DSL installations include filters to block the high frenquency data carrier from the phone sets, and visa-versa (in the U.S. the home owner owns all internal wiring from the demarc - so the owner would plug in these filters on any connections used by phones - leaving 1 unfiltered for the DSL modem; I did this 'installation' myself in a matter of minutes and was up and running without a hitch. I did not have to rewire my home. The only issue with wiring I see would be if you live in a house that was built over 30 years ago - and not many folks that live in old houses have DSL, much less computers to begin with, so this is an exception rather than a rule).
Telcos are positioned for fibre to the demarc - so it is only a matter of time, particularly when you consider all the fibre RTs that are already in the nieghborhoods today (you don't think they ran all that fibre just to support DSL, do you? Telcos think 20 years ahead when they do any significant build-out, and over-engineer heavily to support anticipated higher capacities).
I hate to say it, but you are spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt in a misguided effort to discredit other technologies than your own. Customers will go where the best product is - and that will be on fibre - whoever provides it.
If you find limitations with the new services, by all means avoid them; the telephone company will continue to serve your copper connection for at least the next 15 years.
On the other hand, I am interested in the VOIP telephony, and the fat pipe for my IP network. I don't watch much TV - so my wife and kids will be more interested in that - and I can't see a downside compared to what we use the TV for now. My wife is starting to get interested in the idea of a DVR - but I can always tack on a linux box between the set-top distribution box and the TV to capture the signals if so desired - and the new medium will have shows-on-demand, so that might not be needed anyway.
Solaris and Linux, for that matter, are based on the Posix operating system standard - which means for all basic services and interfaces in-scope they are basically identical.
The real question for Linux isn't so much 'what will we implement', as 'how will we implement this standard feature better'. Threads, drivers, signals, interprocess communication, and a host of other Posix features are nothing new under the sun.
Finally, you can not discount the impact SCO's lawsuit has had on FOSS; developers are much less likely to view questionable source code for fear of including infringing material inadvertently. In the case of SUN's x86 release - what are the terms and conditions of the use of the code? I am betting they won't GPL the code - instead using a much more restrictive license.
(training is)...designed to make you follow their orders no matter how nonsensical.
You are incorrect. If an order is unlawful a soldier has a moral responsiblity to not follow that order, and futhermore to detain the officer who made such an order.
And as I mentioned, but you did not pick up on, soldiers can not define policy - that would lead to a militaristic (facist) state. From a practical standpoint lives can be saved and the army more effective if discipline is maintained; from a broader viewpoint that same self discipline serves to protect the nation from the excesses a militaristic junta would entail. Finally, soldiers swear to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States - not loyalty to any regime.
Universal service (and note I said service - I did not specify military service as the only service that can be rendered) in return for suffrage is not facism. Facism, on the other hand is the following:
* exalts nation and sometimes race above the individual,
* uses violence and modern techniques of propaganda and censorship to forcibly suppress political opposition,
* engages in severe economic and social regimentation, and
* espouses nationalism and sometimes racism or ethnic nationalism.
In your view, President Kennedy's speach urging Americans to "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." is facism. Your viewpoint is BS.
To put it more simply, the rights of the individual end when that individual's actions are detrimental to society. One of the rights lost to a felon, for example, is the right to vote. Now, how is it harmful on the flip-side of that to require a term of service in order to gain the right to vote? For example, lets say you work in a hospital for two years for minimal pay - how is that harmful or in any way detrimental to society or the individual?
From my point of view the largest problems we have as a society result from people not understanding or having empathy for the people around them. You walk a mile in another person's shoes and you begin to see the bigger picture - that your actions, even seemingly the most insignificant, have an impact on others. If every person with economic and/or political power had to get their hands dirty they would have a better appreciation for their position, and would act with more compassion. This is not about facism - it is about being a decent human being.
I suspect Microshaft will learn not to spread FUD and change their business model when it stops being profitable to do so. That time is fast approaching.
Sadly the people most in need of humble pie will undoubtably sail away on their golden parachutes without a look back or a care in the world. Their worker-bees will be left holding the bag.
Installing Firefox requires downloading an unsigned binary from a random web server
- from the blog.
That is not entirely truthful. You can also download the source from ftp.mozilla.org directly if you are paranoid, and build the release yourself. Most, if not all mirrors also carry the source code, so you can also validate the source on the outlying site against the original if there is any question in your mind.
