1) Organisations sign up to host their own "so cool" root domain, expecting that lots of companies will be "forced" to register their key words in the new root domain
2) Companies finally wake up and say "WTF? We don't need this shit" and don't buy in
3) Lots of organisations who did #1 realise they're not going to be able to make enough to pay ICANN let alone cover their costs
4) Scumbuckets come in and start domain-squatting, setting up crap sites, etc
The above may well lead to:
5) People stop trusting domains and use search engines more (it's happening more & more now anyhow - most people can't remember even simple domains and use search engines to find them)
6) More legal cases for domain-squatting and illegal use of registered trademarks/keywords/etc
7) No more "gold rush" mentality for the opening up of new TLDs
8) Bad press for ICANN and fewer groups willing to take part in the next "all new territory" TLD funding drive (leads to less $$$ for ICANN)
Yeah, I'm just dreaming. ICANN is rapidly joining the RIAA & MPAA as a prime example of a bloated, self-serving organisation that's doing all it can to hang onto a way of existance that's no longer viable:(
Following an upgrade from Ubuntu v8, I'm running Ubuntu v9.04 (Jackalope) on an EEE PC and sound was completely fraked. After doing some research, I uninstalled PulseAudio from my system and now it all works fine. Still a few tweaks required, but dang, it works.
Why the hell does PulseAudio exist if it's such a piece of crap? Why is it in Ubuntu by default?
Maybe it has great potential and could be a wonderful thing, but until "it just works" it should be an optional extra, not installed by default.
They used to be the Internet Bill of Rights group but changed their name recently.
While many in this conversation have said we don't need to separate online/computer rights from general rights, this seems to only be the case in a "perfect world." Sadly, all too many countries pay lip service to the UN Declaration of Human Rights (if they bother at all) and even supposedly democratic & free countries butcher our rights in the online/communications world (Echelon, Australia's proposed Internet Filter, data retention acts in the UK & Korea, etc).
Between the efforts of the IRPDC and the Association for Progressive Communications (with their Internet Rights Charter as I mentioned previously in this discussion) there is work being done to raise awareness of our digital rights, not least of which is knowledge that we even have them let alone that they're being ripped from us.
The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) produced their Internet Rights Charter to help provide a basis for taking the UN's Declaration of Human Rights into the online world. It's amazing the number of countries that signed onto the Declaration of Human Rights but think nothing of censoring and snooping on people on-line.
Worth checking out and contacting APC in addition to EFF, etc.
Actually, I was just using Fox News as an example so people would understand what was being meant by a "slant" on reporting. I don't watch TV and the news sources I know about are from down here in Australia (News Corp vs FairFax vs ABC vs others:)
Figured I'd use Fox 'cos most of you lot are yanks - don't want to have people going "What's Fairfax????":):)
Maybe those reporters and editors should also send the letter up the chain to their owners. How many times has a Murdoch or Packer dictated what can & can't be published?
It doesn't take much effort to determine the bias of the reporting source and adjust accordingly to the news being presented (*coff* Fox News *coff*). We shouldn't have to, but it's the way it is.
Thanks for the great info - I should have remembered the ACLS. As you point out, though, there's still a human on board to bring it in if things go wrong, and the pilots have to keep current.
I totally agree re: carrier landings are the hardest of all - like the saying goes, the best things in life are a good orgasm, a good shit and a good landing, but only night traps give you all three at once:)
My father got to visit a USN carrier in the 60's when he was at Moffat with the Kiwis picking up their first Orion. Said landing and take off were the most amazing things he'd ever done and that was in the COD, let alone sitting up front and watching. I'd totally love to get on and visit, let alone have a chance to experience the landing/launch:)
Thanks for the links - I too will be amazed if N-UCAS can walk the walk.
There's going to be a whole lot of pissed off Navy pilots if they make a UAV that can land on a carrier deck at night in crap weather. Their main reason for superiority over all other pilots will be shot to hell.
When Navy pilots say "Flaring to land is like squatting to pee" then land based pilots will be able to come back with "Oh come on, landing on a carrier is so simple, even a computer can do it!":)
"Not so much in modern combat. By the time you got close enough to make a visual ID, you'd be dead already. IFF takes care of identifying friendlies and most non-hostiles, and if you're in a hostile area everything else is fair game."
