Shortly after we got our first T1 connection a few years back, we saw a bunch of strange computers show up in our network neighbourhood, This puzzled me, so I clicked on one of the computers and found out that it had a bunch of shares available. Sure enough, the shares were wide open. I didn't quite no how to respond, so I waited a day to see if the problem went away. It didn't.
I figured that if I could see the shares other people could to, so I opened a share and started looking for a document name that might give me a clue as to who was unwittingly making all this stuff available. I found a document called "Letterhead" or something like that, opened it up, and found a company name and number. I then called the company and told them what I had found.
They too had just gotten a connection, and the consultant that was in charge of configuring the firewall had not done things very effectively. The lady I spoke with was profusely thankful, and the problem was remedied in short order.
However, after reading this article, I'd probably just add some rules to my own firewall to stop their packets and leave it alone.
OK, so maybe I'm a completely naive, but I fail to see how this is an invasion of privacy...
You visit their casino, spend money on their games, eat in their restaurants and stay in their hotel rooms.
Why shouldn't they track that information? You chose to go and do the things you did on their property.
Now, if they were sharing that information with others with whom you had not chosen to do business, then that would be a problem, but the article clearly states that they aren't doing that.
Stand Fast,
Re:At least people notice terrorism.
on
Eco-Terrorism
·
· Score: 1
Global warming is the most significant threat the human race has ever encountered...
One half degree in the last hundred years is significant? Especially when the last hundred years were cooler than other hundred year periods in earth history?
I guess I need to run out and by some of that Waterfront Property in Arizona
My father was in London during the Blitz, and was shot at by the Japanese in India and Burma.
That said, he will be the first to admit that many of the Germans were normal people caught up in a war, just on the wrong side.
I recently watched "The Longest Day" with my seven year old. He asked me who the bad guys were. I tried as best to explain that the bad guys were the Nazis, not the Wermacht or the Luftwaffe.
It depends on how you look at the situation. I needed IM for my company. However, I didn't want all our IM traffic going through someone elses network. Heck, I didn't even want it leaving our network. We put up a Jabber server, installed Gabber everywhere (BTW: the newest Gabber is leaps and bounds beyond any of the previous versions) and now we can IM sensitive material and not worry about who might see it. Add to that that we are starting to implement the GPG encryption on the clients and we feel fairly secure.
Jabber's gateway tools will allow us to eventually connect to both ICQ and AIM servers, so I believe we will get the best of both worlds.
The biggest problem with Jabber acceptance is that it appears most people are unaware that they can setup their own servers for their own purposes.
I tend to agree
that with everything that you said. Kids can be vicious, mean
and nasty, but what's new? I'm 37 and I put up with it when I
was in school. I was taunted because I was English in an
American school. I was taunted because I was tall gangly and
uncoordinated. I was taunted because other kids didn't like the
colour of my house (It was pink, it was hideous, but was it
worth abuse?).
I never killed myself, nor anyone else. That didn't happen,
because of three things. My parents, while often clueless, were
involved in my life, I had few friends, but those I had were of
extraordinary quality, and I had a sense of right and wrong.
Regardless of how you define moral values (Judaeo/Christian,
Muslim, Buddhist, or any sense of absolute right and wrong).
They all have a positive impact. Unfortunately it is not
acceptable to talk about right and wrong. What's right and
what's wrong is determined by the situation. This leads to kids
adrift attempting to make decisions they shouldn't have to
make. Many of these decisions should not be difficult, they
should be instinctive, and the resulting decision should
be the correct decision.
I'm saddened by the abuse that kids do to other kids. I can't
believe that 30 years after I started suffering that abuse it
is still acceptible to school administrations. However, saying
that kids cause violence is equally as silly as saying violent
video games cause violence.
Long ago when I first graduated from college I worked for an Alpha Micro dealer. Alpha Micros were really cool little mini-computers that had a couple of unique qualities. One was that all software was distributed on VHS video tape. The second was that each Alpha motherboard had a unique ID chip. Any time new software was installed, we ran a programme that gave us a hash, called the software provider, read them the hash, and they gave us an unlocking code. This was an interesting copy protection system and worked quite well until one of the security chips went bad. Then, regardless of how many backups were available, it meant hours of phone calls to software providers to get new unlocking codes.
So, I'm not sure how MS is going to do their coding system, but I can guarantee that it will cause IT support people no end of headaches.
Fully agreed, what will become of all the.org open source projects that are not necessarily registered non-profit. There's also a different problem. What do for profits who sponsor Open Source projects do? Does this mean all Open Source projects are going to have to go to.com?
