Exactly.... Funny that SciFi fans are often the "Early Adopters" of new technology - but organizations like Creation don't seem to grock anything but the Mass Market.
Ah well. Another decent idea shot to hell by Greedy Bastids locked in the Wintendo world. I'll hold out for "The Real Thing" at World Con in San Jose...
You have a good point on the "cheap labor" aspect of school district solutions. The one thing they have is time - since they sure as hell don't have any money.
Let's add something to this. Parents and students and staff will all pull together with "The bake-sale-thing" in order to do something good for the school. New uniforms for the football team, new books for the library, a swing set for the playground - what have you. Now, imagine those same parents being asked to throw together a bake sale in order to raise money for "fines" imposed by a BSA audit.
The FIRST thing on every parents mind is going to be "Who are these bastards taking money away from my kid's education?!?"
Pissing off parents is a Bad Thing (tm). Kids remember things like this. They remember the soccer team not getting to go to the finals because the district was broke after an audit. The backlash you mention will (we can only hope) be farther reaching than just a switch away from M$ in the schools - but will represent a whole mindset shift away from the business model that spawned this stupidity in the first place.
"Inferior" at what? I work in a mixed environment myself: Linux, *BSD, Solaris (6,7,8), and (*cough*) Win2K. While I agree 100% that Solaris scales to multiple processors at levels that Linux and *BSD can't touch, for the desktop I'd have to say Solaris is inferior - which is the point you're making.
Perhaps, by incorporating some of the more 'desktop friendly' aspects of Linux into Solaris, Solaris will become less of a sucky proposition on the desktop - which is where most of the world's computer users live.
Murphy knows trying to put Linux on an E65k would be nuts. Sun's Heavy Iron runs best on Solaris and usually isn't saddled with desktop apps. But for the Light Iron (eg: old Ultra5's, modern SunBlade 100's) - which are cheap by Workstation standards - a lot of the more friendly Linux features make sense.
This topic, and several related to it, has come up several times recently and responses frequently over-look one important thing. It is not the government's place to raise our kids. It is our job as parents - for those/.ers old enough to have little h@X0rz of their own - to raise our kids and teach them what's right and wrong.
I'm yet to see and solid evidence that playing a video game that portrays violence will turn kids into murdering little monsters. Or any of the other 'FUD' the proponents of these laws like to toss out there.
Did we push people off cliffs because we saw While-E-Coyote survive a 900 foot drop - several times an episode? Do we run people off the road because we played a lot of Carmageddon? Did Dungeons and Dragons turn its players into Satan Loving Sinners? Obviously not.
Does Congress think kids are too stupid to tell the difference between a video game and real life?
Do they think they are better suited to raise our kids than we are?
Sorry. If I don't want my kid playing violent video games, I don't let her. It's not the government's place to get involved here. This isn't cigarettes or liquor that have well documented harmful side effects. These are fscking video games, that may not be entirely adorable, but aren't going to cause cancer or make kids go psycho.
And no, I don't let my 11 year old play GTA3. but that is my decision, as her parent.
We agreee that the judge botched the ruling, and I agree completely that I don't need to be, nor should I be, around my kid 24x7 to make sure she stays out of trouble, but it's not the government's place to do my job for me.
The point here, as others have mentioned, is one of micromanagement. If I don't want my kid playing violent video games (or smoking, or watching R-Rated movies), I tell her not to and, if I've done my job as a parent, she won't. Same goes for drugs, pr0n, teen sex, etc. Yes, there are some cases (ethanol, cigarettes) where there are proven harmful consequences where I don't mind their intervention, but there is no proof whatsoever that video games are going to hurt anything but the kid's thumb muscles.
The movie ratings are, in many respects, a farce. The whole concept of strictly "age dependent" ratings is inane. Yes, it's convenient and there is some justification for it (statistical averages) but there is no mystical transition in head space when someone turns 17,18,21 that makes them suddenly able to understand things they couldn't understand the day before - or take responsibility for same.
