Email is "open," and I'd guess you could sum up >20% of active internet users with hotmail, gmail, and aol.com
Yes, but this allows for users to weigh the risks because they have a choice: 1. Your email is not very critical to you so you entrust it to a free service like Hotmail 2. Your email is critical so you entrust it to a pay-service which may have a proper SLA 3. You feel that you can run an email server better than the chimps at hotmail or your ISP so you run your own.
The AIM protocol does _not_ give you the choice which is why it's bad - if you entrust all your email to a freebee service like Hotmail then you probably have no reason to complain when they accidentally blow away your account, but with AIM you are _required_ to entrust your account to a bunch of chimps and you can't even change which bunch of chimps you entrust it to if they show incompetence.
ITS OPEN OR CLOSEDNESS, DOES NOT ENTER INTO IT.
You'll note that I never mentioned anything about it's open or closedness in this thread.
I have Jabber, you have Jabber... are we on the same Jabber network? How do I connect to your network?
What? You're not making any sense - it's all automatic. If I'm logged onto the server example1.com with username "bar" and you're logged onto example2.com with username "foo" then I can IM foo@example2.com and it Just Works - this is exactly the same as how you send mail - you don't need to worry about how the network interconnects, you just address your email to someuser@somedomain.com and it Just Works.
What you are saying might be true of other protocols auch as AIM whcih aren't designed to cope with a network of servers - there you may well have 2 AIM servers with no way of communicating with eachother, but with Jabber they will automatically talk so long as there are no firewalls blocking the data between the servers.
100,000 people are now unable to connect. Is this Jabbers fault? No... it's your fault for b0rking your server.
I would be inclined to say it's your fault for hosting so many people on the same server with no "high availability" fail over system in place.
However, if 100,000 people is 100% of your network then that's really bad (this is the case of AOL) but if that 100,000 people on the same server is 1% of your network then it's not quite such an issue.
That said, I'm happy to blame AOL for being idiots... but blaming the OSCAR protocol just because it's closed is idiotic.
The fault of the protocol is that it doesn't allow multiple servers to be run by multiple providers - if it did then the scope for the fsck up would be a lot more limited. You will _always_ get screwups, part of protocol design is to limit the impact of said screwups. the AIM protocol (along with the MSN protocol, etc) were all designed by monopolies who wanted to be in charge of their own servers. The Jabber protocol was designed to be open and allow anyone to run their own server if they so choose.
Other Bad Things about the monopolistic approach to protocol design are: 1. If AOL wanted to discontinue the service they can just pull the plug on the servers and all their users are screwed (similarly they could sudenly decide to charge for the service) 2. If AOL want to completely change the protocol in an incompatable way then they can and that causes much hassle for the users.
The multiple independent server approach guarantees that you can continue using the service, even if you end up having to move to a new server, whcih I see as a Good Thing for the end user.
This isn't an issue of "closed protocol"/"closed source" and more of an issue of "poor management". This can happen just as easily (and arguably easier, in fact) with open source products.
No, I think you'll find this is a protocol flaw - downing a Jabber server only affects connectivity to/from the small number of people using that server. There are many other servers in the network (you can set your own up) which are completely unaffected.
This problem stems from the fact that AIM relies on a single cluster of servers run by a single bunch of fsckwits^W^W^Wcompany - when they screw up they have the opportunity to take out the whole service in one mistake.
I just installed my own Jabber server, but nobody I know has an account on it so I'm now talking to myself.
You obviously have no clue how Jabber works. What you just said is like "I set up my own mail server but noone else has an account on it so I'm talking to myself".
Of course Jabber servers can talk to eachother - thats why it's called the Jabber Network
Jabber is still around? Tried it a few years ago, found their client irritating (not to mention I know nobody that uses it).
There are plenty of Jabber clients around - choose one you do like (I use gAIM).
The nice thing about Jabber is that it's not designed to have a single company owning (and screwing up) a central server - you can run your own Jabber server if you like and will be unaffected by other servers going down (unless you need to talk to someone who actually uses that other server).
This is why you should use an open IM network like Jabber.
Amoungst other things, it's well designed enough not to require everyone to use a central server - run your own server if you want and you're then responsible for any screwups on it.
