Sure, here's some links for you. Popular Science - That's where I first read about it, there was actually a test-drive in the early 90s or so but I couldn't find the article. The tester's opinion did stick with me though! Edmunds Gizmo Highway GM's drive-by-wire and fuel cell concept vehicle In fact there's a whole slew of articles out there - it's tough to pick which ones are the best.
Odds are it will eventually happen. If people can't adjust, car makers will simply introduce an electronic force-feedback system which mimics what you'd normally feel. Heck, it could have an on-off switch too, so if it was raining/snowing/etc you could turn on the force feedback to 'get a feel for the road' but during a normal sunny drive to the store the system could be off.
The lack of feel was the big thing, if people loved it, they (automakers) would have found a way to get it approved. Just like fly by wire - you just build enough redundancy in the system to make sure that catastrophic failures are rare and require the failure of more then one single piece.
To be perfectly honest, I would have rejected a drive-by-wire system too. It could react better then me and be more reliable then a mechanical system and I still wouldn't go for it - something about that seperation I don't like. You take away the feel for the road and I just think people would become so complacent in their (already bad) driving that accidents would just surge. Not to mention it would make those rumble strips useless hehe
All I hope is that this system isn't TOO good. Take electronic sterring - worked great, but people hated it. Why? It's was to good, too "disconnected", you couldn't 'feel' the road under you - it made people uneasy, like they where floating.
Likewise, if this system is so good, so good in fact that people literally don't feel the road at all, they'll shy away from it. There's just something weird about driving and not being able to feel the road under you - it's like being disconnected, giving you a feeling of not being in control.
(Electronic systems tried to compromise by adding force feedback, but it was to late by then)
Oi, no need to be so angry. I don't want to go way offtopic here, but this thing really DOES work. And no, it is not a pyramid scheme since you don't pay any money to join a "club". See the definition of pyramid scheme here.
That's how I have mine now, it goes Modem > Router > Switch > Devices, one of which is the voice terminal.
What are you running your smoothie on? Mine's setup on a Pentium 200, 384mb ram, 5Gb hard drive. Perhaps my (old, slow, makes an occasional clunk but otherwise fine) hard drive could be the culprit? It's the only thing I can think of given the specs of the rest of the machine - it seems like VoIP only uses about 10kb/sec of my bandwidth, but perhaps with a suspect hard drive something could be going on.
Yes, from looking around the web some, it seems that it may be the SmoothWall box getting confused - my next attempt is to hook the voice terminal directly to the modem and use its DHCP server to assign an address to the router, then the switch, yadda yadda.
I've had Vonage now for about 3 weeks and have mixed feelings on it. I've already had a few outages, and while all the features are nice (Such as the network availability forwarding, where it forwards calls to my cell phone if the voice terminal isn't online), my cable inet service seemed a whole lot more reliable before I got it. Then again, it may be just the way my network is setup - seems like once or twice the problem has been with my firewall (Smoothwall) just 'locking up' during a 10+ minute long call.
All in all, if I can iron out these minor problems, I think it will be a lot nicer then a traditional landline, and the price is right. I'm just not at the phase where I trust it whole-heartedly, so I'm glad I have my cell as backup
The difference is that Linux people can make a logical arguement, Microsoft salesmen can only make up big lies and format them so stupid people who've been conditoned through schools accept it
Not necessarily true - you say this because you are pro-Linux and anti-Microsoft. But I bet if you went to someone who was the exact opposite, you'd hear the exact opposite.
Besides, I've taken part on meetings where Linux vendor X was telling us to switch from Windows to Linux, and in other companies it's been Microsoft telling us why we should switch from Linux. In both cases the arguments where strong - both for and against.
You might read some of the FUD MS puts on their site, or it's employees state 'off-the-record', but none of that goes on face to face, they are quite understanding of what their compeition is and know how to use that knowledge for their own good.
