While I agree with the parent on some points, IIRC newspaper ads are the most effective means of advertising. The reason they work is because they integrate well with the way people are using the "device:"
Large, unwieldy media
Breaks in stories that force user to shuffle through said unwieldy media
Format that encourages people to browse the entire publication- Headlines are more enticing than a table of contents!
For a website to really compete for ad money, they first need to keep people around!
After that, the site has to be designed in a way that really uses the real-estate! If people just focus on the center of the screen to see the content (or to avoid annoying ads), and ignore all the crap on the sides, the site has lost the opportunity to interest someone in another article, and has failed to control the speed at which people experience their site.
Making the ads bigger (and integrated into the content) does increase exposure... but I doubt it does much for sales!
The nature of an ad itself should be a function of the target audience. I am not sure what the "lowest common denominator" ad should look like, but... I know that dishing them out to the/. crowd is a waste of time. With all the ability to target ads on a website, jeez!
Maybe the advertising is too cheap... advertisers don't put as much thought into it?
"The voters chose not to re-elect their Senator..."
If only it were that simple! Unfortunately, politicians "represent" us on a number of different topics. To some people, abortion is the most important, for others it might be guns, economy, military, spending in their district,...or DRM.
It's good to offer people residency before citizenship. Residency does not deprive you of the right to experience the country and determine if it is a place that you want to live for the rest of your life. The system shouldn't encourage dual-citizenship (although it should not prevent it either).
I would much rather make it easier to get a green-card to not deny people entry, but waiting a few years (maybe 7 is too long; 5 seems more appropriate) seems to make sense.
Good info on the DSL. But, the question then beckons, how much does the incremental bandwidth itself cost? Specifically, if the telco has 10,000 DSL customers using an average of 10% of their maximum throughput, how much more does it cost them if customers average 50% utilization?
It would seem more efficient to use commodity equipment like 10-T ethernet wiring and hubs on a local scale (one or two city blocks) and a fairly de-centralized network topology, rather than the heavily centralized CO system.
Also, I am curious what percentage of the cost of providing service is in the metering?
Then why aren't "neighborhood" CO-OP/ISP's more popular? It would seem that providing a single 10Mbps link to a point on (say) a city block for residential (or even multi-use) service would be viable.
But, all we have is "connection sharing," where one customer gives away their connectivity, without being able to add any value or economies of scale for others.
Don't get me wrong; I know the per-customer cost is high (it'll take PacBell 2-3 months on my DSL service to cover the support calls and startup kit!), but why don't we see anyone filling the gap on bundled/value-added services in that last 100m?
Regarding heat dissipation-- the problem will be worse since there is minimal airflow in the trunk, and the solar load (especially for dark colored cars) will actually make the internal temperature warmer than the air temperature!
I wouldn't worry too much about condensation, since as the space heats up the relative humidity will drop. Of course the silica gel is always a good, cheap solution, though. (Be sure you can replace/refresh it, though!)
If you aren't in a hurry, and have a good amount of stuff to move, go for a small container. Someone said to sell all your electronics... I might argue for keeping the DVD player with region 1... it might come in handy, especially if it is dual-voltage. If it isn't dual voltage... it might be worthwile to buy a small (500VA) transformer.
Generally, selling everything and starting over is the best bet, especially if you will be staying there for at least two years. Lots of initial cash outflow, or discomfort, but... it'll do.
For what it is worth, if you move before the end of the year, you can charge the moving expenses against your income taxes without itemizing. IANAA, but I think you can charge selling things for less than their value, or get some kind of a break there. If you move in the new year, this is worthless, as you get a substantial (US) tax break as an expat abroad.
For a work visa, you will (almost certainly) need an employer sponsor. Some EU countries (Sweden) give live-in significant others "resident" status, but the working through the kinks can be hard...
Re:So, how important is bandwidth?
on
Net-Nexus Seoul
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
So, maybe providing bandwidth to the home is a dead end and it's developing cybercafes that's the key to a computer-centric culture?
I think one of the big differences that "westerners" have to realize is that Asian homes are typically much smaller than "ours," which encourages going out to do things. Most people cannot really entertain in their homes, so they go to a restaurant to entertain their friends. It's a different culture...
