Actually, this is relatively legitimate usage of patent rights. If companies like Magnequench (oi, what a name -- I'm thirsty, anyone want a big glass of magnet?) spent 50 million dollars developing a technology, and everyone else in the world were allowed to simply use it, no one would ever spend any money developing technology, since everyone else in the world can produce it cheaper than them, for not already being $50mil in debt. We might still very well be driving around in horse and buggies to this day, and you can be pretty sure that no computers would exist for the home.
I don't necessarily agree with who they're going after, I seriously doubt that Compaq et al. are manufacturing these magnets in secretive magnet plants hidden deep in the mountainside, in order to avoid the snooping eyes of Magnequench (hahaha, that name doesn't get old), but rather they're just buying magnets from a parts supplier. The reason, however, that Magnequench is going after these big names is simple -- press coverage. I seriously doubt that the equipment manufacturers will have to destroy devices already made, but what would probably happen in stead is that they or their parts suppliers would have to pay damages to Magnebeverage.
We cannot place any level of merit on what the author of the original article says, as he is missing the key ingredient of proof within the article. It's amazingly easy to misinterpret scientific findings, and you can even use statistics to do it. There's lies, damn lies, and then statistics (Mark Twain, paraphrased).
But I'm guessing that the sense of hostility that I'm picking up from your post pervades more aspects of your life feelings toward "Bible thumping zealots" than just the scientific ramifications that they attempt to impose. As has been said perhaps a hundred times within just this discussion board, it is impossible to disprove Creationism. "Bible thumpers" would easily be able to argue that any support you found toward disproving Creationism could very well have been placed there by God, as there is nothing of which he is not capable. Bible believers believe that God tests their religion repeatedly throughout their lives, and you are to have faith with out sight. This is also known as blind faith, and is prized by them. Biblically, God wants us to believe, not because we have ultimate proof of his existance, but because we feel it in our hearts. If we have reconciled our faith, then our tests are over. God does not want that, and so he will always test you, always keep you thinking, always push you farther, because his desire is that you know and love him regardless of what the considerably more logical side of your mind would state otherwise.
To explain the logic of that, husbands and wives with real love for each other that go through hard times are brought so much closer than they could have ever been before. When each other is all that you have, you realize how prized that relationship is. Similarly with Creationism, and Biblical theology, if you never doubt your faith, then you are not growing in it, and since you are called to do so, you are actually shrinking in it, there is no stable faith. I am Christian, as you probably have guessed, but I am also a science believer. I know many others who are, even PhD's (when I went to school, I believed that all PhD's were athiests or at best agnostics, but I was very surprised to find that not true). They (and I) can reconcile faith and science. We can accept mankinds pursuit of the truth, regardless of how that pursuit manifests itself. If we did not do our part toward helping to find the truth, we would not be true to our faith, but to say that Darwin is vindicated by finding similarities in genetic sequences is foolish.
We know of many similarities that lie outside of DNA. Bacteria, jellyfish, apes, humans, we all require water, we all have hundreds of proteins in common, and I could easily list a thousand more items here (well, not perhaps I, but a biologist easily could). This is only one more set of similarities. In fact, since we already have so much in common with these other organisms, doesn't it make sense that we have genetic structures that are similar? Wouldn't the same genetic sequences that manufacture glucosin be common to us all, or that enable us to metabolize proteins and sugars? Why should they be different. If the allegorical programmer God were to have created us, why would he write a different function to process certain identical tasks for different organisms/programs when the input/output set would be identical? That's as misguided a statement as "All life uses DNA, so it's obvious that it's all decended from a common ancestor."
Just because a doctor says "Creationism is wrong, Evolution is right, and I have proof" is not a valid publication. Sure, I could just as easily have said "Evolution is wrong, Creationism is right" in the same exact story, and it would have held as much merit. The key point here is that the story offers absolutely none of the proof that he's touting. Perhaps when I read a publication on his specific findings, I can merit this as something other than a single MSNBC reporter with a specific agenda (what, reporters have personal agendas?).
