Does this folding@home thing actually work now? I downloaded clients to several machines and was disappointed at how broken it was. My cycles have continued to go for distributed.net and seti@home ever sense.
Granted, it was awhile ago when I tried the folding@home stuff, but even the uninstall was horribly broken and it looked like something that really shouldn't be on any computer that couldn't be trashed.
I hate to see people taken in by such obvious propaganda as that airdrop.
Seems like we can't win. If we send food, it is an obvious propaganda effort. If we don't send food, then we don't have any compassion for the starving masses.
Instead of sitting back whining about people making an effort, what would you suggest?
Why aren't you screaming about how the Taliban isn't providing food to its citizens? Why haven't you gotten on their case for choosing to defend OBL instead of feeding their people? Where is their accountability?
Please, either knock off the guilt trip or put yourself out of misery. Productive society has no need for it.
Interesting/excellent example. In 1991, I did a feasibility study for bringing Internet to a rural community in our parts. Everything looked good - Sun was going to donate servers, we had an expensive but tolerable loop cost for a fractional T1 (I worked for a carrier that helped discount the cost substantially), and the community was fully behind the project.
Then I got the Internet DS0/56 Kbps dedicated quote from our regional - MIDNET. They didn't have any model except for a dues basis, which their member universities paid annually. They calculated dues on the number of students you had and figured our town's population would be a great unit to use in the calculation.
The total cost for a 56 Kbps connection? $85,000/year, payable in advance. (Quick everybody: how much does your cable modem connection cost each month? Or perhaps a better comparison would be a single ISDN B channel).
Even then, I could have ordered a DS3 local loop for less (and if I paid in advance, I'd be certain to get a discount). What were they thinking?
I looked at MIDNET's organization and cost structure, trying to comprehend what I must have been missing. They had:
- free offices paid for by the universities
- employee benefits paid by the universities
- data centers paid for by the universities
- operations employees and network engineers that were on university payroll
- backbone links that were billed to the universities, that they put their own commercial traffic over (against NSFNET AUP)
and numerous other abuses. Oh, and they had 35+ PhDs working for them that required outrageous dues (cost divided by number of institutions served = dues, we later found out).
What did I do? Created the first ISP in the region and stole away most of their non-educational business. Drove the bastards into unemployment. I was proud to be one of numerous CIX members who drove that filthy, corrupt, good-old-boy NSFNET "Oh We'll Give the Internet to Baby Bells and ANS" scam out of business.
You should have read your Economics textbook more closely.
Debillitatus, I don't think they offer high school econ until at least 11th grade, so it's not fair to criticize him yet.
At the same time, he needs a stern warning that unless he opens his eyes and loses the angst-filled hate-focused upper middle class attitude, he's going to be another unemployed loser eventually bunking with a big furry guy named Bruno.
Then again, the Bruno's of the world/do/ need company...
The fact that the private sector invariably gives rise to the worst possible situation for the consumer
Sharkticon simply makes no sense.
Absent a private sector, there are no consumers.
Remember the SAT test?
Q: Subject is to Government, as Consumer is to:
(a) Happy meal
(b) Automobile
(c) Business
(d) Jogging
Hmm... it's a hard one, I'll say! BTW, per gubmint bending over to corporate masters, you must be filing a different tax form than I am or must live in a different country. Please do tell, I'd love to move there.
How did one of (glowing flattery removed about a gubmint boondoggle organization that blows money and still can't get a mission right)our institutions need to privitize one of their greatest resources in order to keep going?
Funny. The poster has the answer to his question in the next paragraph:
No other country in the world comes close to the US in terms of economic might
Bingo. Ever consider the reason for us being the greatest economic might could just be that we permit corporations to exist with only a moderate amount of governmental tyranny and confiscation?
Yet the poster gets lost in the next sentence - so close, yet...
and yet it is near-third-world nations like China that are now expanding their space programs
And you'd expect a totalitarian government to do otherwise?
Hell, they're even talking about putting men on the moon, something we did once and then got bored with.
Uh... you wouldn't have happened to notice that we've got:
1. a war going on that has been estimated to cost at least a billion bucks a month
2. a recession that is killing major sectors of business, leaving less companies for the government to tax/loot.
3. citizens overwhelmingly opposing new taxes, preventing the non-corporate tax base from being looted
4. a ton of baby boomers drooling about being non-producers and getting that retirement/social security.
And you want another moon project? And we keep wondering why liberals have such disasterous personal lives?
As a nation we have the attention span of a four year-old child, and about as much forward-thinking.
I'd say your dreams are about as pragmatic as a four-year-old. What's money anyways?
We'd much rather forget about the future (and everything else) and concentrate on our televisions and big honking SUVs
Ah, an ELF/ALF liberal. We call you a "target" in my parts of the country.
So what is the real, deep-rooted motivation of this poster and his kin?
It seems the only people here with any kind of enthusiasm are the ones that want to control your lives
SimCash writes:
So, I concur, fire the scum -- refuse to fill their coffers.
Isn't this fun, too? It's a lot tougher than simply ranting, but in some odd manner, it's awfully empowering. It makes you aware that you/do/ have a solution. And it's quite an ego boost too, knowing you aren't some pathetic herd animal gobbling up whatever they're dishing out.
It sort of reminds me of a parallel to the ALF (animal liberation front - a collection of angst-filled upper class kiddies that attack farmers and other hard-working people because their daddy didn't by them a BMW) types that are attacking farms in our parts while wearing cool leather shoes. Their activism has no positive impact for their cause. Their consumerism choice continues to reinforce what they oppose.
