been there, done that, burned the t-shirt
on
VoIP for the Masses!
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· Score: 4, Informative
I've been using VoIP for quite a few months now. I have a hardware IP phone plugged right into my hub, and the connection goes through my firewall (over an IPSEC VPN) back to the central office, which is 800 miles away. I can just pick it up and dial a three digit extension to speak with anyone in the office. It works very well -- under ideal circumstances. Those momentary little pockets of packet loss that cause you to die in CounterStrike make the conversation sou..nd li..ke.. so..th...ng..swe. oke...n.. It's not bad for talking to the folks in the office, but not a good thing if you have to deal directly with customers. The quality has gone to heck since cox.net took over. I want my @Home back.:(
If you're not doing QoS (which isn't very likely on residential broadband), then you'll need to terminate (or at least pause) all your high-bandwidth activity while you use the phone.
In an unrelated topic, I ran nmap against my phone (what an odd concept!) and found a telnet daemon running on it. Has anybody hacked this puppy? It's a Polycom SoundPoint IP 400.
Why don't they just use some of that $75 million dollars that my long lost relative General Nobotu had amassed before being killed in a plane crash in Nigeria.
Parker said. "But they are all the same. It's like cigarettes. They need to come with a warning label. 'Warning, extensive playing could be hazardous to your health.' "
Good idea, we all know how well that cigarette warning works.
... and so it took me over two months of being billed at the wrong rate to resolve a simple issue, because their customer service personnel could not receive my email or visit the web page that contained my receipt, proving what I had actually ordered. And since you can never call back directly to the same rep you talked to in a previous call, I had to tell the same story to at least a dozen people. I ended up printing the page, driving to Kinko's and dropping $6 to fax it (twice, because they lost the first one). Brilliant idea!
TellarHK, you are truly a dolt. The absolute very first answer you got from a project member was, "SmoothWall will *never* have a public webserver nor GCC." It is perfectly succint and civil. To anybody who knows anything about firewalls, the answer "It's a *firewall*" is plainly meaningful. Obviously, you are not one of those people, and so you refused to take no for an answer. Ok, well, I give you points for persistence, but amigo, If you keep poking somebody in the eye, don't get upset when they kick you in the head.
This just kills me, "...when I casually mention what -my- needs include...", and you highlight the word "my". How insolent! I would have kicked you right there. The Smoothwall team _donates_ their time, resources, and expertise to you, and yet you have the audacity to make inane demands of them? Accept your virtual bitch slap on your feet, chalk it up to experience, and move on already. You're making yourself look more incompetent every second you drag this issue out.
Oh, and um... for future reference, if you go around telling people how to run their projects after using them "for all of 7 hours" -- expect more of the same.
"Contemplate this on the tree of woe." - Thulsa Doom
I've got a full IPSec VPN to my office running 24/7. I've got servers running at home. I download gigs of data. And I've never heard a peep.
I've configured my firewall to explicitly deny any traffic from @Home's known scanners (24.0.0.203, 24.0.94.130). My logs show hits from them almost daily. Failing that, my Apache config is name-based, and the default virtual server is configured with "deny all". So, unless you know the domain name(s) pointing to my IP, you have to browse by the IP -- and if you do that, you get nada.
> the only formats I hear commonly are... some Heavy Metal.
Got news for ya. Korn and Limp Bizkit are not metal. There is no true metal on commercial radio today. This is the problem with XM -- people who don't know the genre are programming the playlists. Their service is useless until they can provide something that I can't get anywhere else.
I agree. I'm a headbanger, and their metal selection is really pitiful. Like you, I expected fine sub-categories like death/black, hair/80s, nu-metal, power/thrash, etc. Nope. Just one generic "what's hot this month" channel that plays exactly the same marketroid drivel that I can hear on any local FM rock station. Why the hell would I pay $300 + $10/mo for something I can already get on _four_ local FM stations?
There is an opera channel, tho -- they call it "Classic Vox" or something silly like that.
With them, I block between 10,000 and 20,000 messages per day -- which is just about the same as what MAPS/ORBS did for me. In the past two years, I've only ever had two complaints of blocking legit sources (they _were_ open relays tho). FWIW, hosting 250 domains, 1500 accounts.
I don't recall ever hearing a Metallica song on the radio or seeing a Metallica video on tv before Justice. Still, you had an enormous number of devoted fans everywhere. How is it then, that you were able to achieve such stardom that early? How is it possible that the first three albums had sold so many copies with virtually no airplay? Does anyone purchase CDs without ever hearing at least a bit of the content? Surely not. So, if fans didn't hear your music on the radio, or on MTV, how did they know they liked it well enough to buy it? Because they traded "pirated" tapes. Now, tapes are obsolete, so instead, people trade MP3s. Sure, MP3s can have much better quality than tapes. Sure, they're easier to locate and trade. But the fact remains that true fans will still buy the CD.
So what's my point? You didn't seem too concerned about tape trading in the early 80's when you were living on baloney-on-hand sandwiches. In fact, I will wager that you even thought it was a great thing to have your material so widely distributed and appreciated, even if you did not directly profit from it. That's a true artist. That's the Metallica that I long for. That's the Metallica that could kick ass like no other. Now, you're attempting to shut down the very mechanism by which you have attained your own stratospheric heights. Certainly, you are popular enough today that you don't need such exposure anymore. But what will you do? Shut Napster down, turning your back on your heritage, and denying other great but currently unknown bands from benefiting in the same manner that you have? Isn't this just a case of, "We scored, now we're taking our ball and going home!"
Slashdot Mirror
> That's what we really need: More people.
Easy for you to say, you've already been born...
