The business functionality is already being ported to new systems. But that isn't a trivial undertaking, and the projects involved probably won't be complete for a year or more. The point of virtualizing is to avoid a critical hardware failure in the mean time. It isn't meant to be a permanent solution.
There are already projects underway to roll the functionality of this system into other, newer systems. However, those likely won't be complete for a year or more. In the mean time, the idea is to virtualize to avoid a critical hardware failure.
It runs the middleware for a VB4 (I think) front end and Oracle 7.2 back end. Work is already underway to retire the system, but that probably won't happen for another year. The goal of virtualizing is avoiding a critical hardware failure during that time.
Projects are already in the works to retire the system in question. But those likely won't be complete for at least a year. The goal is to virtualize for now to avoid a crippling hardware failure in that time.
OP here. Thanks, but I believe (I'm a/. proxy in all of this) we need 2.1.2.
Also, in case you might be wondering, the goal *is* to completely retire this system (sooner than later), but it has basically been ignored for years. Moving the functionality to other systems will take a while (I'm working on one related project, and we're probably looking to at least the middle of next year), and we want to virtualize for now in case Something Bad Happens.
The CDMA phone, however, is more of a global device. It supports the same three LTE bands as the non-U.S. GSM phone, as well as the two main bands used by U.S. carriers Verizon and Sprint. Another benefit to the CDMA phone is that it supports GSM/EDGE radio frequencies, while the GSM phones do not support CDMA frequencies. Unfortunately, that GSM support is limited to international use for stateside customers. What is oddly missing from all three phones is LTE support for a large portion of Western Europe, which uses LTE Band 7.
Something doesn't make sense here. My understanding was that while the iPhone 4S had a universal radio (CDMA and GSM), there are different iPhone 5 models for different networks (CDMA and GSM). And while they all support LTE, they support different frequencies:
Where the iPhone 4S was a dual GSM/CDMA device, meaning one model for all carriers, the LTE-enabled iPhone 5 comes in two separate GSM models and one CDMA model. This means that consumers will have fewer choices when switching carriers, and that LTE access will be limited when traveling abroad.
Since carriers utilize different radio frequencies (also known as frequency bands) for LTE service, Apple has had to diversify its iPhone 5 portfolio. This largely has to do with the fact that 4G LTE is still in the early stages of development, compared to more mature networks like 2G and 3G. It’s a messy situation that Android handset makers like Samsung and HTC have been dealing with when it comes to their 4G LTE devices. For example, the Samsung Galaxy SIII comes in nine model variants, five of which are specific to North American carriers.
The three iPhone 5 models include: GSM model A1428 that supports LTE Bands 4 and 17; GSM model A1429 that supports LTE Bands 1, 3, and 5; and CDMA model A1429 that supports LTE Bands 1, 3, 5, 13, and 25.
In layman’s terms, this means an iPhone 5 user who wanted to jump from, say, AT&T to Verizon or vice versa, would have to buy a new handset, since AT&T runs a GSM network and Verizon is CDMA. And where owners of GSM handsets previously enjoyed wide compatibility with foreign networks, LTE fragmentation means that AT&T customers using an iPhone 5 in Europe, for example, won’t be able to take advantage of LTE speeds while abroad and will instead get kicked down to the 3G network.
Is the Wired story incorrect? Is there more to this? Or is "able to connect to any GSM network" totally bogus?
More details here, including this blurb from Verizon:
UPDATE: Verizon got back to us, and said "Verizon Wireless plans to enable global LTE roaming on the iPhone 5 in the future. As there are many LTE frequencies currently being deployed around the world, Verizon will be surveying which markets line up best with the frequencies available in our version of the iPhone 5."
I haven't been following the Hudson/Jenkins saga *that* closely, but it was my understanding that most of the developers that had been working on Hudson had moved over to Jenkins and that Hudson itself had basically been left behind in the dust. Even if Hudson gets moved to the EF, will anybody care?
Les Paul was a great talent, but it was in fact Ross Snyder at Ampex who came up with the idea of Sel-Sync (recording in sync with previously recorded tracks), and it was Ampex engineers such as Mort Fujii who actually made it work. Multiple tracks on the same tape already existed, but the ability to record multiple passes in sync with each other did not.
Les did end up paying $10,000 for that machine though!
You also need to remember that early recordings tend to get gummy. The way this is fixed is to bake the tape. You then get ONE shot at recovering the data from it, after that the tape is destroyed. I don't know if they needed to bake the masters, the article doesn't say. If they did, though, then there is nothing you can go back to.
