Just put the damn pc out in the garage if noise is the concern.
That's actually a good idea but he has problems that would prevent that. Because he indicated he turns his computer off, chances are he's running windows. This makes having a nice quiet terminal in the house and a noisemaker in the garage much more difficult. That rack he had in the garage was nice. There was room for all sorts of beige boxes out there.
you could save yourself a lot of money for a new processor if you ran some pipe up on your roof, and put that into your water heater.
Well, he can still do that. I'm not sure how well that will work in a Canadian winter.
if you read the article... The scanner has actually given him rather poor images (he's got a nasty light leak), and you need to be able to put the thing you're scanning on a spit.
Yeah, he admits all that. His problem was that the scanner does a calibration every time, which requires motion of the scanning element relative to the bed. It's got some patern in there. It turned out to be easier to make this amusing rig that rides along and spins the object than it was to try to mount the cal patern on a rotiserie made from the servo that moves the scan element. If the cal paternd noes not read, the device sends an error message and that's it. I'm impressed that the cal worked despite the light leaks.
The whole reason he tried this to begin with was that his hand rotation of the skull was very impressive. I imagine it took much less work than all of that stitching and editing.
It was nice of him to share the experience. We all now know what problems to expect when you take apart a scanner and can imagine solutions.
Record motion with movie with your choice of resolution
Get movie via CF to PCcard adaptor.
use xanim (only non free used) frame advance and screen capture frames you want.
insert each frame as a layer in a gimp drawing
turn on each layer and mark what you want on a transparent layer which is your motion study.
Bonus - export the frames back as an mpeg or other format. Stop animation, it's not exactly film gimp. Come to think of it, this woud make capturing turntable images much easier. If only cameras use a free movie format so that the images could be taken out automatically without signing a fucking NDA.
The RIAA can blow me. I've been unemployed for 8 months. Even if I had money to spend on their overprices shit, I don't feel like listening to it or any other music. I got on a kick a month or so and ripped most of my CDs to ogg and stuck them on a private server. The server does not get much use. There are many others like me. We are not music "consumers" of any kind. Their mindless crap has nothing to say to me now, though once I could tollerate it. Now it's just another irritant. When I do get a job and feel like it, I'll go back to music bars and "consuming" stuff that has nothing to do with them.
Secialty restaruants are having a similar problem of people going to food discounters like grocery stores to get things to eat. Food "pirates" have enven set up soop kitchens! They must be stopped or the country's biggest and most important industry, food, will implode.
Many open source projects (ACE/TAO, Mozilla) for instance have large customer bases using non-current versions, and presumably finding bugs. Sure, if you only want to fix the bug in the released version, its faster, but it's not like closed source vendors don't have the source code to their previous release to debug with.
How many closed source vendors have source code to IE? How successful has M$ been in making everyone use Windoze upBreaker? Any flaw you find in this model aplies to closed source development an order of magnitude worse.
In any case, I think the paper takes this into account. This is why they have two phases of fixing, fast initial and slow stabilization. Free code is always faster getting to the slow stabilization and is probably faster fixing there as well. Also, we can be sure the Mozilla people have taken version control into account in their automaitc bug reporting software and database. It's just as good to fix a rare old bug as it is to fix a common new one.
Plus, even if the major theater chains do play along with digital cinema, there will still be art house theaters in most cities that cling to traditional film projectors and independent and foreign films.
So independent producers are stuck in a high cost, low quality gheto. That's what I'm worried about. The problem is that the owners of the best projection equipment are not free to promote what they want for fear of the majors. Soon, they will have even less room to wiggle.
Before the decade is out, straight-to-Internet may be an option for indie filmmakers as well.
Like straight to internet music? Oh yeah, that got crushed too. It's one of the reason so many independet ISPs bit the bullet. As the lines are increasingly owned by "content" makers and their owners, it's going to get worse.
The web should act like a perfect market with many sellers and many buyers. Instead, it's being converted into yet another exlusive venue for the same old shit the RIAA/MPAA have been shoveling for the last 40 years. In ten years, a movie theater will have about as much chance to get a movie from an independent producer by www as you have of getting music from anything but a major label today. This probability is doubled if independent producers shackle themselves into the film gheto.
