"What is the value of hacking a system to use it for purposes of which it isn't intended or designed for and why can't microsoft legally fight to protect its intended and protected interests?"
I have alot of stuff that I am using in ways that they were not originally intented, and because of they, those items hold a higher value TO ME.
"Value Add" is in the eye of the beholder. To me, being able to run Linux on an XBox as a cheap whatever the hell I decide to use it for is a "Value Add" to me. It may not be to you, it may not be to Microsoft, but it is to me.
Even though i modded my dreamcast and could play pirated games, i didn't consider this a value add. For one, i couldn't read the japanese games and often times it wasn't worth the effort and for pirated games they were ripped, chunked, slow and missing features.
Ahh, the jump to piracy. First off, if you modded your dreamcast to play pirated games, you're a fool, because Dreamcast rips are either self-booting, or you burn a boot CD for it.
Secondly, piracy is not the only reason to mod a console, and it wasn't the reason I modded my playstation 1. I needed that mod chip, but I don't have any pirated games, just imports. And just because you don't understand the Japanese doesn't mean it's completely useless to the rest of the planet.
So, to summarize, you did some stuff, didn't like it, and the rest of the world must now forgo it because you say so, and can't see the use of it? Um, Ok. Thanks, please drive through.
BTW, you mention the PS2 in the context of a dead console.. HUH? Dead? What? Excuse me? Please, stop smoking the MS Crackpipe.
The BNetD project had NO support for Warcraft 3 in it, and the team was not planning on even starting to add Warcraft3 support to it until it was officially released by Blizzard.
What you had was a group of people downloading the source code and modifying the source code to work with Warcraft 3, OUTSIDE of the BNetD tree. The BNetD project had nothing to do with the leaking of the Warcraft 3 beta, nor the support for the non-blizzard bnet servers for War3.
What you basically have is somebody getting ahold of an Open Source program, changing the source to violate license agreements with Blizzard (beta testers, read the agreement over) or enabling people to play pirated beta copies of the software, and the original open source project getting busted for it. This would be like somebody downloading the source for grep, changing it to automatically break out copy protection in some program, distributing it back out on the net and then the companies going after grep as being the issue.
This leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I also just cancelled my pre-order of Warcraft 3.
That's the last time I actually updated the code inside the index.html file, but the content itself changed about 4 minutes ago. E-Tag's are a better way of doing it, but not completely accurate.
I've been using MD5 checksums for a couple of years now on static and source pages to determine if something's screwed up, so that could count as prior art, though I wonder if they also thought at images imbedded into the HTML..
I work in the porn industry. I jumped ship from a fairly large ISP where I was a Senior SysEng, when it started to collapse under the weight of it's own upper management and became a SysEng for a local porn company. This decision was considered, they had been in business for 3 years up to this point, they didn't spam, they didn't flood users with popups, they kept everything above board and legal. The fact that they were dealing with porn didn't really affect my choice, the fact that they were good net.citizens did.
I've now been with this company for over a year, and I must say, it's done wonders for my skills. Why? Because in an ISP environment, things were fairly stagnent (atleast for the company I was with) with had x number of users on y number of dialup lines, with z webservers, mailservers, etc. The most exciting thing that happened was when some junior tech would issue "killall -9" on a Solaris box.
Since I leapt into the pr0n company, I've had to deal with traffic loads that would have caved the ISP's servers in. I had to change my way of thinking, write my programs leaner, always look for ways to optimize, etc, in ways that I hadn't had to do before. Unoptimized solutions didn't rear their heads when you were dealing with 500,000 page views a day, but toss 5,000,000 pages views at it, and suddenly you learn the error of your ways rather quickly.
I deal rarely with the content side of things, I am more into the nuts and bolts, the backends, the scripts, the webservers, etc. I've increased their stability and reliability along the way with things I learned at the ISP, and I've learned several new things from sheer volume of traffic seen. When I do decide to move on, I think I'll be better for it, and will probably be better for it, always approaching solutions from the perspective that I have to build the solution to handle 5,000,000 hits a day, scaling up from there.
So a foray into the porn world is not all sleaze, and it's not all bad. While there are companies out there that are just in it for a quick buck, and will do everything that they can (spam, etc) to get it, there are also ones that are in it for the long haul, pay their employees well (I'm making more than I made at the ISP, I get semi-annual reviews with atleast inflationary increases, etc) and try to be good net.citizens. As the comment said, check the contracts closely, and research the company completely
before making the leap, but don't automatically turn it down because it has the word "porn" attatched.
