Hey, that's better than ROT26. So old, so classic, this joke defies time in geek circles. But, alas, highly inaccurate. For example, how would you encrypt the following string with ROT26?
aAbBcC
I don't think you can - there are 26 letters in the alphabet, but there are 52 if you include upper and lower case. So... good for a joke perhaps, maybe a Lucky Charms magic decoder ring, but actually not accurate.
Guess it's like watching a TV episode where, at a dramatic moment, the techie shrieks: "Get that firewall up NOW!" with lots of sparks and flashing screens.... but why can't I expect better from a tech blog?
Instead, they sell, sell, sell accounts with "unlimited" bandwidth at X speed; add something in their ToS that some unknown amount of usage is too much; and then blame their infrasture problems on those that use BitTorrent and the like (whether they are used for legal or illegal purposes) rather than on their own irresponsibility and money-grabbing.
I live in an old house, parts of which over 100 years old. (It's been heavily remodeled) Old enough that there's no meter on the water. We pay a flat rate. You could call this "unlimited" water because there is no specific limit on the water usage.
Technically, there's no particular reason why we couldn't run pipes over to our neighbors and run the whole block on our single water feed. In theory, I could turn on a faucet and use it as a fountain to feed some forever-flushing toilet art.
Except that would be fraud. See, even with my "unlimited" water source, there are practical limits, if not technical ones. If I were caught, the city would have every right to sue me for damages. I can't go in the business and sell water to southern California. (Yes, I live in Northern CA)
Your Internet pipe is not much different. No, you aren't being sold to specific limits. But the reality is that a very small percentage of the customers account for most of the bandwidth used. They don't want to worry about the 97% of the customers, they just want to put some limits on the last 3%, or get rid of them altogether.
That 3% is us. That includes the 120 TB of network traffic I accounted for last month on my DSL account. That's not BT traffic, that's mostly offsite backups of my business, but still, I know I'm in the "blood sucking leaches" category.
Now, let's talk about brass tacks: My company hosts servers. We have half a dozen in a top-notch hosting facility in Sacramento, CA on a 6Mb burstable contract. In short, we serve data at about a 6 Mb rate during my daily peaks. Yet a single cable customer could account for 6 Mb of data stream if they're set up right.
But while the cable customer pays $50/month for their 6 Mb service, we pay over $1,000 per month for my 6 Mb hosting contract, and I'm happy to pay that (damned cheap!) price. For that $1,200 per month, I get at 5 nines (99.999%) network uptime with dual network feeds, a half-rack, (about 20 U) 20 amps of redundant power, and the ability to burst up to 100 Mb during peak usage.
Are you noticing a small price disparity? $1,200 on my side, $50 on yours. Is that fair? Not that I mind the $1,000 price tag, it's a million-dollar business. The $1,200/mo is peanuts. But it's a big number compared to your $50/month.
Where was I going with this? I don't know. But the bottom line is that Mb isn't the only factor, and the telecoms aren't being as greedy as your limited experience would lead you to believe.
Yes! You can go cheaper! I was giving a more average cost. I paid more to go to a school at my local airport. I learned in a C172. I could have gone the cheaper route, but it was not nearly as convenient.
Go those routes, and stick with good old fashioned paper books for studying instead of the insanely expensive DVD stuff, and you can get into the air on a budget. I'm now looking at purchasing my own plane. Likely candidates right now are a Grumman Yankee or a Piper Tomahawk. Both of those can be found for $18-25k. My ultimate goal is to build my own though. I'm really set on a Zenith Zodiac 601XL with a Chevy Corvair engine whenever I decide to take that leap:).
Personally, I'm pining for a Cozy Mk IV or a Long EZ, with a Lycoming IO 320 or 360 engine... Wish I had the time to build, but it's not uncommon to see these between $18k and $30k.
I'd be leery of any plane running a converted auto-engine - the crankshafts just really aren't made for the continuous torsional stresses a prop gives, and aircraft engines are run considerably harder than car engines. EG: Airplanes routinely cruise at about 75% full throttle, but cars rarely run more than 25% or so on the freeway.
I've been watching the HB lists for a while now, and just in the past year, there have been a number of crankshaft breakages in the Corvair conversions starting about 100 - 150 hours.
In the mean time, no flying cars, and the average schmuck still hasn't paid for his TV he bought on credit. Counter tops which suggest recipes will be something that only someone who can hire kitchen staff will be able to afford; in which case, they won't exactly need a suggestion, will they?
I won't comment on marble counter tops. But I can comment on the "flying cars" problem. It's not a problem of technology, it's not a problem of implementability, that was proven 30 years ago.
The problem isn't the car. It's the driver.
It's easy to drive a car. Mostly, you follow the yellow line in the middle of the road, and remember where to turn.
But aircraft are a completely different thing altogether. You have to know exactly where you are every single second. You have to deal with location, weather, traffic control, altitude, and airspeed. Landing can be a total bitch until you "get the hang of it".
It costs a few hundred bucks to get a driver's license, if you include education, training, driving time, etc.
For most people, it costs about $10,000 to become a basic, VFR (Visual Flight Rules - good weather only) private pilot. It costs considerably more to earn ratings for flying in bad weather, (IFR = Instrument Flight Rules) High Performance aircraft (over 200 HP) complex aircraft (those with retractable landing gear) or to operate a plane for pay. (Commercial License)
It's expensive. Only about 650,000 people in a nation of 300,000,000 have bothered. The result is a very, very, very small marketplace, where even certified aircraft are essentially hand-made, one-by-one. A good percentage of planes are 'experimental' which often means (literally) built in somebody's garage.
Yes, I'm a pilot. Flying is a damned good way to solve the problem of extra spending money - it's also damned fun to do! The hard part is getting the wife to buy into it...
> Yeah Apple is so open and this is the reason i can run OS X on my beige bo- OH WAIT I CANNOT !
