Why do you think AT&T did what it did? Buffet busters, ruin it for everyone. This isn't unique to Cricket, but clearly someone didn't bother to do their homework before placing crosshairs on a target.
no one is arguing with the limits. people are arguing about the fact that the plan is advertised as unlimited when there are in fact, several limitations.
a buffet advertised as "all you can eat" that cuts you off after two plates full shouldn't be billed as "all you can eat" it should be billed as "limit two plates per customer". if you can't handle the load, don't tell your customers that you can. that's dishonest.
all broadband service is limited. those limits should be clearly noted so that we can evaluate each providers' limitations and make an informed choice.
why> here's why: competition. no one in the telecommunications industry wants competition. so they lie to consumers so they can't make informed choices, and make them sign contracts so they can't switch once they've been screwed.
If someone breaks into my house and paints my walls and it looks great, does that mean they shouldnt be arrested for breaking in, even if i benefited from it?
legally, sure. but you'd be a complete dick for doing so, just like axl rose.
there is no truth in advertising. marketing, spin, damage control, "getting in front of" something, it's all fancy talk for lies. if they weren't lies, there wouldn't be fine print and disclaimers, but the is always fine print and there are always disclaimers and fine print.
that's what legal and marketing departments are for: to manage the creation and dissemination of lies.
corporations lie. advertisers lie. sales people lie. politicians lie. lying is what makes the world go round.
How does one "accidentally" run across child porn while surfing the 'net? I've never seen any in my 10+ years of surfing. It seems pretty far-fetched that anyone could get these images in their cache without surfing some seriously freaky sites to begin with.
All I can see "see child porn, you're a criminal" doing is *preventing* people from reporting child porn they see in the course of their internet usage.
all this will do is force everyone to use proxies, encrypted tunnels, and erasing tools to make forensics all but impossible for real cases.
the article is pretty light on the details about the "hack" are they sure it really was a hack and not some sort of fraud or other corruption?
also, if greenpeace knows that these systems are vulnerable, why not use the vulnerability to prove their point? i would think that flooding the system with millions of permits for single trees would illustrate that point nicely. funny thing about backdoors, there are seldom any controls on who can use them.
not all crime committed with a computer is hacking, not all hacking is crime with a computer. con artists commit crimes all the time with computers and do very little hacking. a corrupt employee abusing his or her position is not hacking either.
this lack of disclosure does no one any good, except those who are committing these crimes. secrecy is a big part of the hacking game: those who exploit vulnerable systems for profit do not want their methods or their targets exposed, and victims do not want their vulnerabilities or their exploitation exposed. this gives the exploiters a tremendous amount of power.
that's the great thing about real hacking: if you share what you know, it takes the power away from the real bad guys that operate in secret.
if you want to cut a deal with internet service providers to put your boxes in their data centers so you can be fewer hops from the last mile, that is fine. in fact, it might help to reduce the strain on some backbone connections, meaning better service for everyone.
it would be great if google made such an arrangement with my ISP. i would love nothing more than to connect to gmail and google docs at the full 10mbit my cable company claims i can connect at. i've never actually seen 10mbit, even on speedtests, but that's another story. i also think it would be cool for google.com to have a 10.x.x.x IP address when i ping it from my house.
google will respond faster than competitors that haven't made colocation agreements without harming the connections of competitors. this makes money for the ISP's and helps me get more benefit from a service i use everyday.
the neutrality issue is about using QOS or some other method to deliberately and artificially degrade the speed or quality of connections to non paying content or service providers, or worse, to providers that compete with the ISP's own offerings. i do not use my cable company's phone service and i would not be happy about them playing games with my SIP phone.
the problem isn't with giving higher speeds to those who are willing to pay. faster connections should cost more than slower ones. if ISPs want to sell higher bandwidth connections to their end users, that too should be fine. if my cable company could sell me a connection with a 2mbit uplink i would buy it in a minute. hell, i would gladly trade a couple of mbit/sec in download speed for an extra meg in uplink.
the problem is in discriminating against those who can't/won't pay for faster connections by introducing artificial delays or degradation in order to push competitors and small providers off of their networks. also, restricting access based on content is a bad idea. i should decide what i see, hear, and read, not the government or my ISP.
with colocation, connections are faster because there are fewer hops to be made. this is a natural rather than artificial improvement in performance.
moving servers closer (from a network topology standpoint) to the end user is not the same thing as degrading or giving priority to connections based on paid partnership.
