Seriously, I have been kicking around the idea of getting a unit at rackspace or something and offering webhosting services. Then I see some of the posts here for basic hosting starting at $3/month with 2.5GB traffic!. Jeebus, how do you compete with that?
Kinda takes the wind outta my sails.
Incidentally, I host from home. It's a streaming audio service, so I will eventually need a faster pipe. But if this guy is a sysadmin, why is he even posting on/. ? He should be able to answer the question himself...
A couple of years ago, I waited 8 weeks for benefits (normal wait is 4-6) while I burned through my savings that I set aside for school. During that time I had to move to a more expensive apartment. Shortly after moving, my first meager cheque arrived, adjusted for taxes, and the odd number of days left in the month. Later that week I found a job in a dodgy pharmacy pushing methodone. The place was legit, but it looked otherwise. So I figured, it's December, it's winter, I just moved, I just got my first cheque, and this "job" could dissapear; I'd be crazy to report the income. So I collected a couple more cheques until I was certain that the job was safe. Then I stopped collecting. Total money stolen: ~$1200 or about a month and a half.
A year later and back on my feet with a real job, the unemployment thugs came after me and sent me a nasty letter asking where the money was. I ignored it and they doubled the amount I owe them, plus a hefty penalty. They basically demanded all the money back, even the money I accepted when I was properly unemployed. I "stole" $1200 and right now I owe the gov't nearly $4000.
I'd like to know what any one of those smarmy workers at the labour board would do in the same situation. They're the biggest welfare cases of them all. Social workers are gov't subsidized workers, their salary is paid completely by the tax-payer. If that's not welfare I don't know what is. Shuffle some paper, reject an applicant, collect their cheque.
Strictly speaking, sans the MS spin, I think we can all agree that HTTP is overused.
Trying to build web apps that keep state, etc is a complete pain. Just try avoiding javascript because of different DOMs, and you'll wind up with alot of missing functionality. Then you have to use cookies, and hack up convoluted solutions for a simple problem.
People don't like cookies, they don't like javascript (stupid hack, mostly used for pop-up hell) and again, different browsers make dynamic content a real bitch.
What we need is the equivalent of the browser for web servcies (stupid catch-phrase). Whatever you want to call it, we need a client-server app that provides P2P services. I think MS wants to dominate another market by introducing another "browser" (the P2P app to end all p2p apps) only this time, they'll get their foot out the door before anyone like Netscape can compete. They fumbled with the browser and wound up having to give it away. I have a feeling that Office.NET will have a built-in P2P app/browser. Add $100 bucks to the office price tag.
Didn't they buy groove networks? Just change the protocol it operates on.
Either way, someones going to have to punch a hole in the firewall, we cant just keeping using port 80. Web servers are for http pages. Real-time apps need another port, their own dedicated servers. Not Apache 2.2.13+modssl+PHP+mYSQL+dotNET+MP3+mod_Mono+mod_GT K
>Seriously though, the Internet is the future. Any government that doesn't go out of its way to ensure that its citizens have fast, secure, private, and low-cost connectivity only does it's citizens a disservice.
Which is precisely why no BC gov't will do a damn thing to turn this province high-tech despite our misnomer as Silicon-North, Hollywood-North. It would be against all our BC principles to create a gov't that could actually work *FOR* the people in a 25 year span of mismanagement.
No-Jobs-North more like it. I think I'd like to go home to Alberta. I don't miss the 18 years of *extreme* sub-zero winters, but at least the AB gov't is working for it's constituents.
because the Vancouver job market is dead as a doornail. Can anyone in AB testify to more jobs being there, I'll move back no problem....or is it more gov't work?
But it opens the door for third-party or industry sanctioned, consumer/commodity backup devices. I see a whole new market for DRM compliant backup devices. For those of you in the hardware side, now's your chance to start a small company, put out a product that is cheap, well-made, reliable, satisfies the consumer need to make fair-use backups, and the need for copyright holders to protect their IP, all so you can grow fast, gain interest, become too big for your own infrastructure, go IPO, put out a crappy but much anticipated encore product because you're now thinly-veiled corporate schills, take a huge loss on R&D, advertising and lose millions, get bought out by a front company for one of the media cartels, and have an entire consumer goods market vanish from the face of the earth under the administration of the new parent company, who promises to develop the product but quietly buries it. Sweet dreams, Adam Smith. Welcome to the New New Economy.
The problem is that most ISP customers do NOT view their provider as a common carrier.