Actually you can. There are a bunch of sites explaining how; that is much more useful than running XP on the new Intel Macs, which you can also do. Yeah, you can get it running. If you don't care about security updates. If you take full responsibility for driver problems. If you don't mind dickering with your computer for a day or two. I never could get it to work under either VMWare Player or VMWare Workstation.
> But that's not such an issue at least songs i downloaded with Itunes can be played on my noname mp3 play- OH NOES IT FAILS !
You have to convert them first; you can do that in Itunes. Great. Another hack. Wouldn't it be nice if you didn't have to download software of questionable legality? Feeling that Apple love, yet?
Neither am I.
> Well at least Itunes runs on Linux, to- SHIT IT DOESN'T !
It works with wine apparently, or Crossover Office. I'm noticing a pattern, here... Wine is a barely acceptable hackaround of the proprietary Win32 API. Wouldn't it be nice if iTunes actually worked... on Linux!?!?
Linux has come a long way towards desktop/user friendliness and distributions like Ubuntu are a huge leap forward, but they still haven't achieved the holy grail of but-can-my-grandmother-use-it. Getting closer, though.
Depends on what you do. I've been using Linux since about 1998 or so. I have the same home directory all this time, all my email, etc.
Windows machines have to be reloaded every year or two to "stay fresh". I've *NEVER* reloaded the O/S on my Linux system (now a laptop) for this reason. The other thing is that when I do load in a new O/S (such as my recent upgrade to Fedora 8) the transfer is very easy. The re-integration time is usually just a few hours.
Fight with my computer? Somewhat - but not much more than I do on a Windows system. Yes, it used to be awful, and getting X11 to work at all used to be dicey. Now it's so automatic, just enable a few repos and yum update and bang!
What really gets me is that when I load in the O/S, I run a single command ("yum -y update") and reboot, and all security patches and updates are done, applied, and my system is ready to go. Maybe 20 minutes? Windows has this seemingly endless cycle of WGA/Check/Download/Install/Reboot that easily lasts all day. Do you count that as time spent "fighting" with your computer?
Yes, I still run Windows for video games. I just don't use it for anything where I'm going to need it to work reliably.
the worst part, have you ever sat on a jury? I have been in 2 and some people's "justifications" are insane. One trial 2 women were willing to send the guy down the river 30 secodns after we got in the room, they based it on what the DA said that the judge told them to strike from the record. It was pure fantasy on the DA's part and we were instructed to not consider it.
People are people. They are this way today, were this way 10 years ago, they were this way 200 years ago. That's why we have a jury system so rigged such that a *single* person can hang the jury and let the defendant go.
we spent the next 8 hours going over things and trying to get these ditsy two to actually think. And this is the norm in Jury duty.
See?! It works! This is why the jury system is so beautiful! (And why it sucks so bad for those of us that think a little bit) Most people suck. But the odds of everybody sucking when you get 12 random people together drops rather dramatically.
Welcome to jurisprudence! BTW: my heart-felt thanks for serving on jury duty!
I thought everyone was on board that decentralization was where everything was headed?
And... how did you get that silly idea? Right now, with the Internet, the world is on the most incredible path towards centralization ever. Don't confuse ubiquitous access with decentralization. They are NOT the same.
Ubiquitous access == you can access your Hotmail account from any computer.
Decentralized == your email is being hosted/served on YOUR computer.
With web-based applications being all the rage, the trend is clearly towards centralized, ubiquitous access.
I keep reading mention of these mythical 'most scientists' who are close-minded, stubborn, and obtuse. I wonder where in the world you find these people. -SNIP- So where are these 'most scientists'? No matter where I look, I can't seem to find them!
I tend to find these "most scientists" in the minds of close-minded, stubborn, and obtuse people. Usually these people have some ax to grind, or snake oil they want to sell you, like your local chiropractor who wants to "cure" your blood sugar problems with reflexology.
Remember, people see in others what they see in themselves...
Continue to host the data referenced on a single T-1 line. That will cut your expenses to the bone since you'll never exceed 1.54 Mbps and that should be quite cheap. And, any dumfuxorz who fubarred their parser to not cache these basically static values will probably figure it out... very quickly.
You don't have to leave it on the T-1, maybe just 1 month out of the year. Every year.
Your response is littered with lots of inflammatory words which work rather effectively at reducing the value of the substance in your post. Despite some initial hesitation, I'll bite...
And you have ANY hard data to back that up ? No.
Handily ignoring the rest of my post?
Others are trying to come up with better metrics (http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html...
Which gives lots of details about ALLOCATION. See rest of post.
First of all, it's not a requirement for every address to be routable to (and you can check that much better by looking at what percentage of prefixes are actually advertized).
Eh, what did you say? And, why use an address that's not advertized? (spelled "advertised" by most folks) Sounds amazingly like NAT... in other words, it is not used in the literal sense.
A problem many others have faced and solved before you.
It's like asking "Do you know where my shoe is?" and hearing your spouse respond: "Right where you left it". Technically true, utterly useless in any meaningful sense.
I wonder, why was your first thought to crap out (at least) 10 packets to the net that really are not needed ?
Ignoring the insults, my intention was to try to evaluate the relative strength of my Internet connection, including an accounting for outages that can cover broad areas. By picking addresses from around the world, I'm attempting to evaluate the overall strength of the Internet rather than just my connection to a few key points.
Ah. So now that flooding ICMP out to the net is not enough, you have to litter it with bogus DNS requests the reply to which you are not really interested in.
Are you daft?
You're worried about the effect of about 10-20 DNS requests per day, when mail servers are pelted with millions of SPAMs per day? Have you ever looked at the relative size of a ping packet (a few bytes) with the size of an image-laden penis-pill spam?
Come back when your sense of scale approximates reality.
So, do, in all likelihood, a router in your upstream, or DNS resolvers you know about. Instead, you now latch on to addresses that respond. The cellphone in Singapore, for instance.
