This is true, but the cost of the backbones is spread across evyone who uses it. Penny-Arcade (for example) doesn't pay C&W for the traffic originating from their servers. They pay their ISP. If I'm mirroring their content, then I can (in theory, it would never work this way) half their bandwidth bill.
That's all I was trying to say with my original post. Many hands make light labor, and many (diversly located) servers make for light(er) bandwidth bills. Akamai just automates this (to great effect).
If I had bandwidth to spare, I'd be happy to set myself up as a mirror. As it is, I have a 128K return path, which is just about enough for two or three modem users to saturate. True this would possibly aliviate some main server from having to deal with those two or three folks, but the reward just doesn't justify the effort for me.
Ironic isn't it? I found your post, because it was one I got to meta-moderate.
Anyways, I have to write to disagree. Meta-moding every negative post as unfair without even checking the contents seems to me to be as productive as marking the first five comments you see "Insightful" regardless of content.
I take meta-moding seriously. I take moderating seriously. I choose to not use my moderation points to "punish" bad posts, but I can respect those who do. Sure I find the whole downgrading AC posts wasteful, but I choose not to do it.
True, once a troll post has hit -1, the poster doesn't loose any more Karma, but enough -1 mods (of non "Offtopic" or "Redundant" nature) and their IP gets banned from posting. Perhaps that puts negative moderation in a different light?
I'm in agreement with you that negative posting is wasteful, but I also don't feel that it is completly evil.
Very good points. I misunderstood your original premise.
I still think that having multiple nodes with the same information would lead to less congestion overall (just as building housing near emplyment reduces overall vehicular traffic), and lower costs for specific servers (such as kernel.org).
As a side note, both the local phone company and the ILEC that has plant in town (a Lucent 5E switch capable of both local and LD) and owns the cable company, as well as the biggest upstream fibre optic link (it's really a mess) are ISP's.
But that's my point. It's the reason that AOL uses proxies. The reason that your browser has a disk cache of recently accessed objects. If every request required the transfer of all of the information needed to render a web page...
Think about the time (NIST) servers. There is a really small number of tier 1 servers (or is there just one?), a greater (but still small) number of teir two servers feeding off of the teir one. Then there are the teir three servers. My ISP runs a tier four server and encourages all of its customers to use it. If everyone could access the tier one server its bandwidth usage would be astounding. As it stands, ntp requests are spread over a fairly large spectrum of servers.
Look at akamai. They keep fairly local repositories of bandwidth intensive material. When I check my online comics, I receive the images from an akamia server at my ISP. I get the content faster, my ISP doesn't have to pay for the upstream bandwidth of me viewing the comic, and the comics image server doesn't have the added stress of my viewing this image.
If I had a 10MB connection to the internet I'd be more willing to share that resource, and as such could provide content topologically closer to people around me. Spread the pain so to speak.
Not everyone would decide to be a Debian mirror. Only one (or five) of us would. The rest would snag it from him (or them).
If I had a 10MB connection to my house, I'd mirror shit just to mirror it. I'd download kernels and patches, and tell the maintainers to put me on the list of mirrors. And I wouldn't be alone.
That's one of the reasons that P2P networks work so well. There are so many nodes to get the information from.
Server bandwidth is expensive because it is a scarce commodity. How much do you pay per month for the 100MB connection between your workstation and your server? If you (conveniently) don't count the cost of the infrastructure, the price is zero. Factor in the cost of the infrastructure, and amortize it over the life of the equipment and that number is still ridiculously low. ($70 for two NICs, $80 for a half-decent switch (optional), say it's only good for a year. That's $12.50 a month!)
Server bandwidth is expensive because servers are concentrated into little high traffic nodes. Spread the traffic out (ala freenet, gnutella, morpheus, etc.) and costs drop dramatically. Make bandwidth a commodity, and you will start paying commodity prices.
Coins don't seem to travel as well... Run a quick experiment, and empty the change from your pocket. I happen to have 7 quarters. Somewhere on the coin you will find either a D (minted in Denver, CO) or a P (minted in Philadelphia, PA). All 7 of my quarters (1981, 1989, 1996, 1998, 2000(x2), 2001) have a D stamped on them. I've been trying to collect commemerative quarters from both mints, and have found the only way I can get P minted quarters is by trading with people on the East coast. YMMV (as I am writing from Anchorage, AK), and I'd love to see the results.
Specifically, the dollar value of all music product shipments decreased from $6.2 billion at mid-year 2000 to $5.9 billion at mid-year 2001 - a 4.4 percent decrease. Unit shipments dropped from 488.7 million at mid-year 2000 to 442.7 million units at mid-year 2001 - a 9.4 percent decrease, according to figures released today by the RIAA.
