Some Web hosts in particular like to give out IPs like candy because they're so cheap. I work for one that has thousands of vps customers and every single one gets a minimum of 4 IPs whether they use them or not.
I am wondering if Apple has some sort of patent on using multitouch in a UI which is preventing other phones from implementing it without getting a license from them.
Also, they're trying to trademark the word multitouch.
And they won't let it go without a fight. COO Tim Cook has been quoted as saying, "We will not stand for having our IP ripped off, and we'll use whatever weapons that we have at our disposal. I don't know that I could be more clear than that." That makes it pretty obvious that Apple fully intends to sue the pants off anyone who even thinks of using more than one finger or object to interact with a screen.
Norway's answer to the people problem is to ban ads for medicine that are regulated in any way, like antibiotics.
I've always subscribed to the notion that any company should be able to truthfully advertise their product whenever and however they see fit, with two notable exceptions:
1) Interstate billboards
2) Pharmaceuticals
Seriously, in what universe is it either ethical to advertise a medical treatment directly to the masses? Every prime-time TV commercial is engineered for the specific purpose of duping your subconscious into thinking, "hey, if I buy that product, I'll be happier and better-looking." And that's fine. If you can be so easily persuaded to buy something you don't need and not learn your lesson after it fails to turn you into a basketball star, I really have little sympathy.
But I've seen commercials that show people dancing in flower fields, sailing on the ocean, smiling, and all around having a generally good time and in the whole 30 seconds, they never once said what the drug was for. They just direct you to, "Ask your doctor about Fukitol today." For all I know it was a new contraceptive of some sort. (In which case, it might have been a rare case of truth in advertising.)
It should always be the doctor's place to say, "Well, it looks like your problem is such-and-such, now here's a prescription for a drug whose name you're too illiterate to pronounce." Drug companies have no business trying to market their drugs directly to the unwashed masses. To do so is reckless and immoral. Medicine should always be a science first.
Most of the phones themselves are actually priced about right. They're not exactly cheap to produce. Take a standard desktop computer from 6-7 years ago, shrink it down to the size of a candy bar, add a few gizmos here and there (bluetooth, GPS, touchscreen display), ensure it can run for a full day without a recharge, get it certified by multiple agencies around the world, and then, finally, spend millions developing software for it.
Honestly, I'm surprised there are any under $500. What we really need now is some kind of wireless broadband Internet access that is not owned by an existing cellco. It should be affordable (in line with DSL and cable prices), not require a plan, contract, or special device, and there should be no caps or penalties for using the device. Cell phone companies would be obsolete because the smart phones that they already sell are more than capable of VoIP and you could choose from any VoIP carrier on the planet.
#1) Google will SUBSIDIZE the cost of the netbook (aka NetPC, which was hacked out of existence).
If they're targeting the sub-$300 region as TFA says, they won't have to subsidize much, as similar netbooks (albeit with more expensive chipsets) already sell for less than that. And, uh, it's Google. A company run by hackers doing interesting things with cheap hardware. They're expecting a certain number of them to be hacked or repurposed. Also, they're not selling a separately-purchased subscription or anything with it. All they want is for people to keep using the web and this netbook helps them achieve that.
#2) Unlike NetPC, they won't be using an intel processor, locking out Windows.
--- so when joey or jane try to download and install their favorite game or chat client, it will fail.
--- so when grandma can't load in her quickbooks document for the church, it will fail.
This won't be marketed as a general-purpose computer. The things that you mentioned won't work on a Linux netbook either and that hasn't stopped netbooks from being shipped with Linux preinstalled. (Dell Mini 10, HP Mini 110, Acer Aspire One, MSI Wind, etc.) Most people just want a web browser, an email client, and instant messaging. That's the market that Google's netbook targets. Whoever buys this thing expecting to put their Windows XP Pirate Edition on it instead, deserves whatever complete lack of support they get.
#3) As someone who has lurked in many a netbook forum, I can tell you the number one question will be "How do I install Windows XP on it?"
An the #1 answer will be, "You don't. You just use it like it is." Not so hard, is it? Again, it's not meant to be a general-purpose computer. It's a specific device with a specific job: getting you on the web. Asking how to install Windows on it will make about as much sense as asking how to install OS X on a Nintendo Wii.
