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Domain: cais.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to cais.com.

Comments · 5

  1. Re:Slightly OT but... WRONG by Big_Ass_Spork · · Score: -1 · on Using 3D Game Engines in Architecture?
    This is not the discussion you are looking for.

    Posted by Cliff on Tuesday November 13, @05:50PM
    from the deathmatch-in-the-foyer dept.
    Mentor asks: "Recently, a very promising young architect asked me to give her some ideas for a design presentation she has to do concerning a new building in Germany. Instead of making another dull non-interactive flyby-drivethrough 3dmax-movie, I suggested using the Halflife or Quake engine to precreate the whole building, and let visitors of the exhibition experience the building firsthand, being a player in it, and interacting with the building (without any actual weapons of course :)). I was wondering whether this has been done a lot already . Does anyone have any tips?" I would think that most 3D engines have evolved enough where something like this might actually be practical. Thoughts?

    ( Read More... | 7 comments )

    Are There Risks in Sharing Firewall Logs? Posted by Cliff on Tuesday November 13, @02:33PM
    from the looking-before-leaping dept.
    FireballDWF asks: "What are the risks in sharing my personal Firewall logs with others? I ask as helping to put a stop to detect and stop attacks at their source by becoming an agent for MyNetWatchman sounds easy and appealing, but I am concerned about the possible risks." The MyNetWatchman service is designed to take a pro-active approach to network security. A network agent sits on a users firewall and forwards log entries to a central server that analyzes the data and warns the user if suspicious activity occurs. Sounds like a good plan, but what dangers (if any) will the users of this service be exposing themselves to by providing such access to their machines, even if they are just log files?

    ( Read More... | 11 comments )

    Rolling Your Own Laptop? Posted by Cliff on Tuesday November 13, @10:37AM
    from the when-off-the-shelf-isn't-good-enough dept.
    rneches asks: "I've been looking around for a Linux friendly laptop, and I've found a couple of reasonable systems. However, there really aren't any laptops out there that really meet the needs of a Linux user. In particular, most laptops are, more or less, desktop replacements. As such, they are loaded with scads of nifty features, beefy processors, and so forth. This is great, I suppose, if you are running Windows or MacOS and want a desktop replacement. If you're a Linux user, and spend most of your time in emacs windows (er, frames), most of that fancy stuff is more of a liability than an asset. In other words, I'm talking about coders, admins and other Linux hackers more than I'm talking about the 'average user'." In short, rneches is looking to find a way to build his own laptop, and if the platform doesn't exist to be able to do this, he's looking for help in creating one. Interested?

    ( Read More... | 4112 bytes in body | 354 comments )

    Web Ads with Sound? Posted by Cliff on Tuesday November 13, @07:30AM
    from the what-annoying-thing-will-they-think-of-next dept.
    Mina asks: "Just noticed that some sites, About.com in particular, started piping sound adds in their pages - one in particular (the Harry Potter themed CocaCola subsidized reading campaign from Reading is Fundamental). This isn't something that can easily be turned off - unlike popups, they can't just be clicked on or elminated by a nifty browser plugin. I'm interested in seeing how the Slashdot community deals with the new, more annoying ads that the more desperate companies are implementing now. Do you just live with them? Are there even niftier plugins to the browsers that I'm just not aware of?" And you thought pop-ups were the worst, now you can get sudden and annoying sounds played as well. Maybe browsers will have volume sliders bundled with them in the near future. God, I hope not, but if such ads become commonplace, it may be a good idea.

    ( Read More... | 35 comments )

    Buying Brandname Linux Desktops? Posted by Cliff on Tuesday November 13, @04:21AM
    from the penguins-preinstalled dept.
    bobstaff asks: "I work for a company producing a highly technical product for export of which a Linux network is a significant part. Usually we build the Linux computers from components using some of the higher end options available (Dual 1Ghz Pentium III, SCSI disk,CD-RW,tape, 512Mb Ram, High End Video card, etc...). Occasionally we have a customer, however, who insists on having a brand name computer (eg. Compaq, HP, etc..) with support in whichever country they are from, regardless of the extra cost and decreased performance. In the past this has always caused problems, from Linux incompatible components to having to fight to get the pre-installed Windows distribution overwritten with Linux. What experiences do Slashdot readers have with buying brand name computers with international support and running Linux on them? Also can anyone recommend companies with international support producing Linux computers?"

    ( Read More... | 11 comments )

    Websites for Homebrew Electronic Projects? Posted by Cliff on Monday November 12, @10:25PM
    from the home-automation-projects-on-steroids dept.
    whiplash asks: "There are regular stories on Slashdot concerning neat homebrew projects, hardware doing things nobody expects it to. I think the homebrew niche is excellent reading and wonder if there are any sites devoted to just that? Archives of articles, HOWTO's, and related material devoted to those folks that are controlling their garage doors with old serial cards and other neat things."

    ( Read More... | 8 comments )

    What's It Like Working For Worldcom? Posted by Cliff on Monday November 12, @04:53PM
    from the extending-the-feelers dept.
    Tetch asks: "I work for a multinational IT company which seems likely to transfer its "network services" team to (MCI-)Worldcom under the terms of a business arrangement (Worldcom's gonna run our company network for us). I'm contemplating transfering from my current position to that network services team but would quite like to know more about Worldcom's corporate culture before taking the plunge (since it seems I'd become a Worldcom employee in fairly short order). Does anyone have any experience of life at Worldcom they could share?" It's always smart to try get an idea of the climate in a company before you you try and sign up.

