I would suggest that comparing cable modem bandwidth against telephone and cable TV service is like comparing apples to oranges. You are comparing a device that can use more bandwidth against devices that don't:
1. "Now you can have as many phones in your house as your want"
2. they'll happily split your signal for free [snip] and leave all your TVs connected
That's true, however no more bandwidth resources are required for mutliple phone and TV connections, therefore no matter how many of these you have in your house, the provider will not have to pay more.
"I think this situation [cable modem bandwidth] SHOULD fall under the same rule." "Once the wire comes into your house, what you do with it is your business."
However in the cable modem situation you are incurring extra bandwidth resources to the provider which does cost the provider money. Becuase it's your usage, you are responsible for it.
If extra phones and TVs incurred more bandwidth then you would be responsible for that too.
It really doesn't matter if she owed that or not, if she thought there could be job or contract offerers worth thousands in there, she would have been happy to pay and then switch the email to somewhere else.
So this/. posting says Nancy should have paid money she did not owe in order to get information she wanted badly.
That line of thinking seems a bit sketchy. The term "blackmail" comes to mind. Can't say I agree with this thought.
Article Says: I, [snip] look forward to an unbiased, well-written benchmark comparing the two platforms for both performance and code structure.
However maybe it's an eternal comparison of Apples and Oranges. There may be enough differences between the two platforms that a comprehensive comparison is just futile.
Each platform should be justified on its own merits; each probably meets a need successfully.
We should be glad that more than one alternative is available because development skills differ and target platforms differ.
[snip] the ability to burn tracks on a pay-as-you-go basis, in addition to paying a monthly subscription fee of $9.95.
I did some figuring out of curiosity....
From a price point of view that's about $120/yr so you can burn songs for 99 cents a piece.
The average list price for a CD is US$18.98 including the tracks you want and don't want.
Let's say about 10 songs per CD, then I'm paying $1.90 per song off the shelf.
From the subscription service, if I purchase 10 songs per month then I will be paying $19.85 for that month (close to the same cost of a retail CD).
Consider that Amazon often discounts CDs. On average an Amazon CD will cost about $14.99 ($1.50 per song based on 10 songs). In this case you only have to burn 5 songs per month to make up the equivalent off-the-shelf Amazon price. Not bad.
Of course the more you burn per month (beyond these numbers) the more money you save compared to shelf prices.
And you can't beat the listenting pleasure of hand-picked music. That's worth a whole lot more.
All those small e-commerce guys should pool their resources so they can fight the heavyweight.. if there is a way to do it. There's simply no way a small guy can have a chance by himself, obviously why the lawsuits started at that level -- to increase PANIP's chances. At least PANIP has been/.ed. Hopefully this is just the beginning of the punishment!
This is an interesting find... In the following excerpt taken from the WINE FAQs, the author tries to make an argument that diversification is needed in the Windows world (thus WINE) so that Windows viruses can't take out as much of the computer population. Well, looks like that argument for WINE just backfired.
Excerpt: [snip]Code Red did what any "virus" presented with a large homogeneous population would do: it infected more than 359.000 computers in just the first day.[snip]
It is only a matter of time before a more virulent worm appears. The only way to decrease its impact is to diversify the OS population. Because it is an alternate implementation of the Win32 API and runs on top of a completely different OS, Wine does not have the same flaws and thus can provide this needed diversity.
Just a few weeks ago I received the following error message from SQL Server Enterprise Manager which I thought was quite amusing:
Cannot start transaction while in firehose mode.
And then I found the explanation here.
[snip] explains the virtues of making code freely available for those who wish to hack games.
Imagine the virtues if all code (not just for games) was made freely available to developers.
Then even Microsoft developers could freely use the development versions of software without the large cost overhead. That might spur on Windows development by the masses, just as has been done in the Linux and OpenSource realms.
It appears as if Microsoft is trying to change the console gaming industry, which will edn up benefitting all the big players, not just Microsoft. Of course Microsoft is protecting their own interests but these interests happen to be shared by others.
Maybe Microsoft will succeed to boost XBox software sales by having the laws changed (and/or enforced), however such changes would also affect the other players in the industry. So Sony and Nintendo and any others will also reap the same fiscal rewards from the same laws.
Quite possibly, Microsoft wields the clout that the gaming industry has needed for a long time. Microsoft has the most resources to expend and is stepping up to bat for everybody in the industry, even if it is doing so indirectly. Well, for everybody except the game console modders of course.
