Some minor googling revealed this site, which seems to have most of the requisite information. (Fair warning: Try not to be blown away by the pure awesomeness of the site design, not to mention some of the technically inaccurate details.) Nonetheless, it's probably as good a starting point as any.
I didn't say they don't deserve service, I said they don't have a right to it. What people deserve is only rarely related to what they get. Moreover, their presence on the network is necessarily degrading the experience for everyone else who's being responsible with their activity. Do responsible users *deserve* to be inundated with attacks from the machines of people who, for whatever reason, aren't "advanced user interested in computers and all things technical?" What if we were discussing dogs instead of computers? Would the behavior of their animals be justified by ignorance, incompetence, or apathy?
As I said I think an adequate balance is struck in this case -- there's no disruption of service, *especially* as far as the non-technical user is concerned, and as for erring on the side of caution (false positives) if you think that's a mistake, then I hope you're not an admin.
Pretty much anything else. Most games don't attempt to influence the behavior of the player outside of the game, because they don't provide consequences for *not* playing. There's no consequence for not playing, say, Tetris for a month, while doing the same in WoW (or other MMORPGs) will lead to the disintegration of the social network, be it through apathy or necessity on the part of one's "friends", required for all but the most trivial of tasks, relegating one to the oft-maligned (and justly so) "pickup group". Additionally, the state of Tetris fails to advance in your absence, so you're not missing anything by not playing. The same is actually true of WoW over a sufficient timespan, but it's cleverly disguised though reduced requirements to "catch up" to everyone else, which are meted out in annual or semi-annual doses -- long enough to discourage waiting, but sufficient for anyone who's starting fresh or returning after a hiatus. For many people, the innate desire for instant gratification precludes waiting 6 months to resume playing after a 1 week break (family vacation, business travel, whatever), so they jump back in, work twice as hard, and try their damndest not to miss another week.
End game raiding is just grinding on a larger scale. To make matters worse, you can't just log in and play whenever you feel like it; you have to coordinate times, make yourself available, and rely on others to do the same. You may have a forgiving guild (though probably not, since you describe them as "high level") which allows you to participate at will rather than requiring attendance, but even so, non-attendance will necessarily result in one or more of the following:
1) Reduced opportunity for reward through a point system (to say nothing of sheer odds). 2) Reduced opportunity for *attendance* (regulars get priority) 3) Social ostracism (nobody likes someone who isn't "there for the team") 4) Extreme resentment (possibly leading to fracturing of the guild), especially if the first two don't happen for whatever reason (usually because you're a founding member, an officer, or sleeping with one of them, or they harbor fantasies of sleeping with you).
I get that there's a sense of accomplishment in being the first to do something, but that's maybe 5% of the time, even for the best of guilds. It's far too much drama, politics, responsibility, interdependence, and luck for my taste. I get enough of that shit at work.
there is no guarantee it's harder to get in, the guards are too busy watching to make sure you don't get out to pay attention to the other side of the walls.
Nonsense. The plethora of App store rejections is prima facie evidence that it's harder to get in. Note that harder != impossible, just more difficult, and it goes without saying that *any* barrier is greater than no barrier at all. And in many cases, simply being *more difficult* is enough to make it not worth someone's time. This principle is amply demonstrated in everything from home break-ins to car theft to browser exploits.
There is no silver bullet, of course, but fortunately lead bullets work just fine most of the time.
They do send an e-mail, at first. If the traffic continues unabated, they redirect port 80 traffic (only) through a proxy which adds the notice to the server response (the web page you request). It doesn't break or tamper with anything else.
Personally, I don't see a problem with this, since, if you're allowing botnet traffic, you're already abusing the TOS (with or without your knowledge -- and after the notice, certainly ignorance isn't an excuse), and as such you're not really entitled to "unbroken" service, or any service at all for that matter. I think providing this notice is a good compromise.
Rather than making a separate post, I also want to address one of the points in TFS: "Of course, if you have multiple machines running behind a router or modem then you're going to have a difficult time pinning down which machine might have the infection."
This is rather missing the point -- realistically, if any machine inside your network has been compromised, you should assume that the entire network has been compromised, and you should be inspecting/sanitizing/protecting all of the machines accordingly. You should likewise assume that all of your online accounts have been compromised, change your passwords from a trusted location, and check for any unauthorized activity.
Your post may (or may not) be a joke, but there are merits to the walled garden approach; namely that while it's harder to get out, it's also harder to get in. This form of managed security really is ideal for many users who have neither the skill nor the inclination to concern themselves with technical issues. The situation becomes even more tenuous when the difference between a legitimate and malevolent app is neither obvious nor, in many cases, distinguishable. This is a very real issue on Android-based devices, for example, where there's little or no barrier for any given app to receive the same "stamp of approval" (in that there is none, but one may be perceived) as another and be listed side-by-side.
