Technically it's the VA Linux stockholder's money.
When he decided to cash in he lost some of his rights to the content of the site as he is now accountable to the shareholders.
Not that I agree/disagree with him posting his opionons (although he could have put a little reasoning behind them); just making sure people realize that is now the case.
First off, lemme state that if your gonna give an opionion it is usually the custom to back it up with some reasoning behind it. The simpletons who spend their free time watching sitcoms and wrestling may take opions on face value as fact, but we like a few reasons to give an opionion merit.
Al Gore is a 'risky scheme'; for several reasons. The current administration has been one of the worst on issues of individual privacy vs. law enforcement. They are the ones who brought you carnivore, the clipper chip, continued encryption export restrictions, and misused FBI files.
I also do not support the idea that government needs to be any bigger or provide more social programs. Privately run programs always are better managed with less waste then the government-run equivelent. Third, I believe the scandals and corruption that plagued the Clinton administration will continue to plague a Gore administration.
The economy is a strawman argument; the economy became so strong because we had just 'won' the cold war. The euphoria of such a victory combined with the lowered financial requirements of national defense and the many new markets opened in eastern europe and west asia would of course create a hugely sucessful economic upturn. We had a huge economic upturn after the end of world war II for the same reasons.
Although I like Bush's ideas and credability I won't be voting for him either this year. He's better than Gore, but I find the most affinity with the Libertarian party and they will be getting my vote this election.
Votes cast for third parties are _not_ wasted votes. But voting for one canidate because you are 'voting against' another _is_ wasting your vote. If you are voting Dem/Rep because any other method would be 'wasting your vote', then you aren't really voting at all. Someone else is casting your vote for you!
The two parties would have you convinced otherwise because if a great many people believe they have the freedom to vote outside the two party system then that endangers their powerbase.
If enough people vote in the canidate who reflects their views then the two big parties will have to take notice that their views do not reflect america as a whole; and those who had been witholding their votes from third parties because of the fear of throwing away their vote will change when they see others gravitating to that party.
'who would you vote for today' would be a great slashdot poll.. as long as it included all the canidates.
One of the big economic factors of faster-cheaper vs. slower-pricier is that no matter where you skimp it still costs lots of millions to get something even to low-earth-orbit.
We need a cheap and 100% resuable way to get things into orbit.
Once we have a reusable reliable and affordable SSTO costs to put things into space will drop signifigantly. Using a vehicle thats 100% reusable, and powered on water (hydrogen and oxegen) with only electricity needed to convert one of the most abundant molecules to fuel (easily created with conventional or nuclear electrical plants) it will be a trivial matter to put things into space.
It cost microsoft some-odd-millon to make the first copy of windows 2000, the second copy cost fifty cents. SSTO, once it becomes commonplace the law of numbers will make it cheaper and cheaper to put things into orbit eventually being similar in pricepoint to a trans-oceanic flight.
The ISS and planetary missions are important but our biggest and most costly hurdle is still getting things out of our gravity well. Once we overcome that space will be wide open to us.
Given that it's been two years and it still doesn't run as well as the 4.X versions of netscape.. That the development team has been busy with an fully integrated office suite instead of fixing bugs and working twards release dates can be the only reasonable explanation.
After the suck article I figured I'd give mozilla another shot. The interface is big and clunky (and looks like crap), it won't save preferences (I have to change the butt-ugly fonts every time I start it), and that it still crashes and has problems rendering things. It's no more stable or functional than it was six months into the project..
Of course who needs basic functionality or stability when you can add UML, XYZ, and PDQ support and do this and that sexy thing.
Thank goodness netscape/aol never found out that the money that was supposed to be used tward the next generation browser was really blown on quake matches, raves, and underground bondage fetish parties. Of course the result is that there's still no browser.
I don't subsribe to your communist rhetoric, Mr Jon Katz. It is not in the constitution that the US government should be in the business of redistributing wealth; yet that is what has been the focus government and the emphasis of people like you ever since RDR declared the 'state of emergency' in 1933[1].
Those who belive that the state knows whats best for the individual use phrases like 'selfish' and 'self centered' to describe those who take their own initiative in life and show just what a motivated indivalistic thinker can do without help nor guidance from the state. We are all driven to believe that we cannot help ourselves and we need 'big brother' to guide us.
-- Greg
[1] The framers of the constitution recognized that there would be some extreme circumstances in which constitutional liberties may need to be suspended for the survival of the nation (such as in times of war). In 1933, after being elected, FDR used this stipulation by declaring a state of emergency, this state of emergency has never been lifted; your constitutional rights have been curtailed for the last 65 years. Look it up.
Look here you tree hugging hippie who's all full of fucking rainbows and sunshine and never stepped out side to see the _real world_, and probably still believes socialism is a viable means of government. For those of us who saw the Soviet Union crumble rather than in a haze picking daisies on a commune let me assure you the real world is much different than the crap you learn from john lennon records.
