You cannot just wave your arms and mumble a lot of words and pretend they are the same.
I think you should be heeding some of your own advice there, buddy. Normally, I don't feed trolls, but I'm feeling particularly ornery today, so here goes...
So you're now quoting the very same layman's definition of a "ballast" from Wikipedia I referenced in our previous discussion here to belittle someone else for not being "educated"? This, coming from the same troll who was unable/unwilling to comprehend the fact that an offline LED power supply (whether a simple, linear deign, or a more complicated SMPS type) was analogous to a gas discharge lamp ballast... That's rich.
LED's require their junction current to be limited, period. However, when the power source cannot be configured to supply "constant current", and is a "constant voltage" type, a series resistor is inserted in circuit, with it's value selected based on desired junction current, source voltage, and junction voltage. That series resistance (whether supplied from winding resistance, external resistor, or a combination of both) is known as... ballast resistance.
Rather than continuing to cultivate your own astonishing ignorance on subject matters you obviously know less than nothing about, I'd suggest you search that empty head of yours and try to locate two brain cells to rub together, educate yourself before you speak/type, and try to form a coherent thought. I know that may be a stretch for you, but give it a try - you'd be a better person for it.
And, if you aren't willing to actually try, then shut your trap.
In the future, I suggest you do a little research of your own before you accuse others being "ignorant". Unfortunately, I fear that bit of advice is nothing more than wasted words on a blunt object such as yourself. But, I welcome you to prove my fears unfounded.
Moving on, let's consult Wikipedia for a reasonable common-man's look at the disputed subject matter... From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_ballast we have:
"An electrical ballast is a device intended to limit the amount of current in an electric circuit." Seems pretty straightforward.
Applying that to LED lighting, LED's must have their junction current limited. Ideally, for a constant brightness and reasonable life expectation, it should be fairly tightly regulated regulated - usually by a circuit most often referred to as a switch mode power supply, operating in a "current regulation" mode.
Therefore, as I said in my reply, it's proper to refer to it as a "power supply". However, in terms of a "ballast" used in gas discharge lamps, it's performing the same function.
Hence referring to is as an "analogue". Perhaps you need to look that up? Here, I'll help you with that - https://www.google.com/search?q=analogue+definition
Are there any other multi-syllable, "big" words you're having trouble comprehending in either of my replies? I can try to help you with those too if you'd like...
Well, if you consider a "ballast" as a sort of "power supply", then, yes, there most certainly are "ballasts" in many LED lamps.
LED traffic lights usually have several long-ish strings of LED's (each with a voltage drop of ~2V) wired together so that the drop resistor does not need to dissipate much heat under normal operation - identical in concept to a string of common LED Christmas lights. In the case where there are these long series connected LED strings, it's true that there's no "ballast" per-se.
But, in the case of replacement LED bulbs (40W, 60W, 80W "equivalent" bulbs commonly available now), there is indeed a power supply circuit inside each bulb that regulates the LED current, and some (many, now) provide for phase controlled dimmability too.
LED "flood lights", which would include street lamps, also have a fairly sophisticated power supply in them, particularly important where the power to the lamp housing can be less than ideal, and subjected to large voltage spikes/transients - which can be downright deadly to the light emitting diode junctions in the LED (amongst other things). To get the long lifespan, the power supply circuitry needs to be well designed, built with high quality components, and the LED's themselves need proper thermal management. Not impossible, but not cheap either.
So, in the case of "cheap" LED lights, there isn't necessarily a "ballast". Anything more efficient or higher luminosity than that, there is a "power supply" which would the be LED analogue to a "ballast".
Ironically, a cogent argument seems to be the antithesis of your rebuttal(s).
In an attempt to coax you into offering up a meaningful, cogent counter-argument of your own, I would ask you one simple question:
Why did Apple offer up a $22.99 "refund" to all Breaking Bad Season 5 HD "Season Pass" customers when you, in your own incredibly educated opinion, loudly proclaim to have had absolutely no reason to do so?
Normally, I'd be glad to debate your chemical-free toilet paper example with you. But, I'm afraid I currently have no faith that you're capable of discussing it intelligently, and your counter would reek more than your example product once used.
When you finish high school and are hopefully able to use several multi-syllable words together to form a coherent counter argument, please reply. Until then, please go back to Facebook and playing Candy Crush Saga on your Android phone.
This may be asking for too much, but I'll try to use smaller words here so that you might actually be able to comprehend the issue at hand.
It matters not what the price is, or what the product is called. The issue is with false/misleading representation of what the offered product consisted of.
Apple iTunes initially offered for sale a "Season Pass" of Breaking Bad Season 5. No disclaimer was made within the iTunes Store at the time of purchase stating that it included only episodes 1 through 8, or that it was a "half season", or that the other half of the season was going to be offered up separately as "Season 6" or "The Final Season". Further, no indication of that information was present on the receipt from iTunes.
So it comes down to being a false/misleading advertising through the manipulation of terms - specifically the term "season".
From laws-dot-com, we have "Advertising law also recognizes the manipulation of standards as a deception under consumer law. This means that a company will begin to change something, such as a unit of measurement, to mean something different from how it is normally understood. This will allow companies to charge more for their services, but is a violation of rights according to consumer law." In this specific case, the "unit of measurement" being manipulated is the length of a TV season.
Based on both of those commonly held interpretations, the issue is with what exactly comprises a television "season". And, fortunately that much is an immutable fact - by AMC's own publicized information, Breaking Bad Season 5 consists of 16 episodes.
As to who's responsible for resolving the debacle, that too is clear. The customer purchases the content from Apple iTunes, not from AMC or Sony Entertainment. The money goes to Apple first, who takes their cut and then disburses the remainder. There is no legal recourse or remedy to be had from any other party than Apple here, contrary to what all of the fanboi shills want to proclaim at the top of their lungs.
iTunes is Apple's content "walled garden", so by design they accept responsibility for the good and the bad that comes of it. If AMC/Sony chose or directed iTunes to represent the first eight episodes as "season 5", and the last eight episodes as something else - that's Apple's problem to resolve with both the content provider, and their customers. How Apple resolves it with AMC/Sony is a separate matter completely.
This was a case of false/deceptive advertising, plain and simple. And, that is also exactly why Apple did what it did.
It did fail on "political" reasons, mainly referring to corporate politics, you could boil that down to "pricing" if you wish.
It was priced at better than *4* times as much as *2* POTS lines in my area, delivering the same number of voice channels, and using at most the same amount of switch backplane capacity (two DS0's). And the Telco's got the advantage of having the A/D conversions done at the customer premise (giving cleaner analog performance), and using half the copper pairs of two POTS lines (once the integrated NT interface became the defacto standard). Benefits on two fronts that should have ultimately made providing the service *cheaper*, but it didn't.
And, on the technical aspect, it too failed. Not because the technology didn't work, but because of the limited reach it had. "Back then", even in metropolitan areas 12-18kft of cable was fairly easy to exceed if you were in the wrong place in town. Forget rural, it was often well over length by the time you reached the first home/business/farm out of town.
Overall, it failed. Miserably. ISDN PRI survives and thrives to this day, but is really only seen used in high density voice-grade situations such as ISP dialup or business applications with PBX'es and a need for 6+ voice lines, DID, inbound and outbound CID, and all the other amenities you can get with it.
That was much like the overall premise and promise of ISDN BRI - "high speed" digital access over voice grade plant, which failed miserably due to a number of technical, political, and corporate reasons.
Granted, the OP's proposal is somewhat different, as I assume he was referring to using DSL-like technology in the full voice band. But, there are also limitations on how much data can be carried in a given amount of spectrum using various modulation and encoding schemes.
If she doesn't appreciate or respect the abilities or labor you provide to her, then politely decline for any number of reasons, such as:
1) I am really quite busy lately, perhaps you should seek help from a full time support technician at . 2) I'm not up on the latest adware/scumware/malware removal techniques, but I've heard that is really good, I think carries it. 3) I'm not familiar with that application, perhaps you can call for assistance? 4) I'm really short on time to research the problem, have you tried finding the answer on ?... whatever, and suggest that she purchase her next computer from Dell, pointing out that it comes with full tech support for X years, they're available 24 hours, and so on.
Then, one of 4 things happens:
1) She's thrilled with the support they give her, and your problem is solved. 2) She's frustrated with the support they give here, she falls back to you for support, in which case you politely recite a reason above and point out that she has free support with her shiny new PC - your problem remains solved. 3) She learns to use her computer responsibly, and to be somewhat self sufficient at "fixing it", and your problem is solved. 4) She despises the supprt she recieves from Dell, learns to appreciate your efforts and in the process becomes a much kinder, more understanding person when asking for help - and your problem is stil solved.
Regardless, suggest she "get a Dell" regardless of the reason, and your problem is solved.
If you really want to stir the pot, and get to scenario 4 above much faster, suggest she buy a new PC from Walmart instead. That virtually guarantees your place amongst the Gods of Tech Support in a matter of days.
Just because you do not *SEE* the spam, by no stretch of the imagination does that mean it's *NOT THERE*. Don't *EVER* confuse those facts.
