Yahoo declined to identify the exact sources of its traffic data
I'm going to bet it's because some company is getting data from all the sensors and "traffic center" infrastructure we paid for.
I seriously doubt they have to pay anything for it aside from maybe the cost of a leased line...and I doubt Yahoo gets it for free from said company. Someone's making a lot of bucks off equipment and staff we pay for...even assuming costs for processing the data.
Interestingly, I was just driving down Route 3 here in MA, and noticed that they finally had finished most of the construction for widening the road. Also installed- cameras. The tilt-pan-zoom kind. About every mile or so. In between, or sometimes on the same pole, some sort of antenna box pointed at the road, probably to sense how fast cars are moving by.
Someone want to explain to me how a camera reduces traffic? Considering they have no dynamic ways to alter traffic patterns, seems like a royal fucking waste of money and something bound to be abused.
...works like a charm. Last tim I installed an update, the whole system got b0rked due to an error in writing to/etc/ttys The file got a byte sum of zero, and the logon window hanged upon next reboot.
I love it when people are surprised when an update works.
The whole system "got b0rked" probably because you a)didn't check the disk b)had disk errors c)didn't have journaling turned on.
I support 100+ macintoshes, and when I check the system disk first (using Diskwarrior off an external drive) and repair permissions, I have yet to have anything more dramatic than the installer not complete the install requiring a second application before rebooting the system. That happened...get ready...ONCE. We have everything from Clamshell iBooks to G3's to Dualie G5s; you name it, we've got it.
Diskwarrior is excellent insurance, and one can make a boot CD/DVD or use an iPod for booting. Wait about one day to see if there's any major problems with the update or it gets pulled. Run the checks before any update, and boom, you're good.
IBM has published a paper on speeding up the boot process using something like a make to launch things in parallel that are not dependent on each other.
Doesn't gentoo do something similar, optionally? I could swear I've seen an option for parallel startup, but it was marked with the disclaimer that it only results in a minimum speedup.
Incidentally, if you read the article, you would know that FINAL FANTASY must be capitalized every single time that you say FINAL FANTASY. sheesh
Well, I'm a SLASHDOT READER and we don't read articles, so:
final fantasy final fantasy final fantasy final fantasy final fantasy final fantasy final fantasy final fantasy final fantasy final fantasy final fantasy final fantasy
They are just so absorbed in "their" worlds that nothing else matters.
Completely, totally, wrong. They do not understand WHY it is bad to turn their head and talk to a passenger, until they do so and it causes them to end up in another lane, nearly hit someone, etc.
The lucky ones get "nearly" put in front of "hit something" when they *maybe* tell a friend what happened. The unlucky ones get "when they" put in front of "hit something" in their obituary.
Why do they not understand? Because they are either not given enough info by their parents ("don't do this, it's BAD"), and/or they're given too much info by someone they are busy ignoring (the driver ed guy at their evening driver ed class, where they're doing their homework).
Folks- repeat after me. Not Speeding != Safely driving.
Teens have a lot of problems with situational awareness- ie where other cars are around them. This is aggrivated by distractions in the car with them; teenage passengers, unlike adults, aren't as good as recognizing when they shouldn't talk to the driver. MA state law places restrictions on who can be in the car with young drivers.
Teens have a lot of problems with understanding what a car can and cannot do. They've probably never slammed on the brakes to see how slowly their car stops. They've certainly never been on a skidpad. They have no idea what ABS is for (neither do most adults; it's directional stability, NOT 'stopping as fast as possible'). They've never been taught when to steer around obstacles and when to brake for them, and certianly have never been asked to put into practice avoidance skills.
Teens are often given (or buy) the hand-me-down car, with old safety technology, bad tires/brakes/steering. There are exceptions, but it's rarely the rich kid who got a new small commuter car with 8 airbags and traction control who ends up splattered on a tree. It's the kid who works at the supermarket and drives a +15 year old car he/she bought for $500 and whose parents can't afford to help him/her keep it in excellent shape. Nevermind the safety ratings on inexpensive 0-20 year old US-made small cars is absolutely atrocious. Teens also like SUVs.
