>serious companies? computers that aren't CE >certified aren't even allowed in an incorporated >business (u.s. only, i think). no, it's not the >best price, but if my racks are full and i need >to fit 5 more machines in a closet or spare >cubicle, i can now.
Serious companies who are large enough have their own certification system. In fact, we have our own hardware department who is responsible for system configurations and testing of new hardware and the locking of hardware components.
It isn't economical to rely on a single 3rd party entity to do all your servicing and who's hardware isn't an open standard, as in the case of many rack systems with custom motherboards.
>sure, but if people are busy actually doing work >and a machine goes down, try getting warranty >service on a non-CE or homebrew machine.
First, our machines are not 'homebrew', but this has been addressed in the previous paragraph. Second, large companies don't need warranties because they have their own service departments. We can do the work oursevles faster, for a cheaper cost (components + our real labour), and without dealing with 3rd party manufactures or service contractors. These companies always have a huge service cost because they have overhead as well to support. We just break even, because we don't charge premiums on our own services.
Components are very easy to come by. When we have a new spec system, we order several of the discrete components as used in the system for off-hand use. This way, if something goes bad we just swap it for another part.
This is how all companies like ours work. It would be very foolish to be dealing with RMA numbers, service centers, shipping of servers, etc. when all we would need to do is replace a part. This is in part why we have our own hardware specifications and standards.
They appear to be quite a good spec too, PIII-600mhz 128mb RAM, 17GB HD.
Good spec? Whenever we replace servers, our current default is a dual PIII 1 GHz with 1 GB of ram. 128 MB of ram isn't even good for serving static web pages. And that price of $1700 is outrageous for the specs (I get the feeling what we're really paying for is the 1/4").
Pre-built rack systems are always more expensive, this is why serious companies order kits and standard micro-ATX motherboards and build themselves (easily replaceable, locked and open hardware config, etc., etc.). This is why VA Linux was nothing more than a buzz word. This company will be good to impress your friends over at Mom & Pop co-hosting, but for serious applications the price, proprietary hardware, and specs don't make sense.
And, my god, the heat! 180 servers in one rack!? They should probably subtract a few from that number (for good measure, as they're certain to die) as the center starts to heat up like a tomahawk.
Ok, I hear their arguments about lockin' up criminals and the such (when they are the ones who should really be locked up). They don't fly, because this isn't what the system's actual purpose is anyways. Can anyone tell me honestly they believe the 100% honest police want to use a video camera system spying on the public for "checking faces"?
This really ticks me off because in my own city (Columbus, Ohio), the corrupt Columbus Public Police Department is also going to implement a similar system. This is the same police department which is run by the bigot Cheif Jackson and has been under Federal investigation for such things as racial beatings.
The point is that although some good police departments may be able to use the technology for a slightly good purpose, what happens if it falls into the hands of creeps like these?
There has also been the argument that as long as you're in public, someone can take your picture and has full rights to it. I'm sorry, but that's just not correct. This is why the media has to obtain permission to TAKE YOUR PICTURE. Suddenly, the police are exempt from this. They can take anyone's picture and not tell a soul. Since your picture belongs to you (it's your body, isn't it?) they are steeling when they run it through their system and use it for their purposes. If a model gets paid for her picture, why can't you? Why has this right been taken away selectively when you're dealing with the police?
Another good point is the police must have probable cause for obtaining any evidence or doing any types of personal checks. This was made to protect the privacy of citizens and to eliminate the ability of the police to do things like "Check 'em out." to try to get information on someone for a friend, or a favor for a favor type things. You can't just go digging into someone's personal records for no reason, which is exactly what this system does. By converse, if you are not a match, they know you don't have a record == invasion of your privacy.
It's sad that our privacy is being taken away, and there is no one there to stand up for it. Instead, we have people believing what they are told, including the fact that the government owns you, your image, and your life. When will people realize that they, indeed, have personal and certain fundamental rights?
Eve, an eavesdropper listening to their conversation, requires Alice's original string of photons in order to make head or tail of this exchange.
But what about if Eve also intercepts the "agreement" photon string and compares it to the ones she has sampled? She would be able to reconstruct the key, although she never really sampled it and thus violated QM principles.
Should Eve adopt the so-called "bucket-brigade" strategy--to intercept and resend photons as quickly as she can--she will still give her presence away. The uncertainty principle dictates that Eve cannot copy Alice's photons exactly.
She can't copy them *exactly*, but to a very good degree limited by the specifications of her equipment. She will never be able to copy them 100%, but 99.99999999999% is very possible and very legal under QM rules. So, for example, if Eve was using a very sophisticated method of reading and sending photons, and Alice and Bob's method was only slightly less sophisticated, Eve would be able to succesfully crack the communication by fooling the two into thinking the photons were authentic, when in reality they differed only slightly by an unmeasurable amount, and thus for all intents and purposes were logically the same, but not physically identical. In order to really tell one photon from another, you have to have a measurable wide margin. When they get so close together that each seems as if they are the same, for our purposes they are the same. You'd have to have infinite (uncertainty principle impossibility) resolution in order to tell two very similiar photons apart. So the same very secure "law" is actually a two-edged sword.
