It is here already, at
Starband. Well, not so much unmetered, as it is limited. And, not for gamers... latency is way too high. But, if you don't live in a major metro area, it might be right for you.
-- Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
Ahh.. something I can actually make worthwhile comment on.
Large corporations aren't the only benefactors. VoIP services are also aimed squarely at small biz, over T1 circuits (See Cbeyond or Broadriver for examples). Packages start at around $500 (huh? $500 for T1 and phone service? Yep.)
Unlike what one poster mentioned, 911 and caller ID actually can be supported. You really can't be a CLEC offering services in a US market without 911. And, yep, they can trace it back, hold the circuit open and other neat tricks. BUT, your POTS line provides its own power, so you know it works if your lights are out and someone starts into a stroke.
(Though, what's not currently there in most implementations is the FBI's CALEA requirements. Shhh..:-)
As someone mentioned before, the keys are latency (you've got a pretty small budget to work with before the human ear notices) and bandwidth controls for shared networks (can't let data overrun the voice, and that means tight QoS). A voice stream (at G.711 encoding, which would give the same voice quality as a standard PSTN call) sucks up around 80-100 kbps in either direction, and if you're sharing the trunk with data, you gotta make sure that the entire stream gets through. Otherwise it gets chopped up and sounds like Armstrong on the moon.
-- Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
His personal site is here, and it includes his resume. On it, he lists employment with DeKalb Tech, and responsibility over 1,500 PC's (CPU and other tech facts left out). 1500 machines could generate that much, me thinks.
And, speaking as an ex-State o' GA employee working at a university... boy is he screwed. But, it could be worse. He could have tried to buy supplies that weren't under state contract, or done something else that is outlawed under the state's antediluvian purchasing policies for computer equipment.
-- Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
Pioneer Elite series has a serious bang/buck. Lots of inputs/outputs, optical as well, THX certification, 5.1, etc, etc. Sure, it's not Macintosh, but you didn't pay $20k for it, either.
I built my own speakers, however.
-- Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
Since the first generation of craft would be "wild weasles" going after enemy air defences their is no danger of them shooting at each other, thus them knowing each others positions is meaningless, they aren't looking for air targets. The freindly fire danger I see would be in one of these buggers getting lost and homing in on freindly air defences, either from their own bases or some other allied position. If the craft is damaged and "forgets" where the good guys are supposed to be the potential for it to destroy the first anti-aircraft radar it finds is kinda scary. I'd feel better knowing that humans and humans only can make the decision to fire.
IFF and other ident systems are mostly reliable, automated target recognition via radar profile is faster and more accurate by far than what humans can do, but radar signatures can be spoofed, IFF signals can be faked etc... It may be hard or near impossible today but it won't be impossible for ever.
Um, I don't think this is a real concern. First, radar is not radar is not radar (so to speak). Every radar fire control system built uses a distinctive signal (distinctive to the unit type, not each individual unit), so signal ident is easy enough to tell friend from foe. If the foe fakes being a friend, then there's no attack to avoid mistakes.
Asides from the technical problems of completly automated combat systems there is of course the ethical dilema of allowing machines to make the decision to kill human beings. Humans, even the enemy, deserve the thought and consideration of another human before being killed, we owe each other that small dignity even in war. Modern warfare is already remote and cold enough as it is, removing any more of the humanity and allowing our weapons to do our killing for us makes the prospect of war all too simple a thing, all too bloodless an affair, and I fear that the decision to attack or not will be taken too lightly in such a case. Not to mention the very real (in say 50+ years) of our own AI's turning on us, and making the decision to kill all humans. If they've never been allowed to decide on their own to kill humans they would (hopefully) be less likely to see it as an option if they do turn on us.
Noble thoughts (and not that I don't agree), but a glance through human military history shows that we (speaking for the race, not a country) have never really given a damn about the other side, no matter what weapon was at hand. There are areas of the world that have fought for hundreds if not thousands of years, over slights that others would have long forgotten.
As weapons become more precise (accuracy is still in the targeting... it doesn't matter if the warhead is precise to within 1 meter if you lase the wrong target), it should become easier to attack military installations/units, command and control and infrastructure, thus actually limiting the possibilities of casualties.