That said, broadband has REALLY failed in Asia to the home. Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea... they all have fiber to the basement, with impressive video-on-demand offerings, but... it isn't that successful.
Compare to the US. While there are social connections that make us want to go to the bar, restaurant, whatever... we tend to live in a much less dense urban environment. Is the bottom line that you are willing to pay more to do something out of the house than you are "just" at home?
Raised floor is great for HVAC, but overkill for most of today's needs. Five racks hardly requires a raised floor, unless there is a hell of a lot of cabling!
Technically, no. A computer room is a change in occupancy from "office space." While an interior desecrator could lay out furniture in a room, they are not qualified to properly design the room itself.
I'll bite here. No, you are better off hiring people rather than diverting in-house staff with marginal theoretical knowledge to try and do the job. Example: tying into the building's chilled water system. The landlord might be a bit more comfortable with someone that does this frequently.
Electrically, the actual work is simple enough, but there are codes that you must/should comply with.
My experience, though, has been that most people don't really want to do the job right, they just want to have something functional. The parent's dream of a NOC for five racks seems a bit off in the first place. Do it cheap now, knowing that you are skimping, and budget to go back later and do it right!
(One little code tidbit to spread is that any UPS over 750VA should be killed by an EPO switch at the door of a computer room! A relevant engineering corrollary is that you don't put UPS systems in series!)
Check out this article for how you can evaluate the reliability of a building. Simple little calculator for looking at all the different systems involved.
It's less attractive to have extra fees for calling a cell phone than having the reciever pay. The thing that kills me is making an international call to a cell phone.
Domestically, you may be able to tell what is a cell phone and what isn't, but make an international call to a cell phone and it hurts! No discounts, either!
At least one of which (Intel) has directly critisized the SSSCA.
...Intel is opposed to the government getting involved in DRM. If it will make them more money, why wouldn't they support it?! Moreover, once they have made it, why wouldn't they require it?!
Everyone is out to protect their own interests; Intel doesn't want the government telling them how to do their job.
Re:Why is important infrastructure online?
on
Cyber-Attacks?
·
· Score: 1
No... the statement works just as well taking out the word "cost."
Finding skilled labor for every little remote site is impossible. Finding a monkey can work, but it won't improve security any!
Be careful... you don't have the same consumer protections from a debit card that you do on a credit card!
The reason credit card companies are not worried about providing a more secure system is that they don't stand to loose anything if someone uses a fraudulent card... the cost is borne by the merchants and the consumers.
The same caution goes for the electronic fund transfers (sometimes initiated by a merchant "scanning" your check now)! These aren't checks anymore, and you are not afforded the same protections.
Read the disclosures from your bank... when it comes to electronic transfers, you don't have ANY real protection... think before lighting up the debit cards and electronic bill payments!
Moving to Sweden is pretty easy... you don't even have to get married to a Swede! Living with someone "counts." They are even happier if you decide you want to actually WORK!
The swedish language isn't that hard to learn; the vocabulary isn't that hard to pick up (amazing similarity to english for a lot of things), but the grammar is a bitch. Social things (like why the heck they inhale all the time while listening) are a little tricky...
The only real problem I can think of is...the winter.
I don't think that this is quite the golden opportunity you might think it is. As several people have said, the goal should be to put in a conduit now, not the fiber. That is a fairly small project, and wouldn't have a huge impact on the primary project.
However, the trenching for a sewer line isn't quite the same as an ideal layout for coms conduits. They will have a 16" bucket on a backhoe (or thereabouts) for doing a sweer line. Another major concern is slope... "shit don't go up hill!" Logistically, you would end up needing to put the conduit above the sewer pipe. This would forever be a problem with maintaining the sewer. Also, because of the small bucket, it would be significantly more trenching effort to lay the conduit to the side.
Last big concern is manholes and pulling points. For residential service, these things work better in the sidewalk than the street. (Sewer having the opposite preference.)
If you do go ahead with it, I would recommend a 4" conduit with 4-bore innerduct so there are multiple pulling compartments. Costs might limit you to a copper solution for the short-term, but longer-term fiber might be viable.
From either the mentioned article or another I read on the subject, the owner smelled gasoline before the fire took too much of a hold. The fire started in the only entrance to the place.
