Um, doesn't trying a "different" URL imply that there was a valid URL to begin with? If I'm not running a reachable web service on port 80, what would that starting URL be?
If there is no valid starting URL, then trying random URLs referencing my host is also shady--and just plain silly--since there is no service running.
BTW, the linked information on URLs was really, really not good. It's old, not very accurate, with weird speculations that did not prove valid over the years since it was authored in 1999.
A "URL" is just a standard syntax for specifying a protocol and a resource on a local or remote host. Its user-friendliness is variable, and its use is optional.
I was working at a UNIX terminal lab in college when an enterprising young freshman decided to cat all the man pages together and pipe to lpr.
He had otherwise proven to be an apt UNIX geek so I heard several of his fellow lab users ask him why he thought their terminals had locked up--since asking me would be scary apparently, go figure--and I heard him mumble, "dunno" and then he hustled out before we figured out what happened.
The lab manager held his many thousand page printout in a large overfull box until he reappeared several days later...and said if he ever did something so stupid again, he'd pay for both incidents at $.10/page.
Having well-known service ports open on a network reachable from other autonomous systems implies that they are "publicly" available.
However, scanning the entire TCP and UDP port ranges of some random reachable host in order to assess vulnerability is a differently colored equine.
If I'm running service on TCP80, does that mean you're invited to scan UDP10000-65535 to see what doors may be inadvertently unlocked? I would argue that you may not be breaking a law, but you are acting shady and with ill will towards my host.
Which are the only way I can see to avoid having the thread moderated Offtopic.
I think we're the only two left in the room...
People have gone from Excellent to Terrible karma in one day over not assuming the context of The Article
Whether you're overstating things a bit or not is debatable; either way, my/. karma is not a deeply valued asset. It's nice, but not something that keeps me awake at night.
You joined it by posting in this Slashdot article. Otherwise you risk your posts being moderated Offtopic
I accept the risk, and prefer to keep my comments focused on the specifics of the thread rather than the whole article. However, I also respect your right to handle your side of this situation differently.
I allege that Big Media publishers can do so and that they have. See "piracy", "theft", etc. People think of "file sharing" and "P2P" as if they referred to something that deserves to be made/kept illegal.
Obviously the choice of words someone uses to frame their argument affects the strength of their message. That said, the widely understood definitions of most words is relatively static, and anyone on any side of any issue can use the same words to the same benefit.
Take "piracy", for example. It's centuries old entimology from nautical history is still widely understood throughout the English-speaking world, even if separate definitions have taken hold regarding unauthorized radio transmission, illegal software distribution--and now generalized to illegal digital media distribution.
The argument that "the man" uses "piracy" and its variants specifically to surround P2P with negative connotations denies the decades old entimology surrounding these newwer definitions of piracy that dates back to radio's earliest days and personal computing's earliest days.
Back when I first got involved with personal computing, the groups that cracked software and initiated illegal distribution usually encouraged and actually revelled in the pirate moniker. They always inserted signature splash screens to display during program boot that had the Jolly Roger or a cartoon pirate ship or some such.
Historically speaking, Big Media is using an accepted term for copying ones and zeros in a manner that violates copyrights. The ad nauseum/. posts on how "real pirates have ships, not IPods" are a terrible waste of rhetorical energy on a red-herring that does not help protect our fair use rights in any way whatsoever.
That said, there's nothing wrong with the fair use fighters also using the term to their benefit, ergo you may hear, "The Big Media pirates are pilaging the public domain! Disney is the Captain Hook of the land of fairy tales!" Those are powerful messages too.
We're clearly having separate, tenuously related conversations here.
Context shift number 1:
If only the hardcore prescriptivists realized this.
I directly answered your question regarding how an automated process could handle your simple example, and you lament that some vaguely defined group of rigid grammarians disagrees with "us".
Context shift number 2:
Except "some people" who are in positions of power omit subjects on purpose.
I tell you that you specifically provided an example of the unclear communication I don't like, and you retort that "the man" sometimes purposely misleads "us" using unclear communication. What is the connection between these thoughts, in your mind?
Context shift #3:
Which may mean abandoning Slashdot, as it's full of grammar nazis.