To say that crashing machines and daily reboots are such a horrible problem, caused by Microsoft, is just a plain lie - or maybe you just haven't used anything Microsoft has made in the past couple of years. Maybe you should try so that you know what you're talking about.
While I agree that Win2K and NTWS are significantly more acceptable products, they are relatively recent additions to Microsoft's lineup. Also, until very recently, Microsoft did not promote NT/Win2K as an office desktop environment. Now that they are promoting Win2K on the desktop, how are they doing it? By using their own shoddy OS sitting at a BSOD.
I personally believe that the current Microsoft advertising campaign takes unmitigated gall. Why didn't they tell me five years ago that Win95 was a pile of crap instead of waiting until they had something that behaved reasonably to sell? They could have saved me and millions of others lots of grief and lost productivity.
I have always wanted to be creative. When I was growing up I wanted to draw or paint in the worst way. Unfortunately, I couldn't draw worth a darn. In high school I majored in drafting, and did OK there.
It was in high school that I had my first experiences with a computer. I saw that computer at the end of a 300 baud modem, I learned BASIC. I found that I could create!
As my education progressed, I discovered that the most the really good coders viewed themselves as artists more than engineers.
Programming is an art form with many different mediums. I wish more people understood that.
I could take you to several reputable law firms around this city that are still using WordPerfect v5.1 for DOS. The tool meets their needs and they see no need to change.
Not to nitpick back, but I do believe that you would find otherwise. While not being able to cite statistics for you, a brief Google search on "Small Business Percentage of US economy" turned up several interesting links.
Small business is defined as a company with fewer than 500 employees.
But its not really an important issue. The important issue is that people are tired of the upgrade bandwagon and want a way off.
Most of my clients are working with older hardware. They have no desire to upgrade, and only do so when forced. I think you will find that response from many small businesses, and small businesses make up the bulk of the US economy.
People want stuff that works. If a P166 w/32Mb RAM works, then why change?
As a nerd, I have a hard time with that concept, and I have a fairly kickin' machine, but as a small business owner I completely understand it!
Any technology that will allow users to make better use of their existing equipment will win. Forcing users to upgrade every couple of years just pisses them off.
When I first got out of school I worked for a company that sold and wrote code for Alpha Micro computers. At that time, all Alpha's used VHS tapes for both backup and software distribution. It was built right into the system.
I always thought it was pretty cool how well it worked
Palm Synchronization is very important to a Palm enabled work force.
Other useful items would include, not just free/busy search, but the ability to see multiple calendars side-by-side. This is really useful for scheduling service work for customers as you can see at a glance how quickly you might be able to get somebody on site.
For places such as law firms, date math and linked entries are a requirement. They need to be able to do things like schedule dates 30/45/60/90 days from today (either including or excluding weekends and holidays). They also need to link several dates together, so if some base date changes all linked dates change also.
I used to be one of those folk who drove with a cell phone pressed to my ear at all times.
Then I started riding a motorcycle. Aside from the fact that it is difficult to talk on a cell phone while riding, my cell phone usage while driving my car significantly dropped. You see while riding a motorcycle you are much more aware of what is going on, and quite frankly watching many people talk and drive at the same time scared the heck out of me, and I began to wonder if I was like that.
As far as I'm concerned headset usage should be mandated for cellular users in a car.
After reading the questions, I'd be snippy too. While I understand the need for answers to the questions, it seemed that many of them were quite adversarial, and that the review team's integrity was being called into question pre-review.
We need to give these people the benefit of the doubt until the review comes out, then make judgements about what is said.
Thanks for pointing out this article, much appreciated.
That said, I do believe that my proposal is more extreme than his. Mine actually hits the company at the bottom line by forcing them to outlay cash while his only prevents revenue from coming in.
(Actually, doesn't destroying them violate the new EULA?)
you may not decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, modify, rent, lease, loan, sublicense,
distribute or create derivative works based upon the:CRQ software or:CueCat reader in whole or
part or transmit the:CRQ software over a network or from one computer to another. The:CueCat
reader is only on loan to you from Digital:Convergence and may be recalled at any time. Without
limiting the foregoing, your possession or control of the:CueCat reader does not transfer any right,
title or interest to you in the:CueCat reader. Except as expressly permitted in this License, you may
not reverse engineer, disassemble, modify, rent, lease, loan, sublicense, or distribute the:CueCat
reader.
Of course, the chances of me ever seeing a dime from DC are slim-to-none, and the chances of people actually destroying those little things are much higher.
