In Loudoun County, VA, DSL is not available and the only cable modems you can get are asymmetric -- you still need to dial in, you get a new IP every time, and you upload at modem speeds.
This despite being the home of AOL and PSINet, and one county over from Network Solutions, MCI Worldcom...
The cable company won't be more specific than to say "We plan to have bidirectional cable modem service for the whole county by the end of 2003." Which doesn't say much, considering that the east end of the county has 95% of the population, and the west end is just a bunch of horse farms. Obviously the east end will get done first, and i'd like to know when that will happen.
Nobody will say anything about when DSL is coming.:(
So unless you want to pay business rates, you have no high-speed internet options.
How about opt-in TCP? See, we'll set up an advisory board, and whenever you need to transmit a packet, you just send them a copy of the packet and wait for them to approve it. Only criminals would object that. You're not a criminal, are you?
Imagine a world where Linux was only put out by companies, and the companies supported themselves by sticking ads all over Linux.
People would find a way to turn those ads off, and others would complain, "Linux will dry up and blow away if the companies can't make money!"
Linux flourishes without ads. Apache flourishes without ads. If Slashdot dried up and blew away, something would replace it. Perhaps a peer-to-peer system.
Still, i currently know (i.e. on a personal basis) about eight people who own Tivos and zero people who use ad-blocking software. And they're not all tech-heads. And just about everyone i know has a VCR and uses it to fast-forward over commercials. It's only a matter of time before Tivo techonology is as popular as the VCR.
It's my opinion that if you give something to me, and you haven't asked me to sign a contract, i can do whatever i want to it.
Because if we don't stand up to this, pretty soon you'll hear an ad instead of a dial tone. I read a great article about what life would be like in such a society, and regrettably i have not been able to find it, but it included stuff like: You wake up and push the button that turns on the lights. It changes to say, "Nothing says good morning like a fresh copy of The New York Times. Would you like to order a subscription? [No] [Yes]"
If someone doesn't want me to block their ads, they'd better ask me to sign a contract saying i won't. Otherwise, if they're just going to publish information for all to see, let the vendor beware.
Buying a tivo is expensive, with a monthly service fee. Installing ad filtering software is.. well, free.
If i snapped my fingers and made Tivos free and ad-blocking software expensive, would you then declare that Tivos were evil and ad-blocking software okay?
Buying a tivo unit, you are supporting another business. Installing filtering software... you aren't
But regardless, i don't see what this has to do with the price of tea in China.
Sure it is, if you have a Tivo. Buying a Tivo is analogous to installing ad filtering software. The fact that it costs a bit more doesn't harm the analogy.
That TV advertisers already paid the station to broadcast their commercial. Banner ads pay the host by the click, not in advance.
That's all factored in to the price of the ads. When people skip commercials, advertisers aren't willing to pay as much. But they know that most people will watch the commercials, so there's not much impact on price. It's exactly the same with blocking banner ads.
I don't accept that crackers are performing a social service
Me neither. I hate that argument. People who break into other people's systems are assholes and criminals, and should go to jail, for about the same amount of time as people who break into other people's houses.
If someone breaks into someone else's site and gets caught then they deserve what they get. Nobody forces people to go cracking. If you can't do the time don't do the crime.
Absolutely.
At $2K per day consulting rates that is a non-trivial amount of cash.
What if they then post on IRC the exact steps needed for someone else to break back in?
If that's as far as it goes, then no new crimes have been committed. If someone else uses that information to break in and break a bunch of stuff, then the first person, IMO, is guilty of accessory to [whatever]. In this case, the first person should be expected to pay for damages. (The second person, too)
Absolutely. It sucks. It's an astronomical expense. The intruder is an asshole. And guilty of criminal charges. But that doesn't mean you should be able to send them a bill for your new security measures. Security measures are YOUR job, and YOUR expense. Damages are their expense, but should only include damages, not investigative costs or new security.
If the police or the store spend ten million dollars to figure out that you were the one who stole a pack of M&Ms, that's their expense.
Why would you be so careless with your servers then?
How much do you think it would cost Boeing for this incident? How much would you, as a potential passenger on this aircraft, expect them to spend on this one incident?
