Sometimes I'm really proud of my fellow Europeans. Even some of the bureaucrats seem to get a clue once in a while.
But, the problem doesn't go entirely away. You might not be able to patent the software per se, but you might very well patent a method to get from A to B, which - oh gosh - happens to be implemented with software.
Guess, I didn't see it enough from an admins perspective who has to contact somebody (or multiple entities) at once. And ten days for 16 addresses sounds like enough to deter a spammer.
You mentioned naive and I fear you're on the spot here. Somebody, somewhere finds a way to hack it. Even if this means bribing somebody who's in the position to get that information without restrictions.
Basically, the WHOIS database should stay public, period. (Hey, it's one of the most valuable get that spammer tools after all).
However, some measures should be implemented that make address harvesting totally unprofitable.
For example: The web accessible database only reveals the name (or company) that owns the domain. To get all the information you have to request that by e-mail. This would allow the following scenario:
Only one request per e-mail
A maximum of three requests per day, per e-mail address. Alternatively: only one request per e-mail address can be pending. All other requests are trashed
A three hour delay between the request and the response
Known spammer domains are not eligible to retrieve the information
This would have to be applied on a world wide scale, meaning that all registrars and all country nics must adhere to those rules or have their registration privileges yanked.
Would this make abuses of whois impossible? Probably not. But it would make address harvesting very uneconomic. Considering that spammers are gread freeks by default they would try different attempts to gather mail addresses.
Ok, pissing contest is on. Yet, I try to keep this civilized:
Your database software failed. I lost all my data, but I can at least sue you and get some money. My
business might be ruined, but hey I can cash out from winning a law suit against you. Of course I have to pay the lawyers and might have no income while the suit goes on but who cares.
Trying to be cynical ? Probably. But your logic fails utterly: In a mission critical environment you sure as hell want a database vendor, who:
is likely to provide professional, contractual support on various levels
is not likely to go away next week
who can provide an annual report indicating the amount of $ invested in R&D
ultimately who is accountable.
I'm aware that you can purchase professional support with PostgreSQL (which is likely better then what the big 5 have to offer), but frankly, being responsible for a project I wouldn't bet my carreer on it.
I never said that I necessarily agree with this mindset, but from a (project) management's perspective it's understandable. If I invest $200 000 000 into a mission critical system, the possible savings by using open source products in core elements (database, middleware) is probably not an option.
Now for the rest:
Reliable Database How do you determine reliable ? For millions M$ Access is the idea of a reliable database. Tell you what: It's not! Further disks will and go inevitably bad. Even if you have redundant disk subsystems a logical error or a pointer going haywire may have been written to disk.
good backups We certainly don't have an argument here. However, if you can't afford down time or you can't afford even five minutes of lost data this might not be enough.
Security Of course, but it's incredible difficult to provide good security. Especially in a multi tiered environment. Granted, that has nothing to do with the fact if a database is open source or not.
but as long MySQL lacks fundamental database concepts like transaction control & integrity constraints (foreign keys, triggers) it's useless for deployment as a production database in a half-mission critical environment.
Also, what is the real value of scalabilty for Avergae Jos User? It's relevant for a phone company billing system where the CDRs come flushing in by the millions per hour. But if you require that horsepower, you certainly don't lack resources to spend mucho bucks on a commercial database (from a company you can sue if something goes wrong), the iron to run them all (with a few nifty EMC disk arrays) and serious consulting.
Did anybody else notice that PostgreSQL actually improved performance with more concurrent users ?
The only explanation here is the caching behavior of the data base. Howerver, this also indicates that benchmarking databases is not a really trivial task, because exactly such effects must be considered for database benchmarks.
Further, besides a few graphs. The test says actually nothing different then: PostgreSQL improved strongly, while MySQL is a dog. Actually it says nothing at all.
Not that I mind the results. I worked with both databases briefly and believe that PostgreSQL is far closer to an industrial strength database (Lack of transaction control disqualifies MySQL for that in the first place). Nevertheless, I think the results really lack any significance.
Actually that works pretty well with GSM phones (and probably other standards too).
