Caching techniques: are you referring to the proxy that customers who install the @Home software go through? 99% of people who are aware they are using this proxy realize that it's a horribly slow way to go (and get rid of it.) Of course, it's great for the provider, because slow surfing = less bandwidth.
OK, so the feds can ask an ISP for the IP address of a suspect; this would be useful for purposes such as magic lantern, or otherwise trying to crack the suspect's box. The feds can also obtain logs from the ISP; I've never worked at an ISP, so I'm wondering what do ISPs (or especially overloaded cable ISPs) actually log anyway? I can't imagine the information would be overly extensive, since for the most part it's not in the ISP's best interests to keep verbose logs over an extended period of time. Anyone who knows more care to chime in?
I wouldn't say I'm part of the inner sanctum of any of the BSD realms, but as a user of both FreeBSD and OpenBSD, I have seen nothing but camaraderie. The different BSDs simply coexist; they are not in competition. And noone knows the difference? Come on, each BSD has a clearly stated focus, at which each excels handily.
In 4.4-RELEASE, LINT has maxusers = 10, while GENERIC has maxusers = 32. IIRC, the handbook says to use GENERIC as a baseline, but it does sound like he might have started with LINT - although I pity anyone who would spend that much time commenting out all the esoteric stuff in LINT.
IPFilter on FreeBSD has reported similar occurrences to me; I get pinged by 20-30 hosts over the course of a few seconds. Then, the same hosts try port 53 UDP. I am doing DNS, but it's caching only - it's not set to be authoritative for any zones, so I don't think this is normal traffic, is it?
The parent comment was referring to the lack of Linux-friendly ISPs. My question was what does the lack of Linux-friendly ISPs have to do with @Home/Excite? Cable internet in general is very Linux-friendly, and why would anything change due to the Excite/@Home troubles? Remember, this story is about the news that @Home is currently not taking new orders, so the parent comment sounded a bit offtopic to my ears; I wanted to know: not what the *story* had to do with @Home, but: what the *comment* had to do with @Home. See the difference?
They (@Home) don't really want you to run servers. In the past, they didn't really try to stop anyone, but in response to Code Red, they blocked incoming port 80 (but only in certain areas, e.g. not in my area.) According to their rules, this wouldn't deny anyone any functionality they can rightfully claim. You weren't really supposed to be running web and mail servers in the first place, so maybe it was inevitable that they would prevent you from doing so. And were you trying to get your service canclelled by complaining about the problem? Sheesh...
I may be missing something, but what does this have to do with @Home? Are you saying that if ATT buys out Excite, the service will require proprietary software? I would think the situation would be more to the contrary; the only aspect of @Home that is even close to proprieatary is the @Home software, but that's not required to get connected, and with Excite gone, the software would be gone as well. I think Excite's demise and ATT's potential buyout would actually be more of a "Linux-friendly" move than anything else. Presumably the cable companies are seeing that the proprietary software-based, portal-oriented service won't make it, so more than likely they'll simply provide a straight-up cable modem connection with no eye-candy portals or software.
Much more than a handful, actually. A lot of people only use Windows because that's all they know, and many of the same people only use AOL because that's all they know. It's one of the fundamental reasons AOL & MS are as widepsread as they are ("So easy to use no wonder it's number 1!" & "All my friends are on AOL!") But as far as the people who are torn between using AOL as an ISP and running *NIX, I think these people would be few in number, as you said.
Good point; I'm also suspicious of people coming to conclusions over things that may have happened billions of years ago. After all, there are things that we can actually see and touch (like diseases, natural phenomena, etc.) that we still can't figure out. What makes people so sure that they've figured out things that are so unfathomably far away in space/time?
You have a point, but hey, we're supposed to be nerds; we strive to be technically correct. We speak (and write) clearly and cohesively, unlike the unwashed masses who lack adequate grammar and spelling skills. I'll admit, I usually say "RedHat Linux" instead of the more correct "RedHat's distribution of the Linux kernel," so you may be right on the Linux thing, but I'm right about the car thing. Fair enough?
