Two months ago, I got some junk postal mail that was an illegal Multi-Level Marketing scam.
Wow; the original poster says he saw an IP address in his web logs, and from that you can state with authority that it came from an attempt to scam him?
Holy shit, I better forward my web logs off to the FBI; I've unknowingly been the target of hundreds of scam attempts!
Two months ago, my caller ID reported a call from a number. I was bored, so I checked it out and it looked like a home number. On a hunch, I looked him up in the cross-reference directory and went to his house.
He'd left his door unlocked, and I was looking at his living room. I thought about leaving a note on his TV telling him he left his door unlocked and his house was open to the world.
Thank God I wised up...He could have had me prosecuted!!!! God I'm so starting to hate the government.
I have met the FBI's "top computer expert" special agent in Oklahoma. He is probably a good cop, but he doesn't know shit about computers.
He asked for my card as a technical resource, but then I left that company (another SE Oklahoma ISP, as it happens, that doesn't have a lot of overlap with the two in this story) and I never heard from him.
What part of "infected server" don't you understand?
You've got a server with an open, exploitable remote hole, and evidence that it's been advertising itself to the net as "exploitable server here!" in thousands of web logs.
If you just patch that server and go on with life, you're an idiot. You need to either do a full audit to make sure it's clean, or (far cheaper) rebuild the damn thing from a wiped HD. You don't know what somebody else has done on it.
for instance, there are no headers, as declarations are lifted from the source.
That sounds like a step backwards; declarations were put there on purpose. It helps other people figure out what the code does, including you six months later when you forget.
But if you lose the vote then shut up and pay because the IRS doesn't accept the "I don't like how you are spending my money" defense.
The same argument could be made against your complaints against the telco.
We can go back and forth telling each other to shut up if we don't like something, but I suggest that this is an asinine position and if you honestly think discussing something after it's already been decided is not a legitimate thing to do, why the fuck are you reading Slashdot? And posting?
The problem with your model is that you'd not just be putting your money toward what you want; you'd be confiscating my money at gunpoint to go toward what you want.
Don't confuse growing pains with utter failure, people. Loki isn't down for the count just yet!
That's the other thing I've been trying to get people to understand; the fact that Loki has filed Chapter 11 doesn't mean Linux has failed, or even that Loki has failed.
It just means that Loki's management is realistic enough to know they've got a debt problem, and optimistic enough to think they can fix it with a little breathing room to get the creditors off their neck. Or, to be more in keeping with what an economist might say, it means they recognize that Loki Entertainment Software, Inc. is worth more as a company than as a collection of assets.
That is assuming that the cost of a T1 (> $1000/month) is fair market value - remember, T1s are regulated and tarriffed meaning they generally are more expensive and competitors can't easily provide them. So in this case its apples to oranges.
No, it's not; because those oranges are the costs that provider has to pay to get YOU your bandwidth out to the Internet.
Remember, he doesn't just have to pay to provision you; he has to pay to have enough capacity out to the Internet so that you won't get 1,000ms pings and 1KB/s transfer rates, or you'll go somewhere else.
And he's not paying DSL rates for that bandwidth to the rest of the 'net; he's paying tarriffed telco DSx rates.
You're forgetting that you're using bandwidth not just over your DSL connection, but over the far more expensive connection out to the rest of the Internet.
DSL prices are too low to make a profit. They're loss-leaders right now, and the only people who can afford to charge $40 or $50 a month for it are those who can absorb the losses for now in the hopes of building a brand identity that they can sustain later when they charge a profitable price.
But, in any event, since when is "because I want to charge this much for my product" not a "justified" reason for pricing? It's their circuit, their hardware, their bandwidth; what right do you have to it? None.
If I have a used car with a blue book value of $2,000, and you want to purchase it, and I refuse to sell it for less than $3,000, have I done something wrong? No; it's my damn property, and you're free to not buy it.
You're free to not buy DSL. If it's too expensive, don't buy it. Nobody's putting a gun to your head.
If anything I fully expect my DSL to cost nearly $60 a month within 2 years.
So what?
