Is "sosume" really slipping into IT history already? For those that don't know, and thus get the in-joke, Apple Computers was once sued by Apple Music, the Beatles record label, over the use of the name "Apple". This was back when the Macintosh was still in the early stages of development, long before the much more recent legal spat between the two Apples over iTMS. Part of the settlement agreement that resulted was that Apple Computers would not enter into competion with Apple Music. When Apple shipped the Macintosh with audio support one of the included sound files was called "sosume" - a pun at the expense of Apple Music.
While the number does seem high, especially given the ~5:1 population ratio, it does seem quite plausible to me that it might be at least in the ballpark. Even taking into account the number of worms that have an affinity for scanning the "local network", most of my firewall hits are from other UK residents. According to my latest firewall log report, the US, China, Japan and Korea pretty much make up the rest with only odd probes from other nations - even Russia is now an also ran!
The question is, how are the UK ISP going to react, especially if our "eGovernment" fanatics bring political pressure to bear in the general election run up? I'd like to see a program of user education, faster responses in removing infected PCs from the Internet and proactive monitoring. However, I expect to see more enforced restrictions on traffic, not that I'd particularly mind seeing ISPs firewalling ports 13[579] and 445, but that is potentially an awfully slippery slope.
But you don't have to abandon SMTP completely. Something as simple as hashcash could essentially eliminate spam.
Actually, you don't have to abandon SMTP at all. The protocol has already undergone a fairly major revision with the change to ESMTP and there are very few servers left that are still SMTP only. Technically, it wouldn't be very hard to bolt a much more robust mail transfer mechanism onto SMTP in the same manner we use to deliniate SMTP and ESMTP - the mail server banner and client "HELO/EHLO". For instance you could change the ESMTP banner to include the string "ESMTP v2" instead of just "ESMTP" and compliant servers could sign on with "ALLO", while older clients can still resort to "EHLO" or even "HELO" while the deployment is underway.
Simple, huh? Unfortunately not, because politically, it would probably be a complete nightmare to actually do anything like this. The whole idea would almost certainly break apart under the weight of competing agendas from the various parties involved. I think the whole MARID fiasco proved that beyond any doubt.
I can just picture geeks driving around in red 70's Dodge Chargers shouting "Yaaahoooo" and "Yeehaaaaa"...
Erm, wouldn't geeks be more likely to be shouting "Yaaahoooo" and "Gooooogle"?;)
Even the most telephone-addicted businessman can get 5,000 minutes or more for less than $100 a month.
Yes, but you are still effectively paying $100 (or so) per month for those calls, whether you make them or not. Just because it's called "phone rental" or whatever, doesn't mean that's where the money goes. From the telcos point of view, it's the average that matters, so while theoretically everyone could max out and pay 2c per minute, in practice it's going to be higher than that.
The other side of things, is how many people *really* look at their usage to see whether they have the best plan for their needs instead of going with the herd. For instance, I used to have a mobile on a great monthly plan at ~£20/month with a sizeable number of free minutes and SMS messages included, after which they would be billed at a given rate. All well and good, except that I never used up my allowance since I would always use face-to-face, landline/VoIP and finally email/IM in preference to my mobile and the bulk of my mobile use was people calling/SMSing me. I've since switched to a pay-as-you-go plan which has cost me less than £20 so far this year, sure it's very "teenage-girl" style mobile telephony, but that £200/annum saving still buys quite a lot of beer!:)
Yeah, I just don't understand that either. What *was* the reasoning behind the US charging both the sender and recipient, instead of simply charging the entire amount to the sender? Especially since it opened up the possibility of abuse by telemarketers etc. and the resulting legislation, however effective that is. The only thing I can come up with is both telcos involved wanting to get a slice of each messages' profit or some interstate tax thing. We have multiple telcos in the EU though, and they all seem quite happy with the "sender pays all" approach, presumably on the grounds that it should all balance out in the end, and if not then costs can still be reconciled behind the scenes when negotiating the interconnects.
True, more population in less space makes it much easier for a telco to deliver services, but the charging is skewed too. In the EU we don't pay to receive calls, SMS or MMS messages, only to send them[1], while in the US people effectively get charged both to make and receive on their mobile. So, while the EU gets an additional 40% profit on a 50% increase in population they only charge once. However, since the article makes no attempt to reconcile the two charges in the US vs the single charge in the EU (which is probably impossible anyway, given the number of call plans there are), I think this is pretty much an apples and oranges comparison.
[1] The sole exception being if I were to take a UK SIM card to Spain in which case I would be billed for the international part of the call should a friend back in the UK call me. This is why the practice of buying an additional SIM when travelling abroad within the EU mentioned in the article is so popular.
