Because there's this perceived "quality" associated with cost in the consumer's mind, and free can't possibly be as good as something that costs, say, $4.
Actually, free is something with a low barrier to entry -- so even if it's crap, why wouldn't you try it?
But alright, suppose you're right -- why isn't someone offering them for the same price as the competition? Brand recognition helps a lot, but I don't think the beer analogy applies as well for real vendor lock-in.
I can brew better beer than Budweiser and many micro brews myself for example -- and for much less money bottle for bottle -- but it's so much easier to grab a six from the cooler at the local grocery store.
So, question: Can you brew and distribute better beer, for less money? If so, why isn't someone already doing that?
I mean, I don't really know of any way to run Linux on a swapfile which behaves like a swapfile on Windows -- that is, a file which actually grows and shrinks as needed. Without that, there's really no point in using a swapfile on that device, and it becomes really hard to pick exactly how much of your disk you're going to sacrifice just in case you need swap.
(Even inside the USA, it's pretty clear that all-you-can-eat really means "up to a limit, which you probably don't know until you reach it and are throttled").
Well, actually, as far as I can tell, there is no limit, and I've never been throttled. Small, local ISP, but 100 mbit fiber -- at least 40 mbits, pretty constant.
They've made it clear that so long as people are willing to pay for it, they'll keep adding bandwidth. So, if they ever do run into a bandwidth problem, the model might change -- or the price might go up.
Surely the goal of most ISPs is a stable (or slightly increasing) recurring income
Point is, if the company's lean enough, that recurring income could be going into building infrastructure, instead of... whatever it is Comcast does with its money. Pay for golden parachutes?
there is no structural reason why changing from a pay-by-byte-downloaded (including deals with prepaid thresholds and surcharges for each GByte beyond that) to a pay-by-packet-sent would in itself lead to a usage shock.
Probably not. My point was that charging for user->ISP alone seems a strange choice.
I also don't like the social implications. If upstream packets are cheap enough, we're free to download as much as we want, but not really to share things, or to host our own services (web, email, whatever), and we'll think twice about uploading a lot -- so we evolve towards a more passive society.
If upstream packets cost enough for people to watch their downloads, they'll also cost too much to do pretty much any uploading. Same problem, but even moreso.
Charging for traffic sent encourages congestion avoidance. Charging per packet sent encourages protocol efficiency.
Fair enough; add it to the bill.
For example: Amazon S3 charges differing amounts for upload, download, and storage. They also have a much, much lower charge per request made. The fact that it's there forces people to think about this issue, and encourages protocol efficiency -- but it's low enough that it doesn't encourage outright stupidity, like, say, people inlining their script/css to avoid multiple requests, or zipping a bunch of files which are really unrelated, so as to force them to be a single request.
I don't care what it's used for. (Well, almost....
...and you then went on to list quite a lot of things that you do care about.
I do care that whatever it is, it's maximally efficient
That's good.
What I don't want is for various concepts to be discarded outright because they're not maximally efficient. BitTorrent, for example, is horrendously wasteful, technologically -- but it also is a profoundly disruptive technology, socially. I want to allow things like that.
Actually come to think of it, pretty much all websites use fancy date pickers now
And the better ones provide an option to do an old-fashioned dropdown.
In fact, the best I can remember will let you type a date in m/d/yy form, but will popup a calendar -- and javascript syncs the two. (Click a date in the calendar, and it auto-fills the text field. Type in the text-field, and the calendar will update as you type.)
do you at least get what he's trying to say?
Well, the paper was fairly long, so I looked for screenshots/mockups, to see what the end result would look like. I didn't like those so much, so I didn't read the paper.
People don't like waiting ten seconds for their programs to open.
But they don't mind waiting ten minutes for their OS to boot?
Those programs will probably run ok after they've loaded, but that's not what I was talking about.
Wow, you really are talking about start time -- fine, add a script to open all the apps at launch. It'll add more time for the users to idle while booting, but apps will open instantly once booted.
Also, systems with hardware like that did lag between keystrokes quite often if you could type fast enough.
Must've been typing into a particularly bloaty app. I type 80 wpm, and it really never lagged, on far weaker hardware.
let's say you run a program that needs to communicate with something external to it. You need a laptop so you can take it from one work site to the next
Ok.
Depending on what it's doing, that slow ass processor could greatly reduce the speed, whereas a faster processor would get the job done faster.
