can your grandma Well, she's in heaven, I hope, and I suppose she can do that, if they allow windows in heaven.
"Ok, fine. Can the next person's granny do such a thing?" I agree with your argument. MS Windows should have bundled winzip years ago. And there WAS a time when I had to be taught about winzip, leachy daemons, etc. You're right. If I had never done installer testing I wouldn't have known about hacking the registry and the hard disk to remove links to bogus autorun entries.
I have seen windows machines laden with more daemons than a west texas jackrabbit has ticks. That is a serious flaw in windows for lots of users, actually, and ms should have addressed it long ago.
Does she know how to get winzip?
You raise a good point. I actually am surprised that MS hasn't bundled winzip with the Windows.
And the analogy is fair, except that most compressed windows files are just zipped. They're usually not tarred, gzipped, tar.gz'd, pc6'd, (and heaven knows what else'd) etc. They're just zipped. It seems to me that linux should know how to unzip all of them without me downloading, same as I suggest for windows. Most people might not care about file compression schemes and they might prefer to have the details abstracted away. But you're saying that now it does. That's cool.
Have you ever watched a new user installing Windows from scratch. Alright but I'm not a newb. I've been using 'puters since the 1980's. I can't answer for all of htem, but it seems to me that a person who really understands what a computer does should be able to circumvent most/all headaches.
You will be pleased to know that Redhat now comes with a graphical installer. Actually I'm inclined to use the non graphical one. I was primarily talking about installing new software, and managing the o.s. after it's been installed rather than installing the fresh O.S. The O.S. from the CD installs in a well-ordered way. But then the things I downloaded and tried to install after the fact were alot more troublesome / clunky.
What took three hours to type RPM -Uvh.
Well, there's nobody else around here who knows linux at all. The red hat installation manual doesn't say that. I looked online. Perhaps you can say "I should have known about rpm -Uvh", but I didn't, I'd just installed linux and honestly just wanted to get it working quickly without even that. But I did get some installations going, and then:
Firefox, for instance, still didnt work. Due to? Old kernel perhaps. That left me asking "how am I expected to upgrade this kernel?" and "is that potential headache of upgrading a kernel worth upgrading to firefox?"
(fyi the rh installtion I have is the one with a sellout version of netscape, where the "stop" button was replaced with the "shop" button. it also crashes semi-frequently.)
If you're using it every day then I can see where none of this sounds like it would slow a new user down, but if you put "install a new kernel" onto the plate of a new user, and nobody's helping them out, I suspect that they're just as likely to hop ship to windows.
I also don't understand how you equate installing a web server with what the new user would ever want to do.
Well, running a web server is actually very easy. Just run the thing. (after installing it:-) The fact is, I run a windows server (http/smtp/customjava/mysql) as we speak. I wanted to run all that on a linux server, but the time investment and learning curve (with no in-house linux guru's) made it not worth my time.
I don't intend that as putting linux down, but my time has value, and learning the ins and outs of linux software management and kernel upgrades / patches didn't seem worth it. Perhaps I'll use this ubuntu, though. The iso is downloaded.
Promise all you want. Linux is already mainstream. We're talking server here. The article is talking server. The thing it overlooks is that Linux is *already* a major enterprise player.
I tried to emphasize that I was talking about the old and wondering if the new had improved upon it.
They called my post a troll..too bad. Anyhow, I like the way linux works, too, when it's working.:-)
I have the ubuntu iso download at 31% now. One can hope.
Being forced to manually mount hard drives doesn't make Linux more "real" of an o.s., and neither does a painstakingly nonstandardized software installation process.
They've had more than 10 years to get linux into shape, and the ones who turn away from linux aren't doing it due to incompetence, they're doing it b/c they don't want to waste their time learning arcane commands ("mount"/"umount", "pc6", "rpm", "tar", "untar", "gzip" for instance) with hundreds of command line switches to do basic things that they would like to take for granted. There are such things as "productivity gains", "user friendliness" and "reasonable learning curves." I think the command line is very cool / useful for those who want to get into it, but it should not be a barrier to entry, and it IS probably what has "held Linux back" for all this time, in terms of mainstream adoption.
P.S. If you think your stature comes from standing on my shoulders, then don't cut me down.
Does that mean installing/uninstalling software under linux is now standardized, logical and quick, even for people who never used it before? Have you ever watched a new linux user try to install all their software onto a linux box without any help? Linux will not get any mainstream adoption until THAT need is addressed, and that's a promise.
Back to the original claim. Does mainstream adoption mean CompUSA will begin stocking Linux? I tried to get a Linux installation CD's from comp USA in emeryville CA, and they didnt even carry it in stock.
If you want the OS to be adopted it seems that making it visible, accessible, usable and available are the first steps.
This is my experience with starting as a Linux user, 5 years ago: To install or uninstall software mainly seemed like a collosal task. With earlier versions I had to manually mount the friggin hard drive, AND couldn't do jack with the OS. RH 7.0 shipped with sun RPC open to the world, and it got hacked within 2 days (by the ramen worm). "hackers LOOOVE noodles!" The bottom line is, my Red Hat Linux 7.0/7.1 CD's came with a manual that told how to install and how to uninstall, and that's all I ever did, since the rest of it just seemed like a big hassle and windows was the OS that I could rely on, install things in, and that worked without getting a headache looking for information on the web.
Anyhow, perhaps I should just shut my mouth, and I wonder if I'll get mocked just for admitting that I had trouble using linux, but the linux of 5 years ago was attrocious. If you disagree with that, just try INSTALLING an application in RH 7.0. (i know, it's very old OS, but I'm saying unless getting RPM's to go to the right place and install the right way has gotten any simpler than needing a pc6 decoder, gunzip, tar, untar, rpm, the other equiv of rpm (whose name i don't recall at the moment), and whatever else is involved. If you're a veteran linux user then ask a user from another OS to install software while you watch them. Oh yea, cross your arms and provide no help to them if you really want to see the learning curve in action. Then be nice and help.:)
It would (i believe) quickly become evident how Linux still needs to be made more user friendly, and that all the nonstandardized behavior for basic OS functions (like installing software) is not all that helpful to the users you wish would get onto your bandwagon.
Again, I probably should just have kept my mouth shut about Linux, but those are the reasons I put Mandrake 6.x, RH 7.0,7.1 and 7.2, suse x.x into a box and put the box under my bed and hardly bothered with them for the last 5 years. I use the operating system to get things done, and I don't want to wrestle with it, I want it to do things intuitively.