All the ordnance does is put additional burdens on retailers with no real benefit to the people it's trying to protect. THAT is what is patently wrong about it.
I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at. Web chats are terrible for speed, bandwidth usage, and security. The IRC protocol isn't an issue here. They're talking about "h@X0rZ" trading credit cards and identity information. That's not a flaw with the protocol - or an issue with IRC. As numerous people have pointed out, there are lots of ways for them to do it. And, as has also been pointed out, Carderz are a minority on most IRC nets. As in 1/10ths of a percent.
And the fact that IRC is a cleartext protocol makes it frighteningly easy to monitor. A former employer (an ISP) had a local IRC server that had very clear policy on carding and such - and would randomly monitor for the tell-tale pattern of a credit card number. The CNN article is smoke and mirrors. Yes: Carding happens on IRC. No: that doesn't make IRC bad.
But I'm still wondering about what "security flaws" you're talking about...
I was thinking in the OLD days - pre-PC. Back in the Commodore Pet, Apple, Apple ][, Altair, etc., days. There was a time when there was a huge amount of difference between the various platforms and the only people who used them were psychotic hobbiests and small to medium businesses. Back when a Big Business used a Big Computer and we were lucky to get an account on the University shell.
The clone manufacturers you're referring to are the very same clone manufacturers who were getting raped by M$ licensing agreements. That was the start of the commodity days.
That's a question of economics that would take this way, way, off-topic. But I would dare say that computers wouldn't have become commodity items if consumers hadn't wanted them to become commodity items. In the "good old days" they weren't - they were (relatively) complicated beasts that only a geek could love. It wasn't until the "ease of use" factors brought them down to the masses that they could become a commodity product.
We - the consumers - are the ones to blame for making computers commodity items. Because we - the consumers - wanted them to be that way. Who's to blame for the mass acceptance of computers?
Well . . . who made them "so easy to use your grandma can do it?" Apple (MacOS), and Microsoft (Windows)...
I'm sure there's some truth to the OEM's having gotten themselves in this position, but I seem to remember that this is exactly the sort of thing that got M$ in trouble with the DoJ in the first place: forcing OEM's into contracts that would be illegal in any other industry. eg: "You pay us n dollars for every machine you ship, whether it has our OS or not, or you can kiss off your OEM discount."
The OEM's are already operating on the edge with each box they manufacture. In the commodity world, a $10 difference in price is enough to put a consumer onto another brand. The OEM's can't risk losing their discount when it translates directly into sales. That's the "illegal" part of the M$ Monopoly - their using their power to force other companies to toe their party line.
I have to hand it to the gateway folks for being willing to testify - and risk having M$ find some loophole to yank their OEM discount.
Now, if Gateway hadn't gone to a pure Intel lineup...
Honestly, I don't think it deserves a "Troll" rating. While case mods may be cool, we've seen two "Cool case mod" articles in as many days. How are case mods "News for nerds" or "Stuff that matters?"
It's not that slow a news day!
It's been a long time coming. . .
on
ULTra Robo-Taxi
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
This looks like another take on the Ultra-Light Rail Vehicle concept that's been around for a long time now. Basically replacing the "light" rails and trollies we're used to from a lot of cities with really light vehicles running on even lighter rails. Removing something the size and mass of a locomotive and replacing it with something the size of a Honda Civic with even lower mass.
From a pure engineering standpoint, these things are a great idea and are a much better solution to the "public" transit (as opposed to "Mass" transit as we're saddled with now) problem. The rails are relatively inexpensive to fabricate. They're much less intrusive. They can be switched easily to give better coverage. And the vehicles are light, quiet, and cheap.
The vandalism problem is probably the hardest to solve. And the obvious problem of pulling "unusable" vehicles out of service. Still, it's nice to see a city willing to try a project like this.
The "raw numbers" have always been a point of contention. What is the phrase? "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics." This is almost certainly a case of adding up the numbers and drawing conclusions from them without seeing what they represent.
