I'd sure feel a lot better if I'd gotten a similar email today. I've really got to call Earthlink and/or PacHell about DSL. And that likely means switching my phone service from Cox to PacHell as well.
Following you will find some information to address questions you might have about the email communication that you recently received from us.
Q1. When will you be switching my service?
A1. Cox is creating its own managed network to enable it to ensure the quality and reliability of your service. This transition will be made before June 2002, however we have not yet finalized specific dates for each community
we serve. We will continue to keep you informed on our progress and will do everything we can to give you as much advance notice as possible when the time comes to transition to the new Cox high speed Internet service.
Q2. Do I have to change?
A2. Yes, our partnership with @Home will be ending. Once the Cox-managed network is ready, all customers who currently have the Cox@Home service will be transitioned over to the new Cox-managed network. We think you will be pleased with the new service. By managing all elements of our high speed Internet service, we will be in a much better position to control the quality of our service and deliver greater customer satisfaction. We will make every effort to make this transition as smooth as possible.
Q3. What do I have to do right now? A3. There is nothing for you do right now. At the appropriate time, Cox will provide you with all of the information and tools you need to smoothly convert your service to our new Cox-managed high speed Internet service.
Q4. How will I be affected?
A4. Since we are in the process of finalizing the service and its features, we don't have specific information to share with you at this time. We assure you that your Cox-managed service will include the most popular features you
currently enjoy, as well as some additional benefits.
Q5. Is my new service going to be comparable to my existing service?
A5. It is our goal to provide you with high speed Internet service that is comparable to or better than your existing Cox@Home service. In fact, by offering our own Cox high speed Internet service, we will have a much better abilit
y to manage our network performance and provide the high-quality customer service and technical support our customers have grown to expect from Cox.
Q6. Will I get any new features?
A6. In addition to providing you with the features that you currently enjoy with your Cox @Home service, there will also be some new features and benefits associated with the new Cox-managed service. We are currently finalizing the details and we will share this exciting information with you in advance.
Q7. Is my email address going to change? If so, when?
A7. Since we are still finalizing the details of our Cox-managed high speed Internet service, we don't have any specific information to share with you at this time. You will be notified in advance about any changes to your service, so that you may have time to prepare for this change as necessary. Please know that we understand that an email address change is significant, and we will make every effort to make any service transition as smooth as possible.
Q8. So will you start offering other ISPs?
A8. We are in the process of testing the technical feasibility of offering multiple ISPs over our broadband network. Once this testing is complete, we will then determine the feasibility of rolling out multiple ISPs on a wider basis.
It really makes me wonder if they consider the port blocking on 80 and 25 to be a "feature" to "improve" "service". The funny thing is that I know someone else across the street w/ Cox@Home who DOESN'T have those ports blocked. And I wasn't even running a web server, while he is. Go figure.
Here's the email I got. Not very full of details, but partially reassuring:
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 19:52:36 -0500 (EST)
From: Cox Communications
To: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX@home.com
Subject: Important Information Regarding Your Cox @ Home Service
Dear Cox @ Home customer:
Recently, you were informed that our high-speed Internet partner - Excite @
Home - filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection. We recognize that this
situation may have caused you some concern about the future of your service.
Rest assured, we are taking all the necessary steps to provide continued reliable
high-speed Internet service to our customers ? now and in the future.
We are deeply committed to providing you with a quality high-speed Internet
service. For several months, we have been hard at work creating a new Cox-
managed network to better serve you. There are many benefits to directly
managing our own network, such as:
* Easier, more streamlined customer service experience.
* Enhanced network performance.
* Ability to bring you the latest in cutting-edge technology and product
features.
In the weeks ahead, we'll continue to keep you informed and share more details
of our exciting plans. For more information, please visit www.cox.com/moreinfo .
(Click here: http://www.cox.com/moreinfo )
We thank you for being a valued Cox customer.
Sincerely,
Cox Communications
That URL above is what some flonetwork.com gobbledygook redirected too. Funny, I can't connect....
