STUPID NAMEZERO!! The mess up the URLS too much. http://galacticroot.dyndns.org/mirrors/tcpseq/tcps eq.html is the actual address of the mirror, not http://galacticroot.dyndns.org//mirrors/tcpseq/tcp seq.html. That one should actually work.
Will this really matter once Mircosoft has effectively forced everyone to use DRM? Sure, there will still be many users of Linux(provided Paladium doesn't refuse to run it) and Mac, but without a very large userbase, how effective can pretty much any P2P program be? Undoubtedly, you won't be able to do stuff like this on windows anymore, once Palladium becomes a real product, and the most important people to the user base would have been Windows users.
Come to think of it, how will Palladium treat P2P software in general? I have doubts about it being varified as "secure".
I bought a TeleZapper last summer. I've been using it since then(well since recently). It is simply a tone generator that will beep at the frequency of the first SIT tone. For $50 it would be an incredible rip-off. Well, that is, if it actually worked. The manufacturer that makes it didn't even add the whole SIT sequence! That means that all a telemarketing firm has to do is check for the WHOLE SIT sequence.
But that doesn't really matter. A couple days ago, I got a digital PBX, and programmed it to play a message saying "Hello you have reached XXX-XXX-XXXX. If you are a telemarketer ADD US TO YOUR DO-NOT-CALL-LIST. Please dial XXX for X, XXX for X, or XXX for X.(LONG PAUSE). PLEASE HOLD FOR AUTOMATED VOICE MAIL..." any telemarketers that call and actually get through are breaking the law, as they MUST honor and keep a do-not-call-list. If I get any voice mail messages from them, or if they even dial an extension I'll threaten (and maybe take) legal action. Several have called, and all I get on the voice mail box is "..like to make a call please hang up and tr[BEEP][BEEP][BEEP][BEEP][CLICK]". This seems to be because they hang up after the PBX plays the message. The PBX then has a bit of a delay before its active call detection times out. Well, the saturday round of telemarketing calls have all been blocked, and its worked pretty well so far.
For those who wouldn't want an actual PBX (here's one on ebay currently $33), several companys make similar things that basically do same thing, without the main function of a PBX, for about $130.
Oh, just to clarify, by "didn't get through", I mean the phone would still ring, but their auto-dialer would not put a person on the line. Actually about 30% got through anyway.
For anyone thinking about getting a telezapper, it is really basically a waste of your money.
I also own a telezapper, and it doesn't really work too well. The tone it produces is an audible beep. The real problem I have with telemarketers is that you actually have to go to a phone and pick it up. If you are taking a shower, having dinner, etc... It is REALLY annoying. With the telezapper you still have to pick up the phone. Actually, this device may actually increase calls if some telemarketers program their auto-dialers to retry the number x times is there is an error. As long as you have to answer the phone you might as well just TELL them to add you to their do not call list.
After paying 50 bucks for it(WAY overpriced for a device that just is a tone generator), it didn't really do much. Telemarketers didn't get through, but they still called for a year of using it. Then I just gave up trying to get the telezapper to work. Either it just doesn't work, or my number was getting added to so many different lists that it didn't really matter. It was proably one of the biggest wastes of money I can think of.
The point is that they're not equal. They picked the fastest available processors for each archetecture. Mac processors are RISC, and PC are not. So if you used dual 1GHz Athlons, and Dual 1GHz G4s they wouldn't be equivelant to the Althons. A 1GHz RISC processor has an advantage over a 1GHz processor that doesn't use RISC. You can't really compare them easily. But thats not what really matters anyway.
Mac processors have been almost always lower rated in MHz that PC processors. When PCs were 1GHz, Apple was still making 500MHz(about) Macs. Apple said that because they were RISC, they were equivelant to the PC processors. The test approaches things from a practical point of view. In reality a platform is represented by its current(see latest) hardware, at least for PCs and Macs. The point is that the latest PC hardware beats the latest Mac hardware in this test. Combined with the cost factors, this means if you are someone who wants to get an after-effects workstation, you have two choices. You can get a PC for under $1000 which will be much faster than the Mac, or a slower Mac for over twice the price. This will seriously reduce the number of people that would go with the second option.
