Ridiculous that developers will not listen to their users, yes. The Open Source world is just as much a free market as the commercial world. With more options - can't fork your code in the commercial world, but I can certainly change brands / vendors / providers easily enough.
Beautiful, isn't it?
I've hired and worked with a lot of programmers. I'm biased toward computer scientists with solid technical training. They often understand far more theory and how the technology underlying their application works. I have hired people from technical schools that don't have the deep technical understanding of, say, compiler theory and machine language. Usually, these people can move from one language and environment to another with relative ease. As systems and technology evolve, adaptability can be key to success.
Some of the things I've run into when hiring non-scientists in programming/development roles:
A programmer that doesn't like other programmer's practices of using "makefiles" and lots of little programs to develop large tools. He's never heard of modular programming in the courses he's taken. He also does not understand how to document code at all. Conditional / dependency based compilation is confusing to him. And he'd rather see all his program in one "view." In a recent discussion, we found out he's never heard of dynamic and static binding, and he didn't understand the concepts. Of course, people trying to support his code are frustrated. He has a BS from a liberal arts based program in a general LA college.
A web programmer that graduated from a very technical school, who wanted to look at changes in a.dll file to see what a developer had changed in a library. It never occurred to him that the dll is a compiled binary. When I finally dumped one for him in assembly, he was totally lost. He needed to see the source code. He has a BS from a private engineering college, in web design, but didn't understand what a compiled library is.
A network manager that can't write anything but the most basic batch script files because using the "if" statement is too confusing. He has an MS in Computer Science from another country but his undergrad degree is in some LA business program. I believe that he missed out on a lot of the basics as a result.
A graduate of a 2-year technical programming certificate who doesn't know any programming languages or constructs outside those in C++ and C#. PHP seems "too wierd to program in" for anything he wants to do.
All of these people are working on a common project, different aspects.
Agreed. As a CIO in two past careers, I can attest to this readily. I've personally dealt with some of the worst things you can imagine when "users" are involved in their own support. However, there are usually a few in an organization that really are aware. Those, I co-opt. I've created groups of "super-users" that have more capabilities, the ability to do more with their own computers, and who are involved in setting the computing standards for the organization as a whole. I want their expertise, their involvement, and their support. I've changed many policies because of their input, and many practices.
With all that said, there are downsides of which the CIO should be aware. I had one self-proclaimed networking expert that brought up a DHCP server with a 16-address range on a 3,500 computer network. For those of you that don't know the technology, what that means is the next morning, 3,484 computers were denied network connections by his (idle) server because it was out of available addresses. His VP and I did not agree on his skill set, and the result was her entire network was down. She and I managed to reach an accord, in which his 12-node office became isolated from the rest of the network, and firewalled. His later disruptions impacted far fewer of her people.
Generally, though, getting groups of super-users together with the IT staff can, after initial shock, result in strong alliances, reduced friction, and some really positive and healthy changes in support.
I see this as a good opportunity for a security firm to make a little cash for their efforts. The auction approach is not necessarily the best or most ethical approach as far as we, the consumers, are concerned, but we have no proof that they didn't approach Real prior to the auction, with a private offer.
Security firms take a huge risk these days even announcing they've found exploits and publishing them. How many links do you need to articles on lawsuits against blackhats for revealing an exploit, just because some software author doesn't want it known that they have security holes? I ask myself, "How many unpublished exploits are still to be found in existing platforms because the company knows about it but has buried the information and is in no rush to develop a fix?"
Not quite true. A T-1 is not guaranteed bandwidth past the end of the circuit. If I buy a point-to-point T-1 between two sites, I have guaranteed bandwidth between those sites. If I buy a T-1 to any ISP, I only have that bandwidth to the point where it connects to the ISP's network. The ISP still only purchases so much uplink bandwidth, and it's still shared, unless I work specific SLAs for "unshared" bandwidth.
