when I stuck my tongue out when it rained, I didn't taste any salt at all,
If I was choosing my nick again I would be the RTFT-TROLL (yes; that loud)
Here it is; the article title again, but this time a bit marked up for those of you so bloody stupid you can't see it.
First when I joined this site, it was read the summary, then it's read the article... now it's read the title too? Screw this, I'm leaving this site. I was more than content to just pick a word or three (changing a few) to base my wild speculation on (such as "Gates Salt(ing) Clouds")
hardly anybody has a clue what need in their life (beyond "oooh shiny!") the iPad might sate.
Yup... that sums up the needs in my life.:-)
I think you drastically oversimplify. At least if the iPad owners I know are any indication. For them, the "oooh shiny!" aspect is simply an added bonus.
Is this Android as in ALL android devices or just phones?
I cant wait for option 3.
Option 1: Locked down fisher price phone that wont let you fart without His Jobsiness's permission. (Iphone)
Option 2: Much more open phone that comes with spying baggage that monitors every fart. (aNdroid)
Option 3: A smart phone that doesn't expect me to be a falsebook/twatter obsessive and just works as a smart phone with some computing & browsing (and farting if I choose) capabilities.
Dude, as much as you seem to have a fart fetish, I doubt you'd care about any of the options other than maybe #1. Just sayin...
I wonder how they've avoided the problems up around Alaska or other places where it's actually cold enough for there to be ice - much less methane trapping ice.
I was talking about the Instruction Set Architecture when I used ISA. The ISA buss wasn't terrible for the time but they should have use the S-100 buss since it was a standard already.
No they shouldnt have... it would have marginalized that bus (cheaper peripherals and such).
The truth is that PC was thrown together out of spare parts and bits. IBM used the 8088 because they already used it in the Display writer!
Not according to IBM and Intel. The added cost of a full 16bit bus, support chips and of course the CPU made it too expensive to consider.
The PC was really at test balloon. IBM was seeing if people would buy a PC from them. If it sold then IBM was going to make their REAL PC!
The PC sold too well and IBM was stuck with it.
Think about it. Do you think IBM would have created the PC. The one that would become that standard and use.
1. An Intel CPU.
2. An Operating System from Microsoft?
Yes, I think they would have. No... I'm sorry, I should rephrase that. They HAD to as they were still under a consent decree with the government.
I mean really? IBM?
You think that IBM would create the standard PC that was so easy to clone that everybody and their dog could clone it? Even better clone it and make Intel and Microsoft rich and not pay IBM a dime?
See consent decree above for part... and then take into account revenue on patent licensing. Some of those patents are still being licensed.
Really? The monster that was IBM at the time?
Nope If IBM could do it all over again my bet is that the PC would have used an IBM CPU running a subset of the 360s ISA and an IBM OS.
Then IBM would have made as much money from the clones as Microsoft and Intel combined.
The PC was a terrible test system that was too big of hit to replace.
Yup... because they were a monster, and got in trouble for it, and were not going to be allowed to do it again.
Yes, IBM didnt expect the PC to go anywhere (it was barely a test), but no, there are many things they couldnt do that they probably wanted to.
When IBM came and "created" a standard the standard SUCKED. The 8088 was a terrible CPU with a terrible ISA. Systems like the Atari ST, and Amiga which where cheaper, more powerful, and offered features that MS-DOS wouldn't have for years could never compete
To be fair, DOS was only IBM's blunder in the selection of what they bought for Microsoft (and how Microsoft managed to mangle it into it's later states). The 8088 was chosen because the better 8086 was too expensive (and anything better than that was astronomically expensive), and the ISA bus allowed the easy creation of various add-ons for the PC which helped make it the dominant hardware platform pretty quickly in an era where such things were not decided by "gee, does it run Windows?"
Jolly Ranchers may be relatively harmless in and of themselves, but it is well known that they are a gateway to the "harder" stuff (not literally, nothing's actually harder than a Jolly Rancher.) Sure, today little Chastity Amber is sucking innocently on a Jolly Rancher (and if that sentence doesn't bother you, it should), but tomorrow she's chowing down some Now&Laters. And that shit be quantum. Is she eating it now? Is she eating it later? Until you actually open her mouth and look inside, she's doing both.
Or even worse, Mike-N-Ike's... and we all know how that turned out...
The exe is only necessary to allow Windows shell integration with the online Office service, i.e., so you can double click on a docx on your desktop and have it open in the web office.
If you want to go through the same hassle to open local files you go though with other online office suites, it is not required.
Oh... I thought it was required to enable/implement certain.NET capabilities and Silverlight - through which this "integration" you speak of actually takes place.