No, that isn't true at all.
First off, tapes from 1969 shouldn't need to be baked. It was when formulations changed in the mid '70s that it became a problem. I've heard that tapes from the early '50s usually play without any problems.
Second, baking tapes doesn't destroy them. While there are apparently arguments that baking degrades the tape somewhat, some audio engineers have indicated they've baked tapes over and over to no ill effect. It *is* true, however, that baking only buys you so much time before you have to bake again. Not a huge problem, though.
After the Telecommunications Act of 94 (I think that was the year), it opened the door to other telco competition. Their answer was to form another company, TDS Metrocom, to compete primarily against Ameritech. The result was astounding. Instead of one cohesive structure, we ended up with two completely separate companies that didn't get along well. Not just physically separate (different headquarters), but even technically segmented.
They are slowly merging the entities back together. Things like pricing are still quite a bit different between the ILEC and CLEC markets, but more and more seems to be moving under the same umbrella. There isn't even a separate Metrocom website anymore.
That said, they still seem to have a lot of issues. DSL in AT&T areas can be very problematic, and while they are starting to roll out WiMAX to try and avoid that, coverage is spotty. Not to mention the fact that they aren't offering WiMAX in ILEC areas, even if a) there's signal coverage and b) DSL in those areas is limited to 768k.
I'm sure it's a technical answer but why can't, with 700mb of space available, one lousy kilobyte be reserved for metadata? If older players wouldn't like it, I should think it could be "hidden" after the last track.
It just seems silly that my CD player can't scroll the title of the track being played. Or that my computer can't pull titles and even album art without an Internet connection.
There's nothing magical about WiMax. Other frequency ranges, other protocols, that's about it.
The only interesting thing about it is that it's not operated by traditional telcos.
Not sure what you mean by "traditional telcos", but TDS is rolling out WiMAX in Madison, WI in its CLEC territory to move off of AT&T's copper. Speeds up to 6 Mbps down/3 Mbps up and VoIP. They are advertising coverage within a radius of 2 miles from each tower.
That said, it looks like at least for now they are sticking with copper/DSL in their ILEC territory.
Today's dye sub printers can do a full 8x10. The old residential dye sub stuff used to be crap, but dye sub has been used in professional print shops for at least a decade and the residential stuff has now caught up with the "real technology". My wife's a professional photographer and swears by them now. We've got an Olympus dye sub, HP color laserjet, and one of the higher end HP inkjet printers (before we found the dye sub). The Oly by far blows away all of the others in terms of photo quality. If you're just printing occasional photos, the laserjet does just fine... but if you want professional looking photographs I haven't found anything as good as a dye sub.
Still, I think you'd agree a dye sub is good if you *only* want to do photos. Most people don't want different printers for photos and text, especially if they aren't using it all the time. Same thing with a color laser - probably not worth it for those that only print from time to time.
As far as inkjet photo quality goes, I haven't liked the newer HP models. I usually ended up seeing lines if I looked closely. I don't know how one could agrue with the better Canon and Epson inkjets...
Sorry, that wasn't meant as a troll. But it is beyond me why we're still using technology that's just a slight spin on the old dot matrix printers. Especially in light of newer and still somewhat inexpensive technologies such as color laser ($400) and Dye Sublimation ($250). Especially considering most people use a color inkjet for photos, which Dye Sub is far superior to. It clicks in my head at least that the only reason anyone's using inkjet today is because of the propaganda from manufacturers who make more money on the ink than the printer.
I'll admit I haven't looked at dye sub printers for about a year and a half, but at that time, what I was seeing still didn't match the quality of a good inkjet (read: most of the inkjets on sale). Plus, unless things have changed, the dye sub models were limited to 4x6. And they really aren't meant to be used for text.
Can color lasers do photo quality these days? I know in the past they were great for graphics, but when it came to photos they didn't come close to inkjets.
Please mod the parent down, it is anything but "informative".
Turntables on the top of cheap stereos usually have cartridges with diamond stylii, that (being one of the hardest substances on Earth) will naturally damage the record as it plays. All good carts will have sapphire stylii, which are much nicer to the record.
Generally most good cartridges/stylii have a recommended weight of 3-4g.
Sapphire is anything but "nicer" to a record. In fact, because it begins to wear down so quickly, you're *much* more likely to damage your records with a sapphire stylus than you are with a diamond. That's probably why just about *all* cartridges come with diamond styli today.
