It's funny how people believe that an "Internet-ready" home involves something that it's a tie-breaker for a house. Just tell your builder to run cat 5 when he runs phone wire.
Whoop-dee frickin' doo.
I talked to a local builder about this that was under the impression that an unfinished basement would be a good place for a hub. I explained that most people wouldn't really want to run cabling all the way down there, least of all to a firewall box or something in a musty basement. This was a surprise to them.
You're quite right. But if it were pulled out from the OS, which would be necessary, under this proposed decision, it would be a mere browser, no more interesting or profitable than Mozilla, iCab or Opera.
It seems to me that any one of us fools could start a registry. The fact that no DNSs respect our system hardly matters -- people are willing to pay. I think that news of people starting new TLD registries will soon be like news of people auctioning off things on eBay: the press not realising a non-event when they see one.
I'm pretty gung-ho about private solutions to technical problems. I'm far more confident in my abilities, and those of my technical compatriots, than I am in the ability of our government to enforce a law appropriately.
So I'm generally a firm believer in my ability to take care of things on my own. ORBS and The RBL have certainly been shown to be an extremely successful method of filtering out spam. Since I got my mail server set up with MAPS and ORBS, I get about 2 pieces of spam a week. That's pretty managable. (And good, because I'm the kind of guy that gets spam and calls the company to bitch. Total waste of time.)
However, I don't run an ISP. I worked at one, as all good geeks must, back in '95. Spam wasn't a problem then -- I shutter to think what it must be like these days. Spam is obviously a huge loss to these people, MAPS or no MAPS. Because of the direct financial losses that result from the actions of spammers, I can't help but, although reluctantly, support federal legislation to limit UCE. It seems like the only method of stopping it.
I think that Linux's big place in the gaming market might come from providing a powerful console OS, as mentioned in Timothy's piece. Though we all think of Linux as a desktop environment, it will really do a great job of permitting small-time console manufacturers to have a basis from which to start. Otherwise, they have to start, quite literally, from scratch.
Plus, it will totally rock to get a $200 gaming machine / Quake V box that plugs into a TV.:)
I dropped my landline in '98, and have been straight PCS ever since. The biggest problems:
* Not dependable. Mobile phone companies believe it far more acceptable to have a tower down than landline companies do to have your line dead. Neither really give a shit, but my company cares a bit less.
* No phone book listing. I'd like to be in the phone book, but it just won't happen. I tried to pay them, but they still wouldn't do it. Small problem, but it does suck.
* Extensions. I'd like to have multiple phones on the same line. One in the kitchen, one in my bedroom. When the phone rings, then I wouldn't have to race across the apartment to wherever I left my phone.
* Modem. I've got a DSL, so I don't really care, but it would be nice to have the option of having a modem when my DSL dies. (Again, courtesy of Intelos.)
* Long distance. I pay $0.15 / minute, and I can't switch. I've never heard of a mobile phone provider that would let people switch their long distance. I can't call overseas. Intelos tries to tell me that it's technically impossible, which is a load, clearly. Once that line hits the CO, it doesn't matter what kind of a phone that I'm on. Again, I'm yet to find a mobile phone provider that would let me make overseas calls.
I won't go back to a landline. But I've been tempted, a few times, to suppliment my mobile with a landline.
There's been more and more talk from NASA about skipping Mars missions, never going back to the moon, etc. This is kind of sad, but probably OK.
We all know that commercial enterprise can do way better with space missions than the government. Primarily because there's no overarching benefit to the goverment sponsoring space trips anymore. The research, while it should, IMHO, be government-sponsored, will probably go better as a commercial system.
Less screw-ups, more competition, lower prices. Get me a room on that Lunar Hilton, baby!
I think it's worth noting that Slashdot has never removed a post. Having established no precedent, it makes it considerably easier (IANAL!) for Slashdot to claim that it merely a location where data can be posted, but is not a filter or editor of the content within them.
I don't know how this fits in with the DMCA: Anybody know?
I didn't get a single copy of ILOVEYOU, and I'm disappointed. I set up filtering, based on that subject line, but I didn't get to see the filter in action, beyond my test messages: nobody ever sent it to me.
