Thank you very much. That is very helpful. It seems obvious after several people said it, but that's what I needed to hear.
The teflon tape thing is something I would never have thought up on my own, so that also helped a lot too. I'd probably have a leak again in a few months without it. This job was done about a year ago by professional plumbers. If I don't see teflon tape when I take it apart I'll... well... you know.
The duplication controls have been adopted to protect broadcast copyrights, an NHK official said, adding, "Easy violation of copyright would make movie and music copyright holders reluctant to provide their works and prompt actors and singers to refuse to appear on TV."
If I understand this correctly, movie and music copyright holders would lock up their works so no one could copy them? Isn't that tantamount to saying the sky is falling? I mean, why would you produce a movie if you are afraid to let anyone view it? Would we have to tell our children there used to be a thing called TV and movies and music, but people quit making those things because bad people insisted on replaying them?
The valve is about two 1.5 feet below the tank, and the pipe the valve is in goes straight into the wall at that point. The valve and pipes are chrome.
The drip occurs about once per second and appears to be coming out of the valve threading. In other words, it's coming out where the valve stem goes into the bolt, and turns when you turn the handle.
Someone mentioned teflon tape. Will that work? Or do I need to replace the valve?
I understand your concern. In theory, though, there's an insatiable demand for new software, such that open source can never meet it. Let open source take care of the basic plumbing while we build high rises commercially.
The link in my sig is commercial software I offer built on open source such as JBoss, Tomcat and MySQL. It works, however, with applications running in commercial J2EE vendors such as WebSphere.
There's room for BOTH open source and commercial software.
I agree. If I were an ISP, I'd use a phased approach. I'd use the email, because for some people, that would be enough. It wouldn't have any attachments, just a link to a website. They would be clearly told that they do not need to enter ANY personal information. The risk of links to websites in emails is that they could be forward to fraudulant sites where they will be prompted to enter their password or credit card info. The link they would receive from their ISP would require neither. It would simply be a link to a page they could read with step-by-step instructions. The email would also encourage them to call technical support for questions, or to directly visit the ISP's website to learn more.
For those that don't fix their viruses after the email, cold calling could be an option. Regardless of whether or not the ISP considers this option feasible, the next option would be to disconnect their account until they called support. Support could then reactivate it, explaining that their computer has a virus, and they need to take such and such steps to remove it.
This, IMHO, is better than blocking ports, which doesn't even get rid of the virus. It doesn't keep their computers from doing other things, such as using the ISP's SMTP server, or taking part in a DOS attack. Yet, blocking ports targets people that don't have a virus and use SMTP in legitimate ways. Under options that don't block ports, those people would not be impacted by a plan to help the others remove the viruses from their computers.
Who said anything about class action? I'm talking about 1.2m individual suits. The RIAA would have to respond to each one individually.
You could have a website to guide the legal documents and filing process.
I countersued once using documents I got out of a book written for average Joe's like myself. I forced them to settle, dismissing their suit, and got everything I wanted.
Lawsuits, up until the trial, are mostly about filing documents. It isn't hard to create boiler plate documents when the issue is the same for all the cases.
He's not too far off from what another poster said. He suggested that if you encrypt it, then you can sue the RIAA for decrypting it under the DMCA. Thus, a scrambled number could, in theory, be protected. It's not clear that it would immunize you from copyright infringement, since it's unclear if the evidence could be submitted. But, if the RIAA decrypts it against your will, then you do have cause to sue back.
I agree 100% with both your posts. I also question the feasibility of continuing to try to constrain digital music with laws. I personally don't listen to any RIAA music, so don't have a need for music file sharing. However, I consider the RIAA attacks, and even worse, congressional proposals to turn the FBI into an RIAA strongarm, pointless and destructive, because given the ease of copying digital music, they are persecuting human nature. If you can't get everyone to believe in the cause of the RIAA, then the law isn't going to prevent it. Can you imagine waking up one day to discover that 99% of the population begs to get watermark devices in their ears so they can overcome the temptation to listen to music they didn't pay the record companies for?
Just out of curiosity, who would support a world with free music? Once music leaves the instrument, it belongs to the world. No one can "own" it.
