In any kind of digital dialogue between computers over the Internet, a third party may send packets that are either malformed or are valid but are not part of the conversation. This is done to cause a number of effects that are not desired by the communicating parties. A common example is an attempt to break in to a system. Another example is the classic man-in-the-middle attack. Yet another example is the denial of service attack, which can take many forms.
Perhaps by shifting our thinking a bit, we'll find that these reset packets sent by ISPs to throttle certain types of connections represent the latter form of third party communication, designed to achieve denial of service! The ISP, then, is a "hacker" (for the mass media and Joe Luser definition of "hacker").
Keeping in mind the theory than given an infinite number of monkeys banging away on an infinite number of keyboards, one will reproduce exactly the entire works of William Shakespeare, let's not get one thing wrong: Although Microsoft has several thousand monkeys, they also have several hundred of the brightest programmers in the world. They need to set up a team of experts to create a new operating system from scratch, designed for the future and based on all of the best knowledge available about operating systems. Such a system could be modeled on a similar design as that used by Apple: Open-source microkernel providing the most basic and lowest level services; open-source full-featured CLI-only operating system built around that; friendly user interface component which could be proprietary, open-source, or a combination of the two. This could give Microsoft the ability to protect true innovations in all the parts of the system with which most users would need to interact, while simultaneously capitalizing on the free work of those enterprising souls outside of Microsoft who would fix bugs, close security holes, or make other improvements to the system. Bottom line: Apple has made a fine example of how to become incredibly successful. Microsoft could learn a lot from them. It would put the $25 million that Gates invested in Apple to good use!
I can confirm that there are pieces of the Earth in the moon. Somewhere in the back of my closet, I keep a fossil of a ancient platypus that astronauts brought down from the moon a few decades ago. Looks an awful lot like Hexley.
Ok let's think about this. What was the Constitution and the Bill of Rights supposed to defend? Your rights, right? Ok, now that we've established that, from whom is this Bill of Rights defending you, the individual? Mainly from the government. Now you need to realize that the government is not some ephemeral entity that determines the order of the universe. It's a bunch of dudes who happened to get elected and happen, therefore, to have power to make things happen. It is from THOSE DUDES that the Bill of Rights is supposed to protect you. Unfortunately, the Bill of Rights is only a piece of paper. It is YOU who must always monitor what is happening and to fight violations of your rights. I believe that in that Bill of Rights somewhere, it says something to the effect that:
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Now don't you think that getting the kind of sentence that a rapist might get is a tad bit CRUEL AND UNUSUAL for downloading or uploading some worthless garbage?
I'll tell you what I think about eliminating "defects" from embryos: There was a guy who wanted to eliminate all genetic defects from society. His name was Adolf Hitler. (Let me rephrase that. That's not a guy. It's a cockroach.)
Who's to say that we have the knowledge or the right to decide who will live and who will never be born? What if the analysis that says a defect will certainly happen is incorrect and that person might have grown up and discovered the cure for cancer? What if the analysis that says that a defect has a 90% chance of occurring is also flawed? I don't think it is within the rights of men to decide someone's fate before he's ever born. (The words "men" and "he" are used in the generic sense to refer to both sexes, you oversensitive clod!)
This is true; in addition, if there actually were a reason that the ISPs were losing money, then they would raise the monthly rate by a few dollars. Most people won't switch ISPs over a few dollars a month since it's such a hassle to do so anyway. However, note that I said *IF* there were such a reason, which there isn't, at least until we start doing everything, including all voice and video communication (think all your cable TV and phones), over the Internet.
It was quite clear to me all along that this whole throttling issue revolved around the agenda of some nasty people who want to lock the world in to their way of doing things, and had nothing to do with use of bandwidth or any other legitimate issue. I'm glad this is coming out.
Well you might know when the war of 1812 was fought, but do you have any idea how long the Hundred Years' War lasted? No cheating by looking up the answer...
This is my favorite part: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up."
Keep up the good work!
When it comes down to it, I am completely sure that Microsoft is where it is in terms of its financial success only because of Bill Gates. Unfortunately, ever since he stepped down, I believe that Mr. Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers has no idea what he's doing. Since Microsoft is so high and mighty, it will take a loooooong time for him to sink that ship, but it will never be what it was under Captain (now Admiral) Gates. And the usability of Windows is following the trend of a negative exponential curve. If you think Vista sux, wait 'till you see 7. And the next version, I think they'll call it Windows Excalibur, that one will be so unusable that computer stores will have big dumpsters outside the front entrance, and people will purchase computers and simply drop them into that dumpster upon leaving the store, without ever opening the box. Or they'll just get a Mac, which by then will run Mac OS 12.7 Pelican. (OS 12 will go by bird names.) Maybe this usability disaster explains why Gates gave Jobs a hug sum of money to develop OS X.
