Posts by Charles 9

Re: What do the statistics tell us?

"But not the same sort of routes yet? Majority of British drivers could drive round the M25 without incident save some annoyance at the junctions near Heathrow, run the length of the A1, or park on the High Streets of the UK. Maybe survive the Champs Elysee. Have the google cars done anything equally challenging ?"

I would think negotiating a major Californian city like San Francisco or Los Angeles at rush hour would provide plenty of challenge. The cars have already crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, which has reversible lanes.

Re: Convenience?

Also makes you a hot pickpocket target. Plus some of us keep the phone even easier to reach than the wallet for fear of missing a call.

Re: Longevity

Give them time. Barring a total maiming, fingerprints usually heal.

Re: Watch Out for Flat Battery Syndrom

I insist on replaceable batteries in case one goes bad. The battery is one of the soonest things to go and being able to swap it out adds longevity.

Re: Wouldn't it be great if...

You have to realize that it's so old that there's simply so much cruft in it. Pardon the literature reference, but Flash is in many ways like Ankh-Morpork: stuff built on top of stuff built on top of even more stuff: to the point it's practically impossible to know what's underneath everything, yet it's such a critical nexus that you have no choice but to use it if you want to be something worth paying attention to.

Re: Mail reading

"Communists used to amuse themselves sending out innocuous letters stuck down with permanent glue. MI5 were then stuck; if they opened the letters that was a dead giveaway, if they didn't deliver them that became a giveaway too. But no self-respecting Communist entrusted anything to a letter, relying on unoffical means of communication."

Didn't they get around that problem by either x-raying the letters or having replacement envelopes and skilled forgers at the ready so they can replace canaries (a la Nineteen Eighty-Four)?

Re: Is this a good analogy?

"Except, as far as I understand things, that's not 100% correct, because you can forcibly open someone's house while they aren't there with a warrant."

It depends on the warrant. If the warrant allows only for "peaceable entry," then you can't just break the door down. However, if you find a way to enter the property in a reversible way (an unlocked window, unscrewing a gate hinge, etc.), then you can still go inside, provided you leave the place in the same condition it was when you entered. Only when the warrant allows for "forcible entry" can police break a door down.

IANAL, but I think search and property seizure warrants are typically peaceable entry while arrest warrants are forcible.

Re: Ugh.

The problem with YOUR idea being that "getting it right the first time" is a pipe dream, especially with time AND budget constraints.

Cheap, Quick, Correct — Pick any TWO.

And it's been like this even BEFORE computers entered cars. Manufacturers basically pray they're not forced to do a recall.

Re: Congratulations

"That's monopoly or oligopoly you're talking about there, control of supply. What Marx was (rightly) much more worried about was monopsony, a single buyer. In this case, a monopoly purchaser of labour, who would then be able to determine wages."

Why can't an oligospony work as well? If all the members of a cartel agree to limit their wages equally, since there's no need to compete for, say, a glut of workers they need less of (one dies/leaves, get another), then can not a cartel exert the same kind of single-buyer influence as a monospony?

Re: You say "High Frequency Trading -I say "Man in the Middle Attack."

The problem lies in the lobbyist MAKING the legislator turn towards that area of concern. That's why lobbyists exist: to convince legislators to see things their way. Meaning, even if they don't see eye to eye at first, they probably will by the end.

Re: value of class A network on resale market

"That said, IPv6 was meant to coexist indefinitely with IPv4. Various 6-to-4 mechanisms have been provided to ensure that the initial islands of IPv6 can interoperate with the ocean of IPv4. Eventually, when adoption of IPv6 becomes widespread, there will still be (probably very large) islands of IPv4, and those same 6-to-4 mechanisms will be what allows them (the IPv4 nodes) to remain online. Thus I think my main point still stands: you do not need to take down your IPv4 networks to build out your IPv6 network."

Don't think 6-to-4. Think 4-to-6 (as in what if it's the IPv4 device that has to connect to an IPv6 device, not the other way), using only existing IPv4 protocols.

Re: value of class A network on resale market

"I do believe that eventually you will, though, simply because the transition is so easy; simply because you more likely than not, do not need to replace any equipment; simply because when you do decide to make the transition, the environment to support that transition will already be in place. IPv6 does not require the Internet to "take a holiday" to make the transition."

That assumption is part of the problem. Reality doesn't hold up to this, as there really ARE plenty of hardware fixed to IPv4 and incapable of being upgraded to IPv6. In addition, a small but significant portion of these "stuck" devices serve linchpin roles that make them difficult to replace. How do you replace such a device when there's no budget for it, when the hardware's so customized that replacing it would be a project, not a chore, or if the only possible source for the device no longer exists?

