And this is the reason we have drug-resistant bacteria
Unfortunately, the answer is, "all of the above". Overprescription, failure of patients to complete the course of treatment, use of antibiotics in animal feed as a preventative and growth inducer, inappropriate self-treatment (I'd never heard of people mixing antibiotics with heroin, but that would certainly qualify), over-the-counter sales (mostly in third-world countries, but you'd be surprised at what's available at farm stores), heavy advertising by the pharmaceutical industry to encourage more sales. Every time an antibiotic is used, there is a small but finite risk of promoting antibiotic-resistance.
P2P networks often identify files by a hash. The database could be of file hashes. Get a match and it's the same file, and you don't need a copy of the file to make the comparison.
At least one Gnutella program (BearShare) has a EULA that does in fact prohibit such uses. But I bet the prohibition will be hard to enforce. OTOH, if it gets tossed out, maybe it will be a precedent against the validity of clickthrough EULAs.
>Suite numbers are used when you have a private company supply "PO Boxes", since only the US Post Office can supply PO Boxes
Actually, the PO does not permit suite numbers to be used for private boxes (the practice used to be widespread, and a lot of fraud accompanied it). You're supposed to use "P.M.B. nnn" (for "Private Mail Box")
>have their pictures' [Grammatical Question: Is this the proper use of the apostrophe in this instance?] plastered on a wall
The Grammar Police answer: No, plurals do not use apostrophes, and that includes plurals of acronyms. Possessives ("the CEO's mug shot") use apostrophes, and contractions ("he's gotten off with a slap on the wrist") use apostrophes.
It's a common error, but if performed in front of a Grammar Policeman it could incur penalties of having to parse George Bush's speech into English for up to 30 days. Repeat violators would have to show sentence diagrams of text before and after revision.
> "Non-uniformed" is often a shorthand reference to combatants who are not part of any formal military apparatus of a recognized sovereign state.
Yeah, it's a shorthand way for governments to say "but of course these rules don't apply to us."
So you're saying 9/11 would not have been terrorism if the perpetrators had been wearing military uniforms? Why should an act that would be "terrorism" if committed by an irregular not also be "terrorism" if committed by a soldier?
" Destroying government property (or most other uses of violence / force by non-uniformed combatants) in order to change policy is the definition of terrorism. "
Huh? While it is true that some governments would like to see it defined that way, it's a loaded definition if I ever heard one.
I'd define terrorism as the use of violence, the threat of violence, or other activity designed to create fear (hence the root "terror"), against civilians. (If the targets are military or government and the attackers work for another government, we call it "war"; if the attackers are locals, we call it "revolution".) And why should how the terrorists are dressed make any difference?
But before I did P2P, I never bought new CDs. Except for presents. Or maybe once a year doing that BMC "15 CDs for the price of 1" deal, and then getting out of the "club" immediately. Ok, not exactly immediately. They'd send me CDs, and I'd scrawl "REFUSED" on the carton and throw them back in the mailbox. Eventually they'd expel me from their club. But 6 months later, they'd be missing me and asking to get me to join again. Anyhow, and I'd buy a few used CDs, the price being much more reasonable.
Now that I do P2P, it's pretty much the same. Except that I seem to know more musicians, and buy their CDs new, from them, more as a social obligation than anything else. But none of them is on a label that's a member of the RIAA, so they don't count.
>Like it or not, everyone gets what someone thinks they're worth.
Great! I'm someone. I think everyone's worth, oh, say, US$40K. So now that I've made my decision, everyone will get that?
The problem is when the "someone" is a person who's not personally paying. And especially if the "someone" is selected by the person whose salary is in question.
>Now all you have to do is send them a letter that interests them enough that they actually want to make a copy.
If you're the receptionist, it's your job to send it on to whoever it seems destined for. If it were a snail-mail, you'd send the actual paper letter to legal. If it's an email, you could call legal and say, "Mr. Slimeball, can you come down here and look at the message on my monitor, no, I'm on third floor, no sir, I understand you're very busy..." Or you could just forward (that is, copy) it to him.
And if they're a properly administered system, the sysadmin will be making backups... that is, copies...
Consider. Anything you write is protected by copyright automatically.
