You know, they have these things called "call waiting queues". When a lot of people dial the same number at the same time, more than one person can be connected. This is how you can call your cable company's customer service line at the same time as the other 100,000 dissatisfied customers without getting a busy signal.
Obviously the same can be done with fax numbers, especially if you do not have the bottleneck of a physical machine printing out pages as you receive them.
These large companies probably don't even have real fax machines. All a black-page fax would do is put a black-page PDF in some inbox or file share somewhere.
I find it amusing that companies are willing to accept blurry, low-quality, could-have-been-signed-by-Bigfoot black-and-white signatures delivered by fax, but not high-resolution color scans delivered by e-mail...
I am also amused that "Anonymous" thinks DDoS'ing a fax number will make companies listen to them.
Fix it? It's not broken. Ctrl+C has a specific meaning. Ctrl+V has a specific meaning. Linux terminals don't treat them as "copy" and "paste", but that does not mean they are broken. Terminals have always used Ctrl+C to interrupt running programs; what would be the point of changing it to mean "copy" now?
If you're using a Linux terminal (or an ssh session in PuTTY or something), Ctrl+V doesn't paste (for the same reason that Ctrl+C does not copy), but Shift+Insert does.
I don't know about porting to a new carrier, but AT&T's service is nationwide, and they don't care if your area code matches your billing address once you're signed up. My cell number has a Utah area code, and I live in Washington. I've upgraded my phone twice (with contract renewal) twice since I moved to Washington, the first of which I did while on vacation back in Utah (with my billing address long switched to Washington).
The only annoyance is that Washington locals won't want to call me from their land lines because it's long distance, but most everyone has a cell phone with free nationwide long distance nowadays.
Get a Dropbox account or one of the myriad other services. Free, no waiting, you can publish a file on the web for nothing and I'm still not waiting 60 seconds to download one file.
Perhaps you should suggest this to your friends, rather than complaining about how much it annoys you when they don't.
Your in the digital age now, figure some shit out.
You know, that attitude is why Linux hasn't taken off for consumers. (And before people start flaming me, I use Linux frequently myself and like it.) You're just making it worse. People see that attitude and decide that if you're going to be a jerk about your opinions, they're not going to listen to you. If you want people to change their habits, you are doing exactly the wrong thing.
You might like them, but your a fool.
Where did I indicate that I like these services? I specifically pointed out that I don't use them. Obviously, because I use alternatives, I am well aware that alternatives are available. I only said that I wouldn't get mad if my friends used these services once in a while. If it became so frequent that I felt the need to complain about it on Slashdot, I would instead suggest a better solution directly to them.
Maybe you should try that. It is infinitely more likely to improve the situation than a complaint to strangers on Slashdot.
Right, because running a webserver is cheaper than waiting 60 seconds to download a file. *eye roll*
Most people don't *have* a webserver, and wouldn't know how to get one, and wouldn't know how to run it if they had one, and wouldn't want one even if they did know all that. To most people, it's not worth $X/month plus maintenance and administration overhead just to save three of their friends a 60 second wait. (Hint: maintenance time could easily surpass the total wait time across all your friends from sharing sites like this.)
(For the record I put things either on my webserver or on Amazon S3, but I would not expect any of my friends to do the same unless they already have their own webserver.)
And at that point, barring breaking the law in a country where Amazon does business, it shouldn't matter to them.
You say that (emphasis added), and then:
It's more likely this was pressure from government agencies, and given the amount of infrastructure Amazon has on U.S. soil, it's hard to fault them.
So even though Wikileaks was breaking US law, and was violating Amazon's ToS, you still think it's more likely that Amazon would have ignored its own ToS unless the government intervened?
The terms of service for using Amazon Web Services are pretty broad (which of course is standard CYA for any company hosting third-party content). When terminate-able offenses include "offensive material", you can be sure that "illegally obtained classified material" violates the ToS, regardless of the moral [in]correctness of publishing that information.
