Nope, I'd have to say that the ideas put forth in the Star Wars saga are much closer to Taoism then to Hinduism. The Tao is a much better analogue to the Force then anything in the Hindu pantheon. Where are the references to the caste system, paralells to Shiva, Vishnu, Brahma, et. al. in Star Wars? Not there that I recall. But the all-encompassing Force sounds a lot like the Tao to me.
There is one simple, effective and reasonably sound way of dealing with the payola problem - legalize it. Sounds unfair you think? Think again. As long as we accept music as an industry there will be money in it. And anytime you have large amounts of money circulating around, someone is going to try and stick their hand out. There is no business reason why it shouldn't be radio station owners wanting some of that money and that's why payola continues, despite the numerous attempts to stop it.
Look at the facts for a minute. Every time the politicians have tried to deal with the payola problem it re-emerges, maybe months or years later, but it always comes back. Maybe there are some new changes, some new twists, but still basically it's the same old system. Why does this happen? Simple. Airtime for a music radio station is essentially one big commercial. If I, as a radio station owner, play a song off a record I know that a certain percentage of my listeners will go out and buy that record. Airtime = Advertising, simple as that. So it's natural that at some point I'm going to want to make money off that airtime, as much money as I can. It's America, right? There's nothing unnatural or unlawful about wanting to make a buck, especially if record companies are willing to pay. And they will, every time. Again we ask, why? Because they know to that every time I play their music during regular hours a certain number of listeners will go out and by the album. My playing their records sells more records so they will pay, every time. It's advertising, they know it, I know it and so should everyone else.
It's inescapable in a society that perceives money and music going hand in hand that we are not going to ever have a 'level' playing field for people without money. Want to help artists get away from the money issue? Stop paying for music. Why should we worry about artists if we're willing to let money dictate terms everywhere else in music? Is it because we're concerned about the quality of music available on the airwaves? Hardly, if we we're really concerned about that we wouldn't have let companies like Clear Channel become the 800 ton gorilla they are, able to dictate terms to everyone, quality be dammed. As a nation we've elected to let money and music live comfortably together so why should we worry about issues like payola? In any system were money and music are so close we will see payola emerge, why can't we just learn to accept it as an inevitable part of doing business in the music industry?
Oh course Valenti, et al are bitching and moaning about 'potential' piracy when box office receipts are at record highs: in their minds they now have more to lose. And think about it, do you really expect them to change their tune in any case, up or down? Don't be silly! Imagine you going to your boss and saying, "Gee, no, I don't need that raise right now sir." That's about the position the the entertainment industry is in. Doesn't make me feel any better about DMCA, SSSCA, etc. but I can at least see where they are comming from. Can you ever really have enough money? For me, yes, for Hollywood execs? Maybe not...
Hell, I'd be willing to give 3 to 1 odds that Jack trots these figures out during the next congressional inquiry as proof of the movie industries' unquestionable value in recessionary times and why they should get special legal protection from all those Internet pirates.
I think the real problem here is Vivendi/Blizzard's knee-jerk reaction to threaten to sue the bnetd folks into oblivion. Why not just pick up the phone and call them? Maybe talk it out, rather then fight it in the courts? This situation reminds me of the old saying, that if all you have is a hammer than every problem starts to look like a nail. Maybe if you have too many lawyers then every situation starts to look like a legal problem... If Vivendi/Blizzard had done even a little thinking beforehand, instead of whipping out the lawyers as their first salvo, they might have avoided the unfortunate publicity this controversy is generating. They might have reached an amicable solution for everyone. Now, that's a remote possibility at best.
As soon as you start by threatening with attorney's there's only two possible outcomes; you scare off your opposition and they concede or you guarantee that the only solution to the problem will come months or years later and that it will come from a judge's bench. In a way, using lawyers is like starting a war with atomic weapons: Great if you can win immediately, not so good if you can't. And purposeless if you could have gotten what you wanted with a few phone calls instead. The corporate world is increasingly using this tactic of threatening first and talking later and I can't help but believe that it will ultimately generate nothing but animosity and ill-will in the for them. When will someone wake up?
Truthfully, if you look at the issue impartially, I think that Vivendi/Blizzard do have some real concerns. They've invested several years and millions of dollars in developing their products and frankly, I doubt they really know what effect bnetd will have on the Blizzard franchise or their ability to make a profit from it. Let's face it, they're scared and rightfully so. Wouldn't you be in their place? It's hard to know what to do with an unknown and easy to desire to rollback the clock so you don't have to deal with yet another unknown variable. Instead of condemning Vivendi/Blizzard, we should convince them to sit down with the community and figure out together what to do with the emulation projects. Hell, there might even be some profit opportunities! Who knows? I can't say much for Vivendi but Blizzard has a reputation of working with their customers (anyone that was around for the WarCraft II days and Kali support will remember) and it's certainly a better approach then a protracted legal battle.
I can't help but think how ironic it is that Vivendi/Blizzard and their customers are about to enter a legal battle over this 'Battle.net' situation. Maybe we should all stop acting like the characters in the games and start acting like reasonable human beings.
I just don't see a problem here. MSN and Qwest made some agreements when Qwest decided they didn't want to be in the ISP game anymore. Now they recommend their customer's move to MSN, is this really shocking anyone? They could have just transfered their customer's over to MSN and been done with it; that's generally what everyone else in the ISP game has done over the years. Hell, they could have just dropped them off the map completely like Verio did to their DSL customer's when they decided they didn't like that market anymore. So Qwest isn't advacating all the other ISPs available in their customer's area, so what? Would you really expect them to offer their customer's a totally unbiased choice? Not likely. If you look at their DSL webpage they do a fairly good job at identifying other local ISPs. Hell, if you read the text they specifically point out that you can "Get the ISP of your choice -- Get MSN Internet Access or select from hundreds of ISP partners nationwide. Seems fair to me.
Since it's MSN and Qwest were talking about here it's almost a gut reaction to want to beat them up. I mean, come on, who really likes the phone company anyway? They are such an easy target these days that it's like shooting fish in a barrel. However, if we want to jump on their back over something there are plenty of other more substancive issues to call them on. And MSN? Need I say more? But I still don't see how either company is doing anything here other then what you'd expect them to. And the 'MSN makes it hard to switch' part? Totally out of place. Note what it says in the article:
Customers who leave MSN within one year are charged $150 if they used a special sign-up offer...
Does this really apply to former Qwest ISP customers switching to MSN? I doubt it. This looks like a seperate issue to me and it's not really fair to include this in the same article. While MSN may well jerk their customer's around over the 'special sign-up plan' it's not really fair to blame Qwest for that or to include them in the deed.