Sorry I misunderstood what the exe really was... regardless, I am not about to take a chance that I am wrong. I dont use IE, and I am not about to make any other browser as insecure.
Sorry, I'm just kinda cranky because even after adding a robots.txt entry to slow them down, they still send a bunch to the same pages and way more bots than needed - just was noting the ton of their IPs on the server at the same time I was responding.
Also, according to the article, it's not so easy for the average organisation to hoard addresses:
Sure... as long as they use them. Like the 200+ Microsoft bots that hit my forums at the same time indexing the same content? I guess Microsoft is using those IPs... for what I dont know. Does each of their search servers need to do it's own index of my forums? Why will 15 or 20 be in the same thread at the same time?
If it's so obvious, why don't the defense lawyers call lots of expert witnesses to show just how stupid the RIAA are?
They do, they have and they are making ground. It's hard to win even with experts because of a lack of technical understanding on the part of judges and juries. Some courts (ie: states or locales) are actually working on tech programs for their courts to ensure judges are knowledgeable about the topics they will be presiding over.
In the meantime, with the RIAA equating an IP with a person and the defense needing to teach networking and a lot more to the judge and jury to refute it, the "defense bringing expert witnesses" part isnt quite as helpful as it should be.
Think how few (if any) cases the RIAA would win if the jury were made of slashdot members... we'd call bull on most of their tactics. Without the need for a defense witness trying to cram a few years (schooling/training/ and/or experience) worth of networking knowledge into our heads.
There is nothing about a codec that makes it amenable to DRM. This is uninformed fear-mongering.
DRM is incorporated at the wrapper level. For example, the 'Fairplay' DRM used by Apple is proprietary to Apple and has nothing whatsoever to do with H264.
I would have thought this statement untrue. Here's why. The nature of open codecs would make adding DRM to them less likely (and easier to reverse-engineer/decrypt or bypass thus making such an attempt a waste of time in futility).
Does that apply here? Could Microsoft simply integrate DRM into h264 to satisfy groups like the RIAA/MPAA? Would that then fragment the Internet world even more? Would that create a situation where, to watch certain content (for instance from NetFlix and the likes) one would have to run IE and it's modified h264 HTML5 support? Possibly. Would that increase IE's marketshare by leveraging the tons of NetFlix (and their like) video delivery services? Would they try to create additional delivery markets like leveraging cable company video on demand via computer and a proprietary HTML5/h264 DRMd implementation?
I'm not suggesting answers to any of those questions... I am simply asking them because I think (with Microsoft's true motives currently hidden) that they are relevant to what is really going on here.
I cannot think of the last time Microsoft released anything that "followed the standards" that in truth it (1) did not really do so (at least entirely) and (2) did not contain some sort of proprietary support to further fragment things.
Rubbish. As always during discussions like this you're only talking about the USA. There is a world outside where these problems don't exist. Maybe the US software industry will get locked down, but in reality, not only does the rest of the world not care, but it will use it to its advantage. Time to make sure your passport is up to date.
In this case, it may be relevant due to what country Firefox, Chrome and IE are developed in.
I think containing the hot isle is probably the best way to go as well.
* When I'm working in a datacenter I'd rather be walking around in the cold isle (~70-80F in a modern datacenter) than the hot isle (100-120F if properly contained)
This is probably diverging a bit on the original question, but seeing your 70-80 "modern datacenter" range reminded me of something I've wondered about lately: Has anyone researched the tradeoff point between when the server cooling fans start spooling up and turning the temperature up to run a "hot" floor? Running fans at a higher RPM certainly translates into more current draw than if they're running at their lowest speed. Sure, the equipment can stand running hotter and you're being "green" by not running the A/C as much, but are you just trading that for extra power wasted on spinning a whole lot of fans faster?
That really depends on datacenter design. There are lots of factors that affect it. While my place is not a datacenter, we do run a pretty decent sized stack of servers. The cooling (provided from the wrong side of the room sadly) needs to be set in the low low 60's range to keep the temperature in the server area at about 80 degrees.
We will soon be installing a hot air containment and venting system to help with our cooling. It should help considerably. And during the winter, the hot air will be blow to the other side of the server/office room. It currently keeps the room at about 65 degrees on very cold winter days and the heat disperses decently, but we'd rather have it blowing through a vent section we designed into the front of the space where the entrance door is. That space is also ideally away from the server stack.
Anyway, back to your question, rack containment (by rack design or by datacenter design), stacking order (hotter things on top? or on bottom? all hot things in one rack and the cooler ones in another?), ceiling height, natural air flow characteristics and ability, artificial air flow created by the ceiling(?) or floor (?) cooling ducts, space behind the racks where they vent... well, I could go on and on... but you get the idea... all of those affect what overall room temperature will trigger the units to increase fan speed to cool themselves.