No, the Cobra was *not* a Ford. Modified customized Ford? No. Carroll Shelby used some Ford parts to build _HIS OWN_ cars from the ground up; he didn't start with a Ford and modify it, as you say. Come on, these cars were hand-built and then registered as Shelby cars. If you owned one of these cars, your registration would have Shelby American on it, not Ford Motor Company. How about another example? Panoz uses a Ford drivetrain with the rest of the car being purely Panoz. And it's not a Ford either. I could keep on going, but I think I've made my point. BTW, just because everybody refers to Linux as a complete OS (as we both stated) it doesn't mean it's true. That's what my point was. People just say Linux when they are actually talking about a Linux distribution. There is a difference. Do you believe everything you hear? 8^)
Uhh, based on your car argument, a Shelby Cobra would be called a Ford. The Cobra had a Ford engine (kernel) and built around it were either Shelby parts or commodity parts (GNU and other OSS utils, etc.) This analogy doesn't hold water, because the Linux kernel only partially defines any distribution, just as the Ford engine in a Cobra doesn't make the complete car a Ford car. So Linux is still technically only a kernel. Sure, Linux has pervaded our vernacular as being a complete OS, but the reality remains. OTOH, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD are each a complete OS, and each is unique and has a unique purpose. Among the dozens of Linux distributions, many are similar and there is a lot of redundancy, but among the BSDs, there is very little.
Heh, heh...
Iridium's bankruptcy was a shame, but I meant the Iridium Card might be next. Yeah, and I had Iridium Oakleys, too. Nothing special, if you ask me, and they scratched too easily.
I guess it all started with the SR-71 Blackbird. A large proportion of that aircraft was titanium to withstand the heat of high-speed flight while being strong and light. Next, titanium bicycles (road as well as mountain.) Anybody could make a strong bike out of steel, but weight was always an issue. Titanium-tubed bikes were much lighter than steel bikes, although not as durable. On a side note, I had my wedding band turned on a lathe out of round titanium stock. Among engineers, titanium is cool stuff, so why would I want a gold or platinum ring like all the non-geeks? Before you know it, there's titanium golf clubs, rackets, you name it. I think the more of a buzzword titanium became, the more inappropriate uses it gained. Now we have things named titanium for no good reason at all (although the marketers would disagree.) Sooner or later, all the Joe Schmoes will forget about titanium and it will go back to being cool only for engineers and geeks. My guess is the next buzzword is iridium - uranium has too much of an image problem.
Why would the demise of @Home (essentially only the content aspect of the service) have anything to do with ATT's port filtering? Anyway, the port filtering is done subnet-by-subnet. I definitely have ports 21,22,25,80, and 110 available incoming, so YMMV as it has previously.
In point c) you say you weren't infected, but in point b) you imply that your net access was cut off. If this is the case, the problem is not that DSL.net is cutting people off, it's that they made a mistake.
Thanks for the suggestions, but my firewall has a ~515MB hard drive, so CVSUP is likely not an option (I knew everybody would tell me to CVSUP.) Plus, a make world would put my 486 firewall to work for a long time. So, back to my question, let's say I was doing an initial installation; what would the security risks be in that case? I'm assuming that there wouldn't be any services running during the install/upgrade, and no listening ports, so my guess is that I'd be relatively safe during the process, but I want to be sure.
I'd really like to upgrade my FreeBSD 4.3-RELEASE firewall now that 4.4-RELEASE is out, but to save bandwidth, and for simplicity's sake, I'd like to do it via FTP upgrade. However, I'm wondering if there are any security issues involved in doing so. Normally, IPFilter is running to provide packet filtering, but during the FTP upgrade, I would assume that I'd be relatively unprotected. I have done a lot of searching into this situation and haven't come up with a good answer yet. Does anybody have any opinions on this matter?
That's more or less (I'm running IPFilter) what I'm doing; before CodeRed hit the net, I would rarely see a packet hit me at port 80, but since then, my IPFilter log has been steadily filling up. Since I'm not running a web server, I know I'm not vulnerable, but it's interesting to see all of the infected machines that are hitting me.
Sounds to me like the writing was on the wall. Desert Storm was a relatively high-tech, focused war, at least in the beginning. Remember stealth night bombing runs, extensive use of high-res satellite imagery, and smart bombs with cameras? What about the use night vision in general? That was pretty high-tech stuff for 1991, and this "war" will accordingly be of a high-tech nature in reference to current times. It's no surprise that nobody intends to have an all-out brute-force type of war anymore, and contrary to JonKatz's assumption, most people aren't expecting this kind of war.
One more thing, wouldn't a "real" journalist proofread his story a little more thoroughly? There _is_ a typo in there (see if you can find it,) and his supposedly "inside" information on the death toll was obsolete before his story was even posted.
OK, he _could_ be called a journalist; at least he claims himself as a journalist. My point (underneath the rant) was that if quasi-journalists such as JonKatz are lurking around the wreckage, is just anyone allowed in? I haven't been to ground zero, but even if I lived in the area, I would feel much better about staying out of the way and letting rescuers do their job than going down there just because I'm curious. Did JonKatz provide breaking news to the public? Did he provide any new and/or unique information to the public? These functions are what journalists are expected to perform. I don't think he did either of the aforementioned, so I ask again, what was his point in being there?
