Oh, so people have been doing $X for years, and it doesn't matter until someone comes along to claim it all for itself.
Got it.
FTFY.
Unfortunately, particularly in the US this is about how the system works currently. The patent submitter must list any known prior art with their application, but there is little to really prevent them from leaving things out. It is the patent examiners job to also look for prior art, but their view tends to be very narrow (similar but not identical often isn't good enough), and due to (what I understand of) their workload, they don't necessarily due a particularly exhaustive search.
The end result is that if you're willing to pay for it, you can patent pretty much anything you want. That's why you get craziness like #6,368,227 -- Method of Swinging on a Swing (note: not an Apple patent).
Don't like it? You need to take the patent holder to court, and prove to the court that the patent is either a) frivolous, b) obvious, or c) already exists in the public domain (or is covered by another patent).
That's the system the US uses (I don't live in the US -- our patent system here in Canada seems somewhat better run, so isn't quite as bad; I have a patent (7,251,809) that was accepted in the US, but rejected here in Canada). If you don't like it, you need to change the system.
I'm pretty certain that RMS didn't tell you that you aren't into OSS enough. He probably told you that you aren't enough into Free Software, or at the very least F(L)OSS.
You're probably quite correct -- I spoke somewhat off the cuff, and not willing to dig through 5+ year old e-mails to find what exactly he said. I appreciate the correction.
I know a lot of really neat people who are very smart hackers who continue to throw money at Apple. They'll laugh and make akward apologies about Apple's take-no-prisoners corporate behavior, and some of them even "really hate" (their words) Apple's aggressive patent suits and are really frustrated about Apple's locked-down computing platforms, but I haven't seen one of them put their money and their hardware choices where their mouth is. A lot of them talk about how much they like OSS, but none of them talks about how much they like Free Software.
And that's because there is often a big difference between theory and reality.
I truly appreciate the goals of Free Software, and contribute to them when I can. However, I do have things that need to work today, and F(L)OSS doesn't always cover those needs. And there are several areas, particularly those pertaining to design, usability, and HCI, where commercial solutions are better than existing FOSS solutions.
Personally, I don't care about whatever Apple is doing in terms of patent suits and their corporate behaviour. They are operating within the law. Boycotting Apple won't help, as most of their competitors either a) do the same things, b) do worse things, or c) would do the same if they were big enough to get away with it. Personally, I'm more interested in changing the laws that allow them to get away with such behaviour (although as a non-US citizen, there isn't a whole lot I can do to influence that in the US. It also means that I'm not particularly affected if, say, Apple gets their ban on the importation of various Samsung products into the US. I live in Canada, and we don't have the same problems with our patent system that exists in the US).
And the door swings both ways. FOSS people like to compare Apple to Microsoft as if they were equal, however Apple itself is a big supporter and contributor of FOSS. While parts of OS X/iOS are closed source, a great deal of it is open, including the OS kernel (http://opensource.apple.com). The CUPS printing system in use by every Linux and BSD distro out there is an Apple product. Much of the FOSS ZeroConf implementations out there are either from Apple, or are strongly based on Apple's code. They maintain Webkit (upon which nearly a dozen different browsers are now based). Indeed, I'd say they do more in terms of supporting FOSS than any comparable company out there -- and while not perfect, we should encourage such a level of engagement with the community. Yes, it needs tweaking and improving in areas -- but they're doing much more than the vast bulk of other large corporate hardware/software development organizations.
Supporting FOSS or OSS projects is great -- and developing/leading those projects is even better, but I've come to realize that I can't just sit back and pat people on the back and tell them what a good job they're doing when they're still supporting (and evangelizing -- if only by walking around and showing off their hardware) a company like Apple.
And yet by rejecting those companies that are not 100% FOSS but which do more than any other similar company to contribute to and support FOSS, you're telling other similar companies that there is no point in contributing to FOSS, because unless they're all-in, you'll ignore them. I don't find that helpful to FOSS.
I'm not telling you that you can't buy Apple hardware
...is that CVE-2012-4681 uses a vulnerability during Applet execution.
Apple's Java for OS X 2012-005 disables all browser Applet support, and if re-enabled by the user, will automatically disable it again if it goes unused for 35 days. The Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 10 release appears to go a step further, and disables applets in browsers until they are clicked on explicitly by users, along with disabling the applet plug-in if unused for 35 days.
So while I'm presuming the vulnerability does still exist in the Java classes themselves, Apple certainly has lessened the overall attack surface. You can't take advantage of the vulnerability if you can't run any applets. This negates the possibility of drive-by attacks for the majority of users (although it doesn't lessen the possibility of socially engineered attacks -- I'm willing to bet that if you provide directions on how to re-enable the plug-in and ask users to do so and reload the page to see a dancing monkey, some percentage of users are going to be dumb enough to follow them and have their systems violated).
FWIW, AFAIK Apple doesn't fix bugs in the Java classes themselves. They have to get upstream fixes for these from Oracle.
No his conclusion makes sense for precisely this reason. If OS X increased by more than Linux's share, than the increase cannot be explained by Linux users switching to OS X. Thus there are other reasons besides Linux that users switch to OS X.
Two big problems with that reasoning:
It assumes that the numbers of users out there has remained stagnant for the last 10 years or so, and
It assumes that users never switched from other platforms than Windows
...both of which are incorrect. Had OS X not existed, there is every possibility that at least some current OS X users would be Linux users (assuming in part that they want to run a UNIX-like OS). I'd fall into that category -- I switched to OS X 10.3 from OS/2 WARP v4.5, in significant part because OS X was UNIX with an excellent user interface, on really nice hardware (particularly for portable systems). If OS X didn't exist, I would have turned to desktop Linux. Many OS/2 users made the same jump (I chatted with David Barnes two years ago, and he was using a Mac as well), and while I can't speak for all of them, many had no desire to fall into the Windows ecosystem, and would probably have become Linux users if not for OS X.
All that said, I'm also a Linux user -- I have two headless Debian systems on my network running various services, with Xquartz installed on my Macs for when I want to run graphical Linux applications.
The overall point being, it's possible that if OS X didn't exit, many more of the new computer users in the last decade, and those that switched (particularly from now-legacy non-Windows platforms) may have chose Linux instead of OS X. I don't think its so much about people moving away from Linux as it is more people choosing one over the other in the first place.
(One of my man claims to fame is having RMS himself tell me I'm not into OSS enough because I use a Mac -- even though I've led several OSS projects, and contributed to a dozen more. Oh well, can't please everyone I suppose).
Sure there are some , but this isn't the 90's where *everyone* wanted a desktop ( or 2 ).
