If you're consuming a non-renewable resource, everything is metered by definition. Any comparison to the consumption of fossil fuels by power plants to people using a network is flawed... also by definition. Scarcity of bandwidth can be permanently alleviated by an adequate buildout of infrastructure. Unfortunately, that won't allow the ISPs to bilk us out of every possible penny.
Personally, I think that the idea of a lone bad guy out there is probably naive. Frankly, I think it's the Russian Business Network behind this. They have the resources and the technical capability to hide behind multiple proxies, and won't have any problem processing the extorted funds.
My first thought is that it is completely incompetent system administration happening if their mail servers somehow have the ability to crash their web servers. I'm hoping this is just inaccurate reporting of the true reasons, though.
They probably don't mean "crashed"... a better adjective would probably be buried.
Australian ISPs Claim Net Neutrality Is an 'American Problem'
What a bunch of self-serving assholes. They're no better than Comcastoff.
This is a problem for any nation that wants its citizens to have more than basic email and Web browsing, and doesn't want said citizens to have their services curtailed at the whim of anticompetitive monsters. Apparently, the U.S. doesn't have a monopoly on those, either.
At some point, more and more nations are going to have to put connectivity in the same class of service as electricity and fresh water, and start applying some meaningful quality-of-service standards to these bastards.
At that point, the powers-that-be will have to spend big bucks implementing a more capable filter. They probably don't want to do that.
I think they probably will want to do that. Anything for the children you know.
Well, I meant "don't want to" as in "don't want to spend the money." DNS filtering is cheap, considering that they have the ISPs doing all the work. Sounds like they'd like nothing better than a Great Firewall if they could pull it off. Still, I guess it's a good thing that someone has the next generation's best interests at heart.
Why do we care about ground water in Mars? Don't we have bigger things to do here on Earth? All these Mars missions seem like a major waste of resources. Where is our moon base?
Kid's stuff is a popular target (I've been a couple of Wal-Marts where an Hispanic woman with a gaggle of children was trying to return a shopping cart loaded with diapers when the cops pull up and make an arrest) so they're on the watch for that sort of thing.
The reason that Target was so cooperative with your melting flashlight is that it's a hazard and you might have gotten burned (remember a certain fast-food company and a certain lawsuit.) I agree with the GP... Target is a pain in comparison to Wal-Mart, although both are more liberal than many smaller stores.
You need not run your own server... just point your system at any of the thousands of other public servers out there.
If what these idiots are doing becomes a problem, more and more people will figure out how to bypass simple DNS filtering. At that point, the powers-that-be will have to spend big bucks implementing a more capable filter. They probably don't want to do that.
and why do you think only monks and religious figures could read and write?? because anyone else was deemed a heretic and burned at the stake.
He's also forgetting that all the major religions of the day ruthlessly suppressed any scientific or technological advance which didn't fit into existing religious dogma (most of it, in other words.) Unless, that is, they could personally profit by that knowledge. That really was my point, which Smoker2 completely misunderstood. They may very well have been the geeks of their time (although no true geek would have behaved that way), but they were also, by and large, selfish pricks who deliberately held humanity back for a very long time.
Fact is, with the head start the Greeks and the Romans gave us, we should have gone a lot farther in a lot less time than we did. There are many reasons for why we didn't, true, but the Church (pick one) did it's part to keep us in the Dark.
I disagree. Those that drive like hell or drive gas guzzlers know full well their gas consumption habits. Saying that putting a consumption meter in will make people drive better is like saying putting in an alcohol breath test in cars will detour drunken driving. Sure you might catch the casual offender but on the whole it's a waste of time, energy and money.
Indeed. And in my own case, for a vehicle that constantly reports mpg or lpm, I see it reports 13 mpg, and wonder whether driving aggressively will bring it to 12. So I try.
I love how you people call science snake-oil. Sound like a bunch of religious fundies to me...