Except when the powers that be dictate that you must get a visual confirmation that it's an enemy combatant (to avoid accidentally shooting down the wrong aircraft, etc). Politics and "delicate situations" can dictate 100% confirmation before weapons release, so BVR engagements are not always possible.
Remember how the F14 had that TV camera unit installed under the nose looking forward - extreme visual magnification and image processing to allow positive visual ID on targets while still at missile range.
Of course, great stealth tech (like the F22) stomps on everything else as combatants don't even know it's there until it's too late (http://www.ausairpower.net/air-superiority-2.html)
Here in Australia we've pretty much always had caps. One or two ADSL providers introduced "All you can eat" accounts and got to watch their peak time supply slow to a crawl across ALL their customers 'cos of the kiddies hopping on after school and downloading shitloads. Suffice to say, they lost a lot of business customers who were paying for 1.5Mb and getting 56k modem speeds. Ooops.
Another ISP I know of checked their utilisation levels for their customers and found that only 5% of their customers were using over 50% of their bandwidth (often more). So, they introduced caps and tiered charging. Those who used stuff all bandwidth had a REDUCTION in their connection fees while those who slurped the most saw an increase. A lot of the slurpers got pissed, wrote nastygrams and left. The majority of people paid the same and started complimenting the ISP on their improved service.
Same level of upstream investment could suddenly handle more customers and those few who left actually made it better for everyone who remained.
Fast forward to now where I'm downloading patches & updates, torrenting TV shows that aren't out yet (or are long gone), downloading some (legal!) videos and my teenage son is playing games & watching YouTube. We've got a 40Gb per month cap and are staying within it every month.
Have you lot actually checked how much you're using before you say "Caps are bad, mmmokay?"
It seems the biggest problem the US has is that there's not a lot of competition for Internet connectivity all over the country. Here I've got stacks of options to choose from to get connected with ADSL (cable is a bit more limited) so there's reasonably good competition. Over there, as has been noted by others, the cable companies are running scared 'cos the 'net is getting ready to eat their lunch (Hulu, NetFlix, etc) so they're doing all they can to ensure they still have money flowing in when their cable revenues drop.
Amazing that the USA (home of the free market and competition theory) can be in the position where people can have no choice when it comes to getting online. Who ever would have thought that could happen...
"The swimming events I've seen this evening in the U.S. have been live - if the event is indeed "live" then what problem is there in referring to the event as having taken place at such-and-such a time local?"
'cos they're talking "local to US time" which is evening while in Beijing it's during the morning, so having them say "This evening" is a little odd - especially when the coverage is also being used by non-US countries. For instance, in Australia, they're watching going "Hang on, this evening isn't for another 4 hours, what? Huh? Crazy yanks" and so on:):)
Nothing major - just wierd - like stopping a game because the TV coverage needs to show an advert (instead of the TV station either waiting for breaks in the game or hoping they don't miss any action:)
"Worrying that they some how were altering the live feed is so dumb and inane that I can't even respond. People, take a frigging collective deep breath."
It wasn't a live feed - live started at 8pm in Beijing which is GMT +8 - that's 7am in New York and 4am in Los Angeles. What time was it shown in your area?
Sounds like the did stuff around with the order the teams marched in. They certainly had enough time to do it - it was delayed half a day from when it really happened.
Opening ceremony was at 8pm on the 8th of August 2008 (Chinese like 8 - it's a lucky number:) and Beijing is at GMT+8. Some of the folks here in Melbourne, Australia were watching it that night live (about 10pm onwards local time). Based on the twitter feeds from those in the USA who were tweeting what they saw, it looked like they were watching it around 8pm on the 8th in THEIR time zone. Somewhat impossible, no?
I'm already hearing reports of US swimmers being coached to refer to the time of their race in US broadcast time rather than Beijing time. Ummmmmm - WTF?
So yeah, if you've got HOURS between recording the event and showing it then making any changes you want is a piece of cake.
Hmmm - maybe I should have rephrased that last line a little better so I don't appear quite so BOFH. After all, if I were the BOFH, I would have figured how to electrify the (l)user or dump all their emails:)
Perhaps it should have read:
If you're being paid the big bucks of a good SysAdmin, IT consultant or IT Manager, it is an inefficient use of your client's money for you to wade through junk mail looking for valid messages.
