So, would that mean I would have to sit and wait the same amount of time it takes for Windows to boot? It's like DVD's that force you to view trailers before the actual movie...
Besides, as usual, we would try to find a way around the ads while still getting paid for them.
Anyway, I doubt that they would be real interested in buying ads on my workstation...
You say that as if the only issue is getting the servers to work. I'm sure that getting the servers up to specs was not their biggest problem. You must have forgotten that they also have to build a fully-functional web site that works on their servers... Most web site compatibility problems don't come from the servers being used (very few ever do). It comes from the coding of the web site and additional programs and scripts that are used to communicate to the back-end processes. (How many times have you not been able to view a website because it was hosted on an NT machine while you are using Linux? Chances are higher that you were not able to view a site because the site's authors did not write code for all browsers.) They are most concerned with getting the site working with the majority of the web browsers and users out there. (Which just so happens to be IE 4/5 on Windows 95/98/NT/etc...) Given their timetables, it would not be feasable to start out supporting everyone and everything...
Yeah, but tell that to some non-technical person that is in charge of getting a web site (inexpensively) done for their office. You are preaching to the choir here... Most Slashdot readers know that M$ FrontPage may not be worth much, but most office personnel don't read (nor heard of, for that matter) Slashdot. If all someone has to do is point and click to create a (cheap) web site with a bunch of links that glow when you move the mouse over them, then that's what they will do, regardless of the quality of the site. Like many non-technical people, they want it done *now*, they want it done *cheap*, and they want it by any means possible.
Isn't it wierd how as soon as a good article pops up the links are instantly Slashdotted (and remain so for several hours)? Now I like Slashdot and all (I read it daily), but it's almost as if we (the devoted readers of Slashdot) are a swarm of locusts, feeding on the web site provider's bandwidth and server resources, suddenly attacking a server farm almost all at once, then we disappear almost as suddenly as we came, leaving a trail of overheated processors and worn out disk drives in our wake, often times confusing administrators and leaving them lost in a daze...
Yeah, but what if I actually *want* to build/hack my own stuff? For example, you can buy a new car that will be perfectly reliable, but that doesn't stop car enthusiasts from buying old cars and parts and spending time and money fixing them up. You can buy an in-dash MP3 player that may be chaeaper than building one yourself. But to some there is a rush that you get when you repair/build something to like new quality. And I believe the geek factor is increased when you can say "I built it from scratch myself..."
Actually, the fact that there was no "User Unknown" error returned by your mail server is enough proof to the spammer that they sent the spam to a valid email address...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't most TCP/IP protocols usually send a response to verify that the recipient received the packet? And if a pacemaker transmit's over the Internet, then it would use TCP/IP, would it not? It would still have to listen on some port. (Portscaning for pacemakers...) Of course it could use UDP, but how would it know that the monitoring system's servers received the pacemaker's current status...
Now for the rest of my questions. (More realistic ones this time...) Chances are the pacemaker will connect to some external hardware connected to your computer via a USB or serial cable. (Assigning the pacemaker a globally routeable IP address would be *really* dumb.) What would the human interface be like? Will there be a wire hanging out of their hand? Will it be a wireless connection like a cell phone? (Let's not have any more cell phone radiation...) Will the hardware be PC, Mac, and Linux/UNIX compatible? (You can't always tell a customer that they *must* have Win98...) Can a hardware failure in the PC or external equipment cause any problems with the pacemaker? (Some failures do cause power surges, and I'd *really* hate to have a power surge fry someone's pacemaker...) How often would they need to check in? How are the pacemakers checked when they go to get their checkups now?
Multicasting here would save a lot of bandwidth up to the routers where the streams must split, and all the way to the web reader if they are behind the same backbone router.
...snip...
Ok, an example: You and somebody 2 blocks away are both browsing slashdot. All the other people are doing other unique stuff. So why send all those slashdot images twice? Now replace 'images' with any imaginable content.
Okay... and you are assuming that me and my neighbor are using the same ISP... Try again. If I am using cable Internet, my neighbor has DSL with one provider, and my other neighbor as DSL with another provider, how is multicasting going to help? The closest place (in number of hops) that we are connected may be as far away as DC, LA, NY or Chicago. In most cases the streams will still have to split a good distance from the end users, which will not supply the enormous amount of relief you speak of. Internet topology oftentimes has little to do with physical geography.
Technically, not much is really undetectible by your ISP. (In theory, of course...) The question is, do they really care enough and are they really willing to spend all of that time, effort, and money logging every packet that you send in and out of your measley DSL/Cable connection? Not to mention the hundreds or thousands of other customers they have to deal with. In most cases, no they don't care. Only when you do something obvious (like max out your bandwidth consistently) do they take notice. Most sysadmins have much more important things to worry about during the day. (i.e., reading Slashdot...)
