Sorry it took so long, I was too busy contemplating how to respond to someone with your level of intellect.
I am surprised though at how long it took you to come up with a highly complex yet largely irrelevant mathematical formula to prove a strawman. (Sorry, no Wikipedia link.;) )
Like I said, I really don't have any desire to process a response from you.
FWIW; when you're ready to formulate your own opinions on the subject rather than regurgitating concepts you've gleaned from Wikipedia (statistical concepts from games? Now I've heard it all) feel free to re-instigate this discussion. I'll be waiting.
(Not really, actually, but it seemed like the polite thing to say.)
I hate this condescending answer. The truth is that your vote is completely irrelevant to the outcome of an election. Even in "close" elections, the margins are still in the hundreds range. Even if you had voted, nothing would have changed.
The truth of the matter is that the people who fail to turn up at the polls could completely alter the course of any given election.
Your examples are all pretty short sighted. Not flushing in public bathrooms? By the time 1 person per toilet had used the facility it would be rendered useless and within its first hour of operation would be shut down. Are you advocating we just shut down the polls and let the white-hairs on capitol hill decide the outcome of each "election"?
You say the public's mind has already been made up on any given issue. The social fabric that makes up our country is ever changing. Is the public's mind still made up on that whole integration of the blacks issue? What about allowing women the right to gain educations, vote and join our workforce? Should we allow horseless carriages to enter our city centres?
More recently; what about air traffic reform, the various dozens of issues surrounding church & state separation (abortion, gay marriage, etc.), tax reforms, new land development and native land claims, funding of religious-based schools, anything related to the Internet or other electronic technology that isn't fully understood by 90% of the population at large or any of the other ten thousand issues that are on the table at any given time?
Is your vote going to be the catalyst of the election? Certainly not. But if you and your peer group who presumably all feel strongly about certain issues were to vote instead of not, don't you see how that could alter the tide of the election slightly, if not pivot it in your favour?
I know you're either trolling or you're just completely pessimistic, either way I'm not looking for any kind of response from you but in about 9 hours the polls open for a provincial election here in Ontario so it's kind of in the forefront of my mind as in; how am I going to schedule a trip to the polls around my day-long training session at my company's head office way in the west end of the city?
Just in case it's not already abundantly clear, I will be voting tomorrow.
There's really no sense buying the junky bootlegs on a street corner. I honestly don't understand how any for-profit duplicators make it these days. It was one thing in the age of VHS tapes, but in our current environment, it's far easier for the average consumer to get his hands on a legitimate, high quality copy (and "back it up") than it's worth attempting to purchase a counterfeit copy.
There are actually some very high quality bootleg copies of movies and television shows out there. Search a torrent site for dvdrip, hd, xvid, ac3, h.264/x264 or a plethora of others and you'll find 5.1 surround sound, high definition copies of all sorts of things. Fire them onto a DVD-R, mock up some packaging, set up a website and bang! Profit! (Now if website is a synonym for "street corner" you get the same result).
You are right; in some cases it's just not worth while to get counterfeit or bootleg copies; if they're not available in HD with 5.1 sound quite frankly I'm not interested. I didn't spend this much money on a home theatre system to watch grainy video with 2 channel audio. On the other hand a compromise must be made; I didn't build my theatre setup to spend $60CDN on a high definition video disc either.
I'm sure it's not in the short term, but in the long term (which American businesses seem to have lost all interest in) having a solid infrastructure will give the country a stronger economy and increase profits for most corporations.
So basically you want companies to spend billions of dollars rolling out last mile fibre all over the country, not to mention the billions of dollars required to update the national and international backbone infrastructure, the core and edge equipment required to facilitate the new bandwidth requirements - on potential future profitability?
I remember the last time tech companies, venture capitalists and economists of all breeds and backgrounds spent money on the hopes of future profitability. Then the dot-com bubble crashed and the tech sector reeled (and, some would argue, continues to do so to this day. Long hours, low pay, thankless work environment, massive job insecurity, etc.)
Face it; comparing the (North) American cabling infrastructure to that of Korea and Japan isn't a fair comparison. It's just so physically diverse in North America the two don't go together. Land structure (terrain) and population density are the two biggest factors and until we can get fibre costs down to the point where it's pennies (or even dollars) per fibre/mile it's just not going to scale the same way.
Moreover; how loud are the consumers going to scream when they're asked to finance the R&D and upgrade costs on their monthly statements over the next 10 years? (This is Slashdot so do some soul searching and be honest with yourself.:P )
It's not about the technology. The choice to build or not to build network infrastucture is a business decision. For some reason, US companies just don't seem to consider it profitable to offer fast inexpensive internet access to Americans.
Then either sell the line as a "burst traffic" line, where you get the 10gb offered only for short periods (and market it as such!) or go back to selling 1gb instead of 10. Sell 1gb and "more if available".
What you say sounds like ISPs sell what they don't have and want to shape traffic to continue this scam.
It is a burstable line. Just because you didn't read the fine print doesn't make the phone / cable companies negligent.
