I agree with you 100%. I don't think that my post (rant?) implied that bandwidth should be free. I was commenting on the editorial style of the article.
The last paragraph (which you quoted) was in response to the other/. posts that were stating "FBI should stick to terrorism, or conspiracy". I was justifying why the FBI might be on the case.
Ummm. This is theft. The cable modem tamperers were using a limited resource without permission from the resource's owner. This is even more clear cut than a Copyright infringement. Don't say it's a "breach of contract" because it isn't.
With regards to getting the FBI involved, it is likely that the cable modem service provider went to the local authorities and were referred to the FBI for this case. Local police depts are not (yet) sophisticated enough to handle these types of cases. Almost everything *internet related* goes through the FBI.
Investigators believe cable modems that connect Buckeye Express customers to the Internet were altered, allowing computer users unauthorized access to excessive amounts of bandwidth.
and
Mr. Shryock said he was unaware of an Internet cable provider taking steps to have illegal bandwidth users prosecuted.
and
Paul Shryock, director of information services at Buckeye CableSystem, estimated the loss from the illegal use of the bandwidth at $250,000.
Does anyone notice how the article paints the bandwidth users in a similar manner to drug users?? "Illegal use of bandwidth"? It probably the case that, not one of the "illegal bandwidth" users did anything illegal with the "Excessive" amounts of bandwidth. The wording is rather ridiculous in the article.
IMO, no amount of bandwidth is excessive. Since the FBI was invovled, I doubt this is a breach of contract (read: Civil) case. They probably are pressing charges for the *theft* of bandwidth. The clueless reporter decided to treat bandwidth as a controlled substance.
They do apply heat. They mention that a match will get the joining interface up to 1000s of degrees (F).
I would like to mention that using thin films and layers to join materials is nothing new (even atomically thin films and alternate layering of substrates). Research has been going on in this area since the 70's and since then, many commercial products began to use these interlayers.
Since this story sounds rather press-release-ish and I've heard no news of it elsewhere, I don't think that there's anything new here. Maybe it's improved or now classified as a *nano-tech* product. It sounds like an interesting product, I just wish they discussed the tech behind it.
RNT believes its reactive foil joining methods can overcome current technical hurdles facing manufacturers today. Thermal mismatch in metal-to-ceramic joints, thermal damage to microelectronics, long cycle times in furnaces, and poor electrical conduction across joints are all technical limitations for which reactive joining provides a superior solution. Scientists at RNT have over twenty years experience in reactive foil joining and are continually developing new applications for reactive foils.
The above claim seems more like nonsense than anything. I guess this is typical for a company's press release. My problems with it are as follows:
The reactive layer has nothing to do with thermal mismatch between the two dissimilar materials. The materials themselves cause the thermal mismatch. Sometimes, interlayers can diffuse into the joined materials, effectively spreading the stresses of a thermal mismatch over a larger area rather then concentrating them at the joint. Again, this method does *nothing* for the actual thermal mismatch. I fail to see how reactive joining provides a superior solution.
I think that their press releases should stress the *lower energies* involved with joining via their reactive layer. Lower energy = $$$$ savings.
Having less thermal mismatch is a design decision that may or may not be neccessary. Reducing manufacturing costs (less energy, lower temperatures) is an economic decision, and always good one.
That's my armchair manufacturing/Materials Science/marketing schpeel for the day.
I don't think it's a matter of if Ford wants it to be known or not. It's a matter of manufacturing costs. The engine (V6, 4-cyl, whatever) meets specific HP requirements and they are using cheapest manufacturing technique (sand core casting) that meets the requirements. If you want to pay more for a nylon-glass manifold that cost more to manufacture then Ford probably won't have a problem with that.
BTW, nylon-glass manifolds will eventually be cheaper than sand core cast manifolds. It just takes time for the nylon-glass fibre material to be accepted and more widely utilized.
Regarding Catia, it's not too difficult to learn. The same holds for Unigraphics and IDEAS. I've used them all during an internship one summer. If you are a techie, then you'll be able to pick up enough skills in ~3 months to out-design most designers (not engineers. I said designers).
I found all three relatively easy to learn. The problem is having things to design with them. If it wasn't for a constant inflow of air-intake manifolds (which have very complicated geometries) that I needed to design, I wouldn't have learned the tools as fast.
If I had one of those top 3 design packages installed on my home PC, then I never would have learned them since I didn't *have* to design complicated geomtric parts.
