You're not the only one here. I'm going through similar pains with Cogeco in Ontario, Canada. If it wasn't for lack of alternatives, I'd be on something else already. For now, I suck it up and limp along, but as soon as something else comes up (and it doesn't have to be better, just suiting my needs/wants more), I'll bail.
even if a few major ISPs hold out, they'll eventually go under if all the rest of the ISPs are back to making money with their restrictions and filtering efforts
I don't think those few ISPs will go under, because I don't think the other ISPs will be making much money with restrictions and filtering efforts. Then again, it all depends on skillful marketing.
The way I see it, the fewer of those unlimited ISPs are around, the more popular they will become, even if they impose otherwise unimaginable restrictions such as p2p filtering. My current ISP limits me to 10GB combined in/out / month, and charges per every gig over limit. If I could for example opt for a plan that keeps my rate the same, removes the cap but blocks all p2p ports like kaaza (sp), gnutella etc., I'd switch. Even though I don't come close to using up the bandwidth I'm given right now (at least I don't think so). It's the principle of things. I don't need to have access to p2p networks. I'm willing to give up that freedom voluntarily (as opposed to a host of others, which would be OT here). You can bet your internet that the minute my ISP raises prices and/or imposes additional port blocks to those they have in place already (25, 443) without offering me an alternative, I'll start looking for alternatives. Very quickly. And if I don't find any, I'll suck it up and go back to dial-up. Let them drive away their customers. Let them issue earning report warnings to their stockholders. Let them burn a bit. I'll come back when they change their ways.
What about me, I work from home [...] I'd prefer not to hear the... it's a business expense that you must pay arguement. I have built my business on the model I am in right now at the prices I pay right now.
I'm afraid that if the days of metered bandwidth come, you will not have much of a choice but to re-engineer your business. Any business, in order to be successful, must not cost you money to run. At minimum, it should be paying for itself after the initial period of getting it started. That's not wishful thinking, that's business, plain and simple. If your business ends up costing you more money to run, you'll have to find ways of recouping that -- whether it's by raising prices, changing ISPs, opting for a co-location service or other. Or by changing your business. How about becoming an ISP and finding out first-person about what an ISP must go through to provide a service at a certain price.
should TV's cost more because they use up a significant portion of the electricity
Substitute the word "TV's" with "air conditioning units", "stoves", "electric washers/dryers" or other high-power-draw devices. Anything change? How about coming up with more efficient devices?
or...
How about coming up with a more efficient way to use the resources you are given? Electricity, bandwidth, water...
It doesn't take many stupid users to hog a pair of T1 lines.
It doesn't take p2p, either. All you need is someone trying to download the latest RH9 ISOs over the office T1 while another someone is streaming music from shoutcast/icecast/"insert other-streaming-service here". People need to learn that business and pleasure don't mix, and that they will be hunted down like animals when they abuse the privilege of using business resources, be it internet or otherwise. Especially if the admins know those people to have high-speed internet connectivity at their homes.
"all-you-can-eat" days of the buffet are almost over
Eh, I wouldn't go that far... if anything, I'd expect the "all-you-can-eat" rates go up, but I don't see telcos and ISPs abandoning the idea any time soon.
Additionally, if metered rates do in fact go into effect, we may be on an accelerated path to widespread deployment of wi-fi clusters in more populated areas as a means of circumnavigating the limitations.
Personally, I'm optimistic. History shows humans to be fairly resistant to various roadblocks being thrown at us, so should your prognosis come true, I'm sure we the geeks will find a way around it somehow, wi-fi or otherwise.
I'm sure that anything the gov't can do, people can do, too -- after all, who works at the gov't? What one can invent, so can another. I don't know how long prior to taking that class that guy acquired that particular knowledge, but I'm sure it wasn't widely available at the time, and even when I heard of it from him, it wasn't public domain data. How long has your information been available to the public, with diagrams, step-by-step instructions etc.? How much does all this equipment cost? Even a competent technician will need money to get all this working -- I'm thinking several $k and a few weeks of work?