Yes, depending on what it's doing. For most purposes, it really, really doesn't matter.
Where I work, we have a BP programmer so we can program IC's. We were using an older PC on it for a while. Some IC's took a good five minutes to program. We upgraded to a PC that's considerably newer than that one, and boom, those chips that took 5 minutes now took 30 seconds.
Ah, you misunderstand.
I am not advocating that minimal hardware is the be-all and end-all -- there are going to be CPU-intensive things. However, the vast majority of what I need to do with a computer are not CPU-intensive. I don't think it's a stretch to say that most things people do with a computer are not CPU-intensive.
I am not even advocating that anyone buy this as their primary computer, unless they really have no other choice.
All I am saying is that there are quite a lot of good uses for a slow processor -- which makes it not useless.
Unless, of course, you can find a replacement that's just as cheap and just as portable?
The AC is right, they practically are useless in this day and age...
...for a "BP programmer", to use when he's doing his job.
Take what you're doing right now -- How fast a CPU does it take to post this Slashdot comment? If this little device would let you post on Slashdot from anywhere, without having to carry a full-sized laptop, doesn't that qualify it as something other than "useless"?
In this section in particular -- past the comic -- there is an example of a redesign.
Raise your hand if you would rather try to point at a specific location on a map than simply choose it for a list.
And you know what? By the time you're using this form, you know the date, as text. It's going to be quicker and simpler to enter it via the dropdowns -- even quicker if you can simply type. The calendar widget only helps if it can show me events I've already placed on a calendar -- otherwise, there's no point.
I don't know if that's a representative sample, but it makes me very reluctant to read the rest of the paper.
Linux itself with no DE is not usable to an average person
That depends very much on how you define "DE" -- after all, the iPhone doesn't have a proper DE, yet is usable to the average person.
(Yes, I realize the iPhone doesn't run Linux. I believe the analogy holds -- but if you must, take the EEE PC in its default mode. It has KDE installed, but that's the "advanced" mode.)
for some reason Apple likes being redundant (OS (Roman Numeral 10) 10 point version number....
Unless you read the X as the letter X, as a nod to Unix. If they bumped it to 11, that'd be XI, which would ruin that scheme -- and if they bumped it to 20 (XX) they'd be rightly accused of version inflation.
However, you stated quite clearly that if he were acquitted, it would greatly benefit the state. The implication is pretty clear there.
Of course you never said it -- like any good politician, you've managed to state your opinion... almost... maybe... but never quite, so that you can always claim "I never said that."
The fact that you also say that it would be a good thing to remove corruption is sending mixed messages.
And regarding 'pork barrel projects' maybe you should read my last paragraph as to why I think this is a bad thing.
Let's look, shall we?
Instead, the damage comes from the hurt this does to the Republican party in Alaska. You know, the people who want to explore and develop our natural resources like oil, gold and copper.
That actually would tend to support more pork, not less, unless I'm missing something.
Never mind the environmental implications, or the fact that there actually isn't really enough there to significantly reduce our dependence on foreign oil...
Again, I realize you haven't said it. But your post seems to be very much hinting that you would rather the man goes free, guilty or not, in order to help your state more -- and purely financially.
It doesn't take a "liberal extremist" to see that. It might even have been what you intended.
First, how the fsck are you going to explain this to end-users, who are just starting to get their head around the concept of "bandwidth"?
Second, charging only for upstream would tend to make it more expensive to run a home server, and is certainly biased against torrents and the like.
The reason a simple, flat price-per-bit (or even price-per-packet) is attractive is that it's more directly related to actual cost to the ISP, and it doesn't attempt to discriminate against any particular use (like "overly chatty protocols") unless they're actually costing the ISP more in raw infrastructure.
So what? If I really need the power, I'll fire up an EC2 instance -- which, by the way, is one more thing to add to the list of things that I can do with this device.
