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The Internet

Submission + - Morality of throttling a Local ISP? 3

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I work for a small (400 customers) local cable ISP. For the company the ISP is only a smaller side business, so my whole line of expertise lies in other areas, but since I know the most about Linux and networking I've been stuck into the role of part time sysadmin.

In examining our backbone and customer base I've found out that we are oversubscribed around 70:1 between our customer's bandwidth and our pipe. I've gone to the boss and showed him the bandwidth graphs of us sitting against the limit for the better part of the day, and instead of purchasing more bandwidth, he has asked me to start implementing traffic shaping and packet inspection against P2P users and other types of large downloading. Because this is in a certain limited market, the customers really have the choice between my work, and dial-up.

Being a person on the other side of that coin with my local ISP I'm struggling with the desire to give the customers I'm administering the best experience and the desire to do what my boss wants.

In my situation, what would you do ?
Communications

Submission + - Europe is testing 12.5 Gbs Wireless 1

Submitted by Lorien_the_first_one
Lorien_the_first_one writes: Science news reports that in Europe, a Breakthrough For Post-4G Communications has been announced. A public-private consortium known as IPHOBAC, has been developing new communications technology that is near commercialization now. From the article, "With much of the mobile world yet to migrate to 3G mobile communications, let alone 4G, European researchers are already working on a new technology able to deliver data wirelessly up to 12.5Gb/s.

"The technology — known as 'millimetre (mm)-wave' or microwave photonics — has commercial applications not just in telecommunications (access and in-house networks) but also in instrumentation, radar, security, radio astronomy and other fields."

That's great for Europe, but here in the US, I suspect that patent interests will try to stymie the adoption of such technology until they can get exclusive control of it here.

Comment Re:All this sounds nice, but there's another side. (Score 1) 1224

by SNR monkey (#25294125) Attached to: Ford To Introduce Restrictive Car Keys For Parents
I guess you didn't watch the video then. You should, it's for people who think like you.

I'll give you a quick recap, a 15 year old Volvo 940 is crashed into 3 year old Renault Modus. The host had to leverage himself against the Volvo to get the car door open after the crash and once you saw the inside, it was pretty clear that if you had been driving, you wouldn't be walking anywhere. The dummy probably would have to be cut out of the car, and the lower leg damage might have been serious enough to warrant amputation. The steering wheel ended up somewhere in the driver's face.

On the other hand, the Renault Modus door was opened with only slight effort with one hand. There was no interior deformation, so the driver would been able to walk away. The air bags protected both the driver and passenger.

The cars deform for a reason - they are built to dissipate the kinetic energy of a car crash. All of the energy that goes into deforming metal is not being directed into the passengers.

Your comment about rural America is a specific case. Even if it was true what you said about deformation (and it isn't), you are saying that you think it is better to be a little more safe in one specific set of circumstances, as opposed to safer on the whole (and I'd argue that you'd be safer one the whole with a newer-built for safety car). Perhaps you do 99.99% of your driving on rural roads, but don't think serious/fatal car accidents only happen to lone drivers in the middle of nowhere when there is no one around to help.

You remind me of some people I knew a few years ago. The argued that they were safer not wearing seatbelts, because if you were wearing a seatbelt and hit in the door, you were more likely to die. They didn't stop and consider that the type of side impact that they were trying to protect themselves against only happens a small percentage of the time, and in all other types of crashes, you are much safer wearing safety belts.

I suggest also checking out the FARS Encyclopedia

Do yourself a favor and watch that video. It will take 9 minutes of your time and it could save your life.

Corporate Behemoth Keeps Ripping "Real" 121

Posted by CmdrTaco from the ripping-rocks dept.
Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton has written in with a tale of media rippers and corporate giants "In 2001 RealNetworks sued and blocked Streambox from distributing the Ripper, a program that let users rip and save RealAudio and RealVideo streams even if the stream contained a proprietary "do not copy" flag. Then one year ago this month, RealNetworks caused a stir by releasing a beta of RealPlayer 11 that similarly let the user record and save streams from sites like YouTube and Pandora. YouTube rippers and the like had existed before, but this was the first time a major company had included a stream ripper in its media player. And while RealPlayer 11 didn't explicitly ignore any copy protection flags, the release still provoked legal rumblings: in a Variety article by Scott Kirsner, an anonymous network exec said accused RealNetworks of 'aiding and abetting piracy' and said that they would 'more likely than not' take action against RealNetworks. But now that the feature has stayed in RealPlayer for a year, its real impact will be not on piracy but on the perceived legitimacy of ripping programs. The corporate behemoth, raked over the coals in the past for privacy violations and nuisance-ware, strikes a blow for free-culture hackers." The rest of Bennett's essay is available by following that magical link right below these words.
Image