Have you upgraded to the latest firmware (1.21d) listed on their page, yet? I'd be curious as to what, exactly, "Serial Copyright Management System", and how it affects the usefulness of this device.
I know that my phone and other "electronic gadgets" tend to last a week with light-to-moderate usage. Either these folks are carrying some rather long extension cords, or have something else to recharge all their batteries.
Either way, I can see why people are opting to toss stuff overboard, as I can't even begin to imagine the additional weight all those chargers would be adding...
The problem is that many software, libraries, and hand-made filters validate domain names based on simple rules like "only 0-9, a-z, dots, and it should end by two characters or com/net/org/edu".
That's where you get.uk,.us, etc from. And I certainly wouldn't be surprised if places didn't recognize.int. A lot of web forms don't recognize that "+" is a valid character in an email address either, and no amount of "your mail address validation [on this form where I'm trying to give you money] doesn't work" type mails can convince them to check the RFCs.
There will always be plenty of idiots in the world who think they know all valid addresses. Unfortunately, most can't be bothered to do a little research, and then I or someone else will come along, break the forms, and decide to go elsewhere. And unfortunately, the new TLDs also tend to break what for aeons of "internet time" was an acceptable TLD validation.
NOT Debian unstable!
on
Debian On DVD
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Debian unstable, for the adventurous with a DVD-drive.
"woody" is the debian "testing" version, not the debian "unstable". Debian's "unstable" is AKA "sid". Still cool, though.
Now I wish I either had a laptop w/ a DVD drive, or could find a decent SCSI DVD drive for my home system, since IDE sucks so bad.
It seems that the last few kernel releases have had some kind of serious problem in one of the drivers. I think it was 2.4.8 that had a emu10k driver issue and 2.4.9 that had ntfs problems (could have those versions wrong), now 2.4.11 has a symlink bug and 2.4.12 has a paralell port driver.
It seems to me that these rapid-fire kernel releases are just one more indication that we really do need a 2.5 now at not at some point in the future. But what do I know? Apparently the/. editors know better...Linus knows better...and yet kernels in 2.4 are still coming out with show-stopping bugs.
* 2001-10-05 15:51:40 Whatever happened to the kernel's stable/unstable version separation? (askslashdot,linux) (rejected)
There was once a time when the version of the Linux kernel would indicate in a simple way whether it was a (mostly) stable kernel, or whether it was a development/unstable branch. The convention used was the "y" in the "x.y.z" version of the kernel was even for stable, odd for development. However, this seems to have really changed a lot in the 2.4.x series of kernels. Linus keeps allowing drastic internal changes to that, according to an informal poll, people feel should really be in the non-existent 2.5.x tree. Do you think it's time to petition Linus to stop making 2.4.x the experimental branch? Does anyone see a need for 2.5.x right now?
Now, I love Linux as much as the next average/. user, but when apps break or previously-working code stops working in the same kernel series it used to work in, I really have to wonder...is Linux ready to be primetime, if the series of kernels that shouldn't have drastic changes in them end up as unstable as kernels from an unnamed company in Redmond?
This was all touched off by the discovery by a friend (the hard way) that you can't create ext3 journals in 2.4.10. You can in every appropriately-patched 2.4.x prior to 10 (I'm pretty sure I did in a 2.4.10-pre kernel, too). It's changes like these, and the VM changes that seem to come out in every release (and break things like VMware) that just cause me to grumble that the current kernels are mis-numbered.
Hrm.... The only "battery thing" I saw was that it's rechargable. Big whoop. Palms have had that in units for quite some time. Come to think of it, even the Visor Prism has it. I guess that Cmdr Taco's really stretching for something to say about this new Visor...
They don't know if their desktop comes from the machine on their desk or is beamed to them from Saturn.
If it were being beamed from Saturn, they might suspect something since the latency would likely be a little on the high side.:-)
Other than that, you're absolutely right. And given how much my SO complains about how slow her laptop is, and how little space there is on it, I'm thinking of sneaking behind her back and turning it into an pseudo-xterminal. It should also solve the problem of getting her access to all my mp3s.
