Following the links at Multicans.org took me to:
The US National Security Agency's DOCKMASTER machine was shut down in March, 1998, after repeated extensions. The hardware from this site, except for the hard drives, was given to the National Cryptologic Museum, which in turn loaned it permanently to the Computer Museum History Center in Mountain View, California
hope this helps
Speedchoice had 2-way Satelite ISP access deployed a year and a half ago in Phoenix.
There were two options; you could have a satelite downlink and a phone uplink or satelite both way.
The uplink via satelite was a bit choppy, but when it connected it was very fast. I believe it was a 10mbs channel each way.
Alas, Speedchoice was purchased by Sprint, which has truly ridiculous terms of service, and discontinued the satelite in favor of their microwave crap.
I have a few clients who still are using the Speedchoice equipment - Sprint didn't turn them off - but I don't think Sprint is selling new orders for satelite.
In the future, we all work for Microsoft...
on
A Letter from 2020
·
· Score: 1
Does this mean that we get M$ stock options at birth?
This article is silly. Al Gore would never let this happen - oh, wait, he DID put the Internet for sale on eBay, so I guess anything is possible.
Yes, many people ask, "Why do they load so much crap on there?" I have heard horror stories of Pavilions coming out of the box, brand spanking new, with 63% resources free because so much crap is loading at startup.
Simply put, the marketing weenies do their research, and ask people, "Do you want free this, this and that on your PC, would it make it more likely that you will buy it?" Joe consumer says, "duh! yes!" HP goes to Big Software Company and says, "Please give us a "lite" version of your latest bloat to put on your system to get your name out there & encourage people to upgrade!"
Big Software Company says (most but not all of the time), "Sure, but only if you make it load at start up so people see it!"
HP, of course, pauses about 1 millisecond and says, "OK! Where do we sign?"
The same goes for Dell, Gateway, etc. Lately, some of them seem to be better. Dell, Gateway & HP I *THINK* allow you to have some input.
BTW, an HP tech just told me that now the tatoo is ONLY on the motherboard, the HDD tatoo is no longer used on the currently shipping systems.
No kidding. It's a normal HDD, and a normal Asus board but with customized BIOS code. The tatoo is software, written in a sector of the HDD & portion of the BIOS that I cannot remember the address for at the moment. As for where I heard it, perhaps it was my HP Technician training class? Or maybe it was in the HP service center I worked in? (I am no longer affiliated with HP, thank God. Great high-end stuff, but their low end stuff is crap, and now with the M$ licensing garbage I can no longer recommend ANY HP desktop). I once had the misfortune of supporting the Pavilion
Tell you what. Don't believe? I assume you have a stock Pavilion. Use another HDD, and image your drive to the blank HDD. Then, take a third HDD, from a non-HP computer, and atttempt to boot from the recovery CD in the CD-ROM, selecting the "Full system restore" option. Odds are, it will say something like "This only works on an HP computer." (I say "odds are" because there are a few systems that did not have this "feature".)
And, oh yes, "one license is all you get?" Fine. That's part of the whole model. But I should NOT have to pay extra money if I want to upgrade my harddrive.
With the recovery disks, you can reimage your system. A non-destructive reinstall of Windows is much more difficult.
Obviously, you have the luxury of playing with your own toys. I, on the other hand, have to help consumers who are finding out that their copies of Windows are now useless without some form of hacking if they dare to upgrade their hard drives.
No, I am a person who is technically competent enough to understand the issues and build my own systems (and systems for clients) yet still be concerned for those without the funds to buy my systems (I build using high-quality, brand name parts) or otherwise lacking technical sophistication.
And, the tatooing movement has now moved to the corporate desktop as well. I have my own consulting company, but until recently I advised people to buy brand-name computers. The profit margin is not high enough for me to focus my resources on system builds.
However, the latest Microsoft crap has made me rethink that, and I am now actively building (or subcontracting out, depending on the order size) systems again, because I cannot in good faith recommend purchase of the latest crippled machines.
I generally find that those who are the most arrogant are the least experienced.