If you don't like something, your option is to vote with your own property (money). That's the rule of the game in the US, and increasingly so in the rest of the world. (Don't like it? Name a better alternative that doesn't centralize this vote in the hands of an elite few) Want a bigger vote? Get more property/friends to vote.
Understand though that your non-vote will probably have little effect - passive resistance requires major numbers to make a dent. That's where you need to step up and "positive-vote" (aka spend your money) on things that you do support.
Hate Microsoft? Don't just mooch... buy Redhat (or whatever non-MS OS). Fork it out. Don't be stingy. Buy copies for your friends. Or accept Microsoft's domination.
I wouldn't call it a step in the right direction since each revision to ICANN's Board involves less individual representation and more corporate representatives.
If an individual is a domain owner, how does this apply? (answer: it doesn't) Actually, since non-corporations can own domains, the corporate bashing here really doesn't belong.
I'm really puzzled at the fear/corporate bashing element exemplified here. If my corporation owns X domains, why/shouldn't/ I have representation? Why should some idealist ELF college student / non-domain holder have an equal say - or worse, as this poster proposes? My domain, my money, my vote. Don't like that? Go argue with your poly sci prof and stay out of the real world.
Certainly a "one domain = one vote" scheme would heavily favor corporations which regularly buy blocks of domains to protect their trademark turf.
And this is new? ICANN's already influenced by the big boys, which is nothing new to the Internet. Actually, defense contractor influence is part of its tradition. Just look at NSFNET's original plans for how the net would go commercial (a proposed shift of public assets as big as the frequency giveaways to broadcasters).
That said, and recognizing I'm just a wee little domain owner with a few dozen under my administration, there's really no better way to handle it (even though folks like AOL/TW will certainly get to push things around). Any other non-representational effort is a sort of tyranny.
the public could still compete with the corporations.
Gosh, I think I'm going to take on GE today... not. To think people make fun of conservatives for fearing the government. LOOK! There's a Fortune 50 in your closet! Eek!
Seriously now, what "public" do you propose? The gubmint version? The ACLU? The rioting masses at the latest trade conference?
However, even a "one domain owner = one vote" scheme would be unfair to the public.
The public, c'est moi, right? I'm tired of hearing special interest ploys to protect "the public" (read: wrestle control into their paws) in ICANN and other entities. Give the control to he/she that pays the bills.
I swear I am getter less sympathetic to corporations each day.
Speaking of getting really annoying. Sorry to rant, but corporate bashing is just so nonunique and tiresome.
I found myself doing the same with the cable company, the local newspaper monopoly, McDonalds (for lying about its fries - yea, I know, lame issue, but it pissed me off). Etc. I found I was whining about tons of stuff.
So I fired them all. It really has to come down to that. Don't like the station IDs on the screen? Fire them. Yank the cable. That's your choice.
Warning: Be prepared to be totally amused when you do this.
Cable: I returned everything except the cable modem (I do have my limits). Apparently nobody ever does this. The guy at the counter thought I must have been shut off for not paying when I returned all the other junk. His announcement "but your account is fine" confirmed the suspicion. Oh, apparently they don't have a process for this either. After returning all the converter junk, I discovered I now have better cable for free than I got when I paid for it (HBO is unblocked now). Guess that cable modem needs a few more things live.
Newspaper: Hell, they couldn't make three out of five successful deliveries. Fired them. Now I get every sunday (for the past two months) free and on time.
Give it a shot. Don't like the service? Fire them. Don't rant. Don't threaten. Pull the trigger. You might actually discover you like it.
Looks like Lockheed Martin won more than the joint strike fighter. They're the latest defense contractor to have - yes - their very own top level domain!
You have to admit. Owning a TLD is cooler than being a HoJo's on the Ohio Turnpike complete with pay toilets. Not only do you sell things that cost you nothing to make (more profitable than selling slightly used and still glowing land in Nevada), but it gives you that Intellectual Property high that makes you the rage at all the beltway cocktail parties.
Imagine all the hookups and special deals Jeff Ganek will be doing for his corporate friends - couldn't get mycompany.com because some little squat company beat you to the Internet? No problem... we'll yank their.us registration and give it to ya!
So congratulations to our ever-so-savvy beltway lobbyists. Let's give the boys at Neustar a motto that reflects their vision:
oh geez... pray that NeuStar (such a proud dot-com name) isn't the spinoff of Bellcore and the ever-so-evil LERG database.
lemme see... neustar.com, typical yucky canned art in ever-so-lucent style, nice ethnic balance in people-focused pictures, blurbs about the ceo-vision-speaking guy blathering on cnn, speaking at some suit summit, featured on businessnow, and a company profile that'd win you a buzzword bingo challenge in 6 seconds flat (first paragraph keywords: rampant, globalization, ensuring, interoperability, networks, ubiquity, internet, packet... and so on. Print this site off and try it on your friends! Makes a great party game!)
Aha... came from Lockheed Martin.
Airplanes, TLD's, what's the difference? It's all marketing. Looks like these guys took a few pages from The Corporation's website.
Exactly the case here. Verisign's rules specified that one could not use a community domain unless they were doing business in the community and were authorized.
We met both conditions and yet the squatter (that wasn't even within 300 miles of here and wanted extortion rates) who was never authorized by the community was both registered and extended grandfather rights in violation of Verisign policy by Verisign. We became quickly aware that Verisign simply wanted to destroy.us since it wasn't able to make money off of it.
What about complaints to Verisign? Try filing one... they take 6 weeks (no exaggeration) to respond, always with a form letter either with useless advice that doesn't apply, or statements of the obvious like "in order to register in this subdomain, please contact the subdomain administrator" - yea, call the squatters to complain about them squatting.
