The ISP I work for used to sell a product we called "ISP in a box". You'd get a T1, some USR Total Control terminal servers, a Cisco router to hook to the T1 and the LAN side, and a couple of cheap x86 boxes running Solaris for x86. (used for Apache, mail, DNS)
Of course everything was pre-configured, and for another continuing cost, our admin staff would run everything for you.
Most mid to large ISPs are pretty competant, but the smaller ones, particularly rural, midwestern ones, would amaze you with the utter lack of technical ability of even their admins. I've had to walk these so-called "admins" through useing su to becomes root and restarting BIND.
The old "we pay for the lines so they're ours" argument is the same tired argument AT&T used to avoid being broken up 1982. You know what? The government didn't buy it, AT&T lost, and the common carrier laws were born.
You see, companies are only able to lay those lines by digging up goverment land. Which is taxpayer owned land. Which means if I, as a taxpayer, want cable companies to be force to open the lines to competition that are on my land, I get to do so. (using 'I' as 'marjority of taxpayers')
This argument did not work for AT&T the telco in '82, and it won't work for AT&T or Time Warner the cable companies now. It is only going to be a matter of time before the common carrier laws (the same laws that allow you to have a choice in long distance service) apply to cable TV/Internet.
I fail to see why people who are not major stockholders in cable companies have aginst this anyway... Don't you want choice in cable service? Wouldn't you like to be able to choose between several providers instead of just one? People amaze me...
> As for Apache, there's always
> bugs/holes/orifices being found, and Apache has
> a new patch at least twice every month. To my
> knowledge, IIS5 has been patched ONCE (in Win2k)
> SP1).
Hmm, well let's see what bugtraq has to say...
Number of security holes listed for apache: 10
http://www.securityfocus.com/frames/?content=/vd b/middle.html%3Fvendor%3DApache%2520Group %26title%3DApache%26version%3Dany
Number for IIS: 59
http://www.securityfocus.com/frames/?content=/vd b/middle.html%3Fvendor%3DMicrosoft%2 6title%3DIIS%26version%3Dany
(Links done like this because the posting engine kept inserting spaces in the URL)
Note that some vulnerabilites for both are actually caused by 3rd party add-ons, not Apache or IIS. But, this sure tells me alot about which one I would trust.
> One more funny thing: All the manhole covers in
> Boston say "BSD". Kinda reminds me of BSD's
> place in the computer world.:-)
Yeah, BSD only runs the highest volume web server in the world, the highest volume FTP server in the world, and Microsft even borrowed from their TCP/IP stack for Win2K. But yeah, you're right, it sucks.
Uses OpenBSD/samba as the PDC and BIND as the nameserver. In this case, Win2K Professional will authenticate off samba just fine with a default install. Notice the no Active Directory. If you want directory services (I don't use them) use NDS. It's more functional than AD and interoperable between OS'es.
If you are heterogeneous *at all* stay away from AD. I'm convinced the whole purpose of AD is to kill the heterogeneous network and force everyone to become all-MS shops.
I'm currently running 2K Professional on a Celeron 300 with 128 MB and it runs fine. Even with Dreamweaver 3, Photoshop 5.5, and Visual Studio 6 running at once, and frequent task switching between them. (heck, not to mention the mp3s I play while I work:-)
I have to say that Win2K as a desktop OS is pretty solid. I don't trust it to act as my server though. That's a job that is currently being done by a 200 MHz/32MB OpenBSD box running Apache, BIND, Qmail, and Samba. I don't see any version of windows being as efficient as any UNIX on such modest hardware with lots 'o services. Hell, not to mention that if something ever actually goes wrong with the OpenBSD box I can fix it, and I can't say enough about the security peace of mind I feel with it.
I have no great love of MS, but I have to give Win2K some credit. Since moving to it, all my probs with Win98 are a thing of the past. I still don't see why they think a server needs to run all the flashy GUI overhead though. Anyone admining a server ought to have enough skills to handle a command line or they need a new job.
-Wintermute, Wow that was kinda rambling. Oh well.
