Just stop. It's not a good idea. It has never been a good idea, it will never be a good idea. There is no such thing as a "white-hat worm". No matter what the intentions of its writers are, the worm itself will never be "white-hat". It's going to cause problems on a technical level. It's going to cause problems on a legal level. And even if you accept, for a moment, the premise that this worm could actually work without any collateral damage (which is unacceptable), do you REALLY want Microsoft (or any entity for that matter) deciding what gets distributed this way ? Is it "just" a fix for the vulnerability, or is it a "fix" that will break half of your infrastructure ? Will Microsoft update other, unaffected components of the system with this ? (How do YOU know they won't ?) There is a reason company IT departments don't just let Windows Update rip into their systems and test updates first.
Yeah, quite the amazing offer if I say so myself, 2tb of bandwidth for $15/month... wow. When I check datacenter costs at a reputable datacenter on their best connections it is upwards of $150/month for a machine that comes with a 250GB hard drive and 2000GB of bandwidth.
That's dedicated though. There is a huge difference compared to shared hosting.
Since bandwidth is never delivered at a steady rate 24/7 it means you're going to be going through a cycle of peaks, I've got a game server pulling a terabyte a month and during prime time that is pulling 7mbit/s sometimes hitting 10mbit/s.. find me a 10mbit/s connection I can max out a majority of the time for $15/month.. apparently these hosts have found some hidden cheap bandwidth I guess.
On the contrary. The cost for disk space is actually a lot higher than what they charge, and bandwidth does not grow on trees (though economies of scale apply). However, overselling in shared webhosting works, and it works very well. So long as the majority of your customers NEVER uses their allotted space or bandwidth, you are fine. You do not need to provision 500gb of space per customer when they sign up -- you just need to make sure your system has enough spare capacity to handle growth, and put in more disks/arrays when needed (marketing guys call this "just-in-time provisioning".
Sure, we could go get a full time 100mbit/s connection from a NOC for a thousand a month, but when you're talking about the possibility of maxing out that line with 10-20 customers paying you $15, something doesn't add up. These high numbers being claimed are just as much horseshit as the guys doing unlimited.
Not exactly. These are non mom-and-pop hosters that rent their servers and network connections by the port orby the half-rack. They operate their own datacenters (the serious ones, anyway), which gets you vastly different pricing for your bandwidth (if you deal in many gigabits/sec as opposed to 100mbit/s, prices do drop considerably). You do not look at it as 10-20 customers on one server, but hundreds or thousands of customers on a number of servers with a number of storage arrays.
If they can truly deliver 2tb for $15/month I've got a few download servers they can try out... really, this should be putting all the NOCs out of business.
It won't. You simply have not understood the concept of overselling yet.:) They can sell you 500gb and 5tb precisely because the vast majority of people never use that much, even if they are allowed to. You CAN use that much if the host is reputable and doesn't wiggle out of their agreements ("conventional" and "traditional" websites my ass, pardon my French). For instance, there are plenty of folks on DH that are using upwards of 500g of storage and upwards of 3-4 tb of bandwidth (~3 tb would be an average of 10mbit/s (and yes, average, not peak)). There are thousands more, however, who use less than 1gb and less than 10-100gb of traffic. Given critical mass, this can work well, especially since shared webhosting has an expectation of minor problems (such as an overloaded mySQL server every now and then, or sporadically overloaded servers due to abusive customers (and I do not mean in the "let's kick him because he is using too much but still what is allowed" kind of abusive, but rather the "I'm using this server as if it were a dedicated one, spawning thousands of processes, using an entire server, even though I am FULLY aware that this is a shared webhost" kind of abusive. There is a huge difference between using 500g/5tb to serve mostly static files compared to trying to host a bulletin board with 800 online users at any one time on the same plan -- that's simply infeasible in a shared hosting environment:)
Your particular usage, for instance, is not applicable (game servers on shared hosting are a no-no, persistent processes are
Hi,
Most small business sites will never use even 100gb of data. Thanks for stating the obvious.
We (spamlink)
offer shared hosting at ~$15/month for 200GB disk, 2tb bandwidth, That sounds impressive.
How about $8 for 500gb of disk and 5tb of bandwidth ? Or even 8tb of bandwidth or 700gb, if you get the right promocode ? Dream host..ing ? (this is what a professional calls "surreptitious advertising", just in case you wanted a contrast to your spamlink). There are some people competing in a lunar-cyclish page way, and HOSTs drinking GATORade are out there as well.
and of our customers who use it, most could downgrade to cheaper accounts ($8? $4.50?) without a problem**. Wow, that sounds reasonable, especially your recommendation to downgrade after the stars. Heartfelt, even. Say, why don't you automatically downgrade those people if they are below usage, and automatically upgrade them to the next-higher tier when they exceed their limits ? Now that would be service. I'm sure some companies offer it.
Yahoo knows this about its own customers, too, so this is likely a gimmick to give the impression of a "deal" while knowing most people won't actually consume much. Also note this quote from Yahoo's unlimited email FAQ: "The purpose of unlimited storage isn't to provide an online storage warehouse. Usage that suggests this approach gets flagged by Yahoo! Business Email's anti-abuse controls." Yupp, and I especially like that kind of language. You neglect to mention, of course, that Arrow Bay's (limited) service actually contains teh same kind of language:
You shall at all times use the Services as a conventional and/or traditional web site. You shall not use the Service in any way, in Arrow Bay's sole discretion, that shall impair the functioning or operation of Arrow Bay's Services or equipment. Specifically by way of example and not as a limitation, You shall not use the Services as (i) a repository or instrument for placing or storing archived files, and/or (ii) placing or storing material that can be downloaded through other web sites. So if somebody actually were to use the storage provided in full as a webdav-drive, or as historic storage, or actually as an archive of any kind, you can just terminate them and move on. The terms "traditional" and "conventional" are not defined. Is a site hosting 200gigs of home videos "traditional" ? Is it "conventional" ? How about a site that makes available collections of data ? Certain dreamy hosts have changed their "interpretation" of their ToS in that way recently, as well. If anybody ever sells you any hosting service with > 20 gb of disk space, you can be all but certain that they really only mean "in theory", never "in practice".