I advise that you should concentrate less on sentence structure and more on clarity, and you argue that Slashdot full of folks who waste their time flagging others' poor grammar. Okay, this is subtle. I'm using a global context of clear communications in life, and you're using a focused subset context of/. I don't understand the context change, and I don't care about/.
As an aside, I would point out that clear communication often implies reasonably correct grammar.
Context shift #4:
Tell that to the people pulling the lawmakers' strings.
How could you possibly consider that contextually valid given what I said in my comment? It seems you're lost in a conversation regarding legislators that I never knowingly joined. Help me get to where you are. The road signs are missing.
Context shift #5:
[Use of "protect" to mean "restrict" is]...
That's an inaccurate insertion that, again, changes the context of the conversation. The nonsensical inference is that my use of the word on one side of a debate has any meaningful relation whatsoever to how others may use it to frame their arguments. Opponents in a debate can not co-opt the definition of a specific word to argue their points. "Protect" has a definition independent of anyone's position on the public domain or any other devisive issue.
But it's a nonsensical inference that the incumbent commercial TV news media, which are all controlled by movie studios, will tend to use.
"That others may also use it to frame their opposing perspective is, in fact, entirely irrelevant." --Big_Al_B
What should a writer do if he or she genuinely cannot discern the agent?
Well, that would seem to indicate the writer has serious issues with the subject that are probably more of a problem than grammar. More directly, the sentences immediately preceding the one you quoted contains my opinion of the appropriate uses for passive voice. The short version is, "It sucks, but sometimes it's the best you have."
What should an automated process, such as a grammar checker, do to machine-translate sentences into a subset of English that lacks passive voice?
Sometimes fully-automated processing is not practical, and it should not be shoe-horned into every corner-case situation. For this situation, if I were creating a lightweight desktop grammar checker, I would have it flag the passive phrase as a potential fault, and leave the corrective action to the writer.
I meant "Legislators".
You weren't clear, and that's your fault, not the language's. If you had an agent in mind then the whole challenge was a complete farce. The trivial answer is, of course, "Legislators should care about the public domain."
Having the active subject in mind but purposefully omitting it is an excellent example of what annoys me about some people's communication skills. Communicate clearly, or watch your ideas fall on alienated or apathetic ears. The ideas you passionately evangelize will never move an audience that doesn't get your point.
Your writing, frankly, needs work. Your first post, with the challenge and then the comment regarding legislation seemed largely non sequitorial to me, as a--dare I say--above average reader. The follow-up post with the discussion of prepositional grammar was a awkward mess to read. My advice is to screw semantics and grammar. Work on clarity of thought and expression.
Encyclopedic knowledge and AI indeed...You could have given your readers a very clear context for your idea, but actively chose not to. That's not cool. You're the writer, so tell us what you mean.
Your "protecting" wording lacks precision because all too often, publishers use "protect" in a sense referring to protecting incumbent publishers from other persons, namely as a code word for "restrict".
That's a nonsensical inference derived from taking a single word out of the context that I--as the author--established in that sentence. It was completely precise when taken in context. That others may also use it to frame their opposing perspective is, in fact, entirely irrelevant.
You missed that the AC incorrectly identified the grammatical issue in the first place. The OP terminated his sentence with a conditional--not a preposition--that should have been the openning clause. Reversing them is awkward.
Those who disapprove of preposition stranding in English tend to cite the...
First of all, as much as I care, you may end sentences in prepositions day in and day out. All I care about, as a reader, is clarity--regardless of grammatical construct. I hate guessing what the hell someone is trying to communicate.
Now, with regard to your challenge and how I met it...
I inserted the appropriate agent within the context of your entire comment. It did not require encyclopedic subject knowledge, but simply required a reasonable contextual inference on my part.
Specifically, I argue that when you deleted the agent using passive voice, you implied the most general agent subject that made sense in context. Within context that was "people" rather than "most Atlantic-based octupi and sea lions".
By the way, passive voice usually hinders clarity, so I'm not a fan. As with ending in prepositions though, there are cases when passive constructs increase clarity so careful use is appopriate.
I don't think passive voice adds clarity to your sentence. I think it weakens its meaning.
[topical content]
People should care about protecting public domain content. Whether the act of examining the laws is beneficial or not is unclear, and to assume the worst is an easy out to any complex problem.
Ah yes. I know it seems impossible, especially for those who've failed statistics & probabilies classes, to make target populational inferences from a survey population. But it is quite possible and quite common.