#4) Someone will figure out how to install alternative OSes on it, maybe even write some kind of intel CPU emulator, or real-time recompiler, and then hack Windows into running on it, and then the lawsuits begin.
Uhhh, what? The only "alternative" OS that a hacker can port to ARM is Linux or maybe one of the BSDs. Emulating an x86 CPU with any reasonable speed is simply not going to be feasible. And if it were, where would the lawsuits come from? Microsoft does not care what kind of computer you install Windows upon. And I highly doubt that Google will include an Apple-esqe EULA stating which kinds of software you can and cannot install.
#5) As soon as people get bored with it, into the trash heap it goes.
If you get bored with it, you either didn't need one in the first place, or you're just bored with the Internet in general. I don't think there's a lot that Google can do to prevent either of those.
When the masses get it they will be disappointed by it's lack of backwards compatibility, and start searching (ironically using Google) for websites to show them how to "jailbreak" the thing into running what they want.
The whole thrust of your thinly-veiled argument is that nobody will want it if it can't run Windows. What you fail to realize is that:
1. With the notable exception of hardcore PC gaming, there are really not many computing tasks that absolutely require windows any more. Despite Microsoft's best efforts, Internet content these days is very much OS-independent. We're to the point where most people can do e
I'm wondering what benefit having a solid-state drive with a 10" screen will be other than for those few road warriors who have to write long proposals while on an airplane flight.
That is actually one scenario where you wouldn't want Google's netbook. Chrome OS requires an Internet connection to do anything useful. Not only is wifi access not available (or hideously expensive) on a plane, but extensive document editing is going to be painful in the extreme on such a cramped machine.
Google's netbook is meant either as an auxiliary computing device for basic tasks or for people who don't do much with their computer except web browsing, email, and IM. In other words, 90% of everyone currently online.
In a RATIONAL world, **one** terrorism flag (i.e. one-way ticket, buying with cash, no luggage, watch list, etc) would yield pulling the passenger aside and "enhanced investigation"
Bruce is right that better intelligence and investigative work is needed for real security against terrorist threats. However, there should never be a case where one action or trait marks you suspicious. For example:
1. A one-way ticket has no bearing on whether or not a person is a threat. If it was, a terrorist would simply buy a two-way ticket.
2. I never want to live in a world where paying with cash is considered suspicious. And in any case, a real terrorist would simply use his credit card. If he plans to blow up a plane while on it, he has little fear of leaving a paper trail.
3. I know people who travel without luggage all the time. They do so because it's expensive and a huge hassle to deal with luggage on airplanes these days. Thanks in part to the security theatre that previous terrorist attacks have inspired.
4. If someone is on a watch list, they're already to be considered suspicious and should warrant investigation regardless of any other "flags," so this really doesn't fit in with the rest of the properties you've listed here.
I'd like to see terrorists run the risk of being shot dead in order to carry out their idiocy.
Well, the interesting thing about all of the recent airplane terrorists is they fully expect to die already while carrying out their idiocy. Arming passengers only guarantees that your garden variety drunk (or otherwise mentally unstable individual) will be able to kill other passengers when the whim strikes him.
If I had to choose between taking a flight that had a 1:10,000,000 chance of having a terrorist onboard and one in which any given passenger could be carrying a deadly weapon, I'd take the former every time.
The group said that hackers intent on illegal eavesdropping would need a radio receiver system and signal processing software to process raw radio data, much of which is copyrighted.
Yes, that's right. Their main weapon in defending your privacy against crackers who don't care about the law at all is copyright.
(Note: I have RTFA, but I'm quoting mainly from the summary here.)
Others have cracked the A5/1 encryption technology used in GSM before, but their results have remained secret.
Feh. Steve Gibson explained the flaws in GSM in very precise, technical detail in his podcast with Leo LaPorte back in September. See episode 213 of Security Now, "Cracking GSM Cellphones". He explained how the algorithm was implemented in hardware, right down to the hardware level.
