My boss wrote the software that controls the process of scanning tickets at the gate for another major company that puts on sporting events. By chance, he happened to mention that he built a backdoor into the software which will always cause the software to allow access when it scans a certain barcode, so basically if you have that barcode you can get an unlimited number of people into any event this company puts on (as long as the ticket looks legit enough to pass a visual inspection).
Go do a Google search for "windows 7 laptops" and pick a site from the 200 million results. Or, you could choose eBay / Amazon / NewEgg / Walmart, all of which still sell new Windows 7 laptops.
Otherwise, the unfortunate answer is that you'll have to buy a Windows 8 laptop and put Windows 7 on it. That means you'll have to purchase a license for Windows 7 (OEM licenses do not include downgrade rights), but on the up side, you may be able to get a refund for the bundled Windows 8 license if you remove it from the computer before using it. Just google "oem windows refund process" for more info.
Would you expect them to replace something that's out of warranty? Read their warranty terms, it probably says that once the warranty ends, under all circumstances so does their obligation to you. That's why manufacturers sell extended warranties/maintenance plans.
I'm sure these groups have laudable goals, but there are two huge roadblocks preventing what they're proposing, and they just seem to ignore them. If you want to advance this cause, you can start by addressing these issues instead of pretending like they don't exist.
First, what if someone does something illegal while using your wifi and you're left taking the rap? And yes, sure you can say that an IP does not equal a person, but to use that defense, it's going to cost you a lot of time and money in court that 99% of the population cannot afford.
Second, every residential ISP I've ever used has language in their TOS that specifically says you are not allowed to share your access with anyone that is not a member of your household, or a guest of a member of your household. This legally prevents you from running an open hotspot for the purpose of providing access to strangers.
Given the above, it's incredibly risky to run an open hotspot. Anyone that does so either doesn't know about the above, or (probably mistakenly) thinks they can beat the legal system when it comes knocking.
What would be really cool in a not too distant future...
Interoperable networks to the point that you can go buy a phone anywhere and use it on any network. No more CDMA vs GSM vs iDEN.
Postpaid pay-as-you-go plans with every carrier
Software on the phone that functions similar to a least cost routing algorithm...I.E. I want to send a text message right now, go check with every carrier and get their current SMS rate, then when you have it, select the carrier with the lowest rate and use them to send the message. Same thing for phone calls or data. Say you pop open the facebook app, your phone would go get the per KB data rate from every carrier and send the request through the cheapest one.
Naturally the actual LCR algorithm itself would need to consume data to do its job, so perhaps this could be something built into the GSM spec where all of the towers exchange this info as part of the network overhead.
But just think about what this could do...no more carrier lock in, no more price gouging, actual COMPETITION in the market.
The telcos would HATE it and FIGHT it and try to make it ILLEGAL to do things this way.
But take a second and actually think about it - how much would this do to promote innovation and prevent price fixing?
You could actually probably do something similar to this today with the various prepaid carriers assuming you had two or more than were on the same network type...
Just change the TOS to say that you're not purchasing the software, you're purchasing a non-transferable permanent license. Just like the new model for MS Office, you pay a fee to use the software but you can't sell that software. The only difference is that in the case of Steam, it's a one time fee that grants unlimited use for a single person.
For some reason people continue to believe that the laws of common sense govern their relationship with commercial 3rd parties. This simply isn't the case. If you read AT&T's TOS for wireless service, you'll see that they state that any "smartphone" requires a data plan. Furthermore, you'll also see that AT&T reserves the right to update their TOS from time to time without providing notice, so if it didn't have the smartphone clause when the OP signed up, they added it and he didn't read the updated version.
As much as I dislike being forced into plans I won't use (i.e. a VOICE plan on a smartphone), AT&T was fully within their rights to make this change but the article is worded as though they did something wrong. Folks, just because you don't like things, does not make them wrong.
In the global struggling economy, my first question would be who's paying for this? There's a cost for the devices, someone to install them, fix them, maintain them, plus the cell service. I don't know that this would be very high on my priority list in terms of new projects to get funded. I'm sure it's a great project with good intentions, but is monitoring trees really something we need to be spending money on right now?
