This sounds a lot like what Agent from Forte already does for both news and e-mail. It's also remeniscent of offline mail and fidonet readers I used to use for BBS's back in the mid-eighties. Nothing new here, really.
1) Company A makes a great product
2) Company A attains a dominant position
3) Company B tries to compete by introducing an even greater product.
4a) Company B is successful:
4b) Company B refuses to be bought out and continues to grow:
5) Company C comes along repeats process.
Seems to be a workable system to me.
There are several legal issues to a UN influenced or controlled Internet.
Set aside the technical impossibility of a single political or corporate entity controlling a global free-form connection of disparate internets and considering simply the legal side of what is carried on the internet for a moment.
There are laws in the US governing the foreign control and ownership of telecommunications and broadcast entities.
Many of the larger Telcos are starting to move towards VOIP communications, in effect, putting their phone traffic on the internet.
It would then be impossible for a foreign entity, either political or corporate, under US law, to have authority or ownership of those networks.
Result: The whole thing is about as likely to happen or be enforcable as the Kyoto Treaty was to help the environment.
Getting back to the technical side now.
The 'root' servers I see mentioned here are the DNS root servers. They are in the hands of private organizations, public educational instutions and governmental agencies. There are more than one of them. More can be added if needed.
The only thing that trying to control them will do is fork DNS and force everyone to do the unthinkable; add a second dns server to their tcp/ip configuration. One that's still in private hands and not in UN control. Possibly one hosted in a country that does not sign the UN treaty giving it this authority.
Beyond that, there is no physical or political way to 'take over the internet'. It would mean nationalizing the entire telecommunications industry. Not even if we had a House, Senat and Oval office given over to the Green party would that be possible.
The sky is not falling. If the UN attempts to do this, especially with the current political climate in the US, it will cement the already obvious powerlessness of the UN in governing what the US does with it's own.
If that happens, the US will quickly become the chosen host country to anyone who chooses to not live under the thumb of an unaccountable political body.
In short, the sky is not falling, except in Geneva.
A quick jaunt through pricewatch.com gives a similarly configured machine for about $300 - $350. That's retail. I imagine that AOL isn't paying retail.
They don't lose on this deal.
Works for my family. Mother, brother, sister-in-law, brother-in=law, wife, father-in-law, girlfriend are all in IT in one for or another. (from programming to tech support to director)
Because by doing so, they cease being common-carriers and beging being service providers. They become liable if something *does* get through those filters. If you take on the responsibility for filtering, then you're responsible when the filtering fails.
The responsibility for a computer rests with the owner of that computer, not the company supplying voltage to that computer (whether it come in the power supply, the modem or the ethernet card).
If your system gets hit, it's YOUR fault. No one elses.
You want details? Go look up the patent mentioned in the article's first paragraph:
US Patent # 6,528,948
Solutions no one has mentioned yet..
on
IDE RAID Examined
·
· Score: 1
So far all the discussion has been about IDE raid solutions internal to a server (eg.. a card inside the computer). I would like to mention a second IDE raid solution that has worked exceptionally well for the company I work for.
We started out with an SX-6000 card but found that the early version had a bug that crashed the PCI bus under very heavy network load. (email me for all the sordid details)
We then moved up to the RM-8000 and SX-8000. The difference is that they, like the sx-4k and sx-6k have the i960 CPU and up to 128MB of cache, but unlike the sx4k, they have 4 seperate ide controller chips.
Also, unlike the cards covered in the review, they're external chassis that attach to the server via an U160 SCSI interface. None of the OS incompatibility or driver issues apply. Drop in your favorite SCSI controller (Adaptec 66mhz U160 card in our case) and plug in the chassis.
We have two configurations running here. One uses 8 Maxtor 160GB drives (Raid 6 w/hot spare, 996GB formatted space) and the other uses 120s in the same config (660GB of formatted space).
We've been running these systems since March of this year in a very high load data center for both internal and customer facing applications. Performance has been splendid and even when we lost a drive, the resync time was in the neighborhood of 6-8 hours for the 1TB server.
If you don't like the cards or have problems, then you might want to look into one of these boxes. Total cost (with 2 cold spares) was less than $5k in March for a terabyte. Add another 2k for the server (with gigabit copper nic) and you have a hell of a good file server for your business.