I've been using VoIP for quite a few months now. I have a hardware IP phone plugged right into my hub, and the connection goes through my firewall (over an IPSEC VPN) back to the central office, which is 800 miles away. I can just pick it up and dial a three digit extension to speak with anyone in the office. It works very well -- under ideal circumstances. Those momentary little pockets of packet loss that cause you to die in CounterStrike make the conversation sou..nd li..ke.. so..th...ng..swe. oke...n.. It's not bad for talking to the folks in the office, but not a good thing if you have to deal directly with customers. The quality has gone to heck since cox.net took over. I want my @Home back. :(
If you're not doing QoS (which isn't very likely on residential broadband), then you'll need to terminate (or at least pause) all your high-bandwidth activity while you use the phone.
In an unrelated topic, I ran nmap against my phone (what an odd concept!) and found a telnet daemon running on it. Has anybody hacked this puppy? It's a Polycom SoundPoint IP 400.
Why don't they just use some of that $75 million dollars that my long lost relative General Nobotu had amassed before being killed in a plane crash in Nigeria.
Good idea, we all know how well that cigarette warning works.
Didn't we just do the "Most Outrageous Vendor Lies Ever Told" story?
All the Pine, Elm, and Mutt users are chuckling right now...
... and so it took me over two months of being billed at the wrong rate to resolve a simple issue, because their customer service personnel could not receive my email or visit the web page that contained my receipt, proving what I had actually ordered. And since you can never call back directly to the same rep you talked to in a previous call, I had to tell the same story to at least a dozen people. I ended up printing the page, driving to Kinko's and dropping $6 to fax it (twice, because they lost the first one). Brilliant idea!
Microsoft Certified Reboot Technician
Wow, is it April 1st already?
TellarHK, you are truly a dolt. The absolute very first answer you got from a project member was, "SmoothWall will *never* have a public webserver nor GCC." It is perfectly succint and civil. To anybody who knows anything about firewalls, the answer "It's a *firewall*" is plainly meaningful. Obviously, you are not one of those people, and so you refused to take no for an answer. Ok, well, I give you points for persistence, but amigo, If you keep poking somebody in the eye, don't get upset when they kick you in the head.
This just kills me, "...when I casually mention what -my- needs include...", and you highlight the word "my". How insolent! I would have kicked you right there. The Smoothwall team _donates_ their time, resources, and expertise to you, and yet you have the audacity to make inane demands of them? Accept your virtual bitch slap on your feet, chalk it up to experience, and move on already. You're making yourself look more incompetent every second you drag this issue out.
Oh, and um... for future reference, if you go around telling people how to run their projects after using them "for all of 7 hours" -- expect more of the same.
"Contemplate this on the tree of woe." - Thulsa Doom
I've got a full IPSec VPN to my office running 24/7. I've got servers running at home. I download gigs of data. And I've never heard a peep.
I've configured my firewall to explicitly deny any traffic from @Home's known scanners (24.0.0.203, 24.0.94.130). My logs show hits from them almost daily. Failing that, my Apache config is name-based, and the default virtual server is configured with "deny all". So, unless you know the domain name(s) pointing to my IP, you have to browse by the IP -- and if you do that, you get nada.
I love Google.
http://www.leh.net/~jolene/gm_l6.htm
Uh... heh heh... Vulcan pr0n rules... heh heh...
> the only formats I hear commonly are ... some Heavy Metal.
Got news for ya. Korn and Limp Bizkit are not metal. There is no true metal on commercial radio today. This is the problem with XM -- people who don't know the genre are programming the playlists. Their service is useless until they can provide something that I can't get anywhere else.
I agree. I'm a headbanger, and their metal selection is really pitiful. Like you, I expected fine sub-categories like death/black, hair/80s, nu-metal, power/thrash, etc. Nope. Just one generic "what's hot this month" channel that plays exactly the same marketroid drivel that I can hear on any local FM rock station. Why the hell would I pay $300 + $10/mo for something I can already get on _four_ local FM stations?
There is an opera channel, tho -- they call it "Classic Vox" or something silly like that.
rm -rf /bin/laden
...critics of it who point out that if we don't have a problem now, why fix it...
To anyone who ever said, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," I offer, "Improvement is impossible without change."
- relays.ordb.org
- or.orbl.org
- inputs.orbz.org
- outputs.orbz.org
With them, I block between 10,000 and 20,000 messages per day -- which is just about the same as what MAPS/ORBS did for me. In the past two years, I've only ever had two complaints of blocking legit sources (they _were_ open relays tho). FWIW, hosting 250 domains, 1500 accounts.I don't recall ever hearing a Metallica song on the radio or seeing a Metallica video on tv before Justice. Still, you had an enormous number of devoted fans everywhere. How is it then, that you were able to achieve such stardom that early? How is it possible that the first three albums had sold so many copies with virtually no airplay? Does anyone purchase CDs without ever hearing at least a bit of the content? Surely not. So, if fans didn't hear your music on the radio, or on MTV, how did they know they liked it well enough to buy it? Because they traded "pirated" tapes. Now, tapes are obsolete, so instead, people trade MP3s. Sure, MP3s can have much better quality than tapes. Sure, they're easier to locate and trade. But the fact remains that true fans will still buy the CD.
So what's my point? You didn't seem too concerned about tape trading in the early 80's when you were living on baloney-on-hand sandwiches. In fact, I will wager that you even thought it was a great thing to have your material so widely distributed and appreciated, even if you did not directly profit from it. That's a true artist. That's the Metallica that I long for. That's the Metallica that could kick ass like no other. Now, you're attempting to shut down the very mechanism by which you have attained your own stratospheric heights. Certainly, you are popular enough today that you don't need such exposure anymore. But what will you do? Shut Napster down, turning your back on your heritage, and denying other great but currently unknown bands from benefiting in the same manner that you have? Isn't this just a case of, "We scored, now we're taking our ball and going home!"