The raw number of reported vulnerabilities is not an accurate reflection of security of an OS. Add to that the fact that the many of the "Linux" vulnerabilities are in applications that are common across multiple distros and often (in the case of the numerous bind and sendmail vilnerabilities for example) common to many flavors of UNIX.
I would be actually interested in seeing an Apples to Apples compareson done here. How many "remote root exploits" (Admin access for Windows boxen) have been reported, v "Local root" v "Elevated privilege."
Also, should vendor software exploits that simply RUN under Windows be included in the numbers? In the case of "Linux vulnerabilities" that's often exactly what's happening.
Raw numbers really don't mean jack.
This is frightening...
on
The Eyes Have It
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Considering the absolutley abysimal record of the polygraph in controlled testing (references are extensive) this is just something else we don't need. Relying on an "automatic" system is just asking for more "false faith" in a security system that doesn't work.
The article states that it's proven as effective as the existing polygraph - which is to say its reliability sucks.
Just what the world needs. Another knee-jerk deployment of a technology "to make us feel better." I suspect it'll be as effective as the National Guardsmen standing on the end of the big bridges - only far more intrusive if you happen to be one of those 10% false positives.
Not sure I agree. If they are advertising X speed without a disclaimer that "performance will almost certainly be a lot lower most of the time" then the consumers have a right to expect X speed most of the time. We all know that in reality it falls far short of the advertised speeds. Perhaps if they were saying "You may see as much as X" rather than "Get screaming fast X speed! Ten times faster than dialup!" etc.
As for over-booking the airlines do practice it, but they also compensate passengers who are bumped from flights. The airlines recognize that if they sell more tickets than they have seats, sometimes they will have to deal with their mistake. I don't know the statistics, but I doubt airline over-booking runs to more than 10%. ISP's don't even pretend to compensate their subscribers when the bandwidth drops to nothing. They just blame it on congestion and expect you to be happy with the service.
Though I fully agree that if we want good service, we have to expect to pay for it. Which is why I do pay for commercial class service in my home, and see about 95% of my expected bandwidth 24x7.
Personally, I think a little more truth in advertising would be in order. Sure, they will advertise "X speed to the CO, guaranteed" but how many customers realize once they hit the CO, they're on a massively over-subscribed shared pipe? And if a user is actually using what the ISP advertised, how is that the user's fault?
I was actually referring to the cable loop from the central nodes out through the neighborhoods. The coax coming into the homes. There were issues with some of the cable junctions going to pot whenever it rained and the cables got wet. At one point, a bad junction was responsible for 6 weeks of 30% packet loss.
Sorry if I was implying the cable issue was on the other side.
The problem is on both ends though. Until Febrary when the cable modem service provider I was using went belly up (ISPChannel) I was reasonably happy with the service. Four fixed IP's, 500k/sec downstream, 200k/sec upstream. Reliability was less than pristine, but at least some fraction of that was in the ancient cables run through the city.
My issue here is with the bandwidth. The cable modems were all throttled to restrict the upstream and downstream speeds we could utilize. I was limited to 500k/sec as mentioned, but the entire city was fed by 4 T1 connections. We had roughly 1000 users, each throttled to 500k/sec sharing a 6M/sec pipe.
You do the math. There are similar cases with DSL providers hanging 8000 ADSL users at 1+M/sec of a Redback serviced by a single DS3.
The replacement service, Excite@Home, was no better. Worse, in fact, since they had a No Servers policy and used to aggressively scan for them. No improvement in service or bandwidth. Just a loss of freedom to use the bandwidth we were already paying for.
The providers are complaining about people "stealing" bandwidth when they are massively over-subscribing their systems. If I am paying for bandwidth, I expect to get it. This "they're stealing IP's and sharing the pipe!" line is just a feint to cover the fact they are so massively over-subscribed they can't possibly support the userbase they have.
