Could hydrogen fuel cells potentially change this?
Sure, if you don't mind losing half the power generated to conversion inefficiencies. And if you don't mind doubling (rough guess) the cost and maintenance. Say good-bye to the "under $0.01/kWh" figure.
I guess what I am responding to is the original sugggestion that a gun be a good primary defense of home. It isn't. It is but a last resort against a very small set of possible scenerios... anecdotes aside. Thats all I am saying. Just keep things in perspective.
Ok, and of all these types of breakins, how many of them would be foiled by the owner having a safely stored gun in the house? Seems to me that gun ownership (for self defense) is mostly a false sense of security.
So.... let's say that someone breaks into your home and sees you pull out said imitation firearm. Let's say that they're packing heat as well, and so decide to return fire. Who's going to win?
Damn, you people are watching WAAYYY too many movies! I like to shoot a gun every now than then for fun, but I don't delude myself into thinking that I might actually get the chance to use one in self defense. I certainly don't see myself exchanging fire with a burglar. The Wild West is over! I've been victim to several crimes in my life and there is not ONE of those cases where a gun would have been of much use. By the time you lock the gun up and make it safe, what good is it for self defense?
"Hold on Mr. bad guy, let me go get my gun and we can have this out like men. Damn, I can't find the key. Hold on a minute..."
There are SOO many more effective ways to avoid getting into such situations in the first place that the idea of getting a gun for self defense is all but ridiculous. If you want the gun, thats fine. That is your right, but damn, don't delude youself into thinking it is going to be particular ly useful beyond giving you a (potentially false) sense of security.
I think a move from DVD would require more than just better quality and low price. Going from VHS to DVD was not just about quality. It was about convenience and features. A randonmly seekable disc with extra features that you don't have to rewind and doesn't lose quality over time? Sign me up. What could a new video format offer that increases features and convenience over DVD? Doesn't copy protection actually take away from convenience and features?
Don't forget the roughly equal amount of effort that will go into cracking it.
Yeah, but I think there is a type of person who really gets off on doing that kind of thing. Hell, when I was younger, half the fun of trading games and such was bypassing the copy protection. It gives bored kids something "constructive" to do, and errr, keeps them off drugs and stuff.:-P
If someone's breaking in during the night - they expect someone to be home and are willing to do them harm if they get in the way.
Why would someone breakin when expecting someone to be home? Criminals may be criminals, but they are not necessarily stupid. That is an unnecessary risk. Seems to me that a burgler woudld be much more interested in getting the hell out of there if caught.
As in one-to-one NAT? So you're essentially giving this machine its own routable IP Address, only with the complexity of NAT thrown in?
Maybe I've just been doing it for so long with good firewalls, but it really isn't that complex. I think you are blowing this whole complexing of NAT thing way out of proportion. Adding a NAT rule is just as easy as adding a firewall rule. If you have a good firewall in place that does NAT well, why not utilize it if you can? Works for me.
Whether you like NAT in principle or not, the fact is that it does address many of the problems that Internet as a whole currently presents. NAT isn't perfect, and shouldn't be consider a long term solution to the problems, but people use it for a reason. It isn't like there is some NAT conspiracy spreading propaganda and trying to surpress the truth abot IPv6....
DNS hostnames instead of hardcoded IP addresses: instead of configuring a machine to make its time server is 10.5.23.40, you make it 'time.company.com'. Instead of telling a user to pull up the company website at http://10.3.0.19, go to 'www.internal.company.com'. You do see the advantages and reasons for this, right?
Sorry, I thought you were talking about somehow configuring the IP of the server itself using DNS.
And speaking of messy interconnects, haven't you ever run into the problem where two different networks in need of interconnection have been numbered with the same RFC1918 prefix, such as 192.168.1? Another drawback of NAT: IP addresses that aren't necessarily unique. I know I've run into that problem several times.
WHen setting up a network, I will pick an "unusual" subnet such as 10.16.10.0. The chances of a conflict are pretty low.
Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see IPv6 rolled out in the US, but it is pretty huge change and shouldn't be taken lightly.
