Is suspect that it's more down to someone in an AV lab *cough* Sophos *cough* frantically typing a virus report before they had an coffee in an attempt to get the first announcement. They just didn't hit the "E" key hard enough the first time round. Which would be why it's called "Bagle" and not named for a bread product "bagel", or a missing space probe "beagle" as the writer clearly intended.
The *proper* way to do it is to delete everything from the server *except* for their customer's credit card and any other personal details. Those you put into the index.html file for the entire world to see and use as they see fit. It kills two birds with one stone you see; the spammer gets bitten, but more importantly a whole bunch of people might think twice before responding to a spam which is likely to be far more effective in the long run.
Indeed. I thought that MSN had simply mistakenly put NASA instead of NSA and the poster hadn't picked up on it too. The clincher however is the reference to "Ames Research Center" which is indeed a NASA facility. I guess they don't want Marvin the Martian visiting the US anytime soon...
The BBC has the news as the lead article under the Techology section, which means it's linked off the front page. It's largely a "state of play" article, but does makes the point that SCO has already tried this in the US and had few takers and is yet to sue. Doesn't take much reading between the lines to see they are saying "don't bother paying", without compromising their neutrality...;)
Is there a p2p user interest organization in existence?
Not a specific one that I am aware of, but having someone there to represent the users would be a good idea. There are several more general bodies that could fill the role; the EFF has touched on this area in the past for example. Two other groups with a vested interest that spring to mind are the artists themselves, from both sides of the P2P debate obviously. Also having representatives of those using P2P for 100% legitimate reasons like distros that release their ISOs via BitTorrent to provide the counterpoint to the "P2P is synonymous with copyright infringement" argument you *know* the media corporations are going to use.
I guess letting companies having biometric information could be the beginning of a long and slippery slope, but I can't really see a worst case scenario... someone care to visualize it for me?
The scene in "Minority Report" where Tom Cruise was getting bombarded with personalised advertising as a result of a retina scan? It might be OK if you've just bought a shiny new Lexus, but it's not so OK if you've just bought a "marital aid"...
The Studios agree to pay up to the artists, then increase the price of the CDs to cover costs (plus a small additional margin).
More artists ask for their CDs to be "copy protected" so they can get more money.
More consumers get annoyed with CDs that won't play properly and do strange things to their computers.
More consumers stop buying CDs and switch to on-line alternatives, and not necessarily those with the RIAA "seal of approval".
All of the above.
The Studios realise that it was a bad idea and stop using copy protection.
I just don't see that last option being the one that happens at all and nothing good will come out of this.
And for the otherside of the coin, checkout this story at the Register. Here in the UK, where RIAA style lawsuits and hitsquads have yet to make their mark, CD sales have "rocketed" up 7.6% last year according to Music Week. Interesting tagline comment about how this might delay the UK launch of iTunes too.
I have to agree, much as I hate Verisign's modus operandi, I can't recall any instances where, for example, the entire.com heirarchy was off line. From my understanding of the planned implementation of RFID, Verisign is only going to be providing resolution up to RFID's equivalent of ".com" and it's up to the other "registrars" to support their own RFID domains.
If you want to use Verisign instead of one of the alternates to register and manage your RFID domain then I'll be offering no sympathy if the level of service and support is akin to that of their handling of domains. But Verisign, or rather the erstwhile Network Solutions, has provided essentially bulletproof TLD resolution and I'm sure they are capable of doing the same for RFID.
I thought looking at the whole of creation, as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, was supposed to screw with my mind or something. It doesn't appear to have done so, and I can't see any fairy cake either... I'm sooo disappointed!
Pretty cool picture though; It'll look real nice alongside the Unix Family Tree on the wall. If only there was a landscape version... time for some PostScript hacking I guess.
