While I agree with the basic philosophy and your stance, I know it would be abused. I base this on actual experience in the telco industry.
Having worked in a telco and been responsible for using the Network General Sniffers to troubleshoot networking problems, I can guarantee you that if that day ever arises, instead of your being called and asked, as you are now, if it is your machine, you will simply be shut off.
My guess is that you have something other than regular residential service to even get that call. Most of us do not want to pay more for a business type of connection.
Just like TWC and Comcast automatically throttle now, even when traffic is light. No reason for it, other than it is easier for them to do it all of the time, rather than allow you to use more bandwidth than they want you to use when no one else is using it.
To add insult to injury, when you are cut off. You will be assumed to be guilty. You will be required to prove your innocence before they turn you back on. Granted they will not provide you with any information. Just like when they stated that they needed CAPs, but they could not provide you with information on how much bandwidth you are using now and have been using in the past. With no information, even an expert would find troubleshooting difficult if not impossible.
Also, if you are not physically monitoring when you get cut off, good luck finding the problems if you are a typical user. The expert would have saved log files, but that is way far from the norm compared to most people.
In reality you are paying for service, there should be fines involved when your service is lost for any reason. Have you ever heard of any individual having fines, nope, how many have an actual contract with their ISP. Terms of Service do NOT qualify as a signed contract between entities.
At the telco, there are fines when service is lost. So everyone denies, denies, denies and you MUST prove to them that the problem is on their end or they will simply deny that it is their problem. We ALWAYS had to take copies of our sniffer logs on both ends of the fiber connections and physically prove to them the problem was theirs. Every time, time and time again.
It would be comical if it was not so pathetic. You would think that after proving to them over a half dozen times that the problem is in their system or on their lines, that they might believe you when you called them and actually check. Nope, even after a dozen times, we would have to copy off segments of the logs, attach them to an email and send them to the company providing our lines before they would sigh, admit that it was their problem and finally do what they should have done as soon as you called them, fix the problem.
If you did have a Linux sniffing software tool (more available than for windows, but they exist for windows too) would you be able to set another one up on the internet, to monitor your communications on both sides of your ISP? Probably not.
And we had sniffers at each of our buildings in different states, not a cheap proposition, but a necessary one. How many reading this are even monitoring their own outgoing TCP/IP packets from their own router to their ISP and the internet? Probably zero, being slashdot, perhaps one person reading this might be.
The point, watch what you wish for. If they start doing this, you can bet you will not like the results, and they will be doing it to help you. Just like they are using Deep Packet Inspection to help you. Just like they are forging RST packets to help you. Just like they are throttling your service at 3 am, when few people are online, telling you that bandwidth is scarce, while filing government reports stating their bandwidth usages have actually decreased. Just like they will be helping you when they deny you Net Neutrality. They will mention porn, child pornography, crime, crackers, viruses, all the same old tired scare tactics and FUD
I do not know the exact law, exact regulation or a link or I would list it, but when I mention this, it will seem obvious to most.
I talked to a tech at a bank, he stated that there were laws on the books that made it illegal to connect up the banks private network that connects to other banks.
He also indicated that automatic updates (any and all) would be considered a violation of those same banking laws.
This is probably why nobody screams bloody murder and why the banks are so quick to eat losses due to fraud and scamming. They know that once the TRUST in the system is compromised, they have lost the war.
Yet just a couple of days ago I read about institutions who did NOT segment their networks (physically separating the connections between public internet and backend banking systems) and were finding that someone with enough technical knowledge could install monitoring software between connections and watch everything that passes. That much of the information is not encrypted as it is suppose to be.
Lets face it people, if you are NOT monitoring your outgoing packets and communications you simply do NOT KNOW whether you are safe or not. This monitoring takes time, time is money. Have you looked at salaries of IT professionals in the Security area of networks. You get what you pay for and the pay typically lags behind almost everyone else in IT, except in specific rare cases and where companies understand the importance. Than they pay higher rates for better people. You do not have to believe me, just go to Glassdoor and see for yourself.
These companies literally lose billions when they are hit, yet they will not pay a simple 6 figure salary to have someone with TCP/IP monitoring and packet sniffing experience montior their networks. Just hiring 3 or 4 of these types of IT professionals would be cheap insurance at preventing break ins and quickly cutting off attempts that probe your networks for weaknesses.
Personally I think companies should create Tiger teams of 3 - 5 IT white hat hackers to work each of three shifts. When the company is probed, have their team attack back. When the honey pot is accessed, proof positive of a cracker and/or hacker, basically someone doing something they should not be doing, go on the offensive.
I have always thought the best defense was a strong offense. Pretty soon the smart crackers would leave your company alone as they do NOT want their infrastructure crippled by attacks any more than you do. And if someone has left their PC unprotected and gets attacked, well that is their personal responsibility. Had they never allowed themselves to get cracked in the first place they would never have been used, attacked and thrown away.
For once, an article on botnets notes that the infected machines are in fact Windows. You don't see that often.
Did you read the article. I did, also the link, neither mentioned Windows specifically. Though the article has a tag of Windows, perhaps that is what you saw.