I imagine you are reffering to the Gary Graham case. The allegations that his defense counsel were incompetent were false. They did the best they could given that they were working in very tight constraints in what they could do so they could keep his other assults, roberies, and rapes out of the case. The 'four witnesses' who are alleged to refute the testimony of the key prosecutorial witness of the case originally described the killer in a manner consistant with graham's physique. Only later, much later (12 years) did they change their descriptions to claiming the man the saw was shorter then they originally claimed.
Graham had 33 (!) appeals.
Some of the quotes by Graham, usually said to people he was robbing or raping are pretty damning if you believed this man was innocent.
"I've killed six people already, if you want to be number seven do something stupid." (said to victim)
"I'll kill you, too. Blowing away another white mother fucker don't mean nothing to me." (said to victim)
"Next time, I'm not leaving any witnesses." (said to baliff after trial)
Given the cosmic spans of time we are talking about the chance that an inteligent civilization would be in a stage where it communicated by radio waves at the same time we communicate by radio waves is nearly nil. Life on other planets, even those closest to us in length of existance, would likely be millions of years ahead or behind us technilogically.
Think of what was cutting edge just a thousand years ago. Back then the cutting edge of communication was giving a runner a document to run to the other kingdom. A thousand years from now we'll think radio communication as inefficent as having handwritten notes run hither and yon is today.
Advanced civilizations which presumably have devised means to circumvent relativistic restrictions would not be using communication systems like radio which operate at a virtual snail's pace.
The reason extraterrestrial life has not dropped by for a visit is the same reason you personally have not dropped by for a visit to ant piles or bacterial colonies. It's of no interest to you just as our simple single-cell-like civilization must seem to civilizations more advanced then ours. Even if they did drop in we'd be just as unaware as bacteria under a microscope.
Summing up, looking for advanced civilizations by searching for radio emmisions is like looking for pedestrians on a highway as a sign of life. Its a search for the wrong thing; we should be looking for biproducts of things which are at the 'magic' stage for us but would be commonplace for advanced civilizations... quantum tunneling, strange gravitational anomolies, etc..
I still believe SETI is a good effort; truth is we problably don't know what really to look for so to look for _something_ even if it might be the wrong thing is a good start.
How many times do you expect a non-commercial site to given a dot-org name from a commercial entity (or a small ISP given a dot-net)? If you answered more than zero *bzzzt* you are wrong.
TLD's should have been enforced from the beginning but with the greedy NSI monopoly and their 'registering dotcom? register dotnet and dotorg too!' promotions we are going to have to deal with a system where it doesn't work that way.
Bianchi writes: "Apparently, aside from its biblical posting following their acquiring notice of the dispute . . . Respondents have no made any other use of the domain name."
Anyone have background on this site, or is it a case where the site was completely unused before this dispute occured?
If the original owner had something up there or was actively using the domain to recieve email then this is yet again big money squashing the little guy.
However if there was no content or use of the domain prior to the dispute I hold little sympathy for the original owner.
-- Greg
Abovenet oversteping it's bounds.
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MAPS vs. ORBS
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· Score: 1
Leaving alone the issue of abovenet's rebroadcasting BGP routes for ORBS; its been clearly shown already that this is an issue of ORBS being an indirect customer of abovenet through their own ISP (Telecom new zealand).
Above net is a large enough (I would consider them Tier-1) provider that they should have no place in making judgement calls on which systems their customers have access to. Abovenet provides connectivity for thousands of businesses, some of these ISP's with millions (?) of customers.
This situation is the same as if Pacific Bell prohibited phone calls to/from the vatican for all the millions of it's customers because it's management disagreed with the christian belief system.
Abovenet has stated that they consider the ORBS probes to be an attack (debateable, but we'll take it at face value). However they prohibit all access to the ORBS services by blackholing all their traffic.
If you are one of the thousands/millions of people who are connected directly, or indirectly through another ISP, to abovenet you have no option to use ORBS services, send them email, or even view their website.
Abovenet has it within their ability to specifically block probe traffic; They have done this in the past for other security problems that used specific ports. They could do this if the probe traffic is such a big issue, but instead they decide for all their customers that ORBS are 'bad' and that no-one should be allowed to communicate with them.
At their size, AboveNet has no place making moral decisions for the rest of it's customers.
-- Greg
Re:UNfriendly encounter with ORBS just days ago
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MAPS vs. ORBS
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· Score: 1
I've had one of my mailservers detected as a relay by ORBS before. The message you recieve clearly indicates what bug it was succeptable to and gives a pointer on where to look on how to fix it. Instead of flaming them I went and fixed the problem and had my server removed from the list.
Instead of researching and fixing the problem you went and flamed the ORBS people "I am right and you are wrong and don't you _dare_ blacklist me." When in fact they were right and you were wrong. When you accuse someone of being wrong you should damn-well be sure you are right.