Could you ping my hostname,
if I routed to heaven?
Will it be the same,
if I routed to heaven?
I must hack long, and echo on,
cause I know that there are no
Pings in Heaven.
Would you know my addr,
if I routed to heaven?
Would you scan my ports,
if I routed to heaven?
I know I'll code my way, through night and day
Cause I know that there are no
Pings in Heaven.
ECHO can show you around,
ECHO can help you see,
ECHO can clog your pipe,
And have you screaming at script kiddies,
Script kiddies...
(flashing routing lights...)
K, it's early, and I have no coffee in me yet, I'll probably look back on this later and shoot myself..:)
The site, while pretty bare ATM, and a tad on the slow side, is an excellent start. There have been times when I started out with Debian that I was wondering "WTF?" and the answer been something simple like "you need to install the *-dev package to compile things against it" or something complex like having to touch various files during the kernel module probes when potato (back when it was unstable:) broke.
I did notice on their banner that they have "debianHELP: Militantly FREE software help." in their top bar. I hope this means that they aren't going to reject helping those with questions on the non-free packages available, but instead allow questions/answers/writeups on ALL thing Debian.
Being a long time Debian user, I'll probably start lending spare time to help with what they need help with as my way of giving back to a distribution that I've fallen in love with. I just hope it doesn't turn into the standard "newbie posts questions, regulars flame with RTFM!" type of environment.
By Linux 6.2 Apache based do you really mean RedHat 6.2 running Apache? What kernel? What version of Apache?
I suggest you first start out by phoning up DELL and asking them to explain their methodology for the tests that they are basing the claims on, and the versions of all the software used, and the tweaks applied to all the software. I'm pretty sure Win2k IIS will beat Linux 1.2.36 running Apache 1.1.x as well.:)
There are also several other variables that aren't mentioned. Static pages? Dynamically generated? Via what language?
After talking with DELL about their methods of testing, then ask them to lend you a demo unit for a couple of days to run your own tests on. "Sounds interesting. I would like to pursue your solution further for our server needs, but I would like to have a server to test some of our applications on prior to committing to the purchase." I haven't found a vendor yet that won't ship out a test unit.
Then, when you have the test unit, install Win2k/IIS and test the results, then install Linux/Apache, and test the results, and go by those benchmarks.
And just out of curiosity, what type of hardware was it anyways?:)
Quake 3 is hardly playable with SMP enabled under Win2K with my GeForce 256 DDR.
I don't know what your issue is, but I get a crisp and smooth Quake3 @ 1280x1024x32bpp on my GeForce 256 DDR. HalfLife: Counter-Strike plays at 1024x768x32bpp at 100fps average. Me thinks it's not the graphics card that's the issue in your configuration, as I don't have anything as fancy as SMP.
You have been given an impossible task. There is absolutely no chance in hell that you will be able to block even.001% of the pr0n/objectionable sites out there.
I disagree, and I think the solution is not to block sites you think may be objectionable, but block everything and then allow access to sites. A previous poster hit it on the head when (s)he came up with the suggestion of a user based submission system. I do agree, however, that censorware developed by J. Random Company in the middle of some bible-belt is not a solution at all, especially given the various issues surrounding them, like lack of published blacklists, lack of ability to 'correct' mistaken blacklistings, etc.
An even better solution would be the mandatory, ot atleast universally volunteer, rating of web pages. If everybody were required to have a 'rating' on their sites like the movies/TV, then filtering could be done on the rating. But this leads to the problem of what's rated how in what country. The US for example gives movies with nudity and scenes suggesting sex will get a higher rating than movies there people are getting blown to bits in jet fighters, while the oppose it true for rating boards in Canada (and Europe I believe:)
IMHO, the best way to deal with the problem is through agreements and public shaming. "Hey! You on terminal 5! Please stop viewing the gay hamster porn!" or some sort of public display of the URL's being viewed (not the content, just the URL's) in big bold letters above the workstation, then see how many people visit "www.playboy.com/just_for_the_articles.html"
When I follow the link to the Candy Wrapper Acoustics story, I get the following response from the CNN servers:
Not Found
The requested object does not exist on this server. The link you followed is either outdated, inaccurate, or the server has been instructed not to let you have it.
