I bought my mother a "hifi" so she could play music. A friend set it up for her and for a few weeks she played music.
She called one day to tell me she couldn't turn it off. She was afraid that pulling the plug would break it:
" It just blinks at me and I can't turn it off! It doesn't have an off button!", she said
"Ok, mom, don't worry. What is it blinking", I replied in a re-assuring tone of voice.
"Computer gibberish! it's saying zero,... "colon", zero zero!", she said in a confused panic.
"That's the clock mom. It will show that even when it's off".
"Do you see a button with "standby" or "power" on it?", I asked
"There's a green button that says "standby"", she replied.
"Well, that's the one to turn it off", I suggested.
"But why would they call it standby? Can't they just call it "OFF"! Do they have to try and confuse me with computer jargon? I don't want it blinking at me, it wastes electricity!"
At this point I decided it would be best not to go into an analysis of the power consumption of a plasma display. So I just capitulated:
" You can just pull the plug when you're not using it, mom".
The hi-fi lasted about 3 months. First the turntable failed, then my mother gave up. After a year or so, when visiting I asked her if it was working. She said "No it's broken". I plugged it in and it was working fine. She had just given up. I'm thinking of buying her a hand-crankable mechanical turntable...
Sourcefire is the commercial arm of snort. Marty Roesch the original author of snort is a founder of the company. They sell apliances that run Linux and snort. The appliances are the NS3000 sensors which do gigabit.
Next you're going to tell me that the US will export people to Syria or Egypt for torture so as to avoid the pesky liberals at home whining about human rights.
Come on, get serious, Congress would never violate the US constitution so blatantly.
By the way, has anyone noticed that the US constitution never says anything about "citizens" having rights, just "people"? When did all immigrants suddenly become non-"people"?
And the Citizens of the USA did all of this as PRIVATE citizens. Not as a huge government monopoly. I think NASA should be privatized, broken up, relegated to pure research and/or moved out of the way. It's about time the exploration and exploitation of space became a private afair. While I think it needs to be regulated, it does not need to be the exclusive domain of governments. If it wasn't such a bloated purpose-less bureaucratic mess, we wouldn't have 28 year old shuttles with 20 year old technology flying at enormous cost and danger.
Oh and by the way, how come the Columbia disaster gets an independent investigation right away, while we're still waiting for an independent congressional investigation of the tragic events of September the 11th? Is someone hiding something?
>Perennial favorites (by virtue of liking all their books) are Ken Mcleod and Iain Banks. Both write fairly unchallenging, but very fun, space opera. Watch out for Mr. Bank's non-SF output, which is not up to the level of his SF (IMHO).
AFAIK Stuff published as "Ian M. Banks" is the SF, non-SF is published under the "Ian Banks" name (no "M").
Interesting meta-information in the author's name.
Making an association between an middle eastern sounding name and a terrorist organization clearly demonstates not only your depth of ignorance but also your biggotry.
I don't own a TV (by choice), yet I still get to watch the handful of shows that I like at most a week after they are released. Essentially, I have outsourced the satellite/DVR/encoding process to pirates and just download the stuff when it's done.
I also have a lot of free time and get to read lots of books...
That is the reason I bought 802.11b instead of 802.11a:
I need the extra bandwidth because I use the wireless to stream video (divx) on a daily basis. 11 Mbps is barely adequate and often causes jerkiness in high quality video. So I did some reasearch on 802.11a to find the one best supported by Linux. The result? There is *no* support for any 802.11a cards as far as I could tell. So I didn't buy any.
Some of these companies need to figure out that early adopters are also people likely to use Linux...
Here's an interesting discussion I had with my wife:
"What if stimulating that part of the brain causes *actual* out-of-body experiences rather than just the perception. What if you consciousness is disengaged from your body? How can the researchers tell the difference between *real* and *perceived* out-of-body? Did they ask the subjects to perform a task (such as observe something outside their field of view) that would only be possible in an *actual* out-of-body? Essentially they have proved an causal link between stimulation of this area of the brain and out-of-body experiences. They have not proved that the experience was perceived and not real."