As it stands now, I am unimpressed by someone having a degree as making them an ultimate authority. A PhD does not equal infallibility, as I repeatedly find out while I attend school and reach for my own PhD. Oh for the day when I have it, and suckers will believe whatever I tell them just because I'm a PhD. "I have a doctorate in finance, so you're required to forefeit all your finances to me, I have proof!" "Der, ok, that must be the case 'cause you're so smart."
Are you moderating me down because you disagree with what I say, or because I make an invalid point?
How many times have you had to format your hard drive due to a Winblows crash? Sick of having to click "Yes, I'm sure I want to erase my hard drive" style messages? Well, click no more (er, a little less), now with one click, your hard drive can be reformatted to any of various partition types! No annoying confirmation dialogs, no obnoxious warnings, just click and format.
Now being licensed by MightyE.org! You read it there first!
I am a chemist. As such, I'm quite familiar with physical as well as chemical properties of elements, and their alloys. Strength is a physical property, and it is quite widely known that titanium actually has the highest strength to weight ratio of any other element or alloy. That's why it's so widely sought after for applications such as aircraft, cranes, etc. Steel may be stronger, but at enough extra cost in weight that making a thicker structure of titanium to achieve the same strength will still result is a lighter structure.
Plenty of people are already in the position to do so. If you have servers being colocated at an ISP, then they don't care WHAT software you run on them. There's plenty of sniffing programs out there, so all this is is another to add to the countless other tools which may very well already be in place at your favorite hosting provider. This makes it only marginally easier for someone to sniff out your emails, given that they are getting hosted somewhere between you and your email provider.
Accredited Universities have to do this. It's part of the curriculum requirements to acchieve accredidation. My university (Millersville University of Pennsylvania) is accredited in CS, but we don't have "Computer History 382" or any such thing. Rather we have classes like "Programming Languages 240," wherein we discuss the evolution of programming languages, the conccepts that held true through all their trials, and those that failed, and why they failed. Then we have "Operating Systems 380," which discusses the history and evolution of operating systems, and again those concepts that just worked, and those that pooped out.
I find these classes to be some of the most interresting and enlightening. They provide me an opportunity to learn from what my superior elders have already tried, so that I don't make the same mistakes as them. I am certainly not a history buff, and in fact, it's my least favorite subject, but I definately enjoy the history CS courses.
You need time off. There's only so much creative juice in your brain, this wears out. Sounds goofy, but it's true. I've had programmer's block, and if I know that I should be able to do something, but I can't figure it out, it's always due to stress or lack of sleep. If you need to be at work every day, start taking a couple of half days here and there. Believe me, it's more important to overcome your block than to sit staring at your screen for too long. That only stresses you out more, and increases your block.
The solution is definately sleep, and time away from the computer all together, not even video games.
What this case really comes down to is that the judge doesn't believe that using corinthians.com for this purpose is a legitimate use of the domain name. Probably corinthians.org and.net were already taken, or have at least since been taken. There's no reason that if I wanted to put up a single web page with a single line that states who I am (which could well be the case with this man's scripture verse, many Chrisitans feel that a single verse really defines who they are, like many artists feel that a single poem define who they are), that I shouldn't be allowed to do so.
The judge ruled against him (note that this is 7 for 7 domains he's transfered to the complainant) based on the fact that he doesn't believe a single Bible verse to be signifigant content, and so Corinthians team should get it, even though it's actually spelled CORINTHIAO, but pronounced like Corinthians. Based upon that fact alone, this man has greater right to the domain name. If I were to register Macrosoft.com or Winblows.com, would I be violating Microsoft's domain name? No, not unless I was trying to trick those people who might have misspelled it in their address bar. Too, you can't use the argument that since it's a.com domain name he shouldn't have used it, they're in brazil, they have their own TLD, which he cannot even register under should he choose, and this is the appropriate domain for them to register under.
