It's almost as if they *want* this to be a lesson to somebody...nah, couldn't be... Yeah, the lesson is "don't have any dealings with Microsoft, they will make you bend over and take it hard". Sadly, that lesson has been taught many times before and there are still suckers falling for their crap.
Linux and Windows both suffer from the same issue: theres so much variety of hardware out there that you just can't write it perfect for everything right off-the-bat so you need to release and incrementally improve. Well, you could do a hell of a lot better if the hardware vendors support your platform with manpower, documentation, and support. The two systems don't really suffer from the same issue at all -- some of their drivers might.
I also doubt that Steve meant hardware support when he made that statement. There are more fundamental changes needed.
Do you honestly believe the networks won't follow the MPAA and the RIAA soon ? They're only just discovering that method of distribution...
(not to mention that if your folks, say, download Stargate the show and the MPAA thinks it's Stargate the movie, they won't exactly quibble about the details...)
I will also tell them that they better have good trust in their provider not to give up their information and/or the stomach to face a multi-million-dollar lawsuit (statutory damages can EASILY add up to that) with real scummy $5k-$10k settlement offers. When asked I'll also tell them about alternatives (such as Usenet or TOR). The last thing I need is them coming to me 2 years later with a "but you never told me this was not actually free, and now I have this lawyer bill to pay !" kind of attitude.
Oh, and I don't tell them about how they can get their favourite TV show/music/movie on the day it's released in excellent HD quality without hassle and playable on all their favourite computers and toys in the house for years to come, legally for an appropriate amount of money -- since the content providers summarily don't offer anything of the sort and then cry like little babies when many of their would-be-customers turn to copyright infringement instead -- it's just less hassle, better selection, and better quality.
Not directly, no; all early attempts to do this deliberately resulted in poor performance. This is why BitTorrent forms so many connections. Most of the trading occurs between the fastest peer connections, which automatically selects against congested network links. Indeed; it is a tough nut to crack. However, uncongested or "highest sustainable speed" connectivity often does not keep the traffic in the same network -- particularly since many ISPs have rather low upstream rates -- so traffic from your next-door-neighbour will potentially be trickling in at a twentieth of the speed of a peer half the world away. BT selects on congested network links for that, sure, but often these congested links are the last-mile upstream (and in any case, no effort is made to even find close peers network-topology-wise -- this is a/hard/ problem to solve, too).
BitTorrent as a protocol can't really do much better in the universal case, especially since any form of meaningful caching would be shied-away from due to legal reasons (which is somewhat ludicrous, seeing as how Usenet and HTTP Caches have set quite some precedent). It is not that hard to imagine such reflectors and protocol enhancements to properly support them -- this would could down dramatically on inter-AS-traffic. Of course customers would not be using it since they cannot trust their ISP not to have ulterior motives (like sending all gathered P2P-data straight to the MPAA/RIAA, even if it just pertains to a Linux image or WoW-patch). Trust is fickle like that.
No, BitTorrent was not designed to be "tolerant". The fact that it is/recognizable/ by shapers was not a design decision -- most unencrypted protocols are. It was also not designed with closest peers in mind, i.e. the peer selection algorithm does not take network distance into account (this would truly be tolerant of ISPs needs by keeping most traffic "local").
Most ISPs do not throttle to zero, but to the lowest traffic tier with some very low upper barrier.
Encrypted BitTorrent is still readily recognizable.
How would a domain registry possibly function without it being a monopoly? Well it probally couldn't. Someone has to publish the root zones, and maintain those servers, and do you really want one company running one root server and another company running another? Well it really can't. Wait a minute, Verisign runs the Root zones and their servers ? Since when ?:P
The system we have now is fine as it is, yeah Verisign controls ICANN (they are pretty much the only ones who talk at registrar meetings), but anything they do that is extremely controversial gets rejected. That is not fine. That is bearable, but far from fine. Besides, VeriSign has proven again and again that they cannot be trusted -- so why trust them ?