If my link is throttled, then HOW I use that link is realy no business of my ISP's - unless I'm doing something that's actually against the law. If they don't have the infrastructure to support the bandwidth I'm paying for, that is not MY problem. If they can't support X users at Y bandwidth, then they have no business SELLING X users Y bandwidth.
I'd have to agree. If one of the monster nets was going through a conversion and affecting twenty thousand users, it might be newsworthy. But how is this "front page" news? A small IRC net isn't newsworthy in of itself - unless it's offering some new and unique capability.
And disagreeing with the newsworthieness of a post does not make one a Troll.
You'd be surprised how many large corporations employ folks in their security departments who's sole purpose in life is to break into company sites, or data, or their partner's sites. The guys who do Physical Security rely on Social Engineering like this guy is reported to do, or even simpler means like tailgating or even trying to pick the lock.
It's pretty cool, but there's a lot more time writing up reports about the intrusion than there is actually doing intrusions.
I seem to remember an add-on to Word 6.0 under Windows 3.x that had that capability around '95 or so. I'd imagine I still have a copy of it somewhere - though not the 5.25" disk I'd need to read it....
From what I've seen, a lot of the contested.biz registrations are between legitimate Trademark holders and what are effectively domain squatters. I've seen at least one San Francisco based company issueing requests for (various versions of major hardware vendor).biz addresses in conflict with said major vendor's own legitimate claim.
I wouldn't be overly surprised to see this company, and others, doing this specifically to make money down the road by trying to sell the names back to the trademark holders.
Honestly, cocacola.biz (for example) should legitimately go to them...
This is one of those technologies that could have great potential both in the biomedical field and in the portable device field. Unfortunately, the article doesn't give much detail - and has a couple of strangely glaring errors (10 microns?)
From what I remember of RTGs (Radio Thermal Generators - like those used on Deep Space probes) rely on a temperature differential to generate power. With a body powered unit, you'd be looking at drawing power from the difference between human body temperatute and the ambient temperature outside.
If it's 98 degrees outside, hope you have -real- batteries around to provide power.
Re:Linux to the rescue?
on
Code Red III
·
· Score: 1
This has been proposed on a number of mailing lists since the original CR1 incident. Variations of the "Let's write a good virus" theme have been around probably since the days of the original Morris WORM. In theory, it's a good idea, but the reality would probably turn out far less effective than we'd hope.
A full discussion might actually be productive, but you'll probably find better threads on this idea on the vuln-dev or incidents mailing lists from securityfocus.
And more will come...
on
Code Red III
·
· Score: 1
This sounds a lot like the derivitives of the ILoveYou Outlook Virus. Someone does the initial exploit, and other people modify the code to be more destructive, carry a different payload, whatever. Chances are we'll see more variations on this theme in the near future.
The sad part is that it appears that the vast majority of infected systems are owned by folks who don't even know they have IIS installed on their machine. It was either part of a default load, or they clicked "YES" at some point in an installation without really understanding what they were saying YES to.
Personally, I think we need to have a lot more coverage of this than we're getting. A lot more instances of "If you are running a Windows system, please install all the latest patches today!" on the news, web, etc. Though to be fair, there are a lot of *IX systems unpatched out there too...
I was going to mention Yellow Pages Endeavour - the truely exotic Australian "Speed pod" as they call it. (That particular "boat" is almost impossible to define as anything but an "it") Of course, Yellow Pages can only sail on one tack, which makes it rather limited.
I also seem to recall the TriFoiler was getting close to that speed, though it suffered from cavitation problems.
While we may never see 45 knots on a cruising foil, it should be possible to cram some accomodations into a sailing foil - even if it would never be practical as a production boat. (You have a better background in this than I do though. I'm just an ME and avid sailor)
And, just for the record, this boat is NOT a catamaran. Cats have two hulls. This is (loosly) a Tri.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly.... Funny that SciFi fans are often the "Early Adopters" of new technology - but organizations like Creation don't seem to grock anything but the Mass Market.