I don't want to be an appologist for either MSN or Qwest, 'cause frankly, they haven't done anything for me lately to warrant it. But if the Minnesota Commerce Department is going to call them on the carpet for something it should be more noteworthy then this. Why waste time on non-issues when there so many other real issues, like how Qwest jerks LECs who want access to the COs, that are calling for attention? That seems like a wiser way to spend the taxpayer dollar.
I find it disturbing that the author neglects to mention some critical, and to me anyway, obvious points. Let's talk about just two, bandwidth usage and client optimizations.
First, if I understand what he's driving at correctly, the bandwidth numbers he gives are for the Gnotella network as a whole, not for each and every client connected to it. This is equivelent to saying "average 'HTTP' usage generates n amount of bandwidth over the Internet", or "DNS traffic will consume x number of bytes on a given network". So what? Would anyone be really shocked if 7,000,000 web browsers generated HTTP and DNS traffic in the gigabyte range? Doesn't bother me. That might be an interesting number to your ISP but as a user of Gnotella I could care less about how much total bandwidth my query for 'The Grateful Dead' takes up. It sure sounds like alot of traffic, but it's distributed over the entire Gnotella network. As long as the traffic isn't high enough to overwhelm individual clients I don't see the problem. These numbers just don't seem to be that important, or am I missing something here?
The other item the author fails to consider (and I'm going to guess that, as one of the engineers behind Napster, he probably knows better) are client-side optimizations like search caching and differentiation of the clients. The caching arguement goes like this:
If client A sends out a query to client C looking for 'Grateful Dead' and client B sends out a very similar request to client C, say, 'The Grateful Dead', even basic caching would prevent client C from sending this request back out to the same hosts that responded to the first request made by client A. Again, am I missing something important here? I'm not sure that caching would reduce the traffic dramatically but I'd be willing to bet that it would improve matters significantly, especially for clients that remained 'up' for long periods of time (which is in itself another important factor that seems to be missing here). This just seems so obvious.
There are bunches of optimizations like this that can be done with the Gnotella application to reduce the overall bandwidth. And this leads to the other half of my point, i.e. the author assumes that each and every client will be functionally the same. They aren't. The Gnotella FAQ tells you to reduce your N if your on a slow connection. This means that not all Gnotella clients are exactly the same now anyway; some have higher N's than others. The FastTrack guys (i.e. KaZaA, Morpheous, et. al.) have already shown that it makes sence from an efficency standpoint to have some clients do more then others via 'supernodes' and the like. This seems like a fairly obvious development on the client side and I can't for the life of me understand why this isn't addressed. I mean, really, isn't the 'client-client' vs. 'client-server' approach really the underlying assumption behind why Napster will scale and Gnotella won't?
I hate to say it but it looks to me like the author is showing just a little bias here. Hey, I suppose that if I worked on a competing standard I'd trash-talk the competition too but I think his time would be better spent making the Napster approach work better. No matter how you slice it or dice it Napster is pretty much dead while the Gnotella network is still alive and kicking. Maybe it will never scale to 'billions and billions' of hosts but at least it's still around and going strong.
No, the article is wrong. It states that Pioneer 10 is the furthest man-made object and this is simply not true. Voyager 1 is currently the most distant man-made object and has been for a few years now. See the press release from NASA. The article doesn't mention Voyager 1 at all and if you'd read the article you'd have noticed this. But I won't hold it against you.;-)
I think it's important to keep in mind that neither Voyager 1 nor Pioneer 10 were ever intended to last as long as they have. Its a tribute to the engineers and technicians that designed and built these spacecraft that they continue to do useful science long after their primary missions ended. What the solar foci mission proposes to do though is really quite different from any previous mission and comparing the Voyager or Pioneer missions to it is, in some respects, like comparing apples to oranges. Sending a spacecraft out to 550 AU before it actually starts its primary mission is an entirely different proposition and a very much harder technical feat to achieve. Consider that the round trip light-time to 550 AU is on the order of 6 days and you start to realize how far out we're talking about here. Not that I think it's impossible to accomplish this type of mission but I don't expect to see it happen in my lifetime. I'll leave out the discussion of costs for another time but suffice it to say that considering all the hassles that the NASA and the Pluto Express folks have run into I wouldn't hold my breath.
I'll give you the point as to the 'orders of magnitude' question. I tend to use the astronomical definition, i.e. approx. 2.5 times, and not the 10 times definition. So sue me.
The solar foci telescope sounds like a really interesting idea but I'm not sure it's all that practical now or in the near future. 550 astronomical units is really far out there, several orders of magnitude further then any other space mission to date. Combine that with the proposed size of the mission spacecraft, again vastly larger then anything previously done, and I don't see this happening anytime soon. Still, a very interesting idea though and a logical extension of using extra-galatic objects and looking for lensed objects behind them. Just a few years back that was 'never been done before' stuff too so who knows. In any event, I have to give credit to whomever came up with this idea, they certainly think big!
It not really fair to compare wireless service from companies like Odessa Office Supply with Metricom's Ricochet. The two markets they serve are vastly different.
Odessa, as I understand it, is mainly in the business of being a high-bandwidth ISP to their local customers, most of which are either too far out for DSL or cable modems or not in an area that is easily served by other types of carriers. As such, they do provide a pretty valuable service to the communities they serve, communities that would not have anything better then dial-up service otherwise. It's really pretty much intended to do only point-to-point service, they're not really intending that you will be running around the neighborhood with the equipment. They do support some mobile applications but nothing like what Ricochet did. From what I hear most of the wireless ISPs like Odessa use Breezecom equipment and 802.11 stuff for their networks, again a lot less expensive then the proprietary Ricochet stuff. And Odessa serves a rural market, not a metropolitan one.
Metricom, on the other hand, was in the business of providing a true mobile wireless service within metropolitan areas. Unfortunately, this is a lot harder to do then point-to-point service. To ensure that everyone will have service wherever they happen to be within the area you have to build the network to provide service even to areas that may not have any customers in them. That means that a fair fraction of the network, at any given time, isn't generating any revenue at all, even though it's still got to be operational. Of course, until you have good coverage, customers aren't interested in paying for your service, so it's something of the old chicken or egg situation. No in-place network, no customers. But the costs to build that kind of network can be staggering. Is it really any wonder that Merticom failed?
Looking at it this way, it's easy to see why companies like Odessa survive while Metricom went under. The markets are simply different and it's unfortunate that CNET appears to have missed this point. Oh well.
If anyone is interested, you can find more information on Odessa at http://www.odessaoffice.com/wireless/
Additionally, Marlon's a frequent contributor on the ISP wireless e-mail list. See http://isp-lists.isp-planet.com/subscribe/
Personally, I've got my boxen sitting within inches of the furnace and I've had them there for months without a problem. I live in Seattle, about 125 miles from the Canadian border so the climate is somewhat similar. Unless your buddy is looking at putting in loads of servers and other equipment I can't imagine that you'd have a problem. If you really want to 'do it right' you can usually get most manufacturers to give you the heat output rates for their equipment in BTUs per hour. Add all the rates together then you'll have an idea of how bad things are likely to get. I would imagine you'd have more problems with too much heat then not enough; it might not be a bad idea to check the room where the rack is going to go and verify that it has adequate ventilation to carry the heat load. Stick a wall-mounted thermometer in and see how it goes over time.