And as far as competition goes, that has moved to the registrars, who end up finding that gTLDs are not profitable enough without other services making money. And yet they get to deal with the customers on domain disputes, get to do all the administrative work on domains, etc... Sorry, I'd like my registrar to focus on EXCELLENT domain registrar service, not on shoddy webhosting, domainkiting, frontrunning, or other such bullshit.
Now another thing that verisign is trying to get passed is to charge 0.15 per domain name for bulk deletions, which may have the effect of killing the recycling business, which is most of these registrar's bread and butter. Too fricking bad if it's their bread and butter, it's pretty damn annoying to customers. They are hopefully going to get rid of domain tasting as well, another bread and butter operation that's really annoying.
Either way, the atm fee i paid at the gas station today is more than this fee increase.. although it does make verisign an extra 30 million And are we getting anything in return ?
That works out to an average of 14.8mbit/s. That's not enormous. That's not even huge, or a lot. Downstream you get that kind of bandwidth on customer-grade ADSL2 connections (though upstream would be more expensive at home -- but then again, you don't host servers at home usually).
You are absolutely right. Apple is hardly forcing Safari on people since it asks first and they can decline the download. Well, they are not exactly "asking" first. They are telling you, and if you really want, you can stop it from happening. There is a difference. Pretty much the same as those bloody WGA notification shitdrops from Microsoft. I wouldn't install that piece of crap, no matter whether the Windows install is "genuine" or not.
They can tell if it's prefetched, if you're using a recent firefox. Firefox sends the http header And you seriously believe that they are logging headers when they are not even logging referrers ?
People need to understand what kind of liability they open themselves up to by not securing their wireless. Or they need to know that they had better keep excellent logs themselves in order to prove their own innocence, but then that can be turned against them as well if they don't monitor and police for illegal activity.
The best and easiest way to protect yourself is to lock it up. There are two schools of thought on this. I subscribe to your point of view, but can easily see decent reasons for keeping your network open, as well -- namely plausible deniability. If you actually WERE to want to break the law, having an open and accessible access point could help you plausibly deny any involvement -- and the burden of proof is not on you.
This same way of thinking applies to passwords in the office, especially if you are dealing with corruption and under-the-table transactions. Let's say Sally is the CFO of a company, but everybody knows Sally's password (let's say it's "godlysex"). For everybody testifying under oath that they knew the password and could plausibly have accessed Sally's account with it, the defense weakens the case of the prosecution (since plausibly, Sally had no knowledge of the corruption-related transactions being done through her account).
I know people who only listen to indie bands... just so they can say they only listen to indie bands... because for some reason, being indie makes the music more authentic. If the music were that good, you'd think the bands would be signed to a major label. Then the fans would complain that the band sold out! I don't buy your premise (music good -> major label contract). In fact, if you as a musician have half a brain and an inkling of curiosity, you'd soon realize that being signed to a major label is not, in fact, a good idea for you -- either financially or artistically. There is a reason Madonna has her own label. There is plenty of excellent "indie" music out there, and I'd hate to see them get the "major label" treatment. (There is also plenty of excellent "major label" music out there, don't get me wrong. "Major labels" are not just Britney and cohorts, there is some genuinely good stuff in there too).
Human beings have this illogical obsession with originality and authenticity. Look at synthetic vs real diamonds, generic vs name brands, anything vs Apple, etc. That's actually all just excellent marketing -- I mean REALLY excellent marketing, with all tools of the trade (psychologically-driven branding activities, subliminal information, astroturfing, etc.). It's not really illogical -- the factors at work are well known -- "Public Relations" is a rather well-developed science.
There will always be music made for 'profit', and there will always be music made for the hell of it, but I don't think that means that one or the other will stick firmly to a specific distribution model. And music made for the hell of it is not necessarily better than music made for profit -- nor should it be. Even music made for profit can be a labour of love -- just one that is well-marketable.
I hope that ibiblio & the internet archive (archive.org) are moved away from their current hosting on Cogent's network, urgently.
You paying ? Thought so.
