Windows and Linux do represent different ways of thinking. There are differently designed. Yes, they are just tools. But why shouldn't you be allowed to use whatever tool you want?
Quite true....I think what some people don't realize, though, is that if the school doesn't support it, it doesn't mean use outside of school is prohibited.
I think schools should go out of their way to expose students to a diverse toolset, so they can choose the best one for the job. This goes for computer science and everything else.
Yeah...Some do, some don't, I guess. Another reason to do your research when you're applying. As i've said a lot already, though, I don't think software choices should be the sole factor.
I attend RIT. at the moment. I'd say non-Windows stuff is pretty entrenched there...Heck, our whole Student Information System, most of the course registration functions, and the school's email are accessed via VMS and VAX clusters. I'm not a CS major anymore, but they start(ed) out those students learning Java on Solaris machines, as well.
Supports? We are talking about what platforms are being Excluded here.
No, we're talking about what platforms are supported via technical resources and teaching. You are being excluded from nothing. If you want to use Linux, and the school doesn't give you anywhere to do so, install it on a personal system and go nuts. They have no obligation to provide it on their hardware just because you think they should. If you want it to be mandated, better go into politics.
The issue is that the schools are *selling* the basic rights that you by nature, before they are taking from you.
Please go back and try again with correct grammar. I won't venture a rebuttal until you say it coherently.
Then you should worry about getting ready for life after high school, learning as much as you can, and using Linux on your own time if the school doesn't provide for it.
What if taypayer money is being spent on your rights being taken away.
If you're in high school, you're either not paying taxes at all, or paying an extremely small amount, which would give you almost zero grounds to complain on that point.
You are used to talking to much stupider people if you bring in arguments like that.
My point was that the zealous worrying about what platform your school supports is really secondary to what you should be doing- getting an education. Believe or not, Windows use does not preclude learning. Sorry if you couldn't understand that.
I am sorry dude,but you are making yourself look pretty silly with stupid stuff like that.
I'm sorry too, "dude", but your apparent inability to use proper puncuation or spacing in simple sentences makes up for it.
Your rights to fair use of the software, to look inside the binaries, to build compatible software.
It sounds like you have issues more with the concept of non-free software, not Microsoft's license agreement specifcally. Plain and simple, you can only do certain things with certain software, and that's just the way the world works now.
I am an American, what does that have to do with it.
It seemed like you might not be an American. Some countries have different policies than the US does. That's all.
I dont want to use their Products. Unfortunally they have corrupted so many schools that it is impossible for students to avoid using their product or other non-free software.
Until (perhaps) the day monetary systems are abolished, there will always be non-free software. Even if they have to use non-free software, there's absolutely nothing preventing them for using free software themselves as well.
Also, would it really be fair to have students use only free programs while in school, and then be thrust into environments using products they've never touched before?
Then, frankly, find a different school or become more flexible. As I said to someone else below, are you going to school to concentrate on learning or worry about religious debates over platforms?
Personally, the school I go to supports Linux, Solaris machines, a few VMS clusters, along with Macs and Windows.
That aside, people just use what works. Like it or not, Microsoft file formats are the standard, and they're going to be used until a completely compelling reason to change is found.
From all appearances, it appears your main problem is with the tracking provided for in the agreement....I'm guessing you're not an American, but it probably still applies in some way- we're already being tracked through Social Security numbers, driver's licenses, student ID's, grade records...Nobody gives a damn if Microsoft knows they have a copy of Windows installed.
If you don't want them to do a headcount on you, don't use their products. If you're using Linux exclusively, you are invisible to Microsoft for all intents and purposes.
For example, I'm a freshman at a school where a "MS products only" policy is enforced. Students are required to have a laptop. Only windows is supported by the school technical staff. This is not a big deal; sadly,
And it will continue to not be a big deal, sadly or not, until non-Windows platforms make up the majority of installed machines.
