I beta-tested OnLive a long time ago, and by the third day it was back in the box, ready to be shipped back. It took a long time to pre-buffer a game. The game prices were too high. The resolution wasn't that great, and it didn't have most of the games I actually wanted to play.
A company with an existing revenue stream could get into this market and support the initial losses with their other products. Valve/Steam could do this. Valve already has an existing profitable business model (digital distribution of games on PC/Mac). They're branching out into distribution of apps. They already offer Steam on TV. But I just don't see the draw yet. A decent, $500 PC can run most games on acceptable settings. A gaming console is only $300 and there are tons of games available.
I can see something like a hardware add-on that does game streaming, but both Sony and Microsoft (XBLA) offer game and video downloads. So I'm not quite sure where a dedicated game-streaming device will fit in (and be profitable). If I wanted to spend $50 on a game, I'd get it for PC or a console and have a much better experience.
I don't think the market for something like this will happen until most of the US has affordable, reliable, and reasonably fast (10 mbit+) internet. And when it does happen, I think it's going to be a side-market by an already-profitable company.
It is unfortunate that SORBS has gotten a bad rap. Although it has been plagued on the administrative side of things, its list was still helpful in detecting and removing spam.
Spoken like someone who's never had to deal with them in any capacity. SORBS was an arrogant list that was out of touch with reality and the problems administrators face. SORBS made far too many arbitrary decisions (like blocking netblocks because they LOOKED dynamic - without bothering to check) and caused real harm and damage to millions of people. They were an embarrassment compared to real lists like Zen/SpamHaus, SpamCop, etc who remained professional and logical and actually had policies and procedures to determine how they handled situations.
SORBS felt and acted like a college-run side project. It was by no means professional. They even asked for (mandatory) donations to de-list. What the hell! They were a joke and any real admin stopped using them many years ago in favor of real solutions (DCC/Razor, real anti-spam lists, etc). Anyone who continued to use them was just doing themselves, their customers, and everyone else a disservice.
I thought that open source was about sharing code.
"All you can eat" buffets are about all you can eat for $5, but it doesn't quite apply to the 400lb guy who brings his own plate and napkin. Free food kitchens don't really apply to the guy in the Armani suit. There are limits to anyone's generosity, and in the case of the GPL, the limit is fairness. "You share with me, I share with you. If you just take and take without giving back, you need to get the fuck out."
Apparently the Linux kernel developer did not wish Broadcom to take advantage of his work in proprietary products
Just how likely is it that there is anything in the Linux driver that would be useful to Broadcom? Broadcom already has fully functional proprietary drivers for their chips.
Quality of code, for one. Hey, a Honda Civic is "fully functional", just like a Mercedes S500 is "fully functional". Doesn't mean they're in the same league. From what I understand, the quality of the Broadcom code is junk, and if they were allowed to lift some quality source from the BSD version of their drivers with no strings attached, why not? They're within their rights to use BSD licensed code any way they want, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, in this cse, the author of the GPL code is saying "I caught you lifting chunks of my GPL code for your BSD license. I don't want Broadcom using my work without requiring them to give back, so I'm going to call you out on this." He doesn't want to share with them, because they're jerks about their source and NDA requirements. That's his right.
The draft of the institute's intellectual property crime report, sighted by The Australian shows that copyright owners "failed to explain" how they reached financial loss statistics used in lobbying activities and court cases.
If the author of the article wants to be taken seriously, he may want to do more than a basic spell check. I would think strong written skills would be reasonably important as a journalist. Perhaps not.
Correction: when _you_ start using up a lot of memory Linux totally sucks. When I start using up a lot of memory, Linux acts exactly as I expect, and better than FreeBSD.
(PDF reference)
Hrm. Looks like FreeBSD panics under load in it's default configuration. So sad.
Interesting that the PDF you linked specifically states:
From a stability point of view, Linux and NetBSD worked stable all the time, FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE panicked under load (that went away with 5.1-
CURRENT) and OpenBSD crashed and panicked even in 3.4-CURRENT. OpenBSD
also surprised me with "interesting" syslog messages like "/bsd: full".
FreeBSD 5.1 was released on Mon, 9 Jun 2003, or approaching 3 years ago. Note that he did his comparison in October of 2003, 4 months after 5.1R was published (but he did not use FreeBSD 5.1 for his tests).
As an aside, The initial FreeBSD 5.x offerings were pretty well known to be of less quality than previous releases, partly because of some major structural changes. I'm not making excuses, just stating observations. By the way, FreeBSD 6.1 is about to be released. Your referenced PDF is quite outdated.
Hey, if you want to cherry-pick quotes, I'll take some quotes out of context from the same PDF you referenced above:
The most important OS offering async I/O is FreeBSD. Linux 2.4 scales badly for mmap and many processes.
OK, a normal quotes, from the same PDF you referenced:
(FreeBSD) kqueue is older than epoll. I think Linux should simply have implemented the kqueue API instead of inventing epoll, but the Linux people insist on doing all the mistakes of the other people again. For example, the epoll guy initially thought he could get away without level triggering.
The performance of epoll and kqueue is very similiar.
I like FreeBSD, but I have nothing against linux. It's fine. You can't take a single man's opinion (or even his experiences from 3 years ago!) and spread it around as current "fact". You are simply spreading FUD, with no real point.
