Microsoft said consumers who had installed Service Pack 2 for Windows XP were at a reduced risk. Microsoft said the worm is a variant of Mydoom and that it is investigating the threat the worm poses.
CNET says:
Users who have installed Windows XP Service Pack 2 are immune to the programs that use the vulnerability, including the two new variants of the MyDoom virus.
And I don't see anything from McAfee. I certainly don't read the above as SP2 not vulnerable. CNET seems to suggest that SP2 it isn't vulnerable to the particular virus currently exploiting the hole while the CNN quote is far less reassuring. Anyone have more details/links?
Personally I cannot believe this is legal. EU takes a case V MS and MS can pay off the prosecution witnesses. Is this not in itself evidence that it is an dominent abusive monopoly which will run wild without legal restraints, the exact thing "anti-trust" laws are for. Imagine you were a witness in a blackmail trial and you were called into an appeal, when asked to give evidence you say "sorry, but I made a deal with the defendant for loads of cash to not say anything so I'm withdrawing my statement". End result, you should presumably be tried to perverting the course of justice and/or the defendant tried for witness intimidation. For a business isn't the ultimate intimidation "if you don't do what we want we won't give you buckets of cash"?
Seeing as though you obviously don't care about what sort of a dump you live in and regard jobs as more important then the environment, I presume you will be happy to take the rest of the worlds toxic waste for disposal? Maybe we can even put a tent around the US and pump our emissions in to your environment aswell? We'll give you a few euro to take it so you can employ lots of US citizens to do the real work of dealing with the materials (and dealing with the sick people). You can even charge extra to have particularly noxious shipments escorted to help pay for that penis extension^W^Wmilitary budget you love so much.
As you can see the real plan is obviously to create jobs, bring in cash and give the health care system some real work to do!
Microsoft attempted to get/. to remove posts and failed. The C.O.S. succeeded but got something much better in return here! The C.O.S. seemingly had/. legally by the DMCA so/. responded as best it could, MS made a bit of a mess of things (like inaccuracies in their initial email takedown request) so as far as I could tell MS just went away.
Was it the binatone you were looking for? Your description rang a bell except the controllers were detachable and just wheel-like knobs. Memories, if my parents didn't love to dump everything I bet it would still be in the attic getting wheeled out every few years at times like this!
We got there first and were early on the idea of filing business method patents
Even the pathetic US Patent Office seemed unhappy about this one, but it got through
We couldn't try and close down the market for this type of product with copyright alone, we need patents to stop anyone else doing something similar
Reading the patent it does seem like as always it is the obviousness test which is falling over in the US PTO, but if anyone can stomach reading it for longer then I did and can find something they think is non-obvious hit reply and tell us all about it! Does anyone have any information on how well applied the obviousness test is applied in other fields and countries?
You make some good points but miss the fundamental one, there is most certainly a way to verify that what is printed is what is counted, check it! If just one machine in every station was randomly selected to be scan counted (and obviously any discrepencies should lead to a wider recount) then I would have faith in the system.
The voter anonymity issue you bring up is a problem, but perhaps the machine could have a radom cancelled vote generator to disturb things (though the fact that someone could not vote or could change their mind (creating a vote and cancelling) would disturb things)). The problem would really be with the first and last voters, after that it would be very hard to have any certainty of who cast what unless you had a lot of known reference points or voters who always voted and never cancelled.
Instead of having the paper leave the machine, why not simply have it presented (on a paper roll) through a windows in the machine then the user confirms or scraps the vote which prints out whether the vote is valid or not. The printout could be doubled up, with a human and machine readable section, so a very fast read could be done with the machine readable format, and a slower (or human) verfied read could also be done. Then by default all machines should have their paper result fast counted, all discrepencies should be slow counted along with a random selection of machines (including a few human verified counts). It's as trustworthy as you can get, the only vulnerability I can see being fraud at the polling station where the people running the station stuff the ballot, but I don't think any anonymous voting system can solve that problem!
Even in the worst case scenario, when the decryption key was made public by some other state, the situation couldn't get worse than without any encryption at all.
Except that the system (including everything from the readers in airports to the proceedures for law enforcement officials) would all have been designed based on the encryption being in place and being uncompromised. I would imagine that would make the breaking of the encryption more dangerous, opening up more attack vectors then if the encryption never existed.
