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House Passes Another Spyware Bill
SkippyTPE writes "The AP reports that the US House of Representatives has unanimously passed a law criminalizing Spyware. This is the second such bill in two days (the first imposing civil penalties, whereas this bill imposes criminal penalties). Information on the bills (HR2929 and HR4661) can be found here and here respectively."
Let's think about these laws before we cheer - say to yourself will the world be a better place with yet another law. I applaud the efforts of the government protecting the people but marketing comes has to come from somewhere; like Nielsen rating system by which advertisers use to by spots on TV, somewhere there has to be a way to understand what works on the internet. The law bill clearly states that installing tracking devices on someone else computer will be punishable by imprisonment - you will no longer to be able to track logins via cookies or be running a risk from court interpretations of the law.
As for the second part of the law, phishing:
Zoe Lofgren D-Calif. - cited estimates that up to 90 percent of computers contain some forms of spyware. Lofgren said her daughter was recently victimized by electronic thieves in a phishing scam
It is good thing that 10% of the market is either running an alternative browser and/or operating system preventing those infections. But being victimized via email I tend to say that email isn't secure therefore nothing in email can be trusted - thus let the buyer (user) beware. Over the long haul, Darwinism will balance things out and the law will be just a hoop and dance show for elections.
evil empire...
I know I'm going to be modded up on this
No going to work. So why bother even trying. Another useless law like DMCA........
If I wanted water, I'd ask for DiHydrogen Oxide!
Spyware will just move offshore. More governmental bullshit.
It would add penalties of up to five years in prison for people convicted of installing such programs without a computer user's permission.
If this is really the case, this law isn't going to do a damn thing--all it means is that spyware developers will need to put a sufficiently dense bunch of legalease on page eight of the EULA. (It was noted somewhere--NPR, I think--that the typical EULA is measurably longer than the Constitution of the United States...)
"From time to time, Awesomeness2004!!! Pro may gather usage statistics and other information and transmit this information to the ShadyCorp central server."
"By clicking 'I Agree', you grant ShadyCorp permission to install Awesomeness2004!!! Pro. To take advantage of certain advanced features, Awesomeness 2004!!! Pro requires SnifferExeDllBuddy. SnifferExeDllBuddy may track and report usage statistics and other information."
"ShadyCorps is concerned about your privacy. Your personal information will only be made available to ShadyCorp and approved ShadyCorp partners."
Forget teeth--this law'll be lucky if it can manage to gum hungrily at the bastards' ankles. How about a law that renders post-POS EULAs null and void?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Spyware installs surreptitiously and degrades you performance.
What spyware outfit do you work for?
Is there a good HOWTO on cleaning up a Windoze box from spyware and keeping it clean? I use the following method:
Install Ad-aware, update, clean, reboot, clean
Install Spybot S&D, update, clean, reboot, clean
Install Spywareblaster, update, enable protection
This method has worked pretty well in the past. In the last couple days, I've gotten infected by some browser hijackers and no amount of cleaning and resetting things will delete the %$#@$$#%ers. Is there a better method?
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
"(a) Whoever intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access to a protected computer, by causing a computer program or code to be copied onto the protected computer, and intentionally uses that program or code in furtherance of another Federal criminal offense shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this add another 5 years to any penalties assigned for violating the DMCA? (Granted, that only includes violations that use a "computer program or code copied onto the protected computer," but since that covers all conceivable DMCA violations...)
Well, I really would like to see the death penalty brought in as punishment for spammers and distributors of viruses and spyware, but I also think that the expansion of law in this area has the potential for being over-broad and being abused. We need to take a long hard look at these solutions and decide whether we want to let the government try and take care of this, or let industry try to weed it out.
The government can't enforce a large portion of the laws it already has enacted. So they sit there helping no one, all the while they are waiting to be used in ways they were never designed for. I'm just real uncomfortable with it.
How about we educate users on good internet habits, and let the industry develop better ways to eliminate spyware.