NeoPrime writes "CNN has a story about an Indian IT outsourcing firm HCL Technologies, whose president feels that 'employees come first and customers second.' He further feels that every employee should 'rate their boss, their boss' boss, and any three other company managers they choose, on 18 questions using a 1-5 scale. There is even an electronic ticket system to flag anything they think requires action in the company. The company president explains, 'It can be I have a problem with my bonus, or My seat is not working, or My boss sucks.' This ticket is then routed to a manager for resolution. The article's argument: India has the most modern management system in the world."
Ah, I see. Let me rephrase that for reality.
from the better-than-the-whip dept.
Businesses IT
"CNN has a story about an Indian IT outsourcing firm HCL Technologies, whose president was told by the Public Relations department to say, 'employees come first and customers second.' He further feels that every employee should 'rate their boss, their boss' boss, and any three other company managers they choose, on 18 questions using a 1-5 scale. Of course, each ticket is directly tied to employee number, name, workstation, IP, date, and time. That way, we can quickly determine who the "troublemakers" and "potential future whistleblowers" are in the company.' There is even an electronic ticket system so that the employee may flag themselves by reporting anything that goes against the status quo. The company president explains, 'It can be I have a problem with my bonus, or My seat is not working, or My boss sucks.' Unbeknownst to the employee, this ticket is then silently routed directly to the employee's manager for "appropriate action" (finding an excuse to fire the employee). The article's argument: India has the most modern management system in the world, but it still doesn't fix bad management, corporate politics and infighting, and general 'stab you in the back' behaviour."
There. If Corporate India is anything like much of Corporate America, we now have an accurate summary.
From TFA (1)
audio, video and data technology requires a new type of wiring called "category 5," which has five strands within one sheath.
Wrong....
You know, I can just see some real tech guy, testing him to see how much disinformation he can get away with, trying not to choke with laughter..
Real Tech Guy: hehe. And uh, so we have this new hightech stuff that's just out on the market, it's called "category 5" cable. They uhm, they call it that because it's like hurricanes. Like, a category 5 hurricane is super powerful. So the network manufacturers stole that idea, and a category 5 cable is super powerful. Like a hurricane. Brad Stone: huh. thats so cool. Real Tech Guy: And uh, (choking sounds, as he tries not to laugh) uhmm, what else. So anyway, Cisco, they -- Brad Stone: Sysco? Real Tech Guy:... yeah. Yeah, Sysco. I think you Americans spell it "Cisco" here, but anyway.. heh.. uh, so Sisco, besides making good food products, they decided to diversify into electronics. They make these things called Internet Routing Components. Brad Stone: Mmmhm. I've heard of that. Real Tech Guy: You can just call them "IRC" for short. hehehe. hhehehe...... and uh, well anyway. I think that's enough for your first article. Let me know how it turns out! Brad Stone: Thanks man! I'm gonna write all this up right now!
Another good recommendation is to diversify your crypto. Sign/encrypt your data with multiple different crypto algorithms in the same message.
That's an awesome idea. I'm going to start doing that right now!:P
This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0012_01C22048.805E68 00 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Test ------=_ NextPart_000_0012_01C22048.805E6800 Content-Type:
This is true. I'm not a lawyer, but I think most people don't realize is that good lawyers practice an art. Yes, they have a large set of rules to follow, but it's basically artistry in a courtroom.
It's kinda like boxers - Your lawyer has an objective, the opposing lawyer has an alternate objective, and the judge is there to make sure both sides don't punch each other in the nuts too often. The truth is usually NOT the focus of the "game" (I call it a game because really, that's what court in general seems like, unless you're the defendant).
And those of you naieve enough to expect justice to be served every time, think about this: how many of you know a lawyer that can really make your tickets disappear for a price? Is that fair? To you, it's great. But in reality, it's "not the way things are supposed to turn out" - you just had the money to get a good lawyer that can make things happen for you.
Just think about how the game is stepped up when you get to the federal level and are facing serious charges for downloading kiddie porn on your connection. To get a good lawyer on that level, one who knows the game and can win it, you're going to be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars - if not more. Even if you're innocent - because if you don't spend that kind of money, the opposing side (in this case, the government) is going to crush you.
Also consider that the government will have "enough" proof to nail you to the crime. It was your internet connection. It's in your best interest to prove it was your neighbor, but you're assuming the prosecution will care. They probably have 10 more cases to do this week. The evidence points to you. The Time Warner witness certified it was your connection. They present copies of their logs showing it was in fact your connection. Your own logs show that the activity took place using your connection. Someone has to pay. That's a pretty hard place to be in. You have to prove that:
a) It was your neighbor.
b) It really wasn't you on a laptop.
c) Your neighbor isn't going to admit to ANYTHING.
Back to the "art" issue. Good lawyers can lead a conversation in any direction they want. They do it all day, every day, and they went to law school to learn how to manipulate the conversation during examination. It doesn't matter if you really are guilty or not - if you don't have a really good lawyer in there to help you out ($$$), you're going to have a tough time.
You can take precautions by encrypting your logs, storing them on DVD, doing MD5 hashes of the log, using syslog-ng, whatever. But a good lawyer will point to that and say that's not normal behaviour - "Were you expecting trouble?... and you still opened the access point to the world? So you knew it was possible someone could surf kiddie porn on your connection, and you left it open anyway?" They will bring up your IT experience, then point to the fact that you know better, so perhaps you had an ulterior motive for leaving it open? Also, YOUR evidence that points to someone else will be your server/firewall logs. Which is controlled and maintained by you, and is alterable by you. The prosecutor will still make the point, and you will be facing the "hard" evidence by Time Warner or whatever, vs evidence controlled by you.
