Umm... we want to create 4,000 miles of terrorist in Texas target for... what reason, exactly?
I'm sort of a road geek, so I'll narrate a bit. I don't think there's anything wrong with the way Interstates run now, except maybe that trucks and cars use the same lanes of traffic. Fixing that would be a $125 billion project in itself. As for infrastructure... well, here's how things look right now...
There's a good chunk of fiber running along U.S. 24 (a highway) in Illinois... not an Interstate. There are seven major transmission lines... only one runs along an Interstate for a long while, and that's because it used to be U.S. 51, not I-39. There are at least four major oil lines in the state. They're clearly marked, but I couldn't tell you were they were, except for maybe "Joliet and Chicago". This is because one runs along state highway 83, and another cuts through and under backyards in the western 'burbs. And I see a bunch of refineries right next to I-55. So these two sightings are possibly the same pipe.:-) Railroad follow U.S. routes pretty strictly... except for a few that follow state routes. Oh, and most of the state drags its water out of wells, or the Illinois River / Lake Michigan. That pipe is very much unmarked.
Besides the fact that I like the idea that at most two of those infrastructures can be taken out at once, I also like that I don't know where everything goes. I can tell you that they go across farms, which doesn't help you at all. Security through obscurity? Sure. But it's pretty effective when the infrastructure is tens / hundreds of miles apart.
Sam, to off stage: Frodo, you lazy ass... don't make me walk over there and get you. Frodo! Quit your whining. I'm going to keep on walking, and you're going to follow me, you got that? And I don't want to hear another word about your silly ring!
The best prevention is education -- a scientist on a news channel in the U.S. yesterday said that when the sea recedes like it did before Sunday's tsunami, you have between 5-10 minutes to run the opposite direction. From most accounts, few did.
It is noted that Sumatra was devastated by the 9.0 earthquake, followed twenty minutes later by the worst of the tsunami. In addition, parts of the Indian subcontinent were flooded up to several miles inland, making the visual warning inadequate. On the hillier islands, it may have made a considerable difference.
Because this event is so legendary, it stands to reason that this knowledge can stick around and prevent such large loss of life in the future.
In addition to having written a weather warning widget with the information they provide, I've noticed that their system usually takes beatings nicely whenever widespread severe weather occurs. Based on the interactions I've had with the website in creating the widget, their backend consists of the PHP/MySQL duo... they also run Apache 2 and Red Hat according to Netcraft. Their warnings are in both RSS and XML feeds. So it's been nice working with what they've been willing to provide, especially when you consider the large audience they serve.
I really don't understand this position. Is it true that people that work in the computer industry have zero social skills, or just a perception we've come to cast ourselves by? I'm speaking as a 23 year old software developer who's getting married in 4 days.
There's really nothing that can make us that socially different in our industry... not so much different as accountants that might spend 11 hours a day in a cube, or evil Ms. Wench in grade school that you might've had in first grade. Everyone I work with is married with children (except for the guy next to me, who mostly hangs out with friends at bars, and rides a motorcycle when it's not snowing outside.) And for a while, I worked with four women software developers in a team, and a woman managed it.
I'm well aware it's a gross oversimplification, but at the very least it should resemble reality. Maybe it's reality if you're still a senior in high school, but now that I'm out of college, the real world doesn't suck as much as geeks make it out to be.
By the way, I usually would rather work with the women... except when they start complaining about relational issues.:-)
Cue uninformed knee-jerk responses by teenage slashdotters that don't have teenagers of their own (you figure that out...) in 3... 2... 1...
In other news, this has happened every year since 1990 or thereabouts (definitely pre-Columbine). I haven't heard much substantially happen since then, and I don't think anything will.
I agree with the general direction of these posts, except I've always gotten sick when playing first person shooters (except Wolfenstein 3-D, for relatively obvious reasons). It's strange because I don't get carsick. However, if I'm watching video taken from a moving car, I do get carsick. The same with any movie that resembles the Blair Witch Project... that's why I didn't think that movie was very good. But I digress.
