I'd use mod points on PP but I don't want to. So I'll post instead.
You fix it, you don't get paid for it, you should restrict what they can do! Limited user accounts ONLY. Don't give out the Admin password. Set FF as default browser, set up antivirus/antimalware, and DON'T GIVE OUT THE KEYS.
Of course, the next question is (and let's be honest) are you in a position where your parents can ground you? If so, you might as well just suck it up and deal if you can't convince them that your plans are reasonable...
The way to stop spam is to fight it as the economic problem that it is; if people continue to go after the symptoms of spam like this they will continue to find themselves quickly thwarted.
Sure. Let's educate every farking idiot on the face of the earth. Just like we did with consumers the world over in every single city across the fruited plain. It's worked well for hundreds of years! "Buyer beware" and Heaven help you if you should get defrauded...
What's that you say? We didn't do that? Instead, we instituted "consumer protection" laws that require vendors to adhere to minimal standards of conduct and safety? Laws that prevent manufacturers from making unsafe cars and selling poisoned food? You mean, I can go into pretty much any restaurant and be confident that I probably won't get some terrible disease from poorly cooked food and un-refrigerated meats?
Yes, on the 'net, it's the wild, wild west, all over again. But now problems "over there" have become problems "over here", and suddenly, things like the sorry legal state of Nigeria and Somalia are in our face. Will we fix it overnight? No, but we will fix it. Sure, we'll never get rid of it completely - the Mafia still exists, and gangs still thrive in areas of the mostly controlled First World. (We can get greatly mitigate the gangs by legalizing their primary revenue stream, the drugs, but while related, that's another post)
The thing is that by legally controlling the terms of commerce, we promote healthy commerce. Outlawing commerce altogether has roughly the same effect of not regulating it at all - fraud and crime sets in, legitimate business moves out. To control spam, we need to control commerce, world wide. And that's a big, big problem that will take at least a generation or two to handle.
Reality E: No withheld data. Flying Spaghetti Monster descends from the heavens riding a Harley Davidson and flaming hot pink spandex. Atheists everywhere post furiously the world over that they were JUST KIDDING all those years.
Seriously - it's really retarded to argue that something *might* happen that makes everything we currently know all wrong. But the truth is, the current data can be used to lead one to the most *likely* scenario. Deliberately lying about the current data will lead to a less likely scenario, and increase the chances that people suffer and/or die. Granted, it's highly unlikely to be 100% correct, (Well, duh!) but you're likely to get CLOSER to what happens when you start with as accurate a starting point as possible.
You're just being disingenuous, and given the enormity of the problem, that's really not appreciated.
As you indicate, these are hardly simple questions!
While I would not endorse them today, for years I hosted at GNI, part of 365 Main. Things generally worked well, even if their staff were terse and often unfriendly, so I had no particular complaints until they had a power prolem that cost us about 2000 in direct cost and about two business days to finally, fully resolve. The amount of terse double-speak that came out of them left a very bad taste in my mouth and I've left as soon as I could. Stay clear of 365 Main!
Our new colo is Herakles Data in Sacramento. There, too, things have pretty much 'just worked', but they so much nicer to deal with! And when the inevitable downtime did happen (a 'brownout' on the part of one of their redundant Cisco routers) they were quick to explain exactly what happened and even sent us forms in case we wanted to make a claim against our SLA! (I didn't bother just because I appreciated the respect they afforded me)
And it goes further - when I asked their sales guy about the best way to get a server ack for the development, they GAVE me one that they had replaced because of size limits for FREE! On paper, both colos are similar, with full redundant everything, plenty of certification and nice, glossy promo materials.
I am a Verizon Wireless customer. They make "horrible customer service" sound like something to aspire to.
They haven't been able to get my bill "right" for months. Every single month there are random charges tacked on, that they cannot explain when I call. Until recently, they've cancelled these charges with good apology. But now?
I have two phones suspended because they are lost. Originally, I was told I could suspend them indefinitely. Then I was told that I could only suspend them month-by-month. Then I was was told I could suspend them three months at a time. Now, they're telling me that I can only suspend 6 months per year.
So I decided to buy out the contract. They're charging me for two months' service for two phones I don't even have. And they're charging me for an entire month of service for both of those two phones AFTER the contract has been cancelled!
If you are ever, EVER tempted to go Verizon, RUN LIKE HELL OUT OF THERE. They make a pack of lying vultures seem friendly!
