This almost sounds like a school yard fight between two "children". He's probably done more damage whining like a little bitch than if he just ignored it
reminds me of two quotations from mark twain:
god made the idiot for practice, and then he made the school board.
against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
More than a few years ago, the big AT&T was forced to split up to remove a monopoly they had. Well, lets see, now SBC, Bellsouth, Cingular, DishNetwork and probably more I don't know of all fly under that AT&T banner.
correction: the the AT&T corporation was declared a monopoly and broken up. the new AT&T Inc. monoply is different. it has "Inc." in the name.
corporations are monopolistic, greedy, and unamerican. Inc.'s are cool. google is an Inc. so is apple. you kids love the googles, right?
clearly, you have nothing to fear from the ne AT&T Inc.
I'll betcha the portable datacenter fad will last 'til the first datacenter theft ring starts up.
the military has already solved this problem to a certain extent... just about all of their big systems are wired in some fashion with thermite. you hit the panic button (or pull the panic pin) and the whole thing becomes a ball of white hot sparks and molten iron. i'm not sure if this would an effective civillian theft deterent or not... on the one hand no one in their right mind would steal something that can go up in ball of 5000 degree flame, but on the other hand, i would imagine that is a major concern for insurance companies.
i imagine the claim process would go something like this: insurance adujuster: so someone stole your multi-million dollar datacenter and melted it into a pool of molten metal? data center guy: no they tried to steal it, so we melted it when the alarm went off. insurance adujuster: why in god's name would you do such a thing? data center guy: to protect our data. insurance adujuster: and where is your data now? data center guy: in that pool of molten metal.
i was with military intelligence units when i was in the army, and i have seen some pretty cool systems built into truck trailers. the trouble with a portable data center is that as a general rule, really stable, powerful equipment isn't portable, and really portable equipment isn't very powerful or stable... just ask most laptop users. like an operating room at a hospital, your typical datacenter is very clean, controlled, and monitored environment. like a mobile OR, you are going to sacrifice contol of the environment for portability. i'm not saying that portable datacenters are impossible; i'm saying that they're not a good substitute for the real thing.
portability works for the military for a number of reasons:
the military has an effectively unlimited budget
the military not expected to turn a profit
military equipment is portable because of hazards like artillery and capture by the enemy. that's not the same as a natural disaster.
most military equipment is proprietary and designed with portability and durability in mind. most datacenter gear is not.
the department of defense has advanced terrestrial and satellite communications networks at it's disposal and significantly lower bandwidth requirements. can you imagine getting redundant T3 ordered, provisioned, and installed with less than a week's notice?
for a portable data center to work, special care should be paid to reducing power and cooling requirements. cooling takes power, so cooler running equipment will consume less power. special care should also be taken to protect the equipment during shipping. computers don't exactly deal well with vibration or the bumps and bruises that can come with shipping. shipping by rail is especially dangerous with regards to bumping and bruising.
if Walgreens puts out a circular with Bounty paper towels for 98 cents, it's a pretty good bet that you can walk out of there with Bounty paper towels for 98 cents.
it's a pretty good bet, meaning it has good odds... but it's still a bet and there is still a very real possiblity that you could get suckered.
if advertising wasn't such a highly evolved form of prestigitation, perhaps a walgreens circular would be a guarantee or an assurance instead of the wager that it is today.
verizon has a data business to protect (FIOS/DSL) and can't let you use the EVDO service the way that you would DSL service. if you paid to use EVDO the way that you use DSL, you might not buy DSL/FIOS, and that would be bad for profits. double digit growth doesn't happen on it's own you know.
they would love to block more, but all those commie net neutrality hippies would throw a fit. jeez, they act like abusing people's freedom to do what they want with services that they pay for is a crime or something.
the whole reason that there is one phone company and one cable company in 90% of the neighborhoods in america is to keep prices high and competition low. adding an unrestricted wireless data service of any kind would increase competition and lower prices, and that really isn't in verizon's best interest. the TOS for the EVDO service states that you can't use it as a substitute for DSL. just wait, soon they will call "misusing" EVDO a crime. you're stealing DSL service after all.
a lot of you people are already stealing residential phone service by using cell phones as substitutes for landline phone service. verizon is clearly not going to let you steal DSL as well.
