The FCC's statements on net neutrality clearly leave an exception for government. It's overriding net neutrality but not the FCC's stance on net neutrality.
I'd like to think when they made that exception, they assumed those using it would be sane and in the best interests of the citizens... like for a true national emergency. But maybe the internet needs to be more like how view our financial engagements: Like our protecting the gold of other countries. We have treaties signed that even if we go to war, their gold will remain safe in our vaults. The reason for this is economic stability. Maybe we need to think about digital stability as well.
If you are causing a domestic panic and threatening to not only revoke many of the liberties outlined in the Bill of Rights, but also threatening to shut down communication lines, funneling billions into lobbying interests, while using fear tactics surrounding an illness that I would best describe my first-hand experience as a "laughably mild cold, without the annoyance of a stuffy nose" you're not supporting terrorism, you are practicing the definition of it.
Somebody arrest this unpatriotic and overly-serious person!
The internet will work just fine when everyone is home sick: It'll be sunday for a few weeks in a row. Big deal. This is just an excuse to try and tack demands for government control onto the latest media-sponsored thing to fear, and once they have it, "prioritization of traffic" will become code for "override the FCC's mandate on network neutrality". Fortunately, the deluge of flu pandemic stories already out there has desensitized people to the point that this will fizzle and go nowhere because it can't get above the noise of a thousand other demands for government control and funding for other things.
We already have enough problems with people running into walls, other people, walking into intersections and getting run over by buses -- and that's with just iPods and bluetooth ear leeches. People go driving off bridges, across corn fields, etc., with navsat equipment... And before we solve the human interface problems here, we're talking about immersing people further?
At the rate things are going, we'll all be walking into each other and talking to walls, and occasionally driving off cliffs... And this'll be considered normal.
Yes, for example, given wikipedia access, they could learn that regular window glass blocks pretty much all UV below 300 nm.
... And had you done research beyond wikipedia, like an "average user [who] spends most of their time online discussing urban legends and porn surfing", you'd know that the reason for that is because regular window glass is usually tinted. It is also quite thick. Thin glass, such as those used for vials or bottles, are thinner and thus pass a significantly larger amount of UV light.
That said, the only reason to use glass over plastic is because glass can be made without using industrial processes and is somewhat effective, especially when combined with a reflector. But should you have access to clear, non-pourous plastic, then you'd be right -- that is a superior solution.
It's not an urban myth -- it's a scientific fact. Also -- don't use wikipedia for citations. No self-respecting scientist, amateur or professional, would buttress an argument with a wikipedia link.:\
Broadband access, of course. I'd imagine that narrowly edged out security, stability, access to medical care, and clean drinking water.
Like many information technologies, broadband access reduces the cost and increases the usefulness of basic utilities: Online security with encryption and properly-designed systems can be faster, more tamper-proof, and has better fraud-prevention than traditional security practices (such as checks). Access to medical care is also improved by Broadband access, allowing doctors to telecommute, and rapidly research and connect with collegues who may be in remote locations. Clean drinking water, even, can be helped by broadband access -- the distribution of knowledge on how to build low-cost water purification systems. For example... a clear glass bottle and a cotton filter can clean water from many sources because UV light can sanitize the water.
But if you live in the developing world, a UNCTAD report paints your picture pretty grim. Ridiculously high bandwidth costs are inhibiting developing nations from enjoying productive use of the internet -- like online banking and market tools.
Online banking and market tools does not need broadband. Also, productivity tools are not the main use of the internet, contrary to what many "industry analysts" would tell you. And lastly, the United States is not a single market. Increasingly large segments of this country have fallen to third-world status, and some of our states, if they were independent countries, would qualify for foreign aid from many countries. Especially those where industry has failed, such as Detroit, MI, or most of the southern states which continue to rely on federal tax dollars to subsidize public works projects because the infrastructure has either degraded or has not been built. Fights over water resources are intensifying in some states, for example.
The United States' is significantly behind even some so-called "third world" countries because our corporations have exclusive rights to the data pipes and they are placing more and more restrictions on them daily. There is an erroneous assumption that the market will pressure them to upgrade, or that it's lagging because of a recession, or regulatory costs, etc. Those things might even be true, but they are not the main reason broadband access in the United States is so pitiful: It's because of exclusive contracts with the municipalities and a very few large companies that own those licenses. With no competition, there has never been an incentive to invest in an upgrade. Therefore, while other countries enjoy a competitive atmosphere, the United States does not. We are being outpaced by countries which have state-owned utilities -- China, for example, has a significantly more advanced cell phone network than the United States, and its citizens pay less on average. It is a profit center for the government and upgrades are routinely planned and executed there.
