It's not really a'la carte. They make you subscribe to the whole tier then refund the cable company's cost for each channel you drop from the tier. Every cable company will immediately be paying a fee to allow channels from each media company then pay only a penny per channel per subscriber. That way they can charge $20/tier then refund $.50 when when you opt out of every channel in the tier. This will be rife with abuse!
In Russia's old-fashioned system, as an American I have to register my travel in Russia as I travel. But in the USSA they're going to require 48 hours advance notice. What an improvement.
Thanks for your comments. I'm inclined to agree that the technical problems are the least of the problems with this sort of device. My hope would be that some spectrum from the future FCC auctions could be set aside for this sort of thing. Perhaps companies like Linksys or D-Link would be interested in purchasing some of the spectrum for devices they sell. The initial devices will indeed be the least capable. With a mesh type of network, the more devices the better the network. I'm thinking the first devices would be used as access points to the Internet or for WiFi-type phones in the home and later would also work in conjunction with neighboring devices. Vonage seems to sell a lot of phone access points to users with very little technical sophistication and I would think the same could be possible here, too. I think there would be significant cost benefits as well as increased network freedom from this option but I'm not entirely certain that it would be easy to make that apparent to a large enough group of users.
I don't think there's anything on my network that I've had to manage less than my WiFi routers. Set them up once and they work flawlessly for years until I buy a new one. Surely this is possible here, too.
You're right, the political hurdles are undoubtedly the greatest of the hurdles. Likewise, if there were enough people participating, those hurdles could be overcome. I'm really curious about what it would take to make this happen. Obviously the technical hurdles are there but I feel those are the easiest to overcome. I certainly feel more within my own depth with technical problems since it's within my own field. As far as economic burdens, I'm not convinced that we are paying any less money by having others own the infrastructure. I'm inclined to believe that we would spend less money by purchasing our own peer-to-peer networking nodes than we currently spend on services. This would especially be true if a marketable device were made by Linksys or D-Link but I think it could also be true with a Linux box and various kit-bashed hardware.
I didn't know the OLPC had a mesh network. That's interesting, thanks. Perhaps the third-world countries that use them will have a better chance to build a more egalitarian Internet than we have.
I've never claimed corporations were evil. The problem is that they have too much control over the infrastructure of communications and use that control to their own ends rather than those of the users. Since they have largely protected monopolies in the US we don't have competitive choices.
I fully understand that a user created system could even be a hostile environment. That's why I'm specifically mentioning that we would need end-to-end encryption, greater methods for controlling network intruders, load-balancing, and anonymity. Of course this is difficult technically, that's why I posted the question on Slashdot rather than Digg. I thought a technical discussion could ensue rather than a discussion of my personal phone bill or other tangental topics. I'm a programmer and I thought that others might have technical insight, perhaps a few RFCs I hadn't noticed, or other ideas. I guess Slashdot isn't the place for these types of discussions?
Ok, we've established that you have a different calling pattern than I do. So what? In addition, I've added my cellphone ($100/month) and cable TV/Internet ($150/month) to my regular landline bills ($500/month.) Since you, for some reason, seem to feel that I need to justify my phone expenditures, I'll explain that my phone bill consists of $80 for a line, features, and various discount calling plans. The rest is spent approximately 80% international and 20% domestic long distance. The rates your quoting are already what I'm paying.
Now, can we dispense with your mistaken belief that I should shop for a cheaper rate and discuss the rest of my post. Even if you're only spending $200-$300/ month it's still $2,400-$3,900/year and would make a fine investment for a hardware node. So where's the problem?
We need to create our own common carriers. All these service providers are willing to give us less and less service for our money every day.
We need to create our own network system. Imagine if we developed our own protocols for a wireless WiFi system that is completely peer-to-peer. We would each buy a transmitter/receiver and put them in our homes. If they were more powerful than the current WiFi devices we could easily get full penetration into any populous area. Others would need more elaborate equipment to access other nodes in rural area. We could build our own Internet 2.0 which cuts the carriers completely out of owning the equipment.
