At least for now you can concentrate on growing your business. In the long term, assuming your business becomes successful enough, you can take them to court for wrongfully taking money from you.
Then when Episode III comes out, release that DVD, then a DVD set of I-III, then the DVD set of Episodes I-VI, then the HD DVDs, then the limited edition HD DVDs...
I didn't say that nobody should fight the Windows trademark, but I don't think it's a priority, either for Lindows or for anyone else at this time. One day perhaps, but the focus for now should be on making a better desktop.
I think Michael is making a mistake trying to fight this battle. Whilst the Windows trademark needs fighting, he should really be concentrating on battling Windows as a product.
In the end, I don't think it matters what the product name is. Calling it Lindows might get some people to purchase it that might otherwise purchase Windows, but I doubt it really causes much confusion. However, calling it "Lin---s" in one area, whilst calling it "Lindows" in another, and then changing to "Lindos" outside the US is sure just to cause confusion to your average consumer.
Far better to give the product an uncontraversial, but rememberable name, and concentrate on building that brand.
I do hope that they got all those people to opt-in to receiving message from them. Under the new Electronic Privacy and Communcations Act (2003) I believe what they are proposing would count as unsolicited electronic communications. Anyone who receives one of these might want to try making a complaint to the Information Comissioner.
I've noticed this quite a lot too over here in the UK. It may even be more pronounced since, over here, you aren't meant to undertake people - ie. to overtake, you move to the lanes nearer the divider in the middle of the road. Hence, everyone piles into the third lane (far right in the UK [1]) as nobody wants to be stuck behind lorries and slow vehicles. As soon as a jam happens, the first lane, having less vehicles, invariably becomes the faster.
It gets even worse (or better if you know) around junctions. With the cars coming off at the junctions, the first lane suddenly becomes empty all the way through the junction (assuming that all three lanes go through the junction). Of course, at the other side of the junction you have a slip road (on ramp) and it slows down, but you then just change lane out.
If the junction is of the type where the first lane becomes the slip road (off ramp) and restarts the otherside of the junction, then of course this doesn't work.
[1] Obviously we drive on the left here, which is the right side, the right side being the wrong side to drive on. At least over here the right side is the wrong side to drive on...others may disagree.
Whilst this may be spin, it is exactly the sort of comment that will only make things worse for Microsoft. If there is one thing that EU citizens hate (possibly more than the influence of the EU itself:-) ) is the idea that we should just sit back and let the US take care of everything. This is something that every EU citizen would agree with, irrespective of the issue or their position on it. I suspect that other markets around the world will feel likewise - each has it's own rules, and if you want to trade there you must obey the law.
On your other point, I think that to Microsoft, because they settled with the US government, they therefore weren't found guilty. In their sideways logic, MS therefore see this as an approval of their practices. I imagine that they are trying to use this fact as evidence on their part in other cases around the world - look! the US government didn't find us guilty, so neither should you. However, as I pointed out above, each market is different and should make their own judgement.
Microsoft associate general counsel for Europe Horacio Gutierrez said in a statement the fine was unjustified. "We believe it's unprecedented and inappropriate for the Commission to impose a fine on a company's U.S. operations when those operations are already regulated by the U.S. government and the conduct at issue has been permitted by both the Department of Justice and the U.S. courts," he said.
I'm sorry, but if you trade into the EU, then you are expected to obey the laws of that market. Doesn't matter where the head office is. I'd have thought that Bill would employ lawyers with a clue - at least enough of a clue not to make a stupid statement like this.
Er - please re-read the original comment. Their technology only supports the MS JVM, which is no longer available. So, everyone is installing the Sun JVM installed. JRE 1.4.x is the Sun JVM. (Can I make it any clearer?).
I've tried to look at the demo on their website many times, however it never works because of the requirements:
Windows Internet Explorer Windows Media Player Microsoft (not Sun) JVM...but you can't get the MS JVM any more:-( And I don't use IE (although I appreciate most of the world does).
You can try it yourself here. If you do, be sure to comment what it's like, because I've never seen it!
As everyone else says, open relays no longer seem to figure much in the spam we receive here. I thought I'd link through to the stats to show the point, although (to my surprise) they seem to show just as many relays as ever (best graph at the bottom).
I suspect therefore that open relays (and proxies) are still an issue, but the spammers just don't use them as they are all blacklisted anyway.
"0wning" a machine seems to be the current way to do it. It really needs the ISPs to cut off any machine that has been 0wned immediately, and then contact the subscriber for some LART'ing. Unfortunately, at least on my ISP, they leave the user connected and then contact them later on; weeks later, if you are lucky, the user will fix their machine.