The GSM Association, the industry group based in London that devised the algorithm and represents wireless operators, called Mr. Nohl's efforts illegal
Oh yes, they'd like us to believe that reverse engineering encryption is illegal. It is not. Eavesdropping on cell phone calls is illegal only because cell phone carriers have always used technology decades behind the state of the art. It's a crappy regulatory patch to a massive technical loophole. It's akin to a law forbidding wifi cards from supporting "monitor mode" because you can use it to eavesdrop on unencrypted wifi traffic. Karsten Nohl is not recommending that anyone eavesdrop on other people's phone calls. He's trying to show the public that their conversations are as good as "in the clear" and gosh darn it, the billion-dollar wireless industry just doesn't like that a bit.
Simon Bransfield-Garth, the chief executive of Cellcrypt, says Nohl's efforts could put sophisticated mobile interception technology -- limited to governments and intelligence agencies -- within the reach of any reasonable well-funded criminal organization.
Nope, even better: it puts GSM decryption technology within the reach of anyone with a 2TB hard disk, $1000 of radio equipment, and the time to figure out some software. And, as I pointed out already, this has been known for some time. Until recently, the weaknesses of GSM has been the skeleton in the closet of the wireless industry. It should have seen the light of day years ago.
This is not an easy problem for them to solve, either. A5/3 is much better encryption, but as I understand it, almost every handset in existence can be forced to fall back to A5/1 (or even A5/0, no encryption) relatively easily.
This is an attempt to please brick and mortar stores who want to push electronic sales into the toilet. On line sales already carry a great burden in shipping costs. If you add taxes on top of shipping costs you kill online sales completely.
It's not even that, really. Lawmakers have been trying for years to get taxes on interstate Internet sales, but there are always roadblocks:
1. Businesses claim it would be too burdensome. They're right, but small businesses would be the ones most heavily burdened and the last thing most politicians want is to make enemies with small businesses.
2. No one can arrive at a consensus as to what as interstate sales tax would be for. Other than governments who just want more money and brick-and-mortar stores who perceive online sales as hurting their business and only want to strike a blow to the online retailers. (I could write a book on the inanity of that last point, by the way.)
3. No one can arrive at a consensus as to how to split the money up.
4. The Supreme Court has routinely ruled interstate sales taxes as unconstitutional because they restrict interstate commerce. States have tried to do all kinds of protectionist things including import/export tariffs, charging tolls on semi trucks that pass through a state without making deliveries, etc. All have failed and an interstate sales tax will fail for the same reason.
Federal rail regulations being what they are, the only prospect for high speed rail is if the entire system is grade separated - that is, there are no at-grade crossings. Existing rights-of-way can be used, but every where out in the middle of Modesto or Coalinga where a gravel road crosses the tracks the road will either need to be cut or a bridge or tunnel built.
I often wonder why high-speed rail couldn't be built in the empty median of interstate highways. Sure, you couldn't lay the entire track down in the middle of the highway, but you could cover at least 95% of a long route that way.
Advantages: - Far less need to take/buy private property - No at-grade crossings - Most interstates are already fairly straight and level - A small pang of guilt felt by Hummer owners every time eco-friendly transportation keeps whooshing by them
Disadvantages:
- Many bridges would have to be modified or rebuilt (their center pillars are usually, but not always, in the median) - The median would no longer be a "safety net" in snowy weather
Slow-speed rail isn't going away any time soon, so it doesn't make sense to repurpose those lines. And if we're going to build new rail, we might as well use existing infrastructure (highways) as much as possible.
Can we stop saying things like 'the most popular handset?' When we're talking about a market where no single handset has more than about 1-2% market share, saying 'the most popular' is entirely meaningless.
Assuming the figures are correct, the link in the summary states that the top four have more than 2% each and the iPhone is #1. I think that qualifies as "the most popular," even if it doesn't have a majority on marketshare.
I can understand what you are saying here but if you are renting a whole server, and not just sharing one with other customers, then shouldn't your provider limit their support to what you ask for?
If you're running a fairly small operation with a handful of techs, that might work. But it doesn't scale when you have tens of thousands of customers and hundreds of techs like we do. Our particular company does make exceptions from time to time, but the overwhelming majority of our customers are perfectly willing to give us full root access to their server as long as we hold up our end of the bargain and fix their issues as quickly as humanly possible, so that's how our techs are trained.
It all comes down to the fact that there's a access/support trade-off. If a customer wants us to address any and all issues in a timely manner, we need unrestricted physical and root access at all times. If they take away any of that access, then they either need to be prepared for some downtime, or be experienced enough to handle all of their problems on their own.
