Slashdot

VPS sounds like such a great idea. A bunch of computing resources sitting in some rack and hooked up to a great deal of network infrastructure. Price-wise, it's pretty reasonable. CentOS isn't my favourite Linux distro, but it'll do.

I moved my server from my basement to WebServe.ca for a 3 month trial period. I didn't even get through it. Their NOC is staffed by monkeys. The fun begins about 2 weeks ago, on 16 Feb.

I reported a routing problem to Tech Support. The weekend goes by without action and I find that the problem has randomly fixed itself by Monday (2.5 days offline). The response from tech. support? "You need to host your DNS with us". The next Friday, 23 Feb., the same routing issue pops up. This time it's intermittent, dropping for about 60-90 seconds at a time (and dropping all active TCP connections at the same time). I take a traceroute trace and try and convince the monkeys that the problem is with their routing. They record it as "Website not responding."

Undaunted, I follow the traceroute upstream and find that a router at their upstream provider appears to be the issue. I speak with a nice friendly network tech at Peer1, and he asks me to send the traceroute output to him. He looks at it and sends it to WebServe, copying me (I guess WebServe's routing problem).

I'm frustrated now; it looks like WebServe is holding me hostage until I move my DNS. So, like an idiot, I move my DNS. It turns out that it's an additional service, even when paying $50/mo. for the VPS in the first place. You'd think it'd be free, and the tech. support e-mail certainly implied that.

Now I'm hooped. I'd updated the root nameservers and now my domain is truly offline. I can't retrieve the passwords from their system because I'd used my own domain as the contact. So I created a new account, paid the DNS fee and anxiously awaited the login details on my Gmail account to fix my DNS. I log in and get "multiple modern bill accounts for domain ..." So, basically, their system doesn't check for duplicate account information until AFTER they've taken your money. And as an added bonus, I've now locked out all of the other accounts too (not that I could retrieve their passwords anyway).

The last straw came yesterday, when a single port for one of my services got blocked. Another tech. support ticket, no apparent action (again, mysteriously resolves itself later). I awake this morning to find that they have rebooted my VPS (again dropping all active connections), changed my root password and prevented me from reaching their nameservers.

So I bailed out. Continuous customer service complaints and even outright abuse of their incompetent NOC staff still failed to get any response. Finally, I cancelled the service, fradulently relieved of at least the DNS fee, definitely feeling like the whole thing was a waste of time and money. I'm having to redo about 2 solid days of work due to their bungling. I've filed a BBB complaint about the misleading advertising and defective service. Depending on the outcome of that, I may just have to sue their ass.

Good network technicians really are hard to find. I think I'll deal with the problems of hosting in my basement on a secure, reliable business DSL line than worry about some 16 year-old crackhead trying to figure out IOS on the fly. Seriously, I could build a better network than these guys with some string and some chewing gum.

CBC is reporting that researchers at the Penn State University have discovered a new method of fighting malware that better responds to mutations. From the article:

This is a change from previous methods, which compared suspected viruses against known signatures. Mutations in malware took advantage of the time-delay between the initial infection and the time taken by the anti-virus system to update its known signatures. This new system claims to be able to recognize new infections nearly instantly, and to cancel the quarantine in case of false alarm.

So it's Friday (tgif!), and Vista launched on Tuesday. Not surprisingly, the pirates already have it cracked (or so they claim; I've yet to try it out and see if it actually works) and the DRM has been beaten (again, not totally substantiated, but given Microsoft's track record...)

All in all, it didn't seem quite as bad as previous ones. There's still the zealots (me included), the fanbois and the trolls. Thankfully, most of the discussion seemed to centre around features as opposed to the political mudslinging that's highlighted most of the other big-PR events that Microsoft has pushed.

Vista is here. It's not the mystical uberOS that Microsoft wanted you to believe it was. In fact, it's pretty mundane. I expect I'll have to use it eventually, and it might even be pleasant. I still don't need Microsoft products, nor does the Enterprise. Despite highly-paid professionals telling me I "don't get" the Enterprise environment, the sad truth is I probably know it better than them. The fun part about being a consultant is that you're usually in way over your head. All you need to do is listen and you can learn a hell of a lot in just a couple weeks.

That being said, it's unlikely I will change the minds of those buying Microsoft on large scales today. An Enterprise Microsoft deployment truly is a sight to behold, but there's absolutely no reason it couldn't have been Unix. Microsoft is wasteful, both of computing resources and of time and money. Microsoft encourages its users to be belligerent and stupid, because then it's harder to convince large IT departments to make the switch due to unforeseen "training" costs. Here's a thought: take the training or go find a company that'll put up with your Microsoft crap. It's not like that's any more draconian than the current Microsoftie leadership.

But hey, that's just what I think after nearly 25 years of computing experience. I still remember when disk space was measured in MB, processor speed in Mhz and memory in KB. I don't think that I'm some kind of intellectual elitist, but since that's the current smear campaign, I might as well play one on Slashdot. On the other hand, I'm certainly qualified to challenge even the most sanctimonious of consultants.

My reason for taking such a confrontational approach has changed, however. I jumped on the early Linux bandwagon and was guilty of blind zealotry for many years. However, it's no longer blind. What I push for now is a heterogenous computing environment. I push for enforcement of the laws that prevent Microsoft from becoming the only solution. I don't worry about Linux ever "dying", but it'd nice to be considered along side the average end-user in terms of my needs being considered. It's like software companies think something like "Linux is for evil hackers, so they can figure it out for themselves." To an extent that's true (except the evil part), but sometimes I, too, want stuff to just work.