I've been in some datacenters that were massive rooms, where, due to ceiling height, and space behind racks, room temperature could be considerably higher. In other places (that were more like enclosed corridors), when the "room area" was in the 70's, the servers were running considerably hotter and the "hot aisle" area was blazingly hot.
Ours trigger medium speed at about 80 degrees (non-server side) or 85 degrees (server side) and full speed at about 10 degrees hotter. But our servers also are designed to run pretty hot (per IBM's specs).
If you read the article, when they say 'cutting cable' they mean cutting down premium service to basic service, with a few cutting it out entirely.
The 'one in eight to cut cable' title is very misleading. I'd like to see the numbers for people actually dropping cable altogether and not just reducing service. I'd say its more like one in several thousand if that.
Why would I read the article? C'mon, this is slashdot. I thought I was required NOT to read the article and base my speculations on the usually either exaggerated or erroneous summary on slashdot.
Their site says $99 a month for CABLE, INTERNET AND PHONE for the first year... then it becomes $119 a month for ALL THREE. And only $70 a month for Internet and Basic Cable.
Their advertised price doesn't include taxes, or the rent they charge you for their cable boxes/DVRs. And you have to get a cable box or DVR from them now that they've gone to switched digital video.
We've got a Series 3 Tivo, and we're getting the wonderful opportunity to rent a cable card and tuning adapter from them, and their switched digital goes down about every other month. I'd love to dump them, but I have no other options for high-speed Internet (no DSL here, for example), and the surcharge for Internet without cable is pretty hefty.
Sounds like they suck. Cablevision doesnt dump a ton of extra taxes on our bill (which is one of the things they point out in their comparisons to Verizon's extra $25-30 of taxes and fees) - nor do they charge termination fees or have contracts (unlike Verizon's 2 year contract and almost $400 termination fee), and various of my TVs do not have set-top boxes (which doesnt lose me many of the channels I actually watch). For the ones I do have set top boxes, it's only costing me an extra $5 a month (which, with a few can be talked down to as little as $2 each) and for "DVR like purposes" I have a combo DVD/VHS deck which I can auto-program to record what I want straight from either the non-cable-box signal or from the cable box (which it will tune to the correct channel and record to either DVD or VHS).
The 30/30 sounds like an introductory rate (almost exactly like COmcast's), but we will assume its not for argument's sake. If 30 dollars is internet service bundled, it is probably around 45 for the same speed as a solo service. So, a person has the choice of paying 60 for internet+cable or 45 for just cable. So, why would someone pay 15 a month for basic cable when they could put a fraction of that towards netflix or an ondemand service which gives them the commercial-free programming they want? Or use Hulu or another streaming service? 15 a month is 180 a year for nothing more than basic cable programming.
They'd do it because your prices/math are off. Netflix on demand starts at $9 a month. Neither Netflix or Hulu carry large amounts of current content (ie: "gee, I want to watch that show that was just on TNT right now"). And Hulu's broadcast show listing is decreasing.
So, at Netflix's "starts at" price, it's only $6 a month more for cable and internet over just internet and NetFlixs.
If one likes watching movies and doesnt pay much attention to TNT, Bravo, Discovery, Cartoon Network, etc, etc... then the Netflix option may be best. Otherwise I'd pay the $6 more than a Netflix basic account and get cable. I can rent the DVD's for a dollar from RedBox if there's something I really wanna see before it gets to TV (I dont watch enough "just out on DVD/Bluray" movies a month to justify $9+ to Netflix).
But again, comparing first run movies to TV/cable programming is kinda getting away from the points of both my posts and the article itself.
For things to happen as discussed in the article, a number of factors would have to change. For instance, people in my situation would need alternatives for high speed Internet delivery.
This I think is the key to the whole situation. The problem is that with a stationary point of access, be it a television cable or a telephone line, you're always going to have a monopoly of service and this means it's ripe for overpricing and poor service at the same time. The sole DSL provider in the last town I lived in royally pissed me off so I went with a wireless provider. That was OK but not great. My biggest problem was that the wireless drivers on linux are crap so my system would freeze every so often. With the 802.11n however, I think that wireless might be a good way to get some competition to the big ISPs. That of course explains why so many ISPs are fighting municipal wireless solutions, but that's a different thread.
True... and even in that area, as you discussed, there seem few choices and various "back room" deals for exclusivity with the localities - or more costly efforts involved on the part of the provider who need to lease antenna/repeater space from local businesses and individuals (because they cant get pole space on the utility poles).
