And in the USA the public has been the roadblock to decisions on matters of this sort.
Problem is, who do you trust matters like this to. I understand and agree with your comment, but I don't know what the right answer is. I'm not willing to let the government just decide everything for me because 'they know best'. If we started excluding any particular group from voting there would be cries of discrimination. How to we come up with a better way to make decisions without losing our freedoms completely?
Insurance USED to be about huge medical bills, this is no longer the case. Insurance is now about evening out the cost of healthcare among all of the Insured. The result is, just like your position, everyone on a particular plan pays $X/month regardless of usage. There are 'co-payments' that attempt to extract a paltry sum out of habitual users, but the bottom line is that the people that don't use it get screwed.
Your exact situation is somewhat different in that your landlord is the one taking advantage of you. He has you over a barrel, if you want TV and Internet access you are going to pay him $20/month. He can collect this amount from every tenant, so he does. Again, your only recourse is to move. Your brother is in a better negoitating position, so has a better deal. Thing is, your unique situation isn't a good analysis of the cable ISP overall. As a whole the cable ISP charges everyone the same price so they can make more money and provide a better service. The provider charges everyone on the network, that way if for some reason usage drops off they can still offer a high level of usage. On top of that, monitoring individual bandwidth is costly and difficult. It's much easier and cheaper for the ISP to give one overall price.
This argument is similar to the current situation with cable and satellite TV. There are people that believe the cable companies should offer all of their channels a la carte. Thing is, many of the current channels would go away due to their low subscribership. By offering channels as one big package the cable companies are able to offer a wider selection. The popular channels, (ESPN, CNN, FOX, WB, MTV) help pay for the channels with a lower viewership (SCIFI, HGTV, BRAVO) that might not make it on their own. In the same way broadband ISPs charge everyone an equal amount and are able to offer a more comprehensive overall product. Not everyone cares, but it's still nice to have.
Well, when you come right down to it, I thought he got screwed because he paid to download a TV show that he could have watched for free.
OTOH, I am a fan of Lost, and I personally don't think it's trite. I don't know about 'The Prisoner' being a truly classic television series, but if I wanted to watch a classic show about people stranded, it would be "Gilligan's Island". That's classic TV at it's best.
I mean, why is it that three people that use very little bandwidth should pay more than one person that uses a lot? Because that's the business model that some ISP decided on?
For the same reason three people that rarely go to the doctor pay the same for insurance as one person that goes weekly. It's a way to keep costs down and distribute costs across a larger user base. Is it fair? Absolutely not, but even the three people that use very little bandwidth get better service than they would otherwise.
At the very least, it is proof that even if there are "paranormal" effects out there that nobody understands, none of the current crop of practicioners are anything but frauds.
So, what if there are 'paranormal' effects out there that just can't be reproduced in a scientific setting? Giant Pandas are almost impossible to breed in captivity, does that mean they don't breed in the wild? That no Giant Pandas have ever been born, just because it's difficult to do in a lab?
I'm not advocating any kind of stance to the paranormal, just stating that sometimes things exist even if they can't be proven.
OK, I have a question. Do you see greater value in purchasing a version that you can watch on your iPod than you do in purchasing the DVD? After reading your post, I personally thought you got screwed. If you could have the DVD for the same price, why buy the iPod version. Now, I realize we all have different priorities, and if you find value in it, that's great. Guess my question is how much of your example is due to the fact that you COULD download from iTunes and it's the new fun thing to do? Do you see this technology as something with staying power, and if so, why?
The "offensive, embarassing, pornographic" clause is overly broad (there were a lot of other words included like "distressing" and "threatening"... ridiculous). They explicitly state that all these things are against terms of use regardless of their legality. The terms of use policy only has to prohibit using the connection for anything illegal, that would protect them when their users do illegal things like distributing child pornography.
Thing is they are concerned about more than what's currently just 'illegal'. There are several areas that could get them in trouble. ISPs could be included in civil suits for sexual harrasment, racisim, whatever. My guess would be they just want a way out of any lawsuits that come up.
