If "your friend" hasn't done anything, "he" shouldn't have anything to worry about.
You aren't doing anything illegal when you go into the bathroom to take a dump, so you have nothing to "worry about" if the FBI wants to send agents in to watch you. You aren't doing anything illegal when you dress up like Tinkerbell and prance around your house, so you shouldn't mind Homeland Security agents watching you doing it. If you aren't doing anything illegal, you should not mind the government sending agents over to read your e-mail, rifle through your personal belongings, listen to your phone conversations, and tail you when you drive somewhere.
I recognize the humorous aspect of your post, but that first sentence really summed up a scary, but all-too-commonly-voiced, sentiment about this subject.
They can sacrifice a little bit of their profit. A single megacorp's TV ad or a billboard can pay for quite some time of a technician.
You're assuming that they are profitable. That TV ad or billboard might generate business, so paying for another person to fight spam AND cutting into advertising to do it is a double whammy.
I didn't say "do nothing". I intended to say "prevent them from suing you for whatever slips through the countermeasures".
Actually, what you said was "Let them sign that they won't [sue], during hiring." I think that we need some lawsuits against companies for this kind of thing. Then the large corporations who have purchased their own representatives in Congress will put some pressure on to do something meaningful in legislation and enforcement about the spam problem.
The needs may change. The market situation may change. If you thought about standards in the beginning, a vendor going bankrupt or abusive won't be that big problem.
In some cases, proprietary solutions provide features and functionality not present in open standards. I would avoid Microsoft Exchange (and Lotus Domino) like the plague, but many businesses, including the one for which I work, use it and find that the pluses outweigh the minuses.
Protocol compatibility should be considered when the device is purchased.
My Sony Ericsson T610 phone is OBEX compatible, but it comes with software to sync with Outlook specifically. There is no such included software for syncing with Mozilla, Eudora, or other e-mail clients. So while it's standards compatible, the executive with the T610 software installed will call IT after the switch to Mozilla and say "my phone won't sync with my new e-mail." IT will have to deal with the problem, including finding out what he means by "sync", what data he wants to move, training him to use some new program or method, etc.
I go back to my original point: It's better to have China jail the spammer and have his family starve than it is to let the spammer continue harming businesess and individuals with his spam.
Employment agents don't know shit when it comes to IT so they should give some sort of test to see if you're actually bullshitting.
No, they should hire recruiters who have knowledge. Or they should call your references. If you have good references from past bosses and coworkers, that's a lot more telling than any test.
Also, employment agents tend to "tidy up" resumes a little so that you fit the job description.
So it really doesn't matter how you do on a hypothetical test since they're likely to modify your resume so that it suits their purposes.
I'm aware of that tendency. That's why I specifically demand that they provide me a copy of any resume on me that they send to their clients. I also take copies of my resume with me to each client interview. I had one instance where the 'body shop' had doctored my resume and I was able to whip out the original, provide it to the client, and apologize for the agency having attempted to mislead them. I came out smelling like a rose while the agency lost both the client and me.
Usually those things are all in writing, in the offer letter.
Usually the applicants skills and credentials are all in writing, in the resume.
Opportunities for advancement are rarely spelled out in cover letters. What work the employee will do is usually not described in a cover letter -- only the position title is listed.
But all of that aside, you're asking the employee to trust that the company was honest in their offer letter. So why shouldn't the company trust that the employee was honest on his resume?
With that size, a spam specialist is probably required. However, so big company can absorb the cost easily.
They don't "absorb" any costs. They pass those costs on.
If they are used. There are alternative solutions for these too, often as an intranet app with a web interface. (Not everything has to be tightly integrated with a mail client.)
While I agree with the latter, it costs money to move people away from a solution with which they are all familiar and comfortable.
The worst offenders produce the most spam. They can be blacklisted on the server. "550 - mail rejected, you are on a spam blacklist. If it is by mistake, call XXXX to rectify the situation."
I own and run the domain anti-spam.org and can tell you that the spammers are jumping from one net to another, using zombie machines, etc. It's not that easy unless you block entire countries.
Let them sign that they won't, during hiring. Or move to a country with less lawyers per capita.
Why should someone have to put up with ads for penis enlargers, breast augmentation, 'hot, horny coeds', miracle diets, and 'barely legal teens' at the office? Moving to a country with fewer legal protections for workers is a common, and despicable, tactic.
If they aren't able to understand a simple algorithm, it's likely they aren't able to understand other aspects of their work as well and the question is why they still are there.
Please! The guy who changes flourescent lightbulbs and cleans up after functions doesn't have to understand "algorithms" to do his job -- but he probably does have e-mail so that he can get company-wide notices, requests for his services, etc. Don't be such a snob.
Cursory check of the spam folder once per day solves that, together with a good whitelist.
I don't know about you, but I have enough things to do at work that I don't want to have to read through suspect e-mail in order to avoid losing something.
You should've count with that possibility earlier and request usage of PDAs/phones with standard-compliant OBEX protocol. The standards are here for a reason.
So people should chastise coworkers and managers who don't have OBEX-compatible phones and PDAs? Yeah, that's a great way to win friends and influence people. Whether it's OBEX or not, most PDAs and phones sync better with Outlook than with anything else.
Ummm... they will get redesigned to be W3C-compliant and the original author will be questioned why he didn't adhere to standards? Again, standards have a reason for their existence.
You can't expect secretaries, marketing people, and HR personnel to learn W3C standards to design mail forms and stationary. Nor should they. You put a tool on their computer and they use it to do their jobs. If they use Outlook and it's easier to do using Outlook's proprietary formats and tools, then that's what they should use.
Who in their sane mind would use a proprietary protocol for a mission-critical application, if they don't want to become a vendor's puppet?
Most large corporations who analyze applications based on business needs rather than open standards advocacy. That's why so many businesses use Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino servers. They serve the needs of the corporation.
Besides, Windows-based solutions are marketed as easy to maintain, so the reconfiguration should be an easy job.
What the hell does Windows have to do with rack-mounted Cisco firewalls that exist all over the world?
You need to back off with your anti-Microsoft rant and realize that "open standards" are often severely lacking. That's why we have the spam problem -- because SMTP has no authentication built into it and anyone can spoof anything.
You've got the guy's resume. You've got references if you want them. You've talked to him. If you throw a test at him, that's just saying that you don't trust his resume, references, or word.
