I worked for a bank, and their mission statement that their most important priority was customer service...I am pretty sure the COMPANY's most important priority was making a buck.
No, it really is customer service that's the most important. The reason why is because it's the happy customers who keep coming back and recommending the bank to their friends that results in the bank turning a buck. If they truly put profits first at the expense of customer service, their customer base would dwindle as would their profits.
There is no way to just _get_ a page's pagerank, as ranked by Google, without crawling the entire web yourself, or resorting to methods that are quite closely guarded secrets.
You could always just install the Google toolbar into IE and it will tell you the PageRank number for the current page you're at. For example, the main Slashdot page is ranked 9/10. If you're feeling really adventurous, you could disassemble the toolbar code and find the API call to Google which returns this info.
What I could think of is spoofing the source IP (and port) of outgoing packets to those used in the initial communication with the 3rd party server. Since they use UDP there are no sequence numbers to guess. This way the packets should traverse each client's firewall. Just an idea...
That's pretty much it. The third-party server (eg: Skype's -- this is exactly how Skype does it) coordinates which ports to communicate on. Alice start sending out blind UDP packets to Bob's IP address on a particular port number. Naturally, these will get blocked at the firewall. Bob meanwhile sends out blind UDP packets to Alice's IP address on a particular port number. These too are likely blocked. But because each has initiated an outgoing connection from their system to each other, the firewall will then let through subsequent incoming traffic to those ports. Voilà -- connection!
Re:They will fix the OBSD "virus", + more sec stuf
on
OpenBSD Hackathon Underway
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Accordingly, word on the street is that significant effort this hackathon will be put into fixing the first ever OpenBSD virus...
I guess we're both talking about different things. I'm primarily referring to the 3D accelerated drivers needed for running things like Unreal Tournament on Linux.
There are free drivers for ATI and NVidia cards in XFree86. Using a generic VGA driver would be silly.
Sure, but you missed the point. The root poster said that he wasn't interested in Skype specifically because it isn't open source. However, neither the ATI nor NVidia drivers are open source either. Both are free as in beer, and both are not free as in speech. Why then shun Skype for being closed source while at the same time joyfully using a closed source video driver? Is that not hypocrisy?
Does this mean they use closed source video drivers at all?
Last I checked, neither ATI nor NVidia is handing out source for their Linux drivers. I really doubt most Linux users shun those and stick with a generic VGA driver instead.
Please see CD-ROM for the complete software application.
Huh? Got a download link? BTW, Skype only sometimes requires your call to go through another node such as due to firewall issues. Most of the time, after negotiating the connection, it's a direct connection.
Were they the first mover? (scratches head) That's not quite how I remember it happening.
Well not exactly. I was mostly referring to the "ship first, deal with bugs later" approach Microsoft routinely took. But which other OS company on the PC struck deals with manufacturers to bundle their graphical OS with new systems? The only other one that comes to mind is IBM's OS/2 and I don't know the timeline enough to know if this was explicitly bundled with IBM systems before Windows was.
"Thanks to an initially nasty mutation which smoothed out in the 38th generation, we found that the 'Powered by Stickers' sticker was causing undue shear."
They've implemented the old "hack first, design later" philosophy of software development. After something's hacked together, then it will be documented. Once the documentation has been produced, then it will go through a redesign because of unforseen problems and the API will be changed. As a result, older implementations will break.
On the plus side, at least they'll have first mover advantage no matter how buggy. Hey, it worked for Windows...
Suppose there were a medical emergency in the theater, a doctor attempted to come to the person's aid, and the ushers kicked the doctor out. You can bet there would be a court case, and the theater would lose badly.
Well that's just a ridiculous example. It's like saying some paramedics are rushing in with a stretcher and the usher blocks them because of a cell phone on the paramedic's belt. I can't even fathom someone being so unbelievably retarded that if a doctor said "There's a medical emergency. I need to get into the theater." they would kick the doctor out simply due to them having a cell phone.
On another note, perhaps blocking of cell phones is possible while still allowing emergency calls through. Wouldn't it be possible to have a mini cell receiving station installed in the theater and proxy all the calls through it? If someone dials 911 or any other known emergency numbers, the cell proxy server would let it through. Any other number and the user gets a recorded message asking them to visit the courtesy phone in the lobby.
