I have some friends who are gun nuts, and they solved their problem like this: Get an expandable gun cabinet, with 7 slots. Get 4 guns in there. This is hard, because she needs to know about each gun, and while it is easy to explain a shot gun and a rifle, it is hard to explain that a.22 and a.30-06 are different enough that you can't just use one, and you still need one more gun. Once that is taken care of you will have 3 empty spaces in the gun cabinet, keep it that way. You now can sneak in as many guns as you want, just be sure to expand the gun cabinet each time by enough that there are 3 empty spaces.
You pretty much have to keep all your computers in one room to apply this, but that is a good idea anyway. (except for the laptop)
What I'd like is a PDA that when I'm in a meeting with people it talks to all the PDAs in the room, and puts the owner's name on the screen. I can't remember names, but by having the PDA put the names of the nearby people onscreen I have half a chance of getting it. (Best would be a graphic of the table with everyone's name at their place, but that is tough, and people will not always put the right name in, leading the embarrising laughs)
Make them sync up for meetings to, so we can all decide we need a followup meeting next week, and one is scheduled and in everyone's calander. Just don't leak my lunch date to anyone else...
While your at it, put a GPS in the thing so it can remind me about meetings just far enough a head. When I need to go to the next building I need more warning than if the meeting is just down the hall. And a doctors apoinment needs more warning yet.
It is easist to manage servers from only one vender. Unix makes ti easy to transfer skills, but here is the contradiction: It is easier to manage servers from many different venders and versions, than to manage just one server that is different from the rest.
When you have all OSes the same it is easy because everything automaticly transfers. When all are different it is harder because you always have to remember the correct incarnation of each procedure, but because they are all different you get in the habbit of looking it up each time. When all are the same except for one machine you forget on that one machine that everything is different and you aply the wrong incarnation (ofte with disasterious results, see discussions of killall linux vs hpux on comp.risks) Because of this, the one different machine will get [invalid] complaints often due to these differences.
If you can't stick with one vender, then you should go with many so you are in the habbit of checking the differences. At the very least get some linux (debian, redhat, suse), and bsd (free, open, net) machines in house now, and use them for production. You need to make sure that your admins are used to subtile differences. The other alternative is to just stick with one vender, but not only do you pay more, but your admins become lower quality as they learn only one system. (think of it is a resume builder, you want different systems on your resume!)
Any engineer worth his salt can design a brige to look like a single Artist drawing. Now granted it is silly to put a support tower at an angle so that someone standing on one spot on the shore can see both the inside of a far support tower, and the bridge dwindling off into the distance, and it will probably look odd from all other angles. Still if that particular view is the more important than all others, I can design a bridge that will be both safe, and look like that view.
Now if there were two drawings that both were really odd like that, then I will agree that it can't be done. I think this can be done though. Just remember it will cost extra money.
I tried that, they will not allow me cancel the voice line unless I also cancle the DSL. I can get voice only, or I can get DSL and voice, but I'm not allowed to have DSL only.
Cable internet is just arriving in my area, so I'll be checking them out. I don't own a TV, and they will let me get internet without TV service.
If wireless was avaible in my area (and I'm surprized it is not) I'd consider going for that instead. I haven't seen it yet.
Linux is better than windows. It was designed for multiuser from the ground up. You log in, and you have access to your files, and only your files (with permissions you can modify this, but most lab users won't need to share files anyway). With windows you log in, and you get access to all locally stored programes and files. Want to mess up the comptuer, guess what, Windows give you the rope to hang everyone. Linux only gives root enough rope to hang everyone.
If you have kids, then linux is all the more important. Adults will mostly just use the comptuer for what they want to do. kids will often do their best to destroy the computer. Linux gives you enough protection that kids generally can't destroy the comptuer (if they get good, then openBSD is an option)
I remember high school. Kids all over doing their best to ruin the comptuer system. There was always someone wanting to do a format of whatever disk could be found. Always someone trying to delete critical applications.