That's what MM ran on natively. I used to work for a company that would set up systems for Doctor's offices and hospitals running SCO and MM. (They were all pretty much PPro boxes)
Now, this was *way* back in '95, so I have no idea what is going on with MM now. Maybe it's been ported to Linux. I will say the thing was damn scalable, we had one of the largest hospitals in Cleveland on it. The real nice thing was that MM had it's own built-in C-like language, you could write custom menus, reports, and database querys with it. (which was what my job with company was)
This crap make me ashamed to live in what is otherwise a pretty cool city. The Republican legislature really snuck this one up on us too. They aren't all to blame, since Mayor Peterson (a Democrat) signed the damn thing.
I liked him before. Needless to say, he's lost my vote next election.
I'd love to organize some kind of protest against this, but wouldn't even know where to begin. Heck, I'm well over 18, but look young. The first time someone cards me to play a video game, I'm gonna blow up. Especially since most bars in Indy *don't* card me.
...more than anything else I've seen out of these dishonest, money whore corporations.... For those who aren't aware of the backstory:
For quite some time, we've been using good 'ole PC-100 SDRAM for our computers. Well, with the increasing bus speeds of computers, faster RAM is needed, which is why you can get PC-133 SDRAM for example. Now, the truly fast RAM of the future has shaped up to be a battle between DDR-SDRAM, which uses both the falling and rising edges of the clock cycle to send data, doubling it's bandwidth over convetional SDRAM. And of course, the Rambus/Intel backed RDRAM, which (to make a complex story simple) gives increased bandwidth with a sacrifice in latency.
There's one problem: RDRAM is *much* more expensive. Along the lines of $500 for a 128 MB RIMM. I've heard it joked that you could fly from New York to Los Angeles, buy 256 MB of SDRAM, fly back, and it would be cheaper than mail-ordering the same amount of RDRAM. Now, for all this money, you'd think it would be cheaper right? Nope. In almost every benchmark, RDRAM fails to outperform *conventional* SDRAM, let alone DDR.
For example, Intel's 820 and 840 motherboards, the replacement of the venerable BX chipset, are RDRAM boards. The boards are designed to use RDRAM and Intel's newest Coppermine Pentium IIIs. One problem. OEMs couldn't sell the systems! Because the price for RAM was so high, no one was buying. Or if they were, they bought systems with Via's competeing chipset. So Intel created the MTH (Memory Translator Hub) which allowed SDRAM to be used on 820 and 840 boards.
Now Intel has *heavily* invested in Rambus/RDRAM. That's why they made their new motherboards use it strictly, and only recanted when OEMs came knocking on their door with threats of only buying AMD. Now it appears that Rambus, Inc. so wants to push their overpriced, inferior technology on we the consumers, that they will resort to patent extortion to do so. Your product sucks? Just use some bullshit patent to make the superior competing product too expensive.
The market has *already* spoken. Listen up Intel and Rambus, neither OEMs, Joe User, or the techies of the world want your poor performing, overpriced silicon garbage. Rambus's attempt to force a monopoly in the RAM market needs to be stopped. I sure as hell hope other SDRAM manufacturers will not cave in as easily, or look forward to a a future where we all get to pay $500 for a stick of RAM that doesn't perform for shit.
*catches breath* Yeah, I'm really ranting now, but this anticompetetive foistering of inferior products on the market makes me sick. Time to surf over to pricewatch and buy some cheap, fast SDRAM for the new computer I am building before it is too late.
Clueless. Apple owned 25% of the computer industry at one point with its "high priced" hardware, and bare in mind that the IBM PC "cheap hardware" was always around while Apple's Macintosh market share went from 0% to 25%. Users had choice, and 1 out of 4 of them chose the Mac.
Actually, the reason why the Apple computers use Motorola chips at all is because when Wozniak and Jobs were building the Apple I prototype, they couldn't afford the more expensive, but generaly conciderd superior, Intel chip, the 8080. At the time when the Apple I was built, Woz worked for HP, which, through a deal with Motorola, offered 6800s to employees on discount. (even without the discount, the 6800 was much cheaper than a 8080)
So, in the beginings of Apple, they had the cheaper hardware, not Intel.
The clause that makes something like this 2nd degree murder is usually referred to as Depraved Indifference to Human Life. When you commit an act that falls under this, and it results in death, you can be charged with 2nd degree murder.
