That whole scuffle was Israel versus Iran-By-Proxy.
Yeah, obviously.
Personally, I love how the arabs can stand on the pile of rubble that used to be their infrastructure and shout "we won!"
Um... Notice how very few Israelis are actually disagreeing with that assesment? Victory isn't making piles of rubble. If you look at the larger picture, this was a victory for Hezbollah without a doubt.
The Israeli military is supposed to be one of the best in the world. They've fought a number of nations around them and absolutely trounced them. There was no way Hezbollah, some rag-tag little militia, was supposed to be able to stand up the IDF. When this conflict started, initiated by Hezbollah when the kidnapped those soldiers, Israel was brimming with confidence, setting their explicit goal as the removal of Hezbollah from southern lebanon.
Well that's not even close to what happened, now is it?
What happened is that Israel got hit very hard. They lost a lot of soldiers, and worse a lot of tanks. Their Merkavas are the most heavily armored tanks in the world and double as troop carriers to boot, but they got wasted by shaped charge mines and a more modern version of the classic Russian RPG. With good tactics and planning, Hezbollah was able to fight the ground forces of Israel to a standstill, taking what is for a guerilla conflict a very good ratio of casualties.
Sure, Israel destroyed a lot of infrastructure with a little "shock and awe" air power. Doesn't really do much other than harm the citizenry and piss them off. In the end, Israel couldn't do what mattered, and that's occupy the land that was and still is controlled by Hezbollah.
Make no bones about it. Hezbollah lured Israel into a fight at the time and place of their choosing, handed Israel an unexpected spanking, and sent them packing without giving up much of anything. They're stronger than ever now, both in terms of their support level and in terms of morale. The Arab underdogs beat the big bad Zionist bully, and you better believe others noticed. This little war is going to be studied for a long time, both to refine and improve the techniques used by Hezbollah, and to figure out how to counter them. At the strategic level, this was a stunning victory for Hezbollah and all the nations/groups that oppose Israel. It would be very foolish to view it otherwise.
Dumbest. Culture. Ever. And that's saying something on this silly planet.
Which? The one that declares victory standing on the rubble that used to be their infrastructure? Or the one that thinks whoever makes the most piles of rubble out of infrastructure wins?
As opposed to having X machine-gun militias or Y bazzoka militias reporting sucessfull application of ammo to target?
Kill confirmation is a tricky thing, and even our military usually has to send someone by later after the smoke has cleared to confirm that the target was hit. For a guerilla army anti-tank unit, sticking around long enough to make this determination would be foolish, if not suicidal. If you can intercept the enemy's communication, then let them figure out how many of them you took out while you head for safety.
Of course they probably counted themselves as best they could as well, and I doubt they were intercepting all Israeli communication. The reason Hezbollah said they had killed such and such before Israel admitted it is simply because Israel didn't want to admit it. Besides as far as their PR goes a "suspected" kill was as good as the real thing. So yeah, I agree there's no real mystery there.
Your ISP *does* suck if it uses backbone C and can't be bothered to iron out the issues or switch to a different backbone.
But the ISP may not be -- probably isn't -- connected directly to the major backbones, and instead connects to a local backbone, which will pass on to one of the large backbones, which then connects to backbone C.
Why should I expect my ISP to fix problems involving this provider they have nothing to do with? And every other entity that handles the packet between here and wherever it's going? That's the whole problem: By distinguishing based on where a packet originates from (not just who the nearest neighbor handing it off was), you create a necessity for an exponential amount of "business deals" where "business deals" == "extortion money".
The Myth of Second Hand Smoke claims that inhaling smoke from somebody else's tobacco is at least as dangerous as being a smoker, if not more so.
That's retarded. Of course directly inhaling smoke from a cigarette is worse than getting it second hand. The "Myth of Second Hand Smoke" is that second-hand smoke is significantly dangerous.
In that report, a study was made of a large number of households with two adults, one a smoker, one not. It was found that the percentage of smokers in the study that developed lung/throat cancers was significantly higher than that of the non-smokers. If The Myth of Second Hand Smoke were true, that relationship would either not have existed or have been reversed.
Again, that's retarded. Nobody expects there to be more incidents of lung cancer among the non-smokers. If the "Myth of Second Hand Smoke" were true, then the percentage of non-smokers in the smokers households who developed lung/throat cancers would be much higher than non-smokers in non-smoking households. But by your description of the study, there wasn't a control group in which households with no smokers were studied, and thus the critical metric was not even examined. Which means that this study that allegedly disproves the danger of second hand smoke is bad pseudo-science, and your misrepresntation of the real claims about second hand smoke and the conclusions of this study are intentional lies.
