I was contacted by a reader of my blog - Nolan Haycook - who uses RoadRunner with Time Warner Cable. He called them up and gave me some interesting information from a tier 3 support technician (T3ST):

• TWC really doesn’t have a net neutrality opinion
• There are no monthly bandwidth limits
• They don’t filter any traffic via port blocking, DPI or any other methods
• Their TOS is pretty open regarding activity
• The advertised speed is WYSIWYG
• RR never goes down for maintenance, everything they do is done very smoothly
• Sometimes shit happens and lines get messed up by a backhoe that didn’t call to dig
• TWC/RR probably wont be bought out, if anything Verizon FIOS will sellout RR broadband
• Bandwidth isn’t throttled by time of day, more or less it’s the network load. Look into RR boost capabilities to find out more information on how they trying to give you MORE bandwidth than advertised.
• The modem is an NAT device with an IP address of 192.168.100.1, and it allows port forwarding and DMZ, but minimal configuration otherwise.
• Residential IPs last as long as the connection is live, the T3ST was unsure about the DHCP lease times but he said his was active for about a year and a half.
• RR installs the coaxial cable needed (1 line) free of charge when you purchase their services.

Some of these sound more believable than others to me - specifically the claim that they never go down for maintenance and that their TOS is pretty open. I did a little looking around and (thanks to a link from Nolan) found their subscriber agreement and operator policy. A few interesting quotes:

(iii) If I receive HSD Service, I agree not to use the HSD Service for operation as an Internet service provider, for the hosting of websites (other than as expressly permitted as part of the HSD Service) or for any enterprise purpose whether or not the enterprise is directed toward making a profit. (emphasis added)

(d) I agree to provide TWC and its authorized agents access to my premises during regular business hours upon reasonable notice during the term of this Agreement and after its termination to install, connect, inspect, maintain, repair, replace, alter or disconnect or remove the TWC Equipment, to install Software, to conduct service theft audits, or to check for signal leakage. I agree that TWC may have reasonable access to easements and TWC Equipment located on my grounds.

(b) If I receive HSD Service, I acknowledge that TWC has the right, but not the obligation, to review content on public areas of the HSD Service, including chat rooms, bulletin boards and forums, in order to determine compliance with this Agreement and the Terms of Use.

And finally the kicker…

In using the ISP Service, you may not use an IP address or client ID not assigned to you, forge any TCP/IP packet header or any part of the header information in an e-mail or newsgroup posting or probe, scan or test the vulnerability of any system or network by the use of sniffers, SNMP tools or any other method.

So strictly according to the TOU, I can’t use nmap, and supposedly I can’t host a website. Nolan told the T3ST that he hosts a website through his connection and the tech said it was fine, and who’s gonna care if you scan a friend with nmap to help them test their port forwarding configuration or something? (Yeah, I do UDP scans for one guy all the time.) Furthermore, the information about the modem seems a little fuzzy, but they say I can use any DOCSIS-compliant modem. So if their modem’s defective by design, f*ck it, i’ll buy a better one and harp on them until they give me my money back for their modem.

The iPhone 3G and the App Store hit the streets today. And just as could be expected, an e-mail came in from Defective By Design giving out the 5 reasons you should never buy an iPhone 3G. RMS has a good reason to be angry at Apple. Remember this?

Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.

Steve Jobs, “Thoughts on Music”

Apple is clearly under absolutely no obligation from all those developers - many of whom came from the development community for jailbroken iPhones - to put DRM on their apps. Yet they chose to, and probably not because of pressures from Sega and their cute little Super Monkey Ball implementation. This officially turns Jobs’s letter into bullcrap. He had the option to go without DRM and ignored it, ignoring his promises to the community at the same time.