I think I'm slightly more worried about balancing a 2.4GHz microwave generator (802.11g) on my bollocks.
On the other hand, has anyone made any studies into the effects of microwaving your nuts by using your cellphone while it's in your pocket (i.e. with a bluetooth headset or using it for GPRS with your PDA over bluetooth)?
Thank goodness we've found our first vulnerability in Firefox
First? There have been plenty of other FireFox vulnerabilities in the past, however they have all been fixed extremely quickly once discovered (i.e. within a day or 2).
All software has security holes in it, get over it - the difference is that the Mozilla Foundation have a habit of fixing them as soon as they find out about them whereas Microsoft have a habit of waiting for many months before bothering to fix them even if they are being actively exploited.
People who don't look at the ads, block the ads, or view the ads but get annoyed, are all in the general class of people who aren't sold on the product, i.e., the advertising failed to do its job.
With respect, if you block the ads advertising didn't fail to do it's job - it was never given the opportunity to do it's job. Which is of course the whole problem - if the ad is on your screen and you choose to not click it then that's fair enough - the product it was advertising didn't interest you. But on the other hand, if you blocked the ad then you don't _know_ if it would have interested you.
If this is your belief, why are you on/. (a commercial website)?
Where did I say I didn't support commercial websites? I think you'll find that my only complaint against anything commercial was the use of excessively annoying ads - the ads on slashdot are not excessively annoying IMHO.
Infact my whole arguement was that outright blocking _all_ ads on commercial sites was wrong.
We must always have the right of what to view and what not to view, business models built on denying that choice deserve to be undermined whether its/., CNN, or any other site.
This would work great if the content providers could see if you were blocking ads and not serve content if you are.
I think your view is flawed because by the same token you're saying that business models which deny you the choice of wandering out of the shop with some goods without paying deserve to be undermined too.
But I've been thinking lately -- is this going to change the Internet dramatically? How many web sites rely on advertising revenue, and won't get it anymore when everybody is filtering banners?
Exactly - by filtering _all_ ads you're destroying the current structure of the internet. IMHO filtering excessively annoying ads (flash, animated gifs, popups, etc) is fair enough, but don't you want to encourage the advertisers to use non-intrusive text only ads?
How about I enter my card number on Google, and any site that currently carries Google adverts instead charges my access to Google and Google agregates the bills and charges my card?
Whilest I think there is certainly a good case for providing a "pay-for" version of a site without adverts, I think that completely removing the ability to provide a free service with ads too is very shortsighted - there are some of us who are prepared to put up with Google's non-intrusive ads instead of paying for a site and indeed sometimes find the ads useful.
Would you care to comment on the number of people who actually subscribe to slashdot vs. the number of people who just use the free version, ads and all?
The solution is simple. STOP PAYING for clicked links!
I'd agree here - give sites hosting the adverts a percentage commission on sales resulting from the click.
A slightly more advanced tracking system is needed but it's certainly not the science of rockets.
I should mention that I host Google ads on my site. I do not defraud Google (nor would I condone it) and I would support a commission based system as a replacement for the pay-per-click system. The reason is simple: Cut out the fraud and I, as a legitimate non fraudulent site _should_ get paid more since there is less of the advertising revenue heading to the fraudsters.
How about ending the advertising? I wouldn't miss it.
So you're happy to enter your credit card number on Google and any sites that use AdSense adverts to fund themselves?
I for one welcome Google's approach to adverts - it's a hell of a lot better than the completely untargetted, very annoying Flash, animated GIFs and popups that other advertisers use. Whats more, Google's targetted text ads are sometimes actually useful.
Everyone complains about adverts but obviously don't think about the economics - web sites have to fund themselves somehow, so either you're going to have to pay directly or put up with the ads. IMHO ads designed to be annoying and untargetted can be blocked without any problem but Google style ads are reasonably non-intrusive and targetted so you should allow them - you want to push the advertisers in the direction of sensible unobtrusive ads rather than forcing the sites to close down.
I'm sure that it won't be a huge deal. Our recievers have about 20 satellites programmed in them. I'm sure better/bigger stations or cable companies have more options.
