"Let's assume every single one of the 100 billion stars in the galaxy is inhabited, and each star has a population of 10 trillion humans in orbit around it, and each human has 1 billion devices that need IP addresses. In that case, only 1/340,282nd of the possible 128-bit IPv6 addresses would need to be assigned."
Would we still have to assign 2^120 of them to MIT?
"In reality, AMD is not representing the 2200+ as anything other than a CPU that performs comparably to thier competitor's chip running at 2.2GHz."
That's a pretty long description, and I can't remember seeing "a CPU that performs comparably to an Intel chip running at 2.2GHz" written on any of the adverts for computer systems that I've seen in newspapers.
The description is more likely to be:
ATHLON 2200 system: $999*
and given that two out of the four words are misleading, you wonder why they're allowed to run the advert at all.
($999 being misleading because it won't include tax, won't include shipping, and assumes that you manage to get your rebate a year later)
It gets worse if you read the rest of the claims... things like "$700 worth of software" always seem a bit odd, as if it's only the OEMs who buy "Typing Tutor" or "Garden Designer", so they can whack up the retail price to whatever they want, nobody buys the software retail.
"I'm tired of there being so many desktops in linux."
I use WindowMaker. It starts in under a second, compared with 15 seconds for KDE.
You probably don't want WindowMaker. You'd prefer something with a Start menu and lots of stuff on it. KDE is good.
Howabout we don't care which is the default desktop? You only need to choose it once, and after that, it's, well... a default. It's not like the multi-gigabyte disks that family computers come with are having problems installing both systems at once.
And yes, you can run GNUStep applications. And I can run KDE applications. And we can all run Mac-like applications in Gnome if we want to be posey and cool. In fact, we can both run Windows applications too... awful thing this choice, isn't it?
"Robert X. mentions that his plan would see resistance from ISPs who would cite anti-sharing clauses in their end user contracts, and his explanation of how he'd get arround that is that if everybody's doing it, they can't stop it... In short, this is a pipe dream that will never come true."
I'm not entirely sure why you think Cringely's solution wouldn't work?
"Hello? OneTel? Yes, I'm interested in your expensive, and quite competitive, DSL products... I'd just like to check that I'd be able to run a public wireless hotspot on one... No? okay, I'll just call one of your eight competitors then..."
How could anyone think that in a capitalist country, the market would not adapt to massive consumer demand for anything? It's just one of those things. If you're prepared to pay for a shared connection, and nobody is prepared to offer it, then break out the Soviet Russia jokes. Because I can't imagine that commercial, competitive companies are going to turn down potential customers on philosophical grounds...
"he doesn't really explain how the company providing all this free equipment is supposed to make enough money for it to be worth their while."
One would hope that this would become a community project, rather than a commercial one...
The benefits all accrue to the community, and anyone with a wireless hotspot gains karma [not the slashdot sort] from having it. So what it comes down to is, when does WiFi equipment become cheap enough that someone with an internet connection can buy one when all he's going to get in return is a good reputation?
The second question is, when are WiFi devices going to become universally trusted enough that the bosses at work (you know, the ones who think Linux is some sort of terrrorist device) will let you plug in a wireless DMZ for people in the park opposite to use?
I've got a crappy little internet connection in comparaison with most people here, yet if the equipment was cheap enough, I'd still be happy to setup a hotspot, just for the coolness of having a warchalking symbol outside the house, and a few networked multiplayer games with neighbours. The key is having kit cheap enough that people can buy it in the same random unplanned way that normal people buy whatever it is that normal people implulse-buy.
"With Lego out of the way, this sort of thing may now be introduced by other companies who were too intimidated to enter the market."
The last thing anybody needs is for lego to become [more of] an "intellectual-property" company. It could get quite nasty if Lego becomes another of those paranoid nutcase companies insistant on suing anyone who does any real work. But hopefully they'll stick to defending their own trademark and no more.
"Aren't you concerned that the feds are going to show up at your door because someone was downloading child porn on your connection and they think it was you?"
Dunno, maybe you want to download such things yourself, and the existance of an ISP hotspot means it's unlikley to be proven as you.
Seems like you're shedding a lot of liability to me.
"I think that it was time to retire the current incarnation of Mindstorms anyway. It would be nice if the next gen. robot toy featured:
* wireless (802.11x or cell)
* a linux based os (of course)
* more sophisticated moving parts
* cooler ai modules..."
Or more specifically:
* Lots more outputs, lots more motors (solenoids, electromagnets, lights, LEDs) in the box.
* Li-ion rechargeable batteries
* Radio-control, possibly from your PC.
* Webcam (after all, who will buy it if it can't be used to make a climbing or flying spy-device?)