As administrator of several small mail servers, I'm killing in excess of 88% of incoming email as spam. In one particular case, a very small ISP mail server with about 600 email accounts has a steady inbound SMTP flow of 280kbps minimum 24x7 into the email server. That doesn't sound like much, until you do the math. If that figure held up linearly in larger installations/sites, that would mean that a small-medium sized ISP with 50000 email accounts would see a 23Mbps stream of incoming email - the equivalent of half a DS3.
Now, if the 88% spam figure holds (and unfortunately I'm pretty sure it will - if not even worse than that), that's almost 20Mbps of utterly wasted bandwidth. And guess what? Bandwidth costs money.
Between the RBL's and Spamassassin, we see about a 96% effectiveness in the reduction in spam. Trust me, the reason you see less spam is because your provider is at least trying to catch some of it and the filters have gotten much better at spotting it, *NOT* because there is less spam.
The definition of "not losing" is purely a matter of perspective. Due to the (current) effectiveness of filtering software implemented properly, certainly users are less frustrated and happier.
However, more and more effort (time, software, server resources, horsepower, money) is being spent to combat it, not to mention the waste of bandwidth at all levels. That's effort and money that could be used to expand or enhance services, lower rates, or both. I personally still consider that "losing".
Thank Goodness someone has finally said something about it, even if it was just in passing. The bonus is that it is on the front page of Slashdot.
"Moore's Law" is no more a "law" in the sense of physics (or anything else for that matter), than any other basic observation made by a scientist or physicist.
Oddly, you'd have a hard time believing it wasn't a Law of Nature by the apocalyptic cries from the technology industry when "Moore's Law" falls behind - spouting that something *has* to be done immediately for Moore's Law to continue, lest the nuclear reaction in the Sun cease. Or something.
At the time it was coined by the *press* in 1965, only a small fraction of what we now know was known about the physics of integrated circuits and semiconductors at the time. So, looking back it's easy to see that the exponential trend in density would continue as long as the knowledge and abilility to manipluate materials increased exponentially.
Yes, it is rather surprising that Moore's observation has held true as long as it has. And this isn't to say that the growth trend won't continue, but it will certainly level off for periods while materials or manufacturing research comes up with some new knowledge to advance the industry.
As the article indicates, things are likely headed for a plateau, possibly toward the end of this decade or start of the next. And at that point, Moore's observation will simply no longer be true or appropriate.
Let the cries of armageddon begin as "Moore's Law" is finally recognized as an observation that will eventually be outlived.
For a little "Moore" background, see http://www.intel.com/research/silicon/mooreslaw.ht m
Actually, the Lucent WavePoint IIe (note - the "e") has a 10/100 port on it.
However, you're grossly overestimating the CPU in the box:) Both WavePoint II and IIe's run 486 class CPU's in them.
I can't say with perfect accuracy, but I believe the WP-II's run a 66MHz processor and the IIe's run a 75MHz processor. Anyway, it's along those lines, perhaps it's 75MHz and 100MHz, not sure - regardless, they're 486's.
Incidentally, they both do have CardBus controllers in them, so they probably could support newer CardBus cards (802.11a or g), in theory. However, it would be quickly and terribly I/O bound for lack of bus bandwidth I'd think.
KarlNet wrote the firmware for Lucent (and Proxim) for the WP-II(e)'s, as well ar the OR's. They've had some "troublesome" releases, but in all, the combination of the hardware and KarlNet firmware is *incredibly* stable in recent releases (for me anyway).
KarlNet and Proxim had a falling-out recently, and is no longer writing the AP or card firmware for them to my knowledge. Since the WP-IIe platform has been obsoleted (nix'ing the AP-1000, and all OR products), Proxim has stopped providing FW updates for those products. You can still purchase new FW from KarlNet, so you're not completely SOL, but it will cost money from here out.
For a "vanilla" plain old 802.11b access point, even the "old" Lucent AP-1000 with Orinoco radios is still a very choice. It's not cheap, even on the used market (usually >$100 even on eBay), but they're solid - set it, forget it.
Now, you might wonder just what in the hell this has to do with Marth Stewart? Read on.
First, some facts:
1) IBM at some point was given (through licensing) a copy of the source code licensed from SCO (an obvious "duh", since that's what this fracus is about).
2) SCO has not been remotely shy about telling the world about supposed massive IP violations and misappropriations. In the process, they've seemingly threatened everyone in the *NIX world, down to Linus Torvalds himself, with the possibility of a lawsuit.
3) The source code to all releases of Linux and *BSD kernels (and pretty much anything generally associated with either) is widely available on a per release basis.
4) SCO's stock price has climbed from about $2 to over $10 a share as of close today - a FIVE FOLD increase in stock value since announcing their legal rampage.
Now a couple questions:
1) It would seem to me that the first thing IBM would do is a line by line comparison against the licensed SCO source code and any other code they could get their hands on to compare it against, correct?
2) SCO's threats and allegations has definitely caused some hesitation in the free *NIX marketplaces, less in some instances than others. I would assume that VAR's and integrators would be the most likely to see the financial ramifications of this. So, have customers called you and asked "Are we at risk by using Linux/BSD?" Any quantifiable damage in terms of lost sales?
3) Should SCO's claims prove to be unfounded or otherwise unable to be substantiated (or funnier yet - them crying wolf over code *they* borrowed from whatever source), can they then be litigated into oblivion by IBM?
4) And for those who wondered just what this has to do with Martha Stewart, I read a tidbit on Yahoo several days ago about a twist with her case in that (and I quote) "Martha Stewart is accused of deliberately trying to inflate the stock of her own company â" simply by declaring her innocence." And further "There's kind of a natural tendency when you're confronted with something to deny it. Now they're charging it as market manipulation." (Source -http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030606/ap_en_tv/martha_stewart_162)
It's obvious that SCO's legal moves of late has greatly bolstered it's stock price. Should this prove to be nothing more than a ploy to be bought out (or to inflate stock price), can they not also be held accountable for doing so? In the case of Martha Stewart, they are holding her *personally* responsible for "stockholder damage", could the same possibility be in store for the execs at SCO?
That's all for now:)
Brad
Repeat after me - Radio Data Rate!=Data Throughput
on
802.11g... It's Official
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· Score: 5, Informative
OK, it seems that there are a *lot* of people who either don't read the articles closely, or in the case of the last one posted on Slashdot, don't differentiate between "radio data rate" and "data throughput".
On ordinary 802.11b gear, the maximum "radio data rate" is 11Mbps. Once you account for the inherent loss in throughput because of the uncertainty of the medium (air), and the fact that the protocol was designed to accomodate this uncertainty, your actual maximum "data thoughput" is about half of that - around 5Mbps. 11Mbps 802.11b != 11Mbps throughput, it never has, it never will.
The same goes for 802.11g - the maximum radio data rate was, and _still is_ 54Mbps. However, the throughput is again slightly less than half of that, in the 20Mbps range.
The reported "change" to 802.11g to "20Mbps" media frenzy stemmed almost entirely from simply clarifying that the actual "data throughput" was about 20Mpbs, *not* that the radio data rate had changed, been knocked down, whatever.
You get roughly 20Mbps "data throughput" in a pure 802.11g network - and again, similar to 802.11b, 54Mbps 802.11g != 54Mpbs throughput.
A 4x increase in throughput using 802.11g over 802.11b is nothing to complain about. Now, if we could get Atheros 802.11g drivers for Linux, I'd be a much happier camper:) Although I do hear rumblings about drivers possibly surfacing soon - fingers crossed.
Admittedlty, I haven't tried VMWare since the 2.something-or-other days, but even simple VGA emulation was far from perfect then.
I'm a loyal, huge fan of several old DOS based engineering programs that don't have "modern" windowed or OSS equivalents that are nearly as efficient, and just don't work and play well in a Win2k DOS box (if you can call it that). But even so, I need to use Win2k for the rest of the CAD/CAM/EDA work I do day to day.
So, basically I just needed something to run these old DOS programs. I looked at Bochs, which was pretty young at the time, and wouldn't cut it at all then. I decide to try out VMWare, thinking that just simple non-VESA basic VGA emulation would pretty much be a slam-dunk and work out of the box. Wrong. Nothing but trouble, corrupted video, all sorts of "issues".
Now, I understand that these programs may manipulate the VGA hardware in, um, "non-standard" ways, but even so, I didn't expect the bulk of my old software running in simple 640x480x4bpp mode to exhibit such horrible artifacts. IIRC, even 320x240x4bpp mode exhibited the same problems.
After some fooling around, as an experiment, I installed Linux inside VMWare - with the proprietary X server, and then eventually succeeded in getting my DOS programs to run inside Linux inside Xdosemu. Even though it worked, it was a bit too much of a kludge - even for me. Research and emails to VMWare basically confirmed that video support for anything other than Windows or Linux just wasn't going to be "complete". Bummer.
So, I tried VirtualPC. Even though it was slower than VMWare, when running software in a DOS environment that was cutting edge in the 486-66 days, running in a VM on a 800MHz host seemed unnaturally fast in many ways:)
Many people have run VirtualPC down in that it emulates "outdated" hardware like the DEC Tulip ethernet controller (Intel now I believe) and the lowly S3 Trio video card, but from what I've seen, the hardware emulation is true to the real deal - and the bonus is that just about anything can support those two hardware components. So, VPC gave me what I needed, at a price and speed that were reasonable, even if it doesn't run on everyone's favorite free OS.