IMO, The biggest advantage of a T-1 is that it's easily channelized for traditional services. I can mux off channels for traditional voice (POTS) circuits, compressed video, security systems, etc. that are legacy systems, and gradually rechannelize it to pure data for IP traffic as I convert systems. The second biggest advantage at this time is that I can get a T-1 in more locations in rural America than I can get DSL. So I can build regional networks even in towns where cable providers see no value in extending broadband, and smaller telcos see no profit in establishing DSL access.
There are, of course, many other reasons, but any ISP could set up a virtual circuit through their backbone for point-to-point access on broadband or DSL, if they cared to provide the service. Most don't want to mess with it, not understanding the business potential.
Insight offers GbE connections over fiber in this region in some towns where they deemed it potentially profitable. That's GbE into their backbone as an ISP. Discussions with them on point-to-point services got them thinking about how they could do it, although the rates went up dramatically.
In fact, research and methods have been done for years. There have also been some systems developed as a result. A partial listing of research:
1977, Rome: G. Forsen, M. Nelson, and R. Staron, "Personal Attributes Authentication Techniques," Rome Air Development Center Report RADC-TR-77-1033, Air Force Base Griffis (New York, 1977).
1980, Rand: R. Gaines, W. Lisowski, S. Press, and N. Shapiro, "Authentication by Keystroke Timing: Some Preliminary Results," Technical Report Rand report R-256-NSF, Rand Corporation (1980).
1990, Gupta: R. Joyce and G. Gupta, "Identity Authentication Based on Keystroke Latencies," Communications of the ACM 33:2 (1990), 168-176.
Is this not also similar to their cellular phone support? Verizon sells you a variety of high-powered cellular phones with various features disabled? Such as:
- A calendaring tool that doesn't connect and sync via USB with your computer as advertised by the original phone vendor, even though you've spent the extra $60 for the software from the phone manufacturer.
- A camera for which the only way to extract photos is to use Verizon's pay service to send them to someone else.
Is Verizon also a supported of the pay-for-priority-bandwidth (re: non-neutral Internet) initiatives we've seen?
Good idea on the inventory! I'm suddenly finding myself considering turning on SNMP agents in everything. I have about 1,000 nodes on the network, but SNMP is only running on some core server equipment and switches/routers. I have a number of additional servers that I could spread it to, before distributing to clients. I am curious to see how performance is maintained as I scale up the number of devices. I have Zenoss running right now on a desktop-class machine: 1.7GHz single core w/ 1GB of RAM and 40GB disk. It was a spare, and Zenoss, MySQL, and Apache are all happily coexisting on it, even as I run autodiscovery on it and watch the network traffic with other tools at the same time.
I'm using Nagios on a group of core network devices. I have to be super careful not to perform an "up2date" on it (using RH 4.0 EL) because the Nagios packages always overwrite my config files. But Nagios is good, and it's been very useful. It took me a few days of work to get it set up the way I wanted, and it's been a charm ever since.
A few weeks ago someone posted an article on the top ten OSS projects to watch, and Zenoss was one of those projects. I downloaded it to experiment. I had it up and running in about 20 minutes, on Ubuntu. It's far more powerful at its ability to gather data from nodes. And setup is far less manual. Network discovery worked very well. It found devices on our network that we didn't know were out there. It required no integration with other packages. The interface is also more intuitive in some areas, such as viewing event histories. But, it's more challenging to find performance charts the first few times.
I especially liked the automatic snmp walk through the MIBS on each device. This makes it much easier to pull statistics from it, without having to edit text files. The MRTG-style charts are also good. I wish they were more readily configurable. I also wish there were more MIBS in the distribution, but you can find most by carefully searching equipment provider's web sites.
All in all, After running it side by side with my Nagios setup for a couple of weeks, I like it much better. And I'm moving more SNMP agents into my network just because of Zenoss.
This is an old approach. We merely have to look back nearly 10 years to see the Toshiba Libretto, for instance, the same size as a VCR cartridge. None of the miniatures of this generalized line (full desktop with Windows) have done well. There are a number of reasons besides the Microsoft keystroke issues. People want something larger to read, better keyboards, etc..
