Isn't the easiest solution to this to give the clients a separate, unpublished, and unfiltered email address in your domain to which they send their tax information?
Wouldn't an ever better solution be a web-based upload system with strictly-controlled logins and SSL session encryption?
I have believed for some time now that the behavior of cable and DSL ISPs no longer just "verges on irresponsibility" -- it was, and continues to be, irresponsible. Unfortunately there's no longer any effective regulation of their behavior in ancillary markets that would have forced them to behave responsibly.
What would it have cost the industry to install a simple hardware router like a Linksys or Netgear in each home as part of the Internet installation? The boxes themselves can't cost most than $15-25 in the quantities (millions) involved here. Since most cable connections use DHCP, most of these boxes could be pre-configured and require little extra work on the part of either the installer or the consumer. (These days, of course, a Comcast "installation" consists of the tech handing the consumer a cable modem, a CDROM, and an instruction sheet after he plugs in the cable TV.)
Part of the problem on the cable side stemmed from their desire to extend the pricing model used in cable TV to computer networks. Cable companies expected to collect an additional monthly fee for each computer connected to the Internet, just the way they collect a fee for each TV that has a cable converter. Of course installing a NAT router destroys any such pricing model.
Even back in 1994-1995 when I first started working as an Internet consultant to businesses and nonprofits we always installed a firewall. This was in the days when many full-time connections still ran over dialup. To do otherwise would have been professional incompetence, and these were installations where there was a network administrator on site, not ordinary households who have no concept of computer security.
Data is an integral part of those instructions. Without it, all you have is a receipe with no list of ingredients. All files, whether mp3, exe, or txt are "software".
First of all, the archival copying exemption applies to "computer programs," not to "software."
Secondly, read the law. In the definition of a "digital musical recording" at 17 USC 10, Subchapter A, Sec. 1001, Para. 5B(ii) you'll find:
...a digital musical recording may contain statements or instructions constituting the fixed sounds and incidental material, and statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in order to bring about the perception, reproduction, or communication of the fixed sounds and incidental material. (Emphasis mine.)
In other words, even if a digital music recording may look like a computer program, it's not one according to the US Copyright Act.
Don't kid yourself into believing that the people who write these laws don't know anything about computing. Both Congress and the lobbies have lots of competent staff and attorneys. They thought about this issue long before you did.
less than a day from the RedHat announcement of their changes to the announcement of the class-action lawsuit. Hardly enough time for a law firm to investigate and decide if the case really has any merit, I would think.
One of the first web sites I ever designed was for a law firm that specializes in exactly this type of class-action lawsuit. The rush to court reflects the dynamics of what has become (in the US) a very competitive legal business.
The name of the game in class action suits is to be named the "lead" attorneys by the court in which the suit is heard. Courts decide who gets to be the lead based on the number of plaintiff shares each law firm can bring to the table. Typically the one or two firms representing the largest number of plaintiff shares are designated, and they receive the lion's share of the fees (if any). This has created an enormously competitive environment among trial attorneys as each firm tries to recruit as many plaintiffs as possible. Being first to file the suit can help this recruitment effort, since later filers can appear to potential plaintiffs as less competent or engaging in a "me-too" practice. In such an environment it's become commonplace to announce a suit within days or even hours of a company's earnings restatement.
Finally, before we continue down the "ambulance chaser" road, it's important to remember that a lot of companies engage in shady financial practices and deserve to be sued. My then-client was suing a number of firms where corporate officers dumped their stock just before announcing a major earnings restatement. And, of course, today's the day Martha Stewart will be sentenced....
While we're on the subject of Adblock, I wish it would actually block the *requests* for blocked objects, not simply strip them out of the page after it has been delivered.
I have a long list of acl's in my squid proxy to block, e.g., doubleclick.net, but this can result in delays during loading as the browser waits for a page that the proxy cannot deliver. I had hoped that Adblock would simply not request pages that match strings I've entered into my preference list. Instead it makes all the GET requests, then strips the content.
I don't see anything on SpecOpsLabs site that talks about the fact that WINE falls under the LGPL. Rather they state, "Instead of simply using the WINE project as our basis, David has incorporated into its architecture the best features of all the windows compatibility projects such as WINE, WABI, TWIN and the others. David therefore is not a reinvention of the wheel. Rather, it takes the best of breed pieces from previous attempts to simulate the Windows Subsystem, and integrate it into a single product."
To the extent that this "incorporation" consists of copying over big blocks of code from WINE, this might raise some intricate legal issues. According to WineHQ, the copyright in WINE is held by the "WINE Project Authors," who now number over 600 people. I'm not sure exactly how such a large, disparate group of developers will be able to defend their copyright if it comes to that. Perhaps they should consider transferring copyright to the FSF, or setting up some nonprofit corporate entity to hold the rights?