So basically: they need to focus and have situational awareness, they need to have a based-on-experience understanding of the capabilities of THEIR vehicle and basic car handling techniques, and they need to be driving reliable, safe cars.
Speed comes from a lack of the understanding of the implications (stopping distance skyrockets with speed, for example) and consequences (survivability in a collision plummets, for example). Policing them, just as policing adults, does not solve the root cause. Further- everyone else around them is going to be doing well over the speed limit, so not only are we being hypocritical, but they will be more of a hazard on the road to themselves and others!
I happen to find it hilarious, given light of recent events, that an automotive safety company has a Iraq war leader as their spokesman. Any comments about armour for Humvees, Mr. Franks?
Is it just me, or does it seem that every story that lists the source as a "Russian Security Expert" is generally a load of crap?
After decades of communist rule, I think every Russian is a security expert.
That said, I really am disgusted by the number of unnamed sources in the press overall. Think of the last time you heard a US "government official" actually named. They claim it's "under condition of anonymity". Why does informing the public have to be done UCoA? There's no accountability...
came across this win32 optimized version (depending on your processor).
[siiigh]. Considering much of what a mail client does is either disk or display, and not very repetitive, processor-specific optimizations will do little to no good. Even search functions are largely disk constrained if the mailbox is big enough that search time becomes an issue on any modern system.
If it was a Pi calculator, or a game (in which a miniscule difference in per-frame loop time makes a huge difference in frame rate) I could see the point, but this is just silly
Apple having not signed up to IBM's PowerPC consortia, there are hints in this get-together
That might have something to do with IBM's near incompetence dating back years. They've never been able to supply the # of chips Apple needs to meet demand for systems. High end G5 systems have been trickling out the door because there simply aren't enough processors from IBM to satisfy demand. IBM always drags their feet with the latest mhz bump, and the delivery rate is probably because of yield problems on the higher speed chips.
They are trying to cut corners by shifting the RISK of death off their own astronaughts and test pilots to those of outside contractors many of whom in the case of the original X- Prise were working on the super cheap and therefore were much more dangerous than should be tolerated
Not quite. NASA is trying desperately to remain relevant, as well as retain control over space exploration. The whole space exploration thing has been a wonderful bit of PR for NASA's military research.
Let's face it- for forty years NASA has told everyone that space flight is risky, only perfect, super-smart people can travel into space, and that there's only one way to do it- the Orbiter. During those forty years they've putzed around space, done lots of experiments, lots of simulations and calculations, quietly helped develop a lot of military technology...and come up with various designs for alternatives to the Orbiter and dismissed all of them, probably because they like the status quo, but also because they've been obsessed with making one vehicle do everything, instead of just accepting that you use cargo rockets for cargo, and people ships for people; NASA is like a Soccer Mom, convinced they need a giant hulking vehicle just to toodle to the supermarket and pick up the dry cleaning.
NASA is, as far as technical knowledge is concerned, one of the best equipped organizations to develop something like a new space vehicle. But they were not the ones who ultimately succeeded. Scaled Composites showed up with a nice, small, sexy craft that looks very much this-decade. It uses a pair of jet engines and a single main rocket, and the whole thing could probably fit inside the Orbiter bay several times over, but still carries the same # of people, roughly. NASA is embarassed out of their minds.
Yes, NASA's efforts over the last 40 years have made it possible, but the agency that should have been in the best position, it turns out, was in the worst- and distracted with military projects (do you really think a mach 10+ mini-plane is for peace, love, and understanding? Phbt. It's for delivering tactical nukes very, very quickly from across the globe to better project US military strength).
It's a very typical power move you see in corporations and the public sector all the time. If the other guy's ideas start to endanger you, suddenly embrace his ideas and position yourself as the ideal candidate to manage that guy.
Ok, you got 3 dedicated servers, and use them for distributed compiling.
Fine for you, but do you REALLY think your case matters at all for normal users?
Considering collectively they're about as powerful as the mouse used by most of today's systems, yeah.
My point was that a few low-class machines will run gentoo just fine...and imagine how fast one current (none of my machines are newer than 2-3 years) linux box would be assisting the iPAQ. It's not 1:1 with distcc, but it's a nice speedup.
