The type of rail that was laid down was just wooden beams, rivets, and track. Over flat terrain, say Kansas, you could lay something like that down with some pretty good speed. What about the bridges and blasting to put the tracks through difficult terrain?
However, we are talking bullet trains now. Considerably more engineering goes into the same mile of track. We are talking about 500+ mph. The tolerances and requirements don't make it unreasonable to say it takes a lot more effort to lay down the track. There has to be some sort of foundation support, interconnections, etc. Just the evaluation and testing of the track would take considerable effort.
A few miles per month seems to be dragging their feet a little, but 20 miles per day would seem to be beyond awesome.
The Palantir were created by good to accomplish communication and ostensibly protection similar to satellite photography. However, they were appropriated by evil and used to lie, distort the truth, and fill the world with oppression.
Privacy advocates (such as myself) are rightly worried about such technology for exactly the reason their name implies.
Which is why it is funny that he says it is not a pricing problem. It most certainly is.
While he is correct that DRM, when logically and rationally evaluated from the perspective of the informed consumer, severely diminishes the value of the product, he fails to compare the cost and availability of the product.
Lack of availability will certainly, and quite obviously, push consumers to alternate distribution channels (piracy), but price will push them there regardless.
I have often wondered, "Just who the fuck are they selling this shit too?". I just don't see their demographics having that much disposable income, especially now, and they are pricing themselves out of the market.
Honestly, if the price was reasonable, they would sell more volume. A fair amount of technically minded people would opt for the reasonable payment vs. the uncertain download (malware) from predominantly public trackers. Not to mention dodging the legal liability of piracy and the threat of being sued for some ridiculous amount.
I have been a contributor to all the Humble Bundles simply to support that idea that good games (they really are pretty good) can be made and sold without ridiculous prices and hundred million dollar budgets.
Pricing is the primary issue when speaking of piracy. DRM is secondary. Availability is in there, but only because distribution channels have gone full-retard for decades about treating regions differently.
Strange they have not learned anything from the hard lesson in Russia. The entire reason R5 releases exist is because they are forced to sell to Russian markets faster since competition from piracy on the streets is too much for them.
No you won't. I would kill to protect my family and perhaps my friends, but I would not kill to protect my own life. Everyone has to die, not everyone has to kill.
Yes I would.
Like I said, I don't have the strength to let somebody kill me without fighting back. There is a difference between cowardice and resolve. If you can really allow yourself to die without taking that person's life, you are a better human being than I.
Sadly some are willing to use violence, and sad as that may be, it too is something that is sometimes justifiable
Justifiable violence is my fear. Passive resistance, civil disobedience, and jury nullification are all wonderful examples of making your point without violence and exposing the tyranny and rationale of those in power.
However, I can fully admit that if it came down to it, I would kill another human being without a seconds thought if it was required to protect me, my friends, or my family. If rational discourse is not possible, and the environment so extreme that conflict resolution requires deadly force, I am going to survive.
I do truly admire those that have the courage to be passive and forgiving even while dying painful deaths at the hands of others. I just don't have it.
Sadly, I think we are heading towards justifiable violence as the only means to take back control of our countries and our lives. Protests and legislative bodies are accomplishing next to nothing and the situation is getting so bad, that my only choice will ultimately be violence or incarceration.
As for leaving the US, just where would I go? Every country seems to be getting progressively worse and worse for their citizens, or is in economic slavery to the 1st world super powers.
But the messages have to be routed, handed off to other carriers, stored and forwarded, etc. This has a real cost, even if the last mile imposes no additional burden on the cell tower.
I agree with you, but it important to point out that routing, including "peering and transit" is already established and not part of the cost calculations for SMS. SMS is just a different type of communication, and does not require its own special hardware or communication protocols specifically. At least not to my knowledge.
Routing the SMS message internally does not add significant cost or complexity. The OP is actually correct in a sense. The billing and reporting on SMS messages actually costs more than sending the SMS, at least internally.
