Never once did I say my mother, "Mother? I'm going up to my filthy tomb, to sit in it, in the name of God" and yet my mother would come up and say, "How in the name of God can you sit in this filthy tomb?"
(apologies to Bill Cosby)
My take on code signing, as nicely inspired by your hero and mine, Tommy Boy:
The point is, how do you know the Code Signing Fairy isn't a crazy glue sniffer?
"Building model airplanes" says the little fairy, but we're not buying it. Next thing you know, there's money missing off the dresser and your daughter's knocked up -- I've seen it a hundred times.
They know all you downloaded was a guaranteed piece of shit. That's all it is. Hey, if you want me to take a Word virus and code sign it, I will. I've got spare time. But for right now, for your sake, for your daughter's sake, ya might wanna think about downloading quality code from me.
It depends on what else he does that might make your job easier.
I have a similar situation -- 4 programmers and 1 manager who can program somewhat, and so helps us on many projects. Overall, though, quite incompetant when it comes to tech. Takes 3 times as long to do something as any of us.
However, he does something for us that is incredibly helpful -- he acts as the go-between and scapegoat for our department to the rest of the company. Bigwigs need talking to? Manager does it. End user getting narky? Manager deals with it. Programmers pissed about way things are going, but talking to the CEO directly would cause murder? Manager provides helpful ear and/or translation services.
Sometimes having the extra step in there is very frustrating, especially when something is *clearly screwed* and marketers need to be thumped, it sure seems like it'd be easier if I did it myself. But that buffer is mighty handy when shit starts flying and people are ducking -- I don't have to listen to the screaming of a customer directly nor the whining of sales or the ignorant questions of the CEO. That, to me, is invaluable.
So...before you get too frustrated at his incompetance, see if he's doing anything for you that you're damned glad you don't have to.
Fair enough. I can appreciate the pursuit of that ideal of perfection. I have no problem with improvement...indeed, I'd be very happy to have that one time of VoIP not working go down to zero. Or to get a reliability good enough that getting rid of my landline wouldn't bother me at all.
My admonition was more directed to those who are whining that VoIP "isn't good enough yet" to be used by them...they require it to be as reliable as a landline before they can adopt it and make it useful. Bullshit. I say it's useful now -- not for everything, not for every case, but most. A few flaws in the system do not render it without merit.
IE: Running Debian testing might not be a crash-free experience, but there's still value to be gained from it, and many people have working, useful systems running it. Being a perfectionist prick and insisting that everything spins like a top all the time before you can use it despite the numerous problems it has to overcome is just being pretentious.
In the end, use what you think is best. I think anyone who thinks that VoIP at 99.4% is unusable is missing out on some great technology that'll save you a ton of cash and give you some great features. That's essentially the idea.
Personally I think 94.8% is pretty awful. I don't think 99.4% is very good either.
It's just fine.
I see a lot of people whining about how your phone would be down 4 hours out of the month if you have 99.4 or whatever. My answer is: So?
How many times do you need to make that phone call right-the-hell-now? Out of the phone calls in the past year, I'd say maybe...20. Max. The rest were more relaxed calls to friends/family that weren't time-dependent. Out of that 20, I can think of one time when I wanted to use the VoIP to call my wife's home country (Australia) and couldn't because it was down, so instead I paid Sprint a few dollars to do it through my landline. Whoop-dee-doo.
Sure, 911 is a concern. But keep a cell phone or cheap landline around and you have that. My landline costs me $17/month. Potatoes. My VoIP is worth it because it has brought my costs down from over $75/month to less than $20. Couple that with neat features of running my own Asterisk server and I have a really fun, useful service.
I guess if you're using your VoIP as your home office phone or as a telemarketing device, 99.4% would hurt. For the average home user, the small inconvenience vs. price shouldn't bother anyone that much. I pay about $35/month for my entire phone service and my wife can call home as much as she wants. What a deal.
I have successfully managed to argue my websurfing at work based on one simple principle: Education.
I am a computer programmer -- applications developer. I am paid to be knowledgeable in my field, to maintain that knowledge, and to use it to the benefit of the company. Part of my maintenance of that knowledge is to keep up on all the nuances and happenings of the IT industry, which I do through IT magazines, IT websites, and the occasional IT book or reference.
Thus, I have convinced my employer that my time spent surfing is part of my job description. You want a knowledgeable programmer? Then let me keep up my knowledge.
