I knew a bunch of these, but there are a ton of good ones out there. Don't know how much I'll use them, but I'll take it into consideration. My favorite, by far:
Windows Logo+S: Toggles CAPS LOCK on and off
Thanks, I don't have a key that already does that.... wait a second! The real problem is, my laptop cut the Windows key out and put the function key there instead.
Evil? More like trying to make a profit. I hate how profit = evil on Slashdot. Since when is it your right to get DSL? If Verizon doesn't want to offer you DSL (because you got a fiber connection at one point), they're allowed to do that. By removing the copper connection, they remove a huge cost on their network. These old copper networks aren't free to run and every copper line Verizon removes is a couple more dollars every year in operational costs.
Finally, they're taking aim at something I despise on Windows XP.
"Create a product folder if your product is a collection of individual programs (three or more), and users think of your product in terms of that collection. Use only a single-level folder for this purpose."
I hate when applications make trees to put one program into it. Useless! Now we just need the designers to follow this spec.
A better idea... Buy a Xbox 360 or a Wii. (Buy em used after a couple of months!) Save yourself anywhere from $200-$400 and donate the money to cancer research, or the F@H project if you really like that project. No, you don't get to have the PS3, but, your $200 will go a lot further for research than your cycles will over a couple of years. Also, take the $25-$100 you'll save on electricity (or whatever people in this discussion have been calculating) and donate that. With the $500 or so you'll give to research over the next 3 years, you'll be able to say for sure that you helped out. And, you get to cut out the middle men (Sony getting cash on the hardware and the Electric Co for providing the electricity).
Added benefit: Tax write-off! I want to see you try to write-off the additional ~$100 in electricity you're donating.
"come on.. just buy into level3 or other that have already done the pure fiber/ip networks..."
Last I checked, Level3 didn't own fiber that runs anywhere near my house. And if it does (by chance) run near my house, it doesn't run into my house. The last mile is so crucial. As stated numerous times in these comments, the Cable Companies already have a large fiber plant that runs TV and Data, but the last mile runs over coax. And for people saying: "So build out the last mile," you need to realize how expensive this is. Verizon is spending $20B on a fiber rollout. Last I looked, it was costing $750-$1500 to pass each home and another $750-$1000 to actually wire the house when the customer requests service. Yikes! These prices will no doubt continue to go downward, but that's a long way to profitibility when you can only get about $1200 a year from each house. Remember that a lot of that revenue goes to actually running the network or buying channels from content providers. No idea, but the ROI might be 5 years or greater.
I really recommend watching the above video. The parallels between the 60s PSA and today are absolutely striking. While today legislators will argue about how "the internet has changed the paradigm" and try to enforce blocking on the internet in libraries in and schools, the 60s PSA says that "never before in the history of man have the [pornographers] had access to Mass Transit, Rapid Printing Press, Mass Distribution." Very very intriguing. In 30 years is someone going to be going off on how holographic 3d smell-o-vision (?!) sensory porn has changed the paradigm again? If so, can I get some now? And, when (if) that stuff happens, does this post count as a patent? Or at least prior art?
You know what I'd really like to see? A government-regulated utility that only controls the wires. No service, no nothing. Just pure hardware. And ATT, SBC, Speakeasy, AOL and all the rest can compete on services all day long
What happens when the copper isn't good enough, or the Coax isn't fast enough and you need fiber? You need the government to upgrade it? Good grief.
Also, it's a pretty simplified view (some would even call it Ted Stevens-esque) to think that the wires are just tubes that any service can be put on. Those wires need to be hooked up to a box, and that box needs to have services running on it. It's very difficult to have one box tie a few hundred or thousand wires together and then make AT&T, Verizon and all the rest run service over it. Sure it's possible, but who owns that box? What if the box needs to be upgraded? What if the box goes down? What if Verizon wants to provision a new service on that box to give you faster speeds, different access, worse service, better service etc, but AT&T doesn't want to innovate?
Additionally, if a government utility were to own all the hardware -- you've just eliminated the service providers all together. Many of the features that run over networks (such as VPN, Security, Voice) are built into hardware. These aren't software apps running on servers that are powering this stuff. There are serious problems with this approach.