To print on campus, you must use a printing program (for payment purposes) that is windows only. Buy vmware or virtualpc or you can't print on campus. Considering I live an hour away from school, this is more than a little inconvenient.
Geez...You can afford to commute an hour each way to school, but you can't buy yourself a cheapo printer to use at home?
Teachers only accept emailed documents in word format. I understand most teachers won't be able to open a.cwk file so this is a point I usually glide over, but at the moment I want them to look as evil as possible.;)
You're trying to be funny, but that doesn't really help your argument.
The software required for ALL math courses is Mathsoft's Mathcad. This is also windows only. Calc II seems like it might be possible to survive without the software, but the labs in Calc I make it absolutly necessary for that and most lower courses. With all the cross-platform products available, why do they use this one?
Because it's a standard, it works, and it works well. Just because using something cross-platform would make you feel all warm and fuzzy, that doesn't mean it'd be the best tool for the job.
Frankly, you should either obtain a copy of Windows/Vmware or do your math work in a Windows lab at school, and quit whining. Face it- the vast majority of students and professors don't care one bit about uber-established software like Mathcad being Windows-only.
My complaints fall on deaf ears, and I have no doubts (and also no proof) that my school has sold out to Gates and Co. Any school purporting to educate in the technical fields should be totally open to encouraging the learning of alternate platforms.
Uhmm...You want people to listen to your complaints, but you openly admit you have no proof at all that the school's "sold out"? Seems kinda self-defeating, that.
Any school purporting to educate in the technical fields should be totally open to encouraging the learning of alternate platforms.
Think about this- have you actually been working on your education, or have you been spending too much time worrying about Microsoft products? Sounds like the latter, especially if you're going to transfer based largely on the software choices for school-owned hardware.
You're obviously not the type to be brainwashed, so just suck it up and realize that software packages are tools, not religions.
And for the record, the school I attend is quite friendly to non-Windows platforms, and I dual-boot my personal system.
So, the college now has to watch the student even more, and turn them in to microsoft to save themselvs legal fees:
Oh, please. If you really believe anywhere but (and even then, it's a stretch) dinky community colleges are obsessively watching student PCs for pirated software...You're seriously deluding yourself.
You don't seem to have an idea of the size and complexity of networks at most decent-sized schools, and you vastly over-estimate the motivation level of most network admins towards such monitoring.
Well, I live off-campus (since this March), but from what i've seen, much of the organized social life revolves around the various clubs and such: Anime club, the local Electronic Gaming Society chapter, intramural sports, ethnic student groups, special interest housing, science and math clubs, etc. There's usually stuff like concerts and seminars going on every weekend, too, but the quality varies widely. If you visit, just walk down the stretch between the dorms and the academic side of campus, and you'll see posters up everywhere...Should give you a good sampling of what goes on.
If you're really into partying, most of that goes on over in the school-owned apartments, but from all i've heard, it's just a way to go get drunk/high/stoned/take psychoactive drugs more often than not.
Not really anything you wouldn't find at other schools, just more geek-oriented at times.
If you really want to enter a program here, I really don't think the ratio should scare you off....Like I said, whether you go off-campus or stay local, you're bound to find someone.
That said, though, I won't lie to you...Most of the girls on-campus recognize quite quickly the power they (think they) have: Many of them come off as rather snobbish and superior at times, to the point where a group of them went around posting on doors in all the residence halls this past winter, berating the males for not trying to date them enough.
So just go off-campus. If memory serves, there's at least 4 other schools, including Nazareth(1:3 male:female ratio), within a fairly short driving distance.
And even if you don't....People complain and complain about not finding females, but they usually turn out to be the ones that haven't ventured out of their room for anything but food or class the whole year.
Trust me, if you actually leave your cave once in a while, you'd do just fine:)
Err...Okay. Is there any specific reason you had to call me a dense weirdo twice in two seperate posts? It's rather hard to take you seriously that way.
And for the record, I usually leave my machine turned on due to the fact that I have need to access it remotely quite often. If it's not used for more than a half hour or so, all the power-saving options are set to kick on.