I see I'm not the only one that's noticed this. I was in the Fountain Valley Fry's this past weekend, and went looking for the Linux Games. They still had the sign up, but not a single game in sight.
The Anaheim Fry's a couple of weeks (a month?) ago had nothing but empty shelves in their Linux Games section, aside from a few copies of Q3.
This is all very disturbing, as I was more than willing to pick up some more ports, even though it wasn't until this Sunday night that I installed CivCTP, which I had bought back in January...
People still get out of the way in the UK when they hear sirens? It's sad, but true, that over the past couple years I've noticed I'm about the only driver on the road that pulls over onto the shoulder when he hears a siren. And this has been in multiple states, in both the city and suburbs, surface streets and highways.
I wonder what that says about US drivers in general? Maybe a lack of desire to survive?
I'm surprised your friends haven't started carrying around mallets in case your phone rings. That, or like firemen, they associate the song with the video and get excited?
If the contact lists were encrypted with the 128bit key or OpenPGP cert, then neither a nor b would be *as* evil. And I can think of a couple of situations where c isn't very workable either. Namely, any situation involving moving to another system without being able to copy over your contact list (theft, loss, just hapen to be @ someone else's house).
Note that solving a & b, and solving c are not necessarily mutually exclusive. To wit: needing to remember a 128bit key, or carrying around the key or cert with you....might as well carry the contact list around in that event. However, it's still possible to take away some/most of the evilness of a & b (in this case, evilness being defined as "someone else knowing everyone on my contact list"), without resorting to c. You could even go one step further, and, since the contact list would be encrypted anyway, just use the associated encryption as just an "outer envelope".
It never seems to fail. I install a new kernel, and a day or two later, a new version is released. I literally installed 2.4.6 last night (maybe 27 hours ago, tops). And I'll wager that, had I not, we'd all still be waiting for 2.4.7 to come out. I'll hold off on installing it for a few days to give kernel.org some time to cool off before 2.4.8 comes out...
Actually, LA is one of the few areas in California that has its own power plants and isn't going to be too affected by the power "shortage" throughout the state. In fact, the city's currently selling excess power to the state. --
But we've all seen what would happen if modified bacteria from a NASA probe ended up back on earth. It's all documented right here. Nothing would happen? I think NOT! --
Being a consultant for a company, every week seems to entail going to a different customer, so the hours vary. Lately, though, it's been:
- 8-10 hours/day at customer
- 2-4 hours/day commute
- 3-5 hours/day at home catching up on corporate e-mail and changes (200+ messages/day, and I don't think I'm on all the lists I need to be)
Then there's the weekend where I routinely spend another 3-4 hours a day catching up on corporate email.
So, that's 11-15 hours/day working, plus commute. God, I hate LA traffic.
Sorry! I didn't mean to slight debian. It was the second distro I tried.:) Don't forget.bsd too.
Well, probably.fbsd,.nbsd,.obsd,.bsd386,....:-)
I did the stupid thing. I didn't have any money and I registered my name with namezero. Now I'm not sure if they will let me have it back.
Ouch. Tough break. I kept putting it off, and putting it off, and then a friend went a registered a.com with his last name, and, damn, wouldn't you know it? Both.com and.net for mine were taken by others. One was a quasi-squatter that sells/gives away firstname@ accounts, the other's just a flat out squatter from what I can tell ("If you'd like to purchase..."). Fortunately,.org was still available, and I'll be damned if I let anyone take that from me, especially since I'm non-profit too.
Actually, there ARE a few fairly inexpensive registrars out there, such as Joker and Gandi.net. Both are only 12 Euros/year, which at today's exchange rate is about $10-$11 US. I've had some fairly good experience with Joker, others have with Gandi. It just depends if you want to use a German or a French registrar (if that matters to you). Both have most/all of their pages in english, so for the great unwashed ignorant masses in the US (myself included), it's painless.
But I really think it would be great if the free/opensource OSes got together and formed their own root nameservers. All the cool TLDs, like.nym (one of my personal favorites) could then be made available as well. And if enough sites support alternate roots by default, then for the majority of folks, it would be completely transparent. It might even make VeriSign/NSI sit up and take notice. Not that I'll be holding my breath for THAT to happen.
