>The trouble w/ pirating cable is that it's a 2 way system, unlike satellite
Solution:
Place extra-cheap TV amplifier inline with cable. Wait a while, try to buy a PPV. See if you get charged for it on next month's bill. Or see if they phone you to tell you your cable box is damaged (happened to a friend who tried to "improve" his signal quality with a TV amp).
You know, sometimes the more high-tech they go, the less high-tech you have to be.
>Any why are YOU using a used workstation to update your xcopy image from??
Uhh, I think you've got me confused with the AC.;-) Either that or I'm missing something.
"This is like comparing ghost and xcopy. Sure, I could keep a backup copy of my hard drive with xcopy, but only ghost offers the bulletproof solution."
If anyone cares to continue this sort of boring debate, read here for some debate on both sides of the fence.
Since we want to be correct, the plural of virus is, in fact, virus. Therefore, one would say "The problem on your computer is that there are 2 computer virus on it." To which one would reply, "You idiot sound like brain-my-damage!"
So it is your choice. The plual is in fact virus, the dictionary english plural being viruses, or the slashdot plural being virii.
I stick with a different plural noun for computer virus than living virus, because they are different enough to warrant it, IMHO.
I truly HTH with this debate on how to say the plural form of virus. And, as long as I post to slashdot, I will use the preferred spelling of the maintainers of slashdot.
Good. Then why did you even bother mentioning policy editor in this thread?
>The point you are missing is that we are discussing lock down ways and also time/costs associated
No, in _this_ subthread we are discussing how deepfreeze is an excellent solution to the lockdown problem. Perhaps you screwed up and posted in the wrong thread? I think you wanted to post here then, and not here. If you made a mistake, no problem, but it's silly to get your panties in a knot over it.
>And ghost is not a BP solution either dumbass. Ghost will "ghost" errors on the drive along with everything else.
And why are you using a used workstation to update your ghost image from?
What you should do: You download the ghost image from a CD or server onto a box. Make your changes. Upload changes. As long as you trust your IT staff, there'll never be any foreign stuff on the disk the first bootup after ghosting.
As far as ghost ghosting errors along, well, for me for the past 3 or 4 versions it also tells me there's an error. I assume you are still working with the old shareware version, perhaps, to be noticing that sort of behaviour?
Actually, the latest versions of ghost are so nice they even include a CRC with the ghost data, ensuring that even if one bit in your ghost image file itself changes you notice it. It's very difficult to not notice an error this way.
Now, explain to me how foreign software, virii, or other nasties are introduced into an image when using ghost in the above manner, and I'll show you a set of admins that should be on helpdesk.
A combination of deepfreeze and ghost has cut down on repair problems for us by so much we can sit around and post to slashdot all day now (well, maybe not). We've gone from having labs where 5 or 6 machines (win98) per lab would be out of commission daily due to software vandalism to never having any software vandalism. It has to be the best investment we've made in a long time (although, ghost was pretty damn good a long time ago too).
>Of course, it does little to protect you from leet haxoring tools like deltree.
Overall, deepfreeze (and other such software) tends to protect its own files from deletion (windows does too, since deepfreeze is running the deepfreeze DLL will cause windows to throw an access violation upon deleting it). Although, if you can get the machine to boot to DOS, you can bypass it. However, it isn't very difficult to stop anyone from doing that...
>ya. then there's that software you can get/use for free called POLICY EDITOR
You clearly don't have even the very slightest clue about what you are talking about.
Do you even know the difference between a piece of software that keeps an image of the HDD clean, clear and free of crap while emulating a small write-only partition and a policy editor that (pathetically) attempts to stop users from doing things?
The number once difference would be that deepfreeze is pretty much immune to virii. Is policy editor? No, because it doesn't work at all like deepfreeze.
This is like comparing ghost and xcopy. Sure, I could keep a backup copy of my hard drive with xcopy, but only ghost offers the bulletproof solution.
>Can you define "banned"? In the UK there's no problem buying unlocked scanners (unlike the US IIRC), they used to sell them in my local Tandy (Radio Shack). Of course they may be illegal to use, but I've never heard of that being the case.