Either way the big players in the gaming industry seem to benefit from Microsoft's grandios reputation and endless resources, all competition aside... even if this garners the disdain of the XBox modders and people who sell the mods.
As quoted by the Microsoft web site,.NET runs on the following Microsoft platforms:
Microsoft Windows® 98
Microsoft Windows NT® 4.0 (SP 6a required)
Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me)
Microsoft Windows 2000 (SP2 Recommended)
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Once the complete XBox product is in the customer's hands, all the security in the world is simply a set of preventitive measures.
Because the product is an autonomous unit, obviously anybody is free to hit it from any angle until the security is broken.
I'm sure Microsoft doesn't really expect that the XBox product will be totally secure. So it's probably not such a big deal whenever the product is cracked.
However Microsoft's sporatic changes to the XBox security may easily cause confusion to consumers who try to purchase mod chips (because different version exist), which in and of itself it a good tactic. Frustrated consumers are probably less likely to spend money on modifications after they find some mods don't work (because they are meant for a different version of the XBox).
In people we might call this a cancer risk, rather than furthering their chances down the road. Contextual example: P53 is the most commonly mutated gene in cancer cells
So if GM foods start creating themselves then what's all the fuss about GM foods right now?;)
It's nice that MIT plans to give away all this information for free. But they still have to pay for the bandwidth, the web content management costs, the hardware costs, etc., etc.
Even if MIT does not want to make money off it, they should at least figure out a model to cover the costs.
I have a feeling they will have to address this situation (probably sooner than later) because the high-quality content will be in high demand. No doubt with this proposition of free materials comes a high cost to MIT.
Initially the compact size and flexibility of the contraption reminded me of an iMac. Weird eh?
Of course Open Brick is moreso a server product and iMac a workstation disguised as a desk lamp.
However I do wonder if in the future Open Brick (or a variation thereof) might compete in the same arena as iMac.
The polarization, or scattering, in that afterglow that the astronomers found was produced when cosmic light last interacted with matter nearly 14 billion years ago, the report said.
I can not suspend my disbelief about this one. There are too many light sources in space.
IMHO, the light from the Big Bang should be travelling away from earth instead of towards it -- How did they see it? If they did see it, how can they even have an inkling that its from the beginnings of the earth -- there are uncountable light sources from space.
I think somebody needs funding, and somebody has a lot of useless time on their hands.
I'm looking forward not only to the scientific explanations that follow, but other theories about whether there is a remote chance or not that the people in the article see what they think they are seeing.
Hmm, that must be quite the fine line to walk: Huge R&D, marketing/PR, and costs in order to get a leg over the competition -- and yet not able to run with it because of lack of market demand.
I don't envy these large companies in the slightest. I wonder if the auto-makers have resolved the same situation.
Then I hope they introduce new skins into the game like Ronald McDonald, Grimace, Hamburgler, and Birdie.
Then you can invite Ronald over for dinner (but what would you serve?), sick the dog on Grimace, Hamburgler might be caught by the police, and Birdie might fly into a window.
Epic Records should also place a distinct digital watermark inside the music of each CD that is distributed.
Then they can know beyond a shadow of a doubt from which device the music gets copied from.
Subjectively, I'd say the Tsunamii.Net art piece is relatively pointless because...
here's a much more funny way to
see a computer get destroyed.
Yes, we've all seen this before, however there's no pending countdown for this one, and no delayed gratification!
Therefore the Tsunamii project must be rendered useless because of Prior "Art". {groan}
It is not right that government/military computers were audited for security without express permission from the government.
ForensicTec was able to and *did* read sensitive information which they had no business in doing -- indeed they were not contracted by, and had no agreements with the government to do such a thing.
And it was an "audit" instead of an "attack" because obviously the company had no ill intent; otherwise they would not have gone public.
I speculate that the government probably already knew that such security problems could exist -- most organizations do. ForensicTec acted like a loose canon and did not help matters, but instead simply pointed out the obvious.
Immediately upon stumbling across the government computer network two months ago, ForensicTec should have obtained permission before attempting to "help".
Providing proof afterwards does not justify the means.
Let's hypothesize that ForensicTec did ask to perform a security audit in the first place, and the request was declined by the government. Well, in the words of president O'Keeffe, "We could have easily walked away from it,".
It was a self-serving stunt by ForensicTec for publicity purposes, and they dug themselves in too deep while hoping for the publicity (well, they got publicitly even though it's probably not the exact type they were looking for). The articles quotes: "get some positive exposure for themselves,".
