Slashback: Security, Telephony, Solicitude

Slashback with more on Linux telephony, Mailblocks' terms of service, the scary disease known as SARS, the status of civilian GPS accuracy and more -- read on for the details.

A good oversight to correct. AndyMan! writes "Regarding yesterdays 'Building A Better Inbox,' I got the following email from support@mailblocks.com:

"'Our apologies, we picked up an old version of our TOS when we went live. We will NOT be allowing 3rd parties to send unsolicited email to our userbase. Please check the site this evening for the updated and correct TOS. We apologize for any confusion or inconvenience.'"

All the government you pay for. dunng808 writes "Despite frequent speculation to the contrary, Security Enhanced Linux is alive and well. Government Executive Magazine has a report from a conference on open-source software at which Peter Loscocco, a senior NSA scientist, revealed that the agency has continued to work on SE Linux despite efforts by Microsoft and the Initiative for Software Choice. "We spent a lot of time educating our managers, who accepted a lot of the flack that has come back to NSA about SE Linux," Loscocco said. For those readers trying to win acceptance of open-source software in the workplace, what effort have you undertaken to educate management, and what has worked?"

Also safe for now is GPS. As an anonymous reader writes, "Following last week's thread on GPS, and the possibility that the Pentagon might goof around with the civilian signal, Forbes checks in with the folks in charge and finds we have nothing to worry about."

OK, both of these things involve series of coherent vibrations in air ... A few months back, we mentioned that TheKompany was selling software to let Zaurus owners use Net2Phone for telephone service, and that they were working on a desktop version as well. Well, now it's ready. HeUnique writes "TheKompany just released tkcphone for the Linux desktop. This is the first product which lets Linux users to use their existing net2phone accounts to talk either through net2phone to net2phone or net2phone to standard POTS phone with the best audio quality (G.729 codec)."

And in almost-but-not-totally-unrelated news, jackjumper writes "Shawn Gordon of The Kompany fame has started his own record label, ProgRock Records. From the interview at Linux and Main: "The idea...is to provide progressive rock music to listeners at a low price while allowing more of that money to find its way to the artists' pockets than happens with conventional recording contracts and at the same time making a gesture -- you know the one -- to the established recording cartel." This sounds really cool."

A deadly pathogen by any other name. waytoomuchcoffee writes "The leading hypothesis for what is causing Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is now thought to be a coronavirus, one of the virii that can cause the common cold. The New York Times (archive version for those non-members) has a story here. The global toll is now more than 750 stricken and 22 dead. Singapore is quarantining hundreds of people in an effort to stop the outbreak, while the head of the city's hospitals has taken ill with symptoms consistent with SARS. Both the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization have pages up now, which include FAQs and progression information."

How many times do we have to go over this? Vajsvarana writes "The major free Desktop Environment GNOME and KDE has released a common open statement on recent XFree86 troubles. 'Innovation should happen in the open, with all affected parties able to participate early in the process' seems a clear and strong request to XFree86 people."

Comments

SARS

[DjMd]

Good news is this virus seems to be close contact only (family memebers, health care workers) and does not seem highly infectious...

Now if they could actually confirm which bug it is and get a good test then we would be good shape...

KDE and GNOME

[YokuYakuYoukai]

It's really nice to see unified support by KDE and GNOME on this issue. The way they have been getting along lately i would'nt be supprised if we saw some joint projects...

Initiative for Software Choice

[Michael Hunt]

The Initiative for Software Choice seems like a whitewash organization backed by Microsoft.

It seems to me that every time it becomes politic to get somewhat more relaxed towards Microsoft, lest you draw mocking cries of 'Linux zealot! Stallman Fanboy!' that Microsoft turn around and prove to everyone just how justified the ire against them is.

Here are a few choice quotes:

"Policymakers should not make rigid intellectual property licensing choices a precondition for eligibility for procurement, nor should they discriminate between developers that choose to license their intellectual property on commercial terms, and developers that choose not to charge licensing fees...."

"Lately, concerns have emerged that policy makers, through government procurement policies, research funding or standards policies, may seek to favor one software development model over another."

I won't bother with any more.

The scary thing about this organization is that their party line appears to be quite subtle. Where they fail is that they appear to be up in arms about purchasing regimes which haven't happened yet.

They also use their contentions to subtly dig at the GPL... 'rigid intellectual property licensing' indeed. I wonder if anybody at the Initiative for Software Choice has ever tried to install Windows 2000 in Application Server mode. THAT is 'rigid licensing' at its best.

MH

Re:Initiative for Software Choice

[Skjellifetti]

Here are a few choice quotes:

"Policymakers should not make rigid intellectual property licensing choices a precondition for eligibility for procurement, nor should they discriminate between developers that choose to license their intellectual property on commercial terms, and developers that choose not to charge licensing fees...."

"Lately, concerns have emerged that policy makers, through government procurement policies, research funding or standards policies, may seek to favor one software development model over another."

Those seem like quite reasonable statements to me. Are you suggesting that policymakers should force the Gov't to purchase only GPL'd software? Or release Gov't funded R&D only under a GPL license? Either of those would be unacceptable and every bit as bad as preventing the Gov't from using GPL'd software as the pro MS zealots seem to want.

