I use one password for anything I don't really care about (/. login, LWN login, etc.) and different ones for systems I do care about (webservers, mx machines, client machines etc). I couldn't have told them my care-about passwords anyway though - I don't remember them, I just remember how to type them in. If I have to tell someone, I have to go through the process of mentally "typing" the word - complete with shift keys etc...
It takes less than 5 minutes to remember a new sequence, just by typing it lots of times, and I find that if I *do* forget one from (say) 6 months ago, if I put my fingers through the first 1 or 2 chars, I get the whole sequence back... Holographic memory at its best:-)
I've found this works much better for me than what I used to do (take 2 words, reverse them, catenate them, and take the central 8 chars) - the recovery of "forgotten" passwords is much easier when I let my fingers "remember" what to do... It also allows me to give clients obviously hard-to-forge passwords and easily use them:-)
'... many of us spent 3-4 days awake, with minimal sleep, listening to "Mr. Jazz Hands" (Deloitte leader), lie his way through the explanations as to why it was deploying so poorly... "We greatly underestimated the complexity of the integration of Siebel 7". What a load of crap! "We" = Upper management and Deloitte.'
[huge grin] wonder how he got *that* nickname:-)
Seriously, someone who has new/wonderful management process *can* help a company tread a dangerous path, but you *need* the domain expertise to be well-represented in a solution to a technical problem. Imho, at least. From the reports, it seems the process wasn't that wonderful, either:-)
His 'new operating model' was such a joke that one new VP hired to help implement it resigned after less than a month on the job.
You can expect a certain level of bitterness in ex-employees, especially after a disaster, but there ain't no smoke without fire, and when there's lots of smoke, start looking for the towering inferno...
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Anyone who signs up for a "free" service without reading the small print deserves what they get, just like with any other 'unbelievably-good' offer...
The planet that's not a planet has a moon that's not there!
Perhaps it used to rotate fast, but got hit by some other asteroid in an opposing fashion, so now it rotates slowly ? Space is big (!) so this is unlikely, but if Sedna is not too far from the Kuiper belt, perhaps it's less unlikely than one might expect...
Of course, you are just a high school or at best college undergrad and have no idea what you are talking about...which leads me to wonder why I even bother to read the crap on Slashdot.
My my. Harsh words indeed. FWIW I did my PhD 15 years ago. At school I got 2 'S' levels (most students take none), 6 'A' levels (3 in maths! Most 'A' level students take 3 in total) and 14 'O' levels (most students study for up to 9). Education is not something I'm lacking!
The solution to everything in Physics is mathematical by definition. Therefore any so-called physical property you find that cannot be described mathematically is either false or has not yet been mathematically discovered/formulated. Physics is applied mathematics and nothing more.
No. The *description* of everything in physics is mathematical. The *nature* of it (mainly time-dependent) is in and of itself. If physics was 'nothing more than applied maths', then you'd be able to:
solve the N-body problem, irrespective of starting conditions.
have a solution to the shortest distance between 2 of N points, in O(1) time irrespective of N. See Feinmann.
simultaneously know the position and momentum of an electron. Unless physics imposes limits of course... I'm not talking about measurement here, I'm talking about calculation - since maths by your argument defines physics this shouldn't be a problem...
There are many more. Maths is a wonderful tool, and I think any physicist appreciates what it gives, but it's not the ubiquitous description of everything that you seem to think it is.
The real point I'm making is that even having a 100% accurate model of the universe, you still can't calculate *everything* that will happen without just waiting for it to happen and see what it was that happened. You can get close. There is a theory that the smallest perfect model of the universe is in fact the universe itself...
The point of quantum crytography is that it's using a physical attribute that therefore has physical implications. Maths (despite accurately describing the properties) does not allow the change in reality that would be needed to intercept the communication channel without detection. There are physical limits on what you can change in a physically-encoded transmission, which if you read my original post, was what I was saying. In a purely mathematical environment, there's a lot more flexibility. I can my encoded data through another equation, invoke tensors and multi-dimensional transforms, define and use operations which have vastly different directional costs. There's a lot more you can do...