A computer doing nothing in a household for 22 hours wasting power is not only foolish (no matter how much you pay for your electricity) but wasteful.
Who said I only use my system 2 hours a day? Maybe someone you know, but that someone would not be me, that's for sure.
They use about 200W. Now multiply that by a factor of say 10 million. Thats the output of a decent sized power station required just to keep on a load of computers doing nothing.
Be that as it may, isn't the whole point of this article/argument that they won't be doing nothing?
Theres no point switching off a machine if someone is going to come and use it again in 5 minutes because being powered on/off dozens of times a day would wreck it. HOwever if the labs are not used at night theres no reason why they can't all be powered off , same goes for non essential desktop machines at companies.
Yes, and i'm not arguing those facts.
From your original reply, though, you claim that leaving a home machine on 24-7 would be environmentally irresponsible, and in the very next breath, say that a university lab in constant operation would be different in that fact somehow- neither you or I said anything about damage to the machines in the original replies.
By "typical" user I assume you mean some adolesecent friends of yours who's mum and dad pay his electric bills?
A little touchy, are we? No, I meant normal non-adolescent people who pay for their own living quarters and bills, a group which I would also currently be a member of. Disagree with me if you like, but again, please don't assume, and don't be an ass.
For those of us who have to pay for what we use why the f*ck would I leave a machine on 24/7 when I only use it maybe an hour a day???
I don't know how much you're paying for electricity, or how much you think everyone else is paying, but my bill last month was only $40- and that's with 2 computers + associated equipment on continuously, plus an AC unit, lights, fridge, cooking, a dishwasher, etc.
In any event, you're saying typical users only use their machines maybe an hour per day? Somehow I don't think that fits very well either. I would say 4 or 5 hours minimum as a better estimate for an average family, or even a single person that uses their system for work/entertainment.
If one hour/day really is your true use, though, then yes, I suppose it would be more cost-effective to just turn it off.
If nothing else its hardly enviromentally responsible is it??
To paraphrase the immortal Inigo Montoya, you keep claiming that continuous operation is a bad thing. I do not think computers draw as much power as you think they do.
Universities are different , public labs are in more of less constant use.
Uhmm...So you claim it would cause environmental damage to keep your personal system on all the time, but universities are different in some aspect? Please, feel free to explain.
what off hours? there is no such thing in most cases. and the off hours wouldn't be enough time to download the patches anyways in time(speed just isn't fast enough)
Do you not sleep, or what? And of course they're not going to download in one shot, that's what resumable multi-part downloads are for.
typical users DON'T leave their home computers on when they don't use them btw.
I feel like a broken record saying this, but you don't speak for everyone. Unless you regularly provide in-home support for a wide variety of users in many different countries, which I doubt, you just can't assume that.
I can only speak for what i've seen in my corner of the US, and some friends in England, Australia, Canada, and Russia, but any "typical" user i've seen leaves their PC on 24-7 or close to it. The university I attend leaves the umpteen computers in it's public labs on continuously. I don't think i've ever seen a system turned off there unless it had some sort of failure.
Don't assume you or your friends speak for everyone, please. I, for one, find it disconcerting not to have the fan noise.
And as for leaving PC's on, I have personally seen many people do this, including the hundreds of computers in my university's labs being left on 24-7.
No, the operating system isn't smart enough to know when I am expecting an important call.
So set it to download at like 1 or 2 AM or something, and have it quit around 4-5 or so. Unless you're a doctor or some other professional of that nature, and you don't have a pager, I refuse to believe anyone routinely gets important phone calls at those times of day.
The operating system can't posibly tell what kind of billing am I to expect for a 4 hour telephone call (not every country in the world has free local telephone calls as in the US).
Sorry, bud, but in the end, Microsoft is an American company, and will pander to the interests of that country.
If you really do have to pay for local phone calls, then disable the automatic updates, get broadband, or in the unlikely event that neither of those are possible, take 2 seconds and unplug the CPU from the phone when needed.