The SIM is your encrypted device. To activate it you need a PIN, which could be considered your digital signature and presto:
The location of Your SIM is trackable within a couple 100 yards or so.
The problem of course is, that the location is attached to the device. Nobody prevents you from sticking it under a car and pretend that you went all the way from Malmoe to Lissabon.
That's probably also the most tricky issue with your question:
How can you make a position dependant signature device independant, or at least (if you use a device) make it non-functional if you're not physically there.
I dont damn GUIs to the ground, but prefer to use them for check up and monitoring purposes.
Generating scripts by hand ? Nope. During the years in which you work with RDBs you acquire a tool chest. Mostly shell and perl scripts which are essentially fed some templates and do the job.
The resulting scripts however are regarded as the source, kept up to date and are version controlled. Not that much of a hussle really.
Of course you can usually reverse engineer the databases with most GUI tools. But when was that done last time ? Are all changes applied ? Is it done consequently.
Distributed environments are a good example. There are tools that do the job in the meantime. But, from architecting and designing quite a few distributed systems here's my breakdown on the effort:
Gathering business requirements 20 - 30 %
System Architecture 30 - 40 %
System Design 20%
Setting up object generation infrastructure 10%
Implementing, testing fixing: The rest
The more you invest into the architecture and design the less fixing, debugging, tinkering and praying is applicable. So the part where the gui really helps is minimal. Chances that you seriously fuck up a really complex environment are exorbitant.
from writing some software that would have a very easy point and click, or very simple command line, creat a config file, type of engiene to write a database. And all you would have to do is drag and drop options.
This is a bad idea. I'm aware that point & click, drag & drop GUI interfaces are very tempting to manage such complex systems as a relational database. Let me elaborate:
It gives joe end-user the impression that, hey, it's only a little Access after all. Planning an enterprise database that has to support 100s of users with guaranteed response times and throughput is never an easy task and requires quite some insight into the DB engine. Another issue is that desaster is at your finger tips: Are you sure...? From using desktop applications we all know how easy it is to just click yes. The yes on such a window might be the sure path to major desaster.
An even worse issue is recoverability. It is a pain in the ass to create the scripts for every single database object, to version control them and to treat them like source code. Let me assure you that when the crap touches the ventilator you thank [whomever you believe in] that you went real slow, conservative and have scripts prepared to recover the db from scratch and re-apply the table data you where barely able to bulk copy from your corrupt database. When you dragged and clicked a bit, I can guarantee you, that there's no way to recover the proper database structure (Hey, but Joe, ran the reverse engineering option in March 98...)
The very, very best Sybase DBA I've ever gotten to know did everything with plain straight forward ascii scripts. It's a system that processes $10'000'000'000.00 of real cash every day. It's up and running since 1996 and if it's down for three days the first companies will file for bankruptcy. It handles up to 9'000'000 bookings a day (each consisting of 8 tpc/c transactions).
This guy never had a bad night since the system is in production.
Since I run a billed by the hour business I'm sure they can appreciate that I bill them for our time.
Since it's such an important venture only the very best does. So they get supplied with our principal chief technology consulting architectural advisor whose hourly rate is $500 (American money that is).
In the certified letter into their general direction I won't neglect to mention our 100% short notice surgarge for new customers.
The only thing left will be the scheduling, but I'm sure we find a mutual satisfying time.
They might be disappointed though. After working for Digital for three and Sybase for five years I sure as hell understand and appreciate the necessity of software licensing. And they won't find even a stoopid unhappy paperclip which is unlicensed.
Lemme summarize: Two days of the time of my principal chief technology consulting architectural advisor at 500$ an hour is $8000 plus our surcharge of $8000 is 16k for two days amusement watching some dweeps trying to figure the GPL.
I worked 8 years overall in financial services systems engineering and some of the insight gained there will probably forever prevent me from dealing with banks online. For what it's worth, here's my brief analysis why online banking services are so prone to be cracked:
Big Rewards: If a cracker succeeds the loot is probably a lot greater then after a successful MyTunafish.com hack. (in theory that is, getting the funds into posession is a whole other issue).