Lately I've just played Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 a lot and made other people sick instead of me.:-)
I saw that and I thought that too, but I just thought that there were too many barriers to overcome in that case.
Psychological: adding another leg to a commute. I remember I used to take the bike to the train station, and the train downtown. Some people drive to the train station, take the train downtown, grab a bus and transfer to another bus... not fun. It would take some incentives for people to try this leg (maybe it would cut out other legs, etc.)
Financial: expensive. Suburbs have green space (ignore NIMBY syndrome for right now), but cities are all built up and I firmly believe that building such a system in a large city would be prohibitively expensive (hundreds of millions of dollars) for something that may not serve its residents very well.
Of course, this is what engineers and consultants are for.:-)
Great for small cities, great for medium cities, poor for large cities.
Small cities (cities up to 150,000 people) -- generally are contained within a three or so mile radius, so it would make sense to connect malls, grocery stores, and civil services with the system. Some people could use it without having to use a car, some would be able to use it just for the daily commute.
Medium cities (cities up to 500,000 people) -- still a good option, but would probably be used differently. More reliance on cars to get to parking lots that would then use these things to shuttle passengers between the most often visited places (mass transit, some shopping centers, airports, city center). Good coverage of downtown areas would reduce traffic issues there.
Large cities (cities over 500,000 people) -- Too expensive to build and too many places to potentially have to get to. Light rail is a better option for transporting this many people. Other mass transit systems may overlap (water taxis, buses). System would probably only end up serving a small fraction of the city for a small fraction of destinations. Commercial centers are far too large (and distributed) to serve effectively.
It's rare, but it's not a slashdot-centric problem. I stumbled across a blog yesterday that had a similar problem that I fixed by changing the size up and back.
What you are asking has more to do with the web application specification itself, more than why Tomcat over PHP.
I think of it this way... PHP for web applications is inevitably like building your own house from scratch... mixing the concrete, cutting down the trees, etc. All by yourself. As I've developed some web applications in PHP, this is acceptable if you're building a yurt or something.
Java servlets are what you want to use if you want to ensure some level of expandability, or at least standardized web development practices (in theory). Companies generally don't have one mega web application they run, they have anywhere from several to dozens. You don't really want to start from scratch there. Authentication? Yeah, servlets can do that. Flow control? Yeah, that's covered too. In general, if it's something you're probably going to need, the specification covers it and you can implement it based off the specification, as opposed to winging it. Or, to get back to the house thing, buying precut steel instead of making it yourself. Or, having ready-made shingles instead of copying a design that was made earlier that may be kinda shoddy even though you don't know it.
This doesn't necessarily knock down existing frameworks like Ruby on Rails, which looks pretty sweet, or anything with frameworks. Servlet containers just happen to be (more) secure, time tested foundation from which to build web applications. Tomcat is a good servlet container. We also use BEA WebLogic.
Whoa there... Java Apps (by which I presume you actually meant "Java applets", or you were trolling) have nothing to do with Tomcat, unless Tomcat itself were serving said applets. This is about web applications, which are (in an overly simplified explanation) pages generated by Java code in some sense or another, and only use as many system resources as an HTML webpage would.
This is a good question... may I also add that if you recognize the fellas in the RPG section of the site as Edward and Tellah, you might want to check out the 8-bit Theat(re|er), which features your favorite characters from the U.S. Final Fantasy game before Edward and Tellah.
Earlier this year I picked up Mac OS X Panther for UNIX Geeks, since I decided I probably should know a bit more about UNIX. (Plus the foreword said, hey, even if you just update a website that has UNIX on its webserver, the book is for you.) Needless to say, that particular book hurt my head, and I think I probably should have picked up Learning Unix for Mac OS X Panther instead. Whoops.
As I am considering the advanced Unix users that browse this forum, I'd suggest having a look at that book too/instead.