Nobody seems to have given a decent answer yet, so I'll give my two-cents worth.
To me, utility computing is quite a generic term, but generally means computing resources on demand. It's the ability to vary the resources available to you within a very short space of time. Like the ability to just turn a tap on and off.
There are various ways of delivering that; some companies allow you to install a machine with more processors than you need, but only pay for the ones you use. So you install a 32 node machine, but only pay for 16 processors. Later, as your demand increases, you can just turn on the extra processors. You could do the same with RAM, disc space etc. Obviously though you pay a premium for the convienience.
Another way of deliverying this is through remote resources. You effectively outsource your computing resource; as you need more resources you phone up your supplier and they provide the additional resources from their hardware pool - already setup and ready to go.
At the moment it seems to be of most interest to large data centres.
I think you make a very good point here, one which I have also pointed out the the BBC.
If this had been marked as an opinion piece, then it may have been fair enough. However, the article is being presented as a statement of the facts (a report); in such a case they should present all opinions.
SCO seem to be of the opinion that it was created by "open source zealots"; and however misguided they may be, they are entitled to an opinion. However, many more people I'm sure would disagree; I for one imagine that this is really a virus writer, who probably doesn't even use Linux, jumping on the bandwagon.
As you say, the malware has plenty of other features to indicate that the attach on SCO is only a small part of the author's intent.
I'd never filter out based on the headers anyway, as I'm sure Habeas have some legitimate customers - and changes are their emails are wanted by our users. All I'd do is not use the Habeas information in the calculation for determining whether a message is likely to be spam.
At the moment, SpamAssassin assumes anything with these headers is not spam on the basis that nobody would dare infringe the Habeas copyright. As we've seen however, that premise is invalid, and therefore the Habeas marks are useless now for determining what is and what isn't spam.
Got remote checks enabled - and I can that we get Razor and DNSBL information, so they are working. As you say, this assumes that Habeas has the spammer's IP listed; somebody else mentioned that they are being sent through compromised broadband hosts which presumably means Habeas haven't (and are unlikely to ever) get all the IPs listed.
In theory the Habeas scheme is very clever. It's difficult to get spammers under any anti-spam law (where they exist), so change the ballgame so that you can prosecute under copyright law instead.
Unfortunately though, I suspect it's going to be difficult to track these people down, and even when Habeas do, they will need to mount a prosecution in another country - wherever that happens to be. The spammers may even win given that each country enforces copyright laws differently.
According to the statement given, the latest version of SpamAssassin should be able to filter these out. We're running what I think is the latest (2.61) and it still seems to be letting them through - thanks to the Habeas mark. I'm beginning to think I should just disable the Habeas rules completely and let these get scorded normally.
FreeBSD is used on many many servers around the world. Sure it's not as popular as Linux, but it has quite a big share of installed systems.
BSD is hardly dying - where do you think userland in OS/X comes from? There is money being poured into BSD development, just no where near as much as Linux, and it doesn't get the headlines.
If SCO had told the truth about something, now that would be news. SCO lying about something is an everyday occurance, and hardly merits posting on Slashdot:-).
From what I've read nothing went wrong. Two faults have happened on the cable very close together (in time), and unfortunately the repairs on the first fault have not been completed before the occurance of the second fault.
This isn't bad maintenance or anything - it's just pure bad luck. Two faults in the same period is unlikely, but sometimes does happen. When a fault happens, it will takes days to get hold of a cable ship, go out there (assuming good weather), find the cable and replace the faulty stretch.
The only way to reduce the risk further is to build a third link...but then that costs more. I imagine a cost/benefit analysis showed it to be unnecessary, especially given that there are alternative routes.
NASA should pay up, and then claim against him for any damage that occurs to their probe - which in the hostile environment of space will be quite a bit.
Unless he's written a contract to the contrary, I suggest he could be held liable for the damage. I doubt he has posted any signs disclaiming responsibility:-)
Few of us would rush to send Mrs. Ahmed the $5,000 she asks for in return for a promised $8.5 million.
But many people believe the marketing hype from the manufacturers that their software will bring huge benefits to your organisation for relatively little investment in their software.
Sorry, but Nigerian Scam emails are much more like the marketing materials of large corporates, promising the world but failing to deliver. Open / Free Software at least tends to do what it says on the tin.
Slashdot Mirror
At least for now you can concentrate on growing your business. In the long term, assuming your business becomes successful enough, you can take them to court for wrongfully taking money from you.
