If it's good enough for all of the Senators to have, why can't the Commander in Chief have one? The job sucks enough as it is, without having to be forced to use sub-standard communications infrastructure on a daily basis.
A search might work, if you don't happen to have my 200,000+ photos or 100,000+ other random bits of stuff that accumulates over time you might even be able to do it in a few seconds, But I believe the OS (or the file manager) should be able to keep track of this stuff for you, which means a new API, and the file managers have to tap into it at a minimum.
It's reasonable to call for everyone to do it in the same way, to be interoperable.
Version control, searching, and all of the other advances since the first directory tree are good things to add, but they must be supported down to the application level.
VAX/VMS had a wonderful system of versioning baked right into things, if you worked on a file, it kept versions for you as you saved them....
login.com;1
login.com;2
login.com;3 .. etc.
The default was the last version, unless you explicitly chose a different one. This is an incredibly useful tool, and I still miss it to this day, 20 years after I last used it.
If you can't express an idea explicitly, your power of expression is radically limited. If we can get consensus and support a bigger set of expressions, we can do a whole bunch of cool new stuff. As long as we follow the leader, we'll never do anything this innovative, and we'll always be playing catch up.
It won't be easy!
To do even this simple thing with Linux, all of our applications would have to be re-written to enable a new file specification syntax, hopefully one reasonably compatible with the past. We're talking about a shitload of work, so it's important to agree on a set of goals first, to avoid having to re-do it later.
When there is a flood, there is mud... lots of soft gooshy mud, which things sink into... not the environment for something with legs and lots of vulnerable high-tech sensors to get sucked into.
I think that the issue is faced by far more people than is readily apparent... it's the need for a VERY easy to use tool to share Our Stuff with Our Family. If my Mom and sisters were able to share all their photos with each other by carrying a USB drive around when they see each other... the most important thing they have on their computers would be backed up... the need for social file sharing is huge... we just don't have the tools to do it well yet.
Something that does auto-discovery of stuff, remembers previous decisions, and just goes to work making copies in the right directions is what we need.
10. What one sentence best describes your idea? (maximum 150 characters)
Build a complete set of social and computer networking tools that can be distributed on/via USB Sticks.
--- 11. Describe your idea in more depth. (maximum 300 words)
CBBS opened a new vista of social networking in 1978, which lead to Fidonet, to parallel UUCP, etc. Build a set of tools which allow the modern update to it, with sneakernet as the backbone.
This could be used by families to share photos. Researchers with huge data sets on the larger scale of things.
Provide a nice standard way to share stuff on a massive distributed scale that's extremely easy to use.
--- 12. What problem or issue does your idea address? (maximum 150 words)
Routes around censorship and trust issues with the internet. Lowers the barriers to entry for social networking.
--- 13. If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how? (maximum 150 words)
Anyone who needs to share a huge amount of stuff with others they meet or send packages to on a frequent basis.
--- 14. What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground? (maximum 150 words)
Some brainstorming, evaluation of available tools, and a small community of people who want to contribute to the idea.
--- 15. Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it? (maximum 150 words)
Everyone around the world gets to share more stuff, and gets more as a result.
It just doesn't make sense to expend the limited political capital of the IT department to nag people into cleaning up their folders. If you're in a small company, and can more than double your server storage for $1000, instead of pissing off 25 people, you'll spend the money, and so will the CFO. I should know, we've done it more than once over the past 10 years.
It's far better to spend a few $K than to waste literally weeks of time trying to sort things out, especially when you need sales to be selling and not worried about their computers.
1> Yes.. people could be hurt because the network in question is used to save lives, so it's OK not to hand the keys to an idiot.
2> It's easy to find wireless devices... I've personally been doing it since the 1980's.. it's called a fox hunt here in the Chicago area. We used to get 1 minute of transmission every 5... with WiFi you can just ping the dang thing... how easy is that?
Let's say this system does its job... and produces a 20 bit number that quantifies a person's gait perfectly. This means you've got about 10^6 possible values... there are 6*10^9 people in the world... On average, you're going to have 6000+ people that match a given value, assuming no noise.
