This looks to be a very interesting situation. MS being watched closely while Apple and F/OSS is not.
Should MS' new OS come up with a feature that is the only OS supporting a feature that is part of a newly regulated banking industry security system, how would that play out in court?
If the OS does not come up with anything new, and only adds performance hits, bloatware, and other usability problems, will the consumer throw off MS for other options? If that happens, can MS blame the government?
Somehow, I don't see this working out too well. Even if people just 'think' the government is putting in a super secret back door to spy with, MS' revenue stream will dry up fast. Foreign governments, banks, and businesses will not want that kind of spying going on in their data centers.
Knowing politicians and governments the way we do (when wearing tinfoil hats) if we know this much about how Windows7 is going to be developed, what do we NOT know?
I just don't see this as being good for the industry as a whole. A bad precedent, or so it looks.
Practical approach? errr, perhaps you mean that all the approaches that might have worked failed, and what we have now is the stuff that didn't fail.
Essentially, this was the method used to invent what we had until recently, called the typical light bulb. Now with CFL and OLED etc. that is no longer true and it can be said that the invention of a practical, cheap, and efficient light bulb has taken about 100 years.
We don't have AI yet. We do have very impressive computer programs. Some of which easily outperform what a given human could do with the same pile of bits and bytes in the time alloted. It is still not AI.
If there was an X-prise for AI, it would go unclaimed for many years yet to come.
You are exactly right, and I've written about this problem in North America before. We, as consumers, have reason to believe that truth in advertising is how things are supposed to be. If the cable/telco companies had to include the warnings that drug manufacturers do, the fine print on a broadband contract would grow by several pages. Then we'd invoke clear/simple advertising laws.
The only reason that they can claim competitive reasons for not revealing information is because they are at capacity. They are selling consumers contracts that they can't possibly provide service on.
To my knowledge, not one ISP has physically demonstrated the need for shaping, nor shown in actual use how it works for them. File sharers do not use all the bandwidth they purchased and even if they did, they paid for it.
I don't know how many more court cases it will take, but someone needs to hold their feet to the fire about what they sell, and what they provide, and the dichotomy that creates. Bait and switch laws, lemon laws, and the ideology behind them should apply here. Either you are selling 3Mbit/s or you are selling a Maximum of 3Mbit/s with the following 4 pages of restrictions on protocols, application usage, time of day/week restrictions, and outright bans on some protocols/applications.
Exactly, and as minor black holes are used to anchor the Intergalactic superhighways road system in place, I suspect that Arthur Dent is at this moment contemplating the life of a fly somewhere in Kent.
Are there any marine biologists among us? Have the fish been acting funny lately?
Better we take a page from King Phillip and just go ahead and accuse them of blasphemy, secret meetings, desecrations of our holy book, buggery, and worshiping satan and other false gods. Let the tortured confessions begin.
It might end with pitchforks and torches at the castle door in the middle of the night...
It's probably good that the **AA don't operate in a country where such high drama happens. Instead they have to deal with 'all your mp3 are belong to us' and getting rick rolled 47,062 times a day while they're trying to figure out who is downloading with P2P.
As for the MPAA thinking they don't have to prove anything: it looks like the tide of court opinion is rolling back into the place it needs to be. Soon the **AA's career ship will set sails for other shores. If no proof is needed, then it doesn't matter what you steal from them, using simple logic, since they won't care in court what the evidence shows. That sounds like an invitation to go ahead and crack all their codes, steal their wares and have fun with their business' profitability.
Personally, I prefer the pitchforks and torches in the middle of the night.... I always liked that movie.
In North America and many other places (not all, obviously) the network business plan is basically one of build out the basics which are often guided more by equipment functionality or protocol functionality than anything in the marketing brochure. Once basic services are built, then increase bandwidth where required, spread coverage where there are customers to pay for it.
Generally this is done without a proven adoption rate for new services like 3G or WiMax. That's the gamble part. So prices will initially be steep and will stay steep if there is no adoption or bundling plan to offset the costs. DSL had initial problems this way, but stuck it out long enough for adoption to catch up. Deals with Yahoo etc. helped boost DSL adoption. Cable was an incumbent, people already had the service in their house and only needed the modem to use it.
One thing in common of all these is the necessary part of the plan to oversell the service. That is to force time-sharing by sheer volume of users. So they sell every household in Seattle 6Mbit/s service while betting average usage is generally less than would have been seen with DSL service. This lets them charge more, but not have to build out their infrastructure, and more or less none of the Mr or Mrs Seattle's ever notices. Then the Internet really got more useful, so more usage was the result. Congestion was the result because of bad network/infrastructure planning. If all users in Seattle want to use all 6Mbit/s of their paid for service, the ISPs start wondering if they are being DDoS'd. The ISPs are, in a word, fucked.
WiMax will suffer from the same self-defeating strategy. It will be great if you are within 1/2 mile of the tower. Anywhere else will suck bad.
Interesting point about the overselling: It is P2P that gets picked on and Newsgroups now because these protocols are generally being used when the consumer is not around, so are not user driven traffic. They are just eating bandwidth that was not counted in the initial infrastructure planning. With dial-up and DSL there were not many people using unattended downloads etc. so they are being blamed for the bad planning. The real problem is that they have to figure out how to explain to share holders that they just can't provide the triple-play and quadruple-play services they have been promising. At least not while all these GooTube and ESPN and Vonage people are using the network.