Oh, do you know where I found that package ? Not near the limits. Not at all near the limits. You first go to the legal terms of service, then search another link way down on the page, then scroll way down (it's the second to last paragraph). That seems really open and honest. Really.
OK I can see where you are coming from, but it is a rather pessimistic (but not entirely surprising) view. I'll give you that. Then again, optimism just sets you up for disappointment;-)
These are individuals who were not detained in the US but on the field of combat. Which, by the ingenious thought-construct "War on Terror" is everywhere -- a war like that need not be formally declared, and fields of combat would be anywhere terrorists could be.
Add to that that whenever you enter the US you are automatically assumed guilty of something (after all, why else would you need to have your photograph and your fingerprints taken like a common criminal ?), and there does not seem to be much of a difference left.
I will not enter into the debate as to whether they should be considered to deserve PW status or not That was not the debate I was curious about anyway. The debate I'm curious about is how those people are not "persons", i.e., are not human. If the law had stated "This does not apply to PoWs" or some other law defines "PoWs are not people, persons, or humans under US law", it would be a slightly different (though no less abhorrent) story.
- in most countries it is a categoric 'YES' but the US wants to view this differently for the time being. Yes. It's a common technique in the US currently -- just reassign the meanings of words. Torture is not torture when the US government does it, or when is performed in a way. Therefore, the US does not torture. You can sidestep that issue again when you qualify that with "the US government does not torture people" when you simply redefine the meaning of "people" or "persons".
(Incidentally, how does the US view the status of its own personnel whom might be taken prisoner? Yep, I thought so....) Actually, by defying Geneva conventions, the US is not doing much to protect their own citizens or military personnel when they are being taken as PoWs. After all, why adhere to those conventions when you cannot expect the same treatment in return for citizens of your own country ?
I wholeheartedly support fingerprints and pictures and DNA samples being taken from US citizens that travel abroad upon entry into my country (and any other sensible country). Naturally, this would not apply to Mexicans, Canadians, or other countries where you are not automatically assumed to be guilty of something just by traveling there.
But people who are detained in the US for whatever crimes they might be accused of are not 'usually' sent to Guantanamo Bay. True. However, the original question was whether you can plead the fifth at border control. The argument would be that the fifth could be construed only to apply to US citizen (=people), not foreigners (=less than people). If you decide to try to plead the fifth on an encryption key, could that not be considered a hostile act by a non-citizen ? Would that not qualify you for an all-expenses paid trip to the bay ? (and if you ARE a citizen, good luck getting representation before entering the country...)
So the constitution, abused and distorted as it might currently be, does appear to apply to all people in the US and not only 'citizens' of that country. The problem wasn't so much people already in the US, but people about to enter the US but held up at the airport border security checkpoint. It takes a bit more cunning to subvert the constitutional rights afforded to people for people on US soil, though that's REALLY not much of a problem either when you're a foreigner. Just quote the Patriot act and be done with it. That filthy foreigner was probably planning to bomb something anyway, so nobody really cares. Next up is "charging" (well, detaining really) US citizens for terrorism-related suspicions.
Yes, my view is pessimistic, but then again, as history has well shown, the only way to avoid abuse of power is for that power not to exist. Therefore, looking at the worst-case scenario is really the best course of action when evaluating the current state of something.
An excellent question.
On the sixth anniversary of the imprisonment of detainees at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, a United States judge threw out lawsuit brought by four former British detainees against Donald Rumsfeld and senior military officers for ordering torture and religious abuse, ruling that th the detainees are not "Persons" under U.S. Law, which according to another judge, means that they are less than "human beings". (from http://presscue.com/node/39281)
Any questions ?
(note that if you haven't passed through border control on airports yet, you are not technically uin the US yet).
First of all, my comment was based on data that suggested he had been defeated, as mentioned in the OP. I was, of course, referring to winning and loosing in the actual senses of those words (not politico spindoctor doublespeak).
Simply discounting the meaning of words just because you don't like them is flatly ridiculous.
PR is all good and well, but winning is winning, loosing is loosing, and no looser is also the winner. Then again, you knew that, and you probably also did knew that the counts were not in when that comment was made. Classy sir, classy.
Your response is littered with lots of inflammatory words which work rather effectively at reducing the value of the substance in your post. Despite some initial hesitation, I'll bite...
You may find them inflammatory, I find them warranted given the evidence.
And you have ANY hard data to back that up ? No.
Handily ignoring the rest of my post?
Which does not provide any useful data, just hypothesis after hypothesis.
Others are trying to come up with better metrics (http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html...
Which gives lots of details about ALLOCATION. See rest of post.
Ah, you completely missed how they are also looking at advertized space ? Also, fractions of allocated space that are also advertized ? I argue that that is a BETTER metric than what you came up with by far.
Eh, what did you say? And, why use an address that's not advertized? (spelled "advertised" by most folks) Sounds amazingly like NAT... in other words, it is not used in the literal sense.
It's quite possible that I misuse advertized vs. advertised, it's been a while since I got graded on English tests (and no, it's not my native tongue).
Why use an address that's not advertised ? Consider the case where two large and different networks have to interconnect. RFC1918 addresses will clash there, easily. Also consider addresses that are limited in scope -- for instance military networks.
There are valid reasons. Not all reasons for this are valid, but neither are all of them a sham.
A problem many others have faced and solved before you.
It's like asking "Do you know where my shoe is?" and hearing your spouse respond: "Right where you left it". Technically true, utterly useless in any meaningful sense.
I should have added the word "better", you are quite right.
I wonder, why was your first thought to crap out (at least) 10 packets to the net that really are not needed ?
Ignoring the insults,
Insults ? I'm not attacking you, I'm attacking your method. You are littering the net.
my intention was to try to evaluate the relative strength of my Internet connection, including an accounting for outages that can cover broad areas. By picking addresses from around the world, I'm attempting to evaluate the overall strength of the Internet rather than just my connection to a few key points.
