I've only seen a few episodes of TBBT, but I didn't get that there was anything geeky about it. Do geeks actually watch the show?
The first episode has a hot girl meet a couple of nerdy guys who predictable run into her burly ex-boyfriend. In the next episode, said hot chick finds some reason to take a shower in their apartment, and hilarity ensues. It seemed more fanservice than geekdom. There characters were just "Revenge of the Nerds" style over-the-top archetypes of geeks. This is probably typical of sitcoms since realistic people just aren't as funny as exaggerations.
This interview was the first time I had heard of the series as being for geeks or by geeks. It is good that some mainstream writers take their material seriously.
Fair enough. Some interesting material I came-up with while searching on this topic: 1) In 2013, Comcast proposed a system where Comcast does the monitoring: http://variety.com/2013/digita... 2) Comcast actually stood up for it's users against a copyright troll. https://torrentfreak.com/comca...
To deal with the added write amplification, Tanguy said Micron increased the TRIM command set, meaning blocks of data no longer required can be erased and freed up more often
Did they mean "implemented" rather than "increased?" Or did they mean that they added something new to the TRIM command?
Yeah, that makes sense in a sad way. I suppose the music industry thought the same way for a while. Eventually, illegal music distribution services convinced them otherwise. Now, VPN connections are the equivalent for streaming video.
If the return on investment doesn't exceed the cost of setting up the licensing and distribution rights, it won't happen.
That part seems logical. But I am amazed that "licensing and distribution" would be so expensive that it would exceed the value of millions of people viewing their content. That sounds like the companies are becoming inefficient. Their own internal paperwork is so complex and expensive that they can't deploy their own product. Ouch, that's really wacky.
Even then, it has to exceed costs by a high enough amount, otherwise the entities involved will focus their efforts on something else that's more lucrative
I get that. I work for a company that decided to can a perfectly functioning and completed product because the regulatory requirements for a particular region cost $10 million. Now, they know it would make more than $10 million, but they only had $10 million to spend in that fiscal year. So they spent it on a product that would make more. To all the people on that project, it seems like a really weird decision. But you only have so much working capital.
I echo your sentiment about the "global economy." By default, a licensing agreement should apply universally to all geographies. If I build something on the internet, it is available to everyone by default. I must go out of my way and spend extra money to make it not work for some people based on their location. In this case, the content providers stunted their own sales to the point of creating a black market. (The people using VPN to access Netflix are essentially a black market. Or gray market if you prefer since they aren't doing anything illegal.)
Pope: Thank you for a detailed answer. I'm tired of stupid responses like "xenophobia and stupidity." I expected some AC responses like that, but the registered users doing it is quite maddening.
I wasn't looking for a distilled answer. I really wanted to know what specifically is the problem. If the licenses are locked-up by exclusive agreements with existing broadcasters, then I can understand the problem. Netflix might only be able to solve that by buying out the broadcasters. I wonder if the broadcasters could let the content providers break the contract, in exchange for some agreement. Or if they can sub-license the rights back to Netflix, and profit as a middleman.
Q: Why does this code not work? Distilled answer: Bad programming. Answer I wanted: Line 27 doesn't allocate enough memory.
Q: Why can't I stream The Simpsons? Distilled answer: Licensing and greed. Answer I wanted: Viacom has an exclusive licensing agreement that expires on March 21, 2018
Interesting. So maybe they don't want Netflix to cut into DVD sales if DVD sales are more profitable in Australia than they are in the US. That would be a valid reason.
I get that Netflix won't launch in Australia without licenses. So why don't they have licenses? Why can't they get them?
The only substantive answer I've heard so far is that the companies sold decades-long *exclusive* licenses to someone else. That might tie into your statement "And whatever agreements it did sign so far likely don't become active until Launch Date X." So the implication is that they *can* get licenses, but they won't kick-in until someone else's exclusive license expires? And why was this different in Australia?
"Licensing issues" seems to be the standard reply. But, why would licensing in Australia be different from licensing elsewhere? Isn't a show streamed to Australia is just as profitable as a show streamed to Europe or America?
This is what I always here, same with Anime. But I don't understand why this is hard. Why would the rights be harder to secure in Australia versus anywhere else in the world? Why would a content provider care about geography? Isn't money made from streaming to someone in Australia the same as money made from streaming to someone in the US? When Walmart wants to sell Proctor and Gamble shampoo in the US, Proctor and Gamble profits. Why would P&G not want Walmart to sell shampoo in Australia? Or the Mars or the Moon? Is streaming somehow different?
