Please people, don't drop the ball on this. This is effectively what everyone on Slashdot has been praying for and waiting for- our government to do something about the fact that broadband access in the United States lags behind The Republic of South Korea, Rural Finland and many countries which have only recently emerged from the rule of military dictatorships. The FCC is asking you the People how universal broadband should be delivered- I would think 15 to 20 thousand slashdot subscribers would actually have something constructive to say in this regard.
This is NOT about a transition to a VOIP based network. This is about providing universal broadband access. To quote from the FCC Public Notice:
In the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 ("Recovery Act"), Congress directed
the Commission to create a national broadband plan by February 17, 2010, that seeks to "ensure that all
people of the United States have access to broadband capability and... establish[es] benchmarks for
meeting that goal."1 Among other things, the Commission is to provide "an analysis of the most effective
and efficient mechanism for ensuring broadband access by all people of the United States"2 and "a
detailed strategy for achieving affordability of such service and maximum utilization of broadband
infrastructure and service by the public."
The point of this move by the FCC is to respond to a mandate from the Congress of the United States to move from an obsolete model of providing universal dial tone on the POTS network to provide universal broadband access. The FCC is asking for comment for their proposal that once universal broadband access is delivered, would we really need POTS lines for anything other than Neo and Morpheus to come and visit us? Or should they provide two expensive subsidized networks? Should rural network subscribers (such as myself) have TWO expensive subsidized networks, a subsidized broadband access and a subsidized POTS access? Or could the broadband access be delivered in such a way that the services we enjoy with POTS (911 calls, calls to grandma, faxes, ability to tunnel through the POTS network to other network providers) be effectively delivered with a standardized national broadband infrastructure?
And this is a change in their customer service how? Like with the phones that they currently support they can explain to me why I can't reply to an SMS outside my area code?
Just because filial bonds lead to triumph in Return of the Jedi does NOT mean that Yoda gave bad advice in Revenge of the Sith. If Annakin had listened to Yoda and just for once not been driven by his desire to save Padme, then he might have been able to avoid the following:
1) Padme's death; 2) The rise of the Empire and the destruction of the Republic; 3) The destruction of the Jedi order; 4) The rise of the Sith;
What a coincidence- Skype releases on Linux on June 21, and someone posts a "question" about alternative VOIP- but the "question" is a thinly disguised publicity announcement of Skype on Linux. Is feilkin somehow associated with Skype?
OK. Thanks for the sarcasm. I had previously looked, and been struck by the fact that community support for this leading edge immature technology seems to be extremely diffuse.
I guess my question must have seemed really off topic on Slashdot.
So I took you up on your suggestion and found the following links. Maybe one other reader might find this of benefit:
The Cnet story mentions that a group of independent security consultants discovered the problem and worked with Microsoft to resolve it. Can this be interpreted to mean that they negotiated with Microsoft for financial compensation for resolution of the problem?
Does that mean that we now have a class of professionals who act as freelance quality assurance for popular commercial software? (Or less charitably as software kidnappers?)
The choice posed by the final question is a fallacy (as the poster notes- btw). It can in fact be a New World Order and still be a Business Cycle.
Debates regarding the desirability of the transfer of tech jobs to places such as China and India tend to focus on how the increased supply of cheaper tech workers from traditionally third world countries depresses the price of labor in rich world countries (such as the US) and therefore depresses the earnings of high tech workers in the US. The ultimate thrust of this purported economic trend is that America is going to hell in a hand basket.
The points which are often lost in these debates is that economics tends not to be a zero sum game. If a tech worker is hired in China, India or Russia this does not always lead to a tech worker being fired in the US (though it can lead to a firing). But as Chinese, Indian and Russian workers gain two consequences emerge:
Prices go down in the US (and consumers benefit)
Wages go up in China, India and Russia and producers benefit
For example, I am a high tech worker (producer) and a high tech consumer so I both win (my cost of consumption goes down) and I lose (I gain competition for my product, i.e. my services).
The other major point that observers tend to overlook is that the dominant theme of global prosperity and stability in our lifetime (for the whole world, not just the rich world and the poor world) will be the extent that places such as China, India and Russia are able to successfully grow and develop- you could summarize it as a choice between the future of Mad Max versus the future of Star Trek. The three countries listed contain over a third of the world population, and they and we will be doomed if they are not able to participate in the high tech marketplace freely.
Many of the shortsighted observers who decry the tend to third world cheap programmers demand protectionist policies (immigration caps, etc.) Perhaps the only remedy against the disparity between a rich high tech world and a poor high tech world is an elimination of the the artificial barriers to development in places such as China, India and Russia. Instead of caps on H1 visas, why not allow unlimited immigration into the United States (and not just tech workers- why shouldn't an illiterate construction worker from the inner provinces of China be allowed to find work in the US legally if he or she believes that his/her life is better in the US)? This would very quickly alleviate the problems of poverty on the Asian continent, and if history is any guide allow the United States to witness the kinds of enormous economic growth and dynamism of the early 20th century. The alternative is to allow China, India and Russia to have a monopoly on dynamism.
