Right now, Verizon, the largest local telephone company in the country (and therefore the largest owner and operator of the central offices which handle DSL traffic) is cheating DSL customers out of bandwidth. Right now, my Covad ADSL connection rated at 608kbps/128kbps performs at 108/109. Furthermore, as reported in this DSLReports article, Verizon is closing down its DSL Call Center on March 31. This center "employs over 500 people in DSL sales, customer care, and technical support," and yet Verizon still runs away from its disgruntled customers like a scared horse. CLECs (Competitive Local Exchange Carriers) which use Verizon's central offices to serve their customers, have reported that Verizon shuts off data pipelines and feigns equipment failures as an anti-competitive measure (one such "Denial of Service" attack was reported by 2600.com, whose website was effectively shut out by Verizon, whose technicians bumbled about like drunkards, leaving 2600.com in the dark for four days [in that time, they missed a debate with Jack Valenti at Harvard, and their Internet store experienced massive lost revenues]).
In closing, this is my question to David Farber: When will the FCC begin strict regulation of Digital Subscriber Lines? And when will Verizon be held accountable for their nefarious acts? (Recently, a class action suit against Verizon was initiated on behalf of Verizon DSL customers)
The very concept of content protection as it exists today is wrong. It is merely a method of thought control at the lowest level possible: the file. You can't take a screenshot of a DVD movie because the publishers (not the director or the producer, the publishing company) doesn't find it in its best profitability interests to allow users to take full-quality screenshots. When DeCSS was released to the masses, the entire master plan of the MPAA fell apart; they could no longer be the exclusive provider of motion picture content. People started compressing the DeCSSed.VOB files into DivX or VCD, and users were downloading the files, even though it took considerably more time to do so than it would to walk to the local video store and buy the title. Why did they bother waiting hours (and sometimes even days) just to watch a movie? Simple: because they didn't have to pay for it, and therefore the MPAA is stiffed out of $7 of royalties.
The same thing happens for music, only worse: MP3 files take much less time at all to download (on Broadband/DSL, it takes less than an hour to download an entire album, given a reliable server). Bertelsmann AG saw this and purchased Napster while changing Napster's terms to include a flat rate fee. Many Napster users reluctantly complied, but others flat-out refused to pay, and therefore left Napster.
Be warned, the images of the "starving musician" and the "starving movie producer" are just facades, used as an attempt to establish rationality in the exorbitant prices of CDs and movies. Personally, I don't mind paying for movies, but when it comes to music, that's a world full of extortion. The members of the RIAA and the MPAA seem to have a vacuum hose stuck in the pockets of the consumers, sucking out every dime of loose change accumulated. The consumers thoughtlessly comply, assuming that they'll be given a worthwhile service when, in fact, the music that they're paying for is worth barely more than the aluminum used to make the CDs. The latest example is Metallica; before Lars Ulrich started whining about the Napster situation, Metallica had a huge fan base. Now, many are defecting, and even more are downloading Metallica songs by other means (Gnutella, FTP, etc.).
In this brave new world where any form of media can be compressed into files less than 1/10th of the original raw file (contemporary art has JPEG, music has MP3, movies have DivX), the respective industries can't cope with the tremendous revenue loss. However, I'm not crying for them; I'd rather see the media giants die like the leeches they are.
With the migration to BSD, there's gonna be a whole lot of segfaults. This raises another question: in Linux, when X segfaults, it bumps back to text mode and displays, "Segmentation Fault. Core Dumped." But what will OSX fall back to? That debug screen that you get when you press that button next to the reset button? I've pressed that button, and the only way I've gotten out of debug mode is to restart the whole damn thing.
Re:Ever deathmatched in Q3 with Lucy?
on
Quake For The iPaq
·
· Score: 1
Sometimes, she says, "Wow, is that a rocket launcher in your pocket?"
alias, Idealab. They've consulted with many companies that made it to this nefarious list. Also, Idealab has a tendency of making smarmy slogans/logos/names, so avoid them like a leper.
My family is paying $60 per month for AT&T analog cable (not digital, ANALOG), and the image quality still isn't perfect. Add to that the future rate hikes due to NESN (a sports broadcasting channel owned jointly by the Bruins and the Red Sox) becoming standard in basic cable, and we've got a big problem.
Plus, what the hell am I going to do with the 13" black-and-white Magnetbox once HDTV rolls by? I guess I'll have to connect my NES to it (yes, the old-school, 8-bit NES).
And blocking port 25 would block all mail, not just spam. So no mail could happen
Exactly why people are speaking out against blocking port 25. It takes away their right to use other e-mail providers through SMTP. IMHO That is an infringement on an Internet User's basic rights. I sincerely think that a "Netizen's Bill of Rights" should be written and put into law so that things like this don't happen.
They both feed the populace exactly what they like to hear, and they don't worry about the consequences. For Kissle, the consequences are only confined to the latrine, but for Heise, there is no physical bound for the consequences of his one-sided articles (which I label, properly, propaganda).
