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> What would help if is users started excercising power over their ISPs > and net admins rather than vice versa, but whose gonna bet a cent on > that happening anytime soon... Great timing. This just appeared on my LUG's mailing list. OK, so it's a bit off topic, but intresting none the less. It concerns the local cable monopoly (known as Charter Communications) switching from the more-or-less defunct @home service to a service owned entirely by the cable company itself. The switch over included having customers install some software off a CD (on Windows boxes only, of course) which supposedly just did some "updating of networking settings", but actually added a version of Internet Explorer with Charter logos all over it, added some registry keys, and making the user sign a facist EULA agreement: Re: [Madlug] Charter Pipeline Service From: "David W. Jablonski" <[email protected]> To: madlug at madisonlinux.org Date: 07 Dec 2001 12:18:17 -0600 On Fri, 2001-12-07 at 12:05, xxxxxx at xxx.xxx wrote: >?A plausible start. But given my firewall logs, anyone using Charter (or any >?high-speed alternative) on $MS better have protection - at least something >?like >?ZoneAlarm if nothing else upstream. >? >?-bill Actually what I did was to make sure I wasn't running any server services and uninstalled the Server service on my NT/2000 machine. Unless they hack the TCP/IP stack I think that should pretty much do it. This service that gets installed by Charter is really ugly since they add registry entries to automatically start it. ?I'm totally guessing here but I would assume you don't see this service in your Network Services tab under Network settings. ?If the only way to disable the service is to do a reg hack then I would almost call this illegal if it wasn't for that damn EULA. Now I have another question. ?What if I didn't OK the EULA because I never installed the software? ?Am I not able to get tech support? ?What a joke. This big brother stuff is getting completely out-of-hand in the tech industry. ?First companies get an idea, form a lobbying party, lobby legislation and cream the general public. ?I know this has been an ongoing thing but it just seems that things are progressing this way faster and faster (e.g. DMCA, SSCCA, unfair, incomplete, or misleading EULA's, etc, etc...) I understand Charter's concern of cutting tech support cost and this in turn saves us money on my bills but it's the process that is the problem. ?The companies dictate and we follow. ?We ARE paying for this service so it may behoove them to ask us on certain things. ? Done ranting but boy this rattles me.... I will be writing Charter and asking them to explain their actions and I would also ask people who are concerned about this sort of thing to do the same. ?Maybe as a group we can come up with a general letter to Charter or maybe Matt already has done this. ? - -- David W. Jablonski, RHCE, MCSE Systems Administrator http://www.weccusa.org http://www.energyfinancesolutions.com _______________________________________________ Madlug mailing list ?- ?Madlug at madisonlinux.org http://www.madisonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/madlug - -- Timm Murray - ----------- This message has been encoded ROT26. Decoding is punishable by death under the DMCA. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iEYEARECAAYFAjwRoT4ACgkQqpueKcacfLRzqACcCZlXf3lHahBQjNc58oM8KDpR LCoAn0rJ4mSPJ6+qRQXJ/355ZHAaHXv1 =WMUO -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Devl mailing list Devl at freenetproject.org http://lists.freenetproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devl
