I don't have to pay for your T-shirt if i don't want it. Just like spam. Just like anything else. Unless you go ahead and charge me for it without me saying yes, do whatever you'd like.
Touring the head hunters around Boston, almost every single one is craving MSCE's to toss at company's. Additionally, most of them still scoff at Linux, preferring to hire/place people with tangible experience with Solaris (especially), AIX, or HP-UX.
That being the case I've witnessed, I can't possibly imagine a region where there's more actual demand for Red Hat certified engineers in comparisson to Microsoft certified ones. It's not like this is a single agency phenomenon. It's ALL of them, here.
"I can't wear this shirt because it has DeCSSsource code written on it, and that's a violation of my right to free speech, but I don't like what this person's sending me so let's make a law that make's them stop... Better yet, let's devise a way to block them from accessing our internet!"
It's just that there are some bad apples out there. Independants.
Look at the direct marketing industry as an example that spammers should follow. Or really, they should join the DMA and act like real businesses, rather than the fly-by-night operations that currently exist.
Yes, there's some bad seeds in direct mail, too. There's bad seeds everywhere. Websites that exist only to steal credit card numbers. Hackers or crackers sitting around their dens with nothing better to do than probe my home machine day in and day out. Etc.
But if spammers just followed a few precendents already set, the world would be much better. For instance, require them to use legitamate domains to mail from. Also require them to collect the email addresses of people who want out. That way, before each round of spam was sent out, they could merge their list against a not-list so as to not mail to people who had told someone else they didn't wish to receive email anymore.
But for spammers to follow some guidelines, the people on the receiving end would have to do a little to be more "accomodating". For instance, if spammers were to use legitamate domains, ISP's should NOT simply bar those domains from sending email into their domains. Instead, rely upon the users to "opt out". If the spammer complies with the users requests, let them be free to do what they want. If the spammer ignores request like that, then, at that point, bar their domain.
Pretty much, they need to be forced into compliance with some standards.
Your servers may be private property. Maybe they shouldn't be. OR think of them as real life mailboxes. They're on your property, but everyone is welcome to send stuff to you. In the real world, if you get offers you don't like, you CAN generally find the culprit. You can also submit your name to the DMA and most legitamate mailers will oblige and cease mailing to you.
You could go with the QuickTime Streaming Server. Free server. Free clients. Sounds like a pretty good deal, so long as you're willing to cut all those pesty non-windows and non-macintosh boxes out of your viewership. But don't worry, they're only like 7 or 8% of the market, so it won't matter that much.
Actually, Microsofts main threat to their competition isn't that they bundle to player with their OS (although that's a good sized portion of it), it's that they actually PAY streaming media companies to switch to Windows media, in the form of actually purchasing boxes for them, installing them, paying for their bandwidth, and sending techs on site to troubleshoot.
It that's not unfair and leveraging from one market to another, i don't know what is. I mean, what - you can either serve in RealMedia, make people download a player, and then go and buy the server software, or you can serve Windows media, and if your site is large enough, actually GET PAID to use it.
Can't wait til some class action or something actually drains microsofts coffers a little bit so they have to once again compete on merit rather than just the fact that they have enough money to keep going and going and going long after their competition has gone bankrupt trying to compete with free and subsidized products.
Another product subisidy of theirs, coincidentally, is Windows 2000. All those success stories you read in the ads, those are all basically paid for by microsoft, who sends in tons of techs to get Win2000 running, and doesn't charge a dime for the privelegde, aside from being able to say "HEY! This company had enough confidence in our software to switch."
Hmmm what technology has lasted for 3-5 or more years without disappearing into obsoleteness?
RSA encryption Cinepak compression The rest of Apple's QuickTime Postscript Java
SQL HTML C C++
Some of those have been protected by patents. Some haven't. It's one thing when a patent is obviously a rip off of previously released work, which i think that Amazon's well publicized patents are. It's another thing when a company spends hundreds of thousands of dollars coming up with a new idea, only to see it pilfered away from them.
I think overall, in theory, patents are good. Inventors, be they individuals or R&D departments of corporations, have every right in the world to be the first to profit from their inventions. They also, i think, have a right to be insured exclusive use, if they so desire. Otherwise it really takes away the financial motivator to think of new tools to solve existing problems.
