Amen, that was a breath of fresh air in a room full of "me-me's" instinctively chanting that Comcast is eating babies and setting villages on fire, and that anyone who disagrees is a corporate apologist.
To agree further...
If someone actually *needs* 250GB or more of data per month, and full-pipe speeds the entire time to boot, then as you said there is a plan available for that, called commercial or business class service. There *is* a distinction, and it's funny that they don't see the irony when they say "I want what I paid for."
I dropped my landline and cable television both, everything comes through my cable modem (and I stream Netflix heavily as well as Plex) without issue.
I don't think that Comcast implementing throttling is going to be like what Rome did to Carthage. The reality is that if you are downloading a massive multi-gig file it's going to take a while whether you are throttled or not. Any QoS or traffic management 101 class defines this as bulk or best effort traffic and puts it at the bottom - it's not interactive or particularly time sensitive. Why not make it livable for everyone else? And before everyone hits the reply button and complains that Comcast shouldn't have their upstream oversubscribed, please pause first to grab a clue and realize that every ISP oversubscribes. On top of that, cable plants were only really designed for one way downstream delivery of cable channels so upstream bandwidth will always be much more limited. The only way Comcast can make more upstream bandwidth available is by splitting a node, which means they are doubling their upstream bandwidth by doubling their cable plant. As you can imagine, this is very expensive and that cost ultimately gets passed along to the consumer.
I'm sure someone in the comments has couched this as a net neutrality issue. I also don't buy that argument since it's not targeted at a specific person or application.
So yeah, this sucks, but it was more or less inevitable.
I am not sure why everyone likes to couple IPv6 and NAT so closely. Sure, their use overlaps but as you pointed out they also each have other uses. Who knows why NAT was originally invented - overlapping IP space? Address depletion? Security/obscurity?
For those that want IPv6 and NAT, you can do that too.
With regards to this article, I thought it was something I'd find on godlikeproductions - not slashdot. It's a lot of FUD.
One thing that isn't mentioned is that high energy interactions (like what the LHC produces) are happening in our upper atmosphere every minute of every day. The problem is, we don't have detectors up there so this is why we have the LHC.
If a black hole is going to swallow the earth, then we should look at the skies first.
The actual cost of text messages to carriers is a joke but they charge us like there's some super hard technological feat. Consider: 160 byte maximum, and assume you can send them for a low low price of 5 cents a message. 1,024,000 / 160 = 6400. 6400 *.05 = $320 a megabyte.
What a ripoff. I'm all for paying for services, but the carriers are clearly sticking it to us. I can send a picture message for a quarter (5 times the cost of a text message), and I can guarantee that every image I send is more than 160 * 5 or 800 bytes, and it goes across the same network.
Your math is right, providing that you use your connection 100% of the time and they rate limit your traffic to make it impossible to go over the cap. Under those conditions, then yeah you'd be locked at 809kbps.
But clearly this isn't the case.
You DO get at least 6mbit/sec, and therefore it is possible to go over 205GB a month, which is why they published a cap.
In regards to the AUP, can you find any major ISP that has an AUP that specifically says hosting a service on a residential connection is acceptable? I haven't.
Clearly it is nobody but LinkedIn's responsibility to keep their cert up to date. Getting a warning about an expired cert is the whole point.
It's been interesting to see security and certificates come full circle. A while back we heard about how the "padlock" wouldn't appear if you were using frames and not every frame on the page was encrypted (I'm not talking about firefox specifically here) and users needed to see that padlock in order to be safe. Security was important! Now users can't be bothered that a message appears telling them that things aren't right. Security is an inconvenience!
There is no way to appease both camps, so we might as well leave the folks thinking it's inconvenient in the cold. At least then we have some security.
Saying they support IE only is one thing, but can anyone point out a page that doesn't work? I have never viewed Comcast's website using anything but firefox, and so far haven't found anything that doesn't work. Granted there are a lot of pages I haven't visited, but it appears to work fine.
Are you convinced that it's that simple, that they can dynamically stamp out every worm/virus/trojan/spammer as it pops up without accidentally dropping even one legitimate packet? Are you also aware that your suggestion is not unique in any way, and has been peddled as an answer to every ISP out there that carries substantial traffic?
I am also obliged to point out some of the larger trite counterpoints, such as increased cost for doing the filtering, customers complaining that now the ISP is being a big brother, is the ISP even responsible, etc. etc.
