Just so you know, Sun wrote an ODF plug in for MS Office, so MS Office 2007 and 2003 can both read all of the open document files. For me it works flawlessly - YMMV.
Also, Sun went the extra mile and wrote an OOXML plugin for OO.org - it is still a bit rough on anything other than docx, but it is there. Both are freely available.
You are right--they have neither the expertise nor authority--but they have the ability, and that is why their opinion matters. We've seen them abuse their investigatory discretion before, by alternately challenging some laws and upholding or refusing to challenge others.
Speakeasy *was* the google if ISPs. Speakeasy got snapped up by Best Buy (heavens knows why they want in on the ISP business), and no one that doesn't trust the "geek squad" should trust Speakeasy anymore.
I've heard again and again that encryption & randomizing the port will get around this. From my experience this is not true. The encryption only hides *what* you are transferring, it doesn't (and can't) hide where or how. Bittorrent is a very unique protocol and it is very easy to identify a user, even without real packet inspection. The only thing to get around this is rent a host somewhere that allows bittorrent. Run bittorrent from there and transfer completed items back through ssh, scp, sftp or whatever.
Other than that, your options are very limited. It would be my guess that Comcast uses a layer2 packet shaper, which has the ability to determine the actual content of an unencrypted packet regardless of port, and the ability to determine the type of traffic regardless of port or content. This has been quite common for years. Chances are you are just going to have to live without torrent, or switch to a provider that doesn't throttle torrent activity.
I tried to get around this before on a different ISP, you really can't. I ran fragroute, which chops up your packets randomly so for sure no one can tell what is in them, and hopefully enough to throw off the signature. No dice. I tried a variant of the IP tables rule above (which I think is wrong BTW), no improvement. I ran traffic over TOR (definitely abuse, sorry TOR people, I've mended my ways) and it didn't help, since my ISP could still tell what type of traffic it was, if not what is in it or where it is going. Encrypting traffic and running it over a port that normally has encrypted traffic (ie 443 for SSL, or 22 for ssh) didn't work either.
But as an IT guy, I'd have to guess that the growing trend to throttle connections is most likely a QoS issue. While bt users may not intend to suck up all of the bandwidth their ISP has, bittorrent is notorious for eating up the band. This probably matters to Comcast more and more now that they have their own VoIP & IPTV--too many people on bittorrent and their other services may suffer (this isn't our fault, but it doesn't mean they won't make us pay for it). In addition, bittorrent unfortunately has a rather poorly designed protocol (for packet efficiency that is, it is great for moving around lots of the same bits). Bittorrent has the problem of opening a lot of connections (the larger the torrent storm, the more connections). While each of these connections to other seeders/leechers may only be passing small amounts of information, they tend to take up a lot of the routers memory (especially for very slow connections that stay open even though they don't pass much if not any information). This kills a router. You might not ever notice it at your own home, but having a lot of people on torrents can drop a router fast, and thus reduce the speeds available for all of the other users using your ISP. Kind of like a DOS attack on a router. It is scummy for them to do this, but I thought you guys might want to know the other reasons for throttling this type of bandwidth.
PS - It also seems like they've been throttling Vonage for sometime now. Pigs!
I'm not as young as you think. I'm not going to IU for undergrad, but for my 3rd degree--this time a law degree. So don't assume I'm in the 18-24 range, I'm not.
Thanks, you are right about major contributions to OO.org. You are also right that Novell bought Ximian, SuSE (yast), & Mono, but they've kept development going, and even accelerated it. Mono has come pretty far since Novell took over. So they didn't develop these in-house, but they've improved them, and released the source for all.
Now that I think about it, I left some other pretty big projects out. Thunderbird is not an Outlook replacement, it is an Outlook Express replacement. Evolution is the Outlook replacement, and IMO it is pretty sweet. Novell works hard to bring active directory support to Linux, they also support other important projects, such as alsa, gnome, kde, gnumeric, mozilla, OO.org, samba, & wine. All this has an eye towards the enterprise: samba, evolution, mono, OO.org, especially. Novell really has done more for the enterprise desktop than anyone else.