If you have a PhD in Physics, you should be able to tell me the Einstein-Hilbert action and derive the Einstein field equations from it? You should also be able to state the generally covariant Maxwell equations, and calculate the Maxwell stress-energy tensor. Or even something simple, like calculate the Einstein tensor in 3+1 Minkowski space.
Actually, my only relativity courses *were* undergraduate. The PhD was in information theory, run by a physics department since it had a lot of FLIR (forward-looking infra-red) imagery involved...
I could pretty much do anything you want referring to bayesian probabilities, information content of N-ary relations and implications regarding neural-networks and genetic algorithms. The primary discovery was that the information relaxation-labelling equations correspond to neural network update functions under particular circumstances, thus tying the 'black box' of a neural network into the more-solid maths realms and making them more amenable to analysis.
OTOH, I could do a google lookup of all the above and quote you till the cows come home, which would mean precisely nothing. I've not used any of my relativity stuff since I learnt for an exam, and I tend to lose knowledge I don't use, at least after a period of 16 years or so...
You do surprise me though - we didn't hear anything about Einstein's mathematical limitations. I just assumed that anyone who successfully got to his conclusions could do the maths that his physics depended on. Obviously not. Odd.
I think we're talking at cross purposes here. My point was that you can describe things with maths that have no physical analogue - to use physical rather than mathematical means to guarantee transmission therefore implies more limits, making maths 'more forgiving'. There was no implication of fuzziness or non-purity in the solution.
Since I've done a PhD in Physics, I think I have some insights into the subject. I think *intrinsically* rather than *unequivocally* as well, btw. I think there can be some doubt (equivocation) in the relation when a physical property can allow data transferral under conditions that no known mathematical transformation can...
According to Einstein, quantum entanglement is 'spooky stuff'. I know he was a physicist, but he was pretty damn hot on maths too...
Since they make a point that they "Rely on the laws of physics", they're bound by them too (maths is far more forgiving:-). Both systems rely on the quantum state of photons being undisturbed, so they can only be used between point-to-point optically-networked devices assuming the act of optically switching the packets has the same effect as reading them (the quantum state will be lost). If this is true, no secure networks could be mass-produced using this, unless you trust all the intervening nodes...
OTOH, it's the first generation of these devices, and perhaps IPv8 will somehow encode an encryption hierarchy (packets get encrypted sequentially in one direction, and decrypted on the way back, assuming the same route is taken, each node only needs to know the encryption to the next one worked ok to guarantee the encryption was ok. You'd still want to be in control of all the nodes along the way though...)
As for price - if they can solve the networking issue, that'll come down dramatically - it'll be onboard in the equivalent of the BIOS that we have in ten years time (when we all have fibre to the home. Possible optimistic:-)
The article has little to do with the game of chess, it is a philosophical piece (it strikes me that invoking religion in a philosophical debate is a bit like invoking Hitler in any other argument...). It's a bit thin too - saying that you can use the same word to describe different things doesn't imply any necessary connection between those things; it could mean we interpret the word based on its context...
I have little time for philosophy: the endless soul-searching and argument over subtle nuance seems pretty meaningless - you can't root an argument in reality when you're debating the existence of reality! Accept that and move on. I happen to agree with Popper about falsifiability, but that's just an opinion...
Perhaps we ought to just accept the universe does exist, then perhaps we can start to do something useful rather than pursue ultimate logical deriveable truths (although I guess the Vulcans got their warp drive first, hmmm)... The greatest breakthroughs in science were made once the ancient Greek philosophic method was turned on its head and transformed into the scientific method we use today. Theory and practice, unified in harmony; either on their own regarded with suspicion - look at cold fusion and string theory...