Point is (and I kinda forgot to make it originally), there is a whole lot of interesting (and potentially viewed as dangerous) topics available that could become subject of an academic course, and some institutions of higher learning will let them be taught provided there is enough interest and that one provides a sound "business plan". Such was the case with the course I took at Penn. Now, I've also taken a few other classes there, including designing and building computer chips, assembly, and unix-based operating systems. Does that make me a terrorist, according to the underlaying tone of the thread here? If so, then it's pretty ironic that not only was I taught all these things at a well-known (some would even say prestigious) U.S. university, they even gave me a degree.
So boo-hoo, cyber-terrorists from Canada and such. Teaching of "dangerous" topics happens on U.S. soil, too.
[...] there are probably many schools in the US doing this [...]
There are also some schools out there that will let you propose a course, provided that: - the subject is educational - you find more than the minimum required number of students - you find someone to teach the class
[...] I took an Information Warfare class [...]
Funny you mention that, so did I -- at the aforementioned school. Officially it was called "Computer Ethics", but we've learned a lot about breaking into computers as well. There was even this one guy there, whose name eludes me for security purposes, who looked to be in his 30s at the time and who claimed to have worked for the gov't and was getting his masters at the time, IIRC. At the end of the semester the class got divvied up into groups for a project/presentation, so I made sure I was in the same group as he was. I've learned of a few neat tricks that the gov't was able to do with their technology, though no specifics (for obvious, classified reasons), like being able to pick up EM radiation from a monitor cable and reconstruct the video -- from a few hundred feet away.
But getting back on-topic... if there's a will, there's a way. If students are interested in learning something the school doesn't offer, they should try rallying up support from both their peers as well as the professors to have courses offered.
I have no doubts that a lot of the work IBM's put into Linux has benefited the community in one way or another. I find it kind of ironic, then, that SCO would continue for two months to sell a product they claim to infringes on their IP rights, and profit (as much or as little as they have in that time) from someone else's work. Something's just wrong with that picture.
Well, while I don't use a US provider for my cell phone, I *can* comment on my Canadian one, Rogers, For around $7/mo I get the so-called Messaging Pack, which includes voicemail plus unlimited incoming SMS messages. Every SMS I send out costs me 10 cents. This means that while my plan wouldn't be great for a lot of back-and-forth SMS traffic, it wouldn't cost an arm and a leg to use that way, either.
Now why in the world would someone use a plan with unlimited incoming / restricted outgoing SMS? How about a great replacement for a sysadmin's pager, especially one who gets a lot of status reports and needs to also be available via phone / needs to get in contact with people via phone.
A very good, functional extend-a-leash, if you will.
If you make it only possible to use your products on Windows, it isn't surprising that 95% of your market is on Windows.
But if 95% of your market is Windows, it doesn't make sense to make it possible to use your products with other operating systems.
It becomes a vicios circle, a chicken-and-egg problem if you will. Someone, some day, has to break it, but it's not easy to convince people to do so. I can almost guarantee that the first people to do that (someone pointed out Aironet?) will see a significant uptake of their products by the linux crowd -- mostly because they will be the only ones with a linux product, but also because the linux crowd will stand behind the company. One hand washes the other. One day, someone will see that.
Yeah, really. If Washington State is going to pass that kind of law (and expect enforcement from videogame vendors), I'd like to see the same kind of law (and enforcement) passed for libraries, bookstores, video rental places etc. Seriously, be consistent or STFU.
car would be worth more when you sell it if it will last longer
Yes, but if on average all new cars lose 50% of their value in their first 3 years, then I'd rather lose 50% of $15-20k than 50% of $40-50k.
I picked "3 years" and "50%" arbitrarily for example purposes. I don't know what the real numbers are, but I hope you understand my point regardless of the figures.