Also, good cartridges will track somewhere between 0.8 and 2 grams. Something that tracks at 3-4g is most likely cheap junk.
Just remember - a new record will sound far, far better then a CD.
Personally I don't agree with that, at least in terms of comparing the mediums. Ie, if the CD and LP are done in the same way (which they usually aren't), I'd take the CD. More thoughts on this below.
Records only get crappy after much use. If they could make them out of a more robust material, I'd be first in line to buy.
Actually, if you've got a good cartridge/stylus that can faithfully track everything, wear should be pretty minimal. It's when you use too light of a tracking force and use a cartridge that can't track at all that damage starts to show up. Instead of following the groove walls, the stylus will literally jump over some, chipping them away in the process.
My personal feelings on LP are as follows. I have no particular love for the LP medium in and of itself. It's a pain to set up, even new pressings will usually have to clicks and pops (used pressings almost certainly will, at the very least), and personally I don't hear much/any difference between an original and a CD-R copy. All of that said, however, there are still things that:
1) are only available on LP 2) simply sound better on LP
I think 1 is pretty easy to figure out. In the case of 2, it's not so much that the medium is superior, but rather that whoever cut the LP did a better job of things than whoever cut the CD.
Let's take The Beatles for example. All copies of the stereo mix of I Want To Hold Your Hand sound harsh/shrill on CD. On the other hand, I've got some German LPs with the song that sound amazing. It still sounds amazing when I transfer it to CD-R. It's less in the medium and more in the mastering.
As far as programs like CEDAR and NoNoise go, I despise them. Well, let me clarify. I've got no problems with simple click/pop removal. You're only touching those samples that actually have clicks in them, and it's not too hard to interpolate what should be there. With noise reduction, on the other hand, you're modifying the entire audio spectrum. Like it or not, there's no way to remove hiss without removing some of the music. Sure, you get something that's "clean", but you also get something that's sterile and unnatural, at best. At worst you get garbage (and there are plenty of garbage CDs out there).
Hiss isn't that bad, folks. Other than making sure they are using the best possible tapes, engineers should just leave it alone.
I also take issue with comments saying that early CDs were somehow substandard. Sure, many early CDs weren't very good. But some were great. In fact, some albums sound better in their original CD incarnations than they do on any "remastered" CD. I dare anyone to find a better sounding Mamas & Papas CD than "16 of Their Greatest Hits", which came out in 1986. As with LP vs. CD, it has much less to do with "upgrades in technology" and much more to do with the mastering.
Slashdot Mirror
OP here.
The business functionality is already being ported to new systems. But that isn't a trivial undertaking, and the projects involved probably won't be complete for a year or more. The point of virtualizing is to avoid a critical hardware failure in the mean time. It isn't meant to be a permanent solution.
OP here.
There are already projects underway to roll the functionality of this system into other, newer systems. However, those likely won't be complete for a year or more. In the mean time, the idea is to virtualize to avoid a critical hardware failure.
lukpac (at) (gee-mail) (dot) com
Thanks. However, it *appears* to just be updates, not a full install.
ftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/UW21/
OP here.
It runs the middleware for a VB4 (I think) front end and Oracle 7.2 back end. Work is already underway to retire the system, but that probably won't happen for another year. The goal of virtualizing is avoiding a critical hardware failure during that time.
OP here.
Projects are already in the works to retire the system in question. But those likely won't be complete for at least a year. The goal is to virtualize for now to avoid a crippling hardware failure in that time.
OP here. Thanks, but I believe (I'm a /. proxy in all of this) we need 2.1.2.
Also, in case you might be wondering, the goal *is* to completely retire this system (sooner than later), but it has basically been ignored for years. Moving the functionality to other systems will take a while (I'm working on one related project, and we're probably looking to at least the middle of next year), and we want to virtualize for now in case Something Bad Happens.
Speaking of which Verizon's network is not GSM. So are these iPhones dual-network or what?
Yes:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html
They just don't work on all LTE bands.
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/09/iphone5-lte-model/
And:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html
I actually looked into that the other day but I guess I missed that portion. Sorry for adding to the confusion...
More at the link:
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/09/iphone5-lte-model/
Is the Wired story incorrect? Is there more to this? Or is "able to connect to any GSM network" totally bogus?
More details here, including this blurb from Verizon:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/09/want-global-lte-roaming-on-iphone-5-dont-buy-it-from-att/
Perhaps this should read "able to connect to any LTE network that runs on compatible frequencies"?
