Sales of IP addresses have been common place since about the late 90's or so. I had a class C block for 15 years and had offers many times, but I turned my block into ARIN about 1.5 years ago (yes, it was assigned to me for personal use before the Internet was commercialized, they used to do this). Microsoft has done nothing different from what many other companies have been doing for years. I bet Google has bought IP addresses from companies and individuals. This story only exists because it's "Microsoft".
I don't remember it ever being $100, you probably paid for 2 years. When I got my first domain name in the early 90's before the commercialization of the Internet domain name registration was free. I had my name for a couple of years at no charge (also had a class C subnet assigned to me, which I turned back in last year to ARIN). After the InterNIC transferred from SRI over to Network Solutions (think it was 1994 or so), and the Internet became commercial, the government decided to charge $50 for domain names in which $35 went to Network Solutions and $15 to the U.S. Government. After I think 2 years or so it was determined that the $15 could be considered an illegal tax, so that was revoked leaving the standard $35 Network Solutions fee.
I also agree that the downfall of the domain name registration was when it was passed to ICANN. People may have complained about the $35, but we didn't have squatters and people hijacking names just because someone forgot to "pay the bill".
The United States is approx 100 times larger in size than Korea and over 6 times the population. This is one of the reasons why smaller countries in Asia and Europe tend to have higher speeds and can roll out a new infrastructure to their entire country faster. We have areas of our country too that have very high speeds, however compared to the rest of the U.S. it's just a drop in a bucket, even if the number of people are the size of a small country elsewhere. Other parts of our country have no Internet access, cell service, etc.
Increase your country by 100 times its size and let me know how your WiMax is working then.
Since last year when a console is replaced Microsoft updates the DRM to the new serial number so that games still work without being connected to Xbox Live. I have a few friends that have received new Xbox 360 consoles with new serial numbers and their content is fine. I have no doubt that some people may have had issues if someone did not properly update the DRM to the new serial number, then they would be talking to many people from customer service to get it fixed.
I have had one launch day Xbox 360 fail back around June or July, and I did have the problem with content not working. Support did decide to reimburse all my points, however I got tired of the support person I was talking to (first person was good, this one was not) and asked to talk to someone higher up. This person knew exactly was he was doing and said it should have worked, and hen asked for the serial number and one other number (it's on the blade section where the serial number is). The next day when I connected back into Xbox Live my console was updated so all my content now worked. I was happy and did not need to points anymore, however they still gave me the points anyways "for my trouble". One of my friends console also failed a week before mine and another about a month later and they both received new consoles and all their content works for anyone on the system without being connect to Xbox Live. Another failed about 2 months ago and his is fine too.
If someone does have an Xbox 360 that was replaced and it does not allow access to the content they purchase without being online, you need to get a DRM transfer to the new console. If support does not know what you are talking about you need to talk to someone higher up then that person. The people that answer the phone are first tier and typically only handle the simple and routine problems. This is that way that every large corporation work and is certainly not unique to Microsoft.
Is this the bug in moving mail to different servers using IMAP?
Several years back I ran across this bug with Mozilla and with Thunderbird when it came out. It was pretty severe when moving mail between different IMAP servers. Mozilla/Thunderbird would display an error about the IMAP server, and pretty much everyone would say "It's your IMAP server, you should try 'insert some other server here' instead", which is the typical answser people always give to problems.I finally tracked it down to Mozilla/Thunderbird is corrupting the email message and duplicating some of the headers. It's been probably 2 or 3 years now, so I don't remember which headers it is, but if you get the error shutdown the program , then open the mail file in a text edit and look for the message that is giving you a problem and you will see I think a couple of the mozilla headers that it tacks on duplicated. Just remove any duplicates and the messages will then copy just fine.
I reported this bug a while back and did post it on some forum, and the usual answer was "fill out a bugzilla", so I went there and was introduced to a complex form that didn't make much sense. I said again "this is the bug, the bug reporting process is not straightforward (if I have to spend anytime at all to figure it out then I'm not going to bother), you can open a bugzilla report", I was greeted to the usual insults.