Anyway, because of how business works, WiMax is doomed to fail. If it's being touted as a cure for any current ills, I guarantee that it will fail. That marketing speak is the same as the run up to the war with Iraq. All lies and falsely reported intel.
If a large ISP were to slowly begin augmenting their network with WiMax where it makes sense, you can bet WiMax would take off slowly, but solidly. That's not what this looks like.
Heck, we should tar and feather them anyway...every presidential candidate should learn what it feels like before they reach that office. Hazing, as such, is generally seen as bad, not legal, and one of those things you are not supposed to do but in this case, I agree.
I think starting their term with 30 days in county jail, and a required 30 days service year in any of the lower ranked civil service jobs available in any district. Yes, that was 6 work weeks. It might help them stay just a little more humble and in tune with the people that they are representing. If you have to eat your PB&J with joey who has three kids and a mortgage, and the secretary that can't afford a car, I'm willing to bet you remember it.
Sure they can do it, we have plenty of police and secret service to guard those who need it. No, they are NOT too busy to do this as it is directly related to the job they were voted in to do. when they are too busy to meet with the public they represent, they are too busy to be in office... recall vote etc. is then required.
but I'd say that it depends on what you are wanting to learn. Learning about radio and building a simple radio to help learn is one thing. It can be accomplished without having to learn digital electronics, using discrete analog parts; these are the basic building components of electronics. When I first learned electronics that is how I started.
If you buy a kit, it is likely that there will be digital parts included. They tend to complicate matters of comprehension.
If you have a good understanding of basic electronics and want to learn more about the digital side of things, many here have made good suggestions. You can Google for basic circuit and kits. You could start out with something simple like an alarm clock or Christmas tree light sequencer.
If money isn't the main problem, many micro-controller manufacturers have trainer or development kits. Some fully contained, some not. Again, you can Google for these like so: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=controller+trainer+kit+assemble&btnG=Search and there is a link to Jameco which has several kits that might be of interest.
You might still find a few good books in 1/2 price books or similar. I'd also recommend trying yahoo groups or similar and joining a discussion group that is concerned with people like yourself that are concerned with learning electronics.
Additional fun might be had by joining an offline group such as a hobby robotics group. If you are in the states, Dallas (DPRG), Seattle (SRS) both have active discussion groups. Robotics if for generalists who want and try to learn about all aspects of electronics, from basics to laser guidance systems. They also tend to explain things to one another in a helpful way:)
Is this a new embrace and extend policy? Will it cleverly be name capitulation? To say that ODF clearly won implies that there was a competition. Can anyone find quotes where MS denied such a thing?
Is this the moment that Linux fanbois have been waiting for? I don't know, but I DO know that whether ODF is perfect or not, it is open, and that make so much more sense that it shouldn't even be an argument. WOW
Bill? Is that you? I've been trying to call you for a week. Your '61 El Camino is leaking oil on the road outside my house, the HOA is complaining. Come get your car. Oh, btw, your PO called. WTF? why'd you give him MY number... ASS!
There is a simple reason for it. If they were to introduce a simple and robust phone, people in developed countries would cry out for it, and their overpriced complex phones with features that will never get used will not sell anymore.
I just added two lines to my plan and got $450 worth of phones for free. I'm trying to figure out why anyone would pay. Yes, certainly the contract time pays for the phone, but if I could use no contract, a simple robust phone would be fantastic. I'd not spend money on the things.
It's all good to suggest renewable energy, and we should, but we also should first and foremost be advocates of using LESS energy, not just cheaper, cleaner energy.
We absolutely need things that are more energy efficient, such as:
- transportation - heating/cooling - home appliances - data centers/computers - lighting (street/home/commercial)
We also need cheaper power transfer/sharing systems and components. If solar becomes what it looks like it can, we'll all need the ability to put our share of energy on the grid.
To top that off, we HAVE to start thinking about how all of this will affect commerce. If we are all generating a little bit of our own energy and even sharing that with the grid, it will be as disruptive to the current supply infrastructure and businesses as the Internet has been to the entertainment industries. Personally, I can do without big Hollywood movies or the latest top 20 crappola songs, but electricity is something I definitely need. If I manage to snag a plug-in (hybrid or otherwise) I will need it even more. I would like to see the transfer from current infrastructure to the future version go as smoothly as possible.
Here's the thing. I've given this some thought, both about how it could/might work, and how I would be able to enjoy it working.
If there is a multicast stream of the movies available, one started every 15 or 30 minutes that I could join, I'd be totally happy with that. On demand in 30 minutes or less and no pizza guy to have to be nice to. It would work for me. I'm never in that much of a rush to see a movie that it has to start RIGHT NOW dog maddit!
The cable company ends up with 6-10 streams for each movie, not one for everyone watching it. For anything that has a length somewhere in the order of 10 minutes or less.. hey, so you get a 30 second delay to join the multicast. Play a trailer or something cached while the little clock indicates time to join. Yes, that might irritate some people, but if you want ON DEMAND, pay the higher bandwidth tier, the one over and above what you are paying now.
