See above comment on this being a "public, untrusted network." I got the impression that it was just a connection to the internet. That being the case, I'm not sure that it provides terrorists with anything over what they'd normally get through the internet. If you're doing something private, you should just use an IPSEC connection. You might want to think twice about entering passwords for your favorite sites unless you're using SSL.
On the other hand, the whole thing might be useful for catching terrorists who felt the need to shoot out a last minute email -- provided that traffic is monitored closely.
Most consumers hate spam, but it doesn't bother them so much if it's about things they want, and if they're getting something for the attention.
I'm not knocking your story or anything. But the definition of spam is important. If I buy a product at an online retailer, and thus give away my address, I don't mind them sending me advertisements for things similar to what I've bought in the past. I don't considert that to be spam. It's controlled. It only comes from companies that I've directly done business with. However, if one of the companies SELLS my e-mail address and I start getting advertisements from other companies for similar products, we now have a problem. I've never done business with these companies, and I'm getting unsolicited e-mail from them. That's spam. I don't care whether the products interest me or not. Getting 50 e-mails a day from different companies I've never heard of advertising deep discounts on 100GB hard drives isn't going to please me, no matter how good the discount is.
Having said all of that, I still think any good retailer should include an opt-in box when you're providing them with your e-mail address. That way, they only send you advertisements if you want them.
Verizon is claiming they'll offer up to 144kbps throughput, which will work out to provide real-world speeds of 20-30k
That should make it pretty useable on a PDA. Maybe not for streaming video, but at least browsing would be pretty decent. I'm comparing this, of course, to the results I've seen with CDPD (rated at 19.2Kbps, in practice only about 8 Kbps).
I was merely referring to the growing trend of citing how many Megabytes of ROM a system has, as though that actually makes it a better system. It may have some bearing. For example, when the Macintosh doubled their ROM size, the OS was certainly better. But in many cases, it just indicates code bloat.
I personally feel that the Pocket PC OS is still a little large for what it does. But there's much better examples of wasted ROM out there.
BTW, how did the upgrade to PocketPC 2002 go for you? I have an iPaq 3650 that I'd like to upgrade. Can you downgrade if you aren't happy with the new version? Also, how do you like the new version?
Actually, some of what he did could possibly be illegal. For example, there's a reference to a a header-script he inserted which does a +++ ath style Hayes-modem hang-up.
Agreed. Although I believe he said that it wouldn't really cause a problem because it was formatted incorrectly -- it was just a "troll." But if it did cause a problem then, yup, he would be guilty there.
but if he pulls that kind of stuff on other people's mailing lists he should be banned from said list for life.
Microsoft does not have a monopoly on web-based portals or free e-mail websites.
Think for a second, though. They DO have a monopoly on the operating system, which now includes the browser. Because of such, they have the ability to "screw" users of other browsers without fear of messing up their "crowd." The illegal part is that they used another of their products to help strengthen their OS monopoly. It makes certain that users of pretty much any OS that can't run IE wouldn't be able to use the site (unless you know to hack the HTTP request header).
Just because you don't agree doesn't make what I said FUD.
If Microsoft didn't know that what they were doing was illegal doesn't change the fact that it was.
Oh, don't worry. I fully believe that they knew what they were doing. I was just trying to be nice and make it look like I was giving them the benefit of the doubt.:) And yes, even if they didn't know, it would still be illegal. I would imagine that the reaction to it would be different if they could prove it was ignorance. Fat chance of them managing that kind of proof, though.
But there is a balance of keeping the devil of Redmond out, while gaining less in terms of exposure versus developing a superior product which might actually gain a larger user base.
Why don't we create a new license that has all of the benefits of a BSD style license except that it explicitly excludes Microsoft or any of its subsidiaries from those benefits?:)
But how many Linux applications do you see at CompUSA?
I agree with you. I was thinking about this the other day as I was in CompUSA staring at the one little shelf of Linux OS offerings. I wondered why they didn't have any applications. Then I suddenly realized that nobody wants to pay anything for the application software. We all expect to download it free from the 'net. I include myself in "we." Maybe if we actually started BUYING some applications for Linux, they would start appearing more in stores.
Of course, we can always start the age old "Dreamweaver" thread again....
Or I can buy an iPaq (like I did) and get 64MB of memory plus 32MB of ROM
Although I agree with you and greatly prefer the iPaq to the Palm, I'm not sure that I'd be touting Microsoft's seeming inability to code efficiently enough to keep their handheld operating system in less than 32MB of ROM. In this case, more doesn't necessarily mean better.
