Apple has always charged a premium for Apple OS. And people have paid it. They want that OS... and an awful lot of people love Mac OS. It's easy, and how many viruses are out for the Mac?
The problem with the patent office isn't that they don't search for prior art... they do, but the search is done by narrow-minded bureaucrats without spinal cords or any reasonable technical knowledge.
Another problem plaguing the system is that patents are written by patent attorneys so that they are as broad as possible.
The patent holder wants the loosest possible definition so they might chase down patent infringers, and also so that they might take the narrowest scope possible when being chased for patent infringement in order to avoid prosecution.
The really sad thing is that the patent attorney wins at every turn. They write the patent. They defend the patent. They interpret the patent. They attack the infringer on behalf of the patentholder... and onlythe patent attorney really knows what's going on.
There's nothing a lawyer likes more than a meaningless piece of paper that means exactly what they want at any given time.
They get to chase down anyone with this broadly-worded piece of ____, and hold them hostage. Go to court, or pay licensing fees.
There will always be someone greedy enough to host a spammer.
And, there's nothing to stop a spammer from starting their own ISP.
Once in awhile, I check the headers just to see where it's coming from. China is the place... I bet at least 1/2 of the spam I get at one email account is from China. A good size chunk of the rest is from cablemodem/DSL zombies.
For the first time in history, those with the time and a bit of know-how can do it. It's possible. And if the government stays out of it, it's a real grass roots threat to the big corporations.
Legislators are scared of this. Successes in ventures like this prove that we don't need legislators and regulators like they think we do. Legislators want to leave their legacy. They want to make themselves important, justify their own existence. They want to pat themselves on the back and say that they made government work!
Legislators and big government like to, with the media's help, paint a big picture of pirates, desparation, big evil corporations that need regulating, rip-offs, and even death at the hands of unregulated technology. Just you wait and see... the first time someone dies waiting for an ambulance and they don't have a landline or wireless line, and if it's discovered that they had a free internet phone connection, you can't imagine the press coverage that will flood this topic. 60 Minutes, the NY Times, the Washington Post, the Reverend Jesse Jackson... they'll ALL step in to talk about the horror, the sorrow that this poor soul faced, and that we need legislation to help prevent this type of accident, to prevent the treachery that resorted to this person turning to a "pirated" type of internet phone. You'll see 20% taxes on your internet connection within WEEKS! ISPs will be forced to put up filters. Trust me. It'll happen.
But if we're fast about it, and if it happens quickly, it'll go too far and reach too many people before the government can react. TIVO was something like this. TIVO changed people's habits. They aren't tied to the broadcast schedules for their shows. They skip thru commercials. Commercials are now served inline. You don't realize it, but TIVO changed a lot more than people think. SIP and VoIP, if it picks up pace, could do far more. Soon, wireless connections won't just be a phone, it'll be IP, and you'll end up with VoIP over a wireless phone. It's already started. We just need to keep the government out. Get the stupid "industry" lobbyists, regulators, press, and party hacks and keep them locked up somewhere. A year, maybe 2, and let it grow unchecked.
I buy a new inkjet with 2 new cartridges when they are cheaper than buying 2 replacement cartridges.
I bought four Canon S200's. If Canon, Lexmark, or HP are going to sell printers with cartridges cheaper than they sell cartridges, I'm going to buy a new printer every time. Obviously this doesn't work for high end printers, but I don't have a need for a high end printer.
Then the "little guy" would kill the big guys. You'd have millions of stupid little morons running around suing big companies for no reason except to tie up chunks of money.
The truth is, this Stuler person has a right to complain. And the spammer has a right to file a lawsuit. I'm surprised that the ACLU won't step in and defend Stuler for his right to complain.
The worst part is if Stuler didn't keep any of the spam he received. How many people save SPAM for just this type of event? Very few. I delete it. If I got hauled to court, I'd have to depend on Google archives, newsgroup archives, and archives of various abuse channels out there... and getting responses from those sources for court evidence might be kind of tough.
Ideally, I'd like to see the legislators who wrote the CSA show up for court. Make them sit through this just so they see how FUCKING STUPID they were when they wrote the piece of shit.
How do you get rated informative for not getting the point of the story? Do we have sheep moderating tonite?
Frankly, I'd like to build one myself... and I'd like to re-use some of the dozen or so old CompactFlash cards I have laying around. In fact, instead of up-and-downloading to the player, I'd rather just use my cardreader.
