Whether or not 90% of spam originates in the US (remembering, of course, that 74% of all statistics are made up), almost all of the spam I get is through open relays in CHINA.
And, what happens if javascript pops up dozens of unexpected and unwanted new windows when you visit a page (picture interstitial ads gone wild). And what about places like Salon that make you click through to actually get to the article?
However, if both of them were to begin marketing the same product, it can be trouble. Microsoft(r), for example, has a trademark on "Microsoft" in almost every category under the Sun(r) including T-shirts, coffee mugs and pocket knives in addition to software and computers you would expect. So if Yahoo Serious and Yahoo! were to both sell, say, online movie services, or T-shirts or coffee mugs or fright wigs, one of them will lose. Which should it be?
Hmmm... The identical thing involving the same two entities happened last April... I wonder if Paetec is really pursuing this or whether they're in on it and sending this "woe is me" out as a ruse.
The reply to the complaint (April 5, 2001): From: IP Admin
To: "'21047903@reports.spamcop.net'"
Subject: RE: [SpamCop (http://www.monsterhut.com) id:21047903] Compare and
Save at CompareWebHosts.com
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 17:35:20 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Status: U
PaeTec Communications, Inc. received the attached complaint from you
regarding your contention that you received spam, i.e., that you received an
unsolicited, commercial, bulk e-mail. PaeTec is an integrated
telecommunications provider which offers access to the Internet to
businesses. PaeTec strongly opposes spamming. The e-mail about which you
complained originated from a customer of PaeTec's by the name of MonsterHut.
PaeTec's agreement with MonsterHut expressly prohibits the
sending of spam. In reliance on the complaints it received from you and
others stating that the e-mail you received from MonsterHut was spam, PaeTec
informed MonsterHut that it was terminating its contract.
MonsterHut responded by commencing litigation against
PaeTec. Prior to PaeTec being advised of the existence of the litigation,
MonsterHut obtained a temporary restraining order from the Court, which
prevents PaeTec from terminating MonsterHut's contract pending a hearing at
which both sides can present evidence. The only proof before the Court at
the time it issued the injunction was MonsterHut's claim that it had
received permission from the recipients, such as yourself, to send the
e-mail, and therefore, the e-mail was not spam. PaeTec has disputed
MonsterHut's assertion and has demanded that MonsterHut prove that you and
the other recipients solicited the e-mail. MonsterHut has also claimed that
virtually every complaint PaeTec received was simply a request to be removed
from MonsterHut's mailing lists and was not an allegation that its e-mail
was spam. PaeTec interprets your communication as not simply requesting
removal, but complaining that the e-mail was spam.
It would be very helpful for PaeTec to obtain sworn
statements, which are also known as affidavits, from you and others stating
(if true) that, to the best of your knowledge, you did not solicit e-mails
from MonsterHut, you did not opt-in to being included on the mailing list of
MonsterHut, you did not opt-in to be included on any mailing list that
indicated you were authorizing the sending of e-mails by other unspecified
parties, and that your complaint was not merely a request to have your name
removed from a mailing list. If you are willing to assist PaeTec in its
efforts to vacate the injunction and terminate MonsterHut's Internet access
service, please reply to this e-mail and advise of your willingness to do
so. On the other hand, if you did solicit e-mail from MonsterHut and/or if
you intended merely to request that your name and address be removed from
MonsterHut's mailing list, PaeTec would appreciate it if you would advise it
of those facts so that it can take them into account in deciding whether to
pursue a termination of MonsterHut's service.