But most home-users don't have motorised dishes, so my question still stands - if you're serving home users and the sat goes down, is there actually a sat close enough to take the load without having to reposition everyone's dishes?
I did and it doesn't answer the questions I just asked - just says they moved most of the traffic to another sat, never said anything about the problems.
What exactly do you do if you're running satellite services and the satellite dies? As far as I can see, you either have to get a replacement up pretty damned quickly or you have to go reposition everyone's dishes so you can use another sat. Or are there already other satellites close enough to be able to use without moving dishes?
(How close do sats have to be if you want to avoid moving dishes?)
I imagine losing a satellite would be quite a big deal for satellite TV companies, etc who have all their services routed through a single satellite - talk about all your eggs in one basket.
More children drown every year in 5 gallon buckets than due to guns
Pleazse demonstrate how you drown due to a gun?:)
Re:Dixons stopped VHS because of TiVo/PVRs?...
on
The VHS is Dead
·
· Score: 1
Basically, I'm fed up of casual TV browsing
That's the whole point though - I don't just watch "what's on" anymore. When I want to watch TV there's always something I'm actually vaguely interested in already recorded so I end up watching that instead of any old rubbish (ok, so much of it was on when I wouldn't normally be watching TV anyway). A far more productive use of my TV watching time than repeats of the simpsons.:)
I wouldn't consider going for a PC-based solution unless it was in a small, attractive
The Asus Pundit boxes are quite shiny.
*very* power-efficient
Myth supports ACPI soft powering off between recordings, and if you're using Freeview then you can use a really low-spec CPU since you're not having to do any encoding (it just grabs the MPEG2 stream straight off the air).
Plus, I'd need a Freeview card, so already it's getting quite expensive
Freeview cards are reasonably cheap. I'd say that you could build a reasonable Freeview Myth box for less than the price of a Sky Plus box (ok, it's not cheap, but it's in the same league as commercial systems)
and that's ignoring the time taken to set up MythTV
I thought most slashdotters enjoyed fiddling with computers?:)
Slashdot Mirror
Email is "open," and I'd guess you could sum up >20% of active internet users with hotmail, gmail, and aol.com
Yes, but this allows for users to weigh the risks because they have a choice:
1. Your email is not very critical to you so you entrust it to a free service like Hotmail
2. Your email is critical so you entrust it to a pay-service which may have a proper SLA
3. You feel that you can run an email server better than the chimps at hotmail or your ISP so you run your own.
The AIM protocol does _not_ give you the choice which is why it's bad - if you entrust all your email to a freebee service like Hotmail then you probably have no reason to complain when they accidentally blow away your account, but with AIM you are _required_ to entrust your account to a bunch of chimps and you can't even change which bunch of chimps you entrust it to if they show incompetence.
ITS OPEN OR CLOSEDNESS, DOES NOT ENTER INTO IT.
You'll note that I never mentioned anything about it's open or closedness in this thread.
I have Jabber, you have Jabber... are we on the same Jabber network? How do I connect to your network?
What? You're not making any sense - it's all automatic. If I'm logged onto the server example1.com with username "bar" and you're logged onto example2.com with username "foo" then I can IM foo@example2.com and it Just Works - this is exactly the same as how you send mail - you don't need to worry about how the network interconnects, you just address your email to someuser@somedomain.com and it Just Works.
What you are saying might be true of other protocols auch as AIM whcih aren't designed to cope with a network of servers - there you may well have 2 AIM servers with no way of communicating with eachother, but with Jabber they will automatically talk so long as there are no firewalls blocking the data between the servers.
100,000 people are now unable to connect.
Is this Jabbers fault? No... it's your fault for b0rking your server.
I would be inclined to say it's your fault for hosting so many people on the same server with no "high availability" fail over system in place.
However, if 100,000 people is 100% of your network then that's really bad (this is the case of AOL) but if that 100,000 people on the same server is 1% of your network then it's not quite such an issue.
That said, I'm happy to blame AOL for being idiots... but blaming the OSCAR protocol just because it's closed is idiotic.
The fault of the protocol is that it doesn't allow multiple servers to be run by multiple providers - if it did then the scope for the fsck up would be a lot more limited. You will _always_ get screwups, part of protocol design is to limit the impact of said screwups. the AIM protocol (along with the MSN protocol, etc) were all designed by monopolies who wanted to be in charge of their own servers. The Jabber protocol was designed to be open and allow anyone to run their own server if they so choose.
