All that said, the content industry (e.g. RIAA and MPAA) has made it hard for colleges to run their networks as well. So you can put some of the blame there too.
Incredibly hard. To say that they've forced universities ( at least here in Australia ) to perform witch-hunts regularly is probably putting it lightly. But here, of course, laws are different - and education facilities are not covered by safe harbor.
That's an immense over-reaction, and illustrates the "I pay, give me what i want" attitude which does not score points and makes any sort of discourse adversarial from the get-go. Well done! Gold star for you!
The long and the short of the reality here is - if you, as a student, are asking me to take on your non-academia impacting website filter problem by appealing to my boss to get a change approved ( which then ties *my* name to it, and my boss' too for approving it ) and implemented ( which, may involve out of hours work depending on if such things require it ) then yes, you need to show a little fucking intelligence when it comes to asking me to do it. If you come at me with that attitude then I am going to dismiss your problem and then forget who you are, not because I'm a jerk but because I'm more worried about service delivery for the 12 odd thousand other faculty students that want to Get Stuff Done (tm) and not just those who complain about not getting their internet lulz. If the only reason you've got is "because I said so", then that's just not good enough.
If you come to me saying "The website slashdot.org has been unfairly blocked under the reason pornography, could you check it out?" then I will at least have some sort evidence to back up any sort of claim that the solution that we as IT have in place, may not be appropriately doing its job. If your request is additional to a bunch more that claim there's classification errors going on - I have a strong case to review what's going on and perhaps knock down the paranoia level if there's such a device or bit of software that controls it, or at least try and effect change.
As a member of an IT systems admin team for a faculty we've often got specific mandates which services we must restrict, and to what end. What you may also be up against, other than 'unprivileged' access - is politics. Students do Naughty Stuff (tm) - that's just a fact that keeps on proving itself true time and time again. Even if you can speak for you, your friends, or your entire course - I can bet dollars to donuts that there's someone out there trying to do something shifty. Case in point: I was seriously asked to relax the restrictions on banning Steam so a student could "download 10 or 15 gig so i didn't have to do it over dial-up". On-campus living - sure, i can see where restrictions like that may diminish any sort of sanity saving software platform ( Valve fan \o/ ), but I'm not going to open up a faculty network just so you can play games. It's an education facility, not your personal high speed connection to the 'net. If you were a postgraduate student researching something that required access - then by all means get your supervisor to approve your request and I'll be more than happy to make it happen.
That being said - outline a clear case of why you need certain things re-classified and you may have a better case to work with. I am not suggesting that this tactic will work - as there's probably more to the story ( see - plug and play filter lists/software/appliances which remove the need to dedicate an entire FTE to putting classifications on traffic going out ) than you really know, but it will certainly stop you from seeming like a whinging student and more like an intellectual who is using sound reasoning. Hell - if you are able to find clear, repeated examples of wrongful clasification of websites, you may be able to enact a reconsideration of what's being used to deny you access or relax the level in which things are blocked.
5 drive bays, two gigabit ethernet connectors, runs linux on the backend and the community is growing as far as custom hacks. Software raid, and provides iSCSI, samba, NFS and all sorts of other goodies.
"If they know that they could fix the problems later on, they could beat the competition to market."" Great, just what we need - hardware suppliers being encouraged to release buggy versions in the guise of fully working products.
Hasnt the lessons that have been learnt by the software industry had *any* impact?
No, the real shame is that the majority of the world tends to look to the US for guidance. Changes in which the US has tends to reflect in a number of other places, too.
My university campus (there are at least 3 in this city alone), I actually feel at a significant disadvantage because I am a local english speaking caucasian. The majority of tutors and students are either asian, or from pakistan/indian regions. This leaves tutors difficult to understand, and the overseas students better able to communicate as they can (and often do) prefer to speak their native tongue as opposed to speaking english.
The classic next move is to round up the immigrants into internment camps - which I see the Australians are already doing, so they seem to know the game plan.
You seem to have your story wrong.