The columnist [techtree] also goes on to say "It is inevitable. DRM and Copy Protection will get implemented whether consumers want it or not. The choice of whether we want it to be based on an open technology, or a proprietary technology from one of the âworstâ(TM) purveyors of monopolistic regimes, lies with us, the consumers and the open source community.".
Nonsense. Free software does not restrict user rights. Period.
The new projection equipment is not for you, so don't bother imporving their DRM. The makers of non-free software would be happy to have all the non-cost labor you provide. Be assured, however, that they will lock it up into machines you can't afford and put you in jail for making your own. They will have the "support" of hardware makers, much as they have the DVD Consortium now. The incumbents are terrified of new studios cropping up around the world and are looking for ways to lock them out of "their" theaters, and enywhere near their theaters. They can not tollerate competition and will do whatever it takes to make sure the new equipment plays their stuff and no one else's stuff in the most controlled fashion. They will also do what they can to make sure alternate equipment is inferior the same way they have done DVDs. It's great to work on free equipment, but you will have many enemies. Please don't help them cage you. Microsoft might not be the winner, but you will be the loser when DRM is implemented.
The best place to put your work is into free and open video work without silly restrictions. Why do you want video you would share be more restricted than canned film production that costs arms and legs? The honest way to make money off a movie is to provide real entertainment better than is practical in your home. That's where the real value is and people will continue dragging themselves into theaters over it no matter how easy it becomes to obtain "perfect" coppies.
Number two is that he's going to blame his embarassment on "shareware" without ever looking into free software or what it's all about. The web developer will be fired for not using a comercial system you can buy in a box. He'll never underastand that the GPL is the most honest software deal going. Closed source software is easy to reverse engineer and such "piracy" hapens all the time. Less rigorous open source licenses can lead to missunderstandings like this one. The GPL forces prominent notification of your rights and carries no "pay me if you go comercial" restrictions.
Yeah, the developer is going to be fired for having half a clue. That's what you get when you work for someone like Hatch.
Slashdot covered an article by Alan Cox, the director not the hacker, who foretold everything the NYT has to say. Alan Cox directed "Sid and Nancy" and "Repo Man", to excellent films. He not only foretold the facts but he also knew the implications. I'd link to the previous story, but I can't seem to find it. Google pulls up a mail list post with links to the original articles, here and here, both very much worth reading again. The NYT article is all shine on.
The summary is that the new technology will enable Hollywood to crush all competition, small and large. Through closed "standards" they will control who can use the projection equipment and what it plays and when. Because no local copy exists, it will all be under the control of the current big movie makers. By using a an industry body like the DVD consortium, they can make sure that no one but them has access to the secret format the projectors use and keep projection equipment so high, no one can afford to have anything but them. So, it will be there way or the highway. No mix and match and no competition except from complete independetnts who will be hobbled by a lack of equivalent quality equipment.
It's the same old story since media was invented, patent, legislate, collude and screw everyone you can. Nasty My prediction is that the DMCA will be used to prevent people from making free projectors the same way it's being used to keep people from modding their xbox or refilling toner cartidges.
What's the difference between NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC?
No difference they are owned by the same people. They and different but identical people own the RIAA member companies as well. So, the opions are the same. How else could a corporate loudmouth be taken seriously as a journalist unless journaists mostly reported for corporate loudmouths?
Every aspect of traditional electronic publishing is regulated, degenerate and obsolete. It's not a free press and their choice of talking heads only proves the point.
The safest, and most appropriate license for government-funded and government-created software is the BSD license.
Yeah, it's a bitch when a company can't slap a widget onto government funded software and then sell it back. You can see how the GPL might drive bid prices, aka government costs, down. As for quality, it's hard to see how someone can go wrong with GPL'd software.
GPL-lovers are very quick to cry for censure of any company suspected of violating the license.
Hey, that's the way copyright works. Big dumb companies set it up so they can screw you and me. Too bad when it gets used in a way they did not expect. Various programmers are quick to cry foul when they see work they wanted to stay free and are giving away, used by some big dumb company in an abusive manner. You don't think those same big dumb companies hesitate to set their well funded leagal department on individual programmers if they catch a wiff of anything they might lay claim to? Just look at SCO trying to extort the entire world of Unix. Nothing like that can ever come out of free software. Get back in your hole, troll.