at&t and verizon will do everything possible to guarantee that wireless data services are NOT in competition with residential and commercial DSL because those businesses are there to prop up the now useless telephone business. if you want DSL, in most markets, you need to buy a phone line as well. if you can use a mobile phone to make all of your calls AND get highspeed internet access... well you might as well call the telecommunications industry dead and burn the american flag too while you're at it.
someone else quoted this from the TOS:
"Unlimited Data Plans and Features (such as NationalAccess, BroadbandAccess, Push to Talk, and certain VZEmail services) may ONLY be used with wireless devices for the following purposes: (i) Internet browsing; (ii) email; and (iii) intranet access (including access to corporate intranets, email, and individual productivity applications like customer relationship management, sales force, and field service automation). The Unlimited Data Plans and Features MAY NOT be used for any other purpose. Examples of prohibited uses include, without limitation, the following: (i) continuous uploading, downloading or streaming of audio or video programming or games; (ii) server devices or host computer applications, including, but not limited to, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, automated machine-to-machine connections or peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing; or (iii) as a substitute or backup for private lines or dedicated data connections. This means, by way of example only, that checking email, surfing the Internet, downloading legally acquired songs, and/or visiting corporate intranets is permitted, but downloading movies using P2P file sharing services and/or redirecting television signals for viewing on laptops is prohibited. A person engaged in prohibited uses, continuously for one hour, could typically use 100 to 200 MBs, or, if engaged in prohibited uses for 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, could use more than 5 GBs in a month."
if your friend lives in an RV, doesn't have DSL, and is using EVDO to get online then he broke the TOS and it sucks to be him. no one puts one over on the phone company. maybe he should drive to some hippy commune where there is muni-wifi.
i'll be there still are. i wanted to play around for old time's sake a couple of years ago (popping the heads off some spoonbots) and a few people dropped into my server.
renwerx, the guys who made the renegades mod, is making it's own game called ascension. it's going to be free to the community and since it was made by the renegades, i figure they will be true to the original spirit of gameplay.
darn, i didn't see this until i had posted my reply. skiing was teh awesome. i even had a keybinder mod that let you ski by holding down the jump key. ahh, memories.
jumping rapidly while going downhill caused you to gain speed at a rate that defied physics (both real and virtual). it became such a hit with players that macros and other mods were built to automate the process. the "feature" became so essential to game play that it was built into tribes 2.
i have been shopping for a new laptop since my wife is in grad school, which means that my current laptop is also in grad school. buying the current one was a sort of existential hardship... paying $600 for something that is too underpowered to play games on. perhaps a small device with a comparatively small pricetag and with a keyboard big enough to take notes and things on might be just what the doctor ordered.
Just because the government is regulating something doesn't make it inherently worse off.
we aren't asking the government to do any more regulating, we are just asking them to make permanent (via legislation) and enforcable (the FCC enforces laws, it doesn't create them) what the FCC was doing prior to selling out to AT&T and SBC. net neutrality isn't a new way of doing things. it the way things were always done in the past. the tiered internet is the new way of doing things.
It isn't the regulation that is inherently bad, it is the misuse of the regulation.
the "hands off the net" stuff is just astroturf by the telco industry to convince the public to let them proceed with thier tiered internet plans. passing real, and enforcable, net neutrality legislation will stop all providers from creating a slowlane to relegate non-paying traffic to. the bill that would gut net neutrality failed to pass (a win for net neutality), but the AT&T merger went thru, which was a defeat for net neutrality as well.
when i was in the army in germany a pair of grandmotherly jehova's witnesses would come by every sunday and sidestep every polite attempt i made to get them to leave. i answered the door naked and they stopped coming by.
collusion (oligopoloy) is essentially the same thing as a monopoly. i suppose that you could get a dozen providers to collude... but the temptation might be too great for a small player to undercut the rest of the cartel. too bad that bandwidth has to be compatible with other providers in order to be useful or anyone could get into the game.
it's also too bad that EVDO is in the hands of the only two telcos that matter in america (at&t and verizon) who both have landline and DSL/fiber businesses to protect otherwise there could be some competition overnite in the form of a national mobile broadband network (imagine a little box with a GSM/CDMA antenna and a SIM card and a WIFI tranceiver... like your DSL modem only with no wires). BPL, muni-wifi, and muni-fiber are all mired in telco/cableco funded legal wrangling to offer much hope of competition.
having a choice between your local cableco monopoly and the local telco monopoly is not competition. that's being forced to choose the lesser of two evils. in many cases, for internet access, that lesser evil is the cableco monopoly.
in that situation, the enemy of your enemy is necessarily your friend.