There was some other bugs with the mailer that I found Netscape 7 also had since it is also based on Mozilla. Netscape has always had a very simple "what's the problem?" web page that requires no knowledge whatsoever to use. I have submitted some problems there in the past (not the IMAP one though) and they were fixed. When I try to inform a Mozilla developer I'm treated with insults or a "fix it yourself" attitude, hence the reason I stopped submitting bug reports, I got tired of being insulted by people.
Actually many of the photos are exactly the same. I have been looking at the maps for the Detroit area and if you look closely you will see that both MSN and Google have the same photographs. Look at the cars driving down the road or in parking places and you will see at least with and the northern suburbs that I checked they are identical.
What people are probably going to find is that in some cases Google will have updated photos, in other cases Microsoft will have them, and in others they will be the same.
You can't zoom in very good with Googles, but many of the photos look clearer. With Microsofts you can zoom in a whole lot more, which I really like, and they don't have a watermark all over the photos like Google has. It also seems that Microsoft has a lot more photos. With Google when you leave a heavily populated metro area there typically aren't photos (or very good ones) available. With Microsoft they have a pretty good photo for every place I have checked, even the most rural area that I sometimes visit. It's good to have both sites available....
I'm 38 years old and flying mowers were around at shows when I was a little kid. It's probably accurate to say that they've been around at least as long or longer than I've been alive.
And if anyone remembers back I believe sometime around the mid 90's Dvorak wrote an article in Infoworld about his trip to Comdex in Japan and all the great products he saw there. The problem is that Comdex show never existed since it was cancelled at the last minute.
Many people in the computer industry distrust John Dvorak ever since this incident. He had also been caught writing product reviews on products that he has never used. The articles were based only what he read from other articles, manuals and press releases.
This guy lost credibility years ago and is nothing buy a bullshit artist...
Why does it always have to end up with a Microsoft bashing.
For those that do remember, it was also like this:
1) Mosaic was originally free software (written in the NCSA building at the Univ of Illinois by a group of students)
2) Marc Andreesen took the code he helped write, formed his own company with Jim Clark and others, and called it Mosaic Communications (domain name of mcom.com)
3) MCOM created and released beta versions of a commercial browser called Mosaic II which appeared to be a modified Mosaic web browser. It even had a spinning "M" throbber for Mosaic II (anyone else remember these.9x releases?).
4) The university went after Mosaic Communications for essentially taking the source code that was considered property of the school.
5) Mosaic Communications renamed their company to Netscape Communications and rewrote the browser to remove the Mosaic code.
Of course Mosaic Communications denied that they used the Mosaic code, however every developer with a debugger proved otherwise.
When Microsoft decided to get into the game they did need to act quickly, so they followed the legal path by licensing the Mosaic code from Spyglass. Whether Spyglass got screwed or not, well I don't know. Netscape though took the code, said "look what we wrote", and got caught. They did the same thing with many of their other products too by taking something that was open, slapping a web front-end on it, then saying "Look what we wrote". Their company was no different than any other company and if they could rule the world and twist it around how they felt it should be, they certainly wouldn't have hesitated to do so, and they tried many times with their browser and other products. Or as we refer to it, they were very well known for "Proprietary Open Standards".
Actually SecurID comes in both hardware and software tokens. The first is what most people are familiar with (credit card shaped or keychain version). The other is also known as a SoftID, which is software that is installed on a PC or on a PDA (Palm and Pocket PC). The hardware token is tough to beat, however the softid ones are easier. Besides usually lasting longer than 1 minute, there's been issues with people being able to advance the clock into the future to acquire future passcodes. If someone stole a PDA with a SecurID softid program installed, and they had the persons PIN (probably stored in a note on the PDA along with other passwords), then they could get in using SecurID. This is the reason why hardware tokens is the preferred method. Most large corporations I've seen do use both (probably not all corporations though), however the majority are hardware and software tokens are usually only issued out to specific people or applications.
