Most people will never have their homes broken into. And even if the door is locked a determined thief will find a way in, most often through a window. So why even bother with locking the door?
Everyone should be using encryption. That they aren't doesn't change the fact they should.
Actually, I think this functionality could be made "universal" just by requiring the user enter a passphrase via the standard password prompt. Of cours,e if the user ticks the "remember this logon" button the security is hosed.
Something like this would be fantastic for getting users to adopt pgp. If the security part was built right into the machine (which it can be via the localhost proxy) and worked the same no matter what email client was used it would make adoption much simpler. I hope something like this gets added to the gpg tools in short order.
Is he crazy? The reasons that machines are locked down is that the endusers are stupid. They know nothing about computers, and ideally they shouldn't have to - they are just tools to do their real jobs. Any extra capabilities will just allow them to break more things.
Wrong. Actually, users know only as much as they need to, and no more. That means when you lock down IE via a proxy, someone will figure out a way around it so they can surf at work. And as soon as that person figures it out, everyone else will know. Pretty soon you have a whole building full of windows boxes leaking shit from the web onto your "secure" LAN.
Lock down explorer, and they'll figure out that IE allows them to browse the hard drive. Hide the shit on the hard drive and they'll still find a way in because everyone knows "C:\windows\system32\cmd.exe" will get them in from just about anywhere they can find a place to type it.
Every time a solution is found, those "know nothing users" will find a way to break it. It is not ignorance on their part that allows this, it is ingenuity. The best solution is to provide something else that they are relatively unfamiliar with, and that has better built-in security. But underestimating the ingenuity of your users is the quick path to administrative leave for the network administrator...
I have a collection of ebooks. I have a collection of pulp books. If I want to quote from one of the pulp books I have to find the book, pore through the pages to find the relevant quote (if at all) and then copy it by typing.
If I want to find a quote in an ebook I can find it in seconds with a search. And all I have to do is cut and paste the quote. And, thanks to wireless networking, I can do this from anywhere just as easily as with pen and paper. No, scratch that - easier.
ebooks allow me to collect and catalog far more material than would be practical otherwise. With a forty dollar ebook reader I can carry a collection of books with me - like, for example, the whole shelf of linux references that were posted just the other day in warez.linux. And I can look up information from multiple volumes in just a second.
Saying "what's the point of ebooks" is like saying "what's the point of google! I can just surf the sites myself!"
Hmmm... well, try to play an MP3 then. Ooops, no can do - cannot play an MP3 file from a file in a samba share.
Bullshit. I do this all the time on my Linux system at home. Just because you don't know how to do something, doesn't mean it can't be done.
Well herve, why the fuck don't you tell the good people at Redhat how to recite these majikk incantations that make it all work? Because they don't seem to know either. At least not as of RH9.
And fuck off with your elitist "blame the user for everything" snobbery. It's bullshit like yours that's crippling linux and persisting that "geekwad penguinista" image.
I wished that ugly Penguinistas monicker would have stayed at Ars.
And I wish I didn't have to run a windows desktop just to get the fucntionality I need for the stuff I work on. I promise to work on my problem if you will work on yours... mkay?
Some of the "paid" distros include stuff like xover office and real player. So why not license the technology that's needed? I'm sure RH can't stick it in every distro, but they could include it in the box sets. And in the "free" sets why can they not distribute the free real player? Will real not allow them to include software they give away? Fine then - stick a shortcut on the desktop that says CLICK HERE TO INSTALL THE FREE REAL PLAYER.
Now.. on xmmx, consider. You have a business. You are therefore very vulnerable to lawsuits and legal actions that might cripple your business. Are you going to run unlicensed and patented products on every desktop in your company?
There's no good reason xmms should be unable to play video and audio directly from a samba share. And there's no good reason redhat cannot install xmms to handle videos by default, but equip it only with MPEG1 and OGG codecs. Then the user at least gets an app launch that makes it look like it's trying to do something useful with these files that play perfectly fine on windows.
it's the little stuff that matters most, and on linux there's damn few willing to pay attention to what matters most.
Dude, I've been keeping a log of all the posts I make here that get modded as "troll" simply because I say shit that is critical - yet factual - about the state of the linux desktop. I have to say I have never yet made such a post that did not get immediately modded down. The one I made just a few minutes ago hit -1 within five minutes.