Um, yes there is. The page loads a Javascript (rejectNS.js) that checks to see if "document.all" exists. If not, then it sends the user to the Netscape rejection page. It is not exactly an anti-Netscape page, but it was a bad idea to check for "document.all," since there is an outside chance that his page may actually work in Netscape. (I don't know for sure, since I haven't gone through the rest of the Javascripts.) And I'm quite sure that aspalliance.com can handle Slashdot's traffic surges... Besides, how can you get free publicity and support by blocking out the users you are trying to convert to ASP?
In short, the bug with the i850 chipset only affects people who primarily use legacy hardware.
"Legacy hardware" is not always old stuff. To me, "legacy" may mean a 64MB video card that I may have purchased a couple of months ago. What if I want to upgrade to a P-IV now, but know that I want a second monitor later? I couldn't even go out and buy a cheap 8MB card (also made by Intel) because it would kill the performance. Does that mean I can't upgrade now? Why should I be forced to go buy a new video card to replace the perfectly good (and very powerful) one I have now? What sense would that make? What I want to put into my computer should not be dictated by a hardware bug that shouldn't even exist, especially if I'm willing to pay that much for it.
I work as a sysadmin for a local isp. I deal with spam on a daily basis, from accounts that have been deleted months (or years) ago to my personal account where only a handful of people have knowledge of the address. (Apparently guessing email addresses is quite popular...) There are several reasons why I believe that spam will not go away any time soon:
1. The problem doesn't primarily lie with users from smaller isp's, but with the megolith isp's. I deal with at least a couple dozen or so spams from uu.net addresses alone on a daily basis (that's only from the inactive accounts; we have hundreds of users that probably get a dozen spam messages every day). There are a half dozen other fairly large isp's that are just as prolific with generating spam. With the number of abuse messages that some ISP's get (especially uu.net), I can imagine that it may take up to a week or so to properly deal with some accounts.
2. One major problem is the massive number of servers that are used as remailers due to their being misconfigured. (Whether that is an unintentional oversight or a deliberate action is anyone's guess...) Many of the servers that are used as remailers are located not in the US, so most likely they are not going to be as eager to follow laws that are set by the US.
3. Another big problem is that people who don't know much about setting up a server (and all the security factors involved) are allowed to set up a server to run email for their business on a DSL, cable, or other high speed connection. Sometimes these servers are easily hacked, or just used as remailers as they are.
Of course blocking out by domain will not work. Let us not forget that just because a domain's front page may pass the censors, there are many sites that have sub-sites that aren't linked in to the main site, and those may contain "bad content". For example, "domain.com/" and "domain.com/somesite1" may pass, but "domain.com/somesite2" may fail. There are a lot of free (as well as for profit) hosting sites that contain both legal and censored content...
Until ISP's/Cable companies/Telco's can solve the "last mile" problem by dropping a fiber loop into my back yard, everyone will not have access to the bandwidth needed to do video "chat." Even e-mail is faster than waiting for audio and video to creep down to my PC.
I was wondering. Although I have not downloaded the files to be tested, I notice that some of them are around 50 megs. Question... Since I am not at all familiar with the SDMI file format, can someone tell me why they are so huge? If these are just samples (not including whatever extras they add into the zip file), then what is the average file size of an entire song? Tracks ripped from a cd to.wav files usually end up around 40-60 megs each. MP3's will compress down to 10-15%. If the size of the file is much, much larger, then are they trying to use the enormous file size as a deterrent for sharing songs? If I am missing something very obvious then please let me know.
Not every company starts out large. There is almost no way to accurately determine how fast a company will grow in the next 5 years. Markets change daily, and a business owner may somehow run into a lot of capital. If Joe's Cars decided to open a shop in Lexington, KY, then what happens to his URL? Should he be stuck with http://joescars.louisville.ky.us? Does he now need to register http://joescars.lexington.ky.us, or should he get http://joescars.co.ky.us? What if he expands across state lines? Should he get http://joescars.nashville.tn.us, http://joescars.co.tn.us, or http://joescars.co.us? But what happens to his existing addresses? Anything can happen in a few years. Should he have to change his entire identity every time he expands his business?
On the flip side, suppose a company makes all kinds of expansion promises, and is given a URL that is statewide or countrywide. What happens if he doesn't meet his goals (or "expansion quota"...)? Does he get a letter that says "Your company is too small. Your URL is hereby revoked."
