Here's what I've found virtualization has led to: manufacturers going cheap on on board devices. For example, a lot of low end servers that leverage Intel's VT are starting to ship with what I call "Win-NICs" i.e., devices that leverage the CPU for workload instead of a dedicated silicone chip. Like modems did years ago, now NICs are doing. Soon USB and other controllers will start requiring software application layer drivers where they user to operate entirely in hardware/firmware. This has 1 benefit only, cross platform compatibility. However, it sacrifices device and overall system performance, hardware diagnostics, and nice features like PXE boot.
People are jumping on this technology like flees to a dog. Why don't we simply standardize the device layers and have everyone comply with it? Sure, there's room for custom high performance devices, but the basic chips that every PC needs should be the same on everyone's boards, then we don't need VT...
While I'm on the rant... People, PLEASE; DO NOT put all your systems on 1 virtual host server!!!! I've seen a dozen companies consolidate whole farms onto 1 or 2 hosts in VMWare. Before, if you had 1 server down, you had 1 server down. Now you loose half the network! If you want to VM your machines, you need to be using clustered services and redundant NAS systems. I've even seen 4 different moron customers spec that out, but even then put all the cluster nodes ON THE SAME BOX!?!? C'mon, this isn't rocket science. Virtualizing is not to save money, or to limit the number of physical machines you need, it's for system portability across platforms and quick recovery of nodes and point systems through imaging. If you can't afford the licensing to cluster your systems, you can't afford VT.
I believe the idea here it to auto lock the plane into a simple auto pilot mode while a human in a terrorist control center calmly sits in a mock cockpit, accesses a secure satellite/ground transmitting grid, enters a few red paper pre-coded decryption keys (in 1980s nuclear bomb movie style), and then remotely takes control over the flight of the aircraft taking it wherever he wants. This is certainly different from an auto landing system that could actually be used today.
Since all new planes are flown almost exclusively by wire it is very easy to integrate this system in such a way that removing or jamming such a system would simply result in the plane either flying in a straight line, or crashing outright. Also, all the critical control systems would be behind really heavy metal plates, accessed from the underbelly of the plane, not inside, unless someone remotely unlocked a magnalock. The cockpit systems themselves are just screens and joysticks. Destroying them doesn't actually hurt the computer's ability to fly the plane remotely. This would prevent any form of direct tampering as the terrorist could not disable critical systems from within pressurized space without bringing crowbars and saws into the plane. (I think the TSA is good enough to stop that). Short of a small EMP going off inside the cockpit, I think this would work.
It doesn't stop the terrorists from trying to killing all the passengers, but at the point that someone with a 4" blade pocket knife or a small screwdriver started to try to kill passengers, I think they'd have more than they bargained for to deal with.
Lets go a step further... once the plane is under remote control, the pilots who have been locked in their cockpit safely behind a solid locked door can simply lower cabin pressure and make everyone pass out from lack of oxygen. Then they, wearing portable O2 masks, can come out, tie up the offenders, and re pressurize. Actually, now that I think on it, why do we need remote control to do that? Why not just depressurise and take care of business? All we need is a good door, and a few cheap portable O2 masks... I think this is a better idea for terrorism.
Now as far as pilot issues (pilot has heart attack) or equipment failure, remote flight management is still a good idea. In the long run? Maybe we don't need pilots at all on the plane. I'd be fine having auto pilot take me from place to place. I'd like my car to do that today!
RFID may be easy to copy or crack, but someone gets that info on their screen and still validates it against the hard copy when entering/exiting using a passport. You don't just wave it and go on...
Passport information by itself is not enough to steal someone's identity or bank account. You still need physical proof.
This first pass with RFID is simply making data tracking easier. It was not designed to be secure, just difficult to completely copy or forge.
A truly secure passport system would have to include fingerprinting, pass codes, facial scanning technology, or some other system to prove the identity of the bearer. Of course, the RFID could not be responsible to pass that information, it would likely merely possess some simply information allowing it to access a secure database system that actually contains the remainder of the data. That data could be on a government server, or even an integrated SIM in the passport itself requiring connection to a proprietary system. 3 point data validation would work, but it would be very expensive. You'd still need hard copy for entering nations that do not yet have the technological capacity to electronically scan passports.
One solution I hear proposed was that not only would the passport itself have an RFID tag, but also the person himself embedded under the skin, plus the addition of a fingerprint and 6 digit pin number. All 4 would have to match, be combined, and then be compared to a CRC value stored in an international database. All this would be simply for identity confirmation and nothing more, with the FBI and other similar branches still needing to cross validate your identity to your criminal record or a watch list. Are we really that concerned/paranoid?
OK, I work in Disaster Recovery, so this hits home...
First, the service plan is designed to fix your hardware only. If on site service is available from someone who is actually a trained, reliable, rep for a company (ie, you live/work in one of the 150 largest towns in America), then you are lucky and can usually get good service. Most people have to ship their hardware off or deal with some outsourced local company for repairs that take days. You hardly ever get your machine back in any good shape unless it's repaired at the factory, in which case they normally come back looking new or even better, but you have extended down time.
Second, If you run a business, and downtime is critical, you have spare systems... 1 spare for every 20 functional machines of each specific model is a good rule of thumb. Image a copy of the machine to a clean box and restore the user's files. If you prepared, this means 30-60 minutes of downtime for the user. The repaired machine becomes your replacement spare. If your a growing company, you will have even more spare systems because you order in bulk for more staff than you currently have, and rotate new machines in as employees come online.
If you're a really small business and only have a few machines you still need at least 1 spare at all times (even if you only have 1 working PC!). This is the cost of doing business vs the cost of downtime. Depending on the nature of your business, there are likely regulations from HIPPA, Baynes Oxley, or some other agency or legal requirement that you don't even know about. I've got a local doctor here in my town I service who is bound by law to have nearly 20K in systems and backups just to power his patient administration workstation for 1 simple secretary. It sounds rediculous, but it really isn't if he's going to be able to access those records anytime 24 hours a day if one of his patients is hospitalized and the hospital needs access to their history.
I've also seen cases even with $20k servers where a part failure has kept a system down for 6-7 days as the tech orders and replaces a dozen parts trying to find out which one is causing the others to fail. Sure, he was on site with parts in 4 hours, but downtime can still be crippling regardless of the quality of your service contract. If you don't have a plan to be back up and running in 1 hour or less, then you just plan for downtime. Again, it's the cost of doing business. You need spare systems.
Apple's repair policy is not a bad one. Sure they could focus more on large business and offer next day 2 way shipping or same day on site services for more money, but large businesses have spares, so what's the rush? This is one of the reasons Apple can provide such quality for the price, and that they made more profit last year than Dell while selling almost 20 times fewer machines.
Agreed. First, robots won't be free, they're expensive. Why would you ever want to abuse one? I baby my new car and it's not even as smart as my pocket calculator! Oh, you mean sexually? It doesn't have feelings... As much as we may make it pretend to have emotions, if you rape a robot will it like you any less? only if the programmer wanted it to be that way. Flash the OS and rape it again for all I care...
Also agreed, if it's a machine, it's designed to do a job. Adding emotion does not provide any direct benefit, only cost. Sure, there will be robots people will want as companions or pets. Personally, I say let's make THAT illegal. Make people get REAL FRIENDS! It's better for humanity, and costs less too.
As far as how robots interact with humans, if I had a house droid I would WANT it to be able to flip the bird to a solicitor who has the gall to ring my doorbell, curse and flail at him, throw things, possibly even threaten him with permanently scarring violence. I don't want some law preventing my robot from whooping your ass if you break into my home...
I can understand informational robots (intelligent sign posts, direction givers, delivery droids, taxi drivers, etc) should have a certain expected demeanor towards humans. Lets face it, if your robot is rude, no government or organization is going to deploy it. We don't need to make written laws about things that already have unwritten laws...
