Comcast being better than a rental company sounds oxymoronic, but its possible. I somehow think there will be more wrinkles in the plot before this falls out to a two horse race
I will always continue to rent. I will never pay to stream. There are a few reasons why. If I rent, I can watch anytime, pause, stop, come back the next day if I want. If the movie is really good, I can watch it a second time for free. I physically have the media in my hand.
If it streams, how long can I pause it for? What if I fall asleep watching the movie, can I replay it tomorrow? What if the movie is really good, can I have it streamed at my buddies house the next day for free?
And here is the last reason streaming sucks. For a rental store, they need to pay rent, lighting, buy the DVD's, pay employees money. And they can charge $2.50-$3.00 per rental at Family Video. So why does Comcast charge more to stream? There is no store, there is no employee. It is just a program streaming it to me. I know it costs Comcast less, but they are not passing the savings to me.
First, Blockbuster sucks. For a while, they were the only big rental store in my area. And they charged close to $4 to rent, plus tax. They sucked. I went back once with a rental, and handed it to the person telling them it was due that moment and I did not want to drop it in the box. He said "fine, no problem". The next time I went to rent there was a late fee waiting. He obviously just dropped the rental in the box.
Then Family Video opened up. All their older movies are 2 for $1. On Tuesdays through Thursday, if you rent a new release, you get an older movie free (Older = more than a year old). And their new releases are as little as $2.50, for an additional $0.50 you can rent a title for a week. And they treat customers well, I went there once and, it was my fault I was late and the store closed, and I dropped off the rental in the overnight box. The next day the guy working recognized me and said "jee... we just missed you yesterday, lemme take care of this late fee". No questions asked.
DVD rental stores are there for our service. Guess where I'll be spending my money?
This makes a certain sense. Law enforcement, both police and judges, must feel they are on the same side and under siege by the forces of crime. After all, that's all they see and work with every day. So just as units of soldiers bond and stand up for each other, I imagine it must be tempting for judges and police to bond, or at least feel they are both working the same job from different angles. So they are probably predisposed to think the police know what they are doing when they ask for a wire-tap. Most of the time, they are probably right.
But yeah, it sure does allow the slip-ups (and the occasional outright corruption) to get through mostly unchallenged. That's the downside, and a good reminder why a citizen should never give their governing structure any kind of power without realizing they will use that power early and often and repeatedly, and when someone becomes corrupt it will get used in a corrupted manner. And with very little in the way of real checks and balances in a practical sense.
Maybe we need a law that says judges who approve 80%+ of the requests for warrents they recieve in a year, must have those cases reviewed to see if they all panned out.
If a judge approves a wire tap, and only 60% or less of those warrents lead to convictions (not just an arrest), then we have a problem. A Judge needs probable cause, and for me probable cause means the police already has strong evidence the person is going to break a crime.
There is one website, I will not mention it here, it is used by police officers (if you google, you will find). They talk about everything. Some forums are public forums (anyone who registers can read and post), and other forums are hidden, you must be part of a group to post. I saw that hidden area once and I was shocked to read some of the "tricks" police use to get warrents, to harrass people, and to stick together. For example, if a police officer thinks a judge will be resistant to approving a warrent, they will hit up some neighborhood scum to say "yeah... he is about to sell drugs from his house this weekend". And one other dirty trick. Say a police officer has a real and valid reason to believe you have a stolen car in your garage. This is a true story by the way from that forum. The police officer asked for advice with getting a warrent, because he wanted it all legal. One of the other experianced police officers told him to include drugs on the warrent, because if he does not, he can only search the garage and not desks or cabinets. One of the requirements of a warrent is you can only search for what you're looking for. So if he gets a warrent for a stolen car, and finds drugs hidden in the silverware cabinet in the house, they can't arrest the person for the drugs (unless the person is an idiot and lets them search, or gets a crappy public defender).
Okkaaayyy... Why is bandwidth the problem? These guys [lunarpages.com] can fix you up with everything you need at a low cost. Besides, if your ideas were sufficient to warrant VC attention, then you could get money from them for a T1.
The ideas I have would not interest VC until I had the buisness up and running. There are just too many people out there begging for money. Plus, the sooner you ask for VC funding, the more of the company they want. If you have established a buisness making money, and then you as for VC funding, they have less risk and will demand less in return.
And I would not want to pay a company to host my content. I would have my own servers up and going. I would just need to be plugged in, and have sufficent bandwith.
I wish there was something in between a $70 DSL and a $1000+ t1 line. Too bad there is not a $200 DSL package that guarenteed 750k/second upstream, like splitting a t1 line.
Hey, is it possible to buy 2 DSL lines and double the bandwith?
I wish I would have made *something* and cashed in.
You still can. The trick is that your idea can't be as stupid as the DotCom ideas. VCs realized that a *business plan* might be a good idea. That being said, I hate the funding part. I'd love to hook up with a guy who's good at the "getting the funding" side of things, while I focus on the "producing a product" side of things. Doing both alone is stressful, and often yeilds poor results. No wonder 90% of businesses fail.:-)
I have many great idea's. The only bottleneck is the bandwith, getting enough upstream. Even the best DSL only offers around 350-500k upstream. Anything other than DSL is too expensive.