True innovation takes effort. Effort costs money. Giving away your stuff isn't usually a good way to make money.
"Open source" efforts are generally quite effective at delivering answers to problems that are already well-understood and answered. Witness the whole Open-source UNIX phenomenon - UNIX was an long-standing operating system in the 1980s when it really started to gain steam, and it's downright ancient today. The problems of running a POSIX-style system are well understood.
The BASH shell and environment of today would be quite recognizable by any UNIX developer circa 1978.
Truly new ideas, however, are usually "held back" and kept proprietary for a while during which time the inventor/developer of the idea profits. After a while, the patent expires, and since the patent itself is public information, when it expires, that information is then added to the pool of general knowledge kept by society.
Not only have the "sixth sense" used for horizontal awareness, but also vertical awareness! Imagine having the instruments being "beamed" into your head so that you didn't even need to look at the dash to know the pitch and direction of the plane?!?
This could be a GOD-SEND to pilots in both military and civil use!
Not going to happen. No use writing why AGAIN, I think this reply to the original post is just fine:
Plug your ears, dude, and say "LA LA LA LA LA" really loudly while I finish my post!
They said it was infeasible to have an automated car. They were wrong. They said that flying wasn't going to happen. they were wrong. They said that "heavier than air" flying wasn't going to happen. They were wrong. They said that breaking the sound barrier wasn't going to happen. They were wrong. They said that going into space was ludicrous! hey were wrong. Going to the moon was infeasible. They were wrong. Free, global communications so cheap that there's little sense in metering it? unpossible! (they were wrong here, too!)
Seeing a pattern, here?
It's impractical only given the assumptions of today. But just like every single milestone above, technology improved to the point where previously impossible/infeasible/impractical feats became ordinary, even cheap and everyday. Even the disgustingly underfunded federal space program is now increasingly being compensated for.
What's needed is a new technology that commoditizes space travel. Many people would point to the Space Elevator as the answer to our dreams. But it's not really all that practical, and requires us to build super-duper long-chain nanostructures, currently infeasible. Additionally, there's the problem of how to confer lots of energy to the elevators themselves as they travel their 11,000 mile course.
Inroduce the launch loop, and suddenly, numbers start lining up all over the place, at a cost of around 1% of the most recent stimulus package. Seriously. read up on it!
We "all know" that socialism is evil, and soaring taxes are the death of our economy. Yet the United States economy was perhaps strongest in the 50s and 60s, and we haven't had tax rates that high ever since. Yes, you heard me right: tax rates were HIGHEST in the 1950's and 60's. They were higher in the 1980's than they are now.
In fact, if taxes were the indicator of prosperity, then actual prosperity is virtually a reverse graph of the tax rates! It's one of those baffling facts that get in the way of the rhetoric for so many. see for yourself...
Maybe it's time that the Internet standards get a few clauses added that express these concepts explicitly. Like what Paul said about DNS. A clause like "a nameserver MUST responde truthfully, if technically possible. DNS responses MUST NOT be modified in any way for political, economic or business reasons."
I invite you to write the RFC. It's easy to do, and basically, anybody can write an RFC. There's the infamous evil bit for example. But here's the thing... RFCs are just that: Requests For Ccomment. They don't have any teeth, even if they are frequently referred to. For example, I looked directly at the RFCs in order to develop an SMTP handler a few years back...
There IS an "Internet Standards Organization" or three, and they do often "adopt" an RFC to be an "Internet Standard", but if you look, you'll find that there's no enforcement arm whatsoever! It's up to you, the Internet participant, to require/enforce these standards. And just like the explosion in unregulated 802.11 networking, the Internet's power comes from this completely open, unregulated nature.
Sure, there's a wart or ten. Sorry, that's just how it is. I can name a few others:
1) Large ISPs often ignore the TTL values in name servers and set them to as long as 48 hours. This makes moving servers from location A to location B fraught with hacks, such as putting in a NAT router at the old location to forward traffic to the old "wrong" address to the new "right" one.
2) Mail servers that often don't bounce undeliverable messages, just passing them to/dev/null.
3) "Tricks" played by IE to make it seem "faster" by not negotiating a proper connection to the webserver.
Yes, all of these, (and more!) are highly annoying, but the truth is that violations of standards can't be all that flagrant, or the system breaks and people get upset. So overall, the system works remarkably well.