(Disclaimer: I'm just speculating here. I do work for Amazon, but I had no knowledge of any of this until Ars Technica's articles on the subject, I have no special knowledge of the situation beyond what is publicly available, and my comments should not be construed as Amazon's official position on anything.)
Why on earth would Amazon offer protection from DDoS in their terms of service? Few companies are stupid enough to offer an SLA dependent on factors outside their control. I can't find evidence that Amazon offers this under any circumstance, let alone "usually". What gave you that idea?
I would think Amazon terminated Wikileaks' service not because of the DDoS, but because Wikileaks violated the Terms of Service. Others have quoted the potentially relevant sections, so I won't repeat them here, but they're not hard to find.
Besides, you're billed by AWS once a month, and Wikileaks was only running on EC2 for a day or two, so most probably billing was not even a factor.
1) Wikileaks made Amazon servers a target for DDOS
No, that was the US Government.
How, exactly, did the US government make Amazon's servers a target for attack? Even assuming for the sake of argument that the US government was behind the DDoS, Amazon's servers weren't involved in any way until Wikileaks deliberately decided to move to Amazon's services, knowing the DDoS would continue against the new servers. Surely they were not so naive that they believed the DDoS would magically stop just because they changed hosts!
[Insert bad cops-and-mobster-firefight analogy here.]
Regardless of who was running the DDoS, Wikileaks was surely aware that the DDoS would continue against whatever service provider they chose to use. It was Wikileaks' deliberate decision that put Amazon's servers in the path of the ongoing attack, regardless of where the attack originated. It's absurd to pretend otherwise.
Why would they need a three-letter-agency's say-so to boot someone off their service, when the customer is already clearly violating the terms of service?
The problem is, "where products or services are rendered" gets really, *really* fuzzy with online services.
Suppose you sign up for Amazon S3, and stash your blog's pictures on it. Where are the services being rendered? At the address on your Amazon account? At the data center that handled your session when you signed up for service? At the address of the location from which you uploaded the pictures? At the addresses of the people who look at your blog? At the addresses of the data centers from which S3 serves your pictures? At the address of every network node that your traffic passes through? Is service rendered along the entire network path between the servers and you and your users?
It's not just digital services that are problematic, it's online retail service too. Suppose you order a book from Amazon. Is service rendered at your house? At Amazon's data center? What if multiple geographically distinct servers handle your order at various points? Or maybe the service is rendered at each warehouse that boxes up and sends your book? What if you order multiple books, and each comes from a geographically distinct warehouse? What if you're ordering a gift and having it mailed to someone in another state, or another country?
I won't venture any answers, because I don't have them, but the problem is much more complex than you realize.
ISPs will just charge extra for a "real" IP address. (Basically the same thing they do now if you want more than however many come with your base service.)
I stopped trusting Slashdot for pretty much any remotely important information when I realized that the editors don't even fact-check the headlines, let alone the summaries. Anyone who trusts something posted on Slashdot without reading the source article deserves the misinformation they're probably getting.
About three years ago Dell replaced a laptop for me. The replacement was sent via DHL, and it arrived quickly and unharmed. The return shipping label was also for DHL, and the driver arrived on time for the scheduled pickup. As far as I recall that's the only time I've used DHL, but it was certainly painless.
I've had pretty good luck having USPS-mailed packages arrive fairly quickly, especially considering those packages are usually free shipping from Amazon.
On the other hand, the one time I paid extra to have a giant red "NON-MACHINABLE" stamp put on my envelope, it was returned to me a few days later (contents intact, fortunately) torn in half, in a plastic cover labelled "We Care". I even took a picture for posterity (addresses censored for obvious reasons). I made them send it again for free; as far as I'm aware, it arrived without incident.
I question several of the ways things are done in C/C++. That doesn't mean I can't like the languages, nor does not mentioning those things here mean I'm not allowed to question some of the things Objective-C does.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, they have these things called "call waiting queues". When a lot of people dial the same number at the same time, more than one person can be connected. This is how you can call your cable company's customer service line at the same time as the other 100,000 dissatisfied customers without getting a busy signal.
Obviously the same can be done with fax numbers, especially if you do not have the bottleneck of a physical machine printing out pages as you receive them.