But given the success of these OSes/philosophies in general, even really cheap (read $5/year or so) costs, coupled with a more intelligent name policy, would hopefully make great inroads...
I think that you could actually use the fact that they're going after a number of other 'open' users against SGI. You could spin it as they're trying to usurp the 'open' name. Given that 'open' had a meaning before SGI used it (in fact, they used the 'openGL' name to capitalize on the understanding of the meaning of 'open'.
Frighteningly, that seems to be exactly what they're doing, according to this response by randombit.
This is exactly why current USPT laws need to be changed. The more people who fight this crap, the less likely companies will be inclined to sweep out an entire section of namespace for their own future use. This was all designed to be FCFS, not MLTA[1].
Slashdot Mirror
I started poking around, and at http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/crypto/v2.4 /README.WARNING there was a url listed for "more recent patches. Going there revealed stuff for 2.4.6, 2.4.8, 2.4.10. 2.4.15, and 2.5.0... I plan to check it out myself when I get some free time.
I'd sure feel a lot better if I'd gotten a similar email today. I've really got to call Earthlink and/or PacHell about DSL. And that likely means switching my phone service from Cox to PacHell as well.
Ok, apparently neither mozilla nor w3m from my machine could connect, but I could using lynx from an alternate location.
Here's the scoop from http://www.cox.com/moreinfo:
Following you will find some information to address questions you might have about the email communication that you recently received from us.
Q1. When will you be switching my service?
A1. Cox is creating its own managed network to enable it to ensure the quality and reliability of your service. This transition will be made before June 2002, however we have not yet finalized specific dates for each community
we serve. We will continue to keep you informed on our progress and will do everything we can to give you as much advance notice as possible when the time comes to transition to the new Cox high speed Internet service.
Q2. Do I have to change?
A2. Yes, our partnership with @Home will be ending. Once the Cox-managed network is ready, all customers who currently have the Cox@Home service will be transitioned over to the new Cox-managed network. We think you will be pleased with the new service. By managing all elements of our high speed Internet service, we will be in a much better position to control the quality of our service and deliver greater customer satisfaction. We will make every effort to make this transition as smooth as possible.
Q3. What do I have to do right now?
A3. There is nothing for you do right now. At the appropriate time, Cox will provide you with all of the information and tools you need to smoothly convert your service to our new Cox-managed high speed Internet service.
Q4. How will I be affected?
A4. Since we are in the process of finalizing the service and its features, we don't have specific information to share with you at this time. We assure you that your Cox-managed service will include the most popular features you
currently enjoy, as well as some additional benefits.
Q5. Is my new service going to be comparable to my existing service?
A5. It is our goal to provide you with high speed Internet service that is comparable to or better than your existing Cox@Home service. In fact, by offering our own Cox high speed Internet service, we will have a much better abilit
y to manage our network performance and provide the high-quality customer service and technical support our customers have grown to expect from Cox.
Q6. Will I get any new features?
A6. In addition to providing you with the features that you currently enjoy with your Cox @Home service, there will also be some new features and benefits associated with the new Cox-managed service. We are currently finalizing the details and we will share this exciting information with you in advance.
Q7. Is my email address going to change? If so, when?
A7. Since we are still finalizing the details of our Cox-managed high speed Internet service, we don't have any specific information to share with you at this time. You will be notified in advance about any changes to your service, so that you may have time to prepare for this change as necessary. Please know that we understand that an email address change is significant, and we will make every effort to make any service transition as smooth as possible.
Q8. So will you start offering other ISPs?
A8. We are in the process of testing the technical feasibility of offering multiple ISPs over our broadband network. Once this testing is complete, we will then determine the feasibility of rolling out multiple ISPs on a wider basis.
It really makes me wonder if they consider the port blocking on 80 and 25 to be a "feature" to "improve" "service". The funny thing is that I know someone else across the street w/ Cox@Home who DOESN'T have those ports blocked. And I wasn't even running a web server, while he is. Go figure.
