For what reason might software not be considered goods? Again, IANAL, so I probably see things somewhat simply and might be missing your point entirely, but: If I buy software at the store, I'm obviously buying tangible goods. And if I buy downloadable software online, I'm also buying goods. Now... If I pick up a free yard stick from a salesman at the county fair, I'm not buying anything, but I do receive goods. Am I not also in new possession of new-to-me goods when I download GPL-licensed software for free? If I am, then wouldn't this transaction be covered by the UCC?
Do you think that the similar interpretation of licenses and contracts means that Monsoon Multimedia has lost its license to distribute BusyBox code under the terms of the GNU GPL, by previously violating those same terms?
IANAL, too, but I was forced spend some quality time with the Ohio statutes governing contracts (alternatively, I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night).
If I recall (it's been a couple of years), it was all within the realm of the Uniform Commercial Code, which would mean such statutes exist in most (if not all) states in largely-unmodified form.
In this reading, I learned that all valid contracts have to abide by certain rules (otherwise, they are invalid and null). Chief among these requirements is the concept of reasonable consideration.
A common example of consideration might be residential trash hauling, ie, Waste Management agrees to haul away your detritus on a weekly basis, and in consideration of that act, you agree to pay them when the bill shows up. If you stop paying, the contract ceases to be valid (becomes breached), and soon thereafter they stop hauling your trash.
This would give them the ability to attempt to recover any consideration ("revenue") that you owe, as due for services rendered between the time you received the bill and the time that it became past-due.
It is a very simple, obvious, and boring concept, but it's an important one.
With the GNU GPL, it would seem to apply as such: You give someone software which is licensed under the GPL. The consideration for this generous act is as such: If they'd like to re-distribute the software, they have to do so terms of the GPL. So, they'd required to make the source available, and to include the text of the GPL, and a few other reasonable things that we're all familiar with.
The trouble in this particular case with Monsoon is that there's not any monetary consideration involved in the contract. So what if they decide to close up the GPL'd software and sell it as their own? I mean, sure, the contract is nullified, and they're therefore guilty of copyright violation. But nobody has lost any money, and therefore none can be recovered.
I mean, how would anyone sue for lost revenue/consideration, when the dollar amount lost is zero? Again, IANAL, but it seems to me that the most one might expect a court to do short of issuing statutory damages is to compel the offending party to honor all past and present GPL requests (due consideration). Which they're apparently already doing voluntarily.
So what good is this particular lawsuit but only to set a proper court-tested precedent for the validity of the GNU GPL?
And additionally, if the contract (the GPL license) between the parties becomes null and void due to this admitted lack of consideration, what right does Monsoon Multimedia have to distribute this code ever again? As far as I can tell, in the absence of any subsequent agreement, they've got no right to do so. In fact, they continue to be in violation of copyright law, because the contract with which they are now attempting to comply no longer exists.
(I welcome clarifications, corrections, and arguments to the contrary.)
But I still don't see any such "whitelist." In fact, all of my software works just fine, including some old games that I couldn't even make work with XP (Dungeon Keeper 2 rocks on modern hardware at 1920x1200). So therefore, I call bullshit. Please cite a reference, or get off my lawn.
I'm still a supporter and user of FOSS. I've just got the one Vista machine because an overwhelming portion of my income relies on not only my familiarity with the different nuances of Windows, but my ability to run various-and-sundry Windows programs on a whim, in the field with a computer that I control.
Typically, my main desktop computer runs either Gentoo or Ubuntu. But after a flood destroyed the computer room in my house, I haven't had a chance to put that machine back together. So for the past month, I've been using this Vista laptop exclusively at work and at home.
I could've sworn he was complaining about Compaq shipping a machine with Vista which was incapable of running it, much as Packard Bell was famous for doing in the 90s.
In fact, the OP summed it up as such in his conclusion:
This machine should have come with XP. It is not Vista capable.
It's not a Vista thing. It's a "the salesman is a damned liar" thing. In this instance, the role of the salesman is played by the marketing department at Compaq, who is obviously at fault for shipping a computer with irresponsibly low RAM.
Not to sound like a Microsoft shill (having traditionally been an outspoken Linux and FreeBSD fanboy for over a decade), but:
DRM? Sheeit, nigga - give it up, already. I've been running Vista (by choice) on my laptop since a couple weeks after its released, and have yet to have negative experience from this "DRM" thing which I only seem to hear about in Slashdot straw man, begging-the-question-in-the-traditional-logical-fallacy-sense-of-the-term rants.
See, I'm just not particularly sure how it might be affecting the things I do with the computer. I still copy DVDs with anydvd+dvdshrink, my MP3s all play just fine, CDs rip as well as they ever did on this machine, and YouTube (along with its its ilk) all work fine. Azureus still downloads torrents, VLC, Winamp, and [horror] Windows Media Player still play video without any particular episode. Even Miro Player works fine when fed with all manner of illegitimate RSS feeds.
Yeah, sure. Vista supposedly supports some Trusted Computing Alliance boojigity that will permit (restrict?) me to play certain fancy DRM content (or, I suppose, software) with Vista that won't work elsewhere. But I've never found such media. And in the unlikely event that I'd actually be interested in such content I suspect that the effects of any newfangled DRM would affect users of other operating systems more so than me and my Vista Business install.
Meanwhile, I just don't feel at all inconvenienced by any special DRM function in Vista.
