Mmm...actually, Fight Club struck me more as a satire of the belief that "the pendulum has swung too far". (And also of the belief that there's a secret They who control everything, but that's not really germane right now.)
which is also GPL'd. If you do strings/mnt/usr/sbin/zebra, you see:
Usage : %s [OPTION...] Daemon which manages kernel routing table management and redistribution between different routing protocols. -b, --batch Runs in batch mode -d, --daemon Runs in daemon mode -f, --config_file Set configuration file name -k, --keep_kernel Don't delete old routes which installed by zebra. -l, --log_mode Set verbose log mode flag -P, --vty_port Set vty's port number -r, --retain When program terminates, retain added route by zebra. -v, --version Print program version -h, --help Display this help and exit Report bugs to %s bug-zebra@gnu.org
ObGPLQuote:
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
* a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
* b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
* c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
I used to work on the helpdesk at a small ISP. We decided to get into ADSL, since we were losing a lot of dialup customers to high-speed (like, when I left we had half the customers we had when I started). It ended up being a lot of headaches -- dealing with the Big Telco, learning how to debug connections, figuring out how the network was set up (don't even get me started) -- but the biggest thing was dealing with people's preconceptions about bandwidth.
We went through another company for our ADSL, rather than dealing w/Big Telco, and we got charged for bandwidth -- anything over a gig per customer per month. But you can't go around saying that your customers only get a gig per month, 'cos very few other companies even mention that. So we upped it to 1Gb up, 5Gb down. The idea was that most people wouldn't even get close, and those that would, would shoot right over and pay for the rest, at $20/Gb.
For the most part, that was true: most people never did get close; the ones who went over tended to go 'way over, and we'd send 'em bills for a thousand dollars (no lie). But have you ever dealt with anyone handed a thousand-dollar bandwidth bill? My sympathies if you have.
There were two things working against us and everyone else who wants to switch to metering bandwidth:
Like I said, no one else does it; most advertising just skirts around the issue.
Most people have no concept of bandwidth use, or have a sense of scale about it, or understand how much something like KaZaa can use, or how to keep bandwidth usage down to a dull roar.
It's that last one that really gets people, I think, and I can understand it. You're using your computer, doing the computer thing and downloading mail, checking a website, grabbing some songs, and alla sudden BAM! you get a thousand-dollar bill for this...this invisible stuff that they say you used, even though you already paid your $34.95 plus tax for the month! No wonder we had angry people on the line.
And another thing that just occurs to me: it's really hard to explain how much a gig is, or isn't. It's a fair question from someone checking out your service: You offer x bandwidth per month, so how much is x? But it's nearly impossible to offer a real answer ("It's as long as this here piece of string"), so we offered bland platitudes ("For most people it's never an issue.").
I realize that not everyone was innocent, and we found it hard to believe that anyone could possibly use up 75Gb in a month and not know what the hell they were doing. But even if someone does understand what we were talking about, factor #1 kicks in: Shaw/Telus/Whoever doesn't charge me, so why are you?
We cut deals, of course -- better to get some than none, better to keep a customer than lose one, and the $20/Gb charge had a lot of leeway built into it. And then we tried calling people up once we noticed they were above, say, 4Gb for the month. But eventually the boss told us that if these people left -- the ones using the really insane amounts of bandwidth -- that was fine. We weren't going to get the money (no matter that they signed the agreement), and it would cost too much to either keep 'em on or pursue the matter. They'd quit, and we'd let 'em go.
Holy crap...262kb/s. I'm going to have to start throttling this somehow. If someone wants to mirror my mirror, let me know and I'll get a tarball your way.
Really, can't get through? MRTG sez 68kb/s, which can't be close to maxing my cable connection. Little show getting out, mind you...Cie, my web server, is just a P200, but it seems to be running just fine.
And on that note, am I the only one who longs to see how their website'd do while slashdotted? I wouldn't want the bandwidth bills, but man I'd love to see what'd happen.
A little from column A, a little from column B. The Texe Marrs stuff was the point, originally -- putting up the transcript of the interview. At the time it was just plain text -- no colour, no pix, no nothing. Then I became interested in The Gimp, and started playing around with floating heads. The AynCards came first (you have sent one, right?) and the Timeline came after.