It seems that a fair amount of research into new power plants is coming to fruition - the latest New Scientist had an essay on the JET (Joint European Torus) breaking even on its power budget for nuclear fusion. The big argument now is not whether to build one that ought to provide 10x its input requirements, but where to build it (France or Japan, from memory).
With windfarms (popping up all over Scotland and the exposed areas of England - presumably Ireland as well, that's one hell of a windy place:-), sea-based production, and fusion plants, perhaps power won't be too hard to come by in the future after all, despite out ever-increasing demands...
The new thinking now says that the new Office will run on all versions of Windows, whereas it was previously going to be available only on the new XP system... This is a massive statement. It means that the 'new licencing' is so unpopular that it's forcing MS to drop its upgrade/lock-in strategy for Office. Amazing.
I think the growing popularity of Linux in the server market, and over the next 2 years or so in the desktop market too, is a big part of that decision...
(According to the summary). In fact you can get new firmware, and it's free for everyone so long as you go through the channels. Fair play to Cisco (or at least, well done for recognising a public-relations disaster when they see one!)
I can see why it's useful to have a master password, but really, it was bound to cause major embarassment in the end - the only way it would work is if everyone who knew it (presumably cisco employees) never ever divulged it. That's likely!
With the games possibly (depending on how good the emulator gets..) now having a far wider audience, there'll be a far larger demand for P2P downloads. I wonder if the MS anti-piracy protection will be up to the job - it certainly seems pretty simple to run games on 'modded' xboxes - I wonder if they've been depending on the fact that the games are designed for the console only to protect them from rampant copying...
And I bet that new releases will have to pass an internal 'breaks the emulator' test before they're let out into the wild (it'll only mean the emulator has to cope with the differences, of course...)
Microsoft are going to ditch the NT mega-kernel and use Plan 9 instead. These are the first tentative steps in the migration from the huge monolithic NT ring-main to the elegance that is Plan 9. [deep voice] From the people who brought you Unix, PLAN 9 [/voice] Da da daaaaaaah bom-bom bom-bom bom-booom
I thought by postulating that he is in fact dead, it would be obvious I didn't agree with the man. The 'Naaah' at the end was supposed to negate the sentence in front of it...
Ashcroft, a religious man who does not drink alcohol or caffeine, smoke, gamble or dance,
The perfect antithesis then, to all the people who pay for the 'products' on sale. The line "Don't drink, don't smoke, what do you do?" springs to mind. Have you in fact checked he's still alive ?
Sure, I'm dead-set against kiddie porn - string them up by the bollocks and burn them over a slow fire. Sure, there are other people being exploited in this industry. Newsflash: there are people being exploited in *all* industries - it's just that society places a higher importance on sex than fishing, cooking, or cleaning (for example).
and has fought unrelenting criticism that he has trod roughshod on civil liberties in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, is taking on the porn industry at a time when many experts say Americans are wary about government intrusion into their lives.
Yep, now we see, he is dead. In the water that is. When a public figures decide to go on a non-popular crusade, they're dead men walking. I suppose there's an outside chance (only in the US, [grin]) that he *might* be right - witness the uproar over 1 cm^2 of female flesh after a certain kickabout recently... Naaah.
The reason the trike has smooth motion is simple - the centre of mass (where the axle is attached) doesn't move vertically. It's exactly the same reason as for a hoop rolling on a plane surface except the hoop is more obvious.
