Good hosting is not cheap; cheap hosting comes with sacrifices. Most people can live with cheap hosting (does your site REALLY require 99.999% uptime?) and the choices are endless for decent, affordable hosting. If you need more than that, you are going to have to spend for it.
Bandwidth, disk, redundant power, CPU cycles - those things are all finite and all still cost money.
I posted above about an experience I had with 1and1, while still holding an open and current (paid in full) account -- they turned me over to collection for an amount that I did not owe, had already paid, and had records (credit card bills) proving I paid it.
Took days spending hours on the phone and sending a lot of faxes and letters via email to get it resolved. Nobody at 1and1 seemed to care or be bothered to do anything about it; it was always someone else's problem. The collection agency would only cease action if they got notice from 1and1 that it was resolved... Wash, rinse, repeat.
I also recently switched from 1&1 to Dreamhost. I had been with 1&1 since around 2002 when they came on the scene with a lot of promotions.
I had little downtime but the few times I did need support, I also had significant hassles and long hold times. It was a very "corporate" feeling, like dealing with AT&T or the government.
I had a major issue with billing circa 2005 where they turned me over for collection, on an account that was paid in full and current! It took hours on the phone over multiple days, along with a lot of official-sounding faxes on letterhead to get that resolved and I should have canceled then.
The 1&1 control panel got continuously more proprietary and locked into their own services instead of more popular standards. I just got tired of it. I still have the account open and one client domain on it because I haven't had time to stage them on the new host and verify all the old code is going to work - I had to make minor updates on a few of the older sites while moving to Dreamhost due to some deprecated PHP.
Anyway, I've been with Dreamhost now for about 6 months and have no complaints. I don't know that I would put something mission-critical there, but for my unimportant blog/personal space, our small business ecommerce site and my tiny consulting site and some free hosting for church & friends it works fine.
My grandfather is almost 82, and still works and travels for his business. He had a 40 year career with a major food company and retired, but started a small business to have something to do. He also farmed on the side. He doesn't work because he needs the money (he was wise and invested, saved, and has social security and a company pension as well as his own investments and hundreds of acres of land) but he works to stay active. He's in better health than many people half his age. My grandmother is 78 and also still active. They just returned from a 10 day trip to Ireland, and travel every year to somewhere nice.
My dad is 51 and retired from his own business and now on his second career as a minister. He's not sitting around waiting on social security or a pension, and he's not working because he has to.
The moral: take care of yourself and don't expect the government to fund your retirement vacations to Europe. I'm in my mid-20s and I've been pumping into a 401(k) since the day I started working. I never expect to see a dime from Social Security, and I wish I could opt out of the broken system so I could put that tax money in my own retirement investments where it would do me some good. I have no interest in funding the retirement of those who were too lazy or unwise to save for themselves.
Wow, I actually know where that is. Even though I live in southern Tennessee, I have some friends who live in Illinois about 40 minutes from Vincennes. I've passed through there on the way to visit them several times. Guess I'll have to look this roller coaster up next time I venture north. Not a very large town by any means, so it can't be too hard to find.
No surprise that he works with grain elevators either, considering that there's a LOT of corn, wheat, and soybean farming in that region.
In fact I'm not at all ashamed or embarrassed to put my name and email address beside what I posted/wrote. I know it isn't hard to find my email address and even my telephone number (it is on the site as well). Furthermore, my uid is based on a phonetic spelling of my name. Very clever of me to try so hard to stay an "Anonymous Coward", isn't it?
I initially posted the message verbatim which included my e-mail signature, which contains my web site, email address, phone number, and AIM/MSN screen names. However, the Slashdot Junk Buster rejected it due to two lines of '---' characters. I'm not afraid of being "found out" like it appears you and so many other blathering idiots on the Internet are.
Thank you for making it easier for others to contact me. I hope you will devote the same energy into writing Verio or Mr. Gilmore, and sent me a copy of it, even if you don't agree.
> I think he is just trying to stubbornly make some > minor point of personal philosophy, and hiding it > with his words.
That is almost exactly the case, except he isn't even hiding it with his words. If you find time to read the entire page, I think he makes it pretty clear that he's making himself a "martyr" of sorts (by having his machines killed from the Internet at large) to make his point.
While I respect what the man has done in the past, I think he is indeed a stubborn old fool in a lot of his latest undertakings.