From the summary of the first bill:
Makes it unlawful for any person who is not the owner or authorized user (user) of a protected computer (a computer exclusively for the use of a financial institution or the U.S. Government, or a computer used in interstate or foreign commerce or communication) to engage in deceptive acts [etc etc]
I don't know about you, but my home machine isn't used exclusively by a financial institution or the US government.
The other option is using my computer for interstate commerce (buying stuff off the web, i guess qualifies) in order for spyware to be evil?
I don't like it.
-S
No, the AP correctly reported that the house passed a BILL. A BILL is not a LAW until it passes through the entire congress and the president signs it. (Remember the Schoolhouse Rock song, "I'm just a Bill"?)
John
What about Microsoft?? What about Real.com, and all these others that require you to license their wares, and these wares send user metadata back to the mother ship! what about all this???
I bet because of all the Micro$oft(tm) money(tm) floating round in Washington, this will never ever get addressed!!!
Yup. Another pointless law just to fill lawmakers time up before holiday.
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
First "offtopic" smackdown for failed First Posting woot!
Article in the Inq re M$ spyware associations.
"...has unanimously passed a law..."
How come they never pass any laws posthumously?
Good. Maybe this nonsense will bury EULAs forever.
Better yet, when a few of these fail in court (and they will), a precedent will be built which will make possible a direct legal attack on the EULAs as contracts notion.
Which means, by inference, that you can spam as many ads as you want onto a victim box, provided they are able to close each of the ads by clicking on them. Note that this does not prevent an infinite number of closable ads, just as an infinite number of copyright extension laws is still not infinite copyright.
Note also -and this is important- that they've made no distinction between a program which resides on the box (actual intrusion) and Javascript. This means that Last Measure and other browser shock sites are illegal. Think about it.
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
Install Linux, don't reboot.
With all the articles I've read recently, I'm thinking we are going about this all wrong. While I don't disagree with making this illegal, I believe the laws will be near impossible to enforce and overlook those ultimately responsible.
M$ makes Internet Explorer and Windows to be inherently insecure making spyware and viruses possible. I nearly choked when I saw that M$ may be getting into the antivirus business. If they wanted to do that, all they'd have to do is make their product more secure. About the only reason there is an antivirus and anti-spyware market and a spyware law is because M$ makes them possible.
No, I'm not a karma whore. I'm just stating what I believe.
But why is the rum gone?
Does this mean that the software that the FBI uses to track email in an effort "to fight terrorism" falls under the "spyware" law?
~G
If this becomes law, and a piece of spyware is found to be illegal, who exactly goes to jail? The programmers who wrote it? The stockholders of the company that paid the programmers to write it? The owners of the web site from which a user unwittingly downloaded and installed it? Suppose I determine that I got a piece of spyware from IP address X... is the ISP on the hook for criminal charges too?
Give Congress credit for trying, but I don't see you can realistically make installing spyware a jailable offense.
You cannot get MAC addresses over the internet.
90%, huh? That seems awfully high. People always say 90% of computers are running Windows, too. No, wait -- you don't think those figures could be related, do you?
And I thought the CAN-SPAM Act was supposed to fix all of these email forgery problems.
It's a good thing Congress is on top of it. At least they are when it affects their kids.
sigs, as if you care.
Adware free version
Seriously, I'm all for anti spyware and anti scam measures, but is this really going to address the core issue? That is, people aren't educated enough to NOT fall for scams? And if they AREN'T educated enough to not fall for it in the first place, what good will the law do?
:D ) is long gone. Incidentally those people who would be fooled by spyware are more than likely those who wouldn't know how to deal with it in the first place (spybot, adaware, or cleaning the system registry manually).