These large companies probably don't even have real fax machines. All a black-page fax would do is put a black-page PDF in some inbox or file share somewhere.
I find it amusing that companies are willing to accept blurry, low-quality, could-have-been-signed-by-Bigfoot black-and-white signatures delivered by fax, but not high-resolution color scans delivered by e-mail...
I am also amused that "Anonymous" thinks DDoS'ing a fax number will make companies listen to them.
Fix it? It's not broken. Ctrl+C has a specific meaning. Ctrl+V has a specific meaning. Linux terminals don't treat them as "copy" and "paste", but that does not mean they are broken. Terminals have always used Ctrl+C to interrupt running programs; what would be the point of changing it to mean "copy" now?
Agreed. All editors should provide that option.
If you're using a Linux terminal (or an ssh session in PuTTY or something), Ctrl+V doesn't paste (for the same reason that Ctrl+C does not copy), but Shift+Insert does.
Shift+Insert is sometimes easier than Ctrl+V for pasting stuff, but I can't think of any other reason I use the key.
I don't know about porting to a new carrier, but AT&T's service is nationwide, and they don't care if your area code matches your billing address once you're signed up. My cell number has a Utah area code, and I live in Washington. I've upgraded my phone twice (with contract renewal) twice since I moved to Washington, the first of which I did while on vacation back in Utah (with my billing address long switched to Washington).
The only annoyance is that Washington locals won't want to call me from their land lines because it's long distance, but most everyone has a cell phone with free nationwide long distance nowadays.
Get a Dropbox account or one of the myriad other services. Free, no waiting, you can publish a file on the web for nothing and I'm still not waiting 60 seconds to download one file.
Perhaps you should suggest this to your friends, rather than complaining about how much it annoys you when they don't.
Your in the digital age now, figure some shit out.
You know, that attitude is why Linux hasn't taken off for consumers. (And before people start flaming me, I use Linux frequently myself and like it.) You're just making it worse. People see that attitude and decide that if you're going to be a jerk about your opinions, they're not going to listen to you. If you want people to change their habits, you are doing exactly the wrong thing.
You might like them, but your a fool.
Where did I indicate that I like these services? I specifically pointed out that I don't use them. Obviously, because I use alternatives, I am well aware that alternatives are available. I only said that I wouldn't get mad if my friends used these services once in a while. If it became so frequent that I felt the need to complain about it on Slashdot, I would instead suggest a better solution directly to them.
Maybe you should try that. It is infinitely more likely to improve the situation than a complaint to strangers on Slashdot.
Right, because running a webserver is cheaper than waiting 60 seconds to download a file. *eye roll*
Most people don't *have* a webserver, and wouldn't know how to get one, and wouldn't know how to run it if they had one, and wouldn't want one even if they did know all that. To most people, it's not worth $X/month plus maintenance and administration overhead just to save three of their friends a 60 second wait. (Hint: maintenance time could easily surpass the total wait time across all your friends from sharing sites like this.)
(For the record I put things either on my webserver or on Amazon S3, but I would not expect any of my friends to do the same unless they already have their own webserver.)
And at that point, barring breaking the law in a country where Amazon does business, it shouldn't matter to them.
You say that (emphasis added), and then:
It's more likely this was pressure from government agencies, and given the amount of infrastructure Amazon has on U.S. soil, it's hard to fault them.
So even though Wikileaks was breaking US law, and was violating Amazon's ToS, you still think it's more likely that Amazon would have ignored its own ToS unless the government intervened?
The terms of service for using Amazon Web Services are pretty broad (which of course is standard CYA for any company hosting third-party content). When terminate-able offenses include "offensive material", you can be sure that "illegally obtained classified material" violates the ToS, regardless of the moral [in]correctness of publishing that information.
(Disclaimer: I'm just speculating here. I do work for Amazon, but I had no knowledge of any of this until Ars Technica's articles on the subject, I have no special knowledge of the situation beyond what is publicly available, and my comments should not be construed as Amazon's official position on anything.)