I'm confident there are thousands of others like us that were willing to handle subdomain registration at no expense (same as running primary & secondary dns for folks), but because Verisign hozed it up, we'll have another landrush feeding a government-granted monopoly.
It's little different than granting the railroads land to sell in Wyoming, Nebraska, Utah, etc., except after they were inhabited...
*scoove*
p.s. If you're not happy with the situation, be sure to add Verisign to your "banned vendor" list and make the Internet a better place.
It is rather amusing, not trusting developers. By definition (apologies for being redundant), but developers do not work in a static environment.
Having been in both ends of the pool, it never fails to amaze me at all the rules the corporate "golds" make up, then act surprised when development objectives get missed.
I'd suggest a copy of Yourden's "Death March Projects" be left on the culprit gold's desk for their inspection. It won't work, but it'll be worth a few good stories.
in spite of high karma score, this really isn't an informative solution.
802.11 at legal limits/may/ work up to 10 miles (terrain and a lot of other factors pending - we've shot it over 24 miles in an amateur test so we can exceed fcc regs on part 15, but it's not usable for non-amateur purposes at that amplification/gain and certainly wasn't terribly reliable either - crc and duplicate frame errors up the wazoo). using that approach, you'll need site acquisition in 8 locations. your isp probably doesn't have a suitable tower for the run, so you have to count the uplink, but you may be able to shoot the last run to the school without a site cost. remember, 10-mile shots need clearance and that means a good amount of height - you're not going to stick these anywhere less than a good 50' over the treeline (trees eat 2.4 GHz).
8 802.11 line-of-sight pairs using bridges, high gain dishes, etc. runs at least $5K a pair bare bones (including your cabling, nema boxes, etc.), not including the tower, site acquisition, price of installation, etc. factoring those items in, you might double or triple the equipment number. let's say no less than $10K per site x 8 = $80K.
while we're just slightly over the $75K budget, we've constructed a sloppy network that has 8 fail points and terminates into a city - very likely a noisy zone for 2.4 GHz (most are nearly unusable for this sort of link with any level of quality). and you're probably getting at best a 1 Mbps link.
a better solution is two 35-mile engineered links using licensed 6 GHz gear (and if need be, use a 5.8 GHz link from the city tower to the ISP's facility). this will mean two 6 GHz links and 1 5.8 GHz link: $32K + $32K + $10K = $74K total (factoring less sites and less labor included). we make the budget and have 10 Mbps of thruput, though we need to have someone competent (aka "rf professional") do the link since we're dealing with licensed frequencies, permitting, towers, etc. try hunting thru your wireless isp players, since some of us like working with schools and occasionally work at a serious discount to make things happen for them.
There are many communities that are providing 802.11(x) service for their entire city, but I don't think it's ever been taken past a city before.
Wow... and that deserves a '5' score? Sorry... 802.11 point-to-point has been done for several years in these parts, and we're usually behind the times regionally. Would I rely upon it? No... not unless I was in BFE running a link between two farms with nothing 2.4 GHz nearby. Or did you mean 2.4 has never been out of the city? Huh? I run it on my 50-acre farm and walk around with my ipaq all over the place. The poster sounds like he/she's never been off of Manhatten in his/her life!
unless they, due to consolidation or collusion keep their prices for their firmware products artificially high
Reading the RIAA memo, the word collusion came to mind immediately. For instance:
You are all competitors, but you have common interests in enforcement. Help me help you.
This sounds as if Al Capone was writing a nice suggestive note to the mob in another market. Where's the DoJ? Instead of breaking this recording industry racket, we've got shills like Jesse Helms out making it a felony to refuse to be exploited.
that's why I'm always passing the idiots in SUV's spun out in their mad rush to go skiing in the winter
you know, that reminds me of a winter driving experience I had driving my BMW 740 a few years ago (yea, had to do the yuppie thing and get it out of the system).
i was having a terrible time getting around on our winter roads in town. forget any real gravel road challenges! in spite of snow tires, sand bags in the trunk, whatever, it simply sucked.
i figured i must be missing something obvious (you know, since BMW's home is just a day drive to the alps). i whipped out my drivers manual and wala... noticed they had a section on winter driving.
i flipped to the page and guess what it said:
For driving in winter conditions, BMW recommends that you remove your ski boots before attempting to operate the vehicle.
no kidding. guess those alps must be nice plowed fluffy snow roads for german yuppies. *sigh* i traded in the 740 for a f250 superduty crew cab and have been a superduty buyer ever since.
ok. i've got proof they're going to go dot-bomb. after posting my suspicions, i decided to conduct a highly scientific marketing study... i called my boomer dad.
me: dad, you hear about that satellite radio service with 100 channels going live?
dad: no, really?
me: (scribbling down note about how boomers don't know what we slashdotters do) hmm. ok well, imagine a radio service with 100 channels you can listen to in your explorer.
dad: sounds neat (jot down use of boomer word 'neat' to refer to something of value)
me: yea, let me read some of the channels they've got. (rattle off some rock, talk, classical, etc.)
dad: sounds great. i'd probably listen to that. how do i tune it in?
me: oh, well, that's a minor issue. you have to buy a new radio for your truck.
dad: oh. they can't get it on mine?
me: no, different frequencies. but the radio is only $300.
dad: you've got to be kidding. that much? for a radio?
me: well yea, but it gets 100 channels. and it's only $10 a month...
dad: $10 A MONTH?!?!?! forget it
me: (scribbling down how they've got the right programming for the wrong market. gen-x'ers i've chatted with would gladly throw the money/if/ it had programming of value)
so attention marketing dudes: you are waaaay off. your programming is for a market that wouldn't free up a spare dime for your service.
now that's off my chest, you guys owe me ten years of service with tag's trance on 24x7. get going!