A current example may be those "multi level marketing schemes" like Vector or Pre paid legal (they are really just pyramids in disguise). We've got laws against pyramid schemes, and yet these companies are still around (they call themselves multi level marketing in most cases, just to avoid the legal hassels). The people who actually get caught up in the schemes are those who are a) to stupid or b) to greedy to not realize what's going on; and by the time the person has found out that they have been duped, the perp (I've been watching law and order
And then there's the question of how many people will actually actively pursue a lawsuit against spyware companies. I'm willing to bet that most people will say, "spyware is against the law, the companies can't do that and if they install it on my computer I'll write a nasty letter to them" instead of "spyware? time to sue". Almost like what's going on with spam..
It is good thing that 10% of the market is either running an alternative browser and/or operating system
Just because someone is running IE & XP doesn't mean they have spyware. There are a few out there who are capable of not clicking "install the we-swear-its-not-spyware searchbar" to view their free pr0n.
I'm not saying that I've never inadvertantly picked up some nasty things when using IE, I have done a decent job of making sure it's cleaned out regularly.
IE is very vulnerable, no doubt, but it's not like it includes spyware on the install. (BTW, I'm now running Firefox 90% of the time for speed/tabbing/features reasons, and I keep ie around for the pages that don't quite render right or the media files that don't quite play friendly)
Does this mean that having a software application that automatically updates itself with a newer version that has bugs that compromise the security of the computer and all information within can now be considered a criminal offence for the software developer ?
I wonder what/how many riders are on this bill?... Like, say.. at the bottom in tiny print it says: "Section (15), Paragraph (3). Linus Torvalds, shall be sentenced, for a duration not less than ten (10) years, to incarceration in the federal corrections system, for the crime of "irritation" of a Congressional sponsor, one Mr. William H. Gates III."
Because if not, every worm writing script kiddie is probably crapping a load right now. The law goes into effect today. If your worm infects someone tomorrow, even if you wrote it years ago, you're hosed.
I hope.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Bogus!
Whew!! Now no more Spyware!!!
:-)
Taken care of just like they did when they made SPAM illegal!!
I was glad to get rid of that...
er..
desiv
Coolwebsearch and browser hijackers?
The bill doesn't touch them. I really don't think that they care, since CWS's browser-hijacking "affiliates" are mostly Russian-based.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
This is proper for the US congress. "A computer used in interstate commerce" includes just about everybody-- whenever you buy something off the web from a company in a different state or even use eBay.* The Congress is allowed only to write laws that affect "interstate commerce" which these days is just about everything-- otherwise it is relegated to the state's authority.
Dissection:
- say to yourself will the world be a better place with yet another law
- like Nielsen rating system by which advertisers use to by spots on TV, somewhere there has to be a way to understand what works on the internet.
- The law bill
- installing tracking devices on someone else computer will be punishable by imprisonment - you will no longer to be able to track logins via cookies
/. knows the semantic difference between a cookie and spyware. It's absurd to compare the two, particularly when you're claiming that the difference would somehow be overlooked in court with any lawyer worth the paper their bar scores are printed on. - It is good thing that 10% of the market is either running an alternative browser and/or operating system preventing those infections. But being victimized via email I tend to say that email isn't secure therefore nothing in email can be trusted - thus let the buyer (user) beware. Over the long haul, Darwinism will balance things out and the law will be just a hoop and dance show for elections.
Build complete sentences, proofread your work, and don't try to sound brighter than you actually are. These laws are a fine thing. It's easy for anyone to look at anything the government does and go "Oh Noooo!" and think they sound wise.Are you saying that we should add no more laws, simply because we have too many, regardless of that law's merits?
Someone else covered this already, but Nielsen pays you, in an arrangement made in the clear and with your permission, and you're damn well aware that you're helping them with their marketing data. They don't take over your TV while you think you're just installing TiVo, and they don't make your TV work less efficiently or steal your credit card numbers. This is a dumb, dumb analogy you have made here.
Are we an ESL student?
Even the lowliest n00b on
I would like to point out that each of these sentences has nothing to do with the sentence previous to it, that none of the three is particularly relevant, and that you are clearly way over your head. You successfully pointed out the fact that email can't be trusted - a statement implicit in the fact that a law was just passed addressing criminal activity perpetrated with email as its medium.