When I saw that a user had to run a.exe file, I knew it was Windows specific.
While I agree with the main thrust of your post that Linux needs to get better, I do not believe CLI has anything to do with it.
There are more issues with sound, video and graphics processor units ONLY because of proprietary device drivers and incompatibilities in the BIOS.
Linux is excellent and blows Vista away on hardware designed to run on it. You run into problems trying to get one company s proprietary hardware to work when they refuse to release device drivers into the open source community.
Thankfully the open source community is so large that pretty much any problem you run into has been solved by someone else, but it requires a little work and the average Windows user does not want to do any work and forgets that they had to learn something new with a new operating system from Microsoft. Just laziness.
Best solution, do your homework and STOP buying hardware that is purposefully crippled by the vendor in a vain attempt to lock you into them.
Check out this system that has it all for approx $300:
They'll use that to reinforce their legal argument that browsers are actually part of the OS.
That horse has already left the barn. Everyone now knows what most of us new from the beginning. Microsoft lied, because they thought they could get away with it, again.
In order to sell Microsoft Windows in the European Union, Microsoft is quickly removing any need for IE to be bundled. It was a requirement of even bidding on government contracts for desktop operating systems in the European Union. When they could not bribe their way in, lobbying the foreign governments to change the bid requirements, they were left with no other choice but to unbundle IE or never get another sell of the Windows operating system to those countries.
And what happens to your netbook that will run XP, when they discontinue XP sometime in the next year or two.
Avoid the hassles and just buy a netbook pre-installed with Linux online. These things weight less than 2 bls, thus shipping is nothing.
Also if the PC, laptop, netbook comes pre-installed with Linux, it JUST WORKS out of the box. You only run into problems when you try to install Linux on proprietary hardware designed ONLY for Microsoft operating systems.
The best solution, stop buying products designed to be obsolete in a year or two only because the company wants you to pay them more money, not because the hardware and software can NO LONGER DO THE JOB.
If you have to have a software firewall at home or the office, you have already lost the war.
If you are at a WiFi hotspot, then sure by all means run a software firewall, but only because you are not behind your secure firewall/router.
A secure hardware firewall / router device running either dd-wrt or OpenWrt can be set up very inexpensively today. For between $20 and $100 dollars (all the money goes into the hardware router, though you should definitely donate to the open source router software so they will continue with these great products.
If you want to try to recoop some of your home internet costs that you are paying to your ISP, open your own WiFi and charge others for the privilege. This way you can end up with free WiFi at least. Even if no one uses your WiFi hotspot, which is likely for most, by running a WiFi hotspot you automatically have access to all the other WiFi hotspots running that software all over the world.
If you install a second firewall/router running the Linux and either of the open source software packages mentioned above, you can segment your home network in such a way that you can limit the bandwidth (preserving a minimum amount for yourself first, after all you are footing the bill) of those using your hotspot and prevent them from seeing any of your packets you send out when you are surfing of the web. Its easy to do for anyone who can be patient, read and learn about VLANs. Not to mention setting up Quality of Service so that you get preferred treatment for your VoIP calls. If you have ever had a VoIP call dropped at home, this is the setting that will fix it. QoS and either of the two opensource software packages mentioned above.
Obviously you do not advertise this to your ISP as they most likely have terms of service that prevent you from reselling the service you are paying for and either recouping your costs or making money. Heck they definitely do not want you to have an open wifi hotspot (secure or not) as then you might actually use 20% of the bandwidth you are paying for. No they like it to sit there unused so they can charge you more, more and more for no valid reason.
Because a kind and considerate neighbor had their WiFi open, no password needed, I was able to move to a new location, search for who in the area provided service to me and order the service all from the comfort of my new apartment / house. It was great. A kindness that I believe we should all extend to others. Besides, your cable company will see to it that you never use a fraction of the bandwidth that you are paying for each and every month.
I say screw them and open up hotspots everywhere. Use that bandwidth. As it is today, they have filed financials (required filings to the government) that show that their bandwidth usage on their networks has decreased, their costs have decreased, yet they still attempt to perpetuate the scarcity myth and raise your rates to $100 and over per month. Shame on them.
Innovate and provide me something additional that is worth paying for and I will happily do it, but to restrict what I am already paying in a vain attempt to force me to pay more is simply pathetic and will result in my churning.
If your connection is as severely throttled as mine is, than you might be better off to pay half o
I too get sick of the hardware problems due to proprietary device drivers that prevent video, sound and 3D graphics working as they should.
Thankfully there is a solution.
Purchase a PC built by a vendor who actually likes Linux, with hardware that was actually meant to just work with Linux. Anytime I have purchased a computer pre-installed with Linux, everything just works.
When I try to get Linux working on a PC that was configured with Microsoft Windows in mind is when I run into hassles.