Musicians would make money off live performances and concert paraphenelia like t-shirts. Good artists would be heard, as their music could spread on the Internet legally like wildfire, and their concert demand would go up, without having to sign their rights, freedom and profits away to a label. Artists that can't actually sing would die by the wayside without the countless millions to give them the pop star image, replacing low quality music with modern Mozarts.
If you could vote on a referrendum for this, would you vote yes?
But the distinction is ambiguous from the user's point of view. They only download music. The uploading is a consequence that requires no further action from user. Even if they close the file sharing program when they are done download, uploading will resume the next time they download.
I've always wondered what it would be like if we sued one of them all at once. The headlines would be awesome:
"1.2 million people file lawsuit against RIAA this month. The court system is grinding to a halt, and congress begins deliberations to resolve the problem."
Technical people, who are the target market for HPC products, know that OS X is simply a GUI put on top of a non-GUI OS... BSD. X has always been an add-on in the Unix world.
That's not the same as MS, which, although it had its roots in DOS, has become known primarily for its GUI. The whole Windows and Office market that creates the majority of MS's income is based on the GUI products that come with it. While we like fast computers, none of those software products are performance driven. You don't buy Excel because your reports require teraflops. You buy it because it's easy to use.
The things needed to make Windows secure? Are you kidding?
Complete replacement of the ACL with a root based system. By default nothing else has any privileges unless expressly granted.
New files should never be executable. The ability to execute should be a privilege that must be explicitly granted. This means no more.exe's,.com's,.vbs, etc,...
User's should have the ability to disable non-essential functions of any kind, such as IE. They should not be integrated into essential OS functions.
User's should be able to kill any and every process. Have you ever tried to kill MS processes? There are dozens of them treated like kernel processes. A process could have a huge gaping security hole in it; yet, you can't kill it. Heck, you aren't even allowed to know what it's doing with 33% of your CPU.
All ports should be closed by default. Sounds easy, but disabling MS's networking abilities by defaults scare's Redmond. Their ActiveX and central administration initiatives run counter to this.
It needs to implement PAM and other pluggable security technogolgies so administrators can choose best of breed instead of being stuck with one that has holes in it.
The source code needs to be open so it can not only be peer reviewed, but extended to meet the particular security and other needs of the situation at hand.
I could go on, but this list is enough to demonstrate why Longhorn is being delayed for years. I'll be surprised if MS can accomplish the above list by 2006.
I know of a payroll company that uses Windows clusters. They have to reboot them all at the same time to get them to re-integrate often. So, you're closer to the truth than you think.
Just because my neighbors leave their doors unlocked doesn't mean that I do. Thus, how does blocking entrance to their doors help me?
Most port blocking ISPs do has nothing to do with "helping" the computer owners. Usually, it's solely to generate revenue. The ports they block are those that people would use to run servers or play games.
In this case, the desire to block a port just happends to cross with one of the most common server ports. Email is a fundamental part of the Internet. It's nearly impossible for them to block these ports with inhibiting legitimate non-spam use of them. Even if they try to be selective, they'll still fail on more than one ground. Personally, I don't have a problem at all of ISPs removing virus attachments from incoming email on their POP serves. But port blocking hardly compares in its impact on legal non-spam use.
People make commitments when they choose an ISP. When their ISP's SMTP server ends up on an RBL, they'll have NO WAY to send email to RBL users if port 25 is blocked for all but the ISP's SMTP server. However, changing ISPs after accepting a 12 month contract could have an early termination penalty, as well as installation costs for another ISP, if they even have the option. Many Comcast subscribers have no other broadband option.
To go back to your analogy, this isn't blocking incoming traffic to their PC at all. It's preventing you from visiting any homes that are running SMTP servers. Your ISP police would stop you and disable your vehicle if you were headed to my house.
I run my own email servers, and have to deal with SPAM. But, I have it under control. Its impact is now relatively insignificant to me. The only problem I'm having today is not being able to rely on email coming or going because of spam prevention techniques.
Just this weekend, in order to get an important email to an employee of Compuware, I had to create a reverse DNS entry for proxy IP that matched the domain of my email server. This involved creating a new subdomain one day. The next day, when the subdomain was live, creating the reverse DNS entry. When it was complete, Compuware finally accepted my email.
