Until one (or more likely, all) of your neighbors clicks on the magical "Windows Update Notification" icon that appeared in each of their system trays, and starts downloading 64 Megabytes worth of IE updates, and freshly secured DLL files (that they probably don't even use).
You'll rue the day you hooked the AP up to your modem...
Community Networks, particularly geographically based (Such as The Well, POPnet, and numerous others), have all but dried up... Our Geographic ties to our neighbors forms perhaps the most tenuous of personal relationships... It can't be compared to the ties between people with similair belief systems, or similar interests (Hobbies, Entertainment, Sexual Proclivities, etc).
Once a community network "touches" the Internet, it is, de facto, part of the Internet. In essence, the Internet will always offer more than a community network, because it is comprised of those community networks, and so much more.
No community network will ever be able to rival the content of the Global Internet, which is fast approaching (but may never quite get there) the sum total of all human knowledge. Sure, there's a lot of crap out there, but you only need the means and know-how to sift through it to find just about anything imaginable.
The Internet is what it is... A massive, ever expanding community that encompasses to some degree or another, all heterogenous smaller networks. It transcends the "Geographic community" model, and allows for the stronger "Interest based communities" (Such as Slashdot) to form irrespective of Geography. Therin lies it's power.
How could an Apartment complex, or Neighborhood, ever rival that?
I certainly see some special purpose ad-hoc networks offering certain advantages, such as in a college dorm, for a gaming LAN, but even then, the community would only be as good as it's members. Even then, it's not like you'd disconnect from the Internet, or if you did, not permanently.
You're right about a 21-bits part, but you're butchering the rest of it.
For starters, classful routing on the Internet has gone the way of the Dinosaurs, and good riddance. CIDR saw to that (Classless Inter-Domain Routing), and when BGPv4 became the standard, all was right in the world (Because it implemented CIDR, by carrying Netmask along with the route entries).
In casual conversation today, we still use terms like Class B, or Class C address space, but they don't refer to the actual Classful network boundaries of yore. Today, when someone refers to a Class C address space, they simply mean a 24-bit address space. Likewise, a Class B means a 16-bit (/16) address space.
You say your netmask is 255.255.248.0. This represents a larger address space than a Class C, which has a mask of 255.255.255.0 (or/24).
Your address space is the aggregate of 8 Class C networks. Your network is configured to utilize the first and second octets, and the first 5 bits of the third octet as the network address, leaving the remaining 3 bits of the third octet, and the entire fourth octet as the host address.
That represents a network segment consisting of up to 2048 hosts (Ok... 2046 since you toss the first and last as the network address and the broadcast address.).
In short, your network engineering staff ought to be shot, because damn, that's a really big subnet. There's just no good reason to have that many hosts on a segment.
It's possible that you guys don't have anywhere near that many hosts, but if you do, without even looking, I can tell you that your network is a bit of a show. I hope you have your highly-loaded servers on their own segment, because the number of broadcasts must be tremendous. Even in a switched environment, those broadcasts must be propegated everywhere, and every machine in the network has to stop briefly to examine each and every one.
Your organization should look at some Layer-3 segmentation...
I mean, if you're talking about an employed person looking for a new job, that's one thing. You can afford to stand your ground, and if they insist, you can walk.
An unemployed person doesn't necessarily have that luxury. He/She may just need to job, and that might entail having to sacrifice a little privacy.
If you're about to lose your house or car, your best bet is to suck it up, and submit to the credit check. You'll feel dirty for a while, and you may never feel all that great about your new employer, but you'll feel a hell of a lot better than you would if you were living in a van, down by the river.
(Tip o' the hat to Chris Farley's "Matt Foley, Motiviational Speaker")
As I mentioned above, I already have a cable modem, though not all cable services are equal.
For instance, my service is 768k/128k, for about $40/month.
Then there's the fact that they filter inbound port 80 traffic, which blows goats.
Also, if you'd bothered to read any of the other posts in the thread, you'd have discovered that Internet delivered over the fiber need not consist of DSL service... It could be raw ethernet, in either 10 or 100 mbps flavor.