I will RTFA, and I find this to be a very interesting side effect of the higher gas prices. It may be the only good thing coming out of the situation. If a hydrogen-based car that runs on water comes out, that would be another good thing. But you have to wonder, why are oil prices so high to begin with? It has to do with several things, which I'll touch on, but I'd like to concentrate on this thing called oil futures and another thing called deregulation. Turns out that just prior to Cliton leaving office (there is only one "n" in Cliton), a bill was passed in which was buried this deregulation of oil futures. As a result, the price is higher than $4.50 a gallon due to speculators on Wall Street gambling on the price going up. Gas should really cost about $3.00 a gallon at this point, and it's that high due to heavily increased demand from China and India. But the additional $1.50 per gallon is a direct result of the craziness on Wall Street. Unless people begin to research this for themselves and do something about it, the prices WILL continue to increase and you'll soon see gas at $5.50 a gallon, $6.50 a gallon, and even $99.50 per gallon. What can you do about it? One example is to start a barrage of letters to your representatives. Another is for some enterprising smart people to get together and solve the problem of releasing hydrogen from water in an efficient way. If the situation gets desperate, it may even call for a massive nationwide gas strike in which not only will millions of people refuse to buy gas for a week, but they'll also stay home from work and school during that time. No matter what, something must happen, and sooner is better than later. Because everything depends on gasoline, so the continuously increasing price is causing everything else to become more expensive.
Well, you could try something that no modern computer has been able to achieve, and they think it'll take something on the order of Deep Thought to get it done -- run Windows Vista at a reasonable speed.
I like how you took my obviously un-serious comment so seriously!
Enterprise technologies
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· Score: 4, Funny
This is great news! As the CIO of a well known Fortune 500 company, I can envision some innovative global solutions built on this compelling technology.
This might seem expensive, but get yourself two of those USB/Firewire Western Digital 1TB hard drives and store the video on both of them, so you have a backup in case one dies. Each time the 1TB fills up, get two more drives at a similar price. They'll probably be a larger capacity by then. A drive like this goes for under two hundred bucks nowadays, but I think this is cheap given what you want to accomplish, and I'll explain:
A double layer DVD has a bit under 8.75443220139 gigs of usable storage, IIRC. And a 1 TB drive has 931.32257461548 actual gigs of storage, if a gig is 1024*1024*1024 bytes, not 1000*1000*1000 bytes like the hard drive manufacturers want you to believe. Meaning you can stick the equivalent of 106 double-layer DVDs on one of these 1TB drives. 106 DL DVDs will cost you somewhere in the neighborhood $120 to $135. So you'd spend $70 or so less if you bought 106 DVDs rather than one hard drive, and here I'm telling you to buy two hard drives and thereby spend $140 more than for 106 DVDs. Why?
First, the time it will take you to burn all this crap onto DVD. I think it takes a DVD burner 45 minutes to burn a DL DVD. I haven't done it in a while, so let's just say that's correct. Accordingly, it will take you nearly 80 hours to burn all these damn discs, and that doesn't include the time it takes to put in a disc, select the files, burn them, verify the burn, since you want to be sure, and this will double the burn time.
Second, many of the discs will fail to burn properly, so you'll have to redo them. I've experienced as high as 1 out of every 2 double layer DVDs failing to burn properly (this may be due to the discs or to the computer, or to the software, or a combination of any of them). This increases the time mentioned above and it also increases the price.
Third, since you NEED data redundancy, you need to burn two copies of each. Double the cost and time requirement.
Fourth, you don't want to split files across DVDs so you'll utilize less than all of the available storage capacity of each disc. Increase the number of discs you have to buy, the cost, and the time accordingly.
See, all these reasons show why it is cheaper to just get a bunch of external hard drives, and to duplicate everything. Even if some catastrophe happens to both drives, you can send it to those folks who recovered data from the Space Shuttle Columbia hard drive, which fell out of the sky along with all the poor souls on board. But that's not likely to happen.
I doubt this will do much to help; however, a better approach might be the one used by the electric company here. When you sign up for electricity, there is a $200 "deposit" charge on your first bill. If you pay all your bills on time, the $200 are refunded as a credit to your statement after six months. Similarly, each domain registration might require payment of, say, $100, as a deposit. If you keep the domain for six months, you get the $100 back. In the meantime, ICANN can use the interest from all these deposits they'll be collecting to do some of the stuff that used to be paid by the registration fee itself, thus reducing the regular registration fee somewhat (once your $100 are refunded). I think this reasonable approach will get the job done better than a $.20 charge that domain tasters will gladly pay.
