Dude, you ate in Waterloo Station, of course its going to be expensive, don't forget, you're in London, a capital city inside one of their train stations afterall
Well, the train station is certainly the captive audience so I'm not surprised. When I was in Florence I went out of my way to find the local non-tourist trap shops. At one store I bought a two liter bottle of water for 0.02. Yes, that's two cents. I thought they screwed up the sign and figured it was gonna be 2. Picture my surprise when I got change for my two euro coin....
she will feel like a criminal first due to the practices being deployed at your airports
I don't know if I buy that. In my experience, airport security in the EU (the UK in particular) was at least as intimidating to me as anything I've seen here in the states. Granted, I didn't have to do something foolish like take off my shoes, but they grilled me pretty hard with all the standard questions and I couldn't help but notice a shitload of paramilitary types with submachine guns.
Might you have been referring to our Orwellian immigration practices? In that vain I would probably agree with you. Nobody fingerprinted or photographed me when I entered the EU..... I really hate the direction my country is going:(
The reason for higher prices in Britain is sales tax. You pay 17.5% VAT on a game
Uhh, yeah, but the parent said that games cost the same in pounds as they do in dollars. The last time I checked the Pound Sterling was worth more then 117.5% of the US Dollar...... so why do they cost the "same", again?
Valve may be greedy and evil, but if they keep making games as good as Portal, I don't care.
And the Italian Fascists kept the trains running on time while the Nazi regime was able to fund and build most of the autobahns. Guess you can overlook the bad side of those regimes if you care about getting to your destination on time.
Granted, that's a somewhat bombastic comparison, but I think the spirit behind it holds true here. You think they are greedy and evil but you continue to send them your money just because you like a few of their games?
Modern civilization is truly doomed if people are willing to abandon their principals for the sake of a fucking video game.
Not entirely sure how they rooted the box, but from what I could piece together going through the logs they managed to find a old copy of PHPBB he had been mucking around with on a subdomain
I've been out of the hosting game for awhile, but how did they manage to do this? Was Apache running as root or something? Apache, BIND, MySQL.... I run them all as non-root users. The only internet-exposed daemons that I run as root are ntpd (no other option that I'm aware of) and sendmail, though even sendmail runs part of it's suite under a different user now.
I switched to Time Warner because Verizon wanted to increase my DSL from $34.95/mo to $44.95/mo when my contract expired. Talked to retentions and they refused to help me because I only had dry loop service and all the "deals" they can offer require dialtone service. So I switched to Roadrunner, $29.95/mo for 12 months, then $44.95/mo (from prior experience I know I'll be able to get their retentions people to at least go to $34.95/mo, if not $29.95 again).
When I called Verizon to cancel the DSL the fuckers actually agreed to match that price! Well, screw you too, you had your chance. $34.95/mo for 1.5/384k DSL or $29.95 for 5.0/384 RR. Tough call.
I most definitely do not allow my kids access to the internet unsupervised
If that's the case, then why do you feel the need to push for laws that make porn harder to access? If you are sitting with them, or nearby, who cares if you need a credit card to get into that site?
What does "supervised" internet use mean, anyway?
*shrug*, that's for each parent to decide for themselves. My kids aren't really old enough yet to surf on their own. I typically find the site for them (or have it bookmarked) and let them have at it. I'm not standing on top of them approving every click, but I'm roaming between the living room (where the PC is) and other rooms, so I'm keeping an eye on them.
I pretty much have to do any google searches for them
Uhh, I don't even have SafeSearch enabled on my Google profile, and I've never managed to find porn with a non-porn search. Granted, some non-porn searches are filled with crap, but I doubt your ten year old is looking for a keygen, serial, viagra, etc, etc.
and cannot allow them to even type in the internet address lest they make a common mispelling and come across a porn site.
Then INSTALL SOME FILTERING SOFTWARE. And you are being completely paranoid here. I can think of a lot more damaging things then a ten second exposure to a typosquatting porn site.
Right. And online proxies so they can get around network/filter restrictions don't exist, huh?
I guess I'm not as socially conservative as you are, but I'd make the argument that if your kid is old enough to figure out how to get past a well designed filtering setup then he's probably old enough to look at porn without being scarred for life. And seeing as how this is/. I'd make the assumption that you have enough computer experience to lock down a workstation so they couldn't bypass it anyway. Give me an hour and I'll have Windows locked down so tight that they CAN'T bypass my filtering software. If you really don't trust your kids, feel free to remove your CD-ROM and glue your USB ports shut so they can't boot Knoppix either.
or I'm forced to be a control freak just so I can keep trash out of my own house because porn is so accessible.
