Personally, all my contacts use ICQ (geeks and non-geeks alike).
you know that aim and icq are connected right? as long as you're using vaguely recent clients for icq and aim, then clients on each can speak to the other easily, and appear on buddy lists etc.
I use ichat and have both aim and icq accounts on my buddylist.
FYI. in ichat, to enter in icq buddies, you simple put them in your address book, add a new aim account to that person and put their icq number in it. then use ichat to add that person as a new buddy.
since only the UK recording industry has rights to sell songs in the UK
but they are not selling the song in the UK, they are selling it in france, or germany etc. it just so happens that we in the UK could access it (as we can order a cd from the german amazon).
for me it's simple. I can mail order things from overseas, including music. so why can I not buy music from overseas itunes stores? I can see that the record companies would find this worrying, but tough, that's the law and they need to deal with it.
this is the same thing for me as a french court trying to take ebay to court for selling nazi items on ebay usa. sorry mate, you have no authority there. blok it at the border if you wish, that's your right, but you have no uthority to tell them what they can do in a different country.
uk record companies should not be able to tell apple who their french store can sell to, it's a completely different relationhip and nothing to do with them, and neither should they be able to influence that.
here's hoping that the EU will "do the right thing" (rom my PoV of course, not the BPI's).
dave
PS. when I'm king it'll all change... IP protection will last around 5 years I reckon, that's long enough and then it all goes into the public domain. and then check out "itms davesworld". damn it'll be full:)
well, I'd love them to open source it but I doubt that'l happen. but if they won't give it away, perhaps they'd sell it? and you know, there is a unix (not (tm)) vendor who I think could really use alot of this technology. I'm talking about apple. I'm not suggesting that they try and take over the old customer base and support, but I would think that they could make some serious use of the technology.
they obviously want a piece of the enterprise market but right now, I don't think they've got any real good reasons someone would choose them over any other unix vendor, but if they could bring in some of the (apparently) classy digital clustering technology, and indeed, any other useful things, then they could really make a go for some enterprise stuff.
I just want to see what they do with an 8U server, xserve style:)
Just be glad that you're not buying a graphics card from Sun - they're identical to the Mac ones (both use Open Firmware) but Sun will charge 2-3 times what Apple charge.
does that mean you can actually use sun gfx cards in a mac? not that I'm intending to, but it would be useful to know.
well, I had some overheating probs with my g5 once (apple fixed them for me) and I'd come to my machine in the morning, the screen was blank and the fans were on "jet fighter" mode, which implies to me that if the OS stops taking an active interest in the fans then the firmware will step in and solve the problem the only way it knows how (max out all the fans). certainly the machine was unharmed when I rebooted it, nic and cool in fact:)
how it determines this I don't know, and I suspect few people outside apple do (unless it's a technical document in the archive), but if osx finds some way to crash badly and lets the fans stop, or not go fast enough etc, then you'll have some comeback to apple. if it happens while you're using linux then I suspect you're SOL. however, I would imagine that if linux fails to control the fans properly then the firmware would again step in to save the day.
it might simply be a case of, if the internal temp gets too high then the firmware maxxs all the fans
the desktop g5 doesn't have quite as many temp sensors as I thikn the xserve does (cpu in and out, per cpu, drive bay, motherboard, exhaust and... umm think thats it)
I don't know for a fact, but I imagine the liquid cooled system works the same way as the fans do in the currn g5's. the OS software overrides the bios control. the bios control on it's own will run all the fans at maximum (loud) speed, so without software support for the cooling system in linux, it'll sound like a jet engine.
well, the xraid itself is not reason to buy an xserve as the xraid is desiged to be cross platform. so you can use the xraid with your dell server quite happily. the management app is java and connectivity is fibre channel and ethernet so no major cross platform issues.
I've read of some people buying xraids to use with pc systems as it's just a very good and cheap storage subsystem.
really? an extra ethernet card? sata raid card? fibre channel? scsi? a couple more disks (admittedly this is pushing it with the pm g5 with its grand total of 2 internal disk slots:)
I'd love an imac g5 (though I have a pm g5 now) but it's not really user upgradeable (past mem, new hd and an AE card). it's user fixable perhaps, but not really upgradeable to a major extent.
