Some time around 1995-1996, we broke a story to Infoworld about Microsoft using BSDI unix as their web serving platform. After that they shut down various ports to keep people from finding out. It was hilarious. Even while MS was promoting IIS in the early years, they were still running on Unix, even their main web site.
It seemed to me that the commercials this year were below par. At least half of them were previously-aired commercials, and with few exceptions, none really seemed "superbowl quality".
Ones I noted:
"Monster" - nice 18-wheeler scene, but my friends were like, "What's monster?" I guess they're now avoiding the "dot com" association so now anybody unfamiliar with them has no clue what the company does. What a huge waste of money. Promote yourself to people who are already familiar with you and aware of the fact that your service isn't all that helpful..
"Honda ads" - I don't even remember the name of that goofy SUV-wannabe with the uber high center of gravity (makes a Suzuki Samari look like a Pantera though), but obviously if you buy one of them you seem to have fun with your friends.
This seemed to be the recurring theme of the Superbowl commercials... I'm not sure what they were actually selling but I saw lots of people having good times with better looking people than I usually hang out with, so I guess I need to purchase something.. not sure exactly what tho.
"Anti Drug" - This commercial *really* pisses me off. Every time I see the "drug money supports terrorism" commercial I want to slash the tires of every H2, Navigator, and other bloated gas-guzzling pieces of crap that more-directly cause our dependency upon middle-eastern oil which, unlike the drug-money-terrorism claim, is much more likely to support terrorism. This commercial also seems to indicate that a lot of the slots for the superbowl were not filled because there's no way they paid big bucks to air that piece of crap.
"Jordan vs Jordan" - Cute the first time I saw it but it ran again. I only needed to see it once. No biggie.
"Jordan and Chan" - Puleeeze... What ad team thought that these two were ideal candidates to sell underwear?
"Zebra instant replay" - This was to me the funniest and best commercial.
Likely not related to cross-trace issue
on
Cross-Site-TRACE
·
· Score: 3, Informative
There are two things going on here I suspect. There is a discussion on a cross-trace vulnerability, at the same time, some type MS SQL-based worm was unleashed late Friday which caused lots of problems. Two different issues. Excuse the inter-mingling.
I'm not denying that XM is a useful service. I'm just acknowledging the dynamics of the market that we are in, which makes it incredibly difficult to compete in an industry where alternative services are free. So if you want to compete with "free" you need to be amazingly superior. I don't hear any such buzz that implies that. So I predict that XM will go the way of many other good ideas that didn't have the right market to prosper.
If you have something productive to say, go for it. But calling someone an idiot without any details is counterproductive.
I fully-admit that some of the replies may not be related to the RFC trace issue that the main message applies to, however, the news article was posted right in the middle of a major backbone outage on the Internet. At this point, we're not sure the root cause of this, and so this seems the appropriate forum to post situation reports and news gathered. Slashdot remains one of the few trustworthy sites to check when things like this happen.
Here's what we've been able to learn, at 4:30am Central time.
We have reason to believe that something called the "SQL Worm" is in play. Some sort of DDOS attack which creates overwhelming traffic on port 1434. This is all preliminary stuff, so take it as such but I have one link up and 3 others down.
I don't have confirmation or details on what systems are affected but we have information to indicate that the following networks are currently affected: Quest, Cable & Wireless, Broadwing, Sprint (partially). My Worldcom link seems to be unaffected (which is why I can post). Note that the connectivity interruptions may be regional but that's what we are dealing with in the South Central area of the US. This has been going on now for about 4-5 hours.
What we are seeing is a major outage due to DDOS on port 1434, on portions of the Internet backbone. At this point, the exact pattern of the outage has not been clarified.
Expect the problem to potentially be addressed when the backbone providers start filtering port 1434. However, it's taken them at least four hours to figure this out.
We just got notice (a few moments ago) that Quest finally started filtering port 1434 and everything went back up. So now we need to figure out what vulnerability this was. My information indicates that port 1434 is MS SQL server resolution service (see related CERT advisory. My initial impression is that while this vulnerability was discovered awhile back, someone just recently figured out a very effective exploit using the vulnerability. I am looking forward to hearing more about what people find out.