I used to have that feature here (I'm in Michigan where we have SBC, formerly Ameritech), but I had to drop it because over time it no longer worked.
When they first offered "Privacy Manager" I jumped on it right away and stopped getting telemarketer calls just like they advertised. But after a while suddenly calls started pouring in. At first these telemarketers that used to have no caller ID information started to actually show up on the caller ID, but not with any name that would indicate a telemarketer. Some calls would show someones name, which makes you think it's a residential line, while others would be a business with a name that doesn't sound like something that you would think of as a telemarketer. Most were peoples names though.
Finally a new scam started to show up when the telemarketers would call, but this time the caller ID would not show any information (mine says "unavailable"), which is exactly what Privacy Manager should be blocking. One day just happen to be looking almost right at my caller ID display when a call came in and I saw what was going on. Caller ID basically sends a packet data burst I believe between the first and second rings (sometimes if you pick up the phone quickly you're hear this burst). What happened is that the caller ID display would briefly display a real name and number, but then suddenly get blanked out and be listed as "unavailable". I'm not sure how this one is being done (want a bet it's a feature the phone company offers to telemarketers) since I don't have any contacts anymore at the phone company. I found that I wasn't the only one to have had problems with telemarketers getting through Privacy Manager since a few of my friends started getting calls too.
Remember though that the phone company is not out to help just the consumer, but also the businesses that want to call you. Caller ID was introduced so you could see who is calling you (don't have to answer the phone on telemarketers), but then they offer a service to telemarketers and bill collectors to not have their numbers show up (where I work our offices show up, but our bill collectors will not). Then they offer a way to block calls with no caller ID information, and apparently they offer a way for telemarketers to get around that feature. In the meantime they keep charging everyone for each feature and making more money. I learned a while ago to be very suspicious about any features that the phone companies offer to "help you out" since they will offer something similar to someone else to "help them out" to get around the feature that you are paying for.
Actually nearly all VPN servers now have the ability to tunnel IPSEC inside of TCP or UDP packets to get around NAT devices. There is no defined port for this too, an administrator can pick pretty much any port. Most products still use non-tunneled IKE for the initial exchange (source 500/udp, dest 500/udp), and this is what many ISP's have been blocking. If you can't do the key exchange then you can bring up the tunnel. Some VPN products are starting to add the ability to encapsulate the IKE traffic inside of TCP or UDP to get through either ISP blocks or NAT devices that don't allow source low ports.
HTTP SSL tunnels are slowly starting to get popular too. I messed with it years ago, but it wasn't very good back then. Now with everybody wanting to write applications to tunnel through HTTP, the HTTP SSL VPN software has gotten better. If people start passing VPN's over HTTPS packets the ISP won't be able to decrypt it to analyse what the packet is (IPSEC can be encapsulated in TCP or UDP, but the packet can still be inspected to see if it is IPSEC).
ISP's blocking VPN's will be tough in the future, and many ISP's that have tried have failed and opened them back up and only enforce it with a written policy. While telecommuters may technically violate the AUP, many people only want to jump onto the company network briefly to check their mail, calendar, or grab a few documents to work on, and I see no reason why ISP's get so bent out of shape on that.
Also speaking as a ham radio operator for 24 years, I've been upset at how badly it's progressed lately. I used to try and stay on the cutting edge and enjoyed building and designing things, but now I started shifting back to the HF bands and treating ham radio as more nostalgic.
I do know some hams that also use 802.11 and claim it's "amateur radio", but it's not. It's been posted here that it's a shared band with Part 97 and 15 devices, and it is. Part 15 is supposed to accept all interference, but the interference it accepts needs to be legal interference too (such as a Part 97 accepted device). Ham bands have restrictions too in their transmissions, and Part 15 devices are typically poorly made devices that are designed to pass only at very low power levels. If a local ham went to Best Buy, bought a Linksys WAP and bumped up the power, and then if the RF slattered all over the band, then they would be in violation.
