Sure. In theory - I've not heard of it being done in practise other than wrt to specific bios settings like clock speed.
As far as I know, this isn't possible in Windows (or linux) - happy to be proven wrong though. Do you have any links with further info? My cursory 30 seconds of googling seemed to suggest was still not possible.
yup. but the bios settings are typically a lot harder to change from userland than, well, userland settings (if it's even possible at all - normally it's not)
Most (all excluding Apple?) laptops wil allow you to turn off / disable the wireless chipset in the bios. Many also have a physical kill switch on the side of the case.
Barring some wikileaks sort of tomfoolery from the CIA, this should stop any network access (assuming you also don't plug in a network cable).
I had to go through a similar setup at the start of last year - with the exception that i had to pay for it all myself, so I was working on a budget.
I got a kitset office - 2.4m x 2.4 meter with a small veranda/sheltered area out the front. This had to fit an existing concrete pad so it was perhaps a little smaller than I would have liked. (But then again, I didn't want a huge building taking up all the space in my back yard!)
I insulated and lined it myself. I was expecting it have issues keeping it warm in winter, but ended up with the exact opposite - with no ceiling space it's very hard to keep cool in summer. I bought an air con unit about a week into using it.
I got a sparky to wire the unit up to the house - mains only (no data). I had to dig the 1.5 meter trench myself. Internet is just via wireless into the house - speed is fine (about 35M) and no worries about redundancy. I use a laptop and have data on my phone so in the event of a blackout (which I wouldn't expect now days) I can just use the laptop and phone for access.
You'll definitely want carpet, I wouldn't bother with a plastic protector. White boards etc too. You want it feel office like imo.
Security - I got an alarm that texts my phone if ever there is a break-in. After a while though I stopped using it and often don't even bother locking the door at night. My laptop comes in to the house with me at night, and the most expensive thing left in there is my keyboard or maybe the air con unit. It's hard to make a space with glass windows/doors secure. The alarm will hopefully scare people off if you are home, but if you're out then they're kinda pointless.
yeah, this was going to be my original approach. (I had a previous project where I had stored images in a db, which showed the limitations of this approach).
However, I ended up chucking them in the database for simplicity. I'm able to just move database dumps from production to dev and that's a complete snapshot of the application - no need to worry about also having to sync an emails directory. It also means I don't have to worry about error handling for when an email body is not found (if the db record is there, the email body is there), or making sure emails get purged off disk correctly.
As I'm only ever retrieving one email at a time, performance has not been an issue, and as I'm only keeping a gig or so of mail, disk space hasn't really been a concern either.
Obviously if your dealing with many more emails than I need to, then this may need to be revisited, but in this case, I'm happy with my quick and easy implementation=)
I run a similar (though waaaay less popular) site - http://dudmail.com/ My mail is stored on disk in a mysql db so I don't have quite the same memory constraints as this.
I had originally created this site naively stashing the uncompressed source straight into the db. For the ~100,000 mails I'd typically retain this would take up anywhere from 800mb to slightly over a gig.
At a recent rails camp, I was in need of a mini project so decided that some sort of compression was in order. Not being quite so clever I just used the readily available Zlib library in ruby. This is just run straight over each email as it comes in with no reference to any previous emails, so very "dumb" compared to mailinator, but still fairly effective.
This took about 30 minutes to implement (in about 6 lines of code) - and then a couple of hours to test and debug. An obvious bug (very large emails were causing me to exceed the BLOB size limit and truncating the compressed source) was the main problem there...
I didn't quite reach 90% compression, but my database is now typically around 200-350mb. So about 70-80% compression. I didn't reach 90% compression, but I did manage to implement it in about 6 lines of code =)
(Managable) DRM issues asside, Stanza for the iphone is an excellent reader if you already have an iphone, and don't want to splash out for a dedicated reader. The screen is easy to read, books are easy to source and it's free =)
For the PocketPC - ubook is one of the better ones out there.
