Sure, other governments "[route] all digital traffic in the country through a single choke point, using the capabilities of deep packet inspection" and so do we, in the US. I couldn't think of a better place to put fiber splicers than the "AT&T office in San Francisco." Facebook, and of course other social networking and technology companies, must be a gold mine for them. All they need to do is connect the social networking dots, as they currently do with American's phone calls -- there's no concern for domestic wiretapping laws involved -- it's simply call delivery data for them, and a bit of connecting the social network dots. Hence the reason Verizon Wireless sent out a snail-mail privacy notice to their customers regarding their use of call delivery records in light of the possible broad-surveillance lawsuits, a few years ago. One doesn't need the full conversation if it's possible to ascertain and forward onto other agencies the usual suspects. Separately, Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, once said that he doesn't "tell people the NSA uses Perl. [He merely tells] people the NSA thinks everyone uses Perl. They should know, after all."
Those are smart scientists and engineers over there, to be sure. I'd love to work for them, too.:-)
Interesting idea, but Amateur Radio is restricted to non-commercial use. "The Amateur Radio Service is a voluntary noncommercial communication service, used by qualified persons of any age who are interested in radio technique with a personal aim and without pecuniary interest" (FCC Website).
I recently came across this article at Kuro5hin about a guy (the author) that took to learning to read, write, and speak French fluently in one year. The author has a background in computer programming, and so his perspectives are probably easy to understand for a lot of Slashdot readers. While there's a good deal of the article that focuses on French in particular, a lot of his techniques can be applied to any language. I'd like to use them to learn Spanish, myself. I recommend this read if you're interested in learning a foreign language. There's a lot of great tips and motivation in there.
Looks like the JDJ link is already slow to respond, but there's a mirror here at MirrorDot for those who haven't already bookmarked the site from previous Slashdot comments. (No, I'm not at all affiliated with MirrorDot -- just sharing the love:).
Cringley's not the first with this kind of idea. In fact, the Freenet Project already implements something to this effect. Although not specifically designed for reliable backups, the distributed caching algorithms essentially replicate data towards where it's most often needed, helping to improve network performance and creating copies of important data along the way so that it won't be destroyed if a central server fails. Obviously not a commercial solution, but very interesting.
We're not a 501c3 organization this year, and so we don't have the needed infrastructure in order to charge for admission. We do have some CafePress gear available with a $1.00 markup on each item to help us cover some of the costs we're footing from our personal funds. No donations required, though. Besides, it's better when it's free (sex AND conferences)!;)
We have some excellent speakers coming in this year from Red Hat, Novell (SUSE), the Apache Software Foundation, the Samba Team, and more. We're having an excellent speaker on the Asterisk PBX for Linux and VoIP technologies.
Hosted at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio and with plenty to see and do in the city during the visit, as well! I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of friends this year, and the afterparty should be grand!
Now I can use PalmVNC for cross-platform VNC sessions to my UNIX and Win32 boxen and PSSH to enable SSH2 connections! I wonder if this will work easily in public Wi-Fi hotspots, thinking with regards to quick 802.11b configuration and real-world interoperability?
In the article, Linus mentions his concerns about software patents:
The only things I worry about are all the things that go around the project. Part of it is legal issues. [...] We have random people in random countries working on random things, and they don't have 1,000 patent lawyers. So I'm not worried about one patent in particular, but the whole system. It's not a problem today. But it's a thing I can't control, unlike the technical side, where I can actually do something.
I think he brings about some interesting thoughts -- are changes to the Linux open source development model needed to incorporate contributions from the legal side, checking patents and verifying that source is safe to include in a project -- albeith the Linux kernel or other open source projects? Is this the responsibility of the distribution vendors (such as Red Hat, Novell / SUSE, Debian), or shoud the Linux kernel team and individual projects take this responsibility upon themselves? Should these concerns just be disregarded, and is that safe?
I think that not thinking about these things will eventually hinder Linux adoption, as it did in Munich's case.
So what's the long term plan? What kind of ideas are out there? I know there's a solution to be found!