Part 15 devices are made pretty cheaply, Part 97 is made better, and commercial gear is made even better yet. You can take commercial gear and modify it for use on the ham bands, but you can't take ham gear and use it for commercial use. Part 15 devices just aren't suitable for ham radio use. What many hams are doing is basically hooking up Part 15 devices and sending out packets (some use ICMP packets) with a string that contains their callsign. Of course it's also been mentioned that on the ham bands it's illegal to obscure the meaning of the conversation and to use it for commercial purposes. This can exclude the use of encryption, so if 802.11 nodes are open then there probably isn't a lot they can do to stop rouge users from using the network other than filtering.
Now if the equipment is built from scratch in the 2.4 GHz band and FCC certified for Part 97 use, then it would be perfectly legal and there isn't much a Part 15 device user could do. I don't have a problem with this at all and I sure wish vendors such as Kenwood, Icom, Yaesu, etc. would release products that are approved for the ham bands.
Summary: I highly discourage the use of Part 15 devices in the ham bands and claiming that it's "Amateur Radio" just because they slap a callsign on it, but I do encourage hams or vendors to build radios that are legal for the ham bands. If interference starts occuring and Part 15 devices aren't protected, then it's time for companies to start moving into other bands or protocols that reduce interference. Hams have shared bands with other services for years and we find ways to share the same frequencies with other primary users and not be bothered by them.
Actually VRRP is not about two devices acting as a single unit (that's clustering), VRRP is hot-standby. The virtual IP gives an illusion of a single device, but the devices are independent of each other and really have nothing in common
I've also setup many Nokia IPSO systems and always felt good they have been ahead of most people by natively supporting VRRP. Monitored circuit is also pretty much a requirement too. The problem with hot-standby systems though is that there is always one system sitting idle. At first it's fine, but after a few years you think "Why do I have two devices (router, firewall, etc.) and only one is ever active?". And no, running something like OSPF or a load balancer to rotate between multiple VRRP addresses just adds nothing but uncessary complexity to a design. Nokia is now starting to push their clustering in IPSO 3.6 as a replacement for VRRP. For those of us who have used Nokia IPSO systems, VRRP is certainly nothing new, but by the time the rest of the industry finally picks up on it the we'll probably have dropped it in favor of clustering.
What amazes me most though is how people manage to write 560 page books on a topic that can be discussed in a few pages.
Well if you look at what many of the Netscape folks did you might consider them 'selling out'. Many of the developers refused to work for AOL, but they approved the buyout (merger:) since they were making money off of it, then bailed ship. AOL offered some packages to stay and try it out, so they took it only because of the money, and then they left as soon as they were allowed to.
I don't know if Alan is in a situation to make any money off of the deal, but if he is then he'd be smart to stick around, get the money, then quit just like other people usually do when buyouts occur. If AOL came to me with a wheel barrel of cash to buy a company, I'd say "where do I sign?", then I'd leave as soon as I could.
Is that considered 'selling out'?
I certainly wish him well though and respect any decision he makes.
Naw, it still doesn't beat US Patent Number 5443036, "Method of exercising a cat".
Of course I don't mind Patent 5965809, "Method of bra size determination by direct measurement of the breast". I'm sure a lot of guys are trying to infringe on this one:)
If MS released Office for Linux then I can guarantee that users wouldn't buy it anyways. Sure you might have a few people pay for it, but most will not.
Look at Netscape/iPlanet (not the web browser). There was so much customer demand for Linux versions of their software, such as Enterprise server, Messenging, Directory, etc. that Netscape decided to start porting their servers to Linux. Suddenly the Linux versions became their most popular downloads. Later when an audit was done it was found that everyone was downloading the Linux versions for free, but nobody was paying for it. It was all the Linux users at home downloading it for their personal use or to run it for free and not corporations trying to purchase it (lab environments excluded). Hence the reason why Netscape/iPlanet have been dropping the Linux versions of their products now. There is demand for the product, but there is noone that will pay for it.
