I used planetary names for my network at home, starting with 192.168.0.1 (Mercury - my server) and going out to 192.168.0.10 (Kuiper - laptop) That works great in a house with 5 pc's and sometimes 1 or 2 more. Obviously it wouldn't work with many more though . At point you'd have to give them names based off of function so you could identify them easily. Maybe something like mailserver01, accounting05. That's pretty much the only way to remember, and guess if needed, a system's name.
In order to take advantage of this or the LED trick you have to have some line of sight and the equipment on hand to do it. Every corporate server I've ever worked on has been kept in a locked room somewhere where only a handful of people have access. If someone did manage to get into that room there would be much worse things to worry about than this. On the client side access would be easier but most likely you'd have a user sitting there to deal with. I just don't see why anyone would go to the trouble of trying something like this when there are much easier ways of doing it. Besides the standard everyday break-ins what about all the RF signals a computer gives off? You don't need a line of sight to pick those up. With a powerful enough antennas you might even be able to pick them up miles away! Only ultra secure organizations like the NSA, CIA, etc... would really have to worry about something like this.
I'm sick and tired of everyone trying to charge me $x a month. I don't care if it's $5 a month or $50, it all adds up. And I think we all know that $5 a month will soon be $5 plus $1 misc fees, then $6 plus $1.25, etc... It never ends. It's not my problem if you went public without a plan on how you were going to grow your revenues 12% year to please stockholders. Maybe it's time for dot coms to realize and accept that maybe they are NEVER going to get rich doing what they are doing and that information SHOULD be free. I'm certainly never going to pay you for something I can get for free someplace else. If I can't then there's an opportunity! All your now ex-users will be looking for someplace else to go. I'll gladly clone the idea of your site minus the flaws. If I can at least supplement my income with the advertising revenue it generates that's enough for me!
Sure AOL bought Winamp, ICQ, and Netscape and left them mostly unchanged... but that's the problem! Can anyone honestly think of any real improvements made to any of these pieces of software since AOL bought them out? Winamp added that useless browser and that's it... ICQ added "cute" icons and turned into the first spam IM service... Netscape, how long did it take to come up with a new browser that still can't compete with IE? AOL also bought out the cable companies and look what's happened there. Prices are going up. (Read the $230 a month./ story from last week) Service levels are going down. AOL\TW will just use Redhat as leverage against Microsoft, they aren't going to bring Linux to the desktop! Get real people! As far as I'm conserned AOL is a MUCH bigger threat then MS ever was.
I am a former Mediaone customer. My area was bought out by Comcast and they are changing all our email address too. Comcast just bought ATT too... so guess what might happen to those people... Since being on Comcast they have done the following:
1. Raised prices 20%
2. Eliminated all our email accounts (you can call in 3 weeks to get new ones... gee thanks)
3. Mailed us new cable modems and required us to self install them... then bring the old one back to them. (Not that this is difficult but for some people it might be... and bring the modem to US!!! BTW... the Comcast people were appropriately behind bulletproof glass when I brought the modem back)
4. Eliminated the NNTP server completely!
5. DNS servers switched several times and slowed to a crawl when it didn't timeout. (Because I run Linux and that is not a "client OS" it did not pickup the DNS servers from DHCP... I had to call a friend and have him run nslookup on his Win2k machine)
6. Web performance was in the 56k range and down several hours a day for several weeks while things were being changed over to Comcast... (It's now back)
My solution to all this since there are no other broadband providers in the area was to:
1. Setup a DNS caching server... performance increased 10 fold.
2. Register my own domain at dotster.com ($15 a year) and use zoneedit.com (free DNS!)
3. Use my new dynamic domain to setup my own mail server at home... I paid Zoneedit $11 for the year for email backup in case I was down for some reason. Now I have unlimited email accounts, POP, IMAP.... anything I want!
I'm a 100% pro laze-fair capitalist but sad to say this might actually be an area where a government bureaucracy might be better then the scum we have now. These guys have us by the balls... it's a monopoly. It won't be long before they'll be in a position to control our whole economy. Clearly something has to be done to prevent this. The ideal solution would be for someone to develop a quantum entanglement communication device and make these guys obsolete!
Assuming you live in the US, your employer can legally fire you for being too young. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act only protects people aged 40 and over. Check your state law because if you have any legal protection at all it would be there. (Very doubtfull... I'm not aware of any states that have this)
You couldn't figure out what you wanted to do in college... what makes you think that things change once you graduate? The sooner you figure out that you can't plan life the better! You'll finish school and get a CS job somewhere... maybe you'll like it, maybe you won't. The experience will give you some ideas of what you want to do for the next job. Don't worry about being stuck in CS just because that's what your degree is in. Your interests WILL change and you'll have plenty of opportunities to explore those options. Nobody is going to care if you have a CS degree or a Pottery degree or if you got a 2.0 or 4.0 in 5 years, but they will care what you have been doing since then. Figure out what you want out of life (AKA a ton of money and a personal harem! LOL), set some goals, and you'll slowly figure out how to get there. Just don't get tied down in responsibility until you are ready for it or you won't have that flexibility. Think of all those middle aged, mid management people out there, stuck doing basically the same thing for 30 years so they can support the wife and kids, hoping to last until retirement before getting the over 50 axe. That also includes getting yourself into serious debt like everyone else. Bank some money and you'll have more options later. (Note: all this is coming from a 25 year old who's been out in the "real world" for three years. It could be total BS! Seems be working for me though and all the successfully people I know have done the same.)
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Why don't you switch to a Windows based OS. At least that way when your PC's lock up for 5 minutes nobody will notice.
