Fark.com tried that in 2006 or so with a new domain name for a site called Foobies, but in the end they still discontinued it. Not sure that a separate site would work when the primary site is largely based on a combination of vanity publishing and counter-culture content including sexual content.
You know, you can always register your own domain name, rent server space, and use some kind of content management or blogging software that's either open-source or commercially available. So long as your content isn't so egregious as to attract legal challenge or to make the news for being abhorrent then your provider will probably be fine with taking your money for as long as you wish to maintain the site.
It's those that have decided that they're going to use someone else's platform that have found themselves losing hosting, rather than those with independent sites.
This is a mistake. A car is not like most other purchases, and while Teslas aren't cheap, Tesla isn't so far removed from traditional mass-market sales as to be able to take a page from luxury-performance makes like Ferrari and sell cars to buyers that haven't driven the particular model in question yet.
Sure, there are some people that would be willing to buy a car untested, but I don't think that's most buyers, and I don't care how good Tesla's return policy is, it's a huge hassle to buy something incredibly expensive and to then return it, especially when financing is involved. It's not zero-risk.
Having actually ran Windows 95 and ran betas going to May 1994, the problems with running period-correct software on Win95 were largely related to security vulnerabilities. A better comparison would be to running NT 4.0, similar UI, most applications ran, but underneath the OS was much more stable. There were security vulnerabilities, but fewer than Win95, and more corporate support to mitigate those vulnerabilities both on-platform and from the network. And calc.exe still loaded quickly.
If I had a specific application that was never revised for newer Windows that was mission-critical I could reluctantly make it work well enough. Which is what's happening with the article, and with some other examples like military systems that are stuck on Win2000. Come to think of it I have an old OTDR that runs Windows 2000, it's definitely NOT getting updated.
This is also why I'm largely opposed to using Microsoft/Windows as an infrastructure platform, as a commodity OS it's fickle and software might end up abandoned as the whims of Redmond change.
Most of our older stuff ran on an AS/400. It's sad that a platform older than I am, on physical hardware that's a decade old and isn't even supported by a manufacturer anymore can do financials faster and better than modern Windows-based software.
You use stick-on raceway, often referred to as Panduit. Alternately if you can drill a hole in the wall above the drop-ceiling (or in a hard-lid environment, in the top-plate of the wall) you can fish the wire down the wall and pull it through a low-voltage mudring at the intended work area.
Data drops cost between $200 and $500 per cable to install when they're done as low volume moves/adds/changes, and typically in the $50-$300 range when done as components of a major recabling project. The cost is based on the expected difficulty of the installation (accounting for core drilling, long cable runs to an IDF, firewalls requiring special attention to penetrations and firestopping) and on volume as often multiple drops can be pulled with roughly the same effort as a single drop, so it gets cheaper per-unit to pull dozens or hundreds than to pull only a few.
...and is optimized to run on extremely slow hardware. It was often written by people that were extremely talented at optimizing their code because hardware limitations forced them to do this.
I won't deny that advances in computer language have made it possible to write programs better than they used to be written when machines were extremely procedural and single threaded, but at the same time, the amount of bloat in modern programming afforded by modern hardware has more than made up for it.
I've seen the progression of software for simple things like workorder systems and asset management and audit get worse over time. The only 'improvement' is access, in that going from an 80x25 text console on a remote system with terminal emulation, to a a full-fledged program running on a specific architecture in a text mode, to a GUI program on a specific architecture, to 'applet' type programs using runtime libraries cross-platform, to web-based access that theoretically are entirely platform independent presuming a minimum browser version, and in just about all cases the further they've gone, the slower clunkier for actual experienced users that frequently use the system. It might not be any better for inexperienced users either if the vendor hasn't taken the time to look at workflow from an outside point of view.
They're still wistfully looking back on the era when mass-market VHS tapes were around $20 each and Laserdisc as the premium option was somewhere between $50 and $100 depending on the title, quality of the transfer, and any extra features.
The problem is that with DVD they picked a format that serves more than one purpose, and to a lesser extent likewise with Blu-ray, such that both are easily read by inexpensive commodity PC hardware in addition to purpose-built players. Had studios/publishers/distributors gone with formats that didn't readily play in PCs then perhaps they could've continued such a pricing scheme without seeing widespread piracy, but like with CD, as soon as the format became easily redistributable in a lossless format then they effectively lost.
We don't know what the contract said. We also don't know enough about the kind of service.
Nevertheless the contract should have had SLAs specified and both customer steps to initiate support cases (thus documenting them) and provider actions and response times to remedy them. If she didn't hold up her end by properly notifying the provider and maintaining her own call logs then it's hard to prove. This is doubly so if there's customer-provided equipment like a router or even a very limited number of computers involved.