So if Q CAD is useless in this work environment and Q CAD is the top of the line Linux CAD program that is available then of what use is Linux since all Linux does is provide an operating system for the CAD program to run under.
imagine a doctor's office whose electronic medical records system is inaccessible because the windows PCs that run the client software have been crippled by malware. i fixed that last week. how much does it cost to not see patients for two hours?
imagine your uber-cad station rendered useless by the same thing, probably on the same day because since windows is everywhere, windows vulnerabilities are everywhere too. how much does a lost day of drafting cost your company?
in both cases, there are jobs to be done that can't be done because windows is a giant bullseye on a company's back.
also keep in mind that autocad for windows is it for now, but google sketchup, autocad.com, or some "cad in the cloud" render farm setup can't be that far off. when that day comes, windows' days of being everywhere are numbered.
i was a unix system administrator for a company that designed auto parts. they had windows machines for email and office, but high end SGI workstations for engineering. in recent years, wintel machines running autocad have delivered "good enough" performance for a much lower price. when a cheaper alternative comes along, the autocad PC will go the way of the SGI octane.
pixar and ILM used to use big SGI gear and irix for their renderfarms. now it's all linux becuase the nodes are cheaper.
if you want to use windows, go ahead. if you want to pay a platoon of IT guys to fend off the hordes that seek out windows like no other operating system in history, go right ahead. if you want to replace your desktops every 2 years because of microsoft's unreasonable system resource expectations... well you get the idea.
reason #1 is that the typical nontechnical person doesn't know how to use windows to begin with. they don't know what a partition or a filesystem is and since windows came installed on their walmart emachine, they will probably never find out.
the only difference between not knowing how to use windows and not knowing how to use linux is that you don't feel alone when you don't know how you use windows. you can also call your company's help desk or pay the geek squad to fix your windows problems when you get lost, but consumer grade linux support is not a big market, yet. if you are afraid of learning, just go to your local linux user group's installfest and get one of the LUG members to install it for you.
reason #2 has been irrelevant since ubuntu. the "attitude" you are talking about comes from people emailing the kernel developers' and distro maintainers' lists with "i can haz linux" type questions. windows users don't expect direct support from bill gates, why would you expect that from linux developers?
you will get the same "attitude" on any forum, *ESPECIALLY* windows support forums if you post a new thread to the wrong group without having done at least a cursory google/forum search. that's just basic netiquette.
http://ubuntuforums.org is full of people who are completely lost and asking absolute beginner questions. the mods there are patient and will refer you to the docs that you need. good luck getting that kind of community support from a VB.net forum or a gaming forum.
if you are afriad of forums and google searches, join a LUG and learn hands on in a more humane setting.
There are a small minority of people who will search for it illegally, but I would not say 'more than likely.'
while the number might be low now, it is growing. with each new restriction of choice, reduction of availability, and with each increase in price, the number of illegal downloaders increases.
the tools keep getting easier and safer. the communities keep getting larger and better organized. the studios will continue to be more and more restrictive and controlling.
in time, the studios will have it's legitimate users register and pay for every single viewing while piracy will be as easy as typing a search term into the "omnibar" before you leave for work/school/bed and a still warm DVD will be waiting for you in the ejected tray of your DVD burner when you get home/wake up.
so it may not be "more than likely" at this moment, but each move by the media companies pushes users in that direction. it's a pretty short trip from "not likely" to "standard practice".
i'll do what i've always done since no company can seem to offer a search and download service that rivals oink or the pirate bay. i just want a pass that will stop me from being harassed by the MAFIAA. like, i pay in, register, and when the copytards come knocking they can see my registration and go hassle someone else.
i'd be willing to pay $20 or maybe even $50 a month for that kind of convenience. people that don't want to pay can run the risk if they so choose.
the pass would be voluntary, so people that don't pirate don't have to pay, and the industry already has it's snoops in place to see who is sharing what... they could do what the ASCAP people do and report what is being distributed in order to pay royalties.
this way, the people get left alone, the labels and studios can continue to be corrupt, and the artist will still get screwed. it will be business as usual for everyone involved, only this way i won't get hassled. it's win/win.