The new WinFS (WinFS is not a file system), and one or two additions, they may claim a distributed database search. They can read your email and everyting else on your computer, what does Google have to beat that? Like everything else M$, it won't really work but they will praise it with billions of dollars worth of adverts, product review and astroturfing. They will also step up efforts to poison Google, an effort as likely to work as their Linux virus efforts have.
Being required to use your ISP's SMTP server is not a big deal. SMTP security helps fight spam, and really, one SMTP server is as good as another, as long as the mail gets where it's going.
is a funny thing to follow:
The internet is a big enough place to accomodate peer-to-peer as well as client-server models.
From my persective, M$N/AOL have forced my connection to the internet into a client-server only model. They did this by demanding my ISP block ports that prevent me from running my own service. No web, ftp, mail or even M$ web share. NetBIOS could not compete so M$ bullied my ISP into killing all normal forms of sharing. M$ does not want it's "clients" to have email, then no one can. This kind of behavior will indeed trun the internet into M$/AOLnet instead of the big free place that fits into your "civil libertarian and reasonable" outlook. Please tell me how to avoid the M$/AOL - Carnivore fate while the last mile is still effectively monopolized. Then tell me how keeping people from doing what they can for themselves beter than what you do for them is anything but evil.
The new "nasty business practices that need to be stopped", as you put it, is the thing you just defended. Microsoft is not evil because they are Microsoft or even because they have a monopoly. Microsoft is evil because Bill Gates and friends are paranoid control freaks. They have a monopoly because they have destroyed technically superior competitors by screwing vendors in the same way they are now screwing ISPs. Blocking services that other platforms do better than you is more of the same anti-competitive practice we all hate.
if you look at some earlier forms 4 for him, you'll notice that in March of this year, he acquired 200,000 shares of stock.... Unless, I'm reading this wrong, sometime between March and now, McBride dumped over 200K shares of stock.
Wow, that's some confidence in the outcome of this mess he's got. I suspect he knows something we all suspect! No case, no future, no value, but McBitch thinks he's going to be rich. He can swap tips with Martha soon.
A custom code from Lars? Nuts, that would be like loading up a copy of XP or something. I can hear the development team conversing with Bill Gates, "Download, Burn, Share... we don't care it's going to vanish like so many radio tunes. Our exclusive code will render all the major P2P inop! The user will be left with a crapy AM radio quality thingy that will vanish. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!"
The GPL not only gives explicit permision to copy, it demands you place a notice if you distribute. See, Terms and Conditions, 1 for yourself:
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
Other, less rigorous open or public domain works may have problems.
Did you know that you can switch ISPs? It's a free market.
No, I can't because no it's not. No DSL and only one cable company. Nice, eh? The only option I really have is to build out some kind of wireless network myself. By the time I figure that out, it will be illegal.
Where do you see that AOL/MSN threatened "smal" ISPs (i guess COX high speed internet is small in your opinion) to block SMTP for a competivie reason?
First off, it's what the tech said happened. I doubt he'd lie to me over something like that, so we should not debate the fact that it happened that way. Cox is big, but it's nothing like AOL, M$N or ATT.
Now for reasons. AOL does not let their clients do this already, for whatever dumb Time Warner reasons they have. If they keep other ISPs from doing this, they have reduced their competition. They also have a record of pushing smaller ISPs around. Microsoft has the same reasons and also has sucky software to protect in this way.
What's the competivie reason for the other ports in your link being blocked (Netbios, SQL, SubSeven). Seems if I was microsoft and throwing around my weight I wouldn't want you to block my SQL communication paths nor Netbios.
If you are Microsfoft, you have a few reasons to block these ports. No one is opening up their netBIOS anyway because it's so easy to hack. You don't want people adopting free software to do what your software can't do, because even M$ shills admit free software is better as a "server". You want to block MS SQL because that too is insecure and you don't want small businesses to be able to use one database at more than one site. Yes, the company that won't let two people use their text editor at the same time thinks like that. You would not do very well as a Microsoft Gorilla, though you are not a bad appologist.
ISPs have been blocking port 25 because spammers have been causing them tremendous pain.