(assuming this is true and not a wild fabrication)
You will hear two sounds (if you haven't heard them already):
A flushing sound as the future for Apple goes straight down the toilet. Oh, I understand all the arguments that everyone has had about how the normal end user won't give a damn about the processor and how it'll be the same performance, etc, etc. But in the long run, this is a negative, I feel. Sure, I don't own a G5 because I'm not made of money. But I sure as hell would if I could.
Why? You just *know* there's something good about them. Macintoshes are built like computers SHOULD be built. There's a lot of love and care in them, engineering prowness, etc. It all comes from hardware lock-in, of course, which is why you pay out the ass for them. But on the upside, you're getting a fine piece of ass.
Intel makes decent hardware but they're nothing like a PPC or an AMD chip. Everyone knows it.
A *whiz* and a *splat!* as the shit hits the fan in the user community. Everyone buys Intel because it comes bundled with cheap PCs and they can't afford differently. Fair enough, I can't blame you. But Apple holds a certain market share, a share of people who don't give a damn what the hardware (or software) costs, they want their Mac. You know how obsessive Appleheads are. Do you blame them? You'd lick the keyboard on a Mac if you owned one, too, admit it.
With this comes a disdain for the PC market and Wintel in general. Yes, I realize that a switch to Intel for the CPU won't mean that the rest of the hardware is Intel or that any other piece will be from the PC world. But a lot of how you operate in a market depends on how you are perceived. Users might not understand the complexities of hardware, but they will realize that Apple has switched which company provides a major component of their Macs and that company is part of the Wintel world. That, in and of itself, is enough to produce backlash.
Good luck, Apple. If this is the move you're making, I hope you've done your research. I like your shit...I can't afford it, but I like it. I wish you well.
Conversely, would you do business with a company that leverages every advantage that they legally can to provide the best services at the lowest prices?
Like it or not, offshoring is legal. Business often lets morality and ethics and so forth take a back seat to the bottom line and that's where many go off their tree about offshoring, not about its legitimate use in the business model. Employees are out to save their ass, and employers are out to save theirs. When you get to something like offshoring, you're talking about certain employees unable to save their ass because the employer is saving theirs.
What we really need is a better way to play the game, as employees, so that offshoring is either a) no longer appealing or b) no longer a threat to us. Note the differences in those two statements. Either developers need to make it so that offshoring is unappealing -- by developing better, smarter, faster, etc. -- or by making the threat of offshoring inapplicable to our state as employees, probably by developing skills, abilities, and knowledge that make no sense to offshore.
Now, HOW to do this is not something I've come up with.:) But that's my thoughts on it -- we, as developers, have to start playing a better game because I doubt offshoring is going anywhere.
The real problem with the broadcast flag is that no distributor is ever going to err on the side of openness. What modern company would? Look at the EULAs and contracts and so forth that companies pad themselves with in order to avoid frivolous lawsuits and issues with IP and ownership!
Do you really think that there are going to be lots of broadcasts conducted where the operators go, "Ya know, we probably don't need to prevent someone from recording this. Let it go."
No, we're screwed. Every program has at least something that the producer or the distributor will consider "theirs" and will therefore decide to limit it. Even something as simple as a logo overlay (a-la SciFi Channel, USA, et al) might be considered a "branding" and therefore something that would prevent redistribution. Probably the ONLY thing that would even come close to being open would be things like the State of the Union broadcast -- but even that would be considered proprietary, because it was a *particular* broadcast by a *particular* station with their *particular* boneheaded reporters struggling to come up with something intelligent to comment about.
I dunno. I just think the broadcast flag is a false sense of fairness when it'll turn out to be nothing but solid DRM that everyone will get screwed with.
actually there is a setting in the router to adjust the Quality of Service settings for the voip. When a voip call comes in, it automatically adjusts my bandwidth allocation to provide for the phone service, when I hang up, my download speeds/torrents/whatever go full rate again.
That's really cool, I didn't even know they had anything like that yet. I think that's a big issue; I know that until I applied QoS to the firewall, if I was doing something big on the 'net I would hose out my VoIP and that would be, as they say, that. So I got on that bandwagon pretty quick and it works nice now. Good setup you have. What's Vonage charge for international? That was the big push for us to VoIP, as we were spending $$$ bucks calling there every week.