Let's suppose you write an email. While it shouldn't be necessary, perhaps you might include an explicit restriction in the body of the email, or at the bottom like lawyers often do: "This material is copyright by the sender and may not be reproduced in whole or in part by any means, including but not limited to reproducing on paper via a printer, forwarding to any other mailbox, storing on punch cards, paper tape, magnetic tape, optical media, or any other machine-readable form of reproduction. If you wish to reproduce this item, licenses are available from the sender for a nominal fee."
Let's suppose you sent your email to the RIAA. They are entitled to exactly one copy, which will end up in the mailbox of the receptionist. This will pose a dilemma, which will probably be solved by violating your copyright.
You might find it necessary to take steps to protect your intellectual property.
>The best thing about the Accutron was the cool sound they made.
I had one. It made a faint whine that sounded a lot like a mosquito. If you wore it while sleeping (which I did), and ended up with your wrist near your (or perhaps someone else's) ear, it could wake you (or other owner of ear) up.
>I was just curious how many slashdotters fired off a "polite" feedback.
Not to Carly. But I did email HP citing the news item, asking them to contact me if it was in error. And telling them that HP printers had been removed from my company's "recommended" list pending such a reply. Haven't heard from them yet.
Responsible practice is to inform the vendor and give them time. Say, 2 weeks. One month. Agreed. But not everything that is irresponsible should be actionable. There are those messy side issues like... oh... free speech. The thing about "rights" is that you have to give them even to obnoxious people.
If a company discovers a vulnerability in its product, how many weeks should it have before it notifies its customers of the vulnerability, regardless of whether a fix is yet available? Should that period be any different? Is it responsible to let customers continue to believe the product is secure, once the company knows different? Obviously, from the customers' perspective, one immediately available fix is to stop using the product. Should failure to warn customers of a known danger be any less actionable?
Actually, I think there's a stronger argument for holding the company to that standard (known defects, product liability). But I think we should be reasonable.. if we're going to be setting time periods, set them the same for both.
Choose the one you prefer: 1. a) Attila the Hun, b) Genghis Kahn 2. a) Stalin, b) Hitler 3. a) headcheese, b) haggis 4. a) trial by ordeal, b) trial by secret tribunal 5. a) death by hanging, b) death by firing squad 6. a) ICANN, b) Verisign
Ever try to find a open source tax preperation program? Doesn't exist.
Maybe. But there is a free tax preparation program for Windows, if your needs aren't too exotic (TaxAct)
Re:Saw something similar about EULAs in general
on
GPL's Strength
·
· Score: 1
Actually, CompUSA will. The MS license instructs you to return it if you don't agree, and I was ready to demand that the store call MS to find out whether they would be allowed to sell the product if they didn't comply. But they took it back when I said that I didn't agree to the license terms. Not sure if this is at the manager's discretion, or if they'll all do it and just have the big sign saying they won't accept returns to discourage you.
They are presumably MS's agent in this matter, since MS has instructed you to return it to them. If they did refuse the return (and you could prove it), you might be left with a copy of Office whose license you had not agreed to, and were not bound by.
It's a gen-u-wine US patent. Backed by whatever force of law genuine US patents have. And possessing whatever moral force the law provides.
>someone out to prove that the patent office is either overworked or very negligent.
Probably. Did anyone notice that the patent lawyer has the same last name as the patent holder? And remarkably enough, the phone listing for the attorney (or, at least, somebody with the same name as the attorney) is for the same address as the inventor. It would appear daddy used junior as a stand-in here.
Interestingly, I don't see this happening with my domain (where I receive all mail that didn't have a valid email address). Addresses harvested from USENET, addresses harvested from website registrations (CNBC/MSN either sold my name to spammers, or else protected it with that legendary Microsoft security), and addresses with typos in them, and even addresses that appear to be harvested from 5-year-old MsgID strings (since I have never actually told anyone I was "97110311562@..."). But never dictionary attacks. Of course, if my domain was hotmail.com, the situation might be different.
Given that the (P.R.C.) Chinese govt has an interest in monitoring/censoring Internet traffic, for spam from Chinese sources I've taken to splicing a little comment onto the end of my complaint, thanking them for their interest in "Free Tibet!" literature, or promising that per their request someone from Falun Gong will contact them in person. Either a spammer gets in trouble, or their govt becomes desensitized to subversive phrases in email, it's a win either way.
