Seriously! I must be the luckiest guy on the internet because I don't have anything to complain about with Comcast. I've moved around a decent amount in the past few years in central NJ near the shore and have had the following experiences:
Comcast in Monmouth Beach and Long Branch:
I think this was back when the max was 6 or 8Mbps. Didn't block ports. Had a few issues with the lines running to my older apartment but once those were settled it was smooth sailing. Never really noticed "slowdowns" that the DSL people raised their noses about their non-shared connections.
Cablevision in Neptune and Asbury Park:
15/2 was the stock connection here I believe. Started using newsgoups and had no trouble maxing out the downstream at any time of the day.
Verizon FIOS in Asbury Park and Ocean, NJ:
Switched to FIOS solely for price reasons on a package deal. Base internet was supposed to be 15/5 but somehow I ended up getting a 25/25 connection. Not complaining. As with the previous Cablevision connection, had no problems saturating my downstream link downloading from the right servers.
Now I've moved to Aberdeen, MD and am back with Comcast due to the owners of my rental not wanting me to have FIOS installed. I ended up getting an internet-only package and now have a 50/10 connection for $50 a month. Yes...50Mbps. The kicker is, when I go to speedtest.net I get rated at 62/11.5. So now I'm downloading from newsgroups (using ssl at that) at just shy of 7MB/sec. I've never had issues with it going slower.
TL;DR:
I have a 50/10 Comcast connection that never slows down and speedtest.net says is actually 62/11 for $50 monthly, Netflix streams great.
Youtube, as usual sucks. If Comcast (and Verizon FIOS for that matter) are throttling anything, it's Youtube. That's the only thing I could even remotely say is slow.
winpcap is needed for xbconnect a tool which lets you play Xbox games over the internet with other people which otherwise you wouldn't be able to such as the first Halo. Since it can still be used for XBox Live enabled games of course they wouldn't want you to have it on your computer. From their website: XBConnect is "Next Generation" Game Console Tunnel Software for Windows that allows you to play Microsoft XBox System link, and Sony PSP games over the internet.
There's your DOD root CA info. As some other people have already posted, the DOD runs its own PKI and it's not automatically included in any browsers. More recently they're issuing contractors certs on a Verisign-rooted CA rather than the full DOD one. If you want to automatically install all the DOD certs use this: https://infosec.navy.mil/InstallRoot2_9.zip
Unfortunately that doesn't do anything for people not using IE on windows. You can export the certs from Windows in PKCS7 format and then decode the p7 file using openssl to break it up into individual certs you can import into mozilla/firefox/etc.
Some good ideas in there. I just ask, for that $20 a month are you "purchasing" the music you download or are you just given access to their catalogues as long as you keep dishing out that $20 a month (which at $240 a year seems a bit much to me). If you get to "purchase" as much music as you can download in that month then the record companies would never go for that because people would sign on for a month and download everything they want and then just lay low for a year or so and then pay another $20 and slurp up the new content. If you're just renting the music then that's the type of thing I personally would never go for cause then you're just throwing money away. I'm not trying to say you're idea is horrible, just playing a little devil's advocate.
The babysitter should have enough common sense to walk out of the theater to call you if a situation that warrants calling 911 transpires. God forbid using a land-line at the theater, as well.
Smart cards are very easy to use. If you lose your card it's useless without the pin (and card can get locked out just like windows/linux if too many bad attempts are tried) and vice-versa, the pin is useless without the card. These enable you to not need rediculously huge passwords. Add to it a fingerprint scan and you have 3 factor login (something you have, something you know, something you are).
Not an issue as all drives can change their region up to 5 (I think) times. I helped someone set up a new Dell laptop about a month ago and the region wasn't even set initially. NO movies would play in it till I looked around and set to region 1.
These same lemmings (non-savvy people?) are the ones that leave kazaa running 24x7 and do end up using a hell of a lot more than a few emails and some surfing worth of bandwidth only because they're too stupid to uncheck the "start with windows" option and/or realize it's running in the system tray.
I run BackupPC on my linux server at home. I installed a separate harddrive and use it exclusively for this program. It's fairly easy to set up, works great, and the pooling+compression is wonderful because it saves so much space. Pooling means it doesn't back up more than 1 copy of the same file. It just links to that file in each backup (whether full or incremental).
# 2 full backups of total size 16.48GB (prior to pooling and compression),
# 6 incr backups of total size 1.29GB (prior to pooling and compression).
As you can see it thinks it has backed up over 17.5GB of data but on the main status page it says:
Pool is 6.98GB comprising 109320 files and 4369 directories (as of 1/2 01:00)
Pretty sweet program.
