Chat clients, especially Skype can bring more productive collaboration when used appropriately. How many times did you call some coworker just to find out they're in a meeting? How many times did you answer the phone for some absolutely irrelevant questions while you had urgent work to finish? How many times did you have to arrange a conference call with more than three individuals? How many times did you have a low-priority question that surely needed an answer in the next few hours but was not pressing enough to disturb anyone right with a phone call? - That's the times you need a chat software with the incoming message sound disabled.
Media players and a pair of headphones: major productivity bonus at times. Especially when you have half a million employees in cubicles around you talking on the phone. Think of that "corporate accounts payable" from Office Space - no one would've gone crazy with some soothing music, right?
RSS: network security updates, current media topics may benefit your employer or you. They may also bring a decrease in useless websurfing while nothing new actually happened. Site updates and corporate IT can use RSS for their own good, replacing or enhancing message boards.
Weather update notifiers: take the bike to work and you need one, trust me. Productivity bonus for not getting a cold by escaping that upcoming rain.
Games: increases morale by building teams and informal friendships when used after work. Stumbling upon them during the day acts as an early warning indicator that your HR team or your staff have some serious issues. Productivity increase by making an example of the caught employee. Just kindding:)
Software for personal devices (iTunes etc): music, see above. Or sync the work schedule with a mobile device that the employee carries with them. Productivity increase through less missed deadlines and appointments.
--- Personal freedom and economic productivity come together and leave together. Toiling slaves will take a nap the instant you look away while content workers will stay overtime when solving an interesting problem or the company has an immediate need. The good and the best employees are voluntarily with your company, anyways. And do you want the better share of employees or those that stay there because they have to (and will not get anything anywhere else)?
What if I don't want to paint all my LED-bearing indicators with an ugly black stripe? That may be great at night but an abomination by nasty by daylight. And then again, even laptop manufacturers well-known for not following the abominable blue-lights-and-phony-silver design craze (Lenovo...) is going for blue lit power buttons right now. I can't tell you how disappointed I am, but the sharpie/masking tape solution obviously won't work on a power button.
And there are equipment manufactures out there that put a diode of epic blue-laser-proportions beneath every damn button. I certainly remember an offensive DVD player at a friend's house that severely distracted from watching the TV screen with no less than five bright blue lights, one of them strobing all the time. Each movie looked like the "Battling Seizure Robots" unless someone put a DVD case in front of it. And even then the whole cabinet was flashing wildly by scattered light from these diodes...
The design of this DVD player made me believe there are manufacturers in East Asia that really try to take over the West, literally, I swear. The design of this unit was hideously perfect, second only to a nuclear blast in underlying brainpower and evil beauty:
- all important buttons were glassy transparent with the laser diode beneath, shining directly into your eyes when the DVD player is placed below the TV - the currently active function BLINKS incessantly. And yes, STOP is considered a function:) - all function symbols were printed ON the button and the buttons were otherwise identical. The printing was done from behind and they were not arranged in a logical manner, so you would have no tactile or logical clue after covering them with a Sharpie. - the front plate was recessed at each button's location with each button having a T-shaped cross section, making it next to impossible to paint all light emitting plastic. - covering them with masking tape was prevented because these buttons were also sticking out a few millimetres from the unit, emitting light to their sides. - putting a DVD case in front was prevented by knobs and design "features" sticking out from the front plate, so a gap one centimeter wide was always there, allowing the Seizure Robot's lasers to emanate from the sides. Even when placed *behind* the couch *and* blocked by a DVD case it was enough to light up the room in seizure-friendly blue strobes.
A thick dark woolen blanket finally put an end to the Blofeld's plans for world domination and his Seizure Robot when the unit thankfully died from a sudden case of severe overheating some months later.
HDD activity indicators are great when logging into a machine you're not directly in front of, be it a remote desktop or KVM switched. Especially swap trashing or scheduled virus scans can slow down the entire system with barely visible symptoms in cpu utilization in taskmgr or top. They leave a remote operator with only faint clues on why the machine is so damn slow right now, as the CPU load is negligible and caused only by processes that run all the time anyway.
It's a boon when you do support on a client machine of unknown horsepower, a rotting Windows installation or fragmented filesystem. You remotely started a program, say Outlook, a typical offender, five minutes ago and you don't see any operational window yet. System load for OUTLOOK.EXE is almost nil. How do you tell if it has crashed or is just starving for HD access without looing at the HDD light?
- targets at random: the IDF will pick targets of opportunity, but not random. They usually do not target civilians as their main objective. They are not squeamish about collateral damage, that accusation is right. But they are using precision weapons with immense unit costs to increase the chances of hitting the intended target and they do not fire blindly, letting weapon impacts happen by chance. US-Troops are much more selective about hitting civilians, and they too use the most expensive precision weapons to ensure an impact on the intented targets. These weapons fail sometimes or mistakes in target identification occur, resulting in dead or wounded civilians. - But as tragic as civilian victims are, they are the result of accidents and not of a deliberate act of violence.
+ contrast: Hamas is firing unguided mortars over the border and the Muqtadar army is bombing crowded markets. Their intended targets are loosely defined as "people of the opposing side", which can be US Troops, IDF Troops, but Shiite, Sunnite or Jewish civilians depending on the belief of the terrorists. The Muqtadar army in Iraq is at least trying to target regular soldiers with their remote-controlled IEDs - Hamas on the other hand fires unguided munitions every day with almost no hope of ever hitting a military target, but regularly hitting civilian homes. And that killing spree in a Jewish school was not a military operation at all, but the intended objective was killing as much civilians as possible.
- which brings us to "picks targets of no strategic value": IDF targets Hamas leaders and accepts civilian casualties surrounding that. Despicable, but not terrorism, as the prime target is of strategic value. Hamas targets, ehm, school children and civilian homes in Sderot. Insurgents in Iraq bomb crowded markets just because of the number of people that congregate there. Even more despicable AND terrorism by definition. School children and traders on a market carry no strategic value.
- concerning friendly casualties as part of the battle plan: the IDF has its barracks clearly defined, as have the US Troops. Minimizing friendly casualties are their prime objective and the reason for most of them joining their armies.
+ contrast: Hamas is firing their mortars from the roof of regular homes, retaliation and counter-battery fire *will* therefore will hit a civilian home and they know that. Hizbollah was firing unguided rockets (targets at random again) from urban areas instead of open ground. After firing they retreated into garages under inhabited buildings - counter-fire then hit the buildings and the people inside who were suddenly 100 percent pure civilians. Despicable and textbook terrorism.
- always disguised as civilians: clear call, as almost all soldiers of the West use clearly defined uniforms, openly show flags, national identification emblems and their weapon. This is what the Geneva convention calls "combatants". The other side, well, except for their publicized leaders, one might never know if they are just a civilian working in a bakery or killing infidels for a living.
- central command structures a joke: regular troops are harshly reprimanded when straying from their objective, even when no ceasefire exists. Collateral damage and civilian casualties can lead to war tribunals against them even when they hit the intended target
+ in contrast, well, a cease-fire brokered with Palestinian authorities may or may not apply to the individual Mujahid. And even if individual soldiers break a formal cease fire agreement, they will still be celebrated when a larger target was hit, civilian or not. The Muqtadar army on the other hand adhered to a cease-fire with the Coalition troops in Iraq for quite some time.
As with all things in life, there's no black and white but a large gamut of light and dark grays. Summing up the points to a "terrorism percentage", Hamas is worse than the Iraqi insurgents, who are worse than the IDF, which are in turn worse than most US Troops.
Terrorists are unlawful combatants trying to reach their goal through guerilla warfare, scare tactics and generally inducing fear among their enemies. Their main weapon is not the mortar, IED or Kalashnikov, but fear arising from the fact that they could (and will) attack anybody, anywhere and at any moment. Their strategy of reaching victory is sympathy or war fatigue of the general populace, pressing their leaders to make concessions right away or after - more often than not provoked - "moral outrages" when regular troops commit some serious wrongs, intentional or not. This can and will happen, when regular troops are put under enormous uncertainties concerning the hostiliy of any given individual by dissolving among the general public. It's rationale is the assumption that if anybody *could* be an enemy, sooner or later *someone* shoots at anybody. This either fosters support for the terrorist cause, because the regular trooops are losing their moral advante OR it fosters the general fear among the enemy, increasing the chances for further "outrageous incidents". Their ultimate victory is when all opposing forces unilaterally abandon disputed assets as it is happening in "land for peace" or as it finally happened in Vietnam 1968.
