I think it is worth noting that it can be really easy to access someone else's WAP without even meaning to. My neighbor has one and it is totally open. For some reason, his signal strength is so strong that in the front part of my house it sometimes squishes out my wireless network. I frequently wake up my laptop and begin surfing, only to notice ten minutes later that my computer chose his network over mine, or that mine isn't even showing up as a option.
Also, if you set something up like this that is totally open, I don't see how you haven't authorized others to use it. I mean, it (the signal) is on my property. It's like my neighbor turning on his hose so that it floods my property and then claiming it's "his" water. It's on my property, it hasn't been secured, why isn't it mine to use? Hasn't my neighbor agreed to share his broadband connection by broadcasting over the neighborhood without taking the most basic steps to implement security? Based on the name of his network he uses Macs, and believe me implementing the security features in the Apple software is a matter of clicking a few boxes.
This brings up a really good point. The example of doctors having to keep medical records is quite different. For one thing, my medical records are a lot more important than the record of my visits to/., espn.com, cyclingnews.com, cnet.com, etc. Second, there are some pretty big ISPs in the U.S. that would throw some pretty serious lobbying money against something like this. ATTBI changes my IP number on what seems like an hourly basis. What an amazing pain in the ass to go back, figure out all of the various IP numbers I've been assigned over the last six months, and then to reconstruct my browsing history based on those IP numbers. Now multiply that by however many users ATTBI has and you get the picture. It would be more than a minor burden on ATTBI, AOL, etc. to keep this kind of stuff around for that long.
And more to the point, what does it tell you? The signal to noise ratio would be unbelievable.
This is redundant, but I have a 3.5 year old Blue and White G3 at home. I use it every day. Frankly, there hasn't been anything new in the past few years that compels an upgrade.
Fast processor? Yes (sure it is 4 times slower than a 1 Ghz G$, but it is still a fast processor)
USB? Yes. Firewire? Yes Decent graphics card? Yes Lots of RAM? yes DVD drive? yes
How does my 3.5 year old G3 differ from a Wintel box?
Oh, I can answer that question! The 3.5 year old Wintel box I had (a 233 Mhz Pentium Gateway box)became totally obsolete earlier this year. Can you run XP on a 233 Mhz Pentium? It would be painful.
To say that Apple forces you to buy a new computer every 6 months is about as silly a thing as you could say.
I've been meaning to buy my own modem for about six months now so I could cut my bill by $10 per month. My laziness in this regard has saved me $30. Amazing.
Worse than having your upstream bandwidth reduced, IMHO, was the vast reduction in downstream bandwidth for @Home customers. I used to get 4.6 Mbps down, now I get about 1.2. When I'm downloading something serious that reduction makes a big difference.
So many people are upset about the spoiler that there are very few comments pointing out how bad the episode was. First of all, the ending with the funeral was like a parody of the "death of Spock" that was already taken apart by Seinfeld ("they aren't really dead if we find a way to remember them"). It was awful. Worst thing I've ever seen on X-Files. Second, what hotel has airtight doors every forty feet? There is no way that area was airtight. The whole episode was stupid.
I did like the boat blowing up. Again, had the gas tank really gone, I don't think the entire boat would have exploded like that, but what the hell, it was fun.
I think you are missing the insight offered by this type of modelling, which is that complex systems may result from a simple set of rules. This insight should cause us to question the assumption that most of us, including you, make, i.e., that "society" is "complicated." The whole point of these simulations is to lead one to ask "is society driven by a huge set of rules, or might it be that there is a more limited set of fundemental rules." For example, consider the 'sugarscape' simulation. Understanding that wealth becomes distributed in the way that it is distributed because of a few basic rules would allow us to construct more informed economic policy. We could stop doing "X" to redistribute wealth (if that is the goal) because we know it isn't going to impact the distribution system.
This "MP3 stereo component" obsession has gotten out of hand. I know someone who specializes in OCD. Please, for the sake of the/. community, I think Cmdr Taco needs to seek help dealing with this issue.
I'm probably going to be either ignored or modded down as a troll, but I feel the need to point out that document retention is a difficult issue and perhaps the/. community isn't really the best to debate this issue.
First, document retention policies are going to vary depending on the context. For example, lawyers frequently have to keep certain items for "X" years after a case ends. Tax documents need to be kept for "X" years. So the policy will vary based on 1) the type of business; 2) the jurisdiction; and 3) the particular type of document.
