Yeah, right. Tracking these clowns down is easy....I believe you're giving them much more credit then they are due. Sure, proxy this, proxy that, IRC chats, etc, etc...however, somewhere along the line, they are screwing up, leaving a trail, or some link back to themselves..and you can get them there. Hell, worst case scenario, find them at the money source...that's what makes this go round.
Unfortunately, no one wants to invest the token amount of time it takes to investigate this, so it doesn't happen. You can't possibly believe that a 15-year-old botnet-asswipe, sitting at home on mom and dad's computer, could possibly outwit a highly paid and experienced network or systems analyst. They, as was mentioned in an earlier post, simply use the tool without any comprehension of how it operates....keep digging, and you'll find them...shit always ends up at the bottom.
Is that even a University? Guess they must be now;) So....maybe an engineer or physicist at one of the real Universities here should send them some light reading??
I understand trying to protect your students, but man, lets worry about something important, like frosh hazing....HA.
It wouldn't take much for a [good] company to secure hundreds of thousands of computers and automagically install software that protected [stupid] users...instead of having people install malicious software, there could be some good in installing software that fixes the problems.
Of course the bad people always seem to be 2 steps ahead of the good people anyway...most in between are so clueless they don't know what's happening with their PC's.
I don't think anyone is missing the point...I agree that there is a sub-section of users that are bitching about the capping of download/bandwidth, however, these same people are actually fighting (whether they know it or not) against another few evils. They are also, I'm sorry to say, the reason there is an Internet...without end-users, albeit corporate/commercial/personal, what's the point of an Internet?
Remember when cell phones were per-second? All plans eventually switched to per-minute, why? ~30% LESS talk time than with per second....subtly disguised as a "new feature" or "that per second was too hard to account for". I've taken math before, per minute (rate*minutes) vs. per second (rate*seconds)....come on. Same with voice mail, call waiting, text messaging. All once included in my cost, now broken out so they can ding you for mo' MONEY, MONEY, MONEY. It's amazing how companies work to make you think you're "getting more" for less.
Move forward to the issue at hand...capping of bandwidth and transfer. How is it that my bill continues to go up-up-up, however, my service seems to get slower or more limited? Ahh, because these companies know the future...IPTV, VOIP, distributed-downloading, and hell, one day you may even sign-up for a service that re-images your machine to your snapshot every time you reboot it from the Internet or load programs directly from vendors sites...And if anyone thinks that is going to come with a 1-2Mb download overhead or that 5Mb/s will cut it, you're crazy. Therefore, faster speeds and larger tunnels are going to be needed in order to facility this type of computing/entertainment...they know this and will now begin to cut back what you have, in order to make it look that much better when they give back, what you had originally, at a 50% markup....frankly, I'm surprize more ISP's haven't cut VOIP out yet, since they are beginning to offer it now.
Final point is regarding North America as a whole...why do the more progressive (non-Capitalist) nations have remarkable speeds, compared to the somewhat sluggish availability here? I relize geography is a concern, but in major markets, how is it that the fastest speed is still 1/3 of other countries (with what I can remember as being a higher cost associated with it?). MONEY MONEY MONEY....I mean, I saw an ad the other day for dial up...only $9.95 a month. Dial-up...welcome to 1990. $9.95/month, welcome to 1995.
I know they invest money to make their systems better and faster and more stable, however, if I pay $50 a month for service, I'd expect to pay $50 in a year, for something better...not $55 for a slower or more restricted service. I'm, by being a customer, investing in you as a company, and your technology....if it costs $1200 a year to run maybe 200Gb of bandwidth for an individual user, they are doing some wrong....
Humm...one thing I think he (and the big boys at Microsoft) continually forget or overlook is the unabashed stupidity and ignorance of most end-users. You can mask it in "why should they care" or "we have to make it easier/safer to use", but here is the skinny on what MS and others don't fully accept.
I've been using both Windows [XP, ME, 98, etc] (@ work) and Fedora Core [2-4] (@ home) for years now. And guess what, neither system has EVER been infected with a virus, worm, or and kind of spyware. Why is this? Simple....I MYSELF care about security and system performance. And guess what...I don't even run AV or spyware software...it's installed, but turned off for performace reasons...curiosity gets the best of you sometimes and you want to check, but it always comes up negative. Routers, a must have. Email, for gods sake, don't read what you don't know. Popups...well, if you're clicking these you deserve what you get. MSN Messenger...well, good luck. I have watched a computer, brand new out of the box, powered on for the first time infected to the 9's in under and hour. Kids (end-users), just click and install EVERYTHING (from either websites or friends). Parent's don't know what the kids are doing. Yahoo Toolbar, Time sync, MSN addons, Hit the rabbit for $10 popups, etc, etc, etc. I mean, how is it that two people doing near exactly similar functions (IM, email, office, web browsing) on a computer can have systems that deviate so dramatically in overall performance & corruption in only an hour?
Sure, the guy's answers are somewhat filtered, and somewhat bogus, but he's missing the overall point, over and over again. The reason there are so many security breaches/issues with the software is because when designed/coded, the developer could not imagine how clueless the end-user would eventually become. Sure, they make mistakes leaving this service on, or not having proper user rights, but in essence you can not have a Masters Computer Science student designing software for the average person...they just don't speak the same language (both technically or in practice)...to assume so, is ignorant.