Would Thomas Edison have existed if it weren't for patent protection? I doubt it. Or he would of but he would not have become the almost legend he is today.
Having them last less time the 3 or 5 years would just be ridiculous. Very rarely is something implented correctly the first time around. People would basically be stuck in a proposition of they'ed have the ability to release something that was aweful just so they could hope that it caught on, while competitors sat on the sidelines waiting for the patent to expire.
Likewise, there would probably be a HUGE increase in software upgrade cycles, as inventors of new technology wouldn't want to spout about it until the last possible moment, because again, they'ed have an extremely limited window in which to recoup their monies.
3 years is almost too quick 5 years would be ideal 7 years, still, would be pretty good 17 years is just too long.
Anyone here will know that a) is simply impossible. Sites can change URL's in a matter of minutes, multiple mirrors etc etc. (We need only look at how poor some of the existing "censorship" products are in the West to realise that what China's government want to do is extremely difficult.)
It would be so much easier for the Chinese government to simply make a list of approved sites and only allow access to those ones. No more having to deal with pesky mirrors and brand new URLs or anything. They could simply go "Okay... ESPN.com is okay. Disney.com is okay, eff.org is not okay, house.gov is not okay, slashdot is not okay, ebay.com is okay." That's it. It'd end up being pretty hard to circumvent unless you wanted to start posting pro democracy rants in the item listings of ebay, or in the sports chat on ESPN.
Why does everyone here think that for some reason it's a threat to the democracy in China that the chinese government would attempt to block sites they find "objectionable" due to differing political views than the ones they want to project.
Guess what?
China's not a democracy. They've been censoring the content that enters and is produced in their country for ever. All they're really doing is updating their policies to deal with the internet age. It's really not that much of a shocker.
I wouldn't be suprised if later on they realized that proactively blocking sites was too cumbersome (picking and choosing which sites to block) and they switched everything around and came up with a state sponsored list of allowable sites and straight out blocked all of the rest of the internet. It'd actually be much easier and much more fool proof that way.
Again, no. You can't determine what a parent does with their computer. As for computers in public facilities, you'd have to take it up with the owners of the computer, not the makers of the software.
Just as when someone gets shot, (generally... you never know anymore in this day and age) it's the shooter that gets in trouble, not the gun manufacturer. But in these days of "lets sue everybody" it sounds like gun makers are also starting to see some lawsuits as well.
If you find yourself in one of those lists, and believe that you're there for no good reason, take the time to write the company (on paper would be even better than just an email) and kindly explain to them why you don't feel that your site falls into the category which they placed you in.
But yeah, in the end, you don't have any real leg to stand on to go after the makers of censor ware... Your only hope would be to take it up with the publicly run places that install the software.
I'd honestly love to get my hands on a copy of this list just to do my own analysis on it which I'm SURE would show that peacefire is completely stacking the deck in their reports... Where can I find it?
In the US at least, this software is used by parents on their home machines... Parents have every right in the world to say what and what not their children can do and see on the internet on their home machines. It'd be awefully difficult for parents to configure proxy servers on their own that explicity block sites that they stumble across, not to mention the waste of effort. By using the software, parents are implicitly agreeing that they agree with the censorware's author's idea of what and what is not acceptable.
It's not like it should make much difference to many sites... I mean, kids don't generally have credit cards, so they can't order anything... All those ads also basically go to waste because again kids can't order anything they see promoted on various sites.
So far as the blocking of Peacefires site goes, that's probably acceptable as well... Why should parents go through the hassle of buying and installing the software if the kids can easily go to a site that gives them tools to circumvent this.
You have to realize, kids are not real citizens. Parents are in most cases liable for the actions of their kids... They have every right in the world to determine what constitutes acceptable use and what does not. It's not a denial of service attack...
I think i was agreeing with that point... No one needs to think up new crimes or anything... Existing ones are fine. But just to differentiate, i'd say add "computer" to thing beginning. So people look at your background know for instance that you're a nerd, and not a violent offender:)
But overall... I'd say we're all aware that todays computers (all of them, save for maybe the ones in classified government installations) have security flaws. WE don't need the point proved over and over. We don't need people thinking up tools to release to the public without giving vendors time to actually make fixes, or even worse, in the case of DDOS, releasing tools where there really are no feasible fixes and no one to point fingers at. The points already proven, we don't need it proven anymore.
