I bought ten euros worth of credit with them to call Costa Rica from the USA, only to find out that all my calls are failing. I'd be more specific about what was happening except that's all the error message says: "Call failed" before the window disappears. I called tech support and they gave me some line about the dynamic nature of the Internet and the unreliability of overseas phone networks. I'm not sure exactly what to do with my ten euros of credit now.
In fact, Shaich considers free Wi-Fi to be such an essential marketing tool that he dismisses any discussion of ROI. "What is the ROI on a bathroom?" asked Shaich, pointing out that the day of pay restrooms in restaurants has long since passed.
Perhaps just amend the note on the tip jar: "For excellent service AND wireless access!"
I called them to get service to my house two months ago and they never returned any of my calls. I think that's more likely to hurt their business than a wireless harbor.
I'll be operating from K2VOA in Piscataway, NJ (usually on 20 meter phone) all weekend. If you happen to make a contact with us, ask if KC2AEI is the operator.
If you think the law is badly written or not suitable to society any more your responsibility as a juror (and peer to the defendant) is to not even let it get to the penalty phase.
Earthlink Billing Practices
on
Disconnecting
·
· Score: 2
On August 7, 2001 I moved from my apartment to a new place and new service provider. During this time, my previous provider (CapuNet) had been closing off their residental service and sending its customer base to Earthlink. I had called in late July 2001 and received a cancellation number from CapuNet technical support that my line would be shut down on August 7, 2001 and billing would stop.
On September 13, 2001 I receved a credit card statement from WWW*EARTHLINK.NET posted to my card (that I never directly provided to Earthlink) for $62.27 from 8/29/01. Despite numerous calls every month to contest the charges and assurances from Earthlink billing department that my account had been disabled (every time!) these charges continued until December 11, 2001!
Intelligent citizens, industry professionals and academics will read, understand, and probably agree with this article.
This is also the sort of writing that could really color the public debate if average Joe Citizen had any reason to value the opinion of Bruce Perens over Craig Mundie.
But why should they?
What does the average person know about Perens? What do they know about the Open Source Initiative? Correct me if I'm wrong, but probably very little. What does the average person know about MicroSoft? That they build the software that runs on every computer that they sit behind every day.
There's a bit of a credibility gap.
Craig Mundie could conceivably be any employee with the MicroSoft backing, and he would get press and general public recognition that Perens doesn't.
Pro-Open Source writers are often honest and, while not unbiased or impartial, are at least driven more by a cooperative and edifying spirit than a monopolistic one. If the general public had more reason to trust them, the articles they write would more effectively influence public opinion.
Think about how can this community help people like Perens while he's busy trying to help us.
I've banned what I believe is the entire nation of Saudi Arabia from my web site for quite some time due to some past CGI script abuses. I'd rather just ban the host or hosts they are coming from, but since the national firewall/proxy server doesn't disclose that information, I have to just deny all requests from.isu.net.sa and isu.net.sa.
A whole kingdom has to suffer for the stupid actions of one asshole. Seems a little mean, but also strangely fitting. I doubt I'm the only one doing something like this, too.
They're also known as communes. Heck, voluntary cooperation manifests itself in lots of aspects of any human society; corporations, credit unions, militias, (dare I say it?) governments, churches, universities . . . the list goes on for a while.
It's a shame to see MAPS and collective protection schemes dumped into this list of "bad things." Like most geeks, I don't like everything that MAPS does and I'll admit that I've even been on the wrong side of the ORBS cluestick in the past. However, I believe the concept of collective protection is a good one. If there's a problem with ISPs using systems like that to block legitimate mail, then customers who want to receive said mail won't be with them for long. There are natural market pressures at work to provide what the most important people (the end users like our friends and family) want.
Like most of you, I have a pretty potent procmail script, but I have to say I've probably invested an absurdly significant amount of time in my labor of love getting it just right. If I were less of a geek, I might tend towards finding a group of like-minded mail readers and collecting our resources together. If evantually our creation became a widely recognized and used method of mail filtering, great! Then that's the choice of every sysadmin and every participant (by the merits that they all pay his/her salary) to be behind that shield. Nobody else has the right to tell me I have to accept socket connections from them if I don't want to.
