Well, I guess that's one way to shut down the competition: block traffic to/from their network. Legal? Probably, if only because there's no law specifically forbidding it. Slimy? Absolutely.
Fortunately, I don't have AT&T Broadband, er, Comcrap. Of course, I dunno if Charter is any better, but at least they haven't blocked SIP traffic to Vonage yet.
1. Less security issues. Provided I set up cxoffice/Wine correctly, any "damage" a rogue Windows app might do can be contained very easily. At worst, it will affect the "Windows" stuff, but it won't affect the Linux data. While I occasionally need Outlook to perform some tasks, I usually use native mail readers, so the risk of "some virus" or "some rogue piece of code" coming in is very minimal.
2. Apps that will never have a Linux equivelant. One application I currently rely on for work has effectively been discontinued as a result of M&As, so the chance of seeing a Linux equivelant is zero squared. However, with a little coaxing, it runs just beautifully under cxoffice.
3. Choice. Because I can run my critical business apps under an alternate OS, I am now no longer "locked" into a particular OS choice. I frequently switch between my Linux box and my Win2k box and I can do most of my basic work tasks in either platform.
While I tend to agree that the key layout is a bit strange, allow me to provide a different viewpoint on this.
I recently swapped my 7210 for a 3650 due to all the bugs in the 7210. I showed my wife this phone. She started to play with the camera and various things with it. Once I had set up the phone correctly to send email and turned off the t9 prediction crap, she was able to send email fairly easily.
Note that my wife is what I consider an "Average person." She's not a geek like most of us who read or interact on Slashdot. Her general impression of the phone was that it was easy to use.
Perhaps other, non-technical people might find the phone easy to use. Most of those people don't post on Slashdot, however.
I don't think any company can completely forbid you from participating in online forums (well, maybe they can with employee contracts), but if you're going to do so, don't make it clear who you work for.
Part of the reason I was hired to work for my existing employer is because I was known on the Internet for providing assistance with Check Point FireWall-1, maintaining an FAQ page on the subject as well. I did it on the "side" in addition to my day job.
My own personal "rule" that I've always maintained is to not disclose who I work for in online forums. This means using my personal email account for posting message as well as never making named references to my employer. That isn't to say some people don't know where I work (my customers are out there, after all), but purely by reading my activity in the online forum, it isn't obvious.
Because of where I work, there are some conversations I simply won't get involved with, as by doing so, I would reveal where I work. That's a tradeoff I'm willing to live with.
is the fact that only one company makes phones for it. Well, that and it's not GSM (well, technically, TDMA is based on GSM, but that's a different discussion altogether) and I'm not a fan of Motorola's phones.
If you want a full QWERTY keyboard in a cell phone and have a decent GSM service in your area, I highly recommend the Nokia Communicator. Heck, you can even run Opera on it (see here for details).
> It is not able to properly act as a DNS relay when working with multiple WANs (ISPs)
It doesn't handle DNS packets very well at all. I have a Debian box set up here with BIND. Unless I point the forwarders at the inside IP of the Nexland, DNS won't work. Why? Because it appears to re-write all the DNS packets from the Internet with it's own internal IP. Nexland's response? That's the way it's supposed to work. sigh
-- PhoneBoy
"I say live it or live with it." -- Firesign Theatre
> Why not a software solution, instead of dropping 400 bucks?
Because not everyone has the time/engery/experience/hardware necessary to set this up on a Linux box. I was running my home firewall on a Linux box until I got one of these things. It has issues, but it generally works and requires less fscking with.
I've had one of these since October, and they're not bad. I got one of these and one of Nexland's wireless access hubs as "review units." I wrote up a review on the product, which details the pros and cons of these devices.
-- PhoneBoy
"I say live it or live with it." -- Firesign Theatre
Nothing, but if the people or programs you interact with don't support PNG, then PNG is useless.
As an example, my publisher wants the stuff for my book in Microsoft Word format using a specific style sheet and TIFF files for screen shots. While I can generate Word docs in Open Office and PNG files in GIMP (all freely downloadable), my publisher won't accept the work. Why? Open Office doesn't do a good job with Word's style sheets (or at least my publisher's style sheets). PNG files aren't acceptable to the publisher because the programs they use to lay out the book don't support PNG.
