.. that had been considering a switch to Rogers, but after reading this story, I will never consider them again.
Take it from me; I switched from Rogers to Telus and I'd never go back.
Picture this; between jobs, cell phone is my primary phone (the number is, in fact, in the dozens of resumees I'd handed out), I pay either late or partial payments on all my bills while I try to 'catch up'. Naturally, the billing department begins to harass me. The phone calls become more frequent and nasty as I assert that I've paid last month's charges, the reference # is... etc. It comes to pass that I've got a new job, I'm 3 months behind and just waiting for the 1st and 2nd pay cheques to come in and clear everything up. Let's suppose my bill was $60/month. I owe $180. You'd think I'm now only 2 months behind, right? Wrong. In their eyes I paid only the current month, I'm therefore now FOUR months behind so they cut me off. I was 2 weeks away from paying the entire balance.
Their cable arm's billing department is even more retarded. I had so many services on my digital cable that my bill came to approx. $100/month. Any month I'd miss paying my bills (work weeks are too long:) ) or pay them later than anticipated I'd find a threatening letter in my mailbox. "Pay now or we'll cancel you and charge a $xx investigation charge and a $xx reconnection fee!" Uhm.. Most companies just charge the interest and wait for me to pay the whole lot.
I phoned them about it and explained that their bill came shortly before my payday every month and as such it was difficult to pay as soon as it came in. Their solution? "Let us auto-debit your MasterCard every month!" Yeah. I'm going to trust the competence of your billing department to my credit card?
Apart from their billing department their customer service is horrible, their service isn't all it's cracked up to be (I get better reception with my Telus phone), and their managers are morons. I've had technical and billing problems with all three of their mobility, cable, and high speed Internet arms in the past. They just can't seem to keep their act together.
However, running various network sniffing tools shows that all the windows machines on the network have become insanely chatty -- every windows machine seems to be constantly sending out packets, regardless of whether they're actually doing anything or not. Given that there are hundreds of windows machines on the (ethernet) network, this means A Lot of Packets.
Your steps should be something as follows;
Check the source/port/type/content of the packets to isolate what protocol is causing them.
Check your DHCP configuration. Is the server providing enough information?
Check the available address space. Do you have enough slack space in your address pool or are you running low on addresses causing the machines to 'fight' over them?
Check the lease time. Are they expring too soon causing frequent requests? Remember that if your lease time is 24 hours, your machines will 'phone home' every 12 hours to ensure it's still kosher. (It's not a dial-up ISP; with a large enough address pool to handle your machines, a 7-14 day lease time is just fine)
Check your DNS setup. Are you using an internal DNS server? (With that many machines you really should be). If so, is it talking to your DHCP server to properly setup reverse-mappings? Win2k likes to update its DNS servers vis its reverse map regardless of the owner of said DNS server.
Remember that the switchover to DHCP may be merely causality and may not even be the source of your problem. Isolate and examine some of the packets to be sure..
Some of the ones I have more recent experience with. All of these require some reading and planning before you set them up.
Before you get into network monitoring software, start at layer 1. Look at the physical topology of the network. Do you have network/switch maps? If not, get some. If there are none, make some. How is your network configured? Is it a high speed backbone (1G? 10G?) with low or high speed desktop connections (10Mbit? 100Mbit?) Is WIFI in play? Are you using VLANs? Are you connected to a WAN? Is spanning-tree involved, or is it a flat heirarchal topology? Could you have a redundant path between switches setup somewhere? Are your switches managed? For that matter, are you using hubs? Is there a wiring fault/short somewhere? When this slowdown occurs, do any ports show unusually high activity, or is it simply a server overload situation? You have 7 servers; could you balance the load between them? Where are the servers located within your topology? Are they connected to the backbone, are they dispersed locally (eg. close to a select group of users)? What protocols are in use? Could you pare them down (eg. do you run IPX? Do you need it? What about NETBEUI/NETBIOS?) Do you have any viral/trojan activity? Is your Internet link saturated, or only your internal connections?
On a network that size (relatively small) I'd presume you're running a flat topology. If this is the case, try to balance your high(er) traffic computers on the switches. For example; if you have 24 port, 100BaseTX switches fed by a 1000Mbit backbone connection, try to ensure that you don't have an entire high-demand section of the building connected exclusively to this switch. Divide out the wiring so that half the switch is high while the other half is low traffic (or, add a second uplink).
