You make good points, but I'll also disagree with you on one area. Having a camera can be a detriment, because there are work environments where one is allowed to have a cell phone, but not one with a camera. Thus the phone with a camera gets left in a locker, at home, in a car, or in some other place where it cannot be used in a pinch, and the camera without the unneeded camera is on your person and available. A small point, but still it is relevant to quite a few people.
This I did notice in the OP. The problem is, is there really choice in the broadband market here? For the most part, if you are lucky, you have The cable company, and you have the TelCo's DSL, along with expensive alternatives like Satellite. If you are truly lucky, there are some DSL resellers, Covad for example. But when compared to what others have posted about the choices overseas where this practice is more common, there is not a reasonable amount of choice for most broadband users. If the Cable Company implements this and you are > 15K feet from a DSL capable C/O, you are basically SOL.
There is no guarantee that these companies will "plow" profits into improving their infrastructure. I would argue that its highly questionable that they will, as Time Warner is a huge business with ridiculous revenues that could already afford to do some major buildouts on their network, if they were concerned with the quality of their product.
Media conglomerates are designed to move profits to shareholders. The primary issue is that in many locations there is little to no competition to speak of. To me, it seems as though the Internet is going backwards, in terms of usability and freedom. There is a desire to charge end users for every single thing (tm) while not providing particularly great service. I am a Speakeasy customer, because for the most part, you pay them for your DSL connection and they leave you alone, provided you do not do anything illegal or nefarious to their network. They dont limit my bandwidth, filter my ports, throttle my connection, and I can run almost anything I'd want to on my network. It costs more than Verizon DSL / Comcast / T/W etc, but its worth it.
MicroHoo... or is it YahSoft... Im going with MicroHoo...
If it happens, wonder will yahoo mail go away... aside from all the serious monopoly concerns, this could be a terrible development. (unless you are microsoft or have microsoft stock)
religious side... Baylor University...
[www.baylor.edu] - Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas and affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas, Baylor is the oldest institution of higher learning in continuous operation in the state and the largest Baptist university in the world.
While remaining true to its heritage, Baylor has grown to almost 14,000 students, and its nationally recognized academic divisions provide 150 baccalaureate degree programs at the undergraduate level. The University also offers 76 master's and 22 doctoral programs, two educational specialists, juris doctor, master of divinity and doctor of ministry. The 735-acre campus is located on the banks of the Brazos River in Waco, Texas, a metropolitan area of over 200,000 people.
The problem comes when they try both to make you pay the levy and prosecute you for infringenment. That makes no sense whatsoever. A levy automatically legitimizes the creation of private copies; if you can also be punished for it, you're paying twice for the same crime: presumably reducing somebody else's profits from their IP. This precisely what I was thinking about... I am to the point that I do not buy (or download) new music and I wont start again until things change
You may have a point on theatres.... I think that as they are now, they could have alot more money if the experience was improved on. In this area, most of the theatres smell like stinky feet, the seats are uncomfortably close when youre not dating the person sitting next to you lol, and they are perpetually unclean. At the same time, taking your kids to the movies and purchasing snacks and drinks is comparable to going to a professional sports game in terms of price. I think part of the problem is that the theatres have a closed mentality in terms of revenue streams. Just the concept of having many people together in an environment such as a theatre presents many opportunities sell quality entertainment goods to the consumer, but they are stuck with the break even with ticket sales and get profit fromm food and drink model.
I've never understood the rationale for this if copy will be illegal. Shouldnt the penalty for copying be paid by those caught breaking the law? I am curious as to a valid reason for paying more for all media, including the majority of which will not be used to break copyright law.
I think they would adapt to the new model, continue to make movies, continue to make money, just not as much... Perhaps no-one would get 35 million a movie every time any more. And who knows, with less built-in profit due to an antiquated model, maybe theyll produce less crap.