The RAM, on the other hand, is a definitely a good thing. Personally, I'd like to see a 128MB model.
What I find most amazing is he models the molecules on like a Mac Plus, if I remember right (haven't seen it since it came out)...
Mod me as off topic if you like, but that movie was released in the grand era of the Commodore Amiga. I vaguely remember reading in one of the Amiga rags that they had originally intended to use an Amiga as the computer, but Commodore was behind in their shipments of the A2000. Some nutball decided that they were going to satisfy requests in the order they were received. Obviously, Star Trek producers weren't interested in waiting. I wonder if somebody got fired over that decision.
Well, I dunno about you, but at least I like to be able to open a window once in a while.
Agreed, but think of the lighting issues. Put some normal windows in so they can be opened, but if you construct large portions of the wall out of translucent (or transparent) concrete, you get some awesome natural light in the room. Personally, I think the translucent may be better if it can provide some of the light with privacy. Of course, I can only imagine the cost of manufacturing a custom blind of more than 50 feet in length....
It has been my understanding that all metals must be the color they are, because of the way electrons swim around in the metal meta-crystal, and the way they interact with hitting photons.
I believe your understanding is correct. However, it may be possible to develop a "metal" (maybe alloy or ceramic) with very similar chemical structure to aluminum that possessed all of the same qualities minus color. Obviously, it wouldn't really be aluminum, but it might be real real close. Who knows.
Plus, MS has screwed over its own users before by making the formats completely incompatible (O98 v. O95, IIRC), so there's nothing saying they won't do it again.
Well, let's try the new licensing scheme that MS wants to move to. Having to "rent" my software would provide significant incentive AGAINST upgrading. And I remember the difficulty I experience years ago when my company had just upgraded to the latest version of Office, and we had some difficulty sharing files with some of our customers and partners. We had to be extremely careful. You can't go tell your customer to install the "converter" for their version of Office so that they can view the new files that you are sending them. You have to remember to save a copy in THEIR format, and then reload it to make sure you didn't lose anything in the translation.
Touche, although I don't know about how big the licensing costs for all the assorted programs would be. WinZip, for instance, is something like $10 per in groups of 50, $4 per above 500 users, and they offer a site license that is presumably even cheaper. Hardly savings to get excited about.
Like I said up above, with the new licensing schemes, all of this will change. The costs associated with constant annual renewels can be big. Really big. With businesses today looking to save where they can, there's some real fuel for the fire.
Timing is everything, though. If the Open Source community doesn't quickly provide the tools that can pretty much match those available under Windows, feature for feature, then people will probably be content to stick with what works. Now is the time. An economic slump provides the battleground for these kinds of changes.
Vaporware . . . chips so small they can be inhaled.
I know this is intended to be funny, but when I read it, it actually frightened me instead. Can you imagine what would happen if this technology were used to manufacture destructive little nanobots that couldn't be seen, but could be inhaled? You think viruses and bacteria are bad? Wait until you see this. Even worse, they can be dynamically programmed from an external source via radio transmitter.
There already is an area like this, It's called the Amish Country, Pennsylvania Dutch, etc
The only problem with "Amish Country" is that it definitely isn't devoid of electronic signals. There are all kinds of radio stations in the area, and almost all of the tourists carry cell phones, so there are plenty of cells spitting out a signal.
Personally, I think that if this is such a problem for all these people, they should all just get together and go buy an island somewhere so they can leave the rest of the world alone. I really resent some nut who moves into a town and expects the whole town to bow to his every wacked out whim.
Ironically, yes the Amish [800padutch.com] hhave a website.
I'm reasonably certain that the website is not run by an Amish person. There's a lot of tourist activity in the PA Dutch area. And although some of the Amish reap the rewards, much of the money goes to other individuals hoping to make a buck off of the interesting facets of the Amish community.
Oh come ON! Is that what we're resorting to now? Speculating on what MIGHT have happened had a company tried to compete with Microsoft in order to defend a company's failure to innovate?
That's pretty much how any lawsuit of this type works. You can only speculate on what you might have made. The big issue is not that MSIE was given away for free. In fact, it isn't free. You pay for it when you buy Windows. The issue is that Microsoft used their monopoly to ram this product through to customers with the knowledge and intent that it would drive a future competitor out of business. Microsoft fully intended at this time to jump with both feet into the world of web servers and web applications, and they clearly saw some of Netscape's up-and-coming products as a threat to that market. They were so threatened by it that they reportedly used volume licensing agreements to FORCE OEM's to install IE until they could come up with a way to make it look like it was inseparable from the OS.