If you want dedicated 8Mbit/sec (it's not gigabit, BTW, you best check your acronyms) you might want to check the pricing on a fractional T3. (Hint: it's atleast $1000/month).
If you want to continue whining about your SOHO burstable link I'm afraid your complaints are falling on deaf ears. Pay the money for the real thing or deal with what you're getting for $40/month.
It's the same for a provider. Though for him, cutting down the use doesn't mean shaping a customer's traffic. When I pay for a service, I expect that service to be available to me. If an ISP cannot provide it, he is required to fix this problem. Either by increasing his bandwidth or by reducing his amount of customers. I do not accept that I pay for a certain bandwidth and am not "allowed" to use it.
Repeat after me; BURSTABLE TRAFFIC. You are paying for a consumer-grade, burstable link. If you want dedicated service pay for a couple T1s. What? They're too expensive? Then quit crying when your $40/month burstable link isn't always 100% available to you.
In this case, I don't question my neighbor's use of his pipe but the company's selling policy. Appearantly they sell more bandwidth than they can sell. They should not sell him a pipe fat enough to interfere with the TV broadcast.
Such is the duality of the geek argument. Geeks want 4, 5, 8, 10, more megabit connections to the Internet. Ok, so a cable company gives 10MBit/sec connections to all users. Well now they want to use it at capacity and pay the same as the guy down the street who uses it for burst traffic (web, e-mail and such). I remember the outcry over bandwidth caps! "You sold me a dedicated 8MBit connection and now you want me to pay when I max it out 24 hours a day 31 days in a row? FASCISTS!"
See, the cable connections all share the same big fat pipe. They have an advantage over DSL in the distance they can travel from the 'CO' facility but the disadvantage in that there's only so much total bandwidth to go around and if all your neighbors are downloading large P2P files you're SOL to check your e-mail or use your VoIP service. The bottleneck, of course, for DSL lies in the convergence point at the central office where all those little pipes (drinking straws) feed from the big pipe(s) (firehose) connected to the rest of the Internet.
Consider the ramifications of even so much as a typical suburban neighborhood having 10MBit/sec connections. 1000 houses in a new sub-division * 10MBit/sec = 10GBit/second. That's an OC-192. For a single neighborhood. Now consider the population of the small(ish) town I'm from at ~85,000 people. Estimate that 75% (number pulled from thin air, FWIW) of people have broadband connections and you've got 63750 people with 10MBit connections. That's 640GBit/sec for one small town!! (That's about 67 * OC-192s for the record)
Clearly this gets out of hand FAST. There's no way any company can expect to maintain a level of dedicated, guaranteed bandwidth for all those subscribers; especially at $39.95/month.
QoS is the simple answer, and unfortunately people who use and develop P2P software don't seem to want play ball. They want to be able to saturate the up and downlink capabilities of whatever line they're on to get that {$File} downloaded NOW NOW NOW because hell, free should be fast.
Until something happens where multi-terrabit connections at the core are commonplace we won't see dedicated high speed, full-access all the time connections to our doorsteps and we're going to have to deal with burstable connections that can and do slow down during peak usage times and under major events.
This isn't about what -you- consider to be a critical update. Debian has a methodology for these cases - if you don't like the methodology, that's fine with me. You are free to not use Debian/etch, or find another way to apply the update, perhaps even a command-line approach.
This is kind of the point. No matter how you slice it this is a critical update. Just because a pedantic political body doesn't consider it so is costing the distribution users and harming the reputation of Linux in general.
Please refrain from sitting on your "high horse" and criticizing an entire class of people/business (Linux/FOSS users and advocates) based on one example you disagree with, and then attempt to address with off-topic rhetoric.
I've been a computer / network administrator for the past decade and have either relied exclusively on or integrated Linux into each and every network I've ever run so I'm not sitting on a high horse and talking from a distance; I'm sitting on my GNU/Couch and criticizing my more outspoken counterparts in the FOSS community.
(If you'd clicked the link to my homepage before posting you could have saved the time and effort of putting your foot in your mouth.:) )
BTW, adding 1 line to your/etc/apt/sources.list seems a fairly simple way to get the patch, so what *is* the problem here? Don't want to understand how your OS deals with certain things, then don't use Debian.
There's a lot I don't understand about the things I use in my day to day life but I still use them. Micro-managing one's operating system is a foolish waste of time and loss of productivity. My operating system exists to grant me access to the tools I've installed to perform tasks relevant to my daily life and career. This is something that should be done right the first time without any political nonsense getting in the way. A timezone patch not stable? Now I've heard it all. Next thing you know my/etc/issue file will be unstable.
I agree with you but I'm having difficulty imagining a specific attack scenario...
No, the solution is to drop the "security" red herring altogether and concentrate on the truth of the matter. This update is small, simple, and critical in an international economy. It should go without saying that it should be a mandatory, top of the list update for all systems regardless of their status in some bureaucratic development cycle.
Forget the analogies of web browsers, MP3 players, web servers, e-mail clients, IM clients or any of the other thousands of software packages that could in whatever small or large way affect the system and concentrate on this; this update is in force by a major political body recognized around the world. It is fact and computers should at all costs follow the guidelines set by the Real World governing entities. Period. Full Stop.