This is a copy of an email I sent to someone about this issue:
I saw your post on Slashdot, and noticed that you thought the FC auction was a stunt - I checked in at the bidding, too, saw it was up to 5 million, and the high bidder's name was gad-something. After the auction was pulled, I saw several independent news stories that pointed out that they actually interviewed several of the last high bidders, and they turned out to be college students playing jokes & the like (they are subsequently getting their eBay accounts revoked, I think). Anyhow, I suspect Pud just lost track of which bids were legitimate & which weren't & didn't feel like tracking them all down. He was quoted on cnet.com (I think it was cnet) as saying, "I thought it'd be easier to just do it through eBay instead of spending hours in talks" - apparently, he thought that all the bids would be legitimate and the number of fake bids blew his tolerance.
I suggest that if you are seriously interested in buying the website, go to the FC home page, and click on the "this website for sale" link. He has more info there.
This sounds similar to the practice that HP & some otehr vendors have been following for years, and which is now REQUIRED by Microsoft if you're one of the top ten or so OEM's.
An HP Pavilion HDD has a "tatoo" in a section of the hard drive that can only be reached by debug scripts and the like. FDISK can't touch it. "Recovery" disks look for the HDD tatoo & and the BIOS tatoo and if they don't find it, they will not install. This means if you have one of these types of systems, you need to take your system to an OEM-approved "service center" and they will run the script to make your new hard drive able to function with the recovery disk should you buy a new hard drive.
Some OEM's (notably HP) used to foist this travesty on consumers in return for cheaper licensing for their protection payments to Microsoft for Windows. Now, this is REQUIRED by M$ on all new system.
The solution, of course, is refusing to by OEM systems that have "recovery disks". Use Linux, BSD, ANYTHING, or if you MUST use Windows, by from a smaller OEM which will still give you a genuine Windows OEM CD - the big boys are now PROHIBITED by M$ from distributing Windows CD's, they can only distribute "image" CD's.
I'm sure there's disgruntled techs out there somewhere who have the debug routines to duplicate the tatoos, or a good assembly language hacker can do it. Of course, who wants all the crap the major OEM's load up anyways?
By suddenly approving a patent that they've sat on for 67 years, does this mean that the government is claiming an exclusive, non-reproducable right to use the technology described in the patent?
In other words, since the US Government is the owner of the patent, do they claim to have control over any form of crypto based on it?
Or is this just the results of a routine declassification review? Maybe the guy or his heirs (assuming he's dead, he's gotta be pushing 100 if he was a boy genius) just wanted some credt?
Not only is this guy an idiot, he's a crappy writer, too. I actually stumbled through "I sing thge Body Electronic" a few months back - it's one of the worst books I've ever read. It's the ONLY book related to the history of computers that I've ever judged so worthless that I threw it away. Usually I'm reluctant to throw books about events in the computer industry away because there's always interesting perspectives in them - but this book was just plain BORING and POINTLESS.
I have arranged to buy one of these shirts. I will send certified mail to the MPAA advising them of my intention to wear it. I have arranged for pro bono legal counsel to represent me should the MPAA attempt action against me.
I know how to protect myself with crypto, but a lot of other people do not. These people, ignorant as they may be, have rights to privacy as well. Information, as we all know, is power. The FBI has a track record of using governmental power to gather intelligence on political organizations that it either does not like or that it is told to investigate (see COINTELPRO, Watergate, etc - it's CONGRESS that found this out, not way-out paranoid freaks). I don't like knowing that the course of political events can be influenced using illegally obtained knowledge - which the FBI, beyond any doubt, has done before many times. This is why carnivore is scary. If the FBI was a person instead of an organization there would be sufficent evidence to send that person to jail for a very long time - and giving that person unlimited, unmonitored access to anything it wants (oh, you can trust me, I have a court order, I just won't tell you how I'm using it) is the height of stupidity.
