A number of years back, I had a friend whose personal effects were stolen. Thief apparently gathered enough information to head straight for the RMV and get a new license with their picture on it, causing untold problems, mainly because the thief was a pro, having done this many times. Every time they got into trouble, it would be blamed on who they said they were, not them. Luckily, this person was caught with the forged ID, but it took a long time for my friend to recover from all the damage. Would be interesting to see if this kind of face scanning would help catch such a career criminal.
Just be glad that someone invented it! Worked at a company that started with a few engineers and a handful of Macintosh IIx machines on AppleTalk. When we grew to a 10-way AppleTalk network, it was pitifully slow. One day, Joe (his real name;-), came back with a StarNet controller/hub. A bit of twisted pair later, we had a fast network once again! Not sure exactly how close to Ethernet that was, but it was sure faster than AppleTalk! Later migrated to 10Base-T (and were outraged when Apple's Quadra machines arrived and needed a 10Base-T AAUI adapter costing another 100 bucks!). Having to support multiple kinds of transceivers, including coax probably slowed down the adoption of Ethernet technology. Coax had lots of connector issues, something I still see with my Cable TV installation every now and then. These days, I only use 1000Base-T, because packet LATENCY is much lower, and much of the time that's probably more important than overall throughput being higher. Sure, wireless is constantly evolving and almost can't be avoided with modern mobile devices, but fast wired still seems far more reliable.
A couple of year back, this guy drove into the fire department parking lot, brazenly loaded up a reel of copper (wire, I think -- possibly for maintaining the town's antique "Red Fire Box" alarm system?) and drove off with it (not before being noticed either): Lexington man is 'person of interest' in area copper thefts.
I have a Tivo HD that I own. This means I can do things to it, like put in a 1TB drive, so I can keep well over 100 hours of HD programming around. It has a single "M CableCard" in it for $1.50/mo that lets it decode two channels at once. I pay Tivo $99/yr subscription, and the ($220 -- plus $80 for the new drive -- though I still have the old one, kept as a spare) that I paid for the unit is long since paid off by canceling all of my movie channels. The Tivo can use Netflix, Blockbuster, and Amazon for movie content (if I want), not to mention YouTube and other downloadable web videos. It has optical digital sound output, although I didn't use that until recently -- and it's awesome. See any of that in a cable company DVR? Not to mention that my old cable DVR (since returned) drove me nuts trying to properly schedule programs. It would record the same program several times and would often reboot just when I had finally gotten something programmed, etc. Several times I have been at work when I realized I wanted to record something. Tivos do that easily; cable companies should wake up. They just aren't keeping up. So what are they doing? Yes, they're licensing Tivo (albeit a more expensive version) for their customers! I have an old Tivo Series 2 connected to the first cable box we had by a serial cable. Still works wonders, despite being "single tuner". That one has a lifetime subscription, and paid for itself several years ago. It's on my "first cable box", which is free. [additional cable boxes would be $2.95/mo.].
I thought this would happen with all of the "premium channel" movies on my Tivo HD when I cancelled RCN's movie package, but amazingly, they are still there and playable. It's either a technical oversight on their part, or they're just not quite as annoying as Comcast (or whatever they choose to call themselves these days). I suppose all of these are "gray area" issues, and might be covered in the provider's finely worded "service agreement"?
Seem like you could have it both ways (for instance, report both GB and GiB?). However, I am still waiting for my $50 for all the Seagate drives I bought! NewEgg had all my old invoices online, so I just filed those, but years later, it's still not settled (even if it's a stupid suit). See: http://www.harddrive-settlement.com/notice.htm
"Measurements indicate that some of the electrical connections could not safely handle the amount of current needed to run at the full 14 TeV..."
So, if they dial it up now, we'll get all those 1960s visual effects explosions: as seen on TV in "The Time Tunnel"? I'm sure that doing effects for those old shows might have been exciting on occasion, but since we're paying for this hadron collider research, I suppose it's counterproductive. The collider now seems like a much better investment than those other billions Congress is busy spending for us.