Top 10 Most Memorable Tech Super Bowl Ads 179

Posted by Zonk from the hee-she-throws-a-hammer dept.
theodp writes "From 1977's lovable Xeroxing Monk to 2007's smug-and-rich SalesGenie pitch man, Valleywag has rounded up videos for its Top 10 most memorable tech-oriented Super Bowl commercials. The commercials are: Apple (1984), Monster (1999), CareerBuilder (2005), GoDaddy (2005), Xerox (1977), E*Trade (1999), Pets.com (2000), Computer.com (2000), SalesGenie.com (2007) and OurBeginning (2000). This year's ads are coming soon." I've always been a fan of the Outpost.com gerbil cannon spot.
Censorship

Submission + - Some DNS requests ruled illegal in North Dakota (circleid.com) 1

Submitted by
jgreco
jgreco writes: "A judge in North Dakota has just ruled that requesting a zone transfer from a public DNS server is criminal activity within the meaning of the North Dakota Computer Crimes Law. A zone transfer is a simple request that a DNS server hand over information in bulk, and a DNS server may be configured to allow or deny such requests. That the owner of a DNS server would configure the server to allow such requests, and then claim such requests were unauthorized, is simply stunning.

http://www.circleid.com/posts/811611_david_ritz_court_spam/"
Security

Submission + - The Evolving Face of Credit Card Scams

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The 12 Angry Men have a follow up to their piece on the evolving cross sell scam credit card companies have begun using. Their new article concerns another evolving scam being employed, where users are racking up huge fees, and charges on cards which have never even been activated. The article goes deep into the standard way the scam plays out, as well as detailing some interesting history on how credit applications are processed, and where they are typically (and frighteningly) subject to tampering.
The Courts

Submission + - FBI Doesn't Tell Courts About Bogus Evidence

Submitted by dprovine
dprovine writes: According to a joint investigation by series of articles in The Washington Post and 60 Minutes, a forensic test used by the FBI for decades is known to be invalid. The National Academy of Science issued a report in 2004 that FBI investigators had given "problematic" testimony to juries. The FBI later stopped using "bullet lead analysis", but sent a letter to law enforcement officials saying that they still fully supported the science behind it. Hundreds of criminal defendants — some already convicted in part on the testimony of FBI experts — were not informed about the problems with the evidence used against them in court. Does anyone at the Justice Department even care about what effect this will have on how the public in general (and juries in particular) regards the trustworthiness of FBI testimony?
Moon

Submission + - Vote to Eliminate Leap Seconds 6

Submitted by Mortimer.CA
Mortimer.CA writes: As mentionted on Slahdot previously, there is a proposal to remove leap seconds from UTC (nee 'Greenwich' time). It wil be put to a vote to ITU member states, and if 70% agree, the leap second will be eliminated by 2013. There is some debate as to whether this change is a good or bad idea. One philosophical point opponents make is that the 'official' time on Earth should match the time of the sun and heavens. People with appliances that blink '12:00' can probably ignore this issue.
United States

Wi-Fi Hack Aids Boarding Parties 69

Posted by Zonk from the guess-where-i'm-iming-from dept.
Kage-Yojimbo writes with a link to the site Strategy Page. There, they're reporting on a military adaptation of civilian wi-fi equipment to use in boarding operations on the high seas. Modifications to normal off-the-shelf gear can result in a range of over 700 meters, allowing information to be passed through on-shore internet connections. "The main reason for all this was to speed up the transmission of passport photos and other personal data back to the ship, so that it could be run through databases to check for terrorists or criminals. This wi-fi hack cut several hours off the time required to check documents. The Expanded Maritime Interception Operations (EIMO) wireless system was developed last year, to provide several kilometers of range to the original wi-fi gear (which has been in use for over three years). Each pair of wi-fi units costs about $1400 to construct, using common parts to add more powerful antennae to standard 802.11g wi-fi equipment."
Security

Submission + - Simple Comm Technique Beats Quantum Crypto

Submitted by
Atario
Atario writes: "Spying is big business, and avoiding being spied on an even bigger one. So imagine if someone came up with a simple, cheap way of encrypting messages that is almost impossible to hack into?

American computer engineer Laszlo Kish at Texas A&M University in College Station claims to have done just that. He says the thermal properties of a simple wire can be exploited to create a secure communications channel, one that outperforms quantum cryptography keys."

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