One thing that you should really think about with rack equipment is the noise level. Manufacturers of rack-mounted equipment just love to shove lots and lots of fans in the backsides of their boxes; this tends to make a great deal of unwanted noise. Unless the plan is to have all this stuff in a separate room where no one is going to be in you might want to consider spending the extra money and get a glass or plastic enclosed rack. It costs more but hey, it definitely has the cool factor covered.
Is that no one is talking about the actual exploit in detail. Historically, BUGTRAQ has *always* had a policy of full disclosure, when did this change? According to the article:
"A subsequent message sent to Microsoft and Bugtraq Nov. 28 described the more serious issues but was not published on Bugtraq by joint agreement between Pynnonen and the list's moderator, the security researcher said."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this sound like BUGTRAQ is removing messages that describe security vulnerabilities in detail? I have a hard time understanding why that's necessary and, again, it is so contrary to BUGTRAQ's usual policy as to leave me gaping in disbelief.
Full disclosure vs. non-disclosure issues asside, it seems to me that just announcing there's a security flaw and not revealing the specifics seems worse then the security flaw itself. I mean, think about it, how how does it help if I know there's a problem but I don't know exactly what it is? How does this help me? Yeah, it's great if you want to write web articles about Yet Another Microsoft Security Flaw or you love Netscape/AOL or whatnot but saying "There's a problem but we can't tell you anything about it" it isn't going to do anything for the average user.
A little over a year ago I decided to build my own home server to do some simple tasks like e-mail, web server, storage space for MP3 files and the like. When I started the project I had two main goals in mind:
Cost - I wanted to keep the total cost of the project under $1k, if possible.
Incorporate Real Server Features - Like UPS protection, backups, etc. I wanted the server to function and have the same capabilities as a commercial machine would have.
In order to keep the costs reasonable I purchased the cheapest motherboard, CPU, RAM that I could find. I used an AMD K5 333 with a no-name board and a micro-sized case. Basically, the goals here were to keep it cheap, cheap, cheap for the basic hardware. Other then RAM, my experience is that most servers don't really need much processing power; I figured that for what I wanted just about any low-end processor would suffice. Having sufficient RAM however *IS* important, particularly if you're going to run a large number of processes like e-mail, web, etc. The good news was, and still is for that matter, that RAM prices had fallen significantly, making my 256MB minimum requirement affordable. But again, in the basic computer hardware department the goal was to keep it cheap. I'll get to why in just a minute.
Anyway, I was fortunate to have an old CD ROM and floppy drive laying around, these items helped round out the basic system at a cost of approx $300 for everything, sans hard drives and UPS that is. For the UPS I purchased an APC model, the Desktop 110 as I recall. Since my biggest concern wasn't to keep the machine running through a power failure, I could reasonably use a lower-end model. Even the basic model UPS systems will do line conditioning and surge protection so as long as the unit has enough battery storage to do an immediate and graceful shutdown of the server I felt that it met my needs and, I suspect, would probably meet the needs of other people in similar situations. The UPS ran me another $150.
Finally, onto the primary issue, the hard disks and backup. This is where I knew the costs would be high, so I tried to hold onto my cash till I got to this point. What I really wanted to do was to go with a tape-based solution, but two factors convinced me otherwise. The first, and most obvious issue was cost. Good tape backup systems typically run into the thousands of dollars, putting them much to far out of my budget. Secondly, my personal experience with tape systems is that while the tape costs are cheap the units do require periodic maintenance, again at a significant cost. You also need to invest a significant amount of time doing tape rotation and checking the backup logs. Tape drives are much to complex to really do the maintenance yourself (and this from a guy who used to work at a tape backup repair shop) and once you pass the warranty period expect to pay several hundred dollars and spend a week without the unit for the required maintenance. And no, you really shouldn't skimp on that maintenance, reading the logs, etc. Remember, this is your backup solution; you need to be able to rely on it. In a business where these kinds of periodic costs and tasks aren't such an issue and the necessity of having an of having an ultrareliable backup method is critical it makes these issues less burdensome and it makes more sense to use tape. For my basement server the drawbacks and the costs just don't add up. So, what is the best way to go?
After looking at various other backup solutions like the OnTrack unit, CD-Rs, DVD writables and the like, I finally setteled on doing hardware RAID with a Promise card and two 20GB IDE disks. Cost, approx. $500 for the card and the disks. Why did I choose this method of backup? Well, it met all the criteria and then some. I used a pair of fairly inexpensive disks; this again kept the costs down. Since I really didn't care about disk speed (no swapping, all that RAM remember) I went with 5400RPM models to keep it quiet and low-cost. The Promise card has drivers for both Windows and Linux and was easy to install and use. And there are no tapes to swap out, no rotation schedules to maintain, backup is automatic and trouble-free. I know some people will point out that tape rotation is a GOOD THING and that I'm doing myself a disservice by not doing it but to those folks I would point out that for my needs, a home server, tape rotation and multiple backup copies really aren't necessary.
My basement server has run pretty well so far, with nary a glitch. The RAID backup actually DID come in handy about 2 months ago, when one of the drives in the array failed. I admit that I was a little woried but I shouldn't have been. I replaced the dead drive with a similar model and, low and behold, it's still up and running without losing a single bit. So, all in all, I'd say RAID is a decent way to go and well worth consideration.
Taco, I can't believe it! A story about KPMG requiring formal agreements for linking to their website and I see nary a link to them on the main article...shame on you! Whatever happened to the irreverent Slashdot we knew and loved? Stop listening to the lawyers and listen to me: "I will link them, I will link them, I will link them!"
...that thinks that maybe this girl is having some issues at home? Let me see, she uses the word 'jilted' in paragraph three... humm. Me thinks there just might be some personal issues here.
I have to disagree with this. In my experience, upper level management rarely has any difficulty understanding the dollars and cents security issues. They may not necessarily agree with my assessment that the company really does need to spend an extra $200k on tightening network security, but at least they understand the risks vs. costs part. No, I'd have to say that what upper management really has difficulty with is the intangibles of network security, the issues that can't always be easily translated into dollar amounts. Let me give an example to illustrate this.