You expect the prospective employee to believe you when you tell him about the benefits, his opportunities for advancement, what kind of work he will do, etc., don't you? How would you feel if he demanded that you prove all of those things before continuing with the interview?
3. Company switches to Mozilla (or any other client with antispam plugin) and teaches the employees to teach the built-in Bayesian engine by labeling spam as spam - even a monkey can learn a single click.
Flaws:
1. It costs money to deploy a new mail client. Try doing it for a company with tens of thousands of computers. 2. It costs money to train people in how to use the new mail client. Yes, many administrative people, secretaries, facilities support personnel, etc. will need training and support. 3. All advanced features of existing client, including calendar sharing, meeting scheduling, etc., disappear -- causing much disruption. 4. The spam still arrives, taking bandwidth and storage. 5. Employees can still sue the company for receiving sexually explicit spam. 6. Employees still have to train the anti-spam feature. Some will do it wrong. Some will be confused by it. 7. Some "good" mail will be lost.
The lone admin considers it good but it could be better, and adds a second layer of protection on the mailserver, along the lines of SpamAssassin.
Great idea if you are dealing with a six person office, but Spamassassin doesn't scale at all well for an enterprise type of environment.
Spam is a problem. But usually not *that* big problem, maybe with exception of some ISPs.
I work for an international corporation that employs over 120,000 people. Just about every one of those employees has a computer. They use Outlook and Exchange so that they can share calendars, schedule meetings, etc. You think it would not be a big problem to roll out a new client there? What happens when you deploy the new client and 5,000+ people complain that they can's sync their PDAs and cell phones with the new client? How do you deal with the many people who are using company laptops off-site when the roll-out takes place? What happens when someone's mail forms that they created for Outlook don't function with the new client? Who reconfigures the multiple firewalls to allow port 25 traffic to flow within the company (since Exchange doesn't use that port for its proprietary protocol)?
Having said that, and as much as I may disagree with your views, it's good to see that you're not part of the groupthink and you can put forward your points eloquently...
Thanks. I appreciate you saying/writing that.
But that's assuming an ISP would support the different desktops. More likely, they'd only support the DEFAULT.
But, unlike the Windows alternative UIs you mention, there are many Linux distros which come with, and install, multiple desktop UIs.
Well, if normal people don't read about it or buy apps, where's the problem?
Because normal people, do, on an all to frequent basis, require tech support. Is the cable modem connection down or is it an OS problem? Has the user accidentally cleared/changed their password? Has some app overwritten something critical? Did the user move a file that they should not have? We've all seen it.
No other Linux company has put as much 'Linux' code back into the community as Red Hat. Can't you give them some kudos for that?
Yes I can, but they just abandoned a large group of loyal users, both individuals and businesses, and I really dislike companies that abandon their user base.
Linux is more popular in China than in any other large country. There's a growing anti-American sentiment. The Sun deal. Demand for home-grown OS and apps. And then, take into account the projection that China will have the most Net users in 2007, and that's a LOT of Linux users.
And they will probably all be trying to spam me, if the existing Chinese Internet users are an example of those to come... But, that aside, I'm not convinced that Microsoft will be willing to give up that whole market. They'd rather give away Windows just to maintain dominance and so that they can sell apps (like Office) to businesses. They are far shrewder than many people give them credit for.
However, I do think you're creating a problem where one doesn't exist with regards to desktop Linux; you can apply these issues to Windows too.
I wish that I could agree with the former and I do agree, to some extent, with the latter. On the former, there clearly is a problem. Hardware vendors don't, by and large, support Linux. Nor do most mainstream software vendors. If you want to do your taxes, you're not going to go out and buy a Linux version of TaxCut. Nor will you find Linux versions of most games. ISPs won't support Linux. Very few home computers are sold with Linux. And when something goes wrong in Linux, the "fix" often involves typing commands that look suspiciously lik modem line noise to fix the problem.
While Windows has more than its share of warts, it's an issue of economics. My ISP can create three tech support scripts for the three major versions of Windows (98/2000/XP). They can train their staff about the vagaries of Windows and the ins and outs. Once that's done, they cover about 90% of the market. Is that 3% of the desktop market running Linux worth the hassle of creating more scripts, more training courses for support personnel, etc.? Probably not. For that reason, Linux has to be BETTER than Windows just to gain a foothold. It must be self-healing and require almost no support.
Shame about your unbearable ego, then. Wow, you must be great fun at parties -- that's if you go to any, of course.
If you were interested in making friends, you wouldn't be posting anonymously. Besides, what do my social graces have to do with the strength of my arguments?
Yeah, because ISPs can't support multiple releases of Windows and MacOS X cost-effectively, right? *sigh*
Windows 98, 2000, XP. That's it. Three releases of Mandrake, three releases of RedHat, three releases of SUSE, three releases of Lindows, three releases of Slackware. Now multiply that times two (KDE and Gnome) and you're up to 30 different basic support scripts plus the three that already existed for Windows.
Erm, and you can do that with desktop Linux distros now.
Quit taking things out of context. I pointed that out to counter your earlier argument that "people will buy apps for, read about and support Sun JDS. Or Red Hat Desktop. Or SUSE." Normal people don't read about the OS on their computer or buy many (if any) apps for it.
On this note, how would you improve this situation?
United Linux was the smartest effort towards resolving the situation thus far. There need to be standards for tools, directories, etc. A support person has to know, beyond any doubt, that a given tool exists, where it exists, etc. Binary compatability is an absolute must-have. A company needs to be able to build an app that runs on any "standard" Linux without recompilation. But the main thing that has to happen is for the Linux community to consider the needs of average users and not demand four browsers, three e-mail clients, etc. Pick a standard UI, browser, e-mail client, etc. and only install others in an "advanced setup" mode.
Please keep up with developments before you make comments...
I was aware of RHEL for their enterprise customers, but don't care about it. I hate RedHat. I think that they are scumballs and I look forward to them failing so that more reputable Linux vendors can take their customers. Why should I care about their Enterprise offering when they just killed off their mainstream desktop offering when so many individuals and businesses relied on it?
Ratios aren't important at this stage, unless you're desperately trying to justify your argument. What matters is this: by 2007 there will be more Chinese online than Americans. A large percentage of these, and perhaps the majority, will be using Linux. That is MASSIVE.