And I don't feel that Netscape failed to innovate. Both Netscape and Microsoft provided significant improvements in browsing. I believe browsers would be even better today if that competition had continued. And IIRC, Microsoft pretty much trailed Netscape with product improvements right up through version 4 of both products. That stopped right about the time that Netscape was going under.
When AOL integrated IE way back in 1996 or 1997, IE was the lesser-used product.
I agree with you here. The only thing that I can say in AOL's defense is that they were not involved with Netscape at the time, and they probably received some special agreement to work with Microsoft. It *MIGHT* have even been one of Microsoft's first moves to defeat Netscape, but that's pure speculation on my part.
Just as it's not right for media companies to destroy filesharing utilities that make their business model obsolete, it's wrong to sue someone for making a product better than yours.
Where you and I disagree is in what actually caused Netscape to lose its Market share. I believe that at the time Netscape started to go down, MSIE was not appreciably better than Netscape. I firmly believe that what killed them was a combination of providing MSIE "free" and forcing it to be bundled with the OS. If Netscape had been selling an OS with significant market share, they could have easily bundled their browser with it at no additional charge. Because of these things, I don't believe the AOL is going after Microsoft because MSIE is a better product.
There's one other thing that you may want to consider about AOL's intentions. This move of theirs may convince Microsoft to work harder toward a settlement that limits lawsuits by individuals. I'm sure AOL, being an enemy of Microsoft, would like to win, but that might not be the only reason for the lawsuit.
My main point was that essays count for little if anything.
Agreed. I'm convinced that the whole purpose of the essay is just to make you work a little and make sure you have the drive to complete one. I think very little consideration is given for how good the essays are.
I would hope that grades and SAT scores would count for more than the things you mention in most cases, though.
I would hope so too. I'm pretty sure that they weigh more equally now that they did when I graduated. I had a combined score of 1440 on my SAT (darn verbal), and I didn't receive a single scholarship. My family's perceived income was too high and I wasn't adequately informed about many of the scholarships available.
But on the other hand, it probably worked out the way it should have. We were able to afford to put me through college, whereas many families could not afford to drop $60K for an education. It genuinely would have been unfair if a poor boy, who went to a substandard school because his family couldn't afford to live in a better school district, was not able to receive a scholarship because his school failed to adequately prepare him for the standardized tests.
Sorry about being long winded. I'm feeling a little chatty this morning. Blame it on the two-hour drive to work.:)
I'm not sure what kind of damages AOL expects to get, though. Loss of sales?
Yes. Loss of sales. Navigator was not originally a free product. Netscape also offered server products that were optimized for their browser. Losing the browser market also takes away demand for the server products. And the fact is, Microsoft pretty much ran an entire company out of business (to where they had to sell) by making their product free, pressuring OEM's and other companies into installing the Microsoft product and also making up this lie about how the browser is inseparable from the OS and thus must be bundled with it.
It also doesn't help AOL's case that they're still embedding IE in their own client software.
I'm not sure how a judge will look at it, but I think it COULD help their case. It at least proves that, in the mind of AOL, they were left with no alternative but to use IE for fear of a Microsoft FUD campaign. I mean, can't you just see the MSN adds saying that AOL uses an inferior browser? It's hard for that campaign when both AOL and MSN require the same browser. I dunno; maybe I'm wrong.
No, they are generally based on grades and SAT scores.
No, they are generally based on a combination of grades, SAT scores, sometimes your race, your prominence in the community, sometimes the income of your family, and very much on who you know. I witnessed this "who you know" process in action when the teachers at our high school all "neglected" to inform most of the students about a large number of available scholarships. It was mighty suspicious when one person at the school ended up with something like six of the eight scholarships that were handed out. Even the Valedictorian only received one scholarship.
If you've got the forsight to send somebody out into the world with a portable satellite link you should have the forsight to offer some sort of file sharing mechanism they can effectively use.
I agree, but file sharing was only the first example that came to mind.
Nobody is going to be fucking buying one of these to VPN into a company's servers from their cozy casbah in the middle of the desert.
Actually, if anybody COULD afford to VPN into their servers, it would PROBABLY be somebody with a cozy casbah in the middle of the desert.:-)
For the price per minute cost (probably close to Inmarsat) it would be costly to do anything but broadcast pertinent information.