While it is impossible to know if the fire was set by the government, a competitor, or an enemy of someone inside... the little information available suggests that it was set deliberately.
Yes, the owner was breaking the law by having an unlicensed internet cafe, but your claims of bigotry are unfounded: The chinese government has demonstrated little value for human life. (No, the US government isn't really all that much better-- just more politically aware.)
Nothing currently replaces the recording features of VHS, expect tivo's (costly, and not under consumer control) and DVD-r's (not currently available en masse.)
Check out Terapin's CD Video Recorder. At $500, it's a little pricey, but that is what you seem to be asking for: Something on a consumer scale that can record video on cheap media.
Actually, he does say that the download market is significantly larger than the sales market, and unless a 15-20% drop were seen in sales (when the economy picks up), the evidence would not support his "sky is falling" accusations published by Cato.
Implicitly, he states that people want to own the music, and that the downloading is peripheral to the purchasing. Nothing wrong here.
As for DRM... from an economics standpoint, I imagine he is right: People will not pay as much for fewer rights, and from a purely theoretical standpoint, nothing is wrong. He does state in his conditions:
DRM, as I see it, is merely the protection in the software, on a CD or whatever, that would allow micro-payments. It doesn't do this yet, but in principle it could. That's what I view as closer to ideal.
And, he goes on to describe what he considers DRM to be:
...software that keeps you from making copies; that doesn't extend the length of copyright; and certainly doesn't get rid of fair use.
As much as I hate the idea of paying for EVERYTHING, rather than just a lump sum unlimited usage fee, the evils of DRM are mostly in the implementations: there has to be a way for "independants" to create and duplicate content (and to be afforded the same protections that DRM offers the majors). Since the implementation is far beyond his area of expertise, give him a little room to squirm!
I'd have to say that burying a new pipe is often more attractive for a university. The reason that most campuses have the tunnels is for steam heat.
At my old school, the tunnels were typically 3 feet wide by five feet tall on the branches, with 12" dia steam supply and return pipes. Also sharing the tunnel is 12kV power, sanitary lines (in some locations), domestic water, and copper telephone trunks.
The problem is that the steam pipes have a life of 30-50 years, and if you get a leak you will be hard-pressed to get someone out of the tunnel! Ignoring that, the tunnels are damn hot, so working in them is a challenge. Today, with OSHA, that same tunnel would need to be 6' wide and 7' tall, with exits every 200' or so... not as attractive as in the old days.
They do run fiber conveyance in them, but that was more a function needs changing faster than you can dig up the roads.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, they have things smaller that can do much of the same.
Check out the uCsimm. Onboard ethernet, serial, etc. All you need is a 3.3v power supply and you are good to go!
Only limitation is 8MB of RAM and a Dragonball proc, but...
Large, unwieldy media
Breaks in stories that force user to shuffle through said unwieldy media
Format that encourages people to browse the entire publication- Headlines are more enticing than a table of contents!
For a website to really compete for ad money, they first need to keep people around!
After that, the site has to be designed in a way that really uses the real-estate! If people just focus on the center of the screen to see the content (or to avoid annoying ads), and ignore all the crap on the sides, the site has lost the opportunity to interest someone in another article, and has failed to control the speed at which people experience their site.
Making the ads bigger (and integrated into the content) does increase exposure... but I doubt it does much for sales!
The nature of an ad itself should be a function of the target audience. I am not sure what the "lowest common denominator" ad should look like, but... I know that dishing them out to the /. crowd is a waste of time. With all the ability to target ads on a website, jeez!
Maybe the advertising is too cheap... advertisers don't put as much thought into it?
If only it were that simple! Unfortunately, politicians "represent" us on a number of different topics. To some people, abortion is the most important, for others it might be guns, economy, military, spending in their district, ...or DRM.
How do you avoid compromise?
Sad... the moderators gave the parent "interesting" rather than "funny." At least someone else got it!
It's good to offer people residency before citizenship. Residency does not deprive you of the right to experience the country and determine if it is a place that you want to live for the rest of your life. The system shouldn't encourage dual-citizenship (although it should not prevent it either).
