Good idea. With Linux, I should release / renew just by shutting down the ethernet interface and restarting, right? I haven't even bothered to try this. When I went to attach my firewall and it didn't work, I spent hours trying to figure out why. Once I spat out all the debugging information for the dhcp client, I saw clearly what the problem was, and spoofed the MAC address. I've just left the spoofed address there ever since.
In other words, the SOB's deliberately OVERSELL their bandwidth
I agree that this is a real bummer, but I'm not sure why you are so surprised. Every single utility does this. Ever get an "all circuits are busy" message from the telco? What happens in a city when the temperature is really really hot and everybody turns on their air conditioning? How about if too many people in one location try to use cell phones? Heck, we're even under water restrictions because the water authority didn't plan a large enough reservoir to last through a couple dry years for the current population.
If you pay for the service, you should be able to do anything you want with the bandwidth that you are supposed to get. I don't think there is any harm in sharing your connection with your neighbors if you want to.
I won't get into an argument of whether it's right or wrong, but as most are aware, high bandwidth ISP's promise a connection speed of "up to" some value, which is their way of saying that during peak times, you won't get this speed. They expect a single connection to their services to have periodic spikes of activity, not a constant level of activity at the promised speed. As you put more and more people on the same connection, you get closer to saturating that connection. Most ISP's have not planned their capacity to handle that, so it could really put them in hot water with regards to performance for their other customers.
Like I said, I won't get into an immediate discussion of right or wrong, but we can't assume that an ISP with 1GB of total capacity on a particular loop has only sold 1MB connections to 1000 customers on that loop.
I know some cable ISP's *cough*comacast*cough* restrict the access to a single MAC address coming from one IP.
My cable ISP does this too, although they have no problem with using multiple computers through NAT. Because of this, I don't think MAC address is how they would detect NAT. The firewall sends everything out as the same MAC address. In fact, I had to spoof the MAC on the firewall because when I first connected, I used my laptop to test the connection, so it wants that MAC address all the time.
I think there are other ways of detecting NAT, as the firewall has to do some mangling of the headers to help determine where the response should go, but I can't remember the specifics.
He could be speaking of the end of open source in the business sense.
Where in the article did it mention him indicating the end of Open Source? The warning statement was about the end of "Open Computing," and I believe he was referring to Digital Rights Management and other cryptographic technologies being built into the hardware and operating system. Personally, I find this concept MORE frightening than ending Open Source, but he's doing nothing more here than repeating what all of the big corporate conglomerates (RIAA, etc) have been trying to convince us of. Sad really. As much as I don't like Mr. Gates, I would have hoped that the geek in him wouldn't have caved so quickly.
While I agree that some of the things are unreasonable, I don't agree with all your reasoning.
3 No passenger will be separated from his baggage during the screening process. All screening of passenger carry-on items shall be handled in the full view of the passenger.
This is ludicrous. A carry-on item is screened with the assumption that it might contain a weapon for use in hijacking. A discreet search by a competent guard will be more effective, and less embarassing.
No, no, no. The best thing would be to search the baggage with the passenger present, but perform the search in a private room. I certainly don't want my baggage searched without me there to oversee.
4 All passengers traveling with family members shall have the right to have one adult family member present during all aspects of the screening process.
Also foolish. If they're criminals, leaving them together will allow them to obfuscate any crime, and possibly allow them to overpower or outwit the guards. If they're innocent, leaving them together will encourage reciporcal indignation, slowing down the process.
This is NOT foolish. If my wife (or my son) were taken for questioning and I wasn't allowed to go with them, they'd probably have to kill me to subdue me. They WILL NOT separate my family from my protection. They can bring in all the guards they want for an interrogation, but I'm not letting them isolate my wife and/or son.
8. Screeners will not be permitted to search the contents of a wallet or other item carrying passenger's cash or credit cards without a supervisor present.
Silly. All this does is encouage false "supervisors."
A better idea would be to require all such checks to be completed in front of a functioning recording device, and assume a $500 cash-on-hand if the recording device isn't working. Make the airline have the burden of proof, and the recording device won't be ignored.
