It's not so much it couldn't handle it as the one of the sysadmins with a stick up his ass wanted to make a point about putting inocent machines on the front page of slashdot without warning the admins first.
Re:whoa yours server's been comprimised..
on
Optimizing distcc
·
· Score: 1
If it is a physical product, they don't magically matter transport it into your home. It gets transported, using roads and so on. Your state helps to pay the for upkeep, policing, etc., of these roads, so some of the products of your home state are used for this.
The shipping company employs local workers, pays local property taxes on the warehouse, pays local fuel taxes on the gas they burn in their trucks, etc. Those products are paid for by my transaction. It's less than what a local merchant will pay in sales tax, but what the state pays to support the transaction is less too.
Plus, I'm paying local taxes on my internet connection, my electricity, and everything else I need in my home state to perform the transaction.
Also the company selling you the product uses up the products of the state in which it was stored, and the state in which the internet servers were resident, etc, etc.
And that state is perfectly entitled to tax the labors of the transaction through corporate income taxes, as well as the dozens of other taxes a company pays in the course of doing business.
What I said still holds. My state has no right to the fruits of a transaction committed out of state, only what they support once my purchase crosses the state line, and those taxes are paid by someone. It may be indirect, but the money is still there.
But, can you imagine the outcry if a) Everyone who doesn't actually pay taxes didn't get that "gift" (aka refund) every year and b) The people who do pay taxes had to write one huge check on April 15th?
The government would never be able to maintain support for the tax rates we currently have if people actually had to write out what would probably be the largest check of the year..
On second thought, I fail to see the problem. Where can I vote to get rid of withholding?
The point of sales taxes is that the business is paying the state/local government for services it requires to conduct business. Courts, public utility oversight, roads, etc.
If an out of state business sells something to me, they used absolutely none of those products of the government of my state. Who did use those services was the shipping company, and they paid taxes on their costs for handling their part of the transaction (fuel, local employees, etc.)
States want to claim economic benefits from transactions they had no part in supporting. It's an entirely different situation from me driving down to the local WalMart and buying those items, because my WalMart does depend on my state government to stay in business.
If anything, what should be done is the company is responsible for paying taxes on a transaction in the state that the transaction occoured, or that the company is incorporated in. Sure, everyone will then debate to incorporate in a state with no sales tax, or no income tax. Either way, they'll pay the other, and the state government they operate under gets paid. The argument that somehow my state deserves the same tax revenue for a transaction that they had nothing to do with because it happened in some other jurisdiction, compared to a transaction that I did in state is ridiculous. They didn't "lose" revenue, they were never entitled to it in the first place.
Further, the Constitution prohibits states from taxing "imports or exports." "Use Taxes" are a stupid dodge to claim they're taxing your use of an item purchased out of state instead of taxing the transaction in which you bought it.
States simply have no legal or moral right to tax transactions performed in another jurisdiction. Their authority ends at the state border, and it's not "cheating" the system to buy across state lines if it's favorable to the citizen. It's the way the system was designed.
Re:Why was it illegal there though?
on
Cell-Phone Wars
·
· Score: 1
Why can't people sit in the company of other people and respect the atmosphere, perhaps talking quietly to the person nearest them if they feel the need to chat? Why is it that people these days equate "20 minute wait" with "potential 20 minute phone call?"
Atmosphere? You're talking about the fucking DMV. I fail to see any valid reason for banning cell phones in a government waiting room, other than some bueracrat needs to feel important.
it's about the POINT I'm trying to make. Discuss the point.
What, exactly, is the point you're trying to make? This bill makes it illegal for some politician to blanket my inbox with crap too?
From what I've seen, I don't think this bill accomplishes actually stopping spam. It ends up legitimizing it, and gives members of the DMA each a one-spam-free pass. But I don't want to read ads for the Dean campaign on my inbox without signing up anymore than I want the chance to buy Viagra.