Besides, this thread is laden with the benefits of COMPETITION. Right now, I have none. Cable is the only high-speed Internet access available to me. If the cable company decides that I'm going to start paying $100/month, where then shall I turn?
I'm in Verizon-land, and live in a recently built neighborhood (approximately 5-7 years old). I have fiber to the pedestal in my front yard, but to date, Verizon doesn't have a single service to sell me that makes use of that fiber.
It's baffling...
It's particularly frustrating as my home is some 35,000 feet from the CO, so I'm ineligible for any DSL services.
Verizon would have an "in" if they could have offered me:
High-speed Internet
Television Service
Hi-Def Television Service
They could easily offer me Voice/Video/Data over that line, and I'd most likely bite.
As it is, I think they've missed their window. My local cable company finally got Internet access into my neighborhood so I have them for my cable modem, and I've already made a signifigant investment in DirecTV hardware (with 2 DirecTivos, and 2 other non-Tivo receivers).
Their last hope is to get me Hi-Def content, but it looks like my cable company is going to beat them to that punch too (Cox has deployed Hi-Def cable in Fairfax, VA, and it should be appearing in Fredericksburg shortly).
Sure... A company is under no ogligation to hire you.
All they need do is state that the credit check is a condition of employment.
You're free to walk away.
That said, it's a pretty shitty practice, and if I had the option, I'd choose not to work there. (Of course, in this economy, you takes what you can get, and you likes it.)
Actually, Mozilla is a far cheaper defense against pop-up ads, as it costs $0.
That's an order of magnatude cheaper than whatever Opera is charging for their browser these days. ($39! For a web browser!?)
I must admit, mouse gestures look to be a pretty keen feature. I hope the Mozilla team is paying attention.
I have no basis for comparison on the other points (Resource consumption, or load time) as I don't use Opera, but Mozilla has become a pretty good browser, and I very rarely have to utilize IE (except for some totally retarded Web application we use here at work, built on.Net) anymore.
"Free beer is great, especially if the other guy is paying."
Yogi Berra couldn't have said it any better, even if he were doing an Aflac commercial. ("If you can't work, it pays you cash, which is just as good as Money.")
Your sentiment is echoed over and over throughout this discussion. A couple of points to keep in mind:
Facts are but temporary placeholders that reflect the current state of man's understanding of his environment.
When Science Fiction presents the reader with a sufficiently advanced technology that it is indistinguishable from magic, the author owes you no such explanation.
What makes Science Fiction such a compelling genre for the discussion of ideas (particularly important social themes) is the fact that the environment of the story is unencumbered by the limitations of human understanding.
It provides a rich framework, with enough truth, and enough speculation, so as to remain interesting to the reader, and yet allow the author to explore complex issues which may or may not be just around the corner, and these issues are the point of the story. The science itself is window dressing.
Re:Why this is newsworthy...
on
Potato Bazookas
·
· Score: 2, Funny
It's a joke... Laugh.
Why this is newsworthy...
on
Potato Bazookas
·
· Score: 4, Funny
That some boys are playing with Spud guns is not what makes this a newsworthy story.
Nay, it is the fact that they are German boys that makes this a newsworthy story.
In the late 80s, Ronald Reagan issued a challenge to then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. During his famous speech in Berlin, he said:
"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
Shortly therafter, the Berlin wall was no more, paving the way for German unification.
People with no sense of history thought this to be a good thing, but myself, I saw these occurrances for their true nature. A unified Germany can mean only one thing... It's only a matter of time before massive, well equipped, well trained German armies are marching all over Europe.
Others deny this conclusion, and some have actually made statements to the effect of:
Germany finally learned it's lesson during the last century...
Europe has changed. The EU is proof that Europeans have come to value cooperation more than conquest... Or:
Yeah, like Germany could just roll over France! As if!
Be wary, my Slashdotting friends. It's only a matter of time before the people of Germany grow restless, pretending to be friends with the rest of their European neighbors. Already, German youth have turned their attentions to the design and manufacure of inexpensive, abundant, starch weapons.
Because the lack of "MS Office for Solaris/AIX/SCO" has been the thing that's been holding them back. If they'd only developed "Office for *nix," they might have become a player someday.