For all of you complaining, it works great on my Blackberry 7130e with EVDO. I'm a long time user of Google Local (this is just the upgrade) on the device, and this adds some much needed features like:
*Favorites -- now I don't have to type my home address in everytime I want to map from my house to somewhere else *Details about locations - how long is that place open? (only works with some places, none of which I can find yet) *Live traffic -- we'll see how well it actually works. Keep in mind, I know the interstate is jammed between here and there at rush hour. There's generally no way around it. Simply providing traffic info for the big interstates doesn't really help me out. But, it is a step in the right direction. Hopefully soon, we'll allow the devices to make intelligent decisions based on traffic patterns.
What this means is that if you have 10 ppl sharing a real 15 mbps pipe to the net, and 9 of them are going to Yahoo (who did pay) and you are trying to go to Google (who didn't) then your traffic would be priortiized lower than the ones going to Yahoo, instead of using fair share algorithms.
Now in bigger scales with pipes oversold way more than 10ppl this becomes really bad because if most of the customers are going to companies that did pay, my traffic could be seriously degraded even if I am only using 1 of my 15 mbps because the other people going to sites that paid will be allowed to saturate as much of their bandwidth as possible before I am even given a chance to request.
What you're talking about here is queue starvation. If you look at some QoS designs, there are ways to build QoS networks so that this doesn't happen (in particular with Class Based Weight Fair Queueing and Priority Queueing). Look at where the bottle neck typically is in service provider networks -- the last mile. In DSL, Cable even FTTx builds, the last mile provides the biggest bandwidth crunch. This means that you're essentially competing with yourself for bandwidth, not your neighbors. So the plan is really to pump up and prioritize your own connection to make sure important (ie: paid) traffic gets through first.
I can imagine this being absolutely fantastic for users. This would give you (or your content provider) the ability to tell the ISP what is important and what isn't. Imagine an ISP that allowed you do to this with your own rules. If I could go essentially set my own QoS policy on the ISP router, I would absolutely love it. I could make it so my BitTorrent traffic doesn't choke out my incoming voice, or browsing traffic.
At the end of the day, this is about getting more money for the ISPs, certainly. But it's also about giving the user (and the other user, the content provider) a better experience. The ISPs know that their customers won't put up with them if they make it so their customers can't get access to the sites they want.
You pay Verizon for 15Mbps FiOS to your house. Google pays for a 1 Gbps connection to the Internet from some other carrier. Your FiOS connection, however, is capable of really high speeds, much higher than 15 Mbps, if Verizon flips a switch. So when you're browsing Yahoo, or Slashdot, you get your 15 Mbps that you paid for.
However, when Google wants to send you a video from the video search, they want really high bandwidth and really good Quality of Service. So they toss Verizon some extra cash to temporarily flip your connection to 45 Mbps and let only the Google traffic cover the extra 30 Mbps you just got.
Your video comes in faster and of higher quality. You're happy. Google is happy because you think Google gives you the best service and you keep coming back to look at ads and use their service.. Verizon is really happy, because they just made some extra cash from Google.
Another example might involve Vonage. You (or Vonage) pay Verizon some set cost per month to get "Vonage Accelerator" with that, they'll take your Vonage packets, but them at the front of a queue and ensure they don't get dropped. They'll also reserve bandwidth for you so you don't have to worry about your kid downloading and killing all your bandwidth. Your calls sound great, your current bandwidth isn't compromised.
Sure, if you look at it really cynically, it looks like a protection fee from the mafia. But in the end, it isn't about Verizon, Comcast or some other Service Provider blocking sites, it's about them accelerating current ones.
Personally, I think it's a fantastic idea. I think the people who are really struggling with the idea are the ones who don't understand how it actually works or are super skeptics about everything.
So what you're really saying is -- you've never seen HD. It is really incredible how much more of an experience it is to enjoy a movie or a well done drama on an HD set.
