Obviously you failed electronics as your understanding of how it works is flawed. With modern cpu's and software, power consumption does rise with the work performed, sometimes by an order of magnitude, but somewhat hidden by the energy the psu wastes when not running at its highest efficiency loading, which might well be at its full nameplate delivery, so while the motherboard may be only using 10% of its peak at idling loads, the more of less fixed losses in the psu, and the hard drives still spinning will narrow that gap and make it look like the cpu is still using 30-40%.
That said, I discontinued boinc on my machines because boinc think it needs the system priority full time. The boinc people are all windows fans and could not understand why it was unusable on linux. The old seti clients all ran at minimum priority and I was never aware they were working in the background even when running it on my amiga's at the time. I was once in the top 5000 on the seti production list, but when they converted to boinc, they did two unforgivable things:
1. It took the machine away from me, using 99% of the cpu, to the point I couldn't even type an email reply at my elderly hunt & peck speeds.
2. About 2-3 months later, they threw away everyones rankings. I had been fixing boinc to control the running priority till then. That was the last straw, so it got removed.
I looked at folding@home for about 2 hours, but once again the linux version took my machine away from me. So neither has been installed for several years now.
Has the situation changed so they are once again friendly to the user who would like to think his 24/7 machines might be doing something useful while I'm sawing logs?
Yeah, it was, and on the amiga it was horribly broken for any cpu smarter than the original 68000. Microsoft was so concerned about memory usage, both on disk and in the limited ram of the day, that fixed constants were stored in the upper 8 bits of a 32 bit memory word, and the instant you put a faster cpu in, one that could address all 32 bits of ram, it was explosion city. We asked commie and they said that M$ had went against their guidelines for software building in doing that. They were sorta sorry, but didn't have the clout to mkake M$ redo it properly. So we all wrote our toys, and some of them were damned good, in arexx, or bought a copy of sas C-6.51, which I still have on the shelf above me even though the amiga is dead in the basement. Dead is relative, its a full blown PP&S 68040 cpu with 64 megs of dram on the accelerator card. But to get all that going, it had to do 4 soft reboots in getting booted because with only 2 megs of dram, and a kit that put 2 megs of 'chip' ram off the agnus chip, there wasn't enough ram to mount all the hardware and drive sources.
Then I discovered a huge problem with amigados and backup software, when the main 30GB ide hard drive upchucked. The problem? amigados, when opening a file, puts a lock on the file and never releases it till the program is finished and exits. A lock that prevents reopening the file in even read-only mode, and When the program is amigados, that means, among other things, that the lock on the startup-sequence, and any files it calls in to do the bootup, are locked, AND CANNOT BE BACKED UP! Since all that amounted to nearly 10 megabytes of hand carved OS related stuff, when the new replacement drive arrived, I found to my intense anger, that none of the files required to boot it existed in the backups.
Since by then I was also playing with linux, I didn't want to have to rebuild that 20 room mansion's worth of software by my bare hands and aging memory, so its now stored, as is, on a shelf in the basement. And that monitor has long since gone to its heavenly pasture too.
The amiga was a fair machine in its day, breaking new ground that put the PC's to a rout for a while, but that OS fault was its death knell to me. Between that, and the eternal scsi problems due to the lack of proper terminations from most vendors, and even from Commie itself, one would have to have the guts of a proper prophet to be able to call it good. This is one pilgrim who, when it became obvious too many shortcuts had been taken, found a new church.
I might even have considered putting linux on it, but the one time I tried, it was crippled beyond usability because linux had no idea there was a 68040 & 64 megs of dram to play in, and apparently was trying to run in the original 1/2 meg of chip, and the 2 megs(IIRC) on the A2091 scsi card. Even 10 years ago, that was not enough to run linux.
Maybe that has changed now, I should ask on lkml. But first I'd have to find my round tuit.:)
Let me state it this way: I know enough about patents to be able to see that this countries ability to innovate, improving products at the rate we were doing it 60 years ago, is now severely curtailed. Between patent trolls, and the current version of copyright, it is an insult to anyone who thinks he has a better idea.
Patents were originally set with a lifetime of 7 years, with the option of a one time 7 year renewal if the proper forms and fees were submitted. That short time of exclusivity encouraged the creative thinker to keep on thinking if he intended to make a living based on patent royalties all his life. Then after W-II, big money was being spent by the R&D depts of all the major players because there were tax incentives to be made. Then congress got the bright idea of removing those tax incentives for monies spent on R&D, and that went from as high as 15% to todays figure which I don't have at hand, but it is a much smaller percentage of the GNP now.
Copyrights were then subjected to the Disney folks who wanted to preserve M & M Mouse, so now we have the long untenable position, guaranteeing he will not enter public domain until Walt has been gone 50 years. Except it is now the Corp that owns the copyright, and if its set to expire in the next 10 years, more congress critters will be bought and it will be extended yet again.
These changes are stifling innovation, cutting off its oxygen flow, and both should go back to the form they had when first codified. That encouraged innovation and invention because you had a limited time that was then pretty realistic, to profit from your idea. In fact, if they are to continue to allow patents on software, which is something SCOTUS may rule on in this session of the court, then I'd submit that, because our knowledge database is rising exponentially thanks to the computers ability to mine for data that gets lost in the noise to the human researcher, shorter periods than when first set into law back then simply because it is now much easier to write some code for whatever 'maker' tools one might have at hand & make that working prototype in 10% of the time, and better finished, than it might have taken when patent law was first set.
And just in case you think I'm a tender young child who hasn't yet figured out how things work yet, I hate to spoil a good rant, but I turned 75 a couple of weeks ago. And my tested IQ way back then got me 4f'd for mil service, they didn't like the idea that I could think and therefore may not take orders. Because I can think, and do things that others don't think possible, I have been accused by more than one employer over the last 60 years that I have been chasing electrons for a living, as being able to walk on water. It was hilarious at first, but I have come to enjoy that feeling.
In fact, one of the questions I ask of those who would get my vote: How do you feel the present scenario vis-a-vis patent and copyright could be improved? Most of the answers I've gotten indicate they have no knowledge on either subject. And I vote for the one who tries to have an opinion, because that means he/she will work for us, for a little while at least, when they get to DC.