First off, I'd love to have a Mac. I don't because, contrary to however many hits the author took prior to writing the article, a decently powered one is comparatively flippin' expensive. I'm not going to quote another round of numbers, they're already littered over the thread. And if you want to talk TCO, how about adding in the cost of all the addon apps you need to really make it functional. What's that? Windows software costs money too? Look at the pricing on Mac software versus something comparable in Windows. Windows software has more competitive pricing. Call it sales volume or poor quality if you want, it's still cheaper.
And here's where the Mac dude comes running in on their eco-friendly birkenstocks to remind us all that the Mac can't really be compared to generic hardware anyway because it's so unique. *I* didn't make the comparison in the first place, the author did. If it's so unique to make comparison impossible, then stop doing it. Otherwise, suck it up and take the criticism.
What is it with the Mac crowd? Get off your box. Yes they are cool. Yes they work great. Yes it's Linux. Yes I want one too. And yes, they are expensive.
Call me a pessimist, call me practical, call me jaded. Here's what I think will happen:
* Much wrangling will be had over where the data is going to come from
* The project will be over budget by at least twice the original estimate
* The database will be hacked within the first year, but the government won't detect it until much later
And my biggest prediction:
* Congress will wonder why there just aren't that many people using it
This database totally ignores that many companies want illegal workers because they are cheap. Having a database isn't going to stem the demand.
So I bought a hard drive at Best Buy, and someone from the Geek Squad was milling around. He saw me with the hard drive and asked if I'd like them to install it for me. "No, thanks" I said. His reply? "Well you'll need to be careful when you install it so you don't get dust in there, it can ruin the drive."
I guess the uber tech didn't know that hard drives are sealed.
What kind of qualifications do you need to be on the geek squad? I imagine it's something like:
- Lives with folks
- Can name at least four gaming consoles
- Owns 4+ cats
- Took the short bus to school
- Has at least one black "got root?" t-shirt
The mouse stopped working, it just went dead. Probably something to do with the cord. Since I'm not the Microsoft Q&A, I didn't tear it apart and analyze each component. Do you do that with your equipment?
I replaced both at once not because I am clueless, but because I would have had to order a part, replace it, see if it made a change, and then order another one. Shipping isn't free, and you get pretty decent discounts for order a mobo/cpu packaged together. I'd have been happy to try them one at a time on someone else's dime.
Please, don't make assumptions that just because my hardware failed it was my fault. However, your attitude does well to fit in at Alienware tech support. You should send them your resume.
You also assume that just because the hardware cost more and has better performance, it's somehow harder to hook up. A $12 PCI Express card plugs in the same way as a $550 one. If you don't know that, "you have no business" posting to forums. "Sorry."
For those that are Alienware fans, don't read this as nothing I can say will dissuade you, you've made your religious choice. For anyone else interested in the quality of this company, read on. I own both Dell and Alienware computers. The Dell is a much better piece of hardware in my opinion, is laid out better, comes with better documentation, and is far more reliable.
I bought a system from them and all of the following failed within three months:
- Microsoft gaming mouse
- IBM hard drive (these are notorious for failing, why did they use them?)
- Motherboard or CPU (don't know which, replaced both at once)
In addition, I got my choice of case colors. Turns out it's just spraypainted on. The slightest scratch of your fingernail on the keyboard and the paint comes off, with black plastic underneath. The warranty for the broken parts is worthless, they always assume the customer did something wrong and give you a total runaround until you're discouraged enough to quit calling.
Alienware customer service is abysmal, they told me over and over I'd be receiving my system in a week and it took them close to two months for me to get it.
The best thing Dell could do to save its brand name is beat all the Alienware employees with a rubber hose and then close the doors.
Because, usually, you DO NOT get:
1) Any kind of robust reporting, you are expected to roll-your-own
2) Decent documentation
3) Straightforward installation (can be related to point 2)
I'm not knocking open source, I use it and love it. But this is what I've noticed. Sure, there are great open source tools that have none of these problems, but come on -- most of them have at least two of these issues.
On the plus side, I've found that open source support forums are almost always faster and provide better answers than commerical solutions. In some cases there are even free public support forums for commercial applications (think Phoneboy), and these are also usually better than the commercial equivalent.
Hehe, it will decode all attachments as well. No big deal in itself considering every mailer can do this but it does make it incredibly easy to snoop on folks.
No skill whatsoever is required to view the messages and attachments.
