yea i like being arrogant. it makes people mad. heh;].
i was not just talking about accents, the "cedille" below the C, follows the same rule as accents: it is what i'd call a pronounciation modifier and should NOT appear on a capital letter. it is not proper FRENCH grammar, which by the way, should not be compared to spanish grammar or spelling, as various languages have their own rules. again, proper grammar stipulates that capital letters be immutable.
That is not to say that this rule is often broken in popular litterature like magazines and such, but the rule still remains. Find me one classic piece of french litterature that puts accents or other pronounciation modifiers on capital letters.
It is a sentence's context which should enable a reader to "mentally add" any accent or pronounciation modifier which may be missing on a word's capital letter. THAT is the rule, THAT is how text is supposed to be written, and that is how text should be read.
and i fuckin' know my french grammar, i would conistently make under 10 mistakes on most of Bernard Pivot's "dictees" when i was in high-school. I can school your ass at french spelling *and* grammar any time.
Actually, it is NOT proper french to write capital letters with accents or other character/pronounciation modifiers. Capital letters in french are immutable.
That is, at least, the theory.
Also keep in mind the poster's experiment was *not* meant to cover any other languages but english. That is precisely why he only used pieces of english litterature in his experiment. Anyone with half a brain can understand and accept the fact that each language is most likely to require its own optimal keyboard layout.
Additionally, while the result of his algorithm fits an arguably "limited" universe (face it pal, english is the *only* language worth writing in the universe, and i'm a native french myself), the algorithm itself, or at least the basic theories behind it, can be considered fairly universal eventhough one might want to tweak it to their own needs.
Now let's see if you can re-use/adapt his code for other languages you care about.
... spend 10 bucks on a minijack tape adapter, insert the tape end of the adapter into your car's cassette player, plug the minijack end to your favorite MP3 player's headphone/line output and blam, you're set: you are playing MP3's in your car. A bit of a hack but it sure works nicely.
I used to do that with my iPod in my '99 VW Golf Wolfsburgh whose eletricial system was all screwed-up.
Of course i knowingly gave up that ability when i just bought my 2002 BMW 325i. But I play CDs. You've gotta think about user-interface though. The nice thing about an in-dash CD player is that you can easily interact with it without thinking. Which is good while you drive. I *do not* want to be thinking about ripping CD's while in the car:
"do i really want to rip this CD? should i save HD space for other CDs? Which CD's should i rip first? I want to rip this CD but i don't wanna listen to it rite now and i can't do it at home because there is no computer interface".
Because while in the car... I tend to be driving. And thinking of those things as i'm driving can't be good.
Technology in your car should be highly convenient, yet *remain out of your face*. It should be there, ready to assist you, but not invade you.
BMW gets this. The cockpit controls were carefuly designed and positioned with those goals in mind.
A friend of mine has a really cool AUDI with a slot-loading/6-cd changer/tape deck combo system. It has dual climate-control settings for the left side of the car and the right side. and a slew of buttons all over the place. Perfect for a geek, but man, at night, when all controls are lit-up, the whole thing *looks* just as complex as a plane's cockpit.
plus his brand new audi has had some weird power-steering fluid issues. and they've been giving him sub-par service. which is consistent with my whole VW experience and one of the reasons why i switched to BMW. that and bmwfilms.com 'cuz i wanted to be all dark and mysterious like clive owen.
but i'm digressing.
What I really want now is Apple and BMW to get together and find an incredibly slick way for my iPod to just *plug* into my car's stereo system, check this:
iTunes could have a "special car play list" which users could populate with songs they might wanna listen to in the car. Within that list, an ability to group songs into virtual "CDs" might also be nice.
The in-dash sound system already has 6 buttons to switch radio stations. When in "CD MODE", versus "RADIO MODE", pressing any of those buttons would trigger the corresponding iPod "special car playlist" --> "cd number matching the number you just pressed" --> "first song". Then toggle thru songs via normal controls on steering wheel and in-dash stereo system.
1) without an iPod, the whole system behaves like it always has, which is a simple slot-loading CD system. 2) plug your iPod in, and the whole thing turns into a 6-CD changer system.
While i do think this will be a very handy addition to the operating system thereby, exposing OS scripting to a far larger pool of developers with JavaScript experience, I'm hoping potential security issues will be kept in mind:
Let's call those "scriptlets", should be identified by the operating system and to the user as full-blown application, which, when run, have just as much access to the system as the user does. I'm thinking obvious file extensions such as ".app" for scripts. After all they're interpreted apps.