I think your blame is misplaced -- somewhat. When I was in Upstate New York with Time Warner Cable, I had the Explorer 8200 HD DVR(or was is it the 8100 HD?). It was a terrible box. The thing crashed all the time, failed to record, and did a generally crappy job with pixelation. Also, it lacked basic features like the ability to watch something from the beginning while it was being recorded.
However, when I moved to North Carolina, I got the Explorer 8300HD DVR. I'm still with Time Warner Cable, but a different division, so I got a newer box with different software. This box has been great. A few reboots a month, I think mostly caused by the cable company. However, the software is much more stable and has all the needed features.
In short, I've learned that complaining about the equipment provided by the cable company (or phone company) should be mostly directed at the cable company and not the manufacturer. It's kind of like complaining about Samsung making a crappy wireless phone, when it was your wireless phone carrier that crippled the thing.
Almost... Linksys (Cisco) doesn't make cable modems. They do, however, make access points, desktop switches, print servers, network adapters and network storage.
I'm simplifing things -- but I'm allowed to, because this is Slashdot.
This is pretty much exactly what happened with AT&T back in the early 80s. They split the company into (if memory serves) three companies. One would maintain the lines, one would provide the services, one would do the R&D. Everyone figured that AT&T got the sweet deal because they were providing the long distance service -- the really high margin stuff. People also liked Bell Labs chances because they had the ability to come up with cheap new technologies with little overhead. Finally, everyone thought the Bells got screwed because they had to have the workforce to maintain the lines. Well as it turns out, Bell Labs and AT&T are shells of theirselves, because they couldn't create the kind of value they needed to, whereas the Baby Bells could (due to helpful federal laws).
So I ask, what makes you think that this wouldn't happen all over again? And if you think that splitting a company like Verizon or SBC into two companies will help innovation, you're freaking nuts.
In my opinion, the government should really take their hands off of the whole situation. Seriously. I understand there needs to be regulations for the POTS stuff because it was gifted to the Bells back in the days. But for FiOS and FTTP? Give me a break, these companies are making a huge investment in their network -- to provide the customer better service. They already tried regulating reselling the lines and the Bells already pushed the CLECs out of business for a variety of reasons. If you really want to get lower prices in the mix, get some more companies involved. The way to do that is to lose the restrictions. If Verizon and SBC are the only companies that are able to provide this kind of service to the towns, then so be it - they've got the cash, let them do it. But something tells me that if the revenue is there (it is) then the capital is there, somewhere. Let the market take care of this.
If I've rambled, excuse me - it's been a long day.
They do. If you have a DirectTV TiVo you can indeed record one channel and watch another if you have a two-signal dish.
TiVo solved this problem years ago.
And for those of us without DirecTV? Those of us with Cable -- like most of the country? What about HD? Again, no DirecTV, no HD TiVo. Instead, we're forced into Digital Cable (with an extra 200 crappy channels no one watches), more monthly service fees, renting the equipment (which is sometimes a good thing - like upgrades), and absolutely terrible DVRs that don't have half the features TiVo had years ago.
TiVo really made it too easy for the cable companies. They made a great device, sold it, got people used to it, and then stopped innovating. Now, almost everyone with Cable uses the DVR provided by the cable company. And, I think, it's mostly because of the stupid two tuner issue. I want to record two shows at once (or watch one and record another) -- is that so damn hard?!
And to those of you who say, "buy another TiVo and hook it up as another tuner" -- give me a break, now I have to manage which TiVo does which recordings, and which TiVo stores which recordings -- I'll just suffer through my Digital Cable DVR crap.
Also, even if they know it's not backwards compatible, they don't want to announce it now. That would hurt current sales of games for the current XBox, because a lot of people see them as an investment. By keeping quiet on it, they can announce no backwards compatibility when it comes out so as to not hurt sales of old games.
I don't know if you're responding to my post, but I'll bite.
I never referred to social engineering as the best method of faking todays IDs. The best method today is to make a state with less than awesome security features from scratch (inkjet printer and some laminiate) and use it in somewhere that is not that state. Bouncers are not familiar with all states, because it is too hard to know them all. Published materials allow bouncers to get educated in all states, but until you feel an ID over and over and over again, you'll never really know what a real one is like.
