They sell it as 256K because that's what it used to be, and because its variable between 256K and 640K depending on distance. I get around 500K download speed max.
I got it right after it was first offered here (Minneapolis), and I got 640K right away. I have yet to hear of anyone (in this area, anyway) that currently is running at a speed other than 640. There was a batch of folks that were wired at 512 for a while but USWest/Qwest upped them all to 640 a while back. I'm talking about the actual line rate here, not download speed: the result of "show interface wan0" on the Cisco DSL "modem" (router).
And yes, of course that's just the line charge, but if you start including ISP fees you have to consider the differences in ISPs (many won't let you run web/ftp/mail servers, for example), some have router rate limiting, some let you pay more to allow pegging the link all day long. --
The first three are all sold as "256K" connections, but in reality all are 640 down, 272. And the $20 one is Windows-only. So the (monthly) pricing basically goes:
I'm wondering why someone would want to be a Director of Competitive Strategy at Microsoft. It's certainly not a job I would ever want because I fear it would involve sacrificing good products in the name of What's Good For The Company.
So here's the question: have you ever been really passionate about computers and software? Have you ever gotten up in the middle of the night, thinking not "we're going to make a ton of money", but "this product is so cool it's going to change everything." And if you have, isn't Microsoft going to make you sell your soul?
--
I feel bad for the guy, I really do. He wrote the product and protocol that's used by everybody, maintained it for years, and now he's getting marginalized by people who just showed up.
But that's the way free markets work. It's time for Tatu Ylonnen to accept the fact that he's losing control and market share of SSH. The way to gain that back is with new and better products, not a sackful of lawyers.
His trademark arguments have some merit, but hassling free software authors any further can only result in bad relations between SSH, Inc. and the rest of the *nix world, which should instead be courted as potential customers. --
To be kind, I'll say that it's great to see someone from congress say clearly that the DMCA does severe damage to fair use that ought to be corrected.
Unfortunately, he doesn't even touch on some of the more important parts of the DMCA, and he seems to live in a fantasy-land when it comes time to suggest actual alternatives.
When he speaks of section 1201 (the anti-circumvention portion of the DMCA), he only speaks about the part that makes it illegal to circumvent, and he arrives at the correct conclusion: it's stupid to make circumvention illegal without looking at the underlying purpose.
But he completely misses the fact that even if circumvention itself were legal, it would be impossible in a practical sense as long as circumvention devices are illegal. If the device-ban remains in place, it matters not whether fair use is allowed as a defense: the tools will be illegal to distribute, so they will remain out of reach for institutions such as libraries and schools.
And suggesting that Macrovision is the correct model for digital content protection doesn't make any sense. Either devices will be able to copy content or they won't. Only devices that allow copying will allow fair-use copying, and devices that won't allow copying will harm fair use. His view that including watermarking recognition code in all digital recording devices will somehow permit fair use is illogical. How is a recording device supposed to determine whether I am copying "The Matrix" for ten of my friends, as opposed to recording five movie scenes for my college special-effects class?
Mr. Boucher: technology cannot determine whether a user's copying is fair use or not. Let's not pretend that it can. You have to decide whether you're going to support the media giants' control of the end-use of their content, or support unimpeded fair use by the public. The two are not reconcilable, not by technology, and not by law. --
Another thing that'd make me happier and more likely to read the ads:
Give me the option to display 2 static ads per page to replace the one animated ad. It's hard to read with a stupid ad going blink, blink the whole time.
Hey Kurt, great job. You've come up with some really interesting ideas.
Ideas I like: Comment forums, turn off annoying ads, choice of ad topics.
Ideas I don't like: pop-up ads, flash ads.
I'm a little creeped out by the idea of ad-karma, but if you could come up with some better rewards I could see myself going for the idea. Perhaps you should consider additional rewards, such as:
donate karma-earned ad space to a nonprofit (EFF, EPIC, LinuxPPC)
free stuff: stickers, Debian CDs, independent music CDs... I'm sure you can think up useless little items that'll cost you 1 cent but will have value to the readers. "d00d, check out my Slashdot keychain..."