Certainly that would be a big benefit. But that isn't what the article says happens. The article says it is "transparent" and applications won't even notice. I'm unclear how that is possible and I am looking for input on that. Some other replies are talking about that though, and it sounds interesting...
Minix tries to take a state snapshot, reconstruct something workable,
That's frieking fascinating. I just posted about how I didn't think restarting a driver could really be transparent because state would be lost. Then I read that it actually transfers the state. Do you have any good links with an overview of that? My immediate thought is "well, if the state is transferred, won't the restarted service crash too?" but I'm guessing someone has already thought of that...
There's a lot of "weasel wording" here. I hope the WSJ posts a follow-up that clarifies this a bit.
Such an approach would preserve the ability of Internet service providers to engage in individualized negotiations with [content companies] for a host of services, while prohibiting the precise practice that has raised 'fast lane' concerns," said AT&T in its filing.
This isn't "preserving" a power, it is granting them a new power. But saying "preserve" sounds softer, and more compromisey. Neutrality requires that they always stay neutral, not just sometimes stay neutral. That's the definition of "neutrality."
AT&T's idea would still allow for commercial deals between companies. But they would have to be arranged as the result of one or more subscriber requests; the ISPs couldn't offer fee-based prioritization just because they wanted to.
So all that has to happen is one naive subscriber complains that Netflix is too slow, and then everyone else's Netflix would be moved to the "slow" lane and this one person is one the "fast" lane. As for the "just because they wanted to" part, there is no other reason to have fast lanes. It is purely so the ISPs can make more money without having to upgrade their infrastructure. No one else would want them to do that.
"I am encouraged that people are coming up with creative solutions and not going to the extreme yes-no position," said Nuala O'Connor, president and chief executive of the Center for Democracy and Technology.
I don't understand this statement. Neutrality isn't negotiable. ISPs should not be filtering, altering, slowing, listening, or anything like that. There is no valid reason for them to do so. Proposing that they can do it, but only on Tuesdays, or only if someone asks them to, or only if they think the content is illegal, or only if the user is using up too much bandwidth -- none of those are compromises. They are excuses.
If a driver fails, it is automatically and transparently restarted without rebooting and without applications even noticing, making the system self-healing.
When things are restarted they lose their state. I don't see how applications will not notice that. For example, if an application has an open file handle, it seems unlikely that the file system could be "restarted" without a write failing.
FYI: In the U.S., lots of people don't have gas lines. It's common to either have no gas line, or to have your own oil tank. Water is commonly done through either a well on your own land, or a shared well amongst the community.
Your point still stands, but perhaps avoid that example.
So lots of people beat me up, quite fairly, because I posted about arctic ice and not antarctic ice. The main take-away here is that "ice extent" is not a measure of the volume of ice. The article is not trying to say anything about global warming, or ice volumes. Sorry for the confusion: I saw the usual confusion about "ice extent" and global warming and posted before reading the article.
(ignoring that the article is about the antarctic, not the arctic...)
Sorry about that.
If the arctic loses sea ice, it CONFIRMS warming! If the arctic gains sea ice, it CONFIRMS warming!
The "ice extent" doesn't say anything about gain or loss since it only measures the surface area, not the volume. The links I give merely explain how the extent can increase while the volume can decrease.
I waited to post this to see if the usual "this means global warming is a lie" posts began, and indeed they have. So let me cut this off: Increased arctic sea ice is caused by global warming. This is a CONFIRMATION of warming, not a CONTRADICTION.
Short version: 1. Summer: Arctic land ice melts 2. Melt spreads over water 3. Winter: Old ice freezes. Newly melted ice freezes. 4. Repeat steps 1 - 3 forever At step 3, there is more frozen ice on the surface than there was last year because more ice melted. A separate measure, the arctic ice "volume" decreases every year while the arctic ice "extent" which is the surface area of the ice increases.
This is believable up until the sentence"Comcast doesn’t monitor users’ browser software or web surfin" which we know is false since Comcast sends out notices to people downloading pirated software, and they were in court for monitoring and blocking bittorrent traffic.
It is weird that they throw an obvious lie into what would otherwise be a nice clarifying statement that would put the issue to rest.
Slashdot Mirror
I've only seen a few episodes of TBBT, but I didn't get that there was anything geeky about it. Do geeks actually watch the show?
