I refuse to believe that just becuase someone is a secretary, that means they must be brain dead and easily overwhelmed (they'll start to cry indeed).
If you refuse to believe that, then you obviously aren't working with secretaries. I have that unfortunate responsibility, as I do everything from desktop support up through LAN Admin and Network Engineer for my company's site. I work with secretaries, and they (generally) are cluelss. I think that perhaps 1 out of 10 here are actually competent enough to get their work done without bothering me twice a day about the same problem (because they're too thick to remember it).
Most of them are brain-dead, easily overwhelmed, and would cry if they had to learn how to use Gnome-on-Linux instead of Windows.
What this article neatly avoids mentioning is that this is the Killer App for the Echelon project. They've been scanning the communications of foreign countries for quite some time. Now they've finally admitted to having to the software to filter through the massive amount of data they acquire. It's only logical, isn't it?
The article referenced only mentions using it on TV and radio broadcasts. While I'm sure that it was probably developed and tested with TV and radio, it could just as easily be used to monitor cellular and private radio communications. This is, after all, a spy agency that we're talking about.
Now they don't need to have people whose job is to monitor the cellphone conversations of select suspected/known terrorists. Instead, they simply collect all the data and run it through OASIS. Then do a few keyword searches (using FLUENT if need be) for words like "bomb," "Iraq," "Jihad," or "assasination." They could maybe even do more complex searches (+bomb +embassy). Now that they've got a report, an agent looks over it to determine which conversations are interesting ("Did you get the bomb making supplies?" vs. "Yo! Kobe Bryant is da bomb!!!") and starts investigating.
When I was in school I took a couple law classes. That does not make me a lawyer. IANAL. Definitely am not a lawyer.
But what they always told us in the classes was that a price tag wasn't set in stone, it was merely an invitation to a potential buyer to make an offer. Sales prices are negotiated all the time, and not just on big-ticket items like houses and vehicles.
In that light, it seems to me that you could make a case for "Your honor, I wasn't hacking the system. I was merely making a counter-offer which his system accepted."
Well, the reason they had so much trouble tacking them was because they were using an invalid IP address to hack from. Or was I the only person who saw 256.x.x.x flash across the screen?
Hey, my personal opinion is that we need MORE TV shows with people screaming, "Oh no! Our cookie's been compromised!"
Seriously man...just change your browsers settings to not accept cookies, then you don't have to worry about powerful, pseudo-governmental agents being able to track down your name and address from an old cookie.
Well, let's be honest here. IANAL, but more than likely your actions here are going to largely, if not completely, dictated by your actions in the past.
Since you have indicated that you stand to make a not insignificant amount of money for this product, it would seem economically reasonable to retain a lawyer who is familiar with contract negotiation and employment contracts. To be honest, regardless of your manager's or company's good intentions (assuming they have them), this issue will eventually make it's way to the company's legal department. And they will do everything within their power to make sure that the company gets rights to the software/IP that you have created just to cover their asses.
Secondly, DO NOT WORK ON YOUR EMPLOYER'S PROJECT. Do not consult, brainstorm, collaborate, talk about, listen to discussions about, or otherwise become in any way involved (even peripherally) with your employer's project. Don't do anything that could result in cross-pollenization of your products. What you do on their time could very well be attributed to them when the dust settles.
Third, gather any and all documentation from your personal project's customers about the specs and requirements for this project. Make sure that you have documentation that shows that the project was something that they requested from you and that they have had you working on for some time before your employer offerered this project to you. Your lawyer will probably want it for documentation. (see step one)
Finally, get a copy of your employment agreement. You more than likely signed a non-disclosure and/or non-compete agreement when you started working for them. The wording of this agreement could be crucial in defending your rights to this project. You may have (even unknowingly) signed away your rights to any inventions made during your employment term with this company. Hopefully you have been smart enough to not work on this project on the company's time (coding, brainstorming, making contacts, negotiating with customers, etc). If you have, then it's going to be a very sticky situation. Even if provisions of your employment agreement that you agreed to are illegal or un-enforceable as they relate to this situation, it's going to take court time to prove it and get them thrown out. (see step one.)