Now, my saying this isn't to call her complaints bogus, but there are obligations that the business has when getting into contracts, if she didn't fulfill them then it would be tough for a court to find that the other party violated its own obligations to provide service.
From Youtube:"Any content -- including comments -- that endangers minors is abhorrent and we have clear policies prohibiting this on YouTube. We took immediate action by deleting accounts and channels, reporting illegal activity to authorities and disabling violative comments," a spokeswoman for YouTube said in an email.
It won't work. The fundamental problem is that it's expensive to editorialize/police content and advertising. Major television networks employ standards boards, local television stations have station managers and other staff, and even cable networks have to maintain staff to both sell and to police the content of television shows and of ads. These entities have to spend a sizable amount on salary for these censors, and even being limited to airtime that's limited to 1440 minutes in a 24-hour period they still get it wrong.
There are claims that 5 billion videos are watched daily on Youtube, and more than 400,000 hours of content is added to Youtube every day. There's simply no way to keep up as censors with that kind of content. Hell, Google can't even keep its ad delivery networks free from malicious ads, how do they expect to keep inappropriate content off when those uploading content don't have a strong financial tie with a particular salesman or censor?
That's one of the few things that annoys me about my personal Dell XPS 13, the lack of dedicated home/end/pgup/pgdn keys.
At work I'm still using a fairly old Thinkpad Yoga 12.5" because it still has dedicated hardware keys and because it's got enough border around the screen that it's relatively durable in equipment spaces. I'd have rather they bought me a Panasonic Toughbook or equivalent (it also would've had a physical 9-pin serial port for consoling) but they didn't want to do that.
It fit in my pocket, but the way the backside covers over the hinging areas were designed they just broke off after being dropped, with the plastic snapping.
Honestly if a smartphone could serve as a laptop replacement for the kind of work that I would use it for, it might well be worth that $1500. That kind of work involves datacenter and telecommunications closet equipment service, like consoling in to systems.
I have experimented with using a borderline-phablet smartphone, a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and a USB-OTG cable to let me use an FTDI serial console cable. It works OK, but is limited by the way that Android handles mouse functions, and some other operations are a bit more difficult because of how Android has restricted access to the hardware. Termux can't talk to the serial port, I have to use a different Anrdoid application for terminal use than I do for SSH use. Additionally I have yet to find a good portable Bluetooth keyboard, the closest one has a weird layout and requires hitting function-modifier keys to access common characters for my job (pipe, slash, backslash, brackets) and was so fragile that it broke within a year.
Fundamentally the biggest problem is that for the functionality that I want, it simply doesn't pack down small enough. If I still have to drag my laptop bag along then I may as well bring my laptop.
Then the State of Oregon is free to rewrite its statute to reflect the sort of engineering that requires a PE in order to get one's stamp with regard to the use of the term, which would probably be limited to the senior person in a firm that designs complicated structures or systems and signs off on the soundness of those structures or systems. They shouldn't have the right to restrict criticism of those structures or systems, or of less complicated systems not requiring a PE's stamp to build and implement in the first place.
The man did not overstep any authority by criticizing a system that malfunctions, and he described himself as an engineer in the course of actually documenting/supporting his work. It wasn't like his criticism was limited to, "This system is broken. I'm an engineer. You need to take my word for it."
Though I wish that there was a practical means of spraying out ground-up crayon wax, something that would embed itself into the fabric and melt into place. Unfortunately it would probably congeal while sitting on the porch.
I would like to see it start shouting "PACKAGE THIEF!" or something else equally loudly that can't be easily turned off, but it would probably end up smashed until it stopped emitting.
It's acceptable because no one is home to receive the package.
Sometimes I have packages sent to work, but inevitably they'll try for a Saturday or Sunday delivery so it's a bit of game of roulette. Sometimes I send them to my retired parents' address who have a greater chance of being home, but they live thirty miles away and their home is even more exposed if they're not around to receive the packages directly, so it's also imperfect.
I'd like to see the United States Postal Inspection Service, a law-enforcement entity in its own right, expanded to cover these sorts of crimes even if the shipper is not the USPS, and for the crime of stealing packages to have the same penalties as exists for stealing mail.
By, "security systems," I meant the dialer that contacts the security company when someone trips a door, window, or motion sensor. I wasn't referring to cameras, bandwidth for those is far too high to be practical. When the security company gets an alert, if they have on-site cameras/monitoring then they'll connect to the NVR system and start monitoring over VPN to the site's network over the regular corporate network.
