Seems to me that establishing a long-term relationship with fewer as opposed to screwing people over in volume would make good business sense to garner repeat business.
Sure it would... So why do I have an image of Tom Cruise screaming "Show me the money!" down a phone in my head?
Well, having made a similar comment to yours, slagging off including a Flash GUI for being ridiculous and advising to go with a CLI, preferably IOS, I did some Googling. This this *is* a Cisco I think, an 827 to be precise, or at least that's the only thing I could find that looked like it had a Flash GUI. However, I've seen some of these things, and despite what the poster says they *do* have a CLI - full blown IOS in fact.
As an aside, while searching for this, the sixth hit on my Google list was some poor sap's router, spidered by Google. Oops!
Flash on any network device is ridiculous! I'm guessing that this one of the new breed of all-in-one router come firewall devices aimed at the home broadband market. I for one would be grateful if named vendor and models so I could avoid this product like the plague! What the hell *is* this lemon?
As to remote admin over dial; if you need to do that then a CLI, or at the very least a text mode menu option should be a prerequisite. It really doesn't matter what the interface is like, since you will almost certainly only be making minor configuration tweaks with the CLI once the router is up and running.
If you can afford the price premium, I'd go for one of the established CLI's like Cisco's IOS. While they can be daunting at first they do have the advantage of being a skill portable to a huge range of devices, especially in the case of IOS, and there are dozens of places with template configurations to get you started.
On the otherhand the general consensus on the UK Broadband newsgroups seems to be that Draytek make some excellent kit. I can certainly vouch for that, since I use one myself - a Vigor 2600we to be precise, which cost about 160, but the 2600g is just out that ups the wireless support from 802.11b to 802.11g. To summarise the key features in addition to the wireless:
Lightweight HTTP GUI
CLI access (straightforward, but no IOS feature-wise)
DHCP server / DDNS support
ISDN on some models - dial directly into the router to manage it!
Stateful firewall with content filtering & DDoS protection
VPN support
Management tools including, NTP, SNMP & remote syslog support
All in all a very nice bit of kit, and unlike a certain Netgear product you don't have to help DDOS the University of Michigan NTP server.;)
But don't be too excited yet though, I'm sure MS would make sure that proper security policies are in place, and a good audit trail system to track any access.
Yes they probably would. But the Linux codeauditors will be aware of this too and will no doubt take extra care over code submissions from China, the UK and other countries that get access to the Windows code. Even if genuine, SCO's claims would be small beer compared to Windows code getting into Linux. I suppose if there is real doubt you could always ask Microsoft to give the code the all clear in writing. They would certainly be interested in the possible NDA breach, and if the code submitter wasn't snatched off street then you could probably assume the code is safe.
On a more serious note, I find this somewhat worrying given the allegations made by Taiwan about organized cyber attacks coming from the mainland. Whether this is being reciprocated or not, I can't help but get the feeling that this is akin to handing China the cyber equivalent of a fusion bomb to use against Taiwan. Who knows what other exploits are lurking in the Windows code waiting to be found by the Chinese hackers doing the code review?
Of course, they could always surprise us and give Microsoft a respectable advance notice to issue fixes before coming up with a zero day full disclosure bug report. I guess time will tell as to which way the outcome is going to lean, towards a blessing or a curse, but it's going to be an interesting time finding out. Looks like that Chinese proverb is right again!
Um, no, Ransom Love doesn't look like a stupid dick at all. What with having left the company and being replaced with Darl McBride before this all kicked off and all. Love was all for integrating SCO code with Linux code and giving the code to the community, it's McBride who is the money grubbing SOB with the briefcase full of FUD.
Re:Boycott RFID products
on
NYT on RFID
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
I doubt it'll go that quite way. Given the EU's track record I suspect we'll just have some legislation to the effect that the RFID has to be on a tear off strip or tag in the same way that labels are attached to clothing. Hell, the damn things are small enough that you could embed the things in those little sticky price labels if you were so inclined.
Personally I'm looking forward to the day I can just wheel my trolley through a scanner and have a bill printed out automatically in front of the teller seconds later. They always look so damn disapproving as they swipe the obscene quantities of alcohol and convenience foods through the damn till, like my diet is any of *their* concern.;)
BitTorrent does tend to bounce around some when you first start downloading, but you need to bear with it. The more you upload back to the system, the more you will be rewarded with improved download speed. I usually end up with a 3:1 download to upload ratio long before I get to 20% completion. It can vary some though; I'm currently at 5:1 and 2:1 on two big files I'm grabbing right now. Once it's stabilised it tends to stay around that point until completion when it changes to 0:1 until you close the dialog.