I have a P2/300 Mobile, a Celeron 450, and a P3/600. Compiling stuff with distcc set up is a breeze and I fail to see the complaints about gentoo compile time...of course, they're all bare-bones console-only systems (firewall, mail/web, and fileserver), but you get the idea. Two of them only have 128MB of ram...
The president (ceo?) of UC turned up in India immediately after the incident. He said that he was horrified and the company would do everything it could to make things better. The Indian government then arrested him. After that UC brought in the lawyers and the result is what you see today. Advice to the Indians: You get more flies with honey than with vinegar.
Advice to UC executives: when you kill 15,000 people- yes, 15,000 people...you should thank your lucky stars you're not ripped to shreds by an angry mob or tried in an international court for crimes against humanity. The fact that nobody in Union Carbide management hasn't committed suicide over the guilt is pretty good proof of how disturbed they really are.
The reason the compensation for the victims is so pitiful is that it was done under Indian law. In Indian law, if you accidentally kill someone, the compensation is based on what they would have been worth at the end of their life. In most cases, that is pretty much zero.
The whole point is that the deaths were not accidental. They were due to extreme and willful negligence on the part of Union Carbie (now Dow Chemical) management and employees. Worse, UC blamed a disgruntled employee for the whole thing, despite very conclusive proof otherwise.
This is going to be harsh, but you need to hear it.
Obviously it is not possible to build an enterprise-grade 'your neck is on the line' production environment just for writing reviews
In order for the review to be accurate, that's how it has to be tested. Evaluating enterprise equipment in a non-enterprise environment with people who have no enterprise experience is pretty much worthless...and you're not going to fool anyone.
There's also no market for this sort of thing. Equipment on that level is bought because of high level executive briefings, price negotiations, migration options, and politics. Why? Because the market is so cutthroat and all the features that matter are there. The decisions are not made on whether or not a power cord was included, it was easy to unpack, the manuals were clear, how well built it looks, and how it did on SysMark SuperServerSimulator 2005...which is about the only thing all you 2-guys-with-a-webserver "hardware review" sites know how to do.
Further- often when a hardware vendor wants to get a contract, they provide a unit for evaluation.
On top of that, the major analyst firms already fill what little niche there is, and they have really big names 90% of the important people with Nice Shoes will recognize, which means even if that analyst is wrong, the decision to go with their recommendation is justifiable and won't get the Nice Shoes person fired. You'd be lucky if.01% recognized your name, much less trusted it. "Jones! Why does our website keep crashing?" "Well, we're having a lot of hardware problems." "Why did we go with ABC for our servers?" "Oh, XYZhardware.com said they were the best." "Jones, clean out your desk."
So...sorry, there's no market for what you're trying to do, and you don't have the means to do it.
Did anyone who voted this posting "informative" actually check all the addresses? How do we know any of the addresses you provided are real?
Last time someone did this sort of post(might have been k5, not slashdot), I found 2 out of the 5 addresses were wrong- not just wrong digit...wrong PO box, wrong town, wrong STATE. That's VERY dangerous given that you are sending more than enough information necessary to do identity theft.
Please post links to their "how to reach us" pages on their websites next time.
Has the entire USA become a free-for-all (big business that is) annoyfest?
No. In fact, ever since I added our phone number to the federal do-not-call list, telemarketing calls have in fact stopped.
The exception is the occasional charity, but even those have pretty much ground to a halt. When they do call, the conversation goes something like this:
"Hi! This is the Save Small Kittens from Cancer fund, will you give us money?"
"We're on the federal do not call list."
"We're a non-profit charity, we are exempt, sir".
"And, given that we are a household that has registered as not wanting telemarking calls, what genius thought calling us would be a good way to get money from us?"
"Uh...well...er...um..."
"Did it occur to anyone that, in fact, by calling a household listed on the do-not-call list, you would in fact generate substantial ill will, and virtually guarantee we'd never send you a dime, even if we might have been planning to do so?"
"Uh..."
"Don't call us again." [click]
It's very simple- any time you get a telemarking call from an NPO and you're on the do not call list, tell them that, by calling you, they've been crossed off the list of charities you donate to. Particularly if you've already donated to them- they can see this on their screen- it will be HIGHLY effective.
