What about downloading stuff that the local television networks are too cheap to buy themselves? And the cable TV lineup, the platinum double gold bronze executive subscription, what happens when it doesn't carry what I want either?
I download some things because they just aren't available locally, and I'm morally okay with this particular situation. I do part with the cash and actually buy data I want if it's on store shelves though - not because I want to pay the teethe to the artist or because I have some desire to karma whore in real life, I don't care about any of that, I do it purely because it's more convenient, faster, and plain old less cumbersome to pay, at least when the price is right anyway. I live in Asia, piracy is a way of life here.
Some of the head guys working for iiNet are former Defence Signals Directorate drones (And other 3 letter agencies). Westnet was a small upstart bought out by iiNet, the bozo running that little outfit was one of them. Never, ever, rule out the old boys network up at the top.
Good idea for reducing bird problems in a few isolated areas where noise is not an issue.
What about safeguards for where the vast majority of bird strikes actually occur - low level flight (0-5000ft) anywhere in the sky. I've had plenty of near misses from sea level to about FL140. By the time you actually see them the closure rates are so high that even the fastest reaction time between brain and a fist full of elevator and/or aileron is often pointless, the creature is already behind you and you surmise: 'fuck, that was close, glad I missed it' and get on with business.
I think the only real solution is RADAR combined with early avoidance - maybe even automate the process somewhat.
Deflation might suck if you are already loaded up with debt, but not all of us are. I kind of like the idea of having everything drop in price, except for my wage that is. It might actually encourage me to take out a loan.
I think you are missing the bigger picture. Microsoft is a tech company, been around for a lot of years already - their solid foundation is already growing moss out of the cracks. And, they invest 'billions' of dollars every ~year~ in to research. So, where are their chip fabrication plants? Where are their plastic injection factories? Microsoft sure aint spitting out innovative beautiful wind tunnel designed shit with pretty LCD's and blue LED's all over.
Who gives a royal fart about all the cute little new programming tricks they include in their flagship products, making windows or office better is an absolute, everyone knows this is meant to happen. It sure as hell doesn't cost billions a year to do that though. So, where is the shiny ROI from all this R&D? Shareholders are, rightfully, wondering.
I'm left handed too, but my mouse is on the right - the only reason for this is because I have a wacom tablet that I draw with - turns out it's pretty convenient to be able to drive Maya or Photoshop around with a pen and mouse at the same time.
When your pretty graph goes back "millions" of years, then you might have a point, but 400k out of 3.5 billion years, this is about as useful as grabbing a handful of random people from a barney the dinosaur concert and using them to stereotype the other 6.5 billion people on the planet.
Also, your CO2 graph is not the same as many others available in your average google search. If you can come up with a widely accepted graph amongst real scientists depicting the same portrait you are trying to paint, then great, otherwise core samples from different parts of the world tell very different stories, so I am more inclined to believe people like you are out to make some political statement rather than anything factual.
I don't disagree that humans are spewing shit in to the atmosphere, and common sense says this can't be good, but as others have pointed out, there is a whole lot more to this climate change than just CO2.
It has already caught on, Linux is old news to the masses in Asia. When your average domestic house maid blurts out a question about whether it's running Linux or XP, and your typical oriental middle class joe or jane prefers the eye bling much better than windows XP offerings, then the "year of linux on the netbook" was probably somewhere between 2007/2008.
It's also about $100 USD cheaper than any of the MS offerings, and more often than not the Linux based stuff has better spec hardware too.
The one drawback that you don't mention here is that your CRT probably needs somewhere between 100 and 150 watts to do what a similarly sized LCD panel does with 40. In either case, I'd prefer to have my screen real estate go right to the edges, and be perfectly flat with no warping. CRT's are rarely capable of this. Sit in front of a good LCD for a month and then squat yourself back against your CRT - while there are exceptions to this, most people tend to prefer the LCD.