I wonder how close that June 30th 2006 date is to Microsoft's internal expectations of when Longhorn is going to ship. Why not June 30th 2005 for example; that's still 18 months away which should be more than enough for everyone who is going to upgrade to have done so, and at that point XP will have been shipping for almost four years to account for the "upgrade when I get a new PC" crowd.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but they only have to give documentation to IBM today, the chances of it being read and making Slashdot before the next court session on the 23rd are slim. The only way this *will* make Slashdot today is if SCO fails to deliver any documentation at all, in which case it's likely to be game over, insert coin.
I've just finished reading this at Groklaw too, and for me the interesting point was the bit about SCO's "Big Linux Target" being a user of Linux *and* holder of a commercial Unix license. As noted by Groklaw, unless this is just Darl shooting his mouth off again, then Google is kind of off the hook. It would also imply that SCO is changing their story again, from "if you use Linux, we can sue" to "if you use Linux and have a commercial UNIX license, we can sue".
Never mind Google's IPO, what's even closer is SCO's show and tell in the IBM case on Monday. I suspect that SCO's clarification that the rumours about Google are true is just to give them a positive spin going into the markets on Monday morning so that soften the fall that's going to come later in the day...
The BBC covered this yesterday as well, you can find the story here, but it's mainly financial news. It very sad, but a lot of the toy comapanies I grew up with (and in some cases my Dad too) are really struggling in the Internet age. Hornby seems to be the latest one trying to adapt, with an Internet enabled version of Scalextric. And I mean, *Internet enabled*, it's not just F1GP with model cars on your computer - you use the track and everything. That could be *sooo* cool!
Just a quick clarification, but an "SPF record" is not, strictly speaking, a DNS TXT record type. The SPF RFC defines a new DNS record type called as you might expect, "SPF" which is the preferred way of doing things:
@ IN SPF "<spf string>"
However, in order to get things off the ground without having to wait for DNS servers and tools to support a new record type, it is also possible to publish the same information in a TXT record:
@ IN TXT "<spf string>"
If your DNS server supports the SPF *type*, then you should ideally use that and provide the TXT record as a backup. Query tools that properly support SPF will probably look for the SPF type first and then requery for TXT on a failure, but it's up to the developer of course.
This is not going to work for domains that have dynamic IP addresses.
SPF lets you specify ranges in CIDR format, so you just need to include the IP pools that the hosts that actually send mail might end up in. Or just set them all to use the ISP's smarthosts and use their static IPs in your domain's SPF records. There's even a very nice wizard to create your SPF records with and get a feel for what's possible.
I can think of one, just ONE example where this is the case. The Google Toolbar. It's an incredibly useful thing if you can use it (only works with IE5.5 or better) but it does contain one optional feature what might be classed as "Spyware". Specifically, in return for providing Google with some details of your browsing habits you gain access to some PageRank related features. Google does however provide extensive clickthroughs and documentation that detail just what this entails, which is more than most of the crap out there with a penchant to phone home.
Some even earlier think from my fortune file. Odd that this should come up today!:
Earl Wiener, 55, a University of Miami professor of management science,
telling the Airline Pilots Association (in jest) about 21st century aircraft:
"The crew will consist of one pilot and a dog. The pilot will nurture and feed the dog. The dog will be there to bite the pilot if he touches anything.
Yes, it's security through obscurity, and not very opaque obscurity at that, but that's not really the point. It's more of a deterrant to stop the casual cracker, rather than the determined one. It's kind of like not responding to ICMP pings; by default a lot of port scanners don't scan an IP that fails to respond to a ping. Blocking pings prevents full port scans from those that don't know any better. It also prevents scans from those that do know about this, but work to the assumption that if you are blocking pings, then you probably have a firewall and who knows what else and move onto the softer target a few IPs along.
Besides, for me at least, wireless isn't about performance, it's about the convenience factor. I like being able to take my laptop out into the garden when the sun shines without a 20m CAT5 umbilical cable shoved through a window!
