OMG, DSL signals are put onto a T1, shared with other customers??? If you'd bothered to interpret what I wrote, you would have noticed that I said voice data goes into the T1, and the DSL data goes on a separate network.
T1s were designed to carry over twenty-four or twenty-five (I don't recall which) simultaneous voice channels, at 64Kbps each. Incidentally, the same principle of multiplexing allows both the voice PRI and the internet service data to be multiplexed over a larger pipe.
I don't work at a telco, so I don't know if they have a T3 running out to the DSLAM, with the T1 and internet data multiplexed, or if they have the T1 running separate, with multiple channel-bonded T1s carrying the internet data. I imagine they've taken both approaches, depending on the area.
In any case, the internet data gets its own logical pipe outside of the voice T1 you latched on to.
Touchpads aren't awful these days, but I still miss my old Thinkpad's eraser-mouse. Having the mouse right at the home row was terribly convenient.
I know eraser mice are something Slashdotters love to hate, but does anyone know of a USB keyboard that has one? (Preferably one of the newer recessed designs that reduces accidental bumps.)
Oddly enough, dial-up ISPs seem to go further. I ran a speed test on my dial-up connection because I wanted to see how much bandwidth I had left over while an automated Windows Update download (Which I had to put up with for five days...) sucked up most of my downstream. While I only got 6Kb/s down, the speed test reported 150 Kb/s up.
Yeah, try telling me a 56K modem, connected at 28.8 Kb/s, is transmitting data at 150 Kb/s.
Yes and no. When your phone line gets multiplexed into a T1's stream, your line get a guaranteed throughput of 64Kb/s, at least within the context of that T1. What your voice line can actually transmit and receive is limited by other factors, though you can get the whole 64Kb/s if you spring for a digital BRI, which can be useful for things like ISDN.
Obviously, DSL isn't limited to 64Kb/s. The DSL signal gets intercepted and filtered out before your voice line gets to the T1, and the DSL traffic gets dropped onto its own packet-switched network at the DSLAM. And, yes, that packet-switched network may be shared among multiple customers, but in an asynchronous fashion. (That is, after all, a major reason packet-switched networks are so popular; They make it relatively easy to adapt to different load requirements.)
this is because even if programs aren't using bandwidth networks use a csma/cd "carrier sense multiple access with collision detection" setup where, simply put, if someone is transmitting on the line, you back off and wait to transmit. While that's technically in the Ethernet standard, you don't see it much--if at all--with switched networks, and even less with networks with decent switches that hold packets in a queue. Switches and routers aim to eliminate that kind of inefficiency.
That's nothing. I was in a vacant computer lab in Michigan during Spring Break, pulling Debian CD images from an FTP server in Germany (best transfer rate I could get; Jigdo never worked for me, and there weren't official torrent trackers at the time. {Are there now? Switched to Ubuntu a couple years back.})
The door to the lab bursts open, and a couple techs started methodically checking port labels on all 69 of the PCs, then started checking the Macs. (I was on a Mac 'cause those were the only machines that had burners.) They let me finish downloading disc 12, but told me not to start disc 13.
In 2003, it was kinda noticeable when someone had three simultaneous 200KB/s FTP transfers running. Fortunately, I wasn't in violation of the Acceptable Use Agreement, as I hadn't installed any unauthorized software...
In a power outage, there is a battery backup that keeps the fiber gateway alive for a few hours. Any outage that lasts more than a few hours usually results in a failure of the copper infrastructure as well. Funny. A couple of years ago, we had a wicked ice storm that knocked out power for a sizeable area for close to a week or more. In the case of the road I'm on, the power was out for 5 days. Similar circumstances, but in one case it was only three days, and the phones kept working. When I lived in another area, the power was down two days, but even the BRI we had running into our house at the time kept working.
I hope cell towers will be getting better service than residential areas will be. Or maybe I should just get a ham license.
Verizon can slowly crank up rates, netting huge profits for themselves without spooking the users. It's worth pointing out that as one service provider cranks up rates, their competitors have less to fear from defecting customers, and so are free to raise their rates accordingly.
preemptively writing long discussions about "obvious solutions" to potential problems. There's no shortage of that. Take any fairly bright high school or college student, and ask them for ideas. Chances are, those ideas have already been thought of and been patented, been in use, or been proven untenable.
Last week, for example, I came up with a three-part idea for a practical voxel display apparatus. Come to find out two of the three parts have already been patented, with the issue dates all within the last seven years. I still haven't decided whether or not to try to patent the third part yet.
I've got schematics for a voxel display apparatus that I'm not sure if I'll patent or publish a description of. The summary points out the "printed publication" bit, which makes me realize that just publishing the specs online won't prevent someone else from taking my idea and patenting it.
Which gives me another idea...What if a "printed publication" was devised with limited printed circulation and extensive online publication. The whole idea would be to make ideas unpatentable via publication. Folks could submit illustrations, and these would be passed on more or less verbatim into the publication.
Unless they explicitly tell you that the software will be searching your drive and reporting wouldn't that violate several laws that restrict what software authors can and cannot do? It's called a EULA. It would be interesting to see exactly what percentage of people bother to read them. Fairly typical, I would expect.
It could lead to poetic scenarios, of course, such as when Shinji, the database server, got hammered by Asuka, the web server. Had Rei, the proxy server, been up and running, it might have gone more smoothly.
Don't get me started on the viruses Kaji, Ritsuko and Misato have been passing around. If someone doesn't intervene, Gendo might get infected, and all hell will break loose.