1) Wouldn't do anything for bombers or other delivery methods. 2) Would forever close off space exploration, thereby stranding us here and cutting us off from sending out probes, etc.
The worst thing is, some considered the second a small price to pay to guarantee their safety.
To me the worst thing is that they'd make the decision to sacrifice access to space for safety... but then completely ignore point #1, meaning they aren't sacrificing access to space for safety, but for an illusion of safety.
Now wait a minute. Venus was a beta product. Pre-beta, really. Alpha. A test bed, if you will, to try out ideas and see what worked. Some things worked, and some didn't, and we learned a lot from that experience. We've worked the kinks out, debugged it, you know? Now what I've got here for you today is the final, finished product. This is version 1.0. Guaranteed* to work right the first time!
* Not guaranteed, and no warranty express or implied is granted, including merchantability or fitness for purpose. May turn your planet into Venus. Please don't read this.
The real news is that this made it into the news. Not because it isn't news worthy but because it only makes sense to maintain a shroud of ignorance once you have actually cracked a channel of communication thus instilling your enemies with a false sense of security.
The most likely explanation then would be that Israel had already figured out their communications had been compromised, and that Hezbollah in turn figured out what Israel figured out. At that point the best thing to do is to make the shared knowledge public for PR and morale purposes.
Hezbollah may not be a regular army, but they showed enough savy and sophistication during the conflict that I doubt they would give up the advantage of being able to hear Israel's communication.
For instance during World War II, even after the allies had broken a German code or devised a method to figure out that day's cipher string, they would still go about their routine of acting like they didn't know what the Germans were going to do.
Yes, I remember this in the Pacific too, with a carrier battle (Midway I think) where we knew from intercepted communications exactly where the Japanese fleet was, but we first flew a recon plane near enough to the fleet to be seen so it would appear as if we just "accidentally" ran into them in the middle of the ocean. We sacrificed some element of surprise to maintain the illusion that their codes were secure.
Also there were U.S. codes that were compromised by the Japanese, but in this case we knew it. We used these codes to send messages we wanted the Japanese intercept and read, and would gauge their reactions in messages we intercepted from them to improve our intelligence.
You may think that I'm nitpicking, but that is precisely the difference that needs to be understood.
Not really, now that I get what your complaint is. See, I wasn't assuming that C had a normal business relationship with A or B. C was simply supposed to be a backbone provide in the middle of the net, which your packets will certainly cross several of on their way across the globe. It was a poor choice in wording that implied a relationship where it wasn't intended.
Your B is connected to your C, which means they have a business relationship. If C doesn't get enough money from B and therefore throttles packets with destination B, then that is not an issue of net neutrality or not. It's business as usual.
Then insert back bone provider D, E, and F into the line as necessary until the point gets through.
But the easiest way to make my example work for you would be to make the discrimination based on the target, e.g. Google, who only has a relationship with B and not C.
How about waiting to see if there actually is a problem? Right now there is nothing to fix. Nobody has implemented tiered service yet. Nobody has targeted packets to slow them down yet.
Yes, yet. Are you implying that therefore the ISPs might not actually want to? Then why are they fighting so hard against net neutrality? It certainly isn't because they're averse to government regulation, seeing as how that's why most of them exist as localized monopolies! There's clearly a desire to implement tiered services, and to target packets to slow them down. They will do it, it is only a matter of time.
Personally, I prefer to fix issues before they become a problem. Kinda like fixing your tire design before the first SUV flips over. But waiting until the obvious problem actually bites you in the ass sure is the typical market way of dealing with things.
I say at least let the market try first (may or may not work), then if an actual problem arises, try regulation.
I'd be interested to hear how it could work. Where's the market incentive? As I was pointing out, it's not like end users can actually affect anything, assuming they can even tell what is going on.
Once regulation starts, it's only going to get more pervasive. There is a good chance that regulation will be worse than the problems that may arise without it.
There's already regulation. Regulation is why the internet exists in the first place. Internet is better than no internet, and net neutrality is better than no net neutrality. Even if the legislation that brings it about has its own negative side effects. The balkanization of the internet is a terrible problem. I do not see a good chance that even particularly bad legislation would be worse, so long as it enforced neutrality.
That's the way it is and that's the way it should be. The backbone providers provide service to other providers, and they do it for money.
Um, yes, they sell the service for money. That's not what I was saying. I was saying that the backbone provider would throttle your packets across their backbone because the target network hadn't payed the extortion money. Everyone involved has payed for their bandwidth, but because ISP B didn't pay more for "QOS", your packet gets delayed.
Google doesn't buy bandwidth from your ISP. They pay for access to "the backbone" and your ISP does the same.
