It sounds to me like you're neither interested in arguments counter to your pre-existing beliefs nor are you really going to ever say "I was wrong", as is generally the case when people are too lazy to research views other than their own, but maybe some other Slashdotter will be convinced.
Essentially, fast-flux hosting is when spammers and phishers use ultra-short TTLs on DNS names and then switch the IPs that those DNS names point to on a very rapid basis. This makes it much, much harder to shut down phishing and spam websites.
Hint: lots of those of fast-flux hosts are home machines which got owned. If you blocked 80 incoming, they could no longer be used for those purposes nearly as easily, since any halfway decent spam fighting software views emails that contains URLs with non-standard ports as "high likelihood spam". Anything which makes spammers and phishers work harder without severely impacting the usability of the internet seems like a win to me.
Let's face it: the number of people who need 80 inbound and are competent enough to manage their own web server consists of a vanishingly small number of people compared to the general Internet using populace. And, as I said before, I do think the block should be lifted IF the user is willing to testify that they're one of the competent people.
I work on the anti-spam operations team in one of the largest ISPs in the world. I know what I'm talking about.
One thing: blocking 25 and 80 is a good thing by default is a good idea.
Let's not kid ourselves: a huge percentage of home users are botted. Blocking 25 prevents them from shooting tons of spam over SMTP, and blocking 80 prevents them from being used as easily in fast-flux hosting setups (URLs trying to send you to a non-standard port are a huge red flag for anti-spam software). These problems are bad enough with the relatively low speed connections average users get these days - do you really want to see how much spam someone with a 120mb/s connection can send? I don't.
However, I personally believe ISPs should unblock those ports if: 1. The user requests it. 2. The user signs a document that affirms they are competent enough to not become part of the problem.
The low sales of Crysis are troubling. Doom 3 sold very well, and it was equally a system-killer. There is legitimate concern that PC game piracy is reaching epic proportions, enough to actually make game development unprofitable.
"Everyone who swore they wouldn't buy 3.5E (people like me) ended up getting it eventually, anyway."
I guess I should be glad to know I stuck to my guns when no one else did. I completely boycotted it, and stopped playing D&D as a result. D20 Modern is much better, anyways.
It upset quite a few folks when D&D 3.0E transitioned to 3.5E relatively soon after release, and made some people's investments in D&D become basically worthless overnight. While I appreciate that it's sometimes time to spawn a new edition that's incompatible with the old, it felt like 3.5E should have been an errata to 3.0E, rather than a totally new set of books.
I understand that WotC can't commit itself to any firm "we will not release another edition for X years" guarantee, but it would be nice to hear some sort of assurance that we won't see a repeat of the 3.0E->3.5E debacle. What's the plan? What lessons have you learned?
Here's my theory: Microsoft understands what a huge screw-up the CableCard initiative has been on the Media Center side. They're going to go ahead and get the 360 certified by CableLabs, and then allow you to buy CableCard tuners, like the existing ATI OCUR and the upcoming BCOR (which would allow for PPV). They'll then allow you to use this as an external tuner for a single Media Center box, kind of like how the HDHomeRun currently works. This allows them to bypass the system-level DRM and certification requirements that were screwing them on the Media Center side, since all they'd need to do is deal with wrapping the stream in DRM, which they already know how to do.
HD-DVD on-board? Maybe, but it'd just be for obscuring the costs of the CableLab cert, to some extent.
Let me toss out one more thing, though: the best upscaling DVD players (eg, Oppo) are more like $250, and are much closer to the price range of HD players. Good video upscaling hardware isn't cheap.
"Lastly, a HUGE number of consumers can't even tell the difference between DVD and HD quality!"
I totally disagree - they can tell the difference (from my experience), and I'd be completely shocked if double-blind tests didn't bear this out. The color space and resolution differences alone are _very_ apparent to anyone who's looking at the test material.