Well, you get the idea. A good lawyer will make their opposition look bad, no matter if they're innocent or not.
So, is that open access point worth it? To me, no.
That would be the category I fall under. I think everyone should follow the sharing principle, lock your box, and open the AP. No matter what deviant may come around and use your access, you can always prove it wasn't you. Now it may be a hassle and even cost a bit of cash..., which we all know sucks, but I've been sharing my wifi for nearly 3 years now and have had no problems.
At first I was thinking - whoa, you're very open minded. Then I realized you wrote wifi instead of wife. I need some coffee.
I understand what you're saying about the open access, and it's a nice thing to do - but there's no way in hell I'm going to go through the federal investigation process or even chance the possibility of going to prison, for my neighbors kiddie porn habit. Sorry. My life and the potential hassle is worth way more than him saving $39.95 on his cable bill. You're being nice, and that's applaudable, but if anything does happen - you're going to have a tough time proving it was not you.
You: but I have logs! Them: How convenient. The accused has evidence pointing to someone else. Is it unaltered proof? You: Of course! These are the raw server logs! Them: Logs, from your firewall? You: Yes! Them: A firewall which you have administrative access to, and can change the logs at will? You: Uh, yeah. But I didn't change them. Them: So the logs very well could be altered. And it would be in your best interest for that to happen? You: WTF man... I didn't do it.
Don't expect your freeloader neighbor to step up and take a federal sentence when it comes down to it, and don't put your life in a position where it depends on the justice system to "get it right". Ken Lay, OJ, and lots of others are walking around free men today..
The suggestion is that we are working with governments to create a back door so that they can always access BitLocker-encrypted data,' Niels Ferguson, a developer and cryptographer at Microsoft, wrote Thursday on a corporate blog. 'Over my dead body,' he wrote in his post titled Back-door nonsense.
But they left out the rest of his quote.
Niels then put his feet up on the desk and went on to say, "Off the record, you should note my careful use of the word 'always' in the above sentence", he said, with a slight grin on his face. "Context is everything. If I allow them occasional or intermittent access, I'm still being honest, right?" Niels then laughed and pointed to his "Honorary member of the DoD" plaque on his office wall.
Wonderful idea for burglars:
* Buy one of those birthday cards that let you record a greeting.
* Tuck it into door-jamb, set on auto-record.
* Come back later to retrieve the birthday-card recorder
Exactly! Except in reality, you'd come back to where your fancy birthday card recorder used to be, because the owner, after unlocking the car, got into it and drove away, taking your birthday card recorder with them. heh...
The actual tech's not that simple though; as everyone has already pointed out here, the knock sequence changes each time, sort of like the way RSA SecureID cards work. And, it's still utterly useless.
You gotta look at the issue from a different angle. Too many people are looking at this like, "omg, 8192 bit random keys using a salted PIN provided by the user, with anti-hack technology built into the key!" (or whatever). Sure, it sounds cool. It sounds "unbreakable!":P
1) Most decent, newer cars already use a random key to unlock the car, using standard RF. Recording someone using their key doesn't matter because the key changes each time. Then (at least on Mercedes), on top of the standard "random" RF code to unlock the doors, the key itself has an IR port on the end that interfaces with the ignition and does all kinds of verification or whatever.
People still steal these cars, and it appears to not be much of a problem. This new system will be no different, because smart people don't attack things from the "impossible" angle unless they have to. They attack from angles that are possible.
From the "brute force" angle: Current vehicles have anti-theft tech in the ignition, etc. Who cares about your key when a thief can just connect wire A and B, short circuit C, and start the car anyway. Sure, they'll need to smash a window or whatever - but who cares! It's not their car. Even if the knowledge to hotwire this system isn't out there right away, it will be eventually - there'l be some disgruntled worker willing to sell out the tech for the right price, or someone willing to reverse-engineer the tech for money, and from there it'll become common knowledge.
From the "high-end" angle: There will be dishonest employees at dealerships that have access to key-generation equipment. There will be AAA employees (or the equivalent) that will need to have access to this technology, for the stupid blonde that destroyed her key at 2am outside of the club, but needs to get into her car RIGHT NOW and can't wait until the dealership opens.
The high-end car thief already has access to connections that will program valid RF/IR keys. That type of car thief will just get access to the technology behind this new "knocking" stuff as well. I'm sure there's going to be "manufacturer" or "dealership" master keys for this system, for those "emergencies".
What I'm saying is, there will be enough people with access to the technology behind this, that some of them will be dishonest and it won't change much. It's just a new approach to the same issue, with the same problems.
BitTorrent seems to have worn out it's welcome with the MPAA recently, so maybe the future holds P2P networks owned and managed by Hollywood?"
I'll be happy to join their "P2P" network, buy the content for a reasponable price, and share pieces of files I download to other users that want the same thing. However, their litigious and moneygrubbing attitude makes me NOT want to share any of my bandwidth with them for free. They would have to offer me a monetary incentive to consider using my bandwidth to P2P it. If they want to be the type of association that is convicted of price fixing, and they want to sue everyone under the sun, I have no intention of helping them by sharing my bandwidth. They will get nothing free from me.
Others will take it much further, crack the DRM on the files, and re-share the files on the free networks right after they're released.