An incredible amount of money. But it's their own fault, not the intruder's fault. The intruder is guilty of a lot of criminal charges and should go to jail for about the same amount of time as they would if they broke a window, climbed into the office, and rooted through everyone's desks. But no longer than that. And they certainly shouldn't be blamed for the expense of investigating the breakin or beefing up security.
A better one is that someone broke into the supposedly locked & secured office, opened the safe & stole a money wrapper.
Excellent point! Here's a new analogy: Let's say they just picked a lock without damaging it, opened a safe without damaging it, took nothing, damaged nothing, and left a note that said, "You need better security. I broke into your safe."
I'd say they're guilty of the criminal charges of trespassing, burglary, and breaking and entering. However, i don't think they're guilty of any civil charges, and i don't think they should pay one penny to the store in question. Even if the store in question has to conduct an extremely expensive review or purchase a new security system.
Note, however, that i'm not defending the criminal in any of these examples. If someone walks into my house through an open door, they're still guilty of trespassing. However, it's not as bad as if they rooted through my drawers or set the place on fire.
But let's say they do break into my house and set fire to my filing cabinet. It costs $50 to buy a new filing cabinet, $5000 worth of my time to get my files back in order, $1000 to hire a detective to figure out how they broke in, and $30,000/yr to hire a security guard. I would blame the criminal for the $50 and the $5000, but not the $1000 or the $30,000/yr.
"But all it takes to re-install Red Hat is 30 minutes. How do you come up with US$2000 damage?"... When a system is compromised, and the data on it and its network are compromised, it is not simple to determine the extent of the damage without a lot of work. We do not know if the blackhat stold peoples passwords, hacked other systems, has implemented sniffers, etc. This argues for strong prevention, defense in depth (including monitoring in depth), and trained responders. If all the administrator does is re-install the OS, they are doing a wholly inadequate job of responding to a security incident, as the extent of damage may be far greater then a single system.
So if someone steals a packet of M&Ms from the local grocery store, and the grocery store conducts a full review and decides to hire a $20/hour security guard, spend $1500 installing cameras and a closet-circuit TV system, and install a checkpoint at the candy aisle, that shoplifter caused tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage?
Have you ever used a cell phone in New York? There are lots of big buildings with thick walls. Radio signals don't penetrate them too well. Even if your broadcasting tower is on the top of the Empire State Building, unless there's a line of sight, or an almost-line-of-sight that only passes through a few buildings,
you're not going to get signal*
Basically, you're walking down Broadway talking happily, you turn onto 52nd, and your connection is dropped.
The signal really has to rain down from above for coverage to be decent (after all, not much of Manhattan has a direct line of sight to the top of the ESB, but all of it has a direct line of sight to, say, the sun)
*no matter how many times you shout, "Main screen turn on!"
Slashdot Mirror
As soon as the price becomes unreasonable, people will stop paying. Then the CDs become free.
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This despite being the home of AOL and PSINet, and one county over from Network Solutions, MCI Worldcom...
The cable company won't be more specific than to say "We plan to have bidirectional cable modem service for the whole county by the end of 2003." Which doesn't say much, considering that the east end of the county has 95% of the population, and the west end is just a bunch of horse farms. Obviously the east end will get done first, and i'd like to know when that will happen.
Nobody will say anything about when DSL is coming.
So unless you want to pay business rates, you have no high-speed internet options.
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The wax guy?
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Not for long!
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"Did you see the new G4 cube? It's a thing of beauty!"
"Yeah, well, so's Cindy Margolis, but you can't run Quicken on her."
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Imagine a world where Linux was only put out by companies, and the companies supported themselves by sticking ads all over Linux.
People would find a way to turn those ads off, and others would complain, "Linux will dry up and blow away if the companies can't make money!"
Linux flourishes without ads. Apache flourishes without ads. If Slashdot dried up and blew away, something would replace it. Perhaps a peer-to-peer system.
--
Still, i currently know (i.e. on a personal basis) about eight people who own Tivos and zero people who use ad-blocking software. And they're not all tech-heads. And just about everyone i know has a VCR and uses it to fast-forward over commercials. It's only a matter of time before Tivo techonology is as popular as the VCR.
