Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Needing to subscribe to a relay service (Score 1) 201

Your ISP is shit.

Once there are more Internet subscribers than IPv4 addresses, then by the pigeonhole principle, some subscribers aren't going to have the sort of dedicated IPv4 address needed to accept a TCP connection. Therefore every ISP is shit.

That is not the fault nor has anything to do with IPv4.

The problem with IPv4 is that there aren't enough possible network addresses for an ISP not to be shit.

Comment Reverse SSH breaks if both sides are behind NAT (Score 2) 201

Or have the skill to set up a reverse-ssh tunnel

A reverse-SSH tunnel requires one of two things: either your local computer is on a network that can accept inbound connections, or there's a relay ($) in the middle accepting connections from both the client and the server.

"is it a good thing" that it's not easy to make something in your home visible from the outside network without having to go to some extra effort or cost? Yeah, I think it is.

I believe there's a substantial qualitative difference between "extra effort" and "cost", especially when the latter is a recurring cost payable to the rent-seekers that run relays.

Comment Needing to subscribe to a relay service (Score 1) 201

nothing about IPv4 or NAT requires the servers of "evil companies" to access hosts remotely.

When an entire neighborhood shares an IPv4 address through ISP-controlled carrier-grade NAT, how does a device on subscriber premises receive an incoming TCP connection? How would the NAT appliance even know for which subscriber's device the connection is intended?

Consider a subscriber whose home LAN is behind the ISP's carrier-grade NAT, and the subscriber wants to connect to a home NAS or remote desktop from outside the home LAN. Other people have recommended that such a subscriber additionally subscribe to a relay service such as Tailscale or Hamachi. And if they want visitors from the Internet to reach their home server, it gets even more expensive.

Comment Re:Time for a new standard (Score 1) 201

How exactly has IP6 been a nightmare? What makes is so difficult for you?

What makes IPv6 difficult for a lot of people, such as myself, is that we're in no position to test on it. Last I checked, US fiber ISP Frontier Communications still refused to deploy IPv6 in my city, and the alternative was Comcast.

Comment Trademark cannot extend a copyright (Score 2) 32

The slightly dog-faced one with floppy dog ears from the original movie Dizzy Dishes

Lean into that. Make an episode where poodle!Betty tries to fit into a human-dominated society but fails to pass as human, with people calling her the B word, and have it end on a cliffhanger as she is prepared for plastic surgery.

Also, the name "Betty Boop" is still under copyright.

Names of characters used in more than one work or in merchandise are generally subject to trademark, not copyright. The US Supreme Court has refused to enforce the Lanham Act, which relates to trademarks and passing off, in such a way that it would extend the effective term of an expired patent or copyright. Kellogg Co. v. National Biscuit Co., 305 U.S. 111 (1938); Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 539 U.S. 23 (2003).

Comment Re:Why Jan 1st? (Score 1) 32

The text of Title 17, United States Code, section 305:

All terms of copyright provided by sections 302 through 304 run to the end of the calendar year in which they would otherwise expire.

From House Report 94-1476, linked from "Notes" on the same page:

Under section 305, which has its counterpart in the laws of most foreign countries, the term of copyright protection for a work extends through December 31 of the year in which the term would otherwise have expired. This will make the duration of copyright much easier to compute, since it will be enough to determine the year, rather than the exact date, of the event from which the term is based.

Comment Re:"Streetcars just shouldn't be stuck in traffic" (Score 1) 136

New York just did it earlier this year - added a congestion charge that tolled people depending on how congested the roads are. People who didn't want to pay took public transportation.

How would a congestion charge work in cities that run one bus an hour on each route and don't run any buses at night or on Sundays? (Source)

Comment Re:Tone-deaf (Score 1) 54

Which "AI oligarchs" are directing the nonprofit that generated these emails? I don't recognize any of the names listed at https://sage-future.org/ [sage-future.org], but maybe one of them is who you are talking about?

The nonprofit TFA mentions is "loosely affiliated with the Effective Altruism movement," which is a dubious concept most closely associated with and promoted by uber-crypto-bro (and crook) Sam Bankman-Fried. This affiliation should give you some idea about this organization's motives and operating principles.

Comment Laptops are less of a ship of Theseus (Score 1) 53

The desktop PC industry has had to deal with customers bringing their own DRAM DIMMs and other components across an upgrade for decades. Enthusiasts' desktop PCs are such a ship of Theseus that Microsoft had to choose one component (the logic board) as the seat of license for OEM Windows. Laptops, by contrast, have tended to use fewer standardized, user-replaceable components to save the bulk and weight of connectors. SODIMMs have historically been one of the few components that users can take with them, but the switch to DDR5 CAMMs in many newer laptops has complicated this.

Comment Re:DRAM on package (Score 1) 56

Regarding putting DRAM modules lower than on-package DRAM in the memory hierarchy:

Why on earth would ANYBODY do this?

When DDR5 was pushing the bandwidth limits of the SODIMM form factor, Dell created CAMM and had it standardized through JEDEC. I'm guessing that the shift from SODIMM to CAMM staved off the need to demote DRAM modules by a level in the hierarchy. Maybe some design decision in the Apple M series requires a much faster RAM interconnect then Intel or AMD.

Comment DRAM on package (Score 1) 56

Apple processors in the M series have DRAM on package, which provides better signal integrity than crossing a logic board. Apple could have added a SODIMM or CAMM slot for additional RAM to be used as a RAM disk holding a swap file. But they chose not to, instead putting swap in the SLC intake buffer of the soldered-in SSD.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Buy land. They've stopped making it." -- Mark Twain

Working...