Simply put, in the United States, broadband has stalled because we've combined all the problems with capitalism (monopolies, boom-bust cycles, etc.) with a state-owned system (slow/no growth, not cost effective). Since the dot com bubble burst, no new investment has been made in infrastructure. Some people on so-called "broadband" connections have been so rate-limited or bandwidth-limited that in some cases dialup or satellite provides a more attractive alternative by price-point.
the Linux graphics driver download rate is 0.5% that of their Windows driver downloads at NVIDIA.com
It is entirely possible that Windows users download their drivers much more often than Linux users.
Windows user: "Hey, do I need the x64, or the 32bit? What kind of card to I have? Just to be safe, I better download them all and see which one works. WHQL certified... or not? What's the difference? Let's download both and find out. Hey look, some beta drivers..."
Linux user: "apt-get...done. Because I built this f***er from the ground up and I'd lose some of my geek cred if I couldn't recite the serial number."
Sure the CEO can't tell anybody followed his suggestion, but how many people actually KNOW he can't?
How many? I can't give you a number, but I can say what they all would have in common: A lack of knowledge regarding the submissions process. It's all public record. A trip down to HR to cross-reference the list of names of those submitting comments to the FCC with those on file with the company would be all that's required.
So the solution here is to alter the statistical thresholds by injecting the database with data designed to catch random people's attentions and subject them to additional scrutiny. Maybe create a worm/bot that emulates a web browser and submits queries for words like bomb, president, allah, or whatever they're searching for. Fill their database with crap, and it'll become useless.
It doesn't become fact just because it spreads person to person. Anywhere else, that would be called a rumor. But when it spreads blog to blog, it's different? Just because it's being written down instead of spoken doesn't change the truthfulness of the statements.
They'll continue to make more and more draconian laws. In twenty years, they'll be threatening people with fifty years in the electric chair with a gerbil up their arse, and it will have done nothing to solve the problem. And between websites, new protocols, new control methods, demands to the ISPs, and all of that, the community will survive on shifting sands, always staying one step ahead of their pursuers because it takes time to legislate and administrate a response to what is inherently a social movement without any defined leaders or organizational structure. They cannot beat the economics of the situation, no matter how much technology or social control, or legal action they take: Which is that the cost of reproduction is effectively zero.
They will do everything they can to make distribution as expensive as possible, enforcing ludicrous bandwidth caps and trying to control the internet as much as they can. Eventually, it'll reach a critical point where the cost of forming a new decentralized network will become cheaper than continuing to use the old methods of communication, and the community will give birth to the successor to the internet. It's something of an irony that the internet was created on the ideas of free information exchange and ensuring that an open line of communication would always be possible between its participants turning into a profit-orientated tool by greedy corporations. But while they may someday succeed in control of the network, they will have done nothing to attack the ideals upon which it was originally built, and so long as those ideals live, it will continue to rematerialize like the goddamned phoenix, generation after generation, even as society claims to have no use for it.
But you really cant make the argument that they're preventing HDTV streaming.
Bandwidth cap is 250GB, regardless of upload/download speed or tier purchased. That's 170 hours of footage per month, assuming you don't use it for anything else. You aren't planning on using it for anything else... are you?
Now termination may be a bit harsh, but removal from front-line duties for those who refuse the vaccination seems more than reasonable to me.
Of course, nobody considers the risks to the health of those receiving the shot. It's contraindicated for certain people. Should they lose their jobs because they have a medical condition that makes getting the shot risky? People assume vaccines have no side effects. They do. Every medical procedure does.
But... "my body, my choice" apparently doesn't matter much anymore. We have police running around with syringes and if they find you in a motor vehicle they can forcibly stab you with it and take your body fluids -- because you could be drunk. Jobs and other priviledges of our society are now being withheld not only for what they can take out of you, but now -- what they can put into you.
Your body is the only thing you truly own in this world. Would you really give control of it up... for money?
...because it could take months to restore the data in a disaster.
It takes months to restore data from a box of harddrives? Sounds like a problem with the backup policy, not the technology.
It also appears to be a consumer problem -- the author spent three months replicating 1TB of home data via cable modem to an online backup service.
There's nothing technological preventing this from happening faster. Bandwidth limitations are artificial -- Comcast and most other cable service providers could easily provide fifty times more bandwidth to their customers, but they won't, because they're afraid you'll also use it for streaming HDTV and tell them to go stuff it with their ad-laden broadcast offerings.