Think of it this way: When you start a download you get some credit to get you started. Once your credit has gone you have to acquire more credit by uploading data, each chunk you upload earning you around 3 more chunks worth of download credit. Once your download completes, any further uploads you permit before closing the dialog is pure charity since you get nothing for it other than the karma of contributing to the network.
Seconded (with a caveat). A huge proportion of home users do not even know what an SMTP server is, let alone what is does and why they would want one. As long as the ISP makes provision for SOHO offices and "advanced" users to get such blocks removed on request I have zero problem with this. In fact, the ISP I currently use for my home connection does this, and while I had to chase the issue up (overworked support team I guess), they had no issues with removing the block. Frankly I think it's just a matter of time before this becomes the default anyway. With DCOM/NetBIOS/spam attacks choking ISP's core infrastructure and numerous abuse complaints coming in as well, who could blame them?
Well, the above mentioned switched on users and small businesses with satellite offices using consumer DSL circuits to save money, that's who. I'd also be unhappy about the prospect of this being a slippery slope. Let's say we start by forcing SMTP through the ISP's server (which kills SoBig) and also block DCOM and NetBIOS (which probably shouldn't be on the Internet outside a VPN anyway). Fine, but what happens when we get a major exploit on another non-core protocol? Do we block that too? Who decides?
Are you sure you will feel that way when one of the protocols *you* rely on gets firewalled by your ISP to "protect the Internet"?
And I was just about to submit this too... Still, here are some more links since the BBC and Sky News are covering it too. Looks like they might actually be serious about going ahead with it this time!
Ooh, I like that idea! I think we should go with "pillaging", mainly because that has a word association with "rape", and that simple association with these scum is going to do them no favours at all. It's kind of like the RIAA associating copyright offenders with pirates, only more gramatically correct since all too often their spiders ignore any "robots.txt" file and plough through the html anyway.
So, when will we see a distributed RBL that can stand up to distributed attacks?
More to the point, given that it's certainly doable with plain old DNS: why don't we have one already?
Let's say I run a DNSBL server on a domain I own, "bl.dnsblacklist.com" say. How hard would it be to allow volunteers, preferably at large corporates and ISPs to download the entire zonefile contents via DNS AXFR (or whatever), in return for hosting a mirror server complete with another A record for "bl.dnsblacklist.com"?
I would get to vet the applicants, because they would need to contact me first to acquire the necessary permissions required get access to the zonefile. If I don't trust the applicant to be 100% legit, or get evidence they have misused the data (which, at then end of the day is just a list of IPs that have sent spam), then it's access denied. There are some potential problems with this that I can see though. We still have a limited number of IPs for the distribution of the zone files to the slaves, so it would possible to DDOS those, unless that role could be safely distributed too.
Note: this occurred to me while reading the article, so I almost certainly have missed some potential holes. Still, it does seem a way for a DNSBL provider to gain some resiliance for free if those holes can be plugged. Comments?
Article 6a = Right to use of patented techniques, without authorisation or royalty, if needed solely to achieve software interoperability. UPHELD.
So, does this mean that Jon Johansen of DeCSS fame is now formally off the legal hook in the EU? It seems to me that any arguments other than those of his reverse engineering of CSS are now completely out of the window, and even that is on dubious ground. I suppose this would also apply to the whole Adobe/Elcomsoft/Sklyarov thing too, but that's largely done and dusted.
Ever tried applying patches to 1000 dumb terminals, oh... right... you won't ever have to.)
Ever had to flash the damn firmware on 1000 dumb terminals, because the vendor made a coding error? Better yet, ever tried doing all that when a power failure during the upgrade processes requires an RTB repair because of the lame implementation?
My guess is that Verisign does log the requests received
Simple way to prove that (which I have in progress). Verisign's partner in this is a another dubious operation called Overture, who is well know for "improve your page ranking" type scams and spams. If Verisign is logging the info, then Overture is almost certainly getting a copy. I've got a domain I'm about to expire, so I've seeded the "Snubby Mail Rejector" with several plausible, but previously non-existant addresses over the last few days. It's just a matter of wait and see...
