Having read many of the posts here, and being a manager at a fair-sized company who does a lot of hiring, I thought I'd go ahead and comment.
First, sorry to do this, but your degree means nothing to me. Fifteen years ago, I cared about it. But like most managers, I learned a long time ago, that colleges don't impart practical knowledge to graduates any more, and I need boots on the ground, not heads in the clouds. Recent college grads want to start at the top, want more money than they are worth, and often have attitudes that annoy me.
I'm not looking for a person that will require 6-12 months to get up to speed (at minimum), and provides me with no assurance they will ever be an asset to my teams. I'm sure as hell not going to pay you more than entry level - because you are an entry level guy.
I do hire for entry level positions though. And sometimes I'll take a chance on you if:
1. You want it. If I get the sense that you think you are too good for the job, I'll pass you by for the person that will be grateful to have it. I need people that are clueful, and in the career business for the long haul. I'm not going to hire you if I get the sense you'll jump ship at the first opportunity. I started life as a PC tech. Pay your dues.
2. You're presentable. It makes me look bad, to have folks working for me that look like college dorm rats. Wear a suit to interviews.
3. You're bright. You'll be interviewed and tested with real world problems. It's pretty easy to spot the clueless, somewhat harder to tell the difference between "sort of knows it" and "owns it". 85% of the people who apply for an IT job have no idea how to do it, in my experience. This is less important in an entry level job - you know you're getting a beginner. But in a skilled position, it's fundamental.
4. You're not a pain. I need people that can get along well with their co-workers. If I have to waste time arbitrating disputes involving you, settling the ruffled feathers of another department head, or explaining your performance/appearance/goofy solution to a problem, you will be impacting my productivity.
Lastly, I saw several replies referring to long periods of unemployment after school, while you looked for work. I'll say, that this would attract my attention. But I'd consider why. If you're some clueless kid mooching off your parents because you can't find a job that's good enough for you, then I don't want you.
I see quite a few posters here that seem to think the Internet bubble is still inflating. Nobody is hiring kids anymore and making them executives. The last entry level networking job I posted received 75 applicants. Probably half of those had college degrees. The person I hired had no degree, and had started her career as a paralegal in a big law firm. They moved her into IT because she could get it done, and because she liked it. Aptitude is where you find it.
In reality, Mr. Pickens is certainly promoting wind power, but not in the way you think.
In Texas, where his proposed farms are located, there is a proceding under way at the PUC to determine how large an investment in transmission lines, built to get all that wind power back to consumers, can be charged to electric consumers. In other words, how much Texan's electric bills are going to go up.
Texas currently has something like 9 billion in transmission line assets. The proposed expansion? About 9 billion dollars.
It takes a lot of salesmanship to push something like this through. Pickens is hooting about how wonderful wind power is, and how much we need it, because he wants ratepayers in Dallas and Houston to pay the enormous costs of getting his electricity to market.
Is wind power good? Sure!
Is paying another $50 a month on your bill - before you ever even start paying for the electricity itself, to add 2 or 3 percent more (unreliable) watts to the grid, and mainly make Pickens richer good?
This would be more interesting, if a single word of it were true. But it isn't. It's the PR machine of AT&T at work.
The reality is more obvious, and certainly clear to anyone in the business of working with the FCC. This is about the triple play.
First, know this. Municipalities, by Federal and State law, cannot grant an exclusive franchise agreement (which is just a license to use local rights of way, in return for compensation to the municipality) to any telecommunications or cable provider, under any circumstances, and this has been the law for more than 20 years. To decry Cities for granting monopolies to cable companies (or phone companies) is simply ignorance of the truth. In fact, the converse is true - Cities have been trying in vain for many years to lure in other television and telco providers to no effect. The cost of entry is just too high (it takes a ton of money to build and maintain any kind of hard wire plant), and the entrenched industries have been too successful in getting doublespeak bills (like the referenced FCC action) passed.
What cities do do, is to collect useage fees (called franchise fees) from companies who use public property to make money. After all, the public has invested trillions of dollars buying rights-of-way over the years, and does deserve to be compensated when someone else wants to make (big) money using it. But of course, none of these companies likes to pay - so they work hard to get this cost eliminated, in an amazing variety of ways.
What this article ignores, is that this is the second FCC action on this matter. In the first action, the FCC acted to overrule Cities in the management of their rights-of-way, and they did so at the behest of AT&T and Verizon, who want very badly to sell Cable Television service over their own systems - including the new fiber plant they are busy laying in. And oh, by the way, the conned the FCC into screwing the cable companies blue - by relieving themselves (the telcos) of the obligations cable companies have had to pay, and still have to pay, in order to use all that valuable land to sell TV channels. So, Time Warner is placed at a massive economic disadvantage versus the Telcos. The FCC calls this "lowering the barriers to entry". I think it might more accurately be termed "lets give the Telcos their monopoly back, by killing the cable companies".
Of course, the Cable companies, being much aggrieved by the first action, immediately (along with Cities all across America who don't want to be forced to raise property taxes) filed suit. And to even the most casual observer, it is clear that the FCC violated the law and greatly exceeded their statuatory authority in passing the first measure. So, the second measure was hastily adopted, in hopes of giving the Cable companies enough of a bone, to get them out of court - after all, the cable companies enjoy screwing taxpayers too.
It's one of those deals where you have to know how things really work, in order to understand the play being done here. Not many do. That's why the FCC might get away with it. Or, the courts could side with the Cities, in which case the Telcos would have to play fair on their way in. But no one spends money like they do. That's why we have state legislatures passing bills written by Ma Bell attorneys all over the country now, and why the FCC is so eager to pass their pet rules.
One thing is certain - it isn't going to encourage competition. Neither will it encourage lower rates (monopolies just don't play that way).
It sure is interesting how easily these big companies can control the media though isn't it. It's also interesting how readily most people buy into these big lies. Makes you wonder about the rest of the "news", doesn't it?
1. If they need control, what do they plan to change?
2. Who's going to make me change the root.cache on my nameservers? Because until I do, Euro roots don't and won't exist for my users.
As admins, control of the Internet goes to those we route to, and those roots we cache. If Euro server admins go along with this power grab and split the namespace by changing their root caches, that's their call I guess. But I can't see American operators joining them, or US Telcos siding with the EU.
The real power is still the root.cache file. I won't be pointing to the EU/UN.
No matter what your political leaning, we should all be disturbed by one thing. Michael Moore knows one truth, and knows it well, and exploits it to advantage with this film:
A great many people simply don't have the intellectual capacity to view any film (or TV show, or newspaper article) with an adequate amount of skepticism. Consequently, they accept anything presented to them in such a medium as authoritative, and therefore truth.
Does this advance the quality of political debate?
Funny stuff
on
Hack Your Car
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· Score: 1, Interesting
There are a number of funny things about this article, which breathlessly "exposes" car chipping which has been going on for more than 10 years. *yawn* But perhaps the funniest thing of all, is the reaction of the Slashdotters here, who by and large have reacted with horror that anyone dared modify a computer controlling a car. Oh my!
Could it truly be, that geeks draw the line at anything with real grease on it? Or does the courage to hack extend only as far as tearing up an Xbox in order to brag about running linux on it? Or pestering some working sysadmin trying to earn a living by running a few servers for his boss? woo. Boys play games, Men build machines.
Here's the thing - by and large, all that ECU really does is exactly the same thing a carburator and distributor cap used to do. No more, and no less. Oh sure, maybe it turns on a fan to bring the water temp down a bit, or implements a rev limiter. But for someone who understands the way a car runs (read, any 8th grade dropout working at your local car dealer), with a bit of programming experience, there's nothing magical, intimidating, or even particularly challenging about rolling your own.
Modding chips, is not rolling your own. That's just poking a few new hex values in a two-dimensional array stored in an eprom. array(i,j) of Injectorsquirtduration, AmountofAir. Simple as that. Any fool can do it, and many do. It's essentially the exact same thing as rejetting a carb, or turning the airscrew. No biggie.
Rolling your own means starting with a computer of some sort, putting an OS on it, and writing code that reads a lot of sensor data, and outputs some voltages, all largely to simulate a distributor cap and carb. The hardest part, is figuring out the voltages and what they signify from the various sensors (manifold absolute pressure, throttle position, O2, water temp, air temp, cam (or crank) position (the clock), etc.)
I'm running an MS-AVR microcontroller, using code I modified and compiled myself - on linux, using GCC. My car runs like a top. I had hella fun doing it. Beats modding some lame game box big time. And oh yeah - My car runs on Open source:)
Here's one example of a DIY ecu.
Having read many of the posts here, I find a great deal of mis-information being bandied about, as well as a general lack of understanding as to the current situation involving Muni nets.
First, the RCOC's (Regional Bell Operating Companies) have lobbied furiously against the creation of these networks. Cable has lobbied too, but cable companies have very little influence in statehouses and capital hill, as compared to the RBOCs, which weild enormous lobbying power, especially at the state level. As a result of this all-out lobbying effort, many states flatly prohibit municipalities from building any sort of network which will compete in any way against an RBOC.
Cities have fought back, however. Many towns, where broadband or even basic cable television service are sorely lacking or nonexistent, want to build these networks. There are several lawsuits right now seeking to overturn restrictive state laws by citing a provision in the Telecom Act of 96 which provides that no state may enact law which prohibits, or has the effect of prohibiting the ability of "any entity" from providing telecom service. The FCC, ever beholden to the RBOCs, ruled originally that "any entity" did not include municipal governments, as a sop to telcos who feared taxpayers might just say "screw this, lets build our own". However, there are strong signs that a federal appelate court will overrule the FCC, and force states to allow muni's to start building nets, if taxpayers (us) vote to do so.
The fundamental question is: do we have the right to decide to provide our own?
Municipal governments provide 90% of direct government benefits, to most citizens. The provide streets, street signs, trash pickup, water service, maintain zoning standards, handle legalities like deeds and property matters, and intercede on behalf of citizens in a great many matters. It is an incontrovertible fact, that municipal governments are the best, most effective, and most efficient segment of our democratic system of government here in the US.
Even so, very few people bother to take notice of what your local city government is doing (which no doubt contributes to their efficiency).
I've seen several people here state, that City Governments have no experience with IT, are clueless, incapable, etc. This is flatly false.
City governments are no different than any other large company these days, and all of them larger than about 30,000 population have IT departments. The people that work in those departments often face daunting challenges, as the perils of the annual budget year cycle, and requirements for "low bid" purchases, force them to try and operate non-homogenous networks. They don't have the luxury of saying "100% company X" on anything. IT people that can keep networks like that running, must have skillsets that span very wide areas of knowledge.