And that's leaving aside the fact that I was talking about ssh, which, even with modern cryptography, runs acceptably on a Pentium 2. And by "acceptably", I mean excellent -- I mean that humans can only type so fast, and even a machine that old can more than keep up with my keystrokes to encrypt, compress, and send over the wire.
one eight the storage
For less than the additional cost of an iPhone, I could by a USB stick to use with it. Or I can connect to S3. Or that EC2 instance. Or my server at home.
non-integrated WiFi requiring an extra dongle
Boo hoo, extra dongle. As compared to the iPhone, which, if it does require a keyboard, that's a whole separate device I'd have to carry with me -- and one significantly bigger than an iPhone.
no bluetooth
While I'm at it, could get a bluetooth dongle. But one of the main reasons I'd want bluetooth is for a keyboard, so if the keyboard's good...
lack of GPS
If the battery life is like other laptops, that and the boot time probably make it not the best GPS device. That said, I live in a small town -- I rarely have a use for even Google Maps, so GPS would mostly be a toy.
no cellphone hardware
I've got a phone already. It's much easier to use than an iPhone for making calls -- mostly since it's actually just a phone; if I open it up and start pressing numbers, and then press "send", I'm connected.
It cost me $1, since I already had a service plan. Speaking of which, I actually get to pick a service plan, and I don't end up with half the cost of the hardware going to AT&T, whether I buy service from them or not.
inability to make calls
I'm sure Skype will fit on there, and I already have a USB sound device.
no built-in iTunes music and app stores
Oh how I'll miss the wonder of buying DRM'd tracks, or free tracks in a proprietary app...
And app store? You must be fucking joking... You do realize that, being Linux and open, I can load any Linux app onto it that I want? And that, seeing as the App Store has a rather hefty fee even to submit your app for consideration (which isn't a guarantee that Apple will sell it), and the selection is considerably more limited...
You've actually managed to hit on one of the weakest points of the iPhone.
doesn't fit in your pocket
You've got me there, but... You have seen an EEE PC, right? Even a Macbook Air? I can live with that not fitting in my pocket. Or weighing five times as much. It's still less than half of a full-sized laptop.
and it could be vaporware.
So could the iPhone, before it was actually launched. But hey, if it is, there's still the EEE PC, which is several times more powerful, has a lot more built-in (camera, etc), and I personally know it works.
Yeah, besides all that, its a much better thing to type on than a cellphone...
Yes, it is. Which is kind of the point.
In fact, I noticed you made not a single point about typing. iPhone typing is good, but it's not perfect, and it's miles away from being able to type 80 WPM on an actual keyboard.
Let's also completely ignore the fact that the iPhone will only run one app at a time, and while the screen is a decent resolution, you're going to have to squint a bit if you want to get real work done.
So, question: Have you ever actually used ssh, given that's the specific purpose (other than browsing) that I want out of a mobile device? Or are you just reflexively jumping to defend your shiny new toy?
ZFS assumes everything could be corrupt. It makes no assumptions about wrong or untrusted. ("Wrong" being defined here as human error, so that it's not just "corrupt".) And I think that's about all a storage layer should do.
ZFS also isn't the only way to do this. It's perhaps the slickest, but there's still things like the bad-block relocation layer in Linux, and there are higher-level software layers, like Git.
Now, yes, S3 dropped the ball -- there was a point where they missed "corrupt" on that checklist. But I can see how they might have made the simple leap from "trusted" to "assumed non-corrupt".
Also: Consider that this is not the data. This is the communication layer. You might well assume that your data is fine, but what about your northbridge? How do you know the data in RAM is good? (Does ZFS make any allowances for that?)
What if most people don't share your preferences as consumers?
In a free market, that would mean they get a flat rate, or some more complex plan.
Sure, most Slashdotters are fine with pay-per-bit, if it means no application discrimination.
Really? Given that most Slashdotters are heavy bandwidth users, I'd imagine most of us would rather our bandwidth bills be subsidized by people whose heaviest usage is YouTube -- or better, people who only bought broadband so their Yahoo Mail will come up faster.
But I prefer a low-cost ISP that doesn't impose a unit cost on bandwidth use, even if it means some of my Bittorrent TCP streams are reset.
Why?
What right does the FCC have to dictate that no company can provide it to me?
Well, all things equal, you are saying that you don't particularly care about your TCP streams being reset. Some of us do.
Net neutrality with sufficient bandwidth is pretty much the only way to make all users happy -- if we really need our torrents to not interrupt our Skype calls, we can apply our own QoS on Linksys routers and the like.
The pricing is a separate issue entirely.
If you can't throttle, you've got to price per bit--otherwise, everybody pays more because the ISPs have to upgrade to satiate extreme users.
I don't think anyone is saying you can't throttle.
What we are saying is, don't throttle based on such inanities as number of open TCP sockets or port number, and certainly not on things like deep packet inspection. Throttle on raw bandwidth alone.