Here's a good way to keep homicide laws straight:
2nd Degree Manslaughter: You are driving down the road, obeying all traffic laws. A pedestrian runs in front of you, you hit and kill them. Like or not, you can be charged.
1st Degree Manslaughter: Same situation, except now you are speeding. (but not reckless driving, which would bump it up.)
2nd Degree Murder: Same situation, but you are drunk. Thus depraved indifference. (a murder during the commision of a crime usually falls in here as well, unless intent to kill is proven, which would bump it up.)
1st Degree Murder: This time you see the pedestrian, it's someone you hate, and want dead, so you run them over deliberately.
Note: Some states do not have a difference between 1st and 2nd degree manslaughter.
-Wintermute, IANAL, but I have a friend who is a law student.
1. I'd say that they don't want to limit thier functionality. A tweaked firewall will let them keep useful schtuff turned on.
So that when the firewall is breached, they lose everything? Uh-uh for me.
Well, a well configured firewall *won't* be breached, with the exception of really tricky stuff like session hijacking. (which won't matter for an ssh connection anyway) That's beyond the scope of a few script kiddies.
2.If the firewall uses its CPU to deflect the crap, then the web servers wont have to deal with it.
So put the firewall into service as another server. You can't create more CPU by dedicating some of it to being a firewall.
Defeats the purpose of the firewall by having it serve as well. All a firewall should do is route packets, and allow ssh for remote administration. With the firewall, it's CPU will do the work of handling SYN floods, letting the server's CPUs stick to running Apache.
3. They have a BSD uberadmin who can make that BSD box walk the dog. If something else wierd goes on, it'll be in his back yard.
Linux expertise is more widely available.
Probably not true. Remeber, FreeBSD is older than Linux, and the orignal Berkeley UNIX upon which FreeBSD is based is older still. Many of the true UNIX gurus I know all cut their teeth on a old form of BSD. This is all kinda irrelevant, cause I'm sure the main reason they used BSD is because the guy they had on staff already is a BSD guru.
I'm gonna tranfer all the domains I am administrative contact for to another registrar. And them I am going to encourage anyone who I am technical contact for, as well as friends who have domains, to move them. Then, I'm going to tell any new customers of the webhosting company I work for to register their domain names somewhere else.
If we can't make them change their arrogant, customer-unfriendly policy, we should take our buisness to companies that actually respect their clientel.
"Register your domain now, and get 300 free hours of AOL!"
"With Instant messaging, email, the Internet, and domain names, no wonder it's number one!"
But seriously this bothers me... Why do I forsee this:
A few years down the road, my company, (an ISP) calls up to find out why their domain has not been renewed on the company credit card...
Phone Rep: "AOL-Time Warner-NSI-General Motors-RJ Reynolds, how may I help you?"
Me: "Yes, I was calling to see why my domain, isp.net was not renewed."
Phone Rep: "Ahh, I see that you provide Internet service through that domain?"
Me: "Yup, have for several years now."
Phone Rep: "Well, we have adopted a new domain registration policy for ISPs. Your domain will now cost a percentage of your annual profits. This number will..."
Me (interrupting): What?!?
Phone Rep: "Yes, it's our new policy. Now, if you get 1 OC-3 through us, your cost falls to a 25%, but if you get 2, then..."
Me (interrupting again): Are you kidding me, I'm not giving up my profits for a domain name!"
Phone Rep: "Well, you don't really have choice, see. We own the system. We won't let you transfer the domain. Now, if you give each of your users a copy of Instant Messenger and our Time Warner movies-on-demand service, you cost drops to a mere..."
Is do a whois on the domain, and put down the email for the administrative contact. Then of course I check every "Would you like to receive our complementary spam" checkbox.
I must not be the first person to think of this, cause the Nytimes site won't let you enter a @nytimes.com email.. lol
> If you choose to take your own CDs and make > copies for yourself on your computer or > portable music player, that's great. It's your > music and we want you to enjoy it at home, at > work, in the car and on the jogging trail.
> Thats why people are scared of computers, they > see a screen full of buttons and icons and feel > overwhelmed.
How many "Joe User" windows users do you know that have their screen so cluttered with shortcuts, they couldn't see their background if they had one?
In my experience doing phone tech support, the "Start" menu is an utterly mystifying item. If there isn't a desktop shortcut for it, to them, it doesn't exist.
