You know, I get tired of hearing people complain about AOL and blame them for problems TW is having. It looks the other way around to me. When's the last time you checked out Life, Time or any other of their publications? Right, but you are on the net every day. What would you have done with the world's largest ISP? Let it sit? Right, why go for syngerny when you can ruin things and cast blame?
Time Warner was good for AOL like having a former ATT exec on the board of @Home was good for @Home - it resulted in total ruin. The death of AOL is NOT going to convince anyone to buy a dead tree Time magazine any more than the death of @Home has slowed the move away from long distance telephone calls. Time Warner is sitting on a lot of old models and people who invest in it deserve to be pummeled. They failed entirely to take advantage of the world's largest ISP to promote themselves and change their marketing model. There's a reason no one here ever quotes Time here, they are clueless. I hope you own lots of TW stock Mr. Cluster, you deserve it.
You're not a victim of loss of connectivity through MAPS. You're a victim of the spammer that caused the MAPS listing.
I say maps has a list of all "dial up" IP addresses and large ISPs refuse to take mail from those IPs. Who on that list deserves that kind of treatment? It's being abused to block small ISP mail servers too.
I'll bet you a nickle that most spam comes from competing large ISPs that want to wreck each others service. Today, my wife got a letter from "bloddy_buttholes." Stuff like that does not come from anyone who really wants to sell anything, it comes from someone that wants to disrupt email. It's people like that that should be punished, not someone like me who simply wants to send an email to his mom's AOL account.
When all the small ISPs are dead, it's a small step for the large survivors to require certian mail agents. If you have not heard enough clueless, "I'm sorry we don't support anything but M$-crap-program", just wait. My reply is that I don't need their support for my software, I simply need their mail server to act right. One day they will use the DMCA and Federal laws agianst taking cable services without permission to lock out any software they don't like.
I get about the same warm fuzzies transmitting anything of any value over such a system as I would shopping online at an internet cafe.
If you never bring your wi-fi into the cafe, you will never know if the cash register is transmitting your credit card via wi-fi. Hardee-har-har. Oh, and you better not buy anything over a cable modem because that's a shared connection that can be sniffed. Your dial-up traffic is also sniffed by the local bell. Better give up now and go back to barter. They can't take things off of you can they? Oh my, yes they can. Sorry.
as a manufacturer i would be very pleased if the first thing the consumer did when their initial (starter or full) cartridge runs out of toner is for them torun out and buy a re-manufactured cartridge and put it in the machine. as this voids the warranty on nearly every brand of printer out there
That's a violation of US anti-trust laws. Get the refusal in writing or get your money back.
I suppose you would be circumventing a copyrighted work, if the binary equivalent of "empty" could be copyrighted. Somehow, that kind of copyright protection does not live up to the spirit of copyright law, which is to promote publishing and the useful arts.
Thanks for the nice link to the EFF's anti spam page. As a victim of loss of conectivity through MAPS, I'm all for the EFF's stand on the issue. Allow me to quote some of it here:
Executive Summary: Any measure for stopping spam must ensure that all non-spam messages reach their intended recipients.
And anti-spam blacklists, such as the MAPS RBL (Mail Abuse Prevention System Realtime Blackhole List, the most popular), result in a large number of Internet service providers (ISPs) surreptitiously blocking large amounts of non-spam from innocent people. This is because they block all email from entire IP address blocks--even from entire nations. This is done with no notice to the users, who do not even know that their mail is not being delivered.
That is exactly the situation. Large ISPs such as AOL and email providers like M$ Hotmail all practice this. The result is that mail from smaller ISPs is blocked. How convienent for the larger ISPs. No dial up box may send mail and often the upstream smtp provider is blocked as well.
You say, Businesses get what they deserve. As we all know there are plenty of alternatives to Outlook (and even Windows). The market is already taking care of this problem by itself.