Whats the problem with skipping ads? If you don't want to see them, then you're probably not going to buy any products from them. Most people just ignore the ads. The same applies to online banner ads. Most people that block them, would just ignore them anyway. If an ad is too intrusive, people will actually begin to hate the company instead of like it. For the most part, I don't really think that ads are effective at all towards people that don't want to see them to begin with. Ads really don't do much, for example, if I wan't to find computer hardware, I could care less if its advertised, I'd just use pricewatch.
I'm not saying that ads have no effect, just that the effect can be negative when people are forced to see them.
The FCC laws state that you may not use ciphers to obscure the meaning of your transmissions. What if someone was using https, ssh, or another encrypted protocol over this? Would that be a violation? Its not really clear what that part of the amateur radio laws mean. If that would be a violation, then I'd have to wonder about the practicality of this. Aside from an alternative to TNCs, there might be problems with actually setting up a network, aside from the fact that anyone on it would need licenses.
If this uses some sort of network of electrodes on your face, wouldn't you look strange walking down the street? If enough people started using this, it would become common place, but the appearance of the device could seriously be a marketing flaw until then...
This isn't one time pad at all. This is just encryption with a huge key, and might not even be more secure at all that current standards(except for the key size). The only way one time pad is REALLY secure is if the key is at least as large as the message, and most importantly, is absolutely uninterceptible. If someone with a packet sniffer could read the message unencrypted, they could also intercept the encrypted key, decrypt it, and with the key, just XOR the other data. All the security relies on the encrytion of the key. So really, this is just whatever encryption is used on the key, not one time pad.
Never mind, I thought they were worried about 802.11 devices in nearby houses, etc... Its even more ridiculous that they are worried because _their_ customers might be using 802.11 devices next to the receiver. So basically they want to put restrictions on countless devices, just so their customers won't have something that interferes with their own radio through receiver overload. If one of their small number of customers doesn't want interference, then they don't have to use an 802.11 device in the same car, or at least turn the TX power down on it.
55MHz is a pretty large difference. FM Radio stations are 2MHz apart, do they interfere? No. 800MHz cell phones and 900MHz cordless phones are less than 55MHz apart, do they interfere? No. Countless other services aren't that far apart. Most of the Maryland state police frequencies are _less_ than 1MHz apart, being 39.xx. FM Radio has a pretty far difference between stations, relatively speaking. On a scanner it is usually accurate to.0005MHz, depending on the band. My signal generator for my electronics lab is accurate to 0.000000001MHz, from 10KHz to 1.2GHz, and it's an older one. Although it is temperature stabilized, and is much more precise than a reasonably priced radio would be, even the cheapest radios are accurate to less than 1MHz.
There are 2 possible reasons why this company is worried about this. a) Their equipment really IS that crappy. Maybe they hired the worst engineer in the world or something. It would STILL be hard to see why the receivers wouldn't be able to differentiate between at least 1MHz offsets! Furthermore, 802.11 stuff isn't junk. Its not the best technology, but it doesn't exactly cause interference 55MHz down. If this company can't make radios that are good, then their service won't work, and CAN'T work. Microwave ovens use 2.4GHz. Radar uses 2.4GHz. Cell Phones use 2.4GHz. Radar(Marine atleast) trasmits on powers as high as 25000W. A lot of microwave ovens leak more power than an 802.11 device transmits. If their devices are affected by the 802.11 frequencies, they have no possible market since they will be interfered by an endless number of other devices. b)The company may be clueless about RF, and doesn't know what they're doing. ex: "There are other transmitters using the same band(gasp!). That could cause interference!!!".
Secondly, does anyone know what effect this would have on amateur radio operators on 2.4GHz? I'm not one, but am wondering since that freqs listed as a ham band. Is this law specific to 802.11 or does it affect the whole band? People have also probably invested more than 3 billion in _current_ 2.4GHz devices.... If this company was stupid enough to invest 3 billion in a satellite network that can be affected by devices 55MHz away, then thats their problem.
That doesn't mean that the 20% knows how to use a computer well. TVs don't necessarily have 5 options, most have menus, with a lot more than 5 options. You only need to use 5 options normally. With a computer they could be just using it for E-Mail, using AOL or something. I mean, its not that much harder to use if all they do is turn it on, click on AOL, login, and read/send E-Mail, then shut it down.