Windows is based on a trust model. Macs are the same (I've not worked with OSX though) Linux is assumes that you don't trust yourself. Linux is the only way to go for public machines.
You got the source, fix it. Wanting a low cost open source solution is nice and all, but if you are not willing to do your part (contribute back code fixes) it cannot happen. Open source relys on people like you with a need, providing a fix for your needs, and making the fix freely available.
If you are not willing to give back, then spend the money for an expensive solution.
In your case yes, but consider for a moment the cost of no security whatsoever on the blanks. Want a blank license, just walk in and take as many as you want, no tracking, no chance of getting punished. Not you do you take 15 (presume that you need them for something), but everyone else does too. Now it isn't 15 blanks, it is 2,000 at a total cost of 1784 dollars. Starting to get meaningfull already. (note, the number 2000 was pulled out of the air). Now multiply that out by a few years...
Security and prevention always comes at a cost. Insurance companys can draw fancy curves and graphs to show where your cost for secuiry (including punishing offenders, and insurance) is the least compared to your potential losses. Perhaps it isn't worth the goverment's time to do anything about the theif of blanks, perhaps it is. (I don't know how to do that analysis) At some point though you have something that costs more then it looks like it should because you can't account for the losses spending that much prevents.
There is only one way to go about this that works and everyone will like:
Gather requirements. Get input from everyone. Give a small drinking budget to programers who know someone who left (someone who left the company won't officially do work for you, but for a friend and a drink might give some insiteful rants on what is wrong, and this is invaluable in a re-design). Figgure out what was right, and what was wrong. Document how it should be, based on expirence.
Get some sort of translation between the 4gl, and the J2EE. (ip sockets work), and re-impliment whatever needs to be done. Look at exteem programing, re-factor all the code, but make it work with the old stuff so you always have something working. Re-do the stuff that is buggy, slow, or has new requirements first. (Don't be surprized if some unchanging piece never gets re-factored)
I've never done 4gl or J2EE (much less coversions one to the other), but my expirence in language conversions is everyone wants to do them not because of the limitations of the current language (even though there often are serious limitations, you can code around them), but because there is a lot of baddly designed code in the old system, and the conversion to something else is an excuse to re-write the bad parts. So get your requirements right this time, and get the design right.
Sure, but everyone who wanted to tell show you their gopher page ended up giving you the steps to link there from the UofMN home gohper page. I remember getting several such links at the time.
You could set a different homepage, but you still had to use the main gohper at the UofMN for most of what you did.
To be fair to the UofMN, gopher didn't have a concept of homepage or URL. So every gopher client in the world connected to the UofMN home gopher page (by default, and this was often hardcoded). Even if you did set your home connection elsewhere, for anything useful you ended up following the link to the UofMN home gohper page and from linking to all the servers in the world, the geographical location, and then to a link from there. In other words every server registered with the UofMN, and to get to their server you had to go to the UofMN. This took a serious amount of bandwidth in the days when there wasn't a lot of it. (though the UofMN did have a big connection, gopher traffic was a significant part of it)
You really need to access there level a paranoia before you start. High security military instalations just might happen to have radio locators to look for someone transmiting pictures.
If you have a right to be there, find out what you have a right to use. Normally cell phones are allowed. I'd get one of the super small cell phones you can buy, and one of the largest ones avaiable. Hack the guts from the small one into the big one along with a small computer and camera. But I have the electronic ablilty to do this.
If your budget is really that small, perhaps you should give up until they increase it. If you can't make enough selling those picture to someone else to cover your equipment needs, then perhaps you should find a different job. (Depending on why you want the pictures this may or may not apply, but you should consider it, if they won't pay for it, they might be looking for a decoy to attrack security's attention while their budgeted spy gets the scoup)
If it was me, I'd get a girl to put a corn flakes 110 camera in her purse, and take pictures that way. Girls have an advantage there, everyone expects femails to carry a purse everywhere, while guys cannot. (At least not in my country, other cultures may be different). Can you team up with a girl to secert this stuff in. A fairly large purse stuffed full is easy to hide things in, more so with seceret comparments. (if you can sew).