Put this in the same bin with the FBI's now discredited Lead Bullet analysis, and the idea that DNA matches are "1 in a Trillion", when you mass scan them.
My own limited experimentation with synthetic aperture photography strongly suggests that the "diffraction limit" is overrated. Because you're effectively taking samples from many viewpoints due to the chaotic lensing of the atmosphere, a sufficiently intelligent analysis and synthesis of the raw images over time can exceed the resolution of a single static frame which is where the diffraction limit hold true.
It's my firm belief that that's how they can read license plates from outer space.
Even if you could do the electronics to read/write them, the track density of modern drives would mean that any thermal variation would put at least some of the heads out of alignment.
The other problem is that modern drives require a "flying head" arraignment, which wouldn't work because the airflow around the platters would be turbulent and chaotic as all hell, not to mention the power requirements because of all the drag caused by all of those heads that close to the platter at that speed.
Each set of heads would have its own servo, so the small variations in distance due to expansion of the case wouldn't matter. I agree that reading from one head at a time is a limitation that has to be lived with, and always will be.
I'd go even further... use the old 5 1/4 "half height" form factor, stack 8 platters in it, with 4 sets of heads, spin it at 5400 rpm to keep the power requirements down to reasonable.
This would give you 8 platters * 2 sides * 400 Gbit/in^2 * 50 in^2 (estimated working area surface area per platter) ==> 40 Terabytes in a single package, with an average access time on the order of 5 millisecond, and a sustainable transfer rate of at least 300 Megabytes/Second.
Even without the 4 sets of heads, that would still be a 40 Terabyte drive!
As far as RAID goes, it's just one drive, it's all or nothing, so don't think it would count as it's own mirror.
Because a video camera is nowhere near the quality of a still image, still cameras will win for a number of reasons:
Still Camera - less motion blur, if any
Bigger sensor - less noise
Focus mechanism - an SLR has a much better focusing mechanism
Image Compression - almost all video codecs record a stream of images, and do not optimize the quality of an individual frame
Exposure time - A still camera can take from 1/8000 second to 5 minute exposures for a single frame, as opposed to a fixed time of about 1/30 second for NTSC
Aperture - A still camera can control the aperture to get desired depth of field
So, those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
I'd cut access to any country I was preparing to wage war against... it's common sense to help stop communications to fifth columnists. Of course, they'll route around it.
--Mike--
The store and forward broadcasting scheme has definite merits as a means of distributing information in a community. I think that the Twitter / Indenti.ca - laconica / RSS reader tools of the world will eventually re-collapse into a new version of Usenet, without anonymity, and a slightly different feature set.
Exactly... somewhere I heard that it takes about 5 people to get an open source project off the ground. Perhaps this is another aspect of some grand rule, the guy who wrote indenti.ca, the guy who got it working and federated, and shoulders of at least 3 other people they stood on.
Ideas are great, everyone's got them... it's action that makes a difference. It's amazing how late in life you learn some of these lessons (I'm 44).
The users of twitter got upset that the service was down so much, but all the blogging in the world doesn't do as much good as a single pissed off programmer who actually did something about it, and wrote something to start to replace twitter.
That single programmer probably wouldn't have made much of a dent in the situation, but another pissed off programmer took his work, and made it work on his system, twice and got federation to work, then wrote to tell the rest of us about it.
It was only after this that the blogosphere actually has a snowballs chance in hell of adding any value, by making sure that other people know about the efforts of these two programmers (and all of the ones before them).
As he said over at 0xDECAFBAD, '...ideas are fucking worthless', it's actually adding some value to the ideas, no matter how big or small, that get the snowball rolling in the right direction.
I hope this post helps someone else see how open source really works. If not, it's fucking worthless.
You end up getting a bunch of people convinced that you can send data over phone lines, and other such nonsense. Then they start talking about breaking things into packets.
We all know that phone lines are just tubes, so this "fringe" science talk of "ARPANET" from the folks at BBN should just not be funded.;-)
I'm assuming the 300+ comments above me mean that most of you are lucky enough to have never encountered ACT!2007 Premium.