DotCom Greed: In times where banks are no more measured according to their assets, but are taken upon number of customers that bank online, time to market of a system is extremely crucial. So security (the major attribute of banking online systems) gets usually put on a backburner. In fact there aren't that much really good security experts understanding client server systems accessible from everywhere and (save for the servers) with every external component being in a hostile environment. Now a bank, rather then losing a couple bucks of their stock price very often prefers to just rush the system in.
Unsecure Interfaces: Instead of providing dedicated software a lot of online banks rely on web browsers. Thanks to those insightful 'Murican export restrictions on encryption a lot of the world still browses with 40 bit SSL encryption. Every kiddy who just purchased (or ripped off) the Little Crackpot K1dd13s Resource Shareware Kit is able to crack such communications online (or nearly so).
Amount of components:A C/S systems security is as week as it's weekest component. The complexity of system security climbs exponential with every additional component introduced. Due to the lack of qualified people in the field Joe Dork (recently certified MCSE) is suddenly in charge of Unix Systems security without having a clue of course.
There's a variety of more reasons, but those are probably the most important.
The banks on the other hand don't really have to bother since they have that very powerfull tool putting you always into the role of the idiot: The Contract, Service Agreement or the TOS. Did you read it ? Did you find the part where it states that No matter what happens, it's ALWAYS the customers fault (possibly followed by) unless you can provide proof for gross negligence by the bank (Good Luck).
Banks have a huge interest to get you to bank electonically. An electronic customer is the teller, the datatypist and the bank building in person. The cost savings are amazing. As long however those greed-freaks in conservative suits push the entire risk into my general direction I happily invite them to shove their service agreements up their rectums...
As pointed out to another poster: I don't give a fscking s5it about the contents of spam. The reasons where trampled ad nauseum, but the gist is:
I absolutely, unconditionally believe in the right to be left alone.
So, if I ask you not to send junk mail (you can do that here with a simple entry in the phone book, it's widely respected): Don't!
If I ask you not to call me for any sales pitch: Don't!
If I not explicitely authorize a commercial entity to contact me by email: Don't!
The major difference is that junk mail doesn't arrive postage due and telemarketers don't call reverse charges. But with spam I'm forced to foot the bill and I don't care if it's for barely legal fisting teen sluts or for KDE2 from a "Linux Software House".
Spam wouldn't be so bad if they were actually selling something useful.
Mate, I disagree to the max with your opinion here. Actually all the snake oil spams aren't the real problem. The problem are more and more reputed businesses spamming me with legitimate products and services. Why ?
I never agreed to receive mail from such companies. I pay for their spamming, be it in terms of time, bandwith and storage capacity. Don't forget that in Europe you pay for every bloody second your modem is connected to your ISP!
Even worse: It gives spam respectability and legitimacy. Hey, after all it's coming from P&G so what the heck ?
Even worse, worse: Those companies, seing the net as a commercial cable TV operation will more and more pressure ISPs to allow "legitimate" spam.
Everybody who wants to use the net as the AOL shopping mall, that's fine with me. But don't ever expect me to tolerate that.
"Legitimate" or not: Spam sent to my domain receives the following treatment:
More or less friendly mail to the originator (if legitimate) with copies to all ISPs involved in the relay.
Blacklisting the company and making them very aware of that (sort of: don't ever mail us, call us or contact us, you are on our corporate blacklist!)
If they persist I go through the trouble of sending them a letter by certified mail that we will charge our maximum consultancy rates (currently> $250, 2 hours minimum) for handling the clutter. I never had to sue, but I'm willing to if it gets to that.
Sorry for the outbusrt, but that makes me absolutely furious.
I'm sick and tired of ISPs where you have a hard time convincing some dork that a spam-swine violated their lame TOS. It's even more sickening to see the backbone providers are getting into the game.
"In their case, we signed a contract saying they were going to handle customer complaints, and if the complaints were too much, we would discontinue"
How very elegant. So they don't only allow this junk on their fat pipes they're pulling themselves out of the resposnibility to handle the consequences.
It never ceases to amaze me how companys that feed themselves of the net go through great length to annoy and allienate the very community from which they make money (amazon, etoys, etc...).
