Geostationary satellite distance: 45,000 miles Speed of light: 186,000 miles per second
To get to the satellite and back to earth:
(45,000 x 2)/186,000 = 484ms
This is on top of the normal internet delays. A response from the other end will take just as long to come back so your looking at one second delay. Not good for most any use.
What's really funny is that the submitter tried to make MS look like the bad guy. In reality, what MS have done is good for everyone who wants to use the internet legitimately.
- All "information" and "ideas", which includes music, software, text, and other unique works, should be allowed to freely flow between people in an unlimited fashion without any encumbrances of ownership;
At this point, there is no motivation for people to create many products that exist today. For example, if I am an author and I want to write a book, there is little reason to do so without financial incentive. We all can't live in our parent's basement for our entire lives.
DRM is actually promising in the fact that it will lessen the stranglehold of "big business" on the market. Using the author example from above... Currently, if I want to publish a book, I generally have to sell out* to a big publisher. However, if someone perfects DRM, then I have the option of releasing a digital version of that book from the convenience of my own home.
(*) yes, I realize that it is possible to circumvent the big publishers but only if I have lots of money to self-publish in large volumes. I've already looked into it and Joe Author does not have this sort of capability on average.
So, fighting DRM is just fighting for big business, IMHO.
They still won't be as good as Google.. stop trying!
I disagree from a business perspective.
Lots of people will stay with yahoo mail because it is difficult to switch. If there is no benefit, then there is little reason to make the switch in the first place.
Competition is good. Now, they will start competing on other features and the consumer wins in the end.
I was working in a Detroit high-rise office building once and there was a similar problem. A local radio station was broadcasting from a nearby building. The FM transmission was being picked up on some PBX-based phones at times and there were complaints.
Investigation revealed that when the coiled handset cords on the phone was stretched to a certain length, the FM signal from the radio station was resonating its way in. The solution was to get shielded handset cables.
The credit card companies actually advertise this as a feature. Hasn't anyone seen the "Visa Check Card" commercials?
"Thanks, but I'll have to see some ID."
That's their sole "feature" - that credit cards are less secure than checks. And the percentage that they siphon from the credit card / direct check transaction goes to cover any fraud.
So I fail to see how this is an issue. If someone uses my card fruadulently, then I get reimbursed. That is a lot easier than fooling around with checks from a consumer standpoint. From a business standpoint, it is a ripoff because the cost of credit card / direct check transactions *could* be lower.
In the end, the banks don't even make an effort to catch small scale fraudsters. At one point, I helped a friend do just that but we were displeased to find that the bank and police did not care when we showed them our findings.
Or simply because the developers of K3b don't care about Windows.
If they care about Linux, then they will work to get a standard set of cross-platform apps. In this respect, users can move to these apps under Windows and then simply switch the OS when they are comfortable with them.
Because backwards compatibility of a large basis of the Internet as it exists?
I'm not talking about breaking it. I'm talking about giving an alternative to those of us who are sick of what's currently available. I'd ditch SMTP in a heartbeat if someone implemented a spamless variation of it.
As it sits, my only option is to dump email and move to snail mail.
There exist many methods for anti-spam authentication. Why hasn't someone implemented one of them in an "Email 2.0" style service with the single feature being "not compatible with existing email, including spam"? After the first service opened up for business, there would be more. And more. Until Spam was gone for good.
We can see that people are getting to the point of ditching it entirely so why not move to something that fixes the problem at the expense of backward compatibility? This befuddles me to no end. I'd sign up in a heartbeat and so would everyone email user that I know.
Can we just FUCK backward compatibility for once? Why is it so damn important?
How do you get a critical mass using a micropayment system?
Easy, if you're Microsoft.
1) Release $5 or $10 worth of bundled micropayments with Longhorn. 2) Siphon a percentage of the transactions. 3) People see value in micropayment driven content and find themselves renewing with their own dime. 4) Profit!