Regardless of your political or moral views I'd make the argument that common sense says that any "solution" here is going to do more damage then the "problem". What do you purpose doing about all the amateur/shared porn out there? I can get free porn off bittorrent, USENET, IRC, etc, etc a hellva lot easier then I can off any one website. Should somebody who wants to post a movie of fucking his SO really have to force you to prove your 18 before you download it? Should we invade other nations to impose our anti-porn laws on them? Or maybe adopt a Great Firewall of China scheme to keep those porn packets from entering the US?
The solution here isn't regulation or laws that restrict the rights of adults. It's parenting. If you are supervising your kids on the internet then I really don't see what the problem is, unless you are so uptight that the mere thought of them catching a five second glimpse of porn distresses you to the point that you feel the need to involve your legislators.
I don't want my young kids to have to make decisions at age 9 or 10 about whether or not they should be looking at a certain image that pops up on their screen
Then perhaps they shouldn't be using the internet without your supervision? Forget about porn. Hate speech, predators trolling MySpace, etc, etc are all reasons why I wouldn't want my kids using the internet without supervision. Are your kids old enough to stay home alone? If the answer is no, then they probably aren't old enough to use the internet without supervision.
A neighbors wireless router without encryption would provide unwanted access
Ever hear of using a non privileged account for your kids so they can't do stuff like switch networks or remove your filtering software?
Software filters do not work
Says who? We use them at my agency and they seem to work very well. The only complaint is that they are overly aggressive.
I'll be very upfront about this. I think porn is wrong
Why?
The only way I can do that as a parent is to fight for legislation limiting its access into my home. I don't have any other way to do it.
Sure you do. It's called supervising your kids while they use the internet. Or are you one of those people that thinks the TV and/or PC should be a babysitter for you?
Yup. 5 Gig is a lot to transfer on a wireless plan.
Personally I think the limits they impose on their wireless product have more to do with preventing you from using their service to compete with their service. You can't stream Pandora and be within the TOS but I'm sure they have no problem with you using their EV-DO to stream music from one of THEIR stores. Ditto for Youtube -- can't legally do that either, but they are all to happy to provide video clips of their own via VCast.
Now they want to gobble up the 700mhz band, and are fighting the FCC over the open access rules. Yes, god forbid we try and use that band to offer a REAL third broadband pipe. Much better if Verizon and AT&T grab up all the licenses, without even having to justify how they are using what they have now, and restrict it to their own devices and their approved uses.
I hate them for reasons beyond this post, but Verizon hasn't shown inclination towards helping RIAA out. They actively fought them back in the day on disclosing one of their customers and you don't see Verizon's name in the news trying to figure out a way to leverage their backbone product into stopping piracy for RIAA.
I'm still not sure if I would do business with them, as I currently have the option and decided not to (could get their DSL at 1.5/384), but fear of them helping the content providers would not currently be a reason for not doing business with them, IMHO. Just good old-fashioned fear of being screwed if I ever needed to leave, cuz I'm sure the service doubtless has a contract, like everything else they do......
(Ironic how Time Warner can spend a few hours here, installing indoor wiring, and not require an install fee or a long term contract, but Verizon wants one just for getting DSL when they don't even have to do anything beyond turn it on)
No, that would only be "fair" to those who use/abuse voip, ssh, gaming, etc and unfair to everyone who doesn't. How about (1) they upgrade infrastructure with voip-only routers, and (2) you PAY to have voip prioritized.
How do you "abuse" ssh or voip? Using ssh for huge file transfers (scp or something through a ssh tunnel)? That's easily taken care of by only prioritizing small packets and only allowing X number per interval.
I'm all about them upgrading their infrastructure. But short of providing a 1:1 ratio without ANY over-subscription, there WILL be nodes on their network that max out from time to time. When they max out, do you really want your ssh session running with a 500ms delay because of some perceived fairness issue? Do you really want your VOIP packets dying? Do you really want to be pwn'ed in CS so the guy next door downloading the Wikipedia SQL dump doesn't have to take a 0.1% hit on his download speed?