Now I'm bombarded by mail all day from friends, family, business associates, etc. Much like most of you, I'm sure. I get a few hundred messages most days.
So I've got to admit that I'm a little disappointed that not one of these people had me bookmarked. Maybe this says something about the calibre of my friends: They're smart enough not to run Windows, or Outlook, or open worm-bearing e-mail.
Still, I've got to say, I'm a little bit sad. Oh, well. Maybe next time around.
Let's say that the engineer has logged into the satellite via ssh. His connection is a little laggy, but nevertheless he's entering attitude-control commands for future execution. You're sniffing his packets, but what do you see? Noise, mostly. What could you do with it? Probably nothing.
I guess we could go back and forth over this forever, but what about something on their machine? You know -- get a friend of his daughter's to install a poisoned version of ICQ that traps keystrokes. I think the problem isn't so much TCP/IP, but it's that this can be accessed from non-secure locations. IMHO, satellites ought to be adjustable only from steel-clad bunkers thousands of feet beneath the earth.
OK, well maybe not that extreme. But you know what I mean.
This is cool and all, but, all jokes aside, isn't this a security nightmare. Sure, you can put up a firewall, password proection, IP filtering, PGP, etc., but is that really enough?
From the article: From the comfort of home, an engineer logs onto the Internet using a laptop computer and communicates with an orbiting spacecraft. Using industry standard Internet protocols, simple keystrokes send commands adjusting the spacecraft's attitude.
"Comfort of home"? Pretending that I'm a $6/hour ISP admin, couldn't I trap those packets and crash a satellite?
I'm not trying to be a fearmonger, but I really do think that this is a case of Too Much Stuff Connected To The Internet. We all laughed a few years ago when kooks started saying that "Internet hackers" could shut down power plants and kill small woodlands animals. At the time, of course, none of these things were net connected.
Now, between IPv6-addressable squirrels and this satellite, we really could have a problem on our hands.
I believe that this works by combining two GPSs into one and cross-referencing the data -- the average is likely to be closer to your actual location than either device will independently indicate.
Hey, I like this. If I fail to pay my Mastercard bill on time, they can lower my clockspeed until I pay.
Eventually, if you still don't pay, they change the kernel to command.com and kill your wife.
:)
Re:State vs. Using State Laws
on
Fighting UCITA
·
· Score: 2
An AC wrote: One would say that you allowed the law to be passed in your state. Of course that isn't quite fair either.
Hell no, it wouldn't be. I sure wrote a lot of letters and made a lot of phone calls. You know how you write to a rep, and they send you a form letter back? I replied to those. (Of course, I never heard back after that.)
But as a resident of VA, you're right, I bear responsibility. So I intend to work against it. I like your idea:
I would reccomend a sticker, web bage button and web-ring saying "Proud to be %100 free of UCITA" or something.
That's certainly a step in the right direction -- I'd like to see some tastefully-designed buttons / icons / whatever for various sites.
-Waldo
State vs. Using State Laws
on
Fighting UCITA
·
· Score: 3
My understanding of the law is that you don't need to be here in Virginia, or up in Maryland, in order to distribute software using that license. So the mere presence of a company in this state, such as mine, really shouldn't be criteria for boycott. Otherwise, I'd have to boycott myself.:)
However, Michael's point regarding companies that say that you're bound to UCITA regulations should definitely be boycotted. Hell, boycott might be too weak of a word. I will not only boycott these products -- I will actively encourage others to stay the hell away from them.
But please, let us Virginians (and Marylanders) be. We don't like the law either!
You know, that is the story that I was thinking of, but it's clearly describing another incident. I'd recalled that, hazily, as being about the same episode that I'd witnessed.
I'm trying to find some documentation of the following. Somebody (Geeknews, Slashdot...somebody) picked up the story a few months afterwards, but I don't remember who.
Anyhow, I was watching the NASA channel -- I don't remember the official name -- a few months back. It's cool -- just old tapes of missions, and a bunch of live broadcasts, too. So I'm watching this live broadcast of a recent mission. It's really cool -- you can see a map showing where the shuttle is in relation to the globe, as well as the latitude and longitude, as well as a camera shot from the shuttle. There was some other stuff, too. The screen was all divided up like Bloomberg.