Can you imagine what would have happened if the Internet didn't happen and we ended up going with AOL's proprietary network?
In scandinavia countries new laws will state that "the speed of the line must be atleast 75% of the said one during 24 hour measurement period". And you get throttled with comcast if you're actually using more 70% of what you should have? Why do you put up with this shit?
And it's one of those things that makes no sense. Not at all.
There are two basic types of expenses: running expenses, and overhead expenses. Overhead expenses tend to be relatively fixed. EG: your mortgage payment will stay the same even if you have a friend move in. Running expenses are, by definition, unit-based. If you buy another gallon of milk, you'll pay for another gallon of milk.
It's OK that milk is a unit-cost, because there's a directly attributable cost per gallon of milk sold. More gallons means more cows and more feed, and more water, and more shipping costs, all the way down the line.
But bandwidth has no meaningful unit cost. None. A Gb switch uses about the same ammount of power as a 10 Mb switch. They even both use the same cables. The only difference is the switch itself, and the network adapters for the equipment. Sure, there's the one-time expense of the switch, but that's ridiculously cheap.
Given this, and the stupidly cheap, low (and dropping) cost of fiber, why are we dealing with artificially inflated prices? Comcast could 10x the bandwidth available, become the high-end seller, and make a mint for another 25% hike in fees, at virtually 100% profit after one-time capital expenses are paid.
Why don't they do this? Why are they so fixated on reducing costs in the one area that has no essential cost at all? They're idiots - cutting off their nose to spite their face, missing the whole point of "buy low, sell high".
One of those times when it's clear that private industry isn't intrinsically any more efficient than public agencies...
Does it strike anybody else as a bit ironic to have Intel being sued for a market segmet defined by Intel?
There are loads os chips out there tat can easily be made into a GP computer - ARM, MIPS, SPARC, and Cell, to name a few. It's Intel that defines 'x86' and they are being sued in tat 'market'.
I'm not saying this suit isn't a good idea. Just seems a bit ironic...
FYI: My CentOS 4 servers all have this value set to zero. Also, between 1 AM this morning and now (10-ish AM PST) a kernel update has come out. (yum) So tonight, after hours, I'll be updating and restarting all our production servers.
Yum (and the good guys and Red Hat / CentOS) makes it so easy to be an admin anymore...
That's just not a logical conclusion. It leaves out the much more likely answer that our understanding of the equations of motion is wrong.
So, you take a WHOLE YEAR of Physics in school, and suddenly, you are ready to say with confidence that all the formulas of physics (which, coincidentally, are correct enough to land a robot on Mars and propel a satellite out past the Solar System) are wrong?!?!? Further, you even state that it's MORE LIKELY that they are wrong?
You and your friend were astute enough to notice that you were using overly simplified formulas in your (first year) physics class. You don't think that maybe it's (ahem) more likely that you were just being introduced to the basic concepts, and the formulas were simplified a bit so that students could grasp it? Oooh! ooh! I took a class in this once!
Try really explaining a firewall to somebody sometime - you know, the protocol number, the port number, the IP address, the Mac address - or maybe you don't know, either? Well, many people think they know what a firewall is because they managed to get one to work with the web-based router interface. But how much credence would you give an IT guy who says blithely that setting up firewalls is inherently broken and that we need to rebuild everything, because of flaws he saw in the simplified web-based router interface?
Personally, I think you should pursue physics some more! See what the real formulas are when they start talking about the higher level stuff.... Of course, if you just want to use your 1 year to say "aw, they are all idiots because I took a class!" then so be it.
Just don't expect me to think much of your opinion.
Being guilty of a charge is not the same as being guilty of being guilty of the charge. Because when there are multiple charges for the same act, it's important to keep guilt separate from charges, which are not the same until proven guilty.
It's like a car - when you buy a car, there's the dealer price, the sale price, the Manufacturer's price, the actual sale price (if you buy it) and the commission. They are not the same, but they could be. And what SHOULD be is only relative to your OPINION on the subject. There is no absolute price, only relatives. Who usually don't care what kind of car you drive, anyway.
So when you are looking at charges, whether gas charges, car charges, or Master Charges, it's eh, wait... What are we talking about, again?
