Can enough nodes in a network cause the network to become useless?
Of course. Just like you can DDOS any part of the network with a botnet to take it down. If enough nodes of a network behave in a way to overloads a part of the network, and that part turns out to be critical, then your network will be taken down.
It is silly to say this is purely a network provisioning problem, as the behavior of the nodes (i.e. the phones) cannot be foreseen, especially with new handsets coming out every quarter. And people's usage of their phones changes with time (e.g. SMS usage pattern). It is impractical for any network to cater for any possible mass usage scenario - i.e. if every phone in cell starts a call at exactly the same moment, the cell will be down.
This applies to landline also, if every phone in an area try to make a call at the same time, many will fail to go through.
If someone sells a landline phone that will phone home for updates at 12:00am on Sunday, after enough people bought the phone, the phone companies will find their network being hit by a BIG spike every Sunday, and eventually everyone in the area will find even their landline phone unusable at 12:00am Sunday. Does that mean poor planning by the phone companies?
Sorry to reply twice, but the article title is just too silly.
There is plenty of rare earth all around the world. So if you don't want to buy from China (or China won't sell to you), just mine it yourself.
Instead of printing money to give to bankers, why don't the US government just setup and run mines to extract rare earth from US itself? It create real jobs and solve this problem in one go.
But actually doing something to solve a problem? Nah... it is easier just to find someone to blame while still giving out pork to corporate supporters. It keeps the problem alive so more people can be blamed, and keep the pork money flowing too!
Which means... there is no shortage at all, they just want it cheap.
It is no secret that rare earth is NOT rare at all, and China just have about 30-40% of the world's rare earth.
The only "monopoly" China has is selling them cheaply. The purported reason by Chinese officials is because the rare earth industry is heavily fragmented, and econ 101, with many identical sellers, big buyers from US and Japan can set the price so low that only razor thin margin remains. You are free to make up you own conspiracy on why it has been so cheap so far.
With such cheap source, it make no sense for other countries to mine their own rare earth, which also causes quite a lot of pollution, so all other mines were shut down elsewhere.
Now, after getting a pittance for all the rare earth sold for the past few decades, China finally wakes up and realize that having a rare earth reserve is actually IMPORTANT in the long term. And surprise(!), they don't to continue to sell on the cheap. So they are now trying to consolidate the rare earth mining industry (which takes time), and in the meanwhile, use administrative means to limit the export (i.e. limit their losses).
And what do countries like Japan and US do when China stop selling them cheap rare earth? "Wah Wah! China won't sell for pennies the stuff that we are too lazy to mines ourselves anymore, China EVIL MONOPOLY!"
Just like the call for H1B in the US when IT wages rises. "Wah Wah! IT staffs won't work for pennies anymore, WORKER SHORTAGE!"
Yeah, that's convincing.
China selling cheap stuff to you == dumping.
China stop selling cheap stuff to you == embargo, monopoly!
China buying stuff from you == economic takeover.
China not buying stuff from you == trade deficit, protectionism.
I didn't RTFA (of course), but how is what they did different from guess what real people would respond to certain trade and engineer to profit from that? Isn't that what every speculator is trying to do? If someone used a program to trade and other people guessed (without foul play) how the program responds and profited from it, why is that a crime?
As for "manipulating prices", well, every investment firm is manipulating prices when they release analyst reports recommending "buy" or "sell" for stocks they own, I would like to see them prosecuted too!
This is what you get for promoting the idea of "Intellectual Property".
If you can, using IP, stop people from making and selling products, stop people from singing songs, stop people from telling stories that contain certain fictional characters. Then why not stop people from making a jump from space?
What's this? Would you call Microsoft a strong PC maker? Google just provide the OS, they are a NON-PLAYER in the mobile market, both in terms of name brand recognition and manufacturing/distribution capability. Partnering with HTC or Nokia (while still not have much sense) would make more sense than picking Google.
This is pure Google fanboy wishful thinking.
An Android that plays PSP Games? It need to be so locked down for Sony to accept, that you would not be able to run any non-Sony approved Android apps, that it make no sense to buy one.
