I called up United's arrival/departure information line when I was in the USA. Sure, it's nice, but at least the tech that *they* are using has pretty far to go because it was having trouble understanding my New Zealand accent a lot of the time.
beyond that, your email address is tracked at any site you login to. you have again opted in. you very commonly sign away any other information which a company might way. such as with a product registration (usually optional), or a 'shopping club' at the grocery store.
dont get me wrong. sounds like a good bill to pass. but does it actually *DO* anything?
Yes it does. If people want to join their shopping club, or give their email address to amazon.com, that's their choice. What this stops is the shopping club or amazon selling your email address and details to legions of telemarketers and the like.
The law is a much better reassurance than a company's goodwill.
The reason for this is quite simple. Free Software is a lot less expensive.
Oh, that's a given. What I think is brilliant about free software is that most of the stuff I use is just so damn stable and versatile. Fair enough, a lot of stuff is still under development, but the focus of free software tends to be on quality as opposed to stuffing in all the latest conveniences and being "smart" (by second guessing the user incorrectly). I recently set up a box to act as a transparent router and traffic shaper, the config script is all of around 25 commands.. trying doing something like that in Windows! Of course, this comes back to the free vs money thing - but it also comes down to the fact that Linux & GNU tools are so flexible that you can do this from a pretty much stock install of debian...
I wonder what's going to happen when there's a nice convenient client that does chat (100% legit use), IMs (100% legit use) AND allows one to search for files of any type, without advertising and central servers?
Well, if you're not aware, ICQ now allows you to share files with your contacts. Sure, its not search-millions-of-users-simultaneously kind of stuff, but its still sharing files, etc.
Of course, it has centralised servers owned by AOL... that's a big uh-oh.
It probably is the sound drivers if you're using the crappy ones in the kernel.
I had major problems with my PC freezing whenever I played mp3s and the window manager tried to make a sound - something to do with the driver queueing sounds etc, but then I went alsa and no more problems like that at all.
Without any cumbersome wiring, yeah, or pesky security or annoying encryption. What about the profounf implications of that. You really have to wonder what they were thinking.
They were thinking that security and encryption should be implemented by a higher OSI/whatever network layer, and complicating the data link layer with encryption is unnecessary.
The same kind of reason IP doesn't care if its packets get delivered or not, because TCP takes care of that.
I can buy a leased line in California, and my traffic to Australia costs no more than my traffic going across town. It just doesn't seem like a sustainable model.
Well, you're right, what you say isn't a sustainable model. But its different than what you think. You're not paying for that traffic to Australia, but somebody in Australia is. Download something from New Zealand? You get it for free, some NZ company pays. This is the reason that file archives down-under usually deny any downloads not originating from Australia or NZ.
Sure, its not fair, but really, who the USA really cares if they can get to offshore sites when most are hosted in the US anyway? I know most of my browsing/downloading is from the USA. (I'm in NZ).
A kernel compile is a real world situation, but it is NOT a real world performance test for a filesystem. When compiling, your CPU is under a lot of strain, but I dare say your filesystem isn't. Take a look at the results in the Kernel Compilation table in the article.
ReiserFS (notail), which got the "green" for the fastest make bzImage, took 291.14 seconds realtime, of which 289.33 seconds was CPU time. So, on average, the CPU had a 99.4% load during this kernel compilation. Since a CPU is many orders of magnitude faster than a disk, one can assume that the disk was sitting idle for much of this time - hardly an intensive test of filesystem speed.
A good "real world" test would be putting it on a database server that churns data with disks at near-full capacity (perhaps 24/7) - but then, how would you measure the performance? With a "real world" script? The problem with benchmarks...
That's probably less to do with the actual media and more to do with the surrounding environment. A few years ago there weren't nearly as many electromagnetic waves flying through the air, but now with everyone having a cellphone, they've multiplied hundreds of times over. And seeing as floppy disks aren't exactly reliable in the first place...
How are they supposed to 'provide backdoors' that are not there? Sounds like a bunch of clueless people there in NZ...
Keep in mind that network engineers, security specialists and programmers don't make these laws, bureaucrats do. They're not particularly the smartest type, although they can bullshit well...
Because NZ is a small, first world, multi-cultural, primarily english speaking country, we have long been a testbed for new social policies - recently, we have had a new electoral system tested here, called MMP, which is meant to give a much better representation of the actual amount of votes proportional to the seats in parliament (or congress, take your pick). Being relatively neutral and uninvolved, we have also been involved with governments around the world on various spying activities, although as is expected I am unsure as to exactly *what*, but I know for a fact that the official "spy base" has undertaken a few intelligence operations for the US Government.
It is typical that that we are the first chosen to have our electronic rights minimised - hell, if NZ screws up, what does it matter to the rest of the world?
but this must mean that they're also going to make it incompatible with everything else out there
No, they will have to make it compatible with the industry standard IPv6, if for no other reason than all the major bandwidth providers - UUNet, Sprint, etc - run on *nix, which offer the same, standard implementation.
Put simply, it would be wildly stupid for MS to try to reinvent IPv6, simply so that it won't work.
Sounds very similar to what is instituted at my University.