Of course this doesn't mean it's real any more than it means it's just perception. Simply put, the experiement has only shown a causal link, without accurately examining the "effect" that follows the cause. Just because you can trigger it, doesn't mean it's fake. I would like to see them follow up with some tests of the "experience" to determine whether it is a perceptual recreation of the scene from different perspective.
Once they prove this, they will also have only proven that you can trigger "fake" out-of-body. That still does not prove that there is no "real" out-of-body that can occur under other circumstances.
By the way, I don't have any reason to believe in out-of-body being anything more than a perceptual issue, but the science here doesn't address that question.
Supposedly, Einstein said after the first tests, when he saw the destructive power of the bomb: "The only things infinite are the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe".
The key difference is, of course, that they were building a bomb with no possible "peaceful uses", whereas this guy was building a tools that could have many different positive uses.
A P2P program call edonkey (don't laugh) has partially solved this problem.
In order to dowload a file, you can use a URI such as (ed2k://|file|The_Adventrues_Of_Pluto_Nash(2002).C D1.FTF.eDKDistro.Sharereactor.bin|559778352|1b153e 31f5fdbe829488989d04dda2b1|/ ). The URI contains the "local filename", size and SHA-1 hash. A companion web site acts as a directory of URI's for popular content. The content is screened by the folks running the site. It has now reached the point where the "pirate" teams have accounts and post SHA-1 encoded URIs before releasing the content into the wild. Most edonkey users don't use the embedded search and instead use directories such as sharereactor.
This book has some interesting implications. If we can't decipher an annotated manuscript that is but a few hundred years removed from our time, how could we ever possibly hope to decipher a message form an alien race?
However, if a court of law finds that a *reasonable* person would consider this a violation of someone's civil rights, then the official responsible can be sued for civil rights violations and cannot claim qualified immunity.
"I hereby inform you that the actions you are taking are violating my civil rights. If you do not cease immediately, I will bring charges against you and you cannot claim qualified immunity, because as of know you are aware of the fact that you are voilating my rights."
There is a special kind of person who can answer your question, an "Architect". Perhaps your company should get their act together and pay a professional to do the job properly. After all the cost of an architect will be a fraction of the construction cost and will make the difference between a usable space and... not.
Think of it in terms of design before implementation.
Then I think that if you care about these things you will want to go with DSL. For those areas where that kind of choice exists, I suggest we start voting with our wallet as to what we would like to see provided.
"Furthermore the reason cable companies are capping bandwidth is because it's too expensive."
Ahem, the problem is that instead of passing on the expense by providing a "tiered" stucture of pricing, respresentative of bandwitdh based pricing, they force a complete ban. If they allowed you to pay for extra bandwidth and server use and interesting protocols, you would have a choice. If they priced these services too high for what the market believes is their true value, they will be trumped by a (hopefully existent, perhaps DSL based) competitor who will offer these services cheaper.
The problem is that their "ban" approach distorts the market and imposes technology choices that stiffle inovation. Open architectures allow the market to rapidly develop "interesting" technologies, by allowing them to be offered at a price that the market will accept. Eventually, the VPN (or whatever) functionality starts getting popular and some ISPs start offering it cheaper, expanding its reach...
So they are in effect choosing which technologies are "acceptable" and which not. Some of us believe that P2P is a lot more than just a file-sharing system, it is a completely new ad-hoc networking model architecture that will eventually replace the current very static network. I think that eventually, all the layer 7 protocols will be encapsulated in ad-hoc wireless peer-to-peer encrypted anonymized networks. Obviously cable companies may wish to differ, as this would really screw with their content distribution model. Therefore, they decide that P2P is irrelevant, and they block it. Allowing them to do that will seriously affect inovation for quite a while.
Hopefully, users will start being more demanding and they will start affecting the areas that have more than 2 choices for broadband. Here in NY, for example, I feel I have several choices of providers with different terms. My current provider has pretty much no restrictions.