Restrictions on business/comercial use, servers (also banned by my ISP) and routers are similarly ridiculous. If they don't want you using all the bandwidth, then do it the direct way: with a bandwidth cap!
Right or wrong, business users pay a premium for many services. The justification for this is the idea that a business user can use more of the resource, plus the fact that the business is using your service to generate revenue of their own. You may not agree with this, but it's not exactly a new or unusual concept.
Why should I put up with a restriction on sharing my connection with my neighbor? It's my connection!
So, is stealing cable wrong? If water is included in the price of your apartment is it wrong to let everyone you know come use your shower? Sharing the connection is an abuse of the product your ISP is providing.
NoIP doesn't solve my problem
You are correct there, I was thinking DHCP, not NAT. What you need is to setup a vpn out to a remote machine, then you can have remote access.
I know that if you think from the perspective of an ISP most of their provisions have benefits for them. But as a customer what I want is a real Internet connection: some bandwidth, a routable IP address
Their provisions have benefits for you as well. These restrictions allow the ISP to provide high speed service to you at a reasonable cost. If you want a real connection, move somewhere where you can get a T1. If you do that you can resell your bandwidth, run your own servers, and connect to any site you want as long as you aren't disruptive to others. Problem is a full T is going to cost you many times more than a high speed cable connection will.
Since I'm guessing you don't want to move, are there any wireless providers in the area that you could use? Some of them offer more full featured accounts. The bandwidth will probably be lower, but if your current ISP's restrictions are a problem it might be a way to go.
My ISP could technically kick me out for looking up just about any controversial website, or for routing my connection through my second NIC to my laptop. It would probably take about 5 words for SBC to add a clause to their terms of use agreement banning VoIP and nobody would notice.
Your ISP could probably kick you out for no real reason at all, or could definitely drum one up if they didn't like you. Thing is, they don't want to. They want to collect revenue from you if possible. The only way they are going to kick you off is if you do something obviously abusive. SBC could add that clause banning VoIP any time, it's their contract. Thing is, I bet there are enough people on SBC that are using Vonage, Packet8 or some other VoIP service that would scream very loudly if they try it.
Most of what you discuss are just basic CYA stuff for your ISP.
The 'offensive, embarrassing, pornographic' clause is there to save them if you start distributing kiddie porn
The restriction on business/commercial use is to keep you from taking advantage of their system by running a server or sucking up all of their bandwidth with multiple employees
The wifi thing is to keep you from sharing a connection with all your neighbors that don't want to pay for the service - although if you do it right I don't know how they could detect you running a router.
As far as the NAT, check out http://www.no-ip.com./ I use their free service to ssh into my home machine on a cable network without a static IP. Been doing it for over a year and haven't had any problems yet.
Bottom line is the contract, from what you relayed to us, doesn't state that they will filter any sites. It definitely doesn't appear to say that you can only access locations that have a contract with the ISP, which is what SBC is appearantly trying to do.
Win2K's version of NTFS supports directory symbolic links, where a directory serves as a symbolic link to another directory on the computer.
How can it be considered a symbolic link if you can only link directories??
Unfortunately, Win2K comes with no tools for creating junctions
What good is a feature you can't use. That's just ridiculous.
Plus, 95%++ of the world's computers running Windows NT-based Operating Systems by now (e.g.-> NT/2000/XP/Server 2003)
Down from 99% 5 years ago
which run tons more hardwares than UNIX of any type does,
BS, very few pieces of PC hardware are completely unsupported by Linux. Plus, Linux has a much bigger foothold in the embedded market than Windows.
+ with more peripheral surrounding softwares for any imaginable purpose (thus, Win32 Os are far more ubiquitous + flexible)
'More peripheral surrounding software' is a very difficult statement to prove. There is more commercial windows software than Unix, but there are thousands, maybe millions of open source apps covering nearly ever imaginable purpose available and most of them are built for Linux.
For example, the gene that helps defend against malaria (and is prevelant amongst many of African origin) is the same gene that causes sickle-cell anaemia. The benefit probably outweighs the problem, but it shouldn't be assumed that there is "better", "worse", "above" and so on.