They expect the provider to do something about the spam, and become frustrated when things don't improve. Many problems are the direct result of ignorance on the part of 'netizens'. I'm sure plenty of people here can attest to still being hit by CodeRed probes by @Home and consumer DSL IP's. Spam, open relays, vulnerable boxen, customers that fuck-up a simple peer-based network in their home, customers that send useless BlackIce "I'm being HaX0red!" emails to support, people that respond to the wrong ISP when they get a 5.1.1 from MAILER-DAEMON....*sigh*, the people have no clue what's going on behind the scenes. This is a global information network, they want it to "just work".
I see your point about ISPs keeping a hands off approach, but then the majority of users are left to fend for themselves. If the users are frustrated by spam now, imagine their exasperation when they have to actually configure filtering rules in their mail client;)
Good points. I've only used Sendmail and qmail, and relaying is turned off by default in both. Enabling relaying in both requires alot of work for someone with limited understanding of both SMTP and the individual software package. Recompiling sendmail.cf(?) is a pain, and adding relaying to qmail is wholly obtuse.
Even a newbie with copy of $distro will have to go out of their way to enable relaying, so their really is no excuse for a misconfig'd server these days. I think these open relays are deliberate.
I don't know the default status of the basic SMTP server in Windows, or of Exchange, but I can see Joe Privateenterprise installing his intranet mailserver and not having a clue. One more reason I'm frustrated stuck doing tech support. So many small outfits that "do-it-yourself", in need of a sysadmin.
Also, isn't sendmail installed by default to enable local mail? Like I said, relaying is off on any recent release, but I still see no reason for it to be running as a daemon on a default install.
My point about modding a gpl'd server was that I feared soemthing along the lines of SendSpam v1.0 being released, and the result being an army of Asian and East bloc admins installing it:(
I completely agree, the Eastern bloc is almost as bad as APNIC for spam.
With the sheer volume of spam from those regions, I highly doubt that this is the work of a few misconfigured mail servers. I think it is more a case of "follow the money".
>Lets not let a few rotten apples spoil it for everyone.
I only wish it was a few. Unfortunately, a significant portion of the West's spam originates from within IP blocks assigned to the Eastern bloc, and Asia. And we're not talking a few persistent relays. We're talking huge swaths of the address space, with more than a handful of ISPs operating or turning a blind eye.
I have a feeling that allowing open relays might be a marketable item for an ISP in some regions.
When I was in charge of handling the spam flood at my previous job, most of the spam originated from the APNIC region. Our sysadmins would periodically go on a hell-ride and block out Taiwan, China, and Korea. We received very few complaints about 5.1.1's, just the occasional grandparent who couldn't get mail from a relative overseas.
I never recieved a response from any of the operators of the relays, save for one that originated from a Chinese government body.
it's all about context. I can't stroll through your house and gather up misc. items and then brand you a terrorist. However, if you show up at my door holding a lighter in one hand, and a wick inserted into a bottle of Cheezwhiz filled with petrol in the other, well then we have different ballgame.
1997 Internet Collapses
2000 Aliens make contact with Earth
2000 Star Wars Episode II released
2001 February has only 28 days
2001 Microsoft develops first sentient software package, called MS AI.
2002 Aliens wage war on Earthlings
2002 Earth conquered, Aliens die from email virus
2003 Apes take over the planet
2003 Barbie is cloned
2003 Sony invents time machine
2004 MS AI 2005 convinces apemen to relinquish power
2005 Ian Pearson goes into rehab to tackle crack addiction
2006 teleportation has been a consumer commodity since 1995, who knew?
2007 AI is achieved, Microsoft sues for prior art
2008 Internet usage reaches 50% of US households
2009 Ian continues to smoke crack
2010 Crack found to be good for you
1897 French inventor discovers the secret to Time travel
2013 Internet reaches 75% US households
2013 Internet reaches record high of 22% of US households
2014 AI marries reanimated Elvis
2015 nanbots acheive person-status, exterminate 95% human population
2016 Matrix is created
2017 Darth Vader spotted at local Walmart
2019 Jesus returns, is really a woman
2020 Batboy found in church in Guatemala, suffers teh stigmata
2021 Grandmother in Florida has X-Ray vision
2022 Peopel live to be 100 years old
2023 Planet Earth blows up
2024 Humans wander galaxy
2025 Al gore invents internet, is of no use, planet earth is gone
2050 God is found to be a small post-op transexual man living in Iowa, is of no use, Planet Earth is gone
2003 Robots attain AI, Bill Gates launches lawsuit from cryo-chamner
2007 I like craack
2022 holo-porn invented, society crumbles
2024 ADSL comes to Britain
"25% of TV Celebrites are synthetic.... 2010"
Umm, I hate to break it to you like this...