This is why I'll probably never buy a new car, or a new home (the latter always involves major work like lawns, fences and driveways that one is seldom able to recoup when selling down the road). It just isn't worth it.
Re:My favorite quote...
on
OSI vs SCO
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Heh, mine were:
SCO's complaint is factually defective in that it implies claims about SCO's business and technical capabilities that are untrue. It is, indeed, very cleverly crafted to deceive a reader without intimate knowledge of the technology and history of Unix; it gives false impressions by both the suppression of relevant facts, the ambiguous suggestion of falsehoods, and in a few instances by outright lying.
Ouch. 'Dem are some strong words!
Their strength has been in franchise operations including McDonalds, Burger King, and Pizza Hut, which involve lots of parallel small deployments with no individual site requiring enterprise technology. [...] SCO's claim to own the scalability techniques certainly cannot be supported from the feature list of its own SCO OpenServer
So, SCO Unix is the equivalent of a McDonalds' hamburger? Mmmmm... tasty... Would you like a SCO media kit with that?
Examination of SCO's 10Ks reveals that, even were we to assume that every dime of their revenue came from the enterprise market, their 2002 share could not have exceeded 3.1% [5] This is at the level of statistical noise.
Bur-r-r-r-rned!!!
During the USL/Novell vs. BSD court case, it was determined that only three files out of eighteen thousand in the distribution were found to be the licit property of Novell and removed. I wonder how many will be found in Linux....SCO made the "ancient Unix" Version 7 source code available for free[13], which rather disposes of the theory that the original Unix code had any residual IP value in the marketplace of today. They belatedly terminated this offering on May 19th 2003, apparently realizing how badly it damaged their trade-secret claims.
the author of the generator concludes after his experiments that using the outer ring of magnets at 400rpm would be "closest to ideal for charging 12 volt batteries". I do believe that's wrong. If one looks at most car alternators, the voltage they put out is actually around 13.8 volt for reasons I forget. At 11.8V the generator would at best discharge the battery very slowly.
Oy... and pay the equivalent of the cost a small Hyundai to the insurance company every year?
Plus, like I said earlier, I want variety. I want change. I don't want to be driving the same thing for decades. I don't want to sell the car early either -- you lose too much in depreciation that way. I buy a car that will last me 5-10 years and I drive it till it can't be driven no more. But I'm not gonna sit around 15 years:)
What would the point be, though? Yeah, sure, so you buy a car ever 25 years, instead of every 5-10 -- how much more expensive would a diamond-coated-engine-equipped car be compared to a regular one? I'm sure that this innovation would cost us, consumers, a pretty penny.
Plus, what good is a diamond-coated engine if the paint fades after 15 years or the body rusts through? Not to mention what happens when you get bored with the car you have -- those of us, who get cars for the purpose of driving them to the ground would have to wait much longer before being able to justify getting a newer model.
For now, I'm pretty happy with the car I have (knock on wood) -- it's got 113k miles so far, and I hope it will last at least another 100k (which for me would be 4 more years). Like someone said about diesels: with regular maintenance and care, you can make these things go a long time.
Or maybe they got married and their wife nags at them to death and ruins their concentration.
Speaking from experience, there, matey? *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge* Depending on what the nagging is all about, it might not be a bad thing, you know. With mathematicians working "like hell on on their maths", they may be nagging about being neglected in the bedroom -- I wouldn't mind being nagged about that... not at all...
Slashdot Mirror
You're not the only one here. I'm going through similar pains with Cogeco in Ontario, Canada. If it wasn't for lack of alternatives, I'd be on something else already. For now, I suck it up and limp along, but as soon as something else comes up (and it doesn't have to be better, just suiting my needs/wants more), I'll bail.
even if a few major ISPs hold out, they'll eventually go under if all the rest of the ISPs are back to making money with their restrictions and filtering efforts
I don't think those few ISPs will go under, because I don't think the other ISPs will be making much money with restrictions and filtering efforts. Then again, it all depends on skillful marketing.