Well, I'm basing this on both the reactions and telling-off I got for smuggling in my Canadian scanner in to the UK (nothing is banned in Canada) and what I've read on this site. Supposedly it was made illegal to monitor the police band some time ago, for example.
ze important part:
"Q. Am I breaking the law by owning a scanner?
A. No, but it is illegal to use one to listen to frequencies other than general reception transmissions or those parts of the radio spectrum which your transmitting licence, if you have one, allows you to use. You could be prosecuted for this."
Of course, with the correct licenses anything is legal. Although I am a little freaked out that in the UK you have to pay to use things like CB.;-)
Homemade: Buy a pair of fishing glasses, place polarizing filter over laptop screen. IIRC, you should be able to darken the laptop screen yet still see it fine with the glasses. YMMV, and I may not be describing this just right (but this product was once manufactured -- it may involve removing the polarizing filter that is already on your LCD instead).
>Do hand cell phones interfere with flight systems in reality or is this just a way of making you pay to use the ones built into the back of the seats?
You shouldn't use your cellphone because it will DOS the provider's cell net. The nets aren't designed to hand over your call so fast and things get screwed up and you end up wasting a _lot_ more bandwidth than the cell provider wants you to.
>There hardly is such a thing as a computer crime. A crime is a possibly illegal bad action by which you physically harm one or more human or animal individual, like killing, or raping.
I'll call you on that one.
What say you use the internet to hack street lights so cars crash or hack the airport so planes crash (assuming these are connected to the internet. if not, insert computer at home connected to both internet and modem in between).
It certainly isn't impossible to physically harm others using the internet, and you'll be going to a criminal court for doing any of the above. For someone competent enough, I doubt it's even hard.
>radios are verboten, i believe, since they involve *radio* signals, and there's the potential interference issue.
Well, transmitting ones, sure.
But, IIRC, regular radios are banned because it isn't hard to get one that tunes to the aircraft band, and the _last_ thing the pilot needs during an emergency situation is a passenger putting their aircraft radio on speaker...
Not to mention that in most contries the people do _not_ have the freedom to listen to all of the airwaves without a license, so bringing a scanner on crossborder flights is a no-no. For example, in the US the cellphone range is banned, and in the UK pretty much anything that isn't shortwave, medium wave or long wave is banned (including TV).
>The people who willfully pirate music and movies need to be persecuted to the fullest extent of the law; I will go so far as to say that the law needs to be set up to make persecuting these people easier.
A very interesting choice of words that clearly sums up the current state of law for home users who download via napster and people who watch the encrypted TV signals raining down on them from satellites above.
Very well chosen.
However, you might not have meant that. But it is a good mistake.
>Every action we make, everything we say, makes a statement about who we are.
Oh, how true.
So let's break some things down:
The CEO? A vain, spinesless, mismanaging jerk. The action? Giving an idol of himself to others.
The AC? A bit of a coward, angry, possibly wanting to go postal. The action? Telling the entire world how hard his CEO bites.
You? A jerk in the highest order. The action? Pretending you are better than others.
Feel free to say what you will about me. But I don't feel better than you, except perhaps in attitude.
>Sure, the bobble-head was in poor taste, but complaining about the freebies you got, or complaining because you didn't get enough freebies is just plain childish.
And if it were a flaming bag of shit left on the employee's doorstop, would he be obliged to send a thank you note to the CEO?
Com'mon. It wasn't in poor taste the way hading a $0.10 candle out to someone as a christmas gift is in poor taste. It's nasty in the way giving a condom to a eunic for Christmas is a statement of your opinion of the person.
A handy guide I've reccomended before that you might want to read for next time (if you're that unlucky, that is)! Of course, it's probably highly inaccurate, but I'm sure it'll get you reading up on what your rights really are.
Did you let the officer in? In that case you gave him warrant to do what he asked. If you stop him (such as by telling him to leave) you're now guilty of obstruction of justice.