There are two kinds of spammers, one that does it inetntionally and the other that has a cracked M$ junk box. The first is easy to cut off. The second will give you other problems regardless of what ports you block and is best combated though careful monitoring. You can watch port 25 traffic volume and kill a spammer's connection if you have the right software. You've been reading about "traffic shaping"? What's keeping them from doing that to protect themselves from "spam". The best solution, of course, is to recomend free software as a less troublesome platform and cut people who keep causing problems. M$ made this problem and needs to fix it.
MSN and Eathlink and 90% of the other ISP block port 25 now. They were not 'forced' too, they did this because it was the only way to stop the spam. And it worked,
I've already told you how M$ benifits from this, how do you know that Earchlink was not pushed into it?
Working? A quick check of my AOL account shows 519 new and offensive spams. I have not given that address to anyone but site registrations for the last 5 years. The problem has only gotten worse not better.
On my mail servers, to get around these blocks, I run SMTP on alternative ports. I have my users configured to use those ports in addition to the basic 25.
Who, besides yourself, listens for email on anyport but 25? Oh, I see, you must have a relay outside the network. That's helpful, but why should everyone route around this damage again? Some people don't have your resources, is it OK to screw them so long as you have your rights handed back to you as privalidges?
surely Microsoft-hating husbands don't let their wives open hotmail accounts? For someone accusing MS of duplicity and double standards, your own standards seem pretty flexible...
Unlike some people, I don't force anyone to use any particular software. My wife uses Debian, Mozilla, Hotmail, and Yahoo by choice. When someone comes and cleans out her credit card, we will pay the %50 payment demanded and she might change her mind, so might the credit card company. I can only imagine how nervous a bank, most of which don't use M$ for anything critical, must be about M$'s promises for My Wallet.
lobbying small ISPs to shut their gateways to outbound port 25 traffic, but it seems like pretty easy stuff to get around to me.
The whole reason I'm not useing M$ myself was to avoid the endless list of "get arounds" M$ creates. It makes me angry that they have reached out to crimp my style while I have nothing to do with them.
Being required to use your ISP's SMTP server is not a big deal. SMTP security helps fight spam, and really, one SMTP server is as good as another, as long as the mail gets where it's going.
is a funny thing to follow:
The internet is a big enough place to accomodate peer-to-peer as well as client-server models.
From my persective, M$N/AOL have forced my connection to the internet into a client-server only model. They did this by demanding my ISP block ports that prevent me from running my own service. No web, ftp, mail or even M$ web share. NetBIOS could not compete so M$ bullied my ISP into killing all normal forms of sharing. M$ does not want it's "clients" to have email, then no one can. This kind of behavior will indeed trun the internet into M$/AOLnet instead of the big free place that fits into your "civil libertarian and reasonable" outlook. Please tell me how to avoid the M$/AOL - Carnivore fate while the last mile is still effectively monopolized. Then tell me how keeping people from doing what they can for themselves beter than what you do for them is anything but evil.
The new "nasty business practices that need to be stopped", as you put it, is the thing you just defended. Microsoft is not evil because they are Microsoft or even because they have a monopoly. Microsoft is evil because Bill Gates and friends are paranoid control freaks. They have a monopoly because they have destroyed technically superior competitors by screwing vendors in the same way they are now screwing ISPs. Blocking services that other platforms do better than you is more of the same anti-competitive practice we all hate.
That is very funny, thank you, the usual astroturf had me down. Now I'm laughing my ass off.
I don't know why anyone should care about it. The only place I've ever had trouble finding anything was on a Microsoft platform. Everywhere else find and grep come to the rescue and don't take much time at all. You would think that someone would slap a graphical front end on a combined tool.
Slashdot Mirror
That's actually a good idea but he has problems that would prevent that. Because he indicated he turns his computer off, chances are he's running windows. This makes having a nice quiet terminal in the house and a noisemaker in the garage much more difficult. That rack he had in the garage was nice. There was room for all sorts of beige boxes out there.
you could save yourself a lot of money for a new processor if you ran some pipe up on your roof, and put that into your water heater.
Well, he can still do that. I'm not sure how well that will work in a Canadian winter.
Yeah, he admits all that. His problem was that the scanner does a calibration every time, which requires motion of the scanning element relative to the bed. It's got some patern in there. It turned out to be easier to make this amusing rig that rides along and spins the object than it was to try to mount the cal patern on a rotiserie made from the servo that moves the scan element. If the cal paternd noes not read, the device sends an error message and that's it. I'm impressed that the cal worked despite the light leaks.