You forget Novell also got a pile of cash from Microsoft. My bet is that Novell did it for the cash as much as for the indemnification they claim is worthless.
Please do some research before absurd claims. Let me list a few of the Linux contributions Novell has made you might have heard of.
1. YaST
2. XGL/Compiz
3. Ximian
4. Mono
5. Beagle
6. Bandit
7. iFolder
Plus the boatload of patches and drivers they've contributed, and the Linux devs they pay that write software for "Linux" not specifically SuSE. Novell is right there with Sun, Intel, Dell, Redhat, HP & the other big open source contributers. They give away SuSE (OpenSuSE), and not only that, IMO Novell has done more than any other firm to bring Linux to the enterprise desktop.
As a new IU student, let me say this can't hurt. This isn't too surprising to me, while google is great for getting valuable search results from gobs of pages, it really hasn't been designed or optimized to work with few pages. The IU results with the google search are so irrelevant they are worthless. This isn't a troll, I use google for web searches, but try it yourself here and search for course offerings, or course catalog, or list of courses. Garbage results mostly. I found the same was true of the BYU search--it was google and it was terrible.
The summary sounds like there is a conflict of interest for sure, so I can't say ChaCha was the right replacement (ads mixed with search results?!? sounds evil to me). But I can say a replacement/fix/something had to be done.
Automatix is a really nice idea. For those who don't want to bork their systems, check out easy ubuntu. It hasn't been updated in some time (no feisty support), but it works like a charm on edgy and dapper systems. I wonder why it hasn't been updated, but I think Canonical is trying to make these tools redundant, and IMHO is doing a pretty good job.
Or maybe the big payouts are in lucrative consulting jobs after a politician retires or loses an election. You know, something to pass along to the kids.
I thought encryption was the answer too. It isn't. Encryption will make it so ISPs can't tell the difference between legit P2P and illegitimate P2P. ISPs will, even with encryption, be able to tell what traffic is normal amazon/gmail SSL, and what is bittorrent, eMule or whatever. If P2P is made illegal, even for good uses, encryption won't help because ISPs will just be able to block all of it.
The packet filters and traffic shapers ISPs have are more and more capable--I was a student at a university that blocked all P2P traffic, including bittorrent. I was trying to get an Ubuntu VMWare image to test out the new version before upgrading. Nothing worked, on a torrent with 1000+ seeds, no client would be able to make connections for more than a second or two, and most bittorrent clients couldn't make any connections at all. I tried Azureus with encryption, uTorrent with encryption, Ktorrent, and Rtorrent. And this was a few years ago.
As much as I wish there was a technical workaround to political ineptitude in this matter, there isn't. Encryption won't hide P2P traffic, it just hides the content of the traffic. Politicians don't even have to ban P2P, if ISPs are held accountable, or harsher penalties, or more strict enforcement ensues, ISPs won't be able to afford misses and they'll just have to block P2P traffic, encrypted or not.
Actually Microsoft has never had control. Pirated copies of Windows have always been able to get any Windows update they push, and for those they don't push you can find all over the net. Autopatcher rolls all the Windows updates up into a package, Windiz updates lets you get them sans validation, as do a ton of other sites. Heck, you can even setup your own WSUS with one valid copy of Windows and update all your pirated copies.
This doesn't change anything, Microsoft won't care. This doesn't break activation, or generate valid ID keys, those are some things Microsoft does care about (even if it can't do anything, both of those exploits are in the wild), but not WGA. As long as WGA keeps honest people honest (a la locks on a door) it is doing its job.
Or how about VCRs and DVD players that don't actually ever turn off. The power button just dims the lights on the front.
Couple that with VCR & DVD decks that keep blinking until you set the time, and a house that loses power ~5 times per year, and you can't ever watch a freaking movie without some obnoxious light blinking.
