Recent events (FLOODS) have shown me how fragile my DSL service here is. My provider's DSL was down for the entire state for several days. So I called my local nephew-of-satin cable co and had them install a cable modem last week.
I run a web server, mailserver, and numerous other hobby services here, so I had the "business grade DSL", which is 936/1536. (divide kbps by 9 for a good guestimate in kb/sec, so 100 up, 170 down) DSL always provides me with that speed, it never fluctuates so I get every penny I pay for. I also pay a bit extra for a block of 8 (5 usable) static IP addresses which my services require.
By comparison, the cable offers many more tiers of service, and I opted for again the "business class" service. This I was told was 2k/20k. When he brought the modem I ran a speed test. The installer scoffed at those numbers (about 1.7/15k) and told me "You never really get 2/20, that's the theoretical maximum, just like DSL" at which point I had to show him what DSL really gives you.
Another entertaining surprise was that the cable co did not offer static IP addresses in my area. I talked with my "business representative" for my area of town and he agreed, "Yes that does make my job rather difficult." Offering business internet service without static IP option, I feel sorry for that salesman. Like running a grocery store but not carrying milk. My speeds were about 1.7/15k when we tested it during the install, but it's actually been clocking in very close to 2 up lately.
Not having a lot of experience in multiple simultaneous ISPs took a little digging to get things working properly. "multilink multihoming" I believe is the correct term for having two ISPs on the same machine. Being able to USE them both at the same time is the trick. Most OSs like to reply back on the default interface, regardless of which one the traffic came in on. First requirement was to get a second nic for my server. Without that, the SYN packets came in on the 2nd nic and tried leaving on the first nic, which wasn't going to work of course.
After that was settled it still didn't work, ACK packets were not being forwarded by my router. This required a special bit of software on the server, IPNetRouterX, to modify the traffic since OS X puts default gateway information on the packets even from the non-default source. (speculating this was causing the router to just toss out the packets) Ever since that it's been working very well. During my troubles I talked with numerous people and got a mix of responses. Some were wondering why I was having any problem at all, and others were telling me they fought it for a long time and never got it to work, (mostly unix ppl in both groups) so I assume some unix network stacks support this and some do not, be sure to check your distro.
Now this is with the server answering on two distinct IP addresses. This is not fail-over, it's one server that can answer requests from two different connections at the same time. Maybe not quite what you are looking for. If I wanted to use it for fail-over I would have to change my DNS entries. This would take awhile to propagate of course. But if you could update your DNS entry quickly enough, such as by getting a registrar that had a very SHORT expiration on your entries, (DYNDNS) this could work as a hot-failover. Not a matter of the backup coming online automatically when needed, but of it always being online.
A common thing to do in cases like this is to have your DNS server serve up your two (or more) IP addresses in a round-robin fashion. Try doing a DNS lookup on microsoft.com several times and you will see you are getting different IPs each time. (I currently get 207.46.197.32 and 207.46.232.182 for microsoft.com) If you have two ISPs, and hand out your two addresses round-robin, that will give you some automatic failover for your dual always-online providers, and if one of them craps out, users will just have to notice the timeout, and click the connect button a second time to connect until things get fixed.
The original case I believe was to charge the providers the bigger percentage for their bandwidth. At that time the providers were the universities, the businesses, etc, the people that provided the average user with the content. You see that even today when you compare your network connection's upstream and downstream. My DSL is 936 up and 1536 down. My cable is 2k up and 20k down. And those lines cost 2-4x as much as non business lines that have really crappy upstream without too much less downstream.
But now with p2p, everybody can contribute to upstream. And they are losing their revenue stream because they are used to 1% of their customers consuming 80% of their resources. My upstream is your downstream. So they don't care if your downstream triples. Just so long as my upstream doesn't go up, you can't download from me any faster.;)
But now there are so many others that can upstream. Not faster, just more OF them. And as a result, YOU can download faster. And this requires an overall increase in network capacity.
So why should the people contributing a little more upstream than usual, which is allowing you to DOWNLOAD faster, cost only them more? Makes ya think.
It's not about p2p. it's about people using what they're selling. They want to sell you a service and not have to provide it. It's like buying a member card from a health club. At any given day there are maybe 5% of the members AT the gym. What do you think would happen if there was some big advertisement in town for the health benefits of a particular new workout? What would happen if now suddently, on average, 20% of the members were at the gym?
They'd flip out. Not enough space, not enough machines, lines at machines, customers pissed off, gym pissed off. And they'd want to start raising rates of course. The reason is they have totally oversold their service, and now the public is taking more advantage of what they paid for, and it's biting them. This isn't YOUR fault any more than it's MY fault, if we're both members. They've oversold their service. Now lets say I'm one of the people that decides to go in there every DAY? My card says I can come in any time. So does yours. But you're only in there once a week.
So I should have to pay EXTRA now? I don't think so. I paid for this card, it says I can come in anytime.
p2p could also be interpreted as the reaction of the public to the current state of IP law.
In today's world there is so very little the individual can do to change laws that favor big businesses. This is simply those individuals reacting to laws that they cannot change, by finding ways to do what they believe they should be allowed to do.
In the end, the absurd laws and the p2p about negate each other, so I'm not in favor of people trying to "fix" p2p unless they are also undertaking a fixing of the laws that are providing p2p with justification.
Examine the situation from a different perspective. In the wild west there were small towns that didn't have effective law enforcement or court, and there was a wide measure of "mob rule" / rioting when a big business started running the town, getting the laws of that town changed to their favor and owning the local judges. Sure, you can work to dissolve the mob, but that doesn't really fix the problem. If you're truly interested in fixing the problem, you have to deal with the mob and the company (and it's effects/actions) that's causing the mob to be necessary. If all you work against is the mob, you've only made things better for the minority.
We've been trying for years to fix the laws and it just keeps getting worse. Then came along p2p and suddenly all the injustices were dealt a serious blow. It's still nowhere near even, but it's taken a big enough bite out of the injustice that the "mafiaa" is looking to beat down the newly formed resistance against it. Can't say as I blame them, they've got a sweet thing going and don't want to lose it. But I'm on the losing side of the issue so I'm rooting for the underdog.