Then you point out that Darwinism balances things out. Have you had children? If so, your statement is invalid. I don't see how these laws, passed essentially unanimously, are going to be a "hoop and dance show" for either party. Would you like to illuminate us on that aspect of your glorious deconstruction?
Marketing should come without illicit invasions of privacy, hijacking of personal resources, and the aggravation of an often-painstaking removal process. If it has to "come from somewhere", as you stated, it should come from a place that has some moral and ethical footing. By your argument, I could break into your cardboard box and check out what brand of cheap wine you buy, if it allowed me to market cheap wine to you more effectively. Removing the ethical aspect, as you implicitly did (whether or not you meant to) is foolish.
"Will the world be a better place with yet another law?" (I added the question mark for you - I think you might have forgotten it.) Yeah, it'll be a better place with this law. By the time you'd typed those words, everyone who read the article had already thought about it, and most had come to the conclusion "yes, it will." I can think of a ton of laws that would make the world a better place. "Yet another law" is a dumb, dumb way to look at things, on a number of levels.
You should stick to topics you (a) understand and (b) have something interesting to say about.
one republican member from texas opposed it on the grounds that any govenment control of the internet is wrong check this article
:)
The fellow's name is Ron Paul. He has an interesting position. Though they may not agree with apyware, i think it is a position that i think many here would agree with.
Maybe we should interview him on this site.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
What about those SWF ads? Isn't that considered "code". I don't want to see those SWF ads and they just "copy onto my protected computer" without my explicit permission. Does this law apply to the shockwave flash files?
How about we educate users on good internet habits
I totally agree.
Sure goverements can make these laws but will anybody make sure of them.
Which other group of people can help to stop/reduce spyware? YOU as an individual, as an employee or whatever your function is.
All the friggin companies should tell their employees about these. Some people get spyware and some don't. The ones that don't are doing their job of being aware and it's not a hard job: install the tools (adware, spybot, etc.) & firefox/mozilla. There you go you're set (email is always a gamble though). Now let's see more companies try and take these similar steps and these "laws" will be somewhat useless.
Ron Paul (L-Texas) voted for this bill but he was the lone dissenter in the last spyware bill. It would be interesting to find out what was different about this bill (or what poison pill was in the last one).
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
What part of Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress authority to draft legislation on this subject?
Constitutionally Correct
How about rewards for helping in identifying spyware makers - that aught to spur people into action (i.e. disgrunteled mail clerk rats out his company who is built on creating spyware)
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
US government is the people banding together to protect ourselves under justice - when practiced correctly. Over the long haul, we're 1> all dead, and 2> a feudal/tribal species constantly wasting our lives in war and depradation. We celebrate the momentary anomalies like American democracy and Congress keeping up with crimes by minimuzing them with regulations tied into the existing enforcement infrastructure. Let's get rid of some of these old laws, like subsidies for political campaigns and their corporate bribes, when we want to simplify our government. Maybe that will minimize these election-time postures.
--
make install -not war
Turn off
1) Active X
2) java script
3) java
Don't
1) use email preview
2) click on attachments
3) install the neat freeware
And stay away from sites with popups!
dude, you gonna eat those frys?
-DrMyke
"mmmmmmmmm, doughnuts" - H.J.Simpson; super genius
the spyware is still being created by or contracted for american citizens. doesnt matter if they operate their scams offshore. they're still under US jurisdiction.
Here's my collected advice, in no particular order.
1) Firefox. FIREFOX. FIREFOX! You'll wonder how you lived without it.
2) Disable system restore. Run your favorite anti-spyware programs in safemode (after updating definitions). Spyware S&D does a good job, but you've already listed that.
