I'm not sure I see what difference this makes. Most router/ATA units provided by VoIP vendors do packet prioritization, so whether the phone is on a separate IP shouldn't really make any practical difference unless you've got a router that won't respect QoS in between the VoIP unit and your cable modem. NAT overhead by itself should be minimal unless you've got some ridiculous routing/filtering going on.
I have my ATA NAT'd behind a Netopia 3381 router with a fairly healthy set of rules, which in turn goes to the cable modem. I've had Vonage for almost a year now, and have had zero problems of any sort with the service. No jitter, etc. I've also had good luck so far with TelaSIP via an Asterisk box behind the same router. I'm just not seeing anything that would justify paying TW an extra $18/month over my current Vonage costs.
It doesn't really matter, because at some point you're touching the PSTN network, and that's where the sniffing is going on. About the only thing you could really do would be to set up your own Asterisk box, encrypt everything going out of it, and make anyone that needs to talk to you use something (IP phone, softphone, etc.) that will work with it via the Internet. Not very practical, though.
Verizon and Time Warner, for instance, offer great bundles on DSL/POTS/wireless or cable/cable internet/VOIP for a steal compared to obtaining such services separately.
$39.95 for Time Warner VoIP with no price break on my static IP line is better than the $24.99 I'm paying Vonage? Yeah, I know TW offers QoS, but that only is guaranteed within the TW network, and they already has enough problems providing me with uninterrupted connectivity. Using their own online calculator, I find that their VoIP service would cost me $17.90 more per month, after taxes and such are factored in. Just the difference over a year is still $15 more than an entire year's service from SunRocket. Is TW's deal also better than the $14.99/month I'll be paying if TelaSIP works out?
I don't even want to think about the phone companies - I can't even get a decent DSL line with a static IP from those buffoons without paying out the ass for it.
Most operating systems have done this to some extent and it really didn't affect the stability of NT at all
Count yourself lucky that you didn't have the misfortune to have to deal with buggy video drivers then. Nothing brought more joy to my face than suffering frequent crashes due to a viddy driver problem only to have the card manufacturer disavow responsibility for it. Yes, Cirrus Logic, I'm looking at you. Great - because the OS lets display drivers play where they shouldn't, I now have to buy another display card and hope that the drivers for THAT one aren't broken...
It sure would have been nice to have gotten a command prompt instead of forcing a reboot, or better yet, not required a GUI to actually get anything done.
If you are depending on OS level API calls, you are hosed. Nothing to suprising here.
Yes, because heaven forbid that something as fundamental as the operating system be something other than a moving target from version to version. Witness the plethora of different driver models and APIs that Windows has foisted upon the world over the years, and the ridiculous amount of time developers have to spend just keeping up with the changes.
Libertarians are extreme and hate all government and intererence with big business. For example they would dissemble the EPA and environmental laws because they believe its not the governments job. Also they oppose antitrust laws.
You're painting with a rather big brush there. Plenty of people with a Libertarian bent understand that big business is itself a creation of the government, and once you understand that you can't say with a straight face that big business (in its current form) should be left completely to its own devices. However, if you take away the the near-total avoidance of personal liability that a corporation's owners enjoy through government action, I suspect the anti-trust and environmental issues will largely sort themselves out.
Unless, of course, it goes on as a rider to some ridiculous bill that no one would dare to oppose - offer Congress some kind of anti-kiddie-porn bill or something similar with this tacked on the end, and it will sail through as easily as the RIAA's greased member goes into a Congressional orifice.
Still, I suspect this (and a lot of other projects) get done a certain way simply because it's the way the people involved knew how to do it.
You've pretty much hit the nail on the head, but I don't think microcontroller-based system design is in any danger of dying out. It's just that it's mostly electrical engineers that are familiar with the huge variety of logic replacement packages that's out there, and most software types don't get very much exposure to it unless they enjoy banging on hardware too. The problem, as you correctly point out, is that there are a lot of software guys out there that just don't know what kinds of neat (and cheap!) toys are out there. It's a great example of, "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".
They're not 8-bit microcontrollers, but these devices are great fun to play with, not terribly expensive, and provide something to bang around on that's not a PC but is similar enough for most software guys to do something useful with.
The cheapest Pentium-compatible CPU I see on Newegg is $43.00. That's just for the CPU - no motherboard, memory, etc., which are needed to actually make a working computer. Now consider that you can build a complete 8-bit microcontroller-based system that will probably perform this task just as efficiently as the Pentium-based solution for less than 25% of the quoted CPU cost, with a total power draw of less than a watt when it's running full-out. Development costs shouldn't really factor greatly into it, as there are LOTS of engineers out there that can bang out PIC, 8051, Z80, and similar designs in no time, and there is no shortage of reference designs for those chips either. Pentiums aren't the only commodity technology out there - there are literally billions of microcontrollers sold each year, so I have to think that they're either doing something ridiculously complex with the programmable hardware, or it was designed by some folks that don't really know what's out there in the hardware world and are needlessly giving up a couple hundred dollars or so of profit per unit.