Exactly, and that's one of their biggest faults now. If they would have designed the OS with security in mind from the very start, then the average Joe would be used to it, and not complain endlessly when they try to throw it in later.
even though Microsoft is doing the "Right Thing", a majority of average (Below average?) users will complain until MS is forced to set the firewall to disabled by default. It's sad, but true.
Good point! I think I'll write an article about a linux install from 1998 and see if Slashdot will post the story. (They won't? Why? Oh, because you should update your system so my story is redundant? Ah - then why's this one here, just because it's about Windows? Thought so.)
I tried to upgrade my mothers PC to XP, its a 400mhz AMD K6. It didnt work. So I installed Mandrake 10. No problems whatsoever.
Care to expand on the problems you encountered? I only ask because I'm running Windows Server 2003 on a P2 450 without any problems. 40Gb HDD and 384MB Ram too.
Ah see - that's what I didn't think about. Even though they can tap you "just because", they can't do anything with it officially. I hadn't thought of it that way. Thanks.
Even after all the news surrounding the recent VoIP problems, wiretapping, TOS agreements, etc I still just signed up for Vonage, the $30/month for unlimited local and long distance was to good to pass up (Not to mention my great dislike for my current telco and the fact that I can't get another one unless I lived on the other side of the street). My question though about wiretapping is: Is it that big of a deal? From what I've read the same rules apply, so they can't just tap into you for no reason at all. So it just seems sort of like a moot point to scream and yell about VoIP tapping, since landlines have already had that for quite some time. Where's the "This is bad because" deal? Are we worried that because now that there's a wiretapping rule in place that it means that there's the potential for hackers to exploit it? Something else?
Yup one of the companies I used to work for (Stock Exchange) used OnBase for it's OCRing. I admined it, so I got to get pretty indepth with it (And not to mention training from Hyland is AWESOME! Not the training itself really, the nightly bar crawls and trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the end!). It does what the above posters said plus it has this really slick way of placing the media - you can spread it out over a half dozen different SANs, some DVD-changers, a SQL database, etc and OnBase will know where you put the data and grab it for you - it was truly a wonderful OCR program. (Though at the time horribly expensive, requiring hardware dongles to allow different access to the system)
I think I'm going to run around high-fiving everyone here, because to me this shows they still don't get it. You can kill SuSE, you can kill Novell, IBM, and Red Hat and you still wouldn't kill Linux.
No, they wouldn't kill Linux, but they would shove it so far out of the public view it might as well be Amiga. I don't think they want to kill Linux completely - just the big players, the ones that matter to the high dollar corporate customers. The ones really stealing sales from MS.
But MS is a tad to late to come to the table, they are trying to crush it after it's gotten to large. If they destroy distro X, another will rise out of the ashes and be just as big (I hope!). 10 years ago, if they'd invested all their energy into it, they might have kept Linux small - but it's gaining momentum now, and it's hard to stop a freight train.
Yeah, usually that's what I end up doing. The mouse isn't much of a problem since I've memorized most of the ALT keys (And being in an IDE I don't need to TAB out much) but I'm a crappy touch typist. Keyboard laid flat, fingers in proper position and I'm ok. Put the keyboard in my lap and it's all out the window. Learning how to type on something like this might make it easier to really lean back and relax without hitting the backspace key 30% of the time hehe
Well, I do stretch and take breaks, but I might be interested in something like this. Occasionally I'll sit leaned way back in my chair whilst I type - the particular way my office is setup it's actually quite relaxing and I can get "in the zone" programming. But the keyboard prevents me from doing it for any length of time, this thing though, might let me lean back and relax for an hour or so
No, true, I totally agree with you - I didn't mean to make MS sound like a saint. Perhaps it was an over-generalization on my part, I simply meant to imply that part of the reasons MS is the way it is is due to it's market penetration and it's attempts to keep it that way. Releasing code to early and to un-tested while at the same time trying to put everything but the kitchen sink into the mix.