One of the more interesting innovations in OS X is the fact that PDF technology is pervasive in the operating system -- the Quartz display engine is built on top of Display PostScript, as was NeXTStep's. This means it's possible to output from any application that can print directly to PDF. Select Print, then click Preview. The document is rendered to PDF and displayed in the built-in Preview application. Do a Save As... and you've got your PDF. No need to purchase or install Acrobat, and no need for 3rd party software to integrate with particular applications. It's just there. Very nice.
The printable version of this document was created with this technique.
No wonder I can't find the PDF. It's on Scot's desktop machine. </humor>
Re:'Nother concern to add to the list...
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 1
That's what I get for reading the "printable" version. My feelings are (obviously) not changed by this new information. Not that I think you were trying to sway my opinion. Bah.
Still a neat toy. Still not going to profoundly change my life.
Look at the transition from processor specific assembly to (possibly portable) C code. (Were computers not originally programmed with direct binary instructions?) More software is being written in interpretive languages (such as Perl and Java) than ever before. The transition you are asking for is occuring, whether you realize it or not. It has been occurring since computers came to be.
Driving on snow and ice...
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 2
Actually, I think the cold extreme can be withstood if you don't have snow and ice. But as I learned this week, it just really sucks without a hat. Of course, when its really that bad outside, should people be driving at all?
What? Are you kidding? Not drive, just because there is snow on the ground? How the hell am I supposed to get around for 4-5 months out of the year? (I live in Anchorage, AK) Not only do we drive on the snow and ice (with the help of studded or "siped" tires, such as the blizzak) we actually RACE on it. Oh, yeah. We race using motocycles too.
But in the car, you have shelter from the elements (and a heater too!), on the motorcycle (racing at least), you have exursion pushing the bike around (not to mention the heat of the engine between your knees). The Segway takes both of those benefits away.
It looks like a cool toy/tool, and it certainly has its uses, but I'm sure not going to be replacing my car any time soon.
'Nother concern to add to the list...
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 2
3. What do you do when the weather gets cold? I have a 5 mile drive to work, and the temperature was a paltry -9*F (-23*C). You think I'm going to sit on an exposed seat and let the wind chill drop the temp to (aprox) -50*F (-46*C)? Guess again. I used to deliver newspapers on my bike in the morning, years ago. At least then I was exurting effort, thereby keeping myself warm. With the Segway, I have no such advantage.
Not only that, but the performance testing was done with only one computer pushing data.
I bought a cheap switch, as I figured that it would have a sufficient "back plane" to push data for more than one connection at a time. Wrong. The D-link DSS-8+ is the only (consumer level) switch that I have seen that reports to having a 1.6GB back plane (enough to handle all ports in full duplex mode). Guess what's on my Christmas list this year.
What kind of a back plane does this switch have? How much of a hit (and how many collisions are going to be introduced into my netowrk) if more than one computer is passing traffic through this thing.
It was nice of 3Com to personalize this thing for the reviewer. It seems to have saved them from a serious testing.
The switch works a bit better that the SMC 4 port that the reviever was using as a basis of comparison. Bottom line, if you like the form factor, and think that justifies the price increase, go for it.
If you can't live without Apache, there's always mod_bandwidth.
Not quite as elegant a solution, but it's nice for preventing your web server from taking all of your bandwidth (if, say, you run it off your cable modem, and wish to continue gaming...).
If there is a plane crash and hundreds die it makes the front page. Thousands of car accidents where a few (or zero) people die in each one. Yawn.
The common activities (such as auto accidents and proprietary software piracy) are not news after the Nth occurance (where N is a sufficiently great number, as related to the event in question). Sufficently rare activities (such as the "theft" of GPL code, or plane crashes) happen infrequently enough that the general public (or the/. crowd) find it interesting. That's how it works.
Very cool idea. I see a couple of issues with it as a viable solution for many users:
1) Both of you must have a dedicated gateway computer (with the xboxgw software, you just need to reboot, using a boot disk). Not a problem for some, but the person quoted in the forum thread only has a Win98 box (with one NIC, and is "not a tech wiz".
...if you attempted to play more than two (1 to 1) players, then it would really kill Jbandwidth[sic], as it would mesh (bridge to everywhere) all traffic. This isn't needed, since with the "System Link" games, one console is a server, and all other clients only need to talk to that one server, not to eachother. Thus, this would be another huge waste of bandwith.
Perhaps I am off base here, as I have not actually used TUN/TAP, nor do I own a XBox. Maybe all you would have to do is create links from each client to the server (a start instead of a mesh). Very good thinking all the same.
Where did you find statistics about "cars at 30,000 feet"?