The whole system is fucked every way I've looked at it. Sometimes due to greed, sometimes due to companies (content creators, TV networks, etc) who are still behind the times and sometimes due to "possibly" monopolistic practices by those companies (Verizon or local cable companies) that do their best to prevent competition from entering certain geographic areas - and of course sometimes due to combinations of those issues.
Or if you just buy cable internet and your installer is too lazy to slap the filter on...
I've known people who have done that... maybe that is also part of the reason some cable companies are no longer selling (or making people jump through hoops to get) cable internet only (ie: with no cable TV package attached).
I went to upload some photos and it told me that the only way to do this way to use the new shiny facebook photo uploader app, and asked me to install it. I said no (no way, in fact) and cancelled out of it, only to be directed to a page that said "you will have to use the simple uploader but it's not as good". Wait, what? Didn't you just tell me that the new app was the only way to upload photos now (yes, yes it did)?
It's things like that - tricking people into installing facebook apps - that make me question their motives.
LoL... that is why I said "LESS deceptive" instead of "Not deceptive anymore";-)
FB has become less deceptive in some of their newer things. Not that it's a good thing (the method they have done so). Want to list a certain thing about yourself? Sure. If you have it linked to the page/group/whatever about it. Thus exposing your interests and yourself to the world.
...or you can have your profile info page blank.
No option C anymore.
So, nowadays, it has become more of a use of strongarm tactics to ensure that your data is everywhere and available to anyone as opposed to deceptively tricking people into doing so.
I'm not sure which is worse. The current method for me (well, if I cared. Anything I put on FB on my info section is already all over the web or the Star Trek Phase 2 site or IMDB).
One's very annoying (the "we're posting this info linked to you wherever we choose, or you can choose to have an empty profile" method) and the old method is deceptively evil (the "we'll simply confuse you into allowing us to post your info unless you take the time to stop and read what you are doing and opt out" method).
I guess a lot of people were getting smarter - especially with so many warnings online and via other FB friends telling people to click/unclick new "hidden" privacy options on FB every time a new change rolled out. So, FB got smart in creating a new way of using that info with no privacy settings to prevent them from - either post the info so they can do what they want with it - or remove all the info entirely.
From the Chrome Frame page: "If Google Chrome Frame is not installed, you can direct your users to an installation page." Flash Player works the same way.
or incapable of installing the Chrome Frame plugin under IE.
People are capable of installing Flash Player in order to watch YouTube in IE 6 through 8. The only way I can see that one is "incapable of installing the Chrome Frame plugin" is if one does not have a machine's administrator password. And in that case, you're probably at work, not at home.
Again, us slashdotters need to remove our tech savvy mentality from the equation.
Almost everyone knows what Flash is. It's pre-installed on lots of computers anyway... all a user ever has to do is upgrade it.
Now... ask a "regular computer user" to download some new plugin - even one with Google's name attached to it (since it's not something they have ever heard of (the plugin - not Google)) and see what happens.
Add to that, with the exception of for watching some video, most people simply leave a site that requires some special plugin to view correctly. Hence the reason most web designers worth their salt still make sure their sites work with IE6/IE7/IE8 even though it would be child's play to suggest people install Firefox or Chrome or Opera. I gave up on that mentality ("site best viewed with... download here") after noticing large drop-offs in views from a big chunk of the IE users who came to our sites. Same applies to convincing a user to install a plug-in to view a site.
Are they *really* going to claim it costs *more* to provide *JUST* internet than internet and basic cable? Is it some fucked up claim that the ad revenue I don't watch makes it cheaper for them? If so, then the ads on premium should more than make up for the bloated prices....
That's the sad problem. It doesnt cost more to do so. But yes, ad revenue from showing the ads that you and others may or may not watch, does increase the revenue base - the advertisers do pay for the ads shown to x number of viewers whether the viewers actually watch them or go make a cup of coffee while the ads are showing. In this respect, them and the various channels are also getting smarter in running commercials at the same time and/or even running the same ads on channels they think may have competing shows on (I've seen more and more that if I am watching "Some SciFi show #1" on one channel and switch to "Some SciFi show #2" on another channel, that the major ad spot is the same on both channels, at the exact same time). That mentality doesnt help either, when it comes to more shows moving to Internet delivery - which then of course doesnt help us who want to get cheap Internet without the cost of (or need to get) cable tacked on.
I suspect one day advertisers and content producers will all be on board with having a good method of maintaining those revenues via Internet delivery. Some big advertisers have already jumped onto that bandwagon (for instance Reebok and Legend of the Seeker online).
Therein lies the problem. The studios and advertisers are (as always) behind the times when it comes to figuring out how to monetize their products online.
Sad huh? And thusly, for people like you and me, a combined package becomes our only alternative to get cheap-yet-fast Internet.