It's just a weapon. It's an object, still requiring someone to push the button and set it in motion. And, despite the fact that more precise weapons limit loss of life, a life lost is just that,and war should always be the option of last resort.
-- Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
Re:WTF, Scantrons are even worse
on
eLection '04
·
· Score: 1
Soooo.... why are the lines so long? Why are there people in the drive through? Why do banks have such a bad reputation with ATM and lost deposits? The fact remains, not everyone is enamored of buttons and bright shiny object as you are. And, since it's the postion of the various state and local entities to serve the entire population, AND since they are working with limited budgets, the ol' punch cards and scan ballots work just fine.
-- Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
Not everyone in this country WANTS to vote by computer, you know. So what if the next generation is the so called digital generation. There's still quite a large segment of the population who don't care to be in front of a screen for everything they do, who don't intuitively use a mouse or web interface for their window to the world.
Technology has already started to bridge the gap, anyway... at my polling place, everyone used Scantron ballots (fill in the bubble completely, please!), but the scan machine that you feed the ballot into counts every vote, rejects ballots with multiple votes and dials up at the end of the day to report the results to the state election commission.
No need for setup. No need for PC admins to run the polling place (or be needed nearby for maintenance). Open a box of paper, plug the scanner into the phone line, and go.
-- Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
I apologize if this is already posted, but hasn't anyone recognized that the membership rolls for the Independence Party (the Florida extension of the Reform Party) reach to around 14,000 members in Palm Beach County? For that matter, in all of the state of Florida, it has the most members of the Reform party... SO, maybe it's not a mistake after all.
-- Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
NTT is deploying a technology called PON, or Passive Optical Networking, developed by Lucent (and, AFAIK, still proprietary to them.) PON allows the laying of fiber pairs from a central wire office (CO in the US) to boxes in neighborhoods, which run fiber pairs to the NID on the side of the house. It's called Passive because none of this equipment requres outside power, except the equipment at the CO and the CPE (Customer Premise Equipment). To my knowledge, NTT plans to deliver ATM-25 connections out of the CPE (along with RG-6 video and RJ11 POTS service) to serve data.
How do I know this? Bellsouth is running a trial of the very same technology in a *small* area of North Atlanta. At this writing, only data is being served (PPPoE back to Bellsouth.net, in keeping with ADSL tariffs), with technical discussion on how best to provide the other services (for example, if you lose power, so does the CPE, which kills lifeline 911 service..).
The real niftiness about it all is that every lamda on the fiber is another OC3 of bandwidth. And the light spectrum as a lot of lamdas. The not-so-nifty bit is that it's Lucent proprietary.
I wouldn't expect regular deployment of this in the US until probably 2005.
ex-ILEC-engineer,
Phrack
-- Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
Ah, capitalism. A mighty tool, of one knows how to wield it. Unfortunately, the amount of willpower demonstrated by the average consumer means that the corporation will always remain in control of any good or service that has been deemed desirable in the consumer market.
Of course, if it wasn't a desirable good or service, no one would buy it, and this would be a moot point.
The fact of the matter is that we WANT that carrot that dangles in front of us. Corporations demand that we pay it, and so we do. It is only to be expected that these corporations do all within their power to protect their cash flow. After all, would you not do all that you can to keep breathing?
However, the whole "country-area-network" thing is for the birds. Face it, the only way the human race is ever going to get any further than it has is to pull itself up by it's bootstraps. The Internet provides a big stepping stone in the right direction by removing barriers and allowing cultural communication (all of it, the good, the bad and the ugly). With communication comes understanding. With understanding comes cooperation. With cooperation, most anything is possible.
Isolationism has never been a prudent foreign policy.
-- Never knock on Death's door. Ring the doorbell and run (He hates that).
I've been running the Lucent cards for several months now with no issues. I only have the 2 Mb cards, but since the WAN portion is still under that, I haven't noticed any problems. Sure beats re-wiring the house!
You would be interested in the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act introduced into the House during the 105th Congress. Lots of interesting things.... like, enabling the Post Office to seize? A search of "civil forfeiture" in the 105th Congress at Thomas should turn it up.