who the hell marketed this thing? like hell i'm going to listen to anything but drone ambient before my two cups of deuce-and-a-half (2 shots espresso, half cup dark coffee) kick in.
well, we're not quite a major market (we're in the top 50 population centers tho), but i can't see this playing here either.
looking at the programming, it's just like cable: 300 channels and nothing on!
for example, i like trance. so, checked the 'dance' section and we get four blah 'programmed by someone who's never heard of dance formats' channels - heck, these things are all dusty and decaying, yet it's supposed to be brand new. (dance programmed by some baby boomer, probably). no rave? no trance? blech...
so i jump over to classical. i'll bet they'll have a late romantic to early 20th century channel, right? not just that schmaltzy "best 10 songs of the past 500 years" (you know, beethovan's 5th, schuman's 'unfinished', and the other couple of horribly overplayed tunes). nope. what about a contemporary "stuff from the past 100 years" channel? nope. something opera? nope. just a couple of cutsie, shallow pop classical channels - again, programmed by a baby boomer who learned everything he does about classical by watching Mr. Holland's Opus.
*sigh* they'll last...9 months. nice to see we're wasting valuable frequency for trash.
ah... if you can/get/ them into bankruptcy court. Many choose to ignore bankruptcy altogether, since lots of nasty "you are not in control anymore" things happen there.
theoretically, you can force them into bankruptcy. my experience has been otherwise. several years of debtors exams, missing records, stalling, lies, etc. - all effective in stalling the courts until there is nothing worth litigating against.
look at the penny stock "pink sheet" companies that are reverse-merger products. you'll see this behavior all over the place. in fact, i've yet to find a reverse-merger product that worked...
So some companies can also get used to people producing at maxed out levels of production.
I just came out of a Death March culture/company. 2.8 years of ever increasing fantasy expectations (what they wanted us to do) combined with ever decreasing fulfillment of contractual obligations (what they did with respect to their contracts to their employees).
Vacation became regarded early on as "theft from the company" - and was denied. Taking a sick day was regarded with significant suspicion.
Performance incentives (rewards for completing impossible death march projects) were tossed out - and amazingly, the teams would nail them. At the last second, the company's controller would interfer with one of the last steps (like authorizing a leased line to be ordered) and wala... the team would miss the deadline by hours and lose the bonus. Typical 'Lucy taking the football away' behavior.
Then salaries were reduced by 25% "to make the business plan look better to investors" (while senior management still drove leased bullet-proof mercedes, lotuses, ferarris and such) with the 25% to be paid at year end as a balloon payment (don't ever try this, friends!). Except guess what never showed up at year end? Then that was used to string you along to stay at the company - sort of a reverse option: "Quit and you'll never see the $50K+ we owe you!"
Then payroll started slipping. Most of the sane left then. Those who stayed worked for several months without paychecks - buying the promises of great riches. They got booted finally - firing the entire technology office in another part of the country without leaving anyone to control the assets. Their plan? Threaten the just-fired employees to work for free and inventory and package up the goods for shipping, or be accused of stealing anything that goes missing. "If you don't come in next week and ship it to us and something is missing, you know who the investigators will believe kept it."
Many of the former employees held onto items for collateral. Can you blame them? "Pay up the cash you owe and we'll release the equipment back to you." In the various colo centers the company used, the colo venders are using the same approach with respect to getting the past-due bills paid: pay us and we release your equipment.
USA: Since you've refused to stop supporting Mr. Laden, we're going to attack you. We're thinking about an all-out invasion with ground troops.
Taliban: Oh, you'll regret that. You'll lose just like the Russians and the British. No ground invasion works here.
USA: Damn! OK, then we'll fly over and carpet bomb you. Ha!
Taliban: Oh, didn't we tell you, we live in very deep caves that are not affected by bombs.
USA: Damn again! What if we fight a long, protracted war with special forces, spys and other sneaky things?
Taliban: Your college students will revolt and your people will not like you. You will be very, very unpopular and the United Nations will make fun of you. Hollywood will make movies describing you as bloodthirsty Nazis. Even your children will spit on you.
USA: Damn it again! You've got me stumped. Hmm... well I guess there's only one thing left... (click... poof... boom!) Hello? Get me India. Tell them I've just made a nice big parking lot for them to their north.
As a "libertarian", I'd argue that your vendor in the example does have the right to charge anything: before, during or after an event.
Note that I said that the behavior was immoral - not illegal, impractical, unprofitable, etc. A fundamental moral behavior for a trader is to not aggressively exploit your customer. Sure, a good profit is nice, but exploitation and establishing abnormal pricing solely upon your customer's actual or perceived crisis is predatory and unethical.
Plus, there is a function of mass hystaria that is fed by unethical traders and I'd expect them to have accountability for further inciting fear and panic.
Slashdot Mirror
Does this folding@home thing actually work now? I downloaded clients to several machines and was disappointed at how broken it was. My cycles have continued to go for distributed.net and seti@home ever sense.
Granted, it was awhile ago when I tried the folding@home stuff, but even the uninstall was horribly broken and it looked like something that really shouldn't be on any computer that couldn't be trashed.
*scoove*
I hate to see people taken in by such obvious propaganda as that airdrop.
Seems like we can't win. If we send food, it is an obvious propaganda effort. If we don't send food, then we don't have any compassion for the starving masses.
Instead of sitting back whining about people making an effort, what would you suggest?
Why aren't you screaming about how the Taliban isn't providing food to its citizens? Why haven't you gotten on their case for choosing to defend OBL instead of feeding their people? Where is their accountability?
Please, either knock off the guilt trip or put yourself out of misery. Productive society has no need for it.