I usually dont complain about the news coverage here but what's the point of this? We all know how Google looked back in 1998, either because we used the site back then or because everyone and his grandmother know about archive.org and google is probably one of the first things you try when visiting that site.
I never saw the original Google, and it looks kinda funny. LOL. How did that turn into a multi million dollar company? Seriously. That original page looks worse than what a 5th grader can program in HTML.
I remember back in the 90's when venture capatalists were giving money to any dot com and people. I wish I would have made *something* and cashed in. Looking at the original google, if that was good enough to get them funded, I could have been a millionaire.
Back then I was using webcrawler or excite (which was my hompage before they started to suck). I wonder how the hell they both failed, when they were much better in the start.
Blah. If you want to get locked into a contract you'd "buy" a phone like this. If you just want to make and receive calls you'd go and buy one of the billions of Nokia 3210s or Motorolla flip phones available on the second hand market and get a pre-paid sim. All these fancy camera, mp3, email phones are just for people who want the wizz bang new thing. Those people will always be behind the 8 ball.
You can't buy a pre-paid SIM in the USA. The closest thing we have is pre-paid phone cards. You buy a $50 phone card, and then using your manufacturers pre-chosen phone, you call it in and add the money to your account.
Last time I checked, those Virgin Moble and TracPhone cards were very expensive, over a dime a minute. If you talk 10 minutes a day, every day, that is 300 minutes a month, or $30 bucks in pre-paid. Many monthly plans start at $30 a month and give closer to 1000 minutes.
I would love to see the pre-paid market get in touch with reality. No more crap like "you must buy a card every X days or lose your credits and phone number" or "we only have 2 phones to chose from".
If I could get a motorola flip phone and use prepay without losing my credites just because I don't use them all in 30 days, and not be threatened with losing my phone number if I don't buy more credits, I would consider pre-pay. Also, if the yearly contracts can get you 2 cents per minute, why do some pre-pay charge 25 cents per minute. It is dumb.
At the moment, these devices that do everything don't really to anything really well. A stand-alone camera has better quality than the phone....but we are starting to see that change. As technology continues to develop, and manufacturers are able to pack more and more into a device, the quality of the combined unit might start to be acceptable for more and more people.
I am quite looking forward to the time when I only have to carry one device around, and it will do everything! (including allowing me to SSH into my home computer):)
I agree. But I think they are moving in the right direction. Thank god the did away with those HUGE palm looking phones. Those were so big. Smaller is nicer when it comes to something you want to keep in the pocket.
The 2MP is a huge jump forward for cell phones. For the longest time, finding a reasonably priced 1MP phone was difficult. Even the less than 1MP phones were well over $150. I hope this new 2MP phone pushes prices down a bit.
But the huge winner is the 4 gig hard drive. It is a breakthrough for a cell phone.
I think with cell phones you will always be a couple years behind everything else because the tecnhology needs to shrink. But the days of 10 and 20 gig hard drives on phones are comming.
Since cell phones are so small, I can see new applications like voice recognition tied into the OS. You want to write a report? Talk into your cell phone.
I see so many uses here. This will be fantastic. The only worry I have is with cell phone camera's getting such high resolution, it will invade the privacy of people. Nobody will be free to walk in public anymore and protect their image. For example, say you live down south where black people and white people don't date because of social pressure. You see two kids flirting and take a picture. Post it on the web, and now two people's lives will become miserable.
Or you are in a store and some woman is trying to look at the bottom shelve. Unfortunatly she is wearing a skirt, and the kid clicks a picture. Up on the web it goes.
The 4 gig hard drive is so sweet. That is going to make the phone so awesome. The 2MP camera, nobody will use that as a real camera, but it should give good enough pictures for the unexpected shot.:)
I also like that the phone has wireless support. This could replace my laptop. Hmmmm.
If this phone can be programmed with the J2ME, this will become a hit. I wonder how much RAM it has.
Seriously, why would you say people suck because of what MS does? People are fighting for different options. It is MS trying to force their OS on the world. How? By lobbying governments to not use Linux (In cases where MS will lose, they give away a stripped down version of windows for free). By supporting lawsuits aginst linux, like SCO. By never releasing a finished OS, by changing the EULA when you get a update, by leaving you hanging when they decide to stop support for an OS. MS is the one treating people like crap, not the people!
if the reviewers LIKED it, those screen shots could've stayed up...
In some ways this is like when a movie is about to be released, but the studio will not let the critics screen the film. If a studio knows their $70,000,000 film sucks that bad, they know better than to let critics screen it. It is time to get the PR people over to yahoo and amazon to leave 5 star reviews.
Plus, the screen shots MS gave out, there was nothing special there. Nothing secret. Nothing new. If someone did not tell me it was a new Windows, I would have guessed someone got a new wallpaper for their XP machine.
Look at the screen shop showing "My Music".