LOL!!! First you say that "ratios aren't important" and then talk about "a large percentage" and "the majority". What do you think that those terms represent if not ratios? How can you say that a "large percentage of them" will be using Linux when the biggest sale you can point to is 1 million copies? How do you extrapolate from that agreement that Linux will become wildly popular in China?
I get the feeling that when Linux reaches 20% market share, there'll still be people like yourself talking about "insignificant" and "never going anywhere".
In the last few days, I've downloaded Mandrake 10.0 and Linspire 4.5 (AKA Lindows). I stay on top of the Linux market, have deployed Linux servers, have Linux installed on machines at my home, and use it at my work. I have a bootable Linux distro on a flash drive that I take to work. I also run Windows 2000, XP, and 2003 Server Enterprise Edition. I know the strengths and weaknesses of both Windows and Linux, from both a technical and a marketing standpoint. You're trying to paint me as some kind of anti-Linux, pro-Microsoft fanatic -- and nothing could be further from the truth.
But if you *do* ship only one browser, people will flame you down for being insecure. And then you *still* lose.
Agreed. That's the predicament in which Linux publishers find themselves. Unlike Microsoft, they cannot decide to ship just one browser. If they do, they lose many of the Linux faithful -- and that's, for all intents and purposes, their sales staff. Linux is sold by word of mouth recommendations. But keep supplying three or four browsers, three e-mail clients, four music players, etc., and you limit your penetration into the mass-market. I don't have a solution -- just observations.
Your slightly misguided view stems from the belief that everyone is somehow running vanilla Linux -- but they're not.
I am a computer professional with over 20 years of professional software development and support experience. My views are, to be immodest, insightful and well-reasoned. You would be well-served to learn from what I have to say rather than assuming that you know better.
Instead, people will buy apps for, read about and support Sun JDS. Or Red Hat Desktop. Or SUSE.
How will grandma buy apps for SUSE when she can't configure it to work with her ISP, her ISP won't provide support (because the ISP can't support multiple releases of Linux OSs cost-effectively), has no idea what "SUSE" is, and can't get support when she calls the company that sold her the computer? Do you think that the average Windows user 'reads about' Windows? Heck no. They turn on the computer and click the icons for installed apps.
There will be three or four major distros (also known as 'choice' in a non-Microsoft world), all straightforward to support.
Says who? How will this magically happen? I've not seen any ISPs embracing any of the existing distros for end-user desktops. I've not seen major companies that publish game software, tax preparation software, or mapping software choose flavors of linux to support. There aren't hardware vendors who are, en masse, going to a given few distros of Linux.
It's not hard to understand.
Apparently it is.
If you phone an ISP, they'll typically ask you: "Win98, 2000 or XP?" etc.
So let's pretend that you are right and that there are three major distros of Linux. Each one of those has multiple releases in common usage. Each of the releases probably has given the users the choice of, at the least, KDE or Gnome UIs. Just start doing the math and you'll see that there is a lot more work.
Similarly, driver disks cater for the differences, as do books. So if everyone was using their own hand-crafted LFS or Gentoo installation, you may have a point, but as Linux hits the mainstream desktop it's not going that way. There are clearly defined products and releases, and only a few major players, so it's not remotely a problem for support.
Again, three or four distros times probably three or four active releases per distro times (at least) two GUI front-ends... The numbers are not pretty.
Finally, your "no significant penetration onto end-user desktops" remark is curious.
Apparently you have not been reading the mainstream press. According to a May 21 ZDNet article
Linux's share of the desktop PC market is growing, but is still a small fraction in comparison to the 90 percent-plus market share enjoyed by Windows.
Worse than that, you haven't even been reading the pro-Linux press, such as this articlefrom LinuxPlanet on May 6 in which they state that
...Linux desktop remains far behind with IDC estimating its market share at less than 3 percent.
Sounds pretty grim to me.
Sun has recently signed a deal to supply 1 million Chinese desktops with Linux.
There are 1.3-1.4 billion people in China. That means one copy of Sun-supplied Linux per 1,300 - 1,400 people.
Walmart is selling machines with Linux.
They are also selling Depends adult diapers, but I don't think that means that Depends is about to become a a major player in the undergarment market.
Red Hat has just launched a new desktop offering.
No, Red Hat just killed off their boxed desktop offering and is letting connected geeks beta test for them with Fedora.
IBM and Novell are converting all staff to Linux desktops.
And what percentage of the desktop PCs in the world are owned by IBM and
One of the major strengths of Linux is the lack of a monoculture. Most distributions come with 3 or 4 web browsers, e-mail programs, and media players etc.
Spoken like a true, myopic computer geek. It's the "monoculture" of Windows that makes it usable by the average person. It's what makes it possible to publish books with screen shots. It's what allows the tech-savvy family member to tell his parents and siblings to "click on file and then click on..." It's why ISPs can support users cost-effectively. The lack of consistency in Linux, the fact that each major distro installs three, four, or more browsers rather than one, and the lack of recognition of this as a problem is why, despite being free (as in beer), it still has no significant penetration onto end-user desktops.
I would hate to have on my conscience that some guy with a family to feed is sitting in jail just for spamming because I cooperated with his government in prosecuting him.
Your argument is wrong on so many counts, so I'll just pick on a few of them here.
Company X makes widgets.
Company X gets a lot of spam.
Company X's employees and IT staff spend a lot of time dealing with the spam.
Company X has to hire additional IT staff to combat the spam software.
Company X is forced to raise the price on widgets to pay for the man-hours and additional staff that deals with spam.
Sales of Company X's widgets decline due to the higher prices.
Company X goes into the red, losing money.
Company X lays off workers.
Those workers, who, unlike the spammer, did nothing wrong, have families to feed, too.
Consumers are paying more for most consumer goods (especially Internet access) because almost all companies are dealing with spam problems. That means lower sales of luxury items, layoffs at stores, etc. Republicans are quick to claim that taxes drive down consumer and business spending, but what do they think that the "spam tax" is doing to the economy?
Would you hesitate to turn a mugger in to the police because his family might go hungry? Would you not turn in some guy who robbed a liquor store because he is doing it to feed his family? Just because the U.S. government won't jail spammers doesn't mean that the spammers should not go to jail. If China jails them, then I will applaud China.
