EC countries sell it much cheaper Alcohol is far less expensive in the US than in ANY EC country, though hookers and pot are cheaper (and more readily available) in Europe. Dave
even if the addresses don't match the company can take a risk and accept the card. The AMEX merchant account agreement states that if you don't use AVS, and the charge is disputed, you'll incur a chargeback. To be fully protected, you need to use an AVS. Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing is a great book, but Phil doesn't have all the current info on online credit card transactions. The real info is in your merchant account agreement, which differ slightly from bank to bank. Dave
Re:Please report all merchant violations.
on
A Matter Of Trust?
·
· Score: 1
It's not a violation of the merchant account agreement to require ID on transactions. In a "card not present" transaction, the merchant is required in most cases to use AVS, or some other way to verify the legitimacy of the card/cardholder.
Seriously, we use an enterprise level tool to view stats in every possible way. We've been active in reviewing stats for about the last four years, though we really couldn't go as indepth as we wanted until last year when we started hosting the site on co loc'ed servers. We are all about stats and demographics.
Thanks for the well thought reply, Jimbo. The site is community of persons that are involved in the pro audio business. It is currently operated as a standalone business, with funding from our primary business that happens to do the same sort of thing.
We also have an online store, that is yet again a separate business, which derives most of its revenue from sales of products advertised on the community site. The thinking is to sell the community, and use the cash to expand the online store, and use it to aggregate pro audio business to business customers, as most pro audio gear is sold to other businesses. The real money is in the sale of goods, not advertising. We do about US$10,000 per month with margins of about 15% at the online store. Pretty much without trying, though I suppose our reputation in the non Internet world is primarily the reason. Our primary brick and mortar pro audio business is able to gross a couple mil a year, with stable growth and decent earnings. We want to go full on "click and mortar", using money from the sale of the community to drive it. We are also considering outside money, but don't want to cut the pie that much.
We just haven't really pursued the banner ad venture, because frankly I'd rather not spend my time selling advertising. I didn't even have a media kit until we had been selling banners for about 8 months. The three major trade rags in our industry easily do in excess of US$ 1 million in ad revenue per issue, based on the most discounted rate. According to the trade mags BPA, our reach is comparable to what the mags claim. I think the reason banner ad sales are slow, is because we haven't focused our attention there. Once the horsetrading, barter and freebies are counted, it's more like a US$16CPM. We only have 7 paying sponsors in the banner pool.
Current rates are unmetered impressions for US$3000/year, or short runs of US$40CPM, minimum 5000 impressions per run. When I talked to a DoubleClick rep last Summer at Internet World, before he politely "blew me off" for being too small, he said he thought that we were charging way too little, and would harm our market. That's odd, because most of the potential advertisers thought our rates were way too much, even when shown data from other Web sites. It's all in how you pitch it, like anything else.
The real benefit of the site, is the loyalty and demographics of the visitors. They own small and medium businesses in our industry, the average visit has a 23 minute retention time. It's real sticky, and they spend money. In the last year, I've noticed that the most sucessful banners are the ones that directly offer something for sale, as opposed to just branding.
Thanks for the equations, it'll give me something to use.
Don't be a moron, Robin. It's not GPLed, it never was and the only thing you are doing by redistributing it is giving Mattel a chance to kick your ass in court.
Sorry kid, that is just the way it is. Even Eddy has confirmed that he didn't intend to release it under GPL. It's done, get over it.
With all the heat from DOJ and the States, there is no way in hell that Micros~1 would even try such a thing.
While I've been critical of the way Eddy and Matthew handled the settlement situation, what they did by publishing the essay was not irresponsible. Irresponsible is Mattel's attorney sending legal documents via email that were non binding, used only to threaten people. There are Federal Codes detailing the requirements of service, and email isn't one of them. While the judge gave permission to distribute the TRO via email, there was no mention of the supeona. You just can't serve a legitimate TRO or supeona via email.
CP routinely blocks sites of critics and competing products, and just gets some blocks plain wrong. Mattel knew this, and the essay (which you obviously have not read) outlines how many sites are improperly categorized, across several categories, while Mattel give the impression that the list is current and accurate.
Right now, Beaver College, a real college that has been around for a hundred plus years is considering changing the school's name, in part due to the fact that blocking software prohibits the term "beaver", due to sexual/anontomical connotaions. When CP is used in public settings, such as schools or libraries, the amount of legitimate info filtered is quite vast, while still allowing some undefined porn to pass, unfiltered.