If your servers serve particular segments of the network, connect them to a high(er) speed port on a switch close to the main traffic source to prevent excess traffic needlessly traversing your backbone. If your servers serve the entire network equally, consider localizing the services else connect them with either a high speed or dual NICs to your backbone.
If it's a server-load problem, divide off one/some of the services to some of the servers with a lighter load, else upgrade the hardware accordingly. (Low on RAM? Borrow a stick from a lower demand server)
If you're using spanning-tree, or even if you're not, check the configuration. IBM switches are famous for delaying transactions on their fibre switches if ST is enabled but not utilized. If there are no situations where more than one switch-path exists, disable ST on all switches.
To check your network activity and isolate protocol chatter, I could suggest any number of traffic sniffers. It may be something as simple as your DHCP leases are too short and your 400 machines are looking for the server(s) and requesting new addresses on a regular basis. Lengthen the leases to a week, or if your network is fairly static make it 2. Are you running a mix of Win'98/ME and 2k/XP machines? If you're running a hybrid NETBEUI / NetBIOS over TCP/IP you may have a lot of broadcast traffic looking for daddy. Look to reconfigure your client/server and peer relationships. On machines that don't require file and/or print sharing, disable the protocols entirely (else they'll broadcast constantly looking for everybody else).
You're really going to have to isolate where exactly the problem is occurring before a solid reccomendation can be made - even to the monitoring aspect of things. Remember that most network admin work is done by good old fashioned legwork. Solving computer/network problems is all about the process of elimination. If your network structure is solid it'll make your job a helluva lot easier. Meanwhile you need to isolate if it's hardware, software, malicious, or network before we can begin to solve your problem for you.
Your scenario is not unique to PayPal. Every business that accepts credit card payments is subject to this scam as long as credit card companies offer their 'buyer protection' services. If the buyer disputes a charge then it gets yanked, no questions asked. Eventually, however, if this individual does this enough times then their card will get cancelled.
In a former life I was a delivery driver for a pizza store. Local mom & pop outfit. Of course, they had to accept credit cards for deliveries else even more of their customer base would dwindle towards the generic chains.
There was one particular gentleman who would order approximately $60 worth of food on average 3-4 times/week. Combinations of all sorts of appetizers, milkshakes, cigarettes, etc. and put it on his Visa. I was alerted to the fact that something was probably going to go wrong when I went to his appartment on one occasion, was led up the stairs by another resident to find Mr. Customer in his room with a joint hanging out of his mouth and a Sherrif's Notice (mandatory eviction) taped to the door.
Sure enough, bonehead contested every single Visa charge totalling somewhere in the neighborhood of $1000. Our requirement was to have 1) the imprint of the card and 2) the signature of the buyer. We had it on most of the transactions (something like 70%) but not on the remainder. In most cases the imprint was missing but the signature was present. So Visa, in their infinite wisdom, refused to permit the transactions that were incomplete on our part! Hell-oo? The guy's obviously committing fraud - you KNOW he's authorized $700 worth of transactions, the other $300 are for the same amount at the same time of night to the same address/phone number pair - do you THINK he could be LYING?
It took us charging him with fraud and several months of aggravating follow-up for Visa to smarten up and return the balance to the store's account. (Yes, as soon as fraud is claimed the store's account is auto-debited before notice is sent)
I'd be willing to bet that when he wasn't ordering from us, or at lunch time he was ordering from other restaurants and pulled the same scam on them. With the willingness of credit card companies to hand out $3-5k worth of credit to welfare recipients I'd bet he ate like a king for months before he was caught (and they probably still deny fault for the whole ordeal).
Not blatantly. Only in cases of fraud is there any reason to limit speech.
Have you ever been accused of being a pedophile? It has a habit of ruining lives (and occasionally resulting in death or serious personal injury to the accused). That's why slander is harmful and illegal.
I don't know what dunderhead modded this as offtopic, but damn, that's funny stuff! I don't care who you are that's a funny joke!
Lord forgive icepick72, pray for all the Pygmies in Africa...
Re:Morphing and going into hiding, more likely.
on
P2P Polluter Shuts Down
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· Score: 3, Informative
They try sourcing bandwidth from my cable modem and they'll get to know the dark side of my attorney, I can tell you that.