I'm perpetually amused that folks whine how we can't replace an old-growth forest or rainforest but terraforming a planet, hey, no problem there. All you need to do is sprinkle a little spores and fairy dust and boom you have Earth II, except without all the people mucking it up...
You asked the question and answered it at the same time. Life is very resilient to most anything short of more aggressive life. The old growth forests actually require less effort to fix than to kick-start mars. All you have to do is leave them alone for awhile and they would recover on their own. Keeping people from continuing to drag them down further is the trick. Mars has the edge here in that it's very hard for US to screw it up.
It's more economical to spend $500mil to start an ecosystem that will maintain and develop itself without further interaction, fertilized only with time, than to spend $100mil every few years trying to keep fixing up what people keep breaking, and still continue to lose ground.
That second link is seven pages. Normally anything posted to/. that's more than say, three pages, consists of 400k size pages of advertisements, banners, and otherwise obnoxious noise with maybe three paragraphs (4k or so) of actual content in the middle of the page, that you have to continuously click (NEXT PAGE) to read the next few sentences on.
Not that one. Actual, real content. Multiple pages of real information. What has the world come to? Someone's posting content for the purpose of actually informing us, rather than burying us in cheap banner hits.
The first link is possibly even better than that though. The same information density, in only ONE page. Normally they'd have spread that among at least five banner-whoring pages? Kudos to gpsworld.com for serving their readers. It's pages like that which make me wish I could leave my banner-blockers turned off all the time.
they go to great lengths NOT to bring life to mars. Read up on "bio-barrier". If the spacecraft get contaminated during construction or prep they have to re-sterilize it. They want to find life, not spread it.
If you accidentally bring life to Mars, that makes it about impossible to discover it and know for sure it's Martian life and not something you brought, or that mutated from something you brought.
Although I agree that if we determine there is NO life on mars, I say our next probe is sent with a well-planned variety of "colonizer" lifeforms to begin teraforming of the planet so it's at least borderline useful by the time we can send people out there.
That and in my university you had to comment like a mad fool, which depending on who you outsourced to might be a dead giveaway.
I could come up with dozens of comical comments you might find made by Cheetan or Suthrik to raise an eyebrow when reviewing "your code" but I'll let your imagination color the page instead.
I'd personally demand they don't put a single line of comment in the code, that would have to be a dead giveaway.
for most lot of people, raising the price of something they're addicted/obsessed with or need doesn't help. . Look at all the smokers in the US today. With that insanely high cigarette tax, and with how much it now costs for you to be a pack-a-day smoker, look how many of them there still are. Most smokers consider their carton a week a life essential when shopping. . Food works in much the same way. People buy food at the store telling themselves they're going to eat in moderation. Then after an hour at home they devour an entire bag of chips in one sitting. Cost for them was not a deterrent because they convinced themselves it was going to last longer. In the end it's just another tax on something that for the most part is unavoidable. . If tomorrow they put an additional $2/galon tax on gas, that would not stop me from driving. I can't walk to work. I can't walk to the grocery store. It may squeeze out what little unnecessary driving I do, but in the end it's just another unavoidable expense for me, just another tax. It hasn't deterred me from driving too much. . The first example doesn't care what the tax is because they feel they have to have it. The second example doesn't care what the tax is because they're convinced at the time of purchase that it's not going to affect them. The final example doesn't care what the tax is because reducing consumption is not an option.
they also placed the glass with the thicker area on the bottom because it was heavier, and it's a better idea to put the heavier part of the glass nearer the bottom of the frame. This led to practically all of those panes being installed thicker-side-down. So I suppose you could say gravity was responsible for the pane thickness variance... indirectly.
I thought I read somewhere that there were a few people on the manhatton project that thought there was an appreciable risk that the first nuclear bomb test MAY set the atmosphere on fire.
I think I see a problem, tho I'm definitely not astrophysicist. Gravity affects relative to distance. The proposed earth-size (mass) black hole would have the same mass as the earth, but would be a lot smaller. So wouldn't it be farther from the moon than the earth is? or does gravity only care about where the center of the mass is? So the moon would be less affected by the new black hole than it was by the earth?
and I for one get really tired of all the Sun Java updates. One particular update path I have to go through with some machines requires downloading 5 or 6 java updates, at 35-50mb EACH, as java trampolines itself up to the latest version.
would need to know more about why it's there to begin with. The executable is used by ARD's "send shell command" function. It's the part of the ARD client on the computer that actually performs shell commands received that came from a remote ARD Admin. Speculating since I didn't code the thing, the "user" that generates this request inside the ARD client after receiving the request from an admin is probably not a privileged user, and that's why this executable is setuid, so it can perform the tasks sent to it, as root. So removing the setuid bits WILL "fix" the security hole, but are likely to disable this part of ARD. It wouldn't surprise me if this executable is used for numerous other ARD commands. Other commands such as "restart computer" may be done via this. It's possible that most of the ARD Admin commands are accomplished through this executable for this reason.
I have yet to see anyone test ARD to discover the effect of clearing these bits though, which is rather surprising.
it's also possible the bicycles could be the three wheeled variety. I see them around these parts from time to time for people that can't stand for long periods of time. Usually a large basket on the front too so they can do minor shopping etc.
I was also very surprised to see TWO bikes in the last month being ridden by paraplegics. (no legs) The bikes look a bit like recumbents in that their seat is very close to the ground. The energy is supplied by a cam system on the handlebars, which moves back and forth in addition to twisting for steering. The forward and backward motion moves the bike. Those two had some serious muscle in their arms, and could easily keep pace with others. Beats the heck out of a wheelchair and is an uplifting sight to see on the bicycle trails.
Just a followup on a few of your points. Some you are dead on the money, but a few have some additional information you haven't ran into yet.