Content sourcing would be a great improvement for government as it could potentially eliminate billions of wasted dollars from pork, resolve conflicting regulations before they happen, and greatly improve inter agency communication.
Now all we need someone to do is sneak a line into a bill mandating the use of such a system while nobody's looking!
It's been painfully obvious to me, an engineer who's wife is an elementary ed gifted and talented teacher, that school systems as a whole simply do not pay enough to attract qualified staff.
My wife got a pay raise for getting her master's degree, but the raise was so minor it will take her 9 years to pay off her 18 months of education, not to mention her student loans for college in the first place.
Most schools in South Carolina are paying starting teachers at or below $25,000. I made more bartending part time in college!
To have a level of special education to do her job, the patience to deal with other peoples children, patience to deal with a failing political system, and the willingness to work 11 hour days five days a week deserves more. Sure she gets her summer off, right? Yea, a whole 9 weeks of which she spends most of taking extra classes, preparing new lesson plans, and attending required teacher meetings. The students get 11-12 weeks off, but not staff. She could teach summer school for more money, but then she wouldn't get any time off.
Our school district is so short on staff that they have 24-26 kids per class even though district policy states it should be 18 max for 4th grade rooms.
4 years in school for a technical profession, and you're being told up front there's no real room for promotion (only 1 in 100 can be principal, and that's a different major anyway), the salaries are fixed, it's a pain in the ass job with little thanks (and occasional legal threats the district won't back you up on). No wonder no one wants to teach.
Also, since staffing is hard to come by, any slacker with a degree is practically guaranteed a job, and has nearly perfect job security. Short of molesting a child and there actually being proof of it, it's almost impossible to fire a teacher. This means half the staff could really give a shit. This makes my wife a department head (which by the way does NOT come with a pay raise) because no one else wants to be.
Oh, and did I mention, as school scores decline, they can cut teacher pay. Exactly how am I supposed to react to a pay cut when it only happened because we had crap teachers in the building who can't be fired, because there are no replacements, because the pay scale sucks.
I can get a job painting cutting grass for the state freeway system for more money, better benefits, and I wouldn't even have to go to college.
Time to rethink the school system. Pay teachers more now, or pay for it later....
Good point... Cable companies offer a "broadcast" connection package usually at $10-15 per month. Almoist every HDTV currently on the market, and those sold for the past few years, have built in tuners. If you cable company lets you use your own, your set. If they restrict you from using your own, many states require them to provide you a tuner for free. Soon federal regulation may require the same if the cable companies piss off the FCC enough.
The cost to get a single HD antanea and install it outside your house is worth almost 2 years of HDTV from your cable provider or sattlite service. With HD antaenas I believe you also have to have 1 for each TV set. It's simply not worth it if you have 2 or more TVs... Keep in mind, broadcast TV won't give you good options for DVRs either (no electronic published chanel guide to use). I think Tivo might work, but now you'r paying for the privelidge anyway...
If you can't get cable TV, get a sattelite. It's likely if your town isn't big enough to have cable, the local broadcaster can't afford the HD upgrade and will sell out or shut down in 2009 anyway.
Thanks to recent changes in federal overtime pay requirements, if your full time job is to write software code for a company, then you ARE subject to recieve overtime pay at 1.5X the hourly rate (even if you are on salary). This change went into effect sometime last year. There is a special exemption for programmers however as follows:
To qualify for the computer employee exemption, the following tests must be met:
* The employee must be compensated either on a salary or fee basis (as defined in the regulations) at a rate not less than $455 per week or, if compensated on an hourly basis, at a rate not less than $27.63 an hour;
* The employee must be employed as a computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer or other similarly skilled worker in the computer field performing the duties described below;
* The employee's primary duty must consist of:
1) The application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software or system functional specifications;
2) The design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing or modification of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design specifications;
3) The design, documentation, testing, creation or modification of computer programs related to machine operating systems; or
4) A combination of the aforementioned duties, the performance of which requires the same level of skills.
If you meet all of these above requirements, and are a computer programmer or systems anylyst, than overtime pay is optional by your employer.
This means most line level general coders or code anylists, and basically ANYONE who answers a phone for a living should get overtime pay. Guys like me are paid more than the stated fees, so I can't get overtime. Belive me though, as a qualified engineer, if my company wasn't paying me very well, I'd be out the door, and they know it. I'm in too high demand, and demand is increasing. I may not get direct overtime pay, but I'm well compensated for the 50-60 hours a week I put in. We also have a company policy limiting employees to a 12 hour maximum work day, and prevent employees from being in the building after 7:00PM or on weekends. Many code from home, but that's voluntary.
The primary reason we pay exorbanant rates for internet access in America is that the lines are owned by individual telcos scattered regionally, which are paying high fees to national carriers and sattelite operators to partner across networks. Lets face it, Time Warner is not going to allow Joe Bob's ISP to offer better service at a lower price. They rape them on state to state fees and uplink costs. We also have a lot of this country where only a single ISP is availible. TWC is just pushing into my county and eliminating a local "legal monopoly" that charges almost twice the fee for 1/5 the connection speed and lower quality. For 2 years in my home I didn't have a choice of who to use, I had to pay the fee they wanted. As soon as TWC knowcked on my door, my local monopoly ISP offered a better package (that still cost too much).
The internet (being the backbone of modern telecommunication) is part of the infrastructure of the USA, and should be claimed and operated by the government. I'm not talking about the government becoming the phone company, I'm talking about the FCC taking over the physical line network and switching systems, and opening the entire network to open competition. I should be able to get ANY ISP I want anywhere in the USA.
Let Uncle Sam manage the lines, pay the cost for maintenance, and make a few thousand more government jobs in place of local employment opportunity (also making your job more portable if you work in telco) We regulate minimum quality and bandwidth at varying price points, and allow any carrier from any state to offer service to anyone anywher ein the US. (kind of like cable TV) Prices would fall in part due to competition, in part due to network simplification, but mostly due to the lack of massive fees paid by local companies to connect nationally and the elimination of local monopoly. Believe me, it would make a big difference if everyone could get 8M down/2M up for $29.99 from a national carrier. Look at what's happened to phone prices once the national guys started being allowed to offer local phone! Did thousands of people loose their jobs? NO! Local companies simply started accepting 100% profits instead of 300% profits. They still are profitable, so no harm done, they just charge less.
For 10 years going now we keep hearing the excuse "laying the cable is expensive, slow, and has an impact on your monthly bill." Guess what, all the cable is therenow, except in select small communities who still dont' have cable TV (less than 1% of America).
First, these surveys and studies allways look at music sales directly. This is WRONG! We need to look at the habits of the consumer. What has happened to the movie industry for example? Most young people (age 14-35, accounting for way more than 50% of all media purchased) bought a VHS tape every few months and multiple CDs per month looking back 5-7 years. Now, I find people buying DVDs much more often than CDs and multiple reasons for it.
Another point, ask the average person what they feel about the overall quality of new music today vs 5 years ago. Most will agree that the both number of quality artists and the number of quality tracks per CD has drastically been reduced. At the same time, movie quality has been increasing steadily as evidenced by the number of anual semi-blockbusters ($75 million plus box office gross) increasing steadily and a drastic DVD market and rental service explosion.
There is also a strong and steady increase in purchased downloadable music, TV, and movie going on. Due mostly to a lack of great album content (few good songs per album) it's better economically speaking to download music. Even at $2 per song, I would (and have) saved money by buying only the songs I like off each album vs even the discounted rate of CDs which can sometimes be found for sub-$10.
Also add in the MMO phenomenon of subscription gaming either thru game stations or PCs. I spend about $60 per month in my house on subscriptions to games or services I already own, where these used to be free to play games. That $60 used to go to new game/cd/dvd purchases... not any more.