Philosophically, I agree that users should be given the informed decision of opting-out of the walled garden, but this is already the case in practice, and reality trumps ideology most of the time. It's also reality that there is simply no way to opt-in to such an environment on non-iOS devices.
Ah, ok. The USGS go by the stowaway theory, though it's hard to say whether they're parroting rumor, or vice-versa. We'll probably never know for sure.
I was stationed on Guam too, from '02 through '08. Definitely a beautiful island.
To be fair, it wasn't that the snakes were *permitted*, but rather that the snakes (presumably) stowed away on a ship, and Hawaii only really cracked down after seeing what happened on Guam. While Hawaii has so far escaped the same level of ecological damage, there are still snakes found every year, and it is unknown whether the tree snake has established a colony on one or more of the Hawaiian islands (with the general consensus of "more likely than not"). You can be sure Hawaii will watching the results of this experiment very closely.
The chance of tylenol (the substance inside the frozen mice) destroying the eco-system on Guam is so minuscule, as to be impossible. On the other hand, the damned snakes _are_ destroying the eco-system.
This. There simply aren't any indigenous vertebrates on Guam *to* be affected, and non-indigenous species like the monitor lizard can always be re-introduced should anyone feel it necessary (which I strongly doubt). All native bird species are technically extinct in the wild, existing only in captivity, save the few birds that have been reintroduced on a trial basis. At worst, this program would push back the potential earliest date for full reintroduction, which is a small price to pay for so thoroughly tipping the odds of success of reintroduction.
As for the power outages, they're a bit of a red herring IMO. There are still random outages (or at least there were when I left), but putting snake-guards on the poles eliminated most of the problems, and most of the ongoing outages seemed to be attributable to problems at the plant (*cough* incompetence and indifference *cough*).
IP addresses persist and would still reach the site if you knew which one to type in
In theory that *could* be true, but in practice even internal links are typically based on domain names. Try reading Slashdot with DNS turned off, for example. Additionally it's not unusual to find multiple sites hosted on a single IP, where the site you see is based on the the FQDN you provide.
That said, there are multiple solutions, including something like Open DNS if your ISP's DNS servers are untrustworthy, or proxying, VPN or SSH tunneling, etc.
I don't see this happening anyway -- it's completely unworkable. It only somewhat works in places like China and Iran because it's illegal for users to view blocked sites, not for any technical reason whatsoever.
It's important to remember the context. From pretty much everyones point of view, they would be going to the moon so often it wouldn't be a big deal.
No, the context was a worldwide event that inspired and united a generation, nay, a populous, on a scale never seen before or since, and everyone at the time was well aware of the significance. It was the *first* human exploration of an extraterrestrial body, and the first recording thereof. The first of anything is always more historic, important, and monumental than any repetition. You don't take a piece of art and say oh well, "there's going to be so many reprints and facsimiles that there's no point preserving the original." It's patently obvious that the original holds significantly higher value. In fact, if anyone thought it wasn't a significant event, there wouldn't have been a space race to begin with.
SOP is really no excuse -- it should have either been ignored, or a waiver requested -- and it was a truly boneheaded to record over it.
Yes, I'm well aware of what the term means from a QoS standpoint, it only underscores my point. There is best effort, or there is deprioritized traffic. There is no "better than best".
It's not misleading; it's the headline's purpose to get straight to the author's point, and the point is that the unintended consequence of our domestic policies has been to enable authoritarian regimes to enforce policies of their own.
What's the point of a gene pool if it's been obsoleted by science? That is to say, who cares if people are born with congenital conditions if the technology exists to mitigate or cure that condition? Imagine, if you will, that you had a "repairer" capable of fixing any possible fault with any piece of electronics. There would be little or no value in buying an expensive pristine item when you could obtain and repair a broken one for cheap or free.
In the same way, "pristine" genes are only important insomuch as they provide an individual with a) the ability to survive, b) a decent quality of life and perhaps, to a lesser degree, c) provide society with a productive member. If technology can provide those attributes, then we are no longer reliant on the gene pool as a whole to provide them, hence the gene pool becomes obsolete.
Slashdot Mirror
It may be in South Carolina now, but I believe it originated in Atlanta.
What? Too soon?
The real question is how a business model qualifies for a patent!
Some minor googling revealed this site, which seems to have most of the requisite information. (Fair warning: Try not to be blown away by the pure awesomeness of the site design, not to mention some of the technically inaccurate details.) Nonetheless, it's probably as good a starting point as any.
