I'm delighted with the stand they are taking. I was previously with Eircom and was one of the thousands who left when they caved into IMRO. While I woldn't case myself as purer than pure, I do frequently download iso's for various Linux distributions.
As an aside, I've found UPC to be a much superior ISP, with great customer service, not like the bad old days of NTL.
The main weakness with using Sharepoint as a knowledge repository is that the MOSS search functionality is extremely limited. The search used is the MS developed search, not the search that is used on their OS's or on MSN. When creating a knowledge repository or Knowledge base always ensure that you use a platform that allows you to integrate a search engine.
The message is brought to you by someone who has been struggling (badly) with a Sharepoint based knowledge base for the last 8 months.
Could I speak to someone in systems? Looks like there's a problem with the web front end of the financial software used to calculate the year end accounts. It seems to have disappeared and now the CFO is looking for someone to roast over some hot coals! We can't finish the year end accounts without this Mission Critical software. The SEC will come down on us like a ton of bricks!
I love the Cheiftec Dragon Towers. They are one of the best towers I've worked with. I have a Cheiftec Dragon Full Tower with extended ATX. Very nice machine once you remove the front top door blocking the optical drive bays. They have lots of capacity and good airflow.
First of all, I'm irish and wish to apologise to Europe for Mr McCreevey.
The telling section of the letter to the President of the parliment is this. "You can, of course, reject or substantially amend the proposal. If the Parliament decides to reject it, then the Commission will respect your wishes. I will not propose a new directive." The emphasis is mine.
It is clear now what has to be done. Contact your EU member of Parliment.http://writetothem.com/
I have to admit it makes an impressive sight. My apartment is only 200 hundred yards from O'Connell St. The patterns have been getting more intricate in the last 2 nights as users have gotten more adventurous.
Many are getting all the spotlights to shine on one narrow band of "The Spire". It then shines like a lighthouse right into the apartment.
Expect some good viewing tonight as cloud cover is 100%.
I've been following the debate on privacy here for a few years now. If you want action to be taken on this issue than contact your TD or Senator.
Here is a link to their contact details.
On a personal note, I am *disgusted* with what the Irish government. This strikes at the heart of privacy for the Irish citizen. IANAL, but this may well be repugnant to the constitution and existing data privacy legislation.
Re:But WHY?
on
Landshark
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Simple answer - Traffic. i live in Dublin near the coast. To travel to work every morning takes an hour and a half. With something like this I could be in work in 25 minutes by crossing Dublin Bay and travelling up the canal.
Although, somehow I doubt you'd ever get up to 200mph on any road in Dublin!
This may well be true now but more and more of your transactions will be online and if Microsoft succeed with Palladium than if you want to buy products or services online then you are going to have to buy Longhorn.
The problem will lie in transactions online. If you cannot buy that new cd you wanted because you are not "trusted" by a Palladium system you will be forced to go to a shop to buy it or buy a palladium compliant system.
There was nothing "wrong" with the technology of the Lernout & Hauspie speech engines, the company was the victim of fraudulent sales in the Asian market. I don't think you can compare the them with CoolChips.
CoolChips technology seems too good to be true but this could be the next "Big Thing"tm.
The Kepler is able to measure the brightness of stars and infer from their brightness the size of planet circling the star. This cannot determine whether or not the planet is earth-like. It does not provide enough information.
The Darwin project will use the 'nulling interferometry' technique which not only detects planets circling the star, it will determine whether or not the planet is within the biosphere of the star and the chemical composition of it's atmosphere, if any.
With a huge amount of luck we might be able to detect an earth sized planet at the moment but not an earth-like planet.
Until the launch of "Darwin" by the ESA, (pdf link) it is unlikely that we will be able to detect earth-like planets. We still cannot detect Jupiter sized worlds at this point in time.
As an administrator it is usually easy to read someone else email, or database files. Administrators can use the server notes id to access any database on that server as the server needs manager access to that database. Server's are always listed in the ACL's. To secure your mailfile it is general practice in encrypt all outoing mail. Therefore only generating a new id (or copying their id and password from an admin database) for the person will allow you to view their mail.