-Wintermute, Remembers the time a user spent serveral minutes reading their 15 or so desktop shortcuts in an attempt to find "My Computer"
> One other thing about the mswingui that shits > me is that every goddamned process running in > the background that produces a dialog or window > thinks its important enough to interupt my > typing and grab the focus.
I was just bitching about that today actually. Here I am at work, I click on a link in my browser, and the site is hammered or something so it's loading real slow. I Alt-Tab over to a SecureCRT session (Don't get me started on telnet.exe) to make some adjustments to my websever... Well, what do you no, the browser decides it's important enough to steal the focus in the middle of my typing. Grr....
My other biggest complaint is those damn "Are you Sure" boxes... Umm, If I wasn't sure, I wouldn't have hit the Del key in the first place... I've already got the "Recycle Bin" if I delete something by mistake, why do I need to be asked if I am "sure"?
-Wintermute, Counting the days till this weekend when I go to pick up my original IBM keyboard. But keyboards are another rant....
Someone breaks into your computer? That's B&E. They deface a web page? Vandalism, maybe Destruction of Property. They steal a bunch or credit card numbers and use them? Grand Theft, Fraud.
The government got this one right. No need to clutter up our existing overcomplicated legal system with pointless laws (DMCA anyone?) when existing laws already cover the crimes.
Slashdot Mirror
The ISP I work for used to sell a product we called "ISP in a box". You'd get a T1, some USR Total Control terminal servers, a Cisco router to hook to the T1 and the LAN side, and a couple of cheap x86 boxes running Solaris for x86. (used for Apache, mail, DNS)
Of course everything was pre-configured, and for another continuing cost, our admin staff would run everything for you.
Most mid to large ISPs are pretty competant, but the smaller ones, particularly rural, midwestern ones, would amaze you with the utter lack of technical ability of even their admins. I've had to walk these so-called "admins" through useing su to becomes root and restarting BIND.
...AOL pulled Gnutella as soon as they realized what "evil" Nullsoft hath wrought.. :-)
-Wintermute
The old "we pay for the lines so they're ours" argument is the same tired argument AT&T used to avoid being broken up 1982. You know what? The government didn't buy it, AT&T lost, and the common carrier laws were born.
You see, companies are only able to lay those lines by digging up goverment land. Which is taxpayer owned land. Which means if I, as a taxpayer, want cable companies to be force to open the lines to competition that are on my land, I get to do so. (using 'I' as 'marjority of taxpayers')
This argument did not work for AT&T the telco in '82, and it won't work for AT&T or Time Warner the cable companies now. It is only going to be a matter of time before the common carrier laws (the same laws that allow you to have a choice in long distance service) apply to cable TV/Internet.
I fail to see why people who are not major stockholders in cable companies have aginst this anyway... Don't you want choice in cable service? Wouldn't you like to be able to choose between several providers instead of just one? People amaze me...
-Wintermute
> As for Apache, there's always
d b/middle.html%3Fvendor%3DApache%2520Group %26title%3DApache%26version%3Dany
d b/middle.html%3Fvendor%3DMicrosoft%2 6title%3DIIS%26version%3Dany
:-)
> bugs/holes/orifices being found, and Apache has
> a new patch at least twice every month. To my
> knowledge, IIS5 has been patched ONCE (in Win2k)
> SP1).
Hmm, well let's see what bugtraq has to say...
Number of security holes listed for apache: 10
http://www.securityfocus.com/frames/?content=/v
Number for IIS: 59
http://www.securityfocus.com/frames/?content=/v
(Links done like this because the posting engine kept inserting spaces in the URL)
Note that some vulnerabilites for both are actually caused by 3rd party add-ons, not Apache or IIS. But, this sure tells me alot about which one I would trust.
> One more funny thing: All the manhole covers in
> Boston say "BSD". Kinda reminds me of BSD's
> place in the computer world.
Yeah, BSD only runs the highest volume web server in the world, the highest volume FTP server
in the world, and Microsft even borrowed from their TCP/IP stack for Win2K. But yeah, you're right, it sucks.
-Wintermute
Uses OpenBSD/samba as the PDC and BIND as the nameserver. In this case, Win2K Professional will authenticate off samba just fine with a default install. Notice the no Active Directory. If you want directory services (I don't use them) use NDS. It's more functional than AD and interoperable between OS'es.