For YouTube stuff, just let it play as on-demand as there are far too many videos to stream them constantly and they are not huge. It is the large content stuff that should be multicast on the current infrastructure. Believe me when I say 'current' because any large ISP that thinks they are all that and a bag of chips needs to fscking well upgrade to FTTH or get out of the business of VoD over Internet.
This loud yapping about file sharers using all the bandwidth is less than truthful about the state of their networks. They have been planning their triple-play and quadruple-play bundled services for several years. Their complaints about file sharers is nothing less than admission that they don't have the infrastructure to produce what they have sold to the share holders and SEC and FCC.
Truthfully, there is some serious slight of hand going on and large ISPs like AT&T don't want us to know. If they truly had state of the art systems and services, you'd already have a la carte VoD and all the content you can ever want to watch. Instead what we have is those large ISPs blaming file sharers for using all their bandwidth. This does not bode well for their ability to actually provide any of the services they are bragging about.
It's not about leaving enough bandwidth for the rest of us, they simply don't have enough to support currently sold services, never mind what their board, their share holders, the FCC, and the SEC are told they will be providing in the very near future.
The truth? They are about to be caught red handed at stealing money and tax incentives for development, and doing none of the development or improvements. In the words of the Internet itself: EPIC FAIL
I didn't see anyone else catch this. WTF do you mean to tell me that they 'thought' it was a DDoS? Thought? So much for that traffic shaping magic. Sure, if it had been P2P we'd know exactly what little johnny down the street has on his iPod this morning and the RIAA would be all over the news with it and how file sharers killed the Internet.
From the looks of this, co-ordinated effort is nothing more than a couple thousand bot computers infected with a 'lets watch sports over the net' worm. Think of it. One bot net with 100,000 computers all trying to watch ESPN at the same time, and those that can, also trying to watch something from Europe at the same time.
One word: multicast
Uni-casting VOD over the Internet will keep doing this over and over again and ISPs will continue to blame file sharing for their lack of both foresight and bandwidth.
The costs that you spoke of have already been paid for. It's part of the taking Vista on as a new product process. The hardware/factory space etc. required is the same for both Vista and XP. Since OEMs are not producing imaged HDs 24/7, building 2 different but equally supported (in the factory) systems is neither more difficult or more expensive than doing just one. They have to support how many versions of Vista? They supported all those versions of Vista while they were still supporting versions of XP but now the price is increased?
There is far more to this than manufacturing costs.
Clearly, there are a LOT of people that believe there is far too much software piracy going on in China. I'm not qualified to argue, but it occurs to me that if there is, nothing is lost if you try selling your product at a reasonable price rather than one that inspires piracy. If you make only 35% of what you wanted to make, but your end up with 85% less piracy, don't you actually increase profits? Sure, I made those numbers up because MS has never tried it so there is no effective examples to cite.
Point is, not reacting to the problem in a positive way will only exacerbate the issue, and in this case cause more support for Linux. Perhaps Red Flag Linux will see this as a win for themselves. It's difficult to pirate something that is free, but you can try. Perhaps Ubuntu needs to set a price on distribution to China? That inverse logic stuff.
It's a bit worse than that I think. Trying to identify location of a picture by looking at it in the way that humans do requires that you know the location. As an example of why this implies intimate knowledge to be useful, everyone knows of the big statue of liberty. Not just anyone can guess that your holiday picture with the non-descript base in the background was taken at the base of the statue of liberty. The same goes for > 90% of other places in the world.
Another example: The forests on planets on the show Stargate One, are they in Missouri, Montanna, Canada? Just looking at them will not necessarily tell you anything unless you are intimately familiar with the actual location.
A photo in Syntagma Square in Athens may look like it was taken in Central Park in NYC if not enough of the background was included. It will take huge amounts of data and photos to get anywhere close to what a human can do at this job, and even then it is limited to only what it has seen before.
Other knowledge plays a part too. London bridge is now in Arizona (I think) as it was moved brick by brick and re-assembled. Seeing the bridge does not now mean you know where it is.... it's a trick question. The point is that you need additional information as well. A picture that is a beautiful park setting that has a kangaroo in it? is it in Australia, or a zoo? Additional information is required.
Hats off to them for working on it. It's a tough problem.
From TFA:
Mr. Patel is overseeing H.P.â(TM)s programs in energy-efficient data centers and technology. The research includes advanced projects like trying to replace copper wiring in server computers with laser beams. But like other experts in the field, Mr. Patel says that data centers can be made 30 percent to 50 percent more efficient by applying current technology. At least Mr Patel is doing the expected. He and others are applying the current technology the way that it was meant to be applied. The article did not cover the wide array of companies that are addressing this problem. Data Center efficiency is all about applying the technology correctly. What was not covered explicitly in the "also linked" article is how one company is building data center 'cells' in order to minimize on the cooling costs, and create efficient compartmentalized units inside a huge warehouse.
Those of you who have been in data centers have seen forced air cooling that is not used correctly; cabinets not over vent tiles, vent tiles in the middle of the floor, cabinets over air vent tiles but with a bottom in the cabinet so no air flows.
