That's part of the reason why the answer to the question "Which company should pay for the upgrades?" is "None of the above."
If the ISPs pay for the upgrades, then they own the network. If Google pays for the upgrades, then that's even worse, because the ISPs still own the network, even though they didn't pay for it.
Network infrastructure is a natural monopoly, and like any natural monopoly (roads, sewage, etc...) the only reasonable solution is to nationalize it. We should pay for network maintenance the same way we pay for road maintenance: with taxes. If your municipality wants to expand its capacity, you should be able to vote for somebody who's willing to allocate the tax dollars.
ISPs should only be responsible for the service, not the infrastructure. That's the only way to ensure healthy competition.
The reason Europe's numbers are interesting is because in Europe Internet Explorer isn't bundled with Windows 7. On new machines, people actually choose their browser, which makes for statistics with less skew. (There's still some skew because Windows 7 is still the minority and because of regional differences, but it's a step up.)
Right now it's looking like once everybody has upgraded to Firefox 4, IE 9, and Safari 4 (which will be a while) you'll have to upload two different formats (WebM and H.264) to be compatible on everything. That's not ideal, but it's a pretty big step up from relying on a Flash plug-in, which doesn't work on the iPhone and sucks on Linux. The <video> tag has built-in fall-back support, so we're not going to have the same problem we had in the pre-Flash-video days where web developers either had to force the user to click on their format of choice or deal with terrible browser-detection scripts.
But when you return from your neighbours', you'll immediately notice that somebody is in your house. Everybody with a working pair of eyes is qualified enough to detect that. With internet security, most people aren't qualified enough to be able to distinguish exactly what's important to encrypt and what isn't.
Is your email over SSL? If not, there's nothing stopping somebody from resetting your Amazon password, logging into your account, and shipping stuff to a PO box on your credit card.
Did you use the same password for your online banking as you did for other, less secure services? (How many people have you heard boast about the "strength" of their password without realizing that it's only half the problem?) If so, an attacker can use the password-reminder feature and snoop your email and get your banking password.
Are the answers to your security questions (e.g. your mother's maiden name, your favourite book) on your Facebook profile? Even better: if you — or somebody impersonating you — asked a friend of yours for their security answers, would your friend answer? The great thing about that is that the impersonator has just implicated you in their crime.
Hopefully you see where this is going. Unfortunately, most people don't know how much they don't know.
If your wireless signal is secure, you have a lot less to worry about. At least then it's only the coffee shop employees and your ISP that can screw with you, and that's pretty unlikely.
If you want a unique random number, just pick a random number and make sure it hasn't been used before. GUIDs aren't magical; they're actually less unique than the simple method I just described. Too many people used GUIDs for poor reasons.
Besides, if you used traditional GUIDs, you would not only be exposing when the tank was made, but also where it was made.
The problem is that it's not government run! The government just picked out the biggest ISP and put them in charge of leasing out our lines to their competition. It's really a massive conflict of interest.
The free market is a good thing, but it doesn't just magically work on its own. When the playing field isn't even, it hurts the free market, and we need the government to step in to protect it.
Yeah, that's the real crux of the problem. Bell has a government-sanctioned monopoly over the lines that were largely paid for by taxpayers, and smaller ISPs have no choice but to bend over backward for Bell.
An ISP should definitely not be put in charge of leasing our lines to their competing ISPs, since that's a giant conflict of interest. To make it even worse, Bell sells satellite TV, so Internet streaming isn't in their best interest either. The CBC got screwed by this a while ago when they tried to broadcast a TV show via bittorrent, and Bell shaped the hell out of it.
The CRTC has tried to control this problem with regulation, but I think they're going about it the wrong way. Our lines are a shared resource, like roads. The government should buy them from Bell and lease them out to ISPs in a non-discriminatory way.
Actually, if we're still talking about running OSS as a democracy, I doubt you would actually have to pay a programmer.
Ubuntu has a massive number of users. If there truly is a 51% majority of users that want this feature, it's safe to say that at least one of those users has the means and inclination to build a new binary.
Luckily, the Canadian license holder is CTV, and they're also pretty progressive with their online streaming.
I still get screwed over with sites like Hulu, though, and it's probably going to be a long time before broadcast corporations shed the vestiges of regional licensing.
Yes, you can make a great film on a tiny budget, and I'm a fan of many of them, but don't pretend that a limited budget doesn't limit your film-making possibilities. Do you think you'd be able to make The Matrix on a shoestring budget? How about 2001?
I'm also not saying that you need the DVD aftermarket to make money, just that some films need it, and by eliminating it as an option, you're narrowing the field. (And yes, you're also narrowing the field by giving artists a monopoly on their ideas (i.e. a copyright) but I have no sympathy for artists that can't so much as come up with an idea without using somebody else's IP. It's not that hard.)