Now look at the top left explorer bar and see the link that says "Purchase Music".
What is Windows becomming? A store? What is next? A:, C:, Ebay:???
Seriously, I don't want Windows doing anything more than being an OS. I don't want it becomming a salesperson, I don't want it becomming a DRM cop.
But I think they will continue to sell their OS as the only x86 option available. Linux? Microsoft or SCO will sue them into oblivion. It will go the way of Napster. Does wrong or right matter when you have an army of lawyers? If you don't believe me look at music sharing 4 years ago compared to today. Step #1, buy some members of congress, get them to pass new laws. Step #2, form an industry organization. Step #3, sue and make the targets highly visable, scare people. Step #4, distribute faulty crap to frustrate people.
All this almost makes me want to switch to a Mac, if only they were not so bloody expensive. I just can't get myself to pay $1500+ for a computer. I've never spent more than $500 on any machine I have ever owned, with the exception of my laptop.
Being paranoid is fine -- but it's only 1% of the battle -- and it makes no sense to run around closing up every possible hole you find.
A security expert is supposed to identify ALL of the possible ways in which the organization may experience a negative impact as a result of poor security (both logical and physical). His job, brace yourselves kids, is not to close all of the holes!! Rather, his role is centered around determining the cost/benefit of taking care of each specific issue.
It's my job to be suspicious when there is nothing to be suspicious about. What the FUCK do you think I am? The night watchman??
Now Mitch, why do you think we brought you here? One day you get home from work and this shows up at your house (he shows a thick lettersized envolope). Inside it are pictures of you on the beach with another woman. And that ain't screwing Mitch, no... you're looking in her eyes and making love to her. It is the kind of thing that a wife might be able to forgive, but never forget. Mitch, we're here to look out for you, so if you think of anything you want to talk to us about, I'm sure you'll call me.
Is he mentally ill? Let's just say he doesn't sound like the type of person I'd want to have a beer with.
In fact, he sounds a lot more like the type of person who has food, water & weapons buried in the woods for the coming Apocalypse.
In any population, you will have a percentage of people who are very alturistic, they will sacrifice for everyone else. And you have some people who are so paranoid they will always hide and run. This is required for a species to continue.
For example, say you have birds. Say that 5 out of 100 birds will signal when a predator comes in range. Chances are greater those birds will be eaten, since it is making itself more known to the preditor. Now in that same 100 birds, say you have 5 that always hide, run, and are very paranoid. They have the greatest chance of continuing the species line.
If we all get soft, and say nuclear war does break out, in any form, the guy who has a chamber 50 feet under the ground with a room filled with water and food, and another room with oxygen tanks, he might be what's left to start the gene pool over again.
Instead of critisizing him as mentally ill, maybe you can add some of your distinct expretesse and help build a better shelter. One where 2 people can hold out longer, maybe making some filtration system for well water, adding lights with the correct wavelegnth to let plants grow underground and make natural oxygen. Then you will both survive, and your altruistic genes will get passed on too.
get with it man, you're not important, nobody wants your porn
If it is homemade, they want it. It will end up on Kazza. Then when some kid at the local library is trying to download it, and the school catches him, and the principal sees your wife. Man, that would suck!. And all the parents wanted to do was save the experience on DVD for their own private use. Now the whole town can see them in thier most private moment.
Paranoia is the key to success in the security world
I'll admit it too, I am a bit paranoid and depressed. I try and keep my system secure. I keep everything behind a router with NAT. I have a software firewall. I keep tough passwords. But I still get attacks. If only someone would pay me for the time I spend securing my system. If only someone would pay me for all the frustration. It is not fun.
I require my kids to use at least 14 character passwords on our home network and I'm considering issuing them smart cards.
I have not gone as far as smart cards. I don't even know if they would work to secure a system. If a hacker can get around your router and NAT, if they can bypass your software firewall, if they can do all that, I think they are probably smart enough to play chess with whatever other security set-up you have.
At the most basic level, everything is hardware. If there is some exploit on the hardware level, then OS be damned. What can you do? If a signal can reach your NIC, the hacker has a chance.
I think it is impossible to have a bulletproof system, even if you take human error out of the equation. So the only possible solution left is to discourage the behavior of hacking into systems. The best way is to increase the penalties where the risk is too great for the reward. Right now it is a game, people like playing. But if the result of a harmless "sneak and peek" hack was time in jail, then I doubt anyone would do it.
Why don't we go search that planet. If there a greater chance to find evidence of life there? Why deal with a "dead" planet when we have another planet with oxygen and carbon dioxide.
The atmospheric pressure at Venus' surface is 90 times that of Earth's. It's like being under 1000 meters of water. Furthermore, the surface temperature is hot enough to melt lead, and clouds of sulfuric acid cover the surface.
In other words, space probes don't last very long on Venus. Thus, it's better to go places where you can actually spend time getting data.
Then lets build a space ship that can orbit Venus? Would we learn more that way than just using telescopes?