Another thing to consider is this: Someone can easily learn how to send an E-Mail, or read one. The steps involved are fairly linear. They always will press the power button, once windows loads, click on AOL, and the same login as they always have used, click E-Mail. Once they learn that, the only options that they really have to choose are those of the E-Mail itself. Then they always will click logout, then Start->Shutdown. With most TVs, the remote control might have 20-30 buttons, which translates to 20-30 things a) the user could accidentally press. b) have to use. or c) that make the TV more complicated. There aren't just 5 options. On my AV stuff, just some options are: Volume up Volume down Channel up Channel down Surrond Sound on/off Vcr power Amp power TV power Cable box power Channel keypad Play Record Stop Fast forward Rewind Skip forward Skip backward Slow play Pause Next frame Prev frame Bass level Trebel level Auto sound leveling Balance Tracking Color Sharpness Tin t Contrast Brightness Clock set AV source Record timer Mute Display All of the various graphic equalizer options on the amp And several more. Thats why that 20% is there.
I've never really understood why so many people use AOL. There are a tremendous amount of other ISPs available, yet people use AOL, which isn't even really much of an ISP, more of a badly written BBS. AOL is spyware, it forces updates, and crashes. I've heard of people who have to redial 20-30 times before they get an open line, and then just get kicked of after a few minutes. Further more, why would you PAY to see popup ads!!! If you pay for an ISP, you shouldn't be forced to see ads all the time. Everyone I know that uses it hates it. I would be very surprised to find even one person that actually likes it. Unfortunately, they have such a big ad campaign that a lot of people use it at first. What I don't understand, is if they hate it so much, you would think they would at least look into some other alternatives.
As long as theyre just banner ads. I don't really mind seeing them on Slashdot, and it wouldn't really be worth the subscription service to not see them even if I didn't usually use Junkbuster. Banner ads aren't usually annoying as long as they don't say "Punch the monkey and win 20$!" or have other stupid Java crap. You can just ignore them. It gets bad when a site uses Pop-Up or Pop-Under ads. Pop-Under ads are worse. You can just close a pop-up ad, but its harder with a pop-under ad. The advertisers just don't get it that all those type of ads do is make the viewer want to close them as quickly as possible. That and sometimes make people hate the company they advertise for. At least slashdot doesn't open half a billion ads which in turn double in number when you close them. Slashdot ads just aren't really annoying. If they were, I wouldn't ever go to Slashdot.org again. Since theyre not annoying there isn't any reason to subscribe.
Something the manufacturers will probably overlook is that there are other OSs besides Windows. I'm not going to say Linux specifically, because its not like thats the only OS affected. Most if not all of the standards they are talking about will not work with a PC running anything other than Windows. In many cases this means that you couldn't use the hardware at all. If all the manufacturers include copy protection, then all the consumers will be forced to use Windows.
If they implement hardware copy protection, it would basically be pointless, because anyone could just get hardware without copy protection and use that to copy a CD, DVD, etc... This means that the only way copy protection could "succeed" is if a law was passed forcing all manufacturers to include copy protection. If all the manufacturers included copy protection, this could be a very big problem in some circumstances. As I said ion the above paragraph, it probably wouldn't run ANY OS that's not Windows(at least on a PC). Many people use other OSs, and have to use them. They might be using a program that only runs on that OS, might have hardware that's not supported by Windows(but is still on a PC), Windows might not be stable enough, or any number of other reasons. Copy protection also simply gives the user a harder time copying legitimate files. The RIAA and MPAA always seem to think that all music or all movies belong to them. What if you hold the copyright for a particular song, movie, or other copy protected file? This could even protect against the consumers "pirating" their own files.
Even if someone has a cable modem that uses CAT, what would prevent them from setting up a Linux box with 2 network cards, and have it do NAT? The Linux box would be the only computer directly connected to the modem. The only way I can think that the cable co would be able to effectively determine how many computers were on a LAN would be to force uses to use authentication software, which would probably be Windows only.
I have one of these. It doesn't really seem to do much. When you pick up the phone, it beeps. I'm not sure how effective it actually is, since most of the time I just hang up immediately if I have to say "hello" more than 2 or 3 times. Also, some autodialers may ignore the tone.
Slashdot Mirror
I suggested www.securecomputing.com(the companies website) to be listed as "Criminal Skills".
STUPID NAMEZERO!!s eq.html is the actual address of the mirror, not http://galacticroot.dyndns.org//mirrors/tcpseq/tcp seq.html. That one should actually work.