The way I see it, the fewer of those unlimited ISPs are around, the more popular they will become, even if they impose otherwise unimaginable restrictions such as p2p filtering. My current ISP limits me to 10GB combined in/out / month, and charges per every gig over limit. If I could for example opt for a plan that keeps my rate the same, removes the cap but blocks all p2p ports like kaaza (sp), gnutella etc., I'd switch. Even though I don't come close to using up the bandwidth I'm given right now (at least I don't think so). It's the principle of things. I don't need to have access to p2p networks. I'm willing to give up that freedom voluntarily (as opposed to a host of others, which would be OT here). You can bet your internet that the minute my ISP raises prices and/or imposes additional port blocks to those they have in place already (25, 443) without offering me an alternative, I'll start looking for alternatives. Very quickly. And if I don't find any, I'll suck it up and go back to dial-up. Let them drive away their customers. Let them issue earning report warnings to their stockholders. Let them burn a bit. I'll come back when they change their ways.
You forgot to add:
3. Raise prices for high-speed internet
4. Lather, rinse, repeat
What about me, I work from home [...] I'd prefer not to hear the ... it's a business expense that you must pay arguement. I have built my business on the model I am in right now at the prices I pay right now.
I'm afraid that if the days of metered bandwidth come, you will not have much of a choice but to re-engineer your business. Any business, in order to be successful, must not cost you money to run. At minimum, it should be paying for itself after the initial period of getting it started. That's not wishful thinking, that's business, plain and simple. If your business ends up costing you more money to run, you'll have to find ways of recouping that -- whether it's by raising prices, changing ISPs, opting for a co-location service or other. Or by changing your business. How about becoming an ISP and finding out first-person about what an ISP must go through to provide a service at a certain price.
should TV's cost more because they use up a significant portion of the electricity
Substitute the word "TV's" with "air conditioning units", "stoves", "electric washers/dryers" or other high-power-draw devices. Anything change? How about coming up with more efficient devices?
or...
How about coming up with a more efficient way to use the resources you are given? Electricity, bandwidth, water...
It doesn't take many stupid users to hog a pair of T1 lines.
It doesn't take p2p, either. All you need is someone trying to download the latest RH9 ISOs over the office T1 while another someone is streaming music from shoutcast/icecast/"insert other-streaming-service here". People need to learn that business and pleasure don't mix, and that they will be hunted down like animals when they abuse the privilege of using business resources, be it internet or otherwise. Especially if the admins know those people to have high-speed internet connectivity at their homes.
"all-you-can-eat" days of the buffet are almost over
Eh, I wouldn't go that far... if anything, I'd expect the "all-you-can-eat" rates go up, but I don't see telcos and ISPs abandoning the idea any time soon.
Additionally, if metered rates do in fact go into effect, we may be on an accelerated path to widespread deployment of wi-fi clusters in more populated areas as a means of circumnavigating the limitations.
Personally, I'm optimistic. History shows humans to be fairly resistant to various roadblocks being thrown at us, so should your prognosis come true, I'm sure we the geeks will find a way around it somehow, wi-fi or otherwise.
In capitalist America... the weather controls YOU!
I'm sure that anything the gov't can do, people can do, too -- after all, who works at the gov't? What one can invent, so can another. I don't know how long prior to taking that class that guy acquired that particular knowledge, but I'm sure it wasn't widely available at the time, and even when I heard of it from him, it wasn't public domain data. How long has your information been available to the public, with diagrams, step-by-step instructions etc.? How much does all this equipment cost? Even a competent technician will need money to get all this working -- I'm thinking several $k and a few weeks of work?