Take these factors into account, and I'm actually shocked the music industry isn't suffering DRASTIC sales drops, on the order of 30-50% per year over the last 3 years. For sales to be only marginally down is a wonder.
Lets also look at other factors: Most households used to have 1 game system. Many now have 3 (PC, PS2/3, Xbox). These cost more to maintan and replace and the games cost more too. Some have monthly costs as well as purchase costs (between internet fees and subscriptions). Also media players (i.e. CD/tape players) used to cost $30-50 and could be expected to last a few years each. Now iPods and other media players cost hundreds, and typically have only 18 month lifespans. Cellphones, ring tones, and text messaging anyone?
Overall summing together game, movie, CD, and online sales together (not to mention certain recent printed book phenomenons and card trading games) the overall $'s per person per month fed into the industry is increasing dramatically each year. CD sales are slipping not because of downloads, but because it's simply loosing market share to other more "valuable" (entertainment per dollar spent) market segments.
I found back in 2000 my annual entertainment budget (games, music, dvd, movie, phone, equipment, copmputer costs, etc) was about $150 per month (and that includes estimates for regular hardware replacement). Right now, my subscriptions and services alone are in excess of that, before I include hardware or media to use with it (internet, MMO fees, cell, and voip). As a parent, i would have to be drastically reducing what funds are availible to my children. As a 32 year old without kids (one in the oven now...) I can barely afford my regular services. I haven't been to a theatre to see a movie in 3 months, have not bought a DVD since September, and have not bought a CD in 2 years (bought about 25 tracks on iTunes last year though).
If someone had the incling to simply conduct a survey of total household fluid spending over a 5 year period covering 10,000 or so individuals, these numbers would be obvious.
The music industry's attempts to lobby that downloads hurt business is completely false. All it's doing is instilling further distrust in the industry, and forcing many new artists to seek nearly equally successful independent labels. If they started signing better artists, producing quality work, and lowered the cost of the media to where it should be (CDs should be about $8.99 each now, not $15) they might experience better results.
Ever heard of a backup?...guess you haven't. Use a client for e-mail when you can, and the web only for remote access to your mail. I have years of e-mail stored in my local client from several current and former web based free-mail clients. I leave the "delete from server when downloaded" box unchecked so I allways have 2 copies of all my mail. I periodically archive to maintain a reasonable database, launch time, and scan time. I can re-mount any archive at will and have all my old mail at my fingertips. If one of my free-mail systems clears out my inbox, I can run any number of tools to put all the mail back. I archive to DVD periodically as well, just to be sure.
If you don't protect your own data, why are you surprised they didn't either?
OK, the cameras on the street thing is handled just the same as the cameras in the classroom argument...
Two opposing points-of-view: 1) the presence of the cameras deters crime in the first place, and makes solving it simpler in the second. Plus, it provides video record for evidence, making convictions more likely to stand. It can also resolve a large number of frivolous civil cases, and exhonerate the innocent who are typically victims of false suits. (this happens to teachers a lot "my kid said that... and now I'm suing you" and in most cases, the judge believes the child. Cameras prevent this and save the school system millions). Even most of the people who strongly believe in point 2 usually can't argue the truth of point 1. 2) cameras invade privacy, and potentially allow the government (or in the case of internet connected cameras just about anyone) to track our personal habits. Some even go so far as to argue that "what is seen is not allways the truth, and something off camera, or too small to be seen by the camera could be important evidence swinging a case.
Here's how we take out argument #2: First, the camera system needs to be closed circuit. The information sent from camera to recording device needs to be point to point encrypted with keys that change frequently for each camera (just in case someone taps the signal line, which incidently, is easy to detect). No one should be allowed access to the video system directly (not evenm the camera operators!) It should take a court order to review tape from a specific camera. An agent of the court can be appointed to work at the recording center make this easier. Tapes should be on loop devices containing enough recording space for about a week or so time. Specific content for criminal investigation should be exported to portable media on demand only, and there should not be any archiving of footage at all from the central system. This system should be accessible only thru its central system (no real time tie in to FBI, etc...) and the feeds should not be allowed to run thru a precessing system for face tagging, license plate capture, or any other such service, only the exported media could have that potential.
For example, if used in schools, it's easy to manage. The recording system simply runs tape loops (on HDD media, not real tape for god sake) and noone has access to it at all. A court rep would have to come in, insert a key and type in a passcode just to activate the screen display (not to mention getting in the recording room) to see footage. i.e. no real time monitoring of classrooms. (although for peer review, in the presence of an authorized court rep, administrators would be allowed to activate select cameras to see how teachers are running their classes without the teacher's knowledge, but this would be specifically for peer review, could only be done a specified number of times a year, and must be done to all teachers, not at random, and be fully documented). If an incident happens in the school (or is claimed to happen by a student or parent) then within 1 week of the event, a court rep is dispatched, reviews the feed from the date/time specified in the presence of each side's lawyers, and determines if there is merit to warrent further investigation.
A system like this prevents unauthorized viewing, ensures protection of the teacher's rights, keeps the recording of converasations secure so only information relevent to the courts is reviewable, and protects both children and the teachers equally in the event of a challenge. It also gives administrators an outlet to review teacher performance without actually sitting in the classroom (which is both a distraction, and since the teacher knows he/she is being reviewed, a somewhat useless guesture by staff).
On the streets or other public places, here's my argument: If you're in a public place, you have no privacy. And don't give me crap about "they'll track everywhere I go and know my routine, anjd when I'm breaking it." The data systems to mo
Guess the price of Methane will be going up now... We've got 2 factors agast us getting reliable, cheap methan fuel cells: NASA is going to use truly massive amounts of it, and Bison are starting to replace cows as a reliable meat source (fyi, bison make as little as 10% of the methane that cows do, a more greenhouse friendly meat source, and it also tastes better too).
3TB of HTPC stuff? So I guess a lot of that is DVD media copied to the computer, or is home video footage that should be offloaded to DVD as a backup...
When you do a master backup of a PC, oyu do NOT have to include everything. Any data that can be archived once (like a home movie or a song or movie download) should be. Once you have an archive copy, eliminate it from the routine backup jobs.
I have about 500GB of total data on my 3 PCs combined. I use a Maxtor onetouch (for which I replaced the internal drive with a larger one) and run master backups monthly and daily differentials. (to back uo 3 PCs to a single onetouch requires the purchase of an upgrade to retrospect for about $39. I don't know if you can still get it now that EMC bought them and turned them into a failing product, but there are other software options out there). My total master backup is only about 160GB out of my 500GB of data, once I exclude the MP3s that I ripped from CD and a few movies I store on the HDD.
btw: How did you get to 3TB in a home PC? I know a couple of boards that support 6 onboard SATA connections, but I know of no single chassis that can hold them, nor any reasonably priced RAID 5 controller that can be run without a 64bit PCI slot. Is most of this disk space external, and divided into several individual volumes? If so, but a few cheap HDDs and use Norton Ghost to back them up.
Also: NEVER use DVD or CD for permanant backup. Industry experts have pegged writable disks as being subject to bit level data failure in as little as 90 days. They just are not reliable. Of course, tape backup is worse. Disk to Disk backup is the only truly reliable method. You can't go cheap.
If you want to live in the digital age, you have to be prepared to spend a few hundred dolars protecting your data, and a few hours a month making sure (and READ YOUR LOG FILES!!!!), or you have to agree to take the risk of loosing all your precious data. That's why I still use a film camera....
A couple of misconceptions in your notes. Likely you're the victim of a sales associate who wanted to convince you to buy a higher priced set...
DLP has the lowest latency of the competing technologies. The color rotation in modern sets is better than all but a few very high end desktop LCDs for computers. The larger the LCD, typically the lower the latency. However, the rule "you get what you pay for" applies here as well as anywhere else. Try to stick to LG or Samsung's higher end models. In DLP, stay away from Sony.