*scoove*
Debillitatus writes:
/do/ need company...
Was ARPANet somehow better?
Interesting/excellent example. In 1991, I did a feasibility study for bringing Internet to a rural community in our parts. Everything looked good - Sun was going to donate servers, we had an expensive but tolerable loop cost for a fractional T1 (I worked for a carrier that helped discount the cost substantially), and the community was fully behind the project.
Then I got the Internet DS0/56 Kbps dedicated quote from our regional - MIDNET. They didn't have any model except for a dues basis, which their member universities paid annually. They calculated dues on the number of students you had and figured our town's population would be a great unit to use in the calculation.
The total cost for a 56 Kbps connection? $85,000/year, payable in advance. (Quick everybody: how much does your cable modem connection cost each month? Or perhaps a better comparison would be a single ISDN B channel).
Even then, I could have ordered a DS3 local loop for less (and if I paid in advance, I'd be certain to get a discount). What were they thinking?
I looked at MIDNET's organization and cost structure, trying to comprehend what I must have been missing. They had:
- free offices paid for by the universities
- employee benefits paid by the universities
- data centers paid for by the universities
- operations employees and network engineers that were on university payroll
- backbone links that were billed to the universities, that they put their own commercial traffic over (against NSFNET AUP)
and numerous other abuses. Oh, and they had 35+ PhDs working for them that required outrageous dues (cost divided by number of institutions served = dues, we later found out).
What did I do? Created the first ISP in the region and stole away most of their non-educational business. Drove the bastards into unemployment. I was proud to be one of numerous CIX members who drove that filthy, corrupt, good-old-boy NSFNET "Oh We'll Give the Internet to Baby Bells and ANS" scam out of business.
You should have read your Economics textbook more closely.
Debillitatus, I don't think they offer high school econ until at least 11th grade, so it's not fair to criticize him yet.
At the same time, he needs a stern warning that unless he opens his eyes and loses the angst-filled hate-focused upper middle class attitude, he's going to be another unemployed loser eventually bunking with a big furry guy named Bruno.
Then again, the Bruno's of the world
*scoove*
The fact that the private sector invariably gives rise to the worst possible situation for the consumer
Sharkticon simply makes no sense.
Absent a private sector, there are no consumers.
Remember the SAT test?
Q: Subject is to Government, as Consumer is to:
(a) Happy meal
(b) Automobile
(c) Business
(d) Jogging
Hmm... it's a hard one, I'll say! BTW, per gubmint bending over to corporate masters, you must be filing a different tax form than I am or must live in a different country. Please do tell, I'd love to move there.
*scoove*
How did one of (glowing flattery removed about a gubmint boondoggle organization that blows money and still can't get a mission right)our institutions need to privitize one of their greatest resources in order to keep going?
Funny. The poster has the answer to his question in the next paragraph:
No other country in the world comes close to the US in terms of economic might
Bingo. Ever consider the reason for us being the greatest economic might could just be that we permit corporations to exist with only a moderate amount of governmental tyranny and confiscation?
Yet the poster gets lost in the next sentence - so close, yet...
and yet it is near-third-world nations like China that are now expanding their space programs
And you'd expect a totalitarian government to do otherwise?
Hell, they're even talking about putting men on the moon, something we did once and then got bored with.
Uh... you wouldn't have happened to notice that we've got:
1. a war going on that has been estimated to cost at least a billion bucks a month
2. a recession that is killing major sectors of business, leaving less companies for the government to tax/loot.
3. citizens overwhelmingly opposing new taxes, preventing the non-corporate tax base from being looted
4. a ton of baby boomers drooling about being non-producers and getting that retirement/social security.
And you want another moon project? And we keep wondering why liberals have such disasterous personal lives?
As a nation we have the attention span of a four year-old child, and about as much forward-thinking.
I'd say your dreams are about as pragmatic as a four-year-old. What's money anyways?
We'd much rather forget about the future (and everything else) and concentrate on our televisions and big honking SUVs
Ah, an ELF/ALF liberal. We call you a "target" in my parts of the country.
So what is the real, deep-rooted motivation of this poster and his kin?
It seems the only people here with any kind of enthusiasm are the ones that want to control your lives
He does seem so enthusiastic, doesn't he?
*scoove*
SimCash writes:
/do/ have a solution. And it's quite an ego boost too, knowing you aren't some pathetic herd animal gobbling up whatever they're dishing out.
So, I concur, fire the scum -- refuse to fill their coffers.
Isn't this fun, too? It's a lot tougher than simply ranting, but in some odd manner, it's awfully empowering. It makes you aware that you
It sort of reminds me of a parallel to the ALF (animal liberation front - a collection of angst-filled upper class kiddies that attack farmers and other hard-working people because their daddy didn't by them a BMW) types that are attacking farms in our parts while wearing cool leather shoes. Their activism has no positive impact for their cause. Their consumerism choice continues to reinforce what they oppose.
If you don't like something, your option is to vote with your own property (money). That's the rule of the game in the US, and increasingly so in the rest of the world. (Don't like it? Name a better alternative that doesn't centralize this vote in the hands of an elite few) Want a bigger vote? Get more property/friends to vote.
Understand though that your non-vote will probably have little effect - passive resistance requires major numbers to make a dent. That's where you need to step up and "positive-vote" (aka spend your money) on things that you do support.
Hate Microsoft? Don't just mooch... buy Redhat (or whatever non-MS OS). Fork it out. Don't be stingy. Buy copies for your friends. Or accept Microsoft's domination.
Same applies for any other special cause...
*scoove*
I wouldn't call it a step in the right direction since each revision to ICANN's Board involves less individual representation and more corporate representatives.