The page is rather slashdotted right now, but I managed to get a glimpse. Looks like this thing is just in time for the Doom 3 mania, with more buttons than you can shake a boomstick at! Looks like quite the excellent Doom 3 controller to me, although an additional toggle joystick would help things more. And there's a Google cache right here. Finally, I also found this prototype design of what looks to be another model -- interesting stuff.
We were able to recently bring Jeremy Cole of MySQL in to talk with our group, and he explained that MySQL has a very similar dual-licensing methodology. This allows MySQL to sell their software commercially for those who want to include it in their products (I understand MySQL is used in telecom lots), and the companies that purchase it don't have to distribute the source with their products (which would be a hardship for them and possibly prevent them from using MySQL as a result). Additionally, MySQL AB is able to release the open version of MySQL for those who want to modify the source and tinker to their hearts contents. All contributors to the MySQL codebase have to sign-off on their code and the dual licensing, and this seems to be working well around the board, with a win-win for everyone. This way of doing things seems to support the company and a great database!
Seems to me some of this technology might be able to be put to good use for the DARPA Grand Challenge 2005, in which autonomous vehicles race across the U.S. desert, driven by their waypoints and obstacle avoidance systems. I'm not at all surprised Cornell is doing some of this autonomous vehicle research.
Last year, The Ohio State University's TerraMax and Carnegie Mellon's Red Team did very well at the DARPA Grand Challenge.
Here's some good coverage on Science Blog. There was some other really good blog coverage that gave a play-by-play breakdown of how each autonomous vehicle did the day of the event and what kind of troubles it ran into, but I can't find that via the Googling right now.:) There's also tons of previous Slashdot coverage on the Grand Challenge, and there's a pre-2005 event coming up very soon for interested people, I know.
Speaking of conferences and events, the Ohio LinuxFest 2004 speakers were just announced. There will be speakers representing Red Hat, Novell, Apache Software Foundation, Samba, and more. It's a free event (unlike many others) to be hosted in October and in Columbus, Ohio. It should be an excellent time for all this year!
I was looking at those cards.. how well are they working?
Which distro, too? Or, does the distro just see the drives as a big SCSI array?
They're excellent! I've been using them ever since they were AMI MegaRAID cards (same configuration utility now and everything), and they've been supported in the Linux kernel ever since. Any distro will work with the cards, and we use Fedora here (we have our own in-house talent to support it). The drives in their RAID array show up as one big SCSI drive in userland, and all the real RAID work is done by the hardware. It's great.
We use Linux LVM to take snapshots and then do a hot backup of that data to an archive box. That archive box contains removable hard drives (tape drives are just crap), and we then take the pysical drives to an off-site location to provide security and all the goodness that comes with off-site storage. We also use rsync to synchronize our production NAS devices with a parallel NAS device, to which we can hot-cut and have a current copy of all our data to a 15 minute window. Because rsync (with ext3 ACL support, mind you) only copies what has changed on the filesystem, it goes relatively quickly.
You can find my rsync packages at ftp://bagel.express.org/ (as well as patched Samba-3 packages that really work with Winbind and some updated kernel packages for LVM+snapshot support) at that FTP site.
We just added a couple of these at the office. We used a SATA RAID card from LSI Logic (formerly AMI MegaRAID) and on top of the 6-port device added six 200GB Western Digital drives. From that page, a 200GB Maxtor can be had for around $85.00. Add in a 2U case, which is probably the most expensive part at around $300.00, and you have yourself the most expensive components of what you need, subtract the motherboard, processor, and all that jazz (which can be had for another $300.00 or so).
Running Linux LVM with Samba-3 and Winbind for full Active Directory integration and authentication on top of an ACL-enabled ext3 filesystem, of course!;)
One of the people I work with and one of our investors has had corrective laser surgery -- two in total. Both of them had great experiences, but then again that's only two people. If it was my turn, I would definately do a lot of Googling and other good research, find some of the best doctors, and try to find those doctors by word-of-mouth rather than in a directory of sorts. Just my own opinion in the mix.