Pssst; I think he meant using cable modem accounts to hide amongst the masses.
BTW - if you (the general 'you') don't check your downloads and automatically share them out again you are donating your bandwidth to their efforts. Clean up the P2P - stage and scan your downloads!
SCOTUS is expected to take the government side. One justice already suggested that if a school doesn't want military recruiters, they don't need government aid.
You don't like it? Get on a plane and argue it with them yourself.
Since I don't live in a militaristic country I'm really not concerned.
Naturally, I understood your initial post was merely an example of consequences that can flow from thoughtless speech, so this is a bit offtopic and you would never actually do such a thing.
Boy, and you wonder why people make fun of the American civil justice system.
Up here in Canada we have a saying after someone finds themselves injured; "Walk it off" sometimes followed by a low murmer of "pussy".
Free speech is with regards to the government, not to private parties. Write an email to everyone in your company saying what a jerk your boss is and you will be fired. The Constitution does not protect such things. However, you will not be arrested for writing such an email. Similarly you will not be arrested or have your property taxes doubled, etc. for blogging about how you disagree with the war in Iraq. That is free speech. That is protected by The Constitution.
I suspect a lot of the people on this forum throwing the first around like a battle flag are a tad ignorant of the workings of the world and, alas, their own country.
There were times and there are countries where one would be thrown in prison, their property seized, and possibly face execution for so much as disagreeing with stated public policy. THAT is what the first amendment protects against. It does not absolve one from the natural consequences of their own actions.
I've seen so many bad examples I couldn't begin to respond to all of them! That a person can enter private property and say whatever they want without so much as being told to leave? That an employee can slander / libel their employer and company without fear of reprisal?
I can only imagine that most of the commentators have never owned property or held down a full-time job. If they are gainfully employed, I would encourage all of them to tell their co-workers that their bosses are incompetent, criminal, lazy, or anything else disparaging and see how long they remain employed. I also thoroughly reccomend they then contact the supreme court and explain their case.
If this private institution is recieving federal/state money, then in my opinion there should be a provision that is MUST conform to accepting all forms of free speech that students may express.
Quite a stretch, but Im going to have to assume that you really are that idiotic. I can call you a jackass all I want, but you are not allowed to hit me for it. If you do, you will be sued and jailed (criminal assault, and then a civil suit).
Sued? For simple battery? For what? To regain your pride, or to grab cash?
And you would deserve every bit of the ass pumping you would recieve in jail, for being both a moron and a jackass.
Boy, do you ever have no idea how jail works. There are certain understood rules of conduct. For example, if you call somebody a jackass you'd better expect a fist in your face. And no, you will not be "sued and jailed" for doing so.
Heaven forbid you should ever bleed on your white collar, son.
I paid for a connection to the internet, I want a connection to the internet. If I want a company to give me restricted access so that I can't hurt my computer, I would hire a security company not an ISP. Let me put my own router on that I can configure.
What so many people on this venerable forum tend to forget is that the OTHER 98% of Internet users probably don't even know what a firewall is, letalone how to configure same.
If you're using SOHO broadband service, you are not paying for an SLA. You are paying to use a service based upon their terms and conditions which can (and often do) change at any given time. Read your terms of use very carefully.
Therefore I would say the converse angle to your statement would be if you want unrestricted access to the full Internet you should contact a commercial ISP and pay the going rate. (Hint: $29.95/month will not buy a proper SLA)
Hey! Those poor saps out there who don't have your fancy-shmancy high-speed internet connections need software firewalls - unless you can figure out a way to block ports on my modem.
As another person already pointed out, there are a multitude of dial-up capable routers on the market today. Most of them have been phased out in favour of broadband-only variants but some are still produced. Many models have both dial-up and broadband capabilities, some even go to the extent of using dial-up as a failover if the broadband link is down. Typically these routers come with atleast 4 ports making it easy to network your home. They'll also cost you pretty much the same as a decent 4/5 port 10/100 switch.
If, on the other hand, you don't want to "pay anything" for your home connection - that's fine. Just don't be alarmed when your computer is taken over and your 48kbit connection becomes a 1kbit connection.:)
Again, the mental capacity to vote and sign contracts hasn't changed. Most teenagers could handle these tasks if they were allowed to. Voting really isn't that hard: you look at the candidates, see which ones best represent your own interests and beliefs, and vote for them.