Our office address is in Delaware, our Accounting Dept. is in Australia, Development is in Malaysia, Hosting Service is in California and the servers are in Georgia.
What a sinister and evil scheme to sabotage quality businesses the likes of Double Click or those fine folks discussed in this thread.
My comapanie's domain carries a swiss domain name address, and it's quite conceivable that Swiss businesses in dire need of distributed database architecture consulting wind up right there.
The problem of course is, that the domain is hosted by a company in New Jersey.
I don't really think that my potential customers and prospects really go for an add for a franchise of a special waste deposit or are extremely likely to frequent the Tax Fee shop in Newark and take advantage of this really special offer that lasts for only three days.
(Of course this whole scenario only applies if there are more then maybe 20 hits a month, but you get the picture...)
Methinks the business model has a couple flaws in the age of global networking.
Let me state, for the record, that I hate reverse domain name highjacking. I was actively involved in the etoy fight and I strongly believe that no trademark holder should have a right to sucks-domain names. (Yeah fuckatt.com can sure be confused with the intelectual property of a large, clueless phone company).
This case however could be looked at from two sides: Either the original intention of the crafters of the domain name system is maintained, no exceptions or then trademark (by registration or by virtue) and domain issues are intermingled. The first will never happen. I'm not saying this a good thing, it's the way it is.
I'm not sure if the guy registered the name with bad intention and probably the SA tourist board is a dollar short and a day late.
Nevertheless they do appear to have a legitimate claim for the domain name. The free speach issue argument in this case looks to me like utter bullshit.
There are a lot of domain name issues that seem a hell of a lot murkier. E.g. Should the Zurich insurance group have the right to the zurich.com domain (which they own) or should the fine city of Zurich be able to get the name?
Ok, so hate me if you will, but that case looks fairly clear cut, despite all the whining of the guy.
As most of the intelligent and esteemed members of the/. community discovered long time ago
There is no such thing as a free lunch
The phone company, providing you with free long distance ? Right, only that they charge an arm and a leg when you don't read the fine print.
You just one a free holiday ? Yeah, sure! One of the oldest scams around.
Get this free book. The Scientology classes for which you pay for the rest of your life aren't quite free.
In the case of schools it's an especially dirty scam. Schools scramble for budget and a slimey salesman promising a free computer lab must be very tempting. Nevertheless the responsible folks should have done their homework. How many banner ads do you have to deliver to how many eyeballs to pay for the cost of a cheap $800 computer ? This is not counting that ZapMe has to finance their overhead and line the pockets of their greedy stockholders.
Yourdon was, sort of, the guy who wrote the scripture that taught me structured design. So I really give hime the benefit of a clue.
Death March Projects
Don't even get me started, about those high profile very political shit of real significance.Such projects are easy to detect, watch out for the following features:
There's about 3 metres (10 feet) of documentation. It's mandatory that one of the docs has a title, like Standards how to write Standards
The quality assurance team is of vital importance. After finishing your specs they go to the QA team, to settle dust for the next three weeks (despite the killer deadlines). Then you get them back with the Ts crossed and the Is dotted. You could write Macys famous cookie reciepe into the specs as long the Ts are crossed, etc (On a less cynic note, I believe QA is important, but mostly rottenly implemented).
It's mandatory for such projects to switch the implementation language from Cobol to C. That's one week before coding starts and a bunch of Cobol gurus (with no fucking clue whatsover about C) are assembled for coding.
The scapegoat element is of dire importance. Best is to import a group from Tasmania or Timbuktu. They don't necessarily need to have a clue, but senior project management needs somebody to point the finger after 75% of the timeline.
It is of vital importance to not only have one project sponsor, but three. Best if they hate each other like hell.
A clear project scope is a sure sign of success. Avoid it like the Jerry Springer Show, if you want a death march project. Ideally shift the scope once a month.
Yeah, there's a lot to be said for death march projects, and I sure as hell are gonna order Yourdons book. Should make me an expert in the field...
Because, if you don't vote, you vote anyway - for the majority.
Unfortunately the majority's opinion sucks most of the time.
So, hell! Yes, get your lazy but of the sofa and : vote!