If someone of their own freewill wants to install filtering at home, that is certainly their business. However, in my opinion, based on the URLs filtered, and Mattel's reponse to the situation, Mattel used CP to filter content which might be critical of Mattel, or Mattel's products, under the guise of protecting children from porn.
Mattel is trying to stifle legitimate criticism of the company and the product, by using strong arm legal tactics, while in my opinion, intentionally misrepresenting the facts to both the public and the court. The email supeona was one such method.
Both of those young men were very responsible in breaking the CP list code, and displaying the contents for all to see the hypocrasy of Mattel. Mattel is intentionally misrepresenting CP, in an effort to protect the Mattel corporate identity. As proven by the actions of Mattel against William Silverstein, and against publishers of legal books critical of the Mattel product Barbie, in my eyes, Mattel is an overbearing, greedy company, that will stop at nothing in the name of profits. By abusing the legal system in the way I believe Mattel has, does far greater harm to the public good than a couple of kids cracking a program they sell.
While Mattel is certainly free to sell such a filtering product, and protect it under current US laws, they should not be allowed to misrepresent the fact that much more is filtered than porn.
In my opinion, using the Mattel product Barbie as role model for our daughters, is much more obscene than any porn that one might find on the net.
Having read the original source, it doesn't meet the requirements for release under GPL, specifically the wording of the text for the license. It's missing the disclaimer and sufficent identifying text the the GPL requires. Also, section 7 refers to actions, like this, which prohibit release under the GPL if all the conditions of the license can't be met.
Put a fork in its ass, it's done. The Mattel lawyers might be ruthless motherfuckers, but they aren't stupid. They know damn good and well what they are doing. And some of you wonder why people in other countries think we are arrogant and offensive. It's bullshit like this...
Settlements are not used as precedent in determining other court cases. Had the judge or a jury ruled against the defendants, then it could be used as a precedent. Out of court settlements are just that, out of court.
Moral statement? Really, you are killin' me....;-)
Once one get's away from computer type sites like/., most folks think Matt and Eddie are hacker thieves, stealing from poor Barbie.
The lesson?
Don't fuck with Barbie unless you have the balls to stand up to her. She can be a ruthless bitch...
The validity of the GPL has never been challenged in court. The first case against the GPL is going to bust it apart like a watermellon. Anyone posting cpcrack before the settlement would probably be OK, but is still going to have an intense legal fight, and in the end still have to take it down. For certain, anyone posting it after the settlement will lose.
The license/copyright only pertains to original use, not the redistribution. Then there is always using Virginia as a UCITA test case.
Matt, it is naive to think that after cracking CP and then posting the results that Mattel wouldn't come after you. You did what you did, and that is your business. Real life actions have real life consequences. By settling it the way you did, you basically "sold out" all the mirrors to save your ass. It's done, dude. It's over. You've basically given Mattel the power to fuck everyone that came to your aid.
Mattel DID win, in a big way. Now that they own the copyright on the source, it's a slam dunk to get the essay, the source and binaries removed from the 'net. They own it now, and it's doubtful that it will ever see the light of day. You say that the original license gave the right to redistribute, but that doesn't do the mirrors any good now, as you don't own the code, anymore. It would be foolhardy to think that Mattel will allow any of what you assigned them to be published on the net, in any form whatsoever.
Yeah, it is "out there", but with the assignment of the copyright to Mattel/Microsystems, it'll disappear from the mainstream, and any attention that could be focused on the "evils" of censorware and the way the Mattel operates with respect to that, disappeared when you assigned your copyright.
You say that "I've made my point". What point is that? To most folks, this is now just another case of some damn hacker kids stealing someone elses property.
Young man, I'm afraid at this point, you've done more harm than good. Except, of course, for yourself and Mattel. If anything, perhaps you learned that it is much easier to talk about a principle, than to stand up for one.
Miva Merchant, a shopping cart/transaction software is based on "Mivascript", which is an XML schema for e commerce type apps. The parser is called Miva Empressa. I've used in on Linux and Solaris, but I think they also have an NT and HP-UX version.
Twister, from bCandid Software in an NNTP to Web toolkit for serving Usenet with a Web interface and building large scale message boards. It's used at Deja and ZDnet, to name a few. Twister has functions and several other elements which are complied into a template file. The data displayed according to the XML in the template. Dave
You are NOT "fighting censorship". Censorship is a process of stopping material from being published. In no way does Cyberpatrol, or any of the other stuff stop material from being published.
