Another problem that is actually more pressing has to do with the unique autonomous system number (AS) that are used in BGP (the internet's routing protocol). In the past, a network would just use an AS number from the private partition of their upstream provider, but now more and more networks are becoming multi-homed to two or more providers. Once a network is multi-homed, it then has to request its own AS number. These AS numbers are actually being depleted faster than IPv4 addresses. It has forced the BGP community to begin phasing in a larger AS number field.
They've been doing this for awhile in some way or another as far as I can tell. I went to undergrad at U. of Wyoming, and I remember in my Junior year Operating Systems class (so, three years ago) my prof telling us about a list IT had that detailed the top traded songs on the network. At the time, I wondered how they actually knew which songs were traded. Now I see this turn up on Slashdot, and I guess I know. But they've been monitoring for three year (at least) I guess and seemingly haven't taken any action (though I do know they restricted the bandwidth coming from the dorm network segments at one point.)
Well, the FCC is of the opinion that competition is the better route to go. In other words, by pitting DirectTV and Echostar against each other they'll compete by offering better services at lower prices. So, in your case the thinking is that either Echostar or DirecTV will begin offering you local channels due to competition in an effort to garner your business. On the other hand, if they had merged then there would have been no incentive (in your case) to offer the local channels since you're already a customer.
The FCC and DOJ were particularly concerned that the merger of DirectTV and Echostar would effectivle create a monopoly. Charlie Ergan and the rest of the advocates of the merger argued that the merger was necessary in order to effectively compete with cable. The problem is that in many areas of the country (rural areas, and more than you might think) consumers have a choice of either satellite or nothing. So, the merger would have effectively been a 2:1 and created a monoply in many areas of the country. While it's true that competitive efficiencies may have increased in some urban areas (big satellite company v. cable), the FCC's general policy is that creating competive efficiencies in one market isn't worth creating a monoply in other markets.
I recently saw the Discovery Channel ad on the PATH train too. The ad that was showing was for The Discovery Channel's Shark week, so it featured a shark swimming around. The first time I caught it out of the corner of my eye, it sort of startled me. I knew the train was under the river at that point, and seeing a shark made me think something might be very wrong with the subway!
I'm a CS student now, and I had a professor do this in a LISP class I had. He was the professor who does reseach in AI, so he wrote what I assume to be a fairly sophisticated program that would check all of the students' code, and identify people that had possibly cheated from one another. It even dealt with those that went to the trouble of changing variable names, inserting or removing comments, or even switching the order that trivial code occurred in. I thought it was pretty cool, those that got caught were somewhat less impressed.
If you could get him to come in, a person to consider might be John Perry Barlow from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He visited my University, and had several good arguments in favor of Napster type services.
I live in Wyoming. Now, the town where I live has (which is the third largest city in the state mind you) has a grand total of something like four radio stations, all of which suck most of the time. I myself like to listen to talk radio, sports, and music on the radio (but not any of the music on the radio here.) So that leaves with exactly zero radio listening options. And on top of that, I really like to listen radio in the car while driving the long distances between towns here. Of course, get fifteen miles out of town and you can't get any radio stations, even ones that suck. So, though I realize it's a small market, I think those of us living in relatively unpopulated areas would definitely pay to at least be able to get a bit more choice and to be able to get stations while driving.
When a company comes up with software like this, it's not intended to stop the savviest/. reader from doing whatever. It's designed to stop the 99% of people who wouldn't ever even think that a hack might exist to get around it. For examply, the reason Napster got popular is because people like my Grandma started swapping files. Napster started blocking and she stopped using it, and now it's basically dead. We all know there's way to get around the blocks, but that doesn't really matter. So, I guess my point is, if it's good enough to stop my Grandma, then it's good enough.:)
I don't claim to understand the Chinese mindset. It doesn't make much sense to me either. I mean, Mao did lots of horrible things that caused mass suffering. (Great leap forward, cultural revolution, etc.) But the people still regard Mao as something near to a God. I don't understand it, but that's how it is. I would refer you to the book "Mao's Children in the New China" by Yarong Jiang and David Ashley. It features interviews of people who have grown up since 1949, and most of them think very highly of Mao.
I've never used MSN, nor have I known anyone who's used it. I realize it is a MS product, but can anyone give me an unbiased opinion on MSN? Does it suck or is it decent?
How can you say that the Chinese people don't know what they want?! The Chinese are famous for having revolutions quite often. The entire premise of Communism is that it is a worker revolt! If we go back to 1989 we'll see quite a good example of the people wanting something and demonstrating for it. That was Tiananmen Square. I realize that wasn't too successful, but the reasons for that are things such as disorganized student leadership, etc. The point is that the Chinese are famous for their revolutions, and they just had a successful one in 1949. The people live under reduced freedoms, but they see that as a necessary part of living under "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics". (That is a quote from Deng.) Basically, if 1.2 billion were all that concerned about anything, even internet censorship, there's nothing the piddly government could do to stop them.