With Google's lack of emphasis on user experience, Sony will need to make major changes to the UI that you would not recognize it is an Android device anyway.
The Newton-Leibniz rivalry is the go-to example of simultaneous invention.
Not to the target audience of the Washington Post, ie the general American populace, most of whom are so fxxking ignorant of science, math, and history, plus, they are also proud of that ignorance. They eyes will glaze over when they see the word "calculus". You might get a couple of them to recognize the name Newton, but you have to hit the lottery for them to know who's Leibniz.
OTOH, mention Facebook and they will pretend they know what's it about even if they don't.
Who gets to decide what constitutes "fully patched", I guess Microsoft? So if I refuse the WGA patch, my machine will be quarantined?
Of course, to make this work, program doing the detecting (ie Windows) must be running on a trusted base. Um, didn't we heard something like this before, like Trusted Computing?
We all know this is not about security. This is about control, MS just wants to have its own walled garden, seeing how profitable Apple's garden is.
does that mean that they might actually start enforcing IP rights?
Why? Wouldn't it be easier to just apply patents in the US and sue US companies for profit? Who cares about enforcing IP rights back home, those companies back home have no money to sue for anyway.
OMG! How dare a money making company actually charge people money for providing a service to people who can do it for free!!/sarcasm
Is that kind of response expected by the submitter?
Seriously, for a site filled with geeks who think they are smarter than the general populace, this article FAIL on so many aspects. Just to name a few
1. Economics 101 - price is determined by supply and demand. If there are people who are willing to pay $30 for someone to do something for them, it is not a company being evil for providing said service for $30, even if it cost the company nothing. Cost does not determine the price, the cost of business only determines how much profit the company can make. If you are pissed about that, go ahead and start your own company to offer this service for free. (much in the same spirit of "write your own patch" in OSS)
2. Business has a fixed cost, in rent, in salary, in opportunity costs. So it is never really free to help people to install updates.
3. Guess what? Some people value their time at more than $30 for half-hour, and will be willing to pay $30 to someone if it will save 30mins time and headache. Not everyone is living in their mom's basement with nothing to do and no money to spend most of the day.
4. Grow up. Most "service industry" is based doing things for people that they can do for themselves, in some cases for free, and that includes a large portion of the IT industry.
5. From the comments so far, most/.er are more intelligent than the submitter.
Yeah, why waste the time on pesky stuff like search warrants? If you have nothing to hide, you won't mind the police searching you house anytime they want, right? Make police work much easier, that's good, right?
I had a Telemate script that automated most of the chores, with a hot key for each function. Not only did it scan the enemy twice and calculate the projected position for the laser shot, it has a hot key to shoot torpedoes, hot key to going up and down warp space to evade enemy torpedoes, etc.
It also has hot key to automatically land the ship on planets (which was very tedious if you want to do it safely, keep scanning and reducing speed, and wait until you were close enough to land without crashing), hot key to auto-pilot to designated planet at some sector and land there (in the program I kept a list of all my planets) so I just press a key and wait when doing tours through my planets.:P
That script was the most complicated program I had ever written at that time (just before going to college).
Too bad it only works at 2400 baud. For some reason, at 9600 baud, Telemate start missing text when scanning (possible due to limit on its multitasking capability). Fortunately I only have the $$ for a 2400 baud modem at that time, but my friend has to lower his modem speed in order to use the script:)
only Apple can get away with selling a 'smartphone without a phone'.
I recall something that was called "PDA" which seems to qualify quite well as a "smartphone without a phone", and quite a few companies like Palm, HP has been quite successfully selling those before smartphone became popular.
I know it is trendy with moderators to bash Apple here, but at least try to bash for things they are actually guilty of, ok?
Is this kind of innovation even possible in the lawsuit happy culture and the carrier-locked-phones environment of the US?
Maybe 7-8 years ago, there were already tack-on devices that turns Palm PDA (anybody remember those, actually it's a Sony Clie) into a phone, one that can use the address book of the PDA, and uses the PDA screen as UI. Why did nobody in the US made this for the iPod touch in all these years?