When the public views regular troops of their side as morally equivalent to "the terrorists", they are more than halfway done. The public then regularly forgets the sequence of action and reaction and more often than not regards wrongdoings by "the good guys" with standards that are orders of magnitudes higher than those applicable for "the bad guys". A good example of this false moral equivalence would be any incident, where a police officer would be publicly scalded for shooting a robber "armed with only a toy gun", totally neglecting the cause of action/reaction, the uncertainty of any given situation and the urgency in which extremely important decisions have to be made and carried out.
That said, terrorist fighters are distinguishable from non-terrorist combatants by several key facts: - they are usually under no central leadership: every cell acts more or less alone. Cease fires and agreements cannot be brokered without involving each and every single cell leader. - command structures are informal and loose. And agreements reached with the top leadership may or may not reach the foot soldiers. Orders from upper commands may not be followed, soldiers disobeying upper command orders are not punished, soldiers committing war crimes may never be identified. - staging grounds and homebases are usually perfectly blended with purely civilian assets. And attempts to attack these carries a high risk of collateral damage and the commitment of "wrongs" as described above. Figuratively speaking, the ideal terrorist homebase would also be a religiously-founded daycare facility for homeless, disabled children and infants. - attack targets are picked out of opportunity, not out of strategic reasoning. Any and all things can be targeted, as long as the moral impact is big enough. - a terrorist may or may not carry any uniform or sign of dependency. He will turn into a soldier the moment you look away and instantly revert to a civilian when he drops the Kalashnikov after running around the corner of a building. Killed terrorists can be masqueraded back to a real civilian with now-widowed wife and several kids within seconds.
Compared to a regular army, this yields five key determinants of a terrorist:
- will pick targets apparently at random - targets with absolutely no military or strategic values are attacked with full force - friendly civilian casualties are part of the battle plan - always disguised as a civilian - central command structures, guidelines and rules are flexible, nonexistent or a joke
If you still fail to accurately distinguish a Palestinian fighter from a soldier of the Israeli Defense Force, feel free to plan a week-long holiday in Jerusalem for a more hands-on experience.
Not only that, but it would create an atmosphere within the game that is lightyears beyond the current standards. Everyone improves graphic quality and almost nobody cares about the gameplay mechanics.
But the suspension of disbelief is what makes us enjoy most forms of screen entertainment - when it is strained too much, the game or movie is collapsing to a moving set of pixels and its "magic" suffers.
This is so ridiculous in so many games. I mean, you have that ultra modern main battle tank rolling along at full speed over open flat terrain - and ONE lousy palm tree is all it takes to stop it cold. Or you have that evil sniper hidden in the church tower who planted mines all over the entrance. You may have the whole army at your disposal, but no, that church tower won't go down under any circumstances. Take off and nuke the site from orbit? No way to be sure, because your opponent can simply hide behind a wooden fence and not get hurt by whatever force you're throwing at him.
I'm not advocating ultra-realistic gameplay, but I do like to have more real environments and less a static rodent's lab course to run through. And it's just a shabby game when small wooden boxes shield from nuclear blasts and tiny palm trees stop tanks on full speed. But no, they create another WW2 shooter with improved graphics. Maybe I've just gotten grumpy from all those kids trampling on my lawn...
You have not seen a single jewish or christian person to speak up against Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo or Jenin?
You surely have to get out of that basement more often. And the people upmodding you as well, come on, be real and don't fall for the rhetoric figure of "The Strawman". Facts are this
- there are few to no events done by "The West" that no Westerner complained about. - most controversial events in "The West" has thousands of protesters, usually on both sides
- there are almost no events done by "The Ummah" where Muslims complained about. - most controversial events happening in "The Ummah" draw no protesters and/or heavy persecution of those that would protest.
That someone found an outrageous piece of written garbage that no protesters rallied against is pretty amusing, but not indicative of usual procedures in "The West". First, it's paper, and paper doesn't blush. Then, "some people from country A do X" is much weaker than "almost all people from country B do X".
So, you finally found out that we "Westerners" are not perfect. Big deal. I have another idea: if you "Muslims" stop the violence, we stop our evil press releases and our incredibly evil Mohammed cartoons. Stop killing people and we will stop calling you violent. How's that?
We had absolutely massive demonstrations against the Vietnam war and against the Iraq war, in the US and in Europe. Participation in the Iraq war was the primary reason a number of European governments were voted down in the following elections. The Vietnam war was the reason for a regime change in the US and a pretty thorough turnaround in US foreign policy in the 1970s.
Same in Israel, as there were thousands of protesters against extreme zionism and against building any more settlement outside the Green Line.
The only muslim country that ever saw mass demonstrations against islam was Turkey, but even there an overwhelming majority elected Erdogan and his theistic party, the AKP. All other muslim countries not only remained silent on 9-11 and similar events, but actively celebrated.
Standards for weight, measures, electrical power and the hundred others you mention are pretty easy to define - especially when compared to developing a new ultra-high density optical medium.
"How much is in a kilogram" is an axiomatic definition that could be set to any arbitrary value of "X bazillion carbon atoms", but someone with enough power has to set one value and enforce that. A shipping container is not much different: any value for XYZ-dimensions and max weight is fine, as long as everyone is using it. These are situations, where autocratic definitions are actually beneficial for all.
And then there's the technical standards, like PAL and NTSC, that are so much more than a simple definition problem. And there we have it all again:
NTSC was developed by the US National Television Systems Committee, hence the name. PAL was developed by a German company in the 1960s and only later declared as an official standard.
And let me compare the development of NTSC to PAL, courtesy of Wikipedia:
- the NTSC was established in 1940 to consolidate conflicting standards (just like BluRay/HDDVD today, I might add) - the requirements for the future format were jacked up, technical development began. - 1950, TEN FULL YEARS later, the committee met again, with no result - 1950, the FCC - the agency that originally founded the NTSC - declared another standard as THE standard. - 1953, THREE FULL YEARS later, the committee was able to reach a decision for the NTSC Standard - 1953, the FCC changed its decision and adopted the NTSC standard.
Result: - every kid knows not the original name for NTSC, but the funny acronym Never The Same Color, because this technology has some serious drawbacks concerning color reproduction.
Contrasted to PAL: - developed in 1962 by a private company to counter the bad color quality of NTSC - first working prototypes in 1963 - between 1963 and 1967 standards for the European Union were set - 1967, only five years later, public broadcast in this format started
Result: - a picture quality that was accepted by most viewers until digital TV became available 40 years later.
See the difference? PAL was developed by no-one-knows today, a German company that was defunct decades ago. Accepted as-is, brought in use, end of story. NTSC was the typical governmental work, quabbling, disputing, lobbying, re-specification, re-development and has taken almost 15 years to finally be rolled out to the general public. NTSC probably cost millions of taxpayer dollars, PAL almost none, and was still technically inferior.
I'm not saying this has anything to do with Europe vs. USA; any European Official Standards Body (tm) would have made exactly the same mistakes the NTSC had made. It is just a perfect contrast between private and state funded development: the private investor will reach a conclusion some day or goes broke, and that's a good thing. A governmental body can ponder on a subject for decades without any real result and almost no one cares.
Let the government do what it can do best: placing authoritarian weight behind a decision, because at most times any decision is better than no decision. But keep the bureaucrats out of the labs that actually work on something, they would waste money there AND spoil the results.
Now imagine a state-run bureaucracy had to develop an optical storage medium. Just. Imagine.
Ideas for the state-sponsored requirements: - archival grade 100 years at room temperature - compatible with all existing hardware sitting *somewhere* in the offices in some backwater county office - mil-spec version available and compatible with all other equipment - export restriction to everywhere outside North America. - support for people with all kinds of disabilities including but not limited to complete acephalia and worse. - complete control over privately created media or at least the ability to track yet-unspecified *offenders* (think of the children!) - fair bidding procedure, following a strict rule involving not more than 5 different three-letter agencies - the procedure must be rigged so that the company of a member of the currently ruling party wins - development cycle must take less than thirty years to complete - a 50-percent price increase by the government-licensed contractor is only allowed three times during that period - developing contractor can employ the Army and Some Other Agency to guard their offices. Operating somewhere in the desert on a base that does not appear on any map and is blocked from Google Earth is acceptable.