I don't think they do and the market is not effective yet. Have you seen any large computer vendors selling Linux desktops? I have not and still there is nothing but plans. The one or two that ever did had to make them more exensive than the windoze version of the same machine or face M$ wrath. From the coroprate perspective this makes Linux and even alternate mail clients more expensive than an all M$ set up. There are few companies or institutions that have the flexibility to experiment or impliment known good and published solutions. Dell was started in a college dorm room, but there was no Dell when it happened. Today, it is much more difficult to start such a thing and provide a cost competitive alternative to M$. The practices used to maintain this situation are what got M$ convicted of anti-trust violations.
Also it's very strange that M$ has escaped liability for their obviously defective programs. All manner of manufacturers are slapped with all manner of lawsuits for making obvious and preventable mistakes. I'm not going to defend the practice but I do note that M$ has managed to remain immune to it all.
While it's all too chic right now to bag on the US and the UK for their positions on the upcoming war on Iraq, the Patriot Act, and other debatable topics, I hope everyone takes a deep breath and realizes that the very fact that we are debating these topics proves the openness of these societies.
And I ask, what are we talking about, Openness, ala Glasnost, or Authoritarinaism? Let's all go to the article for a definition:
When elections and legal opposition parties are present but elections are rigged, rules are manipulated, or power is wielded so that there is no real competition for elected office, the political regime is best described as semi-authoritarian...
I suppose the competition in the US and the UK between two eternal and indistiguishable parties makes a choice. In theory an elected person can make a difference too. All you have to do is convince people that you are correct by presenting proper facts to back your opinions. Hmmm, how to get past the government/industry controled mass media that can twist anything anyone ever said or did Could it be that the internet can provide that alternate less controled route of truth in public debate? Or will the internet just get bowled over by established interests and become another outlet of bullshit?
Let's see, using the Clinton sex scandal as an example. Do you remember anything more than the name Monica Lewenski? The name you should remember but will have a hard time finding in print is Paula Jones, the real story sunk under a cartoon of an old man screwing a willing but mentally unstable intern. I take an excellent serries of articles from Vanity Fair and the New York Times as my baseline of, "the truth.": Jones was assulted in a hotel shortly after taking a job , repeatedly harrased, denied promotion and bothered. Later, the American Spectator published and article claiming she had consentual sex with her accoster. She appeared in public presuring him for an appology and a retraction, which were never recieved. Her cause was taken up by others who wished to damage Clinton's political credibility and punish a real wrong. A case was built up showing a patern of behavior of Clinton towards women who worked for under his authority. Clinton's efforts to quash the investigation included payoffs and perjury. The purgury was caught on tape and the whole thing led to impechement which failed to remove Clinton from office. A little google searching finds mostly BS, much like the stuff shoveled out by the AP and networks at the time: the Lewinski Cartoon.
First the searches
clinton sex scandal 91,400 hits of total crap topped off by an MSN cartoon site.
The complaint Bing! lots of details, and at last, Jones's story.
While the details are there, it seems obvious that those details are still difficult to find, even for a relatively informed person. Despite the best efforts of Google and others to organize and present valid and useful information, it seems that the internet can be manipulated by simple flood. Other facts, which draw less public attention, are easier to obscure and burry.
The idea that internet will defeat tyrany is preffaced on the simple fact that tyranies support themselves with lies and lose all foundation and support when the truth is known and repeated. The internet may yet be able to provide the truth with a forum, but it can be discredited, drowned and otherwise removed even in relatively free situations. Here in the US, the internet is under attack and the attackers have the government's blessing. As you and my ability to connect to the internet as peers goes away, the likelyhood of impartial third party reporting goes. This is happening, despite the internet and few people care.
When I saw the story, spam and IE, I thought the US was exploiting holes in IE though email. Silly me, the US military is instead trying to use IE to guide bombs, share radars screens and other intelligence. Nice concept they have, to eliminate propriatory interfaces, but they might chose a better platform than MicroSoft. "All you need is Internet Explorer", said some Air Force dude without a clue. I really hope that was an automated product placement advert replacement of "web browser."
You mean your friends don't already load your mailbox with "viral" adverts? You know, clever little skits that demonstrate some mass produced shit. OK, mine don't either so I doubt this will become a problem until everyone has enough bandwith so that sending such a thing will be no more anoying than a page of text to the reciever. Then it will become the same problem that chain jokes are today.