Ha ha ha... it was after I was done playing around with one of these that I realized, "Holy crap, I can't become an electrical/computer engineer... I don't understand any of this!".
Took a couple of EE courses in college, confirmed said theory... now I'm just a software developer.
For sure, it was fun... I actually used mine as an alarm clock (it had a photosensor) for about three months after I built it, since that was one of the only ones I could understand the electrical diagrams for!
Sure. Segways have found a use in three categories...
1.) Postal workers. Did you know that some postal workers (the ones that have to walk up to the door and feed mail through the slot, not the ones that are in their little car all day) walk up to 10 miles a day? That's fine when it's maybe 65F and pleasant outside, but continental temperatures range from -10F to 110F, so they would at least like to minimize some of the walking when it sucks outside.
2.) Cops. Police officers in Chicago walk around, use mountain bikes, and ride motorcycles, tricycles, police cars, and police jeeps. There's a use for a Segway on foot patrol.
Unfortunately, if you're not in any of those three groups (besides factory workers that need to go between aisles to check on inventory... lots of inventory), you're probably not going to get a chance to use a Segway. Also, Segway performance on ice/snow needs to improve before they get used more.
Wow. It seemed like a partnership that could've been good... AOL had 23 million subscribers, Time-Warner has a godawful amount of content. Broadband was just getting started, and they had a large set of customers they could've introduced to Time Warner's content, provided at discount prices... heck, they didn't even have to provide the broadband pipe itself.
WTF? Who blew it?
Regardless of what people say about the economy, there's a lot of disposable income out there. Surely they could've sold a broadband content service to other people at a bargain, and become the dominant provider like they were for dial-up. Now all that's left is dial-up, fading away...
I guess maybe AOL should get used to finding its home in the lower-middle class bracket... too bad they coulda been a contender elsewhere.
The company I work for runs about three or four old, standalone, in-house developed applications that I'm sure would break if XP2 were installed, judging by their stellar quality . Fixing them is probably not on the priority list. Upgrading to XP2 would result in the loss of our service ticketing application, and an Outlook-wannabe program that needs to die a quick death... but is used by all of the thousands of employees here.
Sorry, no, we run XP and not SP2. The last thing we need is to break more stuff than is already broken.
Meijer, for those who don't know (and since they're a regional store, I suppose there would be many that don't), is the name of a chain of stores that are individually frickin' huge. They're compete directly with Wal-Mart and Target. So if Microsoft/Bungie decides to stop giving Meijer their software/hardware to sell, I think Meijer would just say 'boo-hoo'... they've still got hundreds of aisles of clothing, food, other companies' software, and housewares to make a profit from.
Will it come to a lawsuit? Maybe. Would it be worth Microsoft's time? Probably not, but that is a question left up for debate.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sort of a road geek, so I'll narrate a bit. I don't think there's anything wrong with the way Interstates run now, except maybe that trucks and cars use the same lanes of traffic. Fixing that would be a $125 billion project in itself. As for infrastructure... well, here's how things look right now...
There's a good chunk of fiber running along U.S. 24 (a highway) in Illinois... not an Interstate. There are seven major transmission lines... only one runs along an Interstate for a long while, and that's because it used to be U.S. 51, not I-39. There are at least four major oil lines in the state. They're clearly marked, but I couldn't tell you were they were, except for maybe "Joliet and Chicago". This is because one runs along state highway 83, and another cuts through and under backyards in the western 'burbs. And I see a bunch of refineries right next to I-55. So these two sightings are possibly the same pipe. :-) Railroad follow U.S. routes pretty strictly... except for a few that follow state routes. Oh, and most of the state drags its water out of wells, or the Illinois River / Lake Michigan. That pipe is very much unmarked.
Besides the fact that I like the idea that at most two of those infrastructures can be taken out at once, I also like that I don't know where everything goes. I can tell you that they go across farms, which doesn't help you at all. Security through obscurity? Sure. But it's pretty effective when the infrastructure is tens / hundreds of miles apart.
