I find these numbers a bit hard to believe. I'd much rather see how many people have personal e-mail accounts than "access to the internet". If I regularly visit the library or the mall and have once or twice browsed the web on one of those public kiosks - does this mean I have access to the Internet? I think according them it's a yes.
There are 4 people living in my house. I definitely have access to the internet, my wife doesn't care about computers and my kids are too young to understand it. So in our house it is 1 out of 4 people, and I know people who do not have any kind of Internet access in their home because they don't even own a computer.
So I'm a bit skeptical about these numbers. I'm guessing there is probably about 200 million actually capable of using the internet in this country (of the whole population, some are too young, some too old, some are unable for other reasons - ill (mentally or otherwise), in jail, etc.).
This is where the Virtual Servers come in, and this is an excellent example of why I think everyone should have one - you become your own ISP for about the same price.
Why pay someone to host your mail or any other data in a way where it cannot be accessed securely when you can get your own Virtual [Dedicate/Private] Server and install the mail/web/whatever server of your liking and configure it the way you think it should be?
We provide VServer based virtual servers and by default we provison them with IMAP and POP SSL-enabled only.
As a side note - I've been using SSL for IMAP since 1997 or so and I cannot believe there still are people using unencrypted POP/IMAP, but there are. If you ever happen to be sitting with a laptop at a corporate meeting, one where everyone plugs into an old ethernet hub in the middle of the table, it is always a lot of fun to fire up a sniffer to get all the passwords from the non-technical people at the table checking their e-mail (probably using Outlook too). Then you blurb out the password in the middle of a conversation and whatch the person's reaction.
(Be careful - what may be interpreted as a harmless joke in the late nineties, these days will probably get you fired!)
What's funny is I always run for the update anytime I see an announcement like this, then when the "Shutdown or Restart" dialog comes up, I just ignore it and continue going about my business thinking I'll reboot at the first available opportunity. Guess what - it's been over two weeks since the last time I ran software update, and I still have not rebooted - the SU is just sitting somewhere in the background waiting for me to answer...
hate to do this, but I can't let you get away with this, you just said 1 cubic meter, where as I said, 1.5 cubic meters, meaning 6 bathtubs, as I calculated.
You're right - somewhere I switched from 1.5 to 1. So indeed, 1.5 tons of water is 6 bathtubs, I stand corrected. Still, even at 6 bathtubs, I think my point still stands - it is not like a truckload of water as the original article would want you to believe.
As to support though - my point was that 1.5 tons of water doesn't have such an obscene weight that it immediately falls through the floor. Here is another example - a grand piano weighs about half a ton.
t's max fill 65 gallons, by my math, that puts you at six bath tubs filled right to the top.So basically a water basin that is 35.7 inches/2.8 feet deep a foot and a half wide and 36 feet long.
Why make it so complex? A cube of water 1.5x1.5x1.5meters (or 4.92x4.92x4.92 feet) would weigh exactly 1.5 metric tons. That's by definition of a metric ton.
But if you insist on doing it in gallons - 1 cubic meter is 264.17 gallons, so 4 bathtubs above (not 6 as you calculated). (OK, that's more than "a bathtub or two" as I said originally, but I've posted a link to a large tub that would indeed hold half a metric ton of water somewhere above).
Assuming that your floor supports 40 pounds per square foot (common building code in US), a metric ton (2204.6 pounds), would require an area of 55.1 square feet of floor (or a square 7.4x7.4 feet) without any additional support. Usually a bathroom would have additional support.
BTW, the above was calculated with metric tons in mind. There is another ton, which is defined as 2000 pounds which is about 17% less than a metric ton.
And without lots of really expensive and specialized hardware.
Hmm. Having seen their installation, I wouldn't say it's inexpensive and it certainly does use specialized hardware, in fact it is all specialized hardware AFAICT that only google uses.
Managers typically have a list of people they'd like to let go anyway, but can't because of the near certainty of getting sued. When a 'round of layofs' arrives, it's a welcome opportunity to get rid of the dead weight.
This is not how it worked in what I have seen. The way it happens in larger organizations is a law firm specializing in RIFs gets hired, who then weeds through lists of employees and comes up with a recomendation that is legally least troublesome. There is some negotiation in those lists, but generally they are used as is, and the law firm will also write all the necessary notices, memos, severance agreements, etc.
Since the law firm knows little about the organization, it is pretty much a coin toss.
how do you continue to produce quality work in the face of constant staff reductions?
One cannot produce quality work in the face of constant staff reduction. Having seen one too many RIF situations in the past 3 years, one thing that I learned is that reduction in force and downsizing is in itself an enormous amount of effort which consumes all of organizational resources. It requires a whole lot of strategic planning on the management side, a lot of extra work on the employees (shifting projects, transferring knwoledge, locking down accounts, figuring stuff others did, etc), all producing nothing in the end. It also creates an enormous amount of tension and sets off the panicky types which results in a very counter-creative athmosphere.
