I've been a Cablevision customer for about 8 years. During that period of time it has been quite rare that I've gotten less than 100% of advertised speed. Perhaps no more than 5% of the time.
I doubt I'll sign up for this service - I already get 30 MB down / 5 MB up which seems to me to be as fast as I need. There are very few servers that can fill that bandwidth. Additional capacity won't make things any faster for me.
I've used a script to block servers that failed a certain number of attempts along with AllowUsers. That worked well for a couple of years, but was annoying in that you could see the attempts being made and knowing that if you made a config error you could be vulnerable. It seems to me that even after I got several hundred systems in my block list it wasn't making a difference since the pool of zombies was so large.
Now I just use key only access and AuthUsers and feel a lot more secure. I'm thinking I may add a white list of IP addresses as well. That would really lock things down pretty well.
You have to understand that much of the rest of the world is not quite as oversensitive to race as you are and that we do not count our accomplishments by how non-discriminatory we are, for us equality is simply a given, not something to be proven.
I don't accept this comment realistic at all. The European press was totally agog at the election of Obama, and there were many publications of articles describing how the election of somebody like him was impossible in Europe because of it's entrenched political system which is far less open than the American system. Following is an example article:
LONDON -- Not so long ago, David Lammy seemed destined to become Britain's first black prime minister.
He has much in common with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, and counts him as a friend. Both are sons of immigrants, raised by single mothers, and both are interested in social justice issues. Both attended Harvard Law; they first met at an alumni gathering in 2005.
Able and articulate, Lammy "shot through the bottom ranks of government, hit the middle ranks of government and stayed there ever since," said Lester Holloway, the editor of New Nation, the leading black newspaper in Britain. Now in his mid-30s, Lammy is currently Skills Minister, a relatively minor cabinet position.
Obama's current tour -- he landed in Berlin Thursday and was travelling to Paris and London -- has provoked an intense debate among members of Western Europe's racial and ethnic minorities: What are the chances of a minority politician rising to the top in their countries any time soon?
At the moment, the prospects look daunting.
In Britain's House of Commons, only 15 of 646 members are non-white, although minorities make up about 8 percent of the country's population.
In France, there's only one minority deputy among the 555 members of the National Assembly who represent mainland France, although perhaps one in five citizens is of minority descent. Two members of the 305-seat Senate hail from North Africa, although no senators are black, and President Nicolas Sarkozy has appointed three minority women to his Cabinet.
Neither Britain nor France has significant affirmative action programs, nor is there a sizeable black middle class, as in the United States. The French, for whom national identity is paramount, don't count race in their census.
European political systems also function differently than the American-style primaries. In Europe, tight circles of party insiders, who often attend the same elite schools, choose the national candidates. Critics say that makes it harder for outsiders, and minorities, to break in.
As a black boy living in West Africa, Patrick Lozes heard stories of his father's days as a member of the French Senate and saw his own future in politics.
But after serving in one of France's national parties and running unsuccessfully for the National Assembly, Lozes, 43, got a reality check.
"We pretend to be a color-blind society," he said, but in terms of minorities exerting political power, "the situation has worsened" since his father's day. He now runs CRAN, a nonprofit group in Paris dedicated to social and political issues for blacks.
In France, the three women minority members of Sarkozy's cabinet -- Rachida Dati, Fadela Amara and Rama Yade -- are worth watching. But they're junior ministers, not full ministers.
"I think because of Obama a lot of people feel it's more possible now here because they didn't expect it in America," said Zachary Miller, a black man who hails from Ohio, lives in Paris and is vice chairman of Democrats Abroad in France and an Obama supporter. At the same time, Miller said, "the conclusion is certain things would have to change. No one's really very optimistic that will happen anytime soon."
In England, Holloway said, debate is under way about whether to have black short lists for specific seats in Parliament, as has been done to help women rise in British politics.
To be fair a lot of the price increase you see in your cable TV bill is due to content providers pushing their prices up as much as possible. There needs to be more choice in what gets bundled in your service plan. I get what maybe 250 channels of which I watch less than 10% of.
The service tax that you are talking about was supposed to be used to provide rural internet access, so it is not really expected that it would be applicable to most users.
