MySQL IS a database, and a pretty damn good one at that. However, it is not a very sophisticated database. At one time, actually not THAT long ago, MySQL level databases were state of the art. Now, of course, the state of the art has been bumped up quite substantially. MySQL is still an excellent choice for many database needs, but obviously not all of them, especially in the "high end". Not everyone needs a Lamborghini that pumps out 450 horsepower, sometimes a VW bug works just fine, that's what MySQL is.
As far as I know these plans don't require additional funding for the Mars Surveyor Program. As long as the funding remains the way it is at the moment (something like $100 million per year or so I think) they should be fine.
If they got more funding, then they could probably accelerate the timetable a bit.
As long as they hold it, ONLY THEY CAN BE THE REGISTRAR for that domain. That means that if someone else wants to register it, they have to pay them. And if the original purchaser wants to register it they have to use them AND they have to pay all "back payments", even though they dropped registration.
This is just one more reason why NSI is pure evil.
Actually, it wasn't grey scale at all really, it was just a bunch of red lines. It looked 3D but it sucked, plus it gave you a headache and didn't have many games on it.
If you're serving and/or using tons o' bandwidth, then maybe it's time to charge by the megabyte per month.
However, for the end user, connecting through an ISP and simply surfing et al this is just downright dumb. For one, it would require additional cost to monitor users. Second, it would discourage people from surfing as much. Third, you can say bye bye to banner ads (though maybe that's a good thing), if people have to pay for every bit of those pieces of trash they see they are going to block them. And finally, it would be moving away from closing the "digital devide". If little Timmy can't do something internetish because his parents need to spend their money on food instead of for the excess usage, then little Timmy is at a disadvantage.
Also, once you break down the essential "everyone pays the same" wall, what's next? If you access certain "more expensive" sites, will you be charged more. Might things begin to revert to the long distance phone call paradigm? I doubt it, but it's a very very chilling thought.
Flat rates are simpler, easier to use and understand, and make a lot more sense in the semi-egalitarian environment of the internet.
Get A Fscking Lawyer?! Have things come to that? Can't people setup their own websites without having to shell out a mound of cash to an overpriced lawyer? It would be sorry indeed if everyone needed a lawyer to look over even the simplest of websites.
No, the point is that congress intentionally changed the restrictions for the H-1B visas and let a whole bunch of people get H1B visas and essentially told them "it's just temporary, you will get a green card or citizenship before it runs out". Most people know that it's very difficult to get a green card or citizenship if you have an H1B, however congress specifically changed the laws so that the H1B visa applicants no longer had to even claim that they intended to return home, all of these people were promised that they would become citizens. And yet they were not. Congress could certainly pull out all the stops to get these high-tech workers working, but apparently they couldn't be bothered to put in the effort to make sure we held up our end of the bargain.
Uncle Sam and our big high-tech companies fucked these people in the ass. In fact, we went out of our way to do so. That is just plain wrong, no matter how you slice it.
Did you even read the articles? During the mid '90s, congress changed the laws and allowed issuing of many many more H-1B visas. Congress changed it so that the applicants did not have to prove they intended to return home the H-1B visa was called transitional, implying that they would get green cards or citizenship during that 6 years. Instead, the H-1B workers got wrapped up in red tape and congress let them down. Now, many of them who were essentially promised, not just by the companies they work for but by our very own congress, that they could stay here indefinitely are being "asked" to leave.
Nearly half a million highly educated immigrants from around the world have been stabbed in the back by our industry and government. We owe them more than a kick in the guts.
I think people are missing the point here. Sure they knew it was temporary. But, if you were able to crack the door open to the land of opportunity just a bit, wouldn't you think that was enough and you had it made? I doubt that any of these temporary H1B visa holders actually thought that they would be in exactly the same situation now as they were when they originally got their visas. The real issue I think is why weren't they able (over a period of 6 years) to get a green card, or full citizenship? It seems like there are few of these H1B workers who truly wished to stay here only 6 years and then go back home. Why do we want to shun these highly intelligent and (arguably) highly motivated individuals and make it hard for them to become honest to goodness citizens of the US? Isn't part of what this country is all about is to be an open land of opportunity? Well, if working 6 years in this country for low (perhaps some would even say unfair) wages, keeping their noses clean, being good honest inhabitants (though not citizens) of this country isn't enough to allow them to stay, then exactly what should be enough?