Might work with Korean spammers, too (the South Korean govt is deathly afraid of Communist North Korean influence).
Hey, the US govt is reputed to be watching your email, it might even work with US spammers if Osama's friends were to try to slip them a message about the next operation.
"The government regulation is much worst than any company can do."
At first I thought "wacko rightwing nut". But then I realized, the guy is right.
The only reason EULAs have any power (if they do) is because of government regulation. Without government regulation, a EULA is just a scrap of paper suitable for lining your parakeet's cage, with no legal significance whatsoever, totally unenforceable.
Corporations want government regulations to enforce their EULAs, but want to have a free hand in writing any terms that suit their whim. So, right on, brother! You've cut to the heart of the problem! No government regulation! No enforcement of EULAs! Smash the state!
He didn't say ISPs were common carriers. He (or whoever wrote the TLG blurb) said that TLG had a common carrier attitude. Sort of a "doctrine of first sale", that when they sold you connectivity, they didn't try to retain control over what you did with it.
I'd say it's an admirable policy, though I'm not sure I totally agree with it (my perfect ISP would provide random outages, bounced mail, and data corruption to Republicans).
What to do? No, don't ban the business practice. Just ensure responsibility.
We have a company (not just MS, but anyone) that holds user data (passwords, credit card info, whatever) accessible online (the proof of the pudding is in the eating.. if some cracker is able to access it, then it was accessible). Make that company liable for any real or consequential damages to users due to leakage of that data. Damages including value of time lost in changing passwords, dealing with credit card companies, whatever. Liable regardless of whatever EUL or click-thru smokescreens disclaiming liability they may have.
Don't mandate *how* they should stay secure. Just make it clear that if they blow it, it's going to be very very expensive.
Not a clue. The source claims to be an editor of Internet Security Review and, if that's true, probably has a lot of contacts. But what do I know? I don't really care who wrote it, so long as it becomes common knowledge how to defeat it. It will be amusing when someone with a hex editor edits it to send its keystrokes elsewhere, and starts mailing it to fbi.gov addresses, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you could first (A) Read the spec
And the spec is available where?
The article was a description, a summary, not a specification. The devil is in the details.
And this is the reason we have drug-resistant bacteria
Unfortunately, the answer is, "all of the above". Overprescription, failure of patients to complete the course of treatment, use of antibiotics in animal feed as a preventative and growth inducer, inappropriate self-treatment (I'd never heard of people mixing antibiotics with heroin, but that would certainly qualify), over-the-counter sales (mostly in third-world countries, but you'd be surprised at what's available at farm stores), heavy advertising by the pharmaceutical industry to encourage more sales. Every time an antibiotic is used, there is a small but finite risk of promoting antibiotic-resistance.
P2P networks often identify files by a hash. The database could be of file hashes. Get a match and it's the same file, and you don't need a copy of the file to make the comparison.
At least one Gnutella program (BearShare) has a EULA that does in fact prohibit such uses. But I bet the prohibition will be hard to enforce. OTOH, if it gets tossed out, maybe it will be a precedent against the validity of clickthrough EULAs.
>Suite numbers are used when you have a private company supply "PO Boxes", since only the US Post Office can supply PO Boxes
Actually, the PO does not permit suite numbers to be used for private boxes (the practice used to be widespread, and a lot of fraud accompanied it). You're supposed to use "P.M.B. nnn" (for "Private Mail Box")
>have their pictures' [Grammatical Question: Is this the proper use of the apostrophe in this instance?] plastered on a wall
The Grammar Police answer:
No, plurals do not use apostrophes, and that includes plurals of acronyms. Possessives ("the CEO's mug shot") use apostrophes, and contractions ("he's gotten off with a slap on the wrist") use apostrophes.
It's a common error, but if performed in front of a Grammar Policeman it could incur penalties of having to parse George Bush's speech into English for up to 30 days. Repeat violators would have to show sentence diagrams of text before and after revision.
> "Non-uniformed" is often a shorthand reference to combatants who are not part of any formal military apparatus of a recognized sovereign state.
Yeah, it's a shorthand way for governments to say "but of course these rules don't apply to us."