Was their reply worded un-tactfully? Probably, but they also probably get tons of email from people who rather than deal with their problems go and flame the ORBS staff.
Given that it's being reported that one large ISP (earthlink) is having problems installing this system.. How many providers have this system already in place??
I thought this was a install-on-warrant system, but going back through earlier articles: 'She [Reno] emphasized that the system can only be activated... under court order". In other words, this is an activate-on-warrant system meaning its expected to already be installed at each location.
Can anyone who works at large-ish ISP's in the know confirm or refute the installation of carivore boxes on-site?
I imagine the smaller ISP's won't need these boxes installed as their larger upstream providers will probably already have them in their route-path.
I think its time to get serious about PGP, and SMTP over TLS/SSL for those of us with our own mailservers.
The whole government doesn't have to be corrupt or involved in a conspiracy; it just takes a few unethical people working inside the government to abuse this system to their own ends.
-- Greg
PS: The first installation should be done at the white house. Apparently they have problems losing their emails. Perhaps the FBI can pick up their files while they are there. They can also give a safety awareness and suicide prevention class; as it seems like so many people involved with the administration seem to have accidents or kill themselves in odd ways.
First find a charity you like, then contact them and see if they need any computer related stuff done. If its a larger (non-localized) charity you probably should find someone higer up, as the first line people may not understand how valuble this would be but those who have to pay the 100/hr consultants to maintain the website certainly would.
I recently voulenteered to do some work for a sailing organization running a race from SF to Hawaii; I had a great time and learned a lot about GD and mercator projections doing boat position plots.
Finally, I'd say coding and contributing free software is also a voulenteer effort in its own right.
Given that any website not run by a multinational corporation inevitably dies within seconds of being hit with the 'slashdot effect' I would suggest that slashdot install some cache servers and have all links point to the cache'ed version and the cached version promenently noteing where the original document lives.
I think both the slashdot users who are minutes late and get 'server not responding' and the administrators of these poor slashdotted sites would both be appreciative of this service.
We broke nature's laws, now we can fix them.
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Frankenstein Time
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· Score: 2
Well, Jon Katz would have you believe that we will soon have the ability to alter our genetic makeup and change our evolutionary path. I say we've already done that and that we've been doing it for the last 5000 years.
Becuse of our inteligence and ability to form social groups, humans have effectively cirumvented the process of natural selection, resulting in an overall gene-pool which is 'weaker' (more prone to desease and defects) than it was 5000 years ago.
To illustrate my point; many of us (myself included) have very poor eyesight. Thanks to modern technology, we can get corrective lenses to fix this defect. If we lived ten thousand years ago on the african sahara our bad vision would have made us an easy meal for a predator long before we grew to adulthood. However technology lets us lead normal lives with these defects. The result is that we've got no problem making it to adulthood and passing our defects on to our offspring.
The same issue applies to a whole host of other problems (poor hearing, suceptability to desease, even flat-footedness). Undesirable traits that should have been naturally weeded out of our genepool are instead strenthened because of our ability to compensate for them.
So, having 'perfect' babies is not a new problem; is is really a solution to a problem we created in the process of building civilization. Genetic manipulation to remove defects just performs the job that natural selection should have been doing for the last 5000 years.
First off, the existing system worked fine. If your bill lapsed then your name went back into the pool of those available and somebody else paid the 35 dollars and picked it up.
Non-payment / reposessions have never been considered a revinue stream... Untill now.
NSI has in the past proven that they are very bad at maintaing their contact database (along with other things they can't manage to maintain).
So now they have a financial incentive to continue their incompetence. If they forget to bill you or send the bill to the wrong place; well then if its a popular domain their screwup could make them thousands (millions?).
I would not dare to imply that a cash-flushed corporation could talk to their rep's at NSI and do a little 'wink wink nudge nudge' for an excuse to revoke a domain from a legitimate owner.
First we saw the 'we own your domain' policy change, now the NSI auctions; I suspect it goes downhill from here. I could imagine seeing a new renewal policy where the domain goes to the highest bidder.
NSI has always given quiet approval to the domain speculators as well as promoting blatant violation of the RFC's (registering.com? register.net and.org as well!). I suppose it was only a matter of time until they got into speculation themselves.
All I can say is that if you are still with NSI and you are not a multi-million dollar corporation then you should probably transfer to another registrar. Beyond that you should ensure your domain contact information is accurate and current and know when your registration renewal date is coming up.
Can someone post that URL with the registrar's rankings based on registration policies again? Thanks.
With these sorts of things, if you want to have clean unobstructed use of a band you've got to stay ahead of the rest of the world. Thats means upgrading to the expensive 5.7Ghz band.
Not only does 2.4Ghz have problems with exploding individual use (phones, networks, etc..) but because the band is 'free' (not as in speech, but as in bulk email) businesses have taken it apon themselves to try to use every last bit of it.