I'd be willing to bet that Google does not pay for access to "the backbone", they probably buy bandwidth from an ISP, who in turn has an agreement with the backbone provider, just like mine does. In fact, there are probably several providers in between my ISP and Google's, but I was trying to keep the example simple.
It's really the same as the end-user provider case. The point is you can hold hostage any user who is on the other side of your network and extort money from ISPs who want to be able to deliver good service to them.
"Internet" is when that communication is "best effort": If you can transport the packet, you do transport it. That is what net neutrality wants to codify and end-user providers would like to change.
Yes, that's the concept. If my wording did not imply that to you, then that's miscommunication.
No, the problem is that it doesn't really matter if you switch ISPs if your packets still have to travel through networks owned by other ISPs that alter policies based on packet source.
In other words, you are on the west coast with ISP A. The server you want to talk to is on the east cost with ISP B. Backbone provider C sits in the middle, and your packets want to cross over their network. C decides that B hasn't payed them enough money, and thus slows down packets to and from B that cross over C.
From your end, it looks like service is degraded and your ISP sucks. What do you do? Switch ISPs? It won't help if you still have to cross C to get to B. So there's really no way to "vote with your dollars" in this case -- as if that would work anyway, because like I said you won't know the root cause.
Network neutrality is a basic part of the net's design. So basic nobody thought to codify it until it became clear that certain money grubbers want to eliminate it. Sorry GP, but regulation is the only way to fix this problem.
I have little doubt that Nintendo recouped their R&D cost for the GC before the $99 price drop. The system simply isn't that sophsticated. The Wii might be different, though, since it has such a wildly different controler design.
*shrug* That's how I feel too, but then the AC called that into question, and suddenly my geeky need for facts kicked in. However I don't care enough to actually go searching for them, knowing they may be impossible to find (a breakdown between N's portable and home console units' profitability, that is. Might be in an SEC filing, might not).
It was probably based on complaints and testing. If it was completely made up, it wouldn't rise in popularity. It's like stereotypes - you might not like them, but there's SOME basis in fact. Or else it would never catch on.
No, stereotypes are usually based in total ignorance, and catch on because others are also completely ignorant and don't know any better.
Similarly, the conclusion that "if it was completely made up, it wouldn't rise in popularity" is also falacious. I think the vast majority of entries at snopes.com would disagree with you.
Well, I knew they sold the GC above what it cost to make, the question at issue was whether they actually recouped all of their R&D costs, making the GC as a whole a profitable venture. The "operating income" metric they look at in the article only covers operating expenses, not R&D expenses.
Your mistake is using the logic, "These machines have security issues; therefore, they must be designed that way." That's fallacious, not to mention not provable, as is the subsequent assertion that since they MUST be designing them as insecure, one side must be benefiting since there's no reason to do it unless one side benefits more.
That isn't the logic. The logic is: These machines have a hundred times more security issues than very similar devices made by the same company, security issues that the company has been repeatedly made aware of themselves but refused to fix, issues that have never even come up in their more secure devices but suddenly appeared in voting machines, therefore these multitudenous security issues cannot be merely due to incompetence and ignorance alone.
That's the logic. No, it can't be proven unless we find a document from a Diebold exec telling the engineers to add in failure modes, though we already know from documents that security and reliability have been deprioritized in a way that would never fly in their ATM division.
I just grabbed the first couple examples of ATM vulnerabilities I came across. Remember, since I'm not actually a spinmaster or political operative, I don't devote my life to proving that other things might be just as shoddily designed as e-voting systems. Also, ATMs are much more mature and have had much greater demands placed on them by their corporate banking users. E-voting systems have had no similar such requirements or scrutiny, allowing the ugly entropy of laziness and bureaucracy to create the crap we have today.
It's not like a voting machine is a completely different beast than an ATM, they're actually quite similar, which is why ATM makers started moving into that market. If anything the voting machine should have benefited from all the development and extensive demands placed by the banking industry on ATMs. Instead there's no sign of any of that learning, no matter how simple. Yet give me a week with a Diebold ATM and its source code, and I'd give you a voting machine better than the crap Diebold made itself.
Obviously the tolerance for such crappy machines is a contributing factor. If the requirements for a valid voting machine, oft enumerated here on/., were the actual government requirements, then it would matter little whether Diebold's shitty machines got that way on purpose or on accident -- the voter would either see their ballot correctly printed before they drop it in the box, or they wouldn't. However instead we are allowed to have a black box that we must believe has stored the correct number of votes (since there's no way to prove otherwise; again, an obvious lesson from ATMs goes unheeded).
And what has been Diebold's response every time the issue of having a printed paper ballot has been brought up by officials? Has it been "too expensive"? No. Has it been "too difficult/error prone"? No. It has been "not necessary".