Yup. You can convert any format to virtually anything - if you're prepared to waste^H^H^H^H^Hspend the time doing so. (I believe there's a convoluted process allowing you to convert text files thru various different stages into something the Kindle can read, and even some macros that will manually page thru.lit files copying and pasting the text into something useful)
However, you really don't want to have to do this every single time you want to read something. (And by 'you', I mean 'me' =)
I just want to be able to copy a file simply from my PC on to my PDA, rather than having to download it, extract it, convert it, etc. Particualarly because I always seem to finish a book just as I'm about to leave to go somewhere, and it's bad enough having to go and find something to copy across, without having to spend even more time converting it into an open format)
This is even more of an issue when you're traveling and don't have access to your own PC with conversion tools. Sure, you can connect to the net over your flash wireless connection, download whatever book you're after, but if you have to wait until you're home to convert the file into what even manky proprietary format your reader uses, you may as well have not bothered =)
Besides, you're on slashdot, surely you don't need to be convinced that open standard formats beat closed proprietary formats everytime? Particularly because in terms of formatting and file size, it doesn't get any better than a zipped.html document.
(PDF's do not translate very well to various small screen sizes, and last time I checked, many years ago admittedly,.rb didn't support italics or bold or anything other than plain text which makes it pretty much worthless for reading books)
I'm sure that will have been posted a few times by now, but it basically sums up all that is wrong with the Kindle and Sony Reader much better than I ever could.
You want to stay away from any proprietary technology (why? you shouldn't have to ask...)
That pretty much immediately rules out the Kindle, and any thing Sony has ever made... (also, anything that requires books be in.lit format - microsoft reader, I'm looking at you!)
I've been reading ebooks exclusively since 2001, and after much experimentation, I've settled on ubook reader on pretty much any brand of pocketpc. (It doesn't matter which, personally I'm using a Dell Axim as I like having the thumb scroll button, but what ever takes your fancy...)
What's important in a reader? - Being able to read any format, particularly.html and.rtf. (text, pdf and.lit are to be shunned at all costs) - Being able to read any document, regardless of source (I believe neither the kindle or sony's reader *allow* you to do this. I say allow, because they easily can, they just *choose* not to let you). - Being able to customize the font, margins, text size etc (Where microsoft reader is severely lacking) - Being able to turn pages without lagging (microsoft reader, again I'm looking at you).
The most important thing is being able to read any format. Most of the ebooks easily and freely acquired will be in.html or.rtf (zipped.html is the best). If you can't easily read these on your device, then what's the point?
A pocket pc has a lot more functionality than any of the dedicated readers - its big let down (compared at least to the kindle) is the screen. But my Axim runs at 640x480 resolution, and the text is as crisp as you'd ever want it to be. There's a plethora of ebook readers for the pocket pc, again, my personal recommendation is ubook, (and if you hunt on the net, you can easily find one of the "old" freeware versions that is perfectly adequate, some might even say better, compared to the current version).
i love to run this software over the last 6 years of digital pics i have (approx 2500 pictures) - mostly of my two kids from birth til now (damn trigger happy parents =). it'd be very interesting to see how accurately it could pick the kids up from birth ranging through to how they look now - completely different. if it could do it accurately, i wonder if they could use it to artificially age photographs of people - ie kids missing for years and years.
I'll admit its debatable as to whether pocketpc's are the best devices, but if you end up with one of these, by far the reader is uBook
The blurb from their site says it better than I could:
Book is a simple and lean, yet powerful ebook reader for Windows and Pocket PCs that can read HTML, TXT, RTF, PDB and PRC (not secure) ebook files. It can read directly from inside ZIP files, and supports BMP, GIF, PNG and JPG images. It offers many customization options including: Portrait and Landscape display, Choice of font type, color and size, etc....
I've been using pocketpc's for ebooks for years and after trying every damned reader I could find, this was by far the best I found - and on top of that it's free.
My favourite parts are being able to directly read zipped html and rtf files, as well as being able to rotate the screen and also the most usable implementation of auto scrolling I've seen.
Its under active development - every request I've made to the developer has been implemented within a few weeks (which did wonders for my loyalty. can you tell?)
On the downside, it doesn't do pdf's, but pdf viewers are available for pocketpc (though imo, of limited use on the small screen).
If you use ebooks on pocketpc, and haven't tried this, I seriously recommend giving it a burl!
I find it somewhat ironic that you complain about top-posting whilst top-posting! And a million fucking n00bz with Outleak Excess would still top-post without even snipping irrelevant material when quoting, and when called on it, would claim it was somehow more readable!
> Right. > > Participation is voluntary, and in good communities, there are usually longstanding members who will lay down the heavy, large-knuckled hand of tough love and teach offenders to behave properly. Those who decide that this treatment is unfair leave (or cause more trouble, and get ignored), and those who decide to stay usually do so humbled. I love it. >
I notice that in the screen shots of, (for example), the tractor, the wheels are not round but rather a 13-sided semi-circle shaped object.