Well, that and (I believe) under the new laws, even an NPO can't call you BACK if you tell them to piss off...they have to honor the request, at least for a few years.
Folks- "green" is hardly how one would describe most of the OTHER heavy metals in motherboards...like in the capacitors alone. Nevermind the chemicals used in making all the various components...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm going to bet it's because some company is getting data from all the sensors and "traffic center" infrastructure we paid for.
I seriously doubt they have to pay anything for it aside from maybe the cost of a leased line...and I doubt Yahoo gets it for free from said company. Someone's making a lot of bucks off equipment and staff we pay for...even assuming costs for processing the data.
Interestingly, I was just driving down Route 3 here in MA, and noticed that they finally had finished most of the construction for widening the road. Also installed- cameras. The tilt-pan-zoom kind. About every mile or so. In between, or sometimes on the same pole, some sort of antenna box pointed at the road, probably to sense how fast cars are moving by.
Someone want to explain to me how a camera reduces traffic? Considering they have no dynamic ways to alter traffic patterns, seems like a royal fucking waste of money and something bound to be abused.
They thought of the children...finally.
I love it when people are surprised when an update works.
The whole system "got b0rked" probably because you a)didn't check the disk b)had disk errors c)didn't have journaling turned on.
I support 100+ macintoshes, and when I check the system disk first (using Diskwarrior off an external drive) and repair permissions, I have yet to have anything more dramatic than the installer not complete the install requiring a second application before rebooting the system. That happened...get ready...ONCE. We have everything from Clamshell iBooks to G3's to Dualie G5s; you name it, we've got it.
Diskwarrior is excellent insurance, and one can make a boot CD/DVD or use an iPod for booting. Wait about one day to see if there's any major problems with the update or it gets pulled. Run the checks before any update, and boom, you're good.
Doesn't gentoo do something similar, optionally? I could swear I've seen an option for parallel startup, but it was marked with the disclaimer that it only results in a minimum speedup.
Well, I'm a SLASHDOT READER and we don't read articles, so:
final fantasy final fantasy final fantasy final fantasy final fantasy final fantasy final fantasy final fantasy final fantasy final fantasy final fantasy final fantasy
Funny. Someone should tell him about all those unix machines with apple logos.
(the advertising/marketing divisions have them, the Mac product group obviously has them, etc).
The sound...of 2 teeeeeerrrrrrraaabits...of raw poowweerr.
Watch the Juniper Junker take on the Cisco Crusher this SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY.
Kids's tickets are just five buuuuux!
If 87% of slashdot readers are trying to use lynx to view a site with a webcam feed, we've got bigger problems.
Completely, totally, wrong. They do not understand WHY it is bad to turn their head and talk to a passenger, until they do so and it causes them to end up in another lane, nearly hit someone, etc.
The lucky ones get "nearly" put in front of "hit something" when they *maybe* tell a friend what happened. The unlucky ones get "when they" put in front of "hit something" in their obituary.
Why do they not understand? Because they are either not given enough info by their parents ("don't do this, it's BAD"), and/or they're given too much info by someone they are busy ignoring (the driver ed guy at their evening driver ed class, where they're doing their homework).
How does this address teen driving safety?
Folks- repeat after me. Not Speeding != Safely driving.
Teens have a lot of problems with situational awareness- ie where other cars are around them. This is aggrivated by distractions in the car with them; teenage passengers, unlike adults, aren't as good as recognizing when they shouldn't talk to the driver. MA state law places restrictions on who can be in the car with young drivers.
Teens have a lot of problems with understanding what a car can and cannot do. They've probably never slammed on the brakes to see how slowly their car stops. They've certainly never been on a skidpad. They have no idea what ABS is for (neither do most adults; it's directional stability, NOT 'stopping as fast as possible'). They've never been taught when to steer around obstacles and when to brake for them, and certianly have never been asked to put into practice avoidance skills.
Teens are often given (or buy) the hand-me-down car, with old safety technology, bad tires/brakes/steering. There are exceptions, but it's rarely the rich kid who got a new small commuter car with 8 airbags and traction control who ends up splattered on a tree. It's the kid who works at the supermarket and drives a +15 year old car he/she bought for $500 and whose parents can't afford to help him/her keep it in excellent shape. Nevermind the safety ratings on inexpensive 0-20 year old US-made small cars is absolutely atrocious. Teens also like SUVs.