I am studying stage 1 Java, and we are told that all assignments must compile and run correctly in the laboratory environment. Our lab consists of an array of Macintosh computers (running MacOS 9), with the CodeWarrior IDE. Being Java, usually there are no problems when I submit my assignments - platform independent, etc. However, occasionally people do run into problems. The CS Department tend to be reasonably lenient about it, and provided you haven't modified the file (verified by matching it to an electronic receipt issued on submission) and can prove it compiles on whatever platform it was written under, it is fine.
Of course, C++ is different and so are the Universities, my point is that having a 'standard' IDE that the code must compile in is not a unique thing, and that CS departments are not nazis.
Slashdot Mirror
I called up United's arrival/departure information line when I was in the USA. Sure, it's nice, but at least the tech that *they* are using has pretty far to go because it was having trouble understanding my New Zealand accent a lot of the time.
Yes it does. If people want to join their shopping club, or give their email address to amazon.com, that's their choice. What this stops is the shopping club or amazon selling your email address and details to legions of telemarketers and the like.
The law is a much better reassurance than a company's goodwill.
I thought CAT7 was still in the lab, and CAT6 was damn pricey?
Why does that never work?
Oh, that's a given. What I think is brilliant about free software is that most of the stuff I use is just so damn stable and versatile. Fair enough, a lot of stuff is still under development, but the focus of free software tends to be on quality as opposed to stuffing in all the latest conveniences and being "smart" (by second guessing the user incorrectly). I recently set up a box to act as a transparent router and traffic shaper, the config script is all of around 25 commands.. trying doing something like that in Windows! Of course, this comes back to the free vs money thing - but it also comes down to the fact that Linux & GNU tools are so flexible that you can do this from a pretty much stock install of debian...
Next post talks about PS2.
Everyone gets confused.
Well, if you're not aware, ICQ now allows you to share files with your contacts. Sure, its not search-millions-of-users-simultaneously kind of stuff, but its still sharing files, etc. Of course, it has centralised servers owned by AOL... that's a big uh-oh.
It probably is the sound drivers if you're using the crappy ones in the kernel.
I had major problems with my PC freezing whenever I played mp3s and the window manager tried to make a sound - something to do with the driver queueing sounds etc, but then I went alsa and no more problems like that at all.
Its damn easy to install as well.
They were thinking that security and encryption should be implemented by a higher OSI/whatever network layer, and complicating the data link layer with encryption is unnecessary.
The same kind of reason IP doesn't care if its packets get delivered or not, because TCP takes care of that.
No, but I remember one between a Toyota Supra and one.
Well, you're right, what you say isn't a sustainable model. But its different than what you think. You're not paying for that traffic to Australia, but somebody in Australia is. Download something from New Zealand? You get it for free, some NZ company pays. This is the reason that file archives down-under usually deny any downloads not originating from Australia or NZ.
Sure, its not fair, but really, who the USA really cares if they can get to offshore sites when most are hosted in the US anyway? I know most of my browsing/downloading is from the USA. (I'm in NZ).
Doesn't the G4 have a 1MB cache? You'd think Intel would give a chip running at 2.2GHz at least that much...
I hope I'm wrong here and that this is 1MB L2 cache vs 512KB L1 cache.
ReiserFS (notail), which got the "green" for the fastest make bzImage, took 291.14 seconds realtime, of which 289.33 seconds was CPU time. So, on average, the CPU had a 99.4% load during this kernel compilation. Since a CPU is many orders of magnitude faster than a disk, one can assume that the disk was sitting idle for much of this time - hardly an intensive test of filesystem speed.
A good "real world" test would be putting it on a database server that churns data with disks at near-full capacity (perhaps 24/7) - but then, how would you measure the performance? With a "real world" script? The problem with benchmarks...
Its the bomb.
Just a couple of geeks talking eh?
Except the fact its been on the news, all over radio, and on numerous NZ news websites...and plenty of people are planning on doing it.
That's probably less to do with the actual media and more to do with the surrounding environment. A few years ago there weren't nearly as many electromagnetic waves flying through the air, but now with everyone having a cellphone, they've multiplied hundreds of times over. And seeing as floppy disks aren't exactly reliable in the first place...
Keep in mind that network engineers, security specialists and programmers don't make these laws, bureaucrats do. They're not particularly the smartest type, although they can bullshit well...
And let them into my 10 gig uber-pr0n collection? No way!
cd ~/pr0n/goat/bondage
xv goat_n_chains001.jpg
Oops, wrong window :O
It is typical that that we are the first chosen to have our electronic rights minimised - hell, if NZ screws up, what does it matter to the rest of the world?
but this must mean that they're also going to make it incompatible with everything else out there
No, they will have to make it compatible with the industry standard IPv6, if for no other reason than all the major bandwidth providers - UUNet, Sprint, etc - run on *nix, which offer the same, standard implementation.
Put simply, it would be wildly stupid for MS to try to reinvent IPv6, simply so that it won't work.
I am studying stage 1 Java, and we are told that all assignments must compile and run correctly in the laboratory environment. Our lab consists of an array of Macintosh computers (running MacOS 9), with the CodeWarrior IDE. Being Java, usually there are no problems when I submit my assignments - platform independent, etc. However, occasionally people do run into problems. The CS Department tend to be reasonably lenient about it, and provided you haven't modified the file (verified by matching it to an electronic receipt issued on submission) and can prove it compiles on whatever platform it was written under, it is fine.
Of course, C++ is different and so are the Universities, my point is that having a 'standard' IDE that the code must compile in is not a unique thing, and that CS departments are not nazis.