...what do fake DVDs have to do with the god damn olympics?
the in-laws of one of the american coaches were murdered by a counterfeit DVD in beijing. there was a special on dateline NBC about it called "piracy kills your parents".
counterfeit DVD's contain lead, asian bird flu, and copyright infringement. they support terrorism, bad language, and scientology. in short, they are a plague on humanity.
if it exists, there is a porn of it. there are no exceptions.
regulating pr0n is physically impossible thanks to rule 34.
so, furries are now illegal? does that mean we can hunt them now? japanese guro and tentacle porn is illegal now too? the brits should just invade japan then, it would be cheaper and easier than trying to bust people that are into it.
I am, pretty sure we did with the recent elections. While not a complete shaking out of the rug, it certainly was a good brooming.
the deal that passed was a compromise. there were two issues in the various FISA update bills:
1) legalization of warrantless wire tapping for terrorist suspects
2) retroactive immunity for the companies that participated in the warrantless wiretap program
the compromise was a NO on issue 1 and a YES on issue 2.
Re: My 2 cents, but worth .002 due to the economy.
I'm at a loss to determine how the constitution applies to wiretapping. The 4th amendment discusses place of unreasonable search and seizure.
Wire tapping goes outside the bounds of place, does it not? How is a signal considered property?
the 4th amendment says:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
how is a person secure in his person, house, papers, and effects against unreasonable search if his conversations and correspondence, electronic or otherwise, are being pen registered or actively monitored without warrants?
the 4th amendment states that a search or seizure with out a warrant is unreasonable.
all systems have had failures and therefore are not perfect. What usually works is a mixture of things that happen to be relevant at the time.
so you recognize that there is no perfect way to govern and conduct business? you claim that complex political, social, and philosophical issues cannot be summed up into soundbites?
well, that sounds pretty socialist to me. this is america hippie, we don't do that kind of thing here, so pick a side and wave your flag or go back to canada where you can hold hands and sing give peace a chance on the golden gate bridge.
business is about making big bucks by taking advantage of suckers. if you don't want to steal from suckers you are a socialist nazi terrorist.
On the post: If You Sell An Unlimited Plan, Why Are You Telling Me It Will Be Limited?
Re: Why? Here's why:
no one is arguing with the limits. people are arguing about the fact that the plan is advertised as unlimited when there are in fact, several limitations.
a buffet advertised as "all you can eat" that cuts you off after two plates full shouldn't be billed as "all you can eat" it should be billed as "limit two plates per customer". if you can't handle the load, don't tell your customers that you can. that's dishonest.
all broadband service is limited. those limits should be clearly noted so that we can evaluate each providers' limitations and make an informed choice.
why> here's why: competition. no one in the telecommunications industry wants competition. so they lie to consumers so they can't make informed choices, and make them sign contracts so they can't switch once they've been screwed.
On the post: How Many More Ways Can Axl Rose Piss Off Fans?
Re:
legally, sure. but you'd be a complete dick for doing so, just like axl rose.
On the post: If You Sell An Unlimited Plan, Why Are You Telling Me It Will Be Limited?
Whatever happened to truth in advertising?
that's what legal and marketing departments are for: to manage the creation and dissemination of lies.
corporations lie. advertisers lie. sales people lie. politicians lie. lying is what makes the world go round.
On the post: Did You Know Caching Is How Perverts Avoid Downloading?
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Other Real Problem
http://img.4chan.org/b/
CP is a running joke there.
On the post: Did You Know Caching Is How Perverts Avoid Downloading?
Re: Re: Re: The Real Problem
all this will do is force everyone to use proxies, encrypted tunnels, and erasing tools to make forensics all but impossible for real cases.
On the post: Cop Caught Slamming Cyclist To The Ground On YouTube Indicted
what was critical mass protesting?
the whole thing sounds like something Anonymous would do, only on bikes.