When you turn, the square shape doesn't fit so well, so the c.o.m oscillates vertically, and you get a more bumpy ride - the larger the angle you turn through, the worse the fit, and the bumpier the ride. Wheels (round ones) don't have this turning problem so much; my vote goes to the round wheels:-)
I remember doing a 'Granada power game' (schoolkid teams are set problems to do, and compete to produce the best solution). For the challenge in the year we took part, we had to construct (entirely from cardboard) a device that would travel forward under its own power for 5m, turn through 45 degrees, forward 1m, turn back through 45 degrees and throw a ball-bearing into a target, accuracy being rewarded. There were 2 walls at given positions that you had to get over as well, at 2.5m and 5.5m from the start. We just cut slots in our wheels - there were some really outlandish solutions to getting over the walls though:-)
Betcha the top-of-the-range chips that Intel and AMD make will *still* manage to consume ~100W of power:-)
Talking of power users, it could make for some seriously large on-die L2 (or even L1) cache though. Since the fetch-from-memory is like hitting a brick wall (for a CPU), the more the better - look at how the P4EE performs compared to the non-EE version...
I guess it could also be used for lots of on-chip cores. 16 CPU's per die would be nice, although they'd have to have a large die for all the memory traces going to the motherboard. Even AMD's hyper-transport might struggle with that:-)
Maybe I'm being over-cautious, but the wording at ripe would seem to suggest that you can't re-use the information in the DB. To me, it seems to be for single-level access (ie: I can use it individually, but I can't re-distribute it) and hostip would be effectively re-distributing a portion of the ripe DB if it took bulk data from it.
I do use 'whois' to check on bulk uploads, (and I'll do traceroutes to random IP's in the uploaded netblock as well) before loading a block of N records into the DB, but I think that's acceptable.
Well, if there's no data to be had, there's nothing anyone can do. I do think that's a pretty statistically insignificant proportion of IP addresses though, even with AOL doing it...
Some NAT firewalls send extra headers (X-NAT-PROPOGATED-FOR') similar to proxies ('HTTP_FORWARDED_FOR' and similar), and I try to pick up on those where I can, but at the end of the day, any system has to have *something* to work with.
The fraction of IP addresses that oscillate or change city a lot is very small (1%). The vast majority of the located addresses that I have don't change at all.
As for relevance, well as I've mentioned before it's an experiment. If it turns out to be useful, excellent; if not, well I have some interesting data to play with:-) So far it looks promising, but it's very early days.
Actually the DB is a bit cleverer than just trusting the user, it takes a track history into account... Even when someone does put the wrong city in, simply to screw it up, as soon as 2 people with different IP's do it correctly, the correct city will appear. Since you can only upload info for your own IP address, and it works on a/24 block, it should recover from bad input data over time...
As for maxmind (and quova), I think you'll find you pay for anything other than the country data. Hostip gives you the city if it can...
Regardless, one of the points is to try and analyse just how much wrong data is entered, when you let the net as a whole put info into a system, so I'm happy anyway, and if it turns out to be a useful resource, so much the better:-)
It's always easier to knock something down rather than build it up, isn't it ? Let's just see how it evolves over time:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I use one password for anything I don't really care about (/. login, LWN login, etc.) and different ones for systems I do care about (webservers, mx machines, client machines etc). I couldn't have told them my care-about passwords anyway though - I don't remember them, I just remember how to type them in. If I have to tell someone, I have to go through the process of mentally "typing" the word - complete with shift keys etc...
:-)
:-)
It takes less than 5 minutes to remember a new sequence, just by typing it lots of times, and I find that if I *do* forget one from (say) 6 months ago, if I put my fingers through the first 1 or 2 chars, I get the whole sequence back... Holographic memory at its best
I've found this works much better for me than what I used to do (take 2 words, reverse them, catenate them, and take the central 8 chars) - the recovery of "forgotten" passwords is much easier when I let my fingers "remember" what to do... It also allows me to give clients obviously hard-to-forge passwords and easily use them
Simon
[huge grin] wonder how he got *that* nickname
Seriously, someone who has new/wonderful management process *can* help a company tread a dangerous path, but you *need* the domain expertise to be well-represented in a solution to a technical problem. Imho, at least. From the reports, it seems the process wasn't that wonderful, either
You can expect a certain level of bitterness in ex-employees, especially after a disaster, but there ain't no smoke without fire, and when there's lots of smoke, start looking for the towering inferno...