Unfortunately, Microsoft is playing the role of the evil monopoly that can do nothing right. So we'll have to wait until some bright spark does it first and then gets aquired by Microsoft.
You'd think that, with an R&D budget in the billions, we'd have this from Microsoft by now. Is there some sort of rule that prevents large companies from coming up with something innovative on their own?
The list is absolutely easy to someone with half a brain (not yahoo management, apparently):
1) Innovate. While this might seem like a no brainer, yahoo hasn't fixed what is already broken on their own service for some time now. A good example of this would be their stock message boards, which fill with spam and garbage immediately.
Try CSCO for example. It looks like a circus in that message board. Google will walk into this market because people are simply dying for something usable. Yahoo has dominance right now but they will lose that easily because they are satisfied with "good enough".
2) Make all services open and extensible. Mainly, this means that they should stop requiring someone to open yet another unused email account in order to use their services. I already have half a dozen unused email accounts and I don't need another. It would be great if I could use my existing email account for access to IM, Yahoo auctions, etc. But I don't use these services because I don't want to bother with another email account.
3) Promote an open web. VoIP is just now taking off. The world could use, for example, a free, standards based VoIP client for Windows, Linux, etc. Yahoo could gain many friends if they released a non-yahoo specific client. Certainly, they'll have to make money on it some how but I think that they could make more by keeping it open and not bundled with a service. Perhaps offer their own as a default, or whatever.
The bottom line is that they need to adopt google's "do no evil" plan. I could go on all morning with examples.
This may seem like a silly question, but won't that only be useful if the laptop is going to have more than 4GB of memory? How often does that happen?
As often as it does in game consoles.
But, let us imagine for a moment, that some breakthrough in memory technology allows for a high-density, non-volatile, high-speed, random access memory. At this point, we can just stuff 10 or 20GB of this new NVRAM in the machine and not worry about a hard drive and its power consumption.
However I can do that now. In fact I'm right now setting up a Windows 2003 failover cluster in Virtual Server, with a Linux VM hanging round in the background ready to use if needed.
For the massess...
Right now, you've got to shell out additional cash. AMD and Intel competing will mean that we'll all have it for free. Combined with some hefty processing, there will be no reason not to use it.
So, yes - the geeks have it now but many more will have it in a couple years.
Its in consumer's best interests to force them to upgrade lest they be left behind and forgotten.
Normally this is standard MS mentality but I disagree in this case. Here's why:
Hard drive space is friggin' cheap. Look closely there. The 80GB unit is $55 while the 40GB unit is $48. Wow... For that kind of bang/buck, manufacturers might want to start bundling Linux with Windows in a dual-boot configuration. And coming soon, virtualization - you'll be able to run Linux and Windows simultaneously on the same damn PC.
What better method of migrating people from Windows?
WinFS, however, throws a monkey wrench in that. While linux NTFS is coming along nicely, Microsoft is fearing the loss of the proprietary-ness that has locked them in for so long.
Linux on the desktop is close (though ever so frustrating at this point). WinFS is Microsoft's last ditch at thwarting it for another couple years.
Indeed. Dig for the video (I won't be rude enough to link to a single copy). You'll find yourself laughing because the typical D&D person does fall into one of these categories many times.
Which is a shame. Booting into OSX once in a while might give him an additional perspective.
Perspective on what? He works on the kernel, not the desktop. If he cared about the desktop, we wouldn't be in this mess.
Linux on the desktop is getting real long in the tooth for me. I'm trying real hard not to boot Windows but I keep doing it day after day even though I'm wasting all of my free time trying to assemble some usable "free desktop".
The real deal is quality-of-service (QoS) in layer 2 (ethernet/atm etc) and layer 3 (IP). When you have QoS in hand and a reasonable bandwith ALL-THE-WAY through then you've got a real VoIP system.