I think if you break down the desires of most non-technical home users, you'd find that what people wanted wasn't a desktop PC, but a system that allowed them to browse the web, read and compose e-mail messages, create/view/edit documents now and then, and to play games. It simply happened that, at the time, desktop PCs were the best way to accomplish all these goals for a reasonable price.
We've now entered an age where miniaturization, power consumption, display technology, and wireless data communications has caught up with our desires for small, fast, portable gear to achieve these same ends. For many people, a table device will suffice for browsing the web, reading and composing e-mail messages, creating/viewing/editing documents now and then, and playing games, with the benefit of no cables and large pieces to tie you to a desk. In essence, a better device has come along that accomplishes the users goals (as accomplishing those goals has always been what has driven most home consumers, and not the specific device type or family).
On a simpler level, there is no reason that just because I load file A (content I want), I also have to load file B (advertising). My downloading article.html does not make me obligated to download advertisement.png just because there's an image link to it.
Agree 100%.
To amplify somewhat, the situation is even worse (IMO) when you request data from content-provider.example.com, and they want you to also get some image and Javascript data from advertiser.example.com.
Just because I want something from content-provider.example.com doesn't mean I want (or even trust) the content being sent by a third party (in this case, advertiser.example.com). There is nothing in the HTTP contract that requires me to fetch data from third-party servers just because there are links to it in the markup.
OT, but since song of the south was *banned* by disney, you could only get a copy if you went to where pirates hang out.
it was a great classic movie but disney capitulated to pressure (their own, in fact!) and banned the film.
First off, the movie hasn't been "banned" in any sense of the word. It is simply unreleased in North America on home media, with no current intention for future release. There is nothing in law that compels a company to produce or release a product, and Disney has made the decision not to release this specific title into theatres nor on home media.
That doesn't, however, mean there aren't perfect legal ways to get a copy. The film was released in the 90's on VHS in PAL territories. There was also an NTSC-J LaserDisc release in Japan. And while scarce, Disney can't stop you from buying any of these and converting them (or getting the necessary hardware to watch them directly) for your viewing pleasure.
I'm of mixed opinion on Disney not releasing this film in some form. On the one hand, I don't think the content is entirely appropriate for young children (and let's face it, Disney films on home media are typically purchased for viewing by children). I think they're doing the right thing in not doing a wide, general release. On the other hand, there are laudable aspects of this film from a historical perspective, and it should be available to film students, film historians, and serious film buffs. In particular, the near seamless melding of live action and animation, the fact that it was Disney's first live-action musical drama, and for James Baskett's performance (for which he was the first black person to win an Honorary Academy Award, the first live-action actor hired by Walt Disney, and for which was his last performance). Considering some of the racism Mr. Baskett faced in his lifetime (of special note, the fact that he wasn't allowed to attend the premiere of Song of the South in Atlanta due to his race), it does seem pretty shameful to hide his crowing achievement completely.
America may be baking, but what about the planet as a whole? Before blaming the elevated temperatures on global warming, does anyone have data on whether or not the globe is also melting along with us?
For the record, average global warming doesn't mean evenly distributed global warming. All it requires is that there are more degrees increase times area of landmass in regions that are hotter than previously than there are degrees decrease times area of landmass in regions that are colder than in previous measurements. That is, if we take measurements in ten regions and find that six of them have a 2 degree increase and four of them have a one degree decrease, the average would be a 1 degree net increase in temperature.
Yet I hear very little about it on the news and surprisingly little in even tech websites like this one. I don't get it.
Well, we have had two articles on it this week on/. that I recall, so it isn't as if there is no discussion or awareness that it's on its way.
I think the general lack of excitement is due to a number of factors, including what I perceive to be a general distrust of science by a significant part of the American population. However, the two biggest issues I see are the following:
"Almost there" is virtually a non-story. Other than the sorts of information presented in the videos linked to this article, there really isn't much to talk about when it comes to this story at this time. The rover is still on its way, and how it intends to land probably isn't exactly general interest. Your average human probably doesn't care about the mechanics of the rovers landing. To use an analogy with the event currently dominating much of the news, "will land next week" is about as interesting as "Canadian Olympic Team plane to land in London tomorrow".
NASA's landing record on Mars. Don't get me wrong -- NASA has done some amazing stuff on Mars, and IMO should be applauded long and heartily for their achievements ont he red planet over the last several decades. The performance of Spirit and Opportunity in particular has been way beyond expectations. They're doing some of the most awesome engineering and science out there. However, Mars is notoriously difficult to land on (for all the reasons mentioned in the videos), and there is still the chance that Curiosity is just going to slam into the surface at high speed, never to be heard from again. It's somewhat hard to get emotionally invested into something that could be shattered into millions of tiny bits in the blink of an eye.
I think you'll see much more interest when Curiosity a) lands safely and b) sends its first pictures/videos back to Earth. That's something people can sink their teeth into. For my part, I know I'll be keeping a keen eye on the news next weekend around landing time to hear if the rover was successful in its manoeuvres.
People keep throwing around the word "censorship" like they think they know what it means, but it's obvious they don't. Censorship is when the government restricts your speech. Even if every single one of her claims is true, she is not being censored.
This times one million.
I've been running into this lack of understanding of what censorship is more and more as of late it seems. This certainly doesn't come anywhere close to censorship.
For this to rise to a level to be considered "censorship", once she found out that Apple wouldn't publish her book, she'd have to find that no other store would sell her book either. Then she would need to try to self-publish on the web, only to find that no ISP would host her content. She'd then need to try to make paper copies, only to find that none of the copy stores would be willing to do the job. She'd then need to start making her own copies on an old mimeograph, only to find men in jack-boots kicking down her door and threatening her with death for attempting to get out her message.
THAT is censorship. This author still has thousands of other avenues to publish her work. Government thugs aren't going to break down her door to arrest her and her family to silence her.
Want to know what censorship is? Go and see Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. That is censorship, and is something we all need to be vigilant about. A publisher choosing not to publish a book? That has happened each and every day since the invention of publishing. Just because I write a book doesn't mean that (for example) Random House must publish it, or that it's censorship if they don't.
Find another publisher -- if the book is good, someone will pick it up (either in print or digitally). If the book is junk, self-publish. It isn't censorship until you're threatened with people with guns kicking down your door to imprison or harm yourself or your family, or to otherwise shut down your ability to publish.
...is that golf isn't currently an Olympic sport (but has been added for 2016), and isn't being contested in London this year.
And yes -- sometimes it is these little details that can cause the non-scientists to completely ignore you. Some will feel there isn't much use in hearing your message about space science if you can't even get the details right about what is happening here on Earth.
Why would your credit card info be on the box, again? I know I already asked, but...huh?