"AI teachers in schools....2004"
2 years from now huh?
"AI doctors...2001"
We barely have it now, when did we have it last year?
"85% of American management personnel are knowledge workers....2005"
85% of American Management personnel know how to use Outlook 2005, but still open attachements from unknown sources.
"Creation of The Matrix....2025"
I'll pretend that I didn't actually read that.
I predict that there will NOT be any emotional robots, superior in intellect or strength.
I predict that we will NOT be jaunting to orbit, let alone the Moon, or Mars.
I predict that Ian will continue to make big bucks at BT selling snake oil to gullible execs.
We've been hearing that same tired story of human-like robots since "Robot" made it's way into popular culture. Robots are already here, and they are Us. WE are the robots, semi-autonomous creatures struggling to find purpose in our existence, striving for a more pure state, imprisoned in our shells.
All these memories like tears in the rain...
How can this guy seriously claim human-like robots by 2030? First, there is the technical difficulties of autonomous and sufficiently complex robots. Second, too many dollars go into DVD players and MP3 jukeboxes. We could be exploring space, but the richest citizens of the richest countries of the world want High def TV and satellite sports. feh.
Second, how the hell are we gonna send a manned mission to Mars in 8 years (NASA's current timeline) when we don't even have a base on the Moon? Christ Almighty, we're dinking around in orbit all this time, when we should have been building a test base on the moon. First you build an orbital station, then you build a moonbase, then you see if people don't succumb to fuckin space madness before you fire 5 humans off to Mars for a 3 year minumum round trip.
We have the perfect opportunity to experiment with short-term human habitation in space, and we're farting sround in the high arctic instead.
Sending humans to Mars without the slightest presence on the moon is like sailing for the New World without the slightest idea of how to row across a lake. You can't tell me the US gov't landed men on the fucken moon with a tinfoil go-cart powered by a computer as intelligent as a modern handheld calculator, without a hitch, no loss of life, and successfully returned them to Earth. Bullshit. If there is one reason I'm convinced we never made it to the Moon, it's the fact that we have abandoned it. And now we're just gonna pack up our shit, and blast straight off to Mars? yeah right. Meet your new flight director at NASA, Steven Speilberg.
I dont usually subscribe to conspiracy theory. Aliens, Area51, the Greys, Illuminati, -- whatever. But so help me, I am seriously doubtful about the idea that humankind walked on the moon. Stupid Cold War.
Anyways, predictions like that piss me off to no end. When I was a kid, I really wanted to be an astronaut, I really thought we would be exploring the solar system.
My eyes are open. We will not go to the Moon, we will not go to Mars. We will not have flying cars. We will not converse with Robots, go to vitrual work, have virtual meetings, or have jetpacks. We will not revolutionise agriculture, we will not feed the world, we will not be hit by an asteroid, we will not blow ourselves up in a nuclear holocaust nor will we invent warp drive(sorry to all those that attended Klingon 101).
And most importantly, Jesus is not coming back for a reunion tour.
.NET will be like any other tech, useful, but not as much as the hype said. It will not change the way we compute. P2P will fade away under litigation. The gov't will be bought and sold, IP will rise, copyright more restrictive, and the US will be good at 3 things: pizza, movies and music.
Oh and war. Can't forget war. It's as American as apple pie.
The future is dull. The future is WMA audio in my GPS SUV runnign WinCE, with bratty gun-toting children in the back seat playing HaX-b0x, a wife with orange tan-bed skin and enough plastic to make Barbie blush, hopped up on the the latest diet pills and anti-depressants being hocked by the FDA, while I can't wait to get home to play virtual holo-pr0n with my new Tera Patrick HDVD. Row upon row of 100 year-old people whose bodies refuse to die, while cancer ravages their scientifically enhanced bodies. Millions of chip-enhanced kids attending private schools and getting MBAs while Buddy the Sapien pumps gas for Mr. CEO, chairman of PharmGen, the company that provides memory upgrades and personality-mods. Oops there's a bug in CerebellumNT, please upgrade to service pack 8. Note: some installations of SP8 can cause complete storage failure, and in some cases, hemmhoraging. Please review the README before installation. This hotfix cannot be uninstalled. Young disaffected men from all over the world blow themselves up in public on a regular basis, in some protest of Western Decadence. Office pools bet on how many bodies will go pop in a given week. The new GMC armour-plated urban assualt vehicle is approved by the ATF, soccer moms rejoice. Police now regularly patrol in full combat gear. A new reality-based TV show called "the Running Man".....