I wasn't interested in my personal connection to my upstream, but rather a more general sense of my host's health. And how many cell phones actually *need* a public IP address, or even have one? I argue that an "unadvertised" address is a waste of an address, function better served by NAT.
The fact is, if no changes in allocation and revocation of IP space are made, there is a cutoff date when no more IP addresses will be available.
A point which underscores my post, even if you disagree with my methods.
It's a sham - the Internet is mostly dark
on
One Step Closer to IPv6
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The sad part is, most of the IP addresses in question are... dark. Nothing there. Even though we're approaching 85% allocation, utilization is probably around 1-2%. No, I'm not kidding.
Try it yourself - hack up some script to randomly generate IPs and then ping sweep the network blocks. You'll probably be quite surprised at the result.
A while back, I wanted to have a way to detect if a host was "offline" so that it could modify its behavior. (EG: halt outgoing SOAP requests if the server's network connection was disrupted, preventing bogus error messages from entering the system)
My first thought was to randomly generate 10 IP addresses, then ping them to see if they were offline, guessing that at least 50% would respond. Basically, none did. So, then I tried randomizing addresses and keeping a list of only those that had, at one time, responded. Even that turned out to be unfruitful. So finally, I took a dictionary and randomly created domain names from 1-2 normal dictionary words, pinging those, and keeping a list. That yielded some 40% usable responses, allowing me to keep a list of fairly trustworthy ping hosts to determine the online status of the server in question.
Bottom line: The shortage in the global IP pool is an artifact brought on by grossly inefficient/incompetent management of the global IP pool. The idea that we're running out of addresses purely ignores the fact that the vast, vast majority of the addresses we now have are simply unused.
sql server is a great product, and is certainly better then everything else in the opensource world aside from postgresql
I would argue with that, since it depends on your requirements for "better".
PostgreSQL is a high-quality database. I managed millions of dollars worth of data on Postgres. It runs fast with complex queries (11-table joins with millions of records on each) when lots of RAM is available. Better, it's free, takes about 10 minutes to install when you include its download time via yum on the free CentOS Linux.
SqlLite is the shiznit when you want an embedded SQL server. Imagine the power of SQL on a client system without having to install much of anything. The library for SqLite is so small that the icon for your software is often larger. Despite this fact, you get a quality SQL implementation with many "Enterprise" features, including foreign keys, constraints, etc.
I have a client-based product using SqlLite - the end result is simply stunning, and performance is quite good.
SQL Server is a non-starter for me. First off, I have to be running Windows. Secondly, I have to be managing licenses. Until you've been in the situation where licensing is a non-issue, you won't understand how much time/energy you waste on this issue. Third, why would I go for Sql Server when (free!) PostgreSQL is available?
The fact that I could scale my software up to handling the entire United States without any license fees at all is a SERIOUS plus. (we vend software for schools using PG as a back end)
The truth is that there is no effective limit to the bandwidth available other than the limits we arbitrarily decide. There are an infinite number of frequencies between 1 Khz and 2 Khz. On a given frequency, the amount of information that can be transferred increases with the frequency, so while there's an infinite number of frequencies between any point and any other, the amount of data that can be transferred on a given frequency rises as the frequency increases.
So, assuming that all the bandwidth between 0 and 1 Ghz is Inifinity, the bandwidth between 1 and 2 Ghz is about 3x of the Infinity represented between 0 and 1. (Average of 0...1 is.5 Ghz, average of 1...2 is 1.5 Ghz, given 3x the bandwidth, X infinity.
Practically, the limit is purely technical - how tight can frequency separation get with our current technologies?
Er... As someone with an IQ of 159 you should realize that you are abnormal, and that writing articles addressed only to such a minority of people would be rather... absurd. Actually I don't think your subjective experience can really be generalized to other people with high IQs. For example, I've got a pretty decent IQ myself (153), and generally try NOT to multitask, I'd rather handle one situation at a time. I think its called hyperfocus, which pretty much turn tasks into "flow" like experiences. Intelligence does not lead to one style of expression, there still is tons of neural baggage, and experiences, that will shape your strategy of using it.
I'm right there with you at about 155, last time I tested. I'm partner, CTO, and software engineer for a small software company. (12 staff, 3 software engineers including myself) So I write software, specifications for the other programmers, and frequently answer questions about software layout, design, and also often talk with customers. In other words, my job description is all over the map. I've learned however. I've learned how to answer the phone, answer a few quick questions, and NOT lose my train of thought in programming.
Most importantly, I've learned to say "My mind is in another place, and I can't think this through right now. Can I call you back when I have some spare brain available?". This comes when I notice that I'm losing my hard-earned train of thought, and need to keep it. I don't know if I can stress how important this last point is. When I'm on something, I'm on it and not much of anything else. I'll answer a quick question or something, but as soon as the event window exceeds 1-2 minutes, it becomes an item on my "to-do" list. I do one thing until it's as done as I can before moving on to something else.
Multi-tasking is a fiction. You do only as much as you must to be polite, and even then, not overly polite. Demand respect of your mental state and you'll get it, and you'll get more respect for doing so.
I've told powerful executives of client companies to hold their tongue until I'm ready for them, sometimes rather bluntly. I've never gotten anything but respect for this, because when I'm ready for the executive, I'm 100% theirs, I'm very, very good at what I do, and they appreciate that.
Forget multi-tasking - pretending you can do it only screws you over, and makes others treat you like a doormat.
Anybody remember what Suprnova was like at its peak? I remember that Suprnova accounted for something like 40% of the traffic online, or something ridiculously similar. How does TPB compare?
>> The nice thing about ethanol is that continued research is almost guaranteed to drive down >>the price-per-energy cost by orders of magnitudes
>That's true of most technologies. e.g. If we were to embrace hydrogen, I can guarantee that the >price of hydrogen fuels would drop like a rock over time.