"Bring back castle lego at a reasonable price and we'll talk. I would love to get my hands on that original black knight's castle. The big black square one"
Still got it, assembled and on display... Which is more than I can say for my MindStorms set, since the software doesn't seem to work on Linux.
Anyway, our reason for keeping so much of the stuff around is that it's so damned expensive, we've got to keep it. I expect it'll get used again in a few decades, for the most engineer-like grandchildren.
Do we have to repost everything from NANOG on slashdot? The conclusion was that nobody outside verisign itself would be affected. It doesn't even break RFCs.
"But I'll be damned if you're touching my carrier pigeons. I will feed them steroids and fit them with armor, if necessary, to keep you from interfering with my God-given right to private communications."
Just imagining a carrier pigeon carrying an electronic-countermeasures pod, burning out speed-cameras and mucking up TV reception for everyone she flies over...
"..but releasing these images to the public is a public relations endeavor, not a scientific endeavor."
One of the main aims of the mission was to check the public's idea of mars as a red-sky, hence the reason why that sundial and colour calibration chart was such an important feature on the probe. So yes, it would be kind'a useful to give us non-[professional] scientists a true idea of what the colours of a martian landscape are.
Slashdot Mirror
"Let's assume every single one of the 100 billion stars in the galaxy is inhabited, and each star has a population of 10 trillion humans in orbit around it, and each human has 1 billion devices that need IP addresses. In that case, only 1/340,282nd of the possible 128-bit IPv6 addresses would need to be assigned."
Would we still have to assign 2^120 of them to MIT?
"You don't HAVE to include DRM in the files you encode. It is an option that can be turned on or off in Windows Media Player."
You say that as if you're nervous whether the option will still be there in a year's time...
"Because speak freely does voice over IP with hard encryption. I don't know of any other VoIP product that does that".
You do now!
"In reality, AMD is not representing the 2200+ as anything other than a CPU that performs comparably to thier competitor's chip running at 2.2GHz."
That's a pretty long description, and I can't remember seeing "a CPU that performs comparably to an Intel chip running at 2.2GHz" written on any of the adverts for computer systems that I've seen in newspapers.
The description is more likely to be:
ATHLON 2200 system: $999*
and given that two out of the four words are misleading, you wonder why they're allowed to run the advert at all.
($999 being misleading because it won't include tax, won't include shipping, and assumes that you manage to get your rebate a year later)
It gets worse if you read the rest of the claims... things like "$700 worth of software" always seem a bit odd, as if it's only the OEMs who buy "Typing Tutor" or "Garden Designer", so they can whack up the retail price to whatever they want, nobody buys the software retail.
"My 15" Titanium PowerBook, the last round of the series before they became the 15" AlPB, was advertised to contain a Radeon 9000."
Ah, but little do you know that 15" is a brand-name, used to describe the series of laptops with 8-inch screens...
Okay, maybe in the future. And yes, I'm still pissed at having 57.1GB of storage on my "60GB" music player.
4/1, eh? ... APRIL FOOLS!
WTF? 4/1/2004 has been and gone, 7 days ago, and I can't remember it being April yet.
"The problem is that emailing streams of random data around looks pretty suspicious."
Tell that to Anonymous Coward...
"What makes MP3s any less lossless than CDA"
Not the point. The question is, what makes MP3 less lossless than a DRM-encumbered format.
The loss being, of course, your freedom.
"Linux needs to be... something my grandma can use.""
So install KDE for her! It's not like anybody's grandmother will be answering questions from the installation disk!
Me? I've got a grandmothers' installation. 3 programs (Mozilla, KPPP, KMail), and can't remember ever running a 4th program on this computer...
"I'm tired of there being so many desktops in linux."
I use WindowMaker. It starts in under a second, compared with 15 seconds for KDE.
You probably don't want WindowMaker. You'd prefer something with a Start menu and lots of stuff on it. KDE is good.
Howabout we don't care which is the default desktop? You only need to choose it once, and after that, it's, well... a default. It's not like the multi-gigabyte disks that family computers come with are having problems installing both systems at once.
And yes, you can run GNUStep applications. And I can run KDE applications. And we can all run Mac-like applications in Gnome if we want to be posey and cool. In fact, we can both run Windows applications too... awful thing this choice, isn't it?
"This is horrible. I was hoping to buy my nephew lots of Mindstorms stuff when he got older. Maybe I have to buy them now and keep them around?"
How old's the nephew? I'll probably want to sell the mindstorms set in a decade or so...
"Of course, the high value of the Euro isn't helping..."
The high value of the Euro makes it a great time for Europeans to donate to the EFF though...
