Mahone

Domestic ISPs can and do use proxy servers sometimes for this purpose (they often make it optional because proxy servers can cause problems), but more commonly proxy servers are internal parts of large corporate networks.

They are also used for network filters, especially on corporate networks. If you're using a corporate network, you will also certainly be using an internal proxy server for this purpose, and caching :)

Furthering what Dravin has said, IPv6 has been created to replace IPv4 due to the massive shortage of IPv4. IPv4 was not designed to cope with a network with as many clients as the internet. The integration of IPv6 and IPv4 and eventual removal of IPv4 is not an operation I would want to oversee. DNS servers are only needed because people find it difficult to remember IP addresses. So instead they type a domain name (www . google . com) and a DNS server will convert it into an IP address. This is only external (internet) DNS servers of course... internal servers are similar but not quite the same. Proxy servers are essentially any server that sits between your computer and the server (e.g. webserver) you are trying to connect to, and the proxy server connects to the website on behalf of your computer. So the webserver doesn't see the IP address of your computer connecting to it, instead it sees the IP address of the proxy server, which then directs all the data packets back to your computer. The router you most likely use in your house for your domestic internet connection is essentially a proxy server - webservers don't see your computer connecting to them, they just see your router. Routers and proxies are different but for the purposes of this discussion they are practically the same. People also use proxy servers to make it harder for people to trace over the internet... e.g. I might connect to a proxy server in China to attack a webserver in The Netherlands. This way, the server I attacked only knows the server in China attacked it, it has no idea it was originally coming from me.

It can affect systems in any role to be honest, whether DNS servers or end user systems - all it does is change the IP address of the DNS server where it gets records that it doesn't know about from. Although the modifications the trojan would have to make to the system on a DNS server would be a little different in a lot of cases.

Lets see if you understood my comment... do you know how DNS works, or what it is? DNS servers work in a hierarchy system, if any of the DNS servers that your mac relies are are infected, it's irrelevant what operating system you use, hence, macs will have the same problems as any other operating system.

Those people that don't know what DNS is will end up using their ISPs DNS I tend to use googles DNS to be honest, for the simple reason that it's easier to remember the IPv4 address (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4)

This kind of thing has been going on for a while. Normally they just shut down rogue DNS servers, but it seems this was big enough to put legitimate DNS servers in their place for a period of time. If anyone is infected however, it's easy to fix, taking a matter of seconds. Any network/computer technician worth their salt will know exactly whats wrong. Most people with a bog standard setup at home that has the issue just needs to go to their command prompt (cmd) and type: netsh interface ip set dns "local area connection" static 8.8.8.8 and netsh interface ip set dns "wireless network connection" static 8.8.8.8 Ahh, this pretend world is so blissful :) Back into the real world however, macs are affected because if any routers that OSX/Macs get their DNS information from are affected, this will propagate to the mac, and you'll have the same problems anyone else would.

Seeing as how we're still getting posts about BYU blocking the website, I thought I'd clarify. BYU use cisco WSA/Ironport for their web filtering. Ironport gets continual updates for blacklists from cisco run senderbase.org. It's blocked because it has a poor reputation on senderbase.org, for one of several potential reasons, including the site being run off a server that has been known to exibit suspicious behaviour. Cisco IronPort SenderBase Security Network This is nothing to do with BYU, and nothing to do with the site being LDS related in any way. We run the same systems at my workplace and the page is also blocked here. Cisco can be contacted if you have any queries :)

Oh I'm sure it wasn't on purpose, but it'd be nice if they actually tried to check the context rather than banning due to the usage of a banned word I wasn't worried about it though, I just never had any desire to go back. Plus I'm aware of some of the owners previous activities (going some years back), which I don't morally agree with.

Same thing happened to me, about 6 or 7 years ago. I used the phrase "Tom, **** and Harry", which, at least here, is commonly used to refer to generic people. I got banned 5 minutes later, presumably because the one name raised a flag, and I got banned without them even checking the actual message. I think "context" is something not in the vocabulary of the moderators in that place.

What you mean is, we're the only site that you are aware of where we tell people that we do monitor private messages. Unless specified otherwise, it's always best to assume they are being monitored, because the messages are the property of the forum you post them on. We've never tried to hide this fact. Not all moderators can read them either, only three people that I'm aware of have access to them. We do this for many different reasons, one of which is the safety of the membership here. Scenario: A 50 year old man gets a 12 year old girl to meet up with him, using the PM feature on this site as an initial medium. 50 year old man rapes 12 year old girl, then gets arrested by police. 50 year old man has his computer searched, and finds that he used the PM feature on a mormon messages board to initiate chatting to the girl, and encouraging her to start using other methods to talk to him. He only got away with this because people were sensitive about their "private" messages being read, so the moderators stopped reading them. If the moderators did read them, this would immediately have been flagged as potentially suspicious. These kind of things happen more often than you might think, and forums are a great place for people to pretend to be someone they are not.