I think it's appaling the way these workers are being treated, it is certianly not what America is supposed to be about.
Damn straight! The TV industry is using the airwaves that belong to us, and they are trying to tell us what we can do with what belongs to us? This is rediculous. We own the airwaves we should be telling them what to do! I'm gettin' pretty uppity about all this shit, I may just bitch to my congressman / senator.
Yes, and this is just the tip of the iceburg. Especially as a lot of the multi-media / software industry starts moving towards selling services instead of stuff you can actually own.
I posted a bunch about this in another post about some of the implications of this kind of technology. It's not pretty, it's pretty damn scary if you ask me.
It means that you have less control over the things that you own. Your television, your VCR, you will no longer precisely "own" them, it will almost be like they belong to someone else. A television is supposed to be a simple device, it displays TV broadcasts, a VCR is supposed to be equally simple, it records and plays back TV broadcasts. They will no longer be like that. They will have restrictions that prevent you from doing anything you want with them. The first thing is to prevent you from recording certain shows so you will have to fork out the money to buy their tapes or DVDs if you want to watch it more than once (or if you have a job or other responsibility that prevents you from seeing it the first time).
Do you have any doubt that the industry will expand this and make as many shows as they can copy-protected? Forget about taping the super bowl, you have to buy the tape. The industry will increasingly push copy-protection onto as many shows and broadcasts as they can get away with. And then, who knows what may be next? When they have the power you can bet your ass they will abuse it. There are so many possible scenarios for abuse of this kind of technology it's unbelievable. You've seen what the industry has done already with DVD, certain parts of the DVD you can't skip. What if they could do that to your VCR? It's only a half skip away from this technology.
Imagine this, recording of most broadcast television is illegal (because it's copy-protected). Wouldn't it be tempting for the industry to stop selling you movies and tapes? It would be much more lucrative if they went to a "service" model where you buy / watch TV shows or movies on demand but cannot record them (or skip the commercials). Parts of the software industry are already on their way to being service oriented instead of "item" oriented. Look at microsoft's dot Net crap.
In the future you may not be able to own movies, or software, or TV shows, or music, or maybe even books. All of these things must be rented on demand with a per-use fee from the big corporations. Now, imagine that world. Imagine the sheer power the corporations would have over all us little guys. Imagine how easy censorship would be. All it would take to effectively ban a book would be for no one to be willing to offer it for use, or for the publisher who owns the copyrights to decide not to offer it. And, using your rented software owned by faceless corporation # 317, it may not even be possible to determine the existence of a "subversive book". Imagine how easy it would be to track down the people who "abuse certain software programs" or "read the wrong books", etc. The technology to do that is only this far -> || away from what is being used today. I doubt things will be that severe (at least not right away), but it could and seeing as how it would be in the interests (and profit) of the industry I would be very wary in this area of technology.
The answer to your question is right there in your own post but you apparently missed.
Although, you left some parts off of your corporate example. It should be more like this:
Your problem -> Your manager -> VP -> Big Boss -> another VP -> another manager -> grunt who actually fixes problem.
In the open source world there are few people (usually none) who are pure management. When you send your problem to people working on the linux kernel who forward it to Linus, they actually write the code and can solve the problem. In the open source world your bug reports and comments actually go straight to the ears of the people who not only solve the problems and implement new functionality but also decide what new functionality gets added in. It is the excising of the huge manager -> higher up manager -> yet higher manager ->..... -> high enough management to make a decision -> lower manager -> yet more lower management ->.... -> manager intermediate step which usually has very little usefulness (often it's usefulness is in fact negative), that makes "The Bazaar" so special.
It's not anything particularly special about corporations, it's the system that allows them to weild such power.
First, online freedoms (freedom of speech, freedom from unwaranted search and seizure, etc.) are not as well protected as their "real world" counterparts. Second, it's all too easy to push little guys (individuals, small organizations, and companies) around with only a large wad of cash and some fancy lawyers. How many institutions or individuals out there could withstand (or tolerate) a concerted attack (for whatever reason) from a big company? They have the money to bury you in legal proceedings and legal bills and they have the money to "grease the wheels" in the government to make sure that the new laws favor them and not you.