How exactly do you expect WMP's competitors to make a quality product, when WMP's existence on the market neatly prevents them from being able to charge money for their product?
My recollection is that Real Player appeared years before Windows Media Player. In fact, when it was first released it was the only streaming media player in the marketplace.
Real's original strategy was to give away Player so they could sell their streaming servers. Too bad that wasn't a very good business plan, but don't blame that on Microsoft.
FWIW, I use Mozilla for browsing but WMP to play streaming media. I, too, got tired of jumping through all Real's hoops just to get a free player. I have similar feelings to those expressed by other posters here about the "upgrade to Pro?" popups in QuickTime.
Contrast this situation with that of Adobe Acrobat. They, too, give away Reader to encourage content creators to buy the Acrobat production products, and it looks to me like they've been very successful. Of course, the fact that people need to exchange documents more than they need to view streaming media, and the fact that Acrobat costs a couple hundred bucks, not thousands like the streaming servers Real sells, may have something to do with this.
Show him the (US) Microsoft EULA in his copy of Windows at \\systemroot\system32\eula.txt. What guarantees does he get here?
"NO OTHER WARRANTIES. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Manufacturer and its suppliers disclaim all other warranties, either express or implied, including, but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, [my emphasis] with regard to the SOFTWARE, the accompanying written materials, and any accompanying hardware. This limited
warranty gives you specific legal rights. You may have others which vary from state/jurisdiction to state/jurisdiction.
NO LIABILITY FOR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES. To
the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no event shall Manufacturer or its suppliers be liable for any damages whatsoever (including without limitation, special, incidental, consequential, or indirect damages for personal injury, loss of business profits, business interruption, loss of business information, or any other pecuniary loss) arising out of the use
of or inability to use this product, even if Manufacturer has been advised of the possibility of such damages. In any case, Manufacturer's and its suppliers' entire liability under any
provision of this agreement shall be limited to the amount actually paid by you for the SOFTWARE and/or Microsoft hardware."
These exclusions appear in nearly every software product I own. Hell, I include them in every support contract I write, and I use all open-source products. No one want to be sued for eighty gazillion dollars in alleged lost revenues when someone's server crashes.
Take a look at the reports of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project at http://www.vote.caltech.edu/. Their server seems overloaded today so let's not all go and slashdot it right now.
I provide email services to a small group of commercial customers with no residential accounts. Running a check of my April logs I find these statistics (based on about 100K messages):
Blocked as spam during SMTP exchange: 66% Marked as spam by SpamAssassin: 33%
So all told only about 22% (= 0.33 x 0.66) of the mail we receive is not identified as spam at some point in the process.
We get very few false positive complaints (1-2 per month or less), and nearly all of those represent errors at the SMTP stage. The most common situation is someone on a cable or DSL modem sending a message with a From domain that doesn't match the cable/DSL provider's domain which we routinely block. This appears to happen most often with small businesses and nonprofit organizations who may have set up a website and POP3 delivery on some ISPs server, but use their cable/DSL provider's server, or their own server, for outbound SMTP.
I can't listen to it on portable MP3 players other than iPod. I can't put the files on my server and freely play them from any computer. I can't play them from standalone hardware players. I can't burn a hundred of them to a CD in data format and pop that disc in my in-car MP3 player.
I don't own an iPod, but I'm pretty sure it has a headphone jack. Doesn't your computer have a compatible audio input jack? If not, go buy the appropriate cable.
In other words, if you want to make copy, just do what people did for decades -- dub it.
The question we should be asking is why aren't more work environments using Linux? I could easily use linux (i'd need software for exchange and maybe office but thats easily available) but why won't my company switch? Won't they save alot of $$$? Whats holding them back? I don't think the linux vendors are doing enough to answer those questions. They need to be knocking on CTO's doors and pitching them with solid answers.
What answers can you offer to these common concerns?
1) Why change something that's not broken? This is not a troll. Sure Windows installations have suffered through a variety of worms and so forth, but it's a lot easier and cheaper to resolve that problem by adding some additional server-based defenses like email scanners than switching the entire enterprise over to Linux desktops. And a number of firms I deal with have their web services outsourced, so they don't have an exposed IIS/MS-SQL server that might fall victim to something like Slammer. Remember to most people, especially non-technical decision makers, Linux is just plain scary.
2) Retraining users and providing support costs money and personnel. Most companies have no one on staff yet who could hold users' hands through the transition. Remember that companies benefit a lot from the fact that people have trained themselves to deal with Windows at home. A company switching to Linux on the desktop can't expect any such free user self-training and will have bear all the costs itself. Not to mention the costs of either retraining existing network personnel (why bother?), or hiring new people to handle Linux (again, why bother?). Even competing against an obviously more expensive out of the box solution like Windows, the total cost of a transition to Linux could exceed the cost of maintaining a Windows system for some years to come.
