Almost but not quite...
on
Root Zone Changed
·
· Score: 5, Informative
In the same way that requests go down the tree to find the server, requests go up the tree to the root servers. (Up the tree to the roots, hmm!)
If your immediate DNS handled a request for slashdot.org two seconds previously, it should still be cached -- no need to bother a root server over that. Any request would have go up several levels before a root server would be bothered with it. (Otherwise they'd be continually/.'ed:^)
The root servers could all disappear without a lot of disruption, but only for a short time until the cache entries started timing out.
My backup plan is to toss the entire name space into my local hosts file. I've already got DoubleClick in there for testing.:^)
A few days ago, everytime I tried to moderate, I got the "Create New discusion" screen. Cmdr Taco assured me that it was probably due to the location move. Bah, I thought I'd been granted uber-moderator status or something.
I make my coffee with boiling water. (French press.) It cools down a bit over five minutes, but I still have to add cold water before drinking the first cup. (Either that or wait, and in the morning, that's not an option!)
I keep hearing that McDonald's coffee was hot. I doubt that it was much warmer than any hot-plate type coffee maker. I remember reading about one person who measured a number of coffee makers and found that the temperature wasn't abnormal.
Simple test: Take a digital thermometer and measure the coffee your coffee maker makes. (The empirical test of spilling a cup in your lap should be avoided by non-Darwin aspirants.)
Hmm, I'm suffering from Too Much Coffee right now. No need to sink back to UUCP, each node could just route packets. (The latency of hopping across town to the suck^w guy currently offering a broadband Internet pipe, *shudder*)
There would have to be a mechanism for publishing which nodes are offering Internet access, and handling when they drop off. (The boss finds out, the bill comes in, etc.) In fact, dynamically handling the routing tables for each node would be interesting. (Surely someone like Amateur packet radio has already looked at this problem over the last 20 years?)
Yes, a lot of the stuff being done now is the "goofy prototype" stage: Useful stuff that needs to be tried out now as a learning experience.
We need some sort of model that will allow people to offer what they can for free, but survive nodes dropping out over time. Some nodes might just offer a WAP to the wireless "backbone".
Building on top of a UUCP base would certainly work. Each hop would know who to route to with alternates, and could "survive a nuclear attack".:^) But it's sure not going to provide the broadband that people have gotten addicted to. (It sure would kick ass over the original backbone that ran 56kbps.)
Could a UUCP-based Kazaa/Gnutella be the "killer app"? (Did I just a massive coronary thump from RIAA/MPAA headquarters?)
Routing email like that could be interesting. (Bang paths, anyone?) I suppose UUCP actually could be used for it, lordy!
How about IRC/Instant Messaging? You could have a Friends/Fsckwits list to let you know when someone enters/leaves a physical area. ("Yarg! Quick, hide under the table!")
CD's of info from where? From local resources or from the Internet? If from the Internet, someone is paying for that pipe. You can hide that cost under the rug for a while by getting government money, user donations, subscription fees, corporate donations. It still costs money.
Everyone and his kid were setting up ISPs until they discovered that they had to pay for all the phone lines (and the pipe). I suspect that a lot of "free" wifi Internet connections will go the same way.
Remember, I said that I'm not talking about old style BBSs -- no one is going to use those even if they are free. I'm mainly talking about the financial model of something that a single person can offer free with narrowband Internet connection. What that something is is something that I don't have the answer for yet. File server, Usenet feed, email, game server, proxy cache of some web sites, local WiFi radio station, live toe-cam feeds, I dunno.
I'm just saying "I told you so" now when a lot of people are diving into community WiFi with all the financial planning of the dot.bomb era. Yes, they aren't looking to make a profit, but it has to at least pay the bills in the long run.
1. Offer something.
2. Pay next to zero cost.
3. ???
4. Profit! (Oh wait...)
The new format in Office 11 is an Office 10 killer. Microsoft makes far more money pushing the new upgrade than it could squashing Adobe. (And for bonus points, doesn't this version of Office require the latest OS upgrade too?)
You just need a small critical mass of people upgrading to an incompatable format to force everyone else to upgrade in defence. After all, with all the feature-bloat, what could they add to Office that would cause any sane user to pay out for an upgrade? SuperClippy?
Even so, the book offers unfair advantages. Tolkien can say "his eyes flashed" and you make it happen, which is why turning a popular work into a movie is so difficult.
