Some SP's do add functionality. SP2 for XP was pretty significant; I think that's when the built-in firewall was added, as well as decent wireless support so you could use WPA without having to use a vendor's proprietary configuration utility. There's probably more examples, but I'm having a hard time picturing XP SP1, let alone pre-SP1.
No doubt Apple's updates offer far more in the way of additional functionality than Microsoft's service packs do, but SP's usually are more than purely security fixes etc.
Also some parts of Windows are updated separately; for example, MSIE 7 was a pretty significant update that came at no charge to existing users.
Well, they were also moving platform -- I don't know whether their old site was static HTML with only a few simple scripts or something more complicated, but that can throw a spanner in the works.
Their site currently has a message saying they're launching a new site, so I think it wasn't a simple migration. Of course, stuffing up the launch of a new site on new servers takes a special kind of ineptitude all of its own.
If you plan it right and execute it right it should go without any hiccups.
Sure, but they're a bunch of lawyers so they wouldn't have done any of the technical planning, and they're moving to different web hosts which means neither host particularly cares: one is the ex-host which doesn't want to waste time and money on a customer they've already lost, and the other already has their money and a contract which says "you can fuck us over for 6 months because it's too expensive to go somewhere else until that point"; and each is blaming the other for the fuck up, as per standard operating procedure.
I'm probably a bit jaded, but it's been a long time since I've received adequate customer service from any of our suppliers, much less good service; but I guess that's inevitable when the only real point of comparison you can make between companies before actually using them for a while is price.
The RIAA likely doesn't know -- much less care -- what OS or web server is running their web site. Unless you're actually a hosting company, or a company somehow involved in web hosting such that it's worth the time and money to run your own servers, the platform is entirely handled by whoever is doing your hosting. You decide who's doing your hosting based on price and features; "Linux" or "Windows" is not a feature in and of itself. Even the security of it isn't your concern: that's a problem for the people running the servers that host your website to deal with as they see fit. You, as a hosting customer, rely on their expertise in that regard.
So, pointless speculation about the deeper meaning aside, it seems they're launching a new site and moving to a new host at the same time. Only they don't have their new site ready (or it was ready, but then turned out to be broken so they're fixing it before trying again) before they moved. That's a bit odd, unless their old site had incorrect or damaging information on it and having no website was better than leaving that content up... but a big company mismanaging the move and relaunch of a website is hardly news.
I think the main point was that Apple charges for updates within an OS line, comparable to the Service Packs for Windows which Microsoft gives to its customers for free (on the other hand, they're less frequent). And, you don't have to compare Vista Ultimate against Apple's One True OS at all. Just because Apple don't give you a choice of paying less for fewer features it doesn't mean you can automatically use the highest price offering of everyone else as a base of comparison. That's only valid if one of the cheaper versions of Vista doesn't meet your needs, and you need the Ultimate version. Even that assumes that XP doesn't meet your needs.
He had BOOKS when he was in school? If we wanted to read something, we had to carve it into blocks of stone ourselves using our fingernails, and that's after walking 13 miles through a blizzard.
Optimising DNS lookup time
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I've wondered about this for a while, but like any good slashdotter I haven't actually researched it myself, but figured I'd just post it here and see what sort of replies I get.
Where I work, we host a small number of websites, each usually with two or three domain names (one primary name, and the others redirected to that). These are in a variety of domains; the usual TLD's and a few country codes and special domains.
I've set them up so that each major domain has its own set of name servers; i.e. we have host servers defined under a.com name, which all of our.com domains use..net has its own set,.com.au has its own, and so forth. These all point to the same IP addresses, they're just defined in different domains (i.e. a.ns.ourdomain.com is the same IP as a.ns.ourdomain.com.au).
My reason for doing this is to try to minimize the number of lookups needed. A lookup for "www.example.com" gets a reply saying "the nameservers are a.ns.ourdomain.com and b.ns.ourdomain.com, and their IP addresses are w.x.y.z and a.b.c.d". The resolver can then go straight to our name servers, rather than doing an extra one for ourdomain.com.
This is assuming the resolver is smart enough to realise it can trust the additional records with the IP addresses of [ab].ns.ourdomain.com, since they're coming from a server which is authoritative for.com, anyway.
