Replying to myself: if testing the UA or the IP in the httpd itself was too much load, you could have also just nullrouted the IP blocks the Bing spider was coming from, either in the kernel table, or in your router.
Seems like a better solution would have been to setup a test for the either the User-Agent, or the IP/blocks that Bing was attacking your site from, and dropping those requests in/dev/null - your site would still exist on 'real' search engines, and Bing doesn't pound on your bandwidth anymore.
As long as the non-terrorists vastly outnumber the terrorists:P
Of course, they could always fill an entire plane with terrorists.. I suppose I shouldn't be giving them any ideas, but it probably wouldn't be cost-effective (both in terms of ticket prices and whatever you measure 'suicidal-martyrs-per-terror-induced' in)
with the AT&T reps manner of presenting this, trying to make it sound as if the problems is the caller/potential customer's fault.
Its not that "you (the caller, or New York residents) doesn't have enough towers", its that "We (AT&T) don't have enough towers (in New York)"
My suggestion to the caller, would be to make their next question something along the lines of "So when will AT&T be putting up more towers then?" I mean heck, its not like they even have to build actual *towers* - there are skyscrapers all over the place to stick cells on top of or out the windows at lower floors.
You might be able to patent a *particular* implementation of the protocol, but if you think you can patent a 'protocol', you don't understand what a protocol is.
Its like patenting a language. Can you imagine someone patenting English, or French, and then in order to speak it, you'd have to pay a license fee? I'm not talking about books on learning the language, or video courses, or whatever, I'm talking about the language itself.
The review mentions AT&T 3G, but I couldn't find any mention of whether a new AT&T contract is required to buy the device at the stated price. If it is, then fsck that. If it isn't, then 'meh'. Its still pretty expensive. Wait for v 2.0.
Also, if one plugs its USB in, does it appear as 'USB storage', that one can copy PDF's to and be able to read them? Or is one required to use its proprietary software on a proprietary platform to load only special files with DRM?
And how about on wifi? Can one use any sort of standard protocol (ssh, ftp, smb) to copy PDF's in (or out) and/or can it navigate to an arbitrary URL and download a PDF, or does it only support the device accessing company-specified websites to 'buy' books?
Bottom line - Mandatory contract bad. Mandatory proprietary software bad.
The first thing anyone should do after buying a used computer should be to format the drive, and reinstall from scratch. Using someone else's leftover OS setup is just stupid. Of course if I were ever to sell a computer (unlikely, since I save parts and re-use stuff, especially drives) I would certainly wipe the machine before it left my hands.
What I think, is that the world could use a wakeup call about monocultures and software monopolies.
Just imagine if people used arc welders or battleships the way MS encourages people to use their computers. The point is its a tool, not a toy or an appliance, and pretending it isn't allows things like that to happen.
"Windows is a vulnerable POS" "New virus/trojan/worm affects Windows" "Every Windows computer can be assumed to be compromised, trojan-laden, and part of some botnet thats either being used to compromise other Windows machines, capture the user's personal information and/or to pump out anonymous spam".
Assume these as static truths. Eg, not 'news'.
Now what would *really* be news, is if a day went by and there wasn't some new compromise/attack/vulnerability affecting Windows machines.
I live in hope that someday one of these trojan/worm/virus writers, distribute something that erases the entire hard drive, flashes all flashable memory on the machine, and then powers it down. But of course, they'll never do that, because then they'd be destroying the very resources they use to proliferate.
There isn't one. But that doesn't mean the monopoly telecoms won't play make-believe (eg OMG customers will have to choose between 'all these confusing options', as opposed to having only one choice, made for them by the single telecom serving their area)
Or (as others have suggested) use 'reverse VNC', where the machine being remote-controlled connects *to* the remote controller machine (and you forward the ports at your end).
and use VNC. Its open (nonproprietary) free, there are multiple implementations for multiple platforms.
Better yet, install (your preferred linux distribution) and VirtualBox on their machine, and install (their preferred consumer-grade unstable bloatware OS) in a virtual machine, then setup ssh (and a portforward). Then you can ssh in, and then use VirtualBox's built-in VNC service.
And, unlike MS, google has gotten (and stays) where it is, because it offers what people want, and doesn't subject them to things they don't want. *AND*, they have managed to do that, while being paid to serve advertising, and ensuring that those advertisements don't treat their users like eyeballs to be raped. There is no 'lock in' to using google. If another party came along, and truly did a better job, then people *would* notice, and they would have a fair shot at competing with google for traffic.