I think its unrealistic to expect a consumer level computer system to assuredly last more than 5 years (isn't that the standard depreciation schedule anyway?), especially if you plan to add additional software to it over time (newer software tends to be ever more demanding?). My strategy is to buy cheap (well, if it's not Apple;-), but reliable (i.e. read reviews) hardware and replace parts, if necessary, in the interim. Buying reliable does not have to mean buying expensive.
As far as drives go, I have a 1TB WD10EACS being beaten to death daily in a TiVo HD (since May 2008) and it's pretty reliable so far, as are all but one of my 200GB ATA drives (works once it starts, but has a flaky spin up -- I suppose I should stop using it?). Many of my older SCSI drives (4GB, 8GB, circa 1995) seem to work as well as they ever did -- I've sold some to agencies looking for replacements in nuclear power plants and similar applications (don't you feel safe now?). However, an 8GB USB flash key I was using became completely inert one day -- and it didn't seem to be a static shock issue. I had an identical 1GB one that worked fine for years, and I went back to that until I got another 8GB one (different brand this time). Didn't lose anything, as it was only being used as a backup device.
For unchanging applications that never need updated software, I suppose you could just keep an old system going forever, maybe backing it up just enough (clone drive?) so you could buy a replacement old system on ebay and swap it in if necessary. Works, but it's generally better to "get modern" when possible --- though it never really stays that way for long!
When the aliens (any brand) come, we can simply offer them this individual. This will keep them busy for quite a while, and maybe they'll forget to invade. Meanwhile, Shampoo should work as a patent examiner. Most new patent applications will simply be met with "I already invented that."
In 1996, I had a PowerMac 4400 (overkill, but one of the few Macs into which you could stick multiple Ethernet cards, 100Base-T on the network) running Vicom Internet Gateway (had Parental Controls and all sorts of nice features). I used to restart that machine every now and then. When the Linksys BEFSR41 arrived, it freed up the PowerMac and I would reboot it every few months just for fun (paired with an original Shark Fin cable modem from LANcity -- seldom restarted that either -- as it was in the basement and the router was in the attic). Eventually bought a Linksys WRT54GS (v2) to use the Parental Controls feature (not perfect, but mostly did what I needed, though that feature is being discontinued). Never restarted that much either (paired originally with a 3Com 3CR29210, later with a D-Link DCM-202, and these days with a Motorola SB5101). This is all on a network with several TiVos, a Win/XP machine, a handful of Macs (mostly MacOS X these days), and an AirPort Express (2 client laptops) and I still don't need to restart it. You probably need to figure out just what is failing by doing some network sniffing? Maybe it's related to the ISP? I've had this gear hooked up to RCN's cable for 7 years with few issues (with the gear itself).
In 1999, as we were all busy making sure that Y2K bugs weren't going to be a big deal, someone where I used to work created an email account (as a Lotus Notes database) so customers could make direct inquiries about Y2K compliance. Most anyone could browse that email database. One day, I received a blistering email from a customer, whom I did not know, asking why their Y2K inquiries had been repeatedly ignored. That user had enabled a return receipt and the Lotus Notes database server was automatically generating return receipt emails to the sender each time one of those email records was browsed -- without informing the reader. Oops. I quickly put a stop to that.
The reason it didn't work is that "Dreaming of Brazil" didn't yet exist;-) I stopped using the Rio years ago -- and we won't discuss what happens when you put a physically wet SmartMedia card in it;-(. Oh yeah, and there was a small piece of black electrical tape to hold the battery cover closed (the latch broke the first week I had it). I still like the Rio 300's form factor, feel, and controls better than a lot of other players though. It was often home to my "almost dead" AA batteries as well!