I pay about $750 per month for land-lines, cellular phones, cable TV, and internet connections. I would imagine that the $9,000/year that I'm spending now would go a long way to creating my node to share with others and my own network. We could allow the creation of always on network devices such as Skype-based cellphones and delivery of all media (radio, TV, web, etc.)
To usher this in we, as a group, would need to purchase appropriate network spectrums from the FCC when they go on auction. In addition, we need to develop a highly secure network protocol (encrypted end-to-end and easy to close homes to unacked traffic) that allows complete anonymity and some form of load-balancing across available nodes.
It's time for us to take back the Internet from the profit-mongering companies that seem hell-bent on keeping the people from using the networks we pay for in the ways we want to use them. What would this take for us to create?
Corporations want to have total control over everything they are involved with.
This just does not strike me as true. It seems that lately companies are in a race to see who can outsource the most functions from their business (manufacturing, accounting, design, engineering, research, phone support, sales, etc.) Most companies will happily outsource any business function if they can save a few bucks by doing so. I've watched companies completely rearrange how they do things and rethink their own requirements just to be able to outsource something. GPL v3 will simply require companies to decide whether free software is more important than the DRM they want to build.
I think it'll be a lot easier for Tivo to hire lobbyists and lawyers to allow them to continue to exist while using GPL v3 software than to completely redesign their software with another OS. Of course, they would like to not spend any money for either option but the consumers are better served by forcing this legal battle into the light of day so it can be legally settled for once and all like the VCR/Tape recorders/Radio debates of years before.
The problem with email is that it's too simple to send so people engage in what I call corporate spam: they send out copious amounts of information to too many people. It's all too easy to send out a huge report to everyone in the company then claim that each person should have known whatever tiny nugget that was contained within the report.
Daily, I receive huge documents from many departments which don't appear to have anything to do with me in even a marginal way. Yet, every once in a while some 212 page report will have a line, "an application to handle this will be deployed on the intranet next Tuesday," buried somewhere on page 153 and I'm supposed to realize that I've been assigned a task. If I don't notice the line, contact the other department, attempt to get some requirements for the application, and explain why it can't possibly be done by next Tuesday with my current workload; I'll have several people accusing me of drooping the ball because they "sent an email."
I could easily spend all my time at work reading this corporate spam (which almost never pertains to me) and not write a single line of code. Instead, if someone has an action item for me, I expect them to contact me with notice of that. I just don't have time to wade through every document that someone, while reading it, thought a line in the report was interesting and they should forward the whole report to me.
For the parent post, remember, just because a thought about a person runs through your mind does not mean that an email needs to be sent. If it's not important enough for you to remember later then it's almost definitely not worth interrupting the other person's work and taking a greater amount of their time (often hours with the right off-the-cuff request.) You should attempt to understand what you are requesting of the other person and whether it's worth the their time before sending the email. I'm guessing the other guy in IT has been hammered by to much corporate spam and is pushing back.
Every time a spammer sends an email to your computer its electrons collect in your inbox. If you don't send another email out those electrons will build-up and short out your machine. Send a report, containing these electrons, to the ISP so they can properly purge the excess electrons and allow other internet users to use them.
Just upgrade the smallest Solaris machine. It's almost guaranteed that you can identify some box and reason to upgrade. Afterwards, move the old machine to your desk along with your Windows machine (for the Windows only needs) and use it. If you're lucky, there may already be an old Sun machine lying around that you can just take. In any case, asking for permission will only keep you running around in bureaucracy and it'll never happen but once a machine is on your desk and you're using it everyone will pretty much leave it alone if you just STFU about it.
Many of the students who would look for a degree to get rich were enrolling in CS. Now that the news is filled with stories of out-sourcing to India and the collapse of programming as a way to earn infinite wealth these students are no longer interested in CS and are pursuing careers as doctors and lawyers instead. Good riddance, I say, anyone who is only into programming for the money is probably not overly good at it.
Programmers will always be needed. As tools become more capable and advanced, the only thing that changes is the methodology of programming. Programmers are required because of their ability to think discretely. Any tool is only as good as the organizational ability of the person who uses it. I've met precious few non-programmers (and scientists in general) who are able to think in discrete enough terms to actually create a functional system.