There is already a TON of traffic in between carriers. Validating roaming status, call set up and teardown, etc. The costs, that the carriers created, was the massive gateways and complicated short code system to sell SMS to businesses.
As you said, even considering the costs of the gateways themselves and the bureaucracy of SMS shortcodes and premium charges, they are still making 6 figure profit margins, at a minimum.
The cost of SMS is completely artificial. It has never made sense to me, other than greed and avarice, to sell SMS at all. It should be a completely free service intended to be "added value" to the services already being charged for. Considering people's penchant for using it so damn much, it actually lowers their costs and increases how much service they can sell. If a typical SMS exchange is 1/1,000,000th (or less) of the data passed during a conversation then it is to the advantage of the carrier to encourage it. Such egregious charges do the opposite.
Now they are fucked.
Skype and persistent IM solutions using their data connections represent a HUGE increase in actual traffic passing from the tower to the handset, where it is most expensive.
Not to mention the solutions that allow you to send recorded messages back and forth. No charges for SMS. No charges for cellular minutes usage. Nothing but data, which they still make unlimited on the handset.
Not smart. They deserve what they have coming to them because it was so easy to stop. Longer SMS messages and a completely free service would have provided a heck of lot less incentives to find solutions around their crazy pricing.
but it's such a cash cow I think they'll try something else... maybe legislation?
That's how the DMCA was born. If they could not persuade or stop the consumer outright from bypassing their restrictions they did get legislation making it illegal.
Don't expect common sense and decency to stop the passage of the law either.
I videotaped myself whacking off in the backyard a couple of times and the neighbor got pretty pissed off. Something about how it "ruined" his view from the balcony or some other crap like that.
Other than that I agree with you. Bunch of Quakers out there.
That's exactly what I was thinking. If this material still retains enough strength to resist the crushing force of air at sea level when wrapped and a vacuum inside, it has some very interesting applications. That's a pretty big accomplishment of course, and I am skeptical. The skin around this would have to be very light and strong. Easier said than done.
If true, you could have airships that don't rely on gases lighter than air to float. Which is a good thing, since Helium is running out.
Except this is not steganography. Not exactly. It is a lot more complicated and highly unlikely to work.
RTP streams can carry multiple data streams. That's how voice and audio can be sent in the same connection. The summary implies that additional RTP streams are added, which is not steganographic at all. The additional streams are easily detected. It is as much steganographic as alternate data streams are in Windows files.
However, reading the article indicates something completely different from the summary. This method is not taking advantage of alternate/additional RTP streams at all. It is choosing different codecs based on a complex mapping pattern known only to the sender and receiver. The difference must allow the newly compressed, and transcoded, stream to contain extra hidden data without altering the expected size.
1) Not all VOIP systems use different codecs. It is not really required. My own systems use g729 exclusively from the handsets/deskphones/softphones all the way to termination and origination providers. Without a robust codec library the number of variations here is pretty low. Not to mention both sides would have to support it. 2) This assumes the RTP traffic is encrypted. Which means you are only using steganography as an additional layer of security. 3) If the RTP traffic is in plain text.... this makes it that much easier to defeat. If you were expecting a jpeg file, but upon inspection, found a bmp file, would you not suspect something? This method seems to rely on saying you are using one codec but choose another one. That would seem to be trivial to verify as a 3rd party intercepting packets.
The whole idea is not very workable since the value of codecs is their ability to preserve audio quality, work around iffy connections, and achieve a smaller transmission footprint.
Telemarketers (Debt Collectors are not bound by it) are required to show proof that they checked the number against the list within 14 days of contact. If they cannot, and they made contact, it is a 50k USD fine the last time I checked per infraction .
Of course, the only way the FTC knows about it is complaints. What does the FTC have? Phone records. Everything they need to assess the fine, and they love to do it.
This is completely different, and completely retarded, if it has no such teeth. How does the consumer even know to complain in the first place?