And I think your overpricing too, it's all about choice.
Windows..... if you must:-D Antivirus... AVG or F-Prot with TechProtects Front end Compress.... 7-Zip Firewall.... iptables:-D (ok, XP built-in) Images...... The Gimp IM.......... Gaim Office...... OpenOffice.org Popup....... Firefox
Now the Anti-virus is only free (as in drink) for non-commercial use I know but the bottom line is you do not have to spend a cent on software unless you want to. If you want to choose MS Office over OOo or Photoshop over The Gimp then you are choosing to value that software at whatever price you pay for it. The shame is that:
more people aren't aware of the choice most don't start by making a choice about their OS many don't see any cost/problem in running a pirate copy
I don't think Intel's reaction would be Microsoft's biggest problem, the legal issues relating to an attempted extension of their monopoly would be more likely to cause problems, of course probably not in the US...
Knoppix 3.7 is not a normal Knoppix release. It is like the Linuxtag editions, in that it is a special version made for a specific release (in this case PC-Welt). Unlike the Linuxtag editions, it does not seem to have any extra non-free/non-redistributable components though so there is no real problem with people firing the iso around. Now whether or not there is any real worth to 3.7 V 3.6 is debatable, the main addition is the firewall, which is implemented by using a config script on the cd.
And for anyone who is trying this version (or any other German/DE Knoppix version) it might be worth noting that SHIFT+0 on an English keyboard is the = so when you want to use lang=us/uk/ie (ie for Ireland, a Euro-English setup) cheatcodes you mightn't spend so long hitting keys until you find it. Alternatively you can edit the iso directly to change the language option, or overwrite the blank default boot config with any options you want, or extract the contents of the iso, edit and mkisofs again (just make sure you use the full correct mkisofs line from knoppix.net. Of course if you just make simple edits like this testcd will fail unless you recreate the MD5SUMS on the cd.
Re-writing can only happen today if you are able to update the application. Is this not a prime argument for FOSS being demonstrated? I have no idea if this vulnerability could be wrapped into a binary only application or not, but in general this sort of chain of dependency for patching can only lead to vulnerable systems. What about when/if a visual studio bug appears (or a bug in a common component) which leads to security problems in created apps, you wait for MS to tell people and issue a fix/work-around and then for the developers of any apps you use to issue a fix, and while you at it, hope that the developers of the app you use don't need to wait for someone else to update their code before they can update theirs and so on... not a reliable basis for a business, is it?
Can anyone figure out what is needed (if anything) for the ati DRI drivers to work? The suggestion is that Doom 3 should be nice opengl compliant code and that there should be no requirement for binary drivers to get this working. Is there no Free 3d (however poor) for NVidia chipsets on Linux which might try to run this either?
If it is (in anyones hopes) close I can imagine this could drive a surge of activity to make this work from itchy scratching people, at least until a working fglrx appears! And yes, I do realise that the performance is most probably unplayable even if this would work, but that would be a big push for getting people examining just where the performance hits are coming from. We've seen big shocking leaps in this area before (directx's appearance in wine stunned me and the weather channels sponsored open development of ati drivers was another example) so perhaps there's hope yet to Doom 3 on a Free system?
Where did the RFID tags go, they can find them you know? If they are on the palette, then it'll be obvious what supplier is sending extra tags, if they are doubled in boxes, then when the til tries to charge you for 2 items, the customer (or perhaps till operator) will catch it and again the culprit is nailed. If they are lose in wrapping, just sweep the floor, check there is no products in there and see which suppliers tried to screw you today!
The majority do not get a benefit from voting Chicago 2nd, they actually lose out according to him as they end up going to Chicago which supposedly is undesirable (but what they deserve for foolishely trying to pervert the system under the mistaken belief it would get them somewhere other then risking going where they DON'T want to go rather then their second choice). I am not addressing the article, I just find it humerous that such a bad example (imho) is drawn for knocking the described system.
I find it amusing that you describe the very aim of the voting method and then describe it as a drawback! If everyone votes perversely (i.e. not in their order of preference but to screw someone) then is it the systems fault that they get the result they deserve?