Notes is much more secure than Exchange, but it's not that secure.
Hollings lashes Intel rep for resisting CPRM
on
SSSCA Hearing
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Here's a story from The Register about Hollings grilling Intel executive VP Leslie Vadasz.
Full story below.
Senator brutalizes Intel rep for resisting CPRM By Thomas C Greene in Washington Posted: 01/03/2002 at 14:41 GMT
Entertainment industry lapdog Senator Fritz Hollings (Democrat, South Carolina) lashed out at Intel executive VP Leslie Vadasz who warned that the copy-protected PCs Hollings is obediantly promoting on behalf of his MPAA and RIAA handlers would stifle growth in the marketplace.
"We do not need to neuter the personal computer to be nothing more than a videocassette recorder," Vadasz said in testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Thursday.
An obedient Hollings tore into the witness, calling his testimony "nonsense".
"Now where do you get all this nonsense about how we're going to have irreparable damage?" Hollings demanded. "We don't want to legislate. We want to give you time to develop technology."
The "we" he mentions, it's quite obvious, refers to the entertainment industry flacks and lobbyists who wrote Hollings' pet bill, the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA), which would require hard drives to fail to load 'insecure' applications, and perhaps even operating systems at some point in future. Tinkering with one's own personal property to defeat this Orwellian innovation would be criminally punishable.
This is of course the entertainment industry's dream, as it seeks to hobble all equipment so that it can determine when, where and how its content can be enjoyed by consumers. Copying any content from one medium to another could be blocked on the pretext of piracy prevention, so it's entirely possible that one would have to purchase two CDs with the same content -- one for the computer and one for the stereo, say. It's this sort of extortion the industry has relentlessly lobbied Congress to enshrine in law.
Defeating piracy is the pretext; but obliterating the consumer's right to fair use is the true goal. But because Congress can't quite bring itself to eliminate fair use directly and up-front, a series of laws like the DMCA and SSSCA have been devised to eliminate it practically, or 'incidentally'.
Naturally, the hardware industry is going to resist any law which forces it to break its products. It understands that consumers will be disappointed by equipment which fails to let them enjoy content which they've purchased. They see a slump in sales in the SSSCA. And they're probably right.
The hearing was a typical Congressional dog-and-pony show designed to stroke Hollywood fat cats like Michael Eisner and Jack Valenti pursuing the Holy Grail of pay-per-use technology. No critics were invited to speak, and no harsh criticism was expected.
So when Intel's Vadasz showed the spine to blast the entertainment industry's pet scheme, he had to be beaten down, and Hollings was of course eager to please his masters.
Eisner and Valenti also testified, exhibiting their profound ignorance of technology and their sneering contempt for the rights of consumers, under Hollings' admiring gaze. Hollings, clearly, is an honest politician according to Brendan Behan's formula: when he's bought, he stays bought.
Hollings has also adopted the industry's basic stance, that copying is primarily about piracy, and only rarely about honest fair use. But the best expression of this comes from Recording Industry Ass. of America President Hillary Rosen, who wrote yesterday that, "surely, no one can expect copyright owners to ignore what is happening in the marketplace and fail to protect their creative works because some people engage in copying just for their personal use."
The 'some people' says it all. Most people are criminals, and only a tiny minority are honest and decent, Rosen assumes. This is the also official perspective of Hollywood -- of Eisner, and Valenti, and Hollings. It is a perspective natural to a certain class of person. Consider that we all imagine others to be more or less like ourselves. Decent people expect others to be decent, just like themselves. Criminals expect others to be criminals, just like themselves. When Eisner and Rosen and Valenti and Hollings see a world populated by cheats and frauds and freeloading scum, what does that say about them? ®
As I was not familiar with the Tunney Act, I did a bit of googling and found out some interesting information regarding the case law involved.
Apparently no Judge previous to the MS case has ever asked if any changes would be made to the agreement between the two parties after the public comment period had elapsed.