A couple of years ago, I worked for a Silicon Valley company that built network analysis equipment. In other words, a group of people who should know something about networks and security. For the sake of my stock options, they shall hereafter remain nameless. Anyway, about 6 months after I started working there as the network admin we had a new VP of Sales join the company. As one of his first official acts as our newest executive he calmly walked into my office, announced that he wanted me to set up his e-mail, network access, dial-up access, etc. and that I was to use his initials as both the username AND AS THE PASSWORD FOR ALL OF THEM! Before I could even choke out an answer, he gave me one of those meaningful, penetrating looks that I guess they teach you in VP school or something and then went on to inform me that he didn't want to hear the argument, he'd already heard it before, and that if I didn't do exactly what he asked, he'd go to our CEO and have him tell me to do it that way. And that, as they say, was that.
Actually, I did end up talking this issue over with our CEO for about half an hour that afternoon and, try as I might, no matter what arguments I used, I could not convince him let me enforce a better password policy. And this wasn't the only security battle I lost at that company. I also lost the battle on password lockouts due to one of our brilliant engineers apparent inability to understand what the CAPSLOCK key did. After this engineer managed to beat a 20 try lockout policy one afternoon while I was out eating lunch, our VP of Engineering looked at me sternly when I returned and then explained in no uncertain terms that his people didn't need this kind of security and that they couldn't afford to lose time over this kind of nonsense. And of course, no matter what arguments I used, no matter how reasoned the points I made, the CEO refused to back me on this one and keep the lockout policy intact. Again, security lost out.
In each an every situation I ran into there and, later on, at other companies, security always ended up being secondary to simple convenience. Any of my reasoned arguments to the contrary fell on deaf ears most of the time. What I failed to grasp then, and a good part of the reason that my carefully crafted arguments were so often unsuccessful, was that I simply wasn't speaking a language that most managers understood. Dollars and cents arguments, those kinds of arguments they do understand. Managers and executives are quite comfortable with money issues and in most cases, if presented with an issue couched in dollars and cents terms, they can and will make a reasonable choice. So these days I do my best when approaching these types of issues with management to phrase it in money terms if I can. "We can spend $100k on a really fancy firewall, or we can enforce good passwords, which way do you want me to go?" gets far more mileage then my other arguments ever did. But I have to admit that there are still vast a number of intangible security issues that simply don't translate well into these kinds of terms. And frankly, until they start teaching the value of computer security in MBA school or something, I think corporate computer security officers are always going to labor under an often short-sighted attitude that system security just isn't that important or worth the inconvenience to achieve. Until the attitude changes I predict that we will only see more and more break-ins and security failures. We won't see them because the people charged with security at the companies weren't trying, no, that's simply not the case. We'll see it because they are the only one's that are trying.
You know, I noticed the same thing vis a vis the new 'speed cap' at 1.5 Mbps. This sucks. Bad enough that all of the AT&T customers, myself included, have to deal with a major service disruption but now we also get to use a service that is also markedly slower afterwards. I smell a class action lawsuit brewing...
The new 'speed cap', plus the now mandatory dynamic addressing is starting to make DSL much more attractive.
Unhappy AT&T Customer #587994
How many kilogeeks?
on
Dreamhack 2001
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
OK, I'll bite. Just what *is* the official term for that many computer geeks all in one place? Looking at all those monitors I'm thinking maybe calling it a 'phosphera' of geeks? Or maybe you just use scientific terminology and simply append 'kilo' or 'mega' to the word, i.e. a thousand geeks all in one place would be 'one kilogeek'. Any other suggestions?
Yes, I AM a computer geek and proud of it, dammit! And yeah, if I lived anywhere near there I'd probably be like, maybe, third from the left in the fifth row.
I don't know much about the actual building of bridges but the Bridge Builder game gave me a much deeper appreciation of the physics behind bridges. Plus, it was a fun way to fritter away a few hours on a rainy afternoon. Check it out.
And if the 'IT Chief' is next to the decision makers then he/she is much more likely to be a manager first and a technologist second. So you still end up with the same problems; unrealistic expectations, impossible time tables and little factual understanding of the issues at hand. There is no way to win...
I talked with Counterpane about 6 months ago about monitoring service for the company I worked for then. While I will admit that I wasn't very interested at first (we talked with them because the brother of one of our sales reps worked for Counterpane) I was intrigued with the idea of out-sourcing some of the security burden. As anyone who has had the pleasure (pain?) of managing an Internet start up company's network will tell you there is never enough time to do most things 'right', least of all securing the network against intrusion and attack. So the idea of external monitoring was interesting, at least until we actually sat down with the sales reps from Counterpane and asked about pricing...
As I recall, and please remember that it has been awhile so my numbers may no longer apply, Counterpane's minimum service offering was $25,000 monthly for one detector box and 24/7 monitoring. I wanted to laugh when I heard that figure. And they were never able to satisfy my requirements for dealing with DoS attacks (the monitoring boxes did not have any type of fail-over access though they did promise "It's comming in just a few months...").
Until the prices come down I can't see their service being useful for any but the largest and most heavily trafficed Internet e-commerce sites. And even then only as a backup to in-house monitoring efforts.
I disagree that the 'space elevator' is impossible to build but I still don't think we'll be seeing one built anytime soon. Here's why...
It's Too Vulnerable
Any type of 'space elevator' is inherently vulnerable to attack, either by a hostile nation or a terrorist group using conventional explosives or nuclear weapons. With 35,900 kilometers of target length it's difficult at best to defend, perhaps impossible. And it will be a target. Destroying a space elevator will certainly make an impact on the nation(s) or organizations that own it and at some point someone will see advantage for their group or nation to be the one to do it.
It's Too Big
The construction of a space elevator would be the most difficult and expensive construction project ever undertaken on Earth, by several orders of magnitude. Imagine building a bridge across the Atlantic and you get some idea of the scope of the project. It will also require an extensive human presence in near Earth space to build and maintain the cable and counterweight. In order for a space elevator to be economically feasible and to carry out the actual construction there must be an extensive and thriving space economy to support it. We simply do not have strong and compelling reasons now or in the foreseeable future to build a space elevator.
It's Too Dangerous
Imagine the consequences if a space elevator were to fail. At a cable length of 37,900 kilometers if the cable were to break for any reason the results would be catastrophic for anyone underneath the cable. The damage and destruction would be felt on a global scale and would likely be impossible to protect against. The cable might break due to intentional action (as discussed above), accidental events (something smashes into the cable), weather effects (storms), and structural issues (design or materials failures).
While I do think the space elevator is an incredible concept I do not believe it will be technical problems that prevent us from building one. I would in fact agree that the technical challenges would likely be resolved in the next few decades. But still I do believe that the most serious problems with the concept are political and economic issues that are unlikely to be solved anytime soon. Still, it would be something to see...
Frankly, this is not true. I worked for both companies when the 5300 debacle started, first in Apple's Tier II Customer Support group in Campbell CA then at Acer in their Notebook Support team in San Jose CA. The 5300's were not manufactured by Acer; at least that is what I was told at the time by Acer's Director of Customer Support. It is true that Acer manufactured notebook models for both Apple and IBM but the 5300 series was not one of them.