Does that sound better?
How about:
If you're being paid a constant rate, have lots to do and have bigger issues to resolve that need your time, what the heck are you doing trawling through junk messages???
When I setting up IT environments for my clients, my goal was to get them as self-sufficient as possible to:
a) reduce their spendings on IT
b) let me focus on the big issues
c) keep them happy
I didn't just say "Read the Frackin Manual" and walk away - I'd review what they wanted, present options and come up with the most cost-effective use of everyone's time. In the majority of cases, it worked and all were happy.
So yeah, I guess those last bits of my first message could lead to a BOFH situation, but that certainly wasn't my intention:)
1) Set up the system to put junk mails in a folder the user can see
2) Train the end user to check their junk mails
3) Show the user how to set the spam triggers high or low and what the implications are
If user says they're too busy/important, advise them that due to your workload, their email box will be added to the "manually checked list" which gets done once per week. Point out the impact of losing a time-critical email wrongly flagged.
Most times they do it themselves. For those who are dead set on having someone else do it, hire a temp or arrange for an office junior to do it.
If you're in IT, you have better & more important things to do than check for real mail in a junk mail box...
2. Manufacturer will be required to discontinue offering region free DVD players. Simple as that.
Which is interesting as, here in Australia, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (an independent government authority for fair competition & trade) ruled that DVD region encoding was anti-competitive a few years back. Since then, all DVD players sold in Australia must be either region free or be sold with instructions on how to unlock them.
They even went up against SONY about mod-chipping PS2's, saying it was an Australian's right to purchase games overseas and play them on systems here.
It's always interesting to find a government agency going up against it's own government in the courts over shit like this...
Exactly - people say about antique furniture "Oh, they built things so much better back then."
Sure - some things they did, but all the cheapo-crappo stuff is gone. Same as in 50 to 100 years all the cheapo-crappo stuff we've got will be gone but the high-quality stuff that's well built will still be around.
In the mid-80's I was doing a Bachelor of Informatics degree at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. This combined Comp Sci with group theory (communications & operations of humans in groups) and philosophy. At the time, it seemed odd but the "soft stuff" really has helped in my IT career, perhaps more than the Comp Sci stuff.
Plus, you *have* to respect a subject that mainly involves sitting around in pubs drinking booze and arguing with each other:)
Of course, if I'd only stuck around and finished the degree, maybe I'd have more to say on it. Sadly, reality struck and I ditched it to chase lots of really cool fun work (and a girl:)
You know, it's possible the spam-bots are using human-based systems to bypass your "computer can't recognise it" authentication method. Here's two ways:
1. Spammer farms out registration to third world sweatshops - for US$1 per day, a person just sits there and fills in registrations then passes them on to the bot system to use.
2. Spammer's system redirects your challenge to a "Free Porn Sign Up" page - now nudie hungry humans are filling doing it so they can see free naughties.
Either way is not impossible to figure out and implement - the former costs a small amount to run but could churn out heaps of applications. The latter would produce as many registrations as there are people hanging for "Free Porn" (a rather large number, no?:)
Me thinks a previous poster's comment about throwing in random questions based on the forum topic/theme/etc would help in either of these situations, no?
Men appear to be dominant in a lot of areas, but everywhere else they are supressed/repressed as much or even more than women. (Check out funding differences between breast cancer and prostrate cancer)
Face it - if you're going down the "Doctor who wants to stop cancer" path, what would you rather do - work with lots and lots of breasts or a whole lot of male asses?
As the old joke goes, if you think getting a prostate check up is uncomfortable, think about the poor bastard who has to do it....
Slashdot Mirror
They know getting them early is a nice way to get people comfortable (aka hooked). As bad as big tobacco?
