I wont get into the whole weither this software is right or not convo, but I can tell you what it's like to be followed like this.
I started high school the exact same time my mom took a job as (tada!) Attendance Secretary at the school (now she's the principal's secretary, ie, the one who's really in charge). She knew all my teachers because daily they would have to bring the slip saying who was at what class up to the attendance office. She could see weither I Was in class or not, as well as talk with the teachers about what was going on (This is how I suddenly found myself going to tutoring in Math. My Mom knew about my overall failing grades and bad math score before me).
This had a couple of effects:
Good: For one, I paid attention more in classes, I was a lot nicer, I got some better treatment from the teachers. My grades (except math:b) were very good and I actually made National Honor Society.
Bad: I _had_ to follow the rules to the letter. I could never speak out against the school. EVERYTHING I did was reported to my parents. I couldn't support friend swhen they had problems with teachers else it'd suddenly become a problem on the homefront as well as school. They would know where my money went for school lunches.
In the end while I did do good in school, I really felt like I was being stalked by 'big brother' (for lack of a better word.). So I came out of high school with honors, but somewhat paranoid and didn't have as much fun as I felt my friends had.
This happened at the University of Wisconsin in Platteville as well. They don't wanna ban it, but the bandwitdh was just insane. I believe we've got a new method that limits the bandwitdh to the students now, so that they get X amount and may deal with the causes as they wish. Nice to see they didn't jump on the bandwagon to ban:)
This sounds almost like old news. At my old employer we had a bitch of a time keeping sales people from installing AOL because it screwed up the network settings for them connecting to our network at the office. Not sure exactly what it was it did however.
I'm also a @home user and I'm damn glad someone is finally getting around to doing something about their spam. Here's a message I saw form them on Athome.announce (sorry about the formatting)
Many of you have been posting your questions and concerns in reference to the proposed Usenet Death Penalty (UDP) which would block the @Home Network from posting to USENET. I have attached our official response to the Usenet community and the press here but wanted to bring attention to a couple of points that are raised here:
- This afternoon we began a network wide scan targeting open proxy servers.
- If an open server is identified, the customer associated will be blocked from posting to Usenet until such time we are assured that the proxy software is secured.
------------------------------ To the USENET community:
In response to the recent UDP call for @Home Network to be removed from interacting on the USENET, we are submitting an official response with a proposal of short term and long term news spam prevention initiatives. Excite@Home is very committed to participating respectfully on the Internet, and we have taken previous requests for action seriously.
We have found that the primary source of our excessive USENET posting history comes from subscribers who have installed proxy software incorrectly. Unbeknownst to the customer, this mis-configuration has allowed outside access to the @Home news servers, and has resulted in our subscribers becoming spam relays. Because these various IP addresses create holes in our network, spammers have taken advantage of this mis-configuration, and have posted thousands of newsgroup messages through our news machines.
As of today, we are stepping up our involvement and taking more aggressive action by performing frequent network wide scans of our customer base to target proxy servers. Once these customers are identified, we are suspending their news service immediately. Re-enabling will not occur until we are assured that their machines are secure. We feel that this proactive effort will dramatically decrease the amount of extraneous news traffic originating from home.com.
We are committed to promoting better Excite@Home participation on the USENET, and we are in the process of modifying our current news product and news architecture. We are also implementing more user education as a parallel initiative.
With these new tactics in place, we are asking for an extension to our USENET access beyond the 18th of January and we are confident that the USENET community will see positive news statistics coming in the next few days.
David Jackson Manager, Network Policy Management Excite@Home
> However, this is only a version of the >prosecution, which also stated that Meira had >traces of cocaine in his blood and had in the > >past been treated for stress-related problems.
When I was in high school, some kid in a nearby town slammed his car into building, killing himself. There was a note about how all his hard work had been for naught and all that sort of stuff and that's why he decieded to take his own life. When the police interviewed his friends they learned that in a recent game of Dungeons and Dragons, his character who he had worked on for nearly a year had fallen victim to a fatal curse or something like that.