On the post: Wrongfully Blaming Hackers For Rainforest Deforestation
where are the details on the hack?
also, if greenpeace knows that these systems are vulnerable, why not use the vulnerability to prove their point? i would think that flooding the system with millions of permits for single trees would illustrate that point nicely. funny thing about backdoors, there are seldom any controls on who can use them.
not all crime committed with a computer is hacking, not all hacking is crime with a computer. con artists commit crimes all the time with computers and do very little hacking. a corrupt employee abusing his or her position is not hacking either.
this lack of disclosure does no one any good, except those who are committing these crimes. secrecy is a big part of the hacking game: those who exploit vulnerable systems for profit do not want their methods or their targets exposed, and victims do not want their vulnerabilities or their exploitation exposed. this gives the exploiters a tremendous amount of power.
that's the great thing about real hacking: if you share what you know, it takes the power away from the real bad guys that operate in secret.
On the post: Have The Big Internet Companies Turned Their Back On Net Neutrality?
colocation is fine, QOS is not.
it would be great if google made such an arrangement with my ISP. i would love nothing more than to connect to gmail and google docs at the full 10mbit my cable company claims i can connect at. i've never actually seen 10mbit, even on speedtests, but that's another story. i also think it would be cool for google.com to have a 10.x.x.x IP address when i ping it from my house.
google will respond faster than competitors that haven't made colocation agreements without harming the connections of competitors. this makes money for the ISP's and helps me get more benefit from a service i use everyday.
the neutrality issue is about using QOS or some other method to deliberately and artificially degrade the speed or quality of connections to non paying content or service providers, or worse, to providers that compete with the ISP's own offerings. i do not use my cable company's phone service and i would not be happy about them playing games with my SIP phone.
the problem isn't with giving higher speeds to those who are willing to pay. faster connections should cost more than slower ones. if ISPs want to sell higher bandwidth connections to their end users, that too should be fine. if my cable company could sell me a connection with a 2mbit uplink i would buy it in a minute. hell, i would gladly trade a couple of mbit/sec in download speed for an extra meg in uplink.
the problem is in discriminating against those who can't/won't pay for faster connections by introducing artificial delays or degradation in order to push competitors and small providers off of their networks. also, restricting access based on content is a bad idea. i should decide what i see, hear, and read, not the government or my ISP.
with colocation, connections are faster because there are fewer hops to be made. this is a natural rather than artificial improvement in performance.
moving servers closer (from a network topology standpoint) to the end user is not the same thing as degrading or giving priority to connections based on paid partnership.
On the post: Teacher Threatens Linux Distributor: No Software Is Free
Re:
imagine a doctor's office whose electronic medical records system is inaccessible because the windows PCs that run the client software have been crippled by malware. i fixed that last week. how much does it cost to not see patients for two hours?
imagine your uber-cad station rendered useless by the same thing, probably on the same day because since windows is everywhere, windows vulnerabilities are everywhere too. how much does a lost day of drafting cost your company?
in both cases, there are jobs to be done that can't be done because windows is a giant bullseye on a company's back.
also keep in mind that autocad for windows is it for now, but google sketchup, autocad.com, or some "cad in the cloud" render farm setup can't be that far off. when that day comes, windows' days of being everywhere are numbered.
i was a unix system administrator for a company that designed auto parts. they had windows machines for email and office, but high end SGI workstations for engineering. in recent years, wintel machines running autocad have delivered "good enough" performance for a much lower price. when a cheaper alternative comes along, the autocad PC will go the way of the SGI octane.
pixar and ILM used to use big SGI gear and irix for their renderfarms. now it's all linux becuase the nodes are cheaper.
if you want to use windows, go ahead. if you want to pay a platoon of IT guys to fend off the hordes that seek out windows like no other operating system in history, go right ahead. if you want to replace your desktops every 2 years because of microsoft's unreasonable system resource expectations... well you get the idea.
On the post: Teacher Threatens Linux Distributor: No Software Is Free
Re: Cyber-lynching in progress
the only difference between not knowing how to use windows and not knowing how to use linux is that you don't feel alone when you don't know how you use windows. you can also call your company's help desk or pay the geek squad to fix your windows problems when you get lost, but consumer grade linux support is not a big market, yet. if you are afraid of learning, just go to your local linux user group's installfest and get one of the LUG members to install it for you.
reason #2 has been irrelevant since ubuntu. the "attitude" you are talking about comes from people emailing the kernel developers' and distro maintainers' lists with "i can haz linux" type questions. windows users don't expect direct support from bill gates, why would you expect that from linux developers?
you will get the same "attitude" on any forum, *ESPECIALLY* windows support forums if you post a new thread to the wrong group without having done at least a cursory google/forum search. that's just basic netiquette.
http://ubuntuforums.org is full of people who are completely lost and asking absolute beginner questions. the mods there are patient and will refer you to the docs that you need. good luck getting that kind of community support from a VB.net forum or a gaming forum.
if you are afriad of forums and google searches, join a LUG and learn hands on in a more humane setting.