The current breed of signals and communications intelligence is built upon systems that log and database a wide range of their inputs. Certainly one would assume emerging or custom protocols can take a while to hit the sights of middle management before they too are included whenever possible. However, where you are wrong is with the assumption that the government actually knows who you are based on either your voice, or any in or out of band signalling present. Mostly they can't know who you are, and have no real interest in knowing either.
Signalling systems are complex at best for man (or woman) in the middle work, just reading through any of the spec sheets will make this pretty clear. Your bog standard GSM handset might send it's IMEI once upon a time when you first turned the phone on, but the network thereafter will assign it with a new identity on a regular basis. Unless you catch some of those initial bursts, it becomes a game of association between who you call, and what might be buried somewhere in the database. The mathematics of such things means that even with tons of terrabyte drives, resources are still finite and the depth of associations cannot extend too far before the system starts logging worthless crap.
I guess my point is this: All wiretaps over the last 10 years (at the very least) are not necessarily 'real time' or targeted against any specific individual. The net is routinely cast far and wide. This is why 'retroactive permission / immunity' exists.
When you understand the technology behind the scenes, it's only a very small leap to a broader appreciation for what the government may, or may not be doing behind your back.:-)
You don't really quite understand how this works. All these utilities you mention require constant digging in the ground or precipitation on a regular basis. The internet, those pipes are already in place, bought and paid for. The difference in utility consumption for this stuff between zero capacity and full is so negligible as to be close enough to nothing, the infrastructure is a fixed and known cost.
Sure it costs money to roll out new infrastructure, but given how much unused bandwidth is actually available right now to these ISP's, it is clear that capacity limits are in the majority, an artificial way to increase the ingress of cash to pockets.
Look at ISP's who use port blocks to grade their customers between 'Residential Use' and 'Business', the techs behind the scenes know it's bullshit, but average Joe thinks he is getting gold plated electrons if he pays more.
Well that sucks then. My childhood foray in to matches involved burning an entire swamp, a big one, filled with bone dry reeds about 8 feet tall. That thing went up like a huge Roman candle in seconds, I'm thinking seriously cool at that time, though the two schools located just meters on either side did not share my outlook. I learned a very valuable lesson that day - the point at which ones own stream of urine can successfully extinguish a fire on a blustering hot and windy day is just a few seconds.
I quite literally scraped off all the key labels from all my keyboards both at home and at work. It doesn't just discourage the keyboard illiterate, it actually leaves them questioning your sanity, so they tend to stay well away.
Carnivore, which is really just one of many (obsolete) terms used to describe special purpose intercept systems designed to transparently record and categorize (mostly) TCP/IP traffic, does not, in fact, suck down 'everything'. What it does do is actually very much focussed on small subsections of traffic over the wire, that's how it works, indeed it is entirely why it works too.
Even the NSA with its multi-billion dollar budget has a finite amount of bandwidth and storage space, as does every other government agency the world over. I think you glorify that which is nothing more complicated than wireshark on steroids, with a little magic at the back end to tidy up the packets for the PHB's to oogle over all the porn they can capture.
Er, way to miss the point and go all tangential. Zero during normal power production, it's in the fine print, but you do actually know you have to build those coal burning power stations too, right - so the answer is whatever pollutes the environment the least over its lifetime should win yes? Regardless of the marketing bullshit. Power from coal spills out crud for the entire active life of the plant, not to mention the never ending sourcing and transporting of coal itself which is hardly clean.
Hydro and nuclear, orders of magnitude cleaner - that is the picture of the portrait being painted here, mkay. Just so happens it's all factual and stuff as well.
I read his posts for the content, some I enjoyed, some not so much. I know a few people are saying "I'm Sorry" but I'm sure others would grudgingly agree Roland was a changed man from the early days, all under the bridge and history. Sure he was in it to earn a living, no problems there, but I think it safe to say that in the end he was doing it better.
RIP: I guess you are just young to colour everything in such simple black and white concepts. In 5, 10, 20, 100 years, his kids, his grandkids, his descendants, whoever, these are well wishes for them as much as they are personal or for other readers on slashdot.