So you don't actually "just" want to see whether your host is "up" and "connected", but rather want a poor man's internet weather report ? (http://www.internettrafficreport.com/main.htm and such ?) Your approach doesn't even accurately the relative strength of your internet connection, as you well noted (hard to predict how many of the hostnames and ips you come up with SHOULD respond; when you actually pick them carefully (for various characteristics, such as networks you want to monitor connectivity to), you actually have a gauge of how well your connection works compared to what you would expect.
Furthermore, if you save the hosts that have responded in the past, there is a very real chance that you get an unrepresentative hostlist that won't accurately gauge connectivity problems "on the wide internet".
Even that, however, can easily be done by using well-known addresses and network paths instead of randomly shooting stuff at addresses you are probably not interested in at all.
Are you daft?
I might very well be, but not on this matter.
You're worried about the effect of about 10-20 DNS requests per day, when mail servers are pelted with millions of SPAMs per day? Have you ever looked at the relative size of a ping packet (a few bytes) with the size of an image-laden penis-pill spam?
You may be surprised to discover that I have.
I'm not worried about a single person doing it. I'm worried that a whole lot of brai
"While Clinton won California, New york, new Jersey and Mass, Obama really comes out as the winner here. Why? because not a month ago he was hugely behind, and now he's only narrowly been defeated."
Thanks for playing, but that is not the definition of "winner". You either win, or you loose. Even if you are "narrowly defeated", you still have not won -- unless you can pay for the lawyers to make it so.
Re:It's a sham - the Internet is mostly dark
on
One Step Closer to IPv6
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
You are an exceptionally bad engineer, coder, thinker, and internet citizen.
The sad part is, most of the IP addresses in question are... dark. Nothing there. Even though we're approaching 85% allocation, utilization is probably around 1-2%. No, I'm not kidding.
And you have ANY hard data to back that up ? No. Others are trying to come up with better metrics (http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html is exceptionally verbose), but you ? You are not kidding about thinking that it maybe probably is around 1-2%... Wow.
Try it yourself - hack up some script to randomly generate IPs and then ping sweep the network blocks. You'll probably be quite surprised at the result.
Bzzzt. No, I would not be -- nor should anybody be.
First of all, it's not a requirement for every address to be routable to (and you can check that much better by looking at what percentage of prefixes are actually advertized). Second, many, MANY hosts and networks are behind firewalls, intrusion detection & response systems, etc. -- a "simple pingscan" can easily land you in a black hole at the network border after a couple of pings -- if access to those machines is even allowed from your network. Sure, in consumer broadband connections you don't often have such firewalls restricting inbound access, but that's not the "entire internet". Hell, go ping amazon.com and see what you get back. Nada, that's what.
A while back, I wanted to have a way to detect if a host was "offline" so that it could modify its behavior. (EG: halt outgoing SOAP requests if the server's network connection was disrupted, preventing bogus error messages from entering the system)
A problem many others have faced and solved before you.
My first thought was to randomly generate 10 IP addresses, then ping them to see if they were offline, guessing that at least 50% would respond.
Accounting for the different classes of addresses, unroutable space, bogons, etc. in that random calculation would be more work than the result is worth, especially seeing as how the state of netblocks can change over time.
I wonder, why was your first thought to crap out (at least) 10 packets to the net that really are not needed ? What possible reason could there be for you to automatically ping a cellphone in Singapore ?
Just imagine everybody doing this, just to check whether they are "online"...
How about choosing some well-known addresses (such as one of your own servers in a different locale, or possibly "well-known" servers that you know will respond and that don't mind a ping from you every now and then... Not only do you get a 100% response rate when everything is working correctly, you also forego abusing bandwidth in remote locales you are not at all interested in.
Basically, none did. So, then I tried randomizing addresses and keeping a list of only those that had, at one time, responded. Even that turned out to be unfruitful.
You know, while still a bit dickish, it might have occured to you that most of {a-m}.root-servers.net do reply to ping or DNS requests. So do, in all likelihood, a router in your upstream, or DNS resolvers you know about.
Instead, you now latch on to addresses that respond. The cellphone in Singapore, for instance.
So finally, I took a dictionary and randomly created domain names from 1-2 normal dictionary words, pinging those, and keeping a list.
Ah. So now that flooding ICMP out to the net is not enough, you have to litter it with bogus DNS requests the reply to which you are not really interested in. Again, imagine EVERYBODY doing this.
Why not pick 10 known domain names and always ping those ? At least the results will be cached, and you may even choose ones whose owners you know and can ask whether they mind to be flooded with icmp every now and then.
That yielded some 40% usable responses, allowing me to keep a list of fairly
"Projections suggest that this unallocated pool will run out by 2011 at the latest.'"
Riight. Last I read it was 2011 for ARIN, 2012 for RIPE, assuming current allocation procedures. If allocation- and revocation-procedures are changed before then, "at the latest" suddenly becomes "at the earliest".
There is a problem, but it's not got a final due-by date attached to it just yet.
While networking over powerlines is kinda cool, it's not overly reliable (having seen it in action as a LAN, not a broadband uplink). Personally I also consider it a nightmare troubleshooting-wise -- with cat5 and phone cables, IF you get zapped, you probably won't even feel it. If you tinker with your powerlines to get your broadband to work, well, death-by-internet may become a lot more common than it is nowadays:)
I got that point, however, I don't subscribe to it. The page serves as a perfect example why NOT to use Silverlight. I realize MS does not care about the visitors to that site, but prospective users of SL sure would.
This was not originally my idea, but I have seen 404 errors used in this manner since at least 2002. (you don't want to muck around with mod_rewrite in Apache, want static websites to be served blindingly fast, want automatic caching some dynamic content is already statically saved at an URL ? Easy ! Just make your error handler redirect to a dynamic page given its originating URL and create the content. If you want it cached for future usage, save it into a file at the URLs filesystem representation, if not, no problem.