Ask as many high school students as you can get your hands on what they think of current issues and whom they feel best suits their needs. Most of them respond that they don't know, don't care, or are inclined to vote the way their parents or teachers tell them to.
Same with signing a contract: you read it, and if you think the benefit you're being offered is worth whatever you're agreeing to do, and what you're agreeing to do is something you'll actually be able to do, then you sign it.
Most adults with a college education can barely decipher the language in most contracts. How can you expect someone with eight years less language instruction to do so? Kids also tend to be on the naive side. They haven't been burned before so they ignore the fine print and concentrate on the too-good-to-be-true offer. Columbia House, BMG et al. went through hell because of the sheer number of teenagers signing up for their services and only later finding that the financial obligations were significantly higher than expected. They defaulted, and the companies had no recourse because the contracts were signed by minors. Nowadays they're a lot more careful about who signs their contracts.
What about a new car purchase? If a car salesman sees a fresh young face coming, they'll wind up buried in a 60/96 finance term for 110% of MSRP plus several thousand dollars worth of interest charges! Is it worth putting people at risk of financial ruination before they leave their teens just to say "I told you so - you should have read more carefully"? The extra few years is intended to give them some time to cool their hormones and think about the bigger picture rather than how cool they'll look in their pimped new ride.
What about a will? Living will? Prenupital agreement? Marriage contract? Mortgage? How many 16 year olds do you know responsible and informed enough to enter fully into all of those agreements?
what about america's drinking laws? (which by the way are higher than most other countries in the world? 21? you have to be kidding me) wouldnt they be against the same amendment?
The first amendment covers the restriction of speech by the government. Consumption of fermented beverages may induce freer speech, but it's a stretch.;)
I'm suspicious that judgment suddenly just "comes to a person" after their 18th birthday, or after any other day for that reason.
You'll get no argument here. I still find it strange that at the age of 18 here in Ontario one is allowed to vote or sign up for the armed forces but not allowed to smoke, drink, or peruse sexual materials. At the age of 16 you're allowed to operate a motor vehicle but insurance rates make it prohibitive to do so (indicating the frequency of collisions and infractions by 16-18 year old drivers).
The problem being, how do you determine when an individual is 'ready' for responsibility? Individual testing for age of majority status would be tedious, costly, and entirely ineffective. Ages are set at an arbitrary number decided by the government of the day at a point they believe is reasonable. You say the age when people graduate high school - that's probably not a coincidence. One would suppose by that point in a person's life they've had exposure to enough education and general life experience that they should(!) be capable of making decisions while understanding the consequences. Whether that's always the case is suspect, but hey, it's an imperfect world we live in.
I know a lot of people who believed themselves to be ready to party, have sex, and nine months later the consequences became very real. Sure enough, they drop out of school, live on their parents' (or the tax payers') dime and eventually find themselves grossly unqualified to do anything that pays more than minimum wage. But at the age of 14 here in Ontario boys and girls are considered mature enough to have sex.
What we need is some form of mandatory training on personal responsibility in the modern world. But hey, that's just my opinion.
Why do you have such a big problem with that? I can't belive that people think that an underage child that lives in his parents home has the RIGHT to do any thing he wants, that he has the RIGHT to view any materials, to play any games, to surf anywhere on the internet, that he has the right to do anything he feels like doing and that the parent should have no say so, no right to restrict or deny the activities in their own home..
Kids these days are extremely disrespectful of their elders and of the wishes of their parents. They think the parents should just shell out cash on demand for what ever deviant activity that the child feels he wants to indulge in and that the parent should just shut up and stay out of their lives.
I had to quote those two passages because they're right on the money. I have a younger brother (large age gap) and find myself constantly explaining to him that he has no need for a video cell phone, four high-end video game systems, a snowboard, skateboard, brand-new mountain bike, MP3 player, etc.. just because his friends have them. Some friends are the product of broken homes and alternate between mother and father spoiling them. (Christ, what a stereotype)
If it kills me he'll grow up understanding morality and the concept of working for what you need and want (in that order!)
Would it not also be helpfull to expose a kid to all the things in life, but explain to the kid what is morale and what is not.
Do you really think it's better to let your child(ren) learn morality while picking up hookers and shooting cops than to have open, frank discussions with them? Violent video games aren't a neccesity of life, nor are they a teaching tool. They're entertainment.