That kind of solution might be cost prohibitive now but, as with any technology, I'm sure the price would soon be affordable.
What if a doctor were to go watch a movie and one of his patients started dying and he needed to be contacted? What if a loved one were in an accident and people were trying to get ahold of you so you could possibly see them before they died?
There are many scenarios where having cell reception is important.
Man, what *did* people do before cell phones? Give out the public number to the theatre/opera/amusement park/restaurant/stadium's land line and have an employee come and get them if they got a call?
Actually, an interesting note is that some classy restaurants offer this as a service. They ask you to forward your cell phone to a special number, let them know your name and where you're sitting, and the restaurant staff picks up the call and comes and gets you. "Excuse me, Mr. Smith, but you have a call. This way please..."
Arthur C Clarke must have a pretty bad idea of the alphabet if he denies that one.
You can also say that IBM comes from taking the letters HAL and adding 1 to each letter. However, given that IBM wasn't created in this fashion, it's easily denied. Similarly, Clarke has stated that he didn't create HAL by taking the IBM letters and subtracting 1 from each letter. Yes, you can *derive* HAL this way, but Clarke didn't.
Yeah, well my company is uh... FOURTH! Right! Telerama beat me to the registration office by a minute, so they got the prestige of being third. Want another unverifiable fact? Bill Gates and Steve Jobs both made private anonymous investments in my company!
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I worked for a bank, and their mission statement that their most important priority was customer service...I am pretty sure the COMPANY's most important priority was making a buck.
No, it really is customer service that's the most important. The reason why is because it's the happy customers who keep coming back and recommending the bank to their friends that results in the bank turning a buck. If they truly put profits first at the expense of customer service, their customer base would dwindle as would their profits.
There is no way to just _get_ a page's pagerank, as ranked by Google, without crawling the entire web yourself, or resorting to methods that are quite closely guarded secrets.
You could always just install the Google toolbar into IE and it will tell you the PageRank number for the current page you're at. For example, the main Slashdot page is ranked 9/10. If you're feeling really adventurous, you could disassemble the toolbar code and find the API call to Google which returns this info.
And somewhere in that whole conversation, Steve Jobs shit in his pants.
But in the age of XP and 2000, you'd be lucky to get such stability from an OSX machine.
Well that's just begging for a rebuttal. Care to cite some statistics on your "2000/XP is more stable than OS X" claim?
Now I get to compete with 350 MORE people for that ONE 25,000 yr entry level position!
Wow! They make you sign a 25,000 year contract? I've heard of long hours in the game industry, but that's getting ridiculous!
Heh. Why my fairly offtopic post commenting on my sig got modded up is anyone's guess though. :)
What I could think of is spoofing the source IP (and port) of outgoing packets to those used in the initial communication with the 3rd party server. Since they use UDP there are no sequence numbers to guess. This way the packets should traverse each client's firewall. Just an idea...
That's pretty much it. The third-party server (eg: Skype's -- this is exactly how Skype does it) coordinates which ports to communicate on. Alice start sending out blind UDP packets to Bob's IP address on a particular port number. Naturally, these will get blocked at the firewall. Bob meanwhile sends out blind UDP packets to Alice's IP address on a particular port number. These too are likely blocked. But because each has initiated an outgoing connection from their system to each other, the firewall will then let through subsequent incoming traffic to those ports. Voilà -- connection!
Accordingly, word on the street is that significant effort this hackathon will be put into fixing the first ever OpenBSD virus...
I think a fix has already been found for this particular "virus".
I guess we're both talking about different things. I'm primarily referring to the 3D accelerated drivers needed for running things like Unreal Tournament on Linux.
I haven't checked in on the project in a while, but Bayonne was coming along nicely in this area and is currently used in a few production facilities.
You might have to roll your own, but the framework is certainly there.
The point being that it is entirely possible to have a usable linux workstation without using closed-source binary only drivers. Biatch.
biatch added for emphasis.
Ah, thank you. That clarification certainly bolstered your fine argument.
There are free drivers for ATI and NVidia cards in XFree86. Using a generic VGA driver would be silly.