Seriously. Who are you gonna tell? Outside redhat and other trademarked, corporatized distros there are damn few who seem to care about making what's already there work cohesively. Knoppix gives me a great deal of hope, but it's still too early to tell there. And outside that lone distro, any other solutions that try to be even as compelling as windows (never mind "better") are no longer completely "free" in either sense of the word.
It's no secret what is missing. It doesn't take a genius to use win2k OOTB for five minutes and then try the same stuff in linux and see what's different. And while the difference between RH6 and RH9 is vast, there's still a cast range to cross. How do I set a share in RH? I right click in windows, select "properties" and configure the share tab. Where's the share tab in RH? I don't see it... all I see is a bunch of widgets that set "755" and "644" - what the hell does this stuff mean to an luser?
It means linux still can't compete with windows from an end user perspective.
You don't think corporate users ever play goddamn video files?
See... this is why linux still completely sucks when it comes to an end user experience. Most of you don't have a fucking clue what's really needed, and the rest just make excuses for why it's not there yet.
Better be careful, you're gonna get modded down as a troll.
I just stuck a fresh install of RH9 on a laptop. It installed amazingly well - in fact, it installed better OOTB than win2k.
But "better" lasted only until it came time to actually do stuff with it. Sure, samba seems to work well and it has no problem browsing shares on MS boxes. But try to play a video file... oops, no media codec installed in the RH9 default distro. Hmmm... well, try to play an MP3 then. Ooops, no can do - cannot play an MP3 file from a file in a samba share. Try copying the file to this machine and perhaps it can be played then...
I really want linux to live up to the promise. Really. And I'm looking forward to working with the new media structure in gonome, and hoping to do my part. But I'm honestly beginning to wonder if linux can ever catch up - much less take the lead - on a user friendly desktop.
Has it EVER not been a secret that "Open Cable" was a coalition deployed specifically to lock up cable? Jeeez... remember when MS was supposed to "give away" all those tens of thousands of cable boxes? Remember when this thing called "Open Cable" was launched?
Duh
.
You're a cable company. You make a living selling access to a stream of media delivered out of Hollywood. If you're not directly owned by a media publisher you are in close alliance with them. Are YOU going to make your next generation hardware platform "open" so that any chinese supplier can deliver $150 tivo boxes to your customers that allow them to "digitally duplicate" all your content at THEIR convenience? Are you going to learn nothing at all from the Disney V. Sony case? Are YOU going to give up the ability to control how your users use your service?
This story, while perhaps interesting, comes a year or two late. You might as well make the next story "Joe says sky blue in daytime, film at 11."
Seen the press releases about sobig? How it started at "a porn site" in arizona called easynews?
Easynews has become the god of usenet. They're huge. And they're not the only one. There are several newsgroup services offering a user friendly web interface these days, and it's attracting a LOT of people. Hell, I don't even use news reader software for most groups these days - it's far easier to fire up reget and shop via the web.
So far as the user is concerned usenet is now the web. If you want to talk you can use google and you have access to the entire archive of discussion groups going back at least a decade. And if you want binaries you can do the same thing - for a very modest fee one can have access to everything posted in the last month. tens of thousands of songs, hundreds of movies and music videos, just a click away.
What "adult pass" systems have you seen in "nightshops?" Are these like the "paid value" cards that allegedly sell in pawn shops? (I've never seen one.) Or are they limited to certain sites? I once got a subscriber pass to "Barely Legal" when I bought a buncha stuff at the Hustler Hollywood on Sunset. It sat on my desk for a week before I decided to try it out. Given what I saw when I logged in, I can see why LFP is on the downhill slide. Now, if ccbill would setup a cash based payment system then we might have something to talk about...
Also... dude... uuencoded? Please. That is so.... nineties. yEnc is where it's at.
Name one online payment system that is anonymous in the same way as me throwing a dollar bill into an open window is anonymous.
These systems are absolutely not anonymous. Most payment systems require affiliation with either a bank or a credit agency, which means every single purchase can be tracked.
I think the discussion in the article is entirely skewed because the author looks only at conventional content, and even a cursory look at the Internet demonstrates that supply far outweighs demand: there is an almost inexhaustible supply of prose, music, humour, and news. Why would you register for such content, let alone pay for it?
And you hold up porn as an example to counter this? The level posted to usenet seems to be down the last month or two, but there still has to be at least as much "free" porn out there as "free" music.
Let's talk Suze: there are two newsgroups dedicated to posting her work. If you're a patient sort you could accumulate every photo she's ever taken and it won't cost a dime. But now, years after the first works went online, Suze still manages to sell memberships to her site. You think the only ones who are buying memberships are those wanting to rip the entire site and are too impatient to wait for everything to be posted to the "free" channels?