The perks: - if the product fails, you can still bill the Government - if the product succeeds, the taxpayer will pay you, if they like or even ever heard of your product or not - if the product succeeds, the Government will buy equipment from you for a hundred years and *then* upgrade their remaining legacy stuff anyway.
The dangers: - if the incumbent loses the next election, you're history as well. - your work is too good. Somehow your leading researchers are changing to Some Federal Research Agency or disappearing otherwise.
You are right, blocking specific protocols, ports or adresses is stupid and in some cases bordering on criminally insane. Looking at the internet traffic of any given node and then deciding what to do with it other than relaying it according to defined, mutually agreed-upon principles would at best be classified as a breach of privacy.
Metered Internet is not what I've got in mind. But we are clearly reaching a point where it is becoming increasingly dangerous to market 16MBit connections to home users. People that have no clue about that there is an Internet outside their Internet Explorer are becoming huge bandwidth hogs just like the pirates and everyone else. And sometime in the future, the ISPs will have to do something about it and hopefully do it wisely as not to kill off innovation.
But we have long lived with huge oversubscription factored in and all these newbie-friendly high-bandwidth applications are bringing that model to its knees. Billing by gigabytes transferred is not the answer but neither is billing by maximum bandwidth. And we cannot possibly introduce end customers to load profile based metering.
But now we are in a situation, where there is so much installed bandwidth at the last mile, that sheeple using Internet Explorer and an unpatched Windows could theoretically cause some serious havoc. Together with a for-free expectation we all have concerning the Int0rweb we have a serious challenge for our ISPs. You could go the route to economic-101 and bring us things like risk transfer, commodity spot markets or talk about a entrepreneural risk as the basis for a legitimation for profits - but then again our ISPs are huge telcos that are used to have a certain amount of power or as others say iron yoke over customers.
Furthermore, a gigabyte trickled over the course of a day means almost zero costs while a gigabyte bursted in two seconds is significantly more. For the traditional grid-based services like oil, power and gas, every unit consumed counts and it's cheaper to measure than to manufacture, but this approach will not work for data. The metering cost can actually exceed the metered costs and this would be silly to pursue. Additionally, the metered unit, the Gigabyte, doesn't equal an actual resource consumption like a kilowatthour or a barrel of oil, because it's opportunity cost depends on the current router workload.
But then, load profiles like cheap weekends and expensive afternoons are a royal pain in the behind, so I am really really glad I do not have to come up with a pricing model suitable for mom and pop that still satisfies basic economic principles, the Shareholder and the telco's PHB:)
Executive summary: it may be interesting but also irrelevant what our ISP does internally. A contract is a contract and if they market unmetered X megabits per second, they have to deliver on that contract, no questions asked. I understand that things get scary when every customer draws out their connection to the max, but that's life as an entrepreneur. If their business plan involves sheeple customers or broken contracts, they better get some overpaid consultants to devise another...:)
With grid-borne services and goods (electricity, bandwidth, phone, in some areas natural gas and oil) you have two factors of the cost: capacity and volume. For energy, this means capacity in kilowatts, volume in kilowatthours. For bandwidth this is bitrate and traffic volume.
Both cost factors have to be paid for by the actual user, if the system was fair, leading to a price composed by X capacity and Y volume units used per period.
And then the real world kicks in. As in capitalism, up-stream and expensive infrastructure.
First: - a cheaper provider will attract more customers - the demand each node places on the grid is highly variable and may or may not stochastically predictable, but any single node could switch to full demand at any given time - establishing and maintaining infrastructure is expensive - the maximum capacity of each node may be used rarely, but it WILL be used sometimes. And when that happens, full capacity usually matters a lot to the node's owner. - idle capacity is almost as expensive as capacity at full load - multi-tiered backbone-type networks dominate the market for grid-borne services - installing small capacities is cheap, but large installed capacities get exponentially more expensive and prohibitively expensive past a certain point
Second round of arguments: - economies of anti-scale dominate the capacity market: doubling the installed capacity usually means four times the cost. - overselling capacity means more users sharing the infrastructure cost - more users produce much more predictable node usage (dubbed the "portfolio effect", ref. "stochastics of large numbers") - predictable load usage means less underutilized investments - less underutilized investments mean higher profits, lower costs, lower overall resource consumption.
Conclusion: - installing a large maximum capacity in "last mile" uplinks to every single node is cheap beneficial to the node's user - overselling backbone capacity is a wise choice, for the provider, for the customers and for the overall economy - it is stupid to install incredible backbone capacity (the expensive one) just to have it sitting at idle for months if it is not a piece of utmost importance - few are willing to bear the costs incurred by having a "full" capacity node with a full capacity connection going upstream to most major interconnection points. NASA and the DoD are, but almost no one else. And for good reason
Therefore, "heuristic" providers that take advantage of stochastic load profiles and statistical node demand aggregation will probably outperform "dumb" providers installing backbones always the size of the aggregate maximum capacity of all nodes combined.
The idea probably lies behind the simple fact that humans cannot fathom pure randomness. What people sense as random can be or cannot be, the same holds true for things that are absolutey deterministic.
Example: try writing down a random string of numbers. And then analyse it with a computer.
You will have *trends* in there, you will have uneven distributions in there, you will have a certain favorite number and repeating sequences as well. No matter how hard you try, your brain cannot do random. This mode of operation is not supported on Human Brain 1.0 and we have instead a pseudo-random number generator that is worse than that of Windows 1.0
Explanation: your goal is to make random numbers in this experiment. Your brain therefore makes a feedback loop to see if it attains that goal - and this feedback loop makes this attempt futile. Without the feedback loop, your brain couldn't do anything and with it it will overcompensate for every randomness you actually achieve.
That is a homegrown explanation and I've made it up on the spot right now. But try it sometimes and you'll see what happens: your brain will record the past few numbers in memory and you can not unremember them. Maybe Shaolin monks can, but you and me cannot actively unremember anything. Then your brain will try to *even* the distribution out, because it assumes randomness = even distribution. If you were writing down an uneven distribution, you wouldn't be any random at all, so you have to concentrate on having a flat histogram.
And then you compensate by writing down numbers that you think you didn't choose for a while. And that's where the patterns come into play. Depending on your attention, mood, character and personality, you will choose alternating centers (low numbers/high numbers), hopping patterns (1-9-2-8 and so on) or simple intermittend sequences (1-3-5-6) because each make tracking even distributions easier and therefore trick your brain into thinking it achieved its goal of randomness. Depending on your attention you will even have one or more favorite numbers that clearly stand out during long sequences.
Analyse that number rows and there will be repeating patterns, covariances and data clumps all over the place.
And that was only 10 possible numbers with no other constraints and (almost) no emotional connotations. And now imagine planning terrorist attacks risking your life, assuming an enemy and incredibly strong personal preferences for location, means and time.
First and foremost: because other idiots do some things, it's still idiotic to do the same.
We laugh at rednecks and gangbangers for a reason and that's not just because of their funny music. A black American that would kill someone for mocking Martin Lt King would have the mentioned Mr. King spinning in his grave. On a high rpm, that's for sure.
Second:
I spoke of "able-bodied muslims within hearing range" and meant the whole world including my hometown here in Europe. We have laws of free speech here as well, but said able-bodied muslims WILL do something to suppress mine, even if it means committing a serious or capital offense on me.
I didn't talk about backward countries like Iran and Saudi-Arabia, but somewhere sane where Western laws are in effect. Will that stop violent Muslims from killing heretics?
If you could only ask Mr. van Gogh of the Netherlands.
Different countries have different laws, but able-bodies Muslims will strictly enforce them in THEIR country, but would without hesitation BREAK them in MY country to silence "heretics" and critics.
"Do as the romans do" would be a nice thing to do, as I will surely not drink alcohol and mock Mohammed while on a visit to Iran. It would be nice if Muslims in the Western world would do the same and stopped harassing Wikipedia.
First: there are white muslims and there have been white islamic terrorists. No matter how rare they may be, they could still get a case of sudden jihad going.