Just because it's impossible to "directly" crack a communication doesn't mean its not uncrackable and quantum laws of the universe can't save it either. It doesn't take into considerations things like equipment sensitivity, and other real world things like that which go beyond how it would ideally work, or how it would work on paper. Heck, if someone really wanted the information, they could kidnap and force the people to admit it. That's crackable as far as I'm concerned, which leads me to my next point: if it's written down, known by someone, or even happened, there are always was of "cracking" the secrecy.
I don't see what's so bad about it. I'm a MSDN member too, and I find it quite convient to be able to use a universal login for all microsoft sites.
Even if they weren't using passport they would still require you to submit all your personal info and create a new account.
This method is one of convience for the end user. It's nothing more and if you have a problem with giving out your company address (you do say you are an MSDN member for your job, didn't you), you have real problems.
Otherwise, I guess you could go hide in a corner and not come out. This would solve all the problems of your online privacy.
Last mile has nothing to do with it. It isn't that companies can't afford last mile, it's that last mile is very difficult, in many areas -- technical, legal, and political.
Laying fiber in utility trenches is easy. Even laying it in the ocean is easy. But what isn't easy is translating the huge bandwidth of optical to a last mile solution. You can't run fiber to consumers, because most people have homes which are years old. Copper can't handle it, which is the whole reason for fiber. Companies better understand a shortage of fat pipes is a minor problem compared to the giant barrier which exists between communications providers and their customers.
I think we're in the same situation the cable companies were in awhile ago. They spent millions building their citywide infrastructure, only to not be able to service customers because the cost of running a line through walls and drilling through outer-structures was too high and too risky. Dwellings weren't ready, but the network was.
This began to change when major home builders began running cable as a standard and cable companies started working with builders to ensure they had that vital last mile access.
This is the same thing. We were all worried about saturating the national backbones that we forgot about connecting people up to actually pay for that access. Now we're suffering because we can't afford our own network we built for a different, albeit related problem.
The solution is first to establish an industry standard fiber specification for consumer last- mile deployment. Then, communications companies should partner with builders in service areas to ensure new developments will include domestic wiring and residential areas will include all vital components (switching, QoS, etc.). This way, all someone will need to do is purchase a modem, call up their local ISP, and say "Turn me on!". The most costly part of last mile -- the service call and installation will be avoided.
Currently, the industry has this hacked together with pseudo-solutions (Cable & DSL). Cable is leverging the Cable companies' solved problem and DSL is using the even more distributed POTs, however technical issues have limited development and forced this out as a solution. Cable will never be a solution due to the downstream nature of TV. Cable has wide availability, currently has good service, but is limited, and DSL has low availability, poor service, but is not limited and has high medium distribution. This is exactly why these things will never change.
What we need is companies which think forward. Is there a new development building in your service area? Go talk to the developers and make sure you have that critical component -- the home wiring --in place.
However, this is not new. If you think of the Internet as another utility which must make its way into the home, you'll soon understand our situation. Electricity even suffered the same way. There were huge power plants with giant capacites and wires were stretched at a rate unseen before, yet consumers didn't have access. Last mile was missing. However, after the regular building cycle (wherein the average life of most homes -- due to fire, destruction, etc. expired) when new homes began to use wiring, consumer access soared.
The same can be said with fiber. Time will only tell.
I don't hold them in high regard because they aren't doing anything novel. Most think they are all powerful gods because they can install a network card and run cable from the wall. Some of the more experienced run fancy shell scripts, but that's about it. They come in with pompus attitudes and move my stuff around in my office without care, all to get the job done so they can go back downstairs and play Quake.
Meanwhile, I'm the one producing a product which sells and provides the MONEY for their paycheck. Although I value their importance as a service which can be thought of as analgous to a custodian, I'm not going to walk around with plastic liners on my feet just so they will have less work to do. They're paid to clean up messes if and when they arise. Sorry if you people have to actually DO something.
And as for a reformat, any IT who reformats my drive with the recent build and code, will be fired. Sorry. They're not important, and can easily be replaced. My boss won't care about their pathetic excuse ("I'm too lazy and don't like him enough to fix it.") -- he'll ask who lost the 6 months of work and write the pink slip.
However, I never call them because I fix problems myself (unless the problem is network, etc.). I have heard co-workers call them and the stories of how they come in and are extremly abusive, especially to those who aren't technical users. This is ironic because the only difference is they have read "Unix For Dummies" or another associated 'cookbook'.
So don't worry. The ones who know a little bit more than the Unix command line won't be calling you and I'm sure they run a beast of a system do to 'troubleshooting -- although if you want to call your method of reimaging troubleshooting at all.
Remember what you were hired for -- for us. So don't bitch when you have to *actually* be challenged by your job. You still get the same wage whatever the problem is, so the company could care less either way as well.
A penny a k? I'm no fan of spam, as I do get a lot it, but as you admitted in your self-gratificating "couple hundred bucks a month" speil, e-mail filters almost completly solve the problem.
The next thing you'll be saying is telemarketers should pay you money for using YOUR PERSONAL PHONE, for the money it cost you on your phone bill because you were talking with them for a few seconds, some money for rent to have a place to keep the phone, money for food for you to have the energy to pick up the phone and talk, etc., etc.