Illegal Immigrants caught trying to enter the country, often on crude, massively overpacked boats are contained within immigration camps while their claim is processed. We cannot as a country afford to house so many immigrants, which is why such measures were taken to contain them.
And before the cry of "why dont you process them quicker" is made, perhaps a thought should be taken as to why these people attempting to immigrate didnt make an official request for such in the first place - because they were trying to avoid it, hence the boats.
Finding a job in this city is abysmal. For each job, there's nearly always a requirement of this built-up peice of paper from some tertiary educational institution. Getting past that is the easy bit, of course not mentioning that said peice of paper is almost worthless, and doesnt really give you any real skillset of any sort. Though, it does teach you how to learn ( the only worthwhilte part, imo ).
On top of this degree requirement, you have to make it past recruiters. Those interviews are the pits. Having to go via some third party who arent *really* interested in finding you a job, just making sure they get a payment from their client who has the position open. These recruiters put such rediculous standards on pissy little jobs, that any 'graduate' or 'entry level' job advertised has at least a few years experience wanted.
Its a classic chicken and the egg. To get a job, you need a bit of experience. To get experience, you need a job. The only real way to break this cycle is to whore yourself out to some helpdesk job till someone decides that your mandetory "get used to life" sentence has been served, and takes pity on you enough to give you a go.
I'd be interested to see how many hardware manafacturers have gone to the effort to providing 64-bit versions of their drivers.
It's clear that obviously some drivers MUST have 64-bit drivers, and even Nvidia have provided a 64-bit set of their drivers, with gamer kiddies driving most of the new hardware blitz these days, but how common is it? And if should driver support for most prepherials is lacking, what is the point of installing XP64 in the first place?
Marginal benefits, but with less hardware support. Doesnt seem like a very good reason to switch, to me.
Those hits may be smaller, but the CONTENT is larger. How big is your average flash game? 500kb? 700kb? Those hits could easily outweigh the cumulative bandwidth of the rest of the hits combined.
Actually, a good peice of advice from my Physics lecturer while we were discussing filters for telescopes and whatnot - if you do want to venture out and take a squiz at the event, failing everything else, a pair of welding goggles will do the trick if you wish to look directly at the sun.
FYI, one of the reasons that EFnet is the way it is ( and has been for many a long year ) is because it DOESNT have those features. While I must agree with the invisible hub's, hostmask mirroring/masking and NickServ/ChanServ are 2 things that has distinguished EFnet apart from the rest.
As an Australian, I think the visable effects of EFnet being hit are compounded: the fact that being an Australian automatically removes 70% of possible servers away to connect to - we're just not allowed to connect. I know this must sound like a whine ( and i'll get modded down for it ) but stop and think that its not all rosey and peachy for everyone ALL of the time.
I am saddend to see that this type of activity is still occuring. DDOS on IRC networks just because you dont like someone ( or some group ), hacking of IRC networks just to let off steam and to teach "lessons" - its going to be the ruin of EFnet. It already is well on its way to being so. I've been on EFnet for a good 8 years, part of the massive exodus of Australians from AustNet to EFnet, the growth of EFnet as a small infant, to the glorious network that it was, and now I bare witness to its slow death.
EFnet was ( and in some ways, still is ) the creme of the crop of IRC networks. Everyone who was anyone could be found there. I'd wager that some could credit some of their work due to conversations on it. And to be sappy, the amount of close relationships ( or even more - IRC marraiges! ) that have been forged, EFnet proves itself to be a valuable resource, despite its pitfalls.
It's one matter to just say 'move to another network', but its another to manage to find somewhere as central as EFnet is.
Just because we havent heard of any exploits for OpenBSD, doesnt mean they dont exist.
I am just weary of the fact that there may be script kiddies out there with exploits for things that noone has found yet. This brings up the possibility of all OpenBSD releases being affected, purely because we dont know whats being exploited, and unless there are some extremely savvy systems administrators out there triple-checking their filesystems, and 24-hour surveilance ( overtime + ( time + 1/2 )! ), i doubt we'd know how.
Just food for thought, for the masses..