Just had a thought... what do you think about being able to hold down a key and have the contents of another `desktop' displayed over the top of your current desktop, with adjustable transparency. Maybe even a toggle key.
now that is a very interesting idea, I'd like to see that in action, might be worth suggesting to the authors of various wm programs. I might suggest it to the author of the osx virtual desktop manager (if you don't mind?).
I use dspam alone on my system and it does a very good job of pulling about 80 spams a day from my inbox. I can't say that nothing gets through, but little does. few enough that I don't mind too much, maybe one or two a week.
what does surprise me s that sometimes obvious spams seem to get through, ie every now and then a 419 comes through and I'd have thought it would be well trained on those by now. nevertheless, it works a lot better for me than spamassassin did, and it requires less (or easier) maintenance. I'm runnin on dpsam 3.0 atm so it's time to upgrade obviously.
yes, but no ID is foolproof but biometric ID will be considered to be much stronger than any other, even though its as weak as a passport or drivers licence. but being considered stronger it gives people a false sense of security and thus weakens the system as a whole. remember that a biometric ID does not prove who you are, it only proves that you've the same guy as put his dna (retina scan, colonic map) on the card. and how do you get said biometric id's? I imagne you have to present existing ID, like I dunno, a forgeable passport, forgeable drivers licence etcetc.
also it's the idea of there being a single database with all your info on it. right now the data is spread about quite a bit. with everything in one place, and everyone asking for the same ID (that no doubt logs into the gov database to check data) then you can be tracked across the country as you ID yourself. and who has access to this data? any copper is likely and that's got to be a bad thing. and what about bad data. how can you correct it if you don't know it's there, but it could ruin your life. now bad data currently can cause trouble, but it's kinda limited by the number of places that check that data source. when everyone checks one data source, that is run by the gov, then wtf do you do? even my mum thinks it's a bad idea and she knows little about technology.
not forgetting that in the UK we are not bound by the names we are born with. if I wish to become known as Mandy, I have every right to do so and no-one can tell me I'm wrong (well, they can but.. well, you know:) as long as it's not done for the purposes of deceit, there is nothing wrong with it.
well, jpeg is a processed image, what this format is designed to address is unifying every manufacturers raw image dumps. most medium to high end camera's offer a raw modew which gives you the data directly off the CCD or cmos sensor without any processing applied. this means that you can apply and vary things like white balance settings after the fact rather than getting it right when you take the shot.
the RAW images basically give you direct data off the sensor and all the data about the cameras current settings, ie shutter speed, apeture, meter settings, focus settings etcetc.
having a single format would allow all the image processing apps to only have to load up the DNG file, rather thn having plugin's for nikon's raw file, sony's raw file, canon's raw file etc. right now if you don't have a plugin then you have to process the image through the manufacturers image application which can be a pain and seems unnecessary. also what if you have another platform, are all the raw input filters available for a mac for example? for linux? with a standardised free format then all the apps will have access and no companies will have to pay licence fees to load in the data (which soemthing like the gimp isn't going to do).
1st gen was mechanical wheel, buttons round the outside (5G) 2nd gen was touch wheel,buttons round the outside (10, 15, 20G) 3rd gen was scroll wheel, buttons on the top (15, 30, 40G) 4th gen is click wheel, buttons under scroll wheel (20, 40G)
I'm guessing a bit at capacities but I think I'm about right.
In most broadband connections, people in the same physical area appear to be on one big ethernet with you. If you turn off your firewall, those people can easily route packets past your router since there are no other routers between you and them.
that's a cable thing though isn't it? rather than a dsl thing? well, I suppose I can't speak for the states, but in the UK, (almost) all dsl connections are logically tunneled from the local dslams to a router at your isp (across BT's network) and thus you always have a router outside your control between you and your "neighbours".
And in the larger picture, you're putting the security of your network entirely in the hands of your ISP. Is that really a good idea?:)
well, of course not, and I have a proper openbsd firewall protecting me cos I'm not silly:) however I was just trying to say that while nat concerns are perfectly true, in the UK at least, nat still provides an amount of protection as no-one can route private networks to you as you have to go through other routers outside your control which will drop the packets, or at least route them eslewhere. I wasn't thinking about cable, or possible situations in the states I admit, but I don't really know those situations so maybe my comment was a bit "specialist"
was under the impression that most common NAT/PAT implementations (such as a broadband router) besides Cisco IOS did block inbound packets that weren't associated with outbound connections. But I should really test it myself.