I have never had more than one choice of cable internet provider and one choice of DSL.
you're lucky that you have that. there are many places where you only get one, and sometimes you get none.
there is no competition in the residentail bandwidth market and that is the crux of the issue. if there was competition there would be no such thing as net neutrality because neutrality would be standard operating procedure for every provider lest they lose customers to a competitior..
concerns over net neutrality are a symptom of insufficent competition in the market. the market cannot pressure the players because the market simply doesn't exist.
Why is Debian "racing" or has to race with Ubuntu like distros anyway?
it shouldn't be, and if they are they're making a mistake.
linspire, xandros, knoppix, and ubuntu have ushered in a whole new generation of linux user... this new breed is neither a dev nor a system admin. they are something the linux community has been in short supply of: real users. not newbs, but real computer users that have decided to ditch windows (the formerly exclusive haven of the real user).
these people that use debian based distros still need debian. hopefully these child projects are helping the debian effort (logging bugs, submitting patches, donating time and/or money) so that debian can continue to improve, thereby improving the distros that actually see use by this new crop of real users.
Uh. What debian can't be installed in forty minutes?
uh, the true debian?:-)
seriously, ubuntu has brought many people into linux, and some of them have brought the ricer mentality that ubuntu is the last distro that the world needs since they can install it without too much help and it does what they want. i don't think you or the OP have that mentality, but you do see it somewhat in the community.
the whole idea that Debian is somehow this painfully difficult distro is just absurd and I don't know why people buy into that.
debian has sacrificed some in the "easy to use for random application X" department in order to remain true to it's free software ideals. it's important that they do that. it's also important that they continue doing what they do so that the debian based distros that we all love (and actually use) continue to improve.
debian is the basis for a number of very clever distros (knoppix, DSL, LRP, xandros) that solve the "random application" problem (i.e. i want a sexy desktop without much effort... or i want a super scaled down linux to build routers with). debian is focused on delivering a great "free as in freedom" distribution and they do a good job of it, even when it means giving the cold shoulder to the non-free software everyone (or some small group) wants to use. that's why debian is the basis for so many of those specialized distros... if you start with debian, you can be certain that you are using stuff that free to be used in other products. that's why the ubuntu folks are able to do what they do to please their users. for the ubuntu set (myself included) being able to use third party stuff like codecs easily is a big deal, even if it isn't exactly in line with the true debian "free software" ideal.
none of us should forget that ubuntu is so cool because it was built on a great foundation.
the only greater foundation, of course, would have been slackware. I KID!
Slashdot Mirror
reminds me of two quotations from mark twain:
correction: the the AT&T corporation was declared a monopoly and broken up. the new AT&T Inc. monoply is different. it has "Inc." in the name.
corporations are monopolistic, greedy, and unamerican. Inc.'s are cool. google is an Inc. so is apple. you kids love the googles, right?
clearly, you have nothing to fear from the ne AT&T Inc.
the military has already solved this problem to a certain extent... just about all of their big systems are wired in some fashion with thermite. you hit the panic button (or pull the panic pin) and the whole thing becomes a ball of white hot sparks and molten iron. i'm not sure if this would an effective civillian theft deterent or not... on the one hand no one in their right mind would steal something that can go up in ball of 5000 degree flame, but on the other hand, i would imagine that is a major concern for insurance companies.
i imagine the claim process would go something like this:insurance adujuster: so someone stole your multi-million dollar datacenter and melted it into a pool of molten metal?
data center guy: no they tried to steal it, so we melted it when the alarm went off.
insurance adujuster: why in god's name would you do such a thing?
data center guy: to protect our data.
insurance adujuster: and where is your data now?
data center guy: in that pool of molten metal.