(Oi, I don't think my original post was flamebait either! It was merely a speculation)
If only Apple had licensed the Macintosh, they could have been Microsoft.
But this is not a fact. It's conjecture, and barring a time machine, it can never be proven.
Exactly. I could see it now if the roles where reversed - Apple would release an OS bug ridden and easily compromised, partly due to the fact that it would have to support such a vast array of different hardware configurations and the sheer market penetration they have while MS Windows would be touted as an "Elitists OS", one that those Mac people "just don't understand". A secure and stable OS (Because when you don't have a nearly infinite amount of con figurations, it's pretty easy to be secure and stable) with a small band of fans completely devoted to it.
Makes you wonder what will happen when Linux becomes as big as Windows.
Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter removed 5,300 discs, or 5 percent of the 107,000 his state was scheduled to receive.
And those where just Britney Spears CDs too!
More on topic though, it seems almost like they send the states whatever they have sitting in a warehouse without any rhyme or reason. A lot of those CDs *shouldn't* be in libraries imho.
I wonder if the settlement was for Books-On-Cd as well, as that would of been a welcome addition to the blind and near-blind library patrons.
Oi, hate to reply to myself, but another good thing about cacti is it's speed. It has a compiled version of the daemon which claims it can do over 50 checks a second - in a big network it's worth it.
Well, don't forget it as much as get something better, Cacti. Cacti is a frontend to MRTG & RRDTOOL and offers a lot of awesome improvements, such as a web frontend to add devices, device "profiles" to enable a common monitoring set for things such as Cisco routers, servers, etc and a whole lot more. We used MRTG here at our (Windows only) network, and I'm slowly moving it all over to Cacti for all of the above plus a lot more.
I'm not sure on the exact model, it has a P4 3.06, 1GB ram, 80GB hdd, 128mb radeon on it.
He says the battery life is terrible, something like 1.5 - 2 hours, but for him it's worth it, since he only bought it to bring to LAN parties, so there's no need for it to have a killer battery life.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, here's some links for you.
Popular Science - That's where I first read about it, there was actually a test-drive in the early 90s or so but I couldn't find the article. The tester's opinion did stick with me though!
Edmunds
Gizmo Highway
GM's drive-by-wire and fuel cell concept vehicle
In fact there's a whole slew of articles out there - it's tough to pick which ones are the best.
Odds are it will eventually happen. If people can't adjust, car makers will simply introduce an electronic force-feedback system which mimics what you'd normally feel. Heck, it could have an on-off switch too, so if it was raining/snowing/etc you could turn on the force feedback to 'get a feel for the road' but during a normal sunny drive to the store the system could be off.
The lack of feel was the big thing, if people loved it, they (automakers) would have found a way to get it approved. Just like fly by wire - you just build enough redundancy in the system to make sure that catastrophic failures are rare and require the failure of more then one single piece.
To be perfectly honest, I would have rejected a drive-by-wire system too. It could react better then me and be more reliable then a mechanical system and I still wouldn't go for it - something about that seperation I don't like. You take away the feel for the road and I just think people would become so complacent in their (already bad) driving that accidents would just surge. Not to mention it would make those rumble strips useless hehe
All I hope is that this system isn't TOO good. Take electronic sterring - worked great, but people hated it. Why? It's was to good, too "disconnected", you couldn't 'feel' the road under you - it made people uneasy, like they where floating.
Likewise, if this system is so good, so good in fact that people literally don't feel the road at all, they'll shy away from it. There's just something weird about driving and not being able to feel the road under you - it's like being disconnected, giving you a feeling of not being in control.
(Electronic systems tried to compromise by adding force feedback, but it was to late by then)
Oi, no need to be so angry. I don't want to go way offtopic here, but this thing really DOES work. And no, it is not a pyramid scheme since you don't pay any money to join a "club". See the definition of pyramid scheme here.
I know of one certain bone I'd like to re-grow, and grow larger as well! ;P
That's how I have mine now, it goes Modem > Router > Switch > Devices, one of which is the voice terminal.
