doesn't the quality of onboard graphics suffer from being directly on the mobo?
Uhh... think about what your asking. Does placing the graphics processor closer to the source of it's information (ram) and on a much faster bus (CPU internal bus) make it slower?
The reason onboard graphics suck on most machines is not because they are integrated, it's because the mobo manufacturers have no interest in integrating the latest and greatest video processors and massive quantities of RAM into a motherboard.
Most onboard video is there simply so that system builders can build an average desktop machine for a minimal cost. The reason that AGP and now PCIe slots are there is so that those who need graphics performance can upgrade.
I have seen some onboard graphics that do great TV out... TV out is really relatively unaffected by the power of the graphics chip, though a low budget implementation is not likely to rival a high dollar one. Of course if you want high fps out of the latest 3d title, you will need a high end graphics card with tv out on it. But I watch all my TV through mythtv and an old NVIDIA FX5200 as it's one of the best tv out's on a low budget cards I could get at the time.
Suffice to say, by embedding the GPU in the main processor the system will benefit because the two cores can work together to perform tasks. The graphics can use system memory without the performance penalty currently associated with sharing system ram for graphics. And the best part is that applications that are not being used to generate images for display can still harness the power of the GPU.
For example, many GPU's can do MPEG2 playback without using the main processor, however when you want to re-encode an mpeg2 to mpeg4, the main processor must read the mpeg2 stream itself because its target is not the display; with the GPU integrated into the CPU and connecting to main memory, it is possible to harness its power for any purpose, not just driving the display.
Please don't equate your bad experiences with embedded graphics with what is to come... what we are going to see is a departure from what you know now... a shift to embedding for increased performance rather than embedding to reduce cost. I suspect that the high end processors with embedded GPU's will just slaughter the power of current add-on cards once they are properly written for in software. Not to mention, the fact that your sharing your system RAM can keep the costs a bit lower and make things even faster because multiple cores could manipulate the same memory locations.
And best of all... power requirements drop, cooling requirements drop, and a tiny machine could pump out FPS like nothing you have seen before. So we might actually see the size of high end gaming rigs come way way down. Perhaps you will carry a tiny MacMini sized machine to your next LAN party frag fest.
Why don't major financial insititutions all create a coalition that does exactly this. This coalition would issue signing certificates for the various members, who will then sign all of their email.
All that mail hosts would need to do is verify that the mail was signed by a valid certificate that was issued by the coalition. One certificate to verify against. The coalition can then issue revocation lists as necessary if a member's certificate is ever comprimised.
Seems like an ideal solution to reduce phishing. It could also be used by other organizations who could have their email signed in a similar way, which might allow these messages to bypass spam filters which would benefit the mail hosts.
I think of it as a way to implement a pseudo whitelist, which is by far the best way to ensure that you don't get spam.
When you have children, you will understand why it makes sense to keep things of a sexual nature out of the mainstream.
Not that I agree that it should be that way, I would love to have sex more open in our society. But there are limits, even more sexually open societies try and teach their kids that sex should be passionate, gentile, and between a loving couple; standards ignored in most porn videos I have seen. Our 8 year old knows what sex is, and is well aware that her mother and I have it on occasion. She's even seen some pornographic photos of it, though not by our choosing. But she doesn't need to see a close up a throbbing cock being slammed into some girls ass while she gives another guy head and rubs her pierced clit.
I will tell you that a tasteful image of a naked woman or man, or even tasteful shots of a couple engaging in sexual activity, is not offensive to me... even if my children see it. However it is very hard to make a distinction of what is tasteful. Thus it is simply easier to keep things of sexual nature in an easy accessible, but separate location. Like the magazine racks at your local liquor store.
I love my scantily clothed women as much as the next guy. In fact I have a small but enjoyable porn collection of my own.
However, I don't like it when I inadvertently come across that material when I'm at work, or while one of the kids are sitting next to me. And I certainly don't like the idea of my, increasingly web proficient, 8 year old seeing it when she's on the web (always supervised btw).
I'm usually pretty good at avoiding the darker side of the internet, but sometimes you get an unexpected surprise.
I realize that my idea's are only pipe dreams, however it does seem like it would be more logical if things were organized in such a way.
And by the way, the magazines you mentioned are not pornographic, those mags are behind the counter with an opaque panel hiding the cover except for the title. Another example of keeping the freedom of choice for the consumer while also respecting the wishes of those who prefer not to be exposed. I have no problem with scantily clad people, or even nudes... I wouldn't be upset if my 8 year old girl were to see a tasteful photo of a naked man, however if that man was receiving head from a bimbo in crotchless panties and high heels I might be a bit angry to be put in that situation.