The funny thing about your post is you seem to be proud that out of all the accomplishments you've achived by using this card you compare a terrorist bombing / killing / stabbing / whatever people to a 'poor college kid' trying to get a beer a year or two early?
I'm not really sure what you mean here. I never said that a poor college kid trying to forge IDs is the same as a terrorist. What I did say is that the more security features you add and the more standardization there is, the more you'll stop the 'casual' forgeries -- like the 19 year old trying to get into a bar, because it will be too expensive for him to create IDs.
You will not, however, stop someone who is really determined, because of the principals already talked about in this thread (faking other documents to get an ID, expensive equipment etc.).
In actual fact, it should become easier to get fake ID's. Standardisation across the entire country would mean a greater pool of people working to circumvent security on the cards - with 50 different security systems, you only have one state's worth of villains working on each system.
Wrong. The people who make fake IDs don't make IDs just from their own state. In fact, most of them stay away from their homestate because they can't get it just perfect. If you card, and you're in Maine, you see 95% Maines all day. You see a few NHs and a few MAs. So when you see a fake Maine, you know it right away, it doesn't look like the others, or it feels wrong, etc. As a result, the villians in Maine concentrate on making a MA ID, similarly, so do the villians in NY, and a lot of other places. You'll notice that most fake IDs are not of the places that are actually high security. NY and NJ (recently issued) have two of the highest security IDs, and you generally don't see fakes created - you might see kids "chalking" their age on those, but you won't see a ID made from scratch in those states.
Because of this, you have all the villians from 50 states focusing on 4 or 5 other states that they make really well. If you get a National ID card, with a real hologram, and some decent material, and some security lines, it will not be easy to fake. You'll have all those villians trying to do it, but they won't come up with a dirt cheap way to do it with an inkjet.
Will there still be fake IDs? Most likely. I think they'll cut down on a lot of them with something like this though. The real problem is that the people they're trying to stop, terrorists, will probably still be able to get them. If a DMV can create a the cards, then a terrorist who invests 100K in various equipment can make them as well. But you're going to stop poor college kids from making them.
One final note: In terms of fake IDs, it really doesn't matter unless they actually create a high security ID with stuff like smart chips, true holograms and a true secure material (think: currency).
Very true. The only really big idea here is IPTV, I think. Other institutions -- like Cornell are doing the same. The difference here is Cornell, unlike Dartmouth, didn't get a write up in NYT because they didn't use the Wireless buzzword. Sure you'll be able to receive Cornell IPTV over the wireless network, but why not just plug into an ethernet? Why Dartmouth would decide to go all wireless when the majority of their buildings are already wired for Ethernet is beyond me. I don't buy that it's going to cut costs. The only thing it will cut is network reliability.
Not terribly important, but there is some history here.
Bell Atlantic bought GTE (became Verizon) and they spun out Genuity. Genuity crashed and burned and became Level3. So if Level3 is doing a crappy job, Verizon has some pull over there.
I would be hesitant to buy anything from someone who said "this meeting is one of a thousand for me; I'm just doing my job." If you don't want my sale, I'm not going to give it to you. I don't care if you're the Sales Rep or the Engineer, I'm going to want someone who cares.
I'd rather work with someone who cares about my needs and my company than someone who knows the technology. When your technology breaks (because I broke it, or you did it wrong) I'm going to call you, and you're going to fix it. If I'm not important to you, you're not going to fix it.
You can almost always teach someone the technology (the "I'll get back to you on that" people); it is much harder to teach someone to care about their customers. It's the difference between not knowing and not caring.
This isn't entirely accurate. Just because China is accessing the Internet more often than USA, doesn't mean that Chinese users will be the kings of the Internet. Whoever spends the most online is still king.
Do you think eBay is going to start writing their page in Chinese if China takes over the number one spot? Nope, not until the Chinese start buying useless pieces of junk off of eBay.