You want stimulation on this job? Chew on a stick of gum, clean up that filthy keyboard, and get back to work! Any more complaining and you are fired. - from the hell job.
For those that joke about this patch, I'll bet many of the same jokes were had about canned food in 1812 too. "Who would eat food that had been bottled up for a year? How unwholsome!" Well, look at you now. Does your town have a market where farmers bring their food for you to purchase or do you eat beans from a can? In 100 years or so, people will wonder aloud about why their grandparents troubled themselves with cooking food. They will point to their care free, perfectly ballanced nutition and contrast it to a former world population that was either obese or malnurished. Something will be lost, something will be gained, the methods will be improved.
If Netcraft is not decieved, that would be the way to "fix" it. Netscape on NT, I'm amazed that it has not blue screened yet and is so responsive. If it was IIE, it would be all over by now for the second or third time. Thanks for the insight.
Set top box swindle, news at 10! Wanna bet that this RCA service will use the guide channel to start advertising at you? Just as soon as enough people throw out their old VCRs and everyone has these little owned boxes on their TV, they will start feeding in advertisements to "support the guide service." Oh yeah, they WILL force you to watch the adverts before or even durring the program you wanted. Tivo will follow. It's just like the begining of cable TV - "Wow this new cable thing is cool, look at all the neat advert free programing here." Now look at it, $50/month for programing that's got more ads in it than network had in the 70s and the cool programing was squashed or moved to pay per view.
Free TV guides just don't excite me somehow. Really free broadcasting, where anyone could put up their content and the user could chose anything anytime, that would be nice. That's what the internet was supposed to be.
Gravity is clean. Mount the bottles overhead and make a crimped tube valve, much like old cafeteria milk dispensers, out of food grade flexible hosing. When you finish the bottle, put in a new piece of hose and all is sanitary and cheap. The challenge would be in measuring the fluid as it flows, but that sould be easy for these sleuths.
Why not have this baby track it's users by sex and approximate weight?... it could generate a report on what a user's BAC is likely to be... Hell, the barmonkey could even cut people off.
Hmmm, that's entirely up to the owner of the machine but your ideas will show up in the WindowBar that Bill Gates will make. It will be advertised for three years, on the market in five years, cost four times as much, give you advice you don't want, report all this info back to Microsoft, then cut you off when your license runs out. Have you seen the clippy animation where he flips you off and calls you a weenie? You will.
You say, If somebody is good at something, you recommend him or her to your friends -- and that person gets more business. If somebody is lousy at something, word gets around and the person has trouble getting work, until he's getting work only from people who are more interested in a cheap price than a quality job.
And so, 90% of the world's personal computers run junk from M$. =;>
The only "certs" I could live with would come from the Free Software Foundation, or some other professional group not affiliated with vendors.
You say, "I've met lots of people who are MCSE's who are clueless." That's funny because I have yet to meet anyone with one of those that had a clue or were not ashamed of it. Kinda like a pet rock, "Yeah, I got one of those." they say.
There are real public safety aspects involved with beauty salons. Have you ever considered the UV lights shining on the equipment and what they are there to prevent? You can walk away from a barber shop with more than a bad haircut, you could walk out with lice, ringworm or worse. Barbers also need to be trained in how to protect themselves so they don't become carriers. This is more important than software and hence registration and inspection are justified.
The same criteria are missing from the Software world. Real, objective public health issues can be named for beauty salons. The same can not be said of computer issues.
A better start might be to make those who proffit off software responsible for obvious negligence. The makers of Outlook were told that an email client that automatically loaded and executed code sent by third parties would be disaterous, yet they built it anyway. That decision has cost businesses billions of dollars. Such malpractice deserves contempt and punishment. It's not the $200 computer it's the man years of work that gets wiped out, the business and reputation lost by it's failure that counts.
In addition, you also have to be able to get this data. As mentioned by mmol_6453, you can only get the Ethernet frames if you are on the same LAN or if the victim is tunneling the Ethernet frames through a VPN. If there is an IP router between you and the victim, you will probably not be able to get the leaked bytes (and I am glad to see that several routers listed in the CERT advisory [cert.org] are not vulnerable).