As far as using these tools to test/design parts for your cars, I don't think it would be worth your time. If you could possibly get the files from Ford/GM/Whoever for what it looks like under the hood, then you might have some hope of testing out different variations of things. As far as things stand, under the hood is *extremely* cramped and you can never know the exact geometry of the cylinderheads in order to design/test an optimal air-intake system. Each air intake system is designed custom for each engine. It's hard to get better performance by altering the design *except*...
...many aftermarket parts mimic the design of the OEM part, but use better/lighter/stronger materials. For example, the inside of a Ford F150 sand-cast aluminum air intake manifold is rough, worse than sandpaper. By substituting this manifold for an aftermarket nylon-glassfiber-composite manifold, you will get a significant benefit. This isn't because the shape or design is anybetter, it's because the air flows easier through the plenum of the nylon manifold than it does in the rough-finished aluminum manifold.
This is an advantage that you don't need CAE to *test*. You just know that ligher/stronger/smoother-surface = better performance.
"Apple has embraced unix which, last time I checked, leaves M$ Windows as the only non-unix home computer OS."
Although I've recently switched from using primarily Linux to using OS X on a TiBook, your argument holds very little weight. I use Win2k at work and it's solid. Furthermore, MS hired the Mach MicroKernel developers to create WinNT way back in the day. These guys are excellent and experienced OS developers and they still work at Microsoft.
Although, WindowsXP/2K may be the only non-*nix desktop OS, one can assume that it has a *nix basis, since the core team of developers do. One can especially assume that smart design decisions were for the NT kernel with regard to POSIX thread handling and what not.
Re:The Practice of System and Network Administrati
on
General IT Books?
·
· Score: 2
Secrets and Lies : Digital Security in a Networked World
by Bruce Schneier
A must for every PHB, this book gives a good overview of network security from a systems design standpoint.
The ultimate compliment to his other book about encryption algorithms. I find "Secrets and Lies" to be an ejoyable read. Not much of a reference, though, so give it to your PHB when you are finished reading it.
I don't agree with your comment, chrestomanci. If you legitimately purchased the software, then at the time of purchase, your perceived value of the software (copyprotection included) was greater than the price of the software. Otherwise you wouldn't have purchased it.
After the fact, perhaps the copy protection lessoned the value of the product for you, but that gives you no perfectly entitled right to crack it. Cracking it is illegal under the DMCA and whether you agree or not, it's a federal offense. You are, however, perfectly entitled to attempt to take back the game, to never buy any game with said copy protection again, or most likely, to reasses the copy protection scheme into your perceived value of the next game that you assess. This is a benefit of Capitalism.
It has to do with barriers to entry. Right now, the large television networks control all of the radio towers, cable networks, etc. Replacing this with a p2p rig would allow Joe-SixPack to produce his own television show to compete with what's on the telly.
That's not going to fly by the networks. At the very least, the cable companies that offer highspeed access will put a stop to it. They need to get their cut of the telly pie.
After all, if you can't accept vague, unsubstatiated, unaccountable claims on the Internet as gospel, you just can't trust anyone.
At first read, I thought it was rather vague, too. However, upon closer inspection, they use the adjective extremely, thus cleaning up any uncertainties about those extremely high probabilities.
As far as being unsubstatiated or unaccountable claims, perhaps you missed the first word, statistics. Statistics show these claims, thus substatiating them. The statistics are accountable for the probabilities.
C++ Primer Plus Speaker for the Dead (Orson Scott Card) Disappearing Cryptography, Second Edition - Information Hiding: Steganography and Watermarking (Peter Wayner)
Although I admit that these are all geeky or SciFi books, I have to learn C++ prior to August, the Orson Scott Card book is interesting, and the Steganography book is interesting, too! Sorry. I'm a SciFi geek.
If I finish these books, next on my list is another book by Kurt Vonnegut (I've only read Cat's Cradle). That's hardly geeky.
This is the single most insightful comment that I've read on Slashdot in a long time.
I am happy that it got moderated up. A few weeks ago I switched my preferences to filter all comments less than 5. Unfortuneatly this only allows me to read the typical/. drivel, which isn't too bad in the technical articles or software release articles. For law/IP/DRM stories, it's the same typical comments that get moderated up everytime.
All of the good comments either don't get moderated to 4-5 or they get moderated back down as *troll*. Please readers, if you are moderater, please take your job seriously! Take a little time and effort to improve the site for people who can't take the time to read everything. Don't moderate anything down. Only moderate things up!
I challenge moderators to moderate up two opposing viewpoints attached to the same article. Only that way, will you know that your not moderating things that you agree with.
Also, don't moderate things that are already modded above 3. Take the time and concentrate on uplifting valuable comments that are still buried at 2, 1, or 0.