The answer? Never talk to an officer unless you can be sufficiently vague as to extract from them their true intent. If they poke and prod you into speaking, tell them you'd rather have a lawyer present. Unless you think you can weasel your way out of a traffic ticket, that is.;-)
But hey, if you can't think of anything better at the time, remember this:
If you can't beat them, you should at least try to piss them off.
>Odds are, it would do more good in the long run by nipping these "small time" crooks in the bud before they ever become "big time".
One forgets that jails are but educational institutions and gatherings for criminals. It is much more likely (IMHO) that the crime "goes away" because now the criminal has been caught he spends much more time staying covert rather than risk the punishment again. Because even idiots can learn new and improved ways to be idiots.
>I tell everyone who contacts me in this manner to bid on my auctions.
Bummer. I've gotten most of my hard to find items (like a PrimeStar satellite dish and a busted coin-op game) by seeing something similar being sold by the seller and asking them wether they have what I'm looking for.
Nobody seems to have any problems with this. However, I'm not impatient, and only pay by Money Order (PayPal sucks in so many ways... especially since they screwed up my account within seconds. I only get their spams now.) Unless their Post Office passes counterfeit bills, I would suggest this is even more "secure" than PayPal for the seller, assuming they do as I ask, and keep the item until they have the cash.
It's been my experience, especially with simply coding questions, that it's easier to deja and google for competent Linux/Unix answers than it is for competent windows answers.
Of course, I often find more windows answers overall, it's simply that they just aren't very helpful.
It doesn't even take any particular incompetence of the network admins. _Any_ shared internet service that runs unencryped is always going to be vulnerable. It's only a hacked flash away. Security updates like this are just a little taste of the truth of surfing through a shared 'net connection.
This is just one of the reasons why I suggest to people I know that they buy DSL. Better security, assuming competent admins.
>First of all, you lose a number of potential customers who fear going over the limit (or know for a fact that they will).
True. This is a good thing. They know the service isn't for them, and they don't have a chip on their shoulder like people who signup for unlimited services just to find they get a note from the sysadmin when they get to 30 GB.
It's like a corner store that tells you there's no way they can get you Marmite in Canada. At least they didn't lie and say "Sure, just give us some time".
>Secondly, you have additional costs associated with such things as having to constantly tell people how close to the limit they are and having customers dispute how much they've transfered in a given time period.
The software is really a moot cost. I've seen providers with FAR less money than DTV handle it without complaint. In fact, it's pretty much done for you in modern OSes.
Now, I was with a service that had such a limit. And they had message boards where people could complain, and they did, quite openly in fact. I never did see anything fishy go on on the boards, in fact I'd even seen posts that had I run the company, I may have deleted, but they weren't, save one (from a disgruntled investor).
Of all things, I never saw any complaints about the limit. Of course, the company I'm talking about provided you with a utility that let you measure your bandwidth to the byte, and they let you decide wether to be cut off for the month at the limit, or simply pay a little more for the extra. You could monitor your usage to the kilobyte, and I never saw it out of whack.
Even so, you can avoid the hassles from everyone but whackos (who will complain under _any_ circumstances) by stating you offer 10 GB for $50 but really providing 12 GB.
>You can also forget collecting the last month's bill from many of those who leave who will decide that since your company is so incredibly greedy, you deserve nothing.
This happens for any service. Those people will have another excuse tomorrow, "your service was out for an hour at midnight, you should pay me $xxx for that inconvenience". You honestly can't win with some people.
>So, after cutting off potential revenue, alienating otherwise loyal customers, racking up huge numbers of "uncollectable"'s, and generating enough bad press to make Arie Flischer cry, your company's offices are raided by your creditors just before your disgruntled former customer burn your offices to the ground. Congratulations.
These people try to do that anyways. Witness me and how much I have a burning hatred against Bell Canada. And that has nothing to do with some sort of limit on their DSL, it's simply because I (irrationally) hate the fact they won't provide me with DSL.
But, you know what, even with all the ranting I do, it doesn't make a blind bit of difference. It takes way more than a complaining customer to make things happen. If you keep your nose clean and tell the newspapers the truth when the wackos get you investigated, you'll probably benefit from the service they provided.