So while they clearly must understand the benefit of printed records to verifying the result of an electronic device, they continue to deny that such a thing would be useful for veryfing the result of an electronic device... as long as that device is a voting machine.
That sounds pretty deliberate to me. For whatever reason, they do not want to have a verifiable paper trail following their machines around.
I do agree, though, that even if the machines themselves met some definition of "secure" that satisfied a particular person or group, there would still be people claiming fraud. And maybe in some places there would be. But all that aside, if some groups of people are NEVER willing to trust our electoral process, what will solve that problem?
Who cares what the lunatic fringe thinks when right now no rational person can call these machines secure? Yes, there will always be some group who finds our electoral process untrustworthy. That isn't the point. The point is that, right now, our electoral process is untrustworthy.
Microsoft is trying to build a brand with gamers for the express purpose of making a profit. They knew up front that xbox 1 was going to be a net loss in the end, but what they were buying was mind/market-share. That was true for xbox 1, but you can be sure that they're going to do everything they can with the 360 to make a profit. What good is building a brand if it doesn't result in making you more money?
Sure, Microsoft is going to try to make money. It isn't clear to me that they actually expect to make money this time around. They may be happy with having a smaller (say < $1 bill) loss, and further establishing themselves in the market, in order to have a truly profitable 3rd console. As MS was saying with the Xbox, they are in the console market for the long haul. With their Windows/Office monopoly warchest, they can certainly afford to bide their time. If the Big N lost $2 bill on the GC, we probably wouldn't be hearing about the Wii. With Microsoft, it was all part of the plan.
There's more for microsoft here than just making money from consoles. They're looking at the entire home entertainment market, and the DVD format wars, and the xbox is playing a strategic role here (though a less blatant one than the ps3). This is part of why I think they're willing to continue taking a loss on console sales, since for them it's just a sunk cost against the incredibly lucrative future of owning the living room.
The HARDWARE costs nets them a profit, they still have R&D costs though.
Right, right. So they have to do well enough to recoup their R&D cost. The reason why having a for-profit hardware console is important is that it means the very first sale of their console starts paying off that R&D cost. This is why they were able to make all their money back and them some despite the "failure" that was the Gamecube. If they had tried selling their console at a loss, like Microsoft, then they would most likely have ended up losing money overall, again like Microsoft.
Instead, they made money. And that was on what was possibly the least exciting most "me-too" Nintendo console ever.
David Koresh's cult didn't get in any trouble until it was thought that they were breaking laws. The existence of the cult itself was not illegal. If you rape children, force people to commit "suicide", or don't pay your taxes, Uncle Sam will come after you. Other than that, they don't really care. Sure, you can say there may be some aspect of some religion that is illegal and that it shouldn't be -- multiple wives, use of mind-altering substances, whatever -- but it isn't the religion itself that is illegal. Raeliens, despite being considered a cooky cult, have not been arrested simply for being Raelien.
That's the difference. In China, being a member of a certain religion, regardless of not having committed any other crime, is illegal.
Now I'm not one to appologize for the U.S., and I think "better than China" is damning with faint praise, but this really is a fundamental difference between the two nations.
The Possible Future, Nov 4th, 2008 "While exit polls conducted by our station and others showed Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain neck-in-neck at nearly 50% in this highly contested state of Ohio, initial results from available precincts shows the winner of the state, and thus the country, as Osama bin Laden, with 107% of the vote. A tape allegedly featuring Mr. bin Laden was broadcast by the al Jazeera network just minutes ago, in which the terrorist mastermind said he was pleased by the clear mandate the capitalist pig masses had given him, and that he hoped his transition from a cave somewhere in Pakistan to the Oval Office would go smoothly. Back to you, Tom."
So how do I find entry-level employment as a programmer when I live in northeast Indiana?
It was "crappy under-paying" programming jobs that I was talking about. And I don't know, but he managed to find entry-level programming jobs in SW Michigan, so it is possible.
Well, if they're like my stepfather, who never got a degree, they get crappy under-paying jobs until they've got enough work experience to get someone to look past their education. Then they discover that despite having no formal education this person is an amazing programmer, and start paying him shed loads of money in order to keep him around.
Well, there's really two points to a programming/engineering internship: 1) Cheap labor. For basic programming jobs, an intern isn't necessarily any worse than a full-timer, but is a heck of a lot cheaper. 2) Extended interview. You get to know a potential future employee better than you ever could in an interview, and get them up to speed on what you do should you later hire them. For this reason, it's an especially bad idea to have interns fetching coffee or they won't be interested in coming back full time.
Slashdot Mirror
That whole scuffle was Israel versus Iran-By-Proxy.
Yeah, obviously.
Personally, I love how the arabs can stand on the pile of rubble that used to be their infrastructure and shout "we won!"