Heh! What this means is the same thing as always. Your network security is only as good as your weakest link. If you have an M$ box on your local net and someone owns it, as is so easy to do, it can sniff packets from other silly OS that don't use SSH or similar for ALL local comunications. Let's say I type a password on a local computer and that password gets padded into that ethernet frame. Ha, the M$ machine has got you. A more sinister device to leak, would be your "broadband router" box that sits next to your cable modem. If it leaks and you have an owned M$ box on your network, that M$ box can be used to request small packets through the router and thus sniff your whole network's traffic. Failure and comprimise are generally the result of a combination of minor flaws, unless you are M$ and you just make an email client that automatically executes code, sound and what not from unknown third parties. The weak link breaks a chain.
Read the article, what a great idea! I'd never have thought that's what Slashdot was good for. Solid advice worthy of a +5 troll rating. So what do we find? Thanks to some vagueness in the standards defining IP datagram transmission on Ethernet networks, it's not entirely clear exactly how the padding should be done. Some implementations do it on the NIC, while others handle it in the software device driver
Ding! This means that all NICs that have the problem have that problem under any OS unless the card can be overcome by software. Additionally, "software drivers" under any OS can have the same problem.
Is the problem more likely under, M$ junk? Of course it is. The free software world will move to fix any driver problems, and there are only a few dozen drivers in the world to work the thousands of different brand name cards. The closed source world has thousands of drivers to fix by companies that may not even exist anymore, and because it's closed and the user won't know any better, why would anyone bother?
Of course this completely ignores whole models that are available in the free software world to prevent such problems of untrusted networks in the first place. I don't really care if my NIC pads packets with chunks of the last SSH packet. Encryped noise is just that and you can have as many packets as you like of it. If you played it over a speaker it would sound like this "Shushshhshhhshhhhhshhhhsh!" and I sugest you do shush.
The current situation in no way resembles the ZapNet case. Telcos welcomed the chance to charge long distance fees fax machines would generate and so allowed the connection to the existing network. They will not be so kind to Voice over IP (VoIP) and all other useful services people could run themselves. The laws are stacked against us.
The existing telcos control accesss and they are being DEREGULATED. This would be fine if there were real competition, but there is not. "Servers" are already forbiden over cable networks - and the cable company is set to sell you phone service. Guess what, Voice over IP without paying the cable company will be obtaining service from a cable without permision and a federal offense. DSL? forget it, the local Bells have crused their competitors and also forbid "servers." The laws are against you - AOL/Time/McDonald/M$/USPO doesnt think they can get $250/month from every house in the country because the local public service commision is going to give it to them. They think they are going to get it because they have made it illegal for you to use the wires that enter your house as you please. Vontage will be screwed by all of this.
802.11 meshes may offer a solution, but I fear the rainbow efforts of IBM and others. It won't take big companies long to convince the FCC to regulate the new wireless networks. The result will be most unAmerican - an artificailly limited electronic press which runs through shared property and the air itself.
In one word MS doesn't fully support WMP on any platform other than Windows.
What makes you think it works there? They break their own codecs on Windoze 2000 as well. My father in law's computer had the latest and greatest media player and it refused to show images with AVI files from my Cannon digital camera. It playes some kind of stoner screen saver and the sound. Quick Time played them, OLE in the browser was broken - it played the sounds but not the picture. This made it difficult for me to make a CD of baby movies with an html index. My solution was to include Mozilla, which worked on the same computer under w2k by calling the plugins as seperate programs. So there you have it, Media Player did not play well on it's own or with IE on Win2k. In other words, it sucked out loud.
Slashdot Mirror
Time Warner was good for AOL like having a former ATT exec on the board of @Home was good for @Home - it resulted in total ruin. The death of AOL is NOT going to convince anyone to buy a dead tree Time magazine any more than the death of @Home has slowed the move away from long distance telephone calls. Time Warner is sitting on a lot of old models and people who invest in it deserve to be pummeled. They failed entirely to take advantage of the world's largest ISP to promote themselves and change their marketing model. There's a reason no one here ever quotes Time here, they are clueless. I hope you own lots of TW stock Mr. Cluster, you deserve it.