Calling rpm with half a dosen switches (after reading a manual for 3 hours) just to get it working is not an example of inuitive installation.
Long story short, I just wanted to get a basic functional web server together, and I said to myself: "well, they just can't say enough good things about linux, so I'll use it." And guess what. I just told you what.
OK, for those of you who began using linux within the past year or two, I guess I must ask: Has the experience of new linux users improved at all, since that time? Do YOU people see it catching on, or is it still more or less the same bag of obstacles for you as it was for me 5-6 years ago?
It just occurrs to me at this moment that there is at least one way to entrap a person who is using that defense:
If the RIAA (or any other group) were to leak copyrighted files that had never been legally available to anyone, (unreleased copyrighted materials), and the downloader/uploader had possession of the file(s), the RIAA could bypass the first 2 tiers of the above defense.
It could still suffer at the hands of tier 3, though, and furthermore, if it were established that the files were released only for the purpose of identifying illegal downloaders, and that no commercial intent was ever planned, their commercial value could (arguably) be zero (thereby making hefty damages claims difficult). UNLESS the RIAA counterclaimed that they were going to release the files to market officially at some future date, and that they had lost all their steam due to the leak [that they themselves had staged], which in its own way, constitutes unethical behavior.
If they wanted to get around THAT, too, they could just let some miscreants loose in their archives to "stumble across" the files they wanted to leak, and then say "oh my" (in a fake way) when the files DID get leaked.
If it works, call this the "Sam Jennings defense":)
-->
TIER 1 There is a right to fair use for a single-purchase otc owner of a CD / Tape / Record / Video / Movie. That right does not restrict you from reformatting the content. For example, if you have a CD, you have a right to reformat that into a collection of MP3's. As a corollary, you might* ALSO have a right to download the same mp3's. After all, since you HAVE a right to own them, and the fact that the download is coming from a third party should make no difference.
Therefore, (see the word MIGHT* above),
(1) Downloading such materials is not ALWAYS illegal, since the downloader MIGHT have had a right to fair use. (2) Allowing such materials to be freely downloaded MIGHT NOT be a piracy ring, since the downloader MIGHT have had a right to fair use.
And THEREFORE, (again, see the word MIGHT* above), That an upload OR a download of copyrighted material occurred does NOT constitute probable cause, since there ARE reasonable (i.e. legally defensible) circumstances that could have accounted for the very same behavior. In that regard, the prosecution might not have had probable cause (with regard to any warrants that they might have issued, regardless of what they found). For example, if you are walking home from kinko's with a photocopy of a copyrighted poster the police would not have probable cause to assume that you were in a poster pirating ring. Furthermore, if they caught you bringing a copy of that poster to a friend's house, they STILL have no proof that your FRIEND doesn't ALSO have a home-use right to the very same material. If you can sufficiently emphasize that doubt [of probable cause, as in 4th amendment probable cause] you can defend the case in appeals, right?
TIER 2 There IS such a thing as an orphan-right to copyrighted material. What I mean by that is that if you bought a CD and it was stolen from your car, or your vynil record melted in the sun, etc., you still have a RIGHT to use the software/song/movie, etc, even though you lost the physical COPY of the copyrighted material.
Since most people probably DO have orphan rights to many copyrighted works, (for instance, my own house was once burglarized and I lost about 100 legally purchased music cd's), the prosecuter would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the plaintiff had no orphan rights to the copyrighted material. That would be difficult, to say the least, since music has been recorded and sold for a long time, and proving that a person NEVER had a right to own a particular music CD, for instance, would involve lengthy and costly (and still in most cases impossible) research.
What I'm saying is this: That the plaintiff cannot produce a physical store-bought copy of the downloaded copyrighted works is NOT enough to convict, since they MIGHT have an orphan right, and the burden of proof [beyond reasonable doubt] is on the prosecution, not on the defense.
If you ask me, that provides a defense for ANYbody accused of ANY file sharing, file downloading, any time, anywhere.
TIER 3 OK? Finally, there's the question of legal damages. The RIAA has been asking for ALOT of money for something that really hasn't cost them a penny. If you lose the case there's still the very firm territory of emphasizing (repeatedly) the fact that the RIAA's losses are theoritical paper losses, rather than demonstrable "point-to-the-broken-window" losses. They have no proof that anybody would have bought the music that was downloaded. For instance, even virgin records has headphones to presample music, and most people who sample their music do NOT buy it. In the exact same sense, the RIAA cannot establish that the downloaders were doing anything other than pre-sampling the music. The price of pre-sampling a song at Virgin records is FREE.
If they're asking full market CD price for a bootleg copy of a song that their industry constituents didn't even burn to CD (i.e. they invested nothi
I know it sounds crazy. I can hardly get myself to look at it with credibility, but the facts ARE in line.
The third WTC building on 911 collapsed without ANYTHING touching it. It just collapsed straight down as if it had been demolished. They even abandoned it first. It was UNDAMAGED until it collapsed.
The HOLE in the pentagon was not large enough for the plane that struck.
The jet fuel of an airliner doesn't burn hot enough to melt the structural steel that was used in the WTC buildings. Yet they found molten steel in the wreckage.
Get on line and look at the video wreckage of that third building.
No, I'm saying 911 was a single event, and if you ask me it looks more like an event planned against hte american people by their own government in an effort to galvanize them against an invisible enemy, in order to gain a more absolute form of dictatorial control. That's what 911 looks like, if you ask me.
Fighting a war against an invisible enemy, and using that as a justification for searching everyone who passes through an airport, train station, you name it, already encroaches on basic civil liberties. The fact that the enemy is unseen makes it all the more insidious when the right wingers are asking for permission to spy domestically. It gives them the same sort of blank check request that joseph mccarthy had back in the commie witch hunts during the 50's. Have you such a short memory for history as to overlook the terrible right wing history of the 50's?
3030 killed in 911. that's the only terror attack ever done on that scale on us soil. you think that's a good reason to say "screw civil liberty, privacy and forget about not getting searched. forget about the right to carry a can of coke or a letter opener on an airplane. forget all that it's just not worth it.
you are tire kicking. your whole post is just tire kicking. look at the whole argument and fill in the gaps with your own mind.