Why not, it's worked with religions for millenia :)
This could have a fascinating result:
1) Organisations sign up to host their own "so cool" root domain, expecting that lots of companies will be "forced" to register their key words in the new root domain
2) Companies finally wake up and say "WTF? We don't need this shit" and don't buy in
3) Lots of organisations who did #1 realise they're not going to be able to make enough to pay ICANN let alone cover their costs
4) Scumbuckets come in and start domain-squatting, setting up crap sites, etc
The above may well lead to:
5) People stop trusting domains and use search engines more (it's happening more & more now anyhow - most people can't remember even simple domains and use search engines to find them)
6) More legal cases for domain-squatting and illegal use of registered trademarks/keywords/etc
7) No more "gold rush" mentality for the opening up of new TLDs
8) Bad press for ICANN and fewer groups willing to take part in the next "all new territory" TLD funding drive (leads to less $$$ for ICANN)
Yeah, I'm just dreaming. ICANN is rapidly joining the RIAA & MPAA as a prime example of a bloated, self-serving organisation that's doing all it can to hang onto a way of existance that's no longer viable :(
Insightful???? I thought he was joking! :)
Following an upgrade from Ubuntu v8, I'm running Ubuntu v9.04 (Jackalope) on an EEE PC and sound was completely fraked. After doing some research, I uninstalled PulseAudio from my system and now it all works fine. Still a few tweaks required, but dang, it works.
Why the hell does PulseAudio exist if it's such a piece of crap? Why is it in Ubuntu by default?
Maybe it has great potential and could be a wonderful thing, but until "it just works" it should be an optional extra, not installed by default.
Not sure if you'd heard of these guys:
http://internetrightsandprinciples.org/
They used to be the Internet Bill of Rights group but changed their name recently.
While many in this conversation have said we don't need to separate online/computer rights from general rights, this seems to only be the case in a "perfect world." Sadly, all too many countries pay lip service to the UN Declaration of Human Rights (if they bother at all) and even supposedly democratic & free countries butcher our rights in the online/communications world (Echelon, Australia's proposed Internet Filter, data retention acts in the UK & Korea, etc).
Between the efforts of the IRPDC and the Association for Progressive Communications (with their Internet Rights Charter as I mentioned previously in this discussion) there is work being done to raise awareness of our digital rights, not least of which is knowledge that we even have them let alone that they're being ripped from us.
The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) produced their Internet Rights Charter to help provide a basis for taking the UN's Declaration of Human Rights into the online world. It's amazing the number of countries that signed onto the Declaration of Human Rights but think nothing of censoring and snooping on people on-line.
Worth checking out and contacting APC in addition to EFF, etc.
>What would you say first to an alien?
Gesundheit, perhaps? :)
"We have more poisonous things that creep, crawl or slither than I'd care to name"
Now now, don't bring politicians into this story... :)
Actually, I was just using Fox News as an example so people would understand what was being meant by a "slant" on reporting. I don't watch TV and the news sources I know about are from down here in Australia (News Corp vs FairFax vs ABC vs others :)
Figured I'd use Fox 'cos most of you lot are yanks - don't want to have people going "What's Fairfax????" :) :)
Maybe those reporters and editors should also send the letter up the chain to their owners. How many times has a Murdoch or Packer dictated what can & can't be published?
It doesn't take much effort to determine the bias of the reporting source and adjust accordingly to the news being presented (*coff* Fox News *coff*). We shouldn't have to, but it's the way it is.
Thanks for the great info - I should have remembered the ACLS. As you point out, though, there's still a human on board to bring it in if things go wrong, and the pilots have to keep current.
I totally agree re: carrier landings are the hardest of all - like the saying goes, the best things in life are a good orgasm, a good shit and a good landing, but only night traps give you all three at once :)
My father got to visit a USN carrier in the 60's when he was at Moffat with the Kiwis picking up their first Orion. Said landing and take off were the most amazing things he'd ever done and that was in the COD, let alone sitting up front and watching. I'd totally love to get on and visit, let alone have a chance to experience the landing/launch :)
Thanks for the links - I too will be amazed if N-UCAS can walk the walk.
There's going to be a whole lot of pissed off Navy pilots if they make a UAV that can land on a carrier deck at night in crap weather. Their main reason for superiority over all other pilots will be shot to hell.
When Navy pilots say "Flaring to land is like squatting to pee" then land based pilots will be able to come back with "Oh come on, landing on a carrier is so simple, even a computer can do it!" :)
"Not so much in modern combat. By the time you got close enough to make a visual ID, you'd be dead already. IFF takes care of identifying friendlies and most non-hostiles, and if you're in a hostile area everything else is fair game."