That's unnecessary and insulting. Religious fundamentalists would have been explaining that there's no way to increase the efficiency of an internal combustion engine because it would detract from the glory of God, or some equivalent malarkey. You, on the other hand, sound like someone with little or no background in physics or science that really wants to believe that something can, in fact, be had for nothing.
What our fellow posters are doing is registering a number of possible scenarios that would tend to invalidate the claimed results. That is, after all, how science works, and if Mr. Tao is truly a scientist he will welcome such criticism. Furthermore, as another poster quite correctly pointed out, driving around in a beamer for six months hardly constitutes rigorous scientific proof. The whole thing does smell like snake oil and while it's possible that he has something, so far he's behaving true to form for a typical snake-oil salesman. Matter of fact, releasing such fabulous results via press conference rather than through regular scientific channels is another bad sign.
Let's see how it shakes out after their process has been duplicated by other reputable research organizations (if any feel it's worth the effort) and see if a few peer-reviewed studies duplicate their results. I can say that what we've seen so far from Mr. Tao & Co. can't be called science.
Time will tell. I suspect that this "invention" will end up in the landfill along with hundreds of similar ideas.
This always happens. Wait until a crisis occurs (or can be effectively created by ignoring a problem until it explodes in the public's face.) Then try to get all the bad legislation passed that you can while everyone is distracted and not paying attention. It also helps if you can get people on board with a completely misnamed bill that Congresspeople are afraid to vote against because of voter backlash (because the voting public is largely composed of idiots who take everything at face value), even though a Nay vote would be the correct action.
This stuff should be really obvious to you. I don't even know why I'm wasting my time posting this on slashdot, because I know you're all going to hate it.
It is obvious. The problem is, short-sighted individuals such as yourself don't have the bigger picture, don't seem to grasp the reason copyright was implemented in this country (although the Constitution lays it out in pretty clear English), and most of all don't realize that the power of copyright has been conscripted to benefit the few over the many. That is diametrically opposed to both the Founders' intentions and Constitutional law... if you can't see that then I have no choice but to believe you're either ignorant of the topic, or a paid shill. Regardless, you're right about one thing: we're all going to hate you.
No, you do not. You subscribe to an unsupported and unsupportable myth, and see nothing wrong with your personal mythology being taught to children as established fact. That makes you not only ignorant, but dangerous. Look, the human race already suffered through a long interval of ignorance and misery, with reason taking a back seat to religion. We know that time as the Dark Ages. People who clung to their beliefs in spite of all evidence to the contrary were responsible, and it could happen again.
We'll see how your faith holds up when the lights go out for good. Civilization is fragile. Believe it.
That's most likely true... he understands only what those "religious leaders" with an agenda want him to understand (nothing, in other words) and he doesn't want to question their authority and learn more on his own. I mean, how many people of faith do you know that are convinced that the Theory of Evolution teaches how life was created and thus detracts from the glory of God? Darwin's Theory says nothing about the origins of life, it only predicts how life changes over time. Yet that single misunderstanding is at the center of much of the hate and discontent.
Then, of course, there are the even more ignorant types that just can't stand the thought that humans are nothing but slightly-more-evolved monkeys.
Others see this as yet another example of their crumbling hegemony or indolence as their empire burns.
One only knows how to reach complete happiness in computer software when they have felt the power of the source. Use the source Steve!...gg..GAHH!! *dodges chair*
Obviously, you haven't reached the level of a true master. If you were, you would have used your sourcefield to deflect the chair.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're consuming a non-renewable resource, everything is metered by definition. Any comparison to the consumption of fossil fuels by power plants to people using a network is flawed ... also by definition. Scarcity of bandwidth can be permanently alleviated by an adequate buildout of infrastructure. Unfortunately, that won't allow the ISPs to bilk us out of every possible penny.
Personally, I think that the idea of a lone bad guy out there is probably naive. Frankly, I think it's the Russian Business Network behind this. They have the resources and the technical capability to hide behind multiple proxies, and won't have any problem processing the extorted funds.