So it does not 'require' an unsigned binary at all. In fact as the author of the blog admits, having a signed binary does not prove that the code contained in the archive is free of malicious code at all.
The issue of redirecting the download to another site - a University for example - is represented as less safe than downloading from a verisign registered site. This is hogwash, and avoids the critical argument that Microsoft wishes you to ignore: with a CVS snapshot of the source code I don't have to depend upon pre-compiled binaries and verisign to do my thinking for me. I can run the following command:
diff mysource.c questionablesource.c
- and know immediately if something has been tainted or not. If I must have a binary, I can always validate a checksum of the questionable binary against one provided by Mozilla. Sites that aren't on the up-and-up, or have poor security quickly lose credence in the community, and fall by the wayside.
Finally, most products of open source developers are PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) signed - which serves the same purpose as Verisign - without the attendant costs. A developer publishes a public key used to decrypt a signature encrypted using his private key. If you can not validate the signature - then it did not come from who it should have.
All arguments regarding security of OSS can be countered with the same argument on the closed source side - save one: OSS source code is free to peruse (and diff) as you desire - thus providing the trump card closed source shops can not duplicate or argue effectively against without some subterfuge. The fact is Microsoft wants you to be tied to costly closed security solutions, because then you will only be able to 'trust' a few (rich) closed source shops for your software needs - and small OSS projects will die from lack of patronage. Thankfully they are mistaken in their analysis of your willingness to accept their lies without question.
I started using a microshaft natural keyboard about 3 years ago after I started getting tendenitis in my wrists. I've not had a twinge since - and I type a lot.
I also type very hard - I bang away at the keyboard primarily due to learning to type on a manual typewriter back in the day. I have two MS Natural keyboards I use - and both are still going strong without a hitch.
I also have a microsoft laser mouse which is at least 3 years old - again going strong.
1. The policy of the Executive branch is not requisite on the military - in fact it is the other way around - and rightly so since a military junta is not a democratic form of government; in time of need young men were conscripted into service by order of the civilian government. You should thank your lucky stars (and the men and women who serve in your place) there were enough volunteers to keep you from being drafted.
2. Government employment is based on the budget - which basically says you can have X number of employees. Again, the number of people who get jobs in government does not drive the budget or the number of jobs available. The federal government turns away thousands of applicants every year - if I did not join, someone else would have in my place. Do you want someone with low qualifications in such a critical position?
The tail does not wag the dog. The plane does not fly the pilot. Employment in the Federal Government does not drive allocations or policy.
Talking to you has solidified my belief that suffrage should be based upon a term of public service (2 years minimum). The Swiss have a similar system, and some of the lowest crime rates in Europe; maybe they appreciate civic responsibility ahead of money and pleasure?
From the article: It's not the point that we should move (to another planet). It's the point that the technologies that we need to live and work in other places in the solar system will help us survive on Earth when these bad things happen.
Hello - the title of this/. article is misleading...
The problem with your rebuttal is that while it agrees that there is the possibility of bad sysadmins, it then blithely ignores the same.
The assumption that locking out your end-users will solve all your problems is ignoring the biggest problem - the system administrator. Assuming the system administrator has more knowledge about how a system functions is a fallacy.
The fact of the matter is both developers and system administrators fall woefully short on understanding how their actions can effect operational systems.
The system admin who patches a system without validating what files will be touched - thus crashing a mission critical application (seen it happen) and driving calls into the technical support center - I would argue are more damaging than what most developers do to systems they have admin rights on.
In both cases, a more holistic knowledge - say that of a computer scientist/system integrator - would avoid such calamities. This goes back to how we train our IT professionals, which imho is lacking. There is a strict demarcation between hardware people (site managers/system admins) and software people (developers/dbas) - that is artificial and unnecessary.
Developing better communications and training is the key to fixing this. Slapping a bandaid on a problem and calling it fixed is not the solution.
"...so long as there's a semblance of a right of fair use preserved to the people."
So we are only authorized a 'semblance' (1. An outward or token appearance: "Foolish men mistake transitory semblance for eternal fact" (Thomas Carlyle). 2. A representation; a copy. 3. The barest trace; a modicum: not a semblance of truth to the story.)
A 'semblance' of the right of fair use is not the right of fair use.