Oh, and you can hear all of the radio transmissions, too. So I hear a woman on the shuttle say something about a computer problem, and could Mission Control help her out? She describes the problem to MC, and a tech helps out. She reads off the message on the screen, as well as on a printout. It's a BSOD. MC chuckles, and you can hear laughter in the background, and MC says to reboot the computer.
Now, because I have a wicked poor memory, could somebody validate this?
Anyhow, the point is this: God help them all if they're upgrading and still running Windows.
This is all so stupid. Adding more TLDs is like building more roads. It just doesn't alleviate the problem.
.banc is totally masturbatory on the part of NSI. They should add.nic while they're at it. You know, since we've all seen this *overwhelming* demand for bank domain names.
If they want to add something useful, I like.ego. (Not my idea -- I'm sorry that I can't remember who to credit it to.) I honestly believe that a.ego TLD for personal websites is a fantastic idea. Hell, I don't want Waldo.Net. I'm not a network. I want Waldo.Ego.
I don't know how you'd go about making sure that businesses didn't get 'em, and I'd like to hope that it would be permissable to get ibm.ego, coke.ego, etc.
Short of a.ego TLD, though, I just don't think that new TLDs are a good idea..web is *definitely* the stupidest that I've ever heard of. It would have been a good idea in '92 or '93, but not now. To most people, Internet == WWW.
To all of those that have said that this is a move on NSIs part, I offer a hearty 'Hell Yeah!'
Slashdot Mirror
It's funny how people believe that an "Internet-ready" home involves something that it's a tie-breaker for a house. Just tell your builder to run cat 5 when he runs phone wire.
Whoop-dee frickin' doo.
I talked to a local builder about this that was under the impression that an unfinished basement would be a good place for a hub. I explained that most people wouldn't really want to run cabling all the way down there, least of all to a firewall box or something in a musty basement. This was a surprise to them.
This post is going nowhere. I'm done.
-Waldo
You're quite right. But if it were pulled out from the OS, which would be necessary, under this proposed decision, it would be a mere browser, no more interesting or profitable than Mozilla, iCab or Opera.
-Waldo
It's just a browser!
It seems to me that any one of us fools could start a registry. The fact that no DNSs respect our system hardly matters -- people are willing to pay. I think that news of people starting new TLD registries will soon be like news of people auctioning off things on eBay: the press not realising a non-event when they see one.
This is just stupid.
-Waldo
I'm pretty gung-ho about private solutions to technical problems. I'm far more confident in my abilities, and those of my technical compatriots, than I am in the ability of our government to enforce a law appropriately.
:)
So I'm generally a firm believer in my ability to take care of things on my own. ORBS and The RBL have certainly been shown to be an extremely successful method of filtering out spam. Since I got my mail server set up with MAPS and ORBS, I get about 2 pieces of spam a week. That's pretty managable. (And good, because I'm the kind of guy that gets spam and calls the company to bitch. Total waste of time.)
However, I don't run an ISP. I worked at one, as all good geeks must, back in '95. Spam wasn't a problem then -- I shutter to think what it must be like these days. Spam is obviously a huge loss to these people, MAPS or no MAPS. Because of the direct financial losses that result from the actions of spammers, I can't help but, although reluctantly, support federal legislation to limit UCE. It seems like the only method of stopping it.
God help us all...I'm in favor of a law.
-Waldo
I think that Linux's big place in the gaming market might come from providing a powerful console OS, as mentioned in Timothy's piece. Though we all think of Linux as a desktop environment, it will really do a great job of permitting small-time console manufacturers to have a basis from which to start. Otherwise, they have to start, quite literally, from scratch.
:)
Plus, it will totally rock to get a $200 gaming machine / Quake V box that plugs into a TV.
-Waldo
I dropped my landline in '98, and have been straight PCS ever since. The biggest problems:
* Not dependable. Mobile phone companies believe it far more acceptable to have a tower down than landline companies do to have your line dead. Neither really give a shit, but my company cares a bit less.
* No phone book listing. I'd like to be in the phone book, but it just won't happen. I tried to pay them, but they still wouldn't do it. Small problem, but it does suck.