Before you moderate this as *offtopic*, remember that moderating comments *up* provides a higher value to the site than moderating comments down. Allowing this comment to remain at 2 will allow more people to read it, and create more awareness about how moderation works here at/. !!
The linked story seems more like a press release rather than a study of the material.
It leaves out important facts, such as... ...strength is not the only important material property. The images only show this strength in compression.
Is this material resiliant? Strong in tension or compression? Does it shear easily?
ALL of these properties matter if you are going to use it. Usually, the Aeromet steels, super carbon composites and other superstrong materials suffer from poor non-strength properties, rendering them useless in most situations.
Imagine your super material 2 lb bike frame that chips away because it is so brittle that rocks chip off peices, or is too rigid because the material has no elastic modulos.
Do you realize that writing is a form of expression? Do you realize that many writers use these methods to this to stress a redundancy, stress an iterative process or just to make you think about what you are reading? Do you realize that Pudge isn't CmdrTaco so that we can give him the benefit of the doubt?
All I know is that on my Powerbook G4, MSIE, Mozilla 0.99.X, and Omniweb all crash with the same frequency.
I used Opera way back in January, but stopped because it crashed even more.
I've been running up-to-date versions of OS X, and with the exception of adding a monitor and mouse, my system is not unusual.
Occasionally, I ssh to my linux box and remote display Mozilla for Linux for stability. Usually, I just open a few different browsers. That way, an Omniweb crash won't take down my Mozilla or IE windows (redundancy). I never started doing this until I realized how much they crash.
"Aerogels had been largely forgotten when, in the late 1970s, the French government approached Stanislaus Teichner at Universite Claud Bernard, Lyon seeking a method for storing oxygen and rocket fuels in porous materials. There is a legend passed on between researchers in the aerogel community concerning what happened next. Teichner assigned one of his graduate students the task of preparing and studying aerogels for this application. However, using Kistler's method, which included two time-consuming and laborious solvent exchange steps, their first aerogel took weeks to prepare. Teichner then informed his student that a large number of aerogel samples would be needed for him to complete his dissertation. Realizing that this would take many, many years to accomplish, the student left Teichner's lab with a nervous breakdown. Upon returning after a brief rest, he was strongly motivated to find a better synthetic process. This directly lead to one of the major advances in aerogel science, namely the application of sol-gel chemistry to silica aerogel preparation. This process replaced the sodium silicate used by Kistler with an alkoxysilane, (tetramethyorthosilicate, TMOS). Hydrolyzing TMOS in a solution of methanol produced a gel in one step (called an "alcogel"). This eliminated two of the drawbacks in Kistler's procedure, namely, the water-to-alcohol exchange step and the presence of inorganic salts in the gel. Drying these alcogels under supercritical alcohol conditions produced high-quality silica aerogels. In subsequent years, Teichner's group, and others extended this approach to prepare aerogels of a wide variety of metal oxide aerogels. "
Poor graduate student. I can relate to him, although my ZTP-Al2O3 shortcuts didn't revolutionize anything, and I ended up leaving prior to finishing my thesis. I did, however, still graduate MS.
quote: "It's probably not possible to make aerogel any lighter than this because then it wouldn't gel""
That's just a challenge to the Materials Science Engineers. Maybe that can make He-gel or H2-gel and get the *solid* material to be lighter than air... at least until gas-diffusion takes over and replaces all of the H2/He with O2. A thin membrane around the outside might even prevent this from happening! I can't wait for (air)floating surfboards and cloud-cities.
You don't owe me an apology. I should have been more clear about where that came from. Upon further consideration, I realize that I am wrong in stating that the rest of the article is typical OSS drivel. The remainder of the letter approaches OSS from the side of a public institution and it is *very* intelligently written. The author does a good job of debunking some of the MS arguments and using other MS arguments against closed-source software.
I was too worried about getting FIP (First Intelligent Post) to carefully read the remainder of the article. Upon second reading, I realized this and I owe the/. community an apology.
Slashdot Mirror
The last paragraph (which you quoted) was in response to the other /. posts that were stating "FBI should stick to terrorism, or conspiracy". I was justifying why the FBI might be on the case.
With regards to getting the FBI involved, it is likely that the cable modem service provider went to the local authorities and were referred to the FBI for this case. Local police depts are not (yet) sophisticated enough to handle these types of cases. Almost everything *internet related* goes through the FBI.
Investigators believe cable modems that connect Buckeye Express customers to the Internet were altered, allowing computer users unauthorized access to excessive amounts of bandwidth.
and
Mr. Shryock said he was unaware of an Internet cable provider taking steps to have illegal bandwidth users prosecuted.
and
Paul Shryock, director of information services at Buckeye CableSystem, estimated the loss from the illegal use of the bandwidth at $250,000.