The affidavit request (April 9, 2001):
From: IP Admin
To:
Subject: Monsterhut Affidavit
Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 17:14:37 -0400
Importance: high
X-Priority: 1
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Status: U
Thank you very much for indicating a willingness to help PaeTec
Communications, Inc., in our litigation with MonsterHut. We have gotten a
tremendous positive response from members of the Internet community, and
this will make a big difference in our efforts to vacate the injunction and
to prevent MonsterHut from using PaeTec's network and/or IP addresses to
spam. MonsterHut contends that all of its commercial bulk e-mail is
permission-based and therefore not spam. MonsterHut also contends that most
of the complaints PaeTec has received (particularly those received through
Spam-Cop) were merely requests to be removed from MonsterHut's mailing list,
and were not allegations that the complainant had been spammed. We hope to
refute those claims with your help.
Attached to this e-mail is the text of a sample affidavit that
PaeTec has prepared to assist you in putting your statement into a form we
can submit to the court as evidence. The text of the proposed affidavit is
also located at a website created solely for this purpose,
. The text is somewhat generic because of
the volume of people who have indicated a willingness to sign an affidavit.
As a result, we must ask you to type in some basic information. Please fill
in your name on the first line. In item 1, please fill in the state and
county in which you live. If you do not live in the United States of
America, please modify the language in Item 1 to indicate the country in
which you live and your general location using the equivalent terminology
that is applicable in your country.
Next, please review the text in Items 2-8 very carefully to ensure
their accuracy. Feel free to make whatever additions, deletions, or
modifications you feel are necessary. Since this affidavit is being given
under oath, we want you to be sure that it accurately and truthfully
reflects the facts pertaining to your situation. In this regard, the vast
majority of the people who responded to my last e-mail stated they were
absolutely certain they had never solicited e-mail from MonsterHut. As a
result, the sample affidavit was written this way. A relatively few people
indicated that "to the best of my knowledge" they never solicited e-mail
from Monster Hut. If you feel more comfortable providing a sworn statement
with this type of qualifier, please add it to the appropriate sentence(s) in
paragraph 6 of the sample affidavit. In addition, we need you to fill in
two pieces of information. In Item 5, please indicate the month and date on
which you received your e-mail from MonsterHut, and type in the subject line
of the message you received from MonsterHut. If you cannot recall this
information, it is located below in the "Original Message" portion of this
response or in our initial e-mail to you. In Item 7, please fill in the
blank to indicate whether your initial complaint was made via Spamcop or
directly to PaeTec.
We have left a blank area after the number 9 at the end of the text
so that you may add any additional information that you believe would be
helpful to demonstrate that MonsterHut's e-mail was unsolicited by you .
For example, a large number of people indicated that the e-mail address to
which the MonsterHut e-mail was sent is used only as a contact point for
domain registration purposes with Network Solutions. As another example, a
number of others indicated the e-mail address was not active or was used
solely as a "spam trap". Many others of you indicated the address was used
for only certain specific purposes and was never used to solicit e-mail from
anyone from this address. If you do not wish to add any information, please
delete the number 9.
Once the affidavit meets with your approval, please type in your
name below the signature line next to the word "By:", print out the
affidavit as a separate document, and sign it before a notary public (or if
you are from outside the United States, the equivalent official in your
country who can attest to a signature affixed to a document that is sworn to
under oath). In order for the affidavit to be considered by the Court, we
must receive the original signed copy so
we can submit it to the Court. Therefore, please mail the original, signed
affidavit to PaeTec's outside legal counsel at the following address:
Suzanne, Galbato, Esq.
Bond, Schoeneck & King, LLP
One Lincoln Center
Syracuse, New York 13202
United States of America
If you do not wish to incur the expense of mailing, PaeTec will send you a
self-addressed, stamped envelope for you to send it the original if you
provide PaeTec with a mailing address to which it can send the envelope.
Finally, many of you requested that we ask MonsterHut for its proof
that you solicited e-mail from it. We already have made a formal request
for this proof from MonsterHut. MonsterHut has not yet formally responded
to this request and its time to do so will not expire until after PaeTec
must submit its affidavits to the Court. Moreover, in informal
communications, MonsterHut has advised our attorneys that, at this time,
MonsterHut will be unable to prove on an individual basis that most of you
solicited the e-mail because most of the complaints went through Spam-Cop,
which masks the identity of the complainants,. As a result, we have
requested that MonsterHut describe the sources from which it obtained the
names it used. It appears there may be a relatively few sources.