While this is fine in theory, I don't know (and haven't tested) whether popular DNS servers actually do manage to make quicker lookups using this strategy. If not, then it's rather pointless -- there's a little bit more administrative overhead involved in maintaining separate NS host records.
Any DNS gurus out there have an answer to this? Anyone care to speculate wildly?
Re:moving hosts blows
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Not sure exactly what your rant was about, but it just sounds like you had crappy support from ISP staff. Not really news, that. There's nothing about the DNS down under that makes it inherently slow. We moved our site recently to a different IP (different ISP, in fact), but we host our own DNS so we had control of the process. I reduced the TTL on the record a few days beforehand, and then really reduced it shortly before we launched the new site, and voila -- the updated record was visible to everyone pretty much instantly. (Except for people who configure their DNS proxies to ignore/override TTL values, but that's their problem.)
Obviously, relying on third parties to do the right thing by you is a crapshoot at the best of times. Not everyone has the luxury of hosting things themselves, though.
I'm not sure about network cabling, but anything connected to the public phone system needs to be done by appropriately licensed / Austel-approved electricians. The reasoning behind this seems quite... reasonable, to me.
Also whenever we get a fibre service connected at work we need to provide the make & model of the device being connected to it, for similar reasons. Though they've never actually checked to make sure we really did connect what we said we were going to.
Agreed, and I would suggest that the best way would be to use svn export (rather than checkout) to grab a copy from the repository without the housekeeping directories. That is exactly why the function exists, after all.
While I'm sure shirai has valid complaints, complaining about the dot files as if they're some mysterious magical thing just makes it sound like they've not bothered to read even a very basic introduction to Subversion. That's not entirely unreasonable: they don't want to have to learn to use RCS, they just want it to work; and that's the ultimate goal for all software. But I don't think there's any source control software out there that "just works" without requiring some understanding of how it actually works.
The only real quirk is that have to tell the RCS when you're moving/renaming, deleting, or creating files and folders, rather than just doing it and letting it work out what happened. But it's fairly consistent: changing contents you can do without special actions, but changing the file structure requires you to be explicit.
Radio, whatever the transmission medium, is advertisement. The streaming radio station I listen to the most is idobi, and they do NOT have ads.
Maybe you should read the whole post before you respond. The OP specifically said that the music itself was an advertisement, and that was the main point of the post. Make it too hard for people to hear new music, and they will stop buying new music. At least, that's the theory.
I suspect that the sanctioned (i.e. big end of town) outlets -- big webcasters, regular radio stations, etc -- will continue to pay whatever fees are asked of them, and the only ones to feel this will be the smaller webcasters and non-mainstream audiences.
Weird. I've never really thought about it, but no, I don't look. I just know when it's done, and I'm no longer wiping anything other than my own arse. I figured this is what most people do, but then again, I've never watched anyone else wipe their arse so perhaps I do have some sort of freaky sixth sense. Now that I'm trying to think of a way to explain how I know when it's done, I can't come up with anything better than "when it stops feeling like you're wiping something off, then you're no longer wiping anything off" -- which isn't terribly enlightening.
It normally takes three swipes, by the way. But that's dependent on several variables that aren't worthy of further discussion, even on slashdot. ("One up, one down, and one to polish." you could say. I think that's from Red Dwarf.)
Well, apologies to the original poster, and thanks for making me feel special!
It's a little hard to tell if you used enough TP when it's pitch black:)
Err... is it? Why? Do you, like, look at it after wiping to see if you need to do it again?
I was only in there for 5 seconds, but the lights will stay on for another 4 minutes and 55 seconds. How is that for a real efficient lighting system?
Compared to having the lights left on all day, it's much better. It's also much better than a manual light switch which you forget to turn off after your five second visit.
Also, I think turning a light on uses more power than leaving it on for quite a while; but I'm not sure where the crossover point is. So, having it switch off immediately as you leave, then back on again 30 seconds later when someone else enters could potentially be less efficient than just leaving it on for five minutes. Turning the light on and off also places more stress on it, so excessive cycles will probably shorten its life.
That's going to become more of an issue as people get more memory-hungry: XP 32-bit can only see 3.2 gigs of memory. My work PC has 4 gigs, but some of that's wasted because I decided to opt out of the 64-bit hassle. (I'm not sure if Vista 32-bit can see more than 3.2 gigs; I would expect that it can, seeing how Windows 2003 can. Perhaps that's what will eventually cause people to willingly migrate to Vista, unless XP SP2 includes PAE. For now, I've also opted out of the Vista hassle.)
