I want this data collected. I want TiVo to actually figure out just because I record Cartoon Network for Aqua Teen Hunger Squad does not mean I want to record Kim Possible.
It's pretty rare that TiVo has really figured out shows I like, and I know there are geeks out there with TiVo with similar tastes to mine. I want TiVo to tell advertisers: don't bother this one with feminine products, show him ads that are funny.
I want this data collected. I want to be a number in the database. Sell all that info, but then use it to tailor my entertainment experience to me.
And I DEFINTATELY want TiVo to tell advertisers: He replayed this ad twice--during Farscape. He replayed this ad during Keen Eddie. He watched these ads during Firefly. So the advertisers can say to TV execs: we want the head of the asses who canceled these programs. We lost Jeff TP and his gratuitous disposable income because you're a stupid moron.
Linux can run "SC" the only spreadsheet a real man needs.;)
To be serious, I actually used SC on FreeBSD for all my budget, payroll, and productivity trending at an ISP I worked at. A curses based spreadsheet works fine over a 9600 bps modem.
If you didn't notice, the hovercraft lost all powered systems when it went through the electrical storms. What good would it serve the machines to build a helium balloon if all the equipment they floated through the clouds was destroyed?
To be fair, I think the RIAA is seeing just how cracking down on piracy isn't helping their bottom line.
Not only are people not buying their CDs because the price is too high, they're also not getting the free promotion of materials that P2P file sharing was supplying.
As long as radio monopolies like ClearChannel exist to homogenize what music is promoted, and as long as there is no alternative channels to hear new music, music sales will continue to decline.
Piracy is the only competition to copyrighted works. I think most people in the western world would agree that competition makes better products at better prices and monopolies lead to lesser products at higher prices.
I wouldn't bother with pirating movies because buying them for $19 doesn't seem that expensive. I can't say the same for a $17 CD with one song I want.
All of this is anecdotal, of course, but time will tell if Copyright owners wisen up and stop abusing their monopolies.
802.1x is only half the picture. To run 802.1x you'll need to select an EAP (extensible authentication protocol) method.
Currently, there's 4 common flavors of EAP: EAP-TLS, EAP-TTLS, LEAP, and PEAP.
LEAP is Cisco proprietary and will probably be dumped when Cisco moves to PEAP. Surprisingly, Apple licensed LEAP from Cisco, but only on the client side. You can get LEAP support via the latest update to the Airport client software for MacOS 9 or X. LEAP's weakness is that you can see the username in cleartext over the air, which opens you up to brute force attacks on weak passwords.
EAP-TLS is microsoft's original foray into wireless security. It requires both the radius server and the clients have public key certificates so they can mutually authenticate each other and pass authentication information through a TLS tunnel. Realistically, only corporations with an already implimented Public Key Infrastructure will want to consider EAP-TLS. EAP-TLS is a major administrative nightmare because it requires user certificates, but this also makes it the most secure.
EAP-TTLS was introduced by Funk Software makers of Steel Belted Radius. It only requires that the radius server have a public key certificate. EAP-TTLS builds a TLS (think SSL) tunnel between the radius server and the user to pass authentication information and then inside the tunnel you can use another normally unsafe authentication method such as PAP which sends username and passwords in the clear. In this case though, they're inside an encrypted tunnel.
PEAP was originally a colaboration between microsoft and cisco and does basically the same thing at EAP-TTLS. Microsoft and Cisco's clients no longer interoperate and the whole standard is a mess. Making EAP-TTLS that much more inviting. However because Microsoft control the client and it giving it away for free in XP, PEAP will probably become the standard of the future--the joys of a operating system monopoly.
All of these 802.1x solutions, however, require a radius server to authenticate to. OpenRadius, you think... great if you want to do EAP-TLS. Here's the steps:
1. Install OpenRadius. 2. Install OpenSSL. 3. Setup your server as a Certificate Authority. 4. Issue and sign a certificate for your radius server. 5. Issue and sign certificates for each user. 6. Install an 802.1x supplicant on each client. 7. Install the clients' signed certificates. 8. Configure 802.1x authentication on the access point. 9. Make sure to set up rotating WEP keys, 40 bit WEP really is secure enough if you rotate your keys every half-hour.
802.1x and EAP all sound like wonderful things, but they do not address the needs of the common home user.