Traffic shaping is a lot different from what Comcast is doing. All shaping does is identify packets with a low tolerance for latency and move them to the top of the queue. It doesn't drop anything. It doesn't come into play until that network link hits 100% utilization. To equate a well engineered shaping solution to purposefully dropping bittorrent packets is to display your ignorance of traffic management and networking in general.
You realize that DOCSIS 2.0 networks only allow 42.88Mbits of download per channel, right? You do the math at 5.0mbits per user and you'll realize that it takes less then ten kiddies to max out that channel. Do you seriously think they can afford to segment their network to such a degree that it's completely impossible to max out a channel even if every customer hits 100%?
Yes, upgrading their infrastructure is huge. The segments will get smaller and smaller and more bandwidth on the cable network will become available for data as analog cable is phased out. But there will always be the chance of an individual node maxing out, even under DOCSIS 3.0. When it's maxed out, I'd rather have interactive traffic come to the top of the queue. They could invest billions into their infrastructure and I'd still think there would be a place for a well designed traffic shaping scheme.
and Comcast does have the right to modify traffic on the network they own
I disagree. I'm paying them to transport my traffic. Granted, I don't have an SLA, but even without an SLA I have the right to expect best-effort delivery. Sending me forged packets to trick my client into dropping connections doesn't seem like "best-effort".
In lieu of upgrading their network (god forbid they invest some of that money they are making back into the infrastructure), perhaps they should look at some sort of traffic shaping scheme? Prioritize VOIP, ssh, telnet, gaming, etc, etc, packets over large downloads (ftp or http) or bittorrent, which get best effort delivery. That would be fair to everyone concerned and even if they deployed it nationwide it would only come into play on nodes that are overloaded. I've never seen my node overload, probably because I live in a neighborhood full of old people, so for people in neighborhoods like me it wouldn't even come into play. For people in neighborhoods full of script kiddies they'd get better latency on interactive stuff, while the script kiddies wouldn't lose that much bandwidth overall (how much does VOIP or ssh take?).
Bittorrent is obviously the heavy hitter, but if the service providers think it's their only problem they are going to be rudely surprised in a few years. Recall the story about The Daily Show putting all their archives online? I blew through 600 megs of bandwidth in about half an hour messing around on that site. What will happen when video becomes even more popular then it is today? Will they adopt the Verizon Wireless solution of banning such activity or will they actually (*gasp*) invest in some upgrades?
Of course that doesn't mean we don't make massive use of the open-source community and contribute to it in fairly major ways in some cases. But to say that enterprise support is useless is tantamount to saying you've never really gotten top-tier support.
I don't recall saying it was useless. I've had "top-tier" support from Cisco when I worked at the ISP. I've had "top-tier" support from my vendor for the agency management system we used at the insurance agency.
What I do recall saying is that "it's not a sliver bullet" and "I wouldn't upgrade away from a rock-solid system just to gain support"
I'll cite my own little war story data point. It's trivial, of course, as every story told by a 6-digit/. ID is going to be, but still...
You know what's worse then having a six digit UID? Having an old five digit UID in the 20,000 range that you don't remember the password or e-mail address on:( I even had a running e-mail exchange with CmdrTaco about two years ago trying to guess the e-mail address out of the shitload of old ones that I used to use. No go:(
Hell, wait for the 25th anniversary and our six digit UIDs will be worth something;)
Huge mistake. Damn near bricked the machine. I eventually got minimal useful service running, after $DIETY-only-knows how many RPM removals and replacements to fix broken dependencies and horked up library versions and the like.
That's why I'm still running Slackware for both my desktop and servers. Sure, it's more work, but it's raw unfiltered Linux, and if I fuck it up I know exactly who to blame;)
Rule #1 of a mission-critical application is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Slashdot is mission-critical? That's what I'll tell my boss the next time he asks why I'm spending so much time on it;)
Kidding aside though, I'm rather fond of the old joke that I found in 'fortune -o'. "Working computer hardware is a lot like an erect penis. It stays up as long as you don't fuck with it."
I've been in the mission critical provider business (ISP, then an insurance agency, now in health care) for almost eight years now and I'd take community support (websites, forums, and *gasp* USENET) over corporate support any day of the week.
Yes, it's nice to be able to sell your project to the PHB/MBA by saying "We'll always have support if we have problems!", but anybody that has spent a few hours on the phone with their vendor and who realizes that they know the product better then the Level Four support guys do, comes to realize that support isn't the sliver bullet that it's presented as.