-- PhoneBoy
"I say live it or live with it." -- Firesign Theatre
1. Voicestream is probably one of the more liberal companies with regards to many of these points, including providing unlock codes for their phones after being a customer for three months. I've never used any of the Voicestream-branded phones with my Voicestream service.
2. GSM phones in general are more versatile because the technology generally allows for easier interoperability/portability. This same technology is going to allow Cingular and Voicestream to share spectrum and towers in CA/NV/NY.
3. There are certainly "cheap" phones to be had out there. In order to get the "free" or even "subsidized" phones, you have to sign a one (or more) year service agreement or pay a hefty termination fee. Okay, they have to make their money back on the phone, but what if I find out two or three months into my contract that their service won't meet my needs? That's just money down the tubes. Note that these contracts apply even if you already have a compatible phone, which is something I don't understand.
4. Technology issues aside, why can't I buy a phone once and use it with any service provider? We know it's technically possible to make a phone that has GSM, TDMA, CDMA, and AMPS all in one unit. What is preventing Nokia or any other company from making that kind of a phone? Quite simply, no carrier would approve such a phone. Why? It would be too easy for someone to switch carriers. It's the same reason they're dragging their feet on number portability.
The important thing to note here is that one of their phones are needed to activate the SIM. Once that's done, you can use any phone (I tried a couple of my GSM phones). They told me "oh, just buy the phone, activate, and return the phone." Sounds like what you ended up doing, too (except you kept the phone).
Of course, I ended up cancelling the service and returning the phone the next day since their GSM coverage was crap where I needed it to work. Maybe in a year it might be better.
Some companies block SSH out, some don't. Where I work, all outbound Internet access is done via proxy servers. The SSH proxy doesn't allow any form of port redirection. Of course, this does not stop someone from using something like HTTPTunnel through the web proxy, but...
First of all, the only reason I use IM these days is for work-related purposes with co-workers on an internal Jabber server. Okay, we do our share of chatting that's not exactly work-related, but who doesn't have f2f conversations with people at work about things that have nothing to do with work?
In any case, why I consider the instant transcript a "feature" is because my co-workers and I do tech support. We talk to each other frequently about customer issues. These transcripts often contain useful troubleshooting information. It seems awfully silly to type something more than once, so once a conversation is done, it's copied straight from Jabber into a case note. We usually do not make those kinds of notes viewable to customers, but they are good for internal documentation.
For those of you who have issues with your employer "snooping" on what you're doing, I would not expect any sort of privacy with respect to your computer usage at work. However, your employer needs to tell you your computer usage is subject to monitoring. Employers who fail to notify employees of monitoring are subject to serious trouble if they decide to take advantage of any information they find out as a result.
They'd have to figure out how to enforce local blackouts of sporting events or other items (a.k.a. what the NFL does to home games when not enough people bought tickets). Of course, I think the whole rule is stoopid anyway, but I'm sure someone's going to bring that point up.
You get charged for 10 minutes because your wireless web connection is a circuit-switched connection much like a voice connection. The newer solutions like mentioned in this article and the GRPS-based solutions that are available today from Voicestream and AT&T Wireless are not circuit-based connections, so you only use the connection when some bit of data is being sent or received, so they bill by the kilobyte, not by the minute.
and now the creator of the characters themselves. *sigh* May your collective works live on for many more generations, even if AOLTW keeps making money on it.
* It's a little harder for Windows users to use your service, if you use PPTP
Care to explain this comment? I'm actually using PPTP with the server running on a Linux box and a Win2k client system right now to "secure" my WLAN segment. The only other stuff allowed from that segment is IPSec to certain known systems and SSH directly to my linux box (with RSA keys, of course). No problems here.
-- PhoneBoy
Re:Phase Three: Profit!
on
Electronic Paper
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Digital Rights Management isn't such a horrible thing, provided they respect the right of first sale throughout the process (meaning, I can buy something and they can't restrict my right to sell it to someone else). However, the cynic in me says this is just one of many ways to eliminate that right.