If you really want to secure you're home network you should be installing only 802.11a accesspoints and walking the perimeter of your home making sure the wireless signal does not permiate the walls. 5Ghz is a better range for home networking since your cordless phone, wireless keyboard/mouse, and microwave won't cause interference.
Water may not be the only liquid that makes a suitable carrier for life, but it would be really hard to find a more suitable one. Human experiments to use alcohol instead are rarely successful for very long.
Well, here in Texas there are a variety of human lifeforms that live off of alcohol instead of water.
If the library does not impliment always on filtered access to the Internet, they are not eligible for E-Rate funding--a multi-billion dollar fund created by the FCC generated by the Universal Service Fee on your Internet connection, Cell Phone bill, and wired Telephone bill.
Rather than censor the Internet directly, Congress did a run-around and refused funding to schools and libraries that did not impliment an Internet filtering system. Worse yet, you cannot use E-Rate money to pay for a CIPA compliant filtering system: that comes out of your own money.
What does E-Rate funding pay for? Network cabling, equipment, and Leased Internet Access. Up to 90% of those items can be E-Rate funded depending on the awards granted by the SLD (Schools and Libraries Division) of the FCC.
I spend a third of my work week at a major school district dealing with web filter issues. Getting sites either blocked or unblocked. The smart kids find so many ways around the filters through all sorts of proxy sites that it's questionable how useful the filter are.
Any law or act put in effect "for the children" typically has no merit. CIPA is no exception to the rule. It's not the government's job to enforce morality on children--that's what parents are supposed to do.
On the other hand, CIPA provides a wonderful act to hide behind when employees of the school district whine about the filters--especially considering the millions of dollars our school district receives from E-Rate for network cabling, equipment, and Internet access.
Speakeasy costs me more than any other Internet provider in my area (Houston, a blackhole of DSL thanks to Southwestern Bell)... and it's worth every penny.
The fact that DNS, a 20 year old design, still works after being scaled several magnitudes beyond its original environment is proof that DNS doesn't need to be redesigned. The initial design is nothing short of genius. The extensions to the initial design (dynamic updates) build upon already solid technology.
I run a DNS server, I've looked at DNS packets, and every time I ask the Internet to tell me who the heck slashdot.org is and it comes back with an IP address I'm amazed. My network asks strangers for help and those strangers say: Hey, try here. Bam! Slashdot.org pops up in my browser.
You cannot "combine" DNS, DHCP, and Routing all into a single protocol. Hell, get three network engineers together sometime and try to get them to agree upon the best Internal Gateway Routing protocol sometime... EIGRP, OSPF, RIP.
Routing information is extremely different from domain name information. The two have nothing in common other than IP Addresses. You have to include not only information about who your neighbors are, but also what type of links are between you and your neighbors, and how congested those links are. Now, what about your neighbor's neighbors? Oh, we'll track that to, and also keep a set of tables that show us the next two best reconfigurations should any of the links stop working. Unless you're just talking about RIP for routing.
DHCP on the other hand is about getting clients configured for a network. They can then use DDNS to update their DNS record in a local DNS server. DHCP can do much more than just say: Here's your IP. It can also tell a client: here's where you should get your operating system from, and here's the voice over IP gateway, and here's the server where you should send your management info to, and here's the best local printer to use. Most people don't have clients that can handle that type of information, however.
It's not just "if it's not broke, don't fix it" this is a case of "it frelling works great, keep your hands off of it or I'll kick you in the jimmy."
Even though I no longer run NetSaint/Nagios because it doesn't fit in with the goals of my company's network monitoring goals, I deeply admire the software and especially the creator: Ethan Galstad.
I still visit nagios.org to see what he's doing with the project.
I wouldn't have bothered to read the article but saw Ethan's name and was immediately interested.
In a nutshell, Ethan and Nagios are very successful. Ethan is very well-thought of in the sysadmin community as is his software Nagios. His attitude towards keeping Nagios free makes him even more of a hero.
The most common reason spanning tree problems occur is because no one tells the spanning tree domain who the root of the network is. This leads to the switches deciding to gets to be the root. In most implimentations of spanning tree, the lowest MAC address wins.
Because Cisco switches come with Spanning-Tree enabled by default, and because most network "engineers" don't know what spanning tree is, many corporate networks have a random switch serving as the root of the spanning tree. And so when spanning tree tries to do it's job: fail-over to a redundant link, it doesn't do a very good job because the humans who set up the network were either lazy or ignorant.