Especially for a comic artist, where the content is inherently visual, it would NOT be hard to adopt a distribution mechanism that was, essentially, free. Put a panel on every comic linking to the author's site: those who like the content will visit, those who don't, won't. Put up a tipjar, or even offer an "early bird" subscription service (ie get the next edition a week before the "free" channels, etc.). Because casual fans can get the comic completely free of charge to the author, the website traffic will be comprised of people who are predisposed to contribute. Ergo, those "hits" are actually worth more to the author than would be otherwise.
I don't believe either of these articles really hit the nail so much as the pessimists view of micropayments did. The micropayment system itself is still something of a nuisance and even anathema to many people who (still very much) believe in information being free. Charging for content - even just a penny - presents a barrier that goes far deeper in our society than the visible cost.
If you are walking down the stret and someone asks you for a penny, would you always give it to them? Every time? It's just a penny - if you saw a penny lying in the street odds are you wouldn't even bother to pick it up, unless perhaps to feed your superstitious side. Maybe we ordinarily would but have already given out all the pennies we had in our pocket. Maybe we have an ethical objection to handing out pennies to whomever asks for one. Or maybe we're just having a bad day and don't want to be bothered. Still, one can reasonable argue the simple act of giving someone a penny should be well within the capabilities of even the poorest of us.
But once you move online that penny represents an entirely new barrier. It represents the wall between those who play the system (however badly) and those played by the system. Not everyone has a credit card. Not everyone has a debit card. Furthermore, many people, despite the fact they could have one of these wallet size icons of mass consumerism, don't want one. And it's not because they don't like buying stuff, or because they're too cheap to give you a penny if you were to ask them face to face.
Charging for content online places a barrier between the creator and the audience that goes much deeper than the same model in meatspace. And it's not necessarily an economic one, although it very much can be. Mostly, tho, it's a barrier of philosophy, and it sets the wrong tone for the future so many of us allege to believe in.
The entire promise of this new distribution mechanism is it puts creators more directly in touch with consumers. That some creators are going to work within existing economic structures is to be expected and, frankly, I say more power to'em. But this is a choice for the creator that does not directly involve me: if someone puts banner ads on their site to help them pay the bills, that involves me only passively. Moving to an escrow agent, however, forces the consumer (me) to play an active role in that exchange - even when "it's just a penny" and even when the mechanism is "transparent" at the point of sale.
phone calls, local and long distance, often are pay per unit of some sort. calling 411 too... yet, people can and do "calculate" that calls are worth making, and they pay for them.
That's because "everyone" lacks the presence of IP phones. If everyone had sip phones in their homes and could call anywhere essentially free, would they still use the clunky old RJ11 boxes? Look at cellphones: I have a cousin up north who has cellphones for himself and his wife. They don't even bother with landlines anymore, and they call down here and talk all they like because, within very high limits, the phone bill remains the same price. This fits exactly within the argument presented in the article.
The other side to that is the harder someone makes it to get their info, the more effort activists will put into eroding that artifical value. Perfect example: MP3s. The harder the crackdown on people who share MP3s, the more concerted the efforts (by some people) become to sustain the practice. And these aren't even micropayment transactions yet, but essentially "free" right from the start - in fact, the activists are essentially paying for the opportunity (obtaining CDs to rip and bandwidth to post) to provide free material. Apple may claim to have sold "Millions of songs" but how many Billions of "songs" do you think are download each year from kazaa, usenet, and other services?
Another example: at least one porn site I know put all their content inside java applets (I know this because I know the company that tried to make a business of selling the backend software). The only way to see their content was to pay for the site and then suffer through the horrendous navigation tools supplied by the applet. To make things even harder for the viewer to find a back door, each image was actually assembled in the viewer from a collection of tiles, so even if you located the database of images, you were still left with hundreds of randomly named pieces to reassemble - a giant jigsaw puzzle of the electronic variety.
So, various cores of individuals made it their mission to subscribe, take screencaps of each image, and post them to usenet. This had the double effect of advertising for the sites and making the sites essentially worthless; even subscribers to a site found it more worthwhile to collect the usenet posts than to suffer the "legitimate" distribution model, and so this "service" was (mercifully) driven out of business - along with the sites stupid enough to adopt their misguided ethics.
That thing is over $200. And that's not including the proprietary software to manage and configure that "firewall."