This is disturbing because it's attempt by NetSol to booster the argument that THEY own domain names that are registered with them. Several registrars make it a point to say that YOU own the rights to the domain name; NetSol has recently announced (as described on Slashdot) that it considers itself the owner of domain names that are registered with it and that they have the right to yank the name for any reason. Think about it. When a name expires, it should be delisted and become available again. Instead, without paying any revenue to anyone, NetSol is retaining the domain in its database (asserting "ownership") and then selling it. This is a dramatic difference from collecting a fee from someone who thinks up a domain name and wants to register it - remember, domain names used to be free, and what was initially posed as a "token payment" to prevent people from registering frivolous domain names has turned into a multi-million dollar business. NetSol does NOT own domain names, they should be required to stick to registering requests and nothing else. However, they are refusing to grasp the limited role that was originally envisioned for them and are seeking to take ownership of any name registered with them. Note also that they do NOT offer an option to transfer the name to another registry authority... This is a biggie.
I once thought about getting Flashcom. Do a search on Slashdot for Flashcom, and you'll see why I didn't I have NEVER in my life seen a company as small and as new as Flashcom rack up so many complaints in such a short time. The horror tales of being unable to get anyone on the phone (except for salespeople) for weeks at a time would have been enough to scare me off if there hadn't been the ridiculous long contracts they want you to sign - and the "random billing" of credit cards that Flashcom is known for. I have a moral issue with using phone companies for ISP's. Here in Arizona, US West is busy letting rural telephone customers languish in a limbo of bad service, long repair delays, and frequent outages - while at the same time they throw tons of money upgrading the infrastructure in the cities. Yeah, that's where the money is, but they ARE a monopoly - we theoretically have competition for telcos in AZ but in practice very few companies survive the barrage of lawsuits US West files to anyone who dares to enter the market. This could be why they're being sued by class action lawsuits in both Denver and Arizona. US West has unlimited phone lines, and undercuts regular ISP's by about 50% (US West Internet is about $10-$15/ month for dial up). Their DSL service is not bad, but it bothers me to give them more power. Dancris Internet in Phoenix is pretty good - one nice thing about them is that if there's a problem with the DSL line, they'll call the phone company up and argue with them so that you don't have to. I guess this has been kind of rambling, but the point is, don't judge DSL ISP's by Flashcom's behavior - if you do the research, you'll see that Flashcom is not really a reputable company.
I was at a Microsoft TechNet seminar today, and the guy giving the presentation made a big deal about how Kerobos was an open standard, blah blah blah - and then he stated that MS had made a few "enhancements" and had published them not only on the web, but as RFC's! Now, I don't understand how someone could simultaneously propose an "enhancement" to an open, tax-payer funded standard as a Request For Comment and at the exact same time claim that it is a trade secret... This material is NOT a trade secret, is NOT "protected", but is public information. For what it's worth, the M$ guys at the technet thing seemed kind of embarassed by the lunacy of their legal department on this issue. They certainly wouldn't happy about talking about it.
without reading the appendix that Richard Feynman wrote to the report of the 1986 Challenger explosion. Feynman goes into some detail about the guidelines of testing & debugging that the programmers have to follow, and his reasoning on why the computers (as of 1986) needed to be upgraded. He also talks about the manual landing button for the gear, etc. It's interesting to read about how NASA management, before the Challenger disaster, was trying to get the programmers to do less testing because "it's too expensive and we never seem to have problems." A far more detailed description of Feynman's investigation (along with the appendix itself) can be found in Feynman's book, "What do you care what Other People Think?", published shortly after his death.
I concur. Most people don't realize this, but Eric Drexler, the main person promoting nanotech, briefed Al Gore in a private audiance about the possibilities of nanotech years ago, as described in his second book, Unbounding the Future.