Um... Notice how very few Israelis are actually disagreeing with that assesment? Victory isn't making piles of rubble. If you look at the larger picture, this was a victory for Hezbollah without a doubt.
The Israeli military is supposed to be one of the best in the world. They've fought a number of nations around them and absolutely trounced them. There was no way Hezbollah, some rag-tag little militia, was supposed to be able to stand up the IDF. When this conflict started, initiated by Hezbollah when the kidnapped those soldiers, Israel was brimming with confidence, setting their explicit goal as the removal of Hezbollah from southern lebanon.
Well that's not even close to what happened, now is it?
What happened is that Israel got hit very hard. They lost a lot of soldiers, and worse a lot of tanks. Their Merkavas are the most heavily armored tanks in the world and double as troop carriers to boot, but they got wasted by shaped charge mines and a more modern version of the classic Russian RPG. With good tactics and planning, Hezbollah was able to fight the ground forces of Israel to a standstill, taking what is for a guerilla conflict a very good ratio of casualties.
Sure, Israel destroyed a lot of infrastructure with a little "shock and awe" air power. Doesn't really do much other than harm the citizenry and piss them off. In the end, Israel couldn't do what mattered, and that's occupy the land that was and still is controlled by Hezbollah.
Make no bones about it. Hezbollah lured Israel into a fight at the time and place of their choosing, handed Israel an unexpected spanking, and sent them packing without giving up much of anything. They're stronger than ever now, both in terms of their support level and in terms of morale. The Arab underdogs beat the big bad Zionist bully, and you better believe others noticed. This little war is going to be studied for a long time, both to refine and improve the techniques used by Hezbollah, and to figure out how to counter them. At the strategic level, this was a stunning victory for Hezbollah and all the nations/groups that oppose Israel. It would be very foolish to view it otherwise.
Dumbest. Culture. Ever. And that's saying something on this silly planet.
Which? The one that declares victory standing on the rubble that used to be their infrastructure? Or the one that thinks whoever makes the most piles of rubble out of infrastructure wins?
As opposed to having X machine-gun militias or Y bazzoka militias reporting sucessfull application of ammo to target?
Kill confirmation is a tricky thing, and even our military usually has to send someone by later after the smoke has cleared to confirm that the target was hit. For a guerilla army anti-tank unit, sticking around long enough to make this determination would be foolish, if not suicidal. If you can intercept the enemy's communication, then let them figure out how many of them you took out while you head for safety.
Of course they probably counted themselves as best they could as well, and I doubt they were intercepting all Israeli communication. The reason Hezbollah said they had killed such and such before Israel admitted it is simply because Israel didn't want to admit it. Besides as far as their PR goes a "suspected" kill was as good as the real thing. So yeah, I agree there's no real mystery there.
Your ISP *does* suck if it uses backbone C and can't be bothered to iron out the issues or switch to a different backbone.
But the ISP may not be -- probably isn't -- connected directly to the major backbones, and instead connects to a local backbone, which will pass on to one of the large backbones, which then connects to backbone C.
Why should I expect my ISP to fix problems involving this provider they have nothing to do with? And every other entity that handles the packet between here and wherever it's going? That's the whole problem: By distinguishing based on where a packet originates from (not just who the nearest neighbor handing it off was), you create a necessity for an exponential amount of "business deals" where "business deals" == "extortion money".
The Myth of Second Hand Smoke claims that inhaling smoke from somebody else's tobacco is at least as dangerous as being a smoker, if not more so.
That's retarded. Of course directly inhaling smoke from a cigarette is worse than getting it second hand. The "Myth of Second Hand Smoke" is that second-hand smoke is significantly dangerous.
In that report, a study was made of a large number of households with two adults, one a smoker, one not. It was found that the percentage of smokers in the study that developed lung/throat cancers was significantly higher than that of the non-smokers. If The Myth of Second Hand Smoke were true, that relationship would either not have existed or have been reversed.
Again, that's retarded. Nobody expects there to be more incidents of lung cancer among the non-smokers. If the "Myth of Second Hand Smoke" were true, then the percentage of non-smokers in the smokers households who developed lung/throat cancers would be much higher than non-smokers in non-smoking households. But by your description of the study, there wasn't a control group in which households with no smokers were studied, and thus the critical metric was not even examined. Which means that this study that allegedly disproves the danger of second hand smoke is bad pseudo-science, and your misrepresntation of the real claims about second hand smoke and the conclusions of this study are intentional lies.
1) Wouldn't do anything for bombers or other delivery methods.
2) Would forever close off space exploration, thereby stranding us here and cutting us off from sending out probes, etc.
The worst thing is, some considered the second a small price to pay to guarantee their safety.
