Internet connectivity over cellular networks is already fast enough. However, the cellular carriers have oversold the capacity of their networks (plus they want to give priority to their own subscription-only multimedia services), so they carefully rate-limit services that consume large amounts of bandwidth. For instance, on Verizon's EVDO network (I'm a happy subscriber), I can listen to Secret Agent at 128 kbps for about two minutes before being rate limited to about 1 kbps by Verizon, even though the EVDO network's advertised as capable of 400 kbps and in practice can burst up to around 1000 kbps. (Obviously, there are ways around these kinds of restrictions.)
So for now, my solution is to rip my favorite streams and upload them to my iPod, where I can play them again and again and again. How high am I supposed to jump, again?
I'm buying a subscription TODAY. They were the only good radio station in Cincinnati, and I came near to tears when they shut down their Oxford transmitter. They rock out.
Thanks, both of your, for your advice. I'm off to look at Series 2 DVRs. P2P-ing recorded shows was never my intent, however it would be nice to watch Battlestar Galactica or other shows on my laptop when I travel.
Speaking of TiVo, I'm thinking about buying one but I don't know what to get. Some of my buddies were able to do some neat things hacking into their TiVos, and I'd like the ability to save off selected shows or movies without building a MythTV box (too much effort). Which TiVo should I buy, and what Windows/Linux/FreeBSD apps should I grab? Are there non-TiVo firmware images I should download and install on my TiVo? Can I just go out and buy a TiVo brand new and use it without having to mod it? Or, even better, is there a web site out there that explains everything? I googled for "tivo recommendations" and "which tivo to buy", but they didn't turn up anything interesting. It looks like the Series 2 DVR does everything I want except for burning stuff to DVD, but if I can just FTP the files off or something that'd be good enough for me.
I concur. Mom and Dad have been using Outlook for years, and Windows Small Business Server licenses were relatively cheap, so I ended up going with Exchange. One of the nicer features of Exchange's calendar is that when you send invites to POP/IMAP clients (one of my users has a Mac), it will convert the invite into a link to Outlook Web Access. OWA in Exchange 2003 is much, much better than in previous versions. At the time, the OpenExchange stuff looked interesting but not quite production ready.
I subscribe to Verizon Wireless' Broadband Access and use the PC5740 card for access. I get speeds up to 1 Mbps down, but for short bursts only. The card appears as a modem in Windows, and I noticed a significant performance improvement when I re-configured the device's speed, changing it from the default 115200 bits per second to 921600 bps. Also, I suspect Verizon Wireless is applying some traffic shaping, as streaming MP3 feeds (e.g. in iTunes) are cut off after about two minutes of playing time. I will leave the work-arounds as an exercise to the reader.
The connection's average speed is probably 350 kbps, typically varying between 100 kbps and 600 kbps. Not something you'd want to download an ISO with (too slow) or play Total Annihilation over (too much lag), but fast enough to sync my offline folders and Outlook caching mailbox, and plenty fast enough for SSH or Remote Desktop.
But more importantly, if I could change my voice to SOUND like a Go'auld. I mean, you have to have your priorities when it comes to these things, right?
I think everyone would agree that Steve Gibson is a technically-gifted person, but we should also agree that the guy is a little wacky, just like we should also all agree that Theo De Raadt is a little hot-headed. Not that this makes Steve or Theo a bad person - quite the contrary! It's just that when they make grand pronouncements, the pronouncements should be viewed skeptically. Anybody remember the controversy over NSAKEY a few years ago? I.e., a flurry of wild allegations over something used for code signing that no one now cares about now that it's named something less offensive (_KEY2 for those playing along at home). It's easy to get all hot-headed and worried and freaked out, but that's the antithesis of what a information security officer is supposed to do. They are supposed to stay calm and rational in times of crisis, never jumping to conclusions (because most of the time, those conclusions are worse than wrong: they are misleading). Well, I'm ranting but you get the picture.
Welders tell me that welding masks are basically very dark sunglasses. You can't see anything except the spark, and you do a lot of work by feel more than anything else.