The whole thing is going to be moot soon anyway. Someone will come up with an invisible track detector which identified the trees that are tagged so they can be avoided. Trees and forests have the very handy tendency to be devoid of metal, so a very sensitive metal detector is all you're going to need to detect these things. I wonder how they managed to get this fact by the review board...
You must be using one of those nonstandard modems...normal modems would say NO CARRIER. Trust me, I dealt with dial-up to BBS systems on noisy phone lines all through the 90s, and actually kind of miss the simplicity from time to time.
Ok, so the big question is WTF is AT&T doing with ONE dhcp server for the entire u-verse network, but the bigger question is WHY haven't they just spun up another one to replace it? How long does it take to install an OS, install a DHCP daemon and configure some scopes? A few hours? A day at most?
You should be more careful about writing things and try to make them more factual. If Directv give you something and never told you that you had to pay for extras, then when they charge you for extras, you simply call them up and tell them to explain why you're being billed for something they never disclosed to you. When they can't, demand they remove the charge and if they don't, take them to small claims court and get the judge to remove it for them. To me it sounds like what you're actually saying is directv gave you a 20 page contract which you signed without reading, and you're now upset with them for acting exactly how they said they would in the contract that you didn't read. In this case, this is not a scam, it's a failure to read and understand how contracts and the legal system work.
Actually, you're right. I think the issue was that the tech installing it was a business tech so he didn't have any residential modems on his truck and they would charge to do another truck roll to replace it. The only way to get it for free was to go pick it up at the local comcast office. Unfortunately I was in town from another area just for that day to install computers and stuff at an office we were setting up so it wasn't feasible for me to do that. So, it's more appropriate to say that Comcast will let you turn off NAT as long as you're okay wasting some of your time to go pick up another modem.
Ok, it's not CG-NAT, but if you get commercial service from Comcast, they give you a POS cable router that has NAT turned on. That's OK, but the problem is that the ONLY way to turn NAT off is to purchase a static IP. You can't put it in bridge mode and use your own router unless you have a static IP (for an extra charge, of course).
As far as I'm concerned, their policy of forcing NAT upon me means they are not delivering the full Internet experience, as many applications either do not work or do not work as well through NAT. I argued with them for about 10 minutes, but arguing with some phone monkey who has no idea how the Internet works (or is supposed to work) is futile, and I wasn't about to give them any more money, so I just lived with it.
I am the IT ops director for a small company (100 employees). About 75 of our employees have company smartphones (iphones). Cellphones fall under my purview so I am the one that people come to for ordering phones, setting up e-mail on phones, etc. The company pays for these devices and the associated wireless service and we recently implemented MDM software. You would not believe how many employees made such a stink about having MDM software loaded that gave us the ability to restrict what apps they download (we ban zynga and other games that can steal information, etc). I could understand if this was a BYOD deployment where folks were loading MDM software on their personal devices and they were bummed that meant they had to uninstall their games, but we're talking about corporate owned equipment, and the users feel that they are somehow entitled to ultimate control and privacy on those devices.
But then again, these are the same folks that want to port their personal number in (which we generously allow them to do for convenience of carrying a single device) and want the company to pay their ETF when their personal carrier charges them one. Excuse me? Why should the company pay to get you out of your contract so you can have the privilege of bringing your personal number to your work phone? You don't want to pay? Fine, use the number we issue you, problem solved.
At least OP sort of asked the right question, i.e. "how reasonable is this?" instead of flying off the handle insisting that his rights are being violated. At the end of the day it comes down to this...yes there are other practical solutions such as removing device cameras, MDM software, etc but those all have associated costs and require the company to pay someone to spend time enforcing the rules and verifying that your camera is in fact disabled, or you are indeed running the prescribed MDM software. Banning smartphones has no such associated cost. Sure, perhaps you could argue that no smartphones means lower productivity (it sure would for me, and a lot of folks I work with), but at the end of the day this is one of the things that makes America great. if I hire somebody to work for me and I say they can't bring their smartphone to work, then they can't bring their smartphone to work. If they do, then they can find somewhere else to work. Being the guy that signs the paychecks means you get to make the rules from 9-5.
