I apprecite the input. Fortunately I was only hoping to resurrent some old hardware literally collecting dust. Perhaps some day I'll throw it back in some P2 and find something useful for it to do...
I wouldn't necessarily blame for Vonage for that, as you said you unplug a piece of hardware and most often the service is available again. Perhaps you should replace the ATA. I have one of the Ciscso ATA-186 models, and have never had a problem. I tested one of the newer linksys models as a beta, but found that I still liked the Cisco. The benefit of the Linksys series was that it was also a router for the local network. This is great, but completely unnecessary in my scenario.
As a point, the Linksys model did include QoS, but as someone else mentioned the QoS only works on the packets on YOUR outbound connection, nothing more.
I pay a flat rate, for an advertised service, from TimeWarner - RoadRunner (I understand the argument is for a different provider)...
I pay a flat rate, for an advertised servicer, from Vonage.
In all likleyhood, TimeWarner could be deprioritizing packets destined for Vonage, and offering me a fee-based system to allow these packets to make it where they are destined with normal priority. This is called extortion.
I have worked with Vonage in beta & support in the past to determine wether or not RR was guilty of this. We found that there wasn't enough proof to determine that they were. What we did find, however, was that simulated non-VoIP traffic seemed to travel just a bit faster, than the VoIP traffic did. Probably only enough to notice during the actual call as a slight echo, but not enough to degrade the quality of the call.
I've tried to keep my eye on this, especially since TimeWarner/RR now offers a digital phone service. I would think that they are not far behind with a similar pricing scheme. I look to Vonage to keep up with potential irregularities in traffic and latency.
I've been following this thread very loosely and had a quick question that maybe I didn't see elsewhere. Will any of the 3dfx series of Voodoo cards be supported. I noticed that the Mesa libraries were used for parts of this, and since (as I recall) the Voodoo2 and later cards were supported through Mesa, it would seem it would work...
However, the site lists only nVidia and ATI cards as being supported.
10 years ago, I would've said to build, rather than buy, a new box. Today... I cannot with good faith say the same thing to anyone asking from an 'end-user' point of view. Generally speaking nearly every black box PC on the market is quite usuable and is well within 'appliance' price ranges. I noticed the other day at BestBuy that 'cleaning' a PC costs $250, whereas you could purchase the 'coupon computer of the week' for about $50 more.
Simply put, for end users, just about any black box PC is going to be able to compete with a system like this, and probably come with more than you need for the same price. Just my 2 cents.
For the same reason that not all jails are run by the government, infrastructure. Google may be able to do it cheaper (possibly free to the government?) as opposed to having the National Archives (sic) do it themselves. It costs time, money, and a ton of resources I'd imagine to transfer this type of material. Now, wether or not Google tries to profit from this archive is another story. Based on the content, I don't think it would be possible to profit from it, except perhaps by licensing the database of the archived material to some vendor that wanted to build a search tool.. or something... but I'm rambling.
Jails (quite a number of them) can, and usually are, be privately run. Just like in the IT world were services are outsourced. I'm sure Google is charging someone for this, it just better not be the public, atleast not directly.
On the other side though, what about the remainder of us who already have (I'm not one of them) decent systems, but don't have PCI-E expansion slots. Consider the entire group of pre-64 bit users with beefy systems that have been left without an upgrade path for their video card.
I agree that newer GPU will continue to require larger and beefier systems to push the data to them (after all gameplay is still handled by the CPU), but you should not discredit them for providing a product that is quite viable.
What I would like to see, is more motherboard manufacturer's offering modern CPU systems, but still with support for the AGP video cards. Ideally, I'd like to see a system with both an AGP and a PCI-E expansion port. Video is not the only card we'll ever get that could take advantage of the PCI-E slot, or atleast I hope its not. I'd really like to see drive controllers and other potential devices take advantage of the port, and I really hope that this port doesn't turn into just another video slot, like the AGP was.
Just FYI, Sony was sued over the rootkit, it was documented several times. I believe the largest current suit is in place by the Texas Attorny General.
I cannot link to the article, but it was reported here on Slashdot as well.
The problem with this is that its not the government issuing these records, its a privately run business. And to my knowledge the Constitution, nor any of the Bill fo Rights does NOTHING to prevent private business from infringing.
That being said, what we need here is a law or an extension of a law to incorporate that it is illegal to give out records, and to only make them available, via print, to the owner of said phone, or via the internet with a safegaurds inplace to allow only the owner to access.