Secret trials and detentions, patriot act, roving wiretaps, expanded police powers to read things like email, gone to an airport recently?. there's alot more than I know about but there is plenty.
9/11 was not a person murdering another person, you frame this as if it were a typical crime we should pursue through our court system.
There was never any reason NOT to handle it through our court system. I DO frame it as if it should have been handled in a different way. I frame it as if the president and his entire cabinet should have been investigated, impeached, and probably tried for treason.
When in reality it was an extremely large entity attacking our country, not just singular persons. So terrorism is just a crime we pursue in criminal courts?
I don't believe Al Quaeda exists in the form it has been advertised. Perhaps there IS an AQ somewhere, but I seriously doubt it had anything to do with 911.
If you ask me, the amount of technical expertise needed to conduct 911 already points to not a bunch of camel riding freedom fighters from afghanistan. It points to a western military organization with experience of command and coordination of complex military operations.
The NAME of the date alone points to an AMERICAN source, since the term 9-11 is only meaningful to Americans... Unless you think osama thought of it. I guess he could have watched "cops" on tv from his tent. ??
Car bombs in occupied Iraq do not point to alquaeda. OF COURSE there were going to be car bombs. The U.S. military went in and invaded. That same thing would probably happen in the U.S., too, if it got invaded. It doesn't mean Al Quaeda materialized. It means people (let just call them "Iraqi patriots" / "Iraqi freedom fighters" the same way the administration would have done if they were overthrowing a communist government) objected to the unprovoked and illegal military domination of their country.
Osama bin Laden was trained by the CIA. I have no reason to believe he ever stopped bing a CIA person. That's only boosted by the fact that they never caught him. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are just costly, bloody unjustified military moneygrabs that have served to distract from Osama's failed manhunt. Those wars siphened billions towards military contracts.
When the movement is as large and concerted as it is, you cannot simply frame it as a typical crime. You may lie to yourself, but the rest of us see (save for the sheep).
Yes, in fact it MUST be framed as a typical crime. If it HAD been, it would HAVE BEEN INVESTIGATED PROPERLY.
But 911 was never properly investigated, and the Bush police state after-the-fact isn't a suitable replacement for the proper investigation that they failed to conduct.
The Murder rate in the USA is 16,000 PER YEAR. The US terror rate since (and before) 911 death toll was 3,300 TOTAL.
We maintained our constitution for over 200 years with the number of murders growing the whole time, and we didn't take that as a reason to torch our own constitution.
911 shouldn't have changed a damn thing. Yet it seems as if the Bush team has milked it to build the bedrock for a police state. Given their political donations come from the same private interests that profit from such draconian right wing lunacy, it looks like the Bush team staged it themselves, quite honestly.
??? I don't MIND conceding AT ALL. In fact, I somehow ENJOY conceding a lost debate... not as much as I enjoy WINNING, but I still enjoy it. Win or lose, it is cathartic.
It it gets to be time to concede, I'll let you know, and I won't hide it. I'll do it right here on/. in a totally public way.
If that makes you happy, I'll even submit my concession to/. as a full-fledged story. Of course they'd turn it down, but I'm just saying..
But, right now, there's nothing TO concede, and that WOULD complicate the matter.
Ok. ?:-)
Happy Holidays. God Bless You, and I hope Santa brings you lots of fun toys, and that you have a good woman to kiss on new years eve.
I'm afraid you're going to have to find a sense of logic and perception of your own.
The Lord helps me when I pray, helps me when I forget, helps me when I need help, helps me against demons, helps me when I lose patience, helps me against bad habits, helps me with things you'd never even imagine. There is time to myself, but there IS no alone. There IS no "on my own."
Jesus said we are not supposed to resist evil. Rather, we are supposed to return kindness in exchange for evil. Sometimes it's easier than others.
You remind me of me. You also remind me of one of my oldest friends, who is semi-estranged since I realized I had to start praying. He used to look for Christians on/. so he could rate their posts down. In a completely uncanny way, this very conversation reminds me of something he once told me about.
I was an agnostic for 15 years, and it eventually led me to a place with many many demons. Everything, and everyone was a demon, or a demon's tool. Friends, family, everything I owned, Everything and Everyone were demons. I've spent plenty of time with demons. With God's help, I've learned to talk with them, live among them, and turn them without even giving it a second's thought. Laugh with them? Not their way. Call it hell, if you like, but the LORD makes life possible whereever you live.
If your eyes are eventually opened in a place like the one I'm describing, just remember that it's never too late to pray to God. I went years struggling in a pit of hell, thinking I was completely past redemption.
BTW, Christians aren't supposed to pray to Jesus, they're supposed to pray to the LORD, God the Father, who SENT Jesus. I've met plenty who seem unclear on that, but the first of the 10 Commandments says pray ONLY to God. Jesus never claimed he was God. He claimed to be the savior that the LORD sent.
The Trinity is a theological explaination of the relationship between Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit is the way the LORD uses us, and the way he explains things to us. The Son is Jesus, whom He sent as a teacher and as the sacrifice on the cross, and the Father is the LORD in Heaven, by whose strength, power and guidance, Jesus was able to redeem all of mankind.
Prayer from an agnostic is the LORD's favorite kind. If you pray to the LORD, He will hear you. I don't know HOW he will answer, but he will find a way for you. I honestly hope that you find the LORD, and sooner rather than later. Once you find Him you'll understand.
I see that you obviously have no experience working with networks whatsoever.
Actually, that's far from the truth.
I would like to know how many people you have ever assisted with bandwidth related questions.
I've never worked support, if that is what you mean. I've written servers, built lans and many other such things. But I have not worked on a phone with end users.
I dont see any position to your argument at all. It seems to me that your position has changed many times, and I've been advocating only one thing from the start. You took issue with it at the start, the debate began, and now you've finally gotten around to saying you agree with it.
OK, good, we agree...shake hands. Goodnight.:-)
PS
Yea I remember baud. Those were the good ole days, huh? Don't ask me why the standard changed. As the other guy said, "now that everyone and their dog has a computer..."
Can I ask *why* you need to ask questions that you apparently know the answer to yourself? Never mind that the answer is in the post you're replying to.
I thought the exercise would either force you to see it with fresh eyes, or perhaps that it would reframe the conversation around the specific point of contention, since it seems to me that there's nothing to disagree about if the two units ARE interchangeable. See what I told the other guy in the thread:
Flag bandwidth as bandwidth. Flag upload/download speed as upload download speed.
