Isn't it funny how the same phone company which sold your number to everyone and his brother now charges you so that you don't receive calls from these guys?
Why isn't wireless service in the U.S. like long distance service in the U.S.?:-P
In many ways, wireless service in the USA is better than long distance service. Most plans you find nowadays let you call all across the country from wherever you are and it just comes out of your regular minute allotment. As long as you don't exceed that you don't pay anything extra. Given how most plans give you thousands of minutes, exceeding the allotment in many cases isn't an issue either. Even the cheapest long distance plans cannot compete with that.
Is that the same band that went to war with Ticketmaster for overcharging fans on ticket prices?
They did, but it was later proven that the overcharging was not due to TicketMaster, but rather due to Pearl Jam wanting a very large cut of the ticket sales.
Possibly, but not likely, Microsoft actually makes a fair amount of money from Mac users, hence their zeal to port Office to OS X. I don't think they would want to cut themselves off of the money they make off of Mac users.
When Apollo Mission Astronaut Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he not only gave his famous "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" statement but followed it by several remarks, usual com traffic between him, the other astronauts and Mission Control. Just before he re-entered the lander, however, he made the enigmatic remark "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky."
Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs. Over the years many people questioned Armstrong as to what the "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky" statement meant, but Armstrong always just smiled.
On July 5, 1995 (in Tampa Bay, FL) while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26 year old question to Armstrong. This time he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had finally died and so Neil Armstrong felt he could answer the question.
When he was a kid, he was playing baseball with a friend in the backyard. His friend hit a fly ball which landed in the front of his neighbor's bedroom windows. His neighbors were Mr. & Mrs. Gorsky.
As he leaned down to pick up the ball, young Armstrong heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky, "Oral sex! You want oral sex?! You'll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!"
The new security guards should be smarter in the United States at least, since they are Federals now, rather then high school dropouts or recent immigrants.
Umm... not quite... turns out the existing security guards were just "federalized", not replaced. In fact, a special exemption from the standard federal college degree requirement for civilian jobs was made so that these losers could become federal employees.
Yea... I want to take your point further though... the convergence on a single type of set top box is useless unless it can be integrated with new TVs, much like all modern "cable-ready" TVs and VCRs you buy today will allow you to view standard cable channels without the need for a set-top box.
Designers need to understand that in the home entertainment market, less is more. In addition to the very valid point you make about remote controls, I also don't like to mess with running extra cables, power cords, and other crap behind my entertainment system unless its absolutely needed. Most home-entertainment consumers also don't want to deal with the extra hassle. This isn't the same as a computer setup, where it can sometimes be helpful to have multiple, easily exchangeable components (e.g., an external cable/dsl modem connected to a router).
Where were all the stock analysts telling us of the impending doom?
Actually, Warren Buffet refused to invest in a single tech stock during the 90s because he saw the dot-bomb coming (although he invested in Level 3 communications this year). Many of his investors were angry with him for doing so, especially in light of the outrageous gains some of the stocks had seen. After the crash, the same investors thanked the hell out of him for being wise and prudent.
This one method is very easy, and it is totally passive on the part of the ISP. Many home networks which use NAT have the machines use the ISP's DNS servers directly. If you run a program like Ethereal on your network, you will notice a lot of queries like:
"DNS lookup for 192.168.69.4 to myISPsDNS.com"
"Reply from myISPsDNS.com 192.168.69.4 hostname not found."
I suppose you could fix this by running your own local DNS server instead, so the only lookups that would go past the firewall would be ones for remote machines. But basically, if you have N computers behind your firewall, your ISP's DNS server could theoretically receive hostname lookups for each of them.
Also, this shows that while you're using NAT, it may not necessarily be wi-fi. But if an ISP was reasonably suspicious, I suppose they could (based on the DNS lookup info shown above) send a van out to your street, try to connect to your network via wireless and bust you that way, but even then they still can't prove it was your wireless access point that they connected to.
Re:a good sysadmin is worth a million dollars...
on
Sysadmin Day. Yay.
·
· Score: 2
And I will shut down the servers unless you pay me the sum of... one meeellion dollars!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You gotta be kidding! This isn't 1999, that kind of money doesn't even exist anymore!
One I with which I was particularly underwhelmed was their book on PostgreSQL. Also, their guide on Apache doesn't seem to cover anything that isn't already covered in the Apache documentation. Not to mention the fact it only covers up to Apache 1.3.3!