I can buy a linksys router with basic firewall functionality for $50. I can buy a NIC for $5. That's one helluva jump in price to get less functionality in a low profile case. So what if it says 3com on the box? My whole point is that this stuff doesn't need to be proprietary or expensive - it is only because there's no standard to commoditize the functionality.
It's just not part of the OS. It's part of a redundant OS, which means it works with anything you attach it. You can put it in a mac, or a pc, or even standalone (it's just a CPU attached to a NIC).
There are Millions of people in the "Open source community." A high percentage of them are experienced engineers (and some of them are even working!)
The point is we don't all need the skiils to solder this stuff into our boxes - that would be the opposite of what I was tlakign about, in fact. What's needed is the core technology to be designed and then made available for manufacturers to incorporate into commodity products. That's how you make security an affordable option no matter what Microsoft thinks of it.
Thanks for reminding me this idiotic isolationism isn't a recent phenomena. Realizing our long history of blundering idiocy is somehow comforting in these times of widespread malevolent idiocy...
Slashdot Mirror
So uhh.... yeah. and stuff.
Everyone should be using encryption. That they aren't doesn't change the fact they should.
Something like this would be fantastic for getting users to adopt pgp. If the security part was built right into the machine (which it can be via the localhost proxy) and worked the same no matter what email client was used it would make adoption much simpler. I hope something like this gets added to the gpg tools in short order.
Wrong. Actually, users know only as much as they need to, and no more. That means when you lock down IE via a proxy, someone will figure out a way around it so they can surf at work. And as soon as that person figures it out, everyone else will know. Pretty soon you have a whole building full of windows boxes leaking shit from the web onto your "secure" LAN.
Lock down explorer, and they'll figure out that IE allows them to browse the hard drive. Hide the shit on the hard drive and they'll still find a way in because everyone knows "C:\windows\system32\cmd.exe" will get them in from just about anywhere they can find a place to type it.
Every time a solution is found, those "know nothing users" will find a way to break it. It is not ignorance on their part that allows this, it is ingenuity. The best solution is to provide something else that they are relatively unfamiliar with, and that has better built-in security. But underestimating the ingenuity of your users is the quick path to administrative leave for the network administrator...
As powerful/configurable/secure? Nope. That's why you use linux.
If I want to find a quote in an ebook I can find it in seconds with a search. And all I have to do is cut and paste the quote. And, thanks to wireless networking, I can do this from anywhere just as easily as with pen and paper. No, scratch that - easier.
ebooks allow me to collect and catalog far more material than would be practical otherwise. With a forty dollar ebook reader I can carry a collection of books with me - like, for example, the whole shelf of linux references that were posted just the other day in warez.linux. And I can look up information from multiple volumes in just a second.
Saying "what's the point of ebooks" is like saying "what's the point of google! I can just surf the sites myself!"
Not quite a solution for a corporate office, but great info. Thanks for helping.
Bullshit. I do this all the time on my Linux system at home. Just because you don't know how to do something, doesn't mean it can't be done.
Well herve, why the fuck don't you tell the good people at Redhat how to recite these majikk incantations that make it all work? Because they don't seem to know either. At least not as of RH9.
And fuck off with your elitist "blame the user for everything" snobbery. It's bullshit like yours that's crippling linux and persisting that "geekwad penguinista" image.
And I wish I didn't have to run a windows desktop just to get the fucntionality I need for the stuff I work on. I promise to work on my problem if you will work on yours... mkay?
Go back to the AV Club you fool !
And leave... all this?
Now.. on xmmx, consider. You have a business. You are therefore very vulnerable to lawsuits and legal actions that might cripple your business. Are you going to run unlicensed and patented products on every desktop in your company?
There's no good reason xmms should be unable to play video and audio directly from a samba share. And there's no good reason redhat cannot install xmms to handle videos by default, but equip it only with MPEG1 and OGG codecs. Then the user at least gets an app launch that makes it look like it's trying to do something useful with these files that play perfectly fine on windows.
it's the little stuff that matters most, and on linux there's damn few willing to pay attention to what matters most.
Dude, I've been keeping a log of all the posts I make here that get modded as "troll" simply because I say shit that is critical - yet factual - about the state of the linux desktop. I have to say I have never yet made such a post that did not get immediately modded down. The one I made just a few minutes ago hit -1 within five minutes.