Which means, either price per bit, or daily/weekly/monthly caps, or some combination thereof -- as long as it's explicitly and fairly agreed upon in the first place.
And believe me, there are people out there (like myself) who'd gladly pull in terabytes were it not for monthly usage caps.
So install software on your router to cap your monthly usage, if it starts to hurt your wallet.
Or are you saying you're like those Slashdotters I'm talking about above, where you'd rather Grandma pay for your bandwidth bill?
ISPs should duke it out and battle for customers by experimenting with varying methods of managing congestion.
Wonderful -- "managing congestion".
You do realize it's not just about dropping some torrent connections, right? Here, borrow my tinfoil hat for a moment...
Suppose Comcast notices that a huge amount of bandwidth is being used by YouTube, and that people are watching less cable TV. So, they drop the occasional YouTube connection, artificially alter a few others, maybe even intercept the stream and recompress it down, making it look artificially worse, in an effort to drive people back to cable TV -- which costs the users more money, and is cheaper for Comcast.
That is one of many scenarios that net neutrality prevents.
banning protocol discrimination because it violates some sacred principle means fewer choices in the end.
I would call the loss of YouTube "fewer choices" indeed. And that matters more to me -- I'd much rather be able to choose between two providers who can show me YouTube, or Vuze, or some newer, more disruptive technology, than fifty who will only show me Fox News through their own, proprietary IPTV system.
My niece wanted a new computer, and didn't have much money. I found her an old XP system (actually pretty powerful) on Craigslist for $50. Except to keep it working, I have to answer a support call from her every few weeks.
Lesson #1: Don't leave XP on it. If I'm going to be supporting a system, I'll install a Linux.
Lesson #2: $50 is about what it would cost just for AppleCare. At that price, if it gets to be too much, she can always buy a new one.
Which fixed the problem â" until next time.
Lesson #3: If you're giving people free tech support, make them write it down. Every step. On paper, if they can't be trusted to keep their computer working well enough to find it -- on Google Docs if they have a spare.
The act of writing alone will help them remember, even if they can't find what they're looking for -- and every time they can find it, that saves a phone call to you.
I'm a bit too young to have really gotten the full scope of ME hell but it seems alright if you don't try and really do much on it...you know, kinda like Vista and Linux lol.
Marks you as a troll. (Linux runs Google -- does that qualify as "doing much"?)
But hey, I'll give you a fair reply anyway:
I mean yeah the computer took 2 hours of bullshit just to install a functional USB mouse drive and it froze up twice but I hear you get that exact same crap with Linux too so you can't complain too much.
To put it kindly, you heard wrong. Any modern Linux distro is quite literally plug and play for USB mice. You won't even get a popup -- on that machine, give it maybe ten seconds to load the drivers -- shouldn't really take more than two -- and the mouse will start working.
Regarding installation: I don't know how much Ubuntu insists on its installation, but the Alternate install absolutely does not require 256 megs to install. It's the old Debian installation, and I've seen Debian install in 32 megs or less.
And there's always swap -- as soon as you format the disk, you'll have swap available. So, if it needs 256 to install, format 128 megs of swap -- or be safe and format a gig of it -- and it'll have that available for the rest of the install.
There's also Xubuntu, which requires less resources. And there's the fact that afterwards, you end up with Ubuntu-Minimal, which means you can always choose not to install the full Ubuntu desktop -- you could go for something uber-lightweight, like Fluxbox.
Worst case, I can think of a couple of ways to use other, lighter livecds to install Ubuntu. Not for the faint of heart, but it will work.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a big difference between successful trolling and just making yourself look like a complete idiot.
Whoosh. You just got meta-trolled.
I hope you're joking...
Neither of these articles say how much is "too much". Anything to excess can kill you -- the important point is knowing how much excess.
Because there's this perceived "quality" associated with cost in the consumer's mind, and free can't possibly be as good as something that costs, say, $4.
Actually, free is something with a low barrier to entry -- so even if it's crap, why wouldn't you try it?
But alright, suppose you're right -- why isn't someone offering them for the same price as the competition? Brand recognition helps a lot, but I don't think the beer analogy applies as well for real vendor lock-in.
E: Couldn't find package human-module-humor
root@SanityInAnarchy:~# apt-get install fortunes-off
Close enough.