What I personally think was best was leaving the iPhone as officially “closed” without patching the jailbreaking vulnerabilities. Up until now, only technically savvy users were able to run 3rd-party code on their iPhones, which reduced the number of noobish complaints, script kiddies, and stupid useless apps. Now, even your grandma is going to be playing Super Monkey Ball and Twittering from her car. It’s making the iPhone suck in even more people. If it was incapable of running anything more than Apple’s own code up front, people would be able to look at it for what it really is: a phone (or in my case, a music player). And only the hackers would be able to do cool stuff with it. That way RMS is happy because the phone can be “liberated”, but your grandma isn’t going to be encumbered with any more DRM than what already exists on your typical iPod. I’m not defending FairPlay, but at the same time I think DRMing the App Store is a bad idea because it places even more restrictions on users.

Now, hold on, you say. We only bitch about DRM on music because keeps you from playing that music on different manufacturers’ devices, and App Store apps can only run on the iPhone because of its API and platform even if they’re open source, so the DRM only limits and restricts software piracy. That’s a good point, but the DRM also prevents you from releasing apps under the GPLv3 (due to the obligation of distributing cryptographic keys) and from sharing free apps. I can personally confirm that even free apps are DRMed, as I downloaded a couple of free apps yesterday and found my iTunes account name embedded in the .ipa file along with a FairPlay version stamp. Looking at the DRMed Twitterrific Mach-O binary side by side with a non-DRMed binary of Installer.app in a hex editor further confirmed the existence of encryption in the executable.

This is just the wrong way to “open” a device to third-party development. Only licensed developers can run their code on their phone, and even then they can only run it in “debugging” mode in which the device is tethered to their computer while the program is running. And you need a programming license now just to run your own code on your own device. Sound familiar?

A couple of days ago I rewrote the part of template::tplWikiFormat() that parses the conditional blocks ({if foo…}). The code was inefficient and the parser took forever to validate the code. The new parser does a simpler set of checks that should be just as thorough. But the advantage to the new parser is that the inner function that processes the actual expression (”foo…” in the example above) is a separate function. This led me to wonder, what if I used the same function to allow conditional hiding of the whole block?

It turned out to not be a bad idea, so I added two new tag types into the parser: {restrict} and {hideif}. The first hides the block unless the condition is true, and the second only removes the block if the condition is true. This allows for something like:

{restrict auth_admin}

Putting this into, for example, the Tools sidebar block will hide it from everyone except administrators - a helpful feature and one that people have been asking for for a long time. It’s a bit rudimentary, but I think it gives you more power than you’d get with a simple “check the box next to the groups that will see this block.” Another example would be an advertisement block that is only shown to Internet Explorer users that aren’t logged in:

{restrict msie AND !user_logged_in}

The template parser will also set a boolean value “theme_is_<current theme>” to true now, so you can hide blocks for certain themes. Let’s say your theme has its own search bar. You would add this to the Search block:

{hideif theme_is_leonano}

I’d like to make the feature a little more user-friendly, but as of right now you can add {restrict} and {hideif} checks to any sidebar block of any type and achieve the hiding effect, giving you a bit more power than you’d get with a typical GUI editor. Using the same function call also means I can extend it later, letting you use logic such as checking for membership of a certain group, checking the user level, and more. That might not be implemented for a while, but when and if it is it will be a huge increase in power to Enano’s currently barely-holding-together sidebar framework.

I figured out that my DSL was acting up because of issues with wiring in my house. What exactly was going on I still don’t know. But I do know that the previous owners of my house installed a second phone line, and that the physical wiring for that line is still in place. By installing a DSL filter at the service box outside and wiring the DSL side to the second phone line, I was able to filter my whole house using that one filter and ensure a clean signal for the modem.

Of course, that service-happiness high lasted for about a week.

Last night and this afternoon my ISP decided to do something to their access concentrator. I’ve been switched to yet another one, not unlike the disaster that happened back in February. No, I don’t have another $20 a month to fork over just for a static IP.

So as of now I have bigmomma running my ZoneEdit update script which is hitting the No-IP dynamic update check server every five minutes. I may have to make the interval smaller (and I will switch to using Germantown for the remote IP check if I do this) but it looks like things will work out.

