Re:Things like this are easy to fix.
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Google's Evil NDA
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· Score: 1
Your right - it's not a contract in the traditional sense, which is why I didn't call it a contract. It's an Agreement. You agree to whatever the document says. The other side is not "agreeing" to anything. Just you. Hence, the "one way" aspect. There is no "In exchange for "foo," you agree to "bar" conditions, it's just "I agree to blah blah". "Foo" may be implied or verbalized, but it is not part of the agreement.
From a legal standpoint (court of law) it may still be referred to as a contract however (IANAL) even though there is no consideration from the other party.
I all for consequences for breaking the rules, but we need some balance. The punishment has to fit the offense. I have a serious problem with bullying / fighting getting virtually no punishment, but a non-violent rule violation that doesn't cause any harm (other than a little bit slower net access for others) getting damn near the death penalty.
Re:Things like this are easy to fix.
on
Google's Evil NDA
·
· Score: 1
Contracts like home purchases are two way. You are selling, someone is buying, and both are agreeing to the terms. Both parties are restricted and guided by the terms. Both need to sign.
An NDA is one-way. Only one party has any limitations or restrictions. The other party can either accept or reject the NDA as rewritten, but they don't need to sign it because there is nothing binding them to anything in the agreement.
They are more concerned with making sure these people can communicate with each other, receive information helpful to their daily lives (like weather)
The OLPC is purely designed to be a teaching tool. That's it. This is the One Laptop Per CHILD program, not One Laptop Per Parent or Per Family. It has nothing to do with adults communicating with each other or checking the weather. It may be able to do that, but that's not what it is designed for. It will also never be a substitute for a real teacher, and is not intended to be. The idea is that teachers will incorporate the OLPC into their curriculum to improve how children learn.
And this is a very very good thing indeed - especially for open source. This may have impact on Many Many patents such as the MS "FAT" patents, Amazon's One Click, the NTP patents that bit RIM, etc. Frankly, I would bet that 90% of the dot bomb patents have related prior art that would raise the "obviousness" question. The problem is cost of challenging these patents. Hugely expensive.
"Your Honor, my client deserves to be compensated by the police department for loss of revenue. He knows nothing about any so-called stolen merchandise. He made a legitimate business transaction buying a truckload of DVD players for $5 each from Mr. Soprano. Yes, this transaction occurred at 2am in a back alley, but my client works all hours."
I don't see it that way. I look at OS = Distribution/version when it comes to Linux. My reasoning is that differences between distributions is too great to lump them as one OS. I can point to Windows the same way. I see Windows 2000 as a different OS than XP or 2003. They are not the SAME OS.
I can see that certain combinations of hardware / software may not be entirely stable, but Linux in an enterprise environment can be VERY stable. I have multiple 8-way HP servers running Centos 4 with 50+ terabytes of storage (each) on an EMC SAN that haven't been rebooted since initial install about a year and a half ago. They systems get VERY heavy usage. Sorry you had problems with HP storage. We looked at HP storage and went with EMC for a number of reasons.
Now I HAVE had problems with a couple DL380 G4's and having them fall off the network occasionally (about once a month) due to some bizarre hardware / firmware issue, but only 2 machines out of about 100 have had that problem.
Minor nit: Linux is a KERNEL. Red Hat Linux is an OS. Debian is an OS. They are different OS's but both running the Linux kernel. Because they are different, they are also not 100% compatible, and as an OS family are not totally consistent. The level of consistency is what sets AIX apart more than anything else, and the fact that it is tuned to enterprise environments (as opposed to "general purpose" such as desktop, server, embedded.)
1. Do you REALLY think that you have full confidentiality and security for all mail traveling on an ISP's NETWORK? See AT&T for proof that you don't. If you are worried about confidentiality and security you need to use encryption no matter WHOSE servers you use.
2. As already stated, get a static IP if you want to run a mail server. Problem solved.
3. As already stated, get a static IP if you want to run a mail server. Problem solved.
Look, you can come up with all sorts of goofy requirements to attempt to justify your need to run a server you want. It won't change reality that dynamic addresses are ALREADY damaged goods, both from the fact that so many major ISPs already block mail from dynamic addresses and also the fact that it's very common that the TOS on dynamic IP accounts forbids it. Whining at me won't change these facts.
Just a FYI, credit card companies allow you to specify an alternate address for EXACTLY this purpose. Many eRetailers *already* require that the credit card company have the shipping address on file.
If you want to come up with a scenario that is real, try ordering a part to be drop-shipped to a customer site. That's a case where the ccard company will never have the shipping address on file. In that case, you just have to have a good trust relationship with a vendor to bypass the requirement.