3) Incompatible file formats. Does OO support files written in Word 2003? How about Word 2004? Word 2005? Until every CEO and manager can be assured that someone running an unspecified version of MS Office can read their files without any problems at all, moving them to OO (or, better perhaps, Abiword/Gnumeric) is a non-starter. And, of course, those same CEOs and managers better be able to read any MS Office file they receive without any problems at all.
4) Interfacing with existing MS servers. How easy is it to replace WinXP Pro workstations living in an MS domain using Active Directory with something that runs on Linux and interacts with the very same servers in the very same way?
5) Workplace scheduling and workflow applications are another big headache. While there are now commercial Linux competitors to things like Exchange or Lotus Notes (see, e.g., Novell/SuSE OpenExchange Server), any organization that has used these applications for a long time have big transition problems. Everyone needs to move their address books, their calendars, etc., to the new system. The new system has to be able to download the exec's calendar into her Palm with one mouse click. The new system has to run all those internal scripted applications that someone designed to run in Notes. Etc.
6) Lack of vertical applications. I have a bit of knowledge about health care. While the number of OS applications available in that field has started to rise, most of the network admins I talk with don't know that they exist. And, even if they do exist, how well do they integrate with the other 95% of proprietary commercial healthcare apps that run in, and rely on, a Windows architecture? In health care, at least, a lot depends on how well a provider's office applications can interface with hospitals, other providers, insurers, Medicare/Medicaid, etc. Open standards like HL7 hold some promise here, but it's still a long way off.
7) Lack of support. Sure a large enterprise can forge a contract with IBM or RedHat for support, but what about the 1-50 person business? Who's going to support them as they switchover? And, don't
There was a study done recently with a group of 20 users who had never used a computer before.
So what? Most times the issue is introducing Linux desktops as a replacement to Windows desktops. A test that puts a bunch of totally inexperienced users in front of Linux and Windows has no relevance in 90%+ of real-life installations. The real problem is that most people using computers in office settings are already familiar with Windows, already familiar with MS Office, and already familiar with IE and Outlook Express. Giving them a new desktop with different icons, a start menu full of new, unfamiliar programs, a different office suite, a different browser, and a different mail client can easily become a support and training nightmare. Most admins I talk to (who all use Linux as a server plaform) balk at the notion of converting desktops to Linux because they fear a never-ending array of support issues. And, since most of these admins have little or no Linux experience (relying as they do on me for that), they certainly don't feel comfortable providing the support and training their users will need to survive the transition.
Whenever I read any of these "desktop Linux" discussions, it seems to me the people posting have little or no experience actually supporting real people using Linux for everyday activities. This discussion, for instance, quickly devolved into debates about widgets and toolboxes, issues that have NO relevance to putting real people in real office situations in front of a Linux desktop. While I've used Linux everyday for about ten years now, I still have a WinXP desktop and use MS Office both because they are familiar, and because they get the job done. All my Linux work is done at the command line via SSH sessions in PuTTY.
The Internet is still relatively new to most people, and IMO when you sign up with an ISP, THEY should warn you about security threats on the NET. After all, no software vendor is providing net access. While the ISP is.
I'd go further and say that no ISP should connect anyone to a full-time connection (broadband cable, DSL, etc.) without installing a firewall as part of the package. How much would it cost them to buy Linksys or Netgear boxes in bulk? $10/install? And, knowing how the cable companies work, they'd buy the box for $10, then rent it to the consumer for $3-5/month. So, it's not like it would cost them money; in the longer run, they'd make money off the rentals.
Up until a year or so ago, I used no virus scanning software to protect my clients' networks, just an/etc/procmailrc script to block executable attachments before mail was delivered. While the rest of the world dealt with the virus of the month, my clients did not suffer one whit.
Nowadays I use MailScanner+ClamAV, but still most email malware is propagated by sending executable attachments. The recent round of viruses in zip files broke this trend and forced me to install a scanner that could look inside archives.
Despite this, I never understood why more people didn't simply block executable attachments. How many people really need to exchange an.exe,.bat, or.scr file anyway?
I found ZoneAlarm to be quite a hit on my machine's performance. I also didn't like having to deal with 10 prompts everytime I opened a net-using program.
For me, this is the reason I run ZoneAlarm. I want to know if some piece of malware is trying to phone home. For me the dangerous vector is web sites since I scan all my mail with MailScanner and ClamAV. Just blocking messages with executable attachments stops nearly all common email viruses/worms/trojans. It's that spyware stuff that poses a greater threat here.
And, just what performance hit are we talking about? A pop-up warning box that you can clear with one click? My copy of ZA is running in just 2MB of memory and has no apparent effect on the system's responsiveness.