I think that trespassing, larceny, and breaking & entering pretty much 99% of cybercrime... Just stick the term "computer" in front of each of those, think up some suitable penalties, and that sounds like a reasonable penal system.
That doesn't throw privacy out the window.
Nor does mandating that all ISP's set up their machines to log who has which IP address in the event that one day the FBI needs to track down the next great DDOS d00d... It's really not that bad, i don't think, so law as everything is phrased correctly.
Rather than lobby against any and all government intrusion on the internet, which is going to happen no matter how much every doesn't want it to, why doesn't everyone think together, try to figure out what they're trying to accomplish (no super-conspiracy theorists, please!) and work with them to ensure that they can have what they want while we keep what we want?
There's lots of paperwork that needs to be filled out, since in many times trespassing a computer network is a crime in and of itself, so IBM makes sure they won't be held liable.
But the point is, they exist. It should be a companies decision to hire them or not, not just if some bored kid decides to break into your system, then ask for a paycheck..
I think in most cases, as long as a server asks for a password, to proceed any further without the owner or administrators consent is and should be wrong and illegal.
Don't say that hackers are benevolent.... Even if they do nothing but poke around, it should still be up to the company in question as to whether or not they have their security audited.
no. when the sampling is of 50 and the world is 10,000,000 (i'm making up that number, but it must be around there, being that the compressed file is over 10 megabyte), 50 IS NOT enough to gauge anything. Give me that file, and i'll pull out 50.edu sites that contain the most horrendous filth in the world... Does that make my findings accurate, or even worthy of press release? No.
I've worked in marketing... We've procurred mailing lists... Some were as small as 5,000 new names/month, others were around 100,000/month. The lists of 5,000 were too small to be able to predict from month to month, but when we got up to around 15-20,000 we could generally pinpoint within.5% what the response rates would be. But there would be no way in the world to guess at future response rates by using just 50 names from a list. The first 50, last 50, middle 50, or a random set of 50... 50 is just TOO SMALL to create any meaningful data.
Maybe they could do 1,2,3,4 or 5,000 sites... Then they might have something to report on. Of course, there will be some errors, as nothings perfect. But on the other hand, maybe people will find that overall, their list and assumptions are correct 98% of the time. Not perfect, but good enough for Symantec's target market: Parents.
After all, parents generally buy their kids computers. They feed the kids, clothe the kids, and are liable for their kids actions. Like it or not, parents have every right to install software on the machines they own to block kids from accessing sites that they feel (either first hand, or through a trusted 3rd party, in this case Symantec) are inappropriate. It's not like this software is being mandatorally installed on all the worlds routers or anything.
Not to be a nitpick, but with all of his ramblings about 3-5 years, business patents & software patents vs regular patents, etc... I would have been quite impressed if he'd said that regardless of the outcome of his talks with congressment, Amazon would unilaterally allow anyone (me, you, barnes & noble) access to their patents 3-5 years after the date they were filed or maybe awarded.
That would have been so honorable... Instead, I'm not sure exactly what he was telling us... Like, if he goes to congress and they say no, they're going to let patents last for 20 years, does that mean he's going to hold onto affiliate programs and one-click ordering for the duration of time, or what?
I kind of agree with symantec here... I mean, what Peacefire did is extremely misleading... No site blocking software is going to be perfect, but for them to disect the list, but only the first 50, and at that, only the first 50 educational sites, and then post findings such as a 76% error rate... I mean, that's very biased, and absurd.
If they can decode the list in it's entirety, why don't they do a little more analyisis of it... What is percentage of.edu sites contained in the list. 5%? 10%?
How about an analysis of the first 1000 entries? EDU or not.
In direct marketing, people realize that a sampling of 10,000 people from a given list is generally the bare minimum to use in terms of being able to accurately predict response rates... For instance if mail something to 1,000 people from the same list and get a great response, you shouldn't go ahead and buy 100,000 more names fom that list, because you didn't get an accurate sampling...
The same goes with peacefires thing... They're using nearly enough information to give a real idea of what's happening... When you're able to skew data like that, you can show nearly any result that you want.
Nothing needs to be the best at everything, nor should they even try.
Browsers of the future SHOULD NoT try to encompass every task a user might want to do. Look at the current Netscape for instance... I actually like it the best of any of the browsers, but so far as it's email client goes, I'm much happier with Outlook Express... For it's Address book, again, i like outlook much more... For web page composition, Dreamweaver rules.