Towards the end of his article, Cringley seems to suggest that it might be possible to use ground stations aimed upwards, like AirCell, to provide airplanes with wireless network connectivity. Those airplanes, in exchange for the use of the network connectivity, could then bounce signals back down to earth from a much higher altitude to cover a much wider area. Something like an FM repeater.
I must say, this sounds like an excellent idea, but what about those rural areas where planes don't always fly, and what about if an airport grounds flights for any length of time, such as happened on 9/11? It seems to me that a better solution must be found if we're to obtain reliable network connectivity from such a system, as opposed to just cheap spotty access.
But if nothing else, I give credit to Cringley for some very interesting ideas about the possibilities!
This sounds much like uClinux, which specifically targets boards without MMUs (memory management units). uClinux already runs on tons of target boards and platforms, including older Cisco 2500 / 3000 / 4000 routers. It's commonly used on smaller embedded devices, such as the Actiontec Dual PC Modem and Linksys WRT45G.
I remember that Slashdot story. And just today, in fact, I was looking around on the FCC's website when I found that they do in fact auctionoffsome of the spectrum. Although it's nowhere near enough to fend off monopoly-driven corporations from eating up the entire spectrum, as the author of the original article speculates. Moreso, as the author of the parent comment mentioned, the FCC sticks up for the little guys and the services that wouldn't necessarily be able to fund themselves, such as amateur radio, citizens band, family radio service, instructional television, and other wireless services.
The author raises some interesting points, but as an FCC-licensed amateur radio operator (as one of the previous posters) and someone who considers himself to have more knowledge than the average person in this area, I must respectfully disagree with his opinion.
The FCC does more than just assign spectrum. It also runs enforcement and regulation for our radio frequencies and guards against things such as harmful interference, stepping in with action when needed. Which other governmental organization would keep the technical know-how in house that allows them to track down harmful interference based on field reports?
Furthermore, the FCC guards our markets and prevents monopolies from snatching up too much of a particular spectrum, service, or market. The author seems to think that market dynamics would themselves guard against monopolies with high pricing of spectrum and our current monopoly-prevention laws, but I disagree with this. I don't think the spectrum will be priced out of reach of many corporations. There was recently a desire on the part of various corporations to consolidate the FM broadcast spectrum, and I remember this being heavily debated in various publications. Also, the FCC does already regulates our spectrum based upon our monopoly laws. Which other government agency would handle this for us?
I don't believe that the instability of this unit is because of the Linux-based software it runs. There's many other stable Linux-based media devices out there, such as Sigma Designs EM8500 DVD players, the Dreambox DM7000S DVB Satellite Receiver, Hauppauge Media MVP, and more. Bravo manufactures Linux-based standalone DVD players using the Sigma Designs chipset, as one LKML message points out, for example. I myself put the instability onus squarely on the shoulders of Roku's product engineering, having seen myself some very successful applications of embedded uClinux technologies.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's not kid ourselves ...
:-)
Sure, other governments "[route] all digital traffic in the country through a single choke point, using the capabilities of deep packet inspection" and so do we, in the US. I couldn't think of a better place to put fiber splicers than the "AT&T office in San Francisco." Facebook, and of course other social networking and technology companies, must be a gold mine for them. All they need to do is connect the social networking dots, as they currently do with American's phone calls -- there's no concern for domestic wiretapping laws involved -- it's simply call delivery data for them, and a bit of connecting the social network dots. Hence the reason Verizon Wireless sent out a snail-mail privacy notice to their customers regarding their use of call delivery records in light of the possible broad-surveillance lawsuits, a few years ago. One doesn't need the full conversation if it's possible to ascertain and forward onto other agencies the usual suspects. Separately, Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, once said that he doesn't "tell people the NSA uses Perl. [He merely tells] people the NSA thinks everyone uses Perl. They should know, after all."
Those are smart scientists and engineers over there, to be sure. I'd love to work for them, too.
Interesting idea, but Amateur Radio is restricted to non-commercial use. "The Amateur Radio Service is a voluntary noncommercial communication service, used by qualified persons of any age who are interested in radio technique with a personal aim and without pecuniary interest" (FCC Website).
I was at Penguicon 3.0 and have pictures and movies of it here, here, here, and here!