Laziness and ignorance are the villians of most network problems.
Now if Cisco implimented the follow up to spanning tree: rapid spanning tree protocol (802.1w) like the rest of the industry, you'd eliminate the problem of impatient network admins trying to "tune" their network convergence times. Sadly, at most, you're going to shave 8 seconds off the 30 to 50 seconds of convergence time of STP unless you have a very small network. So tuning STP timers is an excersize in navel-meditation. RSTP (802.1w) solves alot of the convergence time problems with original STP (802.1d) and is nicely backwards compatible.
If it doesn't have Serial ATA on the board, it isn't a new product. I can't be the only one holding off on their next major upgrade until they can get Serial ATA on a motherboard with an Intel chipset.
So come on Intel, put Serial ATA on the board and you've got a sure sale. No more of this parallel ATA crap. While you're at it, get rid of the serial and parallel ports.
The PacketShaper doesn't just throttle traffic based on what TCP/UDP port it runs off of. The PacketShaper actually analyses the data in packets to determine what they are, categorizes that traffic, then allows the administrator to apply rules to that type of traffic.
The really amazing thing is, the PacketShaper itself is easy to configure and run, and should the box lose power or be unplugged, it becomes a passive device. I'm constantly amazed by how easy it is to prioritize traffic with the little purple box.
The best part is, when you block ports, network bandwidth abusers look for a work-around. When you throttle bandwidth, the abusers usually assume it's just a lousy connection and usually don't give you much grief.
I have Ghost in the Shell... on VHS and DVD. It's an interesting movie. Not really great compared to some of my old Nexus Studio subs when I was running an anime club, but it's pretty good.
The question I have is, how did Ghost in the Shell redefine anime? There's nothing really that breath-taking.
The only way 10G Ethernet could support copper would be to use two strands of coax, or twinax. This was batted around by the IEEE committee for a great deal of time, but even with twinax the distances for 10G on copper were short (75 meters) and the cost of twinax is higher than fiber.
So they dropped copper support completely.
Don't expect to see 10G to the desktop anytime soon. 1G to the desktop is still a waste of money for 99% of the desktops out there.
10G Ethernet will see the most benefit for switch/router to switch/router connections in WANs and MANs.
100 meg uses 4B5B/NRZI (non-return to zero, inverted) encoding.
Gig changes the rules yet again.
Just like a 9600 bps modem is still running at 1200 baud (baud is a unit of sound), but 4 bits get stuffed into one baud, so to did the encoding methods change to accomodate the speed changes in ethernet.
If I want a point-and-click environment, Windows is where I want to be. If I want a command-line, stellar networking, and total control I go linux/freebsd.
I rarely use KDE and never Gnome because they are not yet as useful of GUIs as Windows or MacOS are. However I rarely open a DOS window on Windows when I can just telnet/ssh to the linux box and do 40 times more there.
Use the right tool for the job. Why must the idea be forced that there can only be one operating system. It's like telling a carpenter he's only allowed to have one tool in his toolbox.
Eli Whitney didn't die penniless by far. He next big invention was something that started the Age of Mass Production: Interchangable Parts. At the time, gunsmiths hand crafted guns. Each gun was unique, and if your gun broke, you'd have to usually go to the gunsmith who made it to fix it.
Eli Whitney realized that guns were composed of components that could be manufactured as exact duplicates. Assemble the components and you have a finished product. This reduced the time required to repair a broken firearm.
The idea took off, and Eli Whitney profited greatly. Not because he patented it, but because the firearms produced by this method were superior to the competition.
"Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."
Unfortunately, Congress with the help of Federal Courts and the Supreme Court have made laws which do abridge the freedom of speech.
Many justices have declared that some forms of speech are not protected by the First Amendment, even though the Amendment's language is very clear. It protects profanity, it protects lies, it protects hate, it protects rumor, it protects anything you or I might say.
It protects them for one reason, because it was the hope of the Drafters that bad speech would be pushed aside by the noble and intelligent people. Remember, these Drafters originally did not give the masses the power to elect a President.
In a system where there is no longer protected speech, anonymous speech is the next best thing. Until the First Amendment is restored to it's original strength (if it ever is), we only have anonymous speech to protect us when we know an ugly truth.