Downloading security patches through a dail-up is problematic (last machine I gave maintenance to required a 23 Mb download),
My condolences, but if you're working for a business that still gets 100% of their net access through dialup, you're rather behind the times, even if you're outside the US.
Just as everyone cannot be expected to have broadband, please remember that the number of people using dialup is ever-shrinking as well. At some point, priorities have to change.
You do seem to have a point, though...After seeing the list of intended features on their webpage:
* fetch several billion pages per month
* maintain an index of these pages
* search that index up to 1000 times per second
* provide very high quality search results
* operate at minimal cost
My first thought was...Gee, is that all? Good luck, guys, but this is like playing catch-up to someone who's already crossed the finish line. Compare Google to IBM or Oldsmobile all you want, but the facts remain.
And as someone says above, having the founder of Alexa as a "friend" and a (partially) paid-advertising driven search company among their sponsors...I wouldn't get your hopes up quite yet.
Time Warner seems to be blocking port 135 now or something...I had hundreds upon hundreds of scans from other Roadrunner users last night, but not a whisper since I checked this morning.
810 hits on the router and counting, from 491 resolvable hostnames. 90% of em from within my ISP (Roadrunner) like you...Lots of them from NYC, for some odd reason.
5 more hits just in the 2 minutes it took to type this:P
Personally speaking, i'm getting 1-2 hits per minute at the moment from this thing. Whatever "RPC worm shit" you already went through, it was either something different, or you just happened upon it a lot earlier than everyone else.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're going to call someone a fascist redneck and insult their intelligence, you should at least spell "paid" right, shouldn't you?
*hides*
Windows and Linux do represent different ways of thinking. There are differently designed. Yes, they are just tools. But why shouldn't you be allowed to use whatever tool you want?
Quite true....I think what some people don't realize, though, is that if the school doesn't support it, it doesn't mean use outside of school is prohibited.
I think schools should go out of their way to expose students to a diverse toolset, so they can choose the best one for the job. This goes for computer science and everything else.
Yeah...Some do, some don't, I guess. Another reason to do your research when you're applying. As i've said a lot already, though, I don't think software choices should be the sole factor.
I attend RIT. at the moment. I'd say non-Windows stuff is pretty entrenched there...Heck, our whole Student Information System, most of the course registration functions, and the school's email are accessed via VMS and VAX clusters. I'm not a CS major anymore, but they start(ed) out those students learning Java on Solaris machines, as well.
Supports? We are talking about what platforms are being Excluded here.
No, we're talking about what platforms are supported via technical resources and teaching. You are being excluded from nothing. If you want to use Linux, and the school doesn't give you anywhere to do so, install it on a personal system and go nuts. They have no obligation to provide it on their hardware just because you think they should. If you want it to be mandated, better go into politics.
The issue is that the schools are *selling* the basic rights that you by nature, before they are taking from you.
Please go back and try again with correct grammar. I won't venture a rebuttal until you say it coherently.
Quite true.....True for anyone/anywhere, really.
I guess we can be thankful that sort of situation isn't common enough to be a real issue for the time being.
What if your school is high school?
Then you should worry about getting ready for life after high school, learning as much as you can, and using Linux on your own time if the school doesn't provide for it.
What if taypayer money is being spent on your rights being taken away.
If you're in high school, you're either not paying taxes at all, or paying an extremely small amount, which would give you almost zero grounds to complain on that point.
You are used to talking to much stupider people if you bring in arguments like that.
My point was that the zealous worrying about what platform your school supports is really secondary to what you should be doing- getting an education. Believe or not, Windows use does not preclude learning. Sorry if you couldn't understand that.
I am sorry dude,but you are making yourself look pretty silly with stupid stuff like that.
I'm sorry too, "dude", but your apparent inability to use proper puncuation or spacing in simple sentences makes up for it.
Your right to choose to use only free software.