Finally, you say the DVD aftermarket is drying up, but it's still the primary source of revenue for movies. Yes, it won't last forever, but it's just going to be replaced with digital distribution.
Assuring other people that your opinion isn't rooted in bias isn't amazing at all. People do it all the time. The only difference is that nobody really loves Windows, so a Windows user who is trying to make the same sentiment would be more likely to say something like:
"Look, Windows is my primary OS, and I'm no OSS hippie, but Windows does have some serious problems."
While Quattro and FireGL cards would certainly be great for CAD applications, I'm going to need to give a big old [citation needed] to your claim that most CAD users have these high-end cards.
Unlike the situation with games, there's nothing stopping a CAD user from doing their work with lesser video cards. In fact, they could even do their work if you gave them a machine that was 10 years old; they would just have to hide more objects and spend more time in wire-frame mode.
What the GP is suggesting is a conspiracy theory, that the opponents to file sharing hired some hackers to attack their own sites, under the assumption that everybody will suspect TPB is behind the attack and that it will ruin TPB's credibility.
It's also about formats, though. I download TV shows from TPB, and you know what? I can watch every single one of those shows for free with my bunny ears, but I refuse to be tied to a TV schedule. For me, TPB is the 21st century version of a VCR.
Luckily, up here in Canada, CTV and their subsidiaries have realized that they can broadcast on the Internet, make money off of advertising (business as usual, for them) and their customers won't be robbed by the cable companies.
Now, if only Hulu would extend their contracts to other countries.
Sure, prodding somebody because they made one grammatical error is a little trite, but don't you think bitching about signatures is (at the very least) equally trite?
Slashdot Mirror
My father was a strawman, you insensitive clod!
Was it the Jews or the Yanks?
Clearly it's the answer to the Manhattan Project: it's called the Lower East Side Project?
Doubtful. The new Nook uses an LCD screen.
That's part of the reason why the answer to the question "Which company should pay for the upgrades?" is "None of the above."
If the ISPs pay for the upgrades, then they own the network. If Google pays for the upgrades, then that's even worse, because the ISPs still own the network, even though they didn't pay for it.
Network infrastructure is a natural monopoly, and like any natural monopoly (roads, sewage, etc...) the only reasonable solution is to nationalize it. We should pay for network maintenance the same way we pay for road maintenance: with taxes. If your municipality wants to expand its capacity, you should be able to vote for somebody who's willing to allocate the tax dollars.
ISPs should only be responsible for the service, not the infrastructure. That's the only way to ensure healthy competition.
The reason Europe's numbers are interesting is because in Europe Internet Explorer isn't bundled with Windows 7. On new machines, people actually choose their browser, which makes for statistics with less skew. (There's still some skew because Windows 7 is still the minority and because of regional differences, but it's a step up.)
Actually, due to a hole that existed in patent applications before 1995, some of the patents don't expire until 2017: http://www.tunequest.org/a-big-list-of-mp3-patents/20070226/
Right now it's looking like once everybody has upgraded to Firefox 4, IE 9, and Safari 4 (which will be a while) you'll have to upload two different formats (WebM and H.264) to be compatible on everything. That's not ideal, but it's a pretty big step up from relying on a Flash plug-in, which doesn't work on the iPhone and sucks on Linux. The <video> tag has built-in fall-back support, so we're not going to have the same problem we had in the pre-Flash-video days where web developers either had to force the user to click on their format of choice or deal with terrible browser-detection scripts.
But when you return from your neighbours', you'll immediately notice that somebody is in your house. Everybody with a working pair of eyes is qualified enough to detect that. With internet security, most people aren't qualified enough to be able to distinguish exactly what's important to encrypt and what isn't.
Is your email over SSL? If not, there's nothing stopping somebody from resetting your Amazon password, logging into your account, and shipping stuff to a PO box on your credit card.
Did you use the same password for your online banking as you did for other, less secure services? (How many people have you heard boast about the "strength" of their password without realizing that it's only half the problem?) If so, an attacker can use the password-reminder feature and snoop your email and get your banking password.
Are the answers to your security questions (e.g. your mother's maiden name, your favourite book) on your Facebook profile? Even better: if you — or somebody impersonating you — asked a friend of yours for their security answers, would your friend answer? The great thing about that is that the impersonator has just implicated you in their crime.
Hopefully you see where this is going. Unfortunately, most people don't know how much they don't know.
If your wireless signal is secure, you have a lot less to worry about. At least then it's only the coffee shop employees and your ISP that can screw with you, and that's pretty unlikely.
If you want a unique random number, just pick a random number and make sure it hasn't been used before. GUIDs aren't magical; they're actually less unique than the simple method I just described. Too many people used GUIDs for poor reasons.
