The success story that the article talks about is about getting one lead a day only. If 5% of these convert into visitors who actually come and stay at the inn, that's 1 or 2 new visitors per month. Unlikely to be worth any trouble with the website. The inn owner would have been better off spending that money on Google AdWords. He's effectively attracting callers with what must be tens of dollars per call cost. If that's the success story, what's the typical outcome?
I don't think the net neutrality question---or, rather, questions---are so straightforward as some here make them appear. The topic, however, is extremely important: what connection do you want to have in 5 years---a 10-Mb/s one or a 1-Gb/s one?
It most certainly is the Duff's device, or at least is very close to it. Duff's device is, indeed,
a way to unroll loops; specifically, a way to unroll loops that uses a peculiarity in switch statement syntax that allows case to point inside a loop body. Now,
take a look at lc-switch.h in the Protothreads tarball. It contains macros that use
the same peculiarity to jump inside functions instead of loops.
The press freedom index counts events of abuse against journalists and freedom of press and ranks countries based on the number of such events. This methodology is flawed, because it penalizes large countries and makes small countries appear better than they are. For example, Trinidad and Tobago, with 2 events, is in 11th place of the ranking, tying with Estonia, Germany, and Sweden; yet the CIA estimates that the population of Trinidad and Tobago is just a little over a million (1096585) while Germany has 82M people (82424609). Clearly Germany has the better record of press freedom than Trinidad and Tobago with the same number events and population that's eighty times larger.
Based on the original index, I generate different ranking, based on the number of events per million of population (rather than unscaled events).
See the result:
Rigging Press Freedom. (Oh yes, the US takes the first place, Germany -- the second, and Netherlands -- the third.)
The networks (by far the most expensive part) were already in place, paid by various sources. Mostly government grants in Europe, mostly university contributions (that can come from government grants, but
lately do not) in the US.
The end hosts were paid for by grants and were by far not the most expensive part.
who benefits from this?
It is a domonstration of technology. The high-energy physics community is one of the most active users of advanced networking (they have instruments that produce very significant amounts of data---the database is close to a petabyte).
can this technology be brought to individuals and businesses?
Yes. With sufficient application of money this could be brought to most homes in the continental US (for a tentative plan, check out the 100x100 network project: 100Mb/s to 100 million residencies; the difference between 100Mb/s and 10Gb/s is not such a huge chasm as the difference between 10Mb/s and 100Mb/s, because the latter pretty much requires fiber). Transoceanic connectivity is somewhat more expensive, but still doable. The main required ingredients would be useful
applications for residential users (not everyone has a petabyte database of bits coming off a 50-billion-dollar physics instrument) and political will.
What I don't understand is why forigners care. You already have to stand in a long line, get talked to by some semi-literate GS-6 while they look at your passport. What does it matter if also while that happens a camera snaps your picture and a digital reader grabs your finger print? I mean, this changes anything how?
I'll bite. I'm a foreigner living and working in the United States (since I didn't travel outside of the US recently, I was not subject to fingerprinting yet). Personally, I don't care much about the fingerprinting requirement. I also understand why Americans don't see what the fuss is about. However, where I am from (Russia), you're only fingerprinted if you're charged with a crime. This is also the case for many other countries, I understand. Thus, many visitors perceive fingerprinting as an expression of suspicion that they are criminals; not being criminals, they don't like to be treated as ones.
Retinal scanners would probably be seem less threatening.
If someone bypasses security in the lobby with this card and then goes on a shooting spree, could the company issuing the card be liable? What if they missed prior felony convictions in their background check?
This is actually something I've been looking for, too. I'd like to find a pen with the following properties:
archival ink, preferably waterproof and fast-drying
produces fine or extra-fine lines
does not leak on an airplane
acceptable writing ``feel''
Can anyone recommend anything along these lines?
Rapidographs with India inks are very archival (museum favorite) and can produce lines of any thickness, but I am afraid of having one on me when flying -- it seems even less leak-resistant than a fountain pen.
The case of the old Treo is made of low-quality flimsy plastic. To me, the resulting fragility is the biggest problem with the device. I wonder if the new one is any better...
Why shouldn't it be possible to provide a titanium or lexan case at the price they are charging?
