>And what happens when the other 95% of your users discover internet video? Or do you think that these services are going to remain obscure forever?
Whose to say they arent using these services? They just dont live on the computer 24/7 like the 5% who use all the bandwidth. They watch youtube and probably do all sorts of downloading, they just arent running 5 torrents at a time, seeding 2 others, running a server, etc. If they ever become like this then they can join us in the Pro club with a real SLA.
Upgrading to what exactly? Double the speed. Fine now all my torrents are twice as fast.
The idea is that if 5% use 90% of the bandwidth its time to start adderssing that in a fair and honest manner. If that means I have to move up to a Pro account and I get all the bandwidth advertised to me, then thats fine. Unfortunately, too many people have a free lunch mentality when it comes to bandwidth and media downloads.
Seems to be working fine for the T1/T3 system. Want bandwidth? Pay for it. No more of this fake unlimited marketing bs.
>Sure you can be a parasite at Panera without buying anything,
You might find the definition of parasite to be interesting when it comes to coffee shops.
I read a study (or perhaps a well written rant) about how places that offer unlimited wifi tend to do much, much worse than places that dont. Why? Because people will turn a table into their office and fill up all the seats, thus providing a big disincentive for people to actually go in there and drink coffee and buy a baked good.
I live in a major city and I can picture all the free-wifi places in my neighborhood and I absolutely hate them all. Theyre all packed with kids/students who are myspace addicts and your 9-5'er doing work. There are no free tables. And the best part is that these people are there ALL DAY and I'm sure barely spend 10 dollars, if that. In fact the big free wifi place here recently went out of business. I dont know how they stayed in business. You had 15 people there taking all the seats for hours and buying a 3 dollar product!
So it turns out that if you want to stay in business and sell coffee you need to not turn your shop into a laptop hangout. Even starbucks knows this. They can easily foot any bandwidth cost but they would know their shop would turn into a 'business center' in no time and that will hurt them badly in the end. Instead they want you to buy product and get the hell out. If you need wifi its there but you'll need to pay. Interesting that they are going with the starbucks card approach.
Interesting stuff. Panera suffers from this but your typical panera is much larger than your typical starbucks and all the noise doesnt make it conducive to getting things done like a coffeehouse does.
Not just random but a dutch free culture group! Stop the presses! Also college students are skipping class for the insert_some_injustice_here! And as we all know college students love to going to class and free dutch culture groups love buying Trend Micro!
>Load OWA in Firefox (Windows or Linux), and it looks all choppy with bad frames and images and such.
Err no. OWA for non-ie browsers is simplified. OWA for IE is pretty much IE-only. You can change the agent string but then its buggy as all hell. Granted, MS could go out of its way to make the non-ie version more robust, but as a corporation they would be helping their competitors.
So theyre not claiming other browsers dont work, but that if you dont use their product youre going to get the simplified page. I dont condone it but its not a bug or bad coding, its obviously a management decision to only provide basic funationality to non-ie clients.
Isnt it the nature of big business to see something that came from an uncentralized grassroots model and say "We can do better."
Err, no, you cant. Some thigns work only because of their decentralized nature. This approach has brought up stuff like manufactured boy bands, corporate rock, cookie-cutter novels, etc. It certainly wont bring us the next Tim Berners-Lee or the next Jimi Hendrix. It will bring us the next MSN/Prodigy-like walled garden that will collapse when people see how much more exciting the real internet is.
Not for MS. I wonder how much Vista cost them? I wouldnt be surprised if it costs 4 or 5 space hotels. Then again the return on Vista is probably a little better.
What, so according gplv3 'tivoization' in prohibited. The security model in the XO is 'tivoization.' Except now an arbitrary authority has arbitrary rules on releasing 'developer keys' that allow people to hack the bios. So if tivo said 'hey our new tivo is gplv3 compliant because if you ask nicely we -might- give you a key' then we're cool with that?
A 'way' to get the BIOS is far from an open BIOS. Hell, what if they lose all their documentation to generate this or in 20 years when OLPC is a failed project (saying this hypothetically_) and I have 10 of these things in my basement who do I call for the key? Yea, exactly.