"Asking Slashdot" this question is begging for a crappy signal to noise ratio. Witness all the posts along the lines of "who cares if you have nothing to hide" or "destroy everything." The simple fact is that it would be prohibitively expensive to "save everything" once you get about 5 or so years into the life of a business. Who wants to store documents from a project or product that no longer exists and isn't used by anyone? On the other hand, you may need design documents from a ladder you designed and sold 20 years ago, because you may see a product liability action against you. Hence, the need for a document retention policy. It isn't simply about "making sure there is no evidence" or "making sure you don't get in trouble for destroying documents."
I think this comment is the personal opinion on one invidual based on personal experience and not on emprical data.
My personal opinion is just as valid. And my opinion, based on my experience, is that people want Palm devices. Talk about brand recognition-people know these things a Palm Pilots. My friend's wife, who didn't know how to plug the cradle into her windows box, wanted a palm. My sister wanted one. My mother wanted one. Everyone I know wants a palm! I don't know anyone that has a PocketPC.
The fact is that the majority of American's commute to work in cars. So palms are used as electronic organizers, ones that sync nicely to a computer organizer. Some use speciality applications, but most use it as an organizer. I don't think that the ability to work on word files is really that big of a pull to most of the market. Maybe to the/. crowd it is, but to someone who can't figure out how to double click on an installer program to install the software, transferring excel documents and working on them on the tiny handheld isn't something they have any interest in.
before he writes this crap? How about the link to the article yesterday about how apple's design has allowed them to fare much better than boring box maker Gateway.
I know it's fun to bash the Katz, but wouldn't/. be better off if he went somewhere else. He can't seem to formulate an argument without getting at least 50% of his premises wrong.
The article, and many slashdotters, are claiming that KaZaa is refusing to "shut down" to comply with a previous court order. That does not appear to be true. First of all, it appears that the court that ruled in favor of KaZaa is the same court that issued the injunction to shut down. The shut down order supersedes any prior order. KaZaa would only find itself in a conundrum if a different court explicitly ordered them not to shut down and then this court ordered them to do so. That isn't what happened. Furthermore, it does not look the prior ruling had anything to do with KaZaa's right to continue operating. It looks like they are coming up with mostly BS excuses for their decision. Of course, it could be that there is an inconsistency in the two rulings, and that they think they can get away with what they have chosen to do, but that's a different story.
I don't know where people have gotten this idea that the judge has to "approve" of a settlement. I guess its because you hear about judges approving settlements in some high profile cases, as there are some situations in which it happens (e.g., class actions, minors, cases involving consent decrees). But 80% of settlements in the US are not approved by a judge.
They suck. As someone who pays them, they seem huge. I mean, it adds thousands onto your tax bill. While being a contractor may work out better in the long run, having to pay that big chunk of extra taxes really hurts. Not to mention that you have to come up with money quarterly or pay a penalty.
And I was pointing out the reason why no copyright holder ever sued them...
Are there reasons why someone might not think that having their ad up on someone's web site wasn't entirely positive? Probably. But apparently everyone whose ad was up on adcrtic felt that the free exposure outweighed any downside.
As for old ads with out of date products, well, I think that saying that goes "there is no such thing as bad publicity" would be appropriate. So what if someone no longer sells "X." The ad is continuing to get the name out there. And that is the main point of ads. While advertising a specific product is often a primary goal, the overarching purpose of marketing is to keep that brand name in the front rather than the back of consumers' minds. So that when they want a quick hamburger, they think "MacDonalds."
Why would a copyright holder of an ad sue a site that was basically "broadcasting" their ad to people at no charge to the copyright holder. Ads aren't something you make money from by keeping them to yourself.
Sounds like their ought to be an article about this "Dim Sum" because I've never heard about it. Is it open source? Will it run under Red Hat Linux? What about FreeBSD?
Or is this a Microsoft product? Don't drop esoteric references like that and just leave us hanging...
Carnegie Mellon had this. They called it "Andrew." Basically, all the workstations on the network acted as servers, so the whole architecture was distributed, rather than running on a couple of monster servers.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it is worth noting that it can be really easy to access someone else's WAP without even meaning to. My neighbor has one and it is totally open. For some reason, his signal strength is so strong that in the front part of my house it sometimes squishes out my wireless network. I frequently wake up my laptop and begin surfing, only to notice ten minutes later that my computer chose his network over mine, or that mine isn't even showing up as a option.