Point is (and I kinda forgot to make it originally), there is a whole lot of interesting (and potentially viewed as dangerous) topics available that could become subject of an academic course, and some institutions of higher learning will let them be taught provided there is enough interest and that one provides a sound "business plan". Such was the case with the course I took at Penn. Now, I've also taken a few other classes there, including designing and building computer chips, assembly, and unix-based operating systems. Does that make me a terrorist, according to the underlaying tone of the thread here? If so, then it's pretty ironic that not only was I taught all these things at a well-known (some would even say prestigious) U.S. university, they even gave me a degree.
So boo-hoo, cyber-terrorists from Canada and such. Teaching of "dangerous" topics happens on U.S. soil, too.
[...] there are probably many schools in the US doing this [...]
There are also some schools out there that will let you propose a course, provided that:
- the subject is educational
- you find more than the minimum required number of students
- you find someone to teach the class
[...] I took an Information Warfare class [...]
Funny you mention that, so did I -- at the aforementioned school. Officially it was called "Computer Ethics", but we've learned a lot about breaking into computers as well. There was even this one guy there, whose name eludes me for security purposes, who looked to be in his 30s at the time and who claimed to have worked for the gov't and was getting his masters at the time, IIRC. At the end of the semester the class got divvied up into groups for a project/presentation, so I made sure I was in the same group as he was. I've learned of a few neat tricks that the gov't was able to do with their technology, though no specifics (for obvious, classified reasons), like being able to pick up EM radiation from a monitor cable and reconstruct the video -- from a few hundred feet away.
But getting back on-topic... if there's a will, there's a way. If students are interested in learning something the school doesn't offer, they should try rallying up support from both their peers as well as the professors to have courses offered.
I strongly urge you all to use firewall software and anti-virus packages with updated virus definitions
Ehh... but if you live in Michigan or a few other states, you won't be able to go that route, and so you're doubly screwed.
*sigh*
I have no doubts that a lot of the work IBM's put into Linux has benefited the community in one way or another. I find it kind of ironic, then, that SCO would continue for two months to sell a product they claim to infringes on their IP rights, and profit (as much or as little as they have in that time) from someone else's work. Something's just wrong with that picture.
Or maybe it's just me.
Well, while I don't use a US provider for my cell phone, I *can* comment on my Canadian one, Rogers, For around $7/mo I get the so-called Messaging Pack, which includes voicemail plus unlimited incoming SMS messages. Every SMS I send out costs me 10 cents. This means that while my plan wouldn't be great for a lot of back-and-forth SMS traffic, it wouldn't cost an arm and a leg to use that way, either.
Now why in the world would someone use a plan with unlimited incoming / restricted outgoing SMS? How about a great replacement for a sysadmin's pager, especially one who gets a lot of status reports and needs to also be available via phone / needs to get in contact with people via phone.
A very good, functional extend-a-leash, if you will.
If you make it only possible to use your products on Windows, it isn't surprising that 95% of your market is on Windows.
But if 95% of your market is Windows, it doesn't make sense to make it possible to use your products with other operating systems.
It becomes a vicios circle, a chicken-and-egg problem if you will. Someone, some day, has to break it, but it's not easy to convince people to do so. I can almost guarantee that the first people to do that (someone pointed out Aironet?) will see a significant uptake of their products by the linux crowd -- mostly because they will be the only ones with a linux product, but also because the linux crowd will stand behind the company. One hand washes the other. One day, someone will see that.
Hey... isn't that what being A Proud American is all about? :)
Obligatory Simpsons' quote:
Homer: "In case you didn't notice, I was being sarcastic"
Yeah, really. If Washington State is going to pass that kind of law (and expect enforcement from videogame vendors), I'd like to see the same kind of law (and enforcement) passed for libraries, bookstores, video rental places etc. Seriously, be consistent or STFU.
I wonder if I could use this at work...
"Hey, this server's root drive just crashed!"
"No problem, I'll just boot it off my handyh watch here!"
car would be worth more when you sell it if it will last longer
Yes, but if on average all new cars lose 50% of their value in their first 3 years, then I'd rather lose 50% of $15-20k than 50% of $40-50k.