Fundamentally, the responsibility lies with the parents, not the state, to monitor what their kids do. This goes for all manner of things, not just buying video games. My kids know the rules that we have, and I know they know them. But my rules should not limit what OTHER parents or kids do! This is just another 'nanny-state' law - the kind I'm really getting tired of.
Come on, we can't have it both ways. What about the grandmother who sued everybody and their brother after purchasing an 'M' rated game (GTA San Andreas, IIRC) for her young grandson?
One way or another a precedent has to be set. Does the state protect the children, or is it the parent/guardians' responsibility?
Let's face it, the world we live in today is different than the world of yesterday. Kids don't grow up as quickly because they're not put to work to support their families at 13 years of age. Therefore it was decided by society that there should be a reasonable(?) age limit set forth to determine when children become capable, decision making adults. This determines when you're allowed to vote, purchase and consume alcohol and tobacco products, sign your name to a binding contract, purchase / consume violent and/or pornographic materials, etc.
To play devil's advocate for a minute here; the problem with abolishing all 'nanny-state laws' is a partial reflection of our current state of society. We have children with one or no living/remaining parents, children of parents who work long hours to make ends meet, and this leaves kids by and large to manage their own lives. In one circle of thought, this leaves kids to watch violence and porn while smoking, getting drunk and high while cleaning their firearms. Moral degredation of those less fortunate and all that.
On the other side of the coin, it's also believed that if you don't allow children to make their own decisions and face consequences of same they'll never learn to be responsible. It's a tough sell, though, with cigarettes generalling taking years to take their toll on health, pedophiles and other sexual deviants coming out of the woodwork around every corner, violent crime spreading like untamed wildfire,...
Politicians, stemming largely from the rallying cries of concerned citizens' groups, have long determined that we can't take care of ourselves so the long arm of the law must step in and do it for us. Whether you agree with it or not, it seems to be a cost of our present level of society. Let's face it; technology advances faster than even the most educated lawmakers can comprehend and brings with it new methods of delivering sin that they feel must be dealt with. Naturally, if you're not satisfied with how your congresscritter is representing you send them some information and clarify it for them. There's always some sense of naive hope that it'll make a difference.;)
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Take it from me; I switched from Rogers to Telus and I'd never go back.
Picture this; between jobs, cell phone is my primary phone (the number is, in fact, in the dozens of resumees I'd handed out), I pay either late or partial payments on all my bills while I try to 'catch up'. Naturally, the billing department begins to harass me. The phone calls become more frequent and nasty as I assert that I've paid last month's charges, the reference # is ... etc. It comes to pass that I've got a new job, I'm 3 months behind and just waiting for the 1st and 2nd pay cheques to come in and clear everything up. Let's suppose my bill was $60/month. I owe $180. You'd think I'm now only 2 months behind, right? Wrong. In their eyes I paid only the current month, I'm therefore now FOUR months behind so they cut me off. I was 2 weeks away from paying the entire balance.
Their cable arm's billing department is even more retarded. I had so many services on my digital cable that my bill came to approx. $100/month. Any month I'd miss paying my bills (work weeks are too long :) ) or pay them later than anticipated I'd find a threatening letter in my mailbox. "Pay now or we'll cancel you and charge a $xx investigation charge and a $xx reconnection fee!" Uhm.. Most companies just charge the interest and wait for me to pay the whole lot.
I phoned them about it and explained that their bill came shortly before my payday every month and as such it was difficult to pay as soon as it came in. Their solution? "Let us auto-debit your MasterCard every month!" Yeah. I'm going to trust the competence of your billing department to my credit card?
Apart from their billing department their customer service is horrible, their service isn't all it's cracked up to be (I get better reception with my Telus phone), and their managers are morons. I've had technical and billing problems with all three of their mobility, cable, and high speed Internet arms in the past. They just can't seem to keep their act together.
Your steps should be something as follows;
Remember that the switchover to DHCP may be merely causality and may not even be the source of your problem. Isolate and examine some of the packets to be sure..