If you have any questions, please contact us by e-mail at
ipadmin@paetec.com
. On behalf of PaeTec, we want to thank you for your assistance.
There are several reasons. West of the Mississippi River, some 70-80% of the land is owned by the government in the form of "reserves" or "national parks" some of which are available for grazing cattle and the like. Large parts are farmland (the "breadbasket") and vast expanses of wheat, corn and soybean plantings. The blackest parts are, of course, the Rockie Mountains and a couple of deserts.
I dispute that the US is the largest "polluter." Ok, I agree if you consider it as a single country, but if you look at it in land mass, Western Europe is every bit as bright. If you look at it as percentage of country covered, Japan certainly takes the prize followed closely, it looks like, by Germany and England.
What puzzles me is the islands off of South America. What is going on down there?
I wish this existed in Win2K. Maybe then the Casio digital camera drivers would be blacklisted. As it is, they completely corrupt the system, irreparably destroying DirectX, so that the only recovery is to wipe and reinstall the OS. Thanks, Casio. *:-|
You realize, don't you, that by issuing the type of apology that China is insisting on, the US will then be open to lawsuits for reparations. Are you going to cover that expense?
Back in the old, old (minicomputer) days you weren't charged for bug fixes, but there was a compulsory 15% per year charge for "maintentance."
Some people still do that.
Re:Anti-Mainstream Mainstream is the Mainstream.
on
The Pledge
·
· Score: 2
Except that, if it were done by PBS, it would have to be done by current PBS love child, Ken Burns. I don't think I could take that.
PBS is good at science and nature (Nova, Nature), investigative reporting (Frontline) and reasonably good at news (Lehrer). It is not good at drama. Almost all of the good drama shown on PBS comes from England. Masterpiece Theater: British. Mystery: British.
The most recent piece of domestic (US) drama I can recall on PBS is a half-assed effort that totally butchered Langston Hughes' Cora Unashamed. That is a story that leaves the reader unable to speak afterwards. And how they could get a boring performance out of CCH Pounder, I will never know. Of course it was beautifully photographed. Style over substance from PBS.
But you know what's coming next. The RIAA & MPAA will point to this and say, "See? This is what we're trying to stop but we don't smart tech people like Hughes does so please, Mr. Congresscritter, make it illegal to copy our stuff. Make us safe from all these hackers[sic] because what they really are are thieves. Just look at Hughes."
If he is accused of slandering an organization or institution, especially a government body, I don't even know if it can be litigated at all,
They can. Texas Beef Group v. Oprah Winfrey. It doesn't mean they win, but they can sue. Now whether a Government agency can sue, I don't know but many individual office holders have sued for libel and/or slander.
About $350 (with monitor or $200 without) and runs Netscape and Java. Attach a network drive (like xdrive or idrive) and you've got what you're looking for don't you? Mid grade components, mid grade system, very cheap. Linux 2.2, NS 4.7.
Let's say it was someone who isn't really after Microsoft code just to get the new Microsoft code. It could be someone after Microsoft code to find security flaws in older, installed products. Products that Microsoft is no longer updating yet are still installed on many, many machines (like Windows 95 or NT3.5). If, by reading (not downloading, not uploading, but just looking at) the code, they can find a hole, 85% (or whatever number they use today) of the desktop machines in the world are vulnerable to attack. Why risk going after Microsoft when you've got the rest of the world ripe for the picking and they probably don't even realize it?
If it were me, I wouldn't waste time on "upcoming" or beta products. I'd go after the older stuff that's already installed, and therefore unlikely to be updated. Stuff that no one is paying attention to any more except to run things like, oh, Quicken or MS Money.