Don't feel too smug just yet.. If they eventually rule this unconstitutional on 1st amendment grounds, I would't be suprised if they turn around and try the same argument against the prohibition on calling cell phones.
1) Take cooler of LNO2 2) Suspend an ice cube tray full of vodka in it. 3) Add resulting alcohol cubes to a glass of OJ 4) Profit!! (or something...)
The alcohol won't freeze at temperatures designed to make normal ice, but the liquid nitrogen is cold enough to make the liquor freeze. No more worrying about the ice dilluting your drink, as it melts the drink becomes stronger.
It is unethical for people to not pay sales tax for out-of-state purchases.
Why is that?
The point of sales taxes is that the business is paying the state/local government for services it requires to conduct business. Courts, public utility oversight, roads, etc.
If an out of state business sells something to me, they used absolutely none of those products of the government of my state. Who did use those services was the shipping company, and they paid taxes on their costs for handling their part of the transaction (fuel, local employees, etc.)
States want to claim economic benefits from transactions they had no part in supporting. It's an entirely different situation from me driving down to the local WalMart and buying those items, because my WalMart does depend on my state government to stay in business.
If anything, what should be done is the company is responsible for paying taxes on a transaction in the state that the transaction occoured, or that the company is incorporated in. Sure, everyone will then debate to incorporate in a state with no sales tax, or no income tax. Either way, they'll pay the other, and the state government they operate under gets paid. The argument that somehow my state deserves the same tax revenue for a transaction that they had nothing to do with because it happened in some other jurisdiction, compared to a transaction that I did in state is ridiculous. They didn't "lose" revenue, they were never entitled to it in the first place.
If you've got two machines, one running FreeBSD or some other OS that has support for Sparse files in the file system, you can fool DC into thinking you've got 60 gigs worth of data on a 100 meg share.
Share a directory with Samba to the windows machine you're running DC on.
Create a bunch of sparse files in that directory with reasonable sounding names (Like Matrix01.mpg or something). The following program will create sparse files:
Nobody made you purchase that domain. Purchasing a domain puts your information into a public database. You knew that when you did it.
Personally, I think Whois is important. I've had problems with other network sites before as a systems admin, and needed whois to locate the responsible person on the other end. RP records work only if you can get to their DNS server. Yes, it gets abused, but the benefit outweighs the costs IMO.
A good portion of his article was over-riding the Scheduler interrupt vector to give control to his driver > 100HZ. Is there any better way to do this, since it seems like this method is a little suspect (And multiple drivers using this technique might not work together.)
I'm developing a driver for a bit of cheap hardware that unloads a high-frequency counter onto the host processor and needs to be serviced at about 30kHZ.
Electronic voting is a bad idea.
on
eLection '04
·
· Score: 1
Here's why electronic voting is a bad idea. Quite frankly, I prefer a paper ballot trail that can be audited by hand, either scantron or punchcards even if it means I have to drive to a polling place for a half hour once every 365 days. It's more of a bother to get my hair cut than to vote.
I don't think that's what it says...
on
High-Speed Greed
·
· Score: 5
Reading the article, I got the impression they were talking about changing from flat-rate hosting to commissions on retailers that connect through AT&T, not charging retailers a commission on sales by an AT&T subscriber (which would be unenforceable).
IOW, if Amazon.com has a link direct to AT&T's backbone, instead of paying a flat fee for the line, they'd pay based on traffic and sales through that line. They're not going to charge Amazon just because you bought a book and you're an @home subscriber.
It still sounds like a dumb idea though. I imagine this would require retailers to check which pipe an order came through, and AT&T to audit that information.
This is absurd. I think it's time for someone to seriously look at starting a 'pirate' DNS service again, just to wrest control away from ICANN. They've turned the entire DNS structure into a farce. Did anyone else pay attention to what you had to do to suggest a new domain? US$50,000, which doesn't even guarantee you anything. And if two companies suggest the same thing, which one gets control? Seems to me the one that looses their 50k is gonna be pissed.