I think a good analogy would be severe weather - when there is a hurricane or a snow storm outside, people don't go to work, watch their house, stock up on candles, board up windows, etc, etc, until the storm is over. Or ilness - when you're sick, your body is all consumed with fighting the infection and you simply cannot do anything else but sleep.
I've tried my hardest to maintain the level of productivity that I once had before the.bomb, but lately I've resigned to the idea that I should just take it easy until things stabilize again (which, I have no doubt, they will, but probably not until 2005).
Is there such a thing as an RFID tag locator? Could someone electronically-savvy pitch in on this? Can I have a little device that beeps louder as it gets closer to a tag?
DRM simply cannot work without enforcement in the hardware.
And Microsoft is well aware of this. DRM for them is a great way to continue the monopoly on the personal desktop.
It will not be long before we start seeing PC's (or more likely laptops) that have hardware measures that restrict it to being able to run only a specific operating system (nothing new, I believe the xbox does it already). This will all be done under the auspices of DRM, but the real intent of Microsoft will be to leave the consumer no choice but to pay for the Windows license.
Now I don't think the average geek has anything to worry about as far as this hardware goes - the standard PC's capable of running any OS are not going anywhere, so you can still run your Linux or FreeBSD.
Playing media legally on Linux and *BSD might be a different story though....
I am not 100% certain, but I believe their approach is similar to that of FreeBSD jails or the Linux VServer where in addition to a user id and a process id you also have another id (jail id or context id in FreeBSD and VServer respectively). The point is that it's not breakthrough because FreeBSD and Linux already do this.
"MD" - Metabolic Dominance, of course. If TCP/IP is any example, much of what DARPA comes up with trickles down to the civilian world eventually. Just imagine - a company where people work 5 days a week, NON STOP! I can't wait.
This is slightly OT, but I've found one of the best ways to test (as opposed diagnose) hardware is to install FreeBSD then run "make buildworld" on it... If it completes with no problems, it's a pretty good indication that the hardware is in good condition.
Some say that there's no need to compile the ports, and they should be all binary, but oh well.
There are benefits to binary-package installation.
Don't confuse the FreeBSD ports with a packaging system. FreeBSD has its own nice packaging system. (If you've used Solaris a lot you'll feel right at home) The FreeBSD ports all create and install packages for you "behind the scenes", and you can install any package as binary on FreeBSD as simply as:
I am not at all sure I see the benefit of it. It makes connecting more complicated and therefore troublesome, while sniffing out a "secret" knock should be trivial with tcpdump or whatever tool you like to use.
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No, but the proliferation of crappy Microsoft software will. In fact it has already.
There are 4 people living in my house. I definitely have access to the internet, my wife doesn't care about computers and my kids are too young to understand it. So in our house it is 1 out of 4 people, and I know people who do not have any kind of Internet access in their home because they don't even own a computer.
So I'm a bit skeptical about these numbers. I'm guessing there is probably about 200 million actually capable of using the internet in this country (of the whole population, some are too young, some too old, some are unable for other reasons - ill (mentally or otherwise), in jail, etc.).
This is where the Virtual Servers come in, and this is an excellent example of why I think everyone should have one - you become your own ISP for about the same price.
Why pay someone to host your mail or any other data in a way where it cannot be accessed securely when you can get your own Virtual [Dedicate/Private] Server and install the mail/web/whatever server of your liking and configure it the way you think it should be?
Try here
We provide VServer based virtual servers and by default we provison them with IMAP and POP SSL-enabled only.
As a side note - I've been using SSL for IMAP since 1997 or so and I cannot believe there still are people using unencrypted POP/IMAP, but there are. If you ever happen to be sitting with a laptop at a corporate meeting, one where everyone plugs into an old ethernet hub in the middle of the table, it is always a lot of fun to fire up a sniffer to get all the passwords from the non-technical people at the table checking their e-mail (probably using Outlook too). Then you blurb out the password in the middle of a conversation and whatch the person's reaction. (Be careful - what may be interpreted as a harmless joke in the late nineties, these days will probably get you fired!)
What's funny is I always run for the update anytime I see an announcement like this, then when the "Shutdown or Restart" dialog comes up, I just ignore it and continue going about my business thinking I'll reboot at the first available opportunity. Guess what - it's been over two weeks since the last time I ran software update, and I still have not rebooted - the SU is just sitting somewhere in the background waiting for me to answer...
You're right - somewhere I switched from 1.5 to 1. So indeed, 1.5 tons of water is 6 bathtubs, I stand corrected. Still, even at 6 bathtubs, I think my point still stands - it is not like a truckload of water as the original article would want you to believe.
As to support though - my point was that 1.5 tons of water doesn't have such an obscene weight that it immediately falls through the floor. Here is another example - a grand piano weighs about half a ton.
This is a bit besides the point, but AFAIK military servants are not government employees per se.