When equipment is nearing end of life and hardly being used, it sits there and turns electricity into heat while doing nothing. There are often a grand mix of cabinet types that do not all make best use of the cooling system, undersized cooling systems, very dense blade style cabinets replacing cabinets that were not so dense unbalances the heat/cooling process in the whole data center. Not to mention what doing so does to the backup power system when needed.
There are hundreds of 'mistakes' made in data centers all over the country. Correcting them and pushing the efficiency of the data center is a big job that not many people were interested in paying for in years gone by.
If you are interested in what you can do for your small data center, try looking at what APC does, or any cabinet manufacturer. They have lots of glossy marketing materials and websites and stuff. There is plenty of information available. Here's a first link for you http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/apc-index.html
If it was clearly a wrong thing to do, as you intimate, then there are already laws for this. They come in the form of libel and others. There was never any need of the DMCA, and it is being used wrongly, wantonly, and willful wrong. Your statements intimate that you support what has happened. Perhaps you might explain more why you feel so.
With free speech, I'm able to link as I feel necessary. If I am not free to do so, it is not free speech. Sure, if I do so in a way that is libelous, then I'm guilty of that infraction, and still the DMCA is not needed. Perhaps you can explain how your support of the use of the DMCA has has foundation in either humanity or justice.
Yes, that throws the argument in a different direction, but please do explain how you feel free to support such use of a law that was never needed.
IMO, the fact that they could do so is evidence, and damn strong evidence that the system is broken. Not broken a little bit, but completely broken.
The story as it goes is stupid. It would not happen if the Drudge Report was a high school newspaper. This is simply an attempt to quash competition using the DMCA. A government tool provided for their friends to squash anyone that might dissent. Canadians? Listen up... this kind of thing is on it's way to you.
Yes, perhaps this is not about dissent, but the unintended consequences of the law are showing through, and it clearly shows that the law is not in the best interests of the public. It is a bad law. It is being used in this case to stop the freedom of thought and speech.
Seriously, I hope that this whole mess costs them millions in the end. It is not only despicable, it is against all that is good in humanity. Sure, that sounds like a rant, but WE have to start pushing back now, not later when there is no room to do so. Please everyone stop supporting the AP in any way shape or form. They need to just go the way of buggy whip makers.
No, this is not some plea to get you to support the latest l337 cause. This is a plea to get you to support your constitutional rights. Those of you reading this that are not Americans can also help. Make this company fail. The Brits know that what America does, Britain does at twice the speed and volume (more or less) so it is not an issue for a single country. We all need to speak out about what is wrong, always, as a single voice, whether it is Darfur, London, Washington, or Lisbon etc.
It came to my attention some time ago that there are schools offering what they term "ethical hacking" courses and programs.
How the mighty have fallen if the course has to be named with some l337 speak crap to get anyone's attention.
Now, this might seem off topic, but I dare you to take any of those l337 h4X0rz and show them a line up of say 10 different hammers and ask them to tell you the names of each and what they are used for. The point? Calling all of them hammers or axes is like calling computer security 'ethical hacking'. If you are going to learn something about the field, fucking try to learn the real terminology at the beginning. sigh
An example of how bad this is getting is at: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Topic:Ethical_Hacking where they have an entire page that is bereft of both the phrase "computer security" and "network security" but they did use the word 'university'.
Yes, all plumbers are just plumbers, there are good ones and bad ones, but not white hat plumbers and black hat plumbers. Likewise we don't have black hat politicians. We just tend to call them criminals with political connections.
Yeah, mod me troll for being a grammar nazi or something. It's just irritating to see people take perfectly good language and terminology and flush it down the toilet for something that 'sounds' more hip. iFuck iThat!
Giving directions and commenting your code are similar in the respect that the function of both is to explain what someone else (perhaps your future self) is doing as they try to navigate through unfamiliar territory.
There are about as many "correct" ways to do both as there are people on the planet, so this argument never goes away. I just wanted to add to your comment with this:
It does not matter that you use landmarks or directions, both are valid. When they are valid depends on the viewpoint of the interpreter of your instructions. If you use them at the wrong time... well, your instructions suck. As mentioned above about Bostonians and using non-existent landmarks.
For myself, 50 lines of code might be commented simply as
# time sensitive wrapper for the parse function
This would make sense to me, but not to others. It's the equivalent of:
It's about a mile north of the Green Man pub.
In both instances there is much about the reader that is assumed.
It truly has nothing to do with sex. It's about communication. Some people are good at communicating, others are just good at talking. They are not the same.
I write PERL like a man, and for a damn good reason. Have you ever tried to get written instructions from a woman? Well, since my wife wrote the instructions for everyone to get to our first few parties, I've been damned happy with how PERL is written, and proud to document my code like a man. I've seen some PERL written like her directions, but not much.
Did I tell you, I directed most people via phone, up to 30 minutes after they gave up using her written directions.
Sure, women have a different way. In my experience, that is rarely the best, most concise, most efficient way of doing something.
And.... clearly Iraq had links to Al Queda? Yes, reviewing the video, they clearly did according to "the decider". Yes, the MSM have always done the right thing, never reported what they were told to report. No, that would never happen. Obama and his wife are terrorists, you can tell by they way they shake hands. Bin Laden can't be found because all those terrorist types are tricky, they can hide really good. We can find plans of nuclear weapons, but we can't find Osama?