Internet TV is a real bugaboo for ISPs because the internet backbone is built on a statistical packet switching best effort delivery model. Streaming TV over this is not an application that the internet handles well; it requires a quality of service that is not baked into your ISP's infrastructure design.
On the other hand this whole monopoly thing is a big mistake. There really need to be alternatives. And by alternatives I don't mean Fios + Cable; where I live I have a choice between the two, and it isn't really much of a choice, rather it is Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee. Oligopolies aren't much better than Monopolies.
Yes feel free to spout off any nonsense you feel like.
The US has a long history of third parties springing up, or independents running for election. A recent example example is Ross Perot who won 19% of the vote in the 1992 presidential election. In 2000 it was the votes won by the Green Party (Ralph Nader) that were the difference between Bush or Gore winning.
The fact is that it isn't just two people on the ballot. The number is more usually 10 or so in a presidential election. You are free to vote for any one of them.
And that isn't counting the primary system where Americans vote for and choose who will run for the party in the upcoming elections. How do you think that Obama became president? By winning voters during the primary run. Often dozens of candidates are available to choose from across the various parties.
And at the local level it is even more pronounced. I've had neighbors get fed up with the current local officials, say on the school board and just up and run on their own. And get elected.
Also let's be clear about what democracy really is. I grew up in a town that is run as an Athenian style democracy where voters in the town voted on EVERY issue.
Also let us know when in Europe a person of mixed race like Obama is elected President of a MAJOR state like France or Germany. That is when you;ll know you have a strong, open democratic process.
Nice try, but 2007 is hardly the year to watch if you want to know how much mercury there *will* be in CFLs *if* we all decide to use them.
Hooey. CFL mercury levels are constantly decreasing; right now the standard is 5 or 6 mg per bulb. Some manufacturers are now claiming that in a year or two they will be selling bulbs with 1 mg. On average the mercury content of CFLs is dropping at a rate of 20% per year.
It is absolutely completely mind numbingly stupid. The mercury level in ONE amalgam filling (that you put directly in your mouth for crying out loud) is 100 times larger than the amount in a CFL bulb.
Mercury is released into the environment every year from volcanos, weathering rocks, the various industrial processes that use mercury, button cell batteries, old style home thermostats, mercury thermometers, burning of fossil fuels, dental fillings and many other sources to the tune of about 5000 tons per year worldwide. In the US about 150 tons per year is released due to man's activities.
The total amount of mercury present in all the CFLs sold in the US in 2007 was 0.13 tons. In comparison the amount of mercury released in the form of amalgam dental fillings was 35 tons per year.
The concern about the mercury in CFLs is totally irrational.
This ownership is dependent on the country involved being a signatory of the Outer Space Treaty (OST) of 1967. N. Korea recently signed this and is trying to use this treaty as justification for being able to carry out these tests.
Since the UN has passed a resolution banning ballistic launches from N Korea it is questionable as to whether signatories of the OST have to honor the provisions of this treaty. And of course the signatories can dispute the question of whether or not the N Korean launch is an effort to do legitimate space exploration under the provisions of the OST or to develop missiles they can sell to Syria, Iran etc. for use as weapons.
Given that it is known that N Korea is already selling missiles to Iran and Syria, and that there were observers from these countries at this launch it seems to me that there are not reasons to believe that anyone will pay attention to the OST in this case.
I seriously doubt that China could "easily" mobilize more than a third of the population of their country. That would be the equivalent of the US mobilizing an army of about 120 million people. The largest army in history was the Red Army during WW II at about 35 million, and that was under extreme pressure from an invasion by Nazi Germany, and still represented only about 17% of the population.
You do realize I hope that carcinogenic and toxic chemicals are present in great quantities in the natural environment too? For example the human bloodstream naturally contains small amounts of formaldehyde. It is hard to imagine how it would be possible to eliminate exposure to these materials when they are present in every plant or animal through their natural metabolisms.
Sperm count studies that claim reductions in sperm count over time are very questionable. There have been a number of publications in the literature that claim sloppy investigative practices are the reason for this perception. And it definitely has not been world-wide. The data vary greatly by region.
As far as immune system affects of nuclear testing - there is no evidence of such effects even in areas directly downwind of radiation hotspots like Hanford. The only studies showing such affects are in populations exposed to far greater doses, i.e. Nagasaki survivors or children exposed in the Chernobyl accident.
