The point about graphics hogging bandwidth is valid, but ARD is configurable to allow 16-bit (both 1.2 ad 2.0) and even 8-bit graphics (verified only for 1.2), too. Apple advises minimizing animation in the UI and otherwise to make the most of the link.
Given today that most people in the US don't have relatives living nearby to perform such a service, how many/. readers have 17 day's worth of food in their houses?
You make a good point about the problems of preparedness and distance from family. Not all our best solutions are technological, even for/. readers. But what is different in our problem today and how does it change the solution?
One major change between 1914 and 2003 is logistical. Then the limits were based on travel time between people. Now they are based more on sparse relationships across concentrated populations. The lessons for preparation and responsiveness are interesting.
At that time and place, there was about a mile between homes (I know, because I helped fence the land when I was a boy and saw the houses and ruins of houses). Cars and trucks were still rare. The rate of travel was between 5 and 10 miles per hour if the dirt roads were dry. Assuming 10 hours of useful daylight for travel and delivery, one full-time person could cover about 75 miles in a day. Assuming some out-and-back routes, that is fewer than 40 homes per day.
Travel time made both communication and most deliveries local. It made the spread of disease slow and kept the ratio of victims to helpers low. People tended to work, study, worship, and socialize with neighbors. Families were even linked by multiple marriages. So when sickness came, the helper knew the victim well and lived nearby. News of trouble would reach a helper pretty soon. Help was likely to come.
Today (or anytime in cities), most people live close to more people than they have time to know, let alone monitor. Many have moved away from their birthplaces. Beyond the density itself, people today choose to spend little time with neighbors. Travel time is virtually no issue at all, but isolation is.
One risk today is a communication limit: that someone will be overlooked in a crowd of strangers because human networking breaks down through relational isolation. The internet and phone networks do not perfectly complement physical neighborhoods. Trouble goes undetected. Some people suffer or die in isolation.
Yet a public health emergency is likely, because high population density leads to high physical exposure to infected people. When there is such an emergency, another risk is density of victims: delivering physical support can overwhelm those who are routinely trained and supplied to help. Physical help is always local. The earlier the care or supply is required, the closer the helper must be to the victim before the trouble begins.
The point is that preparedness and relationship in the local community still make sense in 2003, but for different reasons than in 1914. Local help is still the best way to make sure people have food, water, energy, medical supplies, and trained medical helpers when they need them in emergencies. We have to do a lot of it, though, as a society, much more than paid EMS and government agencies can handle. It has to be nearly universal and very local, if disaster is to be averted in a bioattack. Maybe this is the/. layer of the solution: peer-to-peer organization.
The best people to make this work well are probably the old. They are at home a lot and can take time to organize the energies of us busy younger people. They are getting to be more technosavvy, too. We can help them set up their communications and record-keeping. Whether epidemic, fire or earthquake is the cause of need, storing a few weeks' supplies for yourself and a few other families makes a lot of sense, too.
Thanks for the reminder, chiph. New Year's Day is coming, so here is my first resolution. It's time for me to replace the four-year-old earthquake supplies and invite those new neighbors over for hog jowls and black-eyed peas (got that from the same grandmother,/.ers)!
In about 1914, my grandmother's family was hit by smallpox in the farming community of Tallapoosa County, Alabama. It prostrated both parents (in their early 30's) and the eldest daughter, leaving only the five-year-old daughter (later my grandmother) to prepare food for the family and care for her baby sister. All lived, which probably means the virus was variola minor, a new, weaker version of smallpox, which had a 1% mortality rate (in place of the horrible 20% rate for variola major).
Variola minor was the most common smallpox by the twentieth century. Yet look at how strongly this weaker form disabled a whole family of healthy people. We must not lose the horror of this disease, especially variola major. It must be kept down. Fortunately, it has no animal hosts holding it in mutating reserve, like influenza or SARS. Stopping it in people stops it. Even a large emergency would be stoppable, eventually.
Like many, I use mainly Rubbermaid Snap Toppers in the shoebox size in several ways. All are labelled with either tape or attractively custom-printed adhesive-backed labels.
1. For each computer, one to a tub: All original cables, manuals, warramties, & media. Receipts, invoices, packing lists. Stack together on shelves in the (dry) basement. NO electronics to zap.
2. Each kind of cable gets its own tub: RJ-45 Ethernet, USB, Firewire 400, Firewire 800, RJ-11 UTP, Audio, AC Power, DC wallwarts, parallel, SCSI, etc. I color code the lids, based roughly on transmission frequency.
3. RAM and other sensitive assemblies go into anti-static bags before boxing them up.
4. The original computer box I keep on a basement shelf for warranty repair shipping for four years.
5. CD-ROM and DVD media go into stackable steel wire drawers that sit on shelves in my office. Applications, OS installs, music, media are kept separate. Older stuff gets boxed up and archived.
6. Software authorization codes, with all other ownership information, go into a spreadsheet with a printed copy at the bank.
7. Where children play or otherwise interfere, I remove the shelves from the bottom four feet of my bookcases and replace them with stacks of large transparent tubs with toys in them-- self-serve. I place some on top of the bookcases, too.
Mac OS X works beautifully with a two or three button mouse out of the box. however, it does NOT default to one button functionality. Why should it, idiot executives aside?
The left button is the same as the single button. The right button provides context-sensitive drop-down menus, same as control-click or control-hold. The wheel scrolls in the active window.
I use a macally ioptinet USB optical mouse with my Power Mac G4 MDD. Fancier third party mice and trackballs like Kensington's are out there, too, with seemingly endless buttons (9 at my last count) for those who prefer them.