For those that are looking for a stable, fast, reliable dual core based Linux that will run 3D graphics (including Compiz, Beryl and Desktop Skin effects), video, sound and more out of the box without problems. I would strongly and highly recommend ZaReason. I have personally met the owners of the company and their daughter. Great people that honestly care about doing things right. I was able to demo their desktop PC and the graphics on their system was fantastic. The next system I purchase will be from them if I do not build it from the ground up with Coreboot. What you can get for only $300 + shipping, well its fantastic.
I have heard good things about a company called System 76, but do NOT have any first hand information on them.
I can also recommend the netbook market, especially the Asus Eee PC because so many millions sold over the last two years that you will find it well supported among the Linux distributions. Even here, make sure you buy an Asus Eee PC that comes pre-installed with Linux, yes even Xandros (they are no longer in business in the same form as when the netbook was introduced, but its a Linux OS and that is critical, otherwise you might get a PC configured with hardware that will ONLY work in Microsoft Windows. Not to mention headaches reconfiguring it to work in Linux. Before you ever upgrade a machine to Linux, you will find your life easier if the hardware that is on it works with one version of Linux or another. Fortunately you can purchase the Asus Eee PC online from a number of reputable vendors and because it is so light, shipping is next to nothing.
This is exactly why Tony Werner, Comcast chief technical officer
Did anybody else read the bolded part as "Time Warner, Comcast"?
And AT&T, Cingular, Verizon, Bell South, T-Mobile, and the list goes on. Every time I see any one of these companies screwing over a customer, I automatically KNOW that they all do it.
Google Searches and searches in Rip Off Reports verify my assumptions 100%. There are NO good providers anymore. Assuming any one of them can go three to five years with no additional complaints providing excellent customer service, than and only than will I modify that thought process and say, wow there is one good one.
Whenever I read about Bandwidth CAPs, Deep Packet Inspection, Net Neutrality, I automatically think of all the telcos, cellular companies, etc, as there is no difference among them. One might hit you harder than the others, but they all provide the same crappy customer-no-service experience.
And get billed from something that arbitrarily gets put on your bill and do not pay, BECAUSE legitimately you did not create the charge, and they all cut you off, send you to collections, and ruin your life.
I am sure a few of you are familiar with this article, Assuring Scarcity from 2006. Bob you were ahead of your time. Enjoy, here are a few quotes:
They ve kept the cellular phone from becoming a real portable computing device. (Thank goodness for Linux hand-held (Nokia N800) and embedded devices that do away with any tethering issues as they just work, granted they are NOT cellular, but WiFi access is almost everywhere today.; over 343 different applications available for the Nokia N800 and N810 and no monthly service fees unless you want them.)
They are explicit in expressing their need to prevent abundance. Why do we tolerate such harmful behavior?
They use the word quality but never tell how it is to be measured
What is important is what contributes to their revenue or, to put it another way, how much value they can take from their users.
Quality is a dangerous word - it s used to justify arbitrary policies.
Their story is accepted because it seems necessary to pay them to give us connectivity but thatâ(TM)s not true. Itâ(TM)s like paying the railroads to build roadways. You dont do that, you build roads based on the need for roads. You fund connectivity in the same way - so it can support other activities and not as a profit center in its own right. You re paying people to carry your bit just like you pay them to carry your garbage - you dont expect to sell them your garbage.
They are simply rigging a marketplace because they seem to be necessary - where is the enthusiasm for enforcing antitrust they use against Microsoft?
It starts out using the term End-to-End but in the opposite sense that its used for the Internet. In this its more like Womb-to-Tomb - they control every aspect of the service. Its that QoS thing. That along with ideas like Acceptable Usage Policy (AUP) is a way to impose their rules on users and maintain their control and value (AKA, high prices).
They are bringing back circuits, AKA sessions for no purpose other than being able to charge for them and their ability to apply their own definition of quality. A circuit gives the carriers control over relationships - if you allow the relationships to be maintained outside their network they lose control.
The purpose of a session is to create a billable event out of nothing.
You don t need them to charge for a service but you do need them if the carrier wants to get in the middle so it can meter your time and bill you.
Even if you are not exchanging packets and using resources you can still be billed!
We honestly should have abundance here in the USA. In fact we should have had abundance here in the USA since 2000. By 2006, leveraging the fiber that the telcos should have already put in place to our homes in every large and medium city (even most small cities if it were deregulated, giving business incentives for others to lay some of the fiber) we should have increasing downstream / upstream bandwidths with decreasing costs like they had in Japan once the Fiber was put in the last mile.
The joke will ultimately be on the Telcos. As they continue their current anti-American business, customer-no-service practices they just continue to make more and more Americans angrier and angrier at them.
Eventually the resentment will build to a point that as soon as some independent party (all of the current US telcos have arrangements and have for years...thus there can be NO FREE MARKET without either government intervention and/or some other non telco company entering the market. When that happens, the resentment and anger will insure the CHURN
Could not agree more. They, telcos, have received over $200 Billion (2006 figure) since 1994 to build out Fiber among other offerings. They have not done this.
So how is there a "coming bandwidth shortage"?
I could say that it is because they have not built out Fiber as they promised.