Anyway, I suspect Adobe will sort it out eventually. A more interesting issue is mobile devices: these are becoming more and more popular, but it will be some time before they're powerful enough to be able to comfortably play Flash without killing the battery life... and even when they can, many displays will be way too small for what Flash developers are targeting. This keeps the age-old question alive: do you create a "dull", standards-based, accessible site; or a media-rich, heavy site which may exclude some people? Or do you do both?
Logically speaking, if your network services go down, your Google services go down, as you can no longer access them. This is one of the main reasons against ASPs, as they are only as reliable as the network structure you use to access them and any faults at the ASP end are just additional problems.
Depending on how you use the service, this might not be such an issue. A well-designed web app shouldn't require heaps of bandwidth, and should probably cope reasonably well with high latency, so if your primary internet link goes down you can use a backup. Often, there's plenty of backups to choose from: possibly dialup, ISDN, wireless broadband (even my phone can provide 45 kB/sec via Bluetooth to a PC, albeit with 600ms or so of latency -- but this is quite usable for many internet applications).
You also need to consider the cost of providing the same reliability in-house. You might very well decide that maintaining 3 or 4 redundant internet links is more cost-effective than maintaining redundant servers, your own backups, UPS devices capable of running the servers, monitoring, and competent staff to run it all. This is, of course, assuming that your ASP does in fact back up your data etc.
Another important thing to consider is of course lock-in: can you get your data out in a useable format if you want to go somewhere else? But your locally-hosted service may lock up your data almost as tightly as an external host, so you need to be mindful of that either way.
I use this "trick" all the time as well, mostly for copying error messages from websites sans formatting, or parts of an email. Another variation is to use the Run dialog, if I'm only copying a single line of text.
I had the opposite problem a week or two ago on a Windows 2003 server (or is it a Windows Server 2003 server? I can never remember). It actually amused me enough to take a screenshot of it, but for those who don't want to view ad-supported screenshots of Automatic Update dialog boxes:
Updating your computer is almost complete. You must restart your computer for the updates to take effect.
Do you want to restart your computer now?
The two buttons, "Restart Now" and "Restart Later" are disabled. So is the close window ("X") button for the dialog itself.
I'm pleased that it's not offering to let this non-privileged user reboot our server; but I can't help but think it would be better to check if they're able to reboot the system before displaying the dialog. Also, why was the "restart later" option disabled? Maybe unprivileged users aren't allowed to interact with the Windows Update dialog at all, but if that's the case, why is it being displayed on their screen?
Full disclosure: I was setting up RDP access to the server for an external contractor, and logged in to add them to the "Remote Desktop" group. While I was there I installed updates from Windows Update, and it wanted a reboot - I deferred it for later and logged out so I could log in as the contractor's (non-admin) account to set up appropriate shortcuts on the desktop and make sure they had access to what they needed to access. The automatic updates dialog appeared immediately after I logged in as this unprivileged user. (I actually used Task Manager to close it.)
I think I was quibbling details, too: your car analogy must have distracted me.
Like most things, car analogies don't really apply -- but perhaps an internet analogy does apply. Leaving an access point completely open is, to me, equivalent to someone setting up an HTTP server on the public internet, and having it respond to normal, unauthenticated HTTP requests with a web page. Now, you can argue that accessing their web server without having their explicit permission to do so is in fact "unauthorised access" to their computer system; which is technically 100% correct. I think it's safe to say that anyone trying to take legal action against someone for accessing their publically available web server would not have a strong case.
A lot of this applies directly to an open access point: the default configuration of most web servers is such that they will accept anonymous requests. If you don't want to make it publically available, you need to learn the basics of the software in order to enable some level of authentication.
So, if someone sets up a web server to accept requests from anonymous users (equiv to an open AP); then puts up a poster with its IP address or DNS name in a public area (equiv to an AP broadcasting its beacon where I can receive it); then it's fair game. Not to mention the fact that for an AP to be useful for internet access, it must respond to my device's DHCP queries for network configuration information with a valid IP address, an IP address of an internet-connected host which is willing to relay traffic for the IP it just suggested I use, and functioning DNS servers. If someone has all this set up, then by all means, this is as good as an explicit invitation to use their AP and internet connection as I see fit.