Using well-established statistics and probability, it is mathematically safe to say that within some given margin of error--three percent is common--that if you asked every single Anerican the same question, their responses would match the surveyed population.
Note that this populational response accuracy does not speak to whether the question is formed in a neutral, accurate manner that elicits meaningful responses from the survey population. The statistical accuracy can just say that given this (well-formed or poorly-formed) question, this target population's response will follow the survey population's response.
Alright. I now call BS on this comment. Extremely vague and borderline nonsensical details followed by a refusal to clarify are the hallmarks of someone who has no clue. As is the *uncited* reference to "some guy" who did "just what I'm saying".
I'm not saying that it's impossible to hijack someone's network space and advertise it as your own to the public internet, but it is not tenable that a routing scheme could only intercept certain email traffic based on keywords. Internet core routing has no application awareness, so either all IP traffic destined for Amazon would be misdirected--or none.
My older cousin was an Apple II evangelist--who convinced my dad we needed one--AND an EE guru. He made his own lowercase letter chips from scratch--including the hardware and embedded code. With that, and a 16K upgrade, my family's II+ became a IIe!
Hm. I think you figured this out, but looking at what I wrote, I should make clear that the pen-stabbing took place in childhood, not at the mall that day. And he was with his family. Late-night typing hazards include very questionable clarity.
Uni is what us skips call University.
Ah, yes I guess I knew that, but I got too excited. Well nevermind the mall name reference then.:^)
I jumped to the conclusion that you were referring to UNI, where I grew up. Sorry.
Hm. I too had a history of elementary and junior high bullies, and was socially a basket case until a late bloom in college. My bullies, as a rule, either ended up in jail or dead-end blue-collar work. One exception is actually a VP of some company's sales org.
BTW, the reason your post caught my attention is that I think I recognize your "uni" reference...
If so, you'll know where I'm talking about when I say that as an adult I was at College Square Mall and bumped into a 6th-grade class nemisis who actually stabbed me with a pen. It was a surprising meeting, because he approached me first, with a sincere hello and an apologetic handshake. He told me he recognized his childhood behavior was awful, had sought help in his late teens, and was a happy father of two by thirty. Managed a store or some such...
Anyway, hope I got that reference right. My dad is a retired Professor Emeritus from the College of Ed. at UNI.
I really can't believe I have to argue that integrity and maturity are good things. I find that *so* weird. I'm not sure I like what that says about the human condition on/.
People DO have a right to whine when what they are being subjected to is not just.
People, of course, have an inalienable right to whine, period. Did I every say otherwise? Nope. Did I say honorable people either live up to agreements or accept consequences for breaking them? Yes.
So, your argument is that to fight injustice you must be immature and lack integrity? If so, that is, by far, the *most* retarded argument I've heard in recent times, even for/.
Shit, should no one have "whined" about Nelson Mandela being in jail? (Note for the obtuse: I'm using hyperbole to show the fault in your viewpoint. The things you're saying don't make sense and taking your logic to the extreme shows how really frickin obvious it is.)
What doesn't make sense? Maturity is good? Integrity is good? What?
Hyperbole is called hyperbole because it is a bad argument. That you think it adds something to your assertions is evidence of your own faulty logic. I'd also suggest that your asnine stretches perfectly illustrate the inherent faults of the slippery slope fallacy too.
Parks did in her time, and Mandela does to this day, follow paths of integrity, maturity and fierce resistance to injustice. There are always ways to do all three simultaneously. Your myopic understanding of integrity and maturity fails to account for that. That's on you.
You just don't get it. You are placing all the responsibility on the consumer and *NONE* on the semi-monopoly that is creating a situation where it's their way or the highway. There are TWO parties here, and you attitude is "Do what they like or live with their consequences."
I place equal responsibility on both parties. They set out the terms prior to you writing them a check, so you volunteered to abide by those terms. How is this abusive?
I live in a counrty when the founders said: Not only do we not like your laws and plan to break them, we also do not accept punishment for breaking them. Your government is illegitimate.
The founding fathers knew that if their revolution failed, for whatever reason, they would face death sentences. Yet they signed their names on documents and stood their ground. Doesn't get more honorable than that.
Your line of thinking does not allow someone to come to this decision. It says, "If I don't like these laws, I have to move somewhere else."