Ah well. Another decent idea shot to hell by Greedy Bastids locked in the Wintendo world. I'll hold out for "The Real Thing" at World Con in San Jose...
You have a good point on the "cheap labor" aspect of school district solutions. The one thing they have is time - since they sure as hell don't have any money.
Let's add something to this. Parents and students and staff will all pull together with "The bake-sale-thing" in order to do something good for the school. New uniforms for the football team, new books for the library, a swing set for the playground - what have you. Now, imagine those same parents being asked to throw together a bake sale in order to raise money for "fines" imposed by a BSA audit.
The FIRST thing on every parents mind is going to be "Who are these bastards taking money away from my kid's education?!?"
Pissing off parents is a Bad Thing (tm). Kids remember things like this. They remember the soccer team not getting to go to the finals because the district was broke after an audit. The backlash you mention will (we can only hope) be farther reaching than just a switch away from M$ in the schools - but will represent a whole mindset shift away from the business model that spawned this stupidity in the first place.
"Inferior" at what? I work in a mixed environment myself: Linux, *BSD, Solaris (6,7,8), and (*cough*) Win2K. While I agree 100% that Solaris scales to multiple processors at levels that Linux and *BSD can't touch, for the desktop I'd have to say Solaris is inferior - which is the point you're making.
Perhaps, by incorporating some of the more 'desktop friendly' aspects of Linux into Solaris, Solaris will become less of a sucky proposition on the desktop - which is where most of the world's computer users live.
Murphy knows trying to put Linux on an E65k would be nuts. Sun's Heavy Iron runs best on Solaris and usually isn't saddled with desktop apps. But for the Light Iron (eg: old Ultra5's, modern SunBlade 100's) - which are cheap by Workstation standards - a lot of the more friendly Linux features make sense.
This topic, and several related to it, has come up several times recently and responses frequently over-look one important thing. It is not the government's place to raise our kids. It is our job as parents - for those /.ers old enough to have little h@X0rz of their own - to raise our kids and teach them what's right and wrong.
I'm yet to see and solid evidence that playing a video game that portrays violence will turn kids into murdering little monsters. Or any of the other 'FUD' the proponents of these laws like to toss out there.
Did we push people off cliffs because we saw While-E-Coyote survive a 900 foot drop - several times an episode? Do we run people off the road because we played a lot of Carmageddon? Did Dungeons and Dragons turn its players into Satan Loving Sinners? Obviously not.
Does Congress think kids are too stupid to tell the difference between a video game and real life?
Do they think they are better suited to raise our kids than we are?
Sorry. If I don't want my kid playing violent video games, I don't let her. It's not the government's place to get involved here. This isn't cigarettes or liquor that have well documented harmful side effects. These are fscking video games, that may not be entirely adorable, but aren't going to cause cancer or make kids go psycho.
And no, I don't let my 11 year old play GTA3. but that is my decision, as her parent.
I have to ask "are you a parent?"
We agreee that the judge botched the ruling, and I agree completely that I don't need to be, nor should I be, around my kid 24x7 to make sure she stays out of trouble, but it's not the government's place to do my job for me.
The point here, as others have mentioned, is one of micromanagement. If I don't want my kid playing violent video games (or smoking, or watching R-Rated movies), I tell her not to and, if I've done my job as a parent, she won't. Same goes for drugs, pr0n, teen sex, etc. Yes, there are some cases (ethanol, cigarettes) where there are proven harmful consequences where I don't mind their intervention, but there is no proof whatsoever that video games are going to hurt anything but the kid's thumb muscles.
The movie ratings are, in many respects, a farce. The whole concept of strictly "age dependent" ratings is inane. Yes, it's convenient and there is some justification for it (statistical averages) but there is no mystical transition in head space when someone turns 17,18,21 that makes them suddenly able to understand things they couldn't understand the day before - or take responsibility for same.