The consumer does not know:
- What information I am storing server side in my databases. - If I am even processing the privacy requests in the first place. That's all new code. Once that standard is in place I will have to go back to every website I am responsible for and enact the new policies. - If, and when, I sold the information to 3rd parties. - If, and when, I was hacked and the information copied. Unless new laws mandate disclosure. - If, and when, affiliates were provided the information.
It is kind of hard to compare the two together. This new standard puts an awful lot of responsibility on website developers and owners, of which many, are ill equipped to comply with new standards like this immediately. There is a significant percentage that will not even upgrade to a new web server capable of processing the requests.
What about foreign web servers? At least the FTC can nail telemarketers in the US regardless of where the call came from as long as the profit was made in the US.
The government and corporations are two faces of the same entity.
Wow...such deep insight. Shame your post doesn't justify that at all. All i read here is incoherent and poorly argued ranting.
Here's one for you..
You have no clue what the hell you are talking about.
bye.
LOL.
Ummmmm Okay. No clue?
I guess you feel represented in government on at least equal terms with the hordes of lobbyists from various corporate interests. Perhaps you feel that those corporate interests align with your interests in some way.
Interesting. Must feel nice I guess.
Meanwhile back at the ranch.... the rest of us know we are sure as hell not being represented in government. Maybe I am generalizing...
Show of hands!
Who feels like their interests, or that of the People's, is being represented in their government?
Who feels like corporations and people who can afford influence are just writing the laws and paying for a legislator to sponsor and pass them?
Don't underestimate the power of the Microsoft drones.
Don't underestimate their ability to influence you indirectly either.
I only have a single client that is making a full Linux switch at every level of the company. They can only do so because all of their platforms and required software comes in a Linux variant.
How many companies are out there that require Windows X just for Internet Explorer? It's completely ridiculous, but tragically true. Time and time again, it comes down to the need to interact with several other 3rd party service providers that have web portals only accessible through IE, and sometimes, IE 6.
Then you have payroll systems, CRMs, time clocks, video surveillance, specialized information systems that all rely on a Microsoft platform to operate. They can't switch because there is not even a viable open source alternative yet, they don't have the funds, willingness, or understanding to create an open source project to make one, and.. again... tragically.... they could not replace everything they need in that fashion.
Vendor lock-in. It's a fucking bitch. Especially when it is shitty, without alternatives, and populated with blame shifters in fields of torment, despair, and apathy.
Writing this from Windows 7 Professional, because I need it for work and there are no good alternatives for some of the tools I need.
Only thing that makes me happy is that for quite a lot of stuff I get to use headless CentOS 5 servers at a datacenter virtualized with XenServer. It's so much easier on Linux once you get over the learning curve.
The government and corporations are two faces of the same entity.
The problem is not "bandwidth cappers". Unlimited bandwidth is logically and physically impossible. It was designed by marketers to attract people to their services. Ironically, it all started with the stupidity of charging Internet by the minute. Most people had a gut feeling that it was bullshit, even if they did not understand the technology. Geeks knew that it was and gravitated towards different options. Mine was a personal account at a university that allowed me access to not only the internal network of the university to compile and run my programs, but also access outside networks. This was well before there were routers you could purchase. I had to create my own and manage my own firewall.
Other ISPs at the time figured out one way to be competitive was to analyze their users network traffic patterns, purchase enough bandwidth to stay comfortably within the average, and then oversell the shit out of it.
From that day forward, the situation has only got worse as public perception is that anything other than unlimited is of lesser value, and that doing so is somehow evil, wrong, and screwing consumers.
There is a simple answer to it, but the ISPs sure as hell don't want to hear it, or anyone else to hear it for that matter either. The answer is to charge for bandwidth like businesses charge each other for bandwidth. A lot more transparency, and a lot less bullshit.
What is a problem is that the content is locked into specific distribution channels and ISPs and content owners are increasingly creating revenue sharing agreements and interests that are quite monopolistic and unfair.
This problem has created a push towards legislation to protect those interests at all costs, the Constitution and consumer rights be damned.