If you are heterogeneous *at all* stay away from AD. I'm convinced the whole purpose of AD is to kill the heterogeneous network and force everyone to become all-MS shops.
-Wintermute
I'm currently running 2K Professional on a Celeron 300 with 128 MB and it runs fine. Even with Dreamweaver 3, Photoshop 5.5, and Visual Studio 6 running at once, and frequent task switching between them. (heck, not to mention the mp3s I play while I work :-)
I have to say that Win2K as a desktop OS is pretty solid. I don't trust it to act as my server though. That's a job that is currently being done by a 200 MHz/32MB OpenBSD box running Apache, BIND, Qmail, and Samba. I don't see any version of windows being as efficient as any UNIX on such modest hardware with lots 'o services. Hell, not to mention that if something ever actually goes wrong with the OpenBSD box I can fix it, and I can't say enough about the security peace of mind I feel with it.
I have no great love of MS, but I have to give Win2K some credit. Since moving to it, all my probs with Win98 are a thing of the past. I still don't see why they think a server needs to run all the flashy GUI overhead though. Anyone admining a server ought to have enough skills to handle a command line or they need a new job.
-Wintermute, Wow that was kinda rambling. Oh well.
That's what MM ran on natively. I used to work for a company that would set up systems for Doctor's offices and hospitals running SCO and MM. (They were all pretty much PPro boxes)
Now, this was *way* back in '95, so I have no idea what is going on with MM now. Maybe it's been ported to Linux. I will say the thing was damn scalable, we had one of the largest hospitals in Cleveland on it. The real nice thing was that MM had it's own built-in C-like language, you could write custom menus, reports, and database querys with it. (which was what my job with company was)
-Wintermute
...beating that poor straw man over and over again like that...
-Wintermute
This crap make me ashamed to live in what is otherwise a pretty cool city. The Republican legislature really snuck this one up on us too. They aren't all to blame, since Mayor Peterson (a Democrat) signed the damn thing.
I liked him before. Needless to say, he's lost my vote next election.
I'd love to organize some kind of protest against this, but wouldn't even know where to begin. Heck, I'm well over 18, but look young. The first time someone cards me to play a video game, I'm gonna blow up. Especially since most bars in Indy *don't* card me.
-Wintermute
...more than anything else I've seen out of these dishonest, money whore corporations.... For those who aren't aware of the backstory:
For quite some time, we've been using good 'ole PC-100 SDRAM for our computers. Well, with the increasing bus speeds of computers, faster RAM is needed, which is why you can get PC-133 SDRAM for example. Now, the truly fast RAM of the future has shaped up to be a battle between DDR-SDRAM, which uses both the falling and rising edges of the clock cycle to send data, doubling it's bandwidth over convetional SDRAM. And of course, the Rambus/Intel backed RDRAM, which (to make a complex story simple) gives increased bandwidth with a sacrifice in latency.
There's one problem: RDRAM is *much* more expensive. Along the lines of $500 for a 128 MB RIMM. I've heard it joked that you could fly from New York to Los Angeles, buy 256 MB of SDRAM, fly back, and it would be cheaper than mail-ordering the same amount of RDRAM. Now, for all this money, you'd think it would be cheaper right? Nope. In almost every benchmark, RDRAM fails to outperform *conventional* SDRAM, let alone DDR.
For example, Intel's 820 and 840 motherboards, the replacement of the venerable BX chipset, are RDRAM boards. The boards are designed to use RDRAM and Intel's newest Coppermine Pentium IIIs. One problem. OEMs couldn't sell the systems! Because the price for RAM was so high, no one was buying. Or if they were, they bought systems with Via's competeing chipset. So Intel created the MTH (Memory Translator Hub) which allowed SDRAM to be used on 820 and 840 boards.
Now Intel has *heavily* invested in Rambus/RDRAM. That's why they made their new motherboards use it strictly, and only recanted when OEMs came knocking on their door with threats of only buying AMD. Now it appears that Rambus, Inc. so wants to push their overpriced, inferior technology on we the consumers, that they will resort to patent extortion to do so. Your product sucks? Just use some bullshit patent to make the superior competing product too expensive.
