I'm guessing from your tone that you would find this comparable to a theif going door to door at night, jiggling doornobs to find an unlocked house.
I don't particularly like the analogy.
I cannot think of a legitimate reason to be jiggling peoples' doorknobs in the night. If you're on my porch, trying to open my door, I'm going to have you arrested.
On the other hand, if you're typing a URL into my website, you're... visiting my website. I couldn't possibly object.
This opens a gray area, though. Suppose you start 'guessing' URLs, trying to find something you think might be up there, but that I'm 'hiding' by putting up on a non-published URL. (And now suppose the URL is something like an old IIS attack that basically amounted to a lot of/../../ sort of trickery.)
At this point, are you jiggling doorknobs or viewing a published webpage? I think it's both, which is what makes this a tricky issue.
This is something I've worried could happen for a long time.
With my current Internet connection, I can go anywhere. I can connect to Slashdot on port 80. I can ssh into my server. I can view Microsoft's webpage. I can view Red Hat's page. In short, I can pretty much connect to anything on the Internet I want.
What's to stop ISPs from restricting this? I don't think it's going to happen, but I'm not so confident that it will never happen. I believe some markets, such as web access on cell phones, already do what I'm describing.
You might have one monthly access fee to be able to hit certain webpages. You can get CNN, Yahoo, and Hotmail for one low fee! For another $10 a month, you get Slashdot, Microsoft, and Google. And for only another $25 a month, you can go anywhere on the Internet that you want!
I don't see any evidence that it's happening today. But has anyone else worried that this might, one day, be the case?
I don't have the lawbooks in front of me, but aren't there some places in which exceeding the speed limit by more than 15 m.p.h. is legally considered a felony? The liberal in me says that even if you kill someone, you should still be able to pick the leader of the country. The main argument I can see there is that violent felons won't "think right," to which I ask: what about those who are mentally handicapped?
non-citizens voting
I'm not sure I like this one. I'm generally pro-rights, but they're not citizens. But they do live in the country. So I don't know.
Nitpicky, but in a literal interpretation, they have to conduct background checks before they can work on the code.
Nowhere (in what you've pasted, but it wouldn't be logical to put it somewhere else) does it say that anything has to be done with it: they could find that the developer has a lengthy history of fraud, and still let him work on it. They did was required: they conducted a background check before he worked on it.
Of course, no one in corporate America would take advantage of loopholes in laws.
We completely blocked popups. For a while. I've gotten several today in Firefox. I think it's now going to be an arms race between pop-up makers and pop-up closers.
We've written spam filters that block spam. This fueled an even bigger arms race between spam senders and spam deleters.
Are we going to do the same with 'floaters'? I'm not sure they're going to be as easy to block, since they are essentially a part of the page content.
I think it's time we started moving away from technological approaches that lead to arms races, where we just end up with even more irritating spam (misspelled, randomly spaced) and still have popups (they just use nasty tricks in JavaScript).
How about we move to a new approach? I've just naturally done this for a while. When I go to your site, and can't see it because some huge thing starts floating across the screen, I go to another site. I'm not going to try to figure out how to close the thing. I'm not going to wait for it to go away. I'm going to leave your site. And if it happens enough, I'm eventually going to stop going to your site, since I can't ever see it.
If more people simply refused to put up with this crap, maybe we wouldn't have problems. They might be making more money off these irritating ads, but the increased cost per ad, times the 0 visitors they'd get, wouldn't equal what they got with less annoying ads.
Technology might buy us some time. But I think it's time we looked to something other than technological hacks to solve this sort of problem.
I think part of the point is that, at 100 Mbps, the 'slowest point' is now your NIC, or, more likely, the server you're trying to get.
BTW: MBps = megabytes, Mbps = megabits, no? In your case it looks like a typo, but I see some replies that look to not know the difference. There's a bit of a difference.
I already ran my own (software) firewall that did both ingress and egress filtering, along with running Firefox as a web browser.
SP2 hasn't done anything noticeable for me, except that the wireless network dialogs are a lot nicer.
I'll admit that the firewall drove me nuts for a bit: it was always popping up, telling me it was doing me a favor by blocking legitimate traffic. I ended up turning it off, but only because I had my own firewall already.