Oh come on, everyone knows in a soccer game for at least half the time, you're not doing anything. Look at some of the players during the play, they walk to the ball, shade to where the action is. I'd rather have them stop the play every 10 seconds and swap players and have full sprints all the time rather than what soccer does. Next you'll tell me that the NHL sucks because those players have 2 minute line changes.
The truth is, among sports, there can be no "more of a sport/less of a sport" argument. These are sports. NFL guys rest because for the time their sport is going, they're hitting at levels that would kill some people. (Look at the countless cases of people getting internal bleeding, cracked ribs and other broken parts.) Even in baseball, which everyone loves to rail on for not being much of a sport, there great physical challenges, unmatched by other sports. Sports are about competition and testing human capabilities.
As for rugby, I've heard it's very intense, and do believe it. Unfortunately, I've never seen a game, so I can't comment.
Slashdot Mirror
Windows Shortcut Keys
I knew a bunch of these, but there are a ton of good ones out there. Don't know how much I'll use them, but I'll take it into consideration. My favorite, by far:
Windows Logo+S: Toggles CAPS LOCK on and off
Thanks, I don't have a key that already does that.... wait a second! The real problem is, my laptop cut the Windows key out and put the function key there instead.
Evil? More like trying to make a profit. I hate how profit = evil on Slashdot. Since when is it your right to get DSL? If Verizon doesn't want to offer you DSL (because you got a fiber connection at one point), they're allowed to do that. By removing the copper connection, they remove a huge cost on their network. These old copper networks aren't free to run and every copper line Verizon removes is a couple more dollars every year in operational costs.
Finally, they're taking aim at something I despise on Windows XP.
I hate when applications make trees to put one program into it. Useless! Now we just need the designers to follow this spec.
A better idea... Buy a Xbox 360 or a Wii. (Buy em used after a couple of months!) Save yourself anywhere from $200-$400 and donate the money to cancer research, or the F@H project if you really like that project. No, you don't get to have the PS3, but, your $200 will go a lot further for research than your cycles will over a couple of years. Also, take the $25-$100 you'll save on electricity (or whatever people in this discussion have been calculating) and donate that. With the $500 or so you'll give to research over the next 3 years, you'll be able to say for sure that you helped out. And, you get to cut out the middle men (Sony getting cash on the hardware and the Electric Co for providing the electricity).
Added benefit: Tax write-off! I want to see you try to write-off the additional ~$100 in electricity you're donating.
"come on.. just buy into level3 or other that have already done the pure fiber/ip networks..."
Last I checked, Level3 didn't own fiber that runs anywhere near my house. And if it does (by chance) run near my house, it doesn't run into my house. The last mile is so crucial. As stated numerous times in these comments, the Cable Companies already have a large fiber plant that runs TV and Data, but the last mile runs over coax. And for people saying: "So build out the last mile," you need to realize how expensive this is. Verizon is spending $20B on a fiber rollout. Last I looked, it was costing $750-$1500 to pass each home and another $750-$1000 to actually wire the house when the customer requests service. Yikes! These prices will no doubt continue to go downward, but that's a long way to profitibility when you can only get about $1200 a year from each house. Remember that a lot of that revenue goes to actually running the network or buying channels from content providers. No idea, but the ROI might be 5 years or greater.
I really recommend watching the above video. The parallels between the 60s PSA and today are absolutely striking. While today legislators will argue about how "the internet has changed the paradigm" and try to enforce blocking on the internet in libraries in and schools, the 60s PSA says that "never before in the history of man have the [pornographers] had access to Mass Transit, Rapid Printing Press, Mass Distribution." Very very intriguing. In 30 years is someone going to be going off on how holographic 3d smell-o-vision (?!) sensory porn has changed the paradigm again? If so, can I get some now? And, when (if) that stuff happens, does this post count as a patent? Or at least prior art?
You know what I'd really like to see? A government-regulated utility that only controls the wires. No service, no nothing. Just pure hardware. And ATT, SBC, Speakeasy, AOL and all the rest can compete on services all day long
What happens when the copper isn't good enough, or the Coax isn't fast enough and you need fiber? You need the government to upgrade it? Good grief.
