We narrowly missed the Eugenics Wars and got George W. Bush instead of Khan Noonien Singh. I'll leave it up to the reader to decide whether we're the lucky ones.
According to this article, Comcast's public image is about the same as Halliburton or ExxonMobil. They're one of the most despised companies in America and they really don't give a shit.
I'm so confused. Someone else said L3 already renegotiated with Comcast and is just pissed about the deal they got. Oy.
Thank you for your explanation, it's substantially more detailed. I didn't figure Netflix really had anything to do with it--traffic is traffic, as far as Comcast is concerned. Hurting Netflix would be a nice effect for Comcast's VOD service but it doesn't seem to be a sufficient motive for all this.
Upstream is also limited to minimize end users setting up servers. There is no technical reason to restrict the upstream to a small fraction of the downstream except that one costs more than the other. Comcast doesn't do that because people don't "need" it, they do it because they want a ton of upstream traffic incurring peering charges with their upstream provider (i.e. Level 3.)
Apparently, Level 3 signed a new agreement and contracted to pay Comcast for the traffic it would be delivering. If Level 3 doesn't like it I suppose they could demand equal upstream charges to accept data from Comcast.
I should have stated my original post more clearly. Obviously, the hardware Comcast and Level 3 own is just as capable of sending data in one direction as it is the other. But peering agreements typically only charge to send data upstream. In this case, Level 3 would be sending Netflix data upstream to Comcast, which wants to be paid for it.
I think it's only problematic if Comcast is charging an exorbitant amount per byte vs. whatever they're charging other downstream providers.
Yeah, Level3 should already be paying for the traffic they send to Comcast's network. That's usually how peering agreements work: you pay for traffic that you send to another network, but not traffic that you are receiving. Uploading costs money, downloading doesn't. It's why most broadband service is structured with low upstream bandwidth.
If Comcast doesn't like what Level3 is paying them to accept L3's traffic, they should renegotiate. It shouldn't matter if the upsurge in traffic is due to Netflix or streaming porn.
Working to find common ground only works when all parties are interested in doing so. When one or both sides take the tack that "it's our way or the highway," only gridlock and polarization ensue.
Rather than holding both parties responsible for current problems, we're content to just lurch back and forth between them, our laughably short memories allowing us to be convinced that whoever's currently in power is at fault. We never seem to realize, collectively, that they're both the problem--again, a result of our short memories and our absurdly rapid news cycles.
I didn't mean to imply that corporations have some brilliant master plan for subjugating the masses. They're far too diverse and self-interested to pull off such a thing. What they do have are funds and connections which they sell to politicians in exchange for special favors. If money is speech then corporate America has a much louder voice than everyone else, which means they set the agenda and they drive policy.
The insidious part is that corporate donors don't care if the guy they're supporting is a bigoted nutcase so long as he votes appropriately whenever legislation concerning their interests comes up.
You're assuming that the masses which are manipulated and divided by both parties (in the US) could actually come to an agreement against their corporate masters.
Conservatives don't worry about "culture war" issues because they're told to, they do it because they believe in it.
Liberals don't push environmental issues and equal rights because they're told to, they do it because they, too, truly believe in it.
Savvy politicians don't invent these movements, they just latch onto them, direct them, and use them to wedge voters. But let's not be naive enough to think that without politicians pulling the strings we'd magically unite and destroy our corporate masters.
Don't read too much into it. I wasn't trying to place a value judgment on anything I stated, just trying to pinpoint how these words are normally used and in what context.
I wasn't saying we should only pay lip service to the minimization of civilian casualties, just that it's the reality. We don't care if innocent bystanders get killed as long as we get the bad guys, too.
Personally, I find war abhorrent and I certainly don't want to see any country's people get targeted or killed. But the world we live in doesn't permit such absolutes.
In a past life I had a fairly straightforward strategy:
1. The trunk was always the next enhancement release--assumed unstable at all times. 2. When we were ready to test that release, we would branch the trunk. 3. From that point forward, new development would be done on the trunk again and only fixes would go into the release branch. 4. Once we had the release branch stable enough to release, we would tag it and cut a release. 5. A release branch would wind up with one or more "maintenance releases," so each time we wanted to have one of those we'd make a branch off of the release branch. Fixes not destined for the current maintenance release would go on the upstream branch to be part of the next one. 6. All fixes were merged upstream using a custom merge tool.
