Microsoft is not known for strong initial offerings. The original IE was awful. The original Windows was unusable. They tend to stay in and fight, and sometimes win.
I find this statement telling. Because, a few (three?) years ago, I believe it would have been something like:
"They stay in and fight, and always win in the end."
Once, Microsoft was perceived as invincible. Once, if Microsoft entered your market you either tried to get them to buy you or else just gnawed your own leg off first (e.g. Novell and NetWare) because Resistance Is Useless.
Now, Microsoft is not perceived as invincible. The world has indeed changed...
First-to-invent is more moral... OK, you can stop laughing now. Yes, I suppose you're right, this is the patent system as it actually exists rather than as we'd like it to exist...
In practice, first-to-invent does not result in a more moral outcome. It encourages deceit ("I invented it last year, before this similar device entered the market. Honest, I did.") and litigation. It's more complex, so it's slower and more expensive. Most (?) other countries have first-to-file. As far as I'm aware none have ever contemplated switching to first-to-invent.
It's a first step. Nuke business process and software patents, stop litigation tourism and mandate loser pays court costs and things might even start to improve.
By the rocket equation, mass fraction is determined by velocity and exhaust velocity is driven two things; the mass of the molecules being put out and the pressure/temperature of the combustion chamber. The latter is limited, as once you get to about 100 atmospheres and 3000K you start to run out of materials to make the combustion chamber out of. Thus, molecule mass is the real driving factor - which is why despite the truly horrific engineering problems it entails, liquid hydrogen is a highly valued rocket fuel.
At one stage apparently, they looked at Hydogen + Flourine. Most exothermic binary reactiion known? Check. Satisfactorily low reaction mass? Check.
Of course, quite apart from the horrific problems of dealing with liquid Flourine, the issue of that light reaction mass product, and its somewhat unfriendly characteristics led to it being abandoned.
I am confused. Your point seems to be that variable length addresses do not incur a performance hit. You say that Tony provided pseudo-code which demonstrated "variable length" was not a problem. However you ask us to look it up ourselves while linking to an article which describes Tony's work history (which does not reference variable length addresses).
That's right. There is a lot of stuff there. The 'info.big-internet' reference shows both sides of a long debate about what eventually became IPv6.
The grandparent was commenting on address length and the last lines of your comment purportedly to support your view provides an example based on frame size. Do you realize that address length and frame size are not the same and they really cannot be compared when talking about routing performance? Maybe if you said the size of the address parameter in the header and the size of the frame_size parameter in the header it would be more comparable, but then it would be obvious that it does not provide a meaningful example since both the address parameter and frame_size parameter are fixed length variables.
So are you talking about variable length addresses or variable frame sizes?
Yes. Both. In the general sense that fixed length (addresses/frame sizes) 'must' be more efficient. It was 'obvious' at the time that fixed length ATM cells must be easier and more efficient to implement in hardware. In fact (and I am well aware of all the other reasons that led to ATM's fall and Ethernet's ascent) ATM was not significantly easier to do in hardware. I offered ATM vs Ethernet since that's something most people are at least superficially aware of.
In fact, Tony Li's (and others') proposal for variable length addressing was ultimately ignored, and we ended up with the current 128 bit format.
One of the places where Tony demonstrated the sort of code that router manufacturers actually write was in this posting. It's part of a long and technical thread. If you are interested you'll have to read to get context.
Not really. It'll probably lead to NAT (v4/v6) being created as a stopgap, [...]
It's doable, too, to give v4 only clients v6 access through protocol translation and a bit of DNS hackery to map v6 addresses to a v4 host temporarily like how NAT works).
Alas, not so. NAT46 (RFC 2766) doesn't work. It's now an ex-Parrot (RFC 4966) and no-one is showing any signs of applying high voltage to the cage.
That particular "simple way to transition" won't work.
You try to design a router ASIC with variable length addresses!
You and I might struggle, but Tony Li didn't seem to have a problem with it. Really. Go and look at Google Groups for info.big-internet around 1993-1994 and see Tony provide pseudo-code that demonstrated that variable length was not a problem for ASICs, nor was it any slower.
Yes, it is obvious that fixed length must be better than variable length. Yes, that is incorrect. What everyone 'knows' may be far from the truth.
Now, continue surfing using the more efficient, cheaper ATM (fixed size cells) NIC rather than that inefficient , expensive Ethernet (variable size frames) NIC.