Wow, looks like even Stallman is waking up to the idea that the gplv3 is wrong and is openly contradicting himself.
I disagree. SP2 didnt just make XP magically better, its roughly the same product with a bunch of security fixes. The difference is that after 18 to 24 months of a microsoft product release the users get used to it and the 3rd party developers have been working long enough on it. Its purely psychological, thus the "OMG XP SUCKS ITS 2000 WITH FISHER PRICE COLORS" and "OMG VISTA SUCKS ITS SO SLOW" comments are just the loud id talking slowly being soothed by a rational ego, "Well, lets see, is it a windows or driver issue?" This process takes time in people and thus in communities, like slashdot.
Humans are still pretty emotional and crazed animals, geeks doubly so, triply so when discussing software.
>You want the average human to stop doing what evolution has spent 300 million years programming them to do?
Really? Evolution has been progrmaming people to kill their mates through disease? Whoa, I've missed a lot in sex ed!
I love how only the most base animal desires get propped out by evolution. I love how people just never say "Hey evolution has instilled logic and compassion into humans." Or "Evolution has instilled moral action" Or "Evolution has instilled guilt and conscious thought." Instead its always fuck and kill, and if you think thats all evolution can do then youre sorely mistaken.
The real question is the ease of being able to control one's sexual desires vs the the control compassion and empathy have on us. Considering your comment could be (and has) been used to justify everything from rape to office sexual harassment, its interesting how society hasnt given up on some basic moral structures. Evolution again! Tricky aint it?
The point with the car is that lots of cars don't start. Or they have lots of mechanical issues.
Yes, I've used more mobile browsers than most geeks and am aware of the limitations. Most of them 'just work.' Apple's browser has real limitations too, but a fanboy on your level wouldnt be able to admit to them.
>or you have a very unusual sense of what constitutes decent user interface.
This is the other canard I'm tired of. Interfaces are not that difficult anymore. We're not teaching people DOS. Just because Apple takes the "show them less" approach doesnt make them better. I always feel like my hands are tied when using OSX until I can open a terminal window. Joe Sixpack isnt opening a terminal window. Perhaps you mean that I have an unusual idea of not worshiping OSX and Apple and revealing the real limitations they have. Not to mention I have the "unusual idea" that little UI changes arent revoltionary, they're barely evolutionary. Or I have the "unsual idea" that showing me less isnt better for me. Or that the brushed aluminum look isnt the paragon of design. Or that I prefer a,gasp, real keyboard and not a virtualized one.
By "just work" you are saying "works the apple way which is the superior way and if you cant recognize that then youre unusual." Heh, sorry buddy, but youre assumptions and apple ass-kissing are far from convincing. In the meantime I click Start > Internet Explorer and magically my treo brings up a browser. It shouldnt be more simple than that and if you cant figure that out then you have no business owning a pda phone.
Well GPS has pretty severe limitations. Its in no way 'god's eye' It doesnt work indoors because of signal issues. You need to get x amount of satellites before you get a fix. If the phone is off nothing is going to work.
Worse, Assisted GPS just kinda figures out the last few cell towers you talked to and gets a fix with a huge radius.
Generally a phone that is on and is left out in the open can be traced to some degree, but if your phone company told you 'its in a 3 block radius of this spot' then its not going to do you any good, unless you can think "Oh wait, I went to the starbucks in that neighborhood, maybe I left it there! They cant tell you "Its in your couch, dummy."
Lastly, they may not allow their CS reps to access this data. I believe in the US by law it can only be gotten with a warrant or after a E911 session has started. They do have other methods of calculating whereabouts, but these also are probably need-to-know so level 1 support cant fool around with them.
Err, those token features are minor side-effects of an exclusive deal. This was done because Apple and AT&T would make more money this way. This is also why the sidekick never took off in huge numbers. It was the first cheap smartphone with a browser. Too much exclusivity hurts everyone involved except the bottom line. Shame really, I know a few Sprint contract lock-ins who would love to have just bought the thing if they just let you.