Also, it's a pretty simplified view (some would even call it Ted Stevens-esque) to think that the wires are just tubes that any service can be put on. Those wires need to be hooked up to a box, and that box needs to have services running on it. It's very difficult to have one box tie a few hundred or thousand wires together and then make AT&T, Verizon and all the rest run service over it. Sure it's possible, but who owns that box? What if the box needs to be upgraded? What if the box goes down? What if Verizon wants to provision a new service on that box to give you faster speeds, different access, worse service, better service etc, but AT&T doesn't want to innovate?
Additionally, if a government utility were to own all the hardware -- you've just eliminated the service providers all together. Many of the features that run over networks (such as VPN, Security, Voice) are built into hardware. These aren't software apps running on servers that are powering this stuff. There are serious problems with this approach.
For all of you complaining, it works great on my Blackberry 7130e with EVDO. I'm a long time user of Google Local (this is just the upgrade) on the device, and this adds some much needed features like:
*Favorites -- now I don't have to type my home address in everytime I want to map from my house to somewhere else
*Details about locations - how long is that place open? (only works with some places, none of which I can find yet)
*Live traffic -- we'll see how well it actually works. Keep in mind, I know the interstate is jammed between here and there at rush hour. There's generally no way around it. Simply providing traffic info for the big interstates doesn't really help me out. But, it is a step in the right direction. Hopefully soon, we'll allow the devices to make intelligent decisions based on traffic patterns.
Now in bigger scales with pipes oversold way more than 10ppl this becomes really bad because if most of the customers are going to companies that did pay, my traffic could be seriously degraded even if I am only using 1 of my 15 mbps because the other people going to sites that paid will be allowed to saturate as much of their bandwidth as possible before I am even given a chance to request.
What you're talking about here is queue starvation. If you look at some QoS designs, there are ways to build QoS networks so that this doesn't happen (in particular with Class Based Weight Fair Queueing and Priority Queueing). Look at where the bottle neck typically is in service provider networks -- the last mile. In DSL, Cable even FTTx builds, the last mile provides the biggest bandwidth crunch. This means that you're essentially competing with yourself for bandwidth, not your neighbors. So the plan is really to pump up and prioritize your own connection to make sure important (ie: paid) traffic gets through first.
I can imagine this being absolutely fantastic for users. This would give you (or your content provider) the ability to tell the ISP what is important and what isn't. Imagine an ISP that allowed you do to this with your own rules. If I could go essentially set my own QoS policy on the ISP router, I would absolutely love it. I could make it so my BitTorrent traffic doesn't choke out my incoming voice, or browsing traffic.
At the end of the day, this is about getting more money for the ISPs, certainly. But it's also about giving the user (and the other user, the content provider) a better experience. The ISPs know that their customers won't put up with them if they make it so their customers can't get access to the sites they want.
Think about it this way.
You pay Verizon for 15Mbps FiOS to your house. Google pays for a 1 Gbps connection to the Internet from some other carrier. Your FiOS connection, however, is capable of really high speeds, much higher than 15 Mbps, if Verizon flips a switch. So when you're browsing Yahoo, or Slashdot, you get your 15 Mbps that you paid for.
However, when Google wants to send you a video from the video search, they want really high bandwidth and really good Quality of Service. So they toss Verizon some extra cash to temporarily flip your connection to 45 Mbps and let only the Google traffic cover the extra 30 Mbps you just got.
Your video comes in faster and of higher quality. You're happy. Google is happy because you think Google gives you the best service and you keep coming back to look at ads and use their service.. Verizon is really happy, because they just made some extra cash from Google.
Another example might involve Vonage. You (or Vonage) pay Verizon some set cost per month to get "Vonage Accelerator" with that, they'll take your Vonage packets, but them at the front of a queue and ensure they don't get dropped. They'll also reserve bandwidth for you so you don't have to worry about your kid downloading and killing all your bandwidth. Your calls sound great, your current bandwidth isn't compromised.
Sure, if you look at it really cynically, it looks like a protection fee from the mafia. But in the end, it isn't about Verizon, Comcast or some other Service Provider blocking sites, it's about them accelerating current ones.
