I find it interesting that I only hear about Diebold's problematic voting machines, and not a single mention of Hart InterCivic'seSlate system. That is what is being used in parts of Texas (at least in Harris and Brazos Counties, and I'm sure others). I have been impressed with the simplicity, and apparent security, of this system. I would think the best solution for overseas voting would be a set (or two, or three) of portable 'booths' for each base overseas, with the (encrypted) flashcard transported back to the vote-counters within a few hours or days, instead of having to wait weeks for the final tallies.
Yep, but if you read the Microsoft KB article, you'll see that, as usual, they are using a full sheet of sheetrock to fix a pinhole. Instead of patching Internet Explorer 5.x and 6.x to show the full URL with the "@" sign in it, they're just removing the ability to have an http:// or https:// link with the @ completely. That's not a fix, it's a farce. If they were really concerned about what their customers need, they would simply filter the URL and remove any strange control characters before the @ sign and ALWAYS SHOW THE FULL URL.
(Of course, I'm being completely obvious here to the SlashDot crowd...)
For those who think they're safe because their marketing preferences are still set to "NO", I suggest you read this line at the bottom of the "Special Offers" section (immediately above the header "How may we contact you?").
Note that special offers are separate from product newsletters. Newsletter Subscriptions can be managed here.
When I clicked the link, I got another list of "Newsletter Subscription" options, none of which were selected as Yes or No. I don't know if those are related to the new spams, but just to be safe I set them all to NO. Also, there is a link to "Edit your subscription to the Yahoo! Newsletter" at the bottom of that page...
Try Attachment Options from Slovak Technical Services. I have had need of this ability since we patched our Office 2K installs to SP1 (or was it SP3?), but the shareware app from Slovak allows you to un-block certain extensions (or all extensions) to a prompted level instead of a "can't find the bloody attachment even though it's still taking up space" level. (Disclaimer - I do not work for nor have any connection with Slovak Technical Services, just a happy user of their product.)
At least in the US, I would think that the "prior art" to a case like this would be Compaq reverse-engineering the IBM BIOS for the first IBM PC clone. If IBM had sued (which they didn't, apparently, because they had just finished being slapped by the Justice Department in their own anti-trust case), and IBM had won, we would all be buying our PCs from IBM and paying handsomely for the right to run Big Blue's hardware.
Unfortunately, precedent can't be set unless a court has seen the case. Oh, well....
Reminds me of my college days (early 1990's). We would have people sitting around the computer lab, logged into VAX terminals. I was once on a 6-way VAX-Phone conversation (you try reading live text in 5 different frames of only 3 lines each, and keeping up!). Turned out that only one of the 6 people in that conversation was at a different school, and only one of the rest was in a different computer lab. the other four of us felt really silly when that was revealed!
Here's the scenario - what I tried, and doesn't work.
1) "Typical" install of Windows 98 SE (includes Outlook Express by default, IE4).
2) Install MS Office 2000 with a full install of Outlook.
3) Set up Outlook as an Exchange Client for a user.
4) Go to Add/Remove Programs and remove Outlook Express.
5) Try and run Outlook - you get a warning that "Outlook requires Outlook Express..." and Outlook shuts down. Will not run at all.
If there's a way around this, PLEASE let me know. I'd love to implement it for my office and get Outlook Express off our machines (users think they can POP their home email accounts with it - and get pissed when the firewall blocks the outbound POP connection).
If Outlook and Outlook Express are so unrelated, why are you REQUIRED to have Outlook Express installed to run Outlook 2000?
Been there, tried this. There is NO way around having to have OE installed to run Outlook2K.
(The only reason I use any MS emailer is because my office uses it. I actually had to convince someone here that using OE to pop our one email account that is allowed to receive attachments was a Bad Idea, and finally got him to change to Eudora...)
My wife and I actually got to see Star Wars - New Hope (the redone version with extra Han Solo action!) on the IMAX screen in San Antonio, Texas. It was great - the images weren't 'full screen' (imagine - letterboxed on an IMAX?), but the audio was tremendous!
