The OP doesn't say but probably doesn't have a cable modem, he more likely has ADSL from the phone company.
I have fought those problems with VOIP and a poor DSL line. With a WRT54G and that optional firmware, and it was an abject failure. We couldn't solve the ADSL line problems at our end.
The solution is probably going to be calling his provider and demanding they give him the speed he is paying for, and if he's not paying for enough speed he may have to pay for more line speed.
The trouble with DSL is it is not guaranteed bandwidth. It can completely stop working for more than enough time to screw up VOIP and
there is likely nothing he can do about it.
Cable modem service is typically enough faster than ADSL from the phone company he is much less likely to have these sort of problems, unless maybe his provider has installed Sandvine traffic management equipment and that is screwing him up detecting his P2P usage and throttling his circuit. I don't know if Sandvine equipment throttles the whole circuit or not. Does it? Does anyone know?
The funny thing is you would never have these problems on an ISDN circuit, which though slow by todays bursty ADSL standards is guaranteed bandwidth, just like that corporate OC-48 you have at work. You get two FM radio quality voice channels on ISDN and it does work, guaranteed. If not they *have* to fix it.
Whereas on ADSL they just say "sorry bub". Then they maybe say "If you got your VOIP from us I bet it would work". But only because in that case they would *have* to fix it. Evil telcos, to be sure.
That's not even the issue.
What was going on was you would do a whois at networksolutions.com, and the domain you checked would be found to be not taken, meaning you can register it now if you want. And likely if you did register it right then you wouldn't notice anything amiss, the registration would go through and you would then own that domain. But if you didn't take it right then and there and pay your bill networksolutions would register it to themselves for the 5 free days, and you could *only* register it through them, not through any other registrar.
And they would likely let anyone else register it through them during that period. They got that "tasting" period for free.
Now it would cost them 20 measly cents. That's the only difference with this proposed? ICANN policy.
My opinion? Registrars should be prohibited from speculating in domain names. Their special position gives them special privileges that others don't have. So they shouldn't be able to traffic in domain names. If they want to frontrun domain names they should pay $2000 each.
If they want to speculate in domain names they should give up their registrar business.
From last weeks Ed Foster column, about Barracuda
on
UCITA By the Back Door
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· Score: 1
the spokesperson sent me this sample of a letter sent by Barracuda sales executives whenever they are made aware of a seller on eBay elsewhere offering used device for sale:
"Please know that any resale of used Barracuda Networks equipment is unauthorized and your customer will be unable to receive Energize Updates or even use the products."
It's unclear from that statement whether Barracuda intends to or has the ability to remotely disable one of their Spam Firewalls that has been resold, but the insinuation is there.
Yes, there are. No contract, prepaid, carrier locked, dramatically more expensive to use.
Clearly not the same as a cellphone with competitive rates. Not if you use it much that is.
don't like termination fees? don't sign a contract agreeing to pay them if you leave. duh. it's not like you have some inalienable god-given right to a cell phone. hence the contract.
Yea, well, the cellular companies and their contracts, all done on the phone, little except perhaps your original one done in writing. Like the parent said, they renewed his contract "without his knowledge". They do that all the time.
Then later they try to stick you with termination charges even though your contract might have been over for *years*. I know lots of people they have tried this on.
i don't think this should apply to dropping service if the cell carrier isn't holding up their end of the bargain (crappy coverage, non-functioning hardware, refusal to address issues, etc) - then, by all means, the customer should have full right to leave without ANY penalty. but if the customer is leaving because they want the sweet phone on the other network, or just because they feel like it...maybe they should have thought of that before signing.
That's called merchantability. The service they provide has to meet normal standards or you have the right to cancel your contract, and you should. It's actually quite easy since people have lots of complaints about cellular service. A friend of mine had 11 Verizon windows mobile based phones in 12 months. They kept sending him a new one when he had trouble. Obviously that was either not the problem or they couldn't fix it. But with evidence of 11 phone replacements in 12 months his contract is pretty much toast.
I believe in having all cellphone carriers in breech of contract as soon as possible. I did it to my current carrier. I told them what problems I had and how long they had to address them, or I was canceling my contract with them. Sent them certified mail. They called me and said "I can't absolve you of your contract. My response, "I don't need you to, I already canceled it".
Nothing happened, I went on to use their service until the contract would have expired normally. But they would have gotten nowhere if I had dumped them, because I have certified mail and contemporaneous notes. That's all it takes. I'd have just said "See you guys in court". As long as I have letters to them outlining the complaints and no evidence they have addressed them, well, you just DON'T have to put up with service deficiencies, not in the US. Things have to meet usability standards. It's the law.
One other little known fact. If the carrier changes anything salient about their service or their contract during your contract and you don't agree, you have 30 days to cancel without penalty. Verizon and Tmobile both changed their text messaging rates a couple years ago, and if you knew you could cancel. They won't tell you, they keep it quiet. And there is nothing they can do about it. It's right in the contract, as required by law.