But 99 percent of people will not have the luxury of end-to-end QoS through their home broadband connection (maybe if they get VoIP through their broadband provider but it is doubtful that a Comcast or SBC will send a tech to setup QoS on the router). The only thing that QoS can help with is prioritization inside the gateway (so that little Joe's mp3 download doesn't interrupt Little Jane's VoIP call).
If you actually go out and set up an Asterisk server and get a couple handsets, you'll find that the codec plays the biggest role in quality. Yes - QoS is nice when we can make use of it but, for the most part, modern broadband connections are "good enough" to make some assumptions and cater to the lowest common denominator.
We would be in a much better place if everything could be ideal.
Anyone else have good or bad experience with VoIP quality?
It is all in the codec (and configuration thereof) that your provider uses. Most of the cheapie services will optimize for bandwidth rather than quality for the sake of saving money but Vonage does the opposite, in my experience. Their quality is better than that of a traditional landline.
The thing is, you can get CD-quality out of VoIP if conditions allow (and they eventually will). So don't let this FUD up your view of the technology.
Carly had a Bachelors in medieval history but was able to become the CEO of a once impressive company because of her MBA. Not that she was any good at it but she did get a hefty severance package.
I meant to imply "financial security" but I can see how I screwed that up - sorry.
As for file systems, did it hurt you that bad over NTFS? Removing FAT32 support from WinXP would be a more useful weapon towards whatever.
Linux on NTFS is close. Every mainstream PC these days is sold with a 100 percent NTFS partition requiring a resize for a Linux install. If people could install Linux on NTFS, then more people would use it. By moving to WinFS, dual-booting Windows remains just as hard (partition resizing, ack - "this might destroy all of the data on the drive, but then again it might work").
Slashdot Mirror
Geostationary satellite distance: 45,000 miles
Speed of light: 186,000 miles per second
To get to the satellite and back to earth:
(45,000 x 2)/186,000 = 484ms
This is on top of the normal internet delays. A response from the other end will take just as long to come back so your looking at one second delay. Not good for most any use.
DUPE
Is it still April Fools?
What's really funny is that the submitter tried to make MS look like the bad guy. In reality, what MS have done is good for everyone who wants to use the internet legitimately.
I believe that's what they call "spin".
By visiting his site,
You must be new here. Welcome.
Don't forget LAPPY!
- All "information" and "ideas", which includes music, software, text, and other unique works, should be allowed to freely flow between people in an unlimited fashion without any encumbrances of ownership;
At this point, there is no motivation for people to create many products that exist today. For example, if I am an author and I want to write a book, there is little reason to do so without financial incentive. We all can't live in our parent's basement for our entire lives.
DRM is actually promising in the fact that it will lessen the stranglehold of "big business" on the market. Using the author example from above... Currently, if I want to publish a book, I generally have to sell out* to a big publisher. However, if someone perfects DRM, then I have the option of releasing a digital version of that book from the convenience of my own home.
(*) yes, I realize that it is possible to circumvent the big publishers but only if I have lots of money to self-publish in large volumes. I've already looked into it and Joe Author does not have this sort of capability on average.
So, fighting DRM is just fighting for big business, IMHO.
They still won't be as good as Google.. stop trying!
I disagree from a business perspective.
Lots of people will stay with yahoo mail because it is difficult to switch. If there is no benefit, then there is little reason to make the switch in the first place.
Competition is good. Now, they will start competing on other features and the consumer wins in the end.
I was working in a Detroit high-rise office building once and there was a similar problem. A local radio station was broadcasting from a nearby building. The FM transmission was being picked up on some PBX-based phones at times and there were complaints.
Investigation revealed that when the coiled handset cords on the phone was stretched to a certain length, the FM signal from the radio station was resonating its way in. The solution was to get shielded handset cables.
The credit card companies actually advertise this as a feature. Hasn't anyone seen the "Visa Check Card" commercials?
"Thanks, but I'll have to see some ID."
That's their sole "feature" - that credit cards are less secure than checks. And the percentage that they siphon from the credit card / direct check transaction goes to cover any fraud.