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In any kind of digital dialogue between computers over the Internet, a third party may send packets that are either malformed or are valid but are not part of the conversation. This is done to cause a number of effects that are not desired by the communicating parties. A common example is an attempt to break in to a system. Another example is the classic man-in-the-middle attack. Yet another example is the denial of service attack, which can take many forms.
Perhaps by shifting our thinking a bit, we'll find that these reset packets sent by ISPs to throttle certain types of connections represent the latter form of third party communication, designed to achieve denial of service! The ISP, then, is a "hacker" (for the mass media and Joe Luser definition of "hacker").
Keeping in mind the theory than given an infinite number of monkeys banging away on an infinite number of keyboards, one will reproduce exactly the entire works of William Shakespeare, let's not get one thing wrong: Although Microsoft has several thousand monkeys, they also have several hundred of the brightest programmers in the world. They need to set up a team of experts to create a new operating system from scratch, designed for the future and based on all of the best knowledge available about operating systems. Such a system could be modeled on a similar design as that used by Apple: Open-source microkernel providing the most basic and lowest level services; open-source full-featured CLI-only operating system built around that; friendly user interface component which could be proprietary, open-source, or a combination of the two. This could give Microsoft the ability to protect true innovations in all the parts of the system with which most users would need to interact, while simultaneously capitalizing on the free work of those enterprising souls outside of Microsoft who would fix bugs, close security holes, or make other improvements to the system. Bottom line: Apple has made a fine example of how to become incredibly successful. Microsoft could learn a lot from them. It would put the $25 million that Gates invested in Apple to good use!
Obligatory quote from Back to the Future: "Do you know what this means? It means that this damn thing doesn't work at all!"
I can confirm that there are pieces of the Earth in the moon. Somewhere in the back of my closet, I keep a fossil of a ancient platypus that astronauts brought down from the moon a few decades ago. Looks an awful lot like Hexley.
You're right, it is a trick question, very good. :-)
Unfortunately, both for you and for those who fought in the war, it lasted 116 years, not 87. :-(
Now don't you think that getting the kind of sentence that a rapist might get is a tad bit CRUEL AND UNUSUAL for downloading or uploading some worthless garbage?
I'll tell you what I think about eliminating "defects" from embryos: There was a guy who wanted to eliminate all genetic defects from society. His name was Adolf Hitler. (Let me rephrase that. That's not a guy. It's a cockroach.)
Who's to say that we have the knowledge or the right to decide who will live and who will never be born? What if the analysis that says a defect will certainly happen is incorrect and that person might have grown up and discovered the cure for cancer? What if the analysis that says that a defect has a 90% chance of occurring is also flawed? I don't think it is within the rights of men to decide someone's fate before he's ever born. (The words "men" and "he" are used in the generic sense to refer to both sexes, you oversensitive clod!)
This is true; in addition, if there actually were a reason that the ISPs were losing money, then they would raise the monthly rate by a few dollars. Most people won't switch ISPs over a few dollars a month since it's such a hassle to do so anyway. However, note that I said *IF* there were such a reason, which there isn't, at least until we start doing everything, including all voice and video communication (think all your cable TV and phones), over the Internet.
It was quite clear to me all along that this whole throttling issue revolved around the agenda of some nasty people who want to lock the world in to their way of doing things, and had nothing to do with use of bandwidth or any other legitimate issue. I'm glad this is coming out.
And if you want a WTF plate, can you get your non-WTF plate replaced by one of the removed ones at no charge, as well?
Well you might know when the war of 1812 was fought, but do you have any idea how long the Hundred Years' War lasted? No cheating by looking up the answer...
This is my favorite part: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up."
Keep up the good work!
When it comes down to it, I am completely sure that Microsoft is where it is in terms of its financial success only because of Bill Gates. Unfortunately, ever since he stepped down, I believe that Mr. Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers has no idea what he's doing. Since Microsoft is so high and mighty, it will take a loooooong time for him to sink that ship, but it will never be what it was under Captain (now Admiral) Gates. And the usability of Windows is following the trend of a negative exponential curve. If you think Vista sux, wait 'till you see 7. And the next version, I think they'll call it Windows Excalibur, that one will be so unusable that computer stores will have big dumpsters outside the front entrance, and people will purchase computers and simply drop them into that dumpster upon leaving the store, without ever opening the box. Or they'll just get a Mac, which by then will run Mac OS 12.7 Pelican. (OS 12 will go by bird names.) Maybe this usability disaster explains why Gates gave Jobs a hug sum of money to develop OS X.
Then they'll have to design robotic rats too, so the robotic snakes have something to eat.
The dirtiest city of them all is Gloucester, MA.
