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Comment: Standing up a new cloud and don't count hours... (Score 1) 119

I'm in the process of standing up a new cloudy little provider and we don't count hours or minutes. Is that so wrong?

The assumption is that the Internet is open 24/7 so why should we be marking time when we know you want it 24/7? We would rather cultivate the developers and geeks as customers. We'll soon have one portal for instant gratification but we're also happy to hand-craft VMs in a private place for you too. And it's built around CloudStack4 so it should feel familiar to many.

Come talk to us while we're young and dumb, before we figure out that our prices are too cheap. 20Gb/s out to the net, BGP/4, IBM BladeCenters for hardware, and we also rent bare metal. Anything from 1vCPU/512MB up to 336 CPUs and 10.5TB of RAM in bare metal if you're willing to pay for it.

http://www.blinkinblox.com/

Disclaimer: Yup, its a commercial plug. I'm pretty much both the King and the garbage man.

Comment: It all comes around again on the big wheel (Score 2) 188

by NoOnesMessiah (#45965477) Attached to: Winamp Purchased By Radionomy

Having been very close to WinAmp and the AmpDev team in general in its infancy (circa 1996-1999) it's good to see that someone else is taking an interest. When AOL/Time Warner bought it for $100 Million in 1999 we all knew the direction it was going: large, corporate, and stupid. Let's face it, AOL bought WinAmp for the community that came with it. It should be no surprise that they did nothing memorable with it. And I can't fault Justin for taking the money and running.

I remember well the Stupid Factor being turned up to 11 when AOL ditched FreeBSD for SunOS/Solaris when they moved the hardware off of its "home" network. They practically ended up doubling the hardware to accommodate a (much) less functional OS. I could see the downward spiral start months before that happened. So they bought it for $100 Million and they're selling it for $5-10 Million. Good job, guys. Way to build shareholder value. Go, Team! ...Still, you beat Microsoft to the punch.

The TAP/WinAmp Memorial Hot Tub still lives and I use it every day. And I still use WinAmp every day, just not a CURRENT version. ( I still keep the pre-brain-damaged versions around despite some known security issues.)

That little pieces of it survive here and there is a nice reminder of what was, and what could have been, and what still might be. We'll see what Radionomy does with it. I, for one, will be happy to give them a chance to become relevant again.

Good luck, guys! Whip that llama's ass!

The Almighty Buck

+ - On the Ethics of TLD Censorship-> 1

Submitted by NoOnesMessiah
NoOnesMessiah (442788) writes "I run my own name servers for a variety of reasons. Now, thanks to ICANN, I have to consider whether I go down the slippery slope of being a BS sifter by black-holing certain top-level domains.

Oh, I know those .TV, .WS, .INFO, and .CC TLDs are hiiiiiighly coveted, and I just can't wait for .COKE and .WALMART, but I can't help but think that brand-specific TLDs will be more abusive rather than useful. .RUSSIANMAFIA anyone? Can we get a .LULZSEC or .WIKILEAKS TLD while we're at it?

So my attitude it going to be, "use my name servers, deal with my real-world choices." Oh, I'm censoring all right. I know this. And its really going to help with the spam sorting and tagging. Question is, "as a network operator am I really over-stepping my bounds?" What do you think?"
Link to Original Source

+ - What are my alternatives to a broken patent system 1

Submitted by NoOnesMessiah
NoOnesMessiah (442788) writes "I've got a good crypto/VPN/VPR thing germinating, and the master sergeant and the cryptologic linguist and the ranger medics all agree that I should pursue it, and that they will use it if I build it. However I also firmly believe that we are all standing on the shoulders of giants when it comes to software and software patents, so I want this thing to be unquestionably free (yes, as in both speech and beer).

I've sired several companies that have done well in the past but this time its about giving back to the community that has been so good to me. And rolling it up with some other open source projects yields a decent security product. Could I sell it? I suppose, but the real answer is, "you don't sell it. You give it back to the community, maybe you productize one flavor of it, and you sell commercial support for it." Not a bad business model in my mind, so it is worth pursuing. But it's still mostly about giving back.

Oh wait..., enter the US Patent and Trademark Office, who'll let you patent "ones" and "zeros" and probably "twos" because they're new and innovative (even though there's no such thing as "two" according to Philip J. Fry). I have no doubt that reptiles in two-thousand-dollar suits will try to pursue intellectual property rights on my ideas again (as they certainly have in the past) but I am willing to take the effort now to protect future rights and freedoms up front.

So how do I do that?