How do you explain that to an 8 year old, pornography is typically not realistic, it's not the way it 'should be' anyway. Porn almost never portrays sex between a loving couple, instead it's between two people who don't even know each other's names. When your raising a kid, you want them to treat sex as an expression of love... eventually they will learn the distinction, but you certainly don't want them going around thinking it's perfectly normal to just screw complete strangers for fun... even if it is during college;-)
DNS does indeed try to define content, not very successfully but it does..edu = educational.com = commercial.mil = military.gov = governement.COUNTRY ACRONYM =...
If I didn't want to visit sites hosted in.ru it would be trivial to block. In fact, I have done just that on machines I've managed as a small layer of security.
I never suggested that sites be blocked by ISP's or the Govt. Just the opposite. A system like this makes it trivial to block from the client side, it wouldn't be necessary to have the ISP or Govt. step in.
Finally, uou nor anyone else are fit to define what content is available or grouped for everyone else. You are responsible for your OWN content viewing, and those you are legally considered guardian of, no one else.
Exactly my point, the current 'system' prevents me from excercising my desire to not see such content and undermines my wishes. Organizing content into easily located and/or avoided locations is only sensible. That's why the DNS system is setup the way that it is, to help categorize information.
On a similar vein, I would love to see a bunch of new TLD's started and popular. If the information were organized properly into the correct TLD, and everyone knew that blogs were in.blog for example, they could determine what was on a site before they clicked a link. You could search for blogs about certain subjects by restricting the scope of your search. etc.
Pornography, is sexually explicit content who's purpose is to entertain, stimulate, or pleasure. Nudity is not pornographic, sex is not pornographic, however videos/images of nude people engaging in sexual activities intended as a source of entertainment for adults is pornographic.
I agree that people try to move that line in both directions, but I think anyone rational will agree that the above is a fair definition.
Perhaps we need a new word, instead of pornography we can call it "sexual entertainment". It has no baggage, so it can be defined as we see fit. We can create additional definitions for sexual art, sexual education media, etc. and define those as well.
Once written into law, those definitions would be up to the courts to judge, but as long as they are written clearly it would be fair to assume that most sites could be easily assessed.
Hell, we do it with movies and music, we can do it with the internet. Just create an incentive to conform, perhaps free.xxx domain names, for life, for established sites.
Simply require sites that are in the business of "sexual entertainment". Sure some porn sites would argue that they are educational, but I think that most would agree that it's pretty easy to determine motive.
Sites that use pornographic ads, must simply host those ads on a.xxx domain, so that they can be easily blocked from loading.
This is not a true fix, there are always loopholes, however it provides a way for a legit porn site to operate their business without fear of upsetting a group of wackos that complain about stumbling into pornadoes (love that word). If the sites are on.xxx the group can't accidentally stumble into them. Especially because browsers could easily block them.
I wrote a letter years back to my congressman recommending the.xxx domain, who later co-authored the first version of this bill, can't remember his name anymore. Anyway, to anyone who's the least bit technical, this appears to be the simplest method of segregating the pornography from the rest of the information on the net.
I don't feel that it should be required that all xxx material be hosted in the xxx domain, however I would imagine that most of the legit porn sites (feels funny saying that) would happily open XXX domains and forward traffic there for a while. Eventually, they could pass a law in the US forcing sites that specifically host content geared toward sexual entertainment be hosted on.xxx domains. But just having the TLD is the most important step in that direction.
I have no problem with the internet having it's "red light district", which is the greatest argument against this bill... it's far easier to avoid that area due to the red lights. The alternative is having the entire internet a sort of pinkish shade do to a nice even coat of porn.
I am guessing you come from the US, or at least Europe or Australia? In India, and many other countries that constantly rank very high on the quality of education charts, college is not quite the same as it is here. From what I understand, schools are far more regimented, far less about self discovery, and not nearly as liberal as our schools.
I know I am making a generalization, and I am not making it from personal experience, but it's what I was led to believe was true. In fact, I have heard it as an arguement for why the western world is more innovative. We encourage self exploration and pushing against the confines of society, science, and every other restriction; wheras many other places tend to push "book knowledge". We have very creative, ambitious, and risk taking graduates while they have highly educated, trainable, and hard working graduates. We create more 'new' ideas, while they simply get more work done.
I fear the day when Indian and Chinese schools encourage the level free thinking that our schools do, not only would they be the most productive societies, but the most innovative as well. Of course, that assumes that their new outlook doesn't cause the same problems we have; demand for higher wages, shorter work weeks, better benefits, lack of job satisfaction, high turnover, increased consumer debt, etc. All side effects of the the capitalistic and free thinking society that we train our graduates to compete in.
Again, this is all BS conclusions arrived at in my head, loosly based upon random snippets of other people's opinions or experiences. I could totally wrong in everything I said!
That's exactly what I thought when I read it. Since when can you take a number and describe it by using units like a preschooler.
I remember once when I had a million thousand dollars... or so my son told me anyway.
If they said that it was the equivalent of 1 billionth of a billionth of a second, I'd make sense. Or perhaps they could just say that it so fast that 1x10^18 pulses can occur every second. (not sure if that's the correct conversion).
