Weird. So the fact that nobody believes those penis enlargement advertisements makes them legal?
I think, then, that what we have to do is reply to and purchse each and every one of them. When they don't work, we can get 'em busted. A deformed penis is a small price to pay for a spam-free mailbox. Especially for/. readers.
The Lazy Way to deal with this is to turn remote management off. If you have no problems, leave it alone until you have some other reason to flash it.
BTW, the last firmware upgrade on the "41" works great with WinXP UPnP. Fairly easy to set up safely (update Windows), and it lets me put my dad behind NAT and still fix his system remotely using XP Remote Assistance. It actually works, much to my amazement, and AFAIK, there are no serious vulnerabilities if it's done right.
The point of having elections is not so that we can measure the will of the voters. Rather, we have them simply because they're a fairly orderly system for choosing people for public office. Remember the phrase, "democracy is the worst possible system, except for all the others." There's much truth in it. Ours is a very a stable system, survived the Florida fiasco with barely a hiccup. Trying to make it more "just" would probably make it less stable... for examply, should we make it so Democrats think it's more just, or so that Republicans think it's more just. Either would be a disaster. What we do have though, is something that's fairly good at guaging public opinion, and which is respected and obeyed, if not loved, by all the participants. Democracy isn't an end unto itself, it's just the best method of preserving liberty.
None. You either think I make sense, or you don't.
>> Sounds to me like you didn't finish the chapter on monopolies.
Well, if you mean the chapters in Das Kapital and Mein Kampf, you're right, I haven't.
I repeat my earlier example... If there were such a thing as natural monopolies, there would be only one cell phone company by now. But in the last ten years, several of them have wired the whole nation.
It's one of those ideas that makes some sense until you step back and think about it. The argument could be applied to any business, from a corner store to a car company... whoever is already established has an advantage, and therefore should be able to lock out all competitiors. Doesn't work that way, it turns out.
Apparently, the concept of a "natural monopoly" is a myth that just won't die. Sorry, don't mean to pick on you personally, but this one just gets under my skin.
Theoretically, a "natural monopoly" was supposed to occur when a business experiences reduced marginal costs with increased production. Normally, when production increases, marginal costs increase. This, supposedly, creates a situation that would allow the company to defeat all of its competitors. For example, once the electric company has run a wire to your neighbor's house, then it's cheaper for them to run a wire to your house than it is for a competitior to do so.
Well, duh. But this doesn't lead to monopoly.
There's a lot more to electric service than a wire, and the electric company will still experience increased marginal costs in all of their other areas, whether it be power generation, transmission from generation sources, customer service, billing, etc. Yes, their average cost MIGHT decrease, but the marginal cost, the one that supposedly leads to the natural monoply, does not decrease.
Even if their marginal cost did decrease, if they tried to use that advantage to jack up prices, then they would simply make themselves more vulnerable to competitors. Despite the simplistic arguments that might fool a freshman economics student (and most Ivy League professors), there is no such thing as a natural monopoly.
But, this myth has been used to create all sorts of REAL monopolies. Wonder why there's only one electric wire coming to your house? Or only one phone line? Or only one cable line? It's because this "natural monopoly" myth has been used as an excuse to encode these monopolies into law. So now, the electric company can raise your rates, but all they have to fear is the politicans, who can be bought off much more cheaply than millions of consumers.
In some cases, I think creating public utilities has had good effects; electricity costs more than it should, but it's probably more reliable than it would be if it were delivered by market mechanisms. This shows up most after storms and other natural disasters, when repair people are dispatched far in excess of what could be justified by lost revenue. The increased costs aren't as bad as they might be in other industries, because the product is pretty simple, and it's pretty much the same thing that's deleivered to all customers.
Cable, telephone, and Internet are another story entirely, though. There's absolutely NO REASON that a second cable or local telco company couldn't be profictable in many situations, but they're prohibited from running a wire to your house in the name of protecting competition.
We've seen multiple phone companies wire the whole nation for wireless telecom over the last decade. Likewise for upcoming 3G/1XRTT services. If the "Natural Monopoly" theory were even remotely true, this wouldn't have been possible.
Outlook does support some iCal functionality, but only in Internet mode, through the Net Folders option. It's only limited by the fact that not all information is exchanged, and the time delay between updates. When a calendar event arrives in the mailbox, Outlook process it and updates the local calendar. It may use MAPI application calls internally, but the data format isn't proprietary and all the information exchange is done through POP/SMTP.