And, if it was guaranteed they would find out: I would have no qualms about using it. If they don't like it, they should damn well secure it. And they should be happy that it's Mr Joe Web Surfer who alerts them to the fact that their internet connection is trivially accessible by anyone in their vicinity, and not Joe Hacker who uses the opportunity to plant keyloggers on their computer so they can steal their credit card info (or just turns their PC into a zombie for their spam net).
It doesn't matter that most of the things needed for the above (advertising the AP, DHCP settings, etc.) are set up automatically by the device. The only excuse for having a completely open access point these days is that the instruction manual that came with the device made no mention of any of the forms of wireless security, nor why you would want them. In that case, if they incur damages they might have a case against the manufacturer of their AP, for selling them equipment without proper documentation as to its proper use. If you didn't read the instruction manual, then too bad. You should've.
Taking a car for a little drive uses petrol and causes wear and tear. There's also the possibility of having an accident, which would cause even more wear and tear. You also (probably) don't know when the owner of the car is coming back, so you can't be sure you're not inconveniencing them. There's also privacy issues - people tend to leave their "stuff" in their cars, and one of the things that sucks about having your car stolen or broken into is knowing random people have been going through your things. Maybe it's just me, but I think many people tend to think of their car as something of a sanctuary, like our homes.
Accessing the AP itself doesn't matter from this perspective: while you are potentially using more electricity and maybe even decreasing the available bandwidth, these things are insignificant enough for me to ignore altogether (particularly in the case of casual web browsing). Assuming you're not actually "breaking into" the computers & devices they have connected to the AP, the only potential inconvenience to people is the fact that you're using their internet link.
There's three potential problems here: firstly, if you do something naughty, they might get the blame for it. That's a whole different scenario, so I'll ignore that. Secondly, congestion on the link may be problematic for them; which is why I'd limit myself to casual web browsing, not downloading. (I'd also try to determine what kind of link they have [I am a geek, after all], and avoid borrowing slow links, both for politeness and for my own sanity.) Thirdly, if they pay-by-the-byte then your usage of the link may directly cost them money. That's a problem, but ignorance is bliss for one's conscience.
In all cases, casual web browsing is very unlikely to cause any problems. This, combined with the ease of setting up *any* sort of protection (no matter how trivial to crack) to indicate that the access point is private, is what makes me feel it isn't wrong.
Incidentally, most insurance companies won't pay out if you didn't lock the doors on your car; even though locks in and of themselves are pretty ineffective against someone who really wants to "borrow" your car, I think this sets a (admittedly non-legal) precedence for taking some basic action to indicate to people that you don't want them to use your car. This might be where the feeling of "wrongness" (or lack thereof) comes from.
No doubt you're correct from a legal perspective, but this is one of those laws I choose to ignore; it doesn't "feel" wrong. Obviously that won't stand up in court, but I'm not too worried that someone who doesn't know how to put crappy WEP security (or even MAC filtering) on their AP will try to take someone for court for using their AP. It's unlikely they're even aware of the possibility that other people might be able to use it, or else they would have discovered how easy it is to put some basic level of "security" on it.
I am of course assuming that one isn't using the open access point to break the law -- whether by trying to hack other systems or downloading copyrighted material. I also wouldn't feel comfortable downloading high (or even moderate) amounts of data on someone else's connection, because you never know what kind of data allowance their internet connection has. But for casual web surfing, sure.
From a legal standpoint, it would be interesting to see if simply associating with an open access point can somehow be considered an offence of any kind. I can't really see that it would be. Accessing the internet via their connection could be considered theft of service, and accessing PCs connected to the AP which aren't yours to access is obviously illegal, so doing anything useful with an open access point is most likely illegal in some way.
What about using their open AP to connect two devices of your own together? They're already transmitting the radio waves into your house/office/car/whatever without your explicit permission, so what's wrong with sending some back?
Both of these examples requires trespassing and possibly tampering with private property (typically belonging to the telco or power company). I suspect there's also explicit laws against it.
Accessing an access point which advertises its presence and does not ask for a password or anything is pretty different to this, especially given that a lot of people deliberately leave their AP open with the intention that other people can use it for internet access if they wish to. If I see a completely open AP, I assume it's been configured that way deliberately and have no qualms with using it.