No, I don't mean false positives inflating the figures, I mean how many of those were not actually spam, but the delivery status notifications *caused* by spam? AoL, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. are some of the most frequently Joe-Jobbed and spoofed addresses I see in my spam folder. That means any bad email addresses will generate a DSN failure unless this has been disabled by the remote mail admin (which is contra to the SMTP spec). If AoL blocks these too (and why not) then the figures will be inflated , perhaps significantly.
Still, it's a nice attention grabbing figure to help raise public awareness of the issue, and I have zero issues with that.
Let's simplify things by a factor of 1 million, and say I have a CD of ten addresses, and borrowing from an earlier explaination I'll use letters instead of addresses:
A, B, B, C, C, D, D, E, F, F
There are six unique addresses (A-F)
Two addresses appear once (A and E)
Four addresses appear twice (B, C, D and F)
Scaling this back to the CD context, for 10m addresses you have a total of 6m individual addresses, 4m appear elsewhere in the list (from 2 to 14 times) and there are more email addresses appearing twice than once. Capiche?
I have a hard time remembering who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.
It's easy! The bad guys use lawyers as offensive weapons and the good guys frantically run around trying to find a lawyer who is prepared to act as a defensive weapon before the first set of lawyers hit.
Maybe I should elaborate on that "current incarnation" bit for the media businesses. I don't think either the music or movie businesses are doomed; someone will always be making and distributing music and film. It's more the methods they use interact with the customer that I think must change.
Downloading a tune (5MB), or even an entire album (60MB), over P2P is nothing from a technical point of view; it must happen millions of times a day. The only issue is that of copyright infringement, which seems to have the same level of stigma attached as driving over the speed limit. Yes, it's wrong, some people frown on it and it does get enforced, but the odds are definately on the side of the infringer getting away with it. It's also fairly obvious that the music industry has so far completely failed to find a means of meeting their requirements for Internet distribution. The objective might be simple - the distribution of music to users with minimal potential for copyright breaches at a profit, but I don't envy the chances of finding a solution.
For the movie industry, it's a little more tricky and not currently so pressing. As stated above I can get a complete album for about 60MB of bandwidth if I wish. A movie sets me back about 3GB if I want a comparable level of quality to the music; that's a 50:1 ratio. When the typical P2P user perceives the 'cost' of bearing that ratio is low enough, then the movie industry starts to follow the music industry. Increasing bandwidth, waiting a little longer for the download and perhaps a more satisfying experience as the payoff all help to lower that 'cost' perception.
The movie industry does have some cards to play that the music industry didn't even have though. Obviously having more time is a big one, more time in which the problem may well be solved for them if the music industry finds a solution they can use as well. It's also a different 'market', which many people overlook; for the music industry the CD is *the* end-user product, backed up with licensing and a limited merchandising market (posters etc). For the movie industry the licensing, especially to cinemas etc., is the product and everything else is tie-in merchandising. And boy, do they have more options on the merchandise: DVD sales and rentals are obvious, but the potential for licensed posters, toys and collectibles etc. is *vastly* larger.
Is it enough to stop them following the same path as the music industry? Perhaps; I certainly don't have many of the issues with the movie business that I do with the music business. Is it going to mean they don't have to change their business model though? I'd say not, but of course, only time will tell.
Slashdot Mirror
Is suspect that it's more down to someone in an AV lab *cough* Sophos *cough* frantically typing a virus report before they had an coffee in an attempt to get the first announcement. They just didn't hit the "E" key hard enough the first time round. Which would be why it's called "Bagle" and not named for a bread product "bagel", or a missing space probe "beagle" as the writer clearly intended.
The *proper* way to do it is to delete everything from the server *except* for their customer's credit card and any other personal details. Those you put into the index.html file for the entire world to see and use as they see fit. It kills two birds with one stone you see; the spammer gets bitten, but more importantly a whole bunch of people might think twice before responding to a spam which is likely to be far more effective in the long run.