This is a myth. More demand does not result in consistently lower prices. There is hardly any material on the face of this earth more desired than gold - and yet its price is not only not dropping, it's a de-facto international standard for measuring inflation of currency!
For all intents and purposes, no amount of "research" is going to cause the price of gold to drop, short of some magical form of alchemy. The price of ethanol may drop somewhat as the infrastructure needed to produce, store, and use it is developed, but it will very quickly reach a "commodity" status and its price, like the price of corn, or steel, or milk, will tend to stabilize in the long term.
BTW: Ethanol is crappy fuel. It's hard on your car, it's not as energy dense as gasoline, and producing it here in the 'states is ridiculous. Consider instead: Butanol!
1) It won't ruin your fuel economy. (MPG) It's energy density is almost identical to gasoline.
2) It mixes with gasoline.
3) It requires no modifications to your gas-powered car.
4) It produces as much as 42% more energy per acre than Ethanol.
5) It doesn't evaporate as fast as gasoline, mean it doesn't "go bad" as fast.
But we will never know. 10 years from now Alzheimer's may be no worse than severe diabetes, MS, Crohn's Disease or what have you: controllable, not curable with a quality of life equivalent to most other people. But because we would rather not kill a dying person to find out if we'll kill them or save them, my father will never get benefit of this.
Which is horse shit. Sorry. But there are plenty of areas outside the USA where "experimental" treatments are available right now. Places where restrictions on these kinds of treatments are non-existent. Where giving your beloved a teaspoon of bleach with breakfast is either perfectly legal, or at least never prosecuted if you throw 100 quid at the local law enforcement officer.
Do your homework. If you feel this is really a legitimate treatment, take a flight to Mexico or Belize, or wherever your homework leads you is a good place, and make it so. No, I'm not kidding.
Based on your post, I'd guess that you aren't willing to do this. In which case, your father isn't worth moving to Mexico or Belize in order to "save". So shut up, or move. Whining does you no good, and annoys the rest of us.
The USA has very conservative medical oversight. That has its pluses and minuses. Deal. There's a booming industry in "medical vacations" to places like India and Mexico where Americans take advantage of treatments that are either unavailable in the USA, or are delivered much cheaper abroad.
Such a long rant, so lacking in substance. Whine whine whine whine.... But then there's something!
I figure it's not about all these bullshit reasons you guys spout off. It's all about control. You and your do what you do to control people, for nothing more than the satisfaction, because you have to live by the same restrictions you put on the rest of us. Your lust for power makes that all worth it, I guess.
I support rising fuel costs, with taxes if necessary. You know why? Because I want control. Not of you - you are an insignificant twat I could care squat about - but over myself. As long as the US is importing the majority of our fuel from the most politically unstable region in the world, our nation's stability and ability to defend itself is seriously compromised.
But, if we bit the bullet, put a $1/gallon gas tax, and used the money to develop alternative energy, higher-efficiency vehicles, and became self-reliant using solar, switch grass ethanol, algae bio-diesel, or whatever, then our stability as a political power is assured. Some extremist whackjobs can't fark us up economically and/or politically just by dickering with our energy supply.
And that's important to me. Right now, the US is in a seriously compromised position since we have to kneel at the behest of the middle east, and take it up the backside from the Chinese who are loaning us the money to fund the Iraq war.
I don't like them apples.
For the record, I've never protested solar, hydro-electric, wind, or nuclear development. So pull your head out of your arse, and take a longer view! This is about YOU when you are an old fart. And, when you are an old fart, you'll care just as much about your freezing ass as you do now.
If I were you, I wouldn't try to thrill the kids by inducing a stall in your 172 in a mountain range.
You are right - I shoulda used an "or"...
So, there I am... flying along in my rented Cessna 172, with a couple kids in the back, touring a local mountain range *or* making the kids squeal by stalling the plane every so often so that it suddenly drops a few hundred feet... There. Fixed that.
So, there I am... flying along in my rented Cessna 172, with a couple kids in the back, touring a local mountain range and making the kids squeal by stalling the plane every so often so that it suddenly drops a few hundred feet...
How am I supposed to know that there's a UAV nearby? It's not like a UAV will announce, in a friendly tone: "Orland Traffic, UAV N301A 4 thousand feet, 3 miles southeast, heading 140, Cessna in sight, no factor.". (Note: UAV == "Unmanned Air Vehicle") For those who don't know, this call means:
UAV N301A = the type of aircraft, and the registration number.
4 thousand feet = the altitude of the aircraft at the time of call.
3 miles southwest = where the airplane is relative to the airport in question (Orland)
Heading 140 = what direction the plane is travelling. In this case, East of due south. (it's heading away from Orland airport, but crossing due south)
Cessna in sight = I see the plane that was just mentioned on the airwaves.
No factor = I couldn't hit it if I wanted to.
A UAV is controlled by a COMPUTER which has no concept of instruction like what I just gave. It could announce itself in some fashion digitally, which would mean that planes that have digital "situational awareness" systems with RADAR and XM Satellite weather might display them just fine - but many planes don't even have a RADIO! (planes with no radio do not fly over major cities - you'd be shocked at how much airspace this still allows)
How could this possibly work? Until there's a consistent, legally defined way for civil aircraft to know that there's a UAV nearby, this is a non-starter. But no way has been declared, and (as of last summer) it has not even been announced to pilots as a possibility. I don't even have the OPTION of knowing where these UAVs might be.
So when I hit a UAV, am I supposed to sue the Federal Govt? (assuming I live to tell about it)
I sense severe stupidity at work, here, and this is not my sig line. UAVs are not a problem, but they have NOT been incorporated into the existing (human/pilot based) aviation system. This is a slow disaster in the making. When an unannounced UAV hits a private plane filled with a happy, loving family, who is to blame for their deaths?
Slashdot Mirror
aAbBcC
I don't think you can - there are 26 letters in the alphabet, but there are 52 if you include upper and lower case. So... good for a joke perhaps, maybe a Lucky Charms magic decoder ring, but actually not accurate.