Mozilla should focus on shipping a kick ass browser only... Think Navigator, not Communicator. The simpler the client, the less likely bugs will surface, the easier it is for people to download, and the sooner it can hit the actual beta stage followed by 1.0.
There's so much progress that's been made on all the fronts... Instant messaging, Streaming Media, etc... They have huge head starts in infrastructure, usability and market saturation. There's no need to replace them And they're not broken... Don't fix them.
Just as everyone gripes with Microsoft bundling the kitchen sink with their OSes... I'd much prefer not to have to download an email client that i won't use, codecs for a streaming system that i won't use, instant messaging that i won't use, and page layout software i won't use just to get a browser which i might like to use.
Like an article that was here yesterday plainly stated... Opensource software in general seems to be developed by programmers for programmers, rather than by programmers for users... You need to enlist some graphics people or UI engineers or something, before the interfaces can really be considered "snappy" or anything...
I'd actually volunteer myself for something like that, being that most my background is in the graphic arts and printing spaces rather than the C, C++, Perl, Java, TCL, Perl, etc... space.
In all honesty, how else will anyone find that the implementation is flawed, if that happened to be the case. There's plenty of secure sites which you can go to that don't need credit card information. Or users and/or testers can visit secure sites and analyze their traffic, and compare it to the traffic that Netscape 4.7 and IE 5 would generate. Sounds like a good idea. It's not like Mozilla is in general use. Everyone knows that it's not ready for the primetime and uses it knowing that it's a work in progress.
If you have a regular ISP, AOL is happy enough to use your existing TCP/IP connection... On windows and the Mac, it's happy enough to automatically start PPP whenever it's needed...
And besides that, isn't configuring PPP a root-only type thing, where if AOL were installed by a user they wouldn't have permission to overwrite any of those settings anyways?
I do know what I'm talking about, I'm sorry to say... Most people are taught to look in the file menu to quit their programs... So when they go there, that's the keyboard command that they're most likely to learn.
Additionally, Pinball may be a unique example, but the issue with that is that it's a program that Microsoft developed and ships with the OS... It'd be more understandable and acceptable if it were a 3rd party app, but it's not... It's technically "part of the OS" as microsoft would say. Yet it introduces a non-standard way of doing things...
Also, unlike Apple, Microsoft does very little to enforce interface rigidity upon develoeprs... That means that in most instances, ctrl-x cuts and ctrl-v pastes, EXCEPT IN QUICKEN, where for some reason it's ctrl-insert to paste and i forgot what it is to cut... It's just lame.
I think that whatever the next step is in opensource UI's, a great idea would be that yes everyone can develop for it and make up whatever tricks they want. But there should be some guidelines in place, and maybe even a certification program so that people will know which applications actually abide by all the recomendations.
Well, we were on the subject of keyboard navigation... Yes, just about every windows app lets you click the X, but how about standard shortcuts for regular tasks... for example, cut and paste is generally ctrl-x and ctrl-v, except for quicken, where it's ctrl-instert and i forgot the other one...
It wouldn't be so bad if all those different variations of quitting applications worked in each application, but instead each program uses a subset of those.
One nice thing about windows compared to the Mac is that you can ALMOST do everything from the keyboard if you desire... But there's way too much inconsistency across applications to make it completely feasible.
I think people need to get over the idea that a command line makes them more productive, enables them to do more, etc, take a step back and LOOk at the current offerings...
GUI's are cool because they give you a Graphical view of your file system. And they give you keyboard shortcuts that represent things that you never could with a CLI... Like "Select All" when you're in a folder view.
On a mac you type "command a, command delete" to rid a directory of files. In Linux, you type "rm *"... which is 4 distinct key strokes rather than 2.
In windows, to switch between tasks, you type command tab. That's all.
Again, before anyone goes out and tries to create the next "killer" interface, take the time to thoroughly learn the existing ones, otherwise, my bets that there'll be a pretty much USELESS interface created. Watch people using their computers. Windows users. Mac users. See how they do some things the same and others differently. See what baffles them. Try to think up better ways for them to do things... Or put their options where they look the first time... Again, otherwise it'll be an utter waste of everyone's time.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't have to pay for your T-shirt if i don't want it. Just like spam. Just like anything else. Unless you go ahead and charge me for it without me saying yes, do whatever you'd like.