Personally, I think it's a fantastic idea. I think the people who are really struggling with the idea are the ones who don't understand how it actually works or are super skeptics about everything.
So what you're really saying is -- you've never seen HD. It is really incredible how much more of an experience it is to enjoy a movie or a well done drama on an HD set.
However, when I moved to North Carolina, I got the Explorer 8300HD DVR. I'm still with Time Warner Cable, but a different division, so I got a newer box with different software. This box has been great. A few reboots a month, I think mostly caused by the cable company. However, the software is much more stable and has all the needed features.
In short, I've learned that complaining about the equipment provided by the cable company (or phone company) should be mostly directed at the cable company and not the manufacturer. It's kind of like complaining about Samsung making a crappy wireless phone, when it was your wireless phone carrier that crippled the thing.
Almost... Linksys (Cisco) doesn't make cable modems. They do, however, make access points, desktop switches, print servers, network adapters and network storage.
* don't know who this is? there are people who would call you an idiot if you didn't.
You mean Tedy Bruschi, surely. Excellent points otherwise though.
This is pretty much exactly what happened with AT&T back in the early 80s. They split the company into (if memory serves) three companies. One would maintain the lines, one would provide the services, one would do the R&D. Everyone figured that AT&T got the sweet deal because they were providing the long distance service -- the really high margin stuff. People also liked Bell Labs chances because they had the ability to come up with cheap new technologies with little overhead. Finally, everyone thought the Bells got screwed because they had to have the workforce to maintain the lines. Well as it turns out, Bell Labs and AT&T are shells of theirselves, because they couldn't create the kind of value they needed to, whereas the Baby Bells could (due to helpful federal laws).
So I ask, what makes you think that this wouldn't happen all over again? And if you think that splitting a company like Verizon or SBC into two companies will help innovation, you're freaking nuts.
In my opinion, the government should really take their hands off of the whole situation. Seriously. I understand there needs to be regulations for the POTS stuff because it was gifted to the Bells back in the days. But for FiOS and FTTP? Give me a break, these companies are making a huge investment in their network -- to provide the customer better service. They already tried regulating reselling the lines and the Bells already pushed the CLECs out of business for a variety of reasons. If you really want to get lower prices in the mix, get some more companies involved. The way to do that is to lose the restrictions. If Verizon and SBC are the only companies that are able to provide this kind of service to the towns, then so be it - they've got the cash, let them do it. But something tells me that if the revenue is there (it is) then the capital is there, somewhere. Let the market take care of this.
If I've rambled, excuse me - it's been a long day.
99.999%
Show me VoIP that does 99.99% and then I'll consider switching.
They do. If you have a DirectTV TiVo you can indeed record one channel and watch another if you have a two-signal dish.
TiVo solved this problem years ago.
And for those of us without DirecTV? Those of us with Cable -- like most of the country? What about HD? Again, no DirecTV, no HD TiVo. Instead, we're forced into Digital Cable (with an extra 200 crappy channels no one watches), more monthly service fees, renting the equipment (which is sometimes a good thing - like upgrades), and absolutely terrible DVRs that don't have half the features TiVo had years ago.
TiVo really made it too easy for the cable companies. They made a great device, sold it, got people used to it, and then stopped innovating. Now, almost everyone with Cable uses the DVR provided by the cable company. And, I think, it's mostly because of the stupid two tuner issue. I want to record two shows at once (or watch one and record another) -- is that so damn hard?!
And to those of you who say, "buy another TiVo and hook it up as another tuner" -- give me a break, now I have to manage which TiVo does which recordings, and which TiVo stores which recordings -- I'll just suffer through my Digital Cable DVR crap.
This was a lot longer than it was supposed to be.
Also, even if they know it's not backwards compatible, they don't want to announce it now. That would hurt current sales of games for the current XBox, because a lot of people see them as an investment. By keeping quiet on it, they can announce no backwards compatibility when it comes out so as to not hurt sales of old games.