Dude, what did you use to make that post, and what did I use to make this reply? I'm just curious... I mean, it's entirely possible you're a 7 line perl script. I have no way to prove it...
Well... typically you find the fault by using an application which stresses one of those components far more than any other and then seeing if the failure condition you're observing occurs more often. This is just basic troubleshooting, it's not even specific to computers.
Guys, you're missing a really big point here: The economics. The server license for Windows 2003 runs from $1,000--3,000. But the Client Access License runs about $40 per client. So the most expensive server license is worth the same as about 75 of these CALs. It's my understanding that if you want to use Linux to connect to a Windows server "legally" you'd have to buy one of those licenses. So even though the Linux server is free, each client still nets them $40 a pop.
But even if all that's wrong, my point is this: The protocols still need a license to be legally used. Microsoft is simply moving away from a revenue stream based on selling software to a revenue stream based on selling licenses.
I'd resign if anyone tried to tell me what to wear in the real world, never mind the virtual. I've never worked at a company with a dress code and I never will. Not because I have an aversion to looking smart, but because that kind of control is normally just the tip of the iceberg.
The golden rule: Those who have the gold, make the rules.
There's nothing in that where it says the rules have to make sense. Often, they don't. But the majority of jobs out there want it. You can skirt around it, but it'll cost you opportunities you'd otherwise have if you'd just get with the program. No, what you wear has no bearing on what's between your ears. Yet, curiously, it does have a bearing on the size of your paycheck.
It's like this: I could choose to dress in a provocative manner, but I'd be attracting a kind of attention I don't want. Likewise, how you dress says something about you as well. What message do you want to convey? Contrary to popular geek belief, clothes do more than just cover your body.
Slashdot Mirror
The FCC's statements on net neutrality clearly leave an exception for government. It's overriding net neutrality but not the FCC's stance on net neutrality.
I'd like to think when they made that exception, they assumed those using it would be sane and in the best interests of the citizens... like for a true national emergency. But maybe the internet needs to be more like how view our financial engagements: Like our protecting the gold of other countries. We have treaties signed that even if we go to war, their gold will remain safe in our vaults. The reason for this is economic stability. Maybe we need to think about digital stability as well.
If you are causing a domestic panic and threatening to not only revoke many of the liberties outlined in the Bill of Rights, but also threatening to shut down communication lines, funneling billions into lobbying interests, while using fear tactics surrounding an illness that I would best describe my first-hand experience as a "laughably mild cold, without the annoyance of a stuffy nose" you're not supporting terrorism, you are practicing the definition of it.
Somebody arrest this unpatriotic and overly-serious person!
In event of contagious diseases, we will quarantine everyone to their houses. Then we will shut off all your ability to play online games.
If you play online video games, you're supporting terrorism.
The internet will work just fine when everyone is home sick: It'll be sunday for a few weeks in a row. Big deal. This is just an excuse to try and tack demands for government control onto the latest media-sponsored thing to fear, and once they have it, "prioritization of traffic" will become code for "override the FCC's mandate on network neutrality". Fortunately, the deluge of flu pandemic stories already out there has desensitized people to the point that this will fizzle and go nowhere because it can't get above the noise of a thousand other demands for government control and funding for other things.
We already have enough problems with people running into walls, other people, walking into intersections and getting run over by buses -- and that's with just iPods and bluetooth ear leeches. People go driving off bridges, across corn fields, etc., with navsat equipment... And before we solve the human interface problems here, we're talking about immersing people further?
At the rate things are going, we'll all be walking into each other and talking to walls, and occasionally driving off cliffs... And this'll be considered normal.
Yes, for example, given wikipedia access, they could learn that regular window glass blocks pretty much all UV below 300 nm.
... And had you done research beyond wikipedia, like an "average user [who] spends most of their time online discussing urban legends and porn surfing", you'd know that the reason for that is because regular window glass is usually tinted. It is also quite thick. Thin glass, such as those used for vials or bottles, are thinner and thus pass a significantly larger amount of UV light.
That said, the only reason to use glass over plastic is because glass can be made without using industrial processes and is somewhat effective, especially when combined with a reflector. But should you have access to clear, non-pourous plastic, then you'd be right -- that is a superior solution.