And Third, big corporations are only growing more and more used to being able to push around the little guys. Granting overly broad patents, modifying our intellectual property laws to empower big corporations even more, letting all these mega-mergers go through, these things encourage companies to get bigger, uglier, and nastier.
And all the while we're spending our time trying to bust up microsoft. Well guess what folks, Billy boy may have done some shady things but his business antics are nothing compared to the assaults on our freedoms and our privacy being mounted by numerous "big faceless" corporations. MS may have taken away some money from you and maybe some other people, but the RIAA and the MPAA are trying to take away freedom of speech and freedom of the press! Who is the more serious threat?
We don't need to get bogged down in yet more regulation, that wouldn't even help. We need to change the system so that it's simply not possible to bully "the little guy" around so much or for big business to influence politicians so easily. Campaign finance reform, a good solid ruling or two from the supreme court upholding the basics of the bill of rights online, some sort of reform of our civil lawsuit system to make it more fair and reasonable, these things will make the difference between our freedom or our domination.
Although, knowing microsoft they'd make it 137 bits (gotta have that parity bit).
Seriously though, if we run out of network addresses with 128 bits, someone ought to be shot. With more than 100,000 septillion addresses for every human on Earth, we better not run out.
Almost all of the core of Intellectual Property law concerns profit (and not some concept of "infringement" of rights), if there is no financial damage to the copyright owner and no financial gain to the "copyright violater", then it becomes something very much different (and something much harder to stop through legal action). Additionally, in this case, if there is no loss of profit for the artists or record labels, then the claim that Napster represents "fair use" is strengthened a bit.
Has it occured to anyone that 100mbps is 75% the speed of an OC-3 connection? If it were easy to connect everybody in a city up to 100mbps fiber to the home, would it be equally easy to connect multiple 100mpbs connections between switches and COs? With that kind of speed, you begin to redefine the internet, there is no more backbone, the entire network is the backbone.
The only problem that needs to be dealt with is ensuring nobody hogs the pipes. This is a technological problem that can be solved, and which will be solved quite rapidly if fiber to the home goes mainstream.
Well, for one, Equifax offerse $45 server certificates.
There are tons of places like that, you just have to look, the problem though is that you pretty much have to bend over for the RSA/Verisign anal raping service if you want the corresponding CA-root certificate to be installed in everyone's browser client.
Thawte is pretty much the cheapest (it's been bought by Verisign but they're certificates don't cost 300 clams yet).
If you go with a 3rd party "unknown" for your certificate, the first time people connect securily to your site they will be prompted (depending on your server software and their client) to download and install the corresponding browser root certificate for that company (well, probably anyway, if they've connected securely to another site that uses certs from the same company they won't have to install it again, but this is unlikely). It's a fairly painless process actually, I suppose you have to weight the pros and cons for yourself.
Who knows, they might just snag everything and put into into some sort of database. Then, they just keep some computers chewing through the database putting everything together, making connections, flagging emails with key words or phrases (or senders or recipients!), etc.
It's not like the hard drive, DB systems, or processors of today aren't up to the task for something of this magnitude. Hell, I'm sure there are larger more complex databases out there already.
Anyway, that's how I would do it if I were a jack booted government computer punk who used constitution imprinted toilet paper.
Obviously we have to compare apples and oranges when deciding which one we want to eat. Just because their different doesn't mean we can't decide which one we like better.
What about comparing golden delicious apples with granny smith apples? Though not as dramatic as the difference between apples and oranges, they are different and neither is inherently better than the other. However, most people still have a preference (personally, I like golden delicious).
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MySQL IS a database, and a pretty damn good one at that. However, it is not a very sophisticated database. At one time, actually not THAT long ago, MySQL level databases were state of the art. Now, of course, the state of the art has been bumped up quite substantially. MySQL is still an excellent choice for many database needs, but obviously not all of them, especially in the "high end". Not everyone needs a Lamborghini that pumps out 450 horsepower, sometimes a VW bug works just fine, that's what MySQL is.
If they got more funding, then they could probably accelerate the timetable a bit.
As long as they hold it, ONLY THEY CAN BE THE REGISTRAR for that domain. That means that if someone else wants to register it, they have to pay them. And if the original purchaser wants to register it they have to use them AND they have to pay all "back payments", even though they dropped registration.
This is just one more reason why NSI is pure evil.