From: Michael Merritt To: drg@verio.net Cc: gnu@toad.com Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 12:47:17 -0600
Mr. Darren Grabowski Verio Security
Mr. Grabowski,
I write to you in response to the web page located at http://www.toad.com/gnu/verio-censorship.html
I encourage you to continue your actions against Mr. Gilmore in response to his refusal to comply with the terms of your company's AUP.
Let me state that I firmly uphold Mr. Gilmore's RIGHTS to run an open mail relay as "free speech". Yet, I also firmly uphold your company's ("Verio") RIGHTS to deny him service if he does not adhere to the terms of the service contract which you offer him. Mr. Gilmore's continual payment of the service charge for his T1 connection is acceptance of the terms of Verio's service contract.
Furthermore, I firmly support the RIGHTS of Internet users, system and network administrators, and blacklists to REFUSE to accept mail from Mr. Gilmore's server/connection/domain.
I am exercising my RIGHTS to freedom of speech and expression in this message, as any American citizen is permitted. I also respect the fact that you have a RIGHT to disregard, ignore, or otherwise disagree with my views, beliefs, and practices.
If Mr. Gilmore is truly concerned about everyone having the freedom to exercise their RIGHTS, he will accept the fact that Verio has the RIGHT to deny him a connection, and he has the RIGHT to seek a connection to the Internet elsewhere. I do not find a law or governing statute anywhere that declares every free man has a RIGHT to access the Internet.
Thank you for your time and consideration of this matter,
-- Michael Merritt SPAM filtering by SubLimeMail -- http://www.sublimemail.com/ (remainder of signature snipped for/. "junk filter")
There are only ten (10) exclamation points in the article, excluding the ones during the IRC chat log. Considering the article is SEVERAL pages long, I find it hard to consider this *excessive* use of exclamation points!
The think that people are not realizing that this keyboard was not designed for gaming - look at the material on the web site, and you see that they are targetting for PDA users.
As the user of a Jornada, I can definitely see where this would have advantages. A keyboard on which I could achieve 30-some odd words per minute would be FAR superior to the pen-based input. THIS is where this keyboard will find its market. The person who is playing games is not going to want to use this mini keyboard, but the travelling sales rep would very much want to tuck this in his brief case to use on his Palm or PocketPC.
Different products appeal to different markets. Obviously this one would flop for gamers, but there are other applications where it would shine, making it a cool product in general. Just because it doesn't increase your scores in online games doesn't mean it sucks!
> MOst consumer grade products aren't shielded
> nearly enough, because, obviously, that would
> drive the price up for a benefit most people
> wouldn't even be aware of..
...nor would it really help them. Seriously, I doubt it really matters to my grandmother if someone "sniffs" her monitor and sees her reading her email and browsing genealogy sites!
Face it, the average person who is using a wireless keyboard is NOT going to be doing anything that significantly matters in the realm of privacy or security. If you are THAT paranoid, surely you knew LONG, LONG ago that wireless kb/mouse was a bad idea.
Agreed, for the most part. It would be nice to see a "pricing history" on Dell's site, so perhaps you can see if the system you are quoting is $10 cheaper than it was yesterday, and $45 cheaper than last week, and the price drop is caused by CPUs going down $5.50 and memory dropping $4.50. But, I doubt it will happen:-(
-Michael
Re:I wonder if I could...
on
Got Tracks?
·
· Score: 1
Fact is, many of us "nerds" are very interested in automotive technology. Slashdot is a site that posts a wide variety of news topics, and while many of them don't interest me, I don't expect all of them to interest you, either. So, you pass over the ones that you don't find intriguing, and I'll quitely pass over all the Star [Trek|Wars], etc., article that do not interest me. Just because we have the common quality of being "nerds" doesn't mean we all have the same periperial interests also.
BTW, Chevy's rock! My Z71 will out-pull on your Ford any day!;-)
> What would be good from the customer perspective is if websites actually provided
> some pricing rationale and history. You could click on an item's price and see that yes, it
> is $100 more expensive today than yesterday, but that's because the price of RAM has just
> gone up, say.
http://www.pricewatch.com tells you whether prices went up or down for certain parts. I've seen similar things for other industries also.
I know that isn't exactly what you are talking about, but some companies do provide this info, or there are other 3rd parties that help.
The harm is this: after Cheese patches your system, it starts scanning other systems. Meaning, your IP address could very well show up in the logs at no-telling-what-Big-Company-that-keeps-very-good-l ogs. The next thing you know, the FBI is knocking on YOUR door wondering why you are scanning Company's IP-block.