The first episode has a hot girl meet a couple of nerdy guys who predictable run into her burly ex-boyfriend. In the next episode, said hot chick finds some reason to take a shower in their apartment, and hilarity ensues. It seemed more fanservice than geekdom. There characters were just "Revenge of the Nerds" style over-the-top archetypes of geeks. This is probably typical of sitcoms since realistic people just aren't as funny as exaggerations.
This interview was the first time I had heard of the series as being for geeks or by geeks. It is good that some mainstream writers take their material seriously.
Fair enough. Some interesting material I came-up with while searching on this topic:
1) In 2013, Comcast proposed a system where Comcast does the monitoring:
http://variety.com/2013/digita...
2) Comcast actually stood up for it's users against a copyright troll.
https://torrentfreak.com/comca...
To deal with the added write amplification, Tanguy said Micron increased the TRIM command set, meaning blocks of data no longer required can be erased and freed up more often
Did they mean "implemented" rather than "increased?" Or did they mean that they added something new to the TRIM command?
Yeah, that makes sense in a sad way. I suppose the music industry thought the same way for a while. Eventually, illegal music distribution services convinced them otherwise. Now, VPN connections are the equivalent for streaming video.
If the return on investment doesn't exceed the cost of setting up the licensing and distribution rights, it won't happen.
That part seems logical. But I am amazed that "licensing and distribution" would be so expensive that it would exceed the value of millions of people viewing their content. That sounds like the companies are becoming inefficient. Their own internal paperwork is so complex and expensive that they can't deploy their own product. Ouch, that's really wacky.
Even then, it has to exceed costs by a high enough amount, otherwise the entities involved will focus their efforts on something else that's more lucrative
I get that. I work for a company that decided to can a perfectly functioning and completed product because the regulatory requirements for a particular region cost $10 million. Now, they know it would make more than $10 million, but they only had $10 million to spend in that fiscal year. So they spent it on a product that would make more. To all the people on that project, it seems like a really weird decision. But you only have so much working capital.
I echo your sentiment about the "global economy." By default, a licensing agreement should apply universally to all geographies. If I build something on the internet, it is available to everyone by default. I must go out of my way and spend extra money to make it not work for some people based on their location. In this case, the content providers stunted their own sales to the point of creating a black market. (The people using VPN to access Netflix are essentially a black market. Or gray market if you prefer since they aren't doing anything illegal.)
Pope: Thank you for a detailed answer. I'm tired of stupid responses like "xenophobia and stupidity." I expected some AC responses like that, but the registered users doing it is quite maddening.
I wasn't looking for a distilled answer. I really wanted to know what specifically is the problem. If the licenses are locked-up by exclusive agreements with existing broadcasters, then I can understand the problem. Netflix might only be able to solve that by buying out the broadcasters. I wonder if the broadcasters could let the content providers break the contract, in exchange for some agreement. Or if they can sub-license the rights back to Netflix, and profit as a middleman.
Q: Why does this code not work?
Distilled answer: Bad programming.
Answer I wanted: Line 27 doesn't allocate enough memory.
Q: Why can't I stream The Simpsons?
Distilled answer: Licensing and greed.
Answer I wanted: Viacom has an exclusive licensing agreement that expires on March 21, 2018
Interesting. So maybe they don't want Netflix to cut into DVD sales if DVD sales are more profitable in Australia than they are in the US. That would be a valid reason.
I keep hearing "greed" but that is a copout. Greedy people do not refuse to license their products for decades.
I get that Netflix won't launch in Australia without licenses. So why don't they have licenses? Why can't they get them?
The only substantive answer I've heard so far is that the companies sold decades-long *exclusive* licenses to someone else. That might tie into your statement "And whatever agreements it did sign so far likely don't become active until Launch Date X." So the implication is that they *can* get licenses, but they won't kick-in until someone else's exclusive license expires? And why was this different in Australia?
Thank you. That is the first actual substantive answer I've had on this topic. Every other reply is "because licensing" or "because greed."
"Those greedy bastards" don't make money by refusing to license their products. There must be some real concrete reason.
"Licensing issues" seems to be the standard reply. But, why would licensing in Australia be different from licensing elsewhere? Isn't a show streamed to Australia is just as profitable as a show streamed to Europe or America?
This is what I always here, same with Anime. But I don't understand why this is hard. Why would the rights be harder to secure in Australia versus anywhere else in the world? Why would a content provider care about geography? Isn't money made from streaming to someone in Australia the same as money made from streaming to someone in the US? When Walmart wants to sell Proctor and Gamble shampoo in the US, Proctor and Gamble profits. Why would P&G not want Walmart to sell shampoo in Australia? Or the Mars or the Moon? Is streaming somehow different?