Personally, I'd love to have a single piece of e-paper for much of my periodical reading. I get many trade rags every week and I throw them away when I'm done with them. A single piece of paper that handles all my trade rags, hm, my wife might like that.:-)
"Charter Communications Inc. of St. Louis also dropped its affiliation with At Home and has begun switching customers to its own network. The company has been preparing for the possible loss of At Home service for the past three months, a Charter spokesman said yesterday. More than 90 percent of Charter?s 145,000 At Home subscribers have been switched over to the new network, the spokesman said."
However, according to this cnet.com article, Charter still is working with @Home in the areas they don't have their network in place yet. Unfortunately, I'm in one of those areas. However, I currently have service still, so I guess I'm a lot luckier than the folks with the Death Star as their local cable company.
My local Charter office told me that they would likely be ready with the new Pipeline service early this week. I've had a hard time finding details on the Pipeline service (like whether or not I can get multiple Static IPs). Can anyone provide links?
Charter would be a really bad company to set an example with anyway, especially since they already have 90% of their cable modem customers on Charter Pipeline anyway. Unfortunately, I'm not one of them *yet*, but they tell me it will likely be available in a few days. Hey, at least my @Home service didn't experience any problems today (*knock on wood*).
The cable companies want all the money and aren't willing to share it with anyone else, including those providing the service. That's the real problem here. At least if the Cable Companies provide the service themselves, they get all the cash and don't have to argue with Excite@Home about about how much they should get.
Of course, Excite@Home may have signed it's own death warrant by making an enemy out of the Death Star.
Up until very recently, I was using 802.11 cards, not 802.11a or 802.11b. These max out at 2mbs. Unless I was spooling a large print job or attempting to do a large LAN-based file transfer, I hardly noticed I only had 2mb of bandwidth available to me.
The 802.11b cards appear to be a bit more reliable and have more range than the 802.11 cards, though, as they don't get disconnected as easily from the Access Point. (Using Nokia gear)
-- PhoneBoy
On the Internet, nobody care's if you're an author
George W Bush said in his campaign for president that the lawsuit against Microsoft would be dropped or severely curtailed if he won the presidency.
There is certainly a semi-symbiotic relationship betwwen the PC Manufacturers and Microsoft. Since Microsoft is the only real choice for many folks, it's in the best interest of both companies for Microsoft to release new OSes and software with more bloat so people are forced to buy faster hardware. Oh, and Microsoft is more than happy to restrict your ability to acquire any other OS with your hardware, because then the truth would come out that their software is bloated, both in terms of features and price.
-- PhoneBoy
Distance does not define "extreme telecommuting"
on
Extreme Telecommuting
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I'm going to ignore the economic implications of this story for a moment because others have already discuss this.
I consider someone to be extreme telecommuting if they work from a <i>home office</i> more than 75% of their time. Distance from the corporate office doesn't necessarily dictate this.
I currently live in Spokane, WA and do customer support for a large company any geek would recognize the name of. The office I report into is in the San Francisco Bay Area. The good thing about this (for me at least) is no time difference. However, I deal with people in just about every timezone, so I'm quite familar with asyncronous communications. Anyone working for or with large multinational corporations will have to deal with the timezone thing, even if they don't telecommute, so I don't see this being a big deal.
One thing my boss makes a point of doing with all of the remote employees that work for our group is to have everyone come into the office for one week every so often. The economy of late has dictated this occur less frequently than he wants, but he does make it happen. Aside from training, we make it a point to do some non-work things together. Face time is important.
The other thing that goes along with "extreme telecommuting" is making sure is constant communication so that you feel "in the loop" with what's going on. As someone who has been telecommuting successfully for the past three years, I can tell you that it does take some work, but it is possible to telecommute and be "in the loop," at least on the important things. We've had to set up a few things like instant messaging, internal email aliases, and so forth to help this along.
In short, I look at this story and go "yeah, and tell me something I don't already know."
