It is entirely possible that some illegitimate clients are laundering thier money through the e-gold service. Especially if it's tax free - a very plausible way to dodge the IRS. The buisness is being investigated under the guise of credit card fraud - so they can look into clientelle that maybe using the service as a mony laundering scheme.
Hmmm... sounds like a Tom Clancy novel.
Dude - you ever try RR's internal transfer - try running an FTP on your box & DL a file from another computer also on RR (not ont the same LAN). You'll see speeds of 800KB+. And that's on the capped WAN.
There are several reasons behind the price / availability of DSL/cable. In major metropolitan areas - particualarly those w/ a pre-exsisting IT industry (not installed since '95)1.5Mb - 2Mb Cable / DSL connections are available for around $40 per month.
For smaller more rural areas - in small cities/towns there are several reasons why broadband is more pricey & speeds are slower.
Margins are low: The availability of low cost broadband - particualarly DSL - is based on how many potential users are in the area. For ISP's w/ fewer than 5,000 potential customers offering DSL as a service seems rather expensive.
Distance form the CO varies available speeds - in rural areas clients are usually greater distances from the CO (CLEC - AKA Central Office) This greatly reduces the amount of speed that can be guaranteed by the ISP(see signal attenuation).
Initial startup costs - when a network - the BRAS,DSL modems, & backbone upgrades are initially installed the first few customers soak up the initial higher cost (excluding beta testers). Who remembers when it was $40 - $50 for a SLIP connection?
Cable modems are easier to run over exsisting cable networks - sometimes offering higher speeds than DSL - but it is shared bandwidth.
Many ISPs do not have a large enough back bone to cater to thier 56k clients & add broadband clients as well.
The US phone grid is an ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE. There are 100's of ISP's with no redunant backbones or even redundant connections to other CLECS in the area. The traditional switched network (dial up & 56k) - be it analog or digital - is becoming overloaded & there are some areas in the US where you can't dial 911 at 6PM because everyone is on AOL checking thier e-mail.
Basically broadband is in its infacy - satilite & microwave have too high of a latancy to be useful - although better than nothing, but don't bother w/ Q3 or UT. And our (the US) phone grid sucks. Telcos are scrambling not only to upgrade their voice carriers but their tcp/ip networks as well & remain competitive. It's going to be quite a while before cost efficient broadband reaches the majority of US households. And some rural areas will never see cable/DSL technologies.
Well there's my two cents. maybe this time I'll be modded higher than 0. Doubt it;)
I think the benefit of Mac OS X (Unix for the rest of us) is lost on the/. crowd - or appears to be.
Aqua is purely elegant. Java 2 support is impressive. PDF implementation is unreal.
Look at an OS before you judge:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/theater/index.html
And yes Virginia you can gnutar -zxf file.gnutar.gz
http://www.omnigroup.com/community/freeware/quake3 /
And I'm sorry enlightenment (you're really nice) but compared to aqua - you lose.
Apple makes hardware, but they also attempt to define a user expirience - i have never seen such elegance in OS design & GUI implementation. I have never seen a more user friendly window manager for Unix.
If apple isn't heading in the right direction - by opening their kernel and several of their applications. Then I don't know who is. I think Apple should be applauded by thier efforts & welcomed to the *nix community.
I'm not asking you to let go of your Mandrake / Slack Ware / Redhat / or whatever distro you cling to. I merely ask for educated opinions.
I have provided mine, but I drank the Apple Kool - Aid, & I liked it!:)
With the more user friendly GUI's such as nautilus. & with more advanced package management & as well as the UNIX friendlyness of Darwin & ability to run M$ office on Macs - fairly soon there will be an alternative to M$. I give M$'s monopolistic hold on the buisness world two more years.
And talk to ANY secretary - ask them which word processor they favour. Wordperfect will be the most common answer.
If Apple wants to port Mac OSX to x386 aritecture it will still need to be a closed box solution. The transmeta technology has already been proven. And AMD has already liscened the technology from transmeta. If apple wants a sucessful port they could ask AMD to create a processor using transmeta techology to inclue a PPC instruction set. This would allow PPC native apps to be run on x386 hardware with minimum (or no) software emulation.
Dude I work as a help desk techie. if you said exactly that. "I have mad KungFu & a black belt in network engineering" I would hook you up with the best of my abilities & resources. (talking NOC escalation here). I have talked to everyone from switch techs to Cisco Certified Idiots (scary some do exsist). I is true that we are kept in the dark. Mostly because the admins don't believe that were are capable of understanding what they are saying.
