Why not switch to XPath for personal GUIDs? For example///[/address]/, etc...and when it's time, prefixing///... is easy enough.
As far as the Spam issue many have brought up, I don't think security through obscurity is ever going to be adequate protection so worrying about the public registry of IDs seems like a waste of time- the evil marketers will only either derive your ID via brute force or buy the ID from somebody else. Using finer grained sender authentication at the user level (combined with cryptographic certificates for sender identity assurance) would seem to me to be the appropriate solution.
I realize that's what they're selling but it doesn't have to be like that. They chose to use a shared leg vice switched leg model when they rolled out their infrastructure.
Regardless of the technical details, the only broadband ISP in my region isn't capable of delivering even 50% of their advertised bandwidth and there's absolutely no difference in performance between their tiered level of services despite charing a premium for the higher bandwidths. I tracked their default tier & highest level over the course of 1 year and so no difference in the average bandwidth. I would like to see some sort of regulation come to bear on this matter because consumers in rural areas are getting hosed.
"Nothing less than the reinvention of today’s communications networks" may just be the Internet Era equivalent of "New & Improved !!" ie. marketing lingo. It might be more recognizable as such if it were in a garish colored star burst on their product packaging. Maybe after it graduates from the "good intentions phase" of their R&D to something more tangible we can discuss how revolutionary it actually is. I know I'll stay tuned.:-D
I'd be happy enough if the ISPs were held accountable for delivering advertised bandwidth when they're not throttling. Does ANYBODY get advertised performance from ANY ISP? Most of 'em tell you up front they won't guarantee bandwidth. To provide some context, my whining comes to you today from the middle of Rural America- an area seriously neglected by the broadband industry.
Garnering majority market share may be a given but making a profit at it is is not and should be considered an independent variable. They spend a metric-butt-ton of money on marketing getting the market share AND they subsidize costs of entry (and even consumer costs; ie. selling a STB below cost) with other parts of the empire (ie. making a profit on titles when they sell a STB cost). While your evidence is compelling, it supports the former case (market lead) and not the latter (profitability).
I wish I was in a position where I didn't have to fix my strategic mistakes. It sure would be a nice a nice world if we didn't have to make mistakes and could call anything difficult a "non-starter."
As one firmly in the Camp *Nix, I do prefer free SW as in $0 because well, I like getting free stuff and especially good free stuff. I have not, do not & will not begrudge organizations that choose to make a profit creating software. I would like to add a few comments though: Commercial organizations often have an agenda which conflicts with best interest of their customers. These same entities often muddy the waters a bit when it comes to the use of the word "create," often using it in lieu of "beg", "borrow", or "steal." They also have a tasty habit of bringing politics to the table as means to give themselves an unfair advantage over their FOSS counterparts. This is not healthy competition. FOSS organizations are almost always nearly transparent. You see the code, you see the dialog. Anybody that wants to can look at the code, can look at the comments, can read the threads between users and contributors. It's pretty tough to have any sort of hidden agenda in this type of environment. Nothing wrong with somebody trying to build a business (& profit) around the creation of value as long as they're actually creating value, don't stifle healthy competition and have the best interest of their customers in mind.
While we're on the subject, I'd like sales people to be readily recognizable as well. Perhaps a red S emblazoned on their forehead with a red-hot branding iron.
My experience with the latest version of Chrome on Ubuntu 9.10 & PCLinuxOS 2009 (.10?) has been an enjoyable one. I've had no problems with Flash and use an ad blocking extension & Firebug (which I like better than Firebug in Firebox).
No need to beat the dead horse, but yes, it's sooo much more responsive than other browsers and the efficient use of screen real estate appeals to me as well.
I think the most significant thing about the article is that it was written; assuming it was written because there's whole new categories of users (both tech & non-tech) abandoning the USS MS who'd read such a distro-overview. I call that a good thing. I don't think this is too big an assumption either- judging by the average level of knowledge of new users showing up in Linux forums the last 6 months (ie. uninformed but eager). As much as it grates on me to see the most fundamental questions being asked (and in ways that make it obvious that not only has the poster not read any manuals but lacks a basic understanding of OS & networking theory), I am encouraged to see this shift and try to put out the welcome mat.
... and non-EU countries as well, such as the US. It's hard to make excuses for systems that contain corruption if there are corruption-free examples that are strong performers (speaking merely from a "systems" stand point).
Thank you, that's encouraging to hear. Hopefully the existence of the EU will encourage countries with questionable ethics to strive to be more like their EU peers that adhere to higher standards.
Out of curiosity, where does any one know where MS normally aims if not at improving performance?
Reminds me of sales people who being their spiel with "Can I be honest with you?" I've always wondered what they were being before if they feel they need to ask permission to be honest.
None the less- customers have been successfully purchased by business offering poor or questionable products & services for years. Hopefully, the Internet will eventually educate all consumers to the value propositions that are out there and improve transparency across the board so we don't have JUST the business with the deep pockets rising to the top.
