Caste System Internet (or is it Tiers?)

I think that the average internet user is likely to be hurt by the mafia-like idea of slowing down pages for those who don't pay "protection money" very soon. The equal playing field is starting to disappear.

Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, creator of slashdot, recently wrote:

'I like to think of the phone companies as basically being gangsters showing up at Google and saying in their best fakey, mobster accent, "Ya know, Sergey, we were just talking to our buddies over at Yahoo! yesterday, and they agreed to pay us a million dollars to make sure that their customers get 10ms ping times to their servers. If you pay us $2 million, we'll give you 8ms ping times. Oh, and if you don't pay up, it sure would be tragic if your customers started dropping packets and lagging out. I heard there's going to be a lot of construction in the Midwest. It sure would be terrible if your backbone got cut by a backhoe somewhere."'

pipes.txt . Caught In The Web . April 2006 . Vol.6 Issue 4 . Page(s) 86 in print issue (Full Article)

OS Design Priorities? Security, Maintenance, and Backups

I love reading Alex St. John's monthly CPU articles...

"Microsoft has shipped how many OSes since 1995? Windows 95, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP, and Windows XP SP2, and rather than getting better with each major OS release, security problems for consumers have gotten worse! With each promise of a more secure OS, we’ve ended up with a less secure one."

"Security, maintenance, and backup and recovery are the most fundamental OS services that any OS should provide, and you’d think that Microsoft would concentrate on getting these fundamentals right before worrying about all the junk it ships with the OS that we don’t need. This, of course, has never been the case to such an extreme degree that Microsoft has created a multibillion dollar industry for such companies as Symantec and McAfee to clean up the mess it makes with each new OS product."


Computer Power User . April 2006 . Vol.6 Issue 4 . Page(s) 14 in print issue . Irony . The Saint by Alex St. John

Star West to Honor Business Warranties for Defunct Totally Awesome Computers

Looks like Star West will be offering warranty support for business customers of Totally Awesome Computers, a Utah company that just disappeared. If you were a former business customer of TAC, I'd call Star West very soon - before they change their mind. Maybe this will slow down possible litigation from folks who paid more for their computers in order to receive "lifetime service and warranty". Looks like the home users are Totally Awesome screwed.