What we've aparently got now is ICANN creating a horde of mega-squatters who can afford it. And now that we've finally gotten control of the registry away from NSI, we're going to have a whole bunch of little registrar monopolies shooting up offering domains under their space. (Excepting those that just want it to have their own TLD just for them). You can bet that they aren't going to be as competitive as the ones offering.[net|org|com] are right now.
The big companies will just buy company.*, which defeats the point. If you actually manage to buy Microsoft.sux before they do, they'll just sue you into oblivion anyway.
Lastly, there's alot of software out there that validates hostnames by some pretty specific rules. 4+ character TLDs with dashes and numbers are going to break all that. Are the companies that just bought.my1st-tld going to pay me for the time it takes to fix those checks in my company's software?
When I begin coding software, I will keep modularity to a minimum
And the next month when it comes time to fix it or add a new feature, you'll change your mind. I'm curently in the process of evaluating code that was written 3 months ago for a web site with no thought to style or modularity, and the end result is the entire thing is getting tossed and redone from scratch, at a not insignificant cost in time and resources. If you think you're going to write code without regard to any accepted software engineering principles, you're an idiot.
Windows has the same library dependency problems you attribute to Linux, it just hides it slightly better at times, and makes it worse at other times. Remember trying to track 4 versions of slightly different VBRUNx00.DLL? Or how installing certain versions of Word just happen to change various system DLLs that break Netscape in new and interesting ways?
Slashdot Mirror
It's not so much it couldn't handle it as the one of the sysadmins with a stick up his ass wanted to make a point about putting inocent machines on the front page of slashdot without warning the admins first.
Nah, the sysadmins are just being pricks.
If it is a physical product, they don't magically
matter transport it into your home. It gets
transported, using roads and so on. Your state
helps to pay the for upkeep, policing, etc., of
these roads, so some of the products of your
home state are used for this.
The shipping company employs local workers, pays local property taxes on the warehouse, pays local fuel taxes on the gas they burn in their trucks, etc. Those products are paid for by my transaction. It's less than what a local merchant will pay in sales tax, but what the state pays to support the transaction is less too.
Plus, I'm paying local taxes on my internet connection, my electricity, and everything else I need in my home state to perform the transaction.
Also the company selling you the product uses
up the products of the state in which it was
stored, and the state in which the internet
servers were resident, etc, etc.
And that state is perfectly entitled to tax the labors of the transaction through corporate income taxes, as well as the dozens of other taxes a company pays in the course of doing business.
What I said still holds. My state has no right to the fruits of a transaction committed out of state, only what they support once my purchase crosses the state line, and those taxes are paid by someone. It may be indirect, but the money is still there.
But, can you imagine the outcry if
a) Everyone who doesn't actually pay taxes didn't get that "gift" (aka refund) every year
and
b) The people who do pay taxes had to write one huge check on April 15th?
The government would never be able to maintain support for the tax rates we currently have if people actually had to write out what would probably be the largest check of the year..
On second thought, I fail to see the problem. Where can I vote to get rid of withholding?
The point of sales taxes is that the business is paying the state/local government for services it requires to conduct business. Courts, public utility oversight, roads, etc.
If an out of state business sells something to me, they used absolutely none of those products of the government of my state. Who did use those services was the shipping company, and they paid taxes on their costs for handling their part of the transaction (fuel, local employees, etc.)
States want to claim economic benefits from transactions they had no part in supporting. It's an entirely different situation from me driving down to the local WalMart and buying those items, because my WalMart does depend on my state government to stay in business.
If anything, what should be done is the company is responsible for paying taxes on a transaction in the state that the transaction occoured, or that the company is incorporated in. Sure, everyone will then debate to incorporate in a state with no sales tax, or no income tax. Either way, they'll pay the other, and the state government they operate under gets paid. The argument that somehow my state deserves the same tax revenue for a transaction that they had nothing to do with because it happened in some other jurisdiction, compared to a transaction that I did in state is ridiculous. They didn't "lose" revenue, they were never entitled to it in the first place.