However the truth, and something tells me at least you already know this, is that there is NOT a bandwidth shortage. This is scarcityFUD advertised and marketed by the telcos to support their ever increasing rates, at all costs, in the face of lower usage of their bandwidth, thus more capacity is actually available.
Remember that the telcos have known for years we would eventually need a minimum of 224 GBs, probably much more than this, in order to watch videos, movie, and basically use the internet in the future. Interesting to not that most CAPs proposed have been lower than this number. Even a CAP of 250 MB would quickly become inadequate and they know it.
Disgusting in the light of the fact that it costs them less than.50 cents to provide 1 GB of bandwidth to us, yet they insist on forcing our monthly rates up to $150 per month. pathetic, and I too will churn way before I reach $60 per month. So the telcos can forget about ever getting me up to even $99 per month. Just is NOT going to ever happen.
Did you know that in many counties and states, the Cable company MUST provide you with basic CABLE TV (not internet) for the low rate of $15.00 per month. They will not advertise it, they will deny that it exists. Find out who is the public figure head in your area, the publics interface to the Cable companies (which typically have to be approved by the local governments to use the right-of-ways to your home or apartment) get the information and insist on this rate. Better yet, get a UHF antenna and say good by to the Cable monopoly forever.
Re:Good for Oracle Investors, Bad for MySQL users
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Oracle Buys Sun
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· Score: 1
As of last Friday night, the word from Sun about MySQL was that there would be no changes.
Now that Oracle is buying Sun I guess Suns plans for MySQL can not be counted on. After all Oracle can change their mind for them.
Personally I am not worried, if Oracle gets stupid, MySQL gets forked, no biggie. In its current state it will do what almost all small and medium sized business need from it.
Thus the great thing about open source, if you company depends on an operating system or application, you have options.
If my company depended on MySQL, I would be ready NOW to build it from scratch and fork if necessary, saving all the parts immediately, just to be safe.
I would make sure that I had the parts ready to install for the top 6 to 12 Linux Distros just to be sure I had a future no matter which distro of Linux became dominant down the road.
We should all expect word to come out of the MySQL Conference & Expo in Santa Clara, CA (4/20 thru 4/23) over the next few days. I wonder if there was anything in the keynote yesterday about this?
I am actually more interested in who knew how far in advance that this was going to happen and if those people had anything to do with Sun purchasing MySQL. That might be telling as to Oracle s intention with MySQL.
Also telling will be any open source product, application, package that has been brought in house to either Sun and/or Oracle over the last 10 to 15 years and how they handled it. Did they slowly choke it off? Did they support it? Whatever these two companies have done in the past to other open source applications, is more than likely what will happen to MySQL.
Quite a few years back I heard some funny and interesting stories about a guy, I think it might have been this David Adair guy in the link below. Anyway, David was a child prodigy and amateur rocket enthusiast and at the age of 11 he was launching larger and larger rockets. He built a rocket that went from the East Coast to Area 51.
If the story is to be believed and this part is nothing that outrageous so why not, The first time he launched a large rocket it set off warnings, people thought some enemy power was shooting at us. Well after that he was asked to notify people so that they knew and they could verify the airspace was clear of airplanes.
It is interesting that in a simpler time, they would not have prevented him from launching and of course it did not hurt to have neighbors that were in the military and government vouching for you either. At least that is the story.
The people that would gather to watch him launch, knew that if he took off running that they should probably be running too.
Not sure if this story is the same one or not, there is so much disinformation around military and experimental aircraft. But figured most would find it entertaining regardless.
At least this one is relatively similar to the story I heard.
I really like this excerpt about no visible light source:
I will not even go into about whether UFOs are terrestrial or extra terrestrial. As with Religion, Politics and a few other subjects, everyone believes whatever they believe and if someone else challenges those beliefs, rather than having an interesting conversation (my typical and preferred reaction) people tend to get upset. So no point in anyone going there, that was NOT my intent with this post..
Why can we not agree to disagree when necessary and let it stop there.
Are there things you can do to the actual modem itself to 'tune' it? I run 99% linux and a couple of osx boxes...so, the windows stuff doesn't do me much good...
You said it. I have gotten to the point that if the company does not give me a device driver that works with Linux, I do not buy their product.
It really is insulting when a company only includes setup programs that will run under a Windows environment.
In fact I only buy routers that run with DD-WRT software. I notice that recently Cisco changed out all their Linksys routers to proprietary ones that will NOT run the DD-WRT Software....guess I will stop buying their routers. Their loss, other companies were making routers with faster processors, more available memory anyway, so its no big loss.
If I had the time I would research the lowest priced router, running Cisco / Linksys proprietary software that would allow VLANs, Quality of Service (QoS) settings; IPTables, OpenVPN, Ipv6, DNS capabilities, bandwidth monitoring, access restrictions (should I need them), MMC/SD Card Support, HTTPS Web Management, which all come default with the Mega version of the DD-WRT Software.
A complete list of features that are available based on the version of the DD-WRT software you are running can be found here. Personally I would not purchase a router without all of these as BASE features. Well I do not have to search router offerings, I already know that just the logging on the basic software that comes on Linksys routers is not effective for my purposes, much less missing many (most) of the other features I have come to rely on.