Is it really that horrible a thought that we might all have to pay 1/16th of the cost of a T1 for T1 speeds?
Everybody wants legislators to impose restrictions on the behavior of other people that they wouldn't tolerate if imposed on themselves.
If it cost you $2 in materials and time to bake a pie, and you held a pie sale, would you tolerate the government requiring you to charge no more than $2.25 for the pie?
It's not like broadband is a right or a necessity; it's a luxury, and one that's expensive to provide. But we're all demanding better service and lower prices. High speed, good service, low price; pick at most two, folks, you can't have all three.
I believe that in the US, it's illegal to send spam without meeting certain restrictions (providing a valid removal address to prevent future spamming, for example), though I'm prepared to stand corrected on that one.
Start standing; that bill never passed either house of Congress.
As if money has ever made the world a better place to live in...
You don't think the money that paid for your house made the world a better place for you to live?
How about the money that bought you your computer?
The money that bought you that last meal? You'd enjoy the world more without food?
Money is what changed the world so that one didn't have to work 18 hours a day merely to get food and basic shelter. Most of the sufferring in the world is due to lack of money, and those sufferring are in EXACTLY the state you'd be in if it weren't for money.
When everybody was scratching out a meager existance and dying of old age at 30, I don't think the world was a better place, sorry.
1. Pretty much all of those spam mails you receive every day are illegal, but you all know better than to reply to the "remove" address. (UK residents may now snipe at our Euro-MP who voted for an "opt-out" policy.)
I'm thinking back to the ones I received today, and with the exception of the single cable descrambler one, I can't think of another one that's illegal. Could you please give some examples?
Ahhh...so the comments that were on Yahoo were primarily about the company and not necessarily the service or provider attorneys?
I don't know, I didn't see them. However, a Google newsgroup search may show you what others have to say regarding their service. Their name comes up fairly often, such as this frequent posting.
Ah, yes, what an amazing and convincing argument you have here. So, according to your logic:
* If my dog bites people and is mean, all dogs bite people and are mean.
* If a black man robs you, all black men are robbers.
Glad to see you find your world so easy to generalize.
Bullshit. The stances being taken on Slashdot are more like:
The concept of "dog" is immoral, so only own cats.
Except my dog Loki, he's OK.
Peddle your straw man somewhere else. Slashdotters have been claiming left and right that the very CONCEPT of proprietary software is theft, but now everybody's in a tizzy over poor Loki.
I didn't make the argument black and white; I'm one of the ones claiming that it *ISN'T* black and white. Proprietary software is OK. Loki is good. Microsoft is good too. Windows sucks, so I don't use it; but it doesn't mean Microsoft can't make something good I will use, such as my Intellimouse.
I use Linux because it's better, not because Microsoft is evil. If Microsoft makes a great program for Linux, I might very well use it.
([1] which is why "anarcho-capitalism" or "libertarian capitalism" is ultimately self-defeating; keeping property concentrated into the hand of the few requires a strong state.)
Your conclusions would be true, if libertarianism had as one of it's goals keeping property concentrated into the hand of the few.
However, it has no such goal, so you've managed to completely bungle your logic.
Libertarianism's goal is to have a weak central state, period. How much or how little property individuals retain is wholly up to the individuals.
Slashdot Mirror
Two months ago, I got some junk postal mail that was an illegal Multi-Level Marketing scam.
Wow; the original poster says he saw an IP address in his web logs, and from that you can state with authority that it came from an attempt to scam him?
Holy shit, I better forward my web logs off to the FBI; I've unknowingly been the target of hundreds of scam attempts!
Two months ago, my caller ID reported a call from a number. I was bored, so I checked it out and it looked like a home number. On a hunch, I looked him up in the cross-reference directory and went to his house.
He'd left his door unlocked, and I was looking at his living room. I thought about leaving a note on his TV telling him he left his door unlocked and his house was open to the world.
Thank God I wised up...He could have had me prosecuted!!!! God I'm so starting to hate the government.
It's not at all surprising, though.
I have met the FBI's "top computer expert" special agent in Oklahoma. He is probably a good cop, but he doesn't know shit about computers.