Yes, but that is TODAY. Things may change. The real question is what kind of market will develop for commodity satellite internet connections given the latency.
Also DirecTV is streaming video, they have made it work.
Yes, but to the best of my knowledge, it's not streaming video over TCP/IP. Maybe I'm wrong here.
The irony is you were suggesting streaming video MIGHT work
No. I said "It should be more than acceptable for most browsing and streaming video." meaning that I saw no reason it wouldn't work for streaming video and that there should be very few if any problems browsing. If you're dying to get into an argument, at least make sure the person you are arguing with truly disagrees with you first.
Shouldn't somebody tell those DirecTV folks their whole system might not work?
I'm not sure what you mean by this.
why would you be using a small network file sharing protocol like SMB/CIFS to share files over the internet rather than something like WebDAV
Remember, not everybody has control over how their administrators set up file systems. If SMB works fine for most people, they aren't going to use WebDAV just for the people who use Satellite -- at least not yet -- maybe if it comes into wider use....
Slashdot Mirror
On the other hand, the whole thing might be useful for catching terrorists who felt the need to shoot out a last minute email -- provided that traffic is monitored closely.
I'm not knocking your story or anything. But the definition of spam is important. If I buy a product at an online retailer, and thus give away my address, I don't mind them sending me advertisements for things similar to what I've bought in the past. I don't considert that to be spam. It's controlled. It only comes from companies that I've directly done business with. However, if one of the companies SELLS my e-mail address and I start getting advertisements from other companies for similar products, we now have a problem. I've never done business with these companies, and I'm getting unsolicited e-mail from them. That's spam. I don't care whether the products interest me or not. Getting 50 e-mails a day from different companies I've never heard of advertising deep discounts on 100GB hard drives isn't going to please me, no matter how good the discount is.
Having said all of that, I still think any good retailer should include an opt-in box when you're providing them with your e-mail address. That way, they only send you advertisements if you want them.
That should make it pretty useable on a PDA. Maybe not for streaming video, but at least browsing would be pretty decent. I'm comparing this, of course, to the results I've seen with CDPD (rated at 19.2Kbps, in practice only about 8 Kbps).
I was merely referring to the growing trend of citing how many Megabytes of ROM a system has, as though that actually makes it a better system. It may have some bearing. For example, when the Macintosh doubled their ROM size, the OS was certainly better. But in many cases, it just indicates code bloat.
I personally feel that the Pocket PC OS is still a little large for what it does. But there's much better examples of wasted ROM out there.
BTW, how did the upgrade to PocketPC 2002 go for you? I have an iPaq 3650 that I'd like to upgrade. Can you downgrade if you aren't happy with the new version? Also, how do you like the new version?
Agreed. Although I believe he said that it wouldn't really cause a problem because it was formatted incorrectly -- it was just a "troll." But if it did cause a problem then, yup, he would be guilty there.
but if he pulls that kind of stuff on other people's mailing lists he should be banned from said list for life.
Absolutely agreed.
Think for a second, though. They DO have a monopoly on the operating system, which now includes the browser. Because of such, they have the ability to "screw" users of other browsers without fear of messing up their "crowd." The illegal part is that they used another of their products to help strengthen their OS monopoly. It makes certain that users of pretty much any OS that can't run IE wouldn't be able to use the site (unless you know to hack the HTTP request header).
Just because you don't agree doesn't make what I said FUD.
Oh, don't worry. I fully believe that they knew what they were doing. I was just trying to be nice and make it look like I was giving them the benefit of the doubt. :) And yes, even if they didn't know, it would still be illegal. I would imagine that the reaction to it would be different if they could prove it was ignorance. Fat chance of them managing that kind of proof, though.
And this is different exactly how?
He is not a monopoly. Microsoft is. What he did (if intentional) was not illegal. What Microsoft did (if intentional) is.
Why don't we create a new license that has all of the benefits of a BSD style license except that it explicitly excludes Microsoft or any of its subsidiaries from those benefits? :)
I agree with you. I was thinking about this the other day as I was in CompUSA staring at the one little shelf of Linux OS offerings. I wondered why they didn't have any applications. Then I suddenly realized that nobody wants to pay anything for the application software. We all expect to download it free from the 'net. I include myself in "we." Maybe if we actually started BUYING some applications for Linux, they would start appearing more in stores.
Of course, we can always start the age old "Dreamweaver" thread again....