I'm not aware of any common implementations that don't just route packets when only doing NAT. And that's all they should do. There is nothing in the NAT standards (RFCs 1631 and 2663) that specify dropping packets that aren't in the NAT process. If a device is doing such things, then by definition it is doing more than just NAT. It is doing at least packet filtering and probably a stateful firewall.
Even without the firewall, NAT is more secure than no having NAT. Secure enough for most home users whose real concern are the worms scanning the internet and not clever hackers manipulating routing tables. Since common devices do provide the simple filtering necessary to protect against this kind of attack, this is all pretty moot.
Ok, maybe not quite as easy as NAT. But it isn't immensely difficult. I would argue that the benefits of using routable addresses (with a firewall) are worth the extra trouble when changing upstream providers.
Obviously you haven't done it with networks of the complexity I have. It isn't just about changing providers. It could be as simple as adding a new remote office. What do you do when you've already allocated your/24 to your LAN/WAN? How about adding a DMZ to your firewall? All this requires reprovisioning, resubnetting, and re-IPing if you have a fixed public set. NAT offers an incredible amount of flexibility in network design. It would be nice if you could just arbitrarily get new public IPv4 subnets or start with a large enough block as in IPv6, but that is not the way things are.
Do you ever use it to access multiple machines behind NAT? And what do you do when it yells at you about screwy host keys? Just ignore it and hit yes, thereby negating most of the security SSH provides you?
It has never been an issue. I try to avoid port mapping and opt for IP mapping. If there is a server behind NAT that I will need to access, I give it its own static translation. I never have problems with screwy keys. If I need to access many machiens behind NAT, I'll just ssh to the one and go from there. I'd probably do that even if I had public IPs (and a firewall). You know, just to limit the points of entry.
And again, there are real problems if you have multiple machines doing IPSec behind the NAT. The VPN masquerade configuration in the linux kernel warns about this.
As I mentioned, I generally avoid initiating VPNs from inside a corporate network. The firewall/VPN concentrator should be maintaining any VPN connections. You can filter traffic there. Although I have had this issue with users accessing VPN from home through NAT. And I will admit that NAT at home isn't worth the trouble if it can be avoided.
Well if you're going to all that trouble [of NATing to a poo], why don't you just give the actual machines the public addresses and use a firewall, thereby significantly reducing the complexity of this setup?
Umm, I would be using a firewall, NAT or no NAT. I wouldn't put a business on the Internet without one. It was only home networks that I suggested NAT alone would be good enough security. As to why I wouldn't assign public addresses directly to the machines? Because it isn't worth the loss of flexibility.
As does IPv6 (at least moreso outside North America). Perhaps if less people were disillusioned by NAT, it would be more common there too.
Get IPv6 in NA? You mean by tunneling my traffic through IPv4 to some backbone many hops away? No thanks! Neat experiment, but not something I would put into production.
I've renumbered networks with multiple locations, one with >150 machines at a location. As I admitted already, it isn't quite as simple as with NAT, but it isn't the extreme pain in the ass you're making it out to be if you're using DHCP and have systems configured to use DNS hostnames whereever possible instead of hard coded IP addresses.
Well, I really dont' know what this "DNS hostnames instead of hard coded IP addresses" thing is, but OK. If you don't mind dealing with it, go for it. I have dealt with networks more complex than just renumbering some machines. When you start making interconnects with vendors and clients, it gets pretty messy.
That's just NAT and a firewall combined into one system. NAT doesn't drop packets, it just alters certain ones under certain circumstances. The part about dropping all packets except those that are replies to outbound connections that you mentioned - that's a stateful firewall. That is above and beyond the definition of NAT. If you yanked all the NAT functionality out of those linksys routers and left only the stateful firewall behind, they would be no less secure.
They'd be MORE secure because they wouldn't be able to access the internet.;-)
Ok, I'll explain it: The person whose router is doing only NAT is not blocking any incoming connections at all. If the connection in question is broadband, people on the same subnet can set up routes to the vunlerable party's RFC1918 address block with that person's public address as the gateway. Anyone with sufficient access to the ISP's routers can set up these routes to pass traffic into your network from anywhere in the ISP. So if you're using NAT without a firewall, your network is wide open to nearby people on the same ISP or anyone with sufficient access to the ISP's systems. For starters.