Here is an example I often use, involving how organizational systems often spring to life. Imagine a sorting facility that tells it's people to sort all the items into three different areas: one area should have all of the blue items, another will have the metal items while the final area will have tall items. The items are being sorted on three non-exclusive properties and there will undoubtedly be an issue when the tall, blue metal item is encountered. Most business managers will claim, "we'll deal with that issue when it arises." But computers don't deal with exceptions gracefully and no company has the resources to deal with the constant onslaught of exceptions produced by a poor data/process organization. This is the function that programmers provide. We always are concerned about the exceptions. The stuff that actually goes according to plan is almost an afterthought.
Anyone who has walked into a company that has it's entire order fulfillment system running on a Microsoft Access database that was kludged together by the dozen office workers cum computer programmer that make up their IT staff will immediately understand why programmers will always be needed. Garbage in = garbage out.
The amount of private info required is WAAY out of control.
Exactly! First the state requires me to have an ID to drive a car then they print my Social Security Number and birthdate on the ID. With these two numbers anyone can mail off a fake a credit card application and get a card in my name. Then to top it all off, I'm expected to show this information to everyone from employers, any police officer, any security person, shop clerks who need to verify I'm really me, and even the bouncers at the local pub. This is insane!
About twenty years ago an exterminator was spraying my apartment complex and asked if I had seen any bugs. I replied, "Only in the computer." Sadly, he actually sprayed inside the computer and killed it. I've since learned to curb the computer humor with non-technical people.
The "food" is the money that people and companies are willing to spend. If the people see that MS is not interested in the food being offered because MS has already bit off more food than it can chew then thee people will simply give the food to a company that is more hungry. Someone needs to clue MS in since it's been so long since they've had competitors and they've forgotten this.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not really a'la carte. They make you subscribe to the whole tier then refund the cable company's cost for each channel you drop from the tier. Every cable company will immediately be paying a fee to allow channels from each media company then pay only a penny per channel per subscriber. That way they can charge $20/tier then refund $.50 when when you opt out of every channel in the tier. This will be rife with abuse!
If it's a false myth wouldn't than make it true?
In Russia's old-fashioned system, as an American I have to register my travel in Russia as I travel. But in the USSA they're going to require 48 hours advance notice. What an improvement.
This junk code is simply comments. It's too bad we don't know what language they're in. ;)
Thanks for your comments. I'm inclined to agree that the technical problems are the least of the problems with this sort of device. My hope would be that some spectrum from the future FCC auctions could be set aside for this sort of thing. Perhaps companies like Linksys or D-Link would be interested in purchasing some of the spectrum for devices they sell. The initial devices will indeed be the least capable. With a mesh type of network, the more devices the better the network. I'm thinking the first devices would be used as access points to the Internet or for WiFi-type phones in the home and later would also work in conjunction with neighboring devices. Vonage seems to sell a lot of phone access points to users with very little technical sophistication and I would think the same could be possible here, too. I think there would be significant cost benefits as well as increased network freedom from this option but I'm not entirely certain that it would be easy to make that apparent to a large enough group of users.
I don't think there's anything on my network that I've had to manage less than my WiFi routers. Set them up once and they work flawlessly for years until I buy a new one. Surely this is possible here, too.
You're right, the political hurdles are undoubtedly the greatest of the hurdles. Likewise, if there were enough people participating, those hurdles could be overcome. I'm really curious about what it would take to make this happen. Obviously the technical hurdles are there but I feel those are the easiest to overcome. I certainly feel more within my own depth with technical problems since it's within my own field. As far as economic burdens, I'm not convinced that we are paying any less money by having others own the infrastructure. I'm inclined to believe that we would spend less money by purchasing our own peer-to-peer networking nodes than we currently spend on services. This would especially be true if a marketable device were made by Linksys or D-Link but I think it could also be true with a Linux box and various kit-bashed hardware.
I didn't know the OLPC had a mesh network. That's interesting, thanks. Perhaps the third-world countries that use them will have a better chance to build a more egalitarian Internet than we have.
I've never claimed corporations were evil. The problem is that they have too much control over the infrastructure of communications and use that control to their own ends rather than those of the users. Since they have largely protected monopolies in the US we don't have competitive choices.
