. Aliens are coming, just outside the heliosphere!"
(I know, I know. Don't be like that.)
If all they did was put their file and print sharing services on Linux, with their blessing/support, it would encourage a lot of tentative IT departments to migrate their existing Novell/Netware licenses to a Novell/Linux implementation. Right now, a lot of Netware servers are being vintaged in favor of Microsoft file & print servers. I think a lot of that reason is the lack of applications that run on Netware. You can't use F&P servers for anything else besides maybe a GroupWise server. With a Novell/Linux, you would get a more usable server OS without having to spend a bunch of money on "competitive upgrade" licenses.
Not quite true. If you were in orbit and your velocity had a sudden delta to 50K MPH, ignoring the effect it would have on your person to go through that change, you'd still be in orbit. And, as the poster said, it wouldn't be the best time to be writing your memoirs. I think I'd suggest screaming, as you're about to plummet into the atmosphere and burn up like a meteor.
Bookpool is even cheaper than Amazon, and they don't have any patents on anything, AFAIK. And they specialize in technical books, not books, movies and power tools.
You're thinking of trademarks. You can't trademark a word unless you plan on defending it (or else some jackass would trademark every word in the english language by now)
Kind of like the financial company ING? If Darl McBride were head of ING, he'd be suing half the world's English speakers every time they used a verb with his company's name at the end.
Again, RTFA. The steam loop is secondary. The primary loop is liquid sodium and located below ground. You'd have to be one fancy driver to even hit the secondary loop, considering that it's in the middle of a concrete building, and getting to the primary loop would be nigh impossible. Furthermore, security around nuclear power plants tends to be pretty tight. When's the last time you heard of any one, anywhere in the world, getting an unauthorized pickup near a reactor building, or even onto a campus?
Some years back, I changed my diet to where the only meat I eat is fish. People often ask me why I draw the line there. I can't really explain it. Kinda weird, huh?
Yeah, though I was in Texas and Arkansas back in '88 when that big Arctic freeze came down over the central U.S. There was about 10 inches of snow in Little Rock, which shut down the whole city. The highway in Texarkana was a solid sheet of ice with a wreck about every 100 yards. What a mess. That was cold, even for the South.
I also had the (mis)fortune to be in Fairbanks shortly after that. Now, it's normally cold up there, but that was the worst cold I've ever experienced. The wind felt like (I imagine) a hurricaine of swords and razors, and even heavy parkas and hot coffee couldn't keep me warm. Luckily, our itinerary took us down to (balmy by comparisson) Anchorage in short order. The temperature was up to only miserable there, and when the wind stopped blowing, you could actually walk around outside without praying for a swift death.
BTW, "PBR" is Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, a long time favorite in the South, now gaining a certain trendy following in the rest of the country.
What, do you think that no one in the American South has a refrigerator? Furthermore, 32 degrees Farenheit is a significant number down there, because they know that you can chill PBR below the freezing point of water without freezing it, making the setting of temperatures on your beer fridge an important skill.
Is that per user? If so, that's insane. While I haven't used it, it seems that Rational provides some neat features (according to their documentation, FWIW), but there's little there that you couldn't accomplish with a few Visio stencils and some well-thought-out Word templates, combined with adherence to a few standards for implementing and managing projects.
Don't like MS products? So use some other drawing tool and a word processor that allows template creation/use. My point is that no software replaces skill at analysis. High prices do seem to make PHBs think that software is powerful (and therefore necessary), though.
The real problem with all of this is that steganograhy of this kind requires sender and reciever to have a copy of the original binary file
No, it doesn't. If I sent you a 24-bit image file and told you that, by lining up the last four bits (least significant) of each pixel (two pixels' data make a byte) in a serial fashion, you could find encoded data, you would have no need for the original of the image nor of the encoded file to extract what's there.
Okay, it's a heady subject, I'll admit.
I read this article in Linux Format magazine about steganography, wherein the least significant n bits of an image's pixels are hijacked for hiding data. The image changes so little that the average viewer can't detect it, and heaps of data (pardon) can be hidden there. Will the next P2P app use steganography to hide (music, et al) files in very large graphics? I'd think that courts would have a hard time determining that the original file wasn't just coincidentally the same as the encoded bits.
Every software in government, which is paid for from citizens taxes, should be open source.
How about, "Every software package mandated by government decree (like e-Tagging for electric power) should have a government-sponsored open source alternative," instead? Oftentimes, as in the case linked here, a government agency writes a software specification and requires vendors to adhere to it. That should be the case with electronic voting, too, and there should be open source alternatives to vendor-based packages.
I tell you what, I would buy a $500 Mac with all the corners trimmed off if only Apple would sell one. Since Apple made the switch to standard, OTS components (USB keyboards, IDE disks, VGA monitors), there's not much reason that they can't (versus won't) compete at the bottom end.
Give me a 1 GHz G4 with a 40 GB drive, a modest video card and 128 MB of RAM, bundle it with a 15" flat panel monitor, OS X and AppleWorks, price it for $500, and get outta my way. If Dell and Gateway can do it, why can't Apple?
"You may be qualified for a loan of up to $53,236.44 OR MORE!!!"
Um... right. They've just spent some ridiculous amount of money to put together a slick envelope containing a piece of paper with a randomly generated number on it (quite possibly using a quantum computer, though not likely) to alert me that I MIGHT be qualified for a loan.
What's this got to do with single-atom lasers? About as much as Duke Nukem Forever, which is to say, little.
Slashdot Mirror
I work for a small utility company, in the IT department, and I started talking to management recently about the possibility of open sourcing some of our apps. I think they're a little scared of being the first ones in our industry to do it (we haven't heard of any others, and I've done some searching). I tried to get a project going, but it faltered due to lack of resources. I sure would like to see a good project get off the ground for e-Tagging, energy scheduling, OASIS (the subject of my project), outage management, or any of the other non-competitive things we have to do.