Guess it's like watching a TV episode where, at a dramatic moment, the techie shrieks: "Get that firewall up NOW!" with lots of sparks and flashing screens.... but why can't I expect better from a tech blog?
Man, oh man, I wish I had some mod points right about now!
This has to be one of the most insightful posts I've read in a long time - this subject could easily be expanded into a book and I'd buy the book!
Instead, they sell, sell, sell accounts with "unlimited" bandwidth at X speed; add something in their ToS that some unknown amount of usage is too much; and then blame their infrasture problems on those that use BitTorrent and the like (whether they are used for legal or illegal purposes) rather than on their own irresponsibility and money-grabbing.
I live in an old house, parts of which over 100 years old. (It's been heavily remodeled) Old enough that there's no meter on the water. We pay a flat rate. You could call this "unlimited" water because there is no specific limit on the water usage.
Technically, there's no particular reason why we couldn't run pipes over to our neighbors and run the whole block on our single water feed. In theory, I could turn on a faucet and use it as a fountain to feed some forever-flushing toilet art.
Except that would be fraud. See, even with my "unlimited" water source, there are practical limits, if not technical ones. If I were caught, the city would have every right to sue me for damages. I can't go in the business and sell water to southern California. (Yes, I live in Northern CA)
Your Internet pipe is not much different. No, you aren't being sold to specific limits. But the reality is that a very small percentage of the customers account for most of the bandwidth used. They don't want to worry about the 97% of the customers, they just want to put some limits on the last 3%, or get rid of them altogether.
That 3% is us. That includes the 120 TB of network traffic I accounted for last month on my DSL account. That's not BT traffic, that's mostly offsite backups of my business, but still, I know I'm in the "blood sucking leaches" category.
Now, let's talk about brass tacks: My company hosts servers. We have half a dozen in a top-notch hosting facility in Sacramento, CA on a 6Mb burstable contract. In short, we serve data at about a 6 Mb rate during my daily peaks. Yet a single cable customer could account for 6 Mb of data stream if they're set up right.
But while the cable customer pays $50/month for their 6 Mb service, we pay over $1,000 per month for my 6 Mb hosting contract, and I'm happy to pay that (damned cheap!) price. For that $1,200 per month, I get at 5 nines (99.999%) network uptime with dual network feeds, a half-rack, (about 20 U) 20 amps of redundant power, and the ability to burst up to 100 Mb during peak usage.
Are you noticing a small price disparity? $1,200 on my side, $50 on yours. Is that fair? Not that I mind the $1,000 price tag, it's a million-dollar business. The $1,200/mo is peanuts. But it's a big number compared to your $50/month.
Where was I going with this? I don't know. But the bottom line is that Mb isn't the only factor, and the telecoms aren't being as greedy as your limited experience would lead you to believe.
I was just about to write something about suddenly finding a need to invade Titan because of their despotic leader... but you beat me to the punch!
'Cause, you know, this is an original joke that, eh, we've never seen before around these parts....
Yes! You can go cheaper! I was giving a more average cost. I paid more to go to a school at my local airport. I learned in a C172. I could have gone the cheaper route, but it was not nearly as convenient.
:).
Go those routes, and stick with good old fashioned paper books for studying instead of the insanely expensive DVD stuff, and you can get into the air on a budget. I'm now looking at purchasing my own plane. Likely candidates right now are a Grumman Yankee or a Piper Tomahawk. Both of those can be found for $18-25k. My ultimate goal is to build my own though. I'm really set on a Zenith Zodiac 601XL with a Chevy Corvair engine whenever I decide to take that leap
Personally, I'm pining for a Cozy Mk IV or a Long EZ, with a Lycoming IO 320 or 360 engine... Wish I had the time to build, but it's not uncommon to see these between $18k and $30k.
I'd be leery of any plane running a converted auto-engine - the crankshafts just really aren't made for the continuous torsional stresses a prop gives, and aircraft engines are run considerably harder than car engines. EG: Airplanes routinely cruise at about 75% full throttle, but cars rarely run more than 25% or so on the freeway.
I've been watching the HB lists for a while now, and just in the past year, there have been a number of crankshaft breakages in the Corvair conversions starting about 100 - 150 hours.
Yikes! Not for me.
In the mean time, no flying cars, and the average schmuck still hasn't paid for his TV he bought on credit. Counter tops which suggest recipes will be something that only someone who can hire kitchen staff will be able to afford; in which case, they won't exactly need a suggestion, will they?
I won't comment on marble counter tops. But I can comment on the "flying cars" problem. It's not a problem of technology, it's not a problem of implementability, that was proven 30 years ago.
The problem isn't the car. It's the driver.
It's easy to drive a car. Mostly, you follow the yellow line in the middle of the road, and remember where to turn.
But aircraft are a completely different thing altogether. You have to know exactly where you are every single second. You have to deal with location, weather, traffic control, altitude, and airspeed. Landing can be a total bitch until you "get the hang of it".
It costs a few hundred bucks to get a driver's license, if you include education, training, driving time, etc.
For most people, it costs about $10,000 to become a basic, VFR (Visual Flight Rules - good weather only) private pilot. It costs considerably more to earn ratings for flying in bad weather, (IFR = Instrument Flight Rules) High Performance aircraft (over 200 HP) complex aircraft (those with retractable landing gear) or to operate a plane for pay. (Commercial License)
It's expensive. Only about 650,000 people in a nation of 300,000,000 have bothered. The result is a very, very, very small marketplace, where even certified aircraft are essentially hand-made, one-by-one. A good percentage of planes are 'experimental' which often means (literally) built in somebody's garage.
Yes, I'm a pilot. Flying is a damned good way to solve the problem of extra spending money - it's also damned fun to do! The hard part is getting the wife to buy into it...