Further, the Constitution prohibits states from taxing "imports or exports." "Use Taxes" are a stupid dodge to claim they're taxing your use of an item purchased out of state instead of taxing the transaction in which you bought it.
States simply have no legal or moral right to tax transactions performed in another jurisdiction. Their authority ends at the state border, and it's not "cheating" the system to buy across state lines if it's favorable to the citizen. It's the way the system was designed.
Why can't people sit in the company of other people and respect the atmosphere, perhaps talking quietly to the person nearest them if they feel the need to chat? Why is it that people these days equate "20 minute wait" with "potential 20 minute phone call?"
Atmosphere? You're talking about the fucking DMV. I fail to see any valid reason for banning cell phones in a government waiting room, other than some bueracrat needs to feel important.
You're right... It's terribly unfair to suggest the punishment for spam should be the same as that of a mere serial killer.
Unfortunately, that whole "cruel and unusual" clause prevents us doing much more to the spammer.
It depends on the state. If you really need to find out, use AgeOfConsent.com for your particular situation.
it's about the POINT I'm trying to make. Discuss the point.
What, exactly, is the point you're trying to make? This bill makes it illegal for some politician to blanket my inbox with crap too?
From what I've seen, I don't think this bill accomplishes actually stopping spam. It ends up legitimizing it, and gives members of the DMA each a one-spam-free pass. But I don't want to read ads for the Dean campaign on my inbox without signing up anymore than I want the chance to buy Viagra.
Don't feel too smug just yet.. If they eventually rule this unconstitutional on 1st amendment grounds, I would't be suprised if they turn around and try the same argument against the prohibition on calling cell phones.
1) Take cooler of LNO2
2) Suspend an ice cube tray full of vodka in it.
3) Add resulting alcohol cubes to a glass of OJ
4) Profit!! (or something...)
The alcohol won't freeze at temperatures designed to make normal ice, but the liquid nitrogen is cold enough to make the liquor freeze. No more worrying about the ice dilluting your drink, as it melts the drink becomes stronger.
Add that to the Liquid Oxygen Grill and you've got yourself one cool party. Main course, desert, and pyrotechnic entertainment all in one.
Someone's actually managed to make a Windows PC where the buggiest thing about it isn't the operating system.
Let me know when they've managed to fit Emacs in there too.
It is unethical for people to not pay sales tax for out-of-state purchases.
Why is that?
The point of sales taxes is that the business is paying the state/local government for services it requires to conduct business. Courts, public utility oversight, roads, etc.
If an out of state business sells something to me, they used absolutely none of those products of the government of my state. Who did use those services was the shipping company, and they paid taxes on their costs for handling their part of the transaction (fuel, local employees, etc.)
States want to claim economic benefits from transactions they had no part in supporting. It's an entirely different situation from me driving down to the local WalMart and buying those items, because my WalMart does depend on my state government to stay in business.
If anything, what should be done is the company is responsible for paying taxes on a transaction in the state that the transaction occoured, or that the company is incorporated in. Sure, everyone will then debate to incorporate in a state with no sales tax, or no income tax. Either way, they'll pay the other, and the state government they operate under gets paid. The argument that somehow my state deserves the same tax revenue for a transaction that they had nothing to do with because it happened in some other jurisdiction, compared to a transaction that I did in state is ridiculous. They didn't "lose" revenue, they were never entitled to it in the first place.
If your homeowner's insurance doesn't cover it, NASA is compensating for damages caused by the disaster: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/spacenews/releases/200 3/03-041.html
If you've got two machines, one running FreeBSD or some other OS that has support for Sparse files in the file system, you can fool DC into thinking you've got 60 gigs worth of data on a 100 meg share.