Government wants to cooperate for a couple of reasons:
1) Campaign donations. 2) Lucrative backroom deals where legislators get a share of the profits, and a cushy ass job after they leave Washington. 3) Intelligence community buy-in. Of course they want more capabilities to monitor and lock down the actions of citizens in cyberspace. Even the well meaning and intentioned will claim they are only doing so to protect the American Way of Life (tm) and to fight the terrorizers that are seemingly everywhere. It's for our own good, and those pesky rights we have only get in the way. Just Trust Us (tm) is parroted over and over again.
So far all we have really succeeded in doing is *freeing* music from DRM to a large extent and providing illegal (infringing) alternate distribution channels for content of many types.
What the content providers/owners want is very simple. Absolute control over your devices. Absolute knowledge of your activities as it relates to their content. Absolute knowledge of all your activities and content to determine if it relates to their content and Fair Use is just fairy tale bullshit. Absolute ability to determine when to charge for access to content. Absolute ability to sell advertising to you based on their information capabilities. Legal enforcement of their powers through government they paid for.
There are two outcomes.
1) We rebel and create a secondary Internet beyond their control and continue to shift towards more direct involvement with the true creators of content, and a paradigm shift of how creators get protected and compensated in an advanced and free society
or
2) Totalitarian control over all of cyberspace and the dawning realization of the Plebs that cyberspace and real life were only separated via their ignorance and by then it will be too late. Bloody revolution or life under a tyrannical regime. Blah, Blah, Blah.... history being repeated yet again.
All of the rest of the bullshit and arguments is just foreplay till we get to the real fucking of the American Citizen.
Money is money. Hiring outside of your organization to kill somebody that is not even on your turf is not unheard of. The Russian gangs don't give two shits about what is going on in Mexico, and there are always shills.
Money speaks louder than any allegiances or rivalries.
anon/lulzsec member in china or russia can harm them. what will mexican drug cartels do ? send a mexican to xiyghuan province, to behead the hacker ?
Not at all. They will pay the Triads or Russian Mafia to take care of the person for them. Assassinations are a source of revenue too. The better question is do the Mexican drug cartels care enough to pay the going rate?
Oh Boy. You caught me. The InterTubes came after 9/11.:D
I guess all that stuff from the before time, that looked a lot like TCP/IP v4 with peering and transit agreements, routing, BGP, fiber op cables across oceans... was not the Internet.
Who knew?
it sounds almost like you were getting your info from 4chan
There is no information on 4chan. Just a bunch of goatse and random anime/furry pictures.
I have tears running down my face man. +5 Funny. To say we could trust US telecoms to protect our privacy more than a foreign company is some rich sarcasm.
I think the geeks would be better off relying on their own form of warning system
Yeahhhhhhh..... maybe not.
I remember the Internet on 9/11. It went basically this way:
1) IT people talking/screaming with other IT people relating information as it was happening. Information got *slightly* altered from one "hop" to the other. 2) Mailing Lists and IRC channels on fire with reports about everything from aliens, aliens raping people, mad cow disease attack, the Russians invading on the East Coast, ICBM launch confirmed by a friend at an undisclosed military location, etc. 3) Screams of, "But I have not gotten laid yet! It's NOT fair!" 4) Fuck it. Meet me in Everquest. We're taking those bastards down before we die.
The "Enemy" could not have created a better disinformation system if they tried.
Facebook? Twitter?... Farmville? It would be an even more glorious cluster fuck if it happened twice.
Slashdot Mirror
You are comparing apples and oranges.
The type of rail that was laid down was just wooden beams, rivets, and track. Over flat terrain, say Kansas, you could lay something like that down with some pretty good speed. What about the bridges and blasting to put the tracks through difficult terrain?
However, we are talking bullet trains now. Considerably more engineering goes into the same mile of track. We are talking about 500+ mph. The tolerances and requirements don't make it unreasonable to say it takes a lot more effort to lay down the track. There has to be some sort of foundation support, interconnections, etc. Just the evaluation and testing of the track would take considerable effort.