Where's the outrage in the cost of the war? By conservative estimates, it costs just as much if not more as this proposed bailout.
There's plenty of outrage. Have you been under a rock or what?
My first thought is that it is completely incompetent system administration happening if their mail servers somehow have the ability to crash their web servers. I'm hoping this is just inaccurate reporting of the true reasons, though.
They probably don't mean "crashed" ... a better adjective would probably be buried.
Australian ISPs Claim Net Neutrality Is an 'American Problem'
What a bunch of self-serving assholes. They're no better than Comcastoff.
This is a problem for any nation that wants its citizens to have more than basic email and Web browsing, and doesn't want said citizens to have their services curtailed at the whim of anticompetitive monsters. Apparently, the U.S. doesn't have a monopoly on those, either.
At some point, more and more nations are going to have to put connectivity in the same class of service as electricity and fresh water, and start applying some meaningful quality-of-service standards to these bastards.
At that point, the powers-that-be will have to spend big bucks implementing a more capable filter. They probably don't want to do that.
I think they probably will want to do that. Anything for the children you know.
Well, I meant "don't want to" as in "don't want to spend the money." DNS filtering is cheap, considering that they have the ISPs doing all the work. Sounds like they'd like nothing better than a Great Firewall if they could pull it off. Still, I guess it's a good thing that someone has the next generation's best interests at heart.
You could have gone to the homepage http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/ There it states 67.5 Terrabits received. (Terrabits, not terrabytes)
Oh, the irony of a device on Mars transmitting terrabits of data.
Yeah ... especially since it's spelled terabits.
Why do we care about ground water in Mars? Don't we have bigger things to do here on Earth? All these Mars missions seem like a major waste of resources. Where is our moon base?
Boy, are you in the wrong thread.
Finally, we know the undisclosed location Cheney is always going to!
I've always suspected it involved a handbasket.
You mean it's like Slashdot, if the concussed monkeys took up drinking.
Hey! I resemble that remark.
Kid's stuff is a popular target (I've been a couple of Wal-Marts where an Hispanic woman with a gaggle of children was trying to return a shopping cart loaded with diapers when the cops pull up and make an arrest) so they're on the watch for that sort of thing.
... Target is a pain in comparison to Wal-Mart, although both are more liberal than many smaller stores.
The reason that Target was so cooperative with your melting flashlight is that it's a hazard and you might have gotten burned (remember a certain fast-food company and a certain lawsuit.) I agree with the GP
You need not run your own server ... just point your system at any of the thousands of other public servers out there.
If what these idiots are doing becomes a problem, more and more people will figure out how to bypass simple DNS filtering. At that point, the powers-that-be will have to spend big bucks implementing a more capable filter. They probably don't want to do that.
and why do you think only monks and religious figures could read and write?? because anyone else was deemed a heretic and burned at the stake.
He's also forgetting that all the major religions of the day ruthlessly suppressed any scientific or technological advance which didn't fit into existing religious dogma (most of it, in other words.) Unless, that is, they could personally profit by that knowledge. That really was my point, which Smoker2 completely misunderstood. They may very well have been the geeks of their time (although no true geek would have behaved that way), but they were also, by and large, selfish pricks who deliberately held humanity back for a very long time.
Fact is, with the head start the Greeks and the Romans gave us, we should have gone a lot farther in a lot less time than we did. There are many reasons for why we didn't, true, but the Church (pick one) did it's part to keep us in the Dark.
Indeed. And in my own case, for a vehicle that constantly reports mpg or lpm, I see it reports 13 mpg, and wonder whether driving aggressively will bring it to 12. So I try.
Any results to report yet?
Did you RTFA?
I said pretty much the same thing in a previous post and I didn't RFTA either. You gotta problem with that?
I love how you people call science snake-oil. Sound like a bunch of religious fundies to me...