IMO, the two things that differentiate this from product offerings in the past are:
- communications changes. This includes wireless networking and USB connections.
- the generation of users who are now comfortable "thumbing" smart phones.
If you are near a community college, you might have more meeting options. Many community colleges support small local businesses directly. While I cannot guarantee that the closest college to you has all this, these are fairly commonly available:
Meeting rooms in their libraries or other facilities that can be used for free or rented for a nominal fee.
Rooms with podiums, video projectors, and even computers that can be used or rented.
Small business support centers with specialized facilities and support options.
Access to costly online research databases available to community patrons.
Cafeterias that can internally cater meetings.
With more than 3,000 community / technical colleges across the US, there might be something near you. Many times, even though the college itself might be distant, it might have a local campus or branch with some of the options above.
As a CIO and IT manager for nearly 2 decades, I have to comment that I am appalled that many young programmers in recent years are clueless about text editors in general. I have found with employees in the last 10 years, the "Windows" generation if you will, they use notepad on occasion, which has limited functionality, and when developing on Unix/Linux systems, they are completely useless. A number of systems that we maintain are slimmed-down systems. The development of apps for these happen on larger systems, and after testing, the apps are moved to the slim systems. I've had to dedicate a lot of money to training resources for these newer hires so they can edit even a simple text config file... We now prefer knowledge of vi as an entry level skill. And if someone claims they have it, we test them.
The article quoted rate is 3.5 oz of cow dung for.042 oz of gas. For each ton of cow dung, you'd get.19 gallons of gas, which in the US at this time, would sell at the pump for roughly 40 to 50 cents.
Wonder what the cost (in gas alone) would be to load that ton of dung into your (hopefully large) truck, then drive it to the collection point. And what do you do with the by-product? Once that 1/5th of a gallon is extracted, there is still a ton of "processed" cow dung to haul again. Probably going to exceed 3 gallons of gas in cost.
It's going to have to be a LOT more efficient before this makes sense.
I'm a consultant in central Illinois, USA. Once you're outside of Chicago with it's associated 'burbs, your options for broadband become pretty limited. If you're near Peoria, Springfield, Champaign, Decatur, or Kankakee, you have some options with DSL and cable broadband.
Some of the small towns, populations > 200, also have cable, but it's typically only because some mom and pop cable company built it up and then.
SBC offers DSL only within a couple of miles of town. There is a subdivision of more than 500 homes right outside of Peoria and Bartonville, both of which have DSL. Yet the subdivision doesn't. Until the cable provider brought in a couple of T-1's about 3 years ago, no options existed. Yet this is less than 3 miles as the crow flies from Bartonville. And there is a new switch and fiber (both less than 10 years old) running right along the road outside the subdivision. And we all know that SBC isn't readily doing any landline buildout for areas they "already cover."
Verizon covers some of the towns in the region, like Canton. But guess what? You can't even get proper caller ID for your PBX from Verizon in that region. Antiquated equipment with no likelihood of change for a while.
There are also numerous other telcos involved in the region, none of who provide services beyond basic voice grade lines if you're outside of town limits.
Insight (ATT) provides high-speed services via cable, and they were doing build-outs in central Illinois, but they have a formula that they use to determine whether they're going to invest. They look for existing fiber, but will add as needed. However, more than 75% of the towns in the region don't fit their profile. If the town's population is less than 1,000, meaning a likely household count of less than 300, chances are you will never see cable. Insight even does a drive-though, counting satellite dishes if the numbers get close. If they see too many, forget it, they're not returning.
Riverton has cable and DSL and is just 4 miles from the city limits of Springfield, the state capital. Yet if you live only a mile outside of Riverton, you have no broadband options.
The list goes on.
Effected population? Hundreds of thousands in Illinois alone. And they don't all have the option to "move to town for a better connection."