So you're saying 9/11 would not have been terrorism if the perpetrators had been wearing military uniforms? Why should an act that would be "terrorism" if committed by an irregular not also be "terrorism" if committed by a soldier?
" Destroying government property (or most other uses of violence / force by non-uniformed combatants) in order to change policy is the definition of terrorism. "
Huh? While it is true that some governments would like to see it defined that way, it's a loaded definition if I ever heard one.
I'd define terrorism as the use of violence, the threat of violence, or other activity designed to create fear (hence the root "terror"), against civilians. (If the targets are military or government and the attackers work for another government, we call it "war"; if the attackers are locals, we call it "revolution".) And why should how the terrorists are dressed make any difference?
I don't know about trend.
But before I did P2P, I never bought new CDs. Except for presents. Or maybe once a year doing that BMC "15 CDs for the price of 1" deal, and then getting out of the "club" immediately. Ok, not exactly immediately. They'd send me CDs, and I'd scrawl "REFUSED" on the carton and throw them back in the mailbox. Eventually they'd expel me from their club. But 6 months later, they'd be missing me and asking to get me to join again. Anyhow, and I'd buy a few used CDs, the price being much more reasonable.
Now that I do P2P, it's pretty much the same. Except that I seem to know more musicians, and buy their CDs new, from them, more as a social obligation than anything else. But none of them is on a label that's a member of the RIAA, so they don't count.
>Like it or not, everyone gets what someone thinks they're worth.
Great! I'm someone. I think everyone's worth, oh, say, US$40K. So now that I've made my decision, everyone will get that?
The problem is when the "someone" is a person who's not personally paying. And especially if the "someone" is selected by the person whose salary is in question.
>Now all you have to do is send them a letter that interests them enough that they actually want to make a copy.
If you're the receptionist, it's your job to send it on to whoever it seems destined for. If it were a snail-mail, you'd send the actual paper letter to legal. If it's an email, you could call legal and say, "Mr. Slimeball, can you come down here and look at the message on my monitor, no, I'm on third floor, no sir, I understand you're very busy..." Or you could just forward (that is, copy) it to him.
And if they're a properly administered system, the sysadmin will be making backups... that is, copies...
Consider. Anything you write is protected by copyright automatically.
Let's suppose you write an email. While it shouldn't be necessary, perhaps you might include an explicit restriction in the body of the email, or at the bottom like lawyers often do: "This material is copyright by the sender and may not be reproduced in whole or in part by any means, including but not limited to reproducing on paper via a printer, forwarding to any other mailbox, storing on punch cards, paper tape, magnetic tape, optical media, or any other machine-readable form of reproduction. If you wish to reproduce this item, licenses are available from the sender for a nominal fee."
Let's suppose you sent your email to the RIAA. They are entitled to exactly one copy, which will end up in the mailbox of the receptionist. This will pose a dilemma, which will probably be solved by violating your copyright.
You might find it necessary to take steps to protect your intellectual property.
>The best thing about the Accutron was the cool sound they made.
I had one. It made a faint whine that sounded a lot like a mosquito. If you wore it while sleeping (which I did), and ended up with your wrist near your (or perhaps someone else's) ear, it could wake you (or other owner of ear) up.
>I was just curious how many slashdotters fired off a "polite" feedback.
Not to Carly. But I did email HP citing the news item, asking them to contact me if it was in error. And telling them that HP printers had been removed from my company's "recommended" list pending such a reply. Haven't heard from them yet.
Responsible practice is to inform the vendor and give them time. Say, 2 weeks. One month. Agreed. But not everything that is irresponsible should be actionable. There are those messy side issues like... oh... free speech. The thing about "rights" is that you have to give them even to obnoxious people.
If a company discovers a vulnerability in its product, how many weeks should it have before it notifies its customers of the vulnerability, regardless of whether a fix is yet available? Should that period be any different? Is it responsible to let customers continue to believe the product is secure, once the company knows different? Obviously, from the customers' perspective, one immediately available fix is to stop using the product. Should failure to warn customers of a known danger be any less actionable?
Actually, I think there's a stronger argument for holding the company to that standard (known defects, product liability). But I think we should be reasonable.. if we're going to be setting time periods, set them the same for both.