Now here's the ugly part: even if you did no work on your side project on your employer's time, even if no provision of your employment agreement specifically prohibits this kind of work, even if you're done everything "right," you will still need a lawyer. (see step one) If you've done everything "right" you can make sure that you maintain your rights to the invention. But you'd probably still be better off to work out a deal with the company where they are either a reseller or licensed in some way. Your company stands to save a fair amount of money (in man-hours) by licensing it from you rather than paying a team to develop it from scratch without imfringing on your IP (assuming that you've copyrighted pr patented it). Also, it could be cheaper in the long-run for the company to work out a contract with your than to sue you. This is an area where your attorney (see step one) can help work out a deal that is beneficial to both sides.
I hate lawyers, but you can't really do business without them.
There used to be a great TV series on The Learning Channel called Connections that did just that. I think that the hosts name was James Burke.
At any rate, he'd start the show with a mosquito and then show how Malaria led to the development of the nuclear bomb or some such.
Well, not exactly. But he'd take two seemingly unrelated objects or events that are separated by a hundred years or more and show the chain of technological evolution that ties them both together. It was easily the best thing on TLC, and they did away with it.
The problem is that they are not selling you simply a specified bandwidth. They are selling you a line with the ability to go up to that bandwidth, with pricing on condition that you do not run servers or NAT. If you want to run servers or NAT, they offer pricing plans which allow that. It's rather disingenous to take the no-NAT pricing plan and then complain that no NAT is allowed.
That depends on how it is marketed, doesn't it? I've seen some DSL companies (Telocity for instance) that state that you can run servers from their residential service and encourage NAT.
Your first statement about selling a line with the ability to go to a specified bandwidth (rather than selling you a specified bandwidth) is a joke. I can buy a DSL line that is rated at 512kb/384kb. But that DSL company can also sell a 1.5Mb/512kb solution on that same line. So I am actually buying the advertised 512kb/384kb of bandwidth on a line that is capable of 1.5Mb/512kb.
You can't advertise a product based on what it's theoretically capable of and then expect people to know that realistically they will get much less. That's the same thing that unmetered ISP's in the UK are getting nailed for. It's the same thing that AOL got nailed for in the US. Unfortunately in the US the FTC is much less willing to get involved than the UK advertising standards authority (I think that's what they're called).
Actually, I'm 99% sure that the L2 cache on the Sparc chips have been on-die or on-module for years now. That's one of the reasons that the chips are so darned expensive.
This has been done for quite a while now in the Workstation/Server market. It wasn't untill several years ago with the Pentium Pro did Intel finally realize what it could do with a full-speed on-module L2 cache. But those chips mainly went into workstation and server products, so the higher price was justified. They didn't do well in the consumer market, so they came out with the Pentium II's that had on-module (but 1/2, then 1/3, then 1/4 speed) L2 cache. When they needed to really get back and compete in the workstation/server market, they came up with the Xeon, which was a Pentium II or III with a full-speed on-module cache ranging from 512K to 2MB.
It doesn't matter where the cache is located, on-die, on-module, or on the system board is fine, so long as it runs at the same speed as the CPU. External full-speed L2 cache was easy in the old days when CPU's ran up to 66 MHz. Now with 1.5 GHz CPU's, there really isn't reasonably priced cache memory available that runs at that speed. So to keep costs low on consumer models, they put the L2 cache into the CPU die. It decreases the yields only slightly so long as the on-die L2 isn't too big, but it's still cheaper than the alternative.
But they're not advertising based on "average use" (at least not where I live). They are advertising a full 640k or whatever connection. If a DSL company advertises to me that I can get a 640k downstream and 384k upstream (just pulling numbers out of my bum) for $49.95 a month, then I should be entitled to use every last drop of that bandwidth in any way that I see fit. After all, they are selling me (or renting me, whatever) a connection with a defined connection rate. If I want to run a web server or a Quake server or any other kind of server, then I should be allowed to. Otherwise, the DSL providers need to change their marketing so that they aren't misleading consumers about what they are providing.
As far as NAT/Firewall/IP Masqing goes, that should be OK too. After all, they are selling you bandwidth. How you use it should be up to you so long as you are not reselling it or something goofy like that. If I want to put my network up behind a NAT/Firewall device and have 3 PC's simultaneously connected PLUS a dial-up server for when I'm on the road with my laptop, then so be it. There is not increased demand on their network because I cannot exceed my badnwidth cap.