I've been a sysadmin and a developer and project manager (as well as tech support etc...).
Your assumption, 'that sysadmins know what they are doing and programmers do not' is a fallacy.
Just as there are inept users, there are inept sysadmins - and even good sysadmins can have their moments. I have seen sysadmins do really boneheaded things - primarily because they are focussed on the OS, as opposed to understanding how that OS interacts with applications and services running on the machine.
The real answer is for people to become acutely aware of how their actions can effect how a system works, or doesn't work holistically - and know what you are doing before you do it. This is particularly important for mission critical servers where one slip of the mouse can put clients offline for hours.
If a user or a sysadmin for that matter consistently screws things up - then you need to start questioning their access to the system to begin with; maybe they are in the wrong line of work?
...the truth of the matter is Linux is probably eating up the markets of AIX, HP-UX, SunOS, Alpha...
You say that like its a bad thing.
The commoditization of the OS has already begun - and will end with a shakeup that leaves Linux distributions on the top of the heap. If you depend upon an in-house OS to float your business model, you need to think about getting a new model.
Why, you may ask, does Microsoft do so well? The answer is the twin power of forced obsolescense and incompatibility. Sell incompatible products (by that I mean incompatible with anyone else's standards and binary executable formats) that only run on your OS, then obsolete versions of the OS and various support systems over time - artificially creating a revenue stream from forcing users to not only upgrade the OS, but also the associated applications. Tried to get support for Win95 lately? Tried to load files created in Visio 6 in Visio 5?
They could open source these end of lifed OSes and applications to make your life easier by allowing 3rd party vendors to fork patches to keep thes old apps working with newer formats - but they won't. They are more interested in making money by forcing you to upgrade - even if you can't afford to.
AOL made a whole business on this premise - leaning on dotcoms to pay high advertisement prices saying, 'if you don't advertise on AOL, you will go nowhere'. Of course, most went nowhere anyway - and probably faster after plopping down millions on these ineffectual ads.
With all that money flowing out of corporations, CFOs are more likely to demand some form of measurement before they release the purse strings in today's environment.
Sadly, developers and website providers are quick to 'satisfy' their customers by saying 'yes we can do that' - even though it is not reasonable to use click-rates as an effectiveness measurement (anyone can click a link 1 time or a thousand times, there is no direct correlation to that and buying habits; with all the auto-popup ads, probably less-so).
Funny, but probably not far from the truth, this will be seen by businesses as such an agregious waste of resources that popup blockers and other means of foiling this advertisement will be considered terrorist acts damaging to our capitalist economy. You watch, I see a rider to the anti-spam laws in our future...
...*sigh* that's why I can't depend upon SUN packages to properly load OS applications because it decides to put them in/opt/sfw instead of/usr/local - and munges up the ENV to boot.
Looking at the blowup of the main picture, the light is emenating from a standard power pole. Closer inspection shows a central blast arch, with a larger surrounding blast arch - dust or steam billowing out at an angle from behind the pole.
From what I see, it appears a transformer on the backside of the power pole blew up - causing the flare; the picture was taken miliseconds after the explosion.
The line on the image in the sky is probably the artifact of a lens flare, caused by the intense light at the moment of maximum light output - a milisecond before the picture was snapped and scanned - leaving the artifact behind.
If I was able to visit that location, I would examine the power pole at the point and see if there is no residue from a transformer blow-up or other malfunction of power lines at that location.
If the VOIP network is designed right, you won't get jitter and lost frames.
One thing you shouldn't do - layer your voip network ontop of an existing data network - or worse yet use the internet as your transport medium - this will lead to the problems you describe.
To guarantee the QOS needed for voice grade traffic you must have a dedicated H.323 (or whatever the next better emerging protocol is - I can't recall its name atm) from end to end.
There are several technologies/issues that must be conquered in order to have truely autonomous systems:
1. Massively parallel systems/neural nets. In order for a system to be self aware in a significant way it will need to be very smart. The current Von Neuman machines will not accomplish this task; current neural nets approach the intelligence of a cockroach.