The reason you may not think anonymous speech is important to you, is because you may not have an ugly truth to tell. You may never have a reason to use anonymous speech. That would be fine. But don't deny yourself the right to use anonymous speech because you do not have the need for it now.
The United States of America was founded as a great experiment to see if wealthy, educated people were responsible enough to rule themselves. Unfortunately, year by year, we give up responsibility to a mythical being known as "The Government". The problem is, as we shed our responsibility, we also shed our rights.
The right of anonymous speech requires the listeners to be responsible enough to research the claims presented. I will accept that responsibility, in the event that I ever need to tell the world of an awful truth, or in the event that someone else needs to tell me an awful truth; a truth that would cost them their job, their standing in society, or even their life.
So I beg you all to think upon this before you claim that "Anonymous Cowards" should be forever done away with. Won't you take the responsibility too, to look into the claims of someone who must hide his identity? Or does that require too much effort?
I'm probably alone on Slashdot, in that I don't have a mild case of paranoia about advertisers knowing all about me. I want advertisers to know about me.
There's an awful lot of products out there in the world, and most of them are pretty hard to find without good ole advertising and the web. My Eclipse desklamp, for example, I discovered on a Slashdot banner ad. I love it. I wish I would have found a Philips Expandium CD-MP3 player banner ad instead of searching for it for the perfect CD-MP3 player for a week.
What do I want? I want to be able to comment on ads definately. I want to be able to mark certain ad categories as interesting to me. I'd love to be able to turn certain ad categories off. And most importantly, I'd like to see fewer animated ads.
Slashdot Mirror
I want this data collected. I want TiVo to actually figure out just because I record Cartoon Network for Aqua Teen Hunger Squad does not mean I want to record Kim Possible.
It's pretty rare that TiVo has really figured out shows I like, and I know there are geeks out there with TiVo with similar tastes to mine. I want TiVo to tell advertisers: don't bother this one with feminine products, show him ads that are funny.
I want this data collected. I want to be a number in the database. Sell all that info, but then use it to tailor my entertainment experience to me.
And I DEFINTATELY want TiVo to tell advertisers: He replayed this ad twice--during Farscape. He replayed this ad during Keen Eddie. He watched these ads during Firefly. So the advertisers can say to TV execs: we want the head of the asses who canceled these programs. We lost Jeff TP and his gratuitous disposable income because you're a stupid moron.
Bigger balls aren't really anything you want to strive for... it's likely a sign of mental retardation:
0 3- fragile_x.html
http://www.midweeknews.com/health/articles/1112
The only dick swinging going on at Slashdot is to the people checking out the match.com banner ads.
Linux can run "SC" the only spreadsheet a real man needs. ;)
To be serious, I actually used SC on FreeBSD for all my budget, payroll, and productivity trending at an ISP I worked at. A curses based spreadsheet works fine over a 9600 bps modem.
If you didn't notice, the hovercraft lost all powered systems when it went through the electrical storms. What good would it serve the machines to build a helium balloon if all the equipment they floated through the clouds was destroyed?
Here's a list of Claria's domains where downloads are available:
o n-time.com
gator.com
claria.com
searchscout.com
precisi
weatherscope.com
date-manager.com
If you're running a web caching system, block on those domains and your users are protected from unnecessary help desk calls.
To be fair, I think the RIAA is seeing just how cracking down on piracy isn't helping their bottom line.
Not only are people not buying their CDs because the price is too high, they're also not getting the free promotion of materials that P2P file sharing was supplying.
As long as radio monopolies like ClearChannel exist to homogenize what music is promoted, and as long as there is no alternative channels to hear new music, music sales will continue to decline.
Piracy is the only competition to copyrighted works. I think most people in the western world would agree that competition makes better products at better prices and monopolies lead to lesser products at higher prices.
I wouldn't bother with pirating movies because buying them for $19 doesn't seem that expensive. I can't say the same for a $17 CD with one song I want.
All of this is anecdotal, of course, but time will tell if Copyright owners wisen up and stop abusing their monopolies.
802.11x doesn't exist yet. IEEE 802.11 Working Group is only up to Task group N -- High throughput wireless.
:P
802.1x is a port-based authentication method covered by a completely different IEEE Working Group.
I see this error a lot.
802.1x is only half the picture. To run 802.1x you'll need to select an EAP (extensible authentication protocol) method.