Linux users typically want something for free and the source code to go with it. How many times does a commercial company release a product for Linux only for the Linux community to keep bothering the company saying "where's the source code???". If MS released a Linux version then it would appear on every warez site with cracks to break any protection. The same thing may exist for Windows or Mac versions, however the percentage of people who use it illegally is very small. Since Linux isn't as wide spread and it's typically techies that run it, and these are the ones that typically also pirate software (how many Slashdot posts are in here justifying cracking, reverse engineering, stealing intellectual property, etc... way, way too many...), these folks will not pay for it regardless of the price, hence there will be a much higher percentage of pirating in the Linux community than Windows/Mac.
I can't see MS releasing a version of Office for Linux anytime soon. Maybe if it had the same or higher office/home desktop market as Apple did they might, but for now I would be shocked if they did.
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Sales of IP addresses have been common place since about the late 90's or so. I had a class C block for 15 years and had offers many times, but I turned my block into ARIN about 1.5 years ago (yes, it was assigned to me for personal use before the Internet was commercialized, they used to do this). Microsoft has done nothing different from what many other companies have been doing for years. I bet Google has bought IP addresses from companies and individuals. This story only exists because it's "Microsoft".
I don't remember it ever being $100, you probably paid for 2 years. When I got my first domain name in the early 90's before the commercialization of the Internet domain name registration was free. I had my name for a couple of years at no charge (also had a class C subnet assigned to me, which I turned back in last year to ARIN). After the InterNIC transferred from SRI over to Network Solutions (think it was 1994 or so), and the Internet became commercial, the government decided to charge $50 for domain names in which $35 went to Network Solutions and $15 to the U.S. Government. After I think 2 years or so it was determined that the $15 could be considered an illegal tax, so that was revoked leaving the standard $35 Network Solutions fee.
I also agree that the downfall of the domain name registration was when it was passed to ICANN. People may have complained about the $35, but we didn't have squatters and people hijacking names just because someone forgot to "pay the bill".
The United States is approx 100 times larger in size than Korea and over 6 times the population. This is one of the reasons why smaller countries in Asia and Europe tend to have higher speeds and can roll out a new infrastructure to their entire country faster. We have areas of our country too that have very high speeds, however compared to the rest of the U.S. it's just a drop in a bucket, even if the number of people are the size of a small country elsewhere. Other parts of our country have no Internet access, cell service, etc. Increase your country by 100 times its size and let me know how your WiMax is working then.
Since last year when a console is replaced Microsoft updates the DRM to the new serial number so that games still work without being connected to Xbox Live. I have a few friends that have received new Xbox 360 consoles with new serial numbers and their content is fine. I have no doubt that some people may have had issues if someone did not properly update the DRM to the new serial number, then they would be talking to many people from customer service to get it fixed.
I have had one launch day Xbox 360 fail back around June or July, and I did have the problem with content not working. Support did decide to reimburse all my points, however I got tired of the support person I was talking to (first person was good, this one was not) and asked to talk to someone higher up. This person knew exactly was he was doing and said it should have worked, and hen asked for the serial number and one other number (it's on the blade section where the serial number is). The next day when I connected back into Xbox Live my console was updated so all my content now worked. I was happy and did not need to points anymore, however they still gave me the points anyways "for my trouble". One of my friends console also failed a week before mine and another about a month later and they both received new consoles and all their content works for anyone on the system without being connect to Xbox Live. Another failed about 2 months ago and his is fine too.
If someone does have an Xbox 360 that was replaced and it does not allow access to the content they purchase without being online, you need to get a DRM transfer to the new console. If support does not know what you are talking about you need to talk to someone higher up then that person. The people that answer the phone are first tier and typically only handle the simple and routine problems. This is that way that every large corporation work and is certainly not unique to Microsoft.
Atari didn't design or create the Lynx, Epyx did. The handheld was already created, however the company was going bankrupt and sold it to Atari.
Is this the bug in moving mail to different servers using IMAP?