On the post: Is Rickrolling Devaluing Your Social Currency?
Re: Oh Crap
On the post: Hollywood Removing Hit Movies From Apple, Netflix
Re:
while the number might be low now, it is growing. with each new restriction of choice, reduction of availability, and with each increase in price, the number of illegal downloaders increases.
the tools keep getting easier and safer. the communities keep getting larger and better organized. the studios will continue to be more and more restrictive and controlling.
in time, the studios will have it's legitimate users register and pay for every single viewing while piracy will be as easy as typing a search term into the "omnibar" before you leave for work/school/bed and a still warm DVD will be waiting for you in the ejected tray of your DVD burner when you get home/wake up.
so it may not be "more than likely" at this moment, but each move by the media companies pushes users in that direction. it's a pretty short trip from "not likely" to "standard practice".
On the post: Why A Music Tax Is A Bad Idea
i want a "piracy pass"
i'd be willing to pay $20 or maybe even $50 a month for that kind of convenience. people that don't want to pay can run the risk if they so choose.
the pass would be voluntary, so people that don't pirate don't have to pay, and the industry already has it's snoops in place to see who is sharing what... they could do what the ASCAP people do and report what is being distributed in order to pay royalties.
this way, the people get left alone, the labels and studios can continue to be corrupt, and the artist will still get screwed. it will be business as usual for everyone involved, only this way i won't get hassled. it's win/win.
On the post: Should DVD Counterfeiters Fear Police Or The Internet More?
Re:
the in-laws of one of the american coaches were murdered by a counterfeit DVD in beijing. there was a special on dateline NBC about it called "piracy kills your parents".
counterfeit DVD's contain lead, asian bird flu, and copyright infringement. they support terrorism, bad language, and scientology. in short, they are a plague on humanity.
On the post: Is Putting Change.gov Under Creative Commons Really A Big Deal?
Re: They want to control the content
On the post: UK Says You Can't Have Some Kinds Of Porn, But It Determines What Kinds
what about rule 34?
http://xkcd.com/305
http://everything2.com/title/Rule%252034
http://www.urbandictionary .com/define.php?term=Rule%2034
if it exists, there is a porn of it. there are no exceptions.
regulating pr0n is physically impossible thanks to rule 34.
so, furries are now illegal? does that mean we can hunt them now? japanese guro and tentacle porn is illegal now too? the brits should just invade japan then, it would be cheaper and easier than trying to bust people that are into it.
On the post: Judge Hears Arguments Over Telco Immunity
Re:
the deal that passed was a compromise. there were two issues in the various FISA update bills:
1) legalization of warrantless wire tapping for terrorist suspects
2) retroactive immunity for the companies that participated in the warrantless wiretap program
the compromise was a NO on issue 1 and a YES on issue 2.
both mccain and obama agreed on that compromise:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9982898-7.html
On the post: Judge Hears Arguments Over Telco Immunity
Re: My 2 cents, but worth .002 due to the economy.
Wire tapping goes outside the bounds of place, does it not? How is a signal considered property?
the 4th amendment says:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
how is a person secure in his person, house, papers, and effects against unreasonable search if his conversations and correspondence, electronic or otherwise, are being pen registered or actively monitored without warrants?
the 4th amendment states that a search or seizure with out a warrant is unreasonable.
On the post: Free Is Not Socialism
Re: Re: Re: And in summary
people who can't recognize sarcasm are socialist.
On the post: Free Is Not Socialism
Re: And in summary
so you recognize that there is no perfect way to govern and conduct business? you claim that complex political, social, and philosophical issues cannot be summed up into soundbites?
well, that sounds pretty socialist to me. this is america hippie, we don't do that kind of thing here, so pick a side and wave your flag or go back to canada where you can hold hands and sing give peace a chance on the golden gate bridge.
business is about making big bucks by taking advantage of suckers. if you don't want to steal from suckers you are a socialist nazi terrorist.
Next >>