Personally, I think it's all hilarious; I regularly crack myself up reading it, which I suppose is good. But I fully realize how subjective that is, and how really, its appeal is limited to me and, like, six other people on Earth.
Dang it, there goes my stomach lining...
on
I, Spammer
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
"This is censorship," he said, arguing that both anti-spam vigilantes
and Internet providers that filter out spam are depriving people of
their right to see their mail.
Dear God, I hope the committee saw through this pathetic little charade.
Last time I checked, I had no oblighation to pay to receive advertising;
I had no right to force others to pay the cost of carrying that
advertising; I had no right to force others to put up with the deluge of
complaints about that advertising.
And if he's right about AOL selling him their membership list and
spamming their members (and AOL VP Leonsis' weasel words about "letting
members opting out" does nothing to make me think otherwise), all that
means is there are two assholes there instead of one. It doesn't give
him any moral high ground.
But at least there's the proposal for a "federal antispam SWAT team".
I'd pay good money to see a live video stream of that take-down.
Zapping: No, not that I could think of. We didn't have a Van de Graaf generator; I would've loved it if we had. And I think I was interested in seeing if a simple setup like this would produce any results.
If my teacher had helped, it wouldn't have been my chemistry project, would it?
And no, I did not put down "faked his results." That pinging noise was your humour detector going off.
I tried duplicating Miller's experiment in my last year of high school
for my chemistry final project. I didn't have a way of zapping the
gases, so I tried shining a UV lamp on them; I'd read about different
versions of the experiment that had tried that with success. And I
didn't have a way of evaporating and condensing the liquids, so I just
poured 'em into a big jar and hoped the interface between liquid and gas,
combined with whatever UV light made it through the glass, would make
amino acids. And I didn't have a gas chromatograph, so I had to use a
chemical...damn, don't remember what it was, but it turned purple in the
presence of amino acids and is used to detect fingerprints on paper.
It hardly needs saying, but in a week I didn't make any amino acids I
could detect. Nevertheless, I ended up getting a shockingly high mark
because I'd written up every possible reason I could think of for the
experiment failing: not enough time, not enough interaction between
liquid and gas, not enough energy from the light, test wasn't sensitive
enough, Miller had faked his results (ha!), etc. I was disappointed in the results, but pretty happy with
my mark.:-)
"I know this all sounds like you're hiding yourself and doing this illegitimately, but the reason you have to do it is everybody tries to shut you down," Shiels said.
On another note, anyone got any idea where these "spammer clubs" he mentions might be? I got this new toy I wanna try out...
I think I might have seen something like this. In my previous life as
helpdesk/abuse guy at a small ISP, I was in charge of locking accounts
for spamming. (Fortunately, it never happened very often.)
So one day I get this complaint from SpamCop about a dialup customer of
ours -- typical pr0n spam. Check the logs, find the account and lock
it -- nothing that unusual, except for what happened next: the customer
called in.
See, almost any time we've had people spam before, it's been someone who
has signed up for an unlimited dialup account, then goes and spams right
away before they get cut off. It got to the point where I was able to
guess that someone was going to do this when I was taking down their
details for an account; this happened with someone signing up for this
guy, and I locked the account before it was even active. This
person, like every other spammer I'd dealt with, never called
back: they knew exactly what they were doing, and what I would tell
them. But this customer did.
Furthermore, she was extremely convincing when she told me she
knew nothing about spam. To all appearances she was nearly clueless
about computers (no offense to her -- I'm sure I couldn't do her job),
could not believe her computer had done anything wrong, and was offended
by the spam her computer had sent when she saw the complaint from
SpamCop. She didn't argue that it wasn't really spam, or say that she didn't know that it was wrong, or that everyone had opted in, or that it was just an experiment, or anything: she didn't know what she had done, and was confused and astounded when I told her. I ended up letting her back on, against my better judgement,
with a warning that if it happened again I'd close her account and that
would be that. We changed her password just to be sure that no one else
was using her account; unfortunately, the modem she'd dialed in on
didn't have caller ID, but she swore blind that no one else knew her
password or used her computer.