Whoa, Jorn is still alive? Hell, in Chicago in 1985 or so I was a kid learning to use a modem and dialing up into "Roger's Park BBS." How incredible that all seemed.
>more people will begin to realize that F/OSS is not only usable, but valuable.
And most people have absolutely no idea what youre takling about. If anything they'll either just ask for XP to be installed or just buy OSX, which is not anything near 100% f/oss. If you have problems with the decisions of MS management, then you're just going to love being controlled by the whims of Jobs.
Slashdot assumes that anything bad for MS must be good for f/oss or Linux specifically. I dont see how that has been or ever will be the case.
>If every balky P2P connection results in a $5-$10 in call-center time, then Comcast will think differently about it's filtering policy.
Bullshit, youre just going to up the call volume and harass a low level script reader who isnt exactly sure what traffic shaping is. In the meantine the facts are that something like 5% of the users use 90% of the bandwidth. I doubt a few extra calls will make any difference.
That said, we're probably going to be looking at tiered pricing for cable customers eventually. Seems fair to me. If you want to max out your connection 24/7 then you should pay for that and cable companies should stop advertising 'unlimited' internet. christ, this problem solves itself. Short-sighted management thinks shaping and filtering will stop this, but its obviously not working.
Slashdot Mirror
>And what happens when the other 95% of your users discover internet video? Or do you think that these services are going to remain obscure forever?
Whose to say they arent using these services? They just dont live on the computer 24/7 like the 5% who use all the bandwidth. They watch youtube and probably do all sorts of downloading, they just arent running 5 torrents at a time, seeding 2 others, running a server, etc. If they ever become like this then they can join us in the Pro club with a real SLA.
>Upgrading their network isn't an option?
Upgrading to what exactly? Double the speed. Fine now all my torrents are twice as fast.
The idea is that if 5% use 90% of the bandwidth its time to start adderssing that in a fair and honest manner. If that means I have to move up to a Pro account and I get all the bandwidth advertised to me, then thats fine. Unfortunately, too many people have a free lunch mentality when it comes to bandwidth and media downloads.
Seems to be working fine for the T1/T3 system. Want bandwidth? Pay for it. No more of this fake unlimited marketing bs.
>Every New Major version of OS X comes with a bunch glitches which they slowly but shirley fix in time.
Surely, you are correct and stop calling me Shirley.
>Sure you can be a parasite at Panera without buying anything,
You might find the definition of parasite to be interesting when it comes to coffee shops.
I read a study (or perhaps a well written rant) about how places that offer unlimited wifi tend to do much, much worse than places that dont. Why? Because people will turn a table into their office and fill up all the seats, thus providing a big disincentive for people to actually go in there and drink coffee and buy a baked good.
I live in a major city and I can picture all the free-wifi places in my neighborhood and I absolutely hate them all. Theyre all packed with kids/students who are myspace addicts and your 9-5'er doing work. There are no free tables. And the best part is that these people are there ALL DAY and I'm sure barely spend 10 dollars, if that. In fact the big free wifi place here recently went out of business. I dont know how they stayed in business. You had 15 people there taking all the seats for hours and buying a 3 dollar product!
So it turns out that if you want to stay in business and sell coffee you need to not turn your shop into a laptop hangout. Even starbucks knows this. They can easily foot any bandwidth cost but they would know their shop would turn into a 'business center' in no time and that will hurt them badly in the end. Instead they want you to buy product and get the hell out. If you need wifi its there but you'll need to pay. Interesting that they are going with the starbucks card approach.
Interesting stuff. Panera suffers from this but your typical panera is much larger than your typical starbucks and all the noise doesnt make it conducive to getting things done like a coffeehouse does.
Not just random but a dutch free culture group! Stop the presses! Also college students are skipping class for the insert_some_injustice_here! And as we all know college students love to going to class and free dutch culture groups love buying Trend Micro!
>Load OWA in Firefox (Windows or Linux), and it looks all choppy with bad frames and images and such.