Aren't you schizophrenic motherfuckers bored with the DRM FUD, yet?
I believe that the SCSI module in linux handles firewire and USB, so from that standpoint it looks like it's a start towards universal communications, except for Ethernet. (Even though old SCSI is nothing like serial: it's the the ultimate expression of parallel communications, with some similarities to the old HP/GPIB parallel communication standard that's still used in for test communication but used to be a hard drive standard.) I have no idea what Windows does.
Linux supports iSCSI, which is a standard for issuing SCSI commands over IP (and obviously by extension, Ethernet). The protocol itself is nearly half a decade old. Microsoft operating systems as far back as Windows 2000 allegedly support it, and Vista offers it as a bullet-point feature.
I'm all for the USB connector's reliability. Myself, I even go through the trouble of using a cheap USB Ethernet adapter whenever I'm in the field, so that a somewhat-maligned RJ45 plug doesn't get a chance to trash the connector on my laptop's motherboard.
So why not design a similarly-robust connector for Ethernet?
I mean: We'd probably want a new, standard connector which is totally incompatible with RJ45 for desktop Ethernet devices, anyway. That way there can be low-voltage DC available on the connector, without causing any conflicts with the 48VDC of IEEE 802.3af Power-over-Ethernet*.
This would offer all of the advantages of Ethernet like long inexpensive cables, lots of connected devices, sane and well-understood spanning of multiple network segments, and universal compatibility. It would also offer all of the advantages of USB, like functional plug-and-play, bus power, and low implementation cost.
It might make sense to make a new protocol layer for the thing, something easy (cheap) to implement that has no reliance on things like DHCP. But then, given the ever-decreasing cost of silicon, it might also be just as well to use good ol' IP for everything anyway. (Routable protocols for a desktop mouse or a desktop hard drive? It sounds silly and far-reaching, but seriously: Why not?)
*: I have no interest at all in having a 48-volt inverter in my laptop, for example. There's enough potential there to be painful if things aren't just-so, and I prefer coffee. Better to keep the thing running at something sane like 5VDC.:)
You've changed your behavior to accept artificial delays, and now refuse to accept anything which does not include such a delay?
That's like complaining about getting an extra lane on the expressway, and complaining about the fact that your commute now takes 4 fewer minutes per day.
While it is obvious to me that you have neither friends nor close family, the rest of the world is showing off their photos on large-ish LCD monitors, playing and observing games, listening to music with increasingly high-quality speakers, and watching stupid videos on YouTube with their desktop PCs with friends.
Not high-end tasks, by any stretch. But none of these things will fit into my pocket.
People are social animals. I've sat at a friend's house and watched Family Guy with him using TV, and the computer. It's just something we enjoy doing from time to time. And then, the other day, he fired the show up on his Motorola Razr and handed it to me -- the video quality was fine, but it's just not any fucking fun holding a cell phone up to watch a show with a friend.
Wake me up when handheld devices are useful for more than one person at a time.
And this, ladies and gentleman, is why one should never post to Slashdot before consuming coffee.
The point I was attempting to make, "would you rather sell a nickle twenty times, or a dollar just once?" is an attempt to illustrate why, exactly, it is that profit margins are so high on low-volume electronics -- or anything else of low volume, for that matter.
Yeah, sure, they could drop the price and sell a lot more of the photovoltaic kits.
But they're not trying to sell PV kits, per se, but they are instead just trying to make money. Maximizing profit is what corporations exist to do. Selling more stuff doesn't always mean earning more profit, but it always means more work.
If they figure the proper markup (ie, the point at which profit is maximized) is 2x retail, that's their problem, isn't it?
If you think you can sell it cheaper, at such miniscule volumes as these things are likely to move at, then please feel free to do so. Else, please STFU.
I used a First Need filter 15 years ago as a primary water source for a 2-week hike on the Appalachian Trial. In that environment, there is a natural desire to carry as little water as possible to keep weight down, which obviously creates a need to gather water with some frequency.
I used it to filter everything from puddled water from recent rain, to water straight from the Potomac, to old, stinky water found inside of a hollow tree stump.
In all cases, the filter removed all coloration, taste, and noticeable odor, along with the nastiest of pathogens. During that two weeks, the filter never clogged or even appreciably slowed, though we were always careful to go easy on the thing by not stirring up any particulate matter during the filtration process.
Highly recommended to any sane person who wants to make sure that they've always got clean drinking water available but thinks that $385 is a bit expensive.
Perhaps they are going ballistic, and that this reaction is the dominant cause for the fact that the networks' online offerings suck.
If you were a station owner, would you immediately bite the hand that feeds you and start publicly slinging mud at your only content provider, or handle things quietly and internally?
I'm really missing your point, here. Sure, the situation could be less ugly than it is, but it's certainly no worse than trying to buy a real modem was in the mid-90s.
The wireless bridge adapters aren't expensive by any stretch of the imagination. Newegg's cheapest listing at the moment is a very well-reviewed Buffalo unit, with a fancy MIMO radio and four Ethernet ports, for $52. $52! For only $52, you get to forget about Wifi problems for any device running any operating systems which can manage to talk Ethernet!
For fuck's sake, do you expect them to give them away for free?