Slashdot Mirror
I still have a ways to go, myself, but I can tell you it works.
http://flwd.com/5bx/main/index.html
11 minutes a day, can be done just about anywhere. I'd suggest cutting back on the beer a little, and anything else with carbohydrates in it.
-- PhoneBoy
Well, I guess that's one way to shut down the competition: block traffic to/from their network.
Legal? Probably, if only because there's no law specifically forbidding it. Slimy? Absolutely.
Fortunately, I don't have AT&T Broadband, er, Comcrap. Of course, I dunno if Charter is any better, but at least they haven't blocked SIP traffic to Vonage yet.
-- PhoneBoy
-- PhoneBoy
Three reasons I disagree with thsi:
1. Less security issues. Provided I set up cxoffice/Wine correctly, any "damage" a rogue Windows app might do can be contained very easily. At worst, it will affect the "Windows" stuff, but it won't affect the Linux data. While I occasionally need Outlook to perform some tasks, I usually use native mail readers, so the risk of "some virus" or "some rogue piece of code" coming in is very minimal.
2. Apps that will never have a Linux equivelant. One application I currently rely on for work has effectively been discontinued as a result of M&As, so the chance of seeing a Linux equivelant is zero squared. However, with a little coaxing, it runs just beautifully under cxoffice.
3. Choice. Because I can run my critical business apps under an alternate OS, I am now no longer "locked" into a particular OS choice. I frequently switch between my Linux box and my Win2k box and I can do most of my basic work tasks in either platform.
-- PhoneBoy
While I tend to agree that the key layout is a bit strange, allow me to provide a different viewpoint on this.
I recently swapped my 7210 for a 3650 due to all the bugs in the 7210. I showed my wife this phone. She started to play with the camera and various things with it. Once I had set up the phone correctly to send email and turned off the t9 prediction crap, she was able to send email fairly easily.
Note that my wife is what I consider an "Average person." She's not a geek like most of us who read or interact on Slashdot. Her general impression of the phone was that it was easy to use.
Perhaps other, non-technical people might find the phone easy to use. Most of those people don't post on Slashdot, however.
-- PhoneBoy
Part of the reason I was hired to work for my existing employer is because I was known on the Internet for providing assistance with Check Point FireWall-1, maintaining an FAQ page on the subject as well. I did it on the "side" in addition to my day job.
My own personal "rule" that I've always maintained is to not disclose who I work for in online forums. This means using my personal email account for posting message as well as never making named references to my employer. That isn't to say some people don't know where I work (my customers are out there, after all), but purely by reading my activity in the online forum, it isn't obvious.
Because of where I work, there are some conversations I simply won't get involved with, as by doing so, I would reveal where I work. That's a tradeoff I'm willing to live with.
-- PhoneBoy
If you want a full QWERTY keyboard in a cell phone and have a decent GSM service in your area, I highly recommend the Nokia Communicator. Heck, you can even run Opera on it (see here for details).
-- PhoneBoy
"Forward into the past."
It doesn't handle DNS packets very well at all. I have a Debian box set up here with BIND. Unless I point the forwarders at the inside IP of the Nexland, DNS won't work. Why? Because it appears to re-write all the DNS packets from the Internet with it's own internal IP. Nexland's response? That's the way it's supposed to work. sigh
-- PhoneBoy
"I say live it or live with it." -- Firesign Theatre
Because not everyone has the time/engery/experience/hardware necessary to set this up on a Linux box. I was running my home firewall on a Linux box until I got one of these things. It has issues, but it generally works and requires less fscking with.
I've had one of these since October, and they're not bad. I got one of these and one of Nexland's wireless access hubs as "review units." I wrote up a review on the product, which details the pros and cons of these devices.
-- PhoneBoy
"I say live it or live with it." -- Firesign Theatre
> What does TIFF do that PNG doesn't?
Nothing, but if the people or programs you interact with don't support PNG, then PNG is useless.