Why pay $300, $600, or even $1000 when I can get all of this and more with the dd-wrt software plus an open source router costing less than $60. Heck add in the MMC/SD Card slots, a faster processor and additional memory and I will pay upwards of $150...but I want all the other features as well. Most proprietary software on routers just does not get me there unless I am willing to spend around $1000 or more, even $300 is too much. Especially if you live in an area with frequent lightning strikes...the proprietary routers are too expensive given the risk of failure and cost of replacement.
You really do get thousands of dollars in features when you use the DD-WRT Software.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course this assume the enemy hackers are not as good as your hackers to protect the content and maps. Or it might be used against them.
Having worked in a telco and been responsible for using the Network General Sniffers to troubleshoot networking problems, I can guarantee you that if that day ever arises, instead of your being called and asked, as you are now, if it is your machine, you will simply be shut off.
My guess is that you have something other than regular residential service to even get that call. Most of us do not want to pay more for a business type of connection.
Just like TWC and Comcast automatically throttle now, even when traffic is light. No reason for it, other than it is easier for them to do it all of the time, rather than allow you to use more bandwidth than they want you to use when no one else is using it.
To add insult to injury, when you are cut off. You will be assumed to be guilty. You will be required to prove your innocence before they turn you back on. Granted they will not provide you with any information. Just like when they stated that they needed CAPs, but they could not provide you with information on how much bandwidth you are using now and have been using in the past. With no information, even an expert would find troubleshooting difficult if not impossible.
Also, if you are not physically monitoring when you get cut off, good luck finding the problems if you are a typical user. The expert would have saved log files, but that is way far from the norm compared to most people.
In reality you are paying for service, there should be fines involved when your service is lost for any reason. Have you ever heard of any individual having fines, nope, how many have an actual contract with their ISP. Terms of Service do NOT qualify as a signed contract between entities.
At the telco, there are fines when service is lost. So everyone denies, denies, denies and you MUST prove to them that the problem is on their end or they will simply deny that it is their problem. We ALWAYS had to take copies of our sniffer logs on both ends of the fiber connections and physically prove to them the problem was theirs. Every time, time and time again.
It would be comical if it was not so pathetic. You would think that after proving to them over a half dozen times that the problem is in their system or on their lines, that they might believe you when you called them and actually check. Nope, even after a dozen times, we would have to copy off segments of the logs, attach them to an email and send them to the company providing our lines before they would sigh, admit that it was their problem and finally do what they should have done as soon as you called them, fix the problem.
If you did have a Linux sniffing software tool (more available than for windows, but they exist for windows too) would you be able to set another one up on the internet, to monitor your communications on both sides of your ISP? Probably not.
And we had sniffers at each of our buildings in different states, not a cheap proposition, but a necessary one. How many reading this are even monitoring their own outgoing TCP/IP packets from their own router to their ISP and the internet? Probably zero, being slashdot, perhaps one person reading this might be.
The point, watch what you wish for. If they start doing this, you can bet you will not like the results, and they will be doing it to help you. Just like they are using Deep Packet Inspection to help you. Just like they are forging RST packets to help you. Just like they are throttling your service at 3 am, when few people are online, telling you that bandwidth is scarce, while filing government reports stating their bandwidth usages have actually decreased. Just like they will be helping you when they deny you Net Neutrality. They will mention porn, child pornography, crime, crackers, viruses, all the same old tired scare tactics and FUD
I do not know the exact law, exact regulation or a link or I would list it, but when I mention this, it will seem obvious to most.
I talked to a tech at a bank, he stated that there were laws on the books that made it illegal to connect up the banks private network that connects to other banks.
He also indicated that automatic updates (any and all) would be considered a violation of those same banking laws.
This is probably why nobody screams bloody murder and why the banks are so quick to eat losses due to fraud and scamming. They know that once the TRUST in the system is compromised, they have lost the war.
Yet just a couple of days ago I read about institutions who did NOT segment their networks (physically separating the connections between public internet and backend banking systems) and were finding that someone with enough technical knowledge could install monitoring software between connections and watch everything that passes. That much of the information is not encrypted as it is suppose to be.
Lets face it people, if you are NOT monitoring your outgoing packets and communications you simply do NOT KNOW whether you are safe or not. This monitoring takes time, time is money. Have you looked at salaries of IT professionals in the Security area of networks. You get what you pay for and the pay typically lags behind almost everyone else in IT, except in specific rare cases and where companies understand the importance. Than they pay higher rates for better people. You do not have to believe me, just go to Glassdoor and see for yourself.
These companies literally lose billions when they are hit, yet they will not pay a simple 6 figure salary to have someone with TCP/IP monitoring and packet sniffing experience montior their networks. Just hiring 3 or 4 of these types of IT professionals would be cheap insurance at preventing break ins and quickly cutting off attempts that probe your networks for weaknesses.