He asked for my card as a technical resource, but then I left that company (another SE Oklahoma ISP, as it happens, that doesn't have a lot of overlap with the two in this story) and I never heard from him.
Yes, but technically, he needs to rebuild that server anyway or he's a menace to the net.
/y \ is probably better.
It's been pointed out to me, however, that just killing inetpub would probably cause them to just recover it from a backup and go on.
deltree
Our discussion degenerated from there into the possibility of overwriting their bootsector with a RedHat FTP auto-install image, then rebooting...
The best solution the problem of Microsoft's monopoly is this:
Rule that the "you can't sue us" clause in their licenses is null and void.
That's it; no other intervention is necessary from the government.
Here's an ethical question for you:
/y \inetpub" instead?
Currently, I run a script "default.ida" that, when hit, logs into the attacker's back door and reboots his server.
What would be the ethics of making it do "deltree
What part of "infected server" don't you understand?
You've got a server with an open, exploitable remote hole, and evidence that it's been advertising itself to the net as "exploitable server here!" in thousands of web logs.
If you just patch that server and go on with life, you're an idiot. You need to either do a full audit to make sure it's clean, or (far cheaper) rebuild the damn thing from a wiped HD. You don't know what somebody else has done on it.
This is especially true if it's Code Red II.
I mean is there a Slahdot article when Microsoft gives out a new Windows 2000 SP? Including the changes and fixes (mirrored in the comments)?
No, but there should be. That's important information to a large percentage of Slashdot readers.
In case you hadn't noticed, Linux is pretty popular around here.
It's not your fault; since VA doesn't make hardware anymore, he probably had to run it on a Packard Bell. :-)
Refusing to support current system because you don't like it (what you were stating) --> same old tired argument --> futile endevour.
No, advocating bad change in current system (what you were stating) --> money out of my pocket to subsidize your pr0n surfing.
Advocating getting the government the hell out of the way of business (what I was stating) --> the right solution.
for instance, there are no headers, as declarations are lifted from the source.
That sounds like a step backwards; declarations were put there on purpose. It helps other people figure out what the code does, including you six months later when you forget.
But if you lose the vote then shut up and pay because the IRS doesn't accept the "I don't like how you are spending my money" defense.
The same argument could be made against your complaints against the telco.
We can go back and forth telling each other to shut up if we don't like something, but I suggest that this is an asinine position and if you honestly think discussing something after it's already been decided is not a legitimate thing to do, why the fuck are you reading Slashdot? And posting?
I am willing to see my taxes go towards that.
The problem with your model is that you'd not just be putting your money toward what you want; you'd be confiscating my money at gunpoint to go toward what you want.
Please keep your whims out of my wallet.
Don't confuse growing pains with utter failure, people. Loki isn't down for the count just yet!
That's the other thing I've been trying to get people to understand; the fact that Loki has filed Chapter 11 doesn't mean Linux has failed, or even that Loki has failed.
It just means that Loki's management is realistic enough to know they've got a debt problem, and optimistic enough to think they can fix it with a little breathing room to get the creditors off their neck. Or, to be more in keeping with what an economist might say, it means they recognize that Loki Entertainment Software, Inc. is worth more as a company than as a collection of assets.
That is assuming that the cost of a T1 (> $1000/month) is fair market value - remember, T1s are regulated and tarriffed meaning they generally are more expensive and competitors can't easily provide them. So in this case its apples to oranges.
No, it's not; because those oranges are the costs that provider has to pay to get YOU your bandwidth out to the Internet.
Remember, he doesn't just have to pay to provision you; he has to pay to have enough capacity out to the Internet so that you won't get 1,000ms pings and 1KB/s transfer rates, or you'll go somewhere else.
And he's not paying DSL rates for that bandwidth to the rest of the 'net; he's paying tarriffed telco DSx rates.
You're forgetting that you're using bandwidth not just over your DSL connection, but over the far more expensive connection out to the rest of the Internet.
DSL prices are too low to make a profit. They're loss-leaders right now, and the only people who can afford to charge $40 or $50 a month for it are those who can absorb the losses for now in the hopes of building a brand identity that they can sustain later when they charge a profitable price.