Here is what works for me, as well as a few things to keep in mind.
If all your client devices support samba (i.e. they're all computers) then by all means just install Windows on an extra box and set up shared folders and dump your media in there.
You mentioned tablets and smartphones. Those likely do not support samba, so I'd suggest a DLNA server such as Tversity. It works pretty well, but there are some rough edges. What about accessing data to present on TVs, etc?
Another concern is the ongoing cost of powering a system sitting in the closet serving only as a file server. Assuming your old computer will suck 100W 24x7x365, do you really want to pay $100 a year to your electric utility to run it?
If I were you, I would look at some of the appliance solutions such as a USB NAS device that lets you plug Cat5 into one end and multiple USB devices (such as USB HDDs) in the other end to create networked storage. Such devices only use a fraction of the power, plus they're silent and generate no heat. A device like that will pay for itself in power savings in under a year.
Another option would be something like a Boxee Box. That will also let you share two USB hard drives to the network, plus it lets you play just about any file format and stream Netflix, etc to a connected TV. The Boxee Box was recently discontinued in favor of the Boxee TV, so you ought to be able to find one on clearance somewhere for $140-150. Just get a couple 2TB USB drives and connect them. If you need more than 4TB of storage, you're probably better off looking at one of the network hard drive appliances that let you put 4 or 8 drives in anyway.
As far as backup, I wouldn't bother messing with RAID, just buy double the storage you need and make a nightly or weekly differential backup between the two storage sets.
But the REAL question is...with Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Pandora, SoundCloud, Spotify, etc, do you really need to keep all that media anymore? Why not just pick one or two services to pay a small subscription fee to and let it all live in the cloud? That'll save you from spending money on a computer, storage, software and electricity, and will probably give you a wider variety of media.
I recently flew cross country on a business trip. I flew American Airlines and had two flights out and two flights back. I purchased the daily pass on the first flight out and it worked fine for e-mail, vpn, remote desktop, etc. Unfortunately, even though all of the flights said they were wifi enabled (and the crew mentioned the wifi availability on all four flights), the first flight was the only one during which I could see the GoGo SSID. So, I feel kind of ripped off because I purchased the daily pass assuming I could use it on both flights that day but only got to use it on the first flight. Apparently there are some service issues which mean that even though the flight says it has wifi available, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's working.
OP posted as though he's a one man show trying to gear up for a new development cycle. Most one man shows aren't cash rich and I suspect they don't want to pay for managed hosting for a dev environment and I figured removing Linux from the equation significantly reduces the barrier to entry for PHP.
That withstanding, there are a number of other problems with this, I just attacked the one at the top of the pile.
Running apache/php on Windows isn't the ideal environment as most php support will be focused on linux
Running dev on a public VPS is questionable, just throw it in virtualbox or vmware on your dev box until you have a working product
And, yes, desktop jockey sysadmins are never a good idea, especially for something public facing. The "and Linux doesn't support remote desktop" comment in the article pretty much nails this as a really bad person to be running a Linux server.
Apache on Windows is still Windows. You don't have to learn how Linux works so you can concentrate your effort on things that are driving your bottom line instead.
So it works. VoIP is great and cheap and all, but what do you really use a land line for? I suspect most people will say something along the lines of, when my cell phone is dead, or during a storm when cell service is out, or to call 911 in the middle of the night when someone kicks in your front door, or when your 2 year old is choking. Cell phones are great inventions, but at 2AM when I hear glass shattering I'm not going to want to wait the few seconds it takes to find my cell, unlock it, load the phone app, dial the number, wait for the call to go through, relay my address to the 911 dispatcher, etc. From a land line it takes 2 seconds and the dispatcher has your info on the screen immediately.
Slashdot Mirror
My boss wrote the software that controls the process of scanning tickets at the gate for another major company that puts on sporting events. By chance, he happened to mention that he built a backdoor into the software which will always cause the software to allow access when it scans a certain barcode, so basically if you have that barcode you can get an unlimited number of people into any event this company puts on (as long as the ticket looks legit enough to pass a visual inspection).