Does Apple sue people like this for stripping off the DRM or whatever? If they do, I guess they don't get hardly as much press, because I never hear about it. Even if they do sue, I doubt they send out blanket subpoenas to everyone and their grandmother. Apple has sold a billion legal song downloads because they make it easy, cheap, and fast to get what you want. The iTunes store doesn't treat their customers like criminals and enemies. Even if they don't say it, I think Apple's DRM is a placebo for the record companies -- easily circumvented. I think they understand the real basic truth to sales: Sell something at a reasonable price, treat your customer nicely, and they're more likely to buy the product instead of steal.
Be nice to your customers. Stop this HDCP, CSS, pricefixing, and lawsuit moneygrubbing and maybe things will work better for you.
All of the data on [the Diebold] storage device is encrypted using a single, hardcoded DES key:
#define DESKEY ((des_key*)"F2654hD4")
Note that this value is not a hex representation of a key, nor does it appear to be randomly generated. Instead, the bytes in the string "F2654hD4 " are fed directly into the DES key scheduler... from the CVS logs, we see this particular key has been used without change since December 1998...
It amazes me that the voting box companies, who are paid disgusting amounts of taxpayer money to develop these things, can't figure out how to code properly. Yes, I know Sequoia is the company discussed in the article, but Diebold has 80% of the voting market. So if they can't do it right as the market leader, I'm afraid of what will be found when/if someone demands a code audit on the Sequoia stuff.
4.4 Key management and other cryptographic issues with the vote and audit records [...] the audit logs are encrypted and checksummed before being written to the storage device. Unfortunately, neither the encrypting nor the checksumming is done with established, secure techniques. [...] (Recall that we have already discussed the lack of cryptography in other potions of the system.) [...] All of the data on a storage device is encrypted using a single, hardcoded DES [22] key: #define DESKEY ((des_key*)"F2654hD4"). Note that this value is not a hex representation of a key, nor does it appear to be randomly generated. Instead, the bytes in the string "F2654hD4 " are fed directly into the DES key scheduler. [...] from the CVS logs, we see this particular key has been used without change since December 1998 [...]...
In June 2005, [Kevin Shelley, the California Secretary of State], reported that when given access to Diebold vote-counting computers, Bev Harris- a critic of Diebold's voting machines - was able to make 65,000 votes disappear simply by changing the memory card that stores voting results for one that had been altered. Although the machines are supposed to record changes to data stored in the system, they showed no record of tampering after the memory cards were swapped. In response, a spokesperson for the Department of State said that, "Information on a blog site is not viable or credible."
... [insert completely awed silence here] .
I think I'll buy "C++ Programming for Dummies" and faxes a quick resume to Diebold
MAKE REGION FREE:
The latest shipment of units are not region free. To change to region free mode do this:
1. Press Setup on remote control to access the setup page
3. A secret menu will pop up
2. Enter 9210 on the remote
5. Press Setup on remote again to exit
4. Select 0 to 6 in region code (0 is region free)
NOTE: This document utilizes TPS REPORT encryption. Breaking or attempting to reverse-engineer this encryption is a violation of the DMCA.
USE WITH HDCP:
1. No HDCP issues as there isn't any HDCP!
Thanks to all the previous posters regarding this player. I did not know this product existed, and it seems to do pretty much everything I want it to do. Thanks again.
You know, I had (honestly) forgotten all about "region free" DVD players, etc. But all the MPAA's fuss, and this associated Slashdot article about it, has reminded me that I do want a more capable DVD player. A while back, I had wanted a player that did DivX, so I could fit two or three of my movies onto a DVD for the little ones to destroy (instead of damaging the original $$ DVDs). At that time, the DivX playback on the units pretty much sucked, so I let it go and forgot about it.
Anyway, this article reminded me that there are really good DVD players out there that support region-free, HDCP-free, high-resolution playback at a reasonable price.... and they play back DivX as well. I think I will order one right now, in fact.
How's that for blowing up in your face, MPAA? I'm sure I'm not the only one that is now thinking, "yes, actually, thats exactly what I want. Thanks for the reminder."
Or, to simplify in terms that every male would understand: Shooting yourself in the nuts doesn't always mean you'll lose them. Some really hot chick might even think guys who shoot themselves in the nuts, are sexy. But it's unlikely.
Mom & Pop don't understand/care about new video production, DVD ripping, file sharing, etc.
That's kinda funny actually, because my parents do all of the above. They're happy editing and then transferring their old family VHS tapes to DVD. They also buy original Disney and other kiddie movies and burn copies for use, so they have a good original stored away when the grandkids destroy the copy.
The only thing they don't do from that list is Shareaza, they have no desire to break the law. The newest laws make that really difficult though, so I just neglect to tell them that AnyDVD's legality is somewhat questionable. Their heart is in the right place.
Sure, there's influence in there from me and their other kids, but parents are just like anyone else - once you show them a good way of doing something, they'll do it - high tech or otherwise. But without outside influence, I think my parents generation is just happy to utilize the technology, but really have a general lack of interest in "keeping up" unless absolutely necessary. I think they would have used Outlook Express forever, as long as they could receive and send email. (Yes, I switched them to Thunderbird).
Anyway, even given all that, they won't be upgrading anytime soon. I built them a really nice (2gb ram) machine, and setup a proper external backup. The only thing I predict they'll spend money on, computerwise, for the next ten years is replacement hard drives.