Hmm, this reading thing sounds like some kind of client/server wetware interface. Does that make LoTR cyberpunk?:^)
(I think you're replying to my post.) A community intranet wouldn't replace your ISP/community Internet connection. It could offer Usenet, email and local web pages. Possbly a proxy could be used to allow Internet web access with reduced bandwidth. (And what to do about Kazaa/Gnutella, etc?)
Bandwidth is the key. It costs money, even if the costs are sometimes hidden. (Some companies have donated spare bandwidth -- Good for them!) What model is going to pay for that bandwidth while still offering free service?
The current model for WiFi community networks seems to be that of a community wireless pipe to the Internet. Now that sort of project is worthy and has it's place. The problem is cash and the pipe.
Dropping it on an existing home-use DSL will cause.. trouble. If it doesn't violate the AUP, it will soon, and since the usage curve of a community WAN should be easy to detect.. (Sympatico has imposed a monthly transfer cap with extra charges past the cap.)
Alternately, a group could pool/raise the money for a legit connection, but then you're talking about money and organization. More power to those with the time for it.
One obsolete model was that of a lone operator setting up their own system and paying the costs out of pocket: The BBS.
I ran a BBS (Coherent/Linux based) for a decade until the Internet killed BBSs. (In the end, I tried a web-based BBS, still through my two phone lines. Couldn't afford that and a pipe out to the Internet, it died.) The main kicker was always the phone lines. I could have supported a large number of users even on a 486, but I couldn't justify the cost of the phone lines.
Now WiFi might make that model viable again. (After all, other than the cost of equipment, it's free.) WiFi doesn't have the coverage of the local telephone, but the number of "lines" are rather large.
I'm not talking about ye olde text BBS here, of course. Times have changed as have user expectations. I just think there might once again be room for a one-person cheep operation. What it would have to offer to make it attactive to users, I leave as an exercise...
If you can't go from the wireless to the school network to the Internet, why not? (Set it up to allow teachers to do that, I suppose.)
Just think, you could have a school web site with all the class assignments so you (and your parents, heh) could access them from home. Handy for that "school work" right?:^)
If you live in a high density area, look at getting together a co-op for bandwidth. Distribute it on WiFi. Get people together and pool some cash. The networks are there, and once they're built, they only have to be connected.
As a cheaper alternative, why provide any direct bandwidth to the Internet? Use spare older boxes and set-up local news, email and web servers -- almost stepping back to UUCP days. It's a little hard for The Man to control your connection when you hardly have one, except for news and email feed. The local community web sites might not be too great, but they'd be in the community, which could be a plus.
Anyone who wanted could toss spare boxes onto your community intranet. Games servers, web sites, local small business -- And all without worrying about the pipe bill.
And clusters of community intranets could peer with each other.:^)
Slashdot Mirror
If your immediate DNS handled a request for slashdot.org two seconds previously, it should still be cached -- no need to bother a root server over that. Any request would have go up several levels before a root server would be bothered with it. (Otherwise they'd be continually /.'ed :^)
The root servers could all disappear without a lot of disruption, but only for a short time until the cache entries started timing out.
My backup plan is to toss the entire name space into my local hosts file. I've already got DoubleClick in there for testing. :^)
No way! You saw Computer Boy too?
Do you have any stairs in your house?
The charge had been listed as a phone sex number, there wouldn't have been a problem.
Before you got to vote on that touch-screen gizmo, did you have to accept the EULA first? :^)
Is going to stop sending me coffee-cup compatable CDROMs?
Okay, I'll take the hammer to Fox news. Then I'll take the barrel and turn it upside down. It now has a top, but no bottom. Phhfffpppt!
Give me a barrel and a hammer, and I'll disprove that one pretty fast.
Yup, GEOS. Hmm, Bell Canada had their Telidon ALEX terminal in the '80's too. What about Prestel (?) in Britain?
A few days ago, everytime I tried to moderate, I got the "Create New discusion" screen. Cmdr Taco assured me that it was probably due to the location move. Bah, I thought I'd been granted uber-moderator status or something.
I keep hearing that McDonald's coffee was hot. I doubt that it was much warmer than any hot-plate type coffee maker. I remember reading about one person who measured a number of coffee makers and found that the temperature wasn't abnormal.
Simple test: Take a digital thermometer and measure the coffee your coffee maker makes. (The empirical test of spilling a cup in your lap should be avoided by non-Darwin aspirants.)
