5 kilometres? All they are selling is a cheap yagi antenna and a cheap-as-free access point slapped onto the back of a network-enabled CCTV camera. You can build one from off-the-shelf components for less than $500, and that's Canadian dollars. Sure, you can up the cost by adding 'features' like CCD imagers instead of CMOS ones, a heated housing will run you another few hun, and if you want pan/tilt/zoom, that adds another grand. But fifty-two hundred bucks? Good grief!
Furthermore, 5 km is nothing, as others have pointed out already. With two 12db yagis and standard 35mW gear, I've shot well past that. Yeah, the Pringles Can would do 5 clicks no problem. And their square-shaped one would have to be a 5-or-9db patch, again nothing new. So I can't see why this was even written about, or how it qualifies as news, since it's not really revelutionary or innovative. Maybe it's just me, being jaded. Or maybe it's 'cause I've worked too close to a few 200mW radios. I have heard that microwaves can be harmful.
Bawls. Lots of Bawls. And ditch the CRT, man. It takes up a lot of room that could be used for Bawls. The KVM is a good idea, as it lets you toggle between systems without having to put down the Bawls you are drinking. Make sure you have a good sturdy shelf to store the empties, too.
Imagine the pterror that other creatures must have felt when it came winging over the ptreetops. I would be ptrembling in my raptor-skin boots, for sure.
My story is thus: Over 10 years in the IT industry, 9 of those as a self-employed, broke, Geek. How broke? Well, let's just say I never bothered to bookmark ThinkGeek.com, okay? Number of times asked for Certs = zero. Conclusion? If you're a consultant, nobody cares if you're Cert'd, since failure to perform doesn't result in you getting paid. Then when I finally did apply for a job (with one of my former clients) they never even asked, since obviously I was competent.
My suggestion, for what it's worth, is to set yourself up as a consultant to establish credentials. I'm not saying that's a total substitute for writing certs, but if your resume can show business experience, and if you have even a few satisfied clients for your prospective employer to call, you are far ahead of the rest of the college monkeys who come out with a lovely framed Cert and hours of lab experience. The posting about the certs being strictly for HR departments is pretty true - the only other people who care are the little old ladies bringing their spyware-infested Compaq to Best Buy for servicing. "Ooh, look, Mildred. All their boys are A++! We can trust them to do a good job!"
All we need to do is post their URL on/. - that way, all the traffic is legitimate visitors, just checking out another "cool link". For example, this site, which sends out tons of spam to my inbox: http://www.xacm.tearnmorbout.com/http://www.dscg.outhatutfile.com/
They are located in the British Virgin Islands, but I bet I could see the smoke from their crumbling servers here in Northern Canada. I for one say Nuke The Bastards. Maybe not a very Canadian attitude, I know, but I am sick and tired of loosing the war on spam by fighting ethically. Once in a while it's nice to kick your opponent in the balls and watch them drop to their knees in agony and surprise.
I fail to see why it's racist and elitist. Did he say the problem is all those uneducated coloured folks' distortion of Proper American English? No. You are just tossing around -isms like candy on parade day - and being snobbish about it, to boot! (I am guessing, however, that your comment about people who think they are better than other people was actually tongue-in-cheek.) While it may be true that the message is more important than the grammar, what we are talking about here is the presentation of an argument or opinion. Frankly, if you can't be literate with your ideas, you will have a hard time convincing others. I see bad grammar and think "lazy bum", and move on. When I see signs in stores that use "quotation" marks incorrectly or excessively, it drives me crazy. Bloody idiots - throwing quotation marks around a word is not how you emphasise it. Use an underline, or italicise it. I once walked past a bookstore with a sign out front that said "Please bare with us during our renovations". Needless to say, the cute girl behind the counter was quite shocked when I asked her if we should get naked right there, or if they had a room in the back. Even her manager insisted I was wrong, and that "bear" was a "furry animal in the woods". Dumbasses.
I totally agree with you about France, though. There's a saying - "The French don't care what you say, as long as you pronounce it correctly."
