It is all the more irrational knowing that there is already a good last mile in place: the local loop.
The problem with local loop is that only one entity, profit or non-profit, can control it. If they suck, we all lose. If they are inefficient, we pay up, instead of them going out of business. If they are incompetent, my service is down and I have to put up with it, instead of going to their competitor. If they are corrupt, we can only slap them on the wrist, instead of taking away their license to operate.
Wireless offers competition. Dial-up was wildly successful because any Joe Blow could throw together an ISP and compete. If we want to grow out of dial-up and into wide spread broadband, there has to be the same level of competition.
As for the "numerous technical problems": details. Since when have we let something like a lack of technology get in the way when there's a buck to be made?
That said, if there has to be a single owner of the last mile, I agree; Lets call it the monopoly that it is, regulate it like a monopoly, and stop pretending. I hate regulation, but the only thing worse than regulation is partial regulation. Do it right, or don't do it at all.
Caveat: off the top of my head, not sure its a good idea, but might be worth a discussion.
Why not let anyone be eligible for controlling a TLD? Then that person or entity may decide:
The TLD's name, such as.com,.pro,.net, etc.
The character of the TLD, such as businesses, organizations, informational sites, certified professionals, etc.
Requirements of getting a second level domain. Could be required that you are non-profit organization, or gaming league, or a licensed MD, etc. You may or may not have to prove your credentials.
Price of second level domain. If you want to target professionals and provide a high level of service, etc. then you might charge a lot. If you are targeting newbies running FrontPage for the first time, it might be a few bucks.
Now, what eligibility requirements do the TLD owners have? Options (pick a subset):
None. This would end up being little different than today's system.
Must resell/distribute SLD.
Must allow others to resell/distribute their SLD, as long as TLD's character is upheld.
Must provide kick-back for every SLD to central management group (e.g. internic, network solutions, verisign, whoever they are now) to cover operating costs.
The endemic problem with TLD is that its always a monopoly held by someone, but we try to pretend that it isn't. Lets give up on pretending a TLD is not a monopoly and instead loosen up who gets a TLD, thereby providing competing TLD monopolies. So company X controls.pro and company Y controls.md; I'm Garver, MD. and I think.pro wants too much money, so I go with.md.
This may also help other issues such as free speech vs. kids hitting xxxbigtits.com. A TLD's requirement may be that all content is kid-safe, and they would decide what that means. It would be easy for software to filter on TLD. Parents would have the power they need to control their kids content without having to watch every link their kid follows.
But that's the beauty of lobbying the government! You make "donations" in the $1000s to influence purchases in the millions. Talk about a return on investment!
Its naive to think this doesn't or wouldn't happen. One, the temptation is just too big (spend a thousand, get a million). Two, who's going to prove it? Even if there are strings attached to the money, which would be illegal, its very easy to say publicly that there weren't. Three, read the papers lately? There is allegation after allegation of this stuff happening. From this mess, to Enron and the Bush administration, to Clinton and pardons, and to every congressional member and their pork projects.
Bottom line: Elected officials carry an enormous amount of power and responsibility when compared to how much they are paid legally. That's a recipe for bribery and for attracting those willing to be bribed.
This is what campaign finance reform is supposed to fix. But I don't support it; I don't think any amount of campaign finance reform will fix the situation. You need to motivate officials to be honest. I don't know how to do that, but I'm certain adding more rules won't. Until someone comes up with something better, I would rather keep my "freedom of speech".
Working on it.:-) Not my preference to be here; wife got into school here, but she's a week from being finished!
That said, NJ does have some redeeming qualities. Jobs and proximity to NYC are the two usually listed. I would add that NJ has some very nice places to live, whatever you are looking for. NJ is not all Newark. There's the shore and semi-rural settings that are both still commutable to NYC; and of course a multitude of suburban and urban settings with plenty of different personalities.
For my money though, I'd rather have as remote a place as possible while still having broadband.
I live in NJ. People here go until they see red. Period. This is the only place where I feel I need to look both ways before going through a recently green light.
Extending the yellow would have the same effect as extending green. That's all.
<rant>As for rear-ending... I'm originally from another a state where people stop when they see yellow (imagine!), and I visit frequently. Hence, I'm not in the habit and I don't want to get into the habit of running orange lights. So, I stop when I see yellow and have time... A good way to get the finger in Jersey and maybe "BMW" stamped onto the back of my Toyota . I've gotten pretty good at hopping the curb to get out of the way. And the worse part is that NJ has no-fault insurance! If those bastards hit me, my insurance company pays for my damages and my premiums go up!</rant>
Because, today, they have the technology. Just as piracy has been around for over 20 years, so has attempts to prevent it. Remember copy-protected floppy discs? How about VHS videos that skipped when you ran the signal through a second VCR? This is just the latest technology they can exploit to dishonestly maintain their market-share.