I've used it that way specifically to avoid going the MAPI/Exchange route. I got to management early and gave 'em basic calendar sharing; once they had that, they couldn't justify the expense of Exchange. Kept the company on pure Internet protocols until we got sold to somebody who converted us to Notes.
A back end server that supported and extended Outlook in that configuration, using standard transport protocols, could be a compelling alternative. Of course, if it ever caught on, Microsoft would drop Net Folders from the Internet version of Outlook pretty quickly.
True enough, but MAPI is just a protocol. All the Calendar functionality comes from the client and the server. And Outlook retains most of it's functionality (and gets a huge boost in perfomrance) when run in Internet mode.
There's no reason the essential Exchange functionality couldn't be duplicated. Some of the Calendar info is already available in that icalendar format, and the rest could be encapsulated in POP/IMAP. Add some server enhancvements and maybe an Outlook plugin, and you could be pretty close.
And of course, you could distribute the Outlook plugin to the whole enterprise just by sending one attachment to the VP of Marketing.
Torpor's on to something, tho'. Technology is what these sports are all about, but too much of it takes it out of the realm that the average person can relate to. Years ago, auto racing was so much more fun because the fans could understand all the development that was going on. Did engines work better in the front or the rear? Which was better, tube frame or monocoque? Pushrod V8 or OHC V-12? Could tires develop more than 1G of grip? (a lot of physicists scoffed at the notion, until some drag racers just did it).
Now, it's all about getting a tenth of a percent less underwing pressure in medium-speed corners, or adjusting the enigine management mappings to suit the circuit, tweaks and tunings that we never even see.
Likewise, when Aus2 won the America's Cup, there was a new keel, you could look at it, you could play Monday morning engineer, you could try to understand why it worked better. Good stuff.
There's probably no way to go back to the past, tho.
It's an old ISP myth. Everybody "oversells" their connections at some point in the stream. In the early days, this sort of thing was an issue, a small ISP would but a certain upstream bandwidth (usually one or two connections) and then sell pieces of it until they had sold more downstream than they had upstream. In practice, it worked well, since few people ever use their maximum bandwidth constantly. A few were fastidious about buying upstream bandwidth in exact proportion to what they sold downstream. They mostly went out of business or were bought by Verio.
Today, few ISP's actually have upstream bandwidth equal to what they've sold downstream. And it gets even more complicated when you consider that there are usually multiple routes out of an ISP, some of which can be easily overloaded, others less so, depending on where the traffic is destined.
The only worthwhile measure is a subjective one. Can you get 1.5Mb throughput on ANY site? On some sites but not others? Do you think you're going to get better service from somebody else? There's no exact answer as to whether you're getting your money's worth; experienced net admins have used a several connections over time, and usually know within a day or two whether they're on a good one or not.
Sorry, but I get really upset when something as profound as fundamental rights of liberty are bastardized to argue for any number of trivial material privileges. I'm all for a society that shares and in which the well off help provide for the less well off. But that has exactly NOTHING to do with the profound rights with which we are born.
>> my right -- and yours --to an adequate standard of health, to be looked after after a life of contributing to society
How the hell do you read that into the 9th Ammendment? What you've mentioned are not rights, they're services that would be provided by others. Nowhere in the Constitution or any other founding documents are you obliged to provide for others. Rights enumerate what the government can not do, or restrict you from doing. They do not specify what others must do for you.
What a surprise, he's afraid that software vendors are going to own his thoughts. "In other words, the products of our creative minds, the very essence of our humanity, are being relentlessly stripped from us."
Hey, KDE is very good and all, and yes, there are some real serious issues about proprietary document formats. But anytime somebody starts into this sort of extremist scare-mongering, even if I basically agree with them, I just tune it out. Most people who use such exaggeration aren't capable of thinking through the issue clearly. It's become far too common these days to make some trivial cause into something of earth-shattering importance. Spare me.
Slashdot Mirror
Her page loads just fine. ;)
And the 'toons are pretty nice, too.
You know what's a nice usability feature? A server that can handle the load. You click on the link, the page loads. Nielsen should get one of them.
No wonder the service stinks.
Let's hear it for preserving our digital heritage! I'm so relieved to know that my descendants will be able to read my blogs centuries from now.
I wonder if the image links on the page, eg:
file:///usr/share/latex2html/icons/nx_grp_g.png
are intentionally broken to show how easy it is to screw up.
I dunno.
Weird. So the fact that nobody believes those penis enlargement advertisements makes them legal?
/. readers.