My father has a DLP rear projection. The fan has never come on. Give it enough breathing room and it won't. It only comes on when it gets too warm. If it's on all the time, you have a hardware problem. Also, the color wheel should make almost no noise. LCD rear projectors also have fans.
If you're comparing this to an overhead projector, you've got a LOT more noise to deal with there. The overheads also have really bad color representation, and unless you spend small fortunes, problems in bright lit rooms that far exceed rear projection.
Viewing angle depends on the manufacturer of the screen glass, not the technology. DLP overall IS better than all the others. Manufacturers use lower quality glass to make the difference in their higher profit TVs look larger. (it's simple business, don't put all the options in the bottom of the profit line products) Better sets have better angles.
Also, LCDs blow bulbs just like DLP. They both use a bright white light source. Modern DLPs sometimes use a 3 color LED set instead of a wheel. These are better, quiter, and the LEDs don't blow out. This is not an option in LCD. You also have pixel loss to deal with , which is not covered until you blow a minimum of 7 individual pixels or 3 pixels within a radius of 5 from a center dead pixel. (color stuck pixels don't count)
Also keep in mind: all rear projection systems need manaul adjustment when installed. It's all about allignment. A properly installed set, installed by a true professional, will eliminate many of the side effect most people complain about. In stores, many of the low end sets are adjusted off focus or shown at lower resolution specifically. Before deciding on picture quality, MAKE SURE they're running the same resolution feed from digital sources and have the same settings. Also make sure to check the adjustments for color, sharpness, etc. A lot of people play with the settings and screw them up. Ask one of the techs to adjust the picture for you. BestBuy is a good place for this since the TV sales people may try to steer you away from cheaper technology, but the in store Geeks will allways set you straight.
If you're planning on hooking a game station or PC to a new TV, make sure you involve a computer technician in the sale, not just some Home Theatre sales guy. If he knew about comuters, he'd be getting paid more to sell computers instead of Home Theatre stuff!
I have had similar experiences with family/friends/customers. I used to be in the SMB PC/server support biz. After leaving one company to work for another that thankfully put me at a desk, I kept getting calls from old clients who refused to do business with anyone but me.
I politely thanked them and offered $60/hour (half my company's previous rate and almost double my previous commission rate). I couldn't get anything done! I was swamped all hours every night of the week after work.
I raised my rates to $80 with a 2 hour minimum (travel excluded) and booked an extra $50 pop if they gave me less than 2 days notice for an appointment. I also started charging extra for weekends. All that did was make me more money.
I couldn't believe what people were willing to pay as long as it was less than hiring a real company to do the work. I made them buy their own software, sign waivers of responsibility, provided no warranty, and strictly imposed minimum hardware and software requirements to do any work at all. Funny thing was, after accepting my terms, most of them were actually spending more than they would have simply hiring someone to do the work.
After missing an entire season of Sci-Fi programming and the Sopranos, I finally had to end it. My neighbors were pissed off at my lawn and yard, my house was a mess, my car hadn't been washed in months, and I had spent months of paying for MMOs I hadn't been playing. I hadn't taken my fiance' to a movie in 6 months.
I got them all off the hook by doing 2 things: I bought a fancy new cell phone and had the number unlisted and turned off the old one, and I started charging more than professional companies. That took care of the majority of people that didn't know me personally. I also started telling customer I was overbooked for 1 week out, and they would have to wait until the following weekend and pay the premium rate to get service at all. After 2 months I was down to helping my personal family only. I still do regular service about 2 times a month to help pad the checkbook, but even my parents wait at least 2 weeks to see me and don't get free service.
What the government has said with the new labor laws introduced about 2 years ago it that companies have to too long abused the "salaried" position title, and they have now applied restrictive law to who may be termed "exempt" or "non-exempt." Computer programmers, field engineers, and such (along with plumbers, electricians, and more) have had steadily increasing work weeks with little or no increase in benefit compensation or pay.
The government is basically saying that a companies unwillingness to invest in a properly sized workforce, or poor foresight in project planning can no longer be dumped on the employees. What this does mean is that since they're paying for it, specific performance measurement will start coming into play in companies and when overtime pay increases, people who are at the low end of the productivity curve will be terminated, provided their minimum performance level is not being met.
I work for a computer firm that makes hardware and software. I teach a class. To do this, I anylize our systems, write scripts, perform Q/A duties on beta code and hardware, receive feedback from customers, and meet with planners and developers continuously to work on improving the product as well as the class. I develop our lab environment, write the lesson plans, teach the material, and manage the website content and registration systems. I read log data and perform break/fix duties not only on my own lab equipment, but also provide on-stie and remote end user and developer support.
I am not paid overtime currently. I work 50-60 hours per week (more when I travel). As best I can tell from reading the federal requirements I should be paid overtime. However, my company could easily argue that my position, defined as it is currently, vs. my current rate of pay and how it has increased over 2 years, is a direct correlation to the hours I work. Their opinion would be "this is a 50-60 hour per week position, and overtime has been estimated and included in my pay" I am compensated for travel (in addition to expenses) and am paid significantly more than lvl 1 and 2 support personel. Also, technically I do not have a staff under me (to manage) but I could be considdered an executive of my department since I am the only one in it, and do not report directly to a department manager, but only to a VP team. I have decision power for purchasing and content development. They got a lot of ways of defining my position.
I have no problem with this. I get AMPLE vacation and benefits, and great pay for my part of the country. I work harder than others, but am paid more too. When I ask, I get what I need. I'm in a legal grey area.
My core programming team is also not paid overtime. They work 50+ hours and as far as I can tell, do qualify for it. Not one of them has asked for that compensation because their position defines the time required, and they are paid well and treated well. If we redefined their position in terms of hourly pay vs salary, I'm sure their base salary would simply come down, the company would (on average) pay them the same, but we'd have a nightmare tracking time cards, hours, and pay a lot more in HR and accounts payable to work it out.
Abuse is one thing. My company lets the guys come in late if they worked late and rarely if ever do they have a "programming party" and even those are optional. There is no requirement to work overtime, it's optional, and they all do it without complaint.
First, Universities run PRIVATE networks, no different legally than a business network. If the RIAA can make universities police their netowrks this way, then can make Microsoft do the same to their own network.
Second, wether the activity is happening on a private or public network, it's not the RIAA's job to manadate policy. The RIAA legally has the power to notify authorities that illegal activity is happening through a particular external IP address. Having the knowlegde of internal LAN activity means someone from the RIAA has illegally obtained access to or acquired data from these networks, which are private, and that information is not admissable in court. Besides, all they can do is provide the AUTHORITIES with information. Contacting the schools, their board, or students directly can be seen as harrasment.
The school's only motive to police their own networks internally is to increase availible netowrk bandwidth. They'll do that at the pipe because bandwidth costs a lot, and a single firewall filter does not. However, adding a packet sniffer to each subnet and each switch is really damned expensive, much more so than increasing bandwidth to account for it, so there's no reason they'll do it.
All the university is legally responsible for is to warn students about the law and set forth policy for evicting students who abuse it or break the law from their networks, and possibly turn evidence over to proper authorities. However, since there are no state or federal lawn dictating that the campus actually police those networks they operate, we leave it to the FBI to determine who may or may not be breaking the law. So long as the university is ignorant of an individual's activity, there is no legal standing to force them to try to find out. The University may choose to call the FBI in to do the job, but I'm sure the FBI has more important jobs to do and could care less.
besides, block a port or a protocol, and someone will just open another one. Sooner or later, a common port needed for PC use will be open sourced, and the networks will start using an encrypted stream over a common port that can't be blocked without disrupting network access to basic functions. At that point, the RIAA can neither stop it nor police it (because the fine for cracking encryption far exceeds that of downloading music).
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
I think this puts a clear stop to any ideas Microsoft may have on this issue.