Can you get some decoy's? someone willing to get caught with a camera at critical times? Done right this can distract secruity allowing you to get away with it. however it can also backfire in that security will be looking for cameras.
There is the If I tell how I know I'd have to kill you, but I have evidence that the NSA approves publicly avaiable encryption for some secure tasks.
Things like when a salemen tells you that he can't tell you who he is selling to, but the customer is in a Virginia town that starts with a L. And that you know.
BTW, there is also evidence that this encryption is used on links physically seperate from the internet, and they have intrustion detection on th wires (as best they can do). Goverment tends to be really paranoid about things that they belive would let a small country take over.
Because it is of interest to me, even though I'm not an expert on the topic. I read the entire summery, trying to figgure out what fire sharing had to do with the topic. Only after I read the summery did I realize that NFS must mean something different, but I wasn't sure what. Once it is explained it makes perfect sense, and I know essentially what is ment.
I have enough of a cryptography background that I can deal with nfs as mentioned, but I'm rusty there, but normally when someone says NFS I think network file system, because it is common to say nfs to me with that meaning. (I work on unix systems, nfs failures are my first clue that something is wrong in many cases)
first of all, seperate your home life and work life. Then seperate the data. I understand that once in a while you need data from one place at the other, but avoid those situations.
At work: that is IS's problem. Store all work data on the work machines, and make IS do the backups. Use SSH, or other VPN when you want to work from home. Compile (or whatever) at work as much as possible. If you have data that you need on the road, get a laptop or PDA for work, and synchronize that when you are at work.
At home: set up a linux box (a 386 is enough, though you might want more) with a big disk, a UPS, and a network card. Put it in a closet or on a shelf. Install SAMBA, and Netatalk. with NFS built in (though there is better than NFS if you look, nfs is there) Use one loging for all machines.
Laptops are a problem, because you often want to use them where you can't get to the network. The first solution to that problem is 820.11. Use it at home, and look for open access on the road. With good VPN (ssh+nfs) you can get to your network server from many places. I manually synchronize only the files I need, but my laptop is rarely used outside of 802.11 areas, if you travel often, then you might need more. (CODA? AFS? )
I know a man who put himself through 2 years of college, while also supproting his wife and kid, making minium wage. He was an old fashioned type of guy who didn't not belive in womehn working outside the home. (with kids not yet a year old it is hard to find any advantage in that anyway, but mostly it was their life choice)
It can be done. It isn't easy, but it can be done. the only reason he didn't finish is after working 40 hour week and school he had no time for the family. (Eventially he went on the fast food management track, and while he could be making more as a programer, he is well over the average salery for his area)
You have to figgure out your values, and energy level. School is always hard, I'm not sure I would recomend it, just because it can take too muh family time from you. YMMV
No, DC actually works better than AC for long distances. However the longer the distance the higher the needed voltage.
AC however has the advantage that you can change voltages cheaply and efficantly. DC is much harder to work with from that standpoint. This ability to change voltages is why AC is used. (There are several other reasion, induction moters and problems switching DC are others).
AC works poorly for long distances because the peaks travel. Power may go around the earth 7 times in a second, but AC will reverse 60 times (US) in that second. If you have generators all over the country, then eventially you will have a place where power from one generator is positive, while the other is negative, and that doesn't work very well.
Yeah, but only if you intend to use them in a burglery, as opposed to use them for something legal. So if you only use them because a couple lock picks will replace the hundreds of keys you otherwise need, you are okay. (but try to convince a court that you actually need 100 keys as a part of your normal life, and so a lockpick is really easier)
Personally I think this is just another stupid law, but the people I vote for tend to not be ellected. Maybe because they might keep their promise of less goverment even though it gets rid of the programs that benifit their constitutes...
How do you protect YOUR house? windows (not microsoft) are trivial to break with a hammer. Locked doors can often be picked. A good saw ($150 or less from home depot) can get through most walls. So are your valuables really prtected?