Does the benefit outweigh the problem. Here in the states we haven't had a malaria outbreak in years if ever, but sickle-cell anaemia is a problem. At one time resistance to malaria was a benefit and still is if you live in Africa. I think this is more a case of a trait that was good at one time and has now become negative due to environmental and cultural changes.
So you're saying that the iPod shouldn't have porn because it IS porn. That being the case I don't think anyone under 18 should be allowed to own an iPod.
Nah, perl is actually great. You just may be annoyed later in life when you have to declare variables, have to decide if you want an int or a float, or just generally create anything that needs to be maintainable and readable. I'd recommend using strict mode. It will help you write cleaner code and teach you some better habits.
I tried to turn him on to coding, but he went out and got Visual Studio, and went off on his own. He came back and proudly demonstrated his various creations.
Shoulda started with Perl. Everyone knows Perl is the best language for learning quality programming skills.
If you use Google you're not in an "buying mind". And then you have Amazon, an online store. I guess that's why.
Thing is, if I understand Google's goals correctly, they don't want to display the whole book online, they want to index the content to show in their search results - that way anyone in a 'buying mind' will be able to get a list of books that fit their topic. Bottom line is fair use is fair use. Either Amazon is violating copyrights, has an agreement with the publishers that allow them to show exerpts or they fall under the fair use provisions that Google claims they fall under.
Actually clock speeds really haven't done much in the last 2-3 years.
I'm not so sure about that. Speeds may have only increased from 3Ghz to 3.8Ghz in the last 1-2 years, but that's still a respectable 27% increase over a 1 year period. Of course you are right, the biggest increases have been with the multicore and 32-64 bit architecture changes. Clock speed may not be doubling every 18 months, but a 27% annual increase is nothing to sneeze at either.
Personally, I believe part of the reason we haven't seen a huge increase in clock speed is the lack of demand. Most people are finally satisfied with the performance their computer is giving and don't feel the need to upgrade constantly.
The information presented in it is freely available all over the web, often with more insightful examples, tutorials, etc. I just don't see the justification in spending x dollars on a book when a simple google search will yield a better result for free.
How am I supposed to curl up next to the fire with a google search, or go camping with a google search. I need the book so I can read it wherever I want, whenever I want.
When I first decided to play with Linux, many many moons ago, I think I bought the Walnut Creek CD-ROM of Slackware at Fry's or by mail order. I got a decent install up and running with XFree86 and a window manager. But it was very definitely a steep learning curve.
Keep in mind ALL of the distros have come a long way since the old Walnut Creek CDs. Back in the day Red Hat was no picnic to install. I'm sure a Slackware install is more difficult than Linspire, but the 10.x versions are really not that hard to install. Most common tools are included, and many of the ones that aren't can be downloaded from linuxpackages.net.
That said, there can still be challenges. Hardware configurations are the primary obstacle I sometimes have difficulty getting around, especially for X. That said, I am writing this from a Slackware desktop, I run a Slackware desktop at home and have three testing machines at work running VMware under a Slackware desktop.
They're married and get it on regularly (it seems), but the only conflict that I've seen them have is that he sometimes gets jealous of the relationship between his wife and the captain, and she wants a kid but he doesn't.
You should put that all in the past tense, Wash was tragically killed by the Revers.
Music isn't the same as books. Music already required a device and power source to play it, even before MP3.
No, music isn't the same as books, but the written word is much like musical compositions. Books have not always been portable. They used to be written on stone tablets, papyrus scrolls, etc... Back in 1455 a guy named Gutenberg invented a thing called a printing press. It wasn't until then that books became portable. What we know as a book is just a type of media for the written word. As soon as a better device (more durable, lighter, cheaper, etc...) comes along books will disappear.
You are very correct, Mr. AC, in stating that there is no adequate electronic device for storing what is now stored on paper, although I disagree with your examples. We don't need something that can drop off a cliff or be taken into a combat zone. What we need is something that is pleasant to read, provides an adequate sized page and doesn't hurt the eyes to look at. Once we have that we can start worrying about durability.
Slashdot Mirror
And in the USA the public has been the roadblock to decisions on matters of this sort.