So your point is still valid. They have what they want, and unless Vista allows them to do something amazing that THEY want to do, it's really of no interest to them. The simple truth is, techies/gamers look at and enjoy the technology itself, AND what the technology can do for them. Normal users ONLY look at what the technology enables them to do.
We're not even talking about corporate deployments here - do you really think corporations will be in a rush to upgrade? Thats a veritable nightmare for IT staff. The one thing that is nice is the "user account protection", but almost all corporate environments that I've visited either (a) dont give a rats ass (small-time shops), or (b) are full-blown corporate shops that already utilize Active Directory to lock down desktops and permissions. So I don't see Vista being a major draw for them either.
I think they should just name them DontopeneveryfuckingemailyoufuckingretardA, DontopeneveryfuckingemailyoufuckingretardB, DontopeneveryfuckingemailyoufuckingretardC and so on...
Donto pen every FUC king E mail you FUC king reta RDB?
A little help here? I don't get it.:)
Leading Net companies say that Verizon's actions could keep some rivals off the road. As consumers try to search Google, buy books on Amazon.com, or watch videos on Yahoo!, they'll all be trying to squeeze into the leftover lanes on Verizon's network.
And? Why would this be a reason to sue? If you don't like Verizon's idea, and it bothers you enough, then use a different provider. Also, who's to say that Verizon would have used the additional bandwidth to fuel their web services?
On Feb. 7 the Net companies plan to take their complaints about Verizon's plans to the Senate during a hearing on telecom reform."
Yes, of course! Those other companies are especially concerned about Verizon customers, and are willing to spend their own money to sue on the behalf of customers that aren't even theirs and don't make them any money!. So let me ask you - when was the last time you saw a company act so noble and unselfish? Its very rare, of course.
So basically, Verizon has an idea that they think is cool and will possibly make them a lot of money. Their competitors freaked out because they aren't to the point where they can offer the same thing, so they go on the offense and sue.
Seems like there are three ways to make money in America: work, sue, or steal. I think people who file frivolous lawsuits should have to pay the defendants attorney fees, extra court costs for wasting time, and a percentage of what they originally asked for in compensation to the defendant. This "sue everyone for everything" crap is terrible.
PS: I dont think they ever expect to win this case, either. They just want the bad PR to be out there.
So what choices does Verizon have?
a) build a cool idea on their network.
b) pay Sprint or someone to run their video traffic. (rofl)
c) abandon an idea they feel will make decent money.
Look, if their customers don't like it, they will leave Verizon, and Verizon will have wasted a huge amount of money building this thing out and promoting it. Let the freakin market decide what is good or crap - dont freakin sue over every single thing you disagree with. It's disgusting...:\
They cant go "closed source" - they've licensed it under the GPL. Unless they rewrite the app from scratch [...] or remove any code from parties that havent agreed to the new license...
I think that's partially true. It is my understanding that, since they are the author of the code -- they can't reverse the existing license on previous versions, but they can change the license for future versions of their software. Excluding parts written or contributed by others, of course.. but I would imagine they could rewrite those parts.
I'm not saying TCO is not lower, it probably is. What I'm saying is, if IBM figured out that Windows actually had a lower TCO, they sure as hell wouldn't be writing a report about it. That's like holding your breath waiting for Microsoft to release a study that said Linux has a lower TCO than Windows. Even if it's true, they'll never publish the report.
So what does the Slashdot crowd use when they need to secure their Linux and Windows servers? Does it cost less than US$100?"
Hi. I just bought this brand new Dodge Viper. I'd like to buy an alarm for it. What do you have that's less than $19.95?
If you're spending less than $100 in hardware to protect an important server - then it's really not all that important to you. Really.
If you want to spend less than $100, buy a Linksys firewall/router and put that in front of the server. If you take your servers a little more seriously than that, spend a little more money and build a decent firewall, or at the very least - a pair of cheap firewall boxes that use CARP for redundancy.
Anyway. To get back to your question - I prefer OpenBSD for firewall control - you can pretty much do anything with OpenBSD/pf (thanks for writing pf, Daniel!)
If a web-based control panel is more your thing, you might want to look into IPCop (a linux-based firewall based on SmoothWall). IPCop is pretty, free, and reasonably capable. PFSense is still building up, but it also has a web interface. PFSense is based on FreeBSD.
Slashdot Mirror
I beta-tested OnLive a long time ago, and by the third day it was back in the box, ready to be shipped back. It took a long time to pre-buffer a game. The game prices were too high. The resolution wasn't that great, and it didn't have most of the games I actually wanted to play. A company with an existing revenue stream could get into this market and support the initial losses with their other products. Valve/Steam could do this. Valve already has an existing profitable business model (digital distribution of games on PC/Mac). They're branching out into distribution of apps. They already offer Steam on TV. But I just don't see the draw yet. A decent, $500 PC can run most games on acceptable settings. A gaming console is only $300 and there are tons of games available.
I can see something like a hardware add-on that does game streaming, but both Sony and Microsoft (XBLA) offer game and video downloads. So I'm not quite sure where a dedicated game-streaming device will fit in (and be profitable). If I wanted to spend $50 on a game, I'd get it for PC or a console and have a much better experience.
I don't think the market for something like this will happen until most of the US has affordable, reliable, and reasonably fast (10 mbit+) internet. And when it does happen, I think it's going to be a side-market by an already-profitable company.
It is unfortunate that SORBS has gotten a bad rap. Although it has been plagued on the administrative side of things, its list was still helpful in detecting and removing spam.