Two T3s with Quest: DOWN. Port udb traffic 1434 totally flooded. Uplinks have their heads up their asses and have no answers at this point. My uplink says he has a Linux server that when activated starts spamming port 1434. Is this or is this not a MS SQL-related issue?
I'm up because I'm multi-homed and I have no MS servers at all running on my network, but every other network that i know of running some MS servers is having blackouts.
We need to find out what is going on right now, and we need to make sure the media does NOT misrepresent exactly what is at fault. Everyone here has a responsibility!
What is with the "New Logic" that the mainstream now employs?
* "Inspectors have not found any evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Cheney cites this as a clear indication they indeed do have weapons of mass destruction and are hiding them."
* "UFO evidence shown to NASA. NASA doesn't respond. This clearly indicates that they can't refute the evidence."
People have gone mad. I suspect that since nobody is denying it, everyone has actually gone mad. This is clear evidence!
I'd like to suggest my ideas for why Spam continues to become more and more of a problem. Ironically, even though many entities claim that spam costs them money, even those that don't like it benefit from its existence, and this creates an inherent conflict of interest:
1. Backbone providers make money selling bandwidth. Conventional wisdom dictates that spam traffic consumes a substantive amount of bandwidth. Therefore, backbone providers have a financial incentive to not reduce spam. They don't care whether the traffic is legit or not because the more the merrier for them.
Case in point: Backbone providers such as Sprint will NOT intervene in DOS attacks against their customers UNLESS the pipes they feed are saturated. If you have some attacker using 80% of your T1, they won't stop him, not until it reaches 100%. Why? Because only then does it take money out of their pockets.
2. Almost every other "SPAM solution" proposed, such as filtering software, actually relies on the existence of spam as a means of supporting themselves. Ironically, the spam filter companies need spam to continue to increase to help boost their business. So they don't really want you to not ever have to deal with spam.. they want it to be an ever-increasing problem so you pay them more money for updates and newer program versions. Again, there is an inherent conflict of interest here. Filtering software is totally useless unless you like the idea of paying some company a fee to reduce 20% of your spam and potentially block legit mail in perpetuity.
Spammers love to use the "Freedom of Speech" argument to justify the protections they deserve. This is fine and dandy. I have no problem with their right to promote what they want. But almost all spammers do one unquestionably unethical thing, which is exploit third-party mail relays to distrubte their spam, and this creates huge problems for innocent parties.
My solution: You hijack a third-party mail relay, you repurpose some web site's formmail.pl script? YOU GO TO JAIL. Period. This is the ONLY way we'll be able to deal with spam. Everything else is a total waste of time.
The problem is, the FBI (Federal Bureau of Incompetence) seems to have no clue how to address this issue. I have yet to see one case of someone hijacking a mail relay or breaking into another computer system and getting nailed for it, even though there seems to be numerous laws that would be broken in such a case.
People need to rally for federal and international enforcement of computer break-in laws. Everything else has been tried: filtering, blacklists, civil penalties, etc., and none of it has worked. When are people going to realize there is only one way to stop this, and it doesn't infringe upon any freedom of speech issues? Spammers can't operate without hiding their identity and location... make them have to do so or else there are CRIMINAL penalties, and we'll see spam stop pretty damn quickly.
The unique, private e-mail name is not effective any more. Spammers are now engaging in indiscriminate "name guessing" techniques. They select a domain and sequentially attach a library of names @thatdomain.com and start spamming. So even if you've never publicized your e-mail address, there's still a chance you'll get spammed, and the first time the address doesn't bounce, it gets added to the "good database".
In my opinion, the best solution to the spam problem is very simple: Clearly criminalize the exploitation of third-party mail relays and vigorously prosecute such cases. Forget civil issues. It must be criminal. No matter how much filtering you do, the spammers will always seek to circumvent the system. The only way to stop them is to criminalize the hijacking of mail relays. Ok, it seems this is already criminal but nobody pursues it. This needs to change.