Currently, there's 4 common flavors of EAP: EAP-TLS, EAP-TTLS, LEAP, and PEAP.
LEAP is Cisco proprietary and will probably be dumped when Cisco moves to PEAP. Surprisingly, Apple licensed LEAP from Cisco, but only on the client side. You can get LEAP support via the latest update to the Airport client software for MacOS 9 or X. LEAP's weakness is that you can see the username in cleartext over the air, which opens you up to brute force attacks on weak passwords.
EAP-TLS is microsoft's original foray into wireless security. It requires both the radius server and the clients have public key certificates so they can mutually authenticate each other and pass authentication information through a TLS tunnel. Realistically, only corporations with an already implimented Public Key Infrastructure will want to consider EAP-TLS. EAP-TLS is a major administrative nightmare because it requires user certificates, but this also makes it the most secure.
EAP-TTLS was introduced by Funk Software makers of Steel Belted Radius. It only requires that the radius server have a public key certificate. EAP-TTLS builds a TLS (think SSL) tunnel between the radius server and the user to pass authentication information and then inside the tunnel you can use another normally unsafe authentication method such as PAP which sends username and passwords in the clear. In this case though, they're inside an encrypted tunnel.
PEAP was originally a colaboration between microsoft and cisco and does basically the same thing at EAP-TTLS. Microsoft and Cisco's clients no longer interoperate and the whole standard is a mess. Making EAP-TTLS that much more inviting. However because Microsoft control the client and it giving it away for free in XP, PEAP will probably become the standard of the future--the joys of a operating system monopoly.
All of these 802.1x solutions, however, require a radius server to authenticate to. OpenRadius, you think... great if you want to do EAP-TLS. Here's the steps:
1. Install OpenRadius.
2. Install OpenSSL.
3. Setup your server as a Certificate Authority.
4. Issue and sign a certificate for your radius server.
5. Issue and sign certificates for each user.
6. Install an 802.1x supplicant on each client.
7. Install the clients' signed certificates.
8. Configure 802.1x authentication on the access point.
9. Make sure to set up rotating WEP keys, 40 bit WEP really is secure enough if you rotate your keys every half-hour.
802.1x and EAP all sound like wonderful things, but they do not address the needs of the common home user.
If you really want to secure you're home network you should be installing only 802.11a accesspoints and walking the perimeter of your home making sure the wireless signal does not permiate the walls. 5Ghz is a better range for home networking since your cordless phone, wireless keyboard/mouse, and microwave won't cause interference.
Well, here in Texas there are a variety of human lifeforms that live off of alcohol instead of water.
If the library does not impliment always on filtered access to the Internet, they are not eligible for E-Rate funding--a multi-billion dollar fund created by the FCC generated by the Universal Service Fee on your Internet connection, Cell Phone bill, and wired Telephone bill.
Rather than censor the Internet directly, Congress did a run-around and refused funding to schools and libraries that did not impliment an Internet filtering system. Worse yet, you cannot use E-Rate money to pay for a CIPA compliant filtering system: that comes out of your own money.
What does E-Rate funding pay for? Network cabling, equipment, and Leased Internet Access. Up to 90% of those items can be E-Rate funded depending on the awards granted by the SLD (Schools and Libraries Division) of the FCC.
I spend a third of my work week at a major school district dealing with web filter issues. Getting sites either blocked or unblocked. The smart kids find so many ways around the filters through all sorts of proxy sites that it's questionable how useful the filter are.
Any law or act put in effect "for the children" typically has no merit. CIPA is no exception to the rule. It's not the government's job to enforce morality on children--that's what parents are supposed to do.
On the other hand, CIPA provides a wonderful act to hide behind when employees of the school district whine about the filters--especially considering the millions of dollars our school district receives from E-Rate for network cabling, equipment, and Internet access.
Question: What do I do if I can't get Speakeasy.net where I live?
Answer: uhaul.com
Speakeasy costs me more than any other Internet provider in my area (Houston, a blackhole of DSL thanks to Southwestern Bell)... and it's worth every penny.
The fact that DNS, a 20 year old design, still works after being scaled several magnitudes beyond its original environment is proof that DNS doesn't need to be redesigned. The initial design is nothing short of genius. The extensions to the initial design (dynamic updates) build upon already solid technology.