However it seems from the article that there isn't anything preventing them from this type of business, legally.
Never mind, I mis-read the results, stupid assumption on my part to believe the order he tested in was the order in which they were originally listed in the article. Oh well...
Is it me, or is the author of the article reading the times backwards. When measuring seem times in ms, smaller is better, meaning it took less time to find a segment of data. He states the Toshiba had the best times in the first two result graphs, yet they have the HIGHEST seek times...
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the author needs to double check is verbage, and think about how he's testing...
Unless I missed a fine point of your reply, I think we said the same thing, or atleast I intended to say basically the same thing. The problem I see with choosing 'residence' as the tax factor, is because of businesses willing to incorporate within low-tax or no-tax states. Case in point, I previously worked for a fire apparatus dealership, within Harris County, Texas.
For nearly the past 30 years, that company had argued that it was not responsible for paying 'inventory' and sales taxes due to the fact that ALL of our customers were non-profit government entities, ie Fire Departments. Both of these taxes were meant to tax equipment sold from Harris County, where our business was located, and paid no regard to where the delivery was made. Now in the end, through litigation, we won the argument, but it took a fair amount of time to get it resolved, the only money we ever lost was on attorney fees, but that was substantial enough.
However, Harris County got back at our argument by implementing new franchises taxes on dealerships, basically collecting a percentage based fee (if I recall correctly) on every item sold from Harris County, regardless of its destination. In the VERY short run this worked out for Harris County. Unfortunately though, this ended up shooting them in the foot, as nearly every large dealership then moved their primary office to a more tax friendly county. Without getting into a lot of detail, our new primary office was a 2 bay garage, with a small office, which I don't even recall if it was ever even manned. All perfectly legal, and business never skipped a beat.
I agree that government is far too involved, and I agree with the other reply regarding limiting government involvement, but like he said, 'sales-tax' in any form, is probably the lowest of our worries on the tax scales...
Under current law, and from what I've read of the new potential one, you would only pay taxes at the receiving end, regardless of where you buy it from, assuming that the retailer has a physical presence within your same state (think BestBuy). This makes sense, and I can't believe how many people are up in arms against it. Being originally from Texas, I think its only fair the state be able to collect revenue from the sales stream. As you're probably aware, Texas doesn't have income tax, and its state & local tax on property is rather low as well, couple that witha lower cost of living (generally speaking) and Texas is a pretty nice state to live in.
What I want to hear (and I mean really want to hear) is an argument from someone on why they think they shouldn't pay ANY sales tax? Every time I see this come up, I never see anyone explain why they think the current law shouldn't be changed. They certainly enjoy all of the facilities their state has to offer, and for those of us that don't pay state income tax (I currently live in Wisconsin, and am having to pay income tax) you should have to pay for those ammenities somehow.
I think what I would rather back, is a an e-commerce tax, something that is equal to all states, and is paid directly to the local county or city government body, perhaps based on a median from all state sales tax.
I'd build you one, parts plus a little bit for christmas, how soon would you want it? Silver or black, full height, or half height (half is more what you see today's components at, but I believe (mostly) that full height are a little cheaper to come by.
Single turner, dual tuner, satellite, HDTV, etc... give me some details and I'll give you a qoute. I've built a few in the past for friends. Lets talk...
They have one being demoed at the local Best Buy (brick & morta electronics retailer)... its neat... and while its hard to tell if its worth it (due to the excess bright lighting throughout the store) it would be neat to see more immersive technologies emerge;)
But seriously... mood lighting (wether in color or 'white')... is something that has always assisted me in getting into the game or film, same applies to sound...
Remember Interstate-76... fucking great game. While you couldn't steal anyone else's car, you could defiantely destroy it, race against it, team up with it,... think FPS for cars... good stuff really. And playing it was a load of fun.
As someone who regularly buys tv series of a few shows that I enjoy, I would be willing to buy said content based on a few peices of criteria.
1. it would have to be available in multiple size/screen resolutions - atleast the basics, and be availble in its original format. 2. the content (even if drm crippled) would have to allow me to watch any resolution show as many times as I wanted, still based solely on the first purchase (I buy a DVD, and I encode it to any resolution I want today, and maybe tomorrow, and perhaps again in three months when I've lost the first encode) 3. the content would have to be reasonably priced. I figure I pay somewhere between $30 and $40 for a complete season of episodes, depending on the show. Break that down between ~10 episodes, and I'm looking at roughly $3-$4/episode. If I am going to purchase a single show, commercial free, it would have to be comparable to this price. 4. the license and/or use of said content would have to be transferable. If I decide that I want to sell my copy of said content/media and relinquish my rights to it, I ought to be able.