Darwin has been ported to intel based systems. Aqua will never be ported to intel. Why?
Because evet Jobs make the entire widget & sells it as a packaged deal - this is why there are not mac clones.
Aqua is the primary UI for darwin on the Mac - it will be a HUGE selling point.
That is why apple cracked down on all of the skin makers.
If you want Aqua YOU WILL HAVE TO BUY A MAC.
If you want to use darwin & the run Xfree86 with KDE or Gnome, or nautilus GUI you can - even on intel based hardware.
But unless it is a skin you will never see Aqua on Intel.
You are 100% correct. You have to *know* how to work the system. (whether or not you should know how to do this is pointless it is there). This system is the wonderful relationship CompUSA has (or lacks) with its vendors. The diagnostics is merely stupid software on a special CD which does logic tests on apple hardware. I know I worked at CompUSA as an apple tech. The SCSI card you speak of sucks - the dirvers suck - It's the vendor's fault that the driver's suck - of course apple didn't do any thorough testing either. Also an apple will shit the bed if it has bad RAM - have ALL of the RAM replaced. Oh & if you call apple's tech support & scream at the correct people you WILL get a replacement. I have a PowerMac 6500 the fell off a delivery truck (literally). Apple didn't want to fix it - nor did coompusa. Once I bought it I just submitted it for service (it helped that I worked there) & it was fixed (or re-built) no questions asked.
He same rules apply w/ compaq, Hewlett Packards & ALL of the machines sold at CompUSA. Its a question of who's going to foot the bill & vendors are ALWAYS arguing w/ the manufacturers. If it was a defect with the machine then it's apple's responsibility. Call their support & talk to a manager (really high up). Then say you will start posting articles on http://www.ihateapple.com - get their attention.
Win ME is a flaming pile. Win 2K is much better- m,ore on par w/ OSX (with out the unix compatibility). Of course OSX will cost only $100 (w/ apache). Win 2K starts at $150.
Just remember you get what you pay for
Slashdot Mirror
Who says they aren't here already!?!
*Hiding under desk in cube*
It is entirely possible that some illegitimate clients are laundering thier money through the e-gold service. Especially if it's tax free - a very plausible way to dodge the IRS. The buisness is being investigated under the guise of credit card fraud - so they can look into clientelle that maybe using the service as a mony laundering scheme. Hmmm... sounds like a Tom Clancy novel.
Dude - you ever try RR's internal transfer - try running an FTP on your box & DL a file from another computer also on RR (not ont the same LAN). You'll see speeds of 800KB+. And that's on the capped WAN.
There are several reasons behind the price / availability of DSL/cable. In major metropolitan areas - particualarly those w/ a pre-exsisting IT industry (not installed since '95)1.5Mb - 2Mb Cable / DSL connections are available for around $40 per month.
,DSL modems, & backbone upgrades are initially installed the first few customers soak up the initial higher cost (excluding beta testers). Who remembers when it was $40 - $50 for a SLIP connection?
;)
For smaller more rural areas - in small cities/towns there are several reasons why broadband is more pricey & speeds are slower.
Margins are low: The availability of low cost broadband - particualarly DSL - is based on how many potential users are in the area. For ISP's w/ fewer than 5,000 potential customers offering DSL as a service seems rather expensive.
Distance form the CO varies available speeds - in rural areas clients are usually greater distances from the CO (CLEC - AKA Central Office) This greatly reduces the amount of speed that can be guaranteed by the ISP(see signal attenuation).
Initial startup costs - when a network - the BRAS
Cable modems are easier to run over exsisting cable networks - sometimes offering higher speeds than DSL - but it is shared bandwidth.
Many ISPs do not have a large enough back bone to cater to thier 56k clients & add broadband clients as well.
The US phone grid is an ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE. There are 100's of ISP's with no redunant backbones or even redundant connections to other CLECS in the area. The traditional switched network (dial up & 56k) - be it analog or digital - is becoming overloaded & there are some areas in the US where you can't dial 911 at 6PM because everyone is on AOL checking thier e-mail.