Finally, if a norwegian guy had Vikings.com, then he has the right to it, even if he only has one single line of Viking verse there. He has a legitimate use for it, and as such, it does not matter WHAT he uses it for as long as he's not defaming the Minnesota Vikings, or attempting to intrude on their business.
Does the ban they're looking for apply only to MP3's?
If so, then can I ZIP or TAR up my files and send them that way?
If it doesn't, then how does this make sense (obviously does not)? What if I made such a program sole for the distribution of background images? How is that wrong? Their case just doesn't seem to me to stand a chance, there cannot be such a ban on peer to peer file sharing, and even if they did, where do you draw the line? If I ICQ or LICQ my files to someone else, does that count as illegal? What if I wrote a plugin to ICQ and LICQ that people can share files automatically in a napster like way, using ICQ and LICQ's file transfer protocol, does that count as infringement of this law?
There needs to be a definitive line drawn here, and there are only gray areas between no file sharing and unrestricted file sharing. The line must be drawn on either side, but there cannot be a middle ground, the middle ground is infinite in size.
If these "physical retailers" are concerned with customers not coming to their stores because they can purchase their goods online, then it indicates that there is a shift occurring in the way that people buy, and in stead of complaining about it, they should instead focus on the market by opening their own online stores. True, I'm not probably going to buy shampoo online (I shave my head anyhow), but then that's not the business that they are concerned with losing. They can offer the kinds of products that people buy online, and get themselves a piece of that gold mine. If people like to buy that way, then it's a good chance that it's a better way to buy. They need to cater to the way that people work, instead of forcing people to work the way they cater.
you can't generate ASP on the fly? That doesn't sound as though your ASP parser is working correctly. It's a huge pain in the butt writing static files from an ASP page. If only there were a "write buffer to this file" function, or if you could even treat the buffer as a string, such as returning a partial buffer from a function. Alas, there isn't, to my knowledge.
I wrote a DLL that acts as the intermediate to the ASP parser. What it does is provide duplicates of all the DLL functions, and for the most part, simply re-call the ASP.DLL dll, except when a path is used containing a sessionID. Then it stripped that out, and fed in an appropriate session cookie to the ASP parser. More detailed I can't really get, it's one of those things my company paid me to do, and they might not like this much. Hope its of help.
I've done this sort of thing for my company, but in a different manner. In stead of the url being http://sessionid.wherever.xxx, it's http://www.wherever.xxx/sessionid This is useful because it doesn't do anything funky with DNS, allmost all links are relative, so the sessionID is preserved, and if I want a link to the root, but preserving the session, I just link to/sessionid. It's really not that difficult to write a little DLL that decodes the document by pulling out the sessionID, and sending the document to the ASP parser on my NT (stop booing, I know it's evil) box.
I've been working with my campus's networking team, and using network analyzers all semester to try to determine why the network seems so slow at times. It turns out that things like Napster, Telephony and a lot of other "Bandwidth Hogs" are really not the source of the bottlenecks on campus. On my campus, at least, it turns out that the majority of bandwidth is actually consumed by multiplayer games like Half-Life, Q3, Unreal Tournament. I run a dedicated HL server off of my machine for my clan, and it often times has 20-30 people playing at once. This makes for some huge consumption. Although this is not outbound traffic, as all the guys are on campus, it does tie up the local network, choking out outbound traffic. My one server can consume up to 90% of total traffic on my network segment. Although my network segment itself doesn't get to more than 20% or so, it all bottlenecks up in the routers with traffic bound for other dorms, or other network segments within my own dorm. For all the dorms and computer labs on campus, there are over 50 routers total. My guess is that inter-router communications are the real bottleneck here. The actual outbound traffic rarely is very high, and local traffic makes up probably 99% of all traffic.
So to all those campus officials who say that things like Napster are consuming all the bandwidth, they're just simply wrong. My campus has seen it. They need to also.
yeah, but it's plenty of time for them to take all their illegal stuff and drop it into a long term storage garage, and wait until they believe that the heat has passed.
Unfortunately, I have little insight to offer in this regard. I strongly suspect that the guy at my door in the wee hours of the morning was intended as nothing but a scare tactic, to try to get me to back off.