Does anyone find it amusing that after all the ridicule the French heaped on Americans for electing Bush that they went and elected somebody even worse?
Using fractals as a way of viewing a problem can be useful, but it doesn't fundamentally offer any new ways to solve a problem over conventional methods.
The original series was fantastically uneven. At the high end it was unmatched by anything that followed with episodes like Amok Time, City on the Edge of Forever, Devil in the Dark etc. At the low end, well it made me want to hurl chunks.
A common thread between many of these great episodes was great writing be authors like Harlan Ellison and Theodore Sturgeon. Bring in some good writers from Sci Fi and you will have great episodes again.
TNG was more even but never reached the heights of the great ToS episodes. Brent Spiner though was terrific.
Enterprise was mostly crap, but the 4th season where they reverted back to the old ToS/TNG formula it was pretty good. Of course by then everyone had given up on the series so it was too late.
While I agree that the scope of copyrights and patents far exceeds that needed for the purpose described in the Constitution, and surely needs to be reduced, I don't think the authors have made a case for elimination of these types of IP. Their blog also makes some disparaging remarks regarding trademarks which are not backed up by any arguments whatsoever.
The arguments presented in their book are also often factually inaccurate. For example they make the comment that the pure sciences do not depend on patents to function (true) and that neither Newton, Einstein, or Darwin received government support. This is of course an important point, because if sciences are socialized there is no need of patents.
Unfortunately of course it is completely inaccurate. Both Darwin and Newton worked at Cambridge, which is a publicly funded university. The Beagle was a survey ship in the British Navy without which Darwin would have not been able to gather evidence for the Origin. Einstein was an employee of the German Patent Office, and his first academic position was at the University of Berne, also publicly funded. He also held other positions at publically funded universities like ETH.
Until they clean up their scholarship it is going to be hard to take their position seriously.
I'm scratching my head what your post really had to do with my post.
I am pointing out the Bush ban on government funding of stem cell research is part of a larger and very corrupt pattern of behavior by his administration. This replacement of scientific inquiry by government policy is no different from the disaster of Lysenkoism under the Soviet government. Political policy has no business in science. PERIOD.
But to address your post, progress does not depend solely on science. It also requires imagination and movitation.
Without science imagination and motivation will get you nowhere. Part of good science is imagination and motivation. Politics has NO place in this.
Bush provided the motivation for making progress that went around the ban. That doesn't mean the ban was good. It just had a good (and intended) effect.
You have absolutely no real evidence that progress would have not only included the discoveries you mentioned PLUS additional progress that was not made because of the ban.
The Bush administration's science policy, including the ban of government funding on stem cell research is an unmitigated disaster for this nation. Among other things it has caused many top scientists to leave the US and move to other countries where they could get funding for their work.
We will be VERY lucky if the US does not pay dearly for this stupidity for decades to come.
My first and greatest complaint against the Bush administration is that it made scientific views a matter of state policy and politics rather than an evidence based process. Of necessity this includes decisions made as to what the course of scientific investigations should be.
THIS IS UNTENABLE POLICY. This is the 21st century where in fact the future progress of the human race depends solely on accurate science. To have politics rather than evidence guide this is flat out 100% unacceptable.
The intrusion of policies of this nature controlling the dispersal of government funds for research and development is a breaking of the requirement that decisions of government be made in a way that aides, not hinders the governed. It is no different in principle than any other corruption of the process of government; it is a matter of religious lobbyists and campaign contributors influencing policy in a manner that is detrimental to the nation and world.
People howl about the oil lobby extracting favorable treatment.
Slashdot Mirror
+1 writer makes sense
I've been a Cablevision customer for about 8 years. During that period of time it has been quite rare that I've gotten less than 100% of advertised speed. Perhaps no more than 5% of the time.
I doubt I'll sign up for this service - I already get 30 MB down / 5 MB up which seems to me to be as fast as I need. There are very few servers that can fill that bandwidth. Additional capacity won't make things any faster for me.
I have Cablevision's Boost service which allows you to unblock ports 80 inbound and 25 outbound.
25 is pretty useless anyway because many ISPs block mail from dynamic IPs. Port 80 is cool though - I was able to dump my hosting service....
101 MB down.. I might sign up just for the bragging rights.
Only if you need bigger pipes.