To be fair though, I'm happy with other O'Reilly books. There is of course the Camel book, plus their book on Web Graphics using Postscript and GNU Software. Also, the book Cascading Style Sheets: the Definative Guide is also of high quality.
Yea... checking driver's licenses alone wouldn't have prevented 9/11. On the other hand, Israel does background checks of anyone who buys an airline ticket. Such checks would have revealed that 15 of the 19 hijackers were here illegally (on overstayed visas) and they could have been arrested right at the airport.
This is what concerns me the most about all these new laws. I believe most aren't needed. Had the government been doing its job, these hijackers, along with other illegal aliens, would have been deported.
Telco's are only allowed to 'share' (sell) that info with affiliates.
This really is no big deal, telcos have been selling your personal information and anything else they could make to anyone and everyone willing to pay for years.
You don't really believe their "privacy policy" do you?:)
That will piss off the majority, who isn't mad at us, and almost nobody will buy your computers anymore.
This is precisely why Wal-Mart can get away with selling computers with Linux on them. Microsoft needs Wal-Mart a lot more than Wal-Mart needs Microsoft. I.e., Wal-Mart isn't going to go out of business if Microsoft disallows them from selling computers, but Microsoft will lose a major distribution outlet if they pissed off Wal-Mart. As a result, Wal-Mart is easily able to do things that other Microsoft OEMS could never dream of getting away with. Also, I think Walmart could easily tell Microsoft how much it is willing to pay for licenses because of this very fact.
If people believe that "mean, evil ISPs" which exercise "undue influence" over politicians who allow themselves to be bought (e.g., Senator Disney) will be remedied by some kind of regulation, they are wrong. If the issue of regulation even comes up for a vote, these same corporations are going to simply buy enough senators and congressmen so that the regulations are written to favor them. The end result will be regulations which effectively keep the formerly unregulated companies unregulated still, but now legally bar any new competition from springing forward. That new bill that is going to outlaw fair-use is a perfect example of this.
Now I don't blame the corporations for this, they are always out to protect their own interests, just as we all do. I blame the legislators who allow themselves to be bought for this problem. If something isn't for sale, there is no way anyone can buy it.
Comcast has already begun routing all port 80 traffic through proxy servers.
Comcast does that here. Although its not supposed to be for monitoring reasons, its strictly for performance. By keeping locally cached copies of websites, it reduces the need for many individual users to run outside of the network to get content, they can simply retrieve the locally cached copy instead, which results in much faster download speeds. Even if you are worried about monitoring, a proxy server isn't the only means by which they could monitor you, so to me, the use of proxies for monitoring purposes is a non-issue.
Yea... generally most DVDs, unlike CDs, are very reasonably priced... I mean... $9-$12 for older (early 1990s and earlier) movies and $16-$23 for newer releases is pretty reasonable pricing, considering all the extra features you get. To me, aside from the fact its wrong to steal others' works, it would just not be worth my time to wait a day or two for the movie I want to download.
I really wish the music industry would learn from the movie industry, instead of putting 2-3 good songs a CD and pricing it more than what a DVD costs, why not price it accordingly based on the "good" stuff? With a DVD, even if you don't want the bonus features, most of the content, in this case the movie itself, is what you want, as opposed to CDs, where very little of the content is what you actually want.
Freenet provides anonymous uploads and anonymous downloads.
But even if they are anonymous, can't they just track the IP addresses of the machines connecting to theirs? Like if you use Netstat or some powerful network sniffing tool?
It just needs to be predicted on The Simpsons! Remember the episode in which Bart sold his soul to Milhouse, who then sold it to Comic Book Guy in exchange for Alf pogs? That was a few years back, and of course Milhouse told Bart (about Alf) "He's coming back, you know!" And now he is back! So write to Fox, et al. and have them feature this, we'll have a tangible product in no time!
I was flipping through this book during my last trip to the local bookstore. I have to say that for the money involved, I really was not too impressed with it. It did not have anything there that the Postgres docs didn't already cover, and many of the examples were trivially easy. Now while the docs have the same problem, they are still free:)
I'm using Postgres extensively for development at work and I still use a little MySQL at home for some unrelated projects. Each one has its place, its not fair to pit the two against each other.
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I use my phone company's Privacy Manager feature
Isn't it funny how the same phone company which sold your number to everyone and his brother now charges you so that you don't receive calls from these guys?
