I was under the impression that Google purchased business/carrier Internet facilities (OC3/OC12/OC48/OC192 and Gig-E interconnects) just like any other major business.
Unlike shared residential services such as cable/DSL/FIOS, these are dedicated facilities. They are paying for all their bandwidth, whether they use it or not.
How can they be "hogging" what they are paying for?
This is why you scrub your RAID arrays once a week. If you're using software RAID on Linux, for example:
echo check >/sys/block/md0/md/sync_action
The above will scrub array md0 and initiate sector reallocation if needed. You do this while you have redundancy so the bad data can be recovered. Over time, weak sectors get reallocated from the spare bands, and when you do have a failure the probability of a secondary failure is very low over the interval needed for drive replacement.
Most non-crap hardware controllers also provide this function. Read the documentation.
It seems strange to continuously up the rotation speed, adding noise, vibration, heat and shortening the life of the drive. Why not just add another set of heads on the opposite side of the drive? You get many of the same benefits - increased sustained transfer rate, but also reduce the seek and latency. To maintain the form factor, reduce the size of the platters (use 2.5" drive platters in a 3.5" drive).
Back in 2001, I bought a Toshiba 5105-s607 laptop (I'm still using it). It has a glass touchpad, with a second display (and a controllable EL backlight!). It's even completely supported by Linux, as well as Windows. I use it to display messages while my display is idle and powered off (e.g., new email, small animations, etc.).
Doesn't this imply that non-ionizing EM (for example, radio waves) may in fact disrupt brain function in some way? A high intensity pulse can apparently disrupt a major function. What does a high level of EM background noise do? Does it lower the S/N ratio (for example, generate random neuron firing), making coherent thought more difficult?
It's called "climate change" now. That way if the current trend of lower temps continues and we go into another mini ice age (as some are predicting) they're still right!
It's called "climate change" now because people had problems understanding the concept of global warming; they concentrated on the terminology instead of understanding the process.
Energy is being added to the Earth's outer layer, including the atmosphere. This additional energy is like turning on a blender - everything is going to get mixed up. Places where it was cold may turn warm. Places where it was warm may become cold. Deserts will form where there was arable land. Dry places may get wetter. The ice caps act as a thermal buffer (like the ice cubes in a drink), and the additional energy is causing them to melt. This in turn raises sea levels.
Things get complicated because of the political boundaries; people can't just move to where things are becoming nicer. If the farm land in the U.S. turns to a dust bowl for example, we can't just pick up 300M people and move to another country - just as the U.S. doesn't open its borders to tens of millions dying of thirst and starvation in other countries.
A secondary complication is the delicate balance between airborne particulates and greenhouse gases. Reducing pollution levels reduces both, but not at the same rate. As the two have opposing impacts, and tend to be politically controlled by local goverments, it's and extra monkey wrench in the calculations.
In this context, the term "climate change" is easier for people to grasp. It doesn't change what is happening.
In my area, everywhere you go there are signs that say "free WiFi". The library, hotels, coffee shops, hospitals, the lobbies of many businesses, some retail stores, etc.
With so much free WiFi, how is the average individual supposed to distinguish an unintentionally open access point from an intentionally open access point? There's rarely any difference in the SSID; many free WiFi seem to leave the default manufacturer identifier.
When people are commonly giving something away, the only way to let them know that you are not giving the same thing away is to lock it up. It's simple and it's common sense. We don't need special laws.
Perhaps the solution for those that can't be bothered to read the instructions is an actual key? Put a real key lock switch on the access point with a small display for a randomly generated software key. Turn the lock and now your access point is secure; to use it you need physical access to read the software key on the display. Turn the key the other way, and the display indicates "free public access". Then we really can blame the person with the access point for allowing access they didn't intend.
As far as I've been able to see, people that display their technology (but don't actually use it) prefer glossy displays. They look much prettier and "high tech" and catch the attention of casual passersby.
Those that use their machines prefer the non-glossy screen, to avoid glare. You only have to work in a normally lighted environment for a few minutes to get annoyed by a glossy screen.
I find the glossy screens useful as an indicator. In the old days it was the person that had their secretary print out their emails - but had the most expensive computer on their desk. Today, it's the folks with glossy screens.