It's interesting to note that Apple has had special repair/replacement programs in place for the 5300 series notebooks for litterally years, beginning soon after the notebooks initially shipped. Even Apple's directors admitted privately that the 5300's were amoung the lowest quality products that Apple ever sold. By the time I started working for them it was standard policy to either offer any customers who contacted Apple a complete rebuild of their unit or an upgrade to a 1400 series notebook. The list of 'standard' replacement items for the 5300's that we did repair went on for pages...
I personally swapped many of the 5300 series notebooks for the 1400 notebooks. By the time I left I didn't even bother trying to convince customers with 5300's to get them repaired rather then replaced with the 1400s. Apple was very interested and committed in doing the best they could to deal fairly with their customers regarding the disapointing reliability of the 5300 notebooks. Out of all of the companies I've worked for in the past few years Apple I believe had the highest commitment to providing customer satisfaction and standing behind their products.
Is it just me or is there something wrong with this picture? The NSA, arguably one of the most secretive agencies in the US government using LINUX, one of the most open and freely available software platforms in the world today? I guess we can assume that the NSA version will not remain Open Source.
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Nope, I'd have to say that the ideas put forth in the Star Wars saga are much closer to Taoism then to Hinduism. The Tao is a much better analogue to the Force then anything in the Hindu pantheon. Where are the references to the caste system, paralells to Shiva, Vishnu, Brahma, et. al. in Star Wars? Not there that I recall. But the all-encompassing Force sounds a lot like the Tao to me.
Good point, you're right and I'd forgotten that fact. Thanks for pointing this out.
There is one simple, effective and reasonably sound way of dealing with the payola problem - legalize it. Sounds unfair you think? Think again. As long as we accept music as an industry there will be money in it. And anytime you have large amounts of money circulating around, someone is going to try and stick their hand out. There is no business reason why it shouldn't be radio station owners wanting some of that money and that's why payola continues, despite the numerous attempts to stop it.
Look at the facts for a minute. Every time the politicians have tried to deal with the payola problem it re-emerges, maybe months or years later, but it always comes back. Maybe there are some new changes, some new twists, but still basically it's the same old system. Why does this happen? Simple. Airtime for a music radio station is essentially one big commercial. If I, as a radio station owner, play a song off a record I know that a certain percentage of my listeners will go out and buy that record. Airtime = Advertising, simple as that. So it's natural that at some point I'm going to want to make money off that airtime, as much money as I can. It's America, right? There's nothing unnatural or unlawful about wanting to make a buck, especially if record companies are willing to pay. And they will, every time. Again we ask, why? Because they know to that every time I play their music during regular hours a certain number of listeners will go out and by the album. My playing their records sells more records so they will pay, every time. It's advertising, they know it, I know it and so should everyone else.
It's inescapable in a society that perceives money and music going hand in hand that we are not going to ever have a 'level' playing field for people without money. Want to help artists get away from the money issue? Stop paying for music. Why should we worry about artists if we're willing to let money dictate terms everywhere else in music? Is it because we're concerned about the quality of music available on the airwaves? Hardly, if we we're really concerned about that we wouldn't have let companies like Clear Channel become the 800 ton gorilla they are, able to dictate terms to everyone, quality be dammed. As a nation we've elected to let money and music live comfortably together so why should we worry about issues like payola? In any system were money and music are so close we will see payola emerge, why can't we just learn to accept it as an inevitable part of doing business in the music industry?
Oh course Valenti, et al are bitching and moaning about 'potential' piracy when box office receipts are at record highs: in their minds they now have more to lose. And think about it, do you really expect them to change their tune in any case, up or down? Don't be silly! Imagine you going to your boss and saying, "Gee, no, I don't need that raise right now sir." That's about the position the the entertainment industry is in. Doesn't make me feel any better about DMCA, SSSCA, etc. but I can at least see where they are comming from. Can you ever really have enough money? For me, yes, for Hollywood execs? Maybe not...
Hell, I'd be willing to give 3 to 1 odds that Jack trots these figures out during the next congressional inquiry as proof of the movie industries' unquestionable value in recessionary times and why they should get special legal protection from all those Internet pirates.
I think the real problem here is Vivendi/Blizzard's knee-jerk reaction to threaten to sue the bnetd folks into oblivion. Why not just pick up the phone and call them? Maybe talk it out, rather then fight it in the courts? This situation reminds me of the old saying, that if all you have is a hammer than every problem starts to look like a nail. Maybe if you have too many lawyers then every situation starts to look like a legal problem... If Vivendi/Blizzard had done even a little thinking beforehand, instead of whipping out the lawyers as their first salvo, they might have avoided the unfortunate publicity this controversy is generating. They might have reached an amicable solution for everyone. Now, that's a remote possibility at best.
As soon as you start by threatening with attorney's there's only two possible outcomes; you scare off your opposition and they concede or you guarantee that the only solution to the problem will come months or years later and that it will come from a judge's bench. In a way, using lawyers is like starting a war with atomic weapons: Great if you can win immediately, not so good if you can't. And purposeless if you could have gotten what you wanted with a few phone calls instead. The corporate world is increasingly using this tactic of threatening first and talking later and I can't help but believe that it will ultimately generate nothing but animosity and ill-will in the for them. When will someone wake up?
Truthfully, if you look at the issue impartially, I think that Vivendi/Blizzard do have some real concerns. They've invested several years and millions of dollars in developing their products and frankly, I doubt they really know what effect bnetd will have on the Blizzard franchise or their ability to make a profit from it. Let's face it, they're scared and rightfully so. Wouldn't you be in their place? It's hard to know what to do with an unknown and easy to desire to rollback the clock so you don't have to deal with yet another unknown variable. Instead of condemning Vivendi/Blizzard, we should convince them to sit down with the community and figure out together what to do with the emulation projects. Hell, there might even be some profit opportunities! Who knows? I can't say much for Vivendi but Blizzard has a reputation of working with their customers (anyone that was around for the WarCraft II days and Kali support will remember) and it's certainly a better approach then a protracted legal battle.
I can't help but think how ironic it is that Vivendi/Blizzard and their customers are about to enter a legal battle over this 'Battle.net' situation. Maybe we should all stop acting like the characters in the games and start acting like reasonable human beings.
Zug zug! And that's all I'm saying on the issue.
Since it's MSN and Qwest were talking about here it's almost a gut reaction to want to beat them up. I mean, come on, who really likes the phone company anyway? They are such an easy target these days that it's like shooting fish in a barrel. However, if we want to jump on their back over something there are plenty of other more substancive issues to call them on. And MSN? Need I say more? But I still don't see how either company is doing anything here other then what you'd expect them to. And the 'MSN makes it hard to switch' part? Totally out of place. Note what it says in the article:
Customers who leave MSN within one year are charged $150 if they used a special sign-up offer...