Several years back I ran across this bug with Mozilla and with Thunderbird when it came out. It was pretty severe when moving mail between different IMAP servers. Mozilla/Thunderbird would display an error about the IMAP server, and pretty much everyone would say "It's your IMAP server, you should try 'insert some other server here' instead", which is the typical answser people always give to problems.I finally tracked it down to Mozilla/Thunderbird is corrupting the email message and duplicating some of the headers. It's been probably 2 or 3 years now, so I don't remember which headers it is, but if you get the error shutdown the program , then open the mail file in a text edit and look for the message that is giving you a problem and you will see I think a couple of the mozilla headers that it tacks on duplicated. Just remove any duplicates and the messages will then copy just fine.
I reported this bug a while back and did post it on some forum, and the usual answer was "fill out a bugzilla", so I went there and was introduced to a complex form that didn't make much sense. I said again "this is the bug, the bug reporting process is not straightforward (if I have to spend anytime at all to figure it out then I'm not going to bother), you can open a bugzilla report", I was greeted to the usual insults.
There was some other bugs with the mailer that I found Netscape 7 also had since it is also based on Mozilla. Netscape has always had a very simple "what's the problem?" web page that requires no knowledge whatsoever to use. I have submitted some problems there in the past (not the IMAP one though) and they were fixed. When I try to inform a Mozilla developer I'm treated with insults or a "fix it yourself" attitude, hence the reason I stopped submitting bug reports, I got tired of being insulted by people.
Actually many of the photos are exactly the same. I have been looking at the maps for the Detroit area and if you look closely you will see that both MSN and Google have the same photographs. Look at the cars driving down the road or in parking places and you will see at least with and the northern suburbs that I checked they are identical.
What people are probably going to find is that in some cases Google will have updated photos, in other cases Microsoft will have them, and in others they will be the same.
You can't zoom in very good with Googles, but many of the photos look clearer. With Microsofts you can zoom in a whole lot more, which I really like, and they don't have a watermark all over the photos like Google has. It also seems that Microsoft has a lot more photos. With Google when you leave a heavily populated metro area there typically aren't photos (or very good ones) available. With Microsoft they have a pretty good photo for every place I have checked, even the most rural area that I sometimes visit. It's good to have both sites available....
I'm 38 years old and flying mowers were around at shows when I was a little kid. It's probably accurate to say that they've been around at least as long or longer than I've been alive.
And if anyone remembers back I believe sometime around the mid 90's Dvorak wrote an article in Infoworld about his trip to Comdex in Japan and all the great products he saw there. The problem is that Comdex show never existed since it was cancelled at the last minute.
Many people in the computer industry distrust John Dvorak ever since this incident. He had also been caught writing product reviews on products that he has never used. The articles were based only what he read from other articles, manuals and press releases.
This guy lost credibility years ago and is nothing buy a bullshit artist...
For those that do remember, it was also like this:
1) Mosaic was originally free software (written in the NCSA building at the Univ of Illinois by a group of students) .9x releases?).
2) Marc Andreesen took the code he helped write, formed his own company with Jim Clark and others, and called it Mosaic Communications (domain name of mcom.com)
3) MCOM created and released beta versions of a commercial browser called Mosaic II which appeared to be a modified Mosaic web browser. It even had a spinning "M" throbber for Mosaic II (anyone else remember these
4) The university went after Mosaic Communications for essentially taking the source code that was considered property of the school.
5) Mosaic Communications renamed their company to Netscape Communications and rewrote the browser to remove the Mosaic code.
Of course Mosaic Communications denied that they used the Mosaic code, however every developer with a debugger proved otherwise.
When Microsoft decided to get into the game they did need to act quickly, so they followed the legal path by licensing the Mosaic code from Spyglass. Whether Spyglass got screwed or not, well I don't know. Netscape though took the code, said "look what we wrote", and got caught. They did the same thing with many of their other products too by taking something that was open, slapping a web front-end on it, then saying "Look what we wrote". Their company was no different than any other company and if they could rule the world and twist it around how they felt it should be, they certainly wouldn't have hesitated to do so, and they tried many times with their browser and other products. Or as we refer to it, they were very well known for "Proprietary Open Standards".