There is something wrong when one has to resort to "identity theft" laws in order to jail someone for sending out over 800 million spam e-mails.
But, this trial and sentencing does prove wrong the commonly voiced arguments that anti-spam laws can't work because it will be impossible to catch spammers and because they are outside of the U.S. This guy spammed. He was in the U.S. He was caught, tried, and jailed. The only flaw is that they didn't have an anti-spam law under which to prosecute him.
Thank you for an interesting and insightful take on all of this.
News itself is inherantly biased: what's newsworthy where you live might not be newsworthy where I live.
Don't confuse newsworthiness with bias. While a murder of a street prostitute in Nigeria might not be of interest to an American audience, that's far different than slanted and/or purposely distorted coverage of a news story.
You, fmaxwell, as a seemingly intelligent and erudite person, are capable of watching a news broadcast on Fox News without mindlessly buying every word as the gospel truth, aren't you?
While I agree that blatant bias is easily recognized, it's the subtle bias which is much harder to recognize and more dangerous. It's the right-wing pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and Ann Coulter who claim to be reporting the "news" when, in fact, they are often lying about such basic things as numbers, percentages, chronology, and even events.
This fixation with "biased" news - or, at least, this fixation with claiming that the other guy's news is biased - seems to be an American thing.
Perhaps it is, but I think that it is a good fixation. It's desirable to have television, radio, and print journalists who make efforts to be even-handed and fair. We have U.S. journalists, like Tim Russert, who are admired for their unbiased coverage. They don't give anyone a "break." They don't shy away from covering scandals even if it involves a person or party that they support. They don't pull punches or ask "softball questions." If you watch their coverage of a story or issue, you are presented with factual accounts and specific information.
I think what angers so many of us is Fox's claim that they are "fair and balanced" when, in fact, they are more slanted than any other major new broadcast source.
With all due respect, I don't remember it the same way as you do. Disney just said that they or their subsidiary Miramax wouldn't distribute the film, but that Michael Moore was free to find another distributor for it.
Miramax bankrolled the picture and was then ordered by their parent company, Disney, to not distribute it. That leaves Michael Moore scrambling to find a distributor in time to let the movie affect the outcome of the 2004 Presidential election.
Stridently crying "censorship" in all the newspapers in the last weeks before he took Farenheit 9/11 to Cannes certainly didn't do him any disfavours.
Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-New Jersey) was so appalled by Disney's behavior that he asked the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation for a hearing on what he termed a "disturbing pattern of politically based corporate censorship of the news media and the entertainment industry." It sounds like it was not just Michael Moore calling this censorship.
No, that's a goal to which all news organizations should aspire.
I would contend that all news is biased, and it is incumbent on you, as an intelligent consumer, to identify this bias and take it into account.
How do you identify bias? How do you know what has been left out? How do you know that the station to which you are listening purposely picked an inarticulate person to voice one side of an argument? How do you know that the TV station that you are watching carefully chose camera angles which hid, or minimized, the protestors? How do you know that they chose to report only some of the numbers from a poll because those omitted numbers put their side in a bad light?
And I wish Hannity, Limbaugh, et al. would admit that they are part of "the media." But they won't, because then they would no longer be able to perpetuate the myth of the "liberal" media.
Hear, hear! Limbaugh is heard on how many stations? Fox has how many affiliates? How much of talk radio is dominated by the right? We've got Michael Moore winning awards for his film and Disney trying to prevent the film's distribution.
Enjoy your laugh, doofus, because I'm about to make you look truly foolish.
Citing Al Franken as an unbiased news source. Good one.
I did not claim that he was "unbiased news source", did I? Nor did Al Franken claim to be unbiased news source. There is a big difference between providing political commentary/analysis and reporting the news. News reports are supposed to be unbiased. Political commentary/analysis is not.
If you try saying that Alan Colmes isn't liberal (besides brilliant), then you either have your head up your ass, have never heard of Alan Colmes, or simply have blind hatred of Fox News
Alan Colmes is the Sean Hannity's equivalent of the Washington Generals. He's a punching bag who's put up there to make it look like a contest. Al Franken skewered Colmes in his book Lie and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. I suggest that you read that before trotting out Colmes as evidence that Fox is not biased.
if you leave a loaded gun on your porch and shout out from the rooftop that it is there for the taking, you have demonstrated a criminal recklessness, an indifference to consequences, that goes far beyond simple negligence.
Then what is it? It's not accessory to murder. It's not a conspiracy to commit murder. And that's what I was refuting.
Plausible tenability
I said "plausible deniability."
never plays as well in court as it does on Slashdot. particularly when it appears you constructed an unusual and elaborate defensive structure well in advance of your arrest.
It's not a matter of something "playing well." It's a matter of the prosecution proving their case that you -- not your neighbor and not some guy with WiFi in his car -- committed a crime. The burden of proof is on the prosecution. It doesn't matter what they think of your motives for turning off security on your WiFi connection. You aren't being tried for evil motives or behaving suspiciously. You're being tried for committing a specific crime and it's their responsibility to prove your guilt.
As an aside, I would hardly call unsecured WiFi networks "unusual" or "elaborate."
How did he conspire with the guy in a van? He just told the guy, on a major media website, that he's deliberately disabled everything that might assist in the guy's capture.
Posting a public announcement is not conspiring. If you publish a web page showing how to build a bomb, have you entered into a "conspiracy" with everyone who builds a bomb based on information on your web page? If you write an article stating that a specific jewelry store has no working burglar alarm, are you an accessory if it is burglarized? The chilling effect on free speech given your world view would be horrifying.
There's nothing in conspiracy law that requires the communication to be secret.
conspire Pronunciation Key (kn-spr)
v. conspired, conspiring, conspires v. intr.
1. To plan together secretly to commit an illegal or wrongful act or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action.
As you can see from the definition, for there to be a conspiracy, there must be a secret dialog between two or more parties, not a public announcement by one.
Now, he says, "I'm not deliberately opening my network to hackers and miscreants bent on downloading copyrighted material. I'm simply choosing not to secure it."
However, that's blatantly false. He said he "turned off all the security features of [his] wireless router", not never secured it.
No, it is not blatantly false. He is not deliberately opening his network for the purpose of use by others in illegal acts. He is simply opening it and letting others use it as they see fit.