Well, my Rio 300 only worked with Windows/98 on a PC with a Parallel Port. While someone had written some Windows/2000 software for it, I could never get it to work. I don't think Creative ever supported it after 98. I donated it to a local Boy Scout troop when I gave them my PIII machine. Also tossed in my serial port connected Olympus D-320L camera (now there was a great little early digital camera!). I still have way too much old gear, most of it worth not much. Want some?http://s90697863.onlinehome.us/ebay/misc/ForSale.html
and maybe sometimes not? Of course, even if you make these things, they'll often meet an untimely end (Murphy's Law says they'll run into Stanley;-), so they had better be on the inexpensive side.
After a lot of scouting around just to have anything that works to do minimally invasive net content filtering for a reasonable cost, I came up with the Linksys WRT54GS router (review) and their Parental Controls service. Not by any means perfect, but most of the time, it does the job and works on ALL the connected computers, you just define different users. It is not ideal for households where everyone shares the same computer. What it's best at is cutting off services at certain times of day. You can configure the filtering and then largely set and forget it, although you need to err on the lax side unless you always want to be overriding the controls. For whatever reason, Linksys doesn't really advertise this service very much, despite being one of the more cost effective options out there. For this reason, I am always thinking that they are going to discontinue the service, but they haven't (and I've had it for a couple of years now). The fact that it is administrated through the router is a big plus, comparable to corporate solutions costing much, much more.
If you can buy with a fixed cost, that's nice, but TiVo is also (effectively) renting, since the box is useless without their service. I have a TiVo Series II (with one of the last "lifetime subscriptions") which I love. It's on an old 20" CRT TV in a little room off the kitchen. It cost me $60 for the DVR and something ($200?) for the subscription, but this gives me a fixed capital cost. TiVo's monthly subscription is really not much different than the cable company, plus they charge extra for the unit, which the cable company does not. In the family room, we have a Motorola 6416 DVR (pitifully small 160GB HD, but that's the best they have right now) from RCN on an HP 50" HDTV (via HDMI and it looks awesome). It was the only HDTV DVR solution that didn't set me back even slightly financially. It's also a cable box providing all my premium channels. Sadly, the TiVo Series II sees only the analog channels, although I can adjust the time used by recordings by adjusting the quality level -- something you can't do with most of the digital boxes! If an HDTV show is 19Mbps, it has to save it at that rate. So, our Motorola DVR is filled up with DiscoveryHD Planet Earth episodes. I'll watch them eventually and get space back to record a few other things! The DVR would usually cost about $14/mo, but after getting RCN to knock many $/mo. off my subscription (did I mention that there is now a competitive market that includes Comcast and Verizon FiOS?), it's effectively free (until sometime next year when the rates go back up -- and I'll worry about it then). Neither the Motorola DVR nor the TiVo is completely satisfactory, but the TiVo is far more useful on a daily basis. None of the HD TiVo solutions seems satisfactory to me (the new one just having the same miserably small 160GB HD). Verizon FiOS has a version of the Motorola 6416 that can play out to a Verizon (non-DVR) set top box as well. That's pretty nice, but with my nice bundled rate (TV, Phone, Internet) I'm sticking with RCN for the time being.
> What kind of a phone crashes regularly when you go to answer a call? I had a SONY-Ericsson T616 from Cingular (OK, the old AT&T Wireless) and it would restart/reboot about 1 in 20 times when I would try to answer a call. I cannot remember the Motorola L7 that I have now ever doing that. Motorola also understands direct shortcuts, and I can even carry a handful of favorite songs along with the L7's (rather limited) iTunes. The T616 had a case of "really bad UI", often unable to do the obvious thing (i.e. your text message example).
The first thing I did when I got a Linksys WAP11 was to change the SSID to MaryPoppins. I briefly tried hiding the SSID altogether, but my laptop kept getting confused. I enabled the 128 bit WEP key, which may be far from perfect, but, at the least it implies KEEP OUT. These days I mostly use wired 1000Base-T though.
