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

Mailblocks MAY Spam You

[waldoj]

Some how I don't feel better by Mailblocks' assertation that they're not going to spam users. Their privacy policy says:

Not now, but in the future, Mailblocks may permit third parties, such as advertisers, to furnish our members, through the Services and otherwise, with information from time to time.

So, were they lying to us before, or are they lying to us now; and if now, in which instance are they lying?

-Waldo Jaquith

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

Infection rate

[Thumb-One]

22 dead out of 750 infected is definitely not insignificant. Assuming a rate of 20 deaths out of 1000 infections, and a 30% infection rate, equals what, 150k deaths in the US? Not trivial.

GPS is having problems

[thogard]

There are many areas in the world that are having problems with GPS but its not due to jaming, its due to the fact that there isn't a full constilation up. PRN 22 went dead a while back and hasn't been replaced. The current plan is to spread out the sats in that orbital ring (the B plane) to help fill up the gap but that will result in more outages in more places for short times compared to the current 1/2 hour outages seen directly in the flight path. The NavCen are recomending that you change your mask angle to 5 degrees if its set higher (many people use 15 degrees).

Right now you can see the problems on this map (mirrored here). The black areas are where GPS isn't going to give a 3d position and the red areas are where it wont get a 4d (3d+time) fix. The dark blue will have issues if any part of the sky is blocked. I don't think I've seen the GPS status this bad for a long time. Maybe its time to launch a few new navstar sats.

My story

[The Bungi]

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?

Well, I told the manager that it was free. He squinted. Then I told him there was no support, but if he opened a port to an IRC server we could get by. He squinted a little more. Then I told him it doesn't really run any of the software we use. He squinted even more. Finally I told him we'd have to use Java or something because .NET doesn't really run in Linux. It will soon, though! He was beginning to look like a japanese psycho on speed by then, so fearing for my job I backpedaled out of his office, bowing a few times and muttering something I heard on the Iron Chef the other day that sounded important. To this day he's not speaking to me.

That's my story. Anyone else?

Re:My story

[digidave]

Here goes:

I told my manager Linux was free, and his eyes opened wide. I told my manager it was more stable than our NT 4 servers, and his eyes opened wider. I told my manager that I would have better, easier, remote management, and his eyes opened wider. I told my manager Linux would still run our Websphere software and that IBM provided a free migration path (no new licenses), and my bosses eyes finally popped out of their sockets.

I'm not being a Linux zealot. Everything there -- except for his eyes popping out -- is true. We just migrated 3 web servers to Redhat. It was an incredibly easy process and we're already seeing dramatic stability improvements despite a severe coding bug that cause us some downtime. I have never managed a Linux server before, but I'm not having any trouble learning it, with a bit of online help.

While your .NET apps won't easily port, who says .NET is better than Java anyway? I'm no Java fan, but I've done some Java web app coding and some .NET development, and .NET is no better.

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....