>Caps work in very specific situations: when you have a monopoly on high-speed internet access, when your customers are perfectly happy to take limits on their use, and when any potential competitors also have similar limits.
Agreed, apart from the monopoly part. However, other factors come into play. If you had a choice between an unlimited DSL link for $50 with 25% packet loss, or a 0% loss 10 GB a month DSL link for the same price, what would you choose? Many here would prefer the second, more reliable choice.
>A better idea would be to introduce a tiered pricing scheme with limits on speed, as opposed to data transfer.
But a limit on speed _is_ a limit on data transfer (which you did mention, but didn't clarify). It's just hidden.
The clarification: Assuming you're talking 56 kbps (just a bit faster than the FCC mandated modem maximum), that's up to 14 Gigs a month. ie: You've just bought into the same plan I discussed, but will soon feel you've been taken when you realize you just got that data a whole lot slower than the guy next door.
And, guess what, the same crazies who would complain about the cap are now complaining about the speed. And, just like the people complaining about the cap who you tell can just buy more service, these people aren't going to listen when you tell them they need to buy a better plan.
>as I suspect many "power users" would do if offered the chance
Now this I agree with. My current 'net provider charges me $20 CDN a month for 7.5 Gigs, but I would gladly pay $50 a month if I could get 30 gigs. But instead they think charging something like $80 a gig above the limit is the way to go, so they only see $20 a month, and I drive to the college to do any particularly large downloading.
After spending time with caps and seeing the improvement in service after caps have been implemented, I'm much more in favour of them. Especially since it means BIG BILLS or no 'net for NIMDA patients. Plus I really can say spam costs me money.;-)
>It's not fair to broadcast and then charge people with a crime for using the magical bits they find flowing their craniums every second of the day.
Fun thing to think about, related to this.
It was said that during WWII an ally in Japan heard an enemy broadcast through her fillings. It is likely this is nothing more than folk lore, but either way consider that it is true for a moment.
What if this same broadcast were a cell phone in the US? What if it were scrambled cable TV audio? What if it were the audio stream of a for-fee audio broadcasting station?
In the US this person would likely have their tooth ripped out of their head, and could go to jail for their illicit act. Now, for all those who consider piracy outright theft, you would have to support this. To not support this is to support theft whenever the circumstances suit you, and that isn't very moral, is it?
And that's just one of the many reasons why piracy isn't theft. Especially when it comes to signals purposely directed at you and I.
>Just as they have utterly failed [hughes.com] to prevent the theft of their premium television channels
As a Canadian who enjoyed DirecTV I take STRONG offense at your use of the word theft.
Explain to me how DirecTV lost anything when I legally pirated their service. If you can't, then you must stand corrected. And suggesting that a failed business practice of underpricing their receivers caused them financial losses is a pathetic and worn argument, which I will rebut to no end.
>Obviously, hiring a bunch of half wits [nds.com] to secure your network does not help the matter.
Those "half-wits" are rumored to have broken into the new P4 card as a retaliation against DirecTV. Not to mention of _all_ access card hacks, theirs were the ONLY cards I know of where a true access card is required in ALL hacks, due to the fact that their encryption is the only unbroken consumer encryption I know of, apart from DigiCipher and VideoCipher, neither of which were originally designed for consumer use. And supposedly VideoCipher has finally been done in as well.
NDS engineers are a hell of a lot more intelligent than your offensive post. You can paint me a criminal all you'd like, but my country supported me all those years I watched DirecTV for free, so it just won't stick. Although, unfortunately, lately ExpressVu and the CRTC recently bought the right to permanently censor Canadians from that oh-so-offensive American culture. At least my TV tower can sill pick up a couple of US stations.
Slashdot Mirror
>The trouble w/ pirating cable is that it's a 2 way system, unlike satellite
Solution:
Place extra-cheap TV amplifier inline with cable. Wait a while, try to buy a PPV. See if you get charged for it on next month's bill. Or see if they phone you to tell you your cable box is damaged (happened to a friend who tried to "improve" his signal quality with a TV amp).