He said he did this so that he has "no way to be certain what kinds of songs, movies and pictures will be downloaded by other people using my IP address," which shows he clearly contemplated people using it illegally.
Contemplating that such could happen does not make one an accessory -- even in this post 9/11, Ashcroft-run utopia in which we live.
Slashdot Mirror
If "your friend" hasn't done anything, "he" shouldn't have anything to worry about.
You aren't doing anything illegal when you go into the bathroom to take a dump, so you have nothing to "worry about" if the FBI wants to send agents in to watch you. You aren't doing anything illegal when you dress up like Tinkerbell and prance around your house, so you shouldn't mind Homeland Security agents watching you doing it. If you aren't doing anything illegal, you should not mind the government sending agents over to read your e-mail, rifle through your personal belongings, listen to your phone conversations, and tail you when you drive somewhere.
I recognize the humorous aspect of your post, but that first sentence really summed up a scary, but all-too-commonly-voiced, sentiment about this subject.
They can sacrifice a little bit of their profit. A single megacorp's TV ad or a billboard can pay for quite some time of a technician.
You're assuming that they are profitable. That TV ad or billboard might generate business, so paying for another person to fight spam AND cutting into advertising to do it is a double whammy.
I didn't say "do nothing". I intended to say "prevent them from suing you for whatever slips through the countermeasures".
Actually, what you said was "Let them sign that they won't [sue], during hiring." I think that we need some lawsuits against companies for this kind of thing. Then the large corporations who have purchased their own representatives in Congress will put some pressure on to do something meaningful in legislation and enforcement about the spam problem.
The needs may change. The market situation may change. If you thought about standards in the beginning, a vendor going bankrupt or abusive won't be that big problem.
In some cases, proprietary solutions provide features and functionality not present in open standards. I would avoid Microsoft Exchange (and Lotus Domino) like the plague, but many businesses, including the one for which I work, use it and find that the pluses outweigh the minuses.
Protocol compatibility should be considered when the device is purchased.
My Sony Ericsson T610 phone is OBEX compatible, but it comes with software to sync with Outlook specifically. There is no such included software for syncing with Mozilla, Eudora, or other e-mail clients. So while it's standards compatible, the executive with the T610 software installed will call IT after the switch to Mozilla and say "my phone won't sync with my new e-mail." IT will have to deal with the problem, including finding out what he means by "sync", what data he wants to move, training him to use some new program or method, etc.
I go back to my original point: It's better to have China jail the spammer and have his family starve than it is to let the spammer continue harming businesess and individuals with his spam.
Employment agents don't know shit when it comes to IT so they should give some sort of test to see if you're actually bullshitting.
No, they should hire recruiters who have knowledge. Or they should call your references. If you have good references from past bosses and coworkers, that's a lot more telling than any test.
Also, employment agents tend to "tidy up" resumes a little so that you fit the job description.
So it really doesn't matter how you do on a hypothetical test since they're likely to modify your resume so that it suits their purposes.
I'm aware of that tendency. That's why I specifically demand that they provide me a copy of any resume on me that they send to their clients. I also take copies of my resume with me to each client interview. I had one instance where the 'body shop' had doctored my resume and I was able to whip out the original, provide it to the client, and apologize for the agency having attempted to mislead them. I came out smelling like a rose while the agency lost both the client and me.
Usually those things are all in writing, in the offer letter.
Usually the applicants skills and credentials are all in writing, in the resume.
Opportunities for advancement are rarely spelled out in cover letters. What work the employee will do is usually not described in a cover letter -- only the position title is listed.
But all of that aside, you're asking the employee to trust that the company was honest in their offer letter. So why shouldn't the company trust that the employee was honest on his resume?
With that size, a spam specialist is probably required. However, so big company can absorb the cost easily.
They don't "absorb" any costs. They pass those costs on.
If they are used. There are alternative solutions for these too, often as an intranet app with a web interface. (Not everything has to be tightly integrated with a mail client.)
While I agree with the latter, it costs money to move people away from a solution with which they are all familiar and comfortable.
The worst offenders produce the most spam. They can be blacklisted on the server. "550 - mail rejected, you are on a spam blacklist. If it is by mistake, call XXXX to rectify the situation."
I own and run the domain anti-spam.org and can tell you that the spammers are jumping from one net to another, using zombie machines, etc. It's not that easy unless you block entire countries.
Let them sign that they won't, during hiring. Or move to a country with less lawyers per capita.
Why should someone have to put up with ads for penis enlargers, breast augmentation, 'hot, horny coeds', miracle diets, and 'barely legal teens' at the office? Moving to a country with fewer legal protections for workers is a common, and despicable, tactic.
If they aren't able to understand a simple algorithm, it's likely they aren't able to understand other aspects of their work as well and the question is why they still are there.
Please! The guy who changes flourescent lightbulbs and cleans up after functions doesn't have to understand "algorithms" to do his job -- but he probably does have e-mail so that he can get company-wide notices, requests for his services, etc. Don't be such a snob.
Cursory check of the spam folder once per day solves that, together with a good whitelist.
I don't know about you, but I have enough things to do at work that I don't want to have to read through suspect e-mail in order to avoid losing something.
You should've count with that possibility earlier and request usage of PDAs/phones with standard-compliant OBEX protocol. The standards are here for a reason.
So people should chastise coworkers and managers who don't have OBEX-compatible phones and PDAs? Yeah, that's a great way to win friends and influence people. Whether it's OBEX or not, most PDAs and phones sync better with Outlook than with anything else.
Ummm... they will get redesigned to be W3C-compliant and the original author will be questioned why he didn't adhere to standards? Again, standards have a reason for their existence.
You can't expect secretaries, marketing people, and HR personnel to learn W3C standards to design mail forms and stationary. Nor should they. You put a tool on their computer and they use it to do their jobs. If they use Outlook and it's easier to do using Outlook's proprietary formats and tools, then that's what they should use.
Who in their sane mind would use a proprietary protocol for a mission-critical application, if they don't want to become a vendor's puppet?
Most large corporations who analyze applications based on business needs rather than open standards advocacy. That's why so many businesses use Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino servers. They serve the needs of the corporation.
Besides, Windows-based solutions are marketed as easy to maintain, so the reconfiguration should be an easy job.
What the hell does Windows have to do with rack-mounted Cisco firewalls that exist all over the world?