Why isn't wireless service in the U.S. like long distance service in the U.S.? :-P
In many ways, wireless service in the USA is better than long distance service. Most plans you find nowadays let you call all across the country from wherever you are and it just comes out of your regular minute allotment. As long as you don't exceed that you don't pay anything extra. Given how most plans give you thousands of minutes, exceeding the allotment in many cases isn't an issue either. Even the cheapest long distance plans cannot compete with that.
Is that the same band that went to war with Ticketmaster for overcharging fans on ticket prices?
They did, but it was later proven that the overcharging was not due to TicketMaster, but rather due to Pearl Jam wanting a very large cut of the ticket sales.
might be inclined to pull Office from the Mac
Possibly, but not likely, Microsoft actually makes a fair amount of money from Mac users, hence their zeal to port Office to OS X. I don't think they would want to cut themselves off of the money they make off of Mac users.
Who can forget the urban legend about Mr. Gorsky?
When Apollo Mission Astronaut Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he not only gave his famous "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" statement but followed it by several remarks, usual com traffic between him, the other astronauts and Mission Control. Just before he re-entered the lander, however, he made the enigmatic remark "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky."
Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs. Over the years many people questioned Armstrong as to what the "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky" statement meant, but Armstrong always just smiled.
On July 5, 1995 (in Tampa Bay, FL) while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26 year old question to Armstrong. This time he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had finally died and so Neil Armstrong felt he could answer the question.
When he was a kid, he was playing baseball with a friend in the backyard. His friend hit a fly ball which landed in the front of his neighbor's bedroom windows. His neighbors were Mr. & Mrs. Gorsky.
As he leaned down to pick up the ball, young Armstrong heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky, "Oral sex! You want oral sex?! You'll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!"
The new security guards should be smarter in the United States at least, since they are Federals now, rather then high school dropouts or recent immigrants.
Umm... not quite... turns out the existing security guards were just "federalized", not replaced. In fact, a special exemption from the standard federal college degree requirement for civilian jobs was made so that these losers could become federal employees.
Yea... I want to take your point further though... the convergence on a single type of set top box is useless unless it can be integrated with new TVs, much like all modern "cable-ready" TVs and VCRs you buy today will allow you to view standard cable channels without the need for a set-top box.
Designers need to understand that in the home entertainment market, less is more. In addition to the very valid point you make about remote controls, I also don't like to mess with running extra cables, power cords, and other crap behind my entertainment system unless its absolutely needed. Most home-entertainment consumers also don't want to deal with the extra hassle. This isn't the same as a computer setup, where it can sometimes be helpful to have multiple, easily exchangeable components (e.g., an external cable/dsl modem connected to a router).
You guys have purposefully ignored the passing of Gene Kan!
Kan? Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!
They could also con a band into making unlicensed merchandise bearing their logo, and then sue them too :)
Where were all the stock analysts telling us of the impending doom?
Actually, Warren Buffet refused to invest in a single tech stock during the 90s because he saw the dot-bomb coming (although he invested in Level 3 communications this year). Many of his investors were angry with him for doing so, especially in light of the outrageous gains some of the stocks had seen. After the crash, the same investors thanked the hell out of him for being wise and prudent.
how could your ISP determine you were sharing?
This one method is very easy, and it is totally passive on the part of the ISP. Many home networks which use NAT have the machines use the ISP's DNS servers directly. If you run a program like Ethereal on your network, you will notice a lot of queries like:
I suppose you could fix this by running your own local DNS server instead, so the only lookups that would go past the firewall would be ones for remote machines. But basically, if you have N computers behind your firewall, your ISP's DNS server could theoretically receive hostname lookups for each of them.
Also, this shows that while you're using NAT, it may not necessarily be wi-fi. But if an ISP was reasonably suspicious, I suppose they could (based on the DNS lookup info shown above) send a van out to your street, try to connect to your network via wireless and bust you that way, but even then they still can't prove it was your wireless access point that they connected to.
And I will shut down the servers unless you pay me the sum of... one meeellion dollars!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You gotta be kidding! This isn't 1999, that kind of money doesn't even exist anymore!
So - what titles would you warn against?
One I with which I was particularly underwhelmed was their book on PostgreSQL. Also, their guide on Apache doesn't seem to cover anything that isn't already covered in the Apache documentation. Not to mention the fact it only covers up to Apache 1.3.3!
To be fair though, I'm happy with other O'Reilly books. There is of course the Camel book, plus their book on Web Graphics using Postscript and GNU Software. Also, the book Cascading Style Sheets: the Definative Guide is also of high quality.
