Well, here's the thing. I'm your average Joe...Not fabulously wealthy, but I do OK. I do not give to charity anymore. Oh, once I did, but then I got stuck on some sucker list and they practically started banging down my door for more donations. I am also of the school of thought that charities themselves are corrupt, taking a large portion of donations for themselves in the form of "administrative fees", which normally involve paying some fool six, sometimes seven figures.
That is why I use Hotmail ONLY for handing out to regsites/corporations. In my experience, the privacy policy of these companies weighs as much as the bits it's written in. I will point out the Yahoo debacle where they automatically turned on everyone's marketing preferences as a small example. God only knows about the stuff going on behind the scenes that people never hear about.
I always thought Slashdotters had the tendency not to trust large corps, and it seems to me that quite a few people are doing exactly that by using these free webmail providers as their primary inboxes. The one and only reason I signed up with Hotmail was to make Microsoft eat the spam I knew I would start receiving. It is an address I can hand out with impunity. My primary inbox belongs to a server sitting in my office that I have direct control over. On this server I have several aliases that I created for mailing lists or sites that I actively participate on (like my munged email address in my account profile up there) That way if I start getting spam on my server I'll know which site ratted me out. Interestingly enough, I'm starting to get spam on my Slashdot alias. But in that case I think some spammer broke though the munging algorithm rather than Cmdr. Taco playing both sides of the fence:)
I see a lot of posts about police states and raids and such, but let's remember that this is a bill introduced by one guy who is obviously owned by the entertainment cabal. Stupid bills get introduced all the time. In this case, it's Orrin Hatch earning his pay from the RIAA/MPAA. If it passes, that's another story...but first let's remember that lots of people with lots of money who also own their own congresscritters will be horribly affected by such a law (think Microsoft and just about every tech company out there) and should easily have it laughed out of Congress.
If we're lucky, there might actually be some congress members beholden to say, oh, a silly thing like The People and see what's going on here. But that's if we're lucky.
Seeing as how you want data redundancy, there are three RAID levels for you to pick from:
RAID 1 - Drive mirroring. Pros: -Excellent read performance, no loss of performance if one drive crashes.
Cons: -The amount of space you can have on this array is limited to the largest drive you can find. Then you have to buy a second one to mirror the data, which means you are paying double the cost per unit storage on your array. -Write performance is slower than other RAID levels.
RAID 5 - Striped array with parity. You can stack as many drives as you want on this array (within limits of the controller of course) and lose only one for redundancy.
Pros: -You can build a very large data array out as many drives as you want, losing only one for the purpose of data reconstruction should a drive in the array fail.
Cons -Array performance dies in the event of a failure, as lost data is reconstructed on the fly from parity information stored across the remaining drives. Of course, performance is restored with the bad disk is replaced and the array reconstructed. -You need at least 3 drives to build a RAID 5 array.
RAID 10 - Drive mirroring with striping. Essentially combines RAID 0 and RAID 1, hence RAID 10.
Pros: -Redundant and fast. Array can survive multiple drive failures.
Cons: -Expensive. You need at least 4 drives to get started with RAID 10, and go by 2's as you expand on the array. As with RAID 1, your price per unit storage is doubled. -The array can survive multiple failures, but that depends on which drives die...If you lose two drives out of the same mirror set, then the array is gone
Which RAID level you pick depends on your application. If you are interested in having something like a 1 TB data dump, you'll probably want to go RAID 5. If you only want 200GB or less in your array, then RAID 1 is probably the way to go. If you are interested in lots of space, lots of redundancy, and have lots of money, then RAID 10 is probably what you want.
The problem I've had with a few popup blockers is that they are not particularly intelligent. Some of them can't even tell the difference between a popup and when you create a new instance of your browser. Beating advertisers requires intelligent filtering at the HTTP stream level, and I've found that the Proxomitron is an excellent proxy that does this. Unfortunately, the writer burned out and it's no longer supported. As such, I've heard really good things about Provoxy, but I can't make a recommendation since I've never used it.
As far as Proxomitron goes, it makes my surfing much more pleasurable. Annoying Flash ads that pop up and make noise and block what you're reading? Gone. Pop-up mouse traps? I laugh in their face. Sidebar/banner ads? What are those? Sometimes, however, the Proxomitron DOES munge some sites due to its filtering, but all you have to do is double click its taskbar icon, punch the "Bypass" button, and reload your browser. A small price to pay compared to punching your monitor in because an ad just took over your browser.