I'm not a freak when it comes to DRM. I am all for fair use, and I truly believe the media companies ought to have some say in how their contents is distributed, as long as it is within the confines of fair use, I'm for it. If I buy a DVD, and decided that it wasn't all it was cracked up to be, I will either sell it to CDMax (or other retail chain) or sell/give to a friend. The same should apply for media purchased online.
Thats about all I can think of at the moment. Perhaps overly simplistic, but I'm looking at the lowest requirments. I would prefer that the media be playable on alternative OS' , but it would not be a requirement.
wow.. way to get defensive. perhaps you could have been more clear on the intent of the system build... I was trying to make a joke, not start flamewar...
Unlike your cell phone, or your cable modem, you cannot choose which service you get through a TiVo device (atleats without hacking it, if I understand the tech correctly).
If there was an option to program the Tivo box to retrieve its listings from an alternate source that would be one thing, but since you cannot choose, your analogy doesn't hold.
Atleast with cell phone service you can choose which provider you use it with, and the same applies (albeit more limited) to the purchased cable modem.
If the TiVo service you purchased was better than what is available freely, then thats one thing, but at this point its becomming crippling to continue to use the TiVo box.
I'd rather have the option of a free basic guide listing, and the option to purchase guide listings that added value, maybe a free guid only contained 2 days worth of data, whereas a purhcased guide contained 5 days, or something...
Slashdot Mirror
I apprecite the input. Fortunately I was only hoping to resurrent some old hardware literally collecting dust. Perhaps some day I'll throw it back in some P2 and find something useful for it to do...
thanks,
harryk
I wouldn't necessarily blame for Vonage for that, as you said you unplug a piece of hardware and most often the service is available again. Perhaps you should replace the ATA. I have one of the Ciscso ATA-186 models, and have never had a problem. I tested one of the newer linksys models as a beta, but found that I still liked the Cisco. The benefit of the Linksys series was that it was also a router for the local network. This is great, but completely unnecessary in my scenario.
As a point, the Linksys model did include QoS, but as someone else mentioned the QoS only works on the packets on YOUR outbound connection, nothing more.
Why?
I pay a flat rate, for an advertised service, from TimeWarner - RoadRunner (I understand the argument is for a different provider)...
I pay a flat rate, for an advertised servicer, from Vonage.
In all likleyhood, TimeWarner could be deprioritizing packets destined for Vonage, and offering me a fee-based system to allow these packets to make it where they are destined with normal priority. This is called extortion.
I have worked with Vonage in beta & support in the past to determine wether or not RR was guilty of this. We found that there wasn't enough proof to determine that they were. What we did find, however, was that simulated non-VoIP traffic seemed to travel just a bit faster, than the VoIP traffic did. Probably only enough to notice during the actual call as a slight echo, but not enough to degrade the quality of the call.
I've tried to keep my eye on this, especially since TimeWarner/RR now offers a digital phone service. I would think that they are not far behind with a similar pricing scheme. I look to Vonage to keep up with potential irregularities in traffic and latency.
just my 2cents
I've been following this thread very loosely and had a quick question that maybe I didn't see elsewhere. Will any of the 3dfx series of Voodoo cards be supported. I noticed that the Mesa libraries were used for parts of this, and since (as I recall) the Voodoo2 and later cards were supported through Mesa, it would seem it would work...
However, the site lists only nVidia and ATI cards as being supported.
Anyone else have any input?
I notice that you only critize the comment, not offer the corrected spelling. Forgive my typo ... whether ...
there, spelling-nazi satisfied?
10 years ago, I would've said to build, rather than buy, a new box. Today ... I cannot with good faith say the same thing to anyone asking from an 'end-user' point of view. Generally speaking nearly every black box PC on the market is quite usuable and is well within 'appliance' price ranges. I noticed the other day at BestBuy that 'cleaning' a PC costs $250, whereas you could purchase the 'coupon computer of the week' for about $50 more.
Simply put, for end users, just about any black box PC is going to be able to compete with a system like this, and probably come with more than you need for the same price. Just my 2 cents.
harryk
For the same reason that not all jails are run by the government, infrastructure. Google may be able to do it cheaper (possibly free to the government?) as opposed to having the National Archives (sic) do it themselves. It costs time, money, and a ton of resources I'd imagine to transfer this type of material. Now, wether or not Google tries to profit from this archive is another story. Based on the content, I don't think it would be possible to profit from it, except perhaps by licensing the database of the archived material to some vendor that wanted to build a search tool .. or something ... but I'm rambling.