Spoken like someone who's never had to deal with them in any capacity. SORBS was an arrogant list that was out of touch with reality and the problems administrators face. SORBS made far too many arbitrary decisions (like blocking netblocks because they LOOKED dynamic - without bothering to check) and caused real harm and damage to millions of people. They were an embarrassment compared to real lists like Zen/SpamHaus, SpamCop, etc who remained professional and logical and actually had policies and procedures to determine how they handled situations. SORBS felt and acted like a college-run side project. It was by no means professional. They even asked for (mandatory) donations to de-list. What the hell! They were a joke and any real admin stopped using them many years ago in favor of real solutions (DCC/Razor, real anti-spam lists, etc). Anyone who continued to use them was just doing themselves, their customers, and everyone else a disservice.
If the author of the article wants to be taken seriously, he may want to do more than a basic spell check. I would think strong written skills would be reasonably important as a journalist. Perhaps not.
Interesting that the PDF you linked specifically states: FreeBSD 5.1 was released on Mon, 9 Jun 2003, or approaching 3 years ago. Note that he did his comparison in October of 2003, 4 months after 5.1R was published (but he did not use FreeBSD 5.1 for his tests). As an aside, The initial FreeBSD 5.x offerings were pretty well known to be of less quality than previous releases, partly because of some major structural changes. I'm not making excuses, just stating observations. By the way, FreeBSD 6.1 is about to be released. Your referenced PDF is quite outdated.
Hey, if you want to cherry-pick quotes, I'll take some quotes out of context from the same PDF you referenced above:
OK, a normal quotes, from the same PDF you referenced:
I like FreeBSD, but I have nothing against linux. It's fine. You can't take a single man's opinion (or even his experiences from 3 years ago!) and spread it around as current "fact". You are simply spreading FUD, with no real point.
Ah, I see. Let me rephrase that for reality.
There. If Corporate India is anything like much of Corporate America, we now have an accurate summary.
You know, I can just see some real tech guy, testing him to see how much disinformation he can get away with, trying not to choke with laughter..
Real Tech Guy: hehe. And uh, so we have this new hightech stuff that's just out on the market, it's called "category 5" cable. They uhm, they call it that because it's like hurricanes. Like, a category 5 hurricane is super powerful. So the network manufacturers stole that idea, and a category 5 cable is super powerful. Like a hurricane.
Brad Stone: huh. thats so cool.
Real Tech Guy: And uh, (choking sounds, as he tries not to laugh) uhmm, what else. So anyway, Cisco, they --
Brad Stone: Sysco?
Real Tech Guy:
Brad Stone: Mmmhm. I've heard of that.
Real Tech Guy: You can just call them "IRC" for short. hehehe. hhehehe...
Brad Stone: Thanks man! I'm gonna write all this up right now!
That's an awesome idea. I'm going to start doing that right now! :P
application/x-pkcs7-signature; name="smime.p7s"
This is true. I'm not a lawyer, but I think most people don't realize is that good lawyers practice an art. Yes, they have a large set of rules to follow, but it's basically artistry in a courtroom.
... and you still opened the access point to the world? So you knew it was possible someone could surf kiddie porn on your connection, and you left it open anyway?" They will bring up your IT experience, then point to the fact that you know better, so perhaps you had an ulterior motive for leaving it open? Also, YOUR evidence that points to someone else will be your server/firewall logs. Which is controlled and maintained by you, and is alterable by you. The prosecutor will still make the point, and you will be facing the "hard" evidence by Time Warner or whatever, vs evidence controlled by you.
It's kinda like boxers - Your lawyer has an objective, the opposing lawyer has an alternate objective, and the judge is there to make sure both sides don't punch each other in the nuts too often. The truth is usually NOT the focus of the "game" (I call it a game because really, that's what court in general seems like, unless you're the defendant).
And those of you naieve enough to expect justice to be served every time, think about this: how many of you know a lawyer that can really make your tickets disappear for a price? Is that fair? To you, it's great. But in reality, it's "not the way things are supposed to turn out" - you just had the money to get a good lawyer that can make things happen for you.
Just think about how the game is stepped up when you get to the federal level and are facing serious charges for downloading kiddie porn on your connection. To get a good lawyer on that level, one who knows the game and can win it, you're going to be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars - if not more. Even if you're innocent - because if you don't spend that kind of money, the opposing side (in this case, the government) is going to crush you.
Also consider that the government will have "enough" proof to nail you to the crime. It was your internet connection. It's in your best interest to prove it was your neighbor, but you're assuming the prosecution will care. They probably have 10 more cases to do this week. The evidence points to you. The Time Warner witness certified it was your connection. They present copies of their logs showing it was in fact your connection. Your own logs show that the activity took place using your connection. Someone has to pay. That's a pretty hard place to be in. You have to prove that:
a) It was your neighbor.
b) It really wasn't you on a laptop.
c) Your neighbor isn't going to admit to ANYTHING.
Back to the "art" issue. Good lawyers can lead a conversation in any direction they want. They do it all day, every day, and they went to law school to learn how to manipulate the conversation during examination. It doesn't matter if you really are guilty or not - if you don't have a really good lawyer in there to help you out ($$$), you're going to have a tough time.
You can take precautions by encrypting your logs, storing them on DVD, doing MD5 hashes of the log, using syslog-ng, whatever. But a good lawyer will point to that and say that's not normal behaviour - "Were you expecting trouble?
Well, you get the idea. A good lawyer will make their opposition look bad, no matter if they're innocent or not.