Anyway... that one comment really made the submitter sound like a child.
Think about this... they release the nonstandard standard and push the software out to their large corporate vendors... then one of their vendors tells one of it's developers to design a tool that can parse the 50,000 documents and find all instances of the word "porn" for example.
The poor programmer causes a stink and shows his boss the set of encyclopedias that lays out the "open" format and tells him that he cannot do it because there are important peices missing.
The large corporate customer demands a refund and damages for the cost of migrating to MS Office... and switches yet again to an ODF standard. There's another major migration, this time telling the world that MS's "open" format is damaged.
MS will not die overnight... it's gonna take a constant beating before it ever adapts to, or folds under, the demands of the people to keep their information accessible.
I say, let MS keep manipulating the market. People are not stupid, I'd be willing to bet that a larger part of the people making IT related decisions are anxiously awaiting the time they can kick MS out their door... and as alternatives continue to grow in power and reputation, and MS continues to tarnish their reputation by misleading consumers, eventually they will be replaced with more consumer friendly alternatives.
A few (10 or so) years ago, I'd never touched a Mac or Linux box... now I have a couple of each, and every job I have had in the last 10 years came with the rollout of Linux server and a bunch of open source software. Even non technical people I meet in my consulting work are asking about Linux servers and Mac desktops because the heard from someone that had a good experience moving from windows.
MS is not dead, nor are they close... but they are closer than they were a few years ago. It takes a LONG time for power to shift when so much of it is wielded by one entity... but it does shift eventually.
...to work on projects like this. I've always thought there was a relatively strong consensus in the tech community that information should be open and privacy must be protected. Of course there are always those who think differently, but on a whole I'd guess they have a pretty small pool to pull from to develop something so sinister.
I'm guessing they hired developers from other countries just like MS does, they have no adversions to spying on the american people, in fact they will probably get a job doing it when they return home with this wonderful experience we gave them! Makes me feel safer, I was really getting tired of those terrorists disturbing my neighborhood.
Anyone know a country that is actually free, and has pretty decent immigration policies? I think I want to leave while I still can;-)
Honestly, I love my country, but I hate the direction it's headed in... someone really needs to convince the public to stop being so afraid so that politicians will stop pulling the wool over their eyes and pushing bad legislation through in the name of "protecting the people". If I want to trade my civil liberties for protection, I'll be glad to contact the local homeland security office and let them know that I'm ready to take it in the ass!
Sorry, this just pisses me off, how could anyone develop such a horrible thing, I don't care what they were paid... for most of us it wouldn't be enough!
The first thing a would be hijacker will do is get on the radio and threaten to kill everyone on board unless they remotely disable the system.
Now I don't want to be the guy who makes that decision!
Sure it will protect ground targets ala 9/11... but it does nothing to protect those on board.
I would rather see every flight equipped with remote controlled fog makers, radio jammers, and noise makers... make it impossible for them to communicate with each other. Throw in some sleeping gas, high voltage door to deliver a nice shock... maybe a few rottweilers with big fricken lasers, an escape pod, and finally what security system wouldn't be complete with a self distruct button... that would stop em.
Seriously, why can't we as a people accept that shit happens. Don't get me wrong, I think that it would be stupid to just ignore the problem, but there really is no foolproof way to ensure that bad things won't happen.
Instead of making flying very slightly more safe (how many plane hijackings have actually happend?) Why don't we focus on how much safer it is to fly than the alternatives. The millions that Boeing is spending on this technology would be far better spent reminding the public that even with the occasional hijacking, it's still MUCH safer to fly than to drive.
This system will not make me feel one bit safer, why, because I know that statistically the chances that it will help me in anyway are almost insignificant! If the rest of the world knew what I know, Boeing would sell more planes, ticket prices would continue to drop, and fewer people would die behind the wheel trying drive 24 hours straight to reach a destination that would take 3 hours on a plane.
Honestly, if they want to spend millions on a new technology... spend it on something that makes planes faster, more fuel efficient, or meaningfully safer... not a stuipid technology that does nothing but make people "feel" safer.
Joe
PS... I realize that I will sound like a jackass the first time this system prevents a terrorist attack. But remember how many people died from more common threats that could have been prevented had this money been spent differently.
I realize that when your dealing with big iron or even high end server solutions there is little more to do than wait for the next best thing... or innovate.
Put out an RFP for someone to design a cluster based system that will perform the same functions the system currently does, but using OTS hardware in a massive single or distributed cluster configuration. Perhaps they use virtualization and have one VM for every symbol... then purchase enough hardware that only the least active symbols share machines while those with the most activity are alone on a machine. They could even be dynamically moved about as loads fluctuate.
Sure it'd be expensive... but a massive cluster of low end machines, even at $2000 a pop can still bring a lot of power and stability to the mix... and best of all, adding more power is as simple as plugging a new one in.