Ricochet is an internet acessess company primaraly in the bay area but spreading to other metro areas around the country. Their plan calls for putting poletop boxes every half mile or so; they have already done this with 900Mhz and are deploying 2.4Ghz. You can imagine what sort of bite this takes out of the useable bandwidth of a frequency.
Other companies are deploying 'wireless T1's also, using this frequency. On top of that alot of home users are buying 2.4Ghz network equipment to save themselves from running ethernet throughout their house. The prevailance of this equipment is being fueled by its recently lowered costs and the emergence of the 802.11 standard for interoperability of devices. 2.4Ghz is getting pretty noisy.
I finnally threw my hands up, moved out of the mountains and got DSL. I now enjoy 66% uptime from wonderful PacBell DSL (but thats another rant entirely).
So put out the bread for 5.7Ghz radios or accept the fact that interference is only going to get worse.
So far all the methods for electronic cash have fallen through... Even the one's with the right ideas.
It appears that credit-cards have become the de-facto currency of the internet economy. Some company that had an add on the radio finally got it; they started selling check card accounts specifically targeting internet commerce (works just like a credit card).
So we have an in-place working system, but the crux of this is that the credit card companies get a cut of every transation that occurs. Its the same as having to pay 'useage fees' whenever you use some other bank's ATM machine although its not the customer who pays these but the merchant.
I use my bank-supplied 'check card' to pay for most everything from gas to food to hardware. I rarely pay paper money for anything anymore, only when its less than five dollars.
Perhaps this is the reason behind DOJ going after VISA. Could the government be so visionary as to see that the credit card is replacing paper money and therefore that industry required more oversight? I doubt it, just lucky I suppose.
Nope, this is not the same. It would be if you had taken a year off of work (or working a burger-flipping gig) and spent that year developing some really cool software. And then you went to work for someone and you handed them all rights to your previously done work. This is what musicians do, scrape by for years developing their talents and writing their material only to have to sign it away hoping for 'the big score'.
If you were hired at an IT company starting with nothing specifically tasked and paid to develop software for them then they have every right to expect to own that software, and conversely you have every right to turn down the job.
There are companies out there with IP clauses that basically assign all ownership of your ideas past present and future to the company. Anyone accepting such a clause is a fool.
Of course this goes for the artists too, but I suppose the promise of fame and fortune clouds their judgement when they have the contracts in front of them. It's also a case where the record labels are the only game in town, but that won't last forever.
No, becuase the 'poor' are too damn stupid to know how to grow food or do much of anything without the rich organizing, training, and supplying equipment to them.
In most instances (repeat for emphasis _most instances_) being 'rich' means that a person through their own hard work and enginuity created something better than the sum of the available parts, and resultantly got some portion of the benefit. If thats organizing people to tend fields, or building tractors, or creating crops with better yeilds, or whatever.. that 'rich' person made life a little better for the people around him.
So go starve the rich, see how far you get when nobody is around to build tractors to plow the fields, and trains to transport the food, or medical supplies for the 'poor' who can't manage to do much of anything but consume resources and breed.
Here's a clue; the cold war is over and guess what? The comunists/socialists lost.
I just looked over their website and according to their faq they provide 'food', I don't see training or water purification equipment! I didn't see any 'donate a tractor now' button either. They do state that occasionally they will entice people to get out of their squalor and do something useful for their comunity by bribing them with food. I guess for some if planting a field now doesn't feed us today then there is no point. *shrug*
A wise man once said 'Do you know what you get when you feed a hundred starving childeren? A thousand starving childeren.'
I know it seems cruel at face value to deny a starving person food, but by artificially cirumvend the laws of natural selection is a recipe for disaster.
If you save all the weak or sick members of a herd of anamals (I dono, gazells perhaps) from predators and succoming to their sicknesses then soon you've got a heard of weak sick anamals who can no longer fend for themselves. Whereas if the weak or sick are taken out of the herd by natural selection (at the hands of some chetas or something) then you end up with a healthier herd.
It works the same way with humans dude. In conclusion, let the starving starve; its more humane to their potential offspring.
All that Excite@Home is offering is to allow content providers to co-locate some of their equipment with Excite@Home so that the Exite@home users will be accessing machines which are closer.
An anology would be putting a vending machine in an apartment complex so the tenants would not have to walk down the block to the 7/11.
Content providers have been playing this game for years already; they try to get as close to users as possible by putting their servers close to exchange points and having server farms across multiple backbones. This is just the next logical step with the ISP providing co-location space to get the servers even closer.
Don't be supprised if AOL will offer the same service.
Slashdot Mirror
Technically it's the VA Linux stockholder's money.
When he decided to cash in he lost some of his rights to the content of the site as he is now accountable to the shareholders.