So a month goes by and I get another complaint from SpamCop -- and it
turns out to be the same customer. "Teach me to be nice," I thought,
and locked her account. Caller-ID was recorded this time, and it was her number. I told the guy at the branch office where she lived that I'd
locked this customer's account -- he had dealt with her the last time --
and he gave her a call. Again, he was convinced that she couldn't be
spamming, and he convinced me that we should at least look at her
computer. We brought it in to the branch office for a look.
Unfortunately, neither one of us really knew what to do beyond the
obvious. It was running Windows 98, no updates; the guy at the office
knew Windows, and I know Unix, but neither one of us had experience with
this sort of thing. I did a portscan and found one port open (1234), but it
the banner said "Express Search"; eventually found
this link, which didn't seem to offer much. Meanwhile, the guy in
the office ran Trend Micro's HouseCall and Panda's online virus scanner,
and didn't find much of interest.
He ended up reinstalling Windows on her computer, adding a firewall,
doing all the updates, and letting her back on; we didn't know what else
to do. We kept looking around for some mention of a virus or trojan
with an SMTP engine (beyond something like Klez, I mean), but couldn't
really find anything -- just lots of "This is weird, anyone seen
anything like this?".
Sorry to be so vague on the details, but like I said, I really don't
know Windows and I'm really not a security guy. But I'm still fairly sure that either she was a wonderful actress, or some 133t haX0r had rooted her box to send spam. Needless to say, this is going to wreak havoc with anyone who has to be the abuse guy -- "Innocent victim of a virus or spammer scum? Hm..."
Simson Garfinkel eventually became a
hermit and withdrew from public life after too many people mistook him
for Art Garfunkel. He now lives in a cave in southern California.
Daniel Weise went
on to work at Microsoft. He distinguished himself as the first
non-Samoan to ever pick up Bob Barker after winning the Showcase
Showdown on "The Price Is Right."
Steve Straussman (no website, sorry -- anyone?) left the Unix-Hater's
list after it was revealed that he had fallen in love with a woman who
loved Unix. He has come to terms with the past, and now teaches "How to
Shell Script in Linux" classes at his local community college.
John Klossner went on to a
successful career making cartoons for Lucas' Skywalker Sound company
newsletter, until fired for printing one that suggested an unnatural
intimacy between Luke Skywalker and Chewbacca.
Donald Norman won the coveted "Golden
C< Prompt" award and retired from public life.
Dennis Ritchie became
something of a celebrity on the web for his many and varied contributions
of photos to Engrish.com.
Holy crap -- 500 hours of recording time? Wow. I suspect your long-term storage requirements are higher than mine.:-)
I agree about two tuners though -- one of the things I'd want from a box like this is the ability to record one tv show while watching (w/full Tivo-like 30-second replay ability) another. I'm guessing two CPUs would do best for this...anyone care to let me know if that's right?
Slashdot Mirror
Mmm...actually, Fight Club struck me more as a satire of the belief that "the pendulum has swung too far". (And also of the belief that there's a secret They who control everything, but that's not really germane right now.)
Aha...good point; I missed that. I emailed them yesterday, so I'm sure I'll find out soon enough. Thanks for the tip.
Thanks for one of the sanest replies I've seen in this article.
ObGPLQuote:
Good point -- but see my comment above about what happens when you charge the 10% who do go over.
I used to work on the helpdesk at a small ISP. We decided to get into ADSL, since we were losing a lot of dialup customers to high-speed (like, when I left we had half the customers we had when I started). It ended up being a lot of headaches -- dealing with the Big Telco, learning how to debug connections, figuring out how the network was set up (don't even get me started) -- but the biggest thing was dealing with people's preconceptions about bandwidth.
We went through another company for our ADSL, rather than dealing w/Big Telco, and we got charged for bandwidth -- anything over a gig per customer per month. But you can't go around saying that your customers only get a gig per month, 'cos very few other companies even mention that. So we upped it to 1Gb up, 5Gb down. The idea was that most people wouldn't even get close, and those that would, would shoot right over and pay for the rest, at $20/Gb.