With all the prevalence of DoS attacks now-a-days, I know we keep a lot closer tabs of our logs and security stuff than we did a year ago. I'm sure other companies are doing this as well, and your IP address showing up in a security log is not generally a good thing.
So, while directly doing some good by patching holes, it maintains all the same appearances of a malicious worm, and if the people you end up scanning don't KNOW this already, you could end up getting reported or checked out really close.
Of course, if ppl would apply patches on a regular basis, you wouldn't have to worry about the Lion worm, and as a result, Cheese.:-)
> I dont think anyone would "let" any worm into
> thier system on a voluntary basis, but if you
> read the story I believe it will tell you that
> the Cheese worm enters via a port that the 1ion
> worm leaves open. So, if you get the Cheese worm
> you have already been attacked and most likely
> didnt know about it.
Understood. I did read the article.:-) However, my concern is based on the fact that a LOT of people are lauding this as a great thing. "Hey, free security updates!" and such. However, regardless of whether the worm's payload is harmful or helpful, it is still using unauthorized resources.
I have a hard time saying unequivocably that "this is a BAD THING(tm)", but I'm not exactly sure that it is exactly a Good Thing(tm) either. After all, it still takes advantage of a security flaw in an unauthorized manner. GRANTED, this will only affect people THIS TIME that a.) haven't patched systems for the Lion worm and b.) could have had Lion on their systems for MONTHS proving their incompetence at security. To those people, THIS worm is probably a good thing, since it will do the work that lots of people are either too lazy or stupid to do.
My concern is, NEXT TIME, somebody might release a worm that fixes one hole, while making two or three others. I just think it is a bad precedent for us (sysadmins) to say, "Hey, this Cheese worm thing is a good thing", because if we take a step in that direction, we'll get taken advantage of in the future. Trust no one, keep your guard up!
Slashdot Mirror
As the old saying goes,
Pick any two:
- Good
- Fast
- Cheap
Good hosting is not cheap; cheap hosting comes with sacrifices. Most people can live with cheap hosting (does your site REALLY require 99.999% uptime?) and the choices are endless for decent, affordable hosting. If you need more than that, you are going to have to spend for it.
Bandwidth, disk, redundant power, CPU cycles - those things are all finite and all still cost money.
I posted above about an experience I had with 1and1, while still holding an open and current (paid in full) account -- they turned me over to collection for an amount that I did not owe, had already paid, and had records (credit card bills) proving I paid it.
Took days spending hours on the phone and sending a lot of faxes and letters via email to get it resolved. Nobody at 1and1 seemed to care or be bothered to do anything about it; it was always someone else's problem. The collection agency would only cease action if they got notice from 1and1 that it was resolved... Wash, rinse, repeat.
I also recently switched from 1&1 to Dreamhost. I had been with 1&1 since around 2002 when they came on the scene with a lot of promotions.
I had little downtime but the few times I did need support, I also had significant hassles and long hold times. It was a very "corporate" feeling, like dealing with AT&T or the government.
I had a major issue with billing circa 2005 where they turned me over for collection, on an account that was paid in full and current! It took hours on the phone over multiple days, along with a lot of official-sounding faxes on letterhead to get that resolved and I should have canceled then.
The 1&1 control panel got continuously more proprietary and locked into their own services instead of more popular standards. I just got tired of it. I still have the account open and one client domain on it because I haven't had time to stage them on the new host and verify all the old code is going to work - I had to make minor updates on a few of the older sites while moving to Dreamhost due to some deprecated PHP.
Anyway, I've been with Dreamhost now for about 6 months and have no complaints. I don't know that I would put something mission-critical there, but for my unimportant blog/personal space, our small business ecommerce site and my tiny consulting site and some free hosting for church & friends it works fine.
I'm American (although an admitted Anglophile), but I've never heard or used "preventive" - always "preventative"
My grandfather is almost 82, and still works and travels for his business. He had a 40 year career with a major food company and retired, but started a small business to have something to do. He also farmed on the side. He doesn't work because he needs the money (he was wise and invested, saved, and has social security and a company pension as well as his own investments and hundreds of acres of land) but he works to stay active. He's in better health than many people half his age. My grandmother is 78 and also still active. They just returned from a 10 day trip to Ireland, and travel every year to somewhere nice.
My dad is 51 and retired from his own business and now on his second career as a minister. He's not sitting around waiting on social security or a pension, and he's not working because he has to.