Compared to the (more common) mod_rewrite approach, this approach does not require every URL to be checked against a regex on every request, and only starts up processing of the URL when no suitable static (or even dynamic) page/file is found. According to the TFA, this fits the claims of the patent. A friend of mine has been using this technique to his great advantage to sprinkle some dynamic content into a static hierarchy of pages. And there is definitely prior art to that, too, since handing off 404 errors to a dynamic page had been done even back then.
Because clearly, an SMS gateway is a SOPHISTICATED piece of software and hardware, designed by rocket brainsurgeons. If the telco has money to throw away, there will always be suppliers all too happy to take much more than what development and maintenance actually cost.
Look at "Instant Messaging" on the internet. It solves much the same problem -- and in the case of Jabber even in a decentralized manner, i.e. similar to having multiple telcos. How is it that those services don't cost anywhere close to $0.4 per message delivered ? How come email does not cost upwards of $0.4 per message (or per 160 byte chunk) ? Sure, there is a cost to providing a decent email subsystem and a decent instant messaging platform. However, that cost is negligible compared to the price of SMS, even though the exact same problem is being solved (albeit on a different network stack).
I frankly could care less what $VENDOR charges for their SMS gateway system. If it's really that much, then $TELCO needs to think long and hard about dropping $VENDOR in that area or paying $DEVELOPERS the same they pay $VENDOR now, but without silly message-per-second licensing fees.
You assume, of course, that Comcast will increase its Callcenter staff to accomodate the influx of new calls. Something tells me the only thing that'll accomplish is people being put on hold longer. The cost to Comcast stays the same.
So the operator might be more easily convinced to give up all membership data ? (compared to a site with enough money for a decent defense attorney...):P
Skaven is great indeed, though if you are referring to the Second Reality soundtrack, that is actually available in a properly mastered version (on Purple Motion's CD Musicdisk).
Who will be liable when the overzealous commission-based filesharer-hunter reports the wrong IP, one offering vital services ? It's a goooood idea to disconnect suicide hotlines from the net (hey, VoIP is used in business as well) because of an alleged filesharing incident, right ? Probably a good idea to disconnect municipal internet connections because one of the city employees used LimeWire as well, right ? They could not possibly be doing something quite a lot more important than lining your pockets, right ?
No, a branded connection must be disconnected immediately. Heck, just disconnect universities outright, preemptively. They could not possibly be working on a cure for cance, on international particle physics experiments, or on anything more important than your bottom line, right ?
But thank you, Paul, thanks to you I have incentive never to buy anything from U2 again, and make it known amongst my peers that they are clearly lunatics not worthy of their patronship. You just lost yourself a bunch of money, and people are still sharing your music. Oh, the irony.
The article is not about the cost of delivery, but the cost for the consumer at US carriers. Assumption of 40 cents per message and half of the maximum message size actually used (20 cents for sending, 20 cents for receiving, as AT&T in the US offers it).
DELIVERY of SMS is practically a byproduct of their existing network. It does not cost a thing. Fun thing is, SMS are best-effort, you don't even get a guarantee that your $0.4 actually bought delivery (but hey, if it's not delivered, they'll halve the price to $0.2 ! How generous !:)
Where do you get that from? Of course, his testimony should be heard. I'm saying people need to look at his and Germany's record and not just believe the German myth that Germany has strong data protection laws.
So you did not imply for the EU and the US to tell him to go take a hike, get his house in order first before he can make a valid point one should listen to ?
Where do you get that from? I said "Voter turnout tells you little about the health of a democracy. The relatively low voter turnout in the US results from..." Voter turnout is a meaningless criterion of democratic values.
You said it was a good system, that is where I got that from; that would imply that you either like the way things are, or that voter turnout is completely irrelevant.
That's the choice the American people are making, quite democratically, and it's served the US well for 200 years.
So a low turnout at both the presidential elections and the primaries is a good democracy ? Yes, you are right, voter turnout is by far not the only nor the one true best measure of the state of a democracy, but it sure does tell you a bit about participation. Democracy constantly changes, and I'd argue nothing changed it more than research into the human psyche, and application of lessons learned therefrom. The combination of mass media, insight into Freudian theory, and the proliferation of public relations specialists (i.e. spindoctors) changes the equation somewhat, and gives a lot of power to very few unelected people (that's something Nazi Germany employed quite successfully, the manufacturing of opinion through the media and the press). Nobody dares mention "Gleichschaltung" in the context of US mass media, but then again, it's coming close. I dare question whether that has to do much with democracy. Of course, the informed voter is an utopian fantasy as well.
Besides, one of the major parties in Germany is the Christian Democrats, and German federal and state governments involve church officials in politics; talk about a disturbing non-separation of church and state.
The CDU (Christlich Demokratische Union) / CSU (Christlich Soziale Union), the strong conservative party in Germany, indeed bears Christianity in its name. Do not judge a book by its cover. They do not have a monopoly on "Christian" values, nor are all its members Christian. It is not a violation of the separation of church and state to have a political party with Christ in its name; The "church" does not write its agenda, and one might rightly argue that their party program is anything but good'ole Christian. Federal and State governments involve church officials in politics ? Well yeah. They are public figures. It may surprise you to know that this does not give church officials political power any more than lobbying groups get (they are also involved in politics), or advisors get. Quite decidedly they do not make policy. Religion is a major part of society, and churches are an extension of that part. Of course that part of society needs to be integrated into everyday life, or rather, is integrated. The state does not exist in a vacuum, nor does the church. Appointed officials in politics have no right to appoint the head of a church, nor do church officials have have any power over appointment of government officials.
As I said; in Germany, we don't have an "Intelligent Design" vs. "Evolution" "debate". Schools are state-run.
As for "two parties", the existence of multiple parties was a big factor in the downfall of the Weimar Republic. What do you think having more than two parties accomplishes? Can you point to any historical examples showing that having more parties results in better democracy?