I mentioned this elsewhere, but since you bring it up I'll ask again. If the pressure is like being under 1000 meters of water, don't we have submirines that can withstand that? And if it is so hot, don't we have some steel or somekind of substance which would not melt? What are our subs made out of? I take it the hull can't withstand that temprature, but can it be changed in some way, even if for a probe that could last longer.
I am a dreamer when it comes to space exploration. I wish we could have more probes, more space ships that traveled farther.
If NASA had a program where they built a great new space ship that would travel to alpha centuri and back, and we were told it would take more than our lifetime, I would go. Have a family on the ship. Make it there, let the next generation study it. Eventually they would come back to earth. We would learn so much.
I assume you're kidding or trolling... right? I mean, unless you like the notion of living under 80 atmospheres of pressure at temperatures hot enough to melt gold...
We have built submarines that can withstand great pressure diving to the depths of the sea. We have built research stations in the antartic that only can be manned for a couple months a year because of the cold, but we built them. We built space ships, space stations.
If we wanted to, every problem you describe is a challenge that someone will find an anwser to. Just because it is hard does not mean it can't be done. For example, you mention the high temprature. I am sure we could think of substances which would resist melting at that temprature for a hull. We would then need some good insulation. We know how heat is conducted, so we would have to limit the convection, we would have to insulate. It is possible. Then we need to figure out how to keep the hull from buckling.
All these leaps in knowledge would be very helpful. Say we decide to build space ships that can travel far away. To the edges of our solar system. Would you feel safer on the space ship if you knew, we have an improved hull, we have technology x and y.
This is what I love about science. It is almost like science fiction, and we are finding ways to make it real. It gives us hope that there is more to life.
I would ask you one question. What was the atmosphere like on earth when life first formed. Wasn't it very toxic, to the point where we would not be able to live back then. I think we might learn something on Venus. Maybe it is like a time capsul. I dunno, but I would like to find out.
I'm curious to know how much effort/man hours is put into studying this kind of phenomena. Do NASA folks just say "That's cool, look at that." like I do, or do they assign a team to spend a month trying to extrapolate airspeed, volume, spin direction, lifespan, and other attributes that I can't even think of?
I guess I mean: does this really mean anything important to a scientist, or is it just eyecandy for the taxpayers?
They have teams. Nothing is done because of individual interest. It is a huge beuracracy, you have managment like any business, that directs the scientists.
It is one of the knocks on the university system. When you start out, getting your BA or AB, you can study many different things, math, biology, literature, physics, sociology, chemisty. But once you start for a PhD, you then pick one small thing and spend the next 7 years studying it and researching it. For example, you could not pick Biology for a PhD, you would pick Genetics. And even then, you're research might be limited to a subset of Genetics, maybe how Gene X produces protien Y in albinos.
I think it would be cool if places like NASA let scientists pick thier projects. Or even let outsiders in, for example if you have a masters in geography and you're interested in helping map the surface of mars, that you can sign up for that work.
Come to think of it, why don't they run NASA like sourcefourge. There is alot of talent out there. And it would make people feel like they are contributing to discovery, rather than living a mundane dilbertesq life.
Here is a comparison of the atmospheric composition of Earth and Venus and Mars. I list the number of molecules per m2 of surface area of the planet in each planet's atmosphere relative to the total number of molecules per m2 in Earth's atmosphere
xxx Earth xx Venus xx Mars
O2 xx 0.20 xx 0.001 xx 10^-7
CO2 xx 0.0003 xx 64 xx 0.009
H2O xx ~ 0.02 xx ~ 0.01 xx ~10-6
Am I reading this right, we have more of an atmosphere on Venus than mars? Why don't we go search that planet. If there a greater chance to find evidence of life there? Why deal with a "dead" planet when we have another planet with oxygen and carbon dioxide. Who knows, maybe we can give Venus CPR. We start with a small station with plants. We build a mini enclosed ecosystem. Then we build another, and another.
I know, we might as well try it in a desert first, but I bet it can be done.
The CO2 number really sticks out. Plants could convert that to oxygen.
I had no idea there was wind on mars. That is kinda cool to think they have wind. If we built a enclosed research station, we could have wind generated power.
I hope we get a research station on mars, even if it is unmanned. It will be a starting point for building more.
Why on earth do we even have commenting? I mean, we went through the whole programming language concept precisely to make instructions to computers human-readable. Ideally, commenting should be obsolete - the language and its syntax should make it obvious what needs to be done.
If it turns out that after all that, our code still isn't intelligible, then isn't this some monumental failure of C, Java, BASIC and the rest, whose whole raison d'etre is to make weird things make sense?
This is not algebra in high school where you lose points for not showing your work. This is the real world where an application might have 100's of lines of codes, maybe 1000's. It might be a bunch of classes in java working together. And then there is the logic, the work flow.
Plus, many companies use peer review for raises and advancement. If your peers have a hard time understanding your code, it will hurt you later.
Most people today don't work 30 years for one company. That means someone else will get stuck with your code.
Now either you will give that person months to go through all the code, to try and figure out how it works, or you will have code with comments that will help him hit the ground running.