The best gun safes are rated as 30 minutes protection against an attacker who knows what he is doing. (but several hours against someone who doesn't)
the poster said "someone broke into my house", so you can assume reasonable mesures were taken. What more can you do if the door was locked?
The obvious answer is just move to cable, since cable companies want to provide phone service you should be able to choose who gives better service. Now if cable companies weren't even more evil that the worst baby bell.
Still, it is worth your while to keep checking out the compitition. If the bells see everyone switching to cable modems and cell phones they will respond (eventially). There are local 802.11 (and other licensed band are possible) networks to connect to. Satalite works great for some people.
Remember, you can turn this into a non-issue, but only if you tell everyone you know that there are options and they should check out cell phones (my cell phone is more talk time then I need, free long distance all for what a land line would be.) Cable is trying to get into the phone market. Let everyone blindly use the phone company, and the phone company has won. Tell people to compare service, and the phone company will start losing. Not everyone, but enough to affect the bottom line, and that is what will bring service to your neighborhood.
You have to talk to each city/township/county/state individually. And note that not just one of the above, you may have to convince several to let you through. Many cities granted a cable company a limitless cable monopoly if they would bring cable in, and internet might apply to that grant, depending on the lawyers.
Fortunatly there is wireless compitition in all areas for both cable (satalite and VHF/UHF) and phone (cell). Internet also has some compitition, but it remains to be seen how much. (cell modems are not broadband today, but your have 802.11, cable, DSL, and satalite for compition) Federal regulations make it illegal for a town to prevent you from putting up satalite dishes. (often towns make it difficult though) 802.11 antennas can often be hidden.
Your best bet if you want to compete with the local monopolies is wireless. Copper is expensive, and breaks even after it is in the ground. Wireless is cheaper (once you buy the license if applicaable)
Until the dictator dies
on
Fair IP Laws?
·
· Score: 1
If I was going to re-engineer goverment, the constitution would be mich simpiler:
The president shall be choosen randomly from all adults.
The president shall have power to write all laws, or set up bodies to make laws. In all cases the president shall be the highest judge in the land.
The president shall have sole power to declare war and approve treaties
On death of the president All laws and treaties shall be null and void All prisoners shall be free All taxes and fines due shall be forgiven. All goverment officals shall be fired.
There shall be no punishment for killing a president.
Note that failing in an attempt to kill the president might be illegal. Also note that ex post facto laws are not prhibited. A president who doesn't do a good job will soon find himself without a life, while those who do a good job are likely to be hit by a crackpot after a few years, preventing power from going to his head.
It wouldn't never work, but it is fun to think about.
Those old rust, rickety roller coasters are often built that way. From day one they look and feel like they just barely passed inspection this morning, and tommorow they will close it forever.
Unfortunatly that means there is no way to tell the difference between a well maintained coaster ment to look and feel like it is about to fail, and a unmaintained one that will fall at any time.
first of all, make sure your tech lead is boss, and has the power to force his vision on everyone. When the tech lead says "Do it this way", then it is done that way. Of course that means your tech lead is good. (Often call cheif architect) He is not a manager, though the buck stops with him for the schedule. He needs to be a good programer who understands every part of the code, and can change any of it. (and have it work). He will not have time to touch every part of the code, but if he can't understand it he will make you re-write it.
Second, have a code review team. A small (3-6?) group of people who do nothing be review code all day every day. They know the code better than the chief architect, but all their job is, is to make sure it is bug free, well styled (readable), and matches the spec. They answer to the tech lead.
The chief architect is critical, I don't think any project can succede without a good dictator for a tech lead. The code reviewers are a good idea for a large project, for a small project they are the coders themselves. (for a large project you cannot understand every part of the code and get your work done, while for a small project it is easier to get your work done when you understand it all)
Management is going to be the biggest factor in success.