1. Its the default search in the default IE browser in MS Vista (aka 'seven'). The same drones that buy new PC's with whatever OS comes on them are the same drones that just type what they are looking for in a URL bar, and have absolutely no concept of 'choosing, and using, a specific search site'. As their new machines start to get slow, they will call their more intelligent friend to 'help', who will rip out MSIE and bing, and install FireFox and google, and the drones probably won't even notice the difference. (other than reduced malware and obnoxious ads) [But bing traffic will drop]
2. There seem to be a lot of 'tech sites' that have javascript-driven mini-pop-uplets, which are triggered when the pointer moves over targeted keywords, and which cause a (unrequested, and usually undesired) bing search to be run for that keyword. These seem to be hosted by something to do with intellitxt.com - I strongly suggest that you block that domain everywhere you can. (Adblock, noscript, privoxy,/etc/hosts, DNS servers, etc). Hopefully I'm not the only one thats noticed it, and as it gets added to the various "domains that crap comes from" lists, [bing traffic will drop]
3. Of course there is always the 1% thats due to the absolutely delusional MS kool-aid drinkers who'd gladly drink cyanide if it came in a pretty MS package or they had to pay an MS licensing fee to do so.
Fail. If the word was populated by exactly 4,386 people, each of whom had an IQ of exactly 693, then half of the population would not have an IQ under 100.
What you *meant* to say (I think, one never knows for sure) is that, for *any* typical given population with a normal distribution of IQ, the IQ of half of that population is less than the average IQ of that population.
My first example above, the average is exactly 693, so this doesnt apply. But that is a fairly unlikely population and IQ distribution. But for a normal distribution where some IQ's are high and some are low, even you can prove it. Assume IQ ranges from 50 to 250, and for 100 hypothetical individuals, use a random number generator to assign random IQ's. add and divide to find the average, then see how many are above, and how many are below. It will be either perfectly half each, or in some edge cases might be 49/51.
Only iPhone 3g and 3gs have GPS. original iphone does not.
And yes, you *can* disable it from talking to cell towers, but not turn off its wifi. Only with a jailbroken phone, of course.
But of course, thats assuming you even mention you have an iphone. Or any cellphone. Now if its in a contract, they can probably find out. But if you have an unlocked one, and are using a cash-bought prepaid SIM in it, then they'd have no way to know you even had a phone, as long as you ditched it before you got arrested. But that seems an awful waste of a really expensive cellphone.
Slashdot Mirror
"laziness and incompetence" = using Microsoft platforms for power plant engineering systems.
"security best practices" = never letting Microsoft platforms near anything mission critical at such an installation.
Replying to myself: if testing the UA or the IP in the httpd itself was too much load, you could have also just nullrouted the IP blocks the Bing spider was coming from, either in the kernel table, or in your router.
Seems like a better solution would have been to setup a test for the either the User-Agent, or the IP/blocks that Bing was attacking your site from, and dropping those requests in /dev/null - your site would still exist on 'real' search engines, and Bing doesn't pound on your bandwidth anymore.
windowsonly proprietary-garbage.
You left out the 'could have been' part. None of these were stated as being the reasons for certain.
Maybe your cheap Windows laptop can't play Disney movies, but my (non-Windows) laptop does just fine.
As long as the non-terrorists vastly outnumber the terrorists :P
Of course, they could always fill an entire plane with terrorists.. I suppose I shouldn't be giving them any ideas, but it probably wouldn't be cost-effective (both in terms of ticket prices and whatever you measure 'suicidal-martyrs-per-terror-induced' in)
with the AT&T reps manner of presenting this, trying to make it sound as if the problems is the caller/potential customer's fault.
Its not that "you (the caller, or New York residents) doesn't have enough towers", its that "We (AT&T) don't have enough towers (in New York)"
My suggestion to the caller, would be to make their next question something along the lines of "So when will AT&T be putting up more towers then?" I mean heck, its not like they even have to build actual *towers* - there are skyscrapers all over the place to stick cells on top of or out the windows at lower floors.
It was good enough 'then', and would still work the same way.
If he is put off by it, perhaps LOGO (Yes, the one with the little 'turtle' that you program to move around and draw lines.
Just a quick comment - the "postal service" is *NOT* remotely related to a 'public option'.
The US Postal Service is *NOT* funded by taxpayer dollars.
You might be able to patent a *particular* implementation of the protocol, but if you think you can patent a 'protocol', you don't understand what a protocol is.
Its like patenting a language. Can you imagine someone patenting English, or French, and then in order to speak it, you'd have to pay a license fee? I'm not talking about books on learning the language, or video courses, or whatever, I'm talking about the language itself.
The review mentions AT&T 3G, but I couldn't find any mention of whether a new AT&T contract is required to buy the device at the stated price. If it is, then fsck that. If it isn't, then 'meh'. Its still pretty expensive. Wait for v 2.0.
Also, if one plugs its USB in, does it appear as 'USB storage', that one can copy PDF's to and be able to read them? Or is one required to use its proprietary software on a proprietary platform to load only special files with DRM?
And how about on wifi? Can one use any sort of standard protocol (ssh, ftp, smb) to copy PDF's in (or out) and/or can it navigate to an arbitrary URL and download a PDF, or does it only support the device accessing company-specified websites to 'buy' books?
Bottom line - Mandatory contract bad. Mandatory proprietary software bad.
The first thing anyone should do after buying a used computer should be to format the drive, and reinstall from scratch. Using someone else's leftover OS setup is just stupid. Of course if I were ever to sell a computer (unlikely, since I save parts and re-use stuff, especially drives) I would certainly wipe the machine before it left my hands.