These kinds of dialers use cellular or copper landlines because the power redundancy to run them is simple and can be entirely contained within the controller's housing. If one attempted to use the corporate network then a lot of other devices would also need to be on battery backup, but with the battery in the housing, the security company can change batteries on a schedule and only have to touch one battery per site or per building, and they don't have to rely on any other entities like the IT department to keep switches and routers running. So in a nutshell if the site loses power, the security system or fire alarm system stay running and can still report events.
And if those systems work and are secure, why exactly would companies spend extra in order to swap them out in order to achieve, from the business' point of view, identical service?
Taiwan really doesn't want embedded systems, fire alarm dialers, security systems, and a whole host of other SCADA or EMS systems to use the cellular network, does it?
Those kinds of devices aren't swapped-out as often as people replace their cell phones. Probably need a ten year service life out of 'em to justify the costs to use that technology instead of good old-fashioned copper landlines, and since they're often in life-safety applications they need a longer dev cycle to be reliable enough.
Realistically you're not going to armor the front of a jetliner to withstand a strike against something as heavy as a person at eighty meters per second.
It's also an issue if you work in an industry that has few employers, especially when such industries inevitably find those employers merging or purchasing each other.
There are a half-dozen firms here that do the kind of engineering that my wife's education and work experience apply-to. She may not intend to go back to work for a firm that she has left, but it would be foolish to ensure being ineligible for rehire when she might find it necessary or find that a company she later works for is now part of that original company again.
Additionally, most of these firms inevitably have joint projects or end up as suppliers for each other, so business-contact with former coworkers is pretty common, no sense in making that worse.
You witnessed someone being done a favor, at the expense of your department's budget, put on the books without any expectation to show up, in a job that's very difficult to define personal employee benchmarks/metrics for. That's not the same as ghosting.
Whom in upper management was this person related to, having sexual intercourse with, or blackmailing? Because I can't think of another reason why this person would be placed on the payroll for a job that they're not doing unless they somehow had leverage over someone with the power to make it happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Fark.com tried that in 2006 or so with a new domain name for a site called Foobies, but in the end they still discontinued it. Not sure that a separate site would work when the primary site is largely based on a combination of vanity publishing and counter-culture content including sexual content.
Trying to read everything of a subject from the Internet is like drinking from a firehose.
Posting on the Internet is like shouting at people as they go past on a roller-coaster.
Archiving the Internet is like washing toilet paper.
You know, you can always register your own domain name, rent server space, and use some kind of content management or blogging software that's either open-source or commercially available. So long as your content isn't so egregious as to attract legal challenge or to make the news for being abhorrent then your provider will probably be fine with taking your money for as long as you wish to maintain the site.
It's those that have decided that they're going to use someone else's platform that have found themselves losing hosting, rather than those with independent sites.
This is a mistake. A car is not like most other purchases, and while Teslas aren't cheap, Tesla isn't so far removed from traditional mass-market sales as to be able to take a page from luxury-performance makes like Ferrari and sell cars to buyers that haven't driven the particular model in question yet.
Sure, there are some people that would be willing to buy a car untested, but I don't think that's most buyers, and I don't care how good Tesla's return policy is, it's a huge hassle to buy something incredibly expensive and to then return it, especially when financing is involved. It's not zero-risk.
Having actually ran Windows 95 and ran betas going to May 1994, the problems with running period-correct software on Win95 were largely related to security vulnerabilities. A better comparison would be to running NT 4.0, similar UI, most applications ran, but underneath the OS was much more stable. There were security vulnerabilities, but fewer than Win95, and more corporate support to mitigate those vulnerabilities both on-platform and from the network. And calc.exe still loaded quickly.
If I had a specific application that was never revised for newer Windows that was mission-critical I could reluctantly make it work well enough. Which is what's happening with the article, and with some other examples like military systems that are stuck on Win2000. Come to think of it I have an old OTDR that runs Windows 2000, it's definitely NOT getting updated.
This is also why I'm largely opposed to using Microsoft/Windows as an infrastructure platform, as a commodity OS it's fickle and software might end up abandoned as the whims of Redmond change.
Most of our older stuff ran on an AS/400. It's sad that a platform older than I am, on physical hardware that's a decade old and isn't even supported by a manufacturer anymore can do financials faster and better than modern Windows-based software.
You use stick-on raceway, often referred to as Panduit. Alternately if you can drill a hole in the wall above the drop-ceiling (or in a hard-lid environment, in the top-plate of the wall) you can fish the wire down the wall and pull it through a low-voltage mudring at the intended work area.