then surely it's being a firewall?:)
the GP was both right and wrong though. in the situation where you have a router directly between A and B doing PAT of A addresses towards B, then B can still access A by using it's unnatted addresses and the router will pass those packets straight along. this involves knowing what those addresses are, and routing that network to the router.
this is where this fallls down on the internet. if my dsl router acted as the router above does then I am still by and large safe. the attacker can make a good guess at what my internal ip addresses are (or brute force) but how does he route those packets towards my router, the half dozen other routers between my attacker and I will swallow those rogue packets.
nat is still a horrid hack that should be binned though:)
ISPs make some good money (hell mine gets $5/mo more out of me for an additional IP) selling off static/dynamic IP space. You think Comcast is going to move for a switch when they make $10/mo per extra IP?
you know, I don't know about america, but I thought that in RIPE territory this wasn't allowed according to RIPE-181. ip addresses are, after all, free to the ISP (apart from paying for their membership of the RIR) and I thought that they could only charge an admin fee (ie configuring the routers/radius servers to allcate them) but not charge for the ip addresses themselves. this to me says that a one off charge to configure it is fine, but a standing "rental" charge is not allowed.
alas I never thought to ask the question when I was a RIPE admin and they cared what I thought, I've asked since and been ignored. anyone know?
I'd say that it's not as easy as that. I'm of the opinion that nat is a big horrible hack. for one, using nat is for the most part a workaround to their not being enough IP's for each customer to have (why is irrelevant). it works but it breaks things. over the last 5 years or so, it's not broken too much that the average user has cared about (due to the way that protocols have worked, or the workarounds put in place by experienced programmers). but we're coming up to much ore interesting internet apps now.
the whole peer to peer situation is really taking off, and I don't just mean kazaa and the like (but those apps are as valid as any others) but things like voice over ip. this works great between 2 real IP's, often works okay between 1 real ip and 1 behind nat (due to programmers ingenuity rather than anything else) but between 2 natted addresses? now it's getting really difficult, and why should it be? the internet was created in a way that made anyone who wanted to be a publisher as well as a consumer, but with nat that doesn't hold true.
yes, you can put in port forwarding on a router but that doesn't solve the problem. with 2 or more computers in the house then who are those packets for? and why should the user have to know these things? they should be able to plug in their equipment and use it, without all the confusion that nat causes.
then you have online gaming for example. it's getting more and mroe popular with loads of games supporting it, but a user behind nat can only join other people's gaes, not host his own. if three friends want to enjoy a private game between them then they should be able to host the game themselves and not share a public server with others. with a real IP address, they can.
and it's not just the home environment that makes NAT horrible. I work for a big computer company with many customers and lots of data transitting our networks for various purposes, and they all like to use the same private IP addresses. most of our own internal network is on public ip addresses (we have a/16) and so connectivity from them to us is fine and easy, but from us to them (and we're talking over private links here, not public) is more difficult due to the various routers that have to do NAT. and you try debugging it when you don't know the situation at hand, the project manager is telling you one set of ip addresses, the networks guys another, and you're seeing a third set in yo firewall logs! (been there, untangled those threads) it's hell, esp when it's a major incident.
it's not unusual to have a connection have both source and destination addresses natted to get through, and that sucks badly. not to mention remembering that the real webserver is on 10.1.1.1 but co's A, B and C access it on 172.2.2.2, co D access it as 10.66.77.88 and co E access it via two layers of nat so who knows what the fuck they access it as?
if all our customers had public ip addresses for their internal network then, by and large, this wouldn't happen. sure, there would be a couple of nat's here and there (genuine nats that is, not pats) for servers that move and are referenced by too many hosts files (ugh) but mostly it would make debugging serious issues so much easier and make the network easier to understand.
I would love to see more made of ipv6 and my website and email is available by it, no almost no other bugger uses it. in fact I don't even know if my email setup for ipv6 works as no-one I know can test it for me!
The reality is that there is no reason for someone like Sony to want to communicate and integrate with Samsung or Motorolla, or anyone else. They would rather see a all Sony solution to the problem
well, there is a good reason for sony to want their kit to communicate with motorola and samsung (if there was such a standard) and thats so that people with a samsung hifi could upgrade to sony kit and not lose functionality. this would open markets up to them as long as their equipment is of high enough quality.
I do think something like this will happen, the question is when. perhaps when all equipment communicates by firewire?:)
what *is* a toaster oven? is it just what we brits would call a toaster (ie you pop 2 slices of proto-toast in and it toasts them)? or is it some form of fancy super toaster?