Microsoft is smart not to be releasing Office for Linux. In many ways, it's the only application (Suite of applications) that makes them relevant in the business world. It's what keeps "asses in the seats" as far as keeping their Operating Systems in such wide deployment.
SmallCompany Inc. doesn't care what games have been developed for Linux. They need their people do be able to utilize Word, Excel, and Outlook. They can't afford translation errors in the spreadsheets... They can't afford for the wrong bullet type to appear in their Memos... They need to run Office, and if they need to run Office, then they need to be running Windows!
(Mac people... Don't get all bent out of shape... We know that Office has been ported to MacOS and OSX.)
Why should Microsoft release a product that would only serve to marginalize their hold on the Desktop OS? It indirectly adds another $200 to the cost of the Office Suite. That's free money to them, and they take it straight to the bank.
As for this:
Create linux/unix software or perish!!
That's a laugher. Anybody remember Corel? Loki? If history is any indicator, I think the case can be made that anyone choosing to produce Linux software (for the desktop) will perish.
[I'm no fan of Microsoft, but I cannot indulge your delusions of grandeur.]
I must admit, I'm a bit of a jwz fanboy. I enjoy a good rant, and he's got a certain gift for it.
Getting back on-topic, I don't know why everybody is so pissed about what he's written. As others have pointed out, it's not like he set out to write "A Comprehensive Review of Video on Linux." The linked "article" was written for his own amusement. Somebody else thought it would be a good idea to submit it to Slashdot. He's merely pointing out that the current state of affairs is pertty sad, and for those of you in the audience with the integrity to state the plain truth, he's correct.
There's not a single Linux video viewer (DVD/or otherwise) that approaches what you'd expect to find in so-called "Commercial software." (That's not to say that all commercial software is good either, but non-intuitive interfaces aside, they generally all work better than most of what's out there for Linux today.)
Other have also ridiculed the tendancy of the developers to make the applications look and feel like A/V equipment. Hard to argue with that. There's no reason a video player needs to look like a physical DVD player. A real DVD player looks the way it does because we operate it here, in the meatspace. It's design is simplistic and somewhat elegant because of the way we interact with it, in 3 dimensions. When this functionality sits on a 2 dimensional screen, it should look and feel like all of the other programs that we're used to using. That's a legitimate gripe.
Maybe this was meant as a joke, but on the off chance that it wasn't, allow me to reiterate the subject of my reply...
Huh?
Maybe I've been asleep at the wheel when it comes to all of the advantages of IPv6, but how on earth does it alleviate the need for a functioning DNS service?
Do you imagine that it will somehow be easier for people to remember IP addresses that are 128 bits in length than it is to remember them in their current 32 bit dotted decimal form?
I guess these will be what we have to look forward to in your DNS-free world of the future:
It's an odd viewpoint for me, but in at least one way, this competition is actually worse for consumers.
Title exclusivity sucks ass. I hate that each of these consoles has at least one extremely compelling title that is available only on that console.
It means having to have multiple consoles in order to play the games that you want to play... My house now has all three current generation consoles (Got my son a PS2 Christmas of last year, picked up an Xbox for myself last summer, and ended up getting a Gamecube this year at the after Christmas sales).
At least I'm covered when a new game comes out, but even then I'm faced with difficult decisions. When we want a game that's available for more than one platform, we have to decide which version to get, resigned to the knowledge that we're gonna be committed to playing said game at one of three locations (The Home Theater, the kids' playroom, or my son's bedroom).
It makes PC gaming look so much more attractive than consoles, knowing that I had software portability; that one title could be played on any of the PCs.
I also have to concede that First person shooters suck on consoles. I long for the Keyboard and Mouse combo whenever I play Halo. I'll never be half as good at it as I am at Quake.
I also have to take issue with your assertion about Better Prices. It may be valid for the hardware (PS2 and Xbox for $200, Gamecube for $150), but it's completely invalid for the game titles themselves. A new game costs $50 (at a retail store), regardless of the console you're buying it for. I have seen no indication that games for Platform X are any less expensive than they are for Platforms Y or Z.
I wish there was a single platform specification, with multiple hardware vendors building compatible systems, all capable of running the same software. Then you'd have real choices.