I could believe a typo too, but not numerous identical ones.
Indeed. I thought that MSN had simply mistakenly put NASA instead of NSA and the poster hadn't picked up on it too. The clincher however is the reference to "Ames Research Center" which is indeed a NASA facility. I guess they don't want Marvin the Martian visiting the US anytime soon...
The BBC has the news as the lead article under the Techology section, which means it's linked off the front page. It's largely a "state of play" article, but does makes the point that SCO has already tried this in the US and had few takers and is yet to sue. Doesn't take much reading between the lines to see they are saying "don't bother paying", without compromising their neutrality... ;)
Not a specific one that I am aware of, but having someone there to represent the users would be a good idea. There are several more general bodies that could fill the role; the EFF has touched on this area in the past for example. Two other groups with a vested interest that spring to mind are the artists themselves, from both sides of the P2P debate obviously. Also having representatives of those using P2P for 100% legitimate reasons like distros that release their ISOs via BitTorrent to provide the counterpoint to the "P2P is synonymous with copyright infringement" argument you *know* the media corporations are going to use.
The scene in "Minority Report" where Tom Cruise was getting bombarded with personalised advertising as a result of a retina scan? It might be OK if you've just bought a shiny new Lexus, but it's not so OK if you've just bought a "marital aid"...
- The Studios agree to pay up to the artists, then increase the price of the CDs to cover costs (plus a small additional margin).
- More artists ask for their CDs to be "copy protected" so they can get more money.
- More consumers get annoyed with CDs that won't play properly and do strange things to their computers.
- More consumers stop buying CDs and switch to on-line alternatives, and not necessarily those with the RIAA "seal of approval".
- All of the above.
- The Studios realise that it was a bad idea and stop using copy protection.
I just don't see that last option being the one that happens at all and nothing good will come out of this.And for the otherside of the coin, checkout this story at the Register. Here in the UK, where RIAA style lawsuits and hitsquads have yet to make their mark, CD sales have "rocketed" up 7.6% last year according to Music Week. Interesting tagline comment about how this might delay the UK launch of iTunes too.
If you want to use Verisign instead of one of the alternates to register and manage your RFID domain then I'll be offering no sympathy if the level of service and support is akin to that of their handling of domains. But Verisign, or rather the erstwhile Network Solutions, has provided essentially bulletproof TLD resolution and I'm sure they are capable of doing the same for RFID.
Pretty cool picture though; It'll look real nice alongside the Unix Family Tree on the wall. If only there was a landscape version... time for some PostScript hacking I guess.
I wonder how close that June 30th 2006 date is to Microsoft's internal expectations of when Longhorn is going to ship. Why not June 30th 2005 for example; that's still 18 months away which should be more than enough for everyone who is going to upgrade to have done so, and at that point XP will have been shipping for almost four years to account for the "upgrade when I get a new PC" crowd.
Here's hoping.
I've just finished reading this at Groklaw too, and for me the interesting point was the bit about SCO's "Big Linux Target" being a user of Linux *and* holder of a commercial Unix license. As noted by Groklaw, unless this is just Darl shooting his mouth off again, then Google is kind of off the hook. It would also imply that SCO is changing their story again, from "if you use Linux, we can sue" to "if you use Linux and have a commercial UNIX license, we can sue".
Never mind Google's IPO, what's even closer is SCO's show and tell in the IBM case on Monday. I suspect that SCO's clarification that the rumours about Google are true is just to give them a positive spin going into the markets on Monday morning so that soften the fall that's going to come later in the day...
The BBC covered this yesterday as well, you can find the story here, but it's mainly financial news. It very sad, but a lot of the toy comapanies I grew up with (and in some cases my Dad too) are really struggling in the Internet age. Hornby seems to be the latest one trying to adapt, with an Internet enabled version of Scalextric. And I mean, *Internet enabled*, it's not just F1GP with model cars on your computer - you use the track and everything. That could be *sooo* cool!
