Puny earthling! The inevitable takeover of your environment by the metallic overlords of the future will ensure that the only office will be one in the "Real live humans diorama!" by which junior robotic overlords will occasionally amuse themselves my pulling the limbs off a helpless fleshy one! Call-Me-Kenneth says: Flesh Ones Must Die!
People as stupid as you shouldn't be allowed to have computers. The "blog" you refer to is the Seattle Times, a major mainstream media outlet, at a rough guess about a million times more reliable than anything on Slashdot.
Could you explain what would be lost if such as page was clearly marked as highly technical, and was optional to read? The OP asked "How about just telling the customers EXACTLY what they're paying for?" Those are the things you're paying your ISP to take care of. The point I was trying to make is that you either go build your own service provider or you pay commercial rates. If you want guaranteed bandwidth and SLAs, there's a market there that will give you it; however you're going to be paying rather a lot more than $20/month for it. (Go google up transit costs for a typical bandwidth provider.)
Look, it's really very simple. If you really want *unlimited* bandwidth, - well, you don't, you probably want to top out at 8Mbps or whatever the headline number is, and be able to run that flat out both ways 24/7. Here's a little exercise for you. (1) calculate your 95th percentile usage rate. (2) research the cost of transit or backhaul to a proper NSP (rather than a retail ISP). I think you might get a rather unpleasant surprise. THAT is the market rate for what you are demanding.
Now divide that number by whatever you're prepared to pay for it, say $360 pa. Divide your market rate transit bandwidth by the same figure. That's the amount of bandwidth you'd get if your $30/month was actually buying you the right to run your connection flat out 24/7. Oh look, it'd be a pretty poor speed for dial-up. Oh noes, the internet is exploding!!!! Gawrsh, if only there was some way to make use of the fact that most people don't actually want to run their connections flat out 24/7, and charge them a cheap rate for short bursts of high-speed data, multiplex thousands of similar users into one aggregated traffic flow... oh look, you've just re-invented the retail ISP market. Congratulations.
How about just telling the customers EXACTLY what they're paying for?
Because most people want their router to be a little box the telco sends them that enables them to get to CNN, Yahoo mail, and donkeyporn.com . If you want to try explaining 95 percentile billing, BGP peering, settlement-free transit, backhaul, TE at the edge, Netfllow, CEF, OSPF, "tier [n]", eyeballs versus content networking, CDMA, MPLS, tag switching, jumbo frames, latency vs packet loss vs RTT, asymmetrical routing ILECs vs CLECs vs incumbents,... well, as someone once said, I encourage all my competitors to adopt ths approach:)
Aww shucks:)
Credit really goes to a Mr John P. Moran of the Royal Forest of Dean Grammar School, circa 1984; a really great teacher. He was genuinely enthusiastic about literature and one always felt he was genuinely trying to open his student's eyes to whatever it was he was teaching, rather than just teaching a set curriculum. (Of course this was before the days of a centralised government-defined curriculum "teaching" the same topic to every kid in the country doing Year 2 English Lit on any given day, obsessive testing and obsession with exam results. Teachers had a lot more scope to define their own syllabus, or at least to teach the set topics or pieces however they wanted. The flip side of course were nutters or weak disciplinarians... there was one bloke who'd been in Fighter Command in the war. Someone told me "Oh, his lessons are a doss; just ask him about flying Hurricanes..." So I tried it, and sure enough a 40 minute monologue resulted, allowing much of the rest of the class to fall quietly asleep whilst a couple of us weirdo geeks listened intently and bombarded him with questions; meanwhile, ( -- I'm drifting, Rory.)
Hey, aren't y'all a bunch of hired killers? Of course they're evil manipulative bastards, that's their job. You didn't really think they were there to spread democracy and peace did you?
That's my cue to point out that E.M. Forster not only predicted the network and it's social effects, but forecast doom when the system runs out of capacity and engineering clue. If you haven't read it yet, read it now - it's short and great.