It's not an urban myth -- it's a scientific fact. Also -- don't use wikipedia for citations. No self-respecting scientist, amateur or professional, would buttress an argument with a wikipedia link. :\
Broadband access, of course. I'd imagine that narrowly edged out security, stability, access to medical care, and clean drinking water.
Like many information technologies, broadband access reduces the cost and increases the usefulness of basic utilities: Online security with encryption and properly-designed systems can be faster, more tamper-proof, and has better fraud-prevention than traditional security practices (such as checks). Access to medical care is also improved by Broadband access, allowing doctors to telecommute, and rapidly research and connect with collegues who may be in remote locations. Clean drinking water, even, can be helped by broadband access -- the distribution of knowledge on how to build low-cost water purification systems. For example... a clear glass bottle and a cotton filter can clean water from many sources because UV light can sanitize the water.
But if you live in the developing world, a UNCTAD report paints your picture pretty grim. Ridiculously high bandwidth costs are inhibiting developing nations from enjoying productive use of the internet -- like online banking and market tools.
Online banking and market tools does not need broadband. Also, productivity tools are not the main use of the internet, contrary to what many "industry analysts" would tell you. And lastly, the United States is not a single market. Increasingly large segments of this country have fallen to third-world status, and some of our states, if they were independent countries, would qualify for foreign aid from many countries. Especially those where industry has failed, such as Detroit, MI, or most of the southern states which continue to rely on federal tax dollars to subsidize public works projects because the infrastructure has either degraded or has not been built. Fights over water resources are intensifying in some states, for example.
The United States' is significantly behind even some so-called "third world" countries because our corporations have exclusive rights to the data pipes and they are placing more and more restrictions on them daily. There is an erroneous assumption that the market will pressure them to upgrade, or that it's lagging because of a recession, or regulatory costs, etc. Those things might even be true, but they are not the main reason broadband access in the United States is so pitiful: It's because of exclusive contracts with the municipalities and a very few large companies that own those licenses. With no competition, there has never been an incentive to invest in an upgrade. Therefore, while other countries enjoy a competitive atmosphere, the United States does not. We are being outpaced by countries which have state-owned utilities -- China, for example, has a significantly more advanced cell phone network than the United States, and its citizens pay less on average. It is a profit center for the government and upgrades are routinely planned and executed there.
Simply put, in the United States, broadband has stalled because we've combined all the problems with capitalism (monopolies, boom-bust cycles, etc.) with a state-owned system (slow/no growth, not cost effective). Since the dot com bubble burst, no new investment has been made in infrastructure. Some people on so-called "broadband" connections have been so rate-limited or bandwidth-limited that in some cases dialup or satellite provides a more attractive alternative by price-point.
If older prestige European countries are able to railroad the EU this way then what is the point for other less-prestigious members to stay?
"Hey... That's a pretty nice economy you got there. It would be a shame if something happened to it." /sad but true
...a provision adopted on two occasions by an 88% majority of the plenary assembly, and which aimed to protect citizens' right to Internet access.
European democracy, defined: 88% Majority beaten by %0.001 business owners.
the Linux graphics driver download rate is 0.5% that of their Windows driver downloads at NVIDIA.com
It is entirely possible that Windows users download their drivers much more often than Linux users.
Windows user: "Hey, do I need the x64, or the 32bit? What kind of card to I have? Just to be safe, I better download them all and see which one works. WHQL certified... or not? What's the difference? Let's download both and find out. Hey look, some beta drivers..."
Linux user: "apt-get...done. Because I built this f***er from the ground up and I'd lose some of my geek cred if I couldn't recite the serial number."
Sure the CEO can't tell anybody followed his suggestion, but how many people actually KNOW he can't?
How many? I can't give you a number, but I can say what they all would have in common: A lack of knowledge regarding the submissions process. It's all public record. A trip down to HR to cross-reference the list of names of those submitting comments to the FCC with those on file with the company would be all that's required.
So the solution here is to alter the statistical thresholds by injecting the database with data designed to catch random people's attentions and subject them to additional scrutiny. Maybe create a worm/bot that emulates a web browser and submits queries for words like bomb, president, allah, or whatever they're searching for. Fill their database with crap, and it'll become useless.
The only time the word "darkened" and the phrase "computer screen radiation" will be used together in a sentence. Only on /.
... or use the raw materials of our democracy.
I thought capitalism did a pretty good job of using us all.
Irony, def.: Executives for a company that makes microprocessors can't do math...
It doesn't become fact just because it spreads person to person. Anywhere else, that would be called a rumor. But when it spreads blog to blog, it's different? Just because it's being written down instead of spoken doesn't change the truthfulness of the statements.