If you say you have a problem, and you aren't willing to give them the info then shouldn't they say, "sorry we cant' fix your problem without more info" before you do a hard shutdown on their box and start snooping around?
To be honest, I don't know what's going on in the submitter's case, but I'm certain he left out some rather important facts. In any case, he isn't one of our customers because we have a pretty solid "hands-off" policy when it comes to unmanaged and colo servers. Our techs are always busy and there's no way any of them would get themselves into this kind of trouble over an unmanaged box.
Okay, since a lot of Slashdotters run their own servers rather than utilize the services of a web hosting company, let me provide some background info. I don't know whether the OP is one of our customers or not, but at the web hosting company I work for, there are two ways to host your server with us:
1. You can co-locate your hardware with us and purchase a unmanaged plan where the only support we offer is reboots and network troubleshooting. Everything else from the OS to web applications is your sole responsibility.
2. You can rent a server from us, which comes with full managed support, meaning the box is provisioned and configured by us, and our techs have full root access to your host in order to resolve any problems that come up. All services on the machine are monitored by Nagios, so we know (and react) within 5 minutes when a service stops responding.
You don't specify which hosting plan you have, but from your description of your problem, it sounds like you purchased #2. All of the things you describe are exactly what our technicians would do if we were charged with keeping a managed server online and a customer was making that task impossible to do. If a customer is asking us to fix a problem and is only making it worse or more difficult by virtue of their incompetence, we have been known to lock them out of their own server until the problem is fixed.
The bottom line is: don't rent a managed server if you don't want managed service. If you want full control over your hardware, you need to talk to the sales team and tell them that you want an unmanaged plan. The trade-off, of course, is that you have to deal with your own "WTF" problems from then on.
That's the problem. They are ok with you using your speed. They aren't ok with you using it all the time to the max
I was going to use a car analogy, but I'll just say this: If I buy an Internet connection, I expect to be able to use it however I wish, within the bounds of the law. If there are additional restrictions on top of that, those need to be communicated before the sale or its false advertising. Otherwise, there's no way to tell exactly what kid of service you're actually getting. Under current broadband provider marketing practices, they could advertise a 200mbit connection for $10 a month but then not reveal until after the customer has the service that you can actually only get 200mb speed for 5 seconds at 4:03 AM on weekday nights. It's technically 200mb service, but like you said, you just can't use it all the time to the max.
None of the marketing pages that TFA linked to even mention the existence of a bandwidth cap (even in the fine print), yet all of those companies are known to have caps. AT&T and Comcast have been taken to task for using the word "unlimited" on their marketing material when the service they offer is nothing of the kind. And I believe AT&T is still using it. I'm normally against regulation, but I really hope the FCC will eventually implement a rule enforcing truth in advertising when it comes to broadband providers.
If it becomes big, it may also become an anonymous source of misinformation. Sad.
This is kinda what I thought too. However, most good journalists (and bloggers, as a collective) are proficient at determining the authenticity of a document, even if the content was formerly secret and the source is anonymous.
Plus, most of the interesting content at wikileaks is way too verbose to easily fake. Someone would have to go through a lot of effort to craft a plausible but fake document of the sort that shows up on wikileaks. That kind of undertaking is not easy to conceal and of course the bigger the lie, the easier it is to undermine.
Slashdot Mirror
A decade ago, common houseplants weren't sending twitter updates to the Internet at large.
Some Web hosts in particular like to give out IPs like candy because they're so cheap. I work for one that has thousands of vps customers and every single one gets a minimum of 4 IPs whether they use them or not.
Yup.
Also, they're trying to trademark the word multitouch.
And they won't let it go without a fight. COO Tim Cook has been quoted as saying, "We will not stand for having our IP ripped off, and we'll use whatever weapons that we have at our disposal. I don't know that I could be more clear than that." That makes it pretty obvious that Apple fully intends to sue the pants off anyone who even thinks of using more than one finger or object to interact with a screen.