Personally I think companies should create Tiger teams of 3 - 5 IT white hat hackers to work each of three shifts. When the company is probed, have their team attack back. When the honey pot is accessed, proof positive of a cracker and/or hacker, basically someone doing something they should not be doing, go on the offensive.
I have always thought the best defense was a strong offense. Pretty soon the smart crackers would leave your company alone as they do NOT want their infrastructure crippled by attacks any more than you do. And if someone has left their PC unprotected and gets attacked, well that is their personal responsibility. Had they never allowed themselves to get cracked in the first place they would never have been used, attacked and thrown away.
For once, an article on botnets notes that the infected machines are in fact Windows. You don't see that often.
Did you read the article. I did, also the link, neither mentioned Windows specifically. Though the article has a tag of Windows, perhaps that is what you saw.
When I saw that a user had to run a .exe file, I knew it was Windows specific.
Granted we all knew it was Windows!
There are more issues with sound, video and graphics processor units ONLY because of proprietary device drivers and incompatibilities in the BIOS.
Linux is excellent and blows Vista away on hardware designed to run on it. You run into problems trying to get one company s proprietary hardware to work when they refuse to release device drivers into the open source community.
Thankfully the open source community is so large that pretty much any problem you run into has been solved by someone else, but it requires a little work and the average Windows user does not want to do any work and forgets that they had to learn something new with a new operating system from Microsoft. Just laziness.
Best solution, do your homework and STOP buying hardware that is purposefully crippled by the vendor in a vain attempt to lock you into them.
Check out this system that has it all for approx $300:
AMD Dual core 3800+ 2.0 GHz, 1 GB DDR2-800, 160 GB hard drive, 3d Graphics with full support for Compiz, Beryl and more
I have met the owners of the company, they are reputable, love Linux and do NOT do MS Windows.
They'll use that to reinforce their legal argument that browsers are actually part of the OS.
That horse has already left the barn. Everyone now knows what most of us new from the beginning. Microsoft lied, because they thought they could get away with it, again.
In order to sell Microsoft Windows in the European Union, Microsoft is quickly removing any need for IE to be bundled. It was a requirement of even bidding on government contracts for desktop operating systems in the European Union. When they could not bribe their way in, lobbying the foreign governments to change the bid requirements, they were left with no other choice but to unbundle IE or never get another sell of the Windows operating system to those countries.
Its been funny to watch.
Avoid the hassles and just buy a netbook pre-installed with Linux online. These things weight less than 2 bls, thus shipping is nothing.
Also if the PC, laptop, netbook comes pre-installed with Linux, it JUST WORKS out of the box. You only run into problems when you try to install Linux on proprietary hardware designed ONLY for Microsoft operating systems.
The best solution, stop buying products designed to be obsolete in a year or two only because the company wants you to pay them more money, not because the hardware and software can NO LONGER DO THE JOB.
If you are at a WiFi hotspot, then sure by all means run a software firewall, but only because you are not behind your secure firewall/router.
A secure hardware firewall / router device running either dd-wrt or OpenWrt can be set up very inexpensively today. For between $20 and $100 dollars (all the money goes into the hardware router, though you should definitely donate to the open source router software so they will continue with these great products.
If you want to try to recoop some of your home internet costs that you are paying to your ISP, open your own WiFi and charge others for the privilege. This way you can end up with free WiFi at least. Even if no one uses your WiFi hotspot, which is likely for most, by running a WiFi hotspot you automatically have access to all the other WiFi hotspots running that software all over the world.
If you install a second firewall/router running the Linux and either of the open source software packages mentioned above, you can segment your home network in such a way that you can limit the bandwidth (preserving a minimum amount for yourself first, after all you are footing the bill) of those using your hotspot and prevent them from seeing any of your packets you send out when you are surfing of the web. Its easy to do for anyone who can be patient, read and learn about VLANs. Not to mention setting up Quality of Service so that you get preferred treatment for your VoIP calls. If you have ever had a VoIP call dropped at home, this is the setting that will fix it. QoS and either of the two opensource software packages mentioned above.
Obviously you do not advertise this to your ISP as they most likely have terms of service that prevent you from reselling the service you are paying for and either recouping your costs or making money. Heck they definitely do not want you to have an open wifi hotspot (secure or not) as then you might actually use 20% of the bandwidth you are paying for. No they like it to sit there unused so they can charge you more, more and more for no valid reason.
Because a kind and considerate neighbor had their WiFi open, no password needed, I was able to move to a new location, search for who in the area provided service to me and order the service all from the comfort of my new apartment / house. It was great. A kindness that I believe we should all extend to others. Besides, your cable company will see to it that you never use a fraction of the bandwidth that you are paying for each and every month.
I say screw them and open up hotspots everywhere. Use that bandwidth. As it is today, they have filed financials (required filings to the government) that show that their bandwidth usage on their networks has decreased, their costs have decreased, yet they still attempt to perpetuate the scarcity myth and raise your rates to $100 and over per month. Shame on them.
Innovate and provide me something additional that is worth paying for and I will happily do it, but to restrict what I am already paying in a vain attempt to force me to pay more is simply pathetic and will result in my churning.