Besides, if you used traditional GUIDs, you would not only be exposing when the tank was made, but also where it was made.
The problem is that it's not government run! The government just picked out the biggest ISP and put them in charge of leasing out our lines to their competition. It's really a massive conflict of interest.
The free market is a good thing, but it doesn't just magically work on its own. When the playing field isn't even, it hurts the free market, and we need the government to step in to protect it.
Yeah, that's the real crux of the problem. Bell has a government-sanctioned monopoly over the lines that were largely paid for by taxpayers, and smaller ISPs have no choice but to bend over backward for Bell.
An ISP should definitely not be put in charge of leasing our lines to their competing ISPs, since that's a giant conflict of interest. To make it even worse, Bell sells satellite TV, so Internet streaming isn't in their best interest either. The CBC got screwed by this a while ago when they tried to broadcast a TV show via bittorrent, and Bell shaped the hell out of it.
The CRTC has tried to control this problem with regulation, but I think they're going about it the wrong way. Our lines are a shared resource, like roads. The government should buy them from Bell and lease them out to ISPs in a non-discriminatory way.
Considering that H.264 is used in ... sites like YouTube, I don't think H.264 will go away anytime soon.
Yeah, Google will never be able to convince YouTube to switch codecs.
Wait...
Your password strength-checking algorithm doesn't need to have access to the old password. Try this:
if hash(DecrementAppendedNum(pwdNew)) is in arrayOldPasswordHashes
fail
It's a little less efficient because you need to hash each of your guesses, but the strength-checking algorithm can afford to be inefficient.
Yes, it is a form of data.
Of course, it's also a self-selected sample, which makes it virtually useless, for the same reason that a web poll is useless.
Democracy is not defined in a standard way. The things common to all definitions are equality and freedom.*
* YMMV
Actually, if we're still talking about running OSS as a democracy, I doubt you would actually have to pay a programmer.
Ubuntu has a massive number of users. If there truly is a 51% majority of users that want this feature, it's safe to say that at least one of those users has the means and inclination to build a new binary.
Yeah, annoying licensing restrictions.
Luckily, the Canadian license holder is CTV, and they're also pretty progressive with their online streaming.
I still get screwed over with sites like Hulu, though, and it's probably going to be a long time before broadcast corporations shed the vestiges of regional licensing.
For the record, it's DNG, not DNF.
Yes, you can make a great film on a tiny budget, and I'm a fan of many of them, but don't pretend that a limited budget doesn't limit your film-making possibilities. Do you think you'd be able to make The Matrix on a shoestring budget? How about 2001?
I'm also not saying that you need the DVD aftermarket to make money, just that some films need it, and by eliminating it as an option, you're narrowing the field. (And yes, you're also narrowing the field by giving artists a monopoly on their ideas (i.e. a copyright) but I have no sympathy for artists that can't so much as come up with an idea without using somebody else's IP. It's not that hard.)
Finally, you say the DVD aftermarket is drying up, but it's still the primary source of revenue for movies. Yes, it won't last forever, but it's just going to be replaced with digital distribution.
Serenity wasn't profitable in theatres; it made all of its money in DVD sales.
In fact, Serenity wouldn't have been made at all if it wasn't for the DVD sales of Firefly.
Assuring other people that your opinion isn't rooted in bias isn't amazing at all. People do it all the time. The only difference is that nobody really loves Windows, so a Windows user who is trying to make the same sentiment would be more likely to say something like:
"Look, Windows is my primary OS, and I'm no OSS hippie, but Windows does have some serious problems."
While Quattro and FireGL cards would certainly be great for CAD applications, I'm going to need to give a big old [citation needed] to your claim that most CAD users have these high-end cards.
Unlike the situation with games, there's nothing stopping a CAD user from doing their work with lesser video cards. In fact, they could even do their work if you gave them a machine that was 10 years old; they would just have to hide more objects and spend more time in wire-frame mode.
What the GP is suggesting is a conspiracy theory, that the opponents to file sharing hired some hackers to attack their own sites, under the assumption that everybody will suspect TPB is behind the attack and that it will ruin TPB's credibility.
Now, I don't prescribe to this conspiracy theory, but the opponents to file sharing aren't as adverse to hiring hackers as you seem to think.
It's also about formats, though. I download TV shows from TPB, and you know what? I can watch every single one of those shows for free with my bunny ears, but I refuse to be tied to a TV schedule. For me, TPB is the 21st century version of a VCR.
Luckily, up here in Canada, CTV and their subsidiaries have realized that they can broadcast on the Internet, make money off of advertising (business as usual, for them) and their customers won't be robbed by the cable companies.
Now, if only Hulu would extend their contracts to other countries.
Sure, prodding somebody because they made one grammatical error is a little trite, but don't you think bitching about signatures is (at the very least) equally trite?