The Internet works by everybody paying their own share of the costs. I'm not paying for your connectivity costs, you're not paying for mine. Note that if you don't pay enough to cover your ISP's real costs, your ISP will start behaving like Cogent does and you're then part of the problem.
So that is a no to you paying ibiblio and archive.org's move to a different provider then, got it.
Great timing to send urgent business email, normally delivered within seconds, only to find out that it has never been received.
You rely on email for critical communication ? Not a good idea.
Of course I do and so does everybody else.
Internally, MAYBE. Externally ? Well, they must've some shoddy IT department then if they can't make it clear that email is a best-effort service.
Don't be silly.
I'm not. You have no way of knowing whether your mail reached its intended recipient or whether it went into a spamfolder, got lost on the way, or is sitting in some mail server queue (as per RFC when transient connectivity problems happen). If you rely on it for urgent and critical business purposes, you damn well better have a backup-plan.
It's no different from relying on your fax machine (which will just scan the documents and which might succeed at sending them at first opportunty the receiver is able to receive it; or having relied on the Telex network way back when - what did you do when the Telex line went dead?
We are not way back when. You generally KNOW when a fax does not get sent (by way of a busy signal or such). You often also have out-of-band communication about the fax.
If your phone line dies, at least you know it did. And even then you can use a backup -- the plain old postal service.
Hint: there was nothing you could do). The only real alternative the Internet today for any significant amount of data that needs to be transmitted intact is courier dispatch, but you don't use that unless the amount of data is huge.
Or, you know, it's actually business critical and you have no way of knowing whether it would reach its intended target otherwise. Hint : email is not that kind of service.
I do wonder if this active sabotage of 3rd party Internet traffic might be class-actionable.
You suing ? Thought so.
I'll be quite happy to join any class-action lawsuit against Cogent, thank you.
But not actually bothered enough to explore it yourself.
Keep in mind that unless Cogent both 1) claimed to route traffic from A to B
and 2) then actively dropped traffic from A to B nothing bad would have happened. Now they knowingly mis-configured the routers to lie to other Internet carrier companies, thus causing this mass-outage. Surely it can't be too long before some entrepreneurial law firm picks up on this way of actively causing trouble for 3rd parties.
Uhm. They actually just dropped peering connections and dropped traffic to and from TeliaSonera's AS (by any route) at the border of their own network. "Third parties" affected are customers of Cogent -- and they should look at their contract language on whether there has actually been a breach of contract (usually, there isn't). Also affected are TeliaSonera customers trying to reach Cogent's network -- but then again, Cogent is not required to send or receive ANY traffic it does not deem fit for its network -- nothing illegal about that.
I agree it's a hell of a dickish move by Cogent, and they are known to seek confrontation. Then again, when you buy transit from Cogent, you either know that or you did not do your homework. If you don't want to put up with their antics, choose a different transit prov
The experiment is not novel. The BBC is running circles around them. It is, however, a decent experiment.
Furthermore, I do believe this could work for private broadcasters as well. Right now, you find all the shows out there on P2P without ads with decent seeding without hassle. If they actually came together to figure out how to provide a better user experience (even with ads), they'd win. Of course, boxed-in low-bitrate streams of mediocre quality on their homepage that disappear after a day or a week are not gonna do the trick. Flash-only websites usable only on 1 or 2 browsers and 1 OS are not gonna do the trick. Stuff you can't send to your appleTv are not gonna do the trick. Stuff you can't send to your media center mythtv-box are not gonna do the trick. Then again, they don't have to care yet -- they still get enough money from public broadcasts, apparently.
Now, I sympathize with Comcast. Many ISPs, not just Comcast, are disrupting P2P sessions, and these sessions are in clear violation of most ISP's Terms of Service. How's that ? Do most ISPs' Terms of Service prohibit passing packets to and from the public internet ? Does, say, BitTorrent not work without violating RFCs relating to TCP/IP ? Or are you making the assumption that all P2P sessions are used exclusively to commit intellectual property rights violations ? If you are claiming that, then, quite honestly, do your damn homework.
