I don't have any idea why digital cameras that'll take my Nikon lenses are so ridiculously expensive. The reason I haven't bought a digital camera yet is that I can't stand the idea of spending more money on a camera which has the optics of a cheap compact camera than I did on my SLR camera. That and the very noticable artifacts present in most digital photographs (and the lack of being able to do things like leave the shutter open for long exposure shots).
I don't call shareware shareware, I call it EOW - Extreme Optimist Ware, because whoever's supplying it is an extreme optimist if they think they are going to get paid! Out of the millions of people who use mIRC, how many do you think have paid K. Mardam Bey anything? Probably not more than a handful.
Having said that I have registered shareware that I was a regular user of (most notably Remote Access BBS software), but then I discovered Unix and opensource software.
For example, DME (distance measuring equipment) in aviation. This works by equipment on the aircraft sending a signal to the ground-based DME station, which replies. The round-trip is measured, giving the distance from the station.
Maybe ICMP pings can be used to find out how much Cat 5 there is between you and the target machine:-) Of course, the time taken to process the ping by the target etc. must be taken into account.
Actually, neither z/OS or z/VM is a Unix. VM isn't even remotely Unixy (can't speak for z/OS since I've never used it). It's adding a Unix-like OS to a machine that never had one.
Simple - HAVE limits. Say, for basic service, you get 1Gbyte transfer/month for $x. Silver service gets you 2Gbyte transfer/month for $x+some extra. Geek service gets you 5Gbyte/month for $x*2. That kind of thing. Let your users run servers or whatever they like - if they use lots of bandwidth, they pay extra. Therefore, someone with three computers at home but who hardly uses any resources doesn't get penalized, and someone who has their website on their home machine pays their fair share.
There are broadband ISPs who do it this way.
Frontier Developments is apparently working on a Wallace and Grommit game. (Frontier Developments is headed by David Braben, one of the duo who wrote the genre-setting game 'Elite').
Go to Marjacq.com and click on the "Developer" menu and then "Frontier Devlopments" to read about it. Not much information there except that they are working on it.
This is not the mark of a company in fear. This is the mark of a company that has had its fear glands surgically removed, and is hell-bent on enslaving all minds and all technology to its will.
Heh. I've never thought of Microsoft being a company full of Thargoids before:-) Maybe we ought to send a few INRA members with horribly beweaponed Asps into witch-space to sort them out...
I have no problem with agreeing with you there. Linux (or at least the distros I've run) is not a consumer-level OS. And I agree that Windows may well remain dominant. However, if Linux can have enough of a presence to prevent Microsoft from using its monopoly power to break cross-platform protocols, then we've won even if we only have 5% shar of the desktop (which is still many millions of users).
Off topic - but everyone seems to be lauding the praises of Apple as a potential MS buster on the desktop. Has everyone forgotten that Apple is a bigger control-freak than Microsoft? Given the opportunity, if the roles were reversed (Apple being the big monopolist), we'd be far worse off right now.
Hmmm. There should be a -1 moderation for "Just Plain Wrong".
The proof that Linux won't 'die' for the reasons you state already exists. I started using Linux as a teenage college student. The kernel was 0.12. Pretty much everyone who was a student when I was graduated about five years ago. But Linux is many orders of magnitude stronger and useful than it was five years ago!
Your comment is a bit like saying the human race will die off because people get old and die; neglecting that at the same time new people are born and replace the old ones who croak. There is a new generation of teenage first years at college who are doing what I was doing. The difference is that they are starting with RedHat or Debian and a 2.4.17 kernel, where I started with a 0.12 kernel, a copy of 'rawrite' and a root disk image. And there's a lot more Linux enthusiasts in the new generation of first-years than there was when I was a first year: many orders of magnitude more.
Whilst I agree by and large with the rest of your comment (and personally, I don't care if Linux makes it as a desktop OS or not; it'd be nice, but Linux will continue just fine without it and still makes a great server OS), I have to disagree with the 'non-trivial uninstall' bit. I use Debian, and I've found it extremely trivial to uninstall packages using 'apt'.
It would however be nice if stuff installed from source had a "make uninstall" to go with "make install"...
You've probably already got a good enough track record that to continue doing what you're doing and continuing advancing won't really be a problem. BUT...