I know it's comforting to read the news and be able to believe what they say. Marketing droids just love people like you.
Yes, of course, that design belongs to Pakistan because their president signed it, right? Just like the weapons being used against the US troops in Iraq are from Iran.
Slashdot Mirror
This looks to be a very interesting situation. MS being watched closely while Apple and F/OSS is not.
Should MS' new OS come up with a feature that is the only OS supporting a feature that is part of a newly regulated banking industry security system, how would that play out in court?
If the OS does not come up with anything new, and only adds performance hits, bloatware, and other usability problems, will the consumer throw off MS for other options? If that happens, can MS blame the government?
Somehow, I don't see this working out too well. Even if people just 'think' the government is putting in a super secret back door to spy with, MS' revenue stream will dry up fast. Foreign governments, banks, and businesses will not want that kind of spying going on in their data centers.
Knowing politicians and governments the way we do (when wearing tinfoil hats) if we know this much about how Windows7 is going to be developed, what do we NOT know?
I just don't see this as being good for the industry as a whole. A bad precedent, or so it looks.
Practical approach? errr, perhaps you mean that all the approaches that might have worked failed, and what we have now is the stuff that didn't fail.
Essentially, this was the method used to invent what we had until recently, called the typical light bulb. Now with CFL and OLED etc. that is no longer true and it can be said that the invention of a practical, cheap, and efficient light bulb has taken about 100 years.
We don't have AI yet. We do have very impressive computer programs. Some of which easily outperform what a given human could do with the same pile of bits and bytes in the time alloted. It is still not AI.
If there was an X-prise for AI, it would go unclaimed for many years yet to come.
You are exactly right, and I've written about this problem in North America before. We, as consumers, have reason to believe that truth in advertising is how things are supposed to be. If the cable/telco companies had to include the warnings that drug manufacturers do, the fine print on a broadband contract would grow by several pages. Then we'd invoke clear/simple advertising laws.
The only reason that they can claim competitive reasons for not revealing information is because they are at capacity. They are selling consumers contracts that they can't possibly provide service on.
To my knowledge, not one ISP has physically demonstrated the need for shaping, nor shown in actual use how it works for them. File sharers do not use all the bandwidth they purchased and even if they did, they paid for it.
I don't know how many more court cases it will take, but someone needs to hold their feet to the fire about what they sell, and what they provide, and the dichotomy that creates. Bait and switch laws, lemon laws, and the ideology behind them should apply here. Either you are selling 3Mbit/s or you are selling a Maximum of 3Mbit/s with the following 4 pages of restrictions on protocols, application usage, time of day/week restrictions, and outright bans on some protocols/applications.
The courts need to clear that up.
Exactly, and as minor black holes are used to anchor the Intergalactic superhighways road system in place, I suspect that Arthur Dent is at this moment contemplating the life of a fly somewhere in Kent.
Are there any marine biologists among us? Have the fish been acting funny lately?
Better we take a page from King Phillip and just go ahead and accuse them of blasphemy, secret meetings, desecrations of our holy book, buggery, and worshiping satan and other false gods. Let the tortured confessions begin.
It might end with pitchforks and torches at the castle door in the middle of the night...
It's probably good that the **AA don't operate in a country where such high drama happens. Instead they have to deal with 'all your mp3 are belong to us' and getting rick rolled 47,062 times a day while they're trying to figure out who is downloading with P2P.
As for the MPAA thinking they don't have to prove anything: it looks like the tide of court opinion is rolling back into the place it needs to be. Soon the **AA's career ship will set sails for other shores. If no proof is needed, then it doesn't matter what you steal from them, using simple logic, since they won't care in court what the evidence shows. That sounds like an invitation to go ahead and crack all their codes, steal their wares and have fun with their business' profitability.
Personally, I prefer the pitchforks and torches in the middle of the night.... I always liked that movie.
In North America and many other places (not all, obviously) the network business plan is basically one of build out the basics which are often guided more by equipment functionality or protocol functionality than anything in the marketing brochure. Once basic services are built, then increase bandwidth where required, spread coverage where there are customers to pay for it.
Generally this is done without a proven adoption rate for new services like 3G or WiMax. That's the gamble part. So prices will initially be steep and will stay steep if there is no adoption or bundling plan to offset the costs. DSL had initial problems this way, but stuck it out long enough for adoption to catch up. Deals with Yahoo etc. helped boost DSL adoption. Cable was an incumbent, people already had the service in their house and only needed the modem to use it.
One thing in common of all these is the necessary part of the plan to oversell the service. That is to force time-sharing by sheer volume of users. So they sell every household in Seattle 6Mbit/s service while betting average usage is generally less than would have been seen with DSL service. This lets them charge more, but not have to build out their infrastructure, and more or less none of the Mr or Mrs Seattle's ever notices. Then the Internet really got more useful, so more usage was the result. Congestion was the result because of bad network/infrastructure planning. If all users in Seattle want to use all 6Mbit/s of their paid for service, the ISPs start wondering if they are being DDoS'd. The ISPs are, in a word, fucked.
WiMax will suffer from the same self-defeating strategy. It will be great if you are within 1/2 mile of the tower. Anywhere else will suck bad.