Too bad no one has a decent mirror... I'd really like to see the fabrication page... none of the images are coming through the google cache.
Do you want your finances, memos, all of your good and bad ideas, along with other dirty laundry indexed and shared with the mothership? Most companies won't want to give that kind of info to Google.com. And certainly not for a measly $4000 price cut.
Something to consider:
Imagine if someone gave away a super cool product... and it really had great benefits. And then, after a few years of use, you became completely and totally dependent on it. The dependency was so great that you bowed to the whims and wishes of it's creator. And this "creation" turned on you, and suddenly, the whole world was turned into this evil and corrupt power> It reminds me somewhat of Lord of the Rings. Could Google eventually be the one ring? The data they collect is unbelievable. Not just surfing the web, capturing more pages in the index, but surfing habits. And with a little association, it's quite easy to put an IP address down to a specific person, and a bank account, and e-commerce records. A whole slew of information to chew on. The tinfoil hat people have already thought of this stuff, but it makes you wonder...
It's a good idea at a good price, and I think it'll do well.
I see someone has already complained about the price for small biz. Frankly, I'd challenge you to find someone to set up a search website, buy hardware, and administer it for a year for under $5000. And, provide an interface that's friendly, and search results that are useful?
To me, $5000 seems kinda cheap. Especially if it works and I don't have to hire some really expensive consultant to run it on a fulltime basis.
And if Japanese settlements are like anything in the US, he paid the lawyers most of it, and the rest went to taxes. He'd be lucky to come home with enough to pay off his mortgage.
I've read through the list 3 times. UGO's list reminds me of a Bill Murray line from What About Bob. "I'm not schizophrenic, and neither am I."
The Goonies? What were they thinking? Smoking too much dope? Let's drop that DVD about 50 numbers, and put it right behind the Muppets Take Manhattan.
Saving Private Ryan at 45? And 5th Elemant at 46? And the Godfather Collection at 49. Are these people sniffing paint? How did they get this?
I liked Almost Famous, but where's Get Shorty? Pulp Fiction? Blade II is there, but Blade 1 isn't? Blade II wasn't as good as the original.
Where is Spiderman? Or Spiderman 2? They've got Dark City on the list. I watched Dark City on cable, but never considered buying/renting it on DVD. Spiderman 1 and 2 are worth owning on DVD.
Is there a battle that we need to win? Does broadband save lives? Are kids getting better grades in school because of broadband?
Just last week, weren't the newspapers discussing a study about kids not learning like they should because of the internet?
It might make my life easier because I access another network from home, but 90% of the people I know don't have broadband, and don't want to pay for it, and rarely need a lot of bandwidth. Is it making my life easier? Sure. But most people I know get away with a dialup account. They check the weather, do a little online shopping, and read the news, that's it. Dialup works for those people. $10 a month isn't bad either. $50 a month to Comcast is a waste of money for most people. If they're going to throw $50 at Comcast, they better get some TV out of the deal.
You're right. Popularity should not dictate content. But content will dictate popularity. And because it's MM, it's going to be expensive. A lot of resources are needed for MM. Who's paying for it?
If the thing sucks, it will never be remembered as a work of art, it'll be remembered as a MM that had OSC involved with it, and it flopped.
People have questions and doubts, and there are many people who think that because someone has a famous SF/Fantasy author involved, it might be a gimmick.
There are also a lot of people thinking: "What? No combat? How's that going to work? Are we just going to chat and drink coffee? Wander around? I can do that on IRC!" Just for the fact that it mentions that, it's saying up front, "Be prepared." That also tells the world be prepared because the whole idea might suck.
Implementing this is impractical. No one wants to re-fit the current system... wait. No one wants to pay for the current system to be re-fitted. The cable plant from the phone company can't handle that kind of voltage, and splicing repeaters into those cables? Forget about it. It took the phone company 5 years to start removing bridge tap and load coils for the latest 2-wire and 4-wire high speed services.
As much as the power utilities might want to gain more revenue, they don't want to spend billions cleaning up every noisy transformer, or splicing in repeaters and filters. Can you imagine what happens when Archie Bunker fires up his 1968 Vintage Vacuum cleaner, and the motor noise takes out the neighborhood's internet connection? Those are the kind of complaints that the utilities are going to have to chase down.