I agree with this one. Furthermore, they should provide a copy of the video immediately on demand to the passenger who was searched. In the event of a dispute, the copy should be provided to a federal agent in the presence of witnesses.
Better: No otherwise legal item shall be confiscated. The passenger may have otherwise legal items packed into USPS containers, and sent home at their own expense. Passengers shouldn't have the *right* to pack their own contraband, and neither should airlines be liable for shipping the items back to the passenger.
Partly agreed. If item is illegal, it should be confiscated. If legal, but clearly not allowed on airline (on a list of banned items), it should be mailed to my address at my expense. If legal and only disallowed at airline's whim, it should be mailed to any address I specify at the expense of the airline.
Do you have actual numbers to support your claim? I'm pretty sure that NYC is supporting the rest of the state, not the other way around.
Actually, I don't. I'm just going on statements made by government officials when I was living in NY. They may very well have been lying to cover up their on ineptitude. If I can find some figures to support or refute my claim, I'll let you know. BTW, I'm certainly not saying that NYC citizens should pay more in taxes; they are more than high enough as it is.
driving a car and drinking coffee is not safe for reasons other than 3rd degree burns and cannot be considered as intended use.
She wasn't driving. The car wasn't moving. The same thing COULD have happened while sitting in a chair in the McD's restaurant, although the table would probably have added some measure of security. Also, bear in mind that they sell the coffee AT the drive-thru, WITH a cup holder AND a lid that is specifically designed to allow you to drink while driving or otherwise not sitting at a table.
It is perfectly reasonable to serve near-boiling temperature coffee (what is generally considered "fresh") and let the customer decide when to start consuming the beverage.
The only problem with this is that the temperature at which the coffee was served was too hot for anyone to drink right away. The main explanation for this was for people who were driving to the office. The coffee would be just ready to drink when they arrived.
Anyway, if you're going to argue about the coffee incident, you'll have to throw away "intended use." There are several other valid arguments available anyway.
this posting is as off topic as a panda in switzerland so don't be afraid to mod it such
Even though NYC is still growing population-wise, many other parts of NYS are shrinking.
And one of the prime reasons for this is the high level of taxation coupled with very low wages. I have friends up there making $8.50 / hour at jobs that would pay $16.00 / hour elsewhere. Even at these rates, there are many people out of work. Why? Taxes. NYS has really high taxes. Part of this is because money is channeled from state taxes to support NYC because it costs more to run the city than can be collected there in taxes. Before any of you NYC dwellers flame me, understand that I'm perfectly aware that the situation used to be the other way around -- NYC supported the rest of the state.
Anyway, I suspect an available labor pool used to lower wages would be pretty attractive to some companies. Also, I'm not sure about Albany, but in many upstate areas, real estate costs are reasonably low.
As Motor Trend [motortrend.com] reported in May, they're using Microsoft's embedded operating system, Windows CE.
And if this is the case, it answers most of the questions as to why they chose a Windows product. The automotive version of Windows CE has a realtime kernel -- an absolute must for this kind of application.
With NT4, NT5, and NT5.1 out there, why bother with the old 9x tree?
I'm only guessing, but it may be because Win98 is a little more friendly towards direct manipulation of the hardware. NT-based Windows versions really try hard to isolate the programmer from direct communication with hardware. By having more direct access to hardware, you get a step closer to realtime capabilities. However, as I said earlier in another thread, I would have thought DOS would have been a better candidate here.
Would this have even made it onto/. if the car didn't run Windows 98??
More importantly, would this have even made it onto MSNBC if the car didn't run on Windows? But seriously, thanks for the links -- a little more detailed info on the car is appreciated.
I would think they could run a standard kernel and do their own application on top of it,p> Actually, I would think a realtime kernel would be better for this kind of task. Do you agree?
I'd like to see linux circa 1998 try and power a car.
What makes you think it would have been any less capable at it than Windows 98? Actually, I'm really surprised that they chose Win98. I would have expected a realtime-ready OS for a job like this. In fact, DOS would have probably been a better choice in this case than any of the Windows versions or normal Linux distributions.