Harm? Blackberry's are fricking leashes! RIM going out of business would be like the Great Emancipation. I suppose the obsessive types would be pretty stressed, but I say fuck 'em. I really, really don't need to be THAT easily accessible.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but science is a belief system (with, at its core, axioms every bit as unprovable as any other philosophy). It is perhaps more accurate to say "there exist a number of scientific philosophies: empiricism, realism versus instrumentalism, falsifiability, and so forth". Wikipedia is by no means the only available reference. A good introductory book on constructing scientific experiments would enlighten you as to the basics, and from there, you can chase down the relevant original works listed in its bibliography. Since I am by no means an expert, nor am I a philosopher, you might also want to consult someone schooled in the study of belief systems for more information.
(The whole "science isn't a belief system" schtick annoys me every bit as much as fundamentalist Atheists who think their assertion that there is no god or gods is somehow less axiomatic than, thus superior to, other people's assertions that there is definitely, may be, or may not be a god or gods. These kinds of people disingenuously play at being rigorous intellectuals without thinking through how their own arguments apply to themselves. I think such behavior is far more hypocritical than plainly admitting to believing in certain things without a rationale, whether that's a piece of 50's clip art or God or a system of logic.)
What I was trying to say is that wealth, education, and technology do not change us. Instead, they amplify us, they allow us to do more of whatever it is we already do. What good is living 300 years if it only means someone has another 230 years to act the fool? What good is the ability to manipulate matter at a nanoscopic scale if all we do is use that ability to create more powerful weapons?
...is that they assume basic human nature will change: That with access to wealth, to automation, and to education, people will trancend their basic natures and become something greater. One problem with this line of reasoning is in deciding what constitutes "better" (or the measurement of "progress"). Values are inherently arbitrary decisions; your ideals might be very different from mine, with no clear way to compare the two objectively. Your utopia, then, might be my dystopia. Another problem is that wealth, automation, and education are merely tools. They are inherently amoral. We have to put them to a purpose, and we have to judge those purposes as being "good" or "bad", and sometimes there are unintended consequences. To use a trite example, nuclear energy mirrors our good desires (for a cheap and clean energy source), our evil desires (for a powerful weapon), and the unintended consequences (there's actually some dangerous waste that must be dealt with).
Well, I guess I'm ranting, but I really don't buy the idea of the Utopian Singularity, or of anyone's Utopia, for that matter.
While we are probably going to end up with SharePoint (which isn't a bad collaboration tool if all your fellow staff members know is Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), I personally like the Plone Help Center. You can see examples on the Plone web site or on my personal web site.
"Xenophon" was my grandfather's name and is my middle name. It made for a cooler-sounding nick than all of the Doctor-Who-themed names I came up with back in the BBS days. And, perhaps unfortunately, being well read in ancient Greek philosophy isn't a pre-requisite for having a Greek name. I don't speak any Greek, either. (Of course, my non-hacker friends would say otherwise.)
Thanks. I'm not sure how I ended up with a "Troll" moderation, but I appreciate everyone's responses. I guess I was looking more for a general survey of "Ethics" as a topic. It's always good to have a place from which to start.
Obviously, I'd benefit from an introductory college course in ethics, but this being Slashdot, I'll ask anyway. Is there a good reference online that describes "Ethics" (capital E) in a fairly general manner, such that the basic axioms like "the ends justify the means" are refuted in a logical and consistent manner? Is there a good book I should be reading on Ethics? Self-study is important to me, and I'd hate to re-hash well known arguments in a debate with someone more knowledgable than I. Appearing stupid or uneducated online is sort of par for the course, but I'd prefer to avoid looking stupid.
What's wrong with politely declining Microsoft's invitation? I can understand not wanting to work for Microsoft because one's personal morals and ethics. I even understand the desire to explain oneself, but there was no need to be rude or abrasive (especially since the invitation seemed to be made in good faith)./p.
The FreeBSD team is looking at possibly making the functions faster, and also caching them by either using a daemon or by having it cached inside the process itself.