i was with military intelligence units when i was in the army, and i have seen some pretty cool systems built into truck trailers. the trouble with a portable data center is that as a general rule, really stable, powerful equipment isn't portable, and really portable equipment isn't very powerful or stable... just ask most laptop users. like an operating room at a hospital, your typical datacenter is very clean, controlled, and monitored environment. like a mobile OR, you are going to sacrifice contol of the environment for portability. i'm not saying that portable datacenters are impossible; i'm saying that they're not a good substitute for the real thing.
portability works for the military for a number of reasons:
for a portable data center to work, special care should be paid to reducing power and cooling requirements. cooling takes power, so cooler running equipment will consume less power. special care should also be taken to protect the equipment during shipping. computers don't exactly deal well with vibration or the bumps and bruises that can come with shipping. shipping by rail is especially dangerous with regards to bumping and bruising.
it's a pretty good bet, meaning it has good odds... but it's still a bet and there is still a very real possiblity that you could get suckered.
if advertising wasn't such a highly evolved form of prestigitation, perhaps a walgreens circular would be a guarantee or an assurance instead of the wager that it is today.
truthful advertising... that's a good one. it's also an oxymoron, like "political integrity" or "reality television".
verizon has a data business to protect (FIOS/DSL) and can't let you use the EVDO service the way that you would DSL service. if you paid to use EVDO the way that you use DSL, you might not buy DSL/FIOS, and that would be bad for profits. double digit growth doesn't happen on it's own you know.
they would love to block more, but all those commie net neutrality hippies would throw a fit. jeez, they act like abusing people's freedom to do what they want with services that they pay for is a crime or something.
the whole reason that there is one phone company and one cable company in 90% of the neighborhoods in america is to keep prices high and competition low. adding an unrestricted wireless data service of any kind would increase competition and lower prices, and that really isn't in verizon's best interest. the TOS for the EVDO service states that you can't use it as a substitute for DSL. just wait, soon they will call "misusing" EVDO a crime. you're stealing DSL service after all.
a lot of you people are already stealing residential phone service by using cell phones as substitutes for landline phone service. verizon is clearly not going to let you steal DSL as well.
at&t and verizon will do everything possible to guarantee that wireless data services are NOT in competition with residential and commercial DSL because those businesses are there to prop up the now useless telephone business. if you want DSL, in most markets, you need to buy a phone line as well. if you can use a mobile phone to make all of your calls AND get highspeed internet access... well you might as well call the telecommunications industry dead and burn the american flag too while you're at it.
someone else quoted this from the TOS:
if your friend lives in an RV, doesn't have DSL, and is using EVDO to get online then he broke the TOS and it sucks to be him. no one puts one over on the phone company. maybe he should drive to some hippy commune where there is muni-wifi.
don't worry, once a sufficiently large portion of the customer disconnections are attributed to skype, they too will be sued.
it's importnat, however, to wait for the "infringer" in question to get close to profitability before slapping the infringment case on them.
i'll be there still are. i wanted to play around for old time's sake a couple of years ago (popping the heads off some spoonbots) and a few people dropped into my server.
renwerx, the guys who made the renegades mod, is making it's own game called ascension. it's going to be free to the community and since it was made by the renegades, i figure they will be true to the original spirit of gameplay.
darn, i didn't see this until i had posted my reply. skiing was teh awesome. i even had a keybinder mod that let you ski by holding down the jump key. ahh, memories.
jumping rapidly while going downhill caused you to gain speed at a rate that defied physics (both real and virtual). it became such a hit with players that macros and other mods were built to automate the process. the "feature" became so essential to game play that it was built into tribes 2.
well, one of them anyway.
existential
-adjective
1. pertaining to existence
apparently you don't game.
just set the hosts file to resolve *.myspace.com to 127.0.0.1 and BAM! problem solved.
after all, it's myspace that attracts predators, not ignorant children with no adult supervision.
i have been shopping for a new laptop since my wife is in grad school, which means that my current laptop is also in grad school. buying the current one was a sort of existential hardship... paying $600 for something that is too underpowered to play games on. perhaps a small device with a comparatively small pricetag and with a keyboard big enough to take notes and things on might be just what the doctor ordered.
we aren't asking the government to do any more regulating, we are just asking them to make permanent (via legislation) and enforcable (the FCC enforces laws, it doesn't create them) what the FCC was doing prior to selling out to AT&T and SBC. net neutrality isn't a new way of doing things. it the way things were always done in the past. the tiered internet is the new way of doing things.