There is nothing to actually "play" in free version, which is basically just a world builder. In the paid version, there is a "survival mode" that actually has stuff like hitpoints, crafting, reason for building your house/base, mining, farming (if you like to), exploring, etc.
That's not fair though. The whole point of punitive damages is to punish the infringer, not just force them to buy it
If that's real reason for punitive damages, explain why the money does NOT goes to the government just like any other fines. The winning side's Legal fees should be awarded separately.
Since the punitive damage money goes to the other side, it seems to me the reason for punitive damages is just to encourage more lawsuits.
Am I the only here who noticed that only in the US of A do people always include the carrier when taking about phone models? "Sprint Samsung Epic 4G"?! What happened to just "Samsung Epic 4G"? What if you use that phone on another network, would that tell you if the problem is with the carrier or the phone?
Oh, you mean in the US, the phones are still locked to the carrier? You cannot simply take the phone and put another carrier's SIM into it? Does that mean you guys always replaces you phone when you switch carriers?
Wow, how many DECADES are the US behind the rest of the world in cellphone service?
Talk about a captured market. Why don't you guys get angry about that (carrier locked phones) first? Once you can easily switch carriers while keeping your phone and you phone number, nobody will put up with crap like putting artificial limits on the network.
Slashdot Mirror
Can enough nodes in a network cause the network to become useless?
Of course. Just like you can DDOS any part of the network with a botnet to take it down. If enough nodes of a network behave in a way to overloads a part of the network, and that part turns out to be critical, then your network will be taken down.
It is silly to say this is purely a network provisioning problem, as the behavior of the nodes (i.e. the phones) cannot be foreseen, especially with new handsets coming out every quarter. And people's usage of their phones changes with time (e.g. SMS usage pattern). It is impractical for any network to cater for any possible mass usage scenario - i.e. if every phone in cell starts a call at exactly the same moment, the cell will be down.
This applies to landline also, if every phone in an area try to make a call at the same time, many will fail to go through.
If someone sells a landline phone that will phone home for updates at 12:00am on Sunday, after enough people bought the phone, the phone companies will find their network being hit by a BIG spike every Sunday, and eventually everyone in the area will find even their landline phone unusable at 12:00am Sunday. Does that mean poor planning by the phone companies?
Sorry to reply twice, but the article title is just too silly.
There is plenty of rare earth all around the world. So if you don't want to buy from China (or China won't sell to you), just mine it yourself.
Instead of printing money to give to bankers, why don't the US government just setup and run mines to extract rare earth from US itself? It create real jobs and solve this problem in one go.
But actually doing something to solve a problem? Nah... it is easier just to find someone to blame while still giving out pork to corporate supporters. It keeps the problem alive so more people can be blamed, and keep the pork money flowing too!
Which means ... there is no shortage at all, they just want it cheap.
It is no secret that rare earth is NOT rare at all, and China just have about 30-40% of the world's rare earth.
The only "monopoly" China has is selling them cheaply. The purported reason by Chinese officials is because the rare earth industry is heavily fragmented, and econ 101, with many identical sellers, big buyers from US and Japan can set the price so low that only razor thin margin remains. You are free to make up you own conspiracy on why it has been so cheap so far.
With such cheap source, it make no sense for other countries to mine their own rare earth, which also causes quite a lot of pollution, so all other mines were shut down elsewhere.
Now, after getting a pittance for all the rare earth sold for the past few decades, China finally wakes up and realize that having a rare earth reserve is actually IMPORTANT in the long term. And surprise(!), they don't to continue to sell on the cheap. So they are now trying to consolidate the rare earth mining industry (which takes time), and in the meanwhile, use administrative means to limit the export (i.e. limit their losses).
And what do countries like Japan and US do when China stop selling them cheap rare earth? "Wah Wah! China won't sell for pennies the stuff that we are too lazy to mines ourselves anymore, China EVIL MONOPOLY!"
Just like the call for H1B in the US when IT wages rises. "Wah Wah! IT staffs won't work for pennies anymore, WORKER SHORTAGE!"
Yeah, that's convincing.