Samba - 100% broken in OSX when trying to share out files to a Windows box with User level security. You can access public stuff, but whoa unto you if you try to access private data with a username and password. It's acknowledged as broken, it "Just doesn't work."
The only problem I've ran into lately is with a specific implementation of network security. Windows got the brilliant idea to digitally sign packets on the LAN. Turn that off and a great many things UNbreak. Mac is supposed to have added support for this but it doesn't appear to work.
ITunes - You can't sort a playlist arbitrarily. You have to sort it by a field. I can't click and drag songs into specific a specific order - "It just doesn't work."
I don't think "it just works" is meant to apply to the presence of features, but instead to core functionality. If I say it differently it may make more sense. I can't say a car doesn't Just Work because it lacks ABS or power windows.
Although that I would admit is a glaring obvious omission in iTunes, most users are very pleased with all the ease of use and features that iTiunes has in it. The built-in store is very well-done. Synchronizing with an iPod is effortless. I would add to that feature request that I would like to be able to add a song to a playlist more than once, to increase its frequency in playback.
Printer - Can't use my Epson CX3810 with the Mac. I realize Epson doesn't provide the driver and there's a third party driver, but it doesn't seem to work quite right, especially if it's over the network (where it doesn't work at all) - So while the ultimate fault lies with Epson, it still "Just doesn't work."
Actually with Leopard there's a very exciting new twist to this. Now this doesn't apply to everything of course, but pretty close and maybe for your printer too. Mac OS X doesn't ship with tons and tons of drivers, they just ship with the common ones. Plug in your printer and turn it on. If you added a hacked driver you found somewhere for it, go into print management and delete the printer. (not the driver) Now run software update. There is a good chance it will find drivers for it on Apple's web site, via software update. This is a new feature in Leopard, that tries to eliminate the need to track down drivers for hardware. You just need to have it plugged in and not working properly when you run software update. I don't know what the odds are of it working for you. To be honest, probably not good right now if it's a new model. But after epson codes drivers for that printer, it will probably be on Apple's software update and upgrade your system automatically. It will automatically add the printer when you reboot following the update even.
I just looked, and good lord there's a lot of bundled supported printers in Leopard. (over 3,000) I see yours is supported with Gutenprint which I believe is a generic open source driver?
Safari - No effective, free adblock software that I can find. Switching to Firefox obviously solves this, but for the Mac and their homebrew application, it "Just doesn't work."
I wouldn't browse without wearing my PithHelmet. Be sure to grab from the link on the right for the new Safari 3.1. Sorry SlashDot you're not getting anywhere near the ad revenue from me, but those shockwave animated ads PISS ME OFF TO NO END. I do wish there were more options available, but PithHelmet does everything I want it to do.
iDVD - This is by far the best example of things not working. I can't even figure out what this program is for, since it doesn't appear to do anything useful. I tried to make a simple DVD with it.
I'd actually classify that as a problem, not that it doesn't work
I was to the mechanic last week to get my engine checked out. The check engine light was on and I had no idea why. It didn't really tell them much either.
So they hooked it up to a "computer". (little handheld diagnostic gadget with small LCD display) Many of us that have taken our vehicles in for service have had to "hook it up to the computer" to see why the idiot light is on.
It told him there were one of three problems, the main one of which was going to require tearing the truck to pieces to get at a sensor, and since it only MIGHT affect my gas mileage, it wasn't worth it and I'm just going to live with the light, it's an old truck.
But he said that the computer itself was 20 grand, and the modules that he had to plug into it to check my vehicle, were $500 apiece. (there were two, any vehicle takes a particular combination of the two, one to read the sensors and one to interpret the output) He also told me that this was the last time the company was going to make modules for it, that the next iteration he was going to have to upgrade the computer (another 20 grand) but was very thankful that the modules were going away and it was instead only going to cost $200-300 each for downloads to upgrade the two parts of the tool.
So in much the same respect, Ford holds a lockdown on my truck, that I can't diagnose it without someone paying an unreasonable amount to do so. I don't have to take it to the dealer, there are mechanics with The Computer too, but it's not like I can have one of my own. He gets $40 every time he hooks someone up to The Computer, to defray the cost of the computer and its modules. That's $40 I really shouldn't have to pay, it should tell me what's wrong, or be a reasonably easy output. (gimme a serial cable with serial out, or on something newer, let me ssh in) Or on some vehicles you get a flashing series of lights. Or how expensive would it be to simply have a 3 digit LED display to give me a number, and have a table in the back of the owner's manual to look up the number? But no they're very happy to charge someone a ridiculous amount for that privilege and so that cost is passed on to me.
I also know someone that reprograms ECUs for street racing ("ricer") cars. He has to disassemble the source code on the new ECUs to figure out what they're doing, to modify them to fit the customers' needs.
Comparing the old photo and the new photo I can't help but notice there are three women in center on the left, and two on the right. Other than that they seem to match up, though the distance in years does make it a little muddy.
Does anyone have the list of names to go with the faces, for both?
I am going to continue to use OSX for at least 6 months as my primary machine, possibly longer if I don't feel that I've fully explored it after that amount of time. But right now, 3 weeks into it, I don't see any compelling reason to choose a Mac over Windows from a usability standpoint unless all you do is email and web browsing.
The general rule of thumb I try to hand out to people is, "you're going to hate it. For the first three weeks everything is going to drive you crazy, you won't know how to do things you had all figured out, and things won't be where you expect them to be". At about the 3 month point you will have figured out most of the adjustments you have to make to do your usual things. At this point the usability of the systems appears roughly equal for most users. (this is the point where my phone stops ringing several times a day)
During the next three months you will begin to learn the additional shortcuts and features that make the mac easier to use. At the end of that time period you'll regard the systems as roughly equal, or that the mac may have a slight advantage.
Then the fun part. Step back onto a pc for a few days, or try to use someone else's PC to get something done. It then becomes clear what the differences really are, all the things that you now again have to worry about, the inconveniences you have to deal with, what you can't do on the PC that you were pleased to find on the mac, etc.