That way, you don't have to DO anything with the code, you just use it to go after other things. Remember the security/ActiveX security flaw that let you enter a Quicken transaction using IE? How much easier would it have been to find if you had the source code for the underlying flaw right in front of you rather than poking around?
It was someone who isn't really after Microsoft code just to get the Microsoft code. It could be someone after Microsoft code to find security flaws in older, installed products. Products that Microsoft is no longer updating yet are still installed on many, many machines (like Windows 95 or NT3.5). If, by reading (not downloading, not uploading, but just looking at) the code, they can find a hole, 85% (or whatever number they use today) of the desktop machines in the world are vulnerable to attack. Why risk going after Microsoft when you've got the rest of the world ripe for the picking and they probably don't even realize it?
If it were me, I wouldn't waste time on "upcoming" or beta products. I'd go after the older stuff that's already installed, and therefore unlikely to be updated. Stuff that no one is paying attention to any more except to run things like, oh, Quicken or MS Money.
It is very important to vote. It is not important to vote for anyone. By going into the voting booth and not selecting anyone, you are sending a message that "I am here and ready to vote as soon as you give me someone worthwhile." By not voting at all, you are saying "I don't care, do whatever you want." Just go in, close the curtain, open the curtain and leave. (Or take the ballot and return it blank).
Voting a blank has a very powerful meaning, especially when "blank" starts to win. When that happens, someone other than tweedle dee or tweedle dum will be emboldened enough to step forward and run. After all, he or she may be able to count on all those "blanks" that have started to win.
This has already started to happen in my city council district. The other half of the district always votes solidly for Mr. I'veBeenHereThirtyYears, whereas my half of the district votes for "blank" by a 3-1 margin. Our district is gerrymandered in such a way as to make the vote from my half of the district irrelevant, but next year is redistricting and that is where all of this can be addressed. There is no reason that this can not be the case on the state and national level as well.
Americans need to realize that immigrants not only work harder than natives (have you ever met a Hispanic migrant farm worker who works less than 13 hours a day?), but contribute more to society.
Slashdot Mirror
Whether or not 90% of spam originates in the US (remembering, of course, that 74% of all statistics are made up), almost all of the spam I get is through open relays in CHINA.
And, what happens if javascript pops up dozens of unexpected and unwanted new windows when you visit a page (picture interstitial ads gone wild). And what about places like Salon that make you click through to actually get to the article?
Carnivore
However, if both of them were to begin marketing the same product, it can be trouble. Microsoft(r), for example, has a trademark on "Microsoft" in almost every category under the Sun(r) including T-shirts, coffee mugs and pocket knives in addition to software and computers you would expect. So if Yahoo Serious and Yahoo! were to both sell, say, online movie services, or T-shirts or coffee mugs or fright wigs, one of them will lose. Which should it be?
Hmmm... The identical thing involving the same two entities happened last April... I wonder if Paetec is really pursuing this or whether they're in on it and sending this "woe is me" out as a ruse.
The reply to the complaint (April 5, 2001):
From: IP Admin
To: "'21047903@reports.spamcop.net'"
Subject: RE: [SpamCop (http://www.monsterhut.com) id:21047903] Compare and
Save at CompareWebHosts.com
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 17:35:20 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Status: U
PaeTec Communications, Inc. received the attached complaint from you
regarding your contention that you received spam, i.e., that you received an
unsolicited, commercial, bulk e-mail. PaeTec is an integrated
telecommunications provider which offers access to the Internet to
businesses. PaeTec strongly opposes spamming. The e-mail about which you
complained originated from a customer of PaeTec's by the name of MonsterHut.
PaeTec's agreement with MonsterHut expressly prohibits the
sending of spam. In reliance on the complaints it received from you and
others stating that the e-mail you received from MonsterHut was spam, PaeTec
informed MonsterHut that it was terminating its contract.