How do you get around the exploitation of foreign networks who don't follow the rules? The backbone ISPs agree to not route traffic for any ISP or network which doesn't adhere to certain standards with respect to adopting a uniform policy of taking action against those who hijack mail relays (i.e. cyber criminal extradition policy or something like that).
These spamming scumbags want to set up shop in China using mail relays overseas? Fine. When they're caught, we extradite them to China and let the Chinese punish them.
Until mail relay hijacking is clearly criminalized, we will NEVER reduce the amount of spam, period. Clearly criminalizing mail relay hijacking will force spammers to set up their own networks and then adopt more benevolent solicitation policies in an effort to not be blacklisted by the Internet at large.
Since I run an ISP and merely want the registrars to do their job and not solicit me and my clients for competitive services, this is fast becoming an issue. Most of the registrars are bundling hosting and other services with registration. Are there any out there that draw the line and act simply as a registrar?
My doctor has advised me to not discuss the plethora of issues I've historically had with Verisign/NSI due to my blood pressure.
What I see now however, is most of the alternative registrars being almost as bad.
We migrated all our domains over to Dotster a few years back and in the beginning we were concerned with the stability of their IIS-based system, which would often crawl to a stop in SSL mode during business hours. We actually had to make post-it note reminders to perform domain maintenance on their system later in the day because their site often was too slow. When they migrated over to a Unix-based system, we were very pleased.
However, recently, Dotster, who was a decent registrar in my opnion, has really gone down the tubes. Their automated domain renewal system seems to not work. The web page where users can enter credit card info on file has been broken (their response, "Nobody uses that page much so we didn't notice it was broken"). And most recently, the've unleashed this obnoxious web-hosting-component company called Hostlane, which has invoiced us for services we didn't ask for and automatically charged credit cards. What's insidious is that the hosting charge is the same amount as domain renewal, which seems to make it suspiciously appear as if they're trying to sneak extra charges through on the customer's billing statements.
I am fed up with these registrars and their sleazy business practices. NSI was the first and the worst, but now so many of the others, from Verisign to Verio, Register.com and others, they all are the pits. Does anyone have any advice for what the best choice is now? I can no longer recommend Dotster.
As I understand this, and correct me if I'm wrong, IE is using an abbreviated initial handshaking mechanism when connecting to web sites, which result in a faster connection when using Microsoft-brand IIS web servers, and a slower connection when using non-IIS servers.
Will this functionality be emulated in an upcoming mod_ben_over_here_comes_Microsoft plug-in to apache?
I could appreciate the attempt to improve performance, but not at the cost of what I perceive to be yet another underhanded attempt to leverage Microsoft's monopoly on the desktop to promote their own products.
--- What's your biggest complaint about the profession? I don't have much to complain about
HUH!? I'm gonna go out on a limb here using my expereince and the people I know and say this is the exception and not the norm... Is this guy for real? ---
Both scenarios are real.
I think the above issue epitomizes the difference between a work environment where management respects the Sysadmin's advice, and one that doesn't.
A good sysadmin will choose tools and technology to make his life as easy as possible, and therefore have little to complain about usually IF he's allowed the freedom to do so. The #1 complaint I've had, as well as any other sysadmin I know, is when management or clientele don't respect the sysadmin's recommendations, or half-way implement technical processes without the approval of the sysadmin.
Let me correct that... of course stability and performance are platform-dependent when your OS is a piece of crap. But what I mean is that rarely are computer problems hardware-based. Almost 100% of problems are software-related and avoidable. Microsoft's competition for both platform and desktop dominance has created an environment where due to the proprietary nature of their OS, along with their superior ability to "whore" themselves out in markets to destroy other companies, have completely eradicated most capable competitors.
First off, all this talk about "Microsoft Technology" is a farce. From the very beginning when Bill Gates weaseled his earliest software licenses from real coders, Microsoft was more a marketing machine than a development company. It amuses me that anyone ever thought of them differently. The company's modus operandi hasn't changed one bit since day one: take other peoples' technology and leverage it for your own gain and garner as much control over the environment as possible.