Actually you can. There are a bunch of sites explaining how; that is much more useful than running XP on the new Intel Macs, which you can also do. Yeah, you can get it running. If you don't care about security updates. If you take full responsibility for driver problems. If you don't mind dickering with your computer for a day or two. I never could get it to work under either VMWare Player or VMWare Workstation. > But that's not such an issue at least songs i downloaded with Itunes can be played on my noname mp3 play- OH NOES IT FAILS !
You have to convert them first; you can do that in Itunes. Great. Another hack. Wouldn't it be nice if you didn't have to download software of questionable legality? Feeling that Apple love, yet?
Neither am I. > Well at least Itunes runs on Linux, to- SHIT IT DOESN'T !
It works with wine apparently, or Crossover Office. I'm noticing a pattern, here... Wine is a barely acceptable hackaround of the proprietary Win32 API. Wouldn't it be nice if iTunes actually worked... on Linux!?!?
MOD PARENT UP!
Read it. You'll see why.
Linux has come a long way towards desktop/user friendliness and distributions like Ubuntu are a huge leap forward, but they still haven't achieved the holy grail of but-can-my-grandmother-use-it. Getting closer, though.
Depends on what you do. I've been using Linux since about 1998 or so. I have the same home directory all this time, all my email, etc.
Windows machines have to be reloaded every year or two to "stay fresh". I've *NEVER* reloaded the O/S on my Linux system (now a laptop) for this reason. The other thing is that when I do load in a new O/S (such as my recent upgrade to Fedora 8) the transfer is very easy. The re-integration time is usually just a few hours.
Fight with my computer? Somewhat - but not much more than I do on a Windows system. Yes, it used to be awful, and getting X11 to work at all used to be dicey. Now it's so automatic, just enable a few repos and yum update and bang!
What really gets me is that when I load in the O/S, I run a single command ("yum -y update") and reboot, and all security patches and updates are done, applied, and my system is ready to go. Maybe 20 minutes? Windows has this seemingly endless cycle of WGA/Check/Download/Install/Reboot that easily lasts all day. Do you count that as time spent "fighting" with your computer?
Yes, I still run Windows for video games. I just don't use it for anything where I'm going to need it to work reliably.
the worst part, have you ever sat on a jury? I have been in 2 and some people's "justifications" are insane. One trial 2 women were willing to send the guy down the river 30 secodns after we got in the room, they based it on what the DA said that the judge told them to strike from the record. It was pure fantasy on the DA's part and we were instructed to not consider it.
People are people. They are this way today, were this way 10 years ago, they were this way 200 years ago. That's why we have a jury system so rigged such that a *single* person can hang the jury and let the defendant go.
we spent the next 8 hours going over things and trying to get these ditsy two to actually think. And this is the norm in Jury duty.
See?! It works! This is why the jury system is so beautiful! (And why it sucks so bad for those of us that think a little bit) Most people suck. But the odds of everybody sucking when you get 12 random people together drops rather dramatically.
Welcome to jurisprudence! BTW: my heart-felt thanks for serving on jury duty!
I thought everyone was on board that decentralization was where everything was headed?
And... how did you get that silly idea? Right now, with the Internet, the world is on the most incredible path towards centralization ever. Don't confuse ubiquitous access with decentralization. They are NOT the same.
Ubiquitous access == you can access your Hotmail account from any computer.
Decentralized == your email is being hosted/served on YOUR computer.
With web-based applications being all the rage, the trend is clearly towards centralized, ubiquitous access.
I keep reading mention of these mythical 'most scientists' who are close-minded, stubborn, and obtuse. I wonder where in the world you find these people. -SNIP- So where are these 'most scientists'? No matter where I look, I can't seem to find them!
I tend to find these "most scientists" in the minds of close-minded, stubborn, and obtuse people. Usually these people have some ax to grind, or snake oil they want to sell you, like your local chiropractor who wants to "cure" your blood sugar problems with reflexology.
Remember, people see in others what they see in themselves...
The answer to this problem is quite easy.
Continue to host the data referenced on a single T-1 line. That will cut your expenses to the bone since you'll never exceed 1.54 Mbps and that should be quite cheap. And, any dumfuxorz who fubarred their parser to not cache these basically static values will probably figure it out... very quickly.
You don't have to leave it on the T-1, maybe just 1 month out of the year. Every year.
Problem solved!
Your response is littered with lots of inflammatory words which work rather effectively at reducing the value of the substance in your post. Despite some initial hesitation, I'll bite...
And you have ANY hard data to back that up ? No.
Handily ignoring the rest of my post?
Others are trying to come up with better metrics (http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html...
Which gives lots of details about ALLOCATION. See rest of post.
First of all, it's not a requirement for every address to be routable to (and you can check that much better by looking at what percentage of prefixes are actually advertized).
Eh, what did you say? And, why use an address that's not advertized? (spelled "advertised" by most folks) Sounds amazingly like NAT... in other words, it is not used in the literal sense.
A problem many others have faced and solved before you.
It's like asking "Do you know where my shoe is?" and hearing your spouse respond: "Right where you left it". Technically true, utterly useless in any meaningful sense.
I wonder, why was your first thought to crap out (at least) 10 packets to the net that really are not needed ?
Ignoring the insults, my intention was to try to evaluate the relative strength of my Internet connection, including an accounting for outages that can cover broad areas. By picking addresses from around the world, I'm attempting to evaluate the overall strength of the Internet rather than just my connection to a few key points.
Ah. So now that flooding ICMP out to the net is not enough, you have to litter it with bogus DNS requests the reply to which you are not really interested in.
Are you daft?
You're worried about the effect of about 10-20 DNS requests per day, when mail servers are pelted with millions of SPAMs per day? Have you ever looked at the relative size of a ping packet (a few bytes) with the size of an image-laden penis-pill spam?
Come back when your sense of scale approximates reality.
So, do, in all likelihood, a router in your upstream, or DNS resolvers you know about. Instead, you now latch on to addresses that respond. The cellphone in Singapore, for instance.