If everybody knows it because it's plastered over the front page of the New York Times it is no longer a secret. Your thief analogy is inaccurate. Regardless of the legitimacy of how it got there, you can not reasonably believe that it is, any more, 'secret'. To look at it another way: a thief stole your vase and smashed it. It is now a broken vase. Just because they had no right to do so doesn't unbreak the vase.
Question (Where is the missing mass? Why is there more matter than anti-matter?)
Hypothesize (X particles)
Predict (X particles will do this thing which we have not yet observed)
Test/experiment (Do they?)
Analysis/Conclusion
At the moment, they are at #3. Unless they can get to both #4 and #5 then the 'theory' is and will remain idle speculation, suitable only for prompting bad jokes in./
During WW I the British decided they didn't want anyone moving through a particular portion of the front:
Ian V. Hogg, in Weapons & War Machines, describes an action that took place in August, 1916, during which the British Army's 100th Company of the Machine Gun Corps fired their ten Vickers guns continuously for twelve hours. They fired a million rounds between them, using 100 new barrels
When I worked for the Post Office, I came to the conclusion that the only way to send fragile stuff any distance was to hand carry it, or make it relatively indestructible.
Point in case: overseas surface mail. A fragile package (marked as such) would be carefully placed, right side up, in a mail bag, under the watchful eye of a supervisor. After which (there being no 'fragile' overseas surface mail service), the rest of the packages would be thrown in on top of it from up to 20ft away. The full mail bag would then be consigned to cold, unfeeling machinery which would transport it around the building, ending with a 10ft drop into a chute leading to the loading bay. There, strong men---no doubt caring, thoughtful and gentle as kittens given the opportunity---would toss the bags as far as they could into the back of a truck, whence it was delivered to the docks and thence to a ship, where it got a special low rate because it was used as packing to stop the rest of the cargo from shifting in high seas.
The point is that very soon in its journey, any possible 'FRAGILE' label is useless, as the package has been aggregated into a larger more economic mass, and that aggregate gets treated pretty much just like any other piece of cargo.
@c6gunner: You appeared to be refuting bberens assertion that "many of the early settlers were criminals of some sort", which does appear to be true, albeit the number of criminals transported to Australia was higher. OTOH, the proportions seem to have tipped the other way nowadays:
Incidentally, many of the early settlers were criminals of some sort
In Australia, maybe. In North America it was mostly people fleeing poverty and persecution.
Not so much
"From the 1620s until the American Revolution, the British colonies in North America received transported British criminals, effectively double the period that Australian colonies received convicts."
That's not what NAT64 is for. NAT64 allows IPv6 only stations access to legacy IPv4 only stations. And then, only until the IPv4 legacy station acquires an IPv6 address, after which you ditch the NAT.
NAT66 maps IPv6 onto a different IPv6 address. This could be used if you thought you needed more IPv6 addresses, such as if your ISP only gave you a single/128. The better solution in this case is to change ISPs (if for no other reason than because any ISP that insists on handing out only/128 is too stupid to survive long, so you might as well find another one sooner rather than later).
Because there will literally be mountains of eWaste and headaches galore? How many of the home routers sold in the past 5 years even support IPv6? I don't think any of the consumer grade stuff does.
Apple Airports and Time capsules; a slew of D-LINK WiFi, including DI-784, DI-524, DI-624, WBR-1310, WBR-1310, WBR-2310, DIR-615; Thomson ST620. And others that I don;t have to hand right now. Admittedly, it's a pathetically small list, but certainly there is SOME consumer grade stuff that does. And the latest Broadcom chipset and associated software does IPv6, so expect it in the next roaund of gateways.
Absent any other specifically firewall features, such as statefulness, NAT on its own offers no more than the illusion of security.
Apart from port scanning which allows preemptive attacks, any time you visit a web page, that site now knows your IP,port combo and can attempt to pwn you.
In practice, firewalls offer NAT as part of their overall service, and so it's the firewall that's protecting you, not the 'NAT'.
When you get a new broadband router, it will almost certainly follow TR-124, which means it has a firewall (the revised IPv6 version of TR-124 is coming RSN, and the fact that it's not already here and widely deployed is a major source of shame---but that's another story).
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft is not known for strong initial offerings. The original IE was awful. The original Windows was unusable. They tend to stay in and fight, and sometimes win.