I run a DNS server, I've looked at DNS packets, and every time I ask the Internet to tell me who the heck slashdot.org is and it comes back with an IP address I'm amazed. My network asks strangers for help and those strangers say: Hey, try here. Bam! Slashdot.org pops up in my browser.
You cannot "combine" DNS, DHCP, and Routing all into a single protocol. Hell, get three network engineers together sometime and try to get them to agree upon the best Internal Gateway Routing protocol sometime... EIGRP, OSPF, RIP.
Routing information is extremely different from domain name information. The two have nothing in common other than IP Addresses. You have to include not only information about who your neighbors are, but also what type of links are between you and your neighbors, and how congested those links are. Now, what about your neighbor's neighbors? Oh, we'll track that to, and also keep a set of tables that show us the next two best reconfigurations should any of the links stop working. Unless you're just talking about RIP for routing.
DHCP on the other hand is about getting clients configured for a network. They can then use DDNS to update their DNS record in a local DNS server. DHCP can do much more than just say: Here's your IP. It can also tell a client: here's where you should get your operating system from, and here's the voice over IP gateway, and here's the server where you should send your management info to, and here's the best local printer to use. Most people don't have clients that can handle that type of information, however.
It's not just "if it's not broke, don't fix it" this is a case of "it frelling works great, keep your hands off of it or I'll kick you in the jimmy."
Fame is also considered success.
Even though I no longer run NetSaint/Nagios because it doesn't fit in with the goals of my company's network monitoring goals, I deeply admire the software and especially the creator: Ethan Galstad.
I still visit nagios.org to see what he's doing with the project.
I wouldn't have bothered to read the article but saw Ethan's name and was immediately interested.
In a nutshell, Ethan and Nagios are very successful. Ethan is very well-thought of in the sysadmin community as is his software Nagios. His attitude towards keeping Nagios free makes him even more of a hero.
The most common reason spanning tree problems occur is because no one tells the spanning tree domain who the root of the network is. This leads to the switches deciding to gets to be the root. In most implimentations of spanning tree, the lowest MAC address wins.
Because Cisco switches come with Spanning-Tree enabled by default, and because most network "engineers" don't know what spanning tree is, many corporate networks have a random switch serving as the root of the spanning tree. And so when spanning tree tries to do it's job: fail-over to a redundant link, it doesn't do a very good job because the humans who set up the network were either lazy or ignorant.
Laziness and ignorance are the villians of most network problems.
Now if Cisco implimented the follow up to spanning tree: rapid spanning tree protocol (802.1w) like the rest of the industry, you'd eliminate the problem of impatient network admins trying to "tune" their network convergence times. Sadly, at most, you're going to shave 8 seconds off the 30 to 50 seconds of convergence time of STP unless you have a very small network. So tuning STP timers is an excersize in navel-meditation. RSTP (802.1w) solves alot of the convergence time problems with original STP (802.1d) and is nicely backwards compatible.
If it doesn't have Serial ATA on the board, it isn't a new product. I can't be the only one holding off on their next major upgrade until they can get Serial ATA on a motherboard with an Intel chipset.
So come on Intel, put Serial ATA on the board and you've got a sure sale. No more of this parallel ATA crap. While you're at it, get rid of the serial and parallel ports.
The PacketShaper doesn't just throttle traffic based on what TCP/UDP port it runs off of. The PacketShaper actually analyses the data in packets to determine what they are, categorizes that traffic, then allows the administrator to apply rules to that type of traffic.
The really amazing thing is, the PacketShaper itself is easy to configure and run, and should the box lose power or be unplugged, it becomes a passive device. I'm constantly amazed by how easy it is to prioritize traffic with the little purple box.
The best part is, when you block ports, network bandwidth abusers look for a work-around. When you throttle bandwidth, the abusers usually assume it's just a lousy connection and usually don't give you much grief.
I have Ghost in the Shell... on VHS and DVD. It's an interesting movie. Not really great compared to some of my old Nexus Studio subs when I was running an anime club, but it's pretty good.
The question I have is, how did Ghost in the Shell redefine anime? There's nothing really that breath-taking.
The only way 10G Ethernet could support copper would be to use two strands of coax, or twinax. This was batted around by the IEEE committee for a great deal of time, but even with twinax the distances for 10G on copper were short (75 meters) and the cost of twinax is higher than fiber.
So they dropped copper support completely.