This is a link that will auto-install the icons (and some additional ones including for "mail compose" and bookmark windows) into Mozilla for the title bar: http://www.grayrest.com/moz/resources/icons.shtml
Lotekk.net has a few other useful Mozilla tricks, like some alternative Splash box graphics and a couple of search engine additions to the sidebar.
There is something in the Constitution of the State of Texas called the Line-Item Veto. Basically, this means that the Govenor of Texas has the right to accept or reject individual items within any bill sent to him. I've long advocated that there should be an amendment to the US Constitution that gives the President line-item veto power. That could seriously cut down on the pork-barreling and "combination bills" of legislation that shouldn't be tied together.
Can we get the US courts to hold Microsoft responsible if someone created a child pornography site with FrontPage? or writes a anti-semetic tract with MS Word? *ponder* Seems like the same sort of "provider" CYA situation to me. Way to go, Dutch courts!
I just looked at their options. They have a CF-X10R (Mobile PIII/850) and a CF-X10V (Mobile Celeron 750), both of which have an optical trackball. Sounds sweet...now will they run Win98SE, English edition?
perhaps, but how many platforms does it run on? Anything that runs KDE, probably, but last time I checked, Windows doesn't run KDE...and what's needed is a viable calendar project that runs on not just Linux, but on Windows, Mac, BEOS, etc...
They do nested confirmation dialogs with Win32 installation programs. It shouldn't be too hard to implement the same thing for other protections! Just make sure that at least one of the boxes defaults to "NO" or "CANCEL"!
Er...Washington's law states that email SENT from or RECEIVED BY someone within the state boundries is covered by this law. If you send forged spam and one of the addresses is to Bill Gates, you have violated the law and are subject to being suponeaed (sp?) by Washington State Courts. It's similar to the EULA statements that any legal action regarding said software is assigned to the jurisdiction of a particular court, no matter where you are located. (I'm not going to argue the [in]validity of EULAs right now....)
I'm trying to administer my box. I've got several different anti-spam measures running on my sendmail server. I used to send messages to 'postmaster' and 'abuse' at every domain in the header of a spam message. Know what? didn't make a bit of difference. I still got UCE and it just gets worse.
If there were costs involved in sending email, then perhaps the bulk of SPAM wouldn't ever get sent; spammers would think twice if it cost them several dollars per message. I have no problem with unsolicited advertising in my snail-mail box; at least those companies had to pay to be able to send that.
When I send unsolicited email, I send it to one person specifically and make sure that they can find me to send a reply. If I don't get a reply, or get a "don't email me again", I don't send anything else to that address. I'm also not selling anything, or promoting a product or service, nor selling p0rn sites.
I'm not one to advocate greater govenment control, but at least make it possible to get some sort of legally-sanctioned reimbursement for the time wasted, disk space used, and bandwidth taken to download each unsolicited email message. I don't want government monitoring my email for me, but I want the chance to take action if I choose to.
Way OT: Chuck Flynn, can you please correctly attribute the quote in your.sig? The "Ask not..." quote belongs to John F. Kennedy...I believe from his inauguration speech.
You are correct that it is not possible to copy the files off the DVD directly without using some kind of key. However, it is possible to copy a DVD bit-by-bit using a (very expensive still) DVD copier/burner without having to decrypt it first. The excessive cost of the burner hardware and the writable-DVD media is the primary protection against this kind of duplication.
I use Windows at work, and am the only person on our entire network (600+ PCs) using Netscape. I've had my share of problems with Netscape 4.7x on Win2000, but nothing a simple 'killall' (oops, I mean 'End Task') can't handle, and I can restart the browser right away without having to reboot.
When I have problems or crashes with IE (3.01-5.5 inclusive; yes, we're still running all of them!) I have to reboot the PC to return to some semblence of stablilty. ANY application being tied so closely to the OS that killing it's process takes out the GUI desktop is a Bad Thing .