As someone who spent $250 (in 1992 dollars) on an external v.32bis SupraFAXModem (which actually was a fantastic deal, at the time, offered only to verifiable BBS sysops), I'm completely unimpressed with your assertion that WifiEthernet adapters are expensive.
Please find something worthwhile to complain about. Thanks!
Why make it an all-on-one-card solution? It seems to me that there's some big advantages to having an external, independantly-positional antenna with regards to potential for alleviating reception problems. In the case of a desktop box, getting the antenna out of the snakepit of grounded cabling and expansive sheet metal behind the box is a huge advantage.
So as long as the concept is improved upon by having a separate antenna, why not go even a step beyond that and use whole separate radio?
Newegg, for instance, has a few wireless adapters which connect directly to the Ethernet port of the desired device.
And furthermore, while we're at it, it's pretty easy to turn a Linksys WRT54GL around backwards (using OpenWRT or the much friendlier dd-wrt firmware) to act as a wireless client, with several available Ethernet jacks for whatever random gear you might want to plug into a wireless network.
Or, shoot: Even Windows can associate with an access point, and do a fine job of bridging between wired and wireless network interfaces. I did this the last time I had friends over for a game of Total Annihilation, and it worked splendidly.
So unless I'm missing something, isn't this a solved problem, at least for desktop machines?
For portable gear, I guess it wouldn't be very practical. But then, having an RTL8139-interfaced WiFi adapter in Cardbus or MiniPCI form wouldn't be all that practical, either. By the time you've researched and procured such a special-use (and currently non-existent) product, you could have just as easily researched and procured a conventional 802.11 card that has decent Linux support out of the box.
I hadn't thought of pool.ntp.org. It's too bad that they couldn't come up with a more agreeable method. Something like pool.ntp.org resolving round-robin to server-unique CNAMEs that are kept until restart and which point to potentially-dynamic A records that are looked up for every query (or once per day, or something).
It'd add a little DNS traffic to the network, but with sensible use it's unlikely to be noticed. Meanwhile, people get to use cheap dynamic IPs as public NTP servers.
But I'm sure there's something about the nature of DNS, as implemented, which will keep this from working...
Unlike a partnership with Akamai, there's no compelling monetary reason for an ISP to offer their own NTP server. Therefore, the easiest (least costly) solution -- at the ISP end -- is probably the most likely to win. Adding a line to dhcpd.conf is probably easier than configuring BIND to issue lies.
And while not everyone uses DHCP, they certainly have some mechanism for communicating things like DNS server addresses, default gateways, and so on. Using that same mechanism (be it DHCP, bootp, or snail mail) to inform the customer of the local NTP server seems trivial in every instance I can think of.
Clients that don't care will obviously ignore this data, but customers who do care can modify their client software accordingly.
Eventually (as in, within the MTBF of a Linksys router), if it ever gains any foothold, clients will use this data by default.
But I guess the most glaring problem to me is that, surprisingly often, the ISP's own DNS servers are slow and/or broken, and overridden. Much of Roadrunner's network is, for instance, assigned DNS servers which are so slow that when browsing the web, more time is spent on simple DNS lookups than on downloading and rendering content.
This, in turn, causes people like me to use a different DNS server on a different network. In my case, I use Level3's DNS at 4.2.2.1 because it is easy to remember and quite fast. Your suggestion ties together DNS and NTP inextricably, such that I'd also be using L3's NTP server by default, when all I really wanted was different DNS.
I don't want a solution to one network problem to have cascading effects on other network services. There's enough of that in the world already.
Remember, the whole point of this is to eliminate end-user manual NTP client configuration, and reduce network load, while offering the useful service of providing accurate time. And I can only hope that, after all of this, network-attached devices of all types will use this mechanism (whatever it is) to automatically derive time from a nearby NTP server.
Some of these devices will be reconfigurable to use whatever NTP server the user wants (certainly, my Linux box is), but hopefully some simpler devices will not be (think print server, networked DVR, WiFi LCD picture frame, or other minimally-configured box).
If a standard method for propogating NTP server names to end-users ever does get implemented, I shouldn't have to run a local copy of BIND and my own regimine of poison, just to allow independant settings for both DNS and NTP servers.
But that's all just my opinion. It is probably wrong.:)
If people are using DNS to look up NTP servers like they should be, instead of stupidly using IP addresses, then a dynamic address that changes even as often as every few days will be more than adequate.
Just get yourself a free static subdomain at a place like dyndns.org or zoneedit, and roll with it. A brief interruption due to a switch in IP addresses would likely never even be noticed by ntpd, but even if it were, there's plenty of redundancy in the NTP pool to cover the gap while the old DNS records expire before the new ones get used instead.
Of course, all bets are off if ntpd only performs one DNS lookup at startup, and then trusts the resultant IP address will be valid until the end of time, irrespective of what the domain's SOA record says should happen. If this is the case, I'd characterize it as an ntpd bug (for not following standard DNS conventions like expiration time) which should be fixed.
Poisoning DNS is never a good idea for public (including ISP) use. Please don't suggest this.
A far better method is to use DHCP to assign one or more local NTP servers, just as is done for DNS servers and other things which may vary from network to network.
DHCP, as a protocol, supports this usage just fine. Various DHCP client implementations also support this by default[1].
All that needs to happen is for the ISP to actually run ntpd (which is trivial), and configure the DHCP server to start telling people that it exists. And then, the consumer router manufacturers, Linux distributions, and (gasp) Windows can start using it.