Problem is, who do you trust matters like this to. I understand and agree with your comment, but I don't know what the right answer is. I'm not willing to let the government just decide everything for me because 'they know best'. If we started excluding any particular group from voting there would be cries of discrimination. How to we come up with a better way to make decisions without losing our freedoms completely?
Insurance USED to be about huge medical bills, this is no longer the case. Insurance is now about evening out the cost of healthcare among all of the Insured. The result is, just like your position, everyone on a particular plan pays $X/month regardless of usage. There are 'co-payments' that attempt to extract a paltry sum out of habitual users, but the bottom line is that the people that don't use it get screwed.
Your exact situation is somewhat different in that your landlord is the one taking advantage of you. He has you over a barrel, if you want TV and Internet access you are going to pay him $20/month. He can collect this amount from every tenant, so he does. Again, your only recourse is to move. Your brother is in a better negoitating position, so has a better deal. Thing is, your unique situation isn't a good analysis of the cable ISP overall. As a whole the cable ISP charges everyone the same price so they can make more money and provide a better service. The provider charges everyone on the network, that way if for some reason usage drops off they can still offer a high level of usage. On top of that, monitoring individual bandwidth is costly and difficult. It's much easier and cheaper for the ISP to give one overall price.
This argument is similar to the current situation with cable and satellite TV. There are people that believe the cable companies should offer all of their channels a la carte. Thing is, many of the current channels would go away due to their low subscribership. By offering channels as one big package the cable companies are able to offer a wider selection. The popular channels, (ESPN, CNN, FOX, WB, MTV) help pay for the channels with a lower viewership (SCIFI, HGTV, BRAVO) that might not make it on their own. In the same way broadband ISPs charge everyone an equal amount and are able to offer a more comprehensive overall product. Not everyone cares, but it's still nice to have.
Well, when you come right down to it, I thought he got screwed because he paid to download a TV show that he could have watched for free.
OTOH, I am a fan of Lost, and I personally don't think it's trite. I don't know about 'The Prisoner' being a truly classic television series, but if I wanted to watch a classic show about people stranded, it would be "Gilligan's Island". That's classic TV at it's best.
I mean, why is it that three people that use very little bandwidth should pay more than one person that uses a lot? Because that's the business model that some ISP decided on?
For the same reason three people that rarely go to the doctor pay the same for insurance as one person that goes weekly. It's a way to keep costs down and distribute costs across a larger user base. Is it fair? Absolutely not, but even the three people that use very little bandwidth get better service than they would otherwise.
At the very least, it is proof that even if there are "paranormal" effects out there that nobody understands, none of the current crop of practicioners are anything but frauds.
So, what if there are 'paranormal' effects out there that just can't be reproduced in a scientific setting? Giant Pandas are almost impossible to breed in captivity, does that mean they don't breed in the wild? That no Giant Pandas have ever been born, just because it's difficult to do in a lab?
I'm not advocating any kind of stance to the paranormal, just stating that sometimes things exist even if they can't be proven.
OK, I have a question. Do you see greater value in purchasing a version that you can watch on your iPod than you do in purchasing the DVD? After reading your post, I personally thought you got screwed. If you could have the DVD for the same price, why buy the iPod version. Now, I realize we all have different priorities, and if you find value in it, that's great. Guess my question is how much of your example is due to the fact that you COULD download from iTunes and it's the new fun thing to do? Do you see this technology as something with staying power, and if so, why?
The "offensive, embarassing, pornographic" clause is overly broad (there were a lot of other words included like "distressing" and "threatening"... ridiculous). They explicitly state that all these things are against terms of use regardless of their legality. The terms of use policy only has to prohibit using the connection for anything illegal, that would protect them when their users do illegal things like distributing child pornography.
Thing is they are concerned about more than what's currently just 'illegal'. There are several areas that could get them in trouble. ISPs could be included in civil suits for sexual harrasment, racisim, whatever. My guess would be they just want a way out of any lawsuits that come up.
Restrictions on business/comercial use, servers (also banned by my ISP) and routers are similarly ridiculous. If they don't want you using all the bandwidth, then do it the direct way: with a bandwidth cap!