You're not a victim of loss of connectivity through MAPS. You're a victim of the spammer that caused the MAPS listing.
I say maps has a list of all "dial up" IP addresses and large ISPs refuse to take mail from those IPs. Who on that list deserves that kind of treatment? It's being abused to block small ISP mail servers too.
I'll bet you a nickle that most spam comes from competing large ISPs that want to wreck each others service. Today, my wife got a letter from "bloddy_buttholes." Stuff like that does not come from anyone who really wants to sell anything, it comes from someone that wants to disrupt email. It's people like that that should be punished, not someone like me who simply wants to send an email to his mom's AOL account.
When all the small ISPs are dead, it's a small step for the large survivors to require certian mail agents. If you have not heard enough clueless, "I'm sorry we don't support anything but M$-crap-program", just wait. My reply is that I don't need their support for my software, I simply need their mail server to act right. One day they will use the DMCA and Federal laws agianst taking cable services without permission to lock out any software they don't like.
If you never bring your wi-fi into the cafe, you will never know if the cash register is transmitting your credit card via wi-fi. Hardee-har-har. Oh, and you better not buy anything over a cable modem because that's a shared connection that can be sniffed. Your dial-up traffic is also sniffed by the local bell. Better give up now and go back to barter. They can't take things off of you can they? Oh my, yes they can. Sorry.
That's a violation of US anti-trust laws. Get the refusal in writing or get your money back.
I suppose you would be circumventing a copyrighted work, if the binary equivalent of "empty" could be copyrighted. Somehow, that kind of copyright protection does not live up to the spirit of copyright law, which is to promote publishing and the useful arts.
Executive Summary: Any measure for stopping spam must ensure that all non-spam messages reach their intended recipients.
And anti-spam blacklists, such as the MAPS RBL (Mail Abuse Prevention System Realtime Blackhole List, the most popular), result in a large number of Internet service providers (ISPs) surreptitiously blocking large amounts of non-spam from innocent people. This is because they block all email from entire IP address blocks--even from entire nations. This is done with no notice to the users, who do not even know that their mail is not being delivered.
That is exactly the situation. Large ISPs such as AOL and email providers like M$ Hotmail all practice this. The result is that mail from smaller ISPs is blocked. How convienent for the larger ISPs. No dial up box may send mail and often the upstream smtp provider is blocked as well.
I don't think they do and the market is not effective yet. Have you seen any large computer vendors selling Linux desktops? I have not and still there is nothing but plans. The one or two that ever did had to make them more exensive than the windoze version of the same machine or face M$ wrath. From the coroprate perspective this makes Linux and even alternate mail clients more expensive than an all M$ set up. There are few companies or institutions that have the flexibility to experiment or impliment known good and published solutions. Dell was started in a college dorm room, but there was no Dell when it happened. Today, it is much more difficult to start such a thing and provide a cost competitive alternative to M$. The practices used to maintain this situation are what got M$ convicted of anti-trust violations.
Also it's very strange that M$ has escaped liability for their obviously defective programs. All manner of manufacturers are slapped with all manner of lawsuits for making obvious and preventable mistakes. I'm not going to defend the practice but I do note that M$ has managed to remain immune to it all.
While it's all too chic right now to bag on the US and the UK for their positions on the upcoming war on Iraq, the Patriot Act, and other debatable topics, I hope everyone takes a deep breath and realizes that the very fact that we are debating these topics proves the openness of these societies.
And I ask, what are we talking about, Openness, ala Glasnost, or Authoritarinaism? Let's all go to the article for a definition:
When elections and legal opposition parties are present but elections are rigged, rules are manipulated, or power is wielded so that there is no real competition for elected office, the political regime is best described as semi-authoritarian...
I suppose the competition in the US and the UK between two eternal and indistiguishable parties makes a choice. In theory an elected person can make a difference too. All you have to do is convince people that you are correct by presenting proper facts to back your opinions. Hmmm, how to get past the government/industry controled mass media that can twist anything anyone ever said or did Could it be that the internet can provide that alternate less controled route of truth in public debate? Or will the internet just get bowled over by established interests and become another outlet of bullshit?