Yes, this is a good idea. You could even look toward one of the AJAX-based hosted office suites. There have been some reported on here in recent weeks. There ought to be something open source by now.
MS does have a corporate license upgrade plan. This is most likely what this fellow is facing. In order to use it, you have to already have licenses for office, and the licensing plan allows for upgrades to each license. But if you have some that are older licenses, the plan requires extra $$ to bring them all up to the same level.
For example, if you have 500 computers to license, with 100 already running Office XP, 100 on Office 2000, and 100 on Office 97:
You would have to pay MS for license for the 200 computers without licenses, plus upgrade costs for the 100 Off2k licenses, plus higher upgrade fees for the 100 Off97 licenses, *plus* the cost of the generalized upgrade for the 300 licensed computers to take everything up to 2003.
MS doesn't quite state it that way, and the formula is somewhat hidden when you look at the contract, but the total cost isn't hidden.
And yes, what that total cost gets you is an annually renewable contract. If you terminate the contract, you have to remove all copies, and you can keep only the original 300 licenses you had, at their respective version levels, plus you may be allowed to keep 200 copies of 2003 for the remaining computers *if* you can prove by your contract that you did indeed purchase licenses at the 2003 level for them.
Yes, I already knew about the auto radar issue, it was just (perhaps too) dry humor. Remember that open-air laser transmission (as opposed to fiber-enclosed) is also a spectrum that the FCC regulates.
On the civil and military radar for aircraft, the radars have different scanning rate abilities. Radar is not all doppler frame-based. Different power transmission envelopes and sweep mechanims allow for varying signal rates from a single source. Working within a narrow band spectrum requires TDM, just like 802.3. However, signal return time, distance, and reflection aspects make sharing a narrow band like this difficult at best. There are methods, but none are truly effective at this time.
Also, I certainly wouldn't want to be transmitting in the same frequency range that an enemy surface-to-air missile's guidance radar uses. Then I would just be a target for an incoming military anti-radiation missile.
Regardless of the technology expansion, there will still be a need for the FCC and for control of a lot of spectrums.
While the airwaves are getting used more efficiently, the FCC is also responsible for other areas of spectrum management that aren't "computerized." For example, many portions of the spectrum are set aside for various types of civil and military radar. While radars are computer-controlled, I would NOT want my local air traffic controller to have to be sharing his spectrum with some junior wireless hacker.
On the other hand, if someone wants to design a system that interferes with the same portion of the spectrum used by police radar guns, I'm not going to complain.
This was exactly my point. They cover up with silly unnecessary features like the rapid zoom animation effect, but don't bother to get newer, better pics.
I don't consider this prejudice against Microsoft. I honestly wish they'd focus on content as opposed to the "glitz" features. I'm more of a purist. I don't want the animation, it gets in the way. When I click on something to zoom in, I want the larger picture, not some growing animation. What's wrong with that? Why must I be prejudiced because I want a clean and simple interface?
If they're features that get in the way, like the way the mouse causes panning when you accidentally mouse across the directional arrow while dragging the map a different direction, why must that be considered a feature rather than a conflict of two or more controls that were not particularly well implemented?
TerraServer's web satellite imagery server came out in the late 90's, with all the early 90's imagery from the USGS. The interface was similar to both of these map sites. And then Microsoft bought and took over TerraServer a year or so later. So, that's probably what's here. Rather than spend time getting data sources updated, perhaps they spent time rewriting all the image server software in.NET.
Seriously, though, Microsoft did the usual overkill, attempting to put too much into the user interface. Hence odd mouse controls, unnecessary zomming animation when a simple quick redraw at the new zoom level is preferred, etc.. More time spent on glitz than substance.
Slashdot Mirror
Ridiculous that developers will not listen to their users, yes. The Open Source world is just as much a free market as the commercial world. With more options - can't fork your code in the commercial world, but I can certainly change brands / vendors / providers easily enough. Beautiful, isn't it?