Naturally my static IP hack I used on my modem isn’t working anymore. It didn’t work for a period back in February either, but then began to work again. We’ll see. I definitely won’t be seeing 98.17.59.63 again for a while.

Dear Mr. Fuhry:

Thank you for your email. We always appreciate the opportunity to respond to our customers.

Thank you for contacting Time Warner Cable. The services and availability may vary based on Package Selection and promotions that may be available in your area. We have found the most efficient method of providing you with pricing are for you to speak to a sales representative who will explain all packages and assist you in customizing a service plan that best fits your needs. Please contact our sales department at 1.877.772.2253. Representatives are available 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

Sincerely,
Mark

Your On-Line Time Warner Cable Representative

I replied to the e-mail politely noting that I already know what service plan I’m going for and that what I’m trying to find out is ethical and network management practices. Needless to say I think I will definitely be sticking with Windstream for right now. Especially now that I got it working nearly perfectly - more on that in a day or two.

Hi,
Just a while ago I checked the Road Runner website and it looks like Time Warner is offering the service where I live. I have a few friends that used RoadRunner in the past until their area was bought out by Comcast (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Warner_Cable#Former_divisions_sold_to_Comcast). I’m currently using Windstream DSL and I’m seriously considering upgrading to Road Runner cable, just have a couple questions though because I’m a power user and use my Internet for a lot of different things. My current situation is that I have an ISP that does absolutely no throttling or firewalling (which I positively love) but the connection isn’t as reliable as I’d like it to be. So my questions are:

• Do Time Warner and/or Road Runner support, financially or otherwise, any legislation that could have any impact (positive or negative) on net neutrality? If so, what bills are they, and where can I view more information about the legislation on the Internet?
• Do you have a monthly bandwidth limit? If so, what is the cap?
• Do you throttle any traffic using port blocking, deep packet inspection, or any other method? If so, what all is blocked?
• Are any ports firewalled by default? I am currently running a web server, mail server, and SSH server from my home. (My question applies to your home/residential service; I will not purchase a business account just to lift inbound port restrictions.)
• Does your acceptable use policy (AUP) or terms of use (TOU) have any restrictions on what types of traffic, inbound or otherwise, residential customers may allow? E.g. are there any legal restrictions that would prevent me from running a web server or a properly secured mail server?
• 15Mbits down is all fine and dandy, but what is the average upload speed of a residential connection? 1Mbit would be nice, but 1.5 or 2 would be even better. 5Mbit would be outstanding.
• How often does RR go down for maintenance? When was the last service outage in my area? Were customers notified of it in advance? How long did the outage last?
• Is there any possibility (even a 1% chance) that my area will be bought out by another provider, specifically Comcast, within the next three years? This is the one issue that I’m scared to death of with residential cable. As you probably know, Comcast is under heavy fire from both customers and the FCC for their questionable (and sometimes downright illegal) network management practices.
• Are there any times of day (or week) when traffic is throttled slower than the peak limit? Also, my DSL modem sometimes connects at a much slower speed than the expected 1.5Mbit/sec due to environmental conditions. Will this happen with cable? Power, phone, and cable lines are all buried underground in my area.
• Is the modem simply a bridge to the Internet or does it behave like a router with NAT? Can I access the modem to forward ports or, preferably, DMZ my router?
• How often does a residential IP address last on average? How much is a static IP address per month?
• Finally, my router and DNS server are at the south end of the house whereas the cable connection is at the north end. I have 75 feet of standard coaxial cable to work with, but does cable Internet require a higher grade of cable to work reliably and at full speed? Needless to say the modem would be in close proximity to the router.

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. As of right now I am very seriously considering an upgrade to Road Runner provided that your policies are in line with net neutrality and will be for the forseeable future. I look forward to applying for Road Runner cable.