The whole reason he tried this to begin with was that his hand rotation of the skull was very impressive. I imagine it took much less work than all of that stitching and editing.
It was nice of him to share the experience. We all now know what problems to expect when you take apart a scanner and can imagine solutions.
Another way to get a realy fine scan like this would be to mount your digicam on one of these, or a lathe.
That's enough activity for me. Good night.
Bonus - export the frames back as an mpeg or other format. Stop animation, it's not exactly film gimp. Come to think of it, this woud make capturing turntable images much easier. If only cameras use a free movie format so that the images could be taken out automatically without signing a fucking NDA.
Secialty restaruants are having a similar problem of people going to food discounters like grocery stores to get things to eat. Food "pirates" have enven set up soop kitchens! They must be stopped or the country's biggest and most important industry, food, will implode.
How many closed source vendors have source code to IE? How successful has M$ been in making everyone use Windoze upBreaker? Any flaw you find in this model aplies to closed source development an order of magnitude worse.
In any case, I think the paper takes this into account. This is why they have two phases of fixing, fast initial and slow stabilization. Free code is always faster getting to the slow stabilization and is probably faster fixing there as well. Also, we can be sure the Mozilla people have taken version control into account in their automaitc bug reporting software and database. It's just as good to fix a rare old bug as it is to fix a common new one.
So independent producers are stuck in a high cost, low quality gheto. That's what I'm worried about. The problem is that the owners of the best projection equipment are not free to promote what they want for fear of the majors. Soon, they will have even less room to wiggle.
Before the decade is out, straight-to-Internet may be an option for indie filmmakers as well.
Like straight to internet music? Oh yeah, that got crushed too. It's one of the reason so many independet ISPs bit the bullet. As the lines are increasingly owned by "content" makers and their owners, it's going to get worse.
The web should act like a perfect market with many sellers and many buyers. Instead, it's being converted into yet another exlusive venue for the same old shit the RIAA/MPAA have been shoveling for the last 40 years. In ten years, a movie theater will have about as much chance to get a movie from an independent producer by www as you have of getting music from anything but a major label today. This probability is doubled if independent producers shackle themselves into the film gheto.
Nonsense. Free software does not restrict user rights. Period.
The new projection equipment is not for you, so don't bother imporving their DRM. The makers of non-free software would be happy to have all the non-cost labor you provide. Be assured, however, that they will lock it up into machines you can't afford and put you in jail for making your own. They will have the "support" of hardware makers, much as they have the DVD Consortium now. The incumbents are terrified of new studios cropping up around the world and are looking for ways to lock them out of "their" theaters, and enywhere near their theaters. They can not tollerate competition and will do whatever it takes to make sure the new equipment plays their stuff and no one else's stuff in the most controlled fashion. They will also do what they can to make sure alternate equipment is inferior the same way they have done DVDs. It's great to work on free equipment, but you will have many enemies. Please don't help them cage you. Microsoft might not be the winner, but you will be the loser when DRM is implemented.
The best place to put your work is into free and open video work without silly restrictions. Why do you want video you would share be more restricted than canned film production that costs arms and legs? The honest way to make money off a movie is to provide real entertainment better than is practical in your home. That's where the real value is and people will continue dragging themselves into theaters over it no matter how easy it becomes to obtain "perfect" coppies.
Number two is that he's going to blame his embarassment on "shareware" without ever looking into free software or what it's all about. The web developer will be fired for not using a comercial system you can buy in a box. He'll never underastand that the GPL is the most honest software deal going. Closed source software is easy to reverse engineer and such "piracy" hapens all the time. Less rigorous open source licenses can lead to missunderstandings like this one. The GPL forces prominent notification of your rights and carries no "pay me if you go comercial" restrictions.
Yeah, the developer is going to be fired for having half a clue. That's what you get when you work for someone like Hatch.
The summary is that the new technology will enable Hollywood to crush all competition, small and large. Through closed "standards" they will control who can use the projection equipment and what it plays and when. Because no local copy exists, it will all be under the control of the current big movie makers. By using a an industry body like the DVD consortium, they can make sure that no one but them has access to the secret format the projectors use and keep projection equipment so high, no one can afford to have anything but them. So, it will be there way or the highway. No mix and match and no competition except from complete independetnts who will be hobbled by a lack of equivalent quality equipment.