I am probably short sighted, but I have no real use for a barcode scanner. I got my CueCat in the mail, so I went to the Digital Convergence Contact site, entered my information, and politely told them that I didn't agree with their EULA, and asked them to provide me with a shipping container and postage so I could return the scanner to them...
I don't personally have DSL, but I have many clients that do.
My experience with both US West (now Qwest) and GTE here in Oregon is that it is a huge pain to get installed and configured correctly (plus Qwest now doesn't provide static IPs by default and you have to special order them). However, in general once it is up and running there is very little down time. I did have one GTE customer who lost their connection for two weeks, but that was ISP error, not GTE error.
I've seen a lot of comments about Mindstorms, and that is truly excellent, however, a new tool that I have discovered (with which I plan to start teaching my six-year-old programming) is a game from Cognitoy called Mind Rover.
It has gotten excellent reviews in the game press, but hardly anyone has ever heard of it. Its premise is simple, accept a challenge and then build a rover to solve the challenge. Rover's are created from various kinds of chassis with various kinds of components--such as radars, bump sensors, etc. When you have picked all your pieces you wire them together using graphical programming environment (somewhat like Lab View). Then you test your rover to see if it is up to the challenge presented.
After reading Jon's comments, and seeing the address to which I could address comments, I sent the following message to the WAVE folk.
Hi,
First, I want to thank you very much for taking the time to speak with Mr. Katz, while I don't know what impact the conversation had on your plans, I do appreciate the fact that you were willing to chat with him about it.
Second, I have to tell you that I find your project to be absolutely terrifying. As a geek kid, who twenty years ago would have fit any profile as a "potential problem," who is now raising a geek kid (he's six, moody, loves computers, is far smarter than most kids his age), I have to say that my greatest desire would for him *not* to have to go through the same things I went through growing up.
Unfortunately, projects such as WAVE tend to enhance the stereotype, not discourage it.
I also have a few questions based on what I have read about WAVE.
How will WAVE deal with my rights as a parent?
Should someone with an axe to grind report my son on your site, how will *I* be informed?
What recourse will a parent have should they feel that there child has been wrongly reported?
Will it be up to me as parent to prove my child innocent of any charges leveled against him?
I imagine that you will be buried in e-mail, but I do look forward to a response to the above questions.
I certainly hope that they will reply, as I feel that they are important questions.
Slashdot Mirror
Shortly after we got our first T1 connection a few years back, we saw a bunch of strange computers show up in our network neighbourhood, This puzzled me, so I clicked on one of the computers and found out that it had a bunch of shares available. Sure enough, the shares were wide open. I didn't quite no how to respond, so I waited a day to see if the problem went away. It didn't.
I figured that if I could see the shares other people could to, so I opened a share and started looking for a document name that might give me a clue as to who was unwittingly making all this stuff available. I found a document called "Letterhead" or something like that, opened it up, and found a company name and number. I then called the company and told them what I had found.
They too had just gotten a connection, and the consultant that was in charge of configuring the firewall had not done things very effectively. The lady I spoke with was profusely thankful, and the problem was remedied in short order.
However, after reading this article, I'd probably just add some rules to my own firewall to stop their packets and leave it alone.
How much effort does it take to get the headlines spelled correctly.
OK, so maybe I'm a completely naive, but I fail to see how this is an invasion of privacy...
You visit their casino, spend money on their games, eat in their restaurants and stay in their hotel rooms.
Why shouldn't they track that information? You chose to go and do the things you did on their property.
Now, if they were sharing that information with others with whom you had not chosen to do business, then that would be a problem, but the article clearly states that they aren't doing that.
Stand Fast,
Global warming is the most significant threat the human race has ever encountered...
One half degree in the last hundred years is significant? Especially when the last hundred years were cooler than other hundred year periods in earth history?
I guess I need to run out and by some of that Waterfront Property in Arizona
Stand Fast,
My father was in London during the Blitz, and was shot at by the Japanese in India and Burma.
That said, he will be the first to admit that many of the Germans were normal people caught up in a war, just on the wrong side.
I recently watched "The Longest Day" with my seven year old. He asked me who the bad guys were. I tried as best to explain that the bad guys were the Nazis, not the Wermacht or the Luftwaffe.
Stand Fast,
Stand Fast,
It depends on how you look at the situation. I needed IM for my company. However, I didn't want all our IM traffic going through someone elses network. Heck, I didn't even want it leaving our network. We put up a Jabber server, installed Gabber everywhere (BTW: the newest Gabber is leaps and bounds beyond any of the previous versions) and now we can IM sensitive material and not worry about who might see it. Add to that that we are starting to implement the GPG encryption on the clients and we feel fairly secure.