Unfortunately, the infrastructure for flat-rate cellular calls is not there, and is almost cost prohibitive. The current call capacity per tower is a finite number (depending upon the technology). If local calls were free, then there would be a huge inrush of new cell phone customers. Which means that there will be more potential customers per square mile. Which means that the cell density must skyrocket to meet potential demand. Which means new towers must be built much closer to each other (and between existing ones) in metropolitan areas. Which means that new frequencies must be allocated. I don't know how much it actually costs to run a cell tower (electrical power, computing power, connections to land lines, etc.) but I believe that the costs would go through the roof. Not to mention the fact that we would all be flooded with even more the cell phone radiation that everyone is in a panic about...
...that the "upgradeable" board did not have any slots for adding new CPU's? I noticed that all six CPU's were soldered onto the board. It's kind of hard to upgrade a board that was built fully upgraded already... --guru
Slashdot Mirror
Besides, as usual, we would try to find a way around the ads while still getting paid for them.
Anyway, I doubt that they would be real interested in buying ads on my workstation...
admin@sys3:~$ uptime
3:53pm up 213 days, 7:56, 1 user, load average: 0.06, 0.02, 0.00
You say that as if the only issue is getting the servers to work. I'm sure that getting the servers up to specs was not their biggest problem. You must have forgotten that they also have to build a fully-functional web site that works on their servers... Most web site compatibility problems don't come from the servers being used (very few ever do). It comes from the coding of the web site and additional programs and scripts that are used to communicate to the back-end processes. (How many times have you not been able to view a website because it was hosted on an NT machine while you are using Linux? Chances are higher that you were not able to view a site because the site's authors did not write code for all browsers.) They are most concerned with getting the site working with the majority of the web browsers and users out there. (Which just so happens to be IE 4/5 on Windows 95/98/NT/etc...) Given their timetables, it would not be feasable to start out supporting everyone and everything...
Yeah, but tell that to some non-technical person that is in charge of getting a web site (inexpensively) done for their office. You are preaching to the choir here... Most Slashdot readers know that M$ FrontPage may not be worth much, but most office personnel don't read (nor heard of, for that matter) Slashdot. If all someone has to do is point and click to create a (cheap) web site with a bunch of links that glow when you move the mouse over them, then that's what they will do, regardless of the quality of the site. Like many non-technical people, they want it done *now*, they want it done *cheap*, and they want it by any means possible.
Isn't it wierd how as soon as a good article pops up the links are instantly Slashdotted (and remain so for several hours)? Now I like Slashdot and all (I read it daily), but it's almost as if we (the devoted readers of Slashdot) are a swarm of locusts, feeding on the web site provider's bandwidth and server resources, suddenly attacking a server farm almost all at once, then we disappear almost as suddenly as we came, leaving a trail of overheated processors and worn out disk drives in our wake, often times confusing administrators and leaving them lost in a daze...
Yeah, but what if I actually *want* to build/hack my own stuff? For example, you can buy a new car that will be perfectly reliable, but that doesn't stop car enthusiasts from buying old cars and parts and spending time and money fixing them up. You can buy an in-dash MP3 player that may be chaeaper than building one yourself. But to some there is a rush that you get when you repair/build something to like new quality. And I believe the geek factor is increased when you can say "I built it from scratch myself..."
Actually, the fact that there was no "User Unknown" error returned by your mail server is enough proof to the spammer that they sent the spam to a valid email address...
Now for the rest of my questions. (More realistic ones this time...) Chances are the pacemaker will connect to some external hardware connected to your computer via a USB or serial cable. (Assigning the pacemaker a globally routeable IP address would be *really* dumb.) What would the human interface be like? Will there be a wire hanging out of their hand? Will it be a wireless connection like a cell phone? (Let's not have any more cell phone radiation...) Will the hardware be PC, Mac, and Linux/UNIX compatible? (You can't always tell a customer that they *must* have Win98...) Can a hardware failure in the PC or external equipment cause any problems with the pacemaker? (Some failures do cause power surges, and I'd *really* hate to have a power surge fry someone's pacemaker...) How often would they need to check in? How are the pacemakers checked when they go to get their checkups now?
Ok, an example: You and somebody 2 blocks away are both browsing slashdot. All the other people are doing other unique stuff. So why send all those slashdot images twice? Now replace 'images' with any imaginable content.
Okay... and you are assuming that me and my neighbor are using the same ISP... Try again. If I am using cable Internet, my neighbor has DSL with one provider, and my other neighbor as DSL with another provider, how is multicasting going to help? The closest place (in number of hops) that we are connected may be as far away as DC, LA, NY or Chicago. In most cases the streams will still have to split a good distance from the end users, which will not supply the enormous amount of relief you speak of. Internet topology oftentimes has little to do with physical geography.