EC2 is self-service, I highly doubt there was any non-automated communication at all (at least, before the fact).
Why on earth would Amazon offer protection from DDoS in their terms of service? Few companies are stupid enough to offer an SLA dependent on factors outside their control. I can't find evidence that Amazon offers this under any circumstance, let alone "usually". What gave you that idea?
I would think Amazon terminated Wikileaks' service not because of the DDoS, but because Wikileaks violated the Terms of Service. Others have quoted the potentially relevant sections, so I won't repeat them here, but they're not hard to find.
Besides, you're billed by AWS once a month, and Wikileaks was only running on EC2 for a day or two, so most probably billing was not even a factor.
1) Wikileaks made Amazon servers a target for DDOS
No, that was the US Government.
How, exactly, did the US government make Amazon's servers a target for attack? Even assuming for the sake of argument that the US government was behind the DDoS, Amazon's servers weren't involved in any way until Wikileaks deliberately decided to move to Amazon's services, knowing the DDoS would continue against the new servers. Surely they were not so naive that they believed the DDoS would magically stop just because they changed hosts!
[Insert bad cops-and-mobster-firefight analogy here.]
Regardless of who was running the DDoS, Wikileaks was surely aware that the DDoS would continue against whatever service provider they chose to use. It was Wikileaks' deliberate decision that put Amazon's servers in the path of the ongoing attack, regardless of where the attack originated. It's absurd to pretend otherwise.
Why would they need a three-letter-agency's say-so to boot someone off their service, when the customer is already clearly violating the terms of service?
The problem is, "where products or services are rendered" gets really, *really* fuzzy with online services.
Suppose you sign up for Amazon S3, and stash your blog's pictures on it. Where are the services being rendered? At the address on your Amazon account? At the data center that handled your session when you signed up for service? At the address of the location from which you uploaded the pictures? At the addresses of the people who look at your blog? At the addresses of the data centers from which S3 serves your pictures? At the address of every network node that your traffic passes through? Is service rendered along the entire network path between the servers and you and your users?
It's not just digital services that are problematic, it's online retail service too. Suppose you order a book from Amazon. Is service rendered at your house? At Amazon's data center? What if multiple geographically distinct servers handle your order at various points? Or maybe the service is rendered at each warehouse that boxes up and sends your book? What if you order multiple books, and each comes from a geographically distinct warehouse? What if you're ordering a gift and having it mailed to someone in another state, or another country?
I won't venture any answers, because I don't have them, but the problem is much more complex than you realize.
I'm half sure I'm contractually prohibited from saying this, but I will tell you that I know for a fact that we don't do that.
ISPs will just charge extra for a "real" IP address. (Basically the same thing they do now if you want more than however many come with your base service.)
Slashdot is supposed to be "stuff that matters."
I stopped trusting Slashdot for pretty much any remotely important information when I realized that the editors don't even fact-check the headlines, let alone the summaries. Anyone who trusts something posted on Slashdot without reading the source article deserves the misinformation they're probably getting.
About three years ago Dell replaced a laptop for me. The replacement was sent via DHL, and it arrived quickly and unharmed. The return shipping label was also for DHL, and the driver arrived on time for the scheduled pickup. As far as I recall that's the only time I've used DHL, but it was certainly painless.
USPS works but is slow as molasses.
I've had pretty good luck having USPS-mailed packages arrive fairly quickly, especially considering those packages are usually free shipping from Amazon.
On the other hand, the one time I paid extra to have a giant red "NON-MACHINABLE" stamp put on my envelope, it was returned to me a few days later (contents intact, fortunately) torn in half, in a plastic cover labelled "We Care". I even took a picture for posterity (addresses censored for obvious reasons). I made them send it again for free; as far as I'm aware, it arrived without incident.
38MB/s is still a lot faster than most fiber-to-the-home installations, to say nothing of Comcast's standard offering...
I question several of the ways things are done in C/C++. That doesn't mean I can't like the languages, nor does not mentioning those things here mean I'm not allowed to question some of the things Objective-C does.
It's clearer than "+".