The bigest fallacy is that the bandwidth is expensive. Bandwidth does cost money (and good reliable bandwidth cost more.) BUT almost half the cost for that T1 is the local loop charge, which goes to the "Bell"s. They are reaping huge rewards from the digital boom! (and if you are paying 1500/mo for a Tier-1 T1 my friend, you are getting ripped off big time!)
If you are a big time ISP and you can afford to colocate in the "Bell" facilities you can cut your local loop charge, while taking it up the *** for the colocation fee, you still come out ahead, but not by much.
Bandwidth does cost money, but the Local Exchange Carriers are keeping a strangle hold on the cost by charging a ton of money for the right to use thier lines. A monopoly by any other name is still a monopoly.
~Sean
isn't it suppoed to be funny....
on
CPAN Shifts Focus
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· Score: 1, Offtopic
In other words, don't panic. The A server is just the highest profile target.
Someone should thank the post for pointing this out to us. Now this place is just a little higher in profile. I like the part about it being on the top floor. Seems to me that if you wanted to HERF gun the place you know where to point it now.
Not to mention that the P4 would almost be rivaled with the amount of heat dissapation requird for 1500 watts of transmission power. I'm surprised Intel had not thought of this before. New super hot laptops, melts in your lap, not in the case...
Seems to me that we would end up with some sort of cross between sourceforge and freenet. Not really efficient, but for those that absolutly have to scratch that itch, without fear of liability...
It is the exact same principle that causes a 8-oz Nerf ball that falls 20' to bounce harmlessly off a pane of glass, while an 8-oz lead weight dropped the same distance cracks it.
In general I agree with the Nerf/lead weight concept, but the Nerf ball has a much slower terminal velocity then the lead weight at 1 atmosphere. But to make it more clear, in a vacuum the principal would be the same.
This is totaly correct. The avarage guy on the street wants to get simple, cheap, and easy to use service. S/He is not instested in spending hours hooking up some contraption to his satellite receiver to get free porn, or all the channels turned on.
The companies probably spend more money on trying to stop the 5% who hack the equipment then they lost in revenue from those 5%. Most of which probably would not pay for the service anyway. From an economic point of view they should just put in place a simple hurdle to keep joe six-pack from screwing around with his receiver.
I do have to wonder, do the geeks at the satellite companies scream to the upper managment about how they are getting hacked, just to further thier job enjoyment?
I agree with you 100%. I did not talk about the stability aspect of the systems. Who would run critical systems on NT or Windows? I was just assuming that we were talking about Linux, so you know...:-)
No it's not. It's all in how you arrange your work status. I am a 1099 contracted resource at a company and I have a defined work schedule, company cube and company workstation.
I have done this too, but only after contracting to a contracting comapny. There has to be one level between you and the company you are really doing work for. Some of the contracting shops that I have worked through insisted that I be W-2 with them so that I could work for thier clients as a contractor. The IRS can be real sticklers about these things. The issue is really liability to the IRS. You may have a fine and happy contracting relationship with a client but the IRS will still claim that you are an emploee and stick the company with penalties for not with holding taxes. Most Companies just do not want to be exposed to that kind of problem. Not all, but most
First and formost, keep the computer system closed. Do not hook it up to any outside networks. No networks, no phone lines, no serial connections. That will elimiate quite a bit of risk for attack.
If that is not an option, then run the outside network connection through a very tight firewall.
It does not matter if the taxes were withheld or not. The IRS has a
short clasification list or the long list (PDF),
that defines what an employee is vs. a contractor. It is hard to be a contractor and show up at a company provided cubical, with a company provided computer, and a standard work schedule, and claim that you are a contractor. It is nearly impossible for the employeer to claim you are a contractor.
However if you read this little gem: Holding the employer liable for the tax that was not withheld does not relieve you from the liability for your share of social security and Medicare taxes.
IT seems that the IRS will probably ignore the company since there is no money to squeez out of them, and the employees will get the shaft...
The funny thing: when pressed on what freenet is used most for, the answer came back: porn. Laughs all around at the talk, but the positive impact in China seems like a good example to me.
It may funny, but it is a good sign. If porn flourishes on this "medium" then this medium is probably going to be a success. Porn is the most censored type of "speach" out there. Look at the VCR industy. A major reason why Sony failed to get the Beta max out there was because it resisted the porn industry from using thier format. The Internet was widly used to distribute porn when it was just getting commercialized. Look at it now.
I think Freenet will take off when it becomes real easy for regular users to download and install the programs and not have to worry about how to set it up. Eventualy there might even be a commercial interest in doing this.
And with a 1/2 dozen servers (preferably big Dells) you will not have to worry about heating your house either.
Who would want to leave the house when you can cache up all of/. on your on your DS3 (with out the ads, of course) and stay roast toasey next to your big pipe?