2. Self repair. On a software level this is semi-trivial: cfengine, for example, allows an administrator to keep a central 'master' machine that all other hosts validate their configurations against. Changes can be pushed to multiple machines, and if a file on a host is corrupted, the system will 'self heal' by immediately replacing the corrupt file with the correct one on the master machine. However, how would a machine repair its own hardware? This implies standardized modularity above and beyond anything currently in production, as well as an ability to manipulate items in the physical world - a robot in essense. Circuits could be made redundant - however, over years of usage, it would be possible to run out of instances of a critical circuit type - and thus fail - as we have seen on some space missions; massive redundancy is costly and the visual accuity and mechanisms needed for robots to operate in the real world are not close to the flexibility of a human.
3. Ethical and moral considerations. Do we want our networks and data servers automated to the point where we can not ascertain how they work, or even if they are truely secure? Do we want self-aware systems that could potentially make decisions that are not in our best interests? (Watch the Terminator movie series for an example of why this could be bad in the longterm). Do you want to put your bank account information into a machine that is autonomous where there is no accountability? How will we correct such problems if they develop (assuming we lose our technological skills).
This is why it is a Grand Challenge - it is a quantum leap beyond everything that has come before. Can it be done? I believe so. Will it be done in my lifetime? I am not sure. Should it be done? Maybe - understanding that everything created by man is imperfect and these machines have the potential to not only help us a great deal, but conversely to harm us at the same magnitude if malformed.
If the autonomous systems NASA and the ESA have put into the void are any indication, I don't think we have much to worry about - the costs will be prohibitive for all save the largest organizations, and true autonomy (in the form of robotics) will have a whole range of other problems (imagine your main file server getting up and walking out of the data center because it mistakenly assumed there was a fire...)
The key, in the interrum is make yourself indispensible. If you have the mindset that you are a code grinder/monkey and that is all you want to be, then your days are numbered. Your goal should instead be becoming the guy who can put together a complete solution (data, application, hardware, network) in short order that works, scales well, and is extensible by your users. You need to be a jack-of-all-trades. That is how to survive and gain esteem in the eyes of your clients and peers, as I see it.
Slashdot Mirror
DSL installations include filters to block the high frenquency data carrier from the phone sets, and visa-versa (in the U.S. the home owner owns all internal wiring from the demarc - so the owner would plug in these filters on any connections used by phones - leaving 1 unfiltered for the DSL modem; I did this 'installation' myself in a matter of minutes and was up and running without a hitch. I did not have to rewire my home. The only issue with wiring I see would be if you live in a house that was built over 30 years ago - and not many folks that live in old houses have DSL, much less computers to begin with, so this is an exception rather than a rule).
Telcos are positioned for fibre to the demarc - so it is only a matter of time, particularly when you consider all the fibre RTs that are already in the nieghborhoods today (you don't think they ran all that fibre just to support DSL, do you? Telcos think 20 years ahead when they do any significant build-out, and over-engineer heavily to support anticipated higher capacities).
I hate to say it, but you are spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt in a misguided effort to discredit other technologies than your own. Customers will go where the best product is - and that will be on fibre - whoever provides it.
Paranoia will destroy yah...
If you find limitations with the new services, by all means avoid them; the telephone company will continue to serve your copper connection for at least the next 15 years.
On the other hand, I am interested in the VOIP telephony, and the fat pipe for my IP network. I don't watch much TV - so my wife and kids will be more interested in that - and I can't see a downside compared to what we use the TV for now. My wife is starting to get interested in the idea of a DVR - but I can always tack on a linux box between the set-top distribution box and the TV to capture the signals if so desired - and the new medium will have shows-on-demand, so that might not be needed anyway.
The sky is not falling.
Solaris and Linux, for that matter, are based on the Posix operating system standard - which means for all basic services and interfaces in-scope they are basically identical.
The real question for Linux isn't so much 'what will we implement', as 'how will we implement this standard feature better'. Threads, drivers, signals, interprocess communication, and a host of other Posix features are nothing new under the sun.
Finally, you can not discount the impact SCO's lawsuit has had on FOSS; developers are much less likely to view questionable source code for fear of including infringing material inadvertently. In the case of SUN's x86 release - what are the terms and conditions of the use of the code? I am betting they won't GPL the code - instead using a much more restrictive license.
Sounds like PhP is trying to manipulate the behavior of the Apache group.
If the issues are not substantive then why the big hulabaloo?
Religious wars only serve to speed up entropy in the system...
If I had any mod points - I would mod this up.