The linked 10 reasons are all bullshit. If the company likes you enough to match the offer, and you are otherwise happy where you are, take it. All you've shown your company is that you have goals, too.
Most employers like that.
This was obviously posted by the person who made the counter offer. (just kidding). But seriously, the question you need to ask yourself is: "If they can afford to make the counter offer, that means they could have afforded that much all along. Do I really want to continue working for a company that has obviously been deceptive in their pay practices?" This is especially true in your case because of the massive pay cut you were forced to take earlier.
Perhaps other states will follow suit, or is this false hope?
Only other states that have a similar competition law would be able to do this. Consumers in idaho were able to sue only because of the 1976 Competition Law.
However, if more strong antitrust sanctions against Microsoft are not gained at the federal level, I wouldn't be surprised if dissenting states decide to create special laws to handle such cases in the future.
Everything you say is true. I definitely subscribe to the "less TV" philosophy. However, if I'm going to have cable TV, I'm not opposed to paying for it. I consider that I'm paying for delivery (clear picture, lots of channels) rather than content. As far as premium channels go, most of them don't have commercials, so paying for them isn't surprising.
And pay about 170 times the value of what you stole, which seems pretty excessive to me.
Since this is a civil suit, you can be pretty sure that this figure will be adjusted down. It's common to start of high as a scare tactic and hope that the issue will be settled out of court.
Also, bear in mind that Comcast could have chosen to press criminal charges, which would have resulted in both a hefty fine AND time spent in jail.
They have a small but nonnegligible number of people contributing to antigravity, perpetual motion, and other pseudo-science.
Ah, but it's sometimes the pursuit of foolishness that finds the real gem hidden in the grass. They may never actually make any of the psuedo-sciences work, but they may discover something useful (and totally unrelated) in their meandering path. It's fine by me as long as they keep the number of people and dollars small.
I live in Australia where there is a "Duopoly" (2 companies own all the cable/ phone lines)
We now can't buy an affordable plan with more than about a 3 to 4.5 GB limit any more.
I suspect that what you really have going on is "price fixing." I don't know about the laws in Australia, but that's illegal in the US. Even if they were approximately at the same price and one CEO just called the other and said "I'm happy with prices where they are, let's keep it that way," that would still be illegal. On the other hand, though, the government actually has to enforce that law, which it really seems to be reluctant to do here lately.
Good God, can you imagine the hassle if there are 5 or 6 startups all wanting to lay cable/fiber/etc on your street and across your property? Especially since they won't all come at the same time.
You're right. I thought about this after submitting.
What is needed is one company controlling the local infrastructure, and charging for access to it.
I'm not sure if this is the best idea either, as it still leaves a monopoly in charge of the infrastructure. If the government wasn't at least as greedy as the companies, I'd say they should control it. Unfortunately, history indicates how much of a failure that would probably be. See my response to "johnalex" for some other ideas. None of them are optimal, though. I don't really know WHAT the best solution is for that "last mile" problem. The utility pole in my front yard is looking overloaded as it is.
I'm not so certain about everyone building their own infrastructure - seems like a waste of resources.
You're probably right. And I'm not sure I'd want them all digging up the street, either.
I don't claim to know how the details would work, but it seems the information infrastructure should be public domain. Perhaps the feds should reimburse companies for existing infrastructure and contract with private entities to provide maintenance, upgrades, and expansions. That way, startups wouldn't have to undergo the horrendous process of petitioning monopolies and/or the courts for access rights.
That's one option. Another is for somebody to do a study to determine the REASONABLE costs of allowing other companies to use your infrastructure. That's what other companies should pay for using existing infrastructure. But to be clear, the company who owns it should make a small profit on their investment. Certainly, other companies shouldn't be allowed to use it for free.
My $0.02 US worth.
I'd say we got a good return on our investment.:-)
The quote in the article states that this could give the Cable companies a monopoly on broadband.