Imagine if you put a team of novice VB programmers in a room with an SQL server and never explained the relational model to them. You'd end up with something BETTER than ACT Premium. In the end, the novice programmers would probably accidentally discover relational tables in the help files, unlike the programmers who built ACT.
Want to backup your SQL database? Too bad. Feel like you should own your own data? Get over it, you're not authorized!
They reset the SA password, and delete any accounts that have SA privileges from the SQL server every time the program is run!
There is a utility which will get the SA password for you, if you promise not to actually change the database... for a mere US$1800.
You can't imagine how bad this thing is... and I hope you don't have to!.
Oh.. and ACT 2007 only works with Outlook 2003, not Outlook 2000, or Outlook 2007. If you use Outlook 2007, you have to upgrade to ACT 2008.
Slashdot Mirror
Find and read everything you can written by Bob Pease. You'll be entertained and enlightened.
If it's good enough for all of the Senators to have, why can't the Commander in Chief have one? The job sucks enough as it is, without having to be forced to use sub-standard communications infrastructure on a daily basis.
A search might work, if you don't happen to have my 200,000+ photos or 100,000+ other random bits of stuff that accumulates over time you might even be able to do it in a few seconds, But I believe the OS (or the file manager) should be able to keep track of this stuff for you, which means a new API, and the file managers have to tap into it at a minimum.
It's reasonable to call for everyone to do it in the same way, to be interoperable.
Version control, searching, and all of the other advances since the first directory tree are good things to add, but they must be supported down to the application level.
VAX/VMS had a wonderful system of versioning baked right into things, if you worked on a file, it kept versions for you as you saved them....
login.com;1
.. etc.
login.com;2
login.com;3
The default was the last version, unless you explicitly chose a different one. This is an incredibly useful tool, and I still miss it to this day, 20 years after I last used it.
If you can't express an idea explicitly, your power of expression is radically limited. If we can get consensus and support a bigger set of expressions, we can do a whole bunch of cool new stuff. As long as we follow the leader, we'll never do anything this innovative, and we'll always be playing catch up.
It won't be easy!
To do even this simple thing with Linux, all of our applications would have to be re-written to enable a new file specification syntax, hopefully one reasonably compatible with the past. We're talking about a shitload of work, so it's important to agree on a set of goals first, to avoid having to re-do it later.
--Mike--
When there is a flood, there is mud... lots of soft gooshy mud, which things sink into... not the environment for something with legs and lots of vulnerable high-tech sensors to get sucked into.
I think that the issue is faced by far more people than is readily apparent... it's the need for a VERY easy to use tool to share Our Stuff with Our Family. If my Mom and sisters were able to share all their photos with each other by carrying a USB drive around when they see each other... the most important thing they have on their computers would be backed up... the need for social file sharing is huge... we just don't have the tools to do it well yet. Something that does auto-discovery of stuff, remembers previous decisions, and just goes to work making copies in the right directions is what we need.
10. What one sentence best describes your idea? (maximum 150 characters)
Build a complete set of social and computer networking tools that can be distributed on/via USB Sticks.
---
11. Describe your idea in more depth. (maximum 300 words)
CBBS opened a new vista of social networking in 1978, which lead to Fidonet, to parallel UUCP, etc.
Build a set of tools which allow the modern update to it, with sneakernet as the backbone.
This could be used by families to share photos. Researchers with huge data sets on the larger scale of things.
Provide a nice standard way to share stuff on a massive distributed scale that's extremely easy to use.
---
12. What problem or issue does your idea address? (maximum 150 words)
Routes around censorship and trust issues with the internet. Lowers the barriers to entry for social networking.
---
13. If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how? (maximum 150 words)
Anyone who needs to share a huge amount of stuff with others they meet or send packages to on a frequent basis.
---
14. What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground? (maximum 150 words)
Some brainstorming, evaluation of available tools, and a small community of people who want to contribute to the idea.