I think your point about different educational backgrounds has some validity, although I didn't get that attitude from the original poster. I think the point in this thread has become that most of us on/. are at least somewhat educated, and should at least make an effort to use proper spelling and grammar. Those tight-asses who complain about "colour has a U in it!" or "it's spelled 'specialize', not 'specialise'" are morons, but there are some things in English that even Americans (with their self-defined version of the language) can agree on with the rest of the world that got its English from the English Colonisation days. Several people have made the point that English is a fluid language, and that is one of the things which makes it ideal as the language of technology and innovation. Personally, I still prefer to see the word spelled 'definitely'!
What many people are missing out on is that this type of software is not restricted to use by movie theatres. Any organisation that needs to book events of any type can use this kind of package. As an example, look at Theatre Manager (www.artsman.com). It has all the bells and whistles, and costs an arm and a leg too. Something like the authour is working on would help out the small community arts groups immesurably, not to mention non-profit event organisers. Frankly, I doubt that the movie theatres will be interested anyways, since they are almost ALL owned by the studios, and the incentive to change software is nonexistant. Perhaps the occasional mom-and-pop theatre in Smalltown USA would be interested, but those are few and far between, and would really have no need for computerised bookings of any sort.
My suggestion (having worked in the live theatre industry) is to give away the software, but charge for support. That's the Open Source Way!
It seems pretty obvious that the extortionist would have been far better off threatening to Slashdot them if they didn't pay...the most effective DDoS method known to man!
True dat. Tesla was the real inventor back then, which is why we wound up using AC polyphase instead of Edison & Co.'s DC system. Many bitter exchanges between the two camps, with Edison's side performing their famous "Westinghousing" of dogs and such to prove AC's danger. (The name comes from the fact that George Westinghouse had bought/leased/stolen Tesla's patents for AC production/distribution.) Fortunately the science of Economics won out when it was shown that AC would be far cheaper to produce and transmit. Tesla often mocked Edison's lab techniques for being too laborious; Edison would produce dozens or hundreds of prototypes for a product (the light bulb being a prime case), whereas Tesla figured it out in his head, made the drawings and had his engineers build the working product. Unlike Edison, Tesla was an absolutely dismal businessman who died broke and senile, forgotten and abandoned by those he helped to make rich (like Westinghouse).
There. I've had my Rant. Hail Tesla!
Frankly, most VoIp solutions will work fine even over dialup. If you can get a 48 kbps connection, even Skype will work. Have done it. Many people make the mistake of assuming that VoIP requires vast amounts of bandwidth, when as mentioned in other posts, the latency is the main issue.
In addition, someone ealier mentioned that Skype is 1.7 Euros per minute - it's actually 1.7 Euro CENTS per minute. A trifling difference, I know...
That being said, the parent poster is right: you really don't want to be nailed for circumventing the approved communication pathways. Even here in Canada, we have to use the right colour of smoke when communicating with our relatives, otherwise the CRTC and the DOC drop on us like a fat kid on a hunk of whale blubber.
We installed a digital language lab two years ago to teach children in our high school their traditional (Canadian First Nations) language. We have 10 workstations running a software package called Genesis, which basically allows the teacher to distribute A/V content to the students. Features include:
-Teacher can monitor each workstation both visually and audibly (hear what the student is saying).
-Teacher can stream A/V content to any/all stations. Content can be live (from a camera) or prerecorded (CD, DVD, VCR, audio tape, etc.).
-Teacher can remotely control the student's station. Applications can be activated/stopped/blocked.
-Teacher can broadcast their desktop to any/all students for demonstration.
-Teacher can broadcast a student's desktop to any/all students.
Lesson plans can be made in advance and delivered to individuals or groups of students.
-Teacher can monitor in real-time the students' progress on audio or written exams.
-Teacher can perform real-time oral or written exams.
There are many other features, but we don't use a lot of them. We just wanted to simulate our old cassette tape language lab with modern computers. This software is pricey, but you can get a demo that lets you have four workstations plus the teacher machine, and it's fully functional for as long as you want.
We purchased it from a company in Utah called Linguatronics , and they provided excellent service and support. If you contact them, they will give you a demo to try it out.
You do need to have pretty decent machines for this to work. I'd recommend at least a P4-class at 1.5Ghz or better, with a shwack of RAM. We discovered that a dedicated LAN is an absolute, and you need a top-drawer switch.
Note: Since we installed this, they have changed their name to Genieve Software, and the product is called XClass Pro. .
Good luck. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about our system.