I'm very glad to hear that. FreeBSD (warts and all) is my drug of choice, and so far, in the very large AD domain at work, winbind has serious problems with even basic account enumeration. I don't know if the fault is in the PAM or NSS modules, or in winbindd itself. Hopefully, an nscd for FreeBSD plus the very recently released Samba 3.0.20 will go a long way to fix these problems.
Part of the problem is that Unix's directory and authentication systems are 30+ years old. PAM and NSS are attempts to fix some of the problems and cruft, but they really aren't all that nice, either. It's amazing that things like Samba's winbind work at all, and even then, there are serious flaws. For example, searching for a particular user account is a straight table scan, order O(n), when using the getpwent API. If your Unix box is a member of an Active Directory domain with lots of accounts (where "lots of" is "more than 1,000"), that user lookup takes forever. Guess what: every time you do an "ls -l", that lookup happens for each line. Now, the newest version of winbind tries to do some caching and whatnot (as do the tools that use account information), but since they are restricted to the 70s-era UNIX get*ent APIs that assume your password file is a flat, unindexed, small, and locally available file, the Samba team cannot make the actual searches faster than O(n).
One would think that by now, someone would have modernized the Unix authentication infrastructure beyond PAM and NSS, but that would break a lot of old code. And not to rant, but it's stupid crap like not being able to log into a cached non-local account that keeps Unix and friends off the enterprise desktops and laptops. Apple probably gets closest, and they still are missing many of the enterprise-class features Windows, I am sad to say, has had for years.
I am the only hacker I know who actually prefers IE (security zones are a killer feature once you fix the stupid defaults), but I do miss tabbed browsing. A while ago, I went looking for tabbed browsing for IE and came across Avant Browser. It's an MDI interface for IE, each tab containing an IE web browser control. My only complaint is a user interface bug where it loses focus in the browser control itself when I alt-tab to a different application. I'll have to try this new plug-in and see if it's any better.
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Internet connectivity over cellular networks is already fast enough. However, the cellular carriers have oversold the capacity of their networks (plus they want to give priority to their own subscription-only multimedia services), so they carefully rate-limit services that consume large amounts of bandwidth. For instance, on Verizon's EVDO network (I'm a happy subscriber), I can listen to Secret Agent at 128 kbps for about two minutes before being rate limited to about 1 kbps by Verizon, even though the EVDO network's advertised as capable of 400 kbps and in practice can burst up to around 1000 kbps. (Obviously, there are ways around these kinds of restrictions.)
So for now, my solution is to rip my favorite streams and upload them to my iPod, where I can play them again and again and again. How high am I supposed to jump, again?
I'm buying a subscription TODAY. They were the only good radio station in Cincinnati, and I came near to tears when they shut down their Oxford transmitter. They rock out.
Thanks, both of your, for your advice. I'm off to look at Series 2 DVRs. P2P-ing recorded shows was never my intent, however it would be nice to watch Battlestar Galactica or other shows on my laptop when I travel.
Speaking of TiVo, I'm thinking about buying one but I don't know what to get. Some of my buddies were able to do some neat things hacking into their TiVos, and I'd like the ability to save off selected shows or movies without building a MythTV box (too much effort). Which TiVo should I buy, and what Windows/Linux/FreeBSD apps should I grab? Are there non-TiVo firmware images I should download and install on my TiVo? Can I just go out and buy a TiVo brand new and use it without having to mod it? Or, even better, is there a web site out there that explains everything? I googled for "tivo recommendations" and "which tivo to buy", but they didn't turn up anything interesting. It looks like the Series 2 DVR does everything I want except for burning stuff to DVD, but if I can just FTP the files off or something that'd be good enough for me.
I concur. Mom and Dad have been using Outlook for years, and Windows Small Business Server licenses were relatively cheap, so I ended up going with Exchange. One of the nicer features of Exchange's calendar is that when you send invites to POP/IMAP clients (one of my users has a Mac), it will convert the invite into a link to Outlook Web Access. OWA in Exchange 2003 is much, much better than in previous versions. At the time, the OpenExchange stuff looked interesting but not quite production ready.