How soon till I rear-end your ass because you're too busy looking for your tag, holding it up to the windsheild, or putting it back rather than paying attention to the road and doing the (for example) 15mph through the lane on the GSP. People like you should have their tags taken away. They come with sticky tape for a reason.
If I did change banks, it would be to Commerce. They don't have the coverage that Wachovia does, (There are 4 branches within 5 minutes of my apt.) but I think they'd make up for it in other benefits and they are expanding as well. What's keeping me with Wachovia are a couple things. It's what I have and I don't have to do anything to change it...so laziness. I love Wachovia's online banking. The First Union online banking site got re-branded to become Wachovia instead of replaced so I have no idea what Wachovia's was like before the merger, but FU's was really nice and still is now. The last point is the fact that I don't have much spare money to enable me to switch because of all the automated payments I make. I make a car payment, federal student loan, ez-pass, credit cards, cell phone and probably a couple more I can't think of. That's a significant portion of my income and I can't see it being easy to just switch to another bank. Also my direct deposit from work. So I have to worry about where the money is going and then who it's going to...and trying not to interrupt the flow of like 1/2 to 3/4 my income in electronic transfers seems very daunting.
Back to Commerce...I've cashed Amex gift checks 3 times recently. The first was at a Commerce (where I obviously don't have an account) and the teller greeted me with a smile and happily asked me to counter-sign the check and gave me my $100 in cash. The second 2 were at a Wachovia branch where I am an account holder and I almost had to jump through hoops to get the money. The hours of Wachovia could be the worst in the business. FU used to be open like 9-3 M-F and 8-12 on Saturday....recently I saw the hours on a Wachovia and it only listed M-F!!!!!! WTF IS THIS? Now, I don't use the tellers...but if I do...I'll never have a chance to get to one. I know Commerce is open 7 days a week...how refreshing.
The ATM here is free and requires no purchases. The chain is named "WaWa" and they're all over this part of the state.
Yes, Wawa is great and they don't charge a fee, but guess what. My bank (Wachovia - BLECH!!!) hits me for $1.00 at that point. It's still better than $2 from, say PNC and then another $1 from Wachovia...but still.
consider that not only do some banks charge you for using the ATM (yours and someone elses), some banks even charge you for using their tellers. I believe Fleet or FirstUnion used to do this.
Speaking for First Union (now Wachovia), that is true and untrue. It all depends on your account. I have a "College Express Checking" account which I got in, guess...college. The account is free each month, I get unlimited check writing, and a free check card that I can use as much as I want. The only downside is if I use a teller to make a transaction (walking into a bank and having them cash a check written out to me doesn't count), then I get hit with a $8 fee. That fee covers the month, though, so at that point I can go and use the tellers as much as I want. Does it bother me? Not really, I've needed them maybe 4-5 times in the last 5 years. I'd rather not pay $5 a month or whatever for the actual checking account (which I earn no interest on anyway to F them.) A friend recently upgraded his account to a normal checking account that charges a fee if below a certain balance and he no longer has to worry about such fees. It all comes down to "I'm poor and I am MORE than happy to make deposits into the ATM." It's quicker and easier anyway.
Even less...I went to physical therapy for my left ring-finger after surgery and on the statements that were sent to me I racked up just shy of $8000 in charges. My co-pay responsibility ended up being $360 ($15 per visit). The best part is that it CLEARLY shows on the statements the payments from the insurance company which only amounts to a little over $1000 and there is another mysterious "adjustments" column where the difference was just subtracted from my account. Now that is complete and utter bullshit. If I had no insurance I would *HAVE* to pay that full ~$8000, but since I do have insurance I only pay $360...but then the PT company only gets about ~$1400 total. That is completely unfair.
Amen to that. I recently learned about passing "single" as a kernel option via grub and it automatically logs you in to root on the machine. If you have physical access to (just about) any machine you can basically breathe on it and root it.
I don't see what the problem is with the FSF going after these companies for using GPL'd code. How is it a bad thing? These companies have 2 choices, use GPL'd code and get their product out the door faster and cheaper BUT they have to now share their code. Or they can spend a LOT more time and develop everything in-house so it really is their product and they can earn all the proceeds. Why do they expect that they can just grab up this "free" code and expect to make tons of money off it?
I don't know if anyone else has mentioned this before or even if it's possible but... Everyone knows that the linux sources are quite readily available to basically anyone with an internet connection. SCO Unix sources are only available from SCO, hence the need for people to go to SCO and sign the NDA if they want to see the alleged infringing code snippets. What if it's SCO that copied Linux code into their proprietary Unix and then bitched to the world that we stole from them? It's not like anyone but employees of SCO are in a position to audit THEIR code. I don't know...just my little conspiracy theory. I can't believe this has gone on as long as it has and am just waiting for SCO to crash and burn.