Right or wrong, business users pay a premium for many services. The justification for this is the idea that a business user can use more of the resource, plus the fact that the business is using your service to generate revenue of their own. You may not agree with this, but it's not exactly a new or unusual concept.
Why should I put up with a restriction on sharing my connection with my neighbor? It's my connection!
So, is stealing cable wrong? If water is included in the price of your apartment is it wrong to let everyone you know come use your shower? Sharing the connection is an abuse of the product your ISP is providing.
NoIP doesn't solve my problem
You are correct there, I was thinking DHCP, not NAT. What you need is to setup a vpn out to a remote machine, then you can have remote access.
I know that if you think from the perspective of an ISP most of their provisions have benefits for them. But as a customer what I want is a real Internet connection: some bandwidth, a routable IP address
Their provisions have benefits for you as well. These restrictions allow the ISP to provide high speed service to you at a reasonable cost. If you want a real connection, move somewhere where you can get a T1. If you do that you can resell your bandwidth, run your own servers, and connect to any site you want as long as you aren't disruptive to others. Problem is a full T is going to cost you many times more than a high speed cable connection will.
Since I'm guessing you don't want to move, are there any wireless providers in the area that you could use? Some of them offer more full featured accounts. The bandwidth will probably be lower, but if your current ISP's restrictions are a problem it might be a way to go.
My ISP could technically kick me out for looking up just about any controversial website, or for routing my connection through my second NIC to my laptop. It would probably take about 5 words for SBC to add a clause to their terms of use agreement banning VoIP and nobody would notice.
Your ISP could probably kick you out for no real reason at all, or could definitely drum one up if they didn't like you. Thing is, they don't want to. They want to collect revenue from you if possible. The only way they are going to kick you off is if you do something obviously abusive. SBC could add that clause banning VoIP any time, it's their contract. Thing is, I bet there are enough people on SBC that are using Vonage, Packet8 or some other VoIP service that would scream very loudly if they try it.
- The 'offensive, embarrassing, pornographic' clause is there to save them if you start distributing kiddie porn
- The restriction on business/commercial use is to keep you from taking advantage of their system by running a server or sucking up all of their bandwidth with multiple employees
- The wifi thing is to keep you from sharing a connection with all your neighbors that don't want to pay for the service - although if you do it right I don't know how they could detect you running a router.
As far as the NAT, check out http://www.no-ip.com./ I use their free service to ssh into my home machine on a cable network without a static IP. Been doing it for over a year and haven't had any problems yet.Bottom line is the contract, from what you relayed to us, doesn't state that they will filter any sites. It definitely doesn't appear to say that you can only access locations that have a contract with the ISP, which is what SBC is appearantly trying to do.
Win2K's version of NTFS supports directory symbolic links, where a directory serves as a symbolic link to another directory on the computer.
How can it be considered a symbolic link if you can only link directories??
Unfortunately, Win2K comes with no tools for creating junctions
What good is a feature you can't use. That's just ridiculous.
Plus, 95%++ of the world's computers running Windows NT-based Operating Systems by now (e.g.-> NT/2000/XP/Server 2003)
Down from 99% 5 years ago
which run tons more hardwares than UNIX of any type does,
BS, very few pieces of PC hardware are completely unsupported by Linux. Plus, Linux has a much bigger foothold in the embedded market than Windows.
+ with more peripheral surrounding softwares for any imaginable purpose (thus, Win32 Os are far more ubiquitous + flexible)
'More peripheral surrounding software' is a very difficult statement to prove. There is more commercial windows software than Unix, but there are thousands, maybe millions of open source apps covering nearly ever imaginable purpose available and most of them are built for Linux.
It's more like just plain "link."
Actually that would be a 'hard link'.
For example, the gene that helps defend against malaria (and is prevelant amongst many of African origin) is the same gene that causes sickle-cell anaemia. The benefit probably outweighs the problem, but it shouldn't be assumed that there is "better", "worse", "above" and so on.
Does the benefit outweigh the problem. Here in the states we haven't had a malaria outbreak in years if ever, but sickle-cell anaemia is a problem. At one time resistance to malaria was a benefit and still is if you live in Africa. I think this is more a case of a trait that was good at one time and has now become negative due to environmental and cultural changes.