I'm not aware of any common implementations of NAT (we're actually talking about PAT) besides Cisco IOS that will route just any packet to the internal network while in NAT mode. Besides, I didn't say it was perfect security. But for most home users, it amounts to the same thing as a firewall blocking incoming traffic. Now, you can nitpick about the differences, but in the end a simple NAT router is goign to protect users from all of those nasties scanning the internet for exploitable services.. giving them time to update their systems and download virus protections.
NAT makes it incredibly easy for companies who don't own their own IP block to move to differerent ISPs at will.
As do properly set up DNS and DHCP.
Not nearly as easy as NAT. Especially when an internal WAN is involved. I'm talking about larger networks than 10 PCs and a Windows 2000 file server.
For businesses, NAT is great. Few businesses use protocols that are broken by NAT.
SSH? PPTP? IPSec? These protocols are all broken by NAT. Many businesses use them.
How in the world is SSH broken by NAT? I use it all the time through NAT. Most IPsec implementation have a NAT traversal mode. And PPTP? That is solved by NATing to a pool of public addresses. But this requires a decent firewall. And if you have such a firewall, you should really be doing the IPsec/PPTP from that anyway. Or even a VPN concentrator. I'm not talking about putting in some Linksys broadband router at the edge of corporate network, ya know.
It alows nearly unlimited internal network growth without worrying about getting a new public subnet when you outgrow your old one.
As does IPv6. Or does this hypothetical business have more than 2^64 computers?
NAT has the distinct advantage of being available now.
I also work with MANY businesses and NAT is a pain in the ass, especially for those with all but the simplest of needs.
Then I suggest that you just don't know how to take advantage of the benefits of NAT. For example, I do work for a medium sized financial institution about to change ISPs and public subnet. If they didn't do NAT, it would be a huge problem trying to coordinate a re-IP with their many remote locations, vendors, and clients. NAT is allowing them to make a seemless transition. This kind of thing happens more often than you'd think.
Until IPv6 catches on, I won't setup a client without NAT. Well, unless they have some critical application that absolutely will not work through NAT, but so far that hasn't been much of a problem.
Now your router might say, block everything by default, allow outbound traffic and keep track of outbound connections and only allow replies back in, but that is a basic stateful firewall, not NAT (or PAT).
I was under the impression that most common NAT/PAT implementations (such as a broadband router) besides Cisco IOS did block inbound packets that weren't associated with outbound connections. But I should really test it myself.
That's totally wrong. NAT does not prevent any kind of packets from moving in either direction. It just modifies packets moving in a certain direction. If you have NAT without any firewall rules to actually disallow incomign connections, your network is quite vulnerable.
I'm pretty sure we are actually talking about PAT (Port Address Translation) and not one-to-one IP translations. PAT is stateful by nature and disallows any inbound traffic that isn't associated with an outbound connection. Whether you like it or not, it does offer protection that would otherwise require a firewall.
I doubt anyone would suggest that if you map a public IP to your internal web server, it is protected. You might want to pay attention to context next time you proclaim that someone is "totally wrong."
Again, NAT does not enhance security. It just doesn't. I don't understand why people think it does. The thing that enhances security is your firewall. So instead of pretending like you get security because connections aren't mapped in, you ship home routers with a rule that says no connections may be established from the ``outside'' to the ``inside.'' Done.
Explain to me why a person with NAT is only "prentending" to have security and a person with a router blocking incoming connections has real security. It amounts to the same thing. Nobody can connect to your PC from the internet... hence "enahanced security." Just because you don't like NAT doesn't mean it doesn't offer some level of protection for your average user. It might not be ideal. But it works.
NAT does nothing good for the internet. It causes confusion, it breaks protocols, it prevents certain types of connectivity from being possible.
NAT makes it incredibly easy for companies who don't own their own IP block to move to differerent ISPs at will. For businesses, NAT is great. Few businesses use protocols that are broken by NAT. It alows nearly unlimited internal network growth without worrying about getting a new public subnet when you outgrow your old one. Or say you want to reroute web traffic to a different server, just change the NAT mapping. I work with MANY businesses and NAT is great. The only problem I have with NAT in a business environment is dealing with the difference between internal and external DNS. That can be a pain.