It can result in a better representation of the interests of its constituents. Yes, a multi-party system can fail. No, it does not have to. Coalitions can be formed. In my mind it is folly to assume that a voter can have exactly one of two positions on any issue,
Traditionally, no. Of course I can't speak to what tpb does in their stats, but traditionally a BitTorrent peer is defined as a tuple of peer_id+info_hash, i.e. even/if/ a client were to use the same peer_id on many torrents on the same tracker, it would still be counted as several peers attached to several info_hashes.
You still don't get my point. Suprnova ITSELF did not generate the traffic. The BitTorrent peers did. Suprnova was also not the "only" tracker out there, as you well noted. Suprnova was in the hundrets of mbit/s. The PEERS generated huge amounts of traffic.
Slashdot Mirror
Just stop. It's not a good idea. It has never been a good idea, it will never be a good idea. There is no such thing as a "white-hat worm". No matter what the intentions of its writers are, the worm itself will never be "white-hat". It's going to cause problems on a technical level. It's going to cause problems on a legal level.
And even if you accept, for a moment, the premise that this worm could actually work without any collateral damage (which is unacceptable), do you REALLY want Microsoft (or any entity for that matter) deciding what gets distributed this way ? Is it "just" a fix for the vulnerability, or is it a "fix" that will break half of your infrastructure ? Will Microsoft update other, unaffected components of the system with this ? (How do YOU know they won't ?)
There is a reason company IT departments don't just let Windows Update rip into their systems and test updates first.
Yeah, quite the amazing offer if I say so myself, 2tb of bandwidth for $15/month ... wow. When I check datacenter costs at a reputable datacenter on their best connections it is upwards of $150/month for a machine that comes with a 250GB hard drive and 2000GB of bandwidth.
That's dedicated though. There is a huge difference compared to shared hosting.
Since bandwidth is never delivered at a steady rate 24/7 it means you're going to be going through a cycle of peaks, I've got a game server pulling a terabyte a month and during prime time that is pulling 7mbit/s sometimes hitting 10mbit/s .. find me a 10mbit/s connection I can max out a majority of the time for $15/month .. apparently these hosts have found some hidden cheap bandwidth I guess.
On the contrary. The cost for disk space is actually a lot higher than what they charge, and bandwidth does not grow on trees (though economies of scale apply). However, overselling in shared webhosting works, and it works very well. So long as the majority of your customers NEVER uses their allotted space or bandwidth, you are fine. You do not need to provision 500gb of space per customer when they sign up -- you just need to make sure your system has enough spare capacity to handle growth, and put in more disks/arrays when needed (marketing guys call this "just-in-time provisioning".
Sure, we could go get a full time 100mbit/s connection from a NOC for a thousand a month, but when you're talking about the possibility of maxing out that line with 10-20 customers paying you $15, something doesn't add up. These high numbers being claimed are just as much horseshit as the guys doing unlimited.
Not exactly. These are non mom-and-pop hosters that rent their servers and network connections by the port orby the half-rack. They operate their own datacenters (the serious ones, anyway), which gets you vastly different pricing for your bandwidth (if you deal in many gigabits/sec as opposed to 100mbit/s, prices do drop considerably).
You do not look at it as 10-20 customers on one server, but hundreds or thousands of customers on a number of servers with a number of storage arrays.
If they can truly deliver 2tb for $15/month I've got a few download servers they can try out ... really, this should be putting all the NOCs out of business.
It won't. You simply have not understood the concept of overselling yet. :) :)
They can sell you 500gb and 5tb precisely because the vast majority of people never use that much, even if they are allowed to. You CAN use that much if the host is reputable and doesn't wiggle out of their agreements ("conventional" and "traditional" websites my ass, pardon my French). For instance, there are plenty of folks on DH that are using upwards of 500g of storage and upwards of 3-4 tb of bandwidth (~3 tb would be an average of 10mbit/s (and yes, average, not peak)). There are thousands more, however, who use less than 1gb and less than 10-100gb of traffic. Given critical mass, this can work well, especially since shared webhosting has an expectation of minor problems (such as an overloaded mySQL server every now and then, or sporadically overloaded servers due to abusive customers (and I do not mean in the "let's kick him because he is using too much but still what is allowed" kind of abusive, but rather the "I'm using this server as if it were a dedicated one, spawning thousands of processes, using an entire server, even though I am FULLY aware that this is a shared webhost" kind of abusive. There is a huge difference between using 500g/5tb to serve mostly static files compared to trying to host a bulletin board with 800 online users at any one time on the same plan -- that's simply infeasible in a shared hosting environment
Your particular usage, for instance, is not applicable (game servers on shared hosting are a no-no, persistent processes are
How about $8 for 500gb of disk and 5tb of bandwidth ? Or even 8tb of bandwidth or 700gb, if you get the right promocode ? Dream host..ing ? (this is what a professional calls "surreptitious advertising", just in case you wanted a contrast to your spamlink). There are some people competing in a lunar-cyclish page way, and HOSTs drinking GATORade are out there as well. and of our customers who use it, most could downgrade to cheaper accounts ($8? $4.50?) without a problem**. Wow, that sounds reasonable, especially your recommendation to downgrade after the stars. Heartfelt, even.
Say, why don't you automatically downgrade those people if they are below usage, and automatically upgrade them to the next-higher tier when they exceed their limits ? Now that would be service. I'm sure some companies offer it. Yahoo knows this about its own customers, too, so this is likely a gimmick to give the impression of a "deal" while knowing most people won't actually consume much. Also note this quote from Yahoo's unlimited email FAQ: "The purpose of unlimited storage isn't to provide an online storage warehouse. Usage that suggests this approach gets flagged by Yahoo! Business Email's anti-abuse controls." Yupp, and I especially like that kind of language. You neglect to mention, of course, that Arrow Bay's (limited) service actually contains teh same kind of language
Certain dreamy hosts have changed their "interpretation" of their ToS in that way recently, as well. If anybody ever sells you any hosting service with > 20 gb of disk space, you can be all but certain that they really only mean "in theory", never "in practice".