Ditto the Bill of Rights, any nibbling on that document and they can flip burgers at wimpy's as far as I'm concerned.
And that attitude is highly anti-innovative and characterizes one of the main problems with the US patent system.
If you abandon it at the first challenge, leaving it for the USPTO to automatically deny other claims along that line for you, then that which you thought patentable in the first place should then become public domain, excluded from collecting actions on your part, and those who might improve upon the idea, patenting the improvements but not your basic idea which would have to be named in their application to qualify for the exemption, and do it without fear of reprisal. Forever.
If you feel your patent is defensible, then defend it. You may have to find an angel and share the proceeds, but you should still have a net profit at the end of the litigation. If you can't find an angel, then your idea was crap in the first place, these VC guys tend to have very good bull shit filters.
I believe the expression has been said as "shit, or get off the pot" so others can use it. If we are to survive on our wits, then we must be free to improve on a concept you failed at without fear of future bankrupting reprisals from you.
I think you are onto a good theory there. After all, the body has an end game resource limit, so it tends to put the response where it seems to do the most good. If it perceives an attack by the seasonal version, it quite likely won't react fast enough when H1N1 comes calling.
I found it interesting that us old farts, those of us that managed to survive the 1957 swine flu are said to be less susceptable by a large margin to the current H1N1. I survived it, on a just barely basis I think, the landlady found me buck naked on the bathroom floor where I had passed out after emptying both ends of the system, drug me back to bed, and fed me chicken soup for a couple of days. Chicken soup cures just about anything.;-) I had been one sick puppy for about 2 days prior to that.
Now 75, and diabetic but otherwise in decent shape for the miles, I haven't gone after the seasonal shot yet, but based on previous exposure to H1N1 giving me some protection from it, I probably will get the seasonal shot in the next week or 2 even if it does raise the risk.
Those old farts reading this that _didn't_ have the 1957 flu would be advised to stock up on canned food and hibernate the rest of the winter, or plan on getting only the H1N1 as early as you can, and the seasonal shot 6 weeks down the road after the first shot has stabilized. H1N1, from my experience with its kin in 1957, is the bigger danger.
But a disclaimer, I'm not a doctor, just a survivor of the original 1957 version and applying Grandpa Gene's common sense. You should apply yours too, its your life.
I don't know where you are buying your horses, but where I come from a 400 pound horse is still a yearling colt & likely has never had a bridle on his head. The horses I'm used to looking at the rear end of were in the ton & plus range, each. Percherons of course, King weighed 1950, and Colonal weighed 2200. And there wasn't anything on that Iowa farm including some Case tractors that were considered to be pretty good in their day, but could also be buried to the pto if the young driver, me in this case, screwed up, I buried an LA and 4 16" plows in the bottom of the west 80.
Daddy made a new double tree out of a native cut piece of Oak, 2+" thick and a foot wide. Those two horses with about 80 feet of 1/2" log chain between the double tree and that tractors rear axle, got down on their bellies and picked the middle of that chain a full foot off the ground, and that 9,000 pounds of tractor came back onto solid ground.
Now folks, that was torque. Then we went back and got the plow but it was a piece of cake for that team.
Those Clydesdale's in the Bud commercials? A 1 tonner even won't make the team, most of those are closer to 2400 than 2000 lbs. We used to know the folks who sold Bud a few of those. And Bud was both picky and inadvertantly abusive. That spot showing one galloping in the surf was very dangerous, with their size they don't 'gallup' at all well even on solid land, and a broken ankle from stepping on the hidden bottom wrong were very real dangers to a fine specimen of the breed. I shuddered every time I saw that spot on tv.
Next time you start measuring horses, bring some real horses, not some skittish 400 lb pets/toys.
What I read into this is the M$ understands just how futile it is to try and attack the gpl in court because they have looked at the record, and have found no winners.
To me, this instance gives the gpl at least as much legal clout as any court ruling ever will. And other wannabe thieves of our code have been put on notice that if M$ knows its futile, the rest had better get their house in order too, making it quite a bit easier for the FSF to gain compliance with the license.
As for M$ changing their spots to stripes, chuckle. ROTFLMAO even. Not bloody likely, as a couple of my British friends would say. No matter what color they attempt to paint themselves, they still have the mentality of a 2 bit company that can't stand one bit of competition.
-- Cheers folks, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
In any case, word excel and powerpoint documents can contain multiple sheets of paper, and I see a lot of people take that to extremes - for example having all the day's letters contained in one word document, or every single spreadsheet they work on in one excel document.
And for those types, I recommend a clue bat be applied, liberally until they get the message that one mistake and the whole day is gone. Sheesh. Makes me more FOR a license to run a computer all the time. If they are so fond of a format they've cobbled up, then save the SOB as a template so they don't have to feel like they will have to re-invent the wheel to do their next proposal. That 'creation' drudgery may be putting a lot of the dummies off from doing it right.
-- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) The NRA is offering FREE Associate memberships to anyone who wants them.
Seize the day, put no trust in the morrow!
-- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
And I concur with the random noise idea when looking at the bigger picture.
But when looking at the individual, this noise takes on a life of its own. Using my immediate family tree as an example, I was almost the outcast in grade school because I was a geek before the term was invented. That geek was however, nutured by my mother, who if she couldn't answer a small boys questions, did know where the library was, and a book that might have the answer in it would come home for a few days.
Interested in the physical world from the git-go, then in things electric when the REA eventually brought electricity to the farmhouses of rural Iowa at about the end of WW-II, I wound up quitting school in the 9nth grade to go out and see if I could make a living fixing these new-fangled televisions. And I did.