I haven't been following the Hudson/Jenkins saga *that* closely, but it was my understanding that most of the developers that had been working on Hudson had moved over to Jenkins and that Hudson itself had basically been left behind in the dust. Even if Hudson gets moved to the EF, will anybody care?
Already posted earlier today:
http://slashdot.org/story/10/10/27/1437252/Microsoft-Is-a-Dying-Consumer-Brand
Les didn't invent multitrack recording. He was probably the first to record that way, but Ampex invented it.
Mod parent way up.
Les Paul was a great talent, but it was in fact Ross Snyder at Ampex who came up with the idea of Sel-Sync (recording in sync with previously recorded tracks), and it was Ampex engineers such as Mort Fujii who actually made it work. Multiple tracks on the same tape already existed, but the ability to record multiple passes in sync with each other did not.
Les did end up paying $10,000 for that machine though!
No, that isn't true at all. First off, tapes from 1969 shouldn't need to be baked. It was when formulations changed in the mid '70s that it became a problem. I've heard that tapes from the early '50s usually play without any problems. Second, baking tapes doesn't destroy them. While there are apparently arguments that baking degrades the tape somewhat, some audio engineers have indicated they've baked tapes over and over to no ill effect. It *is* true, however, that baking only buys you so much time before you have to bake again. Not a huge problem, though.
"synchronous" = symmetric?
After the Telecommunications Act of 94 (I think that was the year), it opened the door to other telco competition. Their answer was to form another company, TDS Metrocom, to compete primarily against Ameritech. The result was astounding. Instead of one cohesive structure, we ended up with two completely separate companies that didn't get along well. Not just physically separate (different headquarters), but even technically segmented.
They are slowly merging the entities back together. Things like pricing are still quite a bit different between the ILEC and CLEC markets, but more and more seems to be moving under the same umbrella. There isn't even a separate Metrocom website anymore.
That said, they still seem to have a lot of issues. DSL in AT&T areas can be very problematic, and while they are starting to roll out WiMAX to try and avoid that, coverage is spotty. Not to mention the fact that they aren't offering WiMAX in ILEC areas, even if a) there's signal coverage and b) DSL in those areas is limited to 768k.
Unfortunately, the alternative is AT&T.
It already exists:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-Text
Wasn't this discussed already [slashdot.org]?
As far as inkjet photo quality goes, I haven't liked the newer HP models. I usually ended up seeing lines if I looked closely. I don't know how one could agrue with the better Canon and Epson inkjets...
Can color lasers do photo quality these days? I know in the past they were great for graphics, but when it came to photos they didn't come close to inkjets.
Also, good cartridges will track somewhere between 0.8 and 2 grams. Something that tracks at 3-4g is most likely cheap junk.
http://www.elpj.com/welcome.html
My personal feelings on LP are as follows. I have no particular love for the LP medium in and of itself. It's a pain to set up, even new pressings will usually have to clicks and pops (used pressings almost certainly will, at the very least), and personally I don't hear much/any difference between an original and a CD-R copy. All of that said, however, there are still things that:
1) are only available on LP
2) simply sound better on LP
I think 1 is pretty easy to figure out. In the case of 2, it's not so much that the medium is superior, but rather that whoever cut the LP did a better job of things than whoever cut the CD.
Let's take The Beatles for example. All copies of the stereo mix of I Want To Hold Your Hand sound harsh/shrill on CD. On the other hand, I've got some German LPs with the song that sound amazing. It still sounds amazing when I transfer it to CD-R. It's less in the medium and more in the mastering.
As far as programs like CEDAR and NoNoise go, I despise them. Well, let me clarify. I've got no problems with simple click/pop removal. You're only touching those samples that actually have clicks in them, and it's not too hard to interpolate what should be there. With noise reduction, on the other hand, you're modifying the entire audio spectrum. Like it or not, there's no way to remove hiss without removing some of the music. Sure, you get something that's "clean", but you also get something that's sterile and unnatural, at best. At worst you get garbage (and there are plenty of garbage CDs out there).
Hiss isn't that bad, folks. Other than making sure they are using the best possible tapes, engineers should just leave it alone.
I also take issue with comments saying that early CDs were somehow substandard. Sure, many early CDs weren't very good. But some were great. In fact, some albums sound better in their original CD incarnations than they do on any "remastered" CD. I dare anyone to find a better sounding Mamas & Papas CD than "16 of Their Greatest Hits", which came out in 1986. As with LP vs. CD, it has much less to do with "upgrades in technology" and much more to do with the mastering.