Can you imagine? Every Verizon customer, able to cancel their contract without penalty? Why wouldn't you take that opportunity, for free?
What, you can't do that in the US? In Europe we can walk into any supermarket and walk out with a contract free phone 5 minutes later. They're not free but they're fairly cheap - competition keeps the prices down.
Essentially you cannot, except for prepaid phones.
You can't buy any phone like that to use on Verizon or Sprint (CDMA).
You *can* buy a cheap ($20) Tmobile GSM Prepaid phone that you can then use on a Tmobile regular plan if you like by discarding the prepaid SIM that comes with it.
There are some cheap ATT Gophone GSM prepaid phones that you can likely stick your regular ATT SIM in and just use.
But it's hardly the competitive market we'd like to see.
Ya know, I was on Tmobile a couple years ago. I had my phone unlocked.
I called up AT&T Cingular, went into their stores, went online.
I told them I had my own phone and I wanted service from them with no contract.
There was no way to get that from them. It was impossible. If I ported my number, got a new number, whatever. There was a 2 year contract.
I asked "Why, not like you are giving me a subsidized phone?" They had no answer. There was no way to establish service with ATT without a 2 year contract.
Nope. It couldn't be done.
I was told that on the phone, by email and in person.
The idea the contract is *just to pay for the free phone* is just preposterous, at least at the time. Maybe it's different now.
Hopefully after the government gets done it *will* be possible to get cellular service with no equipment purchase, no free equipment and no contract. It should be possible, shouldn't it?
One thing I did find out about ATT post-IPhone.
The way to get an IPhone is to go into the ATT store, get a free phone and a new contract.
After that buy your IPhone. There is no further 2 year contract for you buying the IPhone, it's the same.
So you DO get a free Samsung Blackjack or whatever. For absolutely nothing.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. In Europe when you want a new phone you have to shell out several hundred dollars, there are no free phones or discounts. The phone companies here give them away for free*.
But how does the cost of the service compare between europe and the US?
I bet it's lots less in europe than it has been here. Or until just recently.
Here in the US they are essentially charging us monthly for the *free* phone, since no phone is really free.
The free phones are just a mechanism to keep you signed up for long contracts. The carriers keep a stranglehold on the equipment to keep you having to either pay an outlandish price for a phone with no contract or to sign up for a new contract to get it free or at a pretty small discount.
I would guess the free phones and other sales expenses, kickbacks, etc. are costing us at least 20% of our monthly bill, and after two years if you didn't get another free phone, they don't lower your bill. They keep the extra money.
If there were no cancelation fees then the company would have no way to make up its initial gift of a several hundred dollar phone to you if you decided to stop paying the monthly fee for it.
If the FCC strikes down cancelation fees then the price of phones will suddenly increase several hundred bucks. This isn't necessarily a good thing for the market since almost everyone I know tends to go for the free phone or the 50 dollar phone when getting a new plan - no one is willing to spend several hundred dollars. At least, not in a lump sum up front.
The best thing to happen is to have the cellular carriers not sell you or give you your phone at all!
You could then buy it in a bubble package at Walmart.
Motorola, Samsung, LG, Nokia would have sales reps calling on Walmart, Target and other retailers selling them phones in huge volume to sell us without any bundling, and there would then be significant competition.
As it is now the cellphone manufacturers have only a few customers, the carriers.
How much do you really think it costs Motorola to make a free phone at a plant in Mexico? $4-$6 for the really cheap ones that are given out free. Maybe $25 for the really fancy ones.
As usual the problem can be solved by letting market forces work, getting cellphone manufacturers duking it out to sell you your phone through regular retailers, and having cellphone carriers duking it out to sell you your service. And you can then use whatever phone you want.
One GOOD thing that has happened in the last year, the IPHONE came out.
Until then cellphone manufacturers were making phones the *carriers* wanted.
Now, we are finally getting phones that *we* want. But ATT was dragged kicking and screaming to the IPHONE.
Verizon wouldn't make the deal and give up the control. They lose!
The techniques Tarnovski used to burn the top off with acid is failure analysis stuff.
I knew a guy who worked at a chip manufacturer and that's what he did. Failure analysis.
Burn the top of the chip off with what he called "formic acid" (I think, this was over 20 years ago) which "didn't hurt the chip".
They would then look at it under a microscope and try to determine what had failed.
The second microscope Tarnovsky was using looked to be a wire bonder.
It welds wires on by hand, with a pantograph type positioner.
So you can connect the chip to the leads, for example in the package, common for eproms. You can see the little leads in the window of older eproms.
But hackers can also use those to reconnect the last link of a programmable chip like a PAL that has had the security fuses blown after programming. Then you can just read the program out of the chip. OOPS, there goes that programmable security.