Disclaimer: I'm darn glad that I can't partake at the US presidential election. It's sort of the choice between a rotten apple and a watermelon gone bad. This is however no excuse to let Mr. Bush wreck your country...
What escapes me, is what those blokes trying to scam the search engines actually believe to get out of it.
I mean, if I search for thermonuclar rocketscience essays and the first three hits are something like
Hot rocket science sluts
Thermonuclear rocket chicks
High IQ babes with glasses
Am I really likely to visit those blokes ?
The Digital Hijack by etoy was brilliant in it's kind. But it was a statement,(actually the Ars Electronicas jury believed it was art), it was fun and it was subversive.
But going through the pain to make your smut site popular, well, I dunno...
Slashdot Mirror
But, the problem doesn't go entirely away. You might not be able to patent the software per se, but you might very well patent a method to get from A to B, which - oh gosh - happens to be implemented with software.
knock, knock, crash ...
Err! Never mindGuess, I didn't see it enough from an admins perspective who has to contact somebody (or multiple entities) at once. And ten days for 16 addresses sounds like enough to deter a spammer.
You mentioned naive and I fear you're on the spot here. Somebody, somewhere finds a way to hack it. Even if this means bribing somebody who's in the position to get that information without restrictions.
However, some measures should be implemented that make address harvesting totally unprofitable.
For example: The web accessible database only reveals the name (or company) that owns the domain. To get all the information you have to request that by e-mail. This would allow the following scenario:
Only one request per e-mail
A maximum of three requests per day, per e-mail address. Alternatively: only one request per e-mail address can be pending. All other requests are trashed
A three hour delay between the request and the response
Known spammer domains are not eligible to retrieve the information
This would have to be applied on a world wide scale, meaning that all registrars and all country nics must adhere to those rules or have their registration privileges yanked.
Would this make abuses of whois impossible? Probably not. But it would make address harvesting very uneconomic. Considering that spammers are gread freeks by default they would try different attempts to gather mail addresses.
Your database software failed. I lost all my data, but I can at least sue you and get some money. My business might be ruined, but hey I can cash out from winning a law suit against you. Of course I have to pay the lawyers and might have no income while the suit goes on but who cares.
Trying to be cynical ? Probably. But your logic fails utterly: In a mission critical environment you sure as hell want a database vendor, who:
is likely to provide professional, contractual support on various levels
is not likely to go away next week
who can provide an annual report indicating the amount of $ invested in R&D
ultimately who is accountable.
I'm aware that you can purchase professional support with PostgreSQL (which is likely better then what the big 5 have to offer), but frankly, being responsible for a project I wouldn't bet my carreer on it.
I never said that I necessarily agree with this mindset, but from a (project) management's perspective it's understandable. If I invest $200 000 000 into a mission critical system, the possible savings by using open source products in core elements (database, middleware) is probably not an option.
Now for the rest:
Reliable Database How do you determine reliable ? For millions M$ Access is the idea of a reliable database. Tell you what: It's not! Further disks will and go inevitably bad. Even if you have redundant disk subsystems a logical error or a pointer going haywire may have been written to disk.
good backups We certainly don't have an argument here. However, if you can't afford down time or you can't afford even five minutes of lost data this might not be enough.
Security Of course, but it's incredible difficult to provide good security. Especially in a multi tiered environment. Granted, that has nothing to do with the fact if a database is open source or not.
Is that the official release or is that still in beta ? I heard they plan to do it, but with those versions I worked with, didn't support it.
Also, what is the real value of scalabilty for Avergae Jos User? It's relevant for a phone company billing system where the CDRs come flushing in by the millions per hour. But if you require that horsepower, you certainly don't lack resources to spend mucho bucks on a commercial database (from a company you can sue if something goes wrong), the iron to run them all (with a few nifty EMC disk arrays) and serious consulting.
The only explanation here is the caching behavior of the data base. Howerver, this also indicates that benchmarking databases is not a really trivial task, because exactly such effects must be considered for database benchmarks.
Further, besides a few graphs. The test says actually nothing different then: PostgreSQL improved strongly, while MySQL is a dog. Actually it says nothing at all.