Let's remember that the Chinese people are living under a government that they want to be under. The Communists only came into control of the mainland in 1949 after a civil war. Those who disagreed with the system went to Taiwan. It isn't often that you find citizens overthrowing a government after a mere 50 years for a little thing like censorship.
This reminds of a few years back when there seemed to be a craze in having clear cases on smaller electronics. I remember seeing phones, radios, and other stuff with clear cases. The phones seemed to mostly be appealing to teenage girls, though I'm not exactly sure why. Can't think of any reasons why a teenage girl would want to look at a circuit board. In any case, I remeber wondering before why anyone would want a clear case on the phone, and I have that same thought about PCs.
Sometimes I think the sort of paranoia people exhibit about this sort of thing is funny. But then I remember that sort of paranoia is what makes this country great. There's a reason the President can't just do something without getting it past Congress and making sure the Supreme Court doesn't shoot it down. And there's a reason that Congress can't just do something without getting past the other two branches. This country was set up to be paraniod. Even the founding fathers were paranoid that one branch would be too powerful, so they gave the other two branches power to disallow anything the other branch may try.
And in that same spirit, the citizens of this country are paranoid. We don't want things to happen quickly and efficiently in DC. As much as we bitch about those lazy SOBs in DC not doing anything, that's really how we want it. And that's the way it should be. Whenever a privacy story like this concerning the government comes out, there is a huge uproar and this leads to hearings and reports and all kinds of things being done. I think this is sort of the American way of guaranteeing that nothing gets too extreme.
Thoughts?
Does anyone know exactly what type of bandwidth this type of application takes? I'd imagine it would have to be absolutely massive at this point. Probably, as time goes on they'll come up with compression methods similar to the MPEG standards for video today, except for holograms.
If the mainstream media gets ahold of this story, I'll bet this would really take off. I could just imagine the CNN interview with the company CEO saying, "We're just trying to help people, blah blah..." That would in turn cause everybody who has a computer sitting at home (and who doesn't realize this is a for profit company), like my Mom, Grandma, etc. to go and download this thing. I'll bet that's what the company is counting on.
I realize that the problem here is with the size of the routing tables. But with optical routers getting nearer and nearer to mainstream, it seems like this should give us some cushion for growth. If a packet can get through a router at the speed of light, it should give the router more time to do table lookups and that sort of thing. Not to mention the fact that processors for routers will keep getting faster. Anyone have thoughts on the role that optical routers could play in this issue?
Slashdot Mirror
Another problem that is actually more pressing has to do with the unique autonomous system number (AS) that are used in BGP (the internet's routing protocol). In the past, a network would just use an AS number from the private partition of their upstream provider, but now more and more networks are becoming multi-homed to two or more providers. Once a network is multi-homed, it then has to request its own AS number. These AS numbers are actually being depleted faster than IPv4 addresses. It has forced the BGP community to begin phasing in a larger AS number field.
They've been doing this for awhile in some way or another as far as I can tell. I went to undergrad at U. of Wyoming, and I remember in my Junior year Operating Systems class (so, three years ago) my prof telling us about a list IT had that detailed the top traded songs on the network. At the time, I wondered how they actually knew which songs were traded. Now I see this turn up on Slashdot, and I guess I know. But they've been monitoring for three year (at least) I guess and seemingly haven't taken any action (though I do know they restricted the bandwidth coming from the dorm network segments at one point.)
Well, the FCC is of the opinion that competition is the better route to go. In other words, by pitting DirectTV and Echostar against each other they'll compete by offering better services at lower prices. So, in your case the thinking is that either Echostar or DirecTV will begin offering you local channels due to competition in an effort to garner your business. On the other hand, if they had merged then there would have been no incentive (in your case) to offer the local channels since you're already a customer.
The FCC and DOJ were particularly concerned that the merger of DirectTV and Echostar would effectivle create a monopoly. Charlie Ergan and the rest of the advocates of the merger argued that the merger was necessary in order to effectively compete with cable. The problem is that in many areas of the country (rural areas, and more than you might think) consumers have a choice of either satellite or nothing. So, the merger would have effectively been a 2:1 and created a monoply in many areas of the country. While it's true that competitive efficiencies may have increased in some urban areas (big satellite company v. cable), the FCC's general policy is that creating competive efficiencies in one market isn't worth creating a monoply in other markets.
According to this article there is a spaceport in California that has been launching since the year 2000. Does anyone know anymore about it?
I recently saw the Discovery Channel ad on the PATH train too. The ad that was showing was for The Discovery Channel's Shark week, so it featured a shark swimming around. The first time I caught it out of the corner of my eye, it sort of startled me. I knew the train was under the river at that point, and seeing a shark made me think something might be very wrong with the subway!
I'm a CS student now, and I had a professor do this in a LISP class I had. He was the professor who does reseach in AI, so he wrote what I assume to be a fairly sophisticated program that would check all of the students' code, and identify people that had possibly cheated from one another. It even dealt with those that went to the trouble of changing variable names, inserting or removing comments, or even switching the order that trivial code occurred in. I thought it was pretty cool, those that got caught were somewhat less impressed.