Don't bother trying to make us earn the right to turn off ads, though, we're smart enough to do it ourselves already without having to jump through hoops. You have to offer something we don't already have.
--
No, nobody has a right to have a particular business model work, but I don't think that we want to destroy the hardware industry just to appease our own curiousity
Actually, I rather enjoy the idea that my curiosity can destroy a hardware industry.
This whole idea rests upon the assumption that an elite group can actually keep newly-discovered holes a secret. If I were an author of cracking tools, the first thing I'd do is go after the weakest member of the "elite" group, root his machines, backdoor his email accounts, and enjoy my new-found live feed of fresh security holes that I'm free to exploit because nobody else knows they even exist.
I seem to recall a case in the 1800s involving
counterfeit music rolls for player pianos.
Judgement was something to the effect that,
machine-read documents could be protected
under copyright law the same as human-read ones.
You're probably thinking of
White-Smith
vs. Apollo, and if you are, your memory is wrong. The supreme court held that piano rolls were
not covered by copyright. Obviously things are a little different today.
--
This is the first movie I've seen that showed computer geeks doing geeky things without being so ridiculously watered down it just made me want to throw things at the screen. You know what I mean *COUGH The Net COUGH*, 24-point fonts, users typing plain english into command prompts that actually understand them... I got a kick out of seeing real output from the *nix "last" command when he wanted to know who'd been on the machine.
So, guess what- I liked the film. It did something new I've never seen before. The positive open-source propaganda and other interesting bits just make it more fun. I think the "technical consultants" did a great job- thanks guys! --
Basically you need to find a unit that has the features that you want (DTS decoding, etc) and the power output you want.
That's leaving out quite a bit, however, namely how it sounds. I too thought that one 100W receiver/amplifier should be pretty much like another, but once I started putting together a good system I quickly realized that this wasn't the case. I find it easy to find name-brand amplifiers that don't sound good to me.
Also, don't get too hung up on power ratings. A lot of low-end stuff puts out heaps of bad-sounding power. Once you spend an afternoon in a high-end audio store listening to 60 Watt per channel amplifiers that play loud and sound beautiful, and you'll have a hard time going back. If you get efficient speakers (and a lot of large speakers are quite efficient) most amplifiers (receivers) rated above 60 Watts per channel will be able to play loudly enough for even the most hard-core listeners. --
A few things I've learned while shopping recently for a music-listening system (only 2 channels):
1. You may have the impression that one $500 amp is going to sound pretty much the same as another $500 amp (or $1000, or $2000...). It's not true. And it's easy to prove. Go and find yourself a high-end audio store and listen to a half-dozen different setups. And I'm not talking about your local stereo-videogame-and-toaster store here, I mean a real high-end store that sells $10,000 turntables and such, and you can actually listen for ten minutes in a quiet room. Oh, and listen to the same (music, movies) everywhere you go. You'll notice a suprising amount of difference in the sound.
2. Different speakers and amplifiers have different sounds that sound better to different people. Go and listen to a handful of systems and figure out what you like.
3. Unfortunately, all the audioreview.com reviews seem to follow this pattern: eight out of ten reviewers say "sounds great. If you only have $xxx to spend, this is the (amp|speaker) you should buy". Then there's two reviewers who absolutely hate the sound because it's too bright or lifeless. This is true of $500 stuff and $5000 stuff. Since every review follows that same pattern, it's impossible to compare two pieces of equipment realistically.
4. Cheap equipment will drag down the sound. $2000 speakers won't sound too hot on a $200 amplifier. Try and spread your money around to maximize overall system performance.
5. I know I said this in #1 and #2, but go and listen to a bunch of systems at good stores. You really don't need to be an audiophile to hear the difference. Just go and spend a few afternoons hitting the stores and you'll be glad you did.
6. Many high-end shops will let you try stuff out at home. Ask and see if they'll let you.
7. There's a lot of BS floating around out there. Don't believe what other people say. Go and figure it out for yourself.
You all have it wrong. It doesn't mean you can't read it aloud. It means that the software's text-to-speech function won't read it aloud.