"ahh right, now just half an hour at 230 degrees in the fan toaster oven and my breakfast will be just about right"
also, while we're on the subject of american phrases I don't quite understand, can someone tell me what the "bases" are the americans try to reach when they refer to getting to "second base" etc. I know it's a baseball reference and all that, but I don't know what the actions are that constitute each base.
to wander vaguely back on topic, my last 2 phones have had bluetooth and it's bloody good. so much eaiser to send txt messages with a full size keyboard and syncing the address book with that on my computer keeps things nice and siomple, and makes it very easy to change phones "plug in new phone, turn on BT, find it, sync it, done).
a) yes, I did know this, I'm not sure I agree with it, but yes, I do know that they have to shop you to the tv licencing people.
b) this is not true, as I said above, my best friend has a tv but no licence (and he doesn't need one as he only plays game and watches dvds). the tv licencing people got in touch once. he told them why he didn't need one and they have left him alone ever since (and thats about 3 years or so).
as for:
In some famous cases, they will even print your address on a 4-metre poster in the city centre and tell everyone that you don't have a TV license.
I think you are referring to the "bloom street" incident where they printed a big poster in manchester (where I live) saying something to the effect or "4 people in bloom street do not have a tv licence". the big reason that this was so controversial was becuase bloom street is in the middle of an area densely populated by highly orthodox jews who aren't keen on tv. about 4 people on the road weren't orthodox jews and were therefore "allowed" to have tv's. thus it was viewed as a breach of privacy, even though no individual's privacy was breeched.
well, my best friend and his 2 flatmates have a tv which they use for watching dvd's and playing games on xbox, dreamcast and ps2. they don't have an aerial, they don't have a tv licence and they told the tv licencing company once and have never been hassled since.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, all my contacts use ICQ (geeks and non-geeks alike).
you know that aim and icq are connected right? as long as you're using vaguely recent clients for icq and aim, then clients on each can speak to the other easily, and appear on buddy lists etc.
I use ichat and have both aim and icq accounts on my buddylist.
FYI. in ichat, to enter in icq buddies, you simple put them in your address book, add a new aim account to that person and put their icq number in it. then use ichat to add that person as a new buddy.
dave
since only the UK recording industry has rights to sell songs in the UK
:)
but they are not selling the song in the UK, they are selling it in france, or germany etc. it just so happens that we in the UK could access it (as we can order a cd from the german amazon).
for me it's simple. I can mail order things from overseas, including music. so why can I not buy music from overseas itunes stores? I can see that the record companies would find this worrying, but tough, that's the law and they need to deal with it.
this is the same thing for me as a french court trying to take ebay to court for selling nazi items on ebay usa. sorry mate, you have no authority there. blok it at the border if you wish, that's your right, but you have no uthority to tell them what they can do in a different country.
uk record companies should not be able to tell apple who their french store can sell to, it's a completely different relationhip and nothing to do with them, and neither should they be able to influence that.
here's hoping that the EU will "do the right thing" (rom my PoV of course, not the BPI's).
dave
PS. when I'm king it'll all change... IP protection will last around 5 years I reckon, that's long enough and then it all goes into the public domain. and then check out "itms davesworld". damn it'll be full
well, I'd love them to open source it but I doubt that'l happen. but if they won't give it away, perhaps they'd sell it? and you know, there is a unix (not (tm)) vendor who I think could really use alot of this technology. I'm talking about apple. I'm not suggesting that they try and take over the old customer base and support, but I would think that they could make some serious use of the technology.
:)
they obviously want a piece of the enterprise market but right now, I don't think they've got any real good reasons someone would choose them over any other unix vendor, but if they could bring in some of the (apparently) classy digital clustering technology, and indeed, any other useful things, then they could really make a go for some enterprise stuff.