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Here's what I've found virtualization has led to: manufacturers going cheap on on board devices. For example, a lot of low end servers that leverage Intel's VT are starting to ship with what I call "Win-NICs" i.e., devices that leverage the CPU for workload instead of a dedicated silicone chip. Like modems did years ago, now NICs are doing. Soon USB and other controllers will start requiring software application layer drivers where they user to operate entirely in hardware/firmware. This has 1 benefit only, cross platform compatibility. However, it sacrifices device and overall system performance, hardware diagnostics, and nice features like PXE boot.
People are jumping on this technology like flees to a dog. Why don't we simply standardize the device layers and have everyone comply with it? Sure, there's room for custom high performance devices, but the basic chips that every PC needs should be the same on everyone's boards, then we don't need VT...
While I'm on the rant... People, PLEASE; DO NOT put all your systems on 1 virtual host server!!!! I've seen a dozen companies consolidate whole farms onto 1 or 2 hosts in VMWare. Before, if you had 1 server down, you had 1 server down. Now you loose half the network! If you want to VM your machines, you need to be using clustered services and redundant NAS systems. I've even seen 4 different moron customers spec that out, but even then put all the cluster nodes ON THE SAME BOX!?!? C'mon, this isn't rocket science. Virtualizing is not to save money, or to limit the number of physical machines you need, it's for system portability across platforms and quick recovery of nodes and point systems through imaging. If you can't afford the licensing to cluster your systems, you can't afford VT.
I believe the idea here it to auto lock the plane into a simple auto pilot mode while a human in a terrorist control center calmly sits in a mock cockpit, accesses a secure satellite/ground transmitting grid, enters a few red paper pre-coded decryption keys (in 1980s nuclear bomb movie style), and then remotely takes control over the flight of the aircraft taking it wherever he wants. This is certainly different from an auto landing system that could actually be used today. Since all new planes are flown almost exclusively by wire it is very easy to integrate this system in such a way that removing or jamming such a system would simply result in the plane either flying in a straight line, or crashing outright. Also, all the critical control systems would be behind really heavy metal plates, accessed from the underbelly of the plane, not inside, unless someone remotely unlocked a magnalock. The cockpit systems themselves are just screens and joysticks. Destroying them doesn't actually hurt the computer's ability to fly the plane remotely. This would prevent any form of direct tampering as the terrorist could not disable critical systems from within pressurized space without bringing crowbars and saws into the plane. (I think the TSA is good enough to stop that). Short of a small EMP going off inside the cockpit, I think this would work. It doesn't stop the terrorists from trying to killing all the passengers, but at the point that someone with a 4" blade pocket knife or a small screwdriver started to try to kill passengers, I think they'd have more than they bargained for to deal with. Lets go a step further... once the plane is under remote control, the pilots who have been locked in their cockpit safely behind a solid locked door can simply lower cabin pressure and make everyone pass out from lack of oxygen. Then they, wearing portable O2 masks, can come out, tie up the offenders, and re pressurize. Actually, now that I think on it, why do we need remote control to do that? Why not just depressurise and take care of business? All we need is a good door, and a few cheap portable O2 masks... I think this is a better idea for terrorism. Now as far as pilot issues (pilot has heart attack) or equipment failure, remote flight management is still a good idea. In the long run? Maybe we don't need pilots at all on the plane. I'd be fine having auto pilot take me from place to place. I'd like my car to do that today!
RFID may be easy to copy or crack, but someone gets that info on their screen and still validates it against the hard copy when entering/exiting using a passport. You don't just wave it and go on... Passport information by itself is not enough to steal someone's identity or bank account. You still need physical proof. This first pass with RFID is simply making data tracking easier. It was not designed to be secure, just difficult to completely copy or forge. A truly secure passport system would have to include fingerprinting, pass codes, facial scanning technology, or some other system to prove the identity of the bearer. Of course, the RFID could not be responsible to pass that information, it would likely merely possess some simply information allowing it to access a secure database system that actually contains the remainder of the data. That data could be on a government server, or even an integrated SIM in the passport itself requiring connection to a proprietary system. 3 point data validation would work, but it would be very expensive. You'd still need hard copy for entering nations that do not yet have the technological capacity to electronically scan passports. One solution I hear proposed was that not only would the passport itself have an RFID tag, but also the person himself embedded under the skin, plus the addition of a fingerprint and 6 digit pin number. All 4 would have to match, be combined, and then be compared to a CRC value stored in an international database. All this would be simply for identity confirmation and nothing more, with the FBI and other similar branches still needing to cross validate your identity to your criminal record or a watch list. Are we really that concerned/paranoid?
OK, I work in Disaster Recovery, so this hits home... First, the service plan is designed to fix your hardware only. If on site service is available from someone who is actually a trained, reliable, rep for a company (ie, you live/work in one of the 150 largest towns in America), then you are lucky and can usually get good service. Most people have to ship their hardware off or deal with some outsourced local company for repairs that take days. You hardly ever get your machine back in any good shape unless it's repaired at the factory, in which case they normally come back looking new or even better, but you have extended down time. Second, If you run a business, and downtime is critical, you have spare systems... 1 spare for every 20 functional machines of each specific model is a good rule of thumb. Image a copy of the machine to a clean box and restore the user's files. If you prepared, this means 30-60 minutes of downtime for the user. The repaired machine becomes your replacement spare. If your a growing company, you will have even more spare systems because you order in bulk for more staff than you currently have, and rotate new machines in as employees come online. If you're a really small business and only have a few machines you still need at least 1 spare at all times (even if you only have 1 working PC!). This is the cost of doing business vs the cost of downtime. Depending on the nature of your business, there are likely regulations from HIPPA, Baynes Oxley, or some other agency or legal requirement that you don't even know about. I've got a local doctor here in my town I service who is bound by law to have nearly 20K in systems and backups just to power his patient administration workstation for 1 simple secretary. It sounds rediculous, but it really isn't if he's going to be able to access those records anytime 24 hours a day if one of his patients is hospitalized and the hospital needs access to their history. I've also seen cases even with $20k servers where a part failure has kept a system down for 6-7 days as the tech orders and replaces a dozen parts trying to find out which one is causing the others to fail. Sure, he was on site with parts in 4 hours, but downtime can still be crippling regardless of the quality of your service contract. If you don't have a plan to be back up and running in 1 hour or less, then you just plan for downtime. Again, it's the cost of doing business. You need spare systems. Apple's repair policy is not a bad one. Sure they could focus more on large business and offer next day 2 way shipping or same day on site services for more money, but large businesses have spares, so what's the rush? This is one of the reasons Apple can provide such quality for the price, and that they made more profit last year than Dell while selling almost 20 times fewer machines.
Agreed. First, robots won't be free, they're expensive. Why would you ever want to abuse one? I baby my new car and it's not even as smart as my pocket calculator! Oh, you mean sexually? It doesn't have feelings... As much as we may make it pretend to have emotions, if you rape a robot will it like you any less? only if the programmer wanted it to be that way. Flash the OS and rape it again for all I care... Also agreed, if it's a machine, it's designed to do a job. Adding emotion does not provide any direct benefit, only cost. Sure, there will be robots people will want as companions or pets. Personally, I say let's make THAT illegal. Make people get REAL FRIENDS! It's better for humanity, and costs less too. As far as how robots interact with humans, if I had a house droid I would WANT it to be able to flip the bird to a solicitor who has the gall to ring my doorbell, curse and flail at him, throw things, possibly even threaten him with permanently scarring violence. I don't want some law preventing my robot from whooping your ass if you break into my home... I can understand informational robots (intelligent sign posts, direction givers, delivery droids, taxi drivers, etc) should have a certain expected demeanor towards humans. Lets face it, if your robot is rude, no government or organization is going to deploy it. We don't need to make written laws about things that already have unwritten laws...