I find this statement telling. Because, a few (three?) years ago, I believe it would have been something like:
"They stay in and fight, and always win in the end."
Once, Microsoft was perceived as invincible. Once, if Microsoft entered your market you either tried to get them to buy you or else just gnawed your own leg off first (e.g. Novell and NetWare) because Resistance Is Useless.
Now, Microsoft is not perceived as invincible. The world has indeed changed...
I tried naming myself Maud, but TDTTOE.
In practice, first-to-invent does not result in a more moral outcome. It encourages deceit ("I invented it last year, before this similar device entered the market. Honest, I did.") and litigation. It's more complex, so it's slower and more expensive. Most (?) other countries have first-to-file. As far as I'm aware none have ever contemplated switching to first-to-invent.
It's a first step. Nuke business process and software patents, stop litigation tourism and mandate loser pays court costs and things might even start to improve.
I mean, while he's a bit easier to cast your gaze upon than one of the Old Ones
If you do in fact speak from experience, then you are, presumably, irredeemably insane.
Damn. My spell check appears to have achieved malevolent sentience. s/Flourine/Fluorine/g.
By the rocket equation, mass fraction is determined by velocity and exhaust velocity is driven two things; the mass of the molecules being put out and the pressure/temperature of the combustion chamber. The latter is limited, as once you get to about 100 atmospheres and 3000K you start to run out of materials to make the combustion chamber out of. Thus, molecule mass is the real driving factor - which is why despite the truly horrific engineering problems it entails, liquid hydrogen is a highly valued rocket fuel.
At one stage apparently, they looked at Hydogen + Flourine. Most exothermic binary reactiion known? Check. Satisfactorily low reaction mass? Check.
Of course, quite apart from the horrific problems of dealing with liquid Flourine, the issue of that light reaction mass product, and its somewhat unfriendly characteristics led to it being abandoned.
I am confused. Your point seems to be that variable length addresses do not incur a performance hit. You say that Tony provided pseudo-code which demonstrated "variable length" was not a problem. However you ask us to look it up ourselves while linking to an article which describes Tony's work history (which does not reference variable length addresses).
That's right. There is a lot of stuff there. The 'info.big-internet' reference shows both sides of a long debate about what eventually became IPv6.
The grandparent was commenting on address length and the last lines of your comment purportedly to support your view provides an example based on frame size. Do you realize that address length and frame size are not the same and they really cannot be compared when talking about routing performance? Maybe if you said the size of the address parameter in the header and the size of the frame_size parameter in the header it would be more comparable, but then it would be obvious that it does not provide a meaningful example since both the address parameter and frame_size parameter are fixed length variables.
So are you talking about variable length addresses or variable frame sizes?
Yes. Both. In the general sense that fixed length (addresses/frame sizes) 'must' be more efficient. It was 'obvious' at the time that fixed length ATM cells must be easier and more efficient to implement in hardware. In fact (and I am well aware of all the other reasons that led to ATM's fall and Ethernet's ascent) ATM was not significantly easier to do in hardware. I offered ATM vs Ethernet since that's something most people are at least superficially aware of.
In fact, Tony Li's (and others') proposal for variable length addressing was ultimately ignored, and we ended up with the current 128 bit format.
One of the places where Tony demonstrated the sort of code that router manufacturers actually write was in this posting. It's part of a long and technical thread. If you are interested you'll have to read to get context.
Not really. It'll probably lead to NAT (v4/v6) being created as a stopgap, [...]
It's doable, too, to give v4 only clients v6 access through protocol translation and a bit of DNS hackery to map v6 addresses to a v4 host temporarily like how NAT works).
Alas, not so. NAT46 (RFC 2766) doesn't work. It's now an ex-Parrot (RFC 4966) and no-one is showing any signs of applying high voltage to the cage.
That particular "simple way to transition" won't work.
Doesn't matter. I want IPv6-NAT... And anyway, IPv6 addresses are ugg-ly.
Hell, maybe the whole IPv6 thing should be thrown out and something else designed, that is more compatible with the existing IPv4 network.
So you would agree with this then... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v26BAlfWBm8
You try to design a router ASIC with variable length addresses!
You and I might struggle, but Tony Li didn't seem to have a problem with it. Really. Go and look at Google Groups for info.big-internet around 1993-1994 and see Tony provide pseudo-code that demonstrated that variable length was not a problem for ASICs, nor was it any slower.