Nildram, my home ISP in the UK, did this after a just few people requested the change in their Usenet support group, (they probably got a handful of emails too). From a political point of view, great, but from a technical one, perhaps not. This was just two days after the wildcarding, so the patches they deployed had been *really* well tested, hadn't they? Yes, the patches seem to work and it's easy to disable it if there are problems, but better safe than sorry. I expect many ISPs would like to patch, but don't want to get their fingers burnt if the patch causes some issues, so be patient and ask nicely!
Yes, museum uses a wildcard, so what? Firstly the intention to wildcard was right up there and stated in the original proposal for the domain, before it was even approved by ICANN. Unlike Verisign's contract with ICANN, in which they are explicitly instructed to return NXDOMAIN on their.COM and.NET domains (.ORG too, but that is now moot), MuseDoma had approval to do this.
Why? Well firstly,.musuem is a highly restricted domain, and secondly it's all to do with how museums operate. If I go to the London Science Museum and start asking for paleontology information, they will redirect me across to the National History Museum. The wildcarding is just a virtual way of helping people find what they are looking for, which makes sense.
".com" on the otherhand, is a largely unregulated free for all of firstcome first served registrations and lawsuits, trying to apply a structure to that is insane. A good analogy I saw from another poster here on Slashdot was the difference between the alt.* and comp.sci.* heirarchies on Usenet. Do *you* want to try being a moderator on.alt?
According to ISC that should be just options { root-delegation-only exclude { "de"; "lv"; "museum"; }; };. "de" is in there because they have A and MX records directly within the.de ccTLD. ".museum" make a policy decision, before the domain even went live to send unregistered domains to a central index, for a highly restricted domain this should be acceptable. I'm still trying to find out why ".lv" is in there, but they are the only three domains that ISC considers to have a legitimate claim to wildcard.
".cc" does wildcard to a site finder type service and should definately be excluded and neither ".org" or ".us" have ever wildcarded. In fact PIR, who now operates.org, have stated they never will - it's in this/. story!
I work in an office that has a mix of Wyse thin clients to front-end Citrix and traditional Windows and Unix workstations at a large utilities company. When we have a problem with an application; we go direct to the source for on-site support; Microsoft, Citrix, whoever, no questions asked, so I can be pretty damn sure that our Citrix install is up to spec. Despite all this, the thin clients suck. Big time. I'm just glad I only have to use one of the damn things and not administer them. Warning: Everything below this may be an Anti-Citrix rant - I positively despise the fucking things, so things may degenerate!
Let me reiterate one point: This is a user's perspective of Citrix from someone with a predominantly UNIX and networking technical background. I do *not* have a clue about the finer points of managing Citrix installations, nor do I wish to after the last few hateful months with it!
The big selling points of thin clients are supposed to be a lower TCO and better security and management. In short, for WinTerms at least, this is pure marketing bullshit. Sure, it's a couple of hundred bucks a seat cheaper for your hardware and your end users can't install a macro virus or whatever. Well, actually, that last point is wrong. It's perfectly possible to have a user trash your Citrix server if the code happens to get executed there because your AV vendor wasn't on the ball or a patch was broken, only now they can effectively take down twenty other users at the same time.
Another thing that they don't tell you is that software licensing is a fricking nightmare - 1,000 users and 500 seats still equates to 1,000 licenses in many cases. We use Microsoft apps a lot, and they are totally inconsistent in their licensing requirements for thin clients, so much so that we now have full time staff just looking into thin client software licensing issues. Some other vendors are better, others are worse. Others are MUCH worse. More $$$ on the TCO.
Let's look at that TCO a little, while we are here. A tier 1 Windows corporate PC (after bulk discount) is roughly 1000 for us, including all of your office apps (cheap because they are bundled). A Wyse term is setting us back around 700, including your hopefully per-seat software licenses (not as cheap because they are unbundled, but on a bulk purchase scheme). *But* for each 10-20 users, you need a server. We run at 15 and still have performance issues, and we are talking dual Xeon boxes with 2GB of ECC RAM here; not cheap. The hardware/software costs are, in fact, about the same per seat, if anything thin clients are more expensive.
So, that leaves the management aspect of TCO. OK, there's less patching to be done, right? Well, actually no, since all the updates on our traditional desktops and laptops are handled either by the AV application directly or via a systems management package. No savings there. Warranties? Nope. That evens out in the same way that the hardware costs do. First line support costs? No, users still have the same problems with Office and what not. Second and third line support costs then? Ah! Finally a difference; you get to cut back on all your school leaver PC techies at near minimum wage and hire some Citrix Consultants instead, sure you only need half as many, but they come at three times the salary.