Slashdot Mirror
The point about graphics hogging bandwidth is valid, but ARD is configurable to allow 16-bit (both 1.2 ad 2.0) and even 8-bit graphics (verified only for 1.2), too. Apple advises minimizing animation in the UI and otherwise to make the most of the link.
You make a good point about the problems of preparedness and distance from family. Not all our best solutions are technological, even for /. readers. But what is different in our problem today and how does it change the solution?
One major change between 1914 and 2003 is logistical. Then the limits were based on travel time between people. Now they are based more on sparse relationships across concentrated populations. The lessons for preparation and responsiveness are interesting.
At that time and place, there was about a mile between homes (I know, because I helped fence the land when I was a boy and saw the houses and ruins of houses). Cars and trucks were still rare. The rate of travel was between 5 and 10 miles per hour if the dirt roads were dry. Assuming 10 hours of useful daylight for travel and delivery, one full-time person could cover about 75 miles in a day. Assuming some out-and-back routes, that is fewer than 40 homes per day.
Travel time made both communication and most deliveries local. It made the spread of disease slow and kept the ratio of victims to helpers low. People tended to work, study, worship, and socialize with neighbors. Families were even linked by multiple marriages. So when sickness came, the helper knew the victim well and lived nearby. News of trouble would reach a helper pretty soon. Help was likely to come.
Today (or anytime in cities), most people live close to more people than they have time to know, let alone monitor. Many have moved away from their birthplaces. Beyond the density itself, people today choose to spend little time with neighbors. Travel time is virtually no issue at all, but isolation is.
One risk today is a communication limit: that someone will be overlooked in a crowd of strangers because human networking breaks down through relational isolation. The internet and phone networks do not perfectly complement physical neighborhoods. Trouble goes undetected. Some people suffer or die in isolation.
Yet a public health emergency is likely, because high population density leads to high physical exposure to infected people. When there is such an emergency, another risk is density of victims: delivering physical support can overwhelm those who are routinely trained and supplied to help. Physical help is always local. The earlier the care or supply is required, the closer the helper must be to the victim before the trouble begins.
The point is that preparedness and relationship in the local community still make sense in 2003, but for different reasons than in 1914. Local help is still the best way to make sure people have food, water, energy, medical supplies, and trained medical helpers when they need them in emergencies. We have to do a lot of it, though, as a society, much more than paid EMS and government agencies can handle. It has to be nearly universal and very local, if disaster is to be averted in a bioattack. Maybe this is the /. layer of the solution: peer-to-peer organization.
The best people to make this work well are probably the old. They are at home a lot and can take time to organize the energies of us busy younger people. They are getting to be more technosavvy, too. We can help them set up their communications and record-keeping. Whether epidemic, fire or earthquake is the cause of need, storing a few weeks' supplies for yourself and a few other families makes a lot of sense, too.
Thanks for the reminder, chiph. New Year's Day is coming, so here is my first resolution. It's time for me to replace the four-year-old earthquake supplies and invite those new neighbors over for hog jowls and black-eyed peas (got that from the same grandmother, /.ers)!
In about 1914, my grandmother's family was hit by smallpox in the farming community of Tallapoosa County, Alabama. It prostrated both parents (in their early 30's) and the eldest daughter, leaving only the five-year-old daughter (later my grandmother) to prepare food for the family and care for her baby sister. All lived, which probably means the virus was variola minor, a new, weaker version of smallpox, which had a 1% mortality rate (in place of the horrible 20% rate for variola major). Variola minor was the most common smallpox by the twentieth century. Yet look at how strongly this weaker form disabled a whole family of healthy people. We must not lose the horror of this disease, especially variola major. It must be kept down. Fortunately, it has no animal hosts holding it in mutating reserve, like influenza or SARS. Stopping it in people stops it. Even a large emergency would be stoppable, eventually.
Like many, I use mainly Rubbermaid Snap Toppers in the shoebox size in several ways. All are labelled with either tape or attractively custom-printed adhesive-backed labels. 1. For each computer, one to a tub: All original cables, manuals, warramties, & media. Receipts, invoices, packing lists. Stack together on shelves in the (dry) basement. NO electronics to zap. 2. Each kind of cable gets its own tub: RJ-45 Ethernet, USB, Firewire 400, Firewire 800, RJ-11 UTP, Audio, AC Power, DC wallwarts, parallel, SCSI, etc. I color code the lids, based roughly on transmission frequency. 3. RAM and other sensitive assemblies go into anti-static bags before boxing them up. 4. The original computer box I keep on a basement shelf for warranty repair shipping for four years. 5. CD-ROM and DVD media go into stackable steel wire drawers that sit on shelves in my office. Applications, OS installs, music, media are kept separate. Older stuff gets boxed up and archived. 6. Software authorization codes, with all other ownership information, go into a spreadsheet with a printed copy at the bank. 7. Where children play or otherwise interfere, I remove the shelves from the bottom four feet of my bookcases and replace them with stacks of large transparent tubs with toys in them-- self-serve. I place some on top of the bookcases, too.
Mac OS X works beautifully with a two or three button mouse out of the box. however, it does NOT default to one button functionality. Why should it, idiot executives aside? The left button is the same as the single button. The right button provides context-sensitive drop-down menus, same as control-click or control-hold. The wheel scrolls in the active window. I use a macally ioptinet USB optical mouse with my Power Mac G4 MDD. Fancier third party mice and trackballs like Kensington's are out there, too, with seemingly endless buttons (9 at my last count) for those who prefer them.