To me the worst thing is that they'd make the decision to sacrifice access to space for safety... but then completely ignore point #1, meaning they aren't sacrificing access to space for safety, but for an illusion of safety.
Now wait a minute. Venus was a beta product. Pre-beta, really. Alpha. A test bed, if you will, to try out ideas and see what worked. Some things worked, and some didn't, and we learned a lot from that experience. We've worked the kinks out, debugged it, you know? Now what I've got here for you today is the final, finished product. This is version 1.0. Guaranteed* to work right the first time!
* Not guaranteed, and no warranty express or implied is granted, including merchantability or fitness for purpose. May turn your planet into Venus. Please don't read this.
The real news is that this made it into the news. Not because it isn't news worthy but because it only makes sense to maintain a shroud of ignorance once you have actually cracked a channel of communication thus instilling your enemies with a false sense of security.
The most likely explanation then would be that Israel had already figured out their communications had been compromised, and that Hezbollah in turn figured out what Israel figured out. At that point the best thing to do is to make the shared knowledge public for PR and morale purposes.
Hezbollah may not be a regular army, but they showed enough savy and sophistication during the conflict that I doubt they would give up the advantage of being able to hear Israel's communication.
For instance during World War II, even after the allies had broken a German code or devised a method to figure out that day's cipher string, they would still go about their routine of acting like they didn't know what the Germans were going to do.
Yes, I remember this in the Pacific too, with a carrier battle (Midway I think) where we knew from intercepted communications exactly where the Japanese fleet was, but we first flew a recon plane near enough to the fleet to be seen so it would appear as if we just "accidentally" ran into them in the middle of the ocean. We sacrificed some element of surprise to maintain the illusion that their codes were secure.
Also there were U.S. codes that were compromised by the Japanese, but in this case we knew it. We used these codes to send messages we wanted the Japanese intercept and read, and would gauge their reactions in messages we intercepted from them to improve our intelligence.
You may think that I'm nitpicking, but that is precisely the difference that needs to be understood.
Not really, now that I get what your complaint is. See, I wasn't assuming that C had a normal business relationship with A or B. C was simply supposed to be a backbone provide in the middle of the net, which your packets will certainly cross several of on their way across the globe. It was a poor choice in wording that implied a relationship where it wasn't intended.
Your B is connected to your C, which means they have a business relationship. If C doesn't get enough money from B and therefore throttles packets with destination B, then that is not an issue of net neutrality or not. It's business as usual.
Then insert back bone provider D, E, and F into the line as necessary until the point gets through.
But the easiest way to make my example work for you would be to make the discrimination based on the target, e.g. Google, who only has a relationship with B and not C.
Happy?
How about waiting to see if there actually is a problem? Right now there is nothing to fix. Nobody has implemented tiered service yet. Nobody has targeted packets to slow them down yet.
Yes, yet. Are you implying that therefore the ISPs might not actually want to? Then why are they fighting so hard against net neutrality? It certainly isn't because they're averse to government regulation, seeing as how that's why most of them exist as localized monopolies! There's clearly a desire to implement tiered services, and to target packets to slow them down. They will do it, it is only a matter of time.
Personally, I prefer to fix issues before they become a problem. Kinda like fixing your tire design before the first SUV flips over. But waiting until the obvious problem actually bites you in the ass sure is the typical market way of dealing with things.
I say at least let the market try first (may or may not work), then if an actual problem arises, try regulation.
I'd be interested to hear how it could work. Where's the market incentive? As I was pointing out, it's not like end users can actually affect anything, assuming they can even tell what is going on.
Once regulation starts, it's only going to get more pervasive. There is a good chance that regulation will be worse than the problems that may arise without it.
There's already regulation. Regulation is why the internet exists in the first place. Internet is better than no internet, and net neutrality is better than no net neutrality. Even if the legislation that brings it about has its own negative side effects. The balkanization of the internet is a terrible problem. I do not see a good chance that even particularly bad legislation would be worse, so long as it enforced neutrality.
That's the way it is and that's the way it should be. The backbone providers provide service to other providers, and they do it for money.
Um, yes, they sell the service for money. That's not what I was saying. I was saying that the backbone provider would throttle your packets across their backbone because the target network hadn't payed the extortion money. Everyone involved has payed for their bandwidth, but because ISP B didn't pay more for "QOS", your packet gets delayed.
Google doesn't buy bandwidth from your ISP. They pay for access to "the backbone" and your ISP does the same.
I'd be willing to bet that Google does not pay for access to "the backbone", they probably buy bandwidth from an ISP, who in turn has an agreement with the backbone provider, just like mine does. In fact, there are probably several providers in between my ISP and Google's, but I was trying to keep the example simple.