It seems like some people don't get that, just because it's not as large a jump as from VHS (a terrible format) to DVD (a reasonably decent format), that it's not a considerable image quality jump on its own. If all consumers have eaten is dogfood (VHS) and spam (DVD), it's difficult for them to envision what steak (HD-DVD / BRD) tastes like until their friends have talked about it to convince them to try it themselves.
Did you even read book 11? Judging from the comments, it seems like I'm the only person on earth who managed to make it through 10 & 11. In book 11, Moiriane's fate is specifically addressed. Hint: she may not be as dead as you think she is, and the people who are going to save her are probably not who you expected.
Because, you know, it was just yesterday that Apple was telling us how 10.4 was the shiznit. Now we've got 10.5, and suddenly, they won't even sell 10.4 anymore!
Or consider the Linux kernel. Back in the 2.0 days, everyone was telling me about how great Linux was. Now that we've got kernel 2.6, everyone's just dropping support for 2.0 and telling me it sucks compared to the latest version.
It is not unfair for a company to say that the newest version of their software is BETTER than their old version. If it wasn't, why release it?
"I'm not allowed to whack my children with a hammer."
Sensible enough. There are no benefits to be obtained from hitting your kid with a hammer, at least for your kid.
"I'm not allowed to not feed my children."
Sensible enough. There are no benefits to be obtained from starving your kid, at least for your kid.
"I'm not allowed to put my children and others at risk of contracting nasty diseases like polio."
This is where your analogy fails. If the parent feels that the risks associated with the vaccine actually outweigh the benefits, they should be free not to give it. There are some people _claiming_ that there are significant risks associated with the vaccine. I think they're stupid, but it's not my place to make parenting decisions for them, even if it means stopping moderately bad ones. There is not a 100% chance of contracting polio without a vaccine, whereas you hitting your kid with a hammer is a certain done deal in terms of harm.
That's their right to some extent. Parents should and do have tremendous latitude in making decisions for their children. But we can help the kids more by informing the parents of the science involved, not by getting a nanny state involved.
You honestly have to wonder how people can make super-important decisions for their children and themselves using _YouTube_ as their main provider of information. It's sad, but it's just like all those folks getting burned on their million dollar homes with sub-primes - you made a bad decision because you didn't do enough research, and you should be the one paying the price.
You are simply never going to protect all the stupid people from themselves, and making the effort often only punishes the smart people who didn't make those mistakes. That's the unfortunate realization I've come to in my adulthood.
ushare sucks, at least for 360 streaming. It's a PITA to set up, and it fails miserably when you've got a folders with multiple types of media in it (eg, photos and videos, from my digital camera). I have no idea why people keep recommending it, other than the fact that it's relatively well-known. I've heard better things about fuppes, but I haven't had the chance to try it yet.
Twonky intrigued me, but music stuttered like crazy with it. Oh well.
I find it kind of mind-blowing that you can ask "why is the version with the best devs the worst version?" when I gave the answer in the post you responded to. The PS3 is harder to program for, and has an inflexible memory structure. Why is it so hard for people to understand that the PS3 and 360 aren't equally powerful?
Oh, yeah, because Sony releasing some more tools is really going to fix the fundamental problems with the PS3. You are _not_ going to be able to cover up the Cell's weird asymmetrical multi-processing paradigm or the PS3's lack of system RAM with some new libraries. Those are real hardware constraints, not quirks of some system library.
I suspect that Infinity Ward pumped a _ton_ of dev time into the PS3 version, and they're going to find out that the effort wasn't worth the sales. I'll be curious to see what becomes of COD5, believe me.
Slashdot Mirror
It sounds to me like you're neither interested in arguments counter to your pre-existing beliefs nor are you really going to ever say "I was wrong", as is generally the case when people are too lazy to research views other than their own, but maybe some other Slashdotter will be convinced.
Essentially, fast-flux hosting is when spammers and phishers use ultra-short TTLs on DNS names and then switch the IPs that those DNS names point to on a very rapid basis. This makes it much, much harder to shut down phishing and spam websites.