I'm sure VMWare has improved in many of these areas, but for what I needed at that time, it didn't fit at all, and was a basic disappointment. I'm sure if I needed a virtualized server farm, which is the main focus of VMWare currently, I'd be much happier. But it's strength at that time was in processor virtualization and not hardware emulation.
I'm intrigued with the "new" Bochs/Plex86 combination, and maybe someday it will be able to do what I need it to do, under any host OS it's available on. For now, I'll use VPC and watch intently from a distance.
OK, I know this is offtopic, and will probably be modded down as offtopic or flamebait, but it's still worth the time of putting out a word of warning (and bad reference) to those who obviously deserve it.
Normally I wouldn't even think of posting anything quite this strongly put, but if you do business with Florida Computers, or it's web portal aliases, from my (and others' experiences), you could experience some of the poorest business practices I've personally witnessed yet.
Their online portals span several domains, some of which are:
APDrives.com QualityCables.com USBMax.com USB Gear.com FloridaComputers.com CoolDrives.com ut wo.com firewiremax.com... and probably others.
First, do yourself a favor and visit the Clearwater Better Business Bureau and check their record -
http://www.clearwater.bbb.org/commonreport.html? co mpid=62002265
Florida Computers is the "parent" company of all of those web portals, with the same owners, shipped from the same place, with the same customer service and support.
Secondly, check out an extremely unprofessional rant by Rad Rozycki directed at a specific (named) customer over a service complaint at APDrives.com -
http://www.apdrives.com/apdrives/press-news.html
Makes you wonder about the overall calibre of company you're ordering from when they publically post a personal rebuttal to a specific person, with personalized information as well, onto the PRESS section of their website. Sorry, but it's wholly inappropriate in any venue or circumstance.
Lastly, check out a couple Googled references on Mr. Royzcki -
Of course, all of the above information came too late for me to avoid trouble.
I personally had a run-in with them a year ago over a FireWire enclosure that was utterly DOA, zero response via email (support@utwo.com actually bounced - and was eventually fixed after I pointed it out), and of course the problem was with my hardware (of which it didn't work on three different systems, three different 1394 cards, three different cables, and three different OS's), NOT with their product - which incidentally they claimed to personally on site 100% test every single product they sell before shipment. Riiiiiight, everyone pulls their product out of the shrinkwrap, plugs it in, tests it, re-shrinkwraps it, and then ships it out.
It was eventually returned for replacement and instead it was considered a "return" and was charged 15% restocking fee. On defective merchandise!!! Can you say fraud?
He has positively the WORST customer relations and communications skills I have ever experienced when doing business with someone. Downright childish and accusatory in all respects, with no help whatsoever in resolving the matter and nothing but exaggerations, lies, and innuendo in response to my communications.
Do yourself a favor and avoid them AT ALL COST. I needed an enclosure fast, and I ended up ordering a Pyro enclosure from CDW. Even though it wasn't the cheapest one I could have gotten, I know CDW would have at least stood behind the product and helped resolve any warranty issues, not try to stand ON the customer like Mr. Rozycki does. And ultimately the CDW approach would have been cheaper as it turned out.
Brad
Basic constants of the "Internet Universe"...
on
How to Test Your T1?
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· Score: 2, Informative
There seems to be some confusion between what a T1 is, and the data rate a T1 can support, as well as how bandwidth is marketed and sold, and wether or not the online "speedtests" mean anything.
First off, excluding some very odd and sparse cases, from a telco "loop" perspective (the wire and associated hardware involved in providing a T1 from you to the telco's office or remote), a T1 is a T1, regardless of it being frame relay, fractional, point to point, or otherwise. Basically, 1.544Mbps raw data rate. The only thing the telco can tell you is that it is working within acceptable limits, with an acceptably low BER (Bit Error Rate). Nothing more. If it's a non frame relay dedicated T1 (aka point-to-point or "nailed up"), you should see something like 160kBps on a single transfer over an otherwise idle circuit. Frame relay is a totally different ballgame - you run into the circuit's "CIR" - Committed Information Rate (or also referred to as Certified Information Rate on occasion). Basically, it works like this - even though your local loop (wire from you to the telco) supports T1 rates, they're only provisioning your chunk of the frame relay "cloud" to support the bandwidth you purchase. Depending on the provider, it could be a "hard" limit (ie - you'll never get more than that), or a "soft" limit, meaning that you may get more speed if there is sufficient packet bandwidth left, but when it's busy, you'll get choked down to your CIR.
Second immutable fact of the Internet - providers (particularly tier 2 non-backbone providers) will always oversell their bandwidth. Think about it - how do they make any money at it otherwise? It's their bandwidth "sold" to bandwidth "available" ratio that tells you anything about the quality of service you may expect to see from them. It can be virtually anything really. It's similar to the subscriber to modem ratio dialup ISP's keep, or subscriber to bandwidth broadband ISP's keep.I'm not sure what the averages are anymore with the changing scene of broadband right now.
As for testing your speed with one of the online "speed test" sites, take the results with a grain of salt - a very BIG grain. It's only benchmarking the ability for you to transfer data between your location on the Internet to their location on the Internet. Nothing more, nothing less. More oft than not, their results are less than what your circuit (or broadband connection) are configured for, and sometimes, dramatically less. I've seen 256k DSL connections that "felt" as they should speed wise, bench in at dialup speeds using those sites because of bottlenecks beyond their or their provider's control.
A better test of bandwidth, and possibly more importantly connectivity, is to do some basic homework. Ask your provider to provide some traceroute and ping data to some common sites potentially used in your day to day activity - taken at different times of the day, preferrably at the times you're most interested in. Or better yet, ask them if they would let you do the tests yourself from their facility. Choose some sites you frequently visit, business or pleasure, and trace their progress theough the Net. Fewer hops = better speed and reliability overall.
I may catch a little hell for this, but I've found it to be a good general benchmark - download something that is known to be cached at at Akamai cache farm. NAI virus updates used to be a good test. Akamai is generally connected very well, in strategic points through the Internet, and provides at least a benchmark to go from. Downloading from Microsoft is sometimes a decent test, sometimes not, depending on what's downloaded and when. And, no, that wasn't meant to be a troll or flamebait, just a basic fact really.
In all, if it generally looks right, feels right, and provides stable, repeatable performance during the times you need it, it's probably fine. There is no good, clear, black and white method of determining if your "T1" is a "T1".
They may just be shooting you a good deal because they have plenty of bandwidth, and sales prospects are limited because of the economy. Who knows. Just do your homework, limit your exposure to marketdroids and the resultant weasel-words, and go from there.
Remember, for all intents and purposes, the Internet is basically the data version of the public road and highway system. You'll find construction, detours, and bottlenecks regardless of how many 12 lane super-highways exist. You just need to live with it and work within those limits as best you can...... or raise several billion in VC money to build your own Internet to all the sites you want super-fast connections to.
Wow, "Myself", that's probably the most intelligent response I've read so far! And for what it's worth, I totally agree, and people need to make an effort to understand the difference between a "data switch" and a "voice switch"!
Simple fact - 99.9% of basic wired telco infrastructure is completely IP "unaware". In other words, no IP address, doesn't have a clue what TCP/IP is, nor does it care. Granted, the new wireless technologies are more/heavily IP based, but that's a different matter - wireless services always have been, and likely always will be many orders of magnitude more vulnerable to abuse/attack purely because of the uncontrolled nature of the transmission medium (without wires, hence wireless). But I digress...
Of the equipment that does have an IP address, 99.9% of it is privately addresses or firewalled or simply not physically or logically connected to another network.
The only way to "DoS" a switch is to use up the DS0's on it's switching backplane (or whatever, the terminology varies). Even on a tiny switch (5ESS VCDX, etc), this can be multiple hundreds of simultaneous calls.
Then what happens you ask? Simple really, no dial tone to the customer. Your phone doesn't explode, melt down, or otherwise. Nor does the switch "crash". Would it be easily detectable? Without doubt. Would the phone company know where it was coming from or what was causing it? Sure they would.
And, to add to this, most people don't have the slightest clue that dedicated nailed-up circuits (such as PtP T1's) never see a switch. That data is split/multiplexed out of the fiber and handled independantly of switched data. It can't be "jumped" onto another circuit, or have some "magic packet" sent to it to allow it to then connect itself to another circuit or timeslot. Hence the term "nailed-up". Even frame relay is external to the switched voice network for the most part.
What is quite possibly vulnerable is the internal IP (ie computer) network of a particular phone company, or possibly dialup administration modems connected to craft interfaces on various bits of telco gear. But cracking a single telco or exchange and using it as the source of a massive nationwide DoS attack on other carriers isn't going to happen anytime soon.
What's far more likely is a very low-tech attack on the physical infrastructure. Even with redundant facility (logical, physical, and route), there always comes a point in a network that a single "failure point" can bite you. It only depends on how fine-grained your idea of "single point" is.
As far as DoS'ing a "router", how exactly is that different than what happens to routers now? Happens all the time now, so what else is new?:)
The problem with the argument presented above is that the entire infrastucture is based on averages and statistics.
Agreed, and with the current way broadband is provided, ala non-metered, it has to be, which is where the problem lies.
There is probably a better (read - more fair) way, but regardless of what that is, the fact is that the AUP's will be (and are) changing, bounds are being put on, and the relatively small percentage of users that are using the bulk of available bandwidth are the one's doing all of the howling.