Not that I agree/disagree with him posting his opionons (although he could have put a little reasoning behind them); just making sure people realize that is now the case.
-- Greg
First off, lemme state that if your gonna give an opionion it is usually the custom to back it up with some reasoning behind it. The simpletons who spend their free time watching sitcoms and wrestling may take opions on face value as fact, but we like a few reasons to give an opionion merit.
Al Gore is a 'risky scheme'; for several reasons. The current administration has been one of the worst on issues of individual privacy vs. law enforcement. They are the ones who brought you carnivore, the clipper chip, continued encryption export restrictions, and misused FBI files.
I also do not support the idea that government needs to be any bigger or provide more social programs. Privately run programs always are better managed with less waste then the government-run equivelent. Third, I believe the scandals and corruption that plagued the Clinton administration will continue to plague a Gore administration.
The economy is a strawman argument; the economy became so strong because we had just 'won' the cold war. The euphoria of such a victory combined with the lowered financial requirements of national defense and the many new markets opened in eastern europe and west asia would of course create a hugely sucessful economic upturn. We had a huge economic upturn after the end of world war II for the same reasons.
Although I like Bush's ideas and credability I won't be voting for him either this year. He's better than Gore, but I find the most affinity with the Libertarian party and they will be getting my vote this election.
Votes cast for third parties are _not_ wasted votes. But voting for one canidate because you are 'voting against' another _is_ wasting your vote. If you are voting Dem/Rep because any other method would be 'wasting your vote', then you aren't really voting at all. Someone else is casting your vote for you!
The two parties would have you convinced otherwise because if a great many people believe they have the freedom to vote outside the two party system then that endangers their powerbase.
If enough people vote in the canidate who reflects their views then the two big parties will have to take notice that their views do not reflect america as a whole; and those who had been witholding their votes from third parties because of the fear of throwing away their vote will change when they see others gravitating to that party.
'who would you vote for today' would be a great slashdot poll.. as long as it included all the canidates.
-- Greg
One of the big economic factors of faster-cheaper vs. slower-pricier is that no matter where you skimp it still costs lots of millions to get something even to low-earth-orbit.
We need a cheap and 100% resuable way to get things into orbit.
Once we have a reusable reliable and affordable SSTO costs to put things into space will drop signifigantly. Using a vehicle thats 100% reusable, and powered on water (hydrogen and oxegen) with only electricity needed to convert one of the most abundant molecules to fuel (easily created with conventional or nuclear electrical plants) it will be a trivial matter to put things into space.
It cost microsoft some-odd-millon to make the first copy of windows 2000, the second copy cost fifty cents. SSTO, once it becomes commonplace the law of numbers will make it cheaper and cheaper to put things into orbit eventually being similar in pricepoint to a trans-oceanic flight.
The ISS and planetary missions are important but our biggest and most costly hurdle is still getting things out of our gravity well. Once we overcome that space will be wide open to us.
-- Greg
Given that it's been two years and it still doesn't run as well as the 4.X versions of netscape.. That the development team has been busy with an fully integrated office suite instead of fixing bugs and working twards release dates can be the only reasonable explanation.
After the suck article I figured I'd give mozilla another shot. The interface is big and clunky (and looks like crap), it won't save preferences (I have to change the butt-ugly fonts every time I start it), and that it still crashes and has problems rendering things. It's no more stable or functional than it was six months into the project..
Of course who needs basic functionality or stability when you can add UML, XYZ, and PDQ support and do this and that sexy thing.
Thank goodness netscape/aol never found out that the money that was supposed to be used tward the next generation browser was really blown on quake matches, raves, and underground bondage fetish parties. Of course the result is that there's still no browser.
-- Greg
I don't subsribe to your communist rhetoric, Mr Jon Katz. It is not in the constitution that the US government should be in the business of redistributing wealth; yet that is what has been the focus government and the emphasis of people like you ever since RDR declared the 'state of emergency' in 1933[1].
Those who belive that the state knows whats best for the individual use phrases like 'selfish' and 'self centered' to describe those who take their own initiative in life and show just what a motivated indivalistic thinker can do without help nor guidance from the state. We are all driven to believe that we cannot help ourselves and we need 'big brother' to guide us.
-- Greg
[1] The framers of the constitution recognized that there would be some extreme circumstances in which constitutional liberties may need to be suspended for the survival of the nation (such as in times of war). In 1933, after being elected, FDR used this stipulation by declaring a state of emergency, this state of emergency has never been lifted; your constitutional rights have been curtailed for the last 65 years. Look it up.
Look here you tree hugging hippie who's all full of fucking rainbows and sunshine and never stepped out side to see the _real world_, and probably still believes socialism is a viable means of government. For those of us who saw the Soviet Union crumble rather than in a haze picking daisies on a commune let me assure you the real world is much different than the crap you learn from john lennon records.