I'm sorry, but if you have a reachable e-mail address, you would be paying the same amount of money having e-mail if you got spam or not. Network bandwidth is completly free for end users, and companies aren't exactly suffering over spam bandwidth with their enflated premiums and oversold pipes.
Anyone who doesn't have the two seconds to install a mail filter or press delete is butt lazy, and someone who wants to get payed for sitting on their ass and whining about paying for e-mail and hardware they would already have regardless is adding greed to their lazieness.
We're always going to have spam because we live in a capitalist economy. People will always try to sell you something. And most spammers do pay for bandwidth (having a co-hosted mail server is free!?). In many ways, stopping businesses from contacting you with all this consumer rights BS actually hurts the economy. Pretty soon people's vision will be so holy that there will be a charge for looking at advertisements in the local grocery store.
The point is there is no charge for asking "Do you want to buy this?" or "Can I have your money?" which is really all that spam is. Simply reply "No, I don't." or take the default approach and press delete. Your computer is not a forum, however much you want it to be, and people do have an unabridged right to contact you, however annoying their message may be.
Live with it. It goes both ways, and its there for a much more important reason than this. Don't destroy free speech because you are lazy.
This just prooves once again that Canada understands the value of the Internet. One of the things that I noticed while in Canada was the amazing knowledge of the average-connected user. In the US, most people with Intenet access are reserved to e-mailing and Instant messaging, usually using AOL.
However, in Canada, most people online have their own web page, which confirms the fact that Canada has the highest rate of personal domain resgistration per cap. In fact, most Canadians embrace the Internet, and are more connected than ever, utilizing it's true form.
It certianly is a great idea to connect and entire country. Especially the following:
Recommendation 1.1: All communities should be linked to national broadband networks via a high-speed, high-capacity and scalable transport link. This link should be capable of supporting an aggregate of 1.5 megabits per second symmetrical to each end user, as well as support a full range of higher bandwidth requirements to all users and institutions regardless of location.
They're going to offer 1.5 mbps up/down to every person. This is fantastic, much better than what any broadband provider in the states is able to do.
Clearly, Canada understands the value of an open public Internet which is not subject to any one organization or company and is controlled and owned by the people. I just wish Dubya and other politicians would realize the benefits of this ~ Canada is just looking too good with its free WORKING public healthcare, public broadband, and anti-DMCA type consumer protection laws.
Was there any *real* cause for concern? No.
Was there any chance of someone actually exploiting a SETI client to gain control? Probably not.
I really don't think those in industrial espionage automatically would look for a SETI client as a means to gain entry into a system.
Mostly because there are much more conventional ways, and the SETI client is good only for sending and receiving data.
Of course, this is management's job. They have to look like they're constantly doing something. If its attacking harmless, albeit useless applications, or harping on people for installing screensaves, they have a job to do.
It's true that the machines do belong to the company, and equally they can do whatever they want with them. But giving someone a computer implies a little personal freedom. I also don't like the fact that many IT departments think they are god today. The IT department and the computers are meant to support the users, not the other way around.
If I want to install software on my work machine, and I think it's required in the slighest, I won't let anyone from IT tell me otherwise. If I want to make it as complicated as possible to troubleshoot, that's fine, because when I need troubleshooting IT is there and they're getting paid for it. I don't care about making their job easier.
Even software which isn't really required but is more or less classified along the line of 'fun' still should be allowed, provided it is not very, very dangerous to run. This helps boost spirits and encourages employees to work together. For example, I read in that report those who used the SETI clients were in a compitition. I'm sure it was just a fun thing to do in thier freetime. But now, how has their attitude changed now that they have been investigated for installing software which looks for alien life? It will probably not only affect their performance, but their general feeling for the company as well. And for what? In the long term companies who have a no tolerance, no sense policy like this end up only hurting themselves.
This is really cool, but as others have mentioned, I didn't find any info on how they did this. How did they deal with attenuation in the fibers? What kind of network structure did they use which can handle at theortical maximium 1 Gbps from each connected home? Are they sharing bandwidth like cable modems do, or does each person receive a dedicated connection with a personal router, etc.?
How about stringing that very delicate fiber over long distances? What about when there are breaks? Fiber is almost impossible to put back together from two ends, as it has to be 1/4 wavelength+ or scattering will result in an increased error ratio.
I also don't know why they're dissing cable. Cable is awesome, at times much better than DSL. I don't know why he thinks a cable modem only gets around 2.5 kb/s in real life performance. I have a cable modem and can get up to 2.5 Mbps download and over 500 kbps upload. You should also note cable modems ARE capable of high upstream bandwidth. My modem, right now for example, has a maximum bitrate of over 2 MB/s, with a power level of 50 db. However, this is limited at the provider and through the modem via QoS.
The Napster test was equally stupid; everyone knows 28.8 users select 'cable' for whatever reason. These programs should really report the average real bandwidth instead of allowing user selections, which are for the most part pointless.