I've seen a lot of posts about the various experiences, VoIP isn't ready for the end user, etc. I agree with the end user bit, but VoIP is certainly ready for and should probably be exploited by the geek community. Here's my setup and situation:
Internet: Mediacom 3Mbps down, 256K up cable modem. Quite reliable, down probably for 10 minutes a month, maybe less. About $45 for that.
VoIP Provider: BinFone Service through Binhost Technologies, a company I'm a part of. We're small but we know our shit, we're cheap, and we have geeks running the entire show. We are more into reselling VoIP but also do individual IAX and SIP accounts. Rates are $0.03/min for USA, $0.05/min for Australia (wife is Australian, we call there a lot). More info here.
Phone: Grandstream Handytone 486 SIP phone adapter. A very cheap ($65, I believe) phone adapter, but has a web interface, good features, and does what I need it to. It is plugged into the network via CAT5 and into the phone patch block via standard POTS wire.
IAX Server: I run my own IAX server (Asterisk) in-house. It talks to Binhost's server through the IAX protocol (Asterisk proprietary) which is very efficient. I have an X100P FXO PCI card in it that allows connection to the PSTN (my landline) and a NIC to talk to the network.
Firewall: All of this sits behind the firewall, a simple Pentium 233 running Slackware 9.1 and using iptables and QoS scripts to regulate traffic. The QoS designates packets by the MAC address of the Grandstream as highest priority so my VoIP packets always get through quickly.
All right -- big deal, you say. But wait, there's more!
The phones in the entire house are connected to the phone patch block through the patch panel and a 66 block. The VoIP adapter is also connected to the phone patch block as well as the network. The Asterisk box is connected to the network and to the PSTN landline. So. When I pick up a phone (any of the three in the house), I simply dial a number. The signals from all the phones run through the Grandstream VoIP adapter to the Asterisk box. The Asterisk box figures out if it's a local call or long distance. If local, it uses the FXO card to send out the call on the PSTN. If long distance, it communicates via IAX to the Binhost server and places the call over the Internet. No intervention is required on my part as to where it goes, it just does it right.
If the Internet connection is down or otherwise inaccessible, it automatically falls back to the landline so calls can still be placed.
The end result is that I get much cheaper phone calls than I would if I used my long distance on the landline (7 cents US/12 cents Australia vs 3/5), yet I don't have to inconvenience myself with having to worry about which phone I have to use for a phone call.
Incoming calls are received by the Asterisk box. Assuming I haven't turned on call forwarding or do-not-disturb, it rings through the VoIP adapter to the phones in the house. If nobody answers, Asterisk picks up the line and gives a message and allows the user to pick either my or my wife's voice mail box and leave a message. Very handy.
Costs:
Monthly VoIP service: About $20 for the calls, $5 for the line.
Internet: $45/month
Asterisk: Free
Asterisk server: Free donation
FXO Card: $15 on eBay
VoIP Adapter: $65
Wiring: out of some old box
Firewall: Free donation as well
Landline costs: $17.95/month
So total? $80 in startup, $87.95 monthly for all my phone calls and Internet service. I call that a *deal*.
I have a shop PC for looking up things whilst working on my computers, cars, or other projects. It is simple -- a 300mHz PC running Windows 95, without a case, nailed with 16p nails to the bare studs. The monitor sits on a shelf above the workbench, the mouse is on a shelf as well, the keyboard sits on the bench. Ok, stop your cringing. But you know what? What more do I need? Really.
Think about it: What I need in the shop is something that can let me do Google searches, boot up fast, take abuse, and play MP3s so I have music. That's it. At 300mHz, Win95 flies and boots in less than 25 seconds. Since I'm only doing web searches, there's no real load on it. MP3s play fine in Winamp. Without a case, dust flows in and out without causing harm; having it 4 feet above the bench and mounted vertically helps tons. If it gets excessively dusty, a quick squirt from the air hose takes care of that. A 300mHz PC is cheap and simple to repair -- if something breaks, whoopity. No data is kept on it, everything saves or is pulled from the network, so if the hard drive chunks because I started it up in -20F cold, oh well.
Easy, simple, useful, like my wrenches, hammers, and other tools. No fucking around needed, and that's how my shop should work.
Bah. I ran ethernet through the crawlspace of my house, out the side of the foundation, through PVC conduit 3 feet underground to the garage, then back up and through the sidewall into the garage, then through about 20 studs to the ports on the walls. Haven't ever had a problem yet.