Jails (quite a number of them) can, and usually are, be privately run. Just like in the IT world were services are outsourced. I'm sure Google is charging someone for this, it just better not be the public, atleast not directly.
just my 2cents.
On the other side though, what about the remainder of us who already have (I'm not one of them) decent systems, but don't have PCI-E expansion slots. Consider the entire group of pre-64 bit users with beefy systems that have been left without an upgrade path for their video card.
I agree that newer GPU will continue to require larger and beefier systems to push the data to them (after all gameplay is still handled by the CPU), but you should not discredit them for providing a product that is quite viable.
What I would like to see, is more motherboard manufacturer's offering modern CPU systems, but still with support for the AGP video cards. Ideally, I'd like to see a system with both an AGP and a PCI-E expansion port. Video is not the only card we'll ever get that could take advantage of the PCI-E slot, or atleast I hope its not. I'd really like to see drive controllers and other potential devices take advantage of the port, and I really hope that this port doesn't turn into just another video slot, like the AGP was.
just my 2cents
harryk
Just FYI, Sony was sued over the rootkit, it was documented several times. I believe the largest current suit is in place by the Texas Attorny General.
I cannot link to the article, but it was reported here on Slashdot as well.
just fyi.
harryk
The problem with this is that its not the government issuing these records, its a privately run business. And to my knowledge the Constitution, nor any of the Bill fo Rights does NOTHING to prevent private business from infringing.
That being said, what we need here is a law or an extension of a law to incorporate that it is illegal to give out records, and to only make them available, via print, to the owner of said phone, or via the internet with a safegaurds inplace to allow only the owner to access.
However it seems from the article that there isn't anything preventing them from this type of business, legally.
harryk
Never mind, I mis-read the results, stupid assumption on my part to believe the order he tested in was the order in which they were originally listed in the article. Oh well...
harryk
Is it me, or is the author of the article reading the times backwards. When measuring seem times in ms, smaller is better, meaning it took less time to find a segment of data. He states the Toshiba had the best times in the first two result graphs, yet they have the HIGHEST seek times...
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the author needs to double check is verbage, and think about how he's testing...
harryk
Unless I missed a fine point of your reply, I think we said the same thing, or atleast I intended to say basically the same thing. The problem I see with choosing 'residence' as the tax factor, is because of businesses willing to incorporate within low-tax or no-tax states. Case in point, I previously worked for a fire apparatus dealership, within Harris County, Texas.
For nearly the past 30 years, that company had argued that it was not responsible for paying 'inventory' and sales taxes due to the fact that ALL of our customers were non-profit government entities, ie Fire Departments. Both of these taxes were meant to tax equipment sold from Harris County, where our business was located, and paid no regard to where the delivery was made. Now in the end, through litigation, we won the argument, but it took a fair amount of time to get it resolved, the only money we ever lost was on attorney fees, but that was substantial enough.
However, Harris County got back at our argument by implementing new franchises taxes on dealerships, basically collecting a percentage based fee (if I recall correctly) on every item sold from Harris County, regardless of its destination. In the VERY short run this worked out for Harris County. Unfortunately though, this ended up shooting them in the foot, as nearly every large dealership then moved their primary office to a more tax friendly county. Without getting into a lot of detail, our new primary office was a 2 bay garage, with a small office, which I don't even recall if it was ever even manned. All perfectly legal, and business never skipped a beat.
I agree that government is far too involved, and I agree with the other reply regarding limiting government involvement, but like he said, 'sales-tax' in any form, is probably the lowest of our worries on the tax scales...
thanks for the input
Under current law, and from what I've read of the new potential one, you would only pay taxes at the receiving end, regardless of where you buy it from, assuming that the retailer has a physical presence within your same state (think BestBuy). This makes sense, and I can't believe how many people are up in arms against it. Being originally from Texas, I think its only fair the state be able to collect revenue from the sales stream. As you're probably aware, Texas doesn't have income tax, and its state & local tax on property is rather low as well, couple that witha lower cost of living (generally speaking) and Texas is a pretty nice state to live in.
What I want to hear (and I mean really want to hear) is an argument from someone on why they think they shouldn't pay ANY sales tax? Every time I see this come up, I never see anyone explain why they think the current law shouldn't be changed. They certainly enjoy all of the facilities their state has to offer, and for those of us that don't pay state income tax (I currently live in Wisconsin, and am having to pay income tax) you should have to pay for those ammenities somehow.
