- Each website doesnt need a unique IP address. One server machine, with one IP address, can host as many sites as it's processor/memory/disk/bandwidth can handle. We're talking thousands here.
- ISP's that provide access for end-users *already* use NAT. They also already have sufficent blocks assigned to them from the RIR's to allow for the number of connections that they can support based on other limitations (channels, phone lines, bandwidth, etc).
The so-called 'running out of IP addresses' has been 'impending' for over 10 years. Most client machines running certain insecure platforms should be behind a NAT firewall anyway.
They could implement it, but the SSL certificate would only be valid for one hostname. Eg, you'd have to (s)ftp to "ftp.hostingcompany.com", not "www.yourwebsite.com". While you may (or not) be able to grok that, most likely the vast majority of their customers would be totally confused and upset, thus costing the hosting company lots of expensive(?) tech support time. Easier for them just not to bother.
If you really have data that you think that there is someone that has both the motivation to try to intercept it as you transfer it over the wire *AND* have access to the wires (either yours, the major net backbones, or your hosting company's) then your solution is to have your own server machine, which you then configure in any manner you want. If thats 'too expensive', then maybe your data isnt as valuable as you think. Also note that if someone had the motivation, breaking security at the webhost would be far easier than trying to intercept it over the wire.
What could be more fair than the Internet? Anyone that wants can start a blog on any subject in the world and voice any opinion they want to. What possible regulation would have any effect on that?
1. To wire money, you usually have to physically go to your bank and sign forms. It also has a non-trivial fee associated. No merchant is setup to receive 'wire' payments for selling merchandise on a wbsite or over the phone. "Wire" transfers come from an era where the concept of electronic payments were unheard of, and it was marketd at rich people who occasionally needed to send money in a hurry, which is why it often costs $10 - $20 to send one. Some banks even charge to receive a wire.
2. You need the bank account number of the recipient. This number can also be used to *withdraw* money from that account via the ACH.
Its more similar to paypal than to wiring money except, paypal isnt accepted as widely, paypal isnt regulated, it is internet-email specific (you can't pay for something over the phone with it), paypal itself uses the 'take money from your CC or bank account' method to make payments... I'm sure there a more differences.
I'm thinking something that would work very similarly to the existing CC system, except the *merchant* would give you some sort of number/identification, which could *only* be used to send money *to* that merchant. Heck they could post it on their website for all the world to see, because the only thing it could be used for is to send money to them.
Basically instead of you giving info (CC#) to the merchant and the merchant talking to your bank (albeit via a host of intermediaries), the merchant give you info, and you talk directly to your bank, that would both provide immediate notification (via some new system) to the recipient, as well as provide you with some sort of log number/code that you could give to the merchant that they could use to verify you paid them.
The whole Visa/MC process of paying for things electronically is a shitmess.
A far better way would be if, instead of the payER having a number that lets the payEE take money from them, would be if merchants had some sort of account ID, that a payer could use to pay money *to* the merchant. It could not be used to take money from the merchant, so it would be something that they would not need to worry about being 'stolen'. This would eliminate the security problems with CC numbers, and it would also give control back to payers - you decide if, when, and how much to pay. Both the merchant and the payer would get a transaction number, that could be used to match up a payment with an order.
If this sounds a lot like Paypal its no surprise, but people would feel a lot safer if banks were providing this service rather than a less-regulated entity. Additionally, banks could compete to provide it rather than one entity controlling the whole enchilada.
Boot only to (any OS provided by an organization or company that DOESNT try to illegally leverage its near-monopoly position to prevent anything else from existing), and leave Microshit Shista out.
The problem is that in your possibility #3, the defendant has still spent an assload of cash on attorney's fees, which he has to spend upfront before having any hope of 'winning'. And unless he both 'wins', and gets an order that the RIAA pays his attorney fees, he still 'loses', even if the RIAA doesnt win.
There are people who's wet dream would be to make all reading (or listening to music, watching a movie, etc) illegal unless you paid a fee each time to the pile of corporate middlemen that own the various authors of same (with very little of that fee, if any, going to the actual authors, of course)
I don't know what 'you' do, but my home (and office) use Free (and usually 'free' as well) software exclusively (you do know the difference between 'Free' and 'free', don't you?) - there is no Microsoft anything. I don't 'buy' packaged crapware at BestBuy or CircuitCity or anywhere else (partly becuase it pretty much always requires use of Microsoft crapware, but also because its crap anyway)
Consider the quality difference between programmers who write (on a deadline, no less) something because they 'have to', vs programmers that write something because they 'want to'.
I'll choose the latter any day, both for the principle of it, but also because it almost *is* the better tool.