I work for an ISP, and we usually alert users when they are infected with something and generating unusual network activity. We also offer help. But if the problem is really bad we will also have to turn them down.
Once you're to the "stock investor" class of business, it doesn't really matter who runs them. The investors want a return on their investment. If you think any differently, you're just lying to yourself.
Or maybe you just underestimate the varied personal motives of individuals.
Business is designed to do one thing: Make money for those who work for/invest in it, and therefore, amoral.
So how about businesses that are set up to produce a particular product in a particular way, such as an organic farm? Believe it or not, there are investors and business owners who are motivated by moral and/or socially responsible practices. When I invest in a company, I try to make sure it isn't totally amoral. Just because 90% of American businesses are amoral doesn't mean that is the nature of business as a rule. Again, businesses are only as amoral as those who run them. I refuse to let the corporations continue to be a moral shield for people. People need to be held accountable (even if only in words) for the actions of a corporation. I'm sick and tired of people hiding behind the ol' motto, "It's just business..." It isn't "just" business. It is one of the foundations of our society. If businesses are amoral, then the society is amoral.
They are driven by investors, which demand a healthy return on their investment.
Well, not all of them. There are many small businesses that are wholely privately owned with only that bank as an "investor."
You're like this too... you do something for someone in return for $$$. This is just supply/demand at work.
No, i'm not "like this." All my employment decisions are backed by careful consideration of social responsibility. I won't work for just anyone if I have a reasonable choice.
I can't say I blame them. As a business, your goal is to legally make money. You only act to cut off your clients when it effects your bottom line.
See, that is exactly what is wrong with Corporate America... almost no sense of social responsibility. I'm sure most spammers have a very similar excuse. "I gotta make money and I'm not breaking any laws..."
I figured it out. I went and got me a USB memory stick and booted Linux from it. The BIOS treats it like a USB-ZIP drive. No special image. Just the syslinux bootloader, a kernel, and a compressed Linux filesystem. Pretty neat.
Ok, just to make everyone in this thread happy, I went to Microcenter after work and got me one of these new-fangled USB memory stick thingies that everyone is talking about. I am currently (as I write this) booted into Linux running entirely off of the USB memory. Now, if I had a copy of DOS (and not just Win2k) somewhere, I might make it dual boot and consider flashing my BIOS.;-)
I think the spelling "problems" have more to do with the use of 'net slang and abreviations than any actual inability to spell. People use the same kinds of shortcuts in casual speech all the time, so it isn't like it is something new. People are just learning to adapt casual speaking styles to written communications.
Whatever. I'm not sure how you got onto that tangent just from my comment about Mac users generally enjoying their computer experience. And I don't really like how you imply that I am displaying some "fanboy" characteristics. I use Linux/Mac/Windows daily as well. I'm just saying that Apple has a much more refined product that seems to work well for those willing to pay the premium. I really can't say as much for Windows users. Most Windows users I know are getting pretty annoyed by all the maintanence that Windows seems to require. Virus scanners, firewalls, adware removers. For most people, I think Apple offers a very attractive alternative to Windows. I don't think most users care about half the things you mentioned in your rant. I think it comes down to cost. People see cheapass comodity PCs in the store and don't even think about the hell they are going to go through in 3 months when it is infected by every virus and adware known to man because they didn't know how to protect themselves. Hell, I bet some of the people shopping for a new PC think they need one because their old one is so choked by malware.
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Could hydrogen fuel cells potentially change this?
Sure, if you don't mind losing half the power generated to conversion inefficiencies. And if you don't mind doubling (rough guess) the cost and maintenance. Say good-bye to the "under $0.01/kWh" figure.
-matthew
Do you live in Iraq or Afganastan or some place like that? If I felt that insecure, I'd move.
=matthew
-matthew
Damn, you people are watching WAAYYY too many movies! I like to shoot a gun every now than then for fun, but I don't delude myself into thinking that I might actually get the chance to use one in self defense. I certainly don't see myself exchanging fire with a burglar. The Wild West is over! I've been victim to several crimes in my life and there is not ONE of those cases where a gun would have been of much use. By the time you lock the gun up and make it safe, what good is it for self defense?