If your connection is as severely throttled as mine is, than you might be better off to pay half o
I too get sick of the hardware problems due to proprietary device drivers that prevent video, sound and 3D graphics working as they should.
Thankfully there is a solution.
Purchase a PC built by a vendor who actually likes Linux, with hardware that was actually meant to just work with Linux. Anytime I have purchased a computer pre-installed with Linux, everything just works.
When I try to get Linux working on a PC that was configured with Microsoft Windows in mind is when I run into hassles. For those that are looking for a stable, fast, reliable dual core based Linux that will run 3D graphics (including Compiz, Beryl and Desktop Skin effects), video, sound and more out of the box without problems. I would strongly and highly recommend ZaReason. I have personally met the owners of the company and their daughter. Great people that honestly care about doing things right. I was able to demo their desktop PC and the graphics on their system was fantastic. The next system I purchase will be from them if I do not build it from the ground up with Coreboot. What you can get for only $300 + shipping, well its fantastic.
I have heard good things about a company called System 76, but do NOT have any first hand information on them.
I can also recommend the netbook market, especially the Asus Eee PC because so many millions sold over the last two years that you will find it well supported among the Linux distributions. Even here, make sure you buy an Asus Eee PC that comes pre-installed with Linux, yes even Xandros (they are no longer in business in the same form as when the netbook was introduced, but its a Linux OS and that is critical, otherwise you might get a PC configured with hardware that will ONLY work in Microsoft Windows. Not to mention headaches reconfiguring it to work in Linux. Before you ever upgrade a machine to Linux, you will find your life easier if the hardware that is on it works with one version of Linux or another. Fortunately you can purchase the Asus Eee PC online from a number of reputable vendors and because it is so light, shipping is next to nothing.
They keep doing this crap, and too many people keep buying into it, thus they continue it.
If you only use XP and do not like Vista or Windows 7, what are you going to do when it is officially discontinued?
The idea of setting price points based on limitations like this is so old school its ancient.
OMOO is a bit easier, we have used it since the BBS days.
OMOO = Of My Own Opinion
A nod to the old BBS days for sure. I have always liked:
IMO - In My Opinion
This is exactly why Tony Werner, Comcast chief technical officer
Did anybody else read the bolded part as "Time Warner, Comcast"?
And AT&T, Cingular, Verizon, Bell South, T-Mobile, and the list goes on. Every time I see any one of these companies screwing over a customer, I automatically KNOW that they all do it.
Google Searches and searches in Rip Off Reports verify my assumptions 100%. There are NO good providers anymore. Assuming any one of them can go three to five years with no additional complaints providing excellent customer service, than and only than will I modify that thought process and say, wow there is one good one.
Whenever I read about Bandwidth CAPs, Deep Packet Inspection, Net Neutrality, I automatically think of all the telcos, cellular companies, etc, as there is no difference among them. One might hit you harder than the others, but they all provide the same crappy customer-no-service experience.
And get billed from something that arbitrarily gets put on your bill and do not pay, BECAUSE legitimately you did not create the charge, and they all cut you off, send you to collections, and ruin your life.
We honestly should have abundance here in the USA. In fact we should have had abundance here in the USA since 2000. By 2006, leveraging the fiber that the telcos should have already put in place to our homes in every large and medium city (even most small cities if it were deregulated, giving business incentives for others to lay some of the fiber) we should have increasing downstream / upstream bandwidths with decreasing costs like they had in Japan once the Fiber was put in the last mile.
The joke will ultimately be on the Telcos. As they continue their current anti-American business, customer-no-service practices they just continue to make more and more Americans angrier and angrier at them.
Eventually the resentment will build to a point that as soon as some independent party (all of the current US telcos have arrangements and have for years...thus there can be NO FREE MARKET without either government intervention and/or some other non telco company entering the market. When that happens, the resentment and anger will insure the CHURN
Why should I pay more for their mistakes?
Could not agree more. They, telcos, have received over $200 Billion (2006 figure) since 1994 to build out Fiber among other offerings. They have not done this.
So how is there a "coming bandwidth shortage"?
I could say that it is because they have not built out Fiber as they promised.
However the truth, and something tells me at least you already know this, is that there is NOT a bandwidth shortage. This is scarcity FUD advertised and marketed by the telcos to support their ever increasing rates, at all costs, in the face of lower usage of their bandwidth, thus more capacity is actually available.
Remember that the telcos have known for years we would eventually need a minimum of 224 GBs, probably much more than this, in order to watch videos, movie, and basically use the internet in the future. Interesting to not that most CAPs proposed have been lower than this number. Even a CAP of 250 MB would quickly become inadequate and they know it.
Disgusting in the light of the fact that it costs them less than .50 cents to provide 1 GB of bandwidth to us, yet they insist on forcing our monthly rates up to $150 per month. pathetic, and I too will churn way before I reach $60 per month. So the telcos can forget about ever getting me up to even $99 per month. Just is NOT going to ever happen.