* Extensions. I'd like to have multiple phones on the same line. One in the kitchen, one in my bedroom. When the phone rings, then I wouldn't have to race across the apartment to wherever I left my phone.
* Modem. I've got a DSL, so I don't really care, but it would be nice to have the option of having a modem when my DSL dies. (Again, courtesy of Intelos.)
* Long distance. I pay $0.15 / minute, and I can't switch. I've never heard of a mobile phone provider that would let people switch their long distance. I can't call overseas. Intelos tries to tell me that it's technically impossible, which is a load, clearly. Once that line hits the CO, it doesn't matter what kind of a phone that I'm on. Again, I'm yet to find a mobile phone provider that would let me make overseas calls.
I won't go back to a landline. But I've been tempted, a few times, to suppliment my mobile with a landline.
-Waldo
Emmett wrote:
:)
They know we're Open Source zealots, and that we will never, ever back
down. We're too smart for that.
That's all I wanted to hear. You guys kick ass.
-Waldo
There's been more and more talk from NASA about skipping Mars missions, never going back to the moon, etc. This is kind of sad, but probably OK.
We all know that commercial enterprise can do way better with space missions than the government. Primarily because there's no overarching benefit to the goverment sponsoring space trips anymore. The research, while it should, IMHO, be government-sponsored, will probably go better as a commercial system.
Less screw-ups, more competition, lower prices. Get me a room on that Lunar Hilton, baby!
-Waldo
I think it's worth noting that Slashdot has never removed a post. Having established no precedent, it makes it considerably easier (IANAL!) for Slashdot to claim that it merely a location where data can be posted, but is not a filter or editor of the content within them.
I don't know how this fits in with the DMCA: Anybody know?
-Waldo
I didn't get a single copy of ILOVEYOU, and I'm disappointed. I set up filtering, based on that subject line, but I didn't get to see the filter in action, beyond my test messages: nobody ever sent it to me.
Now I'm bombarded by mail all day from friends, family, business associates, etc. Much like most of you, I'm sure. I get a few hundred messages most days.
So I've got to admit that I'm a little disappointed that not one of these people had me bookmarked. Maybe this says something about the calibre of my friends: They're smart enough not to run Windows, or Outlook, or open worm-bearing e-mail.
Still, I've got to say, I'm a little bit sad. Oh, well. Maybe next time around.
-Waldo
This message will get lost in the transition, right?
Right?
;)
Let's say that the engineer has logged into the satellite via ssh. His connection is a little laggy, but nevertheless he's entering attitude-control commands for future execution. You're sniffing his packets, but what do you see? Noise, mostly. What could you do with it? Probably nothing.
I guess we could go back and forth over this forever, but what about something on their machine? You know -- get a friend of his daughter's to install a poisoned version of ICQ that traps keystrokes. I think the problem isn't so much TCP/IP, but it's that this can be accessed from non-secure locations. IMHO, satellites ought to be adjustable only from steel-clad bunkers thousands of feet beneath the earth.
OK, well maybe not that extreme. But you know what I mean.
-Waldo
This is cool and all, but, all jokes aside, isn't this a security nightmare. Sure, you can put up a firewall, password proection, IP filtering, PGP, etc., but is that really enough?
From the article:
From the comfort of home, an engineer logs onto the Internet using a laptop computer and communicates with an orbiting spacecraft. Using industry standard Internet protocols, simple keystrokes send commands adjusting the spacecraft's attitude.
"Comfort of home"? Pretending that I'm a $6/hour ISP admin, couldn't I trap those packets and crash a satellite?
I'm not trying to be a fearmonger, but I really do think that this is a case of Too Much Stuff Connected To The Internet. We all laughed a few years ago when kooks started saying that "Internet hackers" could shut down power plants and kill small woodlands animals. At the time, of course, none of these things were net connected.
Now, between IPv6-addressable squirrels and this satellite, we really could have a problem on our hands.
-Waldo
I'll take down this puppy yet. Me and a few Palm VIIs should be enough to run a nice DDOS attack...