Slashdot Mirror
5 kilometres? All they are selling is a cheap yagi antenna and a cheap-as-free access point slapped onto the back of a network-enabled CCTV camera. You can build one from off-the-shelf components for less than $500, and that's Canadian dollars. Sure, you can up the cost by adding 'features' like CCD imagers instead of CMOS ones, a heated housing will run you another few hun, and if you want pan/tilt/zoom, that adds another grand. But fifty-two hundred bucks? Good grief! Furthermore, 5 km is nothing, as others have pointed out already. With two 12db yagis and standard 35mW gear, I've shot well past that. Yeah, the Pringles Can would do 5 clicks no problem. And their square-shaped one would have to be a 5-or-9db patch, again nothing new. So I can't see why this was even written about, or how it qualifies as news, since it's not really revelutionary or innovative. Maybe it's just me, being jaded. Or maybe it's 'cause I've worked too close to a few 200mW radios. I have heard that microwaves can be harmful.
Bawls. Lots of Bawls. And ditch the CRT, man. It takes up a lot of room that could be used for Bawls. The KVM is a good idea, as it lets you toggle between systems without having to put down the Bawls you are drinking. Make sure you have a good sturdy shelf to store the empties, too.
Imagine the pterror that other creatures must have felt when it came winging over the ptreetops. I would be ptrembling in my raptor-skin boots, for sure.
Exactly! Those bastards.
My story is thus: Over 10 years in the IT industry, 9 of those as a self-employed, broke, Geek. How broke? Well, let's just say I never bothered to bookmark ThinkGeek.com, okay? Number of times asked for Certs = zero. Conclusion? If you're a consultant, nobody cares if you're Cert'd, since failure to perform doesn't result in you getting paid. Then when I finally did apply for a job (with one of my former clients) they never even asked, since obviously I was competent. My suggestion, for what it's worth, is to set yourself up as a consultant to establish credentials. I'm not saying that's a total substitute for writing certs, but if your resume can show business experience, and if you have even a few satisfied clients for your prospective employer to call, you are far ahead of the rest of the college monkeys who come out with a lovely framed Cert and hours of lab experience. The posting about the certs being strictly for HR departments is pretty true - the only other people who care are the little old ladies bringing their spyware-infested Compaq to Best Buy for servicing. "Ooh, look, Mildred. All their boys are A++! We can trust them to do a good job!"
zefrank http://www.zefrank.com/ has a funny video about exactly this kind of thing...http://www.zefrank.com/smallworld/
All we need to do is post their URL on /. - that way, all the traffic is legitimate visitors, just checking out another "cool link". For example, this site, which sends out tons of spam to my inbox: http://www.xacm.tearnmorbout.com/
http://www.dscg.outhatutfile.com/
They are located in the British Virgin Islands, but I bet I could see the smoke from their crumbling servers here in Northern Canada. I for one say Nuke The Bastards. Maybe not a very Canadian attitude, I know, but I am sick and tired of loosing the war on spam by fighting ethically. Once in a while it's nice to kick your opponent in the balls and watch them drop to their knees in agony and surprise.
I fail to see why it's racist and elitist. Did he say the problem is all those uneducated coloured folks' distortion of Proper American English? No. You are just tossing around -isms like candy on parade day - and being snobbish about it, to boot! (I am guessing, however, that your comment about people who think they are better than other people was actually tongue-in-cheek.) While it may be true that the message is more important than the grammar, what we are talking about here is the presentation of an argument or opinion. Frankly, if you can't be literate with your ideas, you will have a hard time convincing others. I see bad grammar and think "lazy bum", and move on. When I see signs in stores that use "quotation" marks incorrectly or excessively, it drives me crazy. Bloody idiots - throwing quotation marks around a word is not how you emphasise it. Use an underline, or italicise it. I once walked past a bookstore with a sign out front that said "Please bare with us during our renovations". Needless to say, the cute girl behind the counter was quite shocked when I asked her if we should get naked right there, or if they had a room in the back. Even her manager insisted I was wrong, and that "bear" was a "furry animal in the woods". Dumbasses. /. are at least somewhat educated, and should at least make an effort to use proper spelling and grammar. Those tight-asses who complain about "colour has a U in it!" or "it's spelled 'specialize', not 'specialise'" are morons, but there are some things in English that even Americans (with their self-defined version of the language) can agree on with the rest of the world that got its English from the English Colonisation days. Several people have made the point that English is a fluid language, and that is one of the things which makes it ideal as the language of technology and innovation. Personally, I still prefer to see the word spelled 'definitely'!