Then you have the IT people working behind the scenes, the ones who have to work the nitty-gritty of the network: especially when things go wrong. These people need to be able to talk low-level, and in terms of low-level, IPv4 was at least within reach for most: four numbers no higher than 255. Now, what if you have to work on IPv6 at a low level and you now have a complicated address with more than 4 non-zero words? And as others have noted, some networks shouldn't be directly-addressable, not trusting in the filtering capability of the firewall (which they feel can be bypassed), which means that aspect of IPv6 is a liability.

Re: Canecutter - 2 things wrong with IPV6

So you're saying that the public part of IPv6 is intended to greatly simplify routing by making say the first x bits be hard-routed, say, geographically to a few levels so that tables only have to come play later on and be of a more-manageable size since the packet's been partially pre-sorted already.

Re: 2 things wrong with IPV6

"Not up on these things for a while (naughty me) but didn't I see that subscribers are dished out /48s or /32s of IPv6? Might not be as unlimited* as people think?"

But they can always be adjusted as time passes. We can't change the fact IPv4, being fundamentally 32-bit is limited to around 4 billion entries total (not accounting for some specialized verboten ranges). The human population combined with multiple devices per person, many of which WILL need to be directly addressable, will eventually overwhelm the range.

Re: 2 things wrong with IPV6

(WHOOSH!)

We remember alphanumeric combinations more complicated than hexadecimal (because they use the entire alphabet rather than just the first six letters) on a regular basis in license plates, postal codes, even some telephone numbers that employ the telephone letter system.

But then what if you have tons of old hardware that ONLY understands IPv4 AND can't be upgraded replaced? Do we basically tell them, "YOU LOSE"?

I don't see how letters would make too much of a difference, as we're using to seeing letters on our license plates and some places use letters in their postal codes. They even try to be accommodating by creating shortcuts when the quartet is 0000 (the :: shortcut). I personally see a max of eight quartets easier than trying to memorize up to 16 different numbers.

Re: Multiplexing

"At the web host farm several customer's web sites can share an internet facing IPv4 address. Each site's requests are differentiated by information other than the external dedicated IPv4 address on which it arrives."

Which then kinda falls apart when they get a request that contains ONLY an IPv4 address. Some protocols are like that.

Re: We need to invent a new version of IP

Sounds to me like you're describing IPv6 (which is two versions up AND 128-bit). Did you neglect to use the Joke Alert icon?

The reason they want it "perfect" is they feel the slightest problem will snowball, like a crack in a foundation stone. They don't like NAT because we already have problems of NAT-to-NAT and carrier-grade NAT. As for the benefits of NAT, what benefits are there that a firewall can't do?

But eventually you end up with double-NATting, carrier-grade NATting, or having a scenario where both ends of the connection are behind NATs, one or more of which may be beyond the control of the endpoints. Then things get complicated.

Re: 10 years?

But this is NO joke. We've gone from stories of IPv4 running out to stories of IPv4 HAVING RUN out, as in there actually ARE empty shelves now, with only scattered items left here and there. And not just in one major part of the world. Asia's been dry for years, but who cares about them? But now it's both Asia AND North America: TWO key world markets. The IPv4 world is basically overcrowded with only two options left: jury-rig it or move to a bigger world. Thing is, moving to IPv6 has so many growing pains few want to go while jury-rigging will only work for so long. There's already complaints about handling carrier-grade NAT; what happens when someone behind a carrier-grade NAT wants to connect to someone else behind another carrier-grade NAT?

Re: Oh For Fuck's Sake!

Until someone starts wearing a helmet or simply doesn't react to the board.

Re: Robot Jox

Actually, stuff like Robot Jox and Pacific Rim I think show the differing viewpoints of mechanical exosuits between America and Japan. Japan's view of the mecha was a huge yet surprisingly mobile unit able to mimic human motions to a considerable degree. Whereas in America, we tend to associate them with giant, complicated machines that take a considerable amount of effort to move effectively. I keep getting the impression Japan went for a more flowing and artistic approach while America tended to ground themselves in the grit of war and a closer sense of realism.

Re: Fail of fails.

"I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Wifi was subcontracted out to a third party to operate, probably with some form of unlimitted/Gigabytes plan."

And I would be amazed an ISP would be offering unlimited traffic to a non-residential customer. Most firms I know meter, and some meter even to residential customers. After all, they have to pay their upstream providers, and metering is the norm there, if at the least to negotiate peering agreements between other providers on that level.