"Robert X. mentions that his plan would see resistance from ISPs who would cite anti-sharing clauses in their end user contracts, and his explanation of how he'd get arround that is that if everybody's doing it, they can't stop it... In short, this is a pipe dream that will never come true."
I'm not entirely sure why you think Cringely's solution wouldn't work?
"Hello? OneTel? Yes, I'm interested in your expensive, and quite competitive, DSL products... I'd just like to check that I'd be able to run a public wireless hotspot on one... No? okay, I'll just call one of your eight competitors then..."
How could anyone think that in a capitalist country, the market would not adapt to massive consumer demand for anything? It's just one of those things. If you're prepared to pay for a shared connection, and nobody is prepared to offer it, then break out the Soviet Russia jokes. Because I can't imagine that commercial, competitive companies are going to turn down potential customers on philosophical grounds...
"he doesn't really explain how the company providing all this free equipment is supposed to make enough money for it to be worth their while."
One would hope that this would become a community project, rather than a commercial one...
The benefits all accrue to the community, and anyone with a wireless hotspot gains karma [not the slashdot sort] from having it. So what it comes down to is, when does WiFi equipment become cheap enough that someone with an internet connection can buy one when all he's going to get in return is a good reputation?
The second question is, when are WiFi devices going to become universally trusted enough that the bosses at work (you know, the ones who think Linux is some sort of terrrorist device) will let you plug in a wireless DMZ for people in the park opposite to use?
I've got a crappy little internet connection in comparaison with most people here, yet if the equipment was cheap enough, I'd still be happy to setup a hotspot, just for the coolness of having a warchalking symbol outside the house, and a few networked multiplayer games with neighbours. The key is having kit cheap enough that people can buy it in the same random unplanned way that normal people buy whatever it is that normal people implulse-buy.
"With Lego out of the way, this sort of thing may now be introduced by other companies who were too intimidated to enter the market."
The last thing anybody needs is for lego to become [more of] an "intellectual-property" company. It could get quite nasty if Lego becomes another of those paranoid nutcase companies insistant on suing anyone who does any real work. But hopefully they'll stick to defending their own trademark and no more.
"Aren't you concerned that the feds are going to show up at your door because someone was downloading child porn on your connection and they think it was you?"
Dunno, maybe you want to download such things yourself, and the existance of an ISP hotspot means it's unlikley to be proven as you.
Seems like you're shedding a lot of liability to me.
"I think that it was time to retire the current incarnation of Mindstorms anyway. It would be nice if the next gen. robot toy featured:
* wireless (802.11x or cell)
* a linux based os (of course)
* more sophisticated moving parts
* cooler ai modules..."
Or more specifically:
* Lots more outputs, lots more motors (solenoids, electromagnets, lights, LEDs) in the box.
* Li-ion rechargeable batteries
* Radio-control, possibly from your PC.
* Webcam (after all, who will buy it if it can't be used to make a climbing or flying spy-device?)
"Bring back castle lego at a reasonable price and we'll talk. I would love to get my hands on that original black knight's castle. The big black square one"
Still got it, assembled and on display... Which is more than I can say for my MindStorms set, since the software doesn't seem to work on Linux.
Anyway, our reason for keeping so much of the stuff around is that it's so damned expensive, we've got to keep it. I expect it'll get used again in a few decades, for the most engineer-like grandchildren.
Do we have to repost everything from NANOG on slashdot? The conclusion was that nobody outside verisign itself would be affected. It doesn't even break RFCs.
"But I'll be damned if you're touching my carrier pigeons. I will feed them steroids and fit them with armor, if necessary, to keep you from interfering with my God-given right to private communications."
Just imagining a carrier pigeon carrying an electronic-countermeasures pod, burning out speed-cameras and mucking up TV reception for everyone she flies over...
"Same velocity, different momentum, though, right?"
African or European laptop?
"Is it just me or does it seem that these guys are trying to prey on immigrant (illegal or otherwise) fears of police authority?"
This is against the background of illegal raids being practised by the real police, so it seems likely the answer is yes.
"..but releasing these images to the public is a public relations endeavor, not a scientific endeavor."
One of the main aims of the mission was to check the public's idea of mars as a red-sky, hence the reason why that sundial and colour calibration chart was such an important feature on the probe. So yes, it would be kind'a useful to give us non-[professional] scientists a true idea of what the colours of a martian landscape are.
"my (cable) ISP which claimed I was using "above average" amounts of bandwidth"
Think about that for a moment...
Noooo! Half of our customers are bandwidth-thieves!
"Definition of Minumim Wage: If they paid you anything less, it would be illegal."
Definition of being paid less than the minimum wage: opening a factory in a prison so you don't have to pay even as much as a "slave wage"