Ditto, in my case the "mbox" format to be precise. I currently use Procmail to automatically CC all incoming messages to a dedicated archive file, one per month, each year in a seperate folder. Outgoing mail is also sent to the same file, although I could easily have an "infile" and an "outfile", break mail apart by topic, or whatever. For more robust long term backup purposes I simply tarball the dozen files within each directory into a file called "mail-yyyy.tar.gz" and backup as normal.
Since mbox is a pretty standard format many tools have a built in import routine or that there there will be an existing third party tool to handle any conversions at least. Failing that, it's fairly trivial to cobble together a one-off conversion tool using a scripting language, or even to batch remail each message one at a time if your new email client uses some undocumented storage format, or is an online service like GMail.
Actually, since the article says "up to a month" I guess that all it *really* means is that the US Government will get patches as soon as they are ready while every one else gets to wait for Patch Tuesday. The wording is also vague enough that this does not preclude a particularly critical patch being released to the world at large out of cycle either. I suspect selected other parties might be afforded a similar arrangement too such as large companies, those responsible for critical national infrastructure and "friendly" governments.
The obvious problem is, the wider this net is cast, then the more likely it is that one of these patches will fall into the hands of a black hat. I suspect that unless you are on Microsoft's new "A list" the chances of there being an exploit in the wild before there is a generally available patch releases just went up. I wouldn't at all be suprised to see this turn into something of an own goal for Microsoft in the long run. Especially so if more media coverage is given to unpatched and exploitable vulnerabilities since the media probably not know about the pending patches either.
I don't know about that; more like finding its proper level again. Take a look at a comparison between the NASDAQ (^IXIC) and the Dow Jones (^DJI) and you'll see what I mean.
You can find out for yourself what the criteria are as defined by Kimberley Young, and find out if you too are an addict, by taking the test (20 multiple choice questions) here. Apparently I'm not addicated to the net though, so the thing must have a flaw somewhere...
You're free to do that right now, with the legislation as it stands. The chances of you getting successfully sued in your hypothetical situation are remote because the judges concerned would probably throw the case out. I suspect though that your situation would be similar to that of Dmitri Sklyarov who was mentioned elsewhere in the thread. As long as you stay put you are fine, but pay a visit to a country more amicable to the desires of the libeled party then you may well find yourself in court.
What the media companies seem to be looking for is a precedent to publish what they want, where they want without being liable for damages if they get it wrong. I don't know about you, but I feel that investigative journalism should be about checking your information before you print and taking responsibility for any errors. It most certainly should not be a matter of publishing anything as fact and, if you get it wrong, simply shrugging your shoulders and moving on to the next sensationalist story that comes along.
That's exactly the train of thought that the media companies are trying to raise as part of their defense. However there is a big difference between saying something that is an uncomfortable truth and something that is complete fabrication, which is very likely the case here. The papers are entirely free to do both - that's what the right to free speech gives them - but what they are trying to do here is absolve themselves of any responsibilty for getting it wrong.
What they are afraid of is this case setting a precedent that would enable someone to sue for damages over an "uncomfortable truth". Suppose they truthfully claimed that a dictator was guilty of human rights atrocities in their US edition paper/website; they feel this ruling would enable that dictator to sue for damages in his own courts. Frankly, I think they are reaching an awfully long way with this - this kind of situation seems to happen every time Robert Mugabe gets a mention in the western media, and the lawsuits are hardly flying, are they? True, there are all sorts of reporting restrictions in place within Zimbabwe, but the media doesn't seem particulary worried about letting the uncomfortable truths fly every time they write a story does it?
Nor me, and based on the content of the linked articles I'd have to side with Cheickh Bangoura on this one. This case isn't about free speech at all, it's about taking responsibility for what you have said or written while using your right to free speech, which is an entirely different kettle of fish. The papers printed something that was found to be untrue by a UN investigation and would undeniably damage someone's reputation whether it was true or not. If the media companies concerned can't prove that they are in the right and the UN's investigation drew the wrong conclusion then they should be liable for damages.
Still, if the ruling is overturned, Cheickh Bangoura is of course free to make any unfounded allegations about the companies concerned and any of their employees that he sees fit. After all, he'd only be exercising his right to free speech, right?
God no! That's too close to the Temporal Wars that completely turned me off Enterprise in the first place. Can you imagine what the show would be like when *every* episode involved time travel, even without B&B at the helm? There are only two things that'll get me to watch another Trek series:
JMS gets to have a crack at his proposal since he's free(er) now that the B5 movie has fallen through.
Failing those options, or a combination of the two, I'm all for calling it a day. Permanantly. I, for one, am getting sick and tired of seeing innovative SciFi shows getting axed because they are "not Trek".