[1]: Unfortunately, I've had/etc/ntp.conf rewritten by a DHCP client under Linux so as to point to non-working servers, due to some machine at woh.rr.com deciding to set the NTP addresses wrong. This is obviously bad behavior, but it's just Roadrunner's fault for putting a broken configuration into production, not the client's fault for trusting and acting upon that configuration.
I found a few problems with your post, however I am only going to scrutinize these two:
You completely missed the point of the analogy.
Er, uh. Heh. You posted a car analogy to Slashdot. Did you really expect anything different?
If you don't like it, go somewhere else.
Aw, shucks. You want a free market privatized police state? Start shopping at Sam's Club, where you agree under contract to be searched. I go there myself from time to time, and really have no problem with their security tactics.
Meanwhile, I'll keep avoiding illegitimate searches of my belongings and unlawful detainment of my person when shopping at places which are open to the general public, where no such contract exists.
So what if it costs slightly extra and annoys the door bouncer?
It's a free society, man. But nobody has said that freedom is without cost.
If the cost of keeping it this way is only a small price hike, a few false arrests, and a bunch of hot-headed-but-powerless receipt checkers, then I'd say we're doing OK and that things are balancing out fairly well.
In the article, the author firmly but politely rebuffed injustice. In Kim's story, she escalated. A grab at a bag leads to a kick in balls. A police officer pulling her over gets smartass comments and a plan to embarrass him in front of his supervisor.
And, but, so? You're forgetting that both the kicked and the potentially embarrassed had already escalated things when they had no authority to do so.
Different technique, sure. But that doesn't make it flawed. The kid rightly deserved kicked for his actions, and the cop would deserve to be embarrassed if he'd actually had the gall to make up something to cite her for.
I know that if I ever behaved like that in any professional capacity (attacking customers, or trying to throw a non-existent law book at them), I'd expect such treatment.
I just see a few problems, in no particular order:
1. It doesn't matter if it's fair. I maintain complete and total possession of all rights to all of my stuff during my entire visit to their establishment, along with any additional stuff that I might have purchased and any incidental items (such as a receipt, bag, coupons, warranty and rebate paperwork, to name a few) acquired since arriving at such establishment. You don't get to go rooting through my things just because you've already rooted through everyone else's.
A bum who begs for money from anyone who passes, also does so fairly and equally. But this does not obligate me to give him anything, even if everyone else who passes does drop some change.
2. Regarding crossing the street: So it should be OK, then, to skip the receipt check without illicit detainment if I clearly announce my intent to the door bouncer, er, I mean, greeter before leaving?
3. It is so, so, so not-my-fucking-problem to help them with their internal stock loss issues. There are already cameras overlooking each register for this very purpose, and the door bouncer would be more efficiently employed looking at those than checking receipts, anyway.
But supposing for a moment that it is my problem, I offer the following obvious advise for any retailers reading this: The technology to overlay the old-school RS-232 data from the register pole over top of the security camera's video feed from that same register not only exists, but is inexpensive. This would enable human to easily compare the names and prices of items, as identified by the register, to the actual items passing through the checkout lane, at the time of the transaction. It would be more effective, less invasive, and provide a stronger chain of evidence to support prosecution in cases in which employee collusion really is happening.
With more modern Ethernet-connected registers, IP cameras, and everything being on the same network, it could even be implemented purely in software.
But, see, none of this matters. I've paid for my stuff, and I'm leaving with it. I really don't care if the store has a reasonable suspicion of theft, or even probable cause sufficient to enable arrest. I know that I've done nothing wrong, and it is my intention to call their bluff. If they feel that I need to be detained or formally arrested for shoplifting, so be it.
But in the absence of physical restraint or an order by a uniformed law enforcement officer, I'm just going to keep calmly walking out the door with my stuff.
In the United States, it is not the responsibility of the people to continuously prove their innocence. And it's my goal to keep it that way for as long as possible.
Soap box, ballot box, jury box, ammo box. I'm exercising the first one on your behalf, and I'm perfectly willing to use the other three as well.
You should be thanking me instead of arguing against me.
But it will be a cold day in hell when you persuade me to believe that if you happened to be connected with the owner instead of a random salesperson on this first call, that the owner would be unable to apply the same discount that the salesperson gave you.
I mean it is, after all, the owner's property. He can always do whatever he wants with his stuff, even give it away for free if it suits him.
And I don't see much weight in the statement that it is "the sole discression [sic] of the salesperson," either.
As much as I hate to do this, I think the following theological analogy is in order:
Can God create a rock so big that He Himself cannot move it? [Yes, of course. But only until he decides to move it anyway.] Can the owner of a company enact policy so strict that even he himself cannot bend it? [Yes, of course. But only until he decides to bend it anyway.]
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Thanks for your reply, Counselor.
A couple of questions for you:
For what reason might software not be considered goods? Again, IANAL, so I probably see things somewhat simply and might be missing your point entirely, but: If I buy software at the store, I'm obviously buying tangible goods. And if I buy downloadable software online, I'm also buying goods. Now... If I pick up a free yard stick from a salesman at the county fair, I'm not buying anything, but I do receive goods. Am I not also in new possession of new-to-me goods when I download GPL-licensed software for free? If I am, then wouldn't this transaction be covered by the UCC?