I've hired and worked with a lot of programmers. I'm biased toward computer scientists with solid technical training. They often understand far more theory and how the technology underlying their application works. I have hired people from technical schools that don't have the deep technical understanding of, say, compiler theory and machine language. Usually, these people can move from one language and environment to another with relative ease. As systems and technology evolve, adaptability can be key to success.
.dll file to see what a developer had changed in a library. It never occurred to him that the dll is a compiled binary. When I finally dumped one for him in assembly, he was totally lost. He needed to see the source code. He has a BS from a private engineering college, in web design, but didn't understand what a compiled library is.
Some of the things I've run into when hiring non-scientists in programming/development roles:
A programmer that doesn't like other programmer's practices of using "makefiles" and lots of little programs to develop large tools. He's never heard of modular programming in the courses he's taken. He also does not understand how to document code at all. Conditional / dependency based compilation is confusing to him. And he'd rather see all his program in one "view." In a recent discussion, we found out he's never heard of dynamic and static binding, and he didn't understand the concepts. Of course, people trying to support his code are frustrated. He has a BS from a liberal arts based program in a general LA college.
A web programmer that graduated from a very technical school, who wanted to look at changes in a
A network manager that can't write anything but the most basic batch script files because using the "if" statement is too confusing. He has an MS in Computer Science from another country but his undergrad degree is in some LA business program. I believe that he missed out on a lot of the basics as a result.
A graduate of a 2-year technical programming certificate who doesn't know any programming languages or constructs outside those in C++ and C#. PHP seems "too wierd to program in" for anything he wants to do.
All of these people are working on a common project, different aspects.
I'm worried.
Agreed. As a CIO in two past careers, I can attest to this readily. I've personally dealt with some of the worst things you can imagine when "users" are involved in their own support. However, there are usually a few in an organization that really are aware. Those, I co-opt. I've created groups of "super-users" that have more capabilities, the ability to do more with their own computers, and who are involved in setting the computing standards for the organization as a whole. I want their expertise, their involvement, and their support. I've changed many policies because of their input, and many practices.
With all that said, there are downsides of which the CIO should be aware. I had one self-proclaimed networking expert that brought up a DHCP server with a 16-address range on a 3,500 computer network. For those of you that don't know the technology, what that means is the next morning, 3,484 computers were denied network connections by his (idle) server because it was out of available addresses. His VP and I did not agree on his skill set, and the result was her entire network was down. She and I managed to reach an accord, in which his 12-node office became isolated from the rest of the network, and firewalled. His later disruptions impacted far fewer of her people.
Generally, though, getting groups of super-users together with the IT staff can, after initial shock, result in strong alliances, reduced friction, and some really positive and healthy changes in support.
Just start with whale sharks.
I see this as a good opportunity for a security firm to make a little cash for their efforts. The auction approach is not necessarily the best or most ethical approach as far as we, the consumers, are concerned, but we have no proof that they didn't approach Real prior to the auction, with a private offer.
Security firms take a huge risk these days even announcing they've found exploits and publishing them. How many links do you need to articles on lawsuits against blackhats for revealing an exploit, just because some software author doesn't want it known that they have security holes? I ask myself, "How many unpublished exploits are still to be found in existing platforms because the company knows about it but has buried the information and is in no rush to develop a fix?"
--- "CAN'T YOU SEE, MAN? IT'S THE END OF FREEDOM!"
N IX-PA-RISC-550MHZ_W0QQitemZ280141263427QQihZ018QQc ategoryZ162QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
No problem, everyone calm down. The server has been located. http://cgi.ebay.com/A6144A-HP-9000-Server-L3000-U
Not quite true. A T-1 is not guaranteed bandwidth past the end of the circuit. If I buy a point-to-point T-1 between two sites, I have guaranteed bandwidth between those sites. If I buy a T-1 to any ISP, I only have that bandwidth to the point where it connects to the ISP's network. The ISP still only purchases so much uplink bandwidth, and it's still shared, unless I work specific SLAs for "unshared" bandwidth.