Also: for the person who was talking about the general slowness of the net and the fact that it won't matter how fast a connection you have -- you'll still only get a max of 500 kbps at even a very good site: I've got news. If, for example, we all had Gigabit connections the net would run MUCH faster. My neighboor also has a cable modem, and if I connect directly to his modem to send files, etc. I can get up to 2 MBps transfer speed. This is partly due to the fact that in modern cable setups, more and more routing is done on the neighborhood level ('micro-routing' and many slow routers -- MSR). If everyone gets a high speed connection like this, the Internet will run a lot faster. And as soon as providers realize more small routers are better than a huge few, things should improve.
We should go back to the oldest currency known to man -- teeth! We could call it e-teeth. We would send our teeth in a little plastic bag where we would have it stored and converted into electronic teeth, suitable for worldwide Internet distribution.
There was a Dilbert epsiode (when the series was airing on UPN) about this. Dilbet had engineered a high-protein plant, and, as a bonus, the "meat" which came off a vine was cubic and thus was able to be stacked and saved space. Dilbert reasoned this would be a cure for world hunger, as the plant could grow in not so good conditions.
This just serves to remind me that we actually live in an as-crazy world where fiction and reality have no contrasts.
Re:Curiosity killed the cat
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Star In A Jar
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Silly, curiosity didn't kill the cat -- that damn Shrodinger's box did!
They've been able to do this for awhile now -- with the wide adoption of digital cable. Not only can they tell what channel you're on, but each box collects information about your viewing habits (and not just on premium services). The same bandwidth (around 800 MHz) which brings your RR also allows your cable boxes to be addressable on the subscriber level.
In addition, I was quite upset with my own cable company (Insight Communications in Columbus, OH), because when the guy came to install RoadRunner he configured a proxy which would collect URLs from your browsing habits, and then use targeted advertising on the company's homepage. A further look at the terms of service revealed that these cable companies are only limited by the various Cable acts, which allow them to collect any information they want and not tell anyone as long as they don't share it with other companies. This means they can monitor your web usage, and your TV viewing habits to build a complete profile of who you are.
Obviously there needs to be some other restrictions placed on these companies -- who are shaping up to be the biggest spys in commercial history.
This is really a great idea. Instead of the tradional model of buying products, we should donate to the programmers themselves as long as they're doing their job. In this way, if they get lazy and, say, delay a release or have a serious bug in a news version, we take away some of their money.
We aren't tied to the ancient x86 architecture because of legacy, we're tied to it because of manufacture contracts with x86's owner -- Intel. It's the industry, not software which is holding things up for cross-platform capabilities. Bring in a company with Intel's power and reach and we might get somewhere, but another emulator or translator isn't going to make a difference.
Everything is a series of litte steps which are so simple they make sense. This is why computers will be able to solve all of the world's problems, right?
They are renting space in hermetically sealed rooms capable of withstanding a one Kiloton explosion, electro-magnetic "pulse bombs", electronic eavesdropping and chemical and biological warfare.
How many of their clients' customers will still be able to access their wonderfully protected web sites over a crippled global or national Internet? Let alone how many will be alive after a one kiloton explosion or a biological weapons attack?
Yes, their site will be up busy humming away deep underground while the rest of the world is in chaos, not caring about potential lost commerce from "Scottish Windows" or if they can order new cellular service from "BTCellnet".
The Internet is a distributed system which relies on having enough nodes on average operational than not. An atomic blast or a heavy war-time attack is designed for distributed destruction of a country's infrastructure. Although the original IP network was designed by the military, it still is no match for war. Although packets are supposed to take alternate routes, in reality they end up following the exact same route (do a traceroute) every single time. This might change with IPv6, but probably not because most companies don't want to hassle with making sure their configurations support multiple routing schemes and that their 'dynamic' routing isn't just really static with values changed.
The point is not much will be working, except for those sealed away sites, and those who will be able to access the Internet will have far more important things to worry about. Almost all commercial systems fail during times of serious war -- this includes the commercial Internet.
Well, many programs do types of 'port scans' to look for certain services to connect to. For example, Gnutella clients routinly scan several class C networks looking for other nodes within the same netblock (as these should be closer to localhost). In fact, I think the portscan is a very useful method in IP. Unfortunatly, it's misused, and as a result often is abused.
A good metaphor for port scanning would be going up and knocking on every door in the neighborhood to see if people are home. There is nothing illegal about that. It may irritate people if you go do it every 5 minutes, or do it during dinner (prime time), but it isn't illegal at all. If you're offering a service, then you are offering it. It's visible. If you don't have it secured, then that's your own fault -- anyone who can be broken into using a simple nmap and a vist to the local script kiddie exploit page doesn't have security at all, and is just using the pathetic execuse of a portscan as an attack, in which case, unfortunatly, it actually is.
It doesn't matter anyway if we make portscans 'illegal', because they will still be done. DoS is technically illegal, but people still do it. All that article was to be was annoying lawyer rhetoric and unsubstatinated arguments.
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>serious companies? computers that aren't CE >certified aren't even allowed in an incorporated >business (u.s. only, i think). no, it's not the >best price, but if my racks are full and i need >to fit 5 more machines in a closet or spare >cubicle, i can now.