There will be a meeting the evening of Saturday, September 15, 2001 in the Baltimore/Washington area to discuss the implications of the recent tragedy as it affects our civil and privacy rights, specifically impending legislation against unbreakable encryption.
Dear Representative Grucci
on
Congress@Work
·
· Score: 5
The Honorable Felix J. Grucci, Jr.
1505 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
May 16, 2001
Representative Grucci,
On May 16, 2001, the Newsbytes section of the Washington Post quoted you as saying that militant environmental groups "use privacy
sites on the Internet to anonymously contact one another and recruit our children. Then, using the environment or other worthwhile causes, they
manipulate juveniles into committing crimes to further their own cause."
I'm concerned about the nature of such accusations, and by your characterization of these privacy sites as having no fundamental purpose beyond the commission of crimes. I hope you haven't forgotten that the right to anonymous and private speech is fundamental to the preservation of liberty and safety against persecution, both from government and from
other citizens.
Perhaps privacy makes you feel uncomfortable. Are you concerned that these privacy sites are enabling countless whistle-blowers in both
government and industry to bring corruption and other untoward activities to light? Would you rather have everyone's opinions forced out in the
open so we can single out groups like radical environmentalists and persecute them "for the children?"
You should not be concerned about your citizens having their right to privacy and anonymity, unless perhaps you have something to
hide.
I am fundamentally opposed to your bill, H.R. 1846. As a substitute for parental supervision, it falls horribly short. As a step back towards an era of terrified McCarthyism, however, it does a wonderful job. Consider the implications your bill would have on the American people before continuing with this effort. Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Rob Carlson
I'd like to send a copy of this letter to local newspapers in his district. If you know them please e-mail me.
I just love the fact that the ships in the new Trade Wars game (in particular this picture) all seem to be painted liberally in shades of LIGHTCYAN, LIGHTBLUE, LIGHTRED, LIGHTGRAY and DARKGRAY, just like the original ships. I get the feeling I'll be having flashbacks the entire time I play this game once it comes out.
Yes, I admit it. Trade Wars cost me as many grade points in high school as Civ did in college.
Is this better or worse than having more specific information about a particular school being made available on demand through the Freedom of Information Act, as we've seen before?
Since these are largely public-funded organizations that own and pay for these filters, can the filtering company be hit with a FOIA request to disclose that information for a specific school or user? After all, taxpayer dollars made that data collection possible! We should have access to it.
If the answer is yes, then we have to consider the dangers of that information being collected in the first place,
If the answer is no, what would stop government organizations (like schools) from outsourcing all of their IT needs, so that they could protect that data against public inspection?
Ten bucks says we've just seen the subject of JonKatz's next book
. . . and perhaps even a majority of the content between the covers.
--
Re:How about faking a super-secret miliary project
on
The Honeypot Project
·
· Score: 2
Yeah, I know, I was shooting for maybe a (+1, Funny) on that post, but it looks like most people are missing the joke. It's basically exactly what Cliff Stoll did in his book back then. The link on "anyone" goes to his homepage.
Ah, you young Slashdotters disappoint me. Such quality reading material out there that you seem to have missed . . .:-)
--
How about faking a super-secret miliary project?
on
The Honeypot Project
·
· Score: 2
I have this great idea for a honeypot, although it might seem a little futuristic.
Picture this: we create a series of directories that contain apparently classified military information. We'll call it something obscure, some sort of acronymn, like SDINet, for example . . . I bet that would keep a dedicated hacker occupied for hours, especially if you mixed in some binary files so they had to check each one before trying to view it on the server.
I know it seems bizzare, but I think it actually might work! And the best part is I don't think anyone has ever come up with anything like this before!
Slashdot Mirror
I bought ten euros worth of credit with them to call Costa Rica from the USA, only to find out that all my calls are failing. I'd be more specific about what was happening except that's all the error message says: "Call failed" before the window disappears. I called tech support and they gave me some line about the dynamic nature of the Internet and the unreliability of overseas phone networks. I'm not sure exactly what to do with my ten euros of credit now.