The mess up the URLS too much.
http://galacticroot.dyndns.org/mirrors/tcpseq/tcp
Ok, I've mirrored the HTML and most of the images(still downloading) HERE. Please only download this to mirror it! My bandwidth is limited!
Will this really matter once Mircosoft has effectively forced everyone to use DRM? Sure, there will still be many users of Linux(provided Paladium doesn't refuse to run it) and Mac, but without a very large userbase, how effective can pretty much any P2P program be? Undoubtedly, you won't be able to do stuff like this on windows anymore, once Palladium becomes a real product, and the most important people to the user base would have been Windows users.
Come to think of it, how will Palladium treat P2P software in general? I have doubts about it being varified as "secure".
I bought a TeleZapper last summer. I've been using it since then(well since recently). It is simply a tone generator that will beep at the frequency of the first SIT tone. For $50 it would be an incredible rip-off. Well, that is, if it actually worked. The manufacturer that makes it didn't even add the whole SIT sequence! That means that all a telemarketing firm has to do is check for the WHOLE SIT sequence.
But that doesn't really matter. A couple days ago, I got a digital PBX, and programmed it to play a message saying "Hello you have reached XXX-XXX-XXXX. If you are a telemarketer ADD US TO YOUR DO-NOT-CALL-LIST. Please dial XXX for X, XXX for X, or XXX for X.(LONG PAUSE). PLEASE HOLD FOR AUTOMATED VOICE MAIL..." any telemarketers that call and actually get through are breaking the law, as they MUST honor and keep a do-not-call-list. If I get any voice mail messages from them, or if they even dial an extension I'll threaten (and maybe take) legal action. Several have called, and all I get on the voice mail box is "..like to make a call please hang up and tr[BEEP][BEEP][BEEP][BEEP][CLICK]". This seems to be because they hang up after the PBX plays the message. The PBX then has a bit of a delay before its active call detection times out. Well, the saturday round of telemarketing calls have all been blocked, and its worked pretty well so far.
For those who wouldn't want an actual PBX (here's one on ebay currently $33), several companys make similar things that basically do same thing, without the main function of a PBX, for about $130.
Oh, just to clarify, by "didn't get through", I mean the phone would still ring, but their auto-dialer would not put a person on the line. Actually about 30% got through anyway.
For anyone thinking about getting a telezapper, it is really basically a waste of your money.
I also own a telezapper, and it doesn't really work too well. The tone it produces is an audible beep. The real problem I have with telemarketers is that you actually have to go to a phone and pick it up. If you are taking a shower, having dinner, etc... It is REALLY annoying. With the telezapper you still have to pick up the phone. Actually, this device may actually increase calls if some telemarketers program their auto-dialers to retry the number x times is there is an error. As long as you have to answer the phone you might as well just TELL them to add you to their do not call list.
After paying 50 bucks for it(WAY overpriced for a device that just is a tone generator), it didn't really do much. Telemarketers didn't get through, but they still called for a year of using it. Then I just gave up trying to get the telezapper to work. Either it just doesn't work, or my number was getting added to so many different lists that it didn't really matter. It was proably one of the biggest wastes of money I can think of.
The point is that they're not equal. They picked the fastest available processors for each archetecture. Mac processors are RISC, and PC are not. So if you used dual 1GHz Athlons, and Dual 1GHz G4s they wouldn't be equivelant to the Althons. A 1GHz RISC processor has an advantage over a 1GHz processor that doesn't use RISC. You can't really compare them easily. But thats not what really matters anyway.
Mac processors have been almost always lower rated in MHz that PC processors. When PCs were 1GHz, Apple was still making 500MHz(about) Macs. Apple said that because they were RISC, they were equivelant to the PC processors. The test approaches things from a practical point of view. In reality a platform is represented by its current(see latest) hardware, at least for PCs and Macs. The point is that the latest PC hardware beats the latest Mac hardware in this test. Combined with the cost factors, this means if you are someone who wants to get an after-effects workstation, you have two choices. You can get a PC for under $1000 which will be much faster than the Mac, or a slower Mac for over twice the price. This will seriously reduce the number of people that would go with the second option.
Yeah, but that would be WAY over the "lowest necessary power" that the FCC says you have to use.
Whats the problem with skipping ads? If you don't want to see them, then you're probably not going to buy any products from them. Most people just ignore the ads. The same applies to online banner ads. Most people that block them, would just ignore them anyway. If an ad is too intrusive, people will actually begin to hate the company instead of like it. For the most part, I don't really think that ads are effective at all towards people that don't want to see them to begin with. Ads really don't do much, for example, if I wan't to find computer hardware, I could care less if its advertised, I'd just use pricewatch.