And what the RBOCs fear most: Muni's have experienced and expert people in the tough areas of network operation already in place. Consider this: Munis regulate every inch of right-of-way in the "last mile", because they own it. Their people are more familiar with it than anyone, anywhere. Munis also have experts on telco regulation on staff, to deal with franchise agreements, rate regulation, etc. Muni's have contruction inspectors, log-standing relationships with Contractors, and experience in utility location/colocation. And Muni's have strong IT staff, as a rule.
There's one last thing to consider. Are you pissed at the service you recieve from your telco or cable company? Whatyougonnadoaboutit? Answer: not much you can do.
But consider - if your local goverment were your provider, what could you do then? Vote. Run for City Council. Local politics is personal folks - and unlike national politics, your personal problems are likely shared by your next-door neighbor. You as an individual can easily effect the outcome of a City Council election. Think on that, as you consider whether you're likely to get better service from a Muni telco.
I've read a lot of articles and posts on this subject, but few that seemed to really understand the situation as it exists today.
In 1996, Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which attempted to promote competition among carriers by forcing LEC's (Local Exchange Carriers) to resell access to their local loops to competing carriers and isps (called CLECS). Congress vested the authority to determine the rate at which these loop inputs were sold with State public utility commissions. It took about a year and a half for all the PUC's to get these rates set, and most of them are still grappling with rules to determine how and in what manner the interconnection can actually occur. Most States set the discount rate on a loop at from 17%-20%.
That was on the residential side. Virtually no one was interested. A few line resellers emerged, essentially re-packaging local loops under their own brand names, but the margin was too small, to bother with going after the residential market for voice. Covad, IP Technologies, and Rythms were notable exceptions, but their business was based on DSL sales - an area that Bell companies were clearly dragging their feet on (since sales there clobbered their highly lucrative DS1 (T1) business.) However, when the DSL resellers got going, the Bells (LECS) responded with aggressive DSL rollouts, usually at loss-leader pricing, which essentially sucked the life out of the Covads before they could begin to realize much revenue. However, the lucrative market for business service remained. In that market, local LECs were hideously overcharging for bandwidth (and still do), and fairly small construction projects could reach multiple companies fairly quickly.
So a lot of CLECS charged forward, building out fiber in metropolitan areas on speculation. Almost none of them built to serve the residential market. Instead, they expected to "cherry pick" big business accounts, by offering rates on fiber connectivity much cheaper than the LECs were offering (and most LECs were still selling only copper pairs, at DS1-DS3 speeds).
Unfortunately, the CLECS didn't bother to keep track of what their competitors were doing. So in many cities, 10 and 20 clecs, would lay lines to reach the same customer areas. It may seem overly simple to you, but the fact is, most companies contract with one company for Internet service. That left an awful lot of fiber laying around unused, and earning no revenue, for the venture capitalists that gambled their dollars on fiber expansions. It's still there, and right about now, many of them are beginning to panic. Chapter 11's and 13's are being filed, even as we speak.
That's a sort of simplified explanation, but it should immediately point to why the long-haul networks aren't getting used. Because the short-haul networks that they expected to service, aren't being used either. Gotta sell the clients first.
On the residential side, it's simply death by strangulation.
The cable companies currently own the high-speed to the home market, because their nets were the cheapest to equip, and because they moved fully two years before the phone companies did. The cable companies also ejoy almost complete freedom from any regulatory restraints (now you know why you sit on hold 3 hours), while the DSL market is still heavily regulated. The phone companies, are playing catchup. And the poor DSL CLECS, are still screwed trying to get their products installed, fighting with the LECS over what kind of equipment they can install, at what rate, etc, in the State PUCs. Add to that the "difficulty" the LECs are having hooking their work order systems up with CLEC's order systems, squabbles over line standards, confusion over who does what and when, and you have a sure-thing recipe. At the PUC's, the armies of lawyers the Bell companies have sent in to every rulemaking, have turned every question into a long-running evidentiary process, presumably in the expectation that the CLECS won't have the resources to hold out. Correct assumption, I suppose. Proof, that the Lawyer is once again mightier than the law.
A couple of interesting things to watch on the legal scene - a 9th circuit ruling that cable modems were in fact a "telecom service" as opposed to a "cable service" conflicts directly with a 5th circuit ruling (or was it 4th) to the contrary. So expect the issue to be decided by the Supremes soon. If Cable companies are required to open up their networks for resale, watch for the LECs to play some really nasty games in order to bring down the profits the Cable companies are currently receiving.
In another arena, keep an eye on the Dingell-Tauzin bill, which proves (as if we really needed the proof) yet again, that there's no such thing as a congressman that can't be bought outright by a phone company. That bill makes it even easier for the LECs to suck the life out of the CLECs, and also simplifies the task for the LECs of strangling the cable companies in a mountain of paper, while evading paper themselves. You just thought @Home sucked now. Give it a couple of years.
The truth is, there's almost no really good news, on the Telco front for Internet users. If the Copyright and Content wars don't ruin it for you on the one side, the Telco's will bleed you dry on the other. Both sides have bought all the congressmen they need to get the job done. Just a matter of waiting now. If Hollywood and Bell have their way, we'll all be back to watching TV again in under 5 years.
I'm left somewhat stunned by some of the responses I've read here. Although the Slashdot community often revels in their "cluefulness" in the face of FUD from Microsoft, goofy patents, or dumb legislation, this issue shows that Slashdotters are no more immune to ignorance, than anyone else.
It seems a good many people are desperately trying to apply their favorite arguements from other issues onto a situation to which they flatly do not apply. This is not a security issue. There is no system compromise, nor privacy invasion. So bleating "security through obscurity" arguments are simply non-sequitor attempts to bring a "with-it" argument into a debate where it does not apply. Neither does the argument that online games are somehow flawed, becuase a driver *can* bypass the rendering code of the game. By arguing such, you simply demonstrate that you do not understand how such mechanisms work.
Unless we want to limit gameservers to processing engines vastly in excess of the typical linux box, or nt server, it simply isn't practical to attempt to render a scene according to a viewpoint at the server - because the clients, all 16, 32, or 64 of them are constantly moving, and not always in predictable ways. That scene data has to be computed at the client, because it's simply not practical to do it elsewhere.
But what really floors me, is that some of you would defend a company who have deliberately embraced unethical behavior and made it a selling point of their product.
Understanding this situation, requires first a basic understanding of the real issues.
First, competitive online gaming is currently being pursued by a lot of people. They join leagues like the OGL and compete in games against other players and teams. There are hundreds of thousands of people doing this now. By they have a huge achilles heel. Online games are vulnerable to cheating, and unlike offline sports, it is hugely difficult to verify that a person is playing an honest game.
So we must live under the honor system. we have no choice but to *trust* that our opponents are playing an honest game. And indeed, the vast majority do. But those who do not, are hard to catch. But until now, the cheats available have been crude, and usually detectable at some level, or preventable by server operators. Most are fairly crude hacks, and don't work all that well anyway. But now, here comes Asus - and designs a driver whose express purpose is to help people cheat. And so, the cheaters now have a nice, professionally developed, virtually undetectable means by which to cheat, and there is basically no way in which to stop them, or ensure you are getting a fair game now.
Now some of you have said "but these drivers might be useful for other purposes, like development, etc.". Maybe they are. But that's not what Asus coded them for, or is selling them as. They are marketing these drivers expressely to help people do something morally wrong. Cheating other people. Asus is a Corporation without ethical standards, for whom the promotion of unethical, shitty behavior is fine if it makes them money. They absolutely represent the worst of what Corporatism can produce. Yet - slashdotters are defending these dirtbags. Irony.
There is no rational argument, which will make this right. And objecting to their despicable business practices, and this product which appeals to the very worst human failings, is hardly whining. Rather, it is simply well justified righteous indignation. And gamers are completely justified in carrying the good fight to them.
Does cheating happen? yes. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't fight it at every opportunity. Cancer happens too - yet no one says "it's going to happen anyway, so just let the victims die".
Some of you folks need to think this issue through a little more fully.
>>The difficulty of guidance and control is overrated.
I think that rather depends, on whether we are discussing a "proof of concept" vehicle tethered to the ground, or a vehicle with sufficient thrust and mass to achieve an altitude deserving of interest. Perhaps the article misstated the (ultimate) goal of manned VTVL flight using low-cost peroxide motors, I assumed it had not.
However, even with a "low and slow" craft, I wouldn't consider the control system necessary to maintain stable flight simple. Even minor angular velocities in a fixed motor craft can be difficult to deal with, and require robust systems to deal with them appropriately. Having experimented in the past with telemetry guidance based on fin deflection, I can attest how readily (and quickly) a rocket powered vehicle becomes a lawndart. Given the difficulties in maintaining thrust accross multiple motors (especially motors subject to flow deviations due to fluid effects, corrosive effects of H2O2 on metallic surfaces (including stainless), etc), simple, it ain't gonna be.
Regardless, I'm keenly interested in such projects, and look forward to reading reports of your progress (assuming the site ever gets un-slashdotted). I have a god-awful yen to begin messing about with a bi-fuel craft myself.
As a rocketry (and Quake) buff myself, I looked over John's pages with a great deal of interest. The project seems rather ambitious, particularly with regards to the VTOL aspects of it. However, I'm curious whether VTOL can be reasonably obtained using presurized monofuel rockets, and completely skeptical that it can be accomplished using any form of potentiometer (joystick) control. It occurs to me that there are (at least) several significant obstacles to overcome.
1. Providing 3-axis stability, given a limited number of vertical (or tangential) thrust vectors, as opposed to an almost unlimited number of external de-stabilizing forces.
2. CP changes caused by the expulsion of fuel
3. Difficulty in calibrating throttle response combined with slow control input/response cycles (made that much worse by the inherent latency of telemetry transmission)
I'd guess, that their ultimate intent is to provide some form of on-board stabilization system, with off-board control primarily manipulating the vehicles post-balance trajectory, while the vehicle itself controls pitch,roll, and yaw through some form of accelerometer feedback mechanism. The mathematics necessary for manipulating all those angular differentials ought to be enough to give even John a trial or three. Non-trivial.
The design of the vehicle itself should be interesting as well, since ideally, you'd want all the motors in the same plane with the CP - which unfortunately causes a wider sectional, and increases drag, thus increasing the fuel and power requirements.