Citrix itself comes across a horrible hack to anyone who has used UNIX thin clients over X11. Performance sucks if you try and do moving video; even VNC managed to do better. And by moving video, I mean a flash animation like you get in a web page, not DVD quality FMV. The screen update code is nothing short of appalling; quite often a webpage is unreadable because the *entire* screen is updating to display one lousy Flash advert, and I've even seen mouse rollovers on links cause this. Whatever happened to atomic updates? While I'm slating the Citrix code, lets take a look at some of the other issues I've had the misfortune to experience:
One random key stops working in one application session and nothing short
What's next? Sticking it in the middle of Aresibo and claiming half a light year range?
Pshaw! Who needs Arecibo? *My* crappy off-the-shelf 802.11b card can get *infinite* range un-aided! True, picking the signal out from the noise at more than 50ft is proving problematic at present, but once I've ironed out that minor problem I'm well on my way to PROFIT!!!
Or was I the only person paying attention in physics when it was explained how *any* electromagnetic transmission has infinite range, since decaying amplitude in accordance with the inverse square rule never reaches zero? Assuming a perfect vacuum, naturally.
According to the story, the universities have developed a new material for Spintronic devices, something not previously available at room temperatures. What? You mean like IBM's harddrives (from 1997), or the Infineon MRAM it hopes to being to market next year, both of which are mentioned in one of the linked stories. Surely both the harddrive and MRAM consist of "room temperature" devices, albeit most likely of a different material.
New material. Got that. But what makes it so special?
Great, they've removed some of the harsher language. Woohoo! Of course, the flip side of that is that MEPs that were erring over that language are now more likely to vote for it than before. We used to have a chance of a Software Patent free EU, but I doubt that is going to happen now.
Still, at least it shows that MEPs *do* listen to their constituents, so there is some hope...
You missed one: Products at discount prices, delivered direct to your door. That can mean "Generic Viagra" if you want, but also everything from books to airplanes, the mundane to the exotic. While, I still get my groceries at the local supermarket so that I know it's fresh and I like browsing for clothing, pretty much everything else I get online.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure it would... So why do I have an image of Tom Cruise screaming "Show me the money!" down a phone in my head?
As an aside, while searching for this, the sixth hit on my Google list was some poor sap's router, spidered by Google. Oops!
As to remote admin over dial; if you need to do that then a CLI, or at the very least a text mode menu option should be a prerequisite. It really doesn't matter what the interface is like, since you will almost certainly only be making minor configuration tweaks with the CLI once the router is up and running.
If you can afford the price premium, I'd go for one of the established CLI's like Cisco's IOS. While they can be daunting at first they do have the advantage of being a skill portable to a huge range of devices, especially in the case of IOS, and there are dozens of places with template configurations to get you started.
On the otherhand the general consensus on the UK Broadband newsgroups seems to be that Draytek make some excellent kit. I can certainly vouch for that, since I use one myself - a Vigor 2600we to be precise, which cost about 160, but the 2600g is just out that ups the wireless support from 802.11b to 802.11g. To summarise the key features in addition to the wireless:
- Lightweight HTTP GUI
- CLI access (straightforward, but no IOS feature-wise)
- DHCP server / DDNS support
- ISDN on some models - dial directly into the router to manage it!
- Stateful firewall with content filtering & DDoS protection
- VPN support
- Management tools including, NTP, SNMP & remote syslog support
All in all a very nice bit of kit, and unlike a certain Netgear product you don't have to help DDOS the University of Michigan NTP server.Yes they probably would. But the Linux codeauditors will be aware of this too and will no doubt take extra care over code submissions from China, the UK and other countries that get access to the Windows code. Even if genuine, SCO's claims would be small beer compared to Windows code getting into Linux. I suppose if there is real doubt you could always ask Microsoft to give the code the all clear in writing. They would certainly be interested in the possible NDA breach, and if the code submitter wasn't snatched off street then you could probably assume the code is safe.
On a more serious note, I find this somewhat worrying given the allegations made by Taiwan about organized cyber attacks coming from the mainland. Whether this is being reciprocated or not, I can't help but get the feeling that this is akin to handing China the cyber equivalent of a fusion bomb to use against Taiwan. Who knows what other exploits are lurking in the Windows code waiting to be found by the Chinese hackers doing the code review?