FYI, it is trivial to reconfigure Ctrl-Alt-Del to do shutdown -h instead of shutdown -r. (have a look in inittab, or your distro's equivalent file)
And there is no reason not to. If the person hitting C-A-D really did want a reboot, its fairly simple for them to turn the power back on afterward. If they didnt, then the box is safely shutdown. As far as chancing an IP address, perhaps the box should use DHCP, then the colo facility can set its IP that way. (After a reboot of course, and obviously you'd need to connect in remote after that and fix the configurations of various applications that need to know the box IP address(es) such as web server vhosts, etc)
Pick an issue, any issue. Now try to claim that among all the people who claim to support that issue, they arent going to be some percentage that are assholes or jerks.
Feel free to file bug reports with both developers of FS as well as those of closed-source software. I suspect that you'll get nowhere fast in both cases if you come across as though you feel you are entitled to free bugfixes. As long as you don't, however, I suspect you'll probably see a fix a lot sooner with FS, as long as its a real bug that might be affecting someone else too.
And opposing Digital Restrictions Management is a very GOOD cause, even if it takes pissing people off (which it surely will). Did you even RTFA?
Perhaps UK cell carriers are different. If I recall correctly UK has some strange setup where someone *receiving* a call pays for it.
I have an iPhone, and I pay about $40US/mo. (Psst, I dont use AT&T).
If your friends want to use software on a PC with a souncdard, thats fine. They are plenty of ways to get free or cheap inbound number that roll into VoIP, either propreitary crap or real VoIP.
Your phone lines being crap are irrelevant. Nothing says you have to use a phone line. Use VoIP. If you use 'real' VoIP, you call a number, not a 'computer'. Now, that number may well lead to another VoIP setup, which may well 'ring' on someone's soundcard, but thats entirely up to them.
In any case, if you want to use some PC-only voice-chat that might have back doors and doesnt interoperate with anything else, and that works for you, go ahead.
And yes, I used to run an Asterisk system, which I migrated over to OpenPBX due to a specific feature I needed. And I dont use the luser GUI interface for it either, I actually write my own config files. Perhaps its a nightmare for 'some people'.
"... users use what is best and not because of its philosophy... "
BZZT - wrong - you even admit it youself : ".. entrenched consumers are with win32.."
Microsoft has used and continues to use its massive market control to shut anything else out. Most 'users' have no idea how to even determine what their choices are to 'decide what is best', because they see 'Windows is just part of the computer' - most 'average users' don't even have a comprehension as to the difference between a computer and an OS.
Some portion recognize Mac's are 'different', but unless they actually use them they don't know how.
Free Software is *still* about what you think it used to be. The problem is that various corporations have bought various politicians, and used their extensive warchest to buy the hearts and minds of the average citizen, in an attempt to make what Free Software is and was, look bad, insecure, illegal, or bad. It takes extreme measures to defend against extreme attacks. It also isnt opposed to 'just paying for your software' - Free Software doesnt mean 'not paying for it'.
Mobiles phones are an issue, to be sure. The cell carriers absolutely do NOT want you to bypass their lucrative profit-per-minute (even if you've bought a bundle of 'minutes' its still profit) and use your unlimited data plan to transmit your phone calls instead, and will use every trick they know to stop it from happening. And I don't know about the 'average crap' handsets, assuming they even have the capacity to run VoIP, barring things the carriers do to get in the way, but if you've got an iPhone, and you've taken the steps to control it yourself instead of allowing Apple to control it, there is an app called Fring, which, while far from perfect, *does* have a user-configurable SIP client.
As far as 'calling people on their computers' - I'm just baffling at that comment. Why not call them at a phone #, which they can choose how they want to work? (Some may well have an ordinary old phone line, some cell, some VoIP via proprietary protocols ringing into a shitty soundcard on a PC, some standards-based VoIP ringing into a real phone via an ATA, or whatever they want, but all irrelevant to you - all you need to know is the phone #)
"Skype" will never replace the existing phone network. Real VoIP is already starting to.
An alternative to what? To Skype? To the PSTN? Software running on a PC is always going to be a poor solution, and is far from your only option for Internet voice communication. You do NOT need some app on your PC to do VoIP. What you want is something called an ATA - its a little box that has a jack for a regular phone, and an ethernet port. They are often supplied with service such as Vonage, but are usually 'locked' down to that provider. You can also but them directly, but you will of course still need 'something else' to initiate SIP connections to. For information about real VoIP networks (both net-to-net, as well as PSTN interconnection), visit voip-info.org
Skype is closed proprietary crap. Real VoIP is about open standards and interoperability. Check out Asterisk, OpenPBX for server software. For client-end stuff, skip the PC soundcard crap and get a real ATA, even a basic Sipura SPA-2000 is better than some crap closed application running off a PC soundcard.