This is going to sound like a joke, but I wonder if SETI@Home is geared to ignore signals from Voyager. I can just see it (from 2015): "Ooh, I've got something. It looks like a probe. Aliens are coming, just outside the heliosphere!" (I know, I know. Don't be like that.)
"All your base are belong to us."
If all they did was put their file and print sharing services on Linux, with their blessing/support, it would encourage a lot of tentative IT departments to migrate their existing Novell/Netware licenses to a Novell/Linux implementation. Right now, a lot of Netware servers are being vintaged in favor of Microsoft file & print servers. I think a lot of that reason is the lack of applications that run on Netware. You can't use F&P servers for anything else besides maybe a GroupWise server. With a Novell/Linux, you would get a more usable server OS without having to spend a bunch of money on "competitive upgrade" licenses.
Not quite true. If you were in orbit and your velocity had a sudden delta to 50K MPH, ignoring the effect it would have on your person to go through that change, you'd still be in orbit. And, as the poster said, it wouldn't be the best time to be writing your memoirs. I think I'd suggest screaming, as you're about to plummet into the atmosphere and burn up like a meteor.
Bookpool is even cheaper than Amazon, and they don't have any patents on anything, AFAIK. And they specialize in technical books, not books, movies and power tools.
Kind of like the financial company ING? If Darl McBride were head of ING, he'd be suing half the world's English speakers every time they used a verb with his company's name at the end.
Yeah. He's the suspicious-looking guy driving his pickup at high speed toward a concrete wall. Wait... no. It's only Ned, coming home from the bar.
I wonder if any are available on eBay...
Again, RTFA. The steam loop is secondary. The primary loop is liquid sodium and located below ground. You'd have to be one fancy driver to even hit the secondary loop, considering that it's in the middle of a concrete building, and getting to the primary loop would be nigh impossible. Furthermore, security around nuclear power plants tends to be pretty tight. When's the last time you heard of any one, anywhere in the world, getting an unauthorized pickup near a reactor building, or even onto a campus?
Like water? It costs about US$20,000 per gallon at the space station.
You joke, but your statement has some kernel of truth! [more running, more ducking]
Some years back, I changed my diet to where the only meat I eat is fish. People often ask me why I draw the line there. I can't really explain it. Kinda weird, huh?
Yeah, though I was in Texas and Arkansas back in '88 when that big Arctic freeze came down over the central U.S. There was about 10 inches of snow in Little Rock, which shut down the whole city. The highway in Texarkana was a solid sheet of ice with a wreck about every 100 yards. What a mess. That was cold, even for the South.
I also had the (mis)fortune to be in Fairbanks shortly after that. Now, it's normally cold up there, but that was the worst cold I've ever experienced. The wind felt like (I imagine) a hurricaine of swords and razors, and even heavy parkas and hot coffee couldn't keep me warm. Luckily, our itinerary took us down to (balmy by comparisson) Anchorage in short order. The temperature was up to only miserable there, and when the wind stopped blowing, you could actually walk around outside without praying for a swift death.
BTW, "PBR" is Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, a long time favorite in the South, now gaining a certain trendy following in the rest of the country.
What, do you think that no one in the American South has a refrigerator? Furthermore, 32 degrees Farenheit is a significant number down there, because they know that you can chill PBR below the freezing point of water without freezing it, making the setting of temperatures on your beer fridge an important skill.
Is that per user? If so, that's insane. While I haven't used it, it seems that Rational provides some neat features (according to their documentation, FWIW), but there's little there that you couldn't accomplish with a few Visio stencils and some well-thought-out Word templates, combined with adherence to a few standards for implementing and managing projects.
Don't like MS products? So use some other drawing tool and a word processor that allows template creation/use. My point is that no software replaces skill at analysis. High prices do seem to make PHBs think that software is powerful (and therefore necessary), though.
INCONCEIVABLE!!
No, it doesn't. If I sent you a 24-bit image file and told you that, by lining up the last four bits (least significant) of each pixel (two pixels' data make a byte) in a serial fashion, you could find encoded data, you would have no need for the original of the image nor of the encoded file to extract what's there.
I was thinking along the same lines. See my comment below.
Okay, it's a heady subject, I'll admit. I read this article in Linux Format magazine about steganography, wherein the least significant n bits of an image's pixels are hijacked for hiding data. The image changes so little that the average viewer can't detect it, and heaps of data (pardon) can be hidden there. Will the next P2P app use steganography to hide (music, et al) files in very large graphics? I'd think that courts would have a hard time determining that the original file wasn't just coincidentally the same as the encoded bits.
How about, "Every software package mandated by government decree (like e-Tagging for electric power) should have a government-sponsored open source alternative," instead? Oftentimes, as in the case linked here, a government agency writes a software specification and requires vendors to adhere to it. That should be the case with electronic voting, too, and there should be open source alternatives to vendor-based packages.
Achieving daily SOBRIGHTy is a laudable goal.
Are you new here? You must be. Nice to see a new face.
Give me a 1 GHz G4 with a 40 GB drive, a modest video card and 128 MB of RAM, bundle it with a 15" flat panel monitor, OS X and AppleWorks, price it for $500, and get outta my way. If Dell and Gateway can do it, why can't Apple?
I get this kind of mail all the time:
"You may be qualified for a loan of up to $53,236.44 OR MORE!!!"
Um... right. They've just spent some ridiculous amount of money to put together a slick envelope containing a piece of paper with a randomly generated number on it (quite possibly using a quantum computer, though not likely) to alert me that I MIGHT be qualified for a loan.
What's this got to do with single-atom lasers? About as much as Duke Nukem Forever, which is to say, little.