For any developer to be pedantic enough to marginalize this as "non security" and therefore refuse to put it into the mandatory update pool is harmful and highly irresponsible. Said developer(s) should be reprimanded, not lauded.
For all those reading these threads and responding that a simple command-line update is the proper solution are short sighted and elitist. Not to sound too cliche, but this is just another example of why Linux / FOSS users and advocates are looked down upon by the real forces in the computer industry and why Linux will never be a mainstream standard. Get off your high horses and realize that just because something is usable by the masses doesn't make it technically inferior nor does it make you any less of a geek because you didn't have to hand-roll your latest update.
For average grandmother, you better believe it! I could send those instructions to just about anyone with half a clue and they could carry it out with no problem.
Sure, you can send them the instructions and (virtually) hold their hand while they carry them out, but consider how difficult it can be with someone who's really not computer literate.
"Open a command prompt. Xterm. Terminal window. No, click here then click "X-Terminal Window" is it open? I mean, is there a black box on the screen now? Yes, it's supposed to blink. No, it's not broken. Now, type "a-p-t-space-" no, the space bar, don't type 'space', ok, "a-p-t" no - you've already typed that don't type it again!". If/when they get an error message quite often then don't understand so they tell you "Ok, done, what's next?" so you don't even realize the command errored out and you have to start from scratch.
Remember that when it comes to computers, otherwise highly intelligent people shut down. It's the same reason old(er) people generally have "12:00" flashing on their VCR clocks. Their brains shut down when it comes to stuff like this. Irrational though it may be it's the truth.
There's an experiment where on one side of a double-sided ('A' frame) flip chart there is a picture. Usually simple geometric shapes and lines, and on the other side is a blank canvas of identical size and colour. One subject stands in view of the picture while the other stands on the other side with pen in hand. It is the job of subject #1 to describe the picture to subject #2 in order that #2 can reproduce it as accurately as possible. The results are almost always highly irregular, transposed (vertically, usually), in the wrong colour(s), almost always incorrect sizes and with a flair of (unintentional) artistic license. The results of these experiments are the very reason why phone support has to be so thoroughly researched and regimented. "Screen" versus "desktop", "Small blue picture of an 'E' with rings around it" instead of "Internet Explorer icon", etc.
In the real world, when you have to type out something seemingly Cyrillic like a multi-part command in a command prompt window you've lost the average Joe and Jane user. "Why would I do this when I can click the balloon that pops up and says 'Updates are ready for your computer, click here to install them.'?"
Internal devs can put up with a beta print driver. Cannon will not support a beta print driver. Make sense now?
Actually based on my experience, most notably with their multi function devices, their drivers are beta. When I asked why all users of a Windows XP workstation had to be administrator (not even Power Users would suffice) in order to even PRINT to the device I was given two pieces of pertinent information;
the device "does more than most" so it was necessary. The fact that I could have plugged in 4 separate devices and accomplished the same thing but with less available desk space I was brushed off.
Their drivers are programed in Japan which, somehow, means the North Americans have no control. So I guess it's kinda a roll of the dice when those Japs are done with them. Or something. I'm still not sure. My car was made in Japan, but it still works on Canadian roads. {shrug}
Honestly, I might be in the classification of people who don't understand, but I resent the implication of "incompetent". I really hate the idea that you have to be an all-knowledgeable ubergeek, or else stay completely away from computers.
No, you don't have to be an "all-knowledgeable ubergeek", but if you're going to discuss security in a technical forum you should enter into it with some level of knowledge that grants you entry. People who operate at level 10 don't want to hold people's hands through levels 1 through 3 all the time, they want to discuss level 8 through 12 problems to broaden their own understanding. So find yourself a forum more appropriate to your level of expertise (a classroom might be a good start) and move up when you're ready.
If you don't want to spend all that time furthering your education and developing your skills you could atleast use some basic research abilities and garner some knowledge on the subject so you can ask pointed questions about various implementations rather than generalities about what you could do.
For the record, you don't like the "ubergeek" approach - well on the flip side of the coin people who have studied, researched and practiced computer/network administrative security for years (decades) don't appreciate every newbie firing a distro onto a spare partition and considering themselves "administrators". For the record, it's thousands/millions of your type who set up inherently insecure servers who contribute greatly to the spread of malware on the Internet through open proxies and relays, so there's a little bit of ire on the other side of the fence.
So if you're going to unleash your services on the open Internet, please, get some education first, open ports second.
On every machine I've installed IE7 on, the first time you hit a page in the internet, it pops up and asks you if you want to turn antiphishing on.
Yes, and as usual in the Microsoft world and made exponentially worse with Vista users are now trained that when Microsoft pops up a question you just say "Yes", "Ok", "Accept" just to get on about your business and make the pesky box go away.
I was configuring my boss's laptop to work on the company network as well as his home wireless LAN and I swear I had to click "Accept" about 2 or more dozen times! I stopped reading the messages - just looked for the "Accept" button! After a few hours of that a message couple pop up asking for permission to format C: and power cycle the unit and I'd click "Accept" just to make the damned thing go away!