I'll stick to Netscape, although I am testing Mozilla, but the lack of support for https:// does bother me some (yes, I know it's available, but not part of the standard package), as does the lack of some features from the UI (HOME button, PRINT button?), but I am liking it better and better.
Well...I've been using Cox in Central Texas since they bought TCA Cable here. TCA provided cable modem service for Myriad Internet, a locally-owned ISP, and I was involved in the beta testing phase (three years ago).
I have had more trouble in the past few months since Cox took over than I even had while in beta! Problem seems (to me) that they decided to move all their tech support to Tyler, Texas instead of in Bryan (where we are located) and consolidate into a multi-state call center. Now, admittedly, their phone support is better (at least, better hours) than TCA was, but nothing beats being able to walk into your ISP's office and corner a tech when you have problems that are obviously (from a tech's viewpoint, anyway) not the consumer's fault.
The biggest problems I found were during their move, when some brilliant mind decided that moving the DNS servers and mailservers to Tyler (at the other end of a WAN connection - not sure T1, T3 or what) where they are at the mercy of a Telco cutting the lines from here to there. (We're talking 160+ miles between me and their mail server...)
Now, they are being 'nice' and not complaining about my web server or mailserver that I run on the cable modem, and haven't charged me for DNS hosting my own domain (for a local non-profit org), so I'll put up with them. But them being 'nice' wasn't so nice when I spent two months wondering why my connection would randomly drop for ~30 minutes at a time, several times a day, and then be told by tech support to "reboot my machine (which one of three?), power cycle the cable modem (already done), shut down everything for 10 minutes and try again (I don't bloody think so)". I would occasionally get a tech who was smart enough to realize that when I said I had tested everything, I meant EVERYTHING (including figuring out that they had a defective head-end device or router on one of the cable nodes).
Prime example I can come up with was marketing the Chevy Nova in Mexico. "No va" in Spanish is "it doesn't go", or something close to that! (although there are reports that the Nova story is a myth). You've also got the Electrolux (Scandinavian) Co. who used the "nothing sucks like an Electrolux" slogan in the US for a very brief time.
Changing the name of a product to an appropriate form for a regional or cultural situation would not be unprecedented or even unusual. "FreeSMB" would be an appropriate alternative name for the SAMBA project, methinks.
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I find it interesting that I only hear about Diebold's problematic voting machines, and not a single mention of Hart InterCivic's eSlate system. That is what is being used in parts of Texas (at least in Harris and Brazos Counties, and I'm sure others). I have been impressed with the simplicity, and apparent security, of this system. I would think the best solution for overseas voting would be a set (or two, or three) of portable 'booths' for each base overseas, with the (encrypted) flashcard transported back to the vote-counters within a few hours or days, instead of having to wait weeks for the final tallies.
Yep, but if you read the Microsoft KB article, you'll see that, as usual, they are using a full sheet of sheetrock to fix a pinhole. Instead of patching Internet Explorer 5.x and 6.x to show the full URL with the "@" sign in it, they're just removing the ability to have an http:// or https:// link with the @ completely. That's not a fix, it's a farce. If they were really concerned about what their customers need, they would simply filter the URL and remove any strange control characters before the @ sign and ALWAYS SHOW THE FULL URL.
(Of course, I'm being completely obvious here to the SlashDot crowd...)
For those who think they're safe because their marketing preferences are still set to "NO", I suggest you read this line at the bottom of the "Special Offers" section (immediately above the header "How may we contact you?"). Note that special offers are separate from product newsletters. Newsletter Subscriptions can be managed here. When I clicked the link, I got another list of "Newsletter Subscription" options, none of which were selected as Yes or No. I don't know if those are related to the new spams, but just to be safe I set them all to NO. Also, there is a link to "Edit your subscription to the Yahoo! Newsletter" at the bottom of that page...
Try Attachment Options from Slovak Technical Services. I have had need of this ability since we patched our Office 2K installs to SP1 (or was it SP3?), but the shareware app from Slovak allows you to un-block certain extensions (or all extensions) to a prompted level instead of a "can't find the bloody attachment even though it's still taking up space" level. (Disclaimer - I do not work for nor have any connection with Slovak Technical Services, just a happy user of their product.)