I didn't say they don't deserve service, I said they don't have a right to it. What people deserve is only rarely related to what they get. Moreover, their presence on the network is necessarily degrading the experience for everyone else who's being responsible with their activity. Do responsible users *deserve* to be inundated with attacks from the machines of people who, for whatever reason, aren't "advanced user interested in computers and all things technical?" What if we were discussing dogs instead of computers? Would the behavior of their animals be justified by ignorance, incompetence, or apathy?
As I said I think an adequate balance is struck in this case -- there's no disruption of service, *especially* as far as the non-technical user is concerned, and as for erring on the side of caution (false positives) if you think that's a mistake, then I hope you're not an admin.
Pretty much anything else. Most games don't attempt to influence the behavior of the player outside of the game, because they don't provide consequences for *not* playing. There's no consequence for not playing, say, Tetris for a month, while doing the same in WoW (or other MMORPGs) will lead to the disintegration of the social network, be it through apathy or necessity on the part of one's "friends", required for all but the most trivial of tasks, relegating one to the oft-maligned (and justly so) "pickup group". Additionally, the state of Tetris fails to advance in your absence, so you're not missing anything by not playing. The same is actually true of WoW over a sufficient timespan, but it's cleverly disguised though reduced requirements to "catch up" to everyone else, which are meted out in annual or semi-annual doses -- long enough to discourage waiting, but sufficient for anyone who's starting fresh or returning after a hiatus. For many people, the innate desire for instant gratification precludes waiting 6 months to resume playing after a 1 week break (family vacation, business travel, whatever), so they jump back in, work twice as hard, and try their damndest not to miss another week.
End game raiding is just grinding on a larger scale. To make matters worse, you can't just log in and play whenever you feel like it; you have to coordinate times, make yourself available, and rely on others to do the same. You may have a forgiving guild (though probably not, since you describe them as "high level") which allows you to participate at will rather than requiring attendance, but even so, non-attendance will necessarily result in one or more of the following:
1) Reduced opportunity for reward through a point system (to say nothing of sheer odds).
2) Reduced opportunity for *attendance* (regulars get priority)
3) Social ostracism (nobody likes someone who isn't "there for the team")
4) Extreme resentment (possibly leading to fracturing of the guild), especially if the first two don't happen for whatever reason (usually because you're a founding member, an officer, or sleeping with one of them, or they harbor fantasies of sleeping with you).
I get that there's a sense of accomplishment in being the first to do something, but that's maybe 5% of the time, even for the best of guilds. It's far too much drama, politics, responsibility, interdependence, and luck for my taste. I get enough of that shit at work.
I would, but I see you already told her. Twice.
there is no guarantee it's harder to get in, the guards are too busy watching to make sure you don't get out to pay attention to the other side of the walls.
Nonsense. The plethora of App store rejections is prima facie evidence that it's harder to get in. Note that harder != impossible, just more difficult, and it goes without saying that *any* barrier is greater than no barrier at all. And in many cases, simply being *more difficult* is enough to make it not worth someone's time. This principle is amply demonstrated in everything from home break-ins to car theft to browser exploits.
There is no silver bullet, of course, but fortunately lead bullets work just fine most of the time.
They do send an e-mail, at first. If the traffic continues unabated, they redirect port 80 traffic (only) through a proxy which adds the notice to the server response (the web page you request). It doesn't break or tamper with anything else.
Personally, I don't see a problem with this, since, if you're allowing botnet traffic, you're already abusing the TOS (with or without your knowledge -- and after the notice, certainly ignorance isn't an excuse), and as such you're not really entitled to "unbroken" service, or any service at all for that matter. I think providing this notice is a good compromise.
Rather than making a separate post, I also want to address one of the points in TFS: "Of course, if you have multiple machines running behind a router or modem then you're going to have a difficult time pinning down which machine might have the infection."
This is rather missing the point -- realistically, if any machine inside your network has been compromised, you should assume that the entire network has been compromised, and you should be inspecting/sanitizing/protecting all of the machines accordingly. You should likewise assume that all of your online accounts have been compromised, change your passwords from a trusted location, and check for any unauthorized activity.
Your post may (or may not) be a joke, but there are merits to the walled garden approach; namely that while it's harder to get out, it's also harder to get in. This form of managed security really is ideal for many users who have neither the skill nor the inclination to concern themselves with technical issues. The situation becomes even more tenuous when the difference between a legitimate and malevolent app is neither obvious nor, in many cases, distinguishable. This is a very real issue on Android-based devices, for example, where there's little or no barrier for any given app to receive the same "stamp of approval" (in that there is none, but one may be perceived) as another and be listed side-by-side.