I'm interested in the possibility of using this for offsite backups. Right now some of my clients transfer a file of some 600-900 MB each day to our servers for offline backup. It wouldn't take much to set up six or seven Google accounts (one per day) and mail the files to them instead.
However, now we run into confidentiality issues. Of course the file is already compressed with gzip or bzip2, but will Google's text analysis algorithms be designed to decompress files and index the contents? (Since virus scanning software like MailScanner already does this, I'd guess the answer is yes.) Most of the information that's sent to us is proprietary, and some of it may be governed by rules like HIPAA. The obvious solution is to encrypt the compressed file before shipping it, of course.
There's also the problem of deleting last Tuesday's message before sending the new one. I suppose I could script lynx for this. Any other suggestions (other than manually deleting it from a web browser each day)?
Since the costs of producing and distributing programming are largely fixed...
This is simply false. Do you suppose ESPN pays the National Collegiate Athletic Association the same amount to broadcast an hour of men's college basketball as it does to broadcast an hour of men's collegiate wrestling? Of course not.
Programmers charge distributors (broadcasters, cable networks, satellite programmers, etc.) vastly different amounts per hour for their programs depending upon the expected popularity of their content, which means the expected size of the audience that will be delivered to advertisers.
Intriguingly the expansion of bandwidth has granted more leverage to the programmers, not to the cable operators. More channels means more channels to fill with programming. This has been of great benefit to smaller, niche programmers (the Independent Film Channel comes to mind) who wouldn't have stood a chance in the four- or twelve-channel world that was American television before the 1990's.
I'm a man in my fifties who started playing videogames when my then 8-year-old daughter first got a Sony PS1. She played Insomniac's Spiro the Dragon and its sequels for a few years after that, and we still play them from time to time some four years later.
When Insomniac released Ratchet & Clank for the PS2, we purchased and enjoyed that as well. Why? Because all of Insomniac's games have offbeat stories and a terrific sense of humor. However, the sequel, Ratchet & Clank Going Commando is a distinctly inferior game to the original. Why? Because the emphasis was on adding more weapons, more explosions, more of all of that, with a lot less
emphasis on writing a clever, humorous story.
About a year ago we happened to pick up a copy of Final Fantasy X. Neither of us had played an FF game, though we had rented Kingdom Hearts and didn't like it very much. FF-X was a revelation. Here was a game with a complex story and attractive characters with whom one could empathize. It was also a game where the female characters were not simply bimbos in skimpy outfits. The heroine, Yuna, is brave, intelligent and, in particular, modest, and I felt no qualms about her being a role model for my daughter.
When the sequel to FF-X was released, what happened? Yuna's kimono was replaced by the usual skimpy outfit, and the two other main female characters were equally sexualized. No doubt they'd heard from their marketing department that they couldn't expect to sell their games to that all-important young male demographic if they weren't sexier.
The problem I see in the gaming industry is not an overemphasis on sequels, since well-made sequels can be just as entertaining as the originals (cf. Spiro I-II-III). It's the attempt to make every game appeal to the supposed prototypical gamer: a young man in his early twenties who only wants to pretend to drive fast cars, shoot lots of people, and fuck bimbos (GTA, anybody?). Reading comments about gaming on Slashdot could often lead one to believe this stereotype isn't that far from the truth. The games that get discussed are almost always in the Doom/Quake genre; role-playing games like FF or The Sims get short shrift.
Now, of course, FF games have their share of violence as well, but the gameplay is more like chess. In fact, I prefer the turn-based approach in FFX to the real-time approach in FF7 or FFX-2, because a lot of the skill in FFX is deciding which characters, skills and defenses you need in particular settings, not mindless button bashing.
But, when all is said and done, what counts most with us is the STORY, not how many weapons I can deploy, or how many ways I can crash a car, or how many ways I can slash an opponent's throat. I see games as a natural progression from movies, replacing passive viewing with active participation. We didn't like FFX-2 less than FFX because of any of the gameplay elements that usually get discussed on Slashdot. We didn't like it as much because the story was rather lame.
Of course, to have good stories means you need good writers, not good programmers or graphic artists. Unfortunately, I see little evidence that the gaming industry thinks that writing matters, because, in their view, why spend money on writing when the target audience of 14-29 year-old males just wants more sex and violence?
One of my clients was recently the target of a joe-job, where tens of thousands of Viagra ads were sent with his domain forged in the From field. Of course, none of these messages were sent by him or through our server.
It wasn't hard to tell when it happened, though, since all the bounce messages came back to us as the MX for the domain. Many of these included the original spam, whose headers clearly indicate that these messages were not originated by my client. I think perhaps you overstate the difficulty of determining who the spammer really is, or at least who the spammer really isn't.