Is it DD/MM/YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY? You can't know which way your users will be thinking with certainty
Well enough. Chances are, I've got some information about them already, and there are preferences where they can store this kind of thing.
Either way, you can always specify what you're expecting, and give live feedback in the form of a date picker.
I can brew better beer than Budweiser and many micro brews myself for example -- and for much less money bottle for bottle -- but it's so much easier to grab a six from the cooler at the local grocery store.
So, question: Can you brew and distribute better beer, for less money? If so, why isn't someone already doing that?
Initech was the Office Space company. Different spelling, probably derived from a different word.
Whoops, must've been late when I wrote that...
I mean, I don't really know of any way to run Linux on a swapfile which behaves like a swapfile on Windows -- that is, a file which actually grows and shrinks as needed. Without that, there's really no point in using a swapfile on that device, and it becomes really hard to pick exactly how much of your disk you're going to sacrifice just in case you need swap.
(Even inside the USA, it's pretty clear that all-you-can-eat really means "up to a limit, which you probably don't know until you reach it and are throttled").
Well, actually, as far as I can tell, there is no limit, and I've never been throttled. Small, local ISP, but 100 mbit fiber -- at least 40 mbits, pretty constant.
They've made it clear that so long as people are willing to pay for it, they'll keep adding bandwidth. So, if they ever do run into a bandwidth problem, the model might change -- or the price might go up.
Surely the goal of most ISPs is a stable (or slightly increasing) recurring income
Point is, if the company's lean enough, that recurring income could be going into building infrastructure, instead of... whatever it is Comcast does with its money. Pay for golden parachutes?
there is no structural reason why changing from a pay-by-byte-downloaded (including deals with prepaid thresholds and surcharges for each GByte beyond that) to a pay-by-packet-sent would in itself lead to a usage shock.
Probably not. My point was that charging for user->ISP alone seems a strange choice.
I also don't like the social implications. If upstream packets are cheap enough, we're free to download as much as we want, but not really to share things, or to host our own services (web, email, whatever), and we'll think twice about uploading a lot -- so we evolve towards a more passive society.
If upstream packets cost enough for people to watch their downloads, they'll also cost too much to do pretty much any uploading. Same problem, but even moreso.
Charging for traffic sent encourages congestion avoidance. Charging per packet sent encourages protocol efficiency.
Fair enough; add it to the bill.
For example: Amazon S3 charges differing amounts for upload, download, and storage. They also have a much, much lower charge per request made. The fact that it's there forces people to think about this issue, and encourages protocol efficiency -- but it's low enough that it doesn't encourage outright stupidity, like, say, people inlining their script/css to avoid multiple requests, or zipping a bunch of files which are really unrelated, so as to force them to be a single request.
I don't care what it's used for. (Well, almost....
...and you then went on to list quite a lot of things that you do care about.
I do care that whatever it is, it's maximally efficient
That's good.
What I don't want is for various concepts to be discarded outright because they're not maximally efficient. BitTorrent, for example, is horrendously wasteful, technologically -- but it also is a profoundly disruptive technology, socially. I want to allow things like that.
Actually come to think of it, pretty much all websites use fancy date pickers now
And the better ones provide an option to do an old-fashioned dropdown.
In fact, the best I can remember will let you type a date in m/d/yy form, but will popup a calendar -- and javascript syncs the two. (Click a date in the calendar, and it auto-fills the text field. Type in the text-field, and the calendar will update as you type.)
do you at least get what he's trying to say?
Well, the paper was fairly long, so I looked for screenshots/mockups, to see what the end result would look like. I didn't like those so much, so I didn't read the paper.
http://shovelglove.com/
The theory is: It's dirt-simple, dirt-cheap, and you'll keep doing it for the rest of your life.
Except I haven't actually done it; just going to buy a sledgehammer tomorrow.
âoeIf you can fly it at 3 feet, you can fly it at 3,000,â/quote.
Except that you're going to have different air pressure, different wind, different temperature...
Not saying it's impossible, but I really hope they don't take it directly from 6 feet up to 6000 and wonder what went wrong.
Actually, it's a great argument for making these things even more dangerous, and letting natural selection take its course!
People don't like waiting ten seconds for their programs to open.
But they don't mind waiting ten minutes for their OS to boot?
Those programs will probably run ok after they've loaded, but that's not what I was talking about.
Wow, you really are talking about start time -- fine, add a script to open all the apps at launch. It'll add more time for the users to idle while booting, but apps will open instantly once booted.