I never referred to social engineering as the best method of faking todays IDs. The best method today is to make a state with less than awesome security features from scratch (inkjet printer and some laminiate) and use it in somewhere that is not that state. Bouncers are not familiar with all states, because it is too hard to know them all. Published materials allow bouncers to get educated in all states, but until you feel an ID over and over and over again, you'll never really know what a real one is like.
The funny thing about your post is you seem to be proud that out of all the accomplishments you've achived by using this card you compare a terrorist bombing / killing / stabbing / whatever people to a 'poor college kid' trying to get a beer a year or two early?
I'm not really sure what you mean here. I never said that a poor college kid trying to forge IDs is the same as a terrorist. What I did say is that the more security features you add and the more standardization there is, the more you'll stop the 'casual' forgeries -- like the 19 year old trying to get into a bar, because it will be too expensive for him to create IDs.
You will not, however, stop someone who is really determined, because of the principals already talked about in this thread (faking other documents to get an ID, expensive equipment etc.).
Wrong. The people who make fake IDs don't make IDs just from their own state. In fact, most of them stay away from their homestate because they can't get it just perfect. If you card, and you're in Maine, you see 95% Maines all day. You see a few NHs and a few MAs. So when you see a fake Maine, you know it right away, it doesn't look like the others, or it feels wrong, etc. As a result, the villians in Maine concentrate on making a MA ID, similarly, so do the villians in NY, and a lot of other places. You'll notice that most fake IDs are not of the places that are actually high security. NY and NJ (recently issued) have two of the highest security IDs, and you generally don't see fakes created - you might see kids "chalking" their age on those, but you won't see a ID made from scratch in those states.
Because of this, you have all the villians from 50 states focusing on 4 or 5 other states that they make really well. If you get a National ID card, with a real hologram, and some decent material, and some security lines, it will not be easy to fake. You'll have all those villians trying to do it, but they won't come up with a dirt cheap way to do it with an inkjet.
Will there still be fake IDs? Most likely. I think they'll cut down on a lot of them with something like this though. The real problem is that the people they're trying to stop, terrorists, will probably still be able to get them. If a DMV can create a the cards, then a terrorist who invests 100K in various equipment can make them as well. But you're going to stop poor college kids from making them.
One final note: In terms of fake IDs, it really doesn't matter unless they actually create a high security ID with stuff like smart chips, true holograms and a true secure material (think: currency).
Very true. The only really big idea here is IPTV, I think. Other institutions -- like Cornell are doing the same. The difference here is Cornell, unlike Dartmouth, didn't get a write up in NYT because they didn't use the Wireless buzzword. Sure you'll be able to receive Cornell IPTV over the wireless network, but why not just plug into an ethernet? Why Dartmouth would decide to go all wireless when the majority of their buildings are already wired for Ethernet is beyond me. I don't buy that it's going to cut costs. The only thing it will cut is network reliability.
Bell Atlantic bought GTE (became Verizon) and they spun out Genuity. Genuity crashed and burned and became Level3. So if Level3 is doing a crappy job, Verizon has some pull over there.
I'd rather work with someone who cares about my needs and my company than someone who knows the technology. When your technology breaks (because I broke it, or you did it wrong) I'm going to call you, and you're going to fix it. If I'm not important to you, you're not going to fix it.
You can almost always teach someone the technology (the "I'll get back to you on that" people); it is much harder to teach someone to care about their customers. It's the difference between not knowing and not caring.
Do you think eBay is going to start writing their page in Chinese if China takes over the number one spot? Nope, not until the Chinese start buying useless pieces of junk off of eBay.
The truth is, among sports, there can be no "more of a sport/less of a sport" argument. These are sports. NFL guys rest because for the time their sport is going, they're hitting at levels that would kill some people. (Look at the countless cases of people getting internal bleeding, cracked ribs and other broken parts.) Even in baseball, which everyone loves to rail on for not being much of a sport, there great physical challenges, unmatched by other sports. Sports are about competition and testing human capabilities.
As for rugby, I've heard it's very intense, and do believe it. Unfortunately, I've never seen a game, so I can't comment.