Security through asking a million technical, obscure asinine questions is, IMHO, worse than no security at all.
For the same reason many anti-virus vendors have free versions of their products that they keep up to date for free: it reduces the overall infection rate and makes the internet a generally safer place.
So corporate entities do things for the greater good of us all, not for the chance to sell people updated, non-cripped, feature-rich versions of their "free" packages?
Hrmmmm.... looking at the "device" from the images on the link makes me think the police overreacted.
Have you ever seen a bomb strapped to somebody's chest? It looks an awful lot like circuit board(s), batter(y|ies), and wires crudely fashioned. Oh, and a baggy hoodie sweatshirt to top it all off? How much C4 could a skinny person conceal?
The police reacted quite properly to somebody wearing an improvisational electronic device in a high risk public setting. She acted poorly by not explaining that she's an electronics geek who has poor taste in attire.
She's also quite lucky she got an officer who wasn't trigger happy. He asked questions first and she's still alive. If this had happened in New York, and/or happened closer to the end of 2001 she'd be on a slab right now undergoing autopsy, not a nonsensical martyr.
who the hell receives pay cheques anyway? doesn't everyone have their pay deposited straight into their account these days?
Must be Monday.
I'm not sure if this question is flamebait or not (being AC I'll bet it is) but as the saying goes I'll bite;
It's colloquial. You don't tell people your "payroll direct deposit transaction" was larger than normal, you make exclamations about the size of your pay cheque.
Yes, many people do still get paid directly by cheque. Some even get cash. (Insert half a dozen prime examples here)
Some people don't maintain bank accounts. Strange but true. Reasons are varied and none of them are my own. Poll the lineup at the local 24x7 "Money Mart" type store and ask them.
All generalizations are false; including this one.
I wonder, if they start doing more and more extensive tests, could they eventually determine the household in which the drugs come from? What's preventing them from testing the sewer water directly out of a house, instead of a waste plant.
Extreme cost and impracticality for two.
Not to mention the mixture of reactions they'd get when they dug up each and every lawn in a given city to install a monitoring device, you know, "just in case you decide to break a specific set of laws in the future". How would they monitor appartment buildings? Install the monitors throughout the walls and floors of every building? "Pardon me while I rip apart your drywall. I won't be much more than 4-5 hours and I'll have your home back the way I found it. Oooh; is that Iced Tea?" Not to mention that even if they did narrow a source of narcotic residue down to a particular residence - how do they prove who deposited it? A resident? A visitor who used your commode? A neighbor whose water closet was out of commission?
Sure. The next step for the government will clearly be a monitoring device connected directly to our genitals at birth. That'll go over well. I can imagine the difficulty in changing the batteries a couple times a year. Updates to screen for new narcotics would be an awesome undertaking. "Come now! Get the 3.0 upgrade - now supporting more types of PCP than ever before!"
Can't get a decent movie on the shitty new formats that support their already aging TV that will be obsolete in 2 years because somebody will come up with something better...
Wait; you mean technology changes over time? You mean CD-RW drives are no longer the cats ass? But I threw away my ZIP drive when I got one!
Yes, technology changes. Yes, early adopters will always get bitten. Yes, you're stupid if you jump on the latest whiz-bang technology or grab the lowest-priced clearance item on the shelf; especially where it concerns something you may own for a decade.
Find a technological plateau and stick to it. I bought my HD TV about a year ago; it was on clearance, yes. It supports 1080i and 720p which is more then capable for the media available today. In 4-5 years when 1080 content is prevalent enough to warrant (and 1080p to boot) I'll replace it with a newer unit that supports same as well as the highest grade cabling standards of the day. Meanwhile I support HDMI, component, and digital audio so what more do I need?
Probably true. Very few people are gullible enough to own a hi-def television.
Thankfully, only a very select few are pompous enough to talk with such disdain about something they know nothing about.
I own an HDTV and I have trouble watching regular-definition television anymore (even though it's digital). High definition is beautiful and the channel lineups are expanding ever faster every year. I've already got dozens of selections in multiple timezones (time shifted HD content in case I miss a program in EST) and every couple months I have a few new channels to choose from.
As to the "all content is garbage" crowd - watch Discovery Channel or PBS in high def for a while and see the difference. Watch a concert presented in HD with 5.1 surround sound and feel immersed as if the concert were taking place right in your living room. Like dramas? Try watching them in HD and see them come to life. Hell, even the news is more brilliant in high def.
To all the sports fans - try watching a few football games in HD then switch back to regular broadcast and try not to go back. Sorry, but once you've seen droplets of water glistening off the blades of grass in the stadium or beads of sweat forming on players' faces you'll be hooked. Hockey is brilliant in HD - the rink is so vibrant it's like you're sitting 20 rows back. Cool down your room and dim the lights and you might as well be in the arena.
As for movies, well, you take what you get. Sure, there's good and there's bad. But here's a hint for you; there always has been! Do you think every movie produced in the 50s, 60s and 70s were instant classics? Hell no! (How many movies was Elvis in for chrissake? "Mr. Presley, your lines are... oh hell, just sing."). When you do get a good movie, though, the better the picture on your television the more you can get immersed in the picture and the more you'll enjoy your investment.