Strangely enough, I had this for years and I now find that if I can't hear a computer or other similar white noise I *can't* go to sleep. I've become that used to it.
People own laptops, shut down desktops when not in use, etc. Plus theres linux' ever-growing embedded segment.
Fair enough on laptops and embedded devices -- I guess I wasn't considering those and I'm not sure the study was, either. As I mentioned on another comment, given Linux users' penchant for uptimes, I'd hazard a guess that the majority of people DO leave their workstations up 24/7 regardless if they're doing anything. I and almost everyone I know certainly does. That being said, as the userbase expands beyond the typical geek, this will become less the case.
Pure "M$ sucks rolF!" bullshit from the clueless.
A poorly-worded statement on my part, and I apologize. I should have stated it as the wait for the various services and agents and crap to load on Windows vs. Linux. Mind you, as you pointed out, waiting for DHCP and so forth can be nasty, too. WinXP has eliminated a lot of that, I guess, but I haven't used it much, preferring 2k so far, which takes quite awhile to get going.
Most sites that stand up to a/.ing are running IIS from, what I've seen. Ever see Slate or MSN go down when/. links to them?
Geez, people. Take a jaunt. Surely we're used to random pokes at MS around here by now. Hello? *feedback* Is this thing on?
Maybe some people chose to turn of their box when
they are not at home or when they are sleeping. Maybe some people want to save a little bit of electricty if they can.
Fair enough, but I would hazard a guess that the percentage of people that leave them running is higher than those that don't. I guess I'm saying that I'm generalizing, but speaking to the majority, I believe. As energy efficient as most modern systems are when they are sleeping or in low-power mode, I can't justify turning them off anymore. (11 machines running 24/7 in my house, currently)
Now, some people have pointed out laptops. Ok, you got me on that one. Rebooting a laptop quickly is important, especially if you don't have Suspend-To-Disk or whatever it's currently called.
This is the problem with the linux zelots. Someone points out somthing that is annoying and should be fixed and people rush to say how this is a non issue, then they go on to say how this is actually better than the way windows does it.
I was just saying that it's probably annoying to a smaller percentage of Linux users vs. a similar audience of Windows users, given their penchant for uptimes.
Yeah because IIS is the only webserver that can be/.ed your right on that one pal. Yeah. Sure.
Chill. I was being humourous, or at least attempting. That being said, the benchmarks already prove that Apache handles better than IIS under high load. But maybe our poster didn't have the option. No biggie either way -- I was just being an ass.
No, you're not booting much. My computer rarely crashes, but I still turn the computer off when I'm not using it -- it's noisy, and produces a lot of heat.
I guess on this point I was thinking that if you're a Linux user, you're more likely to be running your hardware 24/7 vs. shutting down when you're not using it. Of course, as Linux becomes more prominent, this changes, so I guess my statement isn't terribly valid after that. I relent, I guess. That being said, I'd be incredibly curious to see wear-and-tear studies done on computers that get shutdown every night vs. those that run continuously. I leave mine running because I think it's better for them. But who knows.
The guy isn't knocking the Linux kernel for long boot times, he's trying to improve boot times on typical installs.
Ok, yeah, that sounds reasonable. Now...if only the distros use it.:)
That's a strange perspective... if I choose not to fiddle, then do I choose to have an insecure system? Or a slow one?
Works for Windows, I guess.
...when there are definite steps that distros can take to improve the situation.
Fine, but what I'm saying is that if you don't care to set up specific hardware configurations and specific system settings, you choose to have a bunch of scripts that try to "figure it out" for you, and that can take time. If you choose for it to happen automagically, you might not always get the best performance.
First of all, if you run Linux, you're not booting much. What...rebooting maybe once a month? Kernel releases, etc. Otherwise, the machine runs and runs and...well, you get the picture. So who cares about boot time then?
Boot time doesn't have to be an arduous wait. Yes, on out-of-the-box distros it can be incredible, but I blame the distro, not Linux. Shit that takes time is the stupid scripts to auto-configure everything and your dog (who is USB 2.0 compatible now). Anyone worth their salt will fiddle with options until what they need is all they have.
If you choose to not fiddle, then you choose to have boot times that are increasing. It takes time to autoprobe everything correctly and get it set up if you're too lazy to do it yourself. Windows does it from the perspective of 'throw everything in there and take up gadzillions of RAM'. Linux says, 'I'll autosetup everything but still keep you lean'. You pay for what you get, folks.