My daughter's Kyocera phone from Virgin Mobile has a built-in flashlight. It was such an obvious feature that, once I saw it, I couldn't understand why all phones don't have one!
Slashdot Mirror
So back to my original point, why not just have them mail these items to an address that doesn't go through the scanner and scan everything else?
Isn't the easiest solution to this to give the clients a separate, unpublished, and unfiltered email address in your domain to which they send their tax information?
Wouldn't an ever better solution be a web-based upload system with strictly-controlled logins and SSL session encryption?
I have believed for some time now that the behavior of cable and DSL ISPs no longer just "verges on irresponsibility" -- it was, and continues to be, irresponsible. Unfortunately there's no longer any effective regulation of their behavior in ancillary markets that would have forced them to behave responsibly.
What would it have cost the industry to install a simple hardware router like a Linksys or Netgear in each home as part of the Internet installation? The boxes themselves can't cost most than $15-25 in the quantities (millions) involved here. Since most cable connections use DHCP, most of these boxes could be pre-configured and require little extra work on the part of either the installer or the consumer. (These days, of course, a Comcast "installation" consists of the tech handing the consumer a cable modem, a CDROM, and an instruction sheet after he plugs in the cable TV.)
Part of the problem on the cable side stemmed from their desire to extend the pricing model used in cable TV to computer networks. Cable companies expected to collect an additional monthly fee for each computer connected to the Internet, just the way they collect a fee for each TV that has a cable converter. Of course installing a NAT router destroys any such pricing model.
Even back in 1994-1995 when I first started working as an Internet consultant to businesses and nonprofits we always installed a firewall. This was in the days when many full-time connections still ran over dialup. To do otherwise would have been professional incompetence, and these were installations where there was a network administrator on site, not ordinary households who have no concept of computer security.
I'd bet all this is within Sumomo's (Plum's) powers, and she can ride on your shoulder, too!
http://www.absoluteanime.com/chobits/sumomo.htm
Data is an integral part of those instructions. Without it, all you have is a receipe with no list of ingredients. All files, whether mp3, exe, or txt are "software".
First of all, the archival copying exemption applies to "computer programs," not to "software."
Secondly, read the law. In the definition of a "digital musical recording" at 17 USC 10, Subchapter A, Sec. 1001, Para. 5B(ii) you'll find:
...a digital musical recording may contain statements or instructions constituting the fixed sounds and incidental material, and statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in order to bring about the perception, reproduction, or communication of the fixed sounds and incidental material. (Emphasis mine.)
In other words, even if a digital music recording may look like a computer program, it's not one according to the US Copyright Act.
Don't kid yourself into believing that the people who write these laws don't know anything about computing. Both Congress and the lobbies have lots of competent staff and attorneys. They thought about this issue long before you did.
One of the first web sites I ever designed was for a law firm that specializes in exactly this type of class-action lawsuit. The rush to court reflects the dynamics of what has become (in the US) a very competitive legal business.
The name of the game in class action suits is to be named the "lead" attorneys by the court in which the suit is heard. Courts decide who gets to be the lead based on the number of plaintiff shares each law firm can bring to the table. Typically the one or two firms representing the largest number of plaintiff shares are designated, and they receive the lion's share of the fees (if any). This has created an enormously competitive environment among trial attorneys as each firm tries to recruit as many plaintiffs as possible. Being first to file the suit can help this recruitment effort, since later filers can appear to potential plaintiffs as less competent or engaging in a "me-too" practice. In such an environment it's become commonplace to announce a suit within days or even hours of a company's earnings restatement.
Finally, before we continue down the "ambulance chaser" road, it's important to remember that a lot of companies engage in shady financial practices and deserve to be sued. My then-client was suing a number of firms where corporate officers dumped their stock just before announcing a major earnings restatement. And, of course, today's the day Martha Stewart will be sentenced....
And this is a problem because...?
While we're on the subject of Adblock, I wish it would actually block the *requests* for blocked objects, not simply strip them out of the page after it has been delivered.
I have a long list of acl's in my squid proxy to block, e.g., doubleclick.net, but this can result in delays during loading as the browser waits for a page that the proxy cannot deliver. I had hoped that Adblock would simply not request pages that match strings I've entered into my preference list. Instead it makes all the GET requests, then strips the content.
I don't see anything on SpecOpsLabs site that talks about the fact that WINE falls under the LGPL. Rather they state, "Instead of simply using the WINE project as our basis, David has incorporated into its architecture the best features of all the windows compatibility projects such as WINE, WABI, TWIN and the others. David therefore is not a reinvention of the wheel. Rather, it takes the best of breed pieces from previous attempts to simulate the Windows Subsystem, and integrate it into a single product."