You know, sometimes the more high-tech they go, the less high-tech you have to be.
>Any why are YOU using a used workstation to update your xcopy image from??
;-) Either that or I'm missing something.
Uhh, I think you've got me confused with the AC.
"This is like comparing ghost and xcopy. Sure, I could keep a backup copy of my hard drive with xcopy, but only ghost offers the bulletproof solution."
Not on slashdot, it isn't.
If anyone cares to continue this sort of boring debate, read here for some debate on both sides of the fence.
Since we want to be correct, the plural of virus is, in fact, virus. Therefore, one would say "The problem on your computer is that there are 2 computer virus on it." To which one would reply, "You idiot sound like brain-my-damage!"
So it is your choice. The plual is in fact virus, the dictionary english plural being viruses, or the slashdot plural being virii.
I stick with a different plural noun for computer virus than living virus, because they are different enough to warrant it, IMHO.
I truly HTH with this debate on how to say the plural form of virus. And, as long as I post to slashdot, I will use the preferred spelling of the maintainers of slashdot.
Thank you.
>I know the difference quite well.
Good. Then why did you even bother mentioning policy editor in this thread?
>The point you are missing is that we are discussing lock down ways and also time/costs associated
No, in _this_ subthread we are discussing how deepfreeze is an excellent solution to the lockdown problem. Perhaps you screwed up and posted in the wrong thread? I think you wanted to post here then, and not here. If you made a mistake, no problem, but it's silly to get your panties in a knot over it.
>And ghost is not a BP solution either dumbass. Ghost will "ghost" errors on the drive along with everything else.
And why are you using a used workstation to update your ghost image from?
What you should do: You download the ghost image from a CD or server onto a box. Make your changes. Upload changes. As long as you trust your IT staff, there'll never be any foreign stuff on the disk the first bootup after ghosting.
As far as ghost ghosting errors along, well, for me for the past 3 or 4 versions it also tells me there's an error. I assume you are still working with the old shareware version, perhaps, to be noticing that sort of behaviour?
Actually, the latest versions of ghost are so nice they even include a CRC with the ghost data, ensuring that even if one bit in your ghost image file itself changes you notice it. It's very difficult to not notice an error this way.
Now, explain to me how foreign software, virii, or other nasties are introduced into an image when using ghost in the above manner, and I'll show you a set of admins that should be on helpdesk.
A combination of deepfreeze and ghost has cut down on repair problems for us by so much we can sit around and post to slashdot all day now (well, maybe not). We've gone from having labs where 5 or 6 machines (win98) per lab would be out of commission daily due to software vandalism to never having any software vandalism. It has to be the best investment we've made in a long time (although, ghost was pretty damn good a long time ago too).
>Of course, it does little to protect you from leet haxoring tools like deltree.
Overall, deepfreeze (and other such software) tends to protect its own files from deletion (windows does too, since deepfreeze is running the deepfreeze DLL will cause windows to throw an access violation upon deleting it). Although, if you can get the machine to boot to DOS, you can bypass it. However, it isn't very difficult to stop anyone from doing that...
>ya. then there's that software you can get/use for free called POLICY EDITOR
You clearly don't have even the very slightest clue about what you are talking about.
Do you even know the difference between a piece of software that keeps an image of the HDD clean, clear and free of crap while emulating a small write-only partition and a policy editor that (pathetically) attempts to stop users from doing things?
The number once difference would be that deepfreeze is pretty much immune to virii. Is policy editor? No, because it doesn't work at all like deepfreeze.
This is like comparing ghost and xcopy. Sure, I could keep a backup copy of my hard drive with xcopy, but only ghost offers the bulletproof solution.
>Can you define "banned"? In the UK there's no problem buying unlocked scanners (unlike the US IIRC), they used to sell them in my local Tandy (Radio Shack). Of course they may be illegal to use, but I've never heard of that being the case.
;-)
Well, I'm basing this on both the reactions and telling-off I got for smuggling in my Canadian scanner in to the UK (nothing is banned in Canada) and what I've read on this site. Supposedly it was made illegal to monitor the police band some time ago, for example.
ze important part:
"Q. Am I breaking the law by owning a scanner?