Is it still too computationally expensive to draw a proper 3D circle in a game like this using todays hardware?
I realise a "true" circle is probably impossible/impractical, but even a 50-sided circle would probably be enough to fool the eye. Or would this have such a negative effective on FPS that it wouldn't be worth it?
From the article: "What these kids don't realize is that every time they pull up music and movies and make a copy, they are committing a felony under the United States code," Carter said in an interview. "If you were to prosecute someone and give them three years, I think this would act as a deterrent."
I know the american judicial and political system can be pretty screwed up at time, but just how much support does this guy think he's going to get from his constituents (read votes), when he starts sending kids to jail for three years in punishment for what amounts to fiften dollars worth of copyright violation?
To compare, how long do you expect Jeffrey Skilling (former Enron CEO) to spend in jail for the $30 billion lost there . . .
Setting up a proxy securely is not trivial, and it is entirely possible that something gets overlooked, especially when you're working in a less developed country with few peers around you to give you help.
perhaps I'm being a little harsh, but in todays economy if your sysadmin is not up to the task, then perhaps you should be thinking about getting a new sysadmin?
I'd be sympathetic to a charitable organisation that had this happen to them, but really, its not that hard to turn services off that you don't need . ..
hrmmm I don't know what company you work for, but there's a running joke at my work about where the department sources what must the world's nastiest instant coffee, which it dispenses into 3/4 sized plastic cups filled with luke warm water from a coffee stand in the corridor.
And then there was my reasonably expensive "premium" coffee, in a jar, in the kitchen, stashed at the back of a shelf, semi hidden behind a cup. *I* would have thought any half-awake person could have seen it was obviously not company coffee, so I left it there thinking it should be safe.
Yeah, I wasn't too happy when I saw them using it, but hey, my bad for leaving it in the open. As I said, after that its now safely in my desk =)
In many countries bandwidth is still incredibly expensive, this is especially true in tinpot dictatorships that censor the internet. Americans in particular have come to treat bandwidth as a free resource, and do not think about the damage that some poor soul in a third world country has suffered because of a slashdot article about an interesting but badly implemented project about internet censorship.
It seems to me that if leaving a proxy server open to the public can be as expensive as all that, then perhaps the proxy server should not be left open to the public
It is not necessary to put up a "don't use my proxy" sign. When it comes to proxies, unless you are invited to use the proxy, you do not have permission. A proxy should not be confused with a public webserver, where it is reasonable to assume that the default is to allow public access. Your analogy of the open gate applies to normal webpages on my webserver.
I disagree - if you do not want something to be available and usable by the public then you don't make it available and usable to the public.
For instance, this morning I left my expensive coffee in the communal kitchen at work. It was stashed/hidden at the back of the top cupboard, but not labelled in any way. I walked in earlier to make myself a cup and found some contractors (damned contractors) helping themselves to my coffee. I didn't say anything because it was my own damned fault for not indicating that it wasn't publically available coffee, in anyway other than putting at the back of the cupboard.
If you don't want someone using port x on your server, don't open port x to the public.
(note: my coffee is now sitting in my draw at work (and my draw is not a communal area!))
People make the analogy of port scanning being like testing doors to see if they're unlocked. And it's a good one. You aren't allowed to "test my door", or even walk up the path to it, without my permission. Because it's all my property. That "no solicitors" sign is there to prevent just that.
I can't speak with authority on US or international law, but in NZ law (and presumably most of the rest of the commonwealth) you do have implied permission to come on anybodies property at any time. As long as your gate is open, it is legal for anyone to come up your path and knock on your front door until you have let them know otherwise - either by putting up a sign - "No Trespassers", or by telling them to leave your property. After that, then it becomes it illegal for them to be on your land. At this point you can take reasonable steps to remove them.
It's nonsense to say that people don't have an implied right to come onto your land as people do it all the time - neighbours, friends, charity workers, lost people looking for a phone, policeman *cough*, etc etc. . ..
However, this is another analogy that falls down, as there is no universally accepted way to put up a sign on a computer saying "Don't use my proxy server" - one can only assume that if its open, its open to be used. If it wasn't meant to be used then it should be closed (much like a gate).
Slashdot Mirror
Sure. In theory - I've not heard of it being done in practise other than wrt to specific bios settings like clock speed.