Maybe YOU have 256 charicters to play with, but I still have to use old systems with only 6 unique charicters to play with. Please make sure your variables and functions are unique in the first 6 letters. This isn't as bad as it sounds, I can make my variables 1024 charicters if I want to, the compiler will just silently truncate them to 6, so I can still have the long names, I just have to be careful to make the first 6 charicters unique.
Slashdot Mirror
I have some friends who are gun nuts, and they solved their problem like this: Get an expandable gun cabinet, with 7 slots. Get 4 guns in there. This is hard, because she needs to know about each gun, and while it is easy to explain a shot gun and a rifle, it is hard to explain that a .22 and a .30-06 are different enough that you can't just use one, and you still need one more gun. Once that is taken care of you will have 3 empty spaces in the gun cabinet, keep it that way. You now can sneak in as many guns as you want, just be sure to expand the gun cabinet each time by enough that there are 3 empty spaces.
You pretty much have to keep all your computers in one room to apply this, but that is a good idea anyway. (except for the laptop)
What I'd like is a PDA that when I'm in a meeting with people it talks to all the PDAs in the room, and puts the owner's name on the screen. I can't remember names, but by having the PDA put the names of the nearby people onscreen I have half a chance of getting it. (Best would be a graphic of the table with everyone's name at their place, but that is tough, and people will not always put the right name in, leading the embarrising laughs)
Make them sync up for meetings to, so we can all decide we need a followup meeting next week, and one is scheduled and in everyone's calander. Just don't leak my lunch date to anyone else...
While your at it, put a GPS in the thing so it can remind me about meetings just far enough a head. When I need to go to the next building I need more warning than if the meeting is just down the hall. And a doctors apoinment needs more warning yet.
It is easist to manage servers from only one vender. Unix makes ti easy to transfer skills, but here is the contradiction: It is easier to manage servers from many different venders and versions, than to manage just one server that is different from the rest.
When you have all OSes the same it is easy because everything automaticly transfers. When all are different it is harder because you always have to remember the correct incarnation of each procedure, but because they are all different you get in the habbit of looking it up each time. When all are the same except for one machine you forget on that one machine that everything is different and you aply the wrong incarnation (ofte with disasterious results, see discussions of killall linux vs hpux on comp.risks) Because of this, the one different machine will get [invalid] complaints often due to these differences.
If you can't stick with one vender, then you should go with many so you are in the habbit of checking the differences. At the very least get some linux (debian, redhat, suse), and bsd (free, open, net) machines in house now, and use them for production. You need to make sure that your admins are used to subtile differences. The other alternative is to just stick with one vender, but not only do you pay more, but your admins become lower quality as they learn only one system. (think of it is a resume builder, you want different systems on your resume!)
Any engineer worth his salt can design a brige to look like a single Artist drawing. Now granted it is silly to put a support tower at an angle so that someone standing on one spot on the shore can see both the inside of a far support tower, and the bridge dwindling off into the distance, and it will probably look odd from all other angles. Still if that particular view is the more important than all others, I can design a bridge that will be both safe, and look like that view.
Now if there were two drawings that both were really odd like that, then I will agree that it can't be done. I think this can be done though. Just remember it will cost extra money.
I tried that, they will not allow me cancel the voice line unless I also cancle the DSL. I can get voice only, or I can get DSL and voice, but I'm not allowed to have DSL only.
Cable internet is just arriving in my area, so I'll be checking them out. I don't own a TV, and they will let me get internet without TV service.
If wireless was avaible in my area (and I'm surprized it is not) I'd consider going for that instead. I haven't seen it yet.
Linux is better than windows. It was designed for multiuser from the ground up. You log in, and you have access to your files, and only your files (with permissions you can modify this, but most lab users won't need to share files anyway). With windows you log in, and you get access to all locally stored programes and files. Want to mess up the comptuer, guess what, Windows give you the rope to hang everyone. Linux only gives root enough rope to hang everyone.
If you have kids, then linux is all the more important. Adults will mostly just use the comptuer for what they want to do. kids will often do their best to destroy the computer. Linux gives you enough protection that kids generally can't destroy the comptuer (if they get good, then openBSD is an option)
I remember high school. Kids all over doing their best to ruin the comptuer system. There was always someone wanting to do a format of whatever disk could be found. Always someone trying to delete critical applications.