MonsterHut responded by commencing litigation against
PaeTec. Prior to PaeTec being advised of the existence of the litigation,
MonsterHut obtained a temporary restraining order from the Court, which
prevents PaeTec from terminating MonsterHut's contract pending a hearing at
which both sides can present evidence. The only proof before the Court at
the time it issued the injunction was MonsterHut's claim that it had
received permission from the recipients, such as yourself, to send the
e-mail, and therefore, the e-mail was not spam. PaeTec has disputed
MonsterHut's assertion and has demanded that MonsterHut prove that you and
the other recipients solicited the e-mail. MonsterHut has also claimed that
virtually every complaint PaeTec received was simply a request to be removed
from MonsterHut's mailing lists and was not an allegation that its e-mail
was spam. PaeTec interprets your communication as not simply requesting
removal, but complaining that the e-mail was spam.
It would be very helpful for PaeTec to obtain sworn
statements, which are also known as affidavits, from you and others stating
(if true) that, to the best of your knowledge, you did not solicit e-mails
from MonsterHut, you did not opt-in to being included on the mailing list of
MonsterHut, you did not opt-in to be included on any mailing list that
indicated you were authorizing the sending of e-mails by other unspecified
parties, and that your complaint was not merely a request to have your name
removed from a mailing list. If you are willing to assist PaeTec in its
efforts to vacate the injunction and terminate MonsterHut's Internet access
service, please reply to this e-mail and advise of your willingness to do
so. On the other hand, if you did solicit e-mail from MonsterHut and/or if
you intended merely to request that your name and address be removed from
MonsterHut's mailing list, PaeTec would appreciate it if you would advise it
of those facts so that it can take them into account in deciding whether to
pursue a termination of MonsterHut's service.
The affidavit request (April 9, 2001):
From: IP Admin
To:
Subject: Monsterhut Affidavit
Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 17:14:37 -0400
Importance: high
X-Priority: 1
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Status: U
Thank you very much for indicating a willingness to help PaeTec
Communications, Inc., in our litigation with MonsterHut. We have gotten a
tremendous positive response from members of the Internet community, and
this will make a big difference in our efforts to vacate the injunction and
to prevent MonsterHut from using PaeTec's network and/or IP addresses to
spam. MonsterHut contends that all of its commercial bulk e-mail is
permission-based and therefore not spam. MonsterHut also contends that most
of the complaints PaeTec has received (particularly those received through
Spam-Cop) were merely requests to be removed from MonsterHut's mailing list,
and were not allegations that the complainant had been spammed. We hope to
refute those claims with your help.
Attached to this e-mail is the text of a sample affidavit that
PaeTec has prepared to assist you in putting your statement into a form we
can submit to the court as evidence. The text of the proposed affidavit is
also located at a website created solely for this purpose,
. The text is somewhat generic because of
the volume of people who have indicated a willingness to sign an affidavit.
As a result, we must ask you to type in some basic information. Please fill
in your name on the first line. In item 1, please fill in the state and
county in which you live. If you do not live in the United States of
America, please modify the language in Item 1 to indicate the country in
which you live and your general location using the equivalent terminology
that is applicable in your country.
Next, please review the text in Items 2-8 very carefully to ensure
their accuracy. Feel free to make whatever additions, deletions, or
modifications you feel are necessary. Since this affidavit is being given
under oath, we want you to be sure that it accurately and truthfully
reflects the facts pertaining to your situation. In this regard, the vast
majority of the people who responded to my last e-mail stated they were
absolutely certain they had never solicited e-mail from MonsterHut. As a
result, the sample affidavit was written this way. A relatively few people
indicated that "to the best of my knowledge" they never solicited e-mail
from Monster Hut. If you feel more comfortable providing a sworn statement
with this type of qualifier, please add it to the appropriate sentence(s) in
paragraph 6 of the sample affidavit. In addition, we need you to fill in
two pieces of information. In Item 5, please indicate the month and date on
which you received your e-mail from MonsterHut, and type in the subject line
of the message you received from MonsterHut. If you cannot recall this
information, it is located below in the "Original Message" portion of this
response or in our initial e-mail to you. In Item 7, please fill in the
blank to indicate whether your initial complaint was made via Spamcop or
directly to PaeTec.