Average American voter is dependent on too many things to be called a democratic constituent (wages, employers, sewage infrastructure...). In modern society everything is too much integrated, so people do not have real independence. As a result they are easily scared or manipulated by dictators or demagogues.
Great observation. A disturbing proportion of today's Americans are more about preserving their current lifestyle than any abstract ideals such as "freedom", and probably would not be prepared to sacrifice a great deal for those ideals. For instance - look at those who protested the Vietnam conflict. I have all of the respect in the world for those who disagreed, burned their draft card, and went to jail and suffered the consequences of their actions. I have all of the contempt in the world for those who disagreed, burned their draft card, and fled to Canada to avoid prosecution.
If you follow the philosophy that "one person can't make a difference", then B will end up getting voted in, despite the entire population wanting C.
But even though the entire population would want C, they won't be given the opportunity to really hear how C will deal with critical issues, because A and B will make sure they limit C's involvement in the process as much as possible, particularly by refusing to allow them to participate in national televised debates.
* Excessive profanity
* Violence, racial intolerance, or advocate against any individual, group, or organization
* Hacking/cracking content
* Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia
* Pornography, adult, or mature content
* Gambling or casino-related content
...and a bunch of other stuff...
Now granted, this is for their AdSense program and not for AdWords, but it still points to an inconsistent application of what they do and don't find acceptable. I'm not allowed to run porn or gambling ads via AdSense on my own site, but Google apparently has no problem running them on the main search results.
An example of a gambling site that can be found in Google's search results is here. It's free to play, but don't think for a moment that they're not attracting traffic by virtue of the opportunity to win $10,000 in their "tournament", which is still gambling in spirit at the very least.
If Google provided an option that didn't put the same types of 'moral judgements' on my purchases Paypal did, then I would jump ship in a heartbeat.
You might be waiting a while. Google allows advertising for gambling and porn in spite of their clearly stated policy against it, but steadfastly refuses to allow advertisements for firearms/ammunition and tobacco (among other things). So, I would not be surprised in the least if Google's service would make different but equally discriminatory 'moral judgements' regarding what kinds of business they will allow to be conducted through their service.
I personally take their "do no evil" mantra with a very large grain of salt.
The devices do exist, but often aren't practical for everyday use. Many years ago, my dad built a vapor carburetor (basically an industrial strength fuel preheater) and installed it on his 1979 GMC Suburban, with the plumbing necessary to be able to switch it in and out of the fuel system. When in use and working well, the truck got around 40-45 mpg (I've seen it myself), but it was totally useless for anything except extended highway driving as it didn't deal with varying fuel demand very well and also took a bit of time to heat up enough to work. He eventually removed it as it mostly got in the way whenever he needed to do anything under the hood.
Yup. Copies are copies, whether it's disk to disk, disk to RAM, RAM to cache, etc., so it seems to me that you're pretty much forced to break the law to use most software, as the law's currently interpreted.
Considering that these numbers were taken from what's effectively an advertisement for the product, I don't think that's really a safe assumption to make.
However, if you read the Insteon protocol spec, you'll see that it was clearly designed to handle noisy environments, and will make every effort to make sure that correct data gets where it is supposed to go, and that bad data won't be accepted anywhere.
The arguments that some of the people here are making are akin to saying that random data introduced by packet errors in an SSH session will result in someone getting root when they're not supposed to. I suppose it *could* happen, but in practice it doesn't because TCP/IP doesn't let it. Similarly, I'd think Insteon systems should be pretty reliable if given a remotely decent environment to work in.
I had about five minutes before a skinny guy told me to follow him into the security office.
A corollary lesson here is NEVER accompany any store personnel into any area not in view of the public in situations like this. If they have a problem with you, demand that the police be called. If it's not enough of a problem for the cops to deal with and for you to be arrested/charged, then it's not enough of a problem for you to be taken out of the public area of the property. If they ask you to leave, then leave, but you don't have any obligation to compromise your safety and potentially open yourself up to legal problems by accompanying some loss-prevention toady somewhere out of sight of the public and the store cameras.
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I'm not sure I see what difference this makes. Most router/ATA units provided by VoIP vendors do packet prioritization, so whether the phone is on a separate IP shouldn't really make any practical difference unless you've got a router that won't respect QoS in between the VoIP unit and your cable modem. NAT overhead by itself should be minimal unless you've got some ridiculous routing/filtering going on.