I wasn't interested in my personal connection to my upstream, but rather a more general sense of my host's health. And how many cell phones actually *need* a public IP address, or even have one? I argue that an "unadvertised" address is a waste of an address, function better served by NAT.
The fact is, if no changes in allocation and revocation of IP space are made, there is a cutoff date when no more IP addresses will be available.
A point which underscores my post, even if you disagree with my methods.
The sad part is, most of the IP addresses in question are... dark. Nothing there. Even though we're approaching 85% allocation, utilization is probably around 1-2%. No, I'm not kidding.
Try it yourself - hack up some script to randomly generate IPs and then ping sweep the network blocks. You'll probably be quite surprised at the result.
A while back, I wanted to have a way to detect if a host was "offline" so that it could modify its behavior. (EG: halt outgoing SOAP requests if the server's network connection was disrupted, preventing bogus error messages from entering the system)
My first thought was to randomly generate 10 IP addresses, then ping them to see if they were offline, guessing that at least 50% would respond. Basically, none did. So, then I tried randomizing addresses and keeping a list of only those that had, at one time, responded. Even that turned out to be unfruitful. So finally, I took a dictionary and randomly created domain names from 1-2 normal dictionary words, pinging those, and keeping a list. That yielded some 40% usable responses, allowing me to keep a list of fairly trustworthy ping hosts to determine the online status of the server in question.
Bottom line: The shortage in the global IP pool is an artifact brought on by grossly inefficient/incompetent management of the global IP pool. The idea that we're running out of addresses purely ignores the fact that the vast, vast majority of the addresses we now have are simply unused.
In case you haven't seen it before, you outta take a look at the real jet-man. No, I'm not kidding. Know your limitations and work with them!
BTW: this guy is FREAKIN NUTZS but I sure wish I had cajones like his - this would be such a RIP!!!!
sql server is a great product, and is certainly better then everything else in the opensource world aside from postgresql
I would argue with that, since it depends on your requirements for "better".
PostgreSQL is a high-quality database. I managed millions of dollars worth of data on Postgres. It runs fast with complex queries (11-table joins with millions of records on each) when lots of RAM is available. Better, it's free, takes about 10 minutes to install when you include its download time via yum on the free CentOS Linux.
SqlLite is the shiznit when you want an embedded SQL server. Imagine the power of SQL on a client system without having to install much of anything. The library for SqLite is so small that the icon for your software is often larger. Despite this fact, you get a quality SQL implementation with many "Enterprise" features, including foreign keys, constraints, etc.
I have a client-based product using SqlLite - the end result is simply stunning, and performance is quite good.
SQL Server is a non-starter for me. First off, I have to be running Windows. Secondly, I have to be managing licenses. Until you've been in the situation where licensing is a non-issue, you won't understand how much time/energy you waste on this issue. Third, why would I go for Sql Server when (free!) PostgreSQL is available?
The fact that I could scale my software up to handling the entire United States without any license fees at all is a SERIOUS plus. (we vend software for schools using PG as a back end)
The truth is that there is no effective limit to the bandwidth available other than the limits we arbitrarily decide. There are an infinite number of frequencies between 1 Khz and 2 Khz. On a given frequency, the amount of information that can be transferred increases with the frequency, so while there's an infinite number of frequencies between any point and any other, the amount of data that can be transferred on a given frequency rises as the frequency increases.
.5 Ghz, average of 1...2 is 1.5 Ghz, given 3x the bandwidth, X infinity.
So, assuming that all the bandwidth between 0 and 1 Ghz is Inifinity, the bandwidth between 1 and 2 Ghz is about 3x of the Infinity represented between 0 and 1. (Average of 0...1 is
Practically, the limit is purely technical - how tight can frequency separation get with our current technologies?
Er... As someone with an IQ of 159 you should realize that you are abnormal, and that writing articles addressed only to such a minority of people would be rather... absurd. Actually I don't think your subjective experience can really be generalized to other people with high IQs. For example, I've got a pretty decent IQ myself (153), and generally try NOT to multitask, I'd rather handle one situation at a time. I think its called hyperfocus, which pretty much turn tasks into "flow" like experiences. Intelligence does not lead to one style of expression, there still is tons of neural baggage, and experiences, that will shape your strategy of using it.
I'm right there with you at about 155, last time I tested. I'm partner, CTO, and software engineer for a small software company. (12 staff, 3 software engineers including myself) So I write software, specifications for the other programmers, and frequently answer questions about software layout, design, and also often talk with customers. In other words, my job description is all over the map. I've learned however. I've learned how to answer the phone, answer a few quick questions, and NOT lose my train of thought in programming.
Most importantly, I've learned to say "My mind is in another place, and I can't think this through right now. Can I call you back when I have some spare brain available?". This comes when I notice that I'm losing my hard-earned train of thought, and need to keep it. I don't know if I can stress how important this last point is. When I'm on something, I'm on it and not much of anything else. I'll answer a quick question or something, but as soon as the event window exceeds 1-2 minutes, it becomes an item on my "to-do" list. I do one thing until it's as done as I can before moving on to something else.
Multi-tasking is a fiction. You do only as much as you must to be polite, and even then, not overly polite. Demand respect of your mental state and you'll get it, and you'll get more respect for doing so.
I've told powerful executives of client companies to hold their tongue until I'm ready for them, sometimes rather bluntly. I've never gotten anything but respect for this, because when I'm ready for the executive, I'm 100% theirs, I'm very, very good at what I do, and they appreciate that.
Forget multi-tasking - pretending you can do it only screws you over, and makes others treat you like a doormat.
Anybody remember what Suprnova was like at its peak? I remember that Suprnova accounted for something like 40% of the traffic online, or something ridiculously similar. How does TPB compare?
>> The nice thing about ethanol is that continued research is almost guaranteed to drive down
>>the price-per-energy cost by orders of magnitudes
>That's true of most technologies. e.g. If we were to embrace hydrogen, I can guarantee that the
>price of hydrogen fuels would drop like a rock over time.