I had a chance to get one of those once, but it was a big one. Too big for me.
The little tabletop one in the video would be neat. I would grab one of those if it ever presented itself.
Tarnovski used that wire bonder to grab the signals off the chip internally, where they are actually running.
Those smartcards are likely a serial device, but if you can get back to where the data bus is parallel maybe that is before the inherent security.
The guy is obviously good. Wonder if he has a college degree?
We've done 5 mile links with a pair of *old* wallmount AT&T Wavelan bridges and proper antennas on 915 Mhz. Those units were 400mw.
Ticking along for years. 2 MBPS, faster than T1 speed. And proprietary FHSS, no freeloaders. Heh.
You have to get the antenna up above the fresnel effect and any obstructions at the frequency in use, about 60' for 915 Mhz, more like 30' for 2.4 Ghz. Which is why 2.4 Ghz is easier. I would have no problem running that link at either frequency. It'll work fine.
You can do it. No problems at all.
Give good attention to the antennas, that's what you need to get it to work.
File-sharing traffic continues to dominate service provider networks despite earlier suggestions that Peer-to-Peer (P2P) applications would diminish with emerging online trends and industry pressure. This popular technology has become a mass-market application and remains a key driver for broadband adoption in today's competitive market.
The implication for service providers is clear: file-sharing will continue to consume bandwidth and stress both the access network and Internet transit links. Proactive steps are needed to manage these immense costs and with broader subscriber usage, an intelligent approach to managing P2P traffic that preserves the online experience must be considered
Sandvine's Intelligent Traffic Management solution offers the widest range of policy management options to significantly reduce transit bandwidth costs and CAPEX spending on access networks. Service providers can adopt new intelligent techniques or more traditional approaches depending on their business environment.
With Sandrine's subscriber-friendly solutions, service providers can achieve cost savings while increasing customer loyalty.
Not true at all.
It's a DVR, after all. I often put thing in my record list 2 weeks ahead. And admittedly I never order PPV.
But there is nothing whatsoever stopping me from putting a new PPV show on my record list 2 weeks before it shows. I do that often with other shows, every day in fact. But now I *can't* since if I were to order a PPV in advance it would be erased 24 hours hence.
Even if I haven't yet watched it. That is what is not legitimate.
At the risk of getting flamed into oblivion by the "DRM BAAAAD" crowd... surely if you PPV a movie, you're paying for the right to watch it once. Like going to the cinema - if you want to see it again, you buy another ticket.
But that's not what the message said. It said I have 24 hours to watch it, after which I won't be able to watch it. They are going to delete it.
It's a DVR, remember. I can set it to record a movie that won't be showing for 2 weeks (and I DO).
But the message says they are going to delete it in 24 hours whether I have watched it or not. That's what's not right, not legitimate at all.
What if I'm not home? On vacation? Working overtime?
Compare this to getting a video from Blockbuster or Netflix. You can watch it as many times as you like until you send it back, if you ever do. You can show it to others, let them watch it, in the case of a DVD you can let them take it home and watch it.
Certainly not the same as getting a PPV movie, storing it on the HDD locally in your DVR, and having it deleted remotely by someone else.
Now that's bad DRM.
A ton of the patents are also held by ReplayTV, which came out just before Tivo. Replay was recently purchased by Direct TV, which is an interesting move since Replay and Tivo cross licensed their patents since neither one could produce a box without infringing on the other's patents.
I also like the interface on my Replay boxes, unfortunately the company stopped making their set-top boxes and never addressed HD, but the features were great (and even their early models had the 8 second skip back and 30 second skip forward).
Directv likely bought the ReplayTV IP to get the patents as a shield against such litigation from Tivo. Smart. Very smart.
I also have ReplayTV. I have to say I don't much care for the UI, but it's a lot better than the thing in the new Directv HD DVR I have, an HR20.
I used to have the first DVR that Directv had, the UltimateTV from Microsoft. Now, that I did like, I think it had the best and most intuitive and fast UI of them all, and had dual tuners from the start. Sadly that is a dead product. Mine eventually failed. I have heard from Directv reps that the people who still have those won't give them up without a fight. No HD, though. Sad.
This is related, in some way.
I have a crappy, buggy Directv HR20 HD DVR. I received a message a couple days ago.
Effective April 15, 2008, DVR recordings of PPV movies will be available for 24 hours of unlimited viewing after purchase. Major movie studios have required that satellite and cable providers alike may no longer allow their customers to view these recordings for longer than 24 hours. During the 24 hour viewing period, you will continue to enjoy all of your DVR features such as pause and rewind.
It seems if I were to record a PPV movie (I don't, I don't like their PPV prices) I now have only one day to watch it before they are going to remotely erase it from my DVR.
Unbelievable.
Now there's DRM for ya!