Realms of executions of such scripts should be clearly identified and separated, as in a "scriptlet" should never be allowed to run within a browser nor e-mail client context. If a scriptlet is to extend an application's functionality, it should only be executed via direct user interaction and possibly proper warning. Whatever solution is chosen in the end, it should be clear to the user that installing such a scriptlet onto their system is just like installing any other application which could have malicious effects. Every distinction should be made to make it clear to the user that "hey this thing is not something that slightly extends a web page's functionality, it runs straight out of your OS and could seriously fuck your shit up, just like any full-blown application out there".
The nice thing about running OS X though is that even if a user inadvertently runs a malicious script, that script could in theory, provided every user was smart enuff to not use root, or admin user as their default, everyday user, (okay i can dream no?), only have access to a fairly restricted part of the system.
If i was an IT director, i would mandate all corporate LAN machines to be iMacs running OS X. I would create a standard operating system installation script, with various additional scripts geared towards geeks, non-geeks, dumbasses, to allow various levels of protections against themselves. I for one would restrict users to only be able to write to their home directory, while the rest of the system would be restricted to root/admin users. I would have a central, networked/Users mount served off of an xserve with bazillion gigs of storage space.
In fact, any network administrator who is not seriously considering progressively migrating all corporate machines to OS X boxes has got to be living in a hole.
It is my firm belief OS X has an amazing potential to make the world a better place.
This article really shows the importance the Open Source Community should have in the AV field. Information, Systems and Networks Security should be a field spearheaded by entities which are essentially free from any direct interest in any profit making.
It should be a consortium of geeks from varied industries who get together and build firewall and anti-virus software for every known platform out there. A significant focus of such entity should be on novice users.
In the end, we all get affected by viruses and worms (peek at my journal for tips on coping with nimda), it's guna be up to us to effectively edjookate and protect ppl.
in OS X, anything you can print, you can turn into a PDF. Just print a document (word, excel, web page in mozilla or ie), hit the "print preview" button, then click on "save as pdf" and bam your done:)
Actually, since '96 when the first PCI macs were released, namely the PPC 7500/100mhz and every significant desktop mac since then, has come with a removable CPU chip, lots of empty RAM slots and 3 to 6 PCI expansion bays, and extra room for mobo L2 cache RAM, additional video ram, empty drive bays and all that good stuff. Plus the 7500 pioneered the whole concept of upgrading your mac without touching a single screw.
I've owned my 7500 since early '96.
I have used it as my computer back in the dorms. It came with a built-in video capture card.
I've used it to watch TV: back in the dorm, i had a vcr but no tv. i'd plug the antenna cable to vcr tuner input and plug video and audio output of the vcr to ppc 7500's video input and stereo audio inputs (y-cable). I'd watch basketball games and take screen grabs. fun shit.
Then i turned it into a full-time co-located server at an ISP in beverlyhills, where it would host a slew of web sites. it was running MacOS 7.6.1. It stayed there and worked very nicely for about 3 years after which i finally took it back home.
Meanwhile I had upgraded its processor chip from an old PPC 603, to the very first 250Mhz G3 chip. I boosted its RAM up to ~200MB, while it could in theory hold up to a GIG of ram with its 8 slots. I added an Ultra2 LVD SCSI card on one of my free PCI slots and an extra internal 10gig 8.5ms access-time Ultra2 SCSI cheetah IBM drive. i picked both of those by comparing prices on pricewatch.com.
I also added another Ultra SCSI-2 controller on another pci slot cuz i had planned to chain external scsi drives at some point but never followed-thru.
And of course i did all those upgrades without touching a screw. things worked as advertised.
Today, i could still stick a G4 processor in this thing. It's now running LinuxPPC Q4 2000. It sits at home where it's serving some hobby websites of mine off of my DSL connection behind my linksys router.
One thing i'd like to mention is that ever since i've bought this computer, 6 full years ago, it has been on 24/7/365. I've crashed it many times while dicking around with the OS and some server software but never managed to corrupt any of my hard drives.
As of today it is still happily cracking RC5 keys for distributed.net.
I might whipe out the drives and install Mandrake Linux PPC once it has matured a bit.