I imagine you are reffering to the Gary Graham case. The allegations that his defense counsel were incompetent were false. They did the best they could given that they were working in very tight constraints in what they could do so they could keep his other assults, roberies, and rapes out of the case. The 'four witnesses' who are alleged to refute the testimony of the key prosecutorial witness of the case originally described the killer in a manner consistant with graham's physique. Only later, much later (12 years) did they change their descriptions to claiming the man the saw was shorter then they originally claimed.
Graham had 33 (!) appeals.
Some of the quotes by Graham, usually said to people he was robbing or raping are pretty damning if you believed this man was innocent.
"I've killed six people already, if you want to be number seven do something stupid." (said to victim)
"I'll kill you, too. Blowing away another white mother fucker don't mean nothing to me." (said to victim)
"Next time, I'm not leaving any witnesses." (said to baliff after trial)
-- Greg
Israel just bought some friggin lasers . Not that Israel is a threat to us but if they have them then so do others.
-- Greg
Given the cosmic spans of time we are talking about the chance that an inteligent civilization would be in a stage where it communicated by radio waves at the same time we communicate by radio waves is nearly nil. Life on other planets, even those closest to us in length of existance, would likely be millions of years ahead or behind us technilogically.
Think of what was cutting edge just a thousand years ago. Back then the cutting edge of communication was giving a runner a document to run to the other kingdom. A thousand years from now we'll think radio communication as inefficent as having handwritten notes run hither and yon is today.
Advanced civilizations which presumably have devised means to circumvent relativistic restrictions would not be using communication systems like radio which operate at a virtual snail's pace.
The reason extraterrestrial life has not dropped by for a visit is the same reason you personally have not dropped by for a visit to ant piles or bacterial colonies. It's of no interest to you just as our simple single-cell-like civilization must seem to civilizations more advanced then ours. Even if they did drop in we'd be just as unaware as bacteria under a microscope.
Summing up, looking for advanced civilizations by searching for radio emmisions is like looking for pedestrians on a highway as a sign of life. Its a search for the wrong thing; we should be looking for biproducts of things which are at the 'magic' stage for us but would be commonplace for advanced civilizations... quantum tunneling, strange gravitational anomolies, etc..
I still believe SETI is a good effort; truth is we problably don't know what really to look for so to look for _something_ even if it might be the wrong thing is a good start.
-- Greg
How many times do you expect a non-commercial site to given a dot-org name from a commercial entity (or a small ISP given a dot-net)? If you answered more than zero *bzzzt* you are wrong.
TLD's should have been enforced from the beginning but with the greedy NSI monopoly and their 'registering dotcom? register dotnet and dotorg too!' promotions we are going to have to deal with a system where it doesn't work that way.
-- Greg
Bianchi writes: "Apparently, aside from its biblical posting following their acquiring
notice of the dispute . . . Respondents have no made any other use of the domain name."
Anyone have background on this site, or is it a case where the site was completely unused before this dispute occured?
If the original owner had something up there or was actively using the domain to recieve email then this is yet again big money squashing the little guy.
However if there was no content or use of the domain prior to the dispute I hold little sympathy for the original owner.
-- Greg
Leaving alone the issue of abovenet's rebroadcasting BGP routes for ORBS; its been clearly shown already that this is an issue of ORBS being an indirect customer of abovenet through their own ISP (Telecom new zealand).
Above net is a large enough (I would consider them Tier-1) provider that they should have no place in making judgement calls on which systems their customers have access to. Abovenet provides connectivity for thousands of businesses, some of these ISP's with millions (?) of customers.
This situation is the same as if Pacific Bell prohibited phone calls to/from the vatican for all the millions of it's customers because it's management disagreed with the christian belief system.
Abovenet has stated that they consider the ORBS probes to be an attack (debateable, but we'll take it at face value). However they prohibit all access to the ORBS services by blackholing all their traffic.
If you are one of the thousands/millions of people who are connected directly, or indirectly through another ISP, to abovenet you have no option to use ORBS services, send them email, or even view their website.
Abovenet has it within their ability to specifically block probe traffic; They have done this in the past for other security problems that used specific ports. They could do this if the probe traffic is such a big issue, but instead they decide for all their customers that ORBS are 'bad' and that no-one should be allowed to communicate with them.
At their size, AboveNet has no place making moral decisions for the rest of it's customers.
-- Greg
I've had one of my mailservers detected as a relay by ORBS before. The message you recieve clearly indicates what bug it was succeptable to and gives a pointer on where to look on how to fix it. Instead of flaming them I went and fixed the problem and had my server removed from the list.
Instead of researching and fixing the problem you went and flamed the ORBS people "I am right and you are wrong and don't you _dare_ blacklist me." When in fact they were right and you were wrong. When you accuse someone of being wrong you should damn-well be sure you are right.
Was their reply worded un-tactfully? Probably, but they also probably get tons of email from people who rather than deal with their problems go and flame the ORBS staff.