Technically, not much is really undetectible by your ISP. (In theory, of course...) The question is, do they really care enough and are they really willing to spend all of that time, effort, and money logging every packet that you send in and out of your measley DSL/Cable connection? Not to mention the hundreds or thousands of other customers they have to deal with. In most cases, no they don't care. Only when you do something obvious (like max out your bandwidth consistently) do they take notice. Most sysadmins have much more important things to worry about during the day. (i.e., reading Slashdot...)
Um, yes there is. The page loads a Javascript (rejectNS.js) that checks to see if "document.all" exists. If not, then it sends the user to the Netscape rejection page. It is not exactly an anti-Netscape page, but it was a bad idea to check for "document.all," since there is an outside chance that his page may actually work in Netscape. (I don't know for sure, since I haven't gone through the rest of the Javascripts.) And I'm quite sure that aspalliance.com can handle Slashdot's traffic surges... Besides, how can you get free publicity and support by blocking out the users you are trying to convert to ASP?
"Legacy hardware" is not always old stuff. To me, "legacy" may mean a 64MB video card that I may have purchased a couple of months ago. What if I want to upgrade to a P-IV now, but know that I want a second monitor later? I couldn't even go out and buy a cheap 8MB card (also made by Intel) because it would kill the performance. Does that mean I can't upgrade now? Why should I be forced to go buy a new video card to replace the perfectly good (and very powerful) one I have now? What sense would that make? What I want to put into my computer should not be dictated by a hardware bug that shouldn't even exist, especially if I'm willing to pay that much for it.
1. The problem doesn't primarily lie with users from smaller isp's, but with the megolith isp's. I deal with at least a couple dozen or so spams from uu.net addresses alone on a daily basis (that's only from the inactive accounts; we have hundreds of users that probably get a dozen spam messages every day). There are a half dozen other fairly large isp's that are just as prolific with generating spam. With the number of abuse messages that some ISP's get (especially uu.net), I can imagine that it may take up to a week or so to properly deal with some accounts.
2. One major problem is the massive number of servers that are used as remailers due to their being misconfigured. (Whether that is an unintentional oversight or a deliberate action is anyone's guess...) Many of the servers that are used as remailers are located not in the US, so most likely they are not going to be as eager to follow laws that are set by the US.
3. Another big problem is that people who don't know much about setting up a server (and all the security factors involved) are allowed to set up a server to run email for their business on a DSL, cable, or other high speed connection. Sometimes these servers are easily hacked, or just used as remailers as they are.
Of course blocking out by domain will not work. Let us not forget that just because a domain's front page may pass the censors, there are many sites that have sub-sites that aren't linked in to the main site, and those may contain "bad content". For example, "domain.com/" and "domain.com/somesite1" may pass, but "domain.com/somesite2" may fail. There are a lot of free (as well as for profit) hosting sites that contain both legal and censored content...
Wow. That must be some long corner...
Until ISP's/Cable companies/Telco's can solve the "last mile" problem by dropping a fiber loop into my back yard, everyone will not have access to the bandwidth needed to do video "chat." Even e-mail is faster than waiting for audio and video to creep down to my PC.
I was wondering. Although I have not downloaded the files to be tested, I notice that some of them are around 50 megs. Question... Since I am not at all familiar with the SDMI file format, can someone tell me why they are so huge? If these are just samples (not including whatever extras they add into the zip file), then what is the average file size of an entire song? Tracks ripped from a cd to .wav files usually end up around 40-60 megs each. MP3's will compress down to 10-15%. If the size of the file is much, much larger, then are they trying to use the enormous file size as a deterrent for sharing songs? If I am missing something very obvious then please let me know.
On the flip side, suppose a company makes all kinds of expansion promises, and is given a URL that is statewide or countrywide. What happens if he doesn't meet his goals (or "expansion quota" ...)? Does he get a letter that says "Your company is too small. Your URL is hereby revoked."
Unfortunately, the infrastructure for flat-rate cellular calls is not there, and is almost cost prohibitive. The current call capacity per tower is a finite number (depending upon the technology). If local calls were free, then there would be a huge inrush of new cell phone customers. Which means that there will be more potential customers per square mile. Which means that the cell density must skyrocket to meet potential demand. Which means new towers must be built much closer to each other (and between existing ones) in metropolitan areas. Which means that new frequencies must be allocated. I don't know how much it actually costs to run a cell tower (electrical power, computing power, connections to land lines, etc.) but I believe that the costs would go through the roof. Not to mention the fact that we would all be flooded with even more the cell phone radiation that everyone is in a panic about...
...that the "upgradeable" board did not have any slots for adding new CPU's? I noticed that all six CPU's were soldered onto the board. It's kind of hard to upgrade a board that was built fully upgraded already... --guru