But, in any event, since when is "because I want to charge this much for my product" not a "justified" reason for pricing? It's their circuit, their hardware, their bandwidth; what right do you have to it? None.
If I have a used car with a blue book value of $2,000, and you want to purchase it, and I refuse to sell it for less than $3,000, have I done something wrong? No; it's my damn property, and you're free to not buy it.
You're free to not buy DSL. If it's too expensive, don't buy it. Nobody's putting a gun to your head.
If anything I fully expect my DSL to cost nearly $60 a month within 2 years.
So what?
Is it really that horrible a thought that we might all have to pay 1/16th of the cost of a T1 for T1 speeds?
Everybody wants legislators to impose restrictions on the behavior of other people that they wouldn't tolerate if imposed on themselves.
If it cost you $2 in materials and time to bake a pie, and you held a pie sale, would you tolerate the government requiring you to charge no more than $2.25 for the pie?
It's not like broadband is a right or a necessity; it's a luxury, and one that's expensive to provide. But we're all demanding better service and lower prices. High speed, good service, low price; pick at most two, folks, you can't have all three.
I believe that in the US, it's illegal to send spam without meeting certain restrictions (providing a valid removal address to prevent future spamming, for example), though I'm prepared to stand corrected on that one.
Start standing; that bill never passed either house of Congress.
As if money has ever made the world a better place to live in...
You don't think the money that paid for your house made the world a better place for you to live?
How about the money that bought you your computer?
The money that bought you that last meal? You'd enjoy the world more without food?
Money is what changed the world so that one didn't have to work 18 hours a day merely to get food and basic shelter. Most of the sufferring in the world is due to lack of money, and those sufferring are in EXACTLY the state you'd be in if it weren't for money.
When everybody was scratching out a meager existance and dying of old age at 30, I don't think the world was a better place, sorry.
-
1. Pretty much all of those spam mails you receive every day are illegal, but you all know better than to reply to the "remove" address. (UK residents may now snipe at our Euro-MP who voted for an "opt-out" policy.)
I'm thinking back to the ones I received today, and with the exception of the single cable descrambler one, I can't think of another one that's illegal. Could you please give some examples?
Ahhh...so the comments that were on Yahoo were primarily about the company and not necessarily the service or provider attorneys?
I don't know, I didn't see them. However, a Google newsgroup search may show you what others have to say regarding their service. Their name comes up fairly often, such as this frequent posting.
Try working for them and you'll have a different perspective.
Don't mention that perspective in your email or telephone conversations, though, or it'll be in management's hands momentarily.
Ah, yes, what an amazing and convincing argument you have here. So, according to your logic:
* If my dog bites people and is mean, all dogs bite people and are mean.
* If a black man robs you, all black men are robbers.
Glad to see you find your world so easy to generalize.
Bullshit. The stances being taken on Slashdot are more like:
The concept of "dog" is immoral, so only own cats.
Except my dog Loki, he's OK.
Peddle your straw man somewhere else. Slashdotters have been claiming left and right that the very CONCEPT of proprietary software is theft, but now everybody's in a tizzy over poor Loki.
I didn't make the argument black and white; I'm one of the ones claiming that it *ISN'T* black and white. Proprietary software is OK. Loki is good. Microsoft is good too. Windows sucks, so I don't use it; but it doesn't mean Microsoft can't make something good I will use, such as my Intellimouse.
I use Linux because it's better, not because Microsoft is evil. If Microsoft makes a great program for Linux, I might very well use it.
([1] which is why "anarcho-capitalism" or "libertarian capitalism" is ultimately self-defeating; keeping property concentrated into the hand of the few requires a strong state.)
Your conclusions would be true, if libertarianism had as one of it's goals keeping property concentrated into the hand of the few.
However, it has no such goal, so you've managed to completely bungle your logic.
Libertarianism's goal is to have a weak central state, period. How much or how little property individuals retain is wholly up to the individuals.
In practice, however, how many companies can you think of that have filed for Chapter 11 and subsequently come out of it intact?
According to a stock brocker friend of mine, the majority of them.