When they interviewed other people they learned a injury was forcing him to miss out on his Senior year of high school football, and his girlfriend had just left him.
Guess which one that Media picked up on and blamed? Being in a town just a short ways away, we felt the impact a lot. I play RPGs a lot and during this time I was insulted a few times and even talked to by teachers at school, didn't like being called a satanist much either.
Almost all of the people who spoke to me had read the original news report which stated that D&D possibly caused this sucide run, very very few people read the later articles which started to point towards his other, real world problems.
Point I'm trying to make (in a long round about way and what is probably beaten to the ground by now:)) is this: how many of these cases where Video games have been blamed initially have actually turned out to be "not the whole story"?
I think there's just a whole idea of media and people as a whole who just run to the first thing they see and say "That's the reason!!"
> this strikes me as just another of telcos not > wanting to adapt to new technologies
If such a thing were to happen, flat rate or what not, how would this affect the cable modem services and the like? They don't use phone lines like ISPs use. Could this possibly spread the influence and the area of these new techs?
- 30 minutes drive from cable modem access in any direction and they STILL haven't gotten to my town....
Computers with personalities? Why am I slightly concerned by the idea of Microsoft making semi intelligent computers in the future with personalities? Right now there's programs that wont work on the computer without IE 4.0 or whatever, wouldn't it be a bummer if a Microsoft personality said "I don't like Word Perfect, you should use office" and stopped it from being installed? (Granted, that'd probably violate more laws, but since when has that stopped MS?:)
Slashdot Mirror
If you can't figure out all the codes, here's a link that'll help out the newbies (like me)
. ph tml
http://www.linuxhelp.net/guides/xted/bashprompt
I wont get into the whole weither this software is right or not convo, but I can tell you what it's like to be followed like this.
I started high school the exact same time my mom took a job as (tada!) Attendance Secretary at the school (now she's the principal's secretary, ie, the one who's really in charge). She knew all my teachers because daily they would have to bring the slip saying who was at what class up to the attendance office. She could see weither I Was in class or not, as well as talk with the teachers about what was going on (This is how I suddenly found myself going to tutoring in Math. My Mom knew about my overall failing grades and bad math score before me).
This had a couple of effects:
Good: For one, I paid attention more in classes, I was a lot nicer, I got some better treatment from the teachers. My grades (except math:b) were very good and I actually made National Honor Society.
Bad: I _had_ to follow the rules to the letter. I could never speak out against the school. EVERYTHING I did was reported to my parents. I couldn't support friend swhen they had problems with teachers else it'd suddenly become a problem on the homefront as well as school. They would know where my money went for school lunches.
In the end while I did do good in school, I really felt like I was being stalked by 'big brother' (for lack of a better word.). So I came out of high school with honors, but somewhat paranoid and didn't have as much fun as I felt my friends had.
I'm sensing a new use for that ShareSniffer program...;)
This happened at the University of Wisconsin in Platteville as well. They don't wanna ban it, but the bandwitdh was just insane. I believe we've got a new method that limits the bandwitdh to the students now, so that they get X amount and may deal with the causes as they wish. Nice to see they didn't jump on the bandwagon to ban:)
This sounds almost like old news. At my old employer we had a bitch of a time keeping sales people from installing AOL because it screwed up the network settings for them connecting to our network at the office. Not sure exactly what it was it did however.
I'm also a @home user and I'm damn glad someone is finally getting around to doing something about their spam. Here's a message I saw form them on Athome.announce (sorry about the formatting)
Subject:
Usenet UDP - Excite@Home Response
Date:
Thu, 13 Jan 2000 01:31:26 GMT
From:
Newsgroup Policy Specialist
Organization:
@Home Network
Newsgroups:
athome.announce, athome.discussion-athomesvc, athome.discussion-security,
athome.discussion-general
Many of you have been posting your questions and concerns
in reference to the proposed Usenet Death Penalty (UDP) which
would block the @Home Network from posting to USENET. I have attached
our official response to the Usenet community and the press here but
wanted to bring attention to a couple of points that are raised here:
- This afternoon we began a network wide scan targeting open proxy
servers.