Simon.
Anyone who signs up for a "free" service without reading the small print deserves what they get, just like with any other 'unbelievably-good' offer...
Simon.
The planet that's not a planet has a moon that's not there!
Perhaps it used to rotate fast, but got hit by some other asteroid in an opposing fashion, so now it rotates slowly ? Space is big (!) so this is unlikely, but if Sedna is not too far from the Kuiper belt, perhaps it's less unlikely than one might expect...
Simon
My my. Harsh words indeed. FWIW I did my PhD 15 years ago. At school I got 2 'S' levels (most students take none), 6 'A' levels (3 in maths! Most 'A' level students take 3 in total) and 14 'O' levels (most students study for up to 9). Education is not something I'm lacking!
No. The *description* of everything in physics is mathematical. The *nature* of it (mainly time-dependent) is in and of itself. If physics was 'nothing more than applied maths', then you'd be able to:
There are many more. Maths is a wonderful tool, and I think any physicist appreciates what it gives, but it's not the ubiquitous description of everything that you seem to think it is.
The real point I'm making is that even having a 100% accurate model of the universe, you still can't calculate *everything* that will happen without just waiting for it to happen and see what it was that happened. You can get close. There is a theory that the smallest perfect model of the universe is in fact the universe itself...
The point of quantum crytography is that it's using a physical attribute that therefore has physical implications. Maths (despite accurately describing the properties) does not allow the change in reality that would be needed to intercept the communication channel without detection. There are physical limits on what you can change in a physically-encoded transmission, which if you read my original post, was what I was saying. In a purely mathematical environment, there's a lot more flexibility. I can my encoded data through another equation, invoke tensors and multi-dimensional transforms, define and use operations which have vastly different directional costs. There's a lot more you can do...
Note that I haven't insulted you once...
Simon.
Actually, my only relativity courses *were* undergraduate. The PhD was in information theory, run by a physics department since it had a lot of FLIR (forward-looking infra-red) imagery involved...
I could pretty much do anything you want referring to bayesian probabilities, information content of N-ary relations and implications regarding neural-networks and genetic algorithms. The primary discovery was that the information relaxation-labelling equations correspond to neural network update functions under particular circumstances, thus tying the 'black box' of a neural network into the more-solid maths realms and making them more amenable to analysis.
OTOH, I could do a google lookup of all the above and quote you till the cows come home, which would mean precisely nothing. I've not used any of my relativity stuff since I learnt for an exam, and I tend to lose knowledge I don't use, at least after a period of 16 years or so...
You do surprise me though - we didn't hear anything about Einstein's mathematical limitations. I just assumed that anyone who successfully got to his conclusions could do the maths that his physics depended on. Obviously not. Odd.
Simon.
I think we're talking at cross purposes here. My point was that you can describe things with maths that have no physical analogue - to use physical rather than mathematical means to guarantee transmission therefore implies more limits, making maths 'more forgiving'. There was no implication of fuzziness or non-purity in the solution.
Since I've done a PhD in Physics, I think I have some insights into the subject. I think *intrinsically* rather than *unequivocally* as well, btw. I think there can be some doubt (equivocation) in the relation when a physical property can allow data transferral under conditions that no known mathematical transformation can...
According to Einstein, quantum entanglement is 'spooky stuff'. I know he was a physicist, but he was pretty damn hot on maths too...
Simon.
Since they make a point that they "Rely on the laws of physics", they're bound by them too (maths is far more forgiving
OTOH, it's the first generation of these devices, and perhaps IPv8 will somehow encode an encryption hierarchy (packets get encrypted sequentially in one direction, and decrypted on the way back, assuming the same route is taken, each node only needs to know the encryption to the next one worked ok to guarantee the encryption was ok. You'd still want to be in control of all the nodes along the way though...)