Can't upgrade a mac eh? right. and that's a '96 model. Today Apple has VGA displays, USB peripherals, ATA controllers. PCI expansion slots, and support for industry-standard video and graphics acceleration cards. Aside from things directly-tied to your motherboard, i'd say you've got a pretty wide choice of upgrade options.
So now you complain you couldn't build it from scratch in the first place? Well lemme put it this way:
At least, when you buy your mac, you KNOW, *everything*, and i do mean *everything* just WORKS out of the box. That gives you a baseline of a stable reference system. A powerful one. With all the features a geek could ever dream of. (and i'm pretty picky ) (and not a gamer, okay).
Countless friends of mine have mail-ordered all of their PC parts from all over the states, spent NIGHTS putting it all together only to find out some driver is not compatible with their specific configuration.
heh.
Aside from hardware considerations, in my mind, OS X *alone*, is a good-enough reason to buy a mac.
well actually BMW takes care of the full maintenance of your new model at no cost to you for the first 4 years. u only pay for things like new tires or breaks and shit like that.
plus you only need to change a BMW's oil *once* a year or every like 15,000 miles+
plus every time you take your car in for any maintenance, provided you get a dealer who's not a dickhead, and you make an appointment ahead, they'll always give you the sexiest car they have available as a loaner.
plus all of your car's information is stored in a central national database, so you can pull into ANY bmw dealership and they'll know exactly everything about your car.
plus all new bmw models have advanced self-diagnosing and tell you ahead of time when it wants you to take her to the dealership for maintenance.
plus bmw's never break, so you can cancel all those roadside assistance programs.
but even if u do need roadside assistance, it comes bundled with ur car. convenient stickers with 800 number in ur trunk lid.
plus u can go to any bmw dealership, if u own a bmw, they kiss ur ass. and good too. its really cool. nothing surpasses bmw service. i hear lexus and mercedes have good service too tho. that's good. i hear audi/vw suck ass. i do know vw sucks ass. they're assholes man. i got a lemon from them once. fuckin'a. anyway.
About your SCSI concerns, i would like to point out that the Xserve can be configured from the apple store with an UItra160 SCSI card. You'd still need to somehow manage to buy SCSI drives separately and i guess that ain't cheap and it prolly doesn't fit as nicely in the architecture as the ATA controllers.
And i'm wondering what other types of tweaks you could make to this architecture by playing with configurations on the upper and lower PCI slots, like set-up a hardware RAID? in any case, my guess is that any such tweak wouldn't be cheap, nor as nicely integrated in the 1U architecture.
and it is also worthwhile to mention that George Lucas also had some theatre image and sound standard restrictions where he is trying to push to only let theatres equipped with digital projection to play the movie. I'm not exactly sure how far he got on those efforts but that may also be a factor in the far lesser number of theatres showing this picture.
I saw it sunday at "The Grove" in los angeles/fairfax and i was sitting close enough to see pixels on the projected image! It never got bothersome but i did notice it. weird. Did anyone else see pixels?
The original writers of the HTTP protocol were somewhat careless spellers, but the protocol got adopted "as-is". it's really moot but this may confuse you when configuring your httpd.conf or writing CGI code and looking for a slightly-misspelled http header:)
i've had a somewhat related experience at a past job i had working as a developer at a small "dot-com" from back in the day.
It was before the boom of P2P apps but right when streaming audio was becoming very popular. we shared an isdn line for the entire office.
that chick who was like our office generalist, handled everything from HR, accounting, supplies, kept listening to streaming audio tho we told her to NOT DO THAT. influential thing she was.
it goes to show what happens when you make significant network resources available to undeducated, careless masses. this is sad. completely outrageous, unethical...
... depriving hard-working geeks from a decent picture refresh rate during lunch-time oogling of jennycam.
But hey... didn't take us long to figure out real audio streaming ports and her internal ip address and make adequate temporary adjustments to router settings >:]
but i can imagine how evil and out-of-hand p2p shit must get on college campuses. dewd just block the sorority chix. make'em come to you for help;]
seriously tho, when i was in college, we could only use the in-dorm ethernet LAN if we registered our computer's unique MAC address with UCS (university computing services). The dhcp server would assign us an ip address upon booting when it recognizes that MAC address. i'm wondering how practical (most likely not) it would be to use a similar scheme to monitor bandwidth usage and network activity?