Second: Latinos, Hindus, Africans, Afro-Americans, Asians and descendants of some combination thereof pose no risk to air travel. No more than any other guy/gal getting drunk and then trying to stab the pilot, as seen on today's headlines. Unless these people are also islamic, the risk of them being terrorists is about the same as any other non-islamic person: near zero (unless they believe in that Nazi thing, which makes them fail the Jewish Prayer Test, anyway)
Terrorism is a mindset, albeit a twisted and illogic one. Don't portray antipathy against terrorism or muslims as hatred against non-whites. This worldwide dislike is directed only against Muslims, because there's terrorism, bloodshed and violence everywhere they live and most nations are simply fed up with them, no matter if they actually do jihad or just dream of doing it. Until there's a tornado of those elusive moderate muslims coming forward and punishing the violent idiots among them it should be safe to assume a tacit approval of their actions.
In Germany, you could do whatever you want - as long as your crime is non-physical and you don't resist law enforcement or do something physical AND stupid, they won't get physical on you.
I mean, there was that kidnapper who would simply not reveal the location where he held his victim hostage. He was in custody for more than a week, but he just would not tell authorities were to search for the hostage. One policeman beat him up Jack Bauer style until he revealed where he hid his hostage. When police arrived there, the hostage had already starved to death. And contrary to what you expect, the local Jack Bauer officer got a sentence on probation, the kidnapper was let go because of police brutality and the big newspapers were swarming with angry comments against torture in any case.
That was a situation where I would have gladly resorted to the Jack Bauer method of interrogation, but the German cops will sure as hell not do it again.
Airline security could reasonably well be reengineered to having the travellers eat a 50g piece of pork each AND having to say a Jewish prayer. Those who do both fly on plane A (ex: "United Airlines"), those who reject the pork but not the singing get plane A or if they want a separate B (ex: "El Al") and those that reject both get plance C (ex: "Air Arabia"). The only problem is with those who eat pork but reject Jewish singing, it could be religious zealots or nazis, but maybe that's a last risk impossible to remove.
Anyway, the biggest problem is solved. Just check the baggage with an explosive detector and you're ready to fly. -Muslims with pork in their stomachs will never blow themselves up, because their perceived afterlife would be hell. Dito with having prayed to another God than Allah just a few minutes ago. -Everyone else is able to consume a small amount pizza or bacon. Vegetarians must take one for the team here. -NO muslims aboard or ONLY muslims aboard mean 100% safety from terrorism, as there's no infidel to punish *or* no mujahid to do it. -Because the jews also don't eat pork it's not so easy to discriminate between religious people "safe" or "unsafe" for airborne transport, but the Jewish prayers has the advantage of keeping Nazis and religious zealots of other colors out of the Jewish planes.
Oh and please don't tell me it is unfair slander (or libel, I just can't tell them apart) to accuse Muslims of blowing up planes. I know there are peaceful Muslims and lots of 'em, but on the other hand all people that actually DID blow up a plane claimed to be followers of Islam, so I think it's safe to discriminate here. Only a few Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are... ah you know the deal.
Anyway, Muslims may need to be further placed onto different Shia, Sunnite, Alevite or "Other" airlines, as some people of each group consider all other groups to be infidels that need to be killed as well, but that's a story for another day. I'd just enjoy my bacon, a funny "prayer" and the priceless warmth of peace above the clouds.
I am from Europe, but the blame-America-first crowd annoys the hell out of me, to be honest.
Come on, don't portray things as equal that are obviously not.
It is not the same to "forbid denying the holocaust by law" or "killing people the worst imaginable way for laughing at the Koran", no no and no.
-The first is an actual tragedy from not-too-long ago, the other is just some paper with ink on it. -The first is an offense punishable by law, yielding a monetary fine or at worst a sentence on probation, the second means instant death or being a fugitive for the rest of your life, just ask Mr. Salman Rushdie. -The first is gets the most severe punishment only in France and Germany and is over after a few years. The second will follow you everywhere, just ask Mrs. Ayaan Hirsi Ali. -The first can easily be avoided: just don't mention the holocaust and you'll be fine. It's over for sixty years, anyway. The second is hard to avoid because there's a clash of cultures raging around the world that could emerge into a third world war, if you haven't noticed. Oh, and the Koran isn't laughable, it's sad, just read it if you have the time.
The principle is the same, prosecuting people over the denying of an idea. But everything else is totally utterly incomparable in severity and proportion.
You can show the Hitler sign on any German marketplace and publicly deny the holocaust and passer-bys will show you the finger and call the police. Then two friendly-but-serious German officer will come to handcuff you, take your name, put you in jail for two days, release you on bail until the trial.
Now imagine what happened if you publicly mocked Mohammed when there are able-bodied muslim males in the vicinity. Just. Imagine.
Oh and if you mess up, everyone you know will suffer, too. And that means you, your family, your country, the embassies of your country and all well-known corporations and brand names from your country as well.
The Supreme Court has at least a democratic root from which the Judges are nominated.
Oh and it's not THAT bad, as the majority of states still voted for Bush jr. and the tie following the accepted course of elections was a very close one. You could argue it is not fair to follow arbitrary rules and not obeying the pure head count in a nationwide election, but so are the rules and the Democrats agreed to them many times before and only challenged them when it was too late (and not ever since).
It doesn't matter if Bush was hated by so many, there were just extreme contrasts. That and an electorate so close to legal equilibrium is the highest strain possible to a democratic system. I'm content the US of A held up so well and is now on its way to a new and hopefully more clear election result.
Other states descended into anarchy, just look at Kenia right now. The USA didn't suffer that much when compared to this.
Not only that, but the unelected asshats even get to decide *who* can be voted into the democratic half.
So the only half Iranians get to vote on is already pre-selected by the aforementioned asshats. As that list probably contains only friends of asshats, they're likely be asshats as well. So in fact, unelected asshats vote for candidates and Iranians just decide whose face is prettier.
The correct term for that is "Hobson's Choice", I believe.
You're joking but you're close to the truth. Cue the car example:
How many times have said or heard people saying "ouch!" when they were driving through an unexpected pothole?
When you're driving, do you "feel" the conditions of the road? Ice, even if it is invisible, just because it feels "different" on hands and your posterior?
Remember the old ball-type mice, that accumulated dirt in their mechanics and stopped functioning when not regularly cleaned? What was that feeling you had when one mouse axis suddenly stopped responding? I certainly remember some awkward seconds when this happened and that it always took a not-so-small time before the conscious brain recognized the problem.
Try making a screenshot of a dialog window (one with OK and Cancel on it works best), open that in a view-only application (one that doesnt zoom in or manipulate the image when you left-click anywhere on the picture), maximize that window so that the screenshot you took looks like the real thing. Then leave the room for a cup of coffee. When you come back, you *will* click the fake "OK"-Button at first and feel awkward for half a second until you remember.
Yeah, as if the Michigan Militia is going to cut your head off for laughing about one of their idols while shouting allahu ackbar and dancing with the AKs.
They are both citing some important books while doing their thing, but that doesn't make both actions equal. Fighting for individual freedom is entirely different than fighting to kill infidels.
And by "individual freedom" I explicitly exclude "the freedom to oppress my neighbors and others", "the freedom to kill unveiled women", "the freedom to behead infidels" or "the freedom to build a totalitarian state where everyone must obey the orders of my goddamn holy book".
Now mark me flamebait, if you have to, but merely because two actions are performed the same way they are not morally or otherwise equivalent: intent, outcome and collateral effects make the difference between the police and the mob.
Your point on the data channel is valid, but the "expensive" store-and-forward architecture is not.
Compare it to traditional email: hundreds of companies offer store-and-forward services, with *gigabytes* of data retained for *months* for free or orders of magnitudes more for prices below 5 EUR or USD per month.
It is true that SMS calls have an unusually high impact on a phone cell and therefore needs to have a marginal cost high enough to keep supply and demand in check at the very least and at max the price the market will bear.
Slashdot Mirror
Chat clients, especially Skype can bring more productive collaboration when used appropriately. How many times did you call some coworker just to find out they're in a meeting? How many times did you answer the phone for some absolutely irrelevant questions while you had urgent work to finish? How many times did you have to arrange a conference call with more than three individuals? How many times did you have a low-priority question that surely needed an answer in the next few hours but was not pressing enough to disturb anyone right with a phone call? - That's the times you need a chat software with the incoming message sound disabled.