Now given that it is Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly's responsibility to determine a remedy that is in the People's interest, is more likely that the final settlement will be more inline with the Public Comment sentiment rather than the DoJ / MS agreement.
The Judge is entitled to view all of the public's submissions before coming to a decision.
This agreement, and I use the word loosely is simply another attempt to force the U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to agree to the MS / DOJ terms. The indication that to not do so would be unconstitutional due to seperation of powers between the executive and legislative branches is worrying. The Justice Department also states that the Judge "should not lightly reject the government's predictions" is a not too subtle hint that it is running out of patience with Judge Kollar-Kotelly.
I think this is simply going to come down to whose set of lawyers can outlast the other.
We write to you to urge inter-industry cooperation to ensure that digital content can be distributed to consumers efficiently through a variety of means. Each of our companies is in the business of developing the hardware and software that will make e-commerce thrive. Constant access to information, through comprehensive broadband deployment and availability, we expect will in time be widely available. It is clear that your companies' entertainment products will form an important part of a thriving on-line economy. Digital television is also an important development, and we expect it will soon become widely available.
Business models are only beginning to be developed for supplying consumers' on-demand entertainment. We recognize the critical importance of effective anti-piracy tools in this changing market environment, and that the absence of such tools may affect the development of new product offerings. To address this concern, our companies have worked diligently, voluntarily and cooperatively with producers of entertainment content, as well as consumer electronics companies, to develop systems that will foster the legitimate distribution of digital content. The Copy Protection Technology Working Group (CPTWG) and the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) have been highly productive fora for developing consensus among the many disparate businesses that must work together to build a robust infrastructure for the secure dissemination of digital content. We have found these voluntary multi-industry standards setting efforts to be optimally effective in reaching workable market solutions.
For instance, these voluntary groups have successfully formed consensus on key technologies, making it possible to distribute movies in protected environments such as in DVD format, and developing effective technologies for protecting content distributed over cable and satellite. An inter-industry group is now working diligently within CPTWG to develop a consensus on a means to limit the unlawful redistribution of digital content delivered through unprotected over-the-air broadcast channels. This task force (the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group, or BPDG) is working to identify the workable technical and business solutions.
The information technology industry is committed to doing its part in the shared multi-industry development and deployment of effective solutions for the protection of digital content through a variety of distribution channels and an array of settings. We understand this will be an ongoing undertaking, requiring responses as distribution methods and technology evolve and progress. Our goal is to work with you in a consensus-based and cooperative fashion. We urge you to work with us to find technically feasible, cost effective solutions.
We look forward to a fruitful collaboration to achieve our common goal of providing consumers with new and exciting digital entertainment products. Sincerely,
Michael D. Capellas Chairman and CEO Compaq Computer Corporation
Michael S. Dell Chairman of the Board and CEO Dell
Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. Chairman of the Board and CEO IBM Corporation
One of the at large board members of ICANN, Karl Auerbach was reported as saying that "We've just had the equivalent of the president of the United States abolishing Congress" in response to Stuart Lynn's proposals.
At large board members are chosen by rank and file internet users.
Personally I think this proposal is a threat to the supposed impartiality of ICANN. To allow one third of the board members to be chosen by governments will completely alter the original mandate that ICANN was originally setup.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm delighted with the stand they are taking. I was previously with Eircom and was one of the thousands who left when they caved into IMRO. While I woldn't case myself as purer than pure, I do frequently download iso's for various Linux distributions.
As an aside, I've found UPC to be a much superior ISP, with great customer service, not like the bad old days of NTL.
The main weakness with using Sharepoint as a knowledge repository is that the MOSS search functionality is extremely limited. The search used is the MS developed search, not the search that is used on their OS's or on MSN. When creating a knowledge repository or Knowledge base always ensure that you use a platform that allows you to integrate a search engine.
The message is brought to you by someone who has been struggling (badly) with a Sharepoint based knowledge base for the last 8 months.