-- Greg
Given that it's being reported that one large ISP (earthlink) is having problems installing this system.. How many providers have this system already in place??
... under court order". In other words, this is an activate-on-warrant system meaning its expected to already be installed at each location.
I thought this was a install-on-warrant system, but going back through earlier articles: 'She [Reno] emphasized that the system can only be activated
Can anyone who works at large-ish ISP's in the know confirm or refute the installation of carivore boxes on-site?
I imagine the smaller ISP's won't need these boxes installed as their larger upstream providers will probably already have them in their route-path.
I think its time to get serious about PGP, and SMTP over TLS/SSL for those of us with our own mailservers.
The whole government doesn't have to be corrupt or involved in a conspiracy; it just takes a few unethical people working inside the government to abuse this system to their own ends.
-- Greg
PS: The first installation should be done at the white house. Apparently they have problems losing their emails. Perhaps the FBI can pick up their files while they are there. They can also give a safety awareness and suicide prevention class; as it seems like so many people involved with the administration seem to have accidents or kill themselves in odd ways.
Can I be invited to Reno's next BBQ?
First find a charity you like, then contact them and see if they need any computer related stuff done. If its a larger (non-localized) charity you probably should find someone higer up, as the first line people may not understand how valuble this would be but those who have to pay the 100/hr consultants to maintain the website certainly would.
I recently voulenteered to do some work for a sailing organization running a race from SF to Hawaii; I had a great time and learned a lot about GD and mercator projections doing boat position plots.
Finally, I'd say coding and contributing free software is also a voulenteer effort in its own right.
-- Greg
Yesterday it was "If it's not viewable under Linux I won't post it". Today we get powerpoint files.
Since we are being so darn constant, can we implemnt slashdotted website caching contrary to the FAQ? If google can do it...
-- Greg
Given that any website not run by a multinational corporation inevitably dies within seconds of being hit with the 'slashdot effect' I would suggest that slashdot install some cache servers and have all links point to the cache'ed version and the cached version promenently noteing where the original document lives.
I think both the slashdot users who are minutes late and get 'server not responding' and the administrators of these poor slashdotted sites would both be appreciative of this service.
Well, Jon Katz would have you believe that we will soon have the ability to alter our genetic makeup and change our evolutionary path. I say we've already done that and that we've been doing it for the last 5000 years.
Becuse of our inteligence and ability to form social groups, humans have effectively cirumvented the process of natural selection, resulting in an overall gene-pool which is 'weaker' (more prone to desease and defects) than it was 5000 years ago.
To illustrate my point; many of us (myself included) have very poor eyesight. Thanks to modern technology, we can get corrective lenses to fix this defect. If we lived ten thousand years ago on the african sahara our bad vision would have made us an easy meal for a predator long before we grew to adulthood. However technology lets us lead normal lives with these defects. The result is that we've got no problem making it to adulthood and passing our defects on to our offspring.
The same issue applies to a whole host of other problems (poor hearing, suceptability to desease, even flat-footedness). Undesirable traits that should have been naturally weeded out of our genepool are instead strenthened because of our ability to compensate for them.
So, having 'perfect' babies is not a new problem; is is really a solution to a problem we created in the process of building civilization. Genetic manipulation to remove defects just performs the job that natural selection should have been doing for the last 5000 years.
-- Greg
No I don't want to install shockwave, thank you very much. Bah.
-- Greg
First off, the existing system worked fine. If your bill lapsed then your name went back into the pool of those available and somebody else paid the 35 dollars and picked it up.
.com? register .net and .org as well!). I suppose it was only a matter of time until they got into speculation themselves.
Non-payment / reposessions have never been considered a revinue stream... Untill now.
NSI has in the past proven that they are very bad at maintaing their contact database (along with other things they can't manage to maintain).
So now they have a financial incentive to continue their incompetence. If they forget to bill you or send the bill to the wrong place; well then if its a popular domain their screwup could make them thousands (millions?).
I would not dare to imply that a cash-flushed corporation could talk to their rep's at NSI and do a little 'wink wink nudge nudge' for an excuse to revoke a domain from a legitimate owner.
First we saw the 'we own your domain' policy change, now the NSI auctions; I suspect it goes downhill from here. I could imagine seeing a new renewal policy where the domain goes to the highest bidder.
NSI has always given quiet approval to the domain speculators as well as promoting blatant violation of the RFC's (registering
All I can say is that if you are still with NSI and you are not a multi-million dollar corporation then you should probably transfer to another registrar. Beyond that you should ensure your domain contact information is accurate and current and know when your registration renewal date is coming up.
Can someone post that URL with the registrar's rankings based on registration policies again? Thanks.
-- Greg
With these sorts of things, if you want to have clean unobstructed use of a band you've got to stay ahead of the rest of the world. Thats means upgrading to the expensive 5.7Ghz band.