Just goes to show that IT guys rule the world.
Go do a Google search for "windows 7 laptops" and pick a site from the 200 million results. Or, you could choose eBay / Amazon / NewEgg / Walmart, all of which still sell new Windows 7 laptops.
Otherwise, the unfortunate answer is that you'll have to buy a Windows 8 laptop and put Windows 7 on it. That means you'll have to purchase a license for Windows 7 (OEM licenses do not include downgrade rights), but on the up side, you may be able to get a refund for the bundled Windows 8 license if you remove it from the computer before using it. Just google "oem windows refund process" for more info.
Would you expect them to replace something that's out of warranty? Read their warranty terms, it probably says that once the warranty ends, under all circumstances so does their obligation to you. That's why manufacturers sell extended warranties/maintenance plans.
I'm sure these groups have laudable goals, but there are two huge roadblocks preventing what they're proposing, and they just seem to ignore them. If you want to advance this cause, you can start by addressing these issues instead of pretending like they don't exist.
First, what if someone does something illegal while using your wifi and you're left taking the rap? And yes, sure you can say that an IP does not equal a person, but to use that defense, it's going to cost you a lot of time and money in court that 99% of the population cannot afford.
Second, every residential ISP I've ever used has language in their TOS that specifically says you are not allowed to share your access with anyone that is not a member of your household, or a guest of a member of your household. This legally prevents you from running an open hotspot for the purpose of providing access to strangers.
Given the above, it's incredibly risky to run an open hotspot. Anyone that does so either doesn't know about the above, or (probably mistakenly) thinks they can beat the legal system when it comes knocking.
What would be really cool in a not too distant future...
Interoperable networks to the point that you can go buy a phone anywhere and use it on any network. No more CDMA vs GSM vs iDEN.
Postpaid pay-as-you-go plans with every carrier
Software on the phone that functions similar to a least cost routing algorithm...I.E. I want to send a text message right now, go check with every carrier and get their current SMS rate, then when you have it, select the carrier with the lowest rate and use them to send the message. Same thing for phone calls or data. Say you pop open the facebook app, your phone would go get the per KB data rate from every carrier and send the request through the cheapest one.
Naturally the actual LCR algorithm itself would need to consume data to do its job, so perhaps this could be something built into the GSM spec where all of the towers exchange this info as part of the network overhead.
But just think about what this could do...no more carrier lock in, no more price gouging, actual COMPETITION in the market.
The telcos would HATE it and FIGHT it and try to make it ILLEGAL to do things this way.
But take a second and actually think about it - how much would this do to promote innovation and prevent price fixing?
You could actually probably do something similar to this today with the various prepaid carriers assuming you had two or more than were on the same network type...
Just change the TOS to say that you're not purchasing the software, you're purchasing a non-transferable permanent license. Just like the new model for MS Office, you pay a fee to use the software but you can't sell that software. The only difference is that in the case of Steam, it's a one time fee that grants unlimited use for a single person.
For some reason people continue to believe that the laws of common sense govern their relationship with commercial 3rd parties. This simply isn't the case. If you read AT&T's TOS for wireless service, you'll see that they state that any "smartphone" requires a data plan. Furthermore, you'll also see that AT&T reserves the right to update their TOS from time to time without providing notice, so if it didn't have the smartphone clause when the OP signed up, they added it and he didn't read the updated version.
As much as I dislike being forced into plans I won't use (i.e. a VOICE plan on a smartphone), AT&T was fully within their rights to make this change but the article is worded as though they did something wrong. Folks, just because you don't like things, does not make them wrong.
In the global struggling economy, my first question would be who's paying for this? There's a cost for the devices, someone to install them, fix them, maintain them, plus the cell service. I don't know that this would be very high on my priority list in terms of new projects to get funded. I'm sure it's a great project with good intentions, but is monitoring trees really something we need to be spending money on right now?
The whole thing is going to be moot soon anyway. Someone will come up with an invisible track detector which identified the trees that are tagged so they can be avoided. Trees and forests have the very handy tendency to be devoid of metal, so a very sensitive metal detector is all you're going to need to detect these things. I wonder how they managed to get this fact by the review board...