I have my ATA NAT'd behind a Netopia 3381 router with a fairly healthy set of rules, which in turn goes to the cable modem. I've had Vonage for almost a year now, and have had zero problems of any sort with the service. No jitter, etc. I've also had good luck so far with TelaSIP via an Asterisk box behind the same router. I'm just not seeing anything that would justify paying TW an extra $18/month over my current Vonage costs.
It doesn't really matter, because at some point you're touching the PSTN network, and that's where the sniffing is going on. About the only thing you could really do would be to set up your own Asterisk box, encrypt everything going out of it, and make anyone that needs to talk to you use something (IP phone, softphone, etc.) that will work with it via the Internet. Not very practical, though.
Verizon and Time Warner, for instance, offer great bundles on DSL/POTS/wireless or cable/cable internet/VOIP for a steal compared to obtaining such services separately.
$39.95 for Time Warner VoIP with no price break on my static IP line is better than the $24.99 I'm paying Vonage? Yeah, I know TW offers QoS, but that only is guaranteed within the TW network, and they already has enough problems providing me with uninterrupted connectivity. Using their own online calculator, I find that their VoIP service would cost me $17.90 more per month, after taxes and such are factored in. Just the difference over a year is still $15 more than an entire year's service from SunRocket. Is TW's deal also better than the $14.99/month I'll be paying if TelaSIP works out?
I don't even want to think about the phone companies - I can't even get a decent DSL line with a static IP from those buffoons without paying out the ass for it.
Probably for the same reason as we say we "took" a nap, "took" a powder, "took" a break, etc.
[shrug]
Hmm. Here's a question for them - if that's the case, how can they legally offer a caller ID service, or ANI to those customers that have it?
We're not a bank, thegameiam....
You betcha.
Most operating systems have done this to some extent and it really didn't affect the stability of NT at all
Count yourself lucky that you didn't have the misfortune to have to deal with buggy video drivers then. Nothing brought more joy to my face than suffering frequent crashes due to a viddy driver problem only to have the card manufacturer disavow responsibility for it. Yes, Cirrus Logic, I'm looking at you. Great - because the OS lets display drivers play where they shouldn't, I now have to buy another display card and hope that the drivers for THAT one aren't broken...
It sure would have been nice to have gotten a command prompt instead of forcing a reboot, or better yet, not required a GUI to actually get anything done.
If you are depending on OS level API calls, you are hosed. Nothing to suprising here.
Yes, because heaven forbid that something as fundamental as the operating system be something other than a moving target from version to version. Witness the plethora of different driver models and APIs that Windows has foisted upon the world over the years, and the ridiculous amount of time developers have to spend just keeping up with the changes.
Libertarians are extreme and hate all government and intererence with big business. For example they would dissemble the EPA and environmental laws because they believe its not the governments job. Also they oppose antitrust laws.
You're painting with a rather big brush there. Plenty of people with a Libertarian bent understand that big business is itself a creation of the government, and once you understand that you can't say with a straight face that big business (in its current form) should be left completely to its own devices. However, if you take away the the near-total avoidance of personal liability that a corporation's owners enjoy through government action, I suspect the anti-trust and environmental issues will largely sort themselves out.
Thus, legislative gridlock until 2009 or so.
Unless, of course, it goes on as a rider to some ridiculous bill that no one would dare to oppose - offer Congress some kind of anti-kiddie-porn bill or something similar with this tacked on the end, and it will sail through as easily as the RIAA's greased member goes into a Congressional orifice.
Still, I suspect this (and a lot of other projects) get done a certain way simply because it's the way the people involved knew how to do it.
You've pretty much hit the nail on the head, but I don't think microcontroller-based system design is in any danger of dying out. It's just that it's mostly electrical engineers that are familiar with the huge variety of logic replacement packages that's out there, and most software types don't get very much exposure to it unless they enjoy banging on hardware too. The problem, as you correctly point out, is that there are a lot of software guys out there that just don't know what kinds of neat (and cheap!) toys are out there. It's a great example of, "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".
They're not 8-bit microcontrollers, but these devices are great fun to play with, not terribly expensive, and provide something to bang around on that's not a PC but is similar enough for most software guys to do something useful with.
The cheapest Pentium-compatible CPU I see on Newegg is $43.00. That's just for the CPU - no motherboard, memory, etc., which are needed to actually make a working computer. Now consider that you can build a complete 8-bit microcontroller-based system that will probably perform this task just as efficiently as the Pentium-based solution for less than 25% of the quoted CPU cost, with a total power draw of less than a watt when it's running full-out. Development costs shouldn't really factor greatly into it, as there are LOTS of engineers out there that can bang out PIC, 8051, Z80, and similar designs in no time, and there is no shortage of reference designs for those chips either. Pentiums aren't the only commodity technology out there - there are literally billions of microcontrollers sold each year, so I have to think that they're either doing something ridiculously complex with the programmable hardware, or it was designed by some folks that don't really know what's out there in the hardware world and are needlessly giving up a couple hundred dollars or so of profit per unit.