It's my opinion that if you give something to me, and you haven't asked me to sign a contract, i can do whatever i want to it.
Because if we don't stand up to this, pretty soon you'll hear an ad instead of a dial tone. I read a great article about what life would be like in such a society, and regrettably i have not been able to find it, but it included stuff like: You wake up and push the button that turns on the lights. It changes to say, "Nothing says good morning like a fresh copy of The New York Times. Would you like to order a subscription? [No] [Yes]"
If someone doesn't want me to block their ads, they'd better ask me to sign a contract saying i won't. Otherwise, if they're just going to publish information for all to see, let the vendor beware.
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If i snapped my fingers and made Tivos free and ad-blocking software expensive, would you then declare that Tivos were evil and ad-blocking software okay?
Buying a tivo unit, you are supporting another business. Installing filtering software
But regardless, i don't see what this has to do with the price of tea in China.
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That's all factored in to the price of the ads. When people skip commercials, advertisers aren't willing to pay as much. But they know that most people will watch the commercials, so there's not much impact on price. It's exactly the same with blocking banner ads.
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Me neither. I hate that argument. People who break into other people's systems are assholes and criminals, and should go to jail, for about the same amount of time as people who break into other people's houses.
If someone breaks into someone else's site and gets caught then they deserve what they get. Nobody forces people to go cracking. If you can't do the time don't do the crime.
Absolutely.
At $2K per day consulting rates that is a non-trivial amount of cash.
Absolutely. Their expense, not the intruder's.
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If that's as far as it goes, then no new crimes have been committed. If someone else uses that information to break in and break a bunch of stuff, then the first person, IMO, is guilty of accessory to [whatever]. In this case, the first person should be expected to pay for damages. (The second person, too)
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Absolutely. It sucks. It's an astronomical expense. The intruder is an asshole. And guilty of criminal charges. But that doesn't mean you should be able to send them a bill for your new security measures. Security measures are YOUR job, and YOUR expense. Damages are their expense, but should only include damages, not investigative costs or new security.
If the police or the store spend ten million dollars to figure out that you were the one who stole a pack of M&Ms, that's their expense.
Why would you be so careless with your servers then?
Who said i advocated being careless with servers?
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An incredible amount of money. But it's their own fault, not the intruder's fault. The intruder is guilty of a lot of criminal charges and should go to jail for about the same amount of time as they would if they broke a window, climbed into the office, and rooted through everyone's desks. But no longer than that. And they certainly shouldn't be blamed for the expense of investigating the breakin or beefing up security.
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Excellent point! Here's a new analogy: Let's say they just picked a lock without damaging it, opened a safe without damaging it, took nothing, damaged nothing, and left a note that said, "You need better security. I broke into your safe."
I'd say they're guilty of the criminal charges of trespassing, burglary, and breaking and entering. However, i don't think they're guilty of any civil charges, and i don't think they should pay one penny to the store in question. Even if the store in question has to conduct an extremely expensive review or purchase a new security system.
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Note, however, that i'm not defending the criminal in any of these examples. If someone walks into my house through an open door, they're still guilty of trespassing. However, it's not as bad as if they rooted through my drawers or set the place on fire.
But let's say they do break into my house and set fire to my filing cabinet. It costs $50 to buy a new filing cabinet, $5000 worth of my time to get my files back in order, $1000 to hire a detective to figure out how they broke in, and $30,000/yr to hire a security guard. I would blame the criminal for the $50 and the $5000, but not the $1000 or the $30,000/yr.
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So if someone steals a packet of M&Ms from the local grocery store, and the grocery store conducts a full review and decides to hire a $20/hour security guard, spend $1500 installing cameras and a closet-circuit TV system, and install a checkpoint at the candy aisle, that shoplifter caused tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage?
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you're not going to get signal*
Basically, you're walking down Broadway talking happily, you turn onto 52nd, and your connection is dropped.
The signal really has to rain down from above for coverage to be decent (after all, not much of Manhattan has a direct line of sight to the top of the ESB, but all of it has a direct line of sight to, say, the sun)
*no matter how many times you shout, "Main screen turn on!"
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Simple: Get Slashdot to interview them, post a message, and get it moderated up to 5.
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