And this, my friends, is one of the reasons why offshore outsourcing is doomed. You understand comments are important. For people in India schedule is far more important than comments. So they'll cut&paste shit all over the place and leave it uncommented. If you happen to have to work with it, your hair will turn gray pretty quickly
I disagree. India has more engineers than the USA. And these are smart people. Some of them already know english, and others will have to learn. India is a country with too much poverty and so little oppertunity, that when a young kid is given a chance, he'll learn it all. They are lean (paid little) and hungry (willing to learn). In the USA, we expect $100 an hour to consult, one place I worked at hired an Arthur Anderson consulting team and the lead got over $300 an hour. I bet he would be *insulted* to have to work for $20 an hour. Are you going to tell me that the guy in India won't take that wage?
If it means people in India will have to learn english, they will learn english the same way they get their engineering degrees. They will study their asses off like their lives depend on it.
If people in the USA have half a chance, now is the time to take advantage of it and produce a better product than they do in India. Leverege every advantage we have, because the competition is getting better.
We could say how the Bush administration is screwing us, and to a large extent they are. We never should have let factories leave the USA to mexico. We never should have let outsourcing happen. I hope future presidents start raising the tariff, and force American companies back in the USA. But maybe we need to get a little more lean. It is hard for the avarage employee to give a fuck when you see the CEO get a bonus when he lays people off, or scum like enron managment steal the pensions of employees, but what other option do we have? Change the tax code to tax the wealthiest at a higher rate and pump that money back to the poor? Maybe raise the luxery tax rate? Increase the estate tax? Break monopolies?
that using short, descriptive variable names 'should' be enough as long as the code is well-organized.
This works for code I write that nobody else will ever maintain. Even then I can get tripped up, I'll have to lean back in my chair and try to remember what I was thinking when I wrote the code.
But if you write code you're getting paid for, or code for an organization, anything but personal stuff, write good comments. Variable names might give a good idea about what data the variable holds, but it does not tell us much about how it is used.
When I took my first programming class, the most frustrating part was the documentation. I thought it was retarded and stupid and a waste of time. But now I realize it is very important once you write something more significant than "Hello World".
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I will always continue to rent. I will never pay to stream. There are a few reasons why. If I rent, I can watch anytime, pause, stop, come back the next day if I want. If the movie is really good, I can watch it a second time for free. I physically have the media in my hand.
If it streams, how long can I pause it for? What if I fall asleep watching the movie, can I replay it tomorrow? What if the movie is really good, can I have it streamed at my buddies house the next day for free?
And here is the last reason streaming sucks. For a rental store, they need to pay rent, lighting, buy the DVD's, pay employees money. And they can charge $2.50-$3.00 per rental at Family Video. So why does Comcast charge more to stream? There is no store, there is no employee. It is just a program streaming it to me. I know it costs Comcast less, but they are not passing the savings to me.
Then Family Video opened up. All their older movies are 2 for $1. On Tuesdays through Thursday, if you rent a new release, you get an older movie free (Older = more than a year old). And their new releases are as little as $2.50, for an additional $0.50 you can rent a title for a week. And they treat customers well, I went there once and, it was my fault I was late and the store closed, and I dropped off the rental in the overnight box. The next day the guy working recognized me and said "jee... we just missed you yesterday, lemme take care of this late fee". No questions asked.
DVD rental stores are there for our service. Guess where I'll be spending my money?
But yeah, it sure does allow the slip-ups (and the occasional outright corruption) to get through mostly unchallenged. That's the downside, and a good reminder why a citizen should never give their governing structure any kind of power without realizing they will use that power early and often and repeatedly, and when someone becomes corrupt it will get used in a corrupted manner. And with very little in the way of real checks and balances in a practical sense.
Maybe we need a law that says judges who approve 80%+ of the requests for warrents they recieve in a year, must have those cases reviewed to see if they all panned out.
If a judge approves a wire tap, and only 60% or less of those warrents lead to convictions (not just an arrest), then we have a problem. A Judge needs probable cause, and for me probable cause means the police already has strong evidence the person is going to break a crime.
There is one website, I will not mention it here, it is used by police officers (if you google, you will find). They talk about everything. Some forums are public forums (anyone who registers can read and post), and other forums are hidden, you must be part of a group to post. I saw that hidden area once and I was shocked to read some of the "tricks" police use to get warrents, to harrass people, and to stick together. For example, if a police officer thinks a judge will be resistant to approving a warrent, they will hit up some neighborhood scum to say "yeah... he is about to sell drugs from his house this weekend". And one other dirty trick. Say a police officer has a real and valid reason to believe you have a stolen car in your garage. This is a true story by the way from that forum. The police officer asked for advice with getting a warrent, because he wanted it all legal. One of the other experianced police officers told him to include drugs on the warrent, because if he does not, he can only search the garage and not desks or cabinets. One of the requirements of a warrent is you can only search for what you're looking for. So if he gets a warrent for a stolen car, and finds drugs hidden in the silverware cabinet in the house, they can't arrest the person for the drugs (unless the person is an idiot and lets them search, or gets a crappy public defender).