The car is probably safer, as it is likely a smaller target for other things to hit.
"It's not the fall that kills you, just the sudden stop at the end."
Slashdot Mirror
This is true, but the cost of the backbones is spread across evyone who uses it. Penny-Arcade (for example) doesn't pay C&W for the traffic originating from their servers. They pay their ISP. If I'm mirroring their content, then I can (in theory, it would never work this way) half their bandwidth bill.
That's all I was trying to say with my original post. Many hands make light labor, and many (diversly located) servers make for light(er) bandwidth bills. Akamai just automates this (to great effect).
If I had bandwidth to spare, I'd be happy to set myself up as a mirror. As it is, I have a 128K return path, which is just about enough for two or three modem users to saturate. True this would possibly aliviate some main server from having to deal with those two or three folks, but the reward just doesn't justify the effort for me.
Ironic isn't it? I found your post, because it was one I got to meta-moderate.
Anyways, I have to write to disagree. Meta-moding every negative post as unfair without even checking the contents seems to me to be as productive as marking the first five comments you see "Insightful" regardless of content.
I take meta-moding seriously. I take moderating seriously. I choose to not use my moderation points to "punish" bad posts, but I can respect those who do. Sure I find the whole downgrading AC posts wasteful, but I choose not to do it.
True, once a troll post has hit -1, the poster doesn't loose any more Karma, but enough -1 mods (of non "Offtopic" or "Redundant" nature) and their IP gets banned from posting. Perhaps that puts negative moderation in a different light?
I'm in agreement with you that negative posting is wasteful, but I also don't feel that it is completly evil.
Very good points. I misunderstood your original premise.
I still think that having multiple nodes with the same information would lead to less congestion overall (just as building housing near emplyment reduces overall vehicular traffic), and lower costs for specific servers (such as kernel.org).
As a side note, both the local phone company and the ILEC that has plant in town (a Lucent 5E switch capable of both local and LD) and owns the cable company, as well as the biggest upstream fibre optic link (it's really a mess) are ISP's.
But that's my point. It's the reason that AOL uses proxies. The reason that your browser has a disk cache of recently accessed objects. If every request required the transfer of all of the information needed to render a web page...
Think about the time (NIST) servers. There is a really small number of tier 1 servers (or is there just one?), a greater (but still small) number of teir two servers feeding off of the teir one. Then there are the teir three servers. My ISP runs a tier four server and encourages all of its customers to use it. If everyone could access the tier one server its bandwidth usage would be astounding. As it stands, ntp requests are spread over a fairly large spectrum of servers.
Look at akamai. They keep fairly local repositories of bandwidth intensive material. When I check my online comics, I receive the images from an akamia server at my ISP. I get the content faster, my ISP doesn't have to pay for the upstream bandwidth of me viewing the comic, and the comics image server doesn't have the added stress of my viewing this image.
If I had a 10MB connection to the internet I'd be more willing to share that resource, and as such could provide content topologically closer to people around me. Spread the pain so to speak.
Not everyone would decide to be a Debian mirror. Only one (or five) of us would. The rest would snag it from him (or them).
Ah, it's so much fun to dream of utopia.
...or did Hell really freeze over?
The Reg actually defending Microsoft?
Thanks for the link. That was a really interesting read...
Where will the bandwidth come from?
Me.
If I had a 10MB connection to my house, I'd mirror shit just to mirror it. I'd download kernels and patches, and tell the maintainers to put me on the list of mirrors. And I wouldn't be alone.
That's one of the reasons that P2P networks work so well. There are so many nodes to get the information from.
Server bandwidth is expensive because it is a scarce commodity. How much do you pay per month for the 100MB connection between your workstation and your server? If you (conveniently) don't count the cost of the infrastructure, the price is zero. Factor in the cost of the infrastructure, and amortize it over the life of the equipment and that number is still ridiculously low. ($70 for two NICs, $80 for a half-decent switch (optional), say it's only good for a year. That's $12.50 a month!)
Server bandwidth is expensive because servers are concentrated into little high traffic nodes. Spread the traffic out (ala freenet, gnutella, morpheus, etc.) and costs drop dramatically. Make bandwidth a commodity, and you will start paying commodity prices.
Coins don't seem to travel as well... Run a quick experiment, and empty the change from your pocket. I happen to have 7 quarters. Somewhere on the coin you will find either a D (minted in Denver, CO) or a P (minted in Philadelphia, PA). All 7 of my quarters (1981, 1989, 1996, 1998, 2000(x2), 2001) have a D stamped on them. I've been trying to collect commemerative quarters from both mints, and have found the only way I can get P minted quarters is by trading with people on the East coast. YMMV (as I am writing from Anchorage, AK), and I'd love to see the results.
