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Grex > Coop8 > #10: Web-Page Building on Grex |  |
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| Author |
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| 25 new of 382 responses total. |
adbarr
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response 50 of 382:
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Nov 24 12:49 UTC 1995 |
You will also have to consider federal law, unless you cut off all links
to the world outside Michigan.
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mdw
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response 51 of 382:
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Nov 24 19:53 UTC 1995 |
The network bandwith makes a sufficient and easy answer for now; but if
we're considering faster links & relaxing this policy, I'm sorry to say
it seems clear we'll need to consider these other issues almost at once.
It's a shame, because I'd really rather we didn't have to worry about
those things.
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ryan1
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response 52 of 382:
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Nov 24 20:19 UTC 1995 |
I would like to have GIF's on my page. I tried to put them there once.
But it woudl nto let me. ANyway, the gifs that i wanted to show
were smaller than teh actuall page!
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scg
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response 53 of 382:
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Nov 25 05:18 UTC 1995 |
If we're going to get into Federal law, I assume we then have to get into
what's acceptable to import into Singapore or Iran. I think at some point
we need to consider that the person accessing the pages is the one
transporting them, while we are just leaving them on our server for people
to grab if they want them.
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adbarr
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response 54 of 382:
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Nov 25 12:21 UTC 1995 |
I don't think we have to worry about Iran or Singapore, but then again
there is the Rushdie case. I did hear recently he expeted the death
threat/sentence to be lifted soon. Ignoring federal law here is a possiblity
with potentially exciting results. I prefer calm. Unfortunately the law does
not always allow us to defend ourselves with _our_ beliefs, sometimes but not
often. This is not one of those cases, I believe, but check with your lawyer.
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ajax
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response 55 of 382:
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Nov 25 12:35 UTC 1995 |
Re 53, risky defense. With private e-mail, "users are responsible"
would generally work. With user-filled public download libraries, it
seems not to (operators of "pirate boards" have been convicted). With
user-filled web pages, I think you'd be in a gray area between the two.
We're not accountable to foreign laws (unless we go abroad), but being
in the U.S., we are accountable to our federal laws. Even if we could
cut off access outside Michigan, federal law would apply (copyright,
telecomm fraud, etc.).
One thing Mich-only would prevent is being held to community standards
of other U.S. regions. (Not that Grex would consider being Mich-only).
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steve
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response 56 of 382:
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Nov 29 21:45 UTC 1995 |
It's important to remember that pornography in this country is
treated as a really serious crime, such that it behooves us to help
the user quickly remove files that are titled "Man having Sex with
underage child" and that sort of thing. This has happened *very*
infrequently in the past, and I don't think it will ramp up much
in the future. For one thing, Grex is getting a reputation as being
a place where there are limits on things.
As for policies on resources, I think it's important for all of
us to remember that the policies should attempt to cover the current
sitation of little network bandwith, to possibly a situation where we
had a lot more to spare. No, I'm not saying that I know anything
"special" about any donations of bandwitdh, but that we should try
and make policies that stand on their own, instead of needing constant
tweaking.
I'd like not to see hard-and-fast limits on Web resources. The
vast majority of web pages here consume little in the way of resources,
but a few big ones have stuck out in sharp contrast. Thats pretty
much the way things are with FTP and mail, too.
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rcurl
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response 57 of 382:
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Nov 29 23:12 UTC 1995 |
Policies are readily adapted to current circumstances. And, they
can be hard, but not fast (or fast, but not hard). So, it looks
like we need a hard, but not fast, policy, that curbs "big ones".
Is that hard to do?
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steve
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response 58 of 382:
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Nov 30 15:28 UTC 1995 |
In terms of mail, no. Marcus has a system that we should be close
to being able to turn on that will disallow mailboxes from getting
beyong a certain size.
For other things it gets harder. Measuring things like FTP usage
can be done. We'd have to change the ftp daemon, but we could do that
(if there isn't a magical switch that we could turn on to log sizes
already?), but it can be done.
I'm not sure how httpd logs things enough to know what it already
does. But again, we could measure how much things are used. I daresay
coming up with reasonable limits would be a harder thing to do.
But lets remember that the single worst hog on the system in terms
of overall activity is mail, which we can control now (or just about now).
Thats the most important step, as I see it.
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ajax
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response 59 of 382:
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Nov 30 20:45 UTC 1995 |
I recently read that some ISPs that offer personal web pages do meter
usage, and if your page exceeds a threshold like 100MB of transfer a month,
they ask for more money per month. Makes sense to me, in a commercial
environment. A web page offer with unlimited usage would eventually be
used by someone with an ultra-popular page, which would hog all the
bandwidth, leaving the web sites limited by people's patience for access.