How predictable...the first 3 three comments are about how slashdotters don't watch ads on their DVRs and don't understand why anybody does.
and the comment after yours is about how I don't watch TV anymore. And seriously, I don't. DVRs seem archaic, and are a pain in the *@#$ because you have to decide what you want to watch well in advance, which (ahem) sucks. It's all Hulu/Netflix for me, with occasional visits to the network websites... EG: www.cbs.com, www.fox.com, etc.
We still have a TV for the Xbox/Wii/PS2, which we use to watch movies on Netflix instant play from time to time. We probably rent 1 DVD per month from Netflix, just because nobody really takes the initiative to mail the DVD back, and we don't care.
Wikipedia has the following [wikipedia.org] to say on NeXT's impact : "Despite NeXT's limited commercial success, the company had a profound impact on the computer industry. Object-oriented programming and graphical user interfaces became more common after the 1988 release of the NeXTcube and NeXTSTEP, when other companies started to emulate NeXT's object-oriented system."
And somehow, you manage to miss the biggest point: OSX *is* NeXTstep revisited. It's what NeXTSTEP was trying to be, and it's obvious where the influences are...
By making OSX a successor to MacOS, it had a fighting chance, with an inherited customer base, even if the transition was a bit painful...
Sorry, but something that costs $100 isn't a disposable item, it still costs a reasonable amount of effort to earn that much money. Our currency hasn't become that inflated yet...
I guess it depends on your income and/or skill level.
My smart phone cost about $300 and I take good care of it. But, I also fly private planes recreationally, a hobby that costs me anywhere from $70 to $130 per hour, depending on what I fly and how I fly it. Is an hour or so of recreation "disposable"?
They still make standalone mp3 players and pdas and cameras.
They still even make standalone cell phones.
That is, until it's no longer profitable to do so.
1) When was the last time you even saw a pager on sale? Do they even offer pager service any more?
2) Pay phones are disappearing faster than coastal fog on a 100 degree day.
3) land-lines are disappearing now, since most younger, 20-somethings today decide not to bother.
4) Watches are on the strong decline, too. Look around you: how many 25 and unders wear one?
All of these are victims of the success of cell phones. I haven't worn a watch in years. We only have a single dedicated "clock" in my relatively spacious (2,000 sq ft) house, and it's really just decorative. The only other clocks are in the microwave and the coffee maker! I don't remember the last time I used a pay phone, and the land-line is so rarely used that we often don't even have a phone plugged into it. We only have it because it costs some $5/month extra after getting the DSL plan.
Why, exactly, would you think that you'd always have dedicated MP3 players and GPS devices?
The continuing high value of the dollar is destroying the United States economy.
It's why China continues to dismantle our manufacturing and production base. It's why it's cheaper to cut a tree in our forest, ship it overseas to have it cut into boards, and then ship it back to build another McMansion. It's why the Middle Class is eroding in favor of $7/hour burger-flipping poor and Upper Middle/Wealthy super-professionals.
And no politician is going to make the case that we should make changes, because it's easier for the short term. With a strong dollar, oil is cheaper, imported crap is cheaper, travelling overseas is easier. But it comes at the cost of our manufacturing base, which cuts into our sovereignty and our true long-term power.
Why should we bother making these windmills here at $XXX a pop when we can import them from China for half that price? And so goes the experience, the drive, the wisdom, the creativity of our population, who don't have any compelling reason to do any more than buy another (imported) video game console, and play another video game. Why bother getting educated when it's so easy to get what you want? Your $7/hour burger flipper has more true buying power than the upper-middle class equivalent in China!
That is, until the cold, North wind blows. This is *NOT* a long-term, stable situation. The United States does NOT provide value equivalent to its buying power, and this is evidenced by our long-standing trade deficit. Sooner or later, China will decide that it's no longer advantageous to export their stuff cheaply. They will stop subsidizing our Dollar, and without the true wealth and production/manufacturing base to support us, we won't have much to say about it.
The Chinese have had a continuous civilization for 4,000 years. They can be patient, while we Americans still think 100 years is a long time.
Slashdot Mirror
Really? (typing this on my Fedora Core laptop)
It's been my desktop for nearly 10 years...
I'd use mod points on PP but I don't want to. So I'll post instead.
You fix it, you don't get paid for it, you should restrict what they can do! Limited user accounts ONLY. Don't give out the Admin password. Set FF as default browser, set up antivirus/antimalware, and DON'T GIVE OUT THE KEYS.
Of course, the next question is (and let's be honest) are you in a position where your parents can ground you? If so, you might as well just suck it up and deal if you can't convince them that your plans are reasonable...