I think, then, that what we have to do is reply to and purchse each and every one of them. When they don't work, we can get 'em busted. A deformed penis is a small price to pay for a spam-free mailbox. Especially for
The Lazy Way to deal with this is to turn remote management off. If you have no problems, leave it alone until you have some other reason to flash it.
BTW, the last firmware upgrade on the "41" works great with WinXP UPnP. Fairly easy to set up safely (update Windows), and it lets me put my dad behind NAT and still fix his system remotely using XP Remote Assistance. It actually works, much to my amazement, and AFAIK, there are no serious vulnerabilities if it's done right.
If they want to make it easier to switch, all they have to do is drop the price 50%.
The point of having elections is not so that we can measure the will of the voters. Rather, we have them simply because they're a fairly orderly system for choosing people for public office. Remember the phrase, "democracy is the worst possible system, except for all the others." There's much truth in it. Ours is a very a stable system, survived the Florida fiasco with barely a hiccup. Trying to make it more "just" would probably make it less stable... for examply, should we make it so Democrats think it's more just, or so that Republicans think it's more just. Either would be a disaster. What we do have though, is something that's fairly good at guaging public opinion, and which is respected and obeyed, if not loved, by all the participants. Democracy isn't an end unto itself, it's just the best method of preserving liberty.
>> What are your credentials, anyway?
None. You either think I make sense, or you don't.
>> Sounds to me like you didn't finish the chapter on monopolies.
Well, if you mean the chapters in Das Kapital and Mein Kampf, you're right, I haven't.
I repeat my earlier example... If there were such a thing as natural monopolies, there would be only one cell phone company by now. But in the last ten years, several of them have wired the whole nation.
It's one of those ideas that makes some sense until you step back and think about it. The argument could be applied to any business, from a corner store to a car company... whoever is already established has an advantage, and therefore should be able to lock out all competitiors. Doesn't work that way, it turns out.
Apparently, the concept of a "natural monopoly" is a myth that just won't die. Sorry, don't mean to pick on you personally, but this one just gets under my skin.
Theoretically, a "natural monopoly" was supposed to occur when a business experiences reduced marginal costs with increased production. Normally, when production increases, marginal costs increase. This, supposedly, creates a situation that would allow the company to defeat all of its competitors. For example, once the electric company has run a wire to your neighbor's house, then it's cheaper for them to run a wire to your house than it is for a competitior to do so.
Well, duh. But this doesn't lead to monopoly.
There's a lot more to electric service than a wire, and the electric company will still experience increased marginal costs in all of their other areas, whether it be power generation, transmission from generation sources, customer service, billing, etc. Yes, their average cost MIGHT decrease, but the marginal cost, the one that supposedly leads to the natural monoply, does not decrease.
Even if their marginal cost did decrease, if they tried to use that advantage to jack up prices, then they would simply make themselves more vulnerable to competitors. Despite the simplistic arguments that might fool a freshman economics student (and most Ivy League professors), there is no such thing as a natural monopoly.
But, this myth has been used to create all sorts of REAL monopolies. Wonder why there's only one electric wire coming to your house? Or only one phone line? Or only one cable line? It's because this "natural monopoly" myth has been used as an excuse to encode these monopolies into law. So now, the electric company can raise your rates, but all they have to fear is the politicans, who can be bought off much more cheaply than millions of consumers.
In some cases, I think creating public utilities has had good effects; electricity costs more than it should, but it's probably more reliable than it would be if it were delivered by market mechanisms. This shows up most after storms and other natural disasters, when repair people are dispatched far in excess of what could be justified by lost revenue. The increased costs aren't as bad as they might be in other industries, because the product is pretty simple, and it's pretty much the same thing that's deleivered to all customers.
Cable, telephone, and Internet are another story entirely, though. There's absolutely NO REASON that a second cable or local telco company couldn't be profictable in many situations, but they're prohibited from running a wire to your house in the name of protecting competition.
We've seen multiple phone companies wire the whole nation for wireless telecom over the last decade. Likewise for upcoming 3G/1XRTT services. If the "Natural Monopoly" theory were even remotely true, this wouldn't have been possible.
Outlook does support some iCal functionality, but only in Internet mode, through the Net Folders option. It's only limited by the fact that not all information is exchanged, and the time delay between updates. When a calendar event arrives in the mailbox, Outlook process it and updates the local calendar. It may use MAPI application calls internally, but the data format isn't proprietary and all the information exchange is done through POP/SMTP.
I've used it that way specifically to avoid going the MAPI/Exchange route. I got to management early and gave 'em basic calendar sharing; once they had that, they couldn't justify the expense of Exchange. Kept the company on pure Internet protocols until we got sold to somebody who converted us to Notes.