Of course, they could always surprise us and give Microsoft a respectable advance notice to issue fixes before coming up with a zero day full disclosure bug report. I guess time will tell as to which way the outcome is going to lean, towards a blessing or a curse, but it's going to be an interesting time finding out. Looks like that Chinese proverb is right again!
Um, no, Ransom Love doesn't look like a stupid dick at all. What with having left the company and being replaced with Darl McBride before this all kicked off and all. Love was all for integrating SCO code with Linux code and giving the code to the community, it's McBride who is the money grubbing SOB with the briefcase full of FUD.
Personally I'm looking forward to the day I can just wheel my trolley through a scanner and have a bill printed out automatically in front of the teller seconds later. They always look so damn disapproving as they swipe the obscene quantities of alcohol and convenience foods through the damn till, like my diet is any of *their* concern. ;)
Think of it this way: When you start a download you get some credit to get you started. Once your credit has gone you have to acquire more credit by uploading data, each chunk you upload earning you around 3 more chunks worth of download credit. Once your download completes, any further uploads you permit before closing the dialog is pure charity since you get nothing for it other than the karma of contributing to the network.
- Linux Kernel 2.6.0-test6 (full) [32MB]
- Linux Kernel 2.6.0-test6 (patch only) [1MB]
It still seems wrong to improve performance through a Slashdotting, but the more the merrier!Well, the above mentioned switched on users and small businesses with satellite offices using consumer DSL circuits to save money, that's who. I'd also be unhappy about the prospect of this being a slippery slope. Let's say we start by forcing SMTP through the ISP's server (which kills SoBig) and also block DCOM and NetBIOS (which probably shouldn't be on the Internet outside a VPN anyway). Fine, but what happens when we get a major exploit on another non-core protocol? Do we block that too? Who decides?
Are you sure you will feel that way when one of the protocols *you* rely on gets firewalled by your ISP to "protect the Internet"?
"Any sufficiently advanced science is indistiguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke
And I was just about to submit this too... Still, here are some more links since the BBC and Sky News are covering it too. Looks like they might actually be serious about going ahead with it this time!
All in favour...
More to the point, given that it's certainly doable with plain old DNS: why don't we have one already?
Let's say I run a DNSBL server on a domain I own, "bl.dnsblacklist.com" say. How hard would it be to allow volunteers, preferably at large corporates and ISPs to download the entire zonefile contents via DNS AXFR (or whatever), in return for hosting a mirror server complete with another A record for "bl.dnsblacklist.com"?
I would get to vet the applicants, because they would need to contact me first to acquire the necessary permissions required get access to the zonefile. If I don't trust the applicant to be 100% legit, or get evidence they have misused the data (which, at then end of the day is just a list of IPs that have sent spam), then it's access denied. There are some potential problems with this that I can see though. We still have a limited number of IPs for the distribution of the zone files to the slaves, so it would possible to DDOS those, unless that role could be safely distributed too.
Note: this occurred to me while reading the article, so I almost certainly have missed some potential holes. Still, it does seem a way for a DNSBL provider to gain some resiliance for free if those holes can be plugged. Comments?
So, does this mean that Jon Johansen of DeCSS fame is now formally off the legal hook in the EU? It seems to me that any arguments other than those of his reverse engineering of CSS are now completely out of the window, and even that is on dubious ground. I suppose this would also apply to the whole Adobe/Elcomsoft/Sklyarov thing too, but that's largely done and dusted.
A big "WoooooHooooo!" from me if so.
Ever had to flash the damn firmware on 1000 dumb terminals, because the vendor made a coding error? Better yet, ever tried doing all that when a power failure during the upgrade processes requires an RTB repair because of the lame implementation?
Simple way to prove that (which I have in progress). Verisign's partner in this is a another dubious operation called Overture, who is well know for "improve your page ranking" type scams and spams. If Verisign is logging the info, then Overture is almost certainly getting a copy. I've got a domain I'm about to expire, so I've seeded the "Snubby Mail Rejector" with several plausible, but previously non-existant addresses over the last few days. It's just a matter of wait and see...
Nildram, my home ISP in the UK, did this after a just few people requested the change in their Usenet support group, (they probably got a handful of emails too). From a political point of view, great, but from a technical one, perhaps not. This was just two days after the wildcarding, so the patches they deployed had been *really* well tested, hadn't they? Yes, the patches seem to work and it's easy to disable it if there are problems, but better safe than sorry. I expect many ISPs would like to patch, but don't want to get their fingers burnt if the patch causes some issues, so be patient and ask nicely!