And P2P is horribly disruptive, a single user can easily transmit 20 GB of data in a day. You know what would help in that case ? Give the user a traffic quota. Spell it out that you don't want them transferring 20gb per day. Make it clear contractually. Charge more if they exceed that limit. Clear rules, clear advertizing, clear buying decisions.
I can EASILY transmit 30-40gb of data per day (and receive more than that) doing stuff that will not run afoul of most ToS agreements. Heck, you could leave your Blizzard Downloader running and it'll transmit a pipeful of data -- and that is the primary mode of distribution for data by Blizzard Entertainment (with a dozen million accounts now, IIRC). Clearly they are evil, evil P2P-pirates, right ?
P2P is not at all disruptive. If you really think that, you need to take a look on how, exactly, the internet is supposed to work -- namely passing packets back and forth between arbitrary endpoints. It is INHERENTLY P2P-oriented. Sure, you/can/ build a TV-like broadcast-style content-distribution mechanism on it, but really, that's just one application. If your network can't handle the amount of pps or mbps common P2P-clients produce, either upgrade or change your plans. P2P itself is not to blame, either your marketing or your lack of planning is.
Yet Comcast seems intent on making people WANT to regulate them. Its like they are deliberately behaving stupid? I won't contest that.
They aren't agressive at pointing out all the other ISPs, to get the heat off. It might backfire in that there are also plenty of other ISPs that actually know how to plan their network buildout and service packages according to that plan.
Who's running that place? Morons. I don't even have a beef with them not wanting P2P on their network -- but they damn well better don't sell unlimited internet connectivity (or anything citing a bandwidth) if they can't, or won't, live up to it.
If you had read the article, then you would know that what Apple is proposing, is unlimited physical downloads that never expire. That means they cannot switch off your access, and if your hard drive crashed and killed everything on it, you could simply re-download your whole collection. If the company went bankrupt or sold, then as long as you still have the software or the device that can play the file format, then you are fine. So you are saying they are offering the songs without DRM ? Since otherwise, you just blatantly lied and misrepresented.
I hope that ibiblio & the internet archive (archive.org) are moved away from their current hosting on Cogent's network, urgently. You paying ? Thought so.
Great timing to send urgent business email, normally delivered within seconds, only to find out that it has never been received. You rely on email for critical communication ? Not a good idea.
I do wonder if this active sabotage of 3rd party Internet traffic might be class-actionable. You suing ? Thought so.
Of course e-mail is just a tiny part of the overall losses that 3rd parties suffer from this. And if you have a contract with either level3 or teliasonera that includes sla provisions protecting you from this, call them. If you don't, switch your ISP.
The in-testing browser even trumps Opera, which has long been regarded as the fastest browser around. And how does a smaller memory-footprint yield faster performance, EXACTLY ? The two are not necessarily related -- or even related in a way you might like. There are plenty of algorithms that sacrifice memory to become more speedy (and vice versa). The size of a memory-footprint of an application tells you exactly... nothing... about its speed, or its relative speed to other programs with different footprints.
Quite honestly, I don't care about memory consumption so long as it remains reasonable. My Opera-process has been running for weeks with, at times, heavy usage (dozens of open windows, some with highly dynamic pages). It's been stable and quick throughout that time, and did not grow to a size where I'd have to wonder what the hell is causing swapping. Yes, you can crash Opera (often related to badly coded plugins), and yes, you can make it unresponsive. I found, however, that it's far easier to do that to Firefox than Opera, and that Opera has been consistently snappier. Maybe that'll change with FF3. Hopefully it will, competition in that arena is always good.
i may be pilloried and voted as a troll by the defenders of the status quo here for saying this, but i will still say it: the big bang will be disproven. the universe is endless in time and space And I might even subscribe to that view -- IF you had any evidence to back up your claims, or at the very least a better theory that fits better with the existing evidence. Otherwise you are just playing the prophet -- you may be right, but that would be sheer dumb luck.