Your rights to fair use of the software, to look inside the binaries, to build compatible software.
It sounds like you have issues more with the concept of non-free software, not Microsoft's license agreement specifcally. Plain and simple, you can only do certain things with certain software, and that's just the way the world works now.
I am an American, what does that have to do with it.
It seemed like you might not be an American. Some countries have different policies than the US does. That's all.
I dont want to use their Products. Unfortunally they have corrupted so many schools that it is impossible for students to avoid using their product or other non-free software.
Until (perhaps) the day monetary systems are abolished, there will always be non-free software. Even if they have to use non-free software, there's absolutely nothing preventing them for using free software themselves as well.
Also, would it really be fair to have students use only free programs while in school, and then be thrust into environments using products they've never touched before?
Then, frankly, find a different school or become more flexible. As I said to someone else below, are you going to school to concentrate on learning or worry about religious debates over platforms?
Personally, the school I go to supports Linux, Solaris machines, a few VMS clusters, along with Macs and Windows.
That aside, people just use what works. Like it or not, Microsoft file formats are the standard, and they're going to be used until a completely compelling reason to change is found.
Rights to what?
From all appearances, it appears your main problem is with the tracking provided for in the agreement....I'm guessing you're not an American, but it probably still applies in some way- we're already being tracked through Social Security numbers, driver's licenses, student ID's, grade records...Nobody gives a damn if Microsoft knows they have a copy of Windows installed.
If you don't want them to do a headcount on you, don't use their products. If you're using Linux exclusively, you are invisible to Microsoft for all intents and purposes.
For example, I'm a freshman at a school where a "MS products only" policy is enforced. Students are required to have a laptop. Only windows is supported by the school technical staff. This is not a big deal; sadly,
.cwk file so this is a point I usually glide over, but at the moment I want them to look as evil as possible. ;)
And it will continue to not be a big deal, sadly or not, until non-Windows platforms make up the majority of installed machines.
To print on campus, you must use a printing program (for payment purposes) that is windows only. Buy vmware or virtualpc or you can't print on campus. Considering I live an hour away from school, this is more than a little inconvenient.
Geez...You can afford to commute an hour each way to school, but you can't buy yourself a cheapo printer to use at home?
Teachers only accept emailed documents in word format. I understand most teachers won't be able to open a
You're trying to be funny, but that doesn't really help your argument.
The software required for ALL math courses is Mathsoft's Mathcad. This is also windows only. Calc II seems like it might be possible to survive without the software, but the labs in Calc I make it absolutly necessary for that and most lower courses. With all the cross-platform products available, why do they use this one?
Because it's a standard, it works, and it works well. Just because using something cross-platform would make you feel all warm and fuzzy, that doesn't mean it'd be the best tool for the job.
Frankly, you should either obtain a copy of Windows/Vmware or do your math work in a Windows lab at school, and quit whining. Face it- the vast majority of students and professors don't care one bit about uber-established software like Mathcad being Windows-only.
My complaints fall on deaf ears, and I have no doubts (and also no proof) that my school has sold out to Gates and Co. Any school purporting to educate in the technical fields should be totally open to encouraging the learning of alternate platforms.
Uhmm...You want people to listen to your complaints, but you openly admit you have no proof at all that the school's "sold out"? Seems kinda self-defeating, that.
Any school purporting to educate in the technical fields should be totally open to encouraging the learning of alternate platforms.
Think about this- have you actually been working on your education, or have you been spending too much time worrying about Microsoft products? Sounds like the latter, especially if you're going to transfer based largely on the software choices for school-owned hardware.
You're obviously not the type to be brainwashed, so just suck it up and realize that software packages are tools, not religions.
And for the record, the school I attend is quite friendly to non-Windows platforms, and I dual-boot my personal system.
So big brother is now watching you.
:
So, the college now has to watch the student even more, and turn them
in to microsoft to save themselvs legal fees
Oh, please. If you really believe anywhere but (and even then, it's a stretch) dinky community colleges are obsessively watching student PCs for pirated software...You're seriously deluding yourself.