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A number of years back, I had a friend whose personal effects were stolen. Thief apparently gathered enough information to head straight for the RMV and get a new license with their picture on it, causing untold problems, mainly because the thief was a pro, having done this many times. Every time they got into trouble, it would be blamed on who they said they were, not them. Luckily, this person was caught with the forged ID, but it took a long time for my friend to recover from all the damage. Would be interesting to see if this kind of face scanning would help catch such a career criminal.
Just be glad that someone invented it! Worked at a company that started with a few engineers and a handful of Macintosh IIx machines on AppleTalk. When we grew to a 10-way AppleTalk network, it was pitifully slow. One day, Joe (his real name ;-), came back with a StarNet controller/hub. A bit of twisted pair later, we had a fast network once again! Not sure exactly how close to Ethernet that was, but it was sure faster than AppleTalk! Later migrated to 10Base-T (and were outraged when Apple's Quadra machines arrived and needed a 10Base-T AAUI adapter costing another 100 bucks!). Having to support multiple kinds of transceivers, including coax probably slowed down the adoption of Ethernet technology. Coax had lots of connector issues, something I still see with my Cable TV installation every now and then. These days, I only use 1000Base-T, because packet LATENCY is much lower, and much of the time that's probably more important than overall throughput being higher. Sure, wireless is constantly evolving and almost can't be avoided with modern mobile devices, but fast wired still seems far more reliable.
A couple of year back, this guy drove into the fire department parking lot, brazenly loaded up a reel of copper (wire, I think -- possibly for maintaining the town's antique "Red Fire Box" alarm system?) and drove off with it (not before being noticed either): Lexington man is 'person of interest' in area copper thefts.
I have a Tivo HD that I own. This means I can do things to it, like put in a 1TB drive, so I can keep well over 100 hours of HD programming around. It has a single "M CableCard" in it for $1.50/mo that lets it decode two channels at once. I pay Tivo $99/yr subscription, and the ($220 -- plus $80 for the new drive -- though I still have the old one, kept as a spare) that I paid for the unit is long since paid off by canceling all of my movie channels. The Tivo can use Netflix, Blockbuster, and Amazon for movie content (if I want), not to mention YouTube and other downloadable web videos. It has optical digital sound output, although I didn't use that until recently -- and it's awesome. See any of that in a cable company DVR? Not to mention that my old cable DVR (since returned) drove me nuts trying to properly schedule programs. It would record the same program several times and would often reboot just when I had finally gotten something programmed, etc. Several times I have been at work when I realized I wanted to record something. Tivos do that easily; cable companies should wake up. They just aren't keeping up. So what are they doing? Yes, they're licensing Tivo (albeit a more expensive version) for their customers! I have an old Tivo Series 2 connected to the first cable box we had by a serial cable. Still works wonders, despite being "single tuner". That one has a lifetime subscription, and paid for itself several years ago. It's on my "first cable box", which is free. [additional cable boxes would be $2.95/mo.].
I thought this would happen with all of the "premium channel" movies on my Tivo HD when I cancelled RCN's movie package, but amazingly, they are still there and playable. It's either a technical oversight on their part, or they're just not quite as annoying as Comcast (or whatever they choose to call themselves these days). I suppose all of these are "gray area" issues, and might be covered in the provider's finely worded "service agreement"?
Seem like you could have it both ways (for instance, report both GB and GiB?). However, I am still waiting for my $50 for all the Seagate drives I bought! NewEgg had all my old invoices online, so I just filed those, but years later, it's still not settled (even if it's a stupid suit). See: http://www.harddrive-settlement.com/notice.htm
So, if they dial it up now, we'll get all those 1960s visual effects explosions: as seen on TV in "The Time Tunnel"? I'm sure that doing effects for those old shows might have been exciting on occasion, but since we're paying for this hadron collider research, I suppose it's counterproductive. The collider now seems like a much better investment than those other billions Congress is busy spending for us.