Possibly, if you were building out a brand new complex, someone might say, "Hey, we have the opportunity to do it!" You might find someone willing to try it. Pull some fiber to the neigborhood, and then Cat 5 or Coax. You'll get plenty of bandwidth. Even fiber to the home....
For 10 years, I worked as a SONET/DWDM engineer, designing and implementing fiber installations for one of these ILECs.
I read the article. The ILEC is standing in the way of progress? Give me a break. Sure, in this instance, they're complaining.... but local and state governments stand in the way all the time, yet that never makes the newspapers. I've seen cities grant access to install fiber, and then decide they're going to jack up the right-of-way costs to the ILEC, and then give away access to the competition for pennies per mile. Fair? Or unfair?
Often, local governments will take bids for right-of-way to install fiber. That doesn't promote competition. It tells me that the local government is greedy, and they want money to spend. They aren't interested in competition until years later when the citizens are angry with the single provider that won the bid.
During the dotcom boom, many cities took bids for fiber-based infrastructure builds. And often times, it was some poorly-planned flash-in-the-pan company that spent their entire wad winning the bid for a single city, and had very little money for equipment, labor, or anything else. Does anyone know if Sacramento got their city-wide fiber-to-the-home project completed? The last I heard, the company had gone bankrupt during installation, and had been bought by someone else. I hadn't heard whether installation was completed in any neighborhood. Anyone?
Is that what you want coming to your house?
I've also seen local governments place a 10 year moratorium on new construction because people don't like their streets dug up. Frankly, that stifles competition too.
Laying fiber is very expensive. It's not like DSL, where you're re-using the copper loop, or cable modem, where the cable companies laid fiber to the neighborhood, and re-used the coax to the home. Fiber-to-the neighborhood is cheaper by far than fiber to the curb. Fiber is a huge pain to lay to the home.
Surveying, digging, laying conduit with thoughts to bend radius, redundancy, sewer, water, power, and future repair access for accidental cuts? Hope that the contractor has their best person running the backhoe so you don't have to worry about severed gas, electrical, or water lines. Then blow fiber down the conduit, terminate it, light it, test it, educate the end-users (the 50% that initially express an interest), all the while working with city planners, utility companies, city water/sewer departments, and keep the subcontractors in line? Then, after years of work, put active services on it, give away service for the first few months, and then hope to turn a profit at what the government says you can charge for services.
And listen to people complain about the high cost? And then hope to be LUCKY to get 20% (I'm optimistic) of the installed homes as paying subscribers?
It's no wonder that the ILECs are concerned. It takes a long time to build, and it's very expensive. And the stockholders and Wall Street are mad if the payoff is anything over 5 years. What would you think if you just spend $50 million laying fiber rings (not fiber to the home, but the precursor... fiber to the neighborhood), and then the local government decided to subsidize a "public" network, undercutting your entire investment?
And then consider this:
Installation into a neighborhood of 400 homes, you need 400 timeslots on the SONET ring, or 400 wavelengths on a DWDM system. And then expect that 20% will subscribe, but they'll move every other year or so?
Much of the fiber that was blown into the conduits during the dotcom boom is already out-of-date when even last years' best DWDM equipment is considered. The older fiber has problems handling 40, 60, or 80 wavelengths. So you might need to spend millions on extra DWDM chassis to cover a neighborhood. Sure, you could use a DWDM to cover a neighborhood, and then use SONET to hit every house, but who wants a DS3 or less to their home?
Personally, I'd rather have a wave on the
I beg to differ. You don't need to buy a very expensive switch.
I bought a cheapie KVM switch from Microcenter. I think I paid $30, maybe even less. It's a CompactCable 2 port switch.
I've been running 2 machines, both at 1600x1200 at 32bits, Logitech USB keyboard, USB mouse, and a Mitsubishi 930SB 19" monitor, and I don't have any ghosting, or any problems. I occasionaly run resolutions as high as 1920 x 1440, and have yet to experience any trouble.
My point is to shop around, and you don't need to spend a boatload of $$ to get something that works.
Wait til you get married. I set up a machine for my wife. She knows enough not to click on attachments, but otherwise, when plugin windows show up on a page she wants to view, she tends to click OK.
I spent several minutes explaining exactly what happens with some of those plugins, cleaned the machine, and she's been fine for several years. No viruses, no spyware.
Personally, I run Firefox. The Adblock extension alone makes me smile every time I think of all the poor suckers still running IE and watching all those ads and Flash banners.