Carnivore has offshoots
on
Carnivore No More
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Carnivore relied heavily on a product called SilentRunner. SilentRunner was purchased by Computer Associates and given a new name, Network Forensics.
http://www3.ca.com/Solutions/Product.asp?ID=4856
It has the ability to decode email on the fly. I have the product and while it does have some "wow" factor, the usability and stability is atrocious. Another fine cobbled together product from CA.
Spam isn't all that difficult to track back, why is it taking so long for groups like this (#4 in the world) to get shut down? Is the slowdown our legal system and building the case?
Slashdot Mirror
Amen, that was a breath of fresh air in a room full of "me-me's" instinctively chanting that Comcast is eating babies and setting villages on fire, and that anyone who disagrees is a corporate apologist.
To agree further...
If someone actually *needs* 250GB or more of data per month, and full-pipe speeds the entire time to boot, then as you said there is a plan available for that, called commercial or business class service. There *is* a distinction, and it's funny that they don't see the irony when they say "I want what I paid for."
I dropped my landline and cable television both, everything comes through my cable modem (and I stream Netflix heavily as well as Plex) without issue.
I don't think that Comcast implementing throttling is going to be like what Rome did to Carthage. The reality is that if you are downloading a massive multi-gig file it's going to take a while whether you are throttled or not. Any QoS or traffic management 101 class defines this as bulk or best effort traffic and puts it at the bottom - it's not interactive or particularly time sensitive. Why not make it livable for everyone else? And before everyone hits the reply button and complains that Comcast shouldn't have their upstream oversubscribed, please pause first to grab a clue and realize that every ISP oversubscribes. On top of that, cable plants were only really designed for one way downstream delivery of cable channels so upstream bandwidth will always be much more limited. The only way Comcast can make more upstream bandwidth available is by splitting a node, which means they are doubling their upstream bandwidth by doubling their cable plant. As you can imagine, this is very expensive and that cost ultimately gets passed along to the consumer.
I'm sure someone in the comments has couched this as a net neutrality issue. I also don't buy that argument since it's not targeted at a specific person or application.
So yeah, this sucks, but it was more or less inevitable.
I am not sure why everyone likes to couple IPv6 and NAT so closely. Sure, their use overlaps but as you pointed out they also each have other uses. Who knows why NAT was originally invented - overlapping IP space? Address depletion? Security/obscurity?
For those that want IPv6 and NAT, you can do that too.
With regards to this article, I thought it was something I'd find on godlikeproductions - not slashdot. It's a lot of FUD.
One thing that isn't mentioned is that high energy interactions (like what the LHC produces) are happening in our upper atmosphere every minute of every day. The problem is, we don't have detectors up there so this is why we have the LHC.
If a black hole is going to swallow the earth, then we should look at the skies first.
The actual cost of text messages to carriers is a joke but they charge us like there's some super hard technological feat. Consider: 160 byte maximum, and assume you can send them for a low low price of 5 cents a message. 1,024,000 / 160 = 6400. 6400 * .05 = $320 a megabyte.
What a ripoff. I'm all for paying for services, but the carriers are clearly sticking it to us. I can send a picture message for a quarter (5 times the cost of a text message), and I can guarantee that every image I send is more than 160 * 5 or 800 bytes, and it goes across the same network.
It makes me grumpy.
Your math is right, providing that you use your connection 100% of the time and they rate limit your traffic to make it impossible to go over the cap. Under those conditions, then yeah you'd be locked at 809kbps.
But clearly this isn't the case.
You DO get at least 6mbit/sec, and therefore it is possible to go over 205GB a month, which is why they published a cap.
In regards to the AUP, can you find any major ISP that has an AUP that specifically says hosting a service on a residential connection is acceptable? I haven't.
No kidding.
Clearly it is nobody but LinkedIn's responsibility to keep their cert up to date. Getting a warning about an expired cert is the whole point.
It's been interesting to see security and certificates come full circle. A while back we heard about how the "padlock" wouldn't appear if you were using frames and not every frame on the page was encrypted (I'm not talking about firefox specifically here) and users needed to see that padlock in order to be safe. Security was important! Now users can't be bothered that a message appears telling them that things aren't right. Security is an inconvenience!
There is no way to appease both camps, so we might as well leave the folks thinking it's inconvenient in the cold. At least then we have some security.
Saying they support IE only is one thing, but can anyone point out a page that doesn't work? I have never viewed Comcast's website using anything but firefox, and so far haven't found anything that doesn't work. Granted there are a lot of pages I haven't visited, but it appears to work fine.