I love the idea of nanotechnology. I love the idea of limitless resources, perhaps using hydrogen fuel to generate elecrtic power, and nano to do our manufacturing and medical care. I'm not too terribly worried about a nano-war, as it is much easier to destroy than create and agressive nanotechnology assembers would have to create duplicates of themselves as they went along, giving the defenders the advantage. I *AM* scared of the "government", i.e., a totally closed environment developing nano, because I just know the elitist fools in power will decide that nano is too much power for the masses. Granted, the societial change caused by genuine working nano-assemblers would be dramatic. Barring assine copyright stupidity, etc, material goods of all sorts will be next to nothing. Who cares that China can build stuff now with their manufacturing capability? Nanotech will eliminate that nasty problem. But what will happen when everyone who wants one can have, say, a jet airplane? Talk about congestion.. But I digress. I'm afraid of nano being invented in a closed government lab, only to be repressed, and then false stuff planted in the scientific literature to persuade everyone else in the world that nano is unfeasable. Unbelievable? I don't know. I don't know if the authorities would ever be able to cope with the people having that much power. And, there's not too many businesses I'd trust with nano either. Therefore, I propose creating a new company to develop nano, with the following setup: 1. Clone Richard Feynman. Feynman, arguably the second most intelligent man of the century (we all know that Dennis Miller is the first)was the first to propose nano...and then sort of made fun of it, even going so far as to critize Drexler for "wasting your time on this nano stuff when there's more interesting things out there." Oh, come on. Feynman worked on the Manhattan Project. He knew you can't stop science, he also knew that maybe we weren't quite ready for nano...so he sort of trivialized it in the hopes of not encouraging nano research until we as a race were a bit better. Anyhow, we'll make Feynman the CEO of our private little company, but we gotta clone him 'cause he's been dead for like 13 years. 2. Make Steve Wozniak Head of Research. 3. Bring Steve Case in as head of Marketing. Yes, we all know that AOL is the work of Satan (the demonic entity, not the Unix tool), not Steve Case, but still, the guy knows how to market stuff. 4. Bring in Jessie Ventura as Head Lobbyist. Congress will think the nano movement is a bunch of nutcases, and consequently not bother passing a bunch of stupid laws regulating nano. (although I will concede that if any a technology needed intelligent regulation, it's nano - which can be both an incredibly liberating and incredibly oppressing technology) 5. Give Paul Allen a job at the company, because he needs one. 6. Give Linus Torvalds a job at the same company, for the same reason. Laptops that can last for a day on a 9-bolt battery? Who cares! We want laptops that can build themselves, and then eat their surroundings and turn into pepperoni pizzas when they're done! 7. Appoint Hedy Lamarr head of PR. Sure, she's dead, but she's also quite nice to look at on camera, sassy enough not to take crap from reporters, and she understands technology. Plus, she might mate with Linus and they can father beatiful nerd children. We'll just have to go to backup and find a Hedy from, say, circa 1940. 8. Bomb Seattle. Sure, it won't help advance nanotechnology any, but it'll prevent Microsoft from trying to acquire the rights. 9. Put Drexler to work in a lab, supervising a bunch of biologists trying to make protein structures that can be altered and a bunch of geeks with scanning tunneling microscopes. One of the groups will make an assembler. Feed both groups regularly with beer and cheeze puffs. 10. Hire a bunch of patent lawyers and feed them raw meat, and take away their sexual partners. This should also produce results.
There we go. If these steps are taken, I am confident that we shall have free nanotechology soon, live forever, and be happy.
(original post was in the wrong place) I've read a ton of stuff on the debate about SCSI vs IDE...and I've seen some people comment on how "SCSI seems to last longer" and I've seen other people comment on how "SCSI can handle multiple requests better"...but I must confess, it took an electrical enginneer to explain to me the reason that SCSI blows IDE away in servers, and always will: Let's start with the fact that most SCSI & IDE drives are identical in the hardware, it's the logic board that's usually different. Both the SCSI drive and the IDE drive have the same MTBF. Which drive is going to fail first in a server? The IDE will, every time -- BECAUSE IT WORKS HARDER, and RUNS MORE. SCSI's ability to get multiple packets of data means the moving parts of the drive don't have to work as hard as the IDE drive, which is sending the head flying over the platter for every little bit. Result? Two servers, same workload, one with an IDE drive, one with a SCSI, both drives have the same MTBF...but the IDE drive is chugging away to exhaustion while the SCSI drive caches some of the data it needs and is not working nearly as hard. This is why the speed debate is useless as applied to servers. In a desktop? Sure, IDE has its advantages, and big speed is always nice. But in a server in a business environment with a heavy workload, time is the value, and downtime costs -- and that IDE drive is GOING to fail because it's working 10 times as hard as the SCSI drive is to get the same data. Now, if someone can just explain why it costs so much more. I am inclined to agree with the previous poster who said that the hard drive companies just milk the "business market" but I have no real facts to base that on
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Following the links at Multicans.org took me to: The US National Security Agency's DOCKMASTER machine was shut down in March, 1998, after repeated extensions. The hardware from this site, except for the hard drives, was given to the National Cryptologic Museum, which in turn loaned it permanently to the Computer Museum History Center in Mountain View, California
hope this helps
Speedchoice had 2-way Satelite ISP access deployed a year and a half ago in Phoenix.