Now, 60 years later, I am largely retired, having spent the last 28 years as the Chief (and often only) engineer at a tv station. So I'm now doing some woodworking, along with some other things I now have time to do, like a small cnc milling machine & other toys. I have had my fingerprints in things that made the encyclopedias (like the cameras that were on the Trieste in Feb. 1961) along the way, and have managed to collect a C.E.T., a G.E.D., a degree from the University of Hard Knocks. The fact that I've had the party & got the retirement Rolex does not keep my phone from ringing when TSHTF though so I do get 'bonus' work that is also very well paid for occasionally. I rather like it that way as long as I am physically able to do it. It makes me think I might be worth keeping around for a bit yet.
My offspring, while they are mechanically inclined and are generally successful in life, do not share the penchant for things electronic as deeply as I. Computers are today, just a household appliance. They will not build the hardware and write the software for something that will have a daily working lifetime of well over a decade in a tv production environment that I have done more than once.
Am I disappointed? Not really. I tried to give them the tools to survive with, and in today's society, they still need real people to fix the machinery when the other real people that run it, wear it out or break it, and those people, the fixers, will always command a premium salary. And speaking as one of those fixers, the salary has always been generally sufficient if well managed. My home is paid for, I wrote checks for the last 3 vehicles, 2 of which are yet in the driveway. I have no wish to control the worlds wealth as long as I have a warm, dry place to sleep, a good wife and enough to eat. Gas for the vehicles is a plus, as is the time to go fishing as I have it on good authority that the time one spends fishing is not charged against ones time here.
In short, that would seem to define happiness pretty well for me, although today its a day when my wife can breath (COPD) w/o oxygen, or I get a new power tool, hopefully not to be used for trimming fingers since I just did that with a jointer, taking about 1/8" off one. It (the alu guard) makes typing rather error prone though.:(
-- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
However GP said it wouldn't be accurate, just accurate enough. How high do windspeeds get in safe flying weather (assume a headwind) and would that plus whatever error there is in the gps (probably fairly small) be too much for a go/no go system?
I will counter that, in addressing the windspeed that the GPS has no means of measuring.
I once got on one of Frontiers Convair 580's in Lincoln NE, made a stop in Omaha, then cut a trail to Rapid City SD, with the rotation out of Omaha at about 4:25 pm. We climbed into a layer of air that was headed northwest at about 18k feet & watched the most glorious sunset in front of us I have seen in my now 74 years. Figuring we were making around 350 mph, I figured to be on the ground in Rapid City about 6:15 pm. 45 minutes into the flight the pilot announced that while he also was enjoying the view, he was going to have to spoil it or over overshoot Rapid City, making the comment that we had just set an in-service altitude and speed record for a Convair 580, we had followed the quiet air layer till the 580's service ceiling was below us a couple thousand feet, and that the true ground speed was about 620 mph making that tailwind pretty close to 300 mph. I'd call that a tailwind! It was then that I had realized that he had never feathered the props either. He then set them pretty flat, we hit a brick wall and literally fell into Rapid City, nearly an hour early. It took my ride another half an hour to show up.
NO GPS could have sensed that. And that airplane would have stalled out had the pilot tried to reduce the speed to the 350 or less it normally cruised at.
-- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Well, I might not know if it can be done in airplane, but I have a decent speed feeling when I'm driving, given I have multiple frames of reference. But I would think pilot's would have the same skills also.
First off, Mr French Fry Flipper & Onion Ring Dipper, at 35k feet, at night, there is NO external frame of reference. Can't you grok that at all?
Oh, wait, I forgot, this IS/. My bad, I shoulda took that into consideration.
-- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
In this case, the black boxes have not been recovered
And at 26 days elapsed time since the crash, its pingers batteries are probably gone to the battery graveyard, never to be seen or heard from again. I doubt by now if it could be heard 100 yards away even by Alvin. One of the ways to save money is by not replacing those batteries on a fixed schedule. And I wouldn't be surprised to have the NTSB admit they can't find that maintenance log either.
I hate to say it, but the detective work to see what happened may well depend on similar instances the pilots managed to handle & restore control.
The comments so far re windows would seem to be a bit premature since even windows can have month + uptimes if the programs it is asked to run are clean. Flight certified software is generally tested till it can handle anything without a people killing failure.
That might surprise some to hear me say that since I'm a fairly famous anti-windows person, given that the only windows install here (XP on my laptop) was nuked and Mandriva-2009.1 installed a couple of months ago & everything else has been some flavor of linux since 1998.
The thing that burns me is that Airbus knows about the problem with the frozen pitot tubes, but didn't insist they be replaced with the retrofit kit at the first overnight stop. So CEO's did what CEO's do best, maximized profits by keeping the engines spooled up & flying. "This" was something that could be handled at scheduled maintenance times in their minds. The question about that for this flight is probably never going to be answered given the black box hasn't been found and likely won't be. But they have at least 2 other flights where only quick action by the pilots saved the day, & they should be acting on it as we read this, not waiting for the NTSB to pronounce guilt before they cut checks. That lack of action should be criminally prosecutable IMO.
-- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
As long as a competitive, free market is ensured, this won't happen. If a ISP starts filtering, people will move to the next.
Of course, things may turn out very different if we allow dominant market positions to be built in the ISP market.
(But this won't happen, right? Just as we never let any dominant market position arise in the OS market, or in the microprocessor market. Now sorry, gotta rush back to my cave).
Good, because you have obviously been in it way too long and there is little hope of your ever being successful in rejoining the real world. OTOH, maybe there might be a future in satire for you?
Only in the larger cities is there such a thing as even token competition. Here the choice is 33k dialup & pay LD charges out the yang if you don't sign up for verizon's Freedom plan, or verizon's crappy adsl, which is quite heavily filtered for everything but spam. Or the local cable, but their rates are at least double that of verizon's. So there really is no choice. So I must use verizon's circuits if I want net access, its that simple, and it is most certainly not a mistake, the FCC see's to that.
As for the filtering, they are an M$ only outfit and don't seem to like linux, and they have summarily blocked several linux related mailing lists from their mail servers, calling them spam, forcing me to re-subscribe but using a gmail account AND gmails servers, going both ways. Such actions go heavily afoul of the FCC rules for Common Carrier status which carries a huge advantage to the carriers that maintain that status, but is generally ignored unless some federal court judge forces their hand. See Comcast. Otherwise it is business as usual, like the thread on M$ being a 2 bit company that can't stand one bit of competition...