Backups can be a problem with a system of this nature, however. The cheapest solution is to buy two RM/SX 8000 boxes and populate them identically. plug them both into your scsi card and mirror them.:)
Another solution is to get a DLT8000 or other large capacity tape drive and let it run for 20+ hours at a time.
(4 drive DLT8000 autoloaders will back this up in 6-7 hours but cost $50k).
Just wanted to throw a bit of fuel on the fires of discussion here.
Walking Bear
Some very good points made here. However, systems capable of handling DVD rips or WAV rips of CD's aren't that unreasonable. I just installed a new file server here at work. P4 2.0GHz with the SMC GigE card and a Promise external raid box.
That's enough storage for 130 DVD's or ~1300 CD's.
It's a bit pricey for your average college student, but not for 10 students to pool their resources and do.
We've been running GigE with the SMC cards and D-Link Gig Switches for a couple of months. Performance has been stellar. (~600-700Mbit/sec sustained over the Cat5E installed in the office)
This kind of caselaw already exists in respect to Trade mark and service mark litigation. If you do not defend your trade mark, you lose it.
I am not sure I would like to see this implemented in the area of patents. A patent is something even a single guy in his basement can file on his invention. If he is forced to defend it everytime it's infringed in order to keep it, then it becomes much more of a burden than it needs to be.
Myself and the company I work for are in the process of applying for multiple patents. It has been an educational few weeks. There are huge holes in the patent system in the US and they are being exploited. There isn't much that can be done about it at present. The changes will have to come through the case law of patent litigation or through the glacial slowness of the lawmaking system.
Walking Bear
Based on my almost 5 years of marriage, pants are entirely optional. As are shirts, shoes, socks, shorts, panties, bras.. well you get the picture.
Walking Bear
PS. Loving my privacy as I compute naked from the front porch.
Some people are already going that route in other industries. Take a look at what Baen publishing has done. Jim Baen realized that downloadable copies of books weren't a far cry from freebies given out for promotion at cons. He's seen sales of all of Baen's books rise sharply since they began a systematic internet presence for each author.
There are people listening. The others will go the way of buggy whip manufacturers.
Walking Bear
(though the buggy whip makers are making a comeback in some fetish circles)
Slashdot Mirror
This sounds a lot like what Agent from Forte already does for both news and e-mail. It's also remeniscent of offline mail and fidonet readers I used to use for BBS's back in the mid-eighties. Nothing new here, really.
1) Company A makes a great product 2) Company A attains a dominant position 3) Company B tries to compete by introducing an even greater product. 4a) Company B is successful: 4b) Company B refuses to be bought out and continues to grow: 5) Company C comes along repeats process. Seems to be a workable system to me.
There are several legal issues to a UN influenced or controlled Internet.
Set aside the technical impossibility of a single political or corporate entity controlling a global free-form connection of disparate internets and considering simply the legal side of what is carried on the internet for a moment.
There are laws in the US governing the foreign control and ownership of telecommunications and broadcast entities.
Many of the larger Telcos are starting to move towards VOIP communications, in effect, putting their phone traffic on the internet.
It would then be impossible for a foreign entity, either political or corporate, under US law, to have authority or ownership of those networks.
Result: The whole thing is about as likely to happen or be enforcable as the Kyoto Treaty was to help the environment.
Getting back to the technical side now.
The 'root' servers I see mentioned here are the DNS root servers. They are in the hands of private organizations, public educational instutions and governmental agencies. There are more than one of them. More can be added if needed.
The only thing that trying to control them will do is fork DNS and force everyone to do the unthinkable; add a second dns server to their tcp/ip configuration. One that's still in private hands and not in UN control. Possibly one hosted in a country that does not sign the UN treaty giving it this authority.
Beyond that, there is no physical or political way to 'take over the internet'. It would mean nationalizing the entire telecommunications industry. Not even if we had a House, Senat and Oval office given over to the Green party would that be possible.
The sky is not falling. If the UN attempts to do this, especially with the current political climate in the US, it will cement the already obvious powerlessness of the UN in governing what the US does with it's own.
If that happens, the US will quickly become the chosen host country to anyone who chooses to not live under the thumb of an unaccountable political body.
In short, the sky is not falling, except in Geneva.
A quick jaunt through pricewatch.com gives a similarly configured machine for about $300 - $350. That's retail. I imagine that AOL isn't paying retail. They don't lose on this deal.