To the extent that this "incorporation" consists of copying over big blocks of code from WINE, this might raise some intricate legal issues. According to WineHQ, the copyright in WINE is held by the "WINE Project Authors," who now number over 600 people. I'm not sure exactly how such a large, disparate group of developers will be able to defend their copyright if it comes to that. Perhaps they should consider transferring copyright to the FSF, or setting up some nonprofit corporate entity to hold the rights?
My recollection is that Real Player appeared years before Windows Media Player. In fact, when it was first released it was the only streaming media player in the marketplace.
Real's original strategy was to give away Player so they could sell their streaming servers. Too bad that wasn't a very good business plan, but don't blame that on Microsoft.
FWIW, I use Mozilla for browsing but WMP to play streaming media. I, too, got tired of jumping through all Real's hoops just to get a free player. I have similar feelings to those expressed by other posters here about the "upgrade to Pro?" popups in QuickTime.
Contrast this situation with that of Adobe Acrobat. They, too, give away Reader to encourage content creators to buy the Acrobat production products, and it looks to me like they've been very successful. Of course, the fact that people need to exchange documents more than they need to view streaming media, and the fact that Acrobat costs a couple hundred bucks, not thousands like the streaming servers Real sells, may have something to do with this.
Show him the (US) Microsoft EULA in his copy of Windows at \\systemroot\system32\eula.txt. What guarantees does he get here?
"NO OTHER WARRANTIES. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Manufacturer and its suppliers disclaim all other warranties, either express or implied, including, but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, [my emphasis] with regard to the SOFTWARE, the accompanying written materials, and any accompanying hardware. This limited warranty gives you specific legal rights. You may have others which vary from state/jurisdiction to state/jurisdiction.
NO LIABILITY FOR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no event shall Manufacturer or its suppliers be liable for any damages whatsoever (including without limitation, special, incidental, consequential, or indirect damages for personal injury, loss of business profits, business interruption, loss of business information, or any other pecuniary loss) arising out of the use of or inability to use this product, even if Manufacturer has been advised of the possibility of such damages. In any case, Manufacturer's and its suppliers' entire liability under any provision of this agreement shall be limited to the amount actually paid by you for the SOFTWARE and/or Microsoft hardware."
These exclusions appear in nearly every software product I own. Hell, I include them in every support contract I write, and I use all open-source products. No one want to be sued for eighty gazillion dollars in alleged lost revenues when someone's server crashes.
Take a look at the reports of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project at http://www.vote.caltech.edu/.
Their server seems overloaded today so let's not all go and slashdot it right now.
Are they building quarantine facilities at Guantanamo Bay? Certainly we must be "at war" with invasive alien lifeforms.
I provide email services to a small group of commercial customers with no residential accounts. Running a check of my April logs I find these statistics (based on about 100K messages):
Blocked as spam during SMTP exchange: 66%
Marked as spam by SpamAssassin: 33%
So all told only about 22% (= 0.33 x 0.66) of the mail we receive is not identified as spam at some point in the process.
We get very few false positive complaints (1-2 per month or less), and nearly all of those represent errors at the SMTP stage. The most common situation is someone on a cable or DSL modem sending a message with a From domain that doesn't match the cable/DSL provider's domain which we routinely block. This appears to happen most often with small businesses and nonprofit organizations who may have set up a website and POP3 delivery on some ISPs server, but use their cable/DSL provider's server, or their own server, for outbound SMTP.
I can't listen to it on portable MP3 players other than iPod. I can't put the files on my server and freely play them from any computer. I can't play them from standalone hardware players. I can't burn a hundred of them to a CD in data format and pop that disc in my in-car MP3 player.
I don't own an iPod, but I'm pretty sure it has a headphone jack. Doesn't your computer have a compatible audio input jack? If not, go buy the appropriate cable.
In other words, if you want to make copy, just do what people did for decades -- dub it.
The question we should be asking is why aren't more work environments using Linux? I could easily use linux (i'd need software for exchange and maybe office but thats easily available) but why won't my company switch? Won't they save alot of $$$? Whats holding them back? I don't think the linux vendors are doing enough to answer those questions. They need to be knocking on CTO's doors and pitching them with solid answers.
What answers can you offer to these common concerns?
1) Why change something that's not broken? This is not a troll. Sure Windows installations have suffered through a variety of worms and so forth, but it's a lot easier and cheaper to resolve that problem by adding some additional server-based defenses like email scanners than switching the entire enterprise over to Linux desktops. And a number of firms I deal with have their web services outsourced, so they don't have an exposed IIS/MS-SQL server that might fall victim to something like Slammer. Remember to most people, especially non-technical decision makers, Linux is just plain scary.