However, in order to get things off the ground without having to wait for DNS servers and tools to support a new record type, it is also possible to publish the same information in a TXT record:
If your DNS server supports the SPF *type*, then you should ideally use that and provide the TXT record as a backup. Query tools that properly support SPF will probably look for the SPF type first and then requery for TXT on a failure, but it's up to the developer of course.
SPF lets you specify ranges in CIDR format, so you just need to include the IP pools that the hosts that actually send mail might end up in. Or just set them all to use the ISP's smarthosts and use their static IPs in your domain's SPF records. There's even a very nice wizard to create your SPF records with and get a feel for what's possible.
Ars Technica: Windows XP SP2 Beta first look: Page 1 -- (1/2004)
2004 pages! Now that's thorough! Oh, wait a minute...
I can think of one, just ONE example where this is the case. The Google Toolbar. It's an incredibly useful thing if you can use it (only works with IE5.5 or better) but it does contain one optional feature what might be classed as "Spyware". Specifically, in return for providing Google with some details of your browsing habits you gain access to some PageRank related features. Google does however provide extensive clickthroughs and documentation that detail just what this entails, which is more than most of the crap out there with a penchant to phone home.
Besides, for me at least, wireless isn't about performance, it's about the convenience factor. I like being able to take my laptop out into the garden when the sun shines without a 20m CAT5 umbilical cable shoved through a window!
Still, it's a nice attention grabbing figure to help raise public awareness of the issue, and I have zero issues with that.
A, B, B, C, C, D, D, E, F, F
There are six unique addresses (A-F)
Two addresses appear once (A and E)
Four addresses appear twice (B, C, D and F)
Scaling this back to the CD context, for 10m addresses you have a total of 6m individual addresses, 4m appear elsewhere in the list (from 2 to 14 times) and there are more email addresses appearing twice than once. Capiche?
It's easy! The bad guys use lawyers as offensive weapons and the good guys frantically run around trying to find a lawyer who is prepared to act as a defensive weapon before the first set of lawyers hit.
Downloading a tune (5MB), or even an entire album (60MB), over P2P is nothing from a technical point of view; it must happen millions of times a day. The only issue is that of copyright infringement, which seems to have the same level of stigma attached as driving over the speed limit. Yes, it's wrong, some people frown on it and it does get enforced, but the odds are definately on the side of the infringer getting away with it. It's also fairly obvious that the music industry has so far completely failed to find a means of meeting their requirements for Internet distribution. The objective might be simple - the distribution of music to users with minimal potential for copyright breaches at a profit, but I don't envy the chances of finding a solution.
For the movie industry, it's a little more tricky and not currently so pressing. As stated above I can get a complete album for about 60MB of bandwidth if I wish. A movie sets me back about 3GB if I want a comparable level of quality to the music; that's a 50:1 ratio. When the typical P2P user perceives the 'cost' of bearing that ratio is low enough, then the movie industry starts to follow the music industry. Increasing bandwidth, waiting a little longer for the download and perhaps a more satisfying experience as the payoff all help to lower that 'cost' perception.
The movie industry does have some cards to play that the music industry didn't even have though. Obviously having more time is a big one, more time in which the problem may well be solved for them if the music industry finds a solution they can use as well. It's also a different 'market', which many people overlook; for the music industry the CD is *the* end-user product, backed up with licensing and a limited merchandising market (posters etc). For the movie industry the licensing, especially to cinemas etc., is the product and everything else is tie-in merchandising. And boy, do they have more options on the merchandise: DVD sales and rentals are obvious, but the potential for licensed posters, toys and collectibles etc. is *vastly* larger.
Is it enough to stop them following the same path as the music industry? Perhaps; I certainly don't have many of the issues with the movie business that I do with the music business. Is it going to mean they don't have to change their business model though? I'd say not, but of course, only time will tell.