If the first question you ask before hooking up with broadband is: "Do you have any service restrictions", then how long do you think this crap is going to last? Sure, there will be a lame cable provider who caters to mom&pop audiences, but if the majority of serious users become very selective, surely there is a big enough impact to make this a selling point. Even in limited competition that would have an effect.
I think the problem really lies in the fact that very few users have enough of a clue to be demanding even when they do have choices.
Top x questions (in no order):
- Do you restrict the use of LAN's NATed behind a router? - Do you run any proxies (transparent or not) - Do you restrict any traffic by port, address, or protocol type? - Do you allow IPSec? - What are your plans for IPv6? - Do I have at least one non-NATed address? - How much for extra IP or netblock? - Do you have a bandwidth cap on volume or peak use? - Do you allow the use of public facing servers? - Do you allow the use of P2P? - Can I see your Acceptable Use policy and Terms & Conditions? - Can I see your Privacy Policy? - Do you have a security policy? - Do you monitor or collect customer traffic or traffic patterns? - Do you demand a subpoena prior to law enforcement access? - What is your policy on SPAM? - What is your policy on sharing of personally identifiable information? - What is your policy on sharing of aggregate use data?
Make 'em sweat. Most sales people will happily go through this list, very politely. If not, you already have a problem.
Don't know if you noticed, but broadband adoption is in the crapper and many people have reverted to dial-up. Who needs whom more?
Slashdot Mirror
Why are geek's mothers always such luddites?
I bought my mother a "hifi" so she could play music. A friend set it up for her and for a few weeks she played music.
She called one day to tell me she couldn't turn it off. She was afraid that pulling the plug would break it:
" It just blinks at me and I can't turn it off! It doesn't have an off button!", she said
"Ok, mom, don't worry. What is it blinking", I replied in a re-assuring tone of voice.
"Computer gibberish! it's saying zero,... "colon", zero zero!", she said in a confused panic.
"That's the clock mom. It will show that even when it's off".
"Do you see a button with "standby" or "power" on it?", I asked
"There's a green button that says "standby"", she replied.
"Well, that's the one to turn it off", I suggested.
"But why would they call it standby? Can't they just call it "OFF"! Do they have to try and confuse me with computer jargon?
I don't want it blinking at me, it wastes electricity!"
At this point I decided it would be best not to go into an analysis of the power consumption of a plasma display. So I just capitulated:
" You can just pull the plug when you're not using it, mom".
The hi-fi lasted about 3 months. First the turntable failed, then my mother gave up. After a year or so, when visiting I asked her if it was working. She said "No it's broken". I plugged it in and it was working fine. She had just given up. I'm thinking of buying her a hand-crankable mechanical turntable...
Sourcefire is the commercial arm of snort. Marty Roesch the original author of snort is a founder of the company. They sell apliances that run Linux and snort. The appliances are the NS3000 sensors which do gigabit.
Man, you're so cynical.
Next you're going to tell me that the US will export people to Syria or Egypt for torture so as to avoid the pesky liberals at home whining about human rights.
Come on, get serious, Congress would never violate the US constitution so blatantly.
By the way, has anyone noticed that the US constitution never says anything about "citizens" having rights, just "people"? When did all immigrants suddenly become non-"people"?
Agreed!
And the Citizens of the USA did all of this as PRIVATE citizens. Not as a huge government monopoly. I think NASA should be privatized, broken up, relegated to pure research and/or moved out of the way. It's about time the exploration and exploitation of space became a private afair. While I think it needs to be regulated, it does not need to be the exclusive domain of governments. If it wasn't such a bloated purpose-less bureaucratic mess, we wouldn't have 28 year old shuttles with 20 year old technology flying at enormous cost and danger.
Oh and by the way, how come the Columbia disaster gets an independent investigation right away, while we're still waiting for an independent congressional investigation of the tragic events of September the 11th? Is someone hiding something?
Oh how I would love to see a McCain/Feinglod ticket. They have both really stuck to their principles and I respect that.