:)
Media players and a pair of headphones: major productivity bonus at times. Especially when you have half a million employees in cubicles around you talking on the phone. Think of that "corporate accounts payable" from Office Space - no one would've gone crazy with some soothing music, right?
RSS: network security updates, current media topics may benefit your employer or you. They may also bring a decrease in useless websurfing while nothing new actually happened. Site updates and corporate IT can use RSS for their own good, replacing or enhancing message boards.
Weather update notifiers: take the bike to work and you need one, trust me. Productivity bonus for not getting a cold by escaping that upcoming rain.
Games: increases morale by building teams and informal friendships when used after work. Stumbling upon them during the day acts as an early warning indicator that your HR team or your staff have some serious issues. Productivity increase by making an example of the caught employee. Just kindding
Software for personal devices (iTunes etc): music, see above. Or sync the work schedule with a mobile device that the employee carries with them. Productivity increase through less missed deadlines and appointments.
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Personal freedom and economic productivity come together and leave together. Toiling slaves will take a nap the instant you look away while content workers will stay overtime when solving an interesting problem or the company has an immediate need. The good and the best employees are voluntarily with your company, anyways. And do you want the better share of employees or those that stay there because they have to (and will not get anything anywhere else)?
Yep, that solved it. I'm ashamed that I missed this simple option, thanks a lot for pointing that out.
The other poster's solutions won't work on Windows and that's what my clients use, unfortunately.
What if I don't want to paint all my LED-bearing indicators with an ugly black stripe? That may be great at night but an abomination by nasty by daylight. And then again, even laptop manufacturers well-known for not following the abominable blue-lights-and-phony-silver design craze (Lenovo...) is going for blue lit power buttons right now. I can't tell you how disappointed I am, but the sharpie/masking tape solution obviously won't work on a power button.
:)
And there are equipment manufactures out there that put a diode of epic blue-laser-proportions beneath every damn button. I certainly remember an offensive DVD player at a friend's house that severely distracted from watching the TV screen with no less than five bright blue lights, one of them strobing all the time. Each movie looked like the "Battling Seizure Robots" unless someone put a DVD case in front of it. And even then the whole cabinet was flashing wildly by scattered light from these diodes...
The design of this DVD player made me believe there are manufacturers in East Asia that really try to take over the West, literally, I swear. The design of this unit was hideously perfect, second only to a nuclear blast in underlying brainpower and evil beauty:
- all important buttons were glassy transparent with the laser diode beneath, shining directly into your eyes when the DVD player is placed below the TV
- the currently active function BLINKS incessantly. And yes, STOP is considered a function
- all function symbols were printed ON the button and the buttons were otherwise identical. The printing was done from behind and they were not arranged in a logical manner, so you would have no tactile or logical clue after covering them with a Sharpie.
- the front plate was recessed at each button's location with each button having a T-shaped cross section, making it next to impossible to paint all light emitting plastic.
- covering them with masking tape was prevented because these buttons were also sticking out a few millimetres from the unit, emitting light to their sides.
- putting a DVD case in front was prevented by knobs and design "features" sticking out from the front plate, so a gap one centimeter wide was always there, allowing the Seizure Robot's lasers to emanate from the sides. Even when placed *behind* the couch *and* blocked by a DVD case it was enough to light up the room in seizure-friendly blue strobes.
A thick dark woolen blanket finally put an end to the Blofeld's plans for world domination and his Seizure Robot when the unit thankfully died from a sudden case of severe overheating some months later.
HDD activity indicators are great when logging into a machine you're not directly in front of, be it a remote desktop or KVM switched. Especially swap trashing or scheduled virus scans can slow down the entire system with barely visible symptoms in cpu utilization in taskmgr or top. They leave a remote operator with only faint clues on why the machine is so damn slow right now, as the CPU load is negligible and caused only by processes that run all the time anyway.
It's a boon when you do support on a client machine of unknown horsepower, a rotting Windows installation or fragmented filesystem. You remotely started a program, say Outlook, a typical offender, five minutes ago and you don't see any operational window yet. System load for OUTLOOK.EXE is almost nil. How do you tell if it has crashed or is just starving for HD access without looing at the HDD light?
Let's see:
- targets at random: the IDF will pick targets of opportunity, but not random. They usually do not target civilians as their main objective. They are not squeamish about collateral damage, that accusation is right. But they are using precision weapons with immense unit costs to increase the chances of hitting the intended target and they do not fire blindly, letting weapon impacts happen by chance. US-Troops are much more selective about hitting civilians, and they too use the most expensive precision weapons to ensure an impact on the intented targets. These weapons fail sometimes or mistakes in target identification occur, resulting in dead or wounded civilians. - But as tragic as civilian victims are, they are the result of accidents and not of a deliberate act of violence.
+ contrast: Hamas is firing unguided mortars over the border and the Muqtadar army is bombing crowded markets. Their intended targets are loosely defined as "people of the opposing side", which can be US Troops, IDF Troops, but Shiite, Sunnite or Jewish civilians depending on the belief of the terrorists. The Muqtadar army in Iraq is at least trying to target regular soldiers with their remote-controlled IEDs - Hamas on the other hand fires unguided munitions every day with almost no hope of ever hitting a military target, but regularly hitting civilian homes. And that killing spree in a Jewish school was not a military operation at all, but the intended objective was killing as much civilians as possible.
- which brings us to "picks targets of no strategic value": IDF targets Hamas leaders and accepts civilian casualties surrounding that. Despicable, but not terrorism, as the prime target is of strategic value. Hamas targets, ehm, school children and civilian homes in Sderot. Insurgents in Iraq bomb crowded markets just because of the number of people that congregate there. Even more despicable AND terrorism by definition. School children and traders on a market carry no strategic value.
- concerning friendly casualties as part of the battle plan: the IDF has its barracks clearly defined, as have the US Troops. Minimizing friendly casualties are their prime objective and the reason for most of them joining their armies.
+ contrast: Hamas is firing their mortars from the roof of regular homes, retaliation and counter-battery fire *will* therefore will hit a civilian home and they know that. Hizbollah was firing unguided rockets (targets at random again) from urban areas instead of open ground. After firing they retreated into garages under inhabited buildings - counter-fire then hit the buildings and the people inside who were suddenly 100 percent pure civilians. Despicable and textbook terrorism.
- always disguised as civilians: clear call, as almost all soldiers of the West use clearly defined uniforms, openly show flags, national identification emblems and their weapon. This is what the Geneva convention calls "combatants". The other side, well, except for their publicized leaders, one might never know if they are just a civilian working in a bakery or killing infidels for a living.
- central command structures a joke: regular troops are harshly reprimanded when straying from their objective, even when no ceasefire exists. Collateral damage and civilian casualties can lead to war tribunals against them even when they hit the intended target
+ in contrast, well, a cease-fire brokered with Palestinian authorities may or may not apply to the individual Mujahid. And even if individual soldiers break a formal cease fire agreement, they will still be celebrated when a larger target was hit, civilian or not. The Muqtadar army on the other hand adhered to a cease-fire with the Coalition troops in Iraq for quite some time.
As with all things in life, there's no black and white but a large gamut of light and dark grays. Summing up the points to a "terrorism percentage", Hamas is worse than the Iraqi insurgents, who are worse than the IDF, which are in turn worse than most US Troops.
Terrorists are unlawful combatants trying to reach their goal through guerilla warfare, scare tactics and generally inducing fear among their enemies. Their main weapon is not the mortar, IED or Kalashnikov, but fear arising from the fact that they could (and will) attack anybody, anywhere and at any moment. Their strategy of reaching victory is sympathy or war fatigue of the general populace, pressing their leaders to make concessions right away or after - more often than not provoked - "moral outrages" when regular troops commit some serious wrongs, intentional or not. This can and will happen, when regular troops are put under enormous uncertainties concerning the hostiliy of any given individual by dissolving among the general public. It's rationale is the assumption that if anybody *could* be an enemy, sooner or later *someone* shoots at anybody. This either fosters support for the terrorist cause, because the regular trooops are losing their moral advante OR it fosters the general fear among the enemy, increasing the chances for further "outrageous incidents". Their ultimate victory is when all opposing forces unilaterally abandon disputed assets as it is happening in "land for peace" or as it finally happened in Vietnam 1968.