We have left a blank area after the number 9 at the end of the text
so that you may add any additional information that you believe would be
helpful to demonstrate that MonsterHut's e-mail was unsolicited by you .
For example, a large number of people indicated that the e-mail address to
which the MonsterHut e-mail was sent is used only as a contact point for
domain registration purposes with Network Solutions. As another example, a
number of others indicated the e-mail address was not active or was used
solely as a "spam trap". Many others of you indicated the address was used
for only certain specific purposes and was never used to solicit e-mail from
anyone from this address. If you do not wish to add any information, please
delete the number 9.
Once the affidavit meets with your approval, please type in your
name below the signature line next to the word "By:", print out the
affidavit as a separate document, and sign it before a notary public (or if
you are from outside the United States, the equivalent official in your
country who can attest to a signature affixed to a document that is sworn to
under oath). In order for the affidavit to be considered by the Court, we
must receive the original signed copy so
we can submit it to the Court. Therefore, please mail the original, signed
affidavit to PaeTec's outside legal counsel at the following address:
Suzanne, Galbato, Esq.
Bond, Schoeneck & King, LLP
One Lincoln Center
Syracuse, New York 13202
United States of America
If you do not wish to incur the expense of mailing, PaeTec will send you a
self-addressed, stamped envelope for you to send it the original if you
provide PaeTec with a mailing address to which it can send the envelope.
Finally, many of you requested that we ask MonsterHut for its proof
that you solicited e-mail from it. We already have made a formal request
for this proof from MonsterHut. MonsterHut has not yet formally responded
to this request and its time to do so will not expire until after PaeTec
must submit its affidavits to the Court. Moreover, in informal
communications, MonsterHut has advised our attorneys that, at this time,
MonsterHut will be unable to prove on an individual basis that most of you
solicited the e-mail because most of the complaints went through Spam-Cop,
which masks the identity of the complainants,. As a result, we have
requested that MonsterHut describe the sources from which it obtained the
names it used. It appears there may be a relatively few sources.
If you have any questions, please contact us by e-mail at
ipadmin@paetec.com
. On behalf of PaeTec, we want to thank you for your assistance.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/videos/technology/tumblewe ed_rovers.html
http://www.retroweb.com/prisoner.html
What do you want?
Information!
You won't get it!
By hook or by crook, we will!
Isn't that the Non-Motion Picture?
I dispute that the US is the largest "polluter." Ok, I agree if you consider it as a single country, but if you look at it in land mass, Western Europe is every bit as bright. If you look at it as percentage of country covered, Japan certainly takes the prize followed closely, it looks like, by Germany and England.
What puzzles me is the islands off of South America. What is going on down there?
My name eez Hercule Poirot and I 'ave called you all 'ere today to unmask ze murderer. Ze murderer is ....
...
Please deposit twenty five cents for the next two pages
I wish this existed in Win2K. Maybe then the Casio digital camera drivers would be blacklisted. As it is, they completely corrupt the system, irreparably destroying DirectX, so that the only recovery is to wipe and reinstall the OS. Thanks, Casio. *:-|
It's great that MS "apologizes for the inconvenience" but I wonder at what point does it stop being an inconvenience and starts to be real damage.
You realize, don't you, that by issuing the type of apology that China is insisting on, the US will then be open to lawsuits for reparations. Are you going to cover that expense?
Back in the old, old (minicomputer) days you weren't charged for bug fixes, but there was a compulsory 15% per year charge for "maintentance." Some people still do that.
Except that, if it were done by PBS, it would have to be done by current PBS love child, Ken Burns. I don't think I could take that.
PBS is good at science and nature (Nova, Nature), investigative reporting (Frontline) and reasonably good at news (Lehrer). It is not good at drama. Almost all of the good drama shown on PBS comes from England. Masterpiece Theater: British. Mystery: British.