If you've not made the switch and still need to run a Windoze box, Firefox is the answer. Get Adblock. Spend a few careful moments creating some blocks, test them, and you'll see pages loading faster and without any trouble. Very nice.
I had a 2nd line for a period of time. I was waiting for DSL or cable modem in my neighborhood. I never put a phone on the 2nd line, but I gave out that number to any business that asked. I didn't care. I certainly wasn't going to give them my unlisted number. I tried calling it once... and it just rang and rang. No voicemail, nothing. Perfect. I wish I had an idea of how many telemarketers or even auto-dialers tried that number. I still use it today. I know no one has it... several businesses use a phone number as a lookup.
If you can't get away without stamps, and are really paranoid, you can purchase them at the grocery store, but PLEASE pay in cash. If you use a check, they'll get your home address!
If you use a cash card or credit card, they can still get your home address.
You could also get someone else to buy your stamps for you. Stay at home, ask your neighbor to buy stamps for you. But then the USPS would have a picture of your neighbor... hmmm. We wouldn't want that, would we.
I got it. Use another carrier! FedEx? UPS? How about a fax machine? Or email? Western Union? Is Western Union anonymous?
Pigment-based inks on good paper will last as long as traditional commercial photo prints.
I print both on commercial machines (Fuji Frontier 370) and at home on an Epson R800. Both come out with excellent quality. It's hard to distinguish between the two. As for durability, both are rated for much longer than I really need.
14 doesn't equal 100. ????
The article says they tested 14 inkjets. Well, the article doesn't say that, the headline does. It'd be nice if I could read the article. Too bad I don't buy print magazines.
Nice job posting this though. I'm glad the moderators proofed it before posting it too!
Thanks.
Stack a pair of 40gig drives to get to 1cm.
I know... battery drain for 2 drives... but you don't have to spool up both drives at once.
You could have separate archives on separate drives. Really, you could use 3 drives, implement RAID. All 3 drives could spin when docked. Photos on one drive, video on one drive, music on 3rd drive. 40gig on.5cm drives?
Slashdot Mirror
Apple has always charged a premium for Apple OS. And people have paid it. They want that OS... and an awful lot of people love Mac OS. It's easy, and how many viruses are out for the Mac?
The problem with the patent office isn't that they don't search for prior art... they do, but the search is done by narrow-minded bureaucrats without spinal cords or any reasonable technical knowledge.
Another problem plaguing the system is that patents are written by patent attorneys so that they are as broad as possible. The patent holder wants the loosest possible definition so they might chase down patent infringers, and also so that they might take the narrowest scope possible when being chased for patent infringement in order to avoid prosecution.
The really sad thing is that the patent attorney wins at every turn. They write the patent. They defend the patent. They interpret the patent. They attack the infringer on behalf of the patentholder... and onlythe patent attorney really knows what's going on.
There's nothing a lawyer likes more than a meaningless piece of paper that means exactly what they want at any given time. They get to chase down anyone with this broadly-worded piece of ____, and hold them hostage. Go to court, or pay licensing fees.
There will always be someone greedy enough to host a spammer.
And, there's nothing to stop a spammer from starting their own ISP.
Once in awhile, I check the headers just to see where it's coming from. China is the place... I bet at least 1/2 of the spam I get at one email account is from China. A good size chunk of the rest is from cablemodem/DSL zombies.
For the first time in history, those with the time and a bit of know-how can do it. It's possible. And if the government stays out of it, it's a real grass roots threat to the big corporations.
Legislators are scared of this. Successes in ventures like this prove that we don't need legislators and regulators like they think we do. Legislators want to leave their legacy. They want to make themselves important, justify their own existence. They want to pat themselves on the back and say that they made government work!
Legislators and big government like to, with the media's help, paint a big picture of pirates, desparation, big evil corporations that need regulating, rip-offs, and even death at the hands of unregulated technology. Just you wait and see... the first time someone dies waiting for an ambulance and they don't have a landline or wireless line, and if it's discovered that they had a free internet phone connection, you can't imagine the press coverage that will flood this topic. 60 Minutes, the NY Times, the Washington Post, the Reverend Jesse Jackson... they'll ALL step in to talk about the horror, the sorrow that this poor soul faced, and that we need legislation to help prevent this type of accident, to prevent the treachery that resorted to this person turning to a "pirated" type of internet phone. You'll see 20% taxes on your internet connection within WEEKS! ISPs will be forced to put up filters. Trust me. It'll happen.