Other Bad Things about the monopolistic approach to protocol design are:
1. If AOL wanted to discontinue the service they can just pull the plug on the servers and all their users are screwed (similarly they could sudenly decide to charge for the service)
2. If AOL want to completely change the protocol in an incompatable way then they can and that causes much hassle for the users.
The multiple independent server approach guarantees that you can continue using the service, even if you end up having to move to a new server, whcih I see as a Good Thing for the end user.
This isn't an issue of "closed protocol"/"closed source" and more of an issue of "poor management". This can happen just as easily (and arguably easier, in fact) with open source products.
No, I think you'll find this is a protocol flaw - downing a Jabber server only affects connectivity to/from the small number of people using that server. There are many other servers in the network (you can set your own up) which are completely unaffected.
This problem stems from the fact that AIM relies on a single cluster of servers run by a single bunch of fsckwits^W^W^Wcompany - when they screw up they have the opportunity to take out the whole service in one mistake.
I just installed my own Jabber server, but nobody I know has an account on it so I'm now talking to myself.
You obviously have no clue how Jabber works. What you just said is like "I set up my own mail server but noone else has an account on it so I'm talking to myself".
Of course Jabber servers can talk to eachother - thats why it's called the Jabber Network
Jabber is still around? Tried it a few years ago, found their client irritating (not to mention I know nobody that uses it).
There are plenty of Jabber clients around - choose one you do like (I use gAIM).
The nice thing about Jabber is that it's not designed to have a single company owning (and screwing up) a central server - you can run your own Jabber server if you like and will be unaffected by other servers going down (unless you need to talk to someone who actually uses that other server).
This is why you should use an open IM network like Jabber.
Amoungst other things, it's well designed enough not to require everyone to use a central server - run your own server if you want and you're then responsible for any screwups on it.
I think I'm slightly more worried about balancing a 2.4GHz microwave generator (802.11g) on my bollocks.
On the other hand, has anyone made any studies into the effects of microwaving your nuts by using your cellphone while it's in your pocket (i.e. with a bluetooth headset or using it for GPRS with your PDA over bluetooth)?
Thank goodness we've found our first vulnerability in Firefox
First? There have been plenty of other FireFox vulnerabilities in the past, however they have all been fixed extremely quickly once discovered (i.e. within a day or 2).
All software has security holes in it, get over it - the difference is that the Mozilla Foundation have a habit of fixing them as soon as they find out about them whereas Microsoft have a habit of waiting for many months before bothering to fix them even if they are being actively exploited.
People who don't look at the ads, block the ads, or view the ads but get annoyed, are all in the general class of people who aren't sold on the product, i.e., the advertising failed to do its job.
With respect, if you block the ads advertising didn't fail to do it's job - it was never given the opportunity to do it's job. Which is of course the whole problem - if the ad is on your screen and you choose to not click it then that's fair enough - the product it was advertising didn't interest you. But on the other hand, if you blocked the ad then you don't _know_ if it would have interested you.
Duh, oops - didn't see the AC post you were replying to.
If this is your belief, why are you on /. (a commercial website)?
Where did I say I didn't support commercial websites? I think you'll find that my only complaint against anything commercial was the use of excessively annoying ads - the ads on slashdot are not excessively annoying IMHO.
Infact my whole arguement was that outright blocking _all_ ads on commercial sites was wrong.
We must always have the right of what to view and what not to view, business models built on denying that choice deserve to be undermined whether its /., CNN, or any other site.
This would work great if the content providers could see if you were blocking ads and not serve content if you are.
I think your view is flawed because by the same token you're saying that business models which deny you the choice of wandering out of the shop with some goods without paying deserve to be undermined too.
But I've been thinking lately -- is this going to change the Internet dramatically? How many web sites rely on advertising revenue, and won't get it anymore when everybody is filtering banners?
Exactly - by filtering _all_ ads you're destroying the current structure of the internet. IMHO filtering excessively annoying ads (flash, animated gifs, popups, etc) is fair enough, but don't you want to encourage the advertisers to use non-intrusive text only ads?