Why make it so complex? A cube of water 1.5x1.5x1.5meters (or 4.92x4.92x4.92 feet) would weigh exactly 1.5 metric tons. That's by definition of a metric ton.
But if you insist on doing it in gallons - 1 cubic meter is 264.17 gallons, so 4 bathtubs above (not 6 as you calculated). (OK, that's more than "a bathtub or two" as I said originally, but I've posted a link to a large tub that would indeed hold half a metric ton of water somewhere above).
Assuming that your floor supports 40 pounds per square foot (common building code in US), a metric ton (2204.6 pounds), would require an area of 55.1 square feet of floor (or a square 7.4x7.4 feet) without any additional support. Usually a bathroom would have additional support.
BTW, the above was calculated with metric tons in mind. There is another ton, which is defined as 2000 pounds which is about 17% less than a metric ton.
Hmm. Having seen their installation, I wouldn't say it's inexpensive and it certainly does use specialized hardware, in fact it is all specialized hardware AFAICT that only google uses.
>Where do you buy your bathtubs?
Ok, I did say a bath tub or two. I think I like this one. At 125 gallons, it's almost half a cubic meter... :-)
1.5 tons is 1.5 cubic meters of water, which is only about a bath tub full (or two, depending on the size).
This is not how it worked in what I have seen. The way it happens in larger organizations is a law firm specializing in RIFs gets hired, who then weeds through lists of employees and comes up with a recomendation that is legally least troublesome. There is some negotiation in those lists, but generally they are used as is, and the law firm will also write all the necessary notices, memos, severance agreements, etc.
Since the law firm knows little about the organization, it is pretty much a coin toss.
One cannot produce quality work in the face of constant staff reduction. Having seen one too many RIF situations in the past 3 years, one thing that I learned is that reduction in force and downsizing is in itself an enormous amount of effort which consumes all of organizational resources. It requires a whole lot of strategic planning on the management side, a lot of extra work on the employees (shifting projects, transferring knwoledge, locking down accounts, figuring stuff others did, etc), all producing nothing in the end. It also creates an enormous amount of tension and sets off the panicky types which results in a very counter-creative athmosphere.
I think a good analogy would be severe weather - when there is a hurricane or a snow storm outside, people don't go to work, watch their house, stock up on candles, board up windows, etc, etc, until the storm is over. Or ilness - when you're sick, your body is all consumed with fighting the infection and you simply cannot do anything else but sleep.
I've tried my hardest to maintain the level of productivity that I once had before the .bomb, but lately I've resigned to the idea that I should just take it easy until things stabilize again (which, I have no doubt, they will, but probably not until 2005).
Dear moderators - please mod the parent up - this is the answer I was looking for.
Is there such a thing as an RFID tag locator? Could someone electronically-savvy pitch in on this? Can I have a little device that beeps louder as it gets closer to a tag?
And Microsoft is well aware of this. DRM for them is a great way to continue the monopoly on the personal desktop.
It will not be long before we start seeing PC's (or more likely laptops) that have hardware measures that restrict it to being able to run only a specific operating system (nothing new, I believe the xbox does it already). This will all be done under the auspices of DRM, but the real intent of Microsoft will be to leave the consumer no choice but to pay for the Windows license.
Now I don't think the average geek has anything to worry about as far as this hardware goes - the standard PC's capable of running any OS are not going anywhere, so you can still run your Linux or FreeBSD.
Playing media legally on Linux and *BSD might be a different story though....
I am not 100% certain, but I believe their approach is similar to that of FreeBSD jails or the Linux VServer where in addition to a user id and a process id you also have another id (jail id or context id in FreeBSD and VServer respectively). The point is that it's not breakthrough because FreeBSD and Linux already do this.
"MD" - Metabolic Dominance, of course. If TCP/IP is any example, much of what DARPA comes up with trickles down to the civilian world eventually. Just imagine - a company where people work 5 days a week, NON STOP! I can't wait.
This is slightly OT, but I've found one of the best ways to test (as opposed diagnose) hardware is to install FreeBSD then run "make buildworld" on it... If it completes with no problems, it's a pretty good indication that the hardware is in good condition.
So are they going to make my bandwidth tax-deductable?
Why in the world was this moderated as "funny"?
Don't confuse the FreeBSD ports with a packaging system. FreeBSD has its own nice packaging system. (If you've used Solaris a lot you'll feel right at home) The FreeBSD ports all create and install packages for you "behind the scenes", and you can install any package as binary on FreeBSD as simply as:
# pkg_add ftp://ftp2.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/5 .2-RELEASE/packages/archivers/rpm-3.0.6_8.tbz
What commercial licensing? The FreeBSD license is considerably less restrictive than Linux's. (OK, we're getting off-topic now...)
The recent whois nonesense shows pretty clearly what happens when the government "seriously does something".
I am not at all sure I see the benefit of it. It makes connecting more complicated and therefore troublesome, while sniffing out a "secret" knock should be trivial with tcpdump or whatever tool you like to use.