But if we're fast about it, and if it happens quickly, it'll go too far and reach too many people before the government can react. TIVO was something like this. TIVO changed people's habits. They aren't tied to the broadcast schedules for their shows. They skip thru commercials. Commercials are now served inline. You don't realize it, but TIVO changed a lot more than people think. SIP and VoIP, if it picks up pace, could do far more. Soon, wireless connections won't just be a phone, it'll be IP, and you'll end up with VoIP over a wireless phone. It's already started. We just need to keep the government out. Get the stupid "industry" lobbyists, regulators, press, and party hacks and keep them locked up somewhere. A year, maybe 2, and let it grow unchecked.
I was just thinking of the 5th Element. Funny movie.
I buy a new inkjet with 2 new cartridges when they are cheaper than buying 2 replacement cartridges.
I bought four Canon S200's. If Canon, Lexmark, or HP are going to sell printers with cartridges cheaper than they sell cartridges, I'm going to buy a new printer every time. Obviously this doesn't work for high end printers, but I don't have a need for a high end printer.
Then the "little guy" would kill the big guys. You'd have millions of stupid little morons running around suing big companies for no reason except to tie up chunks of money.
The truth is, this Stuler person has a right to complain. And the spammer has a right to file a lawsuit. I'm surprised that the ACLU won't step in and defend Stuler for his right to complain.
The worst part is if Stuler didn't keep any of the spam he received. How many people save SPAM for just this type of event? Very few. I delete it. If I got hauled to court, I'd have to depend on Google archives, newsgroup archives, and archives of various abuse channels out there... and getting responses from those sources for court evidence might be kind of tough.
Ideally, I'd like to see the legislators who wrote the CSA show up for court. Make them sit through this just so they see how FUCKING STUPID they were when they wrote the piece of shit.
How do you get rated informative for not getting the point of the story? Do we have sheep moderating tonite?
Frankly, I'd like to build one myself... and I'd like to re-use some of the dozen or so old CompactFlash cards I have laying around. In fact, instead of up-and-downloading to the player, I'd rather just use my cardreader.
Too bad no one has a decent mirror... I'd really like to see the fabrication page... none of the images are coming through the google cache.
Do you want your finances, memos, all of your good and bad ideas, along with other dirty laundry indexed and shared with the mothership? Most companies won't want to give that kind of info to Google.com. And certainly not for a measly $4000 price cut.
Something to consider: Imagine if someone gave away a super cool product... and it really had great benefits. And then, after a few years of use, you became completely and totally dependent on it. The dependency was so great that you bowed to the whims and wishes of it's creator. And this "creation" turned on you, and suddenly, the whole world was turned into this evil and corrupt power> It reminds me somewhat of Lord of the Rings. Could Google eventually be the one ring? The data they collect is unbelievable. Not just surfing the web, capturing more pages in the index, but surfing habits. And with a little association, it's quite easy to put an IP address down to a specific person, and a bank account, and e-commerce records. A whole slew of information to chew on. The tinfoil hat people have already thought of this stuff, but it makes you wonder...
It's a good idea at a good price, and I think it'll do well.
I see someone has already complained about the price for small biz. Frankly, I'd challenge you to find someone to set up a search website, buy hardware, and administer it for a year for under $5000. And, provide an interface that's friendly, and search results that are useful?
To me, $5000 seems kinda cheap. Especially if it works and I don't have to hire some really expensive consultant to run it on a fulltime basis.
And if Japanese settlements are like anything in the US, he paid the lawyers most of it, and the rest went to taxes. He'd be lucky to come home with enough to pay off his mortgage.
I've read through the list 3 times. UGO's list reminds me of a Bill Murray line from What About Bob. "I'm not schizophrenic, and neither am I."
The Goonies? What were they thinking? Smoking too much dope? Let's drop that DVD about 50 numbers, and put it right behind the Muppets Take Manhattan.
Saving Private Ryan at 45? And 5th Elemant at 46? And the Godfather Collection at 49. Are these people sniffing paint? How did they get this?
I liked Almost Famous, but where's Get Shorty? Pulp Fiction? Blade II is there, but Blade 1 isn't? Blade II wasn't as good as the original.
Where is Spiderman? Or Spiderman 2? They've got Dark City on the list. I watched Dark City on cable, but never considered buying/renting it on DVD. Spiderman 1 and 2 are worth owning on DVD.