When the public views regular troops of their side as morally equivalent to "the terrorists", they are more than halfway done. The public then regularly forgets the sequence of action and reaction and more often than not regards wrongdoings by "the good guys" with standards that are orders of magnitudes higher than those applicable for "the bad guys". A good example of this false moral equivalence would be any incident, where a police officer would be publicly scalded for shooting a robber "armed with only a toy gun", totally neglecting the cause of action/reaction, the uncertainty of any given situation and the urgency in which extremely important decisions have to be made and carried out.
That said, terrorist fighters are distinguishable from non-terrorist combatants by several key facts:
- they are usually under no central leadership: every cell acts more or less alone. Cease fires and agreements cannot be brokered without involving each and every single cell leader.
- command structures are informal and loose. And agreements reached with the top leadership may or may not reach the foot soldiers. Orders from upper commands may not be followed, soldiers disobeying upper command orders are not punished, soldiers committing war crimes may never be identified.
- staging grounds and homebases are usually perfectly blended with purely civilian assets. And attempts to attack these carries a high risk of collateral damage and the commitment of "wrongs" as described above. Figuratively speaking, the ideal terrorist homebase would also be a religiously-founded daycare facility for homeless, disabled children and infants.
- attack targets are picked out of opportunity, not out of strategic reasoning. Any and all things can be targeted, as long as the moral impact is big enough.
- a terrorist may or may not carry any uniform or sign of dependency. He will turn into a soldier the moment you look away and instantly revert to a civilian when he drops the Kalashnikov after running around the corner of a building. Killed terrorists can be masqueraded back to a real civilian with now-widowed wife and several kids within seconds.
Compared to a regular army, this yields five key determinants of a terrorist:
- will pick targets apparently at random
- targets with absolutely no military or strategic values are attacked with full force
- friendly civilian casualties are part of the battle plan
- always disguised as a civilian
- central command structures, guidelines and rules are flexible, nonexistent or a joke
If you still fail to accurately distinguish a Palestinian fighter from a soldier of the Israeli Defense Force, feel free to plan a week-long holiday in Jerusalem for a more hands-on experience.
Not only that, but it would create an atmosphere within the game that is lightyears beyond the current standards. Everyone improves graphic quality and almost nobody cares about the gameplay mechanics.
But the suspension of disbelief is what makes us enjoy most forms of screen entertainment - when it is strained too much, the game or movie is collapsing to a moving set of pixels and its "magic" suffers.
This is so ridiculous in so many games. I mean, you have that ultra modern main battle tank rolling along at full speed over open flat terrain - and ONE lousy palm tree is all it takes to stop it cold. Or you have that evil sniper hidden in the church tower who planted mines all over the entrance. You may have the whole army at your disposal, but no, that church tower won't go down under any circumstances. Take off and nuke the site from orbit? No way to be sure, because your opponent can simply hide behind a wooden fence and not get hurt by whatever force you're throwing at him.
I'm not advocating ultra-realistic gameplay, but I do like to have more real environments and less a static rodent's lab course to run through. And it's just a shabby game when small wooden boxes shield from nuclear blasts and tiny palm trees stop tanks on full speed. But no, they create another WW2 shooter with improved graphics. Maybe I've just gotten grumpy from all those kids trampling on my lawn...
You have not seen a single jewish or christian person to speak up against Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo or Jenin?
You surely have to get out of that basement more often. And the people upmodding you as well, come on, be real and don't fall for the rhetoric figure of "The Strawman". Facts are this
- there are few to no events done by "The West" that no Westerner complained about.
- most controversial events in "The West" has thousands of protesters, usually on both sides
- there are almost no events done by "The Ummah" where Muslims complained about.
- most controversial events happening in "The Ummah" draw no protesters and/or heavy persecution of those that would protest.
That someone found an outrageous piece of written garbage that no protesters rallied against is pretty amusing, but not indicative of usual procedures in "The West". First, it's paper, and paper doesn't blush. Then, "some people from country A do X" is much weaker than "almost all people from country B do X".
So, you finally found out that we "Westerners" are not perfect. Big deal. I have another idea: if you "Muslims" stop the violence, we stop our evil press releases and our incredibly evil Mohammed cartoons. Stop killing people and we will stop calling you violent. How's that?
Works fine through Arcor here in Germany. Snappy response and buffering OK.
:)
Maybe just a server hiccup or another submarine cable?
Moderated as troll and rightly so:
We had absolutely massive demonstrations against the Vietnam war and against the Iraq war, in the US and in Europe. Participation in the Iraq war was the primary reason a number of European governments were voted down in the following elections. The Vietnam war was the reason for a regime change in the US and a pretty thorough turnaround in US foreign policy in the 1970s.
Same in Israel, as there were thousands of protesters against extreme zionism and against building any more settlement outside the Green Line.
The only muslim country that ever saw mass demonstrations against islam was Turkey, but even there an overwhelming majority elected Erdogan and his theistic party, the AKP. All other muslim countries not only remained silent on 9-11 and similar events, but actively celebrated.
Standards for weight, measures, electrical power and the hundred others you mention are pretty easy to define - especially when compared to developing a new ultra-high density optical medium.
"How much is in a kilogram" is an axiomatic definition that could be set to any arbitrary value of "X bazillion carbon atoms", but someone with enough power has to set one value and enforce that. A shipping container is not much different: any value for XYZ-dimensions and max weight is fine, as long as everyone is using it. These are situations, where autocratic definitions are actually beneficial for all.
And then there's the technical standards, like PAL and NTSC, that are so much more than a simple definition problem. And there we have it all again:
NTSC was developed by the US National Television Systems Committee, hence the name. PAL was developed by a German company in the 1960s and only later declared as an official standard.
And let me compare the development of NTSC to PAL, courtesy of Wikipedia:
- the NTSC was established in 1940 to consolidate conflicting standards (just like BluRay/HDDVD today, I might add)
- the requirements for the future format were jacked up, technical development began.
- 1950, TEN FULL YEARS later, the committee met again, with no result
- 1950, the FCC - the agency that originally founded the NTSC - declared another standard as THE standard.
- 1953, THREE FULL YEARS later, the committee was able to reach a decision for the NTSC Standard
- 1953, the FCC changed its decision and adopted the NTSC standard.
Result:
- every kid knows not the original name for NTSC, but the funny acronym Never The Same Color, because this technology has some serious drawbacks concerning color reproduction.
Contrasted to PAL:
- developed in 1962 by a private company to counter the bad color quality of NTSC
- first working prototypes in 1963
- between 1963 and 1967 standards for the European Union were set
- 1967, only five years later, public broadcast in this format started
Result:
- a picture quality that was accepted by most viewers until digital TV became available 40 years later.
See the difference? PAL was developed by no-one-knows today, a German company that was defunct decades ago. Accepted as-is, brought in use, end of story. NTSC was the typical governmental work, quabbling, disputing, lobbying, re-specification, re-development and has taken almost 15 years to finally be rolled out to the general public. NTSC probably cost millions of taxpayer dollars, PAL almost none, and was still technically inferior.
I'm not saying this has anything to do with Europe vs. USA; any European Official Standards Body (tm) would have made exactly the same mistakes the NTSC had made. It is just a perfect contrast between private and state funded development: the private investor will reach a conclusion some day or goes broke, and that's a good thing. A governmental body can ponder on a subject for decades without any real result and almost no one cares.
Let the government do what it can do best: placing authoritarian weight behind a decision, because at most times any decision is better than no decision. But keep the bureaucrats out of the labs that actually work on something, they would waste money there AND spoil the results.
Now imagine a state-run bureaucracy had to develop an optical storage medium. Just. Imagine.
Ideas for the state-sponsored requirements:
- archival grade 100 years at room temperature
- compatible with all existing hardware sitting *somewhere* in the offices in some backwater county office
- mil-spec version available and compatible with all other equipment
- export restriction to everywhere outside North America.
- support for people with all kinds of disabilities including but not limited to complete acephalia and worse.
- complete control over privately created media or at least the ability to track yet-unspecified *offenders* (think of the children!)