Re:.NET according to Steve Ballmer & friends
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What is .NET?
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· Score: 2
You're not supposed to know, silly.
It's all marketing. Everybody gets to go home and bandy about the buzzword of the year, impress their other marketing friends, and blow some hot air at the regualr staff during a meeting.
It's a pep talk.
All the PHBs that attended are sitting around right now, drawing names out of a hat to see who gets the can so they can afford.NET
Re:My first thoughts after reading this:
on
What is .NET?
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· Score: 2
*Crazy ranting voice, removes clothes*
*Begins to douse self in petrol*
I just want to complain a bit here about the fact that all this PKI-ish assemblies and.NET whatever sounds like a good security model that would protect the OS and apps from trojans, virii, and cracking.
Isn't this what everyone wants MS to do? Clean up their act?
OTOH, I see your point about the double-edge of security inhibiting "fair-use". But really, the lock on your door denies me "fair-use" of your microwave, or your toilet, should the need arise, and I find myself in a jam.
Everything comes at a cost. Our ability (freedom if you will) to communicate via this forum means that we need to login and we prolly are firewalled too. Better security in Windows probably means an increased likelihood of DRM hardware and software, and an end to fair use (for the consumer -- I'm sure fair use of our private info in all forms will still be extended to The Corporation).
So which do you prefer:
1. Not having to deal with CodeRed.NET and only being able to watch that new LOTR DVD on an MS platform-compatible, DRM-compliant SONY player and.NET really turning out to be MS-Java, and MS "extending" the standard over time, with the result being something (off the top of my head here) akin to shitty browser implementations that can't render the same fucking page. (Mono vs dotGNU vs.NET, no communicado wrt to certain "features" available only under C# or.NET)
OR
2. Would you prefer to smugly proclaim your technical superiority to Windows lusers, mock MS developers, and continue to wage a holy-war against a company that doesnt *develop* software so much as it *markets* software. (HINT: They could give a shit less about what you think, they're in it for the bucks, it's kind of like trying to tell a Religious Zealot you don't need to be saved) We can all be secure in the knowledge that *nix is better than Windows, Xwindows doesnt suck too bad, and all we're really doing is marginalising Sun's low-end server market. But at least we'll still be able to hack DVD's.
Christ Almighty, I'm getting sick and fucking tired of the MS bashing. Honestly, I never, ever want to see a fucking MS box in a server room again. But if you really, truly believe that under the microscope of millions of hackers, the same number of clueless halfwits behind the wheels of Linux boxen wouldn't leave them unpatched and spread pico_LOVE_YOU, well you're even more susceptible to the herd-mind than PHBs.
"...total donations to political donations from Microsoft and its employees to political parties, candidates and PACs in the 2000 election cycle amounted to more than $6.1 million. During this period, Microsoft and its executives accounted for $2.3 million in soft money contributions..."
I'll agree that they don't fully explain how they arrive at the 6 million figure. None of the numbers provided add up, as the article lacks a thorough breakdown. Articles like this infuriate me because you never get the real story. Even after 300 words, all you have is an inflammatory headline (regardless of which "side" you're on), a bunch of numbers associated with a hot topic like money and politics, and not much else.
As for the actual concept of buying political favours; I think we're all adult enough to realize this is nothing new. All this does is confirm to us that MS does it too, just as we suspected.
Slashdot Mirror
The price is too high ;)
/. ? He should be able to answer the question himself...
Seriously, I have been kicking around the idea of getting a unit at rackspace or something and offering webhosting services. Then I see some of the posts here for basic hosting starting at $3/month with 2.5GB traffic!. Jeebus, how do you compete with that?
Kinda takes the wind outta my sails.
Incidentally, I host from home. It's a streaming audio service, so I will eventually need a faster pipe. But if this guy is a sysadmin, why is he even posting on
.
i
w i n .