I subscribe to Verizon Wireless' Broadband Access and use the PC5740 card for access. I get speeds up to 1 Mbps down, but for short bursts only. The card appears as a modem in Windows, and I noticed a significant performance improvement when I re-configured the device's speed, changing it from the default 115200 bits per second to 921600 bps. Also, I suspect Verizon Wireless is applying some traffic shaping, as streaming MP3 feeds (e.g. in iTunes) are cut off after about two minutes of playing time. I will leave the work-arounds as an exercise to the reader.
The connection's average speed is probably 350 kbps, typically varying between 100 kbps and 600 kbps. Not something you'd want to download an ISO with (too slow) or play Total Annihilation over (too much lag), but fast enough to sync my offline folders and Outlook caching mailbox, and plenty fast enough for SSH or Remote Desktop.
If I could be a Go'auld.
But more importantly, if I could change my voice to SOUND like a Go'auld. I mean, you have to have your priorities when it comes to these things, right?Dude, what a weak troll. Everybody knows Emacs is better than VI. There's not even a debate!
I think everyone would agree that Steve Gibson is a technically-gifted person, but we should also agree that the guy is a little wacky, just like we should also all agree that Theo De Raadt is a little hot-headed. Not that this makes Steve or Theo a bad person - quite the contrary! It's just that when they make grand pronouncements, the pronouncements should be viewed skeptically. Anybody remember the controversy over NSAKEY a few years ago? I.e., a flurry of wild allegations over something used for code signing that no one now cares about now that it's named something less offensive (_KEY2 for those playing along at home). It's easy to get all hot-headed and worried and freaked out, but that's the antithesis of what a information security officer is supposed to do. They are supposed to stay calm and rational in times of crisis, never jumping to conclusions (because most of the time, those conclusions are worse than wrong: they are misleading). Well, I'm ranting but you get the picture.
It's not that they lied, it's just that all the welders I know are rednecks that don't have the fancy gear, is all. :)
Welders tell me that welding masks are basically very dark sunglasses. You can't see anything except the spark, and you do a lot of work by feel more than anything else.
Harm? Blackberry's are fricking leashes! RIM going out of business would be like the Great Emancipation. I suppose the obsessive types would be pretty stressed, but I say fuck 'em. I really, really don't need to be THAT easily accessible.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but science is a belief system (with, at its core, axioms every bit as unprovable as any other philosophy). It is perhaps more accurate to say "there exist a number of scientific philosophies: empiricism, realism versus instrumentalism, falsifiability, and so forth". Wikipedia is by no means the only available reference. A good introductory book on constructing scientific experiments would enlighten you as to the basics, and from there, you can chase down the relevant original works listed in its bibliography. Since I am by no means an expert, nor am I a philosopher, you might also want to consult someone schooled in the study of belief systems for more information.
(The whole "science isn't a belief system" schtick annoys me every bit as much as fundamentalist Atheists who think their assertion that there is no god or gods is somehow less axiomatic than, thus superior to, other people's assertions that there is definitely, may be, or may not be a god or gods. These kinds of people disingenuously play at being rigorous intellectuals without thinking through how their own arguments apply to themselves. I think such behavior is far more hypocritical than plainly admitting to believing in certain things without a rationale, whether that's a piece of 50's clip art or God or a system of logic.)
When Japan is worried about an "electronic Pearl Habor", you know comedy's a dead art form. Now tragedy, that's funny!
What I was trying to say is that wealth, education, and technology do not change us. Instead, they amplify us, they allow us to do more of whatever it is we already do. What good is living 300 years if it only means someone has another 230 years to act the fool? What good is the ability to manipulate matter at a nanoscopic scale if all we do is use that ability to create more powerful weapons?