As a periodic tourist of the EU, I'll grant you there's certainly more frowning going on in that neck of the woods. But I suspect there's actually just as much bribing going on in practice, if not more, relative to the US.
Developers make tactical & strategic errors, entire companies do the same and sometimes the response is poorly handled when either is caught... yadda, yadda, yadda. Let's not dwell on a common-place phenomenon inherent to humans. What causes me the most concern is the QA/QC that should catch this sort of thing is failing. That's the larger problem to me. What buffoon, and presumably somebody senior was responsible for oversight of the review process, was responsible for looking at a tracking-pixel based mechanism and letting it pass muster? What other responsibilities does this joker have in Redmond?
It's not the cheapest but the Phenom Quad Cores can actually rip a DVD and play hi-def off the hard drive at the same time. I put together a box based on one of these for around $400 (4 Gb RAM + 1 TB storage + DVD drive, used on-board everything else cause it was good 'nuf). If you've got a monster DVD collection you're looking to rip to HD it's all about how many DVDs you can feed it every night without cutting into "theater hours."
We switched from M0n0wall to PFsense (a fork of the BSD-based M0n0) because PFsense supported aggregation. Our experience has been very positive. We aggregate two biz class Comcast 50 Mb (down) x 10 Mb (up) (& eventually will include a Verizon T-1) on an COTS PC stuffed with server grade NICs. The PC is driveless and boots off a USB. Rock Solid, out of pocket expense ~$400 for the Lenovo PC but you could probably find a much cheaper hardware platform.
Cheap camera promote child pornography, cheap lighters promote arson, and holy crap- what about cheap pens?! Are we absolutely positive the general public needs access to the wheel and the lever? Perhaps we should think more about that as well.
I believe one of the significant factors that's driving this is the laptop & net-book crowd. They (we) shutdown the unit as often as possible to conserve battery life and often want to fire it up just to check e-mail or make a phone call.
I've done a token amount of cross-platform work and will say that the recompiling your own code for a different target CPU is the "easy" part (relatively)- it's the retooling the code for different desktop widgets that can be a back-breaker. Cross-platform widget libraries exist but aren't always used, used well, or received well.
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Why not switch to XPath for personal GUIDs? For example ///[/address]/, etc...and when it's time, prefixing ///... is easy enough.
As far as the Spam issue many have brought up, I don't think security through obscurity is ever going to be adequate protection so worrying about the public registry of IDs seems like a waste of time- the evil marketers will only either derive your ID via brute force or buy the ID from somebody else. Using finer grained sender authentication at the user level (combined with cryptographic certificates for sender identity assurance) would seem to me to be the appropriate solution.
I realize that's what they're selling but it doesn't have to be like that. They chose to use a shared leg vice switched leg model when they rolled out their infrastructure.
Regardless of the technical details, the only broadband ISP in my region isn't capable of delivering even 50% of their advertised bandwidth and there's absolutely no difference in performance between their tiered level of services despite charing a premium for the higher bandwidths. I tracked their default tier & highest level over the course of 1 year and so no difference in the average bandwidth. I would like to see some sort of regulation come to bear on this matter because consumers in rural areas are getting hosed.
I didn't see a radix so I'm assuming decimal.
Hey! It's impolite to ask pointed questions when a company is trying to boost brand reputation (or shareholder morale)!
"Nothing less than the reinvention of today’s communications networks" may just be the Internet Era equivalent of "New & Improved !!" ie. marketing lingo. It might be more recognizable as such if it were in a garish colored star burst on their product packaging. Maybe after it graduates from the "good intentions phase" of their R&D to something more tangible we can discuss how revolutionary it actually is. I know I'll stay tuned. :-D
I'd be happy enough if the ISPs were held accountable for delivering advertised bandwidth when they're not throttling. Does ANYBODY get advertised performance from ANY ISP? Most of 'em tell you up front they won't guarantee bandwidth. To provide some context, my whining comes to you today from the middle of Rural America- an area seriously neglected by the broadband industry.
Garnering majority market share may be a given but making a profit at it is is not and should be considered an independent variable. They spend a metric-butt-ton of money on marketing getting the market share AND they subsidize costs of entry (and even consumer costs; ie. selling a STB below cost) with other parts of the empire (ie. making a profit on titles when they sell a STB cost). While your evidence is compelling, it supports the former case (market lead) and not the latter (profitability).
I wish I was in a position where I didn't have to fix my strategic mistakes. It sure would be a nice a nice world if we didn't have to make mistakes and could call anything difficult a "non-starter."