I have no resentment or bitterness toward the government, they were simply acting on what they could tell of the situation with out devoting many hours of work into trying to decide whether or not the IP was spoofed or other goofy things.
I'm not mad at my school for giving my information to the feds with out first checking to see whether I was the perpetrator; when the feds say "one of your students have been engaging in illegal activities against our servers, give him to us," I think the right thing for the school to do is what they did. I have little doubt that they knew the guy was only going to try to scare me, I know for a fact that the school specifically protects its students legally against prosecution in this type of matter, the University sees it as a learning process, and as long as I hadn't tried to actually crack a server by gaining illegal access, I've really done no harm, so let me get a wake up call.
Certainly it was a learning experience, I learned that if ever I did want to actually do something like this, don't do it from my own computer.
I'm also not at all surprised that the feds never contacted me to appologize, that would have undone any effect of the Man in Black at my door.
Finally, I'm not at all surprised that it was my IP address that was chosen, I own a domain name that points to it, but it's also registered under the University, so someone can tell that I'm a techie and a good candidate for a framing, and the IP address only uses two separate digits (similar to [but not] 10.01.10.01), and is very symmetrical, so is likely to be chosen simply for its face value.
"Hey badguys, we're on to you, and looking to bust you. So here's ample notice to move your operation elsewhere so that next week when we show up, you can have all the equipment out of there."
I hear a knock at my door. I look through the peep hole, and there is a guy dressed like someone from the movie "Men in Black." How he got in the building, I don't know, it's a University dorm, and there's card access to the doors, and breakfast hasn't even opened yet (aka no awake students), so I don't think a student let him in. I asked who it was, and all he did was flash his badge at the peep hole and say something like "Federal Agent, Open Up" (I was still mostly asleep, and I'm not entirely sure what time it was, but it was still dark out).
Ok, so the feds, er, just one fed is standing outside my door, I guess I should open it. Just a warning: when opening the door to a fed, stand back, they come in like a bullet with out being invited in.
Basically, what he wanted was to let me know that my port scanning of their servers in California wasn't going to be permitted (I've never port scanned anyone but people I know). At school, we have dedicated IP addresses, and apparently there had been a lot of activity from my IP address checking out the ports on their computers. Only thing I can think of is that someone spoofed my IP and was portscanning them. I pleaded ignorance to him, but he wouldn't have any of it. He threatened me with obtaining a search warrant and siezing my electronic equipment.
Well, what do you do when you're staring at a guy who's probably packing heat, and knows how to use it, and who's in your face. You melt, that's what. I probably only got in about ten words for the fifteen minutes or so that he was there (oh, and a whole bunch of first syllables to words before being cut off by him).
About a week later, the school revoked my IP address, telling me that the government had requested it!!! According to the school, they knew about the episode in my room, and that I had been warned about scanning, and that the scans had actually continued after the guy in my room.
Finally: While my IP was revoked (the school placed a filter on the routers, so noone on campus could use my IP address, not even spoof it, the routers simply wouldn't forward it, the portscans continued. There was no way for me to have perpetrated the scans. The government was back in contact with my school, warning that there would soon be legal action against the school if they didn't stop me, but the school responded that there was no way it could have been me, and suggested the possibility of a IP spoofing. The feds apparently concurred, my school appologized to me for the hassle, returned my IP, and I never heard from the feds again.
I think it comes down to whether it is coincidence. There's some SMALL possibility that it was (doesn't seem very likely, but let's never assume anything). If it wasn't, then certainly they didn't have the moral right to do what they did.
Whether or not they have a legal right, I don't know... I'm not a lawyer, least of all a Japanese lawyer, but in America, it'd proably be covered under Parody clauses of Copyright laws, which basically state that you can pretty much rob someone blind of intelectual property such as names, as long as you're doing it to make fun of them.
lest someone like Amazon patents the technology instead, and then sues Google. There's nothing inherrently wrong with patents, just misuse of them. Let google patent the technology, just as long as they're willing to let others take advantage of it in the true open source flavor.