I don't know about the askers workplace, but at my workplace if we need to book work-related travel we use a corporate website to book, but have to provide a credit card to charge the flights, hotels, and car rentals. We then get to expense it, along with whatever meals and incidentals were required for the trip.
Some people in the organization have a corporate credit card, but most of us don't. The benefit of using a personal card for this sort of booking is that if you have a card that gives you any sort of points per dollar purchase, you get them. The company has always been responsive to quickly repaying the expense.
So one day I'll probably be in a similar position as the asker, with the exception that I run an OS that has a secure free space wipe feature built-in to get rid of any traces of anything I delete.
Eh? You can bring your Apple apps over to Window or Linux? Since when?
Since the advent of cross-platform applications. Google Chrome, Firefox, NetBeans, OpenOffice and many other software packages are now available cross platform. Even many Steam games are available on Mac OS X and Windows (and soon Linux form the looks of it). Most of Apple's apps are based on open standard file formats, making them easily portable.
And for those that aren't -- since the advent of OS virtualization. If you're so wildly unhappy with Apple that you don't want to run their OS anymore as your primary OS, just virtualize your existing install for those apps you can't easily immediately get away from. Seems pretty easy to me.
You see, that is my point: GNOME went nuts, a large fractionof their userbase said "screw you" and slid in a few new packages and kept right on working. We didn't have to toss our hardware (as in a Linux or Win to Mac migration)
I see what you did there -- you silently switched from "hard to move from OS X to something else" to "hard to move to OS X". Well, nobody here called you any names that I recall for not running a Mac, nor did anyone tell you you should. So that doesn't particularly help your argument at all. It's also not particularly hard, especially as OS X has a BSD user land; many Open Source apps are readily and easily built and run on OS X. There is even a ports-based system for doing so automatically available, same as for *BSD.
...or all of our software (any complete OS migration) to escape the changes in GNOME we didn't like. We kept all of our files exactly as they were, all of our hardware exactly as it was, we even kept all of the exact same applications. It wasn't a problem.
So what you're basically saying is that you stuck with what you had, and didn't upgrade or change anything at all. Seems to me all desktop OS users have exactly the same choice. Don't like Mountain Lion? Don't upgrade. Stick with what you have. Keep your files exactly as they are, all your hardware exactly as it was, and keep the same applications. What, you think this is some magical feature that only OSS has?
I can't tell if you're kidding or not. Can a 5-year old iMac even run games like Portal 2 or Diablo 3, both of which had native OSX releases?
How do you know what his gaming needs are? Maybe his "gaming needs" go no further than Pac Man and Tetris.
That said, the lowest end 20" mid 2007 iMac had an ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT in it, which is the minimum listed in the Portal 2 specs. Diablo 3 lists the ATI Radeon HD 2600 as the minimum required on the Mac; the HD 2600 Pro was the card in all the 24" mid 2007 iMacs[0]. So yes, a five year old iMac would meet the minimum requirements for the games you list. I'd assume this would require you to run with all of the lowest graphical settings -- you're not going to get the best possible textures and frame rates, but they can in fact run the games you mentioned.
If you are a Mac user, as a drinker of the Kool-Aid you have no choice.
Really? I have no choice of staying with the previous release of the OS that I'm already happy with? I have no choice to install another OS? I have no choice in running KDE or GNOME?
Seems to me I have a lot of options. Probably more than you do.
- Show me how to run Microsoft Visio on Gnome, KDE, or any other distribution so I can open, edit, and then save *.vsd files on my company's network drive.
Run bare-bones Windows in a virtual machine, installing and running only those things you can't get on Linux. Done.
That's how I run for work. My primary workstation is an Apple iMac running Lion. Under my desk I have a headless Core 2 Quad running Debian and VirtualBox. Run the VM on the Debian box, enable terminal services, and run the Remote Desktop Client for Mac. Dedicate a virtual desktop for the RDC instance, and run it fullscreen. As I'm on a gigabit network, it's extremely fast, and I only ever need to touch Windows for those things I absolutely require it for (the product I'm currently working on runs only in IE9. Believe me, having come from a long history of cross-platform projects, this one wounds me to the very core of my being).
Of course, you don't need as fancy a setup -- this one simply suits me, particularly as my iMac workstation is already used heavily for development work. Most of the modern desktop VM solutions have mechanisms to run Windows apps directly on the host desktop in "seamless mode", so you never even need to see Windows itself. VirtualBox is free -- all you need is a Windows installation to virtualize, and/or Windows media and a license key. Easy peasy.
Nice falsehood there, but here's the articles actual thesis, summed up by Blogger Brian Carnell in 1999: "The Internet reaffirms the basic free market critique of large government. Here for 30 years the government had an immensely useful protocol for transferring information, TCP/IP, but it languished. . . . . In less than a decade, private concerns have taken that protocol and created one of the most important technological revolutions of the millennia."
Pretty good summation.
No, pretty bad summation, as it glosses over far too many facts.
Firstly, even though IPv4 because the official protocol of the Internet on Flag Day (1983-01-01), the network running then wasn't the Internet as we know it today. DNS didn't exist until 1983 (prior to that, you had to download HOSTS.TXT from a central repository on a regular basis). The first.COM domain name didn't exist until 1985. The Border Gateway Protocol didn't exist until 1989; prior to that GGP/EGP were in use, and only centralized core routers could participate. CIDR didn't exist until 1993; without CIDR we would have run out of IPv4 address space over a decade ago. Gopher didn't exist until 1991, providing the first end-user friendly way to access data on the Internet. The World-Wide Web didn't exist until late 1990 (in a rudimentary form) -- it wasn't until spring 1993 that CERN announced that the World Wide Web's protocols were available without a license, allowing others to develop web client and server software.
Note that ALL of these contributions came from either publicly funded Universities or from government R&D entities. None came from private concerns.
But you know what I remember of private concerns from this time? CompuServe. America Online. Prodigy. Various BBS's. None of which communicated or inter-operated with one another, and none of which were truly global in scale, and all of which were pretty expensive by modern standards. The government funded/developed Internet and W3 virtually completely wiped them all out.
So claiming that TCP/IP languished for 30 years until it became open to commercial enterprise doesn't reflect the reality of the situation. The Internet wasn't ready for commercial entities until less than 20 years ago. With no BGP (orgs couldn't run their own core routers), CIDR (efficient address allocation), or Gopher/WWW (user friendly data access and document linking/application platforms) none of the successful "private interests" would have had any success. Google, Facebook, heck even Slashdot couldn't exist without all of these technologies in place, and they certainly weren't available 30 years ago. At best, it "languished" for 2 years between 1993 and 1995, when it opened to commercial use for the first time.
(Of course, some (myself included) would argue that it's these same "private/commercial concerns" that are holding back the widespread deployment of IPv6 to fix all of the routing and addressing problems inherent in IPv4. I guess free-market commerce isn't the panacea to everything, huh?)