Your $45/month fee covers (a fraction of) costs
associated with running the campus network plus
a reasonable amount of used capacity. Cornell defined `reasonable' and now charges per bit for everything over. Way to go!
Do you or do you not currently use more than their newly established quota? If you do, the new billing system is a bad news for you. If you don't, it is a good news.
These quotas are selected so that most users
will be well below.
The difficulties of the university in billing and the difficulties of students in deciding when to use the network are good reason to bill only small percentage of users. Say, top 1%.
The problem is that with very fast connections
that dorms get the distribution of used bytes per
user is heavy-tail: if you were to average costs,
90% of users would be billed many times what they
have used. (And the monthly fee would still have
to change every month.)
That's not really the best comparison. Network use is completely different when we're paying for it (and paying out the ass I
might add). If we're paying for the printer, I'm sure as hell going to make the most out of it.
Every time someone sends an Internet1 packet from a dorm, it costs the university a certain amount of money (eventually paid to the upstream Internet1 provider). Why do you think it's OK to send as many as you'd like? If the upstream link were to run at capacity carrying Internet1 traffic for any extended period of time it would translate to a very hefty bill for the university.
Consider the phone system. Do you expect to be able to make long-distance calls for free from the dorm?
Also, I was under the impression Cornell was part of internet2.
Cornell is a member of Internet2. Therefore, the packets they send to other universities have a marginal cost of delivery equal to zero. This doesn't make packets that go to cable ISPs free.
I've long advocated usage-based billing as the
way to manage campus bandwidth (see slide 6 of
`QoS Appliances Considered Harmful' presentation at the spring 2002 Internet2 member meeting).
If you think you're entitled to use as much network capacity for as long as you want because you already pay tuition, compare network use to printer use. No-one expects to be able to print 10000 pages a day, day after day, on the department printer for free. This is because it is understood that each page costs something. The marginal cost of transit of each packet on Internet1 is non-zero: universities are billed for traffic.
Internet2 traffic is a different matter: the marginal cost of transit of a packet is zero, and there's plenty of capacity to play with.
Schools need to control commodity network use (the per-bit charges of commodity providers aren't passed on to the users). QoS appliances are just a wrong way to do it.
To those who believe they are entitled to unlimited transfers from resnet because they {pay tuition|pay monthly connection fee|have a legitimate reason}: do you also think you're entitled to print 10000 pages per month on the department printer? If not, what do you think is the difference from using disproportionate share of network resources?
Commodity transfers aren't free or even cheap. The commodity ISP charges your university transit fees based on the amount of stuff that is transferred. If you're willing to let the school pass those fees down to you, it is reasonable to ask your school to let you use as much as you want. (Good LAN connectivity is a one-time expense and therefore in-campus transit is a non-issue.)
The University is always quick to show all this fancy equipment and
high technology stuff (Internet2, CAVE)...but the students never see it or use it.
I would venture to say that you use it daily.
Have you ever transferred a file to or from another university in the US? The packets went over Abilene (the Internet2 backbone).
Slashdot Mirror
The success story that the article talks about is about getting one lead a day only. If 5% of these convert into visitors who actually come and stay at the inn, that's 1 or 2 new visitors per month. Unlikely to be worth any trouble with the website. The inn owner would have been better off spending that money on Google AdWords. He's effectively attracting callers with what must be tens of dollars per call cost. If that's the success story, what's the typical outcome?
A truck records signal from your WiFi router? How about people taking a picture of your house to sell to banks and insurance companies? Or aerial close-ups of your backyard?
This will be watched closely. Deep linking and framing are similar to the case. So far, deep linking itself has been held legal, but implying association in extensive deep linking is not. Given how well-stripped Grouper's videos are on Searchles, Grouper might have a chance.
Annoying -- being treated as criminals and all -- but, compared to DRM, a much better option.
Internet2 needs you as a coder this summer. </shameless plug>
I don't think the net neutrality question---or, rather, questions---are so straightforward as some here make them appear. The topic, however, is extremely important: what connection do you want to have in 5 years---a 10-Mb/s one or a 1-Gb/s one?
...please take a look at my little piece on grading proposals Summer of Code 2005 written after the students who made it were selected.
