don't really care so much about how a woman looks on the exterior beyond the fact that she merely keeps herself in shape (e.g. bothers to workout enough that she doesn't gain copious amounts of weight)
That's such a loaded statement I think I'll just step around it and hope it doesn't detonate...
However, if that is the case, maybe you just don't like the men you are dating and need to meet different people?
I suppose shouting "dyke!" in a crowded internet forum would be bad form?
I think it's more ignorance. Of a fairly technical issue, at least for most people. A little bit of self-defensiveness there, I'm far less computer literate than most/. users and had no idea that WEP had been broken for 8 years.
Your education is your responsibility. It's assumed that if you're installing a wifi router, you will do your homework on how to set it up and read all the included documentation. Failing that, simply googling for "wifi router security FAQ" would provide this same information in short order. You're the owner and operator of that piece of equipment -- if you don't feel you can manage its installation and maintenance, hire someone who can. It's the same with anything else -- like your car. If your brakes go out because you didn't maintain them and you crash into another vehicle, you have only yourself to blame. It's not any different just because something's electronic.
In truth, the current state of affairs is about what anyone who has been following security news and publications for awhile would expect. There's been a rise in the level of networks that aren't "open", but instead encrypted in some fashion. That's because of the endless parade of articles about pedophiles using laptops and the FBI busting down innocent people's doors to find (da-dum!) the wifi router. So while people are very good at being afraid and then doing something vaguely rational about it, "smart" is one word I wouldn't use to describe the public's response. Most of them still use passwords. Many of them don't know the difference between WEP, WPA, and WPA2 and just set it to whatever option gives them the least amount of grief (Windows likes spit out key-length errors when using WPA -- usually because of an extra space at the end of the copied string)... Which is usually a simple password. So they use 0.008% of the available keyspace, breathe a sigh of relief, and then go to the store to buy duct tape and gas masks because CNN says it'll help keep the terrorists out.
Apparently it's really freaking hard for most guys, based on the difficulty many women seem to have in finding guys that meet those criteria.
I have difficulty finding my car keys in the morning. That says something about me, not the car keys. Last week I found them in the fridge, next to the butter. I guess my point here is that if you can't find something, that doesn't mean it's hiding from you or rare, it might just mean you're looking in the wrong place.
it's apparently also really freaking hard for many women to show the same level of respect for men's similarly simple expectations.
They aren't similarly simple. And don't use the "R" word -- it just leads to arguments. We have to live up to the "simple expectation" that we be beautiful and our bodies young, supple, well-rounded, etc. Do men? No. You'll never have to deal with going swimsuit shopping -- it ranks right up there with "Giving a public speech in front of the whole company" on most women's list of fears. Now I'm not trying to get you to grow a third eye here and suddenly understand the fairer sex here; I don't have to deal with wearing the same wardrobe my entire career, being expected to have a nice car, good job, and a high tolerance for alcohol. I'm just saying -- take a closer look at some of these expectations, and to pay close attention to how you're phrasing things, instead of just repeating them and moving on. Breaking out of that internal monologue of acting-reacting and trying to see things from other perspectives is a hard skill to develop but it'll serve you well in many areas of your life... especially when it comes to dealing with women.
That an ISP may prioritize services like VOIP over http or bittorrent is not what net neutrality is about and quite frankly is something that a good network engineer would look into and would probably implement.
QoS isn't a bad thing, but the user should be in control of it, not the ISP; Who's to say that encrypted packet doesn't need a low-latency link more than the unencrypted VoIP connection? The ISP doesn't know -- it has to guess based on protocol data that may or may not be accurate. But that's a lot more work to implement and so most ISPs won't do it...
We guys accept the duty of keeping things interesting
And that's half the problem. It's not supposed to be a duty, it's supposed to be something you do because you care about the other person.
There is very little less sexy to a guy than a chick that just wants to score a baby.
Most of my female friends would have less endearing things to say about that behavior.
I find the best way to remove a bra is to make sure that things are moving smoothly and then say, "Lose the bra". Beats even the 1-handed Fonzie-level-cool maneuver and, assuming that the environment is right, can actually warm things up.