Basically broadband is in its infacy - satilite & microwave have too high of a latancy to be useful - although better than nothing, but don't bother w/ Q3 or UT. And our (the US) phone grid sucks. Telcos are scrambling not only to upgrade their voice carriers but their tcp/ip networks as well & remain competitive. It's going to be quite a while before cost efficient broadband reaches the majority of US households. And some rural areas will never see cable/DSL technologies.
Well there's my two cents. maybe this time I'll be modded higher than 0. Doubt it
I think the benefit of Mac OS X (Unix for the rest of us) is lost on the /. crowd - or appears to be.
Aqua is purely elegant. Java 2 support is impressive. PDF implementation is unreal.
Look at an OS before you judge:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/theater/index.html
And yes Virginia you can gnutar -zxf file.gnutar.gz
http://www.omnigroup.com/community/freeware/quake3 /
And I'm sorry enlightenment (you're really nice) but compared to aqua - you lose.
Apple makes hardware, but they also attempt to define a user expirience - i have never seen such elegance in OS design & GUI implementation. I have never seen a more user friendly window manager for Unix.
If apple isn't heading in the right direction - by opening their kernel and several of their applications. Then I don't know who is. I think Apple should be applauded by thier efforts & welcomed to the *nix community.
I'm not asking you to let go of your Mandrake / Slack Ware / Redhat / or whatever distro you cling to. I merely ask for educated opinions.
I have provided mine, but I drank the Apple Kool - Aid, & I liked it! :)
With the more user friendly GUI's such as nautilus. & with more advanced package management & as well as the UNIX friendlyness of Darwin & ability to run M$ office on Macs - fairly soon there will be an alternative to M$. I give M$'s monopolistic hold on the buisness world two more years. And talk to ANY secretary - ask them which word processor they favour. Wordperfect will be the most common answer.
Hey that's my boss - He actually fears me because I read slash dot. I'm "One of those Linex geeks".
If Apple wants to port Mac OSX to x386 aritecture it will still need to be a closed box solution. The transmeta technology has already been proven. And AMD has already liscened the technology from transmeta. If apple wants a sucessful port they could ask AMD to create a processor using transmeta techology to inclue a PPC instruction set. This would allow PPC native apps to be run on x386 hardware with minimum (or no) software emulation.
Dude I work as a help desk techie. if you said exactly that. "I have mad KungFu & a black belt in network engineering" I would hook you up with the best of my abilities & resources. (talking NOC escalation here). I have talked to everyone from switch techs to Cisco Certified Idiots (scary some do exsist). I is true that we are kept in the dark. Mostly because the admins don't believe that were are capable of understanding what they are saying.
Darwin has been ported to intel based systems. Aqua will never be ported to intel. Why? Because evet Jobs make the entire widget & sells it as a packaged deal - this is why there are not mac clones. Aqua is the primary UI for darwin on the Mac - it will be a HUGE selling point. That is why apple cracked down on all of the skin makers. If you want Aqua YOU WILL HAVE TO BUY A MAC. If you want to use darwin & the run Xfree86 with KDE or Gnome, or nautilus GUI you can - even on intel based hardware. But unless it is a skin you will never see Aqua on Intel.
You are 100% correct. You have to *know* how to work the system. (whether or not you should know how to do this is pointless it is there). This system is the wonderful relationship CompUSA has (or lacks) with its vendors. The diagnostics is merely stupid software on a special CD which does logic tests on apple hardware. I know I worked at CompUSA as an apple tech. The SCSI card you speak of sucks - the dirvers suck - It's the vendor's fault that the driver's suck - of course apple didn't do any thorough testing either. Also an apple will shit the bed if it has bad RAM - have ALL of the RAM replaced. Oh & if you call apple's tech support & scream at the correct people you WILL get a replacement. I have a PowerMac 6500 the fell off a delivery truck (literally). Apple didn't want to fix it - nor did coompusa. Once I bought it I just submitted it for service (it helped that I worked there) & it was fixed (or re-built) no questions asked. He same rules apply w/ compaq, Hewlett Packards & ALL of the machines sold at CompUSA. Its a question of who's going to foot the bill & vendors are ALWAYS arguing w/ the manufacturers. If it was a defect with the machine then it's apple's responsibility. Call their support & talk to a manager (really high up). Then say you will start posting articles on http://www.ihateapple.com - get their attention.
Win ME is a flaming pile. Win 2K is much better- m,ore on par w/ OSX (with out the unix compatibility). Of course OSX will cost only $100 (w/ apache). Win 2K starts at $150. Just remember you get what you pay for