Is there a battle that we need to win? Does broadband save lives? Are kids getting better grades in school because of broadband?
Just last week, weren't the newspapers discussing a study about kids not learning like they should because of the internet?
It might make my life easier because I access another network from home, but 90% of the people I know don't have broadband, and don't want to pay for it, and rarely need a lot of bandwidth. Is it making my life easier? Sure. But most people I know get away with a dialup account. They check the weather, do a little online shopping, and read the news, that's it. Dialup works for those people. $10 a month isn't bad either. $50 a month to Comcast is a waste of money for most people. If they're going to throw $50 at Comcast, they better get some TV out of the deal.
You're right. Popularity should not dictate content. But content will dictate popularity. And because it's MM, it's going to be expensive. A lot of resources are needed for MM. Who's paying for it?
If the thing sucks, it will never be remembered as a work of art, it'll be remembered as a MM that had OSC involved with it, and it flopped.
People have questions and doubts, and there are many people who think that because someone has a famous SF/Fantasy author involved, it might be a gimmick.
There are also a lot of people thinking: "What? No combat? How's that going to work? Are we just going to chat and drink coffee? Wander around? I can do that on IRC!" Just for the fact that it mentions that, it's saying up front, "Be prepared." That also tells the world be prepared because the whole idea might suck.
Implementing this is impractical. No one wants to re-fit the current system... wait. No one wants to pay for the current system to be re-fitted. The cable plant from the phone company can't handle that kind of voltage, and splicing repeaters into those cables? Forget about it. It took the phone company 5 years to start removing bridge tap and load coils for the latest 2-wire and 4-wire high speed services.
As much as the power utilities might want to gain more revenue, they don't want to spend billions cleaning up every noisy transformer, or splicing in repeaters and filters. Can you imagine what happens when Archie Bunker fires up his 1968 Vintage Vacuum cleaner, and the motor noise takes out the neighborhood's internet connection? Those are the kind of complaints that the utilities are going to have to chase down.
Possibly, if you were building out a brand new complex, someone might say, "Hey, we have the opportunity to do it!" You might find someone willing to try it. Pull some fiber to the neigborhood, and then Cat 5 or Coax. You'll get plenty of bandwidth. Even fiber to the home....
For 10 years, I worked as a SONET/DWDM engineer, designing and implementing fiber installations for one of these ILECs.
I read the article. The ILEC is standing in the way of progress? Give me a break. Sure, in this instance, they're complaining.... but local and state governments stand in the way all the time, yet that never makes the newspapers. I've seen cities grant access to install fiber, and then decide they're going to jack up the right-of-way costs to the ILEC, and then give away access to the competition for pennies per mile. Fair? Or unfair?
Often, local governments will take bids for right-of-way to install fiber. That doesn't promote competition. It tells me that the local government is greedy, and they want money to spend. They aren't interested in competition until years later when the citizens are angry with the single provider that won the bid.
During the dotcom boom, many cities took bids for fiber-based infrastructure builds. And often times, it was some poorly-planned flash-in-the-pan company that spent their entire wad winning the bid for a single city, and had very little money for equipment, labor, or anything else. Does anyone know if Sacramento got their city-wide fiber-to-the-home project completed? The last I heard, the company had gone bankrupt during installation, and had been bought by someone else. I hadn't heard whether installation was completed in any neighborhood. Anyone? Is that what you want coming to your house?
I've also seen local governments place a 10 year moratorium on new construction because people don't like their streets dug up. Frankly, that stifles competition too.
Laying fiber is very expensive. It's not like DSL, where you're re-using the copper loop, or cable modem, where the cable companies laid fiber to the neighborhood, and re-used the coax to the home. Fiber-to-the neighborhood is cheaper by far than fiber to the curb. Fiber is a huge pain to lay to the home.
Surveying, digging, laying conduit with thoughts to bend radius, redundancy, sewer, water, power, and future repair access for accidental cuts? Hope that the contractor has their best person running the backhoe so you don't have to worry about severed gas, electrical, or water lines. Then blow fiber down the conduit, terminate it, light it, test it, educate the end-users (the 50% that initially express an interest), all the while working with city planners, utility companies, city water/sewer departments, and keep the subcontractors in line? Then, after years of work, put active services on it, give away service for the first few months, and then hope to turn a profit at what the government says you can charge for services. And listen to people complain about the high cost? And then hope to be LUCKY to get 20% (I'm optimistic) of the installed homes as paying subscribers?