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Seriously! I must be the luckiest guy on the internet because I don't have anything to complain about with Comcast. I've moved around a decent amount in the past few years in central NJ near the shore and have had the following experiences:
Comcast in Monmouth Beach and Long Branch:
I think this was back when the max was 6 or 8Mbps. Didn't block ports. Had a few issues with the lines running to my older apartment but once those were settled it was smooth sailing. Never really noticed "slowdowns" that the DSL people raised their noses about their non-shared connections.
Cablevision in Neptune and Asbury Park:
15/2 was the stock connection here I believe. Started using newsgoups and had no trouble maxing out the downstream at any time of the day.
Verizon FIOS in Asbury Park and Ocean, NJ:
Switched to FIOS solely for price reasons on a package deal. Base internet was supposed to be 15/5 but somehow I ended up getting a 25/25 connection. Not complaining. As with the previous Cablevision connection, had no problems saturating my downstream link downloading from the right servers.
Now I've moved to Aberdeen, MD and am back with Comcast due to the owners of my rental not wanting me to have FIOS installed. I ended up getting an internet-only package and now have a 50/10 connection for $50 a month. Yes...50Mbps. The kicker is, when I go to speedtest.net I get rated at 62/11.5. So now I'm downloading from newsgroups (using ssl at that) at just shy of 7MB/sec. I've never had issues with it going slower.
TL;DR:
I have a 50/10 Comcast connection that never slows down and speedtest.net says is actually 62/11 for $50 monthly, Netflix streams great.
Youtube, as usual sucks. If Comcast (and Verizon FIOS for that matter) are throttling anything, it's Youtube. That's the only thing I could even remotely say is slow.
winpcap is needed for xbconnect a tool which lets you play Xbox games over the internet with other people which otherwise you wouldn't be able to such as the first Halo. Since it can still be used for XBox Live enabled games of course they wouldn't want you to have it on your computer.
From their website: XBConnect is "Next Generation" Game Console Tunnel Software for Windows that allows you to play Microsoft XBox System link, and Sony PSP games over the internet.
http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/user/view/cs_msg/4637 0
http://dodpki.c3pki.chamb.disa.mil/rootca.html
There's your DOD root CA info. As some other people have already posted, the DOD runs its own PKI and it's not automatically included in any browsers. More recently they're issuing contractors certs on a Verisign-rooted CA rather than the full DOD one. If you want to automatically install all the DOD certs use this: https://infosec.navy.mil/InstallRoot2_9.zip
Unfortunately that doesn't do anything for people not using IE on windows. You can export the certs from Windows in PKCS7 format and then decode the p7 file using openssl to break it up into individual certs you can import into mozilla/firefox/etc.
Some good ideas in there. I just ask, for that $20 a month are you "purchasing" the music you download or are you just given access to their catalogues as long as you keep dishing out that $20 a month (which at $240 a year seems a bit much to me). If you get to "purchase" as much music as you can download in that month then the record companies would never go for that because people would sign on for a month and download everything they want and then just lay low for a year or so and then pay another $20 and slurp up the new content. If you're just renting the music then that's the type of thing I personally would never go for cause then you're just throwing money away. I'm not trying to say you're idea is horrible, just playing a little devil's advocate.
How many times are you going to say the same thing?
The babysitter should have enough common sense to walk out of the theater to call you if a situation that warrants calling 911 transpires. God forbid using a land-line at the theater, as well.
That is fucking apalling...that's all I've got.
He signed his name in italics!!! IT MUST BE HIM!
you got a problem with that? ;)
MBNA has ShopSafe
Citibank has Virtual Account Numbers
Discover has Discover Deskshop
even American Express...
This is *nothing* new
Smart cards are very easy to use. If you lose your card it's useless without the pin (and card can get locked out just like windows/linux if too many bad attempts are tried) and vice-versa, the pin is useless without the card. These enable you to not need rediculously huge passwords. Add to it a fingerprint scan and you have 3 factor login (something you have, something you know, something you are).
Not an issue as all drives can change their region up to 5 (I think) times. I helped someone set up a new Dell laptop about a month ago and the region wasn't even set initially. NO movies would play in it till I looked around and set to region 1.
And get them right back when he/she/it gives you change for your 8-ball the next day.