You need to back off with your anti-Microsoft rant and realize that "open standards" are often severely lacking. That's why we have the spam problem -- because SMTP has no authentication built into it and anyone can spoof anything.
You've got the guy's resume. You've got references if you want them. You've talked to him. If you throw a test at him, that's just saying that you don't trust his resume, references, or word.
You expect the prospective employee to believe you when you tell him about the benefits, his opportunities for advancement, what kind of work he will do, etc., don't you? How would you feel if he demanded that you prove all of those things before continuing with the interview?
3. Company switches to Mozilla (or any other client with antispam plugin) and teaches the employees to teach the built-in Bayesian engine by labeling spam as spam - even a monkey can learn a single click.
Flaws:
1. It costs money to deploy a new mail client. Try doing it for a company with tens of thousands of computers.
2. It costs money to train people in how to use the new mail client. Yes, many administrative people, secretaries, facilities support personnel, etc. will need training and support.
3. All advanced features of existing client, including calendar sharing, meeting scheduling, etc., disappear -- causing much disruption.
4. The spam still arrives, taking bandwidth and storage.
5. Employees can still sue the company for receiving sexually explicit spam.
6. Employees still have to train the anti-spam feature. Some will do it wrong. Some will be confused by it.
7. Some "good" mail will be lost.
The lone admin considers it good but it could be better, and adds a second layer of protection on the mailserver, along the lines of SpamAssassin.
Great idea if you are dealing with a six person office, but Spamassassin doesn't scale at all well for an enterprise type of environment.
Spam is a problem. But usually not *that* big problem, maybe with exception of some ISPs.
I work for an international corporation that employs over 120,000 people. Just about every one of those employees has a computer. They use Outlook and Exchange so that they can share calendars, schedule meetings, etc. You think it would not be a big problem to roll out a new client there? What happens when you deploy the new client and 5,000+ people complain that they can's sync their PDAs and cell phones with the new client? How do you deal with the many people who are using company laptops off-site when the roll-out takes place? What happens when someone's mail forms that they created for Outlook don't function with the new client? Who reconfigures the multiple firewalls to allow port 25 traffic to flow within the company (since Exchange doesn't use that port for its proprietary protocol)?
Having said that, and as much as I may disagree with your views, it's good to see that you're not part of the groupthink and you can put forward your points eloquently...
Thanks. I appreciate you saying/writing that.
But that's assuming an ISP would support the different desktops. More likely, they'd only support the DEFAULT.
But, unlike the Windows alternative UIs you mention, there are many Linux distros which come with, and install, multiple desktop UIs.
Well, if normal people don't read about it or buy apps, where's the problem?
Because normal people, do, on an all to frequent basis, require tech support. Is the cable modem connection down or is it an OS problem? Has the user accidentally cleared/changed their password? Has some app overwritten something critical? Did the user move a file that they should not have? We've all seen it.
No other Linux company has put as much 'Linux' code back into the community as Red Hat. Can't you give them some kudos for that?
Yes I can, but they just abandoned a large group of loyal users, both individuals and businesses, and I really dislike companies that abandon their user base.
Linux is more popular in China than in any other large country. There's a growing anti-American sentiment. The Sun deal. Demand for home-grown OS and apps. And then, take into account the projection that China will have the most Net users in 2007, and that's a LOT of Linux users.
And they will probably all be trying to spam me, if the existing Chinese Internet users are an example of those to come... But, that aside, I'm not convinced that Microsoft will be willing to give up that whole market. They'd rather give away Windows just to maintain dominance and so that they can sell apps (like Office) to businesses. They are far shrewder than many people give them credit for.
However, I do think you're creating a problem where one doesn't exist with regards to desktop Linux; you can apply these issues to Windows too.
I wish that I could agree with the former and I do agree, to some extent, with the latter. On the former, there clearly is a problem. Hardware vendors don't, by and large, support Linux. Nor do most mainstream software vendors. If you want to do your taxes, you're not going to go out and buy a Linux version of TaxCut. Nor will you find Linux versions of most games. ISPs won't support Linux. Very few home computers are sold with Linux. And when something goes wrong in Linux, the "fix" often involves typing commands that look suspiciously lik modem line noise to fix the problem.
While Windows has more than its share of warts, it's an issue of economics. My ISP can create three tech support scripts for the three major versions of Windows (98/2000/XP). They can train their staff about the vagaries of Windows and the ins and outs. Once that's done, they cover about 90% of the market. Is that 3% of the desktop market running Linux worth the hassle of creating more scripts, more training courses for support personnel, etc.? Probably not. For that reason, Linux has to be BETTER than Windows just to gain a foothold. It must be self-healing and require almost no support.
Shame about your unbearable ego, then. Wow, you must be great fun at parties -- that's if you go to any, of course.
If you were interested in making friends, you wouldn't be posting anonymously. Besides, what do my social graces have to do with the strength of my arguments?
Yeah, because ISPs can't support multiple releases of Windows and MacOS X cost-effectively, right? *sigh*
Windows 98, 2000, XP. That's it. Three releases of Mandrake, three releases of RedHat, three releases of SUSE, three releases of Lindows, three releases of Slackware. Now multiply that times two (KDE and Gnome) and you're up to 30 different basic support scripts plus the three that already existed for Windows.
Erm, and you can do that with desktop Linux distros now.
Quit taking things out of context. I pointed that out to counter your earlier argument that "people will buy apps for, read about and support Sun JDS. Or Red Hat Desktop. Or SUSE." Normal people don't read about the OS on their computer or buy many (if any) apps for it.
On this note, how would you improve this situation?
United Linux was the smartest effort towards resolving the situation thus far. There need to be standards for tools, directories, etc. A support person has to know, beyond any doubt, that a given tool exists, where it exists, etc. Binary compatability is an absolute must-have. A company needs to be able to build an app that runs on any "standard" Linux without recompilation. But the main thing that has to happen is for the Linux community to consider the needs of average users and not demand four browsers, three e-mail clients, etc. Pick a standard UI, browser, e-mail client, etc. and only install others in an "advanced setup" mode.
Please keep up with developments before you make comments...
I was aware of RHEL for their enterprise customers, but don't care about it. I hate RedHat. I think that they are scumballs and I look forward to them failing so that more reputable Linux vendors can take their customers. Why should I care about their Enterprise offering when they just killed off their mainstream desktop offering when so many individuals and businesses relied on it?