Hint: lots of those of fast-flux hosts are home machines which got owned. If you blocked 80 incoming, they could no longer be used for those purposes nearly as easily, since any halfway decent spam fighting software views emails that contains URLs with non-standard ports as "high likelihood spam". Anything which makes spammers and phishers work harder without severely impacting the usability of the internet seems like a win to me.
Let's face it: the number of people who need 80 inbound and are competent enough to manage their own web server consists of a vanishingly small number of people compared to the general Internet using populace. And, as I said before, I do think the block should be lifted IF the user is willing to testify that they're one of the competent people.
I work on the anti-spam operations team in one of the largest ISPs in the world. I know what I'm talking about.
How did this get modded informative? Doom 3 _exactly_ fits criterion 2-4.
Again, it has plenty of justification. Please research "fast-flux hosting" and its role in spamming and phishing operations.
Gah: "One thing: blocking 25 and 80 is a good thing by default". I need more caffeine.
One thing: blocking 25 and 80 is a good thing by default is a good idea.
Let's not kid ourselves: a huge percentage of home users are botted. Blocking 25 prevents them from shooting tons of spam over SMTP, and blocking 80 prevents them from being used as easily in fast-flux hosting setups (URLs trying to send you to a non-standard port are a huge red flag for anti-spam software). These problems are bad enough with the relatively low speed connections average users get these days - do you really want to see how much spam someone with a 120mb/s connection can send? I don't.
However, I personally believe ISPs should unblock those ports if:
1. The user requests it.
2. The user signs a document that affirms they are competent enough to not become part of the problem.
The low sales of Crysis are troubling. Doom 3 sold very well, and it was equally a system-killer. There is legitimate concern that PC game piracy is reaching epic proportions, enough to actually make game development unprofitable.
"Everyone who swore they wouldn't buy 3.5E (people like me) ended up getting it eventually, anyway."
I guess I should be glad to know I stuck to my guns when no one else did. I completely boycotted it, and stopped playing D&D as a result. D20 Modern is much better, anyways.
It upset quite a few folks when D&D 3.0E transitioned to 3.5E relatively soon after release, and made some people's investments in D&D become basically worthless overnight. While I appreciate that it's sometimes time to spawn a new edition that's incompatible with the old, it felt like 3.5E should have been an errata to 3.0E, rather than a totally new set of books.
I understand that WotC can't commit itself to any firm "we will not release another edition for X years" guarantee, but it would be nice to hear some sort of assurance that we won't see a repeat of the 3.0E->3.5E debacle. What's the plan? What lessons have you learned?
Here's my theory: Microsoft understands what a huge screw-up the CableCard initiative has been on the Media Center side. They're going to go ahead and get the 360 certified by CableLabs, and then allow you to buy CableCard tuners, like the existing ATI OCUR and the upcoming BCOR (which would allow for PPV). They'll then allow you to use this as an external tuner for a single Media Center box, kind of like how the HDHomeRun currently works. This allows them to bypass the system-level DRM and certification requirements that were screwing them on the Media Center side, since all they'd need to do is deal with wrapping the stream in DRM, which they already know how to do.
HD-DVD on-board? Maybe, but it'd just be for obscuring the costs of the CableLab cert, to some extent.
Let me toss out one more thing, though: the best upscaling DVD players (eg, Oppo) are more like $250, and are much closer to the price range of HD players. Good video upscaling hardware isn't cheap.
Actually, I'm thinking that should read "that it is a considerable image quality jump".
"Lastly, a HUGE number of consumers can't even tell the difference between DVD and HD quality!"
I totally disagree - they can tell the difference (from my experience), and I'd be completely shocked if double-blind tests didn't bear this out. The color space and resolution differences alone are _very_ apparent to anyone who's looking at the test material.
It seems like some people don't get that, just because it's not as large a jump as from VHS (a terrible format) to DVD (a reasonably decent format), that it's not a considerable image quality jump on its own. If all consumers have eaten is dogfood (VHS) and spam (DVD), it's difficult for them to envision what steak (HD-DVD / BRD) tastes like until their friends have talked about it to convince them to try it themselves.