3) Protect your system. Anti-virus software is absolutely essential now. Windows updates are essential. If you've got XP, use the SP2 firewall, it's pretty decent. Otherwise download a firewall and learn how to set it up. (Don't automatically Allow all the connections it asks about, figure out what they actually do)
4) HijackThis! and SysInternal's Process Explorer are pretty useful. Process Explorer will actually end those pesky tasks that Task Manager won't let you touch.
5) Look up the name of every process running on your computer that you are 100% sure about. A lot of spyware programs attempt to "sound" like legitamate process names. spoolsv.exe is legit, spooler.exe is not. Etc. If it's not legitamate, kill it, find out where the executable hides itself, then delete it.
or a computer used in interstate or foreign commerce or communication
um, DUH? wasn't obvious enough for you?
learn to read?
I guess its good that Tom DeLay doesn't have a lot of campaign contributions from Gator, otherwise a bill this would be DOA.
Ah yes, another "fix" from the government. This will change human behaviour, just like prohibition and criminalizing ooh a small section of drugs which aren't controlled by Glaxo Smithkline, oh and murder, but we'll sell guns for... opening beer bottles with, and last time I checked speeding was a criminal offence but how many people get hit with speeding tickets?
Every single person who speeds is a criminal.
I think we now have so many laws that the respect has been watered down. In order to go about their day to day business civillians accept that they have to break laws to get things done.
Humans are incredibly good at calculating risk, we've been doing it since we were chasing the wooly mammoth down a steep incline. People sell drugs because the profit outweighs the risk of getting caught. Note: I said risk, not punishment.
You could make the punishment death by ferrets, but if the risk is low enough, there is no problem.
The punishment for getting hit by a drunk driver while walking on a sidewalk is death. Thats your punishment for being on the sidewalk at the time, but the risk is so low people do it.
It doesn't matter if installing spyware gets you a public flogging if the risk of that ever happening is 1:100000000000). Another well thought out bill.
Whith everyone commenting on whether or not these bills may or may not keep spyware off your computer (Shame on you for not using Linux!), did anyone notice that these bills have an EXPIRATION DATE?! Why?
Definetly, DEFINETLY try all of the above mentioned things first and as directed AND THEN if you *STILL* can't get it off (and are sick of my all caps), THEN:
:)
1)Select one of the following spyware removal discussion boards
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/
http://forums.spywareinfo.com/
http://forums.net-integration.net/
http://www.computercops.biz/forums.html
2)READ THEIR FAQS THOUROUGHLY
3)Create an account and post your story along with supporting documents outlined in their FAQ to their board.
4)Wait patiently and a real life antiscumware security expert will help you.
The people on those forums hate scumware more then anyone and devote their spare time to helping rid the world of it. They have created custom tools to remove almost all kinds of spyware and with your help will diagnose your particular infection and send you the proper tools to get rid of it.
These guys are the best so treat them with respect: do your own spyware scans before you bother them. But I think in your case you are qualified to talk to them now
Good luck!
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
The whole point of having a civilized society, one that's regulated with laws, is not to leave sections of the population under the mercy of darwinism.
If you hate benevolent communal parenting then go live in the jungle.
to outlawing diebold voting machines. Not exactly, but pretty close. Too bad.
In theory, you're right that one house can't pass a bill into law. But in practice, it takes 81 percent of one house to pass a bill by unanimous consent AKA voice vote, as 20 percent can force a roll-call vote. It takes only 67 percent assent of both houses to bypass a Presidential veto. If a bill has 81 percent assent in the House of Representatives, what makes you think it'll have less than 67 percent assent in the Senate?
Clearly, something must be done. This bill is not the answer, but at least they are looking at the problem. I would be surprised if the congess folk are not getting messages from irrate constituents complaining about spyware.
From the Yahoo article:
"People are increasingly finding their home pages have been changed or their computers are sluggish," she said. "Their computers are no longer their own, and they can't figure out why."