When I find myself using IE (infrequently), I do find that it'll now occasionally put a bar across the top informing me that it's barred various malware from installing itself. Between this and the firewall, SP2 is a very good thing for the average computer user, and is of little harm to those of us who already found something to do it.
I'm in my first year at college, and have noticed the same thing the article's pointing out.
We all get a phone number with local service for free. Long distance is pretty cheap.
I've never paid more than a couple dollars a month. (I'm thinking most of it's in administrative fees, too.) If it's a local call, I use the landline: it's free. (The college absorbs the cost, technically. To me, though, it's free.)
But the reason I use my cell phone so much (besides the fact that my parents foot the bill *grin*) is that cell phone providers offer so much that my school's phone service doesn't.
All of the US is a 'local' call as far as my cell carrier is provided. So, unless I know I've used up most of my minutes, I use my cell phone for any long distance calls, because there's no additional cost.
The "Free Nights and Weekends" thing is a huge draw, too; late-night calls are always done on the cell phone.
I still have a landline phone, though. Some don't. It's especially great on campus, as intracampus calls are free as well.
It really shouldn't be surprising that fewer people are using landline phones. At least on my campus, they haven't even tried to keep pace with cell phone plans.
I live on campus and have a 100 Mbps Ethernet drop into the school's backbones (primarily a T3). I'd say it qualifies as "broadband," but faster and without upload caps.
I thought this was pretty much the case on any college campus? All resident students get Internet access?
So if you're falling over drunk, and have to get home, you can drive?
I know, you can help getting drunk (mostly), but you can't help getting old. But my point's the same: juts because you "have to" do something doesn't necessarily mean you should be able to.
I don't think it should be solely age-based. It's possibly you'll be able to drive just as fine when you're 95, while I'll turn 70 and not be able to drive without running small children over.
I think the solution is to make people retake the drivers' test every time their license comes up for renewal.
ban CB radios from all delivery vehicles and Police cars
Ordinarily, I wouldn't care, but this is Slashdot, home to many a geek. So I feel compelled to point this out.
CB radio is a very specific thing, comprised of 40 channels in the 26-27 MHz range. CB's common with truckers. Some police cars may have CB, but, say, police dispatch, is not on CB.
People tend to use "CB radio" to refer to any sort of 2-way radio, when 95% of the time it's incorrect.
It'd be like calling any data flowing over a wire "10BaseT." We know what you mean, but you might actually be referring to a fiber-optic ATM line.
"2-way radio" is the general method of referring to what you used "CB" for.
Netscape obtains blacklists of scam and spam sites which will be denied access to ActiveX and cookies.
This idea has some merit, but
Those on the blacklist might sue, and possibly even have a valid case.
I don't like the idea of a third-party dictating what sites can and can't do in my browser.
It won't work. As soon as badsite1.com is blacklisted, they'll move over to badsite2.com. True, this becomes cost-prohibitive, but it's only $6.49 worth of cost-prohibitiveness.
Are you really "focusing on security" if you still allow the same 'exploits' unless the site is on a blacklist? Isn't the 'right' approach to blacklist everything unless you whitelist it?
Am I misreading it, or does population drop around 1950? Not as significantly as in, say, 1350, but if you look closely, there's a "v" in the near-vertical slope.
A lot of posts mention that this is actually a common customs practice.
You're missing this line from the letter: Several more minutes passed, and then the supervisor appeared. He had looked over my documents and said, "Sir, I'm sorry, you are a Platinum AAdvantage member and shouldn't have been asked this question."
Generally, compliance with customs laws applies whether or not you're a Platinum AAdvantage member. Therefore, it seems that one of two things, both alarming, is going on: a.) American Airlines totally lied, and this was not a TSA policy at all, or b.) American Airlines completely ignores TSA policies for its more 'valuable' customers.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm guessing from your tone that you would find this comparable to a theif going door to door at night, jiggling doornobs to find an unlocked house.
/../../ sort of trickery.)
I don't particularly like the analogy.
I cannot think of a legitimate reason to be jiggling peoples' doorknobs in the night. If you're on my porch, trying to open my door, I'm going to have you arrested.
On the other hand, if you're typing a URL into my website, you're... visiting my website. I couldn't possibly object.