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I don't necessarily agree with who they're going after, I seriously doubt that Compaq et al. are manufacturing these magnets in secretive magnet plants hidden deep in the mountainside, in order to avoid the snooping eyes of Magnequench (hahaha, that name doesn't get old), but rather they're just buying magnets from a parts supplier. The reason, however, that Magnequench is going after these big names is simple -- press coverage. I seriously doubt that the equipment manufacturers will have to destroy devices already made, but what would probably happen in stead is that they or their parts suppliers would have to pay damages to Magnebeverage.
We cannot place any level of merit on what the author of the original article says, as he is missing the key ingredient of proof within the article. It's amazingly easy to misinterpret scientific findings, and you can even use statistics to do it. There's lies, damn lies, and then statistics (Mark Twain, paraphrased).
But I'm guessing that the sense of hostility that I'm picking up from your post pervades more aspects of your life feelings toward "Bible thumping zealots" than just the scientific ramifications that they attempt to impose. As has been said perhaps a hundred times within just this discussion board, it is impossible to disprove Creationism. "Bible thumpers" would easily be able to argue that any support you found toward disproving Creationism could very well have been placed there by God, as there is nothing of which he is not capable. Bible believers believe that God tests their religion repeatedly throughout their lives, and you are to have faith with out sight. This is also known as blind faith, and is prized by them. Biblically, God wants us to believe, not because we have ultimate proof of his existance, but because we feel it in our hearts. If we have reconciled our faith, then our tests are over. God does not want that, and so he will always test you, always keep you thinking, always push you farther, because his desire is that you know and love him regardless of what the considerably more logical side of your mind would state otherwise.
To explain the logic of that, husbands and wives with real love for each other that go through hard times are brought so much closer than they could have ever been before. When each other is all that you have, you realize how prized that relationship is. Similarly with Creationism, and Biblical theology, if you never doubt your faith, then you are not growing in it, and since you are called to do so, you are actually shrinking in it, there is no stable faith. I am Christian, as you probably have guessed, but I am also a science believer. I know many others who are, even PhD's (when I went to school, I believed that all PhD's were athiests or at best agnostics, but I was very surprised to find that not true). They (and I) can reconcile faith and science. We can accept mankinds pursuit of the truth, regardless of how that pursuit manifests itself. If we did not do our part toward helping to find the truth, we would not be true to our faith, but to say that Darwin is vindicated by finding similarities in genetic sequences is foolish.
We know of many similarities that lie outside of DNA. Bacteria, jellyfish, apes, humans, we all require water, we all have hundreds of proteins in common, and I could easily list a thousand more items here (well, not perhaps I, but a biologist easily could). This is only one more set of similarities. In fact, since we already have so much in common with these other organisms, doesn't it make sense that we have genetic structures that are similar? Wouldn't the same genetic sequences that manufacture glucosin be common to us all, or that enable us to metabolize proteins and sugars? Why should they be different. If the allegorical programmer God were to have created us, why would he write a different function to process certain identical tasks for different organisms/programs when the input/output set would be identical? That's as misguided a statement as "All life uses DNA, so it's obvious that it's all decended from a common ancestor."
Just because a doctor says "Creationism is wrong, Evolution is right, and I have proof" is not a valid publication. Sure, I could just as easily have said "Evolution is wrong, Creationism is right" in the same exact story, and it would have held as much merit. The key point here is that the story offers absolutely none of the proof that he's touting. Perhaps when I read a publication on his specific findings, I can merit this as something other than a single MSNBC reporter with a specific agenda (what, reporters have personal agendas?).
As it stands now, I am unimpressed by someone having a degree as making them an ultimate authority. A PhD does not equal infallibility, as I repeatedly find out while I attend school and reach for my own PhD. Oh for the day when I have it, and suckers will believe whatever I tell them just because I'm a PhD. "I have a doctorate in finance, so you're required to forefeit all your finances to me, I have proof!" "Der, ok, that must be the case 'cause you're so smart."