What are you running your smoothie on? Mine's setup on a Pentium 200, 384mb ram, 5Gb hard drive. Perhaps my (old, slow, makes an occasional clunk but otherwise fine) hard drive could be the culprit? It's the only thing I can think of given the specs of the rest of the machine - it seems like VoIP only uses about 10kb/sec of my bandwidth, but perhaps with a suspect hard drive something could be going on.
Yes, from looking around the web some, it seems that it may be the SmoothWall box getting confused - my next attempt is to hook the voice terminal directly to the modem and use its DHCP server to assign an address to the router, then the switch, yadda yadda.
I've had Vonage now for about 3 weeks and have mixed feelings on it. I've already had a few outages, and while all the features are nice (Such as the network availability forwarding, where it forwards calls to my cell phone if the voice terminal isn't online), my cable inet service seemed a whole lot more reliable before I got it.
Then again, it may be just the way my network is setup - seems like once or twice the problem has been with my firewall (Smoothwall) just 'locking up' during a 10+ minute long call.
All in all, if I can iron out these minor problems, I think it will be a lot nicer then a traditional landline, and the price is right. I'm just not at the phase where I trust it whole-heartedly, so I'm glad I have my cell as backup
The difference is that Linux people can make a logical arguement, Microsoft salesmen can only make up big lies and format them so stupid people who've been conditoned through schools accept it
Not necessarily true - you say this because you are pro-Linux and anti-Microsoft. But I bet if you went to someone who was the exact opposite, you'd hear the exact opposite.
Besides, I've taken part on meetings where Linux vendor X was telling us to switch from Windows to Linux, and in other companies it's been Microsoft telling us why we should switch from Linux. In both cases the arguments where strong - both for and against.
You might read some of the FUD MS puts on their site, or it's employees state 'off-the-record', but none of that goes on face to face, they are quite understanding of what their compeition is and know how to use that knowledge for their own good.
Exactly, and that's one of their biggest faults now. If they would have designed the OS with security in mind from the very start, then the average Joe would be used to it, and not complain endlessly when they try to throw it in later.
even though Microsoft is doing the "Right Thing", a majority of average (Below average?) users will complain until MS is forced to set the firewall to disabled by default. It's sad, but true.
Good point! I think I'll write an article about a linux install from 1998 and see if Slashdot will post the story. (They won't? Why? Oh, because you should update your system so my story is redundant? Ah - then why's this one here, just because it's about Windows? Thought so.)
I tried to upgrade my mothers PC to XP, its a 400mhz AMD K6. It didnt work. So I installed Mandrake 10. No problems whatsoever.
Care to expand on the problems you encountered? I only ask because I'm running Windows Server 2003 on a P2 450 without any problems. 40Gb HDD and 384MB Ram too.
Ah see - that's what I didn't think about. Even though they can tap you "just because", they can't do anything with it officially. I hadn't thought of it that way. Thanks.
Even after all the news surrounding the recent VoIP problems, wiretapping, TOS agreements, etc I still just signed up for Vonage, the $30/month for unlimited local and long distance was to good to pass up (Not to mention my great dislike for my current telco and the fact that I can't get another one unless I lived on the other side of the street).
My question though about wiretapping is: Is it that big of a deal? From what I've read the same rules apply, so they can't just tap into you for no reason at all. So it just seems sort of like a moot point to scream and yell about VoIP tapping, since landlines have already had that for quite some time. Where's the "This is bad because" deal? Are we worried that because now that there's a wiretapping rule in place that it means that there's the potential for hackers to exploit it? Something else?
Yup one of the companies I used to work for (Stock Exchange) used OnBase for it's OCRing. I admined it, so I got to get pretty indepth with it (And not to mention training from Hyland is AWESOME! Not the training itself really, the nightly bar crawls and trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the end!).