To me, the email that doesn't get through, particularly when you don't get an automated message telling you, is 1000x more critical than spam. ISPs that serve markets with little or no broadband competition are not likely to care if they disable legitimate use of common Internet ports. Comcast's decision, barring ethics, and presuming it's remotely calculated, will be partly based on the % of the customers that are not realistically likely to switch to another provider if they are upset.
But telephone harrassment is against the law. The government will shut you down. I'm certainly not proposing that you should be able to use your Internet for illegal activities. But port 25 is for email. Email is not illegal.
Phone companies cannot regulate my conversation. They cannot block swearing, or inhibit outgoing calls. They have a service to block incoming calls, but that's not the same thing, since the user chooses what numbers to block, and it only applies to incoming calls. They even lost the battle to charge extra for or inhibit dial-up connections. The bottom line is that the telephone companies cannot hinder legal use of your phone.
Top be fair, phone companies do tier pricing on outgoing calls, so that long distance costs more than local, and international costs more than long distance, in general. But, this is based on their costs. Port blocking is not cost based. It actually costs more to block ports. The business justification is that the ability to block ports creates a new revenue source... charging extra to unblock the ports.
I do get it, but I used the technical descriptions because I presumed YOU understood them. If you understand them, then I'm sure YOU CAN IMAGINE how easy it would be to either put it on the installation CD, or create easy to follow instructions on a web page for Joe, or create a script or bin they could download and run. This isn't any more difficult than downloading and running programs on Windows. Joe Sixpack gets pretty darn good at that. Joe Sixpack never has to know what a cron job is. The legacyfedora.org site even basically says, for those that don't know what cron is, that typing and running the one line will cause it to automatically update every night. Of course, you could simplify it even more by contrasting it to having a beer implant. That's the point. If I were an ISP, I could provide a web page that even Joe sixpack could understand.
Did IBM's ISAM/VSAM database permit you to declaratively join tables via keys and enforce unique constraints on groups of colums to create keys? This is what defined a database as relational.
Transactional concepts are abstracted so that
They are not required to relate data.
A database that supports ACID transactions does not have to be relational.
They are completely independent database concepts.
The first real relational database, to my knowledge, was Ashton Tate's dBase II, which I used on CP/M in the early 80s before DOS even existed.
If I remember, I think dBase I, which was never on the market, was created by Bell Labs. Bell Labs later sued Ashton Tate for using some code from dBase I, and won. Borland then bought dBase when III Plus was out, IIRC.
Businesses were not the first ISPs. There are principles that helped foster the initial growth of the Internet before it was commercialized.
The highjacked PCs are not using the ISPs' email servers. The zombies run as their own email servers. This, this has nothing to do with load on the ISP's email servers. It's not even a bandwidth issue, as the bandwidth isn't as high as you'd think due to the latency and limitted number of processes a consumer PC can run simultaneously, as well as their need to run undetected.
What you define as "business class service", those of us that used the Internet before it was commercialized called it "real Internet". It was the norm before ISPs started to exploit their power to block ports so they could charge extra to open them.
They have a right to produce revenue, but not at all costs. Their ability to create a tiered pricing model that is not based on cost is in part due to limited options people have for high speed connectivity, and is exacerbated by the lack of education of the average Internet user today. This exploitation is not conducive to the highly competitive market we want Internet connectivity to be, and is indeed a sign that cable ISPs are not operating in highly competitive markets.
This is not to say I disagree with all tiered pricing models. I think it's OK to offer higher download speeds and lower upload speeds in order to lower the overall cost of consumer connectivity. I pay a lot more for a symmetric connection, and I don't have a problem with that. It is also OK to charge for static IP block. Although I personally would never use an ISP that didn't offer a static IP, I don't have a problem with offering dynamic IPs to consumers to reduce cost.
But port blocking is another matter entirely. Blocking ports does not reduce cost significantly, and in most cases actually carries higher costs since they have to deploy equipment to do it, and tie it to individual accounts. They do it simply because they have the power as the ISP, and can generate more revenue by charging you extra to not block the ports. This is abuse of the power and a disregard for the Internet community they joined.
ISPs that practice should be given a bad name and replaced by those that don't, and that begins by informing people that they don't have to accept it lying down. I haven't proposed any regulations, or removal of corporate "rights", so I don't understand what you object to. Is free speech and consumer education dangerous?