How about I enter my card number on Google, and any site that currently carries Google adverts instead charges my access to Google and Google agregates the bills and charges my card?
Whilest I think there is certainly a good case for providing a "pay-for" version of a site without adverts, I think that completely removing the ability to provide a free service with ads too is very shortsighted - there are some of us who are prepared to put up with Google's non-intrusive ads instead of paying for a site and indeed sometimes find the ads useful.
Would you care to comment on the number of people who actually subscribe to slashdot vs. the number of people who just use the free version, ads and all?
The solution is simple. STOP PAYING for clicked links!
I'd agree here - give sites hosting the adverts a percentage commission on sales resulting from the click.
A slightly more advanced tracking system is needed but it's certainly not the science of rockets.
I should mention that I host Google ads on my site. I do not defraud Google (nor would I condone it) and I would support a commission based system as a replacement for the pay-per-click system. The reason is simple: Cut out the fraud and I, as a legitimate non fraudulent site _should_ get paid more since there is less of the advertising revenue heading to the fraudsters.
How about ending the advertising? I wouldn't miss it.
So you're happy to enter your credit card number on Google and any sites that use AdSense adverts to fund themselves?
I for one welcome Google's approach to adverts - it's a hell of a lot better than the completely untargetted, very annoying Flash, animated GIFs and popups that other advertisers use. Whats more, Google's targetted text ads are sometimes actually useful.
Everyone complains about adverts but obviously don't think about the economics - web sites have to fund themselves somehow, so either you're going to have to pay directly or put up with the ads. IMHO ads designed to be annoying and untargetted can be blocked without any problem but Google style ads are reasonably non-intrusive and targetted so you should allow them - you want to push the advertisers in the direction of sensible unobtrusive ads rather than forcing the sites to close down.
$5600? But you can buy a RealDoll for that! :)
I know my Sky Digital dish is pointed at Astra (28.2 degrees East) - are there other sats in the area to replace it if it dies without warning?
I'm sure that it won't be a huge deal. Our recievers have about 20 satellites programmed in them. I'm sure better/bigger stations or cable companies have more options.
But most home-users don't have motorised dishes, so my question still stands - if you're serving home users and the sat goes down, is there actually a sat close enough to take the load without having to reposition everyone's dishes?
Read The Fucking Article, loser.
I did and it doesn't answer the questions I just asked - just says they moved most of the traffic to another sat, never said anything about the problems.
What exactly do you do if you're running satellite services and the satellite dies? As far as I can see, you either have to get a replacement up pretty damned quickly or you have to go reposition everyone's dishes so you can use another sat. Or are there already other satellites close enough to be able to use without moving dishes?
(How close do sats have to be if you want to avoid moving dishes?)
I imagine losing a satellite would be quite a big deal for satellite TV companies, etc who have all their services routed through a single satellite - talk about all your eggs in one basket.
Would it not be cheaper/better to drop a lump of high explosive on it rather than a heavy lump of copper?
More children drown every year in 5 gallon buckets than due to guns
:)
Pleazse demonstrate how you drown due to a gun?
Basically, I'm fed up of casual TV browsing
:)
:)
That's the whole point though - I don't just watch "what's on" anymore. When I want to watch TV there's always something I'm actually vaguely interested in already recorded so I end up watching that instead of any old rubbish (ok, so much of it was on when I wouldn't normally be watching TV anyway). A far more productive use of my TV watching time than repeats of the simpsons.
I wouldn't consider going for a PC-based solution unless it was in a small, attractive
The Asus Pundit boxes are quite shiny.
*very* power-efficient
Myth supports ACPI soft powering off between recordings, and if you're using Freeview then you can use a really low-spec CPU since you're not having to do any encoding (it just grabs the MPEG2 stream straight off the air).
Plus, I'd need a Freeview card, so already it's getting quite expensive
Freeview cards are reasonably cheap. I'd say that you could build a reasonable Freeview Myth box for less than the price of a Sky Plus box (ok, it's not cheap, but it's in the same league as commercial systems)
and that's ignoring the time taken to set up MythTV
I thought most slashdotters enjoyed fiddling with computers?