IMO, The biggest advantage of a T-1 is that it's easily channelized for traditional services. I can mux off channels for traditional voice (POTS) circuits, compressed video, security systems, etc. that are legacy systems, and gradually rechannelize it to pure data for IP traffic as I convert systems. The second biggest advantage at this time is that I can get a T-1 in more locations in rural America than I can get DSL. So I can build regional networks even in towns where cable providers see no value in extending broadband, and smaller telcos see no profit in establishing DSL access.
There are, of course, many other reasons, but any ISP could set up a virtual circuit through their backbone for point-to-point access on broadband or DSL, if they cared to provide the service. Most don't want to mess with it, not understanding the business potential.
Insight offers GbE connections over fiber in this region in some towns where they deemed it potentially profitable. That's GbE into their backbone as an ISP. Discussions with them on point-to-point services got them thinking about how they could do it, although the rates went up dramatically.
1977, Rome:
G. Forsen, M. Nelson, and R. Staron, "Personal Attributes Authentication Techniques," Rome Air Development Center Report RADC-TR-77-1033, Air Force Base Griffis (New York, 1977).
1980, Rand:
R. Gaines, W. Lisowski, S. Press, and N. Shapiro, "Authentication by Keystroke Timing: Some Preliminary Results," Technical Report Rand report R-256-NSF, Rand Corporation (1980).
1990, Gupta:
R. Joyce and G. Gupta, "Identity Authentication Based on Keystroke Latencies," Communications of the ACM 33:2 (1990), 168-176.
1995, IBM:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/
1999, ATT:
http://avirubin.com/fgcs.pdf
2005, MIMOS:
http://digital.ni.com/worldwide/singapore.nsf/web
Is this not also similar to their cellular phone support? Verizon sells you a variety of high-powered cellular phones with various features disabled? Such as:
- A calendaring tool that doesn't connect and sync via USB with your computer as advertised by the original phone vendor, even though you've spent the extra $60 for the software from the phone manufacturer.
- A camera for which the only way to extract photos is to use Verizon's pay service to send them to someone else.
Is Verizon also a supported of the pay-for-priority-bandwidth (re: non-neutral Internet) initiatives we've seen?
Good idea on the inventory! I'm suddenly finding myself considering turning on SNMP agents in everything. I have about 1,000 nodes on the network, but SNMP is only running on some core server equipment and switches/routers. I have a number of additional servers that I could spread it to, before distributing to clients. I am curious to see how performance is maintained as I scale up the number of devices. I have Zenoss running right now on a desktop-class machine: 1.7GHz single core w/ 1GB of RAM and 40GB disk. It was a spare, and Zenoss, MySQL, and Apache are all happily coexisting on it, even as I run autodiscovery on it and watch the network traffic with other tools at the same time.
I'm using Nagios on a group of core network devices. I have to be super careful not to perform an "up2date" on it (using RH 4.0 EL) because the Nagios packages always overwrite my config files. But Nagios is good, and it's been very useful. It took me a few days of work to get it set up the way I wanted, and it's been a charm ever since.
A few weeks ago someone posted an article on the top ten OSS projects to watch, and Zenoss was one of those projects. I downloaded it to experiment. I had it up and running in about 20 minutes, on Ubuntu. It's far more powerful at its ability to gather data from nodes. And setup is far less manual. Network discovery worked very well. It found devices on our network that we didn't know were out there. It required no integration with other packages. The interface is also more intuitive in some areas, such as viewing event histories. But, it's more challenging to find performance charts the first few times.
I especially liked the automatic snmp walk through the MIBS on each device. This makes it much easier to pull statistics from it, without having to edit text files. The MRTG-style charts are also good. I wish they were more readily configurable. I also wish there were more MIBS in the distribution, but you can find most by carefully searching equipment provider's web sites.
All in all, After running it side by side with my Nagios setup for a couple of weeks, I like it much better. And I'm moving more SNMP agents into my network just because of Zenoss.