Except when the powers that be dictate that you must get a visual confirmation that it's an enemy combatant (to avoid accidentally shooting down the wrong aircraft, etc). Politics and "delicate situations" can dictate 100% confirmation before weapons release, so BVR engagements are not always possible.
Remember how the F14 had that TV camera unit installed under the nose looking forward - extreme visual magnification and image processing to allow positive visual ID on targets while still at missile range.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-14_Tomcat
http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/military/read.main/88635/
Of course, great stealth tech (like the F22) stomps on everything else as combatants don't even know it's there until it's too late (http://www.ausairpower.net/air-superiority-2.html)
Here in Australia we've pretty much always had caps. One or two ADSL providers introduced "All you can eat" accounts and got to watch their peak time supply slow to a crawl across ALL their customers 'cos of the kiddies hopping on after school and downloading shitloads. Suffice to say, they lost a lot of business customers who were paying for 1.5Mb and getting 56k modem speeds. Ooops.
Another ISP I know of checked their utilisation levels for their customers and found that only 5% of their customers were using over 50% of their bandwidth (often more). So, they introduced caps and tiered charging. Those who used stuff all bandwidth had a REDUCTION in their connection fees while those who slurped the most saw an increase. A lot of the slurpers got pissed, wrote nastygrams and left. The majority of people paid the same and started complimenting the ISP on their improved service.
Same level of upstream investment could suddenly handle more customers and those few who left actually made it better for everyone who remained.
Fast forward to now where I'm downloading patches & updates, torrenting TV shows that aren't out yet (or are long gone), downloading some (legal!) videos and my teenage son is playing games & watching YouTube. We've got a 40Gb per month cap and are staying within it every month.
Have you lot actually checked how much you're using before you say "Caps are bad, mmmokay?"
It seems the biggest problem the US has is that there's not a lot of competition for Internet connectivity all over the country. Here I've got stacks of options to choose from to get connected with ADSL (cable is a bit more limited) so there's reasonably good competition. Over there, as has been noted by others, the cable companies are running scared 'cos the 'net is getting ready to eat their lunch (Hulu, NetFlix, etc) so they're doing all they can to ensure they still have money flowing in when their cable revenues drop.
Amazing that the USA (home of the free market and competition theory) can be in the position where people can have no choice when it comes to getting online. Who ever would have thought that could happen...
Hmmm - BSOD vs "I'm sorry Dave"
Well, perhaps more people have experienced the BSOD (frequently) than have seen 2001: A Space Odyssey :)
"The swimming events I've seen this evening in the U.S. have been live - if the event is indeed "live" then what problem is there in referring to the event as having taken place at such-and-such a time local?"
'cos they're talking "local to US time" which is evening while in Beijing it's during the morning, so having them say "This evening" is a little odd - especially when the coverage is also being used by non-US countries. For instance, in Australia, they're watching going "Hang on, this evening isn't for another 4 hours, what? Huh? Crazy yanks" and so on :) :)
Nothing major - just wierd - like stopping a game because the TV coverage needs to show an advert (instead of the TV station either waiting for breaks in the game or hoping they don't miss any action :)
"Worrying that they some how were altering the live feed is so dumb and inane that I can't even respond. People, take a frigging collective deep breath."
It wasn't a live feed - live started at 8pm in Beijing which is GMT +8 - that's 7am in New York and 4am in Los Angeles. What time was it shown in your area?
Sounds like the did stuff around with the order the teams marched in. They certainly had enough time to do it - it was delayed half a day from when it really happened.
Opening ceremony was at 8pm on the 8th of August 2008 (Chinese like 8 - it's a lucky number :) and Beijing is at GMT+8. Some of the folks here in Melbourne, Australia were watching it that night live (about 10pm onwards local time). Based on the twitter feeds from those in the USA who were tweeting what they saw, it looked like they were watching it around 8pm on the 8th in THEIR time zone. Somewhat impossible, no?
I'm already hearing reports of US swimmers being coached to refer to the time of their race in US broadcast time rather than Beijing time. Ummmmmm - WTF?