Does this really apply to former Qwest ISP customers switching to MSN? I doubt it. This looks like a seperate issue to me and it's not really fair to include this in the same article. While MSN may well jerk their customer's around over the 'special sign-up plan' it's not really fair to blame Qwest for that or to include them in the deed.
I don't want to be an appologist for either MSN or Qwest, 'cause frankly, they haven't done anything for me lately to warrant it. But if the Minnesota Commerce Department is going to call them on the carpet for something it should be more noteworthy then this. Why waste time on non-issues when there so many other real issues, like how Qwest jerks LECs who want access to the COs, that are calling for attention? That seems like a wiser way to spend the taxpayer dollar.
Just my 2 cents.
First, if I understand what he's driving at correctly, the bandwidth numbers he gives are for the Gnotella network as a whole, not for each and every client connected to it. This is equivelent to saying "average 'HTTP' usage generates n amount of bandwidth over the Internet", or "DNS traffic will consume x number of bytes on a given network". So what? Would anyone be really shocked if 7,000,000 web browsers generated HTTP and DNS traffic in the gigabyte range? Doesn't bother me. That might be an interesting number to your ISP but as a user of Gnotella I could care less about how much total bandwidth my query for 'The Grateful Dead' takes up. It sure sounds like alot of traffic, but it's distributed over the entire Gnotella network. As long as the traffic isn't high enough to overwhelm individual clients I don't see the problem. These numbers just don't seem to be that important, or am I missing something here?
The other item the author fails to consider (and I'm going to guess that, as one of the engineers behind Napster, he probably knows better) are client-side optimizations like search caching and differentiation of the clients. The caching arguement goes like this:
If client A sends out a query to client C looking for 'Grateful Dead' and client B sends out a very similar request to client C , say, 'The Grateful Dead', even basic caching would prevent client C from sending this request back out to the same hosts that responded to the first request made by client A. Again, am I missing something important here? I'm not sure that caching would reduce the traffic dramatically but I'd be willing to bet that it would improve matters significantly, especially for clients that remained 'up' for long periods of time (which is in itself another important factor that seems to be missing here). This just seems so obvious.
There are bunches of optimizations like this that can be done with the Gnotella application to reduce the overall bandwidth. And this leads to the other half of my point, i.e. the author assumes that each and every client will be functionally the same. They aren't. The Gnotella FAQ tells you to reduce your N if your on a slow connection. This means that not all Gnotella clients are exactly the same now anyway; some have higher N's than others. The FastTrack guys (i.e. KaZaA, Morpheous, et. al.) have already shown that it makes sence from an efficency standpoint to have some clients do more then others via 'supernodes' and the like. This seems like a fairly obvious development on the client side and I can't for the life of me understand why this isn't addressed. I mean, really, isn't the 'client-client' vs. 'client-server' approach really the underlying assumption behind why Napster will scale and Gnotella won't?
I hate to say it but it looks to me like the author is showing just a little bias here. Hey, I suppose that if I worked on a competing standard I'd trash-talk the competition too but I think his time would be better spent making the Napster approach work better. No matter how you slice it or dice it Napster is pretty much dead while the Gnotella network is still alive and kicking. Maybe it will never scale to 'billions and billions' of hosts but at least it's still around and going strong.
I think it's important to keep in mind that neither Voyager 1 nor Pioneer 10 were ever intended to last as long as they have. Its a tribute to the engineers and technicians that designed and built these spacecraft that they continue to do useful science long after their primary missions ended. What the solar foci mission proposes to do though is really quite different from any previous mission and comparing the Voyager or Pioneer missions to it is, in some respects, like comparing apples to oranges. Sending a spacecraft out to 550 AU before it actually starts its primary mission is an entirely different proposition and a very much harder technical feat to achieve. Consider that the round trip light-time to 550 AU is on the order of 6 days and you start to realize how far out we're talking about here. Not that I think it's impossible to accomplish this type of mission but I don't expect to see it happen in my lifetime. I'll leave out the discussion of costs for another time but suffice it to say that considering all the hassles that the NASA and the Pluto Express folks have run into I wouldn't hold my breath.
I'll give you the point as to the 'orders of magnitude' question. I tend to use the astronomical definition, i.e. approx. 2.5 times, and not the 10 times definition. So sue me.
The solar foci telescope sounds like a really interesting idea but I'm not sure it's all that practical now or in the near future. 550 astronomical units is really far out there, several orders of magnitude further then any other space mission to date. Combine that with the proposed size of the mission spacecraft, again vastly larger then anything previously done, and I don't see this happening anytime soon. Still, a very interesting idea though and a logical extension of using extra-galatic objects and looking for lensed objects behind them. Just a few years back that was 'never been done before' stuff too so who knows. In any event, I have to give credit to whomever came up with this idea, they certainly think big!
More information on the solar foci idea can be found on this page from the Texas Space Grant Consortium.
It not really fair to compare wireless service from companies like Odessa Office Supply with Metricom's Ricochet. The two markets they serve are vastly different.
Odessa, as I understand it, is mainly in the business of being a high-bandwidth ISP to their local customers, most of which are either too far out for DSL or cable modems or not in an area that is easily served by other types of carriers. As such, they do provide a pretty valuable service to the communities they serve, communities that would not have anything better then dial-up service otherwise. It's really pretty much intended to do only point-to-point service, they're not really intending that you will be running around the neighborhood with the equipment. They do support some mobile applications but nothing like what Ricochet did. From what I hear most of the wireless ISPs like Odessa use Breezecom equipment and 802.11 stuff for their networks, again a lot less expensive then the proprietary Ricochet stuff. And Odessa serves a rural market, not a metropolitan one.
Metricom, on the other hand, was in the business of providing a true mobile wireless service within metropolitan areas. Unfortunately, this is a lot harder to do then point-to-point service. To ensure that everyone will have service wherever they happen to be within the area you have to build the network to provide service even to areas that may not have any customers in them. That means that a fair fraction of the network, at any given time, isn't generating any revenue at all, even though it's still got to be operational. Of course, until you have good coverage, customers aren't interested in paying for your service, so it's something of the old chicken or egg situation. No in-place network, no customers. But the costs to build that kind of network can be staggering. Is it really any wonder that Merticom failed?
Looking at it this way, it's easy to see why companies like Odessa survive while Metricom went under. The markets are simply different and it's unfortunate that CNET appears to have missed this point. Oh well.