I wonder why it didn't do well?
Is that a joke? Please dear god tell me that's a joke!
However, for the end user, connecting through an ISP and simply surfing et al this is just downright dumb. For one, it would require additional cost to monitor users. Second, it would discourage people from surfing as much. Third, you can say bye bye to banner ads (though maybe that's a good thing), if people have to pay for every bit of those pieces of trash they see they are going to block them. And finally, it would be moving away from closing the "digital devide". If little Timmy can't do something internetish because his parents need to spend their money on food instead of for the excess usage, then little Timmy is at a disadvantage.
Also, once you break down the essential "everyone pays the same" wall, what's next? If you access certain "more expensive" sites, will you be charged more. Might things begin to revert to the long distance phone call paradigm? I doubt it, but it's a very very chilling thought.
Flat rates are simpler, easier to use and understand, and make a lot more sense in the semi-egalitarian environment of the internet.
Personally, I'd rather have an EJECT key. Not for disks, like a jet fighter. I think that would be cool.
Get A Fscking Lawyer?! Have things come to that? Can't people setup their own websites without having to shell out a mound of cash to an overpriced lawyer? It would be sorry indeed if everyone needed a lawyer to look over even the simplest of websites.
Uncle Sam and our big high-tech companies fucked these people in the ass. In fact, we went out of our way to do so. That is just plain wrong, no matter how you slice it.
Nearly half a million highly educated immigrants from around the world have been stabbed in the back by our industry and government. We owe them more than a kick in the guts.
I think it's appaling the way these workers are being treated, it is certianly not what America is supposed to be about.
Damn straight! The TV industry is using the airwaves that belong to us, and they are trying to tell us what we can do with what belongs to us? This is rediculous. We own the airwaves we should be telling them what to do! I'm gettin' pretty uppity about all this shit, I may just bitch to my congressman / senator.
I posted a bunch about this in another post about some of the implications of this kind of technology. It's not pretty, it's pretty damn scary if you ask me.
It means that you have less control over the things that you own. Your television, your VCR, you will no longer precisely "own" them, it will almost be like they belong to someone else. A television is supposed to be a simple device, it displays TV broadcasts, a VCR is supposed to be equally simple, it records and plays back TV broadcasts. They will no longer be like that. They will have restrictions that prevent you from doing anything you want with them. The first thing is to prevent you from recording certain shows so you will have to fork out the money to buy their tapes or DVDs if you want to watch it more than once (or if you have a job or other responsibility that prevents you from seeing it the first time).
Do you have any doubt that the industry will expand this and make as many shows as they can copy-protected? Forget about taping the super bowl, you have to buy the tape. The industry will increasingly push copy-protection onto as many shows and broadcasts as they can get away with. And then, who knows what may be next? When they have the power you can bet your ass they will abuse it. There are so many possible scenarios for abuse of this kind of technology it's unbelievable. You've seen what the industry has done already with DVD, certain parts of the DVD you can't skip. What if they could do that to your VCR? It's only a half skip away from this technology.
Imagine this, recording of most broadcast television is illegal (because it's copy-protected). Wouldn't it be tempting for the industry to stop selling you movies and tapes? It would be much more lucrative if they went to a "service" model where you buy / watch TV shows or movies on demand but cannot record them (or skip the commercials). Parts of the software industry are already on their way to being service oriented instead of "item" oriented. Look at microsoft's dot Net crap.
In the future you may not be able to own movies, or software, or TV shows, or music, or maybe even books. All of these things must be rented on demand with a per-use fee from the big corporations. Now, imagine that world. Imagine the sheer power the corporations would have over all us little guys. Imagine how easy censorship would be. All it would take to effectively ban a book would be for no one to be willing to offer it for use, or for the publisher who owns the copyrights to decide not to offer it. And, using your rented software owned by faceless corporation # 317, it may not even be possible to determine the existence of a "subversive book". Imagine how easy it would be to track down the people who "abuse certain software programs" or "read the wrong books", etc. The technology to do that is only this far -> || away from what is being used today. I doubt things will be that severe (at least not right away), but it could and seeing as how it would be in the interests (and profit) of the industry I would be very wary in this area of technology.
Although, you left some parts off of your corporate example. It should be more like this:
Your problem -> Your manager -> VP -> Big Boss -> another VP -> another manager -> grunt who actually fixes problem.