Pro Choice vs. Viral Licenses or is it Monopoly vs. Pro Freedom?

Both sides are becoming as obnoxious as the fanatics trying to co-opt the language in the Pro Choice vs. Anti Choice, uh, err, I mean, Pro Life vs. Anti Life abortion debate. No room for a middle ground. No sense that the other side might have some reasonable concerns that are worth listening to.

This is where Microsoft executes extremely well

[RonBarr]

Ya gotta hate 'em, but they know how to do this. No direct slams at open source or linux, just very friendly, helpful suggestions that offering users choice is better than not, isn't it? They've been doing this for decades. If it weren't for the other crap, you know, the illegal immoral stuff, I might even like the bastards.

SARS predictions

[Walt Dismal]

SARS is likely to be as bad as a smallpox epidemic. The Chinese are stonewalling, that's bad, and the Hongkong authorities are trying to play it down so it won't hurt tourism. These idiocies will get us all in trouble. I predict that this virus will hit Silicon Valley hard; I've seen a lot of techies, especially foreign 'guests', just not practicing simple hygiene like washing hands coming out of the restrooms, sneezing widely into the air, etc. Also, the disease hit China, and so much manufacturing is now there, so there are plenty of chances for it to be contracted and brought back to the US. I think we have a real problem coming. Don't fly unless you wear a respiratory mask, either. I suspect SARS is a two-component disease; first you are hit with the new mutant virus, which sets up your immune system to fail to handle certain things, then the second virus characterizing this disease attacks you unhampered. We do not have any effective way to combat that.

Re:SARS predictions

[Anonymous Coward]

dear God, please make an attempt to educate yourself about SARS before posting such drivel.

" SARS is likely to be as bad as a smallpox epidemic."

Great, start off fear mongering.

"The Chinese are stonewalling, that's bad, and the Hongkong authorities are trying to play it down so it won't hurt tourism."

I have been in email contact with doctors in china, this is bad, but there is no evidence that the chinese are stonewalling. WHO has been informed of all details as they come in, and they put it out on the net.

" I predict that this virus will hit Silicon Valley hard; I've seen a lot of techies, especially foreign 'guests', just not practicing simple hygiene like washing hands coming out of the restrooms, sneezing widely into the air, etc."

why7 did you use quotes in your guest statment? smacks of xenophobia. However, unless they have been in close contact very recently with someone who has SARS, they can't pass it on.

"and so much manufacturing is now there, so there are plenty of chances for it to be contracted and brought back to the US"

you aren't impling the goods that are manufactured will bring it here, are you?

" Don't fly unless you wear a respiratory mask, either"
Arguably good advice at any time.

" I suspect SARS is a two-component disease; first you are hit with the new mutant virus, which sets up your immune system to fail to handle certain things, then the second virus characterizing this disease attacks you unhampered."

well, the doctor that ID'd the virus disagrees with you, and since he is a medical doctor, AND uses an electron microscope, and you are some /. panic monger without an electron microscope, I'll go with the doctor.

" We do not have any effective way to combat that."

actually, they have a treatment, unfortunatly it is not the take a pill and you'll be fine variety. Its the let us pump you with liquids kind.

Thats is bad, because you can only do that to a tiny minority of people.

If you know how close we we're to an ebola break out 20 years ago, you would shit your pants.

pasted AC for professional reasons.

Re:SARS and chinese gov

[rowanxmas]

dammit there is a space between the 0 and , but i cant remove it could you help by telling me how to post a clickable link??

Read This

Re:My story

[keyslammer]

Hmmm. Sounds a lot like one of my stories!

Only I like to come in with the "I need $1200 to purchase this commercial package - unless you want me to use this competing open source package, which IMHO is a better product anyway" angle.

Last project I was on, management was blown away by the stability of our Linux servers. Even the Windows guys were impressed. When I left the group, they were using Linux as a dedicated DB/2 server platform (wouldn't switch their web servers because of the VB/.NET thing).

GLONASS and the EU system

[wowbagger]

I'm surprised we don't see more folks making dual mode GPS/GLONASS systems.

GLONASS, for those of you too lazy to Google it, is basically GPS-ski - it's the Russian answer to GPS. Same basic idea, but at a different frequency.

That's important. The biggest reason a military GPS receiver is still more accurate than a civilian rig is that the military rig uses 2 frequencies - the first is the frequency the civilian rigs use, the second is a military only frequency and is encrypted.

The reason this helps accuracy is that the ionosphere bends radio waves, including the GPS signal. Since the signal does not take a straight line path, it travels a bit farther. How much farther - aye, that's the rub. Unless you know what the ionosphere is doing you have no idea.

However, the amount of bend is propotional to frequency - if you use 2 different frequencies, you can determine the difference between them, and thus the amount of bending the ionosphere is adding.

Now, back to GLONASS - being on a different frequency, if you used it plus GPS, you could, in theory, get the same information about the behavior of the ionosphere, and reduce the error. (In practice you wouldn't get the same level of accuracy since the signals are not coming from the same birds, but...)

I've seen some chipsets in the trade journals that do both, but I've not seen any consumer units that do so.

And the .eu is starting to set up THEIR OWN system. I cannot say I blame them - I'd want my own system as well, were I them.

So, if we could only get a triple-threat system....