Seriously. Who are you gonna tell? Outside redhat and other trademarked, corporatized distros there are damn few who seem to care about making what's already there work cohesively. Knoppix gives me a great deal of hope, but it's still too early to tell there. And outside that lone distro, any other solutions that try to be even as compelling as windows (never mind "better") are no longer completely "free" in either sense of the word.
It's no secret what is missing. It doesn't take a genius to use win2k OOTB for five minutes and then try the same stuff in linux and see what's different. And while the difference between RH6 and RH9 is vast, there's still a cast range to cross. How do I set a share in RH? I right click in windows, select "properties" and configure the share tab. Where's the share tab in RH? I don't see it... all I see is a bunch of widgets that set "755" and "644" - what the hell does this stuff mean to an luser?
It means linux still can't compete with windows from an end user perspective.
See... this is why linux still completely sucks when it comes to an end user experience. Most of you don't have a fucking clue what's really needed, and the rest just make excuses for why it's not there yet.
I just stuck a fresh install of RH9 on a laptop. It installed amazingly well - in fact, it installed better OOTB than win2k.
But "better" lasted only until it came time to actually do stuff with it. Sure, samba seems to work well and it has no problem browsing shares on MS boxes. But try to play a video file... oops, no media codec installed in the RH9 default distro. Hmmm... well, try to play an MP3 then. Ooops, no can do - cannot play an MP3 file from a file in a samba share. Try copying the file to this machine and perhaps it can be played then...
I really want linux to live up to the promise. Really. And I'm looking forward to working with the new media structure in gonome, and hoping to do my part. But I'm honestly beginning to wonder if linux can ever catch up - much less take the lead - on a user friendly desktop.
Duh
. You're a cable company. You make a living selling access to a stream of media delivered out of Hollywood. If you're not directly owned by a media publisher you are in close alliance with them. Are YOU going to make your next generation hardware platform "open" so that any chinese supplier can deliver $150 tivo boxes to your customers that allow them to "digitally duplicate" all your content at THEIR convenience? Are you going to learn nothing at all from the Disney V. Sony case? Are YOU going to give up the ability to control how your users use your service?
This story, while perhaps interesting, comes a year or two late. You might as well make the next story "Joe says sky blue in daytime, film at 11."
Easynews has become the god of usenet. They're huge. And they're not the only one. There are several newsgroup services offering a user friendly web interface these days, and it's attracting a LOT of people. Hell, I don't even use news reader software for most groups these days - it's far easier to fire up reget and shop via the web.
So far as the user is concerned usenet is now the web. If you want to talk you can use google and you have access to the entire archive of discussion groups going back at least a decade. And if you want binaries you can do the same thing - for a very modest fee one can have access to everything posted in the last month. tens of thousands of songs, hundreds of movies and music videos, just a click away.
What "adult pass" systems have you seen in "nightshops?" Are these like the "paid value" cards that allegedly sell in pawn shops? (I've never seen one.) Or are they limited to certain sites? I once got a subscriber pass to "Barely Legal" when I bought a buncha stuff at the Hustler Hollywood on Sunset. It sat on my desk for a week before I decided to try it out. Given what I saw when I logged in, I can see why LFP is on the downhill slide. Now, if ccbill would setup a cash based payment system then we might have something to talk about...
Also... dude... uuencoded? Please. That is so.... nineties. yEnc is where it's at.
You be sure to let us know when an anonymous micropayment system arises from the froth, won't you?
These systems are absolutely not anonymous. Most payment systems require affiliation with either a bank or a credit agency, which means every single purchase can be tracked.
I think the discussion in the article is entirely skewed because the author looks only at conventional content, and even a cursory look at the Internet demonstrates that supply far outweighs demand: there is an almost inexhaustible supply of prose, music, humour, and news. Why would you register for such content, let alone pay for it?
And you hold up porn as an example to counter this? The level posted to usenet seems to be down the last month or two, but there still has to be at least as much "free" porn out there as "free" music.
Let's talk Suze: there are two newsgroups dedicated to posting her work. If you're a patient sort you could accumulate every photo she's ever taken and it won't cost a dime. But now, years after the first works went online, Suze still manages to sell memberships to her site. You think the only ones who are buying memberships are those wanting to rip the entire site and are too impatient to wait for everything to be posted to the "free" channels?
Especially for a comic artist, where the content is inherently visual, it would NOT be hard to adopt a distribution mechanism that was, essentially, free. Put a panel on every comic linking to the author's site: those who like the content will visit, those who don't, won't. Put up a tipjar, or even offer an "early bird" subscription service (ie get the next edition a week before the "free" channels, etc.). Because casual fans can get the comic completely free of charge to the author, the website traffic will be comprised of people who are predisposed to contribute. Ergo, those "hits" are actually worth more to the author than would be otherwise.