For the most part, that was true: most people never did get close; the ones who went over tended to go 'way over, and we'd send 'em bills for a thousand dollars (no lie). But have you ever dealt with anyone handed a thousand-dollar bandwidth bill? My sympathies if you have.
There were two things working against us and everyone else who wants to switch to metering bandwidth:
- Like I said, no one else does it; most advertising just skirts around the issue.
- Most people have no concept of bandwidth use, or have a sense of scale about it, or understand how much something like KaZaa can use, or how to keep bandwidth usage down to a dull roar.
It's that last one that really gets people, I think, and I can understand it. You're using your computer, doing the computer thing and downloading mail, checking a website, grabbing some songs, and alla sudden BAM! you get a thousand-dollar bill for this...this invisible stuff that they say you used, even though you already paid your $34.95 plus tax for the month! No wonder we had angry people on the line.And another thing that just occurs to me: it's really hard to explain how much a gig is, or isn't. It's a fair question from someone checking out your service: You offer x bandwidth per month, so how much is x? But it's nearly impossible to offer a real answer ("It's as long as this here piece of string"), so we offered bland platitudes ("For most people it's never an issue.").
I realize that not everyone was innocent, and we found it hard to believe that anyone could possibly use up 75Gb in a month and not know what the hell they were doing. But even if someone does understand what we were talking about, factor #1 kicks in: Shaw/Telus/Whoever doesn't charge me, so why are you?
We cut deals, of course -- better to get some than none, better to keep a customer than lose one, and the $20/Gb charge had a lot of leeway built into it. And then we tried calling people up once we noticed they were above, say, 4Gb for the month. But eventually the boss told us that if these people left -- the ones using the really insane amounts of bandwidth -- that was fine. We weren't going to get the money (no matter that they signed the agreement), and it would cost too much to either keep 'em on or pursue the matter. They'd quit, and we'd let 'em go.
That's better!
to bother throttling.
But you know, if you were a real Slashdotter you'd be offering web space right now.
Holy crap...262kb/s. I'm going to have to start throttling this somehow. If someone wants to mirror my mirror, let me know and I'll get a tarball your way.
Interesting? Boy, slow night. :-)
Really, can't get through? MRTG sez 68kb/s, which can't be close to maxing my cable connection. Little show getting out, mind you...Cie, my web server, is just a P200, but it seems to be running just fine.
And on that note, am I the only one who longs to see how their website'd do while slashdotted? I wouldn't want the bandwidth bills, but man I'd love to see what'd happen.
Personally, I think it's all hilarious; I regularly crack myself up reading it, which I suppose is good. But I fully realize how subjective that is, and how really, its appeal is limited to me and, like, six other people on Earth.
http://saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com
Dear God, I hope the committee saw through this pathetic little charade. Last time I checked, I had no oblighation to pay to receive advertising; I had no right to force others to pay the cost of carrying that advertising; I had no right to force others to put up with the deluge of complaints about that advertising.
And if he's right about AOL selling him their membership list and spamming their members (and AOL VP Leonsis' weasel words about "letting members opting out" does nothing to make me think otherwise), all that means is there are two assholes there instead of one. It doesn't give him any moral high ground.
But at least there's the proposal for a "federal antispam SWAT team". I'd pay good money to see a live video stream of that take-down.
If my teacher had helped, it wouldn't have been my chemistry project, would it?
And no, I did not put down "faked his results." That pinging noise was your humour detector going off.
It hardly needs saying, but in a week I didn't make any amino acids I could detect. Nevertheless, I ended up getting a shockingly high mark because I'd written up every possible reason I could think of for the experiment failing: not enough time, not enough interaction between liquid and gas, not enough energy from the light, test wasn't sensitive enough, Miller had faked his results (ha!), etc. I was disappointed in the results, but pretty happy with my mark. :-)
On another note, anyone got any idea where these "spammer clubs" he mentions might be? I got this new toy I wanna try out...
http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/bugtraq/199 9-q4/0317.html
And I meant to mention that the first incident was at the beginning of March this year, and the second at the beginning of April.
See, almost any time we've had people spam before, it's been someone who has signed up for an unlimited dialup account, then goes and spams right away before they get cut off. It got to the point where I was able to guess that someone was going to do this when I was taking down their details for an account; this happened with someone signing up for this guy, and I locked the account before it was even active. This person, like every other spammer I'd dealt with, never called back: they knew exactly what they were doing, and what I would tell them. But this customer did.