Before you get into network monitoring software, start at layer 1. Look at the physical topology of the network. Do you have network/switch maps? If not, get some. If there are none, make some. How is your network configured? Is it a high speed backbone (1G? 10G?) with low or high speed desktop connections (10Mbit? 100Mbit?) Is WIFI in play? Are you using VLANs? Are you connected to a WAN? Is spanning-tree involved, or is it a flat heirarchal topology? Could you have a redundant path between switches setup somewhere? Are your switches managed? For that matter, are you using hubs? Is there a wiring fault/short somewhere? When this slowdown occurs, do any ports show unusually high activity, or is it simply a server overload situation? You have 7 servers; could you balance the load between them? Where are the servers located within your topology? Are they connected to the backbone, are they dispersed locally (eg. close to a select group of users)? What protocols are in use? Could you pare them down (eg. do you run IPX? Do you need it? What about NETBEUI/NETBIOS?) Do you have any viral/trojan activity? Is your Internet link saturated, or only your internal connections?
On a network that size (relatively small) I'd presume you're running a flat topology. If this is the case, try to balance your high(er) traffic computers on the switches. For example; if you have 24 port, 100BaseTX switches fed by a 1000Mbit backbone connection, try to ensure that you don't have an entire high-demand section of the building connected exclusively to this switch. Divide out the wiring so that half the switch is high while the other half is low traffic (or, add a second uplink).
If your servers serve particular segments of the network, connect them to a high(er) speed port on a switch close to the main traffic source to prevent excess traffic needlessly traversing your backbone. If your servers serve the entire network equally, consider localizing the services else connect them with either a high speed or dual NICs to your backbone.
If it's a server-load problem, divide off one/some of the services to some of the servers with a lighter load, else upgrade the hardware accordingly. (Low on RAM? Borrow a stick from a lower demand server)
If you're using spanning-tree, or even if you're not, check the configuration. IBM switches are famous for delaying transactions on their fibre switches if ST is enabled but not utilized. If there are no situations where more than one switch-path exists, disable ST on all switches.
To check your network activity and isolate protocol chatter, I could suggest any number of traffic sniffers. It may be something as simple as your DHCP leases are too short and your 400 machines are looking for the server(s) and requesting new addresses on a regular basis. Lengthen the leases to a week, or if your network is fairly static make it 2. Are you running a mix of Win'98/ME and 2k/XP machines? If you're running a hybrid NETBEUI / NetBIOS over TCP/IP you may have a lot of broadcast traffic looking for daddy. Look to reconfigure your client/server and peer relationships. On machines that don't require file and/or print sharing, disable the protocols entirely (else they'll broadcast constantly looking for everybody else).
You're really going to have to isolate where exactly the problem is occurring before a solid reccomendation can be made - even to the monitoring aspect of things. Remember that most network admin work is done by good old fashioned legwork. Solving computer/network problems is all about the process of elimination. If your network structure is solid it'll make your job a helluva lot easier. Meanwhile you need to isolate if it's hardware, software, malicious, or network before we can begin to solve your problem for you.
In a former life I was a delivery driver for a pizza store. Local mom & pop outfit. Of course, they had to accept credit cards for deliveries else even more of their customer base would dwindle towards the generic chains.
There was one particular gentleman who would order approximately $60 worth of food on average 3-4 times/week. Combinations of all sorts of appetizers, milkshakes, cigarettes, etc. and put it on his Visa. I was alerted to the fact that something was probably going to go wrong when I went to his appartment on one occasion, was led up the stairs by another resident to find Mr. Customer in his room with a joint hanging out of his mouth and a Sherrif's Notice (mandatory eviction) taped to the door.
Sure enough, bonehead contested every single Visa charge totalling somewhere in the neighborhood of $1000. Our requirement was to have 1) the imprint of the card and 2) the signature of the buyer. We had it on most of the transactions (something like 70%) but not on the remainder. In most cases the imprint was missing but the signature was present. So Visa, in their infinite wisdom, refused to permit the transactions that were incomplete on our part! Hell-oo? The guy's obviously committing fraud - you KNOW he's authorized $700 worth of transactions, the other $300 are for the same amount at the same time of night to the same address/phone number pair - do you THINK he could be LYING?
It took us charging him with fraud and several months of aggravating follow-up for Visa to smarten up and return the balance to the store's account. (Yes, as soon as fraud is claimed the store's account is auto-debited before notice is sent)
I'd be willing to bet that when he wasn't ordering from us, or at lunch time he was ordering from other restaurants and pulled the same scam on them. With the willingness of credit card companies to hand out $3-5k worth of credit to welfare recipients I'd bet he ate like a king for months before he was caught (and they probably still deny fault for the whole ordeal).
