Pay As You Go Broadband
By Kristina
The Benefits of Pay as You Go Broadband
In the past many students and light users were saved from having to sign up to long contract packages by cheap pay as you go deals. Of course this was for a long time limited to only dial up and more and more it became obvious that the limitations of dial up both in speed and in taking up the phone line were so frustrating that many people just bit the bullet and signed up to broadband packages.
Now with the broadband boom there are options for those light users who do not want long term contracts but who do want the same speeds of dial up. Broadband pay as you go is here.
The way that it works is that you only pay for what you use. Your provider charges you for browsing, emailing, gaming and downloading. However you will pay for the time you spend online, so unlike package deals you won’t want to just leave the running on your PC while you make a cup of tea and watch some TV. In order to avoid being online for too long it is good to do things like writing you emails in word and then copy and pasting them into an email and try not to download anything that requires you be online for several hours, or even days. The cost of pay as you go broadband is definitely not suited to say streaming a one hour TV show as you may find your costs build up very quickly. Pay as you go broadband is more suited to light users.
Alternatively, for people who want more freedom than what pay as you go offers, but still do not want a long term package, there are also month by month
15 bits of crypto should be enough for anybody
On May 13, security advisories published by <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2008/msg00152.html">Debian</a> and <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-612-1">Ubuntu</a> revealed that, for over a year, their OpenSSL libraries have had a major flaw in their <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographically_secure_pseudorandom_number_generator" title="Wikipedia: Cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator">CSPRNG</a>, which is used by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_generation" title="Wikipedia: Key generation">key generation</a> functions in many widely-used applications, which caused the "random" numbers produced to be extremely predictable. <small>[<a href="http://blog.rominet.net/2008/05/debianopenssl-debacle.html">lolcat summary</a>]</small> How bad is it? It's <a href="http://www.debian.org/security/key-rollover/">pretty</a> <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/SSLkeys">bad</a>. Understand that these keys are used not only for encryption, but also for authentication. The keyspace has been reduced to a mere 32,768 possibilities, and you can already <a href="http://metasploit.com/users/hdm/tools/debian-openssl/">download them all</a>, along with tools to use them. Worse still, in the days <em>before</em> the issue became publicly known, there was a <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/attacks/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207603339">noticeable</a> <a href="http://stats.denyhosts.net/stats.html">spike</a> in the number of brute-force attacks on SSH servers, indicating that there has already been significant exploitation of this vulnerability.
Partial timeline of events: In May 2006, <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=363516">a bug</a> led to <a href="http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.encryption.openssl.devel/10917">a question</a> which led to <a href="http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/pkg-openssl/openssl/trunk/rand/md_rand.c?rev=141&r1=140&r2=141">the fateful patch</a> being applied to <a href="http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/pkg-openssl/openssl/trunk/rand/md_rand.c?rev=141&view=markup">md_rand.c</a> (in Debian's "unstable" development branch). In April 2007, Debian 4.0 "etch" and Ubuntu 7.04 were both released, which was the beginning of the inclusion of the buggy version of OpenSSL in officially-released distributions. The bug remained unfixed through the releases of Ubuntu 7.10 and 8.04. On May 7, 2008, the <a href="http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/pkg-openssl/openssl/trunk/crypto/rand/md_rand.c?rev=300&view=diff&r1=300&r2=299">patch to fix the problem</a> was committed to Debian's source repository, and on May 13 the issue was officially disclosed and updated packages were made available to users. (The patch's availability days before public disclosure of the bug appears to be a violation of <a href="http://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/ch-pkgs.en.html#s-bug-security-confidentiality">Debian's policy</a>.)
<a href="http://blog.drinsama.de/erich/en/linux/2008051401-debian-openssl-desaster.html">Here</a> <a href="http://blog.drinsama.de/erich/en/linux/2008051401-consequences-of-sslssh-weakness.html">are</a> <a href="http://changelog.complete.org/posts/714-Thoughtfulness-on-the-OpenSSL-bug.html">some</a> <a href="http://www.aigarius.com/blog/2008/05/14/too-similar-to-be-different/">responses</a> <a href="http://algebraicthunk.net/~dburrows/blog/entry/worst-ever/">from</a> <a href="http://www.advogato.org/person/branden/diary/5.html">Debian</a> <a href="http://blog.steve.org.uk/i_still_don_t_know_why_i_m_here.html">blogs</a>, and <a href="http://www.links.org/?p=327">two</a> <a href="http://www.links.org/?p=328">from</a> an OpenSSL developer.
Walk of Flame
Blue, green and grey must have a calming effect. Elsewhere, discussions can be...ignited. <a href="http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/index.htm">Flame Warriors</a>. <a href="http://www.neatorama.com/2008/05/04/flame-warriors/">via</a>
Looking for the mouse
<a href="http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html">Gin, Television, and Social Surplus</a> — Clay Shirky on post-broadcast societal outlets.