As far as I know, this isn't possible in Windows (or linux) - happy to be proven wrong though. Do you have any links with further info? My cursory 30 seconds of googling seemed to suggest was still not possible.
yup. but the bios settings are typically a lot harder to change from userland than, well, userland settings (if it's even possible at all - normally it's not)
Yeah - that's just a software control though and (i imagine) trivially turned on programatically.
Most (all excluding Apple?) laptops wil allow you to turn off / disable the wireless chipset in the bios. Many also have a physical kill switch on the side of the case.
Barring some wikileaks sort of tomfoolery from the CIA, this should stop any network access (assuming you also don't plug in a network cable).
I had to go through a similar setup at the start of last year - with the exception that i had to pay for it all myself, so I was working on a budget.
I got a kitset office - 2.4m x 2.4 meter with a small veranda/sheltered area out the front. This had to fit an existing concrete pad so it was perhaps a little smaller than I would have liked. (But then again, I didn't want a huge building taking up all the space in my back yard!)
I insulated and lined it myself. I was expecting it have issues keeping it warm in winter, but ended up with the exact opposite - with no ceiling space it's very hard to keep cool in summer. I bought an air con unit about a week into using it.
I got a sparky to wire the unit up to the house - mains only (no data). I had to dig the 1.5 meter trench myself. Internet is just via wireless into the house - speed is fine (about 35M) and no worries about redundancy. I use a laptop and have data on my phone so in the event of a blackout (which I wouldn't expect now days) I can just use the laptop and phone for access.
You'll definitely want carpet, I wouldn't bother with a plastic protector. White boards etc too. You want it feel office like imo.
Security - I got an alarm that texts my phone if ever there is a break-in. After a while though I stopped using it and often don't even bother locking the door at night. My laptop comes in to the house with me at night, and the most expensive thing left in there is my keyboard or maybe the air con unit. It's hard to make a space with glass windows/doors secure. The alarm will hopefully scare people off if you are home, but if you're out then they're kinda pointless.
yeah, this was going to be my original approach. (I had a previous project where I had stored images in a db, which showed the limitations of this approach).
However, I ended up chucking them in the database for simplicity. I'm able to just move database dumps from production to dev and that's a complete snapshot of the application - no need to worry about also having to sync an emails directory. It also means I don't have to worry about error handling for when an email body is not found (if the db record is there, the email body is there), or making sure emails get purged off disk correctly.
As I'm only ever retrieving one email at a time, performance has not been an issue, and as I'm only keeping a gig or so of mail, disk space hasn't really been a concern either.
Obviously if your dealing with many more emails than I need to, then this may need to be revisited, but in this case, I'm happy with my quick and easy implementation=)
I run a similar (though waaaay less popular) site - http://dudmail.com/
My mail is stored on disk in a mysql db so I don't have quite the same memory constraints as this.
I had originally created this site naively stashing the uncompressed source straight into the db. For the ~100,000 mails I'd typically retain this would take up anywhere from 800mb to slightly over a gig.
At a recent rails camp, I was in need of a mini project so decided that some sort of compression was in order. Not being quite so clever I just used the readily available Zlib library in ruby. This is just run straight over each email as it comes in with no reference to any previous emails, so very "dumb" compared to mailinator, but still fairly effective.
This took about 30 minutes to implement (in about 6 lines of code) - and then a couple of hours to test and debug. An obvious bug (very large emails were causing me to exceed the BLOB size limit and truncating the compressed source) was the main problem there...
I didn't quite reach 90% compression, but my database is now typically around 200-350mb. So about 70-80% compression. I didn't reach 90% compression, but I did manage to implement it in about 6 lines of code =)
(Managable) DRM issues asside, Stanza for the iphone is an excellent reader if you already have an iphone, and don't want to splash out for a dedicated reader.
The screen is easy to read, books are easy to source and it's free =)
For the PocketPC - ubook is one of the better ones out there.
vim or emacs?
Has anyone asked *that* yet?
Of course . . . you can't have a programming community without abusive editor war threads:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2898/text-editor-for-linux-besides-vi
Yup. You can convert any format to virtually anything - if you're prepared to waste^H^H^H^H^Hspend the time doing so. (I believe there's a convoluted process allowing you to convert text files thru various different stages into something the Kindle can read, and even some macros that will manually page thru .lit files copying and pasting the text into something useful)
.html document.