I would love to see some real competition, something Judge Green intended when he broke up AT&T, but which has (not so quietly since 2000 thanks to the shrub #2.) been thrown under the bus. Frontier just bought most of verizon, and this games rules are bound to change, probably not for the better. We need another Judge Green. Badly...
-- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
What happens if this parasite gets into a human? Either by this insect biting a human who walked on it at the beach, or mowing the grass, or even a child just playing in the yard?
Methinks this could lead to even more drastic problems than it 'fixes'.
-- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Go away, I'm all right.
-- H.G. Wells' last words.
And of course everyone knows the real reason, this is the only media the guvmnt doesn't control now.
We used to have a democratic republic form of government in the USA. That went straight in the shitter with the federal reserve act 21 years before I was born, again in the year I was born with the FCA, and again in 1968 with the GCA68.
Ever closer to a dictatorship folks, and don't say you haven't been warned as even Thomas Jefferson warned us about it at about the time we kicked the brits out.
They who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
-- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Most of our lives are about proving something, either to ourselves or to someone else.
Interesting that I got halfway through the list before someone finally grokked that the fuel was glucose.
As a plenty of non-functional insulin diabetic, the huge majority of us in fact, I would welcome almost anything with minimal side effects that could bring my average glucose down 50 points. I haven't seen my sugar under 125 in ages, and it is often near 200. I could then live a semi normal life.
However the side effects being discussed do bother me. OTOH, my warranty expired nearly 75 years ago...
-- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) I've always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.
Correction, a very bad LAST day. I for one am damned glad we are looking at that thing from the angle we are. And I hope it or we don't move so that when it does blow, we are looking down the gun barrel. The GRB will be here from that distance, probably within a few days of seeing it go supernova. The question that runs in the back of my alleged mind is: Are these GRB's beamed, or isotopic. If beamed, and we are in the beam...
Yes, and if people had been making web pages W3C compliant in the first place 10 years ago, M$ would have been forced to come into compliance by their sheeple/customers.
Besides, I feel left out, my site didn't make their list. OTOH I used linux programs to build it.
Tuff titty M$, couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch.
-- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Peace, n.:
In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
periods of fighting.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Chuckle, and which is what counts at the end of the day. It works. As far as being directly ON the net, that would be terminally stupid, and if this were a windows box I would not own it more than 5 minutes, but its not a windows box... I kinda like it that way.
-- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Peace, n.:
In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
periods of fighting.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
The point of that is, verizon IS a common carrier, at least for all other services, like the telephone, also delivered over exactly the same twisted pair copper that delivers my dsl. How can that then be separated?
As for the web server I just picked a port that wasn't in use according to/etc/services file, then fwd that port in my router to the normal port and this machine and used it. Dyndns supplies a free registration for quasi-stable addresses, so the net cost to me is zip. And I have my own page, free of anything I don't want on it. Since its Adsl, the access speed from outside sucks but that is what I'm paying for.
Figuratively speaking, I get to toot my own horn without any hecklers, other than those to whom I pass out the address. And no, there isn't any porn on it, but my interests as an old fart could best be considered 'eclectic', I'm somewhat of a JOAT.:)
-- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter.
-- William Lloyd Garrison
The first is for the FCC to actually enforce the 'common carrier' rules that ALL the ISP's claim to operate in compliance with, but which in fact they do as they damned well please simply because congress has pulled the manpower and legal help teeth to enforce them with.
What do I mean? Simple really.
As an example, verizon blocks outbound to the customer port 80 requests. This forces the customer who wants to have a web page, to put it on verizon's servers, where they can then load it up with all the commercials they can sell in the form of shrinking the page to make room for the other crap. This port 80 blockage is a VERY blatant violation of the common carrier rules, yet it has existed for at least 5 years that I know of, and the commission has done nothing about it. I think mainly because most of the sheeple wouldn't have any idea how to go about setting it up on their own machines anyway. So there is little public outcry, unlike the bandwidth controlling that seems to have ComCast in moderately warm water.
Because losing the common carrier status has an effect on the taxation and license status, these operators will kill to keep it, and there is no way in hell you'll ever get a tech support drone to confirm that they are doing it.
Enforcing this is the biggest step the commission could take to ensuring net neutrality, but since the likes of the big businesses involved are also heavy contributors to both parties, I really don't expect to see any action unless and until there is a highly visible public outcry against those practices.
Oh, and expect your bandwidth bill to rise to pay for the infrastructure required to handle that level of bandwidth in both directions. I'd guess about 2x with no other factors thrown in. Throw in the build out costs, and even with gubment support, it will go up, cuz the gubment has yet to pay the going rate to pay for the mandates they've passed yet, like the no child left behind act, which may have gotten 5% of what it would take to do it right. Yes, that is an admirable idea, but it should be accompanied by similar mandates for the truly gifted child, and there is 2 of those for every un-educatable one out there, being held back because the other kids can't begin to keep up with them. So they get bored and say screw it, putting their smarts to use in nefarious schemes that will cause them to clash with the law all their lives in many cases.
Damn, I love a chance to get a good rant in...
-- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Yield to Temptation... it may not pass your way again.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
door - if you hadn't been in to collect your last bill, tough luck.
In which case, no bill, no pay. Let the small claims court judge throw out a few of those, and it will get fixed. Pure and simple, the account access should not be torn down if there is a balance owed, it is in their best interests in terms of keeping the cash flowing.
I am a victim of verizon's monopoly, and should a different, better service become available, and as I have all that paid on a monthly schedule, electronically at my bank, that is exactly how I would handle it, and I'd get a certain bit of enjoyment out of facing the bill collector in court. I love to show the world just how far these leeches will go to collect the last 97$.
-- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) "In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the current." -- Thomas Jefferson
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Obviously you failed electronics as your understanding of how it works is flawed.
With modern cpu's and software, power consumption does rise with the work performed, sometimes by an order of magnitude, but somewhat hidden by the energy the psu wastes when not running at its highest efficiency loading, which might well be at its full nameplate delivery, so while the motherboard may be only using 10% of its peak at idling loads, the more of less fixed losses in the psu, and the hard drives still spinning will narrow that gap and make it look like the cpu is still using 30-40%.