Then when Episode III comes out, release that DVD, then a DVD set of I-III, then the DVD set of Episodes I-VI, then the HD DVDs, then the limited edition HD DVDs...
Ah - I knew about Internet keywords, but I never appreciated that this "feature" was due to them :-)
Also, if you click on "Recent Headlines" on the right, you get Microsoft's homepage. Perhaps they are trying to tell us something.
This functionality requires that you are using Firefox, or similar browser...(something to do with the link starting http://http://).
I didn't say that nobody should fight the Windows trademark, but I don't think it's a priority, either for Lindows or for anyone else at this time. One day perhaps, but the focus for now should be on making a better desktop.
I think Michael is making a mistake trying to fight this battle. Whilst the Windows trademark needs fighting, he should really be concentrating on battling Windows as a product.
In the end, I don't think it matters what the product name is. Calling it Lindows might get some people to purchase it that might otherwise purchase Windows, but I doubt it really causes much confusion. However, calling it "Lin---s" in one area, whilst calling it "Lindows" in another, and then changing to "Lindos" outside the US is sure just to cause confusion to your average consumer.
Far better to give the product an uncontraversial, but rememberable name, and concentrate on building that brand.
I do hope that they got all those people to opt-in to receiving message from them. Under the new Electronic Privacy and Communcations Act (2003) I believe what they are proposing would count as unsolicited electronic communications. Anyone who receives one of these might want to try making a complaint to the Information Comissioner.
I've noticed this quite a lot too over here in the UK. It may even be more pronounced since, over here, you aren't meant to undertake people - ie. to overtake, you move to the lanes nearer the divider in the middle of the road. Hence, everyone piles into the third lane (far right in the UK [1]) as nobody wants to be stuck behind lorries and slow vehicles. As soon as a jam happens, the first lane, having less vehicles, invariably becomes the faster.
It gets even worse (or better if you know) around junctions. With the cars coming off at the junctions, the first lane suddenly becomes empty all the way through the junction (assuming that all three lanes go through the junction). Of course, at the other side of the junction you have a slip road (on ramp) and it slows down, but you then just change lane out.
If the junction is of the type where the first lane becomes the slip road (off ramp) and restarts the otherside of the junction, then of course this doesn't work.
[1] Obviously we drive on the left here, which is the right side, the right side being the wrong side to drive on. At least over here the right side is the wrong side to drive on...others may disagree.
Whilst this may be spin, it is exactly the sort of comment that will only make things worse for Microsoft. If there is one thing that EU citizens hate (possibly more than the influence of the EU itself :-) ) is the idea that we should just sit back and let the US take care of everything. This is something that every EU citizen would agree with, irrespective of the issue or their position on it. I suspect that other markets around the world will feel likewise - each has it's own rules, and if you want to trade there you must obey the law.
On your other point, I think that to Microsoft, because they settled with the US government, they therefore weren't found guilty. In their sideways logic, MS therefore see this as an approval of their practices. I imagine that they are trying to use this fact as evidence on their part in other cases around the world - look! the US government didn't find us guilty, so neither should you. However, as I pointed out above, each market is different and should make their own judgement.
Microsoft associate general counsel for Europe Horacio Gutierrez said in a statement the fine was unjustified. "We believe it's unprecedented and inappropriate for the Commission to impose a fine on a company's U.S. operations when those operations are already regulated by the U.S. government and the conduct at issue has been permitted by both the Department of Justice and the U.S. courts," he said.
I'm sorry, but if you trade into the EU, then you are expected to obey the laws of that market. Doesn't matter where the head office is. I'd have thought that Bill would employ lawyers with a clue - at least enough of a clue not to make a stupid statement like this.
Er - please re-read the original comment. Their technology only supports the MS JVM, which is no longer available. So, everyone is installing the Sun JVM installed. JRE 1.4.x is the Sun JVM. (Can I make it any clearer?).
I've tried to look at the demo on their website many times, however it never works because of the requirements:
...but you can't get the MS JVM any more :-( And I don't use IE (although I appreciate most of the world does).
Windows
Internet Explorer
Windows Media Player
Microsoft (not Sun) JVM
You can try it yourself here. If you do, be sure to comment what it's like, because I've never seen it!
As everyone else says, open relays no longer seem to figure much in the spam we receive here. I thought I'd link through to the stats to show the point, although (to my surprise) they seem to show just as many relays as ever (best graph at the bottom).
I suspect therefore that open relays (and proxies) are still an issue, but the spammers just don't use them as they are all blacklisted anyway.