Anyway, it's besides the point... I just believe that someone somewhere really screwed up to let things get so bad. Perhaps it's the PM who selected the software vendor, perhaps its the CIO who hasn't done what needed to be done, or perhaps it's those with the money who didn't listen to their IT people. I personally think it's the latter case, as I have seen that attitude at all levels of business... even a 1 man company can fail to allot the proper funds to IT and let essential services go ignored (like backups).
I have begged and pleaded with bosses that it's necessary to increase capacity prematurely... but often they counter with, come back when something is broken. Then when I do, it's "What do you mean it will take 3 months to implement a fix? Didn't you see this coming?" I still believe this is what happened. Sure someone saw the problem, and knew how to fix it.. but they couldn't convince the man with the cash to cough some up and get the ball rolling. I bet the vault is open now though!
Thank you for the examples... one thing I do notice however... none of this translates to reduced cost for the consumer, as it is all related to the distro.
If I wanted to be bundled I'd approach the distros or software developers as was done in your examples. Approaching a system manufacturer like Dell is a totally different game... Dell will demand significantly more, and will provide less. Google getting themselves as the default search engine for Mozilla was well spent money, but I bet they paid more to get google desktop installed on Dell's PC's. Why, Dell demanded it, and it's hard to refuse to pay with such a large market share.
You speak as though you are somehow involved... if so, your admittance that data rates have doubled and will likely double again means that they are aware that something needed to be done and have not done it.
In their industry, the NYSE cannot afford to be complacent... there is little reason for this to have become an issue, I could have predicted it years ago.
I realize that upgrades for that type of system are not something taken lightly, however they should have had a plan in place, and implemented it before things reached the point where the hardware couldn't keep up with demand. I don't care if that meant a full rewrite of the software and complete overhaul of the hardware, something should have been implemented well before the problem presented itself.
As a network manager, it's my responsibility to assess our future needs and ensure that the system I have will meet those needs. If not, I immediately begin to plan an upgrade, perhaps even implementing it if budget allows. The systems I manage are not "as critical", but I still treat them as such.
With current technology, there is really nothing preventing them from developing a truly scalable system, that can easily grow as needed. Or they could at least deploy a system with 10x the current demand and start planning it's replacement immediately thereafter.
What they experienced should NEVER happen on a critical financial system... too much of our economy is dependent upon it. The resources to prevent it are there, I'm sure the Fed would even offer a loan if they had to. I am confident that, if this issue was indeed caused by an overloaded system, someone dropped the ball in a bad way.
"It wouldn't be especially hard for Dell to use the same bundling scheme with Linux as they do with Windows."
I'd agree whole heartedly except:
What's the first thing a computer savvy Dell buyer does to their machine when they get it home. I don't know about you but I usually reinstall windows, partition the drives, and don't reinstall all the bundled crap.
And who's gonna buy a Linux machine anytime in the near future (assuming the price is equal), computer savvy people and businesses who won't pay for bundled software, and will likely remove it the first chance they get.
The software vendors know this, and therefore they have no incentive to bundle software with Linux. If they did, they would surely have approached Redhat, Suse, and Ubuntu with offers already.
Until Linux is accepted as an alternative to Windows by the "average" computer user who is gonna fall for the FUD, or not know how to find free alternatives, you will never see a company actively paying a vendor to distribute their software with their Linux distro/system.
Sure, developers like Xen and VMWare will lobby to get code included in the kernel, maybe even spend a significant amount of money on it... but that doesn't translate to a savings for the end user as they can get the kernel for free.
I suspect that someday, there will be a market for it... and then you will see the cost of Dell's elusive Linux machines come in line with their Windows brethren. But by then, the market may have changed significantly.
I was in the US Air Force at the time... and sitting idle in our office was a sure way to be given some mundane task to perform... so one had to look busy, or be outside having a smoke break.
In my office, the average smoke break was somewhere near 1 hour as our job was hurry up and wait. (ground computer maintenance for an aircraft based radar platform called AWACS). We could see the planes land, and the crew head in for debrief, from the "smoke pit"... so we were always there when real work needed doing.
Seriously, I have left so many jobs simply because I wasn't happy being treated like a child. Give me a job and I do it, to the best of my ability... don't concern yourself with what I do when I'm not working, and certainly don't tell me that I am expected to spend every minute during business hours working.
Considering the amount of, and importance of, data that flows through that system... I am surprised that it's not routinely well ahead of the needs at peak capacity.
I'd say that someone, likely the one in charge of the IT budget approval, keeps tight purse strings. Of course, he's not the one getting reamed, it's the CIO and his crew who are taking the blame even though they have repeatedly requested the funds to improve the system. Just speculation, but likely spot on.
Just another piece of ammo when I start a new job and demand a reasonable budget.