They love to moan (especially ATT) about how they can't afford fiber, when the truth is they are too busy rubbing our billions of tax dollars all over their fat sweaty bodies
We need either a carrot or a stick for the telcos in this damn country.
How about this: If the incumbent telco doesn't provide a certain level of service that would be required for them to keep their easements they lose them. (easements are the utility right of ways they and the electric and gas utilities were essentially given gratis, when we the public hired them to build out the utility infrastructure years ago.)
That was when they were all regulated utilities, operating "in the public interest", guaranteed a certain ROI in exchange for their rates being capped by the PUC.
They were guaranteed they would never ever lose money. Guaranteed freedom from any competition whatsoever. Great guarantees, huh?
Course now that they are giant companies they want to take the utility infrastructure that they were paid by US, the ratepayers to build, that is there in the easements on all our property that they were given for free, and charge everyone to use it, even though it's actually OURS, not theirs.
Ridiculous.
In Orange County, CA there are literally hundreds of boxes with AT&T on them being installed on the sides of streets. They are working on them continuously. I assume that is FIOS going in, and they are really working hard, it's *everywhere*.
After the way AT&T whined about the condition of their copper plant and how they couldn't give us DSL during the DSL rollout (because they were too cheap to fix it), this is a giant change. It may have to do with the UVERSE TV rollout I have been getting bill inserts about.
Course since it IS AT&T it will probably have too many problems and gotchas, and I will likely be trapped on DSL for the time being, since I have a grandfathered static IP.
I (like others I'm sure, but maybe not so many of us these days) run a mail/web server from home. I just use it for personal mail. I have SPF and rDNS set up, I play by all the rules. Why block me because I use ADSL at home with a static IP ?
But AT&T gives out static blocks with that ADSL -ish rDNS. I'm haven't heard of them supporting any other rDNS. Do they? How did you get rDNS set up?
Actually I agree with you, I should have said "dynamic residential blocks". Most residential users have dynamic IPs with rDNS in the form *.adsl.isp.net and it's safe to assume these can be blocked. If you're running an MTA using a static IP with a valid rDNS entry (that doesn't look like a dynamic), there's absolutely no problem.
It's not safe at all.
I have a number of such IPs from AT&T, Some I have had since 1999.
Clearly not a source of spam, and clearly not identifiable as static numbers by the rDNS.
There's no really good solution except for blocking actual spam source IPs, and there are plenty of good ways to do that.
The spamcop blocklist is quite accurate and should have few false positives.
The CBL.abuseat.org blocklist only covers bot-like activity. It's not perfect but it should have *no* false positives, an important factor for business use.
BTW, the CBL works by "very large spamtraps" and has a short TTL. So if spam hits the spamtraps an IP becomes listed as a spam source. If spam keeps hitting the spamtraps the TTL is reset each time. If the spam stops it falls off, pretty quickly. Which explains the lack of false positives.
*LOTS*
There are many so called dynamic ranges that have hunks permanently assigned.
We got a circuit from AT&T last month. 5 ADSL IPs, the irritating "sticky ips" they give out.
I put mail, web, FTP on those IPs. That's why we got them. We're paying for them.
If you look at the rDNS you would think they are dynamic. But they're not at all.
I would guess they are listed on most of those blackhole lists as dynamic, too.
They likely *were* dynamic until we got them.
So count on the indiscriminate blocking of so called dynamic ranges resulting in significant false positives.
Now, if you really want to block bot-like activity, there is a blackhole list that is specifically maintained to do that, CBL.abuseat.org.
That seems to have no false positives, the way it's designed it should have *none*. It's safe for business use.
I will allow you to track it and to use it in house, but the moment a third party touches it or you attempt to sell it, I want a share of the profits.
Also, if you make me pay a subscription fee (or like slashdot, if I was to choose to), and you STILL sell want to sell my data, I also want a share of the profits.
Your position is too easy. Mine is more like "I charge $4600 a month to allow such tracking, if you don't agree and won't pay then your only recourse is don't track me at all."
As to content providers wanting such tracking in exchange for their content, there are *plenty* of websites I won't read. Like most that use flash or obnoxious content. Their little corners of the internet will be ghost towns as far as I'm concerned. Wait for them to come crawling for the traffic. Without traffic they make no money. We all know it too.
One thing, I had some dealings recently with a guy who worked at a place that manufactures DVDs. A big factory place.
They have HD DVD manufacturing capability, which are made essentially on their old equipment. The same equipment that makes regular DVDs.
Blu Ray? A whole, new, multi million dollar system that could only make Blu Ray, and that's it.
What makes this troll particularly disgusting (for the benefit of the non-RTFA'ers) is that it is based upon patents originally owned by AT&T which had agreed to license the patents to all for Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms. The patents got bought up by this troll company which is now refusing to honor those terms. If this is allowed to stand, then no company can ever rely on FRAND as a business assurance. Any patented process could get sold to an IP management company and be fair game for extortion.