In your scenario, lets assume that Myrtle is a hedonistic "spring break" type trip, Chicago is just another big city and Toronto is a "music lovers paradise" (meaning the trip will entail non-stop musical activities), then while lots of people may want Myrlte or Toronto, they may hate the other one and to them Chicago IS preferable to the alternative. Rather then making the music lovers enter a wet t-shirt contest, or having the "fun crowd" ruining performances for an entire audience, they all get to spend a few days in a hotel together in Chicago amusing themselves as best they can (in context of your follow up on Chicago). No-one loves it, but the group isn't divided over the disgrace of a trip the other lot made them go on.
They might still be loonies who vote for Chicago first choice (or people who can see the writing on the wall for either of the other trips) but that doesn't mean it isn't the best place to go!
Has the test of obviousness just been forgotten? I don't know which is worse either, the per user licensing or using "extra" faces on 3d representations of 2d objects to provide additional interfaces.
Seeing as though Sun are saying they will donate any proceeds to charity makes me wonder if this is in fact a deliberate attempt to attack existing patent database and in particular the US PTO's ability to grant patents. Could they really seriously think these can fly?
Prior art anyone? I know I've seen software sold on the basis of the number of people, and surely some of the previous 3d desktop efforts have done something like the notetaking example given for the 3d patent I mentioned above?
I see no reason to elect voters to then cast their vote at the physical college meeting
Imagine in the last election if Nadar had gotten 1% of the electoral college votes, with Bush/Gore on 49.5%, how do you decide who is president? Now imagine Bush, Gore, Nadar had 30%, 30%, 40%, how do you split that? By providing actual people to cast the votes it allows human beings to decide what the best thing to do is (and in the later case would the Reps Vote for Gore to avoid Nadar, would the Dems vote for Nadar to avoid Bush, would the Reps and Dems combine to avoid letting in a 3rd party, would no cohesive strategy emerge). The only alternative I can see is that the winner is whoever gets the most electoral college votes, but that would get farcical as the number of candidates increased!
Of course you could simply use a nice transferable vote system, but considering the problems figuring out who people voted for, I wouldn't have liked to have seen them try and recount an election with many rounds of transfers! It would also of course help to break the 2 party system as large numbers can safely vote for a third candidate knowing their votes can never be wasted.
Peter Jackson has it made on LOTR. He has gotten everyone (bar a couple of foaming mouthed idiots imho) to happily accept 2 editions of the films from the outset, a "short" theatrical version and an extended DVD version. He has not only sold many extra copies of the films to people who have bought them films twice, he's even managed to get more cash out of thetrical releases of the DVD/extended edition. By making the extended editions, he has also created a double sales line for hdvd and repeated cinema showings.
Reworking the films costs serious money (impacting the bottom line) and if Jackson does it, he risks alienating the fans who have up to know supported him wholeheartedly. Instead he will wait for new formats, and release again both editions on each format, perhaps with more and more of the documentary footage they shot. The work is done on LOTR, from now on it's all just profit!
Of course perhaps he will decide that Bombadil (and hence the "swords" gathered from the barrow which allow the hobbits to survive the attack on weathertop) and Saruman's messing with the Shire are both required and then completely recut the entire trilogy (Saruman and the Shire is for me the great ommission from the films, it's the reason the ending just plain sucks, and it has a major impact on the entire trilogy) in which case we can all start foaming at the mouth about how we have lost our memories while we wonder if the new films are actually an improvement or not!
You could place a block on all international numbers (quite extreme) or you could pick up a simple phone router with a white or black list of prefixes (a company I used to work for did this for a chain of customers shops to limit the staff to just the calls they needed to make for work).
As someone else has pointed out this decision has not come from a company, it has come from the Communications Regulator. Eircom (the incumbent monopoly, formerly state-owned, then semi-state, then public limited and now privately owned) would have had no interest in addressing this problem as they were making a fortune on it too!
Now I personally think this decision is fine also, most people who actually want to call these numbers will be happy to tell their phone service provider to just open up the couple of numbers they need, though I do hope for the odd fringe case they will be able to open the line completely and face the consequences themselves (they may not have a computer and hence might not care in the slightest about all this, but do care about rining mum, sister, granny, school friends etc.)