There were two options; you could have a satelite downlink and a phone uplink or satelite both way.
The uplink via satelite was a bit choppy, but when it connected it was very fast. I believe it was a 10mbs channel each way.
Alas, Speedchoice was purchased by Sprint, which has truly ridiculous terms of service, and discontinued the satelite in favor of their microwave crap.
I have a few clients who still are using the Speedchoice equipment - Sprint didn't turn them off - but I don't think Sprint is selling new orders for satelite.
Does this mean that we get M$ stock options at birth?
This article is silly. Al Gore would never let this happen - oh, wait, he DID put the Internet for sale on eBay, so I guess anything is possible.
Yes, many people ask, "Why do they load so much crap on there?"
I have heard horror stories of Pavilions coming out of the box, brand spanking new, with 63% resources free because so much crap is loading at startup.
Simply put, the marketing weenies do their research, and ask people, "Do you want free this, this and that on your PC, would it make it more likely that you will buy it?"
Joe consumer says, "duh! yes!"
HP goes to Big Software Company and says, "Please give us a "lite" version of your latest bloat to put on your system to get your name out there & encourage people to upgrade!"
Big Software Company says (most but not all of the time), "Sure, but only if you make it load at start up so people see it!"
HP, of course, pauses about 1 millisecond and says, "OK! Where do we sign?"
The same goes for Dell, Gateway, etc. Lately, some of them seem to be better. Dell, Gateway & HP I *THINK* allow you to have some input. BTW, an HP tech just told me that now the tatoo is ONLY on the motherboard, the HDD tatoo is no longer used on the currently shipping systems.
No kidding. It's a normal HDD, and a normal Asus board but with customized BIOS code. The tatoo is software, written in a sector of the HDD & portion of the BIOS that I cannot remember the address for at the moment. As for where I heard it, perhaps it was my HP Technician training class? Or maybe it was in the HP service center I worked in?
(I am no longer affiliated with HP, thank God. Great high-end stuff, but their low end stuff is crap, and now with the M$ licensing garbage I can no longer recommend ANY HP desktop). I once had the misfortune of supporting the Pavilion
Tell you what. Don't believe? I assume you have a stock Pavilion. Use another HDD, and image your drive to the blank HDD. Then, take a third HDD, from a non-HP computer, and atttempt to boot from the recovery CD in the CD-ROM, selecting the "Full system restore" option. Odds are, it will say something like "This only works on an HP computer." (I say "odds are" because there are a few systems that did not have this "feature".)
And, oh yes, "one license is all you get?" Fine. That's part of the whole model. But I should NOT have to pay extra money if I want to upgrade my harddrive.
With the recovery disks, you can reimage your system. A non-destructive reinstall of Windows is much more difficult.
Obviously, you have the luxury of playing with your own toys. I, on the other hand, have to help consumers who are finding out that their copies of Windows are now useless without some form of hacking if they dare to upgrade their hard drives.
No, I am a person who is technically competent enough to understand the issues and build my own systems (and systems for clients) yet still be concerned for those without the funds to buy my systems (I build using high-quality, brand name parts) or otherwise lacking technical sophistication.
And, the tatooing movement has now moved to the corporate desktop as well. I have my own consulting company, but until recently I advised people to buy brand-name computers. The profit margin is not high enough for me to focus my resources on system builds.
However, the latest Microsoft crap has made me rethink that, and I am now actively building (or subcontracting out, depending on the order size) systems again, because I cannot in good faith recommend purchase of the latest crippled machines.
I generally find that those who are the most arrogant are the least experienced.