You must be using one of those nonstandard modems...normal modems would say NO CARRIER. Trust me, I dealt with dial-up to BBS systems on noisy phone lines all through the 90s, and actually kind of miss the simplicity from time to time.
Ok, so the big question is WTF is AT&T doing with ONE dhcp server for the entire u-verse network, but the bigger question is WHY haven't they just spun up another one to replace it? How long does it take to install an OS, install a DHCP daemon and configure some scopes? A few hours? A day at most?
You just described me. If there is a way to get free shit in exchange for spending 30 minutes on the phone complaining, sign me up for it.
You should be more careful about writing things and try to make them more factual. If Directv give you something and never told you that you had to pay for extras, then when they charge you for extras, you simply call them up and tell them to explain why you're being billed for something they never disclosed to you. When they can't, demand they remove the charge and if they don't, take them to small claims court and get the judge to remove it for them. To me it sounds like what you're actually saying is directv gave you a 20 page contract which you signed without reading, and you're now upset with them for acting exactly how they said they would in the contract that you didn't read. In this case, this is not a scam, it's a failure to read and understand how contracts and the legal system work.
I've had commercial service from Comcast for years
Maybe that's why. We just got this service installed about a year ago. Do you have a static IP?
Actually, you're right. I think the issue was that the tech installing it was a business tech so he didn't have any residential modems on his truck and they would charge to do another truck roll to replace it. The only way to get it for free was to go pick it up at the local comcast office. Unfortunately I was in town from another area just for that day to install computers and stuff at an office we were setting up so it wasn't feasible for me to do that. So, it's more appropriate to say that Comcast will let you turn off NAT as long as you're okay wasting some of your time to go pick up another modem.
Ok, it's not CG-NAT, but if you get commercial service from Comcast, they give you a POS cable router that has NAT turned on. That's OK, but the problem is that the ONLY way to turn NAT off is to purchase a static IP. You can't put it in bridge mode and use your own router unless you have a static IP (for an extra charge, of course).
As far as I'm concerned, their policy of forcing NAT upon me means they are not delivering the full Internet experience, as many applications either do not work or do not work as well through NAT. I argued with them for about 10 minutes, but arguing with some phone monkey who has no idea how the Internet works (or is supposed to work) is futile, and I wasn't about to give them any more money, so I just lived with it.
I am the IT ops director for a small company (100 employees). About 75 of our employees have company smartphones (iphones). Cellphones fall under my purview so I am the one that people come to for ordering phones, setting up e-mail on phones, etc. The company pays for these devices and the associated wireless service and we recently implemented MDM software. You would not believe how many employees made such a stink about having MDM software loaded that gave us the ability to restrict what apps they download (we ban zynga and other games that can steal information, etc). I could understand if this was a BYOD deployment where folks were loading MDM software on their personal devices and they were bummed that meant they had to uninstall their games, but we're talking about corporate owned equipment, and the users feel that they are somehow entitled to ultimate control and privacy on those devices.
But then again, these are the same folks that want to port their personal number in (which we generously allow them to do for convenience of carrying a single device) and want the company to pay their ETF when their personal carrier charges them one. Excuse me? Why should the company pay to get you out of your contract so you can have the privilege of bringing your personal number to your work phone? You don't want to pay? Fine, use the number we issue you, problem solved.
Sorry, rant over.
At least OP sort of asked the right question, i.e. "how reasonable is this?" instead of flying off the handle insisting that his rights are being violated. At the end of the day it comes down to this...yes there are other practical solutions such as removing device cameras, MDM software, etc but those all have associated costs and require the company to pay someone to spend time enforcing the rules and verifying that your camera is in fact disabled, or you are indeed running the prescribed MDM software. Banning smartphones has no such associated cost. Sure, perhaps you could argue that no smartphones means lower productivity (it sure would for me, and a lot of folks I work with), but at the end of the day this is one of the things that makes America great. if I hire somebody to work for me and I say they can't bring their smartphone to work, then they can't bring their smartphone to work. If they do, then they can find somewhere else to work. Being the guy that signs the paychecks means you get to make the rules from 9-5.