People who run IIS and then subject it to a/.ing should be drug into the street and shot for being an idiot. Twice.
Slashdot Mirror
Johnny! Go clean your tomb!
Never once did I say my mother, "Mother? I'm going up to my filthy tomb, to sit in it, in the name of God" and yet my mother would come up and say, "How in the name of God can you sit in this filthy tomb?"
(apologies to Bill Cosby)
My take on code signing, as nicely inspired by your hero and mine, Tommy Boy:
The point is, how do you know the Code Signing Fairy isn't a crazy glue sniffer?
"Building model airplanes" says the little fairy, but we're not buying it. Next thing you know, there's money missing off the dresser and your daughter's knocked up -- I've seen it a hundred times.
They know all you downloaded was a guaranteed piece of shit. That's all it is. Hey, if you want me to take a Word virus and code sign it, I will. I've got spare time. But for right now, for your sake, for your daughter's sake, ya might wanna think about downloading quality code from me.
It depends on what else he does that might make your job easier.
I have a similar situation -- 4 programmers and 1 manager who can program somewhat, and so helps us on many projects. Overall, though, quite incompetant when it comes to tech. Takes 3 times as long to do something as any of us.
However, he does something for us that is incredibly helpful -- he acts as the go-between and scapegoat for our department to the rest of the company. Bigwigs need talking to? Manager does it. End user getting narky? Manager deals with it. Programmers pissed about way things are going, but talking to the CEO directly would cause murder? Manager provides helpful ear and/or translation services.
Sometimes having the extra step in there is very frustrating, especially when something is *clearly screwed* and marketers need to be thumped, it sure seems like it'd be easier if I did it myself. But that buffer is mighty handy when shit starts flying and people are ducking -- I don't have to listen to the screaming of a customer directly nor the whining of sales or the ignorant questions of the CEO. That, to me, is invaluable.
So...before you get too frustrated at his incompetance, see if he's doing anything for you that you're damned glad you don't have to.
Do I have to pee in it?
Fair enough. I can appreciate the pursuit of that ideal of perfection. I have no problem with improvement...indeed, I'd be very happy to have that one time of VoIP not working go down to zero. Or to get a reliability good enough that getting rid of my landline wouldn't bother me at all.
My admonition was more directed to those who are whining that VoIP "isn't good enough yet" to be used by them...they require it to be as reliable as a landline before they can adopt it and make it useful. Bullshit. I say it's useful now -- not for everything, not for every case, but most. A few flaws in the system do not render it without merit.
IE: Running Debian testing might not be a crash-free experience, but there's still value to be gained from it, and many people have working, useful systems running it. Being a perfectionist prick and insisting that everything spins like a top all the time before you can use it despite the numerous problems it has to overcome is just being pretentious.
In the end, use what you think is best. I think anyone who thinks that VoIP at 99.4% is unusable is missing out on some great technology that'll save you a ton of cash and give you some great features. That's essentially the idea.
Personally I think 94.8% is pretty awful. I don't think 99.4% is very good either.
It's just fine.
I see a lot of people whining about how your phone would be down 4 hours out of the month if you have 99.4 or whatever. My answer is: So?
How many times do you need to make that phone call right-the-hell-now? Out of the phone calls in the past year, I'd say maybe...20. Max. The rest were more relaxed calls to friends/family that weren't time-dependent. Out of that 20, I can think of one time when I wanted to use the VoIP to call my wife's home country (Australia) and couldn't because it was down, so instead I paid Sprint a few dollars to do it through my landline. Whoop-dee-doo.
Sure, 911 is a concern. But keep a cell phone or cheap landline around and you have that. My landline costs me $17/month. Potatoes. My VoIP is worth it because it has brought my costs down from over $75/month to less than $20. Couple that with neat features of running my own Asterisk server and I have a really fun, useful service.
I guess if you're using your VoIP as your home office phone or as a telemarketing device, 99.4% would hurt. For the average home user, the small inconvenience vs. price shouldn't bother anyone that much. I pay about $35/month for my entire phone service and my wife can call home as much as she wants. What a deal.
I have successfully managed to argue my websurfing at work based on one simple principle: Education.