I agree completely! Remember the ComputerWorld article about wireless access at Panera Bread restaurants?
Perhaps just amend the note on the tip jar: "For excellent service AND wireless access!"
I'm in the process of doing the exact same thing. They want me to remember a stupid secret question/answer that seemed obvious in 1999....
I called them to get service to my house two months ago and they never returned any of my calls. I think that's more likely to hurt their business than a wireless harbor.
I'll be operating from K2VOA in Piscataway, NJ (usually on 20 meter phone) all weekend. If you happen to make a contact with us, ask if KC2AEI is the operator.
In my experience, Speakeasy will reverse your IPs if you're on a Speakeasy POP and you ask them.
I'd still have to vote according to what the law says, not what it means
Well, the law should just be common sense written down.
No matter what the judge says, you only have to vote your conscience.
If you think the law is badly written or not suitable to society any more your responsibility as a juror (and peer to the defendant) is to not even let it get to the penalty phase.
This filter does well
Until spammers turn critic
Hot Sluts and Fair Use
On August 7, 2001 I moved from my apartment to a new place and new service provider. During this time, my previous provider (CapuNet) had been closing off their residental service and sending its customer base to Earthlink. I had called in late July 2001 and received a cancellation number from CapuNet technical support that my line would be shut down on August 7, 2001 and billing would stop.
On September 13, 2001 I receved a credit card statement from WWW*EARTHLINK.NET posted to my card (that I never directly provided to Earthlink) for $62.27 from 8/29/01. Despite numerous calls every month to contest the charges and assurances from Earthlink billing department that my account had been disabled (every time!) these charges continued until December 11, 2001!
You can read the full story here: Earthlink Billing Practices.
God forbid the Cyber-Terrorists should get their hands on this! Good thing we have the far-reaching grasp of the Patriot Act and the new Cyberterrorism Act ready to defend us.
.
I think . .
Intelligent citizens, industry professionals and academics will read, understand, and probably agree with this article.
This is also the sort of writing that could really color the public debate if average Joe Citizen had any reason to value the opinion of Bruce Perens over Craig Mundie.
But why should they?
What does the average person know about Perens? What do they know about the Open Source Initiative? Correct me if I'm wrong, but probably very little. What does the average person know about MicroSoft? That they build the software that runs on every computer that they sit behind every day.
There's a bit of a credibility gap.
Craig Mundie could conceivably be any employee with the MicroSoft backing, and he would get press and general public recognition that Perens doesn't.
Pro-Open Source writers are often honest and, while not unbiased or impartial, are at least driven more by a cooperative and edifying spirit than a monopolistic one. If the general public had more reason to trust them, the articles they write would more effectively influence public opinion.
Think about how can this community help people like Perens while he's busy trying to help us.
I've banned what I believe is the entire nation of Saudi Arabia from my web site for quite some time due to some past CGI script abuses. I'd rather just ban the host or hosts they are coming from, but since the national firewall/proxy server doesn't disclose that information, I have to just deny all requests from .isu.net.sa and isu.net.sa.
A whole kingdom has to suffer for the stupid actions of one asshole. Seems a little mean, but also strangely fitting. I doubt I'm the only one doing something like this, too.
They're generally referred to as "mob justice".
They're also known as communes. Heck, voluntary cooperation manifests itself in lots of aspects of any human society; corporations, credit unions, militias, (dare I say it?) governments, churches, universities . . . the list goes on for a while.
It's a shame to see MAPS and collective protection schemes dumped into this list of "bad things." Like most geeks, I don't like everything that MAPS does and I'll admit that I've even been on the wrong side of the ORBS cluestick in the past. However, I believe the concept of collective protection is a good one. If there's a problem with ISPs using systems like that to block legitimate mail, then customers who want to receive said mail won't be with them for long. There are natural market pressures at work to provide what the most important people (the end users like our friends and family) want.