Use bytes for both.
That should make it very easy for everyone to understand, AND to use.
But for heaven's sake, don't make information difficult for people to interpret the data. Rather, make it EASIER to interpret. Again, that means flag bandwidth as bandwidth, flag upload/download speed as upload download speed. Use bytes to designate both.
There is the expression "honesty is the best policy".
I think it is presumptuous to tell people what they would think or assume about anything...what they would be confused about...techie or not.
I believe most people are capable of a great deal of understanding, and all the moreso when they're not being typecast as fools, and when the effort is made to communicate with them clearly rather than talking down to them. I've found that the more expectation I put into people, the more I get back out of them.
Several times I've read you saying people would fail to understand, that they'd get confused, that they would sue rather than trying to understand. Those are negative assumptions.
I'm not trying to diss on you, but it is important to recongnize the pattern, in the interest of breaking it. It is worth breaking that pattern.
That is not what happened. According to the article, the prosecuters took his email messages from the mail server where they were stored. It is implicit in the phrasing that the guy who's getting sued had his personal email account managed and stored on a server that did not belong to him, and they read the messages that he had stored on a server in his own email account. That's why it is such a benchmark case: the feds seem to be claiming that they don't need a warrant to read your email if it's on hotmail, yahoo, gmail, etc.
From the article:
The government needs a search warrant if it wants to read the U.S. mail that arrives at your home. But federal prosecutors say they don't need a search warrant to read your e-mail messages if those messages happen to be stored in someone else's computer.
That would include all of the Big Four e-mail providers -- Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail and Google -- that together hold e-mail accounts for 135 million Americans.
Twenty years ago, when only a relative handful of scientists and scholars had e-mail, Congress passed a law giving state and federal officials broad access to messages stored on the computers of e-mail providers.
Now that law, the Stored Communications Act of 1986, is being challenged in federal court in Ohio by Steven Warshak, a seller of "natural male enhancement" products who was indicted for mail fraud and money laundering after federal investigators sifted through thousands of his e-mails.
The government isn't saying it has unfettered access to e-mail. But e-mail users should not expect privacy when they allow an outside party to store their messages, prosecutors argue. In fact, many e-mail providers require their customers to sign agreements acknowledging that the provider may release customer information as required by law.
Since byte and bit are interchangeable measures of the same thing, it occurs to me that using one measure (as opposed to the other) does nothing to correct that type of potential confusion you described, and that a clearer description of the difference between "line speed" -vs- "download speed" would correct for that same type of potential confusion (in the case of confused customers).
On the other hand, there's much less potential confusion when line speed is expressed in the terms of measure that people actually use.
For instance, if the company wanted to sell bandwidth at 1 MB/s, and protocols/parity/encryption were taking up 15% of that, then they would advertise:
In fact it seems to me that he must have read them...probably the entire thread...but I just signed in again from yesterday.
Perhaps I don't understand what the ambiguity is. I accept the 8 bit byte as the standard, but I guess there might be some who don't. Are you claiming that the conversion of bytes to bits is ambiguous, due to some machines being 9 bit, and others being 32 bit, etc?
If that's your claim, then wouldn't you also have to agree to the corollary that bits should used for EVERYTHING, not just bandwith... hard drive storage, download speed, upload speed... since, by the same token, the bytes THEY use are ALSO ambiguous?
But you're claiming that colloquial ambiguity is the reason not to use bytes. I guess I just don't see the colloquial ambiguity. If a byte is 8 bits, then bits and bytes are mathematically (and colloquially) interchangeable. If not, then we're pressed to explain why ALL "data volume" measurements are not made in bits.
But the byte is here to stay, and there's NO ambiguity when my operating system tells me that a file on my hard drive is 400 MB. There's no ambiguity when I download a 400 MB file, and it takes x minutes to download. AND, there's no ambiguity when I lose y% of that download speed to a protocol, parity or encryption.
But I don't claim to know everything. Is it ok to ask if you could describe the colloquial ambiguity..?
But you see, anything they could say about x bits they could say about x/8 bytes. The same things that detract from bytes per second also detract from bits per second.
What's more, the ISP would win in court if the download speed were expresed either/or, as long as they were living up to their agreement (of download speed), or the terms of their contract, as well as relevant local law.
What's lost to the protocol, to parity bits and to SSL, etc, is still being downloaded to the client, they're just not getting any on disk end-use out of it. The ISP could easily explain that to anyone, right?
"sir you're downloading more than what shows up on your disk, due to the protocol you're using. some of the bandwidth went to verify data integrity, some of it went to encryption, some of it went to addressing the data to your computer" 15%. (ouch) But that would be 15% of bits or bytes. There's no hiding that one.
Ok, if you think the gas station analogy is broken, consider a rope salesman. A guy is selling rope for $1.20 per linear foot. You ask him for 10 feet of rope, but he won't tell you he's selling it by the foot. Instead, he sells you 120 inches of rope b/c for some strange reason he MUST tie a bunch of knotts into the rope, and he knows you won't have 10 full feet once he's done...BUT HE STILL BILLS YOU FOR A FULL 10 FEET. AND YOU'RE STILL GETTING THE 10 FOOT ROPE! It's just technically shorter once you get your hands on it, due to the knotts. Same with the ISP. inches : feet:: bits : bytes.
It's 7am now i have been coding all night. lolz. so I'm checking out. Fun chatting with you though.
Although what you say is true, it does not change the bottom line: bytes and bits are interchangeable measures of the same thing. If potentially inefficient high level protocols, parity bits and SSL are taking that 15% from bytes per second then they're also taking 15% from bits per second.
Slashdot Mirror
can your grandma
r entVersion\Run
Well, she's in heaven, I hope, and I suppose she can do that, if they allow windows in heaven.
"Ok, fine. Can the next person's granny do such a thing?"
I agree with your argument. MS Windows should have bundled winzip years ago. And there WAS a time when I had to be taught about winzip, leachy daemons, etc. You're right. If I had never done installer testing I wouldn't have known about hacking the registry and the hard disk to remove links to bogus autorun entries.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Cur
I have seen windows machines laden with more daemons than a west texas jackrabbit has ticks. That is a serious flaw in windows for lots of users, actually, and ms should have addressed it long ago.
Does she know how to get winzip?
You raise a good point. I actually am surprised that MS hasn't bundled winzip with the Windows.
