Because they're running out of numbers, and need to use every one they can.
The other problem here is the crazy North American idea of having cell phone numbers in the same area codes as landlines, but requiring the receiver to pay for incoming calls. If all mobile providers were on their own recognizable area codes, and the caller knew that calling a mobile number was expensive, there'd be a lot fewer of these wrong numbers.
Fourth, larger sectors means smaller sector numbers. Any filesystem that needs to address sectors usually has to choose a size for the sector addresses. Remember FAT8, FAT12, FAT16, and FAT32? Each of those numbers were the size of sector references (and thus, how big of a filesystem they could address). This will prevent us from needing to crank up the size of filesystem references eventually.
I don't think there was ever a FAT8, but the 12, 16 and 32 are the bit counts of cluster numbers, not sector numbers. The FAT file systems grouped sectors into contiguous blocks, and addressed those. The blocks were usually 1K-32K in size (i.e. 2 to 64 sectors, always a power of 2). They bore no relation to the drive geometry.
Personally, I wouldn't buy it because of the name, and I'd advise anyone who asked not to buy it either. I just don't trust them. Sony has lied before, how would I know they were telling the truth this time?
What I am saying is, you need the carrot and the stick. Don't buy Sony-BMG music, they cam eup with the rootkit. DO buy those Sony products that are free of DRM. The message will be clear.
I understand what you're saying, but I think the message will be even clearer if I just don't buy anything from any part of Sony. Maybe it's only Sony-BMG that is bad, but they've degraded the name. Sony Electronics should drop the name "Sony" if it doesn't want to take responsibility for the actions of other users of that name.
That said, what do folks think is going to happen to those of us that already have lifetime subscriptions?
I'd suggest you read the fine print on your contract. If it gives TiVo a way out, they'll probably take it. If not, you should buy some life insurance.
If TiVo doesn't offer lifetife subscriptions anymore, then it might just suggest that they won't be around for anyone's lifetime.
I'd say it suggests just the opposite. If I think I'll be around for a few years, then offering lifetime service is an expensive offering. First, I have to take on a long term commitment, with no long term cash flow. Second, it allows customers to lock in current subscription rates, preventing me from getting any extra cash if I raise them in the future.
If I think I'll probably be bankrupt next year, then I may as well label my one year subscription as "lifetime". Maybe I'll sell more, and it will delay the bankruptcy.
So: 79 million barrels = 1,580,000,000 gallons of gasoline. There are 6.5 billion people which means each person will receive 0.24 gallons per day.
Really? I live a pretty prosperous life, but I currently use about that much gasoline in a day. That's not counting the petroleum used to make the other products I use, but I really don't think it would be much of a hardship to reduce my overall petroleum consumption to that level.
That's enough gasoline to let a family of four drive a 40mpg car 40 miles a day. Why would you need to drive that much? Move closer to your work, so you can walk or bike in. (My family of four drives around 30 miles a day, including vacation visits to relatives who live 500 miles away, etc.)
You drive a 10mpg car? That's part of the problem, isn't it?
Why would you do business with someone who treats you like that? Get a Gmail account, or a paid account from someone who treats you reasonably. There are lots of other choices.
If someone is so stupid that they keep an account with a provider who doesn't deliver the email they want, then that's their problem, not mine.
Maybe, but doubtful. The scheme will only work if everyone pays.
Not at all. The header line saying "sender paid" will be just another line to filter on.
If it turns out that only spammers pay, then spamming will be very much less profitable now, and easier to filter. I suspect that's not how it will turn out, but it's not a disaster if it does.
If it turns out that my email provider is filtering email I want to see because the sender won't pay, then I'll find another email provider. It's not as though it's hard to find an email provider.
I suspect an email provider will come along who will charge non-whitelisted senders 0.25 per email, and give me 0.24 of it. I'd love an account there. I'll only get email from my whitelist, and a few people who really want to get through to me.
Sorry, but that's crap. You don't have to use the email provided by your broadband provider. I don't. If you are stuck on a broadband provider who does a crappy job of email, do your email somewhere else.
I agree with you about the details of this plan as currently announced, but the good part of it is that AOL and Yahoo are big. If big companies like that start charging, then a scheme will reasonably quickly evolve where it's easy for a sender to pay. After that happens, the number of ISPs who want in on the scheme will increase, and then we'll start to some solutions to your other problems coming out.
Right now a "sender pays" scheme can't get off the ground. This could be the beginning of putting the infrastructure in place.