You don't seem to have an idea of the size and complexity of networks at most decent-sized schools, and you vastly over-estimate the motivation level of most network admins towards such monitoring.
Well, I live off-campus (since this March), but from what i've seen, much of the organized social life revolves around the various clubs and such: Anime club, the local Electronic Gaming Society chapter, intramural sports, ethnic student groups, special interest housing, science and math clubs, etc. There's usually stuff like concerts and seminars going on every weekend, too, but the quality varies widely. If you visit, just walk down the stretch between the dorms and the academic side of campus, and you'll see posters up everywhere...Should give you a good sampling of what goes on.
If you're really into partying, most of that goes on over in the school-owned apartments, but from all i've heard, it's just a way to go get drunk/high/stoned/take psychoactive drugs more often than not.
Not really anything you wouldn't find at other schools, just more geek-oriented at times.
If you really want to enter a program here, I really don't think the ratio should scare you off....Like I said, whether you go off-campus or stay local, you're bound to find someone.
That said, though, I won't lie to you...Most of the girls on-campus recognize quite quickly the power they (think they) have: Many of them come off as rather snobbish and superior at times, to the point where a group of them went around posting on doors in all the residence halls this past winter, berating the males for not trying to date them enough.
So just go off-campus. If memory serves, there's at least 4 other schools, including Nazareth(1:3 male:female ratio), within a fairly short driving distance.
:)
And even if you don't....People complain and complain about not finding females, but they usually turn out to be the ones that haven't ventured out of their room for anything but food or class the whole year.
Trust me, if you actually leave your cave once in a while, you'd do just fine
Err...Okay. Is there any specific reason you had to call me a dense weirdo twice in two seperate posts? It's rather hard to take you seriously that way.
And for the record, I usually leave my machine turned on due to the fact that I have need to access it remotely quite often. If it's not used for more than a half hour or so, all the power-saving options are set to kick on.
A computer doing nothing in a household for 22 hours wasting power is not only foolish (no matter how much you pay for your electricity) but wasteful.
Who said I only use my system 2 hours a day? Maybe someone you know, but that someone would not be me, that's for sure.
They use about 200W. Now multiply that by a factor of say 10 million. Thats the output of a decent sized power station required just to
keep on a load of computers doing nothing.
Be that as it may, isn't the whole point of this article/argument that they won't be doing nothing?
Theres no point switching off a machine if someone is going to come and use it again in 5 minutes because being powered on/off dozens of
times a day would wreck it. HOwever if the labs are not used at night theres no reason why they can't all be powered off , same goes for non essential desktop machines at companies.
Yes, and i'm not arguing those facts.
From your original reply, though, you claim that leaving a home machine on 24-7 would be environmentally irresponsible, and in the very next breath, say that a university lab in constant operation would be different in that fact somehow- neither you or I said anything about damage to the machines in the original replies.
By "typical" user I assume you mean some adolesecent friends of yours who's mum and dad pay his electric bills?
A little touchy, are we? No, I meant normal non-adolescent people who pay for their own living quarters and bills, a group which I would also currently be a member of. Disagree with me if you like, but again, please don't assume, and don't be an ass.
For those of us who have to pay for what we use why the f*ck would I leave a machine on 24/7 when I only use it maybe an hour a day???
I don't know how much you're paying for electricity, or how much you think everyone else is paying, but my bill last month was only $40- and that's with 2 computers + associated equipment on continuously, plus an AC unit, lights, fridge, cooking, a dishwasher, etc.
In any event, you're saying typical users only use their machines maybe an hour per day? Somehow I don't think that fits very well either. I would say 4 or 5 hours minimum as a better estimate for an average family, or even a single person that uses their system for work/entertainment.
If one hour/day really is your true use, though, then yes, I suppose it would be more cost-effective to just turn it off.
If nothing else its hardly enviromentally responsible is it??