I think its unrealistic to expect a consumer level computer system to assuredly last more than 5 years (isn't that the standard depreciation schedule anyway?), especially if you plan to add additional software to it over time (newer software tends to be ever more demanding?). My strategy is to buy cheap (well, if it's not Apple ;-), but reliable (i.e. read reviews) hardware and replace parts, if necessary, in the interim. Buying reliable does not have to mean buying expensive.
As far as drives go, I have a 1TB WD10EACS being beaten to death daily in a TiVo HD (since May 2008) and it's pretty reliable so far, as are all but one of my 200GB ATA drives (works once it starts, but has a flaky spin up -- I suppose I should stop using it?). Many of my older SCSI drives (4GB, 8GB, circa 1995) seem to work as well as they ever did -- I've sold some to agencies looking for replacements in nuclear power plants and similar applications (don't you feel safe now?). However, an 8GB USB flash key I was using became completely inert one day -- and it didn't seem to be a static shock issue. I had an identical 1GB one that worked fine for years, and I went back to that until I got another 8GB one (different brand this time). Didn't lose anything, as it was only being used as a backup device. For unchanging applications that never need updated software, I suppose you could just keep an old system going forever, maybe backing it up just enough (clone drive?) so you could buy a replacement old system on ebay and swap it in if necessary. Works, but it's generally better to "get modern" when possible --- though it never really stays that way for long!
When the aliens (any brand) come, we can simply offer them this individual. This will keep them busy for quite a while, and maybe they'll forget to invade. Meanwhile, Shampoo should work as a patent examiner. Most new patent applications will simply be met with "I already invented that."
In 1996, I had a PowerMac 4400 (overkill, but one of the few Macs into which you could stick multiple Ethernet cards, 100Base-T on the network) running Vicom Internet Gateway (had Parental Controls and all sorts of nice features). I used to restart that machine every now and then. When the Linksys BEFSR41 arrived, it freed up the PowerMac and I would reboot it every few months just for fun (paired with an original Shark Fin cable modem from LANcity -- seldom restarted that either -- as it was in the basement and the router was in the attic). Eventually bought a Linksys WRT54GS (v2) to use the Parental Controls feature (not perfect, but mostly did what I needed, though that feature is being discontinued). Never restarted that much either (paired originally with a 3Com 3CR29210, later with a D-Link DCM-202, and these days with a Motorola SB5101). This is all on a network with several TiVos, a Win/XP machine, a handful of Macs (mostly MacOS X these days), and an AirPort Express (2 client laptops) and I still don't need to restart it. You probably need to figure out just what is failing by doing some network sniffing? Maybe it's related to the ISP? I've had this gear hooked up to RCN's cable for 7 years with few issues (with the gear itself).
In 1999, as we were all busy making sure that Y2K bugs weren't going to be a big deal, someone where I used to work created an email account (as a Lotus Notes database) so customers could make direct inquiries about Y2K compliance. Most anyone could browse that email database. One day, I received a blistering email from a customer, whom I did not know, asking why their Y2K inquiries had been repeatedly ignored. That user had enabled a return receipt and the Lotus Notes database server was automatically generating return receipt emails to the sender each time one of those email records was browsed -- without informing the reader. Oops. I quickly put a stop to that.
The reason it didn't work is that "Dreaming of Brazil" didn't yet exist ;-) I stopped using the Rio years ago -- and we won't discuss what happens when you put a physically wet SmartMedia card in it ;-(. Oh yeah, and there was a small piece of black electrical tape to hold the battery cover closed (the latch broke the first week I had it). I still like the Rio 300's form factor, feel, and controls better than a lot of other players though. It was often home to my "almost dead" AA batteries as well!