Citing examples of where other people have been wrong before does not help YOUR argument in the least. It does plaster the stink of snake-oil on it though.
All you are doing is philosophy. You might as well be asking whether the world as we see it truly exists or whether it's just a figment of our imagination. An interesting thought, to be sure, but squarely in the realm of philosophy, not science. And on a philosophical note, I'll reject your claim that the concept of time is an artifact of abrahamic religions or entirely based on human perception. Linking the two does not help your argument. As a sidenote, the "big bang" may mark the beginning of our universe (and, indeed, time) and still remain consistent with your views. However, this would be one of those "try to explain 3 dimensions to a 2-dimensional guy"-kind of situations.
Security cameras like those in ATM's have very limited visibility & range, and most people know they are there. The contents of those tapes also aren't generally available to the public. They most likely would need a court order to obtain. So wait a minute. I should ACCEPT big brother if I know that somebody with a badge is watching ? Probably some security guard that did not have the stuff to get into police training ? Maybe a guy with rent to pay ? Yeah, right, that makes me feel better. I don't know WHO is watching those tapes. That's not much different from everybody being able to watch them. So you know where all the CCTV cameras in London are ? Grats.
How would you like it if the whole world could simply go to Google and see a photograph of you walking into a motel with a prostitute, leaving a strip club, getting mugged on the side of the street, or caught in the act of accidentally hitting somebody in a crosswalk with your car? So, are you making a case against taking pictures in general ? 'cause all of those could easily happen through tourists taking pictures.
And what, exactly, is the difference between that picture and the same footage from a "security" camera on the evening news, probably obtained slightly illegally ?
It's that kind of publicity that most people are concerned about. And let them be concerned about it. However, CCTV and ATM cams are no better. At the very least I have the opportunity to look at those pictures of myself by myself.
To some extent you are right, stupendously stupid users can be a real problem. However, any "solution" that hinges on "educating" users is doomed to fail from the start -- Not everybody can know every form of malware out there, and the bad guys are constantly finding new ways to dupe people into falling for it. If your security plan includes a line like "don't install free screensavers", you have already lost.
If the attacker has physical control over the machine, the game is still lost. The "common" physical security measures on the case can be circumvented with a dremel -- though even that is not strictly required if your power supply has air vents you could poke scissors into (carefully).
So are you seriously saying that stage6 was best because a doubleclick on the video makes it full screen, whereas lesser sites like imeem/dailymotion/vimeo could only offer a little button on the video player to make the full screen player kick in? What kind of UI nazi are you? Thanks for invoking Godwin sir, you loose.
It's little things like that which make the difference. If your user interface puts "cool, whizbang design" first and usability second, you automatically loose -- though if you are lucky, you'll get some stupid VC firm to buy into that whizbang look.
Downloads make make the site better for the users, but they reduce the potential for displaying ads and making revenue as well as increasing potential legal liability, so while the site may be better, it may not be 'successful' and I think stage6's demise only reinforces this hypothesis. Legal liability ? Hogwash. That's exactly the same with both approaches.
If you want an adfarm, build an adfarm. Caring about the user's experience is a more important part of the whole. If your users don't like your site, you will have even less exposure. Do you really think YouTube would have happened if they placed profitability first ? Do you really think they are profitable/now/ ?
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I also doubt that Steve meant hardware support when he made that statement. There are more fundamental changes needed.
Do you honestly believe the networks won't follow the MPAA and the RIAA soon ? They're only just discovering that method of distribution ...
...)
(not to mention that if your folks, say, download Stargate the show and the MPAA thinks it's Stargate the movie, they won't exactly quibble about the details
When asked, I will tell people how.
I will also tell them that they better have good trust in their provider not to give up their information and/or the stomach to face a multi-million-dollar lawsuit (statutory damages can EASILY add up to that) with real scummy $5k-$10k settlement offers. When asked I'll also tell them about alternatives (such as Usenet or TOR). The last thing I need is them coming to me 2 years later with a "but you never told me this was not actually free, and now I have this lawyer bill to pay !" kind of attitude.