Serious companies who are large enough have their own certification system. In fact, we have our own hardware department who is responsible for system configurations and testing of new hardware and the locking of hardware components.
It isn't economical to rely on a single 3rd party entity to do all your servicing and who's hardware isn't an open standard, as in the case of many rack systems with custom motherboards.
>sure, but if people are busy actually doing work >and a machine goes down, try getting warranty >service on a non-CE or homebrew machine.
First, our machines are not 'homebrew', but this has been addressed in the previous paragraph. Second, large companies don't need warranties because they have their own service departments. We can do the work oursevles faster, for a cheaper cost (components + our real labour), and without dealing with 3rd party manufactures or service contractors. These companies always have a huge service cost because they have overhead as well to support. We just break even, because we don't charge premiums on our own services.
Components are very easy to come by. When we have a new spec system, we order several of the discrete components as used in the system for off-hand use. This way, if something goes bad we just swap it for another part.
This is how all companies like ours work. It would be very foolish to be dealing with RMA numbers, service centers, shipping of servers, etc. when all we would need to do is replace a part. This is in part why we have our own hardware specifications and standards.
They appear to be quite a good spec too, PIII-600mhz 128mb RAM, 17GB HD.
Good spec? Whenever we replace servers, our current default is a dual PIII 1 GHz with 1 GB of ram. 128 MB of ram isn't even good for serving static web pages. And that price of $1700 is outrageous for the specs (I get the feeling what we're really paying for is the 1/4").
Pre-built rack systems are always more expensive, this is why serious companies order kits and standard micro-ATX motherboards and build themselves (easily replaceable, locked and open hardware config, etc., etc.). This is why VA Linux was nothing more than a buzz word. This company will be good to impress your friends over at Mom & Pop co-hosting, but for serious applications the price, proprietary hardware, and specs don't make sense.
And, my god, the heat! 180 servers in one rack!? They should probably subtract a few from that number (for good measure, as they're certain to die) as the center starts to heat up like a tomahawk.
Ok, I hear their arguments about lockin' up criminals and the such (when they are the ones who should really be locked up). They don't fly, because this isn't what the system's actual purpose is anyways. Can anyone tell me honestly they believe the 100% honest police want to use a video camera system spying on the public for "checking faces"?
This really ticks me off because in my own city (Columbus, Ohio), the corrupt Columbus Public Police Department is also going to implement a similar system. This is the same police department which is run by the bigot Cheif Jackson and has been under Federal investigation for such things as racial beatings. The point is that although some good police departments may be able to use the technology for a slightly good purpose, what happens if it falls into the hands of creeps like these?
There has also been the argument that as long as you're in public, someone can take your picture and has full rights to it. I'm sorry, but that's just not correct. This is why the media has to obtain permission to TAKE YOUR PICTURE. Suddenly, the police are exempt from this. They can take anyone's picture and not tell a soul. Since your picture belongs to you (it's your body, isn't it?) they are steeling when they run it through their system and use it for their purposes. If a model gets paid for her picture, why can't you? Why has this right been taken away selectively when you're dealing with the police?
Another good point is the police must have probable cause for obtaining any evidence or doing any types of personal checks. This was made to protect the privacy of citizens and to eliminate the ability of the police to do things like "Check 'em out." to try to get information on someone for a friend, or a favor for a favor type things. You can't just go digging into someone's personal records for no reason, which is exactly what this system does. By converse, if you are not a match, they know you don't have a record == invasion of your privacy.
It's sad that our privacy is being taken away, and there is no one there to stand up for it. Instead, we have people believing what they are told, including the fact that the government owns you, your image, and your life. When will people realize that they, indeed, have personal and certain fundamental rights?
This from the same guy who uses the word "Links" (the game) and "Links" interchangeably.
/.
Did he really think dye would work? Why would anyone think of dye for anything other than fabric?
Although, this hello kitty gameboy on his site looks "super" cool!
Please, no more Geocities links on
Eve, an eavesdropper listening to their conversation, requires Alice's original string of photons in order to make head or tail of this exchange.
But what about if Eve also intercepts the "agreement" photon string and compares it to the ones she has sampled? She would be able to reconstruct the key, although she never really sampled it and thus violated QM principles.
Should Eve adopt the so-called "bucket-brigade" strategy--to intercept and resend photons as quickly as she can--she will still give her presence away. The uncertainty principle dictates that Eve cannot copy Alice's photons exactly.
She can't copy them *exactly*, but to a very good degree limited by the specifications of her equipment. She will never be able to copy them 100%, but 99.99999999999% is very possible and very legal under QM rules. So, for example, if Eve was using a very sophisticated method of reading and sending photons, and Alice and Bob's method was only slightly less sophisticated, Eve would be able to succesfully crack the communication by fooling the two into thinking the photons were authentic, when in reality they differed only slightly by an unmeasurable amount, and thus for all intents and purposes were logically the same, but not physically identical. In order to really tell one photon from another, you have to have a measurable wide margin. When they get so close together that each seems as if they are the same, for our purposes they are the same. You'd have to have infinite (uncertainty principle impossibility) resolution in order to tell two very similiar photons apart. So the same very secure "law" is actually a two-edged sword.