Scalability inside one box might be desireable if the part of the problem of your application requires intensive bandwidth between components in your computation.
Gigabit ethernet between two boxes in a beowulf cluster may be nice, but how does it compare to passing data back and forth over shared memory segments?
Yes- and I admit that I never have. I don't doubt that your machine was fast. But the question is, if you have a computing problem which can take advantage of multiple processors, and you add additional CPUs to the problem, how does processing scale? Does it scale linearly? Most people will tell you that Linux 2.4.x and before, using Symmetric Multi Processing will not scale linearly. This means that adding 8 CPUs does not perform your computation at 8x, but some lesser multiplier. If you have a particularly compute intensive problem, perhaps you want to add 64 CPUs to the problem... Supposedly the kernel developers currently debate how to scale to support such high end systems. Some have suggested implementing virtual partitions of machines, which is exactly how Solaris does on the E10K- so a 64 CPU machine actually functions as 4 16 CPU machines... Others would suggest that the problem should not be resolved by trying to divide computational problems on the same host, but straddle them across hosts, such as Beowulf is supposed to do (again not in my realm of experience...)
Supposedly Linux does not scale linearly over 4 CPUs with SMP, and from my own experience I have seen that Solaris does this nicely and has done so for years. Supposedly this is being addressed in the 2.5.x series. The response to this is that even high end Unix does not do scale well over greater than 8 CPUs- every E10K or F15 that I have ever seen gets carved up into virtual domains of 8 or 12 CPUs...
People worry about jobs being shipped overseas. I work for a company where half the development staff is in Bangalore (I've even been to Bangalore) and many of the people I work with used to work for Infosys, which is one of the leading software development firms.
Outsourcing can hurt- people in the US do lose jobs here when jobs go overseas. But for every car, shoe, or software program which goes overseas, some person their gets a job. Their earnings go up. They spend money.
A software developer in India earning $20,000 a year might even have enough money to buy something from the US (OK, maybe they might buy a Daewoo instead of a Chrysler- there are models of Korean cars which are popular in India which are not even sold in the US...)
Do people here who worry about jobs going overseas not want to see the level of prosperity go up in India? In China? In the Phillipines? In Africa?
These considerations don't even begin to take account the benefit that people in America realize when goods and services become cheaper here. Sure you might argue that when living standards go up in Mexico, standards in our country go down towards that of Mexico- but remember that in the 19th century people like Marxists predicted that this would happen, that the world would constantly develop towards the edges. Of course, they predicted that when the edges are exhausted, the revolution begins...
Slashdot Mirror
Please people, don't drop the ball on this. This is effectively what everyone on Slashdot has been praying for and waiting for- our government to do something about the fact that broadband access in the United States lags behind The Republic of South Korea, Rural Finland and many countries which have only recently emerged from the rule of military dictatorships. The FCC is asking you the People how universal broadband should be delivered- I would think 15 to 20 thousand slashdot subscribers would actually have something constructive to say in this regard.
The point of this move by the FCC is to respond to a mandate from the Congress of the United States to move from an obsolete model of providing universal dial tone on the POTS network to provide universal broadband access. The FCC is asking for comment for their proposal that once universal broadband access is delivered, would we really need POTS lines for anything other than Neo and Morpheus to come and visit us? Or should they provide two expensive subsidized networks? Should rural network subscribers (such as myself) have TWO expensive subsidized networks, a subsidized broadband access and a subsidized POTS access? Or could the broadband access be delivered in such a way that the services we enjoy with POTS (911 calls, calls to grandma, faxes, ability to tunnel through the POTS network to other network providers) be effectively delivered with a standardized national broadband infrastructure?
And this is a change in their customer service how? Like with the phones that they currently support they can explain to me why I can't reply to an SMS outside my area code?
Just because filial bonds lead to triumph in Return of the Jedi does NOT mean that Yoda gave bad advice in Revenge of the Sith. If Annakin had listened to Yoda and just for once not been driven by his desire to save Padme, then he might have been able to avoid the following:
1) Padme's death;
2) The rise of the Empire and the destruction of the Republic;
3) The destruction of the Jedi order;
4) The rise of the Sith;
What a coincidence- Skype releases on Linux on June 21, and someone posts a "question" about alternative VOIP- but the "question" is a thinly disguised publicity announcement of Skype on Linux. Is feilkin somehow associated with Skype?
I guess my question must have seemed really off topic on Slashdot.
So I took you up on your suggestion and found the following links. Maybe one other reader might find this of benefit:
How to use XCdroast on Linux:
DVD+RW and utils on Linux
With all the +,-, RW, etc, how do I know which DVD drives I can use under Linux to read and write filesystems? Is there a FAQ on this somewhere?