My line of thinking is that if you're an adult, you should act like one. Again, nothing more, nothing less.
Now refocusing on the actual topic, what is the injustice you feel broadband providers are imposing on their customers, exactly, and with some details, if you might? You've got me curious in your kooky ways...
If you admit that telecom access is nothing close to a free market, how can you possibly consider those who violate these agreements as childish and lacking integrity?
Er, no. I did *not* say that anyone who violates AUPs is "childish and lacking integrity". I *did* say that you should not violate an agreement *you* made and then whine when there are negative consequences. The immaturity and lack of integrity is not in the violation, it's in not facing the consequences of your actions.
Mrs. Parks' civil disobidience was a shining moment in human history, and an act worthy of every possible respect. She was also mature enough to face the consequences for her actions. The analogy to an AUP violation is ridiculous and trite.
Part of being an adult is taking responsibility for your choices. It's called maturity.
You rhetoric doesn't reflect this. . Your attitude is that people should either deal with the ridiculous agreements or deal without.
My attitude is that adult people should be mature, regardless of the context. Nothing more, nothing less. If, to you, that implies that I'm in favor of corporate abuse of consumers, then that's just one amazingly asnine and ridiculous leap of logic. Have fun in your head, it seems like a pretty wild joint.
I agree that Verizon benefits from Google financially--albeit indirectly. You frame peering in a way that I wouldn't but, it is one tiny split hair on a full head of agreement. So whatever.
First, let me start by saying that we agree that charging content providers for network usage is very, very dumb and I hope that any such effort joins new Coke in the trash heap of epicly ignorant business moves.
Verizon gets paid by both those hosting sites and those accessing sites. But they want to get more money for no actual effort on their part...
In reality, unless Google purchases hosting services from Verizon--and I don't believe they do--you're wrong. If Google uses another hosting provider who merely peers with Verizon--much more likely--then Verizon collects no revenue from directly from Google for Google traffic across their backbone.
It's true, of course, that Verizon is charging their transit and access customers for access to and transport of this content, so I firmly believe this effort is a highly ill-considered double-billing scheme.
It's rooted in the old telco concept of originating and terminating access fees. These are fees that local phone companies charge LD carriers for each call the local sends to or receives from an LD carrier. In this new context, Verizon considers itself the local provider for its transit customer base, and wants to charge content providers for access to their network. Very, very lame. But rooted in a long-standing traditional billing model.
Here France for $34/mo you get up to 20Mb/s...etc.
Sounds great. I'm curious though...
1a) Who pays the bill to bury the "last-mile" cable to each customer? 1b) Is that cost publicly subsidized and, if so, to what extent? 1c) Is this entity also bearing the full cost to maintain that part of the network, or is that also subsidized in some way? 1d) Is ISP access to that last-mile network subject to government regulation in terms of guaranteed access permission? 1e) Is ISP last-mile access pricing subject to government regulation or tarriff?
2a) Were these services built on top of an existing last-mile copper/coax network, or was this built on a brand new investment in modern last-mile technologies? 2b) If the service is built on new technology, who absorbed the cost of abandoning the old network?
The shortened point of my questions is that there are different costs to do business in different markets, dependent upon the applicable politico-economic model and on the historical network infrastructure where there is one. My cost environment is not as nice as the one in which your providers apparently operate.
You are correct that incumbent monopolies are often detrimental to consumer goals, and correct regarding the current admin favoring some businesses goals over the public good. Though I would argue that their focus is not "all monopolies" but rather "my family's, my friends', and my crony's monopolies." I'm no fan of theirs myself.
Slashdot Mirror
I am very curious to hear the "because" part of your assertion.
I'm solidly on the fence regarding the accuracy of his analogy, and would like to know what others think the flaws or strengths may be.
Um, doesn't trying a "different" URL imply that there was a valid URL to begin with? If I'm not running a reachable web service on port 80, what would that starting URL be?
If there is no valid starting URL, then trying random URLs referencing my host is also shady--and just plain silly--since there is no service running.
BTW, the linked information on URLs was really, really not good. It's old, not very accurate, with weird speculations that did not prove valid over the years since it was authored in 1999.
A "URL" is just a standard syntax for specifying a protocol and a resource on a local or remote host. Its user-friendliness is variable, and its use is optional.