Slashdot Mirror
You misread my post... ;-)
when I stuck my tongue out when it rained, I didn't taste any salt at all,
If I was choosing my nick again I would be the RTFT-TROLL (yes; that loud)
Here it is; the article title again, but this time a bit marked up for those of you so bloody stupid you can't see it.
First when I joined this site, it was read the summary, then it's read the article... now it's read the title too? Screw this, I'm leaving this site. I was more than content to just pick a word or three (changing a few) to base my wild speculation on (such as "Gates Salt(ing) Clouds")
hardly anybody has a clue what need in their life (beyond "oooh shiny!") the iPad might sate.
Yup... that sums up the needs in my life. :-)
I think you drastically oversimplify. At least if the iPad owners I know are any indication. For them, the "oooh shiny!" aspect is simply an added bonus.
Is this Android as in ALL android devices or just phones?
I cant wait for option 3.
Option 1: Locked down fisher price phone that wont let you fart without His Jobsiness's permission. (Iphone) Option 2: Much more open phone that comes with spying baggage that monitors every fart. (aNdroid) Option 3: A smart phone that doesn't expect me to be a falsebook/twatter obsessive and just works as a smart phone with some computing & browsing (and farting if I choose) capabilities.
Dude, as much as you seem to have a fart fetish, I doubt you'd care about any of the options other than maybe #1. Just sayin...
I wonder how they've avoided the problems up around Alaska or other places where it's actually cold enough for there to be ice - much less methane trapping ice.
I was talking about the Instruction Set Architecture when I used ISA. The ISA buss wasn't terrible for the time but they should have use the S-100 buss since it was a standard already.
No they shouldnt have... it would have marginalized that bus (cheaper peripherals and such).
The truth is that PC was thrown together out of spare parts and bits. IBM used the 8088 because they already used it in the Display writer!
Not according to IBM and Intel. The added cost of a full 16bit bus, support chips and of course the CPU made it too expensive to consider.
The PC was really at test balloon. IBM was seeing if people would buy a PC from them. If it sold then IBM was going to make their REAL PC! The PC sold too well and IBM was stuck with it. Think about it. Do you think IBM would have created the PC. The one that would become that standard and use. 1. An Intel CPU. 2. An Operating System from Microsoft?
Yes, I think they would have. No... I'm sorry, I should rephrase that. They HAD to as they were still under a consent decree with the government.
I mean really? IBM? You think that IBM would create the standard PC that was so easy to clone that everybody and their dog could clone it? Even better clone it and make Intel and Microsoft rich and not pay IBM a dime?
See consent decree above for part... and then take into account revenue on patent licensing. Some of those patents are still being licensed.
Really? The monster that was IBM at the time? Nope If IBM could do it all over again my bet is that the PC would have used an IBM CPU running a subset of the 360s ISA and an IBM OS. Then IBM would have made as much money from the clones as Microsoft and Intel combined. The PC was a terrible test system that was too big of hit to replace.
Yup... because they were a monster, and got in trouble for it, and were not going to be allowed to do it again.
Yes, IBM didnt expect the PC to go anywhere (it was barely a test), but no, there are many things they couldnt do that they probably wanted to.
When IBM came and "created" a standard the standard SUCKED. The 8088 was a terrible CPU with a terrible ISA. Systems like the Atari ST, and Amiga which where cheaper, more powerful, and offered features that MS-DOS wouldn't have for years could never compete
To be fair, DOS was only IBM's blunder in the selection of what they bought for Microsoft (and how Microsoft managed to mangle it into it's later states). The 8088 was chosen because the better 8086 was too expensive (and anything better than that was astronomically expensive), and the ISA bus allowed the easy creation of various add-ons for the PC which helped make it the dominant hardware platform pretty quickly in an era where such things were not decided by "gee, does it run Windows?"
But otherwise, I do understand your point.
Jolly Ranchers may be relatively harmless in and of themselves, but it is well known that they are a gateway to the "harder" stuff (not literally, nothing's actually harder than a Jolly Rancher.) Sure, today little Chastity Amber is sucking innocently on a Jolly Rancher (and if that sentence doesn't bother you, it should), but tomorrow she's chowing down some Now&Laters. And that shit be quantum. Is she eating it now? Is she eating it later? Until you actually open her mouth and look inside, she's doing both.
Or even worse, Mike-N-Ike's... and we all know how that turned out...
The exe is only necessary to allow Windows shell integration with the online Office service, i.e., so you can double click on a docx on your desktop and have it open in the web office. If you want to go through the same hassle to open local files you go though with other online office suites, it is not required.
Oh... I thought it was required to enable/implement certain .NET capabilities and Silverlight - through which this "integration" you speak of actually takes place.
