I'm not condoning the actions (or inaction) of people that result in private/personal information being broadcast over wifi.. But, consider that most routers are setup insecure by default AND the people they are targeted to generally are NOT geeks like us, it's reasonable to assume that the people do NOT know that their information is publicly accessible.

I'm not going to put out an analogy, but keep in mind all of yours included someone actively giving out their information.

With these incidents via wifi, the people passively gave it out their information. They likely had no idea until this google thing, and even MORE likely is most people that google got packets from STILL don't know. Why? Because they're not geeks like us, and as such, likely don't even read the stories. Even if they did read the story on what google did, and how badly people's routers are set up, they probably wouldn't think it even applies to them.

Luckily, my first point is getting redressed. I know new linksys routers support a secure setup mechanism, and attempts to set the wep/wpa level to the highest it can and remain compatible with the laptop/device used to set it up. But there's still a long ways to go before the general non-geek populace understands what this jargon means for them.

No. Technically it is spoofing. Every network adapter has a unique address assigned to it, typically stored in some firmware within the NIC itself. The whole purpose is to make that particular interface globally identifiable.

Now, if you change your NIC's MAC to someone ELSE'S MAC, you are spoofing their MAC. IE, you are pretending that your NIC is in fact someone else's, even though it's not. For the sole purpose of attempting to gain access while masquerading as the other device.

That's pretty much the definition of spoofing. Here's a summary definition or two:

Definition of Spoof:

So, what you describe is not spoofing? I think so.

Yea, you really should be modded up.

Mythbusters are NOT scientifically going about replicating experiments to try to reproduce conditions. They're trying to sell entertainment, and as often as not get things half assed or totally wrong.

Noone should be using Mythbusters as a gauge to tell if something is possible or not.

As someone who runs a small ISP, it's really not hard to tell the difference between botnet and P2P activity. Some things to check for. It'd be better as a flowchart, but I'll just make a list:

1) Is it mostly outgoing traffic? P2P does upload, but mostly botnets ONLY upload. So is the traffic lopsided like this?

2) Is it hitting sequential or seemingly random masses of IP blocks (>100 or so)?

3) Is the port fairly uniform or random?

4) Is it TCP or UDP?

Just with those four criteria, and with something like trafshow just to see the connection states RT, you can (with experience) VERY easily discern if large activity is legitimate downloading of movies (Netflix, Hulu, Youtube is ALL download from 1-2 hosts). Bittorrent (Normally synchronous U/D, but even if lopsided, connections tend to be in the reasonable 30-120 or so host connections), or Botnet (Computer is spewing out to massive IP blocks at random, with little/no incoming data on the connection).

* If any of that traffic is with the normal mail ports ( 25, 465, 587, 110, 143, 993, 995) AND you're seeing buttloads of connections, then they're infected.

* If you start seeing totally random things that vaguely resemble portscans (Lots of hosts, same/similar ports, lost of unreachable/ no return packs), they're infected. ... Etc.

This isn't really rocket science, it's fairly easy to setup a IDS to detect this, and warn/slam the brake on this crap. And, as a small ISP, the LAST thing you need is to be shitlisted on a bazillion blacklists, some of which (SORBS especially) are virtually impossible to get off of without being extorted.

As a small ISP, I'd rather lose one customer that can't get their shit together than lose 15 because I didn't terminate that one and got blacklisted.

You're not alone. I remember actually downloading LOD and playing it as a stand-alone RPG, as well as playing it via the local BBS. I'm really suprised more people didn't play it. Was definitely one of the best door games out there.

It's actually abit better than steam in that you can have two computers sitting next to each other, BOTH logged into Impulse and play games off your Impulse account. They both have their pros and cons, but I tend to lean more towards Impulse because of it's tendency to just leave me alone.

Also, with Impulse it often just installs the game with the client. You just run the game like normal to actually play it. I'm sure with steam you could do the same thing, but you'd have to dig around for the actual app within your steam install.

Or put another way: I've never, under any circumstance NOT been able to play games I got from Impulse. (Offline, on a second computer, while my son is logged in with my account on my other comp, etc). Unlike steam which wants me to always log on (Or incredibly frequently anyways), and if, god forbid, my steam client on my other computer logs me in automagically, I get kicked off on the other one.