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i was not just talking about accents, the "cedille" below the C, follows the same rule as accents: it is what i'd call a pronounciation modifier and should NOT appear on a capital letter. it is not proper FRENCH grammar, which by the way, should not be compared to spanish grammar or spelling, as various languages have their own rules. again, proper grammar stipulates that capital letters be immutable.
That is not to say that this rule is often broken in popular litterature like magazines and such, but the rule still remains. Find me one classic piece of french litterature that puts accents or other pronounciation modifiers on capital letters.
It is a sentence's context which should enable a reader to "mentally add" any accent or pronounciation modifier which may be missing on a word's capital letter. THAT is the rule, THAT is how text is supposed to be written, and that is how text should be read.
and i fuckin' know my french grammar, i would conistently make under 10 mistakes on most of Bernard Pivot's "dictees" when i was in high-school. I can school your ass at french spelling *and* grammar any time.
That is, at least, the theory.
Also keep in mind the poster's experiment was *not* meant to cover any other languages but english. That is precisely why he only used pieces of english litterature in his experiment. Anyone with half a brain can understand and accept the fact that each language is most likely to require its own optimal keyboard layout.
Additionally, while the result of his algorithm fits an arguably "limited" universe (face it pal, english is the *only* language worth writing in the universe, and i'm a native french myself), the algorithm itself, or at least the basic theories behind it, can be considered fairly universal eventhough one might want to tweak it to their own needs.
Now let's see if you can re-use/adapt his code for other languages you care about.
or prOn for porn ?
terminator 2 was a far superior movie to terminator 1. hands-down.
I used to do that with my iPod in my '99 VW Golf Wolfsburgh whose eletricial system was all screwed-up.
Of course i knowingly gave up that ability when i just bought my 2002 BMW 325i. But I play CDs. You've gotta think about user-interface though. The nice thing about an in-dash CD player is that you can easily interact with it without thinking. Which is good while you drive. I *do not* want to be thinking about ripping CD's while in the car:
"do i really want to rip this CD? should i save HD space for other CDs? Which CD's should i rip first? I want to rip this CD but i don't wanna listen to it rite now and i can't do it at home because there is no computer interface".
Because while in the car ... I tend to be driving. And thinking of those things as i'm driving can't be good.
Technology in your car should be highly convenient, yet *remain out of your face*. It should be there, ready to assist you, but not invade you.
BMW gets this. The cockpit controls were carefuly designed and positioned with those goals in mind.
A friend of mine has a really cool AUDI with a slot-loading/6-cd changer/tape deck combo system. It has dual climate-control settings for the left side of the car and the right side. and a slew of buttons all over the place. Perfect for a geek, but man, at night, when all controls are lit-up, the whole thing *looks* just as complex as a plane's cockpit.
plus his brand new audi has had some weird power-steering fluid issues. and they've been giving him sub-par service. which is consistent with my whole VW experience and one of the reasons why i switched to BMW. that and bmwfilms.com 'cuz i wanted to be all dark and mysterious like clive owen.
but i'm digressing.
What I really want now is Apple and BMW to get together and find an incredibly slick way for my iPod to just *plug* into my car's stereo system, check this:
iTunes could have a "special car play list" which users could populate with songs they might wanna listen to in the car. Within that list, an ability to group songs into virtual "CDs" might also be nice.
The in-dash sound system already has 6 buttons to switch radio stations. When in "CD MODE", versus "RADIO MODE", pressing any of those buttons would trigger the corresponding iPod "special car playlist" --> "cd number matching the number you just pressed" --> "first song". Then toggle thru songs via normal controls on steering wheel and in-dash stereo system.
1) without an iPod, the whole system behaves like it always has, which is a simple slot-loading CD system.
2) plug your iPod in, and the whole thing turns into a 6-CD changer system.
hahaha great idea. make it happen! :)
Additionally, a 1U server fits very specific business needs which is what Xinet is catering to.
Their coverage is pretty good in my area too. cool.
really great find! i had been looking into thwarting this evil behaviour for a while now. thanks man
Let's call those "scriptlets", should be identified by the operating system and to the user as full-blown application, which, when run, have just as much access to the system as the user does. I'm thinking obvious file extensions such as ".app" for scripts. After all they're interpreted apps.