A. No, but it is illegal to use one to listen to frequencies other than general reception transmissions or those parts of the radio spectrum which your transmitting licence, if you have one, allows you to use. You could be prosecuted for this."
Of course, with the correct licenses anything is legal. Although I am a little freaked out that in the UK you have to pay to use things like CB.
I prefer to fly on the autogiro to the aerodrome, myself.
Solution:
One
Two
Homemade: Buy a pair of fishing glasses, place polarizing filter over laptop screen. IIRC, you should be able to darken the laptop screen yet still see it fine with the glasses. YMMV, and I may not be describing this just right (but this product was once manufactured -- it may involve removing the polarizing filter that is already on your LCD instead).
>Do hand cell phones interfere with flight systems in reality or is this just a way of making you pay to use the ones built into the back of the seats?
You shouldn't use your cellphone because it will DOS the provider's cell net. The nets aren't designed to hand over your call so fast and things get screwed up and you end up wasting a _lot_ more bandwidth than the cell provider wants you to.
>There hardly is such a thing as a computer crime. A crime is a possibly illegal bad action by which you physically harm one or more human or animal individual, like killing, or raping.
I'll call you on that one.
What say you use the internet to hack street lights so cars crash or hack the airport so planes crash (assuming these are connected to the internet. if not, insert computer at home connected to both internet and modem in between).
It certainly isn't impossible to physically harm others using the internet, and you'll be going to a criminal court for doing any of the above. For someone competent enough, I doubt it's even hard.
>radios are verboten, i believe, since they involve *radio* signals, and there's the potential interference issue.
Well, transmitting ones, sure.
But, IIRC, regular radios are banned because it isn't hard to get one that tunes to the aircraft band, and the _last_ thing the pilot needs during an emergency situation is a passenger putting their aircraft radio on speaker...
Not to mention that in most contries the people do _not_ have the freedom to listen to all of the airwaves without a license, so bringing a scanner on crossborder flights is a no-no. For example, in the US the cellphone range is banned, and in the UK pretty much anything that isn't shortwave, medium wave or long wave is banned (including TV).
>Blank Media Prices Could Soar In Canada
Too late.
>The people who willfully pirate music and movies need to be persecuted to the fullest extent of the law; I will go so far as to say that the law needs to be set up to make persecuting these people easier.
A very interesting choice of words that clearly sums up the current state of law for home users who download via napster and people who watch the encrypted TV signals raining down on them from satellites above.
Very well chosen.
However, you might not have meant that. But it is a good mistake.
>Every action we make, everything we say, makes a statement about who we are.
Oh, how true.
So let's break some things down:
The CEO? A vain, spinesless, mismanaging jerk. The action? Giving an idol of himself to others.
The AC? A bit of a coward, angry, possibly wanting to go postal. The action? Telling the entire world how hard his CEO bites.
You? A jerk in the highest order. The action? Pretending you are better than others.
Feel free to say what you will about me. But I don't feel better than you, except perhaps in attitude.
>Sure, the bobble-head was in poor taste, but complaining about the freebies you got, or complaining because you didn't get enough freebies is just plain childish.
And if it were a flaming bag of shit left on the employee's doorstop, would he be obliged to send a thank you note to the CEO?
Com'mon. It wasn't in poor taste the way hading a $0.10 candle out to someone as a christmas gift is in poor taste. It's nasty in the way giving a condom to a eunic for Christmas is a statement of your opinion of the person.
1 high speed photocopier is the equivalent of 10 Gutenberg printing presses.
Photocopier owners to be investigated for fraud, and will be charged with illicitly copying 1 book every 2 minutes the machine has been in operation.
A handy guide I've reccomended before that you might want to read for next time (if you're that unlucky, that is)! Of course, it's probably highly inaccurate, but I'm sure it'll get you reading up on what your rights really are.
;-)
Did you let the officer in? In that case you gave him warrant to do what he asked. If you stop him (such as by telling him to leave) you're now guilty of obstruction of justice.