They'll continue to make more and more draconian laws. In twenty years, they'll be threatening people with fifty years in the electric chair with a gerbil up their arse, and it will have done nothing to solve the problem. And between websites, new protocols, new control methods, demands to the ISPs, and all of that, the community will survive on shifting sands, always staying one step ahead of their pursuers because it takes time to legislate and administrate a response to what is inherently a social movement without any defined leaders or organizational structure. They cannot beat the economics of the situation, no matter how much technology or social control, or legal action they take: Which is that the cost of reproduction is effectively zero.
They will do everything they can to make distribution as expensive as possible, enforcing ludicrous bandwidth caps and trying to control the internet as much as they can. Eventually, it'll reach a critical point where the cost of forming a new decentralized network will become cheaper than continuing to use the old methods of communication, and the community will give birth to the successor to the internet. It's something of an irony that the internet was created on the ideas of free information exchange and ensuring that an open line of communication would always be possible between its participants turning into a profit-orientated tool by greedy corporations. But while they may someday succeed in control of the network, they will have done nothing to attack the ideals upon which it was originally built, and so long as those ideals live, it will continue to rematerialize like the goddamned phoenix, generation after generation, even as society claims to have no use for it.
But you really cant make the argument that they're preventing HDTV streaming.
Bandwidth cap is 250GB, regardless of upload/download speed or tier purchased. That's 170 hours of footage per month, assuming you don't use it for anything else. You aren't planning on using it for anything else... are you?
Now termination may be a bit harsh, but removal from front-line duties for those who refuse the vaccination seems more than reasonable to me.
Of course, nobody considers the risks to the health of those receiving the shot. It's contraindicated for certain people. Should they lose their jobs because they have a medical condition that makes getting the shot risky? People assume vaccines have no side effects. They do. Every medical procedure does.
But... "my body, my choice" apparently doesn't matter much anymore. We have police running around with syringes and if they find you in a motor vehicle they can forcibly stab you with it and take your body fluids -- because you could be drunk. Jobs and other priviledges of our society are now being withheld not only for what they can take out of you, but now -- what they can put into you.
Your body is the only thing you truly own in this world. Would you really give control of it up... for money?
...because it could take months to restore the data in a disaster.
It takes months to restore data from a box of harddrives? Sounds like a problem with the backup policy, not the technology.
It also appears to be a consumer problem -- the author spent three months replicating 1TB of home data via cable modem to an online backup service.
There's nothing technological preventing this from happening faster. Bandwidth limitations are artificial -- Comcast and most other cable service providers could easily provide fifty times more bandwidth to their customers, but they won't, because they're afraid you'll also use it for streaming HDTV and tell them to go stuff it with their ad-laden broadcast offerings.
There's a friggin LED in the middle.
Dude, what did you use to make that post, and what did I use to make this reply? I'm just curious... I mean, it's entirely possible you're a 7 line perl script. I have no way to prove it...
Well... typically you find the fault by using an application which stresses one of those components far more than any other and then seeing if the failure condition you're observing occurs more often. This is just basic troubleshooting, it's not even specific to computers.
Guys, you're missing a really big point here: The economics. The server license for Windows 2003 runs from $1,000--3,000. But the Client Access License runs about $40 per client. So the most expensive server license is worth the same as about 75 of these CALs. It's my understanding that if you want to use Linux to connect to a Windows server "legally" you'd have to buy one of those licenses. So even though the Linux server is free, each client still nets them $40 a pop.
But even if all that's wrong, my point is this: The protocols still need a license to be legally used. Microsoft is simply moving away from a revenue stream based on selling software to a revenue stream based on selling licenses.
I'd resign if anyone tried to tell me what to wear in the real world, never mind the virtual. I've never worked at a company with a dress code and I never will. Not because I have an aversion to looking smart, but because that kind of control is normally just the tip of the iceberg.
The golden rule: Those who have the gold, make the rules.
There's nothing in that where it says the rules have to make sense. Often, they don't. But the majority of jobs out there want it. You can skirt around it, but it'll cost you opportunities you'd otherwise have if you'd just get with the program. No, what you wear has no bearing on what's between your ears. Yet, curiously, it does have a bearing on the size of your paycheck.
It's like this: I could choose to dress in a provocative manner, but I'd be attracting a kind of attention I don't want. Likewise, how you dress says something about you as well. What message do you want to convey? Contrary to popular geek belief, clothes do more than just cover your body.