"Hold on Mr. bad guy, let me go get my gun and we can have this out like men. Damn, I can't find the key. Hold on a minute..."
There are SOO many more effective ways to avoid getting into such situations in the first place that the idea of getting a gun for self defense is all but ridiculous. If you want the gun, thats fine. That is your right, but damn, don't delude youself into thinking it is going to be particular ly useful beyond giving you a (potentially false) sense of security.
-matthew
-matthew
-matthew
Yeah, but I think there is a type of person who really gets off on doing that kind of thing. Hell, when I was younger, half the fun of trading games and such was bypassing the copy protection. It gives bored kids something "constructive" to do, and errr, keeps them off drugs and stuff. :-P
-matthew
Why would someone breakin when expecting someone to be home? Criminals may be criminals, but they are not necessarily stupid. That is an unnecessary risk. Seems to me that a burgler woudld be much more interested in getting the hell out of there if caught.
-matthew
Maybe I've just been doing it for so long with good firewalls, but it really isn't that complex. I think you are blowing this whole complexing of NAT thing way out of proportion. Adding a NAT rule is just as easy as adding a firewall rule. If you have a good firewall in place that does NAT well, why not utilize it if you can? Works for me.
Whether you like NAT in principle or not, the fact is that it does address many of the problems that Internet as a whole currently presents. NAT isn't perfect, and shouldn't be consider a long term solution to the problems, but people use it for a reason. It isn't like there is some NAT conspiracy spreading propaganda and trying to surpress the truth abot IPv6....
DNS hostnames instead of hardcoded IP addresses: instead of configuring a machine to make its time server is 10.5.23.40, you make it 'time.company.com'. Instead of telling a user to pull up the company website at http://10.3.0.19, go to 'www.internal.company.com'. You do see the advantages and reasons for this, right?
Sorry, I thought you were talking about somehow configuring the IP of the server itself using DNS.
And speaking of messy interconnects, haven't you ever run into the problem where two different networks in need of interconnection have been numbered with the same RFC1918 prefix, such as 192.168.1? Another drawback of NAT: IP addresses that aren't necessarily unique. I know I've run into that problem several times.
WHen setting up a network, I will pick an "unusual" subnet such as 10.16.10.0. The chances of a conflict are pretty low.
Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see IPv6 rolled out in the US, but it is pretty huge change and shouldn't be taken lightly.
-matthew
Even without the firewall, NAT is more secure than no having NAT. Secure enough for most home users whose real concern are the worms scanning the internet and not clever hackers manipulating routing tables. Since common devices do provide the simple filtering necessary to protect against this kind of attack, this is all pretty moot.
Ok, maybe not quite as easy as NAT. But it isn't immensely difficult. I would argue that the benefits of using routable addresses (with a firewall) are worth the extra trouble when changing upstream providers.
Obviously you haven't done it with networks of the complexity I have. It isn't just about changing providers. It could be as simple as adding a new remote office. What do you do when you've already allocated your /24 to your LAN/WAN? How about adding a DMZ to your firewall? All this requires reprovisioning, resubnetting, and re-IPing if you have a fixed public set. NAT offers an incredible amount of flexibility in network design. It would be nice if you could just arbitrarily get new public IPv4 subnets or start with a large enough block as in IPv6, but that is not the way things are.
Do you ever use it to access multiple machines behind NAT? And what do you do when it yells at you about screwy host keys? Just ignore it and hit yes, thereby negating most of the security SSH provides you?
It has never been an issue. I try to avoid port mapping and opt for IP mapping. If there is a server behind NAT that I will need to access, I give it its own static translation. I never have problems with screwy keys. If I need to access many machiens behind NAT, I'll just ssh to the one and go from there. I'd probably do that even if I had public IPs (and a firewall). You know, just to limit the points of entry.
And again, there are real problems if you have multiple machines doing IPSec behind the NAT. The VPN masquerade configuration in the linux kernel warns about this.
As I mentioned, I generally avoid initiating VPNs from inside a corporate network. The firewall/VPN concentrator should be maintaining any VPN connections. You can filter traffic there. Although I have had this issue with users accessing VPN from home through NAT. And I will admit that NAT at home isn't worth the trouble if it can be avoided.