The moral: take care of yourself and don't expect the government to fund your retirement vacations to Europe. I'm in my mid-20s and I've been pumping into a 401(k) since the day I started working. I never expect to see a dime from Social Security, and I wish I could opt out of the broken system so I could put that tax money in my own retirement investments where it would do me some good. I have no interest in funding the retirement of those who were too lazy or unwise to save for themselves.
*Slap*
(Even lower UID than the first slap you got. Yeah.)
Vanilla Sky was the absolute worst movie I have ever seen. Hands down.
Great idea, but could we do it somewhere besides New Hampshire? Maybe somewhere tropical that people would WANT to live?
Correction -- he's in Florida.
Chris Bergeron did very much the same thing in his VW Jetta. He lives in Georgia, US. He's shown it at several southeast-area cons.
http://www.dashpc.com/
Located in Vincennes, Indiana
Wow, I actually know where that is. Even though I live in southern Tennessee, I have some friends who live in Illinois about 40 minutes from Vincennes. I've passed through there on the way to visit them several times. Guess I'll have to look this roller coaster up next time I venture north. Not a very large town by any means, so it can't be too hard to find.
No surprise that he works with grain elevators either, considering that there's a LOT of corn, wheat, and soybean farming in that region.
Dear Nameless Coward,
In fact I'm not at all ashamed or embarrassed to put my name and email address beside what I posted/wrote. I know it isn't hard to find my email address and even my telephone number (it is on the site as well). Furthermore, my uid is based on a phonetic spelling of my name. Very clever of me to try so hard to stay an "Anonymous Coward", isn't it?
I initially posted the message verbatim which included my e-mail signature, which contains my web site, email address, phone number, and AIM/MSN screen names. However, the Slashdot Junk Buster rejected it due to two lines of '---' characters. I'm not afraid of being "found out" like it appears you and so many other blathering idiots on the Internet are.
Thank you for making it easier for others to contact me. I hope you will devote the same energy into writing Verio or Mr. Gilmore, and sent me a copy of it, even if you don't agree.
-Michael
> I think he is just trying to stubbornly make some
> minor point of personal philosophy, and hiding it
> with his words.
That is almost exactly the case, except he isn't even hiding it with his words. If you find time to read the entire page, I think he makes it pretty clear that he's making himself a "martyr" of sorts (by having his machines killed from the Internet at large) to make his point.
While I respect what the man has done in the past, I think he is indeed a stubborn old fool in a lot of his latest undertakings.
From: Michael Merritt
/. "junk filter")
To: drg@verio.net
Cc: gnu@toad.com
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 12:47:17 -0600
Mr. Darren Grabowski
Verio Security
Mr. Grabowski,
I write to you in response to the web page located at
http://www.toad.com/gnu/verio-censorship.html
I encourage you to continue your actions against Mr. Gilmore in response to
his refusal to comply with the terms of your company's AUP.
Let me state that I firmly uphold Mr. Gilmore's RIGHTS to run an open mail
relay as "free speech". Yet, I also firmly uphold your company's ("Verio")
RIGHTS to deny him service if he does not adhere to the terms of the service
contract which you offer him. Mr. Gilmore's continual payment of the service
charge for his T1 connection is acceptance of the terms of Verio's service
contract.
Furthermore, I firmly support the RIGHTS of Internet users, system and
network administrators, and blacklists to REFUSE to accept mail from Mr.
Gilmore's server/connection/domain.
I am exercising my RIGHTS to freedom of speech and expression in this
message, as any American citizen is permitted. I also respect the fact that
you have a RIGHT to disregard, ignore, or otherwise disagree with my views,
beliefs, and practices.
If Mr. Gilmore is truly concerned about everyone having the freedom to
exercise their RIGHTS, he will accept the fact that Verio has the RIGHT to
deny him a connection, and he has the RIGHT to seek a connection to the
Internet elsewhere. I do not find a law or governing statute anywhere that
declares every free man has a RIGHT to access the Internet.
Thank you for your time and consideration of this matter,
--
Michael Merritt
SPAM filtering by SubLimeMail -- http://www.sublimemail.com/
(remainder of signature snipped for
Hmm, looks like the media that uses news feeds from the AP may verify their sources ALMOST as much as the Slashdot editors do.
-miklm
There are only ten (10) exclamation points in the article, excluding the ones during the IRC chat log. Considering the article is SEVERAL pages long, I find it hard to consider this *excessive* use of exclamation points!