Sounds like something that would be a lot of fun to work on though. I wonder who they have in mind as the ultimate first pilot? Flying this thing ought to make tooling up 635 in rush hour look like sleeping:)
Over the past several years, I can't count the number of times I've seen people gush on and on about GIS and all the wonderful things it can do. I've watched dozens of Companies and Cities sink millions into attempts to develop functional GIS systems. In fact, most failed miserably. Although in some limited cases GIS can be a workable system, in many cases, GIS is simply a scam touted by consultants, and the computer-ignorant. The most frequent victims of this scam, have been City and County governments.
The reason, is simple.
Most beginning projects focus on the purchase of GIS software, like ESRI's ArcInfo, the purchase of sexy machines to run it, and perhaps some initial staffing to set it up. They almost uniformly massively underestimate the amount of time and money required to actually get a functional landbase into the system, attach data to it, and ensure the necessary level of accuracy of the basemaps.
"It'll be easy, we have DB2 running on an as/400 and lots of maps" - should qualify as one of the most expensive single instances of "famous last words" in computer history.
In reality, very few maps are accurately digitized. Most GIS systems get sold on the premise of scanning and vectorizing dead-tree bluelines, or other formats - from paper. the problem is, that geographic maps are finicky about scale, and the maps you *thought* were accurate inevitably need to be rectified to whatever coordinate system you chose for the system. Its a tedious and enormously time-consuming process that simply doesn't lend itself to any sort of automatic processing. Then, there's the problem that most maps simply aren't accurate to begin with, and you see the beginnings of a problem. "I just bought half a million dollars of GIS software and equipment, and now I discover it's going to cost me three or four million to get my maps in shape to actually be useful".
Picture your average City government. Municipalities are where government really is. About 90% of the civil services provided to you by the sum of all government influence on you, comes from the local level. Cities have huge quantities of maps for things like building plats, subdivision maps, building blueprints, deed records, thoroughfare maps, land-use plans, etc etc etc. And that, coincidentally is where GIS appears to be the most useful. managing all that data is hard for cities - and GIS certainly looks easy in the presentations companies and consultants present - just point and click! What could be easier?
But the numbers of abandoned systems started by cities who bought into these sales pitches are huge - on the order of billions of dollars worth.
GIS companies and consultants know this - yet never warn purchasers, that in most cases, the cost of the software and systems amounts to only a tiny fraction of the actual costs of developing a working GIS.
So when you hear all the gushing success stories, and gee-whiz ideas presented as though GIS was a wonder cure for all sorts of problems, try to bear in mind - GIS works best with single-source maps, and data which can easily be applied to pre-existing points. If you hear the words "scan" or "address-range" - you'll know a bullshit artist is at work. Because for every working system involving simple maps with pre-rectified sources, there are probably 15 that were simply abandoned because of enormous unexpected costs and (salesman provoked) unrealistic expectations. A lot of money has been pissed away on GIS over the years. Real computer professionals know the golden rule - flashy graphics doesn't equal useful purpose.
Even asking such a question is a sure indicator that the questioner has neither age nor wisdom.
This is the sort of thing young people have been rending their breasts about since time began for humanity. It's a silly question, and asking it only demonstrates the very reason people do not take you as seriously as you wish to be taken.
In order to posit such a query, you must:
Assume that wisdom is genetic - i.e. you were born with it, rather than aquiring it over time, proving your immaturity and ignorance.
Assume that you are smarter than the other, possibly more reserved, people you are competing with for attention - meaning you are arrogant, and immature.
Assume that you have the right to expect equality with people who have put in more dues than you have - and prove that you are without common sense, foolish, and immature.
Assume that you understand each issue from every angle, despite your relative lack of experience in comparison to your older peers - demonstrating that you lack judgement and ignore the obvious.
Can't recognize the accomplishments of your elder peers - making you selfish, and proving you lack perspective.
While it is a fact, that not all older people have gained maturity, wisdom, or perspective, it is also a fact, that few people gain these virtues without putting in their time.
You'll know you're well on your way towards earning your own spurs, when you stop being jealous of those who have already earned them, and start trying to learn what they already know.
This debate is one of those that expose the ignorance of the/. crowd towards issues not relating to operating systems.
There are several issues here:
1. Sales taxes fund an enormous number of essential services throughout the United States. In most States, the state takes a percentage of those taxes, and the municipality the sale occurred in takes another percentage on top of that. Where municipalities are concerned, there are only three ways to raise revenue, to pay for things like sewer systems, roads, traffic lights, garbage collection, water service, and other utterly vital government services: property taxes, sales taxes, and franchise fees.
Franchise fees are capped by law, which leaves only one other source of revenue if sales taxes are reduced: property taxes. Since many people rent (including a large percentage of the posters here), reduction in sales tax revenue *must* result in large and disproportionate increases in property taxes, while renters end up paying less and less of the total burden to provide those services.
Is that fair?
2. Brick and mortar stores must pay sales taxes, in addition to overhead for their shop location itself. Providing one class of citizens (online retailers) the opportunity to evade paying their fair share of the tax burden, and giving them an hugely unfair advantage competitively is utterly unjust. Why should a retailer, simply because it chooses to do business on the net, receive *any* preferential advantage? If the business model works, online retailers will make profits. If it doesn't, there is no justification for cutting the throats of local merchants, in order to provide special treatment to website merchants. If net commerce is to succeed, it must make business sense for it to do so. If it doesn't make business sense, then it *should* fail.
3. On what grounds do we presume that online commerce is a worthy goal to pursue? In point of fact, local retailers provide large numbers of jobs, distributed everywhere, while online retailers concentrate jobs in a single location, and often vastly reduce the number created. They also focus profits in the hands of fewer and fewer companies, preferring instead, large corporations. Is this what we want? Fewer jobs? Higher property taxes? Unjust treatment? More powerful Corporations?
Is this the morality that Slashdotters espouse? or is it simply "online at any cost because it's our passion and our hobby and screw everyone else, including, ultimately, ourselves".
I read the above article, and was less than impressed with the author's grasp of the culture he attempts to portray.
As the owner of the Online Gaming League , the largest and most popular competition system for first person shooter and action games, I feel that katz has utterly missed the point - he has not even addressed the real dynamics of the gaming subculture, where they live, and where the memes of this culture are developed, expressed, and spread. I do agree that gamers are a rapidly growing, and distinct subculture, however understanding this phenomenon requires a more thorough review, than simply naming off 4 or 5 websites that specialize in providing banner ads to gaming websites (and citing them as the "diverse and complicated media culture " of gamers, is considerably less than clueful.)
Gamers live, abide, and pursue their interests in very distinct layers, imposed by the "connectedness" of their favorite games. This layering has a huge effect on the interaction between gamers, and the cultural similarities they may (or may not) share. For example, until very recently, console games had no facility for connection to the net. And hence, console gamers have absorbed very little of that which we might call the "Gamer Culture".
On the other hand, the fans of id Software's games, including Quake X, Doom X, etc. use those games as a communications medium, as well as an outlet for fun (The same is true of Tribes players, UT players, etc. id, however, must be given credit as the company which invented the gamer culture as we think of it today). These players have internet connections (and usually the very fastest available), and spread the memes and mores of the gamer culture through direct interaction. Not only do they communicate directly in games, but they meet in Clans (teams) outside the game, socialize together in IRC on networks exclusively dedicated to gamers like irc.enterthegame.com, and troll forums on clan websites, and other gaming oriented sites. They also meet at popular events catering exclusively to gamers, like Quakecon.
It is this interaction and communication that defines the gamer culture. And it is also why, for the most part, that which we describe as "the gamer culture", is in reality, the "id culture".
While I certainly do think the gamer subculture is interesting and worthy of description, I suggest that Mr Katz spend a little more time getting to know it, and what it's really about, before pontificating about it. It's a fact that the corporate websites of banner ad providers aren't setting any standards within the culture.
Wrong. Under federal law, CFR 47, no city may grant an exclusive franchise to *any* cable operator. It's illegal to create a monopoly in this way, and no city does it, and hasn't in 50 years.
It is erroneous to claim that a City gives a cable company a "monopoly". This is not the case.
Cable companies are usually required to obtain a franchise agreement, which grants them the authority to use local city-owned rights-of-way in exchange for a number of things, including, requirements such as providing "open access" to competing ISPs. The agreements are basically lease agreements, leasing the city property in return for consideration.
By law, a municipality cannot grant an exclusive franchise (monopoly), and in fact, most cities are busily trying to lure competitors to their local cable companies into town. They hate having a single cable company as much as the citizens do. But the cost of building a new system is large, and only recently have companies begun to step forward to try and "overbuild" old systems, like AT&T's. The arrival of these overbuilders has less to do with anything congress did (i.e. telecom Act of 1996) than it does the perceived opportunity to run the old coax companies out of business, by building modern state of the art ringed fiber networks, which can offer voice, video, and data at rates and speed vastly exceeding anything that can be done on a crapulent old Coax system. Take a look at Western Integrated Networks proposed system as an example of what these new arrivals want to build. Notice, the fully symmetric 100baseTX ethernet network provided into homes, via a fiber actually brought into the house? That ought to get any self-respecting geek's heart pumping fast.
In regards to "Open Access", the more important thing happening, is th activities resulting from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Mt. Hood v. AT&T, where the court ruled that @Home was a telecommunications service, not a cab;le service. This ruling will require (if left to stand) that cable comapnies be regulated identically to telephone companies, and thus will be forced to offer competitive access to their networks.
I never fail to be amazed at some of the folks that post on these banner ad issues.
Busy websites are expensive to run. Telcos never forget to send the bill for that T1/T3/Colo shelf the webserver is attached to. In many cases, the only revenue these sites take in, comes from banner ads.
No one really enjoys looking at ads, but lets face it - they make it possible for a website to support more than just a few hundred page impressions a month. You think Slashdot would even be here if they didn't get ad revenue? How many thousand bucks a month would *you* pony up out of your own pocket to pay for bandwidth for your suddenly-popular website?
No ads? Guess what - only corporations with the bucks to throw away on websites will be capable of supporting the traffic load a popular site generates.
As for the guys bragging here about the various ways they have devised to prevent ads from being seen on webpages - screw you. You're doing nothing more than cheating the websites out of the ability to pay their bills, and hastening the demise of the non-big-business information scene. How clever of you. I'm sure the big business corporate types really appreciate the help you're giving them.
Go ahead and map names to loopback. Download that copy of junkbuster. But when you can't log on a site anymore that isn't owned by AT&T, IBM, MCI, or whatever, just remember - you helped bring that about.