A few miles per month seems to be dragging their feet a little, but 20 miles per day would seem to be beyond awesome.
What's creepy and deeply ironic is the name.
The Palantir were created by good to accomplish communication and ostensibly protection similar to satellite photography. However, they were appropriated by evil and used to lie, distort the truth, and fill the world with oppression.
Privacy advocates (such as myself) are rightly worried about such technology for exactly the reason their name implies.
That's creepy.
Which is why it is funny that he says it is not a pricing problem. It most certainly is.
While he is correct that DRM, when logically and rationally evaluated from the perspective of the informed consumer, severely diminishes the value of the product, he fails to compare the cost and availability of the product.
Lack of availability will certainly, and quite obviously, push consumers to alternate distribution channels (piracy), but price will push them there regardless.
I have often wondered, "Just who the fuck are they selling this shit too?". I just don't see their demographics having that much disposable income, especially now, and they are pricing themselves out of the market.
Honestly, if the price was reasonable, they would sell more volume. A fair amount of technically minded people would opt for the reasonable payment vs. the uncertain download (malware) from predominantly public trackers. Not to mention dodging the legal liability of piracy and the threat of being sued for some ridiculous amount.
I have been a contributor to all the Humble Bundles simply to support that idea that good games (they really are pretty good) can be made and sold without ridiculous prices and hundred million dollar budgets.
Pricing is the primary issue when speaking of piracy. DRM is secondary. Availability is in there, but only because distribution channels have gone full-retard for decades about treating regions differently.
Strange they have not learned anything from the hard lesson in Russia. The entire reason R5 releases exist is because they are forced to sell to Russian markets faster since competition from piracy on the streets is too much for them.
Trans-Midget Scat Sluts XIX
So?
Frosty was a tosser and Trans-Midget Scat Sluts jumped the shark after the 14th volume.
No you won't. I would kill to protect my family and perhaps my friends, but I would not kill to protect my own life. Everyone has to die, not everyone has to kill.
Yes I would.
Like I said, I don't have the strength to let somebody kill me without fighting back. There is a difference between cowardice and resolve. If you can really allow yourself to die without taking that person's life, you are a better human being than I.
Sadly some are willing to use violence, and sad as that may be, it too is something that is sometimes justifiable
Justifiable violence is my fear. Passive resistance, civil disobedience, and jury nullification are all wonderful examples of making your point without violence and exposing the tyranny and rationale of those in power.
However, I can fully admit that if it came down to it, I would kill another human being without a seconds thought if it was required to protect me, my friends, or my family. If rational discourse is not possible, and the environment so extreme that conflict resolution requires deadly force, I am going to survive.
I do truly admire those that have the courage to be passive and forgiving even while dying painful deaths at the hands of others. I just don't have it.
Sadly, I think we are heading towards justifiable violence as the only means to take back control of our countries and our lives. Protests and legislative bodies are accomplishing next to nothing and the situation is getting so bad, that my only choice will ultimately be violence or incarceration.
As for leaving the US, just where would I go? Every country seems to be getting progressively worse and worse for their citizens, or is in economic slavery to the 1st world super powers.
They also banned "four twenty". A number. Of course it references drug use among college students, but still... a number?
I'm laughing so hard because it's really funny but also because...
the scientists who decided that water does not hydrate probably split a bucket of chicken and prostitutes family style afterwards.
But the messages have to be routed, handed off to other carriers, stored and forwarded, etc. This has a real cost, even if the last mile imposes no additional burden on the cell tower.
I agree with you, but it important to point out that routing, including "peering and transit" is already established and not part of the cost calculations for SMS. SMS is just a different type of communication, and does not require its own special hardware or communication protocols specifically. At least not to my knowledge.
Routing the SMS message internally does not add significant cost or complexity. The OP is actually correct in a sense. The billing and reporting on SMS messages actually costs more than sending the SMS, at least internally.