The ideas I have would not interest VC until I had the buisness up and running. There are just too many people out there begging for money. Plus, the sooner you ask for VC funding, the more of the company they want. If you have established a buisness making money, and then you as for VC funding, they have less risk and will demand less in return.
And I would not want to pay a company to host my content. I would have my own servers up and going. I would just need to be plugged in, and have sufficent bandwith.
I wish there was something in between a $70 DSL and a $1000+ t1 line. Too bad there is not a $200 DSL package that guarenteed 750k/second upstream, like splitting a t1 line.
Hey, is it possible to buy 2 DSL lines and double the bandwith?
You still can. The trick is that your idea can't be as stupid as the DotCom ideas. VCs realized that a *business plan* might be a good idea. That being said, I hate the funding part. I'd love to hook up with a guy who's good at the "getting the funding" side of things, while I focus on the "producing a product" side of things. Doing both alone is stressful, and often yeilds poor results. No wonder 90% of businesses fail. :-)
I have many great idea's. The only bottleneck is the bandwith, getting enough upstream. Even the best DSL only offers around 350-500k upstream. Anything other than DSL is too expensive.
I have so many ideas. I just need the bandwith.
I never saw the original Google, and it looks kinda funny. LOL. How did that turn into a multi million dollar company? Seriously. That original page looks worse than what a 5th grader can program in HTML.
I remember back in the 90's when venture capatalists were giving money to any dot com and people. I wish I would have made *something* and cashed in. Looking at the original google, if that was good enough to get them funded, I could have been a millionaire.
Back then I was using webcrawler or excite (which was my hompage before they started to suck). I wonder how the hell they both failed, when they were much better in the start.
does it run java??
You can't buy a pre-paid SIM in the USA. The closest thing we have is pre-paid phone cards. You buy a $50 phone card, and then using your manufacturers pre-chosen phone, you call it in and add the money to your account.
Last time I checked, those Virgin Moble and TracPhone cards were very expensive, over a dime a minute. If you talk 10 minutes a day, every day, that is 300 minutes a month, or $30 bucks in pre-paid. Many monthly plans start at $30 a month and give closer to 1000 minutes.
I would love to see the pre-paid market get in touch with reality. No more crap like "you must buy a card every X days or lose your credits and phone number" or "we only have 2 phones to chose from".
If I could get a motorola flip phone and use prepay without losing my credites just because I don't use them all in 30 days, and not be threatened with losing my phone number if I don't buy more credits, I would consider pre-pay. Also, if the yearly contracts can get you 2 cents per minute, why do some pre-pay charge 25 cents per minute. It is dumb.
I am quite looking forward to the time when I only have to carry one device around, and it will do everything! (including allowing me to SSH into my home computer) :)
I agree. But I think they are moving in the right direction. Thank god the did away with those HUGE palm looking phones. Those were so big. Smaller is nicer when it comes to something you want to keep in the pocket.
The 2MP is a huge jump forward for cell phones. For the longest time, finding a reasonably priced 1MP phone was difficult. Even the less than 1MP phones were well over $150. I hope this new 2MP phone pushes prices down a bit.
But the huge winner is the 4 gig hard drive. It is a breakthrough for a cell phone.
I think with cell phones you will always be a couple years behind everything else because the tecnhology needs to shrink. But the days of 10 and 20 gig hard drives on phones are comming.
Since cell phones are so small, I can see new applications like voice recognition tied into the OS. You want to write a report? Talk into your cell phone.
I see so many uses here. This will be fantastic. The only worry I have is with cell phone camera's getting such high resolution, it will invade the privacy of people. Nobody will be free to walk in public anymore and protect their image. For example, say you live down south where black people and white people don't date because of social pressure. You see two kids flirting and take a picture. Post it on the web, and now two people's lives will become miserable.
Or you are in a store and some woman is trying to look at the bottom shelve. Unfortunatly she is wearing a skirt, and the kid clicks a picture. Up on the web it goes.
I also like that the phone has wireless support. This could replace my laptop. Hmmmm.
If this phone can be programmed with the J2ME, this will become a hit. I wonder how much RAM it has.
In some ways this is like when a movie is about to be released, but the studio will not let the critics screen the film. If a studio knows their $70,000,000 film sucks that bad, they know better than to let critics screen it. It is time to get the PR people over to yahoo and amazon to leave 5 star reviews.
Plus, the screen shots MS gave out, there was nothing special there. Nothing secret. Nothing new. If someone did not tell me it was a new Windows, I would have guessed someone got a new wallpaper for their XP machine.
Now look at the top left explorer bar and see the link that says "Purchase Music".
What is Windows becomming? A store? What is next? A:, C:, Ebay:???
Seriously, I don't want Windows doing anything more than being an OS. I don't want it becomming a salesperson, I don't want it becomming a DRM cop.