All the ordnance does is put additional burdens on retailers with no real benefit to the people it's trying to protect. THAT is what is patently wrong about it.
I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at. Web chats are terrible for speed, bandwidth usage, and security. The IRC protocol isn't an issue here. They're talking about "h@X0rZ" trading credit cards and identity information. That's not a flaw with the protocol - or an issue with IRC. As numerous people have pointed out, there are lots of ways for them to do it. And, as has also been pointed out, Carderz are a minority on most IRC nets. As in 1/10ths of a percent.
And the fact that IRC is a cleartext protocol makes it frighteningly easy to monitor. A former employer (an ISP) had a local IRC server that had very clear policy on carding and such - and would randomly monitor for the tell-tale pattern of a credit card number. The CNN article is smoke and mirrors. Yes: Carding happens on IRC. No: that doesn't make IRC bad.
But I'm still wondering about what "security flaws" you're talking about...
I was thinking in the OLD days - pre-PC. Back in the Commodore Pet, Apple, Apple ][, Altair, etc., days. There was a time when there was a huge amount of difference between the various platforms and the only people who used them were psychotic hobbiests and small to medium businesses. Back when a Big Business used a Big Computer and we were lucky to get an account on the University shell.
The clone manufacturers you're referring to are the very same clone manufacturers who were getting raped by M$ licensing agreements. That was the start of the commodity days.
That's a question of economics that would take this way, way, off-topic. But I would dare say that computers wouldn't have become commodity items if consumers hadn't wanted them to become commodity items. In the "good old days" they weren't - they were (relatively) complicated beasts that only a geek could love. It wasn't until the "ease of use" factors brought them down to the masses that they could become a commodity product.
We - the consumers - are the ones to blame for making computers commodity items. Because we - the consumers - wanted them to be that way. Who's to blame for the mass acceptance of computers?
Well . . . who made them "so easy to use your grandma can do it?" Apple (MacOS), and Microsoft (Windows)...
I'm sure there's some truth to the OEM's having gotten themselves in this position, but I seem to remember that this is exactly the sort of thing that got M$ in trouble with the DoJ in the first place: forcing OEM's into contracts that would be illegal in any other industry. eg: "You pay us n dollars for every machine you ship, whether it has our OS or not, or you can kiss off your OEM discount."
The OEM's are already operating on the edge with each box they manufacture. In the commodity world, a $10 difference in price is enough to put a consumer onto another brand. The OEM's can't risk losing their discount when it translates directly into sales. That's the "illegal" part of the M$ Monopoly - their using their power to force other companies to toe their party line.
I have to hand it to the gateway folks for being willing to testify - and risk having M$ find some loophole to yank their OEM discount.
Now, if Gateway hadn't gone to a pure Intel lineup...
Honestly, I don't think it deserves a "Troll" rating. While case mods may be cool, we've seen two "Cool case mod" articles in as many days. How are case mods "News for nerds" or "Stuff that matters?"
It's not that slow a news day!
This looks like another take on the Ultra-Light Rail Vehicle concept that's been around for a long time now. Basically replacing the "light" rails and trollies we're used to from a lot of cities with really light vehicles running on even lighter rails. Removing something the size and mass of a locomotive and replacing it with something the size of a Honda Civic with even lower mass.
From a pure engineering standpoint, these things are a great idea and are a much better solution to the "public" transit (as opposed to "Mass" transit as we're saddled with now) problem. The rails are relatively inexpensive to fabricate. They're much less intrusive. They can be switched easily to give better coverage. And the vehicles are light, quiet, and cheap.
The vandalism problem is probably the hardest to solve. And the obvious problem of pulling "unusable" vehicles out of service. Still, it's nice to see a city willing to try a project like this.
The "raw numbers" have always been a point of contention. What is the phrase? "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics." This is almost certainly a case of adding up the numbers and drawing conclusions from them without seeing what they represent.