And the analogy is fair, except that most compressed windows files are just zipped. They're usually not tarred, gzipped, tar.gz'd, pc6'd, (and heaven knows what else'd) etc. They're just zipped. It seems to me that linux should know how to unzip all of them without me downloading, same as I suggest for windows. Most people might not care about file compression schemes and they might prefer to have the details abstracted away. But you're saying that now it does. That's cool.
Have you ever watched a new user installing Windows from scratch.
:-) The fact is, I run a windows server (http/smtp/customjava/mysql) as we speak. I wanted to run all that on a linux server, but the time investment and learning curve (with no in-house linux guru's) made it not worth my time.
Alright but I'm not a newb. I've been using 'puters since the 1980's. I can't answer for all of htem, but it seems to me that a person who really understands what a computer does should be able to circumvent most/all headaches.
You will be pleased to know that Redhat now comes with a graphical installer.
Actually I'm inclined to use the non graphical one. I was primarily talking about installing new software, and managing the o.s. after it's been installed rather than installing the fresh O.S. The O.S. from the CD installs in a well-ordered way. But then the things I downloaded and tried to install after the fact were alot more troublesome / clunky.
What took three hours to type RPM -Uvh.
Well, there's nobody else around here who knows linux at all. The red hat installation manual doesn't say that. I looked online. Perhaps you can say "I should have known about rpm -Uvh", but I didn't, I'd just installed linux and honestly just wanted to get it working quickly without even that. But I did get some installations going, and then:
Firefox, for instance, still didnt work. Due to? Old kernel perhaps. That left me asking "how am I expected to upgrade this kernel?" and "is that potential headache of upgrading a kernel worth upgrading to firefox?"
(fyi the rh installtion I have is the one with a sellout version of netscape, where the "stop" button was replaced with the "shop" button. it also crashes semi-frequently.)
If you're using it every day then I can see where none of this sounds like it would slow a new user down, but if you put "install a new kernel" onto the plate of a new user, and nobody's helping them out, I suspect that they're just as likely to hop ship to windows.
I also don't understand how you equate installing a web server with what the new user would ever want to do.
Well, running a web server is actually very easy. Just run the thing. (after installing it
I don't intend that as putting linux down, but my time has value, and learning the ins and outs of linux software management and kernel upgrades / patches didn't seem worth it. Perhaps I'll use this ubuntu, though. The iso is downloaded.
Promise all you want. Linux is already mainstream.
:-)
We're talking server here. The article is talking server. The thing it overlooks is that Linux is *already* a major enterprise player.
I tried to emphasize that I was talking about the old and wondering if the new had improved upon it.
They called my post a troll..too bad. Anyhow, I like the way linux works, too, when it's working.
I have the ubuntu iso download at 31% now. One can hope.
TY. I'll consider your comment as "5-6 years have passed. It's worth taking the time to take a second look." I'm downloading as I type.
Being forced to manually mount hard drives doesn't make Linux more "real" of an o.s., and neither does a painstakingly nonstandardized software installation process.
They've had more than 10 years to get linux into shape, and the ones who turn away from linux aren't doing it due to incompetence, they're doing it b/c they don't want to waste their time learning arcane commands ("mount"/"umount", "pc6", "rpm", "tar", "untar", "gzip" for instance) with hundreds of command line switches to do basic things that they would like to take for granted. There are such things as "productivity gains", "user friendliness" and "reasonable learning curves." I think the command line is very cool / useful for those who want to get into it, but it should not be a barrier to entry, and it IS probably what has "held Linux back" for all this time, in terms of mainstream adoption.
P.S. If you think your stature comes from standing on my shoulders, then don't cut me down.
Does that mean installing/uninstalling software under linux is now standardized, logical and quick, even for people who never used it before? Have you ever watched a new linux user try to install all their software onto a linux box without any help? Linux will not get any mainstream adoption until THAT need is addressed, and that's a promise.
:)
Back to the original claim. Does mainstream adoption mean CompUSA will begin stocking Linux? I tried to get a Linux installation CD's from comp USA in emeryville CA, and they didnt even carry it in stock.
If you want the OS to be adopted it seems that making it visible, accessible, usable and available are the first steps.
This is my experience with starting as a Linux user, 5 years ago: To install or uninstall software mainly seemed like a collosal task. With earlier versions I had to manually mount the friggin hard drive, AND couldn't do jack with the OS. RH 7.0 shipped with sun RPC open to the world, and it got hacked within 2 days (by the ramen worm). "hackers LOOOVE noodles!" The bottom line is, my Red Hat Linux 7.0/7.1 CD's came with a manual that told how to install and how to uninstall, and that's all I ever did, since the rest of it just seemed like a big hassle and windows was the OS that I could rely on, install things in, and that worked without getting a headache looking for information on the web.
Anyhow, perhaps I should just shut my mouth, and I wonder if I'll get mocked just for admitting that I had trouble using linux, but the linux of 5 years ago was attrocious. If you disagree with that, just try INSTALLING an application in RH 7.0. (i know, it's very old OS, but I'm saying unless getting RPM's to go to the right place and install the right way has gotten any simpler than needing a pc6 decoder, gunzip, tar, untar, rpm, the other equiv of rpm (whose name i don't recall at the moment), and whatever else is involved. If you're a veteran linux user then ask a user from another OS to install software while you watch them. Oh yea, cross your arms and provide no help to them if you really want to see the learning curve in action. Then be nice and help.
It would (i believe) quickly become evident how Linux still needs to be made more user friendly, and that all the nonstandardized behavior for basic OS functions (like installing software) is not all that helpful to the users you wish would get onto your bandwagon.
Again, I probably should just have kept my mouth shut about Linux, but those are the reasons I put Mandrake 6.x, RH 7.0,7.1 and 7.2, suse x.x into a box and put the box under my bed and hardly bothered with them for the last 5 years. I use the operating system to get things done, and I don't want to wrestle with it, I want it to do things intuitively.
Calling rpm with half a dosen switches (after reading a manual for 3 hours) just to get it
working is not an example of inuitive installation.
Long story short, I just wanted to get a basic functional web server together, and I said to myself: "well, they just can't say enough good things about linux, so I'll use it." And guess what. I just told you what.
OK, for those of you who began using linux within the past year or two, I guess I must ask: Has the experience of new linux users improved at all, since that time? Do YOU people see it catching on, or is it still more or less the same bag of obstacles for you as it was for me 5-6 years ago?