Have you ever been accused of being a pedophile? It has a habit of ruining lives (and occasionally resulting in death or serious personal injury to the accused). That's why slander is harmful and illegal.
Lord forgive icepick72, pray for all the Pygmies in Africa ...
Pssst; I think he meant using cable modem accounts to hide amongst the masses.
BTW - if you (the general 'you') don't check your downloads and automatically share them out again you are donating your bandwidth to their efforts. Clean up the P2P - stage and scan your downloads!
Since I don't live in a militaristic country I'm really not concerned.
Boy, and you wonder why people make fun of the American civil justice system.
Up here in Canada we have a saying after someone finds themselves injured; "Walk it off" sometimes followed by a low murmer of "pussy".
Oooh no! We just stepped on a group of nerds! Oooh no!
I suspect a lot of the people on this forum throwing the first around like a battle flag are a tad ignorant of the workings of the world and, alas, their own country.
There were times and there are countries where one would be thrown in prison, their property seized, and possibly face execution for so much as disagreeing with stated public policy. THAT is what the first amendment protects against. It does not absolve one from the natural consequences of their own actions.
I've seen so many bad examples I couldn't begin to respond to all of them! That a person can enter private property and say whatever they want without so much as being told to leave? That an employee can slander / libel their employer and company without fear of reprisal?
I can only imagine that most of the commentators have never owned property or held down a full-time job. If they are gainfully employed, I would encourage all of them to tell their co-workers that their bosses are incompetent, criminal, lazy, or anything else disparaging and see how long they remain employed. I also thoroughly reccomend they then contact the supreme court and explain their case.
No, absurd is the notion that the school is responsible to the government because said government funded a particular student.
If I give you tuition money does that mean I have a say in your school's policies? Are you listening to yourself?!?
Oh?
Had you considered that your laws differ from mine?
I've a shoe horn if you'd care to remove your foot. That looks mighty uncomfortable in there. ;)
Libel is not protected speech.
Sued? For simple battery? For what? To regain your pride, or to grab cash?
Boy, do you ever have no idea how jail works. There are certain understood rules of conduct. For example, if you call somebody a jackass you'd better expect a fist in your face. And no, you will not be "sued and jailed" for doing so.
Heaven forbid you should ever bleed on your white collar, son.
What so many people on this venerable forum tend to forget is that the OTHER 98% of Internet users probably don't even know what a firewall is, letalone how to configure same.
If you're using SOHO broadband service, you are not paying for an SLA. You are paying to use a service based upon their terms and conditions which can (and often do) change at any given time. Read your terms of use very carefully.
Therefore I would say the converse angle to your statement would be if you want unrestricted access to the full Internet you should contact a commercial ISP and pay the going rate. (Hint: $29.95/month will not buy a proper SLA)
As another person already pointed out, there are a multitude of dial-up capable routers on the market today. Most of them have been phased out in favour of broadband-only variants but some are still produced. Many models have both dial-up and broadband capabilities, some even go to the extent of using dial-up as a failover if the broadband link is down. Typically these routers come with atleast 4 ports making it easy to network your home. They'll also cost you pretty much the same as a decent 4/5 port 10/100 switch.
If, on the other hand, you don't want to "pay anything" for your home connection - that's fine. Just don't be alarmed when your computer is taken over and your 48kbit connection becomes a 1kbit connection. :)
Ask as many high school students as you can get your hands on what they think of current issues and whom they feel best suits their needs. Most of them respond that they don't know, don't care, or are inclined to vote the way their parents or teachers tell them to.
Most adults with a college education can barely decipher the language in most contracts. How can you expect someone with eight years less language instruction to do so? Kids also tend to be on the naive side. They haven't been burned before so they ignore the fine print and concentrate on the too-good-to-be-true offer. Columbia House, BMG et al. went through hell because of the sheer number of teenagers signing up for their services and only later finding that the financial obligations were significantly higher than expected. They defaulted, and the companies had no recourse because the contracts were signed by minors. Nowadays they're a lot more careful about who signs their contracts.
What about a new car purchase? If a car salesman sees a fresh young face coming, they'll wind up buried in a 60/96 finance term for 110% of MSRP plus several thousand dollars worth of interest charges! Is it worth putting people at risk of financial ruination before they leave their teens just to say "I told you so - you should have read more carefully"? The extra few years is intended to give them some time to cool their hormones and think about the bigger picture rather than how cool they'll look in their pimped new ride.