At least in the US, I would think that the "prior art" to a case like this would be Compaq reverse-engineering the IBM BIOS for the first IBM PC clone. If IBM had sued (which they didn't, apparently, because they had just finished being slapped by the Justice Department in their own anti-trust case), and IBM had won, we would all be buying our PCs from IBM and paying handsomely for the right to run Big Blue's hardware.
Unfortunately, precedent can't be set unless a court has seen the case. Oh, well....
Reminds me of my college days (early 1990's). We would have people sitting around the computer lab, logged into VAX terminals. I was once on a 6-way VAX-Phone conversation (you try reading live text in 5 different frames of only 3 lines each, and keeping up!). Turned out that only one of the 6 people in that conversation was at a different school, and only one of the rest was in a different computer lab. the other four of us felt really silly when that was revealed!
Er...shouldn't that be "MicroSHAFTed"?
Here's the scenario - what I tried, and doesn't work.
1) "Typical" install of Windows 98 SE (includes Outlook Express by default, IE4).
2) Install MS Office 2000 with a full install of Outlook.
3) Set up Outlook as an Exchange Client for a user.
4) Go to Add/Remove Programs and remove Outlook Express.
5) Try and run Outlook - you get a warning that "Outlook requires Outlook Express..." and Outlook shuts down. Will not run at all.
If there's a way around this, PLEASE let me know. I'd love to implement it for my office and get Outlook Express off our machines (users think they can POP their home email accounts with it - and get pissed when the firewall blocks the outbound POP connection).
If Outlook and Outlook Express are so unrelated, why are you REQUIRED to have Outlook Express installed to run Outlook 2000?
Been there, tried this. There is NO way around having to have OE installed to run Outlook2K.
(The only reason I use any MS emailer is because my office uses it. I actually had to convince someone here that using OE to pop our one email account that is allowed to receive attachments was a Bad Idea, and finally got him to change to Eudora...)
My wife and I actually got to see Star Wars - New Hope (the redone version with extra Han Solo action!) on the IMAX screen in San Antonio, Texas. It was great - the images weren't 'full screen' (imagine - letterboxed on an IMAX?), but the audio was tremendous!
http://www.lotekk.net/index.php?page=moz&sub=icon
This is a link that will auto-install the icons (and some additional ones including for "mail compose" and bookmark windows) into Mozilla for the title bar:
http://www.grayrest.com/moz/resources/icons.shtml
Lotekk.net has a few other useful Mozilla tricks, like some alternative Splash box graphics and a couple of search engine additions to the sidebar.
Google Search can get you more references as well.
There is something in the Constitution of the State of Texas called the Line-Item Veto. Basically, this means that the Govenor of Texas has the right to accept or reject individual items within any bill sent to him. I've long advocated that there should be an amendment to the US Constitution that gives the President line-item veto power. That could seriously cut down on the pork-barreling and "combination bills" of legislation that shouldn't be tied together.
Can we get the US courts to hold Microsoft responsible if someone created a child pornography site with FrontPage? or writes a anti-semetic tract with MS Word? *ponder* Seems like the same sort of "provider" CYA situation to me. Way to go, Dutch courts!
I just looked at their options. They have a CF-X10R (Mobile PIII/850) and a CF-X10V (Mobile Celeron 750), both of which have an optical trackball. Sounds sweet...now will they run Win98SE, English edition?
perhaps, but how many platforms does it run on? Anything that runs KDE, probably, but last time I checked, Windows doesn't run KDE...and what's needed is a viable calendar project that runs on not just Linux, but on Windows, Mac, BEOS, etc...
Have you tried WordPerfect Presentations? It's in the WP Office 2K for Linux that came out several years ago, but works just fine....
They do nested confirmation dialogs with Win32 installation programs. It shouldn't be too hard to implement the same thing for other protections! Just make sure that at least one of the boxes defaults to "NO" or "CANCEL"!