Not that I mind the results. I worked with both databases briefly and believe that PostgreSQL is far closer to an industrial strength database (Lack of transaction control disqualifies MySQL for that in the first place). Nevertheless, I think the results really lack any significance.
The SIM is your encrypted device. To activate it you need a PIN, which could be considered your digital signature and presto:
The location of Your SIM is trackable within a couple 100 yards or so.
The problem of course is, that the location is attached to the device. Nobody prevents you from sticking it under a car and pretend that you went all the way from Malmoe to Lissabon.
That's probably also the most tricky issue with your question:
How can you make a position dependant signature device independant, or at least (if you use a device) make it non-functional if you're not physically there.
Generating scripts by hand ? Nope. During the years in which you work with RDBs you acquire a tool chest. Mostly shell and perl scripts which are essentially fed some templates and do the job.
The resulting scripts however are regarded as the source, kept up to date and are version controlled. Not that much of a hussle really.
Of course you can usually reverse engineer the databases with most GUI tools. But when was that done last time ? Are all changes applied ? Is it done consequently.
Distributed environments are a good example. There are tools that do the job in the meantime. But, from architecting and designing quite a few distributed systems here's my breakdown on the effort:
Gathering business requirements 20 - 30 %
System Architecture 30 - 40 %
System Design 20%
Setting up object generation infrastructure 10%
Implementing, testing fixing: The rest
The more you invest into the architecture and design the less fixing, debugging, tinkering and praying is applicable. So the part where the gui really helps is minimal. Chances that you seriously fuck up a really complex environment are exorbitant.
This is a bad idea. I'm aware that point & click, drag & drop GUI interfaces are very tempting to manage such complex systems as a relational database. Let me elaborate:
It gives joe end-user the impression that, hey, it's only a little Access after all. Planning an enterprise database that has to support 100s of users with guaranteed response times and throughput is never an easy task and requires quite some insight into the DB engine. Another issue is that desaster is at your finger tips: Are you sure ...? From using desktop applications we all know how easy it is to just click yes. The yes on such a window might be the sure path to major desaster.
An even worse issue is recoverability. It is a pain in the ass to create the scripts for every single database object, to version control them and to treat them like source code. Let me assure you that when the crap touches the ventilator you thank [whomever you believe in] that you went real slow, conservative and have scripts prepared to recover the db from scratch and re-apply the table data you where barely able to bulk copy from your corrupt database. When you dragged and clicked a bit, I can guarantee you, that there's no way to recover the proper database structure (Hey, but Joe, ran the reverse engineering option in March 98...)
The very, very best Sybase DBA I've ever gotten to know did everything with plain straight forward ascii scripts. It's a system that processes $10'000'000'000.00 of real cash every day. It's up and running since 1996 and if it's down for three days the first companies will file for bankruptcy. It handles up to 9'000'000 bookings a day (each consisting of 8 tpc/c transactions).
This guy never had a bad night since the system is in production.
Since I run a billed by the hour business I'm sure they can appreciate that I bill them for our time.
Since it's such an important venture only the very best does. So they get supplied with our principal chief technology consulting architectural advisor whose hourly rate is $500 (American money that is).
In the certified letter into their general direction I won't neglect to mention our 100% short notice surgarge for new customers.
The only thing left will be the scheduling, but I'm sure we find a mutual satisfying time.
They might be disappointed though. After working for Digital for three and Sybase for five years I sure as hell understand and appreciate the necessity of software licensing. And they won't find even a stoopid unhappy paperclip which is unlicensed.
Lemme summarize: Two days of the time of my principal chief technology consulting architectural advisor at 500$ an hour is $8000 plus our surcharge of $8000 is 16k for two days amusement watching some dweeps trying to figure the GPL.
Ej, you oughta love the consulting business.
Big Rewards : If a cracker succeeds the loot is probably a lot greater then after a successful MyTunafish.com hack. (in theory that is, getting the funds into posession is a whole other issue).
DotCom Greed : In times where banks are no more measured according to their assets, but are taken upon number of customers that bank online, time to market of a system is extremely crucial. So security (the major attribute of banking online systems) gets usually put on a backburner. In fact there aren't that much really good security experts understanding client server systems accessible from everywhere and (save for the servers) with every external component being in a hostile environment. Now a bank, rather then losing a couple bucks of their stock price very often prefers to just rush the system in.