Oh, and I don't tell them about how they can get their favourite TV show/music/movie on the day it's released in excellent HD quality without hassle and playable on all their favourite computers and toys in the house for years to come, legally for an appropriate amount of money -- since the content providers summarily don't offer anything of the sort and then cry like little babies when many of their would-be-customers turn to copyright infringement instead -- it's just less hassle, better selection, and better quality.
BitTorrent as a protocol can't really do much better in the universal case, especially since any form of meaningful caching would be shied-away from due to legal reasons (which is somewhat ludicrous, seeing as how Usenet and HTTP Caches have set quite some precedent). It is not that hard to imagine such reflectors and protocol enhancements to properly support them -- this would could down dramatically on inter-AS-traffic. Of course customers would not be using it since they cannot trust their ISP not to have ulterior motives (like sending all gathered P2P-data straight to the MPAA/RIAA, even if it just pertains to a Linux image or WoW-patch). Trust is fickle like that.
No, BitTorrent was not designed to be "tolerant". The fact that it is /recognizable/ by shapers was not a design decision -- most unencrypted protocols are. It was also not designed with closest peers in mind, i.e. the peer selection algorithm does not take network distance into account (this would truly be tolerant of ISPs needs by keeping most traffic "local").
Most ISPs do not throttle to zero, but to the lowest traffic tier with some very low upper barrier.
Encrypted BitTorrent is still readily recognizable.
That works out to an average of 14.8mbit/s. That's not enormous. That's not even huge, or a lot. Downstream you get that kind of bandwidth on customer-grade ADSL2 connections (though upstream would be more expensive at home -- but then again, you don't host servers at home usually).
The best and easiest way to protect yourself is to lock it up. There are two schools of thought on this. I subscribe to your point of view, but can easily see decent reasons for keeping your network open, as well -- namely plausible deniability. If you actually WERE to want to break the law, having an open and accessible access point could help you plausibly deny any involvement -- and the burden of proof is not on you.
This same way of thinking applies to passwords in the office, especially if you are dealing with corruption and under-the-table transactions. Let's say Sally is the CFO of a company, but everybody knows Sally's password (let's say it's "godlysex"). For everybody testifying under oath that they knew the password and could plausibly have accessed Sally's account with it, the defense weakens the case of the prosecution (since plausibly, Sally had no knowledge of the corruption-related transactions being done through her account).
There is plenty of excellent "indie" music out there, and I'd hate to see them get the "major label" treatment.
(There is also plenty of excellent "major label" music out there, don't get me wrong. "Major labels" are not just Britney and cohorts, there is some genuinely good stuff in there too). Human beings have this illogical obsession with originality and authenticity. Look at synthetic vs real diamonds, generic vs name brands, anything vs Apple, etc. That's actually all just excellent marketing -- I mean REALLY excellent marketing, with all tools of the trade (psychologically-driven branding activities, subliminal information, astroturfing, etc.). It's not really illogical -- the factors at work are well known -- "Public Relations" is a rather well-developed science. There will always be music made for 'profit', and there will always be music made for the hell of it, but I don't think that means that one or the other will stick firmly to a specific distribution model. And music made for the hell of it is not necessarily better than music made for profit -- nor should it be. Even music made for profit can be a labour of love -- just one that is well-marketable.
I hope that ibiblio & the internet archive (archive.org) are moved away from their current hosting on Cogent's network, urgently.
You paying ? Thought so.
The Internet works by everybody paying their own share of the costs. I'm not paying for your connectivity costs, you're not paying for mine. Note that if you don't pay enough to cover your ISP's real costs, your ISP will start behaving like Cogent does and you're then part of the problem.
So that is a no to you paying ibiblio and archive.org's move to a different provider then, got it.
Great timing to send urgent business email, normally delivered within seconds, only to find out that it has never been received.
You rely on email for critical communication ? Not a good idea.
Of course I do and so does everybody else.
Internally, MAYBE. Externally ? Well, they must've some shoddy IT department then if they can't make it clear that email is a best-effort service.