The raw number of reported vulnerabilities is not an accurate reflection of security of an OS. Add to that the fact that the many of the "Linux" vulnerabilities are in applications that are common across multiple distros and often (in the case of the numerous bind and sendmail vilnerabilities for example) common to many flavors of UNIX.
I would be actually interested in seeing an Apples to Apples compareson done here. How many "remote root exploits" (Admin access for Windows boxen) have been reported, v "Local root" v "Elevated privilege."
Also, should vendor software exploits that simply RUN under Windows be included in the numbers? In the case of "Linux vulnerabilities" that's often exactly what's happening.
Raw numbers really don't mean jack.
Considering the absolutley abysimal record of the polygraph in controlled testing (references are extensive) this is just something else we don't need. Relying on an "automatic" system is just asking for more "false faith" in a security system that doesn't work.
The article states that it's proven as effective as the existing polygraph - which is to say its reliability sucks.
Just what the world needs. Another knee-jerk deployment of a technology "to make us feel better." I suspect it'll be as effective as the National Guardsmen standing on the end of the big bridges - only far more intrusive if you happen to be one of those 10% false positives.
Not sure I agree. If they are advertising X speed without a disclaimer that "performance will almost certainly be a lot lower most of the time" then the consumers have a right to expect X speed most of the time. We all know that in reality it falls far short of the advertised speeds. Perhaps if they were saying "You may see as much as X" rather than "Get screaming fast X speed! Ten times faster than dialup!" etc.
As for over-booking the airlines do practice it, but they also compensate passengers who are bumped from flights. The airlines recognize that if they sell more tickets than they have seats, sometimes they will have to deal with their mistake. I don't know the statistics, but I doubt airline over-booking runs to more than 10%. ISP's don't even pretend to compensate their subscribers when the bandwidth drops to nothing. They just blame it on congestion and expect you to be happy with the service.
Though I fully agree that if we want good service, we have to expect to pay for it. Which is why I do pay for commercial class service in my home, and see about 95% of my expected bandwidth 24x7.
Personally, I think a little more truth in advertising would be in order. Sure, they will advertise "X speed to the CO, guaranteed" but how many customers realize once they hit the CO, they're on a massively over-subscribed shared pipe? And if a user is actually using what the ISP advertised, how is that the user's fault?
I was actually referring to the cable loop from the central nodes out through the neighborhoods. The coax coming into the homes. There were issues with some of the cable junctions going to pot whenever it rained and the cables got wet. At one point, a bad junction was responsible for 6 weeks of 30% packet loss.
Sorry if I was implying the cable issue was on the other side.
The problem is on both ends though. Until Febrary when the cable modem service provider I was using went belly up (ISPChannel) I was reasonably happy with the service. Four fixed IP's, 500k/sec downstream, 200k/sec upstream. Reliability was less than pristine, but at least some fraction of that was in the ancient cables run through the city.
My issue here is with the bandwidth. The cable modems were all throttled to restrict the upstream and downstream speeds we could utilize. I was limited to 500k/sec as mentioned, but the entire city was fed by 4 T1 connections. We had roughly 1000 users, each throttled to 500k/sec sharing a 6M/sec pipe.
You do the math. There are similar cases with DSL providers hanging 8000 ADSL users at 1+M/sec of a Redback serviced by a single DS3.
The replacement service, Excite@Home, was no better. Worse, in fact, since they had a No Servers policy and used to aggressively scan for them. No improvement in service or bandwidth. Just a loss of freedom to use the bandwidth we were already paying for.
The providers are complaining about people "stealing" bandwidth when they are massively over-subscribing their systems. If I am paying for bandwidth, I expect to get it. This "they're stealing IP's and sharing the pipe!" line is just a feint to cover the fact they are so massively over-subscribed they can't possibly support the userbase they have.
If my link is throttled, then HOW I use that link is realy no business of my ISP's - unless I'm doing something that's actually against the law. If they don't have the infrastructure to support the bandwidth I'm paying for, that is not MY problem . If they can't support X users at Y bandwidth, then they have no business SELLING X users Y bandwidth.