I didn't RTFA (of course), but how is what they did different from guess what real people would respond to certain trade and engineer to profit from that? Isn't that what every speculator is trying to do? If someone used a program to trade and other people guessed (without foul play) how the program responds and profited from it, why is that a crime?
As for "manipulating prices", well, every investment firm is manipulating prices when they release analyst reports recommending "buy" or "sell" for stocks they own, I would like to see them prosecuted too!
This is what you get for promoting the idea of "Intellectual Property".
If you can, using IP, stop people from making and selling products, stop people from singing songs, stop people from telling stories that contain certain fictional characters. Then why not stop people from making a jump from space?
Have fun if anyone accidentally swipe you droid screen with a permanent marker.
Sticking a cheap replaceable protector on the screen of expensive gadget is just common sense. Same for plastic back cover.
What's this? Would you call Microsoft a strong PC maker? Google just provide the OS, they are a NON-PLAYER in the mobile market, both in terms of name brand recognition and manufacturing/distribution capability. Partnering with HTC or Nokia (while still not have much sense) would make more sense than picking Google.
This is pure Google fanboy wishful thinking.
An Android that plays PSP Games? It need to be so locked down for Sony to accept, that you would not be able to run any non-Sony approved Android apps, that it make no sense to buy one.
With Google's lack of emphasis on user experience, Sony will need to make major changes to the UI that you would not recognize it is an Android device anyway.
This whole idea makes no sense at all.
The Newton-Leibniz rivalry is the go-to example of simultaneous invention.
Not to the target audience of the Washington Post, ie the general American populace, most of whom are so fxxking ignorant of science, math, and history, plus, they are also proud of that ignorance. They eyes will glaze over when they see the word "calculus". You might get a couple of them to recognize the name Newton, but you have to hit the lottery for them to know who's Leibniz.
OTOH, mention Facebook and they will pretend they know what's it about even if they don't.
When #1 happens, I will be looking for a Mac. It has now reached the point where my phone is more expensive and more important to me than my PC.
If they pull that trick again, it is bye bye Microsoft.
Who gets to decide what constitutes "fully patched", I guess Microsoft? So if I refuse the WGA patch, my machine will be quarantined?
Of course, to make this work, program doing the detecting (ie Windows) must be running on a trusted base. Um, didn't we heard something like this before, like Trusted Computing?
We all know this is not about security. This is about control, MS just wants to have its own walled garden, seeing how profitable Apple's garden is.
Why do these sites have to register in Lybia, of all places?
Why not .us? toysr.us, come2.us, go2.us, etc, are just as short.
does that mean that they might actually start enforcing IP rights?
Why? Wouldn't it be easier to just apply patents in the US and sue US companies for profit? Who cares about enforcing IP rights back home, those companies back home have no money to sue for anyway.
OMG! How dare a money making company actually charge people money for providing a service to people who can do it for free!! /sarcasm
Is that kind of response expected by the submitter?
Seriously, for a site filled with geeks who think they are smarter than the general populace, this article FAIL on so many aspects. Just to name a few
1. Economics 101 - price is determined by supply and demand. If there are people who are willing to pay $30 for someone to do something for them, it is not a company being evil for providing said service for $30, even if it cost the company nothing. Cost does not determine the price, the cost of business only determines how much profit the company can make. If you are pissed about that, go ahead and start your own company to offer this service for free. (much in the same spirit of "write your own patch" in OSS)
2. Business has a fixed cost, in rent, in salary, in opportunity costs. So it is never really free to help people to install updates.
3. Guess what? Some people value their time at more than $30 for half-hour, and will be willing to pay $30 to someone if it will save 30mins time and headache. Not everyone is living in their mom's basement with nothing to do and no money to spend most of the day.
4. Grow up. Most "service industry" is based doing things for people that they can do for themselves, in some cases for free, and that includes a large portion of the IT industry.
5. From the comments so far, most /.er are more intelligent than the submitter.
Yeah, why waste the time on pesky stuff like search warrants? If you have nothing to hide, you won't mind the police searching you house anytime they want, right? Make police work much easier, that's good, right?