As for price - if they can solve the networking issue, that'll come down dramatically - it'll be onboard in the equivalent of the BIOS that we have in ten years time (when we all have fibre to the home. Possible optimistic
Simon
True linux-focussed geeks would have immediately wondered why user-mode linux was suddenly such a hot topic, and so dangerous to boot
Simon
Yes. Of course, a true philosopher can never know...
Simon
The article has little to do with the game of chess, it is a philosophical piece (it strikes me that invoking religion in a philosophical debate is a bit like invoking Hitler in any other argument...). It's a bit thin too - saying that you can use the same word to describe different things doesn't imply any necessary connection between those things; it could mean we interpret the word based on its context...
I have little time for philosophy: the endless soul-searching and argument over subtle nuance seems pretty meaningless - you can't root an argument in reality when you're debating the existence of reality! Accept that and move on. I happen to agree with Popper about falsifiability, but that's just an opinion...
Perhaps we ought to just accept the universe does exist, then perhaps we can start to do something useful rather than pursue ultimate logical deriveable truths (although I guess the Vulcans got their warp drive first, hmmm)... The greatest breakthroughs in science were made once the ancient Greek philosophic method was turned on its head and transformed into the scientific method we use today. Theory and practice, unified in harmony; either on their own regarded with suspicion - look at cold fusion and string theory...
Simon
It seems that a fair amount of research into new power plants is coming to fruition - the latest New Scientist had an essay on the JET (Joint European Torus) breaking even on its power budget for nuclear fusion. The big argument now is not whether to build one that ought to provide 10x its input requirements, but where to build it (France or Japan, from memory).
With windfarms (popping up all over Scotland and the exposed areas of England - presumably Ireland as well, that's one hell of a windy place
Simon
The new thinking now says that the new Office will run on all versions of Windows, whereas it was previously going to be available only on the new XP system... This is a massive statement. It means that the 'new licencing' is so unpopular that it's forcing MS to drop its upgrade/lock-in strategy for Office. Amazing.
I think the growing popularity of Linux in the server market, and over the next 2 years or so in the desktop market too, is a big part of that decision...
Simon.
(According to the summary). In fact you can get new firmware, and it's free for everyone so long as you go through the channels. Fair play to Cisco (or at least, well done for recognising a public-relations disaster when they see one!)
I can see why it's useful to have a master password, but really, it was bound to cause major embarassment in the end - the only way it would work is if everyone who knew it (presumably cisco employees) never ever divulged it. That's likely!
Simon
With the games possibly (depending on how good the emulator gets..) now having a far wider audience, there'll be a far larger demand for P2P downloads. I wonder if the MS anti-piracy protection will be up to the job - it certainly seems pretty simple to run games on 'modded' xboxes - I wonder if they've been depending on the fact that the games are designed for the console only to protect them from rampant copying...
And I bet that new releases will have to pass an internal 'breaks the emulator' test before they're let out into the wild (it'll only mean the emulator has to cope with the differences, of course...)
Simon.
Damn, she's definitely gained a few pounds...
Simon.
Microsoft are going to ditch the NT mega-kernel and use Plan 9 instead. These are the first tentative steps in the migration from the huge monolithic NT ring-main to the elegance that is Plan 9. [deep voice] From the people who brought you Unix, PLAN 9 [/voice] Da da daaaaaaah bom-bom bom-bom bom-booom
Simon
I thought by postulating that he is in fact dead, it would be obvious I didn't agree with the man. The 'Naaah' at the end was supposed to negate the sentence in front of it...
:-)
Oh well
Simon.
The perfect antithesis then, to all the people who pay for the 'products' on sale. The line "Don't drink, don't smoke, what do you do?" springs to mind. Have you in fact checked he's still alive ?
Sure, I'm dead-set against kiddie porn - string them up by the bollocks and burn them over a slow fire. Sure, there are other people being exploited in this industry. Newsflash: there are people being exploited in *all* industries - it's just that society places a higher importance on sex than fishing, cooking, or cleaning (for example).