The mere ability of the FBI to snoop POP3/SMTP traffic should not be a suprise. Any punk with a packet sniffer can pull this off. Any punk with a packet sniffer can't drop a device in the middle of an ISP's network to perform such sniffing with. Just people you can load up a packet sniffer on your Win9x box doesn't mean you're going to capture anything other than the conversations your box is having with other boxes. And even hacking into a server on an ISP and setting up a packet sniffer there isn't going to give you the full view, because (if the ISP is worth it's weight in salt) the network is switched, so now you have to hack into the switch as well, figure out what port the machine is on, and make it a 'monitoring' port. Add a couple more switches, and capturing all the traffic is going to be cumbersome. The FUD surrounding Carnivore is enough. Please don't start adding to it with vague statements about 'punks' and 'packet sniffers'.
I don't know if it's related, but recently I've been getting a HELL of a lot more "Oops, server encountered an internal server error" and "404 - Document not found" errors when attempting to access my hotmail account. I only use Hotmail for my CS Clan stuff, but I check it a couple of times a day. During the past week or so, ever 2nd access (either login in, attempting to view/reply to a message, moving mail, etc) results in some form of error being spewed at me. Prior to this I had no problems. Coincidence? I think not.
But what defines a fair market price? Aren't stocks prices simply the speculation of the value of the company, based on what somebody is willing to pay for a percentage of said company? If I own some stocks, and I decide to sell them, and I set the ask to 50% of current market value, and somebody accepts it, how is that not fair? Sure, it'll probably drop the overall price of that particular stock down for awhile, but since nobody else is going to be selling for the price, it probably won't affect the closing price in anyway.
The same goes for buying stock. If I put in a bid for 1,000 @ $10.00, and the stock is currently trading at $20, more than likely I'm not going to get anything, BUT, assuming that somebody did accept my bid, then they are choosing to sell at a possible loss. How is this unfair?
Slashdot Mirror
"What is the value of hacking a system to use it for purposes of which it isn't intended or designed for and why can't microsoft legally fight to protect its intended and protected interests?"
I have alot of stuff that I am using in ways that they were not originally intented, and because of they, those items hold a higher value TO ME.
"Value Add" is in the eye of the beholder. To me, being able to run Linux on an XBox as a cheap whatever the hell I decide to use it for is a "Value Add" to me. It may not be to you, it may not be to Microsoft, but it is to me.
Even though i modded my dreamcast and could play pirated games, i didn't consider this a value add. For one, i couldn't read the japanese games and often times it wasn't worth the effort and for pirated games they were ripped, chunked, slow and missing features.
Ahh, the jump to piracy. First off, if you modded your dreamcast to play pirated games, you're a fool, because Dreamcast rips are either self-booting, or you burn a boot CD for it.
Secondly, piracy is not the only reason to mod a console, and it wasn't the reason I modded my playstation 1. I needed that mod chip, but I don't have any pirated games, just imports. And just because you don't understand the Japanese doesn't mean it's completely useless to the rest of the planet.
So, to summarize, you did some stuff, didn't like it, and the rest of the world must now forgo it because you say so, and can't see the use of it? Um, Ok. Thanks, please drive through.
BTW, you mention the PS2 in the context of a dead console.. HUH? Dead? What? Excuse me? Please, stop smoking the MS Crackpipe.
The BNetD project had NO support for Warcraft 3 in it, and the team was not planning on even starting to add Warcraft3 support to it until it was officially released by Blizzard.
What you had was a group of people downloading the source code and modifying the source code to work with Warcraft 3, OUTSIDE of the BNetD tree. The BNetD project had nothing to do with the leaking of the Warcraft 3 beta, nor the support for the non-blizzard bnet servers for War3.
What you basically have is somebody getting ahold of an Open Source program, changing the source to violate license agreements with Blizzard (beta testers, read the agreement over) or enabling people to play pirated beta copies of the software, and the original open source project getting busted for it. This would be like somebody downloading the source for grep, changing it to automatically break out copy protection in some program, distributing it back out on the net and then the companies going after grep as being the issue.
This leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I also just cancelled my pre-order of Warcraft 3.