The saddest part of all this is the new generation of "programmers" who don't really seem to understand that stability and performance have NEVER been platform or hardware dependent. The new breed of developers as well as users has been conditioned to accept failure and mediocre performance as the status quo. Microsoft, Oracle, and other companies have shifted their business model to exploit the instability of their own products to create entirely new (support) industries from which to profit. It's like they're selling you tainted food and offering health insurance at the same time.
With few exceptions, Microsoft puts out crap. They don't even spray it with perfume any more.. The computing public has learned to enjoy the taste of crap, and they'll serve you a bigger pile of crap each season and you'll love it. What else are you going to do?
I would really like to see OSS take over, and I do my part, but I see an increasingly lazy, uneducated and unmotivated public that is becoming more and more difficult to reason with. I am at a loss how to knock some sense into the public without an ad budget of less than many millions of dollars. Welcome to the new millennium. It looks like it will have to get much worse before it gets better.
SNES game "Parodious" - an excellent shooter that was banned in the United States because executives felt it was politically-incorrect (pilot your star ship between the legs of a Las Vegas showgirl in one of the scenes). In another scene, the boss is a red, white and blue Eagle that when defeated, loses it's feathers and crashes to the ground. (PS: Game is available via MAME tho)
Original Space Wars Arcade cabinet
Corpse of PT Barnum now oversees all productions
on
Taken?
·
· Score: 1
After seeing that piece of crap called "A.I.", he fooled me once; shame on him. After seeing that piece of crap called "Minority Report", he fooled me twice; shame on me. Pardon me if I don't even need to see his latest effort. I'm still scraping the doo off my shoes from his last productions. What Madonna was and now is to music, Spielberg has inherited the same legacy. Someone please put a parking meter in his slot at the production studio to collect money to reimburse me for the pain and suffering I've been put through as he tries to milk the last remaining bit of money he can from his ever-fleeting burst of notoriety.
That in and of itself is quite telling. It's more productive to replace than understand the nature of a problem and solve it. And corporate america is on a quest to milk even more money after the fact from consumers.
To me, what's worse than "planned obsolesence" which is definitely a factor in product development, is deliberately crippling a well-designed product and reproducing lesser versions at different price points. This is the WORST. Sony deliberately cripples the still-image compression ability of their video cameras so you have to purchase a stand-alone digital camera to get the quality your video camera is capable or producing in many cases. It's despicable and I think consumers should boycott "crippled" products.
At least with Radio Shack if you pay cash, you can remain anonymous. The point of registration with the NYTimes isn't any more of a security breach - give them a free hotmail address - they have your IP address already, and in most cases this can be traced back to you, so visiting any web site dispells your illusion of anonyminity anyway. It's moot.
I am completely against all client-based spam filters. This essentially does nothing to address the most serious repurcussion of spamming, and that's exploitation of third-party networks & bandwidth. Aside from the fact that client-based spam filtering is most-likely the least effective solution and more likely to stop legitimate mail than other methods such as known spam relay blocking.
Ultimately, the only way we're going to really curtail spam is by enacting harsh *criminal* penalties for mail relay and server hijacking, which is the standard method by which most spam is distributed. It's true that these activities are already considered illegal but the law enforcement agencies are either unwilling to take action because there's a minimum threshold of monetary damages required, or they're ill-equipped knowledge and technology-wise to aggressively go after these people.
And Puleeze don't even bother with the ineffective, "let the industry regulate itself" argument, which doesn't work. Most spammers are small "cell groups" that move around a lot; most don't have any money in the first place; only criminal penalties are going to work, and client-side and industry regulated efforts don't stop their efforts at all and just drive bandwidth charges up for the rest of us.
Ironically, worldcom makes money off "script kiddies" too. If you purchase their burstable service, they measure average bandwidth every x seconds, and the more port scanning going on, the more bandwidth being utilized. Isn't that special.