- If an open server is identified, the customer associated will be
blocked from posting to Usenet until such time we are assured that
the proxy software is secured.
------------------------------
To the USENET community:
In response to the recent UDP call for @Home Network to be removed
from interacting on the USENET, we are submitting an official response
with a proposal of short term and long term news spam prevention
initiatives. Excite@Home is very committed to participating
respectfully on the Internet, and we have taken previous requests for
action seriously.
We have found that the primary source of our excessive USENET posting
history comes from subscribers who have installed proxy software
incorrectly. Unbeknownst to the customer, this mis-configuration has
allowed outside access to the @Home news servers, and has resulted in
our subscribers becoming spam relays. Because these various IP
addresses create holes in our network, spammers have taken advantage
of this mis-configuration, and have posted thousands of newsgroup
messages through our news machines.
As of today, we are stepping up our involvement and taking more
aggressive action by performing frequent network wide scans of our
customer base to target proxy servers. Once these customers are
identified, we are suspending their news service immediately.
Re-enabling will not occur until we are assured that their machines
are secure. We feel that this proactive effort will dramatically
decrease the amount of extraneous news traffic originating from
home.com.
We are committed to promoting better Excite@Home participation on the
USENET, and we are in the process of modifying our current news
product and news architecture. We are also implementing more user
education as a parallel initiative.
With these new tactics in place, we are asking for an extension to our
USENET access beyond the 18th of January and we are confident that the
USENET community will see positive news statistics coming in the next
few days.
David Jackson
Manager, Network Policy Management
Excite@Home
Carol
Newsgroup Policy Specialist
Excite@Home
> However, this is only a version of the >prosecution, which also stated that Meira had >traces of cocaine in his blood and had in the > >past been treated for stress-related problems.
:) 3am on 4 hours of sleep :)
When I was in high school, some kid in a nearby town slammed his car into building, killing himself. There was a note about how all his hard work had been for naught and all that sort of stuff and that's why he decieded to take his own life. When the police interviewed his friends they learned that in a recent game of Dungeons and Dragons, his character who he had worked on for nearly a year had fallen victim to a fatal curse or something like that.
When they interviewed other people they learned a injury was forcing him to miss out on his Senior year of high school football, and his girlfriend had just left him.
Guess which one that Media picked up on and blamed? Being in a town just a short ways away, we felt the impact a lot. I play RPGs a lot and during this time I was insulted a few times and even talked to by teachers at school, didn't like being called a satanist much either.
Almost all of the people who spoke to me had read the original news report which stated that D&D possibly caused this sucide run, very very few people read the later articles which started to point towards his other, real world problems.
Point I'm trying to make (in a long round about way and what is probably beaten to the ground by now:)) is this: how many of these cases where Video games have been blamed initially have actually turned out to be "not the whole story"?
I think there's just a whole idea of media and people as a whole who just run to the first thing they see and say "That's the reason!!"
Sorry for the ramble
> this strikes me as just another of telcos not > wanting to adapt to new technologies
If such a thing were to happen, flat rate or what not, how would this affect the cable modem services and the like? They don't use phone lines like ISPs use. Could this possibly spread the influence and the area of these new techs?
- 30 minutes drive from cable modem access in any direction and they STILL haven't gotten to my town....
Computers with personalities? Why am I slightly concerned by the idea of Microsoft making semi intelligent computers in the future with personalities? Right now there's programs that wont work on the computer without IE 4.0 or whatever, wouldn't it be a bummer if a Microsoft personality said "I don't like Word Perfect, you should use office" and stopped it from being installed? (Granted, that'd probably violate more laws, but since when has that stopped MS?:)
I know how ya feel, they lowered the prices on Pentium IIIs just two days AFTER I bought mine.....