Here is what works for me, as well as a few things to keep in mind.
If all your client devices support samba (i.e. they're all computers) then by all means just install Windows on an extra box and set up shared folders and dump your media in there.
You mentioned tablets and smartphones. Those likely do not support samba, so I'd suggest a DLNA server such as Tversity. It works pretty well, but there are some rough edges. What about accessing data to present on TVs, etc?
Another concern is the ongoing cost of powering a system sitting in the closet serving only as a file server. Assuming your old computer will suck 100W 24x7x365, do you really want to pay $100 a year to your electric utility to run it?
If I were you, I would look at some of the appliance solutions such as a USB NAS device that lets you plug Cat5 into one end and multiple USB devices (such as USB HDDs) in the other end to create networked storage. Such devices only use a fraction of the power, plus they're silent and generate no heat. A device like that will pay for itself in power savings in under a year.
Another option would be something like a Boxee Box. That will also let you share two USB hard drives to the network, plus it lets you play just about any file format and stream Netflix, etc to a connected TV. The Boxee Box was recently discontinued in favor of the Boxee TV, so you ought to be able to find one on clearance somewhere for $140-150. Just get a couple 2TB USB drives and connect them. If you need more than 4TB of storage, you're probably better off looking at one of the network hard drive appliances that let you put 4 or 8 drives in anyway.
As far as backup, I wouldn't bother messing with RAID, just buy double the storage you need and make a nightly or weekly differential backup between the two storage sets.
But the REAL question is...with Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Pandora, SoundCloud, Spotify, etc, do you really need to keep all that media anymore? Why not just pick one or two services to pay a small subscription fee to and let it all live in the cloud? That'll save you from spending money on a computer, storage, software and electricity, and will probably give you a wider variety of media.
I recently flew cross country on a business trip. I flew American Airlines and had two flights out and two flights back. I purchased the daily pass on the first flight out and it worked fine for e-mail, vpn, remote desktop, etc. Unfortunately, even though all of the flights said they were wifi enabled (and the crew mentioned the wifi availability on all four flights), the first flight was the only one during which I could see the GoGo SSID. So, I feel kind of ripped off because I purchased the daily pass assuming I could use it on both flights that day but only got to use it on the first flight. Apparently there are some service issues which mean that even though the flight says it has wifi available, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's working.
OP posted as though he's a one man show trying to gear up for a new development cycle. Most one man shows aren't cash rich and I suspect they don't want to pay for managed hosting for a dev environment and I figured removing Linux from the equation significantly reduces the barrier to entry for PHP.
That withstanding, there are a number of other problems with this, I just attacked the one at the top of the pile.
Running apache/php on Windows isn't the ideal environment as most php support will be focused on linux
Running dev on a public VPS is questionable, just throw it in virtualbox or vmware on your dev box until you have a working product
And, yes, desktop jockey sysadmins are never a good idea, especially for something public facing. The "and Linux doesn't support remote desktop" comment in the article pretty much nails this as a really bad person to be running a Linux server.
Apache on Windows is still Windows. You don't have to learn how Linux works so you can concentrate your effort on things that are driving your bottom line instead.
If you don't know linux, why not just get a Windows VPS and install PHP? Just because you want to use PHP does not mean you have to use Linux.
I know, I said that in my comment.
I think you mean AT. ATX is a type of motherboard form factor, AT is a type of keyboard connector.
So it works. VoIP is great and cheap and all, but what do you really use a land line for? I suspect most people will say something along the lines of, when my cell phone is dead, or during a storm when cell service is out, or to call 911 in the middle of the night when someone kicks in your front door, or when your 2 year old is choking. Cell phones are great inventions, but at 2AM when I hear glass shattering I'm not going to want to wait the few seconds it takes to find my cell, unlock it, load the phone app, dial the number, wait for the call to go through, relay my address to the 911 dispatcher, etc. From a land line it takes 2 seconds and the dispatcher has your info on the screen immediately.