You mentioned on another thread that you thought we were taking censorship a little far, I'm not sure how this is resolved by censoring even more, by removing the notification that someone has been banned. The 'banned' status being publically viewable is a default setting on every vbulletin board, phpbb board and practically every other forum software in popular usage. There is a reason for this - people know that that person isn't going to respond to their messages because they can't log in as a result of being banned. It's worth bearing in mind that one member of this forum does not necessarily equate one person in reality. People can and do register sock puppets for their own purposes. This is not allowed on this forum, and will result in all accounts being banned - from your perspective, this may appear as two or more people being banned. Things are not always as they seem, but it'd be wrong for us to publicise the reasons why every individual person got banned. Some people seem to be under the impression that we get some kind of thrill out of being a moderator, that we enjoy clicking on that ban button, that it gives us some kind of powertrip in our online world. In reality, the opposite is the truth. All the moderators on here originated as normal members just like everyone else. None of us asked to become moderators, we were asked to take on that responsibility after a long period of normal membership - none of us expected it, in fact the first question I asked when I was asked to become a moderator was "why me?" We do this for free, on the side of very busy lives in the real world. I recently got married, work full time, in part time university and am planning a migration to a completely different country in the next couple of years. It would be far more convenient for me not to be a moderator here, as it's a little less responsibility to the load I already have, and gives me that little bit more time to concentrate on things I actually get paid to do, and things that actually benefit me. But I do what little I can here (which isn't that much) primarily because this forum was set up for a good purpose, and one that I agree with.

Thanks for this, I hadn't realised people might see it from this perspective - it helps me understand why some people question it in the way they do.

You'd be surprised. I've been to Gambia several times, which is physically next to and almost surrounded by Senegal. Gambia is considerably poorer than Senegal (the Gambians percieve those in Senegal as being rich), yet I was happily using the internet on my iphone while in some of the remotest parts of Gambia, via their mobile telephony network. While computers are not overly common in Gambia due to a terrible electricity network (it cuts out at least twice a day in the richest areas), and most people live in electricity free mud huts/shacks, more and more Gambians are keeping in touch with the outside world using their internet enabled mobile phones. They may be malnourished and in bad health, and in some cases starving, but internet access is not something they are in short supply of.

Plus itunes is fairly large and bloated, with a large footprint. I use various computers throughout any one working day, it's an absolute pain to have to (if necessary) download a 67MB file (depending on connection speed of the site I'm on, can take a few minutes), wait for ~4 minutes for it to install, and open it before I can even start to do something minor that apple have forced me to use iTunes for (like install a firmware update on my phone). I've said it before, but apple has designed it's products from a domestic "standard" perspective. Anything remotely unusual, corporate or advanced and apple products tend to fail miserably.

Even these had their problems when they were new...

Still two things that are not mutually exclusive of each other. Mistakes don't always have to be unintentional.

I don't think she was referring to the action being a mistake. I think she was referring to his decision. Choices and mistakes are not mutually exclusive of each other.

Isn't the British military in charge of the Cayman Islands defense? I'm pretty sure the USA isn't planning on waging war on one of their closest allies any time soon. Plus, we may be small, but our bite can be pretty nasty

You seem unable to differentiate between "wrong" and "bad for the USA".

A radio host, you trust above all? Interesting. Their ultimate aim is to attract listeners, and phrases like "tax avoidance", "disadvantage to US citizens" and "offshore bank accounts" tend to get people listening, and implies fraud, even if it isn't necessarily the case. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for locating money offshore. While it may stop money getting to the US tax office that would get there if the money was located in the US, have you considered whether the US tax office has a moral right (let alone legal right) to that money? Not all tax avoidance is immoral.

When Mr America visits Pakistan, he might be up to no good, and training in a terrorist camp. It's pretty clear he has something to hide if he is visiting Pakistan, I mean, he is clearly over there to ensure he can't be watched by US authorities. Or, he might just be over there to visit family/friends. But the chances of that are so small, right, not even worth considering?

Something I'd love to do, for at least a week or so, but it's not really possible. Back in Jan 2010, I was sat on an almost deserted beach in West Africa, in a poverty stricken country that barely has electricity, let alone computers. And there I was with my iPhone, browsing e-mails via 3G. If I can't get away from it there, I'll never get away from it here. Need to try hanging around with the indigenous peoples in Brazil next...

The other issue is that most job applications (at least here) require you to list your jobs in decending order. So, your previous job is the first job they see. Some of the less understanding headhunters won't even look at the rest of the resume/job application if they are trying to hire an experienced and qualified engineer, and the last place of work was mcdonalds as a burger flipper. This is particularly true if they have 100s of resumes on their desk, they'll only read the first part of each resume to save time - they don't care if you were an engineer in your penultimate job, there are dozens more in the pile that were working in the correct field in their last job. I am not "too good" to do non-professional jobs, and if finances were so tight that it was this or on the street, then of course I'd do it. But there is a potential it could damage your chances of getting back into your chosen field of work in the long run, and it really would mean we'd have to have hit rock bottom for me to do it. This is not a status thing in any way at all.

Welcome to the world of IT... again :) End users have this horrible habit of forgetting this enormous infrastructure (whether it's the server room in their building or in the "cloud") that they can't see which provides services to their computer - if there is a problem, it must be what they can see in front of them. Unless of course it's their own equipment that they are responsible for, at which point, the issue must be somwhere else At a previous workplace, a lot of staff used a specific website for their work. This website wasn't run on the most reliable servers in the world, and would go offline from time to time. Every time this happened, we would somehow get the blame. Explanations of how the server it was hosted on was out of our control fell on deaf ears - it was somehow the IT departments fault. As for wireless, I've not been involved in the setup in my ward/stake, but my understanding is that the Internet Service Provider is selected by the ward/stake - probably the clerk, with very little understanding of IT and very budget conscious. The WLAN setup itself is often done by the people in charge of building services, as it involves placement of cables and drilling - again, people that usually don't have a lot of understanding of IT. While the bulk of the complex setup is done by the IT department at church offices, there is still setup unique to the building which needs to be done by the ward itself, and this can have a drastic impact if done incorrectly.