.rb didn't support italics or bold or anything other than plain text which makes it pretty much worthless for reading books)
However, you really don't want to have to do this every single time you want to read something. (And by 'you', I mean 'me' =)
I just want to be able to copy a file simply from my PC on to my PDA, rather than having to download it, extract it, convert it, etc. Particualarly because I always seem to finish a book just as I'm about to leave to go somewhere, and it's bad enough having to go and find something to copy across, without having to spend even more time converting it into an open format)
This is even more of an issue when you're traveling and don't have access to your own PC with conversion tools. Sure, you can connect to the net over your flash wireless connection, download whatever book you're after, but if you have to wait until you're home to convert the file into what even manky proprietary format your reader uses, you may as well have not bothered =)
Besides, you're on slashdot, surely you don't need to be convinced that open standard formats beat closed proprietary formats everytime? Particularly because in terms of formatting and file size, it doesn't get any better than a zipped
(PDF's do not translate very well to various small screen sizes, and last time I checked, many years ago admittedly,
And in great style, I reply to my own post, but just spotted this link: http://www.defectivebydesign.org/DRMEbookFlyer
I'm sure that will have been posted a few times by now, but it basically sums up all that is wrong with the Kindle and Sony Reader much better than I ever could.
You want to stay away from any proprietary technology (why? you shouldn't have to ask...)
.lit format - microsoft reader, I'm looking at you!)
.html and .rtf. (text, pdf and .lit are to be shunned at all costs)
.html or .rtf (zipped .html is the best). If you can't easily read these on your device, then what's the point?
That pretty much immediately rules out the Kindle, and any thing Sony has ever made...
(also, anything that requires books be in
I've been reading ebooks exclusively since 2001, and after much experimentation, I've settled on ubook reader on pretty much any brand of pocketpc. (It doesn't matter which, personally I'm using a Dell Axim as I like having the thumb scroll button, but what ever takes your fancy...)
What's important in a reader?
- Being able to read any format, particularly
- Being able to read any document, regardless of source (I believe neither the kindle or sony's reader *allow* you to do this. I say allow, because they easily can, they just *choose* not to let you).
- Being able to customize the font, margins, text size etc (Where microsoft reader is severely lacking)
- Being able to turn pages without lagging (microsoft reader, again I'm looking at you).
The most important thing is being able to read any format. Most of the ebooks easily and freely acquired will be in
A pocket pc has a lot more functionality than any of the dedicated readers - its big let down (compared at least to the kindle) is the screen. But my Axim runs at 640x480 resolution, and the text is as crisp as you'd ever want it to be. There's a plethora of ebook readers for the pocket pc, again, my personal recommendation is ubook, (and if you hunt on the net, you can easily find one of the "old" freeware versions that is perfectly adequate, some might even say better, compared to the current version).
i love to run this software over the last 6 years of digital pics i have (approx 2500 pictures) - mostly of my two kids from birth til now (damn trigger happy parents =).
it'd be very interesting to see how accurately it could pick the kids up from birth ranging through to how they look now - completely different.
if it could do it accurately, i wonder if they could use it to artificially age photographs of people - ie kids missing for years and years.
The blurb from their site says it better than I could:
I've been using pocketpc's for ebooks for years and after trying every damned reader I could find, this was by far the best I found - and on top of that it's free.
My favourite parts are being able to directly read zipped html and rtf files, as well as being able to rotate the screen and also the most usable implementation of auto scrolling I've seen. Its under active development - every request I've made to the developer has been implemented within a few weeks (which did wonders for my loyalty. can you tell?)
On the downside, it doesn't do pdf's, but pdf viewers are available for pocketpc (though imo, of limited use on the small screen).
If you use ebooks on pocketpc, and haven't tried this, I seriously recommend giving it a burl!
I find it somewhat ironic that you complain about top-posting whilst top-posting!
And a million fucking n00bz with Outleak Excess would still top-post without even snipping irrelevant material when quoting, and when called on it, would claim it was somehow more readable!
> Right.
>
> Participation is voluntary, and in good communities, there are usually longstanding members who will lay down the heavy, large-knuckled hand of tough love and teach offenders to behave properly. Those who decide that this treatment is unfair leave (or cause more trouble, and get ignored), and those who decide to stay usually do so humbled. I love it.
>
I notice that in the screen shots of, (for example), the tractor, the wheels are not round but rather a 13-sided semi-circle shaped object.
Is it still too computationally expensive to draw a proper 3D circle in a game like this using todays hardware?