It's crazy massive enough that if there were 10^19 Earths, each with a population approaching seven billion, each and every single person on each of those Earths would be able to have an entire Internet's worth of 23-bit address space, all to themselves.
I do, of course, mean 32 bit address space.
Or, if we decided to fill the entire area of the Solar System with computers, we could have a density of about 3.1 * 10^18 computers per square kilometre, roughly inside the orbit of Pluto.
In case 3.1*10^18 computers per square kilometre doesn't mean anything to you, that's 3.1 trillion computers per square metre. Filling the entire orbital plane of Pluto. This should give you a better idea of how many addresses a 128 bit value can provide.
Why stop at IPv6? Certainly, every forseeable limitation has been exceeded in the past, so why not instantly make the jump to IPv240,000 and be done with it til the end of time? This every 30 years needing to upgrade and update the world's computers sure does get old.
You can't really assume a trend of every 30 years when the only data point we have is the first significant (current) one.
You also have to remember the difference between researchers/inventors and implementors. Back in the late 1980's there was already concern in the R&D community that 2^32 addresses wouldn't be sufficient, and that a new protocol would need to be devised. Unfortunately, the implementors typically aren't interested in such concerns -- they have something that works right now, and has a significant number of existing hosts, so they use it. It's the reason why we continue to use IPv4 today.
Lastly, 2^128 addresses is colossally massive. It's 340282366920938463463374607431768211456 addresses, which is over 34 billion billion billion billion. That address space can fit 2^92 individual networks, each the size of the full IPv4 address space. It's crazy massive enough that if there were 10^19 Earths, each with a population approaching seven billion, each and every single person on each of those Earths would be able to have an entire Internet's worth of 23-bit address space, all to themselves. Or, if we decided to fill the entire area of the Solar System with computers, we could have a density of about 3.1 * 10^18 computers per square kilometre, roughly inside the orbit of Pluto. It's nearly enough to give every single atom in the solar systems its own address.
Thus, in a sense, we already have made the jump, as we've called in IPv6. Using some crazy large address size (let's say 1Kib addresses) would make processing the addresses computationally more difficult, and would give such an insane address range that every atom in the universe could have 10^228 addresses each. The computational difficulty of routing such addresses would require routers way more powerful than we currently have, would make them prohibitively expensive, and would remove a lot of smaller, low-powered/embedded devices from being able to function on the network (due to how quickly you could fill RAM with just addresses).
Perhaps somebody has an (expert) answer here to this question: Why was IPv4 even allowed or implemented in the first place? Did this have to do with computing and/or memory limitations back in the day (1974 to 1981) that nobody every thought could be overcome or even required? I know hindsight is 20/20.
I find it hard to understand how the researchers developing the IP protocol could think that 4.29 billion address would be sufficient given the scale of possible adoption in the future.
First things first: due to all of the reserved address ranges, particularly (what were once called) Class D and E addresses, there are fewer publicly routable internet addresses than ~4.29 billion. The number is ~3.70 billion addresses once you take the various reserved address ranges out.
With that out of the way, the world was a vastly different place back in the 1970's when IPv4 was first defined. The idea of everyone carrying a telephone with them everywhere was science fiction, and the notion that such devices would feature processing functionality that would be able to take advantage of being network-enabled probably wasn't even conceived. The personal computer revolution hadn't happened yet either. As you said, hindsight is 20/20. It's easier to see how we got to now from there than the other way around.
It's also worth keeping in mind that when IPv4 was standardized in 1981 ([RFC 791]), computers were not particularly powerful; a state of the art desktop machine of the era would have little RAM, an 8 bit processor, and would run at less than 5Mhz. A device with an 8 bit processor would require at least 4 LOAD instructions to load an address from memory into registers, plus whatever processing would be required against the address (particularly for routing). Newer 16 bit processors (such as the 8088 and 8086) could do the same sort of processing with only two MOV instructions, but using a 128 bit address like in IPv6 would have required 8 bit systems to do a lot of processing just to handle the addresses -- you'd have to run 16 LOAD instructions just to read every part of the address into registers. This would be very significant processing wise for the time; I'd venture to say you'd need a supercomputer just to act as an IPv6 router back in 1981 (even with the limited number of hosts actually on the network). Memory would be a consideration as well -- 16KB fills up pretty quickly, so squeezing every byte out that you can would have been advantageous.
I'm also not particularly sure that the designers of IPv4 had a public Internet in mind. It wasn't until the early 1990's that the Internet was generally opened to commercial use; prior to that it was limited to government and research use. I don't think in the mid 1970's when Robert E. Kahn and Vint Cerf started work on trying to unify the various networks then in operation, that they considered that people would have a dozen or more Internet enabled devices in their homes (at current count there are 24 IP enabled devices in my home, although I certainly don't claim to be typical). That is, the "purpose" of the protocol at the time wasn't to provide a pervasive network that covered the globe, and the idea of 2^32 hosts was probably completely inconceivable. IPv4 has since invention been shoehorned into uses and purposes that were never conceived at the time of its invention. Indeed, considering how many protocols were being invented, and how quickly new iterations were being introduced, it probably wasn't expected that the world would still be using IPv4 over thirty years after it had been first defined.
IPv4 is getting to be a creaky, old technology with all sort of band-aids applied to it over the years. It is time for replacement -- the research and development community has been saying so for fifteen years or more. Unfortunately, the momentum behind IPv4 is massive, and entrenched inte
How much work on the internet do we do outside normal HTTP/HTTPS protocols?
Quite a lot in traffic terms. Streaming video (Netflix et al.) and BitTorrent use massive amounts of traffic without a lot of HTTP(S). Lesser bandwidth uses, but still very important include VoIP, SSH, SMTP/POP3/IMAP, various instant messaging protocols, VNC...honestly, if you're doing most of your work within only HTTP, you're an internet lightweight. It's a magical Internet out there, jellomizer ol' buddy -- let's go exploring.
And the $1 had green on the front as well as the black and yellow, and the overall appearance was "green" though a notably different shade than that of the $20
I don't think of myself as old... but I certainly remember the $1 and $2 bills (theoretically I should still have one of each around somewhere...)
I non-theoretically have a few of each, and the last series of $1 bill (the 1973 series) was predominately black. There was a somewhat greenish tinge to parts of the background, but it was primarily black, not green. The 1967 series, 1954 series, and 1923 series were more green with black boarders, but the series that lasted the last 15 years of the $1 bills life had only the smallest patch of light green on its face.
