In my opinion, people who are going to use that are in for a surprise. I bet 9 times out of 10, their rates are going to go up, instead of going down.
A few years ago, my parents received a call from their house insurance company, doing a "survey" to know what kind of home installations/appliances their customers were using. The lady said that responding to the survey would make the insurance price go down.
Needless to say, the next year, the insurance company sent us a bill 250% higher (about 1500$ more) because we were using an oil furnace, even though the installation was new, and special precautions were taken to prevent oil leaks.
what about users trying to send mail using a 3rd party mail server outside of comcast? (lets say you have your own domain, and need to use a 3rd party smtp server).
I work for an ISP in the states, and we got hell from customers when we blocked port 25 (ok, there is a quick fix, just enable the SMTP Authentication, put your 3rd party email address in the Email address field of OE, then use comcast's smtp server), but not all mail client support this.
"despite the fact that it's been running for months with no change in configuration"
Ok, blaming the firewall for everything might be a little bit exagerated, but keep in minde that we get about 20 idiots a day that say the same "it's been running for months with no change in configuration", but when you turn off the firewall, BOOM, magically everything works fine.
Exaclty... unfortunately, my position is not important enough to make any positive changes to the company policies. My company implements a block on port 25, to block home made SMTP servers (not very effective). But I still think forcing authentication would be a good first step in the fight against spam.
Why don't ISPs force authentication on their SMTP servers to cut down on spam? wouldn't this make sense? I mean, I work for an ISP, and they have a banned IP list from within their domains. When they get a complaint, these userser a put on the list and can't send mail anymore using our servers (or any other SMTP servers on port 25)... the problem with that practice, is that they can only ban people on static IPs, and most of their customers are on DHCP and dynamic IPs. Seems to me, if they force authentication on their SMTP servers, ISPs would have more control when it comes to blocking spammers from withing their network... oh well, just my 2 cents!
This seems like a good option to have on a motherboard for people who'd like to build an HTPC.
The main problem I see with this is it does not offer a lot more features than a standalone DVD player in terms of expandability (most of them today offer VCD/SVCD/MP3...). Correct me if i'm wrong, but if a user wants to play Divx, Xvid, or any other codecs on this motherboard, then the user has to install an OS, which pretty much defeats the purpose of having a BIOS like that.
It's a good start, but if they offered the option to load new codecs on the fly from a HD or CD-ROM drive maybe i'd think about getting one.
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In my opinion, people who are going to use that are in for a surprise. I bet 9 times out of 10, their rates are going to go up, instead of going down.
A few years ago, my parents received a call from their house insurance company, doing a "survey" to know what kind of home installations/appliances their customers were using. The lady said that responding to the survey would make the insurance price go down.
Needless to say, the next year, the insurance company sent us a bill 250% higher (about 1500$ more) because we were using an oil furnace, even though the installation was new, and special precautions were taken to prevent oil leaks.
That's the way insurance companies do business
what about users trying to send mail using a 3rd party mail server outside of comcast? (lets say you have your own domain, and need to use a 3rd party smtp server).
I work for an ISP in the states, and we got hell from customers when we blocked port 25 (ok, there is a quick fix, just enable the SMTP Authentication, put your 3rd party email address in the Email address field of OE, then use comcast's smtp server), but not all mail client support this.
"despite the fact that it's been running for months with no change in configuration"
Ok, blaming the firewall for everything might be a little bit exagerated, but keep in minde that we get about 20 idiots a day that say the same "it's been running for months with no change in configuration", but when you turn off the firewall, BOOM, magically everything works fine.
Exaclty... unfortunately, my position is not important enough to make any positive changes to the company policies. My company implements a block on port 25, to block home made SMTP servers (not very effective). But I still think forcing authentication would be a good first step in the fight against spam.
Why don't ISPs force authentication on their SMTP servers to cut down on spam? wouldn't this make sense? I mean, I work for an ISP, and they have a banned IP list from within their domains. When they get a complaint, these userser a put on the list and can't send mail anymore using our servers (or any other SMTP servers on port 25)... the problem with that practice, is that they can only ban people on static IPs, and most of their customers are on DHCP and dynamic IPs. Seems to me, if they force authentication on their SMTP servers, ISPs would have more control when it comes to blocking spammers from withing their network... oh well, just my 2 cents!
This seems like a good option to have on a motherboard for people who'd like to build an HTPC. The main problem I see with this is it does not offer a lot more features than a standalone DVD player in terms of expandability (most of them today offer VCD/SVCD/MP3...). Correct me if i'm wrong, but if a user wants to play Divx, Xvid, or any other codecs on this motherboard, then the user has to install an OS, which pretty much defeats the purpose of having a BIOS like that. It's a good start, but if they offered the option to load new codecs on the fly from a HD or CD-ROM drive maybe i'd think about getting one.