This is a copy of an email I sent to someone about this issue:
I saw your post on Slashdot, and noticed that you thought the FC auction was a stunt - I checked in at the bidding, too, saw it was up to 5 million, and the high bidder's name was gad-something. After the auction was pulled, I saw several independent news stories that pointed out that they actually interviewed several of the last high bidders, and they turned out to be college students playing jokes & the like (they are subsequently getting their eBay accounts revoked, I think). Anyhow, I suspect Pud just lost track of which bids were legitimate & which weren't & didn't feel like tracking them all down. He was quoted on cnet.com (I think it was cnet) as saying, "I thought it'd be easier to just do it through eBay instead of spending hours in talks" - apparently, he thought that all the bids would be legitimate and the number of fake bids blew his tolerance.
I suggest that if you are seriously interested in buying the website, go to the FC home page, and click on the "this website for sale" link. He has more info there.
This sounds similar to the practice that HP & some otehr vendors have been following for years, and which is now REQUIRED by Microsoft if you're one of the top ten or so OEM's.
An HP Pavilion HDD has a "tatoo" in a section of the hard drive that can only be reached by debug scripts and the like. FDISK can't touch it. "Recovery" disks look for the HDD tatoo & and the BIOS tatoo and if they don't find it, they will not install. This means if you have one of these types of systems, you need to take your system to an OEM-approved "service center" and they will run the script to make your new hard drive able to function with the recovery disk should you buy a new hard drive.
Some OEM's (notably HP) used to foist this travesty on consumers in return for cheaper licensing for their protection payments to Microsoft for Windows. Now, this is REQUIRED by M$ on all new system.
The solution, of course, is refusing to by OEM systems that have "recovery disks". Use Linux, BSD, ANYTHING, or if you MUST use Windows, by from a smaller OEM which will still give you a genuine Windows OEM CD - the big boys are now PROHIBITED by M$ from distributing Windows CD's, they can only distribute "image" CD's.
I'm sure there's disgruntled techs out there somewhere who have the debug routines to duplicate the tatoos, or a good assembly language hacker can do it. Of course, who wants all the crap the major OEM's load up anyways?
By suddenly approving a patent that they've sat on for 67 years, does this mean that the government is claiming an exclusive, non-reproducable right to use the technology described in the patent?
In other words, since the US Government is the owner of the patent, do they claim to have control over any form of crypto based on it?
Or is this just the results of a routine declassification review? Maybe the guy or his heirs (assuming he's dead, he's gotta be pushing 100 if he was a boy genius) just wanted some credt?
Not only is this guy an idiot, he's a crappy writer, too. I actually stumbled through "I sing thge Body Electronic" a few months back - it's one of the worst books I've ever read.
It's the ONLY book related to the history of computers that I've ever judged so worthless that I threw it away.
Usually I'm reluctant to throw books about events in the computer industry away because there's always interesting perspectives in them - but this book was just plain BORING and POINTLESS.
I have arranged to buy one of these shirts.
I will send certified mail to the MPAA advising them of my intention to wear it.
I have arranged for pro bono legal counsel to represent me should the MPAA attempt action against me.
Any comments?
I know how to protect myself with crypto, but a lot of other people do not. These people, ignorant as they may be, have rights to privacy as well. Information, as we all know, is power. The FBI has a track record of using governmental power to gather intelligence on political organizations that it either does not like or that it is told to investigate (see COINTELPRO, Watergate, etc - it's CONGRESS that found this out, not way-out paranoid freaks). I don't like knowing that the course of political events can be influenced using illegally obtained knowledge - which the FBI, beyond any doubt, has done before many times. This is why carnivore is scary. If the FBI was a person instead of an organization there would be sufficent evidence to send that person to jail for a very long time - and giving that person unlimited, unmonitored access to anything it wants (oh, you can trust me, I have a court order, I just won't tell you how I'm using it) is the height of stupidity.
This is disturbing because it's attempt by NetSol to booster the argument that THEY own domain names that are registered with them. Several registrars make it a point to say that YOU own the rights to the domain name; NetSol has recently announced (as described on Slashdot) that it considers itself the owner of domain names that are registered with it and that they have the right to yank the name for any reason.