Don't just go for a fast-track degree - i.e. don't go for a degree 'cos you need a bit of paper. Do the three or four years. Don't just take classes on the narrow subject that your career is - use university as an opportunity to take a sabattical from the world of work and get a broader knowledge of more things.
Although I went to university after only working for one year, I decided not to take a course that narrowly focused on only technical subjects. I'm a software developer - yet I took a BA degree, not a BSc.
I really enjoyed university, and I'm glad I didn't just race through on a fast track.
Software like Binkley also deserves a mention. Ever log onto a FidoNet BBS? The first thing you were likely to see was the BinkleyTerm version information.
BinkleyTerm (and similar) was the bit that shunted FidoNet Netmail and Echomail messages from BBS to BBS. My memory of it is a little hazy now (well, it was 10 years ago!) but I remember it was wrapped in a vile batch file that looked at the exit code to decide what to do next (launch the BBS or get Echomail etc.)
My BBS was never popular, but it was always fun, and being part of FidoNet made it a lot more interesting. 2:252/204, you'll be sadly missed:-)
(It was a 386/16 with a whopping 2.5MB RAM and DesqView as the multitasker).
He never said anything about religion dude, just ethics, and it is unethical to knowingly allow someone to illegaly transfer intelectual property via file-sharing. It would probably have been overlooked though, if it hadn't been for the bandwidth.
Actually, he did. He mentioned that the ISP was run by Christians, who wanted to enforce Christian ethics. Christian ethics encompass more things than filesharing (my last (dialup) ISP got bought by a Christian ISP, which without notice started 'filtering' our access to sites based on various flawed net-nanny type technologies). But that's a whole different discussion which I said I wasn't going to get into, and I won't. ISPs want to be common carriers. They can't have their cake and eat it too. Either they are common carriers and simply sell bandwidth, or they are 'net police.
file-sharing is blatantly illegal,
Since when? I share hundreds of files from my server [0]. None of them are illegal for me to share.
Instead of banning particular things (which could make the ISP liable for user's actions in the eyes of a court, instead of merely a common carrier), why don't they instead give some hard figures about how much bandwidth use is "acceptable"? Why not say something like x GB/month transfer is acceptable use instead of indiscriminately blocking ports in a piecemeal fashion? Dedicated hosting providers do it this way - why can't cable modem/DSL providers do it that way?
Seems like RoadRunner cable manage OK without making an assinine TOS or blocking hundreds of ports. (Wonder what this ISP's port blocking does to programs that assigns ports randomly?)
Buy your own bandwidth
I already do thank you very much. 600GB/month worth of transfer at a data centre with 1.6Gbit/second worth of connection.
[0] My server doesn't run at the end of a cable modem.
I'll leave the comments about your employer's religion and the ethics of imposing their morals on other people alone in this post...
It seems like your company believes the Internet *is* port 80. If that's so, well - quite frankly, broadband is pretty pointless. Web browsing can be done on a cheap 56K link.
High-bandwidth applications ARE the killer app for broadband. If you don't like people actually using more than what a 56K user will use, you're defeating the entire object of broadband. With all those ports you block, you probably break a lot of games too (the real reason I use broadband is for games. I pay for dedicated hosting for servers i.e. real bandwidth). I'm so glad that RoadRunner is my ISP, they actually seem to realise what broadband is actually for.
Next you'll be telling us that you're blocking FTP because it uses too much bandwidth. And blocking ssh because people might use it to tunnel some of the ports you block.
If I ever write a program that needs a bit of bandwidth, it's going to be an apache module and run on port 80 so you can't block it:-]
I have the capability to run an IRC server if I really wanted. I enjoy using irc (#alt.fan.elite on Starchat), and I have met good friends through IRC (in real life, as in go out have a beer etc) but as for running a server, I've decided that I'd rather try skiing through a revolving door before I ever bothered running an IRC server.
Why? Firstly, the politics. IRC is supposed to be fun, but the politics amongst the routing teams, opers, network admins etc. is just lame. Half of the friggin' admins like to think they are God.
Secondly, running an IRC server is like painting a huge DDoS bullseye on your server. Normally, IRC doesn't take up/that/ much bandwidth. But one DDoS attack could easily put you into excess bandwidth charges - as well as knocking your server offline.