Yep, now we see, he is dead. In the water that is. When a public figures decide to go on a non-popular crusade, they're dead men walking. I suppose there's an outside chance (only in the US, [grin]) that he *might* be right - witness the uproar over 1 cm^2 of female flesh after a certain kickabout recently... Naaah.
Simon.
The reason the trike has smooth motion is simple - the centre of mass (where the axle is attached) doesn't move vertically. It's exactly the same reason as for a hoop rolling on a plane surface except the hoop is more obvious.
When you turn, the square shape doesn't fit so well, so the c.o.m oscillates vertically, and you get a more bumpy ride - the larger the angle you turn through, the worse the fit, and the bumpier the ride. Wheels (round ones) don't have this turning problem so much; my vote goes to the round wheels
I remember doing a 'Granada power game' (schoolkid teams are set problems to do, and compete to produce the best solution). For the challenge in the year we took part, we had to construct (entirely from cardboard) a device that would travel forward under its own power for 5m, turn through 45 degrees, forward 1m, turn back through 45 degrees and throw a ball-bearing into a target, accuracy being rewarded. There were 2 walls at given positions that you had to get over as well, at 2.5m and 5.5m from the start. We just cut slots in our wheels - there were some really outlandish solutions to getting over the walls though
Simon
Betcha the top-of-the-range chips that Intel and AMD make will *still* manage to consume ~100W of power
Talking of power users, it could make for some seriously large on-die L2 (or even L1) cache though. Since the fetch-from-memory is like hitting a brick wall (for a CPU), the more the better - look at how the P4EE performs compared to the non-EE version...
I guess it could also be used for lots of on-chip cores. 16 CPU's per die would be nice, although they'd have to have a large die for all the memory traces going to the motherboard. Even AMD's hyper-transport might struggle with that
Simon.
Are the Google side-bar ones. Yet again, Google got it right. The ads are
Every other ad-system I've seen has fallen down on one of those. All hail Google.
Simon
Maybe I'm being over-cautious, but the wording at ripe would seem to suggest that you can't re-use the information in the DB. To me, it seems to be for single-level access (ie: I can use it individually, but I can't re-distribute it) and hostip would be effectively re-distributing a portion of the ripe DB if it took bulk data from it.
I do use 'whois' to check on bulk uploads, (and I'll do traceroutes to random IP's in the uploaded netblock as well) before loading a block of N records into the DB, but I think that's acceptable.
Simon.
Well, if there's no data to be had, there's nothing anyone can do. I do think that's a pretty statistically insignificant proportion of IP addresses though, even with AOL doing it...
:-) So far it looks promising, but it's very early days.
Some NAT firewalls send extra headers (X-NAT-PROPOGATED-FOR') similar to proxies ('HTTP_FORWARDED_FOR' and similar), and I try to pick up on those where I can, but at the end of the day, any system has to have *something* to work with.
The fraction of IP addresses that oscillate or change city a lot is very small (1%). The vast majority of the located addresses that I have don't change at all.
As for relevance, well as I've mentioned before it's an experiment. If it turns out to be useful, excellent; if not, well I have some interesting data to play with
Simon.
Actually the DB is a bit cleverer than just trusting the user, it takes a track history into account... Even when someone does put the wrong city in, simply to screw it up, as soon as 2 people with different IP's do it correctly, the correct city will appear. Since you can only upload info for your own IP address, and it works on a /24 block, it should recover from bad input data over time...
:-)
:-)
As for maxmind (and quova), I think you'll find you pay for anything other than the country data. Hostip gives you the city if it can...
Regardless, one of the points is to try and analyse just how much wrong data is entered, when you let the net as a whole put info into a system, so I'm happy anyway, and if it turns out to be a useful resource, so much the better
It's always easier to knock something down rather than build it up, isn't it ? Let's just see how it evolves over time
Simon