Windows is based on a trust model. Macs are the same (I've not worked with OSX though) Linux is assumes that you don't trust yourself. Linux is the only way to go for public machines.
You got the source, fix it. Wanting a low cost open source solution is nice and all, but if you are not willing to do your part (contribute back code fixes) it cannot happen. Open source relys on people like you with a need, providing a fix for your needs, and making the fix freely available.
If you are not willing to give back, then spend the money for an expensive solution.
In your case yes, but consider for a moment the cost of no security whatsoever on the blanks. Want a blank license, just walk in and take as many as you want, no tracking, no chance of getting punished. Not you do you take 15 (presume that you need them for something), but everyone else does too. Now it isn't 15 blanks, it is 2,000 at a total cost of 1784 dollars. Starting to get meaningfull already. (note, the number 2000 was pulled out of the air). Now multiply that out by a few years...
Security and prevention always comes at a cost. Insurance companys can draw fancy curves and graphs to show where your cost for secuiry (including punishing offenders, and insurance) is the least compared to your potential losses. Perhaps it isn't worth the goverment's time to do anything about the theif of blanks, perhaps it is. (I don't know how to do that analysis) At some point though you have something that costs more then it looks like it should because you can't account for the losses spending that much prevents.
There is only one way to go about this that works and everyone will like:
Gather requirements. Get input from everyone. Give a small drinking budget to programers who know someone who left (someone who left the company won't officially do work for you, but for a friend and a drink might give some insiteful rants on what is wrong, and this is invaluable in a re-design). Figgure out what was right, and what was wrong. Document how it should be, based on expirence.
Get some sort of translation between the 4gl, and the J2EE. (ip sockets work), and re-impliment whatever needs to be done. Look at exteem programing, re-factor all the code, but make it work with the old stuff so you always have something working. Re-do the stuff that is buggy, slow, or has new requirements first. (Don't be surprized if some unchanging piece never gets re-factored)
I've never done 4gl or J2EE (much less coversions one to the other), but my expirence in language conversions is everyone wants to do them not because of the limitations of the current language (even though there often are serious limitations, you can code around them), but because there is a lot of baddly designed code in the old system, and the conversion to something else is an excuse to re-write the bad parts. So get your requirements right this time, and get the design right.
Sure, but everyone who wanted to tell show you their gopher page ended up giving you the steps to link there from the UofMN home gohper page. I remember getting several such links at the time.
You could set a different homepage, but you still had to use the main gohper at the UofMN for most of what you did.
To be fair to the UofMN, gopher didn't have a concept of homepage or URL. So every gopher client in the world connected to the UofMN home gopher page (by default, and this was often hardcoded). Even if you did set your home connection elsewhere, for anything useful you ended up following the link to the UofMN home gohper page and from linking to all the servers in the world, the geographical location, and then to a link from there. In other words every server registered with the UofMN, and to get to their server you had to go to the UofMN. This took a serious amount of bandwidth in the days when there wasn't a lot of it. (though the UofMN did have a big connection, gopher traffic was a significant part of it)
Still I have to agree with the other criticisms.
You really need to access there level a paranoia before you start. High security military instalations just might happen to have radio locators to look for someone transmiting pictures.
If you have a right to be there, find out what you have a right to use. Normally cell phones are allowed. I'd get one of the super small cell phones you can buy, and one of the largest ones avaiable. Hack the guts from the small one into the big one along with a small computer and camera. But I have the electronic ablilty to do this.
If your budget is really that small, perhaps you should give up until they increase it. If you can't make enough selling those picture to someone else to cover your equipment needs, then perhaps you should find a different job. (Depending on why you want the pictures this may or may not apply, but you should consider it, if they won't pay for it, they might be looking for a decoy to attrack security's attention while their budgeted spy gets the scoup)
If it was me, I'd get a girl to put a corn flakes 110 camera in her purse, and take pictures that way. Girls have an advantage there, everyone expects femails to carry a purse everywhere, while guys cannot. (At least not in my country, other cultures may be different). Can you team up with a girl to secert this stuff in. A fairly large purse stuffed full is easy to hide things in, more so with seceret comparments. (if you can sew).