A couple of years ago, I waited 8 weeks for benefits (normal wait is 4-6) while I burned through my savings that I set aside for school. During that time I had to move to a more expensive apartment. Shortly after moving, my first meager cheque arrived, adjusted for taxes, and the odd number of days left in the month. Later that week I found a job in a dodgy pharmacy pushing methodone. The place was legit, but it looked otherwise. So I figured, it's December, it's winter, I just moved, I just got my first cheque, and this "job" could dissapear; I'd be crazy to report the income. So I collected a couple more cheques until I was certain that the job was safe. Then I stopped collecting. Total money stolen: ~$1200 or about a month and a half.
A year later and back on my feet with a real job, the unemployment thugs came after me and sent me a nasty letter asking where the money was. I ignored it and they doubled the amount I owe them, plus a hefty penalty. They basically demanded all the money back, even the money I accepted when I was properly unemployed. I "stole" $1200 and right now I owe the gov't nearly $4000.
I'd like to know what any one of those smarmy workers at the labour board would do in the same situation. They're the biggest welfare cases of them all. Social workers are gov't subsidized workers, their salary is paid completely by the tax-payer. If that's not welfare I don't know what is. Shuffle some paper, reject an applicant, collect their cheque.
Strictly speaking, sans the MS spin, I think we can all agree that HTTP is overused.
.NET will have a built-in P2P app/browser. Add $100 bucks to the office price tag.
T K
Trying to build web apps that keep state, etc is a complete pain. Just try avoiding javascript because of different DOMs, and you'll wind up with alot of missing functionality. Then you have to use cookies, and hack up convoluted solutions for a simple problem.
People don't like cookies, they don't like javascript (stupid hack, mostly used for pop-up hell) and again, different browsers make dynamic content a real bitch.
What we need is the equivalent of the browser for web servcies (stupid catch-phrase). Whatever you want to call it, we need a client-server app that provides P2P services. I think MS wants to dominate another market by introducing another "browser" (the P2P app to end all p2p apps) only this time, they'll get their foot out the door before anyone like Netscape can compete.
They fumbled with the browser and wound up having to give it away. I have a feeling that Office
Didn't they buy groove networks? Just change the protocol it operates on.
Either way, someones going to have to punch a hole in the firewall, we cant just keeping using port 80. Web servers are for http pages. Real-time apps need another port, their own dedicated servers. Not Apache 2.2.13+modssl+PHP+mYSQL+dotNET+MP3+mod_Mono+mod_G
>Seriously though, the Internet is the future. Any government that doesn't go out of its way to ensure that its citizens have fast, secure, private, and low-cost connectivity only does it's citizens a disservice.
Which is precisely why no BC gov't will do a damn thing to turn this province high-tech despite our misnomer as Silicon-North, Hollywood-North. It would be against all our BC principles to create a gov't that could actually work *FOR* the people in a 25 year span of mismanagement.
No-Jobs-North more like it. I think I'd like to go home to Alberta. I don't miss the 18 years of *extreme* sub-zero winters, but at least the AB gov't is working for it's constituents.
because the Vancouver job market is dead as a doornail. Can anyone in AB testify to more jobs being there, I'll move back no problem....or is it more gov't work?
But it opens the door for third-party or industry sanctioned, consumer/commodity backup devices. I see a whole new market for DRM compliant backup devices.
For those of you in the hardware side, now's your chance to start a small company, put out a product that is cheap, well-made, reliable, satisfies the consumer need to make fair-use backups, and the need for copyright holders to protect their IP, all so you can grow fast, gain interest, become too big for your own infrastructure, go IPO, put out a crappy but much anticipated encore product because you're now thinly-veiled corporate schills, take a huge loss on R&D, advertising and lose millions, get bought out by a front company for one of the media cartels, and have an entire consumer goods market vanish from the face of the earth under the administration of the new parent company, who promises to develop the product but quietly buries it.
Sweet dreams, Adam Smith. Welcome to the New New Economy.
The problem is that most ISP customers do NOT view their provider as a common carrier.
;)
They expect the provider to do something about the spam, and become frustrated when things don't improve. Many problems are the direct result of ignorance on the part of 'netizens'. I'm sure plenty of people here can attest to still being hit by CodeRed probes by @Home and consumer DSL IP's. Spam, open relays, vulnerable boxen, customers that fuck-up a simple peer-based network in their home, customers that send useless BlackIce "I'm being HaX0red!" emails to support, people that respond to the wrong ISP when they get a 5.1.1 from MAILER-DAEMON....*sigh*, the people have no clue what's going on behind the scenes. This is a global information network, they want it to "just work".