I don't mean to be obnoxious, but what are their goals here? I read the article and all it talked about was the mission, not about what the Russians hope to gain out of solar sail. I know in general what solar sails in general would theoretically enable, but what specifically are the Russians preparing?
NASA could be voluntarily funded in a way that is precisely tangible: it's called a donation.
Why go to the trouble of taxing something that is related to NASA, instead of just letting me donate tax-deductible money to NASA.
To extend this farther: At the end of my 1040, it says, "this is how much tax you owe, how would you like us to spend it?" What a concept! Capitalism in government budgets!
Not entrapment... unless its a phat car... with the doors unlocked... the keys in... the engine running... and a wad of benjamins hanging out of the glove compartment.
Seriously, where does it start to become entrapment?
Or drinking or smoking what I want, buying what I want, selling what I want, believing what I want, or whatever else as long as I don't infringe on someone else. Until it affects you, why the fuck should you care? And if you do care, what makes you so important that you can tell me what to do?
Guns shouldn't be illegal. Would you, personally, know the difference if I owned a gun or not? How does my simply owning a gun affect you? Now if that gun was used for murder, theft, or assult, then we have something illegal. Until then, stay out of my business.
I'm libertarian because I have no confidence in politicians, and this is a great example of why. Logicron screwed California. Why? As the saying goes, "A fool and his money are easily parted." Unless the fool is a government entity, because they can always raise taxes.
When a company makes a stupid purchase, the company suffers and may go under. Oh, well. A smarter company takes their place.
When a government makes the stupid purchase, taxpayers suffer and the politicians get a couple years to spin their way out of it before facing the next re-election. By then, voters are likely to have forgotten or given up.
The government is run by politicians and politicians are, well, political. Political does not imply any sort of managerial or financial sense.
The same is not true for most of the companies you mentioned. They're looking at potential extinction (particularly the middle men in the entertainment business - e.g. the studios and record labels). So they're fighting for their lives. They can't just "leave the market" or "restructure their business". There is no new market and no new structure for them to go to and retain anything even vaguely like what they have now.
Then kudos to IBM for diversifying and changing with the times. The IBM of today looks very little like the IBM of 10 years ago, which looks even less like the IBM of 25 years ago. Remember when they were a typewriter manufacturer? Remember what a typewriter is?
What IBM does right is always look for the new cheese instead of complaining about how the old cheese smells or how someone stole it from them. It explains why they are still a contendor after so many years.
Why? Because these buggers wouldn't even return my call when I tried to get a job there. I figured they were another dot.com gone bust and now I find out they actually have a product! I guess that means they didn't like me... bummer...
And they are right up the road too... I had dreams of riding a bike to work... if only they had called!
Where's the book "Working for PHBs"? Seriously, isn't that the other half of the problem? The word "Einstein" is used derisively, I think, to say IT workers are arrogant asses that assume all those above and around them are idiots. So, "Managing Einsteins" would be a book about appeasing these Einsteins while getting them to do what you want (e.g. herding cats).
On the other hand, the Einsteins derisively refer to management as PHBs because they don't completely understand technical issues and make decisions on loose technical-ground. Sure, we could blow this issue off as management being stupid, or we can learn, for example, how better to comminucate the issues so the PHBs can make better decisions. It might also enlighten us to the fact there is more to a decision than just the technical side, such as marketing, customer acceptance, product portfolio, etc.
Bottom line, its two different cultures. To get them to work together requires efforts and respect on both sides.
Its interesting that they seem to have skipped the traditional earpiece/mouthpiece and went straight for hands-free (earbud/microphone). I think this is a good move since it removes size as a restriction.
The Matrix did it for DVDs, why not Harry Potter for e-books? Come on, admit it! How many of you finally gave in and bought a DVD player because that was the only way you could buy The Matrix?
I was honestly expecting the CERT advisory to be something like "90% of all SNMP agents were found to be using the default community strings. Your pants our down, buddy, turn off the agent."
Seriously, I've always been surprised the script kiddies haven't gotten hold of this. How hard would it be to write something that finds vender X's boxes and shuts down their interfaces? Switches cannot always be behind firewalls, and the ones in front are the juicy ones.