Yes, it is obvious that fixed length must be better than variable length. Yes, that is incorrect. What everyone 'knows' may be far from the truth.
Now, continue surfing using the more efficient, cheaper ATM (fixed size cells) NIC rather than that inefficient , expensive Ethernet (variable size frames) NIC.
/me resists temptation to moderate this +1 insightful or +1 informative
1. done, made, or conducted without the knowledge of others
2. kept from the knowledge of any but the initiated or privileged
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/secret
If everybody knows it because it's plastered over the front page of the New York Times it is no longer a secret. Your thief analogy is inaccurate. Regardless of the legitimacy of how it got there, you can not reasonably believe that it is, any more, 'secret'. To look at it another way: a thief stole your vase and smashed it. It is now a broken vase. Just because they had no right to do so doesn't unbreak the vase.
At the moment, they are at #3. Unless they can get to both #4 and #5 then the 'theory' is and will remain idle speculation, suitable only for prompting bad jokes in ./
it's ROGUE dammit! Rouge is makeup
Or polishing compound.
So, it's a subtle reference. Obviously it's better to burn out than to rust, both for rock stars and satellites.
Human beings only live for 700,000 hours. The TSA is wasting over 1000 lifetimes each year.
Repent Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_machine_gun
http://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_007.htm
When I worked for the Post Office, I came to the conclusion that the only way to send fragile stuff any distance was to hand carry it, or make it relatively indestructible.
Point in case: overseas surface mail. A fragile package (marked as such) would be carefully placed, right side up, in a mail bag, under the watchful eye of a supervisor. After which (there being no 'fragile' overseas surface mail service), the rest of the packages would be thrown in on top of it from up to 20ft away. The full mail bag would then be consigned to cold, unfeeling machinery which would transport it around the building, ending with a 10ft drop into a chute leading to the loading bay. There, strong men---no doubt caring, thoughtful and gentle as kittens given the opportunity---would toss the bags as far as they could into the back of a truck, whence it was delivered to the docks and thence to a ship, where it got a special low rate because it was used as packing to stop the rest of the cargo from shifting in high seas.
The point is that very soon in its journey, any possible 'FRAGILE' label is useless, as the package has been aggregated into a larger more economic mass, and that aggregate gets treated pretty much just like any other piece of cargo.
The only solutions are
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison#Population_statistics
Incidentally, many of the early settlers were criminals of some sort
In Australia, maybe. In North America it was mostly people fleeing poverty and persecution.
Not so much
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_transportation#North_American_transportation
(Sigh, and why am I not surprised that the ./ filter declined to accept that line on its own?)
By the time that happens in several years, you may have grown out of online gaming. Which of the current video game consoles supports IPv6?
Wii does.
PS 3 announced that it had the capability but AFAIK has not yet implemented it.
XBOX 360 doesn't currently do it and I can't find any roadmap statements.
NAT66 maps IPv6 onto a different IPv6 address. This could be used if you thought you needed more IPv6 addresses, such as if your ISP only gave you a single /128. The better solution in this case is to change ISPs (if for no other reason than because any ISP that insists on handing out only /128 is too stupid to survive long, so you might as well find another one sooner rather than later).
Because there will literally be mountains of eWaste and headaches galore? How many of the home routers sold in the past 5 years even support IPv6? I don't think any of the consumer grade stuff does.
Apple Airports and Time capsules; a slew of D-LINK WiFi, including DI-784, DI-524, DI-624, WBR-1310, WBR-1310, WBR-2310, DIR-615; Thomson ST620. And others that I don;t have to hand right now. Admittedly, it's a pathetically small list, but certainly there is SOME consumer grade stuff that does. And the latest Broadcom chipset and associated software does IPv6, so expect it in the next roaund of gateways.
2. NAT makes for a pretty good firewall.
No, it doesn't.
Absent any other specifically firewall features, such as statefulness, NAT on its own offers no more than the illusion of security.
Apart from port scanning which allows preemptive attacks, any time you visit a web page, that site now knows your IP,port combo and can attempt to pwn you.
In practice, firewalls offer NAT as part of their overall service, and so it's the firewall that's protecting you, not the 'NAT'.
When you get a new broadband router, it will almost certainly follow TR-124, which means it has a firewall (the revised IPv6 version of TR-124 is coming RSN, and the fact that it's not already here and widely deployed is a major source of shame---but that's another story).