Not only does 2.4Ghz have problems with exploding individual use (phones, networks, etc..) but because the band is 'free' (not as in speech, but as in bulk email) businesses have taken it apon themselves to try to use every last bit of it.
Ricochet is an internet acessess company primaraly in the bay area but spreading to other metro areas around the country. Their plan calls for putting poletop boxes every half mile or so; they have already done this with 900Mhz and are deploying 2.4Ghz. You can imagine what sort of bite this takes out of the useable bandwidth of a frequency.
Other companies are deploying 'wireless T1's also, using this frequency. On top of that alot of home users are buying 2.4Ghz network equipment to save themselves from running ethernet throughout their house. The prevailance of this equipment is being fueled by its recently lowered costs and the emergence of the 802.11 standard for interoperability of devices. 2.4Ghz is getting pretty noisy.
I finnally threw my hands up, moved out of the mountains and got DSL. I now enjoy 66% uptime from wonderful PacBell DSL (but thats another rant entirely).
So put out the bread for 5.7Ghz radios or accept the fact that interference is only going to get worse.
-- Greg
So far all the methods for electronic cash have fallen through... Even the one's with the right ideas.
It appears that credit-cards have become the de-facto currency of the internet economy. Some company that had an add on the radio finally got it; they started selling check card accounts specifically targeting internet commerce (works just like a credit card).
So we have an in-place working system, but the crux of this is that the credit card companies get a cut of every transation that occurs. Its the same as having to pay 'useage fees' whenever you use some other bank's ATM machine although its not the customer who pays these but the merchant.
I use my bank-supplied 'check card' to pay for most everything from gas to food to hardware. I rarely pay paper money for anything anymore, only when its less than five dollars.
Perhaps this is the reason behind DOJ going after VISA. Could the government be so visionary as to see that the credit card is replacing paper money and therefore that industry required more oversight? I doubt it, just lucky I suppose.
-- Greg
Nope, this is not the same. It would be if you had taken a year off of work (or working a burger-flipping gig) and spent that year developing some really cool software. And then you went to work for someone and you handed them all rights to your previously done work. This is what musicians do, scrape by for years developing their talents and writing their material only to have to sign it away hoping for 'the big score'.
If you were hired at an IT company starting with nothing specifically tasked and paid to develop software for them then they have every right to expect to own that software, and conversely you have every right to turn down the job.
There are companies out there with IP clauses that basically assign all ownership of your ideas past present and future to the company. Anyone accepting such a clause is a fool.
Of course this goes for the artists too, but I suppose the promise of fame and fortune clouds their judgement when they have the contracts in front of them. It's also a case where the record labels are the only game in town, but that won't last forever.
-- Greg
No, becuase the 'poor' are too damn stupid to know how to grow food or do much of anything without the rich organizing, training, and supplying equipment to them.
In most instances (repeat for emphasis _most instances_) being 'rich' means that a person through their own hard work and enginuity created something better than the sum of the available parts, and resultantly got some portion of the benefit. If thats organizing people to tend fields, or building tractors, or creating crops with better yeilds, or whatever.. that 'rich' person made life a little better for the people around him.
So go starve the rich, see how far you get when nobody is around to build tractors to plow the fields, and trains to transport the food, or medical supplies for the 'poor' who can't manage to do much of anything but consume resources and breed.
Here's a clue; the cold war is over and guess what? The comunists/socialists lost.
I just looked over their website and according to their faq they provide 'food', I don't see training or water purification equipment! I didn't see any 'donate a tractor now' button either. They do state that occasionally they will entice people to get out of their squalor and do something useful for their comunity by bribing them with food. I guess for some if planting a field now doesn't feed us today then there is no point. *shrug*
-- Greg
A wise man once said 'Do you know what you get when you feed a hundred starving childeren? A thousand starving childeren.'
I know it seems cruel at face value to deny a starving person food, but by artificially cirumvend the laws of natural selection is a recipe for disaster.
If you save all the weak or sick members of a herd of anamals (I dono, gazells perhaps) from predators and succoming to their sicknesses then soon you've got a heard of weak sick anamals who can no longer fend for themselves. Whereas if the weak or sick are taken out of the herd by natural selection (at the hands of some chetas or something) then you end up with a healthier herd.
It works the same way with humans dude. In conclusion, let the starving starve; its more humane to their potential offspring.
-- Greg
All that Excite@Home is offering is to allow content providers to co-locate some of their equipment with Excite@Home so that the Exite@home users will be accessing machines which are closer.
An anology would be putting a vending machine in an apartment complex so the tenants would not have to walk down the block to the 7/11.
Content providers have been playing this game for years already; they try to get as close to users as possible by putting their servers close to exchange points and having server farms across multiple backbones. This is just the next logical step with the ISP providing co-location space to get the servers even closer.
Don't be supprised if AOL will offer the same service.
-- Greg