- fair bidding procedure, following a strict rule involving not more than 5 different three-letter agencies
- the procedure must be rigged so that the company of a member of the currently ruling party wins
- development cycle must take less than thirty years to complete
- a 50-percent price increase by the government-licensed contractor is only allowed three times during that period
- developing contractor can employ the Army and Some Other Agency to guard their offices. Operating somewhere in the desert on a base that does not appear on any map and is blocked from Google Earth is acceptable.
The perks:
- if the product fails, you can still bill the Government
- if the product succeeds, the taxpayer will pay you, if they like or even ever heard of your product or not
- if the product succeeds, the Government will buy equipment from you for a hundred years and *then* upgrade their remaining legacy stuff anyway.
The dangers:
- if the incumbent loses the next election, you're history as well.
- your work is too good. Somehow your leading researchers are changing to Some Federal Research Agency or disappearing otherwise.
You are right, blocking specific protocols, ports or adresses is stupid and in some cases bordering on criminally insane. Looking at the internet traffic of any given node and then deciding what to do with it other than relaying it according to defined, mutually agreed-upon principles would at best be classified as a breach of privacy.
:)
:)
Metered Internet is not what I've got in mind. But we are clearly reaching a point where it is becoming increasingly dangerous to market 16MBit connections to home users. People that have no clue about that there is an Internet outside their Internet Explorer are becoming huge bandwidth hogs just like the pirates and everyone else. And sometime in the future, the ISPs will have to do something about it and hopefully do it wisely as not to kill off innovation.
But we have long lived with huge oversubscription factored in and all these newbie-friendly high-bandwidth applications are bringing that model to its knees. Billing by gigabytes transferred is not the answer but neither is billing by maximum bandwidth. And we cannot possibly introduce end customers to load profile based metering.
But now we are in a situation, where there is so much installed bandwidth at the last mile, that sheeple using Internet Explorer and an unpatched Windows could theoretically cause some serious havoc. Together with a for-free expectation we all have concerning the Int0rweb we have a serious challenge for our ISPs. You could go the route to economic-101 and bring us things like risk transfer, commodity spot markets or talk about a entrepreneural risk as the basis for a legitimation for profits - but then again our ISPs are huge telcos that are used to have a certain amount of power or as others say iron yoke over customers.
Furthermore, a gigabyte trickled over the course of a day means almost zero costs while a gigabyte bursted in two seconds is significantly more. For the traditional grid-based services like oil, power and gas, every unit consumed counts and it's cheaper to measure than to manufacture, but this approach will not work for data. The metering cost can actually exceed the metered costs and this would be silly to pursue. Additionally, the metered unit, the Gigabyte, doesn't equal an actual resource consumption like a kilowatthour or a barrel of oil, because it's opportunity cost depends on the current router workload.
But then, load profiles like cheap weekends and expensive afternoons are a royal pain in the behind, so I am really really glad I do not have to come up with a pricing model suitable for mom and pop that still satisfies basic economic principles, the Shareholder and the telco's PHB
Executive summary: it may be interesting but also irrelevant what our ISP does internally. A contract is a contract and if they market unmetered X megabits per second, they have to deliver on that contract, no questions asked. I understand that things get scary when every customer draws out their connection to the max, but that's life as an entrepreneur. If their business plan involves sheeple customers or broken contracts, they better get some overpaid consultants to devise another...
With grid-borne services and goods (electricity, bandwidth, phone, in some areas natural gas and oil) you have two factors of the cost: capacity and volume. For energy, this means capacity in kilowatts, volume in kilowatthours. For bandwidth this is bitrate and traffic volume.
Both cost factors have to be paid for by the actual user, if the system was fair, leading to a price composed by X capacity and Y volume units used per period.
And then the real world kicks in. As in capitalism, up-stream and expensive infrastructure.
First:
- a cheaper provider will attract more customers
- the demand each node places on the grid is highly variable and may or may not stochastically predictable, but any single node could switch to full demand at any given time
- establishing and maintaining infrastructure is expensive
- the maximum capacity of each node may be used rarely, but it WILL be used sometimes. And when that happens, full capacity usually matters a lot to the node's owner.
- idle capacity is almost as expensive as capacity at full load
- multi-tiered backbone-type networks dominate the market for grid-borne services
- installing small capacities is cheap, but large installed capacities get exponentially more expensive and prohibitively expensive past a certain point
Second round of arguments:
- economies of anti-scale dominate the capacity market: doubling the installed capacity usually means four times the cost.
- overselling capacity means more users sharing the infrastructure cost
- more users produce much more predictable node usage (dubbed the "portfolio effect", ref. "stochastics of large numbers")
- predictable load usage means less underutilized investments
- less underutilized investments mean higher profits, lower costs, lower overall resource consumption.
Conclusion:
- installing a large maximum capacity in "last mile" uplinks to every single node is cheap beneficial to the node's user
- overselling backbone capacity is a wise choice, for the provider, for the customers and for the overall economy
- it is stupid to install incredible backbone capacity (the expensive one) just to have it sitting at idle for months if it is not a piece of utmost importance
- few are willing to bear the costs incurred by having a "full" capacity node with a full capacity connection going upstream to most major interconnection points. NASA and the DoD are, but almost no one else. And for good reason
Therefore, "heuristic" providers that take advantage of stochastic load profiles and statistical node demand aggregation will probably outperform "dumb" providers installing backbones always the size of the aggregate maximum capacity of all nodes combined.
The idea probably lies behind the simple fact that humans cannot fathom pure randomness. What people sense as random can be or cannot be, the same holds true for things that are absolutey deterministic.
Example: try writing down a random string of numbers. And then analyse it with a computer.
You will have *trends* in there, you will have uneven distributions in there, you will have a certain favorite number and repeating sequences as well. No matter how hard you try, your brain cannot do random. This mode of operation is not supported on Human Brain 1.0 and we have instead a pseudo-random number generator that is worse than that of Windows 1.0
Explanation: your goal is to make random numbers in this experiment. Your brain therefore makes a feedback loop to see if it attains that goal - and this feedback loop makes this attempt futile. Without the feedback loop, your brain couldn't do anything and with it it will overcompensate for every randomness you actually achieve.
That is a homegrown explanation and I've made it up on the spot right now. But try it sometimes and you'll see what happens: your brain will record the past few numbers in memory and you can not unremember them. Maybe Shaolin monks can, but you and me cannot actively unremember anything. Then your brain will try to *even* the distribution out, because it assumes randomness = even distribution. If you were writing down an uneven distribution, you wouldn't be any random at all, so you have to concentrate on having a flat histogram.
And then you compensate by writing down numbers that you think you didn't choose for a while. And that's where the patterns come into play. Depending on your attention, mood, character and personality, you will choose alternating centers (low numbers/high numbers), hopping patterns (1-9-2-8 and so on) or simple intermittend sequences (1-3-5-6) because each make tracking even distributions easier and therefore trick your brain into thinking it achieved its goal of randomness. Depending on your attention you will even have one or more favorite numbers that clearly stand out during long sequences.
Analyse that number rows and there will be repeating patterns, covariances and data clumps all over the place.
And that was only 10 possible numbers with no other constraints and (almost) no emotional connotations. And now imagine planning terrorist attacks risking your life, assuming an enemy and incredibly strong personal preferences for location, means and time.
First and foremost: because other idiots do some things, it's still idiotic to do the same.
We laugh at rednecks and gangbangers for a reason and that's not just because of their funny music. A black American that would kill someone for mocking Martin Lt King would have the mentioned Mr. King spinning in his grave. On a high rpm, that's for sure.
Second:
I spoke of "able-bodied muslims within hearing range" and meant the whole world including my hometown here in Europe. We have laws of free speech here as well, but said able-bodied muslims WILL do something to suppress mine, even if it means committing a serious or capital offense on me.
I didn't talk about backward countries like Iran and Saudi-Arabia, but somewhere sane where Western laws are in effect. Will that stop violent Muslims from killing heretics?
If you could only ask Mr. van Gogh of the Netherlands.
Different countries have different laws, but able-bodies Muslims will strictly enforce them in THEIR country, but would without hesitation BREAK them in MY country to silence "heretics" and critics.