The Machine Stops. (Written in 1909, as in ninety-nine years ago. In England.)
This is exactly the UK's tactic against the IRA. Even when IRA and INLA prisoners who'd been found guilty in normal criminal courts of criminal acts (murder, assault, conspiracy to cause an explosion or whatnot) went on hunger strike, claiming political or PoW status, HMG rejected it out of hand. And ten "volunteers" died before they called off the campaign. This was when the IRA were receiving guns and money to murder civilians from NORAID, an American organisation that the USG refused to ban.
This is the sort of comment that made otherwise reasonable people say things like "Well, it's an awful crime and all, but why are they acting all surprised for? What did they think was going to happen to them?" after 9/11. (I witnessed comments like that personally; I was in London at the time.)
As the wikipedia article you linked to says in the first couple of lines, the Civil Contingencies Act is merely an updating of long established "national emergency" legislation to cover things like enemy invasion, nuclear attack, major civil disaster, etc. As an example, I live in Gloucestershire which was within an inch and a half of losing it's electricity supply in the July 07 floods. Had the power gone, water and comms are out as well across a very wide area. The county disaster plan for such an eventuality is the forcible evacuation of the civilian population by the police supported by the armed forces (all of 'em, most of the army are running around out east.) Oh and "forcible" means "at gunpoint",and the evacuated area would then be under a curfew, with any looters the chaps bumped into getting on the wrong end of a GPMG. This would have been done under the civil contingencies act. Had it happened 20 years ago it would have been the Civil Emergencies (Emergency Powers) Act, IIRC (could be wrong about that). Anyway the point is that's nothing new, you just hadn't heard about it.
Well, stop press and hold the front page! (god, that dates me doesn't it...)
The Conservative's shadow Home Secretary just resigned as an MP; he will fight the by-election on the single issue of 42 days and related creeping surveillance society, loss of civil liberties and so on. The Lib Dems (my own preferred party) have said they won't contest it, so it will be a straight fight on this one issue between the Labour stooge put up to defend the indefensible, and Davies. The whole world's gone mad, and I'm going to find out if I can make a donation towards his constituency party or campaign fund that won't go to the party nationally.
Labour governments always have a tightrope to walk with respect to US relations; witness Wilson's balancing act over Vietnam, 66-70, for example. This one's so right wing partly because the last really lefty Labour policy proposals, in the early 80s, were rejected so comprehensively in the '83 election that they became unelectable for another decade. In order to shed their image as a bunch of "loony leftie", terrorist-hugging, socialist, nationalising, anti-capitalists who'd wreck UK's apparent regeneration after the slow death of UK industry and economy since the way with sky-high taxes and economic control by the unions, they jumped as hard the other way as they could. Much like the way US democrats have to support gun ownership, the right to bomb any country they want that looks at them funny, unconditional support for Israel, incredibly regressive taxation and so on. "He who studies the void, er, monsters stare back at you", er, sort of thing. YKWIM.
They also weren't apprehended on US soil, You're quite right; many were kidnapped from the territory of sovereign states, allies in some cases, who are not terribly impressed to find US spooks running quasi-legal "disappear squads" where the US has no jurisdiction whatsoever.
Yeah, the isolated incident was that some dope took pictures. The army's response was to ban cameras (from prisons and prison camps.) So how do you know it's an isolated incident? You don't have to google for long to find some pretty horrendous first-person testimony of very bad shit going down.
As good a point as any to suggest to any UK citizens about to post a rant about the new police state, destruction of civil libs, etc, that you get off your fat arses and join Liberty? A polite letter to your MP, believe it or not, does have an effect on them - especially Labour MPs who voted for the bill with majorities of 15% or less.
Those two things will take you about 20 minutes, and when you've done em you can come back here and rant along with me, with a new-found sense of entitlement and smug self-satisfaction at your personal involvement in the issue. Hey it works for me.