I will RTFA, and I find this to be a very interesting side effect of the higher gas prices. It may be the only good thing coming out of the situation. If a hydrogen-based car that runs on water comes out, that would be another good thing. But you have to wonder, why are oil prices so high to begin with? It has to do with several things, which I'll touch on, but I'd like to concentrate on this thing called oil futures and another thing called deregulation. Turns out that just prior to Cliton leaving office (there is only one "n" in Cliton), a bill was passed in which was buried this deregulation of oil futures. As a result, the price is higher than $4.50 a gallon due to speculators on Wall Street gambling on the price going up. Gas should really cost about $3.00 a gallon at this point, and it's that high due to heavily increased demand from China and India. But the additional $1.50 per gallon is a direct result of the craziness on Wall Street. Unless people begin to research this for themselves and do something about it, the prices WILL continue to increase and you'll soon see gas at $5.50 a gallon, $6.50 a gallon, and even $99.50 per gallon. What can you do about it? One example is to start a barrage of letters to your representatives. Another is for some enterprising smart people to get together and solve the problem of releasing hydrogen from water in an efficient way. If the situation gets desperate, it may even call for a massive nationwide gas strike in which not only will millions of people refuse to buy gas for a week, but they'll also stay home from work and school during that time. No matter what, something must happen, and sooner is better than later. Because everything depends on gasoline, so the continuously increasing price is causing everything else to become more expensive.
Well, you could try something that no modern computer has been able to achieve, and they think it'll take something on the order of Deep Thought to get it done -- run Windows Vista at a reasonable speed.
I like how you took my obviously un-serious comment so seriously!
This is great news! As the CIO of a well known Fortune 500 company, I can envision some innovative global solutions built on this compelling technology.
Clear, irrefutable proof that BSD is dying.
Most web users can easily look up how to spell spair, but don't.
Such a powerful cluster should get from power-up to BSOD instantly!
In other words, I should wipe my drive and install MS DOS.
Excitons...hmmm, what a bright idea!
This might seem expensive, but get yourself two of those USB/Firewire Western Digital 1TB hard drives and store the video on both of them, so you have a backup in case one dies. Each time the 1TB fills up, get two more drives at a similar price. They'll probably be a larger capacity by then. A drive like this goes for under two hundred bucks nowadays, but I think this is cheap given what you want to accomplish, and I'll explain:
A double layer DVD has a bit under 8.75443220139 gigs of usable storage, IIRC. And a 1 TB drive has 931.32257461548 actual gigs of storage, if a gig is 1024*1024*1024 bytes, not 1000*1000*1000 bytes like the hard drive manufacturers want you to believe. Meaning you can stick the equivalent of 106 double-layer DVDs on one of these 1TB drives. 106 DL DVDs will cost you somewhere in the neighborhood $120 to $135. So you'd spend $70 or so less if you bought 106 DVDs rather than one hard drive, and here I'm telling you to buy two hard drives and thereby spend $140 more than for 106 DVDs. Why?
First, the time it will take you to burn all this crap onto DVD. I think it takes a DVD burner 45 minutes to burn a DL DVD. I haven't done it in a while, so let's just say that's correct. Accordingly, it will take you nearly 80 hours to burn all these damn discs, and that doesn't include the time it takes to put in a disc, select the files, burn them, verify the burn, since you want to be sure, and this will double the burn time.
Second, many of the discs will fail to burn properly, so you'll have to redo them. I've experienced as high as 1 out of every 2 double layer DVDs failing to burn properly (this may be due to the discs or to the computer, or to the software, or a combination of any of them). This increases the time mentioned above and it also increases the price.
Third, since you NEED data redundancy, you need to burn two copies of each. Double the cost and time requirement.
Fourth, you don't want to split files across DVDs so you'll utilize less than all of the available storage capacity of each disc. Increase the number of discs you have to buy, the cost, and the time accordingly.
See, all these reasons show why it is cheaper to just get a bunch of external hard drives, and to duplicate everything. Even if some catastrophe happens to both drives, you can send it to those folks who recovered data from the Space Shuttle Columbia hard drive, which fell out of the sky along with all the poor souls on board. But that's not likely to happen.
I doubt this will do much to help; however, a better approach might be the one used by the electric company here. When you sign up for electricity, there is a $200 "deposit" charge on your first bill. If you pay all your bills on time, the $200 are refunded as a credit to your statement after six months. Similarly, each domain registration might require payment of, say, $100, as a deposit. If you keep the domain for six months, you get the $100 back. In the meantime, ICANN can use the interest from all these deposits they'll be collecting to do some of the stuff that used to be paid by the registration fee itself, thus reducing the regular registration fee somewhat (once your $100 are refunded). I think this reasonable approach will get the job done better than a $.20 charge that domain tasters will gladly pay.