You are incorrect. If an order is unlawful a soldier has a moral responsiblity to not follow that order, and futhermore to detain the officer who made such an order.
And as I mentioned, but you did not pick up on, soldiers can not define policy - that would lead to a militaristic (facist) state. From a practical standpoint lives can be saved and the army more effective if discipline is maintained; from a broader viewpoint that same self discipline serves to protect the nation from the excesses a militaristic junta would entail. Finally, soldiers swear to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States - not loyalty to any regime.
Universal service (and note I said service - I did not specify military service as the only service that can be rendered) in return for suffrage is not facism. Facism, on the other hand is the following:
* exalts nation and sometimes race above the individual,
* uses violence and modern techniques of propaganda and censorship to forcibly suppress political opposition,
* engages in severe economic and social regimentation, and
* espouses nationalism and sometimes racism or ethnic nationalism.
In your view, President Kennedy's speach urging Americans to "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." is facism. Your viewpoint is BS.
To put it more simply, the rights of the individual end when that individual's actions are detrimental to society. One of the rights lost to a felon, for example, is the right to vote. Now, how is it harmful on the flip-side of that to require a term of service in order to gain the right to vote? For example, lets say you work in a hospital for two years for minimal pay - how is that harmful or in any way detrimental to society or the individual?
From my point of view the largest problems we have as a society result from people not understanding or having empathy for the people around them. You walk a mile in another person's shoes and you begin to see the bigger picture - that your actions, even seemingly the most insignificant, have an impact on others. If every person with economic and/or political power had to get their hands dirty they would have a better appreciation for their position, and would act with more compassion. This is not about facism - it is about being a decent human being.
Yet another straw that broke the camel's back.
I suspect Microshaft will learn not to spread FUD and change their business model when it stops being profitable to do so. That time is fast approaching.
Sadly the people most in need of humble pie will undoubtably sail away on their golden parachutes without a look back or a care in the world. Their worker-bees will be left holding the bag.
That is not entirely truthful. You can also download the source from ftp.mozilla.org directly if you are paranoid, and build the release yourself. Most, if not all mirrors also carry the source code, so you can also validate the source on the outlying site against the original if there is any question in your mind.
So it does not 'require' an unsigned binary at all. In fact as the author of the blog admits, having a signed binary does not prove that the code contained in the archive is free of malicious code at all.
The issue of redirecting the download to another site - a University for example - is represented as less safe than downloading from a verisign registered site. This is hogwash, and avoids the critical argument that Microsoft wishes you to ignore: with a CVS snapshot of the source code I don't have to depend upon pre-compiled binaries and verisign to do my thinking for me. I can run the following command:
diff mysource.c questionablesource.c
- and know immediately if something has been tainted or not. If I must have a binary, I can always validate a checksum of the questionable binary against one provided by Mozilla. Sites that aren't on the up-and-up, or have poor security quickly lose credence in the community, and fall by the wayside.
Finally, most products of open source developers are PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) signed - which serves the same purpose as Verisign - without the attendant costs. A developer publishes a public key used to decrypt a signature encrypted using his private key. If you can not validate the signature - then it did not come from who it should have.
All arguments regarding security of OSS can be countered with the same argument on the closed source side - save one: OSS source code is free to peruse (and diff) as you desire - thus providing the trump card closed source shops can not duplicate or argue effectively against without some subterfuge. The fact is Microsoft wants you to be tied to costly closed security solutions, because then you will only be able to 'trust' a few (rich) closed source shops for your software needs - and small OSS projects will die from lack of patronage. Thankfully they are mistaken in their analysis of your willingness to accept their lies without question.
I started using a microshaft natural keyboard about 3 years ago after I started getting tendenitis in my wrists. I've not had a twinge since - and I type a lot.
I also type very hard - I bang away at the keyboard primarily due to learning to type on a manual typewriter back in the day. I have two MS Natural keyboards I use - and both are still going strong without a hitch.
I also have a microsoft laser mouse which is at least 3 years old - again going strong.
Your logic is flawed.
1. The policy of the Executive branch is not requisite on the military - in fact it is the other way around - and rightly so since a military junta is not a democratic form of government; in time of need young men were conscripted into service by order of the civilian government. You should thank your lucky stars (and the men and women who serve in your place) there were enough volunteers to keep you from being drafted.