There is already a TON of traffic in between carriers. Validating roaming status, call set up and teardown, etc. The costs, that the carriers created, was the massive gateways and complicated short code system to sell SMS to businesses.
As you said, even considering the costs of the gateways themselves and the bureaucracy of SMS shortcodes and premium charges, they are still making 6 figure profit margins, at a minimum.
The cost of SMS is completely artificial. It has never made sense to me, other than greed and avarice, to sell SMS at all. It should be a completely free service intended to be "added value" to the services already being charged for. Considering people's penchant for using it so damn much, it actually lowers their costs and increases how much service they can sell. If a typical SMS exchange is 1/1,000,000th (or less) of the data passed during a conversation then it is to the advantage of the carrier to encourage it. Such egregious charges do the opposite.
Now they are fucked.
Skype and persistent IM solutions using their data connections represent a HUGE increase in actual traffic passing from the tower to the handset, where it is most expensive.
Not to mention the solutions that allow you to send recorded messages back and forth. No charges for SMS. No charges for cellular minutes usage. Nothing but data, which they still make unlimited on the handset.
Not smart. They deserve what they have coming to them because it was so easy to stop. Longer SMS messages and a completely free service would have provided a heck of lot less incentives to find solutions around their crazy pricing.
but it's such a cash cow I think they'll try something else... maybe legislation?
That's how the DMCA was born. If they could not persuade or stop the consumer outright from bypassing their restrictions they did get legislation making it illegal.
Don't expect common sense and decency to stop the passage of the law either.
Porn doesn't hurt your neighbor in ANY WAY
Ohh, I dunno about that.
I videotaped myself whacking off in the backyard a couple of times and the neighbor got pretty pissed off. Something about how it "ruined" his view from the balcony or some other crap like that.
Other than that I agree with you. Bunch of Quakers out there.
That's exactly what I was thinking. If this material still retains enough strength to resist the crushing force of air at sea level when wrapped and a vacuum inside, it has some very interesting applications. That's a pretty big accomplishment of course, and I am skeptical. The skin around this would have to be very light and strong. Easier said than done.
If true, you could have airships that don't rely on gases lighter than air to float. Which is a good thing, since Helium is running out.
Learn to logic
Okay Yoda.
Except this is not steganography. Not exactly. It is a lot more complicated and highly unlikely to work.
RTP streams can carry multiple data streams. That's how voice and audio can be sent in the same connection. The summary implies that additional RTP streams are added, which is not steganographic at all. The additional streams are easily detected. It is as much steganographic as alternate data streams are in Windows files.
However, reading the article indicates something completely different from the summary. This method is not taking advantage of alternate/additional RTP streams at all. It is choosing different codecs based on a complex mapping pattern known only to the sender and receiver. The difference must allow the newly compressed, and transcoded, stream to contain extra hidden data without altering the expected size.
1) Not all VOIP systems use different codecs. It is not really required. My own systems use g729 exclusively from the handsets/deskphones/softphones all the way to termination and origination providers. Without a robust codec library the number of variations here is pretty low. Not to mention both sides would have to support it.
2) This assumes the RTP traffic is encrypted. Which means you are only using steganography as an additional layer of security.
3) If the RTP traffic is in plain text.... this makes it that much easier to defeat. If you were expecting a jpeg file, but upon inspection, found a bmp file, would you not suspect something? This method seems to rely on saying you are using one codec but choose another one. That would seem to be trivial to verify as a 3rd party intercepting packets.
The whole idea is not very workable since the value of codecs is their ability to preserve audio quality, work around iffy connections, and achieve a smaller transmission footprint.
You can't compare the two.
Telemarketers (Debt Collectors are not bound by it) are required to show proof that they checked the number against the list within 14 days of contact. If they cannot, and they made contact, it is a 50k USD fine the last time I checked per infraction .
Of course, the only way the FTC knows about it is complaints. What does the FTC have? Phone records. Everything they need to assess the fine, and they love to do it.
This is completely different, and completely retarded, if it has no such teeth. How does the consumer even know to complain in the first place?