Clients were able to cherry-pick what patches they wanted, too, and we would merge those fixes into a custom branch (based on their installed release) and cut a patch release. We had a system that tracked dependencies so the defect rate was quite low with this process. If a given fix had too many dependencies we'd force the customer to take the next maintenance release.
At any given time, we maintained an enhancement branch (trunk), at least two major release branches, and then we usually supported the last two maintenance releases on each major release branch.
Yeah, that's what I use it for: advertising. Not to make money from it, either, but rather just to get the word out.
If someone is not a Facebook member I wonder exactly what they're so worried about, though. As mentioned, Google and DoubleClick and other analytic services do the same thing with your anonymized data, and in return you get statistics about the people visiting your site. That's what companies who base their revenues on advertising do. They all want to track you and aggregate your data so they can target ads more effectively. If someone doesn't like that, I would suggest disabling all cookies and JavaScript as well as using a proxy, just to be safe.
Non-military personnel engaging in violent acts against civilians to bring about social or political change is terrorism.
Non-military personnel engaging in violent acts against a foreign occupier or their own government is insurgency or rebellion (though will usually be called "terrorism" by the state.)
Military personnel targeting foreign civilians during a period of open hostilities is considered warfare. Dead civilians are considered "collateral damage" if we are interested in paying lip service to the notion that civilians shouldn't be targets.
Military/police personnel targeting their own citizens under government orders is state terror.
There are situations where things get really hazy but I try to use the above as general guidelines to determine what is and isn't terrorism.
I lived in Indiana for several years and had a steady job, then it (along with 128 other jobs) was eliminated. I wound up having to move to New Jersey to get a job.
That's the economy we're dealing with right now. If you can afford to ride out hard economic times and keep your house and your car, more power to you. But if you have to give up those things and move halfway across the country in order to find work, then that's what you do.
It amazes me how many people acknowledge that there are no jobs anywhere near them yet they're completely against the idea of moving someplace that does have jobs. The job market isn't local anymore--it's global. You go to where you can get a job. You can't wait for the jobs to come to you.
The USA incarcerates more of its population than any other country. We also lock up more nonviolent offenders than anyone else. Our system is focused on punishment rather than rehabilitation. And all this is while crime rates are trending downward across the board. Our law enforcement, criminal justice, and corrections systems are not going to cooperate and slim down. They'll just find ways to trump up crime statistics and invent new crimes in order to keep boosting their funding and resources.
Absolutely. All those cars and guns and kevlar vests and tasers don't spring up out of thin air. Nor do prisons. Criminal justice is big business, especially in the USA.
For "bus" you may substitute some other sudden or not-so-sudden tragedy. The point is, the people who work here today may not be here tomorrow, and the software must still be maintained in any case.
It's not just documenting code that matters, it's having documented specifications. The specs say how the system should work. The code says how it does work. These things are not always the same and it's worthwhile to know where you have discrepancies.
Programmers often seem to think of documentation and other paperwork as useless overhead. Some of it may be, but bona fide requirements and specifications are invaluable for any kind of large, complex system.
In the world of enterprise software, you must have well-written requirements. And specs. Everything needs to be written down so five years down the road you aren't left wondering why you did something a certain way. Or, God forbid, you get hit by a bus and some other poor sucker has to figure out what you did and why. I've seen programmers whose written English is so poor as to border on illiteracy. They write specs that are complete nonsense. It doesn't matter how good a programmer you are if you can't put what you code into plain English so others can understand it.
On the subject of cheating, I recently had a candidate who was given a coding assignment so I could gauge their programming abilities. Nothing too serious, I just wanted to make sure this person could actually code, right? They submitted something blatantly copied from a website. Very little Google searching turned up the original source. I don't know what's worse: that they didn't think they'd get caught; that they thought I was too stupid to figure out what they did; or that they simply didn't care enough to do the assignment on their own. I mean, if you'd cheat in the process of applying for a job, why the hell would I want you to work for me?
Duh, what? The FCC is part of the executive branch. You know, the part of the government that answers to the President. Apart from that, the people elected on November 2nd don't even take office until next year.
Slashdot Mirror
How do you figure? We might be moving to a cashless society but there will still be plenty of money moving around--just electronically.
The economy of the Federation could best be described as a technate: an economy based on energy accounting rather than capitalism.
We narrowly missed the Eugenics Wars and got George W. Bush instead of Khan Noonien Singh. I'll leave it up to the reader to decide whether we're the lucky ones.