This is a myth. More demand does not result in consistently lower prices. There is hardly any material on the face of this earth more desired than gold - and yet its price is not only not dropping, it's a de-facto international standard for measuring inflation of currency!
For all intents and purposes, no amount of "research" is going to cause the price of gold to drop, short of some magical form of alchemy. The price of ethanol may drop somewhat as the infrastructure needed to produce, store, and use it is developed, but it will very quickly reach a "commodity" status and its price, like the price of corn, or steel, or milk, will tend to stabilize in the long term.
BTW: Ethanol is crappy fuel. It's hard on your car, it's not as energy dense as gasoline, and producing it here in the 'states is ridiculous. Consider instead: Butanol!
1) It won't ruin your fuel economy. (MPG) It's energy density is almost identical to gasoline.
2) It mixes with gasoline.
3) It requires no modifications to your gas-powered car.
4) It produces as much as 42% more energy per acre than Ethanol.
5) It doesn't evaporate as fast as gasoline, mean it doesn't "go bad" as fast.
Go Butanol!
But we will never know. 10 years from now Alzheimer's may be no worse than severe diabetes, MS, Crohn's Disease or what have you: controllable, not curable with a quality of life equivalent to most other people. But because we would rather not kill a dying person to find out if we'll kill them or save them, my father will never get benefit of this.
Which is horse shit. Sorry. But there are plenty of areas outside the USA where "experimental" treatments are available right now. Places where restrictions on these kinds of treatments are non-existent. Where giving your beloved a teaspoon of bleach with breakfast is either perfectly legal, or at least never prosecuted if you throw 100 quid at the local law enforcement officer.
Do your homework. If you feel this is really a legitimate treatment, take a flight to Mexico or Belize, or wherever your homework leads you is a good place, and make it so. No, I'm not kidding.
Based on your post, I'd guess that you aren't willing to do this. In which case, your father isn't worth moving to Mexico or Belize in order to "save". So shut up, or move. Whining does you no good, and annoys the rest of us.
The USA has very conservative medical oversight. That has its pluses and minuses. Deal. There's a booming industry in "medical vacations" to places like India and Mexico where Americans take advantage of treatments that are either unavailable in the USA, or are delivered much cheaper abroad.
Read up, and good luck!
Such a long rant, so lacking in substance. Whine whine whine whine.... But then there's something!
I figure it's not about all these bullshit reasons you guys spout off. It's all about control. You and your do what you do to control people, for nothing more than the satisfaction, because you have to live by the same restrictions you put on the rest of us. Your lust for power makes that all worth it, I guess.
I support rising fuel costs, with taxes if necessary. You know why? Because I want control. Not of you - you are an insignificant twat I could care squat about - but over myself. As long as the US is importing the majority of our fuel from the most politically unstable region in the world, our nation's stability and ability to defend itself is seriously compromised.
But, if we bit the bullet, put a $1/gallon gas tax, and used the money to develop alternative energy, higher-efficiency vehicles, and became self-reliant using solar, switch grass ethanol, algae bio-diesel, or whatever, then our stability as a political power is assured. Some extremist whackjobs can't fark us up economically and/or politically just by dickering with our energy supply.
And that's important to me. Right now, the US is in a seriously compromised position since we have to kneel at the behest of the middle east, and take it up the backside from the Chinese who are loaning us the money to fund the Iraq war.
I don't like them apples.
For the record, I've never protested solar, hydro-electric, wind, or nuclear development. So pull your head out of your arse, and take a longer view! This is about YOU when you are an old fart. And, when you are an old fart, you'll care just as much about your freezing ass as you do now.
You are right - I shoulda used an "or"... So, there I am... flying along in my rented Cessna 172, with a couple kids in the back, touring a local mountain range *or* making the kids squeal by stalling the plane every so often so that it suddenly drops a few hundred feet... There. Fixed that.
So, there I am... flying along in my rented Cessna 172, with a couple kids in the back, touring a local mountain range and making the kids squeal by stalling the plane every so often so that it suddenly drops a few hundred feet...
How am I supposed to know that there's a UAV nearby? It's not like a UAV will announce, in a friendly tone: "Orland Traffic, UAV N301A 4 thousand feet, 3 miles southeast, heading 140, Cessna in sight, no factor.". (Note: UAV == "Unmanned Air Vehicle") For those who don't know, this call means:
Orland Traffic = the airport in question. Click here if you are curious.
UAV N301A = the type of aircraft, and the registration number.
4 thousand feet = the altitude of the aircraft at the time of call.
3 miles southwest = where the airplane is relative to the airport in question (Orland)
Heading 140 = what direction the plane is travelling. In this case, East of due south. (it's heading away from Orland airport, but crossing due south)
Cessna in sight = I see the plane that was just mentioned on the airwaves.
No factor = I couldn't hit it if I wanted to.
A UAV is controlled by a COMPUTER which has no concept of instruction like what I just gave. It could announce itself in some fashion digitally, which would mean that planes that have digital "situational awareness" systems with RADAR and XM Satellite weather might display them just fine - but many planes don't even have a RADIO! (planes with no radio do not fly over major cities - you'd be shocked at how much airspace this still allows)
How could this possibly work? Until there's a consistent, legally defined way for civil aircraft to know that there's a UAV nearby, this is a non-starter. But no way has been declared, and (as of last summer) it has not even been announced to pilots as a possibility. I don't even have the OPTION of knowing where these UAVs might be.
So when I hit a UAV, am I supposed to sue the Federal Govt? (assuming I live to tell about it)
I sense severe stupidity at work, here, and this is not my sig line. UAVs are not a problem, but they have NOT been incorporated into the existing (human/pilot based) aviation system. This is a slow disaster in the making. When an unannounced UAV hits a private plane filled with a happy, loving family, who is to blame for their deaths?