Actually SecurID comes in both hardware and software tokens. The first is what most people are familiar with (credit card shaped or keychain version). The other is also known as a SoftID, which is software that is installed on a PC or on a PDA (Palm and Pocket PC). The hardware token is tough to beat, however the softid ones are easier. Besides usually lasting longer than 1 minute, there's been issues with people being able to advance the clock into the future to acquire future passcodes. If someone stole a PDA with a SecurID softid program installed, and they had the persons PIN (probably stored in a note on the PDA along with other passwords), then they could get in using SecurID. This is the reason why hardware tokens is the preferred method. Most large corporations I've seen do use both (probably not all corporations though), however the majority are hardware and software tokens are usually only issued out to specific people or applications.
When they first offered "Privacy Manager" I jumped on it right away and stopped getting telemarketer calls just like they advertised. But after a while suddenly calls started pouring in. At first these telemarketers that used to have no caller ID information started to actually show up on the caller ID, but not with any name that would indicate a telemarketer. Some calls would show someones name, which makes you think it's a residential line, while others would be a business with a name that doesn't sound like something that you would think of as a telemarketer. Most were peoples names though.
Finally a new scam started to show up when the telemarketers would call, but this time the caller ID would not show any information (mine says "unavailable"), which is exactly what Privacy Manager should be blocking. One day just happen to be looking almost right at my caller ID display when a call came in and I saw what was going on. Caller ID basically sends a packet data burst I believe between the first and second rings (sometimes if you pick up the phone quickly you're hear this burst). What happened is that the caller ID display would briefly display a real name and number, but then suddenly get blanked out and be listed as "unavailable". I'm not sure how this one is being done (want a bet it's a feature the phone company offers to telemarketers) since I don't have any contacts anymore at the phone company. I found that I wasn't the only one to have had problems with telemarketers getting through Privacy Manager since a few of my friends started getting calls too.
Remember though that the phone company is not out to help just the consumer, but also the businesses that want to call you. Caller ID was introduced so you could see who is calling you (don't have to answer the phone on telemarketers), but then they offer a service to telemarketers and bill collectors to not have their numbers show up (where I work our offices show up, but our bill collectors will not). Then they offer a way to block calls with no caller ID information, and apparently they offer a way for telemarketers to get around that feature. In the meantime they keep charging everyone for each feature and making more money. I learned a while ago to be very suspicious about any features that the phone companies offer to "help you out" since they will offer something similar to someone else to "help them out" to get around the feature that you are paying for.
HTTP SSL tunnels are slowly starting to get popular too. I messed with it years ago, but it wasn't very good back then. Now with everybody wanting to write applications to tunnel through HTTP, the HTTP SSL VPN software has gotten better. If people start passing VPN's over HTTPS packets the ISP won't be able to decrypt it to analyse what the packet is (IPSEC can be encapsulated in TCP or UDP, but the packet can still be inspected to see if it is IPSEC).
ISP's blocking VPN's will be tough in the future, and many ISP's that have tried have failed and opened them back up and only enforce it with a written policy. While telecommuters may technically violate the AUP, many people only want to jump onto the company network briefly to check their mail, calendar, or grab a few documents to work on, and I see no reason why ISP's get so bent out of shape on that.
I do know some hams that also use 802.11 and claim it's "amateur radio", but it's not. It's been posted here that it's a shared band with Part 97 and 15 devices, and it is. Part 15 is supposed to accept all interference, but the interference it accepts needs to be legal interference too (such as a Part 97 accepted device). Ham bands have restrictions too in their transmissions, and Part 15 devices are typically poorly made devices that are designed to pass only at very low power levels. If a local ham went to Best Buy, bought a Linksys WAP and bumped up the power, and then if the RF slattered all over the band, then they would be in violation.
Part 15 devices are made pretty cheaply, Part 97 is made better, and commercial gear is made even better yet. You can take commercial gear and modify it for use on the ham bands, but you can't take ham gear and use it for commercial use. Part 15 devices just aren't suitable for ham radio use. What many hams are doing is basically hooking up Part 15 devices and sending out packets (some use ICMP packets) with a string that contains their callsign. Of course it's also been mentioned that on the ham bands it's illegal to obscure the meaning of the conversation and to use it for commercial purposes. This can exclude the use of encryption, so if 802.11 nodes are open then there probably isn't a lot they can do to stop rouge users from using the network other than filtering.