Have my vendors helped me out in the past? Absolutely. But will I upgrade away from a rock-solid system that has served me well for years merely to gain support with a newer version? No way in hell......
In Northern California, they're trying to get everybody to use them for TV/Internet/Phone and send out an unrelenting barrage of snail-mail spam to get you to sign up, at one point they (Comcast) had live operators calling customers to persuade them to switch, I would always reply "so if I was having one of my heart attacks during one of your network problems what should I do?".
I've never understood why anybody would want phone service from the cableco. It has all of the reliably issues of VoIP products like Vonage and it's usually almost twice as expensive.
Your heart attack comment is dead on. I have two schools of thought. Either you are young, childless and in-shape and can afford to not have a POTS line -- those people (myself included) have cells and no landline of any sort. Or you have kids, or medical issues, or what-not and want a bulletproof phone solution. In that scenario you need POTS.
Why the hell anyone would give up the reliability of POTS, while gaining nothing (at least a cell phone gains you the freedom to use it anywhere in the world with signal and a roaming agreement) in return is beyond me.
That and the HUGEASS buffer on cablemodems makes it impossible to do any kind of QOS.
Uhh, I was able to get a fairly decent QoS scheme going, using Linux and HTB. The trick is to take the cable modem buffer out of play by refusing to let your connection max out on either the upstream or downstream.
The way I did it was to limit OUTGOING traffic on my LAN nic to 75% of my total bandwidth and then setup classes within that 75% to break out the traffic. Anything above 75% gets dropped. I might be using more then 75% on the actual cable modem, but in short order TCP is smart enough to slow down and match the speed that I'm allowing on my LAN interface. Short of a ping flood or really badly written udp implementation I don't see what the problem with this type of setup is.
Upstream I limited to 90%. You can get away with allowing more on the upstream because you have total control over what you send but only limited control (i.e: drop packets and bank on TCP being smart enough to slow down) on what you receive.
Yeah, you don't get your whole bandwidth. But short of having control over the QoS on their end you will never be able to do any type of QoS scheme and max out your line. If I'm really hell bent on getting my 5mbits (3.75mbits works just fine 99% of the time) I can always disable it for the duration of whatever I'm doing.
Being rich doesn't make one evil, but being evil often puts one in a position to collect wealth (as in 2, 6 and 7 above).
I'd go further and say that number 3 applies to a lot of the current generation of business people. They don't give a damn about building something that's going to last. They only care about the next quarters results. What do they care if the company tanks? They will still be rich. And if we can only pump up the results for next quarter, maybe, just maybe, we can get bought out before anybody realizes how bad off we really are.....
You'll notice that, especially in consumer electronics, people start looking for machines with old firmware or older fashioning because they allowed something a newer revision (or the next generation of the same product) does not offer anymore. And I'm not even talking about "illegal" options like unlocking certain goodies that should be available for extra money or enabling a console to play copies.
No shit! Like how Linksys purposefully dumbed down all of their routers so there wouldn't be enough memory/resources to load any of the community supported firmware versions onto them.
I won't even dwell on all of the stuff that Vista won't let you do.... Isn't it a conflict of interest for Microsoft to target a product at consumers while kissing the ass of the content providers and preventing people from doing something with their own PC?
<sarcasm> Well, it's only a monopoly because of Government regulation, if the Government would just take the shackles off and go to a laissez-faire economic system all of the natural monopolies of the world like Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner would magically disappear and be replaced by a healthy competitive marketplace where the consumer would win. Because the free market solves everything, from broadband access issues in rural areas to feeding the straving children in Africa.</sarcasm>
(Sorry, had to beat the free market trolls to the punch.... there goes my karma for the week....)
Much less than 1%. Most email systems have an attachment size limit of around 5MB
Hmm, I thought the typical setting for that was 10MB? That's what I limit my messages to in sendmail.
Regardless though, I think we'd both agree that even if you didn't have that limit, e-mail is a piss poor way to transfer large files. By the time the MIME encoding is done the e-mail is probably 30-40% bigger then the original binary attachment. And unless you are planning on using one e-mail to send that file to 200 people (thus moving the workload off to your smtp server) I fail to see any benefits to using e-mail to share files.
E-mail hasn't been useful for file sharing since the early days of warez rooms on AOL. Anybody remember those? E-mail folders full of pirated software that could be forwarded to somebody at the click of a button to be downloaded at their leisure....