2. Government employment is based on the budget - which basically says you can have X number of employees. Again, the number of people who get jobs in government does not drive the budget or the number of jobs available. The federal government turns away thousands of applicants every year - if I did not join, someone else would have in my place. Do you want someone with low qualifications in such a critical position?
The tail does not wag the dog. The plane does not fly the pilot. Employment in the Federal Government does not drive allocations or policy.
Talking to you has solidified my belief that suffrage should be based upon a term of public service (2 years minimum). The Swiss have a similar system, and some of the lowest crime rates in Europe; maybe they appreciate civic responsibility ahead of money and pleasure?
From the article: It's not the point that we should move (to another planet). It's the point that the technologies that we need to live and work in other places in the solar system will help us survive on Earth when these bad things happen.
/. article is misleading...
Hello - the title of this
I think giving up my freedom and putting my life on the line for 12 years with crappy pay in the military probably fits the bill.
So yes, I have pride in being an American.
There is only one gotcha: if you are corresponding with those you are ostensibly trying to cloak your communications from.
They could then collect the plain-text and log the IP address from whence it came.
The problem with your rebuttal is that while it agrees that there is the possibility of bad sysadmins, it then blithely ignores the same.
The assumption that locking out your end-users will solve all your problems is ignoring the biggest problem - the system administrator. Assuming the system administrator has more knowledge about how a system functions is a fallacy.
The fact of the matter is both developers and system administrators fall woefully short on understanding how their actions can effect operational systems.
The system admin who patches a system without validating what files will be touched - thus crashing a mission critical application (seen it happen) and driving calls into the technical support center - I would argue are more damaging than what most developers do to systems they have admin rights on.
In both cases, a more holistic knowledge - say that of a computer scientist/system integrator - would avoid such calamities. This goes back to how we train our IT professionals, which imho is lacking. There is a strict demarcation between hardware people (site managers/system admins) and software people (developers/dbas) - that is artificial and unnecessary.
Developing better communications and training is the key to fixing this. Slapping a bandaid on a problem and calling it fixed is not the solution.
"...so long as there's a semblance of a right of fair use preserved to the people."
So we are only authorized a 'semblance' (1. An outward or token appearance: "Foolish men mistake transitory semblance for eternal fact" (Thomas Carlyle). 2. A representation; a copy. 3. The barest trace; a modicum: not a semblance of truth to the story.)
A 'semblance' of the right of fair use is not the right of fair use.
I've been a sysadmin and a developer and project manager (as well as tech support etc...).
Your assumption, 'that sysadmins know what they are doing and programmers do not' is a fallacy.
Just as there are inept users, there are inept sysadmins - and even good sysadmins can have their moments. I have seen sysadmins do really boneheaded things - primarily because they are focussed on the OS, as opposed to understanding how that OS interacts with applications and services running on the machine.
The real answer is for people to become acutely aware of how their actions can effect how a system works, or doesn't work holistically - and know what you are doing before you do it. This is particularly important for mission critical servers where one slip of the mouse can put clients offline for hours.
If a user or a sysadmin for that matter consistently screws things up - then you need to start questioning their access to the system to begin with; maybe they are in the wrong line of work?
You say that like its a bad thing.
The commoditization of the OS has already begun - and will end with a shakeup that leaves Linux distributions on the top of the heap. If you depend upon an in-house OS to float your business model, you need to think about getting a new model.
Why, you may ask, does Microsoft do so well? The answer is the twin power of forced obsolescense and incompatibility. Sell incompatible products (by that I mean incompatible with anyone else's standards and binary executable formats) that only run on your OS, then obsolete versions of the OS and various support systems over time - artificially creating a revenue stream from forcing users to not only upgrade the OS, but also the associated applications. Tried to get support for Win95 lately? Tried to load files created in Visio 6 in Visio 5?
They could open source these end of lifed OSes and applications to make your life easier by allowing 3rd party vendors to fork patches to keep thes old apps working with newer formats - but they won't. They are more interested in making money by forcing you to upgrade - even if you can't afford to.
Comparing Apples to Oranges, to use a cliche.
AOL made a whole business on this premise - leaning on dotcoms to pay high advertisement prices saying, 'if you don't advertise on AOL, you will go nowhere'. Of course, most went nowhere anyway - and probably faster after plopping down millions on these ineffectual ads.