HD is a move in the right direction, but 1080p capable TVs, of the size where 1080 actually matters, are quite expensive, relatively speaking... the cheapest one at Newegg (not that that's any standard) is $900 AFTER rebate.
I'm sorry, that's not something the average family can afford for entertainment purposes.
Quite expensive? I took my brother on a weekend trip to Niagara Falls and it cost me (hotel, gas, food, entertainment) over $1000.
BTW - the average family (in Canada atleast) can easily afford between $500-1000 for a tv; that's the cost range of a typical 27-32" LCD TV nowadays (was the cost of a similar sized CRT not too long ago). I don't know many people, even single income households, with a TV smaller than 27" nowadays, except those who don't care for tv and they're not really the focus of this discussion so they're kind of moot anyways.
I'm not sure what you consider to be a "typical family", but in a household with 2 incomes combined for $50-90k/year $900 is peanuts for perhaps a decade of entertainment value. Even if you factor a $4000 home theatre system (TV, (HD/Blu-Ray)DVD player, surround system) it's still not a major undertaking; especially with the Big Box Stores 0% finance offers.
Would you pay $112/month for theatre-quality entertainment for the whole family? (n.b. It'll cost you more than half that to take a family of four to the movies. If you all get snacks and drinks it can easily run over $100 for a single outing).
Re:That's a good point. Thanks.
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I think you missed my point -- you can see what an attacker would see from the local machine, by nmapping the network IP. Going to a different machine is superfluous.
If I scan my network-facing IP address, whether I do so from another machine on my LAN or from my server itself, the scan will not traverse to my ISP and back again through my modem. It will be recognized as a connection to a local address and head to that interface directly but traffic will be understood to come from a safe(r), local source.
For true, proper scan results you should scan from a remote source across the Internet when verifying your security setup. Put simply there are too many variables to account for to ensure proper results by merely scanning your outward facing IP address from localhost.
Naturally, you should be running utilities like netstat in the first place to determine exactly what is open, talking or waiting on each of your interfaces before you start traversing the Internet but as an added measure of security you should step outside of your own front door to test the deadbolts.
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I am surprised though at how long it took you to come up with a highly complex yet largely irrelevant mathematical formula to prove a strawman. (Sorry, no Wikipedia link. ;) )
That's some good trollin', son! {smirk}
Like I said, I really don't have any desire to process a response from you.
FWIW; when you're ready to formulate your own opinions on the subject rather than regurgitating concepts you've gleaned from Wikipedia (statistical concepts from games? Now I've heard it all) feel free to re-instigate this discussion. I'll be waiting.
(Not really, actually, but it seemed like the polite thing to say.)
The truth of the matter is that the people who fail to turn up at the polls could completely alter the course of any given election.
Your examples are all pretty short sighted. Not flushing in public bathrooms? By the time 1 person per toilet had used the facility it would be rendered useless and within its first hour of operation would be shut down. Are you advocating we just shut down the polls and let the white-hairs on capitol hill decide the outcome of each "election"?
You say the public's mind has already been made up on any given issue. The social fabric that makes up our country is ever changing. Is the public's mind still made up on that whole integration of the blacks issue? What about allowing women the right to gain educations, vote and join our workforce? Should we allow horseless carriages to enter our city centres?
More recently; what about air traffic reform, the various dozens of issues surrounding church & state separation (abortion, gay marriage, etc.), tax reforms, new land development and native land claims, funding of religious-based schools, anything related to the Internet or other electronic technology that isn't fully understood by 90% of the population at large or any of the other ten thousand issues that are on the table at any given time?
Is your vote going to be the catalyst of the election? Certainly not. But if you and your peer group who presumably all feel strongly about certain issues were to vote instead of not, don't you see how that could alter the tide of the election slightly, if not pivot it in your favour?
I know you're either trolling or you're just completely pessimistic, either way I'm not looking for any kind of response from you but in about 9 hours the polls open for a provincial election here in Ontario so it's kind of in the forefront of my mind as in; how am I going to schedule a trip to the polls around my day-long training session at my company's head office way in the west end of the city?
Just in case it's not already abundantly clear, I will be voting tomorrow.
There are actually some very high quality bootleg copies of movies and television shows out there. Search a torrent site for dvdrip, hd, xvid, ac3, h.264/x264 or a plethora of others and you'll find 5.1 surround sound, high definition copies of all sorts of things. Fire them onto a DVD-R, mock up some packaging, set up a website and bang! Profit! (Now if website is a synonym for "street corner" you get the same result).
You are right; in some cases it's just not worth while to get counterfeit or bootleg copies; if they're not available in HD with 5.1 sound quite frankly I'm not interested. I didn't spend this much money on a home theatre system to watch grainy video with 2 channel audio. On the other hand a compromise must be made; I didn't build my theatre setup to spend $60CDN on a high definition video disc either.
So basically you want companies to spend billions of dollars rolling out last mile fibre all over the country, not to mention the billions of dollars required to update the national and international backbone infrastructure, the core and edge equipment required to facilitate the new bandwidth requirements - on potential future profitability?