I was working at a UNIX terminal lab in college when an enterprising young freshman decided to cat all the man pages together and pipe to lpr.
He had otherwise proven to be an apt UNIX geek so I heard several of his fellow lab users ask him why he thought their terminals had locked up--since asking me would be scary apparently, go figure--and I heard him mumble, "dunno" and then he hustled out before we figured out what happened.
The lab manager held his many thousand page printout in a large overfull box until he reappeared several days later...and said if he ever did something so stupid again, he'd pay for both incidents at $.10/page.
Having well-known service ports open on a network reachable from other autonomous systems implies that they are "publicly" available.
However, scanning the entire TCP and UDP port ranges of some random reachable host in order to assess vulnerability is a differently colored equine.
If I'm running service on TCP80, does that mean you're invited to scan UDP10000-65535 to see what doors may be inadvertently unlocked? I would argue that you may not be breaking a law, but you are acting shady and with ill will towards my host.
And anybody with half a clue (i.e. most Republicans)
Maybe...if you round up. Then, sure, half sounds right.
Now if they'd just use it when they voted, we'd all benefit.
Which are the only way I can see to avoid having the thread moderated Offtopic.
/. karma is not a deeply valued asset. It's nice, but not something that keeps me awake at night.
/. posts on how "real pirates have ships, not IPods" are a terrible waste of rhetorical energy on a red-herring that does not help protect our fair use rights in any way whatsoever.
I think we're the only two left in the room...
People have gone from Excellent to Terrible karma in one day over not assuming the context of The Article
Whether you're overstating things a bit or not is debatable; either way, my
You joined it by posting in this Slashdot article. Otherwise you risk your posts being moderated Offtopic
I accept the risk, and prefer to keep my comments focused on the specifics of the thread rather than the whole article. However, I also respect your right to handle your side of this situation differently.
I allege that Big Media publishers can do so and that they have. See "piracy", "theft", etc. People think of "file sharing" and "P2P" as if they referred to something that deserves to be made/kept illegal.
Obviously the choice of words someone uses to frame their argument affects the strength of their message. That said, the widely understood definitions of most words is relatively static, and anyone on any side of any issue can use the same words to the same benefit.
Take "piracy", for example. It's centuries old entimology from nautical history is still widely understood throughout the English-speaking world, even if separate definitions have taken hold regarding unauthorized radio transmission, illegal software distribution--and now generalized to illegal digital media distribution.
The argument that "the man" uses "piracy" and its variants specifically to surround P2P with negative connotations denies the decades old entimology surrounding these newwer definitions of piracy that dates back to radio's earliest days and personal computing's earliest days.
Back when I first got involved with personal computing, the groups that cracked software and initiated illegal distribution usually encouraged and actually revelled in the pirate moniker. They always inserted signature splash screens to display during program boot that had the Jolly Roger or a cartoon pirate ship or some such.
Historically speaking, Big Media is using an accepted term for copying ones and zeros in a manner that violates copyrights. The ad nauseum
That said, there's nothing wrong with the fair use fighters also using the term to their benefit, ergo you may hear, "The Big Media pirates are pilaging the public domain! Disney is the Captain Hook of the land of fairy tales!" Those are powerful messages too.
I'm spent. Entertaining discussion. Later.
We're clearly having separate, tenuously related conversations here.
Context shift number 1:
If only the hardcore prescriptivists realized this.
I directly answered your question regarding how an automated process could handle your simple example, and you lament that some vaguely defined group of rigid grammarians disagrees with "us".
Context shift number 2:
Except "some people" who are in positions of power omit subjects on purpose.
I tell you that you specifically provided an example of the unclear communication I don't like, and you retort that "the man" sometimes purposely misleads "us" using unclear communication. What is the connection between these thoughts, in your mind?
Context shift #3:
Which may mean abandoning Slashdot, as it's full of grammar nazis.
I advise that you should concentrate less on sentence structure and more on clarity, and you argue that Slashdot full of folks who waste their time flagging others' poor grammar. Okay, this is subtle. I'm using a global context of clear communications in life, and you're using a focused subset context of
As an aside, I would point out that clear communication often implies reasonably correct grammar.
Context shift #4:
Tell that to the people pulling the lawmakers' strings.