IRC is supposed to be fun but the combination of lame admins and lame lusers make it an unpleasant chore. So I'll stick to being a mere user in an out of the way channel that's mode +s.
As for Starchat, at least they've done some things to protect themselves from DDoS attacks - they've made it non-trivial to find out the actual names of all the servers and the way they are linked (/map etc. are disabled), IP addresses are masked so users won't get DDoSed, ChanServ and NickServ are implemented. StarChat's still relatively small so they aren't the big DDoS target the large networks are. But even with this network, there's more than enough lameness to go around.
Looking at the bigger networks - look at the application process for adding your server to DALnet. The process seems about as fun as an IRS tax audit. Half the time, the IRC networks are their own worst enemies. I think a lot of the problems with IRC could be solved if there was no such thing as ops (instead, server-side/ignore if a user was being a pain in the ass). In our channel, we solve it the other way - everyone gets ops. It runs remarkably smoothly that way.
Besides, I've already seen annoying ads like these on weather.com.
The more recent, more annoying ads are the reason I've stopped using weather.com. I like the site, but the ads are just too annoying.
I have no objection to advertisments, but I do have an objection to them if they are annoying. I used to use weather.com because they had good local radar graphics. But even their radar graphics aren't worth the annoyance of their advertisments!
Now I exclusively use ADDS, a government provided service with no advertisments (which has some nice Java tools, too).
Yep. Brain can rewire, and it does it better the younger you are. Almost never gets it perfect, though. I'd bet money you never quite got back the same dexterity and sensitivity you had in your hand before your accident.
Dexterity-wise, I can't tell the difference. It was my right hand, and I still write with it, and it doesn't stop me from playing the piano. Nor playing Unreal Tourney:-]
I can tell the difference in sensation still if I really try and notice, because I can compare with my left hand. I can't really notice a difference in sensitivity, it's just some sensations feel slightly different than they do with the left hand.
One thing I have to wonder about is if the nerves grow up the 'wrong' pathway, and how long it will take the brain to sort it out.
When I was 15 years old, I put my hand through an old glass door while trying to open it. The glass sliced through my right wrist, severing pretty much everything (apart from about half of one tendon). I probably don't have to mention the large quantities of blood that went everywhere.
Six hours of microsurgery, and it was put back together again...followed by three months of three hours a day physiotherapy.
The thing I found fascinating was that when the median nerve [0] (the nerve that runs up the middle of your wrist and supplies your index finger to thumb and half your palm) is that some of the nerves went the wrong way. I could stroke part of one finger, and the sensation would come out somewhere else - like a different finger, or a different side of the finger. It was...well...very weird.
However, it didn't take long for the brain to fix it. After a short while, the brain learned the error, and sensations came out in the expected place.
It's one thing when this happens to fingers - but I wonder if you'd need some kind of "optotherapy" to coach the brain to fix the image problems you'd get with optical connections wired differently to how they were before.
[0] Movement of the fingers is controlled by the muscles in the forearm. The median nerve does sensation.
Apparently, the concept of writing a device driver without patching the kernel is still impossible even though Windows/Mac have been doing it for many years...
That's simply not true: you can load kernel modules without having to reboot (Windows always makes you reboot when you install a new device driver).
I use Linux as a server - and that's one of the BEST features of Linux on a remote server - it never needs to be rebooted. You can install new device drivers (kernel modules), new software - no reboot. Windows 2000 systems need a reboot just for installing new software.
With a server, the probability of the box rebooting is inversely proportional to your distance from the server, so not having to reboot even for device drivers is essential (especially since I live 40 miles from the box). Linux provides this, and has for at least five or six years.
Their business deal sounds pretty dire, especially since you can get dedicated hosting these days at a full-featured datacenter with backup power generation, and 300GB burstable bandwidth included for only $99 a month. All on a much fatter pipe too.
I live very close to JSC (and work opposite JSC). I have a lot of friends who work there as civil servants and contractors.
Sadly, the opinion of most at JSC is that we are at the sunset of manned space travel. The astronaut program has all but finished (no new astronaut selection). The ISS is effectively atrophying (it's basically just Mir 2 at the moment).