I've always subscribed to the notion that any company should be able to truthfully advertise their product whenever and however they see fit, with two notable exceptions:
1) Interstate billboards
2) Pharmaceuticals
Seriously, in what universe is it either ethical to advertise a medical treatment directly to the masses? Every prime-time TV commercial is engineered for the specific purpose of duping your subconscious into thinking, "hey, if I buy that product, I'll be happier and better-looking." And that's fine. If you can be so easily persuaded to buy something you don't need and not learn your lesson after it fails to turn you into a basketball star, I really have little sympathy.
But I've seen commercials that show people dancing in flower fields, sailing on the ocean, smiling, and all around having a generally good time and in the whole 30 seconds, they never once said what the drug was for. They just direct you to, "Ask your doctor about Fukitol today." For all I know it was a new contraceptive of some sort. (In which case, it might have been a rare case of truth in advertising.)
It should always be the doctor's place to say, "Well, it looks like your problem is such-and-such, now here's a prescription for a drug whose name you're too illiterate to pronounce." Drug companies have no business trying to market their drugs directly to the unwashed masses. To do so is reckless and immoral. Medicine should always be a science first.
Most of the phones themselves are actually priced about right. They're not exactly cheap to produce. Take a standard desktop computer from 6-7 years ago, shrink it down to the size of a candy bar, add a few gizmos here and there (bluetooth, GPS, touchscreen display), ensure it can run for a full day without a recharge, get it certified by multiple agencies around the world, and then, finally, spend millions developing software for it.
Honestly, I'm surprised there are any under $500. What we really need now is some kind of wireless broadband Internet access that is not owned by an existing cellco. It should be affordable (in line with DSL and cable prices), not require a plan, contract, or special device, and there should be no caps or penalties for using the device. Cell phone companies would be obsolete because the smart phones that they already sell are more than capable of VoIP and you could choose from any VoIP carrier on the planet.
It's not a phone, but...
The iPhone runs a heavily modified version of Darwin/OS X.
The N900, Palm Pre, and Android phones are the most well-known, but there are many others.
Wait, wait... there's porn on flickr?
If they're targeting the sub-$300 region as TFA says, they won't have to subsidize much, as similar netbooks (albeit with more expensive chipsets) already sell for less than that. And, uh, it's Google. A company run by hackers doing interesting things with cheap hardware. They're expecting a certain number of them to be hacked or repurposed. Also, they're not selling a separately-purchased subscription or anything with it. All they want is for people to keep using the web and this netbook helps them achieve that.
This won't be marketed as a general-purpose computer. The things that you mentioned won't work on a Linux netbook either and that hasn't stopped netbooks from being shipped with Linux preinstalled. (Dell Mini 10, HP Mini 110, Acer Aspire One, MSI Wind, etc.) Most people just want a web browser, an email client, and instant messaging. That's the market that Google's netbook targets. Whoever buys this thing expecting to put their Windows XP Pirate Edition on it instead, deserves whatever complete lack of support they get.
An the #1 answer will be, "You don't. You just use it like it is." Not so hard, is it? Again, it's not meant to be a general-purpose computer. It's a specific device with a specific job: getting you on the web. Asking how to install Windows on it will make about as much sense as asking how to install OS X on a Nintendo Wii.
Uhhh, what? The only "alternative" OS that a hacker can port to ARM is Linux or maybe one of the BSDs. Emulating an x86 CPU with any reasonable speed is simply not going to be feasible. And if it were, where would the lawsuits come from? Microsoft does not care what kind of computer you install Windows upon. And I highly doubt that Google will include an Apple-esqe EULA stating which kinds of software you can and cannot install.
Also, the Chromium OS is open source, is very well documented, and Google encourages external hacking and development.
If you get bored with it, you either didn't need one in the first place, or you're just bored with the Internet in general. I don't think there's a lot that Google can do to prevent either of those.
The whole thrust of your thinly-veiled argument is that nobody will want it if it can't run Windows. What you fail to realize is that:
1. With the notable exception of hardcore PC gaming, there are really not many computing tasks that absolutely require windows any more. Despite Microsoft's best efforts, Internet content these days is very much OS-independent. We're to the point where most people can do e
That is actually one scenario where you wouldn't want Google's netbook. Chrome OS requires an Internet connection to do anything useful. Not only is wifi access not available (or hideously expensive) on a plane, but extensive document editing is going to be painful in the extreme on such a cramped machine.