If you are walking down the stret and someone asks you for a penny, would you always give it to them? Every time? It's just a penny - if you saw a penny lying in the street odds are you wouldn't even bother to pick it up, unless perhaps to feed your superstitious side. Maybe we ordinarily would but have already given out all the pennies we had in our pocket. Maybe we have an ethical objection to handing out pennies to whomever asks for one. Or maybe we're just having a bad day and don't want to be bothered. Still, one can reasonable argue the simple act of giving someone a penny should be well within the capabilities of even the poorest of us.
But once you move online that penny represents an entirely new barrier. It represents the wall between those who play the system (however badly) and those played by the system. Not everyone has a credit card. Not everyone has a debit card. Furthermore, many people, despite the fact they could have one of these wallet size icons of mass consumerism, don't want one. And it's not because they don't like buying stuff, or because they're too cheap to give you a penny if you were to ask them face to face.
Charging for content online places a barrier between the creator and the audience that goes much deeper than the same model in meatspace. And it's not necessarily an economic one, although it very much can be. Mostly, tho, it's a barrier of philosophy, and it sets the wrong tone for the future so many of us allege to believe in.
The entire promise of this new distribution mechanism is it puts creators more directly in touch with consumers. That some creators are going to work within existing economic structures is to be expected and, frankly, I say more power to'em. But this is a choice for the creator that does not directly involve me: if someone puts banner ads on their site to help them pay the bills, that involves me only passively. Moving to an escrow agent, however, forces the consumer (me) to play an active role in that exchange - even when "it's just a penny" and even when the mechanism is "transparent" at the point of sale.
Cheaper and easier doesn't mean better and more effective.
That's because "everyone" lacks the presence of IP phones. If everyone had sip phones in their homes and could call anywhere essentially free, would they still use the clunky old RJ11 boxes? Look at cellphones: I have a cousin up north who has cellphones for himself and his wife. They don't even bother with landlines anymore, and they call down here and talk all they like because, within very high limits, the phone bill remains the same price. This fits exactly within the argument presented in the article.
The other side to that is the harder someone makes it to get their info, the more effort activists will put into eroding that artifical value. Perfect example: MP3s. The harder the crackdown on people who share MP3s, the more concerted the efforts (by some people) become to sustain the practice. And these aren't even micropayment transactions yet, but essentially "free" right from the start - in fact, the activists are essentially paying for the opportunity (obtaining CDs to rip and bandwidth to post) to provide free material. Apple may claim to have sold "Millions of songs" but how many Billions of "songs" do you think are download each year from kazaa, usenet, and other services?
Another example: at least one porn site I know put all their content inside java applets (I know this because I know the company that tried to make a business of selling the backend software). The only way to see their content was to pay for the site and then suffer through the horrendous navigation tools supplied by the applet. To make things even harder for the viewer to find a back door, each image was actually assembled in the viewer from a collection of tiles, so even if you located the database of images, you were still left with hundreds of randomly named pieces to reassemble - a giant jigsaw puzzle of the electronic variety.
So, various cores of individuals made it their mission to subscribe, take screencaps of each image, and post them to usenet. This had the double effect of advertising for the sites and making the sites essentially worthless; even subscribers to a site found it more worthwhile to collect the usenet posts than to suffer the "legitimate" distribution model, and so this "service" was (mercifully) driven out of business - along with the sites stupid enough to adopt their misguided ethics.
I can buy a linksys router with basic firewall functionality for $50. I can buy a NIC for $5. That's one helluva jump in price to get less functionality in a low profile case. So what if it says 3com on the box? My whole point is that this stuff doesn't need to be proprietary or expensive - it is only because there's no standard to commoditize the functionality.
There are Millions of people in the "Open source community." A high percentage of them are experienced engineers (and some of them are even working!)
The point is we don't all need the skiils to solder this stuff into our boxes - that would be the opposite of what I was tlakign about, in fact. What's needed is the core technology to be designed and then made available for manufacturers to incorporate into commodity products. That's how you make security an affordable option no matter what Microsoft thinks of it.
Thanks for reminding me this idiotic isolationism isn't a recent phenomena. Realizing our long history of blundering idiocy is somehow comforting in these times of widespread malevolent idiocy...