Well, my Rio 300 only worked with Windows/98 on a PC with a Parallel Port. While someone had written some Windows/2000 software for it, I could never get it to work. I don't think Creative ever supported it after 98. I donated it to a local Boy Scout troop when I gave them my PIII machine. Also tossed in my serial port connected Olympus D-320L camera (now there was a great little early digital camera!). I still have way too much old gear, most of it worth not much. Want some?http://s90697863.onlinehome.us/ebay/misc/ForSale.html
and maybe sometimes not? Of course, even if you make these things, they'll often meet an untimely end (Murphy's Law says they'll run into Stanley ;-), so they had better be on the inexpensive side.
After a lot of scouting around just to have anything that works to do minimally invasive net content filtering for a reasonable cost, I came up with the Linksys WRT54GS router (review) and their Parental Controls service. Not by any means perfect, but most of the time, it does the job and works on ALL the connected computers, you just define different users. It is not ideal for households where everyone shares the same computer. What it's best at is cutting off services at certain times of day. You can configure the filtering and then largely set and forget it, although you need to err on the lax side unless you always want to be overriding the controls. For whatever reason, Linksys doesn't really advertise this service very much, despite being one of the more cost effective options out there. For this reason, I am always thinking that they are going to discontinue the service, but they haven't (and I've had it for a couple of years now). The fact that it is administrated through the router is a big plus, comparable to corporate solutions costing much, much more.
I was always amazed that MERL still existed, and it apparently continued to do basic research, a real rarity these days.
If you can buy with a fixed cost, that's nice, but TiVo is also (effectively) renting, since the box is useless without their service. I have a TiVo Series II (with one of the last "lifetime subscriptions") which I love. It's on an old 20" CRT TV in a little room off the kitchen. It cost me $60 for the DVR and something ($200?) for the subscription, but this gives me a fixed capital cost. TiVo's monthly subscription is really not much different than the cable company, plus they charge extra for the unit, which the cable company does not. In the family room, we have a Motorola 6416 DVR (pitifully small 160GB HD, but that's the best they have right now) from RCN on an HP 50" HDTV (via HDMI and it looks awesome). It was the only HDTV DVR solution that didn't set me back even slightly financially. It's also a cable box providing all my premium channels. Sadly, the TiVo Series II sees only the analog channels, although I can adjust the time used by recordings by adjusting the quality level -- something you can't do with most of the digital boxes! If an HDTV show is 19Mbps, it has to save it at that rate. So, our Motorola DVR is filled up with DiscoveryHD Planet Earth episodes. I'll watch them eventually and get space back to record a few other things! The DVR would usually cost about $14/mo, but after getting RCN to knock many $/mo. off my subscription (did I mention that there is now a competitive market that includes Comcast and Verizon FiOS?), it's effectively free (until sometime next year when the rates go back up -- and I'll worry about it then). Neither the Motorola DVR nor the TiVo is completely satisfactory, but the TiVo is far more useful on a daily basis. None of the HD TiVo solutions seems satisfactory to me (the new one just having the same miserably small 160GB HD). Verizon FiOS has a version of the Motorola 6416 that can play out to a Verizon (non-DVR) set top box as well. That's pretty nice, but with my nice bundled rate (TV, Phone, Internet) I'm sticking with RCN for the time being.
> What kind of a phone crashes regularly when you go to answer a call?
I had a SONY-Ericsson T616 from Cingular (OK, the old AT&T Wireless) and it would restart/reboot about 1 in 20 times when I would try to answer a call. I cannot remember the Motorola L7 that I have now ever doing that. Motorola also understands direct shortcuts, and I can even carry a handful of favorite songs along with the L7's (rather limited) iTunes. The T616 had a case of "really bad UI", often unable to do the obvious thing (i.e. your text message example).
The first thing I did when I got a Linksys WAP11 was to change the SSID to MaryPoppins. I briefly tried hiding the SSID altogether, but my laptop kept getting confused. I enabled the 128 bit WEP key, which may be far from perfect, but, at the least it implies KEEP OUT. These days I mostly use wired 1000Base-T though.