Ratios aren't important at this stage, unless you're desperately trying to justify your argument. What matters is this: by 2007 there will be more Chinese online than Americans. A large percentage of these, and perhaps the majority, will be using Linux. That is MASSIVE.
LOL!!! First you say that "ratios aren't important" and then talk about "a large percentage" and "the majority". What do you think that those terms represent if not ratios? How can you say that a "large percentage of them" will be using Linux when the biggest sale you can point to is 1 million copies? How do you extrapolate from that agreement that Linux will become wildly popular in China?
I get the feeling that when Linux reaches 20% market share, there'll still be people like yourself talking about "insignificant" and "never going anywhere".
In the last few days, I've downloaded Mandrake 10.0 and Linspire 4.5 (AKA Lindows). I stay on top of the Linux market, have deployed Linux servers, have Linux installed on machines at my home, and use it at my work. I have a bootable Linux distro on a flash drive that I take to work. I also run Windows 2000, XP, and 2003 Server Enterprise Edition. I know the strengths and weaknesses of both Windows and Linux, from both a technical and a marketing standpoint. You're trying to paint me as some kind of anti-Linux, pro-Microsoft fanatic -- and nothing could be further from the truth.
But if you *do* ship only one browser, people will flame you down for being insecure. And then you *still* lose.
Agreed. That's the predicament in which Linux publishers find themselves. Unlike Microsoft, they cannot decide to ship just one browser. If they do, they lose many of the Linux faithful -- and that's, for all intents and purposes, their sales staff. Linux is sold by word of mouth recommendations. But keep supplying three or four browsers, three e-mail clients, four music players, etc., and you limit your penetration into the mass-market. I don't have a solution -- just observations.
I am a computer professional with over 20 years of professional software development and support experience. My views are, to be immodest, insightful and well-reasoned. You would be well-served to learn from what I have to say rather than assuming that you know better.
Instead, people will buy apps for, read about and support Sun JDS. Or Red Hat Desktop. Or SUSE.
How will grandma buy apps for SUSE when she can't configure it to work with her ISP, her ISP won't provide support (because the ISP can't support multiple releases of Linux OSs cost-effectively), has no idea what "SUSE" is, and can't get support when she calls the company that sold her the computer? Do you think that the average Windows user 'reads about' Windows? Heck no. They turn on the computer and click the icons for installed apps.
There will be three or four major distros (also known as 'choice' in a non-Microsoft world), all straightforward to support.
Says who? How will this magically happen? I've not seen any ISPs embracing any of the existing distros for end-user desktops. I've not seen major companies that publish game software, tax preparation software, or mapping software choose flavors of linux to support. There aren't hardware vendors who are, en masse, going to a given few distros of Linux.
It's not hard to understand.
Apparently it is.
If you phone an ISP, they'll typically ask you: "Win98, 2000 or XP?" etc.
So let's pretend that you are right and that there are three major distros of Linux. Each one of those has multiple releases in common usage. Each of the releases probably has given the users the choice of, at the least, KDE or Gnome UIs. Just start doing the math and you'll see that there is a lot more work.
Similarly, driver disks cater for the differences, as do books. So if everyone was using their own hand-crafted LFS or Gentoo installation, you may have a point, but as Linux hits the mainstream desktop it's not going that way. There are clearly defined products and releases, and only a few major players, so it's not remotely a problem for support.
Again, three or four distros times probably three or four active releases per distro times (at least) two GUI front-ends... The numbers are not pretty.
Finally, your "no significant penetration onto end-user desktops" remark is curious.
Apparently you have not been reading the mainstream press. According to a May 21 ZDNet article
Worse than that, you haven't even been reading the pro-Linux press, such as this articlefrom LinuxPlanet on May 6 in which they state that
Sounds pretty grim to me.
Sun has recently signed a deal to supply 1 million Chinese desktops with Linux.
There are 1.3-1.4 billion people in China. That means one copy of Sun-supplied Linux per 1,300 - 1,400 people.
Walmart is selling machines with Linux.
They are also selling Depends adult diapers, but I don't think that means that Depends is about to become a a major player in the undergarment market.
Red Hat has just launched a new desktop offering.
No, Red Hat just killed off their boxed desktop offering and is letting connected geeks beta test for them with Fedora.
IBM and Novell are converting all staff to Linux desktops.
And what percentage of the desktop PCs in the world are owned by IBM and
One of the major strengths of Linux is the lack of a monoculture. Most distributions come with 3 or 4 web browsers, e-mail programs, and media players etc.
..." It's why ISPs can support users cost-effectively. The lack of consistency in Linux, the fact that each major distro installs three, four, or more browsers rather than one, and the lack of recognition of this as a problem is why, despite being free (as in beer), it still has no significant penetration onto end-user desktops.
Spoken like a true, myopic computer geek. It's the "monoculture" of Windows that makes it usable by the average person. It's what makes it possible to publish books with screen shots. It's what allows the tech-savvy family member to tell his parents and siblings to "click on file and then click on
Your argument is wrong on so many counts, so I'll just pick on a few of them here.
- Company X makes widgets.
- Company X gets a lot of spam.
- Company X's employees and IT staff spend a lot of time dealing with the spam.
- Company X has to hire additional IT staff to combat the spam software.
- Company X is forced to raise the price on widgets to pay for the man-hours and additional staff that deals with spam.
- Sales of Company X's widgets decline due to the higher prices.
- Company X goes into the red, losing money.
- Company X lays off workers.
- Those workers, who, unlike the spammer, did nothing wrong, have families to feed, too.
Consumers are paying more for most consumer goods (especially Internet access) because almost all companies are dealing with spam problems. That means lower sales of luxury items, layoffs at stores, etc. Republicans are quick to claim that taxes drive down consumer and business spending, but what do they think that the "spam tax" is doing to the economy?Would you hesitate to turn a mugger in to the police because his family might go hungry? Would you not turn in some guy who robbed a liquor store because he is doing it to feed his family? Just because the U.S. government won't jail spammers doesn't mean that the spammers should not go to jail. If China jails them, then I will applaud China.
There is something wrong when one has to resort to "identity theft" laws in order to jail someone for sending out over 800 million spam e-mails.