Yes, another port would be simpler to secure. Without that, firewall administrators will simply go higher in the stack and look at layer 7. In other words, the firewall will have to pick out the URL and apply rules to that. Of course, this also implies the firewall is tracking connections, etc. It can no longer be just a dumb packet filter, but no serious firewall is.
In the end, the lack of a port as a service differentiator isn't a big deal. What is important is that you have something wich differentiates the service. A URL can do that, it just costs a little more CPU.
A previous found Mersenne number was used to show the advance of science on our planet in a message send into outer space.
Yup, ET is going to get our message and probably laugh, "Ha ha, what morons, they've only found the 39th one! Lets defeat their pitiful technology, take their resources, and make them slaves! Muhahahahah!"
How's the quote go? It's better to keep your mouth shut and leave people wondering if you're a fool, than to open it and prove that you are.
School sucks. Starting out in the work place sucks. But its all good in the end. Here's my short story to illustrate why.
I hated school. I got sick of studying things just for the gee-wiz value. If I had to study another abstract algorithm or data structure without really seeing the benefits, I think I would have quit and become a farmer. I was spinning my wheels; learning a lot (even that was arguable), but it didn't get me any where.
At first, I hated work. I couldn't see the benefit of what I was doing, mostly because it had no benefit. I was just another clog in the corporate wheel. I did what people told me using the tools I acquired in college. I was a factory worker, nothing more. Again, I didn't feel like I was getting any where, but for the opposite reason. My tires were firmly planted, but not spinning since I wasn't learning anything.
Somehow, I found it within to at least do it well and suggest improvements. Over time people realized I had a brain. It did take a few job changes though and a couple years.
Now, I'm happy as a clam. I'm designing and implementing software. I'm given a problem, I have to design the solution, then implement it. I'm learning, then applying it. Now, I was getting somewhere.
The point is, I don't feel alive unless I'm getting somewhere. Neither in school, nor in my first job did I have that feeling. But looking back, they were necessary steps in the road to where I am now, so I guess they did get me somewhere after all.
It doesn't prove everything, but it does prove something:
That the whole laptop isn't a container for bad things. By making you turn it on, they have reduced the laptop's useful cargo from around 1"x10"x12" to around 0.75"x4"x4". Not bad for 10 seconds worth of searching.
More importantly, they got to watch you. Did you have a brief look of panic? Did you roll your eyes? Did you roll your eyes overly dramatically?
No check is perfect. Their job is to achieve the maximum effectiveness in a minimal amount of time. As a result, most of their checks are designed to elicit a response from you. Also, their job is to find people with weapons that intend to use them, not just find weapons. People on a mission will act differently (nervous, attentive, scared, determined) than people just catching a flight (bored, inattentive, impatient).
Re:Here's a concept: mod the ads
on
Slashdot Updates
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Don't banner ads already have a moderation system? Its called "click throughs."
Now, if you throw in some personalization, then you might have something.
Slashdot Mirror
It is all the more irrational knowing that there is already a good last mile in place: the local loop.
The problem with local loop is that only one entity, profit or non-profit, can control it. If they suck, we all lose. If they are inefficient, we pay up, instead of them going out of business. If they are incompetent, my service is down and I have to put up with it, instead of going to their competitor. If they are corrupt, we can only slap them on the wrist, instead of taking away their license to operate.
Wireless offers competition. Dial-up was wildly successful because any Joe Blow could throw together an ISP and compete. If we want to grow out of dial-up and into wide spread broadband, there has to be the same level of competition.
As for the "numerous technical problems": details. Since when have we let something like a lack of technology get in the way when there's a buck to be made?
That said, if there has to be a single owner of the last mile, I agree; Lets call it the monopoly that it is, regulate it like a monopoly, and stop pretending. I hate regulation, but the only thing worse than regulation is partial regulation. Do it right, or don't do it at all.
Caveat: off the top of my head, not sure its a good idea, but might be worth a discussion.
Why not let anyone be eligible for controlling a TLD? Then that person or entity may decide:
Now, what eligibility requirements do the TLD owners have? Options (pick a subset):
The endemic problem with TLD is that its always a monopoly held by someone, but we try to pretend that it isn't. Lets give up on pretending a TLD is not a monopoly and instead loosen up who gets a TLD, thereby providing competing TLD monopolies. So company X controls .pro and company Y controls .md; I'm Garver, MD. and I think .pro wants too much money, so I go with .md.
This may also help other issues such as free speech vs. kids hitting xxxbigtits.com. A TLD's requirement may be that all content is kid-safe, and they would decide what that means. It would be easy for software to filter on TLD. Parents would have the power they need to control their kids content without having to watch every link their kid follows.