Oh, do you know where I found that package ? Not near the limits. Not at all near the limits. You first go to the legal terms of service, then search another link way down on the page, then scroll way down (it's the second to last paragraph). That seems really open and honest. Really.
Add to that that whenever you enter the US you are automatically assumed guilty of something (after all, why else would you need to have your photograph and your fingerprints taken like a common criminal ?), and there does not seem to be much of a difference left. I will not enter into the debate as to whether they should be considered to deserve PW status or not That was not the debate I was curious about anyway. The debate I'm curious about is how those people are not "persons", i.e., are not human. If the law had stated "This does not apply to PoWs" or some other law defines "PoWs are not people, persons, or humans under US law", it would be a slightly different (though no less abhorrent) story. - in most countries it is a categoric 'YES' but the US wants to view this differently for the time being. Yes. It's a common technique in the US currently -- just reassign the meanings of words. Torture is not torture when the US government does it, or when is performed in a way. Therefore, the US does not torture.
You can sidestep that issue again when you qualify that with "the US government does not torture people" when you simply redefine the meaning of "people" or "persons". (Incidentally, how does the US view the status of its own personnel whom might be taken prisoner? Yep, I thought so....) Actually, by defying Geneva conventions, the US is not doing much to protect their own citizens or military personnel when they are being taken as PoWs. After all, why adhere to those conventions when you cannot expect the same treatment in return for citizens of your own country ?
I wholeheartedly support fingerprints and pictures and DNA samples being taken from US citizens that travel abroad upon entry into my country (and any other sensible country). Naturally, this would not apply to Mexicans, Canadians, or other countries where you are not automatically assumed to be guilty of something just by traveling there. But people who are detained in the US for whatever crimes they might be accused of are not 'usually' sent to Guantanamo Bay. True. However, the original question was whether you can plead the fifth at border control. The argument would be that the fifth could be construed only to apply to US citizen (=people), not foreigners (=less than people). If you decide to try to plead the fifth on an encryption key, could that not be considered a hostile act by a non-citizen ? Would that not qualify you for an all-expenses paid trip to the bay ?
(and if you ARE a citizen, good luck getting representation before entering the country
It takes a bit more cunning to subvert the constitutional rights afforded to people for people on US soil, though that's REALLY not much of a problem either when you're a foreigner. Just quote the Patriot act and be done with it. That filthy foreigner was probably planning to bomb something anyway, so nobody really cares.
Next up is "charging" (well, detaining really) US citizens for terrorism-related suspicions.
Yes, my view is pessimistic, but then again, as history has well shown, the only way to avoid abuse of power is for that power not to exist. Therefore, looking at the worst-case scenario is really the best course of action when evaluating the current state of something.
The prophets of atheism are called scientists. Dirty, dirty scientists.
Any questions ?
(note that if you haven't passed through border control on airports yet, you are not technically uin the US yet).
That depends.
Are you an American citizen ? If so, you may be afforded human rights under US law. If not, well, you have no rights.
Oh brother ...
First of all, my comment was based on data that suggested he had been defeated, as mentioned in the OP. I was, of course, referring to winning and loosing in the actual senses of those words (not politico spindoctor doublespeak).
Simply discounting the meaning of words just because you don't like them is flatly ridiculous.
PR is all good and well, but winning is winning, loosing is loosing, and no looser is also the winner. Then again, you knew that, and you probably also did knew that the counts were not in when that comment was made. Classy sir, classy.
Your response is littered with lots of inflammatory words which work rather effectively at reducing the value of the substance in your post. Despite some initial hesitation, I'll bite...
You may find them inflammatory, I find them warranted given the evidence.
And you have ANY hard data to back that up ? No.
Handily ignoring the rest of my post?
Which does not provide any useful data, just hypothesis after hypothesis.
Others are trying to come up with better metrics (http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html...
Which gives lots of details about ALLOCATION. See rest of post.
Ah, you completely missed how they are also looking at advertized space ? Also, fractions of allocated space that are also advertized ? I argue that that is a BETTER metric than what you came up with by far.
Eh, what did you say? And, why use an address that's not advertized? (spelled "advertised" by most folks) Sounds amazingly like NAT... in other words, it is not used in the literal sense.
It's quite possible that I misuse advertized vs. advertised, it's been a while since I got graded on English tests (and no, it's not my native tongue). Why use an address that's not advertised ? Consider the case where two large and different networks have to interconnect. RFC1918 addresses will clash there, easily. Also consider addresses that are limited in scope -- for instance military networks. There are valid reasons. Not all reasons for this are valid, but neither are all of them a sham.
A problem many others have faced and solved before you.
It's like asking "Do you know where my shoe is?" and hearing your spouse respond: "Right where you left it". Technically true, utterly useless in any meaningful sense.
I should have added the word "better", you are quite right.
I wonder, why was your first thought to crap out (at least) 10 packets to the net that really are not needed ?
Ignoring the insults,
Insults ? I'm not attacking you, I'm attacking your method. You are littering the net.
my intention was to try to evaluate the relative strength of my Internet connection, including an accounting for outages that can cover broad areas. By picking addresses from around the world, I'm attempting to evaluate the overall strength of the Internet rather than just my connection to a few key points.
So you don't actually "just" want to see whether your host is "up" and "connected", but rather want a poor man's internet weather report ? (http://www.internettrafficreport.com/main.htm and such ?) Your approach doesn't even accurately the relative strength of your internet connection, as you well noted (hard to predict how many of the hostnames and ips you come up with SHOULD respond; when you actually pick them carefully (for various characteristics, such as networks you want to monitor connectivity to), you actually have a gauge of how well your connection works compared to what you would expect. Furthermore, if you save the hosts that have responded in the past, there is a very real chance that you get an unrepresentative hostlist that won't accurately gauge connectivity problems "on the wide internet". Even that, however, can easily be done by using well-known addresses and network paths instead of randomly shooting stuff at addresses you are probably not interested in at all.
Are you daft?
I might very well be, but not on this matter.