(Oh yeah, I guess there is... They call them PCs)
That's part of the Genius...
on
F'd Companies
·
· Score: 1
I mean, how can you market a viable product (the book) if you're going to get sued repeatedly. That would decimate the bottom line.
I guess that's what makes Kaplan qualified to author such a book.
My own company (I was an employee, not the owner), back in 2000, was featured on the website, and at the time, had generated the most comments ever. If any of you have a subscription, search the archives for a thread entitled "Amazing Grace." It'll be worth your time, providing a good deal of amusement, that is, until the racist trolls took the thread over.
Slashdot Mirror
No GNUs is good GNUs, with Gary... Gnu.
Oh, wait... That's not right. Here, try this one...
Ahhh... Much better.
You'll rue the day you hooked the AP up to your modem...
We're talking total rue-age.
The Internet is what it is... A massive, ever expanding community that encompasses to some degree or another, all heterogenous smaller networks. It transcends the "Geographic community" model, and allows for the stronger "Interest based communities" (Such as Slashdot) to form irrespective of Geography. Therin lies it's power.
How could an Apartment complex, or Neighborhood, ever rival that?
I certainly see some special purpose ad-hoc networks offering certain advantages, such as in a college dorm, for a gaming LAN, but even then, the community would only be as good as it's members. Even then, it's not like you'd disconnect from the Internet, or if you did, not permanently.
We're talking about a software code upgrade on existing routers...
ISPs are utilizing either Cisco or Juniper in their cores (If they're using something else *chuckle*, it's time to change ISPs).
You can get IPv6 support from each company.
Why do people assume that this is going to require a capital investment?
It's no wonder you didn't sign your post.
For starters, classful routing on the Internet has gone the way of the Dinosaurs, and good riddance. CIDR saw to that (Classless Inter-Domain Routing), and when BGPv4 became the standard, all was right in the world (Because it implemented CIDR, by carrying Netmask along with the route entries).
In casual conversation today, we still use terms like Class B, or Class C address space, but they don't refer to the actual Classful network boundaries of yore. Today, when someone refers to a Class C address space, they simply mean a 24-bit address space. Likewise, a Class B means a 16-bit (/16) address space.
You say your netmask is 255.255.248.0. This represents a larger address space than a Class C, which has a mask of 255.255.255.0 (or /24).
Your address space is the aggregate of 8 Class C networks. Your network is configured to utilize the first and second octets, and the first 5 bits of the third octet as the network address, leaving the remaining 3 bits of the third octet, and the entire fourth octet as the host address.
That represents a network segment consisting of up to 2048 hosts (Ok... 2046 since you toss the first and last as the network address and the broadcast address.).
In short, your network engineering staff ought to be shot, because damn, that's a really big subnet. There's just no good reason to have that many hosts on a segment.
It's possible that you guys don't have anywhere near that many hosts, but if you do, without even looking, I can tell you that your network is a bit of a show. I hope you have your highly-loaded servers on their own segment, because the number of broadcasts must be tremendous. Even in a switched environment, those broadcasts must be propegated everywhere, and every machine in the network has to stop briefly to examine each and every one.
Your organization should look at some Layer-3 segmentation...
I mean, if you're talking about an employed person looking for a new job, that's one thing. You can afford to stand your ground, and if they insist, you can walk.
An unemployed person doesn't necessarily have that luxury. He/She may just need to job, and that might entail having to sacrifice a little privacy.
If you're about to lose your house or car, your best bet is to suck it up, and submit to the credit check. You'll feel dirty for a while, and you may never feel all that great about your new employer, but you'll feel a hell of a lot better than you would if you were living in a van, down by the river.
(Tip o' the hat to Chris Farley's "Matt Foley, Motiviational Speaker")
As I mentioned above, I already have a cable modem, though not all cable services are equal.
For instance, my service is 768k/128k, for about $40/month.
Then there's the fact that they filter inbound port 80 traffic, which blows goats.
Also, if you'd bothered to read any of the other posts in the thread, you'd have discovered that Internet delivered over the fiber need not consist of DSL service... It could be raw ethernet, in either 10 or 100 mbps flavor.