Jabber's gateway tools will allow us to eventually connect to both ICQ and AIM servers, so I believe we will get the best of both worlds.
The biggest problem with Jabber acceptance is that it appears most people are unaware that they can setup their own servers for their own purposes.
Stand Fast,
I tend to agree that with everything that you said. Kids can be vicious, mean and nasty, but what's new? I'm 37 and I put up with it when I was in school. I was taunted because I was English in an American school. I was taunted because I was tall gangly and uncoordinated. I was taunted because other kids didn't like the colour of my house (It was pink, it was hideous, but was it worth abuse?).
I never killed myself, nor anyone else. That didn't happen, because of three things. My parents, while often clueless, were involved in my life, I had few friends, but those I had were of extraordinary quality, and I had a sense of right and wrong.
Regardless of how you define moral values (Judaeo/Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or any sense of absolute right and wrong). They all have a positive impact. Unfortunately it is not acceptable to talk about right and wrong. What's right and what's wrong is determined by the situation. This leads to kids adrift attempting to make decisions they shouldn't have to make. Many of these decisions should not be difficult, they should be instinctive, and the resulting decision should be the correct decision.
I'm saddened by the abuse that kids do to other kids. I can't believe that 30 years after I started suffering that abuse it is still acceptible to school administrations. However, saying that kids cause violence is equally as silly as saying violent video games cause violence.
Stand Fast,
Long ago when I first graduated from college I worked for an Alpha Micro dealer. Alpha Micros were really cool little mini-computers that had a couple of unique qualities. One was that all software was distributed on VHS video tape. The second was that each Alpha motherboard had a unique ID chip. Any time new software was installed, we ran a programme that gave us a hash, called the software provider, read them the hash, and they gave us an unlocking code. This was an interesting copy protection system and worked quite well until one of the security chips went bad. Then, regardless of how many backups were available, it meant hours of phone calls to software providers to get new unlocking codes.
So, I'm not sure how MS is going to do their coding system, but I can guarantee that it will cause IT support people no end of headaches.
Stand Fast,
Fully agreed, what will become of all the .org open source projects that are not necessarily registered non-profit. There's also a different problem. What do for profits who sponsor Open Source projects do? Does this mean all Open Source projects are going to have to go to .com?
Stand Fast,
To say that crashing machines and daily reboots are such a horrible problem, caused by Microsoft, is just a plain lie - or maybe you just haven't used anything Microsoft has made in the past couple of years. Maybe you should try so that you know what you're talking about.
While I agree that Win2K and NTWS are significantly more acceptable products, they are relatively recent additions to Microsoft's lineup. Also, until very recently, Microsoft did not promote NT/Win2K as an office desktop environment. Now that they are promoting Win2K on the desktop, how are they doing it? By using their own shoddy OS sitting at a BSOD.
I personally believe that the current Microsoft advertising campaign takes unmitigated gall. Why didn't they tell me five years ago that Win95 was a pile of crap instead of waiting until they had something that behaved reasonably to sell? They could have saved me and millions of others lots of grief and lost productivity.
Stand Fast,
Houston Porn Czar
Houston Porn Star
The planets must be in some strange alignment or something!
Stand Fast,
I have always wanted to be creative. When I was growing up I wanted to draw or paint in the worst way. Unfortunately, I couldn't draw worth a darn. In high school I majored in drafting, and did OK there.
It was in high school that I had my first experiences with a computer. I saw that computer at the end of a 300 baud modem, I learned BASIC. I found that I could create!
As my education progressed, I discovered that the most the really good coders viewed themselves as artists more than engineers.
Programming is an art form with many different mediums. I wish more people understood that.
Stand Fast,
I could take you to several reputable law firms around this city that are still using WordPerfect v5.1 for DOS. The tool meets their needs and they see no need to change.
Stand Fast,
Not to nitpick back, but I do believe that you would find otherwise. While not being able to cite statistics for you, a brief Google search on "Small Business Percentage of US economy" turned up several interesting links.
Small business is defined as a company with fewer than 500 employees.
But its not really an important issue. The important issue is that people are tired of the upgrade bandwagon and want a way off.
Stand Fast,
What is soon?
Most of my clients are working with older hardware. They have no desire to upgrade, and only do so when forced. I think you will find that response from many small businesses, and small businesses make up the bulk of the US economy.
People want stuff that works. If a P166 w/32Mb RAM works, then why change?
As a nerd, I have a hard time with that concept, and I have a fairly kickin' machine, but as a small business owner I completely understand it!