Hurray for Russia!!
Perhaps they can teach NASA how to run an economical, yet highly effective, space program.
It just occurrs to me at this moment that there is at least one way to entrap a person who is using that defense:
If the RIAA (or any other group) were to leak copyrighted files that had never been legally available to anyone, (unreleased copyrighted materials), and the downloader/uploader had possession of the file(s), the RIAA could bypass the first 2 tiers of the above defense.
It could still suffer at the hands of tier 3, though, and furthermore, if it were established that the files were released only for the purpose of identifying illegal downloaders, and that no commercial intent was ever planned, their commercial value could (arguably) be zero (thereby making hefty damages claims difficult). UNLESS the RIAA counterclaimed that they were going to release the files to market officially at some future date, and that they had lost all their steam due to the leak [that they themselves had staged], which in its own way, constitutes unethical behavior.
If they wanted to get around THAT, too, they could just let some miscreants loose in their archives to "stumble across" the files they wanted to leak, and then say "oh my" (in a fake way) when the files DID get leaked.
But that would just be toooo sneaky, wouldn't it?
If it works, call this the "Sam Jennings defense" :)
-->
TIER 1
There is a right to fair use for a single-purchase otc owner of a CD / Tape / Record / Video / Movie. That right does not restrict you from reformatting the content. For example, if you have a CD, you have a right to reformat that into a collection of MP3's. As a corollary, you might* ALSO have a right to download the same mp3's. After all, since you HAVE a right to own them, and the fact that the download is coming from a third party should make no difference.
Therefore, (see the word MIGHT* above),
(1) Downloading such materials is not ALWAYS illegal, since the downloader MIGHT have had a right to fair use.
(2) Allowing such materials to be freely downloaded MIGHT NOT be a piracy ring, since the downloader MIGHT have had a right to fair use.
And THEREFORE, (again, see the word MIGHT* above),
That an upload OR a download of copyrighted material occurred does NOT constitute probable cause, since there ARE reasonable (i.e. legally defensible) circumstances that could have accounted for the very same behavior. In that regard, the prosecution might not have had probable cause (with regard to any warrants that they might have issued, regardless of what they found). For example, if you are walking home from kinko's with a photocopy of a copyrighted poster the police would not have probable cause to assume that you were in a poster pirating ring. Furthermore, if they caught you bringing a copy of that poster to a friend's house, they STILL have no proof that your FRIEND doesn't ALSO have a home-use right to the very same material. If you can sufficiently emphasize that doubt [of probable cause, as in 4th amendment probable cause] you can defend the case in appeals, right?
TIER 2
There IS such a thing as an orphan-right to copyrighted material. What I mean by that is that if you bought a CD and it was stolen from your car, or your vynil record melted in the sun, etc., you still have a RIGHT to use the software/song/movie, etc, even though you lost the physical COPY of the copyrighted material.
Since most people probably DO have orphan rights to many copyrighted works, (for instance, my own house was once burglarized and I lost about 100 legally purchased music cd's), the prosecuter would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the plaintiff had no orphan rights to the copyrighted material. That would be difficult, to say the least, since music has been recorded and sold for a long time, and proving that a person NEVER had a right to own a particular music CD, for instance, would involve lengthy and costly (and still in most cases impossible) research.
What I'm saying is this: That the plaintiff cannot produce a physical store-bought copy of the downloaded copyrighted works is NOT enough to convict, since they MIGHT have an orphan right, and the burden of proof [beyond reasonable doubt] is on the prosecution, not on the defense.
If you ask me, that provides a defense for ANYbody accused of ANY file sharing, file downloading, any time, anywhere.
TIER 3
OK? Finally, there's the question of legal damages. The RIAA has been asking for ALOT of money for something that really hasn't cost them a penny. If you lose the case there's still the very firm territory of emphasizing (repeatedly) the fact that the RIAA's losses are theoritical paper losses, rather than demonstrable "point-to-the-broken-window" losses. They have no proof that anybody would have bought the music that was downloaded. For instance, even virgin records has headphones to presample music, and most people who sample their music do NOT buy it. In the exact same sense, the RIAA cannot establish that the downloaders were doing anything other than pre-sampling the music. The price of pre-sampling a song at Virgin records is FREE.
If they're asking full market CD price for a bootleg copy of a song that their industry constituents didn't even burn to CD (i.e. they invested nothi
I know it sounds crazy. I can hardly get myself to look at it with credibility, but the facts ARE in line.
e
0 9736411725&q=wtc+3
The third WTC building on 911 collapsed without ANYTHING touching it. It just collapsed straight down as if it had been demolished. They even abandoned it first. It was UNDAMAGED until it collapsed.
The HOLE in the pentagon was not large enough for the plane that struck.
The jet fuel of an airliner doesn't burn hot enough to melt the structural steel that was used in the WTC buildings. Yet they found molten steel in the wreckage.
Get on line and look at the video wreckage of that third building.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=911+collaps
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-78427415
That was not an airplane strike, it was demolition.
No, I'm saying 911 was a single event, and if you ask me it looks more like an event planned against hte american people by their own government in an effort to galvanize them against an invisible enemy, in order to gain a more absolute form of dictatorial control. That's what 911 looks like, if you ask me.
v iolent_crime/murder.html
Fighting a war against an invisible enemy, and using that as a justification for searching everyone who passes through an airport, train station, you name it, already encroaches on basic civil liberties. The fact that the enemy is unseen makes it all the more insidious when the right wingers are asking for permission to spy domestically. It gives them the same sort of blank check request that joseph mccarthy had back in the commie witch hunts during the 50's. Have you such a short memory for history as to overlook the terrible right wing history of the 50's?
here. this is the recent murder rate. it's been close to 16000 for a long time.
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/offenses_reported/
3030 killed in 911. that's the only terror attack ever done on that scale on us soil. you think that's a good reason to say "screw civil liberty, privacy and forget about not getting searched. forget about the right to carry a can of coke or a letter opener on an airplane. forget all that it's just not worth it.
you are tire kicking. your whole post is just tire kicking. look at the whole argument and fill in the gaps with your own mind.
Secret trials and detentions, patriot act, roving wiretaps, expanded police powers to read things like email, gone to an airport recently?. there's alot more than I know about but there is plenty.
Sheesh. Wake up, people.