A back end server that supported and extended Outlook in that configuration, using standard transport protocols, could be a compelling alternative. Of course, if it ever caught on, Microsoft would drop Net Folders from the Internet version of Outlook pretty quickly.
True enough, but MAPI is just a protocol. All the Calendar functionality comes from the client and the server. And Outlook retains most of it's functionality (and gets a huge boost in perfomrance) when run in Internet mode.
There's no reason the essential Exchange functionality couldn't be duplicated. Some of the Calendar info is already available in that icalendar format, and the rest could be encapsulated in POP/IMAP. Add some server enhancvements and maybe an Outlook plugin, and you could be pretty close.
And of course, you could distribute the Outlook plugin to the whole enterprise just by sending one attachment to the VP of Marketing.
yeah... that's more precise. But my wording was snappier. ;)
The only truly public license is no license.
Torpor's on to something, tho'. Technology is what these sports are all about, but too much of it takes it out of the realm that the average person can relate to. Years ago, auto racing was so much more fun because the fans could understand all the development that was going on. Did engines work better in the front or the rear? Which was better, tube frame or monocoque? Pushrod V8 or OHC V-12? Could tires develop more than 1G of grip? (a lot of physicists scoffed at the notion, until some drag racers just did it).
Now, it's all about getting a tenth of a percent less underwing pressure in medium-speed corners, or adjusting the enigine management mappings to suit the circuit, tweaks and tunings that we never even see.
Likewise, when Aus2 won the America's Cup, there was a new keel, you could look at it, you could play Monday morning engineer, you could try to understand why it worked better. Good stuff.
There's probably no way to go back to the past, tho.
>> I bought a 100GB drive last spring and it's not even half full yet!
You know, if you're ever accused of pirating DVD's, this statement should provide proof that you're not.
>> system for an on-line auction house where the actual, physical good is escrowed by the auction house
Hey, that's a good idea, I think I'll start a business that does that.
Oops.
It's an old ISP myth. Everybody "oversells" their connections at some point in the stream. In the early days, this sort of thing was an issue, a small ISP would but a certain upstream bandwidth (usually one or two connections) and then sell pieces of it until they had sold more downstream than they had upstream. In practice, it worked well, since few people ever use their maximum bandwidth constantly. A few were fastidious about buying upstream bandwidth in exact proportion to what they sold downstream. They mostly went out of business or were bought by Verio.
Today, few ISP's actually have upstream bandwidth equal to what they've sold downstream. And it gets even more complicated when you consider that there are usually multiple routes out of an ISP, some of which can be easily overloaded, others less so, depending on where the traffic is destined.
The only worthwhile measure is a subjective one. Can you get 1.5Mb throughput on ANY site? On some sites but not others? Do you think you're going to get better service from somebody else? There's no exact answer as to whether you're getting your money's worth; experienced net admins have used a several connections over time, and usually know within a day or two whether they're on a good one or not.
You have to look at why we have rights at all.
It seems self-evident to me. We are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. To secure these rights, governments are instituted.
Sorry, but I get really upset when something as profound as fundamental rights of liberty are bastardized to argue for any number of trivial material privileges. I'm all for a society that shares and in which the well off help provide for the less well off. But that has exactly NOTHING to do with the profound rights with which we are born.
>> my right -- and yours --to an adequate standard of health, to be looked after after a life of contributing to society
How the hell do you read that into the 9th Ammendment? What you've mentioned are not rights, they're services that would be provided by others. Nowhere in the Constitution or any other founding documents are you obliged to provide for others. Rights enumerate what the government can not do, or restrict you from doing. They do not specify what others must do for you.
What a surprise, he's afraid that software vendors are going to own his thoughts. "In other words, the products of our creative minds, the very essence of our humanity, are being relentlessly stripped from us."
Hey, KDE is very good and all, and yes, there are some real serious issues about proprietary document formats. But anytime somebody starts into this sort of extremist scare-mongering, even if I basically agree with them, I just tune it out. Most people who use such exaggeration aren't capable of thinking through the issue clearly. It's become far too common these days to make some trivial cause into something of earth-shattering importance. Spare me.
Give a man some corn, and you feed him for a day. Teach him to plant it, and you'll be feeding him for 25-to-Life.
Former Microsoft security chief Howard Schmidt
Just explain that it's not going to fail, because this guy is no longer engineering it.
(imagine powering your house with the excess electricity generated by your car)
Buy one in Colorado, drive it to the coast and sell it. Repeat until wealthy.