I realize this isn't a guaranteed experience, but for the novice to approaching intermediate computer user, I see this pretty much verbatim. For intermediate to experienced users, mileage varies. In some of those cases I believe the user has already matched up with the correct platform for what it is they do. Any clown that says "mac is better!" or "windows is better!" should be ignored. It depends on the user, and what the user needs to do.
So it's my opinion that novice users approach 85% best suited to macs. As the user's level increases, it moves closer to 50/50. I've seen a number of advanced users try mac and like it, and a nearly equal number try it and go back. I have yet to see a single novice switch back to windows. I have seen several mac novices try a pc, and none of them have been happy with the change. (though not all have returned to mac despite this)
I suppose you could summarize that by saying that macs are better in general for people that don't have specific needs. (getting back to the tired catchphrase "it just works") Users that have specific needs, need a specific computer, based on their needs. I gave up long ago trying to second-guess people as to what their computer needs are. Even people I thought I knew well surprised me when I asked probing questions about their computer use, their likes and dislikes, etc. Things that bother you will be of no consequence to someone else. Things you consider totally trivial will be their pet peeve. Anyone that answers "what computer should I get?" without asking at least 1/2 dozen questions before answering is selling you on the computer they think is best for them.
Even if Mac OS X prompts the user before allowing a program to elevate privileges, does that matter if users just click without looking? After all, lots of programs prompt for such things in order to install some shared framework they use at the installation or first-run stage
I think in this area apple has an advantage that often goes overlooked. The number of warnings and popups a windows system presents the user with is a magnitude greater than what an OS X user sees. My god, plug in a flash drive. Can you escape with fewer than three popups? There's a reason windows users have the "click the button in the new window that just opened without reading it" mentality. Windows has gone from just letting programs do as they please, to popping up dialogs every 25 seconds. This is not an improvement, it just conditions the user to ignore the message and click the button to get on with it.
So although the windows and the mac user base will both have a degree of "make the interrupting box go away" mentality, a lot more os x users stop and read the box when it pops up, because they're not used to being harassed constantly by it and have an actual interest in seeing what it's about.
My other unrelated point is developer assumptions. I have, to date, ran into three pieces of OS X software that REQUIRE you to be logged in as an admin to either install, or to run, their software. In all other cases, they will either install or run if you provide an administrator's login and password.
And the grand majority of software for OS X does not require installation to run, you can drag it to your desktop and kick it off. Again the and also the grand majority of software for OS X, particularly that which your "average user" would want to use, does not require any authentication to run because it can function from within a basic user's privileges.
Compare that with windows. It's very hard to find a single app that will run without installing, and neigh impossible to find an app that a non admin can install. Once installed, about 8% of the programs won't run at all or won't run properly if you are not an admin user. Numerous programs will only run if you are the specific (admin) user that installed them.
Some of this is windows' fault, and some of it is programmers' fault. The programmers have come to expect all users to be admins because that's been the default. And it's easier that way, there's so much less you have to deal with if you can assume the user is an admin. So they take the short way and simply demand you be an admin to install it.
This perpetuates the problem, because now everyone wants to be an admin because they can't install software or run some software etc without logging out and back in as the admin, so for pure convenience they use an admin account.
There is a third point this just reminded me of. Assumed administrator rights. There is a group "admin" on OS X, that DOES give you write permission to certain folders that an unprivileged user does not have. But the scope is very small. On windows, merely logging in as an admin gives you a whole basket full of extra powers. This is probably why the programmers want the users to simply be admins, because it makes their jobs (particularly on installing) soooo much simpler. Instead of dealing with a dozen different permissions, you can either say are you an admin or not and be done with it. If you are, go do whatever you like. Otherwise, take a hike.
This again perpetuates windows wanting to default to admin, users wanting to default to admin, and developers wanting to default to admin. That throws a pretty daunting wrench into the works when trying to secure a system by default.
I agree with that theory. There is no "good" format to use, other than whatever is popular today, and just keep moving it forward to a new format every 5-10 years. It doesn't matter what you pick today, it's going to be impossible to access 20 years from now.
We have customers in here from time to time with a box of floppies. Their new computer doesn't have a floppy drive and none of the local stores carry them anymore. Back in th' day, most people would think you were insane to tell them that in 10 years you would have problems finding a drive for that disk. (assuming it still held a good image)
Surprisingly, only extremely rarely do we have a disk that's unreadable. Sometimes one or two files have an error on them, but so far nothing major.
i inherited a box of photos. There are only three people in the world that can identify most of the people in those pictures (I have a small family tree) and I'm not one of them.
Gets very hard to positively ID a relative in a picture that's 40 years old, with family resemblance, is that grandpa 15 years ago, or dad 35 years ago? Most of the pictures have a story behind them, but of those, most of the time the only people that can ID them just know who they are, not why or even where the picture was taken.
Definitely a good idea to scan them in and get them annotated. I recently digitized in a whole pile of 32mm (yes, 32, not 35) film strips that my mom took when she was 10, and several dozen long reels (spliced) of 8mm silent films, taken by a hand-cranked film camera. For those, the best plan is to find someone that knows the film, and can provide commentary to it while watching it. Then edit in the commentary to make a sound track. It's amazing the things you can find out, and equally amazing what the person that knows the event remembers that they hat otherwise completely forgotten about. Good times.
I'm glad I got those films done when I did. The projector we used was almost twice my age, made of cast iron, and on its original bulb. During the event I got quite good at splicing the thin film using scotch tape, as it was extremely brittle and had to have at least two dozen breaks mended during the event. I don't think I could have done this had I waited much longer. I'm thankful I was taught how to use/maintain the projector years ago by my grandmother, because nobody else around here has any idea now.
The films were recorded in a very basic AVI format, that plays on any OS. Saved to hard drive, and burned to three sets of disks, two of which were given to relatives.
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Recent events (FLOODS) have shown me how fragile my DSL service here is. My provider's DSL was down for the entire state for several days. So I called my local nephew-of-satin cable co and had them install a cable modem last week.