I think what I would rather back, is a an e-commerce tax, something that is equal to all states, and is paid directly to the local county or city government body, perhaps based on a median from all state sales tax.
just my 2 cents...
harryk
Sure,
I'd build you one, parts plus a little bit for christmas, how soon would you want it? Silver or black, full height, or half height (half is more what you see today's components at, but I believe (mostly) that full height are a little cheaper to come by.
Single turner, dual tuner, satellite, HDTV, etc... give me some details and I'll give you a qoute. I've built a few in the past for friends. Lets talk...
They have one being demoed at the local Best Buy (brick & morta electronics retailer) ... its neat... and while its hard to tell if its worth it (due to the excess bright lighting throughout the store) it would be neat to see more immersive technologies emerge ;)
... is something that has always assisted me in getting into the game or film, same applies to sound...
But seriously... mood lighting (wether in color or 'white')
my 2 cents.
harryk
Remember Interstate-76 ... fucking great game. While you couldn't steal anyone else's car, you could defiantely destroy it, race against it, team up with it, ... think FPS for cars ... good stuff really. And playing it was a load of fun.
Matter of fact, I'll probably re-install tonight!
harryk
actually .... the square root of 16,777,217 is 4096.0001220703106810106506642501
;)
The square root of 16,777,216 is 4096.
harryk
Secure Shell file system mount has been available as a module for some time. ssh_fs.o I think, or something, but it works sufficiently enough.
the project is here: http://shfs.sourceforge.net/
enjoy...
harryk
As someone who regularly buys tv series of a few shows that I enjoy, I would be willing to buy said content based on a few peices of criteria.
1. it would have to be available in multiple size/screen resolutions - atleast the basics, and be availble in its original format.
2. the content (even if drm crippled) would have to allow me to watch any resolution show as many times as I wanted, still based solely on the first purchase (I buy a DVD, and I encode it to any resolution I want today, and maybe tomorrow, and perhaps again in three months when I've lost the first encode)
3. the content would have to be reasonably priced. I figure I pay somewhere between $30 and $40 for a complete season of episodes, depending on the show. Break that down between ~10 episodes, and I'm looking at roughly $3-$4/episode. If I am going to purchase a single show, commercial free, it would have to be comparable to this price.
4. the license and/or use of said content would have to be transferable. If I decide that I want to sell my copy of said content/media and relinquish my rights to it, I ought to be able.
I'm not a freak when it comes to DRM. I am all for fair use, and I truly believe the media companies ought to have some say in how their contents is distributed, as long as it is within the confines of fair use, I'm for it. If I buy a DVD, and decided that it wasn't all it was cracked up to be, I will either sell it to CDMax (or other retail chain) or sell/give to a friend. The same should apply for media purchased online.
Thats about all I can think of at the moment. Perhaps overly simplistic, but I'm looking at the lowest requirments. I would prefer that the media be playable on alternative OS' , but it would not be a requirement.
Harryk
wow .. way to get defensive. perhaps you could have been more clear on the intent of the system build ... I was trying to make a joke, not start flamewar...
nice
You just built your wife a AMD x2 3800 ... and I'm trying to think of why?
.. your disposable income is obviously far greater than mine...
...
Don't you think thats a bit over kill
I just peiced together a p2 system for my wife, which is still overkill for what she needs
I entered ...
best thing since...
Asia Carrera personally autographed my copy of her first anal scene, A is for Asia porno!
wonder if I'll win...
Unlike your cell phone, or your cable modem, you cannot choose which service you get through a TiVo device (atleats without hacking it, if I understand the tech correctly).
If there was an option to program the Tivo box to retrieve its listings from an alternate source that would be one thing, but since you cannot choose, your analogy doesn't hold.
Atleast with cell phone service you can choose which provider you use it with, and the same applies (albeit more limited) to the purchased cable modem.
If the TiVo service you purchased was better than what is available freely, then thats one thing, but at this point its becomming crippling to continue to use the TiVo box.
I'd rather have the option of a free basic guide listing, and the option to purchase guide listings that added value, maybe a free guid only contained 2 days worth of data, whereas a purhcased guide contained 5 days, or something...
Just my 2 cents.
Thats funny, I submitted the same story earlier today from CNN,here: http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/fun.games/07/27/game. lawsuit.ap/index.html
Oh well... I guess we should just chalk this up to another Stella award nominee...
harryk