Today, there are still plenty of ISPs that don't block ports, but they are usually in more competitive markets than areas where people can only get cable for broadband.
I just went through the steps to install Yum and do updates for RH 9, using fedoralegacy.org. I was blown away how easy it was. Just had to run a few lines I copied from their web page, and boom, it worked. One more line of code, and it becomes a nightly cron job.
If you don't want to use the cron job, you simply run "yum update" whenever you want to update.
Apt-get looked simple too, but I decided to try Yum.
You could easily automate the installation process with a simple script or bin.
In contrast to Windows, the updates cover a lot more software than Windows, which only covers software supplied by Microsoft. However, if you manually upgrade to a newer release than was included in your distribution, then the updates will no longer be automatically applied. Thus, if I upgrade from Mozilla 1.4.x to Mozilla 1.6, I'll no longer get updates for the RH9 release, as my current version will always be newer than the one included in the release. Of course, if you manually upgrade your software, then in theory, you've demonstrated a bit of technical proficiency above what you described.
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The teflon tape thing is something I would never have thought up on my own, so that also helped a lot too. I'd probably have a leak again in a few months without it. This job was done about a year ago by professional plumbers. If I don't see teflon tape when I take it apart I'll ... well... you know.
If I understand this correctly, movie and music copyright holders would lock up their works so no one could copy them? Isn't that tantamount to saying the sky is falling? I mean, why would you produce a movie if you are afraid to let anyone view it? Would we have to tell our children there used to be a thing called TV and movies and music, but people quit making those things because bad people insisted on replaying them?
The valve is about two 1.5 feet below the tank, and the pipe the valve is in goes straight into the wall at that point. The valve and pipes are chrome.
The drip occurs about once per second and appears to be coming out of the valve threading. In other words, it's coming out where the valve stem goes into the bolt, and turns when you turn the handle.
Someone mentioned teflon tape. Will that work? Or do I need to replace the valve?
The link in my sig is commercial software I offer built on open source such as JBoss, Tomcat and MySQL. It works, however, with applications running in commercial J2EE vendors such as WebSphere.
There's room for BOTH open source and commercial software.
Currently, I catch the water and dump it periodically, because I'm afraid to take it apart.
For those that don't fix their viruses after the email, cold calling could be an option. Regardless of whether or not the ISP considers this option feasible, the next option would be to disconnect their account until they called support. Support could then reactivate it, explaining that their computer has a virus, and they need to take such and such steps to remove it.
This, IMHO, is better than blocking ports, which doesn't even get rid of the virus. It doesn't keep their computers from doing other things, such as using the ISP's SMTP server, or taking part in a DOS attack. Yet, blocking ports targets people that don't have a virus and use SMTP in legitimate ways. Under options that don't block ports, those people would not be impacted by a plan to help the others remove the viruses from their computers.
You could have a website to guide the legal documents and filing process.
I countersued once using documents I got out of a book written for average Joe's like myself. I forced them to settle, dismissing their suit, and got everything I wanted.
Lawsuits, up until the trial, are mostly about filing documents. It isn't hard to create boiler plate documents when the issue is the same for all the cases.
He's not too far off from what another poster said. He suggested that if you encrypt it, then you can sue the RIAA for decrypting it under the DMCA. Thus, a scrambled number could, in theory, be protected. It's not clear that it would immunize you from copyright infringement, since it's unclear if the evidence could be submitted. But, if the RIAA decrypts it against your will, then you do have cause to sue back.
I agree 100% with both your posts. I also question the feasibility of continuing to try to constrain digital music with laws. I personally don't listen to any RIAA music, so don't have a need for music file sharing. However, I consider the RIAA attacks, and even worse, congressional proposals to turn the FBI into an RIAA strongarm, pointless and destructive, because given the ease of copying digital music, they are persecuting human nature. If you can't get everyone to believe in the cause of the RIAA, then the law isn't going to prevent it. Can you imagine waking up one day to discover that 99% of the population begs to get watermark devices in their ears so they can overcome the temptation to listen to music they didn't pay the record companies for?
Is this swiss cheese? If so, then your point has holes.