Why drive to Fort Wayne? They do have web site, ya know? :^)
And then AOL Peon Buster for forging IM logs of employee activity. Never worry about another wrongful dismissal suit! Select embarrassment factor.
There would have to be a mechanism for publishing which nodes are offering Internet access, and handling when they drop off. (The boss finds out, the bill comes in, etc.) In fact, dynamically handling the routing tables for each node would be interesting. (Surely someone like Amateur packet radio has already looked at this problem over the last 20 years?)
We need some sort of model that will allow people to offer what they can for free, but survive nodes dropping out over time. Some nodes might just offer a WAP to the wireless "backbone".
Building on top of a UUCP base would certainly work. Each hop would know who to route to with alternates, and could "survive a nuclear attack". :^) But it's sure not going to provide the broadband that people have gotten addicted to. (It sure would kick ass over the original backbone that ran 56kbps.)
Could a UUCP-based Kazaa/Gnutella be the "killer app"? (Did I just a massive coronary thump from RIAA/MPAA headquarters?)
How about IRC/Instant Messaging? You could have a Friends/Fsckwits list to let you know when someone enters/leaves a physical area. ("Yarg! Quick, hide under the table!")
Everyone and his kid were setting up ISPs until they discovered that they had to pay for all the phone lines (and the pipe). I suspect that a lot of "free" wifi Internet connections will go the same way.
Remember, I said that I'm not talking about old style BBSs -- no one is going to use those even if they are free. I'm mainly talking about the financial model of something that a single person can offer free with narrowband Internet connection. What that something is is something that I don't have the answer for yet. File server, Usenet feed, email, game server, proxy cache of some web sites, local WiFi radio station, live toe-cam feeds, I dunno.
I'm just saying "I told you so" now when a lot of people are diving into community WiFi with all the financial planning of the dot.bomb era. Yes, they aren't looking to make a profit, but it has to at least pay the bills in the long run.
1. Offer something. 2. Pay next to zero cost. 3. ??? 4. Profit! (Oh wait...)
You just need a small critical mass of people upgrading to an incompatable format to force everyone else to upgrade in defence. After all, with all the feature-bloat, what could they add to Office that would cause any sane user to pay out for an upgrade? SuperClippy?
Hmm, this reading thing sounds like some kind of client/server wetware interface. Does that make LoTR cyberpunk? :^)
Bandwidth is the key. It costs money, even if the costs are sometimes hidden. (Some companies have donated spare bandwidth -- Good for them!) What model is going to pay for that bandwidth while still offering free service?
Dropping it on an existing home-use DSL will cause .. trouble. If it doesn't violate the AUP, it will soon, and since the usage curve of a community WAN should be easy to detect.. (Sympatico has imposed a monthly transfer cap with extra charges past the cap.)
Alternately, a group could pool/raise the money for a legit connection, but then you're talking about money and organization. More power to those with the time for it.
One obsolete model was that of a lone operator setting up their own system and paying the costs out of pocket: The BBS.
I ran a BBS (Coherent/Linux based) for a decade until the Internet killed BBSs. (In the end, I tried a web-based BBS, still through my two phone lines. Couldn't afford that and a pipe out to the Internet, it died.) The main kicker was always the phone lines. I could have supported a large number of users even on a 486, but I couldn't justify the cost of the phone lines.
Now WiFi might make that model viable again. (After all, other than the cost of equipment, it's free.) WiFi doesn't have the coverage of the local telephone, but the number of "lines" are rather large.
I'm not talking about ye olde text BBS here, of course. Times have changed as have user expectations. I just think there might once again be room for a one-person cheep operation. What it would have to offer to make it attactive to users, I leave as an exercise...
Just think, you could have a school web site with all the class assignments so you (and your parents, heh) could access them from home. Handy for that "school work" right? :^)
As a cheaper alternative, why provide any direct bandwidth to the Internet? Use spare older boxes and set-up local news, email and web servers -- almost stepping back to UUCP days. It's a little hard for The Man to control your connection when you hardly have one, except for news and email feed. The local community web sites might not be too great, but they'd be in the community, which could be a plus.
Anyone who wanted could toss spare boxes onto your community intranet. Games servers, web sites, local small business -- And all without worrying about the pipe bill.
And clusters of community intranets could peer with each other. :^)
Yarg! PULP rags.
I wouldn't exactly call Analog a "plup rag".