I think any gamers who take one incident and say "This tiny problem is the ONE reason!" are liars. Or have some bizarro pathology that I've never seen in normal people.

Really? Just because NWN had a problem with it's DRM you haven''t bought ANY games since then (Aside from the casual games, which also have problems with their DRM)?

@GP Really? Just because MW4's DRM didn't work with your particular setup you're so jaded that you've never bought another game since? Really?

I call BS. Huge piles of flaming, stinking BS. But nice stories. :)

You don't HAVE to install the updates automagically. You can, actually, tell it "No thanks, I'd like to not update my game".

I'm just guessing here, but I am and have been an entrepreneur, having run a successful local business for 10 years. I'd think, if anything, what killed them was the pricing. Don't get me wrong, I love F/OSS (FBSD/Linux on my servers, Ubuntu on my desktops, hell I even game on Linux machines).

But you can't really run a competitive business when your competitor's things are 1) easier to acquire, 2) work on a larger range of systems, and 3) And most importantly, when your prices are always at least 200-1000% higher than competition's.

Don't believe me? Look up some random handful of the games on there. Then go to GoG.com, steam, impulse, gamersgate, and check out the prices there. Then, if you're really thrifty, go look them up on amazon, ebay, etc (For hardcopies), I'm sure you'll find EVEN CHEAPER prices there. Hell, some games are as cheap as $0.99. Less than a dollar, and LGP wants to charge $20-60? That's why they're dead, if they are dead. No sane person would pay exorbitant prices for games that are at least 10-15 years old and can be had at a fraction of the price.

For that price difference, if I REALLY wanted to support F/OSS, I'd buy the $0.99 version off ebay, run it under WINE and send the other $19.01-49.01 or so to one of the F/OSS projects I use and love, knowing that I'm actually helping out the community whose resources I use.

More likely it evolved because when you try to stack equally-sized cylinders you manage to get 7 in one 'cluster'. a center, and six adjacent cylinders. That has likely led to the eventual formation of hexagon-shaped honeycombs vs other shapes.

Of course, I'm not a zoologist or any other kind of -ist in this field, so I could be wrong.

Should be modded -1 flamebait.

There's two problems with your argument. First of all, it's quite obvious that the environment is windows, and the guy is using a dos batch file to call os-specific things to do stuff. He'd have to re-write the whole script anyways in order to use linux. The other problem is that he really doesn't need to use python. Or perl. Or lua. Or whatever other random scripty bits we'd use in *nix land. Because, get this, it's not *nix land he's working with. It's windows.

I'm not really understanding these people who are trying to get him to complicate his "project" by adding scripting/programming languages, or arguing that he should switch his infrastructure over to linux (debian-based in your particular case, I assume). Just write the damn batch script in a KISS fashion, and as long as it works, he's set.

I'd be saying the same thing if someone wrote a batch script for ubuntu (specifically), and people were saying "Hey, you should use OSX/Windows/SuSe/FreeBSD". Although I'm sure that 3/4 of those I just listed would work with very little if any modification.

The real problem is that the way these grants and such are setup it's very very difficult for small isps that care about the last mile to get them. And the larger incumbent isps don't want them because the margins on such rural systems are so small that the cost of acquiring the government subsidy is more than the profit they'd get for at least 10-15 years.

So who's left? The phone company, maybe the cable co's, and the hughesnet people. Which will develop just enough roll out 256k up/down and call it 'broadband', and stuff the remaining funds into their pockets.

Keep in mind too that the heavily regulated internet providers (Phone, Cable, Satellite) are already accruing the fees that need to happen to get the grants, subsidies, etc. The smaller businesses can't afford to hire people who know the inner workings of the bureaucracies, and can't afford to 'waste' time on learning the maze-like complexity either.

So, I'd "fix" your statement by saying:

I wonder if we'll give away billions to Telephone + Cable ISPs without getting anything in return again.

The real truth is that ANY documentary, news story, or journalistic activity is going to be biased by the person/people creating the production, be it written, audible, or visual.

To really find the truth in any situation, you have to look beyond 'the story', and do your own research.

Hopefully that's what you were getting at.

I wish I had mod points. I also wish you'd posted this as non-AC.

Mod parent +insightful! Go indie games! :)