a) run an openSSH or VNC server, and b) write a cronjob/Scheduled Task to shoot a ping at some IP address you control periodically whenever IP connectivity is present.
This will only work if your computer appears to be usable by a thief without wiping the OS. If the thief is dumb, he'll at least try and get on the Internet with it, and then you can swoop in and pwn him.
Hey now. You'll find I'm usually the first to make fun of the Holocaust.
Anyhow, I hate to be the one to tell you, but insults comprise 98% of all Internet traffic which isn't consumed by porn. If a comment from a retard with a chip on his shoulder about an OS has sufficient power to provoke you to type 6 paragraphs of careful, even-handed vitriol, I shudder to think how little spare time even a single visit to YouTube would leave you.
Those cables have to terminate somewhere, and in order for them to connect to the Internet, they'll have to terminate at a local carrier's exchange.
BIG companies can lay enough cables to hook up to multiple carriers (the great expense involved in this is a direct result of the local-monopoly arrangement of telcos at present) and I have no doubt that Google could decide for themselves that Comcast is a crappy carrier and light up some of their own cross-country fibers to get packets from one side of the Comcast network to the other without buying transport from them. But no small company will ever have that luxury unless the big players are forced (against their own profitability) to act in good faith.
Metcalfe's law, for one thing. A small company will inevitably have to depend on its competitors' cooperation to get into the broadband game. Peering and paid-transit agreements will always favor the big guy because he controls more endpoints, and so the incumbent carriers are always in a rather advantageous conflict of interests: if their competitors are also their customers, then they may sabotage their competitors' efforts more or less at will.
I administrate quite a few small-town cableco Internet services, and I can tell you firsthand that AT&T always drags its feet in repairing circuit outages in those locales where it offers a competing residential Internet service. Increasingly, those cablecos are getting set up for failure and then bought out by the same providers whose connectivity they were reselling in the first place. And none of this is good for consumers.
STEAL is an awfully strong word, and one which comes with all sorts of connotations which hold in the case of real-world meatspace ownership but not in digital media.
Framing the debate in this way will only serve to poison the well when there are real, legitimate rights that need to be discussed.
If you honestly need a primer about the things which are at stake that do NOT involve piracy, then you probably can't do better than looking up a Larry Lessig lecture or two on YouTube.
Regardless, the "industry needs to change" rhetoric is real. Whether you trust the motives of the people advancing these arguments or not, (sure, a lot of them just want stuff for free) the point remains that the big players in the content industry wagered their livelihoods on certain engineering and technical ideas (like scarcity) which are simply no longer true. For their business to continue, the rest of us will have to live with legislating away all of the abundance which digital technology could be providing us.
Copyright or not, that is not something I'm willing to live with.
Slashdot Mirror
Quite right. Otherwise there'd be a lunar and a solar eclipse every month.
Don't set it off though. Wait for the thief to try and fly somewhere.
Hence the "appears to be usable by a thief without wiping the OS" bit.
;)
I leave a guest account, with clear instructions on how to get in and use it. Honeypot systems are never foolproof, but neither are fools
That's a spoon.
Parent, not grandparent.
a) run an openSSH or VNC server, and
b) write a cronjob/Scheduled Task to shoot a ping at some IP address you control periodically whenever IP connectivity is present.
This will only work if your computer appears to be usable by a thief without wiping the OS. If the thief is dumb, he'll at least try and get on the Internet with it, and then you can swoop in and pwn him.
do not click.
do not click.
Fixed.
And let me take this opportunity to point out OMG LOL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaGgpGLxLQw
That sound you just heard was the collective orgasms of the entire RichardDawkins.net forum membership.
That's fair. I had the idea that the argument was starting to matter to you or something. Crazy right? ;)
Hey now. You'll find I'm usually the first to make fun of the Holocaust.
Anyhow, I hate to be the one to tell you, but insults comprise 98% of all Internet traffic which isn't consumed by porn. If a comment from a retard with a chip on his shoulder about an OS has sufficient power to provoke you to type 6 paragraphs of careful, even-handed vitriol, I shudder to think how little spare time even a single visit to YouTube would leave you.
Offensive? Offensive? Is software allegiance an ethnic group, complete with identity politics and racial epithets? Jesus Christ. Relax.
You must have missed the typo. 1440x90 is a long, extremely thin rectangle. I don't think Windows will display that out of the box either.
You're thinking of "borken."
Have you ever met an average Internet user?
;)
It's not as big a problem as you'd think.
Couldn't be a Scientologist. Their entire business model is about selling the information they're privy to.
I would like to see /. adopt a new Library-Of-Congress unit of money to keep everything in perspective: Apache helicopters.
For instance: "This new educational program is valued at 3/10 of an Apache."
what the hell are you even talking about, AC? Do you have a response to my post or not?
Those cables have to terminate somewhere, and in order for them to connect to the Internet, they'll have to terminate at a local carrier's exchange.
BIG companies can lay enough cables to hook up to multiple carriers (the great expense involved in this is a direct result of the local-monopoly arrangement of telcos at present) and I have no doubt that Google could decide for themselves that Comcast is a crappy carrier and light up some of their own cross-country fibers to get packets from one side of the Comcast network to the other without buying transport from them. But no small company will ever have that luxury unless the big players are forced (against their own profitability) to act in good faith.
Metcalfe's law, for one thing. A small company will inevitably have to depend on its competitors' cooperation to get into the broadband game. Peering and paid-transit agreements will always favor the big guy because he controls more endpoints, and so the incumbent carriers are always in a rather advantageous conflict of interests: if their competitors are also their customers, then they may sabotage their competitors' efforts more or less at will.
I administrate quite a few small-town cableco Internet services, and I can tell you firsthand that AT&T always drags its feet in repairing circuit outages in those locales where it offers a competing residential Internet service. Increasingly, those cablecos are getting set up for failure and then bought out by the same providers whose connectivity they were reselling in the first place. And none of this is good for consumers.
STEAL is an awfully strong word, and one which comes with all sorts of connotations which hold in the case of real-world meatspace ownership but not in digital media.
Framing the debate in this way will only serve to poison the well when there are real, legitimate rights that need to be discussed.
If you honestly need a primer about the things which are at stake that do NOT involve piracy, then you probably can't do better than looking up a Larry Lessig lecture or two on YouTube.
Regardless, the "industry needs to change" rhetoric is real. Whether you trust the motives of the people advancing these arguments or not, (sure, a lot of them just want stuff for free) the point remains that the big players in the content industry wagered their livelihoods on certain engineering and technical ideas (like scarcity) which are simply no longer true. For their business to continue, the rest of us will have to live with legislating away all of the abundance which digital technology could be providing us.
Copyright or not, that is not something I'm willing to live with.
As it turns out, money will do the job just as well.
It was. That's why all major US cities are wired for last-mile fiber optics, just like the ILECs promised to do!