Can you get some decoy's? someone willing to get caught with a camera at critical times? Done right this can distract secruity allowing you to get away with it. however it can also backfire in that security will be looking for cameras.
There is the If I tell how I know I'd have to kill you, but I have evidence that the NSA approves publicly avaiable encryption for some secure tasks.
Things like when a salemen tells you that he can't tell you who he is selling to, but the customer is in a Virginia town that starts with a L. And that you know.
BTW, there is also evidence that this encryption is used on links physically seperate from the internet, and they have intrustion detection on th wires (as best they can do). Goverment tends to be really paranoid about things that they belive would let a small country take over.
Because it is of interest to me, even though I'm not an expert on the topic. I read the entire summery, trying to figgure out what fire sharing had to do with the topic. Only after I read the summery did I realize that NFS must mean something different, but I wasn't sure what. Once it is explained it makes perfect sense, and I know essentially what is ment.
I have enough of a cryptography background that I can deal with nfs as mentioned, but I'm rusty there, but normally when someone says NFS I think network file system, because it is common to say nfs to me with that meaning. (I work on unix systems, nfs failures are my first clue that something is wrong in many cases)
first of all, seperate your home life and work life. Then seperate the data. I understand that once in a while you need data from one place at the other, but avoid those situations.
At work: that is IS's problem. Store all work data on the work machines, and make IS do the backups. Use SSH, or other VPN when you want to work from home. Compile (or whatever) at work as much as possible. If you have data that you need on the road, get a laptop or PDA for work, and synchronize that when you are at work.
At home: set up a linux box (a 386 is enough, though you might want more) with a big disk, a UPS, and a network card. Put it in a closet or on a shelf. Install SAMBA, and Netatalk. with NFS built in (though there is better than NFS if you look, nfs is there) Use one loging for all machines.
Laptops are a problem, because you often want to use them where you can't get to the network. The first solution to that problem is 820.11. Use it at home, and look for open access on the road. With good VPN (ssh+nfs) you can get to your network server from many places. I manually synchronize only the files I need, but my laptop is rarely used outside of 802.11 areas, if you travel often, then you might need more. (CODA? AFS? )
I know a man who put himself through 2 years of college, while also supproting his wife and kid, making minium wage. He was an old fashioned type of guy who didn't not belive in womehn working outside the home. (with kids not yet a year old it is hard to find any advantage in that anyway, but mostly it was their life choice)
It can be done. It isn't easy, but it can be done. the only reason he didn't finish is after working 40 hour week and school he had no time for the family. (Eventially he went on the fast food management track, and while he could be making more as a programer, he is well over the average salery for his area)
You have to figgure out your values, and energy level. School is always hard, I'm not sure I would recomend it, just because it can take too muh family time from you. YMMV
No, DC actually works better than AC for long distances. However the longer the distance the higher the needed voltage.
AC however has the advantage that you can change voltages cheaply and efficantly. DC is much harder to work with from that standpoint. This ability to change voltages is why AC is used. (There are several other reasion, induction moters and problems switching DC are others).
AC works poorly for long distances because the peaks travel. Power may go around the earth 7 times in a second, but AC will reverse 60 times (US) in that second. If you have generators all over the country, then eventially you will have a place where power from one generator is positive, while the other is negative, and that doesn't work very well.
Yeah, but only if you intend to use them in a burglery, as opposed to use them for something legal. So if you only use them because a couple lock picks will replace the hundreds of keys you otherwise need, you are okay. (but try to convince a court that you actually need 100 keys as a part of your normal life, and so a lockpick is really easier)
Personally I think this is just another stupid law, but the people I vote for tend to not be ellected. Maybe because they might keep their promise of less goverment even though it gets rid of the programs that benifit their constitutes...