Touring the head hunters around Boston, almost every single one is craving MSCE's to toss at company's. Additionally, most of them still scoff at Linux, preferring to hire/place people with tangible experience with Solaris (especially), AIX, or HP-UX.
That being the case I've witnessed, I can't possibly imagine a region where there's more actual demand for Red Hat certified engineers in comparisson to Microsoft certified ones. It's not like this is a single agency phenomenon. It's ALL of them, here.
More like irony...
"I can't wear this shirt because it has DeCSSsource code written on it, and that's a violation of my right to free speech, but I don't like what this person's sending me so let's make a law that make's them stop... Better yet, let's devise a way to block them from accessing our internet!"
It's just that there are some bad apples out there. Independants.
Look at the direct marketing industry as an example that spammers should follow. Or really, they should join the DMA and act like real businesses, rather than the fly-by-night operations that currently exist.
Yes, there's some bad seeds in direct mail, too. There's bad seeds everywhere. Websites that exist only to steal credit card numbers. Hackers or crackers sitting around their dens with nothing better to do than probe my home machine day in and day out. Etc.
But if spammers just followed a few precendents already set, the world would be much better. For instance, require them to use legitamate domains to mail from. Also require them to collect the email addresses of people who want out. That way, before each round of spam was sent out, they could merge their list against a not-list so as to not mail to people who had told someone else they didn't wish to receive email anymore.
But for spammers to follow some guidelines, the people on the receiving end would have to do a little to be more "accomodating". For instance, if spammers were to use legitamate domains, ISP's should NOT simply bar those domains from sending email into their domains. Instead, rely upon the users to "opt out". If the spammer complies with the users requests, let them be free to do what they want. If the spammer ignores request like that, then, at that point, bar their domain.
Pretty much, they need to be forced into compliance with some standards.
Your servers may be private property. Maybe they shouldn't be. OR think of them as real life mailboxes. They're on your property, but everyone is welcome to send stuff to you. In the real world, if you get offers you don't like, you CAN generally find the culprit. You can also submit your name to the DMA and most legitamate mailers will oblige and cease mailing to you.
You could go with the QuickTime Streaming Server. Free server. Free clients. Sounds like a pretty good deal, so long as you're willing to cut all those pesty non-windows and non-macintosh boxes out of your viewership. But don't worry, they're only like 7 or 8% of the market, so it won't matter that much.
Oops! Did I say that?
Actually, Microsofts main threat to their competition isn't that they bundle to player with their OS (although that's a good sized portion of it), it's that they actually PAY streaming media companies to switch to Windows media, in the form of actually purchasing boxes for them, installing them, paying for their bandwidth, and sending techs on site to troubleshoot.
It that's not unfair and leveraging from one market to another, i don't know what is. I mean, what - you can either serve in RealMedia, make people download a player, and then go and buy the server software, or you can serve Windows media, and if your site is large enough, actually GET PAID to use it.
Can't wait til some class action or something actually drains microsofts coffers a little bit so they have to once again compete on merit rather than just the fact that they have enough money to keep going and going and going long after their competition has gone bankrupt trying to compete with free and subsidized products.
Another product subisidy of theirs, coincidentally, is Windows 2000. All those success stories you read in the ads, those are all basically paid for by microsoft, who sends in tons of techs to get Win2000 running, and doesn't charge a dime for the privelegde, aside from being able to say "HEY! This company had enough confidence in our software to switch."
New strategy, i guess.
Hmmm what technology has lasted for 3-5 or more years without disappearing into obsoleteness?
RSA encryption
Cinepak compression
The rest of Apple's QuickTime
Postscript
Java
SQL
HTML
C
C++
Some of those have been protected by patents. Some haven't. It's one thing when a patent is obviously a rip off of previously released work, which i think that Amazon's well publicized patents are. It's another thing when a company spends hundreds of thousands of dollars coming up with a new idea, only to see it pilfered away from them.
I think overall, in theory, patents are good. Inventors, be they individuals or R&D departments of corporations, have every right in the world to be the first to profit from their inventions. They also, i think, have a right to be insured exclusive use, if they so desire. Otherwise it really takes away the financial motivator to think of new tools to solve existing problems.