It's the same old story since media was invented, patent, legislate, collude and screw everyone you can. Nasty My prediction is that the DMCA will be used to prevent people from making free projectors the same way it's being used to keep people from modding their xbox or refilling toner cartidges.
No difference they are owned by the same people. They and different but identical people own the RIAA member companies as well. So, the opions are the same. How else could a corporate loudmouth be taken seriously as a journalist unless journaists mostly reported for corporate loudmouths?
Every aspect of traditional electronic publishing is regulated, degenerate and obsolete. It's not a free press and their choice of talking heads only proves the point.
The whole reason M$ is whining is because the world is moving onto GPL'd software.
Yeah, it's a bitch when a company can't slap a widget onto government funded software and then sell it back. You can see how the GPL might drive bid prices, aka government costs, down. As for quality, it's hard to see how someone can go wrong with GPL'd software.
GPL-lovers are very quick to cry for censure of any company suspected of violating the license.
Hey, that's the way copyright works. Big dumb companies set it up so they can screw you and me. Too bad when it gets used in a way they did not expect. Various programmers are quick to cry foul when they see work they wanted to stay free and are giving away, used by some big dumb company in an abusive manner. You don't think those same big dumb companies hesitate to set their well funded leagal department on individual programmers if they catch a wiff of anything they might lay claim to? Just look at SCO trying to extort the entire world of Unix. Nothing like that can ever come out of free software. Get back in your hole, troll.
The new WinFS (WinFS is not a file system), and one or two additions, they may claim a distributed database search. They can read your email and everyting else on your computer, what does Google have to beat that? Like everything else M$, it won't really work but they will praise it with billions of dollars worth of adverts, product review and astroturfing. They will also step up efforts to poison Google, an effort as likely to work as their Linux virus efforts have.
is a funny thing to follow: The internet is a big enough place to accomodate peer-to-peer as well as client-server models.
From my persective, M$N/AOL have forced my connection to the internet into a client-server only model. They did this by demanding my ISP block ports that prevent me from running my own service. No web, ftp, mail or even M$ web share. NetBIOS could not compete so M$ bullied my ISP into killing all normal forms of sharing. M$ does not want it's "clients" to have email, then no one can. This kind of behavior will indeed trun the internet into M$/AOLnet instead of the big free place that fits into your "civil libertarian and reasonable" outlook. Please tell me how to avoid the M$/AOL - Carnivore fate while the last mile is still effectively monopolized. Then tell me how keeping people from doing what they can for themselves beter than what you do for them is anything but evil.
The new "nasty business practices that need to be stopped", as you put it, is the thing you just defended. Microsoft is not evil because they are Microsoft or even because they have a monopoly. Microsoft is evil because Bill Gates and friends are paranoid control freaks. They have a monopoly because they have destroyed technically superior competitors by screwing vendors in the same way they are now screwing ISPs. Blocking services that other platforms do better than you is more of the same anti-competitive practice we all hate.
Wow, that's some confidence in the outcome of this mess he's got. I suspect he knows something we all suspect! No case, no future, no value, but McBitch thinks he's going to be rich. He can swap tips with Martha soon.
Ever had to deal with a backseat engineer?
In the imortal words of Elmer Fud, "Oh no, wig for wam!"
A custom code from Lars? Nuts, that would be like loading up a copy of XP or something. I can hear the development team conversing with Bill Gates, "Download, Burn, Share ... we don't care it's going to vanish like so many radio tunes. Our exclusive code will render all the major P2P inop! The user will be left with a crapy AM radio quality thingy that will vanish. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!"
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
Other, less rigorous open or public domain works may have problems.
No, I can't because no it's not. No DSL and only one cable company. Nice, eh? The only option I really have is to build out some kind of wireless network myself. By the time I figure that out, it will be illegal.
First off, it's what the tech said happened. I doubt he'd lie to me over something like that, so we should not debate the fact that it happened that way. Cox is big, but it's nothing like AOL, M$N or ATT.