They are suing to prohibit the publication of not only the program or the source, but also the essay that was also on the site.
While CP is not censoring in the definition of the word, the legal action by Microsystems/Mattel, by also trying to prohibit publication of material which they own no copyright, is indeed censorship. It's just the latest in the way Mattel uses the courts to attempt to silence criticisim of their business practices.
Those are routers, dude. Most people have to take two or three hops to just to get to their NAP, and some even that many to make if off their WAN. In Seattle, it takes 5 hops for me to get to the above.net backbone, then a single hop to San Jose, CA, then 4 more hops to hit Alta Vista. That's 11 hops for me, and I'm only 1000 miles away.
This about servers, kid. Not application software. Yep, there is a great deal more to Internet servers than games and office suites. And the MS Windows dev tools are better, for Windows developement.
The real truth is, that MS is far from powering the Internet. Even MS lists it's Internet server share at 25%, which means that 75% of the Internet is powered by non MS solutions.
It's all about the right tool for the right job. And IIS and Windows aren't the best tools for all jobs, just SOME jobs. If one were to look past the pretty face of the sites listed at this FUD stop, one would see that most of the heavy lifting is done on other platforms than Windows.
Yep, RC2 Win2k wouldn't run well with 128MB RAM. Just started with the RTM, it's too early to tell, except that the resource requirements seem excessive. Had to upgrade to 512 MB RAM to get it to work.
The only problem with your argument was that most of the computers searched WERE NOT from the named defendants.
The reason it was allowed was that none of the persons involved filed to suppress the search.
It's people like you that make others glad there is a Constitution, and due process. You speak as if these people have been convicted, they have not. It's about due process kid, innocent until proven guilty.
Twister by bCandid Software (the guys that helped build deja.com) is just such an animal. I have been looking for good discussion board software for more than a year, after hosting a community of users for the last six years.
It's basically an NNTP to HTTP gateway. We are just beginning testing.
Judging from your SEC filings and abanet, that your "lawyer" does exist. I'll be damned...
Is litigation his speciality? It appears though he is your Registered Agent. I don't know of too many registered agents that are consumate litigators, particularly in IP or libel/slander cases.
BTW, since you guys at LinuxOne are such technical powerhouses, you should know that it doesn't take a Hotmail account to access your email from all over the world. Maybe that fact just didn't trickle down to your legal department. Ask one of your "several" programmers just how to do that. The real trick to being able to get on the Internet from around the world, is the connection, something Hotmail doesn't provide. I'm sure you knew that, since you are the ones with the pre-IPO software company.
I'd think that a pre-IPO, multi million dollar, multi national software company such as LinuxOne, would have the infrastructure to be able to host a simple Web based email server. I mean, it appears his address is the address you guys used in your SEC filings, why doesn't he just log on via your WAN, to the LinuxOne mail servers. But, you guys are the pros, what do I know about any of this hi tech stuff. I'm only a lowly network administrator. I don't know too much about all this business stuff. Why there must be a real good reason that your attorney is using Hotmail to distribute LinuxOne legal documents, instead of the robust infrastructure that a pre-IPO potential multi million dollar, multi national software company would have.
You know, most of the stuff to set up your own mail server is available on a RedHat or Mandrake distribution. For the sake of argument, I'll just assume that you are familiar with Linux distributions other than your own.
Let's see...you are about to launch a multi million dollar IPO...your lawyer uses a Hotmail account, and is not familiar with the terms and conditions of his account. Most respected, professional companies use a business email account.
Of course, there is the little issue that Hotmail does not allow the accounts to be used for business purposes. The terms of use are pretty clear, and it looks like your "lawyer" didn't take the time to read http://lc2.law5.hotmail.passport.com/cgi-bin/dasp/ hminfo_shell.asp?_lang=&content=nospam, that specifically notes the terms and conditions for using Hotmail.
It appears your "lawyer" has violated a couple of the terms of his Hotmail account. Does he really exist?, If so he is obligated to to inform us as to what state he is licensed to practice, and provide complete contact information. Your "hey stop that" email threat is not binding, and would not be recognised in a court of law as a valid cease and desist. In fact, if it were found that such a lawyer did not exist, you could be sued for harassment.
My theory, there was never any "lawyer".
So, knock off the bullshit, deal with us like regular people.
The production servers we run are rock solid, nary a peep. The dev/staging server, OTOH, doubles as the firewall (ipchains) to our mini NOC, as the prod servers are co loc'ed.