Seems like it would be simpler and less expensive just to print the names of the people that tickets are issued to directly on the tickets themselves. Even the airlines manage to do that. Then, if someone shows up with someone else's ticket, you can both deny them entry, and you have the option to not give that 'someone else' tickets in the future.
You need to decice wether you want an appliance that will have a very limited set of features, and which the maker will decide what you are allowed to do with it and/or the data it contains (wether its your's or data that you 'licensed'), but will make sure everything 'just works' (well, except when it doesnt - in which case you wont be able to research and correct the problem yourself because you will have no access and everything will be closed, and will instead have to rely on the vendor to fix it, assuming they arent too busy selling more or working on their next project
or
a tool that you control, for which you expect to use (and gasp!, possibly expand) your own knowledge and skills to setup, maintain, and operate, but over which you will have complete control, and no external entity (RIAA, MPAA, Govt, hackers) will have any means to dictate otherwise.
Right now both of these scenarios overlap, to some degree - one is moving more in one direction, and one in the other.
Actually, its why the average consumer isn't ready to see a computer as anything other than a toy or an 'applicance'.
Perhaps the concept of 'computer' needs to diverge - one fork will be for the appliance and toy crowd - the other will be for those that use it as a tool and actually might be bothered to RTFM and try to educate themselves..
The former need not ever bother with learning anything other than button-pushing, but when it blows up, they'll need to be prepared to spend some money to pay folk from the latter to 'make it all better'
In fact, I almost say the divergence has already happened. Microsoft is on one fork, Free Software is on the other. People from the ignorant fork will always slowly migrate to the other fork.
Those of us in that fork don't *WANT* a toy or an appliance where responsibility (and therefore control) is taken away from us. (BTW, having just seen WALL-E, there is part of that movie that would make an excellent analogy, feel free to watch it to see why)
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Luckily:
- Each website doesnt need a unique IP address. One server machine, with one IP address, can host as many sites as it's processor/memory/disk/bandwidth can handle. We're talking thousands here.
- ISP's that provide access for end-users *already* use NAT. They also already have sufficent blocks assigned to them from the RIR's to allow for the number of connections that they can support based on other limitations (channels, phone lines, bandwidth, etc).
The so-called 'running out of IP addresses' has been 'impending' for over 10 years. Most client machines running certain insecure platforms should be behind a NAT firewall anyway.
They could implement it, but the SSL certificate would only be valid for one hostname. Eg, you'd have to (s)ftp to "ftp.hostingcompany.com", not "www.yourwebsite.com". While you may (or not) be able to grok that, most likely the vast majority of their customers would be totally confused and upset, thus costing the hosting company lots of expensive(?) tech support time. Easier for them just not to bother.
If you really have data that you think that there is someone that has both the motivation to try to intercept it as you transfer it over the wire *AND* have access to the wires (either yours, the major net backbones, or your hosting company's) then your solution is to have your own server machine, which you then configure in any manner you want. If thats 'too expensive', then maybe your data isnt as valuable as you think. Also note that if someone had the motivation, breaking security at the webhost would be far easier than trying to intercept it over the wire.
What could be more fair than the Internet? Anyone that wants can start a blog on any subject in the world and voice any opinion they want to. What possible regulation would have any effect on that?
Damn. Please export your banking system to the rest of the world. :P
Is that primarily used to *pay bills*, or is it often used to make purchases over the web as well?
Some important differences:
1. To wire money, you usually have to physically go to your bank and sign forms. It also has a non-trivial fee associated. No merchant is setup to receive 'wire' payments for selling merchandise on a wbsite or over the phone. "Wire" transfers come from an era where the concept of electronic payments were unheard of, and it was marketd at rich people who occasionally needed to send money in a hurry, which is why it often costs $10 - $20 to send one. Some banks even charge to receive a wire.
2. You need the bank account number of the recipient. This number can also be used to *withdraw* money from that account via the ACH.
Its more similar to paypal than to wiring money except, paypal isnt accepted as widely, paypal isnt regulated, it is internet-email specific (you can't pay for something over the phone with it), paypal itself uses the 'take money from your CC or bank account' method to make payments... I'm sure there a more differences.
I'm thinking something that would work very similarly to the existing CC system, except the *merchant* would give you some sort of number/identification, which could *only* be used to send money *to* that merchant. Heck they could post it on their website for all the world to see, because the only thing it could be used for is to send money to them.