Yea... checking driver's licenses alone wouldn't have prevented 9/11. On the other hand, Israel does background checks of anyone who buys an airline ticket. Such checks would have revealed that 15 of the 19 hijackers were here illegally (on overstayed visas) and they could have been arrested right at the airport.
This is what concerns me the most about all these new laws. I believe most aren't needed. Had the government been doing its job, these hijackers, along with other illegal aliens, would have been deported.
You're right... the funniest part is that this joker works for the same company whose CEO said that privacy is dead, get over it.
Telco's are only allowed to 'share' (sell) that info with affiliates.
This really is no big deal, telcos have been selling your personal information and anything else they could make to anyone and everyone willing to pay for years.
You don't really believe their "privacy policy" do you? :)
That will piss off the majority, who isn't mad at us, and almost nobody will buy your computers anymore.
This is precisely why Wal-Mart can get away with selling computers with Linux on them. Microsoft needs Wal-Mart a lot more than Wal-Mart needs Microsoft. I.e., Wal-Mart isn't going to go out of business if Microsoft disallows them from selling computers, but Microsoft will lose a major distribution outlet if they pissed off Wal-Mart. As a result, Wal-Mart is easily able to do things that other Microsoft OEMS could never dream of getting away with. Also, I think Walmart could easily tell Microsoft how much it is willing to pay for licenses because of this very fact.
If people believe that "mean, evil ISPs" which exercise "undue influence" over politicians who allow themselves to be bought (e.g., Senator Disney) will be remedied by some kind of regulation, they are wrong. If the issue of regulation even comes up for a vote, these same corporations are going to simply buy enough senators and congressmen so that the regulations are written to favor them. The end result will be regulations which effectively keep the formerly unregulated companies unregulated still, but now legally bar any new competition from springing forward. That new bill that is going to outlaw fair-use is a perfect example of this.
Now I don't blame the corporations for this, they are always out to protect their own interests, just as we all do. I blame the legislators who allow themselves to be bought for this problem. If something isn't for sale, there is no way anyone can buy it.
Comcast has already begun routing all port 80 traffic through proxy servers.
Comcast does that here. Although its not supposed to be for monitoring reasons, its strictly for performance. By keeping locally cached copies of websites, it reduces the need for many individual users to run outside of the network to get content, they can simply retrieve the locally cached copy instead, which results in much faster download speeds. Even if you are worried about monitoring, a proxy server isn't the only means by which they could monitor you, so to me, the use of proxies for monitoring purposes is a non-issue.
I remember hearing a great man say that "it is better to let 30 men go free, then have one innocent man condemned for life."
Contrast that to King Herod, who said "It is better to kill the innocent, than to let the guilty go free."
Yea... generally most DVDs, unlike CDs, are very reasonably priced... I mean... $9-$12 for older (early 1990s and earlier) movies and $16-$23 for newer releases is pretty reasonable pricing, considering all the extra features you get. To me, aside from the fact its wrong to steal others' works, it would just not be worth my time to wait a day or two for the movie I want to download.
I really wish the music industry would learn from the movie industry, instead of putting 2-3 good songs a CD and pricing it more than what a DVD costs, why not price it accordingly based on the "good" stuff? With a DVD, even if you don't want the bonus features, most of the content, in this case the movie itself, is what you want, as opposed to CDs, where very little of the content is what you actually want.
Unless of course its a Bloodhound Gang CD :)
Freenet provides anonymous uploads and anonymous downloads.
But even if they are anonymous, can't they just track the IP addresses of the machines connecting to theirs? Like if you use Netstat or some powerful network sniffing tool?
The best part about any contract is that the fine print always nullifies anything stated previously :)
And I have yet to see this actually happenning.
It just needs to be predicted on The Simpsons! Remember the episode in which Bart sold his soul to Milhouse, who then sold it to Comic Book Guy in exchange for Alf pogs? That was a few years back, and of course Milhouse told Bart (about Alf) "He's coming back, you know!" And now he is back! So write to Fox, et al. and have them feature this, we'll have a tangible product in no time!
O'Reilly has a book on PostgreSQL...
I was flipping through this book during my last trip to the local bookstore. I have to say that for the money involved, I really was not too impressed with it. It did not have anything there that the Postgres docs didn't already cover, and many of the examples were trivially easy. Now while the docs have the same problem, they are still free :)
I'm using Postgres extensively for development at work and I still use a little MySQL at home for some unrelated projects. Each one has its place, its not fair to pit the two against each other.