I just want to see what they do with an 8U server, xserve style
dave
Just be glad that you're not buying a graphics card from Sun - they're identical to the Mac ones (both use Open Firmware) but Sun will charge 2-3 times what Apple charge.
does that mean you can actually use sun gfx cards in a mac? not that I'm intending to, but it would be useful to know.
dave
well, I had some overheating probs with my g5 once (apple fixed them for me) and I'd come to my machine in the morning, the screen was blank and the fans were on "jet fighter" mode, which implies to me that if the OS stops taking an active interest in the fans then the firmware will step in and solve the problem the only way it knows how (max out all the fans). certainly the machine was unharmed when I rebooted it, nic and cool in fact
how it determines this I don't know, and I suspect few people outside apple do (unless it's a technical document in the archive), but if osx finds some way to crash badly and lets the fans stop, or not go fast enough etc, then you'll have some comeback to apple. if it happens while you're using linux then I suspect you're SOL. however, I would imagine that if linux fails to control the fans properly then the firmware would again step in to save the day.
it might simply be a case of, if the internal temp gets too high then the firmware maxxs all the fans
the desktop g5 doesn't have quite as many temp sensors as I thikn the xserve does (cpu in and out, per cpu, drive bay, motherboard, exhaust and... umm think thats it)
dave
I don't know for a fact, but I imagine the liquid cooled system works the same way as the fans do in the currn g5's. the OS software overrides the bios control. the bios control on it's own will run all the fans at maximum (loud) speed, so without software support for the cooling system in linux, it'll sound like a jet engine.
dave
well, the xraid itself is not reason to buy an xserve as the xraid is desiged to be cross platform. so you can use the xraid with your dell server quite happily. the management app is java and connectivity is fibre channel and ethernet so no major cross platform issues.
I've read of some people buying xraids to use with pc systems as it's just a very good and cheap storage subsystem.
dave
really? an extra ethernet card? sata raid card? fibre channel? scsi? a couple more disks (admittedly this is pushing it with the pm g5 with its grand total of 2 internal disk slots :)
I'd love an imac g5 (though I have a pm g5 now) but it's not really user upgradeable (past mem, new hd and an AE card). it's user fixable perhaps, but not really upgradeable to a major extent.
dave
Just had a thought... what do you think about being able to hold down a key and have the contents of another `desktop' displayed over the top of your current desktop, with adjustable transparency. Maybe even a toggle key.
now that is a very interesting idea, I'd like to see that in action, might be worth suggesting to the authors of various wm programs. I might suggest it to the author of the osx virtual desktop manager (if you don't mind?).
dave
it seems to me that we're on 3.2 preview release 1. not 3.2 release which is scheduled for the 20th to the 22nd. is this post a bit early?
dave
I use dspam alone on my system and it does a very good job of pulling about 80 spams a day from my inbox. I can't say that nothing gets through, but little does. few enough that I don't mind too much, maybe one or two a week.
what does surprise me s that sometimes obvious spams seem to get through, ie every now and then a 419 comes through and I'd have thought it would be well trained on those by now. nevertheless, it works a lot better for me than spamassassin did, and it requires less (or easier) maintenance. I'm runnin on dpsam 3.0 atm so it's time to upgrade obviously.
dave
I like to make prints on Super-A3 sized paper
what's super A3? surely it's either A3 or it's not A3?
dave
yes, but no ID is foolproof but biometric ID will be considered to be much stronger than any other, even though its as weak as a passport or drivers licence. but being considered stronger it gives people a false sense of security and thus weakens the system as a whole. remember that a biometric ID does not prove who you are, it only proves that you've the same guy as put his dna (retina scan, colonic map) on the card. and how do you get said biometric id's? I imagne you have to present existing ID, like I dunno, a forgeable passport, forgeable drivers licence etcetc.
:) as long as it's not done for the purposes of deceit, there is nothing wrong with it.
also it's the idea of there being a single database with all your info on it. right now the data is spread about quite a bit. with everything in one place, and everyone asking for the same ID (that no doubt logs into the gov database to check data) then you can be tracked across the country as you ID yourself. and who has access to this data? any copper is likely and that's got to be a bad thing. and what about bad data. how can you correct it if you don't know it's there, but it could ruin your life. now bad data currently can cause trouble, but it's kinda limited by the number of places that check that data source. when everyone checks one data source, that is run by the gov, then wtf do you do? even my mum thinks it's a bad idea and she knows little about technology.
not forgetting that in the UK we are not bound by the names we are born with. if I wish to become known as Mandy, I have every right to do so and no-one can tell me I'm wrong (well, they can but.. well, you know
*sigh* I wrote and complained to my mp, did you?
dave
and every joke* is at someones expense
dave
* that has any claims on actually being funny
well, jpeg is a processed image, what this format is designed to address is unifying every manufacturers raw image dumps. most medium to high end camera's offer a raw modew which gives you the data directly off the CCD or cmos sensor without any processing applied. this means that you can apply and vary things like white balance settings after the fact rather than getting it right when you take the shot.