The most recent piece of domestic (US) drama I can recall on PBS is a half-assed effort that totally butchered Langston Hughes' Cora Unashamed. That is a story that leaves the reader unable to speak afterwards. And how they could get a boring performance out of CCH Pounder, I will never know. Of course it was beautifully photographed. Style over substance from PBS.
Just don't leave it in your pants pocket when you do laundry.
But you know what's coming next. The RIAA & MPAA will point to this and say, "See? This is what we're trying to stop but we don't smart tech people like Hughes does so please, Mr. Congresscritter, make it illegal to copy our stuff. Make us safe from all these hackers[sic] because what they really are are thieves. Just look at Hughes."
http://www.thinknic.com/
About $350 (with monitor or $200 without) and runs Netscape and Java. Attach a network drive (like xdrive or idrive) and you've got what you're looking for don't you? Mid grade components, mid grade system, very cheap. Linux 2.2, NS 4.7.
I'm just using Microsoft's own words. "The code wasn't downloaded, it was only looked at."
Why? Because you could then explore an unknown flaw rather than one there may be a fix for.
Here's what you could do with it:
Let's say it was someone who isn't really after Microsoft code just to get the new Microsoft code. It could be someone after Microsoft code to find security flaws in older, installed products. Products that Microsoft is no longer updating yet are still installed on many, many machines (like Windows 95 or NT3.5). If, by reading (not downloading, not uploading, but just looking at) the code, they can find a hole, 85% (or whatever number they use today) of the desktop machines in the world are vulnerable to attack. Why risk going after Microsoft when you've got the rest of the world ripe for the picking and they probably don't even realize it?
If it were me, I wouldn't waste time on "upcoming" or beta products. I'd go after the older stuff that's already installed, and therefore unlikely to be updated. Stuff that no one is paying attention to any more except to run things like, oh, Quicken or MS Money.
That way, you don't have to DO anything with the code, you just use it to go after other things. Remember the security/ActiveX security flaw that let you enter a Quicken transaction using IE? How much easier would it have been to find if you had the source code for the underlying flaw right in front of you rather than poking around?
There's at least one other possibility.
It was someone who isn't really after Microsoft code just to get the Microsoft code. It could be someone after Microsoft code to find security flaws in older, installed products. Products that Microsoft is no longer updating yet are still installed on many, many machines (like Windows 95 or NT3.5). If, by reading (not downloading, not uploading, but just looking at) the code, they can find a hole, 85% (or whatever number they use today) of the desktop machines in the world are vulnerable to attack. Why risk going after Microsoft when you've got the rest of the world ripe for the picking and they probably don't even realize it?
If it were me, I wouldn't waste time on "upcoming" or beta products. I'd go after the older stuff that's already installed, and therefore unlikely to be updated. Stuff that no one is paying attention to any more except to run things like, oh, Quicken or MS Money.
It is very important to vote. It is not important to vote for anyone. By going into the voting booth and not selecting anyone, you are sending a message that "I am here and ready to vote as soon as you give me someone worthwhile." By not voting at all, you are saying "I don't care, do whatever you want." Just go in, close the curtain, open the curtain and leave. (Or take the ballot and return it blank).
Voting a blank has a very powerful meaning, especially when "blank" starts to win. When that happens, someone other than tweedle dee or tweedle dum will be emboldened enough to step forward and run. After all, he or she may be able to count on all those "blanks" that have started to win.
This has already started to happen in my city council district. The other half of the district always votes solidly for Mr. I'veBeenHereThirtyYears, whereas my half of the district votes for "blank" by a 3-1 margin. Our district is gerrymandered in such a way as to make the vote from my half of the district irrelevant, but next year is redistricting and that is where all of this can be addressed. There is no reason that this can not be the case on the state and national level as well.
Looks to me like they're just asking to be sued by Apple.