Musicians would make money off live performances and concert paraphenelia like t-shirts. Good artists would be heard, as their music could spread on the Internet legally like wildfire, and their concert demand would go up, without having to sign their rights, freedom and profits away to a label. Artists that can't actually sing would die by the wayside without the countless millions to give them the pop star image, replacing low quality music with modern Mozarts.
If you could vote on a referrendum for this, would you vote yes?
But the distinction is ambiguous from the user's point of view. They only download music. The uploading is a consequence that requires no further action from user. Even if they close the file sharing program when they are done download, uploading will resume the next time they download.
"1.2 million people file lawsuit against RIAA this month. The court system is grinding to a halt, and congress begins deliberations to resolve the problem."
That's not the same as MS, which, although it had its roots in DOS, has become known primarily for its GUI. The whole Windows and Office market that creates the majority of MS's income is based on the GUI products that come with it. While we like fast computers, none of those software products are performance driven. You don't buy Excel because your reports require teraflops. You buy it because it's easy to use.
- Complete replacement of the ACL with a root based system. By default nothing else has any privileges unless expressly granted.
- New files should never be executable. The ability to execute should be a privilege that must be explicitly granted. This means no more
.exe's, .com's, .vbs, etc,...
- User's should have the ability to disable non-essential functions of any kind, such as IE. They should not be integrated into essential OS functions.
- User's should be able to kill any and every process. Have you ever tried to kill MS processes? There are dozens of them treated like kernel processes. A process could have a huge gaping security hole in it; yet, you can't kill it. Heck, you aren't even allowed to know what it's doing with 33% of your CPU.
- All ports should be closed by default. Sounds easy, but disabling MS's networking abilities by defaults scare's Redmond. Their ActiveX and central administration initiatives run counter to this.
- It needs to implement PAM and other pluggable security technogolgies so administrators can choose best of breed instead of being stuck with one that has holes in it.
- The source code needs to be open so it can not only be peer reviewed, but extended to meet the particular security and other needs of the situation at hand.
I could go on, but this list is enough to demonstrate why Longhorn is being delayed for years. I'll be surprised if MS can accomplish the above list by 2006.I know of a payroll company that uses Windows clusters. They have to reboot them all at the same time to get them to re-integrate often. So, you're closer to the truth than you think.
That's an interesting and novel idea.
Most port blocking ISPs do has nothing to do with "helping" the computer owners. Usually, it's solely to generate revenue. The ports they block are those that people would use to run servers or play games.
In this case, the desire to block a port just happends to cross with one of the most common server ports. Email is a fundamental part of the Internet. It's nearly impossible for them to block these ports with inhibiting legitimate non-spam use of them. Even if they try to be selective, they'll still fail on more than one ground. Personally, I don't have a problem at all of ISPs removing virus attachments from incoming email on their POP serves. But port blocking hardly compares in its impact on legal non-spam use.
People make commitments when they choose an ISP. When their ISP's SMTP server ends up on an RBL, they'll have NO WAY to send email to RBL users if port 25 is blocked for all but the ISP's SMTP server. However, changing ISPs after accepting a 12 month contract could have an early termination penalty, as well as installation costs for another ISP, if they even have the option. Many Comcast subscribers have no other broadband option.
To go back to your analogy, this isn't blocking incoming traffic to their PC at all. It's preventing you from visiting any homes that are running SMTP servers. Your ISP police would stop you and disable your vehicle if you were headed to my house.
I run my own email servers, and have to deal with SPAM. But, I have it under control. Its impact is now relatively insignificant to me. The only problem I'm having today is not being able to rely on email coming or going because of spam prevention techniques.
Just this weekend, in order to get an important email to an employee of Compuware, I had to create a reverse DNS entry for proxy IP that matched the domain of my email server. This involved creating a new subdomain one day. The next day, when the subdomain was live, creating the reverse DNS entry. When it was complete, Compuware finally accepted my email.
To me, the email that doesn't get through, particularly when you don't get an automated message telling you, is 1000x more critical than spam. ISPs that serve markets with little or no broadband competition are not likely to care if they disable legitimate use of common Internet ports. Comcast's decision, barring ethics, and presuming it's remotely calculated, will be partly based on the % of the customers that are not realistically likely to switch to another provider if they are upset.