Read this press release from Glassbook, where they specifically say "The Glassbook Plus Reader is a full-featured, ebook software that offers a two-page view, text-to-speech capability that pronounces words or enables the text to be read aloud..."
But of course publisher control of fair use must stop, and I hope restricted-use e-books crash and burn in spectacular fashion. --
Why, oh, why does deja.com set "Pragma: no-cache" on every stupid page returned?
I use deja.com on a daily basis, but it drives me crazy that I have to wait several seconds for each page to reload just by hitting the forward and back buttons on the browser.
Hint to deja.com: your archive hasn't changed that much in the last thirty seconds. Let my browser cache do its work and if I really want to reload a query, I'll punch the button in my browser that says reload.
--
LinuxONE lite, at least in theory, does this. I haven't been able to connect to their webserver lately, though, so I couldn't tell you what the status of that is, nor can I download and test it.
You mean these guys? Bwahahahaha! They've been exposed as a stock-IPO scam with only the barest attempt at a product. How could anyone read Slashdot and miss all the articles about LinuxOne? --
Go and read the article. To test the software, the reviewer has the company selling the software set up an email account for him on one of their machines. Mail sent to that account presumably passes through their magic program and then gets forwarded to another account belonging to the reviewer.
Hello? You're testing censorware! I don't believe for a second that this company wouldn't be sleazy enough to hand-check the emails getting sent through the account. All they have to do is open the emails, look at them, and (inserting a few false-positives and negatives) manually tell the software whether or not to filter the image.
This is a completely invalid test if the software is vulnerable to fiddling by the company during the test. --
Open Projects provides interactive facilities for coordination and
support to groups and projects involved with open source. We run
between 1,500 and 2,000 clients and are home to such projects as Debian
GNU/Linux and Enlightenment. We've had our
share of difficulties recently, but we're continuing on.
The past few weeks have been quite an experience. Last week one of our
hubs
on Open Projects started going up and down like a yoyo. I'd seen that
behavior in this normally very reliable server in recent weeks and not
thought much of it, since the company in question was in the process of
moving its facilities and reliability issues do sometimes creep in
during such
moves. But we soon obtained a little bit more insight into the problem.
After watching the server perform a loop-de-loop, I received a/MSG
from a rather peremptory and anonymous skript kiddie informing me that
if I didn't
permanently remove the sponsor's server from the network, he would kill
my home
ADSL
line and take down Open Projects until he got his way. It seems he
feels
the sponsor owes him money. I'm afraid I wasn't very polite in my
response.
Feeling that one can hardly allow psychotic delinquents to dictate
network
policy, I explained to him that while he might very well be able to take
down our network, he was not going to set policy, and specifically I
would
not entertain the notion of removing our sponsor's machine.
The last week has been interesting. Apparently this petulant child has
something over 45Mbps to play with, and he's moderately competent with
SYN
attacks and so on. In various incidents throughout the week he packeted
ISP's and universities and small companies to death to demonstrate his,
uh,
prowess with borrowed equipment. Currently he has proclaimed that he'll
be
taking down our network once a day for an hour until his wishes are
granted.
All I can say is that he's going to be doing it for a long time if
that's
the case; the heat death of the universe isn't due to arrive for some
time.
Throughout this experience I have noticed it's very difficult to
coordinate
much of a response from ISPs and backbone providers. An unofficial
contact
at uu.net explained that we must notify his security people while an
attack
was taking place for them to have any chance of thwarting it. They
thoughtfully provided him with an email address rather than a telephone
number to give to us, explaining that this is a matter of policy.
Perhaps they
don't
understand that packeting can affect services like email. Or perhaps
they
are simply extremely comfortable, their owners having cornered much of
the
backbone market after the last round of industry mergers. My employer's
ISP
was targeted, and so far the people at the ISP seem a little bewildered,
though they're game to fight the good fight. Some folks with very nice
bandwidth contributed a server today to see if we couldn't keep our
hubbing
working through an attack, and the skript kiddie seems to have gone
after
their routers, leaving very little in the way of evidence behind him as
to
his point of origin.