For fighting spam, popups and malware in general, I find Cexx to be a good site. They have a decent list of anti spyware/adware apps, and lenghthy and informative analyses of the various spyware running around.
I could see this for an indie project, but no way for a feature film. The reason why, I think, is because that in order for a computer to start rendering a CGI frame, it must have several things: Geometry, textures, lighting algorithms, and any procedurals needed to make things like fur, hair, realistic water effects, etc. Now, if I were PDI, or any company that has spent millions in R&D in creating these things, do you think I would want this info on Joe Schmoe's computer just waiting to be opened up and reverse engineered? I don't think so.
They do. Specifically, Microsoft does all the time.
I know. So does the Samba crew. So does the Mono crew. So does the Wine crew. Microsoft abhors inter-operation. That's why they're going on a patenting binge, undoubtedly to further lock up their protocols and make sure that if you don't use Microsoft software, you can't use services or protocols provided by it. Can you imagine if Cisco did something like this with TCP/IP?
And speaking of Cisco, let's take a look at one of their proprietary protocols you mentioned, EIGRP. EIGRP is a great protocol...Fast convergence, low bandwidth, very easy to set up. But if I wanted to drop, say, an IBM or HP router in that network I wouldn't be able to get routing updates from my Cisco stuff because it's using EIGRP. So there you have it, vendor lock-in. So now in order to get those routers talking, I would use OSPF...an open standard available to anyone who can read an RFC. Do you see where I am going here?
The point of my original post was that in order for an insanely large network like the Internet to work, with hundreds, if not thousands of different architectures all on it and able to talk to each other, the protocols for such communication MUST be OPEN and FREE. Money grubbing companies with patents on said protocls only guarantee that the owner of the patents and companies with enough money to pay them off are able to talk to each other. Everyone else will be left in the dust. Just ask the Samba guys about it when Longhorn comes out.
You do, of course, realize that if everyone who had an RFC that they charged a license fee for, the Internet would not exist at all?
The Internet was built off of the same philosophy as OSS. It's a bunch of people putting their heads together and throwing their ideas in the ring to make things better for all involved. What if all of these people clutched their ideas to their chest and said "This is MY piece and you have to pay me to use it"?
It doesn't matter whether or not Cisco would charge a small license fee for this new implementation. They are running against the philosophy that built the Internet in the first place. Standards must be open and free for the widest possible adaptation or you are looking at vendor lock-in ala Microsoft. In other words, to hell with Cisco.
I did RTFA and it looks like this is a proposed draft - It has not been ratified. Cisco is saying that if it is they've got the patents. What they're going to do with it I'd rather not find out. I'm willing to bet that most vendors won't follow the new recommendation to escape potential fees/lawsuits and instead go with another implemenation...Possibly their own. And that can't be a good thing.
To tell you the truth I know nothing of OSX, so whether or not there are actual performance gains with new releases is not my place to say.
I do, however, have a great deal of experience with Windows and can say that each iteration is certainly NOT faster than the one before. A system can run great with Windows 98, but you try to stick XP on that same system it's going to tank...Even if you have enough memory. As far as requirements and whether or not they are taking the wrong direction, MS can do whatever the hell they want. I see myself migrating to Linux before Longhorn anyway.
Why you do you need that much power just to run an operating system? Will people be able to print faster in Word? Perhaps the cards will bounce around the screen REALLY fast when you finish Solitaire? What can Longhorn or XP do for me that 2000 can't? Give me more pretty colors on my screen and a teeth-grinding, bang-my-head-on-the-keyboard, handholding, the-user-is-an-idiot default UI from hell?
Microsoft has brought us into the culture of bloatware acceptance. The belief seems to be that code doesn't need to be optimized because the brute force of today's processors make up for any clunkiness, and any extra processor cycles left over after that can be used up by making the UI pretty and shiny with lots of special effects and talking paperclips while you move windows around the screen. But then if this wasn't so why would anyone upgrade their computers?
Seem to me that Intel makes the processors and Microsoft sells them. I guess they don't call it "Wintel" for nothing.