Think about it. When a name expires, it should be delisted and become available again. Instead, without paying any revenue to anyone, NetSol is retaining the domain in its database (asserting "ownership") and then selling it. This is a dramatic difference from collecting a fee from someone who thinks up a domain name and wants to register it - remember, domain names used to be free, and what was initially posed as a "token payment" to prevent people from registering frivolous domain names has turned into a multi-million dollar business.
NetSol does NOT own domain names, they should be required to stick to registering requests and nothing else. However, they are refusing to grasp the limited role that was originally envisioned for them and are seeking to take ownership of any name registered with them.
Note also that they do NOT offer an option to transfer the name to another registry authority...
This is a biggie.
I once thought about getting Flashcom. Do a search on Slashdot for Flashcom, and you'll see why I didn't
I have NEVER in my life seen a company as small and as new as Flashcom rack up so many complaints in such a short time. The horror tales of being unable to get anyone on the phone (except for salespeople) for weeks at a time would have been enough to scare me off if there hadn't been the ridiculous long contracts they want you to sign - and the "random billing" of credit cards that Flashcom is known for.
I have a moral issue with using phone companies for ISP's. Here in Arizona, US West is busy letting rural telephone customers languish in a limbo of bad service, long repair delays, and frequent outages - while at the same time they throw tons of money upgrading the infrastructure in the cities. Yeah, that's where the money is, but they ARE a monopoly - we theoretically have competition for telcos in AZ but in practice very few companies survive the barrage of lawsuits US West files to anyone who dares to enter the market. This could be why they're being sued by class action lawsuits in both Denver and Arizona.
US West has unlimited phone lines, and undercuts regular ISP's by about 50% (US West Internet is about $10-$15/ month for dial up). Their DSL service is not bad, but it bothers me to give them more power.
Dancris Internet in Phoenix is pretty good - one nice thing about them is that if there's a problem with the DSL line, they'll call the phone company up and argue with them so that you don't have to.
I guess this has been kind of rambling, but the point is, don't judge DSL ISP's by Flashcom's behavior - if you do the research, you'll see that Flashcom is not really a reputable company.
I was at a Microsoft TechNet seminar today, and the guy giving the presentation made a big deal about how Kerobos was an open standard, blah blah blah - and then he stated that MS had made a few "enhancements" and had published them not only on the web, but as RFC's!
Now, I don't understand how someone could simultaneously propose an "enhancement" to an open, tax-payer funded standard as a Request For Comment and at the exact same time claim that it is a trade secret...
This material is NOT a trade secret, is NOT "protected", but is public information.
For what it's worth, the M$ guys at the technet thing seemed kind of embarassed by the lunacy of their legal department on this issue. They certainly wouldn't happy about talking about it.
without reading the appendix that Richard Feynman wrote to the report of the 1986 Challenger explosion.
Feynman goes into some detail about the guidelines of testing & debugging that the programmers have to follow, and his reasoning on why the computers (as of 1986) needed to be upgraded. He also talks about the manual landing button for the gear, etc.
It's interesting to read about how NASA management, before the Challenger disaster, was trying to get the programmers to do less testing because "it's too expensive and we never seem to have problems."
A far more detailed description of Feynman's investigation (along with the appendix itself) can be found in Feynman's book, "What do you care what Other People Think?", published shortly after his death.
I concur.
Most people don't realize this, but Eric Drexler, the main person promoting nanotech, briefed Al Gore in a private audiance about the possibilities of nanotech years ago, as described in his second book, Unbounding the Future.
I love the idea of nanotechnology. I love the idea of limitless resources, perhaps using hydrogen fuel to generate elecrtic power, and nano to do our manufacturing and medical care. I'm not too terribly worried about a nano-war, as it is much easier to destroy than create and agressive nanotechnology assembers would have to create duplicates of themselves as they went along, giving the defenders the advantage.
I *AM* scared of the "government", i.e., a totally closed environment developing nano, because I just know the elitist fools in power will decide that nano is too much power for the masses.
Granted, the societial change caused by genuine working nano-assemblers would be dramatic. Barring assine copyright stupidity, etc, material goods of all sorts will be next to nothing. Who cares that China can build stuff now with their manufacturing capability? Nanotech will eliminate that nasty problem. But what will happen when everyone who wants one can have, say, a jet airplane? Talk about congestion..