Online shopping didn't destroy retail chains, they adapted... looking at Best Buy and WalMart, and are doing quite well in some cases. Hell even Amazon changing the model for selling books didn't put Borders or Waldenbooks out of business. I think the major Theatre chains would be fine... you know there are people who prefer the theatre model, especially if more was done to make it an enjoyable experience - clean theatre, better quality food, etc etc etc... who knows, they could play the movie at the theatre and sell the dvd at the same time (c) and do promotions that arent currently available.
and no definitely not new to the game.. but security didnt become the big scare tactic that it is today until money got involved. Noone could possibly do double-digit time for port-scanning and things of that nature before Internet == Commerce. When big money got involved, all of a sudden there were financial transactions, billions of dollars of them, going on, online every day. And all I was saying is with the money comes the scrutiny (and the crooks).
unpatched versions of MSSQL. I am sure that all the shops apply all MS patches and update their software regularly according the MS Product Cycle.:End Sarcasm
Oracle security is a direct function of the DBA/SA's skill
I guess you could say the same for MSSQL, but this is slashdot, whats the fun in that?
The scanning method he used is not conclusive that all of the "hits" were vulnerable db servers. Also he only scanned for MSSQL and Oracle, What of Sybase, MySQL, PostGres, DB2, and all manner of other systems? MySQL has had a remote vuln in the past - I'm sure somewhere on the inet there are vuln versions running. I cant speak of the others. The bottom line is that his "research" misses a significant portion of whats running out there. How do you not add MySQL, when LAMP is a pretty prominent application foundation. I also dont see anything conclusive in TFA to show that it was more than verifying the port was open - how does he even know its actually the database running there? He specifically states that corporate data is at risk, but he randomly chose IP ranges, would it not make more sense to randomly chose IP ranges from those known to be corporate networks? (info is available - ARIN, RIPE, APNIC, etc). Without a more rigorous study the article is most definitely FUD, as you cant definitively draw any conclusions from the results. What the article does do, is causes a good discussion about why people should be more security-aware.
the current state of things is not good... But its because money got involved. Where there is money, you can usually find corruption... All of a sudden people start breaking things with financial incentive (botnets, spam, etc) and it became a jumbled mess.
Personally, I would rather have my webserver, which is designed to be publicly available, and quite easy to secure, available - vs. WormBait such as MSSQL.
I can't think of one good reason to have your DB Server port open to the inet. Need to link it to a remote server? VPN... The argument about the only secure system being completly disconnected is true, but doesnt apply here. The point is there is something that the person managing the server want to make available, so there is inherent risk... the point is to take the "best" method to do that.
The article is so much FUD, but doesnt excuse having the db port open to the inet.
I don't want to sound like a shill, but isnt this the rationale behind SOAP and such? Why leave a DB port open on the Internet. I agree that TFA may be blowing things out of proportion, but still, seems like an unnecessary risk.. at a minumum ip-filter the port.. do something other than let Joe Script-Kiddie find the port and (depending on the db software) crack your system.
with the applications where teachers submit papers into a plagiarism database (I cannot remember the name.. its 6AM), if two students use the same program, the second one is going to get busted for plagiarism anyway.. unless there is some randomness built in the sentence structure and words used.
cause diplomatic row... because I don't recall Babelfish (or any other free online translation s/w) claiming to be 100% accurate or anything like that. Dutch is not so rare you cannot find someone who can translate (perhaps for a fee).
I can remember many CFP's where it says to only submit a paper if you or your institution can fund having it published... this reminds me of my old advisor telling us if we published in IEEE we'd have to get permission to cite the paper in our dissertation...
I hope it was FUD, but I always thought IEEE was too expensive anyway...
I am a moron when it comes to this kind of engineering, but couldnt they use a radio signal to get targetting information, i.e. a handshake then pass the data transfer aspects to the laser?
we have the Gas engine... it works.. lets forget about all this crazy hybird and electric car talk...
While we're at it, Coal Plants do a good job at producing energy and they work too... lets forget about all that fandangled alternate energy source stuff...
While were at it.. smoke signals work too.. no need for complicated technology like telephone and email...
okay.. now that my sarcasm limit has been reached... because something works is not a good reason for ignoring technology that can potentially supercede it...
This sounds like global politcal practice to me. I don't about TFA's veracity, but if this is true, its quite sad. I'll also say that politicians the world over attempt to regulate things about which they have little to no knowledge, and fail to enlist knowledgeable impartial people in the lawmaking process. This is how we end up with things such as the DMCA and the ability of RIAA to sue their customers for thousands of dollar per song shared, enforcement of ridiculous software EULA's, software patents, ineffective anti-spam legislation, and other misplaced attempts ad infinitum.