Every month or so, it cores and takes down the both of the NICs. It's the latest released kernel, I suspect it has something to do with the Netgear NICs, as it's not an identical configuration, but the directory structure and software package is identical. ifconf says they are both up, but they are not.
The production box is at 119 days up, only because after the first five months, I had to take it down to put RAM in it, otherwise I'd be approaching 300 days, without a glitch.
The dev/staging box can't go more than 30 or 40 days without the NICs going down. I just haven't got around to putting other NICs in and recompiling the kernel, though I'll probably duplicate the identical machine, before then.
Slashdot Mirror
Would you care to come out of the closet now, or rest on your homophobic comments.
When, and if, you grow up, young man, you'll find that another persons sexuallity is no big. And is really not your business.
Dave
Soooo, why are misdemeanor suspects being held on million dollar bail? That seems to be punitive and excessive, particularly for a misdemeanor.
EC countries sell it much cheaper
Alcohol is far less expensive in the US than in ANY EC country, though hookers and pot are cheaper (and more readily available) in Europe.
Dave
even if the addresses don't match the company can take a risk and accept the card. The AMEX merchant account agreement states that if you don't use AVS, and the charge is disputed, you'll incur a chargeback. To be fully protected, you need to use an AVS. Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing is a great book, but Phil doesn't have all the current info on online credit card transactions. The real info is in your merchant account agreement, which differ slightly from bank to bank. Dave
It's not a violation of the merchant account agreement to require ID on transactions. In a "card not present" transaction, the merchant is required in most cases to use AVS, or some other way to verify the legitimacy of the card/cardholder.
Dave
You mean like a hit counter? ;-)
Seriously, we use an enterprise level tool to view stats in every possible way. We've been active in reviewing stats for about the last four years, though we really couldn't go as indepth as we wanted until last year when we started hosting the site on co loc'ed servers. We are all about stats and demographics.
The average retention time is 23 minutes...
Dave
We also have an online store, that is yet again a separate business, which derives most of its revenue from sales of products advertised on the community site. The thinking is to sell the community, and use the cash to expand the online store, and use it to aggregate pro audio business to business customers, as most pro audio gear is sold to other businesses. The real money is in the sale of goods, not advertising. We do about US$10,000 per month with margins of about 15% at the online store. Pretty much without trying, though I suppose our reputation in the non Internet world is primarily the reason. Our primary brick and mortar pro audio business is able to gross a couple mil a year, with stable growth and decent earnings. We want to go full on "click and mortar", using money from the sale of the community to drive it. We are also considering outside money, but don't want to cut the pie that much.
We just haven't really pursued the banner ad venture, because frankly I'd rather not spend my time selling advertising. I didn't even have a media kit until we had been selling banners for about 8 months. The three major trade rags in our industry easily do in excess of US$ 1 million in ad revenue per issue, based on the most discounted rate. According to the trade mags BPA, our reach is comparable to what the mags claim. I think the reason banner ad sales are slow, is because we haven't focused our attention there. Once the horsetrading, barter and freebies are counted, it's more like a US$16CPM. We only have 7 paying sponsors in the banner pool.
Current rates are unmetered impressions for US$3000/year, or short runs of US$40CPM, minimum 5000 impressions per run. When I talked to a DoubleClick rep last Summer at Internet World, before he politely "blew me off" for being too small, he said he thought that we were charging way too little, and would harm our market. That's odd, because most of the potential advertisers thought our rates were way too much, even when shown data from other Web sites. It's all in how you pitch it, like anything else.
The real benefit of the site, is the loyalty and demographics of the visitors. They own small and medium businesses in our industry, the average visit has a 23 minute retention time. It's real sticky, and they spend money. In the last year, I've noticed that the most sucessful banners are the ones that directly offer something for sale, as opposed to just branding.
Thanks for the equations, it'll give me something to use.
Dave
Don't be a moron, Robin. It's not GPLed, it never was and the only thing you are doing by redistributing it is giving Mattel a chance to kick your ass in court.
Sorry kid, that is just the way it is. Even Eddy has confirmed that he didn't intend to release it under GPL. It's done, get over it.
While I've been critical of the way Eddy and Matthew handled the settlement situation, what they did by publishing the essay was not irresponsible. Irresponsible is Mattel's attorney sending legal documents via email that were non binding, used only to threaten people. There are Federal Codes detailing the requirements of service, and email isn't one of them. While the judge gave permission to distribute the TRO via email, there was no mention of the supeona. You just can't serve a legitimate TRO or supeona via email.