How could you possibly consider that contextually valid given what I said in my comment? It seems you're lost in a conversation regarding legislators that I never knowingly joined. Help me get to where you are. The road signs are missing.
Context shift #5:
[Use of "protect" to mean "restrict" is]...
That's an inaccurate insertion that, again, changes the context of the conversation. The nonsensical inference is that my use of the word on one side of a debate has any meaningful relation whatsoever to how others may use it to frame their arguments. Opponents in a debate can not co-opt the definition of a specific word to argue their points. "Protect" has a definition independent of anyone's position on the public domain or any other devisive issue.
But it's a nonsensical inference that the incumbent commercial TV news media, which are all controlled by movie studios, will tend to use.
What should a writer do if he or she genuinely cannot discern the agent?
Well, that would seem to indicate the writer has serious issues with the subject that are probably more of a problem than grammar. More directly, the sentences immediately preceding the one you quoted contains my opinion of the appropriate uses for passive voice. The short version is, "It sucks, but sometimes it's the best you have."
What should an automated process, such as a grammar checker, do to machine-translate sentences into a subset of English that lacks passive voice?
Sometimes fully-automated processing is not practical, and it should not be shoe-horned into every corner-case situation. For this situation, if I were creating a lightweight desktop grammar checker, I would have it flag the passive phrase as a potential fault, and leave the corrective action to the writer.
I meant "Legislators".
You weren't clear, and that's your fault, not the language's. If you had an agent in mind then the whole challenge was a complete farce. The trivial answer is, of course, "Legislators should care about the public domain."
Having the active subject in mind but purposefully omitting it is an excellent example of what annoys me about some people's communication skills. Communicate clearly, or watch your ideas fall on alienated or apathetic ears. The ideas you passionately evangelize will never move an audience that doesn't get your point.
Your writing, frankly, needs work. Your first post, with the challenge and then the comment regarding legislation seemed largely non sequitorial to me, as a--dare I say--above average reader. The follow-up post with the discussion of prepositional grammar was a awkward mess to read. My advice is to screw semantics and grammar. Work on clarity of thought and expression.
Encyclopedic knowledge and AI indeed...You could have given your readers a very clear context for your idea, but actively chose not to. That's not cool. You're the writer, so tell us what you mean.
Your "protecting" wording lacks precision because all too often, publishers use "protect" in a sense referring to protecting incumbent publishers from other persons, namely as a code word for "restrict".
That's a nonsensical inference derived from taking a single word out of the context that I--as the author--established in that sentence. It was completely precise when taken in context. That others may also use it to frame their opposing perspective is, in fact, entirely irrelevant.
You miss.
Did I? That's arguable.
You missed that the AC incorrectly identified the grammatical issue in the first place. The OP terminated his sentence with a conditional--not a preposition--that should have been the openning clause. Reversing them is awkward.
Those who disapprove of preposition stranding in English tend to cite the...
First of all, as much as I care, you may end sentences in prepositions day in and day out. All I care about, as a reader, is clarity--regardless of grammatical construct. I hate guessing what the hell someone is trying to communicate.
Now, with regard to your challenge and how I met it...
I inserted the appropriate agent within the context of your entire comment. It did not require encyclopedic subject knowledge, but simply required a reasonable contextual inference on my part.
Specifically, I argue that when you deleted the agent using passive voice, you implied the most general agent subject that made sense in context. Within context that was "people" rather than "most Atlantic-based octupi and sea lions".
By the way, passive voice usually hinders clarity, so I'm not a fan. As with ending in prepositions though, there are cases when passive constructs increase clarity so careful use is appopriate.
I don't think passive voice adds clarity to your sentence. I think it weakens its meaning.
[topical content]
People should care about protecting public domain content. Whether the act of examining the laws is beneficial or not is unclear, and to assume the worst is an easy out to any complex problem.
[/topical content]
First, the AC is incorrect. The sentence ended in a conditional, not a preposition. And, terminating with a conditional clause is "horseshit" writing.
Going on and on about a dead language and an incorrectly noted grammar violation is also horseshit.
I'm not sure what the AC was going on about...but to easily address your challenge:
"People should care about the public domain."
If the survey question was presented in a "choose one" format, those percentages would indeed be screwwy.