Sam, to off stage: Frodo, you lazy ass... don't make me walk over there and get you. Frodo! Quit your whining. I'm going to keep on walking, and you're going to follow me, you got that? And I don't want to hear another word about your silly ring!
It is noted that Sumatra was devastated by the 9.0 earthquake, followed twenty minutes later by the worst of the tsunami. In addition, parts of the Indian subcontinent were flooded up to several miles inland, making the visual warning inadequate. On the hillier islands, it may have made a considerable difference.
Because this event is so legendary, it stands to reason that this knowledge can stick around and prevent such large loss of life in the future.
Surely you jest.
Not nearly enough to cover the electric bill. :-)
(The math of this calculation, I leave to someone else...)
Might I also mention it was the only basketball game I ever owned? But it had the best halftime shows...
In addition to having written a weather warning widget with the information they provide, I've noticed that their system usually takes beatings nicely whenever widespread severe weather occurs. Based on the interactions I've had with the website in creating the widget, their backend consists of the PHP/MySQL duo... they also run Apache 2 and Red Hat according to Netcraft. Their warnings are in both RSS and XML feeds. So it's been nice working with what they've been willing to provide, especially when you consider the large audience they serve.
There's really nothing that can make us that socially different in our industry... not so much different as accountants that might spend 11 hours a day in a cube, or evil Ms. Wench in grade school that you might've had in first grade. Everyone I work with is married with children (except for the guy next to me, who mostly hangs out with friends at bars, and rides a motorcycle when it's not snowing outside.) And for a while, I worked with four women software developers in a team, and a woman managed it.
I'm well aware it's a gross oversimplification, but at the very least it should resemble reality. Maybe it's reality if you're still a senior in high school, but now that I'm out of college, the real world doesn't suck as much as geeks make it out to be.
By the way, I usually would rather work with the women... except when they start complaining about relational issues. :-)
In other news, this has happened every year since 1990 or thereabouts (definitely pre-Columbine). I haven't heard much substantially happen since then, and I don't think anything will.
Lately I've just played Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 a lot and made other people sick instead of me. :-)
Psychological: adding another leg to a commute. I remember I used to take the bike to the train station, and the train downtown. Some people drive to the train station, take the train downtown, grab a bus and transfer to another bus... not fun. It would take some incentives for people to try this leg (maybe it would cut out other legs, etc.)
Financial: expensive. Suburbs have green space (ignore NIMBY syndrome for right now), but cities are all built up and I firmly believe that building such a system in a large city would be prohibitively expensive (hundreds of millions of dollars) for something that may not serve its residents very well.
Of course, this is what engineers and consultants are for. :-)
Small cities (cities up to 150,000 people) -- generally are contained within a three or so mile radius, so it would make sense to connect malls, grocery stores, and civil services with the system. Some people could use it without having to use a car, some would be able to use it just for the daily commute.
Medium cities (cities up to 500,000 people) -- still a good option, but would probably be used differently. More reliance on cars to get to parking lots that would then use these things to shuttle passengers between the most often visited places (mass transit, some shopping centers, airports, city center). Good coverage of downtown areas would reduce traffic issues there.
Large cities (cities over 500,000 people) -- Too expensive to build and too many places to potentially have to get to. Light rail is a better option for transporting this many people. Other mass transit systems may overlap (water taxis, buses). System would probably only end up serving a small fraction of the city for a small fraction of destinations. Commercial centers are far too large (and distributed) to serve effectively.
Comments, questions, flames?
It's rare, but it's not a slashdot-centric problem. I stumbled across a blog yesterday that had a similar problem that I fixed by changing the size up and back.
I think of it this way... PHP for web applications is inevitably like building your own house from scratch... mixing the concrete, cutting down the trees, etc. All by yourself. As I've developed some web applications in PHP, this is acceptable if you're building a yurt or something.