Here's a girl tip: You can learn to take one off (and put one on, although the mental imagery here is frightening) by just going to the store, buying one, and then trying to clip/unclip it around your knee while sitting on the floor or bed. Bend your knee at about a 45 degree angle, and practice that way. You think it's easy for us? Please. And that Fonzie-level-cool maneuver -- my girlfriend can do that (even through clothes) and it's a nice treat. I still have to take hers off with both hands. *grumbles*
it's that they have access to the same page and the DOM elements in it and the data structures of the browser itself.
Well, if that isn't convincing enough, threads usually inherit the permissions of the process creating it. So multi-threading only manages to increase complexity, without improving security. Any exploit made in the child process/thread can use those permissions to access the parent. It's not even a privilege escalation attack, because no permissions are changed to do it. Sad. Very sad.
So we have a router that does stateful packet inspection and prioritizes traffic based on internal rules. Aren't we supposed to be against this? Because it sounds a lot to me like encrypted packets, UDP, and peer-to-peer, three things that certain well-funded groups have been trying to kill or restrict for awhile, would seem to be the worst-affected here.
Apple has always expounded that they have "guidelines", not "rules" or "laws" or "requirements".
Yes, and corporations repeatedly tell me they value my privacy, business, and happiness, so they install cameras everywhere, add hidden fees, and outsource customer service to countries where english is a second language and the most common word used in conversation with them is "what". What Apple says and what Apple does are two very different things. If it was all just a few guidelines, they wouldn't have such byzantine approvals processes for every piece of kit they make.
It builds on the concept of multiprocess browsing but uses more fine-grained isolation to expand on the security advantages that are already delivered by existing multiprocess browsing models.
That's a new definition of security of which I was previously unaware. Just about anyone who's spent five minutes trying to do multi-process, multi-thread, unsyncronized accesses, cloud, spin-locks, etc., will tell you that no, there are no inherent security advantages. It'll be less secure unless you make a dedicated effort from project start just to keep it on par with single-threaded. The only "advantage" it has is that when it fails it'll crash more slowly, with a wider variety of obscure error messages, hammering the operating system as it tanks with the extra overhead as it does so. Yes, it might be slightly harder to develop an exploit because it's not using a generic flaw, but some complicated and obscure flaw -- but that's not more secure; Only badly designed.
"The day that I, as a nontechnical software user, can meaningfully participate in an open-source project is the day that open source will truly have won."
You just did. Feedback from users is the lifeblood of the open source movement -- not programs and data. We listen. Our email addresses and online presence is right here. We don't hide behind departments and voicemail systems with irritating prompting systems. We'll come out for a beer with you if we're close. This isn't a corporation, this is a community. Several thousand people in the open source community just read what you had to say -- and thought about it.
You think you'll ever get that, however much you pay, for commercial software?
Having more people contribute with no clear guidance will just make things worse.
And overly-restrictive UI requirements will prevent the interface from ever evolving. No set of guidelines and standards can account for all possible applications and uses. So we will always need a testbed and ways to deviate from the standards; Apple would never allow that. Linux makes it optional. The community makes it recommended. The userbase reflects the demand for it.
Yeah, and? It's also been established that other male mammals, including humans, can reply with something call semen displacement (circumsized males need not apply, some restrictions may apply, see mate for full rules and details) Women aren't without their biological defenses either; Concealing ovulation, various vaginal defenses, such as lack of secretions leading to a lower likelihood of fertility, etc., etc.
But really people, is it so freaking hard to just take us out to dinner, kiss our neck afterwords in an intimate and quiet environment, and actually DO the foreplay (and for those in longer-term relationships, not have it become formulaic?) Because if the sex sucks, it isn't going to matter how much scientific knowledge you have about the mating process -- it doesn't change the fact that it will still end in tears for you! *mutters* They can tell me down to the molecular level how conception works, but they can't even get the damn condom out of the wrapper and a bra off without completely ruining it...
Why do we need a giant test facility to create what's out there already and is the final place these things will be operating in anyway?
a) To catch obvious design flaws early, b) To test the device over the entire range of possible operation, c) To provide a benchmark that remains static from one test to the next, d) To control all external variables so as to create a consistent frame of reference, e) To save a few bucks because it's really f----ing expensive to test every design as a full-scale prototype.... Or to pull a page from our own industry, what's wrong with the following statement: "It compiles, ship it!"