I remember the last time tech companies, venture capitalists and economists of all breeds and backgrounds spent money on the hopes of future profitability. Then the dot-com bubble crashed and the tech sector reeled (and, some would argue, continues to do so to this day. Long hours, low pay, thankless work environment, massive job insecurity, etc.)
Face it; comparing the (North) American cabling infrastructure to that of Korea and Japan isn't a fair comparison. It's just so physically diverse in North America the two don't go together. Land structure (terrain) and population density are the two biggest factors and until we can get fibre costs down to the point where it's pennies (or even dollars) per fibre/mile it's just not going to scale the same way.
Moreover; how loud are the consumers going to scream when they're asked to finance the R&D and upgrade costs on their monthly statements over the next 10 years? (This is Slashdot so do some soul searching and be honest with yourself. :P )
... maybe because it's not (profitable)?!?
What you say sounds like ISPs sell what they don't have and want to shape traffic to continue this scam.
It is a burstable line. Just because you didn't read the fine print doesn't make the phone / cable companies negligent.
If you want dedicated 8Mbit/sec (it's not gigabit, BTW, you best check your acronyms) you might want to check the pricing on a fractional T3. (Hint: it's atleast $1000/month).
If you want to continue whining about your SOHO burstable link I'm afraid your complaints are falling on deaf ears. Pay the money for the real thing or deal with what you're getting for $40/month.
Repeat after me; BURSTABLE TRAFFIC. You are paying for a consumer-grade, burstable link. If you want dedicated service pay for a couple T1s. What? They're too expensive? Then quit crying when your $40/month burstable link isn't always 100% available to you.
Such is the duality of the geek argument. Geeks want 4, 5, 8, 10, more megabit connections to the Internet. Ok, so a cable company gives 10MBit/sec connections to all users. Well now they want to use it at capacity and pay the same as the guy down the street who uses it for burst traffic (web, e-mail and such). I remember the outcry over bandwidth caps! "You sold me a dedicated 8MBit connection and now you want me to pay when I max it out 24 hours a day 31 days in a row? FASCISTS!"
See, the cable connections all share the same big fat pipe. They have an advantage over DSL in the distance they can travel from the 'CO' facility but the disadvantage in that there's only so much total bandwidth to go around and if all your neighbors are downloading large P2P files you're SOL to check your e-mail or use your VoIP service. The bottleneck, of course, for DSL lies in the convergence point at the central office where all those little pipes (drinking straws) feed from the big pipe(s) (firehose) connected to the rest of the Internet.
Consider the ramifications of even so much as a typical suburban neighborhood having 10MBit/sec connections. 1000 houses in a new sub-division * 10MBit/sec = 10GBit/second. That's an OC-192. For a single neighborhood. Now consider the population of the small(ish) town I'm from at ~85,000 people. Estimate that 75% (number pulled from thin air, FWIW) of people have broadband connections and you've got 63750 people with 10MBit connections. That's 640GBit/sec for one small town!! (That's about 67 * OC-192s for the record)
Clearly this gets out of hand FAST. There's no way any company can expect to maintain a level of dedicated, guaranteed bandwidth for all those subscribers; especially at $39.95/month.
QoS is the simple answer, and unfortunately people who use and develop P2P software don't seem to want play ball. They want to be able to saturate the up and downlink capabilities of whatever line they're on to get that {$File} downloaded NOW NOW NOW because hell, free should be fast.
Until something happens where multi-terrabit connections at the core are commonplace we won't see dedicated high speed, full-access all the time connections to our doorsteps and we're going to have to deal with burstable connections that can and do slow down during peak usage times and under major events.
This is kind of the point. No matter how you slice it this is a critical update. Just because a pedantic political body doesn't consider it so is costing the distribution users and harming the reputation of Linux in general.
I've been a computer / network administrator for the past decade and have either relied exclusively on or integrated Linux into each and every network I've ever run so I'm not sitting on a high horse and talking from a distance; I'm sitting on my GNU/Couch and criticizing my more outspoken counterparts in the FOSS community.
(If you'd clicked the link to my homepage before posting you could have saved the time and effort of putting your foot in your mouth. :) )
There's a lot I don't understand about the things I use in my day to day life but I still use them. Micro-managing one's operating system is a foolish waste of time and loss of productivity. My operating system exists to grant me access to the tools I've installed to perform tasks relevant to my daily life and career. This is something that should be done right the first time without any political nonsense getting in the way. A timezone patch not stable? Now I've heard it all. Next thing you know my /etc/issue file will be unstable.
No, the solution is to drop the "security" red herring altogether and concentrate on the truth of the matter. This update is small, simple, and critical in an international economy. It should go without saying that it should be a mandatory, top of the list update for all systems regardless of their status in some bureaucratic development cycle.
Forget the analogies of web browsers, MP3 players, web servers, e-mail clients, IM clients or any of the other thousands of software packages that could in whatever small or large way affect the system and concentrate on this; this update is in force by a major political body recognized around the world. It is fact and computers should at all costs follow the guidelines set by the Real World governing entities. Period. Full Stop.