In the open source world there are few people (usually none) who are pure management. When you send your problem to people working on the linux kernel who forward it to Linus, they actually write the code and can solve the problem. In the open source world your bug reports and comments actually go straight to the ears of the people who not only solve the problems and implement new functionality but also decide what new functionality gets added in. It is the excising of the huge manager -> higher up manager -> yet higher manager -> ..... -> high enough management to make a decision -> lower manager -> yet more lower management -> .... -> manager intermediate step which usually has very little usefulness (often it's usefulness is in fact negative), that makes "The Bazaar" so special.
First, online freedoms (freedom of speech, freedom from unwaranted search and seizure, etc.) are not as well protected as their "real world" counterparts. Second, it's all too easy to push little guys (individuals, small organizations, and companies) around with only a large wad of cash and some fancy lawyers. How many institutions or individuals out there could withstand (or tolerate) a concerted attack (for whatever reason) from a big company? They have the money to bury you in legal proceedings and legal bills and they have the money to "grease the wheels" in the government to make sure that the new laws favor them and not you.
And Third, big corporations are only growing more and more used to being able to push around the little guys. Granting overly broad patents, modifying our intellectual property laws to empower big corporations even more, letting all these mega-mergers go through, these things encourage companies to get bigger, uglier, and nastier.
And all the while we're spending our time trying to bust up microsoft. Well guess what folks, Billy boy may have done some shady things but his business antics are nothing compared to the assaults on our freedoms and our privacy being mounted by numerous "big faceless" corporations. MS may have taken away some money from you and maybe some other people, but the RIAA and the MPAA are trying to take away freedom of speech and freedom of the press! Who is the more serious threat?
We don't need to get bogged down in yet more regulation, that wouldn't even help. We need to change the system so that it's simply not possible to bully "the little guy" around so much or for big business to influence politicians so easily. Campaign finance reform, a good solid ruling or two from the supreme court upholding the basics of the bill of rights online, some sort of reform of our civil lawsuit system to make it more fair and reasonable, these things will make the difference between our freedom or our domination.
Although, knowing microsoft they'd make it 137 bits (gotta have that parity bit).
Seriously though, if we run out of network addresses with 128 bits, someone ought to be shot. With more than 100,000 septillion addresses for every human on Earth, we better not run out.
Almost all of the core of Intellectual Property law concerns profit (and not some concept of "infringement" of rights), if there is no financial damage to the copyright owner and no financial gain to the "copyright violater", then it becomes something very much different (and something much harder to stop through legal action). Additionally, in this case, if there is no loss of profit for the artists or record labels, then the claim that Napster represents "fair use" is strengthened a bit.
The only problem that needs to be dealt with is ensuring nobody hogs the pipes. This is a technological problem that can be solved, and which will be solved quite rapidly if fiber to the home goes mainstream.
The O'Reilly book is only a small handbook, and it's for PHP3 anywho. O'Reilly (unfortunately) doesn't have any "real" books on PHP.
There are tons of places like that, you just have to look, the problem though is that you pretty much have to bend over for the RSA/Verisign anal raping service if you want the corresponding CA-root certificate to be installed in everyone's browser client.
Thawte is pretty much the cheapest (it's been bought by Verisign but they're certificates don't cost 300 clams yet).
If you go with a 3rd party "unknown" for your certificate, the first time people connect securily to your site they will be prompted (depending on your server software and their client) to download and install the corresponding browser root certificate for that company (well, probably anyway, if they've connected securely to another site that uses certs from the same company they won't have to install it again, but this is unlikely). It's a fairly painless process actually, I suppose you have to weight the pros and cons for yourself.
Now, if only it still wouldn't be a toy browser. :P
Damn Mozilla dev. team.
Nevertheless, I think Carnivore is probably a pretty simple system. Now, Echelon on the other hand.....
It's not like the hard drive, DB systems, or processors of today aren't up to the task for something of this magnitude. Hell, I'm sure there are larger more complex databases out there already.
Anyway, that's how I would do it if I were a jack booted government computer punk who used constitution imprinted toilet paper.
What about comparing golden delicious apples with granny smith apples? Though not as dramatic as the difference between apples and oranges, they are different and neither is inherently better than the other. However, most people still have a preference (personally, I like golden delicious).