Slashdot Mirror
You make good points, but I'll also disagree with you on one area. Having a camera can be a detriment, because there are work environments where one is allowed to have a cell phone, but not one with a camera. Thus the phone with a camera gets left in a locker, at home, in a car, or in some other place where it cannot be used in a pinch, and the camera without the unneeded camera is on your person and available. A small point, but still it is relevant to quite a few people.
They have a Point of Presence [POP] there. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Speakeasy+Atlanta+POP Perhaps, what you mean is that they aren't available at your residence.
This I did notice in the OP. The problem is, is there really choice in the broadband market here? For the most part, if you are lucky, you have The cable company, and you have the TelCo's DSL, along with expensive alternatives like Satellite. If you are truly lucky, there are some DSL resellers, Covad for example. But when compared to what others have posted about the choices overseas where this practice is more common, there is not a reasonable amount of choice for most broadband users. If the Cable Company implements this and you are > 15K feet from a DSL capable C/O, you are basically SOL.
There is no guarantee that these companies will "plow" profits into improving their infrastructure. I would argue that its highly questionable that they will, as Time Warner is a huge business with ridiculous revenues that could already afford to do some major buildouts on their network, if they were concerned with the quality of their product. Media conglomerates are designed to move profits to shareholders. The primary issue is that in many locations there is little to no competition to speak of. To me, it seems as though the Internet is going backwards, in terms of usability and freedom. There is a desire to charge end users for every single thing (tm) while not providing particularly great service. I am a Speakeasy customer, because for the most part, you pay them for your DSL connection and they leave you alone, provided you do not do anything illegal or nefarious to their network. They dont limit my bandwidth, filter my ports, throttle my connection, and I can run almost anything I'd want to on my network. It costs more than Verizon DSL / Comcast / T/W etc, but its worth it.
MicroHoo... or is it YahSoft... Im going with MicroHoo... If it happens, wonder will yahoo mail go away... aside from all the serious monopoly concerns, this could be a terrible development. (unless you are microsoft or have microsoft stock)
religious side... Baylor University... [www.baylor.edu] - Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas and affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas, Baylor is the oldest institution of higher learning in continuous operation in the state and the largest Baptist university in the world. While remaining true to its heritage, Baylor has grown to almost 14,000 students, and its nationally recognized academic divisions provide 150 baccalaureate degree programs at the undergraduate level. The University also offers 76 master's and 22 doctoral programs, two educational specialists, juris doctor, master of divinity and doctor of ministry. The 735-acre campus is located on the banks of the Brazos River in Waco, Texas, a metropolitan area of over 200,000 people.
You may have a point on theatres.... I think that as they are now, they could have alot more money if the experience was improved on. In this area, most of the theatres smell like stinky feet, the seats are uncomfortably close when youre not dating the person sitting next to you lol, and they are perpetually unclean. At the same time, taking your kids to the movies and purchasing snacks and drinks is comparable to going to a professional sports game in terms of price. I think part of the problem is that the theatres have a closed mentality in terms of revenue streams. Just the concept of having many people together in an environment such as a theatre presents many opportunities sell quality entertainment goods to the consumer, but they are stuck with the break even with ticket sales and get profit fromm food and drink model.
I've never understood the rationale for this if copy will be illegal. Shouldnt the penalty for copying be paid by those caught breaking the law? I am curious as to a valid reason for paying more for all media, including the majority of which will not be used to break copyright law.
I think they would adapt to the new model, continue to make movies, continue to make money, just not as much... Perhaps no-one would get 35 million a movie every time any more. And who knows, with less built-in profit due to an antiquated model, maybe theyll produce less crap. Online shopping didn't destroy retail chains, they adapted... looking at Best Buy and WalMart, and are doing quite well in some cases. Hell even Amazon changing the model for selling books didn't put Borders or Waldenbooks out of business. I think the major Theatre chains would be fine... you know there are people who prefer the theatre model, especially if more was done to make it an enjoyable experience - clean theatre, better quality food, etc etc etc... who knows, they could play the movie at the theatre and sell the dvd at the same time (c) and do promotions that arent currently available.
and no definitely not new to the game.. but security didnt become the big scare tactic that it is today until money got involved. Noone could possibly do double-digit time for port-scanning and things of that nature before Internet == Commerce. When big money got involved, all of a sudden there were financial transactions, billions of dollars of them, going on, online every day. And all I was saying is with the money comes the scrutiny (and the crooks).
unpatched versions of MSSQL. I am sure that all the shops apply all MS patches and update their software regularly according the MS Product Cycle. :End Sarcasm
Oracle security is a direct function of the DBA/SA's skill
I guess you could say the same for MSSQL, but this is slashdot, whats the fun in that?