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Caching techniques: are you referring to the proxy that customers who install the @Home software go through? 99% of people who are aware they are using this proxy realize that it's a horribly slow way to go (and get rid of it.) Of course, it's great for the provider, because slow surfing = less bandwidth.
OK, so the feds can ask an ISP for the IP address of a suspect; this would be useful for purposes such as magic lantern, or otherwise trying to crack the suspect's box. The feds can also obtain logs from the ISP; I've never worked at an ISP, so I'm wondering what do ISPs (or especially overloaded cable ISPs) actually log anyway? I can't imagine the information would be overly extensive, since for the most part it's not in the ISP's best interests to keep verbose logs over an extended period of time. Anyone who knows more care to chime in?
I wouldn't say I'm part of the inner sanctum of any of the BSD realms, but as a user of both FreeBSD and OpenBSD, I have seen nothing but camaraderie. The different BSDs simply coexist; they are not in competition. And noone knows the difference? Come on, each BSD has a clearly stated focus, at which each excels handily.
In 4.4-RELEASE, LINT has maxusers = 10, while GENERIC has maxusers = 32. IIRC, the handbook says to use GENERIC as a baseline, but it does sound like he might have started with LINT - although I pity anyone who would spend that much time commenting out all the esoteric stuff in LINT.
IPFilter on FreeBSD has reported similar occurrences to me; I get pinged by 20-30 hosts over the course of a few seconds. Then, the same hosts try port 53 UDP. I am doing DNS, but it's caching only - it's not set to be authoritative for any zones, so I don't think this is normal traffic, is it?
The parent comment was referring to the lack of Linux-friendly ISPs. My question was what does the lack of Linux-friendly ISPs have to do with @Home/Excite? Cable internet in general is very Linux-friendly, and why would anything change due to the Excite/@Home troubles? Remember, this story is about the news that @Home is currently not taking new orders, so the parent comment sounded a bit offtopic to my ears; I wanted to know: not what the *story* had to do with @Home, but: what the *comment* had to do with @Home. See the difference?
They (@Home) don't really want you to run servers. In the past, they didn't really try to stop anyone, but in response to Code Red, they blocked incoming port 80 (but only in certain areas, e.g. not in my area.) According to their rules, this wouldn't deny anyone any functionality they can rightfully claim. You weren't really supposed to be running web and mail servers in the first place, so maybe it was inevitable that they would prevent you from doing so. And were you trying to get your service canclelled by complaining about the problem? Sheesh...
I may be missing something, but what does this have to do with @Home? Are you saying that if ATT buys out Excite, the service will require proprietary software? I would think the situation would be more to the contrary; the only aspect of @Home that is even close to proprieatary is the @Home software, but that's not required to get connected, and with Excite gone, the software would be gone as well. I think Excite's demise and ATT's potential buyout would actually be more of a "Linux-friendly" move than anything else. Presumably the cable companies are seeing that the proprietary software-based, portal-oriented service won't make it, so more than likely they'll simply provide a straight-up cable modem connection with no eye-candy portals or software.
Much more than a handful, actually. A lot of people only use Windows because that's all they know, and many of the same people only use AOL because that's all they know. It's one of the fundamental reasons AOL & MS are as widepsread as they are ("So easy to use no wonder it's number 1!" & "All my friends are on AOL!") But as far as the people who are torn between using AOL as an ISP and running *NIX, I think these people would be few in number, as you said.
Good point; I'm also suspicious of people coming to conclusions over things that may have happened billions of years ago. After all, there are things that we can actually see and touch (like diseases, natural phenomena, etc.) that we still can't figure out. What makes people so sure that they've figured out things that are so unfathomably far away in space/time?
You have a point, but hey, we're supposed to be nerds; we strive to be technically correct. We speak (and write) clearly and cohesively, unlike the unwashed masses who lack adequate grammar and spelling skills. I'll admit, I usually say "RedHat Linux" instead of the more correct "RedHat's distribution of the Linux kernel," so you may be right on the Linux thing, but I'm right about the car thing. Fair enough?
No, the Cobra was *not* a Ford. Modified customized Ford? No. Carroll Shelby used some Ford parts to build _HIS OWN_ cars from the ground up; he didn't start with a Ford and modify it, as you say. Come on, these cars were hand-built and then registered as Shelby cars. If you owned one of these cars, your registration would have Shelby American on it, not Ford Motor Company. How about another example? Panoz uses a Ford drivetrain with the rest of the car being purely Panoz. And it's not a Ford either. I could keep on going, but I think I've made my point. BTW, just because everybody refers to Linux as a complete OS (as we both stated) it doesn't mean it's true. That's what my point was. People just say Linux when they are actually talking about a Linux distribution. There is a difference. Do you believe everything you hear? 8^)
Uhh, based on your car argument, a Shelby Cobra would be called a Ford. The Cobra had a Ford engine (kernel) and built around it were either Shelby parts or commodity parts (GNU and other OSS utils, etc.) This analogy doesn't hold water, because the Linux kernel only partially defines any distribution, just as the Ford engine in a Cobra doesn't make the complete car a Ford car. So Linux is still technically only a kernel. Sure, Linux has pervaded our vernacular as being a complete OS, but the reality remains. OTOH, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD are each a complete OS, and each is unique and has a unique purpose. Among the dozens of Linux distributions, many are similar and there is a lot of redundancy, but among the BSDs, there is very little.