---
15. Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it? (maximum 150 words)
Everyone around the world gets to share more stuff, and gets more as a result.
It's far better to spend a few $K than to waste literally weeks of time trying to sort things out, especially when you need sales to be selling and not worried about their computers.
--Mike--
2> It's easy to find wireless devices... I've personally been doing it since the 1980's.. it's called a fox hunt here in the Chicago area. We used to get 1 minute of transmission every 5... with WiFi you can just ping the dang thing... how easy is that?
--Mike--
Put this in the same bin with the FBI's now discredited Lead Bullet analysis, and the idea that DNA matches are "1 in a Trillion", when you mass scan them.
Nothing to see here... move along.
--Mike--
It's my firm belief that that's how they can read license plates from outer space.
--Mike--
The other problem is that modern drives require a "flying head" arraignment, which wouldn't work because the airflow around the platters would be turbulent and chaotic as all hell, not to mention the power requirements because of all the drag caused by all of those heads that close to the platter at that speed.
Each set of heads would have its own servo, so the small variations in distance due to expansion of the case wouldn't matter. I agree that reading from one head at a time is a limitation that has to be lived with, and always will be.
This would give you 8 platters * 2 sides * 400 Gbit/in^2 * 50 in^2 (estimated working area surface area per platter) ==> 40 Terabytes in a single package, with an average access time on the order of 5 millisecond, and a sustainable transfer rate of at least 300 Megabytes/Second.
Even without the 4 sets of heads, that would still be a 40 Terabyte drive!
As far as RAID goes, it's just one drive, it's all or nothing, so don't think it would count as it's own mirror.
--Mike--
No, but they can reach 60%, according to the heat engine page at Wikipedia.
So, those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
I don't know Russian... but I do know Google... so here's a bit of a mashup:
Twitter | Google Translate
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fwardirect&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=ru&tl=en
I'd cut access to any country I was preparing to wage war against... it's common sense to help stop communications to fifth columnists. Of course, they'll route around it. --Mike--
The store and forward broadcasting scheme has definite merits as a means of distributing information in a community. I think that the Twitter / Indenti.ca - laconica / RSS reader tools of the world will eventually re-collapse into a new version of Usenet, without anonymity, and a slightly different feature set.
Usenet is dead... long live Usenet.
Ideas are great, everyone's got them... it's action that makes a difference. It's amazing how late in life you learn some of these lessons (I'm 44).
--Mike--
That single programmer probably wouldn't have made much of a dent in the situation, but another pissed off programmer took his work, and made it work on his system, twice and got federation to work, then wrote to tell the rest of us about it.
It was only after this that the blogosphere actually has a snowballs chance in hell of adding any value, by making sure that other people know about the efforts of these two programmers (and all of the ones before them).
As he said over at 0xDECAFBAD, '...ideas are fucking worthless', it's actually adding some value to the ideas, no matter how big or small, that get the snowball rolling in the right direction.
I hope this post helps someone else see how open source really works. If not, it's fucking worthless.
--Mike--
--Mike--
VMware and Ubuntu are sure making it easy to imagine migrating all this stuff away from Windows.
--Mike--
We all know that phone lines are just tubes, so this "fringe" science talk of "ARPANET" from the folks at BBN should just not be funded. ;-)
--Mike--
Imagine if you put a team of novice VB programmers in a room with an SQL server and never explained the relational model to them. You'd end up with something BETTER than ACT Premium. In the end, the novice programmers would probably accidentally discover relational tables in the help files, unlike the programmers who built ACT.
Want to backup your SQL database? Too bad. Feel like you should own your own data? Get over it, you're not authorized!
They reset the SA password, and delete any accounts that have SA privileges from the SQL server every time the program is run!
There is a utility which will get the SA password for you, if you promise not to actually change the database... for a mere US$1800.
You can't imagine how bad this thing is... and I hope you don't have to!.
Oh.. and ACT 2007 only works with Outlook 2003, not Outlook 2000, or Outlook 2007. If you use Outlook 2007, you have to upgrade to ACT 2008.
--Mike--