I would much rather make it easier to get a green-card to not deny people entry, but waiting a few years (maybe 7 is too long; 5 seems more appropriate) seems to make sense.
Good info on the DSL. But, the question then beckons, how much does the incremental bandwidth itself cost? Specifically, if the telco has 10,000 DSL customers using an average of 10% of their maximum throughput, how much more does it cost them if customers average 50% utilization?
It would seem more efficient to use commodity equipment like 10-T ethernet wiring and hubs on a local scale (one or two city blocks) and a fairly de-centralized network topology, rather than the heavily centralized CO system.
Also, I am curious what percentage of the cost of providing service is in the metering?
Then why aren't "neighborhood" CO-OP/ISP's more popular? It would seem that providing a single 10Mbps link to a point on (say) a city block for residential (or even multi-use) service would be viable.
But, all we have is "connection sharing," where one customer gives away their connectivity, without being able to add any value or economies of scale for others.
Don't get me wrong; I know the per-customer cost is high (it'll take PacBell 2-3 months on my DSL service to cover the support calls and startup kit!), but why don't we see anyone filling the gap on bundled/value-added services in that last 100m?
Regarding heat dissipation-- the problem will be worse since there is minimal airflow in the trunk, and the solar load (especially for dark colored cars) will actually make the internal temperature warmer than the air temperature!
I wouldn't worry too much about condensation, since as the space heats up the relative humidity will drop. Of course the silica gel is always a good, cheap solution, though. (Be sure you can replace/refresh it, though!)
If you aren't in a hurry, and have a good amount of stuff to move, go for a small container. Someone said to sell all your electronics... I might argue for keeping the DVD player with region 1... it might come in handy, especially if it is dual-voltage. If it isn't dual voltage... it might be worthwile to buy a small (500VA) transformer.
Generally, selling everything and starting over is the best bet, especially if you will be staying there for at least two years. Lots of initial cash outflow, or discomfort, but... it'll do.
For what it is worth, if you move before the end of the year, you can charge the moving expenses against your income taxes without itemizing. IANAA, but I think you can charge selling things for less than their value, or get some kind of a break there. If you move in the new year, this is worthless, as you get a substantial (US) tax break as an expat abroad.
For a work visa, you will (almost certainly) need an employer sponsor. Some EU countries (Sweden) give live-in significant others "resident" status, but the working through the kinks can be hard...
That said, broadband has REALLY failed in Asia to the home. Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea... they all have fiber to the basement, with impressive video-on-demand offerings, but... it isn't that successful.
Compare to the US. While there are social connections that make us want to go to the bar, restaurant, whatever... we tend to live in a much less dense urban environment. Is the bottom line that you are willing to pay more to do something out of the house than you are "just" at home?
Raised floor is great for HVAC, but overkill for most of today's needs. Five racks hardly requires a raised floor, unless there is a hell of a lot of cabling!
Technically, no. A computer room is a change in occupancy from "office space." While an interior desecrator could lay out furniture in a room, they are not qualified to properly design the room itself.
I'll bite here. No, you are better off hiring people rather than diverting in-house staff with marginal theoretical knowledge to try and do the job. Example: tying into the building's chilled water system. The landlord might be a bit more comfortable with someone that does this frequently.
Electrically, the actual work is simple enough, but there are codes that you must/should comply with.
My experience, though, has been that most people don't really want to do the job right, they just want to have something functional. The parent's dream of a NOC for five racks seems a bit off in the first place. Do it cheap now, knowing that you are skimping, and budget to go back later and do it right!
(One little code tidbit to spread is that any UPS over 750VA should be killed by an EPO switch at the door of a computer room! A relevant engineering corrollary is that you don't put UPS systems in series!)
Check out this article for how you can evaluate the reliability of a building. Simple little calculator for looking at all the different systems involved.
Makes you think about how all the parts relate...
Domestically, you may be able to tell what is a cell phone and what isn't, but make an international call to a cell phone and it hurts! No discounts, either!
Everyone is out to protect their own interests; Intel doesn't want the government telling them how to do their job.
No... the statement works just as well taking out the word "cost."
Finding skilled labor for every little remote site is impossible. Finding a monkey can work, but it won't improve security any!