I don't believe any penalty will be too harsh, and it will hopefully set a precedent for other companiess to take a more discerning approach to such a sensitive matter in the future.
I'm not saying that security holes shouldn't be researched when there looks to be a problem. But come on... it can be done in a much better way than ForensicTec handled it. The government can't be blamed for taking exception to the method.
Slashdot Mirror
1. "Now you can have as many phones in your house as your want"
2. they'll happily split your signal for free [snip] and leave all your TVs connected
That's true, however no more bandwidth resources are required for mutliple phone and TV connections, therefore no matter how many of these you have in your house, the provider will not have to pay more.
"I think this situation [cable modem bandwidth] SHOULD fall under the same rule."
"Once the wire comes into your house, what you do with it is your business."
However in the cable modem situation you are incurring extra bandwidth resources to the provider which does cost the provider money. Becuase it's your usage, you are responsible for it.
If extra phones and TVs incurred more bandwidth then you would be responsible for that too.
So this /. posting says Nancy should have paid money she did not owe in order to get information she wanted badly.
That line of thinking seems a bit sketchy. The term "blackmail" comes to mind. Can't say I agree with this thought.
However maybe it's an eternal comparison of Apples and Oranges. There may be enough differences between the two platforms that a comprehensive comparison is just futile.
Each platform should be justified on its own merits; each probably meets a need successfully.
We should be glad that more than one alternative is available because development skills differ and target platforms differ.
I did some figuring out of curiosity ....
From a price point of view that's about $120/yr so you can burn songs for 99 cents a piece.
The average list price for a CD is US$18.98 including the tracks you want and don't want. Let's say about 10 songs per CD, then I'm paying $1.90 per song off the shelf. From the subscription service, if I purchase 10 songs per month then I will be paying $19.85 for that month (close to the same cost of a retail CD).
Consider that Amazon often discounts CDs. On average an Amazon CD will cost about $14.99 ($1.50 per song based on 10 songs). In this case you only have to burn 5 songs per month to make up the equivalent off-the-shelf Amazon price. Not bad.
Of course the more you burn per month (beyond these numbers) the more money you save compared to shelf prices.
And you can't beat the listenting pleasure of hand-picked music. That's worth a whole lot more.
All those small e-commerce guys should pool their resources so they can fight the heavyweight .. if there is a way to do it. There's simply no way a small guy can have a chance by himself, obviously why the lawsuits started at that level -- to increase PANIP's chances. At least PANIP has been /.ed. Hopefully this is just the beginning of the punishment!
Excerpt:
[snip]Code Red did what any "virus" presented with a large homogeneous population would do: it infected more than 359.000 computers in just the first day.[snip]
It is only a matter of time before a more virulent worm appears. The only way to decrease its impact is to diversify the OS population. Because it is an alternate implementation of the Win32 API and runs on top of a completely different OS, Wine does not have the same flaws and thus can provide this needed diversity.
Just a few weeks ago I received the following error message from SQL Server Enterprise Manager which I thought was quite amusing:
Cannot start transaction while in firehose mode.
And then I found the explanation here.
Imagine the virtues if all code (not just for games) was made freely available to developers.
Then even Microsoft developers could freely use the development versions of software without the large cost overhead. That might spur on Windows development by the masses, just as has been done in the Linux and OpenSource realms.
Maybe Microsoft will succeed to boost XBox software sales by having the laws changed (and/or enforced), however such changes would also affect the other players in the industry. So Sony and Nintendo and any others will also reap the same fiscal rewards from the same laws.
Quite possibly, Microsoft wields the clout that the gaming industry has needed for a long time. Microsoft has the most resources to expend and is stepping up to bat for everybody in the industry, even if it is doing so indirectly. Well, for everybody except the game console modders of course.
Either way the big players in the gaming industry seem to benefit from Microsoft's grandios reputation and endless resources, all competition aside ... even if this garners the disdain of the XBox modders and people who sell the mods.
That's not true. .NET runs on more than XP ...
As quoted by the Microsoft web site, .NET runs on the following Microsoft platforms:
Microsoft Windows® 98
Microsoft Windows NT® 4.0 (SP 6a required)
Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me)
Microsoft Windows 2000 (SP2 Recommended)
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Because the product is an autonomous unit, obviously anybody is free to hit it from any angle until the security is broken.
I'm sure Microsoft doesn't really expect that the XBox product will be totally secure. So it's probably not such a big deal whenever the product is cracked.