Would Thomas Edison have existed if it weren't for patent protection? I doubt it. Or he would of but he would not have become the almost legend he is today.
Having them last less time the 3 or 5 years would just be ridiculous. Very rarely is something implented correctly the first time around. People would basically be stuck in a proposition of they'ed have the ability to release something that was aweful just so they could hope that it caught on, while competitors sat on the sidelines waiting for the patent to expire.
Likewise, there would probably be a HUGE increase in software upgrade cycles, as inventors of new technology wouldn't want to spout about it until the last possible moment, because again, they'ed have an extremely limited window in which to recoup their monies.
3 years is almost too quick
5 years would be ideal
7 years, still, would be pretty good
17 years is just too long.
Anyone here will know that a) is simply impossible. Sites can change URL's in a matter of minutes, multiple mirrors etc etc. (We need only look at how poor some of the existing "censorship" products are in the West to realise that what China's government want to do is extremely difficult.)
It would be so much easier for the Chinese government to simply make a list of approved sites and only allow access to those ones. No more having to deal with pesky mirrors and brand new URLs or anything. They could simply go "Okay... ESPN.com is okay. Disney.com is okay, eff.org is not okay, house.gov is not okay, slashdot is not okay, ebay.com is okay." That's it. It'd end up being pretty hard to circumvent unless you wanted to start posting pro democracy rants in the item listings of ebay, or in the sports chat on ESPN.
Why does everyone here think that for some reason it's a threat to the democracy in China that the chinese government would attempt to block sites they find "objectionable" due to differing political views than the ones they want to project.
Guess what?
China's not a democracy. They've been censoring the content that enters and is produced in their country for ever. All they're really doing is updating their policies to deal with the internet age. It's really not that much of a shocker.
I wouldn't be suprised if later on they realized that proactively blocking sites was too cumbersome (picking and choosing which sites to block) and they switched everything around and came up with a state sponsored list of allowable sites and straight out blocked all of the rest of the internet. It'd actually be much easier and much more fool proof that way.
Again, no. You can't determine what a parent does with their computer. As for computers in public facilities, you'd have to take it up with the owners of the computer, not the makers of the software.
Just as when someone gets shot, (generally... you never know anymore in this day and age) it's the shooter that gets in trouble, not the gun manufacturer. But in these days of "lets sue everybody" it sounds like gun makers are also starting to see some lawsuits as well.
If you find yourself in one of those lists, and believe that you're there for no good reason, take the time to write the company (on paper would be even better than just an email) and kindly explain to them why you don't feel that your site falls into the category which they placed you in.
But yeah, in the end, you don't have any real leg to stand on to go after the makers of censor ware... Your only hope would be to take it up with the publicly run places that install the software.
I'd honestly love to get my hands on a copy of this list just to do my own analysis on it which I'm SURE would show that peacefire is completely stacking the deck in their reports... Where can I find it?
NO.
In the US at least, this software is used by parents on their home machines... Parents have every right in the world to say what and what not their children can do and see on the internet on their home machines. It'd be awefully difficult for parents to configure proxy servers on their own that explicity block sites that they stumble across, not to mention the waste of effort. By using the software, parents are implicitly agreeing that they agree with the censorware's author's idea of what and what is not acceptable.
It's not like it should make much difference to many sites... I mean, kids don't generally have credit cards, so they can't order anything... All those ads also basically go to waste because again kids can't order anything they see promoted on various sites.
So far as the blocking of Peacefires site goes, that's probably acceptable as well... Why should parents go through the hassle of buying and installing the software if the kids can easily go to a site that gives them tools to circumvent this.
You have to realize, kids are not real citizens. Parents are in most cases liable for the actions of their kids... They have every right in the world to determine what constitutes acceptable use and what does not. It's not a denial of service attack...
I think i was agreeing with that point... No one needs to think up new crimes or anything... Existing ones are fine. But just to differentiate, i'd say add "computer" to thing beginning. So people look at your background know for instance that you're a nerd, and not a violent offender :)
But overall... I'd say we're all aware that todays computers (all of them, save for maybe the ones in classified government installations) have security flaws. WE don't need the point proved over and over. We don't need people thinking up tools to release to the public without giving vendors time to actually make fixes, or even worse, in the case of DDOS, releasing tools where there really are no feasible fixes and no one to point fingers at. The points already proven, we don't need it proven anymore.