Also I'm glad they showed the reasonable approach of putting renewal dates on the plan, an acknowledgment that this is not the way it should be, just the way it must be for now.
Slashdot Mirror
And don't forget Novell's $536M to withdraw their complaint from the existing EU case.
I believe you need to load the appropriate nls modules for you language.
- Buzz
- Rex
- Bo
- Hamm
- Slink
- Potato
- Woody
- Sarge
- Etch
- Mickey
- Simba
- Pooh
Though I guess Lilo could be an interesting twist!Personally I cannot believe this is legal. EU takes a case V MS and MS can pay off the prosecution witnesses. Is this not in itself evidence that it is an dominent abusive monopoly which will run wild without legal restraints, the exact thing "anti-trust" laws are for. Imagine you were a witness in a blackmail trial and you were called into an appeal, when asked to give evidence you say "sorry, but I made a deal with the defendant for loads of cash to not say anything so I'm withdrawing my statement". End result, you should presumably be tried to perverting the course of justice and/or the defendant tried for witness intimidation. For a business isn't the ultimate intimidation "if you don't do what we want we won't give you buckets of cash"?
Seeing as though you obviously don't care about what sort of a dump you live in and regard jobs as more important then the environment, I presume you will be happy to take the rest of the worlds toxic waste for disposal? Maybe we can even put a tent around the US and pump our emissions in to your environment aswell? We'll give you a few euro to take it so you can employ lots of US citizens to do the real work of dealing with the materials (and dealing with the sick people). You can even charge extra to have particularly noxious shipments escorted to help pay for that penis extension^W^Wmilitary budget you love so much.
As you can see the real plan is obviously to create jobs, bring in cash and give the health care system some real work to do!
Microsoft attempted to get /. to remove posts and failed. The C.O.S. succeeded but got something much better in return here! The C.O.S. seemingly had /. legally by the DMCA so /. responded as best it could, MS made a bit of a mess of things (like inaccuracies in their initial email takedown request) so as far as I could tell MS just went away.
Was it the binatone you were looking for? Your description rang a bell except the controllers were detachable and just wheel-like knobs. Memories, if my parents didn't love to dump everything I bet it would still be in the attic getting wheeled out every few years at times like this!
- We got there first and were early on the idea of filing business method patents
- Even the pathetic US Patent Office seemed unhappy about this one, but it got through
- We couldn't try and close down the market for this type of product with copyright alone, we need patents to stop anyone else doing something similar
Reading the patent it does seem like as always it is the obviousness test which is falling over in the US PTO, but if anyone can stomach reading it for longer then I did and can find something they think is non-obvious hit reply and tell us all about it! Does anyone have any information on how well applied the obviousness test is applied in other fields and countries?You make some good points but miss the fundamental one, there is most certainly a way to verify that what is printed is what is counted, check it! If just one machine in every station was randomly selected to be scan counted (and obviously any discrepencies should lead to a wider recount) then I would have faith in the system.
The voter anonymity issue you bring up is a problem, but perhaps the machine could have a radom cancelled vote generator to disturb things (though the fact that someone could not vote or could change their mind (creating a vote and cancelling) would disturb things)). The problem would really be with the first and last voters, after that it would be very hard to have any certainty of who cast what unless you had a lot of known reference points or voters who always voted and never cancelled.
Instead of having the paper leave the machine, why not simply have it presented (on a paper roll) through a windows in the machine then the user confirms or scraps the vote which prints out whether the vote is valid or not. The printout could be doubled up, with a human and machine readable section, so a very fast read could be done with the machine readable format, and a slower (or human) verfied read could also be done. Then by default all machines should have their paper result fast counted, all discrepencies should be slow counted along with a random selection of machines (including a few human verified counts). It's as trustworthy as you can get, the only vulnerability I can see being fraud at the polling station where the people running the station stuff the ballot, but I don't think any anonymous voting system can solve that problem!
Except that the system (including everything from the readers in airports to the proceedures for law enforcement officials) would all have been designed based on the encryption being in place and being uncompromised. I would imagine that would make the breaking of the encryption more dangerous, opening up more attack vectors then if the encryption never existed.
And I think your overpricing too, it's all about choice.