You on't agree that Microsoft is in the wrong. You are posting on Slashdot. Therefore, you are a Microsoft shill.
LEAVE, YOU HEATHEN!
The way to stop spam is to fight it as the economic problem that it is; if people continue to go after the symptoms of spam like this they will continue to find themselves quickly thwarted.
Sure. Let's educate every farking idiot on the face of the earth. Just like we did with consumers the world over in every single city across the fruited plain. It's worked well for hundreds of years! "Buyer beware" and Heaven help you if you should get defrauded...
What's that you say? We didn't do that? Instead, we instituted "consumer protection" laws that require vendors to adhere to minimal standards of conduct and safety? Laws that prevent manufacturers from making unsafe cars and selling poisoned food? You mean, I can go into pretty much any restaurant and be confident that I probably won't get some terrible disease from poorly cooked food and un-refrigerated meats?
Yes, on the 'net, it's the wild, wild west, all over again. But now problems "over there" have become problems "over here", and suddenly, things like the sorry legal state of Nigeria and Somalia are in our face. Will we fix it overnight? No, but we will fix it. Sure, we'll never get rid of it completely - the Mafia still exists, and gangs still thrive in areas of the mostly controlled First World. (We can get greatly mitigate the gangs by legalizing their primary revenue stream, the drugs, but while related, that's another post)
The thing is that by legally controlling the terms of commerce, we promote healthy commerce. Outlawing commerce altogether has roughly the same effect of not regulating it at all - fraud and crime sets in, legitimate business moves out. To control spam, we need to control commerce, world wide. And that's a big, big problem that will take at least a generation or two to handle.
Reality E: No withheld data. Flying Spaghetti Monster descends from the heavens riding a Harley Davidson and flaming hot pink spandex. Atheists everywhere post furiously the world over that they were JUST KIDDING all those years.
Seriously - it's really retarded to argue that something *might* happen that makes everything we currently know all wrong. But the truth is, the current data can be used to lead one to the most *likely* scenario. Deliberately lying about the current data will lead to a less likely scenario, and increase the chances that people suffer and/or die. Granted, it's highly unlikely to be 100% correct, (Well, duh!) but you're likely to get CLOSER to what happens when you start with as accurate a starting point as possible.
You're just being disingenuous, and given the enormity of the problem, that's really not appreciated.
That is, unless your name is either Bambi or Nemo...
Sure, I'll buy my way out of the contract. That's not what I'm complaining about. My complaints:
1) Horrible inconsistency. Reps that just seem to say whatever sounds nice, and bills that don't match (at ALL) what was said.
2) Billing for a contract after the contract is terminated. (WTF?)
As you indicate, these are hardly simple questions!
While I would not endorse them today, for years I hosted at GNI, part of 365 Main. Things generally worked well, even if their staff were terse and often unfriendly, so I had no particular complaints until they had a power prolem that cost us about 2000 in direct cost and about two business days to finally, fully resolve. The amount of terse double-speak that came out of them left a very bad taste in my mouth and I've left as soon as I could. Stay clear of 365 Main!
Our new colo is Herakles Data in Sacramento. There, too, things have pretty much 'just worked', but they so much nicer to deal with! And when the inevitable downtime did happen (a 'brownout' on the part of one of their redundant Cisco routers) they were quick to explain exactly what happened and even sent us forms in case we wanted to make a claim against our SLA! (I didn't bother just because I appreciated the respect they afforded me)
And it goes further - when I asked their sales guy about the best way to get a server ack for the development, they GAVE me one that they had replaced because of size limits for FREE! On paper, both colos are similar, with full redundant everything, plenty of certification and nice, glossy promo materials.
In practice, they are like night and day.
I am a Verizon Wireless customer. They make "horrible customer service" sound like something to aspire to.
They haven't been able to get my bill "right" for months. Every single month there are random charges tacked on, that they cannot explain when I call. Until recently, they've cancelled these charges with good apology. But now?
I have two phones suspended because they are lost. Originally, I was told I could suspend them indefinitely. Then I was told that I could only suspend them month-by-month. Then I was was told I could suspend them three months at a time. Now, they're telling me that I can only suspend 6 months per year.
So I decided to buy out the contract. They're charging me for two months' service for two phones I don't even have. And they're charging me for an entire month of service for both of those two phones AFTER the contract has been cancelled!