Although I agree with you and greatly prefer the iPaq to the Palm, I'm not sure that I'd be touting Microsoft's seeming inability to code efficiently enough to keep their handheld operating system in less than 32MB of ROM. In this case, more doesn't necessarily mean better.
The RAM, on the other hand, is a definitely a good thing. Personally, I'd like to see a 128MB model.
Wouldn't the steel tank have been much heavier?
Mod me as off topic if you like, but that movie was released in the grand era of the Commodore Amiga. I vaguely remember reading in one of the Amiga rags that they had originally intended to use an Amiga as the computer, but Commodore was behind in their shipments of the A2000. Some nutball decided that they were going to satisfy requests in the order they were received. Obviously, Star Trek producers weren't interested in waiting. I wonder if somebody got fired over that decision.
Agreed, but think of the lighting issues. Put some normal windows in so they can be opened, but if you construct large portions of the wall out of translucent (or transparent) concrete, you get some awesome natural light in the room. Personally, I think the translucent may be better if it can provide some of the light with privacy. Of course, I can only imagine the cost of manufacturing a custom blind of more than 50 feet in length....
I believe your understanding is correct. However, it may be possible to develop a "metal" (maybe alloy or ceramic) with very similar chemical structure to aluminum that possessed all of the same qualities minus color. Obviously, it wouldn't really be aluminum, but it might be real real close. Who knows.
Well, let's try the new licensing scheme that MS wants to move to. Having to "rent" my software would provide significant incentive AGAINST upgrading. And I remember the difficulty I experience years ago when my company had just upgraded to the latest version of Office, and we had some difficulty sharing files with some of our customers and partners. We had to be extremely careful. You can't go tell your customer to install the "converter" for their version of Office so that they can view the new files that you are sending them. You have to remember to save a copy in THEIR format, and then reload it to make sure you didn't lose anything in the translation.
Touche, although I don't know about how big the licensing costs for all the assorted programs would be. WinZip, for instance, is something like $10 per in groups of 50, $4 per above 500 users, and they offer a site license that is presumably even cheaper. Hardly savings to get excited about.
Like I said up above, with the new licensing schemes, all of this will change. The costs associated with constant annual renewels can be big. Really big. With businesses today looking to save where they can, there's some real fuel for the fire.
Timing is everything, though. If the Open Source community doesn't quickly provide the tools that can pretty much match those available under Windows, feature for feature, then people will probably be content to stick with what works. Now is the time. An economic slump provides the battleground for these kinds of changes.
I know this is intended to be funny, but when I read it, it actually frightened me instead. Can you imagine what would happen if this technology were used to manufacture destructive little nanobots that couldn't be seen, but could be inhaled? You think viruses and bacteria are bad? Wait until you see this. Even worse, they can be dynamically programmed from an external source via radio transmitter.
Somebody pinch me and wake me up.
The only problem with "Amish Country" is that it definitely isn't devoid of electronic signals. There are all kinds of radio stations in the area, and almost all of the tourists carry cell phones, so there are plenty of cells spitting out a signal.
Personally, I think that if this is such a problem for all these people, they should all just get together and go buy an island somewhere so they can leave the rest of the world alone. I really resent some nut who moves into a town and expects the whole town to bow to his every wacked out whim.
I'm reasonably certain that the website is not run by an Amish person. There's a lot of tourist activity in the PA Dutch area. And although some of the Amish reap the rewards, much of the money goes to other individuals hoping to make a buck off of the interesting facets of the Amish community.
That's pretty much how any lawsuit of this type works. You can only speculate on what you might have made. The big issue is not that MSIE was given away for free. In fact, it isn't free. You pay for it when you buy Windows. The issue is that Microsoft used their monopoly to ram this product through to customers with the knowledge and intent that it would drive a future competitor out of business. Microsoft fully intended at this time to jump with both feet into the world of web servers and web applications, and they clearly saw some of Netscape's up-and-coming products as a threat to that market. They were so threatened by it that they reportedly used volume licensing agreements to FORCE OEM's to install IE until they could come up with a way to make it look like it was inseparable from the OS.
And I don't feel that Netscape failed to innovate. Both Netscape and Microsoft provided significant improvements in browsing. I believe browsers would be even better today if that competition had continued. And IIRC, Microsoft pretty much trailed Netscape with product improvements right up through version 4 of both products. That stopped right about the time that Netscape was going under.
When AOL integrated IE way back in 1996 or 1997, IE was the lesser-used product.