Realms of executions of such scripts should be clearly identified and separated, as in a "scriptlet" should never be allowed to run within a browser nor e-mail client context. If a scriptlet is to extend an application's functionality, it should only be executed via direct user interaction and possibly proper warning. Whatever solution is chosen in the end, it should be clear to the user that installing such a scriptlet onto their system is just like installing any other application which could have malicious effects. Every distinction should be made to make it clear to the user that "hey this thing is not something that slightly extends a web page's functionality, it runs straight out of your OS and could seriously fuck your shit up, just like any full-blown application out there".
The nice thing about running OS X though is that even if a user inadvertently runs a malicious script, that script could in theory, provided every user was smart enuff to not use root, or admin user as their default, everyday user, (okay i can dream no?), only have access to a fairly restricted part of the system.
If i was an IT director, i would mandate all corporate LAN machines to be iMacs running OS X. I would create a standard operating system installation script, with various additional scripts geared towards geeks, non-geeks, dumbasses, to allow various levels of protections against themselves. I for one would restrict users to only be able to write to their home directory, while the rest of the system would be restricted to root/admin users. I would have a central, networked /Users mount served off of an xserve with bazillion gigs of storage space.
In fact, any network administrator who is not seriously considering progressively migrating all corporate machines to OS X boxes has got to be living in a hole.
It is my firm belief OS X has an amazing potential to make the world a better place.
This article really shows the importance the Open Source Community should have in the AV field. Information, Systems and Networks Security should be a field spearheaded by entities which are essentially free from any direct interest in any profit making.
It should be a consortium of geeks from varied industries who get together and build firewall and anti-virus software for every known platform out there. A significant focus of such entity should be on novice users.
In the end, we all get affected by viruses and worms (peek at my journal for tips on coping with nimda), it's guna be up to us to effectively edjookate and protect ppl.
or something.
hehe yea. cool man
i hear ye :) the s2000 does indeed look cool :)
in OS X, anything you can print, you can turn into a PDF. Just print a document (word, excel, web page in mozilla or ie), hit the "print preview" button, then click on "save as pdf" and bam your done
cool huh
Actually, since '96 when the first PCI macs were released, namely the PPC 7500/100mhz and every significant desktop mac since then, has come with a removable CPU chip, lots of empty RAM slots and 3 to 6 PCI expansion bays, and extra room for mobo L2 cache RAM, additional video ram, empty drive bays and all that good stuff. Plus the 7500 pioneered the whole concept of upgrading your mac without touching a single screw.
I've owned my 7500 since early '96.
I have used it as my computer back in the dorms. It came with a built-in video capture card.
I've used it to watch TV: back in the dorm, i had a vcr but no tv. i'd plug the antenna cable to vcr tuner input and plug video and audio output of the vcr to ppc 7500's video input and stereo audio inputs (y-cable). I'd watch basketball games and take screen grabs. fun shit.
i've used it to actually capture video: I'm the one who digitized every single student movie clip from that site using this puppy.. It was running MacOS 7.5
Then i turned it into a full-time co-located server at an ISP in beverlyhills, where it would host a slew of web sites. it was running MacOS 7.6.1. It stayed there and worked very nicely for about 3 years after which i finally took it back home.
Meanwhile I had upgraded its processor chip from an old PPC 603, to the very first 250Mhz G3 chip. I boosted its RAM up to ~200MB, while it could in theory hold up to a GIG of ram with its 8 slots. I added an Ultra2 LVD SCSI card on one of my free PCI slots and an extra internal 10gig 8.5ms access-time Ultra2 SCSI cheetah IBM drive. i picked both of those by comparing prices on pricewatch.com.
I also added another Ultra SCSI-2 controller on another pci slot cuz i had planned to chain external scsi drives at some point but never followed-thru.
And of course i did all those upgrades without touching a screw. things worked as advertised.
Today, i could still stick a G4 processor in this thing. It's now running LinuxPPC Q4 2000. It sits at home where it's serving some hobby websites of mine off of my DSL connection behind my linksys router.
One thing i'd like to mention is that ever since i've bought this computer, 6 full years ago, it has been on 24/7/365. I've crashed it many times while dicking around with the OS and some server software but never managed to corrupt any of my hard drives.
As of today it is still happily cracking RC5 keys for distributed.net.
I might whipe out the drives and install Mandrake Linux PPC once it has matured a bit.
Can't upgrade a mac eh? right. and that's a '96 model. Today Apple has VGA displays, USB peripherals, ATA controllers. PCI expansion slots, and support for industry-standard video and graphics acceleration cards. Aside from things directly-tied to your motherboard, i'd say you've got a pretty wide choice of upgrade options.