Are you moderating me down because you disagree with what I say, or because I make an invalid point?
How many times have you had to format your hard drive due to a Winblows crash? Sick of having to click "Yes, I'm sure I want to erase my hard drive" style messages? Well, click no more (er, a little less), now with one click, your hard drive can be reformatted to any of various partition types! No annoying confirmation dialogs, no obnoxious warnings, just click and format.
Now being licensed by MightyE.org! You read it there first!
I am a chemist. As such, I'm quite familiar with physical as well as chemical properties of elements, and their alloys. Strength is a physical property, and it is quite widely known that titanium actually has the highest strength to weight ratio of any other element or alloy. That's why it's so widely sought after for applications such as aircraft, cranes, etc. Steel may be stronger, but at enough extra cost in weight that making a thicker structure of titanium to achieve the same strength will still result is a lighter structure.
Plenty of people are already in the position to do so. If you have servers being colocated at an ISP, then they don't care WHAT software you run on them. There's plenty of sniffing programs out there, so all this is is another to add to the countless other tools which may very well already be in place at your favorite hosting provider. This makes it only marginally easier for someone to sniff out your emails, given that they are getting hosted somewhere between you and your email provider.
Accredited Universities have to do this. It's part of the curriculum requirements to acchieve accredidation. My university (Millersville University of Pennsylvania) is accredited in CS, but we don't have "Computer History 382" or any such thing. Rather we have classes like "Programming Languages 240," wherein we discuss the evolution of programming languages, the conccepts that held true through all their trials, and those that failed, and why they failed. Then we have "Operating Systems 380," which discusses the history and evolution of operating systems, and again those concepts that just worked, and those that pooped out.
I find these classes to be some of the most interresting and enlightening. They provide me an opportunity to learn from what my superior elders have already tried, so that I don't make the same mistakes as them. I am certainly not a history buff, and in fact, it's my least favorite subject, but I definately enjoy the history CS courses.
You need time off. There's only so much creative juice in your brain, this wears out. Sounds goofy, but it's true. I've had programmer's block, and if I know that I should be able to do something, but I can't figure it out, it's always due to stress or lack of sleep. If you need to be at work every day, start taking a couple of half days here and there. Believe me, it's more important to overcome your block than to sit staring at your screen for too long. That only stresses you out more, and increases your block.
The solution is definately sleep, and time away from the computer all together, not even video games.
What this case really comes down to is that the judge doesn't believe that using corinthians.com for this purpose is a legitimate use of the domain name. Probably corinthians.org and .net were already taken, or have at least since been taken. There's no reason that if I wanted to put up a single web page with a single line that states who I am (which could well be the case with this man's scripture verse, many Chrisitans feel that a single verse really defines who they are, like many artists feel that a single poem define who they are), that I shouldn't be allowed to do so.
.com domain name he shouldn't have used it, they're in brazil, they have their own TLD, which he cannot even register under should he choose, and this is the appropriate domain for them to register under.
The judge ruled against him (note that this is 7 for 7 domains he's transfered to the complainant) based on the fact that he doesn't believe a single Bible verse to be signifigant content, and so Corinthians team should get it, even though it's actually spelled CORINTHIAO, but pronounced like Corinthians. Based upon that fact alone, this man has greater right to the domain name. If I were to register Macrosoft.com or Winblows.com, would I be violating Microsoft's domain name? No, not unless I was trying to trick those people who might have misspelled it in their address bar. Too, you can't use the argument that since it's a
Finally, if a norwegian guy had Vikings.com, then he has the right to it, even if he only has one single line of Viking verse there. He has a legitimate use for it, and as such, it does not matter WHAT he uses it for as long as he's not defaming the Minnesota Vikings, or attempting to intrude on their business.
Does the ban they're looking for apply only to MP3's?
If so, then can I ZIP or TAR up my files and send them that way?