Slashdot Mirror
Some time around 1995-1996, we broke a story to Infoworld about Microsoft using BSDI unix as their web serving platform. After that they shut down various ports to keep people from finding out. It was hilarious. Even while MS was promoting IIS in the early years, they were still running on Unix, even their main web site.
It seemed to me that the commercials this year were below par. At least half of them were previously-aired commercials, and with few exceptions, none really seemed "superbowl quality".
Ones I noted:
"Monster" - nice 18-wheeler scene, but my friends were like, "What's monster?" I guess they're now avoiding the "dot com" association so now anybody unfamiliar with them has no clue what the company does. What a huge waste of money. Promote yourself to people who are already familiar with you and aware of the fact that your service isn't all that helpful..
"Honda ads" - I don't even remember the name of that goofy SUV-wannabe with the uber high center of gravity (makes a Suzuki Samari look like a Pantera though), but obviously if you buy one of them you seem to have fun with your friends.
This seemed to be the recurring theme of the Superbowl commercials... I'm not sure what they were actually selling but I saw lots of people having good times with better looking people than I usually hang out with, so I guess I need to purchase something.. not sure exactly what tho.
"Anti Drug" - This commercial *really* pisses me off. Every time I see the "drug money supports terrorism" commercial I want to slash the tires of every H2, Navigator, and other bloated gas-guzzling pieces of crap that more-directly cause our dependency upon middle-eastern oil which, unlike the drug-money-terrorism claim, is much more likely to support terrorism. This commercial also seems to indicate that a lot of the slots for the superbowl were not filled because there's no way they paid big bucks to air that piece of crap.
"Jordan vs Jordan" - Cute the first time I saw it but it ran again. I only needed to see it once. No biggie.
"Jordan and Chan" - Puleeeze... What ad team thought that these two were ideal candidates to sell underwear?
"Zebra instant replay" - This was to me the funniest and best commercial.
There are two things going on here I suspect. There is a discussion on a cross-trace vulnerability, at the same time, some type MS SQL-based worm was unleashed late Friday which caused lots of problems. Two different issues. Excuse the inter-mingling.
I'm not denying that XM is a useful service. I'm just acknowledging the dynamics of the market that we are in, which makes it incredibly difficult to compete in an industry where alternative services are free. So if you want to compete with "free" you need to be amazingly superior. I don't hear any such buzz that implies that. So I predict that XM will go the way of many other good ideas that didn't have the right market to prosper.
If you have something productive to say, go for it. But calling someone an idiot without any details is counterproductive.
I fully-admit that some of the replies may not be related to the RFC trace issue that the main message applies to, however, the news article was posted right in the middle of a major backbone outage on the Internet. At this point, we're not sure the root cause of this, and so this seems the appropriate forum to post situation reports and news gathered. Slashdot remains one of the few trustworthy sites to check when things like this happen.
Here's what we've been able to learn, at 4:30am Central time.
We have reason to believe that something called the "SQL Worm" is in play. Some sort of DDOS attack which creates overwhelming traffic on port 1434. This is all preliminary stuff, so take it as such but I have one link up and 3 others down.
I don't have confirmation or details on what systems are affected but we have information to indicate that the following networks are currently affected: Quest, Cable & Wireless, Broadwing, Sprint (partially). My Worldcom link seems to be unaffected (which is why I can post). Note that the connectivity interruptions may be regional but that's what we are dealing with in the South Central area of the US. This has been going on now for about 4-5 hours.
What we are seeing is a major outage due to DDOS on port 1434, on portions of the Internet backbone. At this point, the exact pattern of the outage has not been clarified.
Expect the problem to potentially be addressed when the backbone providers start filtering port 1434. However, it's taken them at least four hours to figure this out.
We just got notice (a few moments ago) that Quest finally started filtering port 1434 and everything went back up. So now we need to figure out what vulnerability this was. My information indicates that port 1434 is MS SQL server resolution service (see related CERT advisory. My initial impression is that while this vulnerability was discovered awhile back, someone just recently figured out a very effective exploit using the vulnerability. I am looking forward to hearing more about what people find out.