Share a directory with Samba to the windows machine you're running DC on.
Create a bunch of sparse files in that directory with reasonable sounding names (Like Matrix01.mpg or something). The following program will create sparse files:
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main( int argc, char **argv )
{
int fd;
if( argc < 2 ) {
printf( "Usage: %s filename\n", argv[0] );
exit( 1 );
}
fd = open( argv[1], O_CREAT | O_WRONLY );
if( fd < 0 ) {
printf( "Couldn't open file.\n" );
exit( 1 );
}
lseek( fd, 1073741824, SEEK_SET );
write( fd, "x", 1 );
close( fd );
return 0;
}
Share that directory with DC and enjoy.
Nobody made you purchase that domain. Purchasing a domain puts your information into a public database. You knew that when you did it.
Personally, I think Whois is important. I've had problems with other network sites before as a systems admin, and needed whois to locate the responsible person on the other end. RP records work only if you can get to their DNS server. Yes, it gets abused, but the benefit outweighs the costs IMO.
A good portion of his article was over-riding the Scheduler interrupt vector to give control to his driver > 100HZ. Is there any better way to do this, since it seems like this method is a little suspect (And multiple drivers using this technique might not work together.)
I'm developing a driver for a bit of cheap hardware that unloads a high-frequency counter onto the host processor and needs to be serviced at about 30kHZ.
Here's why electronic voting is a bad idea. Quite frankly, I prefer a paper ballot trail that can be audited by hand, either scantron or punchcards even if it means I have to drive to a polling place for a half hour once every 365 days. It's more of a bother to get my hair cut than to vote.
Reading the article, I got the impression they were talking about changing from flat-rate hosting to commissions on retailers that connect through AT&T, not charging retailers a commission on sales by an AT&T subscriber (which would be unenforceable).
IOW, if Amazon.com has a link direct to AT&T's backbone, instead of paying a flat fee for the line, they'd pay based on traffic and sales through that line. They're not going to charge Amazon just because you bought a book and you're an @home subscriber.
It still sounds like a dumb idea though. I imagine this would require retailers to check which pipe an order came through, and AT&T to audit that information.
What we've aparently got now is ICANN creating a horde of mega-squatters who can afford it. And now that we've finally gotten control of the registry away from NSI, we're going to have a whole bunch of little registrar monopolies shooting up offering domains under their space. (Excepting those that just want it to have their own TLD just for them). You can bet that they aren't going to be as competitive as the ones offering .[net|org|com] are right now.
The big companies will just buy company.*, which defeats the point. If you actually manage to buy Microsoft.sux before they do, they'll just sue you into oblivion anyway.
Lastly, there's alot of software out there that validates hostnames by some pretty specific rules. 4+ character TLDs with dashes and numbers are going to break all that. Are the companies that just bought .my1st-tld going to pay me for the time it takes to fix those checks in my company's software?
Excessive modularity is often the downfall of major software products.
Didn't I already call you out once on this stupid view the other day? Aparently you have a problem with reading comprehension.
I guess I will sit around and wait for my subpoena.
Good luck. I put a C version up on my page and on Freshmeat over a week and a half ago, and still haven't gotten a letter.
Has anyone gotten a cease-and-desist letter from these clowns after the first wave?
When I begin coding software, I will keep modularity to a minimum
And the next month when it comes time to fix it or add a new feature, you'll change your mind. I'm curently in the process of evaluating code that was written 3 months ago for a web site with no thought to style or modularity, and the end result is the entire thing is getting tossed and redone from scratch, at a not insignificant cost in time and resources. If you think you're going to write code without regard to any accepted software engineering principles, you're an idiot.
Windows has the same library dependency problems you attribute to Linux, it just hides it slightly better at times, and makes it worse at other times. Remember trying to track 4 versions of slightly different VBRUNx00.DLL? Or how installing certain versions of Word just happen to change various system DLLs that break Netscape in new and interesting ways?