Does anyone notice how the article paints the bandwidth users in a similar manner to drug users?? "Illegal use of bandwidth"? It probably the case that, not one of the "illegal bandwidth" users did anything illegal with the "Excessive" amounts of bandwidth. The wording is rather ridiculous in the article.
IMO, no amount of bandwidth is excessive. Since the FBI was invovled, I doubt this is a breach of contract (read: Civil) case. They probably are pressing charges for the *theft* of bandwidth. The clueless reporter decided to treat bandwidth as a controlled substance.
I would like to mention that using thin films and layers to join materials is nothing new (even atomically thin films and alternate layering of substrates). Research has been going on in this area since the 70's and since then, many commercial products began to use these interlayers.
Since this story sounds rather press-release-ish and I've heard no news of it elsewhere, I don't think that there's anything new here. Maybe it's improved or now classified as a *nano-tech* product. It sounds like an interesting product, I just wish they discussed the tech behind it.
RNT believes its reactive foil joining methods can overcome current technical hurdles facing manufacturers today. Thermal mismatch in metal-to-ceramic joints, thermal damage to microelectronics, long cycle times in furnaces, and poor electrical conduction across joints are all technical limitations for which reactive joining provides a superior solution. Scientists at RNT have over twenty years experience in reactive foil joining and are continually developing new applications for reactive foils.
The above claim seems more like nonsense than anything. I guess this is typical for a company's press release. My problems with it are as follows:
The reactive layer has nothing to do with thermal mismatch between the two dissimilar materials. The materials themselves cause the thermal mismatch. Sometimes, interlayers can diffuse into the joined materials, effectively spreading the stresses of a thermal mismatch over a larger area rather then concentrating them at the joint. Again, this method does *nothing* for the actual thermal mismatch. I fail to see how reactive joining provides a superior solution.
I think that their press releases should stress the *lower energies* involved with joining via their reactive layer. Lower energy = $$$$ savings.
Having less thermal mismatch is a design decision that may or may not be neccessary. Reducing manufacturing costs (less energy, lower temperatures) is an economic decision, and always good one.
That's my armchair manufacturing/Materials Science/marketing schpeel for the day.
BTW, nylon-glass manifolds will eventually be cheaper than sand core cast manifolds. It just takes time for the nylon-glass fibre material to be accepted and more widely utilized.
I found all three relatively easy to learn. The problem is having things to design with them. If it wasn't for a constant inflow of air-intake manifolds (which have very complicated geometries) that I needed to design, I wouldn't have learned the tools as fast.
If I had one of those top 3 design packages installed on my home PC, then I never would have learned them since I didn't *have* to design complicated geomtric parts.
As far as using these tools to test/design parts for your cars, I don't think it would be worth your time. If you could possibly get the files from Ford/GM/Whoever for what it looks like under the hood, then you might have some hope of testing out different variations of things. As far as things stand, under the hood is *extremely* cramped and you can never know the exact geometry of the cylinderheads in order to design/test an optimal air-intake system. Each air intake system is designed custom for each engine. It's hard to get better performance by altering the design *except*...
...many aftermarket parts mimic the design of the OEM part, but use better/lighter/stronger materials. For example, the inside of a Ford F150 sand-cast aluminum air intake manifold is rough, worse than sandpaper. By substituting this manifold for an aftermarket nylon-glassfiber-composite manifold, you will get a significant benefit. This isn't because the shape or design is anybetter, it's because the air flows easier through the plenum of the nylon manifold than it does in the rough-finished aluminum manifold.
This is an advantage that you don't need CAE to *test*. You just know that ligher/stronger/smoother-surface = better performance.
I'm done rambling for now.
Although I've recently switched from using primarily Linux to using OS X on a TiBook, your argument holds very little weight. I use Win2k at work and it's solid. Furthermore, MS hired the Mach MicroKernel developers to create WinNT way back in the day. These guys are excellent and experienced OS developers and they still work at Microsoft.
Although, WindowsXP/2K may be the only non-*nix desktop OS, one can assume that it has a *nix basis, since the core team of developers do. One can especially assume that smart design decisions were for the NT kernel with regard to POSIX thread handling and what not.
by Bruce Schneier
A must for every PHB, this book gives a good overview of network security from a systems design standpoint.
The ultimate compliment to his other book about encryption algorithms. I find "Secrets and Lies" to be an ejoyable read. Not much of a reference, though, so give it to your PHB when you are finished reading it.
a) Preaching to the choir.
b) Old news, I've read most of it elsewhere.
c) a thinly veiled Microsoft bashing coming from within.
d) fodder for Slashdot's editorial slant of objective stories.