The scanning method he used is not conclusive that all of the "hits" were vulnerable db servers. Also he only scanned for MSSQL and Oracle, What of Sybase, MySQL, PostGres, DB2, and all manner of other systems? MySQL has had a remote vuln in the past - I'm sure somewhere on the inet there are vuln versions running. I cant speak of the others. The bottom line is that his "research" misses a significant portion of whats running out there. How do you not add MySQL, when LAMP is a pretty prominent application foundation. I also dont see anything conclusive in TFA to show that it was more than verifying the port was open - how does he even know its actually the database running there? He specifically states that corporate data is at risk, but he randomly chose IP ranges, would it not make more sense to randomly chose IP ranges from those known to be corporate networks? (info is available - ARIN, RIPE, APNIC, etc). Without a more rigorous study the article is most definitely FUD, as you cant definitively draw any conclusions from the results. What the article does do, is causes a good discussion about why people should be more security-aware.
the current state of things is not good... But its because money got involved. Where there is money, you can usually find corruption... All of a sudden people start breaking things with financial incentive (botnets, spam, etc) and it became a jumbled mess.
Personally, I would rather have my webserver, which is designed to be publicly available, and quite easy to secure, available - vs. WormBait such as MSSQL. I can't think of one good reason to have your DB Server port open to the inet. Need to link it to a remote server? VPN... The argument about the only secure system being completly disconnected is true, but doesnt apply here. The point is there is something that the person managing the server want to make available, so there is inherent risk... the point is to take the "best" method to do that. The article is so much FUD, but doesnt excuse having the db port open to the inet.
I don't want to sound like a shill, but isnt this the rationale behind SOAP and such? Why leave a DB port open on the Internet. I agree that TFA may be blowing things out of proportion, but still, seems like an unnecessary risk.. at a minumum ip-filter the port.. do something other than let Joe Script-Kiddie find the port and (depending on the db software) crack your system.
and I'm only half joking - They'll ban all pre-1972 cars.. except for "trusted" individuals.
with the applications where teachers submit papers into a plagiarism database (I cannot remember the name.. its 6AM), if two students use the same program, the second one is going to get busted for plagiarism anyway.. unless there is some randomness built in the sentence structure and words used.
cause diplomatic row... because I don't recall Babelfish (or any other free online translation s/w) claiming to be 100% accurate or anything like that. Dutch is not so rare you cannot find someone who can translate (perhaps for a fee).
his hot air content could cause cabin destabilization
I am corrected... should have looked it up first (d'oh)
I can remember many CFP's where it says to only submit a paper if you or your institution can fund having it published... this reminds me of my old advisor telling us if we published in IEEE we'd have to get permission to cite the paper in our dissertation... I hope it was FUD, but I always thought IEEE was too expensive anyway...
I am a moron when it comes to this kind of engineering, but couldnt they use a radio signal to get targetting information, i.e. a handshake then pass the data transfer aspects to the laser?
we have the Gas engine... it works.. lets forget about all this crazy hybird and electric car talk...
While we're at it, Coal Plants do a good job at producing energy and they work too... lets forget about all that fandangled alternate energy source stuff...
While were at it.. smoke signals work too.. no need for complicated technology like telephone and email...
okay.. now that my sarcasm limit has been reached... because something works is not a good reason for ignoring technology that can potentially supercede it...
This sounds like global politcal practice to me. I don't about TFA's veracity, but if this is true, its quite sad. I'll also say that politicians the world over attempt to regulate things about which they have little to no knowledge, and fail to enlist knowledgeable impartial people in the lawmaking process. This is how we end up with things such as the DMCA and the ability of RIAA to sue their customers for thousands of dollar per song shared, enforcement of ridiculous software EULA's, software patents, ineffective anti-spam legislation, and other misplaced attempts ad infinitum.