BBC Sound Index
<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/soundindex/">BBC Sound Index</a> -- an excellent way to confirm your worst fears about the music Internet users are listening to.
WARNING: This page may be altered in transit!
<a href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080416-research-1-3-percent-of-web-pages-altered-in-transit.html">ArsTechnica is reporting on the practice of altering and editing web-traffic enroute from the server to your client/browser.</a> <a href="http://vancouver.cs.washington.edu/#test-results">Is your ISP, work or connection path altering your requested documents? Find out here.</a>
Subdomain Squatting
<a href="http://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com/2008/04/08/network-solutions-not-just-thieves-and-hijackers-now-using-tactics-that-can-get-your-site-banned-from-google/">Just one more reason not to trust Network Solutions.</a>
Indonesia bans YouTube and MySpace
As a result of the Dutch film <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/70287/Fitna">Fitna</a>, Indonesia has <a href="http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/04/03/indonesia-blocks-youtube">blocked several websites including MySpace and YouTube.</a> This follows hot on the heels of a new bill which could see people <a href="http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/03/25/pornography-please-indonesian">face six years of jail time or a 1 billion rupiah fine for being caught sending out porn, “false news” or racial or religious slurs on the Web.</a> The Indonesian government will start censoring the Internet next month with specialised software. Very disappointing for a country which had a <a href="http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=25652">reasonably free press.</a>
Internet Event Horizons
Having trouble connecting to a site? It may be you and many others got too close to a network event horizon and the packets ...disappeared.... <a href="http://hubble.cs.washington.edu/">The internets has black holes</a>, too. <a href="http://www.physorg.com/news126884005.html">via </a>
about:mozilla
<a href="http://home.mcom.com/" title="Welcome to Mosaic Communications Corporation!">Welcome to Mosaic Communications Corporation!</a> It was 1994, and the World Wide Web as we know it today was about to be born. Mosaic Communications didn't invent the web and didn't even invent the graphical browser. The Netscape browser and Netscape server were instrumental in commercializing the internet. mcom.com was one of the <a href="http://home.mcom.com/home/internet-directory.html" title="Mosaic Communications Internet Directory">standard starting points</a> for anybody on the Web, and this little slice of history can help the young'uns understand what the Web used to be like.
Reconstructed from archived files for your benefit by one <a href="http://home.mcom.com/people/jwz/index.html" title="Jamie Zawinski ">jwz</a>, a task <a href="http://jwz.livejournal.com/856745.html" title="Happy Run Some Old Web Browsers Day!">epic in the telling</a>.
Ten and two ... whoo-hoo!
Live from her minivan, it’s <a href="http://www.jeannietate.com">The Jeannie Tate Show</a>! Everyone’s favorite soccer mom runs errands around town with the help of special guests like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Iw1uEVaQpA&feature=related">Bill Hader</a> (SNL), <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHlCaDgfgDg">Rashida Jones</a> (The Office), <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E-amvRNKKc">Lonny Ross</a> (30 Rock), and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p4PKxEHxGM">Rob Riggle</a> (The Daily Show). Of course, she’s willing to leave the van behind to visit her heroines, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk_VpEEYCq8">Hillary</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfNH8Wv6izY">Oprah</a>. The <a href="http://nymag.com/movies/features/videos/40617">show</a> was independently produced by the <a href="http://newyork.ucbtheatre.com/performers/5683">lovely</a> <a href="http://www.haastyle.com/carey.php">Maggie</a> <a href="http://themaggiecarey.com">Carey</a> and Second City/SNL vet <a href="http://www.ugcdb.com/people/person.php?personID=953">Liz</a> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1560199/">Cackowski</a> before being picked up by <a href="http://marketingconversation.com/2007/09/11/warner-brothers-shows-faith-in-itself-and-its-future/">Warner Brothers</a>.
Some say Jeannie’s <a href="http://newszine.jou.ufl.edu/index.php?id=1734">shoot first, market later</a> webisode approach is the <a href="http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6541243.html">future</a> of entertainment. But it <a href="http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2008/02/29/a_short_half_life_for_a_new_series/">hasn’t</a> worked out for everyone so far.
contracts so you do not need to commit to 12 months or a year. You just pay each month and give notice when you no longer need it. You pay a little more for these kind of contracts but they are often worth it to people who do not want to be roped into a long contract.
With either of these packages it is important to note that most providers expect you to have an existing broadband connection and modem. One of the downsides of these pay as you go deals is that you may have to fork out quite a bit more in start up costs if you are not already set up for broadband whereas most of the long contract deals will come with a modem and connection.