Well it kind of depends on what the problem with their 10K filing is that is causing the auditors to balk at signing off on it. If the situation clears up, the auditors sign *and* it gets filed before the hearing then it's all moot and they stay listed. On the otherhand, as of yesterday they are also late in filing their quarterly statement as well, which as far as I am aware does not require signing off by an external auditor.
Unfortunalty that's not The SCO Group. You probably meant SCOX, but since they are now delinquent in their SEC filings they've had a nice red "E" appended to their ticker symbol. The correct Yahoo! Finance page is here.
Even if they were making the somewhat idiotic assumption that all of their users were behind a properly configured firewall, so what? That makes absolutely zero provision for a potential cracker having already circumvented the firewall by other means or even the possibility that they might be an employee. Or haven't they seen any of the reports that a significant amount of computer crime is committed by aggrieved employees?
I don't think it's so much improper usage of the word "intentional" as an incorrect synonym for the term "brain dead".
It's a piece of backup software, at the very least it needs to have read access to everything it is going to be used to backup. If you are planning on doing a full system backup, that means it needs read access to the whole filesystem or it can't do it's job. That doesn't mean it needs to be running as "root" of course; ideally such a tool would be running with a dedicated user and group. On a Windows box however it's not uncommon to see backup utilities running with higher priviledges than the "administrator" account because that's the only way to sidestep things like system file protection and other tricks Microsoft uses to protect the system from abuse.
True enough, although Sun does produce a web browser called HotJava it's not exactly got a great market share. What they (mostly) do have in common however is that they write the backend applications that will be receiving the data *from* the forms. I guess it depends on which where your first priority lies; getting the form looking pretty or getting accurate and useful data into your backend systems.
Slashdot Mirror
Is "sosume" really slipping into IT history already? For those that don't know, and thus get the in-joke, Apple Computers was once sued by Apple Music, the Beatles record label, over the use of the name "Apple". This was back when the Macintosh was still in the early stages of development, long before the much more recent legal spat between the two Apples over iTMS. Part of the settlement agreement that resulted was that Apple Computers would not enter into competion with Apple Music. When Apple shipped the Macintosh with audio support one of the included sound files was called "sosume" - a pun at the expense of Apple Music.
The question is, how are the UK ISP going to react, especially if our "eGovernment" fanatics bring political pressure to bear in the general election run up? I'd like to see a program of user education, faster responses in removing infected PCs from the Internet and proactive monitoring. However, I expect to see more enforced restrictions on traffic, not that I'd particularly mind seeing ISPs firewalling ports 13[579] and 445, but that is potentially an awfully slippery slope.
Actually, you don't have to abandon SMTP at all. The protocol has already undergone a fairly major revision with the change to ESMTP and there are very few servers left that are still SMTP only. Technically, it wouldn't be very hard to bolt a much more robust mail transfer mechanism onto SMTP in the same manner we use to deliniate SMTP and ESMTP - the mail server banner and client "HELO/EHLO". For instance you could change the ESMTP banner to include the string "ESMTP v2" instead of just "ESMTP" and compliant servers could sign on with "ALLO", while older clients can still resort to "EHLO" or even "HELO" while the deployment is underway.
Simple, huh? Unfortunately not, because politically, it would probably be a complete nightmare to actually do anything like this. The whole idea would almost certainly break apart under the weight of competing agendas from the various parties involved. I think the whole MARID fiasco proved that beyond any doubt.
Isn't it obvious? In totalitarian Saudi Arabia the regime pays you!
I can just picture geeks driving around in red 70's Dodge Chargers shouting "Yaaahoooo" and "Yeehaaaaa"... Erm, wouldn't geeks be more likely to be shouting "Yaaahoooo" and "Gooooogle"? ;)
Yes, but you are still effectively paying $100 (or so) per month for those calls, whether you make them or not. Just because it's called "phone rental" or whatever, doesn't mean that's where the money goes. From the telcos point of view, it's the average that matters, so while theoretically everyone could max out and pay 2c per minute, in practice it's going to be higher than that.
The other side of things, is how many people *really* look at their usage to see whether they have the best plan for their needs instead of going with the herd. For instance, I used to have a mobile on a great monthly plan at ~£20/month with a sizeable number of free minutes and SMS messages included, after which they would be billed at a given rate. All well and good, except that I never used up my allowance since I would always use face-to-face, landline/VoIP and finally email/IM in preference to my mobile and the bulk of my mobile use was people calling/SMSing me. I've since switched to a pay-as-you-go plan which has cost me less than £20 so far this year, sure it's very "teenage-girl" style mobile telephony, but that £200/annum saving still buys quite a lot of beer! :)
Yeah, I just don't understand that either. What *was* the reasoning behind the US charging both the sender and recipient, instead of simply charging the entire amount to the sender? Especially since it opened up the possibility of abuse by telemarketers etc. and the resulting legislation, however effective that is. The only thing I can come up with is both telcos involved wanting to get a slice of each messages' profit or some interstate tax thing. We have multiple telcos in the EU though, and they all seem quite happy with the "sender pays all" approach, presumably on the grounds that it should all balance out in the end, and if not then costs can still be reconciled behind the scenes when negotiating the interconnects.