As an example, my publisher wants the stuff for my book in Microsoft Word format using a specific style sheet and TIFF files for screen shots. While I can generate Word docs in Open Office and PNG files in GIMP (all freely downloadable), my publisher won't accept the work. Why? Open Office doesn't do a good job with Word's style sheets (or at least my publisher's style sheets). PNG files aren't acceptable to the publisher because the programs they use to lay out the book don't support PNG.
-- PhoneBoy
"I say live it or live with it." -- Firesign Theatre
A few responses to the above:
1. Voicestream is probably one of the more liberal companies with regards to many of these points, including providing unlock codes for their phones after being a customer for three months. I've never used any of the Voicestream-branded phones with my Voicestream service.
2. GSM phones in general are more versatile because the technology generally allows for easier interoperability/portability. This same technology is going to allow Cingular and Voicestream to share spectrum and towers in CA/NV/NY.
3. There are certainly "cheap" phones to be had out there. In order to get the "free" or even "subsidized" phones, you have to sign a one (or more) year service agreement or pay a hefty termination fee. Okay, they have to make their money back on the phone, but what if I find out two or three months into my contract that their service won't meet my needs? That's just money down the tubes. Note that these contracts apply even if you already have a compatible phone, which is something I don't understand.
4. Technology issues aside, why can't I buy a phone once and use it with any service provider? We know it's technically possible to make a phone that has GSM, TDMA, CDMA, and AMPS all in one unit. What is preventing Nokia or any other company from making that kind of a phone? Quite simply, no carrier would approve such a phone. Why? It would be too easy for someone to switch carriers. It's the same reason they're dragging their feet on number portability.
-- PhoneBoy
The important thing to note here is that one of their phones are needed to activate the SIM. Once that's done, you can use any phone (I tried a couple of my GSM phones). They told me "oh, just buy the phone, activate, and return the phone." Sounds like what you ended up doing, too (except you kept the phone).
Of course, I ended up cancelling the service and returning the phone the next day since their GSM coverage was crap where I needed it to work. Maybe in a year it might be better.
-- PhoneBoy
Some companies block SSH out, some don't. Where I work, all outbound Internet access is done via proxy servers. The SSH proxy doesn't allow any form of port redirection. Of course, this does not stop someone from using something like HTTPTunnel through the web proxy, but...
-- PhoneBoy
First of all, the only reason I use IM these days is for work-related purposes with co-workers on an internal Jabber server. Okay, we do our share of chatting that's not exactly work-related, but who doesn't have f2f conversations with people at work about things that have nothing to do with work?
In any case, why I consider the instant transcript a "feature" is because my co-workers and I do tech support. We talk to each other frequently about customer issues. These transcripts often contain useful troubleshooting information. It seems awfully silly to type something more than once, so once a conversation is done, it's copied straight from Jabber into a case note. We usually do not make those kinds of notes viewable to customers, but they are good for internal documentation.
For those of you who have issues with your employer "snooping" on what you're doing, I would not expect any sort of privacy with respect to your computer usage at work. However, your employer needs to tell you your computer usage is subject to monitoring. Employers who fail to notify employees of monitoring are subject to serious trouble if they decide to take advantage of any information they find out as a result.
-- PhoneBoy
They'd have to figure out how to enforce local blackouts of sporting events or other items (a.k.a. what the NFL does to home games when not enough people bought tickets). Of course, I think the whole rule is stoopid anyway, but I'm sure someone's going to bring that point up.
-- PhoneBoy
You get charged for 10 minutes because your wireless web connection is a circuit-switched connection much like a voice connection. The newer solutions like mentioned in this article and the GRPS-based solutions that are available today from Voicestream and AT&T Wireless are not circuit-based connections, so you only use the connection when some bit of data is being sent or received, so they bill by the kilobyte, not by the minute.
-- PhoneBoy
1. Cable Modem
2. ISDN to a different ISP
3. Analog Dialup to Company Network
4. GPRS or GSM dialup
Obviously, my company pays for all of them. The point is: if Internet access is important, have at least one backup, if not more.
-- PhoneBoy
and now the creator of the characters themselves. *sigh* May your collective works live on for many more generations, even if AOLTW keeps making money on it.