Also, if you set something up like this that is totally open, I don't see how you haven't authorized others to use it. I mean, it (the signal) is on my property. It's like my neighbor turning on his hose so that it floods my property and then claiming it's "his" water. It's on my property, it hasn't been secured, why isn't it mine to use? Hasn't my neighbor agreed to share his broadband connection by broadcasting over the neighborhood without taking the most basic steps to implement security? Based on the name of his network he uses Macs, and believe me implementing the security features in the Apple software is a matter of clicking a few boxes.
This brings up a really good point. The example of doctors having to keep medical records is quite different. For one thing, my medical records are a lot more important than the record of my visits to /., espn.com, cyclingnews.com, cnet.com, etc. Second, there are some pretty big ISPs in the U.S. that would throw some pretty serious lobbying money against something like this. ATTBI changes my IP number on what seems like an hourly basis. What an amazing pain in the ass to go back, figure out all of the various IP numbers I've been assigned over the last six months, and then to reconstruct my browsing history based on those IP numbers. Now multiply that by however many users ATTBI has and you get the picture. It would be more than a minor burden on ATTBI, AOL, etc. to keep this kind of stuff around for that long.
And more to the point, what does it tell you? The signal to noise ratio would be unbelievable.
This is redundant, but I have a 3.5 year old Blue and White G3 at home. I use it every day. Frankly, there hasn't been anything new in the past few years that compels an upgrade.
Fast processor? Yes (sure it is 4 times slower than a 1 Ghz G$, but it is still a fast processor)
USB? Yes.
Firewire? Yes
Decent graphics card? Yes
Lots of RAM? yes
DVD drive? yes
How does my 3.5 year old G3 differ from a Wintel box?
Oh, I can answer that question! The 3.5 year old Wintel box I had (a 233 Mhz Pentium Gateway box)became totally obsolete earlier this year. Can you run XP on a 233 Mhz Pentium? It would be painful.
To say that Apple forces you to buy a new computer every 6 months is about as silly a thing as you could say.
I've been meaning to buy my own modem for about six months now so I could cut my bill by $10 per month. My laziness in this regard has saved me $30. Amazing.
Worse than having your upstream bandwidth reduced, IMHO, was the vast reduction in downstream bandwidth for @Home customers. I used to get 4.6 Mbps down, now I get about 1.2. When I'm downloading something serious that reduction makes a big difference.
So many people are upset about the spoiler that there are very few comments pointing out how bad the episode was. First of all, the ending with the funeral was like a parody of the "death of Spock" that was already taken apart by Seinfeld ("they aren't really dead if we find a way to remember them"). It was awful. Worst thing I've ever seen on X-Files. Second, what hotel has airtight doors every forty feet? There is no way that area was airtight. The whole episode was stupid.
I did like the boat blowing up. Again, had the gas tank really gone, I don't think the entire boat would have exploded like that, but what the hell, it was fun.
I think you are missing the insight offered by this type of modelling, which is that complex systems may result from a simple set of rules. This insight should cause us to question the assumption that most of us, including you, make, i.e., that "society" is "complicated." The whole point of these simulations is to lead one to ask "is society driven by a huge set of rules, or might it be that there is a more limited set of fundemental rules." For example, consider the 'sugarscape' simulation. Understanding that wealth becomes distributed in the way that it is distributed because of a few basic rules would allow us to construct more informed economic policy. We could stop doing "X" to redistribute wealth (if that is the goal) because we know it isn't going to impact the distribution system.
AT&T (and many others) limits upload bandwidth to 128. Pretty damn hard to push 100 GB per day through a pipe that size.
This "MP3 stereo component" obsession has gotten out of hand. I know someone who specializes in OCD. Please, for the sake of the /. community, I think Cmdr Taco needs to seek help dealing with this issue.
I'm probably going to be either ignored or modded down as a troll, but I feel the need to point out that document retention is a difficult issue and perhaps the /. community isn't really the best to debate this issue.
First, document retention policies are going to vary depending on the context. For example, lawyers frequently have to keep certain items for "X" years after a case ends. Tax documents need to be kept for "X" years. So the policy will vary based on 1) the type of business; 2) the jurisdiction; and 3) the particular type of document.