So now you complain you couldn't build it from scratch in the first place? Well lemme put it this way:
At least, when you buy your mac, you KNOW, *everything*, and i do mean *everything* just WORKS out of the box. That gives you a baseline of a stable reference system. A powerful one. With all the features a geek could ever dream of. (and i'm pretty picky ) (and not a gamer, okay).
Countless friends of mine have mail-ordered all of their PC parts from all over the states, spent NIGHTS putting it all together only to find out some driver is not compatible with their specific configuration.
heh.
Aside from hardware considerations, in my mind, OS X *alone*, is a good-enough reason to buy a mac.
well actually BMW takes care of the full maintenance of your new model at no cost to you for the first 4 years. u only pay for things like new tires or breaks and shit like that.
plus you only need to change a BMW's oil *once* a year or every like 15,000 miles+
plus every time you take your car in for any maintenance, provided you get a dealer who's not a dickhead, and you make an appointment ahead, they'll always give you the sexiest car they have available as a loaner.
plus all of your car's information is stored in a central national database, so you can pull into ANY bmw dealership and they'll know exactly everything about your car.
plus all new bmw models have advanced self-diagnosing and tell you ahead of time when it wants you to take her to the dealership for maintenance.
plus bmw's never break, so you can cancel all those roadside assistance programs.
but even if u do need roadside assistance, it comes bundled with ur car. convenient stickers with 800 number in ur trunk lid.
plus u can go to any bmw dealership, if u own a bmw, they kiss ur ass. and good too. its really cool. nothing surpasses bmw service. i hear lexus and mercedes have good service too tho. that's good. i hear audi/vw suck ass. i do know vw sucks ass. they're assholes man. i got a lemon from them once. fuckin'a. anyway.
im very happy with my 2002 325i. it totally owns.
About your SCSI concerns, i would like to point out that the Xserve can be configured from the apple store with an UItra160 SCSI card. You'd still need to somehow manage to buy SCSI drives separately and i guess that ain't cheap and it prolly doesn't fit as nicely in the architecture as the ATA controllers.
And i'm wondering what other types of tweaks you could make to this architecture by playing with configurations on the upper and lower PCI slots, like set-up a hardware RAID? in any case, my guess is that any such tweak wouldn't be cheap, nor as nicely integrated in the 1U architecture.
any thoughts?
the latest model of either one.
fully-loaded.
and it is also worthwhile to mention that George Lucas also had some theatre image and sound standard restrictions where he is trying to push to only let theatres equipped with digital projection to play the movie. I'm not exactly sure how far he got on those efforts but that may also be a factor in the far lesser number of theatres showing this picture.
I saw it sunday at "The Grove" in los angeles/fairfax and i was sitting close enough to see pixels on the projected image! It never got bothersome but i did notice it. weird. Did anyone else see pixels?
with only one "R".
The original writers of the HTTP protocol were somewhat careless spellers, but the protocol got adopted "as-is". it's really moot but this may confuse you when configuring your httpd.conf or writing CGI code and looking for a slightly-misspelled http header :)
cheers!
Last i checked you can't run/deploy EJB's on open source java application servers. You gotta go to commercial ones.
I don't think they'd have a dire need for EJB's in such application though. And they can still remain J2EE-compliant.
It was before the boom of P2P apps but right when streaming audio was becoming very popular. we shared an isdn line for the entire office.
that chick who was like our office generalist, handled everything from HR, accounting, supplies, kept listening to streaming audio tho we told her to NOT DO THAT. influential thing she was.
it goes to show what happens when you make significant network resources available to undeducated, careless masses. this is sad. completely outrageous, unethical ...
But hey ... didn't take us long to figure out real audio streaming ports and her internal ip address and make adequate temporary adjustments to router settings >:]
but i can imagine how evil and out-of-hand p2p shit must get on college campuses. dewd just block the sorority chix. make'em come to you for help ;]
seriously tho, when i was in college, we could only use the in-dorm ethernet LAN if we registered our computer's unique MAC address with UCS (university computing services). The dhcp server would assign us an ip address upon booting when it recognizes that MAC address. i'm wondering how practical (most likely not) it would be to use a similar scheme to monitor bandwidth usage and network activity?
but hey. *we* were the geeks.