If anyone is interested, you can find more information on Odessa at http://www.odessaoffice.com/wireless/
Additionally, Marlon's a frequent contributor on the ISP wireless e-mail list. See http://isp-lists.isp-planet.com/subscribe/
Personally, I've got my boxen sitting within inches of the furnace and I've had them there for months without a problem. I live in Seattle, about 125 miles from the Canadian border so the climate is somewhat similar. Unless your buddy is looking at putting in loads of servers and other equipment I can't imagine that you'd have a problem. If you really want to 'do it right' you can usually get most manufacturers to give you the heat output rates for their equipment in BTUs per hour. Add all the rates together then you'll have an idea of how bad things are likely to get. I would imagine you'd have more problems with too much heat then not enough; it might not be a bad idea to check the room where the rack is going to go and verify that it has adequate ventilation to carry the heat load. Stick a wall-mounted thermometer in and see how it goes over time.
One thing that you should really think about with rack equipment is the noise level. Manufacturers of rack-mounted equipment just love to shove lots and lots of fans in the backsides of their boxes; this tends to make a great deal of unwanted noise. Unless the plan is to have all this stuff in a separate room where no one is going to be in you might want to consider spending the extra money and get a glass or plastic enclosed rack. It costs more but hey, it definitely has the cool factor covered.
Is that no one is talking about the actual exploit in detail. Historically, BUGTRAQ has *always* had a policy of full disclosure, when did this change? According to the article:
"A subsequent message sent to Microsoft and Bugtraq Nov. 28 described the more serious issues but was not published on Bugtraq by joint agreement between Pynnonen and the list's moderator, the security researcher said."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this sound like BUGTRAQ is removing messages that describe security vulnerabilities in detail? I have a hard time understanding why that's necessary and, again, it is so contrary to BUGTRAQ's usual policy as to leave me gaping in disbelief.
Full disclosure vs. non-disclosure issues asside, it seems to me that just announcing there's a security flaw and not revealing the specifics seems worse then the security flaw itself. I mean, think about it, how how does it help if I know there's a problem but I don't know exactly what it is? How does this help me? Yeah, it's great if you want to write web articles about Yet Another Microsoft Security Flaw or you love Netscape/AOL or whatnot but saying "There's a problem but we can't tell you anything about it" it isn't going to do anything for the average user.
A little over a year ago I decided to build my own home server to do some simple tasks like e-mail, web server, storage space for MP3 files and the like. When I started the project I had two main goals in mind:
In order to keep the costs reasonable I purchased the cheapest motherboard, CPU, RAM that I could find. I used an AMD K5 333 with a no-name board and a micro-sized case. Basically, the goals here were to keep it cheap, cheap, cheap for the basic hardware. Other then RAM, my experience is that most servers don't really need much processing power; I figured that for what I wanted just about any low-end processor would suffice. Having sufficient RAM however *IS* important, particularly if you're going to run a large number of processes like e-mail, web, etc. The good news was, and still is for that matter, that RAM prices had fallen significantly, making my 256MB minimum requirement affordable. But again, in the basic computer hardware department the goal was to keep it cheap. I'll get to why in just a minute.
Anyway, I was fortunate to have an old CD ROM and floppy drive laying around, these items helped round out the basic system at a cost of approx $300 for everything, sans hard drives and UPS that is. For the UPS I purchased an APC model, the Desktop 110 as I recall. Since my biggest concern wasn't to keep the machine running through a power failure, I could reasonably use a lower-end model. Even the basic model UPS systems will do line conditioning and surge protection so as long as the unit has enough battery storage to do an immediate and graceful shutdown of the server I felt that it met my needs and, I suspect, would probably meet the needs of other people in similar situations. The UPS ran me another $150.
Finally, onto the primary issue, the hard disks and backup. This is where I knew the costs would be high, so I tried to hold onto my cash till I got to this point. What I really wanted to do was to go with a tape-based solution, but two factors convinced me otherwise. The first, and most obvious issue was cost. Good tape backup systems typically run into the thousands of dollars, putting them much to far out of my budget. Secondly, my personal experience with tape systems is that while the tape costs are cheap the units do require periodic maintenance, again at a significant cost. You also need to invest a significant amount of time doing tape rotation and checking the backup logs. Tape drives are much to complex to really do the maintenance yourself (and this from a guy who used to work at a tape backup repair shop) and once you pass the warranty period expect to pay several hundred dollars and spend a week without the unit for the required maintenance. And no, you really shouldn't skimp on that maintenance, reading the logs, etc. Remember, this is your backup solution; you need to be able to rely on it. In a business where these kinds of periodic costs and tasks aren't such an issue and the necessity of having an of having an ultrareliable backup method is critical it makes these issues less burdensome and it makes more sense to use tape. For my basement server the drawbacks and the costs just don't add up. So, what is the best way to go?
After looking at various other backup solutions like the OnTrack unit, CD-Rs, DVD writables and the like, I finally setteled on doing hardware RAID with a Promise card and two 20GB IDE disks. Cost, approx. $500 for the card and the disks. Why did I choose this method of backup? Well, it met all the criteria and then some. I used a pair of fairly inexpensive disks; this again kept the costs down. Since I really didn't care about disk speed (no swapping, all that RAM remember) I went with 5400RPM models to keep it quiet and low-cost. The Promise card has drivers for both Windows and Linux and was easy to install and use. And there are no tapes to swap out, no rotation schedules to maintain, backup is automatic and trouble-free. I know some people will point out that tape rotation is a GOOD THING and that I'm doing myself a disservice by not doing it but to those folks I would point out that for my needs, a home server, tape rotation and multiple backup copies really aren't necessary.
My basement server has run pretty well so far, with nary a glitch. The RAID backup actually DID come in handy about 2 months ago, when one of the drives in the array failed. I admit that I was a little woried but I shouldn't have been. I replaced the dead drive with a similar model and, low and behold, it's still up and running without losing a single bit. So, all in all, I'd say RAID is a decent way to go and well worth consideration.
A couple of years ago, I worked for a Silicon Valley company that built network analysis equipment. In other words, a group of people who should know something about networks and security. For the sake of my stock options, they shall hereafter remain nameless. Anyway, about 6 months after I started working there as the network admin we had a new VP of Sales join the company. As one of his first official acts as our newest executive he calmly walked into my office, announced that he wanted me to set up his e-mail, network access, dial-up access, etc. and that I was to use his initials as both the username AND AS THE PASSWORD FOR ALL OF THEM! Before I could even choke out an answer, he gave me one of those meaningful, penetrating looks that I guess they teach you in VP school or something and then went on to inform me that he didn't want to hear the argument, he'd already heard it before, and that if I didn't do exactly what he asked, he'd go to our CEO and have him tell me to do it that way. And that, as they say, was that.