In my world Roland was just a name on my computer screen - for good or bad (I never judged), but he definitely stood out from the noise, a name I became so familiar with that it was an assumed extension of slashdot - from the day I started reading this site to the day I finish, this happy looking old guy with glasses would always be there. Simple as that. It really is a case of "You miss what you took for granted when it's gone", and sometimes it can be a sobering moment when you stop and ponder that it is no more.
So get your head out of your basement and understand that people are social creatures, we are compassionate, we interact. We might go through predictable motions like saying "Rest in Peace", but for each of us, we mean it in ways that go far beyond a moment of personal gratification.
No offence taken, not everybody squats on the same tree branch though.
I don't think the two revenue streams are similar, one is more or less a legitimized pyramid scheme (Amway) while the other is outright theft through deception. Worst case with Amway, you end up with a house full of hand soap that'll last you the next 30 years, not so good if your bank account gets cleaned out and all your cards maxed up though.
Mozilla made 75 million dollars in 2007, a little less in 2006. They have a healthy number of zero's in their bank account. I don't think anything other than fast cars, hookers, and beer are on the horizon for anyone in their executive.
(Not a pissing contest I promise) I've been doing this (and more) on my N95 with Garmin mobile XT for as long as the phone has been on the market, though it takes several button presses, as does the iPhone. Your 'one press of a button' line is in error.
The key difference though is that I can also use google maps, route 66, tomtom, and a myriad of other mapping applications that are entirely lacking on the iPhone, which just sucks really. Like you say, teh smooth is good, but there are more feature complete systems out in the world that already do this.
Slashdot Mirror
TPB has adverts? What internet are you using?
What about downloading stuff that the local television networks are too cheap to buy themselves? And the cable TV lineup, the platinum double gold bronze executive subscription, what happens when it doesn't carry what I want either?
I download some things because they just aren't available locally, and I'm morally okay with this particular situation. I do part with the cash and actually buy data I want if it's on store shelves though - not because I want to pay the teethe to the artist or because I have some desire to karma whore in real life, I don't care about any of that, I do it purely because it's more convenient, faster, and plain old less cumbersome to pay, at least when the price is right anyway. I live in Asia, piracy is a way of life here.
Maybe he can take some of our Asian rats to keep his cute feral kitten population in check when it all goes bad then?
Some of the head guys working for iiNet are former Defence Signals Directorate drones (And other 3 letter agencies). Westnet was a small upstart bought out by iiNet, the bozo running that little outfit was one of them. Never, ever, rule out the old boys network up at the top.
Good idea for reducing bird problems in a few isolated areas where noise is not an issue.
What about safeguards for where the vast majority of bird strikes actually occur - low level flight (0-5000ft) anywhere in the sky. I've had plenty of near misses from sea level to about FL140. By the time you actually see them the closure rates are so high that even the fastest reaction time between brain and a fist full of elevator and/or aileron is often pointless, the creature is already behind you and you surmise: 'fuck, that was close, glad I missed it' and get on with business.
I think the only real solution is RADAR combined with early avoidance - maybe even automate the process somewhat.
Deflation might suck if you are already loaded up with debt, but not all of us are. I kind of like the idea of having everything drop in price, except for my wage that is. It might actually encourage me to take out a loan.
I think you are missing the bigger picture. Microsoft is a tech company, been around for a lot of years already - their solid foundation is already growing moss out of the cracks. And, they invest 'billions' of dollars every ~year~ in to research. So, where are their chip fabrication plants? Where are their plastic injection factories? Microsoft sure aint spitting out innovative beautiful wind tunnel designed shit with pretty LCD's and blue LED's all over.
Who gives a royal fart about all the cute little new programming tricks they include in their flagship products, making windows or office better is an absolute, everyone knows this is meant to happen. It sure as hell doesn't cost billions a year to do that though. So, where is the shiny ROI from all this R&D? Shareholders are, rightfully, wondering.