I used planetary names for my network at home, starting with 192.168.0.1 (Mercury - my server) and going out to 192.168.0.10 (Kuiper - laptop) That works great in a house with 5 pc's and sometimes 1 or 2 more. Obviously it wouldn't work with many more though . At point you'd have to give them names based off of function so you could identify them easily. Maybe something like mailserver01, accounting05. That's pretty much the only way to remember, and guess if needed, a system's name.
In order to take advantage of this or the LED trick you have to have some line of sight and the equipment on hand to do it. Every corporate server I've ever worked on has been kept in a locked room somewhere where only a handful of people have access. If someone did manage to get into that room there would be much worse things to worry about than this. On the client side access would be easier but most likely you'd have a user sitting there to deal with. I just don't see why anyone would go to the trouble of trying something like this when there are much easier ways of doing it. Besides the standard everyday break-ins what about all the RF signals a computer gives off? You don't need a line of sight to pick those up. With a powerful enough antennas you might even be able to pick them up miles away! Only ultra secure organizations like the NSA, CIA, etc... would really have to worry about something like this.
Finally, a greenhouse for my PC!
I'm sick and tired of everyone trying to charge me $x a month. I don't care if it's $5 a month or $50, it all adds up. And I think we all know that $5 a month will soon be $5 plus $1 misc fees, then $6 plus $1.25, etc... It never ends. It's not my problem if you went public without a plan on how you were going to grow your revenues 12% year to please stockholders. Maybe it's time for dot coms to realize and accept that maybe they are NEVER going to get rich doing what they are doing and that information SHOULD be free. I'm certainly never going to pay you for something I can get for free someplace else. If I can't then there's an opportunity! All your now ex-users will be looking for someplace else to go. I'll gladly clone the idea of your site minus the flaws. If I can at least supplement my income with the advertising revenue it generates that's enough for me!
Sure AOL bought Winamp, ICQ, and Netscape and left them mostly unchanged... but that's the problem! Can anyone honestly think of any real improvements made to any of these pieces of software since AOL bought them out? Winamp added that useless browser and that's it... ICQ added "cute" icons and turned into the first spam IM service... Netscape, how long did it take to come up with a new browser that still can't compete with IE? AOL also bought out the cable companies and look what's happened there. Prices are going up. (Read the $230 a month ./ story from last week) Service levels are going down. AOL\TW will just use Redhat as leverage against Microsoft, they aren't going to bring Linux to the desktop! Get real people! As far as I'm conserned AOL is a MUCH bigger threat then MS ever was.
I am a former Mediaone customer. My area was bought out by Comcast and they are changing all our email address too. Comcast just bought ATT too... so guess what might happen to those people... Since being on Comcast they have done the following:
1. Raised prices 20%
2. Eliminated all our email accounts (you can call in 3 weeks to get new ones... gee thanks)
3. Mailed us new cable modems and required us to self install them... then bring the old one back to them. (Not that this is difficult but for some people it might be... and bring the modem to US!!! BTW... the Comcast people were appropriately behind bulletproof glass when I brought the modem back)
4. Eliminated the NNTP server completely!
5. DNS servers switched several times and slowed to a crawl when it didn't timeout. (Because I run Linux and that is not a "client OS" it did not pickup the DNS servers from DHCP... I had to call a friend and have him run nslookup on his Win2k machine)
6. Web performance was in the 56k range and down several hours a day for several weeks while things were being changed over to Comcast... (It's now back)
My solution to all this since there are no other broadband providers in the area was to:
1. Setup a DNS caching server... performance increased 10 fold.
2. Register my own domain at dotster.com ($15 a year) and use zoneedit.com (free DNS!)
3. Use my new dynamic domain to setup my own mail server at home... I paid Zoneedit $11 for the year for email backup in case I was down for some reason. Now I have unlimited email accounts, POP, IMAP.... anything I want!
I'm a 100% pro laze-fair capitalist but sad to say this might actually be an area where a government bureaucracy might be better then the scum we have now. These guys have us by the balls... it's a monopoly. It won't be long before they'll be in a position to control our whole economy. Clearly something has to be done to prevent this. The ideal solution would be for someone to develop a quantum entanglement communication device and make these guys obsolete!
Assuming you live in the US, your employer can legally fire you for being too young. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act only protects people aged 40 and over. Check your state law because if you have any legal protection at all it would be there. (Very doubtfull... I'm not aware of any states that have this)
You couldn't figure out what you wanted to do in college... what makes you think that things change once you graduate? The sooner you figure out that you can't plan life the better! You'll finish school and get a CS job somewhere... maybe you'll like it, maybe you won't. The experience will give you some ideas of what you want to do for the next job. Don't worry about being stuck in CS just because that's what your degree is in. Your interests WILL change and you'll have plenty of opportunities to explore those options. Nobody is going to care if you have a CS degree or a Pottery degree or if you got a 2.0 or 4.0 in 5 years, but they will care what you have been doing since then. Figure out what you want out of life (AKA a ton of money and a personal harem! LOL), set some goals, and you'll slowly figure out how to get there. Just don't get tied down in responsibility until you are ready for it or you won't have that flexibility. Think of all those middle aged, mid management people out there, stuck doing basically the same thing for 30 years so they can support the wife and kids, hoping to last until retirement before getting the over 50 axe. That also includes getting yourself into serious debt like everyone else. Bank some money and you'll have more options later. (Note: all this is coming from a 25 year old who's been out in the "real world" for three years. It could be total BS! Seems be working for me though and all the successfully people I know have done the same.)