It most certainly is the Duff's device, or at least is very close to it. Duff's device is, indeed, a way to unroll loops; specifically, a way to unroll loops that uses a peculiarity in switch statement syntax that allows case to point inside a loop body. Now, take a look at lc-switch.h in the Protothreads tarball. It contains macros that use the same peculiarity to jump inside functions instead of loops.
I use wmx, the binary of which comes in at 102100 bytes. That's about 20 times smaller than your mwm, which you say is 4 times smaller than blackbox.
Based on the original index, I generate different ranking, based on the number of events per million of population (rather than unscaled events).
See the result: Rigging Press Freedom. (Oh yes, the US takes the first place, Germany -- the second, and Netherlands -- the third.)
Their data is quite bad. They claim that Texas A&M University-College Station and University of California-Santa Barbara do not have campus networks. I kid you not.
The end hosts were paid for by grants and were by far not the most expensive part.
It is a domonstration of technology. The high-energy physics community is one of the most active users of advanced networking (they have instruments that produce very significant amounts of data---the database is close to a petabyte). Yes. With sufficient application of money this could be brought to most homes in the continental US (for a tentative plan, check out the 100x100 network project: 100Mb/s to 100 million residencies; the difference between 100Mb/s and 10Gb/s is not such a huge chasm as the difference between 10Mb/s and 100Mb/s, because the latter pretty much requires fiber). Transoceanic connectivity is somewhat more expensive, but still doable. The main required ingredients would be useful applications for residential users (not everyone has a petabyte database of bits coming off a 50-billion-dollar physics instrument) and political will.Hope this helps,
Retinal scanners would probably be seem less threatening.
Now, just a few more of these, please. At this point the focus should be on those who write spamware and spamming and DDoSing viruses.
What do you mean no death penalty option?
If someone bypasses security in the lobby with this card and then goes on a shooting spree, could the company issuing the card be liable? What if they missed prior felony convictions in their background check?
Can anyone recommend anything along these lines?
Rapidographs with India inks are very archival (museum favorite) and can produce lines of any thickness, but I am afraid of having one on me when flying -- it seems even less leak-resistant than a fountain pen.
I made a web page that catalogs the reasons why I think that Verisign is wrong in itroducing *.COM and *.NET wildcard A records: Verisign NET and COM Wildcards Considered Unethical.
Why shouldn't it be possible to provide a titanium or lexan case at the price they are charging?
Your $45/month fee covers (a fraction of) costs associated with running the campus network plus a reasonable amount of used capacity. Cornell defined `reasonable' and now charges per bit for everything over. Way to go!
Do you or do you not currently use more than their newly established quota? If you do, the new billing system is a bad news for you. If you don't, it is a good news.
These quotas are selected so that most users will be well below.
The problem is that with very fast connections that dorms get the distribution of used bytes per user is heavy-tail: if you were to average costs, 90% of users would be billed many times what they have used. (And the monthly fee would still have to change every month.)
Consider the phone system. Do you expect to be able to make long-distance calls for free from the dorm?
Cornell is a member of Internet2. Therefore, the packets they send to other universities have a marginal cost of delivery equal to zero. This doesn't make packets that go to cable ISPs free.If you think you're entitled to use as much network capacity for as long as you want because you already pay tuition, compare network use to printer use. No-one expects to be able to print 10000 pages a day, day after day, on the department printer for free. This is because it is understood that each page costs something. The marginal cost of transit of each packet on Internet1 is non-zero: universities are billed for traffic.
Internet2 traffic is a different matter: the marginal cost of transit of a packet is zero, and there's plenty of capacity to play with.
Schools need to control commodity network use (the per-bit charges of commodity providers aren't passed on to the users). QoS appliances are just a wrong way to do it.
To those who believe they are entitled to unlimited transfers from resnet because they {pay tuition|pay monthly connection fee|have a legitimate reason}: do you also think you're entitled to print 10000 pages per month on the department printer? If not, what do you think is the difference from using disproportionate share of network resources?
Commodity transfers aren't free or even cheap. The commodity ISP charges your university transit fees based on the amount of stuff that is transferred. If you're willing to let the school pass those fees down to you, it is reasonable to ask your school to let you use as much as you want. (Good LAN connectivity is a one-time expense and therefore in-campus transit is a non-issue.)
Incidentally, we run both IPv4 and IPv6 on our Abilene backbone.