Backwards in time... Taking (or rather, collecting) a dump is not going to be a very pleasant experience then.
I like it this way too, unfortunately my ISP appears to want to save a few bucks on their own machines and uses OpenDNS.
So, I use 4.2.2.1 through .5 as my name servers instead.
I'm left handed too, but my mouse is on the right - the only reason for this is because I have a wacom tablet that I draw with - turns out it's pretty convenient to be able to drive Maya or Photoshop around with a pen and mouse at the same time.
When your pretty graph goes back "millions" of years, then you might have a point, but 400k out of 3.5 billion years, this is about as useful as grabbing a handful of random people from a barney the dinosaur concert and using them to stereotype the other 6.5 billion people on the planet.
Also, your CO2 graph is not the same as many others available in your average google search. If you can come up with a widely accepted graph amongst real scientists depicting the same portrait you are trying to paint, then great, otherwise core samples from different parts of the world tell very different stories, so I am more inclined to believe people like you are out to make some political statement rather than anything factual.
I don't disagree that humans are spewing shit in to the atmosphere, and common sense says this can't be good, but as others have pointed out, there is a whole lot more to this climate change than just CO2.
It has already caught on, Linux is old news to the masses in Asia. When your average domestic house maid blurts out a question about whether it's running Linux or XP, and your typical oriental middle class joe or jane prefers the eye bling much better than windows XP offerings, then the "year of linux on the netbook" was probably somewhere between 2007/2008.
It's also about $100 USD cheaper than any of the MS offerings, and more often than not the Linux based stuff has better spec hardware too.
The one drawback that you don't mention here is that your CRT probably needs somewhere between 100 and 150 watts to do what a similarly sized LCD panel does with 40. In either case, I'd prefer to have my screen real estate go right to the edges, and be perfectly flat with no warping. CRT's are rarely capable of this. Sit in front of a good LCD for a month and then squat yourself back against your CRT - while there are exceptions to this, most people tend to prefer the LCD.
The current breed of signals and communications intelligence is built upon systems that log and database a wide range of their inputs. Certainly one would assume emerging or custom protocols can take a while to hit the sights of middle management before they too are included whenever possible. However, where you are wrong is with the assumption that the government actually knows who you are based on either your voice, or any in or out of band signalling present. Mostly they can't know who you are, and have no real interest in knowing either.
Signalling systems are complex at best for man (or woman) in the middle work, just reading through any of the spec sheets will make this pretty clear. Your bog standard GSM handset might send it's IMEI once upon a time when you first turned the phone on, but the network thereafter will assign it with a new identity on a regular basis. Unless you catch some of those initial bursts, it becomes a game of association between who you call, and what might be buried somewhere in the database. The mathematics of such things means that even with tons of terrabyte drives, resources are still finite and the depth of associations cannot extend too far before the system starts logging worthless crap.
I guess my point is this: All wiretaps over the last 10 years (at the very least) are not necessarily 'real time' or targeted against any specific individual. The net is routinely cast far and wide. This is why 'retroactive permission / immunity' exists.
When you understand the technology behind the scenes, it's only a very small leap to a broader appreciation for what the government may, or may not be doing behind your back. :-)
It doesn't really matter if they do manage to pull a stunt like this - random joe sixpack, meet open proxy.
You don't really quite understand how this works. All these utilities you mention require constant digging in the ground or precipitation on a regular basis. The internet, those pipes are already in place, bought and paid for. The difference in utility consumption for this stuff between zero capacity and full is so negligible as to be close enough to nothing, the infrastructure is a fixed and known cost.
Sure it costs money to roll out new infrastructure, but given how much unused bandwidth is actually available right now to these ISP's, it is clear that capacity limits are in the majority, an artificial way to increase the ingress of cash to pockets.
Look at ISP's who use port blocks to grade their customers between 'Residential Use' and 'Business', the techs behind the scenes know it's bullshit, but average Joe thinks he is getting gold plated electrons if he pays more.