Don't be silly.
I'm not. You have no way of knowing whether your mail reached its intended recipient or whether it went into a spamfolder, got lost on the way, or is sitting in some mail server queue (as per RFC when transient connectivity problems happen). If you rely on it for urgent and critical business purposes, you damn well better have a backup-plan.
It's no different from relying on your fax machine (which will just scan the documents and which might succeed at sending them at first opportunty the receiver is able to receive it; or having relied on the Telex network way back when - what did you do when the Telex line went dead?
We are not way back when. You generally KNOW when a fax does not get sent (by way of a busy signal or such). You often also have out-of-band communication about the fax.
If your phone line dies, at least you know it did. And even then you can use a backup -- the plain old postal service.
Hint: there was nothing you could do). The only real alternative the Internet today for any significant amount of data that needs to be transmitted intact is courier dispatch, but you don't use that unless the amount of data is huge.
Or, you know, it's actually business critical and you have no way of knowing whether it would reach its intended target otherwise. Hint : email is not that kind of service.
I do wonder if this active sabotage of 3rd party Internet traffic might be class-actionable.
You suing ? Thought so.
I'll be quite happy to join any class-action lawsuit against Cogent, thank you.
But not actually bothered enough to explore it yourself.
Keep in mind that unless Cogent both 1) claimed to route traffic from A to B
and 2) then actively dropped traffic from A to B nothing bad would have happened. Now they knowingly mis-configured the routers to lie to other Internet carrier companies, thus causing this mass-outage. Surely it can't be too long before some entrepreneurial law firm picks up on this way of actively causing trouble for 3rd parties.
Uhm. They actually just dropped peering connections and dropped traffic to and from TeliaSonera's AS (by any route) at the border of their own network. "Third parties" affected are customers of Cogent -- and they should look at their contract language on whether there has actually been a breach of contract (usually, there isn't). Also affected are TeliaSonera customers trying to reach Cogent's network -- but then again, Cogent is not required to send or receive ANY traffic it does not deem fit for its network -- nothing illegal about that.
I agree it's a hell of a dickish move by Cogent, and they are known to seek confrontation. Then again, when you buy transit from Cogent, you either know that or you did not do your homework. If you don't want to put up with their antics, choose a different transit prov
The experiment is not novel. The BBC is running circles around them. It is, however, a decent experiment.
Furthermore, I do believe this could work for private broadcasters as well. Right now, you find all the shows out there on P2P without ads with decent seeding without hassle. If they actually came together to figure out how to provide a better user experience (even with ads), they'd win. Of course, boxed-in low-bitrate streams of mediocre quality on their homepage that disappear after a day or a week are not gonna do the trick. Flash-only websites usable only on 1 or 2 browsers and 1 OS are not gonna do the trick. Stuff you can't send to your appleTv are not gonna do the trick. Stuff you can't send to your media center mythtv-box are not gonna do the trick. Then again, they don't have to care yet -- they still get enough money from public broadcasts, apparently.
I have to wonder : are you familiar with the concepts of null-routes and automation ?
I can EASILY transmit 30-40gb of data per day (and receive more than that) doing stuff that will not run afoul of most ToS agreements. Heck, you could leave your Blizzard Downloader running and it'll transmit a pipeful of data -- and that is the primary mode of distribution for data by Blizzard Entertainment (with a dozen million accounts now, IIRC). Clearly they are evil, evil P2P-pirates, right ?
P2P is not at all disruptive. If you really think that, you need to take a look on how, exactly, the internet is supposed to work -- namely passing packets back and forth between arbitrary endpoints. It is INHERENTLY P2P-oriented. Sure, you
If your network can't handle the amount of pps or mbps common P2P-clients produce, either upgrade or change your plans. P2P itself is not to blame, either your marketing or your lack of planning is. Yet Comcast seems intent on making people WANT to regulate them. Its like they are deliberately behaving stupid? I won't contest that. They aren't agressive at pointing out all the other ISPs, to get the heat off. It might backfire in that there are also plenty of other ISPs that actually know how to plan their network buildout and service packages according to that plan. Who's running that place? Morons. I don't even have a beef with them not wanting P2P on their network -- but they damn well better don't sell unlimited internet connectivity (or anything citing a bandwidth) if they can't, or won't, live up to it.