You said:
There's little reason to believe that our computer controlled cars will be capable of crashing in 50 years My premise was an attack on your premise, not on the notion of alien infallibility. Your premise was that since humans will be able to build infallible devices, there's no reason aliens couldn't. My premise was that humans cannot build infallible devices. If my premise is correct, then yours must necessarily be incorrect. That doesn't mean your conclusion is wrong, only your reasoning.
I said nothing about aliens being fallible or infallible.
There's little reason to believe that our computer controlled cars will be capable of crashing in 50 years There will always be the potential for failure of the human element. And since all technology derives from human effort, all technology is therefor fallible.
Slashdot Mirror
A comment further below had a link to these.
"Grey goo" refers to out-of-control nanomachines, not bacterial slime...
T1s were designed to carry over twenty-four or twenty-five (I don't recall which) simultaneous voice channels, at 64Kbps each. Incidentally, the same principle of multiplexing allows both the voice PRI and the internet service data to be multiplexed over a larger pipe.
I don't work at a telco, so I don't know if they have a T3 running out to the DSLAM, with the T1 and internet data multiplexed, or if they have the T1 running separate, with multiple channel-bonded T1s carrying the internet data. I imagine they've taken both approaches, depending on the area.
In any case, the internet data gets its own logical pipe outside of the voice T1 you latched on to.
Touchpads aren't awful these days, but I still miss my old Thinkpad's eraser-mouse. Having the mouse right at the home row was terribly convenient.
I know eraser mice are something Slashdotters love to hate, but does anyone know of a USB keyboard that has one? (Preferably one of the newer recessed designs that reduces accidental bumps.)
The poster I was replying to was replying to a comment set in the context of a university network, not your run-of-the-monopoly cable provider.
I suppose the university might have been using DOCSYS for their dorms.
Oddly enough, dial-up ISPs seem to go further. I ran a speed test on my dial-up connection because I wanted to see how much bandwidth I had left over while an automated Windows Update download (Which I had to put up with for five days...) sucked up most of my downstream. While I only got 6Kb/s down, the speed test reported 150 Kb/s up.
Yeah, try telling me a 56K modem, connected at 28.8 Kb/s, is transmitting data at 150 Kb/s.
Yes and no. When your phone line gets multiplexed into a T1's stream, your line get a guaranteed throughput of 64Kb/s, at least within the context of that T1. What your voice line can actually transmit and receive is limited by other factors, though you can get the whole 64Kb/s if you spring for a digital BRI, which can be useful for things like ISDN.
Obviously, DSL isn't limited to 64Kb/s. The DSL signal gets intercepted and filtered out before your voice line gets to the T1, and the DSL traffic gets dropped onto its own packet-switched network at the DSLAM. And, yes, that packet-switched network may be shared among multiple customers, but in an asynchronous fashion. (That is, after all, a major reason packet-switched networks are so popular; They make it relatively easy to adapt to different load requirements.)
That's nothing. I was in a vacant computer lab in Michigan during Spring Break, pulling Debian CD images from an FTP server in Germany (best transfer rate I could get; Jigdo never worked for me, and there weren't official torrent trackers at the time. {Are there now? Switched to Ubuntu a couple years back.})
The door to the lab bursts open, and a couple techs started methodically checking port labels on all 69 of the PCs, then started checking the Macs. (I was on a Mac 'cause those were the only machines that had burners.) They let me finish downloading disc 12, but told me not to start disc 13.
In 2003, it was kinda noticeable when someone had three simultaneous 200KB/s FTP transfers running. Fortunately, I wasn't in violation of the Acceptable Use Agreement, as I hadn't installed any unauthorized software...
I hope cell towers will be getting better service than residential areas will be. Or maybe I should just get a ham license.
In short, inflation.
Last week, for example, I came up with a three-part idea for a practical voxel display apparatus. Come to find out two of the three parts have already been patented, with the issue dates all within the last seven years. I still haven't decided whether or not to try to patent the third part yet.
I've got schematics for a voxel display apparatus that I'm not sure if I'll patent or publish a description of. The summary points out the "printed publication" bit, which makes me realize that just publishing the specs online won't prevent someone else from taking my idea and patenting it.
Which gives me another idea...What if a "printed publication" was devised with limited printed circulation and extensive online publication. The whole idea would be to make ideas unpatentable via publication. Folks could submit illustrations, and these would be passed on more or less verbatim into the publication.
It would be a fun project, at the very least.
If one couldn't sign away his right to free speech, we wouldn't have NDAs.
I don't know about privacy, though.
Funny what difference a single letter can make.
It could lead to poetic scenarios, of course, such as when Shinji, the database server, got hammered by Asuka, the web server. Had Rei, the proxy server, been up and running, it might have gone more smoothly.
Don't get me started on the viruses Kaji, Ritsuko and Misato have been passing around. If someone doesn't intervene, Gendo might get infected, and all hell will break loose.
Saw it once upon a time at bash.org.
The way you describe it, I wouldn't think of it as an endorsement at all. More like dark humor.
Just because someone wins doesn't mean the author endorses them. Often, such cases are supposed to be warnings.
Q: How do you know when there's an EMP?
A: When your window melts.
I distinctly remember Dent pulling equivalents of Scrabble pieces out of a pouch, with the resulting phrase, "What is six times seven"
:-)
Fine...I used numerals instead of letters.
(And someone apparently decided to waste their last few mod points modding down my post, the parent post and the grandparent...Whatever.)
54? Methinks you meant 6 * 7.
I said nothing about aliens being fallible or infallible.