What's happened now is this: One company, AT&T, apparently offered certain favorable terms essentially gratis to anyone who wanted to use their technology.
This encumbered the patents to the extent others relied on that.
All these other companies RELIED on that to run their businesses. These other companies made their entire businesses based on that offer.
The litigation will consider whether you can "take it back" or not.
I would say no, you can't "take it back".
It's not really fair for Rembrandtip to come back and want to change the terms of the offer, saying "I own the patent now, and I want more".
This after millions had been spent developing the technology by perhaps dozens of companies. Hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment made and sold in reliance on AT&T's offer.
In the case of the ATSC broadcast technology the federal government has now forced *everyone* to go to that technology.
They wouldn't have done that if the technology somehow was unavailable.
And Rembrandtip would not have bought and paid for those patents if they were essentially encumbered by AT&T offering those favorable terms to all comers, years ago. That's Rembrandtip's argument. That they are not bound by AT&T's offer. I would guess they are bound by it.
I am hoping Rembrandtip got screwed on those patents, and they are not worth much at all since AT&T essentially gave them all away and others relied on that fact.
But ICANN is an organization that can't detect clear ethical violations and conflicts of interests even when it's plain for any idiot to see and recognize.
When it gets through to ICANN that they are supposed to be preventing such conflicts and they actually start doing what they are charged to do, this will all stop.
ICANN is likely dominated by the very companies they are charged with regulating.
Oh hell, put me in charge of ICANN and this will all stop right away. They can do domain tasting, for a $150 fee. They can look through the whois queries for $90 each. Selling domain names you yourself registered while acting as a registrar? Fine, the fee for that is $1100. Heh.
' If you check for availability of a website and someone sees you do it and they reserve it before you, it's fair play."
The solution to all this is for registrars to be prohibited from selling domain names, they should only be in the business of providing their "clerical" service, registering your domain name and putting your numbers in the root nameservers.
By their buying and selling domain names themselves they have created a giant conflict of interest.
I don't say they shouldn't be able to buy and sell domains, just not while they are a registrar.
They should give up their registrar business, or only own the domain name they operate under. And no others.
Registrars have a special position, they have access and knowledge that others do not.
Like the real estate agent mentioned in the parent- he has knowledge he gains due to his position that professional ethics prohibit his using for his own gain.
Similarly registrars have knowledge that others do not, and by their using it for gain they are cheating everyone who is not in their special position. Unfortunately they have no ethics so they have no problem using their special position to screw everyone else.
It's a conflict of interest.
We need to give them ethics by prohibiting their trading in the commodity they have their special position in. Domain names.
Slashdot Mirror
The OP doesn't say but probably doesn't have a cable modem, he more likely has ADSL from the phone company.
I have fought those problems with VOIP and a poor DSL line. With a WRT54G and that optional firmware, and it was an abject failure. We couldn't solve the ADSL line problems at our end.
The solution is probably going to be calling his provider and demanding they give him the speed he is paying for, and if he's not paying for enough speed he may have to pay for more line speed.
The trouble with DSL is it is not guaranteed bandwidth. It can completely stop working for more than enough time to screw up VOIP and there is likely nothing he can do about it.
Cable modem service is typically enough faster than ADSL from the phone company he is much less likely to have these sort of problems, unless maybe his provider has installed Sandvine traffic management equipment and that is screwing him up detecting his P2P usage and throttling his circuit. I don't know if Sandvine equipment throttles the whole circuit or not. Does it? Does anyone know?
The funny thing is you would never have these problems on an ISDN circuit, which though slow by todays bursty ADSL standards is guaranteed bandwidth, just like that corporate OC-48 you have at work. You get two FM radio quality voice channels on ISDN and it does work, guaranteed. If not they *have* to fix it.
Whereas on ADSL they just say "sorry bub". Then they maybe say "If you got your VOIP from us I bet it would work". But only because in that case they would *have* to fix it. Evil telcos, to be sure.
That's not even the issue.
What was going on was you would do a whois at networksolutions.com, and the domain you checked would be found to be not taken, meaning you can register it now if you want. And likely if you did register it right then you wouldn't notice anything amiss, the registration would go through and you would then own that domain.
But if you didn't take it right then and there and pay your bill networksolutions would register it to themselves for the 5 free days, and you could *only* register it through them, not through any other registrar.
And they would likely let anyone else register it through them during that period. They got that "tasting" period for free.
Now it would cost them 20 measly cents. That's the only difference with this proposed? ICANN policy.
My opinion? Registrars should be prohibited from speculating in domain names. Their special position gives them special privileges that others don't have. So they shouldn't be able to traffic in domain names. If they want to frontrun domain names they should pay $2000 each.