Basically instead of you giving info (CC#) to the merchant and the merchant talking to your bank (albeit via a host of intermediaries), the merchant give you info, and you talk directly to your bank, that would both provide immediate notification (via some new system) to the recipient, as well as provide you with some sort of log number/code that you could give to the merchant that they could use to verify you paid them.
The whole Visa/MC process of paying for things electronically is a shitmess.
A far better way would be if, instead of the payER having a number that lets the payEE take money from them, would be if merchants had some sort of account ID, that a payer could use to pay money *to* the merchant. It could not be used to take money from the merchant, so it would be something that they would not need to worry about being 'stolen'. This would eliminate the security problems with CC numbers, and it would also give control back to payers - you decide if, when, and how much to pay. Both the merchant and the payer would get a transaction number, that could be used to match up a payment with an order.
If this sounds a lot like Paypal its no surprise, but people would feel a lot safer if banks were providing this service rather than a less-regulated entity. Additionally, banks could compete to provide it rather than one entity controlling the whole enchilada.
Boot only to (any OS provided by an organization or company that DOESNT try to illegally leverage its near-monopoly position to prevent anything else from existing), and leave Microshit Shista out.
The problem is that in your possibility #3, the defendant has still spent an assload of cash on attorney's fees, which he has to spend upfront before having any hope of 'winning'. And unless he both 'wins', and gets an order that the RIAA pays his attorney fees, he still 'loses', even if the RIAA doesnt win.
There are people who's wet dream would be to make all reading (or listening to music, watching a movie, etc) illegal unless you paid a fee each time to the pile of corporate middlemen that own the various authors of same (with very little of that fee, if any, going to the actual authors, of course)
I don't know what 'you' do, but my home (and office) use Free (and usually 'free' as well) software exclusively (you do know the difference between 'Free' and 'free', don't you?) - there is no Microsoft anything. I don't 'buy' packaged crapware at BestBuy or CircuitCity or anywhere else (partly becuase it pretty much always requires use of Microsoft crapware, but also because its crap anyway)
Consider the quality difference between programmers who write (on a deadline, no less) something because they 'have to', vs programmers that write something because they 'want to'.
I'll choose the latter any day, both for the principle of it, but also because it almost *is* the better tool.
This just in - FreeBSD, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc, as well as OpenOffice, Gimp, Firefox, etc, are equally free *regardless* of what country you live in.
What is this 'buying software' concept you speak of?
FYI, it is trivial to reconfigure Ctrl-Alt-Del to do shutdown -h instead of shutdown -r. (have a look in inittab, or your distro's equivalent file)
And there is no reason not to. If the person hitting C-A-D really did want a reboot, its fairly simple for them to turn the power back on afterward. If they didnt, then the box is safely shutdown. As far as chancing an IP address, perhaps the box should use DHCP, then the colo facility can set its IP that way. (After a reboot of course, and obviously you'd need to connect in remote after that and fix the configurations of various applications that need to know the box IP address(es) such as web server vhosts, etc)
Pick an issue, any issue. Now try to claim that among all the people who claim to support that issue, they arent going to be some percentage that are assholes or jerks.
Feel free to file bug reports with both developers of FS as well as those of closed-source software. I suspect that you'll get nowhere fast in both cases if you come across as though you feel you are entitled to free bugfixes.
As long as you don't, however, I suspect you'll probably see a fix a lot sooner with FS, as long as its a real bug that might be affecting someone else too.
And opposing Digital Restrictions Management is a very GOOD cause, even if it takes pissing people off (which it surely will). Did you even RTFA?
Perhaps UK cell carriers are different. If I recall correctly UK has some strange setup where someone *receiving* a call pays for it.
I have an iPhone, and I pay about $40US/mo. (Psst, I dont use AT&T).
If your friends want to use software on a PC with a souncdard, thats fine. They are plenty of ways to get free or cheap inbound number that roll into VoIP, either propreitary crap or real VoIP.
Your phone lines being crap are irrelevant. Nothing says you have to use a phone line. Use VoIP. If you use 'real' VoIP, you call a number, not a 'computer'. Now, that number may well lead to another VoIP setup, which may well 'ring' on someone's soundcard, but thats entirely up to them.
In any case, if you want to use some PC-only voice-chat that might have back doors and doesnt interoperate with anything else, and that works for you, go ahead.
And yes, I used to run an Asterisk system, which I migrated over to OpenPBX due to a specific feature I needed. And I dont use the luser GUI interface for it either, I actually write my own config files. Perhaps its a nightmare for 'some people'.