Episodic television, on the other hand, are worth money decades after release.
Eh, your probably right. But I guess if I was the executive at [INSERT MAJOR MEDIA COMPANY HERE] I'd be doing studies to see whether or not I'd make more money releasing them online with ads or solely releasing them via the DVD channel.
I would make the assumption that releasing them online would NOT undercut DVD sales, as the hard-core followers are still going to buy them and the rest wouldn't have bothered anyway. Of course I'm probably a lot more logical then most executives at [INSERT MAJOR MEDIA COMPANY HERE]:(
Their fucking site needs some obscure bullshit app from Microsoft to work, too
Uhh, what part of the site is that exactly? I've never had a problem using Firefox to watch TDS vids. Friends of mine watch them on their Macs. I would also assume that the site works just fine under Linux...
One would assume that they are using some sort of distributed solution, like Akamai. One would also assume that Viacom has enough resources to pull this off if they decide to do so. I'm not having any problems watching (well, downloading, cuz I'm reading/.) videos on that site. Maxed out my 10.0mbit connection as a matter of fact. And that's AFTER a/. article about it....
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Well, the train station is certainly the captive audience so I'm not surprised. When I was in Florence I went out of my way to find the local non-tourist trap shops. At one store I bought a two liter bottle of water for 0.02. Yes, that's two cents. I thought they screwed up the sign and figured it was gonna be 2. Picture my surprise when I got change for my two euro coin....
she will feel like a criminal first due to the practices being deployed at your airportsI don't know if I buy that. In my experience, airport security in the EU (the UK in particular) was at least as intimidating to me as anything I've seen here in the states. Granted, I didn't have to do something foolish like take off my shoes, but they grilled me pretty hard with all the standard questions and I couldn't help but notice a shitload of paramilitary types with submachine guns.
Might you have been referring to our Orwellian immigration practices? In that vain I would probably agree with you. Nobody fingerprinted or photographed me when I entered the EU..... I really hate the direction my country is going :(
Uhh, yeah, but the parent said that games cost the same in pounds as they do in dollars. The last time I checked the Pound Sterling was worth more then 117.5% of the US Dollar...... so why do they cost the "same", again?
And the Italian Fascists kept the trains running on time while the Nazi regime was able to fund and build most of the autobahns. Guess you can overlook the bad side of those regimes if you care about getting to your destination on time.
Granted, that's a somewhat bombastic comparison, but I think the spirit behind it holds true here. You think they are greedy and evil but you continue to send them your money just because you like a few of their games?
Modern civilization is truly doomed if people are willing to abandon their principals for the sake of a fucking video game.
I've been out of the hosting game for awhile, but how did they manage to do this? Was Apache running as root or something? Apache, BIND, MySQL.... I run them all as non-root users. The only internet-exposed daemons that I run as root are ntpd (no other option that I'm aware of) and sendmail, though even sendmail runs part of it's suite under a different user now.
I switched to Time Warner because Verizon wanted to increase my DSL from $34.95/mo to $44.95/mo when my contract expired. Talked to retentions and they refused to help me because I only had dry loop service and all the "deals" they can offer require dialtone service. So I switched to Roadrunner, $29.95/mo for 12 months, then $44.95/mo (from prior experience I know I'll be able to get their retentions people to at least go to $34.95/mo, if not $29.95 again).
When I called Verizon to cancel the DSL the fuckers actually agreed to match that price! Well, screw you too, you had your chance. $34.95/mo for 1.5/384k DSL or $29.95 for 5.0/384 RR. Tough call.
If that's the case, then why do you feel the need to push for laws that make porn harder to access? If you are sitting with them, or nearby, who cares if you need a credit card to get into that site?
What does "supervised" internet use mean, anyway?*shrug*, that's for each parent to decide for themselves. My kids aren't really old enough yet to surf on their own. I typically find the site for them (or have it bookmarked) and let them have at it. I'm not standing on top of them approving every click, but I'm roaming between the living room (where the PC is) and other rooms, so I'm keeping an eye on them.
I pretty much have to do any google searches for themUhh, I don't even have SafeSearch enabled on my Google profile, and I've never managed to find porn with a non-porn search. Granted, some non-porn searches are filled with crap, but I doubt your ten year old is looking for a keygen, serial, viagra, etc, etc.
and cannot allow them to even type in the internet address lest they make a common mispelling and come across a porn site.Then INSTALL SOME FILTERING SOFTWARE. And you are being completely paranoid here. I can think of a lot more damaging things then a ten second exposure to a typosquatting porn site.