The reverses were entirely green on all of those series, mind you -- but I don't know anyone who would describe the colour of the front of the 1973 series as green. I have mint condition versions of the 1973 and 1967 designs, with a very good quality version of the 1954 series. Thanks for giving me an excuse to get them out to inspect them.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, so people have been doing $X for years, and it doesn't matter until someone comes along to claim it all for itself.
Got it.
FTFY.
Unfortunately, particularly in the US this is about how the system works currently. The patent submitter must list any known prior art with their application, but there is little to really prevent them from leaving things out. It is the patent examiners job to also look for prior art, but their view tends to be very narrow (similar but not identical often isn't good enough), and due to (what I understand of) their workload, they don't necessarily due a particularly exhaustive search.
The end result is that if you're willing to pay for it, you can patent pretty much anything you want. That's why you get craziness like #6,368,227 -- Method of Swinging on a Swing (note: not an Apple patent).
Don't like it? You need to take the patent holder to court, and prove to the court that the patent is either a) frivolous, b) obvious, or c) already exists in the public domain (or is covered by another patent).
That's the system the US uses (I don't live in the US -- our patent system here in Canada seems somewhat better run, so isn't quite as bad; I have a patent (7,251,809) that was accepted in the US, but rejected here in Canada). If you don't like it, you need to change the system.
Yaz
I'm pretty certain that RMS didn't tell you that you aren't into OSS enough. He probably told you that you aren't enough into Free Software, or at the very least F(L)OSS.
You're probably quite correct -- I spoke somewhat off the cuff, and not willing to dig through 5+ year old e-mails to find what exactly he said. I appreciate the correction.
I know a lot of really neat people who are very smart hackers who continue to throw money at Apple. They'll laugh and make akward apologies about Apple's take-no-prisoners corporate behavior, and some of them even "really hate" (their words) Apple's aggressive patent suits and are really frustrated about Apple's locked-down computing platforms, but I haven't seen one of them put their money and their hardware choices where their mouth is. A lot of them talk about how much they like OSS, but none of them talks about how much they like Free Software.
And that's because there is often a big difference between theory and reality.
I truly appreciate the goals of Free Software, and contribute to them when I can. However, I do have things that need to work today, and F(L)OSS doesn't always cover those needs. And there are several areas, particularly those pertaining to design, usability, and HCI, where commercial solutions are better than existing FOSS solutions.
Personally, I don't care about whatever Apple is doing in terms of patent suits and their corporate behaviour. They are operating within the law. Boycotting Apple won't help, as most of their competitors either a) do the same things, b) do worse things, or c) would do the same if they were big enough to get away with it. Personally, I'm more interested in changing the laws that allow them to get away with such behaviour (although as a non-US citizen, there isn't a whole lot I can do to influence that in the US. It also means that I'm not particularly affected if, say, Apple gets their ban on the importation of various Samsung products into the US. I live in Canada, and we don't have the same problems with our patent system that exists in the US).
And the door swings both ways. FOSS people like to compare Apple to Microsoft as if they were equal, however Apple itself is a big supporter and contributor of FOSS. While parts of OS X/iOS are closed source, a great deal of it is open, including the OS kernel (http://opensource.apple.com). The CUPS printing system in use by every Linux and BSD distro out there is an Apple product. Much of the FOSS ZeroConf implementations out there are either from Apple, or are strongly based on Apple's code. They maintain Webkit (upon which nearly a dozen different browsers are now based). Indeed, I'd say they do more in terms of supporting FOSS than any comparable company out there -- and while not perfect, we should encourage such a level of engagement with the community. Yes, it needs tweaking and improving in areas -- but they're doing much more than the vast bulk of other large corporate hardware/software development organizations.
Supporting FOSS or OSS projects is great -- and developing/leading those projects is even better, but I've come to realize that I can't just sit back and pat people on the back and tell them what a good job they're doing when they're still supporting (and evangelizing -- if only by walking around and showing off their hardware) a company like Apple.
And yet by rejecting those companies that are not 100% FOSS but which do more than any other similar company to contribute to and support FOSS, you're telling other similar companies that there is no point in contributing to FOSS, because unless they're all-in, you'll ignore them. I don't find that helpful to FOSS.
I'm not telling you that you can't buy Apple hardware
Good, because I'd ignore you anyway :).
I'm just asking that you take
...is that CVE-2012-4681 uses a vulnerability during Applet execution.
Apple's Java for OS X 2012-005 disables all browser Applet support, and if re-enabled by the user, will automatically disable it again if it goes unused for 35 days. The Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 10 release appears to go a step further, and disables applets in browsers until they are clicked on explicitly by users, along with disabling the applet plug-in if unused for 35 days.
So while I'm presuming the vulnerability does still exist in the Java classes themselves, Apple certainly has lessened the overall attack surface. You can't take advantage of the vulnerability if you can't run any applets. This negates the possibility of drive-by attacks for the majority of users (although it doesn't lessen the possibility of socially engineered attacks -- I'm willing to bet that if you provide directions on how to re-enable the plug-in and ask users to do so and reload the page to see a dancing monkey, some percentage of users are going to be dumb enough to follow them and have their systems violated).
FWIW, AFAIK Apple doesn't fix bugs in the Java classes themselves. They have to get upstream fixes for these from Oracle.
Yaz
No his conclusion makes sense for precisely this reason. If OS X increased by more than Linux's share, than the increase cannot be explained by Linux users switching to OS X. Thus there are other reasons besides Linux that users switch to OS X.
Two big problems with that reasoning:
...both of which are incorrect. Had OS X not existed, there is every possibility that at least some current OS X users would be Linux users (assuming in part that they want to run a UNIX-like OS). I'd fall into that category -- I switched to OS X 10.3 from OS/2 WARP v4.5, in significant part because OS X was UNIX with an excellent user interface, on really nice hardware (particularly for portable systems). If OS X didn't exist, I would have turned to desktop Linux. Many OS/2 users made the same jump (I chatted with David Barnes two years ago, and he was using a Mac as well), and while I can't speak for all of them, many had no desire to fall into the Windows ecosystem, and would probably have become Linux users if not for OS X.
All that said, I'm also a Linux user -- I have two headless Debian systems on my network running various services, with Xquartz installed on my Macs for when I want to run graphical Linux applications.
The overall point being, it's possible that if OS X didn't exit, many more of the new computer users in the last decade, and those that switched (particularly from now-legacy non-Windows platforms) may have chose Linux instead of OS X. I don't think its so much about people moving away from Linux as it is more people choosing one over the other in the first place.
(One of my man claims to fame is having RMS himself tell me I'm not into OSS enough because I use a Mac -- even though I've led several OSS projects, and contributed to a dozen more. Oh well, can't please everyone I suppose).
Yaz
To see my enemies buried. After that, I don't care.
I'd hope you'd also want to live long enough to hear the lamentation of their women.