Content sourcing would be a great improvement for government as it could potentially eliminate billions of wasted dollars from pork, resolve conflicting regulations before they happen, and greatly improve inter agency communication.
Now all we need someone to do is sneak a line into a bill mandating the use of such a system while nobody's looking!
It's been painfully obvious to me, an engineer who's wife is an elementary ed gifted and talented teacher, that school systems as a whole simply do not pay enough to attract qualified staff.
My wife got a pay raise for getting her master's degree, but the raise was so minor it will take her 9 years to pay off her 18 months of education, not to mention her student loans for college in the first place.
Most schools in South Carolina are paying starting teachers at or below $25,000. I made more bartending part time in college!
To have a level of special education to do her job, the patience to deal with other peoples children, patience to deal with a failing political system, and the willingness to work 11 hour days five days a week deserves more. Sure she gets her summer off, right? Yea, a whole 9 weeks of which she spends most of taking extra classes, preparing new lesson plans, and attending required teacher meetings. The students get 11-12 weeks off, but not staff. She could teach summer school for more money, but then she wouldn't get any time off.
Our school district is so short on staff that they have 24-26 kids per class even though district policy states it should be 18 max for 4th grade rooms.
4 years in school for a technical profession, and you're being told up front there's no real room for promotion (only 1 in 100 can be principal, and that's a different major anyway), the salaries are fixed, it's a pain in the ass job with little thanks (and occasional legal threats the district won't back you up on). No wonder no one wants to teach.
Also, since staffing is hard to come by, any slacker with a degree is practically guaranteed a job, and has nearly perfect job security. Short of molesting a child and there actually being proof of it, it's almost impossible to fire a teacher. This means half the staff could really give a shit. This makes my wife a department head (which by the way does NOT come with a pay raise) because no one else wants to be.
Oh, and did I mention, as school scores decline, they can cut teacher pay. Exactly how am I supposed to react to a pay cut when it only happened because we had crap teachers in the building who can't be fired, because there are no replacements, because the pay scale sucks.
I can get a job painting cutting grass for the state freeway system for more money, better benefits, and I wouldn't even have to go to college.
Time to rethink the school system. Pay teachers more now, or pay for it later....
Good point... Cable companies offer a "broadcast" connection package usually at $10-15 per month. Almoist every HDTV currently on the market, and those sold for the past few years, have built in tuners. If you cable company lets you use your own, your set. If they restrict you from using your own, many states require them to provide you a tuner for free. Soon federal regulation may require the same if the cable companies piss off the FCC enough. The cost to get a single HD antanea and install it outside your house is worth almost 2 years of HDTV from your cable provider or sattlite service. With HD antaenas I believe you also have to have 1 for each TV set. It's simply not worth it if you have 2 or more TVs... Keep in mind, broadcast TV won't give you good options for DVRs either (no electronic published chanel guide to use). I think Tivo might work, but now you'r paying for the privelidge anyway... If you can't get cable TV, get a sattelite. It's likely if your town isn't big enough to have cable, the local broadcaster can't afford the HD upgrade and will sell out or shut down in 2009 anyway.
Thanks to recent changes in federal overtime pay requirements, if your full time job is to write software code for a company, then you ARE subject to recieve overtime pay at 1.5X the hourly rate (even if you are on salary). This change went into effect sometime last year. There is a special exemption for programmers however as follows:
To qualify for the computer employee exemption, the following tests must be met:
* The employee must be compensated either on a salary or fee basis (as defined in the regulations) at a rate not less than $455 per week or, if compensated on an hourly basis, at a rate not less than $27.63 an hour;
* The employee must be employed as a computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer or other similarly skilled worker in the computer field performing the duties described below;
* The employee's primary duty must consist of:
1) The application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software or system functional specifications;
2) The design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing or modification of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design specifications;
3) The design, documentation, testing, creation or modification of computer programs related to machine operating systems; or
4) A combination of the aforementioned duties, the performance of which requires the same level of skills.
If you meet all of these above requirements, and are a computer programmer or systems anylyst, than overtime pay is optional by your employer.
This means most line level general coders or code anylists, and basically ANYONE who answers a phone for a living should get overtime pay. Guys like me are paid more than the stated fees, so I can't get overtime. Belive me though, as a qualified engineer, if my company wasn't paying me very well, I'd be out the door, and they know it. I'm in too high demand, and demand is increasing. I may not get direct overtime pay, but I'm well compensated for the 50-60 hours a week I put in. We also have a company policy limiting employees to a 12 hour maximum work day, and prevent employees from being in the building after 7:00PM or on weekends. Many code from home, but that's voluntary.
The primary reason we pay exorbanant rates for internet access in America is that the lines are owned by individual telcos scattered regionally, which are paying high fees to national carriers and sattelite operators to partner across networks. Lets face it, Time Warner is not going to allow Joe Bob's ISP to offer better service at a lower price. They rape them on state to state fees and uplink costs. We also have a lot of this country where only a single ISP is availible. TWC is just pushing into my county and eliminating a local "legal monopoly" that charges almost twice the fee for 1/5 the connection speed and lower quality. For 2 years in my home I didn't have a choice of who to use, I had to pay the fee they wanted. As soon as TWC knowcked on my door, my local monopoly ISP offered a better package (that still cost too much).
The internet (being the backbone of modern telecommunication) is part of the infrastructure of the USA, and should be claimed and operated by the government. I'm not talking about the government becoming the phone company, I'm talking about the FCC taking over the physical line network and switching systems, and opening the entire network to open competition. I should be able to get ANY ISP I want anywhere in the USA.
Let Uncle Sam manage the lines, pay the cost for maintenance, and make a few thousand more government jobs in place of local employment opportunity (also making your job more portable if you work in telco) We regulate minimum quality and bandwidth at varying price points, and allow any carrier from any state to offer service to anyone anywher ein the US. (kind of like cable TV) Prices would fall in part due to competition, in part due to network simplification, but mostly due to the lack of massive fees paid by local companies to connect nationally and the elimination of local monopoly. Believe me, it would make a big difference if everyone could get 8M down/2M up for $29.99 from a national carrier. Look at what's happened to phone prices once the national guys started being allowed to offer local phone! Did thousands of people loose their jobs? NO! Local companies simply started accepting 100% profits instead of 300% profits. They still are profitable, so no harm done, they just charge less.
For 10 years going now we keep hearing the excuse "laying the cable is expensive, slow, and has an impact on your monthly bill." Guess what, all the cable is therenow, except in select small communities who still dont' have cable TV (less than 1% of America).
First, these surveys and studies allways look at music sales directly. This is WRONG! We need to look at the habits of the consumer. What has happened to the movie industry for example? Most young people (age 14-35, accounting for way more than 50% of all media purchased) bought a VHS tape every few months and multiple CDs per month looking back 5-7 years. Now, I find people buying DVDs much more often than CDs and multiple reasons for it.
Another point, ask the average person what they feel about the overall quality of new music today vs 5 years ago. Most will agree that the both number of quality artists and the number of quality tracks per CD has drastically been reduced. At the same time, movie quality has been increasing steadily as evidenced by the number of anual semi-blockbusters ($75 million plus box office gross) increasing steadily and a drastic DVD market and rental service explosion.
There is also a strong and steady increase in purchased downloadable music, TV, and movie going on. Due mostly to a lack of great album content (few good songs per album) it's better economically speaking to download music. Even at $2 per song, I would (and have) saved money by buying only the songs I like off each album vs even the discounted rate of CDs which can sometimes be found for sub-$10.
Also add in the MMO phenomenon of subscription gaming either thru game stations or PCs. I spend about $60 per month in my house on subscriptions to games or services I already own, where these used to be free to play games. That $60 used to go to new game/cd/dvd purchases... not any more.