So basically: they need to focus and have situational awareness, they need to have a based-on-experience understanding of the capabilities of THEIR vehicle and basic car handling techniques, and they need to be driving reliable, safe cars.
Speed comes from a lack of the understanding of the implications (stopping distance skyrockets with speed, for example) and consequences (survivability in a collision plummets, for example). Policing them, just as policing adults, does not solve the root cause. Further- everyone else around them is going to be doing well over the speed limit, so not only are we being hypocritical, but they will be more of a hazard on the road to themselves and others!
I happen to find it hilarious, given light of recent events, that an automotive safety company has a Iraq war leader as their spokesman. Any comments about armour for Humvees, Mr. Franks?
Well, I'm guessing you're not 17. Neither am I, but slash does have a fair number of young readers.
After decades of communist rule, I think every Russian is a security expert.
That said, I really am disgusted by the number of unnamed sources in the press overall. Think of the last time you heard a US "government official" actually named. They claim it's "under condition of anonymity". Why does informing the public have to be done UCoA? There's no accountability...
[siiigh]. Considering much of what a mail client does is either disk or display, and not very repetitive, processor-specific optimizations will do little to no good. Even search functions are largely disk constrained if the mailbox is big enough that search time becomes an issue on any modern system.
If it was a Pi calculator, or a game (in which a miniscule difference in per-frame loop time makes a huge difference in frame rate) I could see the point, but this is just silly
That might have something to do with IBM's near incompetence dating back years. They've never been able to supply the # of chips Apple needs to meet demand for systems. High end G5 systems have been trickling out the door because there simply aren't enough processors from IBM to satisfy demand. IBM always drags their feet with the latest mhz bump, and the delivery rate is probably because of yield problems on the higher speed chips.
[Steve Reality Distortion Field, engage!]
Yup, sounds like a great idea.
Not quite. NASA is trying desperately to remain relevant, as well as retain control over space exploration. The whole space exploration thing has been a wonderful bit of PR for NASA's military research.
Let's face it- for forty years NASA has told everyone that space flight is risky, only perfect, super-smart people can travel into space, and that there's only one way to do it- the Orbiter. During those forty years they've putzed around space, done lots of experiments, lots of simulations and calculations, quietly helped develop a lot of military technology...and come up with various designs for alternatives to the Orbiter and dismissed all of them, probably because they like the status quo, but also because they've been obsessed with making one vehicle do everything, instead of just accepting that you use cargo rockets for cargo, and people ships for people; NASA is like a Soccer Mom, convinced they need a giant hulking vehicle just to toodle to the supermarket and pick up the dry cleaning.
NASA is, as far as technical knowledge is concerned, one of the best equipped organizations to develop something like a new space vehicle. But they were not the ones who ultimately succeeded. Scaled Composites showed up with a nice, small, sexy craft that looks very much this-decade. It uses a pair of jet engines and a single main rocket, and the whole thing could probably fit inside the Orbiter bay several times over, but still carries the same # of people, roughly. NASA is embarassed out of their minds.
Yes, NASA's efforts over the last 40 years have made it possible, but the agency that should have been in the best position, it turns out, was in the worst- and distracted with military projects (do you really think a mach 10+ mini-plane is for peace, love, and understanding? Phbt. It's for delivering tactical nukes very, very quickly from across the globe to better project US military strength).
It's a very typical power move you see in corporations and the public sector all the time. If the other guy's ideas start to endanger you, suddenly embrace his ideas and position yourself as the ideal candidate to manage that guy.
Considering collectively they're about as powerful as the mouse used by most of today's systems, yeah.
My point was that a few low-class machines will run gentoo just fine...and imagine how fast one current (none of my machines are newer than 2-3 years) linux box would be assisting the iPAQ. It's not 1:1 with distcc, but it's a nice speedup.
Helloooooo distccd.