This is an old approach. We merely have to look back nearly 10 years to see the Toshiba Libretto, for instance, the same size as a VCR cartridge. None of the miniatures of this generalized line (full desktop with Windows) have done well. There are a number of reasons besides the Microsoft keystroke issues. People want something larger to read, better keyboards, etc..
IMO, the two things that differentiate this from product offerings in the past are:
- communications changes. This includes wireless networking and USB connections.
- the generation of users who are now comfortable "thumbing" smart phones.
If you are near a community college, you might have more meeting options. Many community colleges support small local businesses directly. While I cannot guarantee that the closest college to you has all this, these are fairly commonly available:
Meeting rooms in their libraries or other facilities that can be used for free or rented for a nominal fee.
Rooms with podiums, video projectors, and even computers that can be used or rented.
Small business support centers with specialized facilities and support options.
Access to costly online research databases available to community patrons.
Cafeterias that can internally cater meetings.
With more than 3,000 community / technical colleges across the US, there might be something near you. Many times, even though the college itself might be distant, it might have a local campus or branch with some of the options above.
As a CIO and IT manager for nearly 2 decades, I have to comment that I am appalled that many young programmers in recent years are clueless about text editors in general. I have found with employees in the last 10 years, the "Windows" generation if you will, they use notepad on occasion, which has limited functionality, and when developing on Unix/Linux systems, they are completely useless. A number of systems that we maintain are slimmed-down systems. The development of apps for these happen on larger systems, and after testing, the apps are moved to the slim systems. I've had to dedicate a lot of money to training resources for these newer hires so they can edit even a simple text config file... We now prefer knowledge of vi as an entry level skill. And if someone claims they have it, we test them.
The article quoted rate is 3.5 oz of cow dung for .042 oz of gas. For each ton of cow dung, you'd get .19 gallons of gas, which in the US at this time, would sell at the pump for roughly 40 to 50 cents.
Wonder what the cost (in gas alone) would be to load that ton of dung into your (hopefully large) truck, then drive it to the collection point. And what do you do with the by-product? Once that 1/5th of a gallon is extracted, there is still a ton of "processed" cow dung to haul again. Probably going to exceed 3 gallons of gas in cost.
It's going to have to be a LOT more efficient before this makes sense.
I'm a consultant in central Illinois, USA. Once you're outside of Chicago with it's associated 'burbs, your options for broadband become pretty limited. If you're near Peoria, Springfield, Champaign, Decatur, or Kankakee, you have some options with DSL and cable broadband. Some of the small towns, populations > 200, also have cable, but it's typically only because some mom and pop cable company built it up and then. SBC offers DSL only within a couple of miles of town. There is a subdivision of more than 500 homes right outside of Peoria and Bartonville, both of which have DSL. Yet the subdivision doesn't. Until the cable provider brought in a couple of T-1's about 3 years ago, no options existed. Yet this is less than 3 miles as the crow flies from Bartonville. And there is a new switch and fiber (both less than 10 years old) running right along the road outside the subdivision. And we all know that SBC isn't readily doing any landline buildout for areas they "already cover." Verizon covers some of the towns in the region, like Canton. But guess what? You can't even get proper caller ID for your PBX from Verizon in that region. Antiquated equipment with no likelihood of change for a while. There are also numerous other telcos involved in the region, none of who provide services beyond basic voice grade lines if you're outside of town limits. Insight (ATT) provides high-speed services via cable, and they were doing build-outs in central Illinois, but they have a formula that they use to determine whether they're going to invest. They look for existing fiber, but will add as needed. However, more than 75% of the towns in the region don't fit their profile. If the town's population is less than 1,000, meaning a likely household count of less than 300, chances are you will never see cable. Insight even does a drive-though, counting satellite dishes if the numbers get close. If they see too many, forget it, they're not returning. Riverton has cable and DSL and is just 4 miles from the city limits of Springfield, the state capital. Yet if you live only a mile outside of Riverton, you have no broadband options. The list goes on. Effected population? Hundreds of thousands in Illinois alone. And they don't all have the option to "move to town for a better connection."