I totally agree with you about France, though. There's a saying - "The French don't care what you say, as long as you pronounce it correctly."
I think your point about different educational backgrounds has some validity, although I didn't get that attitude from the original poster. I think the point in this thread has become that most of us on
What many people are missing out on is that this type of software is not restricted to use by movie theatres. Any organisation that needs to book events of any type can use this kind of package. As an example, look at Theatre Manager (www.artsman.com). It has all the bells and whistles, and costs an arm and a leg too. Something like the authour is working on would help out the small community arts groups immesurably, not to mention non-profit event organisers. Frankly, I doubt that the movie theatres will be interested anyways, since they are almost ALL owned by the studios, and the incentive to change software is nonexistant. Perhaps the occasional mom-and-pop theatre in Smalltown USA would be interested, but those are few and far between, and would really have no need for computerised bookings of any sort. My suggestion (having worked in the live theatre industry) is to give away the software, but charge for support. That's the Open Source Way!
It seems pretty obvious that the extortionist would have been far better off threatening to Slashdot them if they didn't pay...the most effective DDoS method known to man!
True dat. Tesla was the real inventor back then, which is why we wound up using AC polyphase instead of Edison & Co.'s DC system. Many bitter exchanges between the two camps, with Edison's side performing their famous "Westinghousing" of dogs and such to prove AC's danger. (The name comes from the fact that George Westinghouse had bought/leased/stolen Tesla's patents for AC production/distribution.) Fortunately the science of Economics won out when it was shown that AC would be far cheaper to produce and transmit. Tesla often mocked Edison's lab techniques for being too laborious; Edison would produce dozens or hundreds of prototypes for a product (the light bulb being a prime case), whereas Tesla figured it out in his head, made the drawings and had his engineers build the working product. Unlike Edison, Tesla was an absolutely dismal businessman who died broke and senile, forgotten and abandoned by those he helped to make rich (like Westinghouse). There. I've had my Rant. Hail Tesla!
Frankly, most VoIp solutions will work fine even over dialup. If you can get a 48 kbps connection, even Skype will work. Have done it. Many people make the mistake of assuming that VoIP requires vast amounts of bandwidth, when as mentioned in other posts, the latency is the main issue. In addition, someone ealier mentioned that Skype is 1.7 Euros per minute - it's actually 1.7 Euro CENTS per minute. A trifling difference, I know... That being said, the parent poster is right: you really don't want to be nailed for circumventing the approved communication pathways. Even here in Canada, we have to use the right colour of smoke when communicating with our relatives, otherwise the CRTC and the DOC drop on us like a fat kid on a hunk of whale blubber.
We installed a digital language lab two years ago to teach children in our high school their traditional (Canadian First Nations) language. We have 10 workstations running a software package called Genesis, which basically allows the teacher to distribute A/V content to the students. Features include: -Teacher can monitor each workstation both visually and audibly (hear what the student is saying). -Teacher can stream A/V content to any/all stations. Content can be live (from a camera) or prerecorded (CD, DVD, VCR, audio tape, etc.). -Teacher can remotely control the student's station. Applications can be activated/stopped/blocked. -Teacher can broadcast their desktop to any/all students for demonstration. -Teacher can broadcast a student's desktop to any/all students. Lesson plans can be made in advance and delivered to individuals or groups of students. -Teacher can monitor in real-time the students' progress on audio or written exams. -Teacher can perform real-time oral or written exams. There are many other features, but we don't use a lot of them. We just wanted to simulate our old cassette tape language lab with modern computers. This software is pricey, but you can get a demo that lets you have four workstations plus the teacher machine, and it's fully functional for as long as you want. We purchased it from a company in Utah called Linguatronics , and they provided excellent service and support. If you contact them, they will give you a demo to try it out. You do need to have pretty decent machines for this to work. I'd recommend at least a P4-class at 1.5Ghz or better, with a shwack of RAM. We discovered that a dedicated LAN is an absolute, and you need a top-drawer switch. Note: Since we installed this, they have changed their name to Genieve Software, and the product is called XClass Pro. . Good luck. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about our system.