Unsecure Interfaces : Instead of providing dedicated software a lot of online banks rely on web browsers. Thanks to those insightful 'Murican export restrictions on encryption a lot of the world still browses with 40 bit SSL encryption. Every kiddy who just purchased (or ripped off) the Little Crackpot K1dd13s Resource Shareware Kit is able to crack such communications online (or nearly so).
Amount of components :A C/S systems security is as week as it's weekest component. The complexity of system security climbs exponential with every additional component introduced. Due to the lack of qualified people in the field Joe Dork (recently certified MCSE) is suddenly in charge of Unix Systems security without having a clue of course.
There's a variety of more reasons, but those are probably the most important.
The banks on the other hand don't really have to bother since they have that very powerfull tool putting you always into the role of the idiot: The Contract, Service Agreement or the TOS. Did you read it ? Did you find the part where it states that No matter what happens, it's ALWAYS the customers fault (possibly followed by) unless you can provide proof for gross negligence by the bank (Good Luck).
Banks have a huge interest to get you to bank electonically. An electronic customer is the teller, the datatypist and the bank building in person. The cost savings are amazing. As long however those greed-freaks in conservative suits push the entire risk into my general direction I happily invite them to shove their service agreements up their rectums...
I absolutely, unconditionally believe in the right to be left alone. So, if I ask you not to send junk mail (you can do that here with a simple entry in the phone book, it's widely respected): Don't!
If I ask you not to call me for any sales pitch: Don't!
If I not explicitely authorize a commercial entity to contact me by email: Don't!
The major difference is that junk mail doesn't arrive postage due and telemarketers don't call reverse charges. But with spam I'm forced to foot the bill and I don't care if it's for barely legal fisting teen sluts or for KDE2 from a "Linux Software House".
Mate, I disagree to the max with your opinion here. Actually all the snake oil spams aren't the real problem. The problem are more and more reputed businesses spamming me with legitimate products and services. Why ?
I never agreed to receive mail from such companies. I pay for their spamming, be it in terms of time, bandwith and storage capacity. Don't forget that in Europe you pay for every bloody second your modem is connected to your ISP!
Even worse: It gives spam respectability and legitimacy. Hey, after all it's coming from P&G so what the heck ?
Even worse, worse: Those companies, seing the net as a commercial cable TV operation will more and more pressure ISPs to allow "legitimate" spam.
Everybody who wants to use the net as the AOL shopping mall, that's fine with me. But don't ever expect me to tolerate that.
"Legitimate" or not: Spam sent to my domain receives the following treatment:
More or less friendly mail to the originator (if legitimate) with copies to all ISPs involved in the relay.
Blacklisting the company and making them very aware of that (sort of: don't ever mail us, call us or contact us, you are on our corporate blacklist!)
If they persist I go through the trouble of sending them a letter by certified mail that we will charge our maximum consultancy rates (currently> $250, 2 hours minimum) for handling the clutter. I never had to sue, but I'm willing to if it gets to that.
I'm sick and tired of ISPs where you have a hard time convincing some dork that a spam-swine violated their lame TOS. It's even more sickening to see the backbone providers are getting into the game.
"In their case, we signed a contract saying they were going to handle customer complaints, and if the complaints were too much, we would discontinue"
How very elegant. So they don't only allow this junk on their fat pipes they're pulling themselves out of the resposnibility to handle the consequences.
It never ceases to amaze me how companys that feed themselves of the net go through great length to annoy and allienate the very community from which they make money (amazon, etoys, etc...).
What a sinister and evil scheme to sabotage quality businesses the likes of Double Click or those fine folks discussed in this thread.
I'm duely shocked, sir, Er! yes...
The problem of course is, that the domain is hosted by a company in New Jersey.
I don't really think that my potential customers and prospects really go for an add for a franchise of a special waste deposit or are extremely likely to frequent the Tax Fee shop in Newark and take advantage of this really special offer that lasts for only three days.