Did you know that in many counties and states, the Cable company MUST provide you with basic CABLE TV (not internet) for the low rate of $15.00 per month. They will not advertise it, they will deny that it exists. Find out who is the public figure head in your area, the publics interface to the Cable companies (which typically have to be approved by the local governments to use the right-of-ways to your home or apartment) get the information and insist on this rate. Better yet, get a UHF antenna and say good by to the Cable monopoly forever.
As of last Friday night, the word from Sun about MySQL was that there would be no changes.
Now that Oracle is buying Sun I guess Suns plans for MySQL can not be counted on. After all Oracle can change their mind for them.
Personally I am not worried, if Oracle gets stupid, MySQL gets forked, no biggie. In its current state it will do what almost all small and medium sized business need from it.
Thus the great thing about open source, if you company depends on an operating system or application, you have options.
If my company depended on MySQL, I would be ready NOW to build it from scratch and fork if necessary, saving all the parts immediately, just to be safe.
I would make sure that I had the parts ready to install for the top 6 to 12 Linux Distros just to be sure I had a future no matter which distro of Linux became dominant down the road.
We should all expect word to come out of the MySQL Conference & Expo in Santa Clara, CA (4/20 thru 4/23) over the next few days. I wonder if there was anything in the keynote yesterday about this?
I am actually more interested in who knew how far in advance that this was going to happen and if those people had anything to do with Sun purchasing MySQL. That might be telling as to Oracle s intention with MySQL.
Also telling will be any open source product, application, package that has been brought in house to either Sun and/or Oracle over the last 10 to 15 years and how they handled it. Did they slowly choke it off? Did they support it? Whatever these two companies have done in the past to other open source applications, is more than likely what will happen to MySQL.
Quite a few years back I heard some funny and interesting stories about a guy, I think it might have been this David Adair guy in the link below. Anyway, David was a child prodigy and amateur rocket enthusiast and at the age of 11 he was launching larger and larger rockets. He built a rocket that went from the East Coast to Area 51.
If the story is to be believed and this part is nothing that outrageous so why not, The first time he launched a large rocket it set off warnings, people thought some enemy power was shooting at us. Well after that he was asked to notify people so that they knew and they could verify the airspace was clear of airplanes.
It is interesting that in a simpler time, they would not have prevented him from launching and of course it did not hurt to have neighbors that were in the military and government vouching for you either. At least that is the story.
The people that would gather to watch him launch, knew that if he took off running that they should probably be running too.
Not sure if this story is the same one or not, there is so much disinformation around military and experimental aircraft. But figured most would find it entertaining regardless.
At least this one is relatively similar to the story I heard.
I really like this excerpt about no visible light source:
The most interesting thing about this to me still is how well lit the underground area was. There were no shadows, anywhere. And there were no light fixtures, anywhere. I was wondering how they generated that much light. It didn't look like the walls were glowing, or the floor or the ceiling. But every square inch of this place was lit, and yet there was no visible source of light.
I will not even go into about whether UFOs are terrestrial or extra terrestrial. As with Religion, Politics and a few other subjects, everyone believes whatever they believe and if someone else challenges those beliefs, rather than having an interesting conversation (my typical and preferred reaction) people tend to get upset. So no point in anyone going there, that was NOT my intent with this post..
Why can we not agree to disagree when necessary and let it stop there.
Are there things you can do to the actual modem itself to 'tune' it? I run 99% linux and a couple of osx boxes...so, the windows stuff doesn't do me much good...
You said it. I have gotten to the point that if the company does not give me a device driver that works with Linux, I do not buy their product.
It really is insulting when a company only includes setup programs that will run under a Windows environment.
In fact I only buy routers that run with DD-WRT software. I notice that recently Cisco changed out all their Linksys routers to proprietary ones that will NOT run the DD-WRT Software....guess I will stop buying their routers. Their loss, other companies were making routers with faster processors, more available memory anyway, so its no big loss.
If I had the time I would research the lowest priced router, running Cisco / Linksys proprietary software that would allow VLANs, Quality of Service (QoS) settings; IPTables, OpenVPN, Ipv6, DNS capabilities, bandwidth monitoring, access restrictions (should I need them), MMC/SD Card Support, HTTPS Web Management, which all come default with the Mega version of the DD-WRT Software.
A complete list of features that are available based on the version of the DD-WRT software you are running can be found here. Personally I would not purchase a router without all of these as BASE features. Well I do not have to search router offerings, I already know that just the logging on the basic software that comes on Linksys routers is not effective for my purposes, much less missing many (most) of the other features I have come to rely on.
Why pay $300, $600, or even $1000 when I can get all of this and more with the dd-wrt software plus an open source router costing less than $60. Heck add in the MMC/SD Card slots, a faster processor and additional memory and I will pay upwards of $150...but I want all the other features as well. Most proprietary software on routers just does not get me there unless I am willing to spend around $1000 or more, even $300 is too much. Especially if you live in an area with frequent lightning strikes...the proprietary routers are too expensive given the risk of failure and cost of replacement.
You really do get thousands of dollars in features when you use the DD-WRT Software.
And of course someone has to pay for the server, storage and the bandwidth too.