..... if you must :-D ... AVG or F-Prot with TechProtects Front end .... 7-Zip .... iptables :-D (ok, XP built-in) ...... The Gimp .......... Gaim ...... OpenOffice.org ....... Firefox
Windows
Antivirus
Compress
Firewall
Images
IM
Office
Popup
Now the Anti-virus is only free (as in drink) for non-commercial use I know but the bottom line is you do not have to spend a cent on software unless you want to. If you want to choose MS Office over OOo or Photoshop over The Gimp then you are choosing to value that software at whatever price you pay for it. The shame is that:
more people aren't aware of the choice
most don't start by making a choice about their OS
many don't see any cost/problem in running a pirate copy
I don't think Intel's reaction would be Microsoft's biggest problem, the legal issues relating to an attempted extension of their monopoly would be more likely to cause problems, of course probably not in the US ...
Knoppix 3.7 is not a normal Knoppix release. It is like the Linuxtag editions, in that it is a special version made for a specific release (in this case PC-Welt). Unlike the Linuxtag editions, it does not seem to have any extra non-free/non-redistributable components though so there is no real problem with people firing the iso around. Now whether or not there is any real worth to 3.7 V 3.6 is debatable, the main addition is the firewall, which is implemented by using a config script on the cd.
And for anyone who is trying this version (or any other German/DE Knoppix version) it might be worth noting that SHIFT+0 on an English keyboard is the = so when you want to use lang=us/uk/ie (ie for Ireland, a Euro-English setup) cheatcodes you mightn't spend so long hitting keys until you find it. Alternatively you can edit the iso directly to change the language option, or overwrite the blank default boot config with any options you want, or extract the contents of the iso, edit and mkisofs again (just make sure you use the full correct mkisofs line from knoppix.net. Of course if you just make simple edits like this testcd will fail unless you recreate the MD5SUMS on the cd.
Re-writing can only happen today if you are able to update the application. Is this not a prime argument for FOSS being demonstrated? I have no idea if this vulnerability could be wrapped into a binary only application or not, but in general this sort of chain of dependency for patching can only lead to vulnerable systems. What about when/if a visual studio bug appears (or a bug in a common component) which leads to security problems in created apps, you wait for MS to tell people and issue a fix/work-around and then for the developers of any apps you use to issue a fix, and while you at it, hope that the developers of the app you use don't need to wait for someone else to update their code before they can update theirs and so on ... not a reliable basis for a business, is it?
Can anyone figure out what is needed (if anything) for the ati DRI drivers to work? The suggestion is that Doom 3 should be nice opengl compliant code and that there should be no requirement for binary drivers to get this working. Is there no Free 3d (however poor) for NVidia chipsets on Linux which might try to run this either?
If it is (in anyones hopes) close I can imagine this could drive a surge of activity to make this work from itchy scratching people, at least until a working fglrx appears! And yes, I do realise that the performance is most probably unplayable even if this would work, but that would be a big push for getting people examining just where the performance hits are coming from. We've seen big shocking leaps in this area before (directx's appearance in wine stunned me and the weather channels sponsored open development of ati drivers was another example) so perhaps there's hope yet to Doom 3 on a Free system?
Where did the RFID tags go, they can find them you know? If they are on the palette, then it'll be obvious what supplier is sending extra tags, if they are doubled in boxes, then when the til tries to charge you for 2 items, the customer (or perhaps till operator) will catch it and again the culprit is nailed. If they are lose in wrapping, just sweep the floor, check there is no products in there and see which suppliers tried to screw you today!
The majority do not get a benefit from voting Chicago 2nd, they actually lose out according to him as they end up going to Chicago which supposedly is undesirable (but what they deserve for foolishely trying to pervert the system under the mistaken belief it would get them somewhere other then risking going where they DON'T want to go rather then their second choice). I am not addressing the article, I just find it humerous that such a bad example (imho) is drawn for knocking the described system.
I find it amusing that you describe the very aim of the voting method and then describe it as a drawback! If everyone votes perversely (i.e. not in their order of preference but to screw someone) then is it the systems fault that they get the result they deserve?