Just because it's impossible to "directly" crack a communication doesn't mean its not uncrackable and quantum laws of the universe can't save it either. It doesn't take into considerations things like equipment sensitivity, and other real world things like that which go beyond how it would ideally work, or how it would work on paper. Heck, if someone really wanted the information, they could kidnap and force the people to admit it. That's crackable as far as I'm concerned, which leads me to my next point: if it's written down, known by someone, or even happened, there are always was of "cracking" the secrecy.
I don't see what's so bad about it. I'm a MSDN member too, and I find it quite convient to be able to use a universal login for all microsoft sites.
Even if they weren't using passport they would still require you to submit all your personal info and create a new account.
This method is one of convience for the end user. It's nothing more and if you have a problem with giving out your company address (you do say you are an MSDN member for your job, didn't you), you have real problems.
Otherwise, I guess you could go hide in a corner and not come out. This would solve all the problems of your online privacy.
Last mile has nothing to do with it. It isn't that companies can't afford last mile, it's that last mile is very difficult, in many areas -- technical, legal, and political.
Laying fiber in utility trenches is easy. Even laying it in the ocean is easy. But what isn't easy is translating the huge bandwidth of optical to a last mile solution. You can't run fiber to consumers, because most people have homes which are years old. Copper can't handle it, which is the whole reason for fiber. Companies better understand a shortage of fat pipes is a minor problem compared to the giant barrier which exists between communications providers and their customers.
I think we're in the same situation the cable companies were in awhile ago. They spent millions building their citywide infrastructure, only to not be able to service customers because the cost of running a line through walls and drilling through outer-structures was too high and too risky. Dwellings weren't ready, but the network was.
This began to change when major home builders began running cable as a standard and cable companies started working with builders to ensure they had that vital last mile access.
This is the same thing. We were all worried about saturating the national backbones that we forgot about connecting people up to actually pay for that access. Now we're suffering because we can't afford our own network we built for a different, albeit related problem.
The solution is first to establish an industry standard fiber specification for consumer last- mile deployment. Then, communications companies should partner with builders in service areas to ensure new developments will include domestic wiring and residential areas will include all vital components (switching, QoS, etc.). This way, all someone will need to do is purchase a modem, call up their local ISP, and say "Turn me on!". The most costly part of last mile -- the service call and installation will be avoided.
Currently, the industry has this hacked together with pseudo-solutions (Cable & DSL). Cable is leverging the Cable companies' solved problem and DSL is using the even more distributed POTs, however technical issues have limited development and forced this out as a solution. Cable will never be a solution due to the downstream nature of TV. Cable has wide availability, currently has good service, but is limited, and DSL has low availability, poor service, but is not limited and has high medium distribution. This is exactly why these things will never change.
What we need is companies which think forward. Is there a new development building in your service area? Go talk to the developers and make sure you have that critical component -- the home wiring --in place.
However, this is not new. If you think of the Internet as another utility which must make its way into the home, you'll soon understand our situation. Electricity even suffered the same way. There were huge power plants with giant capacites and wires were stretched at a rate unseen before, yet consumers didn't have access. Last mile was missing. However, after the regular building cycle (wherein the average life of most homes -- due to fire, destruction, etc. expired) when new homes began to use wiring, consumer access soared.
The same can be said with fiber. Time will only tell.
I don't hold them in high regard because they aren't doing anything novel. Most think they are all powerful gods because they can install a network card and run cable from the wall. Some of the more experienced run fancy shell scripts, but that's about it. They come in with pompus attitudes and move my stuff around in my office without care, all to get the job done so they can go back downstairs and play Quake.
Meanwhile, I'm the one producing a product which sells and provides the MONEY for their paycheck. Although I value their importance as a service which can be thought of as analgous to a custodian, I'm not going to walk around with plastic liners on my feet just so they will have less work to do. They're paid to clean up messes if and when they arise. Sorry if you people have to actually DO something.
And as for a reformat, any IT who reformats my drive with the recent build and code, will be fired. Sorry. They're not important, and can easily be replaced. My boss won't care about their pathetic excuse ("I'm too lazy and don't like him enough to fix it.") -- he'll ask who lost the 6 months of work and write the pink slip.
However, I never call them because I fix problems myself (unless the problem is network, etc.). I have heard co-workers call them and the stories of how they come in and are extremly abusive, especially to those who aren't technical users. This is ironic because the only difference is they have read "Unix For Dummies" or another associated 'cookbook'.
So don't worry. The ones who know a little bit more than the Unix command line won't be calling you and I'm sure they run a beast of a system do to 'troubleshooting -- although if you want to call your method of reimaging troubleshooting at all.
Remember what you were hired for -- for us. So don't bitch when you have to *actually* be challenged by your job. You still get the same wage whatever the problem is, so the company could care less either way as well.
Well, I'm not that old but I imagine you had some fun times!
God I love those days :
"8K Bytes RAM in 16 Chips!"
A penny a k? I'm no fan of spam, as I do get a lot it, but as you admitted in your self-gratificating "couple hundred bucks a month" speil, e-mail filters almost completly solve the problem.