Yes, this is a good idea. You could even look toward one of the AJAX-based hosted office suites. There have been some reported on here in recent weeks. There ought to be something open source by now.
MS does have a corporate license upgrade plan. This is most likely what this fellow is facing. In order to use it, you have to already have licenses for office, and the licensing plan allows for upgrades to each license. But if you have some that are older licenses, the plan requires extra $$ to bring them all up to the same level.
For example, if you have 500 computers to license, with 100 already running Office XP, 100 on Office 2000, and 100 on Office 97:
You would have to pay MS for license for the 200 computers without licenses, plus upgrade costs for the 100 Off2k licenses, plus higher upgrade fees for the 100 Off97 licenses, *plus* the cost of the generalized upgrade for the 300 licensed computers to take everything up to 2003.
MS doesn't quite state it that way, and the formula is somewhat hidden when you look at the contract, but the total cost isn't hidden.
And yes, what that total cost gets you is an annually renewable contract. If you terminate the contract, you have to remove all copies, and you can keep only the original 300 licenses you had, at their respective version levels, plus you may be allowed to keep 200 copies of 2003 for the remaining computers *if* you can prove by your contract that you did indeed purchase licenses at the 2003 level for them.
Good luck.
Heheh. Or as in my case, the typographically challenged. :)
I used to buy lottery tickets, too. Until it dawned on me that they just amount to extra tax on the mathemtically challenged.
Yes, I already knew about the auto radar issue, it was just (perhaps too) dry humor. Remember that open-air laser transmission (as opposed to fiber-enclosed) is also a spectrum that the FCC regulates.
On the civil and military radar for aircraft, the radars have different scanning rate abilities. Radar is not all doppler frame-based. Different power transmission envelopes and sweep mechanims allow for varying signal rates from a single source. Working within a narrow band spectrum requires TDM, just like 802.3. However, signal return time, distance, and reflection aspects make sharing a narrow band like this difficult at best. There are methods, but none are truly effective at this time.
Also, I certainly wouldn't want to be transmitting in the same frequency range that an enemy surface-to-air missile's guidance radar uses. Then I would just be a target for an incoming military anti-radiation missile.
Regardless of the technology expansion, there will still be a need for the FCC and for control of a lot of spectrums.
While the airwaves are getting used more efficiently, the FCC is also responsible for other areas of spectrum management that aren't "computerized." For example, many portions of the spectrum are set aside for various types of civil and military radar. While radars are computer-controlled, I would NOT want my local air traffic controller to have to be sharing his spectrum with some junior wireless hacker.
On the other hand, if someone wants to design a system that interferes with the same portion of the spectrum used by police radar guns, I'm not going to complain.
I would guess it's at least as useful as my Cone of Silence.
This was exactly my point. They cover up with silly unnecessary features like the rapid zoom animation effect, but don't bother to get newer, better pics.
I don't consider this prejudice against Microsoft. I honestly wish they'd focus on content as opposed to the "glitz" features. I'm more of a purist. I don't want the animation, it gets in the way. When I click on something to zoom in, I want the larger picture, not some growing animation. What's wrong with that? Why must I be prejudiced because I want a clean and simple interface?
If they're features that get in the way, like the way the mouse causes panning when you accidentally mouse across the directional arrow while dragging the map a different direction, why must that be considered a feature rather than a conflict of two or more controls that were not particularly well implemented?
TerraServer's web satellite imagery server came out in the late 90's, with all the early 90's imagery from the USGS. The interface was similar to both of these map sites. And then Microsoft bought and took over TerraServer a year or so later. So, that's probably what's here. Rather than spend time getting data sources updated, perhaps they spent time rewriting all the image server software in .NET.
Seriously, though, Microsoft did the usual overkill, attempting to put too much into the user interface. Hence odd mouse controls, unnecessary zomming animation when a simple quick redraw at the new zoom level is preferred, etc.. More time spent on glitz than substance.