I run a web server, mailserver, and numerous other hobby services here, so I had the "business grade DSL", which is 936/1536. (divide kbps by 9 for a good guestimate in kb/sec, so 100 up, 170 down) DSL always provides me with that speed, it never fluctuates so I get every penny I pay for. I also pay a bit extra for a block of 8 (5 usable) static IP addresses which my services require.
By comparison, the cable offers many more tiers of service, and I opted for again the "business class" service. This I was told was 2k/20k. When he brought the modem I ran a speed test. The installer scoffed at those numbers (about 1.7/15k) and told me "You never really get 2/20, that's the theoretical maximum, just like DSL" at which point I had to show him what DSL really gives you.
Another entertaining surprise was that the cable co did not offer static IP addresses in my area. I talked with my "business representative" for my area of town and he agreed, "Yes that does make my job rather difficult." Offering business internet service without static IP option, I feel sorry for that salesman. Like running a grocery store but not carrying milk. My speeds were about 1.7/15k when we tested it during the install, but it's actually been clocking in very close to 2 up lately.
Not having a lot of experience in multiple simultaneous ISPs took a little digging to get things working properly. "multilink multihoming" I believe is the correct term for having two ISPs on the same machine. Being able to USE them both at the same time is the trick. Most OSs like to reply back on the default interface, regardless of which one the traffic came in on. First requirement was to get a second nic for my server. Without that, the SYN packets came in on the 2nd nic and tried leaving on the first nic, which wasn't going to work of course.
After that was settled it still didn't work, ACK packets were not being forwarded by my router. This required a special bit of software on the server, IPNetRouterX, to modify the traffic since OS X puts default gateway information on the packets even from the non-default source. (speculating this was causing the router to just toss out the packets) Ever since that it's been working very well. During my troubles I talked with numerous people and got a mix of responses. Some were wondering why I was having any problem at all, and others were telling me they fought it for a long time and never got it to work, (mostly unix ppl in both groups) so I assume some unix network stacks support this and some do not, be sure to check your distro.
Now this is with the server answering on two distinct IP addresses. This is not fail-over, it's one server that can answer requests from two different connections at the same time. Maybe not quite what you are looking for. If I wanted to use it for fail-over I would have to change my DNS entries. This would take awhile to propagate of course. But if you could update your DNS entry quickly enough, such as by getting a registrar that had a very SHORT expiration on your entries, (DYNDNS) this could work as a hot-failover. Not a matter of the backup coming online automatically when needed, but of it always being online.
A common thing to do in cases like this is to have your DNS server serve up your two (or more) IP addresses in a round-robin fashion. Try doing a DNS lookup on microsoft.com several times and you will see you are getting different IPs each time. (I currently get 207.46.197.32 and 207.46.232.182 for microsoft.com) If you have two ISPs, and hand out your two addresses round-robin, that will give you some automatic failover for your dual always-online providers, and if one of them craps out, users will just have to notice the timeout, and click the connect button a second time to connect until things get fixed.
The original case I believe was to charge the providers the bigger percentage for their bandwidth. At that time the providers were the universities, the businesses, etc, the people that provided the average user with the content. You see that even today when you compare your network connection's upstream and downstream. My DSL is 936 up and 1536 down. My cable is 2k up and 20k down. And those lines cost 2-4x as much as non business lines that have really crappy upstream without too much less downstream.
But now with p2p, everybody can contribute to upstream. And they are losing their revenue stream because they are used to 1% of their customers consuming 80% of their resources. My upstream is your downstream. So they don't care if your downstream triples. Just so long as my upstream doesn't go up, you can't download from me any faster. ;)
But now there are so many others that can upstream. Not faster, just more OF them. And as a result, YOU can download faster. And this requires an overall increase in network capacity.
So why should the people contributing a little more upstream than usual, which is allowing you to DOWNLOAD faster, cost only them more? Makes ya think.
It's not about p2p. it's about people using what they're selling. They want to sell you a service and not have to provide it. It's like buying a member card from a health club. At any given day there are maybe 5% of the members AT the gym. What do you think would happen if there was some big advertisement in town for the health benefits of a particular new workout? What would happen if now suddently, on average, 20% of the members were at the gym?
They'd flip out. Not enough space, not enough machines, lines at machines, customers pissed off, gym pissed off. And they'd want to start raising rates of course. The reason is they have totally oversold their service, and now the public is taking more advantage of what they paid for, and it's biting them. This isn't YOUR fault any more than it's MY fault, if we're both members. They've oversold their service. Now lets say I'm one of the people that decides to go in there every DAY? My card says I can come in any time. So does yours. But you're only in there once a week.
So I should have to pay EXTRA now? I don't think so. I paid for this card, it says I can come in anytime.
In today's world there is so very little the individual can do to change laws that favor big businesses. This is simply those individuals reacting to laws that they cannot change, by finding ways to do what they believe they should be allowed to do.
In the end, the absurd laws and the p2p about negate each other, so I'm not in favor of people trying to "fix" p2p unless they are also undertaking a fixing of the laws that are providing p2p with justification.
Examine the situation from a different perspective. In the wild west there were small towns that didn't have effective law enforcement or court, and there was a wide measure of "mob rule" / rioting when a big business started running the town, getting the laws of that town changed to their favor and owning the local judges. Sure, you can work to dissolve the mob, but that doesn't really fix the problem. If you're truly interested in fixing the problem, you have to deal with the mob and the company (and it's effects/actions) that's causing the mob to be necessary. If all you work against is the mob, you've only made things better for the minority.
We've been trying for years to fix the laws and it just keeps getting worse. Then came along p2p and suddenly all the injustices were dealt a serious blow. It's still nowhere near even, but it's taken a big enough bite out of the injustice that the "mafiaa" is looking to beat down the newly formed resistance against it. Can't say as I blame them, they've got a sweet thing going and don't want to lose it. But I'm on the losing side of the issue so I'm rooting for the underdog.