Actually, I did end up talking this issue over with our CEO for about half an hour that afternoon and, try as I might, no matter what arguments I used, I could not convince him let me enforce a better password policy. And this wasn't the only security battle I lost at that company. I also lost the battle on password lockouts due to one of our brilliant engineers apparent inability to understand what the CAPSLOCK key did. After this engineer managed to beat a 20 try lockout policy one afternoon while I was out eating lunch, our VP of Engineering looked at me sternly when I returned and then explained in no uncertain terms that his people didn't need this kind of security and that they couldn't afford to lose time over this kind of nonsense. And of course, no matter what arguments I used, no matter how reasoned the points I made, the CEO refused to back me on this one and keep the lockout policy intact. Again, security lost out.
In each an every situation I ran into there and, later on, at other companies, security always ended up being secondary to simple convenience. Any of my reasoned arguments to the contrary fell on deaf ears most of the time. What I failed to grasp then, and a good part of the reason that my carefully crafted arguments were so often unsuccessful, was that I simply wasn't speaking a language that most managers understood. Dollars and cents arguments, those kinds of arguments they do understand. Managers and executives are quite comfortable with money issues and in most cases, if presented with an issue couched in dollars and cents terms, they can and will make a reasonable choice. So these days I do my best when approaching these types of issues with management to phrase it in money terms if I can. "We can spend $100k on a really fancy firewall, or we can enforce good passwords, which way do you want me to go?" gets far more mileage then my other arguments ever did. But I have to admit that there are still vast a number of intangible security issues that simply don't translate well into these kinds of terms. And frankly, until they start teaching the value of computer security in MBA school or something, I think corporate computer security officers are always going to labor under an often short-sighted attitude that system security just isn't that important or worth the inconvenience to achieve. Until the attitude changes I predict that we will only see more and more break-ins and security failures. We won't see them because the people charged with security at the companies weren't trying, no, that's simply not the case. We'll see it because they are the only one's that are trying.
You know, I noticed the same thing vis a vis the new 'speed cap' at 1.5 Mbps. This sucks. Bad enough that all of the AT&T customers, myself included, have to deal with a major service disruption but now we also get to use a service that is also markedly slower afterwards. I smell a class action lawsuit brewing...
The new 'speed cap', plus the now mandatory dynamic addressing is starting to make DSL much more attractive.
Unhappy AT&T Customer #587994
OK, I'll bite. Just what *is* the official term for that many computer geeks all in one place? Looking at all those monitors I'm thinking maybe calling it a 'phosphera' of geeks? Or maybe you just use scientific terminology and simply append 'kilo' or 'mega' to the word, i.e. a thousand geeks all in one place would be 'one kilogeek'. Any other suggestions?
Yes, I AM a computer geek and proud of it, dammit! And yeah, if I lived anywhere near there I'd probably be like, maybe, third from the left in the fifth row.
I don't know much about the actual building of bridges but the Bridge Builder game gave me a much deeper appreciation of the physics behind bridges. Plus, it was a fun way to fritter away a few hours on a rainy afternoon. Check it out.
And if the 'IT Chief' is next to the decision makers then he/she is much more likely to be a manager first and a technologist second. So you still end up with the same problems; unrealistic expectations, impossible time tables and little factual understanding of the issues at hand. There is no way to win...
I talked with Counterpane about 6 months ago about monitoring service for the company I worked for then. While I will admit that I wasn't very interested at first (we talked with them because the brother of one of our sales reps worked for Counterpane) I was intrigued with the idea of out-sourcing some of the security burden. As anyone who has had the pleasure (pain?) of managing an Internet start up company's network will tell you there is never enough time to do most things 'right', least of all securing the network against intrusion and attack. So the idea of external monitoring was interesting, at least until we actually sat down with the sales reps from Counterpane and asked about pricing...
As I recall, and please remember that it has been awhile so my numbers may no longer apply, Counterpane's minimum service offering was $25,000 monthly for one detector box and 24/7 monitoring. I wanted to laugh when I heard that figure. And they were never able to satisfy my requirements for dealing with DoS attacks (the monitoring boxes did not have any type of fail-over access though they did promise "It's comming in just a few months...").
Until the prices come down I can't see their service being useful for any but the largest and most heavily trafficed Internet e-commerce sites. And even then only as a backup to in-house monitoring efforts.
I disagree that the 'space elevator' is impossible to build but I still don't think we'll be seeing one built anytime soon. Here's why...
It's Too Vulnerable
Any type of 'space elevator' is inherently vulnerable to attack, either by a hostile nation or a terrorist group using conventional explosives or nuclear weapons. With 35,900 kilometers of target length it's difficult at best to defend, perhaps impossible. And it will be a target. Destroying a space elevator will certainly make an impact on the nation(s) or organizations that own it and at some point someone will see advantage for their group or nation to be the one to do it.
It's Too Big
The construction of a space elevator would be the most difficult and expensive construction project ever undertaken on Earth, by several orders of magnitude. Imagine building a bridge across the Atlantic and you get some idea of the scope of the project. It will also require an extensive human presence in near Earth space to build and maintain the cable and counterweight. In order for a space elevator to be economically feasible and to carry out the actual construction there must be an extensive and thriving space economy to support it. We simply do not have strong and compelling reasons now or in the foreseeable future to build a space elevator.
It's Too Dangerous
Imagine the consequences if a space elevator were to fail. At a cable length of 37,900 kilometers if the cable were to break for any reason the results would be catastrophic for anyone underneath the cable. The damage and destruction would be felt on a global scale and would likely be impossible to protect against. The cable might break due to intentional action (as discussed above), accidental events (something smashes into the cable), weather effects (storms), and structural issues (design or materials failures).
While I do think the space elevator is an incredible concept I do not believe it will be technical problems that prevent us from building one. I would in fact agree that the technical challenges would likely be resolved in the next few decades. But still I do believe that the most serious problems with the concept are political and economic issues that are unlikely to be solved anytime soon. Still, it would be something to see...
It's interesting to note that Apple has had special repair/replacement programs in place for the 5300 series notebooks for litterally years, beginning soon after the notebooks initially shipped. Even Apple's directors admitted privately that the 5300's were amoung the lowest quality products that Apple ever sold. By the time I started working for them it was standard policy to either offer any customers who contacted Apple a complete rebuild of their unit or an upgrade to a 1400 series notebook. The list of 'standard' replacement items for the 5300's that we did repair went on for pages...
I personally swapped many of the 5300 series notebooks for the 1400 notebooks. By the time I left I didn't even bother trying to convince customers with 5300's to get them repaired rather then replaced with the 1400s. Apple was very interested and committed in doing the best they could to deal fairly with their customers regarding the disapointing reliability of the 5300 notebooks. Out of all of the companies I've worked for in the past few years Apple I believe had the highest commitment to providing customer satisfaction and standing behind their products.
Is it just me or is there something wrong with this picture? The NSA, arguably one of the most secretive agencies in the US government using LINUX, one of the most open and freely available software platforms in the world today? I guess we can assume that the NSA version will not remain Open Source.