Yes, whatever became of the idea that it is my machine, not some marketing cash cow. The EULA should enumerate and describe in no uncertain terms what will be installled, what it will do, and how it will do it. The end user should need to okey each program, not the whole shooting match. If something is going to run on startup in the background, this should be stated and explained. There should be an easy way to stop the process. There should be a simple way to uninstall the evil program and all of its minions in the registry etcetera. Browser hijacking? Just plain illegal. If caught, death is too good for you. This is for starters.
Now explain this:
H.R.2929:
Makes it unlawful for any person who is not the owner or authorized user (user) of a protected computer (a computer exclusively for the use of a financial institution or the U.S. Government, or a computer used in interstate or foreign commerce or communication).........
It is home computers that need the most help in the fight against spyware, not corpoate, bank, and government computers, and unless I am reading this wrongly, home computers are given no protection under the bill. Why is that?
Then there was this quote which I just found amusing:
The chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said Goodlatte's anti-spyware bill was preferable because of its criminal sanctions, and Barton said he will work to combine both proposals for a final vote by year's end.Barton acknowledged that experts had recently found more than 60 varieties of spyware installed on the panel's own computers. He said all the spyware programs had been installed without the permission of computer users.
I'm of the mind that developers should (unless not possible) isolate their entire application to their own directory and only go into c:/Windows only when absolutely necessary.
OK, so you suggest to include all of an app's libraries in each app's bundle. Then what if it is later discovered that a widely used library has a security hole such as the one in the JPEG parser of GDI+? I'm sure many of us could argue good reasons for factoring some libraries out into separately installed frameworks.
Claria Corporation, a company based in California, operates the GAIN ad network used by Gator eWallet software. Do you live in California? If not, this commerce among states surely comes under federal jurisdiction: "The Congress shall have Power ... To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States".
... as Ron Paul voted against it. Obviously Ron Paul hasnt used a Microsoft computer in the last 4+ years. Figures, since hes from my hometown Congressional district.
(This post isn't really about the parent or the article, I'm just getting on a soapbox).
..."
"If the law prevents others
Laws never prevent anything. Laws ascribe consequences to convictions. No matter what penal deterents you put in place to make a choice less attractive, it is still a choice.
It is possible to increase security, but all increases in security necessarily incur a usability cost. Adding a guard to a knife may protect the user's fingers, but will get in the way of a skilled craftsman. Adding metal to a car to make it sturdier may interfere with visibility and handling.
It is also possible to use physical force (handcuffs, walls) and threat of violence (guns) to lock people down, such as in a concentration camp or jail. This will prevent the prisoners from doing things outside the walls of their confines, but is otherwise hardly different from locking the rest of the world up, as far as 'preventing' things goes.
As long as we put responsibility for people's actions in the hands of other people, we can expect people to behave irresponsibly. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't claim to have the answer, I claim all answers are trade-offs.
Get Dimension 4.. from THINKING MAN SOFTWARE
Software for Geeks^H^H^H^H^HThinking Men!
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
While I don't disagree with this, I also thing this is nothing more than a bandaid. The seive that is Internet Explorer is what makes most of this possible. IE gets hijacked and tons of spyway/virus type crap gets installed. I have been banning the use of it at work, but there are some users I just cannot prevent from using it. (my CFO refuses to stop using it?!?!?!?!) When companies are caught doing illegal things, they fine the companies till that *fix* the problem. Well, it's been almost 10 years, and IE has gotten worse not better. The more Microsoft embeds IE into Windows, the more disruptive these virus writers become. They need to mandate MS to separate IE from Windows, and curb it's *automatic usability* features. Fine them till they do it, or force them to remove IE all together and not allow them to make a web browser anymore. (wow wouldn't that break 30 million websites that are IE only hah)
:(
anyway, I'm just ranting because I have to deal with this epidemic daily at work...
Install Ad-aware, update, clean, reboot, clean
Install Spybot S&D, update, clean, reboot, clean
Install Spywareblaster, update, enable protection
I wonder if people who say "oh use adaware, spybot, etc." would say this if the nice authors had NOT made these free softwares AVAILABLE?? what would be the answer be? "oh, go ahead and just reformat your hard drive!!"" (/sarcasm).