Yeah it does, but I'm not so sure that this is all that bad. Everybody flame me if you want, but at least let me explain my reasoning. Right now, my local telco has an absolute stranglehold on service in my area. Forget about DSL -- not even available here. My cable company has a stranglehold on TV (never mind the fact that I actually like my cable company -- it's a rather small one). For the first time, though, my cable company is planning on offering telephony over IP, which will provide direct competition with the behemoth that runs the phone service. Cable is the first technology in decades that poses a threat to the rather well entrenched baby bells. I can easily see how forcing them to share their infrastructure will reduce the short-term profitability of providing these services.
Now, here's what I'm hoping will happen: My cable company picks up steam and goes head to head in competition with my telco. Prices drop in the battle, and service improves. Then, the FCC reconsiders its decision (because my cable company is now providing phone service too), and forces the cable company to allow startups a chance to get into the business.
On top of all of this, I believe that startups should only be allowed access to an existing companies equipment for a specified period of time. I believe this will provide incentive to build their own infrastructure.
Finally, I'd like to submit one last idea. Right now, there are three technologies that are capable of providing good TV, Internet and Telephony services. That would be the telephone companies' copper (or fiber), the cable companies' coax (or fiber) and wireless broadband. If all of these technologies can provide the same services, I really don't care if each is a monopoly. As long as they compete with each other, prices will go down and service will go up. What I don't want to see is one company controlling all of these technologies in the same area.
The story of their efforts is old, but based on the expected service date of 01-Jun-2002, it looks like they just actually went live. Their own website doesn't even appear to be updated with a "success" message yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Good idea. With Linux, I should release / renew just by shutting down the ethernet interface and restarting, right? I haven't even bothered to try this. When I went to attach my firewall and it didn't work, I spent hours trying to figure out why. Once I spat out all the debugging information for the dhcp client, I saw clearly what the problem was, and spoofed the MAC address. I've just left the spoofed address there ever since.
I agree that this is a real bummer, but I'm not sure why you are so surprised. Every single utility does this. Ever get an "all circuits are busy" message from the telco? What happens in a city when the temperature is really really hot and everybody turns on their air conditioning? How about if too many people in one location try to use cell phones? Heck, we're even under water restrictions because the water authority didn't plan a large enough reservoir to last through a couple dry years for the current population.
I won't get into an argument of whether it's right or wrong, but as most are aware, high bandwidth ISP's promise a connection speed of "up to" some value, which is their way of saying that during peak times, you won't get this speed. They expect a single connection to their services to have periodic spikes of activity, not a constant level of activity at the promised speed. As you put more and more people on the same connection, you get closer to saturating that connection. Most ISP's have not planned their capacity to handle that, so it could really put them in hot water with regards to performance for their other customers.
Like I said, I won't get into an immediate discussion of right or wrong, but we can't assume that an ISP with 1GB of total capacity on a particular loop has only sold 1MB connections to 1000 customers on that loop.
My cable ISP does this too, although they have no problem with using multiple computers through NAT. Because of this, I don't think MAC address is how they would detect NAT. The firewall sends everything out as the same MAC address. In fact, I had to spoof the MAC on the firewall because when I first connected, I used my laptop to test the connection, so it wants that MAC address all the time.
I think there are other ways of detecting NAT, as the firewall has to do some mangling of the headers to help determine where the response should go, but I can't remember the specifics.
Where in the article did it mention him indicating the end of Open Source? The warning statement was about the end of "Open Computing," and I believe he was referring to Digital Rights Management and other cryptographic technologies being built into the hardware and operating system. Personally, I find this concept MORE frightening than ending Open Source, but he's doing nothing more here than repeating what all of the big corporate conglomerates (RIAA, etc) have been trying to convince us of. Sad really. As much as I don't like Mr. Gates, I would have hoped that the geek in him wouldn't have caved so quickly.
No, no, no. The best thing would be to search the baggage with the passenger present, but perform the search in a private room. I certainly don't want my baggage searched without me there to oversee.
This is NOT foolish. If my wife (or my son) were taken for questioning and I wasn't allowed to go with them, they'd probably have to kill me to subdue me. They WILL NOT separate my family from my protection. They can bring in all the guards they want for an interrogation, but I'm not letting them isolate my wife and/or son.