<rubbing hands together evilly>
;)
Now, wouldn't that be really great when platoon A opens fire on the wrong hill 50' from where they should have
Or bombs a Chinese embassy.
Oh, wait....
I believe that this works by combining two GPSs into one and cross-referencing the data -- the average is likely to be closer to your actual location than either device will independently indicate.
Thankfully, this is no longer necessary.
-Waldo
Hey, I like this. If I fail to pay my Mastercard bill on time, they can lower my clockspeed until I pay.
Eventually, if you still don't pay, they change the kernel to command.com and kill your wife.
:)
An AC wrote:
One would say that you allowed the law to be passed in your state.
Of course that isn't quite fair either.
Hell no, it wouldn't be. I sure wrote a lot of letters and made a lot of phone calls. You know how you write to a rep, and they send you a form letter back? I replied to those. (Of course, I never heard back after that.)
But as a resident of VA, you're right, I bear responsibility. So I intend to work against it. I like your idea:
I would reccomend a sticker, web bage button and web-ring saying "Proud to be %100 free of UCITA" or something.
That's certainly a step in the right direction -- I'd like to see some tastefully-designed buttons / icons / whatever for various sites.
-Waldo
My understanding of the law is that you don't need to be here in Virginia, or up in Maryland, in order to distribute software using that license. So the mere presence of a company in this state, such as mine, really shouldn't be criteria for boycott. Otherwise, I'd have to boycott myself. :)
However, Michael's point regarding companies that say that you're bound to UCITA regulations should definitely be boycotted. Hell, boycott might be too weak of a word. I will not only boycott these products -- I will actively encourage others to stay the hell away from them.
But please, let us Virginians (and Marylanders) be. We don't like the law either!
-Waldo
RealPlayer just doesn't crash enough as it is; this should help.
/me ducks and runs
;)
Oh, God, that was the best laugh that I've had in days. Thank you.
I don't know much about PK as a person, but I *really* hope that he was the kind of guy that would appreciate that.
-Waldo
You know, that is the story that I was thinking of, but it's clearly describing another incident. I'd recalled that, hazily, as being about the same episode that I'd witnessed.
:)
Well, chalk me up as a nut.
-Waldo
I'm trying to find some documentation of the following. Somebody (Geeknews, Slashdot...somebody) picked up the story a few months afterwards, but I don't remember who.
Anyhow, I was watching the NASA channel -- I don't remember the official name -- a few months back. It's cool -- just old tapes of missions, and a bunch of live broadcasts, too. So I'm watching this live broadcast of a recent mission. It's really cool -- you can see a map showing where the shuttle is in relation to the globe, as well as the latitude and longitude, as well as a camera shot from the shuttle. There was some other stuff, too. The screen was all divided up like Bloomberg.
Oh, and you can hear all of the radio transmissions, too. So I hear a woman on the shuttle say something about a computer problem, and could Mission Control help her out? She describes the problem to MC, and a tech helps out. She reads off the message on the screen, as well as on a printout. It's a BSOD. MC chuckles, and you can hear laughter in the background, and MC says to reboot the computer.
Now, because I have a wicked poor memory, could somebody validate this?
Anyhow, the point is this: God help them all if they're upgrading and still running Windows.
-Waldo
This is all so stupid. Adding more TLDs is like building more roads. It just doesn't alleviate the problem.
.nic while they're at it. You know, since we've all seen this *overwhelming* demand for bank domain names.
.ego. (Not my idea -- I'm sorry that I can't remember who to credit it to.) I honestly believe that a .ego TLD for personal websites is a fantastic idea. Hell, I don't want Waldo.Net. I'm not a network. I want Waldo.Ego.
.ego TLD, though, I just don't think that new TLDs are a good idea. .web is *definitely* the stupidest that I've ever heard of. It would have been a good idea in '92 or '93, but not now. To most people, Internet == WWW.
.banc is totally masturbatory on the part of NSI. They should add
If they want to add something useful, I like
I don't know how you'd go about making sure that businesses didn't get 'em, and I'd like to hope that it would be permissable to get ibm.ego, coke.ego, etc.
Short of a
To all of those that have said that this is a move on NSIs part, I offer a hearty 'Hell Yeah!'
-Waldo