the RAW images basically give you direct data off the sensor and all the data about the cameras current settings, ie shutter speed, apeture, meter settings, focus settings etcetc.
having a single format would allow all the image processing apps to only have to load up the DNG file, rather thn having plugin's for nikon's raw file, sony's raw file, canon's raw file etc. right now if you don't have a plugin then you have to process the image through the manufacturers image application which can be a pain and seems unnecessary. also what if you have another platform, are all the raw input filters available for a mac for example? for linux? with a standardised free format then all the apps will have access and no companies will have to pay licence fees to load in the data (which soemthing like the gimp isn't going to do).
dave
then it would be a second generation ipod.
1st gen was mechanical wheel, buttons round the outside (5G)
2nd gen was touch wheel,buttons round the outside (10, 15, 20G)
3rd gen was scroll wheel, buttons on the top (15, 30, 40G)
4th gen is click wheel, buttons under scroll wheel (20, 40G)
I'm guessing a bit at capacities but I think I'm about right.
dave
In most broadband connections, people in the same physical area appear to be on one big ethernet with you. If you turn off your firewall, those people can easily route packets past your router since there are no other routers between you and them.
:)
:) however I was just trying to say that while nat concerns are perfectly true, in the UK at least, nat still provides an amount of protection as no-one can route private networks to you as you have to go through other routers outside your control which will drop the packets, or at least route them eslewhere. I wasn't thinking about cable, or possible situations in the states I admit, but I don't really know those situations so maybe my comment was a bit "specialist"
that's a cable thing though isn't it? rather than a dsl thing? well, I suppose I can't speak for the states, but in the UK, (almost) all dsl connections are logically tunneled from the local dslams to a router at your isp (across BT's network) and thus you always have a router outside your control between you and your "neighbours".
And in the larger picture, you're putting the security of your network entirely in the hands of your ISP. Is that really a good idea?
well, of course not, and I have a proper openbsd firewall protecting me cos I'm not silly
dave
d00d, we already have dhcp v6
d hc -dhcpv6-28.txt
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-
there are even severl working dhcpv6 servers.
dave
was under the impression that most common NAT/PAT implementations (such as a broadband router) besides Cisco IOS did block inbound packets that weren't associated with outbound connections. But I should really test it myself.
:)
:)
then surely it's being a firewall?
the GP was both right and wrong though. in the situation where you have a router directly between A and B doing PAT of A addresses towards B, then B can still access A by using it's unnatted addresses and the router will pass those packets straight along. this involves knowing what those addresses are, and routing that network to the router.
this is where this fallls down on the internet. if my dsl router acted as the router above does then I am still by and large safe. the attacker can make a good guess at what my internal ip addresses are (or brute force) but how does he route those packets towards my router, the half dozen other routers between my attacker and I will swallow those rogue packets.
nat is still a horrid hack that should be binned though
ISPs make some good money (hell mine gets $5/mo more out of me for an additional IP) selling off static/dynamic IP space. You think Comcast is going to move for a switch when they make $10/mo per extra IP?
you know, I don't know about america, but I thought that in RIPE territory this wasn't allowed according to RIPE-181. ip addresses are, after all, free to the ISP (apart from paying for their membership of the RIR) and I thought that they could only charge an admin fee (ie configuring the routers/radius servers to allcate them) but not charge for the ip addresses themselves. this to me says that a one off charge to configure it is fine, but a standing "rental" charge is not allowed.
alas I never thought to ask the question when I was a RIPE admin and they cared what I thought, I've asked since and been ignored. anyone know?
dave
I'd say that it's not as easy as that. I'm of the opinion that nat is a big horrible hack. for one, using nat is for the most part a workaround to their not being enough IP's for each customer to have (why is irrelevant). it works but it breaks things. over the last 5 years or so, it's not broken too much that the average user has cared about (due to the way that protocols have worked, or the workarounds put in place by experienced programmers). but we're coming up to much ore interesting internet apps now.