But when I buy 4 liters of milk, the dairy industry can't tell me how fast I'm allowed to drink it. If I pay for "unlimited internet"...
And you hit the exact problem of why the way broadband as it is marketed now is a joke - bang-on.
If you buy 4 liters of milk, you have 4 liters of milk. In terms of bandwidth, if you had to pay for what you use, you are fully entitled to what you've paid for, regardless of how fast you consume it.
But what people want or think they deserve is the whole damned cow, which is where the problem lies. Sorry, I'm here to tell you that you don't get the whole cow for $49.95.
If it were marketed such that you 1) paid a "media access" fee for the maximum data transfer capability of your connection, and then 2) paid for the data you actually transferred, then broadband sales would be level and fair.
I'll draw the parallel to electricity again. You have a 200 amp service in your house, you pay a minimum "facilities" fee for the ability of the power company to supply you with power up to that rated power consumption rate. Billing note - you haven't purchased a single kilowatt of power yet. Then, you're billed for the power you consume. The more you consume, the more your bill is.
For those who whine about "not knowing how much their bill will be" I say "deal with it". You manage for phone, electricity, food, everything that's metered. There are easy, simple utilities that can account for every byte you transmit or receive. In fact, it's easier to self-account for bandwidth useage than it is to self-account for telephone useage.
There's a distinguishment people totally miss between "unlimited internet" and "unrestricted internet". Everything has a bounds, whether you like it or not. The bitch is really with the fact that the bounds are being drawn in black and white now, rather than the nebulous weazel-words that were in old AUP's.
It always comes down to this - you want fast, unrestricted, unlimited, high quality internet 24x7, you should pay for it accordingly.
For those who want transfer costs at $0.25/GB, you're dreaming. Speaking for the last Sprint dedicated T1 pricing I had, the T1 "port fee" alone was $400/month. So, to do some math:
T1 = 1544000bps
(60 seconds per minute * 60 minutes per hour * 24 hours per day * 30 days per month * 1544000 bits per second) / 8 bits per Byte / 1024 Bytes per kB / 1024 kB per MB / 1024 MB per GB = 465.9GB of transfer per month, 100% utilization 24 x 7
$400 per month port charge / 465.9GB data transfer = $0.86 per GB.
That's the cost of just banging bits into and out of the serial port at Sprint's nearest POP - already at three times what I saw spewed in another comment.
Add local loop cost (>$100 per month usually), then add transport fees (depends on mileage, but likely >>$100 per month), your internal infrastructure costs (equipment, office space, power, maintainance, etc).
Now, figure that you will likely never, ever achieve 100% utilization on the T1 raw bit rate continually, for a typical business, perhaps figure that the most you'd utilize the span at is 50% of that on average. Take whatever cost you arrived at after adding infrastructure cost, and then double it.
Now you're getting much closer to what it really costs.
For >$900 a month, you can probably have the whole cow.
What's the point of broadband if I can't use it to its full extent?
Go ahead, moderate this as flamebait or troll, but what exactly is it with the whiny 14 year olds who post crap like this?
Listen, for those of you who think that your provider "owes" you or is "obligated" to open the flood gates of bandwidth for you, all for the low, low price of $49.95 (or whatever), here's two words to live by: Screw Off.
You're paying for exactly two things 1) an always "on" connection, and 2) the "ability" to download content at a rate faster than dialup. No guarantees are made, nor is anyone ever obligated to roll out the red capret of resources and let you track mud all over it.
Broadband service is sold and priced as a statistically "multiplexed" service, meaning that on average, a T1 worth of bandwidth should suffice to serve 100 customers, or whatever. There is likely 10's to 100's of thousands of dollars in infrastructure that's being used to deliver that service to you (which has to be maintained, upgraded, and eventually paid for - yes, paid for), as well as monthly fees for bandwidth from various backbone providers and whatnot (yes, believe it or not, providers don't get bandwidth for free).
It gets said all over the place when articles like this are posted, and I'll just join the few that do have a clue and reinforce it. If you want unrestricted access to a T1's worth of bandwidth, both up and down so you can run your "servers", then STFU and pay for it, all $1000 or more a month of it. Period, end of discussion.
If you wish to join the rest of the civilized public, pay your way accordingly, and enjoy a decent, convienient service for a very reasonable fee, then you're welcome to join in.
But I refuse to pay for, or allow "little Johnny" down the street to download pr0n from the Gnutella network at an average rate of 600kbps 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, degrading service for the other 99 or whatever users that bandwidth statistically should be serving, and pay the same rate as I do. That's totally BS, and no reasonable person with a clue can argue against it.
What would happen if telephone service or electricity was sold "buffet style" like broadband is/was? The US would turn into a third world country virtually overnight from a technology standpoint. Certainly no electricity for most of the country (unless you could generate your own), and telephone service would be worthless. Chaos the norm, piss-poor service at it's absolute best. Sound familiar? Welcome to the typical world of broadband.
Grow up, use the service provided responsibly, and pay your way.
OK, go ahead and moderate this (Score:0, Redundant)...
The fact that there is fiber essentially in your local loop really has nothing to do with it actually.
The DSLAM (Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer) is essentially the phone company side of the DSL loop. Think of it as the "modem" on their side.
For all intents and purposes, DSL "modems" *have* to work with only copper between them. To be more accurate, the Analog to Digital conversions must have copper between them. The customer's modem (called CPE - Customer Premise Equipment) has Analog to Digital circuitry in it (called a front-end), and the central office has the same equivalent circuitry in the DSLAM.
The fact that you have a hybrid loop is most likely because the subscriber density is high enough to support (possibly force) the need for a Remote Subscriber Terminal somewhere away from the central office.
What's nixing your ability to get DSL is the fact that the telco's DSLAM is physically located in the central office. Therefore, since your physical copper pair does NOT terminate in the central office, but in a remote subscriber cabinet somewhere, there would have to be a DSLAM (or a smaller equivalent of it - more on this in a minute) in the remote equipment site. Chances are that although the customer density may be high in the area, there probably isn't enough customers to warrant the purchase, installation, and support of a full blown DSLAM in that location.
There are smaller scale DSL equipment solutions that are ideal for this sort of scenario. Advanced Fiber Communications makes one (kinda expensive), as well as Next Level, amongst others. They make line cards that have most of the DSLAM's functionality on them with your ordinary POTS SLIC (more acronyms - POTS Plain Old Telephone Service, SLIC Subscriber Line Interface Circuitry). They are generally used in low population density areas, digital remotes, or rural areas. Transport back to the central office is generally over the existing network installed to the remote site, usually ATM based at some point. These options are generally more expensive per customer, but a lower cost investment that a full DSLAM for certain, given the low possible customer count.
Chances are that your telco has neither AFC or NLC equipment installed, in which case you are still screwed, but at least you know that there are options;)
To expand on what was mentioned earlier about redundacy a bit...
Redundancy in the telecom world takes on two basic forms - equipment redundancy and circuit redundancy.
Equipment redundancy is pretty much what it says - redundant equipment in place with the same end service in mind. Should a processor in a fiber multiplexer die, fry, go up in smoke, whatever, the equipment fails over to the backup processor with little or no interruption of service. This is more or less a minimum standard in the telecom world.
Then there is circuit redundancy, which takes two more basic forms, either over a single cable (with multiple fiber strands), or over multiple cables. Unfortunately, more often than not in more "rural" areas, this is usually multiple fiber redundancy within a single cable. Which covers almost all equipment failures involving the physical cable interface, but does nothing at all for when Joe-Backhoe-Operator digs without a locate and tears up 15 feet of cable without even noticing it. Which is the most common failure I've experienced.
Even multiple cables isn't always the answer, especially if the physical routes aren't diverse enough. I can think of two instances, both in the upper midwest, where multiple cables in proximity (read - one or more conduits in a very small space) were damaged or destroyed, once by fire, and another by a vandal who knew where to find them.
The ideal situation is for telephone companies to have two routes out to the "network" running in almost opposite directions. However, again, although this works well for switched voice calls, most of the time it doesn't work for "nailed up" point to point circuits, which still leaves those types of circuits, commonly used by ISP's where frame relay isn't available, in the cold when routes are destroyed. And, we all know how fragile frame relay can be, especially when Worldcom is at the helm - "Oh, let's just globally upgrade the software in our network without any phasing or large scale testing at all. Oh, yeah, and when it falls on it's nose, let's let it fester for a week or so before we get the network to re-converge."
So, there you have it in a nutshell. Nothing is foolproof, especially if you don't own or control all of the network from point to point. But, I think most everyone would agree, there are very few times I've ever picked up the phone and not had dialtone. I think most people in the states would agree with that. Remember, the telephone network is the most complicated, expensive, diverse, available electronic network in the world. And although the phone companies are far from perfect, especially the former US West and Worldcom, when you think about it, it's really amazing how stable it is, and that it works as well as it does!
Slashdot Mirror
You cannot just wave your arms and mumble a lot of words and pretend they are the same.
I think you should be heeding some of your own advice there, buddy. Normally, I don't feed trolls, but I'm feeling particularly ornery today, so here goes...
So you're now quoting the very same layman's definition of a "ballast" from Wikipedia I referenced in our previous discussion here to belittle someone else for not being "educated"? This, coming from the same troll who was unable/unwilling to comprehend the fact that an offline LED power supply (whether a simple, linear deign, or a more complicated SMPS type) was analogous to a gas discharge lamp ballast... That's rich.