It does what the above posters said plus it has this really slick way of placing the media - you can spread it out over a half dozen different SANs, some DVD-changers, a SQL database, etc and OnBase will know where you put the data and grab it for you - it was truly a wonderful OCR program. (Though at the time horribly expensive, requiring hardware dongles to allow different access to the system)
I think I'm going to run around high-fiving everyone here, because to me this shows they still don't get it. You can kill SuSE, you can kill Novell, IBM, and Red Hat and you still wouldn't kill Linux.
No, they wouldn't kill Linux, but they would shove it so far out of the public view it might as well be Amiga. I don't think they want to kill Linux completely - just the big players, the ones that matter to the high dollar corporate customers. The ones really stealing sales from MS.
But MS is a tad to late to come to the table, they are trying to crush it after it's gotten to large. If they destroy distro X, another will rise out of the ashes and be just as big (I hope!). 10 years ago, if they'd invested all their energy into it, they might have kept Linux small - but it's gaining momentum now, and it's hard to stop a freight train.
Yeah, usually that's what I end up doing. The mouse isn't much of a problem since I've memorized most of the ALT keys (And being in an IDE I don't need to TAB out much) but I'm a crappy touch typist. Keyboard laid flat, fingers in proper position and I'm ok. Put the keyboard in my lap and it's all out the window. Learning how to type on something like this might make it easier to really lean back and relax without hitting the backspace key 30% of the time hehe
Well, I do stretch and take breaks, but I might be interested in something like this. Occasionally I'll sit leaned way back in my chair whilst I type - the particular way my office is setup it's actually quite relaxing and I can get "in the zone" programming. But the keyboard prevents me from doing it for any length of time, this thing though, might let me lean back and relax for an hour or so
No, true, I totally agree with you - I didn't mean to make MS sound like a saint. Perhaps it was an over-generalization on my part, I simply meant to imply that part of the reasons MS is the way it is is due to it's market penetration and it's attempts to keep it that way. Releasing code to early and to un-tested while at the same time trying to put everything but the kitchen sink into the mix.
(Oi, I don't think my original post was flamebait either! It was merely a speculation)
If only Apple had licensed the Macintosh, they could have been Microsoft.
But this is not a fact. It's conjecture, and barring a time machine, it can never be proven.
Exactly. I could see it now if the roles where reversed - Apple would release an OS bug ridden and easily compromised, partly due to the fact that it would have to support such a vast array of different hardware configurations and the sheer market penetration they have while MS Windows would be touted as an "Elitists OS", one that those Mac people "just don't understand". A secure and stable OS (Because when you don't have a nearly infinite amount of con figurations, it's pretty easy to be secure and stable) with a small band of fans completely devoted to it.
Makes you wonder what will happen when Linux becomes as big as Windows.
Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter removed 5,300 discs, or 5 percent of the 107,000 his state was scheduled to receive.
And those where just Britney Spears CDs too!
More on topic though, it seems almost like they send the states whatever they have sitting in a warehouse without any rhyme or reason. A lot of those CDs *shouldn't* be in libraries imho.
I wonder if the settlement was for Books-On-Cd as well, as that would of been a welcome addition to the blind and near-blind library patrons.
Oi, hate to reply to myself, but another good thing about cacti is it's speed. It has a compiled version of the daemon which claims it can do over 50 checks a second - in a big network it's worth it.
Well, don't forget it as much as get something better, Cacti. Cacti is a frontend to MRTG & RRDTOOL and offers a lot of awesome improvements, such as a web frontend to add devices, device "profiles" to enable a common monitoring set for things such as Cisco routers, servers, etc and a whole lot more. We used MRTG here at our (Windows only) network, and I'm slowly moving it all over to Cacti for all of the above plus a lot more.
I'm not sure on the exact model, it has a P4 3.06, 1GB ram, 80GB hdd, 128mb radeon on it.
He says the battery life is terrible, something like 1.5 - 2 hours, but for him it's worth it, since he only bought it to bring to LAN parties, so there's no need for it to have a killer battery life.