So, yeah, Labour MPs who voted for this disgraceful attack on fundamental rights we've had since Runnymede ought to be utterly ashamed of themselves; they've revealed that they are unprincipled bunch of spineless tossers, and I think there's a line about weasel's and god's clean air from Blackadder that springs to mind, too. Fuck Brown, and fuck this government, too. I've even crossed a personal rubicon whereby I now think a Tory govt would be preferable, something I never thought I'd say.
Slashdot Mirror
- google "group robot porn"
Another robosexual out of the closet.
Lobster Random, is that you? You old perve, you.
Death to the fleshy ones!!
Puny earthling! The inevitable takeover of your environment by the metallic overlords of the future will ensure that the only office will be one in the "Real live humans diorama!" by which junior robotic overlords will occasionally amuse themselves my pulling the limbs off a helpless fleshy one! Call-Me-Kenneth says: Flesh Ones Must Die!
People as stupid as you shouldn't be allowed to have computers. The "blog" you refer to is the Seattle Times, a major mainstream media outlet, at a rough guess about a million times more reliable than anything on Slashdot.
Get back in your basement, twat.
Nonsense. This is one of many internal emails released during the recent court case. Unless you're suggested MS deliberately work up fake emails to show their products in a bad light just in case a lawyer comes calling with a disclosure warrant, which (to be clear) would be a serious criminal offence. It might help if you read yesterday's article on this, linked from BoingBoing, which has the corroborating detail you're so sure doesn't exist.
If you can't afford $250 for a printer you're probably better off writing it out by hand anyway.
Luckily, Lexmark printers are totally shit anyway.
Now divide that number by whatever you're prepared to pay for it, say $360 pa. Divide your market rate transit bandwidth by the same figure. That's the amount of bandwidth you'd get if your $30/month was actually buying you the right to run your connection flat out 24/7. Oh look, it'd be a pretty poor speed for dial-up. Oh noes, the internet is exploding!!!! Gawrsh, if only there was some way to make use of the fact that most people don't actually want to run their connections flat out 24/7, and charge them a cheap rate for short bursts of high-speed data, multiplex thousands of similar users into one aggregated traffic flow... oh look, you've just re-invented the retail ISP market. Congratulations.
How about just telling the customers EXACTLY what they're paying for?
Because most people want their router to be a little box the telco sends them that enables them to get to CNN, Yahoo mail, and donkeyporn.com . If you want to try explaining 95 percentile billing, BGP peering, settlement-free transit, backhaul, TE at the edge, Netfllow, CEF, OSPF, "tier [n]", eyeballs versus content networking, CDMA, MPLS, tag switching, jumbo frames, latency vs packet loss vs RTT, asymmetrical routing ILECs vs CLECs vs incumbents,... well, as someone once said, I encourage all my competitors to adopt ths approachAww shucks :)
Credit really goes to a Mr John P. Moran of the Royal Forest of Dean Grammar School, circa 1984; a really great teacher. He was genuinely enthusiastic about literature and one always felt he was genuinely trying to open his student's eyes to whatever it was he was teaching, rather than just teaching a set curriculum. (Of course this was before the days of a centralised government-defined curriculum "teaching" the same topic to every kid in the country doing Year 2 English Lit on any given day, obsessive testing and obsession with exam results. Teachers had a lot more scope to define their own syllabus, or at least to teach the set topics or pieces however they wanted. The flip side of course were nutters or weak disciplinarians... there was one bloke who'd been in Fighter Command in the war. Someone told me "Oh, his lessons are a doss; just ask him about flying Hurricanes..." So I tried it, and sure enough a 40 minute monologue resulted, allowing much of the rest of the class to fall quietly asleep whilst a couple of us weirdo geeks listened intently and bombarded him with questions; meanwhile, ( -- I'm drifting, Rory.)