Google's netbook is meant either as an auxiliary computing device for basic tasks or for people who don't do much with their computer except web browsing, email, and IM. In other words, 90% of everyone currently online.
Bruce is right that better intelligence and investigative work is needed for real security against terrorist threats. However, there should never be a case where one action or trait marks you suspicious. For example:
1. A one-way ticket has no bearing on whether or not a person is a threat. If it was, a terrorist would simply buy a two-way ticket.
2. I never want to live in a world where paying with cash is considered suspicious. And in any case, a real terrorist would simply use his credit card. If he plans to blow up a plane while on it, he has little fear of leaving a paper trail.
3. I know people who travel without luggage all the time. They do so because it's expensive and a huge hassle to deal with luggage on airplanes these days. Thanks in part to the security theatre that previous terrorist attacks have inspired.
4. If someone is on a watch list, they're already to be considered suspicious and should warrant investigation regardless of any other "flags," so this really doesn't fit in with the rest of the properties you've listed here.
Well, the interesting thing about all of the recent airplane terrorists is they fully expect to die already while carrying out their idiocy. Arming passengers only guarantees that your garden variety drunk (or otherwise mentally unstable individual) will be able to kill other passengers when the whim strikes him.
If I had to choose between taking a flight that had a 1:10,000,000 chance of having a terrorist onboard and one in which any given passenger could be carrying a deadly weapon, I'd take the former every time.
Ugh, sleep deprivation fail. I meant "right down to the register level."
Yep, it's copyrighted alright. By the Free Software Foundation.
(Note: I have RTFA, but I'm quoting mainly from the summary here.)
Feh. Steve Gibson explained the flaws in GSM in very precise, technical detail in his podcast with Leo LaPorte back in September. See episode 213 of Security Now, "Cracking GSM Cellphones". He explained how the algorithm was implemented in hardware, right down to the hardware level.
Oh yes, they'd like us to believe that reverse engineering encryption is illegal. It is not. Eavesdropping on cell phone calls is illegal only because cell phone carriers have always used technology decades behind the state of the art. It's a crappy regulatory patch to a massive technical loophole. It's akin to a law forbidding wifi cards from supporting "monitor mode" because you can use it to eavesdrop on unencrypted wifi traffic. Karsten Nohl is not recommending that anyone eavesdrop on other people's phone calls. He's trying to show the public that their conversations are as good as "in the clear" and gosh darn it, the billion-dollar wireless industry just doesn't like that a bit.
Nope, even better: it puts GSM decryption technology within the reach of anyone with a 2TB hard disk, $1000 of radio equipment, and the time to figure out some software. And, as I pointed out already, this has been known for some time. Until recently, the weaknesses of GSM has been the skeleton in the closet of the wireless industry. It should have seen the light of day years ago.
This is not an easy problem for them to solve, either. A5/3 is much better encryption, but as I understand it, almost every handset in existence can be forced to fall back to A5/1 (or even A5/0, no encryption) relatively easily.
It's not even that, really. Lawmakers have been trying for years to get taxes on interstate Internet sales, but there are always roadblocks:
1. Businesses claim it would be too burdensome. They're right, but small businesses would be the ones most heavily burdened and the last thing most politicians want is to make enemies with small businesses.
2. No one can arrive at a consensus as to what as interstate sales tax would be for. Other than governments who just want more money and brick-and-mortar stores who perceive online sales as hurting their business and only want to strike a blow to the online retailers. (I could write a book on the inanity of that last point, by the way.)
3. No one can arrive at a consensus as to how to split the money up.
4. The Supreme Court has routinely ruled interstate sales taxes as unconstitutional because they restrict interstate commerce. States have tried to do all kinds of protectionist things including import/export tariffs, charging tolls on semi trucks that pass through a state without making deliveries, etc. All have failed and an interstate sales tax will fail for the same reason.
I often wonder why high-speed rail couldn't be built in the empty median of interstate highways. Sure, you couldn't lay the entire track down in the middle of the highway, but you could cover at least 95% of a long route that way.