Why? Well firstly, .musuem is a highly restricted domain, and secondly it's all to do with how museums operate. If I go to the London Science Museum and start asking for paleontology information, they will redirect me across to the National History Museum. The wildcarding is just a virtual way of helping people find what they are looking for, which makes sense.
".com" on the otherhand, is a largely unregulated free for all of firstcome first served registrations and lawsuits, trying to apply a structure to that is insane. A good analogy I saw from another poster here on Slashdot was the difference between the alt.* and comp.sci.* heirarchies on Usenet. Do *you* want to try being a moderator on .alt?
".cc" does wildcard to a site finder type service and should definately be excluded and neither ".org" or ".us" have ever wildcarded. In fact PIR, who now operates .org, have stated they never will - it's in this /. story!
Let me reiterate one point: This is a user's perspective of Citrix from someone with a predominantly UNIX and networking technical background. I do *not* have a clue about the finer points of managing Citrix installations, nor do I wish to after the last few hateful months with it!
The big selling points of thin clients are supposed to be a lower TCO and better security and management. In short, for WinTerms at least, this is pure marketing bullshit. Sure, it's a couple of hundred bucks a seat cheaper for your hardware and your end users can't install a macro virus or whatever. Well, actually, that last point is wrong. It's perfectly possible to have a user trash your Citrix server if the code happens to get executed there because your AV vendor wasn't on the ball or a patch was broken, only now they can effectively take down twenty other users at the same time.
Another thing that they don't tell you is that software licensing is a fricking nightmare - 1,000 users and 500 seats still equates to 1,000 licenses in many cases. We use Microsoft apps a lot, and they are totally inconsistent in their licensing requirements for thin clients, so much so that we now have full time staff just looking into thin client software licensing issues. Some other vendors are better, others are worse. Others are MUCH worse. More $$$ on the TCO.
Let's look at that TCO a little, while we are here. A tier 1 Windows corporate PC (after bulk discount) is roughly 1000 for us, including all of your office apps (cheap because they are bundled). A Wyse term is setting us back around 700, including your hopefully per-seat software licenses (not as cheap because they are unbundled, but on a bulk purchase scheme). *But* for each 10-20 users, you need a server. We run at 15 and still have performance issues, and we are talking dual Xeon boxes with 2GB of ECC RAM here; not cheap. The hardware/software costs are, in fact, about the same per seat, if anything thin clients are more expensive.
So, that leaves the management aspect of TCO. OK, there's less patching to be done, right? Well, actually no, since all the updates on our traditional desktops and laptops are handled either by the AV application directly or via a systems management package. No savings there. Warranties? Nope. That evens out in the same way that the hardware costs do. First line support costs? No, users still have the same problems with Office and what not. Second and third line support costs then? Ah! Finally a difference; you get to cut back on all your school leaver PC techies at near minimum wage and hire some Citrix Consultants instead, sure you only need half as many, but they come at three times the salary.
Citrix itself comes across a horrible hack to anyone who has used UNIX thin clients over X11. Performance sucks if you try and do moving video; even VNC managed to do better. And by moving video, I mean a flash animation like you get in a web page, not DVD quality FMV. The screen update code is nothing short of appalling; quite often a webpage is unreadable because the *entire* screen is updating to display one lousy Flash advert, and I've even seen mouse rollovers on links cause this. Whatever happened to atomic updates? While I'm slating the Citrix code, lets take a look at some of the other issues I've had the misfortune to experience:
Pshaw! Who needs Arecibo? *My* crappy off-the-shelf 802.11b card can get *infinite* range un-aided! True, picking the signal out from the noise at more than 50ft is proving problematic at present, but once I've ironed out that minor problem I'm well on my way to PROFIT!!!
Or was I the only person paying attention in physics when it was explained how *any* electromagnetic transmission has infinite range, since decaying amplitude in accordance with the inverse square rule never reaches zero? Assuming a perfect vacuum, naturally.
New material. Got that. But what makes it so special?
Still, at least it shows that MEPs *do* listen to their constituents, so there is some hope...
You missed one: Products at discount prices, delivered direct to your door. That can mean "Generic Viagra" if you want, but also everything from books to airplanes, the mundane to the exotic. While, I still get my groceries at the local supermarket so that I know it's fresh and I like browsing for clothing, pretty much everything else I get online.