Rob touched on this in what he said above, but I also wanted to bring to attention this story that is of similar subject matter posted Wednesday on the Slash site. It's an idea for a slash feature to automatically do several of the things that the Slashteam did manually on Tuesday to keep the site alive. Things such as serving static HTML, disabling or changing the functionality of the search and other dynamic functionality, etc.
I'd also like to throw in my public note of thanks to everyone who kept the site up on Tuesday. We thirsted for answers, and you were there to provide, as always. Your work and dedication are wholly appreciated.
On a personal note, I am an abuse department employee for a major ISP, and I will eviscerate every one of the bastards that I catch. The/. community has my word.
Well, I do have the bias that I work for a competitor, but, I can also assure you that has nothing to do with my opinion that NAWCAT sucks. I'm on the acquired MediaOne network, and from what I hear, they have patches where things are better, and areas where things are worse (like any nationwide business, I suppose).
I've experienced insane downtime, and to even get a refund for the downtime (which has lasted *days*, on 2 occasions, or just 12 hours+ on uncounted others), you have to call in for customer service. Which is uphelpful And rude. And not ever what you were hoping for after the 20-50 minutes hold times.
Now, I will say here, these are pretty much the same old gripes you hear about any ISP, downtime and customer service (is there really anything *else* to complain about?...), but this is stuff that I consider signifcantly unacceptable, we'll say enough to make me check for DSL availibility every 7 days. Most certainly not worth the $55 a month I was laying down for it. I feel it is necessary to say at least one good thing, I guess, so here it is - they never once changed my IP address. That was very nice.
But, the damnedable port 80 nonsense was the last straw. ADSL is availible in only 4 days, and even if it wasn't, I'd have bitten the bullet and eaten the cost of a line string for the SDSL connectivity. I was at the end of my rope with them anyway. I'm not only ditching their internet service, I'm getting rid of them as a TV cable providor as well. I'm going to go install Linux on one of those Dish Network boxes, they've got a great deal going.
My cable IP, bought by Netscape AOL Warner CNN AT&T Time (NAWCAT) is still being port 80 filtered, at least as of this moment.
While I hope that changes, it's too late for them. I already scheduled my Earthlink DSL installation.
And just in case anyone from AT&T sees this: I got all of my friends who had cable accounts to switch with me. I hate you people
But I am full of love.:)
They're trying to make a little dinky console do too much. I don't think that anyone (especially Microsoft) can integrate so many disparate functions so easily. They should have just stuck more with trying to make it competitive in its core purpose: gaming.
I just want my stinking gamecube.
Prodigy has (finally) now implemented port 25 filtering, after no little amount of prodding from the rest of the idustry. This practice significantly reduces the spam output from a network - no more worrying about open relays, etc. But as you point out, it does limit your mail server options.
There is no reason, howe ver, that you can't use the perscribed servers. All it's changing is a few IP addresses in a "Received" header that no one is ever going to look at anyway. It's really not a big deal unless your ISP can't keep their servers alive. And if that's the case, why are you with them in the first place?
There's nothing stopping you from POPing mail into your client from every server you can imagine (POP3 service runs on port 110, not 25), and your "From" and "To" fields are set clientside, and will remain unchanged. In the end, there is sure to be some adjustment, but likely little loss in functionality.
If this is not a feasible solution for you, perhaps it is time to consider upgrading to a commercial internet account, they start around $70 a month, and you can run your own non-port-25-filtered mail server (I don't know that Prodigy sells business accounts anymore, but most national ISPs, including us, do.
Contradictory to Usenix Talk?
on
NYSE Goes To Linux
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
For anyone who wasn't fortunate enough to attend the annual Usenix Technichal Conference for 2001, the keynote address was (brilliantly) delivered by Daniel D. Frye, Director of the IBM Linux Technology Center. In the talk, and the following Q&A, he made it explicitly clear that IBM's position on Linux was that it would be ready for the 24/7 no-downtime, mission-critical environment (like the financial sector), soon, but that it wasn't yet. The indication was something like 5 years or so, and the conference was 2 months ago.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd also like to throw in my public note of thanks to everyone who kept the site up on Tuesday. We thirsted for answers, and you were there to provide, as always. Your work and dedication are wholly appreciated.
On a personal note, I am an abuse department employee for a major ISP, and I will eviscerate every one of the bastards that I catch. The /. community has my word.
I've experienced insane downtime, and to even get a refund for the downtime (which has lasted *days*, on 2 occasions, or just 12 hours+ on uncounted others), you have to call in for customer service. Which is uphelpful And rude. And not ever what you were hoping for after the 20-50 minutes hold times.
Now, I will say here, these are pretty much the same old gripes you hear about any ISP, downtime and customer service (is there really anything *else* to complain about?...), but this is stuff that I consider signifcantly unacceptable, we'll say enough to make me check for DSL availibility every 7 days. Most certainly not worth the $55 a month I was laying down for it. I feel it is necessary to say at least one good thing, I guess, so here it is - they never once changed my IP address. That was very nice.
But, the damnedable port 80 nonsense was the last straw. ADSL is availible in only 4 days, and even if it wasn't, I'd have bitten the bullet and eaten the cost of a line string for the SDSL connectivity. I was at the end of my rope with them anyway. I'm not only ditching their internet service, I'm getting rid of them as a TV cable providor as well. I'm going to go install Linux on one of those Dish Network boxes, they've got a great deal going.
My cable IP, bought by Netscape AOL Warner CNN AT&T Time (NAWCAT) is still being port 80 filtered, at least as of this moment. While I hope that changes, it's too late for them. I already scheduled my Earthlink DSL installation. And just in case anyone from AT&T sees this: I got all of my friends who had cable accounts to switch with me. I hate you people But I am full of love. :)
They're trying to make a little dinky console do too much. I don't think that anyone (especially Microsoft) can integrate so many disparate functions so easily. They should have just stuck more with trying to make it competitive in its core purpose: gaming. I just want my stinking gamecube.
There is no reason, howe ver, that you can't use the perscribed servers. All it's changing is a few IP addresses in a "Received" header that no one is ever going to look at anyway. It's really not a big deal unless your ISP can't keep their servers alive. And if that's the case, why are you with them in the first place?
There's nothing stopping you from POPing mail into your client from every server you can imagine (POP3 service runs on port 110, not 25), and your "From" and "To" fields are set clientside, and will remain unchanged. In the end, there is sure to be some adjustment, but likely little loss in functionality.
If this is not a feasible solution for you, perhaps it is time to consider upgrading to a commercial internet account, they start around $70 a month, and you can run your own non-port-25-filtered mail server (I don't know that Prodigy sells business accounts anymore, but most national ISPs, including us, do.
For anyone who wasn't fortunate enough to attend the annual Usenix Technichal Conference for 2001, the keynote address was (brilliantly) delivered by Daniel D. Frye, Director of the IBM Linux Technology Center. In the talk, and the following Q&A, he made it explicitly clear that IBM's position on Linux was that it would be ready for the 24/7 no-downtime, mission-critical environment (like the financial sector), soon, but that it wasn't yet. The indication was something like 5 years or so, and the conference was 2 months ago.
I wonder what changed IBM's position so quickly?