...is that they assume basic human nature will change: That with access to wealth, to automation, and to education, people will trancend their basic natures and become something greater. One problem with this line of reasoning is in deciding what constitutes "better" (or the measurement of "progress"). Values are inherently arbitrary decisions; your ideals might be very different from mine, with no clear way to compare the two objectively. Your utopia, then, might be my dystopia. Another problem is that wealth, automation, and education are merely tools. They are inherently amoral. We have to put them to a purpose, and we have to judge those purposes as being "good" or "bad", and sometimes there are unintended consequences. To use a trite example, nuclear energy mirrors our good desires (for a cheap and clean energy source), our evil desires (for a powerful weapon), and the unintended consequences (there's actually some dangerous waste that must be dealt with).
Well, I guess I'm ranting, but I really don't buy the idea of the Utopian Singularity, or of anyone's Utopia, for that matter.
While we are probably going to end up with SharePoint (which isn't a bad collaboration tool if all your fellow staff members know is Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), I personally like the Plone Help Center. You can see examples on the Plone web site or on my personal web site.
"Xenophon" was my grandfather's name and is my middle name. It made for a cooler-sounding nick than all of the Doctor-Who-themed names I came up with back in the BBS days. And, perhaps unfortunately, being well read in ancient Greek philosophy isn't a pre-requisite for having a Greek name. I don't speak any Greek, either. (Of course, my non-hacker friends would say otherwise.)
Thanks. I'm not sure how I ended up with a "Troll" moderation, but I appreciate everyone's responses. I guess I was looking more for a general survey of "Ethics" as a topic. It's always good to have a place from which to start.
Obviously, I'd benefit from an introductory college course in ethics, but this being Slashdot, I'll ask anyway. Is there a good reference online that describes "Ethics" (capital E) in a fairly general manner, such that the basic axioms like "the ends justify the means" are refuted in a logical and consistent manner? Is there a good book I should be reading on Ethics? Self-study is important to me, and I'd hate to re-hash well known arguments in a debate with someone more knowledgable than I. Appearing stupid or uneducated online is sort of par for the course, but I'd prefer to avoid looking stupid.
What's wrong with politely declining Microsoft's invitation? I can understand not wanting to work for Microsoft because one's personal morals and ethics. I even understand the desire to explain oneself, but there was no need to be rude or abrasive (especially since the invitation seemed to be made in good faith)./p.
I'm very glad to hear that. FreeBSD (warts and all) is my drug of choice, and so far, in the very large AD domain at work, winbind has serious problems with even basic account enumeration. I don't know if the fault is in the PAM or NSS modules, or in winbindd itself. Hopefully, an nscd for FreeBSD plus the very recently released Samba 3.0.20 will go a long way to fix these problems.
Part of the problem is that Unix's directory and authentication systems are 30+ years old. PAM and NSS are attempts to fix some of the problems and cruft, but they really aren't all that nice, either. It's amazing that things like Samba's winbind work at all, and even then, there are serious flaws. For example, searching for a particular user account is a straight table scan, order O(n), when using the getpwent API. If your Unix box is a member of an Active Directory domain with lots of accounts (where "lots of" is "more than 1,000"), that user lookup takes forever. Guess what: every time you do an "ls -l", that lookup happens for each line. Now, the newest version of winbind tries to do some caching and whatnot (as do the tools that use account information), but since they are restricted to the 70s-era UNIX get*ent APIs that assume your password file is a flat, unindexed, small, and locally available file, the Samba team cannot make the actual searches faster than O(n).
One would think that by now, someone would have modernized the Unix authentication infrastructure beyond PAM and NSS, but that would break a lot of old code. And not to rant, but it's stupid crap like not being able to log into a cached non-local account that keeps Unix and friends off the enterprise desktops and laptops. Apple probably gets closest, and they still are missing many of the enterprise-class features Windows, I am sad to say, has had for years.
The whole "tabs at the bottom" thing was fixed as soon as I found out I could unlock and reposition the tab bar. :)
I am the only hacker I know who actually prefers IE (security zones are a killer feature once you fix the stupid defaults), but I do miss tabbed browsing. A while ago, I went looking for tabbed browsing for IE and came across Avant Browser. It's an MDI interface for IE, each tab containing an IE web browser control. My only complaint is a user interface bug where it loses focus in the browser control itself when I alt-tab to a different application. I'll have to try this new plug-in and see if it's any better.