CP routinely blocks sites of critics and competing products, and just gets some blocks plain wrong. Mattel knew this, and the essay (which you obviously have not read) outlines how many sites are improperly categorized, across several categories, while Mattel give the impression that the list is current and accurate.
Right now, Beaver College, a real college that has been around for a hundred plus years is considering changing the school's name, in part due to the fact that blocking software prohibits the term "beaver", due to sexual/anontomical connotaions. When CP is used in public settings, such as schools or libraries, the amount of legitimate info filtered is quite vast, while still allowing some undefined porn to pass, unfiltered.
If someone of their own freewill wants to install filtering at home, that is certainly their business. However, in my opinion, based on the URLs filtered, and Mattel's reponse to the situation, Mattel used CP to filter content which might be critical of Mattel, or Mattel's products, under the guise of protecting children from porn.
Mattel is trying to stifle legitimate criticism of the company and the product, by using strong arm legal tactics, while in my opinion, intentionally misrepresenting the facts to both the public and the court. The email supeona was one such method.
Both of those young men were very responsible in breaking the CP list code, and displaying the contents for all to see the hypocrasy of Mattel. Mattel is intentionally misrepresenting CP, in an effort to protect the Mattel corporate identity. As proven by the actions of Mattel against William Silverstein, and against publishers of legal books critical of the Mattel product Barbie, in my eyes, Mattel is an overbearing, greedy company, that will stop at nothing in the name of profits. By abusing the legal system in the way I believe Mattel has, does far greater harm to the public good than a couple of kids cracking a program they sell.
While Mattel is certainly free to sell such a filtering product, and protect it under current US laws, they should not be allowed to misrepresent the fact that much more is filtered than porn.
In my opinion, using the Mattel product Barbie as role model for our daughters, is much more obscene than any porn that one might find on the net.
Dave
Put a fork in its ass, it's done. The Mattel lawyers might be ruthless motherfuckers, but they aren't stupid. They know damn good and well what they are doing. And some of you wonder why people in other countries think we are arrogant and offensive. It's bullshit like this...
Dave
Moral statement? Really, you are killin' me.... ;-)
Once one get's away from computer type sites like /., most folks think Matt and Eddie are hacker thieves, stealing from poor Barbie.
The lesson?
Don't fuck with Barbie unless you have the balls to stand up to her. She can be a ruthless bitch...
Dave
The license/copyright only pertains to original use, not the redistribution. Then there is always using Virginia as a UCITA test case.
Game Over........
Dave
Mattel DID win, in a big way. Now that they own the copyright on the source, it's a slam dunk to get the essay, the source and binaries removed from the 'net. They own it now, and it's doubtful that it will ever see the light of day. You say that the original license gave the right to redistribute, but that doesn't do the mirrors any good now, as you don't own the code, anymore. It would be foolhardy to think that Mattel will allow any of what you assigned them to be published on the net, in any form whatsoever.
Yeah, it is "out there", but with the assignment of the copyright to Mattel/Microsystems, it'll disappear from the mainstream, and any attention that could be focused on the "evils" of censorware and the way the Mattel operates with respect to that, disappeared when you assigned your copyright.
You say that "I've made my point". What point is that? To most folks, this is now just another case of some damn hacker kids stealing someone elses property.
Young man, I'm afraid at this point, you've done more harm than good. Except, of course, for yourself and Mattel. If anything, perhaps you learned that it is much easier to talk about a principle, than to stand up for one.
Dave
Twister, from bCandid Software in an NNTP to Web toolkit for serving Usenet with a Web interface and building large scale message boards. It's used at Deja and ZDnet, to name a few. Twister has functions and several other elements which are complied into a template file. The data displayed according to the XML in the template.
Dave
They are suing to prohibit the publication of not only the program or the source, but also the essay that was also on the site.
While CP is not censoring in the definition of the word, the legal action by Microsystems/Mattel, by also trying to prohibit publication of material which they own no copyright, is indeed censorship. It's just the latest in the way Mattel uses the courts to attempt to silence criticisim of their business practices.
Dave
Those are routers, dude. Most people have to take two or three hops to just to get to their NAP, and some even that many to make if off their WAN. In Seattle, it takes 5 hops for me to get to the above.net backbone, then a single hop to San Jose, CA, then 4 more hops to hit Alta Vista. That's 11 hops for me, and I'm only 1000 miles away.
Dave
It's not an attachment, it installs without the users knowledge.