Do you think that the similar interpretation of licenses and contracts means that Monsoon Multimedia has lost its license to distribute BusyBox code under the terms of the GNU GPL, by previously violating those same terms?
IANAL, too, but I was forced spend some quality time with the Ohio statutes governing contracts (alternatively, I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night).
If I recall (it's been a couple of years), it was all within the realm of the Uniform Commercial Code, which would mean such statutes exist in most (if not all) states in largely-unmodified form.
In this reading, I learned that all valid contracts have to abide by certain rules (otherwise, they are invalid and null). Chief among these requirements is the concept of reasonable consideration.
A common example of consideration might be residential trash hauling, ie, Waste Management agrees to haul away your detritus on a weekly basis, and in consideration of that act, you agree to pay them when the bill shows up. If you stop paying, the contract ceases to be valid (becomes breached), and soon thereafter they stop hauling your trash.
This would give them the ability to attempt to recover any consideration ("revenue") that you owe, as due for services rendered between the time you received the bill and the time that it became past-due.
It is a very simple, obvious, and boring concept, but it's an important one.
With the GNU GPL, it would seem to apply as such: You give someone software which is licensed under the GPL. The consideration for this generous act is as such: If they'd like to re-distribute the software, they have to do so terms of the GPL. So, they'd required to make the source available, and to include the text of the GPL, and a few other reasonable things that we're all familiar with.
The trouble in this particular case with Monsoon is that there's not any monetary consideration involved in the contract. So what if they decide to close up the GPL'd software and sell it as their own? I mean, sure, the contract is nullified, and they're therefore guilty of copyright violation. But nobody has lost any money, and therefore none can be recovered.
I mean, how would anyone sue for lost revenue/consideration, when the dollar amount lost is zero? Again, IANAL, but it seems to me that the most one might expect a court to do short of issuing statutory damages is to compel the offending party to honor all past and present GPL requests (due consideration). Which they're apparently already doing voluntarily.
So what good is this particular lawsuit but only to set a proper court-tested precedent for the validity of the GNU GPL?
And additionally, if the contract (the GPL license) between the parties becomes null and void due to this admitted lack of consideration, what right does Monsoon Multimedia have to distribute this code ever again? As far as I can tell, in the absence of any subsequent agreement, they've got no right to do so. In fact, they continue to be in violation of copyright law, because the contract with which they are now attempting to comply no longer exists.
(I welcome clarifications, corrections, and arguments to the contrary.)
But I still don't see any such "whitelist." In fact, all of my software works just fine, including some old games that I couldn't even make work with XP (Dungeon Keeper 2 rocks on modern hardware at 1920x1200). So therefore, I call bullshit. Please cite a reference, or get off my lawn.
I'm still a supporter and user of FOSS. I've just got the one Vista machine because an overwhelming portion of my income relies on not only my familiarity with the different nuances of Windows, but my ability to run various-and-sundry Windows programs on a whim, in the field with a computer that I control.
Typically, my main desktop computer runs either Gentoo or Ubuntu. But after a flood destroyed the computer room in my house, I haven't had a chance to put that machine back together. So for the past month, I've been using this Vista laptop exclusively at work and at home.
It seems to be fine.
Really? Cool!
I could've sworn he was complaining about Compaq shipping a machine with Vista which was incapable of running it, much as Packard Bell was famous for doing in the 90s.
In fact, the OP summed it up as such in his conclusion:
This machine should have come with XP. It is not Vista capable.
It's not a Vista thing. It's a "the salesman is a damned liar" thing. In this instance, the role of the salesman is played by the marketing department at Compaq, who is obviously at fault for shipping a computer with irresponsibly low RAM.
*yawn*
*hands back prize*
News Flash: Man buys cheapest PC he can find, and is shocked to discover that its performance, as configured out-of-the-box, completely fucking sucks!
1994 called. Packard Bell wants their infamy back.
Not to sound like a Microsoft shill (having traditionally been an outspoken Linux and FreeBSD fanboy for over a decade), but:
DRM? Sheeit, nigga - give it up, already. I've been running Vista (by choice) on my laptop since a couple weeks after its released, and have yet to have negative experience from this "DRM" thing which I only seem to hear about in Slashdot straw man, begging-the-question-in-the-traditional-logical-fallacy-sense-of-the-term rants.
See, I'm just not particularly sure how it might be affecting the things I do with the computer. I still copy DVDs with anydvd+dvdshrink, my MP3s all play just fine, CDs rip as well as they ever did on this machine, and YouTube (along with its its ilk) all work fine. Azureus still downloads torrents, VLC, Winamp, and [horror] Windows Media Player still play video without any particular episode. Even Miro Player works fine when fed with all manner of illegitimate RSS feeds.
Yeah, sure. Vista supposedly supports some Trusted Computing Alliance boojigity that will permit (restrict?) me to play certain fancy DRM content (or, I suppose, software) with Vista that won't work elsewhere. But I've never found such media. And in the unlikely event that I'd actually be interested in such content I suspect that the effects of any newfangled DRM would affect users of other operating systems more so than me and my Vista Business install.
Meanwhile, I just don't feel at all inconvenienced by any special DRM function in Vista.
Aren't you schizophrenic motherfuckers bored with the DRM FUD, yet?