Fortunately, companies like Xcor Aerospace are developing reusable propulsion technology at a fraction of the price that governments do - so maybe there's a chance that space exploration will continue once NASA throws in the towel and reverts to being NACA.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not just the resolution - it'll do away with the awful artifacts that are present on even the best of today's digital cameras.
$1K for a digital SLR camera? More like $5K.
I don't have any idea why digital cameras that'll take my Nikon lenses are so ridiculously expensive. The reason I haven't bought a digital camera yet is that I can't stand the idea of spending more money on a camera which has the optics of a cheap compact camera than I did on my SLR camera. That and the very noticable artifacts present in most digital photographs (and the lack of being able to do things like leave the shutter open for long exposure shots).
I don't call shareware shareware, I call it EOW - Extreme Optimist Ware, because whoever's supplying it is an extreme optimist if they think they are going to get paid! Out of the millions of people who use mIRC, how many do you think have paid K. Mardam Bey anything? Probably not more than a handful.
Having said that I have registered shareware that I was a regular user of (most notably Remote Access BBS software), but then I discovered Unix and opensource software.
Pings are used to measure things in real life.
:-) Of course, the time taken to process the ping by the target etc. must be taken into account.
For example, DME (distance measuring equipment) in aviation. This works by equipment on the aircraft sending a signal to the ground-based DME station, which replies. The round-trip is measured, giving the distance from the station.
Maybe ICMP pings can be used to find out how much Cat 5 there is between you and the target machine
Actually, neither z/OS or z/VM is a Unix. VM isn't even remotely Unixy (can't speak for z/OS since I've never used it). It's adding a Unix-like OS to a machine that never had one.
Simple - HAVE limits. Say, for basic service, you get 1Gbyte transfer/month for $x. Silver service gets you 2Gbyte transfer/month for $x+some extra. Geek service gets you 5Gbyte/month for $x*2. That kind of thing. Let your users run servers or whatever they like - if they use lots of bandwidth, they pay extra. Therefore, someone with three computers at home but who hardly uses any resources doesn't get penalized, and someone who has their website on their home machine pays their fair share.
There are broadband ISPs who do it this way.
Go to Marjacq.com and click on the "Developer" menu and then "Frontier Devlopments" to read about it. Not much information there except that they are working on it.
Heh. I've never thought of Microsoft being a company full of Thargoids before :-) Maybe we ought to send a few INRA members with horribly beweaponed Asps into witch-space to sort them out...
Microsoft intended it to be pronounced C-sharp.
:-)
But in Britain, the # sign is known as a "hash" (not pound - pound is a cursive L that's used to indicate currency).
So to all non-US English speakers, C# will probably be known as C-Hash.
How ironic
I have no problem with agreeing with you there. Linux (or at least the distros I've run) is not a consumer-level OS. And I agree that Windows may well remain dominant. However, if Linux can have enough of a presence to prevent Microsoft from using its monopoly power to break cross-platform protocols, then we've won even if we only have 5% shar of the desktop (which is still many millions of users).
Off topic - but everyone seems to be lauding the praises of Apple as a potential MS buster on the desktop. Has everyone forgotten that Apple is a bigger control-freak than Microsoft? Given the opportunity, if the roles were reversed (Apple being the big monopolist), we'd be far worse off right now.
Hmmm. There should be a -1 moderation for "Just Plain Wrong".
The proof that Linux won't 'die' for the reasons you state already exists. I started using Linux as a teenage college student. The kernel was 0.12. Pretty much everyone who was a student when I was graduated about five years ago. But Linux is many orders of magnitude stronger and useful than it was five years ago!
Your comment is a bit like saying the human race will die off because people get old and die; neglecting that at the same time new people are born and replace the old ones who croak. There is a new generation of teenage first years at college who are doing what I was doing. The difference is that they are starting with RedHat or Debian and a 2.4.17 kernel, where I started with a 0.12 kernel, a copy of 'rawrite' and a root disk image. And there's a lot more Linux enthusiasts in the new generation of first-years than there was when I was a first year: many orders of magnitude more.
Whilst I agree by and large with the rest of your comment (and personally, I don't care if Linux makes it as a desktop OS or not; it'd be nice, but Linux will continue just fine without it and still makes a great server OS), I have to disagree with the 'non-trivial uninstall' bit. I use Debian, and I've found it extremely trivial to uninstall packages using 'apt'.