Yaz
Sure there are some , but this isn't the 90's where *everyone* wanted a desktop ( or 2 ).
I think if you break down the desires of most non-technical home users, you'd find that what people wanted wasn't a desktop PC, but a system that allowed them to browse the web, read and compose e-mail messages, create/view/edit documents now and then, and to play games. It simply happened that, at the time, desktop PCs were the best way to accomplish all these goals for a reasonable price.
We've now entered an age where miniaturization, power consumption, display technology, and wireless data communications has caught up with our desires for small, fast, portable gear to achieve these same ends. For many people, a table device will suffice for browsing the web, reading and composing e-mail messages, creating/viewing/editing documents now and then, and playing games, with the benefit of no cables and large pieces to tie you to a desk. In essence, a better device has come along that accomplishes the users goals (as accomplishing those goals has always been what has driven most home consumers, and not the specific device type or family).
Yaz
On a simpler level, there is no reason that just because I load file A (content I want), I also have to load file B (advertising). My downloading article.html does not make me obligated to download advertisement.png just because there's an image link to it.
Agree 100%.
To amplify somewhat, the situation is even worse (IMO) when you request data from content-provider.example.com, and they want you to also get some image and Javascript data from advertiser.example.com.
Just because I want something from content-provider.example.com doesn't mean I want (or even trust) the content being sent by a third party (in this case, advertiser.example.com). There is nothing in the HTTP contract that requires me to fetch data from third-party servers just because there are links to it in the markup.
Yaz
OT, but since song of the south was *banned* by disney, you could only get a copy if you went to where pirates hang out.
it was a great classic movie but disney capitulated to pressure (their own, in fact!) and banned the film.
First off, the movie hasn't been "banned" in any sense of the word. It is simply unreleased in North America on home media, with no current intention for future release. There is nothing in law that compels a company to produce or release a product, and Disney has made the decision not to release this specific title into theatres nor on home media.
That doesn't, however, mean there aren't perfect legal ways to get a copy. The film was released in the 90's on VHS in PAL territories. There was also an NTSC-J LaserDisc release in Japan. And while scarce, Disney can't stop you from buying any of these and converting them (or getting the necessary hardware to watch them directly) for your viewing pleasure.
I'm of mixed opinion on Disney not releasing this film in some form. On the one hand, I don't think the content is entirely appropriate for young children (and let's face it, Disney films on home media are typically purchased for viewing by children). I think they're doing the right thing in not doing a wide, general release. On the other hand, there are laudable aspects of this film from a historical perspective, and it should be available to film students, film historians, and serious film buffs. In particular, the near seamless melding of live action and animation, the fact that it was Disney's first live-action musical drama, and for James Baskett's performance (for which he was the first black person to win an Honorary Academy Award, the first live-action actor hired by Walt Disney, and for which was his last performance). Considering some of the racism Mr. Baskett faced in his lifetime (of special note, the fact that he wasn't allowed to attend the premiere of Song of the South in Atlanta due to his race), it does seem pretty shameful to hide his crowing achievement completely.
Yaz
America may be baking, but what about the planet as a whole? Before blaming the elevated temperatures on global warming, does anyone have data on whether or not the globe is also melting along with us?
For the record, average global warming doesn't mean evenly distributed global warming. All it requires is that there are more degrees increase times area of landmass in regions that are hotter than previously than there are degrees decrease times area of landmass in regions that are colder than in previous measurements. That is, if we take measurements in ten regions and find that six of them have a 2 degree increase and four of them have a one degree decrease, the average would be a 1 degree net increase in temperature.
Yaz
I'm planning to write a survey paper on the overall effectiveness of scientists carrying coffins on government funding of science.
So if anyone knows of any papers in this area of research, please let me know. Future science may depend on it!
Yaz
Yet I hear very little about it on the news and surprisingly little in even tech websites like this one. I don't get it.
Well, we have had two articles on it this week on /. that I recall, so it isn't as if there is no discussion or awareness that it's on its way.
I think the general lack of excitement is due to a number of factors, including what I perceive to be a general distrust of science by a significant part of the American population. However, the two biggest issues I see are the following:
I think you'll see much more interest when Curiosity a) lands safely and b) sends its first pictures/videos back to Earth. That's something people can sink their teeth into. For my part, I know I'll be keeping a keen eye on the news next weekend around landing time to hear if the rover was successful in its manoeuvres.
Yaz
People keep throwing around the word "censorship" like they think they know what it means, but it's obvious they don't. Censorship is when the government restricts your speech. Even if every single one of her claims is true, she is not being censored.
This times one million.
I've been running into this lack of understanding of what censorship is more and more as of late it seems. This certainly doesn't come anywhere close to censorship.
For this to rise to a level to be considered "censorship", once she found out that Apple wouldn't publish her book, she'd have to find that no other store would sell her book either. Then she would need to try to self-publish on the web, only to find that no ISP would host her content. She'd then need to try to make paper copies, only to find that none of the copy stores would be willing to do the job. She'd then need to start making her own copies on an old mimeograph, only to find men in jack-boots kicking down her door and threatening her with death for attempting to get out her message.
THAT is censorship. This author still has thousands of other avenues to publish her work. Government thugs aren't going to break down her door to arrest her and her family to silence her.
Want to know what censorship is? Go and see Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. That is censorship, and is something we all need to be vigilant about. A publisher choosing not to publish a book? That has happened each and every day since the invention of publishing. Just because I write a book doesn't mean that (for example) Random House must publish it, or that it's censorship if they don't.
Find another publisher -- if the book is good, someone will pick it up (either in print or digitally). If the book is junk, self-publish. It isn't censorship until you're threatened with people with guns kicking down your door to imprison or harm yourself or your family, or to otherwise shut down your ability to publish.
Yaz
...is that golf isn't currently an Olympic sport (but has been added for 2016), and isn't being contested in London this year.
And yes -- sometimes it is these little details that can cause the non-scientists to completely ignore you. Some will feel there isn't much use in hearing your message about space science if you can't even get the details right about what is happening here on Earth.
Yaz
Why would your credit card info be on the box, again? I know I already asked, but...huh?
I don't know about the askers workplace, but at my workplace if we need to book work-related travel we use a corporate website to book, but have to provide a credit card to charge the flights, hotels, and car rentals. We then get to expense it, along with whatever meals and incidentals were required for the trip.
Some people in the organization have a corporate credit card, but most of us don't. The benefit of using a personal card for this sort of booking is that if you have a card that gives you any sort of points per dollar purchase, you get them. The company has always been responsive to quickly repaying the expense.
So one day I'll probably be in a similar position as the asker, with the exception that I run an OS that has a secure free space wipe feature built-in to get rid of any traces of anything I delete.