All they are trying to do is show how there are "generations" of consoles. Why split hairs over the details... we are talking about the Economist!
Be careful... you don't have the same consumer protections from a debit card that you do on a credit card!
The reason credit card companies are not worried about providing a more secure system is that they don't stand to loose anything if someone uses a fraudulent card... the cost is borne by the merchants and the consumers.
The same caution goes for the electronic fund transfers (sometimes initiated by a merchant "scanning" your check now)! These aren't checks anymore, and you are not afforded the same protections.
Read the disclosures from your bank... when it comes to electronic transfers, you don't have ANY real protection... think before lighting up the debit cards and electronic bill payments!
Moving to Sweden is pretty easy... you don't even have to get married to a Swede! Living with someone "counts." They are even happier if you decide you want to actually WORK!
...the winter.
The swedish language isn't that hard to learn; the vocabulary isn't that hard to pick up (amazing similarity to english for a lot of things), but the grammar is a bitch. Social things (like why the heck they inhale all the time while listening) are a little tricky...
The only real problem I can think of is
just my 0.2 krona.
I don't think that this is quite the golden opportunity you might think it is. As several people have said, the goal should be to put in a conduit now, not the fiber. That is a fairly small project, and wouldn't have a huge impact on the primary project.
However, the trenching for a sewer line isn't quite the same as an ideal layout for coms conduits. They will have a 16" bucket on a backhoe (or thereabouts) for doing a sweer line. Another major concern is slope... "shit don't go up hill!" Logistically, you would end up needing to put the conduit above the sewer pipe. This would forever be a problem with maintaining the sewer. Also, because of the small bucket, it would be significantly more trenching effort to lay the conduit to the side.
Last big concern is manholes and pulling points. For residential service, these things work better in the sidewalk than the street. (Sewer having the opposite preference.)
If you do go ahead with it, I would recommend a 4" conduit with 4-bore innerduct so there are multiple pulling compartments. Costs might limit you to a copper solution for the short-term, but longer-term fiber might be viable.
From either the mentioned article or another I read on the subject, the owner smelled gasoline before the fire took too much of a hold. The fire started in the only entrance to the place.
While it is impossible to know if the fire was set by the government, a competitor, or an enemy of someone inside... the little information available suggests that it was set deliberately.
Yes, the owner was breaking the law by having an unlicensed internet cafe, but your claims of bigotry are unfounded: The chinese government has demonstrated little value for human life. (No, the US government isn't really all that much better-- just more politically aware.)
Check out Terapin's CD Video Recorder. At $500, it's a little pricey, but that is what you seem to be asking for: Something on a consumer scale that can record video on cheap media.
Actually, he does say that the download market is significantly larger than the sales market, and unless a 15-20% drop were seen in sales (when the economy picks up), the evidence would not support his "sky is falling" accusations published by Cato.
Implicitly, he states that people want to own the music, and that the downloading is peripheral to the purchasing. Nothing wrong here.
As for DRM... from an economics standpoint, I imagine he is right: People will not pay as much for fewer rights, and from a purely theoretical standpoint, nothing is wrong. He does state in his conditions:
And, he goes on to describe what he considers DRM to be:
As much as I hate the idea of paying for EVERYTHING, rather than just a lump sum unlimited usage fee, the evils of DRM are mostly in the implementations: there has to be a way for "independants" to create and duplicate content (and to be afforded the same protections that DRM offers the majors). Since the implementation is far beyond his area of expertise, give him a little room to squirm!
I'd have to say that burying a new pipe is often more attractive for a university. The reason that most campuses have the tunnels is for steam heat.
At my old school, the tunnels were typically 3 feet wide by five feet tall on the branches, with 12" dia steam supply and return pipes. Also sharing the tunnel is 12kV power, sanitary lines (in some locations), domestic water, and copper telephone trunks.
The problem is that the steam pipes have a life of 30-50 years, and if you get a leak you will be hard-pressed to get someone out of the tunnel! Ignoring that, the tunnels are damn hot, so working in them is a challenge. Today, with OSHA, that same tunnel would need to be 6' wide and 7' tall, with exits every 200' or so... not as attractive as in the old days.
They do run fiber conveyance in them, but that was more a function needs changing faster than you can dig up the roads.