I've used a script to block servers that failed a certain number of attempts along with AllowUsers. That worked well for a couple of years, but was annoying in that you could see the attempts being made and knowing that if you made a config error you could be vulnerable. It seems to me that even after I got several hundred systems in my block list it wasn't making a difference since the pool of zombies was so large.
Now I just use key only access and AuthUsers and feel a lot more secure. I'm thinking I may add a white list of IP addresses as well. That would really lock things down pretty well.
You have to understand that much of the rest of the world is not quite as oversensitive to race as you are and that we do not count our accomplishments by how non-discriminatory we are, for us equality is simply a given, not something to be proven.
I don't accept this comment realistic at all. The European press was totally agog at the election of Obama, and there were many publications of articles describing how the election of somebody like him was impossible in Europe because of it's entrenched political system which is far less open than the American system. Following is an example article:
LONDON -- Not so long ago, David Lammy seemed destined to become Britain's first black prime minister.
He has much in common with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, and counts him as a friend. Both are sons of immigrants, raised by single mothers, and both are interested in social justice issues. Both attended Harvard Law; they first met at an alumni gathering in 2005.
Able and articulate, Lammy "shot through the bottom ranks of government, hit the middle ranks of government and stayed there ever since," said Lester Holloway, the editor of New Nation, the leading black newspaper in Britain. Now in his mid-30s, Lammy is currently Skills Minister, a relatively minor cabinet position.
Obama's current tour -- he landed in Berlin Thursday and was travelling to Paris and London -- has provoked an intense debate among members of Western Europe's racial and ethnic minorities: What are the chances of a minority politician rising to the top in their countries any time soon?
At the moment, the prospects look daunting.
In Britain's House of Commons, only 15 of 646 members are non-white, although minorities make up about 8 percent of the country's population.
In France, there's only one minority deputy among the 555 members of the National Assembly who represent mainland France, although perhaps one in five citizens is of minority descent. Two members of the 305-seat Senate hail from North Africa, although no senators are black, and President Nicolas Sarkozy has appointed three minority women to his Cabinet.
Neither Britain nor France has significant affirmative action programs, nor is there a sizeable black middle class, as in the United States. The French, for whom national identity is paramount, don't count race in their census.
European political systems also function differently than the American-style primaries. In Europe, tight circles of party insiders, who often attend the same elite schools, choose the national candidates. Critics say that makes it harder for outsiders, and minorities, to break in.
As a black boy living in West Africa, Patrick Lozes heard stories of his father's days as a member of the French Senate and saw his own future in politics.
But after serving in one of France's national parties and running unsuccessfully for the National Assembly, Lozes, 43, got a reality check.
"We pretend to be a color-blind society," he said, but in terms of minorities exerting political power, "the situation has worsened" since his father's day. He now runs CRAN, a nonprofit group in Paris dedicated to social and political issues for blacks.
In France, the three women minority members of Sarkozy's cabinet -- Rachida Dati, Fadela Amara and Rama Yade -- are worth watching. But they're junior ministers, not full ministers.
"I think because of Obama a lot of people feel it's more possible now here because they didn't expect it in America," said Zachary Miller, a black man who hails from Ohio, lives in Paris and is vice chairman of Democrats Abroad in France and an Obama supporter. At the same time, Miller said, "the conclusion is certain things would have to change. No one's really very optimistic that will happen anytime soon."
In England, Holloway said, debate is under way about whether to have black short lists for specific seats in Parliament, as has been done to help women rise in British politics.
"My pe
To be fair a lot of the price increase you see in your cable TV bill is due to content providers pushing their prices up as much as possible. There needs to be more choice in what gets bundled in your service plan. I get what maybe 250 channels of which I watch less than 10% of.
The service tax that you are talking about was supposed to be used to provide rural internet access, so it is not really expected that it would be applicable to most users.
Internet TV is a real bugaboo for ISPs because the internet backbone is built on a statistical packet switching best effort delivery model. Streaming TV over this is not an application that the internet handles well; it requires a quality of service that is not baked into your ISP's infrastructure design.
On the other hand this whole monopoly thing is a big mistake. There really need to be alternatives. And by alternatives I don't mean Fios + Cable; where I live I have a choice between the two, and it isn't really much of a choice, rather it is Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee. Oligopolies aren't much better than Monopolies.