However Microsoft's sporatic changes to the XBox security may easily cause confusion to consumers who try to purchase mod chips (because different version exist), which in and of itself it a good tactic. Frustrated consumers are probably less likely to spend money on modifications after they find some mods don't work (because they are meant for a different version of the XBox).
In people we might call this a cancer risk, rather than furthering their chances down the road.
Contextual example: P53 is the most commonly mutated gene in cancer cells
So if GM foods start creating themselves then what's all the fuss about GM foods right now? ;)
Even if MIT does not want to make money off it, they should at least figure out a model to cover the costs.
I have a feeling they will have to address this situation (probably sooner than later) because the high-quality content will be in high demand. No doubt with this proposition of free materials comes a high cost to MIT.
Initially the compact size and flexibility of the contraption reminded me of an iMac. Weird eh?
Of course Open Brick is moreso a server product and iMac a workstation disguised as a desk lamp.
However I do wonder if in the future Open Brick (or a variation thereof) might compete in the same arena as iMac.
I can not suspend my disbelief about this one. There are too many light sources in space. IMHO, the light from the Big Bang should be travelling away from earth instead of towards it -- How did they see it? If they did see it, how can they even have an inkling that its from the beginnings of the earth -- there are uncountable light sources from space.
I think somebody needs funding, and somebody has a lot of useless time on their hands.
I'm looking forward not only to the scientific explanations that follow, but other theories about whether there is a remote chance or not that the people in the article see what they think they are seeing.
So why should I care if a website knows I leave it and go to SlashDot. Doesn't everybody?
I don't envy these large companies in the slightest. I wonder if the auto-makers have resolved the same situation.
This would be an interesting study within itself.
Then I hope they introduce new skins into the game like Ronald McDonald, Grimace, Hamburgler, and Birdie.
Then you can invite Ronald over for dinner (but what would you serve?), sick the dog on Grimace, Hamburgler might be caught by the police, and Birdie might fly into a window.
Does this mean the source for Adobe Photoshop might be published if a picture is generated from it?
Epic Records should also place a distinct digital watermark inside the music of each CD that is distributed.
Then they can know beyond a shadow of a doubt from which device the music gets copied from.
Testing reveals: ET Shuttle Observation Camera STS-112 PAR Flight Hardware Certification Summary [...] No issues ".
Just as long as they don't put a hairline crack in the tank when they screw on the web cam.
Subjectively, I'd say the Tsunamii.Net art piece is relatively pointless because
here's a much more funny way to see a computer get destroyed.
Yes, we've all seen this before, however there's no pending countdown for this one, and no delayed gratification!
Therefore the Tsunamii project must be rendered useless because of Prior "Art". {groan}
After discussing this article with a friend, he suggested: it would be nice to see a city skyline (cloak the buildings that impede the view).
That seems a very useful and non-violent use of the technology. I thought it was a great idea.
Hope the FPS are high enough on the web cam. Otherwise you'll be looking at it and still miss it.
So nothing in the pitch breaks down to form a droplet of other stuff instead of pitch? It sure sits there for long enough.
It is not right that government/military computers were audited for security without express permission from the government.
ForensicTec was able to and *did* read sensitive information which they had no business in doing -- indeed they were not contracted by, and had no agreements with the government to do such a thing.
And it was an "audit" instead of an "attack" because obviously the company had no ill intent; otherwise they would not have gone public.
I speculate that the government probably already knew that such security problems could exist -- most organizations do. ForensicTec acted like a loose canon and did not help matters, but instead simply pointed out the obvious.
Immediately upon stumbling across the government computer network two months ago, ForensicTec should have obtained permission before attempting to "help".
Providing proof afterwards does not justify the means.
Let's hypothesize that ForensicTec did ask to perform a security audit in the first place, and the request was declined by the government. Well, in the words of president O'Keeffe, "We could have easily walked away from it,".
It was a self-serving stunt by ForensicTec for publicity purposes, and they dug themselves in too deep while hoping for the publicity (well, they got publicitly even though it's probably not the exact type they were looking for). The articles quotes: "get some positive exposure for themselves,".
I don't believe any penalty will be too harsh, and it will hopefully set a precedent for other companiess to take a more discerning approach to such a sensitive matter in the future.
I'm not saying that security holes shouldn't be researched when there looks to be a problem. But come on ... it can be done in a much better way than ForensicTec handled it. The government can't be blamed for taking exception to the method.