That's unnecessary and insulting. Religious fundamentalists would have been explaining that there's no way to increase the efficiency of an internal combustion engine because it would detract from the glory of God, or some equivalent malarkey. You, on the other hand, sound like someone with little or no background in physics or science that really wants to believe that something can, in fact, be had for nothing.
What our fellow posters are doing is registering a number of possible scenarios that would tend to invalidate the claimed results. That is, after all, how science works, and if Mr. Tao is truly a scientist he will welcome such criticism. Furthermore, as another poster quite correctly pointed out, driving around in a beamer for six months hardly constitutes rigorous scientific proof. The whole thing does smell like snake oil and while it's possible that he has something, so far he's behaving true to form for a typical snake-oil salesman. Matter of fact, releasing such fabulous results via press conference rather than through regular scientific channels is another bad sign.
Let's see how it shakes out after their process has been duplicated by other reputable research organizations (if any feel it's worth the effort) and see if a few peer-reviewed studies duplicate their results. I can say that what we've seen so far from Mr. Tao & Co. can't be called science.
Time will tell. I suspect that this "invention" will end up in the landfill along with hundreds of similar ideas.
Don't you mean "High-Performance Beowulf Cluster"?
Is there such a thing as a "Low-Performance Beowulf Cluster"?
This always happens. Wait until a crisis occurs (or can be effectively created by ignoring a problem until it explodes in the public's face.) Then try to get all the bad legislation passed that you can while everyone is distracted and not paying attention. It also helps if you can get people on board with a completely misnamed bill that Congresspeople are afraid to vote against because of voter backlash (because the voting public is largely composed of idiots who take everything at face value), even though a Nay vote would be the correct action.
This stuff should be really obvious to you. I don't even know why I'm wasting my time posting this on slashdot, because I know you're all going to hate it.
... if you can't see that then I have no choice but to believe you're either ignorant of the topic, or a paid shill. Regardless, you're right about one thing: we're all going to hate you.
It is obvious. The problem is, short-sighted individuals such as yourself don't have the bigger picture, don't seem to grasp the reason copyright was implemented in this country (although the Constitution lays it out in pretty clear English), and most of all don't realize that the power of copyright has been conscripted to benefit the few over the many. That is diametrically opposed to both the Founders' intentions and Constitutional law
" reasons that are so so compelling that aspects of the theory can be safely treated as fact."
Yes, the observational portions of the Theory of Evolution can, indeed, be treated as fact because, well, they are.
Hey, you did okay. A lot better than any Creationist.
I subscribe to the Creation theory.
No, you do not. You subscribe to an unsupported and unsupportable myth, and see nothing wrong with your personal mythology being taught to children as established fact. That makes you not only ignorant, but dangerous. Look, the human race already suffered through a long interval of ignorance and misery, with reason taking a back seat to religion. We know that time as the Dark Ages. People who clung to their beliefs in spite of all evidence to the contrary were responsible, and it could happen again.
We'll see how your faith holds up when the lights go out for good. Civilization is fragile. Believe it.
Because you don't understand it most likely.
... he understands only what those "religious leaders" with an agenda want him to understand (nothing, in other words) and he doesn't want to question their authority and learn more on his own. I mean, how many people of faith do you know that are convinced that the Theory of Evolution teaches how life was created and thus detracts from the glory of God? Darwin's Theory says nothing about the origins of life, it only predicts how life changes over time. Yet that single misunderstanding is at the center of much of the hate and discontent.
That's most likely true
Then, of course, there are the even more ignorant types that just can't stand the thought that humans are nothing but slightly-more-evolved monkeys.
What happened to the traditional Christianity that preached "love thy neighbor"?
That means "have sex with the neighbor girl" nowadays. I want to know what happened to the Christianity that taught that lying was wrong.
Others see this as yet another example of their crumbling hegemony or indolence as their empire burns.
One only knows how to reach complete happiness in computer software when they have felt the power of the source. Use the source Steve! ...gg..GAHH!! *dodges chair*
Obviously, you haven't reached the level of a true master. If you were, you would have used your sourcefield to deflect the chair.