Now cable modems are a different issue because the bandwidth is shared. Time Warner's RoadRunner service (my ISP) is very careful to make no claims as to the amount of bandwidth that you get. They market it as "super fast" and "many times faster than a dialup modem." Then in the small print they point out that it's a shared system, available bandwidth varies according to utilization, etc. In that situation, I don't want Quake servers or Web servers on the network. I'm paying my $39.95/month for fast access and I don't want it torpedoed because the kid next door runs a game server, or has a web server with nude pics of his girlfriend on it (well...maybe THAT would be ok).
Someone above claimed that RoadRunner actually encouraged users to use NAT solutions. But in my RoadRunner ToS it says that it's forbidden to connect more than one machine to their service via "IP sharing". It says that if you want to connect a second machine then you HAVE to purchase a second IP address for the $10 or $15 per month that they charge. I still do it anyways because I don't eat up any more bandwidth with my PC's than I would if there were just one of them. I can only use one at a time effectively, and I live alone. So I guess that you could say that I don't agree with that provision, depending on how it's used.
Crap. I say something like this and then Napster comes out and says that they will put copyright protection on content traded through their service. The article I read even specifically mentions not being able to burn it to CD.
So maybe he's bluffing. Maybe he has no intention of doing what he's saying. Maybe his only motive is to whip the music industry (or should I say content distribution industry?) into enough of a frenzy that they finally start allowing music to be downloaded over the Internet. And maybe he actually manages to get them to do it without having to muck around with legislation that shouldn't exist anyway.
Hooray! Or not.
Just because it's available in a digital format over the Internet doesn't mean that we're any better off than we are now. What if the record companies produce a digital licensing system that requires that the music only be distributed in an SDMI or (even worse) SAP protected format? What if BMG and the others gang up on Napster and say "We will only allow you to exist if you distribute content protected with digital copyright (read: content control) devices."
Great. Now I can download it. But I can't do anything with it but play it on my PC. I can't (necessarily) copy it or make a backup of it. I can't burn it to CD for use in my home stereo (or car). I can't make a re-mix of it or alter it in any way. I can't sample it.
The DMCA will still exist. Content distributors and their cohorts (read: Microsoft) will continue to develop technology and legislation to maximize profits by reducing "piracy" and eliminating users rights. And Linux won't help you in this case if Napster is distributing SAP-protected music.
And once broadband capability becomes more widespread, video will be the next to go.
Take it one step further: Because SAP won't exist for Linux and it will be illegal to create a SAP-compatible Linux player (remember DeCSS, anyone?), what consumers are going to be using Linux? By targetting the popular applications of PC's and the Internet and trying to create proprietary de facto standards to monopolize those markets, MS is effectively going to be able to wedge Linux out of a potentially large market.
And it's nothing that MS hasn't done before. Many times over.
Times are changing. Ms is gradually realizing what people have been saying since the Internet boom in the mid-1990's: content is king. MS is going through an idealogical shift right now. They are trying to re-mold their software into content rather than applications.
Content enjoys (generally) much greater protection than a software package that people can "buy". Most computer users still don't realize that they license software and buy copies of the installation media. So by shifting to a content/subscription model, they can break end-users of the annoying false notion that they actually own it just because they paid for it. And we all know that MS will make much more money from a subscription model anyway, so it's a double-win for them.
The MS anti-trust trial is too little too late. In the new MS model, the OS is just a point of authentication and a content display device, whether that content is audio, video, or an application. Sure, it's also a tidy revenue stream now, but in pales in comparison to what the future will bring.
Wow. Sorry, I didn't mean to turn this into an anti-Microsoft rant. But for the first time this afternoon it became clear to me what MS is doing before they were doing it. And it's tied to online media distribution, which is what we are talking about. It's all part of the same thing, and I don't think that it's a coincidence that we've been seeing a lot more about this topic in the past month than in previous months.
So in summary: we are heading down a very dark and dangerous path that is the erosion of our rights, and Orrin Hatch isn't doing as much to protect them as we think he is.
I have been using remote admin tools in various jobs for several years now, and I like them. We all know that it's time-saving, and time equals money, but let me spell it out just in case.
A user calls the helpdesk with a problem. The user is clueless as to how to operate a computer, otherwise they would have the problem. This is further complicated by the fact that most users don't have the knowledge/language necessary to express the nature of their problem in a way that is meaningful to technicians.