Slashdot Mirror
Uhh... think about what your asking. Does placing the graphics processor closer to the source of it's information (ram) and on a much faster bus (CPU internal bus) make it slower?
The reason onboard graphics suck on most machines is not because they are integrated, it's because the mobo manufacturers have no interest in integrating the latest and greatest video processors and massive quantities of RAM into a motherboard.
Most onboard video is there simply so that system builders can build an average desktop machine for a minimal cost. The reason that AGP and now PCIe slots are there is so that those who need graphics performance can upgrade.
I have seen some onboard graphics that do great TV out... TV out is really relatively unaffected by the power of the graphics chip, though a low budget implementation is not likely to rival a high dollar one. Of course if you want high fps out of the latest 3d title, you will need a high end graphics card with tv out on it. But I watch all my TV through mythtv and an old NVIDIA FX5200 as it's one of the best tv out's on a low budget cards I could get at the time.
Suffice to say, by embedding the GPU in the main processor the system will benefit because the two cores can work together to perform tasks. The graphics can use system memory without the performance penalty currently associated with sharing system ram for graphics. And the best part is that applications that are not being used to generate images for display can still harness the power of the GPU.
For example, many GPU's can do MPEG2 playback without using the main processor, however when you want to re-encode an mpeg2 to mpeg4, the main processor must read the mpeg2 stream itself because its target is not the display; with the GPU integrated into the CPU and connecting to main memory, it is possible to harness its power for any purpose, not just driving the display.
Please don't equate your bad experiences with embedded graphics with what is to come... what we are going to see is a departure from what you know now... a shift to embedding for increased performance rather than embedding to reduce cost. I suspect that the high end processors with embedded GPU's will just slaughter the power of current add-on cards once they are properly written for in software. Not to mention, the fact that your sharing your system RAM can keep the costs a bit lower and make things even faster because multiple cores could manipulate the same memory locations.
And best of all... power requirements drop, cooling requirements drop, and a tiny machine could pump out FPS like nothing you have seen before. So we might actually see the size of high end gaming rigs come way way down. Perhaps you will carry a tiny MacMini sized machine to your next LAN party frag fest.
once MS gets through with them!
Why don't major financial insititutions all create a coalition that does exactly this. This coalition would issue signing certificates for the various members, who will then sign all of their email.
All that mail hosts would need to do is verify that the mail was signed by a valid certificate that was issued by the coalition. One certificate to verify against. The coalition can then issue revocation lists as necessary if a member's certificate is ever comprimised.
Seems like an ideal solution to reduce phishing. It could also be used by other organizations who could have their email signed in a similar way, which might allow these messages to bypass spam filters which would benefit the mail hosts.
I think of it as a way to implement a pseudo whitelist, which is by far the best way to ensure that you don't get spam.
Hurry, patent that, it's a great idea ;-) Would make for some interesting gaming too. Pre-program a sequence and release it when the timing is perfect.
Not to mention it's uses as an accessablity tool.
When you have children, you will understand why it makes sense to keep things of a sexual nature out of the mainstream.
Not that I agree that it should be that way, I would love to have sex more open in our society. But there are limits, even more sexually open societies try and teach their kids that sex should be passionate, gentile, and between a loving couple; standards ignored in most porn videos I have seen. Our 8 year old knows what sex is, and is well aware that her mother and I have it on occasion. She's even seen some pornographic photos of it, though not by our choosing. But she doesn't need to see a close up a throbbing cock being slammed into some girls ass while she gives another guy head and rubs her pierced clit.
I will tell you that a tasteful image of a naked woman or man, or even tasteful shots of a couple engaging in sexual activity, is not offensive to me... even if my children see it. However it is very hard to make a distinction of what is tasteful. Thus it is simply easier to keep things of sexual nature in an easy accessible, but separate location. Like the magazine racks at your local liquor store.
Just FYI,
;-)
I love my scantily clothed women as much as the next guy. In fact I have a small but enjoyable porn collection of my own.
However, I don't like it when I inadvertently come across that material when I'm at work, or while one of the kids are sitting next to me. And I certainly don't like the idea of my, increasingly web proficient, 8 year old seeing it when she's on the web (always supervised btw).
I'm usually pretty good at avoiding the darker side of the internet, but sometimes you get an unexpected surprise.
I realize that my idea's are only pipe dreams, however it does seem like it would be more logical if things were organized in such a way.
And by the way, the magazines you mentioned are not pornographic, those mags are behind the counter with an opaque panel hiding the cover except for the title. Another example of keeping the freedom of choice for the consumer while also respecting the wishes of those who prefer not to be exposed. I have no problem with scantily clad people, or even nudes... I wouldn't be upset if my 8 year old girl were to see a tasteful photo of a naked man, however if that man was receiving head from a bimbo in crotchless panties and high heels I might be a bit angry to be put in that situation.