Slashdot's continuing trend to post stories late continues, with one now finally exiting the queue that came from 1983. And even then; The 1200xl was so horrible that people bought up its predecessor to avoid having to succumb to the evil. Someone quick, draw an analogy to the current Vista v. XP debacle as a distraction while I run away now!
Everything you know about creating life is wrong...
1. You need two parents.
False: cloning, X0 conception (Also called Turner syndrome).
2. The parents must be of the opposite sex.
False: Stem cell research can now create both eggs and sperm using DNA from another. DNA from a male can be inserted into an egg, and DNA from a female can be inserted into a sperm, although this has only been accomplished in a laboratory so far, and did not lead to viability.
3. You need a parent at all.
Partly true: Present technology cannot take a child from conception to birth without involvement of a female at some point during the maturation cycle. However, womb transplantation and IVF means that the question of which female is now open-ended.
they want their cake (electricity) and to eat it too (no sign of it's production anywhere). I happen to think wind turbines are pretty and the noise negligible.
Your attitude is more akin to puritan values that we have to suffer for every creature comfort. The truth is, no, we really don't have to suffer. I can, in fact, have electricity and not look at ugly giant rotating turbines, and it's more economical as well.
Wind power costs about 0.055 cents/kWh. Coal has been slowly rising and is about 0.03 cents/kWh right now. Wind power would be competitive with oil and gas plants -- if it were 1998. Today, it beats both answers. Here's the problem -- nuclear and coal are the only economical alternatives for base load plants, which handle 35-40% of the total electrical power generation in this country. Of the remainder, load-following and peak plants, wind power might be useful.
The issue is, wind power is needs a lot of space to operate. And for aesthetic reasons, they need to be placed in fairly remote locations away from urban centers, which reduces efficiency. There are other geographical restrictions as well -- namely that the wind source must be fairly reliable. Electricity generated on an industrial scale can't be stored (for the most part). The grid must be designed to meet peak power requirements -- which means if you deploy wind power, you need a backup as well (such as gas turbine) -- wind power isn't a replacement in the majority of cases; It's a cost-reducing add-on.
A kWh of wind power is the cost of that infrastructure plus maintenance costs of the backup gas turbine infrastructure, when operating. The economic result here is that deploying wind power to provide a cheaper supplement to existing gas turbine and oil peak plants is viable in a few markets. But such deployment will happen slowly, over many years, as the cost of maintaining existing infrastructure exceeds the cost of building and operating new infrastructure.
So the practical implication of this is that rocky planets are a lot more common than previously thought, or that we have a better explanation of how they're created, or... what? These are great photos, but what's the story here?
Comcast is another company whose commercials strike me as pure lies and misinformation based on a grain of truth
Well, the problem is they advertise "speed" and "availability", neither of which are really decent metrics. Speed is a crap metric because it's a scalar (math) quantity, and most often is measured by peak, rather than average, or worst-case. And "Availability" depends entirely on the service level agreement. If the power goes out, does that count toward availability? No, because "they" can't control it. Routine maintenance on their network? Nope. Lightning strike? Nah. So they can say almost whatever they want and get away with it because of some clever word-play. You'll be careful to note that in these endless commercials about high speed internet from any company they're careful to never put any number in it except the phone number to call. So it's not so much that they're lying -- it's really more that they're speaking sweet nothings, which is perfectly legal (and disingenuous).
Us geeks know that network performance isn't a scalar (math) quantity. Bigger numbers don't mean shit. It's the matrix of bandwidth (in bytes), latency (in milliseconds), packet loss (a percentage), all averaged over a long enough time-frame (hour, day, week, month, or billing cycle) to account for all systemic variables (bandwidth caps, network load averages, etc) is what matters.
I suppose you could derive from this information a weighted index, but it would still be largely useless to the average consumer. The problem is when you get down to brass tacks, different users have different needs. A heavy game player's internet needs will likely be low bandwidth, but low latency. A few milliseconds of extra time, or a few lost packets, will make that user's experience very poor. Someone who has an internet-TV has a large need for bandwidth, but latency is not an issue (even if the transfer is delayed by hours it might not matter). And then there's the little old grandma who doesn't do anything but check her e-mail and read CNN. If it wasn't for latency problems, she could be using a modem and never know the difference between either. Especially if she installed Vista -- god, network latency is nothing when it takes 8 seconds to render the downloaded page.