Linux has "figured it out" pretty much all the way. We are left with only one obstacle the constant bickering about concepts like "Intellectual Property" and "Software Patents", and even the more mundane ones like "vendor lock-in". The truth is that Linux has evolved to the point where it requires no further effort on the part of an ISV to support it. WINE works extremely well with many desktop applications. If you were to write a new application, WINE provides winelib to allow you to compile your Windows application on Linux. That's it. Just use the winelib API and it is instantly compatible with Windows and Linux.

Same thing goes for Cedega: DirectX 9 is nearly fully implemented. Development shops (such as Blizzard) that work closely with TransGaming) can make games that work extremely well on Linux without any extra work. All that is required is to design the application for Linux support from the beginning.

The problem isn't Microsoft making things difficult for us. The problem is people other than Microsoft making things difficult for us. As a recent example, Neverwinter Nights 2 was released by Atari recently. The original, by BioWare had a Linux client released (and a darned good one at that!). Atari decided they didn't want to spend the money to release a Linux client for the sequel (OK, that seems dumb. How many of the original NWN players used the Linux client?). Further, they wouldn't even take the zero-cost approach of simply designing the game to be compatible with the Cedega API. Why are they deliberately locking out Linux users? Simple: Linux is considered "competition", so Microsoft pays Atari an exclusive deal to ensure their product won't work with Linux.

This is all well and good. However, this exclusive deal perpetuates the very negative conflict between Microsoft and Linux users. I can't believe that society at large stands idly by while Microsoft spends billions of dollars to smear, bully, steal, etc. from a small segment of the population who are largely responsible for literally billions of man-hours of unpaid research, development and support of the largest OSS project on the planet. These people are to be commended for their efforts, not competed with like some gigantic multi-national conglomerate with unlimited cash at their disposal. Why should a hacker who lives in a basement with a rack full of servers be required to play hardball with the largest software company on the planet? Because people let Microsoft tell them that there's only one future: the one where Microsoft is the only OS in existence.

Ridiculous. I've spent a large part of 15 years of my life doing private research, writing documentation and code, mostly for free. I never complained about not being paid until it was decided that I was "competition" and I couldn't get paid to do anything but code for The (Windows) Man. Leaving the industry wasn't even an option. It was torture. I've also spent a large part of 10 years of my life using Windows. It's gotten better, but I as a citizen have a right to boycott any company I want if I believe their business practices are unethical. I buy plenty of software; I just don't buy it from Microsoft because I don't use it. There are laws preventing Microsoft from engaging in anti-competitive behaviour, and if I can't continue to use Linux in a reasonable fashion, then those laws clearly need to be enforced. That decision was made over 10 years ago, and it is only American corporate corruption and greed that has prevented it from being enforced.

So yes, Vista has touched down. I'm putting it out of my mind, and I'm avoiding the flamebait and trolls until the hoopla has settled. Microsoft is still evil -- and I'll still keep saying it, but I'm taking a short break from the anger, elitism, snobbery and general malaise that fighting with Microsoft retards always involves. Technology will triumph over Greed. Freedom will triumph over Tyranny.

I've gone after a lot of people for a lot of different reasons lately. Of course, most of that is just normal Slashdot, but this is a little different. It's kind of personal.

Justice has become perverted in North America, and especially in the United States. There's a disturbing trend toward pay-as-you-go justice. I've had a lot of unfair things happen to me, but that's just life. But when someone makes a quarter million dollars (and gains 2 years experience to boot) off work you wrote, then foolishly put into his filthy little hands, that starts feeling like criminal behaviour.

So I did what most victims would do: I called the police. In fact, I called the police in two different cities (a second opinion, as it were). I asked commercial crimes to investigate what I thought was a clear case of plagiarism for profit. They didn't even bother sending an officer to take my statement. That's where so-called "Intellectual Property Law" is today. The police are utterly helpless to do anything, because what was stolen from me is only virtual.

If I were a large corporation, I could infiltrate with my agents, build a case, and one day win a large settlement. I suppose if I were capable of this, I might feel a sense of justice. But it's too unbalanced now. My good work gets stolen due to my ignorance of what could be done with it. In all fairness, I was only 21 when this happens, so you'll have to excuse a bit of naivity. It turns out my only real legal recourse is to sue. At best, I could represent myself (and almost surely lose as my very rich opponent could certainly afford a lawyer), pay a considerable amount in legal fees up front, and win my case. The odds are incredibly against me, however, and the cost is very high, well into the millions (which is of course the amount named in this hypothetical lawsuit). I'd rather see him go to jail, anyhow.

Thus, we have pay-as-you-go justice. A corporation willingly takes a stance which is surely in civil breach, but there's no real laws to prosecute. So when they get caught, they only pay a fine. In most cases, the fine is not even close to the illicit gains for when they weren't caught. We even have a price on murder these days: $33M US (O.J. Simpson, for those of you who have been sleeping under a rock). In Canada, many financial institutions avoid expensive security implementations simply by paying the Interac fines for the machines that aren't in compliance. The public is never made aware of these uncompliant machines. Sarbanes-Oxley IS: same gig. There's no legal precedent for anything, so to paraphrase someone on the subject: you just don't want to have the worst implementation. Luckily, it seems that nobody is too keen on really implementing a strict Sarbanes-Oxley implementations, so there will always be work-arounds. At least there were where I was working. (Hint: generic user accounts). Besides, the worst case scenario is that multi-million dollar fines need to be paid. It's not like anyone can go to jail or anything.

Someone really do need to go to jail about this. Just look at Enron. The really guilty people didn't get punished, they got rich. It's illegal to bribe a police officer. Pay-as-you-go justice is basically the same thing, except that the money ends up in a lawyer's pocket instead of a dirty cop's.