Right. And online proxies so they can get around network/filter restrictions don't exist, huh?I guess I'm not as socially conservative as you are, but I'd make the argument that if your kid is old enough to figure out how to get past a well designed filtering setup then he's probably old enough to look at porn without being scarred for life. And seeing as how this is /. I'd make the assumption that you have enough computer experience to lock down a workstation so they couldn't bypass it anyway. Give me an hour and I'll have Windows locked down so tight that they CAN'T bypass my filtering software. If you really don't trust your kids, feel free to remove your CD-ROM and glue your USB ports shut so they can't boot Knoppix either.
or I'm forced to be a control freak just so I can keep trash out of my own house because porn is so accessible.Regardless of your political or moral views I'd make the argument that common sense says that any "solution" here is going to do more damage then the "problem". What do you purpose doing about all the amateur/shared porn out there? I can get free porn off bittorrent, USENET, IRC, etc, etc a hellva lot easier then I can off any one website. Should somebody who wants to post a movie of fucking his SO really have to force you to prove your 18 before you download it? Should we invade other nations to impose our anti-porn laws on them? Or maybe adopt a Great Firewall of China scheme to keep those porn packets from entering the US?
The solution here isn't regulation or laws that restrict the rights of adults. It's parenting. If you are supervising your kids on the internet then I really don't see what the problem is, unless you are so uptight that the mere thought of them catching a five second glimpse of porn distresses you to the point that you feel the need to involve your legislators.
Then perhaps they shouldn't be using the internet without your supervision? Forget about porn. Hate speech, predators trolling MySpace, etc, etc are all reasons why I wouldn't want my kids using the internet without supervision. Are your kids old enough to stay home alone? If the answer is no, then they probably aren't old enough to use the internet without supervision.
A neighbors wireless router without encryption would provide unwanted accessEver hear of using a non privileged account for your kids so they can't do stuff like switch networks or remove your filtering software?
Software filters do not workSays who? We use them at my agency and they seem to work very well. The only complaint is that they are overly aggressive.
I'll be very upfront about this. I think porn is wrongWhy?
The only way I can do that as a parent is to fight for legislation limiting its access into my home. I don't have any other way to do it.Sure you do. It's called supervising your kids while they use the internet. Or are you one of those people that thinks the TV and/or PC should be a babysitter for you?
Personally I think the limits they impose on their wireless product have more to do with preventing you from using their service to compete with their service. You can't stream Pandora and be within the TOS but I'm sure they have no problem with you using their EV-DO to stream music from one of THEIR stores. Ditto for Youtube -- can't legally do that either, but they are all to happy to provide video clips of their own via VCast.
Now they want to gobble up the 700mhz band, and are fighting the FCC over the open access rules. Yes, god forbid we try and use that band to offer a REAL third broadband pipe. Much better if Verizon and AT&T grab up all the licenses, without even having to justify how they are using what they have now, and restrict it to their own devices and their approved uses.
I hate them for reasons beyond this post, but Verizon hasn't shown inclination towards helping RIAA out. They actively fought them back in the day on disclosing one of their customers and you don't see Verizon's name in the news trying to figure out a way to leverage their backbone product into stopping piracy for RIAA.
I'm still not sure if I would do business with them, as I currently have the option and decided not to (could get their DSL at 1.5/384), but fear of them helping the content providers would not currently be a reason for not doing business with them, IMHO. Just good old-fashioned fear of being screwed if I ever needed to leave, cuz I'm sure the service doubtless has a contract, like everything else they do......
(Ironic how Time Warner can spend a few hours here, installing indoor wiring, and not require an install fee or a long term contract, but Verizon wants one just for getting DSL when they don't even have to do anything beyond turn it on)
How do you "abuse" ssh or voip? Using ssh for huge file transfers (scp or something through a ssh tunnel)? That's easily taken care of by only prioritizing small packets and only allowing X number per interval.
I'm all about them upgrading their infrastructure. But short of providing a 1:1 ratio without ANY over-subscription, there WILL be nodes on their network that max out from time to time. When they max out, do you really want your ssh session running with a 500ms delay because of some perceived fairness issue? Do you really want your VOIP packets dying? Do you really want to be pwn'ed in CS so the guy next door downloading the Wikipedia SQL dump doesn't have to take a 0.1% hit on his download speed?