"... users use what is best and not because of its philosophy ... "
BZZT - wrong - you even admit it youself : .. entrenched consumers are with win32 .."
"
Microsoft has used and continues to use its massive market control to shut anything else out. Most 'users' have no idea how to even determine what their choices are to 'decide what is best', because they see 'Windows is just part of the computer' - most 'average users' don't even have a comprehension as to the difference between a computer and an OS.
Some portion recognize Mac's are 'different', but unless they actually use them they don't know how.
Free Software is *still* about what you think it used to be. The problem is that various corporations have bought various politicians, and used their extensive warchest to buy the hearts and minds of the average citizen, in an attempt to make what Free Software is and was, look bad, insecure, illegal, or bad. It takes extreme measures to defend against extreme attacks. It also isnt opposed to 'just paying for your software' - Free Software doesnt mean 'not paying for it'.
IAX over ssh anyone?
Mobiles phones are an issue, to be sure. The cell carriers absolutely do NOT want you to bypass their lucrative profit-per-minute (even if you've bought a bundle of 'minutes' its still profit) and use your unlimited data plan to transmit your phone calls instead, and will use every trick they know to stop it from happening. And I don't know about the 'average crap' handsets, assuming they even have the capacity to run VoIP, barring things the carriers do to get in the way, but if you've got an iPhone, and you've taken the steps to control it yourself instead of allowing Apple to control it, there is an app called Fring, which, while far from perfect, *does* have a user-configurable SIP client.
As far as 'calling people on their computers' - I'm just baffling at that comment. Why not call them at a phone #, which they can choose how they want to work? (Some may well have an ordinary old phone line, some cell, some VoIP via proprietary protocols ringing into a shitty soundcard on a PC, some standards-based VoIP ringing into a real phone via an ATA, or whatever they want, but all irrelevant to you - all you need to know is the phone #)
"Skype" will never replace the existing phone network. Real VoIP is already starting to.
An alternative to what? To Skype? To the PSTN? Software running on a PC is always going to be a poor solution, and is far from your only option for Internet voice communication. You do NOT need some app on your PC to do VoIP. What you want is something called an ATA - its a little box that has a jack for a regular phone, and an ethernet port. They are often supplied with service such as Vonage, but are usually 'locked' down to that provider. You can also but them directly, but you will of course still need 'something else' to initiate SIP connections to. For information about real VoIP networks (both net-to-net, as well as PSTN interconnection), visit voip-info.org
Skype is closed proprietary crap. Real VoIP is about open standards and interoperability. Check out Asterisk, OpenPBX for server software. For client-end stuff, skip the PC soundcard crap and get a real ATA, even a basic Sipura SPA-2000 is better than some crap closed application running off a PC soundcard.
I'm impressed, I was expecting it to be Windows-only, but there are versions for Mac and Linux as well.
Seems like it would be simpler and less expensive just to print the names of the people that tickets are issued to directly on the tickets themselves. Even the airlines manage to do that. Then, if someone shows up with someone else's ticket, you can both deny them entry, and you have the option to not give that 'someone else' tickets in the future.
Another option would be to check ID's at the door.
You need to decice wether you want an appliance that will have a very limited set of features, and which the maker will decide what you are allowed to do with it and/or the data it contains (wether its your's or data that you 'licensed'), but will make sure everything 'just works' (well, except when it doesnt - in which case you wont be able to research and correct the problem yourself because you will have no access and everything will be closed, and will instead have to rely on the vendor to fix it, assuming they arent too busy selling more or working on their next project
or
a tool that you control, for which you expect to use (and gasp!, possibly expand) your own knowledge and skills to setup, maintain, and operate, but over which you will have complete control, and no external entity (RIAA, MPAA, Govt, hackers) will have any means to dictate otherwise.
Right now both of these scenarios overlap, to some degree - one is moving more in one direction, and one in the other.
Actually, its why the average consumer isn't ready to see a computer as anything other than a toy or an 'applicance'.
Perhaps the concept of 'computer' needs to diverge - one fork will be for the appliance and toy crowd - the other will be for those that use it as a tool and actually might be bothered to RTFM and try to educate themselves..
The former need not ever bother with learning anything other than button-pushing, but when it blows up, they'll need to be prepared to spend some money to pay folk from the latter to 'make it all better'
In fact, I almost say the divergence has already happened. Microsoft is on one fork, Free Software is on the other. People from the ignorant fork will always slowly migrate to the other fork.
Those of us in that fork don't *WANT* a toy or an appliance where responsibility (and therefore control) is taken away from us. (BTW, having just seen WALL-E, there is part of that movie that would make an excellent analogy, feel free to watch it to see why)