I believe that the SCSI module in linux handles firewire and USB, so from that standpoint it looks like it's a start towards universal communications, except for Ethernet. (Even though old SCSI is nothing like serial: it's the the ultimate expression of parallel communications, with some similarities to the old HP/GPIB parallel communication standard that's still used in for test communication but used to be a hard drive standard.) I have no idea what Windows does.
Linux supports iSCSI, which is a standard for issuing SCSI commands over IP (and obviously by extension, Ethernet). The protocol itself is nearly half a decade old. Microsoft operating systems as far back as Windows 2000 allegedly support it, and Vista offers it as a bullet-point feature.
FWIW.
I'm all for the USB connector's reliability. Myself, I even go through the trouble of using a cheap USB Ethernet adapter whenever I'm in the field, so that a somewhat-maligned RJ45 plug doesn't get a chance to trash the connector on my laptop's motherboard.
:)
So why not design a similarly-robust connector for Ethernet?
I mean: We'd probably want a new, standard connector which is totally incompatible with RJ45 for desktop Ethernet devices, anyway. That way there can be low-voltage DC available on the connector, without causing any conflicts with the 48VDC of IEEE 802.3af Power-over-Ethernet*.
This would offer all of the advantages of Ethernet like long inexpensive cables, lots of connected devices, sane and well-understood spanning of multiple network segments, and universal compatibility. It would also offer all of the advantages of USB, like functional plug-and-play, bus power, and low implementation cost.
It might make sense to make a new protocol layer for the thing, something easy (cheap) to implement that has no reliance on things like DHCP. But then, given the ever-decreasing cost of silicon, it might also be just as well to use good ol' IP for everything anyway. (Routable protocols for a desktop mouse or a desktop hard drive? It sounds silly and far-reaching, but seriously: Why not?)
*: I have no interest at all in having a 48-volt inverter in my laptop, for example. There's enough potential there to be painful if things aren't just-so, and I prefer coffee. Better to keep the thing running at something sane like 5VDC.
Let me get this straight:
You've changed your behavior to accept artificial delays, and now refuse to accept anything which does not include such a delay?
That's like complaining about getting an extra lane on the expressway, and complaining about the fact that your commute now takes 4 fewer minutes per day.
Are you OK?
Yeah, ok.
While it is obvious to me that you have neither friends nor close family, the rest of the world is showing off their photos on large-ish LCD monitors, playing and observing games, listening to music with increasingly high-quality speakers, and watching stupid videos on YouTube with their desktop PCs with friends.
Not high-end tasks, by any stretch. But none of these things will fit into my pocket.
People are social animals. I've sat at a friend's house and watched Family Guy with him using TV, and the computer. It's just something we enjoy doing from time to time. And then, the other day, he fired the show up on his Motorola Razr and handed it to me -- the video quality was fine, but it's just not any fucking fun holding a cell phone up to watch a show with a friend.
Wake me up when handheld devices are useful for more than one person at a time.
And this, ladies and gentleman, is why one should never post to Slashdot before consuming coffee.
The point I was attempting to make, "would you rather sell a nickle twenty times, or a dollar just once?" is an attempt to illustrate why, exactly, it is that profit margins are so high on low-volume electronics -- or anything else of low volume, for that matter.
Yeah, sure, they could drop the price and sell a lot more of the photovoltaic kits.
But they're not trying to sell PV kits, per se, but they are instead just trying to make money. Maximizing profit is what corporations exist to do. Selling more stuff doesn't always mean earning more profit, but it always means more work.
If they figure the proper markup (ie, the point at which profit is maximized) is 2x retail, that's their problem, isn't it?
If you think you can sell it cheaper, at such miniscule volumes as these things are likely to move at, then please feel free to do so. Else, please STFU.
HTH. HAND.
If they priced the stuff with more reasonable profit margins, they'd sell quite a bit more of 'em.
Would you rather sell a nickel five times, or a dollar just once?
I used a First Need filter 15 years ago as a primary water source for a 2-week hike on the Appalachian Trial. In that environment, there is a natural desire to carry as little water as possible to keep weight down, which obviously creates a need to gather water with some frequency.
I used it to filter everything from puddled water from recent rain, to water straight from the Potomac, to old, stinky water found inside of a hollow tree stump.
In all cases, the filter removed all coloration, taste, and noticeable odor, along with the nastiest of pathogens. During that two weeks, the filter never clogged or even appreciably slowed, though we were always careful to go easy on the thing by not stirring up any particulate matter during the filtration process.
Highly recommended to any sane person who wants to make sure that they've always got clean drinking water available but thinks that $385 is a bit expensive.
Perhaps they are going ballistic, and that this reaction is the dominant cause for the fact that the networks' online offerings suck.
If you were a station owner, would you immediately bite the hand that feeds you and start publicly slinging mud at your only content provider, or handle things quietly and internally?
I'm really missing your point, here. Sure, the situation could be less ugly than it is, but it's certainly no worse than trying to buy a real modem was in the mid-90s.
The wireless bridge adapters aren't expensive by any stretch of the imagination. Newegg's cheapest listing at the moment is a very well-reviewed Buffalo unit, with a fancy MIMO radio and four Ethernet ports, for $52. $52! For only $52, you get to forget about Wifi problems for any device running any operating systems which can manage to talk Ethernet!
For fuck's sake, do you expect them to give them away for free?
