What?! But how can that be?! The WHO published data and mortality figures that unequivocally showed the swine flu would be more deadly than even the Spanish Flu, killing millions of people all around the globe!

Are you saying that we can't trust government organizations designed to prevent the common citizen from having to actually read statistical reports on mortality?

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For more fun facts around the swine flu epidemic, read The H1N1 Survival Guide.

I didn't find any systems in my research that offered the features you're describing. It might be that we're just so outside the target market that I wasn't able to find any. However, I can see that a number of companies offer those solutions as bolt-on appliances that would add more systems to our network for management instead of a centralized solution (one of the core requirements we had for our project).

Do you know of any companies that provide that sort of technology, integrated into a video recording and archival system? If so, I'm quite interested for our next round of security system upgrades in the next few years.

You misunderstand me: I wasn't able to find anyone who could provide those specifications, at *any* price level. I was saying, 'Here are our requirements, what will this cost?' And the answer I was getting back was, 'We can't meet your requirements, period. Ask someone else.' The word 'cheap' also never appeared in the specifications. :)

We could lower the requirements. However - in our industry, those requirements are not considered unreasonable. They are what we provide to our own customers. Or we face large contractual fines for failure to perform.

And to answer another poster's question here: the reason we were looking for an outside contractor was purely so that management would have someone to point fingers at when it fails. It's a legal/liability/compliance issue - with the contractual fines if we don't meet the 15 minute SLA. Having an outside contractor to draw on punts the liability to them, since we can say, 'We've contracted the third-party vendor on this issue' to our customers, and then THEY have to address it in a timely manner. Management just wants to be able to shift liability to an outside contractor.

I'm not an actuarial, so I don't know how much that's really worth. ;)

It might be paid support, but unfortunately, it's not truly professional support - when I contacted them about it, they were unable to meet the 15 minute SLA response time and 24x7x365 support that our organization was looking for. And even hunting around the recesses of the internet, I have been unable to find anyone who has both experience with Zoneminder and the ability to provide those support terms.

Some people might consider those terms unreasonable. Our industry considers it a minimum. In the meantime, I'm getting stuck with being the 'first responder' for any problems with the system, 24x7x365.

Sorry, but... Zoneminder *is* the state of the art in Linux DVR software.

And for reference, having recently compared many different versions on different operating systems for a project at my company, Zoneminder IS the state of the art in all platforms of DVR software. It's one of the only systems that will work with many varieties of end-point hardware cleanly. Most dedicated embedded systems will only work with their brand of camera, or a single video protocol.

There are systems that will link motion sensors and contact alarms (Zoneminder can do that, too, though it takes some finangling). Again, most of these only work with *their* hardware.

The biggest things to keep in mind are bandwidth, storage consumption, and retention. A camera input card may have a very large 'potential framerate', but when you spread that among the 16 inputs you have coming in, things start to add up *very* rapidly. There are physical limitations on the hardware that you will run into if your deployment is of any large size. Our deployment is one of the largest, having 80 cameras currently (planning on adding another 16 before too long), and we have to spread the load out among 5 high-powered servers with relatively large amounts of RAM. Even with that, we still need to upgrade our switch infrastructure to gigabit in order to be able to view all the cameras simultaneously! We've got fiber to our SANs, though, so storage and later retrieval of footage is no issue.

The only downside is the lack of professional support - Management doesn't have anyone externally that they can point at if something breaks.

If you're a power Linux user, I'd recommend Zoneminder. If you have a few cameras for a small business and are not technically skilled, I'd recommend a pre-packaged solution - but expect to spend more for a similar sized installation. If you have a LOT of cameras (more than about 16) but are not technically skilled... I'd recommend finding a consultant who can deploy Zoneminder and contract long-term support with them.

If it's true you feel that way, then stop giving the government your money. It's one thing to say that the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots et al. It's another to actually start doing it. Civil disobedience is a form of revolution - and part of civil disobedience is knowing the consequences of it and to willingly suffer them in the name of your principles.

Besides, if enough people refuse to pay their taxes at once due to a lack of faith in the government, the government won't have enough places to put them.

That aside - while I agree that our government is bloated, it's not actually /that/ incompetent, compared to the average corporate environment. I'd say they're pretty average, and quite capable of providing the infrastructure support and freedoms I require for my life. While I grumble about the amount of taxes I pay and believe we should pay less, it's hardly disenfranchising my citizenship at the moment.

Yeah, seriously... you guys see ads?

A friend of mine has a little micro-webserver application he drops on his computer that changes the routing table for these sites to point at itself, and then serves up a 1x1 transparent png. Works pretty well from what he says.

Sounds like they're saying that putting a BIOS password on a laptop means they don't have to tell anyone the next time they lose 500 million social security records, huh? Or heck, if BIOS passwords are too difficult, it could always just have user accounts. Those count as "access controls", too.

Combined with the idea of the government managing our health care, I'm not terribly encouraged by the idea.

Effectively, if they're between you and your server, 'click here to own this connection.'

I just talked with the resident encryption guru here - as long as the attacker is between you and the server you're connecting to, with this bug you can inject arbitrary data in front of the target encrypted packet. Some of the data you can inject includes commands, such as, 'By the way, send the rest of this connection to this IP over here, keep the authentication details but renegotiate the encryption.' In other words, 'Keep authentication but talk to the attacker's PC instead.'

That depends on where you live, mostly. In Missouri, we had a spat with our legislators about 5 year ago - they were putting gas taxes into the general fund and then spending a much smaller amount of money on road maintenance. When we complained about the state of our roads, they replied, 'Gee, guess we have to raise gas taxes, then.'

So we used citizen's initiative to put an item on the ballot to specifically reserve gas taxes for the Dept. of Transportation. A lot of people were saying that it was going to destroy our schools by taking away their funding. Still, it passed by almost an 80% margin.

Now, our roads are in much better condition. You might want to check in the area where you live how much is gathered in gas taxes, and then how much is spent on road maintenance, and compare the numbers.

The thing is, technology is irrelevant to plot and character. If it wasn't, then the stories they'd be telling would be so alien as to be incomprehensible. Stories are about people, not technology. It's something written into just about any guide to writing science fiction you can find: Don't let the technology overshadow the characters!

Yes, lightsabers and teleporters are cool. But the story is about a boy turning into a man and saving the world (Gee, thanks, Wesley). Or a continuing mission through space, etc. The story isn't about the technology. Sure, it'd be nice to have more realistic tech written into the story to begin with - BUT. I will note that the most popular episodes of TNG always revolved around characters. The episodes oriented towards 'how the teleporters actually work' as a plot device didn't fare so well.

He then continued to say, "Also, I use it to hunt deer."

Yeah, I'm going to have to say that IRC is to blame here. Poor typing is endemic on IRC, and is even worse on Second Life, where the graphics detract from the online communication.

If you want to increase or maintain your English skills, socialize with people who put an emphasis on proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Without those fundamentals in the people around you, your dialogue will eventually sink to match their levels.

If you're wondering, yes, this would probably be considered elitist by many online neophytes. I personally prefer to call it 'having standards'. :)