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Yeah, right. Tracking these clowns down is easy....I believe you're giving them much more credit then they are due. Sure, proxy this, proxy that, IRC chats, etc, etc...however, somewhere along the line, they are screwing up, leaving a trail, or some link back to themselves..and you can get them there. Hell, worst case scenario, find them at the money source...that's what makes this go round.
Unfortunately, no one wants to invest the token amount of time it takes to investigate this, so it doesn't happen. You can't possibly believe that a 15-year-old botnet-asswipe, sitting at home on mom and dad's computer, could possibly outwit a highly paid and experienced network or systems analyst. They, as was mentioned in an earlier post, simply use the tool without any comprehension of how it operates....keep digging, and you'll find them...shit always ends up at the bottom.
Is that even a University? Guess they must be now ;) So....maybe an engineer or physicist at one of the real Universities here should send them some light reading??
I understand trying to protect your students, but man, lets worry about something important, like frosh hazing....HA.
It wouldn't take much for a [good] company to secure hundreds of thousands of computers and automagically install software that protected [stupid] users...instead of having people install malicious software, there could be some good in installing software that fixes the problems. Of course the bad people always seem to be 2 steps ahead of the good people anyway...most in between are so clueless they don't know what's happening with their PC's.
I don't think anyone is missing the point...I agree that there is a sub-section of users that are bitching about the capping of download/bandwidth, however, these same people are actually fighting (whether they know it or not) against another few evils. They are also, I'm sorry to say, the reason there is an Internet...without end-users, albeit corporate/commercial/personal, what's the point of an Internet?
;)
Remember when cell phones were per-second? All plans eventually switched to per-minute, why? ~30% LESS talk time than with per second....subtly disguised as a "new feature" or "that per second was too hard to account for". I've taken math before, per minute (rate*minutes) vs. per second (rate*seconds)....come on. Same with voice mail, call waiting, text messaging. All once included in my cost, now broken out so they can ding you for mo' MONEY, MONEY, MONEY. It's amazing how companies work to make you think you're "getting more" for less.
Move forward to the issue at hand...capping of bandwidth and transfer. How is it that my bill continues to go up-up-up, however, my service seems to get slower or more limited? Ahh, because these companies know the future...IPTV, VOIP, distributed-downloading, and hell, one day you may even sign-up for a service that re-images your machine to your snapshot every time you reboot it from the Internet or load programs directly from vendors sites...And if anyone thinks that is going to come with a 1-2Mb download overhead or that 5Mb/s will cut it, you're crazy. Therefore, faster speeds and larger tunnels are going to be needed in order to facility this type of computing/entertainment...they know this and will now begin to cut back what you have, in order to make it look that much better when they give back, what you had originally, at a 50% markup....frankly, I'm surprize more ISP's haven't cut VOIP out yet, since they are beginning to offer it now.
Final point is regarding North America as a whole...why do the more progressive (non-Capitalist) nations have remarkable speeds, compared to the somewhat sluggish availability here? I relize geography is a concern, but in major markets, how is it that the fastest speed is still 1/3 of other countries (with what I can remember as being a higher cost associated with it?). MONEY MONEY MONEY....I mean, I saw an ad the other day for dial up...only $9.95 a month. Dial-up...welcome to 1990. $9.95/month, welcome to 1995.
I know they invest money to make their systems better and faster and more stable, however, if I pay $50 a month for service, I'd expect to pay $50 in a year, for something better...not $55 for a slower or more restricted service. I'm, by being a customer, investing in you as a company, and your technology....if it costs $1200 a year to run maybe 200Gb of bandwidth for an individual user, they are doing some wrong....
My $0.02...that I managed to save from them
Humm...one thing I think he (and the big boys at Microsoft) continually forget or overlook is the unabashed stupidity and ignorance of most end-users. You can mask it in "why should they care" or "we have to make it easier/safer to use", but here is the skinny on what MS and others don't fully accept.
I've been using both Windows [XP, ME, 98, etc] (@ work) and Fedora Core [2-4] (@ home) for years now. And guess what, neither system has EVER been infected with a virus, worm, or and kind of spyware. Why is this? Simple....I MYSELF care about security and system performance. And guess what...I don't even run AV or spyware software...it's installed, but turned off for performace reasons...curiosity gets the best of you sometimes and you want to check, but it always comes up negative. Routers, a must have. Email, for gods sake, don't read what you don't know. Popups...well, if you're clicking these you deserve what you get. MSN Messenger...well, good luck. I have watched a computer, brand new out of the box, powered on for the first time infected to the 9's in under and hour. Kids (end-users), just click and install EVERYTHING (from either websites or friends). Parent's don't know what the kids are doing. Yahoo Toolbar, Time sync, MSN addons, Hit the rabbit for $10 popups, etc, etc, etc. I mean, how is it that two people doing near exactly similar functions (IM, email, office, web browsing) on a computer can have systems that deviate so dramatically in overall performance & corruption in only an hour?
Sure, the guy's answers are somewhat filtered, and somewhat bogus, but he's missing the overall point, over and over again. The reason there are so many security breaches/issues with the software is because when designed/coded, the developer could not imagine how clueless the end-user would eventually become. Sure, they make mistakes leaving this service on, or not having proper user rights, but in essence you can not have a Masters Computer Science student designing software for the average person...they just don't speak the same language (both technically or in practice)...to assume so, is ignorant.