I'm not saying that ads have no effect, just that the effect can be negative when people are forced to see them.
The FCC laws state that you may not use ciphers to obscure the meaning of your transmissions. What if someone was using https, ssh, or another encrypted protocol over this? Would that be a violation? Its not really clear what that part of the amateur radio laws mean. If that would be a violation, then I'd have to wonder about the practicality of this. Aside from an alternative to TNCs, there might be problems with actually setting up a network, aside from the fact that anyone on it would need licenses.
If this uses some sort of network of electrodes on your face, wouldn't you look strange walking down the street? If enough people started using this, it would become common place, but the appearance of the device could seriously be a marketing flaw until then...
This isn't one time pad at all. This is just encryption with a huge key, and might not even be more secure at all that current standards(except for the key size). The only way one time pad is REALLY secure is if the key is at least as large as the message, and most importantly, is absolutely uninterceptible. If someone with a packet sniffer could read the message unencrypted, they could also intercept the encrypted key, decrypt it, and with the key, just XOR the other data. All the security relies on the encrytion of the key. So really, this is just whatever encryption is used on the key, not one time pad.
There are lots of places/online stores that sell them, just Search Google.
This was already posted on Slashdot just a day ago.
Never mind, I thought they were worried about 802.11 devices in nearby houses, etc... Its even more ridiculous that they are worried because _their_ customers might be using 802.11 devices next to the receiver. So basically they want to put restrictions on countless devices, just so their customers won't have something that interferes with their own radio through receiver overload. If one of their small number of customers doesn't want interference, then they don't have to use an 802.11 device in the same car, or at least turn the TX power down on it.
This article must have been written on Apr 1.
55MHz is a pretty large difference. FM Radio stations are 2MHz apart, do they interfere? No. 800MHz cell phones and 900MHz cordless phones are less than 55MHz apart, do they interfere? No. Countless other services aren't that far apart. Most of the Maryland state police frequencies are _less_ than 1MHz apart, being 39.xx. FM Radio has a pretty far difference between stations, relatively speaking. On a scanner it is usually accurate to .0005MHz, depending on the band. My signal generator for my electronics lab is accurate to 0.000000001MHz, from 10KHz to 1.2GHz, and it's an older one. Although it is temperature stabilized, and is much more precise than a reasonably priced radio would be, even the cheapest radios are accurate to less than 1MHz.
There are 2 possible reasons why this company is worried about this.
a) Their equipment really IS that crappy. Maybe they hired the worst engineer in the world or something. It would STILL be hard to see why the receivers wouldn't be able to differentiate between at least 1MHz offsets! Furthermore, 802.11 stuff isn't junk. Its not the best technology, but it doesn't exactly cause interference 55MHz down. If this company can't make radios that are good, then their service won't work, and CAN'T work. Microwave ovens use 2.4GHz. Radar uses 2.4GHz. Cell Phones use 2.4GHz. Radar(Marine atleast) trasmits on powers as high as 25000W. A lot of microwave ovens leak more power than an 802.11 device transmits. If their devices are affected by the 802.11 frequencies, they have no possible market since they will be interfered by an endless number of other devices.
b)The company may be clueless about RF, and doesn't know what they're doing. ex: "There are other transmitters using the same band(gasp!). That could cause interference!!!".
Secondly, does anyone know what effect this would have on amateur radio operators on 2.4GHz? I'm not one, but am wondering since that freqs listed as a ham band. Is this law specific to 802.11 or does it affect the whole band? People have also probably invested more than 3 billion in _current_ 2.4GHz devices.... If this company was stupid enough to invest 3 billion in a satellite network that can be affected by devices 55MHz away, then thats their problem.