So, is that open access point worth it? To me, no.
At first I was thinking - whoa, you're very open minded. Then I realized you wrote wifi instead of wife. I need some coffee.
I understand what you're saying about the open access, and it's a nice thing to do - but there's no way in hell I'm going to go through the federal investigation process or even chance the possibility of going to prison, for my neighbors kiddie porn habit. Sorry. My life and the potential hassle is worth way more than him saving $39.95 on his cable bill. You're being nice, and that's applaudable, but if anything does happen - you're going to have a tough time proving it was not you.
You: but I have logs!
Them: How convenient. The accused has evidence pointing to someone else. Is it unaltered proof?
You: Of course! These are the raw server logs!
Them: Logs, from your firewall?
You: Yes!
Them: A firewall which you have administrative access to, and can change the logs at will?
You: Uh, yeah. But I didn't change them.
Them: So the logs very well could be altered. And it would be in your best interest for that to happen?
You: WTF man... I didn't do it.
Don't expect your freeloader neighbor to step up and take a federal sentence when it comes down to it, and don't put your life in a position where it depends on the justice system to "get it right". Ken Lay, OJ, and lots of others are walking around free men today..
But they left out the rest of his quote.
Exactly! Except in reality, you'd come back to where your fancy birthday card recorder used to be, because the owner, after unlocking the car, got into it and drove away, taking your birthday card recorder with them. heh...
The actual tech's not that simple though; as everyone has already pointed out here, the knock sequence changes each time, sort of like the way RSA SecureID cards work. And, it's still utterly useless.
You gotta look at the issue from a different angle. Too many people are looking at this like, "omg, 8192 bit random keys using a salted PIN provided by the user, with anti-hack technology built into the key!" (or whatever). Sure, it sounds cool. It sounds "unbreakable!"
1) Most decent, newer cars already use a random key to unlock the car, using standard RF. Recording someone using their key doesn't matter because the key changes each time. Then (at least on Mercedes), on top of the standard "random" RF code to unlock the doors, the key itself has an IR port on the end that interfaces with the ignition and does all kinds of verification or whatever.
People still steal these cars, and it appears to not be much of a problem. This new system will be no different, because smart people don't attack things from the "impossible" angle unless they have to. They attack from angles that are possible.
From the "brute force" angle: Current vehicles have anti-theft tech in the ignition, etc. Who cares about your key when a thief can just connect wire A and B, short circuit C, and start the car anyway. Sure, they'll need to smash a window or whatever - but who cares! It's not their car. Even if the knowledge to hotwire this system isn't out there right away, it will be eventually - there'l be some disgruntled worker willing to sell out the tech for the right price, or someone willing to reverse-engineer the tech for money, and from there it'll become common knowledge.
From the "high-end" angle: There will be dishonest employees at dealerships that have access to key-generation equipment. There will be AAA employees (or the equivalent) that will need to have access to this technology, for the stupid blonde that destroyed her key at 2am outside of the club, but needs to get into her car RIGHT NOW and can't wait until the dealership opens.
The high-end car thief already has access to connections that will program valid RF/IR keys. That type of car thief will just get access to the technology behind this new "knocking" stuff as well. I'm sure there's going to be "manufacturer" or "dealership" master keys for this system, for those "emergencies".
What I'm saying is, there will be enough people with access to the technology behind this, that some of them will be dishonest and it won't change much. It's just a new approach to the same issue, with the same problems.
I'll be happy to join their "P2P" network, buy the content for a reasponable price, and share pieces of files I download to other users that want the same thing. However, their litigious and moneygrubbing attitude makes me NOT want to share any of my bandwidth with them for free. They would have to offer me a monetary incentive to consider using my bandwidth to P2P it. If they want to be the type of association that is convicted of price fixing, and they want to sue everyone under the sun, I have no intention of helping them by sharing my bandwidth. They will get nothing free from me.
Others will take it much further, crack the DRM on the files, and re-share the files on the free networks right after they're released.
Does Apple sue people like this for stripping off the DRM or whatever? If they do, I guess they don't get hardly as much press, because I never hear about it. Even if they do sue, I doubt they send out blanket subpoenas to everyone and their grandmother. Apple has sold a billion legal song downloads because they make it easy, cheap, and fast to get what you want. The iTunes store doesn't treat their customers like criminals and enemies. Even if they don't say it, I think Apple's DRM is a placebo for the record companies -- easily circumvented. I think they understand the real basic truth to sales: Sell something at a reasonable price, treat your customer nicely, and they're more likely to buy the product instead of steal.
Be nice to your customers. Stop this HDCP, CSS, pricefixing, and lawsuit moneygrubbing and maybe things will work better for you.
No, actually, the key is F2654hD4.
rofl.
Diebold
.
I think I'll buy "C++ Programming for Dummies" and faxes a quick resume to Diebold
MAKE REGION FREE:
The latest shipment of units are not region free. To change to region free mode do this:
1. Press Setup on remote control to access the setup page
3. A secret menu will pop up
2. Enter 9210 on the remote
5. Press Setup on remote again to exit
4. Select 0 to 6 in region code (0 is region free)
USE WITH HDCP:
1. No HDCP issues as there isn't any HDCP!
Thanks to all the previous posters regarding this player. I did not know this product existed, and it seems to do pretty much everything I want it to do. Thanks again.