So is it a crime to lose your keys? Why is it different for forgetting your password, especially after the trauma of getting arrested?
But I don't think it's a problem that the state can, with good reason, compel you to decrypt it.
And who gets to decide if the reason is good? The police?
It is? I managed to save quite a bit of money (a few hundred) building my own computer rather than buying a pre-built one with nearly the same specs.
Probably not if you have a full time job and you accounted for the hourly rate on the time you spent on building it.
More and more like building your own car, building your own PC is fine as a hobby, but does not make sense if you are doing it to try to save money.
Wow, that brings back memories.
I had a Telemate script that automated most of the chores, with a hot key for each function. Not only did it scan the enemy twice and calculate the projected position for the laser shot, it has a hot key to shoot torpedoes, hot key to going up and down warp space to evade enemy torpedoes, etc.
It also has hot key to automatically land the ship on planets (which was very tedious if you want to do it safely, keep scanning and reducing speed, and wait until you were close enough to land without crashing), hot key to auto-pilot to designated planet at some sector and land there (in the program I kept a list of all my planets) so I just press a key and wait when doing tours through my planets. :P
That script was the most complicated program I had ever written at that time (just before going to college).
Too bad it only works at 2400 baud. For some reason, at 9600 baud, Telemate start missing text when scanning (possible due to limit on its multitasking capability). Fortunately I only have the $$ for a 2400 baud modem at that time, but my friend has to lower his modem speed in order to use the script :)
OTOH, the dev will miss out on folks trying the product out, and on any of the marketing bennies that piracy can give his products.
False dichotomy, lots of iPhone apps have a free "lite" version that let's you try it out before paying for the full version.
only Apple can get away with selling a 'smartphone without a phone'.
I recall something that was called "PDA" which seems to qualify quite well as a "smartphone without a phone", and quite a few companies like Palm, HP has been quite successfully selling those before smartphone became popular.
I know it is trendy with moderators to bash Apple here, but at least try to bash for things they are actually guilty of, ok?
Is this kind of innovation even possible in the lawsuit happy culture and the carrier-locked-phones environment of the US?
Maybe 7-8 years ago, there were already tack-on devices that turns Palm PDA (anybody remember those, actually it's a Sony Clie) into a phone, one that can use the address book of the PDA, and uses the PDA screen as UI. Why did nobody in the US made this for the iPod touch in all these years?
There is nothing to actually "play" in free version, which is basically just a world builder. In the paid version, there is a "survival mode" that actually has stuff like hitpoints, crafting, reason for building your house/base, mining, farming (if you like to), exploring, etc.
I highly recommend the YouTube series "X's Adventure in Minecraft" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bh4EexJO4I&sns=em for a good idea why this game can be fun.
Yeah, the first time a lift fell and killed someone, everyone would go back to taking stairs.... didn't happen.
The first time a car runs over a kid, it's all over for Ford... didn't happen either.
The first time a plane crashes, it's all over for .... didn't happen.
Come on! This is /., aren't we supposed to be excited about new gadgets?
That's not fair though. The whole point of punitive damages is to punish the infringer, not just force them to buy it
If that's real reason for punitive damages, explain why the money does NOT goes to the government just like any other fines. The winning side's Legal fees should be awarded separately.
Since the punitive damage money goes to the other side, it seems to me the reason for punitive damages is just to encourage more lawsuits.
Am I the only here who noticed that only in the US of A do people always include the carrier when taking about phone models? "Sprint Samsung Epic 4G"?! What happened to just "Samsung Epic 4G"? What if you use that phone on another network, would that tell you if the problem is with the carrier or the phone?
Oh, you mean in the US, the phones are still locked to the carrier? You cannot simply take the phone and put another carrier's SIM into it? Does that mean you guys always replaces you phone when you switch carriers?
Wow, how many DECADES are the US behind the rest of the world in cellphone service?
Talk about a captured market. Why don't you guys get angry about that (carrier locked phones) first? Once you can easily switch carriers while keeping your phone and you phone number, nobody will put up with crap like putting artificial limits on the network.