So, let me get this straight: your office WiFi AP works OK, so it follows that all spectrum should remain unlicensed?
Yeah, that's not quite the most compelling argument I've heard about this issue. Certainly not the most informed, either.
"Personally, I don't see how they're going to do it."
Gears of War 2, of course. How soon people forget how many zillions of copies that game sold.
Did you even read book 11? Judging from the comments, it seems like I'm the only person on earth who managed to make it through 10 & 11. In book 11, Moiriane's fate is specifically addressed. Hint: she may not be as dead as you think she is, and the people who are going to save her are probably not who you expected.
I'm 99% positive that was an in-joke in the series, given that each of the three male "leads" uses that particular expression multiple times.
Because, you know, it was just yesterday that Apple was telling us how 10.4 was the shiznit. Now we've got 10.5, and suddenly, they won't even sell 10.4 anymore!
Or consider the Linux kernel. Back in the 2.0 days, everyone was telling me about how great Linux was. Now that we've got kernel 2.6, everyone's just dropping support for 2.0 and telling me it sucks compared to the latest version.
It is not unfair for a company to say that the newest version of their software is BETTER than their old version. If it wasn't, why release it?
"I'm not allowed to whack my children with a hammer."
Sensible enough. There are no benefits to be obtained from hitting your kid with a hammer, at least for your kid.
"I'm not allowed to not feed my children."
Sensible enough. There are no benefits to be obtained from starving your kid, at least for your kid.
"I'm not allowed to put my children and others at risk of contracting nasty diseases like polio."
This is where your analogy fails. If the parent feels that the risks associated with the vaccine actually outweigh the benefits, they should be free not to give it. There are some people _claiming_ that there are significant risks associated with the vaccine. I think they're stupid, but it's not my place to make parenting decisions for them, even if it means stopping moderately bad ones. There is not a 100% chance of contracting polio without a vaccine, whereas you hitting your kid with a hammer is a certain done deal in terms of harm.
That's their right to some extent. Parents should and do have tremendous latitude in making decisions for their children. But we can help the kids more by informing the parents of the science involved, not by getting a nanny state involved.
You honestly have to wonder how people can make super-important decisions for their children and themselves using _YouTube_ as their main provider of information. It's sad, but it's just like all those folks getting burned on their million dollar homes with sub-primes - you made a bad decision because you didn't do enough research, and you should be the one paying the price.
You are simply never going to protect all the stupid people from themselves, and making the effort often only punishes the smart people who didn't make those mistakes. That's the unfortunate realization I've come to in my adulthood.
I was under the impression that you could do exactly what you suggest. Am I misinformed?
ushare sucks, at least for 360 streaming. It's a PITA to set up, and it fails miserably when you've got a folders with multiple types of media in it (eg, photos and videos, from my digital camera). I have no idea why people keep recommending it, other than the fact that it's relatively well-known. I've heard better things about fuppes, but I haven't had the chance to try it yet.
Twonky intrigued me, but music stuttered like crazy with it. Oh well.
I thought that the Asian CDMA phones used different frequency bands? I'd kill to get some of those slick Korean smartphones over here.
I find it kind of mind-blowing that you can ask "why is the version with the best devs the worst version?" when I gave the answer in the post you responded to. The PS3 is harder to program for, and has an inflexible memory structure. Why is it so hard for people to understand that the PS3 and 360 aren't equally powerful?
Oh, yeah, because Sony releasing some more tools is really going to fix the fundamental problems with the PS3. You are _not_ going to be able to cover up the Cell's weird asymmetrical multi-processing paradigm or the PS3's lack of system RAM with some new libraries. Those are real hardware constraints, not quirks of some system library.
I suspect that Infinity Ward pumped a _ton_ of dev time into the PS3 version, and they're going to find out that the effort wasn't worth the sales. I'll be curious to see what becomes of COD5, believe me.