Well if you're going to all that trouble [of NATing to a poo], why don't you just give the actual machines the public addresses and use a firewall, thereby significantly reducing the complexity of this setup?
Umm, I would be using a firewall, NAT or no NAT. I wouldn't put a business on the Internet without one. It was only home networks that I suggested NAT alone would be good enough security. As to why I wouldn't assign public addresses directly to the machines? Because it isn't worth the loss of flexibility.
As does IPv6 (at least moreso outside North America). Perhaps if less people were disillusioned by NAT, it would be more common there too.
Get IPv6 in NA? You mean by tunneling my traffic through IPv4 to some backbone many hops away? No thanks! Neat experiment, but not something I would put into production.
I've renumbered networks with multiple locations, one with >150 machines at a location. As I admitted already, it isn't quite as simple as with NAT, but it isn't the extreme pain in the ass you're making it out to be if you're using DHCP and have systems configured to use DNS hostnames whereever possible instead of hard coded IP addresses.
Well, I really dont' know what this "DNS hostnames instead of hard coded IP addresses" thing is, but OK. If you don't mind dealing with it, go for it. I have dealt with networks more complex than just renumbering some machines. When you start making interconnects with vendors and clients, it gets pretty messy.
-matthew
They'd be MORE secure because they wouldn't be able to access the internet. ;-)
-matthew
I'm not aware of any common implementations of NAT (we're actually talking about PAT) besides Cisco IOS that will route just any packet to the internal network while in NAT mode. Besides, I didn't say it was perfect security. But for most home users, it amounts to the same thing as a firewall blocking incoming traffic. Now, you can nitpick about the differences, but in the end a simple NAT router is goign to protect users from all of those nasties scanning the internet for exploitable services.. giving them time to update their systems and download virus protections.
NAT makes it incredibly easy for companies who don't own their own IP block to move to differerent ISPs at will.
As do properly set up DNS and DHCP.
Not nearly as easy as NAT. Especially when an internal WAN is involved. I'm talking about larger networks than 10 PCs and a Windows 2000 file server.
For businesses, NAT is great. Few businesses use protocols that are broken by NAT.
SSH? PPTP? IPSec? These protocols are all broken by NAT. Many businesses use them.
How in the world is SSH broken by NAT? I use it all the time through NAT. Most IPsec implementation have a NAT traversal mode. And PPTP? That is solved by NATing to a pool of public addresses. But this requires a decent firewall. And if you have such a firewall, you should really be doing the IPsec/PPTP from that anyway. Or even a VPN concentrator. I'm not talking about putting in some Linksys broadband router at the edge of corporate network, ya know.
It alows nearly unlimited internal network growth without worrying about getting a new public subnet when you outgrow your old one.
As does IPv6. Or does this hypothetical business have more than 2^64 computers?
NAT has the distinct advantage of being available now.
I also work with MANY businesses and NAT is a pain in the ass, especially for those with all but the simplest of needs.
Then I suggest that you just don't know how to take advantage of the benefits of NAT. For example, I do work for a medium sized financial institution about to change ISPs and public subnet. If they didn't do NAT, it would be a huge problem trying to coordinate a re-IP with their many remote locations, vendors, and clients. NAT is allowing them to make a seemless transition. This kind of thing happens more often than you'd think.
Until IPv6 catches on, I won't setup a client without NAT. Well, unless they have some critical application that absolutely will not work through NAT, but so far that hasn't been much of a problem.
-matthew
I was under the impression that most common NAT/PAT implementations (such as a broadband router) besides Cisco IOS did block inbound packets that weren't associated with outbound connections. But I should really test it myself.
-matthew
I'm pretty sure we are actually talking about PAT (Port Address Translation) and not one-to-one IP translations. PAT is stateful by nature and disallows any inbound traffic that isn't associated with an outbound connection. Whether you like it or not, it does offer protection that would otherwise require a firewall.
I doubt anyone would suggest that if you map a public IP to your internal web server, it is protected. You might want to pay attention to context next time you proclaim that someone is "totally wrong."