Also, systems with hardware like that did lag between keystrokes quite often if you could type fast enough.
Must've been typing into a particularly bloaty app. I type 80 wpm, and it really never lagged, on far weaker hardware.
let's say you run a program that needs to communicate with something external to it. You need a laptop so you can take it from one work site to the next
Ok.
Depending on what it's doing, that slow ass processor could greatly reduce the speed, whereas a faster processor would get the job done faster.
Yes, depending on what it's doing. For most purposes, it really, really doesn't matter.
Where I work, we have a BP programmer so we can program IC's. We were using an older PC on it for a while. Some IC's took a good five minutes to program. We upgraded to a PC that's considerably newer than that one, and boom, those chips that took 5 minutes now took 30 seconds.
Ah, you misunderstand.
I am not advocating that minimal hardware is the be-all and end-all -- there are going to be CPU-intensive things. However, the vast majority of what I need to do with a computer are not CPU-intensive. I don't think it's a stretch to say that most things people do with a computer are not CPU-intensive.
I am not even advocating that anyone buy this as their primary computer, unless they really have no other choice.
All I am saying is that there are quite a lot of good uses for a slow processor -- which makes it not useless.
Unless, of course, you can find a replacement that's just as cheap and just as portable?
The AC is right, they practically are useless in this day and age...
...for a "BP programmer", to use when he's doing his job.
Take what you're doing right now -- How fast a CPU does it take to post this Slashdot comment? If this little device would let you post on Slashdot from anywhere, without having to carry a full-sized laptop, doesn't that qualify it as something other than "useless"?
In this section in particular -- past the comic -- there is an example of a redesign.
Raise your hand if you would rather try to point at a specific location on a map than simply choose it for a list.
And you know what? By the time you're using this form, you know the date, as text. It's going to be quicker and simpler to enter it via the dropdowns -- even quicker if you can simply type. The calendar widget only helps if it can show me events I've already placed on a calendar -- otherwise, there's no point.
I don't know if that's a representative sample, but it makes me very reluctant to read the rest of the paper.
Linux itself with no DE is not usable to an average person
That depends very much on how you define "DE" -- after all, the iPhone doesn't have a proper DE, yet is usable to the average person.
(Yes, I realize the iPhone doesn't run Linux. I believe the analogy holds -- but if you must, take the EEE PC in its default mode. It has KDE installed, but that's the "advanced" mode.)
for some reason Apple likes being redundant (OS (Roman Numeral 10) 10 point version number....
Unless you read the X as the letter X, as a nod to Unix. If they bumped it to 11, that'd be XI, which would ruin that scheme -- and if they bumped it to 20 (XX) they'd be rightly accused of version inflation.
I never said removing corruption doesn't matter.
However, you stated quite clearly that if he were acquitted, it would greatly benefit the state. The implication is pretty clear there.
Of course you never said it -- like any good politician, you've managed to state your opinion... almost... maybe... but never quite, so that you can always claim "I never said that."
The fact that you also say that it would be a good thing to remove corruption is sending mixed messages.
And regarding 'pork barrel projects' maybe you should read my last paragraph as to why I think this is a bad thing.
Let's look, shall we?
Instead, the damage comes from the hurt this does to the Republican party in Alaska. You know, the people who want to explore and develop our natural resources like oil, gold and copper.
That actually would tend to support more pork, not less, unless I'm missing something.
Never mind the environmental implications, or the fact that there actually isn't really enough there to significantly reduce our dependence on foreign oil...
Again, I realize you haven't said it. But your post seems to be very much hinting that you would rather the man goes free, guilty or not, in order to help your state more -- and purely financially.
It doesn't take a "liberal extremist" to see that. It might even have been what you intended.
Two large problems:
First, how the fsck are you going to explain this to end-users, who are just starting to get their head around the concept of "bandwidth"?
Second, charging only for upstream would tend to make it more expensive to run a home server, and is certainly biased against torrents and the like.
The reason a simple, flat price-per-bit (or even price-per-packet) is attractive is that it's more directly related to actual cost to the ISP, and it doesn't attempt to discriminate against any particular use (like "overly chatty protocols") unless they're actually costing the ISP more in raw infrastructure.
Except for slower processor, half the RAM
So what? If I really need the power, I'll fire up an EC2 instance -- which, by the way, is one more thing to add to the list of things that I can do with this device.