Just an idea.
No that's Oracle trying not to panic its stock holders.
But that's the beauty of lobbying the government! You make "donations" in the $1000s to influence purchases in the millions. Talk about a return on investment!
Its naive to think this doesn't or wouldn't happen. One, the temptation is just too big (spend a thousand, get a million). Two, who's going to prove it? Even if there are strings attached to the money, which would be illegal, its very easy to say publicly that there weren't. Three, read the papers lately? There is allegation after allegation of this stuff happening. From this mess, to Enron and the Bush administration, to Clinton and pardons, and to every congressional member and their pork projects.
Bottom line: Elected officials carry an enormous amount of power and responsibility when compared to how much they are paid legally. That's a recipe for bribery and for attracting those willing to be bribed.
This is what campaign finance reform is supposed to fix. But I don't support it; I don't think any amount of campaign finance reform will fix the situation. You need to motivate officials to be honest. I don't know how to do that, but I'm certain adding more rules won't. Until someone comes up with something better, I would rather keep my "freedom of speech".
Only true if the world is run by dishonest cheaters.
Working on it. :-) Not my preference to be here; wife got into school here, but she's a week from being finished!
That said, NJ does have some redeeming qualities. Jobs and proximity to NYC are the two usually listed. I would add that NJ has some very nice places to live, whatever you are looking for. NJ is not all Newark. There's the shore and semi-rural settings that are both still commutable to NYC; and of course a multitude of suburban and urban settings with plenty of different personalities.
For my money though, I'd rather have as remote a place as possible while still having broadband.
I live in NJ. People here go until they see red. Period. This is the only place where I feel I need to look both ways before going through a recently green light.
Extending the yellow would have the same effect as extending green. That's all.
<rant>As for rear-ending... I'm originally from another a state where people stop when they see yellow (imagine!), and I visit frequently. Hence, I'm not in the habit and I don't want to get into the habit of running orange lights. So, I stop when I see yellow and have time... A good way to get the finger in Jersey and maybe "BMW" stamped onto the back of my Toyota . I've gotten pretty good at hopping the curb to get out of the way. And the worse part is that NJ has no-fault insurance! If those bastards hit me, my insurance company pays for my damages and my premiums go up!</rant>
Because, today, they have the technology. Just as piracy has been around for over 20 years, so has attempts to prevent it. Remember copy-protected floppy discs? How about VHS videos that skipped when you ran the signal through a second VCR? This is just the latest technology they can exploit to dishonestly maintain their market-share.
I don't mean to be obnoxious, but what are their goals here? I read the article and all it talked about was the mission, not about what the Russians hope to gain out of solar sail. I know in general what solar sails in general would theoretically enable, but what specifically are the Russians preparing?
NASA could be voluntarily funded in a way that is precisely tangible: it's called a donation.
Why go to the trouble of taxing something that is related to NASA, instead of just letting me donate tax-deductible money to NASA.
To extend this farther: At the end of my 1040, it says, "this is how much tax you owe, how would you like us to spend it?" What a concept! Capitalism in government budgets!
Not entrapment... unless its a phat car... with the doors unlocked... the keys in... the engine running... and a wad of benjamins hanging out of the glove compartment.
Seriously, where does it start to become entrapment?
Or drinking or smoking what I want, buying what I want, selling what I want, believing what I want, or whatever else as long as I don't infringe on someone else. Until it affects you, why the fuck should you care? And if you do care, what makes you so important that you can tell me what to do?
Guns shouldn't be illegal. Would you, personally, know the difference if I owned a gun or not? How does my simply owning a gun affect you? Now if that gun was used for murder, theft, or assult, then we have something illegal. Until then, stay out of my business.
I'm libertarian because I have no confidence in politicians, and this is a great example of why. Logicron screwed California. Why? As the saying goes, "A fool and his money are easily parted." Unless the fool is a government entity, because they can always raise taxes.
When a company makes a stupid purchase, the company suffers and may go under. Oh, well. A smarter company takes their place.
When a government makes the stupid purchase, taxpayers suffer and the politicians get a couple years to spin their way out of it before facing the next re-election. By then, voters are likely to have forgotten or given up.
The government is run by politicians and politicians are, well, political. Political does not imply any sort of managerial or financial sense.
Then kudos to IBM for diversifying and changing with the times. The IBM of today looks very little like the IBM of 10 years ago, which looks even less like the IBM of 25 years ago. Remember when they were a typewriter manufacturer? Remember what a typewriter is?