That said, I discontinued boinc on my machines because boinc think it needs the system priority full time. The boinc people are all windows fans and could not understand why it was unusable on linux. The old seti clients all ran at minimum priority and I was never aware they were working in the background even when running it on my amiga's at the time. I was once in the top 5000 on the seti production list, but when they converted to boinc, they did two unforgivable things:
1. It took the machine away from me, using 99% of the cpu, to the point I couldn't even type an email reply at my elderly hunt & peck speeds.
2. About 2-3 months later, they threw away everyones rankings. I had been fixing boinc to control the running priority till then. That was the last straw, so it got removed.
I looked at folding@home for about 2 hours, but once again the linux version took my machine away from me. So neither has been installed for several years now.
Has the situation changed so they are once again friendly to the user who would like to think his 24/7 machines might be doing something useful while I'm sawing logs?
--
Cheers, Gene
The more things change, the more the same they are. You expected any different once he had taken the oath?
Yeah, it was, and on the amiga it was horribly broken for any cpu smarter than the original 68000. Microsoft was so concerned about memory usage, both on disk and in the limited ram of the day, that fixed constants were stored in the upper 8 bits of a 32 bit memory word, and the instant you put a faster cpu in, one that could address all 32 bits of ram, it was explosion city. We asked commie and they said that M$ had went against their guidelines for software building in doing that. They were sorta sorry, but didn't have the clout to mkake M$ redo it properly. So we all wrote our toys, and some of them were damned good, in arexx, or bought a copy of sas C-6.51, which I still have on the shelf above me even though the amiga is dead in the basement. Dead is relative, its a full blown PP&S 68040 cpu with 64 megs of dram on the accelerator card. But to get all that going, it had to do 4 soft reboots in getting booted because with only 2 megs of dram, and a kit that put 2 megs of 'chip' ram off the agnus chip, there wasn't enough ram to mount all the hardware and drive sources.
Then I discovered a huge problem with amigados and backup software, when the main 30GB ide hard drive upchucked. The problem? amigados, when opening a file, puts a lock on the file and never releases it till the program is finished and exits. A lock that prevents reopening the file in even read-only mode, and When the program is amigados, that means, among other things, that the lock on the startup-sequence, and any files it calls in to do the bootup, are locked, AND CANNOT BE BACKED UP! Since all that amounted to nearly 10 megabytes of hand carved OS related stuff, when the new replacement drive arrived, I found to my intense anger, that none of the files required to boot it existed in the backups.
Since by then I was also playing with linux, I didn't want to have to rebuild that 20 room mansion's worth of software by my bare hands and aging memory, so its now stored, as is, on a shelf in the basement. And that monitor has long since gone to its heavenly pasture too.
The amiga was a fair machine in its day, breaking new ground that put the PC's to a rout for a while, but that OS fault was its death knell to me. Between that, and the eternal scsi problems due to the lack of proper terminations from most vendors, and even from Commie itself, one would have to have the guts of a proper prophet to be able to call it good. This is one pilgrim who, when it became obvious too many shortcuts had been taken, found a new church.
I might even have considered putting linux on it, but the one time I tried, it was crippled beyond usability because linux had no idea there was a 68040 & 64 megs of dram to play in, and apparently was trying to run in the original 1/2 meg of chip, and the 2 megs(IIRC) on the A2091 scsi card. Even 10 years ago, that was not enough to run linux.
Maybe that has changed now, I should ask on lkml. But first I'd have to find my round tuit. :)
--
Cheers, Gene
Let me state it this way: I know enough about patents to be able to see that this countries ability to innovate, improving products at the rate we were doing it 60 years ago, is now severely curtailed. Between patent trolls, and the current version of copyright, it is an insult to anyone who thinks he has a better idea.
Patents were originally set with a lifetime of 7 years, with the option of a one time 7 year renewal if the proper forms and fees were submitted. That short time of exclusivity encouraged the creative thinker to keep on thinking if he intended to make a living based on patent royalties all his life. Then after W-II, big money was being spent by the R&D depts of all the major players because there were tax incentives to be made. Then congress got the bright idea of removing those tax incentives for monies spent on R&D, and that went from as high as 15% to todays figure which I don't have at hand, but it is a much smaller percentage of the GNP now.
Copyrights were then subjected to the Disney folks who wanted to preserve M & M Mouse, so now we have the long untenable position, guaranteeing he will not enter public domain until Walt has been gone 50 years.
Except it is now the Corp that owns the copyright, and if its set to expire in the next 10 years, more congress critters will be bought and it will be extended yet again.
These changes are stifling innovation, cutting off its oxygen flow, and both should go back to the form they had when first codified. That encouraged innovation and invention because you had a limited time that was then pretty realistic, to profit from your idea. In fact, if they are to continue to allow patents on software, which is something SCOTUS may rule on in this session of the court, then I'd submit that, because our knowledge database is rising exponentially thanks to the computers ability to mine for data that gets lost in the noise to the human researcher, shorter periods than when first set into law back then simply because it is now much easier to write some code for whatever 'maker' tools one might have at hand & make that working prototype in 10% of the time, and better finished, than it might have taken when patent law was first set.
And just in case you think I'm a tender young child who hasn't yet figured out how things work yet, I hate to spoil a good rant, but I turned 75 a couple of weeks ago. And my tested IQ way back then got me 4f'd for mil service, they didn't like the idea that I could think and therefore may not take orders. Because I can think, and do things that others don't think possible, I have been accused by more than one employer over the last 60 years that I have been chasing electrons for a living, as being able to walk on water. It was hilarious at first, but I have come to enjoy that feeling.
In fact, one of the questions I ask of those who would get my vote: How do you feel the present scenario vis-a-vis patent and copyright could be improved? Most of the answers I've gotten indicate they have no knowledge on either subject. And I vote for the one who tries to have an opinion, because that means he/she will work for us, for a little while at least, when they get to DC.