Hey, aren't y'all a bunch of hired killers? Of course they're evil manipulative bastards, that's their job. You didn't really think they were there to spread democracy and peace did you?
The Machine Stops. (Written in 1909, as in ninety-nine years ago. In England.)
Yes, of course; my point is that this is nothing new.
This is exactly the UK's tactic against the IRA. Even when IRA and INLA prisoners who'd been found guilty in normal criminal courts of criminal acts (murder, assault, conspiracy to cause an explosion or whatnot) went on hunger strike, claiming political or PoW status, HMG rejected it out of hand. And ten "volunteers" died before they called off the campaign. This was when the IRA were receiving guns and money to murder civilians from NORAID, an American organisation that the USG refused to ban.
This is the sort of comment that made otherwise reasonable people say things like "Well, it's an awful crime and all, but why are they acting all surprised for? What did they think was going to happen to them?" after 9/11. (I witnessed comments like that personally; I was in London at the time.)
As the wikipedia article you linked to says in the first couple of lines, the Civil Contingencies Act is merely an updating of long established "national emergency" legislation to cover things like enemy invasion, nuclear attack, major civil disaster, etc. As an example, I live in Gloucestershire which was within an inch and a half of losing it's electricity supply in the July 07 floods. Had the power gone, water and comms are out as well across a very wide area. The county disaster plan for such an eventuality is the forcible evacuation of the civilian population by the police supported by the armed forces (all of 'em, most of the army are running around out east.) Oh and "forcible" means "at gunpoint",and the evacuated area would then be under a curfew, with any looters the chaps bumped into getting on the wrong end of a GPMG. This would have been done under the civil contingencies act. Had it happened 20 years ago it would have been the Civil Emergencies (Emergency Powers) Act, IIRC (could be wrong about that). Anyway the point is that's nothing new, you just hadn't heard about it.
The Conservative's shadow Home Secretary just resigned as an MP; he will fight the by-election on the single issue of 42 days and related creeping surveillance society, loss of civil liberties and so on. The Lib Dems (my own preferred party) have said they won't contest it, so it will be a straight fight on this one issue between the Labour stooge put up to defend the indefensible, and Davies. The whole world's gone mad, and I'm going to find out if I can make a donation towards his constituency party or campaign fund that won't go to the party nationally.
Labour governments always have a tightrope to walk with respect to US relations; witness Wilson's balancing act over Vietnam, 66-70, for example. This one's so right wing partly because the last really lefty Labour policy proposals, in the early 80s, were rejected so comprehensively in the '83 election that they became unelectable for another decade. In order to shed their image as a bunch of "loony leftie", terrorist-hugging, socialist, nationalising, anti-capitalists who'd wreck UK's apparent regeneration after the slow death of UK industry and economy since the way with sky-high taxes and economic control by the unions, they jumped as hard the other way as they could. Much like the way US democrats have to support gun ownership, the right to bomb any country they want that looks at them funny, unconditional support for Israel, incredibly regressive taxation and so on. "He who studies the void, er, monsters stare back at you", er, sort of thing. YKWIM.
Yeah, the isolated incident was that some dope took pictures. The army's response was to ban cameras (from prisons and prison camps.) So how do you know it's an isolated incident? You don't have to google for long to find some pretty horrendous first-person testimony of very bad shit going down.
Those two things will take you about 20 minutes, and when you've done em you can come back here and rant along with me, with a new-found sense of entitlement and smug self-satisfaction at your personal involvement in the issue. Hey it works for me.
So, yeah, Labour MPs who voted for this disgraceful attack on fundamental rights we've had since Runnymede ought to be utterly ashamed of themselves; they've revealed that they are unprincipled bunch of spineless tossers, and I think there's a line about weasel's and god's clean air from Blackadder that springs to mind, too. Fuck Brown, and fuck this government, too. I've even crossed a personal rubicon whereby I now think a Tory govt would be preferable, something I never thought I'd say.
Neil Young got it about right.