What about a will? Living will? Prenupital agreement? Marriage contract? Mortgage? How many 16 year olds do you know responsible and informed enough to enter fully into all of those agreements?
The first amendment covers the restriction of speech by the government. Consumption of fermented beverages may induce freer speech, but it's a stretch. ;)
You'll get no argument here. I still find it strange that at the age of 18 here in Ontario one is allowed to vote or sign up for the armed forces but not allowed to smoke, drink, or peruse sexual materials. At the age of 16 you're allowed to operate a motor vehicle but insurance rates make it prohibitive to do so (indicating the frequency of collisions and infractions by 16-18 year old drivers).
The problem being, how do you determine when an individual is 'ready' for responsibility? Individual testing for age of majority status would be tedious, costly, and entirely ineffective. Ages are set at an arbitrary number decided by the government of the day at a point they believe is reasonable. You say the age when people graduate high school - that's probably not a coincidence. One would suppose by that point in a person's life they've had exposure to enough education and general life experience that they should(!) be capable of making decisions while understanding the consequences. Whether that's always the case is suspect, but hey, it's an imperfect world we live in.
I know a lot of people who believed themselves to be ready to party, have sex, and nine months later the consequences became very real. Sure enough, they drop out of school, live on their parents' (or the tax payers') dime and eventually find themselves grossly unqualified to do anything that pays more than minimum wage. But at the age of 14 here in Ontario boys and girls are considered mature enough to have sex.
What we need is some form of mandatory training on personal responsibility in the modern world. But hey, that's just my opinion.
I had to quote those two passages because they're right on the money. I have a younger brother (large age gap) and find myself constantly explaining to him that he has no need for a video cell phone, four high-end video game systems, a snowboard, skateboard, brand-new mountain bike, MP3 player, etc.. just because his friends have them. Some friends are the product of broken homes and alternate between mother and father spoiling them. (Christ, what a stereotype)
If it kills me he'll grow up understanding morality and the concept of working for what you need and want (in that order!)
Do you really think it's better to let your child(ren) learn morality while picking up hookers and shooting cops than to have open, frank discussions with them? Violent video games aren't a neccesity of life, nor are they a teaching tool. They're entertainment.
Come on, we can't have it both ways. What about the grandmother who sued everybody and their brother after purchasing an 'M' rated game (GTA San Andreas, IIRC) for her young grandson?
One way or another a precedent has to be set. Does the state protect the children, or is it the parent/guardians' responsibility?
Let's face it, the world we live in today is different than the world of yesterday. Kids don't grow up as quickly because they're not put to work to support their families at 13 years of age. Therefore it was decided by society that there should be a reasonable(?) age limit set forth to determine when children become capable, decision making adults. This determines when you're allowed to vote, purchase and consume alcohol and tobacco products, sign your name to a binding contract, purchase / consume violent and/or pornographic materials, etc.
To play devil's advocate for a minute here; the problem with abolishing all 'nanny-state laws' is a partial reflection of our current state of society. We have children with one or no living/remaining parents, children of parents who work long hours to make ends meet, and this leaves kids by and large to manage their own lives. In one circle of thought, this leaves kids to watch violence and porn while smoking, getting drunk and high while cleaning their firearms. Moral degredation of those less fortunate and all that.
On the other side of the coin, it's also believed that if you don't allow children to make their own decisions and face consequences of same they'll never learn to be responsible. It's a tough sell, though, with cigarettes generalling taking years to take their toll on health, pedophiles and other sexual deviants coming out of the woodwork around every corner, violent crime spreading like untamed wildfire, ...
Politicians, stemming largely from the rallying cries of concerned citizens' groups, have long determined that we can't take care of ourselves so the long arm of the law must step in and do it for us. Whether you agree with it or not, it seems to be a cost of our present level of society. Let's face it; technology advances faster than even the most educated lawmakers can comprehend and brings with it new methods of delivering sin that they feel must be dealt with. Naturally, if you're not satisfied with how your congresscritter is representing you send them some information and clarify it for them. There's always some sense of naive hope that it'll make a difference. ;)
That you made an arbitrary statement in which you would impose your morality on others.