If you are ever, EVER tempted to go Verizon, RUN LIKE HELL OUT OF THERE. They make a pack of lying vultures seem friendly!
True innovation takes effort. Effort costs money. Giving away your stuff isn't usually a good way to make money.
"Open source" efforts are generally quite effective at delivering answers to problems that are already well-understood and answered. Witness the whole Open-source UNIX phenomenon - UNIX was an long-standing operating system in the 1980s when it really started to gain steam, and it's downright ancient today. The problems of running a POSIX-style system are well understood.
The BASH shell and environment of today would be quite recognizable by any UNIX developer circa 1978.
Truly new ideas, however, are usually "held back" and kept proprietary for a while during which time the inventor/developer of the idea profits. After a while, the patent expires, and since the patent itself is public information, when it expires, that information is then added to the pool of general knowledge kept by society.
In its basic inception, patents are a good thing!
Not only have the "sixth sense" used for horizontal awareness, but also vertical awareness! Imagine having the instruments being "beamed" into your head so that you didn't even need to look at the dash to know the pitch and direction of the plane?!?
This could be a GOD-SEND to pilots in both military and civil use!
Not going to happen. No use writing why AGAIN, I think this reply to the original post is just fine:
Plug your ears, dude, and say "LA LA LA LA LA" really loudly while I finish my post!
They said it was infeasible to have an automated car. They were wrong.
They said that flying wasn't going to happen. they were wrong.
They said that "heavier than air" flying wasn't going to happen. They were wrong.
They said that breaking the sound barrier wasn't going to happen. They were wrong.
They said that going into space was ludicrous! hey were wrong.
Going to the moon was infeasible. They were wrong.
Free, global communications so cheap that there's little sense in metering it? unpossible! (they were wrong here, too!)
Seeing a pattern, here?
It's impractical only given the assumptions of today. But just like every single milestone above, technology improved to the point where previously impossible/infeasible/impractical feats became ordinary, even cheap and everyday. Even the disgustingly underfunded federal space program is now increasingly being compensated for.
What's needed is a new technology that commoditizes space travel. Many people would point to the Space Elevator as the answer to our dreams. But it's not really all that practical, and requires us to build super-duper long-chain nanostructures, currently infeasible. Additionally, there's the problem of how to confer lots of energy to the elevators themselves as they travel their 11,000 mile course.
But there's a solution that today solves all these problems without requiring any particularly new developments - space travel can be commoditized in as little as 3-5 years, and provide a launch price of as little as $3 per kg, well under 1% of the $12,000/pound figure stated in your linked-to article.
Inroduce the launch loop, and suddenly, numbers start lining up all over the place, at a cost of around 1% of the most recent stimulus package. Seriously. read up on it!
We "all know" that socialism is evil, and soaring taxes are the death of our economy. Yet the United States economy was perhaps strongest in the 50s and 60s, and we haven't had tax rates that high ever since. Yes, you heard me right: tax rates were HIGHEST in the 1950's and 60's. They were higher in the 1980's than they are now.
In fact, if taxes were the indicator of prosperity, then actual prosperity is virtually a reverse graph of the tax rates! It's one of those baffling facts that get in the way of the rhetoric for so many. see for yourself...
Personally, I find comments like yours annoying.
Maybe it's time that the Internet standards get a few clauses added that express these concepts explicitly. Like what Paul said about DNS. A clause like "a nameserver MUST responde truthfully, if technically possible. DNS responses MUST NOT be modified in any way for political, economic or business reasons."
I invite you to write the RFC. It's easy to do, and basically, anybody can write an RFC. There's the infamous evil bit for example. But here's the thing... RFCs are just that: Requests For Ccomment. They don't have any teeth, even if they are frequently referred to. For example, I looked directly at the RFCs in order to develop an SMTP handler a few years back...
There IS an "Internet Standards Organization" or three, and they do often "adopt" an RFC to be an "Internet Standard", but if you look, you'll find that there's no enforcement arm whatsoever! It's up to you, the Internet participant, to require/enforce these standards. And just like the explosion in unregulated 802.11 networking, the Internet's power comes from this completely open, unregulated nature.
Sure, there's a wart or ten. Sorry, that's just how it is. I can name a few others:
1) Large ISPs often ignore the TTL values in name servers and set them to as long as 48 hours. This makes moving servers from location A to location B fraught with hacks, such as putting in a NAT router at the old location to forward traffic to the old "wrong" address to the new "right" one.