However, if it was presented in a "choose all that apply" format, it would be very UNlikely that the percentages would sum to 100.
besides having a dynamic IP is nice.
1) Why?
2) Why do you think your broadband IP would not be dynamic?
Seriously, statistics and probabilities are real. Really real. Really!
Ah yes. I know it seems impossible, especially for those who've failed statistics & probabilies classes, to make target populational inferences from a survey population. But it is quite possible and quite common.
Using well-established statistics and probability, it is mathematically safe to say that within some given margin of error--three percent is common--that if you asked every single Anerican the same question, their responses would match the surveyed population.
Note that this populational response accuracy does not speak to whether the question is formed in a neutral, accurate manner that elicits meaningful responses from the survey population. The statistical accuracy can just say that given this (well-formed or poorly-formed) question, this target population's response will follow the survey population's response.
Alright. I now call BS on this comment. Extremely vague and borderline nonsensical details followed by a refusal to clarify are the hallmarks of someone who has no clue. As is the *uncited* reference to "some guy" who did "just what I'm saying".
I'm not saying that it's impossible to hijack someone's network space and advertise it as your own to the public internet, but it is not tenable that a routing scheme could only intercept certain email traffic based on keywords. Internet core routing has no application awareness, so either all IP traffic destined for Amazon would be misdirected--or none.
My older cousin was an Apple II evangelist--who convinced my dad we needed one--AND an EE guru. He made his own lowercase letter chips from scratch--including the hardware and embedded code. With that, and a 16K upgrade, my family's II+ became a IIe!
Thanks Cuz!
Hm. I think you figured this out, but looking at what I wrote, I should make clear that the pen-stabbing took place in childhood, not at the mall that day. And he was with his family. Late-night typing hazards include very questionable clarity.
:^)
Uni is what us skips call University.
Ah, yes I guess I knew that, but I got too excited. Well nevermind the mall name reference then.
I jumped to the conclusion that you were referring to UNI, where I grew up. Sorry.
Hm. I too had a history of elementary and junior high bullies, and was socially a basket case until a late bloom in college. My bullies, as a rule, either ended up in jail or dead-end blue-collar work. One exception is actually a VP of some company's sales org.
BTW, the reason your post caught my attention is that I think I recognize your "uni" reference...
If so, you'll know where I'm talking about when I say that as an adult I was at College Square Mall and bumped into a 6th-grade class nemisis who actually stabbed me with a pen. It was a surprising meeting, because he approached me first, with a sincere hello and an apologetic handshake. He told me he recognized his childhood behavior was awful, had sought help in his late teens, and was a happy father of two by thirty. Managed a store or some such...
Anyway, hope I got that reference right. My dad is a retired Professor Emeritus from the College of Ed. at UNI.
just place a server on the network that reports false routing times
What is a "false routing time", how would a "server" report them, and to whom?
That explanation is fuzzy enough to make me, as a network engineer for an ISP, suspicious of your understanding of routing.
There are ways for rogue route advertisements to make it into interior or exterior routing protocols, but those ways are not "fairly easy".
I really can't believe I have to argue that integrity and maturity are good things. I find that *so* weird. I'm not sure I like what that says about the human condition on /.
/.
People DO have a right to whine when what they are being subjected to is not just.
People, of course, have an inalienable right to whine, period. Did I every say otherwise? Nope. Did I say honorable people either live up to agreements or accept consequences for breaking them? Yes.
So, your argument is that to fight injustice you must be immature and lack integrity? If so, that is, by far, the *most* retarded argument I've heard in recent times, even for
Shit, should no one have "whined" about Nelson Mandela being in jail?
(Note for the obtuse: I'm using hyperbole to show the fault in your viewpoint. The things you're saying don't make sense and taking your logic to the extreme shows how really frickin obvious it is.)
What doesn't make sense? Maturity is good? Integrity is good? What?
Hyperbole is called hyperbole because it is a bad argument. That you think it adds something to your assertions is evidence of your own faulty logic. I'd also suggest that your asnine stretches perfectly illustrate the inherent faults of the slippery slope fallacy too.
Parks did in her time, and Mandela does to this day, follow paths of integrity, maturity and fierce resistance to injustice. There are always ways to do all three simultaneously. Your myopic understanding of integrity and maturity fails to account for that. That's on you.