Care to explain this comment? I'm actually using PPTP with the server running on a Linux box and a Win2k client system right now to "secure" my WLAN segment. The only other stuff allowed from that segment is IPSec to certain known systems and SSH directly to my linux box (with RSA keys, of course). No problems here.
-- PhoneBoy
Digital Rights Management isn't such a horrible thing, provided they respect the right of first sale throughout the process (meaning, I can buy something and they can't restrict my right to sell it to someone else). However, the cynic in me says this is just one of many ways to eliminate that right.
:-)
Personally, I'd love to have a single piece of e-paper for much of my periodical reading. I get many trade rags every week and I throw them away when I'm done with them. A single piece of paper that handles all my trade rags, hm, my wife might like that.
-- PhoneBoy
"Charter Communications Inc. of St. Louis also dropped its affiliation with At Home and has begun switching customers to its own network. The company has been preparing for the possible loss of At Home service for the past three months, a Charter spokesman said yesterday. More than 90 percent of Charter?s 145,000 At Home subscribers have been switched over to the new network, the spokesman said."
However, according to this cnet.com article, Charter still is working with @Home in the areas they don't have their network in place yet. Unfortunately, I'm in one of those areas. However, I currently have service still, so I guess I'm a lot luckier than the folks with the Death Star as their local cable company.
My local Charter office told me that they would likely be ready with the new Pipeline service early this week. I've had a hard time finding details on the Pipeline service (like whether or not I can get multiple Static IPs). Can anyone provide links?
-- PhoneBoy
Charter would be a really bad company to set an example with anyway, especially since they already have 90% of their cable modem customers on Charter Pipeline anyway. Unfortunately, I'm not one of them *yet*, but they tell me it will likely be available in a few days. Hey, at least my @Home service didn't experience any problems today (*knock on wood*).
The cable companies want all the money and aren't willing to share it with anyone else, including those providing the service. That's the real problem here. At least if the Cable Companies provide the service themselves, they get all the cash and don't have to argue with Excite@Home about about how much they should get.
Of course, Excite@Home may have signed it's own death warrant by making an enemy out of the Death Star.
-- PhoneBoy "with his ISDN on standby"
The 802.11b cards appear to be a bit more reliable and have more range than the 802.11 cards, though, as they don't get disconnected as easily from the Access Point. (Using Nokia gear)
-- PhoneBoy
On the Internet, nobody care's if you're an author
There is certainly a semi-symbiotic relationship betwwen the PC Manufacturers and Microsoft. Since Microsoft is the only real choice for many folks, it's in the best interest of both companies for Microsoft to release new OSes and software with more bloat so people are forced to buy faster hardware. Oh, and Microsoft is more than happy to restrict your ability to acquire any other OS with your hardware, because then the truth would come out that their software is bloated, both in terms of features and price.
-- PhoneBoy
I'm going to ignore the economic implications of this story for a moment because others have already discuss this.
I consider someone to be extreme telecommuting if they work from a <i>home office</i> more than 75% of their time. Distance from the corporate office doesn't necessarily dictate this.
I currently live in Spokane, WA and do customer support for a large company any geek would recognize the name of. The office I report into is in the San Francisco Bay Area. The good thing about this (for me at least) is no time difference. However, I deal with people in just about every timezone, so I'm quite familar with asyncronous communications. Anyone working for or with large multinational corporations will have to deal with the timezone thing, even if they don't telecommute, so I don't see this being a big deal.
One thing my boss makes a point of doing with all of the remote employees that work for our group is to have everyone come into the office for one week every so often. The economy of late has dictated this occur less frequently than he wants, but he does make it happen. Aside from training, we make it a point to do some non-work things together. Face time is important.
The other thing that goes along with "extreme telecommuting" is making sure is constant communication so that you feel "in the loop" with what's going on. As someone who has been telecommuting successfully for the past three years, I can tell you that it does take some work, but it is possible to telecommute and be "in the loop," at least on the important things. We've had to set up a few things like instant messaging, internal email aliases, and so forth to help this along.
In short, I look at this story and go "yeah, and tell me something I don't already know."
-- PhoneBoy