Apparently you don't understand how adsl works, then... ANY A/D conversion breaks it. If you have anything other than a copper pair back to a DSLAM (or Mini-RAM when Alcatel get's it's act together and can provide a product that won't overheat in the hut), you're outta luck. That's the facts.
Look up stunnel (secure tunnels) on freshmeat. Unix and Windows clients that i know of, at least. It will secure *every* communication between the two machines.
This mean I can now sell ads on my Starsiege Tribes or Quake skins? Will I now see billboards for Miller Lite as I enter the pub in Everquest? Will the billboards in SimCity now carry real ads?
I'm sure if offered money, folks would make game skins look like NASCAR. Come to think of it, that's tempting.
I graduated high school 10 years ago, the child of white middle class parents in a rural area (hmmm... so far so bad). Geek I was, geek I am. While I didn't and don't go to extremes in dress (I tend to prefer earth tones), I often found myself on the short end of many sticks. I remember well the deep pool of anger that formed then (and hangs around sometimes) and became a source I could draw upon. And, being a rural child, I owned guns (I was a hunter). So, arrest me now.
But, I got lucky. My school was blessed with a Navy JROTC program. And while the program itself wasn't the best in the world (nor the worst), it was staffed with an Assistant Naval Science Instructor named Kit Carson Campbell. He made the difference in many lives, by actually listening to our problems, sympathizing and providing support as well as reminders that high school ends and the glory days of the popular crowd will come to an end. He was open to students both in the program and not. I, and others, owe him many thanks.
Kit, if you're out there, the world needs ya, ya hairy deck ape.:-)
For others that are out there who are young and feeling the dark days close about them, I leave only advice based on my own experience: stand tall and don't give up who you are. It will end, and in the real world you can triumph.
It's not just the presentation of the Internet to the media "experts" that causes people to scratch their heads in wonder. Try crawling into a RBOC for a few days. There are many inside one that always see the Internet as an exploitable "product" itself, not as a new medium of expressing thought and ideas and opinions. To reuse and already overused metaphor, the Internet is the telephone of the new information age, considering it's current and probable future impact. The old media models will not fall (some people will still have to be spoon fed), but a new model has arisen. Just as the power of the television to shape thought and ideas wasn't predicted in the 50's, the old-media experts cannot understand the new digital community that has sprung up in their midst, and such dismiss it as a passing fad.
Slashdot Mirror
It is here already, at Starband. Well, not so much unmetered, as it is limited. And, not for gamers... latency is way too high. But, if you don't live in a major metro area, it might be right for you.
--
Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
Large corporations aren't the only benefactors. VoIP services are also aimed squarely at small biz, over T1 circuits (See Cbeyond or Broadriver for examples). Packages start at around $500 (huh? $500 for T1 and phone service? Yep.)
Unlike what one poster mentioned, 911 and caller ID actually can be supported. You really can't be a CLEC offering services in a US market without 911. And, yep, they can trace it back, hold the circuit open and other neat tricks. BUT, your POTS line provides its own power, so you know it works if your lights are out and someone starts into a stroke.
(Though, what's not currently there in most implementations is the FBI's CALEA requirements. Shhh.. :-)
As someone mentioned before, the keys are latency (you've got a pretty small budget to work with before the human ear notices) and bandwidth controls for shared networks (can't let data overrun the voice, and that means tight QoS). A voice stream (at G.711 encoding, which would give the same voice quality as a standard PSTN call) sucks up around 80-100 kbps in either direction, and if you're sharing the trunk with data, you gotta make sure that the entire stream gets through. Otherwise it gets chopped up and sounds like Armstrong on the moon.
--
Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
No, you make them vice-president. Everybody knows that asses are in the back, genitals are in the front.
--
Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
And, speaking as an ex-State o' GA employee working at a university... boy is he screwed. But, it could be worse. He could have tried to buy supplies that weren't under state contract, or done something else that is outlawed under the state's antediluvian purchasing policies for computer equipment.
--
Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
4 years as undergrad, 3 years as employee. I'll stick with just going to the games.