To paraphrase the immortal Inigo Montoya, you keep claiming that continuous operation is a bad thing. I do not think computers draw as much power as you think they do.
Universities are different , public labs are in more of less constant use.
Uhmm...So you claim it would cause environmental damage to keep your personal system on all the time, but universities are different in some aspect? Please, feel free to explain.
what off hours? there is no such thing in most cases. and the off hours wouldn't be enough time to download the patches anyways in time(speed just isn't fast enough)
Do you not sleep, or what? And of course they're not going to download in one shot, that's what resumable multi-part downloads are for.
typical users DON'T leave their home computers on when they don't use them btw.
I feel like a broken record saying this, but you don't speak for everyone. Unless you regularly provide in-home support for a wide variety of users in many different countries, which I doubt, you just can't assume that.
I can only speak for what i've seen in my corner of the US, and some friends in England, Australia, Canada, and Russia, but any "typical" user i've seen leaves their PC on 24-7 or close to it. The university I attend leaves the umpteen computers in it's public labs on continuously. I don't think i've ever seen a system turned off there unless it had some sort of failure.
Don't assume you or your friends speak for everyone, please. I, for one, find it disconcerting not to have the fan noise.
And as for leaving PC's on, I have personally seen many people do this, including the hundreds of computers in my university's labs being left on 24-7.
No, the operating system isn't smart enough to know when I am expecting an important call.
So set it to download at like 1 or 2 AM or something, and have it quit around 4-5 or so. Unless you're a doctor or some other professional of that nature, and you don't have a pager, I refuse to believe anyone routinely gets important phone calls at those times of day.
The operating system can't posibly tell what kind of billing am I to expect for a 4 hour telephone call (not every country in the world has free local telephone calls as in the US).
Sorry, bud, but in the end, Microsoft is an American company, and will pander to the interests of that country.
If you really do have to pay for local phone calls, then disable the automatic updates, get broadband, or in the unlikely event that neither of those are possible, take 2 seconds and unplug the CPU from the phone when needed.
Downloading security patches through a dail-up is problematic (last machine I gave maintenance to required a 23 Mb download),
My condolences, but if you're working for a business that still gets 100% of their net access through dialup, you're rather behind the times, even if you're outside the US.
Just as everyone cannot be expected to have broadband, please remember that the number of people using dialup is ever-shrinking as well. At some point, priorities have to change.
Yeah...You'd think they'd notify all the people like Symantec, Mcafee, CERT, etc. that've been posting the other links all week.
I had the same problem this afternoon, this link for the XP patch seems to work still, for the moment.
You do seem to have a point, though...After seeing the list of intended features on their webpage:
* fetch several billion pages per month
* maintain an index of these pages
* search that index up to 1000 times per second
* provide very high quality search results
* operate at minimal cost
My first thought was...Gee, is that all? Good luck, guys, but this is like playing catch-up to someone who's already crossed the finish line. Compare Google to IBM or Oldsmobile all you want, but the facts remain.
And as someone says above, having the founder of Alexa as a "friend" and a (partially) paid-advertising driven search company among their sponsors...I wouldn't get your hopes up quite yet.
Time Warner seems to be blocking port 135 now or something...I had hundreds upon hundreds of scans from other Roadrunner users last night, but not a whisper since I checked this morning.
Gotcha beat there :)
:P
810 hits on the router and counting, from 491 resolvable hostnames. 90% of em from within my ISP (Roadrunner) like you...Lots of them from NYC, for some odd reason.
5 more hits just in the 2 minutes it took to type this
Uhh, no....
Personally speaking, i'm getting 1-2 hits per minute at the moment from this thing. Whatever "RPC worm shit" you already went through, it was either something different, or you just happened upon it a lot earlier than everyone else.
~50 hits on my router in just the last half-hour or so, 90% of them from Rochester and NYC RoadRunner addresses.
I have a feeling this worm will hit especially hard on home broadband users that never touch Windows Update.