9/11 was not a person murdering another person, you frame this as if it were a typical crime we should pursue through our court system.
There was never any reason NOT to handle it through our court system. I DO frame it as if it should have been handled in a different way. I frame it as if the president and his entire cabinet should have been investigated, impeached, and probably tried for treason.
When in reality it was an extremely large entity attacking our country, not just singular persons. So terrorism is just a crime we pursue in criminal courts?
I don't believe Al Quaeda exists in the form it has been advertised. Perhaps there IS an AQ somewhere, but I seriously doubt it had anything to do with 911.
If you ask me, the amount of technical expertise needed to conduct 911 already points to not a bunch of camel riding freedom fighters from afghanistan. It points to a western military organization with experience of command and coordination of complex military operations.
The NAME of the date alone points to an AMERICAN source, since the term 9-11 is only meaningful to Americans... Unless you think osama thought of it. I guess he could have watched "cops" on tv from his tent. ??
Car bombs in occupied Iraq do not point to alquaeda. OF COURSE there were going to be car bombs. The U.S. military went in and invaded. That same thing would probably happen in the U.S., too, if it got invaded. It doesn't mean Al Quaeda materialized. It means people (let just call them "Iraqi patriots" / "Iraqi freedom fighters" the same way the administration would have done if they were overthrowing a communist government) objected to the unprovoked and illegal military domination of their country.
Osama bin Laden was trained by the CIA. I have no reason to believe he ever stopped bing a CIA person. That's only boosted by the fact that they never caught him. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are just costly, bloody unjustified military moneygrabs that have served to distract from Osama's failed manhunt. Those wars siphened billions towards military contracts.
When the movement is as large and concerted as it is, you cannot simply frame it as a typical crime. You may lie to yourself, but the rest of us see (save for the sheep).
Yes, in fact it MUST be framed as a typical crime. If it HAD been, it would HAVE BEEN INVESTIGATED PROPERLY.
But 911 was never properly investigated, and the Bush police state after-the-fact isn't a suitable replacement for the proper investigation that they failed to conduct.
Correction.
The US terror rate since (and before) 911 death toll was 3030. TOTAL.
The Murder rate in the USA is 16,000 PER YEAR.
y /Missile-Not-Flight-77.html
The US terror rate since (and before) 911 death toll was 3,300 TOTAL.
We maintained our constitution for over 200 years with the number of murders growing the whole time, and we didn't take that as a reason to torch our own constitution.
911 shouldn't have changed a damn thing. Yet it seems as if the Bush team has milked it to build the bedrock for a police state. Given their political donations come from the same private interests that profit from such draconian right wing lunacy, it looks like the Bush team staged it themselves, quite honestly.
http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20Histor
Getting security "locked down" is the wrong answer. Getting the nazis out of office is the right answer.
Yes that robot will help in simulations.
http://www.newgrounds.com/seals/index.html
??? I don't MIND conceding AT ALL. In fact, I somehow ENJOY conceding a lost debate... not as much as I enjoy WINNING, but I still enjoy it. Win or lose, it is cathartic.
/. in a totally public way.
/. as a full-fledged story. Of course they'd turn it down, but I'm just saying..
:-)
It it gets to be time to concede, I'll let you know, and I won't hide it. I'll do it right here on
If that makes you happy, I'll even submit my concession to
But, right now, there's nothing TO concede, and that WOULD complicate the matter.
Ok. ?
Happy Holidays. God Bless You, and I hope Santa brings you lots of fun toys, and that you have a good woman to kiss on new years eve.
I'm afraid you're going to have to find a sense of logic and perception of your own.
/. so he could rate their posts down. In a completely uncanny way, this very conversation reminds me of something he once told me about.
The Lord helps me when I pray, helps me when I forget, helps me when I need help, helps me against demons, helps me when I lose patience, helps me against bad habits, helps me with things you'd never even imagine. There is time to myself, but there IS no alone. There IS no "on my own."
Jesus said we are not supposed to resist evil. Rather, we are supposed to return kindness in exchange for evil. Sometimes it's easier than others.
You remind me of me. You also remind me of one of my oldest friends, who is semi-estranged since I realized I had to start praying. He used to look for Christians on
I was an agnostic for 15 years, and it eventually led me to a place with many many demons. Everything, and everyone was a demon, or a demon's tool. Friends, family, everything I owned, Everything and Everyone were demons. I've spent plenty of time with demons. With God's help, I've learned to talk with them, live among them, and turn them without even giving it a second's thought. Laugh with them? Not their way. Call it hell, if you like, but the LORD makes life possible whereever you live.
If your eyes are eventually opened in a place like the one I'm describing, just remember that it's never too late to pray to God. I went years struggling in a pit of hell, thinking I was completely past redemption.
BTW, Christians aren't supposed to pray to Jesus, they're supposed to pray to the LORD, God the Father, who SENT Jesus. I've met plenty who seem unclear on that, but the first of the 10 Commandments says pray ONLY to God. Jesus never claimed he was God. He claimed to be the savior that the LORD sent.
The Trinity is a theological explaination of the relationship between Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit is the way the LORD uses us, and the way he explains things to us. The Son is Jesus, whom He sent as a teacher and as the sacrifice on the cross, and the Father is the LORD in Heaven, by whose strength, power and guidance, Jesus was able to redeem all of mankind.
Prayer from an agnostic is the LORD's favorite kind. If you pray to the LORD, He will hear you. I don't know HOW he will answer, but he will find a way for you. I honestly hope that you find the LORD, and sooner rather than later. Once you find Him you'll understand.
God Bless You,
Sam
http://slashdot.org/journal.pl?op=display
I've been posting on slashdot for a long time. I guess I was bound to come across somebody like you eventually.
Jesus said love your enemies, and pray for them.
God bless you.
I see that you obviously have no experience working with networks whatsoever.
:-)
Actually, that's far from the truth.
I would like to know how many people you have ever assisted with bandwidth related questions.
I've never worked support, if that is what you mean. I've written servers, built lans and many other such things. But I have not worked on a phone with end users.
I dont see any position to your argument at all. It seems to me that your position has changed many times, and I've been advocating only one thing from the start. You took issue with it at the start, the debate began, and now you've finally gotten around to saying you agree with it.
OK, good, we agree...shake hands. Goodnight.
PS
Yea I remember baud. Those were the good ole days, huh? Don't ask me why the standard changed. As the other guy said, "now that everyone and their dog has a computer..."