Take these factors into account, and I'm actually shocked the music industry isn't suffering DRASTIC sales drops, on the order of 30-50% per year over the last 3 years. For sales to be only marginally down is a wonder.
Lets also look at other factors: Most households used to have 1 game system. Many now have 3 (PC, PS2/3, Xbox). These cost more to maintan and replace and the games cost more too. Some have monthly costs as well as purchase costs (between internet fees and subscriptions). Also media players (i.e. CD/tape players) used to cost $30-50 and could be expected to last a few years each. Now iPods and other media players cost hundreds, and typically have only 18 month lifespans. Cellphones, ring tones, and text messaging anyone?
Overall summing together game, movie, CD, and online sales together (not to mention certain recent printed book phenomenons and card trading games) the overall $'s per person per month fed into the industry is increasing dramatically each year. CD sales are slipping not because of downloads, but because it's simply loosing market share to other more "valuable" (entertainment per dollar spent) market segments.
I found back in 2000 my annual entertainment budget (games, music, dvd, movie, phone, equipment, copmputer costs, etc) was about $150 per month (and that includes estimates for regular hardware replacement). Right now, my subscriptions and services alone are in excess of that, before I include hardware or media to use with it (internet, MMO fees, cell, and voip). As a parent, i would have to be drastically reducing what funds are availible to my children. As a 32 year old without kids (one in the oven now...) I can barely afford my regular services. I haven't been to a theatre to see a movie in 3 months, have not bought a DVD since September, and have not bought a CD in 2 years (bought about 25 tracks on iTunes last year though).
If someone had the incling to simply conduct a survey of total household fluid spending over a 5 year period covering 10,000 or so individuals, these numbers would be obvious.
The music industry's attempts to lobby that downloads hurt business is completely false. All it's doing is instilling further distrust in the industry, and forcing many new artists to seek nearly equally successful independent labels. If they started signing better artists, producing quality work, and lowered the cost of the media to where it should be (CDs should be about $8.99 each now, not $15) they might experience better results.
Ever heard of a backup? ...guess you haven't. Use a client for e-mail when you can, and the web only for remote access to your mail. I have years of e-mail stored in my local client from several current and former web based free-mail clients. I leave the "delete from server when downloaded" box unchecked so I allways have 2 copies of all my mail. I periodically archive to maintain a reasonable database, launch time, and scan time. I can re-mount any archive at will and have all my old mail at my fingertips. If one of my free-mail systems clears out my inbox, I can run any number of tools to put all the mail back. I archive to DVD periodically as well, just to be sure.
If you don't protect your own data, why are you surprised they didn't either?
OK, the cameras on the street thing is handled just the same as the cameras in the classroom argument...
Two opposing points-of-view: 1) the presence of the cameras deters crime in the first place, and makes solving it simpler in the second. Plus, it provides video record for evidence, making convictions more likely to stand. It can also resolve a large number of frivolous civil cases, and exhonerate the innocent who are typically victims of false suits. (this happens to teachers a lot "my kid said that... and now I'm suing you" and in most cases, the judge believes the child. Cameras prevent this and save the school system millions). Even most of the people who strongly believe in point 2 usually can't argue the truth of point 1.
2) cameras invade privacy, and potentially allow the government (or in the case of internet connected cameras just about anyone) to track our personal habits. Some even go so far as to argue that "what is seen is not allways the truth, and something off camera, or too small to be seen by the camera could be important evidence swinging a case.
Here's how we take out argument #2: First, the camera system needs to be closed circuit. The information sent from camera to recording device needs to be point to point encrypted with keys that change frequently for each camera (just in case someone taps the signal line, which incidently, is easy to detect). No one should be allowed access to the video system directly (not evenm the camera operators!) It should take a court order to review tape from a specific camera. An agent of the court can be appointed to work at the recording center make this easier. Tapes should be on loop devices containing enough recording space for about a week or so time. Specific content for criminal investigation should be exported to portable media on demand only, and there should not be any archiving of footage at all from the central system. This system should be accessible only thru its central system (no real time tie in to FBI, etc...) and the feeds should not be allowed to run thru a precessing system for face tagging, license plate capture, or any other such service, only the exported media could have that potential.
For example, if used in schools, it's easy to manage. The recording system simply runs tape loops (on HDD media, not real tape for god sake) and noone has access to it at all. A court rep would have to come in, insert a key and type in a passcode just to activate the screen display (not to mention getting in the recording room) to see footage. i.e. no real time monitoring of classrooms. (although for peer review, in the presence of an authorized court rep, administrators would be allowed to activate select cameras to see how teachers are running their classes without the teacher's knowledge, but this would be specifically for peer review, could only be done a specified number of times a year, and must be done to all teachers, not at random, and be fully documented). If an incident happens in the school (or is claimed to happen by a student or parent) then within 1 week of the event, a court rep is dispatched, reviews the feed from the date/time specified in the presence of each side's lawyers, and determines if there is merit to warrent further investigation.
A system like this prevents unauthorized viewing, ensures protection of the teacher's rights, keeps the recording of converasations secure so only information relevent to the courts is reviewable, and protects both children and the teachers equally in the event of a challenge. It also gives administrators an outlet to review teacher performance without actually sitting in the classroom (which is both a distraction, and since the teacher knows he/she is being reviewed, a somewhat useless guesture by staff).
On the streets or other public places, here's my argument: If you're in a public place, you have no privacy. And don't give me crap about "they'll track everywhere I go and know my routine, anjd when I'm breaking it." The data systems to mo
Guess the price of Methane will be going up now... We've got 2 factors agast us getting reliable, cheap methan fuel cells: NASA is going to use truly massive amounts of it, and Bison are starting to replace cows as a reliable meat source (fyi, bison make as little as 10% of the methane that cows do, a more greenhouse friendly meat source, and it also tastes better too).
3TB of HTPC stuff? So I guess a lot of that is DVD media copied to the computer, or is home video footage that should be offloaded to DVD as a backup...
When you do a master backup of a PC, oyu do NOT have to include everything. Any data that can be archived once (like a home movie or a song or movie download) should be. Once you have an archive copy, eliminate it from the routine backup jobs.
I have about 500GB of total data on my 3 PCs combined. I use a Maxtor onetouch (for which I replaced the internal drive with a larger one) and run master backups monthly and daily differentials. (to back uo 3 PCs to a single onetouch requires the purchase of an upgrade to retrospect for about $39. I don't know if you can still get it now that EMC bought them and turned them into a failing product, but there are other software options out there). My total master backup is only about 160GB out of my 500GB of data, once I exclude the MP3s that I ripped from CD and a few movies I store on the HDD.
btw: How did you get to 3TB in a home PC? I know a couple of boards that support 6 onboard SATA connections, but I know of no single chassis that can hold them, nor any reasonably priced RAID 5 controller that can be run without a 64bit PCI slot. Is most of this disk space external, and divided into several individual volumes? If so, but a few cheap HDDs and use Norton Ghost to back them up.
Also: NEVER use DVD or CD for permanant backup. Industry experts have pegged writable disks as being subject to bit level data failure in as little as 90 days. They just are not reliable. Of course, tape backup is worse. Disk to Disk backup is the only truly reliable method. You can't go cheap.
If you want to live in the digital age, you have to be prepared to spend a few hundred dolars protecting your data, and a few hours a month making sure (and READ YOUR LOG FILES!!!!), or you have to agree to take the risk of loosing all your precious data. That's why I still use a film camera....
A couple of misconceptions in your notes. Likely you're the victim of a sales associate who wanted to convince you to buy a higher priced set...
DLP has the lowest latency of the competing technologies. The color rotation in modern sets is better than all but a few very high end desktop LCDs for computers. The larger the LCD, typically the lower the latency. However, the rule "you get what you pay for" applies here as well as anywhere else. Try to stick to LG or Samsung's higher end models. In DLP, stay away from Sony.