According to this article, Comcast's public image is about the same as Halliburton or ExxonMobil. They're one of the most despised companies in America and they really don't give a shit.
I'm so confused. Someone else said L3 already renegotiated with Comcast and is just pissed about the deal they got. Oy.
Thank you for your explanation, it's substantially more detailed. I didn't figure Netflix really had anything to do with it--traffic is traffic, as far as Comcast is concerned. Hurting Netflix would be a nice effect for Comcast's VOD service but it doesn't seem to be a sufficient motive for all this.
Upstream is also limited to minimize end users setting up servers. There is no technical reason to restrict the upstream to a small fraction of the downstream except that one costs more than the other. Comcast doesn't do that because people don't "need" it, they do it because they want a ton of upstream traffic incurring peering charges with their upstream provider (i.e. Level 3.)
Apparently, Level 3 signed a new agreement and contracted to pay Comcast for the traffic it would be delivering. If Level 3 doesn't like it I suppose they could demand equal upstream charges to accept data from Comcast.
I should have stated my original post more clearly. Obviously, the hardware Comcast and Level 3 own is just as capable of sending data in one direction as it is the other. But peering agreements typically only charge to send data upstream. In this case, Level 3 would be sending Netflix data upstream to Comcast, which wants to be paid for it.
I think it's only problematic if Comcast is charging an exorbitant amount per byte vs. whatever they're charging other downstream providers.
If L3 accepted then I don't see what they have to bitch about.
Yeah, Level3 should already be paying for the traffic they send to Comcast's network. That's usually how peering agreements work: you pay for traffic that you send to another network, but not traffic that you are receiving. Uploading costs money, downloading doesn't. It's why most broadband service is structured with low upstream bandwidth.
If Comcast doesn't like what Level3 is paying them to accept L3's traffic, they should renegotiate. It shouldn't matter if the upsurge in traffic is due to Netflix or streaming porn.
Neat, I finally get to "whoosh" somebody!
In the immortal words of Patrick Henry: "Live free or die hard."
Working to find common ground only works when all parties are interested in doing so. When one or both sides take the tack that "it's our way or the highway," only gridlock and polarization ensue.
Rather than holding both parties responsible for current problems, we're content to just lurch back and forth between them, our laughably short memories allowing us to be convinced that whoever's currently in power is at fault. We never seem to realize, collectively, that they're both the problem--again, a result of our short memories and our absurdly rapid news cycles.
I didn't mean to imply that corporations have some brilliant master plan for subjugating the masses. They're far too diverse and self-interested to pull off such a thing. What they do have are funds and connections which they sell to politicians in exchange for special favors. If money is speech then corporate America has a much louder voice than everyone else, which means they set the agenda and they drive policy.
The insidious part is that corporate donors don't care if the guy they're supporting is a bigoted nutcase so long as he votes appropriately whenever legislation concerning their interests comes up.
You're assuming that the masses which are manipulated and divided by both parties (in the US) could actually come to an agreement against their corporate masters.
Conservatives don't worry about "culture war" issues because they're told to, they do it because they believe in it.
Liberals don't push environmental issues and equal rights because they're told to, they do it because they, too, truly believe in it.
Savvy politicians don't invent these movements, they just latch onto them, direct them, and use them to wedge voters. But let's not be naive enough to think that without politicians pulling the strings we'd magically unite and destroy our corporate masters.
After I experience a bas taste I immediately seek out some bas relief.
That's instant sig material, right there.
Don't read too much into it. I wasn't trying to place a value judgment on anything I stated, just trying to pinpoint how these words are normally used and in what context.
I wasn't saying we should only pay lip service to the minimization of civilian casualties, just that it's the reality. We don't care if innocent bystanders get killed as long as we get the bad guys, too.
Personally, I find war abhorrent and I certainly don't want to see any country's people get targeted or killed. But the world we live in doesn't permit such absolutes.
In a past life I had a fairly straightforward strategy:
1. The trunk was always the next enhancement release--assumed unstable at all times.
2. When we were ready to test that release, we would branch the trunk.
3. From that point forward, new development would be done on the trunk again and only fixes would go into the release branch.
4. Once we had the release branch stable enough to release, we would tag it and cut a release.
5. A release branch would wind up with one or more "maintenance releases," so each time we wanted to have one of those we'd make a branch off of the release branch. Fixes not destined for the current maintenance release would go on the upstream branch to be part of the next one.