I have a P2/300 Mobile, a Celeron 450, and a P3/600. Compiling stuff with distcc set up is a breeze and I fail to see the complaints about gentoo compile time...of course, they're all bare-bones console-only systems (firewall, mail/web, and fileserver), but you get the idea. Two of them only have 128MB of ram...
Advice to UC executives: when you kill 15,000 people- yes, 15,000 people...you should thank your lucky stars you're not ripped to shreds by an angry mob or tried in an international court for crimes against humanity. The fact that nobody in Union Carbide management hasn't committed suicide over the guilt is pretty good proof of how disturbed they really are.
The reason the compensation for the victims is so pitiful is that it was done under Indian law. In Indian law, if you accidentally kill someone, the compensation is based on what they would have been worth at the end of their life. In most cases, that is pretty much zero.
The whole point is that the deaths were not accidental. They were due to extreme and willful negligence on the part of Union Carbie (now Dow Chemical) management and employees. Worse, UC blamed a disgruntled employee for the whole thing, despite very conclusive proof otherwise.
This is going to be harsh, but you need to hear it.
Obviously it is not possible to build an enterprise-grade 'your neck is on the line' production environment just for writing reviews
In order for the review to be accurate, that's how it has to be tested. Evaluating enterprise equipment in a non-enterprise environment with people who have no enterprise experience is pretty much worthless...and you're not going to fool anyone.
There's also no market for this sort of thing. Equipment on that level is bought because of high level executive briefings, price negotiations, migration options, and politics. Why? Because the market is so cutthroat and all the features that matter are there. The decisions are not made on whether or not a power cord was included, it was easy to unpack, the manuals were clear, how well built it looks, and how it did on SysMark SuperServerSimulator 2005...which is about the only thing all you 2-guys-with-a-webserver "hardware review" sites know how to do.
Further- often when a hardware vendor wants to get a contract, they provide a unit for evaluation.
On top of that, the major analyst firms already fill what little niche there is, and they have really big names 90% of the important people with Nice Shoes will recognize, which means even if that analyst is wrong, the decision to go with their recommendation is justifiable and won't get the Nice Shoes person fired. You'd be lucky if .01% recognized your name, much less trusted it. "Jones! Why does our website keep crashing?" "Well, we're having a lot of hardware problems." "Why did we go with ABC for our servers?" "Oh, XYZhardware.com said they were the best." "Jones, clean out your desk."
So...sorry, there's no market for what you're trying to do, and you don't have the means to do it.
Last time someone did this sort of post(might have been k5, not slashdot), I found 2 out of the 5 addresses were wrong- not just wrong digit...wrong PO box, wrong town, wrong STATE. That's VERY dangerous given that you are sending more than enough information necessary to do identity theft.
Please post links to their "how to reach us" pages on their websites next time.
Who is Zonk, out of curiosity? First time I've seen that name. I'm also kind of curious why this is front page news.
Wait...you read the articles?
You're not from around here, are you.
No. In fact, ever since I added our phone number to the federal do-not-call list, telemarketing calls have in fact stopped.
The exception is the occasional charity, but even those have pretty much ground to a halt. When they do call, the conversation goes something like this:
"Hi! This is the Save Small Kittens from Cancer fund, will you give us money?"
"We're on the federal do not call list."
"We're a non-profit charity, we are exempt, sir".
"And, given that we are a household that has registered as not wanting telemarking calls, what genius thought calling us would be a good way to get money from us?"
"Uh...well...er...um..."
"Did it occur to anyone that, in fact, by calling a household listed on the do-not-call list, you would in fact generate substantial ill will, and virtually guarantee we'd never send you a dime, even if we might have been planning to do so?"
"Uh..."
"Don't call us again." [click]
It's very simple- any time you get a telemarking call from an NPO and you're on the do not call list, tell them that, by calling you, they've been crossed off the list of charities you donate to. Particularly if you've already donated to them- they can see this on their screen- it will be HIGHLY effective.
Well, that and (I believe) under the new laws, even an NPO can't call you BACK if you tell them to piss off...they have to honor the request, at least for a few years.
"green" lead free
Folks- "green" is hardly how one would describe most of the OTHER heavy metals in motherboards...like in the capacitors alone. Nevermind the chemicals used in making all the various components...