I see your point about ISPs keeping a hands off approach, but then the majority of users are left to fend for themselves. If the users are frustrated by spam now, imagine their exasperation when they have to actually configure filtering rules in their mail client
Good points. I've only used Sendmail and qmail, and relaying is turned off by default in both. Enabling relaying in both requires alot of work for someone with limited understanding of both SMTP and the individual software package. Recompiling sendmail.cf(?) is a pain, and adding relaying to qmail is wholly obtuse.
:(
Even a newbie with copy of $distro will have to go out of their way to enable relaying, so their really is no excuse for a misconfig'd server these days. I think these open relays are deliberate.
I don't know the default status of the basic SMTP server in Windows, or of Exchange, but I can see Joe Privateenterprise installing his intranet mailserver and not having a clue. One more reason I'm frustrated stuck doing tech support. So many small outfits that "do-it-yourself", in need of a sysadmin.
Also, isn't sendmail installed by default to enable local mail? Like I said, relaying is off on any recent release, but I still see no reason for it to be running as a daemon on a default install.
My point about modding a gpl'd server was that I feared soemthing along the lines of SendSpam v1.0 being released, and the result being an army of Asian and East bloc admins installing it
whoops.
;)
here.
grep APNIC.
Of course, that includes AU, and NZ too. The other poster's idea is better
Netname: APNIC-CIDR-BLK
Netblock: 202.0.0.0 - 203.255.255.255
Maintainer: AP
I completely agree, the Eastern bloc is almost as bad as APNIC for spam.
With the sheer volume of spam from those regions, I highly doubt that this is the work of a few misconfigured mail servers. I think it is more a case of "follow the money".
>Lets not let a few rotten apples spoil it for everyone.
I only wish it was a few. Unfortunately, a significant portion of the West's spam originates from within IP blocks assigned to the Eastern bloc, and Asia. And we're not talking a few persistent relays. We're talking huge swaths of the address space, with more than a handful of ISPs operating or turning a blind eye.
I have a feeling that allowing open relays might be a marketable item for an ISP in some regions.
>Step one: Remove the Open Relay from the e-mail server software.
Good Idea. Only I can easily see someone taking some GPL'd mail server and adding open relaying into it again.
>Step two: Consider changing the process of sending/recieving e-mail....
Internet mail 2000. From DJ Berstein's site, creator of qmail.
When I was in charge of handling the spam flood at my previous job, most of the spam originated from the APNIC region. Our sysadmins would periodically go on a hell-ride and block out Taiwan, China, and Korea. We received very few complaints about 5.1.1's, just the occasional grandparent who couldn't get mail from a relative overseas.
I never recieved a response from any of the operators of the relays, save for one that originated from a Chinese government body.
it's all about context. I can't stroll through your house and gather up misc. items and then brand you a terrorist. However, if you show up at my door holding a lighter in one hand, and a wick inserted into a bottle of Cheezwhiz filled with petrol in the other, well then we have different ballgame.
>When the document isn't needed anymore, you change the URL content to "Not here anymore, sorry."
wayback machine
google
proxy caches
Copyright 2002© Ian Pearson
1997 Internet Collapses
2000 Aliens make contact with Earth
2000 Star Wars Episode II released
2001 February has only 28 days
2001 Microsoft develops first sentient software package, called MS AI.
2002 Aliens wage war on Earthlings
2002 Earth conquered, Aliens die from email virus
2003 Apes take over the planet
2003 Barbie is cloned
2003 Sony invents time machine
2004 MS AI 2005 convinces apemen to relinquish power
2005 Ian Pearson goes into rehab to tackle crack addiction
2006 teleportation has been a consumer commodity since 1995, who knew?
2007 AI is achieved, Microsoft sues for prior art
2008 Internet usage reaches 50% of US households
2009 Ian continues to smoke crack
2010 Crack found to be good for you
1897 French inventor discovers the secret to Time travel
2013 Internet reaches 75% US households
2013 Internet reaches record high of 22% of US households
2014 AI marries reanimated Elvis
2015 nanbots acheive person-status, exterminate 95% human population
2016 Matrix is created
2017 Darth Vader spotted at local Walmart
2019 Jesus returns, is really a woman
2020 Batboy found in church in Guatemala, suffers teh stigmata
2021 Grandmother in Florida has X-Ray vision
2022 Peopel live to be 100 years old
2023 Planet Earth blows up
2024 Humans wander galaxy
2025 Al gore invents internet, is of no use, planet earth is gone
2050 God is found to be a small post-op transexual man living in Iowa, is of no use, Planet Earth is gone
2003 Robots attain AI, Bill Gates launches lawsuit from cryo-chamner
2007 I like craack
2022 holo-porn invented, society crumbles
2024 ADSL comes to Britain
"25% of TV Celebrites are synthetic .... 2010"
Umm, I hate to break it to you like this...