Traffic shaping is a lot different from what Comcast is doing. All shaping does is identify packets with a low tolerance for latency and move them to the top of the queue. It doesn't drop anything. It doesn't come into play until that network link hits 100% utilization. To equate a well engineered shaping solution to purposefully dropping bittorrent packets is to display your ignorance of traffic management and networking in general.
You realize that DOCSIS 2.0 networks only allow 42.88Mbits of download per channel, right? You do the math at 5.0mbits per user and you'll realize that it takes less then ten kiddies to max out that channel. Do you seriously think they can afford to segment their network to such a degree that it's completely impossible to max out a channel even if every customer hits 100%?
Yes, upgrading their infrastructure is huge. The segments will get smaller and smaller and more bandwidth on the cable network will become available for data as analog cable is phased out. But there will always be the chance of an individual node maxing out, even under DOCSIS 3.0. When it's maxed out, I'd rather have interactive traffic come to the top of the queue. They could invest billions into their infrastructure and I'd still think there would be a place for a well designed traffic shaping scheme.
I disagree. I'm paying them to transport my traffic. Granted, I don't have an SLA, but even without an SLA I have the right to expect best-effort delivery. Sending me forged packets to trick my client into dropping connections doesn't seem like "best-effort".
In lieu of upgrading their network (god forbid they invest some of that money they are making back into the infrastructure), perhaps they should look at some sort of traffic shaping scheme? Prioritize VOIP, ssh, telnet, gaming, etc, etc, packets over large downloads (ftp or http) or bittorrent, which get best effort delivery. That would be fair to everyone concerned and even if they deployed it nationwide it would only come into play on nodes that are overloaded. I've never seen my node overload, probably because I live in a neighborhood full of old people, so for people in neighborhoods like me it wouldn't even come into play. For people in neighborhoods full of script kiddies they'd get better latency on interactive stuff, while the script kiddies wouldn't lose that much bandwidth overall (how much does VOIP or ssh take?).
Bittorrent is obviously the heavy hitter, but if the service providers think it's their only problem they are going to be rudely surprised in a few years. Recall the story about The Daily Show putting all their archives online? I blew through 600 megs of bandwidth in about half an hour messing around on that site. What will happen when video becomes even more popular then it is today? Will they adopt the Verizon Wireless solution of banning such activity or will they actually (*gasp*) invest in some upgrades?
I don't recall saying it was useless. I've had "top-tier" support from Cisco when I worked at the ISP. I've had "top-tier" support from my vendor for the agency management system we used at the insurance agency.
What I do recall saying is that "it's not a sliver bullet" and "I wouldn't upgrade away from a rock-solid system just to gain support"
You know what's worse then having a six digit UID? Having an old five digit UID in the 20,000 range that you don't remember the password or e-mail address on :( I even had a running e-mail exchange with CmdrTaco about two years ago trying to guess the e-mail address out of the shitload of old ones that I used to use. No go :(
Hell, wait for the 25th anniversary and our six digit UIDs will be worth something ;)
Huge mistake. Damn near bricked the machine. I eventually got minimal useful service running, after $DIETY-only-knows how many RPM removals and replacements to fix broken dependencies and horked up library versions and the like.That's why I'm still running Slackware for both my desktop and servers. Sure, it's more work, but it's raw unfiltered Linux, and if I fuck it up I know exactly who to blame ;)
Slashdot is mission-critical? That's what I'll tell my boss the next time he asks why I'm spending so much time on it ;)
Kidding aside though, I'm rather fond of the old joke that I found in 'fortune -o'. "Working computer hardware is a lot like an erect penis. It stays up as long as you don't fuck with it."
I've been in the mission critical provider business (ISP, then an insurance agency, now in health care) for almost eight years now and I'd take community support (websites, forums, and *gasp* USENET) over corporate support any day of the week.
Yes, it's nice to be able to sell your project to the PHB/MBA by saying "We'll always have support if we have problems!", but anybody that has spent a few hours on the phone with their vendor and who realizes that they know the product better then the Level Four support guys do, comes to realize that support isn't the sliver bullet that it's presented as.
Have my vendors helped me out in the past? Absolutely. But will I upgrade away from a rock-solid system that has served me well for years merely to gain support with a newer version? No way in hell......