Thought so. Great timing to send urgent business email, normally delivered within seconds, only to find out that it has never been received. You rely on email for critical communication ? Not a good idea. I do wonder if this active sabotage of 3rd party Internet traffic might be class-actionable. You suing ?
Thought so. Of course e-mail is just a tiny part of the overall losses that 3rd parties suffer from this. And if you have a contract with either level3 or teliasonera that includes sla provisions protecting you from this, call them. If you don't, switch your ISP.
Quite honestly, I don't care about memory consumption so long as it remains reasonable. My Opera-process has been running for weeks with, at times, heavy usage (dozens of open windows, some with highly dynamic pages). It's been stable and quick throughout that time, and did not grow to a size where I'd have to wonder what the hell is causing swapping.
Yes, you can crash Opera (often related to badly coded plugins), and yes, you can make it unresponsive. I found, however, that it's far easier to do that to Firefox than Opera, and that Opera has been consistently snappier. Maybe that'll change with FF3. Hopefully it will, competition in that arena is always good.
Citing examples of where other people have been wrong before does not help YOUR argument in the least. It does plaster the stink of snake-oil on it though.
All you are doing is philosophy. You might as well be asking whether the world as we see it truly exists or whether it's just a figment of our imagination. An interesting thought, to be sure, but squarely in the realm of philosophy, not science. And on a philosophical note, I'll reject your claim that the concept of time is an artifact of abrahamic religions or entirely based on human perception. Linking the two does not help your argument. As a sidenote, the "big bang" may mark the beginning of our universe (and, indeed, time) and still remain consistent with your views. However, this would be one of those "try to explain 3 dimensions to a 2-dimensional guy"-kind of situations.
I don't know WHO is watching those tapes. That's not much different from everybody being able to watch them.
So you know where all the CCTV cameras in London are ? Grats. How would you like it if the whole world could simply go to Google and see a photograph of you walking into a motel with a prostitute, leaving a strip club, getting mugged on the side of the street, or caught in the act of accidentally hitting somebody in a crosswalk with your car? So, are you making a case against taking pictures in general ? 'cause all of those could easily happen through tourists taking pictures.
And what, exactly, is the difference between that picture and the same footage from a "security" camera on the evening news, probably obtained slightly illegally ? It's that kind of publicity that most people are concerned about. And let them be concerned about it. However, CCTV and ATM cams are no better. At the very least I have the opportunity to look at those pictures of myself by myself.
To some extent you are right, stupendously stupid users can be a real problem. However, any "solution" that hinges on "educating" users is doomed to fail from the start -- Not everybody can know every form of malware out there, and the bad guys are constantly finding new ways to dupe people into falling for it. If your security plan includes a line like "don't install free screensavers", you have already lost.
If the attacker has physical control over the machine, the game is still lost. The "common" physical security measures on the case can be circumvented with a dremel -- though even that is not strictly required if your power supply has air vents you could poke scissors into (carefully).
What kind of UI nazi are you? Thanks for invoking Godwin sir, you loose.
It's little things like that which make the difference. If your user interface puts "cool, whizbang design" first and usability second, you automatically loose -- though if you are lucky, you'll get some stupid VC firm to buy into that whizbang look. Downloads make make the site better for the users, but they reduce the potential for displaying ads and making revenue as well as increasing potential legal liability, so while the site may be better, it may not be 'successful' and I think stage6's demise only reinforces this hypothesis. Legal liability ? Hogwash. That's exactly the same with both approaches.
If you want an adfarm, build an adfarm. Caring about the user's experience is a more important part of the whole. If your users don't like your site, you will have even less exposure. Do you really think YouTube would have happened if they placed profitability first ? Do you really think they are profitable