now that the FCC is owned and operated by the telecommunications industry, we need congress to pass legislation that makes it illegal to stop the earlier (and more effective) practice of net neutrality.
the "hands off the net" stuff is just astroturf by the telco industry to convince the public to let them proceed with thier tiered internet plans. passing real, and enforcable, net neutrality legislation will stop all providers from creating a slowlane to relegate non-paying traffic to. the bill that would gut net neutrality failed to pass (a win for net neutality), but the AT&T merger went thru, which was a defeat for net neutrality as well.
suing a state for not using your stuff. jeez i hope SCO doesn't adopt that tactic.
when i was in the army in germany a pair of grandmotherly jehova's witnesses would come by every sunday and sidestep every polite attempt i made to get them to leave. i answered the door naked and they stopped coming by.
you are very proactive.
collusion (oligopoloy) is essentially the same thing as a monopoly. i suppose that you could get a dozen providers to collude... but the temptation might be too great for a small player to undercut the rest of the cartel. too bad that bandwidth has to be compatible with other providers in order to be useful or anyone could get into the game.
it's also too bad that EVDO is in the hands of the only two telcos that matter in america (at&t and verizon) who both have landline and DSL/fiber businesses to protect otherwise there could be some competition overnite in the form of a national mobile broadband network (imagine a little box with a GSM/CDMA antenna and a SIM card and a WIFI tranceiver... like your DSL modem only with no wires). BPL, muni-wifi, and muni-fiber are all mired in telco/cableco funded legal wrangling to offer much hope of competition.
having a choice between your local cableco monopoly and the local telco monopoly is not competition. that's being forced to choose the lesser of two evils. in many cases, for internet access, that lesser evil is the cableco monopoly.
in that situation, the enemy of your enemy is necessarily your friend.
you're lucky that you have that. there are many places where you only get one, and sometimes you get none.
there is no competition in the residentail bandwidth market and that is the crux of the issue. if there was competition there would be no such thing as net neutrality because neutrality would be standard operating procedure for every provider lest they lose customers to a competitior..
concerns over net neutrality are a symptom of insufficent competition in the market. the market cannot pressure the players because the market simply doesn't exist.
it shouldn't be, and if they are they're making a mistake.
linspire, xandros, knoppix, and ubuntu have ushered in a whole new generation of linux user... this new breed is neither a dev nor a system admin. they are something the linux community has been in short supply of: real users. not newbs, but real computer users that have decided to ditch windows (the formerly exclusive haven of the real user).
these people that use debian based distros still need debian. hopefully these child projects are helping the debian effort (logging bugs, submitting patches, donating time and/or money) so that debian can continue to improve, thereby improving the distros that actually see use by this new crop of real users.
uh, the true debian? :-)
seriously, ubuntu has brought many people into linux, and some of them have brought the ricer mentality that ubuntu is the last distro that the world needs since they can install it without too much help and it does what they want. i don't think you or the OP have that mentality, but you do see it somewhat in the community.
debian has sacrificed some in the "easy to use for random application X" department in order to remain true to it's free software ideals. it's important that they do that. it's also important that they continue doing what they do so that the debian based distros that we all love (and actually use) continue to improve.
debian is the basis for a number of very clever distros (knoppix, DSL, LRP, xandros) that solve the "random application" problem (i.e. i want a sexy desktop without much effort... or i want a super scaled down linux to build routers with). debian is focused on delivering a great "free as in freedom" distribution and they do a good job of it, even when it means giving the cold shoulder to the non-free software everyone (or some small group) wants to use. that's why debian is the basis for so many of those specialized distros... if you start with debian, you can be certain that you are using stuff that free to be used in other products. that's why the ubuntu folks are able to do what they do to please their users. for the ubuntu set (myself included) being able to use third party stuff like codecs easily is a big deal, even if it isn't exactly in line with the true debian "free software" ideal.
none of us should forget that ubuntu is so cool because it was built on a great foundation.
the only greater foundation, of course, would have been slackware. I KID!
anything is funny when you substitute the word pants:
the debian that can be installed in 40 minutes is not the true debian.
i used to have a debian Tshirt that said "it's what your mom would use if it was 20 times eaiser."
i think that the debian group will always be needed to do the heavy lifting and the ubuntus of the world will add specifictiy and compatibility.