LED's require their junction current to be limited, period. However, when the power source cannot be configured to supply "constant current", and is a "constant voltage" type, a series resistor is inserted in circuit, with it's value selected based on desired junction current, source voltage, and junction voltage. That series resistance (whether supplied from winding resistance, external resistor, or a combination of both) is known as... ballast resistance.
Rather than continuing to cultivate your own astonishing ignorance on subject matters you obviously know less than nothing about, I'd suggest you search that empty head of yours and try to locate two brain cells to rub together, educate yourself before you speak/type, and try to form a coherent thought. I know that may be a stretch for you, but give it a try - you'd be a better person for it.
And, if you aren't willing to actually try, then shut your trap.
--Brad
In the future, I suggest you do a little research of your own before you accuse others being "ignorant". Unfortunately, I fear that bit of advice is nothing more than wasted words on a blunt object such as yourself. But, I welcome you to prove my fears unfounded.
Moving on, let's consult Wikipedia for a reasonable common-man's look at the disputed subject matter... From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_ballast we have:
"An electrical ballast is a device intended to limit the amount of current in an electric circuit." Seems pretty straightforward.
Applying that to LED lighting, LED's must have their junction current limited. Ideally, for a constant brightness and reasonable life expectation, it should be fairly tightly regulated regulated - usually by a circuit most often referred to as a switch mode power supply, operating in a "current regulation" mode.
Therefore, as I said in my reply, it's proper to refer to it as a "power supply". However, in terms of a "ballast" used in gas discharge lamps, it's performing the same function.
Hence referring to is as an "analogue". Perhaps you need to look that up? Here, I'll help you with that - https://www.google.com/search?q=analogue+definition
Are there any other multi-syllable, "big" words you're having trouble comprehending in either of my replies? I can try to help you with those too if you'd like...
--Brad
Well, if you consider a "ballast" as a sort of "power supply", then, yes, there most certainly are "ballasts" in many LED lamps.
LED traffic lights usually have several long-ish strings of LED's (each with a voltage drop of ~2V) wired together so that the drop resistor does not need to dissipate much heat under normal operation - identical in concept to a string of common LED Christmas lights. In the case where there are these long series connected LED strings, it's true that there's no "ballast" per-se.
But, in the case of replacement LED bulbs (40W, 60W, 80W "equivalent" bulbs commonly available now), there is indeed a power supply circuit inside each bulb that regulates the LED current, and some (many, now) provide for phase controlled dimmability too.
LED "flood lights", which would include street lamps, also have a fairly sophisticated power supply in them, particularly important where the power to the lamp housing can be less than ideal, and subjected to large voltage spikes/transients - which can be downright deadly to the light emitting diode junctions in the LED (amongst other things). To get the long lifespan, the power supply circuitry needs to be well designed, built with high quality components, and the LED's themselves need proper thermal management. Not impossible, but not cheap either.
So, in the case of "cheap" LED lights, there isn't necessarily a "ballast". Anything more efficient or higher luminosity than that, there is a "power supply" which would the be LED analogue to a "ballast".
--Brad
Ironically, a cogent argument seems to be the antithesis of your rebuttal(s).
In an attempt to coax you into offering up a meaningful, cogent counter-argument of your own, I would ask you one simple question:
Why did Apple offer up a $22.99 "refund" to all Breaking Bad Season 5 HD "Season Pass" customers when you, in your own incredibly educated opinion, loudly proclaim to have had absolutely no reason to do so?
Normally, I'd be glad to debate your chemical-free toilet paper example with you. But, I'm afraid I currently have no faith that you're capable of discussing it intelligently, and your counter would reek more than your example product once used.
When you finish high school and are hopefully able to use several multi-syllable words together to form a coherent counter argument, please reply. Until then, please go back to Facebook and playing Candy Crush Saga on your Android phone.
This may be asking for too much, but I'll try to use smaller words here so that you might actually be able to comprehend the issue at hand.
It matters not what the price is, or what the product is called. The issue is with false/misleading representation of what the offered product consisted of.
Apple iTunes initially offered for sale a "Season Pass" of Breaking Bad Season 5. No disclaimer was made within the iTunes Store at the time of purchase stating that it included only episodes 1 through 8, or that it was a "half season", or that the other half of the season was going to be offered up separately as "Season 6" or "The Final Season". Further, no indication of that information was present on the receipt from iTunes.
So it comes down to being a false/misleading advertising through the manipulation of terms - specifically the term "season".
From laws-dot-com, we have "Advertising law also recognizes the manipulation of standards as a deception under consumer law. This means that a company will begin to change something, such as a unit of measurement, to mean something different from how it is normally understood. This will allow companies to charge more for their services, but is a violation of rights according to consumer law." In this specific case, the "unit of measurement" being manipulated is the length of a TV season.
Based on both of those commonly held interpretations, the issue is with what exactly comprises a television "season". And, fortunately that much is an immutable fact - by AMC's own publicized information, Breaking Bad Season 5 consists of 16 episodes.
As to who's responsible for resolving the debacle, that too is clear. The customer purchases the content from Apple iTunes, not from AMC or Sony Entertainment. The money goes to Apple first, who takes their cut and then disburses the remainder. There is no legal recourse or remedy to be had from any other party than Apple here, contrary to what all of the fanboi shills want to proclaim at the top of their lungs.
iTunes is Apple's content "walled garden", so by design they accept responsibility for the good and the bad that comes of it. If AMC/Sony chose or directed iTunes to represent the first eight episodes as "season 5", and the last eight episodes as something else - that's Apple's problem to resolve with both the content provider, and their customers. How Apple resolves it with AMC/Sony is a separate matter completely.
This was a case of false/deceptive advertising, plain and simple. And, that is also exactly why Apple did what it did.
Fanboi? Unclear. Obtuse? Apparently.
Which is indeed the case.
You can do whatever you want with it. That includes figuring out how to install Linux on it.
Microsoft has no obligation to assist or otherwise support you in that effort.
End of discussion.
It did fail on "political" reasons, mainly referring to corporate politics, you could boil that down to "pricing" if you wish.
It was priced at better than *4* times as much as *2* POTS lines in my area, delivering the same number of voice channels, and using at most the same amount of switch backplane capacity (two DS0's). And the Telco's got the advantage of having the A/D conversions done at the customer premise (giving cleaner analog performance), and using half the copper pairs of two POTS lines (once the integrated NT interface became the defacto standard). Benefits on two fronts that should have ultimately made providing the service *cheaper*, but it didn't.
And, on the technical aspect, it too failed. Not because the technology didn't work, but because of the limited reach it had. "Back then", even in metropolitan areas 12-18kft of cable was fairly easy to exceed if you were in the wrong place in town. Forget rural, it was often well over length by the time you reached the first home/business/farm out of town.
Overall, it failed. Miserably. ISDN PRI survives and thrives to this day, but is really only seen used in high density voice-grade situations such as ISP dialup or business applications with PBX'es and a need for 6+ voice lines, DID, inbound and outbound CID, and all the other amenities you can get with it.
Brad
That was much like the overall premise and promise of ISDN BRI - "high speed" digital access over voice grade plant, which failed miserably due to a number of technical, political, and corporate reasons.
Granted, the OP's proposal is somewhat different, as I assume he was referring to using DSL-like technology in the full voice band. But, there are also limitations on how much data can be carried in a given amount of spectrum using various modulation and encoding schemes.
1-800-WWW-DELL
... whatever, and suggest that she purchase her next computer from Dell, pointing out that it comes with full tech support for X years, they're available 24 hours, and so on.
Yes, that's right, tell her to get a Dell.
If she doesn't appreciate or respect the abilities or labor you provide to her, then politely decline for any number of reasons, such as:
1) I am really quite busy lately, perhaps you should seek help from a full time support technician at .
2) I'm not up on the latest adware/scumware/malware removal techniques, but I've heard that is really good, I think carries it.
3) I'm not familiar with that application, perhaps you can call for assistance?
4) I'm really short on time to research the problem, have you tried finding the answer on ?
Then, one of 4 things happens:
1) She's thrilled with the support they give her, and your problem is solved.
2) She's frustrated with the support they give here, she falls back to you for support, in which case you politely recite a reason above and point out that she has free support with her shiny new PC - your problem remains solved.
3) She learns to use her computer responsibly, and to be somewhat self sufficient at "fixing it", and your problem is solved.
4) She despises the supprt she recieves from Dell, learns to appreciate your efforts and in the process becomes a much kinder, more understanding person when asking for help - and your problem is stil solved.
Regardless, suggest she "get a Dell" regardless of the reason, and your problem is solved.
If you really want to stir the pot, and get to scenario 4 above much faster, suggest she buy a new PC from Walmart instead. That virtually guarantees your place amongst the Gods of Tech Support in a matter of days.
Brad
You have got to be kidding, right?
Just because you do not *SEE* the spam, by no stretch of the imagination does that mean it's *NOT THERE*. Don't *EVER* confuse those facts.
As administrator of several small mail servers, I'm killing in excess of 88% of incoming email as spam. In one particular case, a very small ISP mail server with about 600 email accounts has a steady inbound SMTP flow of 280kbps minimum 24x7 into the email server. That doesn't sound like much, until you do the math. If that figure held up linearly in larger installations/sites, that would mean that a small-medium sized ISP with 50000 email accounts would see a 23Mbps stream of incoming email - the equivalent of half a DS3.