2) Retraining users and providing support costs money and personnel. Most companies have no one on staff yet who could hold users' hands through the transition. Remember that companies benefit a lot from the fact that people have trained themselves to deal with Windows at home. A company switching to Linux on the desktop can't expect any such free user self-training and will have bear all the costs itself. Not to mention the costs of either retraining existing network personnel (why bother?), or hiring new people to handle Linux (again, why bother?). Even competing against an obviously more expensive out of the box solution like Windows, the total cost of a transition to Linux could exceed the cost of maintaining a Windows system for some years to come.
3) Incompatible file formats. Does OO support files written in Word 2003? How about Word 2004? Word 2005? Until every CEO and manager can be assured that someone running an unspecified version of MS Office can read their files without any problems at all, moving them to OO (or, better perhaps, Abiword/Gnumeric) is a non-starter. And, of course, those same CEOs and managers better be able to read any MS Office file they receive without any problems at all.
4) Interfacing with existing MS servers. How easy is it to replace WinXP Pro workstations living in an MS domain using Active Directory with something that runs on Linux and interacts with the very same servers in the very same way?
5) Workplace scheduling and workflow applications are another big headache. While there are now commercial Linux competitors to things like Exchange or Lotus Notes (see, e.g., Novell/SuSE OpenExchange Server), any organization that has used these applications for a long time have big transition problems. Everyone needs to move their address books, their calendars, etc., to the new system. The new system has to be able to download the exec's calendar into her Palm with one mouse click. The new system has to run all those internal scripted applications that someone designed to run in Notes. Etc.
6) Lack of vertical applications. I have a bit of knowledge about health care. While the number of OS applications available in that field has started to rise, most of the network admins I talk with don't know that they exist. And, even if they do exist, how well do they integrate with the other 95% of proprietary commercial healthcare apps that run in, and rely on, a Windows architecture? In health care, at least, a lot depends on how well a provider's office applications can interface with hospitals, other providers, insurers, Medicare/Medicaid, etc. Open standards like HL7 hold some promise here, but it's still a long way off.
7) Lack of support. Sure a large enterprise can forge a contract with IBM or RedHat for support, but what about the 1-50 person business? Who's going to support them as they switchover? And, don't
There was a study done recently with a group of 20 users who had never used a computer before.
So what? Most times the issue is introducing Linux desktops as a replacement to Windows desktops. A test that puts a bunch of totally inexperienced users in front of Linux and Windows has no relevance in 90%+ of real-life installations. The real problem is that most people using computers in office settings are already familiar with Windows, already familiar with MS Office, and already familiar with IE and Outlook Express. Giving them a new desktop with different icons, a start menu full of new, unfamiliar programs, a different office suite, a different browser, and a different mail client can easily become a support and training nightmare. Most admins I talk to (who all use Linux as a server plaform) balk at the notion of converting desktops to Linux because they fear a never-ending array of support issues. And, since most of these admins have little or no Linux experience (relying as they do on me for that), they certainly don't feel comfortable providing the support and training their users will need to survive the transition.
Whenever I read any of these "desktop Linux" discussions, it seems to me the people posting have little or no experience actually supporting real people using Linux for everyday activities. This discussion, for instance, quickly devolved into debates about widgets and toolboxes, issues that have NO relevance to putting real people in real office situations in front of a Linux desktop. While I've used Linux everyday for about ten years now, I still have a WinXP desktop and use MS Office both because they are familiar, and because they get the job done. All my Linux work is done at the command line via SSH sessions in PuTTY.
I'd go further and say that no ISP should connect anyone to a full-time connection (broadband cable, DSL, etc.) without installing a firewall as part of the package. How much would it cost them to buy Linksys or Netgear boxes in bulk? $10/install? And, knowing how the cable companies work, they'd buy the box for $10, then rent it to the consumer for $3-5/month. So, it's not like it would cost them money; in the longer run, they'd make money off the rentals.
Up until a year or so ago, I used no virus scanning software to protect my clients' networks, just an /etc/procmailrc script to block executable attachments before mail was delivered. While the rest of the world dealt with the virus of the month, my clients did not suffer one whit.
.exe, .bat, or .scr file anyway?
Nowadays I use MailScanner+ClamAV, but still most email malware is propagated by sending executable attachments. The recent round of viruses in zip files broke this trend and forced me to install a scanner that could look inside archives.
Despite this, I never understood why more people didn't simply block executable attachments. How many people really need to exchange an
I found ZoneAlarm to be quite a hit on my machine's performance. I also didn't like having to deal with 10 prompts everytime I opened a net-using program.
For me, this is the reason I run ZoneAlarm. I want to know if some piece of malware is trying to phone home. For me the dangerous vector is web sites since I scan all my mail with MailScanner and ClamAV. Just blocking messages with executable attachments stops nearly all common email viruses/worms/trojans. It's that spyware stuff that poses a greater threat here.