It would however be nice if stuff installed from source had a "make uninstall" to go with "make install"...
Well, in my ever so humble opinion...
You've probably already got a good enough track record that to continue doing what you're doing and continuing advancing won't really be a problem. BUT...
Don't just go for a fast-track degree - i.e. don't go for a degree 'cos you need a bit of paper. Do the three or four years. Don't just take classes on the narrow subject that your career is - use university as an opportunity to take a sabattical from the world of work and get a broader knowledge of more things.
Although I went to university after only working for one year, I decided not to take a course that narrowly focused on only technical subjects. I'm a software developer - yet I took a BA degree, not a BSc.
I really enjoyed university, and I'm glad I didn't just race through on a fast track.
Software like Binkley also deserves a mention. Ever log onto a FidoNet BBS? The first thing you were likely to see was the BinkleyTerm version information.
:-)
BinkleyTerm (and similar) was the bit that shunted FidoNet Netmail and Echomail messages from BBS to BBS. My memory of it is a little hazy now (well, it was 10 years ago!) but I remember it was wrapped in a vile batch file that looked at the exit code to decide what to do next (launch the BBS or get Echomail etc.)
My BBS was never popular, but it was always fun, and being part of FidoNet made it a lot more interesting. 2:252/204, you'll be sadly missed
(It was a 386/16 with a whopping 2.5MB RAM and DesqView as the multitasker).
Actually, he did. He mentioned that the ISP was run by Christians, who wanted to enforce Christian ethics. Christian ethics encompass more things than filesharing (my last (dialup) ISP got bought by a Christian ISP, which without notice started 'filtering' our access to sites based on various flawed net-nanny type technologies). But that's a whole different discussion which I said I wasn't going to get into, and I won't. ISPs want to be common carriers. They can't have their cake and eat it too. Either they are common carriers and simply sell bandwidth, or they are 'net police.
file-sharing is blatantly illegal,
Since when? I share hundreds of files from my server [0]. None of them are illegal for me to share.
Instead of banning particular things (which could make the ISP liable for user's actions in the eyes of a court, instead of merely a common carrier), why don't they instead give some hard figures about how much bandwidth use is "acceptable"? Why not say something like x GB/month transfer is acceptable use instead of indiscriminately blocking ports in a piecemeal fashion? Dedicated hosting providers do it this way - why can't cable modem/DSL providers do it that way?
Seems like RoadRunner cable manage OK without making an assinine TOS or blocking hundreds of ports. (Wonder what this ISP's port blocking does to programs that assigns ports randomly?)
Buy your own bandwidth
I already do thank you very much. 600GB/month worth of transfer at a data centre with 1.6Gbit/second worth of connection.
[0] My server doesn't run at the end of a cable modem.
I'll leave the comments about your employer's religion and the ethics of imposing their morals on other people alone in this post...
:-]
It seems like your company believes the Internet *is* port 80. If that's so, well - quite frankly, broadband is pretty pointless. Web browsing can be done on a cheap 56K link.
High-bandwidth applications ARE the killer app for broadband. If you don't like people actually using more than what a 56K user will use, you're defeating the entire object of broadband. With all those ports you block, you probably break a lot of games too (the real reason I use broadband is for games. I pay for dedicated hosting for servers i.e. real bandwidth). I'm so glad that RoadRunner is my ISP, they actually seem to realise what broadband is actually for.
Next you'll be telling us that you're blocking FTP because it uses too much bandwidth. And blocking ssh because people might use it to tunnel some of the ports you block.
If I ever write a program that needs a bit of bandwidth, it's going to be an apache module and run on port 80 so you can't block it
I have the capability to run an IRC server if I really wanted. I enjoy using irc (#alt.fan.elite on Starchat), and I have met good friends through IRC (in real life, as in go out have a beer etc) but as for running a server, I've decided that I'd rather try skiing through a revolving door before I ever bothered running an IRC server.
/that/ much bandwidth. But one DDoS attack could easily put you into excess bandwidth charges - as well as knocking your server offline.
/ignore if a user was being a pain in the ass). In our channel, we solve it the other way - everyone gets ops. It runs remarkably smoothly that way.