The answer? Never talk to an officer unless you can be sufficiently vague as to extract from them their true intent. If they poke and prod you into speaking, tell them you'd rather have a lawyer present. Unless you think you can weasel your way out of a traffic ticket, that is.
But hey, if you can't think of anything better at the time, remember this:
If you can't beat them, you should at least try to piss them off.
On second thought, don't do that.
>Odds are, it would do more good in the long run by nipping these "small time" crooks in the bud before they ever become "big time".
One forgets that jails are but educational institutions and gatherings for criminals. It is much more likely (IMHO) that the crime "goes away" because now the criminal has been caught he spends much more time staying covert rather than risk the punishment again. Because even idiots can learn new and improved ways to be idiots.
>I tell everyone who contacts me in this manner to bid on my auctions.
Bummer. I've gotten most of my hard to find items (like a PrimeStar satellite dish and a busted coin-op game) by seeing something similar being sold by the seller and asking them wether they have what I'm looking for.
Nobody seems to have any problems with this. However, I'm not impatient, and only pay by Money Order (PayPal sucks in so many ways... especially since they screwed up my account within seconds. I only get their spams now.) Unless their Post Office passes counterfeit bills, I would suggest this is even more "secure" than PayPal for the seller, assuming they do as I ask, and keep the item until they have the cash.
That's strange.
It's been my experience, especially with simply coding questions, that it's easier to deja and google for competent Linux/Unix answers than it is for competent windows answers.
Of course, I often find more windows answers overall, it's simply that they just aren't very helpful.
It doesn't even take any particular incompetence of the network admins. _Any_ shared internet service that runs unencryped is always going to be vulnerable. It's only a hacked flash away. Security updates like this are just a little taste of the truth of surfing through a shared 'net connection.
This is just one of the reasons why I suggest to people I know that they buy DSL. Better security, assuming competent admins.
>First of all, you lose a number of potential customers who fear going over the limit (or know for a fact that they will).
;-)
True. This is a good thing. They know the service isn't for them, and they don't have a chip on their shoulder like people who signup for unlimited services just to find they get a note from the sysadmin when they get to 30 GB.
It's like a corner store that tells you there's no way they can get you Marmite in Canada. At least they didn't lie and say "Sure, just give us some time".
>Secondly, you have additional costs associated with such things as having to constantly tell people how close to the limit they are and having customers dispute how much they've transfered in a given time period.
The software is really a moot cost. I've seen providers with FAR less money than DTV handle it without complaint. In fact, it's pretty much done for you in modern OSes.
Now, I was with a service that had such a limit. And they had message boards where people could complain, and they did, quite openly in fact. I never did see anything fishy go on on the boards, in fact I'd even seen posts that had I run the company, I may have deleted, but they weren't, save one (from a disgruntled investor).
Of all things, I never saw any complaints about the limit. Of course, the company I'm talking about provided you with a utility that let you measure your bandwidth to the byte, and they let you decide wether to be cut off for the month at the limit, or simply pay a little more for the extra. You could monitor your usage to the kilobyte, and I never saw it out of whack.
Even so, you can avoid the hassles from everyone but whackos (who will complain under _any_ circumstances) by stating you offer 10 GB for $50 but really providing 12 GB.
>You can also forget collecting the last month's bill from many of those who leave who will decide that since your company is so incredibly greedy, you deserve nothing.
This happens for any service. Those people will have another excuse tomorrow, "your service was out for an hour at midnight, you should pay me $xxx for that inconvenience". You honestly can't win with some people.
>So, after cutting off potential revenue, alienating otherwise loyal customers, racking up huge numbers of "uncollectable"'s, and generating enough bad press to make Arie Flischer cry, your company's offices are raided by your creditors just before your disgruntled former customer burn your offices to the ground. Congratulations.
These people try to do that anyways. Witness me and how much I have a burning hatred against Bell Canada. And that has nothing to do with some sort of limit on their DSL, it's simply because I (irrationally) hate the fact they won't provide me with DSL.