Restrictions on services on Aussie cable
on
Smart Routers
·
· Score: 1
The kind of enforcement of what services you are able to run are already here in Australia. The current broadband carriers ( both of them - we have only 2, with DSL still being introduced ) require you to not run any type of service from your connection as part of the AUP ( Acceptable Usage Policy ), and as such, is a ground for termination.
A lot of people are quite annoyed with this AUP, as by default, unicies run the type of services from scratch.
While I can understand the need for the ISP's to restrict what their clients do, and i respect their distaste of 31337 kiddies running 0-day warez ftp sites on their network, I find it highly vexing that I have to firewall myself from my own ISP against me.
Here in Australia, we unfortunately experienced the down-sides of cabling in tubing. One of our major teclos - Telstra had their pipes to Indonesia/Asia cut by pirates earlier this year, causing widespread chaos across the country.
The routing turmoil it created was akin to diverting a raging river down your house's drainpipes..
Rumors were being spread that Telstra had prior knowledge that this was going to happen, threats were made, and they passed them off as an extortion attempt.
What are the moral/fiscal implications of this? Surely such a major telco/ISP/Bandwidth carrier should pay more attention to such threats, and make sure that they dont come to fruit. Not only did THEIR customers suffer, but rather the whole country did.
Imagine a mishap with this type of tubing, sometimes Oops! just cant cut it..
The FBI 2002 budget request includes more than $13 million for Internet surveillance, $2.5 million more than this year. Most of the new money would go for research and development.
This so-called research and development, can it be really called that?
Etherpeek is a commercially available network monitoring program that is far less precise in filtering the information collected.
What's going on here? Are the FBI using their budgeted money for OTHER peoples products?
The article states that the FBI's Carnivore system has been officially used ( insert paranoia here ) a measly 13 times, with Etherpeek, 11 times.
If Etherpeek is being defined as far less precise, why arent they coming out with new fang-dangled software packages that are better, rather than purchase external software?.
I would have thought that the FBI would be a prime example for the need for in-house software, as their needs will be very specific to the tasks they perform.
Slashdot Mirror
All that said, the content industry (e.g. RIAA and MPAA) has made it hard for colleges to run their networks as well. So you can put some of the blame there too.
Incredibly hard. To say that they've forced universities ( at least here in Australia ) to perform witch-hunts regularly is probably putting it lightly. But here, of course, laws are different - and education facilities are not covered by safe harbor.
That's an immense over-reaction, and illustrates the "I pay, give me what i want" attitude which does not score points and makes any sort of discourse adversarial from the get-go. Well done! Gold star for you!
The long and the short of the reality here is - if you, as a student, are asking me to take on your non-academia impacting website filter problem by appealing to my boss to get a change approved ( which then ties *my* name to it, and my boss' too for approving it ) and implemented ( which, may involve out of hours work depending on if such things require it ) then yes, you need to show a little fucking intelligence when it comes to asking me to do it. If you come at me with that attitude then I am going to dismiss your problem and then forget who you are, not because I'm a jerk but because I'm more worried about service delivery for the 12 odd thousand other faculty students that want to Get Stuff Done (tm) and not just those who complain about not getting their internet lulz. If the only reason you've got is "because I said so", then that's just not good enough.
If you come to me saying "The website slashdot.org has been unfairly blocked under the reason pornography, could you check it out?" then I will at least have some sort evidence to back up any sort of claim that the solution that we as IT have in place, may not be appropriately doing its job. If your request is additional to a bunch more that claim there's classification errors going on - I have a strong case to review what's going on and perhaps knock down the paranoia level if there's such a device or bit of software that controls it, or at least try and effect change.
As a member of an IT systems admin team for a faculty we've often got specific mandates which services we must restrict, and to what end. What you may also be up against, other than 'unprivileged' access - is politics. Students do Naughty Stuff (tm) - that's just a fact that keeps on proving itself true time and time again. Even if you can speak for you, your friends, or your entire course - I can bet dollars to donuts that there's someone out there trying to do something shifty. Case in point: I was seriously asked to relax the restrictions on banning Steam so a student could "download 10 or 15 gig so i didn't have to do it over dial-up". On-campus living - sure, i can see where restrictions like that may diminish any sort of sanity saving software platform ( Valve fan \o/ ), but I'm not going to open up a faculty network just so you can play games. It's an education facility, not your personal high speed connection to the 'net. If you were a postgraduate student researching something that required access - then by all means get your supervisor to approve your request and I'll be more than happy to make it happen.