You just don't get it. You are placing all the responsibility on the consumer and *NONE* on the semi-monopoly that is creating a situation where it's their way or the highway. There are TWO parties here, and you attitude is "Do what they like or live with their consequences."
I place equal responsibility on both parties. They set out the terms prior to you writing them a check, so you volunteered to abide by those terms. How is this abusive?
I live in a counrty when the founders said: Not only do we not like your laws and plan to break them, we also do not accept punishment for breaking them. Your government is illegitimate.
The founding fathers knew that if their revolution failed, for whatever reason, they would face death sentences. Yet they signed their names on documents and stood their ground. Doesn't get more honorable than that.
Your line of thinking does not allow someone to come to this decision. It says, "If I don't like these laws, I have to move somewhere else."
My line of thinking is that if you're an adult, you should act like one. Again, nothing more, nothing less.
Now refocusing on the actual topic, what is the injustice you feel broadband providers are imposing on their customers, exactly, and with some details, if you might? You've got me curious in your kooky ways...
If you admit that telecom access is nothing close to a free market, how can you possibly consider those who violate these agreements as childish and lacking integrity?
Er, no. I did *not* say that anyone who violates AUPs is "childish and lacking integrity". I *did* say that you should not violate an agreement *you* made and then whine when there are negative consequences. The immaturity and lack of integrity is not in the violation, it's in not facing the consequences of your actions.
Mrs. Parks' civil disobidience was a shining moment in human history, and an act worthy of every possible respect. She was also mature enough to face the consequences for her actions. The analogy to an AUP violation is ridiculous and trite.
Part of being an adult is taking responsibility for your choices. It's called maturity.
You rhetoric doesn't reflect this. . Your attitude is that people should either deal with the ridiculous agreements or deal without.
My attitude is that adult people should be mature, regardless of the context. Nothing more, nothing less. If, to you, that implies that I'm in favor of corporate abuse of consumers, then that's just one amazingly asnine and ridiculous leap of logic. Have fun in your head, it seems like a pretty wild joint.
I agree that Verizon benefits from Google financially--albeit indirectly. You frame peering in a way that I wouldn't but, it is one tiny split hair on a full head of agreement. So whatever.
Regards,
Big Al
First, let me start by saying that we agree that charging content providers for network usage is very, very dumb and I hope that any such effort joins new Coke in the trash heap of epicly ignorant business moves.
Verizon gets paid by both those hosting sites and those accessing sites.
But they want to get more money for no actual effort on their part...
In reality, unless Google purchases hosting services from Verizon--and I don't believe they do--you're wrong. If Google uses another hosting provider who merely peers with Verizon--much more likely--then Verizon collects no revenue from directly from Google for Google traffic across their backbone.
It's true, of course, that Verizon is charging their transit and access customers for access to and transport of this content, so I firmly believe this effort is a highly ill-considered double-billing scheme.
It's rooted in the old telco concept of originating and terminating access fees. These are fees that local phone companies charge LD carriers for each call the local sends to or receives from an LD carrier. In this new context, Verizon considers itself the local provider for its transit customer base, and wants to charge content providers for access to their network. Very, very lame. But rooted in a long-standing traditional billing model.
Here France for $34/mo you get up to 20Mb/s...etc.
Sounds great. I'm curious though...
1a) Who pays the bill to bury the "last-mile" cable to each customer?
1b) Is that cost publicly subsidized and, if so, to what extent?
1c) Is this entity also bearing the full cost to maintain that part of the network, or is that also subsidized in some way?
1d) Is ISP access to that last-mile network subject to government regulation in terms of guaranteed access permission?
1e) Is ISP last-mile access pricing subject to government regulation or tarriff?
2a) Were these services built on top of an existing last-mile copper/coax network, or was this built on a brand new investment in modern last-mile technologies?
2b) If the service is built on new technology, who absorbed the cost of abandoning the old network?
The shortened point of my questions is that there are different costs to do business in different markets, dependent upon the applicable politico-economic model and on the historical network infrastructure where there is one. My cost environment is not as nice as the one in which your providers apparently operate.
You are correct that incumbent monopolies are often detrimental to consumer goals, and correct regarding the current admin favoring some businesses goals over the public good. Though I would argue that their focus is not "all monopolies" but rather "my family's, my friends', and my crony's monopolies." I'm no fan of theirs myself.