How do you explain that to an 8 year old, pornography is typically not realistic, it's not the way it 'should be' anyway. Porn almost never portrays sex between a loving couple, instead it's between two people who don't even know each other's names. When your raising a kid, you want them to treat sex as an expression of love... eventually they will learn the distinction, but you certainly don't want them going around thinking it's perfectly normal to just screw complete strangers for fun... even if it is during college
DNS does indeed try to define content, not very successfully but it does.
If I didn't want to visit sites hosted in
I never suggested that sites be blocked by ISP's or the Govt. Just the opposite. A system like this makes it trivial to block from the client side, it wouldn't be necessary to have the ISP or Govt. step in.
Exactly my point, the current 'system' prevents me from excercising my desire to not see such content and undermines my wishes. Organizing content into easily located and/or avoided locations is only sensible. That's why the DNS system is setup the way that it is, to help categorize information.
On a similar vein, I would love to see a bunch of new TLD's started and popular. If the information were organized properly into the correct TLD, and everyone knew that blogs were in
Convincing the extremists is hard.
.xxx domain names, for life, for established sites.
Pornography, is sexually explicit content who's purpose is to entertain, stimulate, or pleasure. Nudity is not pornographic, sex is not pornographic, however videos/images of nude people engaging in sexual activities intended as a source of entertainment for adults is pornographic.
I agree that people try to move that line in both directions, but I think anyone rational will agree that the above is a fair definition.
Perhaps we need a new word, instead of pornography we can call it "sexual entertainment". It has no baggage, so it can be defined as we see fit. We can create additional definitions for sexual art, sexual education media, etc. and define those as well.
Once written into law, those definitions would be up to the courts to judge, but as long as they are written clearly it would be fair to assume that most sites could be easily assessed.
Hell, we do it with movies and music, we can do it with the internet. Just create an incentive to conform, perhaps free
Simply require sites that are in the business of "sexual entertainment". Sure some porn sites would argue that they are educational, but I think that most would agree that it's pretty easy to determine motive.
.xxx domain, so that they can be easily blocked from loading.
.xxx the group can't accidentally stumble into them. Especially because browsers could easily block them.
Sites that use pornographic ads, must simply host those ads on a
This is not a true fix, there are always loopholes, however it provides a way for a legit porn site to operate their business without fear of upsetting a group of wackos that complain about stumbling into pornadoes (love that word). If the sites are on
I wrote a letter years back to my congressman recommending the .xxx domain, who later co-authored the first version of this bill, can't remember his name anymore. Anyway, to anyone who's the least bit technical, this appears to be the simplest method of segregating the pornography from the rest of the information on the net.
.xxx domains. But just having the TLD is the most important step in that direction.
I don't feel that it should be required that all xxx material be hosted in the xxx domain, however I would imagine that most of the legit porn sites (feels funny saying that) would happily open XXX domains and forward traffic there for a while. Eventually, they could pass a law in the US forcing sites that specifically host content geared toward sexual entertainment be hosted on
I have no problem with the internet having it's "red light district", which is the greatest argument against this bill... it's far easier to avoid that area due to the red lights. The alternative is having the entire internet a sort of pinkish shade do to a nice even coat of porn.
who tried to envision what the opposite of a "gentle" mouse would be?
I am guessing you come from the US, or at least Europe or Australia? In India, and many other countries that constantly rank very high on the quality of education charts, college is not quite the same as it is here. From what I understand, schools are far more regimented, far less about self discovery, and not nearly as liberal as our schools.
I know I am making a generalization, and I am not making it from personal experience, but it's what I was led to believe was true. In fact, I have heard it as an arguement for why the western world is more innovative. We encourage self exploration and pushing against the confines of society, science, and every other restriction; wheras many other places tend to push "book knowledge". We have very creative, ambitious, and risk taking graduates while they have highly educated, trainable, and hard working graduates. We create more 'new' ideas, while they simply get more work done.
I fear the day when Indian and Chinese schools encourage the level free thinking that our schools do, not only would they be the most productive societies, but the most innovative as well. Of course, that assumes that their new outlook doesn't cause the same problems we have; demand for higher wages, shorter work weeks, better benefits, lack of job satisfaction, high turnover, increased consumer debt, etc. All side effects of the the capitalistic and free thinking society that we train our graduates to compete in.
Again, this is all BS conclusions arrived at in my head, loosly based upon random snippets of other people's opinions or experiences. I could totally wrong in everything I said!
That's exactly what I thought when I read it. Since when can you take a number and describe it by using units like a preschooler.
I remember once when I had a million thousand dollars... or so my son told me anyway.
If they said that it was the equivalent of 1 billionth of a billionth of a second, I'd make sense. Or perhaps they could just say that it so fast that 1x10^18 pulses can occur every second. (not sure if that's the correct conversion).
Anyway... that one comment really made the submitter sound like a child.
Think about this... they release the nonstandard standard and push the software out to their large corporate vendors... then one of their vendors tells one of it's developers to design a tool that can parse the 50,000 documents and find all instances of the word "porn" for example.