But, you know what, even with all the ranting I do, it doesn't make a blind bit of difference. It takes way more than a complaining customer to make things happen. If you keep your nose clean and tell the newspapers the truth when the wackos get you investigated, you'll probably benefit from the service they provided.
>Caps work in very specific situations: when you have a monopoly on high-speed internet access, when your customers are perfectly happy to take limits on their use, and when any potential competitors also have similar limits.
Agreed, apart from the monopoly part. However, other factors come into play. If you had a choice between an unlimited DSL link for $50 with 25% packet loss, or a 0% loss 10 GB a month DSL link for the same price, what would you choose? Many here would prefer the second, more reliable choice.
>A better idea would be to introduce a tiered pricing scheme with limits on speed, as opposed to data transfer.
But a limit on speed _is_ a limit on data transfer (which you did mention, but didn't clarify). It's just hidden.
The clarification: Assuming you're talking 56 kbps (just a bit faster than the FCC mandated modem maximum), that's up to 14 Gigs a month. ie: You've just bought into the same plan I discussed, but will soon feel you've been taken when you realize you just got that data a whole lot slower than the guy next door.
And, guess what, the same crazies who would complain about the cap are now complaining about the speed. And, just like the people complaining about the cap who you tell can just buy more service, these people aren't going to listen when you tell them they need to buy a better plan.
>as I suspect many "power users" would do if offered the chance
Now this I agree with. My current 'net provider charges me $20 CDN a month for 7.5 Gigs, but I would gladly pay $50 a month if I could get 30 gigs. But instead they think charging something like $80 a gig above the limit is the way to go, so they only see $20 a month, and I drive to the college to do any particularly large downloading.
After spending time with caps and seeing the improvement in service after caps have been implemented, I'm much more in favour of them. Especially since it means BIG BILLS or no 'net for NIMDA patients. Plus I really can say spam costs me money.
>It's not fair to broadcast and then charge people with a crime for using the magical bits they find flowing their craniums every second of the day.
Fun thing to think about, related to this.
It was said that during WWII an ally in Japan heard an enemy broadcast through her fillings. It is likely this is nothing more than folk lore, but either way consider that it is true for a moment.
What if this same broadcast were a cell phone in the US? What if it were scrambled cable TV audio? What if it were the audio stream of a for-fee audio broadcasting station?
In the US this person would likely have their tooth ripped out of their head, and could go to jail for their illicit act. Now, for all those who consider piracy outright theft, you would have to support this. To not support this is to support theft whenever the circumstances suit you, and that isn't very moral, is it?
And that's just one of the many reasons why piracy isn't theft. Especially when it comes to signals purposely directed at you and I.
>But seriously, anyone else know of anyone this cheap with static IP?
:-P
Yes, but I doubt I'd want to tell anyone who gets their machines infected.
>Just as they have utterly failed [hughes.com] to prevent the theft of their premium television channels
As a Canadian who enjoyed DirecTV I take STRONG offense at your use of the word theft.
Explain to me how DirecTV lost anything when I legally pirated their service. If you can't, then you must stand corrected. And suggesting that a failed business practice of underpricing their receivers caused them financial losses is a pathetic and worn argument, which I will rebut to no end.
>Obviously, hiring a bunch of half wits [nds.com] to secure your network does not help the matter.
Those "half-wits" are rumored to have broken into the new P4 card as a retaliation against DirecTV. Not to mention of _all_ access card hacks, theirs were the ONLY cards I know of where a true access card is required in ALL hacks, due to the fact that their encryption is the only unbroken consumer encryption I know of, apart from DigiCipher and VideoCipher, neither of which were originally designed for consumer use. And supposedly VideoCipher has finally been done in as well.
NDS engineers are a hell of a lot more intelligent than your offensive post. You can paint me a criminal all you'd like, but my country supported me all those years I watched DirecTV for free, so it just won't stick. Although, unfortunately, lately ExpressVu and the CRTC recently bought the right to permanently censor Canadians from that oh-so-offensive American culture. At least my TV tower can sill pick up a couple of US stations.