Don't expect to see 10G to the desktop anytime soon. 1G to the desktop is still a waste of money for 99% of the desktops out there.
10G Ethernet will see the most benefit for switch/router to switch/router connections in WANs and MANs.
Only 10 meg EtherNet uses Manchester Encoding.
100 meg uses 4B5B/NRZI (non-return to zero, inverted) encoding.
Gig changes the rules yet again.
Just like a 9600 bps modem is still running at 1200 baud (baud is a unit of sound), but 4 bits get stuffed into one baud, so to did the encoding methods change to accomodate the speed changes in ethernet.
If I want a point-and-click environment, Windows is where I want to be. If I want a command-line, stellar networking, and total control I go linux/freebsd.
I rarely use KDE and never Gnome because they are not yet as useful of GUIs as Windows or MacOS are. However I rarely open a DOS window on Windows when I can just telnet/ssh to the linux box and do 40 times more there.
Use the right tool for the job. Why must the idea be forced that there can only be one operating system. It's like telling a carpenter he's only allowed to have one tool in his toolbox.
Fortunately, in the United States of America, such a practice is unlawful under US Code Title 18, Section 2511: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/2511.html
I believe this came about with the Communications Act of 1986, probably one of the best acts of privacy protection in the modern era.My condolences to the Australians, who have no such protections.
Yeah, Zero Wing is probably the only game on the market today where kids and adults can recite the dialogue in the game.
"All your base are belong to us."
"What you say !!"
"Move all 'zig'"
I was stunned that even USA Today had an article a few weeks back about the "All your base..." craze.
Eli Whitney didn't die penniless by far. He next big invention was something that started the Age of Mass Production: Interchangable Parts. At the time, gunsmiths hand crafted guns. Each gun was unique, and if your gun broke, you'd have to usually go to the gunsmith who made it to fix it.
Eli Whitney realized that guns were composed of components that could be manufactured as exact duplicates. Assemble the components and you have a finished product. This reduced the time required to repair a broken firearm.
The idea took off, and Eli Whitney profited greatly. Not because he patented it, but because the firearms produced by this method were superior to the competition.
"Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."
Unfortunately, Congress with the help of Federal Courts and the Supreme Court have made laws which do abridge the freedom of speech.
Many justices have declared that some forms of speech are not protected by the First Amendment, even though the Amendment's language is very clear. It protects profanity, it protects lies, it protects hate, it protects rumor, it protects anything you or I might say.
It protects them for one reason, because it was the hope of the Drafters that bad speech would be pushed aside by the noble and intelligent people. Remember, these Drafters originally did not give the masses the power to elect a President.
In a system where there is no longer protected speech, anonymous speech is the next best thing. Until the First Amendment is restored to it's original strength (if it ever is), we only have anonymous speech to protect us when we know an ugly truth.
The reason you may not think anonymous speech is important to you, is because you may not have an ugly truth to tell. You may never have a reason to use anonymous speech. That would be fine. But don't deny yourself the right to use anonymous speech because you do not have the need for it now.
The United States of America was founded as a great experiment to see if wealthy, educated people were responsible enough to rule themselves. Unfortunately, year by year, we give up responsibility to a mythical being known as "The Government". The problem is, as we shed our responsibility, we also shed our rights.
The right of anonymous speech requires the listeners to be responsible enough to research the claims presented. I will accept that responsibility, in the event that I ever need to tell the world of an awful truth, or in the event that someone else needs to tell me an awful truth; a truth that would cost them their job, their standing in society, or even their life.
So I beg you all to think upon this before you claim that "Anonymous Cowards" should be forever done away with. Won't you take the responsibility too, to look into the claims of someone who must hide his identity? Or does that require too much effort?
I'm probably alone on Slashdot, in that I don't have a mild case of paranoia about advertisers knowing all about me. I want advertisers to know about me.
There's an awful lot of products out there in the world, and most of them are pretty hard to find without good ole advertising and the web. My Eclipse desklamp, for example, I discovered on a Slashdot banner ad. I love it. I wish I would have found a Philips Expandium CD-MP3 player banner ad instead of searching for it for the perfect CD-MP3 player for a week.
What do I want? I want to be able to comment on ads definately. I want to be able to mark certain ad categories as interesting to me. I'd love to be able to turn certain ad categories off. And most importantly, I'd like to see fewer animated ads.