Hi,
Could I speak to someone in systems? Looks like there's a problem with the web front end of the financial software used to calculate the year end accounts. It seems to have disappeared and now the CFO is looking for someone to roast over some hot coals! We can't finish the year end accounts without this Mission Critical software. The SEC will come down on us like a ton of bricks!
You can reply to my username.
"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." - Princess Leia
I love the Cheiftec Dragon Towers. They are one of the best towers I've worked with. I have a Cheiftec Dragon Full Tower with extended ATX. Very nice machine once you remove the front top door blocking the optical drive bays. They have lots of capacity and good airflow.
You can still pick some up in Europe from http://www.komplett.ie/
First of all, I'm irish and wish to apologise to Europe for Mr McCreevey.
The telling section of the letter to the President of the parliment is this. "You can, of course, reject or substantially amend the proposal. If the Parliament decides to reject it, then the Commission will respect your wishes. I will not propose a new directive." The emphasis is mine.
It is clear now what has to be done. Contact your EU member of Parliment.http://writetothem.com/
Do it. Do it now.
I have to admit it makes an impressive sight. My apartment is only 200 hundred yards from O'Connell St. The patterns have been getting more intricate in the last 2 nights as users have gotten more adventurous.
Many are getting all the spotlights to shine on one narrow band of "The Spire". It then shines like a lighthouse right into the apartment.
Expect some good viewing tonight as cloud cover is 100%.
I've been following the debate on privacy here for a few years now. If you want action to be taken on this issue than contact your TD or Senator. Here is a link to their contact details. On a personal note, I am *disgusted* with what the Irish government. This strikes at the heart of privacy for the Irish citizen. IANAL, but this may well be repugnant to the constitution and existing data privacy legislation.
Simple answer - Traffic. i live in Dublin near the coast. To travel to work every morning takes an hour and a half. With something like this I could be in work in 25 minutes by crossing Dublin Bay and travelling up the canal.
Although, somehow I doubt you'd ever get up to 200mph on any road in Dublin!
Gopher
Are we finally seeing space travel as "Reality TV"? Im all for expansion of space but do we really need MTV's "The Real World in Space" TM? :-)
The Times has a nice writeup of the upcoming anniversary.
It can be found here.
Quote "I worry about what I call feature creep -- layering too many things into a product so the original intent of the product gets lost,"
And I thought they were talking about Windows!
This may well be true now but more and more of your transactions will be online and if Microsoft succeed with Palladium than if you want to buy products or services online then you are going to have to buy Longhorn.
The problem will lie in transactions online. If you cannot buy that new cd you wanted because you are not "trusted" by a Palladium system you will be forced to go to a shop to buy it or buy a palladium compliant system.
The BBC website has a related article about the formation of the Ma'adim Vallis. It can be found at News.BBC.Co.Uk
There was nothing "wrong" with the technology of the Lernout & Hauspie speech engines, the company was the victim of fraudulent sales in the Asian market. I don't think you can compare the them with CoolChips.
CoolChips technology seems too good to be true but this could be the next "Big Thing"tm.
The Kepler is able to measure the brightness of stars and infer from their brightness the size of planet circling the star. This cannot determine whether or not the planet is earth-like. It does not provide enough information.
The Darwin project will use the 'nulling interferometry' technique which not only detects planets circling the star, it will determine whether or not the planet is within the biosphere of the star and the chemical composition of it's atmosphere, if any.
With a huge amount of luck we might be able to detect an earth sized planet at the moment but not an earth-like planet.
Until the launch of "Darwin" by the ESA, (pdf link) it is unlikely that we will be able to detect earth-like planets. We still cannot detect Jupiter sized worlds at this point in time.
True, but running agents allows more features in the mail file etc., but point taken.
I'm obviously not paranoid enough!
As an administrator it is usually easy to read someone else email, or database files. Administrators can use the server notes id to access any database on that server as the server needs manager access to that database. Server's are always listed in the ACL's. To secure your mailfile it is general practice in encrypt all outoing mail. Therefore only generating a new id (or copying their id and password from an admin database) for the person will allow you to view their mail.