That doesn't mean that the 20% knows how to use a computer well. TVs don't necessarily have 5 options, most have menus, with a lot more than 5 options. You only need to use 5 options normally. With a computer they could be just using it for E-Mail, using AOL or something. I mean, its not that much harder to use if all they do is turn it on, click on AOL, login, and read/send E-Mail, then shut it down.
n t
Another thing to consider is this:
Someone can easily learn how to send an E-Mail, or read one. The steps involved are fairly linear. They always will press the power button, once windows loads, click on AOL, and the same login as they always have used, click E-Mail. Once they learn that, the only options that they really have to choose are those of the E-Mail itself. Then they always will click logout, then Start->Shutdown. With most TVs, the remote control might have 20-30 buttons, which translates to 20-30 things a) the user could accidentally press. b) have to use. or c) that make the TV more complicated. There aren't just 5 options. On my AV stuff, just some options are:
Volume up
Volume down
Channel up
Channel down
Surrond Sound on/off
Vcr power
Amp power
TV power
Cable box power
Channel keypad
Play
Record
Stop
Fast forward
Rewind
Skip forward
Skip backward
Slow play
Pause
Next frame
Prev frame
Bass level
Trebel level
Auto sound leveling
Balance
Tracking
Color
Sharpness
Ti
Contrast
Brightness
Clock set
AV source
Record timer
Mute
Display
All of the various graphic equalizer options on the amp
And several more. Thats why that 20% is there.
I've never really understood why so many people use AOL. There are a tremendous amount of other ISPs available, yet people use AOL, which isn't even really much of an ISP, more of a badly written BBS. AOL is spyware, it forces updates, and crashes. I've heard of people who have to redial 20-30 times before they get an open line, and then just get kicked of after a few minutes. Further more, why would you PAY to see popup ads!!! If you pay for an ISP, you shouldn't be forced to see ads all the time. Everyone I know that uses it hates it. I would be very surprised to find even one person that actually likes it. Unfortunately, they have such a big ad campaign that a lot of people use it at first. What I don't understand, is if they hate it so much, you would think they would at least look into some other alternatives.
As long as theyre just banner ads. I don't really mind seeing them on Slashdot, and it wouldn't really be worth the subscription service to not see them even if I didn't usually use Junkbuster. Banner ads aren't usually annoying as long as they don't say "Punch the monkey and win 20$!" or have other stupid Java crap. You can just ignore them. It gets bad when a site uses Pop-Up or Pop-Under ads. Pop-Under ads are worse. You can just close a pop-up ad, but its harder with a pop-under ad. The advertisers just don't get it that all those type of ads do is make the viewer want to close them as quickly as possible. That and sometimes make people hate the company they advertise for. At least slashdot doesn't open half a billion ads which in turn double in number when you close them. Slashdot ads just aren't really annoying. If they were, I wouldn't ever go to Slashdot.org again. Since theyre not annoying there isn't any reason to subscribe.
Something the manufacturers will probably overlook is that there are other OSs besides Windows. I'm not going to say Linux specifically, because its not like thats the only OS affected. Most if not all of the standards they are talking about will not work with a PC running anything other than Windows. In many cases this means that you couldn't use the hardware at all. If all the manufacturers include copy protection, then all the consumers will be forced to use Windows.
If they implement hardware copy protection, it would basically be pointless, because anyone could just get hardware without copy protection and use that to copy a CD, DVD, etc... This means that the only way copy protection could "succeed" is if a law was passed forcing all manufacturers to include copy protection. If all the manufacturers included copy protection, this could be a very big problem in some circumstances. As I said ion the above paragraph, it probably wouldn't run ANY OS that's not Windows(at least on a PC). Many people use other OSs, and have to use them. They might be using a program that only runs on that OS, might have hardware that's not supported by Windows(but is still on a PC), Windows might not be stable enough, or any number of other reasons. Copy protection also simply gives the user a harder time copying legitimate files. The RIAA and MPAA always seem to think that all music or all movies belong to them. What if you hold the copyright for a particular song, movie, or other copy protected file? This could even protect against the consumers "pirating" their own files.
Even if someone has a cable modem that uses CAT, what would prevent them from setting up a Linux box with 2 network cards, and have it do NAT? The Linux box would be the only computer directly connected to the modem. The only way I can think that the cable co would be able to effectively determine how many computers were on a LAN would be to force uses to use authentication software, which would probably be Windows only.
Digital Camera Watch
I have one of these. It doesn't really seem to do much. When you pick up the phone, it beeps. I'm not sure how effective it actually is, since most of the time I just hang up immediately if I have to say "hello" more than 2 or 3 times. Also, some autodialers may ignore the tone.
On http://xxx.lanl.gov/RobotsBeware.html:
Click here to initiate automated "seek-and-destroy" against your site.
Uh, what exactly is that supposed to do???