My father has a DLP rear projection. The fan has never come on. Give it enough breathing room and it won't. It only comes on when it gets too warm. If it's on all the time, you have a hardware problem. Also, the color wheel should make almost no noise. LCD rear projectors also have fans.
If you're comparing this to an overhead projector, you've got a LOT more noise to deal with there. The overheads also have really bad color representation, and unless you spend small fortunes, problems in bright lit rooms that far exceed rear projection.
Viewing angle depends on the manufacturer of the screen glass, not the technology. DLP overall IS better than all the others. Manufacturers use lower quality glass to make the difference in their higher profit TVs look larger. (it's simple business, don't put all the options in the bottom of the profit line products) Better sets have better angles.
Also, LCDs blow bulbs just like DLP. They both use a bright white light source. Modern DLPs sometimes use a 3 color LED set instead of a wheel. These are better, quiter, and the LEDs don't blow out. This is not an option in LCD. You also have pixel loss to deal with , which is not covered until you blow a minimum of 7 individual pixels or 3 pixels within a radius of 5 from a center dead pixel. (color stuck pixels don't count)
Also keep in mind: all rear projection systems need manaul adjustment when installed. It's all about allignment. A properly installed set, installed by a true professional, will eliminate many of the side effect most people complain about. In stores, many of the low end sets are adjusted off focus or shown at lower resolution specifically. Before deciding on picture quality, MAKE SURE they're running the same resolution feed from digital sources and have the same settings. Also make sure to check the adjustments for color, sharpness, etc. A lot of people play with the settings and screw them up. Ask one of the techs to adjust the picture for you. BestBuy is a good place for this since the TV sales people may try to steer you away from cheaper technology, but the in store Geeks will allways set you straight.
If you're planning on hooking a game station or PC to a new TV, make sure you involve a computer technician in the sale, not just some Home Theatre sales guy. If he knew about comuters, he'd be getting paid more to sell computers instead of Home Theatre stuff!
I have had similar experiences with family/friends/customers. I used to be in the SMB PC/server support biz. After leaving one company to work for another that thankfully put me at a desk, I kept getting calls from old clients who refused to do business with anyone but me.
I politely thanked them and offered $60/hour (half my company's previous rate and almost double my previous commission rate). I couldn't get anything done! I was swamped all hours every night of the week after work.
I raised my rates to $80 with a 2 hour minimum (travel excluded) and booked an extra $50 pop if they gave me less than 2 days notice for an appointment. I also started charging extra for weekends. All that did was make me more money.
I couldn't believe what people were willing to pay as long as it was less than hiring a real company to do the work. I made them buy their own software, sign waivers of responsibility, provided no warranty, and strictly imposed minimum hardware and software requirements to do any work at all. Funny thing was, after accepting my terms, most of them were actually spending more than they would have simply hiring someone to do the work.
After missing an entire season of Sci-Fi programming and the Sopranos, I finally had to end it. My neighbors were pissed off at my lawn and yard, my house was a mess, my car hadn't been washed in months, and I had spent months of paying for MMOs I hadn't been playing. I hadn't taken my fiance' to a movie in 6 months.
I got them all off the hook by doing 2 things: I bought a fancy new cell phone and had the number unlisted and turned off the old one, and I started charging more than professional companies. That took care of the majority of people that didn't know me personally. I also started telling customer I was overbooked for 1 week out, and they would have to wait until the following weekend and pay the premium rate to get service at all. After 2 months I was down to helping my personal family only. I still do regular service about 2 times a month to help pad the checkbook, but even my parents wait at least 2 weeks to see me and don't get free service.
What the government has said with the new labor laws introduced about 2 years ago it that companies have to too long abused the "salaried" position title, and they have now applied restrictive law to who may be termed "exempt" or "non-exempt." Computer programmers, field engineers, and such (along with plumbers, electricians, and more) have had steadily increasing work weeks with little or no increase in benefit compensation or pay.
The government is basically saying that a companies unwillingness to invest in a properly sized workforce, or poor foresight in project planning can no longer be dumped on the employees. What this does mean is that since they're paying for it, specific performance measurement will start coming into play in companies and when overtime pay increases, people who are at the low end of the productivity curve will be terminated, provided their minimum performance level is not being met.
I work for a computer firm that makes hardware and software. I teach a class. To do this, I anylize our systems, write scripts, perform Q/A duties on beta code and hardware, receive feedback from customers, and meet with planners and developers continuously to work on improving the product as well as the class. I develop our lab environment, write the lesson plans, teach the material, and manage the website content and registration systems. I read log data and perform break/fix duties not only on my own lab equipment, but also provide on-stie and remote end user and developer support.
I am not paid overtime currently. I work 50-60 hours per week (more when I travel). As best I can tell from reading the federal requirements I should be paid overtime. However, my company could easily argue that my position, defined as it is currently, vs. my current rate of pay and how it has increased over 2 years, is a direct correlation to the hours I work. Their opinion would be "this is a 50-60 hour per week position, and overtime has been estimated and included in my pay" I am compensated for travel (in addition to expenses) and am paid significantly more than lvl 1 and 2 support personel. Also, technically I do not have a staff under me (to manage) but I could be considdered an executive of my department since I am the only one in it, and do not report directly to a department manager, but only to a VP team. I have decision power for purchasing and content development. They got a lot of ways of defining my position.
I have no problem with this. I get AMPLE vacation and benefits, and great pay for my part of the country. I work harder than others, but am paid more too. When I ask, I get what I need. I'm in a legal grey area.
My core programming team is also not paid overtime. They work 50+ hours and as far as I can tell, do qualify for it. Not one of them has asked for that compensation because their position defines the time required, and they are paid well and treated well. If we redefined their position in terms of hourly pay vs salary, I'm sure their base salary would simply come down, the company would (on average) pay them the same, but we'd have a nightmare tracking time cards, hours, and pay a lot more in HR and accounts payable to work it out.
Abuse is one thing. My company lets the guys come in late if they worked late and rarely if ever do they have a "programming party" and even those are optional. There is no requirement to work overtime, it's optional, and they all do it without complaint.
First, Universities run PRIVATE networks, no different legally than a business network. If the RIAA can make universities police their netowrks this way, then can make Microsoft do the same to their own network.
Second, wether the activity is happening on a private or public network, it's not the RIAA's job to manadate policy. The RIAA legally has the power to notify authorities that illegal activity is happening through a particular external IP address. Having the knowlegde of internal LAN activity means someone from the RIAA has illegally obtained access to or acquired data from these networks, which are private, and that information is not admissable in court. Besides, all they can do is provide the AUTHORITIES with information. Contacting the schools, their board, or students directly can be seen as harrasment.
The school's only motive to police their own networks internally is to increase availible netowrk bandwidth. They'll do that at the pipe because bandwidth costs a lot, and a single firewall filter does not. However, adding a packet sniffer to each subnet and each switch is really damned expensive, much more so than increasing bandwidth to account for it, so there's no reason they'll do it.
All the university is legally responsible for is to warn students about the law and set forth policy for evicting students who abuse it or break the law from their networks, and possibly turn evidence over to proper authorities. However, since there are no state or federal lawn dictating that the campus actually police those networks they operate, we leave it to the FBI to determine who may or may not be breaking the law. So long as the university is ignorant of an individual's activity, there is no legal standing to force them to try to find out. The University may choose to call the FBI in to do the job, but I'm sure the FBI has more important jobs to do and could care less.
besides, block a port or a protocol, and someone will just open another one. Sooner or later, a common port needed for PC use will be open sourced, and the networks will start using an encrypted stream over a common port that can't be blocked without disrupting network access to basic functions. At that point, the RIAA can neither stop it nor police it (because the fine for cracking encryption far exceeds that of downloading music).
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
I think this puts a clear stop to any ideas Microsoft may have on this issue.