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Some SP's do add functionality. SP2 for XP was pretty significant; I think that's when the built-in firewall was added, as well as decent wireless support so you could use WPA without having to use a vendor's proprietary configuration utility. There's probably more examples, but I'm having a hard time picturing XP SP1, let alone pre-SP1.
No doubt Apple's updates offer far more in the way of additional functionality than Microsoft's service packs do, but SP's usually are more than purely security fixes etc.
Also some parts of Windows are updated separately; for example, MSIE 7 was a pretty significant update that came at no charge to existing users.
Well, they were also moving platform -- I don't know whether their old site was static HTML with only a few simple scripts or something more complicated, but that can throw a spanner in the works.
Their site currently has a message saying they're launching a new site, so I think it wasn't a simple migration. Of course, stuffing up the launch of a new site on new servers takes a special kind of ineptitude all of its own.
If you plan it right and execute it right it should go without any hiccups.Sure, but they're a bunch of lawyers so they wouldn't have done any of the technical planning, and they're moving to different web hosts which means neither host particularly cares: one is the ex-host which doesn't want to waste time and money on a customer they've already lost, and the other already has their money and a contract which says "you can fuck us over for 6 months because it's too expensive to go somewhere else until that point"; and each is blaming the other for the fuck up, as per standard operating procedure.
I'm probably a bit jaded, but it's been a long time since I've received adequate customer service from any of our suppliers, much less good service; but I guess that's inevitable when the only real point of comparison you can make between companies before actually using them for a while is price.
The RIAA likely doesn't know -- much less care -- what OS or web server is running their web site. Unless you're actually a hosting company, or a company somehow involved in web hosting such that it's worth the time and money to run your own servers, the platform is entirely handled by whoever is doing your hosting. You decide who's doing your hosting based on price and features; "Linux" or "Windows" is not a feature in and of itself. Even the security of it isn't your concern: that's a problem for the people running the servers that host your website to deal with as they see fit. You, as a hosting customer, rely on their expertise in that regard.
So, pointless speculation about the deeper meaning aside, it seems they're launching a new site and moving to a new host at the same time. Only they don't have their new site ready (or it was ready, but then turned out to be broken so they're fixing it before trying again) before they moved. That's a bit odd, unless their old site had incorrect or damaging information on it and having no website was better than leaving that content up... but a big company mismanaging the move and relaunch of a website is hardly news.
I think the main point was that Apple charges for updates within an OS line, comparable to the Service Packs for Windows which Microsoft gives to its customers for free (on the other hand, they're less frequent). And, you don't have to compare Vista Ultimate against Apple's One True OS at all. Just because Apple don't give you a choice of paying less for fewer features it doesn't mean you can automatically use the highest price offering of everyone else as a base of comparison. That's only valid if one of the cheaper versions of Vista doesn't meet your needs, and you need the Ultimate version. Even that assumes that XP doesn't meet your needs.
Shouldn't that be, "them thar servers"?
He had BOOKS when he was in school? If we wanted to read something, we had to carve it into blocks of stone ourselves using our fingernails, and that's after walking 13 miles through a blizzard.
I've wondered about this for a while, but like any good slashdotter I haven't actually researched it myself, but figured I'd just post it here and see what sort of replies I get.
Where I work, we host a small number of websites, each usually with two or three domain names (one primary name, and the others redirected to that). These are in a variety of domains; the usual TLD's and a few country codes and special domains.
I've set them up so that each major domain has its own set of name servers; i.e. we have host servers defined under a .com name, which all of our .com domains use. .net has its own set, .com.au has its own, and so forth. These all point to the same IP addresses, they're just defined in different domains (i.e. a.ns.ourdomain.com is the same IP as a.ns.ourdomain.com.au).
My reason for doing this is to try to minimize the number of lookups needed. A lookup for "www.example.com" gets a reply saying "the nameservers are a.ns.ourdomain.com and b.ns.ourdomain.com, and their IP addresses are w.x.y.z and a.b.c.d". The resolver can then go straight to our name servers, rather than doing an extra one for ourdomain.com.
This is assuming the resolver is smart enough to realise it can trust the additional records with the IP addresses of [ab].ns.ourdomain.com, since they're coming from a server which is authoritative for .com, anyway.
While this is fine in theory, I don't know (and haven't tested) whether popular DNS servers actually do manage to make quicker lookups using this strategy. If not, then it's rather pointless -- there's a little bit more administrative overhead involved in maintaining separate NS host records.