RTFA, it's in the linked dslreports article. http://www.dslreports.com/r0/download/408236~c5157 c5f2ecde8dae62b6b20c84644a3/UnlimitedUse.png
These same lemmings (non-savvy people?) are the ones that leave kazaa running 24x7 and do end up using a hell of a lot more than a few emails and some surfing worth of bandwidth only because they're too stupid to uncheck the "start with windows" option and/or realize it's running in the system tray.
I run BackupPC on my linux server at home. I installed a separate harddrive and use it exclusively for this program. It's fairly easy to set up, works great, and the pooling+compression is wonderful because it saves so much space. Pooling means it doesn't back up more than 1 copy of the same file. It just links to that file in each backup (whether full or incremental).
# 2 full backups of total size 16.48GB (prior to pooling and compression),
# 6 incr backups of total size 1.29GB (prior to pooling and compression).
As you can see it thinks it has backed up over 17.5GB of data but on the main status page it says:
Pool is 6.98GB comprising 109320 files and 4369 directories (as of 1/2 01:00)
Pretty sweet program.
I'd like to give you all 5 of my vapor-mod-points.
How soon till I rear-end your ass because you're too busy looking for your tag, holding it up to the windsheild, or putting it back rather than paying attention to the road and doing the (for example) 15mph through the lane on the GSP. People like you should have their tags taken away. They come with sticky tape for a reason.
If I did change banks, it would be to Commerce. They don't have the coverage that Wachovia does, (There are 4 branches within 5 minutes of my apt.) but I think they'd make up for it in other benefits and they are expanding as well. What's keeping me with Wachovia are a couple things. It's what I have and I don't have to do anything to change it...so laziness. I love Wachovia's online banking. The First Union online banking site got re-branded to become Wachovia instead of replaced so I have no idea what Wachovia's was like before the merger, but FU's was really nice and still is now. The last point is the fact that I don't have much spare money to enable me to switch because of all the automated payments I make. I make a car payment, federal student loan, ez-pass, credit cards, cell phone and probably a couple more I can't think of. That's a significant portion of my income and I can't see it being easy to just switch to another bank. Also my direct deposit from work. So I have to worry about where the money is going and then who it's going to...and trying not to interrupt the flow of like 1/2 to 3/4 my income in electronic transfers seems very daunting.
Back to Commerce...I've cashed Amex gift checks 3 times recently. The first was at a Commerce (where I obviously don't have an account) and the teller greeted me with a smile and happily asked me to counter-sign the check and gave me my $100 in cash. The second 2 were at a Wachovia branch where I am an account holder and I almost had to jump through hoops to get the money. The hours of Wachovia could be the worst in the business. FU used to be open like 9-3 M-F and 8-12 on Saturday....recently I saw the hours on a Wachovia and it only listed M-F!!!!!! WTF IS THIS? Now, I don't use the tellers...but if I do...I'll never have a chance to get to one. I know Commerce is open 7 days a week...how refreshing.
Even less...I went to physical therapy for my left ring-finger after surgery and on the statements that were sent to me I racked up just shy of $8000 in charges. My co-pay responsibility ended up being $360 ($15 per visit). The best part is that it CLEARLY shows on the statements the payments from the insurance company which only amounts to a little over $1000 and there is another mysterious "adjustments" column where the difference was just subtracted from my account. Now that is complete and utter bullshit. If I had no insurance I would *HAVE* to pay that full ~$8000, but since I do have insurance I only pay $360...but then the PT company only gets about ~$1400 total. That is completely unfair.
Amen to that. I recently learned about passing "single" as a kernel option via grub and it automatically logs you in to root on the machine. If you have physical access to (just about) any machine you can basically breathe on it and root it.
I don't see what the problem is with the FSF going after these companies for using GPL'd code. How is it a bad thing? These companies have 2 choices, use GPL'd code and get their product out the door faster and cheaper BUT they have to now share their code. Or they can spend a LOT more time and develop everything in-house so it really is their product and they can earn all the proceeds. Why do they expect that they can just grab up this "free" code and expect to make tons of money off it?
Implementing stricter airport security standards - $800,000
After hours security guards - $2,000
2 Mainframes - $2,000,000
Having your machines wheeled out by Islamic terrorists - Priceless
I don't know if anyone else has mentioned this before or even if it's possible but...
Everyone knows that the linux sources are quite readily available to basically anyone with an internet connection. SCO Unix sources are only available from SCO, hence the need for people to go to SCO and sign the NDA if they want to see the alleged infringing code snippets. What if it's SCO that copied Linux code into their proprietary Unix and then bitched to the world that we stole from them? It's not like anyone but employees of SCO are in a position to audit THEIR code. I don't know...just my little conspiracy theory. I can't believe this has gone on as long as it has and am just waiting for SCO to crash and burn.