It's really the same as the end-user provider case. The point is you can hold hostage any user who is on the other side of your network and extort money from ISPs who want to be able to deliver good service to them.
"Internet" is when that communication is "best effort": If you can transport the packet, you do transport it. That is what net neutrality wants to codify and end-user providers would like to change.
Yes, that's the concept. If my wording did not imply that to you, then that's miscommunication.
No, the problem is that it doesn't really matter if you switch ISPs if your packets still have to travel through networks owned by other ISPs that alter policies based on packet source.
In other words, you are on the west coast with ISP A.
The server you want to talk to is on the east cost with ISP B.
Backbone provider C sits in the middle, and your packets want to cross over their network.
C decides that B hasn't payed them enough money, and thus slows down packets to and from B that cross over C.
From your end, it looks like service is degraded and your ISP sucks. What do you do? Switch ISPs? It won't help if you still have to cross C to get to B. So there's really no way to "vote with your dollars" in this case -- as if that would work anyway, because like I said you won't know the root cause.
Network neutrality is a basic part of the net's design. So basic nobody thought to codify it until it became clear that certain money grubbers want to eliminate it. Sorry GP, but regulation is the only way to fix this problem.
I have little doubt that Nintendo recouped their R&D cost for the GC before the $99 price drop. The system simply isn't that sophsticated. The Wii might be different, though, since it has such a wildly different controler design.
*shrug* That's how I feel too, but then the AC called that into question, and suddenly my geeky need for facts kicked in. However I don't care enough to actually go searching for them, knowing they may be impossible to find (a breakdown between N's portable and home console units' profitability, that is. Might be in an SEC filing, might not).
It was probably based on complaints and testing. If it was completely made up, it wouldn't rise in popularity. It's like stereotypes - you might not like them, but there's SOME basis in fact. Or else it would never catch on.
No, stereotypes are usually based in total ignorance, and catch on because others are also completely ignorant and don't know any better.
Similarly, the conclusion that "if it was completely made up, it wouldn't rise in popularity" is also falacious. I think the vast majority of entries at snopes.com would disagree with you.
Well, I knew they sold the GC above what it cost to make, the question at issue was whether they actually recouped all of their R&D costs, making the GC as a whole a profitable venture. The "operating income" metric they look at in the article only covers operating expenses, not R&D expenses.
Your mistake is using the logic, "These machines have security issues; therefore, they must be designed that way." That's fallacious, not to mention not provable, as is the subsequent assertion that since they MUST be designing them as insecure, one side must be benefiting since there's no reason to do it unless one side benefits more.
/., were the actual government requirements, then it would matter little whether Diebold's shitty machines got that way on purpose or on accident -- the voter would either see their ballot correctly printed before they drop it in the box, or they wouldn't. However instead we are allowed to have a black box that we must believe has stored the correct number of votes (since there's no way to prove otherwise; again, an obvious lesson from ATMs goes unheeded).
That isn't the logic. The logic is: These machines have a hundred times more security issues than very similar devices made by the same company, security issues that the company has been repeatedly made aware of themselves but refused to fix, issues that have never even come up in their more secure devices but suddenly appeared in voting machines, therefore these multitudenous security issues cannot be merely due to incompetence and ignorance alone.
That's the logic. No, it can't be proven unless we find a document from a Diebold exec telling the engineers to add in failure modes, though we already know from documents that security and reliability have been deprioritized in a way that would never fly in their ATM division.
I just grabbed the first couple examples of ATM vulnerabilities I came across. Remember, since I'm not actually a spinmaster or political operative, I don't devote my life to proving that other things might be just as shoddily designed as e-voting systems. Also, ATMs are much more mature and have had much greater demands placed on them by their corporate banking users. E-voting systems have had no similar such requirements or scrutiny, allowing the ugly entropy of laziness and bureaucracy to create the crap we have today.
It's not like a voting machine is a completely different beast than an ATM, they're actually quite similar, which is why ATM makers started moving into that market. If anything the voting machine should have benefited from all the development and extensive demands placed by the banking industry on ATMs. Instead there's no sign of any of that learning, no matter how simple. Yet give me a week with a Diebold ATM and its source code, and I'd give you a voting machine better than the crap Diebold made itself.
Obviously the tolerance for such crappy machines is a contributing factor. If the requirements for a valid voting machine, oft enumerated here on
And what has been Diebold's response every time the issue of having a printed paper ballot has been brought up by officials? Has it been "too expensive"? No. Has it been "too difficult/error prone"? No. It has been "not necessary".
So while they clearly must understand the benefit of printed records to verifying the result of an electronic device, they continue to deny that such a thing would be useful for veryfing the result of an electronic device... as long as that device is a voting machine.