Works for my family. Mother, brother, sister-in-law, brother-in=law, wife, father-in-law, girlfriend are all in IT in one for or another. (from programming to tech support to director)
Because by doing so, they cease being common-carriers and beging being service providers. They become liable if something *does* get through those filters. If you take on the responsibility for filtering, then you're responsible when the filtering fails. The responsibility for a computer rests with the owner of that computer, not the company supplying voltage to that computer (whether it come in the power supply, the modem or the ethernet card). If your system gets hit, it's YOUR fault. No one elses.
You want details? Go look up the patent mentioned in the article's first paragraph: US Patent # 6,528,948
So far all the discussion has been about IDE raid solutions internal to a server (eg.. a card inside the computer). I would like to mention a second IDE raid solution that has worked exceptionally well for the company I work for. We started out with an SX-6000 card but found that the early version had a bug that crashed the PCI bus under very heavy network load. (email me for all the sordid details) We then moved up to the RM-8000 and SX-8000. The difference is that they, like the sx-4k and sx-6k have the i960 CPU and up to 128MB of cache, but unlike the sx4k, they have 4 seperate ide controller chips. Also, unlike the cards covered in the review, they're external chassis that attach to the server via an U160 SCSI interface. None of the OS incompatibility or driver issues apply. Drop in your favorite SCSI controller (Adaptec 66mhz U160 card in our case) and plug in the chassis. We have two configurations running here. One uses 8 Maxtor 160GB drives (Raid 6 w/hot spare, 996GB formatted space) and the other uses 120s in the same config (660GB of formatted space). We've been running these systems since March of this year in a very high load data center for both internal and customer facing applications. Performance has been splendid and even when we lost a drive, the resync time was in the neighborhood of 6-8 hours for the 1TB server. If you don't like the cards or have problems, then you might want to look into one of these boxes. Total cost (with 2 cold spares) was less than $5k in March for a terabyte. Add another 2k for the server (with gigabit copper nic) and you have a hell of a good file server for your business. Backups can be a problem with a system of this nature, however. The cheapest solution is to buy two RM/SX 8000 boxes and populate them identically. plug them both into your scsi card and mirror them. :)
Another solution is to get a DLT8000 or other large capacity tape drive and let it run for 20+ hours at a time.
(4 drive DLT8000 autoloaders will back this up in 6-7 hours but cost $50k).
Just wanted to throw a bit of fuel on the fires of discussion here.
Walking Bear
Some very good points made here. However, systems capable of handling DVD rips or WAV rips of CD's aren't that unreasonable. I just installed a new file server here at work. P4 2.0GHz with the SMC GigE card and a Promise external raid box.
Machine cost w/U160 scsi card, UPS and Monitor == $850
910GB formatted RAID 5 w/hot spair (8 160GB drive array) == ~$3,600
That's enough storage for 130 DVD's or ~1300 CD's.
It's a bit pricey for your average college student, but not for 10 students to pool their resources and do.
We've been running GigE with the SMC cards and D-Link Gig Switches for a couple of months. Performance has been stellar. (~600-700Mbit/sec sustained over the Cat5E installed in the office)
Walking Bear
This kind of caselaw already exists in respect to Trade mark and service mark litigation. If you do not defend your trade mark, you lose it. I am not sure I would like to see this implemented in the area of patents. A patent is something even a single guy in his basement can file on his invention. If he is forced to defend it everytime it's infringed in order to keep it, then it becomes much more of a burden than it needs to be. Myself and the company I work for are in the process of applying for multiple patents. It has been an educational few weeks. There are huge holes in the patent system in the US and they are being exploited. There isn't much that can be done about it at present. The changes will have to come through the case law of patent litigation or through the glacial slowness of the lawmaking system. Walking Bear
Based on my almost 5 years of marriage, pants are entirely optional. As are shirts, shoes, socks, shorts, panties, bras.. well you get the picture. Walking Bear PS. Loving my privacy as I compute naked from the front porch.
Some people are already going that route in other industries. Take a look at what Baen publishing has done. Jim Baen realized that downloadable copies of books weren't a far cry from freebies given out for promotion at cons. He's seen sales of all of Baen's books rise sharply since they began a systematic internet presence for each author. There are people listening. The others will go the way of buggy whip manufacturers. Walking Bear (though the buggy whip makers are making a comeback in some fetish circles)