Err no. OWA for non-ie browsers is simplified. OWA for IE is pretty much IE-only. You can change the agent string but then its buggy as all hell. Granted, MS could go out of its way to make the non-ie version more robust, but as a corporation they would be helping their competitors.
So theyre not claiming other browsers dont work, but that if you dont use their product youre going to get the simplified page. I dont condone it but its not a bug or bad coding, its obviously a management decision to only provide basic funationality to non-ie clients.
Whoa, a lot of people dont get this at all. Here's a hint.
Isnt it the nature of big business to see something that came from an uncentralized grassroots model and say "We can do better."
Err, no, you cant. Some thigns work only because of their decentralized nature. This approach has brought up stuff like manufactured boy bands, corporate rock, cookie-cutter novels, etc. It certainly wont bring us the next Tim Berners-Lee or the next Jimi Hendrix. It will bring us the next MSN/Prodigy-like walled garden that will collapse when people see how much more exciting the real internet is.
Not for MS. I wonder how much Vista cost them? I wouldnt be surprised if it costs 4 or 5 space hotels. Then again the return on Vista is probably a little better.
>Imagine a fully loaded train at 300 mph crashing in to Grand Central Station in Manhattan.
That's the plot to Speed 4: Hobo's revenge.
>but this is a theft deterrant issue for deployment countries
So? Tivoization by tivo is a profit issue. Locked BIOS in, say, in a voting machine is a security issue.
What happens when MIT stops paying for the fancy activation server?
again, either OLPC is wrong or GPLv3 is wrong. Sounds like the later is wrong.
What, so according gplv3 'tivoization' in prohibited. The security model in the XO is 'tivoization.' Except now an arbitrary authority has arbitrary rules on releasing 'developer keys' that allow people to hack the bios. So if tivo said 'hey our new tivo is gplv3 compliant because if you ask nicely we -might- give you a key' then we're cool with that?
A 'way' to get the BIOS is far from an open BIOS. Hell, what if they lose all their documentation to generate this or in 20 years when OLPC is a failed project (saying this hypothetically_) and I have 10 of these things in my basement who do I call for the key? Yea, exactly.
Wow, looks like even Stallman is waking up to the idea that the gplv3 is wrong and is openly contradicting himself.
I disagree. SP2 didnt just make XP magically better, its roughly the same product with a bunch of security fixes. The difference is that after 18 to 24 months of a microsoft product release the users get used to it and the 3rd party developers have been working long enough on it. Its purely psychological, thus the "OMG XP SUCKS ITS 2000 WITH FISHER PRICE COLORS" and "OMG VISTA SUCKS ITS SO SLOW" comments are just the loud id talking slowly being soothed by a rational ego, "Well, lets see, is it a windows or driver issue?" This process takes time in people and thus in communities, like slashdot.
Humans are still pretty emotional and crazed animals, geeks doubly so, triply so when discussing software.
>You want the average human to stop doing what evolution has spent 300 million years programming them to do?
Really? Evolution has been progrmaming people to kill their mates through disease? Whoa, I've missed a lot in sex ed!
I love how only the most base animal desires get propped out by evolution. I love how people just never say "Hey evolution has instilled logic and compassion into humans." Or "Evolution has instilled moral action" Or "Evolution has instilled guilt and conscious thought." Instead its always fuck and kill, and if you think thats all evolution can do then youre sorely mistaken.
The real question is the ease of being able to control one's sexual desires vs the the control compassion and empathy have on us. Considering your comment could be (and has) been used to justify everything from rape to office sexual harassment, its interesting how society hasnt given up on some basic moral structures. Evolution again! Tricky aint it?
>effort to isolate muslim nations, to me. Singapore, Pakistan, Qatar, UAE.
Yeah, take that Islamic Republic of Singapore!
Christ, even our tin-foiled conspiracy nuts cant be bothered to do the basic research, guess thats why they're conspiracy nuts.
The point with the car is that lots of cars don't start. Or they have lots of mechanical issues.
,gasp, real keyboard and not a virtualized one.
Yes, I've used more mobile browsers than most geeks and am aware of the limitations. Most of them 'just work.' Apple's browser has real limitations too, but a fanboy on your level wouldnt be able to admit to them.