If they want to speculate in domain names they should give up their registrar business.
http://www.gripe2ed.com/scoop/story/2008/6/3/0529/41400
It's unclear from that statement whether Barracuda intends to or has the ability to remotely disable one of their Spam Firewalls that has been resold, but the insinuation is there.
Yes, there are. No contract, prepaid, carrier locked, dramatically more expensive to use.
Clearly not the same as a cellphone with competitive rates. Not if you use it much that is.
Then later they try to stick you with termination charges even though your contract might have been over for *years*. I know lots of people they have tried this on. That's called merchantability. The service they provide has to meet normal standards or you have the right to cancel your contract, and you should. It's actually quite easy since people have lots of complaints about cellular service. A friend of mine had 11 Verizon windows mobile based phones in 12 months. They kept sending him a new one when he had trouble. Obviously that was either not the problem or they couldn't fix it. But with evidence of 11 phone replacements in 12 months his contract is pretty much toast.
I believe in having all cellphone carriers in breech of contract as soon as possible. I did it to my current carrier. I told them what problems I had and how long they had to address them, or I was canceling my contract with them. Sent them certified mail. They called me and said "I can't absolve you of your contract. My response, "I don't need you to, I already canceled it".
Nothing happened, I went on to use their service until the contract would have expired normally. But they would have gotten nowhere if I had dumped them, because I have certified mail and contemporaneous notes. That's all it takes. I'd have just said "See you guys in court". As long as I have letters to them outlining the complaints and no evidence they have addressed them, well, you just DON'T have to put up with service deficiencies, not in the US. Things have to meet usability standards. It's the law.
One other little known fact. If the carrier changes anything salient about their service or their contract during your contract and you don't agree, you have 30 days to cancel without penalty. Verizon and Tmobile both changed their text messaging rates a couple years ago, and if you knew you could cancel. They won't tell you, they keep it quiet. And there is nothing they can do about it. It's right in the contract, as required by law.
Can you imagine? Every Verizon customer, able to cancel their contract without penalty? Why wouldn't you take that opportunity, for free?
You can't buy any phone like that to use on Verizon or Sprint (CDMA).
You *can* buy a cheap ($20) Tmobile GSM Prepaid phone that you can then use on a Tmobile regular plan if you like by discarding the prepaid SIM that comes with it.
There are some cheap ATT Gophone GSM prepaid phones that you can likely stick your regular ATT SIM in and just use.
But it's hardly the competitive market we'd like to see.
Ya know, I was on Tmobile a couple years ago. I had my phone unlocked.
I called up AT&T Cingular, went into their stores, went online.
I told them I had my own phone and I wanted service from them with no contract.
There was no way to get that from them. It was impossible. If I ported my number, got a new number, whatever.
There was a 2 year contract.
I asked "Why, not like you are giving me a subsidized phone?" They had no answer.
There was no way to establish service with ATT without a 2 year contract.
Nope. It couldn't be done.
I was told that on the phone, by email and in person.
The idea the contract is *just to pay for the free phone* is just preposterous, at least at the time. Maybe it's different now.
Hopefully after the government gets done it *will* be possible to get cellular service with no equipment purchase, no free equipment and no contract. It should be possible, shouldn't it?
One thing I did find out about ATT post-IPhone.
The way to get an IPhone is to go into the ATT store, get a free phone and a new contract.
After that buy your IPhone. There is no further 2 year contract for you buying the IPhone, it's the same.
So you DO get a free Samsung Blackjack or whatever. For absolutely nothing.
I bet it's lots less in europe than it has been here. Or until just recently.
Here in the US they are essentially charging us monthly for the *free* phone, since no phone is really free.
The free phones are just a mechanism to keep you signed up for long contracts. The carriers keep a stranglehold on the equipment to keep you having to either pay an outlandish price for a phone with no contract or to sign up for a new contract to get it free or at a pretty small discount.
I would guess the free phones and other sales expenses, kickbacks, etc. are costing us at least 20% of our monthly bill, and after two years if you didn't get another free phone, they don't lower your bill. They keep the extra money.
The best thing to happen is to have the cellular carriers not sell you or give you your phone at all!
You could then buy it in a bubble package at Walmart.
Motorola, Samsung, LG, Nokia would have sales reps calling on Walmart, Target and other retailers selling them phones in huge volume to sell us without any bundling, and there would then be significant competition.
As it is now the cellphone manufacturers have only a few customers, the carriers.
How much do you really think it costs Motorola to make a free phone at a plant in Mexico? $4-$6 for the really cheap ones that are given out free. Maybe $25 for the really fancy ones.
As usual the problem can be solved by letting market forces work, getting cellphone manufacturers duking it out to sell you your phone through regular retailers, and having cellphone carriers duking it out to sell you your service. And you can then use whatever phone you want.
One GOOD thing that has happened in the last year, the IPHONE came out.