Let's see, using the Clinton sex scandal as an example. Do you remember anything more than the name Monica Lewenski? The name you should remember but will have a hard time finding in print is Paula Jones, the real story sunk under a cartoon of an old man screwing a willing but mentally unstable intern. I take an excellent serries of articles from Vanity Fair and the New York Times as my baseline of, "the truth.": Jones was assulted in a hotel shortly after taking a job , repeatedly harrased, denied promotion and bothered. Later, the American Spectator published and article claiming she had consentual sex with her accoster. She appeared in public presuring him for an appology and a retraction, which were never recieved. Her cause was taken up by others who wished to damage Clinton's political credibility and punish a real wrong. A case was built up showing a patern of behavior of Clinton towards women who worked for under his authority. Clinton's efforts to quash the investigation included payoffs and perjury. The purgury was caught on tape and the whole thing led to impechement which failed to remove Clinton from office. A little google searching finds mostly BS, much like the stuff shoveled out by the AP and networks at the time: the Lewinski Cartoon.
First the searches
Now what you see:
While the details are there, it seems obvious that those details are still difficult to find, even for a relatively informed person. Despite the best efforts of Google and others to organize and present valid and useful information, it seems that the internet can be manipulated by simple flood. Other facts, which draw less public attention, are easier to obscure and burry.
The idea that internet will defeat tyrany is preffaced on the simple fact that tyranies support themselves with lies and lose all foundation and support when the truth is known and repeated. The internet may yet be able to provide the truth with a forum, but it can be discredited, drowned and otherwise removed even in relatively free situations. Here in the US, the internet is under attack and the attackers have the government's blessing. As you and my ability to connect to the internet as peers goes away, the likelyhood of impartial third party reporting goes. This is happening, despite the internet and few people care.
When I saw the story, spam and IE, I thought the US was exploiting holes in IE though email. Silly me, the US military is instead trying to use IE to guide bombs, share radars screens and other intelligence. Nice concept they have, to eliminate propriatory interfaces, but they might chose a better platform than MicroSoft. "All you need is Internet Explorer", said some Air Force dude without a clue. I really hope that was an automated product placement advert replacement of "web browser."
Your shell script will give me twenty.
You mean your friends don't already load your mailbox with "viral" adverts? You know, clever little skits that demonstrate some mass produced shit. OK, mine don't either so I doubt this will become a problem until everyone has enough bandwith so that sending such a thing will be no more anoying than a page of text to the reciever. Then it will become the same problem that chain jokes are today.
You want stimulation on this job? Chew on a stick of gum, clean up that filthy keyboard, and get back to work! Any more complaining and you are fired. - from the hell job.
For those that joke about this patch, I'll bet many of the same jokes were had about canned food in 1812 too. "Who would eat food that had been bottled up for a year? How unwholsome!" Well, look at you now. Does your town have a market where farmers bring their food for you to purchase or do you eat beans from a can? In 100 years or so, people will wonder aloud about why their grandparents troubled themselves with cooking food. They will point to their care free, perfectly ballanced nutition and contrast it to a former world population that was either obese or malnurished. Something will be lost, something will be gained, the methods will be improved.
If Netcraft is not decieved, that would be the way to "fix" it. Netscape on NT, I'm amazed that it has not blue screened yet and is so responsive. If it was IIE, it would be all over by now for the second or third time. Thanks for the insight.
Free TV guides just don't excite me somehow. Really free broadcasting, where anyone could put up their content and the user could chose anything anytime, that would be nice. That's what the internet was supposed to be.
OK, I'm having a bad year.
An engineer on wiskey can be risky.
Hmmm, that's entirely up to the owner of the machine but your ideas will show up in the WindowBar that Bill Gates will make. It will be advertised for three years, on the market in five years, cost four times as much, give you advice you don't want, report all this info back to Microsoft, then cut you off when your license runs out. Have you seen the clippy animation where he flips you off and calls you a weenie? You will.
If somebody is good at something, you recommend him or her to your friends -- and that person gets more business. If somebody is lousy at something, word gets around and the person has trouble getting work, until he's getting work only from people who are more interested in a cheap price than a quality job.