I track the reliability of my Internet access (15 second interval measurements). My cable company (Cablevision/Optonline) recently made some change, that took the good reliability (99.9) and made it much better (approaching 99.999). This is very obvious when the data is charted.
I wonder if they have been getting feedback that the reliability is not acceptable, especially for services like VoIP?
The total bandwidth doesn't have to reach 100Gbps, but only exceed 10Gbps, to require faster than 10G-e, which only 8-10 SATA drives in parallel could do today.
The SATA interface speed isn't of much use in this calculation. While SATA drives can burst to their interface speed when data is in the drive cache, they can only sustain 50-70MB/s (400-560Mb/s). In order to bring a 10G port to 80% sustained utilization, you would need 15 to 20 drives running at capacity (meaning, no seeks). In reality, with normal seeking and fragmentation, you would probably need twice that (about 40 SATA drives).
...containing the source Internet Protocol ("IP") addresses of all access to the location or file "1P2-915261.html", "915261" or other variants thereof between 12:00 a.m. EST on March 1, 2007 and 5:23 p.m. on March 7, 2007.
Even assuming that someone insanely keeps logs that long, what are the legal requirements for accurate time of day on the server (none, as far as I know)? If page entries are manually timestamped or timestamped by a javascript on the poster's machine, there's no particular reason to have an accurate clock. Was the clock on your machine accurate a year ago? How do you know? How do you prove that in this case the accesses didn't occur after the URLs were posted by people reading the posts? This isn't just one machine, but multiple machines. How do you perform a time correlation with data that has no requirement for validity?
I've been reading with FBReader for years on my PDA. One thing that it offers that E-Ink can't is auto-scroll; the document smooth-scrolls without intervention at a speed you set. This lets me read for hours without having to interact with the device (for example, when my hands are busy while eating or taking notes).
I've found that the auto-scroll helps keep me focused on the material, and let's me get through it faster. If my mind wanders, I have to page back so it has trained me to maintain my attention. After years of reading this way, I find I don't like real books as much - and I never thought I'd say that.
The code I write for commercial use tends to start ugly, but functional. Its development is driven by schedules and fluctuating specifications. If the code has a long life, and I am maintaining my own code, it tends to gets more beautiful over time as I improve it.
The code I write for myself starts off being beautiful. It does exactly what I want, in the way I think of as best. Over time, as I learn more, I start to see flaws and the code gets uglier. I tend to recode my own stuff more frequently to more efficient and elegant implementations.
In both cases, there are some small segments, like a subroutine, that I consider gems. They are beautiful to look at, and I carry these from project to project, almost as a seed.
For some people, coding is a trade. For some it's an art. In most cases, it's a mix of the two. The proportion is what I think changes the perception. Of course, no one but another programmer can even see the beauty in the code, and in many ways that's a shame.
This is actually the basis of the flaw in the RIAA's reasoning. An IP address does not relate to an individual. Even if there is only one person normally associated with an IP address, that IP address, for that particular (illegal) action may not relate to the individual.
If you are assuming that someone is committing a crime, you have to also consider that they may be falsely laying the blame on someone else. Cracking the password on their router, spoofing packets, botting their machine, hacking their wireless, or even physically splicing a wire. After all, people have been physically splicing into other networks for decades (cable and telephone). Why assume that the relationship is a pristine one-to-one for IP addresses?
If you are going to burden someone with thousands of dollars in legal fees, you should have to have more than an IP address. Most people will simply fold under the weight of a lawsuit; that doesn't imply guilt, just poverty in the face of huge legal fees.
I just revived two 4th gen iPods with "dead" hard drives. It seems that the firmware in the iPods can't perform sector reallocation if a sector goes bad. The iTunes software won't re-init the drives in that case, and getting the drives into disk mode to diagnostics may not be possible.
What I found is that if I connect the Firewire cable to an un-powered connector (6-pin unpowered, like a daisy chain, or via a 4 to 6 pin adapter), I can get the drive into disk mode. It must take a different path through the firmware in that case.
Once in disk mode, I used dd_rescue (retry forever) on Linux to copy/dev/zero to the drive until full. After that, iTunes was able to re-init the drives. They've been working fine ever since (fully loaded). The first time I thought it was just a lucky coincidence. When the process worked a second time, it seemed downright odd.