Advantages:
- Far less need to take/buy private property
- No at-grade crossings
- Most interstates are already fairly straight and level
- A small pang of guilt felt by Hummer owners every time eco-friendly transportation keeps whooshing by them
Disadvantages:
- Many bridges would have to be modified or rebuilt (their center pillars are usually, but not always, in the median)
- The median would no longer be a "safety net" in snowy weather
Slow-speed rail isn't going away any time soon, so it doesn't make sense to repurpose those lines. And if we're going to build new rail, we might as well use existing infrastructure (highways) as much as possible.
Not very intrepid if you ask me.
Assuming the figures are correct, the link in the summary states that the top four have more than 2% each and the iPhone is #1. I think that qualifies as "the most popular," even if it doesn't have a majority on marketshare.
If you're running a fairly small operation with a handful of techs, that might work. But it doesn't scale when you have tens of thousands of customers and hundreds of techs like we do. Our particular company does make exceptions from time to time, but the overwhelming majority of our customers are perfectly willing to give us full root access to their server as long as we hold up our end of the bargain and fix their issues as quickly as humanly possible, so that's how our techs are trained.
It all comes down to the fact that there's a access/support trade-off. If a customer wants us to address any and all issues in a timely manner, we need unrestricted physical and root access at all times. If they take away any of that access, then they either need to be prepared for some downtime, or be experienced enough to handle all of their problems on their own.
To be honest, I don't know what's going on in the submitter's case, but I'm certain he left out some rather important facts. In any case, he isn't one of our customers because we have a pretty solid "hands-off" policy when it comes to unmanaged and colo servers. Our techs are always busy and there's no way any of them would get themselves into this kind of trouble over an unmanaged box.
In that case, you are definitely getting the shaft and need to find another host.
Okay, since a lot of Slashdotters run their own servers rather than utilize the services of a web hosting company, let me provide some background info. I don't know whether the OP is one of our customers or not, but at the web hosting company I work for, there are two ways to host your server with us:
1. You can co-locate your hardware with us and purchase a unmanaged plan where the only support we offer is reboots and network troubleshooting. Everything else from the OS to web applications is your sole responsibility.
2. You can rent a server from us, which comes with full managed support, meaning the box is provisioned and configured by us, and our techs have full root access to your host in order to resolve any problems that come up. All services on the machine are monitored by Nagios, so we know (and react) within 5 minutes when a service stops responding.
You don't specify which hosting plan you have, but from your description of your problem, it sounds like you purchased #2. All of the things you describe are exactly what our technicians would do if we were charged with keeping a managed server online and a customer was making that task impossible to do. If a customer is asking us to fix a problem and is only making it worse or more difficult by virtue of their incompetence, we have been known to lock them out of their own server until the problem is fixed.
The bottom line is: don't rent a managed server if you don't want managed service. If you want full control over your hardware, you need to talk to the sales team and tell them that you want an unmanaged plan. The trade-off, of course, is that you have to deal with your own "WTF" problems from then on.
I was going to use a car analogy, but I'll just say this: If I buy an Internet connection, I expect to be able to use it however I wish, within the bounds of the law. If there are additional restrictions on top of that, those need to be communicated before the sale or its false advertising. Otherwise, there's no way to tell exactly what kid of service you're actually getting. Under current broadband provider marketing practices, they could advertise a 200mbit connection for $10 a month but then not reveal until after the customer has the service that you can actually only get 200mb speed for 5 seconds at 4:03 AM on weekday nights. It's technically 200mb service, but like you said, you just can't use it all the time to the max.
None of the marketing pages that TFA linked to even mention the existence of a bandwidth cap (even in the fine print), yet all of those companies are known to have caps. AT&T and Comcast have been taken to task for using the word "unlimited" on their marketing material when the service they offer is nothing of the kind. And I believe AT&T is still using it. I'm normally against regulation, but I really hope the FCC will eventually implement a rule enforcing truth in advertising when it comes to broadband providers.
Way to generalize there. As if no journalists are bloggers, and all bloggers are lazy attention whores.
Besides, I said "bloggers as a collective".
This is kinda what I thought too. However, most good journalists (and bloggers, as a collective) are proficient at determining the authenticity of a document, even if the content was formerly secret and the source is anonymous.
Plus, most of the interesting content at wikileaks is way too verbose to easily fake. Someone would have to go through a lot of effort to craft a plausible but fake document of the sort that shows up on wikileaks. That kind of undertaking is not easy to conceal and of course the bigger the lie, the easier it is to undermine.