And that's leaving aside the fact that I was talking about ssh, which, even with modern cryptography, runs acceptably on a Pentium 2. And by "acceptably", I mean excellent -- I mean that humans can only type so fast, and even a machine that old can more than keep up with my keystrokes to encrypt, compress, and send over the wire.
one eight the storage
For less than the additional cost of an iPhone, I could by a USB stick to use with it. Or I can connect to S3. Or that EC2 instance. Or my server at home.
non-integrated WiFi requiring an extra dongle
Boo hoo, extra dongle. As compared to the iPhone, which, if it does require a keyboard, that's a whole separate device I'd have to carry with me -- and one significantly bigger than an iPhone.
no bluetooth
While I'm at it, could get a bluetooth dongle. But one of the main reasons I'd want bluetooth is for a keyboard, so if the keyboard's good...
lack of GPS
If the battery life is like other laptops, that and the boot time probably make it not the best GPS device. That said, I live in a small town -- I rarely have a use for even Google Maps, so GPS would mostly be a toy.
no cellphone hardware
I've got a phone already. It's much easier to use than an iPhone for making calls -- mostly since it's actually just a phone; if I open it up and start pressing numbers, and then press "send", I'm connected.
It cost me $1, since I already had a service plan. Speaking of which, I actually get to pick a service plan, and I don't end up with half the cost of the hardware going to AT&T, whether I buy service from them or not.
inability to make calls
I'm sure Skype will fit on there, and I already have a USB sound device.
no built-in iTunes music and app stores
Oh how I'll miss the wonder of buying DRM'd tracks, or free tracks in a proprietary app...
And app store? You must be fucking joking... You do realize that, being Linux and open, I can load any Linux app onto it that I want? And that, seeing as the App Store has a rather hefty fee even to submit your app for consideration (which isn't a guarantee that Apple will sell it), and the selection is considerably more limited...
You've actually managed to hit on one of the weakest points of the iPhone.
doesn't fit in your pocket
You've got me there, but... You have seen an EEE PC, right? Even a Macbook Air? I can live with that not fitting in my pocket. Or weighing five times as much. It's still less than half of a full-sized laptop.
and it could be vaporware.
So could the iPhone, before it was actually launched. But hey, if it is, there's still the EEE PC, which is several times more powerful, has a lot more built-in (camera, etc), and I personally know it works.
Yeah, besides all that, its a much better thing to type on than a cellphone...
Yes, it is. Which is kind of the point.
In fact, I noticed you made not a single point about typing. iPhone typing is good, but it's not perfect, and it's miles away from being able to type 80 WPM on an actual keyboard.
Let's also completely ignore the fact that the iPhone will only run one app at a time, and while the screen is a decent resolution, you're going to have to squint a bit if you want to get real work done.
So, question: Have you ever actually used ssh, given that's the specific purpose (other than browsing) that I want out of a mobile device? Or are you just reflexively jumping to defend your shiny new toy?
Looks like your signature fits perfectly.
Yes, or at least we should.
Let me be more specific:
ZFS assumes everything could be corrupt. It makes no assumptions about wrong or untrusted. ("Wrong" being defined here as human error, so that it's not just "corrupt".) And I think that's about all a storage layer should do.
ZFS also isn't the only way to do this. It's perhaps the slickest, but there's still things like the bad-block relocation layer in Linux, and there are higher-level software layers, like Git.
Now, yes, S3 dropped the ball -- there was a point where they missed "corrupt" on that checklist. But I can see how they might have made the simple leap from "trusted" to "assumed non-corrupt".
Also: Consider that this is not the data. This is the communication layer. You might well assume that your data is fine, but what about your northbridge? How do you know the data in RAM is good? (Does ZFS make any allowances for that?)
If you're "poor", then wth are you doing having a decent PC and high speed internet?
Simple: You're a college student. Parents paid for the computer, and the school pays for the Internet.
That's not the only example, but it is the easiest.
What if most people don't share your preferences as consumers?
In a free market, that would mean they get a flat rate, or some more complex plan.
Sure, most Slashdotters are fine with pay-per-bit, if it means no application discrimination.
Really? Given that most Slashdotters are heavy bandwidth users, I'd imagine most of us would rather our bandwidth bills be subsidized by people whose heaviest usage is YouTube -- or better, people who only bought broadband so their Yahoo Mail will come up faster.