So I fail to see how this is an issue. If someone uses my card fruadulently, then I get reimbursed. That is a lot easier than fooling around with checks from a consumer standpoint. From a business standpoint, it is a ripoff because the cost of credit card / direct check transactions *could* be lower.
In the end, the banks don't even make an effort to catch small scale fraudsters. At one point, I helped a friend do just that but we were displeased to find that the bank and police did not care when we showed them our findings.
Or simply because the developers of K3b don't care about Windows.
If they care about Linux, then they will work to get a standard set of cross-platform apps. In this respect, users can move to these apps under Windows and then simply switch the OS when they are comfortable with them.
Because backwards compatibility of a large basis of the Internet as it exists?
I'm not talking about breaking it. I'm talking about giving an alternative to those of us who are sick of what's currently available. I'd ditch SMTP in a heartbeat if someone implemented a spamless variation of it.
As it sits, my only option is to dump email and move to snail mail.
Here's what I don't get:
There exist many methods for anti-spam authentication. Why hasn't someone implemented one of them in an "Email 2.0" style service with the single feature being "not compatible with existing email, including spam"? After the first service opened up for business, there would be more. And more. Until Spam was gone for good.
We can see that people are getting to the point of ditching it entirely so why not move to something that fixes the problem at the expense of backward compatibility? This befuddles me to no end. I'd sign up in a heartbeat and so would everyone email user that I know.
Can we just FUCK backward compatibility for once? Why is it so damn important?
How do you get a critical mass using a micropayment system?
Easy, if you're Microsoft.
1) Release $5 or $10 worth of bundled micropayments with Longhorn.
2) Siphon a percentage of the transactions.
3) People see value in micropayment driven content and find themselves renewing with their own dime.
4) Profit!
Unfortunately, Microsoft is playing the role of the evil monopoly that can do nothing right. So we'll have to wait until some bright spark does it first and then gets aquired by Microsoft.
You'd think that, with an R&D budget in the billions, we'd have this from Microsoft by now. Is there some sort of rule that prevents large companies from coming up with something innovative on their own?
The list is absolutely easy to someone with half a brain (not yahoo management, apparently):
1) Innovate. While this might seem like a no brainer, yahoo hasn't fixed what is already broken on their own service for some time now. A good example of this would be their stock message boards, which fill with spam and garbage immediately.
Try CSCO for example. It looks like a circus in that message board. Google will walk into this market because people are simply dying for something usable. Yahoo has dominance right now but they will lose that easily because they are satisfied with "good enough".
2) Make all services open and extensible. Mainly, this means that they should stop requiring someone to open yet another unused email account in order to use their services. I already have half a dozen unused email accounts and I don't need another. It would be great if I could use my existing email account for access to IM, Yahoo auctions, etc. But I don't use these services because I don't want to bother with another email account.
3) Promote an open web. VoIP is just now taking off. The world could use, for example, a free, standards based VoIP client for Windows, Linux, etc. Yahoo could gain many friends if they released a non-yahoo specific client. Certainly, they'll have to make money on it some how but I think that they could make more by keeping it open and not bundled with a service. Perhaps offer their own as a default, or whatever.
The bottom line is that they need to adopt google's "do no evil" plan. I could go on all morning with examples.
I really think the HD-DVD will win simply becuase of the name.
But you haven't seen the logo for BluRay yet. It's going to be a shark with a freakin' blue laser mounted on its head. In its teeth will be an HD-DVD.
This will scare consumers into thinking that they could possibly be attacked if they were to buy an HD-DVD.
This may seem like a silly question, but won't that only be useful if the laptop is going to have more than 4GB of memory? How often does that happen?
As often as it does in game consoles.
But, let us imagine for a moment, that some breakthrough in memory technology allows for a high-density, non-volatile, high-speed, random access memory. At this point, we can just stuff 10 or 20GB of this new NVRAM in the machine and not worry about a hard drive and its power consumption.