In fact, I tried submitting this one to Slashdot [2001-01-08 16:48:31 Earthlink blocks UDP port 25 (articles,censorship) (rejected)]. The excuse is that blocking port 25 allows the ISP to crack down on spam. The average spammer uses a proggie to send hundreds of spam e-mails every hour, so why don't they just monitor the SMTP transfers per hour and then draw their own conclusions?
Well, it's stuck on my Dad's Pentium 166 (and his 386SX; the P166 was a Father's day 1999 present in order to get him out of DOS 3.3). That was a great program for its time. I don't know what good it'll do to have a text-mode word processor, but go ahead and try porting it.
Slashdot Mirror
In closing, this is my question to David Farber: When will the FCC begin strict regulation of Digital Subscriber Lines? And when will Verizon be held accountable for their nefarious acts?
(Recently, a class action suit against Verizon was initiated on behalf of Verizon DSL customers)
The same thing happens for music, only worse: MP3 files take much less time at all to download (on Broadband/DSL, it takes less than an hour to download an entire album, given a reliable server). Bertelsmann AG saw this and purchased Napster while changing Napster's terms to include a flat rate fee. Many Napster users reluctantly complied, but others flat-out refused to pay, and therefore left Napster.
Be warned, the images of the "starving musician" and the "starving movie producer" are just facades, used as an attempt to establish rationality in the exorbitant prices of CDs and movies. Personally, I don't mind paying for movies, but when it comes to music, that's a world full of extortion. The members of the RIAA and the MPAA seem to have a vacuum hose stuck in the pockets of the consumers, sucking out every dime of loose change accumulated. The consumers thoughtlessly comply, assuming that they'll be given a worthwhile service when, in fact, the music that they're paying for is worth barely more than the aluminum used to make the CDs. The latest example is Metallica; before Lars Ulrich started whining about the Napster situation, Metallica had a huge fan base. Now, many are defecting, and even more are downloading Metallica songs by other means (Gnutella, FTP, etc.).
In this brave new world where any form of media can be compressed into files less than 1/10th of the original raw file (contemporary art has JPEG, music has MP3, movies have DivX), the respective industries can't cope with the tremendous revenue loss. However, I'm not crying for them; I'd rather see the media giants die like the leeches they are.
With the migration to BSD, there's gonna be a whole lot of segfaults. This raises another question: in Linux, when X segfaults, it bumps back to text mode and displays, "Segmentation Fault. Core Dumped." But what will OSX fall back to? That debug screen that you get when you press that button next to the reset button? I've pressed that button, and the only way I've gotten out of debug mode is to restart the whole damn thing.
Sometimes, she says, "Wow, is that a rocket launcher in your pocket?"
Yup, recognize that scene like it was my hometown.
alias, Idealab. They've consulted with many companies that made it to this nefarious list. Also, Idealab has a tendency of making smarmy slogans/logos/names, so avoid them like a leper.
When it comes to cell phones in cars, I have only one policy: Drive Now, Talk Later!
Plus, what the hell am I going to do with the 13" black-and-white Magnetbox once HDTV rolls by? I guess I'll have to connect my NES to it (yes, the old-school, 8-bit NES).
If you value your Quake skills, DO NOT get a trackball. An optical USB mouse is much better.
Heh, funny you should bring that up. I quit that job.
"German" refers to the origin.
Pretty soon, we'll all be speaking like the kids in South Park after the "Chin-Pokomon" incident.
Slashdot trolls are so infatuated with the concept of trolling, that they don't stop to check their grammar.
Okay, so it's TCP port 25. I'm sorry, I got confused.
Exactly why people are speaking out against blocking port 25. It takes away their right to use other e-mail providers through SMTP. IMHO That is an infringement on an Internet User's basic rights. I sincerely think that a "Netizen's Bill of Rights" should be written and put into law so that things like this don't happen.
They both feed the populace exactly what they like to hear, and they don't worry about the consequences. For Kissle, the consequences are only confined to the latrine, but for Heise, there is no physical bound for the consequences of his one-sided articles (which I label, properly, propaganda).
In fact, I tried submitting this one to Slashdot [2001-01-08 16:48:31 Earthlink blocks UDP port 25 (articles,censorship) (rejected)]. The excuse is that blocking port 25 allows the ISP to crack down on spam. The average spammer uses a proggie to send hundreds of spam e-mails every hour, so why don't they just monitor the SMTP transfers per hour and then draw their own conclusions?
Well, it's stuck on my Dad's Pentium 166 (and his 386SX; the P166 was a Father's day 1999 present in order to get him out of DOS 3.3). That was a great program for its time. I don't know what good it'll do to have a text-mode word processor, but go ahead and try porting it.
10 * 100 trillion = 1 quadrillion.
Read a little closer next time.
Richard M. Stallman! Say it! Say it!
No surprise about what Rob Lowe or the fictional Dirk Diggler would insure, heh.
Oh well, I won't get modded down for being long-winded.
"The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected."
-- The Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd Edition, June 1972
If DeCSS is opened in a wave editor as raw data and played back on a sound card, does it make a copyrightable sound?
And that would be one quadrillion. Come on, don't be so afraid to say quadrillion. I know you can.