But I digress. I'm afraid of nano being invented in a closed government lab, only to be repressed, and then false stuff planted in the scientific literature to persuade everyone else in the world that nano is unfeasable. Unbelievable? I don't know. I don't know if the authorities would ever be able to cope with the people having that much power. And, there's not too many businesses I'd trust with nano either. Therefore, I propose creating a new company to develop nano, with the following setup:
1. Clone Richard Feynman. Feynman, arguably the second most intelligent man of the century (we all know that Dennis Miller is the first)was the first to propose nano...and then sort of made fun of it, even going so far as to critize Drexler for "wasting your time on this nano stuff when there's more interesting things out there." Oh, come on. Feynman worked on the Manhattan Project. He knew you can't stop science, he also knew that maybe we weren't quite ready for nano...so he sort of trivialized it in the hopes of not encouraging nano research until we as a race were a bit better. Anyhow, we'll make Feynman the CEO of our private little company, but we gotta clone him 'cause he's been dead for like 13 years.
2. Make Steve Wozniak Head of Research.
3. Bring Steve Case in as head of Marketing. Yes, we all know that AOL is the work of Satan (the demonic entity, not the Unix tool), not Steve Case, but still, the guy knows how to market stuff.
4. Bring in Jessie Ventura as Head Lobbyist. Congress will think the nano movement is a bunch of nutcases, and consequently not bother passing a bunch of stupid laws regulating nano. (although I will concede that if any a technology needed intelligent regulation, it's nano - which can be both an incredibly liberating and incredibly oppressing technology)
5. Give Paul Allen a job at the company, because he needs one.
6. Give Linus Torvalds a job at the same company, for the same reason. Laptops that can last for a day on a 9-bolt battery? Who cares! We want laptops that can build themselves, and then eat their surroundings and turn into pepperoni pizzas when they're done!
7. Appoint Hedy Lamarr head of PR. Sure, she's dead, but she's also quite nice to look at on camera, sassy enough not to take crap from reporters, and she understands technology. Plus, she might mate with Linus and they can father beatiful nerd children. We'll just have to go to backup and find a Hedy from, say, circa 1940.
8. Bomb Seattle. Sure, it won't help advance nanotechnology any, but it'll prevent Microsoft from trying to acquire the rights.
9. Put Drexler to work in a lab, supervising a bunch of biologists trying to make protein structures that can be altered and a bunch of geeks with scanning tunneling microscopes. One of the groups will make an assembler. Feed both groups regularly with beer and cheeze puffs.
10. Hire a bunch of patent lawyers and feed them raw meat, and take away their sexual partners. This should also produce results.
There we go. If these steps are taken, I am confident that we shall have free nanotechology soon, live forever, and be happy.
(original post was in the wrong place)
I've read a ton of stuff on the debate about SCSI vs IDE...and I've seen some people comment on how "SCSI
seems to last longer" and I've seen other people comment on how "SCSI can handle multiple requests
better"...but I must confess, it took an electrical enginneer to explain to me the reason that SCSI blows IDE away in
servers, and always will: Let's start with the fact that most SCSI & IDE drives are identical in the hardware, it's
the logic board that's usually different. Both the SCSI drive and the IDE drive have the same MTBF. Which
drive is going to fail first in a server? The IDE will, every time -- BECAUSE IT WORKS HARDER, and
RUNS MORE. SCSI's ability to get multiple packets of data means the moving parts of the drive don't have to
work as hard as the IDE drive, which is sending the head flying over the platter for every little bit. Result? Two
servers, same workload, one with an IDE drive, one with a SCSI, both drives have the same MTBF...but the
IDE drive is chugging away to exhaustion while the SCSI drive caches some of the data it needs and is not
working nearly as hard. This is why the speed debate is useless as applied to servers. In a desktop? Sure, IDE
has its advantages, and big speed is always nice. But in a server in a business environment with a heavy
workload, time is the value, and downtime costs -- and that IDE drive is GOING to fail because it's working
10 times as hard as the SCSI drive is to get the same data. Now, if someone can just explain why it costs so
much more. I am inclined to agree with the previous poster who said that the hard drive companies just milk
the "business market" but I have no real facts to base that on