The poor programmer causes a stink and shows his boss the set of encyclopedias that lays out the "open" format and tells him that he cannot do it because there are important peices missing.
The large corporate customer demands a refund and damages for the cost of migrating to MS Office... and switches yet again to an ODF standard. There's another major migration, this time telling the world that MS's "open" format is damaged.
MS will not die overnight... it's gonna take a constant beating before it ever adapts to, or folds under, the demands of the people to keep their information accessible.
I say, let MS keep manipulating the market. People are not stupid, I'd be willing to bet that a larger part of the people making IT related decisions are anxiously awaiting the time they can kick MS out their door... and as alternatives continue to grow in power and reputation, and MS continues to tarnish their reputation by misleading consumers, eventually they will be replaced with more consumer friendly alternatives.
A few (10 or so) years ago, I'd never touched a Mac or Linux box... now I have a couple of each, and every job I have had in the last 10 years came with the rollout of Linux server and a bunch of open source software. Even non technical people I meet in my consulting work are asking about Linux servers and Mac desktops because the heard from someone that had a good experience moving from windows.
MS is not dead, nor are they close... but they are closer than they were a few years ago. It takes a LONG time for power to shift when so much of it is wielded by one entity... but it does shift eventually.
...to work on projects like this. I've always thought there was a relatively strong consensus in the tech community that information should be open and privacy must be protected. Of course there are always those who think differently, but on a whole I'd guess they have a pretty small pool to pull from to develop something so sinister.
;-)
I'm guessing they hired developers from other countries just like MS does, they have no adversions to spying on the american people, in fact they will probably get a job doing it when they return home with this wonderful experience we gave them! Makes me feel safer, I was really getting tired of those terrorists disturbing my neighborhood.
Anyone know a country that is actually free, and has pretty decent immigration policies? I think I want to leave while I still can
Honestly, I love my country, but I hate the direction it's headed in... someone really needs to convince the public to stop being so afraid so that politicians will stop pulling the wool over their eyes and pushing bad legislation through in the name of "protecting the people". If I want to trade my civil liberties for protection, I'll be glad to contact the local homeland security office and let them know that I'm ready to take it in the ass!
Sorry, this just pisses me off, how could anyone develop such a horrible thing, I don't care what they were paid... for most of us it wouldn't be enough!
The first thing a would be hijacker will do is get on the radio and threaten to kill everyone on board unless they remotely disable the system.
Now I don't want to be the guy who makes that decision!
Sure it will protect ground targets ala 9/11... but it does nothing to protect those on board.
I would rather see every flight equipped with remote controlled fog makers, radio jammers, and noise makers... make it impossible for them to communicate with each other. Throw in some sleeping gas, high voltage door to deliver a nice shock... maybe a few rottweilers with big fricken lasers, an escape pod, and finally what security system wouldn't be complete with a self distruct button... that would stop em.
Seriously, why can't we as a people accept that shit happens. Don't get me wrong, I think that it would be stupid to just ignore the problem, but there really is no foolproof way to ensure that bad things won't happen.
Instead of making flying very slightly more safe (how many plane hijackings have actually happend?) Why don't we focus on how much safer it is to fly than the alternatives. The millions that Boeing is spending on this technology would be far better spent reminding the public that even with the occasional hijacking, it's still MUCH safer to fly than to drive.
This system will not make me feel one bit safer, why, because I know that statistically the chances that it will help me in anyway are almost insignificant! If the rest of the world knew what I know, Boeing would sell more planes, ticket prices would continue to drop, and fewer people would die behind the wheel trying drive 24 hours straight to reach a destination that would take 3 hours on a plane.
Honestly, if they want to spend millions on a new technology... spend it on something that makes planes faster, more fuel efficient, or meaningfully safer... not a stuipid technology that does nothing but make people "feel" safer.
Joe
PS... I realize that I will sound like a jackass the first time this system prevents a terrorist attack. But remember how many people died from more common threats that could have been prevented had this money been spent differently.
can the user control what is cached and what isn't?
For example, I could care less if a config file I will likely never edit again is cached, but I want my database to be cached for higher performance.
I realize that when your dealing with big iron or even high end server solutions there is little more to do than wait for the next best thing... or innovate.
Put out an RFP for someone to design a cluster based system that will perform the same functions the system currently does, but using OTS hardware in a massive single or distributed cluster configuration. Perhaps they use virtualization and have one VM for every symbol... then purchase enough hardware that only the least active symbols share machines while those with the most activity are alone on a machine. They could even be dynamically moved about as loads fluctuate.
Sure it'd be expensive... but a massive cluster of low end machines, even at $2000 a pop can still bring a lot of power and stability to the mix... and best of all, adding more power is as simple as plugging a new one in.