I think that trespassing, larceny, and breaking & entering pretty much 99% of cybercrime... Just stick the term "computer" in front of each of those, think up some suitable penalties, and that sounds like a reasonable penal system.
That doesn't throw privacy out the window.
Nor does mandating that all ISP's set up their machines to log who has which IP address in the event that one day the FBI needs to track down the next great DDOS d00d... It's really not that bad, i don't think, so law as everything is phrased correctly.
Rather than lobby against any and all government intrusion on the internet, which is going to happen no matter how much every doesn't want it to, why doesn't everyone think together, try to figure out what they're trying to accomplish (no super-conspiracy theorists, please!) and work with them to ensure that they can have what they want while we keep what we want?
IBM does this already.
There's lots of paperwork that needs to be filled out, since in many times trespassing a computer network is a crime in and of itself, so IBM makes sure they won't be held liable.
But the point is, they exist. It should be a companies decision to hire them or not, not just if some bored kid decides to break into your system, then ask for a paycheck..
I think in most cases, as long as a server asks for a password, to proceed any further without the owner or administrators consent is and should be wrong and illegal.
Don't say that hackers are benevolent.... Even if they do nothing but poke around, it should still be up to the company in question as to whether or not they have their security audited.
no. when the sampling is of 50 and the world is 10,000,000 (i'm making up that number, but it must be around there, being that the compressed file is over 10 megabyte), 50 IS NOT enough to gauge anything. Give me that file, and i'll pull out 50 .edu sites that contain the most horrendous filth in the world... Does that make my findings accurate, or even worthy of press release? No.
.5% what the response rates would be. But there would be no way in the world to guess at future response rates by using just 50 names from a list. The first 50, last 50, middle 50, or a random set of 50... 50 is just TOO SMALL to create any meaningful data.
I've worked in marketing... We've procurred mailing lists... Some were as small as 5,000 new names/month, others were around 100,000/month. The lists of 5,000 were too small to be able to predict from month to month, but when we got up to around 15-20,000 we could generally pinpoint within
Maybe they could do 1,2,3,4 or 5,000 sites... Then they might have something to report on. Of course, there will be some errors, as nothings perfect. But on the other hand, maybe people will find that overall, their list and assumptions are correct 98% of the time. Not perfect, but good enough for Symantec's target market: Parents.
After all, parents generally buy their kids computers. They feed the kids, clothe the kids, and are liable for their kids actions. Like it or not, parents have every right to install software on the machines they own to block kids from accessing sites that they feel (either first hand, or through a trusted 3rd party, in this case Symantec) are inappropriate. It's not like this software is being mandatorally installed on all the worlds routers or anything.
Not to be a nitpick, but with all of his ramblings about 3-5 years, business patents & software patents vs regular patents, etc... I would have been quite impressed if he'd said that regardless of the outcome of his talks with congressment, Amazon would unilaterally allow anyone (me, you, barnes & noble) access to their patents 3-5 years after the date they were filed or maybe awarded.
That would have been so honorable... Instead, I'm not sure exactly what he was telling us... Like, if he goes to congress and they say no, they're going to let patents last for 20 years, does that mean he's going to hold onto affiliate programs and one-click ordering for the duration of time, or what?
I kind of agree with symantec here... I mean, what Peacefire did is extremely misleading... No site blocking software is going to be perfect, but for them to disect the list, but only the first 50, and at that, only the first 50 educational sites, and then post findings such as a 76% error rate... I mean, that's very biased, and absurd.
.edu sites contained in the list. 5%? 10%?
If they can decode the list in it's entirety, why don't they do a little more analyisis of it... What is percentage of
How about an analysis of the first 1000 entries? EDU or not.
In direct marketing, people realize that a sampling of 10,000 people from a given list is generally the bare minimum to use in terms of being able to accurately predict response rates... For instance if mail something to 1,000 people from the same list and get a great response, you shouldn't go ahead and buy 100,000 more names fom that list, because you didn't get an accurate sampling...
The same goes with peacefires thing... They're using nearly enough information to give a real idea of what's happening... When you're able to skew data like that, you can show nearly any result that you want.
Nothing needs to be the best at everything, nor should they even try.