I'm perpetually amused that folks whine how we can't replace an old-growth forest or rainforest but terraforming a planet, hey, no problem there. All you need to do is sprinkle a little spores and fairy dust and boom you have Earth II, except without all the people mucking it up...
You asked the question and answered it at the same time. Life is very resilient to most anything short of more aggressive life. The old growth forests actually require less effort to fix than to kick-start mars. All you have to do is leave them alone for awhile and they would recover on their own. Keeping people from continuing to drag them down further is the trick. Mars has the edge here in that it's very hard for US to screw it up.
It's more economical to spend $500mil to start an ecosystem that will maintain and develop itself without further interaction, fertilized only with time, than to spend $100mil every few years trying to keep fixing up what people keep breaking, and still continue to lose ground.
That second link is seven pages. Normally anything posted to /. that's more than say, three pages, consists of 400k size pages of advertisements, banners, and otherwise obnoxious noise with maybe three paragraphs (4k or so) of actual content in the middle of the page, that you have to continuously click (NEXT PAGE) to read the next few sentences on.
Not that one. Actual, real content. Multiple pages of real information. What has the world come to? Someone's posting content for the purpose of actually informing us, rather than burying us in cheap banner hits.
The first link is possibly even better than that though. The same information density, in only ONE page. Normally they'd have spread that among at least five banner-whoring pages? Kudos to gpsworld.com for serving their readers. It's pages like that which make me wish I could leave my banner-blockers turned off all the time.
well if they don't want to claim ownership/possession of it in the first place, that makes it harder for it it complain when it goes missing.
"I'm sorry, you should have told us that was your satellite, we DID ask. We just assumed since nobody claimed it, it was just some random space junk."
they go to great lengths NOT to bring life to mars. Read up on "bio-barrier". If the spacecraft get contaminated during construction or prep they have to re-sterilize it. They want to find life, not spread it.
If you accidentally bring life to Mars, that makes it about impossible to discover it and know for sure it's Martian life and not something you brought, or that mutated from something you brought.
Although I agree that if we determine there is NO life on mars, I say our next probe is sent with a well-planned variety of "colonizer" lifeforms to begin teraforming of the planet so it's at least borderline useful by the time we can send people out there.
That and in my university you had to comment like a mad fool, which depending on who you outsourced to might be a dead giveaway.
I could come up with dozens of comical comments you might find made by Cheetan or Suthrik to raise an eyebrow when reviewing "your code" but I'll let your imagination color the page instead.
I'd personally demand they don't put a single line of comment in the code, that would have to be a dead giveaway.
mmm that may make a very nice addition to my botnet. Wonder what it has for network bandwidth?
for most lot of people, raising the price of something they're addicted/obsessed with or need doesn't help.
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Look at all the smokers in the US today. With that insanely high cigarette tax, and with how much it now costs for you to be a pack-a-day smoker, look how many of them there still are. Most smokers consider their carton a week a life essential when shopping.
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Food works in much the same way. People buy food at the store telling themselves they're going to eat in moderation. Then after an hour at home they devour an entire bag of chips in one sitting. Cost for them was not a deterrent because they convinced themselves it was going to last longer. In the end it's just another tax on something that for the most part is unavoidable.
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If tomorrow they put an additional $2/galon tax on gas, that would not stop me from driving. I can't walk to work. I can't walk to the grocery store. It may squeeze out what little unnecessary driving I do, but in the end it's just another unavoidable expense for me, just another tax. It hasn't deterred me from driving too much.
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The first example doesn't care what the tax is because they feel they have to have it. The second example doesn't care what the tax is because they're convinced at the time of purchase that it's not going to affect them. The final example doesn't care what the tax is because reducing consumption is not an option.
they also placed the glass with the thicker area on the bottom because it was heavier, and it's a better idea to put the heavier part of the glass nearer the bottom of the frame. This led to practically all of those panes being installed thicker-side-down. So I suppose you could say gravity was responsible for the pane thickness variance... indirectly.
I thought I read somewhere that there were a few people on the manhatton project that thought there was an appreciable risk that the first nuclear bomb test MAY set the atmosphere on fire.
I think I see a problem, tho I'm definitely not astrophysicist. Gravity affects relative to distance. The proposed earth-size (mass) black hole would have the same mass as the earth, but would be a lot smaller. So wouldn't it be farther from the moon than the earth is? or does gravity only care about where the center of the mass is? So the moon would be less affected by the new black hole than it was by the earth?
OK Jethro.
and I for one get really tired of all the Sun Java updates. One particular update path I have to go through with some machines requires downloading 5 or 6 java updates, at 35-50mb EACH, as java trampolines itself up to the latest version.
would need to know more about why it's there to begin with. The executable is used by ARD's "send shell command" function. It's the part of the ARD client on the computer that actually performs shell commands received that came from a remote ARD Admin. Speculating since I didn't code the thing, the "user" that generates this request inside the ARD client after receiving the request from an admin is probably not a privileged user, and that's why this executable is setuid, so it can perform the tasks sent to it, as root. So removing the setuid bits WILL "fix" the security hole, but are likely to disable this part of ARD. It wouldn't surprise me if this executable is used for numerous other ARD commands. Other commands such as "restart computer" may be done via this. It's possible that most of the ARD Admin commands are accomplished through this executable for this reason.
I have yet to see anyone test ARD to discover the effect of clearing these bits though, which is rather surprising.
I prefer it to NOT do that. Clutters up the main page more than usual. I thought it got done once or twice in the past but was immediately removed?
it's also possible the bicycles could be the three wheeled variety. I see them around these parts from time to time for people that can't stand for long periods of time. Usually a large basket on the front too so they can do minor shopping etc.
I was also very surprised to see TWO bikes in the last month being ridden by paraplegics. (no legs) The bikes look a bit like recumbents in that their seat is very close to the ground. The energy is supplied by a cam system on the handlebars, which moves back and forth in addition to twisting for steering. The forward and backward motion moves the bike. Those two had some serious muscle in their arms, and could easily keep pace with others. Beats the heck out of a wheelchair and is an uplifting sight to see on the bicycle trails.