I recently came across this article at Kuro5hin about a guy (the author) that took to learning to read, write, and speak French fluently in one year. The author has a background in computer programming, and so his perspectives are probably easy to understand for a lot of Slashdot readers. While there's a good deal of the article that focuses on French in particular, a lot of his techniques can be applied to any language. I'd like to use them to learn Spanish, myself. I recommend this read if you're interested in learning a foreign language. There's a lot of great tips and motivation in there.
Looks like the JDJ link is already slow to respond, but there's a mirror here at MirrorDot for those who haven't already bookmarked the site from previous Slashdot comments. (No, I'm not at all affiliated with MirrorDot -- just sharing the love :).
Cringley's not the first with this kind of idea. In fact, the Freenet Project already implements something to this effect. Although not specifically designed for reliable backups, the distributed caching algorithms essentially replicate data towards where it's most often needed, helping to improve network performance and creating copies of important data along the way so that it won't be destroyed if a central server fails. Obviously not a commercial solution, but very interesting.
We're not a 501c3 organization this year, and so we don't have the needed infrastructure in order to charge for admission. We do have some CafePress gear available with a $1.00 markup on each item to help us cover some of the costs we're footing from our personal funds. No donations required, though. Besides, it's better when it's free (sex AND conferences)! ;)
We have some excellent speakers coming in this year from Red Hat, Novell (SUSE), the Apache Software Foundation, the Samba Team, and more. We're having an excellent speaker on the Asterisk PBX for Linux and VoIP technologies.
Hosted at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio and with plenty to see and do in the city during the visit, as well! I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of friends this year, and the afterparty should be grand!
Now I can use PalmVNC for cross-platform VNC sessions to my UNIX and Win32 boxen and PSSH to enable SSH2 connections! I wonder if this will work easily in public Wi-Fi hotspots, thinking with regards to quick 802.11b configuration and real-world interoperability?
I think that not thinking about these things will eventually hinder Linux adoption, as it did in Munich's case.
So what's the long term plan? What kind of ideas are out there? I know there's a solution to be found!
The page is rather slashdotted right now, but I managed to get a glimpse. Looks like this thing is just in time for the Doom 3 mania, with more buttons than you can shake a boomstick at! Looks like quite the excellent Doom 3 controller to me, although an additional toggle joystick would help things more. And there's a Google cache right here. Finally, I also found this prototype design of what looks to be another model -- interesting stuff.
We were able to recently bring Jeremy Cole of MySQL in to talk with our group, and he explained that MySQL has a very similar dual-licensing methodology. This allows MySQL to sell their software commercially for those who want to include it in their products (I understand MySQL is used in telecom lots), and the companies that purchase it don't have to distribute the source with their products (which would be a hardship for them and possibly prevent them from using MySQL as a result). Additionally, MySQL AB is able to release the open version of MySQL for those who want to modify the source and tinker to their hearts contents. All contributors to the MySQL codebase have to sign-off on their code and the dual licensing, and this seems to be working well around the board, with a win-win for everyone. This way of doing things seems to support the company and a great database!
Seems to me some of this technology might be able to be put to good use for the DARPA Grand Challenge 2005, in which autonomous vehicles race across the U.S. desert, driven by their waypoints and obstacle avoidance systems. I'm not at all surprised Cornell is doing some of this autonomous vehicle research.
:) There's also tons of previous Slashdot coverage on the Grand Challenge, and there's a pre-2005 event coming up very soon for interested people, I know.
Last year, The Ohio State University's TerraMax and Carnegie Mellon's Red Team did very well at the DARPA Grand Challenge. Here's some good coverage on Science Blog. There was some other really good blog coverage that gave a play-by-play breakdown of how each autonomous vehicle did the day of the event and what kind of troubles it ran into, but I can't find that via the Googling right now.
Speaking of conferences and events, the Ohio LinuxFest 2004 speakers were just announced. There will be speakers representing Red Hat, Novell, Apache Software Foundation, Samba, and more. It's a free event (unlike many others) to be hosted in October and in Columbus, Ohio. It should be an excellent time for all this year!