In your scenario, lets assume that Myrtle is a hedonistic "spring break" type trip, Chicago is just another big city and Toronto is a "music lovers paradise" (meaning the trip will entail non-stop musical activities), then while lots of people may want Myrlte or Toronto, they may hate the other one and to them Chicago IS preferable to the alternative. Rather then making the music lovers enter a wet t-shirt contest, or having the "fun crowd" ruining performances for an entire audience, they all get to spend a few days in a hotel together in Chicago amusing themselves as best they can (in context of your follow up on Chicago). No-one loves it, but the group isn't divided over the disgrace of a trip the other lot made them go on.
They might still be loonies who vote for Chicago first choice (or people who can see the writing on the wall for either of the other trips) but that doesn't mean it isn't the best place to go!
Has the test of obviousness just been forgotten? I don't know which is worse either, the per user licensing or using "extra" faces on 3d representations of 2d objects to provide additional interfaces.
Seeing as though Sun are saying they will donate any proceeds to charity makes me wonder if this is in fact a deliberate attempt to attack existing patent database and in particular the US PTO's ability to grant patents. Could they really seriously think these can fly?
Prior art anyone? I know I've seen software sold on the basis of the number of people, and surely some of the previous 3d desktop efforts have done something like the notetaking example given for the 3d patent I mentioned above?
Imagine in the last election if Nadar had gotten 1% of the electoral college votes, with Bush/Gore on 49.5%, how do you decide who is president? Now imagine Bush, Gore, Nadar had 30%, 30%, 40%, how do you split that? By providing actual people to cast the votes it allows human beings to decide what the best thing to do is (and in the later case would the Reps Vote for Gore to avoid Nadar, would the Dems vote for Nadar to avoid Bush, would the Reps and Dems combine to avoid letting in a 3rd party, would no cohesive strategy emerge). The only alternative I can see is that the winner is whoever gets the most electoral college votes, but that would get farcical as the number of candidates increased!
Of course you could simply use a nice transferable vote system, but considering the problems figuring out who people voted for, I wouldn't have liked to have seen them try and recount an election with many rounds of transfers! It would also of course help to break the 2 party system as large numbers can safely vote for a third candidate knowing their votes can never be wasted.
Peter Jackson has it made on LOTR. He has gotten everyone (bar a couple of foaming mouthed idiots imho) to happily accept 2 editions of the films from the outset, a "short" theatrical version and an extended DVD version. He has not only sold many extra copies of the films to people who have bought them films twice, he's even managed to get more cash out of thetrical releases of the DVD/extended edition. By making the extended editions, he has also created a double sales line for hdvd and repeated cinema showings.
Reworking the films costs serious money (impacting the bottom line) and if Jackson does it, he risks alienating the fans who have up to know supported him wholeheartedly. Instead he will wait for new formats, and release again both editions on each format, perhaps with more and more of the documentary footage they shot. The work is done on LOTR, from now on it's all just profit!
Of course perhaps he will decide that Bombadil (and hence the "swords" gathered from the barrow which allow the hobbits to survive the attack on weathertop) and Saruman's messing with the Shire are both required and then completely recut the entire trilogy (Saruman and the Shire is for me the great ommission from the films, it's the reason the ending just plain sucks, and it has a major impact on the entire trilogy) in which case we can all start foaming at the mouth about how we have lost our memories while we wonder if the new films are actually an improvement or not!
You could place a block on all international numbers (quite extreme) or you could pick up a simple phone router with a white or black list of prefixes (a company I used to work for did this for a chain of customers shops to limit the staff to just the calls they needed to make for work).
As someone else has pointed out this decision has not come from a company, it has come from the Communications Regulator. Eircom (the incumbent monopoly, formerly state-owned, then semi-state, then public limited and now privately owned) would have had no interest in addressing this problem as they were making a fortune on it too! Now I personally think this decision is fine also, most people who actually want to call these numbers will be happy to tell their phone service provider to just open up the couple of numbers they need, though I do hope for the odd fringe case they will be able to open the line completely and face the consequences themselves (they may not have a computer and hence might not care in the slightest about all this, but do care about rining mum, sister, granny, school friends etc.) Also I'm glad they showed the reasonable approach of putting renewal dates on the plan, an acknowledgment that this is not the way it should be, just the way it must be for now.