Data drops cost between $200 and $500 per cable to install when they're done as low volume moves/adds/changes, and typically in the $50-$300 range when done as components of a major recabling project. The cost is based on the expected difficulty of the installation (accounting for core drilling, long cable runs to an IDF, firewalls requiring special attention to penetrations and firestopping) and on volume as often multiple drops can be pulled with roughly the same effort as a single drop, so it gets cheaper per-unit to pull dozens or hundreds than to pull only a few.
...and is optimized to run on extremely slow hardware. It was often written by people that were extremely talented at optimizing their code because hardware limitations forced them to do this.
I won't deny that advances in computer language have made it possible to write programs better than they used to be written when machines were extremely procedural and single threaded, but at the same time, the amount of bloat in modern programming afforded by modern hardware has more than made up for it.
I've seen the progression of software for simple things like workorder systems and asset management and audit get worse over time. The only 'improvement' is access, in that going from an 80x25 text console on a remote system with terminal emulation, to a a full-fledged program running on a specific architecture in a text mode, to a GUI program on a specific architecture, to 'applet' type programs using runtime libraries cross-platform, to web-based access that theoretically are entirely platform independent presuming a minimum browser version, and in just about all cases the further they've gone, the slower clunkier for actual experienced users that frequently use the system. It might not be any better for inexperienced users either if the vendor hasn't taken the time to look at workflow from an outside point of view.
They're still wistfully looking back on the era when mass-market VHS tapes were around $20 each and Laserdisc as the premium option was somewhere between $50 and $100 depending on the title, quality of the transfer, and any extra features.
The problem is that with DVD they picked a format that serves more than one purpose, and to a lesser extent likewise with Blu-ray, such that both are easily read by inexpensive commodity PC hardware in addition to purpose-built players. Had studios/publishers/distributors gone with formats that didn't readily play in PCs then perhaps they could've continued such a pricing scheme without seeing widespread piracy, but like with CD, as soon as the format became easily redistributable in a lossless format then they effectively lost.
We don't know what the contract said. We also don't know enough about the kind of service.
Nevertheless the contract should have had SLAs specified and both customer steps to initiate support cases (thus documenting them) and provider actions and response times to remedy them. If she didn't hold up her end by properly notifying the provider and maintaining her own call logs then it's hard to prove. This is doubly so if there's customer-provided equipment like a router or even a very limited number of computers involved.
Now, my saying this isn't to call her complaints bogus, but there are obligations that the business has when getting into contracts, if she didn't fulfill them then it would be tough for a court to find that the other party violated its own obligations to provide service.
From Youtube: "Any content -- including comments -- that endangers minors is abhorrent and we have clear policies prohibiting this on YouTube. We took immediate action by deleting accounts and channels, reporting illegal activity to authorities and disabling violative comments," a spokeswoman for YouTube said in an email.
It won't work. The fundamental problem is that it's expensive to editorialize/police content and advertising. Major television networks employ standards boards, local television stations have station managers and other staff, and even cable networks have to maintain staff to both sell and to police the content of television shows and of ads. These entities have to spend a sizable amount on salary for these censors, and even being limited to airtime that's limited to 1440 minutes in a 24-hour period they still get it wrong.
There are claims that 5 billion videos are watched daily on Youtube, and more than 400,000 hours of content is added to Youtube every day. There's simply no way to keep up as censors with that kind of content. Hell, Google can't even keep its ad delivery networks free from malicious ads, how do they expect to keep inappropriate content off when those uploading content don't have a strong financial tie with a particular salesman or censor?
That's one of the few things that annoys me about my personal Dell XPS 13, the lack of dedicated home/end/pgup/pgdn keys.
At work I'm still using a fairly old Thinkpad Yoga 12.5" because it still has dedicated hardware keys and because it's got enough border around the screen that it's relatively durable in equipment spaces. I'd have rather they bought me a Panasonic Toughbook or equivalent (it also would've had a physical 9-pin serial port for consoling) but they didn't want to do that.
Apple keyboard is far too large.
This was the last one I tried:
iclever
It fit in my pocket, but the way the backside covers over the hinging areas were designed they just broke off after being dropped, with the plastic snapping.
Don't think of it as a smartphone, think of it as replacing that desktop computer and adding more functionality to boot.
Honestly if a smartphone could serve as a laptop replacement for the kind of work that I would use it for, it might well be worth that $1500. That kind of work involves datacenter and telecommunications closet equipment service, like consoling in to systems.