Any technology that will allow users to make better use of their existing equipment will win. Forcing users to upgrade every couple of years just pisses them off.
Stand Fast,
When I first got out of school I worked for a company that sold and wrote code for Alpha Micro computers. At that time, all Alpha's used VHS tapes for both backup and software distribution. It was built right into the system.
I always thought it was pretty cool how well it worked
Stand Fast,
Palm Synchronization is very important to a Palm enabled work force.
Other useful items would include, not just free/busy search, but the ability to see multiple calendars side-by-side. This is really useful for scheduling service work for customers as you can see at a glance how quickly you might be able to get somebody on site.
For places such as law firms, date math and linked entries are a requirement. They need to be able to do things like schedule dates 30/45/60/90 days from today (either including or excluding weekends and holidays). They also need to link several dates together, so if some base date changes all linked dates change also.
Stand Fast,
I used to be one of those folk who drove with a cell phone pressed to my ear at all times.
Then I started riding a motorcycle. Aside from the fact that it is difficult to talk on a cell phone while riding, my cell phone usage while driving my car significantly dropped. You see while riding a motorcycle you are much more aware of what is going on, and quite frankly watching many people talk and drive at the same time scared the heck out of me, and I began to wonder if I was like that.
As far as I'm concerned headset usage should be mandated for cellular users in a car.
Stand Fast,
After reading the questions, I'd be snippy too. While I understand the need for answers to the questions, it seemed that many of them were quite adversarial, and that the review team's integrity was being called into question pre-review.
We need to give these people the benefit of the doubt until the review comes out, then make judgements about what is said.
Stand Fast,
Thanks for pointing out this article, much appreciated.
That said, I do believe that my proposal is more extreme than his. Mine actually hits the company at the bottom line by forcing them to outlay cash while his only prevents revenue from coming in.
(Actually, doesn't destroying them violate the new EULA?)
you may not decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, modify, rent, lease, loan, sublicense, distribute or create derivative works based upon the :CRQ software or :CueCat reader in whole or
part or transmit the :CRQ software over a network or from one computer to another. The :CueCat
reader is only on loan to you from Digital:Convergence and may be recalled at any time. Without
limiting the foregoing, your possession or control of the :CueCat reader does not transfer any right,
title or interest to you in the :CueCat reader. Except as expressly permitted in this License, you may
not reverse engineer, disassemble, modify, rent, lease, loan, sublicense, or distribute the :CueCat
reader.
Of course, the chances of me ever seeing a dime from DC are slim-to-none, and the chances of people actually destroying those little things are much higher.
Either way is fine with me.
Stand Fast,
I am probably short sighted, but I have no real use for a barcode scanner. I got my CueCat in the mail, so I went to the Digital Convergence Contact site, entered my information, and politely told them that I didn't agree with their EULA, and asked them to provide me with a shipping container and postage so I could return the scanner to them...
...I haven't heard from them yet
I wrote a little editorial about this subject on my website www.exceptionalminds.com/rhacer/s oap box
Stand Fast,
Stand Fast,
I've seen a lot of comments about Mindstorms, and that is truly excellent, however, a new tool that I have discovered (with which I plan to start teaching my six-year-old programming) is a game from Cognitoy called Mind Rover.
It has gotten excellent reviews in the game press, but hardly anyone has ever heard of it. Its premise is simple, accept a challenge and then build a rover to solve the challenge. Rover's are created from various kinds of chassis with various kinds of components--such as radars, bump sensors, etc. When you have picked all your pieces you wire them together using graphical programming environment (somewhat like Lab View). Then you test your rover to see if it is up to the challenge presented.
Stand Fast,
After reading Jon's comments, and seeing the address to which I could address comments, I sent the following message to the WAVE folk.
Hi,
First, I want to thank you very much for taking the time to speak with Mr. Katz, while I don't know what impact the conversation had on your plans, I do appreciate the fact that you were willing to chat with him about it.
Second, I have to tell you that I find your project to be absolutely terrifying. As a geek kid, who twenty years ago would have fit any profile as a "potential problem," who is now raising a geek kid (he's six, moody, loves computers, is far smarter than most kids his age), I have to say that my greatest desire would for him *not* to have to go through the same things I went through growing up.
Unfortunately, projects such as WAVE tend to enhance the stereotype, not discourage it.
I also have a few questions based on what I have read about WAVE.
I imagine that you will be buried in e-mail, but I do look forward to a response to the above questions.
I certainly hope that they will reply, as I feel that they are important questions.
Stand Fast,