Ditto the Bill of Rights, any nibbling on that document and they can flip burgers at wimpy's as far as I'm concerned.
--
Cheers, Gene
And that attitude is highly anti-innovative and characterizes one of the main problems with the US patent system.
If you abandon it at the first challenge, leaving it for the USPTO to automatically deny other claims along that line for you, then that which you thought patentable in the first place should then become public domain, excluded from collecting actions on your part, and those who might improve upon the idea, patenting the improvements but not your basic idea which would have to be named in their application to qualify for the exemption, and do it without fear of reprisal. Forever.
If you feel your patent is defensible, then defend it. You may have to find an angel and share the proceeds, but you should still have a net profit at the end of the litigation. If you can't find an angel, then your idea was crap in the first place, these VC guys tend to have very good bull shit filters.
I believe the expression has been said as "shit, or get off the pot" so others can use it. If we are to survive on our wits, then we must be free to improve on a concept you failed at without fear of future bankrupting reprisals from you.
Seems clear enough to me anyway.
--
Cheers, Gene
I think you are onto a good theory there. After all, the body has an end game resource limit, so it tends to put the response where it seems to do the most good. If it perceives an attack by the seasonal version, it quite likely won't react fast enough when H1N1 comes calling.
I found it interesting that us old farts, those of us that managed to survive the 1957 swine flu are said to be less susceptable by a large margin to the current H1N1. I survived it, on a just barely basis I think, the landlady found me buck naked on the bathroom floor where I had passed out after emptying both ends of the system, drug me back to bed, and fed me chicken soup for a couple of days. Chicken soup cures just about anything. ;-) I had been one sick puppy for about 2 days prior to that.
Now 75, and diabetic but otherwise in decent shape for the miles, I haven't gone after the seasonal shot yet, but based on previous exposure to H1N1 giving me some protection from it, I probably will get the seasonal shot in the next week or 2 even if it does raise the risk.
Those old farts reading this that _didn't_ have the 1957 flu would be advised to stock up on canned food and hibernate the rest of the winter, or plan on getting only the H1N1 as early as you can, and the seasonal shot 6 weeks down the road after the first shot has stabilized. H1N1, from my experience with its kin in 1957, is the bigger danger.
But a disclaimer, I'm not a doctor, just a survivor of the original 1957 version and applying Grandpa Gene's common sense. You should apply yours too, its your life.
Cheers, Gene
I don't know where you are buying your horses, but where I come from a 400 pound horse is still a yearling colt & likely has never had a bridle on his head. The horses I'm used to looking at the rear end of were in the ton & plus range, each. Percherons of course, King weighed 1950, and Colonal weighed 2200. And there wasn't anything on that Iowa farm including some Case tractors that were considered to be pretty good in their day, but could also be buried to the pto if the young driver, me in this case, screwed up, I buried an LA and 4 16" plows in the bottom of the west 80.
Daddy made a new double tree out of a native cut piece of Oak, 2+" thick and a foot wide. Those two horses with about 80 feet of 1/2" log chain between the double tree and that tractors rear axle, got down on their bellies and picked the middle of that chain a full foot off the ground, and that 9,000 pounds of tractor came back onto solid ground.
Now folks, that was torque. Then we went back and got the plow but it was a piece of cake for that team.
Those Clydesdale's in the Bud commercials? A 1 tonner even won't make the team, most of those are closer to 2400 than 2000 lbs. We used to know the folks who sold Bud a few of those. And Bud was both picky and inadvertantly abusive. That spot showing one galloping in the surf was very dangerous, with their size they don't 'gallup' at all well even on solid land, and a broken ankle from stepping on the hidden bottom wrong were very real dangers to a fine specimen of the breed. I shuddered every time I saw that spot on tv.
Next time you start measuring horses, bring some real horses, not some skittish 400 lb pets/toys.
--
Cheers, Gene
What I read into this is the M$ understands just how futile it is to try and attack the gpl in court because they have looked at the record, and have found no winners.
To me, this instance gives the gpl at least as much legal clout as any court ruling ever will. And other wannabe thieves of our code have been put on notice that if M$ knows its futile, the rest had better get their house in order too, making it quite a bit easier for the FSF to gain compliance with the license.
As for M$ changing their spots to stripes, chuckle. ROTFLMAO even. Not bloody likely, as a couple of my British friends would say. No matter what color they attempt to paint themselves, they still have the mentality of a 2 bit company that can't stand one bit of competition.
--
Cheers folks, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
In any case, word excel and powerpoint documents can contain multiple sheets of paper, and I see a lot of people take that to extremes - for example having all the day's letters contained in one word document, or every single spreadsheet they work on in one excel document.
And for those types, I recommend a clue bat be applied, liberally until they get the message that one mistake and the whole day is gone. Sheesh. Makes me more FOR a license to run a computer all the time. If they are so fond of a format they've cobbled up, then save the SOB as a template so they don't have to feel like they will have to re-invent the wheel to do their next proposal. That 'creation' drudgery may be putting a lot of the dummies off from doing it right.
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
The NRA is offering FREE Associate memberships to anyone who wants them.
Seize the day, put no trust in the morrow!
-- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
And I concur with the random noise idea when looking at the bigger picture.
But when looking at the individual, this noise takes on a life of its own. Using my immediate family tree as an example, I was almost the outcast in grade school because I was a geek before the term was invented. That geek was however, nutured by my mother, who if she couldn't answer a small boys questions, did know where the library was, and a book that might have the answer in it would come home for a few days.
Interested in the physical world from the git-go, then in things electric when the REA eventually brought electricity to the farmhouses of rural Iowa at about the end of WW-II, I wound up quitting school in the 9nth grade to go out and see if I could make a living fixing these new-fangled televisions. And I did.
Now, 60 years later, I am largely retired, having spent the last 28 years as the Chief (and often only) engineer at a tv station. So I'm now doing some woodworking, along with some other things I now have time to do, like a small cnc milling machine & other toys. I have had my fingerprints in things that made the encyclopedias (like the cameras that were on the Trieste in Feb. 1961) along the way, and have managed to collect a C.E.T., a G.E.D., a degree from the University of Hard Knocks. The fact that I've had the party & got the retirement Rolex does not keep my phone from ringing when TSHTF though so I do get 'bonus' work that is also very well paid for occasionally. I rather like it that way as long as I am physically able to do it. It makes me think I might be worth keeping around for a bit yet.