Choose the one you prefer:
1. a) Attila the Hun, b) Genghis Kahn
2. a) Stalin, b) Hitler
3. a) headcheese, b) haggis
4. a) trial by ordeal, b) trial by secret tribunal
5. a) death by hanging, b) death by firing squad
6. a) ICANN, b) Verisign
Ever try to find a open source tax preperation program? Doesn't exist.
Maybe. But there is a free tax preparation program for Windows, if your needs aren't too exotic (TaxAct)
Actually, CompUSA will. The MS license instructs you to return it if you don't agree, and I was ready to demand that the store call MS to find out whether they would be allowed to sell the product if they didn't comply. But they took it back when I said that I didn't agree to the license terms. Not sure if this is at the manager's discretion, or if they'll all do it and just have the big sign saying they won't accept returns to discourage you.
They are presumably MS's agent in this matter, since MS has instructed you to return it to them. If they did refuse the return (and you could prove it), you might be left with a copy of Office whose license you had not agreed to, and were not bound by.
>There's no way this is for real.
It's a gen-u-wine US patent. Backed by whatever force of law genuine US patents have. And possessing whatever moral force the law provides.
>someone out to prove that the patent office is either overworked or very negligent.
Probably. Did anyone notice that the patent lawyer has the same last name as the patent holder? And remarkably enough, the phone listing for the attorney (or, at least, somebody with the same name as the attorney) is for the same address as the inventor. It would appear daddy used junior as a stand-in here.
Interestingly, I don't see this happening with my domain (where I receive all mail that didn't have a valid email address). Addresses harvested from USENET, addresses harvested from website registrations (CNBC/MSN either sold my name to spammers, or else protected it with that legendary Microsoft security), and addresses with typos in them, and even addresses that appear to be harvested from 5-year-old MsgID strings (since I have never actually told anyone I was "97110311562@..."). But never dictionary attacks. Of course, if my domain was hotmail.com, the situation might be different.
Given that the (P.R.C.) Chinese govt has an interest in monitoring/censoring Internet traffic, for spam from Chinese sources I've taken to splicing a little comment onto the end of my complaint, thanking them for their interest in "Free Tibet!" literature, or promising that per their request someone from Falun Gong will contact them in person. Either a spammer gets in trouble, or their govt becomes desensitized to subversive phrases in email, it's a win either way.
Might work with Korean spammers, too (the South Korean govt is deathly afraid of Communist North Korean influence).
Hey, the US govt is reputed to be watching your email, it might even work with US spammers if Osama's friends were to try to slip them a message about the next operation.
"The government regulation is much worst than any company can do."
At first I thought "wacko rightwing nut". But then I realized, the guy is right.
The only reason EULAs have any power (if they do) is because of government regulation. Without government regulation, a EULA is just a scrap of paper suitable for lining your parakeet's cage, with no legal significance whatsoever, totally unenforceable.
Corporations want government regulations to enforce their EULAs, but want to have a free hand in writing any terms that suit their whim. So, right on, brother! You've cut to the heart of the problem! No government regulation! No enforcement of EULAs! Smash the state!
Oh, that wasn't precisely what you had in mind?..
I'd say it's an admirable policy, though I'm not sure I totally agree with it (my perfect ISP would provide random outages, bounced mail, and data corruption to Republicans).
What to do? No, don't ban the business practice. Just ensure responsibility.
We have a company (not just MS, but anyone) that holds user data (passwords, credit card info, whatever) accessible online (the proof of the pudding is in the eating.. if some cracker is able to access it, then it was accessible). Make that company liable for any real or consequential damages to users due to leakage of that data. Damages including value of time lost in changing passwords, dealing with credit card companies, whatever. Liable regardless of whatever EUL or click-thru smokescreens disclaiming liability they may have.
Don't mandate *how* they should stay secure. Just make it clear that if they blow it, it's going to be very very expensive.
Not a clue. The source claims to be an editor of Internet Security Review and, if that's true, probably has a lot of contacts. But what do I know? I don't really care who wrote it, so long as it becomes common knowledge how to defeat it. It will be amusing when someone with a hex editor edits it to send its keystrokes elsewhere, and starts mailing it to fbi.gov addresses, though.