The consumer does not know:
- What information I am storing server side in my databases.
- If I am even processing the privacy requests in the first place. That's all new code. Once that standard is in place I will have to go back to every website I am responsible for and enact the new policies.
- If, and when, I sold the information to 3rd parties.
- If, and when, I was hacked and the information copied. Unless new laws mandate disclosure.
- If, and when, affiliates were provided the information.
It is kind of hard to compare the two together. This new standard puts an awful lot of responsibility on website developers and owners, of which many, are ill equipped to comply with new standards like this immediately. There is a significant percentage that will not even upgrade to a new web server capable of processing the requests.
What about foreign web servers? At least the FTC can nail telemarketers in the US regardless of where the call came from as long as the profit was made in the US.
Most likely Ga Ga waxed her legs properly today so they are enduring terrible slow news day
So what happens when Ga Ga waxes her legs improperly?
The government and corporations are two faces of the same entity.
Wow...such deep insight. Shame your post doesn't justify that at all. All i read here is incoherent and poorly argued ranting.
Here's one for you..
You have no clue what the hell you are talking about.
bye.
LOL.
Ummmmm Okay. No clue?
I guess you feel represented in government on at least equal terms with the hordes of lobbyists from various corporate interests. Perhaps you feel that those corporate interests align with your interests in some way.
Interesting. Must feel nice I guess.
Meanwhile back at the ranch.... the rest of us know we are sure as hell not being represented in government. Maybe I am generalizing...
Show of hands!
Who feels like their interests, or that of the People's, is being represented in their government?
Who feels like corporations and people who can afford influence are just writing the laws and paying for a legislator to sponsor and pass them?
Nagging?
They will just offer a golden chicken or some shit in Farmville and Bam!... the majority of all Facebook users just adopted the change.
The rest will get an offer in Mafia Wars.
Don't underestimate the power of the Microsoft drones.
Don't underestimate their ability to influence you indirectly either.
I only have a single client that is making a full Linux switch at every level of the company. They can only do so because all of their platforms and required software comes in a Linux variant.
How many companies are out there that require Windows X just for Internet Explorer? It's completely ridiculous, but tragically true. Time and time again, it comes down to the need to interact with several other 3rd party service providers that have web portals only accessible through IE, and sometimes, IE 6.
Then you have payroll systems, CRMs, time clocks, video surveillance, specialized information systems that all rely on a Microsoft platform to operate. They can't switch because there is not even a viable open source alternative yet, they don't have the funds, willingness, or understanding to create an open source project to make one, and.. again... tragically.... they could not replace everything they need in that fashion.
Vendor lock-in. It's a fucking bitch. Especially when it is shitty, without alternatives, and populated with blame shifters in fields of torment, despair, and apathy.
Writing this from Windows 7 Professional, because I need it for work and there are no good alternatives for some of the tools I need.
Only thing that makes me happy is that for quite a lot of stuff I get to use headless CentOS 5 servers at a datacenter virtualized with XenServer. It's so much easier on Linux once you get over the learning curve.
The government and corporations are two faces of the same entity.
The problem is not "bandwidth cappers". Unlimited bandwidth is logically and physically impossible. It was designed by marketers to attract people to their services. Ironically, it all started with the stupidity of charging Internet by the minute. Most people had a gut feeling that it was bullshit, even if they did not understand the technology. Geeks knew that it was and gravitated towards different options. Mine was a personal account at a university that allowed me access to not only the internal network of the university to compile and run my programs, but also access outside networks. This was well before there were routers you could purchase. I had to create my own and manage my own firewall.
Other ISPs at the time figured out one way to be competitive was to analyze their users network traffic patterns, purchase enough bandwidth to stay comfortably within the average, and then oversell the shit out of it.
From that day forward, the situation has only got worse as public perception is that anything other than unlimited is of lesser value, and that doing so is somehow evil, wrong, and screwing consumers.