Why would Apple not have proper sectore reallocation software, especially in a mobile device? It's not like their customers would just buy another, or pay an (expensive) out of warranty repair. Oh, wait...
You're right... people don't have an expectation of privacy in a public space. However, if someone decides to discreetly pick their nose and someone else notices they're usually considerate and respect the person's privacy by not pointing it out. On the other hand, if you were to take a picture of that situation and publish it online, that would make you an inconsiderate asshole. It's one thing to not have privacy in a crowd of 20 people. It's another thing to not have privacy in front of millions of people online.
I'm pretty sure that I've seen news reports (even live) on the street in Canada when I was visiting. Is it only non-Canadian nationals that get to be assholes, or are all television broadcasters also assholes? How is it handled when the guy picking his nose ends up in the background shot for the reporter on the street?
So what you are saying is that my looking at someone doing something embarrassing (like a peeing drunk) in public is illegal? Or if I turn to my wife and point out the person standing naked in their window? If it's not illegal for me to see and if it's not illegal for me to point it out to others because it's in a public space where you otherwise have no expectation of privacy, why would it be illegal in a photo?
So my vacation pictures from our visit to Canada that I posted on my web site are somehow illegal? Public photos of public spaces. Everyone could see those faces and license plates when the pictures were taken - how is this a privacy issue? When you can't make sense of laws anymore, everyone is a criminal.
By initiating a lawsuit, they are getting the attention of the media. The small handful of people that may have read the anonymous post has increased to thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands. As a result, the number of people that question whether this is just an anonymous nut or a real-life whistle-blower has also increased.
Why pursue an anonymous comment with the force of law? Is there really something behind it? What are they trying to hide?
That's the train of thought that the hospital has initiated. It's not the anonymous poster that should be sued, it's the administration that chose to advertise an otherwise meaningless post and bring scrutiny to their business.
Unless the anonymous poster is the person in the administration that started this. In that case, mission accomplished!
If an office had a few "guest" telepresence droids available, instead of hopping on a plane you could just move your connection to an available droid. As fast as teleportation, and two or three visits would pay for the unit in airline and hotel cost avoidance. It would have met the requirements of better than 90% of the times I've had to travel for business. Put a couple of waldoes on it, and we're approaching 99%.
... and the impact on those that buy the stuff? Pretty minimal I'd say, if they aren't planning to share it. Watermarking is so much better than DRM.
If watermarking can actually be used to identify an individual purchaser, as opposed to a source, then it is DRM. There is no reason that an individually coded watermark can't contain more than an owner in that case - an expiration for example - and any codec written to honor it can enforce the restriction.
Slashdot Mirror
I was under the impression that Google purchased business/carrier Internet facilities (OC3/OC12/OC48/OC192 and Gig-E interconnects) just like any other major business.
Unlike shared residential services such as cable/DSL/FIOS, these are dedicated facilities. They are paying for all their bandwidth, whether they use it or not.
How can they be "hogging" what they are paying for?
This is why you scrub your RAID arrays once a week. If you're using software RAID on Linux, for example:
echo check > /sys/block/md0/md/sync_action
The above will scrub array md0 and initiate sector reallocation if needed. You do this while you have redundancy so the bad data can be recovered. Over time, weak sectors get reallocated from the spare bands, and when you do have a failure the probability of a secondary failure is very low over the interval needed for drive replacement.
Most non-crap hardware controllers also provide this function. Read the documentation.
It seems strange to continuously up the rotation speed, adding noise, vibration, heat and shortening the life of the drive. Why not just add another set of heads on the opposite side of the drive? You get many of the same benefits - increased sustained transfer rate, but also reduce the seek and latency. To maintain the form factor, reduce the size of the platters (use 2.5" drive platters in a 3.5" drive).
Back in 2001, I bought a Toshiba 5105-s607 laptop (I'm still using it). It has a glass touchpad, with a second display (and a controllable EL backlight!). It's even completely supported by Linux, as well as Windows. I use it to display messages while my display is idle and powered off (e.g., new email, small animations, etc.).
So, what's the Apple innovation again?