What IBM does right is always look for the new cheese instead of complaining about how the old cheese smells or how someone stole it from them. It explains why they are still a contendor after so many years.
Why? Because these buggers wouldn't even return my call when I tried to get a job there. I figured they were another dot.com gone bust and now I find out they actually have a product! I guess that means they didn't like me... bummer...
And they are right up the road too... I had dreams of riding a bike to work... if only they had called!
Oh, well. Congratulations, Vonage!
Where's the book "Working for PHBs"? Seriously, isn't that the other half of the problem? The word "Einstein" is used derisively, I think, to say IT workers are arrogant asses that assume all those above and around them are idiots. So, "Managing Einsteins" would be a book about appeasing these Einsteins while getting them to do what you want (e.g. herding cats).
On the other hand, the Einsteins derisively refer to management as PHBs because they don't completely understand technical issues and make decisions on loose technical-ground. Sure, we could blow this issue off as management being stupid, or we can learn, for example, how better to comminucate the issues so the PHBs can make better decisions. It might also enlighten us to the fact there is more to a decision than just the technical side, such as marketing, customer acceptance, product portfolio, etc.
Bottom line, its two different cultures. To get them to work together requires efforts and respect on both sides.
Its interesting that they seem to have skipped the traditional earpiece/mouthpiece and went straight for hands-free (earbud/microphone). I think this is a good move since it removes size as a restriction.
The Matrix did it for DVDs, why not Harry Potter for e-books? Come on, admit it! How many of you finally gave in and bought a DVD player because that was the only way you could buy The Matrix?
I was honestly expecting the CERT advisory to be something like "90% of all SNMP agents were found to be using the default community strings. Your pants our down, buddy, turn off the agent."
Seriously, I've always been surprised the script kiddies haven't gotten hold of this. How hard would it be to write something that finds vender X's boxes and shuts down their interfaces? Switches cannot always be behind firewalls, and the ones in front are the juicy ones.
Yes, another port would be simpler to secure. Without that, firewall administrators will simply go higher in the stack and look at layer 7. In other words, the firewall will have to pick out the URL and apply rules to that. Of course, this also implies the firewall is tracking connections, etc. It can no longer be just a dumb packet filter, but no serious firewall is.
In the end, the lack of a port as a service differentiator isn't a big deal. What is important is that you have something wich differentiates the service. A URL can do that, it just costs a little more CPU.
Yes. Thank you.
A previous found Mersenne number was used to show the advance of science on our planet in a message send into outer space.
Yup, ET is going to get our message and probably laugh, "Ha ha, what morons, they've only found the 39th one! Lets defeat their pitiful technology, take their resources, and make them slaves! Muhahahahah!"
How's the quote go? It's better to keep your mouth shut and leave people wondering if you're a fool, than to open it and prove that you are.
School sucks. Starting out in the work place sucks. But its all good in the end. Here's my short story to illustrate why.
I hated school. I got sick of studying things just for the gee-wiz value. If I had to study another abstract algorithm or data structure without really seeing the benefits, I think I would have quit and become a farmer. I was spinning my wheels; learning a lot (even that was arguable), but it didn't get me any where.
At first, I hated work. I couldn't see the benefit of what I was doing, mostly because it had no benefit. I was just another clog in the corporate wheel. I did what people told me using the tools I acquired in college. I was a factory worker, nothing more. Again, I didn't feel like I was getting any where, but for the opposite reason. My tires were firmly planted, but not spinning since I wasn't learning anything.
Somehow, I found it within to at least do it well and suggest improvements. Over time people realized I had a brain. It did take a few job changes though and a couple years.
Now, I'm happy as a clam. I'm designing and implementing software. I'm given a problem, I have to design the solution, then implement it. I'm learning, then applying it. Now, I was getting somewhere.
The point is, I don't feel alive unless I'm getting somewhere. Neither in school, nor in my first job did I have that feeling. But looking back, they were necessary steps in the road to where I am now, so I guess they did get me somewhere after all.
It doesn't prove everything, but it does prove something:
No check is perfect. Their job is to achieve the maximum effectiveness in a minimal amount of time. As a result, most of their checks are designed to elicit a response from you. Also, their job is to find people with weapons that intend to use them, not just find weapons. People on a mission will act differently (nervous, attentive, scared, determined) than people just catching a flight (bored, inattentive, impatient).
Don't banner ads already have a moderation system? Its called "click throughs."
Now, if you throw in some personalization, then you might have something.