As someone who spent $250 (in 1992 dollars) on an external v.32bis SupraFAXModem (which actually was a fantastic deal, at the time, offered only to verifiable BBS sysops), I'm completely unimpressed with your assertion that WifiEthernet adapters are expensive.
Please find something worthwhile to complain about. Thanks!
Why make it an all-on-one-card solution? It seems to me that there's some big advantages to having an external, independantly-positional antenna with regards to potential for alleviating reception problems. In the case of a desktop box, getting the antenna out of the snakepit of grounded cabling and expansive sheet metal behind the box is a huge advantage.
So as long as the concept is improved upon by having a separate antenna, why not go even a step beyond that and use whole separate radio?
Newegg, for instance, has a few wireless adapters which connect directly to the Ethernet port of the desired device.
And furthermore, while we're at it, it's pretty easy to turn a Linksys WRT54GL around backwards (using OpenWRT or the much friendlier dd-wrt firmware) to act as a wireless client, with several available Ethernet jacks for whatever random gear you might want to plug into a wireless network.
Or, shoot: Even Windows can associate with an access point, and do a fine job of bridging between wired and wireless network interfaces. I did this the last time I had friends over for a game of Total Annihilation, and it worked splendidly.
So unless I'm missing something, isn't this a solved problem, at least for desktop machines?
For portable gear, I guess it wouldn't be very practical. But then, having an RTL8139-interfaced WiFi adapter in Cardbus or MiniPCI form wouldn't be all that practical, either. By the time you've researched and procured such a special-use (and currently non-existent) product, you could have just as easily researched and procured a conventional 802.11 card that has decent Linux support out of the box.
Bummer.
I hadn't thought of pool.ntp.org. It's too bad that they couldn't come up with a more agreeable method. Something like pool.ntp.org resolving round-robin to server-unique CNAMEs that are kept until restart and which point to potentially-dynamic A records that are looked up for every query (or once per day, or something).
It'd add a little DNS traffic to the network, but with sensible use it's unlikely to be noticed. Meanwhile, people get to use cheap dynamic IPs as public NTP servers.
But I'm sure there's something about the nature of DNS, as implemented, which will keep this from working...
A few thoughts...
:)
Unlike a partnership with Akamai, there's no compelling monetary reason for an ISP to offer their own NTP server. Therefore, the easiest (least costly) solution -- at the ISP end -- is probably the most likely to win. Adding a line to dhcpd.conf is probably easier than configuring BIND to issue lies.
And while not everyone uses DHCP, they certainly have some mechanism for communicating things like DNS server addresses, default gateways, and so on. Using that same mechanism (be it DHCP, bootp, or snail mail) to inform the customer of the local NTP server seems trivial in every instance I can think of.
Clients that don't care will obviously ignore this data, but customers who do care can modify their client software accordingly.
Eventually (as in, within the MTBF of a Linksys router), if it ever gains any foothold, clients will use this data by default.
But I guess the most glaring problem to me is that, surprisingly often, the ISP's own DNS servers are slow and/or broken, and overridden. Much of Roadrunner's network is, for instance, assigned DNS servers which are so slow that when browsing the web, more time is spent on simple DNS lookups than on downloading and rendering content.
This, in turn, causes people like me to use a different DNS server on a different network. In my case, I use Level3's DNS at 4.2.2.1 because it is easy to remember and quite fast. Your suggestion ties together DNS and NTP inextricably, such that I'd also be using L3's NTP server by default, when all I really wanted was different DNS.
I don't want a solution to one network problem to have cascading effects on other network services. There's enough of that in the world already.
Remember, the whole point of this is to eliminate end-user manual NTP client configuration, and reduce network load, while offering the useful service of providing accurate time. And I can only hope that, after all of this, network-attached devices of all types will use this mechanism (whatever it is) to automatically derive time from a nearby NTP server.
Some of these devices will be reconfigurable to use whatever NTP server the user wants (certainly, my Linux box is), but hopefully some simpler devices will not be (think print server, networked DVR, WiFi LCD picture frame, or other minimally-configured box).
If a standard method for propogating NTP server names to end-users ever does get implemented, I shouldn't have to run a local copy of BIND and my own regimine of poison, just to allow independant settings for both DNS and NTP servers.
But that's all just my opinion. It is probably wrong.
Every few years? Pfft.
If people are using DNS to look up NTP servers like they should be, instead of stupidly using IP addresses, then a dynamic address that changes even as often as every few days will be more than adequate.
Just get yourself a free static subdomain at a place like dyndns.org or zoneedit, and roll with it. A brief interruption due to a switch in IP addresses would likely never even be noticed by ntpd, but even if it were, there's plenty of redundancy in the NTP pool to cover the gap while the old DNS records expire before the new ones get used instead.
Of course, all bets are off if ntpd only performs one DNS lookup at startup, and then trusts the resultant IP address will be valid until the end of time, irrespective of what the domain's SOA record says should happen. If this is the case, I'd characterize it as an ntpd bug (for not following standard DNS conventions like expiration time) which should be fixed.
Wrong solution.
/etc/ntp.conf rewritten by a DHCP client under Linux so as to point to non-working servers, due to some machine at woh.rr.com deciding to set the NTP addresses wrong. This is obviously bad behavior, but it's just Roadrunner's fault for putting a broken configuration into production, not the client's fault for trusting and acting upon that configuration.
Poisoning DNS is never a good idea for public (including ISP) use. Please don't suggest this.