Comcast delivers an acceptable experience to a certain class of internet users and has crafted their service accordingly. The problem is that this service isn't tiered or can be adapted to serve several different markets. There is only one service, one market, and if you don't like it--you may not have any other options. Comcast is constrained by a need to maximize profitability, minimize costs, and is using an infrastructure which they are unwilling (or unable) to modify to deliver an acceptable experience to a larger user-base. There's no competition in most of its markets, and hence no reason to invest in doing so. The lack of competition ensures that Comcast's prices will continue to inflate while the number of customers who receive an acceptable experience will fall.
The bandwidth caps being imposed now are not the (direct) result of TV-over-internet competing with its internet offering, and instead the logical result of a lack of competition with its internet service. Any business in the same position and market(s) as Comcast would be doing the exact same thing, because Comcast doesn't exist to bring internet to the masses, so we can all celebrate the information age and live in peace, tranquility, and gigabytes of free porn. They exist to make money for their shareholders.
And the reason why service is shit in so many parts of this country isn't because of Evil BigCorp and their profiteering ways, but rather;
a) Infrastructure costs are a very high barrier to entry into the market. The United States is a big place with a low population density (taken as a whole) compared to other geographical regions like, say, Japan. The cost per customer is higher because there's a lot more wire and
LOS will be lost in most of any downtown urban region. Tall skyscrapers eat signals, film at 11. And under bridges. Or inside. Anything beamed from geosyncronous orbit's going to be very weak. How do you think it'll work reaching into a staircase in a 50 story skyscraper? Or in a grocery store? S-Band is the same band WiFi uses, and you need a pringles can to get more than a mile. What do you think the signal attenuation's going to be on something 26,200 miles away? O.o
Yeah. Ground based relay stations. You're gonna need 'em.
Slashdot Mirror
Dumb question here, but why not look up the tax returns they've filed with the IRS?
don't really care so much about how a woman looks on the exterior beyond the fact that she merely keeps herself in shape (e.g. bothers to workout enough that she doesn't gain copious amounts of weight)
That's such a loaded statement I think I'll just step around it and hope it doesn't detonate...
However, if that is the case, maybe you just don't like the men you are dating and need to meet different people?
I suppose shouting "dyke!" in a crowded internet forum would be bad form?
OK - mod-bomb me. I can't even fathom how this post relates to TFA =). Again - WTF is this discussion doing on slashdot?!?
You're a geek and you're asking how topic drift happens. Dude. ;)
I think it's more ignorance. Of a fairly technical issue, at least for most people. A little bit of self-defensiveness there, I'm far less computer literate than most /. users and had no idea that WEP had been broken for 8 years.
Your education is your responsibility. It's assumed that if you're installing a wifi router, you will do your homework on how to set it up and read all the included documentation. Failing that, simply googling for "wifi router security FAQ" would provide this same information in short order. You're the owner and operator of that piece of equipment -- if you don't feel you can manage its installation and maintenance, hire someone who can. It's the same with anything else -- like your car. If your brakes go out because you didn't maintain them and you crash into another vehicle, you have only yourself to blame. It's not any different just because something's electronic.
And for that matter, you're in a insecure place connecting via some random network. Its just stupid.
But very convenient. You'd be surprised how much Stupid you can get for Convenience.
In truth, the current state of affairs is about what anyone who has been following security news and publications for awhile would expect. There's been a rise in the level of networks that aren't "open", but instead encrypted in some fashion. That's because of the endless parade of articles about pedophiles using laptops and the FBI busting down innocent people's doors to find (da-dum!) the wifi router. So while people are very good at being afraid and then doing something vaguely rational about it, "smart" is one word I wouldn't use to describe the public's response. Most of them still use passwords. Many of them don't know the difference between WEP, WPA, and WPA2 and just set it to whatever option gives them the least amount of grief (Windows likes spit out key-length errors when using WPA -- usually because of an extra space at the end of the copied string)... Which is usually a simple password. So they use 0.008% of the available keyspace, breathe a sigh of relief, and then go to the store to buy duct tape and gas masks because CNN says it'll help keep the terrorists out.