My offspring, while they are mechanically inclined and are generally successful in life, do not share the penchant for things electronic as deeply as I. Computers are today, just a household appliance. They will not build the hardware and write the software for something that will have a daily working lifetime of well over a decade in a tv production environment that I have done more than once.
Am I disappointed? Not really. I tried to give them the tools to survive with, and in today's society, they still need real people to fix the machinery when the other real people that run it, wear it out or break it, and those people, the fixers, will always command a premium salary. And speaking as one of those fixers, the salary has always been generally sufficient if well managed. My home is paid for, I wrote checks for the last 3 vehicles, 2 of which are yet in the driveway. I have no wish to control the worlds wealth as long as I have a warm, dry place to sleep, a good wife and enough to eat. Gas for the vehicles is a plus, as is the time to go fishing as I have it on good authority that the time one spends fishing is not charged against ones time here.
In short, that would seem to define happiness pretty well for me, although today its a day when my wife can breath (COPD) w/o oxygen, or I get a new power tool, hopefully not to be used for trimming fingers since I just did that with a jointer, taking about 1/8" off one. It (the alu guard) makes typing rather error prone though. :(
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
But I'm diabetic you insensitive clod.
However GP said it wouldn't be accurate, just accurate enough. How high do windspeeds get in safe flying weather (assume a headwind) and would that plus whatever error there is in the gps (probably fairly small) be too much for a go/no go system?
I will counter that, in addressing the windspeed that the GPS has no means of measuring.
I once got on one of Frontiers Convair 580's in Lincoln NE, made a stop in Omaha, then cut a trail to Rapid City SD, with the rotation out of Omaha at about 4:25 pm. We climbed into a layer of air that was headed northwest at about 18k feet & watched the most glorious sunset in front of us I have seen in my now 74 years. Figuring we were making around 350 mph, I figured to be on the ground in Rapid City about 6:15 pm. 45 minutes into the flight the pilot announced that while he also was enjoying the view, he was going to have to spoil it or over overshoot Rapid City, making the comment that we had just set an in-service altitude and speed record for a Convair 580, we had followed the quiet air layer till the 580's service ceiling was below us a couple thousand feet, and that the true ground speed was about 620 mph making that tailwind pretty close to 300 mph. I'd call that a tailwind! It was then that I had realized that he had never feathered the props either. He then set them pretty flat, we hit a brick wall and literally fell into Rapid City, nearly an hour early. It took my ride another half an hour to show up.
NO GPS could have sensed that. And that airplane would have stalled out had the pilot tried to reduce the speed to the 350 or less it normally cruised at.
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Well, I might not know if it can be done in airplane, but I have a decent speed feeling when I'm driving, given I have multiple frames of reference. But I would think pilot's would have the same skills also.
First off, Mr French Fry Flipper & Onion Ring Dipper, at 35k feet, at night, there is NO external frame of reference. Can't you grok that at all?
Oh, wait, I forgot, this IS /. My bad, I shoulda took that into consideration.
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
In this case, the black boxes have not been recovered
And at 26 days elapsed time since the crash, its pingers batteries are probably gone to the battery graveyard, never to be seen or heard from again. I doubt by now if it could be heard 100 yards away even by Alvin. One of the ways to save money is by not replacing those batteries on a fixed schedule. And I wouldn't be surprised to have the NTSB admit they can't find that maintenance log either.
I hate to say it, but the detective work to see what happened may well depend on similar instances the pilots managed to handle & restore control.
The comments so far re windows would seem to be a bit premature since even windows can have month + uptimes if the programs it is asked to run are clean. Flight certified software is generally tested till it can handle anything without a people killing failure.
That might surprise some to hear me say that since I'm a fairly famous anti-windows person, given that the only windows install here (XP on my laptop) was nuked and Mandriva-2009.1 installed a couple of months ago & everything else has been some flavor of linux since 1998.
The thing that burns me is that Airbus knows about the problem with the frozen pitot tubes, but didn't insist they be replaced with the retrofit kit at the first overnight stop. So CEO's did what CEO's do best, maximized profits by keeping the engines spooled up & flying. "This" was something that could be handled at scheduled maintenance times in their minds. The question about that for this flight is probably never going to be answered given the black box hasn't been found and likely won't be. But they have at least 2 other flights where only quick action by the pilots saved the day, & they should be acting on it as we read this, not waiting for the NTSB to pronounce guilt before they cut checks. That lack of action should be criminally prosecutable IMO.
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
As long as a competitive, free market is ensured, this won't happen.
If a ISP starts filtering, people will move to the next.
Of course, things may turn out very different if we allow dominant market positions to be built in the ISP market.
(But this won't happen, right? Just as we never let any dominant market position arise in the OS market, or in the microprocessor market. Now sorry, gotta rush back to my cave).
Good, because you have obviously been in it way too long and there is little hope of your ever being successful in rejoining the real world. OTOH, maybe there might be a future in satire for you?
Only in the larger cities is there such a thing as even token competition. Here the choice is 33k dialup & pay LD charges out the yang if you don't sign up for verizon's Freedom plan, or verizon's crappy adsl, which is quite heavily filtered for everything but spam. Or the local cable, but their rates are at least double that of verizon's. So there really is no choice. So I must use verizon's circuits if I want net access, its that simple, and it is most certainly not a mistake, the FCC see's to that.
As for the filtering, they are an M$ only outfit and don't seem to like linux, and they have summarily blocked several linux related mailing lists from their mail servers, calling them spam, forcing me to re-subscribe but using a gmail account AND gmails servers, going both ways. Such actions go heavily afoul of the FCC rules for Common Carrier status which carries a huge advantage to the carriers that maintain that status, but is generally ignored unless some federal court judge forces their hand. See Comcast. Otherwise it is business as usual, like the thread on M$ being a 2 bit company that can't stand one bit of competition...