That sounds fine, but I'd still be worried about the accuracy of the read. As long as we're going to have users read and answer two captchas, why don't do this: present the unknown captcha to two people, if they agree on the answer accept it, if not show the same captcha to a third person. Accuracy is probably more important than speed for books that still haven't been digitized.
One particularly significant benefit (to the companies being ripped-off) to piracy is lock-in. As you said, Microsoft might not be where it is now, if it were not for piracy. I think the same goes for programs like Photoshop. Teenagers won't/can't pay $600 for Photoshop. Adobe doesn't lose anything by teen pirates who can't afford Photoshop--but they do gain another crop of kids proficient with their software. If any of these kids use Photoshop professionally, they buy a real license.
I think this is the biggest stumbling block to free software. No one wants to use the GIMP because they can get Photoshop. If fewer could get Photoshop, fewer professionals would have Photoshop experience, and more would be willing to contribute to GIMP. Why use Ubuntu when you can get Windows?
But you are right, if any program can be pirated without any repercussions, it WILL hurt both the company and the product's future. It is too costly to stamp out ALL piracy--costly to the produce, the enforcer, and the legitimate customers who will get some spill over--so determining the right amount is tantamount to success.
I think we're studying piracy to see if it is worth cracking down on. There are certainly costs to preventing piracy and catching pirates. How much attention do they deserve? If piracy is a wash or a net gain, we shouldn't care. If piracy is a dangerous destabilizing economic force, than we should fight it harder. That is why it is worth studying.
Just because we already have policy on something doesn't mean we shouldn't constantly re-evaluate that policy to see if it makes sense.
Re:Piracy is marker of immature market
on
Piracy Economics
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Yes an no. Piracy can really only apply to copyable objects. You can can steal a Civic but you can't "pirate" one. Intangible goods that can be pirated haven't been around as long as "tangible goods", like wheat and clay pots. You really can't pirate music until tapes, you really couldn't pirate movies until VHS, and software is somewhat of a recent invention itself.
I would suggest that piracy is associated with newer markets, not because the markets are immature, but because the newest markets are easily commoditized. Sure there was piracy long ago with books (since the printing press), and music (with sheet music), but we've found more efficient distribution methods go hand in hand with piracy. I don't think the music market is immature, music is just easily distributed.
Yeah but Xen is still a royal PITA to get running. KVM wasn't bad, and VMWare was pretty easy. I haven't even seen OpenVZ. Of the three I've tried, the ease of use was highly correlated to the product maturity. All three work, but IMHO VMWare is so far ahead it will take some time for Xen to be considered out of the hobbyist market and in the commercial one. I'm sure it'll get there, but to do what? Be a faster VMWare?
So to sum, we've got OpenVZ, Virtualbox, KVM/Qemu, Xen, VMWare, Virtual Iron, and Virtuozzo. With so much virtualization software, I personally think performance takes a back seat to functionality (sure OpenVZ is fast, cool, what will it do for me that VMWare or Xen won't?). Is there really that much space in the virtualization landscape?
NYTimes specifically allows non-logged in access to its articles through google news. So in this instance you don't even have to use bugmenot. Just search for the article on google news. I always appreciate it when people post google news links to NYT articles.
Because of this, with the NYT, you can even disable/block cookies from their site entirely. The problem, other than this minor inconvenience, is that many other sites don't allow this. Since mirroring content like this is a no-go, sometimes the only option in keeping one's privacy is to not read the article. Unfortunately, not enough people are doing this to put a dent in online page views, so don't expect the honeypot to replace the vinegar any time soon.
Use a different measurement system sure, but what measurement system? You can pay by the number of clickthroughs, but if these sites are willing to build up fraudulent page views, fraudulent clickthroughs wouldn't surprise me either. The best system I can think of is to do a revenue sharing plan--tell a site they get X% commission for each sale referred from their site. It is a lot harder, more expensive, and more clearly illegal to fake a credit card purchase--so I can see this being effective, even if sites don't like this model.