Now, if the 88% spam figure holds (and unfortunately I'm pretty sure it will - if not even worse than that), that's almost 20Mbps of utterly wasted bandwidth. And guess what? Bandwidth costs money.
Between the RBL's and Spamassassin, we see about a 96% effectiveness in the reduction in spam. Trust me, the reason you see less spam is because your provider is at least trying to catch some of it and the filters have gotten much better at spotting it, *NOT* because there is less spam.
The definition of "not losing" is purely a matter of perspective. Due to the (current) effectiveness of filtering software implemented properly, certainly users are less frustrated and happier.
However, more and more effort (time, software, server resources, horsepower, money) is being spent to combat it, not to mention the waste of bandwidth at all levels. That's effort and money that could be used to expand or enhance services, lower rates, or both. I personally still consider that "losing".
Thank Goodness someone has finally said something about it, even if it was just in passing. The bonus is that it is on the front page of Slashdot.
t m
"Moore's Law" is no more a "law" in the sense of physics (or anything else for that matter), than any other basic observation made by a scientist or physicist.
Oddly, you'd have a hard time believing it wasn't a Law of Nature by the apocalyptic cries from the technology industry when "Moore's Law" falls behind - spouting that something *has* to be done immediately for Moore's Law to continue, lest the nuclear reaction in the Sun cease. Or something.
At the time it was coined by the *press* in 1965, only a small fraction of what we now know was known about the physics of integrated circuits and semiconductors at the time. So, looking back it's easy to see that the exponential trend in density would continue as long as the knowledge and abilility to manipluate materials increased exponentially.
Yes, it is rather surprising that Moore's observation has held true as long as it has. And this isn't to say that the growth trend won't continue, but it will certainly level off for periods while materials or manufacturing research comes up with some new knowledge to advance the industry.
As the article indicates, things are likely headed for a plateau, possibly toward the end of this decade or start of the next. And at that point, Moore's observation will simply no longer be true or appropriate.
Let the cries of armageddon begin as "Moore's Law" is finally recognized as an observation that will eventually be outlived.
For a little "Moore" background, see http://www.intel.com/research/silicon/mooreslaw.h
Actually, the Lucent WavePoint IIe (note - the "e") has a 10/100 port on it.
:) Both WavePoint II and IIe's run 486 class CPU's in them.
However, you're grossly overestimating the CPU in the box
I can't say with perfect accuracy, but I believe the WP-II's run a 66MHz processor and the IIe's run a 75MHz processor. Anyway, it's along those lines, perhaps it's 75MHz and 100MHz, not sure - regardless, they're 486's.
Incidentally, they both do have CardBus controllers in them, so they probably could support newer CardBus cards (802.11a or g), in theory. However, it would be quickly and terribly I/O bound for lack of bus bandwidth I'd think.
KarlNet wrote the firmware for Lucent (and Proxim) for the WP-II(e)'s, as well ar the OR's. They've had some "troublesome" releases, but in all, the combination of the hardware and KarlNet firmware is *incredibly* stable in recent releases (for me anyway).
KarlNet and Proxim had a falling-out recently, and is no longer writing the AP or card firmware for them to my knowledge. Since the WP-IIe platform has been obsoleted (nix'ing the AP-1000, and all OR products), Proxim has stopped providing FW updates for those products. You can still purchase new FW from KarlNet, so you're not completely SOL, but it will cost money from here out.
For a "vanilla" plain old 802.11b access point, even the "old" Lucent AP-1000 with Orinoco radios is still a very choice. It's not cheap, even on the used market (usually >$100 even on eBay), but they're solid - set it, forget it.
FWIW
Brad
Now, you might wonder just what in the hell this has to do with Marth Stewart? Read on.
p /20030606/ap_en_tv/martha_stewart_162)
:)
First, some facts:
1) IBM at some point was given (through licensing) a copy of the source code licensed from SCO (an obvious "duh", since that's what this fracus is about).
2) SCO has not been remotely shy about telling the world about supposed massive IP violations and misappropriations. In the process, they've seemingly threatened everyone in the *NIX world, down to Linus Torvalds himself, with the possibility of a lawsuit.
3) The source code to all releases of Linux and *BSD kernels (and pretty much anything generally associated with either) is widely available on a per release basis.
4) SCO's stock price has climbed from about $2 to over $10 a share as of close today - a FIVE FOLD increase in stock value since announcing their legal rampage.
Now a couple questions:
1) It would seem to me that the first thing IBM would do is a line by line comparison against the licensed SCO source code and any other code they could get their hands on to compare it against, correct?
2) SCO's threats and allegations has definitely caused some hesitation in the free *NIX marketplaces, less in some instances than others. I would assume that VAR's and integrators would be the most likely to see the financial ramifications of this. So, have customers called you and asked "Are we at risk by using Linux/BSD?" Any quantifiable damage in terms of lost sales?
3) Should SCO's claims prove to be unfounded or otherwise unable to be substantiated (or funnier yet - them crying wolf over code *they* borrowed from whatever source), can they then be litigated into oblivion by IBM?
4) And for those who wondered just what this has to do with Martha Stewart, I read a tidbit on Yahoo several days ago about a twist with her case in that (and I quote) "Martha Stewart is accused of deliberately trying to inflate the stock of her own company â" simply by declaring her innocence." And further "There's kind of a natural tendency when you're confronted with something to deny it. Now they're charging it as market manipulation." (Source -http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/a
It's obvious that SCO's legal moves of late has greatly bolstered it's stock price. Should this prove to be nothing more than a ploy to be bought out (or to inflate stock price), can they not also be held accountable for doing so? In the case of Martha Stewart, they are holding her *personally* responsible for "stockholder damage", could the same possibility be in store for the execs at SCO?
That's all for now
Brad
OK, it seems that there are a *lot* of people who either don't read the articles closely, or in the case of the last one posted on Slashdot, don't differentiate between "radio data rate" and "data throughput".
:) Although I do hear rumblings about drivers possibly surfacing soon - fingers crossed.
On ordinary 802.11b gear, the maximum "radio data rate" is 11Mbps. Once you account for the inherent loss in throughput because of the uncertainty of the medium (air), and the fact that the protocol was designed to accomodate this uncertainty, your actual maximum "data thoughput" is about half of that - around 5Mbps. 11Mbps 802.11b != 11Mbps throughput, it never has, it never will.
The same goes for 802.11g - the maximum radio data rate was, and _still is_ 54Mbps. However, the throughput is again slightly less than half of that, in the 20Mbps range.
The reported "change" to 802.11g to "20Mbps" media frenzy stemmed almost entirely from simply clarifying that the actual "data throughput" was about 20Mpbs, *not* that the radio data rate had changed, been knocked down, whatever.
You get roughly 20Mbps "data throughput" in a pure 802.11g network - and again, similar to 802.11b, 54Mbps 802.11g != 54Mpbs throughput.
A 4x increase in throughput using 802.11g over 802.11b is nothing to complain about. Now, if we could get Atheros 802.11g drivers for Linux, I'd be a much happier camper
Brad
Admittedlty, I haven't tried VMWare since the 2.something-or-other days, but even simple VGA emulation was far from perfect then.
:)
I'm a loyal, huge fan of several old DOS based engineering programs that don't have "modern" windowed or OSS equivalents that are nearly as efficient, and just don't work and play well in a Win2k DOS box (if you can call it that). But even so, I need to use Win2k for the rest of the CAD/CAM/EDA work I do day to day.
So, basically I just needed something to run these old DOS programs. I looked at Bochs, which was pretty young at the time, and wouldn't cut it at all then. I decide to try out VMWare, thinking that just simple non-VESA basic VGA emulation would pretty much be a slam-dunk and work out of the box. Wrong. Nothing but trouble, corrupted video, all sorts of "issues".
Now, I understand that these programs may manipulate the VGA hardware in, um, "non-standard" ways, but even so, I didn't expect the bulk of my old software running in simple 640x480x4bpp mode to exhibit such horrible artifacts. IIRC, even 320x240x4bpp mode exhibited the same problems.
After some fooling around, as an experiment, I installed Linux inside VMWare - with the proprietary X server, and then eventually succeeded in getting my DOS programs to run inside Linux inside Xdosemu. Even though it worked, it was a bit too much of a kludge - even for me. Research and emails to VMWare basically confirmed that video support for anything other than Windows or Linux just wasn't going to be "complete". Bummer.
So, I tried VirtualPC. Even though it was slower than VMWare, when running software in a DOS environment that was cutting edge in the 486-66 days, running in a VM on a 800MHz host seemed unnaturally fast in many ways
Many people have run VirtualPC down in that it emulates "outdated" hardware like the DEC Tulip ethernet controller (Intel now I believe) and the lowly S3 Trio video card, but from what I've seen, the hardware emulation is true to the real deal - and the bonus is that just about anything can support those two hardware components. So, VPC gave me what I needed, at a price and speed that were reasonable, even if it doesn't run on everyone's favorite free OS.
I'm sure VMWare has improved in many of these areas, but for what I needed at that time, it didn't fit at all, and was a basic disappointment. I'm sure if I needed a virtualized server farm, which is the main focus of VMWare currently, I'd be much happier. But it's strength at that time was in processor virtualization and not hardware emulation.