>Perennial favorites (by virtue of liking all their books) are Ken Mcleod and Iain Banks. Both write fairly unchallenging, but very fun, space opera. Watch out for Mr. Bank's non-SF output, which is not up to the level of his SF (IMHO).
AFAIK Stuff published as "Ian M. Banks" is the SF, non-SF is published under the "Ian Banks" name (no "M").
Interesting meta-information in the author's name.
> Did I forget anything?
:Q
"Imagine a beowulf cluster of.." -- drool
Making an association between an middle eastern sounding name and a terrorist organization clearly demonstates not only your depth of ignorance but also your biggotry.
I don't own a TV (by choice), yet I still get to watch the handful of shows that I like at most a week after they are released. Essentially, I have outsourced the satellite/DVR/encoding process to pirates and just download the stuff when it's done.
I also have a lot of free time and get to read lots of books...
That is the reason I bought 802.11b instead of 802.11a:
I need the extra bandwidth because I use the wireless to stream video (divx) on a daily basis. 11 Mbps is barely adequate and often causes jerkiness in high quality video. So I did some reasearch on 802.11a to find the one best supported by Linux. The result? There is *no* support for any 802.11a cards as far as I could tell. So I didn't buy any.
Some of these companies need to figure out that early adopters are also people likely to use Linux...
Here's an interesting discussion I had with my wife:
"What if stimulating that part of the brain causes *actual* out-of-body experiences rather than just the perception. What if you consciousness is disengaged from your body? How can the researchers tell the difference between *real* and *perceived* out-of-body? Did they ask the subjects to perform a task (such as observe something outside their field of view) that would only be possible in an *actual* out-of-body? Essentially they have proved an causal link between stimulation of this area of the brain and out-of-body experiences. They have not proved that the experience was perceived and not real."
Of course this doesn't mean it's real any more than it means it's just perception. Simply put, the experiement has only shown a causal link, without accurately examining the "effect" that follows the cause. Just because you can trigger it, doesn't mean it's fake. I would like to see them follow up with some tests of the "experience" to determine whether it is a perceptual recreation of the scene from different perspective.
Once they prove this, they will also have only proven that you can trigger "fake" out-of-body. That still does not prove that there is no "real" out-of-body that can occur under other circumstances.
By the way, I don't have any reason to believe in out-of-body being anything more than a perceptual issue, but the science here doesn't address that question.
Supposedly, Einstein said after the first tests, when he saw the destructive power of the bomb: "The only things infinite are the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe".
The key difference is, of course, that they were building a bomb with no possible "peaceful uses", whereas this guy was building a tools that could have many different positive uses.
Ahem, "greecian"? ... That would be "greek".
A P2P program call edonkey (don't laugh) has partially solved this problem.
C D1.FTF.eDKDistro.Sharereactor.bin|559778352|1b153e 31f5fdbe829488989d04dda2b1|/
In order to dowload a file, you can use a URI such as (ed2k://|file|The_Adventrues_Of_Pluto_Nash(2002).
). The URI contains the "local filename", size and SHA-1 hash. A companion web site acts as a directory of URI's for popular content. The content is screened by the folks running the site. It has now reached the point where the "pirate" teams have accounts and post SHA-1 encoded URIs before releasing the content into the wild. Most edonkey users don't use the embedded search and instead use directories such as sharereactor.
This book has some interesting implications. If we can't decipher an annotated manuscript that is but a few hundred years removed from our time, how could we ever possibly hope to decipher a message form an alien race?
He is right,
However, if a court of law finds that a *reasonable* person would consider this a violation of someone's civil rights, then the official responsible can be sued for civil rights violations and cannot claim qualified immunity.
"I hereby inform you that the actions you are taking are violating my civil rights. If you do not cease immediately, I will bring charges against you and you cannot claim qualified immunity, because as of know you are aware of the fact that you are voilating my rights."
There are a number of purpose built systems that are designed as highly accurate NTP stratum 1 servers, with GPS input.
These are rack-mountable 1u servers designed for service provider environments. I have deployed several such systems.
Have a look at TrueTime" for an example.
Some of these systems are Linux/ntpd/gpsd based, but come with support and in a turn-key format with Web based GUI.