Sorry I misunderstood what the exe really was... regardless, I am not about to take a chance that I am wrong. I dont use IE, and I am not about to make any other browser as insecure.
Sorry, I'm just kinda cranky because even after adding a robots.txt entry to slow them down, they still send a bunch to the same pages and way more bots than needed - just was noting the ton of their IPs on the server at the same time I was responding.
Also, according to the article, it's not so easy for the average organisation to hoard addresses:
Sure... as long as they use them. Like the 200+ Microsoft bots that hit my forums at the same time indexing the same content? I guess Microsoft is using those IPs... for what I dont know. Does each of their search servers need to do it's own index of my forums? Why will 15 or 20 be in the same thread at the same time?
I know... it doesnt matter...
According to the article, that time was yesterday.
The authors of TFA estimate that in less than a year ARIN will have no more /8 blocks left to allocate.
Which has nothing to do with how many are sitting unused by ISPs and large companies sitting on big IP blocks.
If it's so obvious, why don't the defense lawyers call lots of expert witnesses to show just how stupid the RIAA are?
They do, they have and they are making ground. It's hard to win even with experts because of a lack of technical understanding on the part of judges and juries. Some courts (ie: states or locales) are actually working on tech programs for their courts to ensure judges are knowledgeable about the topics they will be presiding over.
In the meantime, with the RIAA equating an IP with a person and the defense needing to teach networking and a lot more to the judge and jury to refute it, the "defense bringing expert witnesses" part isnt quite as helpful as it should be.
Think how few (if any) cases the RIAA would win if the jury were made of slashdot members... we'd call bull on most of their tactics. Without the need for a defense witness trying to cram a few years (schooling/training/ and/or experience) worth of networking knowledge into our heads.
There is nothing about a codec that makes it amenable to DRM. This is uninformed fear-mongering.
DRM is incorporated at the wrapper level. For example, the 'Fairplay' DRM used by Apple is proprietary to Apple and has nothing whatsoever to do with H264.
I would have thought this statement untrue. Here's why. The nature of open codecs would make adding DRM to them less likely (and easier to reverse-engineer/decrypt or bypass thus making such an attempt a waste of time in futility).
Does that apply here? Could Microsoft simply integrate DRM into h264 to satisfy groups like the RIAA/MPAA? Would that then fragment the Internet world even more? Would that create a situation where, to watch certain content (for instance from NetFlix and the likes) one would have to run IE and it's modified h264 HTML5 support? Possibly. Would that increase IE's marketshare by leveraging the tons of NetFlix (and their like) video delivery services? Would they try to create additional delivery markets like leveraging cable company video on demand via computer and a proprietary HTML5/h264 DRMd implementation?
I'm not suggesting answers to any of those questions... I am simply asking them because I think (with Microsoft's true motives currently hidden) that they are relevant to what is really going on here.
I cannot think of the last time Microsoft released anything that "followed the standards" that in truth it (1) did not really do so (at least entirely) and (2) did not contain some sort of proprietary support to further fragment things.
Rubbish. As always during discussions like this you're only talking about the USA. There is a world outside where these problems don't exist. Maybe the US software industry will get locked down, but in reality, not only does the rest of the world not care, but it will use it to its advantage. Time to make sure your passport is up to date.
In this case, it may be relevant due to what country Firefox, Chrome and IE are developed in.
I think containing the hot isle is probably the best way to go as well.
* When I'm working in a datacenter I'd rather be walking around in the cold isle (~70-80F in a modern datacenter) than the hot isle (100-120F if properly contained)
This is probably diverging a bit on the original question, but seeing your 70-80 "modern datacenter" range reminded me of something I've wondered about lately: Has anyone researched the tradeoff point between when the server cooling fans start spooling up and turning the temperature up to run a "hot" floor? Running fans at a higher RPM certainly translates into more current draw than if they're running at their lowest speed. Sure, the equipment can stand running hotter and you're being "green" by not running the A/C as much, but are you just trading that for extra power wasted on spinning a whole lot of fans faster?
That really depends on datacenter design. There are lots of factors that affect it. While my place is not a datacenter, we do run a pretty decent sized stack of servers. The cooling (provided from the wrong side of the room sadly) needs to be set in the low low 60's range to keep the temperature in the server area at about 80 degrees.
We will soon be installing a hot air containment and venting system to help with our cooling. It should help considerably. And during the winter, the hot air will be blow to the other side of the server/office room. It currently keeps the room at about 65 degrees on very cold winter days and the heat disperses decently, but we'd rather have it blowing through a vent section we designed into the front of the space where the entrance door is. That space is also ideally away from the server stack.