I've been running a dual CPU machine with 4GB of RAM for a while now, but 1 TB of storage, what the hell for ?
Obviously for all the spyware and ensuing porn that will get loaded into your system via buffer overflow after you plug it into your personal 1gbit 'Net connect:)
My company was with Genuity, too, and it was a mere 384k fractional. One day I had to shut down all of our equipment to put in our brand spanking new 4-post rack and not 10 minutes went by when a guy from the NOC called us and asked if we were having problems. Truly excellent service.
We ended up moving up to a T1 but we got a better deal with Qwest. They are pretty proactive, also, and we have had no outages whatsoever on their side.
I just love it when these guys roll out and say stuff like this.
"There are more germs in your kitchen then there are on your toilet seat", seeming to imply that a toilet seat has fewer and less dangerous microbes than a kitchen sponge.
And now we have "There are lots of infectious, er, well at least they belong to infectious families, of bacteria on your shower curtain"
I'm sorry, but I can say that I've never gotten a wound infected while washing dishes or taking a shower. I can not say the same about cleaning a toilet. A word to the wise - if you have an open cut on your hand/arm, do not clean the toilet, even if you are wearing rubber gloves.
Anyway, do these guys really have nothing better to do than count bacteria on shower curtains and issue a press release about it? I'm sure whoever provided the grant money for this research is ecstatic.
I'm not exactly up to date on the latest music that's being released, but last I checked CD's were still being released in stereo, and seeing as how standard players are only capable of decoding 2-channel, 16 bit, 44.1kHz PCM streams that's the way it's going to be for a long time, if not forever.
DVD's are another story. I'm sure the \AUDIO_TS directory could hold some 5.1 music, but I've yet to see it being used. There'd be a small market if so. Would people really buy the super whizbang 5.1 version of their favorite music that will only run on their DVD player, given that they listen to CD's in their cars, discmans, etc?
And now to the crux of the problem. Since there is no 5.1 music out unless you are ripping it straight from a movie, why does SuperMP3 matter to p2p, or anything for that matter? IMHO, it doesn't - for straight music files.
Possibly, however, it might make a difference with DVR's. In the distant future, when all TV is HD and all audio is 5.1, DVR's will perhaps encode to SuperMP3 to save space and keep the 5.1 channels. Will this matter to p2p? Only if you rip the movie out of the box and place it on the 'Net.
Regardless, SuperMP3 will probably end up being yet another case study on why DRM doesn't work.
Reminds me this story that my dad told me, who's worked on big systems back in the 50's and 60's working as an aerospace employee, back when they were still using magnetic cores. They had been having major problems with the core overheating. Somehow, and don't ask me how, they figured out that Wildroot Cream Oil was the perfect coolant, and the core worked like a charm from then on.
Guess they figured it out in much the same way they figured out green tea cleans heads really well!
Hm, very interesting. Do you know where are these cameras and how close are they to the plates when the pictures are taken? Up till your first reply I always thought that OCR in this way was at best an inexact science.
They use cameras, and the system is automated? I had always thought the Congestion Charge system was based on RF or something of that sort. Here in Southern California, there are a few toll roads around, but to go through them you have to have an RF transmitter. If you blow a station without one they take a picture of your plates and send you a hefty bill in the mail. However, last I heard those pictures were reviewed by humans and input into the system.
The place where this stuff is being installed is a pissant little town in FL whose wealthy 341 residents are demanding that police take action after burglars netted $400,000 worth of jewelry from the area.
Here is a MapQuest pic of Manalapan. You may want to zoom in. As you can see, it is located on a peninsula with not many ways in. So I'm guessing that they will place these detectors at these few arteries. Even so, I doubt they will be effective. As anyone here knows, OCR from camera images taken in anything other than a controlled environment is dicey at best.
But it doesn't matter anyway, because reading the article and taking note of the geography of Manalapan has led me to wonder if they've considered the burglars could come in BY BOAT.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, here's the thing. I'm your average Joe...Not fabulously wealthy, but I do OK. I do not give to charity anymore. Oh, once I did, but then I got stuck on some sucker list and they practically started banging down my door for more donations. I am also of the school of thought that charities themselves are corrupt, taking a large portion of donations for themselves in the form of "administrative fees", which normally involve paying some fool six, sometimes seven figures.