If it doesn't, then how does this make sense (obviously does not)? What if I made such a program sole for the distribution of background images? How is that wrong? Their case just doesn't seem to me to stand a chance, there cannot be such a ban on peer to peer file sharing, and even if they did, where do you draw the line? If I ICQ or LICQ my files to someone else, does that count as illegal? What if I wrote a plugin to ICQ and LICQ that people can share files automatically in a napster like way, using ICQ and LICQ's file transfer protocol, does that count as infringement of this law?
There needs to be a definitive line drawn here, and there are only gray areas between no file sharing and unrestricted file sharing. The line must be drawn on either side, but there cannot be a middle ground, the middle ground is infinite in size.
If these "physical retailers" are concerned with customers not coming to their stores because they can purchase their goods online, then it indicates that there is a shift occurring in the way that people buy, and in stead of complaining about it, they should instead focus on the market by opening their own online stores. True, I'm not probably going to buy shampoo online (I shave my head anyhow), but then that's not the business that they are concerned with losing. They can offer the kinds of products that people buy online, and get themselves a piece of that gold mine. If people like to buy that way, then it's a good chance that it's a better way to buy. They need to cater to the way that people work, instead of forcing people to work the way they cater.
you can't generate ASP on the fly? That doesn't sound as though your ASP parser is working correctly. It's a huge pain in the butt writing static files from an ASP page. If only there were a "write buffer to this file" function, or if you could even treat the buffer as a string, such as returning a partial buffer from a function. Alas, there isn't, to my knowledge.
I wrote a DLL that acts as the intermediate to the ASP parser. What it does is provide duplicates of all the DLL functions, and for the most part, simply re-call the ASP.DLL dll, except when a path is used containing a sessionID. Then it stripped that out, and fed in an appropriate session cookie to the ASP parser. More detailed I can't really get, it's one of those things my company paid me to do, and they might not like this much. Hope its of help.
I've done this sort of thing for my company, but in a different manner. In stead of the url being http://sessionid.wherever.xxx, it's http://www.wherever.xxx/sessionid This is useful because it doesn't do anything funky with DNS, allmost all links are relative, so the sessionID is preserved, and if I want a link to the root, but preserving the session, I just link to /sessionid. It's really not that difficult to write a little DLL that decodes the document by pulling out the sessionID, and sending the document to the ASP parser on my NT (stop booing, I know it's evil) box.
I've been working with my campus's networking team, and using network analyzers all semester to try to determine why the network seems so slow at times. It turns out that things like Napster, Telephony and a lot of other "Bandwidth Hogs" are really not the source of the bottlenecks on campus. On my campus, at least, it turns out that the majority of bandwidth is actually consumed by multiplayer games like Half-Life, Q3, Unreal Tournament. I run a dedicated HL server off of my machine for my clan, and it often times has 20-30 people playing at once. This makes for some huge consumption. Although this is not outbound traffic, as all the guys are on campus, it does tie up the local network, choking out outbound traffic. My one server can consume up to 90% of total traffic on my network segment. Although my network segment itself doesn't get to more than 20% or so, it all bottlenecks up in the routers with traffic bound for other dorms, or other network segments within my own dorm. For all the dorms and computer labs on campus, there are over 50 routers total. My guess is that inter-router communications are the real bottleneck here. The actual outbound traffic rarely is very high, and local traffic makes up probably 99% of all traffic.
So to all those campus officials who say that things like Napster are consuming all the bandwidth, they're just simply wrong. My campus has seen it. They need to also.
Born on Feb 29, 1976.
It's my 6th birthday!
um... read the article before making comments please. The outrage here was because it was pointed out, and brushed off.
here here
yeah, but it's plenty of time for them to take all their illegal stuff and drop it into a long term storage garage, and wait until they believe that the heat has passed.
Unfortunately, I have little insight to offer in this regard. I strongly suspect that the guy at my door in the wee hours of the morning was intended as nothing but a scare tactic, to try to get me to back off.
I have no resentment or bitterness toward the government, they were simply acting on what they could tell of the situation with out devoting many hours of work into trying to decide whether or not the IP was spoofed or other goofy things.