--
Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
Pioneer Elite series has a serious bang/buck. Lots of inputs/outputs, optical as well, THX certification, 5.1, etc, etc. Sure, it's not Macintosh, but you didn't pay $20k for it, either. I built my own speakers, however.
--
Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
Greetings, coder! You have been recruited by the KDE League to defend the frontier from the Windows Armada....
--
Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
Um, I don't think this is a real concern. First, radar is not radar is not radar (so to speak). Every radar fire control system built uses a distinctive signal (distinctive to the unit type, not each individual unit), so signal ident is easy enough to tell friend from foe. If the foe fakes being a friend, then there's no attack to avoid mistakes.
Asides from the technical problems of completly automated combat systems there is of course the ethical dilema of allowing machines to make the decision to kill human beings. Humans, even the enemy, deserve the thought and consideration of another human before being killed, we owe each other that small dignity even in war. Modern warfare is already remote and cold enough as it is, removing any more of the humanity and allowing our weapons to do our killing for us makes the prospect of war all too simple a thing, all too bloodless an affair, and I fear that the decision to attack or not will be taken too lightly in such a case. Not to mention the very real (in say 50+ years) of our own AI's turning on us, and making the decision to kill all humans. If they've never been allowed to decide on their own to kill humans they would (hopefully) be less likely to see it as an option if they do turn on us.
Noble thoughts (and not that I don't agree), but a glance through human military history shows that we (speaking for the race, not a country) have never really given a damn about the other side, no matter what weapon was at hand. There are areas of the world that have fought for hundreds if not thousands of years, over slights that others would have long forgotten.
As weapons become more precise (accuracy is still in the targeting... it doesn't matter if the warhead is precise to within 1 meter if you lase the wrong target), it should become easier to attack military installations/units, command and control and infrastructure, thus actually limiting the possibilities of casualties.
It's just a weapon. It's an object, still requiring someone to push the button and set it in motion. And, despite the fact that more precise weapons limit loss of life, a life lost is just that,and war should always be the option of last resort.
--
Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
Soooo.... why are the lines so long? Why are there people in the drive through? Why do banks have such a bad reputation with ATM and lost deposits? The fact remains, not everyone is enamored of buttons and bright shiny object as you are. And, since it's the postion of the various state and local entities to serve the entire population, AND since they are working with limited budgets, the ol' punch cards and scan ballots work just fine.
--
Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
Technology has already started to bridge the gap, anyway... at my polling place, everyone used Scantron ballots (fill in the bubble completely, please!), but the scan machine that you feed the ballot into counts every vote, rejects ballots with multiple votes and dials up at the end of the day to report the results to the state election commission.
No need for setup. No need for PC admins to run the polling place (or be needed nearby for maintenance). Open a box of paper, plug the scanner into the phone line, and go.
--
Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
I apologize if this is already posted, but hasn't anyone recognized that the membership rolls for the Independence Party (the Florida extension of the Reform Party) reach to around 14,000 members in Palm Beach County? For that matter, in all of the state of Florida, it has the most members of the Reform party... SO, maybe it's not a mistake after all.
--
Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
NTT is deploying a technology called PON, or Passive Optical Networking, developed by Lucent (and, AFAIK, still proprietary to them.) PON allows the laying of fiber pairs from a central wire office (CO in the US) to boxes in neighborhoods, which run fiber pairs to the NID on the side of the house. It's called Passive because none of this equipment requres outside power, except the equipment at the CO and the CPE (Customer Premise Equipment). To my knowledge, NTT plans to deliver ATM-25 connections out of the CPE (along with RG-6 video and RJ11 POTS service) to serve data.
How do I know this? Bellsouth is running a trial of the very same technology in a *small* area of North Atlanta. At this writing, only data is being served (PPPoE back to Bellsouth.net, in keeping with ADSL tariffs), with technical discussion on how best to provide the other services (for example, if you lose power, so does the CPE, which kills lifeline 911 service..).
The real niftiness about it all is that every lamda on the fiber is another OC3 of bandwidth. And the light spectrum as a lot of lamdas. The not-so-nifty bit is that it's Lucent proprietary.
I wouldn't expect regular deployment of this in the US until probably 2005.
ex-ILEC-engineer,
Phrack
--
Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
I love deadlines.. especially that "whooshing" sound they make as they go by.