    ( Read More... | 631 bytes in body | 256 comments )

    Does Computer Journalism Have a History? Posted by Cliff on Monday November 12, @11:29AM
    from the following-the-paper-and-bit-trail dept.
    apanishev asks: "Hi to all /.'ters! I'm a beginner computer journalist in a Russian on- and offline magazine "PL-komp'yutery". One of the recent topics of my interest is: whether the computer journalism itself has a history? Sure it does, but my first investigations revealed nothing. I know there were some Amiga paper magazines and some BBS electronic bulletines before the Internet age, but what was the very first paper (and/or online) magazine about personal computers? About web design and professional computing? About PC games? I would be very grateful for any thoughts about the subject."

    ( Read More... | 13 comments )

    Standard Set of Network Diagram Icons? Posted by Cliff on Monday November 12, @08:25AM
    from the the-RIGHT-pictures-means-1000-words dept.
    Cerebus asks: "I'm taking over administrative and management functions for a network, and one of the tasks is, of course, providing accurate diagrams for the whole shebang. In playing with various tools for this (Dia, Visio, Kvivio, xfig, tgif, etc). I've noticed that each package has it's own idea about what abstract icon to use for various devices (what Visio would call "logical" icons). While there is some overlap, the meaning attached to an icon is sometimes different between applications, and what's worse is that (using the example of Visio) the same application has multiple different icons for the same type of device! Is there any kind of standard for network diagram iconography? Should there be?"

    ( Read More... | 10 comments )

    What Would You Load onto a Business Card CD? Posted by Cliff on Monday November 12, @03:20AM
    from the taking-your-critical-utils-with-you dept.
    tkrabec asks: "I have a few of the Business card sized CD-roms, and I have been toying around about what to put on them. I want to make a utility disk that has stuff I commonly use or would find helpful. These CD's will hold about 50 meg I primarily do work with Win32 but I would also like some helpful linux things. I will probably make 2 disks wo get all data/programs I want. I want to put: dos boot.img 1.4Meg for older machines, rawrite 14K to write .img's to floppy's, putty 695K for secure communications, memtest.img 75K for testing for bad memory, fdisk 65K for HD problems, Winzip 1.2Meg for unzipping things. These are just some idea's and I would like some more with some approximate sizes. Also are there any good references that I could put on there as well?"

    ( Read More... | 37 comments )

  2. Re:Mariott Hotels by jfunk · · Score: 2 · on Hotels w/ High-Speed Internet Access?
    Disclaimer: I work for a competitor in this space called SolutionInc. I do not speak for them and none of what I say is official. What I can say is that ours is Linux-based. :-)*

    Your speed could probably be explained by the fact that it gets tunneled through Salt Lake City. IIRC, when I was in a Marriott in San Francisco there were, something like, 18 hops back to Halifax, and I was behind two or three levels of masquerading. Apparently, you can do a PPTP VPN only if you're the only guy doing it. IPSec is generally out of the question.

    In fact, it's fairly rare to get a real IP in a hotel. Our server allows the user to select whether they want a masqueraded or real IP when you open up a browser, if the site has any and you're willing to pay a few extra dollars.

    Ooops, I've rambled...

    I-something, I think.


    That's CAIS' I-Port, now owned by Cisco. It runs on a Windows NT server.
  3. Huh? DSL is all the craze here.. by TurkishGeek · · Score: 2 · on Washington DC is Most Wired Region in the U.S.

    I live in Maryland, DC metro area. BellAtlantic ADSL is widely available everywhere around here, and if BellAtlantic does not offer service in your area, there is always Flashcom and CAIS Internet.

    I had mine since May. I have yet to see a friend who could not get a DSL connection even though he tried to. And BellAtlantic offers good service, I have a 640K link and am quite happy with it. Now this is the scene with Maryland, I know downtown Dc and Virginia are even better wired with many more connectivity options. Business grade DSL is available almost everywhere in the DC metro area, and the area is home to DIGEX, so no connectivity problems here.

    Looks like you're really misinformed about the area. DC area is a great place to live in, when it comes to Net connectivity. No cable modem service yet(at least where I live), but DSL wins hands down since it is very convenient to have a single bill for phone and Net.

  4. Re:No, this isn't a mistake, perhaps NOPE by johnhebert · · Score: 2 · on New GOP Domain Name Violates RFC 2146

    The choice of GOP.GOV does not lead to one thinking that this is the domain name of a standing committee of the House.

    This relationship would be better described as RobLimo suggested; GOP.HOUSE.GOV. This is what is intended in RFC 2146.

    An interesting experiment would be, as you suggested, to have the Democrats register DEMOCRATS.GOV, or better yet, INDEPENDENTS.GOV, and see what kind of stink that would raise.

    Now what I find even more interesting is that CAIS.COM, the nameservice provider for GOP.GOV, has a banner image of a major city skyline being destroyed in massive, flaming explosion. Coming on the heels of the Senate voting down participation in the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, my paranoid conspiracy theory engine purrs...

  5. Re:No, this isn't a mistake, perhaps NOPE by johnhebert · · Score: 2 · on New GOP Domain Name Violates RFC 2146

    The choice of GOP.GOV does not lead to one thinking that this is the domain name of a standing committee of the House.

    This relationship would be better described as RobLimo suggested; GOP.HOUSE.GOV. This is what is intended in RFC 2146.

    An interesting experiment would be, as you suggested, to have the Democrats register DEMOCRATS.GOV, or better yet, INDEPENDENTS.GOV, and see what kind of stink that would raise.

    Now what I find even more interesting is that CAIS.COM, the nameservice provider for GOP.GOV, has a banner image of a major city skyline being destroyed in massive, flaming explosion. Coming on the heels of the Senate voting down participation in the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, my paranoid conspiracy theory engine purrs...