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At last,
the contents of Aardvark's "million-dollar ideas" notebook
are revealed for all to see!
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Regular readers will recall that I have, on several occasions, pointed out
that those Net users whose Internet connections include a volume-rate
component are risking their wallets in the face of DOS attacks, and even
the effects of the recent Code Red infections.
One of the biggest benefits (aside from speed) touted for DSL is the "always on"
aspect of the service's operation. No need to plug-in and dial up your ISP
to get connected -- just click on a bookmark or hypertext link and you're
online.
This makes it quite practical to leave your PC polling its mailbox at regular
intervals or to leave that instant-messaging program running all day long so
that you can instantly respond to incoming messages.
However, as I predicted, a growing number of users seem to be getting a nasty
shock when their monthly account arrives.
One reader has related his shock surprise
after what appears to be a DOS attack against his machine.
Telecom's response in this case seems to be that you ought to turn off your
DSL modem when you're not using your PC -- which kind of negates that key
"always on" benefit now doesn't it?
It is a problem though -- if Telecom was to take all complaints at face value
they could find every man and his dog who inadvertently went over their DSL
volume allocation claiming they'd been attacked -- and keeping a track of
each and every IP session could be a major overhead.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Oh... and for what it's worth, I've now logged four Code Red probes against
my firewall from IP addresses that map back to XTRA dial-up accounts. What
on earth are people doing running webservers from a dial-up account???
The Secret Open Sauce?
Yes, that's "sauce" not source -- because I'm wondering just what magical
ingredient (like the gunk they put in Big Macs to glue them together) is
needed to really get Linux into the desktop market.
We're told that Linux is doing "very nicely thank you" in the server
marketplace -- but it's noticeably absent from your average desktop PC.
Could applications software be the missing ingredient of that special sauce?
Maybe -- but there are replacements for most MS Office applications (and they're
free!) so, considering that a huge percentage of office-PCs are used solely for
word processing, email and spreadsheet applications -- why are they still
using Windows?
Could it be the cost of the learning curve?
Maybe -- but there are some pretty decent Windows-like GUIs available for Linux
now so there wouldn't be a great deal of end-user training required -- in fact
it would probably be on par with the amount of education required to teach
MS-using office-workers not to open unsolicited email attachments eh?
Is it price of purchase? Hardly -- most branded Linux distributions are far
cheaper than the equivalent MS OS and, thanks to the liberal licensing,
one copy can often be installed on every machine you own.
So --
you tell me -- why is Linux still an orphan child
even in the face of what many will tell you is a complete abuse of the
market by Microsoft?
Aardvark also makes a summary of this daily column available via XML using
the RSS format. More details can be found
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