Now for reasons. AOL does not let their clients do this already, for whatever dumb Time Warner reasons they have. If they keep other ISPs from doing this, they have reduced their competition. They also have a record of pushing smaller ISPs around. Microsoft has the same reasons and also has sucky software to protect in this way.
What's the competivie reason for the other ports in your link being blocked (Netbios, SQL, SubSeven). Seems if I was microsoft and throwing around my weight I wouldn't want you to block my SQL communication paths nor Netbios.
If you are Microsfoft, you have a few reasons to block these ports. No one is opening up their netBIOS anyway because it's so easy to hack. You don't want people adopting free software to do what your software can't do, because even M$ shills admit free software is better as a "server". You want to block MS SQL because that too is insecure and you don't want small businesses to be able to use one database at more than one site. Yes, the company that won't let two people use their text editor at the same time thinks like that. You would not do very well as a Microsoft Gorilla, though you are not a bad appologist.
ISPs have been blocking port 25 because spammers have been causing them tremendous pain.
There are two kinds of spammers, one that does it inetntionally and the other that has a cracked M$ junk box. The first is easy to cut off. The second will give you other problems regardless of what ports you block and is best combated though careful monitoring. You can watch port 25 traffic volume and kill a spammer's connection if you have the right software. You've been reading about "traffic shaping"? What's keeping them from doing that to protect themselves from "spam". The best solution, of course, is to recomend free software as a less troublesome platform and cut people who keep causing problems. M$ made this problem and needs to fix it.
MSN and Eathlink and 90% of the other ISP block port 25 now. They were not 'forced' too, they did this because it was the only way to stop the spam. And it worked,
I've already told you how M$ benifits from this, how do you know that Earchlink was not pushed into it?
Working? A quick check of my AOL account shows 519 new and offensive spams. I have not given that address to anyone but site registrations for the last 5 years. The problem has only gotten worse not better.
On my mail servers, to get around these blocks, I run SMTP on alternative ports. I have my users configured to use those ports in addition to the basic 25.
Who, besides yourself, listens for email on anyport but 25? Oh, I see, you must have a relay outside the network. That's helpful, but why should everyone route around this damage again? Some people don't have your resources, is it OK to screw them so long as you have your rights handed back to you as privalidges?
Unlike some people, I don't force anyone to use any particular software. My wife uses Debian, Mozilla, Hotmail, and Yahoo by choice. When someone comes and cleans out her credit card, we will pay the %50 payment demanded and she might change her mind, so might the credit card company. I can only imagine how nervous a bank, most of which don't use M$ for anything critical, must be about M$'s promises for My Wallet.
lobbying small ISPs to shut their gateways to outbound port 25 traffic, but it seems like pretty easy stuff to get around to me.
The whole reason I'm not useing M$ myself was to avoid the endless list of "get arounds" M$ creates. It makes me angry that they have reached out to crimp my style while I have nothing to do with them.
I don't buy them or use them. Duh yourself.
is a funny thing to follow:
The internet is a big enough place to accomodate peer-to-peer as well as client-server models.
From my persective, M$N/AOL have forced my connection to the internet into a client-server only model. They did this by demanding my ISP block ports that prevent me from running my own service. No web, ftp, mail or even M$ web share. NetBIOS could not compete so M$ bullied my ISP into killing all normal forms of sharing. M$ does not want it's "clients" to have email, then no one can. This kind of behavior will indeed trun the internet into M$/AOLnet instead of the big free place that fits into your "civil libertarian and reasonable" outlook. Please tell me how to avoid the M$/AOL - Carnivore fate while the last mile is still effectively monopolized. Then tell me how keeping people from doing what they can for themselves beter than what you do for them is anything but evil.
The new "nasty business practices that need to be stopped", as you put it, is the thing you just defended. Microsoft is not evil because they are Microsoft or even because they have a monopoly. Microsoft is evil because Bill Gates and friends are paranoid control freaks. They have a monopoly because they have destroyed technically superior competitors by screwing vendors in the same way they are now screwing ISPs. Blocking services that other platforms do better than you is more of the same anti-competitive practice we all hate.
I don't know why anyone should care about it. The only place I've ever had trouble finding anything was on a Microsoft platform. Everywhere else find and grep come to the rescue and don't take much time at all. You would think that someone would slap a graphical front end on a combined tool.