Java servlets are what you want to use if you want to ensure some level of expandability, or at least standardized web development practices (in theory). Companies generally don't have one mega web application they run, they have anywhere from several to dozens. You don't really want to start from scratch there. Authentication? Yeah, servlets can do that. Flow control? Yeah, that's covered too. In general, if it's something you're probably going to need, the specification covers it and you can implement it based off the specification, as opposed to winging it. Or, to get back to the house thing, buying precut steel instead of making it yourself. Or, having ready-made shingles instead of copying a design that was made earlier that may be kinda shoddy even though you don't know it.
This doesn't necessarily knock down existing frameworks like Ruby on Rails, which looks pretty sweet, or anything with frameworks. Servlet containers just happen to be (more) secure, time tested foundation from which to build web applications. Tomcat is a good servlet container. We also use BEA WebLogic.
Whoa there... Java Apps (by which I presume you actually meant "Java applets", or you were trolling) have nothing to do with Tomcat, unless Tomcat itself were serving said applets. This is about web applications, which are (in an overly simplified explanation) pages generated by Java code in some sense or another, and only use as many system resources as an HTML webpage would.
This is a good question... may I also add that if you recognize the fellas in the RPG section of the site as Edward and Tellah, you might want to check out the 8-bit Theat(re|er), which features your favorite characters from the U.S. Final Fantasy game before Edward and Tellah.
As I am considering the advanced Unix users that browse this forum, I'd suggest having a look at that book too/instead.
Took a couple of EE courses in college, confirmed said theory... now I'm just a software developer.
For sure, it was fun... I actually used mine as an alarm clock (it had a photosensor) for about three months after I built it, since that was one of the only ones I could understand the electrical diagrams for!
1.) Postal workers. Did you know that some postal workers (the ones that have to walk up to the door and feed mail through the slot, not the ones that are in their little car all day) walk up to 10 miles a day? That's fine when it's maybe 65F and pleasant outside, but continental temperatures range from -10F to 110F, so they would at least like to minimize some of the walking when it sucks outside.
2.) Cops. Police officers in Chicago walk around, use mountain bikes, and ride motorcycles, tricycles, police cars, and police jeeps. There's a use for a Segway on foot patrol.
3.) Tour groups. See the story I submitted: Segways Roll Over Chicago.
Unfortunately, if you're not in any of those three groups (besides factory workers that need to go between aisles to check on inventory... lots of inventory), you're probably not going to get a chance to use a Segway. Also, Segway performance on ice/snow needs to improve before they get used more.
WTF? Who blew it?
Regardless of what people say about the economy, there's a lot of disposable income out there. Surely they could've sold a broadband content service to other people at a bargain, and become the dominant provider like they were for dial-up. Now all that's left is dial-up, fading away...
I guess maybe AOL should get used to finding its home in the lower-middle class bracket... too bad they coulda been a contender elsewhere.
I disagree... to support my position, you need only look at the prevalence of handheld TVs.
Oh, wait...
Whenever my default web browser starts to send my personal information out to random Russian companies without my knowledge? :-)
Sorry, no, we run XP and not SP2. The last thing we need is to break more stuff than is already broken.
Yeah, we could be together, and hold hands, and you would be my girlfriend, and... did I just say that out loud?
The only problem is that the random hot girl would probably just smack you back to reality, producing a failure rate of 100%.
Meijer, for those who don't know (and since they're a regional store, I suppose there would be many that don't), is the name of a chain of stores that are individually frickin' huge. They're compete directly with Wal-Mart and Target. So if Microsoft/Bungie decides to stop giving Meijer their software/hardware to sell, I think Meijer would just say 'boo-hoo'... they've still got hundreds of aisles of clothing, food, other companies' software, and housewares to make a profit from.
Will it come to a lawsuit? Maybe. Would it be worth Microsoft's time? Probably not, but that is a question left up for debate.