I realise a "true" circle is probably impossible/impractical, but even a 50-sided circle would probably be enough to fool the eye. Or would this have such a negative effective on FPS that it wouldn't be worth it?
j&j?
In regards to windows 1.0:
It took 55 programmers one year to develop this program.
And 500 slashdotters 20 minutes to overload neowin's server looking at screenshots of an OS we all supposedly loath . . .
From the article:
"What these kids don't realize is that every time they pull up music and movies and make a copy, they are committing a felony under the United States code," Carter said in an interview. "If you were to prosecute someone and give them three years, I think this would act as a deterrent."
I know the american judicial and political system can be pretty screwed up at time, but just how much support does this guy think he's going to get from his constituents (read votes), when he starts sending kids to jail for three years in punishment for what amounts to fiften dollars worth of copyright violation?
To compare, how long do you expect Jeffrey Skilling (former Enron CEO) to spend in jail for the $30 billion lost there . . .
Remember, we're talking the sorts of countries that think they can censor the internet here.
You'd think any country trying to censor the internet would first consider trying to secure their open proxies . . .
Setting up a proxy securely is not trivial, and it is entirely possible that something gets overlooked, especially when you're working in a less developed country with few peers around you to give you help.
.
perhaps I'm being a little harsh, but in todays economy if your sysadmin is not up to the task, then perhaps you should be thinking about getting a new sysadmin?
I'd be sympathetic to a charitable organisation that had this happen to them, but really, its not that hard to turn services off that you don't need . .
hrmmm
I don't know what company you work for, but there's a running joke at my work about where the department sources what must the world's nastiest instant coffee, which it dispenses into 3/4 sized plastic cups filled with luke warm water from a coffee stand in the corridor.
And then there was my reasonably expensive "premium" coffee, in a jar, in the kitchen, stashed at the back of a shelf, semi hidden behind a cup.
*I* would have thought any half-awake person could have seen it was obviously not company coffee, so I left it there thinking it should be safe.
Yeah, I wasn't too happy when I saw them using it, but hey, my bad for leaving it in the open. As I said, after that its now safely in my desk =)
In many countries bandwidth is still incredibly expensive, this is especially true in tinpot dictatorships that censor the internet. Americans in particular have come to treat bandwidth as a free resource, and do not think about the damage that some poor soul in a third world country has suffered because of a slashdot article about an interesting but badly implemented project about internet censorship.
It seems to me that if leaving a proxy server open to the public can be as expensive as all that, then perhaps the proxy server should not be left open to the public
It is not necessary to put up a "don't use my proxy" sign. When it comes to proxies, unless you are invited to use the proxy, you do not have permission.
A proxy should not be confused with a public webserver, where it is reasonable to assume that the default is to allow public access. Your analogy of the open gate applies to normal webpages on my webserver.
I disagree - if you do not want something to be available and usable by the public then you don't make it available and usable to the public.
For instance, this morning I left my expensive coffee in the communal kitchen at work. It was stashed/hidden at the back of the top cupboard, but not labelled in any way. I walked in earlier to make myself a cup and found some contractors (damned contractors) helping themselves to my coffee. I didn't say anything because it was my own damned fault for not indicating that it wasn't publically available coffee, in anyway other than putting at the back of the cupboard.
If you don't want someone using port x on your server, don't open port x to the public.
(note: my coffee is now sitting in my draw at work (and my draw is not a communal area!))
People make the analogy of port scanning being like testing doors to see if they're unlocked. And it's a good one. You aren't allowed to "test my door", or even walk up the path to it, without my permission. Because it's all my property. That "no solicitors" sign is there to prevent just that.
.
I can't speak with authority on US or international law, but in NZ law (and presumably most of the rest of the commonwealth) you do have implied permission to come on anybodies property at any time. As long as your gate is open, it is legal for anyone to come up your path and knock on your front door until you have let them know otherwise - either by putting up a sign - "No Trespassers", or by telling them to leave your property. After that, then it becomes it illegal for them to be on your land. At this point you can take reasonable steps to remove them.
It's nonsense to say that people don't have an implied right to come onto your land as people do it all the time - neighbours, friends, charity workers, lost people looking for a phone, policeman *cough*, etc etc. . .
However, this is another analogy that falls down, as there is no universally accepted way to put up a sign on a computer saying "Don't use my proxy server" - one can only assume that if its open, its open to be used. If it wasn't meant to be used then it should be closed (much like a gate).