I fully understand that a user created system could even be a hostile environment. That's why I'm specifically mentioning that we would need end-to-end encryption, greater methods for controlling network intruders, load-balancing, and anonymity. Of course this is difficult technically, that's why I posted the question on Slashdot rather than Digg. I thought a technical discussion could ensue rather than a discussion of my personal phone bill or other tangental topics. I'm a programmer and I thought that others might have technical insight, perhaps a few RFCs I hadn't noticed, or other ideas. I guess Slashdot isn't the place for these types of discussions?
Ok, we've established that you have a different calling pattern than I do. So what? In addition, I've added my cellphone ($100/month) and cable TV/Internet ($150/month) to my regular landline bills ($500/month.) Since you, for some reason, seem to feel that I need to justify my phone expenditures, I'll explain that my phone bill consists of $80 for a line, features, and various discount calling plans. The rest is spent approximately 80% international and 20% domestic long distance. The rates your quoting are already what I'm paying.
Now, can we dispense with your mistaken belief that I should shop for a cheaper rate and discuss the rest of my post. Even if you're only spending $200-$300/ month it's still $2,400-$3,900/year and would make a fine investment for a hardware node. So where's the problem?
Ok, so you clearly don't make a lot of long distance calls as I do. Substitute your own numbers and comment on the bulk of my comment. Sheesh...
We need to create our own common carriers. All these service providers are willing to give us less and less service for our money every day.
We need to create our own network system. Imagine if we developed our own protocols for a wireless WiFi system that is completely peer-to-peer. We would each buy a transmitter/receiver and put them in our homes. If they were more powerful than the current WiFi devices we could easily get full penetration into any populous area. Others would need more elaborate equipment to access other nodes in rural area. We could build our own Internet 2.0 which cuts the carriers completely out of owning the equipment.
I pay about $750 per month for land-lines, cellular phones, cable TV, and internet connections. I would imagine that the $9,000/year that I'm spending now would go a long way to creating my node to share with others and my own network. We could allow the creation of always on network devices such as Skype-based cellphones and delivery of all media (radio, TV, web, etc.)
To usher this in we, as a group, would need to purchase appropriate network spectrums from the FCC when they go on auction. In addition, we need to develop a highly secure network protocol (encrypted end-to-end and easy to close homes to unacked traffic) that allows complete anonymity and some form of load-balancing across available nodes.
It's time for us to take back the Internet from the profit-mongering companies that seem hell-bent on keeping the people from using the networks we pay for in the ways we want to use them. What would this take for us to create?
Corporations want to have total control over everything they are involved with.
This just does not strike me as true. It seems that lately companies are in a race to see who can outsource the most functions from their business (manufacturing, accounting, design, engineering, research, phone support, sales, etc.) Most companies will happily outsource any business function if they can save a few bucks by doing so. I've watched companies completely rearrange how they do things and rethink their own requirements just to be able to outsource something. GPL v3 will simply require companies to decide whether free software is more important than the DRM they want to build.
I think it'll be a lot easier for Tivo to hire lobbyists and lawyers to allow them to continue to exist while using GPL v3 software than to completely redesign their software with another OS. Of course, they would like to not spend any money for either option but the consumers are better served by forcing this legal battle into the light of day so it can be legally settled for once and all like the VCR/Tape recorders/Radio debates of years before.
The problem with email is that it's too simple to send so people engage in what I call corporate spam: they send out copious amounts of information to too many people. It's all too easy to send out a huge report to everyone in the company then claim that each person should have known whatever tiny nugget that was contained within the report.
Daily, I receive huge documents from many departments which don't appear to have anything to do with me in even a marginal way. Yet, every once in a while some 212 page report will have a line, "an application to handle this will be deployed on the intranet next Tuesday," buried somewhere on page 153 and I'm supposed to realize that I've been assigned a task. If I don't notice the line, contact the other department, attempt to get some requirements for the application, and explain why it can't possibly be done by next Tuesday with my current workload; I'll have several people accusing me of drooping the ball because they "sent an email."