But I prefer a low-cost ISP that doesn't impose a unit cost on bandwidth use, even if it means some of my Bittorrent TCP streams are reset.
Why?
What right does the FCC have to dictate that no company can provide it to me?
Well, all things equal, you are saying that you don't particularly care about your TCP streams being reset. Some of us do.
Net neutrality with sufficient bandwidth is pretty much the only way to make all users happy -- if we really need our torrents to not interrupt our Skype calls, we can apply our own QoS on Linksys routers and the like.
The pricing is a separate issue entirely.
If you can't throttle, you've got to price per bit--otherwise, everybody pays more because the ISPs have to upgrade to satiate extreme users.
I don't think anyone is saying you can't throttle.
What we are saying is, don't throttle based on such inanities as number of open TCP sockets or port number, and certainly not on things like deep packet inspection. Throttle on raw bandwidth alone.
Which means, either price per bit, or daily/weekly/monthly caps, or some combination thereof -- as long as it's explicitly and fairly agreed upon in the first place.
And believe me, there are people out there (like myself) who'd gladly pull in terabytes were it not for monthly usage caps.
So install software on your router to cap your monthly usage, if it starts to hurt your wallet.
Or are you saying you're like those Slashdotters I'm talking about above, where you'd rather Grandma pay for your bandwidth bill?
ISPs should duke it out and battle for customers by experimenting with varying methods of managing congestion.
Wonderful -- "managing congestion".
You do realize it's not just about dropping some torrent connections, right? Here, borrow my tinfoil hat for a moment...
Suppose Comcast notices that a huge amount of bandwidth is being used by YouTube, and that people are watching less cable TV. So, they drop the occasional YouTube connection, artificially alter a few others, maybe even intercept the stream and recompress it down, making it look artificially worse, in an effort to drive people back to cable TV -- which costs the users more money, and is cheaper for Comcast.
That is one of many scenarios that net neutrality prevents.
banning protocol discrimination because it violates some sacred principle means fewer choices in the end.
I would call the loss of YouTube "fewer choices" indeed. And that matters more to me -- I'd much rather be able to choose between two providers who can show me YouTube, or Vuze, or some newer, more disruptive technology, than fifty who will only show me Fox News through their own, proprietary IPTV system.
My niece wanted a new computer, and didn't have much money. I found her an old XP system (actually pretty powerful) on Craigslist for $50. Except to keep it working, I have to answer a support call from her every few weeks.
Lesson #1: Don't leave XP on it. If I'm going to be supporting a system, I'll install a Linux.
Lesson #2: $50 is about what it would cost just for AppleCare. At that price, if it gets to be too much, she can always buy a new one.
Which fixed the problem â" until next time.
Lesson #3: If you're giving people free tech support, make them write it down. Every step. On paper, if they can't be trusted to keep their computer working well enough to find it -- on Google Docs if they have a spare.
The act of writing alone will help them remember, even if they can't find what they're looking for -- and every time they can find it, that saves a phone call to you.
I'm a bit too young to have really gotten the full scope of ME hell but it seems alright if you don't try and really do much on it...you know, kinda like Vista and Linux lol.
Marks you as a troll. (Linux runs Google -- does that qualify as "doing much"?)
But hey, I'll give you a fair reply anyway:
I mean yeah the computer took 2 hours of bullshit just to install a functional USB mouse drive and it froze up twice but I hear you get that exact same crap with Linux too so you can't complain too much.
To put it kindly, you heard wrong. Any modern Linux distro is quite literally plug and play for USB mice. You won't even get a popup -- on that machine, give it maybe ten seconds to load the drivers -- shouldn't really take more than two -- and the mouse will start working.
Regarding installation: I don't know how much Ubuntu insists on its installation, but the Alternate install absolutely does not require 256 megs to install. It's the old Debian installation, and I've seen Debian install in 32 megs or less.
And there's always swap -- as soon as you format the disk, you'll have swap available. So, if it needs 256 to install, format 128 megs of swap -- or be safe and format a gig of it -- and it'll have that available for the rest of the install.
There's also Xubuntu, which requires less resources. And there's the fact that afterwards, you end up with Ubuntu-Minimal, which means you can always choose not to install the full Ubuntu desktop -- you could go for something uber-lightweight, like Fluxbox.
Worst case, I can think of a couple of ways to use other, lighter livecds to install Ubuntu. Not for the faint of heart, but it will work.