Like most of you, I have a pretty potent procmail script, but I have to say I've probably invested an absurdly significant amount of time in my labor of love getting it just right. If I were less of a geek, I might tend towards finding a group of like-minded mail readers and collecting our resources together. If evantually our creation became a widely recognized and used method of mail filtering, great! Then that's the choice of every sysadmin and every participant (by the merits that they all pay his/her salary) to be behind that shield. Nobody else has the right to tell me I have to accept socket connections from them if I don't want to.
There will be a meeting the evening of Saturday, September 15, 2001 in the Baltimore/Washington area to discuss the implications of the recent tragedy as it affects our civil and privacy rights, specifically impending legislation against unbreakable encryption.
For more information please see my article, "Post-WTC Privacy Rights Discussions in Baltimore/DC" on cluebot.com or contact me via e-mail with any questions.
The Honorable Felix J. Grucci, Jr.
1505 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
May 16, 2001
Representative Grucci,
On May 16, 2001, the Newsbytes section of the Washington Post quoted you as saying that militant environmental groups "use privacy sites on the Internet to anonymously contact one another and recruit our children. Then, using the environment or other worthwhile causes, they manipulate juveniles into committing crimes to further their own cause."
I'm concerned about the nature of such accusations, and by your characterization of these privacy sites as having no fundamental purpose beyond the commission of crimes. I hope you haven't forgotten that the right to anonymous and private speech is fundamental to the preservation of liberty and safety against persecution, both from government and from other citizens.
Perhaps privacy makes you feel uncomfortable. Are you concerned that these privacy sites are enabling countless whistle-blowers in both government and industry to bring corruption and other untoward activities to light? Would you rather have everyone's opinions forced out in the open so we can single out groups like radical environmentalists and persecute them "for the children?"
You should not be concerned about your citizens having their right to privacy and anonymity, unless perhaps you have something to hide.
I am fundamentally opposed to your bill, H.R. 1846. As a substitute for parental supervision, it falls horribly short. As a step back towards an era of terrified McCarthyism, however, it does a wonderful job. Consider the implications your bill would have on the American people before continuing with this effort. Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Rob Carlson
I'd like to send a copy of this letter to local newspapers in his district. If you know them please e-mail me.
A copy of this message is available on my web page.
--
Finally, a use for a new ICANN top-level:
sucks.coop
--
Yes, I admit it. Trade Wars cost me as many grade points in high school as Civ did in college.
Alt-027[0;1;44m forever!
--
Is this better or worse than having more specific information about a particular school being made available on demand through the Freedom of Information Act, as we've seen before?
Since these are largely public-funded organizations that own and pay for these filters, can the filtering company be hit with a FOIA request to disclose that information for a specific school or user? After all, taxpayer dollars made that data collection possible! We should have access to it.
If the answer is yes, then we have to consider the dangers of that information being collected in the first place,
If the answer is no, what would stop government organizations (like schools) from outsourcing all of their IT needs, so that they could protect that data against public inspection?
Tired of supermarkets following your every move? Check out my Giant BonusCard Swap Meet.
--
--
Coming soon!
Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter's Absolutely Excellent Adventures ... IN THE MATRIX!
--
so much for freedom of speech and freedom to choose.
Such as the freedom not to buy it in the first place? (checks) No, you've still got that. Vote with your wallet.
--
Ten bucks says we've just seen the subject of JonKatz's next book
. . . and perhaps even a majority of the content between the covers.
--
Yeah, I know, I was shooting for maybe a (+1, Funny) on that post, but it looks like most people are missing the joke. It's basically exactly what Cliff Stoll did in his book back then. The link on "anyone" goes to his homepage.
Ah, you young Slashdotters disappoint me. Such quality reading material out there that you seem to have missed . . . :-)
--
I have this great idea for a honeypot, although it might seem a little futuristic.
Picture this: we create a series of directories that contain apparently classified military information. We'll call it something obscure, some sort of acronymn, like SDINet, for example . . . I bet that would keep a dedicated hacker occupied for hours, especially if you mixed in some binary files so they had to check each one before trying to view it on the server.
I know it seems bizzare, but I think it actually might work! And the best part is I don't think anyone has ever come up with anything like this before!
Let me know if you think it would work?
--