Interesting point about the overselling: It is P2P that gets picked on and Newsgroups now because these protocols are generally being used when the consumer is not around, so are not user driven traffic. They are just eating bandwidth that was not counted in the initial infrastructure planning. With dial-up and DSL there were not many people using unattended downloads etc. so they are being blamed for the bad planning. The real problem is that they have to figure out how to explain to share holders that they just can't provide the triple-play and quadruple-play services they have been promising. At least not while all these GooTube and ESPN and Vonage people are using the network.
Anyway, because of how business works, WiMax is doomed to fail. If it's being touted as a cure for any current ills, I guarantee that it will fail. That marketing speak is the same as the run up to the war with Iraq. All lies and falsely reported intel.
If a large ISP were to slowly begin augmenting their network with WiMax where it makes sense, you can bet WiMax would take off slowly, but solidly. That's not what this looks like.
I think starting their term with 30 days in county jail, and a required 30 days service year in any of the lower ranked civil service jobs available in any district. Yes, that was 6 work weeks. It might help them stay just a little more humble and in tune with the people that they are representing. If you have to eat your PB&J with joey who has three kids and a mortgage, and the secretary that can't afford a car, I'm willing to bet you remember it.
Sure they can do it, we have plenty of police and secret service to guard those who need it. No, they are NOT too busy to do this as it is directly related to the job they were voted in to do. when they are too busy to meet with the public they represent, they are too busy to be in office... recall vote etc. is then required.
but I'd say that it depends on what you are wanting to learn. Learning about radio and building a simple radio to help learn is one thing. It can be accomplished without having to learn digital electronics, using discrete analog parts; these are the basic building components of electronics. When I first learned electronics that is how I started.
If you buy a kit, it is likely that there will be digital parts included. They tend to complicate matters of comprehension.
If you have a good understanding of basic electronics and want to learn more about the digital side of things, many here have made good suggestions. You can Google for basic circuit and kits. You could start out with something simple like an alarm clock or Christmas tree light sequencer.
If money isn't the main problem, many micro-controller manufacturers have trainer or development kits. Some fully contained, some not. Again, you can Google for these like so:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=controller+trainer+kit+assemble&btnG=Search and there is a link to Jameco which has several kits that might be of interest.
You might still find a few good books in 1/2 price books or similar. I'd also recommend trying yahoo groups or similar and joining a discussion group that is concerned with people like yourself that are concerned with learning electronics.
Additional fun might be had by joining an offline group such as a hobby robotics group. If you are in the states, Dallas (DPRG), Seattle (SRS) both have active discussion groups. Robotics if for generalists who want and try to learn about all aspects of electronics, from basics to laser guidance systems. They also tend to explain things to one another in a helpful way :)
Have fun, hope that helps
That, I believe, is the smell of heads exploding!
Is this a new embrace and extend policy? Will it cleverly be name capitulation? To say that ODF clearly won implies that there was a competition. Can anyone find quotes where MS denied such a thing?
Is this the moment that Linux fanbois have been waiting for? I don't know, but I DO know that whether ODF is perfect or not, it is open, and that make so much more sense that it shouldn't even be an argument. WOW
Bill? Is that you? I've been trying to call you for a week. Your '61 El Camino is leaking oil on the road outside my house, the HOA is complaining. Come get your car. Oh, btw, your PO called. WTF? why'd you give him MY number... ASS!
There is a simple reason for it. If they were to introduce a simple and robust phone, people in developed countries would cry out for it, and their overpriced complex phones with features that will never get used will not sell anymore.
I just added two lines to my plan and got $450 worth of phones for free. I'm trying to figure out why anyone would pay. Yes, certainly the contract time pays for the phone, but if I could use no contract, a simple robust phone would be fantastic. I'd not spend money on the things.
That, my friend, is why they don't do it.
It's all good to suggest renewable energy, and we should, but we also should first and foremost be advocates of using LESS energy, not just cheaper, cleaner energy.
We absolutely need things that are more energy efficient, such as:
- transportation
- heating/cooling
- home appliances
- data centers/computers
- lighting (street/home/commercial)
We also need cheaper power transfer/sharing systems and components. If solar becomes what it looks like it can, we'll all need the ability to put our share of energy on the grid.
To top that off, we HAVE to start thinking about how all of this will affect commerce. If we are all generating a little bit of our own energy and even sharing that with the grid, it will be as disruptive to the current supply infrastructure and businesses as the Internet has been to the entertainment industries. Personally, I can do without big Hollywood movies or the latest top 20 crappola songs, but electricity is something I definitely need. If I manage to snag a plug-in (hybrid or otherwise) I will need it even more. I would like to see the transfer from current infrastructure to the future version go as smoothly as possible.
Here's the thing. I've given this some thought, both about how it could/might work, and how I would be able to enjoy it working.
If there is a multicast stream of the movies available, one started every 15 or 30 minutes that I could join, I'd be totally happy with that. On demand in 30 minutes or less and no pizza guy to have to be nice to. It would work for me. I'm never in that much of a rush to see a movie that it has to start RIGHT NOW dog maddit!