Until then cellphone manufacturers were making phones the *carriers* wanted.
Now, we are finally getting phones that *we* want.
But ATT was dragged kicking and screaming to the IPHONE.
Verizon wouldn't make the deal and give up the control. They lose!
The techniques Tarnovski used to burn the top off with acid is failure analysis stuff.
I knew a guy who worked at a chip manufacturer and that's what he did. Failure analysis.
Burn the top of the chip off with what he called "formic acid" (I think, this was over 20 years ago) which "didn't hurt the chip".
They would then look at it under a microscope and try to determine what had failed.
The second microscope Tarnovsky was using looked to be a wire bonder.
It welds wires on by hand, with a pantograph type positioner.
So you can connect the chip to the leads, for example in the package, common for eproms. You can see the little leads in the window of older eproms.
But hackers can also use those to reconnect the last link of a programmable chip like a PAL that has had the security fuses blown after programming. Then you can just read the program out of the chip. OOPS, there goes that programmable security.
I had a chance to get one of those once, but it was a big one. Too big for me.
The little tabletop one in the video would be neat. I would grab one of those if it ever presented itself.
Tarnovski used that wire bonder to grab the signals off the chip internally, where they are actually running.
Those smartcards are likely a serial device, but if you can get back to where the data bus is parallel maybe that is before the inherent security.
The guy is obviously good. Wonder if he has a college degree?
We've done 5 mile links with a pair of *old* wallmount AT&T Wavelan bridges and proper antennas on 915 Mhz. Those units were 400mw.
Ticking along for years. 2 MBPS, faster than T1 speed. And proprietary FHSS, no freeloaders. Heh.
You have to get the antenna up above the fresnel effect and any obstructions at the frequency in use, about 60' for 915 Mhz, more like 30' for 2.4 Ghz. Which is why 2.4 Ghz is easier. I would have no problem running that link at either frequency. It'll work fine.
You can do it. No problems at all.
Give good attention to the antennas, that's what you need to get it to work.
That site is badly out of date and cannot be relied on.
Comcast No (does not limit BitTorrent bandwidth)
Which they clearly have bought Sandvine.com equipment specifically to do.
Not true at all.
It's a DVR, after all. I often put thing in my record list 2 weeks ahead. And admittedly I never order PPV.
But there is nothing whatsoever stopping me from putting a new PPV show on my record list 2 weeks before it shows.
I do that often with other shows, every day in fact. But now I *can't* since if I were to order a PPV in advance it would be erased 24 hours hence.
Even if I haven't yet watched it. That is what is not legitimate.
It's a DVR, remember. I can set it to record a movie that won't be showing for 2 weeks (and I DO).
But the message says they are going to delete it in 24 hours whether I have watched it or not. That's what's not right, not legitimate at all.
What if I'm not home? On vacation? Working overtime?
Compare this to getting a video from Blockbuster or Netflix. You can watch it as many times as you like until you send it back, if you ever do. You can show it to others, let them watch it, in the case of a DVD you can let them take it home and watch it.
Certainly not the same as getting a PPV movie, storing it on the HDD locally in your DVR, and having it deleted remotely by someone else.
Now that's bad DRM.
I also have ReplayTV. I have to say I don't much care for the UI, but it's a lot better than the thing in the new Directv HD DVR I have, an HR20.
I used to have the first DVR that Directv had, the UltimateTV from Microsoft. Now, that I did like, I think it had the best and most intuitive and fast UI of them all, and had dual tuners from the start. Sadly that is a dead product. Mine eventually failed. I have heard from Directv reps that the people who still have those won't give them up without a fight. No HD, though. Sad.
I have a crappy, buggy Directv HR20 HD DVR. I received a message a couple days ago. It seems if I were to record a PPV movie (I don't, I don't like their PPV prices) I now have only one day to watch it before they are going to remotely erase it from my DVR.
Unbelievable.
Now there's DRM for ya!
That was when they were all regulated utilities, operating "in the public interest", guaranteed a certain ROI in exchange for their rates being capped by the PUC.
They were guaranteed they would never ever lose money. Guaranteed freedom from any competition whatsoever. Great guarantees, huh?
Course now that they are giant companies they want to take the utility infrastructure that they were paid by US, the ratepayers to build, that is there in the easements on all our property that they were given for free, and charge everyone to use it, even though it's actually OURS, not theirs.
Ridiculous.
In Orange County, CA there are literally hundreds of boxes with AT&T on them being installed on the sides of streets. They are working on them continuously. I assume that is FIOS going in, and they are really working hard, it's *everywhere*.
After the way AT&T whined about the condition of their copper plant and how they couldn't give us DSL during the DSL rollout (because they were too cheap to fix it), this is a giant change. It may have to do with the UVERSE TV rollout I have been getting bill inserts about.