The market has *already* spoken. Listen up Intel and Rambus, neither OEMs, Joe User, or the techies of the world want your poor performing, overpriced silicon garbage. Rambus's attempt to force a monopoly in the RAM market needs to be stopped. I sure as hell hope other SDRAM manufacturers will not cave in as easily, or look forward to a a future where we all get to pay $500 for a stick of RAM that doesn't perform for shit.
*catches breath* Yeah, I'm really ranting now, but this anticompetetive foistering of inferior products on the market makes me sick. Time to surf over to pricewatch and buy some cheap, fast SDRAM for the new computer I am building before it is too late.
-Wintermute
Clueless. Apple owned 25% of the computer industry at one point with its "high priced" hardware, and bare in mind that the IBM PC "cheap hardware" was always around while Apple's Macintosh market share went from 0% to 25%. Users had choice, and 1 out of 4 of them chose the Mac.
Actually, the reason why the Apple computers use Motorola chips at all is because when Wozniak and Jobs were building the Apple I prototype, they couldn't afford the more expensive, but generaly conciderd superior, Intel chip, the 8080. At the time when the Apple I was built, Woz worked for HP, which, through a deal with Motorola, offered 6800s to employees on discount. (even without the discount, the 6800 was much cheaper than a 8080)
So, in the beginings of Apple, they had the cheaper hardware, not Intel.
The clause that makes something like this 2nd degree murder is usually referred to as Depraved Indifference to Human Life. When you commit an act that falls under this, and it results in death, you can be charged with 2nd degree murder.
Here's a good way to keep homicide laws straight:
2nd Degree Manslaughter: You are driving down the road, obeying all traffic laws. A pedestrian runs in front of you, you hit and kill them. Like or not, you can be charged.
1st Degree Manslaughter: Same situation, except now you are speeding. (but not reckless driving, which would bump it up.)
2nd Degree Murder: Same situation, but you are drunk. Thus depraved indifference. (a murder during the commision of a crime usually falls in here as well, unless intent to kill is proven, which would bump it up.)
1st Degree Murder: This time you see the pedestrian, it's someone you hate, and want dead, so you run them over deliberately.
Note: Some states do not have a difference between 1st and 2nd degree manslaughter.
-Wintermute, IANAL, but I have a friend who is a law student.but does anyone make a "locked-down by default" distro based off Red Hat/Debian/*BSD?
OpenBSD is pretty well there in the world of "secure by default". You'll have to enable pretty much anything you want to use by yourself.
-Wintermute
1. I'd say that they don't want to limit thier functionality. A tweaked firewall will let them keep useful schtuff turned on.
So that when the firewall is breached, they lose everything? Uh-uh for me.
Well, a well configured firewall *won't* be breached, with the exception of really tricky stuff like session hijacking. (which won't matter for an ssh connection anyway) That's beyond the scope of a few script kiddies.
2.If the firewall uses its CPU to deflect the crap, then the web servers wont have to deal with it.
So put the firewall into service as another server. You can't create more CPU by dedicating some of it to being a firewall.
Defeats the purpose of the firewall by having it serve as well. All a firewall should do is route packets, and allow ssh for remote administration. With the firewall, it's CPU will do the work of handling SYN floods, letting the server's CPUs stick to running Apache.
3. They have a BSD uberadmin who can make that BSD box walk the dog. If something else wierd goes on, it'll be in his back yard.
Linux expertise is more widely available.
Probably not true. Remeber, FreeBSD is older than Linux, and the orignal Berkeley UNIX upon which FreeBSD is based is older still. Many of the true UNIX gurus I know all cut their teeth on a old form of BSD. This is all kinda irrelevant, cause I'm sure the main reason they used BSD is because the guy they had on staff already is a BSD guru.
But yeah, bad moderation, this wasn't a troll.
-Wintermute
I'm gonna tranfer all the domains I am administrative contact for to another registrar. And them I am going to encourage anyone who I am technical contact for, as well as friends who have domains, to move them. Then, I'm going to tell any new customers of the webhosting company I work for to register their domain names somewhere else.
If we can't make them change their arrogant, customer-unfriendly policy, we should take our buisness to companies that actually respect their clientel.