I just checked and there are 521 AOL and Yahoo addresses subscribed. I'm not going to pay $5 a day to reach those people!
Since this story is a dupe of this one, I'll ask the same question I asked in that thread: Why do you think this is your problem? Don't pay. If they want to receive your newsletter, they'll get AOL and Yahoo to let you through for free, or they'll move elsewhere. It's not your problem.
And so as not to be redundant, I'll add something new:
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Sure, the current plan is a piece of crap, and will likely drive smart users away from Yahoo and AOL. But maybe enough users will remain that the "sender pays" infrastructure will be put in place. Then smart ISPs will have another good tool at their disposal for spam filtering: bulk mailers aren't going to pay.
Most users receive about as much as they send, so they won't mind paying, as long as they get the bulk of the fees for email they receive. Folks like you who send a lot more than you receive will need to be whitelisted, but that's pretty easy.
A smart ISP who is handling things well will make the whitelisting as easy as the current confirmation email: users who want to subscribe will sign up on your website, you'll send a confirmation email to them, when they respond to that a copy can be sent to their ISP to inform it that they want to whitelist you. This is not hard to do.
Why? Because I don't want to deal with these complaints or issues *at all*.
I think that's what I suggested you do: ignore the issue. It's not your problem. Why deal with it?
A preemptive strike is called for here.
That may be, but I think you'll find that actually takes more work than ignoring it would. You're the one who said it would be a lot of work to deal with.
Now, discussion boards and mailing lists will need to purge and actively reject individuals using aol.com addresses. What other choice would operators of such boards and lists have?
Just don't pay the fee? Tell the users AOL is very unreliable at delivering your mail, so you don't recommend using them?
Why do you think this is a problem that you need to deal with? Let AOL handle the complaints when people lose email that they want to receive.
It does, now. Perhaps the anonymous submitter trusted Geist's reputation enough to predict that? (No, I'm not serious.) But realistically, there's a lot on that page besides the link to the press release.
The link in the Slashdot summary goes to someone's blog
I don't know if Michael Geist submitted the link, but he's actually a pretty well known columnist and copyright activist. You should check out michaelgeist.com for some interesting reading.
Lately there has been a lot about the Canadian election and the brouhaha over the CRIA (the Canadian RIAA) and friends supporting a candidate who was the author of a pro-business copyright bill, but generally it's a pretty interesting blog. And who knows, he may even have contributed to the electoral loss of that candidate, the minister who sponsored the bill, and the government who brought it in.
I have virtually no accent at all, except for very mild British overtones...
That claim makes no sense whatsoever. You have a regional accent, it just happens to come close to the one you hear around you most commonly. I'm guessing it's a midwest accent, aka "General American", aka the US TV network announcer accent.
Allowing that would make mathematical proofs patentable as well, there's no way you can get around that.
That would be a disaster for our economy. Can you imagine if we were no longer allowed to prove that maps can be colored with 4 colors? We'd always need to keep 5 colors of ink in stock, or pay royalties for secretly having proof that 4 were sufficient.
Okay, sorry, I just thought there might have been something creative or insightful in what you wrote. I didn't realize that it was a simulation of a computer-generated comment.
I'm sorry, but I don't get your point. Of course insight and creativity aren't sufficient to do math. If they were, all good novelists would be good mathematicians. My claim is that insight and creativity are necessary, which the original poster didn't seem to recognize.
The 1976 computer-based proof of the Four Color Theorem relied on insight, creativity, and mathematical and computational ability.
You seem to be equating math with arithmetic. Computers can do arithmetic, but they aren't very good at math. To do math you need creativity and insight.
This is misleading - naturally occurring uranium is much less radioactive than products from nuclear fission. I would quite happily pick up a fuel rod before it goes into a power plant but I wouldnt go near one once it comes out. The uranium from coal combustion is relatively harmless.
Yes, this is really the point. I believe that the ratio is approximately 1,000,000 to 1, i.e. waste is a million times more radioactive than fuel. It decays faster; uranium will last billions of years, whereas the high level waste will decay to safer stuff in thousands.
So the 12 tonnes of uranium in the GP post is really equivalent to 12 mg of high level waste. Nuclear plants in normal operation don't release 12 mg of high level waste; they are very good at containing it. But accidents happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Because they're running out of numbers, and need to use every one they can.
The other problem here is the crazy North American idea of having cell phone numbers in the same area codes as landlines, but requiring the receiver to pay for incoming calls. If all mobile providers were on their own recognizable area codes, and the caller knew that calling a mobile number was expensive, there'd be a lot fewer of these wrong numbers.