Apparently it's really freaking hard for most guys, based on the difficulty many women seem to have in finding guys that meet those criteria.
I have difficulty finding my car keys in the morning. That says something about me, not the car keys. Last week I found them in the fridge, next to the butter. I guess my point here is that if you can't find something, that doesn't mean it's hiding from you or rare, it might just mean you're looking in the wrong place.
it's apparently also really freaking hard for many women to show the same level of respect for men's similarly simple expectations.
They aren't similarly simple. And don't use the "R" word -- it just leads to arguments. We have to live up to the "simple expectation" that we be beautiful and our bodies young, supple, well-rounded, etc. Do men? No. You'll never have to deal with going swimsuit shopping -- it ranks right up there with "Giving a public speech in front of the whole company" on most women's list of fears. Now I'm not trying to get you to grow a third eye here and suddenly understand the fairer sex here; I don't have to deal with wearing the same wardrobe my entire career, being expected to have a nice car, good job, and a high tolerance for alcohol. I'm just saying -- take a closer look at some of these expectations, and to pay close attention to how you're phrasing things, instead of just repeating them and moving on. Breaking out of that internal monologue of acting-reacting and trying to see things from other perspectives is a hard skill to develop but it'll serve you well in many areas of your life... especially when it comes to dealing with women.
That an ISP may prioritize services like VOIP over http or bittorrent is not what net neutrality is about and quite frankly is something that a good network engineer would look into and would probably implement.
QoS isn't a bad thing, but the user should be in control of it, not the ISP; Who's to say that encrypted packet doesn't need a low-latency link more than the unencrypted VoIP connection? The ISP doesn't know -- it has to guess based on protocol data that may or may not be accurate. But that's a lot more work to implement and so most ISPs won't do it...
We guys accept the duty of keeping things interesting
And that's half the problem. It's not supposed to be a duty, it's supposed to be something you do because you care about the other person.
There is very little less sexy to a guy than a chick that just wants to score a baby.
Most of my female friends would have less endearing things to say about that behavior.
I find the best way to remove a bra is to make sure that things are moving smoothly and then say, "Lose the bra". Beats even the 1-handed Fonzie-level-cool maneuver and, assuming that the environment is right, can actually warm things up.
Here's a girl tip: You can learn to take one off (and put one on, although the mental imagery here is frightening) by just going to the store, buying one, and then trying to clip/unclip it around your knee while sitting on the floor or bed. Bend your knee at about a 45 degree angle, and practice that way. You think it's easy for us? Please. And that Fonzie-level-cool maneuver -- my girlfriend can do that (even through clothes) and it's a nice treat. I still have to take hers off with both hands. *grumbles*
it's that they have access to the same page and the DOM elements in it and the data structures of the browser itself.
Well, if that isn't convincing enough, threads usually inherit the permissions of the process creating it. So multi-threading only manages to increase complexity, without improving security. Any exploit made in the child process/thread can use those permissions to access the parent. It's not even a privilege escalation attack, because no permissions are changed to do it. Sad. Very sad.
So we have a router that does stateful packet inspection and prioritizes traffic based on internal rules. Aren't we supposed to be against this? Because it sounds a lot to me like encrypted packets, UDP, and peer-to-peer, three things that certain well-funded groups have been trying to kill or restrict for awhile, would seem to be the worst-affected here.
Apple has always expounded that they have "guidelines", not "rules" or "laws" or "requirements".
Yes, and corporations repeatedly tell me they value my privacy, business, and happiness, so they install cameras everywhere, add hidden fees, and outsource customer service to countries where english is a second language and the most common word used in conversation with them is "what". What Apple says and what Apple does are two very different things. If it was all just a few guidelines, they wouldn't have such byzantine approvals processes for every piece of kit they make.
It builds on the concept of multiprocess browsing but uses more fine-grained isolation to expand on the security advantages that are already delivered by existing multiprocess browsing models.
That's a new definition of security of which I was previously unaware. Just about anyone who's spent five minutes trying to do multi-process, multi-thread, unsyncronized accesses, cloud, spin-locks, etc., will tell you that no, there are no inherent security advantages. It'll be less secure unless you make a dedicated effort from project start just to keep it on par with single-threaded. The only "advantage" it has is that when it fails it'll crash more slowly, with a wider variety of obscure error messages, hammering the operating system as it tanks with the extra overhead as it does so. Yes, it might be slightly harder to develop an exploit because it's not using a generic flaw, but some complicated and obscure flaw -- but that's not more secure; Only badly designed.