Well that sucks then. My childhood foray in to matches involved burning an entire swamp, a big one, filled with bone dry reeds about 8 feet tall. That thing went up like a huge Roman candle in seconds, I'm thinking seriously cool at that time, though the two schools located just meters on either side did not share my outlook. I learned a very valuable lesson that day - the point at which ones own stream of urine can successfully extinguish a fire on a blustering hot and windy day is just a few seconds.
I've never played with matches since.
I wish I could forget but that's all grandma will talk about if you mention computers.
-- comment shamelessly stolen from someone else.
I quite literally scraped off all the key labels from all my keyboards both at home and at work. It doesn't just discourage the keyboard illiterate, it actually leaves them questioning your sanity, so they tend to stay well away.
Carnivore, which is really just one of many (obsolete) terms used to describe special purpose intercept systems designed to transparently record and categorize (mostly) TCP/IP traffic, does not, in fact, suck down 'everything'. What it does do is actually very much focussed on small subsections of traffic over the wire, that's how it works, indeed it is entirely why it works too.
Even the NSA with its multi-billion dollar budget has a finite amount of bandwidth and storage space, as does every other government agency the world over. I think you glorify that which is nothing more complicated than wireshark on steroids, with a little magic at the back end to tidy up the packets for the PHB's to oogle over all the porn they can capture.
Forget the g, I thought it was some kind of parrot... And I still see a parrot even after knowing it's a g.
Er, way to miss the point and go all tangential. Zero during normal power production, it's in the fine print, but you do actually know you have to build those coal burning power stations too, right - so the answer is whatever pollutes the environment the least over its lifetime should win yes? Regardless of the marketing bullshit. Power from coal spills out crud for the entire active life of the plant, not to mention the never ending sourcing and transporting of coal itself which is hardly clean.
Hydro and nuclear, orders of magnitude cleaner - that is the picture of the portrait being painted here, mkay. Just so happens it's all factual and stuff as well.
I read his posts for the content, some I enjoyed, some not so much. I know a few people are saying "I'm Sorry" but I'm sure others would grudgingly agree Roland was a changed man from the early days, all under the bridge and history. Sure he was in it to earn a living, no problems there, but I think it safe to say that in the end he was doing it better.
RIP: I guess you are just young to colour everything in such simple black and white concepts. In 5, 10, 20, 100 years, his kids, his grandkids, his descendants, whoever, these are well wishes for them as much as they are personal or for other readers on slashdot.
In my world Roland was just a name on my computer screen - for good or bad (I never judged), but he definitely stood out from the noise, a name I became so familiar with that it was an assumed extension of slashdot - from the day I started reading this site to the day I finish, this happy looking old guy with glasses would always be there. Simple as that. It really is a case of "You miss what you took for granted when it's gone", and sometimes it can be a sobering moment when you stop and ponder that it is no more.
So get your head out of your basement and understand that people are social creatures, we are compassionate, we interact. We might go through predictable motions like saying "Rest in Peace", but for each of us, we mean it in ways that go far beyond a moment of personal gratification.
No offence taken, not everybody squats on the same tree branch though.
I don't think the two revenue streams are similar, one is more or less a legitimized pyramid scheme (Amway) while the other is outright theft through deception. Worst case with Amway, you end up with a house full of hand soap that'll last you the next 30 years, not so good if your bank account gets cleaned out and all your cards maxed up though.
Mozilla made 75 million dollars in 2007, a little less in 2006. They have a healthy number of zero's in their bank account. I don't think anything other than fast cars, hookers, and beer are on the horizon for anyone in their executive.
(Not a pissing contest I promise) I've been doing this (and more) on my N95 with Garmin mobile XT for as long as the phone has been on the market, though it takes several button presses, as does the iPhone. Your 'one press of a button' line is in error.
The key difference though is that I can also use google maps, route 66, tomtom, and a myriad of other mapping applications that are entirely lacking on the iPhone, which just sucks really. Like you say, teh smooth is good, but there are more feature complete systems out in the world that already do this.