You live in a "town of 1.5M people" and you don't have a Best Buy?
Not that I like Best Buy.
You *could* order one from that thar intarweb, too.
However I can do that now. In fact I'm right now setting up a Windows 2003 failover cluster in Virtual Server, with a Linux VM hanging round in the background ready to use if needed.
For the massess...
Right now, you've got to shell out additional cash. AMD and Intel competing will mean that we'll all have it for free. Combined with some hefty processing, there will be no reason not to use it.
So, yes - the geeks have it now but many more will have it in a couple years.
Its in consumer's best interests to force them to upgrade lest they be left behind and forgotten.
Normally this is standard MS mentality but I disagree in this case. Here's why:
Hard drive space is friggin' cheap. Look closely there. The 80GB unit is $55 while the 40GB unit is $48. Wow... For that kind of bang/buck, manufacturers might want to start bundling Linux with Windows in a dual-boot configuration. And coming soon, virtualization - you'll be able to run Linux and Windows simultaneously on the same damn PC.
What better method of migrating people from Windows?
WinFS, however, throws a monkey wrench in that. While linux NTFS is coming along nicely, Microsoft is fearing the loss of the proprietary-ness that has locked them in for so long.
Linux on the desktop is close (though ever so frustrating at this point). WinFS is Microsoft's last ditch at thwarting it for another couple years.
Indeed. Dig for the video (I won't be rude enough to link to a single copy). You'll find yourself laughing because the typical D&D person does fall into one of these categories many times.
A good laugh, if anything.
Which is a shame. Booting into OSX once in a while might give him an additional perspective.
Perspective on what? He works on the kernel, not the desktop. If he cared about the desktop, we wouldn't be in this mess.
Linux on the desktop is getting real long in the tooth for me. I'm trying real hard not to boot Windows but I keep doing it day after day even though I'm wasting all of my free time trying to assemble some usable "free desktop".
Are you for real ?
Sure thing.
The real deal is quality-of-service (QoS) in layer 2 (ethernet/atm etc) and layer 3 (IP). When you have QoS in hand and a reasonable bandwith ALL-THE-WAY through then you've got a real VoIP system.
But 99 percent of people will not have the luxury of end-to-end QoS through their home broadband connection (maybe if they get VoIP through their broadband provider but it is doubtful that a Comcast or SBC will send a tech to setup QoS on the router). The only thing that QoS can help with is prioritization inside the gateway (so that little Joe's mp3 download doesn't interrupt Little Jane's VoIP call).
If you actually go out and set up an Asterisk server and get a couple handsets, you'll find that the codec plays the biggest role in quality. Yes - QoS is nice when we can make use of it but, for the most part, modern broadband connections are "good enough" to make some assumptions and cater to the lowest common denominator.
We would be in a much better place if everything could be ideal.
Anyone else have good or bad experience with VoIP quality?
It is all in the codec (and configuration thereof) that your provider uses. Most of the cheapie services will optimize for bandwidth rather than quality for the sake of saving money but Vonage does the opposite, in my experience. Their quality is better than that of a traditional landline.
The thing is, you can get CD-quality out of VoIP if conditions allow (and they eventually will). So don't let this FUD up your view of the technology.
Carly had a Bachelors in medieval history but was able to become the CEO of a once impressive company because of her MBA. Not that she was any good at it but she did get a hefty severance package.
Financial obscurity?
I meant to imply "financial security" but I can see how I screwed that up - sorry.
As for file systems, did it hurt you that bad over NTFS? Removing FAT32 support from WinXP would be a more useful weapon towards whatever.
Linux on NTFS is close. Every mainstream PC these days is sold with a 100 percent NTFS partition requiring a resize for a Linux install. If people could install Linux on NTFS, then more people would use it. By moving to WinFS, dual-booting Windows remains just as hard (partition resizing, ack - "this might destroy all of the data on the drive, but then again it might work").
$0.02,
Darren