Yes feel free to spout off any nonsense you feel like.
The US has a long history of third parties springing up, or independents running for election. A recent example example is Ross Perot who won 19% of the vote in the 1992 presidential election. In 2000 it was the votes won by the Green Party (Ralph Nader) that were the difference between Bush or Gore winning.
The fact is that it isn't just two people on the ballot. The number is more usually 10 or so in a presidential election. You are free to vote for any one of them.
And that isn't counting the primary system where Americans vote for and choose who will run for the party in the upcoming elections. How do you think that Obama became president? By winning voters during the primary run. Often dozens of candidates are available to choose from across the various parties.
And at the local level it is even more pronounced. I've had neighbors get fed up with the current local officials, say on the school board and just up and run on their own. And get elected.
Also let's be clear about what democracy really is. I grew up in a town that is run as an Athenian style democracy where voters in the town voted on EVERY issue.
Also let us know when in Europe a person of mixed race like Obama is elected President of a MAJOR state like France or Germany. That is when you;ll know you have a strong, open democratic process.
Nice try, but 2007 is hardly the year to watch if you want to know how much mercury there *will* be in CFLs *if* we all decide to use them.
Hooey. CFL mercury levels are constantly decreasing; right now the standard is 5 or 6 mg per bulb. Some manufacturers are now claiming that in a year or two they will be selling bulbs with 1 mg. On average the mercury content of CFLs is dropping at a rate of 20% per year.
It is absolutely completely mind numbingly stupid. The mercury level in ONE amalgam filling (that you put directly in your mouth for crying out loud) is 100 times larger than the amount in a CFL bulb.
The average amalgam dental filling has 100 times more mercury in it than the average CFL. This worrying about mercury in CFL's is absurd.
Mercury is released into the environment every year from volcanos, weathering rocks, the various industrial processes that use mercury, button cell batteries, old style home thermostats, mercury thermometers, burning of fossil fuels, dental fillings and many other sources to the tune of about 5000 tons per year worldwide. In the US about 150 tons per year is released due to man's activities.
The total amount of mercury present in all the CFLs sold in the US in 2007 was 0.13 tons. In comparison the amount of mercury released in the form of amalgam dental fillings was 35 tons per year.
The concern about the mercury in CFLs is totally irrational.
Presumably Alamo Drafthouse makes use of various services provided by the government. With a tax subsidy they are no longer having to pay for them.
This ownership is dependent on the country involved being a signatory of the Outer Space Treaty (OST) of 1967. N. Korea recently signed this and is trying to use this treaty as justification for being able to carry out these tests.
Since the UN has passed a resolution banning ballistic launches from N Korea it is questionable as to whether signatories of the OST have to honor the provisions of this treaty. And of course the signatories can dispute the question of whether or not the N Korean launch is an effort to do legitimate space exploration under the provisions of the OST or to develop missiles they can sell to Syria, Iran etc. for use as weapons.
Given that it is known that N Korea is already selling missiles to Iran and Syria, and that there were observers from these countries at this launch it seems to me that there are not reasons to believe that anyone will pay attention to the OST in this case.
I seriously doubt that China could "easily" mobilize more than a third of the population of their country. That would be the equivalent of the US mobilizing an army of about 120 million people. The largest army in history was the Red Army during WW II at about 35 million, and that was under extreme pressure from an invasion by Nazi Germany, and still represented only about 17% of the population.
You do realize I hope that carcinogenic and toxic chemicals are present in great quantities in the natural environment too? For example the human bloodstream naturally contains small amounts of formaldehyde. It is hard to imagine how it would be possible to eliminate exposure to these materials when they are present in every plant or animal through their natural metabolisms.
Sperm count studies that claim reductions in sperm count over time are very questionable. There have been a number of publications in the literature that claim sloppy investigative practices are the reason for this perception. And it definitely has not been world-wide. The data vary greatly by region.
As far as immune system affects of nuclear testing - there is no evidence of such effects even in areas directly downwind of radiation hotspots like Hanford. The only studies showing such affects are in populations exposed to far greater doses, i.e. Nagasaki survivors or children exposed in the Chernobyl accident.
Does anyone find it amusing that after all the ridicule the French heaped on Americans for electing Bush that they went and elected somebody even worse?