"AI teachers in schools....2004"
2 years from now huh?
"AI doctors...2001"
We barely have it now, when did we have it last year?
"85% of American management personnel are knowledge workers....2005"
85% of American Management personnel know how to use Outlook 2005, but still open attachements from unknown sources.
"Creation of The Matrix....2025"
I'll pretend that I didn't actually read that.
I predict that there will NOT be any emotional robots, superior in intellect or strength.
I predict that we will NOT be jaunting to orbit, let alone the Moon, or Mars.
I predict that Ian will continue to make big bucks at BT selling snake oil to gullible execs.
We've been hearing that same tired story of human-like robots since "Robot" made it's way into popular culture. Robots are already here, and they are Us. WE are the robots, semi-autonomous creatures struggling to find purpose in our existence, striving for a more pure state, imprisoned in our shells.
All these memories like tears in the rain...
How can this guy seriously claim human-like robots by 2030? First, there is the technical difficulties of autonomous and sufficiently complex robots. Second, too many dollars go into DVD players and MP3 jukeboxes. We could be exploring space, but the richest citizens of the richest countries of the world want High def TV and satellite sports. feh.
Second, how the hell are we gonna send a manned mission to Mars in 8 years (NASA's current timeline) when we don't even have a base on the Moon? Christ Almighty, we're dinking around in orbit all this time, when we should have been building a test base on the moon. First you build an orbital station, then you build a moonbase, then you see if people don't succumb to fuckin space madness before you fire 5 humans off to Mars for a 3 year minumum round trip.
We have the perfect opportunity to experiment with short-term human habitation in space, and we're farting sround in the high arctic instead.
Sending humans to Mars without the slightest presence on the moon is like sailing for the New World without the slightest idea of how to row across a lake. You can't tell me the US gov't landed men on the fucken moon with a tinfoil go-cart powered by a computer as intelligent as a modern handheld calculator, without a hitch, no loss of life, and successfully returned them to Earth. Bullshit. If there is one reason I'm convinced we never made it to the Moon, it's the fact that we have abandoned it. And now we're just gonna pack up our shit, and blast straight off to Mars? yeah right. Meet your new flight director at NASA, Steven Speilberg.
I dont usually subscribe to conspiracy theory. Aliens, Area51, the Greys, Illuminati, -- whatever. But so help me, I am seriously doubtful about the idea that humankind walked on the moon. Stupid Cold War.
Anyways, predictions like that piss me off to no end. When I was a kid, I really wanted to be an astronaut, I really thought we would be exploring the solar system.
My eyes are open. We will not go to the Moon, we will not go to Mars. We will not have flying cars. We will not converse with Robots, go to vitrual work, have virtual meetings, or have jetpacks. We will not revolutionise agriculture, we will not feed the world, we will not be hit by an asteroid, we will not blow ourselves up in a nuclear holocaust nor will we invent warp drive(sorry to all those that attended Klingon 101).
And most importantly, Jesus is not coming back for a reunion tour.
What will happen is the US will continue its slide into a false democracy, evolving into a policestate-nation. We will drive electric-petrol hybrids, buy electricity from Mexico and Canada, who will later become "members" in a North American economic union, consumerism will replace capitalism, the corporation you work for will own your house, your car, and if they go tits up you're screwed. More R&D money will go into potentially commercially succesful ideas like DVD, Viagra, and SuperTomato© rather than disease research. Fewer businesses. Larger MegaCorps. Less diversity. Less convergence, more incompatibilities. One OS, one point of failure, one company in charge of your computer. One hardware platform, one copyright notice, onetime use, one payment method, 30 different subscriptions, 5 services. Whoops, that's the present.
.NET will be like any other tech, useful, but not as much as the hype said. It will not change the way we compute. P2P will fade away under litigation. The gov't will be bought and sold, IP will rise, copyright more restrictive, and the US will be good at 3 things: pizza, movies and music.
Oh and war. Can't forget war. It's as American as apple pie.