This about servers, kid. Not application software. Yep, there is a great deal more to Internet servers than games and office suites. And the MS Windows dev tools are better, for Windows developement.
The real truth is, that MS is far from powering the Internet. Even MS lists it's Internet server share at 25%, which means that 75% of the Internet is powered by non MS solutions.
It's all about the right tool for the right job. And IIS and Windows aren't the best tools for all jobs, just SOME jobs. If one were to look past the pretty face of the sites listed at this FUD stop, one would see that most of the heavy lifting is done on other platforms than Windows.
Dave
Yep, RC2 Win2k wouldn't run well with 128MB RAM. Just started with the RTM, it's too early to tell, except that the resource requirements seem excessive. Had to upgrade to 512 MB RAM to get it to work.
Dave
TFN2K is a Win DDOS tool..........
The only problem with your argument was that most of the computers searched WERE NOT from the named defendants.
The reason it was allowed was that none of the persons involved filed to suppress the search.
It's people like you that make others glad there is a Constitution, and due process. You speak as if these people have been convicted, they have not. It's about due process kid, innocent until proven guilty.
Dave
Twister by bCandid Software (the guys that helped build deja.com) is just such an animal. I have been looking for good discussion board software for more than a year, after hosting a community of users for the last six years.
It's basically an NNTP to HTTP gateway. We are just beginning testing.
Dave
Judging from your SEC filings and abanet, that your "lawyer" does exist. I'll be damned...
;->
Is litigation his speciality? It appears though he is your Registered Agent. I don't know of too many registered agents that are consumate litigators, particularly in IP or libel/slander cases.
BTW, since you guys at LinuxOne are such technical powerhouses, you should know that it doesn't take a Hotmail account to access your email from all over the world. Maybe that fact just didn't trickle down to your legal department. Ask one of your "several" programmers just how to do that. The real trick to being able to get on the Internet from around the world, is the connection, something Hotmail doesn't provide. I'm sure you knew that, since you are the ones with the pre-IPO software company.
I'd think that a pre-IPO, multi million dollar, multi national software company such as LinuxOne, would have the infrastructure to be able to host a simple Web based email server. I mean, it appears his address is the address you guys used in your SEC filings, why doesn't he just log on via your WAN, to the LinuxOne mail servers. But, you guys are the pros, what do I know about any of this hi tech stuff. I'm only a lowly network administrator. I don't know too much about all this business stuff. Why there must be a real good reason that your attorney is using Hotmail to distribute LinuxOne legal documents, instead of the robust infrastructure that a pre-IPO potential multi million dollar, multi national software company would have.
You know, most of the stuff to set up your own mail server is available on a RedHat or Mandrake distribution. For the sake of argument, I'll just assume that you are familiar with Linux distributions other than your own.
I'm missing something in all this, right?
Dave
Let's see...you are about to launch a multi million dollar IPO...your lawyer uses a Hotmail account, and is not familiar with the terms and conditions of his account. Most respected, professional companies use a business email account.
/ hminfo_shell.asp?_lang=&content=nospam, that specifically notes the terms and conditions for using Hotmail.
Of course, there is the little issue that Hotmail does not allow the accounts to be used for business purposes. The terms of use are pretty clear, and it looks like your "lawyer" didn't take the time to read http://lc2.law5.hotmail.passport.com/cgi-bin/dasp
It appears your "lawyer" has violated a couple of the terms of his Hotmail account. Does he really exist?, If so he is obligated to to inform us as to what state he is licensed to practice, and provide complete contact information. Your "hey stop that" email threat is not binding, and would not be recognised in a court of law as a valid cease and desist. In fact, if it were found that such a lawyer did not exist, you could be sued for harassment.
My theory, there was never any "lawyer".
So, knock off the bullshit, deal with us like regular people.
Dave
The production servers we run are rock solid, nary a peep. The dev/staging server, OTOH, doubles as the firewall (ipchains) to our mini NOC, as the prod servers are co loc'ed.
Every month or so, it cores and takes down the both of the NICs. It's the latest released kernel, I suspect it has something to do with the Netgear NICs, as it's not an identical configuration, but the directory structure and software package is identical. ifconf says they are both up, but they are not.
The production box is at 119 days up, only because after the first five months, I had to take it down to put RAM in it, otherwise I'd be approaching 300 days, without a glitch.
The dev/staging box can't go more than 30 or 40 days without the NICs going down. I just haven't got around to putting other NICs in and recompiling the kernel, though I'll probably duplicate the identical machine, before then.
Dave