As a first, one of our admins contacted the FBI at our request. I'm not
sure this will accomplish anything useful, but it's certainly worth a
try.
It is worth noting that, as a philosophical anarchist, I'm usually not
inclined to bring in the muscle of a law enforcement agency to resolve
such
disputes, preferring to reason with the party or parties involved. But
in
cases where the problem user has learned his manners from repeated
viewing
of Robocop, well, there's not much one can do but consider the
business to be a declaration of war.
At any rate, it seems to me that this otherwise very mundane set of
attacks
points to a long-standing problem with the Internet: Denial-of-service
attackers have location indirection, but content services and users are
left in
plain
sight as targets for their efforts. I'm hoping Corridors will helpful in dealing with this
problem, though it's a fairly long-term project (and constantly in
search of
additional expertise to finish the design and begin the
actual implementation). Meanwhile, we
go on, attempting to devise kludges to improve the
robustness
of ircd in the face of all-out attack.
Any assistance from the
readership
in combatting problems which we have never experienced in quite this
magnitude would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks to the Magenet people and Diane Bruce and F. John Rowan of the
hybrid
ircd project for their assistance. Thanks to the many users and admins
of OPN, whose patience and support have been impressive. And thanks
especially to VA Linux
for
their help and support; they've been real heroes and deserve a great
deal of
praise. And no, we're not going to delink their server, however many or
few
seconds we have to comply.;)
--
Hey, doesn't anybody value parody anymore? I bet you could go and poll all of the bureaucrats that make and support overbroad trademark protection and you'd find a significant percentage that once read and enjoyed Mad Magazine.
I mean, at one point in time, it was actually funny when a comic spoofed movies and gave the spoofs confusingly similar names to the real, (trademarked) thing.
Oh, wait a minute! Mad Magazine is now owned by none other than our friends at Time Warner! Guess for them it's OK!
the FCC requires brokerage houses to obtain background information from their customers under the "know your customers" rules
You sure didn't follow the links and read about the hearing, did you? He won because neither the SEC nor NASD requires such a thing, because E*TRADE doesn't recommend stocks. Oh, and the FCC has nothing to do with the stock market...
The questionnaire is a normal part of opening an account
Do you have an E*TRADE account? Did you participate in the RHAT offering? I did, and know for certain that the questionnaire is not part of opening an account, but rather was required only to participate in the Red Hat "affinity" program.
--
The first batch of people to get DSL hooked up got 640kbps down and 272kbps up. That only lasted a few months and then everybody getting hooked up after that got a smaller download number (256 or 512), while leaving the first people at 640. A month or three ago USWest upped the line speed to 640 for everybody.
Of course, that's just the line speed; you might get throttled at your ISP.
I wouldn't use USWest as an ISP unless they were the only one available. VISI kicks ass. --
1. It's not IIT that's reviewing it, it's the Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute (IITRI). What? It's "affiliated" with IIT? OK, that's all right then.
I think that despite the recent ruling for the MPAA in New York, it would be inappropriate to call reverse-engineered, open-source DVD code "illegal". The MPAA and DVD-CCA would absolutely love it if everyone started calling this code "illegal" because they are fighting as much of a publicity battle as they are a legal battle.
Please, consider calling such code "unlicensed" instead. The distinction is that all other DVD player software has a CSS license from DVD-CCA. --
Since most of the opponents made their strongest points in the first or second round of comments, there's fewer and fewer submitted in each following round. --
Slashdot Mirror
I got it right after it was first offered here (Minneapolis), and I got 640K right away. I have yet to hear of anyone (in this area, anyway) that currently is running at a speed other than 640. There was a batch of folks that were wired at 512 for a while but USWest/Qwest upped them all to 640 a while back. I'm talking about the actual line rate here, not download speed: the result of "show interface wan0" on the Cisco DSL "modem" (router).
And yes, of course that's just the line charge, but if you start including ISP fees you have to consider the differences in ISPs (many won't let you run web/ftp/mail servers, for example), some have router rate limiting, some let you pay more to allow pegging the link all day long.