The future is dull. The future is WMA audio in my GPS SUV runnign WinCE, with bratty gun-toting children in the back seat playing HaX-b0x, a wife with orange tan-bed skin and enough plastic to make Barbie blush, hopped up on the the latest diet pills and anti-depressants being hocked by the FDA, while I can't wait to get home to play virtual holo-pr0n with my new Tera Patrick HDVD. Row upon row of 100 year-old people whose bodies refuse to die, while cancer ravages their scientifically enhanced bodies. Millions of chip-enhanced kids attending private schools and getting MBAs while Buddy the Sapien pumps gas for Mr. CEO, chairman of PharmGen, the company that provides memory upgrades and personality-mods. Oops there's a bug in CerebellumNT, please upgrade to service pack 8. Note: some installations of SP8 can cause complete storage failure, and in some cases, hemmhoraging. Please review the README before installation. This hotfix cannot be uninstalled. Young disaffected men from all over the world blow themselves up in public on a regular basis, in some protest of Western Decadence. Office pools bet on how many bodies will go pop in a given week. The new GMC armour-plated urban assualt vehicle is approved by the ATF, soccer moms rejoice. Police now regularly patrol in full combat gear. A new reality-based TV show called "the Running Man".....
A truly geeky proposal ;)
Best wishes to you both.
You're not supposed to know, silly.
.NET
It's all marketing. Everybody gets to go home and bandy about the buzzword of the year, impress their other marketing friends, and blow some hot air at the regualr staff during a meeting.
It's a pep talk.
All the PHBs that attended are sitting around right now, drawing names out of a hat to see who gets the can so they can afford
*Crazy ranting voice, removes clothes*
.NET whatever sounds like a good security model that would protect the OS and apps from trojans, virii, and cracking.
.NET really turning out to be MS-Java, and MS "extending" the standard over time, with the result being something (off the top of my head here) akin to shitty browser implementations that can't render the same fucking page. (Mono vs dotGNU vs .NET, no communicado wrt to certain "features" available only under C# or .NET)
*Begins to douse self in petrol*
I just want to complain a bit here about the fact that all this PKI-ish assemblies and
Isn't this what everyone wants MS to do? Clean up their act?
OTOH, I see your point about the double-edge of security inhibiting "fair-use". But really, the lock on your door denies me "fair-use" of your microwave, or your toilet, should the need arise, and I find myself in a jam.
Everything comes at a cost. Our ability (freedom if you will) to communicate via this forum means that we need to login and we prolly are firewalled too. Better security in Windows probably means an increased likelihood of DRM hardware and software, and an end to fair use (for the consumer -- I'm sure fair use of our private info in all forms will still be extended to The Corporation).
So which do you prefer:
1. Not having to deal with CodeRed.NET and only being able to watch that new LOTR DVD on an MS platform-compatible, DRM-compliant SONY player and
OR
2. Would you prefer to smugly proclaim your technical superiority to Windows lusers, mock MS developers, and continue to wage a holy-war against a company that doesnt *develop* software so much as it *markets* software. (HINT: They could give a shit less about what you think, they're in it for the bucks, it's kind of like trying to tell a Religious Zealot you don't need to be saved) We can all be secure in the knowledge that *nix is better than Windows, Xwindows doesnt suck too bad, and all we're really doing is marginalising Sun's low-end server market. But at least we'll still be able to hack DVD's.
Christ Almighty, I'm getting sick and fucking tired of the MS bashing. Honestly, I never, ever want to see a fucking MS box in a server room again. But if you really, truly believe that under the microscope of millions of hackers, the same number of clueless halfwits behind the wheels of Linux boxen wouldn't leave them unpatched and spread pico_LOVE_YOU, well you're even more susceptible to the herd-mind than PHBs.
*Crazy voice trails off, lights match*
*FOOM!*
6.1 million campaign dollars says it'll never happen.
I GOT ONE! Don't let 'em git away!
YeeeeHaaaawww!
SQUEAL, BOY!!! *grunt* grunt*
from the article:
"...total donations to political donations from Microsoft and its employees to political parties, candidates and PACs in the 2000 election cycle amounted to more than $6.1 million. During this period, Microsoft and its executives accounted for $2.3 million in soft money contributions..."
I'll agree that they don't fully explain how they arrive at the 6 million figure. None of the numbers provided add up, as the article lacks a thorough breakdown. Articles like this infuriate me because you never get the real story. Even after 300 words, all you have is an inflammatory headline (regardless of which "side" you're on), a bunch of numbers associated with a hot topic like money and politics, and not much else.
As for the actual concept of buying political favours; I think we're all adult enough to realize this is nothing new. All this does is confirm to us that MS does it too, just as we suspected.
and the Mass Misinformation Machine rolls on...