And so, 90% of the world's personal computers run junk from M$. =;>
The only "certs" I could live with would come from the Free Software Foundation, or some other professional group not affiliated with vendors.
You say, "I've met lots of people who are MCSE's who are clueless." That's funny because I have yet to meet anyone with one of those that had a clue or were not ashamed of it. Kinda like a pet rock, "Yeah, I got one of those." they say.
The same criteria are missing from the Software world. Real, objective public health issues can be named for beauty salons. The same can not be said of computer issues.
A better start might be to make those who proffit off software responsible for obvious negligence. The makers of Outlook were told that an email client that automatically loaded and executed code sent by third parties would be disaterous, yet they built it anyway. That decision has cost businesses billions of dollars. Such malpractice deserves contempt and punishment. It's not the $200 computer it's the man years of work that gets wiped out, the business and reputation lost by it's failure that counts.
Heh! What this means is the same thing as always. Your network security is only as good as your weakest link. If you have an M$ box on your local net and someone owns it, as is so easy to do, it can sniff packets from other silly OS that don't use SSH or similar for ALL local comunications. Let's say I type a password on a local computer and that password gets padded into that ethernet frame. Ha, the M$ machine has got you. A more sinister device to leak, would be your "broadband router" box that sits next to your cable modem. If it leaks and you have an owned M$ box on your network, that M$ box can be used to request small packets through the router and thus sniff your whole network's traffic. Failure and comprimise are generally the result of a combination of minor flaws, unless you are M$ and you just make an email client that automatically executes code, sound and what not from unknown third parties. The weak link breaks a chain.
Thanks to some vagueness in the standards defining IP datagram transmission on Ethernet networks, it's not entirely clear exactly how the padding should be done. Some implementations do it on the NIC, while others handle it in the software device driver
Ding! This means that all NICs that have the problem have that problem under any OS unless the card can be overcome by software. Additionally, "software drivers" under any OS can have the same problem.
Is the problem more likely under, M$ junk? Of course it is. The free software world will move to fix any driver problems, and there are only a few dozen drivers in the world to work the thousands of different brand name cards. The closed source world has thousands of drivers to fix by companies that may not even exist anymore, and because it's closed and the user won't know any better, why would anyone bother?
Of course this completely ignores whole models that are available in the free software world to prevent such problems of untrusted networks in the first place. I don't really care if my NIC pads packets with chunks of the last SSH packet. Encryped noise is just that and you can have as many packets as you like of it. If you played it over a speaker it would sound like this "Shushshhshhhshhhhhshhhhsh!" and I sugest you do shush.
The existing telcos control accesss and they are being DEREGULATED. This would be fine if there were real competition, but there is not. "Servers" are already forbiden over cable networks - and the cable company is set to sell you phone service. Guess what, Voice over IP without paying the cable company will be obtaining service from a cable without permision and a federal offense. DSL? forget it, the local Bells have crused their competitors and also forbid "servers." The laws are against you - AOL/Time/McDonald/M$/USPO doesnt think they can get $250/month from every house in the country because the local public service commision is going to give it to them. They think they are going to get it because they have made it illegal for you to use the wires that enter your house as you please. Vontage will be screwed by all of this.
802.11 meshes may offer a solution, but I fear the rainbow efforts of IBM and others. It won't take big companies long to convince the FCC to regulate the new wireless networks. The result will be most unAmerican - an artificailly limited electronic press which runs through shared property and the air itself.
What makes you think it works there? They break their own codecs on Windoze 2000 as well. My father in law's computer had the latest and greatest media player and it refused to show images with AVI files from my Cannon digital camera. It playes some kind of stoner screen saver and the sound. Quick Time played them, OLE in the browser was broken - it played the sounds but not the picture. This made it difficult for me to make a CD of baby movies with an html index. My solution was to include Mozilla, which worked on the same computer under w2k by calling the plugins as seperate programs. So there you have it, Media Player did not play well on it's own or with IE on Win2k. In other words, it sucked out loud.
how about a non-transferable, time limited opt-in list that must be maintained by each and every company that would call you?