You're worried about the effect of about 10-20 DNS requests per day, when mail servers are pelted with millions of SPAMs per day? Have you ever looked at the relative size of a ping packet (a few bytes) with the size of an image-laden penis-pill spam?
You may be surprised to discover that I have. I'm not worried about a single person doing it. I'm worried that a whole lot of brai
"While Clinton won California, New york, new Jersey and Mass, Obama really comes out as the winner here. Why? because not a month ago he was hugely behind, and now he's only narrowly been defeated."
Thanks for playing, but that is not the definition of "winner". You either win, or you loose. Even if you are "narrowly defeated", you still have not won -- unless you can pay for the lawyers to make it so.
The sad part is, most of the IP addresses in question are... dark. Nothing there. Even though we're approaching 85% allocation, utilization is probably around 1-2%. No, I'm not kidding.
And you have ANY hard data to back that up ? No. Others are trying to come up with better metrics (http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html is exceptionally verbose), but you ? You are not kidding about thinking that it maybe probably is around 1-2% ... Wow.
Try it yourself - hack up some script to randomly generate IPs and then ping sweep the network blocks. You'll probably be quite surprised at the result.
Bzzzt. No, I would not be -- nor should anybody be. First of all, it's not a requirement for every address to be routable to (and you can check that much better by looking at what percentage of prefixes are actually advertized). Second, many, MANY hosts and networks are behind firewalls, intrusion detection & response systems, etc. -- a "simple pingscan" can easily land you in a black hole at the network border after a couple of pings -- if access to those machines is even allowed from your network. Sure, in consumer broadband connections you don't often have such firewalls restricting inbound access, but that's not the "entire internet". Hell, go ping amazon.com and see what you get back. Nada, that's what.
A while back, I wanted to have a way to detect if a host was "offline" so that it could modify its behavior. (EG: halt outgoing SOAP requests if the server's network connection was disrupted, preventing bogus error messages from entering the system)
A problem many others have faced and solved before you.
My first thought was to randomly generate 10 IP addresses, then ping them to see if they were offline, guessing that at least 50% would respond.
Accounting for the different classes of addresses, unroutable space, bogons, etc. in that random calculation would be more work than the result is worth, especially seeing as how the state of netblocks can change over time. I wonder, why was your first thought to crap out (at least) 10 packets to the net that really are not needed ? What possible reason could there be for you to automatically ping a cellphone in Singapore ? Just imagine everybody doing this, just to check whether they are "online" ...
How about choosing some well-known addresses (such as one of your own servers in a different locale, or possibly "well-known" servers that you know will respond and that don't mind a ping from you every now and then ... Not only do you get a 100% response rate when everything is working correctly, you also forego abusing bandwidth in remote locales you are not at all interested in.
Basically, none did. So, then I tried randomizing addresses and keeping a list of only those that had, at one time, responded. Even that turned out to be unfruitful.
You know, while still a bit dickish, it might have occured to you that most of {a-m}.root-servers.net do reply to ping or DNS requests. So do, in all likelihood, a router in your upstream, or DNS resolvers you know about. Instead, you now latch on to addresses that respond. The cellphone in Singapore, for instance.
So finally, I took a dictionary and randomly created domain names from 1-2 normal dictionary words, pinging those, and keeping a list.
Ah. So now that flooding ICMP out to the net is not enough, you have to litter it with bogus DNS requests the reply to which you are not really interested in. Again, imagine EVERYBODY doing this. Why not pick 10 known domain names and always ping those ? At least the results will be cached, and you may even choose ones whose owners you know and can ask whether they mind to be flooded with icmp every now and then.
That yielded some 40% usable responses, allowing me to keep a list of fairly
"Projections suggest that this unallocated pool will run out by 2011 at the latest.'"
Riight. Last I read it was 2011 for ARIN, 2012 for RIPE, assuming current allocation procedures. If allocation- and revocation-procedures are changed before then, "at the latest" suddenly becomes "at the earliest".
There is a problem, but it's not got a final due-by date attached to it just yet.
While networking over powerlines is kinda cool, it's not overly reliable (having seen it in action as a LAN, not a broadband uplink). Personally I also consider it a nightmare troubleshooting-wise -- with cat5 and phone cables, IF you get zapped, you probably won't even feel it. If you tinker with your powerlines to get your broadband to work, well, death-by-internet may become a lot more common than it is nowadays :)
I got that point, however, I don't subscribe to it.
The page serves as a perfect example why NOT to use Silverlight.
I realize MS does not care about the visitors to that site, but prospective users of SL sure would.
I clicked the link.
Drawing looked decent, so I click it.
Requires Silverlight.
I am not going to install Silverlight for a Comic Strip or any other website content that works just as well without it.
I don't care enough about that website to install Silverlight.
That website just lost a prospective repeat visitor.
Silverlight just cost you, prospective silverlight-only website operator, money.
Thank you Microsoft, for this great lesson on why not to use Silverlight.
This was not originally my idea, but I have seen 404 errors used in this manner since at least 2002. (you don't want to muck around with mod_rewrite in Apache, want static websites to be served blindingly fast, want automatic caching some dynamic content is already statically saved at an URL ? Easy ! Just make your error handler redirect to a dynamic page given its originating URL and create the content. If you want it cached for future usage, save it into a file at the URLs filesystem representation, if not, no problem.
Compared to the (more common) mod_rewrite approach, this approach does not require every URL to be checked against a regex on every request, and only starts up processing of the URL when no suitable static (or even dynamic) page/file is found. According to the TFA, this fits the claims of the patent.
A friend of mine has been using this technique to his great advantage to sprinkle some dynamic content into a static hierarchy of pages. And there is definitely prior art to that, too, since handing off 404 errors to a dynamic page had been done even back then.
Because clearly, an SMS gateway is a SOPHISTICATED piece of software and hardware, designed by rocket brainsurgeons. If the telco has money to throw away, there will always be suppliers all too happy to take much more than what development and maintenance actually cost.