<lame joke>But dude, your getting a Dell!</lame joke>
I've never understood why anybody would want phone service from the cableco. It has all of the reliably issues of VoIP products like Vonage and it's usually almost twice as expensive.
Your heart attack comment is dead on. I have two schools of thought. Either you are young, childless and in-shape and can afford to not have a POTS line -- those people (myself included) have cells and no landline of any sort. Or you have kids, or medical issues, or what-not and want a bulletproof phone solution. In that scenario you need POTS.
Why the hell anyone would give up the reliability of POTS, while gaining nothing (at least a cell phone gains you the freedom to use it anywhere in the world with signal and a roaming agreement) in return is beyond me.
Uhh, I was able to get a fairly decent QoS scheme going, using Linux and HTB. The trick is to take the cable modem buffer out of play by refusing to let your connection max out on either the upstream or downstream.
The way I did it was to limit OUTGOING traffic on my LAN nic to 75% of my total bandwidth and then setup classes within that 75% to break out the traffic. Anything above 75% gets dropped. I might be using more then 75% on the actual cable modem, but in short order TCP is smart enough to slow down and match the speed that I'm allowing on my LAN interface. Short of a ping flood or really badly written udp implementation I don't see what the problem with this type of setup is.
Upstream I limited to 90%. You can get away with allowing more on the upstream because you have total control over what you send but only limited control (i.e: drop packets and bank on TCP being smart enough to slow down) on what you receive.
Yeah, you don't get your whole bandwidth. But short of having control over the QoS on their end you will never be able to do any type of QoS scheme and max out your line. If I'm really hell bent on getting my 5mbits (3.75mbits works just fine 99% of the time) I can always disable it for the duration of whatever I'm doing.
I'd go further and say that number 3 applies to a lot of the current generation of business people. They don't give a damn about building something that's going to last. They only care about the next quarters results. What do they care if the company tanks? They will still be rich. And if we can only pump up the results for next quarter, maybe, just maybe, we can get bought out before anybody realizes how bad off we really are.....
No shit! Like how Linksys purposefully dumbed down all of their routers so there wouldn't be enough memory/resources to load any of the community supported firmware versions onto them.
I won't even dwell on all of the stuff that Vista won't let you do.... Isn't it a conflict of interest for Microsoft to target a product at consumers while kissing the ass of the content providers and preventing people from doing something with their own PC?
<sarcasm> Well, it's only a monopoly because of Government regulation, if the Government would just take the shackles off and go to a laissez-faire economic system all of the natural monopolies of the world like Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner would magically disappear and be replaced by a healthy competitive marketplace where the consumer would win. Because the free market solves everything, from broadband access issues in rural areas to feeding the straving children in Africa.</sarcasm>
(Sorry, had to beat the free market trolls to the punch.... there goes my karma for the week....)
Hmm, I thought the typical setting for that was 10MB? That's what I limit my messages to in sendmail.
Regardless though, I think we'd both agree that even if you didn't have that limit, e-mail is a piss poor way to transfer large files. By the time the MIME encoding is done the e-mail is probably 30-40% bigger then the original binary attachment. And unless you are planning on using one e-mail to send that file to 200 people (thus moving the workload off to your smtp server) I fail to see any benefits to using e-mail to share files.
E-mail hasn't been useful for file sharing since the early days of warez rooms on AOL. Anybody remember those? E-mail folders full of pirated software that could be forwarded to somebody at the click of a button to be downloaded at their leisure....
Eh, your probably right. But I guess if I was the executive at [INSERT MAJOR MEDIA COMPANY HERE] I'd be doing studies to see whether or not I'd make more money releasing them online with ads or solely releasing them via the DVD channel.
I would make the assumption that releasing them online would NOT undercut DVD sales, as the hard-core followers are still going to buy them and the rest wouldn't have bothered anyway. Of course I'm probably a lot more logical then most executives at [INSERT MAJOR MEDIA COMPANY HERE] :(
Uhh, what part of the site is that exactly? I've never had a problem using Firefox to watch TDS vids. Friends of mine watch them on their Macs. I would also assume that the site works just fine under Linux...
One would assume that they are using some sort of distributed solution, like Akamai. One would also assume that Viacom has enough resources to pull this off if they decide to do so. I'm not having any problems watching (well, downloading, cuz I'm reading /.) videos on that site. Maxed out my 10.0mbit connection as a matter of fact. And that's AFTER a /. article about it....