Duh! Missed a "for example" out of my footnote in the parent post. You could, of course, substitute any pair of EU countries for Spain and the UK.
[1] The sole exception being if I were to take a UK SIM card to Spain in which case I would be billed for the international part of the call should a friend back in the UK call me. This is why the practice of buying an additional SIM when travelling abroad within the EU mentioned in the article is so popular.
...here!. Not too hard, is it?
Since mbox is a pretty standard format many tools have a built in import routine or that there there will be an existing third party tool to handle any conversions at least. Failing that, it's fairly trivial to cobble together a one-off conversion tool using a scripting language, or even to batch remail each message one at a time if your new email client uses some undocumented storage format, or is an online service like GMail.
The obvious problem is, the wider this net is cast, then the more likely it is that one of these patches will fall into the hands of a black hat. I suspect that unless you are on Microsoft's new "A list" the chances of there being an exploit in the wild before there is a generally available patch releases just went up. I wouldn't at all be suprised to see this turn into something of an own goal for Microsoft in the long run. Especially so if more media coverage is given to unpatched and exploitable vulnerabilities since the media probably not know about the pending patches either.
I don't know about that; more like finding its proper level again. Take a look at a comparison between the NASDAQ (^IXIC) and the Dow Jones (^DJI) and you'll see what I mean.
That was my first thought too. Maybe we'll finally get to here some of these lines on the big screen. Or maybe not. ;)
You can find out for yourself what the criteria are as defined by Kimberley Young, and find out if you too are an addict, by taking the test (20 multiple choice questions) here. Apparently I'm not addicated to the net though, so the thing must have a flaw somewhere...
What the media companies seem to be looking for is a precedent to publish what they want, where they want without being liable for damages if they get it wrong. I don't know about you, but I feel that investigative journalism should be about checking your information before you print and taking responsibility for any errors. It most certainly should not be a matter of publishing anything as fact and, if you get it wrong, simply shrugging your shoulders and moving on to the next sensationalist story that comes along.
What they are afraid of is this case setting a precedent that would enable someone to sue for damages over an "uncomfortable truth". Suppose they truthfully claimed that a dictator was guilty of human rights atrocities in their US edition paper/website; they feel this ruling would enable that dictator to sue for damages in his own courts. Frankly, I think they are reaching an awfully long way with this - this kind of situation seems to happen every time Robert Mugabe gets a mention in the western media, and the lawsuits are hardly flying, are they? True, there are all sorts of reporting restrictions in place within Zimbabwe, but the media doesn't seem particulary worried about letting the uncomfortable truths fly every time they write a story does it?
Still, if the ruling is overturned, Cheickh Bangoura is of course free to make any unfounded allegations about the companies concerned and any of their employees that he sees fit. After all, he'd only be exercising his right to free speech, right?
Why this wasn't in the write up is beyond^W entirely to be expected given the recent track record of Slashdot editors... :P
- JMS gets to have a crack at his proposal since he's free(er) now that the B5 movie has fallen through.
- Manny Coto gets free reign *without* *any* B&B input *what-so-ever*.
Failing those options, or a combination of the two, I'm all for calling it a day. Permanantly. I, for one, am getting sick and tired of seeing innovative SciFi shows getting axed because they are "not Trek".Welcome to the Pink Sheets...
Unfortunalty that's not The SCO Group. You probably meant SCOX, but since they are now delinquent in their SEC filings they've had a nice red "E" appended to their ticker symbol. The correct Yahoo! Finance page is here.
I don't think it's so much improper usage of the word "intentional" as an incorrect synonym for the term "brain dead".
It's a piece of backup software, at the very least it needs to have read access to everything it is going to be used to backup. If you are planning on doing a full system backup, that means it needs read access to the whole filesystem or it can't do it's job. That doesn't mean it needs to be running as "root" of course; ideally such a tool would be running with a dedicated user and group. On a Windows box however it's not uncommon to see backup utilities running with higher priviledges than the "administrator" account because that's the only way to sidestep things like system file protection and other tricks Microsoft uses to protect the system from abuse.
True enough, although Sun does produce a web browser called HotJava it's not exactly got a great market share. What they (mostly) do have in common however is that they write the backend applications that will be receiving the data *from* the forms. I guess it depends on which where your first priority lies; getting the form looking pretty or getting accurate and useful data into your backend systems.