What I think, is that the world could use a wakeup call about monocultures and software monopolies.
Just imagine if people used arc welders or battleships the way MS encourages people to use their computers. The point is its a tool, not a toy or an appliance, and pretending it isn't allows things like that to happen.
Just because most viruses/trojans don't generally go scorched-earth on the host computer doesn't mean your files are secure.
Want you pictures/videos/novels/papers/"goddamn things" to be secure?
Don't store them on a Windows computer.
The point there, was that if some virus did this, millions of people would learn this, and learn it well.
Sometimes learning is painful. Sometimes people don't learn even after repeated lessons.
(And just so you can feel safe, I don't write viruses or trojans. That would require using a Windows computer, which I don't)
Ah I see you subscribe to the 'popularity myth'.
Thoroughly debunked here:
http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT5785842995.html
"Windows is a vulnerable POS" "New virus/trojan/worm affects Windows" "Every Windows computer can be assumed to be compromised, trojan-laden, and part of some botnet thats either being used to compromise other Windows machines, capture the user's personal information and/or to pump out anonymous spam".
Assume these as static truths. Eg, not 'news'.
Now what would *really* be news, is if a day went by and there wasn't some new compromise/attack/vulnerability affecting Windows machines.
I live in hope that someday one of these trojan/worm/virus writers, distribute something that erases the entire hard drive, flashes all flashable memory on the machine, and then powers it down. But of course, they'll never do that, because then they'd be destroying the very resources they use to proliferate.
There isn't one. But that doesn't mean the monopoly telecoms won't play make-believe (eg OMG customers will have to choose between 'all these confusing options', as opposed to having only one choice, made for them by the single telecom serving their area)
Actually, the "telephone industry" was given money, not the "(I)nternet industry".
Or (as others have suggested) use 'reverse VNC', where the machine being remote-controlled connects *to* the remote controller machine (and you forward the ports at your end).
and use VNC. Its open (nonproprietary) free, there are multiple implementations for multiple platforms.
Better yet, install (your preferred linux distribution) and VirtualBox on their machine, and install (their preferred consumer-grade unstable bloatware OS) in a virtual machine, then setup ssh (and a portforward). Then you can ssh in, and then use VirtualBox's built-in VNC service.
And, unlike MS, google has gotten (and stays) where it is, because it offers what people want, and doesn't subject them to things they don't want. *AND*, they have managed to do that, while being paid to serve advertising, and ensuring that those advertisements don't treat their users like eyeballs to be raped. There is no 'lock in' to using google. If another party came along, and truly did a better job, then people *would* notice, and they would have a fair shot at competing with google for traffic.
1. Its the default search in the default IE browser in MS Vista (aka 'seven'). The same drones that buy new PC's with whatever OS comes on them are the same drones that just type what they are looking for in a URL bar, and have absolutely no concept of 'choosing, and using, a specific search site'. As their new machines start to get slow, they will call their more intelligent friend to 'help', who will rip out MSIE and bing, and install FireFox and google, and the drones probably won't even notice the difference. (other than reduced malware and obnoxious ads) [But bing traffic will drop]
2. There seem to be a lot of 'tech sites' that have javascript-driven mini-pop-uplets, which are triggered when the pointer moves over targeted keywords, and which cause a (unrequested, and usually undesired) bing search to be run for that keyword. These seem to be hosted by something to do with intellitxt.com - I strongly suggest that you block that domain everywhere you can. (Adblock, noscript, privoxy, /etc/hosts, DNS servers, etc). Hopefully I'm not the only one thats noticed it, and as it gets added to the various "domains that crap comes from" lists, [bing traffic will drop]
3. Of course there is always the 1% thats due to the absolutely delusional MS kool-aid drinkers who'd gladly drink cyanide if it came in a pretty MS package or they had to pay an MS licensing fee to do so.
Fail. If the word was populated by exactly 4,386 people, each of whom had an IQ of exactly 693, then half of the population would not have an IQ under 100.
What you *meant* to say (I think, one never knows for sure) is that, for *any* typical given population with a normal distribution of IQ, the IQ of half of that population is less than the average IQ of that population.
My first example above, the average is exactly 693, so this doesnt apply. But that is a fairly unlikely population and IQ distribution. But for a normal distribution where some IQ's are high and some are low, even you can prove it. Assume IQ ranges from 50 to 250, and for 100 hypothetical individuals, use a random number generator to assign random IQ's. add and divide to find the average, then see how many are above, and how many are below. It will be either perfectly half each, or in some edge cases might be 49/51.
Only iPhone 3g and 3gs have GPS. original iphone does not.
And yes, you *can* disable it from talking to cell towers, but not turn off its wifi. Only with a jailbroken phone, of course.
But of course, thats assuming you even mention you have an iphone. Or any cellphone. Now if its in a contract, they can probably find out. But if you have an unlocked one, and are using a cash-bought prepaid SIM in it, then they'd have no way to know you even had a phone, as long as you ditched it before you got arrested. But that seems an awful waste of a really expensive cellphone.