Doesn't this imply that non-ionizing EM (for example, radio waves) may in fact disrupt brain function in some way? A high intensity pulse can apparently disrupt a major function. What does a high level of EM background noise do? Does it lower the S/N ratio (for example, generate random neuron firing), making coherent thought more difficult?
It's called "climate change" now because people had problems understanding the concept of global warming; they concentrated on the terminology instead of understanding the process.
Energy is being added to the Earth's outer layer, including the atmosphere. This additional energy is like turning on a blender - everything is going to get mixed up. Places where it was cold may turn warm. Places where it was warm may become cold. Deserts will form where there was arable land. Dry places may get wetter. The ice caps act as a thermal buffer (like the ice cubes in a drink), and the additional energy is causing them to melt. This in turn raises sea levels.
Things get complicated because of the political boundaries; people can't just move to where things are becoming nicer. If the farm land in the U.S. turns to a dust bowl for example, we can't just pick up 300M people and move to another country - just as the U.S. doesn't open its borders to tens of millions dying of thirst and starvation in other countries.
A secondary complication is the delicate balance between airborne particulates and greenhouse gases. Reducing pollution levels reduces both, but not at the same rate. As the two have opposing impacts, and tend to be politically controlled by local goverments, it's and extra monkey wrench in the calculations.
In this context, the term "climate change" is easier for people to grasp. It doesn't change what is happening.In my area, everywhere you go there are signs that say "free WiFi". The library, hotels, coffee shops, hospitals, the lobbies of many businesses, some retail stores, etc.
With so much free WiFi, how is the average individual supposed to distinguish an unintentionally open access point from an intentionally open access point? There's rarely any difference in the SSID; many free WiFi seem to leave the default manufacturer identifier.
When people are commonly giving something away, the only way to let them know that you are not giving the same thing away is to lock it up. It's simple and it's common sense. We don't need special laws.
Perhaps the solution for those that can't be bothered to read the instructions is an actual key? Put a real key lock switch on the access point with a small display for a randomly generated software key. Turn the lock and now your access point is secure; to use it you need physical access to read the software key on the display. Turn the key the other way, and the display indicates "free public access". Then we really can blame the person with the access point for allowing access they didn't intend.
As far as I've been able to see, people that display their technology (but don't actually use it) prefer glossy displays. They look much prettier and "high tech" and catch the attention of casual passersby. Those that use their machines prefer the non-glossy screen, to avoid glare. You only have to work in a normally lighted environment for a few minutes to get annoyed by a glossy screen. I find the glossy screens useful as an indicator. In the old days it was the person that had their secretary print out their emails - but had the most expensive computer on their desk. Today, it's the folks with glossy screens.
I track the reliability of my Internet access (15 second interval measurements). My cable company (Cablevision/Optonline) recently made some change, that took the good reliability (99.9) and made it much better (approaching 99.999). This is very obvious when the data is charted.
I wonder if they have been getting feedback that the reliability is not acceptable, especially for services like VoIP?
While we're at it, lets prohibit band members that use illegal drugs from ever using a musical instrument or performing again.
Even assuming that someone insanely keeps logs that long, what are the legal requirements for accurate time of day on the server (none, as far as I know)? If page entries are manually timestamped or timestamped by a javascript on the poster's machine, there's no particular reason to have an accurate clock. Was the clock on your machine accurate a year ago? How do you know? How do you prove that in this case the accesses didn't occur after the URLs were posted by people reading the posts? This isn't just one machine, but multiple machines. How do you perform a time correlation with data that has no requirement for validity?
Well, the giant penguin attacking Microsoft was done years ago...
I've been reading with FBReader for years on my PDA. One thing that it offers that E-Ink can't is auto-scroll; the document smooth-scrolls without intervention at a speed you set. This lets me read for hours without having to interact with the device (for example, when my hands are busy while eating or taking notes).
I've found that the auto-scroll helps keep me focused on the material, and let's me get through it faster. If my mind wanders, I have to page back so it has trained me to maintain my attention. After years of reading this way, I find I don't like real books as much - and I never thought I'd say that.
The code I write for commercial use tends to start ugly, but functional. Its development is driven by schedules and fluctuating specifications. If the code has a long life, and I am maintaining my own code, it tends to gets more beautiful over time as I improve it.