Jojo - In your case, your DSL provider has chosen to itemize the breakout of costs, rather than lump it in to a single sum. If you'll look, your bill represents an 80/20 split in revenues, which your provider has chosen to represent as such on the bill. The equivalent AOL/TW bill, would be $37.50 to the Telco (AOL/TW), $12.50 to the ISP.
I'm no fan of cable companies in general, but this article doesn't exactly cast the facts of this issue in a fair light.
The reality is, that under a reseller model, 75%/25% is a somewhat better deal than that being currently offered by the Telco's for DSL service, where the split is currently about 83%/17% in many states.
Is this split unfair? Not really. Consider, that the value-added by the isp itself is pretty insignificant compared to the cost of building, maintaining, and operating the wire plant. Mail servers, DNS, docsis service, etc. are trivial costs, and the real value added by the isp is customer service - and a considerable portion of that must be provided by the hosting cable company, since a large percentage of customer problems are system based.
A fairer way of presenting this issue, would have been "Cable company offers 25% discount at wholesale to ISP's wishing to use their system."
More troubling, are the requirements about splitting advertising, and providing AOL/TW editorial control over content provided by the ISP. I doubt this will be a long-term issue, since the FCC has previously taken very negative stances towards attempts to exert too much control over reseller ISP's in the Telco arena.
In fact, this may not be an issue long at all, since the 8th Circuit recently declared that cable modem service was, in fact, a telecom service. This is an important distinction, since currently, cable modems are regulated under the much more ambiguous "cable services" umbrella by the FCC and by state PUC's. At some point soon, cable modems are going to be moved under the far more restictive telecom data services regulatory umbrella, at which time the entire "Open Access/Forced Access" issue will go away. Telecom companies are required to provide non-discriminatory access to their systems, at rates set by state PUC's.
Frankly, the whole issue doesn't turn me on at all. AOL/TW, TCI/AT&T, et al, currently are selling the service over systems based on a very old branching tree/coax design, that as never intended to provide two-way services. That it works at all is somewhat miraculous. Much more interesting, is the arrival of a new class of "Overbuilders" (or companies planning to build and deploy their own wire plant over the top of the old incumbant systems). Comapnies like Western integrated networks, Wide Open West, Rio, etc. are currently seeking franchises from cities, to construct ultra-high density fiber-optic systems, to deliver voice/video/data services on systems that are far far superior to the crapulent old coax systems.
Take a look at the system specs for Western integrated network's system, for example (http://www.winfirst.com). Note, especially, the planned data speeds they plan to deliver into homes. Yeah - that's 100baseT service. And yup, they're bringing fiber inside the house. Frankly, the prospect of a fully bi-directional ethernet connection into my home makes me erect. It also has to have the incumbant telecoms shitting in their pants, as they watch the imminent death of their cash-cow DS1 and DS3 circuit business arriving on the scene. These new systems are designed with a series of descending fiber rings, and very low node densities. wow baby. No reason at all they can't offer businesses sonet (OC3-OC48) services at very low rates.
Oddly, I've seen very little drooling about this from the geek press, who ought, rightly, to be having a feeding frenzy about it. Instead, we see silly gnashing of teeth over AOL/TW, and inappropriatly biased stories over a thing which, by comparison, is almost irrelevent.
Those that are pointing out that "sessions" are a more accurate measure overlook the fact that banner ads are typically delivered per page pull - and users who view 10 pages may see 10 completely different banner ads in that time.
These numbers are important for both advertisers and web operators alike, because many banner ads pay on a cost per thousand (CPM) basis. Advertisers need to see how many people are actually seeing their ads, and operators need accurate numbers to be sure they are paid fairly.
Any web operator you meet, can tell you that the page impressions counted by the banner ad company *never* match the page impressions reported by the logs, and often are on the order of 1/3 the number webtrends or webalyser reports. Add that to the idiotic way companies like Media Metrix are "projecting" traffic based on relatively small sample sets, and the result is, that website operators always manage to get screwed in the deal.
I wonder that we aren't seeing more discussion/speculation as to the outright legality of the SDMI.
Whether or not it is technically feasible is beside the point. Is it legal? A couple of points to consider:
1. Copyrights, by law, last for 17 years at which time "ownership" is "transferred" to the "Public Domain". Therefore, is it legal to wrap the copyrighted work in a format which, by virtue of encryption, renders impossible that transfer of ownership interest?
2. The concept of manufacturers and a few copyright holders working together to develop a format + playback + record mechanism, in which the copyright holders serve as "gatekeepers", granting or denying access to the technology in their own self-interest, could only be considered a pernicious form of anti-competitive restraint of trade. New artists, equipment manufacturers, etc. will be forced to pay financial tribute to the keepers of the encryption keys, and can easily be excluded from the market, simply by denying access to the recording or playback equipment. I can readily envision such collusion as standing in violation of any number of anti-trust statutes, from Sherman on down.
Lastly, I wouldn't overlook the marketability of such a system. Will consumers really "pay-per-play"? Will they spend their bucks buying systems that a five year old could see was meant from the outset to soak the maximum amount of money from their pockets? What's in it for them? Why would Joe Bob go out and plunk down $200 on a new player in the first place (especially one which renders his existing music collection worthless from the outset)?
I expect the public to respond to the "new" format and equipment with a hearty "no thanks".
I don't think OMM or the majority of posters here have made the correct assumptions. Yes, FPS games are gaining in popularity in contrast to adventure games, and there's a very good reason why.
FPS games, unlike adventure games, are growth experiences.
Those who characterize FPS games as "mindless" clearly have very limited experience with them. They ignore the vibrant communities that have sprang up around the id Software games, and focus on the "difficulty" of the silly puzzles that seem to be the sole reason for existance of adventure games. Frankly, I need more than puzzles to hold my interest. I need people.
1. FPS games are easy to play, and very hard to play well. Ever seen a professional adventure game player? Playing Quake3 well means practice, and lots of it. You must master aim of course, and also movement and tactics as well, if you hope to beat the best quake players.
2. FPS games, as a result of interconnected online play, often create entire communities of people - people that play together, talk together in IRC, and travel far to attend lan parties like Quakecon 2000. As often as not, regular FPS afficianados develop an identity that transcends the game itself.
3. FPS games are competitive experiences - in other words, sport. People like sports. Hundreds of thousands of people compete regularly in leagues like the Online Gaming League, Cyberathlete Professional League, etc.
There are other reasons, of course. But the bottom line, is that immersing yourself in the FPS scene is a far richer and more fulfilling experience than anything a solitary adventure game can ever offer. And that's the real reason FPS games are proving to be the more popular genre.
I'm not sure I see this case as much of a precedent setter. The issue boils down to a rather simple one of contract law - did SBC (ASI) guarantee a link speed that it subsequently did not deliver? if it was a failure, did it occur outside of ASI's reasonable ability to control?
Not dissimilar to the law relating to cartage and freight hauling.
On the other hand, the many responses here point out a more interesting telecommunications issue which very few people are tracking - That "deregulation" of the local loop has, in fact, created 4 or 5 new layers of federal and state beuracracy, in a vain attempt to promote "competition".
The DSL issue in Houston is a perfect case in point. But to understand it, you have to know a little history about it.
In 1996, Congress passed the "Telecom Act", which purported to do, among other things, "de-regulate and open the local loop to competition".
Loosely translated, that means the wise denizens of Congress saw fit to repeal various provisions of the existing regulatory code that governed the RBOC's, and replace it with a new and "better" model. Essentially, they decreed that the RBOC's would henceforth become wholesalers of telecom parts (called UNE's, or un-bundled network elements). The idea being, that "CLEC's" (Competitive Local Exchange Carriers" could buy loops from the RBOC's at a wholesale price, and resell them to customers at a profit. Congress vested the responsibility for implementing this new law with the FCC - an agency of lawyers, led by commissioners who got the job out of political patronage.
At the time, DSL was just a promising new idea, and the broadband boom hadn't started yet. So it was understood, that the loops were going to be sold as voice circuits (POTS), or dedicated DS lines (T1's, T3's, etc.)
Congress was happy (since they could proclaim that they had brought a new age of competition), the RBOC's were happy (they still controlled their nets, and they got to get into long distance too), and the FCC was happy (lots of new regulations for the lawyers to write and argue over) and the CLECS were happy (hey! all I have to do is pass around orders in computers, and I get a nice 17% profit). Life was good.
Of course, it took 3 years for the lawyers at the FCC to write the new rules (they have families to feed too), and in the meantime, along comes this DSL business.
Don't kid yourself, the RBOC's hate DSL. When DSL first appeared, the RBOCs hemmed and hawed and tested the bejesus out of it, and generally kept it on the shelf, until the damned cable companies spoiled the fun, and began to sell cable modem service. Suddenly, dark clouds appeared on the RBOC horizon - the upstart cable companies were offering speeds which began to compare, and even exceed the speeds the RBOC's provided with their T1 business - a very, very lucrative portion of their business to boot. Suddenly, that $1400/mo. T1 line begins to look like a serious ripoff in the face of $40 cable connections.
Imagine, if you will, the collective sound of the rectums of 10,000 telephone company exec's slamming shut, in one gigantic sucking motion.
And, curse the luck, DSL companies like Covad wanted to place DSLAMs at local CO's, so they could begin selling DSL service to customers. Their own equipment!
Try to bear in mind, that several broadband technologies now exist, using the same sort of high-frequency transmission encoding DSL does, that can send and receive data at speeds approaching 60Mbps. Kinda puts a whole new perspective on what DSL could be, doesn't it?
The wiley RBOC's retaliated though, and began to install DSL systems in their headends just as fast as they possibly could. Way faster, in fact, than their CSR and installers could possibly keep up with.
Now why would they do that?
Well, I'll tell you. What you don't know, is that the FCC punted a considerable portion of the regulatory burden onto states - including certifying that the RBOC's had done all the things necessary to "enable competition" so that the RBOC's would be allowed to sell long distance service (read: make mega bucks). So, the smarty men at the baby bells took their fight to preserve T1 service to the local PUC's - in Texas, and in all the other 49 states. They required rulemakings to tell them just exactly what they needed to do to make it possible for them to "help" the CLECs connect their DSL service. And yes, i really mean *exactly*. So the PUC's all over the country are currently embroiled in proceedings to define exactly what the Bells had to do, to allow the Covads of the world to resell their local loops for DSL service. Oh, and did I mention that they installed equipment, lots of it, that ultimately limits the throughput of subscriber premises equipment to 1.5 Mbps or so?