--
http://www.qwest.com/dsl/learn/pricing.html
The first three are all sold as "256K" connections, but in reality all are 640 down, 272. And the $20 one is Windows-only. So the (monthly) pricing basically goes:
--
So here's the question: have you ever been really passionate about computers and software? Have you ever gotten up in the middle of the night, thinking not "we're going to make a ton of money", but "this product is so cool it's going to change everything." And if you have, isn't Microsoft going to make you sell your soul?
--
But that's the way free markets work. It's time for Tatu Ylonnen to accept the fact that he's losing control and market share of SSH. The way to gain that back is with new and better products, not a sackful of lawyers.
His trademark arguments have some merit, but hassling free software authors any further can only result in bad relations between SSH, Inc. and the rest of the *nix world, which should instead be courted as potential customers.
--
Unfortunately, he doesn't even touch on some of the more important parts of the DMCA, and he seems to live in a fantasy-land when it comes time to suggest actual alternatives.
When he speaks of section 1201 (the anti-circumvention portion of the DMCA), he only speaks about the part that makes it illegal to circumvent, and he arrives at the correct conclusion: it's stupid to make circumvention illegal without looking at the underlying purpose.
But he completely misses the fact that even if circumvention itself were legal, it would be impossible in a practical sense as long as circumvention devices are illegal. If the device-ban remains in place, it matters not whether fair use is allowed as a defense: the tools will be illegal to distribute, so they will remain out of reach for institutions such as libraries and schools.
And suggesting that Macrovision is the correct model for digital content protection doesn't make any sense. Either devices will be able to copy content or they won't. Only devices that allow copying will allow fair-use copying, and devices that won't allow copying will harm fair use. His view that including watermarking recognition code in all digital recording devices will somehow permit fair use is illogical. How is a recording device supposed to determine whether I am copying "The Matrix" for ten of my friends, as opposed to recording five movie scenes for my college special-effects class?
Mr. Boucher: technology cannot determine whether a user's copying is fair use or not. Let's not pretend that it can. You have to decide whether you're going to support the media giants' control of the end-use of their content, or support unimpeded fair use by the public. The two are not reconcilable, not by technology, and not by law.
--
Another thing that'd make me happier and more likely to read the ads:
Give me the option to display 2 static ads per page to replace the one animated ad. It's hard to read with a stupid ad going blink, blink the whole time.
--
Ideas I like: Comment forums, turn off annoying ads, choice of ad topics.
Ideas I don't like: pop-up ads, flash ads.
I'm a little creeped out by the idea of ad-karma, but if you could come up with some better rewards I could see myself going for the idea. Perhaps you should consider additional rewards, such as:
Don't bother trying to make us earn the right to turn off ads, though, we're smart enough to do it ourselves already without having to jump through hoops. You have to offer something we don't already have.
--
Actually, I rather enjoy the idea that my curiosity can destroy a hardware industry.
ALL YOUR INDUSTRY ARE BELONG TO... oh, sorry.
--
This whole idea rests upon the assumption that an elite group can actually keep newly-discovered holes a secret. If I were an author of cracking tools, the first thing I'd do is go after the weakest member of the "elite" group, root his machines, backdoor his email accounts, and enjoy my new-found live feed of fresh security holes that I'm free to exploit because nobody else knows they even exist.
--
You're probably thinking of White-Smith vs. Apollo, and if you are, your memory is wrong. The supreme court held that piano rolls were not covered by copyright. Obviously things are a little different today.
--
This is the first movie I've seen that showed computer geeks doing geeky things without being so ridiculously watered down it just made me want to throw things at the screen. You know what I mean *COUGH The Net COUGH*, 24-point fonts, users typing plain english into command prompts that actually understand them... I got a kick out of seeing real output from the *nix "last" command when he wanted to know who'd been on the machine.
So, guess what- I liked the film. It did something new I've never seen before. The positive open-source propaganda and other interesting bits just make it more fun. I think the "technical consultants" did a great job- thanks guys!
--
That's leaving out quite a bit, however, namely how it sounds. I too thought that one 100W receiver/amplifier should be pretty much like another, but once I started putting together a good system I quickly realized that this wasn't the case. I find it easy to find name-brand amplifiers that don't sound good to me.