Perhaps blizzard should talk nicly with the bnetd people and find out what makes thier site more attractive instead of suing them into the ground. Seems to me that they would earn a lot more respect from their user community that way...
But that is just me... I not have my myopic corperate glasses with clue filter attachement on today...
The user community has spoken, the people that they are trying to sell to. They are unhappy and doing something about it. If there is a problem Blizzard should examine the cause not try to cure the symptom.
I sent this to the Post Editors. (I also subitted the story, but I'm sure several others did many times over, Jack is just too good a target to pass up )
It seems that Mr. Valenti is suffering from the same myopic view of the market place that plagued the movie industry when then VCR was first introduced ["Movies Get Framed", op-ed Feb 25, 2002]. After the VCR was introduced the industry felt threatened and tried to bludgeon the manufacturers through the courts. The Supreme Court held that the VCR was a Fair Use device that the public should be able to use. Did this result in piracy, yes, but it also spawned a whole new industry to deliver movies to the public at reasonable prices. Why do people pay for movies when they could just "pirate" them off the Internet? The average consumer is more interested in obtaining the movie in a legitimate, convenient, and cost effective manner. You will never be able to completely prevent piracy. There will always be some enterprising geek that has too much time on his hands that will try to break the electronic locks that you use, witness DeCSS. But if you provide a reasonable mechanism for the general consumer to conveniently obtain your product legally they will. Stop punishing us and move forward with a simple to use movie on demand system.
Thanks for your time and consideration,
Sean McAdam ...address/phone # deleted...
It was somewhat off the cuff, so it probably will not get published in the paper. But It made me feel better...
It will be difficult for spammers to fake a known keys from a friend, relative, or some other "known" person or entitiy.
If I get a signed email, but I do not recognise the key, I will be suspisious, and may just junk it. Once signing emails is ubiquitous it will be more difficult for spammers to hide in the dark corners of the Internet. Not imposible, but more difficult. If you make it difficult enought the cost of spamming for these jerks goes up, and will result in less spam.
We do not need more laws "protecting" us! What we really need is a easy to use universal email crypto standard where everyone will sign thier email. Any mail not signed is immediatly suspect. Any keys you do not recognize are suspect.
Standard crypto would serve us much better then any new law (set of laws) and the possible abusive applications of said law(s). We would surly end up with all sorts of lawful and awful unintended consequences as a result af anything that is generated by any government.
Slashdot Mirror
I would bet that this number is out there for the benifit of the stock spin-meisters. All of the developers are probably included in the 90%.
How do you think Alan Cox feels about being lumped in with the "marketers"?
~Sean
Speaking of fallacies....
The bigest fallacy is that the bandwidth is expensive. Bandwidth does cost money (and good reliable bandwidth cost more.) BUT almost half the cost for that T1 is the local loop charge, which goes to the "Bell"s. They are reaping huge rewards from the digital boom! (and if you are paying 1500/mo for a Tier-1 T1 my friend, you are getting ripped off big time!)
If you are a big time ISP and you can afford to colocate in the "Bell" facilities you can cut your local loop charge, while taking it up the *** for the colocation fee, you still come out ahead, but not by much.
Bandwidth does cost money, but the Local Exchange Carriers are keeping a strangle hold on the cost by charging a ton of money for the right to use thier lines. A monopoly by any other name is still a monopoly.
~Sean
if it is unexpected?
Someone should thank the post for pointing this out to us. Now this place is just a little higher in profile. I like the part about it being on the top floor. Seems to me that if you wanted to HERF gun the place you know where to point it now.
Not to mention that the P4 would almost be rivaled with the amount of heat dissapation requird for 1500 watts of transmission power. I'm surprised Intel had not thought of this before. New super hot laptops, melts in your lap, not in the case...
Why don't "they" just sue the spammers out of existance? "They" would make all of our lives that much easier.
If ORBZ is testing for obsure bugs/holes, you can bet that the spammers are doing it too.
~Sean
Seems to me that we would end up with some sort of cross between sourceforge and freenet. Not really efficient, but for those that absolutly have to scratch that itch, without fear of liability...
~Sean
In general I agree with the Nerf/lead weight concept, but the Nerf ball has a much slower terminal velocity then the lead weight at 1 atmosphere. But to make it more clear, in a vacuum the principal would be the same.
~Sean
This is totaly correct. The avarage guy on the street wants to get simple, cheap, and easy to use service. S/He is not instested in spending hours hooking up some contraption to his satellite receiver to get free porn, or all the channels turned on.
The companies probably spend more money on trying to stop the 5% who hack the equipment then they lost in revenue from those 5%. Most of which probably would not pay for the service anyway. From an economic point of view they should just put in place a simple hurdle to keep joe six-pack from screwing around with his receiver.