This was a very informative post -- thanks.
You did make one error, however:
Fourth, larger sectors means smaller sector numbers. Any filesystem that needs to address sectors usually has to choose a size for the sector addresses. Remember FAT8, FAT12, FAT16, and FAT32? Each of those numbers were the size of sector references (and thus, how big of a filesystem they could address). This will prevent us from needing to crank up the size of filesystem references eventually.
I don't think there was ever a FAT8, but the 12, 16 and 32 are the bit counts of cluster numbers, not sector numbers. The FAT file systems grouped sectors into contiguous blocks, and addressed those. The blocks were usually 1K-32K in size (i.e. 2 to 64 sectors, always a power of 2). They bore no relation to the drive geometry.
Personally, I wouldn't buy it because of the name, and I'd advise anyone who asked not to buy it either. I just don't trust them. Sony has lied before, how would I know they were telling the truth this time?
What I am saying is, you need the carrot and the stick. Don't buy Sony-BMG music, they cam eup with the rootkit. DO buy those Sony products that are free of DRM. The message will be clear.
I understand what you're saying, but I think the message will be even clearer if I just don't buy anything from any part of Sony. Maybe it's only Sony-BMG that is bad, but they've degraded the name. Sony Electronics should drop the name "Sony" if it doesn't want to take responsibility for the actions of other users of that name.
ATTENTION! BLAH BLAH BLAH ...
Click through agreements have trained people not to read anything presented in all caps.
That said, what do folks think is going to happen to those of us that already have lifetime subscriptions?
I'd suggest you read the fine print on your contract. If it gives TiVo a way out, they'll probably take it. If not, you should buy some life insurance.
If TiVo doesn't offer lifetife subscriptions anymore, then it might just suggest that they won't be around for anyone's lifetime.
I'd say it suggests just the opposite. If I think I'll be around for a few years, then offering lifetime service is an expensive offering. First, I have to take on a long term commitment, with no long term cash flow. Second, it allows customers to lock in current subscription rates, preventing me from getting any extra cash if I raise them in the future.
If I think I'll probably be bankrupt next year, then I may as well label my one year subscription as "lifetime". Maybe I'll sell more, and it will delay the bankruptcy.
So: 79 million barrels = 1,580,000,000 gallons of gasoline. There are 6.5 billion people which means each person will receive 0.24 gallons per day.
Really? I live a pretty prosperous life, but I currently use about that much gasoline in a day. That's not counting the petroleum used to make the other products I use, but I really don't think it would be much of a hardship to reduce my overall petroleum consumption to that level.
That's enough gasoline to let a family of four drive a 40mpg car 40 miles a day. Why would you need to drive that much? Move closer to your work, so you can walk or bike in. (My family of four drives around 30 miles a day, including vacation visits to relatives who live 500 miles away, etc.)
You drive a 10mpg car? That's part of the problem, isn't it?
Why would you do business with someone who treats you like that? Get a Gmail account, or a paid account from someone who treats you reasonably. There are lots of other choices.
If someone is so stupid that they keep an account with a provider who doesn't deliver the email they want, then that's their problem, not mine.
Maybe, but doubtful. The scheme will only work if everyone pays.
Not at all. The header line saying "sender paid" will be just another line to filter on.
If it turns out that only spammers pay, then spamming will be very much less profitable now, and easier to filter. I suspect that's not how it will turn out, but it's not a disaster if it does.
If it turns out that my email provider is filtering email I want to see because the sender won't pay, then I'll find another email provider. It's not as though it's hard to find an email provider.
I suspect an email provider will come along who will charge non-whitelisted senders 0.25 per email, and give me 0.24 of it. I'd love an account there. I'll only get email from my whitelist, and a few people who really want to get through to me.
Sorry, but that's crap. You don't have to use the email provided by your broadband provider. I don't. If you are stuck on a broadband provider who does a crappy job of email, do your email somewhere else.
I agree with you about the details of this plan as currently announced, but the good part of it is that AOL and Yahoo are big. If big companies like that start charging, then a scheme will reasonably quickly evolve where it's easy for a sender to pay. After that happens, the number of ISPs who want in on the scheme will increase, and then we'll start to some solutions to your other problems coming out.
Right now a "sender pays" scheme can't get off the ground. This could be the beginning of putting the infrastructure in place.