I agree with this one. Furthermore, they should provide a copy of the video immediately on demand to the passenger who was searched. In the event of a dispute, the copy should be provided to a federal agent in the presence of witnesses.
Better: No otherwise legal item shall be confiscated. The passenger may have otherwise legal items packed into USPS containers, and sent home at their own expense. Passengers shouldn't have the *right* to pack their own contraband, and neither should airlines be liable for shipping the items back to the passenger.
Partly agreed. If item is illegal, it should be confiscated. If legal, but clearly not allowed on airline (on a list of banned items), it should be mailed to my address at my expense. If legal and only disallowed at airline's whim, it should be mailed to any address I specify at the expense of the airline.
Personally, I think the government should bill M$ for all of their time spent on this....
Actually, I don't. I'm just going on statements made by government officials when I was living in NY. They may very well have been lying to cover up their on ineptitude. If I can find some figures to support or refute my claim, I'll let you know. BTW, I'm certainly not saying that NYC citizens should pay more in taxes; they are more than high enough as it is.
She wasn't driving. The car wasn't moving. The same thing COULD have happened while sitting in a chair in the McD's restaurant, although the table would probably have added some measure of security. Also, bear in mind that they sell the coffee AT the drive-thru, WITH a cup holder AND a lid that is specifically designed to allow you to drink while driving or otherwise not sitting at a table.
It is perfectly reasonable to serve near-boiling temperature coffee (what is generally considered "fresh") and let the customer decide when to start consuming the beverage.
The only problem with this is that the temperature at which the coffee was served was too hot for anyone to drink right away. The main explanation for this was for people who were driving to the office. The coffee would be just ready to drink when they arrived.
Anyway, if you're going to argue about the coffee incident, you'll have to throw away "intended use." There are several other valid arguments available anyway.
this posting is as off topic as a panda in switzerland so don't be afraid to mod it such
Agreed. Same goes for my post.
And one of the prime reasons for this is the high level of taxation coupled with very low wages. I have friends up there making $8.50 / hour at jobs that would pay $16.00 / hour elsewhere. Even at these rates, there are many people out of work. Why? Taxes. NYS has really high taxes. Part of this is because money is channeled from state taxes to support NYC because it costs more to run the city than can be collected there in taxes. Before any of you NYC dwellers flame me, understand that I'm perfectly aware that the situation used to be the other way around -- NYC supported the rest of the state.
Anyway, I suspect an available labor pool used to lower wages would be pretty attractive to some companies. Also, I'm not sure about Albany, but in many upstate areas, real estate costs are reasonably low.
And if this is the case, it answers most of the questions as to why they chose a Windows product. The automotive version of Windows CE has a realtime kernel -- an absolute must for this kind of application.
I'm only guessing, but it may be because Win98 is a little more friendly towards direct manipulation of the hardware. NT-based Windows versions really try hard to isolate the programmer from direct communication with hardware. By having more direct access to hardware, you get a step closer to realtime capabilities. However, as I said earlier in another thread, I would have thought DOS would have been a better candidate here.
More importantly, would this have even made it onto MSNBC if the car didn't run on Windows? But seriously, thanks for the links -- a little more detailed info on the car is appreciated.
I would think they could run a standard kernel and do their own application on top of it ,p>
Actually, I would think a realtime kernel would be better for this kind of task. Do you agree?
What makes you think it would have been any less capable at it than Windows 98? Actually, I'm really surprised that they chose Win98. I would have expected a realtime-ready OS for a job like this. In fact, DOS would have probably been a better choice in this case than any of the Windows versions or normal Linux distributions.
This was obviously posted by the person who made the counter offer. (just kidding). But seriously, the question you need to ask yourself is: "If they can afford to make the counter offer, that means they could have afforded that much all along. Do I really want to continue working for a company that has obviously been deceptive in their pay practices?" This is especially true in your case because of the massive pay cut you were forced to take earlier.
Only other states that have a similar competition law would be able to do this. Consumers in idaho were able to sue only because of the 1976 Competition Law.
However, if more strong antitrust sanctions against Microsoft are not gained at the federal level, I wouldn't be surprised if dissenting states decide to create special laws to handle such cases in the future.