(Of course this whole scenario only applies if there are more then maybe 20 hits a month, but you get the picture...)
Methinks the business model has a couple flaws in the age of global networking.
Let the domain name fights roll in...
This case however could be looked at from two sides: Either the original intention of the crafters of the domain name system is maintained, no exceptions or then trademark (by registration or by virtue) and domain issues are intermingled. The first will never happen. I'm not saying this a good thing, it's the way it is.
I'm not sure if the guy registered the name with bad intention and probably the SA tourist board is a dollar short and a day late.
Nevertheless they do appear to have a legitimate claim for the domain name. The free speach issue argument in this case looks to me like utter bullshit.
There are a lot of domain name issues that seem a hell of a lot murkier. E.g. Should the Zurich insurance group have the right to the zurich.com domain (which they own) or should the fine city of Zurich be able to get the name?
Ok, so hate me if you will, but that case looks fairly clear cut, despite all the whining of the guy.
There is no such thing as a free lunch
The phone company, providing you with free long distance ? Right, only that they charge an arm and a leg when you don't read the fine print.
You just one a free holiday ? Yeah, sure! One of the oldest scams around.
Get this free book. The Scientology classes for which you pay for the rest of your life aren't quite free.
In the case of schools it's an especially dirty scam. Schools scramble for budget and a slimey salesman promising a free computer lab must be very tempting. Nevertheless the responsible folks should have done their homework. How many banner ads do you have to deliver to how many eyeballs to pay for the cost of a cheap $800 computer ? This is not counting that ZapMe has to finance their overhead and line the pockets of their greedy stockholders.
Bastards, the lot of them.
For me personally they'll never fly. Basic reason being data protection.
I wouldn't even dare to use a calender service and web-email is reduced to throwaway accounts.
But even the thought of storing my companys or private data on some, possibly badly secured server, gives me the jitters.
Hey, and I'm not only not paranoid, but wouldn't really give a shit if they're out there to get me.
Yourdon was, sort of, the guy who wrote the scripture that taught me structured design. So I really give hime the benefit of a clue.
Death March Projects
Don't even get me started, about those high profile very political shit of real significance.Such projects are easy to detect, watch out for the following features:
There's about 3 metres (10 feet) of documentation. It's mandatory that one of the docs has a title, like Standards how to write Standards
The quality assurance team is of vital importance. After finishing your specs they go to the QA team, to settle dust for the next three weeks (despite the killer deadlines). Then you get them back with the Ts crossed and the Is dotted. You could write Macys famous cookie reciepe into the specs as long the Ts are crossed, etc (On a less cynic note, I believe QA is important, but mostly rottenly implemented).
It's mandatory for such projects to switch the implementation language from Cobol to C. That's one week before coding starts and a bunch of Cobol gurus (with no fucking clue whatsover about C) are assembled for coding.
The scapegoat element is of dire importance. Best is to import a group from Tasmania or Timbuktu. They don't necessarily need to have a clue, but senior project management needs somebody to point the finger after 75% of the timeline.
It is of vital importance to not only have one project sponsor, but three. Best if they hate each other like hell.
A clear project scope is a sure sign of success. Avoid it like the Jerry Springer Show, if you want a death march project. Ideally shift the scope once a month.
Yeah, there's a lot to be said for death march projects, and I sure as hell are gonna order Yourdons book. Should make me an expert in the field...
Because, if you don't vote, you vote anyway - for the majority.
Unfortunately the majority's opinion sucks most of the time.
So, hell! Yes, get your lazy but of the sofa and : vote!
Disclaimer: I'm darn glad that I can't partake at the US presidential election. It's sort of the choice between a rotten apple and a watermelon gone bad. This is however no excuse to let Mr. Bush wreck your country...
I mean, if I search for thermonuclar rocketscience essays and the first three hits are something like
Hot rocket science sluts
Thermonuclear rocket chicks
High IQ babes with glasses
Am I really likely to visit those blokes ? The Digital Hijack by etoy was brilliant in it's kind. But it was a statement,(actually the Ars Electronicas jury believed it was art), it was fun and it was subversive.
But going through the pain to make your smut site popular, well, I dunno...