For any developer to be pedantic enough to marginalize this as "non security" and therefore refuse to put it into the mandatory update pool is harmful and highly irresponsible. Said developer(s) should be reprimanded, not lauded.
For all those reading these threads and responding that a simple command-line update is the proper solution are short sighted and elitist. Not to sound too cliche, but this is just another example of why Linux / FOSS users and advocates are looked down upon by the real forces in the computer industry and why Linux will never be a mainstream standard. Get off your high horses and realize that just because something is usable by the masses doesn't make it technically inferior nor does it make you any less of a geek because you didn't have to hand-roll your latest update.
Sure, you can send them the instructions and (virtually) hold their hand while they carry them out, but consider how difficult it can be with someone who's really not computer literate.
"Open a command prompt. Xterm. Terminal window. No, click here then click "X-Terminal Window" is it open? I mean, is there a black box on the screen now? Yes, it's supposed to blink. No, it's not broken. Now, type "a-p-t-space-" no, the space bar, don't type 'space', ok, "a-p-t" no - you've already typed that don't type it again!". If/when they get an error message quite often then don't understand so they tell you "Ok, done, what's next?" so you don't even realize the command errored out and you have to start from scratch.
Remember that when it comes to computers, otherwise highly intelligent people shut down. It's the same reason old(er) people generally have "12:00" flashing on their VCR clocks. Their brains shut down when it comes to stuff like this. Irrational though it may be it's the truth.
There's an experiment where on one side of a double-sided ('A' frame) flip chart there is a picture. Usually simple geometric shapes and lines, and on the other side is a blank canvas of identical size and colour. One subject stands in view of the picture while the other stands on the other side with pen in hand. It is the job of subject #1 to describe the picture to subject #2 in order that #2 can reproduce it as accurately as possible. The results are almost always highly irregular, transposed (vertically, usually), in the wrong colour(s), almost always incorrect sizes and with a flair of (unintentional) artistic license. The results of these experiments are the very reason why phone support has to be so thoroughly researched and regimented. "Screen" versus "desktop", "Small blue picture of an 'E' with rings around it" instead of "Internet Explorer icon", etc.
In the real world, when you have to type out something seemingly Cyrillic like a multi-part command in a command prompt window you've lost the average Joe and Jane user. "Why would I do this when I can click the balloon that pops up and says 'Updates are ready for your computer, click here to install them.'?"
Actually based on my experience, most notably with their multi function devices, their drivers are beta. When I asked why all users of a Windows XP workstation had to be administrator (not even Power Users would suffice) in order to even PRINT to the device I was given two pieces of pertinent information;
No, you don't have to be an "all-knowledgeable ubergeek", but if you're going to discuss security in a technical forum you should enter into it with some level of knowledge that grants you entry. People who operate at level 10 don't want to hold people's hands through levels 1 through 3 all the time, they want to discuss level 8 through 12 problems to broaden their own understanding. So find yourself a forum more appropriate to your level of expertise (a classroom might be a good start) and move up when you're ready.
If you don't want to spend all that time furthering your education and developing your skills you could atleast use some basic research abilities and garner some knowledge on the subject so you can ask pointed questions about various implementations rather than generalities about what you could do.
For the record, you don't like the "ubergeek" approach - well on the flip side of the coin people who have studied, researched and practiced computer/network administrative security for years (decades) don't appreciate every newbie firing a distro onto a spare partition and considering themselves "administrators". For the record, it's thousands/millions of your type who set up inherently insecure servers who contribute greatly to the spread of malware on the Internet through open proxies and relays, so there's a little bit of ire on the other side of the fence.
So if you're going to unleash your services on the open Internet, please, get some education first, open ports second.
Yes, and as usual in the Microsoft world and made exponentially worse with Vista users are now trained that when Microsoft pops up a question you just say "Yes", "Ok", "Accept" just to get on about your business and make the pesky box go away.
I was configuring my boss's laptop to work on the company network as well as his home wireless LAN and I swear I had to click "Accept" about 2 or more dozen times! I stopped reading the messages - just looked for the "Accept" button! After a few hours of that a message couple pop up asking for permission to format C: and power cycle the unit and I'd click "Accept" just to make the damned thing go away!
Security through asking a million technical, obscure asinine questions is, IMHO, worse than no security at all.
So corporate entities do things for the greater good of us all, not for the chance to sell people updated, non-cripped, feature-rich versions of their "free" packages?
Have you ever seen a bomb strapped to somebody's chest? It looks an awful lot like circuit board(s), batter(y|ies), and wires crudely fashioned. Oh, and a baggy hoodie sweatshirt to top it all off? How much C4 could a skinny person conceal?
The police reacted quite properly to somebody wearing an improvisational electronic device in a high risk public setting. She acted poorly by not explaining that she's an electronics geek who has poor taste in attire.
She's also quite lucky she got an officer who wasn't trigger happy. He asked questions first and she's still alive. If this had happened in New York, and/or happened closer to the end of 2001 she'd be on a slab right now undergoing autopsy, not a nonsensical martyr.
Must be Monday.