With all the dynamic content out there, the datestamp is not a good indicator as to the last-changed time of the document itself.
HEADThat's the last time I actually updated the code inside the index.html file, but the content itself changed about 4 minutes ago. E-Tag's are a better way of doing it, but not completely accurate.
I've been using MD5 checksums for a couple of years now on static and source pages to determine if something's screwed up, so that could count as prior art, though I wonder if they also thought at images imbedded into the HTML..
I work in the porn industry. I jumped ship from a fairly large ISP where I was a Senior SysEng, when it started to collapse under the weight of it's own upper management and became a SysEng for a local porn company. This decision was considered, they had been in business for 3 years up to this point, they didn't spam, they didn't flood users with popups, they kept everything above board and legal. The fact that they were dealing with porn didn't really affect my choice, the fact that they were good net.citizens did.
I've now been with this company for over a year, and I must say, it's done wonders for my skills. Why? Because in an ISP environment, things were fairly stagnent (atleast for the company I was with) with had x number of users on y number of dialup lines, with z webservers, mailservers, etc. The most exciting thing that happened was when some junior tech would issue "killall -9" on a Solaris box.
Since I leapt into the pr0n company, I've had to deal with traffic loads that would have caved the ISP's servers in. I had to change my way of thinking, write my programs leaner, always look for ways to optimize, etc, in ways that I hadn't had to do before. Unoptimized solutions didn't rear their heads when you were dealing with 500,000 page views a day, but toss 5,000,000 pages views at it, and suddenly you learn the error of your ways rather quickly.
I deal rarely with the content side of things, I am more into the nuts and bolts, the backends, the scripts, the webservers, etc. I've increased their stability and reliability along the way with things I learned at the ISP, and I've learned several new things from sheer volume of traffic seen. When I do decide to move on, I think I'll be better for it, and will probably be better for it, always approaching solutions from the perspective that I have to build the solution to handle 5,000,000 hits a day, scaling up from there.
So a foray into the porn world is not all sleaze, and it's not all bad. While there are companies out there that are just in it for a quick buck, and will do everything that they can (spam, etc) to get it, there are also ones that are in it for the long haul, pay their employees well (I'm making more than I made at the ISP, I get semi-annual reviews with atleast inflationary increases, etc) and try to be good net.citizens. As the comment said, check the contracts closely, and research the company completely
before making the leap, but don't automatically turn it down because it has the word "porn" attatched.Could you ping my hostname,
if I routed to heaven?
Will it be the same,
if I routed to heaven?
I must hack long, and echo on,
cause I know that there are no
Pings in Heaven.
Would you know my addr,
if I routed to heaven?
Would you scan my ports,
if I routed to heaven?
I know I'll code my way, through night and day
Cause I know that there are no
Pings in Heaven.
ECHO can show you around,
ECHO can help you see,
ECHO can clog your pipe,
And have you screaming at script kiddies,
Script kiddies...
(flashing routing lights...)
K, it's early, and I have no coffee in me yet, I'll probably look back on this later and shoot myself.. :)
The site, while pretty bare ATM, and a tad on the slow side, is an excellent start. There have been times when I started out with Debian that I was wondering "WTF?" and the answer been something simple like "you need to install the *-dev package to compile things against it" or something complex like having to touch various files during the kernel module probes when potato (back when it was unstable :) broke.
I did notice on their banner that they have "debianHELP: Militantly FREE software help." in their top bar. I hope this means that they aren't going to reject helping those with questions on the non-free packages available, but instead allow questions/answers/writeups on ALL thing Debian.
Being a long time Debian user, I'll probably start lending spare time to help with what they need help with as my way of giving back to a distribution that I've fallen in love with. I just hope it doesn't turn into the standard "newbie posts questions, regulars flame with RTFM!" type of environment.
---------------------
Aluve, TrIaX
By Linux 6.2 Apache based do you really mean RedHat 6.2 running Apache? What kernel? What version of Apache?
I suggest you first start out by phoning up DELL and asking them to explain their methodology for the tests that they are basing the claims on, and the versions of all the software used, and the tweaks applied to all the software. I'm pretty sure Win2k IIS will beat Linux 1.2.36 running Apache 1.1.x as well. :)
There are also several other variables that aren't mentioned. Static pages? Dynamically generated? Via what language?