/shouldn't/ I have representation? Why should some idealist ELF college student / non-domain holder have an equal say - or worse, as this poster proposes? My domain, my money, my vote. Don't like that? Go argue with your poly sci prof and stay out of the real world.
If an individual is a domain owner, how does this apply? (answer: it doesn't) Actually, since non-corporations can own domains, the corporate bashing here really doesn't belong.
I'm really puzzled at the fear/corporate bashing element exemplified here. If my corporation owns X domains, why
Certainly a "one domain = one vote" scheme would heavily favor corporations which regularly buy blocks of domains to protect their trademark turf.
And this is new? ICANN's already influenced by the big boys, which is nothing new to the Internet. Actually, defense contractor influence is part of its tradition. Just look at NSFNET's original plans for how the net would go commercial (a proposed shift of public assets as big as the frequency giveaways to broadcasters).
That said, and recognizing I'm just a wee little domain owner with a few dozen under my administration, there's really no better way to handle it (even though folks like AOL/TW will certainly get to push things around). Any other non-representational effort is a sort of tyranny.
the public could still compete with the corporations.
Gosh, I think I'm going to take on GE today... not. To think people make fun of conservatives for fearing the government. LOOK! There's a Fortune 50 in your closet! Eek!
Seriously now, what "public" do you propose? The gubmint version? The ACLU? The rioting masses at the latest trade conference?
However, even a "one domain owner = one vote" scheme would be unfair to the public.
The public, c'est moi, right? I'm tired of hearing special interest ploys to protect "the public" (read: wrestle control into their paws) in ICANN and other entities. Give the control to he/she that pays the bills.
Want a domain vote? Buy one.
*scoove*
I swear I am getter less sympathetic to corporations each day.
Speaking of getting really annoying. Sorry to rant, but corporate bashing is just so nonunique and tiresome.
I found myself doing the same with the cable company, the local newspaper monopoly, McDonalds (for lying about its fries - yea, I know, lame issue, but it pissed me off). Etc. I found I was whining about tons of stuff.
So I fired them all. It really has to come down to that. Don't like the station IDs on the screen? Fire them. Yank the cable. That's your choice.
Warning: Be prepared to be totally amused when you do this.
Cable: I returned everything except the cable modem (I do have my limits). Apparently nobody ever does this. The guy at the counter thought I must have been shut off for not paying when I returned all the other junk. His announcement "but your account is fine" confirmed the suspicion. Oh, apparently they don't have a process for this either. After returning all the converter junk, I discovered I now have better cable for free than I got when I paid for it (HBO is unblocked now). Guess that cable modem needs a few more things live.
Newspaper: Hell, they couldn't make three out of five successful deliveries. Fired them. Now I get every sunday (for the past two months) free and on time.
Give it a shot. Don't like the service? Fire them. Don't rant. Don't threaten. Pull the trigger. You might actually discover you like it.
Now if I could just fire the postal service...
*scoove*
true today... from fond memories of years past.
.us registrar hasn't? then again, hojos isn't quite the household name it once was...
apparently hojos learned something that our new
*scoove*
Looks like Lockheed Martin won more than the joint strike fighter. They're the latest defense contractor to have - yes - their very own top level domain!
.us registration and give it to ya!
You have to admit. Owning a TLD is cooler than being a HoJo's on the Ohio Turnpike complete with pay toilets. Not only do you sell things that cost you nothing to make (more profitable than selling slightly used and still glowing land in Nevada), but it gives you that Intellectual Property high that makes you the rage at all the beltway cocktail parties.
Imagine all the hookups and special deals Jeff Ganek will be doing for his corporate friends - couldn't get mycompany.com because some little squat company beat you to the Internet? No problem... we'll yank their
So congratulations to our ever-so-savvy beltway lobbyists. Let's give the boys at Neustar a motto that reflects their vision:
Neustar: The Internet's Pay Toilet.
oh geez... pray that NeuStar (such a proud dot-com name) isn't the spinoff of Bellcore and the ever-so-evil LERG database.
lemme see... neustar.com, typical yucky canned art in ever-so-lucent style, nice ethnic balance in people-focused pictures, blurbs about the ceo-vision-speaking guy blathering on cnn, speaking at some suit summit, featured on businessnow, and a company profile that'd win you a buzzword bingo challenge in 6 seconds flat (first paragraph keywords: rampant, globalization, ensuring, interoperability, networks, ubiquity, internet, packet... and so on. Print this site off and try it on your friends! Makes a great party game!)
Aha... came from Lockheed Martin.
Airplanes, TLD's, what's the difference? It's all marketing. Looks like these guys took a few pages from The Corporation's website.
*scoove*
Exactly the case here. Verisign's rules specified that one could not use a community domain unless they were doing business in the community and were authorized.
.us since it wasn't able to make money off of it.
We met both conditions and yet the squatter (that wasn't even within 300 miles of here and wanted extortion rates) who was never authorized by the community was both registered and extended grandfather rights in violation of Verisign policy by Verisign. We became quickly aware that Verisign simply wanted to destroy
What about complaints to Verisign? Try filing one... they take 6 weeks (no exaggeration) to respond, always with a form letter either with useless advice that doesn't apply, or statements of the obvious like "in order to register in this subdomain, please contact the subdomain administrator" - yea, call the squatters to complain about them squatting.
I'm confident there are thousands of others like us that were willing to handle subdomain registration at no expense (same as running primary & secondary dns for folks), but because Verisign hozed it up, we'll have another landrush feeding a government-granted monopoly.
It's little different than granting the railroads land to sell in Wyoming, Nebraska, Utah, etc., except after they were inhabited...
*scoove*
p.s. If you're not happy with the situation, be sure to add Verisign to your "banned vendor" list and make the Internet a better place.