2) Mail servers that often don't bounce undeliverable messages, just passing them to /dev/null.
3) "Tricks" played by IE to make it seem "faster" by not negotiating a proper connection to the webserver.
Yes, all of these, (and more!) are highly annoying, but the truth is that violations of standards can't be all that flagrant, or the system breaks and people get upset. So overall, the system works remarkably well.
Can you imagine what would have happened if the Internet didn't happen and we ended up going with AOL's proprietary network?
(shudder)
In scandinavia countries new laws will state that "the speed of the line must be atleast 75% of the said one during 24 hour measurement period". And you get throttled with comcast if you're actually using more 70% of what you should have? Why do you put up with this shit?
And it's one of those things that makes no sense. Not at all.
There are two basic types of expenses: running expenses, and overhead expenses. Overhead expenses tend to be relatively fixed. EG: your mortgage payment will stay the same even if you have a friend move in. Running expenses are, by definition, unit-based. If you buy another gallon of milk, you'll pay for another gallon of milk.
It's OK that milk is a unit-cost, because there's a directly attributable cost per gallon of milk sold. More gallons means more cows and more feed, and more water, and more shipping costs, all the way down the line.
But bandwidth has no meaningful unit cost. None. A Gb switch uses about the same ammount of power as a 10 Mb switch. They even both use the same cables. The only difference is the switch itself, and the network adapters for the equipment. Sure, there's the one-time expense of the switch, but that's ridiculously cheap.
Given this, and the stupidly cheap, low (and dropping) cost of fiber, why are we dealing with artificially inflated prices? Comcast could 10x the bandwidth available, become the high-end seller, and make a mint for another 25% hike in fees, at virtually 100% profit after one-time capital expenses are paid.
Why don't they do this? Why are they so fixated on reducing costs in the one area that has no essential cost at all? They're idiots - cutting off their nose to spite their face, missing the whole point of "buy low, sell high".
One of those times when it's clear that private industry isn't intrinsically any more efficient than public agencies...
Does it strike anybody else as a bit ironic to have Intel being sued for a market segmet defined by Intel?
There are loads os chips out there tat can easily be made into a GP computer - ARM, MIPS, SPARC, and Cell, to name a few. It's Intel that defines 'x86' and they are being sued in tat 'market'.
I'm not saying this suit isn't a good idea. Just seems a bit ironic...
FYI: My CentOS 4 servers all have this value set to zero. Also, between 1 AM this morning and now (10-ish AM PST) a kernel update has come out. (yum) So tonight, after hours, I'll be updating and restarting all our production servers.
Yum (and the good guys and Red Hat / CentOS) makes it so easy to be an admin anymore...
That's just not a logical conclusion. It leaves out the much more likely answer that our understanding of the equations of motion is wrong.
So, you take a WHOLE YEAR of Physics in school, and suddenly, you are ready to say with confidence that all the formulas of physics (which, coincidentally, are correct enough to land a robot on Mars and propel a satellite out past the Solar System) are wrong?!?!? Further, you even state that it's MORE LIKELY that they are wrong?
You and your friend were astute enough to notice that you were using overly simplified formulas in your (first year) physics class. You don't think that maybe it's (ahem) more likely that you were just being introduced to the basic concepts, and the formulas were simplified a bit so that students could grasp it? Oooh! ooh! I took a class in this once!
Try really explaining a firewall to somebody sometime - you know, the protocol number, the port number, the IP address, the Mac address - or maybe you don't know, either? Well, many people think they know what a firewall is because they managed to get one to work with the web-based router interface. But how much credence would you give an IT guy who says blithely that setting up firewalls is inherently broken and that we need to rebuild everything, because of flaws he saw in the simplified web-based router interface?
Personally, I think you should pursue physics some more! See what the real formulas are when they start talking about the higher level stuff.... Of course, if you just want to use your 1 year to say "aw, they are all idiots because I took a class!" then so be it.
Just don't expect me to think much of your opinion.
Being guilty of a charge is not the same as being guilty of being guilty of the charge. Because when there are multiple charges for the same act, it's important to keep guilt separate from charges, which are not the same until proven guilty.