"The day that I, as a nontechnical software user, can meaningfully participate in an open-source project is the day that open source will truly have won."
You just did. Feedback from users is the lifeblood of the open source movement -- not programs and data. We listen. Our email addresses and online presence is right here. We don't hide behind departments and voicemail systems with irritating prompting systems. We'll come out for a beer with you if we're close. This isn't a corporation, this is a community. Several thousand people in the open source community just read what you had to say -- and thought about it.
You think you'll ever get that, however much you pay, for commercial software?
Having more people contribute with no clear guidance will just make things worse.
And overly-restrictive UI requirements will prevent the interface from ever evolving. No set of guidelines and standards can account for all possible applications and uses. So we will always need a testbed and ways to deviate from the standards; Apple would never allow that. Linux makes it optional. The community makes it recommended. The userbase reflects the demand for it.
Yeah, and? It's also been established that other male mammals, including humans, can reply with something call semen displacement (circumsized males need not apply, some restrictions may apply, see mate for full rules and details) Women aren't without their biological defenses either; Concealing ovulation, various vaginal defenses, such as lack of secretions leading to a lower likelihood of fertility, etc., etc.
But really people, is it so freaking hard to just take us out to dinner, kiss our neck afterwords in an intimate and quiet environment, and actually DO the foreplay (and for those in longer-term relationships, not have it become formulaic?) Because if the sex sucks, it isn't going to matter how much scientific knowledge you have about the mating process -- it doesn't change the fact that it will still end in tears for you! *mutters* They can tell me down to the molecular level how conception works, but they can't even get the damn condom out of the wrapper and a bra off without completely ruining it...
Wind IS a base load replacement.
*blink* The respondent is a moron.
Why do we need a giant test facility to create what's out there already and is the final place these things will be operating in anyway?
a) To catch obvious design flaws early, ... Or to pull a page from our own industry, what's wrong with the following statement: "It compiles, ship it!"
b) To test the device over the entire range of possible operation,
c) To provide a benchmark that remains static from one test to the next,
d) To control all external variables so as to create a consistent frame of reference,
e) To save a few bucks because it's really f----ing expensive to test every design as a full-scale prototype.
Slashdot's continuing trend to post stories late continues, with one now finally exiting the queue that came from 1983. And even then; The 1200xl was so horrible that people bought up its predecessor to avoid having to succumb to the evil. Someone quick, draw an analogy to the current Vista v. XP debacle as a distraction while I run away now!
Everything you know about creating life is wrong...
1. You need two parents.
False: cloning, X0 conception (Also called Turner syndrome).
2. The parents must be of the opposite sex.
False: Stem cell research can now create both eggs and sperm using DNA from another. DNA from a male can be inserted into an egg, and DNA from a female can be inserted into a sperm, although this has only been accomplished in a laboratory so far, and did not lead to viability.
3. You need a parent at all.
Partly true: Present technology cannot take a child from conception to birth without involvement of a female at some point during the maturation cycle. However, womb transplantation and IVF means that the question of which female is now open-ended.
they want their cake (electricity) and to eat it too (no sign of it's production anywhere). I happen to think wind turbines are pretty and the noise negligible.
Your attitude is more akin to puritan values that we have to suffer for every creature comfort. The truth is, no, we really don't have to suffer. I can, in fact, have electricity and not look at ugly giant rotating turbines, and it's more economical as well.
Wind power costs about 0.055 cents/kWh. Coal has been slowly rising and is about 0.03 cents/kWh right now. Wind power would be competitive with oil and gas plants -- if it were 1998. Today, it beats both answers. Here's the problem -- nuclear and coal are the only economical alternatives for base load plants, which handle 35-40% of the total electrical power generation in this country. Of the remainder, load-following and peak plants, wind power might be useful.
The issue is, wind power is needs a lot of space to operate. And for aesthetic reasons, they need to be placed in fairly remote locations away from urban centers, which reduces efficiency. There are other geographical restrictions as well -- namely that the wind source must be fairly reliable. Electricity generated on an industrial scale can't be stored (for the most part). The grid must be designed to meet peak power requirements -- which means if you deploy wind power, you need a backup as well (such as gas turbine) -- wind power isn't a replacement in the majority of cases; It's a cost-reducing add-on.