There is a simple answer to it, but the ISPs sure as hell don't want to hear it, or anyone else to hear it for that matter either. The answer is to charge for bandwidth like businesses charge each other for bandwidth. A lot more transparency, and a lot less bullshit.
What is a problem is that the content is locked into specific distribution channels and ISPs and content owners are increasingly creating revenue sharing agreements and interests that are quite monopolistic and unfair.
This problem has created a push towards legislation to protect those interests at all costs, the Constitution and consumer rights be damned.
Government wants to cooperate for a couple of reasons:
1) Campaign donations.
2) Lucrative backroom deals where legislators get a share of the profits, and a cushy ass job after they leave Washington.
3) Intelligence community buy-in. Of course they want more capabilities to monitor and lock down the actions of citizens in cyberspace. Even the well meaning and intentioned will claim they are only doing so to protect the American Way of Life (tm) and to fight the terrorizers that are seemingly everywhere. It's for our own good, and those pesky rights we have only get in the way. Just Trust Us (tm) is parroted over and over again.
So far all we have really succeeded in doing is *freeing* music from DRM to a large extent and providing illegal (infringing) alternate distribution channels for content of many types.
What the content providers/owners want is very simple. Absolute control over your devices. Absolute knowledge of your activities as it relates to their content. Absolute knowledge of all your activities and content to determine if it relates to their content and Fair Use is just fairy tale bullshit. Absolute ability to determine when to charge for access to content. Absolute ability to sell advertising to you based on their information capabilities. Legal enforcement of their powers through government they paid for.
There are two outcomes.
1) We rebel and create a secondary Internet beyond their control and continue to shift towards more direct involvement with the true creators of content, and a paradigm shift of how creators get protected and compensated in an advanced and free society
or
2) Totalitarian control over all of cyberspace and the dawning realization of the Plebs that cyberspace and real life were only separated via their ignorance and by then it will be too late. Bloody revolution or life under a tyrannical regime. Blah, Blah, Blah.... history being repeated yet again.
All of the rest of the bullshit and arguments is just foreplay till we get to the real fucking of the American Citizen.
Money is money. Hiring outside of your organization to kill somebody that is not even on your turf is not unheard of. The Russian gangs don't give two shits about what is going on in Mexico, and there are always shills.
Money speaks louder than any allegiances or rivalries.
anon/lulzsec member in china or russia can harm them. what will mexican drug cartels do ? send a mexican to xiyghuan province, to behead the hacker ?
Not at all. They will pay the Triads or Russian Mafia to take care of the person for them. Assassinations are a source of revenue too. The better question is do the Mexican drug cartels care enough to pay the going rate?
WTF internet were you using?
Other than the fact it didn't exist yet
Oh Boy. You caught me. The InterTubes came after 9/11. :D
I guess all that stuff from the before time, that looked a lot like TCP/IP v4 with peering and transit agreements, routing, BGP, fiber op cables across oceans... was not the Internet.
Who knew?
it sounds almost like you were getting your info from 4chan
There is no information on 4chan. Just a bunch of goatse and random anime/furry pictures.
OMG.
I have tears running down my face man. +5 Funny. To say we could trust US telecoms to protect our privacy more than a foreign company is some rich sarcasm.
I think the geeks would be better off relying on their own form of warning system
Yeahhhhhhh..... maybe not.
I remember the Internet on 9/11. It went basically this way:
1) IT people talking/screaming with other IT people relating information as it was happening. Information got *slightly* altered from one "hop" to the other.
2) Mailing Lists and IRC channels on fire with reports about everything from aliens, aliens raping people, mad cow disease attack, the Russians invading on the East Coast, ICBM launch confirmed by a friend at an undisclosed military location, etc.
3) Screams of, "But I have not gotten laid yet! It's NOT fair!"
4) Fuck it. Meet me in Everquest. We're taking those bastards down before we die.
The "Enemy" could not have created a better disinformation system if they tried.
Facebook? Twitter? ... Farmville? It would be an even more glorious cluster fuck if it happened twice.