I agree with you here. The only thing that I can say in AOL's defense is that they were not involved with Netscape at the time, and they probably received some special agreement to work with Microsoft. It *MIGHT* have even been one of Microsoft's first moves to defeat Netscape, but that's pure speculation on my part.
Just as it's not right for media companies to destroy filesharing utilities that make their business model obsolete, it's wrong to sue someone for making a product better than yours.
Where you and I disagree is in what actually caused Netscape to lose its Market share. I believe that at the time Netscape started to go down, MSIE was not appreciably better than Netscape. I firmly believe that what killed them was a combination of providing MSIE "free" and forcing it to be bundled with the OS. If Netscape had been selling an OS with significant market share, they could have easily bundled their browser with it at no additional charge. Because of these things, I don't believe the AOL is going after Microsoft because MSIE is a better product.
There's one other thing that you may want to consider about AOL's intentions. This move of theirs may convince Microsoft to work harder toward a settlement that limits lawsuits by individuals. I'm sure AOL, being an enemy of Microsoft, would like to win, but that might not be the only reason for the lawsuit.
Agreed. I'm convinced that the whole purpose of the essay is just to make you work a little and make sure you have the drive to complete one. I think very little consideration is given for how good the essays are.
I would hope that grades and SAT scores would count for more than the things you mention in most cases, though.
I would hope so too. I'm pretty sure that they weigh more equally now that they did when I graduated. I had a combined score of 1440 on my SAT (darn verbal), and I didn't receive a single scholarship. My family's perceived income was too high and I wasn't adequately informed about many of the scholarships available.
But on the other hand, it probably worked out the way it should have. We were able to afford to put me through college, whereas many families could not afford to drop $60K for an education. It genuinely would have been unfair if a poor boy, who went to a substandard school because his family couldn't afford to live in a better school district, was not able to receive a scholarship because his school failed to adequately prepare him for the standardized tests.
Sorry about being long winded. I'm feeling a little chatty this morning. Blame it on the two-hour drive to work. :)
Yes. Loss of sales. Navigator was not originally a free product. Netscape also offered server products that were optimized for their browser. Losing the browser market also takes away demand for the server products. And the fact is, Microsoft pretty much ran an entire company out of business (to where they had to sell) by making their product free, pressuring OEM's and other companies into installing the Microsoft product and also making up this lie about how the browser is inseparable from the OS and thus must be bundled with it.
It also doesn't help AOL's case that they're still embedding IE in their own client software.
I'm not sure how a judge will look at it, but I think it COULD help their case. It at least proves that, in the mind of AOL, they were left with no alternative but to use IE for fear of a Microsoft FUD campaign. I mean, can't you just see the MSN adds saying that AOL uses an inferior browser? It's hard for that campaign when both AOL and MSN require the same browser. I dunno; maybe I'm wrong.
No, they are generally based on a combination of grades, SAT scores, sometimes your race, your prominence in the community, sometimes the income of your family, and very much on who you know. I witnessed this "who you know" process in action when the teachers at our high school all "neglected" to inform most of the students about a large number of available scholarships. It was mighty suspicious when one person at the school ended up with something like six of the eight scholarships that were handed out. Even the Valedictorian only received one scholarship.
I agree, but file sharing was only the first example that came to mind.
Nobody is going to be fucking buying one of these to VPN into a company's servers from their cozy casbah in the middle of the desert.
Actually, if anybody COULD afford to VPN into their servers, it would PROBABLY be somebody with a cozy casbah in the middle of the desert. :-)
For the price per minute cost (probably close to Inmarsat) it would be costly to do anything but broadcast pertinent information.
Yes, but that is TODAY. Things may change. The real question is what kind of market will develop for commodity satellite internet connections given the latency.
Also DirecTV is streaming video, they have made it work.
Yes, but to the best of my knowledge, it's not streaming video over TCP/IP. Maybe I'm wrong here.
The irony is you were suggesting streaming video MIGHT work
No. I said "It should be more than acceptable for most browsing and streaming video." meaning that I saw no reason it wouldn't work for streaming video and that there should be very few if any problems browsing. If you're dying to get into an argument, at least make sure the person you are arguing with truly disagrees with you first.
I'm not sure what you mean by this.
why would you be using a small network file sharing protocol like SMB/CIFS to share files over the internet rather than something like WebDAV
Remember, not everybody has control over how their administrators set up file systems. If SMB works fine for most people, they aren't going to use WebDAV just for the people who use Satellite -- at least not yet -- maybe if it comes into wider use....