That sounds pretty deliberate to me. For whatever reason, they do not want to have a verifiable paper trail following their machines around.
I do agree, though, that even if the machines themselves met some definition of "secure" that satisfied a particular person or group, there would still be people claiming fraud. And maybe in some places there would be. But all that aside, if some groups of people are NEVER willing to trust our electoral process, what will solve that problem?
Who cares what the lunatic fringe thinks when right now no rational person can call these machines secure? Yes, there will always be some group who finds our electoral process untrustworthy. That isn't the point. The point is that, right now, our electoral process is untrustworthy.
That "Nintendo has never lost money on a console" is something of an urban myth.
:P
If you're going to say something is an urban legend, I'd at least expect a snopes link to support that.
But I'd believe the GC lost money overall and it was made up for with GB sales.
Microsoft is trying to build a brand with gamers for the express purpose of making a profit. They knew up front that xbox 1 was going to be a net loss in the end, but what they were buying was mind/market-share. That was true for xbox 1, but you can be sure that they're going to do everything they can with the 360 to make a profit. What good is building a brand if it doesn't result in making you more money?
Sure, Microsoft is going to try to make money. It isn't clear to me that they actually expect to make money this time around. They may be happy with having a smaller (say < $1 bill) loss, and further establishing themselves in the market, in order to have a truly profitable 3rd console. As MS was saying with the Xbox, they are in the console market for the long haul. With their Windows/Office monopoly warchest, they can certainly afford to bide their time. If the Big N lost $2 bill on the GC, we probably wouldn't be hearing about the Wii. With Microsoft, it was all part of the plan.
There's more for microsoft here than just making money from consoles. They're looking at the entire home entertainment market, and the DVD format wars, and the xbox is playing a strategic role here (though a less blatant one than the ps3). This is part of why I think they're willing to continue taking a loss on console sales, since for them it's just a sunk cost against the incredibly lucrative future of owning the living room.
The HARDWARE costs nets them a profit, they still have R&D costs though.
Right, right. So they have to do well enough to recoup their R&D cost. The reason why having a for-profit hardware console is important is that it means the very first sale of their console starts paying off that R&D cost. This is why they were able to make all their money back and them some despite the "failure" that was the Gamecube. If they had tried selling their console at a loss, like Microsoft, then they would most likely have ended up losing money overall, again like Microsoft.
Instead, they made money. And that was on what was possibly the least exciting most "me-too" Nintendo console ever.
You're right, I probably should have said "Great Satanic masses", not that I know if Osama uses that particular term.
David Koresh's cult didn't get in any trouble until it was thought that they were breaking laws. The existence of the cult itself was not illegal. If you rape children, force people to commit "suicide", or don't pay your taxes, Uncle Sam will come after you. Other than that, they don't really care. Sure, you can say there may be some aspect of some religion that is illegal and that it shouldn't be -- multiple wives, use of mind-altering substances, whatever -- but it isn't the religion itself that is illegal. Raeliens, despite being considered a cooky cult, have not been arrested simply for being Raelien.
That's the difference. In China, being a member of a certain religion, regardless of not having committed any other crime, is illegal.
Now I'm not one to appologize for the U.S., and I think "better than China" is damning with faint praise, but this really is a fundamental difference between the two nations.
The Possible Future, Nov 4th, 2008
"While exit polls conducted by our station and others showed Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain neck-in-neck at nearly 50% in this highly contested state of Ohio, initial results from available precincts shows the winner of the state, and thus the country, as Osama bin Laden, with 107% of the vote. A tape allegedly featuring Mr. bin Laden was broadcast by the al Jazeera network just minutes ago, in which the terrorist mastermind said he was pleased by the clear mandate the capitalist pig masses had given him, and that he hoped his transition from a cave somewhere in Pakistan to the Oval Office would go smoothly. Back to you, Tom."
I don't know, think that would wake people up?
So how do I find entry-level employment as a programmer when I live in northeast Indiana?
It was "crappy under-paying" programming jobs that I was talking about. And I don't know, but he managed to find entry-level programming jobs in SW Michigan, so it is possible.
Well, if they're like my stepfather, who never got a degree, they get crappy under-paying jobs until they've got enough work experience to get someone to look past their education. Then they discover that despite having no formal education this person is an amazing programmer, and start paying him shed loads of money in order to keep him around.
:(
Results may vary. Life is unfair.
Well, there's really two points to a programming/engineering internship:
1) Cheap labor. For basic programming jobs, an intern isn't necessarily any worse than a full-timer, but is a heck of a lot cheaper.
2) Extended interview. You get to know a potential future employee better than you ever could in an interview, and get them up to speed on what you do should you later hire them. For this reason, it's an especially bad idea to have interns fetching coffee or they won't be interested in coming back full time.