The code I write for myself starts off being beautiful. It does exactly what I want, in the way I think of as best. Over time, as I learn more, I start to see flaws and the code gets uglier. I tend to recode my own stuff more frequently to more efficient and elegant implementations.
In both cases, there are some small segments, like a subroutine, that I consider gems. They are beautiful to look at, and I carry these from project to project, almost as a seed.
For some people, coding is a trade. For some it's an art. In most cases, it's a mix of the two. The proportion is what I think changes the perception. Of course, no one but another programmer can even see the beauty in the code, and in many ways that's a shame.
This is actually the basis of the flaw in the RIAA's reasoning. An IP address does not relate to an individual. Even if there is only one person normally associated with an IP address, that IP address, for that particular (illegal) action may not relate to the individual.
If you are assuming that someone is committing a crime, you have to also consider that they may be falsely laying the blame on someone else. Cracking the password on their router, spoofing packets, botting their machine, hacking their wireless, or even physically splicing a wire. After all, people have been physically splicing into other networks for decades (cable and telephone). Why assume that the relationship is a pristine one-to-one for IP addresses?
If you are going to burden someone with thousands of dollars in legal fees, you should have to have more than an IP address. Most people will simply fold under the weight of a lawsuit; that doesn't imply guilt, just poverty in the face of huge legal fees.
I just revived two 4th gen iPods with "dead" hard drives. It seems that the firmware in the iPods can't perform sector reallocation if a sector goes bad. The iTunes software won't re-init the drives in that case, and getting the drives into disk mode to diagnostics may not be possible.
/dev/zero to the drive until full. After that, iTunes was able to re-init the drives. They've been working fine ever since (fully loaded). The first time I thought it was just a lucky coincidence. When the process worked a second time, it seemed downright odd.
What I found is that if I connect the Firewire cable to an un-powered connector (6-pin unpowered, like a daisy chain, or via a 4 to 6 pin adapter), I can get the drive into disk mode. It must take a different path through the firmware in that case.
Once in disk mode, I used dd_rescue (retry forever) on Linux to copy
Why would Apple not have proper sectore reallocation software, especially in a mobile device? It's not like their customers would just buy another, or pay an (expensive) out of warranty repair. Oh, wait...
I'm pretty sure that I've seen news reports (even live) on the street in Canada when I was visiting. Is it only non-Canadian nationals that get to be assholes, or are all television broadcasters also assholes? How is it handled when the guy picking his nose ends up in the background shot for the reporter on the street?
So what you are saying is that my looking at someone doing something embarrassing (like a peeing drunk) in public is illegal? Or if I turn to my wife and point out the person standing naked in their window? If it's not illegal for me to see and if it's not illegal for me to point it out to others because it's in a public space where you otherwise have no expectation of privacy, why would it be illegal in a photo?
So my vacation pictures from our visit to Canada that I posted on my web site are somehow illegal? Public photos of public spaces. Everyone could see those faces and license plates when the pictures were taken - how is this a privacy issue? When you can't make sense of laws anymore, everyone is a criminal.
By initiating a lawsuit, they are getting the attention of the media. The small handful of people that may have read the anonymous post has increased to thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands. As a result, the number of people that question whether this is just an anonymous nut or a real-life whistle-blower has also increased.
Why pursue an anonymous comment with the force of law? Is there really something behind it? What are they trying to hide?
That's the train of thought that the hospital has initiated. It's not the anonymous poster that should be sued, it's the administration that chose to advertise an otherwise meaningless post and bring scrutiny to their business.
Unless the anonymous poster is the person in the administration that started this. In that case, mission accomplished!
Isn't it time we moved to mesh networking, bypassing the telcos and ISPs that want to control content and communication?
Wine 0.9.45 was released today, with the following main changes:
If an office had a few "guest" telepresence droids available, instead of hopping on a plane you could just move your connection to an available droid. As fast as teleportation, and two or three visits would pay for the unit in airline and hotel cost avoidance. It would have met the requirements of better than 90% of the times I've had to travel for business. Put a couple of waldoes on it, and we're approaching 99%.
If watermarking can actually be used to identify an individual purchaser, as opposed to a source, then it is DRM. There is no reason that an individually coded watermark can't contain more than an owner in that case - an expiration for example - and any codec written to honor it can enforce the restriction.