Sure, but you missed the point. The root poster said that he wasn't interested in Skype specifically because it isn't open source. However, neither the ATI nor NVidia drivers are open source either. Both are free as in beer, and both are not free as in speech. Why then shun Skype for being closed source while at the same time joyfully using a closed source video driver? Is that not hypocrisy?
Except for that it's not a true statement... Funny mods don't improve your karma.
Humous != Humorous. Post Humously. To post humously, you do need good karma. You misread and also missed the double entendre.
My sig is finally relevant to the story!
Does this mean they use closed source video drivers at all?
Last I checked, neither ATI nor NVidia is handing out source for their Linux drivers. I really doubt most Linux users shun those and stick with a generic VGA driver instead.
Does this mean you've uninstalled your closed source video card drivers too?
Here's a choice quote from the PDF you linked to:
Appendix A. Final VoIP Software
Please see CD-ROM for the complete software application.
Huh? Got a download link? BTW, Skype only sometimes requires your call to go through another node such as due to firewall issues. Most of the time, after negotiating the connection, it's a direct connection.
Were they the first mover? (scratches head) That's not quite how I remember it happening.
Well not exactly. I was mostly referring to the "ship first, deal with bugs later" approach Microsoft routinely took. But which other OS company on the PC struck deals with manufacturers to bundle their graphical OS with new systems? The only other one that comes to mind is IBM's OS/2 and I don't know the timeline enough to know if this was explicitly bundled with IBM systems before Windows was.
"Thanks to an initially nasty mutation which smoothed out in the 38th generation, we found that the 'Powered by Stickers' sticker was causing undue shear."
They've implemented the old "hack first, design later" philosophy of software development. After something's hacked together, then it will be documented. Once the documentation has been produced, then it will go through a redesign because of unforseen problems and the API will be changed. As a result, older implementations will break.
On the plus side, at least they'll have first mover advantage no matter how buggy. Hey, it worked for Windows...
Suppose there were a medical emergency in the theater, a doctor attempted to come to the person's aid, and the ushers kicked the doctor out. You can bet there would be a court case, and the theater would lose badly.
Well that's just a ridiculous example. It's like saying some paramedics are rushing in with a stretcher and the usher blocks them because of a cell phone on the paramedic's belt. I can't even fathom someone being so unbelievably retarded that if a doctor said "There's a medical emergency. I need to get into the theater." they would kick the doctor out simply due to them having a cell phone.
On another note, perhaps blocking of cell phones is possible while still allowing emergency calls through. Wouldn't it be possible to have a mini cell receiving station installed in the theater and proxy all the calls through it? If someone dials 911 or any other known emergency numbers, the cell proxy server would let it through. Any other number and the user gets a recorded message asking them to visit the courtesy phone in the lobby.
That kind of solution might be cost prohibitive now but, as with any technology, I'm sure the price would soon be affordable.
Yeah, the Cluetrain Manifesto is sitting on the clearance rack right next to the GNU Manifesto. :)
What if a doctor were to go watch a movie and one of his patients started dying and he needed to be contacted? What if a loved one were in an accident and people were trying to get ahold of you so you could possibly see them before they died?
There are many scenarios where having cell reception is important.
Man, what *did* people do before cell phones? Give out the public number to the theatre/opera/amusement park/restaurant/stadium's land line and have an employee come and get them if they got a call?
Actually, an interesting note is that some classy restaurants offer this as a service. They ask you to forward your cell phone to a special number, let them know your name and where you're sitting, and the restaurant staff picks up the call and comes and gets you. "Excuse me, Mr. Smith, but you have a call. This way please..."
Arthur C Clarke must have a pretty bad idea of the alphabet if he denies that one.
You can also say that IBM comes from taking the letters HAL and adding 1 to each letter. However, given that IBM wasn't created in this fashion, it's easily denied. Similarly, Clarke has stated that he didn't create HAL by taking the IBM letters and subtracting 1 from each letter. Yes, you can *derive* HAL this way, but Clarke didn't.
Yeah, well my company is uh... FOURTH! Right! Telerama beat me to the registration office by a minute, so they got the prestige of being third. Want another unverifiable fact? Bill Gates and Steve Jobs both made private anonymous investments in my company!