The cable company ends up with 6-10 streams for each movie, not one for everyone watching it. For anything that has a length somewhere in the order of 10 minutes or less.. hey, so you get a 30 second delay to join the multicast. Play a trailer or something cached while the little clock indicates time to join. Yes, that might irritate some people, but if you want ON DEMAND, pay the higher bandwidth tier, the one over and above what you are paying now.
For YouTube stuff, just let it play as on-demand as there are far too many videos to stream them constantly and they are not huge. It is the large content stuff that should be multicast on the current infrastructure. Believe me when I say 'current' because any large ISP that thinks they are all that and a bag of chips needs to fscking well upgrade to FTTH or get out of the business of VoD over Internet.
This loud yapping about file sharers using all the bandwidth is less than truthful about the state of their networks. They have been planning their triple-play and quadruple-play bundled services for several years. Their complaints about file sharers is nothing less than admission that they don't have the infrastructure to produce what they have sold to the share holders and SEC and FCC.
Truthfully, there is some serious slight of hand going on and large ISPs like AT&T don't want us to know. If they truly had state of the art systems and services, you'd already have a la carte VoD and all the content you can ever want to watch. Instead what we have is those large ISPs blaming file sharers for using all their bandwidth. This does not bode well for their ability to actually provide any of the services they are bragging about.
It's not about leaving enough bandwidth for the rest of us, they simply don't have enough to support currently sold services, never mind what their board, their share holders, the FCC, and the SEC are told they will be providing in the very near future.
The truth? They are about to be caught red handed at stealing money and tax incentives for development, and doing none of the development or improvements. In the words of the Internet itself: EPIC FAIL
I didn't see anyone else catch this. WTF do you mean to tell me that they 'thought' it was a DDoS? Thought? So much for that traffic shaping magic. Sure, if it had been P2P we'd know exactly what little johnny down the street has on his iPod this morning and the RIAA would be all over the news with it and how file sharers killed the Internet.
From the looks of this, co-ordinated effort is nothing more than a couple thousand bot computers infected with a 'lets watch sports over the net' worm. Think of it. One bot net with 100,000 computers all trying to watch ESPN at the same time, and those that can, also trying to watch something from Europe at the same time.
One word: multicast
Uni-casting VOD over the Internet will keep doing this over and over again and ISPs will continue to blame file sharing for their lack of both foresight and bandwidth.
The costs that you spoke of have already been paid for. It's part of the taking Vista on as a new product process. The hardware/factory space etc. required is the same for both Vista and XP. Since OEMs are not producing imaged HDs 24/7, building 2 different but equally supported (in the factory) systems is neither more difficult or more expensive than doing just one. They have to support how many versions of Vista? They supported all those versions of Vista while they were still supporting versions of XP but now the price is increased?
There is far more to this than manufacturing costs.
It all makes sense now. The only way to make the switch to Vista make sense is to make buying XP more expensive. WTF???
Just one more drama in the Saga that is MS reality telvision. Hand me the remote please....
Clearly, there are a LOT of people that believe there is far too much software piracy going on in China. I'm not qualified to argue, but it occurs to me that if there is, nothing is lost if you try selling your product at a reasonable price rather than one that inspires piracy. If you make only 35% of what you wanted to make, but your end up with 85% less piracy, don't you actually increase profits? Sure, I made those numbers up because MS has never tried it so there is no effective examples to cite.
Point is, not reacting to the problem in a positive way will only exacerbate the issue, and in this case cause more support for Linux. Perhaps Red Flag Linux will see this as a win for themselves. It's difficult to pirate something that is free, but you can try. Perhaps Ubuntu needs to set a price on distribution to China? That inverse logic stuff.
It's a bit worse than that I think. Trying to identify location of a picture by looking at it in the way that humans do requires that you know the location. As an example of why this implies intimate knowledge to be useful, everyone knows of the big statue of liberty. Not just anyone can guess that your holiday picture with the non-descript base in the background was taken at the base of the statue of liberty. The same goes for > 90% of other places in the world.
.... it's a trick question. The point is that you need additional information as well. A picture that is a beautiful park setting that has a kangaroo in it? is it in Australia, or a zoo? Additional information is required.
Another example: The forests on planets on the show Stargate One, are they in Missouri, Montanna, Canada? Just looking at them will not necessarily tell you anything unless you are intimately familiar with the actual location.
A photo in Syntagma Square in Athens may look like it was taken in Central Park in NYC if not enough of the background was included. It will take huge amounts of data and photos to get anywhere close to what a human can do at this job, and even then it is limited to only what it has seen before.
Other knowledge plays a part too. London bridge is now in Arizona (I think) as it was moved brick by brick and re-assembled. Seeing the bridge does not now mean you know where it is
Hats off to them for working on it. It's a tough problem.
Those of you who have been in data centers have seen forced air cooling that is not used correctly; cabinets not over vent tiles, vent tiles in the middle of the floor, cabinets over air vent tiles but with a bottom in the cabinet so no air flows.
When equipment is nearing end of life and hardly being used, it sits there and turns electricity into heat while doing nothing. There are often a grand mix of cabinet types that do not all make best use of the cooling system, undersized cooling systems, very dense blade style cabinets replacing cabinets that were not so dense unbalances the heat/cooling process in the whole data center. Not to mention what doing so does to the backup power system when needed.