Notes is much more secure than Exchange, but it's not that secure.
Here's a story from The Register about Hollings grilling Intel executive VP Leslie Vadasz.
Full story below.
Senator brutalizes Intel rep for resisting CPRM
By Thomas C Greene in Washington
Posted: 01/03/2002 at 14:41 GMT
Entertainment industry lapdog Senator Fritz Hollings (Democrat, South Carolina) lashed out at Intel executive VP Leslie Vadasz who warned that the copy-protected PCs Hollings is obediantly promoting on behalf of his MPAA and RIAA handlers would stifle growth in the marketplace.
"We do not need to neuter the personal computer to be nothing more than a videocassette recorder," Vadasz said in testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Thursday.
An obedient Hollings tore into the witness, calling his testimony "nonsense".
"Now where do you get all this nonsense about how we're going to have irreparable damage?" Hollings demanded. "We don't want to legislate. We want to give you time to develop technology."
The "we" he mentions, it's quite obvious, refers to the entertainment industry flacks and lobbyists who wrote Hollings' pet bill, the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA), which would require hard drives to fail to load 'insecure' applications, and perhaps even operating systems at some point in future. Tinkering with one's own personal property to defeat this Orwellian innovation would be criminally punishable.
This is of course the entertainment industry's dream, as it seeks to hobble all equipment so that it can determine when, where and how its content can be enjoyed by consumers. Copying any content from one medium to another could be blocked on the pretext of piracy prevention, so it's entirely possible that one would have to purchase two CDs with the same content -- one for the computer and one for the stereo, say. It's this sort of extortion the industry has relentlessly lobbied Congress to enshrine in law.
Defeating piracy is the pretext; but obliterating the consumer's right to fair use is the true goal. But because Congress can't quite bring itself to eliminate fair use directly and up-front, a series of laws like the DMCA and SSSCA have been devised to eliminate it practically, or 'incidentally'.
Naturally, the hardware industry is going to resist any law which forces it to break its products. It understands that consumers will be disappointed by equipment which fails to let them enjoy content which they've purchased. They see a slump in sales in the SSSCA. And they're probably right.
The hearing was a typical Congressional dog-and-pony show designed to stroke Hollywood fat cats like Michael Eisner and Jack Valenti pursuing the Holy Grail of pay-per-use technology. No critics were invited to speak, and no harsh criticism was expected.
So when Intel's Vadasz showed the spine to blast the entertainment industry's pet scheme, he had to be beaten down, and Hollings was of course eager to please his masters.
Eisner and Valenti also testified, exhibiting their profound ignorance of technology and their sneering contempt for the rights of consumers, under Hollings' admiring gaze. Hollings, clearly, is an honest politician according to Brendan Behan's formula: when he's bought, he stays bought.
Hollings has also adopted the industry's basic stance, that copying is primarily about piracy, and only rarely about honest fair use. But the best expression of this comes from Recording Industry Ass. of America President Hillary Rosen, who wrote yesterday that, "surely, no one can expect copyright owners to ignore what is happening in the marketplace and fail to protect their creative works because some people engage in copying just for their personal use."
The 'some people' says it all. Most people are criminals, and only a tiny minority are honest and decent, Rosen assumes. This is the also official perspective of Hollywood -- of Eisner, and Valenti, and Hollings. It is a perspective natural to a certain class of person. Consider that we all imagine others to be more or less like ourselves. Decent people expect others to be decent, just like themselves. Criminals expect others to be criminals, just like themselves. When Eisner and Rosen and Valenti and Hollings see a world populated by cheats and frauds and freeloading scum, what does that say about them? ®
As I was not familiar with the Tunney Act, I did a bit of googling and found out some interesting information regarding the case law involved.
:)
Apparently no Judge previous to the MS case has ever asked if any changes would be made to the agreement between the two parties after the public comment period had elapsed.