You know, I had (honestly) forgotten all about "region free" DVD players, etc. But all the MPAA's fuss, and this associated Slashdot article about it, has reminded me that I do want a more capable DVD player. A while back, I had wanted a player that did DivX, so I could fit two or three of my movies onto a DVD for the little ones to destroy (instead of damaging the original $$ DVDs). At that time, the DivX playback on the units pretty much sucked, so I let it go and forgot about it.
Anyway, this article reminded me that there are really good DVD players out there that support region-free, HDCP-free, high-resolution playback at a reasonable price.... and they play back DivX as well. I think I will order one right now, in fact.
How's that for blowing up in your face, MPAA? I'm sure I'm not the only one that is now thinking, "yes, actually, thats exactly what I want. Thanks for the reminder."
Or, to simplify in terms that every male would understand: Shooting yourself in the nuts doesn't always mean you'll lose them. Some really hot chick might even think guys who shoot themselves in the nuts, are sexy. But it's unlikely.
That's kinda funny actually, because my parents do all of the above. They're happy editing and then transferring their old family VHS tapes to DVD. They also buy original Disney and other kiddie movies and burn copies for use, so they have a good original stored away when the grandkids destroy the copy.
The only thing they don't do from that list is Shareaza, they have no desire to break the law. The newest laws make that really difficult though, so I just neglect to tell them that AnyDVD's legality is somewhat questionable. Their heart is in the right place.
Sure, there's influence in there from me and their other kids, but parents are just like anyone else - once you show them a good way of doing something, they'll do it - high tech or otherwise. But without outside influence, I think my parents generation is just happy to utilize the technology, but really have a general lack of interest in "keeping up" unless absolutely necessary. I think they would have used Outlook Express forever, as long as they could receive and send email. (Yes, I switched them to Thunderbird).
Anyway, even given all that, they won't be upgrading anytime soon. I built them a really nice (2gb ram) machine, and setup a proper external backup. The only thing I predict they'll spend money on, computerwise, for the next ten years is replacement hard drives.
So your point is still valid. They have what they want, and unless Vista allows them to do something amazing that THEY want to do, it's really of no interest to them. The simple truth is, techies/gamers look at and enjoy the technology itself, AND what the technology can do for them. Normal users ONLY look at what the technology enables them to do.
We're not even talking about corporate deployments here - do you really think corporations will be in a rush to upgrade? Thats a veritable nightmare for IT staff. The one thing that is nice is the "user account protection", but almost all corporate environments that I've visited either (a) dont give a rats ass (small-time shops), or (b) are full-blown corporate shops that already utilize Active Directory to lock down desktops and permissions. So I don't see Vista being a major draw for them either.
Where is Vista's market?
And? Why would this be a reason to sue? If you don't like Verizon's idea, and it bothers you enough, then use a different provider. Also, who's to say that Verizon would have used the additional bandwidth to fuel their web services?
Yes, of course! Those other companies are especially concerned about Verizon customers, and are willing to spend their own money to sue on the behalf of customers that aren't even theirs and don't make them any money!. So let me ask you - when was the last time you saw a company act so noble and unselfish? Its very rare, of course.
So basically, Verizon has an idea that they think is cool and will possibly make them a lot of money. Their competitors freaked out because they aren't to the point where they can offer the same thing, so they go on the offense and sue.
Seems like there are three ways to make money in America: work, sue, or steal. I think people who file frivolous lawsuits should have to pay the defendants attorney fees, extra court costs for wasting time, and a percentage of what they originally asked for in compensation to the defendant. This "sue everyone for everything" crap is terrible.
PS: I dont think they ever expect to win this case, either. They just want the bad PR to be out there.
So what choices does Verizon have?
a) build a cool idea on their network.
b) pay Sprint or someone to run their video traffic. (rofl)
c) abandon an idea they feel will make decent money.
Look, if their customers don't like it, they will leave Verizon, and Verizon will have wasted a huge amount of money building this thing out and promoting it. Let the freakin market decide what is good or crap - dont freakin sue over every single thing you disagree with. It's disgusting...
I think that's partially true. It is my understanding that, since they are the author of the code -- they can't reverse the existing license on previous versions, but they can change the license for future versions of their software. Excluding parts written or contributed by others, of course.. but I would imagine they could rewrite those parts.
IBM Reports Indicate Linux TCO Is Lower
Um.. you expected something else?
I'm not saying TCO is not lower, it probably is. What I'm saying is, if IBM figured out that Windows actually had a lower TCO, they sure as hell wouldn't be writing a report about it. That's like holding your breath waiting for Microsoft to release a study that said Linux has a lower TCO than Windows. Even if it's true, they'll never publish the report.
Hi. I just bought this brand new Dodge Viper. I'd like to buy an alarm for it. What do you have that's less than $19.95?
If you're spending less than $100 in hardware to protect an important server - then it's really not all that important to you. Really.
If you want to spend less than $100, buy a Linksys firewall/router and put that in front of the server. If you take your servers a little more seriously than that, spend a little more money and build a decent firewall, or at the very least - a pair of cheap firewall boxes that use CARP for redundancy.
Anyway. To get back to your question - I prefer OpenBSD for firewall control - you can pretty much do anything with OpenBSD/pf (thanks for writing pf, Daniel!)
If a web-based control panel is more your thing, you might want to look into IPCop (a linux-based firewall based on SmoothWall). IPCop is pretty, free, and reasonably capable. PFSense is still building up, but it also has a web interface. PFSense is based on FreeBSD.
Hope it helps. -J