Anyway, back to your question, rack containment (by rack design or by datacenter design), stacking order (hotter things on top? or on bottom? all hot things in one rack and the cooler ones in another?), ceiling height, natural air flow characteristics and ability, artificial air flow created by the ceiling(?) or floor (?) cooling ducts, space behind the racks where they vent... well, I could go on and on... but you get the idea... all of those affect what overall room temperature will trigger the units to increase fan speed to cool themselves.
I've been in some datacenters that were massive rooms, where, due to ceiling height, and space behind racks, room temperature could be considerably higher. In other places (that were more like enclosed corridors), when the "room area" was in the 70's, the servers were running considerably hotter and the "hot aisle" area was blazingly hot.
Ours trigger medium speed at about 80 degrees (non-server side) or 85 degrees (server side) and full speed at about 10 degrees hotter. But our servers also are designed to run pretty hot (per IBM's specs).
If you read the article, when they say 'cutting cable' they mean cutting down premium service to basic service, with a few cutting it out entirely.
The 'one in eight to cut cable' title is very misleading. I'd like to see the numbers for people actually dropping cable altogether and not just reducing service. I'd say its more like one in several thousand if that.
Why would I read the article? C'mon, this is slashdot. I thought I was required NOT to read the article and base my speculations on the usually either exaggerated or erroneous summary on slashdot.
Their advertised price doesn't include taxes, or the rent they charge you for their cable boxes/DVRs. And you have to get a cable box or DVR from them now that they've gone to switched digital video.
We've got a Series 3 Tivo, and we're getting the wonderful opportunity to rent a cable card and tuning adapter from them, and their switched digital goes down about every other month. I'd love to dump them, but I have no other options for high-speed Internet (no DSL here, for example), and the surcharge for Internet without cable is pretty hefty.
Sounds like they suck. Cablevision doesnt dump a ton of extra taxes on our bill (which is one of the things they point out in their comparisons to Verizon's extra $25-30 of taxes and fees) - nor do they charge termination fees or have contracts (unlike Verizon's 2 year contract and almost $400 termination fee), and various of my TVs do not have set-top boxes (which doesnt lose me many of the channels I actually watch). For the ones I do have set top boxes, it's only costing me an extra $5 a month (which, with a few can be talked down to as little as $2 each) and for "DVR like purposes" I have a combo DVD/VHS deck which I can auto-program to record what I want straight from either the non-cable-box signal or from the cable box (which it will tune to the correct channel and record to either DVD or VHS).
The 30/30 sounds like an introductory rate (almost exactly like COmcast's), but we will assume its not for argument's sake. If 30 dollars is internet service bundled, it is probably around 45 for the same speed as a solo service. So, a person has the choice of paying 60 for internet+cable or 45 for just cable. So, why would someone pay 15 a month for basic cable when they could put a fraction of that towards netflix or an ondemand service which gives them the commercial-free programming they want? Or use Hulu or another streaming service? 15 a month is 180 a year for nothing more than basic cable programming.
They'd do it because your prices/math are off. Netflix on demand starts at $9 a month. Neither Netflix or Hulu carry large amounts of current content (ie: "gee, I want to watch that show that was just on TNT right now"). And Hulu's broadcast show listing is decreasing.
So, at Netflix's "starts at" price, it's only $6 a month more for cable and internet over just internet and NetFlixs.
If one likes watching movies and doesnt pay much attention to TNT, Bravo, Discovery, Cartoon Network, etc, etc... then the Netflix option may be best. Otherwise I'd pay the $6 more than a Netflix basic account and get cable. I can rent the DVD's for a dollar from RedBox if there's something I really wanna see before it gets to TV (I dont watch enough "just out on DVD/Bluray" movies a month to justify $9+ to Netflix).
But again, comparing first run movies to TV/cable programming is kinda getting away from the points of both my posts and the article itself.
This I think is the key to the whole situation. The problem is that with a stationary point of access, be it a television cable or a telephone line, you're always going to have a monopoly of service and this means it's ripe for overpricing and poor service at the same time. The sole DSL provider in the last town I lived in royally pissed me off so I went with a wireless provider. That was OK but not great. My biggest problem was that the wireless drivers on linux are crap so my system would freeze every so often. With the 802.11n however, I think that wireless might be a good way to get some competition to the big ISPs. That of course explains why so many ISPs are fighting municipal wireless solutions, but that's a different thread.
True... and even in that area, as you discussed, there seem few choices and various "back room" deals for exclusivity with the localities - or more costly efforts involved on the part of the provider who need to lease antenna/repeater space from local businesses and individuals (because they cant get pole space on the utility poles).
The whole system is fucked every way I've looked at it. Sometimes due to greed, sometimes due to companies (content creators, TV networks, etc) who are still behind the times and sometimes due to "possibly" monopolistic practices by those companies (Verizon or local cable companies) that do their best to prevent competition from entering certain geographic areas - and of course sometimes due to combinations of those issues.