After the fact, perhaps the copy protection lessoned the value of the product for you, but that gives you no perfectly entitled right to crack it. Cracking it is illegal under the DMCA and whether you agree or not, it's a federal offense. You are, however, perfectly entitled to attempt to take back the game, to never buy any game with said copy protection again, or most likely, to reasses the copy protection scheme into your perceived value of the next game that you assess. This is a benefit of Capitalism.
That's not going to fly by the networks. At the very least, the cable companies that offer highspeed access will put a stop to it. They need to get their cut of the telly pie.
At first read, I thought it was rather vague, too. However, upon closer inspection, they use the adjective extremely, thus cleaning up any uncertainties about those extremely high probabilities.
As far as being unsubstatiated or unaccountable claims, perhaps you missed the first word, statistics. Statistics show these claims, thus substatiating them. The statistics are accountable for the probabilities.
Well, then please recommend my next book for me. Which Vonnegut book should I read next?
Speaker for the Dead (Orson Scott Card)
Disappearing Cryptography, Second Edition - Information Hiding: Steganography and Watermarking (Peter Wayner)
Although I admit that these are all geeky or SciFi books, I have to learn C++ prior to August, the Orson Scott Card book is interesting, and the Steganography book is interesting, too! Sorry. I'm a SciFi geek.
If I finish these books, next on my list is another book by Kurt Vonnegut (I've only read Cat's Cradle). That's hardly geeky.
I am happy that it got moderated up. A few weeks ago I switched my preferences to filter all comments less than 5. Unfortuneatly this only allows me to read the typical /. drivel, which isn't too bad in the technical articles or software release articles. For law/IP/DRM stories, it's the same typical comments that get moderated up everytime.
All of the good comments either don't get moderated to 4-5 or they get moderated back down as *troll*. Please readers, if you are moderater, please take your job seriously! Take a little time and effort to improve the site for people who can't take the time to read everything. Don't moderate anything down. Only moderate things up!
I challenge moderators to moderate up two opposing viewpoints attached to the same article. Only that way, will you know that your not moderating things that you agree with.
Also, don't moderate things that are already modded above 3. Take the time and concentrate on uplifting valuable comments that are still buried at 2, 1, or 0.
Before you moderate this as *offtopic*, remember that moderating comments *up* provides a higher value to the site than moderating comments down. Allowing this comment to remain at 2 will allow more people to read it, and create more awareness about how moderation works here at /. !!
It leaves out important facts, such as...
...strength is not the only important material property. The images only show this strength in compression.
Is this material resiliant? Strong in tension or compression? Does it shear easily?
ALL of these properties matter if you are going to use it. Usually, the Aeromet steels, super carbon composites and other superstrong materials suffer from poor non-strength properties, rendering them useless in most situations.
Imagine your super material 2 lb bike frame that chips away because it is so brittle that rocks chip off peices, or is too rigid because the material has no elastic modulos.
Do you realize that writing is a form of expression?
Do you realize that many writers use these methods to this to stress a redundancy, stress an iterative process or just to make you think about what you are reading?
Do you realize that Pudge isn't CmdrTaco so that we can give him the benefit of the doubt?
I used Opera way back in January, but stopped because it crashed even more.
I've been running up-to-date versions of OS X, and with the exception of adding a monitor and mouse, my system is not unusual.
Occasionally, I ssh to my linux box and remote display Mozilla for Linux for stability. Usually, I just open a few different browsers. That way, an Omniweb crash won't take down my Mozilla or IE windows (redundancy). I never started doing this until I realized how much they crash.
Run KDE or Gnome or any of the other desktop environments.
My friend does this on his laptop. It is a very effective solution.
Or you could make aerogel using a gas which was lighter than air. Then the material itself would be lighter than air. See my other comment.
Poor graduate student. I can relate to him, although my ZTP-Al2O3 shortcuts didn't revolutionize anything, and I ended up leaving prior to finishing my thesis. I did, however, still graduate MS.
That's just a challenge to the Materials Science Engineers. Maybe that can make He-gel or H2-gel and get the *solid* material to be lighter than air... at least until gas-diffusion takes over and replaces all of the H2/He with O2. A thin membrane around the outside might even prevent this from happening! I can't wait for (air)floating surfboards and cloud-cities.
take a look at the aerogel photogallery.
SPROINGEEEE-OINGEEE
I was too worried about getting FIP (First Intelligent Post) to carefully read the remainder of the article. Upon second reading, I realized this and I owe the /. community an apology.
Sorry /. community.