As one firmly in the Camp *Nix, I do prefer free SW as in $0 because well, I like getting free stuff and especially good free stuff. I have not, do not & will not begrudge organizations that choose to make a profit creating software. I would like to add a few comments though: Commercial organizations often have an agenda which conflicts with best interest of their customers. These same entities often muddy the waters a bit when it comes to the use of the word "create," often using it in lieu of "beg", "borrow", or "steal." They also have a tasty habit of bringing politics to the table as means to give themselves an unfair advantage over their FOSS counterparts. This is not healthy competition. FOSS organizations are almost always nearly transparent. You see the code, you see the dialog. Anybody that wants to can look at the code, can look at the comments, can read the threads between users and contributors. It's pretty tough to have any sort of hidden agenda in this type of environment. Nothing wrong with somebody trying to build a business (& profit) around the creation of value as long as they're actually creating value, don't stifle healthy competition and have the best interest of their customers in mind.
While we're on the subject, I'd like sales people to be readily recognizable as well. Perhaps a red S emblazoned on their forehead with a red-hot branding iron.
Some would argue that there are currently market-leading OSes still in Beta.
My experience with the latest version of Chrome on Ubuntu 9.10 & PCLinuxOS 2009 (.10?) has been an enjoyable one. I've had no problems with Flash and use an ad blocking extension & Firebug (which I like better than Firebug in Firebox). No need to beat the dead horse, but yes, it's sooo much more responsive than other browsers and the efficient use of screen real estate appeals to me as well.
I think the most significant thing about the article is that it was written; assuming it was written because there's whole new categories of users (both tech & non-tech) abandoning the USS MS who'd read such a distro-overview. I call that a good thing. I don't think this is too big an assumption either- judging by the average level of knowledge of new users showing up in Linux forums the last 6 months (ie. uninformed but eager). As much as it grates on me to see the most fundamental questions being asked (and in ways that make it obvious that not only has the poster not read any manuals but lacks a basic understanding of OS & networking theory), I am encouraged to see this shift and try to put out the welcome mat.
MS switching that Windows dialog box we all love so much from blue to black may just be a green thing.
'cause, you know- a black CRT uses less energy.
... and non-EU countries as well, such as the US. It's hard to make excuses for systems that contain corruption if there are corruption-free examples that are strong performers (speaking merely from a "systems" stand point).
Thank you, that's encouraging to hear. Hopefully the existence of the EU will encourage countries with questionable ethics to strive to be more like their EU peers that adhere to higher standards.
Out of curiosity, where does any one know where MS normally aims if not at improving performance?
Reminds me of sales people who being their spiel with "Can I be honest with you?" I've always wondered what they were being before if they feel they need to ask permission to be honest.
None the less- customers have been successfully purchased by business offering poor or questionable products & services for years. Hopefully, the Internet will eventually educate all consumers to the value propositions that are out there and improve transparency across the board so we don't have JUST the business with the deep pockets rising to the top.
As a periodic tourist of the EU, I'll grant you there's certainly more frowning going on in that neck of the woods. But I suspect there's actually just as much bribing going on in practice, if not more, relative to the US.
Developers make tactical & strategic errors, entire companies do the same and sometimes the response is poorly handled when either is caught ... yadda, yadda, yadda. Let's not dwell on a common-place phenomenon inherent to humans. What causes me the most concern is the QA/QC that should catch this sort of thing is failing. That's the larger problem to me. What buffoon, and presumably somebody senior was responsible for oversight of the review process, was responsible for looking at a tracking-pixel based mechanism and letting it pass muster? What other responsibilities does this joker have in Redmond?
It's not the cheapest but the Phenom Quad Cores can actually rip a DVD and play hi-def off the hard drive at the same time. I put together a box based on one of these for around $400 (4 Gb RAM + 1 TB storage + DVD drive, used on-board everything else cause it was good 'nuf). If you've got a monster DVD collection you're looking to rip to HD it's all about how many DVDs you can feed it every night without cutting into "theater hours."
We switched from M0n0wall to PFsense (a fork of the BSD-based M0n0) because PFsense supported aggregation. Our experience has been very positive. We aggregate two biz class Comcast 50 Mb (down) x 10 Mb (up) (& eventually will include a Verizon T-1) on an COTS PC stuffed with server grade NICs. The PC is driveless and boots off a USB. Rock Solid, out of pocket expense ~$400 for the Lenovo PC but you could probably find a much cheaper hardware platform.
Cheap camera promote child pornography, cheap lighters promote arson, and holy crap- what about cheap pens?! Are we absolutely positive the general public needs access to the wheel and the lever? Perhaps we should think more about that as well.
I believe one of the significant factors that's driving this is the laptop & net-book crowd. They (we) shutdown the unit as often as possible to conserve battery life and often want to fire it up just to check e-mail or make a phone call.
I've done a token amount of cross-platform work and will say that the recompiling your own code for a different target CPU is the "easy" part (relatively)- it's the retooling the code for different desktop widgets that can be a back-breaker. Cross-platform widget libraries exist but aren't always used, used well, or received well.