I do have to wonder, do the geeks at the satellite companies scream to the upper managment about how they are getting hacked, just to further thier job enjoyment?
~Sean
You mean like Godzilla vs. Micky Mouse?
~Sean
I agree with you 100%. I did not talk about the stability aspect of the systems. Who would run critical systems on NT or Windows? I was just assuming that we were talking about Linux, so you know... :-)
~Sean
I have done this too, but only after contracting to a contracting comapny. There has to be one level between you and the company you are really doing work for. Some of the contracting shops that I have worked through insisted that I be W-2 with them so that I could work for thier clients as a contractor. The IRS can be real sticklers about these things. The issue is really liability to the IRS. You may have a fine and happy contracting relationship with a client but the IRS will still claim that you are an emploee and stick the company with penalties for not with holding taxes. Most Companies just do not want to be exposed to that kind of problem. Not all, but most
~Sean
First and formost, keep the computer system closed. Do not hook it up to any outside networks. No networks, no phone lines, no serial connections. That will elimiate quite a bit of risk for attack.
If that is not an option, then run the outside network connection through a very tight firewall.
~Sean
However if you read this little gem:
Holding the employer liable for the tax that was not withheld does not relieve you from the liability for your share of social security and Medicare taxes.
IT seems that the IRS will probably ignore the company since there is no money to squeez out of them, and the employees will get the shaft...
Thanks, Uncle Sam...
~Sean
porn, what else?
It may funny, but it is a good sign. If porn flourishes on this "medium" then this medium is probably going to be a success. Porn is the most censored type of "speach" out there. Look at the VCR industy. A major reason why Sony failed to get the Beta max out there was because it resisted the porn industry from using thier format. The Internet was widly used to distribute porn when it was just getting commercialized. Look at it now.
I think Freenet will take off when it becomes real easy for regular users to download and install the programs and not have to worry about how to set it up. Eventualy there might even be a commercial interest in doing this.
Go Freenet!
~Sean
And with a 1/2 dozen servers (preferably big Dells) you will not have to worry about heating your house either.
/. on your on your DS3 (with out the ads, of course) and stay roast toasey next to your big pipe?
Who would want to leave the house when you can cache up all of
A Three digit UID might even get you a marrige proposal...
The editors just wanted to test drive thier new <A HREF="http://slashdot.org/search.pl?topic=176"> Icon</A><BR><P>
Perhaps blizzard should talk nicly with the bnetd people and find out what makes thier site more attractive instead of suing them into the ground. Seems to me that they would earn a lot more respect from their user community that way...
But that is just me... I not have my myopic corperate glasses with clue filter attachement on today...
The user community has spoken, the people that they are trying to sell to. They are unhappy and doing something about it. If there is a problem Blizzard should examine the cause not try to cure the symptom.
Screw them too.
It seems that Mr. Valenti is suffering from the same myopic view of the market place that plagued the movie industry when then VCR was first introduced ["Movies Get Framed", op-ed Feb 25, 2002]. After the VCR was introduced the industry felt threatened and tried to bludgeon the manufacturers through the courts. The Supreme Court held that the VCR was a Fair Use device that the public should be able to use. Did this result in piracy, yes, but it also spawned a whole new industry to deliver movies to the public at reasonable prices. Why do people pay for movies when they could just "pirate" them off the Internet? The average consumer is more interested in obtaining the movie in a legitimate, convenient, and cost effective manner. You will never be able to completely prevent piracy. There will always be some enterprising geek that has too much time on his hands that will try to break the electronic locks that you use, witness DeCSS. But if you provide a reasonable mechanism for the general consumer to conveniently obtain your product legally they will. Stop punishing us and move forward with a simple to use movie on demand system.
Thanks for your time and consideration,
...address/phone # deleted...
Sean McAdam
It was somewhat off the cuff, so it probably will not get published in the paper. But It made me feel better...
~Sean
It will be difficult for spammers to fake a known keys from a friend, relative, or some other "known" person or entitiy.
If I get a signed email, but I do not recognise the key, I will be suspisious, and may just junk it. Once signing emails is ubiquitous it will be more difficult for spammers to hide in the dark corners of the Internet. Not imposible, but more difficult. If you make it difficult enought the cost of spamming for these jerks goes up, and will result in less spam.
~Sean
We do not need more laws "protecting" us! What we really need is a easy to use universal email crypto standard where everyone will sign thier email. Any mail not signed is immediatly suspect. Any keys you do not recognize are suspect.
Standard crypto would serve us much better then any new law (set of laws) and the possible abusive applications of said law(s). We would surly end up with all sorts of lawful and awful unintended consequences as a result af anything that is generated by any government.
~Sean