This is NOT a credit card company requirement, and probably will NEVER be a credit card company requirement. Why? Because credit card companies are not liable for fraud - MERCHANTS are.
ISP's did not create the un-authenticated, anonymous SMTP protocol that was designed back in the kinder and gentler early days of the net.
Now I will blame ISP's and other mail server operators for not taking a very strong stance and mandate that mail servers behave correctly, such as working forward and reverse DNS, correct HELO/EHLO arguments, etc. Hell, just rejecting mail from poorly setup mail servers alone would go a LONG way towards cutting spam down with ZERO impact on server load, and legit mail.
No, because legitimate users on dynamic IPs use their ISP's or other mail service provider's mail servers. Been down that road. As I stated in a previous comment, people on dynamic IPs are ALREADY doomed as many major ISPs already block them. Sorry if you don't like it, it's a fact of life. If you want to send mail without going through a smarthost, get a static IP. Yeah it cost extra. Deal.
YOU are not the problem. Grannie and Aunt Mathilda are. Port blocking by default with a way for savvy users to unblock solves the problem with such a MINOR inconvenience that it's a non-problem. Doing nothing will not solve the problem.
As for you assertion that blocking inbound from dynamics is not effective, I, and MANY other ISP's disagree with you. The mail server logs don't lie. Blocked mail from dynamic space (which is ALL spam) is 75% of ALL connections to our mail servers, with other blacklists cutting it down even further. That reduces load on spamassassin and other anti-spam analysis by a factor of 6. While it hasn't STOPPED spam, it sure as hell cuts it down to a manageable level.
I agree that ISP's need to be a lot more proactive and less reactive towards spam. Port blocking is proactive. Responding to spam complaints is closing the gate after the cows got out.
Obviously trying it without telling anyone is stupid. Tell customers ahead of time, give them the info they need such as "use port 587, 465 (for broken MS clients) or your VPN dammit", etc. Doing nothing does not solve the problem. Just because Mindspring engineers are morons doesn't mean that the idea is bad.
Yeah, I used to subscribe to that belief, but the spam problem needs drastic action to deal with. The FACT is that many ISPs already block port 25 and "manage" traffic to a certain extent already, and are still "common carrier's."
because SMTP has not been designed to cope with authentication and authorization.
That is true, which is why back in 1998 ago they came up with the MSA port (RFC 2476.) There is no need for ANY MUA to use port 25 anymore. ISP's should be blocking port 25 for everyone except mail servers or others that have used the ISP's tool to request that port 25 be open for outbound.
Simple. Pass a law that says that those people are "a danger to national security" and REQUIRE that ISPs take them offline until the problem has been corrected. If they are running a spambot, most likely they are also on someone's DDOS / portscanning network too. Allow (require?) the ISP to charge a service fee for reconnection and verification that their machine is no longer vulnerable (penetration testing.)
That may have been back when you worked there, but it's quite obvious that it's not the case now. If ISPs gave a shit, they would block outbound port 25 by default for dynamic IP clients (and maybe ALL IPs). That would stop at LEAST 95% of the spam botnets. This works best with a tool to allow you to open the port if needed (running a mail server.) Running a mail server on a dynamic address at this point is futile as a good portion of servers will block you anyway. MUA's should all be configured to use port 587 for authenticated submission.
ISPs could also install sniffers to watch the rate of outbound off-network port 25 SYN packets, and investigate unusual activity. Oh and don't go saying that this is difficult - just talk to AT&T and the government - they have been sniffing ALL traffic.
But it's VERY VERY rare to find an ISP that does ANYTHING AT ALL to stop outbound spam. Oh sure, they are perfectly willing to install blacklists and filters on inbound, but outbound? Nothing. They don't care. The only way to fix this is to make habitual offenders be financially liable. ISPs also need to make end users liable and start enforcing their TOS, disconnecting grannie and her POS windows box that has no firewall, anti-virus, and is running spambot software.
Even hard core republicans have a lot of distaste for Cheney and Bush at this point (toss Gonzalas in there too.) Republicans are in a hard place at the moment... They don't dare side too much on democratic issues even when the dems are right (which does happen once in a while...) Frankly, I find both parties and the party system in general quite distasteful. The worst is when you have extremists running the parties like they are now, and the only things they can agree on is how great under the table cash is from lobbying groups, and that pork barrel spending is a good thing (makes you look good to the voters...)
The biggest difference was consumers. The consumer option was Win98se or XP. While 98 wasn't as bad as ME, it was hardly "stable" and XP offered a large benefit. XP also offers a little more than 2000, such as better USB, wireless, and power management support. BTW, many large corp. customers are still on 2000.