Unless this is something different, the Windows home server does pretty cool. From Wikipedia:
* Centralized Backup - Allows backup up to 12PCs using Single Instance Store technology to avoid multiple copies of the same file, even if that file exists on multiple PCs.
* Health Monitoring - Can centrally track the health of all PCs on the network, including antivirus and firewall status.
* File Sharing - Offers network shares for commonly used files like MP3s and videos with network-attached storage.
* Printer Sharing - Allows a centralized print server to handle print jobs for all users.
* Previous Versions - Takes advantage of Volume Shadow Copy Services to take point in time snapshots that allow older versions of files to be recovered.
* Headless Operation - No monitor or keyboard attached to the device itself, much like a firewall or router.
* Remote administration - Provides a client UI to remotely perform administrative tasks. Also allows Remote Desktop connections to the server.
* Remote Access Gateway - Allows access to any PC on the network from outside the home.
* Media Streaming - Can stream media to an Xbox 360 or other devices supporting Windows Media Connect.
* Data redundancy - Guards against a single drive failure by duplicating data across multiple drives.
* Expandable Storage - Provides a unified single and easily expandable storage space, removing the need for drive letters.
The problem isn't the *obvious* issue. I mean, it wasn't obvious to me in 1995, or most other people I'd wager. The problem is the scope of the patent. No one should be able to patent "processes that implement voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) using analog phones as endpoints." It is way to broad. Acceris should hold a patent on A SINGLE process to implement VoIP. You shouldn't be able to patent an end result, just the specific way you used to get there. Patents like this make clean room reverse engineering, work arounds, and competing methods all illegal without the patent holder's permission.
How many people are going to sign up knowing there is a possibility that Vonage will go *** up in the near future? I can answer that. All of the people who don't know about the patent issues. Like my parents and most of my friends. I took a brief unscientific poll of the dozen people around me. About 3/4ths knew what VOIP was, and of those most knew Vonage. And of everyone, no one had heard of the patent dispute with Verizon.
I think we often overestimate how much the general public knows/cares about this stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
Just so you know, Sun wrote an ODF plug in for MS Office, so MS Office 2007 and 2003 can both read all of the open document files. For me it works flawlessly - YMMV. Also, Sun went the extra mile and wrote an OOXML plugin for OO.org - it is still a bit rough on anything other than docx, but it is there. Both are freely available.
You are right--they have neither the expertise nor authority--but they have the ability, and that is why their opinion matters. We've seen them abuse their investigatory discretion before, by alternately challenging some laws and upholding or refusing to challenge others.
Speakeasy *was* the google if ISPs. Speakeasy got snapped up by Best Buy (heavens knows why they want in on the ISP business), and no one that doesn't trust the "geek squad" should trust Speakeasy anymore.
I've heard again and again that encryption & randomizing the port will get around this. From my experience this is not true. The encryption only hides *what* you are transferring, it doesn't (and can't) hide where or how. Bittorrent is a very unique protocol and it is very easy to identify a user, even without real packet inspection. The only thing to get around this is rent a host somewhere that allows bittorrent. Run bittorrent from there and transfer completed items back through ssh, scp, sftp or whatever.
Other than that, your options are very limited. It would be my guess that Comcast uses a layer2 packet shaper, which has the ability to determine the actual content of an unencrypted packet regardless of port, and the ability to determine the type of traffic regardless of port or content. This has been quite common for years. Chances are you are just going to have to live without torrent, or switch to a provider that doesn't throttle torrent activity.
I tried to get around this before on a different ISP, you really can't. I ran fragroute, which chops up your packets randomly so for sure no one can tell what is in them, and hopefully enough to throw off the signature. No dice. I tried a variant of the IP tables rule above (which I think is wrong BTW), no improvement. I ran traffic over TOR (definitely abuse, sorry TOR people, I've mended my ways) and it didn't help, since my ISP could still tell what type of traffic it was, if not what is in it or where it is going. Encrypting traffic and running it over a port that normally has encrypted traffic (ie 443 for SSL, or 22 for ssh) didn't work either.