It is rather amusing, not trusting developers. By definition (apologies for being redundant), but developers do not work in a static environment.
Having been in both ends of the pool, it never fails to amaze me at all the rules the corporate "golds" make up, then act surprised when development objectives get missed.
I'd suggest a copy of Yourden's "Death March Projects" be left on the culprit gold's desk for their inspection. It won't work, but it'll be worth a few good stories.
*scoove*
in spite of high karma score, this really isn't an informative solution.
/may/ work up to 10 miles (terrain and a lot of other factors pending - we've shot it over 24 miles in an amateur test so we can exceed fcc regs on part 15, but it's not usable for non-amateur purposes at that amplification/gain and certainly wasn't terribly reliable either - crc and duplicate frame errors up the wazoo). using that approach, you'll need site acquisition in 8 locations. your isp probably doesn't have a suitable tower for the run, so you have to count the uplink, but you may be able to shoot the last run to the school without a site cost. remember, 10-mile shots need clearance and that means a good amount of height - you're not going to stick these anywhere less than a good 50' over the treeline (trees eat 2.4 GHz).
802.11 at legal limits
8 802.11 line-of-sight pairs using bridges, high gain dishes, etc. runs at least $5K a pair bare bones (including your cabling, nema boxes, etc.), not including the tower, site acquisition, price of installation, etc. factoring those items in, you might double or triple the equipment number. let's say no less than $10K per site x 8 = $80K.
while we're just slightly over the $75K budget, we've constructed a sloppy network that has 8 fail points and terminates into a city - very likely a noisy zone for 2.4 GHz (most are nearly unusable for this sort of link with any level of quality). and you're probably getting at best a 1 Mbps link.
a better solution is two 35-mile engineered links using licensed 6 GHz gear (and if need be, use a 5.8 GHz link from the city tower to the ISP's facility). this will mean two 6 GHz links and 1 5.8 GHz link: $32K + $32K + $10K = $74K total (factoring less sites and less labor included). we make the budget and have 10 Mbps of thruput, though we need to have someone competent (aka "rf professional") do the link since we're dealing with licensed frequencies, permitting, towers, etc. try hunting thru your wireless isp players, since some of us like working with schools and occasionally work at a serious discount to make things happen for them.
There are many communities that are providing 802.11(x) service for their entire city, but I don't think it's ever been taken past a city before.
Wow... and that deserves a '5' score? Sorry... 802.11 point-to-point has been done for several years in these parts, and we're usually behind the times regionally. Would I rely upon it? No... not unless I was in BFE running a link between two farms with nothing 2.4 GHz nearby. Or did you mean 2.4 has never been out of the city? Huh? I run it on my 50-acre farm and walk around with my ipaq all over the place. The poster sounds like he/she's never been off of Manhatten in his/her life!
*scoove*
unless they, due to consolidation or collusion keep their prices for their firmware products artificially high
Reading the RIAA memo, the word collusion came to mind immediately. For instance:
You are all competitors, but you have common interests in enforcement. Help me help you.
This sounds as if Al Capone was writing a nice suggestive note to the mob in another market. Where's the DoJ? Instead of breaking this recording industry racket, we've got shills like Jesse Helms out making it a felony to refuse to be exploited.
*scoove*
that's why I'm always passing the idiots in SUV's spun out in their mad rush to go skiing in the winter
you know, that reminds me of a winter driving experience I had driving my BMW 740 a few years ago (yea, had to do the yuppie thing and get it out of the system).
i was having a terrible time getting around on our winter roads in town. forget any real gravel road challenges! in spite of snow tires, sand bags in the trunk, whatever, it simply sucked.
i figured i must be missing something obvious (you know, since BMW's home is just a day drive to the alps). i whipped out my drivers manual and wala... noticed they had a section on winter driving.
i flipped to the page and guess what it said:
For driving in winter conditions, BMW recommends that you remove your ski boots before attempting to operate the vehicle.
no kidding. guess those alps must be nice plowed fluffy snow roads for german yuppies. *sigh* i traded in the 740 for a f250 superduty crew cab and have been a superduty buyer ever since.
*scoove*
ok. i've got proof they're going to go dot-bomb. after posting my suspicions, i decided to conduct a highly scientific marketing study... i called my boomer dad.
/if/ it had programming of value)
me: dad, you hear about that satellite radio service with 100 channels going live?
dad: no, really?
me: (scribbling down note about how boomers don't know what we slashdotters do) hmm. ok well, imagine a radio service with 100 channels you can listen to in your explorer.
dad: sounds neat (jot down use of boomer word 'neat' to refer to something of value)
me: yea, let me read some of the channels they've got. (rattle off some rock, talk, classical, etc.)
dad: sounds great. i'd probably listen to that. how do i tune it in?
me: oh, well, that's a minor issue. you have to buy a new radio for your truck.
dad: oh. they can't get it on mine?
me: no, different frequencies. but the radio is only $300.
dad: you've got to be kidding. that much? for a radio?
me: well yea, but it gets 100 channels. and it's only $10 a month...
dad: $10 A MONTH?!?!?! forget it
me: (scribbling down how they've got the right programming for the wrong market. gen-x'ers i've chatted with would gladly throw the money
so attention marketing dudes: you are waaaay off. your programming is for a market that wouldn't free up a spare dime for your service.
now that's off my chest, you guys owe me ten years of service with tag's trance on 24x7. get going!
*scoove*
did you know cows like trance? true!
oh... and no ambient channels whatsoever!
who the hell marketed this thing? like hell i'm going to listen to anything but drone ambient before my two cups of deuce-and-a-half (2 shots espresso, half cup dark coffee) kick in.
like the trance lyric tune goes...