Besides, this thread is laden with the benefits of COMPETITION. Right now, I have none. Cable is the only high-speed Internet access available to me. If the cable company decides that I'm going to start paying $100/month, where then shall I turn?
I'm in Verizon-land, and live in a recently built neighborhood (approximately 5-7 years old). I have fiber to the pedestal in my front yard, but to date, Verizon doesn't have a single service to sell me that makes use of that fiber.
It's baffling...
It's particularly frustrating as my home is some 35,000 feet from the CO, so I'm ineligible for any DSL services.
Verizon would have an "in" if they could have offered me:
They could easily offer me Voice/Video/Data over that line, and I'd most likely bite.
As it is, I think they've missed their window. My local cable company finally got Internet access into my neighborhood so I have them for my cable modem, and I've already made a signifigant investment in DirecTV hardware (with 2 DirecTivos, and 2 other non-Tivo receivers).
Their last hope is to get me Hi-Def content, but it looks like my cable company is going to beat them to that punch too (Cox has deployed Hi-Def cable in Fairfax, VA, and it should be appearing in Fredericksburg shortly).
All they need do is state that the credit check is a condition of employment.
You're free to walk away.
That said, it's a pretty shitty practice, and if I had the option, I'd choose not to work there. (Of course, in this economy, you takes what you can get, and you likes it.)
It's not like the editors read the stories, or look at what the other editors have accepted for publication.
That's an order of magnatude cheaper than whatever Opera is charging for their browser these days. ($39! For a web browser!?)
I must admit, mouse gestures look to be a pretty keen feature. I hope the Mozilla team is paying attention.
I have no basis for comparison on the other points (Resource consumption, or load time) as I don't use Opera, but Mozilla has become a pretty good browser, and I very rarely have to utilize IE (except for some totally retarded Web application we use here at work, built on .Net) anymore.
They keep using Alberto Tomba as the source material!
How come Sony and Nintendo didn't put a 10/100 ethernet controller onboard?
How come Sony and Nintendo don't support real Hi-Def? (They each do 480p, but the Xbox does 480p, 720p, and 1080i.)
How come Sony and Nintendo don't have a built-in hard drive?
Bigots aside, there's a lot to like about the Xbox.
Yogi Berra couldn't have said it any better, even if he were doing an Aflac commercial. ("If you can't work, it pays you cash, which is just as good as Money.")
What makes Science Fiction such a compelling genre for the discussion of ideas (particularly important social themes) is the fact that the environment of the story is unencumbered by the limitations of human understanding.
It provides a rich framework, with enough truth, and enough speculation, so as to remain interesting to the reader, and yet allow the author to explore complex issues which may or may not be just around the corner, and these issues are the point of the story. The science itself is window dressing.
It's a joke... Laugh.
Nay, it is the fact that they are German boys that makes this a newsworthy story.
In the late 80s, Ronald Reagan issued a challenge to then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. During his famous speech in Berlin, he said:
Shortly therafter, the Berlin wall was no more, paving the way for German unification.
People with no sense of history thought this to be a good thing, but myself, I saw these occurrances for their true nature. A unified Germany can mean only one thing... It's only a matter of time before massive, well equipped, well trained German armies are marching all over Europe.
Others deny this conclusion, and some have actually made statements to the effect of:
Be wary, my Slashdotting friends. It's only a matter of time before the people of Germany grow restless, pretending to be friends with the rest of their European neighbors. Already, German youth have turned their attentions to the design and manufacure of inexpensive, abundant, starch weapons.
Heed my warning... It's only a matter of time...
Because the lack of "MS Office for Solaris/AIX/SCO" has been the thing that's been holding them back. If they'd only developed "Office for *nix," they might have become a player someday.
Microsoft is smart not to be releasing Office for Linux. In many ways, it's the only application (Suite of applications) that makes them relevant in the business world. It's what keeps "asses in the seats" as far as keeping their Operating Systems in such wide deployment.
SmallCompany Inc. doesn't care what games have been developed for Linux. They need their people do be able to utilize Word, Excel, and Outlook. They can't afford translation errors in the spreadsheets... They can't afford for the wrong bullet type to appear in their Memos... They need to run Office, and if they need to run Office, then they need to be running Windows!