But as an IT guy, I'd have to guess that the growing trend to throttle connections is most likely a QoS issue. While bt users may not intend to suck up all of the bandwidth their ISP has, bittorrent is notorious for eating up the band. This probably matters to Comcast more and more now that they have their own VoIP & IPTV--too many people on bittorrent and their other services may suffer (this isn't our fault, but it doesn't mean they won't make us pay for it). In addition, bittorrent unfortunately has a rather poorly designed protocol (for packet efficiency that is, it is great for moving around lots of the same bits). Bittorrent has the problem of opening a lot of connections (the larger the torrent storm, the more connections). While each of these connections to other seeders/leechers may only be passing small amounts of information, they tend to take up a lot of the routers memory (especially for very slow connections that stay open even though they don't pass much if not any information). This kills a router. You might not ever notice it at your own home, but having a lot of people on torrents can drop a router fast, and thus reduce the speeds available for all of the other users using your ISP. Kind of like a DOS attack on a router. It is scummy for them to do this, but I thought you guys might want to know the other reasons for throttling this type of bandwidth.
PS - It also seems like they've been throttling Vonage for sometime now. Pigs!
I'm not as young as you think. I'm not going to IU for undergrad, but for my 3rd degree--this time a law degree. So don't assume I'm in the 18-24 range, I'm not.
Thanks, you are right about major contributions to OO.org. You are also right that Novell bought Ximian, SuSE (yast), & Mono, but they've kept development going, and even accelerated it. Mono has come pretty far since Novell took over. So they didn't develop these in-house, but they've improved them, and released the source for all.
Now that I think about it, I left some other pretty big projects out. Thunderbird is not an Outlook replacement, it is an Outlook Express replacement. Evolution is the Outlook replacement, and IMO it is pretty sweet. Novell works hard to bring active directory support to Linux, they also support other important projects, such as alsa, gnome, kde, gnumeric, mozilla, OO.org, samba, & wine. All this has an eye towards the enterprise: samba, evolution, mono, OO.org, especially. Novell really has done more for the enterprise desktop than anyone else.
You forget Novell also got a pile of cash from Microsoft. My bet is that Novell did it for the cash as much as for the indemnification they claim is worthless.
Please do some research before absurd claims. Let me list a few of the Linux contributions Novell has made you might have heard of. 1. YaST 2. XGL/Compiz 3. Ximian 4. Mono 5. Beagle 6. Bandit 7. iFolder Plus the boatload of patches and drivers they've contributed, and the Linux devs they pay that write software for "Linux" not specifically SuSE. Novell is right there with Sun, Intel, Dell, Redhat, HP & the other big open source contributers. They give away SuSE (OpenSuSE), and not only that, IMO Novell has done more than any other firm to bring Linux to the enterprise desktop.
As a new IU student, let me say this can't hurt. This isn't too surprising to me, while google is great for getting valuable search results from gobs of pages, it really hasn't been designed or optimized to work with few pages. The IU results with the google search are so irrelevant they are worthless. This isn't a troll, I use google for web searches, but try it yourself here and search for course offerings, or course catalog, or list of courses. Garbage results mostly. I found the same was true of the BYU search--it was google and it was terrible.
The summary sounds like there is a conflict of interest for sure, so I can't say ChaCha was the right replacement (ads mixed with search results?!? sounds evil to me). But I can say a replacement/fix/something had to be done.
Automatix is a really nice idea. For those who don't want to bork their systems, check out easy ubuntu. It hasn't been updated in some time (no feisty support), but it works like a charm on edgy and dapper systems. I wonder why it hasn't been updated, but I think Canonical is trying to make these tools redundant, and IMHO is doing a pretty good job.
Or maybe the big payouts are in lucrative consulting jobs after a politician retires or loses an election. You know, something to pass along to the kids.