Any DNS gurus out there have an answer to this? Anyone care to speculate wildly?
Not sure exactly what your rant was about, but it just sounds like you had crappy support from ISP staff. Not really news, that. There's nothing about the DNS down under that makes it inherently slow. We moved our site recently to a different IP (different ISP, in fact), but we host our own DNS so we had control of the process. I reduced the TTL on the record a few days beforehand, and then really reduced it shortly before we launched the new site, and voila -- the updated record was visible to everyone pretty much instantly. (Except for people who configure their DNS proxies to ignore/override TTL values, but that's their problem.)
Obviously, relying on third parties to do the right thing by you is a crapshoot at the best of times. Not everyone has the luxury of hosting things themselves, though.
I'm not sure about network cabling, but anything connected to the public phone system needs to be done by appropriately licensed / Austel-approved electricians. The reasoning behind this seems quite... reasonable, to me.
Also whenever we get a fibre service connected at work we need to provide the make & model of the device being connected to it, for similar reasons. Though they've never actually checked to make sure we really did connect what we said we were going to.
Agreed, and I would suggest that the best way would be to use svn export (rather than checkout) to grab a copy from the repository without the housekeeping directories. That is exactly why the function exists, after all.
While I'm sure shirai has valid complaints, complaining about the dot files as if they're some mysterious magical thing just makes it sound like they've not bothered to read even a very basic introduction to Subversion. That's not entirely unreasonable: they don't want to have to learn to use RCS, they just want it to work; and that's the ultimate goal for all software. But I don't think there's any source control software out there that "just works" without requiring some understanding of how it actually works.
The only real quirk is that have to tell the RCS when you're moving/renaming, deleting, or creating files and folders, rather than just doing it and letting it work out what happened. But it's fairly consistent: changing contents you can do without special actions, but changing the file structure requires you to be explicit.
Maybe you should read the whole post before you respond. The OP specifically said that the music itself was an advertisement, and that was the main point of the post. Make it too hard for people to hear new music, and they will stop buying new music. At least, that's the theory.
I suspect that the sanctioned (i.e. big end of town) outlets -- big webcasters, regular radio stations, etc -- will continue to pay whatever fees are asked of them, and the only ones to feel this will be the smaller webcasters and non-mainstream audiences.
I realise you're taking a "fuck you, RMS/FSF" stance, and not speaking out of ignorance, but you picked a poor argument to use.
Debian nearly always refer to their distribution as "Debian GNU/Linux". And guess what distribution Ubuntu is based on?
Weird. I've never really thought about it, but no, I don't look. I just know when it's done, and I'm no longer wiping anything other than my own arse. I figured this is what most people do, but then again, I've never watched anyone else wipe their arse so perhaps I do have some sort of freaky sixth sense. Now that I'm trying to think of a way to explain how I know when it's done, I can't come up with anything better than "when it stops feeling like you're wiping something off, then you're no longer wiping anything off" -- which isn't terribly enlightening.
It normally takes three swipes, by the way. But that's dependent on several variables that aren't worthy of further discussion, even on slashdot. ("One up, one down, and one to polish." you could say. I think that's from Red Dwarf.)
Well, apologies to the original poster, and thanks for making me feel special!
Err... is it? Why? Do you, like, look at it after wiping to see if you need to do it again?
I was only in there for 5 seconds, but the lights will stay on for another 4 minutes and 55 seconds.How is that for a real efficient lighting system?
Compared to having the lights left on all day, it's much better. It's also much better than a manual light switch which you forget to turn off after your five second visit.
Also, I think turning a light on uses more power than leaving it on for quite a while; but I'm not sure where the crossover point is. So, having it switch off immediately as you leave, then back on again 30 seconds later when someone else enters could potentially be less efficient than just leaving it on for five minutes. Turning the light on and off also places more stress on it, so excessive cycles will probably shorten its life.
Actually, there isn't a Flash plugin for 64-bit Windows, either. http://www.adobe.com/go/6b3af6c9
That's going to become more of an issue as people get more memory-hungry: XP 32-bit can only see 3.2 gigs of memory. My work PC has 4 gigs, but some of that's wasted because I decided to opt out of the 64-bit hassle. (I'm not sure if Vista 32-bit can see more than 3.2 gigs; I would expect that it can, seeing how Windows 2003 can. Perhaps that's what will eventually cause people to willingly migrate to Vista, unless XP SP2 includes PAE. For now, I've also opted out of the Vista hassle.)