(Mac people... Don't get all bent out of shape... We know that Office has been ported to MacOS and OSX.)
Why should Microsoft release a product that would only serve to marginalize their hold on the Desktop OS? It indirectly adds another $200 to the cost of the Office Suite. That's free money to them, and they take it straight to the bank.
As for this:
That's a laugher. Anybody remember Corel? Loki? If history is any indicator, I think the case can be made that anyone choosing to produce Linux software (for the desktop) will perish.
[I'm no fan of Microsoft, but I cannot indulge your delusions of grandeur.]
I must admit, I'm a bit of a jwz fanboy. I enjoy a good rant, and he's got a certain gift for it.
Getting back on-topic, I don't know why everybody is so pissed about what he's written. As others have pointed out, it's not like he set out to write "A Comprehensive Review of Video on Linux." The linked "article" was written for his own amusement. Somebody else thought it would be a good idea to submit it to Slashdot. He's merely pointing out that the current state of affairs is pertty sad, and for those of you in the audience with the integrity to state the plain truth, he's correct.
There's not a single Linux video viewer (DVD/or otherwise) that approaches what you'd expect to find in so-called "Commercial software." (That's not to say that all commercial software is good either, but non-intuitive interfaces aside, they generally all work better than most of what's out there for Linux today.)
Other have also ridiculed the tendancy of the developers to make the applications look and feel like A/V equipment. Hard to argue with that. There's no reason a video player needs to look like a physical DVD player. A real DVD player looks the way it does because we operate it here, in the meatspace. It's design is simplistic and somewhat elegant because of the way we interact with it, in 3 dimensions. When this functionality sits on a 2 dimensional screen, it should look and feel like all of the other programs that we're used to using. That's a legitimate gripe.
Huh?
Maybe I've been asleep at the wheel when it comes to all of the advantages of IPv6, but how on earth does it alleviate the need for a functioning DNS service?
Do you imagine that it will somehow be easier for people to remember IP addresses that are 128 bits in length than it is to remember them in their current 32 bit dotted decimal form?
I guess these will be what we have to look forward to in your DNS-free world of the future:
Riiiight.
I never said anyone was forcing me to do anything. I concede that I'm only catering to my desires.
Still, it's a pretty sad state of affairs.
Dragons's Lair in 1080i @ 65" is quite an experience...
At any rate, it still doesn't solve the problems I describe... It mostly makes the best of a bad situation.
Title exclusivity sucks ass. I hate that each of these consoles has at least one extremely compelling title that is available only on that console.
It means having to have multiple consoles in order to play the games that you want to play... My house now has all three current generation consoles (Got my son a PS2 Christmas of last year, picked up an Xbox for myself last summer, and ended up getting a Gamecube this year at the after Christmas sales).
At least I'm covered when a new game comes out, but even then I'm faced with difficult decisions. When we want a game that's available for more than one platform, we have to decide which version to get, resigned to the knowledge that we're gonna be committed to playing said game at one of three locations (The Home Theater, the kids' playroom, or my son's bedroom).
It makes PC gaming look so much more attractive than consoles, knowing that I had software portability; that one title could be played on any of the PCs.
I also have to concede that First person shooters suck on consoles. I long for the Keyboard and Mouse combo whenever I play Halo. I'll never be half as good at it as I am at Quake.
I also have to take issue with your assertion about Better Prices. It may be valid for the hardware (PS2 and Xbox for $200, Gamecube for $150), but it's completely invalid for the game titles themselves. A new game costs $50 (at a retail store), regardless of the console you're buying it for. I have seen no indication that games for Platform X are any less expensive than they are for Platforms Y or Z.
I wish there was a single platform specification, with multiple hardware vendors building compatible systems, all capable of running the same software. Then you'd have real choices.
(Oh yeah, I guess there is... They call them PCs)
I guess that's what makes Kaplan qualified to author such a book.
My own company (I was an employee, not the owner), back in 2000, was featured on the website, and at the time, had generated the most comments ever. If any of you have a subscription, search the archives for a thread entitled "Amazing Grace." It'll be worth your time, providing a good deal of amusement, that is, until the racist trolls took the thread over.