Just a followup on a few of your points. Some you are dead on the money, but a few have some additional information you haven't ran into yet.
Samba - 100% broken in OSX when trying to share out files to a Windows box with User level security. You can access public stuff, but whoa unto you if you try to access private data with a username and password. It's acknowledged as broken, it "Just doesn't work."
The only problem I've ran into lately is with a specific implementation of network security. Windows got the brilliant idea to digitally sign packets on the LAN. Turn that off and a great many things UNbreak. Mac is supposed to have added support for this but it doesn't appear to work.
ITunes - You can't sort a playlist arbitrarily. You have to sort it by a field. I can't click and drag songs into specific a specific order - "It just doesn't work."
I don't think "it just works" is meant to apply to the presence of features, but instead to core functionality. If I say it differently it may make more sense. I can't say a car doesn't Just Work because it lacks ABS or power windows.
Although that I would admit is a glaring obvious omission in iTunes, most users are very pleased with all the ease of use and features that iTiunes has in it. The built-in store is very well-done. Synchronizing with an iPod is effortless. I would add to that feature request that I would like to be able to add a song to a playlist more than once, to increase its frequency in playback.
Printer - Can't use my Epson CX3810 with the Mac. I realize Epson doesn't provide the driver and there's a third party driver, but it doesn't seem to work quite right, especially if it's over the network (where it doesn't work at all) - So while the ultimate fault lies with Epson, it still "Just doesn't work."
Actually with Leopard there's a very exciting new twist to this. Now this doesn't apply to everything of course, but pretty close and maybe for your printer too. Mac OS X doesn't ship with tons and tons of drivers, they just ship with the common ones. Plug in your printer and turn it on. If you added a hacked driver you found somewhere for it, go into print management and delete the printer. (not the driver) Now run software update. There is a good chance it will find drivers for it on Apple's web site, via software update. This is a new feature in Leopard, that tries to eliminate the need to track down drivers for hardware. You just need to have it plugged in and not working properly when you run software update. I don't know what the odds are of it working for you. To be honest, probably not good right now if it's a new model. But after epson codes drivers for that printer, it will probably be on Apple's software update and upgrade your system automatically. It will automatically add the printer when you reboot following the update even.
I just looked, and good lord there's a lot of bundled supported printers in Leopard. (over 3,000) I see yours is supported with Gutenprint which I believe is a generic open source driver?
Safari - No effective, free adblock software that I can find. Switching to Firefox obviously solves this, but for the Mac and their homebrew application, it "Just doesn't work."
I wouldn't browse without wearing my PithHelmet. Be sure to grab from the link on the right for the new Safari 3.1. Sorry SlashDot you're not getting anywhere near the ad revenue from me, but those shockwave animated ads PISS ME OFF TO NO END. I do wish there were more options available, but PithHelmet does everything I want it to do.
iDVD - This is by far the best example of things not working. I can't even figure out what this program is for, since it doesn't appear to do anything useful. I tried to make a simple DVD with it.
I'd actually classify that as a problem, not that it doesn't work
I was to the mechanic last week to get my engine checked out. The check engine light was on and I had no idea why. It didn't really tell them much either.
So they hooked it up to a "computer". (little handheld diagnostic gadget with small LCD display) Many of us that have taken our vehicles in for service have had to "hook it up to the computer" to see why the idiot light is on.
It told him there were one of three problems, the main one of which was going to require tearing the truck to pieces to get at a sensor, and since it only MIGHT affect my gas mileage, it wasn't worth it and I'm just going to live with the light, it's an old truck.
But he said that the computer itself was 20 grand, and the modules that he had to plug into it to check my vehicle, were $500 apiece. (there were two, any vehicle takes a particular combination of the two, one to read the sensors and one to interpret the output) He also told me that this was the last time the company was going to make modules for it, that the next iteration he was going to have to upgrade the computer (another 20 grand) but was very thankful that the modules were going away and it was instead only going to cost $200-300 each for downloads to upgrade the two parts of the tool.
So in much the same respect, Ford holds a lockdown on my truck, that I can't diagnose it without someone paying an unreasonable amount to do so. I don't have to take it to the dealer, there are mechanics with The Computer too, but it's not like I can have one of my own. He gets $40 every time he hooks someone up to The Computer, to defray the cost of the computer and its modules. That's $40 I really shouldn't have to pay, it should tell me what's wrong, or be a reasonably easy output. (gimme a serial cable with serial out, or on something newer, let me ssh in) Or on some vehicles you get a flashing series of lights. Or how expensive would it be to simply have a 3 digit LED display to give me a number, and have a table in the back of the owner's manual to look up the number? But no they're very happy to charge someone a ridiculous amount for that privilege and so that cost is passed on to me.
I also know someone that reprograms ECUs for street racing ("ricer") cars. He has to disassemble the source code on the new ECUs to figure out what they're doing, to modify them to fit the customers' needs.
There are many examples of lock-down in vehicles.
Comparing the old photo and the new photo I can't help but notice there are three women in center on the left, and two on the right. Other than that they seem to match up, though the distance in years does make it a little muddy.
Does anyone have the list of names to go with the faces, for both?
I am going to continue to use OSX for at least 6 months as my primary machine, possibly longer if I don't feel that I've fully explored it after that amount of time. But right now, 3 weeks into it, I don't see any compelling reason to choose a Mac over Windows from a usability standpoint unless all you do is email and web browsing.
The general rule of thumb I try to hand out to people is, "you're going to hate it. For the first three weeks everything is going to drive you crazy, you won't know how to do things you had all figured out, and things won't be where you expect them to be". At about the 3 month point you will have figured out most of the adjustments you have to make to do your usual things. At this point the usability of the systems appears roughly equal for most users. (this is the point where my phone stops ringing several times a day)
During the next three months you will begin to learn the additional shortcuts and features that make the mac easier to use. At the end of that time period you'll regard the systems as roughly equal, or that the mac may have a slight advantage.