So you're saying that the iPod shouldn't have porn because it IS porn. That being the case I don't think anyone under 18 should be allowed to own an iPod.
They should hire George Romero to make a documentary.
Nah, perl is actually great. You just may be annoyed later in life when you have to declare variables, have to decide if you want an int or a float, or just generally create anything that needs to be maintainable and readable. I'd recommend using strict mode. It will help you write cleaner code and teach you some better habits.
I tried to turn him on to coding, but he went out and got Visual Studio, and went off on his own. He came back and proudly demonstrated his various creations.
Shoulda started with Perl. Everyone knows Perl is the best language for learning quality programming skills.
If you use Google you're not in an "buying mind". And then you have Amazon, an online store. I guess that's why.
Thing is, if I understand Google's goals correctly, they don't want to display the whole book online, they want to index the content to show in their search results - that way anyone in a 'buying mind' will be able to get a list of books that fit their topic. Bottom line is fair use is fair use. Either Amazon is violating copyrights, has an agreement with the publishers that allow them to show exerpts or they fall under the fair use provisions that Google claims they fall under.
Actually clock speeds really haven't done much in the last 2-3 years.
I'm not so sure about that. Speeds may have only increased from 3Ghz to 3.8Ghz in the last 1-2 years, but that's still a respectable 27% increase over a 1 year period. Of course you are right, the biggest increases have been with the multicore and 32-64 bit architecture changes. Clock speed may not be doubling every 18 months, but a 27% annual increase is nothing to sneeze at either.
Personally, I believe part of the reason we haven't seen a huge increase in clock speed is the lack of demand. Most people are finally satisfied with the performance their computer is giving and don't feel the need to upgrade constantly.
So why don't publishers go after Amazon in court??
Well yeah, to USE them... but if a person would just want to read about them a book is fine.
The information presented in it is freely available all over the web, often with more insightful examples, tutorials, etc. I just don't see the justification in spending x dollars on a book when a simple google search will yield a better result for free.
How am I supposed to curl up next to the fire with a google search, or go camping with a google search. I need the book so I can read it wherever I want, whenever I want.
When I first decided to play with Linux, many many moons ago, I think I bought the Walnut Creek CD-ROM of Slackware at Fry's or by mail order. I got a decent install up and running with XFree86 and a window manager. But it was very definitely a steep learning curve.
Keep in mind ALL of the distros have come a long way since the old Walnut Creek CDs. Back in the day Red Hat was no picnic to install. I'm sure a Slackware install is more difficult than Linspire, but the 10.x versions are really not that hard to install. Most common tools are included, and many of the ones that aren't can be downloaded from linuxpackages.net.
That said, there can still be challenges. Hardware configurations are the primary obstacle I sometimes have difficulty getting around, especially for X. That said, I am writing this from a Slackware desktop, I run a Slackware desktop at home and have three testing machines at work running VMware under a Slackware desktop.
They're married and get it on regularly (it seems), but the only conflict that I've seen them have is that he sometimes gets jealous of the relationship between his wife and the captain, and she wants a kid but he doesn't.
You should put that all in the past tense, Wash was tragically killed by the Revers.
What I want to know is how do I get a job making replica mechanical limbs for 'science'?
Music isn't the same as books. Music already required a device and power source to play it, even before MP3.
No, music isn't the same as books, but the written word is much like musical compositions. Books have not always been portable. They used to be written on stone tablets, papyrus scrolls, etc... Back in 1455 a guy named Gutenberg invented a thing called a printing press. It wasn't until then that books became portable. What we know as a book is just a type of media for the written word. As soon as a better device (more durable, lighter, cheaper, etc...) comes along books will disappear.
You are very correct, Mr. AC, in stating that there is no adequate electronic device for storing what is now stored on paper, although I disagree with your examples. We don't need something that can drop off a cliff or be taken into a combat zone. What we need is something that is pleasant to read, provides an adequate sized page and doesn't hurt the eyes to look at. Once we have that we can start worrying about durability.
I, for one, welcome our new American overlords...