A far better method is to use DHCP to assign one or more local NTP servers, just as is done for DNS servers and other things which may vary from network to network.
DHCP, as a protocol, supports this usage just fine. Various DHCP client implementations also support this by default[1].
All that needs to happen is for the ISP to actually run ntpd (which is trivial), and configure the DHCP server to start telling people that it exists. And then, the consumer router manufacturers, Linux distributions, and (gasp) Windows can start using it.
[1]: Unfortunately, I've had
Big?
Yeah, right.
In other news, the neighborhood Wash'N'Shine is running a special. For only $20, you get $30 worth of car wash tokens!
But that's not all! They've also added Bug Blaster(tm) to their array of high-pressure sprays in the do-it-yourself wash bays!
I tell you. The Wash'N'Shine is a huge opportunity for investment, waiting to explode. Just look at all of their recent, innovative features.
Good points.
I found a few problems with your post, however I am only going to scrutinize these two:
You completely missed the point of the analogy.
Er, uh. Heh. You posted a car analogy to Slashdot. Did you really expect anything different?
If you don't like it, go somewhere else.
Aw, shucks. You want a free market privatized police state? Start shopping at Sam's Club, where you agree under contract to be searched. I go there myself from time to time, and really have no problem with their security tactics.
Meanwhile, I'll keep avoiding illegitimate searches of my belongings and unlawful detainment of my person when shopping at places which are open to the general public, where no such contract exists.
So what if it costs slightly extra and annoys the door bouncer?
It's a free society, man. But nobody has said that freedom is without cost.
If the cost of keeping it this way is only a small price hike, a few false arrests, and a bunch of hot-headed-but-powerless receipt checkers, then I'd say we're doing OK and that things are balancing out fairly well.
In the article, the author firmly but politely rebuffed injustice. In Kim's story, she escalated. A grab at a bag leads to a kick in balls. A police officer pulling her over gets smartass comments and a plan to embarrass him in front of his supervisor.
And, but, so? You're forgetting that both the kicked and the potentially embarrassed had already escalated things when they had no authority to do so.
Different technique, sure. But that doesn't make it flawed. The kid rightly deserved kicked for his actions, and the cop would deserve to be embarrassed if he'd actually had the gall to make up something to cite her for.
I know that if I ever behaved like that in any professional capacity (attacking customers, or trying to throw a non-existent law book at them), I'd expect such treatment.
*shrug*
Good points.
I just see a few problems, in no particular order:
1. It doesn't matter if it's fair. I maintain complete and total possession of all rights to all of my stuff during my entire visit to their establishment, along with any additional stuff that I might have purchased and any incidental items (such as a receipt, bag, coupons, warranty and rebate paperwork, to name a few) acquired since arriving at such establishment. You don't get to go rooting through my things just because you've already rooted through everyone else's.
A bum who begs for money from anyone who passes, also does so fairly and equally. But this does not obligate me to give him anything, even if everyone else who passes does drop some change.
2. Regarding crossing the street: So it should be OK, then, to skip the receipt check without illicit detainment if I clearly announce my intent to the door bouncer, er, I mean, greeter before leaving?
3. It is so, so, so not-my-fucking-problem to help them with their internal stock loss issues. There are already cameras overlooking each register for this very purpose, and the door bouncer would be more efficiently employed looking at those than checking receipts, anyway.
But supposing for a moment that it is my problem, I offer the following obvious advise for any retailers reading this: The technology to overlay the old-school RS-232 data from the register pole over top of the security camera's video feed from that same register not only exists, but is inexpensive. This would enable human to easily compare the names and prices of items, as identified by the register, to the actual items passing through the checkout lane, at the time of the transaction. It would be more effective, less invasive, and provide a stronger chain of evidence to support prosecution in cases in which employee collusion really is happening.
With more modern Ethernet-connected registers, IP cameras, and everything being on the same network, it could even be implemented purely in software.
But, see, none of this matters. I've paid for my stuff, and I'm leaving with it. I really don't care if the store has a reasonable suspicion of theft, or even probable cause sufficient to enable arrest. I know that I've done nothing wrong, and it is my intention to call their bluff. If they feel that I need to be detained or formally arrested for shoplifting, so be it.
But in the absence of physical restraint or an order by a uniformed law enforcement officer, I'm just going to keep calmly walking out the door with my stuff.
In the United States, it is not the responsibility of the people to continuously prove their innocence. And it's my goal to keep it that way for as long as possible.
Soap box, ballot box, jury box, ammo box. I'm exercising the first one on your behalf, and I'm perfectly willing to use the other three as well.
You should be thanking me instead of arguing against me.
Fine; one example. Thank you for that.
But it will be a cold day in hell when you persuade me to believe that if you happened to be connected with the owner instead of a random salesperson on this first call, that the owner would be unable to apply the same discount that the salesperson gave you.
I mean it is, after all, the owner's property. He can always do whatever he wants with his stuff, even give it away for free if it suits him.
And I don't see much weight in the statement that it is "the sole discression [sic] of the salesperson," either.
As much as I hate to do this, I think the following theological analogy is in order:
Can God create a rock so big that He Himself cannot move it? [Yes, of course. But only until he decides to move it anyway.]
Can the owner of a company enact policy so strict that even he himself cannot bend it? [Yes, of course. But only until he decides to bend it anyway.]