Phone companies cannot regulate my conversation. They cannot block swearing, or inhibit outgoing calls. They have a service to block incoming calls, but that's not the same thing, since the user chooses what numbers to block, and it only applies to incoming calls. They even lost the battle to charge extra for or inhibit dial-up connections. The bottom line is that the telephone companies cannot hinder legal use of your phone.
Top be fair, phone companies do tier pricing on outgoing calls, so that long distance costs more than local, and international costs more than long distance, in general. But, this is based on their costs. Port blocking is not cost based. It actually costs more to block ports. The business justification is that the ability to block ports creates a new revenue source... charging extra to unblock the ports.
When did I recommend "compelling" them?!? I was simply sharing an opinion, in the hope that more people would consider "choosing not to use them".
I do get it, but I used the technical descriptions because I presumed YOU understood them. If you understand them, then I'm sure YOU CAN IMAGINE how easy it would be to either put it on the installation CD, or create easy to follow instructions on a web page for Joe, or create a script or bin they could download and run. This isn't any more difficult than downloading and running programs on Windows. Joe Sixpack gets pretty darn good at that. Joe Sixpack never has to know what a cron job is. The legacyfedora.org site even basically says, for those that don't know what cron is, that typing and running the one line will cause it to automatically update every night. Of course, you could simplify it even more by contrasting it to having a beer implant. That's the point. If I were an ISP, I could provide a web page that even Joe sixpack could understand.
Transactional concepts are abstracted so that
- They are not required to relate data.
- A database that supports ACID transactions does not have to be relational.
They are completely independent database concepts.If I remember, I think dBase I, which was never on the market, was created by Bell Labs. Bell Labs later sued Ashton Tate for using some code from dBase I, and won. Borland then bought dBase when III Plus was out, IIRC.
The highjacked PCs are not using the ISPs' email servers. The zombies run as their own email servers. This, this has nothing to do with load on the ISP's email servers. It's not even a bandwidth issue, as the bandwidth isn't as high as you'd think due to the latency and limitted number of processes a consumer PC can run simultaneously, as well as their need to run undetected.
What you define as "business class service", those of us that used the Internet before it was commercialized called it "real Internet". It was the norm before ISPs started to exploit their power to block ports so they could charge extra to open them.
They have a right to produce revenue, but not at all costs. Their ability to create a tiered pricing model that is not based on cost is in part due to limited options people have for high speed connectivity, and is exacerbated by the lack of education of the average Internet user today. This exploitation is not conducive to the highly competitive market we want Internet connectivity to be, and is indeed a sign that cable ISPs are not operating in highly competitive markets.
This is not to say I disagree with all tiered pricing models. I think it's OK to offer higher download speeds and lower upload speeds in order to lower the overall cost of consumer connectivity. I pay a lot more for a symmetric connection, and I don't have a problem with that. It is also OK to charge for static IP block. Although I personally would never use an ISP that didn't offer a static IP, I don't have a problem with offering dynamic IPs to consumers to reduce cost.
But port blocking is another matter entirely. Blocking ports does not reduce cost significantly, and in most cases actually carries higher costs since they have to deploy equipment to do it, and tie it to individual accounts. They do it simply because they have the power as the ISP, and can generate more revenue by charging you extra to not block the ports. This is abuse of the power and a disregard for the Internet community they joined.
ISPs that practice should be given a bad name and replaced by those that don't, and that begins by informing people that they don't have to accept it lying down. I haven't proposed any regulations, or removal of corporate "rights", so I don't understand what you object to. Is free speech and consumer education dangerous?
Today, there are still plenty of ISPs that don't block ports, but they are usually in more competitive markets than areas where people can only get cable for broadband.
If you don't want to use the cron job, you simply run "yum update" whenever you want to update.
Apt-get looked simple too, but I decided to try Yum.
You could easily automate the installation process with a simple script or bin.
In contrast to Windows, the updates cover a lot more software than Windows, which only covers software supplied by Microsoft. However, if you manually upgrade to a newer release than was included in your distribution, then the updates will no longer be automatically applied. Thus, if I upgrade from Mozilla 1.4.x to Mozilla 1.6, I'll no longer get updates for the RH9 release, as my current version will always be newer than the one included in the release. Of course, if you manually upgrade your software, then in theory, you've demonstrated a bit of technical proficiency above what you described.