Now given that it is Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly's responsibility to determine a remedy that is in the People's interest, is more likely that the final settlement will be more inline with the Public Comment sentiment rather than the DoJ / MS agreement.
The Judge is entitled to view all of the public's submissions before coming to a decision.
Now isn't that interesting?
This agreement, and I use the word loosely is simply another attempt to force the U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to agree to the MS / DOJ terms. The indication that to not do so would be unconstitutional due to seperation of powers between the executive and legislative branches is worrying. The Justice Department also states that the Judge "should not lightly reject the government's predictions" is a not too subtle hint that it is running out of patience with Judge Kollar-Kotelly.
I think this is simply going to come down to whose set of lawyers can outlast the other.
But then, isn't this nearly always the case?
Here is a copy of the letter.
It can be found at Letter
February 27, 2002
Dear Sirs:
We write to you to urge inter-industry cooperation to ensure that digital content can be distributed to consumers efficiently through a variety of means. Each of our companies is in the business of developing the hardware and software that will make e-commerce thrive.
Constant access to information, through comprehensive broadband deployment and availability, we expect will in time be widely
available. It is clear that your companies' entertainment products will form an important part of a thriving on-line economy. Digital
television is also an important development, and we expect it will soon become widely available.
Business models are only beginning to be developed for supplying consumers' on-demand entertainment. We recognize the critical
importance of effective anti-piracy tools in this changing market environment, and that the absence of such tools may affect the development of new product offerings. To address this concern, our
companies have worked diligently, voluntarily and cooperatively with producers of entertainment content, as well as consumer electronics
companies, to develop systems that will foster the legitimate distribution of digital content. The Copy Protection Technology Working Group (CPTWG) and the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) have been highly productive fora for developing consensus among the many disparate businesses that must work together to build a robust infrastructure for the secure dissemination of digital content. We have found these voluntary multi-industry standards setting efforts to be optimally effective in reaching workable market solutions.
For instance, these voluntary groups have successfully formed consensus on key technologies, making it possible to distribute movies in protected environments such as in DVD format, and developing effective technologies for protecting content distributed over cable and satellite. An inter-industry group is now working diligently within CPTWG to develop a consensus on a means to limit the unlawful
redistribution of digital content delivered through unprotected over-the-air broadcast channels. This task force (the Broadcast
Protection Discussion Group, or BPDG) is working to identify the workable technical and business solutions.
The information technology industry is committed to doing its part in the shared multi-industry development and deployment of effective
solutions for the protection of digital content through a variety of distribution channels and an array of settings. We understand this will be an ongoing undertaking, requiring responses as distribution methods and technology evolve and progress. Our goal is to work with you in a consensus-based and cooperative fashion. We urge you to work with us to find technically feasible, cost effective solutions.
We look forward to a fruitful collaboration to achieve our common goal of providing consumers with new and exciting digital entertainment
products.
Sincerely,
Michael D. Capellas
Chairman and CEO
Compaq Computer Corporation
Michael S. Dell
Chairman of the Board and CEO
Dell
Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
Chairman of the Board and CEO
IBM Corporation
Craig Barrett
Chief Executive Officer
Intel Corporation
Steve Bennett
President and CEO
Intuit Inc.
Steven A. Ballmer
CEO
Microsoft Corporation
Christopher B. Galvin
Chairman of the Board and CEO
Motorola
John S. Chen
Chairman, CEO and President
Sybase, Inc.
Lawrence A. Weinbach
Chairman of the Board and CEO
Unisys Corporation
Cc: Jack Valenti
One of the at large board members of ICANN, Karl Auerbach was reported as saying that "We've just had the equivalent of the president of the United States abolishing Congress" in response to Stuart Lynn's proposals.
At large board members are chosen by rank and file internet users.
Personally I think this proposal is a threat to the supposed impartiality of ICANN. To allow one third of the board members to be chosen by governments will completely alter the original mandate that ICANN was originally setup.
The BBC Website and the ICCAN Watch website has a much more indepth analysis of the proposed plan.