It's like a car - when you buy a car, there's the dealer price, the sale price, the Manufacturer's price, the actual sale price (if you buy it) and the commission. They are not the same, but they could be. And what SHOULD be is only relative to your OPINION on the subject. There is no absolute price, only relatives. Who usually don't care what kind of car you drive, anyway.
So when you are looking at charges, whether gas charges, car charges, or Master Charges, it's eh, wait... What are we talking about, again?
How predictable...the first 3 three comments are about how slashdotters don't watch ads on their DVRs and don't understand why anybody does.
and the comment after yours is about how I don't watch TV anymore. And seriously, I don't. DVRs seem archaic, and are a pain in the *@#$ because you have to decide what you want to watch well in advance, which (ahem) sucks. It's all Hulu/Netflix for me, with occasional visits to the network websites... EG: www.cbs.com, www.fox.com, etc.
We still have a TV for the Xbox/Wii/PS2, which we use to watch movies on Netflix instant play from time to time. We probably rent 1 DVD per month from Netflix, just because nobody really takes the initiative to mail the DVD back, and we don't care.
Wikipedia has the following [wikipedia.org] to say on NeXT's impact : "Despite NeXT's limited commercial success, the company had a profound impact on the computer industry. Object-oriented programming and graphical user interfaces became more common after the 1988 release of the NeXTcube and NeXTSTEP, when other companies started to emulate NeXT's object-oriented system."
And somehow, you manage to miss the biggest point: OSX *is* NeXTstep revisited. It's what NeXTSTEP was trying to be, and it's obvious where the influences are...
By making OSX a successor to MacOS, it had a fighting chance, with an inherited customer base, even if the transition was a bit painful...
Sorry, but something that costs $100 isn't a disposable item, it still costs a reasonable amount of effort to earn that much money. Our currency hasn't become that inflated yet...
I guess it depends on your income and/or skill level.
My smart phone cost about $300 and I take good care of it. But, I also fly private planes recreationally, a hobby that costs me anywhere from $70 to $130 per hour, depending on what I fly and how I fly it. Is an hour or so of recreation "disposable"?
Some of us don't want or need cellphones.
They still make standalone mp3 players and pdas and cameras.
They still even make standalone cell phones.
That is, until it's no longer profitable to do so.
1) When was the last time you even saw a pager on sale? Do they even offer pager service any more?
2) Pay phones are disappearing faster than coastal fog on a 100 degree day.
3) land-lines are disappearing now, since most younger, 20-somethings today decide not to bother.
4) Watches are on the strong decline, too. Look around you: how many 25 and unders wear one?
All of these are victims of the success of cell phones. I haven't worn a watch in years. We only have a single dedicated "clock" in my relatively spacious (2,000 sq ft) house, and it's really just decorative. The only other clocks are in the microwave and the coffee maker! I don't remember the last time I used a pay phone, and the land-line is so rarely used that we often don't even have a phone plugged into it. We only have it because it costs some $5/month extra after getting the DSL plan.
Why, exactly, would you think that you'd always have dedicated MP3 players and GPS devices?
The continuing high value of the dollar is destroying the United States economy.
It's why China continues to dismantle our manufacturing and production base. It's why it's cheaper to cut a tree in our forest, ship it overseas to have it cut into boards, and then ship it back to build another McMansion. It's why the Middle Class is eroding in favor of $7/hour burger-flipping poor and Upper Middle/Wealthy super-professionals.
And no politician is going to make the case that we should make changes, because it's easier for the short term. With a strong dollar, oil is cheaper, imported crap is cheaper, travelling overseas is easier. But it comes at the cost of our manufacturing base, which cuts into our sovereignty and our true long-term power.
Why should we bother making these windmills here at $XXX a pop when we can import them from China for half that price? And so goes the experience, the drive, the wisdom, the creativity of our population, who don't have any compelling reason to do any more than buy another (imported) video game console, and play another video game. Why bother getting educated when it's so easy to get what you want? Your $7/hour burger flipper has more true buying power than the upper-middle class equivalent in China!
That is, until the cold, North wind blows. This is *NOT* a long-term, stable situation. The United States does NOT provide value equivalent to its buying power, and this is evidenced by our long-standing trade deficit. Sooner or later, China will decide that it's no longer advantageous to export their stuff cheaply. They will stop subsidizing our Dollar, and without the true wealth and production/manufacturing base to support us, we won't have much to say about it.
The Chinese have had a continuous civilization for 4,000 years. They can be patient, while we Americans still think 100 years is a long time.