I'm intrigued with the "new" Bochs/Plex86 combination, and maybe someday it will be able to do what I need it to do, under any host OS it's available on. For now, I'll use VPC and watch intently from a distance.
Just my two cents worth.
Brad
OK, I know this is offtopic, and will probably be modded down as offtopic or flamebait, but it's still worth the time of putting out a word of warning (and bad reference) to those who obviously deserve it.
B Gear.comt wo.com ... and probably others.
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l =e n&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=kioskshawaii-23060103 00330001%40news-server.hawaii.rr.com&rnum=2
l =e n&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=thorax2-1007011008220 001%40news-server.hawaii.rr.com&rnum=1
Normally I wouldn't even think of posting anything quite this strongly put, but if you do business with Florida Computers, or it's web portal aliases, from my (and others' experiences), you could experience some of the poorest business practices I've personally witnessed yet.
Their online portals span several domains, some of which are:
APDrives.com
QualityCables.com
USBMax.com
US
FloridaComputers.com
CoolDrives.com
u
firewiremax.com
First, do yourself a favor and visit the Clearwater Better Business Bureau and check their record -
http://www.clearwater.bbb.org/commonreport.html
Florida Computers is the "parent" company of all of those web portals, with the same owners, shipped from the same place, with the same customer service and support.
Secondly, check out an extremely unprofessional rant by Rad Rozycki directed at a specific (named) customer over a service complaint at APDrives.com -
http://www.apdrives.com/apdrives/press-news.htm
Makes you wonder about the overall calibre of company you're ordering from when they publically post a personal rebuttal to a specific person, with personalized information as well, onto the PRESS section of their website. Sorry, but it's wholly inappropriate in any venue or circumstance.
Lastly, check out a couple Googled references on Mr. Royzcki -
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=rad+rozycki&h
and
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=rad+rozycki&h
Of course, all of the above information came too late for me to avoid trouble.
I personally had a run-in with them a year ago over a FireWire enclosure that was utterly DOA, zero response via email (support@utwo.com actually bounced - and was eventually fixed after I pointed it out), and of course the problem was with my hardware (of which it didn't work on three different systems, three different 1394 cards, three different cables, and three different OS's), NOT with their product - which incidentally they claimed to personally on site 100% test every single product they sell before shipment. Riiiiiight, everyone pulls their product out of the shrinkwrap, plugs it in, tests it, re-shrinkwraps it, and then ships it out.
It was eventually returned for replacement and instead it was considered a "return" and was charged 15% restocking fee. On defective merchandise!!! Can you say fraud?
He has positively the WORST customer relations and communications skills I have ever experienced when doing business with someone. Downright childish and accusatory in all respects, with no help whatsoever in resolving the matter and nothing but exaggerations, lies, and innuendo in response to my communications.
Do yourself a favor and avoid them AT ALL COST. I needed an enclosure fast, and I ended up ordering a Pyro enclosure from CDW. Even though it wasn't the cheapest one I could have gotten, I know CDW would have at least stood behind the product and helped resolve any warranty issues, not try to stand ON the customer like Mr. Rozycki does. And ultimately the CDW approach would have been cheaper as it turned out.
Brad
There seems to be some confusion between what a T1 is, and the data rate a T1 can support, as well as how bandwidth is marketed and sold, and wether or not the online "speedtests" mean anything.
... or raise several billion in VC money to build your own Internet to all the sites you want super-fast connections to.
First off, excluding some very odd and sparse cases, from a telco "loop" perspective (the wire and associated hardware involved in providing a T1 from you to the telco's office or remote), a T1 is a T1, regardless of it being frame relay, fractional, point to point, or otherwise. Basically, 1.544Mbps raw data rate. The only thing the telco can tell you is that it is working within acceptable limits, with an acceptably low BER (Bit Error Rate). Nothing more. If it's a non frame relay dedicated T1 (aka point-to-point or "nailed up"), you should see something like 160kBps on a single transfer over an otherwise idle circuit. Frame relay is a totally different ballgame - you run into the circuit's "CIR" - Committed Information Rate (or also referred to as Certified Information Rate on occasion). Basically, it works like this - even though your local loop (wire from you to the telco) supports T1 rates, they're only provisioning your chunk of the frame relay "cloud" to support the bandwidth you purchase. Depending on the provider, it could be a "hard" limit (ie - you'll never get more than that), or a "soft" limit, meaning that you may get more speed if there is sufficient packet bandwidth left, but when it's busy, you'll get choked down to your CIR.
Second immutable fact of the Internet - providers (particularly tier 2 non-backbone providers) will always oversell their bandwidth. Think about it - how do they make any money at it otherwise? It's their bandwidth "sold" to bandwidth "available" ratio that tells you anything about the quality of service you may expect to see from them. It can be virtually anything really. It's similar to the subscriber to modem ratio dialup ISP's keep, or subscriber to bandwidth broadband ISP's keep.I'm not sure what the averages are anymore with the changing scene of broadband right now.
As for testing your speed with one of the online "speed test" sites, take the results with a grain of salt - a very BIG grain. It's only benchmarking the ability for you to transfer data between your location on the Internet to their location on the Internet. Nothing more, nothing less. More oft than not, their results are less than what your circuit (or broadband connection) are configured for, and sometimes, dramatically less. I've seen 256k DSL connections that "felt" as they should speed wise, bench in at dialup speeds using those sites because of bottlenecks beyond their or their provider's control.
A better test of bandwidth, and possibly more importantly connectivity, is to do some basic homework. Ask your provider to provide some traceroute and ping data to some common sites potentially used in your day to day activity - taken at different times of the day, preferrably at the times you're most interested in. Or better yet, ask them if they would let you do the tests yourself from their facility. Choose some sites you frequently visit, business or pleasure, and trace their progress theough the Net. Fewer hops = better speed and reliability overall.
I may catch a little hell for this, but I've found it to be a good general benchmark - download something that is known to be cached at at Akamai cache farm. NAI virus updates used to be a good test. Akamai is generally connected very well, in strategic points through the Internet, and provides at least a benchmark to go from. Downloading from Microsoft is sometimes a decent test, sometimes not, depending on what's downloaded and when. And, no, that wasn't meant to be a troll or flamebait, just a basic fact really.
In all, if it generally looks right, feels right, and provides stable, repeatable performance during the times you need it, it's probably fine. There is no good, clear, black and white method of determining if your "T1" is a "T1".
They may just be shooting you a good deal because they have plenty of bandwidth, and sales prospects are limited because of the economy. Who knows. Just do your homework, limit your exposure to marketdroids and the resultant weasel-words, and go from there.
Remember, for all intents and purposes, the Internet is basically the data version of the public road and highway system. You'll find construction, detours, and bottlenecks regardless of how many 12 lane super-highways exist. You just need to live with it and work within those limits as best you can...
Brad
Wow, "Myself", that's probably the most intelligent response I've read so far! And for what it's worth, I totally agree, and people need to make an effort to understand the difference between a "data switch" and a "voice switch"!
:)
Simple fact - 99.9% of basic wired telco infrastructure is completely IP "unaware". In other words, no IP address, doesn't have a clue what TCP/IP is, nor does it care. Granted, the new wireless technologies are more/heavily IP based, but that's a different matter - wireless services always have been, and likely always will be many orders of magnitude more vulnerable to abuse/attack purely because of the uncontrolled nature of the transmission medium (without wires, hence wireless). But I digress...
Of the equipment that does have an IP address, 99.9% of it is privately addresses or firewalled or simply not physically or logically connected to another network.
The only way to "DoS" a switch is to use up the DS0's on it's switching backplane (or whatever, the terminology varies). Even on a tiny switch (5ESS VCDX, etc), this can be multiple hundreds of simultaneous calls.
Then what happens you ask? Simple really, no dial tone to the customer. Your phone doesn't explode, melt down, or otherwise. Nor does the switch "crash". Would it be easily detectable? Without doubt. Would the phone company know where it was coming from or what was causing it? Sure they would.
And, to add to this, most people don't have the slightest clue that dedicated nailed-up circuits (such as PtP T1's) never see a switch. That data is split/multiplexed out of the fiber and handled independantly of switched data. It can't be "jumped" onto another circuit, or have some "magic packet" sent to it to allow it to then connect itself to another circuit or timeslot. Hence the term "nailed-up". Even frame relay is external to the switched voice network for the most part.
What is quite possibly vulnerable is the internal IP (ie computer) network of a particular phone company, or possibly dialup administration modems connected to craft interfaces on various bits of telco gear. But cracking a single telco or exchange and using it as the source of a massive nationwide DoS attack on other carriers isn't going to happen anytime soon.
What's far more likely is a very low-tech attack on the physical infrastructure. Even with redundant facility (logical, physical, and route), there always comes a point in a network that a single "failure point" can bite you. It only depends on how fine-grained your idea of "single point" is.
As far as DoS'ing a "router", how exactly is that different than what happens to routers now? Happens all the time now, so what else is new?
So, when will we see the ability for editors moderate each other's story postings on the front page so the understudy trolls know when to chime in? ;)
Moderators, please mod the parent down! It's obvious that the poster is trying to shine the light of reason on people, and it's hurting their eyes!!
If it weren't for jumping to conclusions, I doubt anyone whould get any excercise at all around here!