Look at "Instant Messaging" on the internet. It solves much the same problem -- and in the case of Jabber even in a decentralized manner, i.e. similar to having multiple telcos. How is it that those services don't cost anywhere close to $0.4 per message delivered ? How come email does not cost upwards of $0.4 per message (or per 160 byte chunk) ?
Sure, there is a cost to providing a decent email subsystem and a decent instant messaging platform. However, that cost is negligible compared to the price of SMS, even though the exact same problem is being solved (albeit on a different network stack).
I frankly could care less what $VENDOR charges for their SMS gateway system. If it's really that much, then $TELCO needs to think long and hard about dropping $VENDOR in that area or paying $DEVELOPERS the same they pay $VENDOR now, but without silly message-per-second licensing fees.
You assume, of course, that Comcast will increase its Callcenter staff to accomodate the influx of new calls. Something tells me the only thing that'll accomplish is people being put on hold longer. The cost to Comcast stays the same.
So the operator might be more easily convinced to give up all membership data ? ...) :P
(compared to a site with enough money for a decent defense attorney
Skaven is great indeed, though if you are referring to the Second Reality soundtrack, that is actually available in a properly mastered version (on Purple Motion's CD Musicdisk).
Since you bring up suicide ...
Who will be liable when the overzealous commission-based filesharer-hunter reports the wrong IP, one offering vital services ? It's a goooood idea to disconnect suicide hotlines from the net (hey, VoIP is used in business as well) because of an alleged filesharing incident, right ? Probably a good idea to disconnect municipal internet connections because one of the city employees used LimeWire as well, right ? They could not possibly be doing something quite a lot more important than lining your pockets, right ?
No, a branded connection must be disconnected immediately. Heck, just disconnect universities outright, preemptively. They could not possibly be working on a cure for cance, on international particle physics experiments, or on anything more important than your bottom line, right ?
But thank you, Paul, thanks to you I have incentive never to buy anything from U2 again, and make it known amongst my peers that they are clearly lunatics not worthy of their patronship. You just lost yourself a bunch of money, and people are still sharing your music. Oh, the irony.
The article is not about the cost of delivery, but the cost for the consumer at US carriers. Assumption of 40 cents per message and half of the maximum message size actually used (20 cents for sending, 20 cents for receiving, as AT&T in the US offers it).
:)
DELIVERY of SMS is practically a byproduct of their existing network. It does not cost a thing. Fun thing is, SMS are best-effort, you don't even get a guarantee that your $0.4 actually bought delivery (but hey, if it's not delivered, they'll halve the price to $0.2 ! How generous !
Where do you get that from? Of course, his testimony should be heard. I'm saying people need to look at his and Germany's record and not just believe the German myth that Germany has strong data protection laws.
So you did not imply for the EU and the US to tell him to go take a hike, get his house in order first before he can make a valid point one should listen to ?
Where do you get that from? I said "Voter turnout tells you little about the health of a democracy. The relatively low voter turnout in the US results from..." Voter turnout is a meaningless criterion of democratic values.
You said it was a good system, that is where I got that from; that would imply that you either like the way things are, or that voter turnout is completely irrelevant.
That's the choice the American people are making, quite democratically, and it's served the US well for 200 years.
So a low turnout at both the presidential elections and the primaries is a good democracy ? Yes, you are right, voter turnout is by far not the only nor the one true best measure of the state of a democracy, but it sure does tell you a bit about participation.
Democracy constantly changes, and I'd argue nothing changed it more than research into the human psyche, and application of lessons learned therefrom. The combination of mass media, insight into Freudian theory, and the proliferation of public relations specialists (i.e. spindoctors) changes the equation somewhat, and gives a lot of power to very few unelected people (that's something Nazi Germany employed quite successfully, the manufacturing of opinion through the media and the press). Nobody dares mention "Gleichschaltung" in the context of US mass media, but then again, it's coming close. I dare question whether that has to do much with democracy. Of course, the informed voter is an utopian fantasy as well.
Besides, one of the major parties in Germany is the Christian Democrats, and German federal and state governments involve church officials in politics; talk about a disturbing non-separation of church and state.
The CDU (Christlich Demokratische Union) / CSU (Christlich Soziale Union), the strong conservative party in Germany, indeed bears Christianity in its name. Do not judge a book by its cover. They do not have a monopoly on "Christian" values, nor are all its members Christian. It is not a violation of the separation of church and state to have a political party with Christ in its name; The "church" does not write its agenda, and one might
rightly argue that their party program is anything but good'ole Christian.
Federal and State governments involve church officials in politics ? Well yeah. They are public figures. It may surprise you to know that this does not give church officials political power any more than lobbying groups get (they are also involved in politics), or advisors get. Quite decidedly they do not make policy.
Religion is a major part of society, and churches are an extension of that part. Of course that part of society needs to be integrated into everyday life, or rather, is integrated. The state does not exist in a vacuum, nor does the church. Appointed officials in politics have no right to appoint the head of a church, nor do church officials have have any power over appointment of government officials.
As I said; in Germany, we don't have an "Intelligent Design" vs. "Evolution" "debate". Schools are state-run.
As for "two parties", the existence of multiple parties was a big factor in the downfall of the Weimar Republic. What do you think having more than two parties accomplishes? Can you point to any historical examples showing that having more parties results in better democracy?
It can result in a better representation of the interests of its constituents. Yes, a multi-party system can fail. No, it does not have to. Coalitions can be formed.
In my mind it is folly to assume that a voter can have exactly one of two positions on any issue,
Traditionally, no. Of course I can't speak to what tpb does in their stats, but traditionally a BitTorrent peer is defined as a tuple of peer_id+info_hash, i.e. even /if/ a client were to use the same peer_id on many torrents on the same tracker, it would still be counted as several peers attached to several info_hashes.
You still don't get my point. Suprnova ITSELF did not generate the traffic. The BitTorrent peers did. Suprnova was also not the "only" tracker out there, as you well noted. Suprnova was in the hundrets of mbit/s. The PEERS generated huge amounts of traffic.
Just do the logic.