Smarty men indeed. they gained a couple of years, while the lawyers argue, and in the meantime protect their T1 business, while selling DSL service mostly un-molested.
And when the dust clears, they will have a network in place that "won't support" the ultra-high bitrates of the newer HFC technology. Smart, eh?
Of course, the DSL companies cried foul, and immediately sought to force the RBOC's to sell the "platform" (AKA UNE-P) instead of just the conditioned loops. They are currently demanding the right to install their own DLC cards at the big chassis in the local CO's, so they can offer the higher speeds now made possible, and better compete with cable, and Bell itself. Of course, Bell disagrees. Surprise! More fights.
And that's where we are today. Our new 'de-regulated" market, is being done at the Federal, State, and local level, and the lawyers are having a feeding frenzy. In the end, who knows what we will get. Depends on who ends up out-maneuvering whom. Oh, and your DSL service will be a mere shadow of what it could be, until the dust clears.
In the meantime, all the "exactness" the Bells wanted in determining how to allow the CLECs to resell their service has resulted in an amazing blizzard of order forms, line certifications, engineer conditioning checks, etc. etc. ad nauseum being passed between the LECs and the CLECs. That's why it takes 6 months to get your DSL hooked up. heh.
-Tap
Slashdot Mirror
Having read many of the posts here, and being a manager at a fair-sized company who does a lot of hiring, I thought I'd go ahead and comment.
First, sorry to do this, but your degree means nothing to me. Fifteen years ago, I cared about it. But like most managers, I learned a long time ago, that colleges don't impart practical knowledge to graduates any more, and I need boots on the ground, not heads in the clouds. Recent college grads want to start at the top, want more money than they are worth, and often have attitudes that annoy me.
I'm not looking for a person that will require 6-12 months to get up to speed (at minimum), and provides me with no assurance they will ever be an asset to my teams. I'm sure as hell not going to pay you more than entry level - because you are an entry level guy.
I do hire for entry level positions though. And sometimes I'll take a chance on you if:
1. You want it. If I get the sense that you think you are too good for the job, I'll pass you by for the person that will be grateful to have it. I need people that are clueful, and in the career business for the long haul. I'm not going to hire you if I get the sense you'll jump ship at the first opportunity. I started life as a PC tech. Pay your dues.
2. You're presentable. It makes me look bad, to have folks working for me that look like college dorm rats. Wear a suit to interviews.
3. You're bright. You'll be interviewed and tested with real world problems. It's pretty easy to spot the clueless, somewhat harder to tell the difference between "sort of knows it" and "owns it". 85% of the people who apply for an IT job have no idea how to do it, in my experience. This is less important in an entry level job - you know you're getting a beginner. But in a skilled position, it's fundamental.
4. You're not a pain. I need people that can get along well with their co-workers. If I have to waste time arbitrating disputes involving you, settling the ruffled feathers of another department head, or explaining your performance/appearance/goofy solution to a problem, you will be impacting my productivity.
Lastly, I saw several replies referring to long periods of unemployment after school, while you looked for work. I'll say, that this would attract my attention. But I'd consider why. If you're some clueless kid mooching off your parents because you can't find a job that's good enough for you, then I don't want you.
I see quite a few posters here that seem to think the Internet bubble is still inflating. Nobody is hiring kids anymore and making them executives. The last entry level networking job I posted received 75 applicants. Probably half of those had college degrees. The person I hired had no degree, and had started her career as a paralegal in a big law firm. They moved her into IT because she could get it done, and because she liked it. Aptitude is where you find it.
It's all about knowing the whole story.
In reality, Mr. Pickens is certainly promoting wind power, but not in the way you think.
In Texas, where his proposed farms are located, there is a proceding under way at the PUC to determine how large an investment in transmission lines, built to get all that wind power back to consumers, can be charged to electric consumers. In other words, how much Texan's electric bills are going to go up.
Texas currently has something like 9 billion in transmission line assets. The proposed expansion? About 9 billion dollars.
It takes a lot of salesmanship to push something like this through. Pickens is hooting about how wonderful wind power is, and how much we need it, because he wants ratepayers in Dallas and Houston to pay the enormous costs of getting his electricity to market.
Is wind power good? Sure!
Is paying another $50 a month on your bill - before you ever even start paying for the electricity itself, to add 2 or 3 percent more (unreliable) watts to the grid, and mainly make Pickens richer good?
Not so much.
This would be more interesting, if a single word of it were true. But it isn't. It's the PR machine of AT&T at work.
The reality is more obvious, and certainly clear to anyone in the business of working with the FCC. This is about the triple play.
First, know this. Municipalities, by Federal and State law, cannot grant an exclusive franchise agreement (which is just a license to use local rights of way, in return for compensation to the municipality) to any telecommunications or cable provider, under any circumstances, and this has been the law for more than 20 years. To decry Cities for granting monopolies to cable companies (or phone companies) is simply ignorance of the truth. In fact, the converse is true - Cities have been trying in vain for many years to lure in other television and telco providers to no effect. The cost of entry is just too high (it takes a ton of money to build and maintain any kind of hard wire plant), and the entrenched industries have been too successful in getting doublespeak bills (like the referenced FCC action) passed.
What cities do do, is to collect useage fees (called franchise fees) from companies who use public property to make money. After all, the public has invested trillions of dollars buying rights-of-way over the years, and does deserve to be compensated when someone else wants to make (big) money using it. But of course, none of these companies likes to pay - so they work hard to get this cost eliminated, in an amazing variety of ways.
What this article ignores, is that this is the second FCC action on this matter. In the first action, the FCC acted to overrule Cities in the management of their rights-of-way, and they did so at the behest of AT&T and Verizon, who want very badly to sell Cable Television service over their own systems - including the new fiber plant they are busy laying in. And oh, by the way, the conned the FCC into screwing the cable companies blue - by relieving themselves (the telcos) of the obligations cable companies have had to pay, and still have to pay, in order to use all that valuable land to sell TV channels. So, Time Warner is placed at a massive economic disadvantage versus the Telcos. The FCC calls this "lowering the barriers to entry". I think it might more accurately be termed "lets give the Telcos their monopoly back, by killing the cable companies".
Of course, the Cable companies, being much aggrieved by the first action, immediately (along with Cities all across America who don't want to be forced to raise property taxes) filed suit. And to even the most casual observer, it is clear that the FCC violated the law and greatly exceeded their statuatory authority in passing the first measure. So, the second measure was hastily adopted, in hopes of giving the Cable companies enough of a bone, to get them out of court - after all, the cable companies enjoy screwing taxpayers too.
It's one of those deals where you have to know how things really work, in order to understand the play being done here. Not many do. That's why the FCC might get away with it. Or, the courts could side with the Cities, in which case the Telcos would have to play fair on their way in. But no one spends money like they do. That's why we have state legislatures passing bills written by Ma Bell attorneys all over the country now, and why the FCC is so eager to pass their pet rules.
One thing is certain - it isn't going to encourage competition. Neither will it encourage lower rates (monopolies just don't play that way).
It sure is interesting how easily these big companies can control the media though isn't it. It's also interesting how readily most people buy into these big lies. Makes you wonder about the rest of the "news", doesn't it?
1. If they need control, what do they plan to change?
2. Who's going to make me change the root.cache on my nameservers? Because until I do, Euro roots don't and won't exist for my users.
As admins, control of the Internet goes to those we route to, and those roots we cache. If Euro server admins go along with this power grab and split the namespace by changing their root caches, that's their call I guess. But I can't see American operators joining them, or US Telcos siding with the EU.
The real power is still the root.cache file. I won't be pointing to the EU/UN.
No matter what your political leaning, we should all be disturbed by one thing. Michael Moore knows one truth, and knows it well, and exploits it to advantage with this film:
A great many people simply don't have the intellectual capacity to view any film (or TV show, or newspaper article) with an adequate amount of skepticism. Consequently, they accept anything presented to them in such a medium as authoritative, and therefore truth.
Does this advance the quality of political debate?
There are a number of funny things about this article, which breathlessly "exposes" car chipping which has been going on for more than 10 years. *yawn* But perhaps the funniest thing of all, is the reaction of the Slashdotters here, who by and large have reacted with horror that anyone dared modify a computer controlling a car. Oh my!
Could it truly be, that geeks draw the line at anything with real grease on it? Or does the courage to hack extend only as far as tearing up an Xbox in order to brag about running linux on it? Or pestering some working sysadmin trying to earn a living by running a few servers for his boss? woo. Boys play games, Men build machines.
Here's the thing - by and large, all that ECU really does is exactly the same thing a carburator and distributor cap used to do. No more, and no less. Oh sure, maybe it turns on a fan to bring the water temp down a bit, or implements a rev limiter. But for someone who understands the way a car runs (read, any 8th grade dropout working at your local car dealer), with a bit of programming experience, there's nothing magical, intimidating, or even particularly challenging about rolling your own.
Modding chips, is not rolling your own. That's just poking a few new hex values in a two-dimensional array stored in an eprom. array(i,j) of Injectorsquirtduration, AmountofAir. Simple as that. Any fool can do it, and many do. It's essentially the exact same thing as rejetting a carb, or turning the airscrew. No biggie.
Rolling your own means starting with a computer of some sort, putting an OS on it, and writing code that reads a lot of sensor data, and outputs some voltages, all largely to simulate a distributor cap and carb. The hardest part, is figuring out the voltages and what they signify from the various sensors (manifold absolute pressure, throttle position, O2, water temp, air temp, cam (or crank) position (the clock), etc.)
I'm running an MS-AVR microcontroller, using code I modified and compiled myself - on linux, using GCC. My car runs like a top. I had hella fun doing it. Beats modding some lame game box big time. And oh yeah - My car runs on Open source :)
Here's one example of a DIY ecu.
Having read many of the posts here, I find a great deal of mis-information being bandied about, as well as a general lack of understanding as to the current situation involving Muni nets.
First, the RCOC's (Regional Bell Operating Companies) have lobbied furiously against the creation of these networks. Cable has lobbied too, but cable companies have very little influence in statehouses and capital hill, as compared to the RBOCs, which weild enormous lobbying power, especially at the state level. As a result of this all-out lobbying effort, many states flatly prohibit municipalities from building any sort of network which will compete in any way against an RBOC.