This opens a gray area, though. Suppose you start 'guessing' URLs, trying to find something you think might be up there, but that I'm 'hiding' by putting up on a non-published URL. (And now suppose the URL is something like an old IIS attack that basically amounted to a lot of
At this point, are you jiggling doorknobs or viewing a published webpage? I think it's both, which is what makes this a tricky issue.
This is something I've worried could happen for a long time.
With my current Internet connection, I can go anywhere. I can connect to Slashdot on port 80. I can ssh into my server. I can view Microsoft's webpage. I can view Red Hat's page. In short, I can pretty much connect to anything on the Internet I want.
What's to stop ISPs from restricting this? I don't think it's going to happen, but I'm not so confident that it will never happen. I believe some markets, such as web access on cell phones, already do what I'm describing.
You might have one monthly access fee to be able to hit certain webpages. You can get CNN, Yahoo, and Hotmail for one low fee! For another $10 a month, you get Slashdot, Microsoft, and Google. And for only another $25 a month, you can go anywhere on the Internet that you want!
I don't see any evidence that it's happening today. But has anyone else worried that this might, one day, be the case?
Do you need a barcode on your face for it to work?
Thanks for sgiwing us the evidence.
Never mind the "Do we trust diebold" conspiracy theories
It's not a question of trusting Diebold not to hack the election; it's a question of trusting others not to hack the election using Diebold software.
"Restoration of voting rights for former felons"
I don't have the lawbooks in front of me, but aren't there some places in which exceeding the speed limit by more than 15 m.p.h. is legally considered a felony? The liberal in me says that even if you kill someone, you should still be able to pick the leader of the country. The main argument I can see there is that violent felons won't "think right," to which I ask: what about those who are mentally handicapped?
non-citizens voting
I'm not sure I like this one. I'm generally pro-rights, but they're not citizens. But they do live in the country. So I don't know.
proof of identification
Yes! How do we not require this?
Nitpicky, but in a literal interpretation, they have to conduct background checks before they can work on the code.
Nowhere (in what you've pasted, but it wouldn't be logical to put it somewhere else) does it say that anything has to be done with it: they could find that the developer has a lengthy history of fraud, and still let him work on it. They did was required: they conducted a background check before he worked on it.
Of course, no one in corporate America would take advantage of loopholes in laws.
We completely blocked popups. For a while. I've gotten several today in Firefox. I think it's now going to be an arms race between pop-up makers and pop-up closers.
We've written spam filters that block spam. This fueled an even bigger arms race between spam senders and spam deleters.
Are we going to do the same with 'floaters'? I'm not sure they're going to be as easy to block, since they are essentially a part of the page content.
I think it's time we started moving away from technological approaches that lead to arms races, where we just end up with even more irritating spam (misspelled, randomly spaced) and still have popups (they just use nasty tricks in JavaScript).
How about we move to a new approach? I've just naturally done this for a while. When I go to your site, and can't see it because some huge thing starts floating across the screen, I go to another site. I'm not going to try to figure out how to close the thing. I'm not going to wait for it to go away. I'm going to leave your site. And if it happens enough, I'm eventually going to stop going to your site, since I can't ever see it.
If more people simply refused to put up with this crap, maybe we wouldn't have problems. They might be making more money off these irritating ads, but the increased cost per ad, times the 0 visitors they'd get, wouldn't equal what they got with less annoying ads.
Technology might buy us some time. But I think it's time we looked to something other than technological hacks to solve this sort of problem.
What's the point of 100Mbps though?
I think part of the point is that, at 100 Mbps, the 'slowest point' is now your NIC, or, more likely, the server you're trying to get.
BTW: MBps = megabytes, Mbps = megabits, no? In your case it looks like a typo, but I see some replies that look to not know the difference. There's a bit of a difference.
I installed SP2 a couple months ago.
I already ran my own (software) firewall that did both ingress and egress filtering, along with running Firefox as a web browser.
SP2 hasn't done anything noticeable for me, except that the wireless network dialogs are a lot nicer.
I'll admit that the firewall drove me nuts for a bit: it was always popping up, telling me it was doing me a favor by blocking legitimate traffic. I ended up turning it off, but only because I had my own firewall already.