I picked "3 years" and "50%" arbitrarily for example purposes. I don't know what the real numbers are, but I hope you understand my point regardless of the figures.
This is why I'll probably never buy a new car, or a new home (the latter always involves major work like lawns, fences and driveways that one is seldom able to recoup when selling down the road). It just isn't worth it.
Heh, mine were:
...SCO made the "ancient Unix" Version 7 source code available for free[13], which rather disposes of the theory that the original Unix code had any residual IP value in the marketplace of today. They belatedly terminated this offering on May 19th 2003, apparently realizing how badly it damaged their trade-secret claims.
SCO's complaint is factually defective in that it implies claims about SCO's business and technical capabilities that are untrue. It is, indeed, very cleverly crafted to deceive a reader without intimate knowledge of the technology and history of Unix; it gives false impressions by both the suppression of relevant facts, the ambiguous suggestion of falsehoods, and in a few instances by outright lying.
Ouch. 'Dem are some strong words!
Their strength has been in franchise operations including McDonalds, Burger King, and Pizza Hut, which involve lots of parallel small deployments with no individual site requiring enterprise technology. [...] SCO's claim to own the scalability techniques certainly cannot be supported from the feature list of its own SCO OpenServer
So, SCO Unix is the equivalent of a McDonalds' hamburger? Mmmmm... tasty... Would you like a SCO media kit with that?
Examination of SCO's 10Ks reveals that, even were we to assume that every dime of their revenue came from the enterprise market, their 2002 share could not have exceeded 3.1% [5] This is at the level of statistical noise.
Bur-r-r-r-rned!!!
During the USL/Novell vs. BSD court case, it was determined that only three files out of eighteen thousand in the distribution were found to be the licit property of Novell and removed. I wonder how many will be found in Linux.
Uhh... can you say "too late now"?
I think I've had enough already.
Eh, I just have to say it...
the author of the generator concludes after his experiments that using the outer ring of magnets at 400rpm would be "closest to ideal for charging 12 volt batteries". I do believe that's wrong. If one looks at most car alternators, the voltage they put out is actually around 13.8 volt for reasons I forget. At 11.8V the generator would at best discharge the battery very slowly.
You could diamond coat the body work.
:)
Oy... and pay the equivalent of the cost a small Hyundai to the insurance company every year?
Plus, like I said earlier, I want variety. I want change. I don't want to be driving the same thing for decades. I don't want to sell the car early either -- you lose too much in depreciation that way. I buy a car that will last me 5-10 years and I drive it till it can't be driven no more. But I'm not gonna sit around 15 years
sed -e 's/Linux/Unix and its derivatives/' $MY_NEXT_POST
:)
duely noted
At least all of us Linux zealots can now say:
"See, Linux is so good, even Microsoft has seen the light and decided to license it!"
What would the point be, though? Yeah, sure, so you buy a car ever 25 years, instead of every 5-10 -- how much more expensive would a diamond-coated-engine-equipped car be compared to a regular one? I'm sure that this innovation would cost us, consumers, a pretty penny.
Plus, what good is a diamond-coated engine if the paint fades after 15 years or the body rusts through? Not to mention what happens when you get bored with the car you have -- those of us, who get cars for the purpose of driving them to the ground would have to wait much longer before being able to justify getting a newer model.
For now, I'm pretty happy with the car I have (knock on wood) -- it's got 113k miles so far, and I hope it will last at least another 100k (which for me would be 4 more years). Like someone said about diesels: with regular maintenance and care, you can make these things go a long time.
Or maybe they got married and their wife nags at them to death and ruins their concentration.
Speaking from experience, there, matey? *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*
Depending on what the nagging is all about, it might not be a bad thing, you know.
With mathematicians working "like hell on on their maths", they may be
nagging about being neglected in the bedroom -- I wouldn't mind being nagged about that...
not at all...
oh...