In other venues, it's called fraud.
Sorry, the ISP's aren't getting my sympathy.
I'd have to agree. If one of the monster nets was going through a conversion and affecting twenty thousand users, it might be newsworthy. But how is this "front page" news? A small IRC net isn't newsworthy in of itself - unless it's offering some new and unique capability.
And disagreeing with the newsworthieness of a post does not make one a Troll.
You'd be surprised how many large corporations employ folks in their security departments who's sole purpose in life is to break into company sites, or data, or their partner's sites. The guys who do Physical Security rely on Social Engineering like this guy is reported to do, or even simpler means like tailgating or even trying to pick the lock.
It's pretty cool, but there's a lot more time writing up reports about the intrusion than there is actually doing intrusions.
I seem to remember an add-on to Word 6.0 under Windows 3.x that had that capability around '95 or so. I'd imagine I still have a copy of it somewhere - though not the 5.25" disk I'd need to read it....
From what I've seen, a lot of the contested .biz registrations are between legitimate Trademark holders and what are effectively domain squatters. I've seen at least one San Francisco based company issueing requests for (various versions of major hardware vendor).biz addresses in conflict with said major vendor's own legitimate claim.
I wouldn't be overly surprised to see this company, and others, doing this specifically to make money down the road by trying to sell the names back to the trademark holders.
Honestly, cocacola.biz (for example) should legitimately go to them...
This is one of those technologies that could have great potential both in the biomedical field and in the portable device field. Unfortunately, the article doesn't give much detail - and has a couple of strangely glaring errors (10 microns?)
From what I remember of RTGs (Radio Thermal Generators - like those used on Deep Space probes) rely on a temperature differential to generate power. With a body powered unit, you'd be looking at drawing power from the difference between human body temperatute and the ambient temperature outside.
If it's 98 degrees outside, hope you have -real- batteries around to provide power.
This has been proposed on a number of mailing lists since the original CR1 incident. Variations of the "Let's write a good virus" theme have been around probably since the days of the original Morris WORM. In theory, it's a good idea, but the reality would probably turn out far less effective than we'd hope.
A full discussion might actually be productive, but you'll probably find better threads on this idea on the vuln-dev or incidents mailing lists from securityfocus.
This sounds a lot like the derivitives of the ILoveYou Outlook Virus. Someone does the initial exploit, and other people modify the code to be more destructive, carry a different payload, whatever. Chances are we'll see more variations on this theme in the near future.
The sad part is that it appears that the vast majority of infected systems are owned by folks who don't even know they have IIS installed on their machine. It was either part of a default load, or they clicked "YES" at some point in an installation without really understanding what they were saying YES to.
Personally, I think we need to have a lot more coverage of this than we're getting. A lot more instances of "If you are running a Windows system, please install all the latest patches today!" on the news, web, etc. Though to be fair, there are a lot of *IX systems unpatched out there too...
I know.
Wishful thinking...
Portage 660CDT -- FreeBSD 4.3
Satellite Pro 480CDT -- OpenBSD 2.7 - 2.9, FBSD 4.3
Tecra 520CDT -- Mandrake 8.0
None of them are new, of course, but they have all been more than up to whatever tasks I've put to them.
Only examples of what you can do with old iron...
I was going to mention Yellow Pages Endeavour - the truely exotic Australian "Speed pod" as they call it. (That particular "boat" is almost impossible to define as anything but an "it") Of course, Yellow Pages can only sail on one tack, which makes it rather limited.
I also seem to recall the TriFoiler was getting close to that speed, though it suffered from cavitation problems.
While we may never see 45 knots on a cruising foil, it should be possible to cram some accomodations into a sailing foil - even if it would never be practical as a production boat. (You have a better background in this than I do though. I'm just an ME and avid sailor)
And, just for the record, this boat is NOT a catamaran. Cats have two hulls. This is (loosly) a Tri.