-Wintermute
Ok, by MS's own admission, this is a trade secret. From the license:
> The Specification is confidential information
> and a trade secret of Microsoft.
Now according to a little research I performed here.
> In fact, publication of a trade secret to any
> third party could destroy its confidential nature.
I think they are toast.
-Wintermute"You've got a domain name!"
"Register your domain now, and get 300 free hours of AOL!"
"With Instant messaging, email, the Internet, and domain names, no wonder it's number one!"
But seriously this bothers me... Why do I forsee this:
A few years down the road, my company, (an ISP) calls up to find out why their domain has not been renewed on the company credit card...
Phone Rep: "AOL-Time Warner-NSI-General Motors-RJ Reynolds, how may I help you?"
Me: "Yes, I was calling to see why my domain, isp.net was not renewed."
Phone Rep: "Ahh, I see that you provide Internet service through that domain?"
Me: "Yup, have for several years now."
Phone Rep: "Well, we have adopted a new domain registration policy for ISPs. Your domain will now cost a percentage of your annual profits. This number will..."
Me (interrupting): What?!?
Phone Rep: "Yes, it's our new policy. Now, if you get 1 OC-3 through us, your cost falls to a 25%, but if you get 2, then..."
Me (interrupting again): Are you kidding me, I'm not giving up my profits for a domain name!"
Phone Rep: "Well, you don't really have choice, see. We own the system. We won't let you transfer the domain. Now, if you give each of your users a copy of Instant Messenger and our Time Warner movies-on-demand service, you cost drops to a mere..."
Me: I wonder if anyone wants to buy an ISP?
-Wintermute
Is do a whois on the domain, and put down the email for the administrative contact. Then of course I check every "Would you like to receive our complementary spam" checkbox.
I must not be the first person to think of this, cause the Nytimes site won't let you enter a @nytimes.com email.. lol
-Wintermute
> If you choose to take your own CDs and make
> copies for yourself on your computer or
> portable music player, that's great. It's your
> music and we want you to enjoy it at home, at
> work, in the car and on the jogging trail.
Read it yourself if you want.
Apparently, it is bad if you want to have someone else give you that copy of music that you paid for. RIAA shows their hypocracy.
-Wintermute
> Thats why people are scared of computers, they
> see a screen full of buttons and icons and feel
> overwhelmed.
How many "Joe User" windows users do you know that have their screen so cluttered with shortcuts, they couldn't see their background if they had one?
In my experience doing phone tech support, the "Start" menu is an utterly mystifying item. If there isn't a desktop shortcut for it, to them, it doesn't exist.
-Wintermute, Remembers the time a user spent serveral minutes reading their 15 or so desktop shortcuts in an attempt to find "My Computer"
> One other thing about the mswingui that shits
> me is that every goddamned process running in
> the background that produces a dialog or window
> thinks its important enough to interupt my
> typing and grab the focus.
I was just bitching about that today actually. Here I am at work, I click on a link in my browser, and the site is hammered or something so it's loading real slow. I Alt-Tab over to a SecureCRT session (Don't get me started on telnet.exe) to make some adjustments to my websever... Well, what do you no, the browser decides it's important enough to steal the focus in the middle of my typing. Grr....
My other biggest complaint is those damn "Are you Sure" boxes... Umm, If I wasn't sure, I wouldn't have hit the Del key in the first place... I've already got the "Recycle Bin" if I delete something by mistake, why do I need to be asked if I am "sure"?
-Wintermute, Counting the days till this weekend when I go to pick up my original IBM keyboard. But keyboards are another rant....
This is the U.S. legal system after all, he can probably get a few million there easy...
-Wintermute
Linux = GPL = Freely Redistributable
Pirating free software would be an oxymoron.
Well, maybe this post is supposed to be sarcastic. Didn't seem so to me though.
-Wintermute
It was part of major "layoffs" at OSI... Check out this site for more info on the whole thing.
-Wintermute
You hit the nail right on the head:
Someone breaks into your computer? That's B&E. They deface a web page? Vandalism, maybe Destruction of Property. They steal a bunch or credit card numbers and use them? Grand Theft, Fraud.
The government got this one right. No need to clutter up our existing overcomplicated legal system with pointless laws (DMCA anyone?) when existing laws already cover the crimes.
-Wintermute