Yaz
Eh? You can bring your Apple apps over to Window or Linux? Since when?
Since the advent of cross-platform applications. Google Chrome, Firefox, NetBeans, OpenOffice and many other software packages are now available cross platform. Even many Steam games are available on Mac OS X and Windows (and soon Linux form the looks of it). Most of Apple's apps are based on open standard file formats, making them easily portable.
And for those that aren't -- since the advent of OS virtualization. If you're so wildly unhappy with Apple that you don't want to run their OS anymore as your primary OS, just virtualize your existing install for those apps you can't easily immediately get away from. Seems pretty easy to me.
You see, that is my point: GNOME went nuts, a large fractionof their userbase said "screw you" and slid in a few new packages and kept right on working. We didn't have to toss our hardware (as in a Linux or Win to Mac migration)
I see what you did there -- you silently switched from "hard to move from OS X to something else" to "hard to move to OS X". Well, nobody here called you any names that I recall for not running a Mac, nor did anyone tell you you should. So that doesn't particularly help your argument at all. It's also not particularly hard, especially as OS X has a BSD user land; many Open Source apps are readily and easily built and run on OS X. There is even a ports-based system for doing so automatically available, same as for *BSD.
...or all of our software (any complete OS migration) to escape the changes in GNOME we didn't like. We kept all of our files exactly as they were, all of our hardware exactly as it was, we even kept all of the exact same applications. It wasn't a problem.
So what you're basically saying is that you stuck with what you had, and didn't upgrade or change anything at all. Seems to me all desktop OS users have exactly the same choice. Don't like Mountain Lion? Don't upgrade. Stick with what you have. Keep your files exactly as they are, all your hardware exactly as it was, and keep the same applications. What, you think this is some magical feature that only OSS has?
Yaz
I can't tell if you're kidding or not. Can a 5-year old iMac even run games like Portal 2 or Diablo 3, both of which had native OSX releases?
How do you know what his gaming needs are? Maybe his "gaming needs" go no further than Pac Man and Tetris.
That said, the lowest end 20" mid 2007 iMac had an ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT in it, which is the minimum listed in the Portal 2 specs. Diablo 3 lists the ATI Radeon HD 2600 as the minimum required on the Mac; the HD 2600 Pro was the card in all the 24" mid 2007 iMacs[0]. So yes, a five year old iMac would meet the minimum requirements for the games you list. I'd assume this would require you to run with all of the lowest graphical settings -- you're not going to get the best possible textures and frame rates, but they can in fact run the games you mentioned.
Yaz
[0] - Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_(Intel-based)
If you are a Mac user, as a drinker of the Kool-Aid you have no choice.
Really? I have no choice of staying with the previous release of the OS that I'm already happy with? I have no choice to install another OS? I have no choice in running KDE or GNOME?
Seems to me I have a lot of options. Probably more than you do.
Yaz
- Show me how to run Microsoft Visio on Gnome, KDE, or any other distribution so I can open, edit, and then save *.vsd files on my company's network drive.
Run bare-bones Windows in a virtual machine, installing and running only those things you can't get on Linux. Done.
That's how I run for work. My primary workstation is an Apple iMac running Lion. Under my desk I have a headless Core 2 Quad running Debian and VirtualBox. Run the VM on the Debian box, enable terminal services, and run the Remote Desktop Client for Mac. Dedicate a virtual desktop for the RDC instance, and run it fullscreen. As I'm on a gigabit network, it's extremely fast, and I only ever need to touch Windows for those things I absolutely require it for (the product I'm currently working on runs only in IE9. Believe me, having come from a long history of cross-platform projects, this one wounds me to the very core of my being).
Of course, you don't need as fancy a setup -- this one simply suits me, particularly as my iMac workstation is already used heavily for development work. Most of the modern desktop VM solutions have mechanisms to run Windows apps directly on the host desktop in "seamless mode", so you never even need to see Windows itself. VirtualBox is free -- all you need is a Windows installation to virtualize, and/or Windows media and a license key. Easy peasy.
Yaz
Nice falsehood there, but here's the articles actual thesis, summed up by Blogger Brian Carnell in 1999: "The Internet reaffirms the basic free market critique of large government. Here for 30 years the government had an immensely useful protocol for transferring information, TCP/IP, but it languished. . . . . In less than a decade, private concerns have taken that protocol and created one of the most important technological revolutions of the millennia."
Pretty good summation.
No, pretty bad summation, as it glosses over far too many facts.
Firstly, even though IPv4 because the official protocol of the Internet on Flag Day (1983-01-01), the network running then wasn't the Internet as we know it today. DNS didn't exist until 1983 (prior to that, you had to download HOSTS.TXT from a central repository on a regular basis). The first .COM domain name didn't exist until 1985. The Border Gateway Protocol didn't exist until 1989; prior to that GGP/EGP were in use, and only centralized core routers could participate. CIDR didn't exist until 1993; without CIDR we would have run out of IPv4 address space over a decade ago. Gopher didn't exist until 1991, providing the first end-user friendly way to access data on the Internet. The World-Wide Web didn't exist until late 1990 (in a rudimentary form) -- it wasn't until spring 1993 that CERN announced that the World Wide Web's protocols were available without a license, allowing others to develop web client and server software.
Note that ALL of these contributions came from either publicly funded Universities or from government R&D entities. None came from private concerns.
But you know what I remember of private concerns from this time? CompuServe. America Online. Prodigy. Various BBS's. None of which communicated or inter-operated with one another, and none of which were truly global in scale, and all of which were pretty expensive by modern standards. The government funded/developed Internet and W3 virtually completely wiped them all out.
So claiming that TCP/IP languished for 30 years until it became open to commercial enterprise doesn't reflect the reality of the situation. The Internet wasn't ready for commercial entities until less than 20 years ago. With no BGP (orgs couldn't run their own core routers), CIDR (efficient address allocation), or Gopher/WWW (user friendly data access and document linking/application platforms) none of the successful "private interests" would have had any success. Google, Facebook, heck even Slashdot couldn't exist without all of these technologies in place, and they certainly weren't available 30 years ago. At best, it "languished" for 2 years between 1993 and 1995, when it opened to commercial use for the first time.
(Of course, some (myself included) would argue that it's these same "private/commercial concerns" that are holding back the widespread deployment of IPv6 to fix all of the routing and addressing problems inherent in IPv4. I guess free-market commerce isn't the panacea to everything, huh?)
Yaz
It's crazy massive enough that if there were 10^19 Earths, each with a population approaching seven billion, each and every single person on each of those Earths would be able to have an entire Internet's worth of 23-bit address space, all to themselves.
I do, of course, mean 32 bit address space.