I just checked and there are 521 AOL and Yahoo addresses subscribed. I'm not going to pay $5 a day to reach those people!
Since this story is a dupe of this one, I'll ask the same question I asked in that thread: Why do you think this is your problem? Don't pay. If they want to receive your newsletter, they'll get AOL and Yahoo to let you through for free, or they'll move elsewhere. It's not your problem.
And so as not to be redundant, I'll add something new:
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Sure, the current plan is a piece of crap, and will likely drive smart users away from Yahoo and AOL. But maybe enough users will remain that the "sender pays" infrastructure will be put in place. Then smart ISPs will have another good tool at their disposal for spam filtering: bulk mailers aren't going to pay.
Most users receive about as much as they send, so they won't mind paying, as long as they get the bulk of the fees for email they receive. Folks like you who send a lot more than you receive will need to be whitelisted, but that's pretty easy.
A smart ISP who is handling things well will make the whitelisting as easy as the current confirmation email: users who want to subscribe will sign up on your website, you'll send a confirmation email to them, when they respond to that a copy can be sent to their ISP to inform it that they want to whitelist you. This is not hard to do.
Why? Because I don't want to deal with these complaints or issues *at all*.
I think that's what I suggested you do: ignore the issue. It's not your problem. Why deal with it?
A preemptive strike is called for here.
That may be, but I think you'll find that actually takes more work than ignoring it would. You're the one who said it would be a lot of work to deal with.
Now, discussion boards and mailing lists will need to purge and actively reject individuals using aol.com addresses. What other choice would operators of such boards and lists have?
Just don't pay the fee? Tell the users AOL is very unreliable at delivering your mail, so you don't recommend using them?
Why do you think this is a problem that you need to deal with? Let AOL handle the complaints when people lose email that they want to receive.
It does, now. Perhaps the anonymous submitter trusted Geist's reputation enough to predict that? (No, I'm not serious.) But realistically, there's a lot on that page besides the link to the press release.
The link in the Slashdot summary goes to someone's blog
I don't know if Michael Geist submitted the link, but he's actually a pretty well known columnist and copyright activist. You should check out michaelgeist.com for some interesting reading.
Lately there has been a lot about the Canadian election and the brouhaha over the CRIA (the Canadian RIAA) and friends supporting a candidate who was the author of a pro-business copyright bill, but generally it's a pretty interesting blog. And who knows, he may even have contributed to the electoral loss of that candidate, the minister who sponsored the bill, and the government who brought it in.
I have virtually no accent at all, except for very mild British overtones...
That claim makes no sense whatsoever. You have a regional accent, it just happens to come close to the one you hear around you most commonly. I'm guessing it's a midwest accent, aka "General American", aka the US TV network announcer accent.
"Shouts down"? Responding to someone on Slashdot doesn't silence them. Mods can silence someone, but someone posting to a discussion can't.
Allowing that would make mathematical proofs patentable as well, there's no way you can get around that.
That would be a disaster for our economy. Can you imagine if we were no longer allowed to prove that maps can be colored with 4 colors? We'd always need to keep 5 colors of ink in stock, or pay royalties for secretly having proof that 4 were sufficient.
Okay, sorry, I just thought there might have been something creative or insightful in what you wrote. I didn't realize that it was a simulation of a computer-generated comment.
I'm sorry, but I don't get your point. Of course insight and creativity aren't sufficient to do math. If they were, all good novelists would be good mathematicians. My claim is that insight and creativity are necessary, which the original poster didn't seem to recognize.
The 1976 computer-based proof of the Four Color Theorem relied on insight, creativity, and mathematical and computational ability.
You seem to be equating math with arithmetic. Computers can do arithmetic, but they aren't very good at math. To do math you need creativity and insight.
So the 12 tonnes of uranium in the GP post is really equivalent to 12 mg of high level waste.
Oops, that should have been 12 g, not mg.
This is misleading - naturally occurring uranium is much less radioactive than products from nuclear fission. I would quite happily pick up a fuel rod before it goes into a power plant but I wouldnt go near one once it comes out. The uranium from coal combustion is relatively harmless.
Yes, this is really the point. I believe that the ratio is approximately 1,000,000 to 1, i.e. waste is a million times more radioactive than fuel. It decays faster; uranium will last billions of years, whereas the high level waste will decay to safer stuff in thousands.
So the 12 tonnes of uranium in the GP post is really equivalent to 12 mg of high level waste. Nuclear plants in normal operation don't release 12 mg of high level waste; they are very good at containing it. But accidents happen.