Can I ask *why* you need to ask questions that you apparently know the answer to yourself? Never mind that the answer is in the post you're replying to.
I thought the exercise would either force you to see it with fresh eyes, or perhaps that it would reframe the conversation around the specific point of contention, since it seems to me that there's nothing to disagree about if the two units ARE interchangeable. See what I told the other guy in the thread:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=212886&cid=17
Flag bandwidth as bandwidth.
Flag upload/download speed as upload download speed.
Use bytes for both.
That should make it very easy for everyone to understand, AND to use.
But for heaven's sake, don't make information difficult for people to interpret the data. Rather, make it EASIER to interpret. Again, that means flag bandwidth as bandwidth, flag upload/download speed as upload download speed. Use bytes to designate both.
There is the expression "honesty is the best policy".
I think it is presumptuous to tell people what they would think or assume about anything...what they would be confused about...techie or not.
I believe most people are capable of a great deal of understanding, and all the moreso when they're not being typecast as fools, and when the effort is made to communicate with them clearly rather than talking down to them. I've found that the more expectation I put into people, the more I get back out of them.
Several times I've read you saying people would fail to understand, that they'd get confused, that they would sue rather than trying to understand. Those are negative assumptions.
I'm not trying to diss on you, but it is important to recongnize the pattern, in the interest of breaking it. It is worth breaking that pattern.
That is not what happened. According to the article, the prosecuters took his email messages from the mail server where they were stored. It is implicit in the phrasing that the guy who's getting sued had his personal email account managed and stored on a server that did not belong to him, and they read the messages that he had stored on a server in his own email account. That's why it is such a benchmark case: the feds seem to be claiming that they don't need a warrant to read your email if it's on hotmail, yahoo, gmail, etc.
From the article:
The government needs a search warrant if it wants to read the U.S. mail that arrives at your home. But federal prosecutors say they don't need a search warrant to read your e-mail messages if those messages happen to be stored in someone else's computer.
That would include all of the Big Four e-mail providers -- Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail and Google -- that together hold e-mail accounts for 135 million Americans.
Twenty years ago, when only a relative handful of scientists and scholars had e-mail, Congress passed a law giving state and federal officials broad access to messages stored on the computers of e-mail providers.
Now that law, the Stored Communications Act of 1986, is being challenged in federal court in Ohio by Steven Warshak, a seller of "natural male enhancement" products who was indicted for mail fraud and money laundering after federal investigators sifted through thousands of his e-mails.
The government isn't saying it has unfettered access to e-mail. But e-mail users should not expect privacy when they allow an outside party to store their messages, prosecutors argue. In fact, many e-mail providers require their customers to sign agreements acknowledging that the provider may release customer information as required by law.
http://www.startribune.com/789/story/884388.html
It is truly a concern. Running your own mail server has never been as good an idea as it is now.
Since byte and bit are interchangeable measures of the same thing, it occurs to me that using one measure (as opposed to the other) does nothing to correct that type of potential confusion you described, and that a clearer description of the difference between "line speed" -vs- "download speed" would correct for that same type of potential confusion (in the case of confused customers).
On the other hand, there's much less potential confusion when line speed is expressed in the terms of measure that people actually use.
For instance, if the company wanted to sell bandwidth at 1 MB/s, and protocols/parity/encryption were taking up 15% of that, then they would advertise:
1 MB/s bandwidth
870 kB/s (at least) download speed, depending on protocol, parity, encryption
Right? Both are expressed in bytes, and still there's no confusion.
In fact it seems to me that he must have read them...probably the entire thread...but I just signed in again from yesterday.
Perhaps I don't understand what the ambiguity is. I accept the 8 bit byte as the standard, but I guess there might be some who don't. Are you claiming that the conversion of bytes to bits is ambiguous, due to some machines being 9 bit, and others being 32 bit, etc?
If that's your claim, then wouldn't you also have to agree to the corollary that bits should used for EVERYTHING, not just bandwith... hard drive storage, download speed, upload speed... since, by the same token, the bytes THEY use are ALSO ambiguous?
But you're claiming that colloquial ambiguity is the reason not to use bytes. I guess I just don't see the colloquial ambiguity. If a byte is 8 bits, then bits and bytes are mathematically (and colloquially) interchangeable. If not, then we're pressed to explain why ALL "data volume" measurements are not made in bits.
But the byte is here to stay, and there's NO ambiguity when my operating system tells me that a file on my hard drive is 400 MB. There's no ambiguity when I download a 400 MB file, and it takes x minutes to download. AND, there's no ambiguity when I lose y% of that download speed to a protocol, parity or encryption.
But I don't claim to know everything. Is it ok to ask if you could describe the colloquial ambiguity..?
But you see, anything they could say about x bits they could say about x/8 bytes. The same things that detract from bytes per second also detract from bits per second.
:: bits : bytes.
What's more, the ISP would win in court if the download speed were expresed either/or, as long as they were living up to their agreement (of download speed), or the terms of their contract, as well as relevant local law.
What's lost to the protocol, to parity bits and to SSL, etc, is still being downloaded to the client, they're just not getting any on disk end-use out of it. The ISP could easily explain that to anyone, right?
"sir you're downloading more than what shows up on your disk, due to the protocol you're using. some of the bandwidth went to verify data integrity, some of it went to encryption, some of it went to addressing the data to your computer" 15%. (ouch) But that would be 15% of bits or bytes. There's no hiding that one.
Ok, if you think the gas station analogy is broken, consider a rope salesman. A guy is selling rope for $1.20 per linear foot. You ask him for 10 feet of rope, but he won't tell you he's selling it by the foot. Instead, he sells you 120 inches of rope b/c for some strange reason he MUST tie a bunch of knotts into the rope, and he knows you won't have 10 full feet once he's done...BUT HE STILL BILLS YOU FOR A FULL 10 FEET. AND YOU'RE STILL GETTING THE 10 FOOT ROPE! It's just technically shorter once you get your hands on it, due to the knotts. Same with the ISP. inches : feet
It's 7am now i have been coding all night. lolz. so I'm checking out. Fun chatting with you though.
Although what you say is true, it does not change the bottom line: bytes and bits are interchangeable measures of the same thing. If potentially inefficient high level protocols, parity bits and SSL are taking that 15% from bytes per second then they're also taking 15% from bits per second.
:-)
Right?