I would love to see some real competition, something Judge Green intended when he broke up AT&T, but which has (not so quietly since 2000 thanks to the shrub #2.) been thrown under the bus. Frontier just bought most of verizon, and this games rules are bound to change, probably not for the better. We need another Judge Green. Badly...
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
And to this I would add one more question:
What happens if this parasite gets into a human? Either by this insect biting a human who walked on it at the beach, or mowing the grass, or even a child just playing in the yard?
Methinks this could lead to even more drastic problems than it 'fixes'.
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Go away, I'm all right.
-- H.G. Wells' last words.
Hell, I can't even trust him!
And of course everyone knows the real reason, this is the only media the guvmnt doesn't control now.
We used to have a democratic republic form of government in the USA. That went straight in the shitter with the federal reserve act 21 years before I was born, again in the year I was born with the FCA, and again in 1968 with the GCA68.
Ever closer to a dictatorship folks, and don't say you haven't been warned as even Thomas Jefferson warned us about it at about the time we kicked the brits out.
They who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Most of our lives are about proving something, either to ourselves or to
someone else.
Interesting that I got halfway through the list before someone finally grokked that the fuel was glucose.
As a plenty of non-functional insulin diabetic, the huge majority of us in fact, I would welcome almost anything with minimal side effects that could bring my average glucose down 50 points. I haven't seen my sugar under 125 in ages, and it is often near 200. I could then live a semi normal life.
However the side effects being discussed do bother me. OTOH, my warranty expired nearly 75 years ago...
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
I've always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.
Correction, a very bad LAST day. I for one am damned glad we are looking at that thing from the angle we are. And I hope it or we don't move so that when it does blow, we are looking down the gun barrel. The GRB will be here from that distance, probably within a few days of seeing it go supernova. The question that runs in the back of my alleged mind is: Are these GRB's beamed, or isotopic. If beamed, and we are in the beam...
Not much we can do but make our peace.
Neat idea, but how do they get rid of the heat of 1000 suns? Does the IR escape because it isn't reflected the same way?
Yes, and if people had been making web pages W3C compliant in the first place 10 years ago, M$ would have been forced to come into compliance by their sheeple/customers.
Besides, I feel left out, my site didn't make their list. OTOH I used linux programs to build it.
Tuff titty M$, couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch.
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Peace, n.:
In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
periods of fighting.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Chuckle, and which is what counts at the end of the day. It works. As far as being directly ON the net, that would be terminally stupid, and if this were a windows box I would not own it more than 5 minutes, but its not a windows box... I kinda like it that way.
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Peace, n.:
In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
periods of fighting.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
The point of that is, verizon IS a common carrier, at least for all other services, like the telephone, also delivered over exactly the same twisted pair copper that delivers my dsl. How can that then be separated?
As for the web server I just picked a port that wasn't in use according to /etc/services file, then fwd that port in my router to the normal port and this machine and used it. Dyndns supplies a free registration for quasi-stable addresses, so the net cost to me is zip. And I have my own page, free of anything I don't want on it. Since its Adsl, the access speed from outside sucks but that is what I'm paying for.
Figuratively speaking, I get to toot my own horn without any hecklers, other than those to whom I pass out the address. And no, there isn't any porn on it, but my interests as an old fart could best be considered 'eclectic', I'm somewhat of a JOAT. :)
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
With reasonable men I will reason;
with humane men I will plead;
but to tyrants I will give no quarter.
-- William Lloyd Garrison
The first is for the FCC to actually enforce the 'common carrier' rules that ALL the ISP's claim to operate in compliance with, but which in fact they do as they damned well please simply because congress has pulled the manpower and legal help teeth to enforce them with.
What do I mean? Simple really.
As an example, verizon blocks outbound to the customer port 80 requests. This forces the customer who wants to have a web page, to put it on verizon's servers, where they can then load it up with all the commercials they can sell in the form of shrinking the page to make room for the other crap. This port 80 blockage is a VERY blatant violation of the common carrier rules, yet it has existed for at least 5 years that I know of, and the commission has done nothing about it. I think mainly because most of the sheeple wouldn't have any idea how to go about setting it up on their own machines anyway. So there is little public outcry, unlike the bandwidth controlling that seems to have ComCast in moderately warm water.
Because losing the common carrier status has an effect on the taxation and license status, these operators will kill to keep it, and there is no way in hell you'll ever get a tech support drone to confirm that they are doing it.
Enforcing this is the biggest step the commission could take to ensuring net neutrality, but since the likes of the big businesses involved are also heavy contributors to both parties, I really don't expect to see any action unless and until there is a highly visible public outcry against those practices.
Oh, and expect your bandwidth bill to rise to pay for the infrastructure required to handle that level of bandwidth in both directions. I'd guess about 2x with no other factors thrown in. Throw in the build out costs, and even with gubment support, it will go up, cuz the gubment has yet to pay the going rate to pay for the mandates they've passed yet, like the no child left behind act, which may have gotten 5% of what it would take to do it right. Yes, that is an admirable idea, but it should be accompanied by similar mandates for the truly gifted child, and there is 2 of those for every un-educatable one out there, being held back because the other kids can't begin to keep up with them. So they get bored and say screw it, putting their smarts to use in nefarious schemes that will cause them to clash with the law all their lives in many cases.
Damn, I love a chance to get a good rant in...
-- ... it may not pass your way again.
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Yield to Temptation
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
door - if you hadn't been in to collect your last bill, tough luck.
In which case, no bill, no pay. Let the small claims court judge throw out a few of those, and it will get fixed. Pure and simple, the account access should not be torn down if there is a balance owed, it is in their best interests in terms of keeping the cash flowing.
I am a victim of verizon's monopoly, and should a different, better service become available, and as I have all that paid on a monthly schedule, electronically at my bank, that is exactly how I would handle it, and I'd get a certain bit of enjoyment out of facing the bill collector in court. I love to show the world just how far these leeches will go to collect the last 97$.
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
"In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with
the current."
-- Thomas Jefferson