Course since it IS AT&T it will probably have too many problems and gotchas, and I will likely be trapped on DSL for the time being, since I have a grandfathered static IP.
It's not safe at all.
I have a number of such IPs from AT&T, Some I have had since 1999.
Clearly not a source of spam, and clearly not identifiable as static numbers by the rDNS.
There's no really good solution except for blocking actual spam source IPs, and there are plenty of good ways to do that.
The spamcop blocklist is quite accurate and should have few false positives.
The CBL.abuseat.org blocklist only covers bot-like activity. It's not perfect but it should have *no* false positives, an important factor for business use.
BTW, the CBL works by "very large spamtraps" and has a short TTL. So if spam hits the spamtraps an IP becomes listed as a spam source. If spam keeps hitting the spamtraps the TTL is reset each time. If the spam stops it falls off, pretty quickly. Which explains the lack of false positives.
There are many so called dynamic ranges that have hunks permanently assigned.
We got a circuit from AT&T last month. 5 ADSL IPs, the irritating "sticky ips" they give out.
I put mail, web, FTP on those IPs. That's why we got them. We're paying for them.
If you look at the rDNS you would think they are dynamic. But they're not at all.
I would guess they are listed on most of those blackhole lists as dynamic, too.
They likely *were* dynamic until we got them.
So count on the indiscriminate blocking of so called dynamic ranges resulting in significant false positives.
Now, if you really want to block bot-like activity, there is a blackhole list that is specifically maintained to do that, CBL.abuseat.org.
That seems to have no false positives, the way it's designed it should have *none*. It's safe for business use.
As to content providers wanting such tracking in exchange for their content, there are *plenty* of websites I won't read. Like most that use flash or obnoxious content. Their little corners of the internet will be ghost towns as far as I'm concerned. Wait for them to come crawling for the traffic. Without traffic they make no money. We all know it too.
They need us much more than we need them.
One thing, I had some dealings recently with a guy who worked at a place that manufactures DVDs. A big factory place.
They have HD DVD manufacturing capability, which are made essentially on their old equipment. The same equipment that makes regular DVDs.
Blu Ray? A whole, new, multi million dollar system that could only make Blu Ray, and that's it.
Hardly a good technology if true. Wasteful.
What's happened now is this: One company, AT&T, apparently offered certain favorable terms essentially gratis to anyone who wanted to use their technology.
This encumbered the patents to the extent others relied on that.
All these other companies RELIED on that to run their businesses.
These other companies made their entire businesses based on that offer.
The litigation will consider whether you can "take it back" or not.
I would say no, you can't "take it back".
It's not really fair for Rembrandtip to come back and want to change the terms of the offer, saying "I own the patent now, and I want more".
This after millions had been spent developing the technology by perhaps dozens of companies. Hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment made and sold in reliance on AT&T's offer.
In the case of the ATSC broadcast technology the federal government has now forced *everyone* to go to that technology.
They wouldn't have done that if the technology somehow was unavailable.
And Rembrandtip would not have bought and paid for those patents if they were essentially encumbered by AT&T offering those favorable terms to all comers, years ago. That's Rembrandtip's argument. That they are not bound by AT&T's offer. I would guess they are bound by it.
I am hoping Rembrandtip got screwed on those patents, and they are not worth much at all since AT&T essentially gave them all away and others relied on that fact.
That is what will be litigated.
But ICANN is an organization that can't detect clear ethical violations and conflicts of interests even when it's plain for any idiot to see and recognize.
When it gets through to ICANN that they are supposed to be preventing such conflicts and they actually start doing what they are charged to do, this will all stop.
ICANN is likely dominated by the very companies they are charged with regulating.
Oh hell, put me in charge of ICANN and this will all stop right away. They can do domain tasting, for a $150 fee. They can look through the whois queries for $90 each. Selling domain names you yourself registered while acting as a registrar? Fine, the fee for that is $1100. Heh.
' If you check for availability of a website and someone sees you do it and they reserve it before you, it's fair play."
The solution to all this is for registrars to be prohibited from selling domain names, they should only be in the business of providing their "clerical" service, registering your domain name and putting your numbers in the root nameservers.
By their buying and selling domain names themselves they have created a giant conflict of interest.
I don't say they shouldn't be able to buy and sell domains, just not while they are a registrar.
They should give up their registrar business, or only own the domain name they operate under. And no others.
Registrars have a special position, they have access and knowledge that others do not.
Like the real estate agent mentioned in the parent- he has knowledge he gains due to his position that professional ethics prohibit his using for his own gain.
Similarly registrars have knowledge that others do not, and by their using it for gain they are cheating everyone who is not in their special position. Unfortunately they have no ethics so they have no problem using their special position to screw everyone else.
It's a conflict of interest.
We need to give them ethics by prohibiting their trading in the commodity they have their special position in. Domain names.