Apparently the IRS agrees with me on this.
If I had something insane like $10M I'd sooner set up my own foundation than give any of it to charity.
That is why I use Hotmail ONLY for handing out to regsites/corporations. In my experience, the privacy policy of these companies weighs as much as the bits it's written in. I will point out the Yahoo debacle where they automatically turned on everyone's marketing preferences as a small example. God only knows about the stuff going on behind the scenes that people never hear about.
:)
I always thought Slashdotters had the tendency not to trust large corps, and it seems to me that quite a few people are doing exactly that by using these free webmail providers as their primary inboxes. The one and only reason I signed up with Hotmail was to make Microsoft eat the spam I knew I would start receiving. It is an address I can hand out with impunity. My primary inbox belongs to a server sitting in my office that I have direct control over. On this server I have several aliases that I created for mailing lists or sites that I actively participate on (like my munged email address in my account profile up there) That way if I start getting spam on my server I'll know which site ratted me out. Interestingly enough, I'm starting to get spam on my Slashdot alias. But in that case I think some spammer broke though the munging algorithm rather than Cmdr. Taco playing both sides of the fence
Actually it's a "he". Poor guy, what were his parents thinking? :)
Since his server's been nuked, you can read a little about him here.
I see a lot of posts about police states and raids and such, but let's remember that this is a bill introduced by one guy who is obviously owned by the entertainment cabal. Stupid bills get introduced all the time. In this case, it's Orrin Hatch earning his pay from the RIAA/MPAA. If it passes, that's another story...but first let's remember that lots of people with lots of money who also own their own congresscritters will be horribly affected by such a law (think Microsoft and just about every tech company out there) and should easily have it laughed out of Congress.
If we're lucky, there might actually be some congress members beholden to say, oh, a silly thing like The People and see what's going on here. But that's if we're lucky.
Seeing as how you want data redundancy, there are three RAID levels for you to pick from:
RAID 1 - Drive mirroring.
Pros:
-Excellent read performance, no loss of performance if one drive crashes.
Cons:
-The amount of space you can have on this array is limited to the largest drive you can find. Then you have to buy a second one to mirror the data, which means you are paying double the cost per unit storage on your array.
-Write performance is slower than other RAID levels.
RAID 5 - Striped array with parity. You can stack as many drives as you want on this array (within limits of the controller of course) and lose only one for redundancy.
Pros:
-You can build a very large data array out as many drives as you want, losing only one for the purpose of data reconstruction should a drive in the array fail.
Cons
-Array performance dies in the event of a failure, as lost data is reconstructed on the fly from parity information stored across the remaining drives. Of course, performance is restored with the bad disk is replaced and the array reconstructed.
-You need at least 3 drives to build a RAID 5 array.
RAID 10 - Drive mirroring with striping. Essentially combines RAID 0 and RAID 1, hence RAID 10.
Pros:
-Redundant and fast. Array can survive multiple drive failures.
Cons:
-Expensive. You need at least 4 drives to get started with RAID 10, and go by 2's as you expand on the array. As with RAID 1, your price per unit storage is doubled.
-The array can survive multiple failures, but that depends on which drives die...If you lose two drives out of the same mirror set, then the array is gone
Which RAID level you pick depends on your application. If you are interested in having something like a 1 TB data dump, you'll probably want to go RAID 5. If you only want 200GB or less in your array, then RAID 1 is probably the way to go. If you are interested in lots of space, lots of redundancy, and have lots of money, then RAID 10 is probably what you want.
Because if you can't see it, it goes away...Right?
The problem I've had with a few popup blockers is that they are not particularly intelligent. Some of them can't even tell the difference between a popup and when you create a new instance of your browser. Beating advertisers requires intelligent filtering at the HTTP stream level, and I've found that the Proxomitron is an excellent proxy that does this. Unfortunately, the writer burned out and it's no longer supported. As such, I've heard really good things about Provoxy, but I can't make a recommendation since I've never used it.
As far as Proxomitron goes, it makes my surfing much more pleasurable. Annoying Flash ads that pop up and make noise and block what you're reading? Gone. Pop-up mouse traps? I laugh in their face. Sidebar/banner ads? What are those? Sometimes, however, the Proxomitron DOES munge some sites due to its filtering, but all you have to do is double click its taskbar icon, punch the "Bypass" button, and reload your browser. A small price to pay compared to punching your monitor in because an ad just took over your browser.