Also, don't get too hung up on power ratings. A lot of low-end stuff puts out heaps of bad-sounding power. Once you spend an afternoon in a high-end audio store listening to 60 Watt per channel amplifiers that play loud and sound beautiful, and you'll have a hard time going back. If you get efficient speakers (and a lot of large speakers are quite efficient) most amplifiers (receivers) rated above 60 Watts per channel will be able to play loudly enough for even the most hard-core listeners.
--
A few things I've learned while shopping recently for a music-listening system (only 2 channels):
1. You may have the impression that one $500 amp is going to sound pretty much the same as another $500 amp (or $1000, or $2000...). It's not true. And it's easy to prove. Go and find yourself a high-end audio store and listen to a half-dozen different setups. And I'm not talking about your local stereo-videogame-and-toaster store here, I mean a real high-end store that sells $10,000 turntables and such, and you can actually listen for ten minutes in a quiet room. Oh, and listen to the same (music, movies) everywhere you go. You'll notice a suprising amount of difference in the sound.
2. Different speakers and amplifiers have different sounds that sound better to different people. Go and listen to a handful of systems and figure out what you like.
3. Unfortunately, all the audioreview.com reviews seem to follow this pattern: eight out of ten reviewers say "sounds great. If you only have $xxx to spend, this is the (amp|speaker) you should buy". Then there's two reviewers who absolutely hate the sound because it's too bright or lifeless. This is true of $500 stuff and $5000 stuff. Since every review follows that same pattern, it's impossible to compare two pieces of equipment realistically.
4. Cheap equipment will drag down the sound. $2000 speakers won't sound too hot on a $200 amplifier. Try and spread your money around to maximize overall system performance.
5. I know I said this in #1 and #2, but go and listen to a bunch of systems at good stores. You really don't need to be an audiophile to hear the difference. Just go and spend a few afternoons hitting the stores and you'll be glad you did.
6. Many high-end shops will let you try stuff out at home. Ask and see if they'll let you.
7. There's a lot of BS floating around out there. Don't believe what other people say. Go and figure it out for yourself.
--
Read this press release from Glassbook, where they specifically say "The Glassbook Plus Reader is a full-featured, ebook software that offers a two-page view, text-to-speech capability that pronounces words or enables the text to be read aloud..."
But of course publisher control of fair use must stop, and I hope restricted-use e-books crash and burn in spectacular fashion.
--
I use deja.com on a daily basis, but it drives me crazy that I have to wait several seconds for each page to reload just by hitting the forward and back buttons on the browser.
Hint to deja.com: your archive hasn't changed that much in the last thirty seconds. Let my browser cache do its work and if I really want to reload a query, I'll punch the button in my browser that says reload.
--
You mean these guys ? Bwahahahaha! They've been exposed as a stock-IPO scam with only the barest attempt at a product. How could anyone read Slashdot and miss all the articles about LinuxOne?
--
Hello? You're testing censorware! I don't believe for a second that this company wouldn't be sleazy enough to hand-check the emails getting sent through the account. All they have to do is open the emails, look at them, and (inserting a few false-positives and negatives) manually tell the software whether or not to filter the image.
This is a completely invalid test if the software is vulnerable to fiddling by the company during the test.
--
Open Projects Net: Denial of Service Attacks
Posted 7 Nov 2000 by lilo
Open Projects provides interactive facilities for coordination and support to groups and projects involved with open source. We run between 1,500 and 2,000 clients and are home to such projects as Debian GNU/Linux and Enlightenment. We've had our share of difficulties recently, but we're continuing on.
The past few weeks have been quite an experience. Last week one of our hubs on Open Projects started going up and down like a yoyo. I'd seen that behavior in this normally very reliable server in recent weeks and not thought much of it, since the company in question was in the process of moving its facilities and reliability issues do sometimes creep in during such moves. But we soon obtained a little bit more insight into the problem. After watching the server perform a loop-de-loop, I received a /MSG
from a rather peremptory and anonymous skript kiddie informing me that
if I didn't
permanently remove the sponsor's server from the network, he would kill
my home
ADSL
line and take down Open Projects until he got his way. It seems he
feels
the sponsor owes him money. I'm afraid I wasn't very polite in my
response.