I am a computer programmer -- applications developer. I am paid to be knowledgeable in my field, to maintain that knowledge, and to use it to the benefit of the company. Part of my maintenance of that knowledge is to keep up on all the nuances and happenings of the IT industry, which I do through IT magazines, IT websites, and the occasional IT book or reference.
Thus, I have convinced my employer that my time spent surfing is part of my job description. You want a knowledgeable programmer? Then let me keep up my knowledge.
You will hear two sounds (if you haven't heard them already):
- A flushing sound as the future for Apple goes straight down the toilet. Oh, I understand all the arguments that everyone has had about how the normal end user won't give a damn about the processor and how it'll be the same performance, etc, etc. But in the long run, this is a negative, I feel. Sure, I don't own a G5 because I'm not made of money. But I sure as hell would if I could.
- A *whiz* and a *splat!* as the shit hits the fan in the user community. Everyone buys Intel because it comes bundled with cheap PCs and they can't afford differently. Fair enough, I can't blame you. But Apple holds a certain market share, a share of people who don't give a damn what the hardware (or software) costs, they want their Mac. You know how obsessive Appleheads are. Do you blame them? You'd lick the keyboard on a Mac if you owned one, too, admit it.
Good luck, Apple. If this is the move you're making, I hope you've done your research. I like your shit...I can't afford it, but I like it. I wish you well.Why? You just *know* there's something good about them. Macintoshes are built like computers SHOULD be built. There's a lot of love and care in them, engineering prowness, etc. It all comes from hardware lock-in, of course, which is why you pay out the ass for them. But on the upside, you're getting a fine piece of ass.
Intel makes decent hardware but they're nothing like a PPC or an AMD chip. Everyone knows it.
With this comes a disdain for the PC market and Wintel in general. Yes, I realize that a switch to Intel for the CPU won't mean that the rest of the hardware is Intel or that any other piece will be from the PC world. But a lot of how you operate in a market depends on how you are perceived. Users might not understand the complexities of hardware, but they will realize that Apple has switched which company provides a major component of their Macs and that company is part of the Wintel world. That, in and of itself, is enough to produce backlash.
Conversely, would you do business with a company that leverages every advantage that they legally can to provide the best services at the lowest prices?
:) But that's my thoughts on it -- we, as developers, have to start playing a better game because I doubt offshoring is going anywhere.
Like it or not, offshoring is legal. Business often lets morality and ethics and so forth take a back seat to the bottom line and that's where many go off their tree about offshoring, not about its legitimate use in the business model. Employees are out to save their ass, and employers are out to save theirs. When you get to something like offshoring, you're talking about certain employees unable to save their ass because the employer is saving theirs.
What we really need is a better way to play the game, as employees, so that offshoring is either a) no longer appealing or b) no longer a threat to us. Note the differences in those two statements. Either developers need to make it so that offshoring is unappealing -- by developing better, smarter, faster, etc. -- or by making the threat of offshoring inapplicable to our state as employees, probably by developing skills, abilities, and knowledge that make no sense to offshore.
Now, HOW to do this is not something I've come up with.
Well, usually a lot because he performs a task that I can't do myself. And I like it when shit doesn't shoot from my walls. :)
...fuel-hungry mynocks?
The real problem with the broadcast flag is that no distributor is ever going to err on the side of openness. What modern company would? Look at the EULAs and contracts and so forth that companies pad themselves with in order to avoid frivolous lawsuits and issues with IP and ownership!
Do you really think that there are going to be lots of broadcasts conducted where the operators go, "Ya know, we probably don't need to prevent someone from recording this. Let it go."
No, we're screwed. Every program has at least something that the producer or the distributor will consider "theirs" and will therefore decide to limit it. Even something as simple as a logo overlay (a-la SciFi Channel, USA, et al) might be considered a "branding" and therefore something that would prevent redistribution. Probably the ONLY thing that would even come close to being open would be things like the State of the Union broadcast -- but even that would be considered proprietary, because it was a *particular* broadcast by a *particular* station with their *particular* boneheaded reporters struggling to come up with something intelligent to comment about.
I dunno. I just think the broadcast flag is a false sense of fairness when it'll turn out to be nothing but solid DRM that everyone will get screwed with.
Depends on where you are in Iowa, I live here, too, and I might want to use your line! :)
Find a lake that thinks it's a gin and tonic and pretend you are a lemon.
...except it won't be giving you the latest news headlines and sports scores.
The hell it won't.