And, just what performance hit are we talking about? A pop-up warning box that you can clear with one click? My copy of ZA is running in just 2MB of memory and has no apparent effect on the system's responsiveness.
However, now we run into confidentiality issues. Of course the file is already compressed with gzip or bzip2, but will Google's text analysis algorithms be designed to decompress files and index the contents? (Since virus scanning software like MailScanner already does this, I'd guess the answer is yes.) Most of the information that's sent to us is proprietary, and some of it may be governed by rules like HIPAA. The obvious solution is to encrypt the compressed file before shipping it, of course.
There's also the problem of deleting last Tuesday's message before sending the new one. I suppose I could script lynx for this. Any other suggestions (other than manually deleting it from a web browser each day)?
Since the costs of producing and distributing programming are largely fixed...
This is simply false. Do you suppose ESPN pays the National Collegiate Athletic Association the same amount to broadcast an hour of men's college basketball as it does to broadcast an hour of men's collegiate wrestling? Of course not.
Programmers charge distributors (broadcasters, cable networks, satellite programmers, etc.) vastly different amounts per hour for their programs depending upon the expected popularity of their content, which means the expected size of the audience that will be delivered to advertisers.
Intriguingly the expansion of bandwidth has granted more leverage to the programmers, not to the cable operators. More channels means more channels to fill with programming. This has been of great benefit to smaller, niche programmers (the Independent Film Channel comes to mind) who wouldn't have stood a chance in the four- or twelve-channel world that was American television before the 1990's.
I'm a man in my fifties who started playing videogames when my then 8-year-old daughter first got a Sony PS1. She played Insomniac's Spiro the Dragon and its sequels for a few years after that, and we still play them from time to time some four years later.
When Insomniac released Ratchet & Clank for the PS2, we purchased and enjoyed that as well. Why? Because all of Insomniac's games have offbeat stories and a terrific sense of humor. However, the sequel, Ratchet & Clank Going Commando is a distinctly inferior game to the original. Why? Because the emphasis was on adding more weapons, more explosions, more of all of that, with a lot less emphasis on writing a clever, humorous story.
About a year ago we happened to pick up a copy of Final Fantasy X. Neither of us had played an FF game, though we had rented Kingdom Hearts and didn't like it very much. FF-X was a revelation. Here was a game with a complex story and attractive characters with whom one could empathize. It was also a game where the female characters were not simply bimbos in skimpy outfits. The heroine, Yuna, is brave, intelligent and, in particular, modest, and I felt no qualms about her being a role model for my daughter.
When the sequel to FF-X was released, what happened? Yuna's kimono was replaced by the usual skimpy outfit, and the two other main female characters were equally sexualized. No doubt they'd heard from their marketing department that they couldn't expect to sell their games to that all-important young male demographic if they weren't sexier.
The problem I see in the gaming industry is not an overemphasis on sequels, since well-made sequels can be just as entertaining as the originals (cf. Spiro I-II-III). It's the attempt to make every game appeal to the supposed prototypical gamer: a young man in his early twenties who only wants to pretend to drive fast cars, shoot lots of people, and fuck bimbos (GTA, anybody?). Reading comments about gaming on Slashdot could often lead one to believe this stereotype isn't that far from the truth. The games that get discussed are almost always in the Doom/Quake genre; role-playing games like FF or The Sims get short shrift.
Now, of course, FF games have their share of violence as well, but the gameplay is more like chess. In fact, I prefer the turn-based approach in FFX to the real-time approach in FF7 or FFX-2, because a lot of the skill in FFX is deciding which characters, skills and defenses you need in particular settings, not mindless button bashing.
But, when all is said and done, what counts most with us is the STORY, not how many weapons I can deploy, or how many ways I can crash a car, or how many ways I can slash an opponent's throat. I see games as a natural progression from movies, replacing passive viewing with active participation. We didn't like FFX-2 less than FFX because of any of the gameplay elements that usually get discussed on Slashdot. We didn't like it as much because the story was rather lame.
Of course, to have good stories means you need good writers, not good programmers or graphic artists. Unfortunately, I see little evidence that the gaming industry thinks that writing matters, because, in their view, why spend money on writing when the target audience of 14-29 year-old males just wants more sex and violence?
One of my clients was recently the target of a joe-job, where tens of thousands of Viagra ads were sent with his domain forged in the From field. Of course, none of these messages were sent by him or through our server.
It wasn't hard to tell when it happened, though, since all the bounce messages came back to us as the MX for the domain. Many of these included the original spam, whose headers clearly indicate that these messages were not originated by my client. I think perhaps you overstate the difficulty of determining who the spammer really is, or at least who the spammer really isn't.
My daughter's Kyocera phone from Virgin Mobile has a built-in flashlight. It was such an obvious feature that, once I saw it, I couldn't understand why all phones don't have one!