Anyway, I suspect Adobe will sort it out eventually. A more interesting issue is mobile devices: these are becoming more and more popular, but it will be some time before they're powerful enough to be able to comfortably play Flash without killing the battery life... and even when they can, many displays will be way too small for what Flash developers are targeting. This keeps the age-old question alive: do you create a "dull", standards-based, accessible site; or a media-rich, heavy site which may exclude some people? Or do you do both?
Depending on how you use the service, this might not be such an issue. A well-designed web app shouldn't require heaps of bandwidth, and should probably cope reasonably well with high latency, so if your primary internet link goes down you can use a backup. Often, there's plenty of backups to choose from: possibly dialup, ISDN, wireless broadband (even my phone can provide 45 kB/sec via Bluetooth to a PC, albeit with 600ms or so of latency -- but this is quite usable for many internet applications).
You also need to consider the cost of providing the same reliability in-house. You might very well decide that maintaining 3 or 4 redundant internet links is more cost-effective than maintaining redundant servers, your own backups, UPS devices capable of running the servers, monitoring, and competent staff to run it all. This is, of course, assuming that your ASP does in fact back up your data etc.
Another important thing to consider is of course lock-in: can you get your data out in a useable format if you want to go somewhere else? But your locally-hosted service may lock up your data almost as tightly as an external host, so you need to be mindful of that either way.
...read the endless adds...Ads, as in advertising. (Also: altar.)
Who wouldn't be tempted to look at that?!
Programme.
(Sorry. Maybe a program helped you enrol in the programme.)
I use this "trick" all the time as well, mostly for copying error messages from websites sans formatting, or parts of an email. Another variation is to use the Run dialog, if I'm only copying a single line of text.
I had the opposite problem a week or two ago on a Windows 2003 server (or is it a Windows Server 2003 server? I can never remember). It actually amused me enough to take a screenshot of it, but for those who don't want to view ad-supported screenshots of Automatic Update dialog boxes:
The two buttons, "Restart Now" and "Restart Later" are disabled. So is the close window ("X") button for the dialog itself.
I'm pleased that it's not offering to let this non-privileged user reboot our server; but I can't help but think it would be better to check if they're able to reboot the system before displaying the dialog. Also, why was the "restart later" option disabled? Maybe unprivileged users aren't allowed to interact with the Windows Update dialog at all, but if that's the case, why is it being displayed on their screen?
Full disclosure: I was setting up RDP access to the server for an external contractor, and logged in to add them to the "Remote Desktop" group. While I was there I installed updates from Windows Update, and it wanted a reboot - I deferred it for later and logged out so I could log in as the contractor's (non-admin) account to set up appropriate shortcuts on the desktop and make sure they had access to what they needed to access. The automatic updates dialog appeared immediately after I logged in as this unprivileged user. (I actually used Task Manager to close it.)
Then why don't they put an HTTP redirect on the server which hosts "promise.com"? They already have a web server there, after all.
I reckon it's that empty promise thing. Very deep.
I think I was quibbling details, too: your car analogy must have distracted me.
Like most things, car analogies don't really apply -- but perhaps an internet analogy does apply. Leaving an access point completely open is, to me, equivalent to someone setting up an HTTP server on the public internet, and having it respond to normal, unauthenticated HTTP requests with a web page. Now, you can argue that accessing their web server without having their explicit permission to do so is in fact "unauthorised access" to their computer system; which is technically 100% correct. I think it's safe to say that anyone trying to take legal action against someone for accessing their publically available web server would not have a strong case.
A lot of this applies directly to an open access point: the default configuration of most web servers is such that they will accept anonymous requests. If you don't want to make it publically available, you need to learn the basics of the software in order to enable some level of authentication.
So, if someone sets up a web server to accept requests from anonymous users (equiv to an open AP); then puts up a poster with its IP address or DNS name in a public area (equiv to an AP broadcasting its beacon where I can receive it); then it's fair game. Not to mention the fact that for an AP to be useful for internet access, it must respond to my device's DHCP queries for network configuration information with a valid IP address, an IP address of an internet-connected host which is willing to relay traffic for the IP it just suggested I use, and functioning DNS servers. If someone has all this set up, then by all means, this is as good as an explicit invitation to use their AP and internet connection as I see fit.