>or you have a very unusual sense of what constitutes decent user interface.
This is the other canard I'm tired of. Interfaces are not that difficult anymore. We're not teaching people DOS. Just because Apple takes the "show them less" approach doesnt make them better. I always feel like my hands are tied when using OSX until I can open a terminal window. Joe Sixpack isnt opening a terminal window. Perhaps you mean that I have an unusual idea of not worshiping OSX and Apple and revealing the real limitations they have. Not to mention I have the "unusual idea" that little UI changes arent revoltionary, they're barely evolutionary. Or I have the "unsual idea" that showing me less isnt better for me. Or that the brushed aluminum look isnt the paragon of design. Or that I prefer a
By "just work" you are saying "works the apple way which is the superior way and if you cant recognize that then youre unusual." Heh, sorry buddy, but youre assumptions and apple ass-kissing are far from convincing. In the meantime I click Start > Internet Explorer and magically my treo brings up a browser. It shouldnt be more simple than that and if you cant figure that out then you have no business owning a pda phone.
>How about publicizing actual discoveries instead of random speculation?
You must be new here.
Well GPS has pretty severe limitations. Its in no way 'god's eye' It doesnt work indoors because of signal issues. You need to get x amount of satellites before you get a fix. If the phone is off nothing is going to work.
Worse, Assisted GPS just kinda figures out the last few cell towers you talked to and gets a fix with a huge radius.
Generally a phone that is on and is left out in the open can be traced to some degree, but if your phone company told you 'its in a 3 block radius of this spot' then its not going to do you any good, unless you can think "Oh wait, I went to the starbucks in that neighborhood, maybe I left it there!
They cant tell you "Its in your couch, dummy."
Lastly, they may not allow their CS reps to access this data. I believe in the US by law it can only be gotten with a warrant or after a E911 session has started. They do have other methods of calculating whereabouts, but these also are probably need-to-know so level 1 support cant fool around with them.
The iPhone is revolutionary because it just works.
My dads old POS cadillac just "worked." It started every time. No one would call that car revolutionary.
My treo "just works." I can make phone calls and surf the web.
I'm not sure why people keep using this tired old canard, but lots of things "just work."
Err, those token features are minor side-effects of an exclusive deal. This was done because Apple and AT&T would make more money this way. This is also why the sidekick never took off in huge numbers. It was the first cheap smartphone with a browser. Too much exclusivity hurts everyone involved except the bottom line. Shame really, I know a few Sprint contract lock-ins who would love to have just bought the thing if they just let you.
Wow, youre crazy. Any more gems for us? Roswell? Bigfoot?
Dude this is slashdot, facts that go against the 'MS IS DYING THIS IS THE YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP' will not get modded up and will be ignored.
Whoa, Jorn is still alive? Hell, in Chicago in 1985 or so I was a kid learning to use a modem and dialing up into "Roger's Park BBS." How incredible that all seemed.
>more people will begin to realize that F/OSS is not only usable, but valuable.
And most people have absolutely no idea what youre takling about. If anything they'll either just ask for XP to be installed or just buy OSX, which is not anything near 100% f/oss. If you have problems with the decisions of MS management, then you're just going to love being controlled by the whims of Jobs.
Slashdot assumes that anything bad for MS must be good for f/oss or Linux specifically. I dont see how that has been or ever will be the case.
>If every balky P2P connection results in a $5-$10 in call-center time, then Comcast will think differently about it's filtering policy.
Bullshit, youre just going to up the call volume and harass a low level script reader who isnt exactly sure what traffic shaping is. In the meantine the facts are that something like 5% of the users use 90% of the bandwidth. I doubt a few extra calls will make any difference.
That said, we're probably going to be looking at tiered pricing for cable customers eventually. Seems fair to me. If you want to max out your connection 24/7 then you should pay for that and cable companies should stop advertising 'unlimited' internet. christ, this problem solves itself. Short-sighted management thinks shaping and filtering will stop this, but its obviously not working.