I thought encryption was the answer too. It isn't. Encryption will make it so ISPs can't tell the difference between legit P2P and illegitimate P2P. ISPs will, even with encryption, be able to tell what traffic is normal amazon/gmail SSL, and what is bittorrent, eMule or whatever. If P2P is made illegal, even for good uses, encryption won't help because ISPs will just be able to block all of it.
The packet filters and traffic shapers ISPs have are more and more capable--I was a student at a university that blocked all P2P traffic, including bittorrent. I was trying to get an Ubuntu VMWare image to test out the new version before upgrading. Nothing worked, on a torrent with 1000+ seeds, no client would be able to make connections for more than a second or two, and most bittorrent clients couldn't make any connections at all. I tried Azureus with encryption, uTorrent with encryption, Ktorrent, and Rtorrent. And this was a few years ago.
As much as I wish there was a technical workaround to political ineptitude in this matter, there isn't. Encryption won't hide P2P traffic, it just hides the content of the traffic. Politicians don't even have to ban P2P, if ISPs are held accountable, or harsher penalties, or more strict enforcement ensues, ISPs won't be able to afford misses and they'll just have to block P2P traffic, encrypted or not.
Actually Microsoft has never had control. Pirated copies of Windows have always been able to get any Windows update they push, and for those they don't push you can find all over the net. Autopatcher rolls all the Windows updates up into a package, Windiz updates lets you get them sans validation, as do a ton of other sites. Heck, you can even setup your own WSUS with one valid copy of Windows and update all your pirated copies.
This doesn't change anything, Microsoft won't care. This doesn't break activation, or generate valid ID keys, those are some things Microsoft does care about (even if it can't do anything, both of those exploits are in the wild), but not WGA. As long as WGA keeps honest people honest (a la locks on a door) it is doing its job.
Or how about VCRs and DVD players that don't actually ever turn off. The power button just dims the lights on the front.
Couple that with VCR & DVD decks that keep blinking until you set the time, and a house that loses power ~5 times per year, and you can't ever watch a freaking movie without some obnoxious light blinking.
That sounds fine, but I'd still be worried about the accuracy of the read. As long as we're going to have users read and answer two captchas, why don't do this: present the unknown captcha to two people, if they agree on the answer accept it, if not show the same captcha to a third person. Accuracy is probably more important than speed for books that still haven't been digitized.
One particularly significant benefit (to the companies being ripped-off) to piracy is lock-in. As you said, Microsoft might not be where it is now, if it were not for piracy. I think the same goes for programs like Photoshop. Teenagers won't/can't pay $600 for Photoshop. Adobe doesn't lose anything by teen pirates who can't afford Photoshop--but they do gain another crop of kids proficient with their software. If any of these kids use Photoshop professionally, they buy a real license.
I think this is the biggest stumbling block to free software. No one wants to use the GIMP because they can get Photoshop. If fewer could get Photoshop, fewer professionals would have Photoshop experience, and more would be willing to contribute to GIMP. Why use Ubuntu when you can get Windows?
But you are right, if any program can be pirated without any repercussions, it WILL hurt both the company and the product's future. It is too costly to stamp out ALL piracy--costly to the produce, the enforcer, and the legitimate customers who will get some spill over--so determining the right amount is tantamount to success.
I think we're studying piracy to see if it is worth cracking down on. There are certainly costs to preventing piracy and catching pirates. How much attention do they deserve? If piracy is a wash or a net gain, we shouldn't care. If piracy is a dangerous destabilizing economic force, than we should fight it harder. That is why it is worth studying.
Just because we already have policy on something doesn't mean we shouldn't constantly re-evaluate that policy to see if it makes sense.
Yes an no. Piracy can really only apply to copyable objects. You can can steal a Civic but you can't "pirate" one. Intangible goods that can be pirated haven't been around as long as "tangible goods", like wheat and clay pots. You really can't pirate music until tapes, you really couldn't pirate movies until VHS, and software is somewhat of a recent invention itself.