Two T3s with Quest: DOWN. Port udb traffic 1434 totally flooded. Uplinks have their heads up their asses and have no answers at this point. My uplink says he has a Linux server that when activated starts spamming port 1434. Is this or is this not a MS SQL-related issue?
I'm up because I'm multi-homed and I have no MS servers at all running on my network, but every other network that i know of running some MS servers is having blackouts.
We need to find out what is going on right now, and we need to make sure the media does NOT misrepresent exactly what is at fault. Everyone here has a responsibility!
Who here actually is paying for XM or other Satellite radio (not counting the free stuff with digital cable/satellite tv service)?
I rest my case.
What is with the "New Logic" that the mainstream now employs?
* "Inspectors have not found any evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Cheney cites this as a clear indication they indeed do have weapons of mass destruction and are hiding them."
* "UFO evidence shown to NASA. NASA doesn't respond. This clearly indicates that they can't refute the evidence."
People have gone mad. I suspect that since nobody is denying it, everyone has actually gone mad. This is clear evidence!
I'd like to suggest my ideas for why Spam continues to become more and more of a problem. Ironically, even though many entities claim that spam costs them money, even those that don't like it benefit from its existence, and this creates an inherent conflict of interest:
1. Backbone providers make money selling bandwidth. Conventional wisdom dictates that spam traffic consumes a substantive amount of bandwidth. Therefore, backbone providers have a financial incentive to not reduce spam. They don't care whether the traffic is legit or not because the more the merrier for them.
Case in point: Backbone providers such as Sprint will NOT intervene in DOS attacks against their customers UNLESS the pipes they feed are saturated. If you have some attacker using 80% of your T1, they won't stop him, not until it reaches 100%. Why? Because only then does it take money out of their pockets.
2. Almost every other "SPAM solution" proposed, such as filtering software, actually relies on the existence of spam as a means of supporting themselves. Ironically, the spam filter companies need spam to continue to increase to help boost their business. So they don't really want you to not ever have to deal with spam.. they want it to be an ever-increasing problem so you pay them more money for updates and newer program versions. Again, there is an inherent conflict of interest here. Filtering software is totally useless unless you like the idea of paying some company a fee to reduce 20% of your spam and potentially block legit mail in perpetuity.
Spammers love to use the "Freedom of Speech" argument to justify the protections they deserve. This is fine and dandy. I have no problem with their right to promote what they want. But almost all spammers do one unquestionably unethical thing, which is exploit third-party mail relays to distrubte their spam, and this creates huge problems for innocent parties.
My solution: You hijack a third-party mail relay, you repurpose some web site's formmail.pl script? YOU GO TO JAIL. Period. This is the ONLY way we'll be able to deal with spam. Everything else is a total waste of time.
The problem is, the FBI (Federal Bureau of Incompetence) seems to have no clue how to address this issue. I have yet to see one case of someone hijacking a mail relay or breaking into another computer system and getting nailed for it, even though there seems to be numerous laws that would be broken in such a case.
People need to rally for federal and international enforcement of computer break-in laws. Everything else has been tried: filtering, blacklists, civil penalties, etc., and none of it has worked. When are people going to realize there is only one way to stop this, and it doesn't infringe upon any freedom of speech issues? Spammers can't operate without hiding their identity and location... make them have to do so or else there are CRIMINAL penalties, and we'll see spam stop pretty damn quickly.
The unique, private e-mail name is not effective any more. Spammers are now engaging in indiscriminate "name guessing" techniques. They select a domain and sequentially attach a library of names @thatdomain.com and start spamming. So even if you've never publicized your e-mail address, there's still a chance you'll get spammed, and the first time the address doesn't bounce, it gets added to the "good database".
In my opinion, the best solution to the spam problem is very simple: Clearly criminalize the exploitation of third-party mail relays and vigorously prosecute such cases. Forget civil issues. It must be criminal. No matter how much filtering you do, the spammers will always seek to circumvent the system. The only way to stop them is to criminalize the hijacking of mail relays. Ok, it seems this is already criminal but nobody pursues it. This needs to change.