The next thing you'll be saying is telemarketers should pay you money for using YOUR PERSONAL PHONE, for the money it cost you on your phone bill because you were talking with them for a few seconds, some money for rent to have a place to keep the phone, money for food for you to have the energy to pick up the phone and talk, etc., etc.
I'm sorry, but if you have a reachable e-mail address, you would be paying the same amount of money having e-mail if you got spam or not. Network bandwidth is completly free for end users, and companies aren't exactly suffering over spam bandwidth with their enflated premiums and oversold pipes.
Anyone who doesn't have the two seconds to install a mail filter or press delete is butt lazy, and someone who wants to get payed for sitting on their ass and whining about paying for e-mail and hardware they would already have regardless is adding greed to their lazieness.
We're always going to have spam because we live in a capitalist economy. People will always try to sell you something. And most spammers do pay for bandwidth (having a co-hosted mail server is free!?). In many ways, stopping businesses from contacting you with all this consumer rights BS actually hurts the economy. Pretty soon people's vision will be so holy that there will be a charge for looking at advertisements in the local grocery store.
The point is there is no charge for asking "Do you want to buy this?" or "Can I have your money?" which is really all that spam is. Simply reply "No, I don't." or take the default approach and press delete. Your computer is not a forum, however much you want it to be, and people do have an unabridged right to contact you, however annoying their message may be.
Live with it. It goes both ways, and its there for a much more important reason than this. Don't destroy free speech because you are lazy.
This just prooves once again that Canada understands the value of the Internet. One of the things that I noticed while in Canada was the amazing knowledge of the average-connected user. In the US, most people with Intenet access are reserved to e-mailing and Instant messaging, usually using AOL.
However, in Canada, most people online have their own web page, which confirms the fact that Canada has the highest rate of personal domain resgistration per cap. In fact, most Canadians embrace the Internet, and are more connected than ever, utilizing it's true form.
It certianly is a great idea to connect and entire country. Especially the following:
Recommendation 1.1: All communities should be linked to national broadband networks via a high-speed, high-capacity and scalable transport link. This link should be capable of supporting an aggregate of 1.5 megabits per second symmetrical to each end user, as well as support a full range of higher bandwidth requirements to all users and institutions regardless of location.
They're going to offer 1.5 mbps up/down to every person. This is fantastic, much better than what any broadband provider in the states is able to do.
Clearly, Canada understands the value of an open public Internet which is not subject to any one organization or company and is controlled and owned by the people. I just wish Dubya and other politicians would realize the benefits of this ~ Canada is just looking too good with its free WORKING public healthcare, public broadband, and anti-DMCA type consumer protection laws.
Was there any *real* cause for concern? No. Was there any chance of someone actually exploiting a SETI client to gain control? Probably not. I really don't think those in industrial espionage automatically would look for a SETI client as a means to gain entry into a system.
Mostly because there are much more conventional ways, and the SETI client is good only for sending and receiving data.
Of course, this is management's job. They have to look like they're constantly doing something. If its attacking harmless, albeit useless applications, or harping on people for installing screensaves, they have a job to do.
It's true that the machines do belong to the company, and equally they can do whatever they want with them. But giving someone a computer implies a little personal freedom. I also don't like the fact that many IT departments think they are god today. The IT department and the computers are meant to support the users, not the other way around.
If I want to install software on my work machine, and I think it's required in the slighest, I won't let anyone from IT tell me otherwise. If I want to make it as complicated as possible to troubleshoot, that's fine, because when I need troubleshooting IT is there and they're getting paid for it. I don't care about making their job easier.
Even software which isn't really required but is more or less classified along the line of 'fun' still should be allowed, provided it is not very, very dangerous to run. This helps boost spirits and encourages employees to work together. For example, I read in that report those who used the SETI clients were in a compitition. I'm sure it was just a fun thing to do in thier freetime. But now, how has their attitude changed now that they have been investigated for installing software which looks for alien life? It will probably not only affect their performance, but their general feeling for the company as well. And for what? In the long term companies who have a no tolerance, no sense policy like this end up only hurting themselves.
This is really cool, but as others have mentioned, I didn't find any info on how they did this. How did they deal with attenuation in the fibers? What kind of network structure did they use which can handle at theortical maximium 1 Gbps from each connected home? Are they sharing bandwidth like cable modems do, or does each person receive a dedicated connection with a personal router, etc.?
How about stringing that very delicate fiber over long distances? What about when there are breaks? Fiber is almost impossible to put back together from two ends, as it has to be 1/4 wavelength+ or scattering will result in an increased error ratio.
I also don't know why they're dissing cable. Cable is awesome, at times much better than DSL. I don't know why he thinks a cable modem only gets around 2.5 kb/s in real life performance. I have a cable modem and can get up to 2.5 Mbps download and over 500 kbps upload. You should also note cable modems ARE capable of high upstream bandwidth. My modem, right now for example, has a maximum bitrate of over 2 MB/s, with a power level of 50 db. However, this is limited at the provider and through the modem via QoS.
The Napster test was equally stupid; everyone knows 28.8 users select 'cable' for whatever reason. These programs should really report the average real bandwidth instead of allowing user selections, which are for the most part pointless.