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Your right - it's not a contract in the traditional sense, which is why I didn't call it a contract. It's an Agreement. You agree to whatever the document says. The other side is not "agreeing" to anything. Just you. Hence, the "one way" aspect. There is no "In exchange for "foo," you agree to "bar" conditions, it's just "I agree to blah blah". "Foo" may be implied or verbalized, but it is not part of the agreement.
From a legal standpoint (court of law) it may still be referred to as a contract however (IANAL) even though there is no consideration from the other party.
Nope. I heard China, but all support calls will be spoken in French. This will keep support costs low...
I all for consequences for breaking the rules, but we need some balance. The punishment has to fit the offense. I have a serious problem with bullying / fighting getting virtually no punishment, but a non-violent rule violation that doesn't cause any harm (other than a little bit slower net access for others) getting damn near the death penalty.
Contracts like home purchases are two way. You are selling, someone is buying, and both are agreeing to the terms. Both parties are restricted and guided by the terms. Both need to sign.
An NDA is one-way. Only one party has any limitations or restrictions. The other party can either accept or reject the NDA as rewritten, but they don't need to sign it because there is nothing binding them to anything in the agreement.
They are more concerned with making sure these people can communicate with each other, receive information helpful to their daily lives (like weather)
The OLPC is purely designed to be a teaching tool. That's it. This is the One Laptop Per CHILD program, not One Laptop Per Parent or Per Family. It has nothing to do with adults communicating with each other or checking the weather. It may be able to do that, but that's not what it is designed for. It will also never be a substitute for a real teacher, and is not intended to be. The idea is that teachers will incorporate the OLPC into their curriculum to improve how children learn.
See the website for more info.
That's enough out of you, Dogbert!
And this is a very very good thing indeed - especially for open source. This may have impact on Many Many patents such as the MS "FAT" patents, Amazon's One Click, the NTP patents that bit RIM, etc. Frankly, I would bet that 90% of the dot bomb patents have related prior art that would raise the "obviousness" question. The problem is cost of challenging these patents. Hugely expensive.
"Your Honor, my client deserves to be compensated by the police department for loss of revenue. He knows nothing about any so-called stolen merchandise. He made a legitimate business transaction buying a truckload of DVD players for $5 each from Mr. Soprano. Yes, this transaction occurred at 2am in a back alley, but my client works all hours."
I don't see it that way. I look at OS = Distribution/version when it comes to Linux. My reasoning is that differences between distributions is too great to lump them as one OS. I can point to Windows the same way. I see Windows 2000 as a different OS than XP or 2003. They are not the SAME OS.
I can see that certain combinations of hardware / software may not be entirely stable, but Linux in an enterprise environment can be VERY stable. I have multiple 8-way HP servers running Centos 4 with 50+ terabytes of storage (each) on an EMC SAN that haven't been rebooted since initial install about a year and a half ago. They systems get VERY heavy usage. Sorry you had problems with HP storage. We looked at HP storage and went with EMC for a number of reasons.
Now I HAVE had problems with a couple DL380 G4's and having them fall off the network occasionally (about once a month) due to some bizarre hardware / firmware issue, but only 2 machines out of about 100 have had that problem.
Linux is just an OS.
Minor nit: Linux is a KERNEL. Red Hat Linux is an OS. Debian is an OS. They are different OS's but both running the Linux kernel. Because they are different, they are also not 100% compatible, and as an OS family are not totally consistent. The level of consistency is what sets AIX apart more than anything else, and the fact that it is tuned to enterprise environments (as opposed to "general purpose" such as desktop, server, embedded.)
1. Do you REALLY think that you have full confidentiality and security for all mail traveling on an ISP's NETWORK? See AT&T for proof that you don't. If you are worried about confidentiality and security you need to use encryption no matter WHOSE servers you use.
2. As already stated, get a static IP if you want to run a mail server. Problem solved.
3. As already stated, get a static IP if you want to run a mail server. Problem solved.
Look, you can come up with all sorts of goofy requirements to attempt to justify your need to run a server you want. It won't change reality that dynamic addresses are ALREADY damaged goods, both from the fact that so many major ISPs already block mail from dynamic addresses and also the fact that it's very common that the TOS on dynamic IP accounts forbids it. Whining at me won't change these facts.
Just a FYI, credit card companies allow you to specify an alternate address for EXACTLY this purpose. Many eRetailers *already* require that the credit card company have the shipping address on file.
If you want to come up with a scenario that is real, try ordering a part to be drop-shipped to a customer site. That's a case where the ccard company will never have the shipping address on file. In that case, you just have to have a good trust relationship with a vendor to bypass the requirement.
This is NOT a credit card company requirement, and probably will NEVER be a credit card company requirement. Why? Because credit card companies are not liable for fraud - MERCHANTS are.