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srw
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response 60 of 382:
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Dec 1 01:17 UTC 1995 |
Our httpd does log hits against pages, and also logs the size of the transfer.
What we need is some software to go against the log file to produce useful
summaries. This is on my to-do list, but it's not at the top.
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jazz
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response 61 of 382:
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Dec 7 00:45 UTC 1995 |
One of the saner policies I've seen ISP's have regarding web pages is
to have them centrally submitted via a web-master account ... which also
allows a great deal of control over pages that consume a large amount of
bandwidth. One good page can easily consume half the bandwidth of a T-1 to
a moderate site; a popular page would completely swamp GREX.
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remmers
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response 62 of 382:
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Dec 7 12:07 UTC 1995 |
That might work well in some settings, but I don't think it would
be a good fit for Grex. What with so many new folks coming in and
setting up web pages, it would put a lot of demand on the (unpaid,
volunteer) webmaster to keep up. Also, a number of users update
their web pages frequently--and these are text-only web pages that
don't consume much bandwidth. Having to submit changes to a web-
master would just be cumbersome without helping Grex with its
bandwidth problem.
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jazz
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response 63 of 382:
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Dec 7 12:54 UTC 1995 |
Well, then at least a conditions-of-use policy for anyone who put
up a web page might be a good idea ... to help avoid the problem and to
provide a clear recourse if the problem does occur. I can see how the
suggestion could encounter problems for volunteers, but is traffic in pages
really that high?
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ajax
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response 64 of 382:
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Dec 7 18:09 UTC 1995 |
It seems unlikely that Grex would get a text-only web page that's
that popular, simply because it would be so darned slow. But if it
happens, Grex isn't tied by customer contracts; its web use policy
can change as needed. Unless/until a problem arises, it's hard to
predict what use guidelines should be enacted. However, I'd be
curious to hear suggestions.
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rcurl
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response 65 of 382:
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Dec 7 18:18 UTC 1995 |
Is there a means to count "hits" on a web page here?
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srw
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response 66 of 382:
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Dec 8 07:45 UTC 1995 |
I have bumped the log analyzer to the top of my priority, and located some
software to do the job. It is called "analog". I used it for the first time
a few days ago and it showed clearly that there are 5 main users who have been
abusing our "no-graphics" conditions of use policy. I have taken steps to
ensure that this abuse will stop. I will provide some more info on the log
analyzer when we get a week of http log data that's free of this abuse. Since
the logs roll on Sunday,I will see what we have on 12/10, but it will still
be tainted by abusive activity earlier in the week.
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ajax
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response 67 of 382:
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Dec 8 23:14 UTC 1995 |
What kind of policy abuses are taking place?
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popcorn
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response 68 of 382:
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Dec 9 06:44 UTC 1995 |
People were posting graphics files, either not realizing that they weren't
supposed to, or, if they knew, ignoring it. Graphics files were partly turned
off, but people found a hole.
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srw
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response 69 of 382:
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Dec 9 17:35 UTC 1995 |
There are multiple holes and very little blocking of these, but the log
analyzer now allows me to evaluate the traffic, and find the people who are
abusing the server despite this.
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steve
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response 70 of 382:
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Dec 9 21:57 UTC 1995 |
suggestion: the mkhomepage program should place a notice in the
default html file it creates, stating that Grex isn't to be used
for gif's or other graphics stuff. Might that be reasonable?
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sidhe
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response 71 of 382:
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Dec 10 00:07 UTC 1995 |
It would be ultimately fair if they were informed that way..
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srw
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response 72 of 382:
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Dec 10 00:40 UTC 1995 |
That sounds like a fairly decent idea to me. RobH?
If Rob h agrees, then either he or I should do it.
Notifying people of exactly what the policy is is an excellent idea.
Our abusers, by and large, do know this, as they have been told in other ways
(like direct mail from staff), and have not cleaned up their act. Some have
taken steps to avoid the blocking done by the server. So while this is a good
idea, and will help, it is a small part of the solution.
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robh
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response 73 of 382:
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Dec 10 01:55 UTC 1995 |
Sounds like a good idea, though I expect the more serious
abusers don't bother to run mkhomepage. Still, anything we
can do is worth it.
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srw
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response 74 of 382:
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Dec 10 02:03 UTC 1995 |
Do you want to put that in, or should I?
(Makes no difference to me, but we should pick one.)
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