Browsers of the future SHOULD NoT try to encompass every task a user might want to do. Look at the current Netscape for instance... I actually like it the best of any of the browsers, but so far as it's email client goes, I'm much happier with Outlook Express... For it's Address book, again, i like outlook much more... For web page composition, Dreamweaver rules.
Mozilla should focus on shipping a kick ass browser only... Think Navigator, not Communicator. The simpler the client, the less likely bugs will surface, the easier it is for people to download, and the sooner it can hit the actual beta stage followed by 1.0.
There's so much progress that's been made on all the fronts... Instant messaging, Streaming Media, etc... They have huge head starts in infrastructure, usability and market saturation. There's no need to replace them And they're not broken... Don't fix them.
Just as everyone gripes with Microsoft bundling the kitchen sink with their OSes... I'd much prefer not to have to download an email client that i won't use, codecs for a streaming system that i won't use, instant messaging that i won't use, and page layout software i won't use just to get a browser which i might like to use.
Like an article that was here yesterday plainly stated... Opensource software in general seems to be developed by programmers for programmers, rather than by programmers for users... You need to enlist some graphics people or UI engineers or something, before the interfaces can really be considered "snappy" or anything...
I'd actually volunteer myself for something like that, being that most my background is in the graphic arts and printing spaces rather than the C, C++, Perl, Java, TCL, Perl, etc... space.
In all honesty, how else will anyone find that the implementation is flawed, if that happened to be the case. There's plenty of secure sites which you can go to that don't need credit card information. Or users and/or testers can visit secure sites and analyze their traffic, and compare it to the traffic that Netscape 4.7 and IE 5 would generate. Sounds like a good idea. It's not like Mozilla is in general use. Everyone knows that it's not ready for the primetime and uses it knowing that it's a work in progress.
If you have a regular ISP, AOL is happy enough to use your existing TCP/IP connection... On windows and the Mac, it's happy enough to automatically start PPP whenever it's needed...
And besides that, isn't configuring PPP a root-only type thing, where if AOL were installed by a user they wouldn't have permission to overwrite any of those settings anyways?
I do know what I'm talking about, I'm sorry to say... Most people are taught to look in the file menu to quit their programs... So when they go there, that's the keyboard command that they're most likely to learn.
Additionally, Pinball may be a unique example, but the issue with that is that it's a program that Microsoft developed and ships with the OS... It'd be more understandable and acceptable if it were a 3rd party app, but it's not... It's technically "part of the OS" as microsoft would say. Yet it introduces a non-standard way of doing things...
Also, unlike Apple, Microsoft does very little to enforce interface rigidity upon develoeprs... That means that in most instances, ctrl-x cuts and ctrl-v pastes, EXCEPT IN QUICKEN, where for some reason it's ctrl-insert to paste and i forgot what it is to cut... It's just lame.
I think that whatever the next step is in opensource UI's, a great idea would be that yes everyone can develop for it and make up whatever tricks they want. But there should be some guidelines in place, and maybe even a certification program so that people will know which applications actually abide by all the recomendations.
Well, we were on the subject of keyboard navigation... Yes, just about every windows app lets you click the X, but how about standard shortcuts for regular tasks... for example, cut and paste is generally ctrl-x and ctrl-v, except for quicken, where it's ctrl-instert and i forgot the other one...
It wouldn't be so bad if all those different variations of quitting applications worked in each application, but instead each program uses a subset of those.
One nice thing about windows compared to the Mac is that you can ALMOST do everything from the keyboard if you desire... But there's way too much inconsistency across applications to make it completely feasible.
I think people need to get over the idea that a command line makes them more productive, enables them to do more, etc, take a step back and LOOk at the current offerings...
GUI's are cool because they give you a Graphical view of your file system. And they give you keyboard shortcuts that represent things that you never could with a CLI... Like "Select All" when you're in a folder view.
On a mac you type "command a, command delete" to rid a directory of files. In Linux, you type "rm *"... which is 4 distinct key strokes rather than 2.
In windows, to switch between tasks, you type command tab. That's all.
Again, before anyone goes out and tries to create the next "killer" interface, take the time to thoroughly learn the existing ones, otherwise, my bets that there'll be a pretty much USELESS interface created. Watch people using their computers. Windows users. Mac users. See how they do some things the same and others differently. See what baffles them. Try to think up better ways for them to do things... Or put their options where they look the first time... Again, otherwise it'll be an utter waste of everyone's time.