Feeling that one can hardly allow psychotic delinquents to dictate
network
policy, I explained to him that while he might very well be able to take
down our network, he was not going to set policy, and specifically I
would
not entertain the notion of removing our sponsor's machine.
The last week has been interesting. Apparently this petulant child has something over 45Mbps to play with, and he's moderately competent with SYN attacks and so on. In various incidents throughout the week he packeted ISP's and universities and small companies to death to demonstrate his, uh, prowess with borrowed equipment. Currently he has proclaimed that he'll be taking down our network once a day for an hour until his wishes are granted. All I can say is that he's going to be doing it for a long time if that's the case; the heat death of the universe isn't due to arrive for some time.
Throughout this experience I have noticed it's very difficult to coordinate much of a response from ISPs and backbone providers. An unofficial contact at uu.net explained that we must notify his security people while an attack was taking place for them to have any chance of thwarting it. They thoughtfully provided him with an email address rather than a telephone number to give to us, explaining that this is a matter of policy. Perhaps they don't understand that packeting can affect services like email. Or perhaps they are simply extremely comfortable, their owners having cornered much of the backbone market after the last round of industry mergers. My employer's ISP was targeted, and so far the people at the ISP seem a little bewildered, though they're game to fight the good fight. Some folks with very nice bandwidth contributed a server today to see if we couldn't keep our hubbing working through an attack, and the skript kiddie seems to have gone after their routers, leaving very little in the way of evidence behind him as to his point of origin.
As a first, one of our admins contacted the FBI at our request. I'm not sure this will accomplish anything useful, but it's certainly worth a try. It is worth noting that, as a philosophical anarchist, I'm usually not inclined to bring in the muscle of a law enforcement agency to resolve such disputes, preferring to reason with the party or parties involved. But in cases where the problem user has learned his manners from repeated viewing of Robocop, well, there's not much one can do but consider the business to be a declaration of war.
At any rate, it seems to me that this otherwise very mundane set of attacks points to a long-standing problem with the Internet: Denial-of-service attackers have location indirection, but content services and users are left in plain sight as targets for their efforts. I'm hoping Corridors will helpful in dealing with this problem, though it's a fairly long-term project (and constantly in search of additional expertise to finish the design and begin the actual implementation). Meanwhile, we go on, attempting to devise kludges to improve the robustness of ircd in the face of all-out attack.
Any assistance from the readership in combatting problems which we have never experienced in quite this magnitude would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks to the Magenet people and Diane Bruce and F. John Rowan of the hybrid ircd project for their assistance. Thanks to the many users and admins of OPN, whose patience and support have been impressive. And thanks especially to VA Linux for their help and support; they've been real heroes and deserve a great deal of praise. And no, we're not going to delink their server, however many or few seconds we have to comply. ;)
--
I mean, at one point in time, it was actually funny when a comic spoofed movies and gave the spoofs confusingly similar names to the real, (trademarked) thing.
Oh, wait a minute! Mad Magazine is now owned by none other than our friends at Time Warner! Guess for them it's OK!
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Sewer Commissioner? Is that an inside joke by the author?
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Of course, that's just the line speed; you might get throttled at your ISP.
I wouldn't use USWest as an ISP unless they were the only one available. VISI kicks ass.
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1. It's not IIT that's reviewing it, it's the Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute (IITRI). What? It's "affiliated" with IIT? OK, that's all right then.
2. It's not Kent State (which is in Ohio), but Chicago-Kent College of Law, which is part of IIT in Chicago.
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Please, consider calling such code "unlicensed" instead. The distinction is that all other DVD player software has a CSS license from DVD-CCA.
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- 235 Comments
- 129 Reply Comments
- 28 Post-Hearing Comments
- 16 Post-Hearing Reply Comments
Since most of the opponents made their strongest points in the first or second round of comments, there's fewer and fewer submitted in each following round.--