I have experimented with using a borderline-phablet smartphone, a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and a USB-OTG cable to let me use an FTDI serial console cable. It works OK, but is limited by the way that Android handles mouse functions, and some other operations are a bit more difficult because of how Android has restricted access to the hardware. Termux can't talk to the serial port, I have to use a different Anrdoid application for terminal use than I do for SSH use. Additionally I have yet to find a good portable Bluetooth keyboard, the closest one has a weird layout and requires hitting function-modifier keys to access common characters for my job (pipe, slash, backslash, brackets) and was so fragile that it broke within a year.
Fundamentally the biggest problem is that for the functionality that I want, it simply doesn't pack down small enough. If I still have to drag my laptop bag along then I may as well bring my laptop.
Then the State of Oregon is free to rewrite its statute to reflect the sort of engineering that requires a PE in order to get one's stamp with regard to the use of the term, which would probably be limited to the senior person in a firm that designs complicated structures or systems and signs off on the soundness of those structures or systems. They shouldn't have the right to restrict criticism of those structures or systems, or of less complicated systems not requiring a PE's stamp to build and implement in the first place.
The man did not overstep any authority by criticizing a system that malfunctions, and he described himself as an engineer in the course of actually documenting/supporting his work. It wasn't like his criticism was limited to, "This system is broken. I'm an engineer. You need to take my word for it."
In this particular case, worth it.
Though I wish that there was a practical means of spraying out ground-up crayon wax, something that would embed itself into the fabric and melt into place. Unfortunately it would probably congeal while sitting on the porch.
I would like to see it start shouting "PACKAGE THIEF!" or something else equally loudly that can't be easily turned off, but it would probably end up smashed until it stopped emitting.
It's acceptable because no one is home to receive the package.
Sometimes I have packages sent to work, but inevitably they'll try for a Saturday or Sunday delivery so it's a bit of game of roulette. Sometimes I send them to my retired parents' address who have a greater chance of being home, but they live thirty miles away and their home is even more exposed if they're not around to receive the packages directly, so it's also imperfect.
I'd like to see the United States Postal Inspection Service, a law-enforcement entity in its own right, expanded to cover these sorts of crimes even if the shipper is not the USPS, and for the crime of stealing packages to have the same penalties as exists for stealing mail.
By, "security systems," I meant the dialer that contacts the security company when someone trips a door, window, or motion sensor. I wasn't referring to cameras, bandwidth for those is far too high to be practical. When the security company gets an alert, if they have on-site cameras/monitoring then they'll connect to the NVR system and start monitoring over VPN to the site's network over the regular corporate network.
These kinds of dialers use cellular or copper landlines because the power redundancy to run them is simple and can be entirely contained within the controller's housing. If one attempted to use the corporate network then a lot of other devices would also need to be on battery backup, but with the battery in the housing, the security company can change batteries on a schedule and only have to touch one battery per site or per building, and they don't have to rely on any other entities like the IT department to keep switches and routers running. So in a nutshell if the site loses power, the security system or fire alarm system stay running and can still report events.
And if those systems work and are secure, why exactly would companies spend extra in order to swap them out in order to achieve, from the business' point of view, identical service?
Taiwan really doesn't want embedded systems, fire alarm dialers, security systems, and a whole host of other SCADA or EMS systems to use the cellular network, does it?
Those kinds of devices aren't swapped-out as often as people replace their cell phones. Probably need a ten year service life out of 'em to justify the costs to use that technology instead of good old-fashioned copper landlines, and since they're often in life-safety applications they need a longer dev cycle to be reliable enough.
5kg isn't really a problem.
Drones capable of doing work weigh considerably more than 5kg. You're looking at a mass more like 50kg, possibly quite a bit more:
Drone Weight Article
Realistically you're not going to armor the front of a jetliner to withstand a strike against something as heavy as a person at eighty meters per second.
It's also an issue if you work in an industry that has few employers, especially when such industries inevitably find those employers merging or purchasing each other.
There are a half-dozen firms here that do the kind of engineering that my wife's education and work experience apply-to. She may not intend to go back to work for a firm that she has left, but it would be foolish to ensure being ineligible for rehire when she might find it necessary or find that a company she later works for is now part of that original company again.
Additionally, most of these firms inevitably have joint projects or end up as suppliers for each other, so business-contact with former coworkers is pretty common, no sense in making that worse.
You witnessed someone being done a favor, at the expense of your department's budget, put on the books without any expectation to show up, in a job that's very difficult to define personal employee benchmarks/metrics for. That's not the same as ghosting.
Whom in upper management was this person related to, having sexual intercourse with, or blackmailing? Because I can't think of another reason why this person would be placed on the payroll for a job that they're not doing unless they somehow had leverage over someone with the power to make it happen.