How do you protect YOUR house? windows (not microsoft) are trivial to break with a hammer. Locked doors can often be picked. A good saw ($150 or less from home depot) can get through most walls. So are your valuables really prtected?
The best gun safes are rated as 30 minutes protection against an attacker who knows what he is doing. (but several hours against someone who doesn't)
the poster said "someone broke into my house", so you can assume reasonable mesures were taken. What more can you do if the door was locked?
The obvious answer is just move to cable, since cable companies want to provide phone service you should be able to choose who gives better service. Now if cable companies weren't even more evil that the worst baby bell.
Still, it is worth your while to keep checking out the compitition. If the bells see everyone switching to cable modems and cell phones they will respond (eventially). There are local 802.11 (and other licensed band are possible) networks to connect to. Satalite works great for some people.
Remember, you can turn this into a non-issue, but only if you tell everyone you know that there are options and they should check out cell phones (my cell phone is more talk time then I need, free long distance all for what a land line would be.) Cable is trying to get into the phone market. Let everyone blindly use the phone company, and the phone company has won. Tell people to compare service, and the phone company will start losing. Not everyone, but enough to affect the bottom line, and that is what will bring service to your neighborhood.
You have to talk to each city/township/county/state individually. And note that not just one of the above, you may have to convince several to let you through. Many cities granted a cable company a limitless cable monopoly if they would bring cable in, and internet might apply to that grant, depending on the lawyers.
Fortunatly there is wireless compitition in all areas for both cable (satalite and VHF/UHF) and phone (cell). Internet also has some compitition, but it remains to be seen how much. (cell modems are not broadband today, but your have 802.11, cable, DSL, and satalite for compition) Federal regulations make it illegal for a town to prevent you from putting up satalite dishes. (often towns make it difficult though) 802.11 antennas can often be hidden.
Your best bet if you want to compete with the local monopolies is wireless. Copper is expensive, and breaks even after it is in the ground. Wireless is cheaper (once you buy the license if applicaable)
If I was going to re-engineer goverment, the constitution would be mich simpiler:
Note that failing in an attempt to kill the president might be illegal. Also note that ex post facto laws are not prhibited. A president who doesn't do a good job will soon find himself without a life, while those who do a good job are likely to be hit by a crackpot after a few years, preventing power from going to his head.
It wouldn't never work, but it is fun to think about.
Those old rust, rickety roller coasters are often built that way. From day one they look and feel like they just barely passed inspection this morning, and tommorow they will close it forever.
Unfortunatly that means there is no way to tell the difference between a well maintained coaster ment to look and feel like it is about to fail, and a unmaintained one that will fall at any time.
first of all, make sure your tech lead is boss, and has the power to force his vision on everyone. When the tech lead says "Do it this way", then it is done that way. Of course that means your tech lead is good. (Often call cheif architect) He is not a manager, though the buck stops with him for the schedule. He needs to be a good programer who understands every part of the code, and can change any of it. (and have it work). He will not have time to touch every part of the code, but if he can't understand it he will make you re-write it.
Second, have a code review team. A small (3-6?) group of people who do nothing be review code all day every day. They know the code better than the chief architect, but all their job is, is to make sure it is bug free, well styled (readable), and matches the spec. They answer to the tech lead.
The chief architect is critical, I don't think any project can succede without a good dictator for a tech lead. The code reviewers are a good idea for a large project, for a small project they are the coders themselves. (for a large project you cannot understand every part of the code and get your work done, while for a small project it is easier to get your work done when you understand it all)
Management is going to be the biggest factor in success.
Maybe YOU have 256 charicters to play with, but I still have to use old systems with only 6 unique charicters to play with. Please make sure your variables and functions are unique in the first 6 letters. This isn't as bad as it sounds, I can make my variables 1024 charicters if I want to, the compiler will just silently truncate them to 6, so I can still have the long names, I just have to be careful to make the first 6 charicters unique.