That being said - outline a clear case of why you need certain things re-classified and you may have a better case to work with. I am not suggesting that this tactic will work - as there's probably more to the story ( see - plug and play filter lists/software/appliances which remove the need to dedicate an entire FTE to putting classifications on traffic going out ) than you really know, but it will certainly stop you from seeming like a whinging student and more like an intellectual who is using sound reasoning. Hell - if you are able to find clear, repeated examples of wrongful clasification of websites, you may be able to enact a reconsideration of what's being used to deny you access or relax the level in which things are blocked.
Of course, they might not care. Who knows?
I have a Thecus n5200.
5 drive bays, two gigabit ethernet connectors, runs linux on the backend and the community is growing as far as custom hacks. Software raid, and provides iSCSI, samba, NFS and all sorts of other goodies.
Hasnt the lessons that have been learnt by the software industry had *any* impact?
No, the real shame is that the majority of the world tends to look to the US for guidance. Changes in which the US has tends to reflect in a number of other places, too.
My university campus (there are at least 3 in this city alone), I actually feel at a significant disadvantage because I am a local english speaking caucasian. The majority of tutors and students are either asian, or from pakistan/indian regions. This leaves tutors difficult to understand, and the overseas students better able to communicate as they can (and often do) prefer to speak their native tongue as opposed to speaking english.
The classic next move is to round up the immigrants into internment camps - which I see the Australians are already doing, so they seem to know the game plan.
You seem to have your story wrong.
Illegal Immigrants caught trying to enter the country, often on crude, massively overpacked boats are contained within immigration camps while their claim is processed. We cannot as a country afford to house so many immigrants, which is why such measures were taken to contain them.
And before the cry of "why dont you process them quicker" is made, perhaps a thought should be taken as to why these people attempting to immigrate didnt make an official request for such in the first place - because they were trying to avoid it, hence the boats.
Disclaimer: I am a graduate, also in Melbourne.
Finding a job in this city is abysmal. For each job, there's nearly always a requirement of this built-up peice of paper from some tertiary educational institution. Getting past that is the easy bit, of course not mentioning that said peice of paper is almost worthless, and doesnt really give you any real skillset of any sort. Though, it does teach you how to learn ( the only worthwhilte part, imo ).
On top of this degree requirement, you have to make it past recruiters. Those interviews are the pits. Having to go via some third party who arent *really* interested in finding you a job, just making sure they get a payment from their client who has the position open. These recruiters put such rediculous standards on pissy little jobs, that any 'graduate' or 'entry level' job advertised has at least a few years experience wanted.
Its a classic chicken and the egg. To get a job, you need a bit of experience. To get experience, you need a job. The only real way to break this cycle is to whore yourself out to some helpdesk job till someone decides that your mandetory "get used to life" sentence has been served, and takes pity on you enough to give you a go.
* Spyware that forbids detection by third party software
* Spyware that forbids removal by third party software
I'd be interested to see how many hardware manafacturers have gone to the effort to providing 64-bit versions of their drivers.
It's clear that obviously some drivers MUST have 64-bit drivers, and even Nvidia have provided a 64-bit set of their drivers, with gamer kiddies driving most of the new hardware blitz these days, but how common is it? And if should driver support for most prepherials is lacking, what is the point of installing XP64 in the first place?
Marginal benefits, but with less hardware support. Doesnt seem like a very good reason to switch, to me.
In response to 2)..
Those hits may be smaller, but the CONTENT is larger. How big is your average flash game? 500kb? 700kb? Those hits could easily outweigh the cumulative bandwidth of the rest of the hits combined.
Actually, a good peice of advice from my Physics lecturer while we were discussing filters for telescopes and whatnot - if you do want to venture out and take a squiz at the event, failing everything else, a pair of welding goggles will do the trick if you wish to look directly at the sun.