How do you get around the exploitation of foreign networks who don't follow the rules? The backbone ISPs agree to not route traffic for any ISP or network which doesn't adhere to certain standards with respect to adopting a uniform policy of taking action against those who hijack mail relays (i.e. cyber criminal extradition policy or something like that).
These spamming scumbags want to set up shop in China using mail relays overseas? Fine. When they're caught, we extradite them to China and let the Chinese punish them.
Until mail relay hijacking is clearly criminalized, we will NEVER reduce the amount of spam, period. Clearly criminalizing mail relay hijacking will force spammers to set up their own networks and then adopt more benevolent solicitation policies in an effort to not be blacklisted by the Internet at large.
Since I run an ISP and merely want the registrars to do their job and not solicit me and my clients for competitive services, this is fast becoming an issue. Most of the registrars are bundling hosting and other services with registration. Are there any out there that draw the line and act simply as a registrar?
Verisign Horror Stories
The Verisign Sucks Page.
They're Baaaaaak!
My doctor has advised me to not discuss the plethora of issues I've historically had with Verisign/NSI due to my blood pressure.
What I see now however, is most of the alternative registrars being almost as bad.
We migrated all our domains over to Dotster a few years back and in the beginning we were concerned with the stability of their IIS-based system, which would often crawl to a stop in SSL mode during business hours. We actually had to make post-it note reminders to perform domain maintenance on their system later in the day because their site often was too slow. When they migrated over to a Unix-based system, we were very pleased.
However, recently, Dotster, who was a decent registrar in my opnion, has really gone down the tubes. Their automated domain renewal system seems to not work. The web page where users can enter credit card info on file has been broken (their response, "Nobody uses that page much so we didn't notice it was broken"). And most recently, the've unleashed this obnoxious web-hosting-component company called Hostlane, which has invoiced us for services we didn't ask for and automatically charged credit cards. What's insidious is that the hosting charge is the same amount as domain renewal, which seems to make it suspiciously appear as if they're trying to sneak extra charges through on the customer's billing statements.
I am fed up with these registrars and their sleazy business practices. NSI was the first and the worst, but now so many of the others, from Verisign to Verio, Register.com and others, they all are the pits. Does anyone have any advice for what the best choice is now? I can no longer recommend Dotster.
As I understand this, and correct me if I'm wrong, IE is using an abbreviated initial handshaking mechanism when connecting to web sites, which result in a faster connection when using Microsoft-brand IIS web servers, and a slower connection when using non-IIS servers.
Will this functionality be emulated in an upcoming mod_ben_over_here_comes_Microsoft plug-in to apache?
I could appreciate the attempt to improve performance, but not at the cost of what I perceive to be yet another underhanded attempt to leverage Microsoft's monopoly on the desktop to promote their own products.
---
What's your biggest complaint about the profession?
I don't have much to complain about
HUH!? I'm gonna go out on a limb here using my expereince and the people I know and say this is the exception and not the norm... Is this guy for real?
---
Both scenarios are real.
I think the above issue epitomizes the difference between a work environment where management respects the Sysadmin's advice, and one that doesn't.
A good sysadmin will choose tools and technology to make his life as easy as possible, and therefore have little to complain about usually IF he's allowed the freedom to do so. The #1 complaint I've had, as well as any other sysadmin I know, is when management or clientele don't respect the sysadmin's recommendations, or half-way implement technical processes without the approval of the sysadmin.
Let me correct that... of course stability and performance are platform-dependent when your OS is a piece of crap. But what I mean is that rarely are computer problems hardware-based. Almost 100% of problems are software-related and avoidable. Microsoft's competition for both platform and desktop dominance has created an environment where due to the proprietary nature of their OS, along with their superior ability to "whore" themselves out in markets to destroy other companies, have completely eradicated most capable competitors.
First off, all this talk about "Microsoft Technology" is a farce. From the very beginning when Bill Gates weaseled his earliest software licenses from real coders, Microsoft was more a marketing machine than a development company. It amuses me that anyone ever thought of them differently. The company's modus operandi hasn't changed one bit since day one: take other peoples' technology and leverage it for your own gain and garner as much control over the environment as possible.