If you could get him to come in, a person to consider might be John Perry Barlow from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He visited my University, and had several good arguments in favor of Napster type services.
I live in Wyoming. Now, the town where I live has (which is the third largest city in the state mind you) has a grand total of something like four radio stations, all of which suck most of the time. I myself like to listen to talk radio, sports, and music on the radio (but not any of the music on the radio here.) So that leaves with exactly zero radio listening options. And on top of that, I really like to listen radio in the car while driving the long distances between towns here. Of course, get fifteen miles out of town and you can't get any radio stations, even ones that suck. So, though I realize it's a small market, I think those of us living in relatively unpopulated areas would definitely pay to at least be able to get a bit more choice and to be able to get stations while driving.
When a company comes up with software like this, it's not intended to stop the savviest /. reader from doing whatever. It's designed to stop the 99% of people who wouldn't ever even think that a hack might exist to get around it. For examply, the reason Napster got popular is because people like my Grandma started swapping files. Napster started blocking and she stopped using it, and now it's basically dead. We all know there's way to get around the blocks, but that doesn't really matter. So, I guess my point is, if it's good enough to stop my Grandma, then it's good enough. :)
I don't claim to understand the Chinese mindset. It doesn't make much sense to me either. I mean, Mao did lots of horrible things that caused mass suffering. (Great leap forward, cultural revolution, etc.) But the people still regard Mao as something near to a God. I don't understand it, but that's how it is. I would refer you to the book "Mao's Children in the New China" by Yarong Jiang and David Ashley. It features interviews of people who have grown up since 1949, and most of them think very highly of Mao.
I've never used MSN, nor have I known anyone who's used it. I realize it is a MS product, but can anyone give me an unbiased opinion on MSN? Does it suck or is it decent?
How can you say that the Chinese people don't know what they want?! The Chinese are famous for having revolutions quite often. The entire premise of Communism is that it is a worker revolt! If we go back to 1989 we'll see quite a good example of the people wanting something and demonstrating for it. That was Tiananmen Square. I realize that wasn't too successful, but the reasons for that are things such as disorganized student leadership, etc. The point is that the Chinese are famous for their revolutions, and they just had a successful one in 1949. The people live under reduced freedoms, but they see that as a necessary part of living under "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics". (That is a quote from Deng.) Basically, if 1.2 billion were all that concerned about anything, even internet censorship, there's nothing the piddly government could do to stop them.
Let's remember that the Chinese people are living under a government that they want to be under. The Communists only came into control of the mainland in 1949 after a civil war. Those who disagreed with the system went to Taiwan. It isn't often that you find citizens overthrowing a government after a mere 50 years for a little thing like censorship.
This reminds of a few years back when there seemed to be a craze in having clear cases on smaller electronics. I remember seeing phones, radios, and other stuff with clear cases. The phones seemed to mostly be appealing to teenage girls, though I'm not exactly sure why. Can't think of any reasons why a teenage girl would want to look at a circuit board. In any case, I remeber wondering before why anyone would want a clear case on the phone, and I have that same thought about PCs.
Sometimes I think the sort of paranoia people exhibit about this sort of thing is funny. But then I remember that sort of paranoia is what makes this country great. There's a reason the President can't just do something without getting it past Congress and making sure the Supreme Court doesn't shoot it down. And there's a reason that Congress can't just do something without getting past the other two branches. This country was set up to be paraniod. Even the founding fathers were paranoid that one branch would be too powerful, so they gave the other two branches power to disallow anything the other branch may try. And in that same spirit, the citizens of this country are paranoid. We don't want things to happen quickly and efficiently in DC. As much as we bitch about those lazy SOBs in DC not doing anything, that's really how we want it. And that's the way it should be. Whenever a privacy story like this concerning the government comes out, there is a huge uproar and this leads to hearings and reports and all kinds of things being done. I think this is sort of the American way of guaranteeing that nothing gets too extreme. Thoughts?
Does anyone know exactly what type of bandwidth this type of application takes? I'd imagine it would have to be absolutely massive at this point. Probably, as time goes on they'll come up with compression methods similar to the MPEG standards for video today, except for holograms.
If the mainstream media gets ahold of this story, I'll bet this would really take off. I could just imagine the CNN interview with the company CEO saying, "We're just trying to help people, blah blah..." That would in turn cause everybody who has a computer sitting at home (and who doesn't realize this is a for profit company), like my Mom, Grandma, etc. to go and download this thing. I'll bet that's what the company is counting on.
I realize that the problem here is with the size of the routing tables. But with optical routers getting nearer and nearer to mainstream, it seems like this should give us some cushion for growth. If a packet can get through a router at the speed of light, it should give the router more time to do table lookups and that sort of thing. Not to mention the fact that processors for routers will keep getting faster. Anyone have thoughts on the role that optical routers could play in this issue?
than having to run 50,000 miles of Cat 3 cable.