Or, if we decided to fill the entire area of the Solar System with computers, we could have a density of about 3.1 * 10^18 computers per square kilometre, roughly inside the orbit of Pluto.
In case 3.1*10^18 computers per square kilometre doesn't mean anything to you, that's 3.1 trillion computers per square metre. Filling the entire orbital plane of Pluto. This should give you a better idea of how many addresses a 128 bit value can provide.
Yaz
Why stop at IPv6? Certainly, every forseeable limitation has been exceeded in the past, so why not instantly make the jump to IPv240,000 and be done with it til the end of time? This every 30 years needing to upgrade and update the world's computers sure does get old.
You can't really assume a trend of every 30 years when the only data point we have is the first significant (current) one.
You also have to remember the difference between researchers/inventors and implementors. Back in the late 1980's there was already concern in the R&D community that 2^32 addresses wouldn't be sufficient, and that a new protocol would need to be devised. Unfortunately, the implementors typically aren't interested in such concerns -- they have something that works right now, and has a significant number of existing hosts, so they use it. It's the reason why we continue to use IPv4 today.
Lastly, 2^128 addresses is colossally massive. It's 340282366920938463463374607431768211456 addresses, which is over 34 billion billion billion billion. That address space can fit 2^92 individual networks, each the size of the full IPv4 address space. It's crazy massive enough that if there were 10^19 Earths, each with a population approaching seven billion, each and every single person on each of those Earths would be able to have an entire Internet's worth of 23-bit address space, all to themselves. Or, if we decided to fill the entire area of the Solar System with computers, we could have a density of about 3.1 * 10^18 computers per square kilometre, roughly inside the orbit of Pluto. It's nearly enough to give every single atom in the solar systems its own address.
Thus, in a sense, we already have made the jump, as we've called in IPv6. Using some crazy large address size (let's say 1Kib addresses) would make processing the addresses computationally more difficult, and would give such an insane address range that every atom in the universe could have 10^228 addresses each. The computational difficulty of routing such addresses would require routers way more powerful than we currently have, would make them prohibitively expensive, and would remove a lot of smaller, low-powered/embedded devices from being able to function on the network (due to how quickly you could fill RAM with just addresses).
Yaz
Perhaps somebody has an (expert) answer here to this question: Why was IPv4 even allowed or implemented in the first place? Did this have to do with computing and/or memory limitations back in the day (1974 to 1981) that nobody every thought could be overcome or even required? I know hindsight is 20/20.
I find it hard to understand how the researchers developing the IP protocol could think that 4.29 billion address would be sufficient given the scale of possible adoption in the future.
First things first: due to all of the reserved address ranges, particularly (what were once called) Class D and E addresses, there are fewer publicly routable internet addresses than ~4.29 billion. The number is ~3.70 billion addresses once you take the various reserved address ranges out.
With that out of the way, the world was a vastly different place back in the 1970's when IPv4 was first defined. The idea of everyone carrying a telephone with them everywhere was science fiction, and the notion that such devices would feature processing functionality that would be able to take advantage of being network-enabled probably wasn't even conceived. The personal computer revolution hadn't happened yet either. As you said, hindsight is 20/20. It's easier to see how we got to now from there than the other way around.
It's also worth keeping in mind that when IPv4 was standardized in 1981 ([RFC 791]), computers were not particularly powerful; a state of the art desktop machine of the era would have little RAM, an 8 bit processor, and would run at less than 5Mhz. A device with an 8 bit processor would require at least 4 LOAD instructions to load an address from memory into registers, plus whatever processing would be required against the address (particularly for routing). Newer 16 bit processors (such as the 8088 and 8086) could do the same sort of processing with only two MOV instructions, but using a 128 bit address like in IPv6 would have required 8 bit systems to do a lot of processing just to handle the addresses -- you'd have to run 16 LOAD instructions just to read every part of the address into registers. This would be very significant processing wise for the time; I'd venture to say you'd need a supercomputer just to act as an IPv6 router back in 1981 (even with the limited number of hosts actually on the network). Memory would be a consideration as well -- 16KB fills up pretty quickly, so squeezing every byte out that you can would have been advantageous.
I'm also not particularly sure that the designers of IPv4 had a public Internet in mind. It wasn't until the early 1990's that the Internet was generally opened to commercial use; prior to that it was limited to government and research use. I don't think in the mid 1970's when Robert E. Kahn and Vint Cerf started work on trying to unify the various networks then in operation, that they considered that people would have a dozen or more Internet enabled devices in their homes (at current count there are 24 IP enabled devices in my home, although I certainly don't claim to be typical). That is, the "purpose" of the protocol at the time wasn't to provide a pervasive network that covered the globe, and the idea of 2^32 hosts was probably completely inconceivable. IPv4 has since invention been shoehorned into uses and purposes that were never conceived at the time of its invention. Indeed, considering how many protocols were being invented, and how quickly new iterations were being introduced, it probably wasn't expected that the world would still be using IPv4 over thirty years after it had been first defined.
IPv4 is getting to be a creaky, old technology with all sort of band-aids applied to it over the years. It is time for replacement -- the research and development community has been saying so for fifteen years or more. Unfortunately, the momentum behind IPv4 is massive, and entrenched inte
How much work on the internet do we do outside normal HTTP/HTTPS protocols?
Quite a lot in traffic terms. Streaming video (Netflix et al.) and BitTorrent use massive amounts of traffic without a lot of HTTP(S). Lesser bandwidth uses, but still very important include VoIP, SSH, SMTP/POP3/IMAP, various instant messaging protocols, VNC...honestly, if you're doing most of your work within only HTTP, you're an internet lightweight. It's a magical Internet out there, jellomizer ol' buddy -- let's go exploring.
Yaz
And the $1 had green on the front as well as the black and yellow, and the overall appearance was "green" though a notably different shade than that of the $20 I don't think of myself as old... but I certainly remember the $1 and $2 bills (theoretically I should still have one of each around somewhere...)
I non-theoretically have a few of each, and the last series of $1 bill (the 1973 series) was predominately black. There was a somewhat greenish tinge to parts of the background, but it was primarily black, not green. The 1967 series, 1954 series, and 1923 series were more green with black boarders, but the series that lasted the last 15 years of the $1 bills life had only the smallest patch of light green on its face.
The reverses were entirely green on all of those series, mind you -- but I don't know anyone who would describe the colour of the front of the 1973 series as green. I have mint condition versions of the 1973 and 1967 designs, with a very good quality version of the 1954 series. Thanks for giving me an excuse to get them out to inspect them.
Yaz
...and when we used to have a $1 it was dark green and $2 was orange
Actually, the $1 was black and yellow on front, and green on the reverse.
The $2 bill was considered to be "terracotta" coloured, and was more reddish-brown than orange.
Yaz