According to many studies, 75% of all security breaches are from the INSIDE.
The only thing that made this funny was that the shout "Show us your tits" came from a group of female hackers.
There is a special kind of person who can answer your question, an "Architect". Perhaps your company should get their act together and pay a professional to do the job properly. After all the cost of an architect will be a fraction of the construction cost and will make the difference between a usable space and ... not.
Think of it in terms of design before implementation.
Then I think that if you care about these things you will want to go with DSL. For those areas where that kind of choice exists, I suggest we start voting with our wallet as to what we would like to see provided.
"Furthermore the reason cable companies are capping bandwidth is because it's too expensive."
Ahem, the problem is that instead of passing on the expense by providing a "tiered" stucture of pricing, respresentative of bandwitdh based pricing, they force a complete ban. If they allowed you to pay for extra bandwidth and server use and interesting protocols, you would have a choice. If they priced these services too high for what the market believes is their true value, they will be trumped by a (hopefully existent, perhaps DSL based) competitor who will offer these services cheaper.
The problem is that their "ban" approach distorts the market and imposes technology choices that stiffle inovation. Open architectures allow the market to rapidly develop "interesting" technologies, by allowing them to be offered at a price that the market will accept. Eventually, the VPN (or whatever) functionality starts getting popular and some ISPs start offering it cheaper, expanding its reach...
So they are in effect choosing which technologies are "acceptable" and which not. Some of us believe that P2P is a lot more than just a file-sharing system, it is a completely new ad-hoc networking model architecture that will eventually replace the current very static network. I think that eventually, all the layer 7 protocols will be encapsulated in ad-hoc wireless peer-to-peer encrypted anonymized networks. Obviously cable companies may wish to differ, as this would really screw with their content distribution model. Therefore, they decide that P2P is irrelevant, and they block it. Allowing them to do that will seriously affect inovation for quite a while.
Hopefully, users will start being more demanding and they will start affecting the areas that have more than 2 choices for broadband. Here in NY, for example, I feel I have several choices of providers with different terms. My current provider has pretty much no restrictions.
If the first question you ask before hooking up with broadband is:
"Do you have any service restrictions", then how long do you think this crap is going to last? Sure, there will be a lame cable provider who caters to mom&pop audiences, but if the majority of serious users become very selective, surely there is a big enough impact to make this a selling point. Even in limited competition that would have an effect.
I think the problem really lies in the fact that very few users have enough of a clue to be demanding even when they do have choices.
Top x questions (in no order):
- Do you restrict the use of LAN's NATed behind a router?
- Do you run any proxies (transparent or not)
- Do you restrict any traffic by port, address, or protocol type?
- Do you allow IPSec?
- What are your plans for IPv6?
- Do I have at least one non-NATed address?
- How much for extra IP or netblock?
- Do you have a bandwidth cap on volume or peak use?
- Do you allow the use of public facing servers?
- Do you allow the use of P2P?
- Can I see your Acceptable Use policy and Terms & Conditions?
- Can I see your Privacy Policy?
- Do you have a security policy?
- Do you monitor or collect customer traffic or traffic patterns?
- Do you demand a subpoena prior to law enforcement access?
- What is your policy on SPAM?
- What is your policy on sharing of personally identifiable information?
- What is your policy on sharing of aggregate use data?
Make 'em sweat. Most sales people will happily go through this list, very politely. If not, you already have a problem.
Don't know if you noticed, but broadband adoption is in the crapper and many people have reverted to dial-up. Who needs whom more?
Gregory Powell
Abuse & Security, Supervisor
So according to his title, Mr. Gregory Powell supervises the abuse of roadrunner customers as well as their security, right? He is the Abuse-Master!
Do you think he is related to the other Mr. Powell (Jr.) who supervises the abuse of all telecommunications users collectively?
Or maybe his father, the other Mr. Powell (Sr.), who will then come to bomb your home to stop the "anonymous criminal activity"?
Check out the Freedom from Religion Foundation. You are not alone my friend.