But I think they will continue to sell their OS as the only x86 option available. Linux? Microsoft or SCO will sue them into oblivion. It will go the way of Napster. Does wrong or right matter when you have an army of lawyers? If you don't believe me look at music sharing 4 years ago compared to today. Step #1, buy some members of congress, get them to pass new laws. Step #2, form an industry organization. Step #3, sue and make the targets highly visable, scare people. Step #4, distribute faulty crap to frustrate people.
All this almost makes me want to switch to a Mac, if only they were not so bloody expensive. I just can't get myself to pay $1500+ for a computer. I've never spent more than $500 on any machine I have ever owned, with the exception of my laptop.
A security expert is supposed to identify ALL of the possible ways in which the organization may experience a negative impact as a result of poor security (both logical and physical). His job, brace yourselves kids, is not to close all of the holes!! Rather, his role is centered around determining the cost/benefit of taking care of each specific issue.
It's my job to be suspicious when there is nothing to be suspicious about. What the FUCK do you think I am? The night watchman??
Now Mitch, why do you think we brought you here? One day you get home from work and this shows up at your house (he shows a thick lettersized envolope). Inside it are pictures of you on the beach with another woman. And that ain't screwing Mitch, no... you're looking in her eyes and making love to her. It is the kind of thing that a wife might be able to forgive, but never forget. Mitch, we're here to look out for you, so if you think of anything you want to talk to us about, I'm sure you'll call me.
Is he mentally ill? Let's just say he doesn't sound like the type of person I'd want to have a beer with.
In fact, he sounds a lot more like the type of person who has food, water & weapons buried in the woods for the coming Apocalypse.
In any population, you will have a percentage of people who are very alturistic, they will sacrifice for everyone else. And you have some people who are so paranoid they will always hide and run. This is required for a species to continue.
For example, say you have birds. Say that 5 out of 100 birds will signal when a predator comes in range. Chances are greater those birds will be eaten, since it is making itself more known to the preditor. Now in that same 100 birds, say you have 5 that always hide, run, and are very paranoid. They have the greatest chance of continuing the species line.
If we all get soft, and say nuclear war does break out, in any form, the guy who has a chamber 50 feet under the ground with a room filled with water and food, and another room with oxygen tanks, he might be what's left to start the gene pool over again.
Instead of critisizing him as mentally ill, maybe you can add some of your distinct expretesse and help build a better shelter. One where 2 people can hold out longer, maybe making some filtration system for well water, adding lights with the correct wavelegnth to let plants grow underground and make natural oxygen. Then you will both survive, and your altruistic genes will get passed on too.
If it is homemade, they want it. It will end up on Kazza. Then when some kid at the local library is trying to download it, and the school catches him, and the principal sees your wife. Man, that would suck!. And all the parents wanted to do was save the experience on DVD for their own private use. Now the whole town can see them in thier most private moment.
I'll admit it too, I am a bit paranoid and depressed. I try and keep my system secure. I keep everything behind a router with NAT. I have a software firewall. I keep tough passwords. But I still get attacks. If only someone would pay me for the time I spend securing my system. If only someone would pay me for all the frustration. It is not fun.
I require my kids to use at least 14 character passwords on our home network and I'm considering issuing them smart cards.
I have not gone as far as smart cards. I don't even know if they would work to secure a system. If a hacker can get around your router and NAT, if they can bypass your software firewall, if they can do all that, I think they are probably smart enough to play chess with whatever other security set-up you have.
At the most basic level, everything is hardware. If there is some exploit on the hardware level, then OS be damned. What can you do? If a signal can reach your NIC, the hacker has a chance.
I think it is impossible to have a bulletproof system, even if you take human error out of the equation. So the only possible solution left is to discourage the behavior of hacking into systems. The best way is to increase the penalties where the risk is too great for the reward. Right now it is a game, people like playing. But if the result of a harmless "sneak and peek" hack was time in jail, then I doubt anyone would do it.
The atmospheric pressure at Venus' surface is 90 times that of Earth's. It's like being under 1000 meters of water. Furthermore, the surface temperature is hot enough to melt lead, and clouds of sulfuric acid cover the surface.
In other words, space probes don't last very long on Venus. Thus, it's better to go places where you can actually spend time getting data.
Then lets build a space ship that can orbit Venus? Would we learn more that way than just using telescopes?
I mentioned this elsewhere, but since you bring it up I'll ask again. If the pressure is like being under 1000 meters of water, don't we have submirines that can withstand that? And if it is so hot, don't we have some steel or somekind of substance which would not melt? What are our subs made out of? I take it the hull can't withstand that temprature, but can it be changed in some way, even if for a probe that could last longer.
I am a dreamer when it comes to space exploration. I wish we could have more probes, more space ships that traveled farther.
If NASA had a program where they built a great new space ship that would travel to alpha centuri and back, and we were told it would take more than our lifetime, I would go. Have a family on the ship. Make it there, let the next generation study it. Eventually they would come back to earth. We would learn so much.
We have built submarines that can withstand great pressure diving to the depths of the sea. We have built research stations in the antartic that only can be manned for a couple months a year because of the cold, but we built them. We built space ships, space stations.