Even those anti-spywares are not enough to keep my computer 100% clean. I NEED and so use other anti-spywares on my computer besides those 3. And no, i don't feel like revealing what they are just to educate the scummy spyware purveyors.
My friend (who is basically computer-illiterate and that's the NICEST thing i could say about her computer skills) uses the computer but rarely surfs anywhere except on hotmail to check her email. Guess what? Every time i clean her computer of spyware, Avenue spyware or adware comes up and found out this comes from Microsoft's OWN SITE! Even ebay has adware or spyware on their site with doubleclick. I'm glad she's so computer-illiterate AND doesn't have a credit card AND doesn't deal with Ebay, Paypal, or any of her banks online 'cause she could be in even worse trouble.
Face it, if we don't even have basic laws on spyware, these crap spyware companies along with their $$$ Company Sponsors will keep writing them and they just get worse the better your anti-spyware becomes. It's just an spyware vs. anti-spyware ARMS RACE.
The only time politicians act is when their own families get hurt. I'm GLAD that congressman's daughter was victimized by the phishing scam, otherwise we STILL wouldn't have ANY Congress anti-spyware bills.
* weedshare.com 50% to artists, webjay.org iuma.com CDBaby.com Epitonic.com ampcast.com
This is the bill Philip Corwin, Kazaa's lobbyist, wanted.
Quick recap on how this works for those unfamiliar:
A bill, when introduced, must pass muster with both the house of representativs and the senate in the form of a simple majority vote in both houses before being presented to the president for signing into law. That's an optimal scenario, however 'optimal' doesn't equal realistic. It might bounce between both houses for a bit before passing onto the president, the president may say no (in which case a 2/3 majority is required in order to enact it as law, overriding presidential veto).
Source: US History course, 8th grade.
This sig no verb.
The success of Google, and the foray of other entities into the search engine market should have proved one thing to marketing people all over: if you want to advertise on the web, you got to make your customer come to you, not the other way round. So the death of push advertising need not mean the death of marketing altogether, but rather it's transformation into something more meaningful.
We reject the can-toi
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
There sure is... download FireFox (www.mozilla.org) and *stop* using IE.
Since myself and my workplace switched browsers, monthly spyware scans have been turning up *empty*. We used to see *dozens* every month while using IE.
Willie...
Who cares if you end up with a system that has four different jpeg.dll on the machine
I care because I want to know which ones are exploitable and which ones aren't.
[If there's a security hole in your static binary,] Then tell your user to upgrade your application to the newer version (which includes the new library). It's your job to make sure *your* app works.
So in other words, do you want all apps to "phone home" over the Internet, connecting to a Central Server(tm) to check for updates in order to "tell your user" that such updates exist? Some would consider it a privacy risk to give the publisher a list of the IP addresses of all users of a program.
And if several programs have the GUI libraries loaded, wouldn't several copies take up a lot of memory on less-capable machines, such as battery-powered machines or older machines owned by schools and other nonprofit organizations? I guess the loader could checksum each module and use shared memory for read-only sections of common versions of common modules.
And what about dial-up? Not every geographic area where you have customers has a residential high-speed Internet access provider. Bigger app bundles means bigger download times. I've seen printer driver downloads in triple digit megabytes.
And what about windowing systems and device drivers? Aren't they dynamically loaded modules as well? Wouldn't statically linking those take us all the way back to DOS? What is the operating environment and what is the application? If you're not going to turn every app into a bootable CD, the OS developer needs to state a policy that draws a line between what should be statically linked and what should be dynamically linked.
My hat off to you Sir.
Well spoken. Sooner or later the message gets across, or at least you've done what you could.
Is there a good HOWTO on cleaning up a Windoze box from spyware and keeping it clean?
1. Select Linux distro
2. Insert cd
yada, yada yada
At least fou othe people undestood it with the missing 'r'. Are you eading challanged?