"f*cking baby boomers!"
*scoove*
well, we're not quite a major market (we're in the top 50 population centers tho), but i can't see this playing here either.
looking at the programming, it's just like cable: 300 channels and nothing on!
for example, i like trance. so, checked the 'dance' section and we get four blah 'programmed by someone who's never heard of dance formats' channels - heck, these things are all dusty and decaying, yet it's supposed to be brand new. (dance programmed by some baby boomer, probably). no rave? no trance? blech...
so i jump over to classical. i'll bet they'll have a late romantic to early 20th century channel, right? not just that schmaltzy "best 10 songs of the past 500 years" (you know, beethovan's 5th, schuman's 'unfinished', and the other couple of horribly overplayed tunes). nope. what about a contemporary "stuff from the past 100 years" channel? nope. something opera? nope. just a couple of cutsie, shallow pop classical channels - again, programmed by a baby boomer who learned everything he does about classical by watching Mr. Holland's Opus.
*sigh* they'll last...9 months. nice to see we're wasting valuable frequency for trash.
*scoove*
ah... if you can /get/ them into bankruptcy court. Many choose to ignore bankruptcy altogether, since lots of nasty "you are not in control anymore" things happen there.
theoretically, you can force them into bankruptcy. my experience has been otherwise. several years of debtors exams, missing records, stalling, lies, etc. - all effective in stalling the courts until there is nothing worth litigating against.
look at the penny stock "pink sheet" companies that are reverse-merger products. you'll see this behavior all over the place. in fact, i've yet to find a reverse-merger product that worked...
So some companies can also get used to people producing at maxed out levels of production.
I just came out of a Death March culture/company. 2.8 years of ever increasing fantasy expectations (what they wanted us to do) combined with ever decreasing fulfillment of contractual obligations (what they did with respect to their contracts to their employees).
Vacation became regarded early on as "theft from the company" - and was denied. Taking a sick day was regarded with significant suspicion.
Performance incentives (rewards for completing impossible death march projects) were tossed out - and amazingly, the teams would nail them. At the last second, the company's controller would interfer with one of the last steps (like authorizing a leased line to be ordered) and wala... the team would miss the deadline by hours and lose the bonus. Typical 'Lucy taking the football away' behavior.
Then salaries were reduced by 25% "to make the business plan look better to investors" (while senior management still drove leased bullet-proof mercedes, lotuses, ferarris and such) with the 25% to be paid at year end as a balloon payment (don't ever try this, friends!). Except guess what never showed up at year end? Then that was used to string you along to stay at the company - sort of a reverse option: "Quit and you'll never see the $50K+ we owe you!"
Then payroll started slipping. Most of the sane left then. Those who stayed worked for several months without paychecks - buying the promises of great riches. They got booted finally - firing the entire technology office in another part of the country without leaving anyone to control the assets. Their plan? Threaten the just-fired employees to work for free and inventory and package up the goods for shipping, or be accused of stealing anything that goes missing. "If you don't come in next week and ship it to us and something is missing, you know who the investigators will believe kept it."
Many of the former employees held onto items for collateral. Can you blame them? "Pay up the cash you owe and we'll release the equipment back to you." In the various colo centers the company used, the colo venders are using the same approach with respect to getting the past-due bills paid: pay us and we release your equipment.
So what's wrong with this?
*scoove*
Just caught a Drugereport blurb reporting Oracle's Larry Ellison volunteering to contribute to the creation of a national ID database system.
At the same time, Newt Gingrich blabbed on Fox News that a "secure national ID system" would make air travelers feel much more secure.
Looks like we're seeing yet another power grab.
*scoove*
Discussion overheard between two nations:
USA: Since you've refused to stop supporting Mr. Laden, we're going to attack you. We're thinking about an all-out invasion with ground troops.
Taliban: Oh, you'll regret that. You'll lose just like the Russians and the British. No ground invasion works here.
USA: Damn! OK, then we'll fly over and carpet bomb you. Ha!
Taliban: Oh, didn't we tell you, we live in very deep caves that are not affected by bombs.
USA: Damn again! What if we fight a long, protracted war with special forces, spys and other sneaky things?
Taliban: Your college students will revolt and your people will not like you. You will be very, very unpopular and the United Nations will make fun of you. Hollywood will make movies describing you as bloodthirsty Nazis. Even your children will spit on you.
USA: Damn it again! You've got me stumped. Hmm... well I guess there's only one thing left... (click... poof... boom!) Hello? Get me India. Tell them I've just made a nice big parking lot for them to their north.
2. Centralized key escrow creates a single point of failure for our national cybersecurity infrastructure.
Ack! Thanks for reminding us of this aspect of the problem. Remembering the not-so-former administration and its bumbles, we had:
- missing hard drives at a national nuclear lab (what ever did happen with that investigation? reno'ized?)
- lost laptops with national secrets (culprits handslapped)
- directors putting national secrets on their home peecee
- presidents letting movie stars kids play with the nuclear "launch codes" football
- major spy crisis after major spy crisis
etc.
And you want to give these guys the keys??? Might as well let Osama keep them.
*scoove*
As a "libertarian", I'd argue that your vendor in the example does have the right to charge anything: before, during or after an event.
Note that I said that the behavior was immoral - not illegal, impractical, unprofitable, etc. A fundamental moral behavior for a trader is to not aggressively exploit your customer. Sure, a good profit is nice, but exploitation and establishing abnormal pricing solely upon your customer's actual or perceived crisis is predatory and unethical.
Plus, there is a function of mass hystaria that is fed by unethical traders and I'd expect them to have accountability for further inciting fear and panic.
Disagree?