There are hundreds of 'mistakes' made in data centers all over the country. Correcting them and pushing the efficiency of the data center is a big job that not many people were interested in paying for in years gone by.
If you are interested in what you can do for your small data center, try looking at what APC does, or any cabinet manufacturer. They have lots of glossy marketing materials and websites and stuff. There is plenty of information available. Here's a first link for you http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/apc-index.html
If it was clearly a wrong thing to do, as you intimate, then there are already laws for this. They come in the form of libel and others. There was never any need of the DMCA, and it is being used wrongly, wantonly, and willful wrong. Your statements intimate that you support what has happened. Perhaps you might explain more why you feel so.
With free speech, I'm able to link as I feel necessary. If I am not free to do so, it is not free speech. Sure, if I do so in a way that is libelous, then I'm guilty of that infraction, and still the DMCA is not needed. Perhaps you can explain how your support of the use of the DMCA has has foundation in either humanity or justice.
Yes, that throws the argument in a different direction, but please do explain how you feel free to support such use of a law that was never needed.
IMO, the fact that they could do so is evidence, and damn strong evidence that the system is broken. Not broken a little bit, but completely broken.
The story as it goes is stupid. It would not happen if the Drudge Report was a high school newspaper. This is simply an attempt to quash competition using the DMCA. A government tool provided for their friends to squash anyone that might dissent. Canadians? Listen up... this kind of thing is on it's way to you.
Yes, perhaps this is not about dissent, but the unintended consequences of the law are showing through, and it clearly shows that the law is not in the best interests of the public. It is a bad law. It is being used in this case to stop the freedom of thought and speech.
Seriously, I hope that this whole mess costs them millions in the end. It is not only despicable, it is against all that is good in humanity. Sure, that sounds like a rant, but WE have to start pushing back now, not later when there is no room to do so. Please everyone stop supporting the AP in any way shape or form. They need to just go the way of buggy whip makers.
No, this is not some plea to get you to support the latest l337 cause. This is a plea to get you to support your constitutional rights. Those of you reading this that are not Americans can also help. Make this company fail. The Brits know that what America does, Britain does at twice the speed and volume (more or less) so it is not an issue for a single country. We all need to speak out about what is wrong, always, as a single voice, whether it is Darfur, London, Washington, or Lisbon etc.
Please
It came to my attention some time ago that there are schools offering what they term "ethical hacking" courses and programs.
How the mighty have fallen if the course has to be named with some l337 speak crap to get anyone's attention.
Now, this might seem off topic, but I dare you to take any of those l337 h4X0rz and show them a line up of say 10 different hammers and ask them to tell you the names of each and what they are used for. The point? Calling all of them hammers or axes is like calling computer security 'ethical hacking'. If you are going to learn something about the field, fucking try to learn the real terminology at the beginning. sigh
An example of how bad this is getting is at:
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Topic:Ethical_Hacking where they have an entire page that is bereft of both the phrase "computer security" and "network security" but they did use the word 'university'.
Yes, all plumbers are just plumbers, there are good ones and bad ones, but not white hat plumbers and black hat plumbers. Likewise we don't have black hat politicians. We just tend to call them criminals with political connections.
Yeah, mod me troll for being a grammar nazi or something. It's just irritating to see people take perfectly good language and terminology and flush it down the toilet for something that 'sounds' more hip. iFuck iThat!
Giving directions and commenting your code are similar in the respect that the function of both is to explain what someone else (perhaps your future self) is doing as they try to navigate through unfamiliar territory.
There are about as many "correct" ways to do both as there are people on the planet, so this argument never goes away. I just wanted to add to your comment with this:
It does not matter that you use landmarks or directions, both are valid. When they are valid depends on the viewpoint of the interpreter of your instructions. If you use them at the wrong time... well, your instructions suck. As mentioned above about Bostonians and using non-existent landmarks.
For myself, 50 lines of code might be commented simply as
# time sensitive wrapper for the parse function
This would make sense to me, but not to others. It's the equivalent of:
It's about a mile north of the Green Man pub.
In both instances there is much about the reader that is assumed.
It truly has nothing to do with sex. It's about communication. Some people are good at communicating, others are just good at talking. They are not the same.
I write PERL like a man, and for a damn good reason. Have you ever tried to get written instructions from a woman? Well, since my wife wrote the instructions for everyone to get to our first few parties, I've been damned happy with how PERL is written, and proud to document my code like a man. I've seen some PERL written like her directions, but not much.
Did I tell you, I directed most people via phone, up to 30 minutes after they gave up using her written directions.
Sure, women have a different way. In my experience, that is rarely the best, most concise, most efficient way of doing something.
And.... clearly Iraq had links to Al Queda? Yes, reviewing the video, they clearly did according to "the decider". Yes, the MSM have always done the right thing, never reported what they were told to report. No, that would never happen. Obama and his wife are terrorists, you can tell by they way they shake hands. Bin Laden can't be found because all those terrorist types are tricky, they can hide really good. We can find plans of nuclear weapons, but we can't find Osama?
I know it's comforting to read the news and be able to believe what they say. Marketing droids just love people like you.
Yes, of course, that design belongs to Pakistan because their president signed it, right? Just like the weapons being used against the US troops in Iraq are from Iran.
It's okay, you can thank me later.