Then the fun part. Step back onto a pc for a few days, or try to use someone else's PC to get something done. It then becomes clear what the differences really are, all the things that you now again have to worry about, the inconveniences you have to deal with, what you can't do on the PC that you were pleased to find on the mac, etc.
I realize this isn't a guaranteed experience, but for the novice to approaching intermediate computer user, I see this pretty much verbatim. For intermediate to experienced users, mileage varies. In some of those cases I believe the user has already matched up with the correct platform for what it is they do. Any clown that says "mac is better!" or "windows is better!" should be ignored. It depends on the user, and what the user needs to do.
So it's my opinion that novice users approach 85% best suited to macs. As the user's level increases, it moves closer to 50/50. I've seen a number of advanced users try mac and like it, and a nearly equal number try it and go back. I have yet to see a single novice switch back to windows. I have seen several mac novices try a pc, and none of them have been happy with the change. (though not all have returned to mac despite this)
I suppose you could summarize that by saying that macs are better in general for people that don't have specific needs. (getting back to the tired catchphrase "it just works") Users that have specific needs, need a specific computer, based on their needs. I gave up long ago trying to second-guess people as to what their computer needs are. Even people I thought I knew well surprised me when I asked probing questions about their computer use, their likes and dislikes, etc. Things that bother you will be of no consequence to someone else. Things you consider totally trivial will be their pet peeve. Anyone that answers "what computer should I get?" without asking at least 1/2 dozen questions before answering is selling you on the computer they think is best for them.
Even if Mac OS X prompts the user before allowing a program to elevate privileges, does that matter if users just click without looking? After all, lots of programs prompt for such things in order to install some shared framework they use at the installation or first-run stage
I think in this area apple has an advantage that often goes overlooked. The number of warnings and popups a windows system presents the user with is a magnitude greater than what an OS X user sees. My god, plug in a flash drive. Can you escape with fewer than three popups? There's a reason windows users have the "click the button in the new window that just opened without reading it" mentality. Windows has gone from just letting programs do as they please, to popping up dialogs every 25 seconds. This is not an improvement, it just conditions the user to ignore the message and click the button to get on with it.
So although the windows and the mac user base will both have a degree of "make the interrupting box go away" mentality, a lot more os x users stop and read the box when it pops up, because they're not used to being harassed constantly by it and have an actual interest in seeing what it's about.
My other unrelated point is developer assumptions. I have, to date, ran into three pieces of OS X software that REQUIRE you to be logged in as an admin to either install, or to run, their software. In all other cases, they will either install or run if you provide an administrator's login and password.
And the grand majority of software for OS X does not require installation to run, you can drag it to your desktop and kick it off. Again the and also the grand majority of software for OS X, particularly that which your "average user" would want to use, does not require any authentication to run because it can function from within a basic user's privileges.
Compare that with windows. It's very hard to find a single app that will run without installing, and neigh impossible to find an app that a non admin can install. Once installed, about 8% of the programs won't run at all or won't run properly if you are not an admin user. Numerous programs will only run if you are the specific (admin) user that installed them.
Some of this is windows' fault, and some of it is programmers' fault. The programmers have come to expect all users to be admins because that's been the default. And it's easier that way, there's so much less you have to deal with if you can assume the user is an admin. So they take the short way and simply demand you be an admin to install it.
This perpetuates the problem, because now everyone wants to be an admin because they can't install software or run some software etc without logging out and back in as the admin, so for pure convenience they use an admin account.
There is a third point this just reminded me of. Assumed administrator rights. There is a group "admin" on OS X, that DOES give you write permission to certain folders that an unprivileged user does not have. But the scope is very small. On windows, merely logging in as an admin gives you a whole basket full of extra powers. This is probably why the programmers want the users to simply be admins, because it makes their jobs (particularly on installing) soooo much simpler. Instead of dealing with a dozen different permissions, you can either say are you an admin or not and be done with it. If you are, go do whatever you like. Otherwise, take a hike.
This again perpetuates windows wanting to default to admin, users wanting to default to admin, and developers wanting to default to admin. That throws a pretty daunting wrench into the works when trying to secure a system by default.
I agree with that theory. There is no "good" format to use, other than whatever is popular today, and just keep moving it forward to a new format every 5-10 years. It doesn't matter what you pick today, it's going to be impossible to access 20 years from now.
We have customers in here from time to time with a box of floppies. Their new computer doesn't have a floppy drive and none of the local stores carry them anymore. Back in th' day, most people would think you were insane to tell them that in 10 years you would have problems finding a drive for that disk. (assuming it still held a good image)
Surprisingly, only extremely rarely do we have a disk that's unreadable. Sometimes one or two files have an error on them, but so far nothing major.
i inherited a box of photos. There are only three people in the world that can identify most of the people in those pictures (I have a small family tree) and I'm not one of them.
Gets very hard to positively ID a relative in a picture that's 40 years old, with family resemblance, is that grandpa 15 years ago, or dad 35 years ago? Most of the pictures have a story behind them, but of those, most of the time the only people that can ID them just know who they are, not why or even where the picture was taken.
Definitely a good idea to scan them in and get them annotated. I recently digitized in a whole pile of 32mm (yes, 32, not 35) film strips that my mom took when she was 10, and several dozen long reels (spliced) of 8mm silent films, taken by a hand-cranked film camera. For those, the best plan is to find someone that knows the film, and can provide commentary to it while watching it. Then edit in the commentary to make a sound track. It's amazing the things you can find out, and equally amazing what the person that knows the event remembers that they hat otherwise completely forgotten about. Good times.
I'm glad I got those films done when I did. The projector we used was almost twice my age, made of cast iron, and on its original bulb. During the event I got quite good at splicing the thin film using scotch tape, as it was extremely brittle and had to have at least two dozen breaks mended during the event. I don't think I could have done this had I waited much longer. I'm thankful I was taught how to use/maintain the projector years ago by my grandmother, because nobody else around here has any idea now.
The films were recorded in a very basic AVI format, that plays on any OS. Saved to hard drive, and burned to three sets of disks, two of which were given to relatives.