And, if it was guaranteed they would find out: I would have no qualms about using it. If they don't like it, they should damn well secure it. And they should be happy that it's Mr Joe Web Surfer who alerts them to the fact that their internet connection is trivially accessible by anyone in their vicinity, and not Joe Hacker who uses the opportunity to plant keyloggers on their computer so they can steal their credit card info (or just turns their PC into a zombie for their spam net).
It doesn't matter that most of the things needed for the above (advertising the AP, DHCP settings, etc.) are set up automatically by the device. The only excuse for having a completely open access point these days is that the instruction manual that came with the device made no mention of any of the forms of wireless security, nor why you would want them. In that case, if they incur damages they might have a case against the manufacturer of their AP, for selling them equipment without proper documentation as to its proper use. If you didn't read the instruction manual, then too bad. You should've.
Taking a car for a little drive uses petrol and causes wear and tear. There's also the possibility of having an accident, which would cause even more wear and tear. You also (probably) don't know when the owner of the car is coming back, so you can't be sure you're not inconveniencing them. There's also privacy issues - people tend to leave their "stuff" in their cars, and one of the things that sucks about having your car stolen or broken into is knowing random people have been going through your things. Maybe it's just me, but I think many people tend to think of their car as something of a sanctuary, like our homes.
Accessing the AP itself doesn't matter from this perspective: while you are potentially using more electricity and maybe even decreasing the available bandwidth, these things are insignificant enough for me to ignore altogether (particularly in the case of casual web browsing). Assuming you're not actually "breaking into" the computers & devices they have connected to the AP, the only potential inconvenience to people is the fact that you're using their internet link.
There's three potential problems here: firstly, if you do something naughty, they might get the blame for it. That's a whole different scenario, so I'll ignore that. Secondly, congestion on the link may be problematic for them; which is why I'd limit myself to casual web browsing, not downloading. (I'd also try to determine what kind of link they have [I am a geek, after all], and avoid borrowing slow links, both for politeness and for my own sanity.) Thirdly, if they pay-by-the-byte then your usage of the link may directly cost them money. That's a problem, but ignorance is bliss for one's conscience.
In all cases, casual web browsing is very unlikely to cause any problems. This, combined with the ease of setting up *any* sort of protection (no matter how trivial to crack) to indicate that the access point is private, is what makes me feel it isn't wrong.
Incidentally, most insurance companies won't pay out if you didn't lock the doors on your car; even though locks in and of themselves are pretty ineffective against someone who really wants to "borrow" your car, I think this sets a (admittedly non-legal) precedence for taking some basic action to indicate to people that you don't want them to use your car. This might be where the feeling of "wrongness" (or lack thereof) comes from.
No doubt you're correct from a legal perspective, but this is one of those laws I choose to ignore; it doesn't "feel" wrong. Obviously that won't stand up in court, but I'm not too worried that someone who doesn't know how to put crappy WEP security (or even MAC filtering) on their AP will try to take someone for court for using their AP. It's unlikely they're even aware of the possibility that other people might be able to use it, or else they would have discovered how easy it is to put some basic level of "security" on it.
I am of course assuming that one isn't using the open access point to break the law -- whether by trying to hack other systems or downloading copyrighted material. I also wouldn't feel comfortable downloading high (or even moderate) amounts of data on someone else's connection, because you never know what kind of data allowance their internet connection has. But for casual web surfing, sure.
From a legal standpoint, it would be interesting to see if simply associating with an open access point can somehow be considered an offence of any kind. I can't really see that it would be. Accessing the internet via their connection could be considered theft of service, and accessing PCs connected to the AP which aren't yours to access is obviously illegal, so doing anything useful with an open access point is most likely illegal in some way.
What about using their open AP to connect two devices of your own together? They're already transmitting the radio waves into your house/office/car/whatever without your explicit permission, so what's wrong with sending some back?
Both of these examples requires trespassing and possibly tampering with private property (typically belonging to the telco or power company). I suspect there's also explicit laws against it.
Accessing an access point which advertises its presence and does not ask for a password or anything is pretty different to this, especially given that a lot of people deliberately leave their AP open with the intention that other people can use it for internet access if they wish to. If I see a completely open AP, I assume it's been configured that way deliberately and have no qualms with using it.