FYI, one of the reasons that EFnet is the way it is ( and has been for many a long year ) is because it DOESNT have those features. While I must agree with the invisible hub's, hostmask mirroring/masking and NickServ/ChanServ are 2 things that has distinguished EFnet apart from the rest.
As an Australian, I think the visable effects of EFnet being hit are compounded: the fact that being an Australian automatically removes 70% of possible servers away to connect to - we're just not allowed to connect. I know this must sound like a whine ( and i'll get modded down for it ) but stop and think that its not all rosey and peachy for everyone ALL of the time.
I am saddend to see that this type of activity is still occuring. DDOS on IRC networks just because you dont like someone ( or some group ), hacking of IRC networks just to let off steam and to teach "lessons" - its going to be the ruin of EFnet. It already is well on its way to being so. I've been on EFnet for a good 8 years, part of the massive exodus of Australians from AustNet to EFnet, the growth of EFnet as a small infant, to the glorious network that it was, and now I bare witness to its slow death.
EFnet was ( and in some ways, still is ) the creme of the crop of IRC networks. Everyone who was anyone could be found there. I'd wager that some could credit some of their work due to conversations on it. And to be sappy, the amount of close relationships ( or even more - IRC marraiges! ) that have been forged, EFnet proves itself to be a valuable resource, despite its pitfalls.
It's one matter to just say 'move to another network', but its another to manage to find somewhere as central as EFnet is.
Hail Eris!
I hope that this doesnt mean that when we seen those cute ( and freakin' big ) diplodocus', it cant morph into a Velociraptor and rip us apart.
Just because we havent heard of any exploits for OpenBSD, doesnt mean they dont exist.
I am just weary of the fact that there may be script kiddies out there with exploits for things that noone has found yet. This brings up the possibility of all OpenBSD releases being affected, purely because we dont know whats being exploited, and unless there are some extremely savvy systems administrators out there triple-checking their filesystems, and 24-hour surveilance ( overtime + ( time + 1/2 )! ), i doubt we'd know how.
Just food for thought, for the masses..
The kind of enforcement of what services you are able to run are already here in Australia. The current broadband carriers ( both of them - we have only 2, with DSL still being introduced ) require you to not run any type of service from your connection as part of the AUP ( Acceptable Usage Policy ), and as such, is a ground for termination.
A lot of people are quite annoyed with this AUP, as by default, unicies run the type of services from scratch.
While I can understand the need for the ISP's to restrict what their clients do, and i respect their distaste of 31337 kiddies running 0-day warez ftp sites on their network, I find it highly vexing that I have to firewall myself from my own ISP against me.
Here in Australia, we unfortunately experienced the down-sides of cabling in tubing. One of our major teclos - Telstra had their pipes to Indonesia/Asia cut by pirates earlier this year, causing widespread chaos across the country.
The routing turmoil it created was akin to diverting a raging river down your house's drainpipes..
Rumors were being spread that Telstra had prior knowledge that this was going to happen, threats were made, and they passed them off as an extortion attempt.
What are the moral/fiscal implications of this? Surely such a major telco/ISP/Bandwidth carrier should pay more attention to such threats, and make sure that they dont come to fruit. Not only did THEIR customers suffer, but rather the whole country did.
Imagine a mishap with this type of tubing, sometimes Oops! just cant cut it..
The FBI 2002 budget request includes more than $13 million for Internet surveillance, $2.5 million more than this year. Most of the new money would go for research and development.
This so-called research and development, can it be really called that?
Etherpeek is a commercially available network monitoring program that is far less precise in filtering the information collected.
What's going on here? Are the FBI using their budgeted money for OTHER peoples products?
The article states that the FBI's Carnivore system has been officially used ( insert paranoia here ) a measly 13 times, with Etherpeek, 11 times.
If Etherpeek is being defined as far less precise, why arent they coming out with new fang-dangled software packages that are better, rather than purchase external software?.
I would have thought that the FBI would be a prime example for the need for in-house software, as their needs will be very specific to the tasks they perform.