Those people that are really hard up for Christmas present ideas...
None of the people actually using XP get to fly. They are chained to a computer while they watch others fly by. Seriously. Watch it again.
(Too bad adcritic is no more. They would have had an easily accessable copy of the commercial)
See: http://www.riaa.com/News_Story.cfm?id=446 for the RIAA news story; http://www.riaa.com/pdf/midyear_2001.pdf for the actual statistics.
Here's the relevant bit:
Here's the math:
$6.2B/488.7M = $12.69/Unit (last year)
$5.9B/442.7M = $13.33/Unit (this year)
Simple economics. Charge more, sell less. Especially with a weak economy.
No wonder I can't find the PDF. It's on Scot's desktop machine. </humor>
That's what I get for reading the "printable" version. My feelings are (obviously) not changed by this new information. Not that I think you were trying to sway my opinion. Bah.
Still a neat toy. Still not going to profoundly change my life.
Look at the transition from processor specific assembly to (possibly portable) C code. (Were computers not originally programmed with direct binary instructions?) More software is being written in interpretive languages (such as Perl and Java) than ever before. The transition you are asking for is occuring, whether you realize it or not. It has been occurring since computers came to be.
Rob Schnider in The Animal. Does that satisfy your requirments?
;o)
Seesh!
Just copy and paste to spellonline.com.
Simple.
What? Are you kidding? Not drive, just because there is snow on the ground? How the hell am I supposed to get around for 4-5 months out of the year? (I live in Anchorage, AK) Not only do we drive on the snow and ice (with the help of studded or "siped" tires, such as the blizzak) we actually RACE on it. Oh, yeah. We race using motocycles too.
But in the car, you have shelter from the elements (and a heater too!), on the motorcycle (racing at least), you have exursion pushing the bike around (not to mention the heat of the engine between your knees). The Segway takes both of those benefits away.
It looks like a cool toy/tool, and it certainly has its uses, but I'm sure not going to be replacing my car any time soon.
3. What do you do when the weather gets cold? I have a 5 mile drive to work, and the temperature was a paltry -9*F (-23*C). You think I'm going to sit on an exposed seat and let the wind chill drop the temp to (aprox) -50*F (-46*C)? Guess again. I used to deliver newspapers on my bike in the morning, years ago. At least then I was exurting effort, thereby keeping myself warm. With the Segway, I have no such advantage.
Thanks, but no thanks.
The back up server is still online.
i ndex.html
http://www2.tomshardware.com/network/01q4/011129/
Not only that, but the performance testing was done with only one computer pushing data.
I bought a cheap switch, as I figured that it would have a sufficient "back plane" to push data for more than one connection at a time. Wrong. The D-link DSS-8+ is the only (consumer level) switch that I have seen that reports to having a 1.6GB back plane (enough to handle all ports in full duplex mode). Guess what's on my Christmas list this year.
What kind of a back plane does this switch have? How much of a hit (and how many collisions are going to be introduced into my netowrk) if more than one computer is passing traffic through this thing.
It was nice of 3Com to personalize this thing for the reviewer. It seems to have saved them from a serious testing.
The butler did it.
J/K
The switch works a bit better that the SMC 4 port that the reviever was using as a basis of comparison. Bottom line, if you like the form factor, and think that justifies the price increase, go for it.
If you can't live without Apache, there's always mod_bandwidth.
Not quite as elegant a solution, but it's nice for preventing your web server from taking all of your bandwidth (if, say, you run it off your cable modem, and wish to continue gaming...).
Would it make you happier if I was to ammend that to say "Sufficently rarely reported activities"?
Same difference.
If there is a plane crash and hundreds die it makes the front page. Thousands of car accidents where a few (or zero) people die in each one. Yawn.
/. crowd) find it interesting. That's how it works.
The common activities (such as auto accidents and proprietary software piracy) are not news after the Nth occurance (where N is a sufficiently great number, as related to the event in question). Sufficently rare activities (such as the "theft" of GPL code, or plane crashes) happen infrequently enough that the general public (or the
1) Both of you must have a dedicated gateway computer (with the xboxgw software, you just need to reboot, using a boot disk). Not a problem for some, but the person quoted in the forum thread only has a Win98 box (with one NIC, and is "not a tech wiz".
2) According to the xboxgw HOWTO:
Perhaps I am off base here, as I have not actually used TUN/TAP, nor do I own a XBox. Maybe all you would have to do is create links from each client to the server (a start instead of a mesh). Very good thinking all the same.
Where did you find statistics about "cars at 30,000 feet"?
The car is probably safer, as it is likely a smaller target for other things to hit.
"It's not the fall that kills you, just the sudden stop at the end."