*tappity, tappity, linux scripty*
There. Scrolling stats on the ever-changing size of Britney's bosom.
actually there is a setting in the router to adjust the Quality of Service settings for the voip. When a voip call comes in, it automatically adjusts my bandwidth allocation to provide for the phone service, when I hang up, my download speeds/torrents/whatever go full rate again.
That's really cool, I didn't even know they had anything like that yet. I think that's a big issue; I know that until I applied QoS to the firewall, if I was doing something big on the 'net I would hose out my VoIP and that would be, as they say, that. So I got on that bandwagon pretty quick and it works nice now. Good setup you have. What's Vonage charge for international? That was the big push for us to VoIP, as we were spending $$$ bucks calling there every week.
- Internet: Mediacom 3Mbps down, 256K up cable modem. Quite reliable, down probably for 10 minutes a month, maybe less. About $45 for that.
- VoIP Provider: BinFone Service through Binhost Technologies, a company I'm a part of. We're small but we know our shit, we're cheap, and we have geeks running the entire show. We are more into reselling VoIP but also do individual IAX and SIP accounts. Rates are $0.03/min for USA, $0.05/min for Australia (wife is Australian, we call there a lot). More info here.
- Phone: Grandstream Handytone 486 SIP phone adapter. A very cheap ($65, I believe) phone adapter, but has a web interface, good features, and does what I need it to. It is plugged into the network via CAT5 and into the phone patch block via standard POTS wire.
- IAX Server: I run my own IAX server (Asterisk) in-house. It talks to Binhost's server through the IAX protocol (Asterisk proprietary) which is very efficient. I have an X100P FXO PCI card in it that allows connection to the PSTN (my landline) and a NIC to talk to the network.
- Firewall: All of this sits behind the firewall, a simple Pentium 233 running Slackware 9.1 and using iptables and QoS scripts to regulate traffic. The QoS designates packets by the MAC address of the Grandstream as highest priority so my VoIP packets always get through quickly.
All right -- big deal, you say. But wait, there's more!The phones in the entire house are connected to the phone patch block through the patch panel and a 66 block. The VoIP adapter is also connected to the phone patch block as well as the network. The Asterisk box is connected to the network and to the PSTN landline. So. When I pick up a phone (any of the three in the house), I simply dial a number. The signals from all the phones run through the Grandstream VoIP adapter to the Asterisk box. The Asterisk box figures out if it's a local call or long distance. If local, it uses the FXO card to send out the call on the PSTN. If long distance, it communicates via IAX to the Binhost server and places the call over the Internet. No intervention is required on my part as to where it goes, it just does it right.
If the Internet connection is down or otherwise inaccessible, it automatically falls back to the landline so calls can still be placed.
The end result is that I get much cheaper phone calls than I would if I used my long distance on the landline (7 cents US/12 cents Australia vs 3/5), yet I don't have to inconvenience myself with having to worry about which phone I have to use for a phone call.
Incoming calls are received by the Asterisk box. Assuming I haven't turned on call forwarding or do-not-disturb, it rings through the VoIP adapter to the phones in the house. If nobody answers, Asterisk picks up the line and gives a message and allows the user to pick either my or my wife's voice mail box and leave a message. Very handy.
Costs:
Monthly VoIP service: About $20 for the calls, $5 for the line.
Internet: $45/month
Asterisk: Free
Asterisk server: Free donation
FXO Card: $15 on eBay
VoIP Adapter: $65
Wiring: out of some old box
Firewall: Free donation as well
Landline costs: $17.95/month
So total? $80 in startup, $87.95 monthly for all my phone calls and Internet service. I call that a *deal*.
I have a shop PC for looking up things whilst working on my computers, cars, or other projects. It is simple -- a 300mHz PC running Windows 95, without a case, nailed with 16p nails to the bare studs. The monitor sits on a shelf above the workbench, the mouse is on a shelf as well, the keyboard sits on the bench. Ok, stop your cringing. But you know what? What more do I need? Really.
Think about it: What I need in the shop is something that can let me do Google searches, boot up fast, take abuse, and play MP3s so I have music. That's it. At 300mHz, Win95 flies and boots in less than 25 seconds. Since I'm only doing web searches, there's no real load on it. MP3s play fine in Winamp. Without a case, dust flows in and out without causing harm; having it 4 feet above the bench and mounted vertically helps tons. If it gets excessively dusty, a quick squirt from the air hose takes care of that. A 300mHz PC is cheap and simple to repair -- if something breaks, whoopity. No data is kept on it, everything saves or is pulled from the network, so if the hard drive chunks because I started it up in -20F cold, oh well.