Cities have fought back, however. Many towns, where broadband or even basic cable television service are sorely lacking or nonexistent, want to build these networks. There are several lawsuits right now seeking to overturn restrictive state laws by citing a provision in the Telecom Act of 96 which provides that no state may enact law which prohibits, or has the effect of prohibiting the ability of "any entity" from providing telecom service. The FCC, ever beholden to the RBOCs, ruled originally that "any entity" did not include municipal governments, as a sop to telcos who feared taxpayers might just say "screw this, lets build our own". However, there are strong signs that a federal appelate court will overrule the FCC, and force states to allow muni's to start building nets, if taxpayers (us) vote to do so.
The fundamental question is: do we have the right to decide to provide our own?
Municipal governments provide 90% of direct government benefits, to most citizens. The provide streets, street signs, trash pickup, water service, maintain zoning standards, handle legalities like deeds and property matters, and intercede on behalf of citizens in a great many matters. It is an incontrovertible fact, that municipal governments are the best, most effective, and most efficient segment of our democratic system of government here in the US.
Even so, very few people bother to take notice of what your local city government is doing (which no doubt contributes to their efficiency).
I've seen several people here state, that City Governments have no experience with IT, are clueless, incapable, etc. This is flatly false.
City governments are no different than any other large company these days, and all of them larger than about 30,000 population have IT departments. The people that work in those departments often face daunting challenges, as the perils of the annual budget year cycle, and requirements for "low bid" purchases, force them to try and operate non-homogenous networks. They don't have the luxury of saying "100% company X" on anything. IT people that can keep networks like that running, must have skillsets that span very wide areas of knowledge.
And what the RBOCs fear most: Muni's have experienced and expert people in the tough areas of network operation already in place. Consider this: Munis regulate every inch of right-of-way in the "last mile", because they own it. Their people are more familiar with it than anyone, anywhere. Munis also have experts on telco regulation on staff, to deal with franchise agreements, rate regulation, etc. Muni's have contruction inspectors, log-standing relationships with Contractors, and experience in utility location/colocation. And Muni's have strong IT staff, as a rule.
There's one last thing to consider. Are you pissed at the service you recieve from your telco or cable company? Whatyougonnadoaboutit? Answer: not much you can do.
But consider - if your local goverment were your provider, what could you do then? Vote. Run for City Council. Local politics is personal folks - and unlike national politics, your personal problems are likely shared by your next-door neighbor. You as an individual can easily effect the outcome of a City Council election. Think on that, as you consider whether you're likely to get better service from a Muni telco.
That was on the residential side. Virtually no one was interested. A few line resellers emerged, essentially re-packaging local loops under their own brand names, but the margin was too small, to bother with going after the residential market for voice. Covad, IP Technologies, and Rythms were notable exceptions, but their business was based on DSL sales - an area that Bell companies were clearly dragging their feet on (since sales there clobbered their highly lucrative DS1 (T1) business.) However, when the DSL resellers got going, the Bells (LECS) responded with aggressive DSL rollouts, usually at loss-leader pricing, which essentially sucked the life out of the Covads before they could begin to realize much revenue. However, the lucrative market for business service remained. In that market, local LECs were hideously overcharging for bandwidth (and still do), and fairly small construction projects could reach multiple companies fairly quickly.
So a lot of CLECS charged forward, building out fiber in metropolitan areas on speculation. Almost none of them built to serve the residential market. Instead, they expected to "cherry pick" big business accounts, by offering rates on fiber connectivity much cheaper than the LECs were offering (and most LECs were still selling only copper pairs, at DS1-DS3 speeds).
Unfortunately, the CLECS didn't bother to keep track of what their competitors were doing. So in many cities, 10 and 20 clecs, would lay lines to reach the same customer areas. It may seem overly simple to you, but the fact is, most companies contract with one company for Internet service. That left an awful lot of fiber laying around unused, and earning no revenue, for the venture capitalists that gambled their dollars on fiber expansions. It's still there, and right about now, many of them are beginning to panic. Chapter 11's and 13's are being filed, even as we speak.
That's a sort of simplified explanation, but it should immediately point to why the long-haul networks aren't getting used. Because the short-haul networks that they expected to service, aren't being used either. Gotta sell the clients first.
On the residential side, it's simply death by strangulation.
The cable companies currently own the high-speed to the home market, because their nets were the cheapest to equip, and because they moved fully two years before the phone companies did. The cable companies also ejoy almost complete freedom from any regulatory restraints (now you know why you sit on hold 3 hours), while the DSL market is still heavily regulated. The phone companies, are playing catchup. And the poor DSL CLECS, are still screwed trying to get their products installed, fighting with the LECS over what kind of equipment they can install, at what rate, etc, in the State PUCs. Add to that the "difficulty" the LECs are having hooking their work order systems up with CLEC's order systems, squabbles over line standards, confusion over who does what and when, and you have a sure-thing recipe. At the PUC's, the armies of lawyers the Bell companies have sent in to every rulemaking, have turned every question into a long-running evidentiary process, presumably in the expectation that the CLECS won't have the resources to hold out. Correct assumption, I suppose. Proof, that the Lawyer is once again mightier than the law.
A couple of interesting things to watch on the legal scene - a 9th circuit ruling that cable modems were in fact a "telecom service" as opposed to a "cable service" conflicts directly with a 5th circuit ruling (or was it 4th) to the contrary. So expect the issue to be decided by the Supremes soon. If Cable companies are required to open up their networks for resale, watch for the LECs to play some really nasty games in order to bring down the profits the Cable companies are currently receiving. In another arena, keep an eye on the Dingell-Tauzin bill, which proves (as if we really needed the proof) yet again, that there's no such thing as a congressman that can't be bought outright by a phone company. That bill makes it even easier for the LECs to suck the life out of the CLECs, and also simplifies the task for the LECs of strangling the cable companies in a mountain of paper, while evading paper themselves. You just thought @Home sucked now. Give it a couple of years.
The truth is, there's almost no really good news, on the Telco front for Internet users. If the Copyright and Content wars don't ruin it for you on the one side, the Telco's will bleed you dry on the other. Both sides have bought all the congressmen they need to get the job done. Just a matter of waiting now. If Hollywood and Bell have their way, we'll all be back to watching TV again in under 5 years.
It seems a good many people are desperately trying to apply their favorite arguements from other issues onto a situation to which they flatly do not apply. This is not a security issue. There is no system compromise, nor privacy invasion. So bleating "security through obscurity" arguments are simply non-sequitor attempts to bring a "with-it" argument into a debate where it does not apply. Neither does the argument that online games are somehow flawed, becuase a driver *can* bypass the rendering code of the game. By arguing such, you simply demonstrate that you do not understand how such mechanisms work.
Unless we want to limit gameservers to processing engines vastly in excess of the typical linux box, or nt server, it simply isn't practical to attempt to render a scene according to a viewpoint at the server - because the clients, all 16, 32, or 64 of them are constantly moving, and not always in predictable ways. That scene data has to be computed at the client, because it's simply not practical to do it elsewhere.
But what really floors me, is that some of you would defend a company who have deliberately embraced unethical behavior and made it a selling point of their product.
Understanding this situation, requires first a basic understanding of the real issues.
First, competitive online gaming is currently being pursued by a lot of people. They join leagues like the OGL and compete in games against other players and teams. There are hundreds of thousands of people doing this now. By they have a huge achilles heel. Online games are vulnerable to cheating, and unlike offline sports, it is hugely difficult to verify that a person is playing an honest game.
So we must live under the honor system. we have no choice but to *trust* that our opponents are playing an honest game. And indeed, the vast majority do. But those who do not, are hard to catch. But until now, the cheats available have been crude, and usually detectable at some level, or preventable by server operators. Most are fairly crude hacks, and don't work all that well anyway. But now, here comes Asus - and designs a driver whose express purpose is to help people cheat. And so, the cheaters now have a nice, professionally developed, virtually undetectable means by which to cheat, and there is basically no way in which to stop them, or ensure you are getting a fair game now.
Now some of you have said "but these drivers might be useful for other purposes, like development, etc.". Maybe they are. But that's not what Asus coded them for, or is selling them as. They are marketing these drivers expressely to help people do something morally wrong. Cheating other people. Asus is a Corporation without ethical standards, for whom the promotion of unethical, shitty behavior is fine if it makes them money. They absolutely represent the worst of what Corporatism can produce. Yet - slashdotters are defending these dirtbags. Irony.
There is no rational argument, which will make this right. And objecting to their despicable business practices, and this product which appeals to the very worst human failings, is hardly whining. Rather, it is simply well justified righteous indignation. And gamers are completely justified in carrying the good fight to them.
Does cheating happen? yes. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't fight it at every opportunity. Cancer happens too - yet no one says "it's going to happen anyway, so just let the victims die".
Some of you folks need to think this issue through a little more fully.
Brian Davis
President
Online Gaming League
>>The difficulty of guidance and control is overrated. I think that rather depends, on whether we are discussing a "proof of concept" vehicle tethered to the ground, or a vehicle with sufficient thrust and mass to achieve an altitude deserving of interest. Perhaps the article misstated the (ultimate) goal of manned VTVL flight using low-cost peroxide motors, I assumed it had not. However, even with a "low and slow" craft, I wouldn't consider the control system necessary to maintain stable flight simple. Even minor angular velocities in a fixed motor craft can be difficult to deal with, and require robust systems to deal with them appropriately. Having experimented in the past with telemetry guidance based on fin deflection, I can attest how readily (and quickly) a rocket powered vehicle becomes a lawndart. Given the difficulties in maintaining thrust accross multiple motors (especially motors subject to flow deviations due to fluid effects, corrosive effects of H2O2 on metallic surfaces (including stainless), etc), simple, it ain't gonna be. Regardless, I'm keenly interested in such projects, and look forward to reading reports of your progress (assuming the site ever gets un-slashdotted). I have a god-awful yen to begin messing about with a bi-fuel craft myself.
1. Providing 3-axis stability, given a limited number of vertical (or tangential) thrust vectors, as opposed to an almost unlimited number of external de-stabilizing forces.
2. CP changes caused by the expulsion of fuel
3. Difficulty in calibrating throttle response combined with slow control input/response cycles (made that much worse by the inherent latency of telemetry transmission)
I'd guess, that their ultimate intent is to provide some form of on-board stabilization system, with off-board control primarily manipulating the vehicles post-balance trajectory, while the vehicle itself controls pitch,roll, and yaw through some form of accelerometer feedback mechanism. The mathematics necessary for manipulating all those angular differentials ought to be enough to give even John a trial or three. Non-trivial.
The design of the vehicle itself should be interesting as well, since ideally, you'd want all the motors in the same plane with the CP - which unfortunately causes a wider sectional, and increases drag, thus increasing the fuel and power requirements.