Here's the email I got. Not very full of details, but partially reassuring:
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 19:52:36 -0500 (EST)
From: Cox Communications
To: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX@home.com
Subject: Important Information Regarding Your Cox @ Home Service
Dear Cox @ Home customer:
Recently, you were informed that our high-speed Internet partner - Excite @
Home - filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection. We recognize that this
situation may have caused you some concern about the future of your service.
Rest assured, we are taking all the necessary steps to provide continued reliable
high-speed Internet service to our customers ? now and in the future.
We are deeply committed to providing you with a quality high-speed Internet
service. For several months, we have been hard at work creating a new Cox-
managed network to better serve you. There are many benefits to directly
managing our own network, such as:
* Easier, more streamlined customer service experience.
* Enhanced network performance.
* Ability to bring you the latest in cutting-edge technology and product
features.
In the weeks ahead, we'll continue to keep you informed and share more details
of our exciting plans. For more information, please visit www.cox.com/moreinfo .
(Click here: http://www.cox.com/moreinfo )
We thank you for being a valued Cox customer.
Sincerely,
Cox Communications
That URL above is what some flonetwork.com gobbledygook redirected too. Funny, I can't connect....
And of course, no SDMI anywhere in sight.
Have you upgraded to the latest firmware (1.21d) listed on their page, yet? I'd be curious as to what, exactly, "Serial Copyright Management System", and how it affects the usefulness of this device.
I know that my phone and other "electronic gadgets" tend to last a week with light-to-moderate usage. Either these folks are carrying some rather long extension cords, or have something else to recharge all their batteries.
Either way, I can see why people are opting to toss stuff overboard, as I can't even begin to imagine the additional weight all those chargers would be adding...
The problem is that many software, libraries, and hand-made filters validate domain names based on simple rules like "only 0-9, a-z, dots, and it should end by two characters or com/net/org/edu" .
.uk, .us, etc from. And I certainly wouldn't be surprised if places didn't recognize .int. A lot of web forms don't recognize that "+" is a valid character in an email address either, and no amount of "your mail address validation [on this form where I'm trying to give you money] doesn't work" type mails can convince them to check the RFCs.
That's where you get
There will always be plenty of idiots in the world who think they know all valid addresses. Unfortunately, most can't be bothered to do a little research, and then I or someone else will come along, break the forms, and decide to go elsewhere. And unfortunately, the new TLDs also tend to break what for aeons of "internet time" was an acceptable TLD validation.
Debian unstable, for the adventurous with a DVD-drive.
"woody" is the debian "testing" version, not the debian "unstable". Debian's "unstable" is AKA "sid". Still cool, though.
Now I wish I either had a laptop w/ a DVD drive, or could find a decent SCSI DVD drive for my home system, since IDE sucks so bad.
It seems to me that these rapid-fire kernel releases are just one more indication that we really do need a 2.5 now at not at some point in the future. But what do I know? Apparently the
Hrm.... The only "battery thing" I saw was that it's rechargable. Big whoop. Palms have had that in units for quite some time. Come to think of it, even the Visor Prism has it. I guess that Cmdr Taco's really stretching for something to say about this new Visor...
They don't know if their desktop comes from the machine on their desk or is beamed to them from Saturn.
:-)
If it were being beamed from Saturn, they might suspect something since the latency would likely be a little on the high side.
Other than that, you're absolutely right. And given how much my SO complains about how slow her laptop is, and how little space there is on it, I'm thinking of sneaking behind her back and turning it into an pseudo-xterminal. It should also solve the problem of getting her access to all my mp3s.
I see I'm not the only one that's noticed this. I was in the Fountain Valley Fry's this past weekend, and went looking for the Linux Games. They still had the sign up, but not a single game in sight.
The Anaheim Fry's a couple of weeks (a month?) ago had nothing but empty shelves in their Linux Games section, aside from a few copies of Q3.
This is all very disturbing, as I was more than willing to pick up some more ports, even though it wasn't until this Sunday night that I installed CivCTP, which I had bought back in January...
The cause of, and the solution to, all of life's problems.