Easy, simple, useful, like my wrenches, hammers, and other tools. No fucking around needed, and that's how my shop should work.
First of all: Do not run cat-5 between buildings.
Bah. I ran ethernet through the crawlspace of my house, out the side of the foundation, through PVC conduit 3 feet underground to the garage, then back up and through the sidewall into the garage, then through about 20 studs to the ports on the walls. Haven't ever had a problem yet.
and if you have a loud computer near the bed...
Strangely enough, I had this for years and I now find that if I can't hear a computer or other similar white noise I *can't* go to sleep. I've become that used to it.
People own laptops, shut down desktops when not in use, etc. Plus theres linux' ever-growing embedded segment.
/.ing are running IIS from, what I've seen. Ever see Slate or MSN go down when /. links to them?
Fair enough on laptops and embedded devices -- I guess I wasn't considering those and I'm not sure the study was, either. As I mentioned on another comment, given Linux users' penchant for uptimes, I'd hazard a guess that the majority of people DO leave their workstations up 24/7 regardless if they're doing anything. I and almost everyone I know certainly does. That being said, as the userbase expands beyond the typical geek, this will become less the case.
Pure "M$ sucks rolF!" bullshit from the clueless.
A poorly-worded statement on my part, and I apologize. I should have stated it as the wait for the various services and agents and crap to load on Windows vs. Linux. Mind you, as you pointed out, waiting for DHCP and so forth can be nasty, too. WinXP has eliminated a lot of that, I guess, but I haven't used it much, preferring 2k so far, which takes quite awhile to get going.
Most sites that stand up to a
Geez, people. Take a jaunt. Surely we're used to random pokes at MS around here by now. Hello? *feedback* Is this thing on?
Maybe some people chose to turn of their box when they are not at home or when they are sleeping. Maybe some people want to save a little bit of electricty if they can.
/.ed your right on that one pal. Yeah. Sure.
Fair enough, but I would hazard a guess that the percentage of people that leave them running is higher than those that don't. I guess I'm saying that I'm generalizing, but speaking to the majority, I believe. As energy efficient as most modern systems are when they are sleeping or in low-power mode, I can't justify turning them off anymore. (11 machines running 24/7 in my house, currently)
Now, some people have pointed out laptops. Ok, you got me on that one. Rebooting a laptop quickly is important, especially if you don't have Suspend-To-Disk or whatever it's currently called.
This is the problem with the linux zelots. Someone points out somthing that is annoying and should be fixed and people rush to say how this is a non issue, then they go on to say how this is actually better than the way windows does it.
I was just saying that it's probably annoying to a smaller percentage of Linux users vs. a similar audience of Windows users, given their penchant for uptimes.
Yeah because IIS is the only webserver that can be
Chill. I was being humourous, or at least attempting. That being said, the benchmarks already prove that Apache handles better than IIS under high load. But maybe our poster didn't have the option. No biggie either way -- I was just being an ass.
No, you're not booting much. My computer rarely crashes, but I still turn the computer off when I'm not using it -- it's noisy, and produces a lot of heat.
:)
...when there are definite steps that distros can take to improve the situation.
I guess on this point I was thinking that if you're a Linux user, you're more likely to be running your hardware 24/7 vs. shutting down when you're not using it. Of course, as Linux becomes more prominent, this changes, so I guess my statement isn't terribly valid after that. I relent, I guess. That being said, I'd be incredibly curious to see wear-and-tear studies done on computers that get shutdown every night vs. those that run continuously. I leave mine running because I think it's better for them. But who knows.
The guy isn't knocking the Linux kernel for long boot times, he's trying to improve boot times on typical installs.
Ok, yeah, that sounds reasonable. Now...if only the distros use it.
That's a strange perspective... if I choose not to fiddle, then do I choose to have an insecure system? Or a slow one?
Works for Windows, I guess.
Fine, but what I'm saying is that if you don't care to set up specific hardware configurations and specific system settings, you choose to have a bunch of scripts that try to "figure it out" for you, and that can take time. If you choose for it to happen automagically, you might not always get the best performance.
Does this even make sense to compare music files to a truck full of paper?
No, but if you'd kindly convert it to units of LOC, I'd appreciate.