Sincerely yours,
Dan Fuhry
dan@enanocms.org

The 22-year-old receiver and amplifier had a lonely and traumatic history that began almost as soon as its original owner purchased it. It expressed lament for a lonely childhood where it was not put to use and accumulated a considerable amount of dust.

The county examiner said that the most likely cause of death was a short circuit. No traces of ozone were found in the surrounding atmosphere.

The amp did not leave a suicide note and its original owner was not available for comment.

“Resuscitation efforts are underway,” said the current owner, Dan Fuhry, “but at this point things are looking very grim. We’re going to try the good old slap on the side, but that is currently our last remaining hope for the amplifier.”

Known for its loud output but warm capacitors, the Pioneer receiver enjoyed music with considerable bass. It loved video processing and equalizer functions, and had a talented FM receiver. “It’s such a shame to see this piece of history leave us,” Fuhry said in an interview. “It was just a great multi-purpose device. We’re going to miss it.”

The Pioneer VSX-5000 is survived by Logitech X-540 III and its host computer, Nighthawk, who told us only that she will miss not having to push ALSA to the limits. The receiver specified in its will that it did not wish for a memorial service. If resuscitation efforts are not successful, it will be recycled.

The amplifier was playing Empty Walls by Serj Tankian at the time of its death Wednesday evening. “Suppose it wasn’t into alternative metal,” mentioned Fuhry.

I reluctantly decided to restore my device. It’s not an easy thing because I had a lot of crap on there, though it was all replaceable. I pulled up WinPwn and built an IPSW with everything but Cydia, which seems to not fit on the restore image. Everything looked to be going great, until iTunes gave me the dreaded 1604 error. Things looked really grim as I saw people talking about their $500 paperweights, and so on, and so forth.

The best instructions I could find were to log out and log back in to a Windows system as a different user. Then it occurred to me - what if iTunes’s database somehow became corrupt?

So I figured out that the 1604 error is in fact easily fixed, and here’s how:

1. Navigate to your Application Data folder. I did this by going to Start > Run and typing %APPDATA% (case matters).
2. Delete or rename the “Apple Computer” folder.
3. Start iTunes

You should be warned here that this will blank your music library and preferences, and if you bought music from the iTunes Music Store, beware that you might lose it. I personally don’t know either way because I’ve never purchased from iTMS.

Furthermore though, if you choose to rename the folder, you can have two iTunes profiles, one for restoring your iPod and one for general use. It’s not a fantastic way of doing things, but it’s better than not being able to restore IMO.

(Disclaimer: I cannot assume responsibility for any damaged or lost data or hardware caused by following these instructions.)

So a lot has happened in the past month, most of it being IRL things that I don’t talk about here. (That’s why God made Facebook.) But a few things have happened in my online and computer life as well.

The biggest and best thing: I got new speakers! The third X-540 set came in last week and it works great. I’ve been a lot more careful about turning this set off before playing with cables or rebooting my system, something that I’ve never had to do with other speakers. It’s a pain in the behind, but luckily Nighthawk doesn’t undergo reboots that often anymore. They actually sound pretty good for $120 speakers, so assuming they keep working for a few years I would consider them a good buy. Can’t really make an accurate judgment yet though.

A bit has gone into Enano as well. I’m working on several major feature additions to the ACL system, primarily tools for debugging existing rules. There’s a new API for calculating “effective permissions” and seeing where they are inherited from, and there will be a UI for it in 1.1.4. At this point I don’t know when 1.1.4 will get pushed out, but being an alpha it will not need to undergo a lot of testing, so I can release it when I feel that all the features I keep meaning to add are added.

I did a couple of things IRL too, namely a visit to the Albuquerque area where I have a bit of family. I did a lot of hiking around; the first day up on Sandia Peak I was pelted with snow and sleet. Pretty extreme for the Southwest, eh? I also visited Sky City and a couple of other nearby places.

Guess that’s about it, but I’ll hopefully be posting more regularly again.