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Is the Internet Shutting Out Independent Players?
"ISPs aren't advertizing routes for competing ISPs, and since IP blocks are heavily filtered upstream, this won't do much good anyway. The reasons for this are clear (Routing table growth was getting way out of hand), hence the introduction of CIDR ? , and the allocation of IPs to ISPs, with a resulting lockout on availability of routable IP space to individuals or smaller groups.
With the availabilty of IPv6, and the cost of RAM, I find it somewhat hard to believe that either IP address blocks are scarce, or that the size of routing tables are unmanageable any more. This might have been true with an 8MB Cisco 10 years ago, but surely it would be a negligible cost to put 1-2GB of RAM on even a reasonably budget router at todays prices.
Obviously, IPV6 isn't really here yet, but i would like to think that when (if) it arrives, we will see a more open routing system.
Is anybody working on returning some kind of equal standing to 'the little guys' when it comes to internet routing infrastructure, and how a more 'open' system could work in practice on tomorrow's (or today's) internet?"
God money sucks.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Not sure if this will be first post, but it is important to note that there are quite a few trolls, with user #s in the 500,000s that are posting blatant whoring posts in order to amass huge amounts of karma...for what? i don't know.
These posts tend to be high on opinion, or "my friend says...", or "during my work at company X, i noticed", but generally low on real content.
They also tend to have www.slashdot.org as the URL for their user info.
If the troll's got something useful to say, then mod them up, but watch out for these posts! if in doubt, check the posting history...one example of this new type of troll is Walter Bell, who says he works at NASA...
AT&T - "at least they're not Verizon". *sigh*
I am only out to bust Walter and the other new "old-school" trolls' asses.
Plus, the occasional crapflood and ascii art at opportune times ;)
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64.28.67.150 is a better choice.
>>Incidentally, I was a couple of minutes short of FP. :)
Yeah, and I'm only a few inches short of an 18 inch long unit. Doesn't help me score.
Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and thermonuclear devices.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
That may have been a compelling insight if it weren't a total lie.
I just heard some sad news on Yahoo - Former Beatle George Harrison was found dead at his friend's home in California yesterday. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
True, but bashing Katz is always insightful. The true test of one's intelligence is in whether or not they agree with Katz.
Bite my yammer.
No, but the usual crappy Katz bashing has been replaced by a more directed assault on his journalistic integrity (or lack of) Did you read that Afghanistan article? If you had you would realise just why Katz needs to be slapped.
Really, that story was made up bollocks from the start.
Oh, I'm not denying that the post should be marked off-topic, but you really should read the Catz article in question (sorry, no link) and then you'll realise why somebody gave it Insightful. And the Troll mod was totally unjustified.
I'm off to dig up the ZX Spectrum I left buried and install the SETI client while cracking MD5 hashes. Oh, sorry, I thought I lived in Afghanistan for a moment.
Moderators: This post is off-topic, not troll, flamebait, or overrated. Please moderate accordingly.
Good grief Man!.
This thread cetainly troll-nosedived in about 10 minutes. Please, someone restore some order! Completely OT anti-karma-whore posts modded up as Interesting? Please.
PS, the article itself is a bit of ham, no? I don;t think the Internet was ever desinged for You and Me. It was a DOD project let loose upon the free market.
Important message below. Take the time to read it, in its entirety, to understand how slashdot works, and why you need to moderate.
In an effort to restore slashdot to it's previous level of quality, I've begun a two step process. The first step is a determined effort to point out, and mod down, all obvious karma whores and trolls. The second step is to rid this site of Jon Katz. The job is large, but not impossible.
This poster obviously does not care about the topic, rather he (or she, perhaps), cares only about inflating karma, and to do so, this person has posted absolute crap.
What qualifies as crap on slashdot? Well, quite honestly, about half of the comments ranked above 2.
One way to easily spot a karma whore attempt, is to look for an obvious, but pathetic, post of linux superiority. A linux karma whore will often attempt to point out that linux is the best for job x, even though there may be, and probably are, better alternatives, such as Microsoft for desktops and FreeBSD for servers. These points will be ignored by linux karma whores, as pointing this out will not ensure the positive moderation they desire.
Another method for spotting karma whores is to look for comments posting, verbatim, something stated in the article, or in the editor's summary. While this often includes italicizing the quote, this is frequently a ploy to show that the person read the article, even though it's more likely the person only skimmed to find a comment worth repeating. Additional signs of the repetitive karma whore are: commentary on a quote that says nothing, "mirroring" an article that is not slashdotted, or pointing to google's cache. Also be careful before moderating up posts which link to obviously related sites: karma whores occasionally search popular search engines to find related stories in an effort to gain more karma.
The third type of karma whore, one that very often succeeds on slashdot, is the sympathy whore. A sympathy whore often tries to gain karma by appealing to the moderator's sense of decency, either with a story about how they were unfairly fired, perhaps how they were unfairly persecuted, or occasionally how main stream capitalism is trampling on a sense of global decency. The latter tends to link common, benine events to horrific events of the past, making unfair generalizations and calling for action on behalf of a charity rather than carrying on with one's life. Do not let your heart be fooled into thinking that they are genuine: the sympathy whores want nothing more than karma.
Why would someone try to whore karma? Well, the simple answer is that everyone wants to feel smart, or popular. Many posters on slashdot describe themselves as nerds or geeks, societal outcasts. Posting to slashdot is their only true sense of community, and they view karma as a measure of popularity or status. Others karma whore to try to increase revenue and traffic to their own websites. Frequent marks of traffic whores are links in the posts that match the user's homepage, or links to hardware reviews on small sites, where links to purchase the hardware occupy the bottom half of the review. Again, do not let these subtle traffic whores fool you.
Now, turning our attention to Mr. Jon Katz. While he may possess some talents as a writer, his technical knowledge is seriously lacking. Furthermore, his credibility as a journalist is next to zero following his Afghanistan fiasco.. He also has nothing to do with open source, linux, or free software in general: thus, much like kuro5hin, he no longer fits in OSDN's mission statement. It is for this reason that we must finish what we started and get rid of Jon Katz.
With these basic guidelines in mind, go out and moderate. Realize that many of the higher moderated comments are whores, and mod them back down. In an effort to increase the quality of comments, try to mod down no more than 3 posts in a given session ; use your remaining points to moderate some users UP. This ensures that not only are karma whores eliminated but that valid posts are acknowledged.
ALL YOUR 192.168.X.X is mine!
there must be a few moderators out there that don't like my Sig since it seems to be comming true a lot latly :-)
the above comment was moded -1 overrated