After talking with DELL about their methods of testing, then ask them to lend you a demo unit for a couple of days to run your own tests on. "Sounds interesting. I would like to pursue your solution further for our server needs, but I would like to have a server to test some of our applications on prior to committing to the purchase." I haven't found a vendor yet that won't ship out a test unit.
Then, when you have the test unit, install Win2k/IIS and test the results, then install Linux/Apache, and test the results, and go by those benchmarks.
And just out of curiosity, what type of hardware was it anyways? :)
Quake 3 is hardly playable with SMP enabled under Win2K with my GeForce 256 DDR.
I don't know what your issue is, but I get a crisp and smooth Quake3 @ 1280x1024x32bpp on my GeForce 256 DDR. HalfLife: Counter-Strike plays at 1024x768x32bpp at 100fps average. Me thinks it's not the graphics card that's the issue in your configuration, as I don't have anything as fancy as SMP.
You have been given an impossible task. There is absolutely no chance in hell that you will be able to block even .001% of the pr0n/objectionable sites out there.
I disagree, and I think the solution is not to block sites you think may be objectionable, but block everything and then allow access to sites. A previous poster hit it on the head when (s)he came up with the suggestion of a user based submission system. I do agree, however, that censorware developed by J. Random Company in the middle of some bible-belt is not a solution at all, especially given the various issues surrounding them, like lack of published blacklists, lack of ability to 'correct' mistaken blacklistings, etc.
An even better solution would be the mandatory, ot atleast universally volunteer, rating of web pages. If everybody were required to have a 'rating' on their sites like the movies/TV, then filtering could be done on the rating. But this leads to the problem of what's rated how in what country. The US for example gives movies with nudity and scenes suggesting sex will get a higher rating than movies there people are getting blown to bits in jet fighters, while the oppose it true for rating boards in Canada (and Europe I believe :)
IMHO, the best way to deal with the problem is through agreements and public shaming. "Hey! You on terminal 5! Please stop viewing the gay hamster porn!" or some sort of public display of the URL's being viewed (not the content, just the URL's) in big bold letters above the workstation, then see how many people visit "www.playboy.com/just_for_the_articles.html"
TrIaX - For the best in pulse weaponry.When I follow the link to the Candy Wrapper Acoustics story, I get the following response from the CNN servers:
Not Found
The requested object does not exist on this server. The link you followed is either outdated, inaccurate, or the server has been instructed not to let you have it.
Anybody have the correct URL? :)
The mere ability of the FBI to snoop POP3/SMTP traffic should not be a suprise. Any punk with a packet sniffer can pull this off. Any punk with a packet sniffer can't drop a device in the middle of an ISP's network to perform such sniffing with. Just people you can load up a packet sniffer on your Win9x box doesn't mean you're going to capture anything other than the conversations your box is having with other boxes. And even hacking into a server on an ISP and setting up a packet sniffer there isn't going to give you the full view, because (if the ISP is worth it's weight in salt) the network is switched, so now you have to hack into the switch as well, figure out what port the machine is on, and make it a 'monitoring' port. Add a couple more switches, and capturing all the traffic is going to be cumbersome. The FUD surrounding Carnivore is enough. Please don't start adding to it with vague statements about 'punks' and 'packet sniffers'.
I don't know if it's related, but recently I've been getting a HELL of a lot more "Oops, server encountered an internal server error" and "404 - Document not found" errors when attempting to access my hotmail account. I only use Hotmail for my CS Clan stuff, but I check it a couple of times a day. During the past week or so, ever 2nd access (either login in, attempting to view/reply to a message, moving mail, etc) results in some form of error being spewed at me. Prior to this I had no problems. Coincidence? I think not.
But what defines a fair market price? Aren't stocks prices simply the speculation of the value of the company, based on what somebody is willing to pay for a percentage of said company? If I own some stocks, and I decide to sell them, and I set the ask to 50% of current market value, and somebody accepts it, how is that not fair? Sure, it'll probably drop the overall price of that particular stock down for awhile, but since nobody else is going to be selling for the price, it probably won't affect the closing price in anyway.
The same goes for buying stock. If I put in a bid for 1,000 @ $10.00, and the stock is currently trading at $20, more than likely I'm not going to get anything, BUT, assuming that somebody did accept my bid, then they are choosing to sell at a possible loss. How is this unfair?