Furthermore, she was extremely convincing when she told me she knew nothing about spam. To all appearances she was nearly clueless about computers (no offense to her -- I'm sure I couldn't do her job), could not believe her computer had done anything wrong, and was offended by the spam her computer had sent when she saw the complaint from SpamCop. She didn't argue that it wasn't really spam, or say that she didn't know that it was wrong, or that everyone had opted in, or that it was just an experiment, or anything: she didn't know what she had done, and was confused and astounded when I told her. I ended up letting her back on, against my better judgement, with a warning that if it happened again I'd close her account and that would be that. We changed her password just to be sure that no one else was using her account; unfortunately, the modem she'd dialed in on didn't have caller ID, but she swore blind that no one else knew her password or used her computer.
So a month goes by and I get another complaint from SpamCop -- and it turns out to be the same customer. "Teach me to be nice," I thought, and locked her account. Caller-ID was recorded this time, and it was her number. I told the guy at the branch office where she lived that I'd locked this customer's account -- he had dealt with her the last time -- and he gave her a call. Again, he was convinced that she couldn't be spamming, and he convinced me that we should at least look at her computer. We brought it in to the branch office for a look.
Unfortunately, neither one of us really knew what to do beyond the obvious. It was running Windows 98, no updates; the guy at the office knew Windows, and I know Unix, but neither one of us had experience with this sort of thing. I did a portscan and found one port open (1234), but it the banner said "Express Search"; eventually found this link, which didn't seem to offer much. Meanwhile, the guy in the office ran Trend Micro's HouseCall and Panda's online virus scanner, and didn't find much of interest.
He ended up reinstalling Windows on her computer, adding a firewall, doing all the updates, and letting her back on; we didn't know what else to do. We kept looking around for some mention of a virus or trojan with an SMTP engine (beyond something like Klez, I mean), but couldn't really find anything -- just lots of "This is weird, anyone seen anything like this?".
Sorry to be so vague on the details, but like I said, I really don't know Windows and I'm really not a security guy. But I'm still fairly sure that either she was a wonderful actress, or some 133t haX0r had rooted her box to send spam. Needless to say, this is going to wreak havoc with anyone who has to be the abuse guy -- "Innocent victim of a virus or spammer scum? Hm..."
ObRant: Fucking goddamned spammers anyway. Fuckwads.
Simson Garfinkel eventually became a hermit and withdrew from public life after too many people mistook him for Art Garfunkel. He now lives in a cave in southern California.
Daniel Weise went on to work at Microsoft. He distinguished himself as the first non-Samoan to ever pick up Bob Barker after winning the Showcase Showdown on "The Price Is Right."
Steve Straussman (no website, sorry -- anyone?) left the Unix-Hater's list after it was revealed that he had fallen in love with a woman who loved Unix. He has come to terms with the past, and now teaches "How to Shell Script in Linux" classes at his local community college.
John Klossner went on to a successful career making cartoons for Lucas' Skywalker Sound company newsletter, until fired for printing one that suggested an unnatural intimacy between Luke Skywalker and Chewbacca.
Donald Norman won the coveted "Golden C< Prompt" award and retired from public life.
Dennis Ritchie became something of a celebrity on the web for his many and varied contributions of photos to Engrish.com.
Scott Burson became a monk and moved to Iceland.
Don Hopkins ran for office in Lousiana and lost. He is now a semi-successful insurance salesman, and plays harmonica regularly.
That was all I could find out about -- anyone got any more?
Sorry folks, gotta take the page down or my cable connection'll get cut off for sure. :-)
http://saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com/matrix.html
And y'all thought Trekkies were over the top.
I agree about two tuners though -- one of the things I'd want from a box like this is the ability to record one tv show while watching (w/full Tivo-like 30-second replay ability) another. I'm guessing two CPUs would do best for this...anyone care to let me know if that's right?
I did not just spend two years on helpdesk so I could be a "Computer Infrastructure Practitioner". Think that's gonna scare anyone?