ISP's did not create the un-authenticated, anonymous SMTP protocol that was designed back in the kinder and gentler early days of the net.
Now I will blame ISP's and other mail server operators for not taking a very strong stance and mandate that mail servers behave correctly, such as working forward and reverse DNS, correct HELO/EHLO arguments, etc. Hell, just rejecting mail from poorly setup mail servers alone would go a LONG way towards cutting spam down with ZERO impact on server load, and legit mail.
No, because legitimate users on dynamic IPs use their ISP's or other mail service provider's mail servers. Been down that road. As I stated in a previous comment, people on dynamic IPs are ALREADY doomed as many major ISPs already block them. Sorry if you don't like it, it's a fact of life. If you want to send mail without going through a smarthost, get a static IP. Yeah it cost extra. Deal.
YOU are not the problem. Grannie and Aunt Mathilda are. Port blocking by default with a way for savvy users to unblock solves the problem with such a MINOR inconvenience that it's a non-problem. Doing nothing will not solve the problem.
As for you assertion that blocking inbound from dynamics is not effective, I, and MANY other ISP's disagree with you. The mail server logs don't lie. Blocked mail from dynamic space (which is ALL spam) is 75% of ALL connections to our mail servers, with other blacklists cutting it down even further. That reduces load on spamassassin and other anti-spam analysis by a factor of 6. While it hasn't STOPPED spam, it sure as hell cuts it down to a manageable level.
I agree that ISP's need to be a lot more proactive and less reactive towards spam. Port blocking is proactive. Responding to spam complaints is closing the gate after the cows got out.
Obviously trying it without telling anyone is stupid. Tell customers ahead of time, give them the info they need such as "use port 587, 465 (for broken MS clients) or your VPN dammit", etc. Doing nothing does not solve the problem. Just because Mindspring engineers are morons doesn't mean that the idea is bad.
Yeah, I used to subscribe to that belief, but the spam problem needs drastic action to deal with. The FACT is that many ISPs already block port 25 and "manage" traffic to a certain extent already, and are still "common carrier's."
because SMTP has not been designed to cope with authentication and authorization.
That is true, which is why back in 1998 ago they came up with the MSA port (RFC 2476.) There is no need for ANY MUA to use port 25 anymore. ISP's should be blocking port 25 for everyone except mail servers or others that have used the ISP's tool to request that port 25 be open for outbound.
Simple. Pass a law that says that those people are "a danger to national security" and REQUIRE that ISPs take them offline until the problem has been corrected. If they are running a spambot, most likely they are also on someone's DDOS / portscanning network too. Allow (require?) the ISP to charge a service fee for reconnection and verification that their machine is no longer vulnerable (penetration testing.)
That may have been back when you worked there, but it's quite obvious that it's not the case now. If ISPs gave a shit, they would block outbound port 25 by default for dynamic IP clients (and maybe ALL IPs). That would stop at LEAST 95% of the spam botnets. This works best with a tool to allow you to open the port if needed (running a mail server.) Running a mail server on a dynamic address at this point is futile as a good portion of servers will block you anyway. MUA's should all be configured to use port 587 for authenticated submission.
ISPs could also install sniffers to watch the rate of outbound off-network port 25 SYN packets, and investigate unusual activity. Oh and don't go saying that this is difficult - just talk to AT&T and the government - they have been sniffing ALL traffic.
But it's VERY VERY rare to find an ISP that does ANYTHING AT ALL to stop outbound spam. Oh sure, they are perfectly willing to install blacklists and filters on inbound, but outbound? Nothing. They don't care. The only way to fix this is to make habitual offenders be financially liable. ISPs also need to make end users liable and start enforcing their TOS, disconnecting grannie and her POS windows box that has no firewall, anti-virus, and is running spambot software.
Even hard core republicans have a lot of distaste for Cheney and Bush at this point (toss Gonzalas in there too.) Republicans are in a hard place at the moment... They don't dare side too much on democratic issues even when the dems are right (which does happen once in a while...) Frankly, I find both parties and the party system in general quite distasteful. The worst is when you have extremists running the parties like they are now, and the only things they can agree on is how great under the table cash is from lobbying groups, and that pork barrel spending is a good thing (makes you look good to the voters...)
... And Ubuntu Linux upgrades are free in any case.
Exactly. The lure of $100 printers can be great, but you get what you pay for - a printer without a "brain".
The biggest difference was consumers. The consumer option was Win98se or XP. While 98 wasn't as bad as ME, it was hardly "stable" and XP offered a large benefit. XP also offers a little more than 2000, such as better USB, wireless, and power management support. BTW, many large corp. customers are still on 2000.