-Michael
The think that people are not realizing that this keyboard was not designed for gaming - look at the material on the web site, and you see that they are targetting for PDA users.
As the user of a Jornada, I can definitely see where this would have advantages. A keyboard on which I could achieve 30-some odd words per minute would be FAR superior to the pen-based input. THIS is where this keyboard will find its market. The person who is playing games is not going to want to use this mini keyboard, but the travelling sales rep would very much want to tuck this in his brief case to use on his Palm or PocketPC.
Different products appeal to different markets. Obviously this one would flop for gamers, but there are other applications where it would shine, making it a cool product in general. Just because it doesn't increase your scores in online games doesn't mean it sucks!
-Michael
Geek for hire
> nearly enough, because, obviously, that would
> drive the price up for a benefit most people
> wouldn't even be aware of..
Face it, the average person who is using a wireless keyboard is NOT going to be doing anything that significantly matters in the realm of privacy or security. If you are THAT paranoid, surely you knew LONG, LONG ago that wireless kb/mouse was a bad idea.
-Michael
Shameless plug: http://www.miklm.com/resume.html
Actually..... The truck on the front page (white 4-door with blue paint accents) would be a Ford F-250 or F-350 Super Duty crew cab.
-Michael
Sorry, I've been working with VB/ASP too long. (Trek|Wars) or [Trek||Wars] should work to get the point across. How about just "Trek" OR "Wars"?
:-)
-Michael
Agreed, for the most part. It would be nice to see a "pricing history" on Dell's site, so perhaps you can see if the system you are quoting is $10 cheaper than it was yesterday, and $45 cheaper than last week, and the price drop is caused by CPUs going down $5.50 and memory dropping $4.50. But, I doubt it will happen :-(
-Michael
BTW, Chevy's rock! My Z71 will out-pull on your Ford any day! ;-)
> some pricing rationale and history. You could click on an item's price and see that yes, it
> is $100 more expensive today than yesterday, but that's because the price of RAM has just
> gone up, say.
http://www.pricewatch.com tells you whether prices went up or down for certain parts. I've seen similar things for other industries also.
I know that isn't exactly what you are talking about, but some companies do provide this info, or there are other 3rd parties that help.
--Michael
> so what harm could it do?
l ogs. The next thing you know, the FBI is knocking on YOUR door wondering why you are scanning Company's IP-block.
:-)
The harm is this: after Cheese patches your system, it starts scanning other systems. Meaning, your IP address could very well show up in the logs at no-telling-what-Big-Company-that-keeps-very-good-
With all the prevalence of DoS attacks now-a-days, I know we keep a lot closer tabs of our logs and security stuff than we did a year ago. I'm sure other companies are doing this as well, and your IP address showing up in a security log is not generally a good thing.
So, while directly doing some good by patching holes, it maintains all the same appearances of a malicious worm, and if the people you end up scanning don't KNOW this already, you could end up getting reported or checked out really close.
Of course, if ppl would apply patches on a regular basis, you wouldn't have to worry about the Lion worm, and as a result, Cheese.
-Michael
> I dont think anyone would "let" any worm into
:-) However, my concern is based on the fact that a LOT of people are lauding this as a great thing. "Hey, free security updates!" and such. However, regardless of whether the worm's payload is harmful or helpful, it is still using unauthorized resources.
> thier system on a voluntary basis, but if you
> read the story I believe it will tell you that
> the Cheese worm enters via a port that the 1ion
> worm leaves open. So, if you get the Cheese worm
> you have already been attacked and most likely
> didnt know about it.
Understood. I did read the article.
I have a hard time saying unequivocably that "this is a BAD THING(tm)", but I'm not exactly sure that it is exactly a Good Thing(tm) either. After all, it still takes advantage of a security flaw in an unauthorized manner. GRANTED, this will only affect people THIS TIME that a.) haven't patched systems for the Lion worm and b.) could have had Lion on their systems for MONTHS proving their incompetence at security. To those people, THIS worm is probably a good thing, since it will do the work that lots of people are either too lazy or stupid to do.
My concern is, NEXT TIME, somebody might release a worm that fixes one hole, while making two or three others. I just think it is a bad precedent for us (sysadmins) to say, "Hey, this Cheese worm thing is a good thing", because if we take a step in that direction, we'll get taken advantage of in the future. Trust no one, keep your guard up!
-Michael