Using fractals as a way of viewing a problem can be useful, but it doesn't fundamentally offer any new ways to solve a problem over conventional methods.
Then there is the little thing "Science is the process of developing naturalistic explanations of natural phenomena".
ID and Creationism fail on this one in oh so many ways... A Diety Designing Life is neither a natural phenomena nor is it a naturalistic explanation.
Hypotheses involving such matters do not belong in a science curricum.
The original series was fantastically uneven. At the high end it was unmatched by anything that followed with episodes like Amok Time, City on the Edge of Forever, Devil in the Dark etc. At the low end, well it made me want to hurl chunks.
A common thread between many of these great episodes was great writing be authors like Harlan Ellison and Theodore Sturgeon. Bring in some good writers from Sci Fi and you will have great episodes again.
TNG was more even but never reached the heights of the great ToS episodes. Brent Spiner though was terrific.
Enterprise was mostly crap, but the 4th season where they reverted back to the old ToS/TNG formula it was pretty good. Of course by then everyone had given up on the series so it was too late.
While I agree that the scope of copyrights and patents far exceeds that needed for the purpose described in the Constitution, and surely needs to be reduced, I don't think the authors have made a case for elimination of these types of IP. Their blog also makes some disparaging remarks regarding trademarks which are not backed up by any arguments whatsoever.
The arguments presented in their book are also often factually inaccurate. For example they make the comment that the pure sciences do not depend on patents to function (true) and that neither Newton, Einstein, or Darwin received government support. This is of course an important point, because if sciences are socialized there is no need of patents.
Unfortunately of course it is completely inaccurate. Both Darwin and Newton worked at Cambridge, which is a publicly funded university. The Beagle was a survey ship in the British Navy without which Darwin would have not been able to gather evidence for the Origin. Einstein was an employee of the German Patent Office, and his first academic position was at the University of Berne, also publicly funded. He also held other positions at publically funded universities like ETH.
Until they clean up their scholarship it is going to be hard to take their position seriously.
I'm scratching my head what your post really had to do with my post.
I am pointing out the Bush ban on government funding of stem cell research is part of a larger and very corrupt pattern of behavior by his administration. This replacement of scientific inquiry by government policy is no different from the disaster of Lysenkoism under the Soviet government. Political policy has no business in science. PERIOD.
But to address your post, progress does not depend solely on science. It also requires imagination and movitation.
Without science imagination and motivation will get you nowhere. Part of good science is imagination and motivation. Politics has NO place in this.
Bush provided the motivation for making progress that went around the ban. That doesn't mean the ban was good. It just had a good (and intended) effect.
You have absolutely no real evidence that progress would have not only included the discoveries you mentioned PLUS additional progress that was not made because of the ban.
The Bush administration's science policy, including the ban of government funding on stem cell research is an unmitigated disaster for this nation. Among other things it has caused many top scientists to leave the US and move to other countries where they could get funding for their work.
We will be VERY lucky if the US does not pay dearly for this stupidity for decades to come.
Crikey RTFA.
It's about physical counterfeiting. It's why guys like DuPont Authentication Services
http://www2.dupont.com/Authentication/en_US/
offer various authentication technologies like 3D holograms for media protection.
My first and greatest complaint against the Bush administration is that it made scientific views a matter of state policy and politics rather than an evidence based process. Of necessity this includes decisions made as to what the course of scientific investigations should be.
THIS IS UNTENABLE POLICY. This is the 21st century where in fact the future progress of the human race depends solely on accurate science. To have politics rather than evidence guide this is flat out 100% unacceptable.
The intrusion of policies of this nature controlling the dispersal of government funds for research and development is a breaking of the requirement that decisions of government be made in a way that aides, not hinders the governed. It is no different in principle than any other corruption of the process of government; it is a matter of religious lobbyists and campaign contributors influencing policy in a manner that is detrimental to the nation and world.
People howl about the oil lobby extracting favorable treatment.
This is FAR worse.
Well yes, but that wasn't mentioned in the resolution. It was purely an attempt to regulate what science is discussed openly.
Now consider that the two leading Republicans in contention for the next presidential election support teaching of ID or Creationism.
Hell, it's almost like actually having a date!
You poor deluded thing.