I could easily spend all my time at work reading this corporate spam (which almost never pertains to me) and not write a single line of code. Instead, if someone has an action item for me, I expect them to contact me with notice of that. I just don't have time to wade through every document that someone, while reading it, thought a line in the report was interesting and they should forward the whole report to me.
For the parent post, remember, just because a thought about a person runs through your mind does not mean that an email needs to be sent. If it's not important enough for you to remember later then it's almost definitely not worth interrupting the other person's work and taking a greater amount of their time (often hours with the right off-the-cuff request.) You should attempt to understand what you are requesting of the other person and whether it's worth the their time before sending the email. I'm guessing the other guy in IT has been hammered by to much corporate spam and is pushing back.
Every time a spammer sends an email to your computer its electrons collect in your inbox. If you don't send another email out those electrons will build-up and short out your machine. Send a report, containing these electrons, to the ISP so they can properly purge the excess electrons and allow other internet users to use them.
Just put thermite packets over your drives with a remote trigger. No one's gonna be able to reassemble the bits from the molten blob that's left.
Does that make Apple the Star Trek of the analogy?
Just upgrade the smallest Solaris machine. It's almost guaranteed that you can identify some box and reason to upgrade. Afterwards, move the old machine to your desk along with your Windows machine (for the Windows only needs) and use it. If you're lucky, there may already be an old Sun machine lying around that you can just take. In any case, asking for permission will only keep you running around in bureaucracy and it'll never happen but once a machine is on your desk and you're using it everyone will pretty much leave it alone if you just STFU about it.
Many of the students who would look for a degree to get rich were enrolling in CS. Now that the news is filled with stories of out-sourcing to India and the collapse of programming as a way to earn infinite wealth these students are no longer interested in CS and are pursuing careers as doctors and lawyers instead. Good riddance, I say, anyone who is only into programming for the money is probably not overly good at it.
Programmers will always be needed. As tools become more capable and advanced, the only thing that changes is the methodology of programming. Programmers are required because of their ability to think discretely. Any tool is only as good as the organizational ability of the person who uses it. I've met precious few non-programmers (and scientists in general) who are able to think in discrete enough terms to actually create a functional system.
Here is an example I often use, involving how organizational systems often spring to life. Imagine a sorting facility that tells it's people to sort all the items into three different areas: one area should have all of the blue items, another will have the metal items while the final area will have tall items. The items are being sorted on three non-exclusive properties and there will undoubtedly be an issue when the tall, blue metal item is encountered. Most business managers will claim, "we'll deal with that issue when it arises." But computers don't deal with exceptions gracefully and no company has the resources to deal with the constant onslaught of exceptions produced by a poor data/process organization. This is the function that programmers provide. We always are concerned about the exceptions. The stuff that actually goes according to plan is almost an afterthought.
Anyone who has walked into a company that has it's entire order fulfillment system running on a Microsoft Access database that was kludged together by the dozen office workers cum computer programmer that make up their IT staff will immediately understand why programmers will always be needed. Garbage in = garbage out.
Exactly! First the state requires me to have an ID to drive a car then they print my Social Security Number and birthdate on the ID. With these two numbers anyone can mail off a fake a credit card application and get a card in my name. Then to top it all off, I'm expected to show this information to everyone from employers, any police officer, any security person, shop clerks who need to verify I'm really me, and even the bouncers at the local pub. This is insane!
"Happy Birthday" doesn't enter the public domain until 2030
About twenty years ago an exterminator was spraying my apartment complex and asked if I had seen any bugs. I replied, "Only in the computer." Sadly, he actually sprayed inside the computer and killed it. I've since learned to curb the computer humor with non-technical people.
Or as Elmer Fudd would say:
"I will use the Wiimote to fire the wiiifle!!! You wascaly wabbit!"
That's practically the only show on the Hallmark Channel.
Have you seen any of the Star Wars movies? There are no opening credits to fix typos in.
The "food" is the money that people and companies are willing to spend. If the people see that MS is not interested in the food being offered because MS has already bit off more food than it can chew then thee people will simply give the food to a company that is more hungry. Someone needs to clue MS in since it's been so long since they've had competitors and they've forgotten this.