I'm not sure if this question is flamebait or not (being AC I'll bet it is) but as the saying goes I'll bite;
Extreme cost and impracticality for two.
Not to mention the mixture of reactions they'd get when they dug up each and every lawn in a given city to install a monitoring device, you know, "just in case you decide to break a specific set of laws in the future". How would they monitor appartment buildings? Install the monitors throughout the walls and floors of every building? "Pardon me while I rip apart your drywall. I won't be much more than 4-5 hours and I'll have your home back the way I found it. Oooh; is that Iced Tea?" Not to mention that even if they did narrow a source of narcotic residue down to a particular residence - how do they prove who deposited it? A resident? A visitor who used your commode? A neighbor whose water closet was out of commission?
Sure. The next step for the government will clearly be a monitoring device connected directly to our genitals at birth. That'll go over well. I can imagine the difficulty in changing the batteries a couple times a year. Updates to screen for new narcotics would be an awesome undertaking. "Come now! Get the 3.0 upgrade - now supporting more types of PCP than ever before!"
Wait; you mean technology changes over time? You mean CD-RW drives are no longer the cats ass? But I threw away my ZIP drive when I got one!
Yes, technology changes. Yes, early adopters will always get bitten. Yes, you're stupid if you jump on the latest whiz-bang technology or grab the lowest-priced clearance item on the shelf; especially where it concerns something you may own for a decade.
Find a technological plateau and stick to it. I bought my HD TV about a year ago; it was on clearance, yes. It supports 1080i and 720p which is more then capable for the media available today. In 4-5 years when 1080 content is prevalent enough to warrant (and 1080p to boot) I'll replace it with a newer unit that supports same as well as the highest grade cabling standards of the day. Meanwhile I support HDMI, component, and digital audio so what more do I need?
Half my collection of movies are old Anime or Jerry Lewis movies.]
Bet those look GREAT on HD (yeah right).
Once again, another fantastic example on Slashdot of the "I'm a niche and I don't count in the discussion at hand therefore the subject is stupid!"
Thankfully, only a very select few are pompous enough to talk with such disdain about something they know nothing about.
I own an HDTV and I have trouble watching regular-definition television anymore (even though it's digital). High definition is beautiful and the channel lineups are expanding ever faster every year. I've already got dozens of selections in multiple timezones (time shifted HD content in case I miss a program in EST) and every couple months I have a few new channels to choose from.
As to the "all content is garbage" crowd - watch Discovery Channel or PBS in high def for a while and see the difference. Watch a concert presented in HD with 5.1 surround sound and feel immersed as if the concert were taking place right in your living room. Like dramas? Try watching them in HD and see them come to life. Hell, even the news is more brilliant in high def.
To all the sports fans - try watching a few football games in HD then switch back to regular broadcast and try not to go back. Sorry, but once you've seen droplets of water glistening off the blades of grass in the stadium or beads of sweat forming on players' faces you'll be hooked. Hockey is brilliant in HD - the rink is so vibrant it's like you're sitting 20 rows back. Cool down your room and dim the lights and you might as well be in the arena.
As for movies, well, you take what you get. Sure, there's good and there's bad. But here's a hint for you; there always has been! Do you think every movie produced in the 50s, 60s and 70s were instant classics? Hell no! (How many movies was Elvis in for chrissake? "Mr. Presley, your lines are ... oh hell, just sing."). When you do get a good movie, though, the better the picture on your television the more you can get immersed in the picture and the more you'll enjoy your investment.
Quite expensive? I took my brother on a weekend trip to Niagara Falls and it cost me (hotel, gas, food, entertainment) over $1000.
BTW - the average family (in Canada atleast) can easily afford between $500-1000 for a tv; that's the cost range of a typical 27-32" LCD TV nowadays (was the cost of a similar sized CRT not too long ago). I don't know many people, even single income households, with a TV smaller than 27" nowadays, except those who don't care for tv and they're not really the focus of this discussion so they're kind of moot anyways.
I'm not sure what you consider to be a "typical family", but in a household with 2 incomes combined for $50-90k/year $900 is peanuts for perhaps a decade of entertainment value. Even if you factor a $4000 home theatre system (TV, (HD/Blu-Ray)DVD player, surround system) it's still not a major undertaking; especially with the Big Box Stores 0% finance offers.
Would you pay $112/month for theatre-quality entertainment for the whole family? (n.b. It'll cost you more than half that to take a family of four to the movies. If you all get snacks and drinks it can easily run over $100 for a single outing).
If I scan my network-facing IP address, whether I do so from another machine on my LAN or from my server itself, the scan will not traverse to my ISP and back again through my modem. It will be recognized as a connection to a local address and head to that interface directly but traffic will be understood to come from a safe(r), local source.
For true, proper scan results you should scan from a remote source across the Internet when verifying your security setup. Put simply there are too many variables to account for to ensure proper results by merely scanning your outward facing IP address from localhost.
Naturally, you should be running utilities like netstat in the first place to determine exactly what is open, talking or waiting on each of your interfaces before you start traversing the Internet but as an added measure of security you should step outside of your own front door to test the deadbolts.