So yeah, if you've got HOURS between recording the event and showing it then making any changes you want is a piece of cake.
Hmmm - maybe I should have rephrased that last line a little better so I don't appear quite so BOFH. After all, if I were the BOFH, I would have figured how to electrify the (l)user or dump all their emails
Perhaps it should have read:
If you're being paid the big bucks of a good SysAdmin, IT consultant or IT Manager, it is an inefficient use of your client's money for you to wade through junk mail looking for valid messages.
Does that sound better?
How about:
If you're being paid a constant rate, have lots to do and have bigger issues to resolve that need your time, what the heck are you doing trawling through junk messages???
When I setting up IT environments for my clients, my goal was to get them as self-sufficient as possible to:
a) reduce their spendings on IT
b) let me focus on the big issues
c) keep them happy
I didn't just say "Read the Frackin Manual" and walk away - I'd review what they wanted, present options and come up with the most cost-effective use of everyone's time. In the majority of cases, it worked and all were happy.
So yeah, I guess those last bits of my first message could lead to a BOFH situation, but that certainly wasn't my intention
Whatever solution you get, the simple answer is:
1) Set up the system to put junk mails in a folder the user can see
2) Train the end user to check their junk mails
3) Show the user how to set the spam triggers high or low and what the implications are
If user says they're too busy/important, advise them that due to your workload, their email box will be added to the "manually checked list" which gets done once per week. Point out the impact of losing a time-critical email wrongly flagged.
Most times they do it themselves. For those who are dead set on having someone else do it, hire a temp or arrange for an office junior to do it.
If you're in IT, you have better & more important things to do than check for real mail in a junk mail box...
2. Manufacturer will be required to discontinue offering region free DVD players. Simple as that.
Which is interesting as, here in Australia, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (an independent government authority for fair competition & trade) ruled that DVD region encoding was anti-competitive a few years back. Since then, all DVD players sold in Australia must be either region free or be sold with instructions on how to unlock them.
They even went up against SONY about mod-chipping PS2's, saying it was an Australian's right to purchase games overseas and play them on systems here.
It's always interesting to find a government agency going up against it's own government in the courts over shit like this...
For more info:
ACCC comments re: region coding
ACCC vs SONY on PS2 modchips
Only the best work has survived until now.
Exactly - people say about antique furniture "Oh, they built things so much better back then."
Sure - some things they did, but all the cheapo-crappo stuff is gone. Same as in 50 to 100 years all the cheapo-crappo stuff we've got will be gone but the high-quality stuff that's well built will still be around.
In the mid-80's I was doing a Bachelor of Informatics degree at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. This combined Comp Sci with group theory (communications & operations of humans in groups) and philosophy. At the time, it seemed odd but the "soft stuff" really has helped in my IT career, perhaps more than the Comp Sci stuff.
:)
:)
Plus, you *have* to respect a subject that mainly involves sitting around in pubs drinking booze and arguing with each other
Of course, if I'd only stuck around and finished the degree, maybe I'd have more to say on it. Sadly, reality struck and I ditched it to chase lots of really cool fun work (and a girl
You know, it's possible the spam-bots are using human-based systems to bypass your "computer can't recognise it" authentication method. Here's two ways:
:)
1. Spammer farms out registration to third world sweatshops - for US$1 per day, a person just sits there and fills in registrations then passes them on to the bot system to use.
2. Spammer's system redirects your challenge to a "Free Porn Sign Up" page - now nudie hungry humans are filling doing it so they can see free naughties.
Either way is not impossible to figure out and implement - the former costs a small amount to run but could churn out heaps of applications. The latter would produce as many registrations as there are people hanging for "Free Porn" (a rather large number, no?
Me thinks a previous poster's comment about throwing in random questions based on the forum topic/theme/etc would help in either of these situations, no?
Men appear to be dominant in a lot of areas, but everywhere else they are supressed/repressed as much or even more than women. (Check out funding differences between breast cancer and prostrate cancer)
Face it - if you're going down the "Doctor who wants to stop cancer" path, what would you rather do - work with lots and lots of breasts or a whole lot of male asses?
As the old joke goes, if you think getting a prostate check up is uncomfortable, think about the poor bastard who has to do it....