Why? Firstly, the politics. IRC is supposed to be fun, but the politics amongst the routing teams, opers, network admins etc. is just lame. Half of the friggin' admins like to think they are God.
Secondly, running an IRC server is like painting a huge DDoS bullseye on your server. Normally, IRC doesn't take up
IRC is supposed to be fun but the combination of lame admins and lame lusers make it an unpleasant chore. So I'll stick to being a mere user in an out of the way channel that's mode +s.
As for Starchat, at least they've done some things to protect themselves from DDoS attacks - they've made it non-trivial to find out the actual names of all the servers and the way they are linked (/map etc. are disabled), IP addresses are masked so users won't get DDoSed, ChanServ and NickServ are implemented. StarChat's still relatively small so they aren't the big DDoS target the large networks are. But even with this network, there's more than enough lameness to go around.
Looking at the bigger networks - look at the application process for adding your server to DALnet. The process seems about as fun as an IRS tax audit. Half the time, the IRC networks are their own worst enemies. I think a lot of the problems with IRC could be solved if there was no such thing as ops (instead, server-side
According to Symantec.com, it was Visual Basic.
The more recent, more annoying ads are the reason I've stopped using weather.com. I like the site, but the ads are just too annoying.
I have no objection to advertisments, but I do have an objection to them if they are annoying. I used to use weather.com because they had good local radar graphics. But even their radar graphics aren't worth the annoyance of their advertisments!
Now I exclusively use ADDS, a government provided service with no advertisments (which has some nice Java tools, too).
Dexterity-wise, I can't tell the difference. It was my right hand, and I still write with it, and it doesn't stop me from playing the piano. Nor playing Unreal Tourney :-]
I can tell the difference in sensation still if I really try and notice, because I can compare with my left hand. I can't really notice a difference in sensitivity, it's just some sensations feel slightly different than they do with the left hand.
One thing I have to wonder about is if the nerves grow up the 'wrong' pathway, and how long it will take the brain to sort it out.
When I was 15 years old, I put my hand through an old glass door while trying to open it. The glass sliced through my right wrist, severing pretty much everything (apart from about half of one tendon). I probably don't have to mention the large quantities of blood that went everywhere.
Six hours of microsurgery, and it was put back together again...followed by three months of three hours a day physiotherapy.
The thing I found fascinating was that when the median nerve [0] (the nerve that runs up the middle of your wrist and supplies your index finger to thumb and half your palm) is that some of the nerves went the wrong way. I could stroke part of one finger, and the sensation would come out somewhere else - like a different finger, or a different side of the finger. It was...well...very weird.
However, it didn't take long for the brain to fix it. After a short while, the brain learned the error, and sensations came out in the expected place.
It's one thing when this happens to fingers - but I wonder if you'd need some kind of "optotherapy" to coach the brain to fix the image problems you'd get with optical connections wired differently to how they were before.
[0] Movement of the fingers is controlled by the muscles in the forearm. The median nerve does sensation.
That's simply not true: you can load kernel modules without having to reboot (Windows always makes you reboot when you install a new device driver).
I use Linux as a server - and that's one of the BEST features of Linux on a remote server - it never needs to be rebooted. You can install new device drivers (kernel modules), new software - no reboot. Windows 2000 systems need a reboot just for installing new software.
With a server, the probability of the box rebooting is inversely proportional to your distance from the server, so not having to reboot even for device drivers is essential (especially since I live 40 miles from the box). Linux provides this, and has for at least five or six years.
Their business deal sounds pretty dire, especially since you can get dedicated hosting these days at a full-featured datacenter with backup power generation, and 300GB burstable bandwidth included for only $99 a month. All on a much fatter pipe too.
Sadly, the opinion of most at JSC is that we are at the sunset of manned space travel. The astronaut program has all but finished (no new astronaut selection). The ISS is effectively atrophying (it's basically just Mir 2 at the moment).
Fortunately, companies like Xcor Aerospace are developing reusable propulsion technology at a fraction of the price that governments do - so maybe there's a chance that space exploration will continue once NASA throws in the towel and reverts to being NACA.
Methane, whilst indeed flammable, is odourless. The stink from farts is caused by things other than the methane gas.