Sounds like something that would be a lot of fun to work on though. I wonder who they have in mind as the ultimate first pilot? Flying this thing ought to make tooling up 635 in rush hour look like sleeping :)
The reason, is simple.
Most beginning projects focus on the purchase of GIS software, like ESRI's ArcInfo, the purchase of sexy machines to run it, and perhaps some initial staffing to set it up. They almost uniformly massively underestimate the amount of time and money required to actually get a functional landbase into the system, attach data to it, and ensure the necessary level of accuracy of the basemaps.
"It'll be easy, we have DB2 running on an as/400 and lots of maps" - should qualify as one of the most expensive single instances of "famous last words" in computer history.
In reality, very few maps are accurately digitized. Most GIS systems get sold on the premise of scanning and vectorizing dead-tree bluelines, or other formats - from paper. the problem is, that geographic maps are finicky about scale, and the maps you *thought* were accurate inevitably need to be rectified to whatever coordinate system you chose for the system. Its a tedious and enormously time-consuming process that simply doesn't lend itself to any sort of automatic processing. Then, there's the problem that most maps simply aren't accurate to begin with, and you see the beginnings of a problem. "I just bought half a million dollars of GIS software and equipment, and now I discover it's going to cost me three or four million to get my maps in shape to actually be useful".
Picture your average City government. Municipalities are where government really is. About 90% of the civil services provided to you by the sum of all government influence on you, comes from the local level. Cities have huge quantities of maps for things like building plats, subdivision maps, building blueprints, deed records, thoroughfare maps, land-use plans, etc etc etc. And that, coincidentally is where GIS appears to be the most useful. managing all that data is hard for cities - and GIS certainly looks easy in the presentations companies and consultants present - just point and click! What could be easier?
But the numbers of abandoned systems started by cities who bought into these sales pitches are huge - on the order of billions of dollars worth.
GIS companies and consultants know this - yet never warn purchasers, that in most cases, the cost of the software and systems amounts to only a tiny fraction of the actual costs of developing a working GIS.
So when you hear all the gushing success stories, and gee-whiz ideas presented as though GIS was a wonder cure for all sorts of problems, try to bear in mind - GIS works best with single-source maps, and data which can easily be applied to pre-existing points. If you hear the words "scan" or "address-range" - you'll know a bullshit artist is at work. Because for every working system involving simple maps with pre-rectified sources, there are probably 15 that were simply abandoned because of enormous unexpected costs and (salesman provoked) unrealistic expectations. A lot of money has been pissed away on GIS over the years. Real computer professionals know the golden rule - flashy graphics doesn't equal useful purpose.
Even asking such a question is a sure indicator that the questioner has neither age nor wisdom.
This is the sort of thing young people have been rending their breasts about since time began for humanity. It's a silly question, and asking it only demonstrates the very reason people do not take you as seriously as you wish to be taken.
In order to posit such a query, you must:
Assume that wisdom is genetic - i.e. you were born with it, rather than aquiring it over time, proving your immaturity and ignorance.
Assume that you are smarter than the other, possibly more reserved, people you are competing with for attention - meaning you are arrogant, and immature.
Assume that you have the right to expect equality with people who have put in more dues than you have - and prove that you are without common sense, foolish, and immature.
Assume that you understand each issue from every angle, despite your relative lack of experience in comparison to your older peers - demonstrating that you lack judgement and ignore the obvious.
Can't recognize the accomplishments of your elder peers - making you selfish, and proving you lack perspective.
While it is a fact, that not all older people have gained maturity, wisdom, or perspective, it is also a fact, that few people gain these virtues without putting in their time.
You'll know you're well on your way towards earning your own spurs, when you stop being jealous of those who have already earned them, and start trying to learn what they already know.
There are several issues here:
1. Sales taxes fund an enormous number of essential services throughout the United States. In most States, the state takes a percentage of those taxes, and the municipality the sale occurred in takes another percentage on top of that. Where municipalities are concerned, there are only three ways to raise revenue, to pay for things like sewer systems, roads, traffic lights, garbage collection, water service, and other utterly vital government services: property taxes, sales taxes, and franchise fees.
Franchise fees are capped by law, which leaves only one other source of revenue if sales taxes are reduced: property taxes. Since many people rent (including a large percentage of the posters here), reduction in sales tax revenue *must* result in large and disproportionate increases in property taxes, while renters end up paying less and less of the total burden to provide those services.
Is that fair?
2. Brick and mortar stores must pay sales taxes, in addition to overhead for their shop location itself. Providing one class of citizens (online retailers) the opportunity to evade paying their fair share of the tax burden, and giving them an hugely unfair advantage competitively is utterly unjust. Why should a retailer, simply because it chooses to do business on the net, receive *any* preferential advantage? If the business model works, online retailers will make profits. If it doesn't, there is no justification for cutting the throats of local merchants, in order to provide special treatment to website merchants. If net commerce is to succeed, it must make business sense for it to do so. If it doesn't make business sense, then it *should* fail.
3. On what grounds do we presume that online commerce is a worthy goal to pursue? In point of fact, local retailers provide large numbers of jobs, distributed everywhere, while online retailers concentrate jobs in a single location, and often vastly reduce the number created. They also focus profits in the hands of fewer and fewer companies, preferring instead, large corporations. Is this what we want? Fewer jobs? Higher property taxes? Unjust treatment? More powerful Corporations?
Is this the morality that Slashdotters espouse? or is it simply "online at any cost because it's our passion and our hobby and screw everyone else, including, ultimately, ourselves".
Gamers live, abide, and pursue their interests in very distinct layers, imposed by the "connectedness" of their favorite games. This layering has a huge effect on the interaction between gamers, and the cultural similarities they may (or may not) share. For example, until very recently, console games had no facility for connection to the net. And hence, console gamers have absorbed very little of that which we might call the "Gamer Culture".
On the other hand, the fans of id Software's games, including Quake X, Doom X, etc. use those games as a communications medium, as well as an outlet for fun (The same is true of Tribes players, UT players, etc. id, however, must be given credit as the company which invented the gamer culture as we think of it today). These players have internet connections (and usually the very fastest available), and spread the memes and mores of the gamer culture through direct interaction. Not only do they communicate directly in games, but they meet in Clans (teams) outside the game, socialize together in IRC on networks exclusively dedicated to gamers like irc.enterthegame.com, and troll forums on clan websites, and other gaming oriented sites. They also meet at popular events catering exclusively to gamers, like Quakecon.
It is this interaction and communication that defines the gamer culture. And it is also why, for the most part, that which we describe as "the gamer culture", is in reality, the "id culture".
While I certainly do think the gamer subculture is interesting and worthy of description, I suggest that Mr Katz spend a little more time getting to know it, and what it's really about, before pontificating about it. It's a fact that the corporate websites of banner ad providers aren't setting any standards within the culture.
gg dewd.
Tapper
Wrong. Under federal law, CFR 47, no city may grant an exclusive franchise to *any* cable operator. It's illegal to create a monopoly in this way, and no city does it, and hasn't in 50 years.
Cable companies are usually required to obtain a franchise agreement, which grants them the authority to use local city-owned rights-of-way in exchange for a number of things, including, requirements such as providing "open access" to competing ISPs. The agreements are basically lease agreements, leasing the city property in return for consideration.
By law, a municipality cannot grant an exclusive franchise (monopoly), and in fact, most cities are busily trying to lure competitors to their local cable companies into town. They hate having a single cable company as much as the citizens do. But the cost of building a new system is large, and only recently have companies begun to step forward to try and "overbuild" old systems, like AT&T's. The arrival of these overbuilders has less to do with anything congress did (i.e. telecom Act of 1996) than it does the perceived opportunity to run the old coax companies out of business, by building modern state of the art ringed fiber networks, which can offer voice, video, and data at rates and speed vastly exceeding anything that can be done on a crapulent old Coax system. Take a look at Western Integrated Networks proposed system as an example of what these new arrivals want to build. Notice, the fully symmetric 100baseTX ethernet network provided into homes, via a fiber actually brought into the house? That ought to get any self-respecting geek's heart pumping fast.
In regards to "Open Access", the more important thing happening, is th activities resulting from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Mt. Hood v. AT&T, where the court ruled that @Home was a telecommunications service, not a cab;le service. This ruling will require (if left to stand) that cable comapnies be regulated identically to telephone companies, and thus will be forced to offer competitive access to their networks.
I never fail to be amazed at some of the folks that post on these banner ad issues. Busy websites are expensive to run. Telcos never forget to send the bill for that T1/T3/Colo shelf the webserver is attached to. In many cases, the only revenue these sites take in, comes from banner ads. No one really enjoys looking at ads, but lets face it - they make it possible for a website to support more than just a few hundred page impressions a month. You think Slashdot would even be here if they didn't get ad revenue? How many thousand bucks a month would *you* pony up out of your own pocket to pay for bandwidth for your suddenly-popular website? No ads? Guess what - only corporations with the bucks to throw away on websites will be capable of supporting the traffic load a popular site generates. As for the guys bragging here about the various ways they have devised to prevent ads from being seen on webpages - screw you. You're doing nothing more than cheating the websites out of the ability to pay their bills, and hastening the demise of the non-big-business information scene. How clever of you. I'm sure the big business corporate types really appreciate the help you're giving them. Go ahead and map names to loopback. Download that copy of junkbuster. But when you can't log on a site anymore that isn't owned by AT&T, IBM, MCI, or whatever, just remember - you helped bring that about.
Jojo - In your case, your DSL provider has chosen to itemize the breakout of costs, rather than lump it in to a single sum. If you'll look, your bill represents an 80/20 split in revenues, which your provider has chosen to represent as such on the bill. The equivalent AOL/TW bill, would be $37.50 to the Telco (AOL/TW), $12.50 to the ISP.
I'm no fan of cable companies in general, but this article doesn't exactly cast the facts of this issue in a fair light.
The reality is, that under a reseller model, 75%/25% is a somewhat better deal than that being currently offered by the Telco's for DSL service, where the split is currently about 83%/17% in many states.
Is this split unfair? Not really. Consider, that the value-added by the isp itself is pretty insignificant compared to the cost of building, maintaining, and operating the wire plant. Mail servers, DNS, docsis service, etc. are trivial costs, and the real value added by the isp is customer service - and a considerable portion of that must be provided by the hosting cable company, since a large percentage of customer problems are system based.
A fairer way of presenting this issue, would have been "Cable company offers 25% discount at wholesale to ISP's wishing to use their system."