The problem with the argument presented above is that the entire infrastucture is based on averages and statistics.
Agreed, and with the current way broadband is provided, ala non-metered, it has to be, which is where the problem lies.
There is probably a better (read - more fair) way, but regardless of what that is, the fact is that the AUP's will be (and are) changing, bounds are being put on, and the relatively small percentage of users that are using the bulk of available bandwidth are the one's doing all of the howling.
But when I buy 4 liters of milk, the dairy industry can't tell me how fast I'm allowed to drink it. If I pay for "unlimited internet"...
And you hit the exact problem of why the way broadband as it is marketed now is a joke - bang-on.
If you buy 4 liters of milk, you have 4 liters of milk. In terms of bandwidth, if you had to pay for what you use, you are fully entitled to what you've paid for, regardless of how fast you consume it.
But what people want or think they deserve is the whole damned cow, which is where the problem lies. Sorry, I'm here to tell you that you don't get the whole cow for $49.95.
If it were marketed such that you 1) paid a "media access" fee for the maximum data transfer capability of your connection, and then 2) paid for the data you actually transferred, then broadband sales would be level and fair.
I'll draw the parallel to electricity again. You have a 200 amp service in your house, you pay a minimum "facilities" fee for the ability of the power company to supply you with power up to that rated power consumption rate. Billing note - you haven't purchased a single kilowatt of power yet. Then, you're billed for the power you consume. The more you consume, the more your bill is.
For those who whine about "not knowing how much their bill will be" I say "deal with it". You manage for phone, electricity, food, everything that's metered. There are easy, simple utilities that can account for every byte you transmit or receive. In fact, it's easier to self-account for bandwidth useage than it is to self-account for telephone useage.
There's a distinguishment people totally miss between "unlimited internet" and "unrestricted internet". Everything has a bounds, whether you like it or not. The bitch is really with the fact that the bounds are being drawn in black and white now, rather than the nebulous weazel-words that were in old AUP's.
It always comes down to this - you want fast, unrestricted, unlimited, high quality internet 24x7, you should pay for it accordingly.
For those who want transfer costs at $0.25/GB, you're dreaming. Speaking for the last Sprint dedicated T1 pricing I had, the T1 "port fee" alone was $400/month. So, to do some math:
T1 = 1544000bps
(60 seconds per minute * 60 minutes per hour * 24 hours per day * 30 days per month * 1544000 bits per second) / 8 bits per Byte / 1024 Bytes per kB / 1024 kB per MB / 1024 MB per GB = 465.9GB of transfer per month, 100% utilization 24 x 7
$400 per month port charge / 465.9GB data transfer = $0.86 per GB.
That's the cost of just banging bits into and out of the serial port at Sprint's nearest POP - already at three times what I saw spewed in another comment.
Add local loop cost (>$100 per month usually), then add transport fees (depends on mileage, but likely >>$100 per month), your internal infrastructure costs (equipment, office space, power, maintainance, etc).
Now, figure that you will likely never, ever achieve 100% utilization on the T1 raw bit rate continually, for a typical business, perhaps figure that the most you'd utilize the span at is 50% of that on average. Take whatever cost you arrived at after adding infrastructure cost, and then double it.
Now you're getting much closer to what it really costs.
For >$900 a month, you can probably have the whole cow.
What's the point of broadband if I can't use it to its full extent?
Go ahead, moderate this as flamebait or troll, but what exactly is it with the whiny 14 year olds who post crap like this?
Listen, for those of you who think that your provider "owes" you or is "obligated" to open the flood gates of bandwidth for you, all for the low, low price of $49.95 (or whatever), here's two words to live by: Screw Off.
You're paying for exactly two things 1) an always "on" connection, and 2) the "ability" to download content at a rate faster than dialup. No guarantees are made, nor is anyone ever obligated to roll out the red capret of resources and let you track mud all over it.
Broadband service is sold and priced as a statistically "multiplexed" service, meaning that on average, a T1 worth of bandwidth should suffice to serve 100 customers, or whatever. There is likely 10's to 100's of thousands of dollars in infrastructure that's being used to deliver that service to you (which has to be maintained, upgraded, and eventually paid for - yes, paid for), as well as monthly fees for bandwidth from various backbone providers and whatnot (yes, believe it or not, providers don't get bandwidth for free).
It gets said all over the place when articles like this are posted, and I'll just join the few that do have a clue and reinforce it. If you want unrestricted access to a T1's worth of bandwidth, both up and down so you can run your "servers", then STFU and pay for it, all $1000 or more a month of it. Period, end of discussion.
If you wish to join the rest of the civilized public, pay your way accordingly, and enjoy a decent, convienient service for a very reasonable fee, then you're welcome to join in.
But I refuse to pay for, or allow "little Johnny" down the street to download pr0n from the Gnutella network at an average rate of 600kbps 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, degrading service for the other 99 or whatever users that bandwidth statistically should be serving, and pay the same rate as I do. That's totally BS, and no reasonable person with a clue can argue against it.
What would happen if telephone service or electricity was sold "buffet style" like broadband is/was? The US would turn into a third world country virtually overnight from a technology standpoint. Certainly no electricity for most of the country (unless you could generate your own), and telephone service would be worthless. Chaos the norm, piss-poor service at it's absolute best. Sound familiar? Welcome to the typical world of broadband.
Grow up, use the service provided responsibly, and pay your way.
OK, go ahead and moderate this (Score:0, Redundant)...
;)
The fact that there is fiber essentially in your local loop really has nothing to do with it actually.
The DSLAM (Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer) is essentially the phone company side of the DSL loop. Think of it as the "modem" on their side.
For all intents and purposes, DSL "modems" *have* to work with only copper between them. To be more accurate, the Analog to Digital conversions must have copper between them. The customer's modem (called CPE - Customer Premise Equipment) has Analog to Digital circuitry in it (called a front-end), and the central office has the same equivalent circuitry in the DSLAM.
The fact that you have a hybrid loop is most likely because the subscriber density is high enough to support (possibly force) the need for a Remote Subscriber Terminal somewhere away from the central office.
What's nixing your ability to get DSL is the fact that the telco's DSLAM is physically located in the central office. Therefore, since your physical copper pair does NOT terminate in the central office, but in a remote subscriber cabinet somewhere, there would have to be a DSLAM (or a smaller equivalent of it - more on this in a minute) in the remote equipment site. Chances are that although the customer density may be high in the area, there probably isn't enough customers to warrant the purchase, installation, and support of a full blown DSLAM in that location.
There are smaller scale DSL equipment solutions that are ideal for this sort of scenario. Advanced Fiber Communications makes one (kinda expensive), as well as Next Level, amongst others. They make line cards that have most of the DSLAM's functionality on them with your ordinary POTS SLIC (more acronyms - POTS Plain Old Telephone Service, SLIC Subscriber Line Interface Circuitry). They are generally used in low population density areas, digital remotes, or rural areas. Transport back to the central office is generally over the existing network installed to the remote site, usually ATM based at some point. These options are generally more expensive per customer, but a lower cost investment that a full DSLAM for certain, given the low possible customer count.
Chances are that your telco has neither AFC or NLC equipment installed, in which case you are still screwed, but at least you know that there are options
Brad
To expand on what was mentioned earlier about redundacy a bit...
Redundancy in the telecom world takes on two basic forms - equipment redundancy and circuit redundancy.
Equipment redundancy is pretty much what it says - redundant equipment in place with the same end service in mind. Should a processor in a fiber multiplexer die, fry, go up in smoke, whatever, the equipment fails over to the backup processor with little or no interruption of service. This is more or less a minimum standard in the telecom world.
Then there is circuit redundancy, which takes two more basic forms, either over a single cable (with multiple fiber strands), or over multiple cables. Unfortunately, more often than not in more "rural" areas, this is usually multiple fiber redundancy within a single cable. Which covers almost all equipment failures involving the physical cable interface, but does nothing at all for when Joe-Backhoe-Operator digs without a locate and tears up 15 feet of cable without even noticing it. Which is the most common failure I've experienced.
Even multiple cables isn't always the answer, especially if the physical routes aren't diverse enough. I can think of two instances, both in the upper midwest, where multiple cables in proximity (read - one or more conduits in a very small space) were damaged or destroyed, once by fire, and another by a vandal who knew where to find them.
The ideal situation is for telephone companies to have two routes out to the "network" running in almost opposite directions. However, again, although this works well for switched voice calls, most of the time it doesn't work for "nailed up" point to point circuits, which still leaves those types of circuits, commonly used by ISP's where frame relay isn't available, in the cold when routes are destroyed. And, we all know how fragile frame relay can be, especially when Worldcom is at the helm - "Oh, let's just globally upgrade the software in our network without any phasing or large scale testing at all. Oh, yeah, and when it falls on it's nose, let's let it fester for a week or so before we get the network to re-converge."
So, there you have it in a nutshell. Nothing is foolproof, especially if you don't own or control all of the network from point to point. But, I think most everyone would agree, there are very few times I've ever picked up the phone and not had dialtone. I think most people in the states would agree with that. Remember, the telephone network is the most complicated, expensive, diverse, available electronic network in the world. And although the phone companies are far from perfect, especially the former US West and Worldcom, when you think about it, it's really amazing how stable it is, and that it works as well as it does!
Brad