Average American voter is dependent on too many things to be called a democratic constituent (wages, employers, sewage infrastructure...). In modern society everything is too much integrated, so people do not have real independence. As a result they are easily scared or manipulated by dictators or demagogues.
Great observation. A disturbing proportion of today's Americans are more about preserving their current lifestyle than any abstract ideals such as "freedom", and probably would not be prepared to sacrifice a great deal for those ideals. For instance - look at those who protested the Vietnam conflict. I have all of the respect in the world for those who disagreed, burned their draft card, and went to jail and suffered the consequences of their actions. I have all of the contempt in the world for those who disagreed, burned their draft card, and fled to Canada to avoid prosecution.
the more favours they do when holding office, the bigger the pot they will have when the time comes to defend their seat.
Nowadays that's called "campaign contribution", but once upon a time I remember that being called "bribery".
If you follow the philosophy that "one person can't make a difference", then B will end up getting voted in, despite the entire population wanting C.
But even though the entire population would want C, they won't be given the opportunity to really hear how C will deal with critical issues, because A and B will make sure they limit C's involvement in the process as much as possible, particularly by refusing to allow them to participate in national televised debates.
19% isn't a "small fraction", particularly in light of the power that the two major parties wield.
From https://www.google.com/adsense/policies, since you so nicely asked:
...and a bunch of other stuff...
Site Content
Site may not include:
* Excessive profanity
* Violence, racial intolerance, or advocate against any individual, group, or organization
* Hacking/cracking content
* Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia
* Pornography, adult, or mature content
* Gambling or casino-related content
Now granted, this is for their AdSense program and not for AdWords, but it still points to an inconsistent application of what they do and don't find acceptable. I'm not allowed to run porn or gambling ads via AdSense on my own site, but Google apparently has no problem running them on the main search results.
An example of a gambling site that can be found in Google's search results is here. It's free to play, but don't think for a moment that they're not attracting traffic by virtue of the opportunity to win $10,000 in their "tournament", which is still gambling in spirit at the very least.
If Google provided an option that didn't put the same types of 'moral judgements' on my purchases Paypal did, then I would jump ship in a heartbeat.
You might be waiting a while. Google allows advertising for gambling and porn in spite of their clearly stated policy against it, but steadfastly refuses to allow advertisements for firearms/ammunition and tobacco (among other things). So, I would not be surprised in the least if Google's service would make different but equally discriminatory 'moral judgements' regarding what kinds of business they will allow to be conducted through their service.
I personally take their "do no evil" mantra with a very large grain of salt.
The devices do exist, but often aren't practical for everyday use. Many years ago, my dad built a vapor carburetor (basically an industrial strength fuel preheater) and installed it on his 1979 GMC Suburban, with the plumbing necessary to be able to switch it in and out of the fuel system. When in use and working well, the truck got around 40-45 mpg (I've seen it myself), but it was totally useless for anything except extended highway driving as it didn't deal with varying fuel demand very well and also took a bit of time to heat up enough to work. He eventually removed it as it mostly got in the way whenever he needed to do anything under the hood.
Yup. Copies are copies, whether it's disk to disk, disk to RAM, RAM to cache, etc., so it seems to me that you're pretty much forced to break the law to use most software, as the law's currently interpreted.
Considering that these numbers were taken from what's effectively an advertisement for the product, I don't think that's really a safe assumption to make.
However, if you read the Insteon protocol spec, you'll see that it was clearly designed to handle noisy environments, and will make every effort to make sure that correct data gets where it is supposed to go, and that bad data won't be accepted anywhere.
The arguments that some of the people here are making are akin to saying that random data introduced by packet errors in an SSH session will result in someone getting root when they're not supposed to. I suppose it *could* happen, but in practice it doesn't because TCP/IP doesn't let it. Similarly, I'd think Insteon systems should be pretty reliable if given a remotely decent environment to work in.
I had about five minutes before a skinny guy told me to follow him into the security office.
A corollary lesson here is NEVER accompany any store personnel into any area not in view of the public in situations like this. If they have a problem with you, demand that the police be called. If it's not enough of a problem for the cops to deal with and for you to be arrested/charged, then it's not enough of a problem for you to be taken out of the public area of the property. If they ask you to leave, then leave, but you don't have any obligation to compromise your safety and potentially open yourself up to legal problems by accompanying some loss-prevention toady somewhere out of sight of the public and the store cameras.
You're simply using now unlicensed software - not copying it.
Not trying to be pedantic, but unless your machine is using NVRAM you have to copy software to use it.
http://www.opencores.org/projects.cgi/web/vga_lcd/ overview