"Do as the romans do" would be a nice thing to do, as I will surely not drink alcohol and mock Mohammed while on a visit to Iran. It would be nice if Muslims in the Western world would do the same and stopped harassing Wikipedia.
Pfff, that would be racist and utterly useless.
First: there are white muslims and there have been white islamic terrorists. No matter how rare they may be, they could still get a case of sudden jihad going.
Second: Latinos, Hindus, Africans, Afro-Americans, Asians and descendants of some combination thereof pose no risk to air travel. No more than any other guy/gal getting drunk and then trying to stab the pilot, as seen on today's headlines. Unless these people are also islamic, the risk of them being terrorists is about the same as any other non-islamic person: near zero (unless they believe in that Nazi thing, which makes them fail the Jewish Prayer Test, anyway)
Terrorism is a mindset, albeit a twisted and illogic one. Don't portray antipathy against terrorism or muslims as hatred against non-whites. This worldwide dislike is directed only against Muslims, because there's terrorism, bloodshed and violence everywhere they live and most nations are simply fed up with them, no matter if they actually do jihad or just dream of doing it. Until there's a tornado of those elusive moderate muslims coming forward and punishing the violent idiots among them it should be safe to assume a tacit approval of their actions.
See what I meant by "violence"? :)
In Germany, you could do whatever you want - as long as your crime is non-physical and you don't resist law enforcement or do something physical AND stupid, they won't get physical on you.
I mean, there was that kidnapper who would simply not reveal the location where he held his victim hostage. He was in custody for more than a week, but he just would not tell authorities were to search for the hostage. One policeman beat him up Jack Bauer style until he revealed where he hid his hostage. When police arrived there, the hostage had already starved to death. And contrary to what you expect, the local Jack Bauer officer got a sentence on probation, the kidnapper was let go because of police brutality and the big newspapers were swarming with angry comments against torture in any case.
That was a situation where I would have gladly resorted to the Jack Bauer method of interrogation, but the German cops will sure as hell not do it again.
Airline security could reasonably well be reengineered to having the travellers eat a 50g piece of pork each AND having to say a Jewish prayer. Those who do both fly on plane A (ex: "United Airlines"), those who reject the pork but not the singing get plane A or if they want a separate B (ex: "El Al") and those that reject both get plance C (ex: "Air Arabia"). The only problem is with those who eat pork but reject Jewish singing, it could be religious zealots or nazis, but maybe that's a last risk impossible to remove.
Anyway, the biggest problem is solved. Just check the baggage with an explosive detector and you're ready to fly.
-Muslims with pork in their stomachs will never blow themselves up, because their perceived afterlife would be hell. Dito with having prayed to another God than Allah just a few minutes ago.
-Everyone else is able to consume a small amount pizza or bacon. Vegetarians must take one for the team here.
-NO muslims aboard or ONLY muslims aboard mean 100% safety from terrorism, as there's no infidel to punish *or* no mujahid to do it.
-Because the jews also don't eat pork it's not so easy to discriminate between religious people "safe" or "unsafe" for airborne transport, but the Jewish prayers has the advantage of keeping Nazis and religious zealots of other colors out of the Jewish planes.
Oh and please don't tell me it is unfair slander (or libel, I just can't tell them apart) to accuse Muslims of blowing up planes. I know there are peaceful Muslims and lots of 'em, but on the other hand all people that actually DID blow up a plane claimed to be followers of Islam, so I think it's safe to discriminate here. Only a few Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are... ah you know the deal.
Anyway, Muslims may need to be further placed onto different Shia, Sunnite, Alevite or "Other" airlines, as some people of each group consider all other groups to be infidels that need to be killed as well, but that's a story for another day. I'd just enjoy my bacon, a funny "prayer" and the priceless warmth of peace above the clouds.
I am from Europe, but the blame-America-first crowd annoys the hell out of me, to be honest.
Come on, don't portray things as equal that are obviously not.
It is not the same to "forbid denying the holocaust by law" or "killing people the worst imaginable way for laughing at the Koran", no no and no.
-The first is an actual tragedy from not-too-long ago, the other is just some paper with ink on it.
-The first is an offense punishable by law, yielding a monetary fine or at worst a sentence on probation, the second means instant death or being a fugitive for the rest of your life, just ask Mr. Salman Rushdie.
-The first is gets the most severe punishment only in France and Germany and is over after a few years. The second will follow you everywhere, just ask Mrs. Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
-The first can easily be avoided: just don't mention the holocaust and you'll be fine. It's over for sixty years, anyway. The second is hard to avoid because there's a clash of cultures raging around the world that could emerge into a third world war, if you haven't noticed. Oh, and the Koran isn't laughable, it's sad, just read it if you have the time.
The principle is the same, prosecuting people over the denying of an idea. But everything else is totally utterly incomparable in severity and proportion.
You can show the Hitler sign on any German marketplace and publicly deny the holocaust and passer-bys will show you the finger and call the police. Then two friendly-but-serious German officer will come to handcuff you, take your name, put you in jail for two days, release you on bail until the trial.
Now imagine what happened if you publicly mocked Mohammed when there are able-bodied muslim males in the vicinity. Just. Imagine.
Oh and if you mess up, everyone you know will suffer, too. And that means you, your family, your country, the embassies of your country and all well-known corporations and brand names from your country as well.
The Supreme Court has at least a democratic root from which the Judges are nominated.
Oh and it's not THAT bad, as the majority of states still voted for Bush jr. and the tie following the accepted course of elections was a very close one. You could argue it is not fair to follow arbitrary rules and not obeying the pure head count in a nationwide election, but so are the rules and the Democrats agreed to them many times before and only challenged them when it was too late (and not ever since).
It doesn't matter if Bush was hated by so many, there were just extreme contrasts. That and an electorate so close to legal equilibrium is the highest strain possible to a democratic system. I'm content the US of A held up so well and is now on its way to a new and hopefully more clear election result.
Other states descended into anarchy, just look at Kenia right now. The USA didn't suffer that much when compared to this.
Not only that, but the unelected asshats even get to decide *who* can be voted into the democratic half.
So the only half Iranians get to vote on is already pre-selected by the aforementioned asshats. As that list probably contains only friends of asshats, they're likely be asshats as well. So in fact, unelected asshats vote for candidates and Iranians just decide whose face is prettier.
The correct term for that is "Hobson's Choice", I believe.
You're joking but you're close to the truth. Cue the car example:
How many times have said or heard people saying "ouch!" when they were driving through an unexpected pothole?
When you're driving, do you "feel" the conditions of the road? Ice, even if it is invisible, just because it feels "different" on hands and your posterior?
Remember the old ball-type mice, that accumulated dirt in their mechanics and stopped functioning when not regularly cleaned? What was that feeling you had when one mouse axis suddenly stopped responding? I certainly remember some awkward seconds when this happened and that it always took a not-so-small time before the conscious brain recognized the problem.
Try making a screenshot of a dialog window (one with OK and Cancel on it works best), open that in a view-only application (one that doesnt zoom in or manipulate the image when you left-click anywhere on the picture), maximize that window so that the screenshot you took looks like the real thing. Then leave the room for a cup of coffee. When you come back, you *will* click the fake "OK"-Button at first and feel awkward for half a second until you remember.
Yeah, as if the Michigan Militia is going to cut your head off for laughing about one of their idols while shouting allahu ackbar and dancing with the AKs.
They are both citing some important books while doing their thing, but that doesn't make both actions equal. Fighting for individual freedom is entirely different than fighting to kill infidels.
And by "individual freedom" I explicitly exclude "the freedom to oppress my neighbors and others", "the freedom to kill unveiled women", "the freedom to behead infidels" or "the freedom to build a totalitarian state where everyone must obey the orders of my goddamn holy book".
Now mark me flamebait, if you have to, but merely because two actions are performed the same way they are not morally or otherwise equivalent: intent, outcome and collateral effects make the difference between the police and the mob.
Your point on the data channel is valid, but the "expensive" store-and-forward architecture is not.
Compare it to traditional email: hundreds of companies offer store-and-forward services, with *gigabytes* of data retained for *months* for free or orders of magnitudes more for prices below 5 EUR or USD per month.
It is true that SMS calls have an unusually high impact on a phone cell and therefore needs to have a marginal cost high enough to keep supply and demand in check at the very least and at max the price the market will bear.