Er...Washington's law states that email SENT from or RECEIVED BY someone within the state boundries is covered by this law. If you send forged spam and one of the addresses is to Bill Gates, you have violated the law and are subject to being suponeaed (sp?) by Washington State Courts. It's similar to the EULA statements that any legal action regarding said software is assigned to the jurisdiction of a particular court, no matter where you are located. (I'm not going to argue the [in]validity of EULAs right now....)
If there were costs involved in sending email, then perhaps the bulk of SPAM wouldn't ever get sent; spammers would think twice if it cost them several dollars per message. I have no problem with unsolicited advertising in my snail-mail box; at least those companies had to pay to be able to send that.
When I send unsolicited email, I send it to one person specifically and make sure that they can find me to send a reply. If I don't get a reply, or get a "don't email me again", I don't send anything else to that address. I'm also not selling anything, or promoting a product or service, nor selling p0rn sites.
I'm not one to advocate greater govenment control, but at least make it possible to get some sort of legally-sanctioned reimbursement for the time wasted, disk space used, and bandwidth taken to download each unsolicited email message. I don't want government monitoring my email for me, but I want the chance to take action if I choose to.
Way OT: Chuck Flynn, can you please correctly attribute the quote in your .sig? The "Ask not..." quote belongs to John F. Kennedy...I believe from his inauguration speech.
You are correct that it is not possible to copy the files off the DVD directly without using some kind of key. However, it is possible to copy a DVD bit-by-bit using a (very expensive still) DVD copier/burner without having to decrypt it first. The excessive cost of the burner hardware and the writable-DVD media is the primary protection against this kind of duplication.
Well, neither is the MPAA, and remember what happened in the DeCSS raid.....
When I have problems or crashes with IE (3.01-5.5 inclusive; yes, we're still running all of them!) I have to reboot the PC to return to some semblence of stablilty. ANY application being tied so closely to the OS that killing it's process takes out the GUI desktop is a Bad Thing .
I'll stick to Netscape, although I am testing Mozilla, but the lack of support for https:// does bother me some (yes, I know it's available, but not part of the standard package), as does the lack of some features from the UI (HOME button, PRINT button?), but I am liking it better and better.
I have had more trouble in the past few months since Cox took over than I even had while in beta! Problem seems (to me) that they decided to move all their tech support to Tyler, Texas instead of in Bryan (where we are located) and consolidate into a multi-state call center. Now, admittedly, their phone support is better (at least, better hours) than TCA was, but nothing beats being able to walk into your ISP's office and corner a tech when you have problems that are obviously (from a tech's viewpoint, anyway) not the consumer's fault.
The biggest problems I found were during their move, when some brilliant mind decided that moving the DNS servers and mailservers to Tyler (at the other end of a WAN connection - not sure T1, T3 or what) where they are at the mercy of a Telco cutting the lines from here to there. (We're talking 160+ miles between me and their mail server...)
Now, they are being 'nice' and not complaining about my web server or mailserver that I run on the cable modem, and haven't charged me for DNS hosting my own domain (for a local non-profit org), so I'll put up with them. But them being 'nice' wasn't so nice when I spent two months wondering why my connection would randomly drop for ~30 minutes at a time, several times a day, and then be told by tech support to "reboot my machine (which one of three?), power cycle the cable modem (already done), shut down everything for 10 minutes and try again (I don't bloody think so)". I would occasionally get a tech who was smart enough to realize that when I said I had tested everything, I meant EVERYTHING (including figuring out that they had a defective head-end device or router on one of the cable nodes).
Geez...do I sound bitter or what?
Prime example I can come up with was marketing the Chevy Nova in Mexico. "No va" in Spanish is "it doesn't go", or something close to that! (although there are reports that the Nova story is a myth). You've also got the Electrolux (Scandinavian) Co. who used the "nothing sucks like an Electrolux" slogan in the US for a very brief time.
Changing the name of a product to an appropriate form for a regional or cultural situation would not be unprecedented or even unusual. "FreeSMB" would be an appropriate alternative name for the SAMBA project, methinks.