A kWh of wind power is the cost of that infrastructure plus maintenance costs of the backup gas turbine infrastructure, when operating. The economic result here is that deploying wind power to provide a cheaper supplement to existing gas turbine and oil peak plants is viable in a few markets. But such deployment will happen slowly, over many years, as the cost of maintaining existing infrastructure exceeds the cost of building and operating new infrastructure.
So the practical implication of this is that rocky planets are a lot more common than previously thought, or that we have a better explanation of how they're created, or... what? These are great photos, but what's the story here?
Comcast is another company whose commercials strike me as pure lies and misinformation based on a grain of truth
Well, the problem is they advertise "speed" and "availability", neither of which are really decent metrics. Speed is a crap metric because it's a scalar (math) quantity, and most often is measured by peak, rather than average, or worst-case. And "Availability" depends entirely on the service level agreement. If the power goes out, does that count toward availability? No, because "they" can't control it. Routine maintenance on their network? Nope. Lightning strike? Nah. So they can say almost whatever they want and get away with it because of some clever word-play. You'll be careful to note that in these endless commercials about high speed internet from any company they're careful to never put any number in it except the phone number to call. So it's not so much that they're lying -- it's really more that they're speaking sweet nothings, which is perfectly legal (and disingenuous).
Us geeks know that network performance isn't a scalar (math) quantity. Bigger numbers don't mean shit. It's the matrix of bandwidth (in bytes), latency (in milliseconds), packet loss (a percentage), all averaged over a long enough time-frame (hour, day, week, month, or billing cycle) to account for all systemic variables (bandwidth caps, network load averages, etc) is what matters.
I suppose you could derive from this information a weighted index, but it would still be largely useless to the average consumer. The problem is when you get down to brass tacks, different users have different needs. A heavy game player's internet needs will likely be low bandwidth, but low latency. A few milliseconds of extra time, or a few lost packets, will make that user's experience very poor. Someone who has an internet-TV has a large need for bandwidth, but latency is not an issue (even if the transfer is delayed by hours it might not matter). And then there's the little old grandma who doesn't do anything but check her e-mail and read CNN. If it wasn't for latency problems, she could be using a modem and never know the difference between either. Especially if she installed Vista -- god, network latency is nothing when it takes 8 seconds to render the downloaded page.
Comcast delivers an acceptable experience to a certain class of internet users and has crafted their service accordingly. The problem is that this service isn't tiered or can be adapted to serve several different markets. There is only one service, one market, and if you don't like it--you may not have any other options. Comcast is constrained by a need to maximize profitability, minimize costs, and is using an infrastructure which they are unwilling (or unable) to modify to deliver an acceptable experience to a larger user-base. There's no competition in most of its markets, and hence no reason to invest in doing so. The lack of competition ensures that Comcast's prices will continue to inflate while the number of customers who receive an acceptable experience will fall.
The bandwidth caps being imposed now are not the (direct) result of TV-over-internet competing with its internet offering, and instead the logical result of a lack of competition with its internet service. Any business in the same position and market(s) as Comcast would be doing the exact same thing, because Comcast doesn't exist to bring internet to the masses, so we can all celebrate the information age and live in peace, tranquility, and gigabytes of free porn. They exist to make money for their shareholders.
And the reason why service is shit in so many parts of this country isn't because of Evil BigCorp and their profiteering ways, but rather;
a) Infrastructure costs are a very high barrier to entry into the market. The United States is a big place with a low population density (taken as a whole) compared to other geographical regions like, say, Japan. The cost per customer is higher because there's a lot more wire and
LOS will be lost in most of any downtown urban region. Tall skyscrapers eat signals, film at 11. And under bridges. Or inside. Anything beamed from geosyncronous orbit's going to be very weak. How do you think it'll work reaching into a staircase in a 50 story skyscraper? Or in a grocery store? S-Band is the same band WiFi uses, and you need a pringles can to get more than a mile. What do you think the signal attenuation's going to be on something 26,200 miles away? O.o
Yeah. Ground based relay stations. You're gonna need 'em.