It's no wonder that the ILECs are concerned. It takes a long time to build, and it's very expensive. And the stockholders and Wall Street are mad if the payoff is anything over 5 years.
What would you think if you just spend $50 million laying fiber rings (not fiber to the home, but the precursor... fiber to the neighborhood), and then the local government decided to subsidize a "public" network, undercutting your entire investment?
And then consider this:
Installation into a neighborhood of 400 homes, you need 400 timeslots on the SONET ring, or 400 wavelengths on a DWDM system. And then expect that 20% will subscribe, but they'll move every other year or so?
Much of the fiber that was blown into the conduits during the dotcom boom is already out-of-date when even last years' best DWDM equipment is considered. The older fiber has problems handling 40, 60, or 80 wavelengths. So you might need to spend millions on extra DWDM chassis to cover a neighborhood. Sure, you could use a DWDM to cover a neighborhood, and then use SONET to hit every house, but who wants a DS3 or less to their home?
Personally, I'd rather have a wave on the
I beg to differ. You don't need to buy a very expensive switch.
I bought a cheapie KVM switch from Microcenter. I think I paid $30, maybe even less. It's a CompactCable 2 port switch.
I've been running 2 machines, both at 1600x1200 at 32bits, Logitech USB keyboard, USB mouse, and a Mitsubishi 930SB 19" monitor, and I don't have any ghosting, or any problems. I occasionaly run resolutions as high as 1920 x 1440, and have yet to experience any trouble.
My point is to shop around, and you don't need to spend a boatload of $$ to get something that works.
I can't wait. A standard 22 minute TV comedy will take 45 minutes in the air after watching 23 minutes of commercials.
Thanks... but no thanks. I'll just stick to a DVD.
This won't last long. The government will step in and declare this confidential info. No one wants terrorists to have this info too!
Wait til you get married. I set up a machine for my wife. She knows enough not to click on attachments, but otherwise, when plugin windows show up on a page she wants to view, she tends to click OK. I spent several minutes explaining exactly what happens with some of those plugins, cleaned the machine, and she's been fine for several years. No viruses, no spyware.
Personally, I run Firefox. The Adblock extension alone makes me smile every time I think of all the poor suckers still running IE and watching all those ads and Flash banners.
If you've not made the switch and still need to run a Windoze box, Firefox is the answer. Get Adblock. Spend a few careful moments creating some blocks, test them, and you'll see pages loading faster and without any trouble. Very nice.
I had a 2nd line for a period of time. I was waiting for DSL or cable modem in my neighborhood. I never put a phone on the 2nd line, but I gave out that number to any business that asked. I didn't care. I certainly wasn't going to give them my unlisted number. I tried calling it once... and it just rang and rang. No voicemail, nothing. Perfect. I wish I had an idea of how many telemarketers or even auto-dialers tried that number. I still use it today. I know no one has it... several businesses use a phone number as a lookup.
Don't use USPS kiosks. Vote with your dollar.
If you can't get away without stamps, and are really paranoid, you can purchase them at the grocery store, but PLEASE pay in cash. If you use a check, they'll get your home address!
If you use a cash card or credit card, they can still get your home address.
You could also get someone else to buy your stamps for you. Stay at home, ask your neighbor to buy stamps for you. But then the USPS would have a picture of your neighbor... hmmm. We wouldn't want that, would we.
I got it. Use another carrier! FedEx? UPS? How about a fax machine? Or email? Western Union? Is Western Union anonymous?
Pigment-based inks on good paper will last as long as traditional commercial photo prints.
I print both on commercial machines (Fuji Frontier 370) and at home on an Epson R800. Both come out with excellent quality. It's hard to distinguish between the two. As for durability, both are rated for much longer than I really need.
14 doesn't equal 100. ????
The article says they tested 14 inkjets. Well, the article doesn't say that, the headline does. It'd be nice if I could read the article. Too bad I don't buy print magazines.
Nice job posting this though. I'm glad the moderators proofed it before posting it too!
Thanks.
Stack a pair of 40gig drives to get to 1cm.
.5cm drives?
I know... battery drain for 2 drives... but you don't have to spool up both drives at once.
You could have separate archives on separate drives.
Really, you could use 3 drives, implement RAID.
All 3 drives could spin when docked.
Photos on one drive, video on one drive, music on 3rd drive.
40gig on