The saddest part of all this is the new generation of "programmers" who don't really seem to understand that stability and performance have NEVER been platform or hardware dependent. The new breed of developers as well as users has been conditioned to accept failure and mediocre performance as the status quo. Microsoft, Oracle, and other companies have shifted their business model to exploit the instability of their own products to create entirely new (support) industries from which to profit. It's like they're selling you tainted food and offering health insurance at the same time.
With few exceptions, Microsoft puts out crap. They don't even spray it with perfume any more.. The computing public has learned to enjoy the taste of crap, and they'll serve you a bigger pile of crap each season and you'll love it. What else are you going to do?
I would really like to see OSS take over, and I do my part, but I see an increasingly lazy, uneducated and unmotivated public that is becoming more and more difficult to reason with. I am at a loss how to knock some sense into the public without an ad budget of less than many millions of dollars. Welcome to the new millennium. It looks like it will have to get much worse before it gets better.
Original version of Choplifter for Apple.
SNES game "Parodious" - an excellent shooter that was banned in the United States because executives felt it was politically-incorrect (pilot your star ship between the legs of a Las Vegas showgirl in one of the scenes). In another scene, the boss is a red, white and blue Eagle that when defeated, loses it's feathers and crashes to the ground. (PS: Game is available via MAME tho)
Original Space Wars Arcade cabinet
After seeing that piece of crap called "A.I.", he fooled me once; shame on him. After seeing that piece of crap called "Minority Report", he fooled me twice; shame on me. Pardon me if I don't even need to see his latest effort. I'm still scraping the doo off my shoes from his last productions. What Madonna was and now is to music, Spielberg has inherited the same legacy. Someone please put a parking meter in his slot at the production studio to collect money to reimburse me for the pain and suffering I've been put through as he tries to milk the last remaining bit of money he can from his ever-fleeting burst of notoriety.
It's cheaper to replace than it is to repair.
That in and of itself is quite telling. It's more productive to replace than understand the nature of a problem and solve it. And corporate america is on a quest to milk even more money after the fact from consumers.
To me, what's worse than "planned obsolesence" which is definitely a factor in product development, is deliberately crippling a well-designed product and reproducing lesser versions at different price points. This is the WORST. Sony deliberately cripples the still-image compression ability of their video cameras so you have to purchase a stand-alone digital camera to get the quality your video camera is capable or producing in many cases. It's despicable and I think consumers should boycott "crippled" products.
At least with Radio Shack if you pay cash, you can remain anonymous. The point of registration with the NYTimes isn't any more of a security breach - give them a free hotmail address - they have your IP address already, and in most cases this can be traced back to you, so visiting any web site dispells your illusion of anonyminity anyway. It's moot.
I am completely against all client-based spam filters. This essentially does nothing to address the most serious repurcussion of spamming, and that's exploitation of third-party networks & bandwidth. Aside from the fact that client-based spam filtering is most-likely the least effective solution and more likely to stop legitimate mail than other methods such as known spam relay blocking.
Ultimately, the only way we're going to really curtail spam is by enacting harsh *criminal* penalties for mail relay and server hijacking, which is the standard method by which most spam is distributed. It's true that these activities are already considered illegal but the law enforcement agencies are either unwilling to take action because there's a minimum threshold of monetary damages required, or they're ill-equipped knowledge and technology-wise to aggressively go after these people.
And Puleeze don't even bother with the ineffective, "let the industry regulate itself" argument, which doesn't work. Most spammers are small "cell groups" that move around a lot; most don't have any money in the first place; only criminal penalties are going to work, and client-side and industry regulated efforts don't stop their efforts at all and just drive bandwidth charges up for the rest of us.
Ironically, worldcom makes money off "script kiddies" too. If you purchase their burstable service, they measure average bandwidth every x seconds, and the more port scanning going on, the more bandwidth being utilized. Isn't that special.