Heh, heh...
Iridium's bankruptcy was a shame, but I meant the Iridium Card might be next. Yeah, and I had Iridium Oakleys, too. Nothing special, if you ask me, and they scratched too easily.
I guess it all started with the SR-71 Blackbird. A large proportion of that aircraft was titanium to withstand the heat of high-speed flight while being strong and light. Next, titanium bicycles (road as well as mountain.) Anybody could make a strong bike out of steel, but weight was always an issue. Titanium-tubed bikes were much lighter than steel bikes, although not as durable. On a side note, I had my wedding band turned on a lathe out of round titanium stock. Among engineers, titanium is cool stuff, so why would I want a gold or platinum ring like all the non-geeks? Before you know it, there's titanium golf clubs, rackets, you name it. I think the more of a buzzword titanium became, the more inappropriate uses it gained. Now we have things named titanium for no good reason at all (although the marketers would disagree.) Sooner or later, all the Joe Schmoes will forget about titanium and it will go back to being cool only for engineers and geeks. My guess is the next buzzword is iridium - uranium has too much of an image problem.
Why would the demise of @Home (essentially only the content aspect of the service) have anything to do with ATT's port filtering? Anyway, the port filtering is done subnet-by-subnet. I definitely have ports 21,22,25,80, and 110 available incoming, so YMMV as it has previously.
Does this mean that hacking will not be considered terrorism?
In point c) you say you weren't infected, but in point b) you imply that your net access was cut off. If this is the case, the problem is not that DSL.net is cutting people off, it's that they made a mistake.
Thanks for the suggestions, but my firewall has a ~515MB hard drive, so CVSUP is likely not an option (I knew everybody would tell me to CVSUP.) Plus, a make world would put my 486 firewall to work for a long time. So, back to my question, let's say I was doing an initial installation; what would the security risks be in that case? I'm assuming that there wouldn't be any services running during the install/upgrade, and no listening ports, so my guess is that I'd be relatively safe during the process, but I want to be sure.
I'd really like to upgrade my FreeBSD 4.3-RELEASE firewall now that 4.4-RELEASE is out, but to save bandwidth, and for simplicity's sake, I'd like to do it via FTP upgrade. However, I'm wondering if there are any security issues involved in doing so. Normally, IPFilter is running to provide packet filtering, but during the FTP upgrade, I would assume that I'd be relatively unprotected. I have done a lot of searching into this situation and haven't come up with a good answer yet. Does anybody have any opinions on this matter?
That's more or less (I'm running IPFilter) what I'm doing; before CodeRed hit the net, I would rarely see a packet hit me at port 80, but since then, my IPFilter log has been steadily filling up. Since I'm not running a web server, I know I'm not vulnerable, but it's interesting to see all of the infected machines that are hitting me.
Sounds to me like the writing was on the wall. Desert Storm was a relatively high-tech, focused war, at least in the beginning. Remember stealth night bombing runs, extensive use of high-res satellite imagery, and smart bombs with cameras? What about the use night vision in general? That was pretty high-tech stuff for 1991, and this "war" will accordingly be of a high-tech nature in reference to current times. It's no surprise that nobody intends to have an all-out brute-force type of war anymore, and contrary to JonKatz's assumption, most people aren't expecting this kind of war.
This may be a stupid question, but why pay for Linux support when you have 4 admins/programmers?
One more thing, wouldn't a "real" journalist proofread his story a little more thoroughly? There _is_ a typo in there (see if you can find it,) and his supposedly "inside" information on the death toll was obsolete before his story was even posted.
OK, he _could_ be called a journalist; at least he claims himself as a journalist. My point (underneath the rant) was that if quasi-journalists such as JonKatz are lurking around the wreckage, is just anyone allowed in? I haven't been to ground zero, but even if I lived in the area, I would feel much better about staying out of the way and letting rescuers do their job than going down there just because I'm curious. Did JonKatz provide breaking news to the public? Did he provide any new and/or unique information to the public? These functions are what journalists are expected to perform. I don't think he did either of the aforementioned, so I ask again, what was his point in being there?