Philosophically, I agree that users should be given the informed decision of opting-out of the walled garden, but this is already the case in practice, and reality trumps ideology most of the time. It's also reality that there is simply no way to opt-in to such an environment on non-iOS devices.
Ah, ok. The USGS go by the stowaway theory, though it's hard to say whether they're parroting rumor, or vice-versa. We'll probably never know for sure.
Excellent point.
I was stationed on Guam too, from '02 through '08. Definitely a beautiful island.
To be fair, it wasn't that the snakes were *permitted*, but rather that the snakes (presumably) stowed away on a ship, and Hawaii only really cracked down after seeing what happened on Guam. While Hawaii has so far escaped the same level of ecological damage, there are still snakes found every year, and it is unknown whether the tree snake has established a colony on one or more of the Hawaiian islands (with the general consensus of "more likely than not"). You can be sure Hawaii will watching the results of this experiment very closely.
The chance of tylenol (the substance inside the frozen mice) destroying the eco-system on Guam is so minuscule, as to be impossible. On the other hand, the damned snakes _are_ destroying the eco-system.
This. There simply aren't any indigenous vertebrates on Guam *to* be affected, and non-indigenous species like the monitor lizard can always be re-introduced should anyone feel it necessary (which I strongly doubt). All native bird species are technically extinct in the wild, existing only in captivity, save the few birds that have been reintroduced on a trial basis. At worst, this program would push back the potential earliest date for full reintroduction, which is a small price to pay for so thoroughly tipping the odds of success of reintroduction.
As for the power outages, they're a bit of a red herring IMO. There are still random outages (or at least there were when I left), but putting snake-guards on the poles eliminated most of the problems, and most of the ongoing outages seemed to be attributable to problems at the plant (*cough* incompetence and indifference *cough*).
Well? Is they?
IP addresses persist and would still reach the site if you knew which one to type in
In theory that *could* be true, but in practice even internal links are typically based on domain names. Try reading Slashdot with DNS turned off, for example. Additionally it's not unusual to find multiple sites hosted on a single IP, where the site you see is based on the the FQDN you provide.
That said, there are multiple solutions, including something like Open DNS if your ISP's DNS servers are untrustworthy, or proxying, VPN or SSH tunneling, etc.
I don't see this happening anyway -- it's completely unworkable. It only somewhat works in places like China and Iran because it's illegal for users to view blocked sites, not for any technical reason whatsoever.
Slashdot seems to be a lot like Playboy in that regard... nobody reads it for the articles.
Although TBH, Slashdot's pictorials could use some work.
My mistake, I misunderstood the GPs point.
If the purpose of flying was to reduce rush hour traffic, you might have a point.
Bah, the World Series is open to any Major League Baseball team anywhere in the world!
Around here, if the trains don't hit a car when they cross a road, they stop, back up, and try again.
Ah yes, the Chinese -- world renowned for their high quality manufacturing and refusal to cut costs or corners in the pursuit of perfection.
On an almost entirely unrelated note: now taking bets on how long it will take to set the new world record for the highest speed train crash.
It's important to remember the context. From pretty much everyones point of view, they would be going to the moon so often it wouldn't be a big deal.
No, the context was a worldwide event that inspired and united a generation, nay, a populous, on a scale never seen before or since, and everyone at the time was well aware of the significance. It was the *first* human exploration of an extraterrestrial body, and the first recording thereof. The first of anything is always more historic, important, and monumental than any repetition. You don't take a piece of art and say oh well, "there's going to be so many reprints and facsimiles that there's no point preserving the original." It's patently obvious that the original holds significantly higher value. In fact, if anyone thought it wasn't a significant event, there wouldn't have been a space race to begin with.
SOP is really no excuse -- it should have either been ignored, or a waiver requested -- and it was a truly boneheaded to record over it.
Yes, I'm well aware of what the term means from a QoS standpoint, it only underscores my point. There is best effort, or there is deprioritized traffic. There is no "better than best".
It's not misleading; it's the headline's purpose to get straight to the author's point, and the point is that the unintended consequence of our domestic policies has been to enable authoritarian regimes to enforce policies of their own.
What's the point of a gene pool if it's been obsoleted by science? That is to say, who cares if people are born with congenital conditions if the technology exists to mitigate or cure that condition? Imagine, if you will, that you had a "repairer" capable of fixing any possible fault with any piece of electronics. There would be little or no value in buying an expensive pristine item when you could obtain and repair a broken one for cheap or free.
In the same way, "pristine" genes are only important insomuch as they provide an individual with a) the ability to survive, b) a decent quality of life and perhaps, to a lesser degree, c) provide society with a productive member. If technology can provide those attributes, then we are no longer reliant on the gene pool as a whole to provide them, hence the gene pool becomes obsolete.