Also: for the person who was talking about the general slowness of the net and the fact that it won't matter how fast a connection you have -- you'll still only get a max of 500 kbps at even a very good site: I've got news. If, for example, we all had Gigabit connections the net would run MUCH faster. My neighboor also has a cable modem, and if I connect directly to his modem to send files, etc. I can get up to 2 MBps transfer speed. This is partly due to the fact that in modern cable setups, more and more routing is done on the neighborhood level ('micro-routing' and many slow routers -- MSR). If everyone gets a high speed connection like this, the Internet will run a lot faster. And as soon as providers realize more small routers are better than a huge few, things should improve.
We should go back to the oldest currency known to man -- teeth! We could call it e-teeth. We would send our teeth in a little plastic bag where we would have it stored and converted into electronic teeth, suitable for worldwide Internet distribution.
There was a Dilbert epsiode (when the series was airing on UPN) about this. Dilbet had engineered a high-protein plant, and, as a bonus, the "meat" which came off a vine was cubic and thus was able to be stacked and saved space. Dilbert reasoned this would be a cure for world hunger, as the plant could grow in not so good conditions.
This just serves to remind me that we actually live in an as-crazy world where fiction and reality have no contrasts.
Silly, curiosity didn't kill the cat -- that damn Shrodinger's box did!
What's wrong with looking at her browsing history? You don't need a 3rd party program to do that...
They've been able to do this for awhile now -- with the wide adoption of digital cable. Not only can they tell what channel you're on, but each box collects information about your viewing habits (and not just on premium services). The same bandwidth (around 800 MHz) which brings your RR also allows your cable boxes to be addressable on the subscriber level.
In addition, I was quite upset with my own cable company (Insight Communications in Columbus, OH), because when the guy came to install RoadRunner he configured a proxy which would collect URLs from your browsing habits, and then use targeted advertising on the company's homepage. A further look at the terms of service revealed that these cable companies are only limited by the various Cable acts, which allow them to collect any information they want and not tell anyone as long as they don't share it with other companies. This means they can monitor your web usage, and your TV viewing habits to build a complete profile of who you are.
Obviously there needs to be some other restrictions placed on these companies -- who are shaping up to be the biggest spys in commercial history.
that the LA times site has two adds that pop-up when I clicked the story. And they're complaining about commerical advertisement?
This is really a great idea. Instead of the tradional model of buying products, we should donate to the programmers themselves as long as they're doing their job. In this way, if they get lazy and, say, delay a release or have a serious bug in a news version, we take away some of their money.
Starving programmers! What a novel idea!
We aren't tied to the ancient x86 architecture because of legacy, we're tied to it because of manufacture contracts with x86's owner -- Intel. It's the industry, not software which is holding things up for cross-platform capabilities. Bring in a company with Intel's power and reach and we might get somewhere, but another emulator or translator isn't going to make a difference.
Everything is a series of litte steps which are so simple they make sense. This is why computers will be able to solve all of the world's problems, right?
Defeating their own purpose:
They are renting space in hermetically sealed rooms capable of withstanding a one Kiloton explosion, electro-magnetic "pulse bombs", electronic eavesdropping and chemical and biological warfare.
How many of their clients' customers will still be able to access their wonderfully protected web sites over a crippled global or national Internet? Let alone how many will be alive after a one kiloton explosion or a biological weapons attack?
Yes, their site will be up busy humming away deep underground while the rest of the world is in chaos, not caring about potential lost commerce from "Scottish Windows" or if they can order new cellular service from "BTCellnet".
The Internet is a distributed system which relies on having enough nodes on average operational than not. An atomic blast or a heavy war-time attack is designed for distributed destruction of a country's infrastructure. Although the original IP network was designed by the military, it still is no match for war. Although packets are supposed to take alternate routes, in reality they end up following the exact same route (do a traceroute) every single time. This might change with IPv6, but probably not because most companies don't want to hassle with making sure their configurations support multiple routing schemes and that their 'dynamic' routing isn't just really static with values changed.
The point is not much will be working, except for those sealed away sites, and those who will be able to access the Internet will have far more important things to worry about. Almost all commercial systems fail during times of serious war -- this includes the commercial Internet.
Well, many programs do types of 'port scans' to look for certain services to connect to. For example, Gnutella clients routinly scan several class C networks looking for other nodes within the same netblock (as these should be closer to localhost). In fact, I think the portscan is a very useful method in IP. Unfortunatly, it's misused, and as a result often is abused.
A good metaphor for port scanning would be going up and knocking on every door in the neighborhood to see if people are home. There is nothing illegal about that. It may irritate people if you go do it every 5 minutes, or do it during dinner (prime time), but it isn't illegal at all. If you're offering a service, then you are offering it. It's visible. If you don't have it secured, then that's your own fault -- anyone who can be broken into using a simple nmap and a vist to the local script kiddie exploit page doesn't have security at all, and is just using the pathetic execuse of a portscan as an attack, in which case, unfortunatly, it actually is.
It doesn't matter anyway if we make portscans 'illegal', because they will still be done. DoS is technically illegal, but people still do it. All that article was to be was annoying lawyer rhetoric and unsubstatinated arguments.