--
People still get out of the way in the UK when they hear sirens? It's sad, but true, that over the past couple years I've noticed I'm about the only driver on the road that pulls over onto the shoulder when he hears a siren. And this has been in multiple states, in both the city and suburbs, surface streets and highways.
I wonder what that says about US drivers in general? Maybe a lack of desire to survive?
--
I'm surprised your friends haven't started carrying around mallets in case your phone rings. That, or like firemen, they associate the song with the video and get excited?
--
If the contact lists were encrypted with the 128bit key or OpenPGP cert, then neither a nor b would be *as* evil. And I can think of a couple of situations where c isn't very workable either. Namely, any situation involving moving to another system without being able to copy over your contact list (theft, loss, just hapen to be @ someone else's house).
Note that solving a & b, and solving c are not necessarily mutually exclusive. To wit: needing to remember a 128bit key, or carrying around the key or cert with you....might as well carry the contact list around in that event. However, it's still possible to take away some/most of the evilness of a & b (in this case, evilness being defined as "someone else knowing everyone on my contact list"), without resorting to c. You could even go one step further, and, since the contact list would be encrypted anyway, just use the associated encryption as just an "outer envelope".
Does this mean I get 5 pounds from you?
--
The humor value of a post really loses something if you have to explicitly point out it's humor, even if it's true.
--
It never seems to fail. I install a new kernel, and a day or two later, a new version is released. I literally installed 2.4.6 last night (maybe 27 hours ago, tops). And I'll wager that, had I not, we'd all still be waiting for 2.4.7 to come out. I'll hold off on installing it for a few days to give kernel.org some time to cool off before 2.4.8 comes out...
--
Actually, LA is one of the few areas in California that has its own power plants and isn't going to be too affected by the power "shortage" throughout the state. In fact, the city's currently selling excess power to the state.
--
But we've all seen what would happen if modified bacteria from a NASA probe ended up back on earth. It's all documented right here. Nothing would happen? I think NOT!
--
I hate to followup my own post, but as another example, here's the coming week:
Sunday: Fly to Tacoma
Mon-Wed: customer site in downtown Tacoma
Wed nite: fly to Salt Lake City
Thu-Fri: customer site in SLC
Fri nite: fly home
Somehow, I doubt it'll be only 8 hour days this week too.
--
Being a consultant for a company, every week seems to entail going to a different customer, so the hours vary. Lately, though, it's been:
- 8-10 hours/day at customer
- 2-4 hours/day commute
- 3-5 hours/day at home catching up on corporate e-mail and changes (200+ messages/day, and I don't think I'm on all the lists I need to be)
Then there's the weekend where I routinely spend another 3-4 hours a day catching up on corporate email.
So, that's 11-15 hours/day working, plus commute. God, I hate LA traffic.
--
Well, probably
Ouch. Tough break. I kept putting it off, and putting it off, and then a friend went a registered a
--
Personally, I'd want to have ".deb"... :-)
.nym (one of my personal favorites) could then be made available as well. And if enough sites support alternate roots by default, then for the majority of folks, it would be completely transparent. It might even make VeriSign/NSI sit up and take notice. Not that I'll be holding my breath for THAT to happen.
Actually, there ARE a few fairly inexpensive registrars out there, such as Joker and Gandi.net. Both are only 12 Euros/year, which at today's exchange rate is about $10-$11 US. I've had some fairly good experience with Joker, others have with Gandi. It just depends if you want to use a German or a French registrar (if that matters to you). Both have most/all of their pages in english, so for the great unwashed ignorant masses in the US (myself included), it's painless.
But I really think it would be great if the free/opensource OSes got together and formed their own root nameservers. All the cool TLDs, like
But given the success of these OSes/philosophies in general, even really cheap (read $5/year or so) costs, coupled with a more intelligent name policy, would hopefully make great inroads...
--
Frighteningly, that seems to be exactly what they're doing, according to this response by randombit.
This is exactly why current USPT laws need to be changed. The more people who fight this crap, the less likely companies will be inclined to sweep out an entire section of namespace for their own future use. This was all designed to be FCFS, not MLTA[1].
[1] - Most Lawyers Takes All
--