I am not asking about decss, as that is easy to find on the web.
The Cnet story mentions that a group of independent security consultants discovered the problem and worked with Microsoft to resolve it. Can this be interpreted to mean that they negotiated with Microsoft for financial compensation for resolution of the problem?
Does that mean that we now have a class of professionals who act as freelance quality assurance for popular commercial software? (Or less charitably as software kidnappers?)
Debates regarding the desirability of the transfer of tech jobs to places such as China and India tend to focus on how the increased supply of cheaper tech workers from traditionally third world countries depresses the price of labor in rich world countries (such as the US) and therefore depresses the earnings of high tech workers in the US. The ultimate thrust of this purported economic trend is that America is going to hell in a hand basket.
The points which are often lost in these debates is that economics tends not to be a zero sum game. If a tech worker is hired in China, India or Russia this does not always lead to a tech worker being fired in the US (though it can lead to a firing). But as Chinese, Indian and Russian workers gain two consequences emerge:
For example, I am a high tech worker (producer) and a high tech consumer so I both win (my cost of consumption goes down) and I lose (I gain competition for my product, i.e. my services).
The other major point that observers tend to overlook is that the dominant theme of global prosperity and stability in our lifetime (for the whole world, not just the rich world and the poor world) will be the extent that places such as China, India and Russia are able to successfully grow and develop- you could summarize it as a choice between the future of Mad Max versus the future of Star Trek. The three countries listed contain over a third of the world population, and they and we will be doomed if they are not able to participate in the high tech marketplace freely.
Many of the shortsighted observers who decry the tend to third world cheap programmers demand protectionist policies (immigration caps, etc.) Perhaps the only remedy against the disparity between a rich high tech world and a poor high tech world is an elimination of the the artificial barriers to development in places such as China, India and Russia. Instead of caps on H1 visas, why not allow unlimited immigration into the United States (and not just tech workers- why shouldn't an illiterate construction worker from the inner provinces of China be allowed to find work in the US legally if he or she believes that his/her life is better in the US)? This would very quickly alleviate the problems of poverty on the Asian continent, and if history is any guide allow the United States to witness the kinds of enormous economic growth and dynamism of the early 20th century. The alternative is to allow China, India and Russia to have a monopoly on dynamism.
Scalability inside one box might be desireable if the part of the problem of your application requires intensive bandwidth between components in your computation.
Gigabit ethernet between two boxes in a beowulf cluster may be nice, but how does it compare to passing data back and forth over shared memory segments?
Yes- and I admit that I never have. I don't doubt that your machine was fast. But the question is, if you have a computing problem which can take advantage of multiple processors, and you add additional CPUs to the problem, how does processing scale? Does it scale linearly? Most people will tell you that Linux 2.4.x and before, using Symmetric Multi Processing will not scale linearly.
This means that adding 8 CPUs does not perform your computation at 8x, but some lesser multiplier. If you have a particularly compute intensive problem, perhaps you want to add 64 CPUs to the problem...
Supposedly the kernel developers currently debate how to scale to support such high end systems. Some have suggested implementing virtual partitions of machines, which is exactly how Solaris does on the E10K- so a 64 CPU machine actually functions as 4 16 CPU machines...
Others would suggest that the problem should not be resolved by trying to divide computational problems on the same host, but straddle them across hosts, such as Beowulf is supposed to do (again not in my realm of experience...)
Supposedly Linux does not scale linearly over 4 CPUs with SMP, and from my own experience I have seen that Solaris does this nicely and has done so for years.
Supposedly this is being addressed in the 2.5.x series.
The response to this is that even high end Unix does not do scale well over greater than 8 CPUs- every E10K or F15 that I have ever seen gets carved up into virtual domains of 8 or 12 CPUs...
People worry about jobs being shipped overseas. I work for a company where half the development staff is in Bangalore (I've even been to Bangalore) and many of the people I work with used to work for Infosys, which is one of the leading software development firms.
Outsourcing can hurt- people in the US do lose jobs here when jobs go overseas. But for every car, shoe, or software program which goes overseas, some person their gets a job. Their earnings go up. They spend money.
A software developer in India earning $20,000 a year might even have enough money to buy something from the US (OK, maybe they might buy a Daewoo instead of a Chrysler- there are models of Korean cars which are popular in India which are not even sold in the US...)
Do people here who worry about jobs going overseas not want to see the level of prosperity go up in India? In China? In the Phillipines? In Africa?
These considerations don't even begin to take account the benefit that people in America realize when goods and services become cheaper here. Sure you might argue that when living standards go up in Mexico, standards in our country go down towards that of Mexico- but remember that in the 19th century people like Marxists predicted that this would happen, that the world would constantly develop towards the edges. Of course, they predicted that when the edges are exhausted, the revolution begins...