"0wning" a machine seems to be the current way to do it. It really needs the ISPs to cut off any machine that has been 0wned immediately, and then contact the subscriber for some LART'ing. Unfortunately, at least on my ISP, they leave the user connected and then contact them later on; weeks later, if you are lucky, the user will fix their machine.
Nobody seems to have given a decent answer yet, so I'll give my two-cents worth.
To me, utility computing is quite a generic term, but generally means computing resources on demand. It's the ability to vary the resources available to you within a very short space of time. Like the ability to just turn a tap on and off.
There are various ways of delivering that; some companies allow you to install a machine with more processors than you need, but only pay for the ones you use. So you install a 32 node machine, but only pay for 16 processors. Later, as your demand increases, you can just turn on the extra processors. You could do the same with RAM, disc space etc. Obviously though you pay a premium for the convienience.
Another way of deliverying this is through remote resources. You effectively outsource your computing resource; as you need more resources you phone up your supplier and they provide the additional resources from their hardware pool - already setup and ready to go.
At the moment it seems to be of most interest to large data centres.
I think you make a very good point here, one which I have also pointed out the the BBC.
If this had been marked as an opinion piece, then it may have been fair enough. However, the article is being presented as a statement of the facts (a report); in such a case they should present all opinions.
SCO seem to be of the opinion that it was created by "open source zealots"; and however misguided they may be, they are entitled to an opinion. However, many more people I'm sure would disagree; I for one imagine that this is really a virus writer, who probably doesn't even use Linux, jumping on the bandwagon.
As you say, the malware has plenty of other features to indicate that the attach on SCO is only a small part of the author's intent.
I'd never filter out based on the headers anyway, as I'm sure Habeas have some legitimate customers - and changes are their emails are wanted by our users. All I'd do is not use the Habeas information in the calculation for determining whether a message is likely to be spam.
At the moment, SpamAssassin assumes anything with these headers is not spam on the basis that nobody would dare infringe the Habeas copyright. As we've seen however, that premise is invalid, and therefore the Habeas marks are useless now for determining what is and what isn't spam.
Got remote checks enabled - and I can that we get Razor and DNSBL information, so they are working. As you say, this assumes that Habeas has the spammer's IP listed; somebody else mentioned that they are being sent through compromised broadband hosts which presumably means Habeas haven't (and are unlikely to ever) get all the IPs listed.
In theory the Habeas scheme is very clever. It's difficult to get spammers under any anti-spam law (where they exist), so change the ballgame so that you can prosecute under copyright law instead.
Unfortunately though, I suspect it's going to be difficult to track these people down, and even when Habeas do, they will need to mount a prosecution in another country - wherever that happens to be. The spammers may even win given that each country enforces copyright laws differently.
According to the statement given, the latest version of SpamAssassin should be able to filter these out. We're running what I think is the latest (2.61) and it still seems to be letting them through - thanks to the Habeas mark. I'm beginning to think I should just disable the Habeas rules completely and let these get scorded normally.
Some minor points...
FreeBSD is used on many many servers around the world. Sure it's not as popular as Linux, but it has quite a big share of installed systems.
BSD is hardly dying - where do you think userland in OS/X comes from? There is money being poured into BSD development, just no where near as much as Linux, and it doesn't get the headlines.
If SCO had told the truth about something, now that would be news. SCO lying about something is an everyday occurance, and hardly merits posting on Slashdot :-).
From what I've read nothing went wrong. Two faults have happened on the cable very close together (in time), and unfortunately the repairs on the first fault have not been completed before the occurance of the second fault.
This isn't bad maintenance or anything - it's just pure bad luck. Two faults in the same period is unlikely, but sometimes does happen. When a fault happens, it will takes days to get hold of a cable ship, go out there (assuming good weather), find the cable and replace the faulty stretch.
The only way to reduce the risk further is to build a third link...but then that costs more. I imagine a cost/benefit analysis showed it to be unnecessary, especially given that there are alternative routes.
What's invisible light? I usually find that when I look into a light source that it's highly visible.
:-)
Think I might go and patent the above, but using plain old visible light instead
NASA should pay up, and then claim against him for any damage that occurs to their probe - which in the hostile environment of space will be quite a bit.
:-)
Unless he's written a contract to the contrary, I suggest he could be held liable for the damage. I doubt he has posted any signs disclaiming responsibility
But many people believe the marketing hype from the manufacturers that their software will bring huge benefits to your organisation for relatively little investment in their software.
Sorry, but Nigerian Scam emails are much more like the marketing materials of large corporates, promising the world but failing to deliver. Open / Free Software at least tends to do what it says on the tin.