Why is Netflix not available in Australia?
Certainly that would be a big benefit. But that isn't what the article says happens. The article says it is "transparent" and applications won't even notice. I'm unclear how that is possible and I am looking for input on that. Some other replies are talking about that though, and it sounds interesting...
So the drivers are stateless?
Minix tries to take a state snapshot, reconstruct something workable,
That's frieking fascinating. I just posted about how I didn't think restarting a driver could really be transparent because state would be lost. Then I read that it actually transfers the state. Do you have any good links with an overview of that? My immediate thought is "well, if the state is transferred, won't the restarted service crash too?" but I'm guessing someone has already thought of that...
There's a lot of "weasel wording" here. I hope the WSJ posts a follow-up that clarifies this a bit.
Such an approach would preserve the ability of Internet service providers to engage in individualized negotiations with [content companies] for a host of services, while prohibiting the precise practice that has raised 'fast lane' concerns," said AT&T in its filing.
This isn't "preserving" a power, it is granting them a new power. But saying "preserve" sounds softer, and more compromisey. Neutrality requires that they always stay neutral, not just sometimes stay neutral. That's the definition of "neutrality."
AT&T's idea would still allow for commercial deals between companies. But they would have to be arranged as the result of one or more subscriber requests; the ISPs couldn't offer fee-based prioritization just because they wanted to.
So all that has to happen is one naive subscriber complains that Netflix is too slow, and then everyone else's Netflix would be moved to the "slow" lane and this one person is one the "fast" lane. As for the "just because they wanted to" part, there is no other reason to have fast lanes. It is purely so the ISPs can make more money without having to upgrade their infrastructure. No one else would want them to do that.
"I am encouraged that people are coming up with creative solutions and not going to the extreme yes-no position," said Nuala O'Connor, president and chief executive of the Center for Democracy and Technology.
I don't understand this statement. Neutrality isn't negotiable. ISPs should not be filtering, altering, slowing, listening, or anything like that. There is no valid reason for them to do so. Proposing that they can do it, but only on Tuesdays, or only if someone asks them to, or only if they think the content is illegal, or only if the user is using up too much bandwidth -- none of those are compromises. They are excuses.
If a driver fails, it is automatically and transparently restarted without rebooting and without applications even noticing, making the system self-healing.
When things are restarted they lose their state. I don't see how applications will not notice that. For example, if an application has an open file handle, it seems unlikely that the file system could be "restarted" without a write failing.
You have electricity, water and gas, don't you?
FYI: In the U.S., lots of people don't have gas lines. It's common to either have no gas line, or to have your own oil tank. Water is commonly done through either a well on your own land, or a shared well amongst the community.
Your point still stands, but perhaps avoid that example.
So lots of people beat me up, quite fairly, because I posted about arctic ice and not antarctic ice. The main take-away here is that "ice extent" is not a measure of the volume of ice. The article is not trying to say anything about global warming, or ice volumes. Sorry for the confusion: I saw the usual confusion about "ice extent" and global warming and posted before reading the article.
(ignoring that the article is about the antarctic, not the arctic...)
Sorry about that.
If the arctic loses sea ice, it CONFIRMS warming!
If the arctic gains sea ice, it CONFIRMS warming!
The "ice extent" doesn't say anything about gain or loss since it only measures the surface area, not the volume. The links I give merely explain how the extent can increase while the volume can decrease.
I waited to post this to see if the usual "this means global warming is a lie" posts began, and indeed they have. So let me cut this off: Increased arctic sea ice is caused by global warming. This is a CONFIRMATION of warming, not a CONTRADICTION.
Short version:
1. Summer: Arctic land ice melts
2. Melt spreads over water
3. Winter: Old ice freezes. Newly melted ice freezes.
4. Repeat steps 1 - 3 forever
At step 3, there is more frozen ice on the surface than there was last year because more ice melted. A separate measure, the arctic ice "volume" decreases every year while the arctic ice "extent" which is the surface area of the ice increases.
Previous discussions on this:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
http://news.slashdot.org/comme...
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
This is believable up until the sentence"Comcast doesn’t monitor users’ browser software or web surfin" which we know is false since Comcast sends out notices to people downloading pirated software, and they were in court for monitoring and blocking bittorrent traffic.
It is weird that they throw an obvious lie into what would otherwise be a nice clarifying statement that would put the issue to rest.