We use Linux LVM to take snapshots and then do a hot backup of that data to an archive box. That archive box contains removable hard drives (tape drives are just crap), and we then take the pysical drives to an off-site location to provide security and all the goodness that comes with off-site storage. We also use rsync to synchronize our production NAS devices with a parallel NAS device, to which we can hot-cut and have a current copy of all our data to a 15 minute window. Because rsync (with ext3 ACL support, mind you) only copies what has changed on the filesystem, it goes relatively quickly. You can find my rsync packages at ftp://bagel.express.org/ (as well as patched Samba-3 packages that really work with Winbind and some updated kernel packages for LVM+snapshot support) at that FTP site.
We just added a couple of these at the office. We used a SATA RAID card from LSI Logic (formerly AMI MegaRAID) and on top of the 6-port device added six 200GB Western Digital drives. From that page, a 200GB Maxtor can be had for around $85.00. Add in a 2U case, which is probably the most expensive part at around $300.00, and you have yourself the most expensive components of what you need, subtract the motherboard, processor, and all that jazz (which can be had for another $300.00 or so). Running Linux LVM with Samba-3 and Winbind for full Active Directory integration and authentication on top of an ACL-enabled ext3 filesystem, of course! ;)
One of the people I work with and one of our investors has had corrective laser surgery -- two in total. Both of them had great experiences, but then again that's only two people. If it was my turn, I would definately do a lot of Googling and other good research, find some of the best doctors, and try to find those doctors by word-of-mouth rather than in a directory of sorts. Just my own opinion in the mix.
I must say, this sounds like an excellent idea, but what about those rural areas where planes don't always fly, and what about if an airport grounds flights for any length of time, such as happened on 9/11? It seems to me that a better solution must be found if we're to obtain reliable network connectivity from such a system, as opposed to just cheap spotty access. But if nothing else, I give credit to Cringley for some very interesting ideas about the possibilities!
This sounds much like uClinux, which specifically targets boards without MMUs (memory management units). uClinux already runs on tons of target boards and platforms, including older Cisco 2500 / 3000 / 4000 routers. It's commonly used on smaller embedded devices, such as the Actiontec Dual PC Modem and Linksys WRT45G.
I remember that Slashdot story. And just today, in fact, I was looking around on the FCC's website when I found that they do in fact auction off some of the spectrum. Although it's nowhere near enough to fend off monopoly-driven corporations from eating up the entire spectrum, as the author of the original article speculates. Moreso, as the author of the parent comment mentioned, the FCC sticks up for the little guys and the services that wouldn't necessarily be able to fund themselves, such as amateur radio, citizens band, family radio service, instructional television, and other wireless services.
This is great! I certianly wish more companies would adopt this kind of a driver development model.
I know the GNOME Foundation has also done a similar bounty system, recently.
Seems to me that this goes hand-in-hand with the broadcast flag.
The FCC does more than just assign spectrum. It also runs enforcement and regulation for our radio frequencies and guards against things such as harmful interference, stepping in with action when needed. Which other governmental organization would keep the technical know-how in house that allows them to track down harmful interference based on field reports?
Furthermore, the FCC guards our markets and prevents monopolies from snatching up too much of a particular spectrum, service, or market. The author seems to think that market dynamics would themselves guard against monopolies with high pricing of spectrum and our current monopoly-prevention laws, but I disagree with this. I don't think the spectrum will be priced out of reach of many corporations. There was recently a desire on the part of various corporations to consolidate the FM broadcast spectrum, and I remember this being heavily debated in various publications. Also, the FCC does already regulates our spectrum based upon our monopoly laws. Which other government agency would handle this for us?
As the subject says, please mod up the parent! :)
I don't believe that the instability of this unit is because of the Linux-based software it runs. There's many other stable Linux-based media devices out there, such as Sigma Designs EM8500 DVD players, the Dreambox DM7000S DVB Satellite Receiver, Hauppauge Media MVP, and more. Bravo manufactures Linux-based standalone DVD players using the Sigma Designs chipset, as one LKML message points out, for example. I myself put the instability onus squarely on the shoulders of Roku's product engineering, having seen myself some very successful applications of embedded uClinux technologies.