-matthew
Explain to me why a person with NAT is only "prentending" to have security and a person with a router blocking incoming connections has real security. It amounts to the same thing. Nobody can connect to your PC from the internet... hence "enahanced security." Just because you don't like NAT doesn't mean it doesn't offer some level of protection for your average user. It might not be ideal. But it works.
NAT does nothing good for the internet. It causes confusion, it breaks protocols, it prevents certain types of connectivity from being possible.
NAT makes it incredibly easy for companies who don't own their own IP block to move to differerent ISPs at will. For businesses, NAT is great. Few businesses use protocols that are broken by NAT. It alows nearly unlimited internal network growth without worrying about getting a new public subnet when you outgrow your old one. Or say you want to reroute web traffic to a different server, just change the NAT mapping. I work with MANY businesses and NAT is great. The only problem I have with NAT in a business environment is dealing with the difference between internal and external DNS. That can be a pain.
-matthew
I work for an ISP, and we usually alert users when they are infected with something and generating unusual network activity. We also offer help. But if the problem is really bad we will also have to turn them down.
Or maybe you just underestimate the varied personal motives of individuals.
Business is designed to do one thing: Make money for those who work for/invest in it, and therefore, amoral.
So how about businesses that are set up to produce a particular product in a particular way, such as an organic farm? Believe it or not, there are investors and business owners who are motivated by moral and/or socially responsible practices. When I invest in a company, I try to make sure it isn't totally amoral. Just because 90% of American businesses are amoral doesn't mean that is the nature of business as a rule. Again, businesses are only as amoral as those who run them. I refuse to let the corporations continue to be a moral shield for people. People need to be held accountable (even if only in words) for the actions of a corporation. I'm sick and tired of people hiding behind the ol' motto, "It's just business..." It isn't "just" business. It is one of the foundations of our society. If businesses are amoral, then the society is amoral.
-matthew
Only as amoral as those who run them.
They are driven by investors, which demand a healthy return on their investment.
Well, not all of them. There are many small businesses that are wholely privately owned with only that bank as an "investor."
You're like this too... you do something for someone in return for $$$. This is just supply/demand at work.
No, i'm not "like this." All my employment decisions are backed by careful consideration of social responsibility. I won't work for just anyone if I have a reasonable choice.
-matthew
See, that is exactly what is wrong with Corporate America... almost no sense of social responsibility. I'm sure most spammers have a very similar excuse. "I gotta make money and I'm not breaking any laws..."
*sigh*
-matthew
I figured it out. I went and got me a USB memory stick and booted Linux from it. The BIOS treats it like a USB-ZIP drive. No special image. Just the syslinux bootloader, a kernel, and a compressed Linux filesystem. Pretty neat.
Ok, just to make everyone in this thread happy, I went to Microcenter after work and got me one of these new-fangled USB memory stick thingies that everyone is talking about. I am currently (as I write this) booted into Linux running entirely off of the USB memory. Now, if I had a copy of DOS (and not just Win2k) somewhere, I might make it dual boot and consider flashing my BIOS. ;-)
I think the spelling "problems" have more to do with the use of 'net slang and abreviations than any actual inability to spell. People use the same kinds of shortcuts in casual speech all the time, so it isn't like it is something new. People are just learning to adapt casual speaking styles to written communications.
-matthew
Right, like they can't make their own mplementations of IP/HTTP/SMTP/CSS/etc.
-matthew
Whatever. I'm not sure how you got onto that tangent just from my comment about Mac users generally enjoying their computer experience. And I don't really like how you imply that I am displaying some "fanboy" characteristics. I use Linux/Mac/Windows daily as well. I'm just saying that Apple has a much more refined product that seems to work well for those willing to pay the premium. I really can't say as much for Windows users. Most Windows users I know are getting pretty annoyed by all the maintanence that Windows seems to require. Virus scanners, firewalls, adware removers. For most people, I think Apple offers a very attractive alternative to Windows. I don't think most users care about half the things you mentioned in your rant. I think it comes down to cost. People see cheapass comodity PCs in the store and don't even think about the hell they are going to go through in 3 months when it is infected by every virus and adware known to man because they didn't know how to protect themselves. Hell, I bet some of the people shopping for a new PC think they need one because their old one is so choked by malware.
-matthew