--
Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
Ah, capitalism. A mighty tool, of one knows how to wield it. Unfortunately, the amount of willpower demonstrated by the average consumer means that the corporation will always remain in control of any good or service that has been deemed desirable in the consumer market.
Of course, if it wasn't a desirable good or service, no one would buy it, and this would be a moot point.
The fact of the matter is that we WANT that carrot that dangles in front of us. Corporations demand that we pay it, and so we do. It is only to be expected that these corporations do all within their power to protect their cash flow. After all, would you not do all that you can to keep breathing?
However, the whole "country-area-network" thing is for the birds. Face it, the only way the human race is ever going to get any further than it has is to pull itself up by it's bootstraps. The Internet provides a big stepping stone in the right direction by removing barriers and allowing cultural communication (all of it, the good, the bad and the ugly). With communication comes understanding. With understanding comes cooperation. With cooperation, most anything is possible.
Isolationism has never been a prudent foreign policy.
--
Never knock on Death's door.
Ring the doorbell and run
(He hates that).
I've been running the Lucent cards for several months now with no issues. I only have the 2 Mb cards, but since the WAN portion is still under that, I haven't noticed any problems. Sure beats re-wiring the house!
Nah, a good caning would do.
Agreed. Ummm... good link. That's a more updated wording than my printed copy.
You would be interested in the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act introduced into the House during the 105th Congress. Lots of interesting things.... like, enabling the Post Office to seize? A search of "civil forfeiture" in the 105th Congress at Thomas should turn it up.
I believe those laws have been changed within the last year. Of course, I *have* the CCW....
Apparently you don't understand how adsl works, then... ANY A/D conversion breaks it. If you have anything other than a copper pair back to a DSLAM (or Mini-RAM when Alcatel get's it's act together and can provide a product that won't overheat in the hut), you're outta luck. That's the facts.
Check www.adsl.com for the FAQ's.
Bellsouth offers ADSL in the Raleigh-Durham
area. http://www.bellsouth.net/external/adsl
Look up stunnel (secure tunnels) on freshmeat. Unix and Windows clients that i know of, at least. It will secure *every* communication between the two machines.
This mean I can now sell ads on my Starsiege Tribes or Quake skins? Will I now see billboards for Miller Lite as I enter the pub in Everquest? Will the billboards in SimCity now carry real ads?
I'm sure if offered money, folks would make game skins look like NASCAR. Come to think of it, that's tempting.
I graduated high school 10 years ago, the child of white middle class parents in a rural area (hmmm... so far so bad). Geek I was, geek I am. While I didn't and don't go to extremes in dress (I tend to prefer earth tones), I often found myself on the short end of many sticks. I remember well the deep pool of anger that formed then (and hangs around sometimes) and became a source I could draw upon. And, being a rural child, I owned guns (I was a hunter). So, arrest me now.
:-)
But, I got lucky. My school was blessed with a Navy JROTC program. And while the program itself wasn't the best in the world (nor the worst), it was staffed with an Assistant Naval Science Instructor named Kit Carson Campbell. He made the difference in many lives, by actually listening to our problems, sympathizing and providing support as well as reminders that high school ends and the glory days of the popular crowd will come to an end. He was open to students both in the program and not. I, and others, owe him many thanks.
Kit, if you're out there, the world needs ya, ya hairy deck ape.
For others that are out there who are young and feeling the dark days close about them, I leave only advice based on my own experience: stand tall and don't give up who you are. It will end, and in the real world you can triumph.
It's not just the presentation of the Internet to the media "experts" that causes people to scratch their heads in wonder. Try crawling into a RBOC for a few days. There are many inside one that always see the Internet as an exploitable "product" itself, not as a new medium of expressing thought and ideas and opinions. To reuse and already overused metaphor, the Internet is the telephone of the new information age, considering it's current and probable future impact. The old media models will not fall (some people will still have to be spoon fed), but a new model has arisen. Just as the power of the television to shape thought and ideas wasn't predicted in the 50's, the old-media experts cannot understand the new digital community that has sprung up in their midst, and such dismiss it as a passing fad.