I would suggest that piracy is associated with newer markets, not because the markets are immature, but because the newest markets are easily commoditized. Sure there was piracy long ago with books (since the printing press), and music (with sheet music), but we've found more efficient distribution methods go hand in hand with piracy. I don't think the music market is immature, music is just easily distributed.
Yeah but Xen is still a royal PITA to get running. KVM wasn't bad, and VMWare was pretty easy. I haven't even seen OpenVZ. Of the three I've tried, the ease of use was highly correlated to the product maturity. All three work, but IMHO VMWare is so far ahead it will take some time for Xen to be considered out of the hobbyist market and in the commercial one. I'm sure it'll get there, but to do what? Be a faster VMWare?
So to sum, we've got OpenVZ, Virtualbox, KVM/Qemu, Xen, VMWare, Virtual Iron, and Virtuozzo. With so much virtualization software, I personally think performance takes a back seat to functionality (sure OpenVZ is fast, cool, what will it do for me that VMWare or Xen won't?). Is there really that much space in the virtualization landscape?
NYTimes specifically allows non-logged in access to its articles through google news. So in this instance you don't even have to use bugmenot. Just search for the article on google news. I always appreciate it when people post google news links to NYT articles.
Because of this, with the NYT, you can even disable/block cookies from their site entirely. The problem, other than this minor inconvenience, is that many other sites don't allow this. Since mirroring content like this is a no-go, sometimes the only option in keeping one's privacy is to not read the article. Unfortunately, not enough people are doing this to put a dent in online page views, so don't expect the honeypot to replace the vinegar any time soon.
Use a different measurement system sure, but what measurement system? You can pay by the number of clickthroughs, but if these sites are willing to build up fraudulent page views, fraudulent clickthroughs wouldn't surprise me either. The best system I can think of is to do a revenue sharing plan--tell a site they get X% commission for each sale referred from their site. It is a lot harder, more expensive, and more clearly illegal to fake a credit card purchase--so I can see this being effective, even if sites don't like this model.
Anyone have any better ideas?
Unless this is something different, the Windows home server does pretty cool. From Wikipedia:
* Centralized Backup - Allows backup up to 12PCs using Single Instance Store technology to avoid multiple copies of the same file, even if that file exists on multiple PCs.
* Health Monitoring - Can centrally track the health of all PCs on the network, including antivirus and firewall status.
* File Sharing - Offers network shares for commonly used files like MP3s and videos with network-attached storage.
* Printer Sharing - Allows a centralized print server to handle print jobs for all users.
* Previous Versions - Takes advantage of Volume Shadow Copy Services to take point in time snapshots that allow older versions of files to be recovered.
* Headless Operation - No monitor or keyboard attached to the device itself, much like a firewall or router.
* Remote administration - Provides a client UI to remotely perform administrative tasks. Also allows Remote Desktop connections to the server.
* Remote Access Gateway - Allows access to any PC on the network from outside the home.
* Media Streaming - Can stream media to an Xbox 360 or other devices supporting Windows Media Connect.
* Data redundancy - Guards against a single drive failure by duplicating data across multiple drives.
* Expandable Storage - Provides a unified single and easily expandable storage space, removing the need for drive letters.
Yeah, I have a profanity filter greasemonkey script installed, so I don't even know what the word was.
The problem isn't the *obvious* issue. I mean, it wasn't obvious to me in 1995, or most other people I'd wager. The problem is the scope of the patent. No one should be able to patent "processes that implement voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) using analog phones as endpoints." It is way to broad. Acceris should hold a patent on A SINGLE process to implement VoIP. You shouldn't be able to patent an end result, just the specific way you used to get there. Patents like this make clean room reverse engineering, work arounds, and competing methods all illegal without the patent holder's permission.
I can answer that. All of the people who don't know about the patent issues. Like my parents and most of my friends. I took a brief unscientific poll of the dozen people around me. About 3/4ths knew what VOIP was, and of those most knew Vonage. And of everyone, no one had heard of the patent dispute with Verizon.
I think we often overestimate how much the general public knows/cares about this stuff.