I'm not mad at my school for giving my information to the feds with out first checking to see whether I was the perpetrator; when the feds say "one of your students have been engaging in illegal activities against our servers, give him to us," I think the right thing for the school to do is what they did. I have little doubt that they knew the guy was only going to try to scare me, I know for a fact that the school specifically protects its students legally against prosecution in this type of matter, the University sees it as a learning process, and as long as I hadn't tried to actually crack a server by gaining illegal access, I've really done no harm, so let me get a wake up call.
Certainly it was a learning experience, I learned that if ever I did want to actually do something like this, don't do it from my own computer.
I'm also not at all surprised that the feds never contacted me to appologize, that would have undone any effect of the Man in Black at my door.
Finally, I'm not at all surprised that it was my IP address that was chosen, I own a domain name that points to it, but it's also registered under the University, so someone can tell that I'm a techie and a good candidate for a framing, and the IP address only uses two separate digits (similar to [but not] 10.01.10.01), and is very symmetrical, so is likely to be chosen simply for its face value.
Man, I'd love to pour over that code!
They come crawling to me :).
Ok,
"Hey badguys, we're on to you, and looking to bust you. So here's ample notice to move your operation elsewhere so that next week when we show up, you can have all the equipment out of there."
Nice thought though.
I hear a knock at my door. I look through the peep hole, and there is a guy dressed like someone from the movie "Men in Black." How he got in the building, I don't know, it's a University dorm, and there's card access to the doors, and breakfast hasn't even opened yet (aka no awake students), so I don't think a student let him in. I asked who it was, and all he did was flash his badge at the peep hole and say something like "Federal Agent, Open Up" (I was still mostly asleep, and I'm not entirely sure what time it was, but it was still dark out).
Ok, so the feds, er, just one fed is standing outside my door, I guess I should open it. Just a warning: when opening the door to a fed, stand back, they come in like a bullet with out being invited in.
Basically, what he wanted was to let me know that my port scanning of their servers in California wasn't going to be permitted (I've never port scanned anyone but people I know). At school, we have dedicated IP addresses, and apparently there had been a lot of activity from my IP address checking out the ports on their computers. Only thing I can think of is that someone spoofed my IP and was portscanning them. I pleaded ignorance to him, but he wouldn't have any of it. He threatened me with obtaining a search warrant and siezing my electronic equipment.
Well, what do you do when you're staring at a guy who's probably packing heat, and knows how to use it, and who's in your face. You melt, that's what. I probably only got in about ten words for the fifteen minutes or so that he was there (oh, and a whole bunch of first syllables to words before being cut off by him).
About a week later, the school revoked my IP address, telling me that the government had requested it!!! According to the school, they knew about the episode in my room, and that I had been warned about scanning, and that the scans had actually continued after the guy in my room.
Finally:
While my IP was revoked (the school placed a filter on the routers, so noone on campus could use my IP address, not even spoof it, the routers simply wouldn't forward it, the portscans continued. There was no way for me to have perpetrated the scans. The government was back in contact with my school, warning that there would soon be legal action against the school if they didn't stop me, but the school responded that there was no way it could have been me, and suggested the possibility of a IP spoofing. The feds apparently concurred, my school appologized to me for the hassle, returned my IP, and I never heard from the feds again.
Scarry, huh? True story.
I think it comes down to whether it is coincidence. There's some SMALL possibility that it was (doesn't seem very likely, but let's never assume anything). If it wasn't, then certainly they didn't have the moral right to do what they did.
Whether or not they have a legal right, I don't know... I'm not a lawyer, least of all a Japanese lawyer, but in America, it'd proably be covered under Parody clauses of Copyright laws, which basically state that you can pretty much rob someone blind of intelectual property such as names, as long as you're doing it to make fun of them.
WOOHOO!!! About 400th Post!!!
lest someone like Amazon patents the technology instead, and then sues Google. There's nothing inherrently wrong with patents, just misuse of them. Let google patent the technology, just as long as they're willing to let others take advantage of it in the true open source flavor.