"Asking Slashdot" this question is begging for a crappy signal to noise ratio. Witness all the posts along the lines of "who cares if you have nothing to hide" or "destroy everything." The simple fact is that it would be prohibitively expensive to "save everything" once you get about 5 or so years into the life of a business. Who wants to store documents from a project or product that no longer exists and isn't used by anyone? On the other hand, you may need design documents from a ladder you designed and sold 20 years ago, because you may see a product liability action against you. Hence, the need for a document retention policy. It isn't simply about "making sure there is no evidence" or "making sure you don't get in trouble for destroying documents."
I think this comment is the personal opinion on one invidual based on personal experience and not on emprical data.
/. crowd it is, but to someone who can't figure out how to double click on an installer program to install the software, transferring excel documents and working on them on the tiny handheld isn't something they have any interest in.
My personal opinion is just as valid. And my opinion, based on my experience, is that people want Palm devices. Talk about brand recognition-people know these things a Palm Pilots. My friend's wife, who didn't know how to plug the cradle into her windows box, wanted a palm. My sister wanted one. My mother wanted one. Everyone I know wants a palm! I don't know anyone that has a PocketPC.
The fact is that the majority of American's commute to work in cars. So palms are used as electronic organizers, ones that sync nicely to a computer organizer. Some use speciality applications, but most use it as an organizer. I don't think that the ability to work on word files is really that big of a pull to most of the market. Maybe to the
before he writes this crap? How about the link to the article yesterday about how apple's design has allowed them to fare much better than boring box maker Gateway.
/. be better off if he went somewhere else. He can't seem to formulate an argument without getting at least 50% of his premises wrong.
I know it's fun to bash the Katz, but wouldn't
The article, and many slashdotters, are claiming that KaZaa is refusing to "shut down" to comply with a previous court order. That does not appear to be true. First of all, it appears that the court that ruled in favor of KaZaa is the same court that issued the injunction to shut down. The shut down order supersedes any prior order. KaZaa would only find itself in a conundrum if a different court explicitly ordered them not to shut down and then this court ordered them to do so. That isn't what happened. Furthermore, it does not look the prior ruling had anything to do with KaZaa's right to continue operating. It looks like they are coming up with mostly BS excuses for their decision. Of course, it could be that there is an inconsistency in the two rulings, and that they think they can get away with what they have chosen to do, but that's a different story.
I don't know where people have gotten this idea that the judge has to "approve" of a settlement. I guess its because you hear about judges approving settlements in some high profile cases, as there are some situations in which it happens (e.g., class actions, minors, cases involving consent decrees). But 80% of settlements in the US are not approved by a judge.
They suck. As someone who pays them, they seem huge. I mean, it adds thousands onto your tax bill. While being a contractor may work out better in the long run, having to pay that big chunk of extra taxes really hurts. Not to mention that you have to come up with money quarterly or pay a penalty.
Never mind. The point appears to have been lost on at least two people.
One can see any number of science fiction books coming out in which Canada manages to suck itself into a black hole or blow itself into orbit.
And I was pointing out the reason why no copyright holder ever sued them...
Are there reasons why someone might not think that having their ad up on someone's web site wasn't entirely positive? Probably. But apparently everyone whose ad was up on adcrtic felt that the free exposure outweighed any downside.
As for old ads with out of date products, well, I think that saying that goes "there is no such thing as bad publicity" would be appropriate. So what if someone no longer sells "X." The ad is continuing to get the name out there. And that is the main point of ads. While advertising a specific product is often a primary goal, the overarching purpose of marketing is to keep that brand name in the front rather than the back of consumers' minds. So that when they want a quick hamburger, they think "MacDonalds."
Why would a copyright holder of an ad sue a site that was basically "broadcasting" their ad to people at no charge to the copyright holder. Ads aren't something you make money from by keeping them to yourself.
Sounds like their ought to be an article about this "Dim Sum" because I've never heard about it. Is it open source? Will it run under Red Hat Linux? What about FreeBSD?
Or is this a Microsoft product? Don't drop esoteric references like that and just leave us hanging...
Carnegie Mellon had this. They called it "Andrew." Basically, all the workstations on the network acted as servers, so the whole architecture was distributed, rather than running on a couple of monster servers.
It used to be horribly slow.
Sorry, no.
Sure, but it will cost you $250/hour...
I like that. That's a good one.
And on a related note, I hear that Microsoft's patent application for their "on" button technology was recently submitted....