But, this trial and sentencing does prove wrong the commonly voiced arguments that anti-spam laws can't work because it will be impossible to catch spammers and because they are outside of the U.S. This guy spammed. He was in the U.S. He was caught, tried, and jailed. The only flaw is that they didn't have an anti-spam law under which to prosecute him.
We are talking about the same guy, right
I meant to say Jim Lehrer but somehow the synapses misfired. Sorry for wasting bandwidth and your time.
Thank you for an interesting and insightful take on all of this.
News itself is inherantly biased: what's newsworthy where you live might not be newsworthy where I live.
Don't confuse newsworthiness with bias. While a murder of a street prostitute in Nigeria might not be of interest to an American audience, that's far different than slanted and/or purposely distorted coverage of a news story.
You, fmaxwell, as a seemingly intelligent and erudite person, are capable of watching a news broadcast on Fox News without mindlessly buying every word as the gospel truth, aren't you?
While I agree that blatant bias is easily recognized, it's the subtle bias which is much harder to recognize and more dangerous. It's the right-wing pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and Ann Coulter who claim to be reporting the "news" when, in fact, they are often lying about such basic things as numbers, percentages, chronology, and even events.
This fixation with "biased" news - or, at least, this fixation with claiming that the other guy's news is biased - seems to be an American thing.
Perhaps it is, but I think that it is a good fixation. It's desirable to have television, radio, and print journalists who make efforts to be even-handed and fair. We have U.S. journalists, like Tim Russert, who are admired for their unbiased coverage. They don't give anyone a "break." They don't shy away from covering scandals even if it involves a person or party that they support. They don't pull punches or ask "softball questions." If you watch their coverage of a story or issue, you are presented with factual accounts and specific information.
I think what angers so many of us is Fox's claim that they are "fair and balanced" when, in fact, they are more slanted than any other major new broadcast source.
With all due respect, I don't remember it the same way as you do. Disney just said that they or their subsidiary Miramax wouldn't distribute the film, but that Michael Moore was free to find another distributor for it.
Miramax bankrolled the picture and was then ordered by their parent company, Disney, to not distribute it. That leaves Michael Moore scrambling to find a distributor in time to let the movie affect the outcome of the 2004 Presidential election.
Stridently crying "censorship" in all the newspapers in the last weeks before he took Farenheit 9/11 to Cannes certainly didn't do him any disfavours.
Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-New Jersey) was so appalled by Disney's behavior that he asked the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation for a hearing on what he termed a "disturbing pattern of politically based corporate censorship of the news media and the entertainment industry." It sounds like it was not just Michael Moore calling this censorship.
That's a very naive thing to believe.
No, that's a goal to which all news organizations should aspire.
I would contend that all news is biased, and it is incumbent on you, as an intelligent consumer, to identify this bias and take it into account.
How do you identify bias? How do you know what has been left out? How do you know that the station to which you are listening purposely picked an inarticulate person to voice one side of an argument? How do you know that the TV station that you are watching carefully chose camera angles which hid, or minimized, the protestors? How do you know that they chose to report only some of the numbers from a poll because those omitted numbers put their side in a bad light?
And I wish Hannity, Limbaugh, et al. would admit that they are part of "the media." But they won't, because then they would no longer be able to perpetuate the myth of the "liberal" media.
Hear, hear! Limbaugh is heard on how many stations? Fox has how many affiliates? How much of talk radio is dominated by the right? We've got Michael Moore winning awards for his film and Disney trying to prevent the film's distribution.
HAHAHA!
Enjoy your laugh, doofus, because I'm about to make you look truly foolish.
Citing Al Franken as an unbiased news source. Good one.
I did not claim that he was "unbiased news source", did I? Nor did Al Franken claim to be unbiased news source. There is a big difference between providing political commentary/analysis and reporting the news. News reports are supposed to be unbiased. Political commentary/analysis is not.
If you try saying that Alan Colmes isn't liberal (besides brilliant), then you either have your head up your ass, have never heard of Alan Colmes, or simply have blind hatred of Fox News
Alan Colmes is the Sean Hannity's equivalent of the Washington Generals. He's a punching bag who's put up there to make it look like a contest. Al Franken skewered Colmes in his book Lie and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. I suggest that you read that before trotting out Colmes as evidence that Fox is not biased.
if you leave a loaded gun on your porch and shout out from the rooftop that it is there for the taking, you have demonstrated a criminal recklessness, an indifference to consequences, that goes far beyond simple negligence.
Then what is it? It's not accessory to murder. It's not a conspiracy to commit murder. And that's what I was refuting.
Plausible tenability
I said "plausible deniability."
never plays as well in court as it does on Slashdot. particularly when it appears you constructed an unusual and elaborate defensive structure well in advance of your arrest.
It's not a matter of something "playing well." It's a matter of the prosecution proving their case that you -- not your neighbor and not some guy with WiFi in his car -- committed a crime. The burden of proof is on the prosecution. It doesn't matter what they think of your motives for turning off security on your WiFi connection. You aren't being tried for evil motives or behaving suspiciously. You're being tried for committing a specific crime and it's their responsibility to prove your guilt.
As an aside, I would hardly call unsecured WiFi networks "unusual" or "elaborate."
Posting a public announcement is not conspiring. If you publish a web page showing how to build a bomb, have you entered into a "conspiracy" with everyone who builds a bomb based on information on your web page? If you write an article stating that a specific jewelry store has no working burglar alarm, are you an accessory if it is burglarized? The chilling effect on free speech given your world view would be horrifying.
There's nothing in conspiracy law that requires the communication to be secret.
As you can see from the definition, for there to be a conspiracy, there must be a secret dialog between two or more parties, not a public announcement by one.
Now, he says, "I'm not deliberately opening my network to hackers and miscreants bent on downloading copyrighted material. I'm simply choosing not to secure it."
However, that's blatantly false. He said he "turned off all the security features of [his] wireless router", not never secured it.
No, it is not blatantly false. He is not deliberately opening his network for the purpose of use by others in illegal acts. He is simply opening it and letting others use it as they see fit.
He said he did this so that he has "no way to be certain what kinds of songs, movies and pictures will be downloaded by other people using my IP address," which shows he clearly contemplated people using it illegally.
Contemplating that such could happen does not make one an accessory -- even in this post 9/11, Ashcroft-run utopia in which we live.
BSA = Boy Scouts of America?
BSA = Business Software Alliance