Anyway, it's besides the point... I just believe that someone somewhere really screwed up to let things get so bad. Perhaps it's the PM who selected the software vendor, perhaps its the CIO who hasn't done what needed to be done, or perhaps it's those with the money who didn't listen to their IT people. I personally think it's the latter case, as I have seen that attitude at all levels of business... even a 1 man company can fail to allot the proper funds to IT and let essential services go ignored (like backups).
I have begged and pleaded with bosses that it's necessary to increase capacity prematurely... but often they counter with, come back when something is broken. Then when I do, it's "What do you mean it will take 3 months to implement a fix? Didn't you see this coming?" I still believe this is what happened. Sure someone saw the problem, and knew how to fix it.. but they couldn't convince the man with the cash to cough some up and get the ball rolling. I bet the vault is open now though!
I will concede... but still say that the market isn't ripe for it yet... not enough suckers in the linux world to target it yet!
Thank you for the examples... one thing I do notice however... none of this translates to reduced cost for the consumer, as it is all related to the distro.
If I wanted to be bundled I'd approach the distros or software developers as was done in your examples. Approaching a system manufacturer like Dell is a totally different game... Dell will demand significantly more, and will provide less. Google getting themselves as the default search engine for Mozilla was well spent money, but I bet they paid more to get google desktop installed on Dell's PC's. Why, Dell demanded it, and it's hard to refuse to pay with such a large market share.
You speak as though you are somehow involved... if so, your admittance that data rates have doubled and will likely double again means that they are aware that something needed to be done and have not done it.
In their industry, the NYSE cannot afford to be complacent... there is little reason for this to have become an issue, I could have predicted it years ago.
I realize that upgrades for that type of system are not something taken lightly, however they should have had a plan in place, and implemented it before things reached the point where the hardware couldn't keep up with demand. I don't care if that meant a full rewrite of the software and complete overhaul of the hardware, something should have been implemented well before the problem presented itself.
As a network manager, it's my responsibility to assess our future needs and ensure that the system I have will meet those needs. If not, I immediately begin to plan an upgrade, perhaps even implementing it if budget allows. The systems I manage are not "as critical", but I still treat them as such.
With current technology, there is really nothing preventing them from developing a truly scalable system, that can easily grow as needed. Or they could at least deploy a system with 10x the current demand and start planning it's replacement immediately thereafter.
What they experienced should NEVER happen on a critical financial system... too much of our economy is dependent upon it. The resources to prevent it are there, I'm sure the Fed would even offer a loan if they had to. I am confident that, if this issue was indeed caused by an overloaded system, someone dropped the ball in a bad way.
"It wouldn't be especially hard for Dell to use the same bundling scheme with Linux as they do with Windows."
I'd agree whole heartedly except:
What's the first thing a computer savvy Dell buyer does to their machine when they get it home. I don't know about you but I usually reinstall windows, partition the drives, and don't reinstall all the bundled crap.
And who's gonna buy a Linux machine anytime in the near future (assuming the price is equal), computer savvy people and businesses who won't pay for bundled software, and will likely remove it the first chance they get.
The software vendors know this, and therefore they have no incentive to bundle software with Linux. If they did, they would surely have approached Redhat, Suse, and Ubuntu with offers already.
Until Linux is accepted as an alternative to Windows by the "average" computer user who is gonna fall for the FUD, or not know how to find free alternatives, you will never see a company actively paying a vendor to distribute their software with their Linux distro/system.
Sure, developers like Xen and VMWare will lobby to get code included in the kernel, maybe even spend a significant amount of money on it... but that doesn't translate to a savings for the end user as they can get the kernel for free.
I suspect that someday, there will be a market for it... and then you will see the cost of Dell's elusive Linux machines come in line with their Windows brethren. But by then, the market may have changed significantly.
This is exactly the reason I started smoking.
I was in the US Air Force at the time... and sitting idle in our office was a sure way to be given some mundane task to perform... so one had to look busy, or be outside having a smoke break.
In my office, the average smoke break was somewhere near 1 hour as our job was hurry up and wait. (ground computer maintenance for an aircraft based radar platform called AWACS). We could see the planes land, and the crew head in for debrief, from the "smoke pit"... so we were always there when real work needed doing.
Any chance your looking for an IT Manager.
Seriously, I have left so many jobs simply because I wasn't happy being treated like a child. Give me a job and I do it, to the best of my ability... don't concern yourself with what I do when I'm not working, and certainly don't tell me that I am expected to spend every minute during business hours working.
Considering the amount of, and importance of, data that flows through that system... I am surprised that it's not routinely well ahead of the needs at peak capacity.
I'd say that someone, likely the one in charge of the IT budget approval, keeps tight purse strings. Of course, he's not the one getting reamed, it's the CIO and his crew who are taking the blame even though they have repeatedly requested the funds to improve the system. Just speculation, but likely spot on.
Just another piece of ammo when I start a new job and demand a reasonable budget.