For fighting spam, popups and malware in general, I find Cexx to be a good site. They have a decent list of anti spyware/adware apps, and lenghthy and informative analyses of the various spyware running around.
Get your significant other to play too!
I could see this for an indie project, but no way for a feature film. The reason why, I think, is because that in order for a computer to start rendering a CGI frame, it must have several things: Geometry, textures, lighting algorithms, and any procedurals needed to make things like fur, hair, realistic water effects, etc. Now, if I were PDI, or any company that has spent millions in R&D in creating these things, do you think I would want this info on Joe Schmoe's computer just waiting to be opened up and reverse engineered? I don't think so.
Tounge controlled huh? Sim dating games have just acheived a whole new paradigm.
They do. Specifically, Microsoft does all the time.
I know. So does the Samba crew. So does the Mono crew. So does the Wine crew. Microsoft abhors inter-operation. That's why they're going on a patenting binge, undoubtedly to further lock up their protocols and make sure that if you don't use Microsoft software, you can't use services or protocols provided by it. Can you imagine if Cisco did something like this with TCP/IP?
And speaking of Cisco, let's take a look at one of their proprietary protocols you mentioned, EIGRP. EIGRP is a great protocol...Fast convergence, low bandwidth, very easy to set up. But if I wanted to drop, say, an IBM or HP router in that network I wouldn't be able to get routing updates from my Cisco stuff because it's using EIGRP. So there you have it, vendor lock-in. So now in order to get those routers talking, I would use OSPF...an open standard available to anyone who can read an RFC. Do you see where I am going here?
The point of my original post was that in order for an insanely large network like the Internet to work, with hundreds, if not thousands of different architectures all on it and able to talk to each other, the protocols for such communication MUST be OPEN and FREE. Money grubbing companies with patents on said protocls only guarantee that the owner of the patents and companies with enough money to pay them off are able to talk to each other. Everyone else will be left in the dust. Just ask the Samba guys about it when Longhorn comes out.
You do, of course, realize that if everyone who had an RFC that they charged a license fee for, the Internet would not exist at all?
The Internet was built off of the same philosophy as OSS. It's a bunch of people putting their heads together and throwing their ideas in the ring to make things better for all involved. What if all of these people clutched their ideas to their chest and said "This is MY piece and you have to pay me to use it"?
It doesn't matter whether or not Cisco would charge a small license fee for this new implementation. They are running against the philosophy that built the Internet in the first place. Standards must be open and free for the widest possible adaptation or you are looking at vendor lock-in ala Microsoft. In other words, to hell with Cisco.
I did RTFA and it looks like this is a proposed draft - It has not been ratified. Cisco is saying that if it is they've got the patents. What they're going to do with it I'd rather not find out. I'm willing to bet that most vendors won't follow the new recommendation to escape potential fees/lawsuits and instead go with another implemenation...Possibly their own. And that can't be a good thing.
To tell you the truth I know nothing of OSX, so whether or not there are actual performance gains with new releases is not my place to say.
I do, however, have a great deal of experience with Windows and can say that each iteration is certainly NOT faster than the one before. A system can run great with Windows 98, but you try to stick XP on that same system it's going to tank...Even if you have enough memory. As far as requirements and whether or not they are taking the wrong direction, MS can do whatever the hell they want. I see myself migrating to Linux before Longhorn anyway.
Why you do you need that much power just to run an operating system? Will people be able to print faster in Word? Perhaps the cards will bounce around the screen REALLY fast when you finish Solitaire? What can Longhorn or XP do for me that 2000 can't? Give me more pretty colors on my screen and a teeth-grinding, bang-my-head-on-the-keyboard, handholding, the-user-is-an-idiot default UI from hell?
Microsoft has brought us into the culture of bloatware acceptance. The belief seems to be that code doesn't need to be optimized because the brute force of today's processors make up for any clunkiness, and any extra processor cycles left over after that can be used up by making the UI pretty and shiny with lots of special effects and talking paperclips while you move windows around the screen. But then if this wasn't so why would anyone upgrade their computers?