6. All fixes were merged upstream using a custom merge tool.
Clients were able to cherry-pick what patches they wanted, too, and we would merge those fixes into a custom branch (based on their installed release) and cut a patch release. We had a system that tracked dependencies so the defect rate was quite low with this process. If a given fix had too many dependencies we'd force the customer to take the next maintenance release.
At any given time, we maintained an enhancement branch (trunk), at least two major release branches, and then we usually supported the last two maintenance releases on each major release branch.
Yeah, that's what I use it for: advertising. Not to make money from it, either, but rather just to get the word out.
If someone is not a Facebook member I wonder exactly what they're so worried about, though. As mentioned, Google and DoubleClick and other analytic services do the same thing with your anonymized data, and in return you get statistics about the people visiting your site. That's what companies who base their revenues on advertising do. They all want to track you and aggregate your data so they can target ads more effectively. If someone doesn't like that, I would suggest disabling all cookies and JavaScript as well as using a proxy, just to be safe.
Non-military personnel engaging in violent acts against civilians to bring about social or political change is terrorism.
Non-military personnel engaging in violent acts against a foreign occupier or their own government is insurgency or rebellion (though will usually be called "terrorism" by the state.)
Military personnel targeting foreign civilians during a period of open hostilities is considered warfare. Dead civilians are considered "collateral damage" if we are interested in paying lip service to the notion that civilians shouldn't be targets.
Military/police personnel targeting their own citizens under government orders is state terror.
There are situations where things get really hazy but I try to use the above as general guidelines to determine what is and isn't terrorism.
As one of the posters upthread said, "move!"
I lived in Indiana for several years and had a steady job, then it (along with 128 other jobs) was eliminated. I wound up having to move to New Jersey to get a job.
That's the economy we're dealing with right now. If you can afford to ride out hard economic times and keep your house and your car, more power to you. But if you have to give up those things and move halfway across the country in order to find work, then that's what you do.
It amazes me how many people acknowledge that there are no jobs anywhere near them yet they're completely against the idea of moving someplace that does have jobs. The job market isn't local anymore--it's global. You go to where you can get a job. You can't wait for the jobs to come to you.
Al Gore invented the Internet, not the Web. Get it right.
The USA incarcerates more of its population than any other country. We also lock up more nonviolent offenders than anyone else. Our system is focused on punishment rather than rehabilitation. And all this is while crime rates are trending downward across the board. Our law enforcement, criminal justice, and corrections systems are not going to cooperate and slim down. They'll just find ways to trump up crime statistics and invent new crimes in order to keep boosting their funding and resources.
It's horribly fucked up, to say the least.
Absolutely. All those cars and guns and kevlar vests and tasers don't spring up out of thin air. Nor do prisons. Criminal justice is big business, especially in the USA.
For "bus" you may substitute some other sudden or not-so-sudden tragedy. The point is, the people who work here today may not be here tomorrow, and the software must still be maintained in any case.
It's not just documenting code that matters, it's having documented specifications. The specs say how the system should work. The code says how it does work. These things are not always the same and it's worthwhile to know where you have discrepancies.
Programmers often seem to think of documentation and other paperwork as useless overhead. Some of it may be, but bona fide requirements and specifications are invaluable for any kind of large, complex system.
God, I wish I had mod points.
In the world of enterprise software, you must have well-written requirements. And specs. Everything needs to be written down so five years down the road you aren't left wondering why you did something a certain way. Or, God forbid, you get hit by a bus and some other poor sucker has to figure out what you did and why. I've seen programmers whose written English is so poor as to border on illiteracy. They write specs that are complete nonsense. It doesn't matter how good a programmer you are if you can't put what you code into plain English so others can understand it.
On the subject of cheating, I recently had a candidate who was given a coding assignment so I could gauge their programming abilities. Nothing too serious, I just wanted to make sure this person could actually code, right? They submitted something blatantly copied from a website. Very little Google searching turned up the original source. I don't know what's worse: that they didn't think they'd get caught; that they thought I was too stupid to figure out what they did; or that they simply didn't care enough to do the assignment on their own. I mean, if you'd cheat in the process of applying for a job, why the hell would I want you to work for me?
Duh, what? The FCC is part of the executive branch. You know, the part of the government that answers to the President. Apart from that, the people elected on November 2nd don't even take office until next year.