When I find myself using IE (infrequently), I do find that it'll now occasionally put a bar across the top informing me that it's barred various malware from installing itself. Between this and the firewall, SP2 is a very good thing for the average computer user, and is of little harm to those of us who already found something to do it.
Time to get a new cell phone provider!
Because of their website?
I'm willing to bet that the guy in charge of coding the backend for their site is not the same guy setting up the telephone network.
I'm afraid I had to block access to my server from Slashdot. I don't have enough bandwidth for the onslaught.
CoralCache cache to the rescue!
Completely off-topic, but:
www.kiwilyrics.com - a wiki for lyrics
Do you know how long I've been saying, "Someone should make a Wiki for song lyrics?"
I'm in my first year at college, and have noticed the same thing the article's pointing out.
We all get a phone number with local service for free. Long distance is pretty cheap.
I've never paid more than a couple dollars a month. (I'm thinking most of it's in administrative fees, too.) If it's a local call, I use the landline: it's free. (The college absorbs the cost, technically. To me, though, it's free.)
But the reason I use my cell phone so much (besides the fact that my parents foot the bill *grin*) is that cell phone providers offer so much that my school's phone service doesn't.
All of the US is a 'local' call as far as my cell carrier is provided. So, unless I know I've used up most of my minutes, I use my cell phone for any long distance calls, because there's no additional cost.
The "Free Nights and Weekends" thing is a huge draw, too; late-night calls are always done on the cell phone.
I still have a landline phone, though. Some don't. It's especially great on campus, as intracampus calls are free as well.
It really shouldn't be surprising that fewer people are using landline phones. At least on my campus, they haven't even tried to keep pace with cell phone plans.
65% have broadband
I live on campus and have a 100 Mbps Ethernet drop into the school's backbones (primarily a T3). I'd say it qualifies as "broadband," but faster and without upload caps.
I thought this was pretty much the case on any college campus? All resident students get Internet access?
Your signature sums the joke up nicely.
BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO.
So if you're falling over drunk, and have to get home, you can drive?
I know, you can help getting drunk (mostly), but you can't help getting old. But my point's the same: juts because you "have to" do something doesn't necessarily mean you should be able to.
I don't think it should be solely age-based. It's possibly you'll be able to drive just as fine when you're 95, while I'll turn 70 and not be able to drive without running small children over.
I think the solution is to make people retake the drivers' test every time their license comes up for renewal.
Of course, this costs money.
ban CB radios from all delivery vehicles and Police cars
Ordinarily, I wouldn't care, but this is Slashdot, home to many a geek. So I feel compelled to point this out.
CB radio is a very specific thing, comprised of 40 channels in the 26-27 MHz range. CB's common with truckers. Some police cars may have CB, but, say, police dispatch, is not on CB.
People tend to use "CB radio" to refer to any sort of 2-way radio, when 95% of the time it's incorrect.
It'd be like calling any data flowing over a wire "10BaseT." We know what you mean, but you might actually be referring to a fiber-optic ATM line.
"2-way radio" is the general method of referring to what you used "CB" for.
"What about in vehicle systems like OnStar?"
Thought I'd answer this question:
"Hands-free systems apparently don't help much either as they still require a driver to 'actively be part of a conversation.'"
This idea has some merit, but
Anyone else feel a bit of deja vu?
Am I misreading it, or does population drop around 1950? Not as significantly as in, say, 1350, but if you look closely, there's a "v" in the near-vertical slope.
Or is it just an illusion?
That Hitler guy is expressing his opinion, not killing people.
Come back and complain about it when he comes into power.
Porn. Lots and lots of porn.
A lot of posts mention that this is actually a common customs practice.
You're missing this line from the letter:
Several more minutes passed, and then the supervisor appeared. He
had looked over my documents and said, "Sir, I'm sorry, you are a
Platinum AAdvantage member and shouldn't have been asked this
question."
Generally, compliance with customs laws applies whether or not you're a Platinum AAdvantage member. Therefore, it seems that one of two things, both alarming, is going on:
a.) American Airlines totally lied, and this was not a TSA policy at all, or
b.) American Airlines completely ignores TSA policies for its more 'valuable' customers.
Something's not right here.