Everything you say is true. I definitely subscribe to the "less TV" philosophy. However, if I'm going to have cable TV, I'm not opposed to paying for it. I consider that I'm paying for delivery (clear picture, lots of channels) rather than content. As far as premium channels go, most of them don't have commercials, so paying for them isn't surprising.
Since this is a civil suit, you can be pretty sure that this figure will be adjusted down. It's common to start of high as a scare tactic and hope that the issue will be settled out of court.
Also, bear in mind that Comcast could have chosen to press criminal charges, which would have resulted in both a hefty fine AND time spent in jail.
Ah, but it's sometimes the pursuit of foolishness that finds the real gem hidden in the grass. They may never actually make any of the psuedo-sciences work, but they may discover something useful (and totally unrelated) in their meandering path. It's fine by me as long as they keep the number of people and dollars small.
I suspect that what you really have going on is "price fixing." I don't know about the laws in Australia, but that's illegal in the US. Even if they were approximately at the same price and one CEO just called the other and said "I'm happy with prices where they are, let's keep it that way," that would still be illegal. On the other hand, though, the government actually has to enforce that law, which it really seems to be reluctant to do here lately.
You're right. I thought about this after submitting. What is needed is one company controlling the local infrastructure, and charging for access to it.
I'm not sure if this is the best idea either, as it still leaves a monopoly in charge of the infrastructure. If the government wasn't at least as greedy as the companies, I'd say they should control it. Unfortunately, history indicates how much of a failure that would probably be. See my response to "johnalex" for some other ideas. None of them are optimal, though. I don't really know WHAT the best solution is for that "last mile" problem. The utility pole in my front yard is looking overloaded as it is.
You're probably right. And I'm not sure I'd want them all digging up the street, either.
I don't claim to know how the details would work, but it seems the information infrastructure should be public domain. Perhaps the feds should reimburse companies for existing infrastructure and contract with private entities to provide maintenance, upgrades, and expansions. That way, startups wouldn't have to undergo the horrendous process of petitioning monopolies and/or the courts for access rights.
That's one option. Another is for somebody to do a study to determine the REASONABLE costs of allowing other companies to use your infrastructure. That's what other companies should pay for using existing infrastructure. But to be clear, the company who owns it should make a small profit on their investment. Certainly, other companies shouldn't be allowed to use it for free.
My $0.02 US worth.
I'd say we got a good return on our investment. :-)
Yeah it does, but I'm not so sure that this is all that bad. Everybody flame me if you want, but at least let me explain my reasoning. Right now, my local telco has an absolute stranglehold on service in my area. Forget about DSL -- not even available here. My cable company has a stranglehold on TV (never mind the fact that I actually like my cable company -- it's a rather small one). For the first time, though, my cable company is planning on offering telephony over IP, which will provide direct competition with the behemoth that runs the phone service. Cable is the first technology in decades that poses a threat to the rather well entrenched baby bells. I can easily see how forcing them to share their infrastructure will reduce the short-term profitability of providing these services.
Now, here's what I'm hoping will happen: My cable company picks up steam and goes head to head in competition with my telco. Prices drop in the battle, and service improves. Then, the FCC reconsiders its decision (because my cable company is now providing phone service too), and forces the cable company to allow startups a chance to get into the business.
On top of all of this, I believe that startups should only be allowed access to an existing companies equipment for a specified period of time. I believe this will provide incentive to build their own infrastructure.
Finally, I'd like to submit one last idea. Right now, there are three technologies that are capable of providing good TV, Internet and Telephony services. That would be the telephone companies' copper (or fiber), the cable companies' coax (or fiber) and wireless broadband. If all of these technologies can provide the same services, I really don't care if each is a monopoly. As long as they compete with each other, prices will go down and service will go up. What I don't want to see is one company controlling all of these technologies in the same area.
OK. Am I wrong? Correct my thinking if I am.
The story of their efforts is old, but based on the expected service date of 01-Jun-2002, it looks like they just actually went live. Their own website doesn't even appear to be updated with a "success" message yet.