/16) and so connectivity from them to us is fine and easy, but from us to them (and we're talking over private links here, not public) is more difficult due to the various routers that have to do NAT. and you try debugging it when you don't know the situation at hand, the project manager is telling you one set of ip addresses, the networks guys another, and you're seeing a third set in yo firewall logs! (been there, untangled those threads) it's hell, esp when it's a major incident.
the whole peer to peer situation is really taking off, and I don't just mean kazaa and the like (but those apps are as valid as any others) but things like voice over ip. this works great between 2 real IP's, often works okay between 1 real ip and 1 behind nat (due to programmers ingenuity rather than anything else) but between 2 natted addresses? now it's getting really difficult, and why should it be? the internet was created in a way that made anyone who wanted to be a publisher as well as a consumer, but with nat that doesn't hold true.
yes, you can put in port forwarding on a router but that doesn't solve the problem. with 2 or more computers in the house then who are those packets for? and why should the user have to know these things? they should be able to plug in their equipment and use it, without all the confusion that nat causes.
then you have online gaming for example. it's getting more and mroe popular with loads of games supporting it, but a user behind nat can only join other people's gaes, not host his own. if three friends want to enjoy a private game between them then they should be able to host the game themselves and not share a public server with others. with a real IP address, they can.
and it's not just the home environment that makes NAT horrible. I work for a big computer company with many customers and lots of data transitting our networks for various purposes, and they all like to use the same private IP addresses. most of our own internal network is on public ip addresses (we have a
it's not unusual to have a connection have both source and destination addresses natted to get through, and that sucks badly. not to mention remembering that the real webserver is on 10.1.1.1 but co's A, B and C access it on 172.2.2.2, co D access it as 10.66.77.88 and co E access it via two layers of nat so who knows what the fuck they access it as?
if all our customers had public ip addresses for their internal network then, by and large, this wouldn't happen. sure, there would be a couple of nat's here and there (genuine nats that is, not pats) for servers that move and are referenced by too many hosts files (ugh) but mostly it would make debugging serious issues so much easier and make the network easier to understand.
I would love to see more made of ipv6 and my website and email is available by it, no almost no other bugger uses it. in fact I don't even know if my email setup for ipv6 works as no-one I know can test it for me!
dave
The reality is that there is no reason for someone like Sony to want to communicate and integrate with Samsung or Motorolla, or anyone else. They would rather see a all Sony solution to the problem
:)
well, there is a good reason for sony to want their kit to communicate with motorola and samsung (if there was such a standard) and thats so that people with a samsung hifi could upgrade to sony kit and not lose functionality. this would open markets up to them as long as their equipment is of high enough quality.
I do think something like this will happen, the question is when. perhaps when all equipment communicates by firewire?
dave
(unless it's a toaster oven or something)
what *is* a toaster oven? is it just what we brits would call a toaster (ie you pop 2 slices of proto-toast in and it toasts them)? or is it some form of fancy super toaster?
"ahh right, now just half an hour at 230 degrees in the fan toaster oven and my breakfast will be just about right"
also, while we're on the subject of american phrases I don't quite understand, can someone tell me what the "bases" are the americans try to reach when they refer to getting to "second base" etc. I know it's a baseball reference and all that, but I don't know what the actions are that constitute each base.
to wander vaguely back on topic, my last 2 phones have had bluetooth and it's bloody good. so much eaiser to send txt messages with a full size keyboard and syncing the address book with that on my computer keeps things nice and siomple, and makes it very easy to change phones "plug in new phone, turn on BT, find it, sync it, done).
dave
a) yes, I did know this, I'm not sure I agree with it, but yes, I do know that they have to shop you to the tv licencing people.
b) this is not true, as I said above, my best friend has a tv but no licence (and he doesn't need one as he only plays game and watches dvds). the tv licencing people got in touch once. he told them why he didn't need one and they have left him alone ever since (and thats about 3 years or so).
as for:
In some famous cases, they will even print your address on a 4-metre poster in the city centre and tell everyone that you don't have a TV license.
I think you are referring to the "bloom street" incident where they printed a big poster in manchester (where I live) saying something to the effect or "4 people in bloom street do not have a tv licence". the big reason that this was so controversial was becuase bloom street is in the middle of an area densely populated by highly orthodox jews who aren't keen on tv. about 4 people on the road weren't orthodox jews and were therefore "allowed" to have tv's. thus it was viewed as a breach of privacy, even though no individual's privacy was breeched.
dave
well, my best friend and his 2 flatmates have a tv which they use for watching dvd's and playing games on xbox, dreamcast and ps2. they don't have an aerial, they don't have a tv licence and they told the tv licencing company once and have never been hassled since.
ymmv
dave