If we wanted to, every problem you describe is a challenge that someone will find an anwser to. Just because it is hard does not mean it can't be done. For example, you mention the high temprature. I am sure we could think of substances which would resist melting at that temprature for a hull. We would then need some good insulation. We know how heat is conducted, so we would have to limit the convection, we would have to insulate. It is possible. Then we need to figure out how to keep the hull from buckling.
All these leaps in knowledge would be very helpful. Say we decide to build space ships that can travel far away. To the edges of our solar system. Would you feel safer on the space ship if you knew, we have an improved hull, we have technology x and y.
This is what I love about science. It is almost like science fiction, and we are finding ways to make it real. It gives us hope that there is more to life.
I would ask you one question. What was the atmosphere like on earth when life first formed. Wasn't it very toxic, to the point where we would not be able to live back then. I think we might learn something on Venus. Maybe it is like a time capsul. I dunno, but I would like to find out.
I guess I mean: does this really mean anything important to a scientist, or is it just eyecandy for the taxpayers?
They have teams. Nothing is done because of individual interest. It is a huge beuracracy, you have managment like any business, that directs the scientists.
It is one of the knocks on the university system. When you start out, getting your BA or AB, you can study many different things, math, biology, literature, physics, sociology, chemisty. But once you start for a PhD, you then pick one small thing and spend the next 7 years studying it and researching it. For example, you could not pick Biology for a PhD, you would pick Genetics. And even then, you're research might be limited to a subset of Genetics, maybe how Gene X produces protien Y in albinos.
I think it would be cool if places like NASA let scientists pick thier projects. Or even let outsiders in, for example if you have a masters in geography and you're interested in helping map the surface of mars, that you can sign up for that work.
Come to think of it, why don't they run NASA like sourcefourge. There is alot of talent out there. And it would make people feel like they are contributing to discovery, rather than living a mundane dilbertesq life.
xxx Earth xx Venus xx Mars
O2 xx 0.20 xx 0.001 xx 10^-7
CO2 xx 0.0003 xx 64 xx 0.009
H2O xx ~ 0.02 xx ~ 0.01 xx ~10-6
Am I reading this right, we have more of an atmosphere on Venus than mars? Why don't we go search that planet. If there a greater chance to find evidence of life there? Why deal with a "dead" planet when we have another planet with oxygen and carbon dioxide. Who knows, maybe we can give Venus CPR. We start with a small station with plants. We build a mini enclosed ecosystem. Then we build another, and another.
I know, we might as well try it in a desert first, but I bet it can be done.
The CO2 number really sticks out. Plants could convert that to oxygen.
I hope we get a research station on mars, even if it is unmanned. It will be a starting point for building more.
If it turns out that after all that, our code still isn't intelligible, then isn't this some monumental failure of C, Java, BASIC and the rest, whose whole raison d'etre is to make weird things make sense?
This is not algebra in high school where you lose points for not showing your work. This is the real world where an application might have 100's of lines of codes, maybe 1000's. It might be a bunch of classes in java working together. And then there is the logic, the work flow.
Plus, many companies use peer review for raises and advancement. If your peers have a hard time understanding your code, it will hurt you later.
Most people today don't work 30 years for one company. That means someone else will get stuck with your code.
Now either you will give that person months to go through all the code, to try and figure out how it works, or you will have code with comments that will help him hit the ground running.
I disagree. India has more engineers than the USA. And these are smart people. Some of them already know english, and others will have to learn. India is a country with too much poverty and so little oppertunity, that when a young kid is given a chance, he'll learn it all. They are lean (paid little) and hungry (willing to learn). In the USA, we expect $100 an hour to consult, one place I worked at hired an Arthur Anderson consulting team and the lead got over $300 an hour. I bet he would be *insulted* to have to work for $20 an hour. Are you going to tell me that the guy in India won't take that wage?
If it means people in India will have to learn english, they will learn english the same way they get their engineering degrees. They will study their asses off like their lives depend on it.
If people in the USA have half a chance, now is the time to take advantage of it and produce a better product than they do in India. Leverege every advantage we have, because the competition is getting better.
We could say how the Bush administration is screwing us, and to a large extent they are. We never should have let factories leave the USA to mexico. We never should have let outsourcing happen. I hope future presidents start raising the tariff, and force American companies back in the USA. But maybe we need to get a little more lean. It is hard for the avarage employee to give a fuck when you see the CEO get a bonus when he lays people off, or scum like enron managment steal the pensions of employees, but what other option do we have? Change the tax code to tax the wealthiest at a higher rate and pump that money back to the poor? Maybe raise the luxery tax rate? Increase the estate tax? Break monopolies?
This works for code I write that nobody else will ever maintain. Even then I can get tripped up, I'll have to lean back in my chair and try to remember what I was thinking when I wrote the code.
But if you write code you're getting paid for, or code for an organization, anything but personal stuff, write good comments. Variable names might give a good idea about what data the variable holds, but it does not tell us much about how it is used.
When I took my first programming class, the most frustrating part was the documentation. I thought it was retarded and stupid and a waste of time. But now I realize it is very important once you write something more significant than "Hello World".