Are you convinced that it's that simple, that they can dynamically stamp out every worm/virus/trojan/spammer as it pops up without accidentally dropping even one legitimate packet? Are you also aware that your suggestion is not unique in any way, and has been peddled as an answer to every ISP out there that carries substantial traffic?
I am also obliged to point out some of the larger trite counterpoints, such as increased cost for doing the filtering, customers complaining that now the ISP is being a big brother, is the ISP even responsible, etc. etc.
This has already been played out.
First off, I'd love to have a Mac. I don't because, contrary to however many hits the author took prior to writing the article, a decently powered one is comparatively flippin' expensive. I'm not going to quote another round of numbers, they're already littered over the thread. And if you want to talk TCO, how about adding in the cost of all the addon apps you need to really make it functional. What's that? Windows software costs money too? Look at the pricing on Mac software versus something comparable in Windows. Windows software has more competitive pricing. Call it sales volume or poor quality if you want, it's still cheaper.
And here's where the Mac dude comes running in on their eco-friendly birkenstocks to remind us all that the Mac can't really be compared to generic hardware anyway because it's so unique. *I* didn't make the comparison in the first place, the author did. If it's so unique to make comparison impossible, then stop doing it. Otherwise, suck it up and take the criticism.
What is it with the Mac crowd? Get off your box. Yes they are cool. Yes they work great. Yes it's Linux. Yes I want one too. And yes, they are expensive.
Call me a pessimist, call me practical, call me jaded. Here's what I think will happen: * Much wrangling will be had over where the data is going to come from * The project will be over budget by at least twice the original estimate * The database will be hacked within the first year, but the government won't detect it until much later And my biggest prediction: * Congress will wonder why there just aren't that many people using it This database totally ignores that many companies want illegal workers because they are cheap. Having a database isn't going to stem the demand.
I guess the uber tech didn't know that hard drives are sealed .
What kind of qualifications do you need to be on the geek squad? I imagine it's something like:
- Lives with folks
- Can name at least four gaming consoles
- Owns 4+ cats
- Took the short bus to school
- Has at least one black "got root?" t-shirt
Please, don't make assumptions that just because my hardware failed it was my fault. However, your attitude does well to fit in at Alienware tech support. You should send them your resume.
You also assume that just because the hardware cost more and has better performance, it's somehow harder to hook up. A $12 PCI Express card plugs in the same way as a $550 one. If you don't know that, "you have no business" posting to forums. "Sorry."
Alienware products are awful. Don't take my word for it - http://www.resellerratings.com/seller1650.html
I bought a system from them and all of the following failed within three months:
- Microsoft gaming mouse
- IBM hard drive (these are notorious for failing, why did they use them?)
- Motherboard or CPU (don't know which, replaced both at once)
In addition, I got my choice of case colors. Turns out it's just spraypainted on. The slightest scratch of your fingernail on the keyboard and the paint comes off, with black plastic underneath. The warranty for the broken parts is worthless, they always assume the customer did something wrong and give you a total runaround until you're discouraged enough to quit calling.
Alienware customer service is abysmal, they told me over and over I'd be receiving my system in a week and it took them close to two months for me to get it.
The best thing Dell could do to save its brand name is beat all the Alienware employees with a rubber hose and then close the doors.
Because, usually, you DO NOT get: 1) Any kind of robust reporting, you are expected to roll-your-own 2) Decent documentation 3) Straightforward installation (can be related to point 2) I'm not knocking open source, I use it and love it. But this is what I've noticed. Sure, there are great open source tools that have none of these problems, but come on -- most of them have at least two of these issues. On the plus side, I've found that open source support forums are almost always faster and provide better answers than commerical solutions. In some cases there are even free public support forums for commercial applications (think Phoneboy), and these are also usually better than the commercial equivalent.
Hehe, it will decode all attachments as well. No big deal in itself considering every mailer can do this but it does make it incredibly easy to snoop on folks.
No skill whatsoever is required to view the messages and attachments.
Carnivore relied heavily on a product called SilentRunner. SilentRunner was purchased by Computer Associates and given a new name, Network Forensics.
http://www3.ca.com/Solutions/Product.asp?ID=4856
It has the ability to decode email on the fly. I have the product and while it does have some "wow" factor, the usability and stability is atrocious. Another fine cobbled together product from CA.
Spam isn't all that difficult to track back, why is it taking so long for groups like this (#4 in the world) to get shut down? Is the slowdown our legal system and building the case?