With all that money flowing out of corporations, CFOs are more likely to demand some form of measurement before they release the purse strings in today's environment.
Sadly, developers and website providers are quick to 'satisfy' their customers by saying 'yes we can do that' - even though it is not reasonable to use click-rates as an effectiveness measurement (anyone can click a link 1 time or a thousand times, there is no direct correlation to that and buying habits; with all the auto-popup ads, probably less-so).
Funny, but probably not far from the truth, this will be seen by businesses as such an agregious waste of resources that popup blockers and other means of foiling this advertisement will be considered terrorist acts damaging to our capitalist economy. You watch, I see a rider to the anti-spam laws in our future...
...*sigh* that's why I can't depend upon SUN packages to properly load OS applications because it decides to put them in /opt/sfw instead of /usr/local - and munges up the ENV to boot.
Linux rules, Solaris drools.
Looking at the blowup of the main picture, the light is emenating from a standard power pole. Closer inspection shows a central blast arch, with a larger surrounding blast arch - dust or steam billowing out at an angle from behind the pole.
From what I see, it appears a transformer on the backside of the power pole blew up - causing the flare; the picture was taken miliseconds after the explosion.
The line on the image in the sky is probably the artifact of a lens flare, caused by the intense light at the moment of maximum light output - a milisecond before the picture was snapped and scanned - leaving the artifact behind.
If I was able to visit that location, I would examine the power pole at the point and see if there is no residue from a transformer blow-up or other malfunction of power lines at that location.
If the VOIP network is designed right, you won't get jitter and lost frames.
One thing you shouldn't do - layer your voip network ontop of an existing data network - or worse yet use the internet as your transport medium - this will lead to the problems you describe.
To guarantee the QOS needed for voice grade traffic you must have a dedicated H.323 (or whatever the next better emerging protocol is - I can't recall its name atm) from end to end.
You can have my keyboard when you pry my dead fingers from it...
There are several technologies/issues that must be conquered in order to have truely autonomous systems:
1. Massively parallel systems/neural nets. In order for a system to be self aware in a significant way it will need to be very smart. The current Von Neuman machines will not accomplish this task; current neural nets approach the intelligence of a cockroach.
2. Self repair. On a software level this is semi-trivial: cfengine, for example, allows an administrator to keep a central 'master' machine that all other hosts validate their configurations against. Changes can be pushed to multiple machines, and if a file on a host is corrupted, the system will 'self heal' by immediately replacing the corrupt file with the correct one on the master machine. However, how would a machine repair its own hardware? This implies standardized modularity above and beyond anything currently in production, as well as an ability to manipulate items in the physical world - a robot in essense. Circuits could be made redundant - however, over years of usage, it would be possible to run out of instances of a critical circuit type - and thus fail - as we have seen on some space missions; massive redundancy is costly and the visual accuity and mechanisms needed for robots to operate in the real world are not close to the flexibility of a human.
3. Ethical and moral considerations. Do we want our networks and data servers automated to the point where we can not ascertain how they work, or even if they are truely secure? Do we want self-aware systems that could potentially make decisions that are not in our best interests? (Watch the Terminator movie series for an example of why this could be bad in the longterm). Do you want to put your bank account information into a machine that is autonomous where there is no accountability? How will we correct such problems if they develop (assuming we lose our technological skills).
This is why it is a Grand Challenge - it is a quantum leap beyond everything that has come before. Can it be done? I believe so. Will it be done in my lifetime? I am not sure. Should it be done? Maybe - understanding that everything created by man is imperfect and these machines have the potential to not only help us a great deal, but conversely to harm us at the same magnitude if malformed.
I have been talking about this for years...
If the autonomous systems NASA and the ESA have put into the void are any indication, I don't think we have much to worry about - the costs will be prohibitive for all save the largest organizations, and true autonomy (in the form of robotics) will have a whole range of other problems (imagine your main file server getting up and walking out of the data center because it mistakenly assumed there was a fire...)
The key, in the interrum is make yourself indispensible. If you have the mindset that you are a code grinder/monkey and that is all you want to be, then your days are numbered. Your goal should instead be becoming the guy who can put together a complete solution (data, application, hardware, network) in short order that works, scales well, and is extensible by your users. You need to be a jack-of-all-trades. That is how to survive and gain esteem in the eyes of your clients and peers, as I see it.