More troubling, are the requirements about splitting advertising, and providing AOL/TW editorial control over content provided by the ISP. I doubt this will be a long-term issue, since the FCC has previously taken very negative stances towards attempts to exert too much control over reseller ISP's in the Telco arena.
In fact, this may not be an issue long at all, since the 8th Circuit recently declared that cable modem service was, in fact, a telecom service. This is an important distinction, since currently, cable modems are regulated under the much more ambiguous "cable services" umbrella by the FCC and by state PUC's. At some point soon, cable modems are going to be moved under the far more restictive telecom data services regulatory umbrella, at which time the entire "Open Access/Forced Access" issue will go away. Telecom companies are required to provide non-discriminatory access to their systems, at rates set by state PUC's.
Frankly, the whole issue doesn't turn me on at all. AOL/TW, TCI/AT&T, et al, currently are selling the service over systems based on a very old branching tree/coax design, that as never intended to provide two-way services. That it works at all is somewhat miraculous. Much more interesting, is the arrival of a new class of "Overbuilders" (or companies planning to build and deploy their own wire plant over the top of the old incumbant systems). Comapnies like Western integrated networks, Wide Open West, Rio, etc. are currently seeking franchises from cities, to construct ultra-high density fiber-optic systems, to deliver voice/video/data services on systems that are far far superior to the crapulent old coax systems.
Take a look at the system specs for Western integrated network's system, for example (http://www.winfirst.com). Note, especially, the planned data speeds they plan to deliver into homes. Yeah - that's 100baseT service. And yup, they're bringing fiber inside the house . Frankly, the prospect of a fully bi-directional ethernet connection into my home makes me erect. It also has to have the incumbant telecoms shitting in their pants, as they watch the imminent death of their cash-cow DS1 and DS3 circuit business arriving on the scene. These new systems are designed with a series of descending fiber rings, and very low node densities. wow baby. No reason at all they can't offer businesses sonet (OC3-OC48) services at very low rates.
Oddly, I've seen very little drooling about this from the geek press, who ought, rightly, to be having a feeding frenzy about it. Instead, we see silly gnashing of teeth over AOL/TW, and inappropriatly biased stories over a thing which, by comparison, is almost irrelevent.
Those that are pointing out that "sessions" are a more accurate measure overlook the fact that banner ads are typically delivered per page pull - and users who view 10 pages may see 10 completely different banner ads in that time.
These numbers are important for both advertisers and web operators alike, because many banner ads pay on a cost per thousand (CPM) basis. Advertisers need to see how many people are actually seeing their ads, and operators need accurate numbers to be sure they are paid fairly.
Any web operator you meet, can tell you that the page impressions counted by the banner ad company *never* match the page impressions reported by the logs, and often are on the order of 1/3 the number webtrends or webalyser reports. Add that to the idiotic way companies like Media Metrix are "projecting" traffic based on relatively small sample sets, and the result is, that website operators always manage to get screwed in the deal.
I wonder that we aren't seeing more discussion/speculation as to the outright legality of the SDMI.
Whether or not it is technically feasible is beside the point. Is it legal? A couple of points to consider:
1. Copyrights, by law, last for 17 years at which time "ownership" is "transferred" to the "Public Domain". Therefore, is it legal to wrap the copyrighted work in a format which, by virtue of encryption, renders impossible that transfer of ownership interest?
2. The concept of manufacturers and a few copyright holders working together to develop a format + playback + record mechanism, in which the copyright holders serve as "gatekeepers", granting or denying access to the technology in their own self-interest, could only be considered a pernicious form of anti-competitive restraint of trade. New artists, equipment manufacturers, etc. will be forced to pay financial tribute to the keepers of the encryption keys, and can easily be excluded from the market, simply by denying access to the recording or playback equipment. I can readily envision such collusion as standing in violation of any number of anti-trust statutes, from Sherman on down.
Lastly, I wouldn't overlook the marketability of such a system. Will consumers really "pay-per-play"? Will they spend their bucks buying systems that a five year old could see was meant from the outset to soak the maximum amount of money from their pockets? What's in it for them? Why would Joe Bob go out and plunk down $200 on a new player in the first place (especially one which renders his existing music collection worthless from the outset)?
I expect the public to respond to the "new" format and equipment with a hearty "no thanks".
FPS games, unlike adventure games, are growth experiences.
Those who characterize FPS games as "mindless" clearly have very limited experience with them. They ignore the vibrant communities that have sprang up around the id Software games, and focus on the "difficulty" of the silly puzzles that seem to be the sole reason for existance of adventure games. Frankly, I need more than puzzles to hold my interest. I need people.
1. FPS games are easy to play, and very hard to play well. Ever seen a professional adventure game player? Playing Quake3 well means practice, and lots of it. You must master aim of course, and also movement and tactics as well, if you hope to beat the best quake players.
2. FPS games, as a result of interconnected online play, often create entire communities of people - people that play together, talk together in IRC, and travel far to attend lan parties like Quakecon 2000. As often as not, regular FPS afficianados develop an identity that transcends the game itself.
3. FPS games are competitive experiences - in other words, sport. People like sports. Hundreds of thousands of people compete regularly in leagues like the Online Gaming League, Cyberathlete Professional League, etc.
There are other reasons, of course. But the bottom line, is that immersing yourself in the FPS scene is a far richer and more fulfilling experience than anything a solitary adventure game can ever offer. And that's the real reason FPS games are proving to be the more popular genre.
I'm not sure I see this case as much of a precedent setter. The issue boils down to a rather simple one of contract law - did SBC (ASI) guarantee a link speed that it subsequently did not deliver? if it was a failure, did it occur outside of ASI's reasonable ability to control?
Not dissimilar to the law relating to cartage and freight hauling.
On the other hand, the many responses here point out a more interesting telecommunications issue which very few people are tracking - That "deregulation" of the local loop has, in fact, created 4 or 5 new layers of federal and state beuracracy, in a vain attempt to promote "competition".
The DSL issue in Houston is a perfect case in point. But to understand it, you have to know a little history about it.
In 1996, Congress passed the "Telecom Act", which purported to do, among other things, "de-regulate and open the local loop to competition".
Loosely translated, that means the wise denizens of Congress saw fit to repeal various provisions of the existing regulatory code that governed the RBOC's, and replace it with a new and "better" model. Essentially, they decreed that the RBOC's would henceforth become wholesalers of telecom parts (called UNE's, or un-bundled network elements). The idea being, that "CLEC's" (Competitive Local Exchange Carriers" could buy loops from the RBOC's at a wholesale price, and resell them to customers at a profit. Congress vested the responsibility for implementing this new law with the FCC - an agency of lawyers, led by commissioners who got the job out of political patronage.
At the time, DSL was just a promising new idea, and the broadband boom hadn't started yet. So it was understood, that the loops were going to be sold as voice circuits (POTS), or dedicated DS lines (T1's, T3's, etc.)
Congress was happy (since they could proclaim that they had brought a new age of competition), the RBOC's were happy (they still controlled their nets, and they got to get into long distance too), and the FCC was happy (lots of new regulations for the lawyers to write and argue over) and the CLECS were happy (hey! all I have to do is pass around orders in computers, and I get a nice 17% profit). Life was good.
Of course, it took 3 years for the lawyers at the FCC to write the new rules (they have families to feed too), and in the meantime, along comes this DSL business.
Don't kid yourself, the RBOC's hate DSL. When DSL first appeared, the RBOCs hemmed and hawed and tested the bejesus out of it, and generally kept it on the shelf, until the damned cable companies spoiled the fun, and began to sell cable modem service. Suddenly, dark clouds appeared on the RBOC horizon - the upstart cable companies were offering speeds which began to compare, and even exceed the speeds the RBOC's provided with their T1 business - a very, very lucrative portion of their business to boot. Suddenly, that $1400/mo. T1 line begins to look like a serious ripoff in the face of $40 cable connections.
Imagine, if you will, the collective sound of the rectums of 10,000 telephone company exec's slamming shut, in one gigantic sucking motion.
And, curse the luck, DSL companies like Covad wanted to place DSLAMs at local CO's, so they could begin selling DSL service to customers. Their own equipment!
Try to bear in mind, that several broadband technologies now exist, using the same sort of high-frequency transmission encoding DSL does, that can send and receive data at speeds approaching 60Mbps. Kinda puts a whole new perspective on what DSL could be, doesn't it?
The wiley RBOC's retaliated though, and began to install DSL systems in their headends just as fast as they possibly could. Way faster, in fact, than their CSR and installers could possibly keep up with.
Now why would they do that?
Well, I'll tell you. What you don't know, is that the FCC punted a considerable portion of the regulatory burden onto states - including certifying that the RBOC's had done all the things necessary to "enable competition" so that the RBOC's would be allowed to sell long distance service (read: make mega bucks). So, the smarty men at the baby bells took their fight to preserve T1 service to the local PUC's - in Texas, and in all the other 49 states. They required rulemakings to tell them just exactly what they needed to do to make it possible for them to "help" the CLECs connect their DSL service. And yes, i really mean *exactly*. So the PUC's all over the country are currently embroiled in proceedings to define exactly what the Bells had to do, to allow the Covads of the world to resell their local loops for DSL service. Oh, and did I mention that they installed equipment, lots of it, that ultimately limits the throughput of subscriber premises equipment to 1.5 Mbps or so?
Smarty men indeed. they gained a couple of years, while the lawyers argue, and in the meantime protect their T1 business, while selling DSL service mostly un-molested.
And when the dust clears, they will have a network in place that "won't support" the ultra-high bitrates of the newer HFC technology. Smart, eh?
Of course, the DSL companies cried foul, and immediately sought to force the RBOC's to sell the "platform" (AKA UNE-P) instead of just the conditioned loops. They are currently demanding the right to install their own DLC cards at the big chassis in the local CO's, so they can offer the higher speeds now made possible, and better compete with cable, and Bell itself. Of course, Bell disagrees. Surprise! More fights.
And that's where we are today. Our new 'de-regulated" market, is being done at the Federal, State, and local level, and the lawyers are having a feeding frenzy. In the end, who knows what we will get. Depends on who ends up out-maneuvering whom. Oh, and your DSL service will be a mere shadow of what it could be, until the dust clears.
In the meantime, all the "exactness" the Bells wanted in determining how to allow the CLECs to resell their service has resulted in an amazing blizzard of order forms, line certifications, engineer conditioning checks, etc. etc. ad nauseum being passed between the LECs and the CLECs. That's why it takes 6 months to get your DSL hooked up. heh. -Tap