How do I effectively "patent-proof," copy-left, and make-free-to-all-in-perpetuity, in the public domain, one or more of the core, innovative (and presumably patentable) ideas so that they remain free, simply because they could be useful to others? (That, and the fact that I wish to see a lot more encryption on the Internet in the future.)

I wish that John Gilmore, Bruce Schneier, Phil Zimmermann, or Vint Cerf had time to talk about such things but they really don't know, or care about, who I am or what I might be doing. So I thought maybe some snarky Slashdot comments might help. Well, they couldn't hurt.

So, what say you, Slashdotters? What is the intellectual property equivalent of taking a dump in a box and mailing it to the USPTO? I know this is right down your alley. How does one keep an idea truly free? How does one un-file an anti-patent?"

Comment: Re:It's a huge issue to app developers, not Google (Score 1) 211

by torpor (#32443840) Attached to: Android Compatibility and Fragmentation

The problem is OEMs have no incentive to put money into handsets they sold two years ago.

The OEMs should be profiting from their own app stores .. profits being driven from their customers. That they don't get this yet is hugely disappointing .. appstores - and naturally, software updates - are of huge interest to "next-gen" cell users .. but the carriers just don't want to get into it.

I suppose its because of the draconian US laws about content delivery over telephone networks, in the end, though ..

Comment: Oh Brother.... (Score 1) 325

by NoOnesMessiah (#31557404) Attached to: Need Help Salvaging Data From an Old Xenix System

Oh, Hesu..., you whiners haven't looked in my garage, ever!; Apple /// with 5Mb Profile Hard Disk anyone? If I recall correctly, that flavour of xenix is EFS and there are still some old unixes (and early 90s BSDs) that can bridge that gap. It's probably an MFM or RLL ISA controller but I'm sure you could cobble together the hardware to either extract data or image the drive. The people whining about "OMG! Don't Touch It! You might break it!" never lived through that vintage of hardware....

+ - Is it time for a "Dear Charlie" letter?

Submitted by NoOnesMessiah
NoOnesMessiah (442788) writes "I'm thinking it might be time for a "Dear Charlie" letter to Dish Network simply because of Roku and Hulu. I'm sick and tired of paying $65+ a month with my bill creeping upward slowly when I only watch about 12 channels anyway. And so I'd like to know what the Slashdot crowd thinks; Is it time to push for A-la-carte programing or it is time for Roku and Hulu? Or is Roku only half-baked yet? What about adding NetFlix into the mix? Where do you spend your home entertainment dollars? (And please don't say EverCrack or Pogo...)"

Comment: It has non-standard pinouts...!?! (Score 1) 460

by NoOnesMessiah (#31305858) Attached to: Will the Serial Console Ever Die?

Seriously!?! Non-standard pinouts. I've been using non-standard pinouts for, what?, 25 plus years!?!

Are you a consultant for the USB lobby, or are you just mildly retarded?

What?, are you expecting some pretty little GUI to configure your fibre channel switches or something?

Or were you just trolling for flames?...

Comment: JUNO FIRST is another good one .. (Score 1) 78

by torpor (#28985321) Attached to: A History of <em>Robotron</em>

I love Robotron, play it regularly, Defender too .. In fact this is a list of games on my WIZ console, which is running pretty much MAME exclusively these days:

Robotron
Defender
Scramble
Moon Buggy
Crazy Climber
Crazy Climber 2
Juno First
Pleiades
Pisces
Exerion

Currently, I just can't stop playing Juno First .. love it so much, I'm considering doing a 'tribute/remake' for iPhone ..

Comment: Re:The Smart Devices Q7 is a good solution (Score 1) 167

by torpor (#28592955) Attached to: Good PDF Reader Device With Internet Browsing?

I wouldn't be so quick to jump on the SmartQ7 .. the OS pretty much blows, and there are power-management issues .. the device is rather prone to suddenly shutting down if you don't play with the right buttons for a while (15 minutes), and really .. the OS is pretty bad. It'll be much more ready for prime-time when a full Android or Mer port is completed .. in the meantime, if you get one, be prepared to put up with a very weird, Chinese, Ubuntu hack ..

Communications

+ - Global Internet Routing Meltdown Narrowly Averted

Submitted by puzzled
puzzled (12525) writes "Some guys in the Czech Republic made a little mistake in BGP configuration and the whole internet rang like a gong for about ninety minutes while the NANOG kids sorted it out. This seems to be a fairly good write up; not so technical that you'd have to be a protocol droid to understand it. Apparently stuff like this almost happens on a not too irregular basis. http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=11111&pageid=28&pagename=Sci-Tech"

Thus spake the master programmer: "When a program is being tested, it is too late to make design changes." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

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