Or if you just buy cable internet and your installer is too lazy to slap the filter on...
I've known people who have done that... maybe that is also part of the reason some cable companies are no longer selling (or making people jump through hoops to get) cable internet only (ie: with no cable TV package attached).
How about the deceptive photo uploader?
I went to upload some photos and it told me that the only way to do this way to use the new shiny facebook photo uploader app, and asked me to install it. I said no (no way, in fact) and cancelled out of it, only to be directed to a page that said "you will have to use the simple uploader but it's not as good". Wait, what? Didn't you just tell me that the new app was the only way to upload photos now (yes, yes it did)?
It's things like that - tricking people into installing facebook apps - that make me question their motives.
LoL... that is why I said "LESS deceptive" instead of "Not deceptive anymore" ;-)
FB has become less deceptive in some of their newer things. Not that it's a good thing (the method they have done so). Want to list a certain thing about yourself? Sure. If you have it linked to the page/group/whatever about it. Thus exposing your interests and yourself to the world.
...or you can have your profile info page blank.
No option C anymore.
So, nowadays, it has become more of a use of strongarm tactics to ensure that your data is everywhere and available to anyone as opposed to deceptively tricking people into doing so.
I'm not sure which is worse. The current method for me (well, if I cared. Anything I put on FB on my info section is already all over the web or the Star Trek Phase 2 site or IMDB).
One's very annoying (the "we're posting this info linked to you wherever we choose, or you can choose to have an empty profile" method) and the old method is deceptively evil (the "we'll simply confuse you into allowing us to post your info unless you take the time to stop and read what you are doing and opt out" method).
I guess a lot of people were getting smarter - especially with so many warnings online and via other FB friends telling people to click/unclick new "hidden" privacy options on FB every time a new change rolled out. So, FB got smart in creating a new way of using that info with no privacy settings to prevent them from - either post the info so they can do what they want with it - or remove all the info entirely.
most are not willing or unaware of
From the Chrome Frame page: "If Google Chrome Frame is not installed, you can direct your users to an installation page." Flash Player works the same way.
or incapable of installing the Chrome Frame plugin under IE.
People are capable of installing Flash Player in order to watch YouTube in IE 6 through 8. The only way I can see that one is "incapable of installing the Chrome Frame plugin" is if one does not have a machine's administrator password. And in that case, you're probably at work, not at home.
Again, us slashdotters need to remove our tech savvy mentality from the equation.
Almost everyone knows what Flash is. It's pre-installed on lots of computers anyway... all a user ever has to do is upgrade it.
Now... ask a "regular computer user" to download some new plugin - even one with Google's name attached to it (since it's not something they have ever heard of (the plugin - not Google)) and see what happens.
Add to that, with the exception of for watching some video, most people simply leave a site that requires some special plugin to view correctly. Hence the reason most web designers worth their salt still make sure their sites work with IE6/IE7/IE8 even though it would be child's play to suggest people install Firefox or Chrome or Opera. I gave up on that mentality ("site best viewed with... download here") after noticing large drop-offs in views from a big chunk of the IE users who came to our sites. Same applies to convincing a user to install a plug-in to view a site.
Are they *really* going to claim it costs *more* to provide *JUST* internet than internet and basic cable? Is it some fucked up claim that the ad revenue I don't watch makes it cheaper for them? If so, then the ads on premium should more than make up for the bloated prices....
That's the sad problem. It doesnt cost more to do so. But yes, ad revenue from showing the ads that you and others may or may not watch, does increase the revenue base - the advertisers do pay for the ads shown to x number of viewers whether the viewers actually watch them or go make a cup of coffee while the ads are showing. In this respect, them and the various channels are also getting smarter in running commercials at the same time and/or even running the same ads on channels they think may have competing shows on (I've seen more and more that if I am watching "Some SciFi show #1" on one channel and switch to "Some SciFi show #2" on another channel, that the major ad spot is the same on both channels, at the exact same time). That mentality doesnt help either, when it comes to more shows moving to Internet delivery - which then of course doesnt help us who want to get cheap Internet without the cost of (or need to get) cable tacked on.
I suspect one day advertisers and content producers will all be on board with having a good method of maintaining those revenues via Internet delivery. Some big advertisers have already jumped onto that bandwagon (for instance Reebok and Legend of the Seeker online).
Therein lies the problem. The studios and advertisers are (as always) behind the times when it comes to figuring out how to monetize their products online.
Sad huh? And thusly, for people like you and me, a combined package becomes our only alternative to get cheap-yet-fast Internet.