Now if the equipment is built from scratch in the 2.4 GHz band and FCC certified for Part 97 use, then it would be perfectly legal and there isn't much a Part 15 device user could do. I don't have a problem with this at all and I sure wish vendors such as Kenwood, Icom, Yaesu, etc. would release products that are approved for the ham bands.
Summary: I highly discourage the use of Part 15 devices in the ham bands and claiming that it's "Amateur Radio" just because they slap a callsign on it, but I do encourage hams or vendors to build radios that are legal for the ham bands. If interference starts occuring and Part 15 devices aren't protected, then it's time for companies to start moving into other bands or protocols that reduce interference. Hams have shared bands with other services for years and we find ways to share the same frequencies with other primary users and not be bothered by them.
K8RCA
I've also setup many Nokia IPSO systems and always felt good they have been ahead of most people by natively supporting VRRP. Monitored circuit is also pretty much a requirement too. The problem with hot-standby systems though is that there is always one system sitting idle. At first it's fine, but after a few years you think "Why do I have two devices (router, firewall, etc.) and only one is ever active?". And no, running something like OSPF or a load balancer to rotate between multiple VRRP addresses just adds nothing but uncessary complexity to a design. Nokia is now starting to push their clustering in IPSO 3.6 as a replacement for VRRP. For those of us who have used Nokia IPSO systems, VRRP is certainly nothing new, but by the time the rest of the industry finally picks up on it the we'll probably have dropped it in favor of clustering.
What amazes me most though is how people manage to write 560 page books on a topic that can be discussed in a few pages.
Well if you look at what many of the Netscape folks did you might consider them 'selling out'. Many of the developers refused to work for AOL, but they approved the buyout (merger
I don't know if Alan is in a situation to make any money off of the deal, but if he is then he'd be smart to stick around, get the money, then quit just like other people usually do when buyouts occur. If AOL came to me with a wheel barrel of cash to buy a company, I'd say "where do I sign?", then I'd leave as soon as I could.
Is that considered 'selling out'?
I certainly wish him well though and respect any decision he makes.
Of course I don't mind Patent 5965809, "Method of bra size determination by direct measurement of the breast". I'm sure a lot of guys are trying to infringe on this one :)
If MS released Office for Linux then I can guarantee that users wouldn't buy it anyways. Sure you might have a few people pay for it, but most will not. Look at Netscape/iPlanet (not the web browser). There was so much customer demand for Linux versions of their software, such as Enterprise server, Messenging, Directory, etc. that Netscape decided to start porting their servers to Linux. Suddenly the Linux versions became their most popular downloads. Later when an audit was done it was found that everyone was downloading the Linux versions for free, but nobody was paying for it. It was all the Linux users at home downloading it for their personal use or to run it for free and not corporations trying to purchase it (lab environments excluded). Hence the reason why Netscape/iPlanet have been dropping the Linux versions of their products now. There is demand for the product, but there is noone that will pay for it. Linux users typically want something for free and the source code to go with it. How many times does a commercial company release a product for Linux only for the Linux community to keep bothering the company saying "where's the source code???". If MS released a Linux version then it would appear on every warez site with cracks to break any protection. The same thing may exist for Windows or Mac versions, however the percentage of people who use it illegally is very small. Since Linux isn't as wide spread and it's typically techies that run it, and these are the ones that typically also pirate software (how many Slashdot posts are in here justifying cracking, reverse engineering, stealing intellectual property, etc... way, way too many...), these folks will not pay for it regardless of the price, hence there will be a much higher percentage of pirating in the Linux community than Windows/Mac. I can't see MS releasing a version of Office for Linux anytime soon. Maybe if it had the same or higher office/home desktop market as Apple did they might, but for now I would be shocked if they did.