Seem to me that Intel makes the processors and Microsoft sells them. I guess they don't call it "Wintel" for nothing.
I've been running a dual CPU machine with 4GB of RAM for a while now, but 1 TB of storage, what the hell for ?
:)
Obviously for all the spyware and ensuing porn that will get loaded into your system via buffer overflow after you plug it into your personal 1gbit 'Net connect
My spidey sense tells me that there are four really cheap DS3 cards to be had on eBay. Gotta go!
My company was with Genuity, too, and it was a mere 384k fractional. One day I had to shut down all of our equipment to put in our brand spanking new 4-post rack and not 10 minutes went by when a guy from the NOC called us and asked if we were having problems. Truly excellent service.
We ended up moving up to a T1 but we got a better deal with Qwest. They are pretty proactive, also, and we have had no outages whatsoever on their side.
I just love it when these guys roll out and say stuff like this.
"There are more germs in your kitchen then there are on your toilet seat", seeming to imply that a toilet seat has fewer and less dangerous microbes than a kitchen sponge.
And now we have "There are lots of infectious, er, well at least they belong to infectious families, of bacteria on your shower curtain"
I'm sorry, but I can say that I've never gotten a wound infected while washing dishes or taking a shower. I can not say the same about cleaning a toilet. A word to the wise - if you have an open cut on your hand/arm, do not clean the toilet, even if you are wearing rubber gloves.
Anyway, do these guys really have nothing better to do than count bacteria on shower curtains and issue a press release about it? I'm sure whoever provided the grant money for this research is ecstatic.
I'm not exactly up to date on the latest music that's being released, but last I checked CD's were still being released in stereo, and seeing as how standard players are only capable of decoding 2-channel, 16 bit, 44.1kHz PCM streams that's the way it's going to be for a long time, if not forever.
DVD's are another story. I'm sure the \AUDIO_TS directory could hold some 5.1 music, but I've yet to see it being used. There'd be a small market if so. Would people really buy the super whizbang 5.1 version of their favorite music that will only run on their DVD player, given that they listen to CD's in their cars, discmans, etc?
And now to the crux of the problem. Since there is no 5.1 music out unless you are ripping it straight from a movie, why does SuperMP3 matter to p2p, or anything for that matter? IMHO, it doesn't - for straight music files.
Possibly, however, it might make a difference with DVR's. In the distant future, when all TV is HD and all audio is 5.1, DVR's will perhaps encode to SuperMP3 to save space and keep the 5.1 channels. Will this matter to p2p? Only if you rip the movie out of the box and place it on the 'Net.
Regardless, SuperMP3 will probably end up being yet another case study on why DRM doesn't work.
Apparently they are having some trouble finding the MAME dump of Pac Man.
Reminds me this story that my dad told me, who's worked on big systems back in the 50's and 60's working as an aerospace employee, back when they were still using magnetic cores. They had been having major problems with the core overheating. Somehow, and don't ask me how, they figured out that Wildroot Cream Oil was the perfect coolant, and the core worked like a charm from then on.
Guess they figured it out in much the same way they figured out green tea cleans heads really well!
Hm, very interesting. Do you know where are these cameras and how close are they to the plates when the pictures are taken? Up till your first reply I always thought that OCR in this way was at best an inexact science.
They use cameras, and the system is automated? I had always thought the Congestion Charge system was based on RF or something of that sort. Here in Southern California, there are a few toll roads around, but to go through them you have to have an RF transmitter. If you blow a station without one they take a picture of your plates and send you a hefty bill in the mail. However, last I heard those pictures were reviewed by humans and input into the system.
The place where this stuff is being installed is a pissant little town in FL whose wealthy 341 residents are demanding that police take action after burglars netted $400,000 worth of jewelry from the area.
Here is a MapQuest pic of Manalapan. You may want to zoom in. As you can see, it is located on a peninsula with not many ways in. So I'm guessing that they will place these detectors at these few arteries. Even so, I doubt they will be effective. As anyone here knows, OCR from camera images taken in anything other than a controlled environment is dicey at best.
But it doesn't matter anyway, because reading the article and taking note of the geography of Manalapan has led me to wonder if they've considered the burglars could come in BY BOAT.
Is it called Tiberium?