When I worked as a level 2 technician, I would have to call the user back on 90% of the tickets that I was issued simply because I couldn't make sense of what the user had told the helpdesk. No wonder the helpdesk couldn't help them and decided to send someone 'round to check it out. So I'd spend about 10 minutes on the phone with a user working through what exactly the user was doing that caused the problem only to realize that it was a user training issue rather than a support issue. Or that it could be fixed by changing a simple setting in a configuration screen. Something the helpdesk could have done had they comprehended what gobbledygook the user was spouting.
When we finally implemented a remote admin solution we gave the helpdesk access to it. The number of tickets that were escalated to the more expensive level 2 support people decreased dramatically. There's a cost saving right there.
But in my organization when a level 2 technician had to go "deskside," they would have to take an elevator (or the stairs) to the appropriate floor, which became an issue because our company spanned 21 floors of the office building. If something couldn't be done over the phone then it could take 20 minutes in travel time (waiting for elevators, making stops along the way), not to mention the time it took for the fix.
Once we had remote admin, even in most scenarios that did escalate to level 2 we could fix them remotely by logging into the user's system with a privileged account. Software installs typically required a deskside visit. With remote admin, I could just log into the machine while the user was at lunch and when they came back it would be working. I could do 5 installs at a time if I needed to without leaving my desk.
This obviously was a time-saver, which of course equates into a money saver. And in fact we did eliminate at about 25% of our level 2 support staff due to the "reduced workload". So it definitely can save money.
We also used remote admin tools to work on PC's at remote sites (which allowed us to not even have IT people at the remote site and still service the users adequately) via the WAN. We could even remotely troubleshoot systems from salespeople in the field who were logged in via dial-up. Sure was slow, but it worked. So there is significant savings attached to it.
As a sysadmin, I use remote admin tools all the time when working on servers. Makes it very convenient, especially if I need to work on several servers simultaneously.
In your situation with it being an ASP, obviously the issues are slightly different. I've seen a couple people here who've been pretty adamant about it not being a good idea in that kind of an environment. Someone even tried to claim that ASP just means a webserver with request forms. So with that in mind, it appears that we have to define what an ASP model actually is in your case.
The ASP that I worked for generally had WAN links to all of our customers that they used to access the apps that we hosted for them. These were of course firewalled on both ends and only passed traffic between clients and the app server. In this situation it should be relatively simple to allow traffic from your remote admin tool between the client company and a specified pool of systems at your company. This can be a relatively secure solution and it would work pretty well from a technical standpoint.
But if your ASP is one that only provides browser-based front ends to an app server via the Internet, it is considerably more difficult to implement a secure remote admin tool.
And then there's the whole issue of customers letting an ASP have admin capabilities over their desktops. Or are we talking about remotely administrating the servers at their site (which their shouldn't be many of if it's an ASP model)?
So I guess the question is how are you defining yourself as an ASP? I worked for an ASP that evolved from an outsourcing model. We started as a company in 1995 with customers that outsourced their entire IT departments to us, including app servers and desktop support. When the ASP buzz hit, we shifted away from desktop support and more towards apps. We used to farm out a lot of applications via Citrix (someone else mentioned this) and we could shadow users sessions. But that's not so much remote admin since the session is executing on the app server anyway. Unless your company also is contracted to provide desktop support, it seems to me an odd way to go.
Seems to me that they would only have to remove entries in their database/index for material upon request. I mean, If Metallica says "stop trading our stuff" then just put a block on any searches that include the word Metallica and don't return results with the word Metallica in it.
This also seems to be backed up by (note especially the third sentence):
we place the burden on plaintiffs to provide notice to Napster of copyrighted works and files containing such works available on the Napster system before Napster has the duty to disable access to the offending content. Napster, however, also bears the burden of policing the system within the limits of the system. Here, we recognize that this is not an exact science in that the files are user named. In crafting the injunction on remand, the district court should recognize that Napster's system does not currently appear to allow Napster access to users' MP3 files.
If your users have unbacked up data on their machines then it's not the fault of the virus, but of your IS department. We have file servers for a reason. It's our policy that they store everything on the server. If they fail to do so, it's their fault. And to be honest, I've deleted all of the files on a users local machine on more than one occasion just to prove the point. It only takes one or two incidents before word gets out not to store anything locally.
Licensing for AV software is just the cost of doing business these days. It's another piece of software, and if you are using preventative measures like AV software with hueristic scanning, then you are much more likely to fare well in an outbreak. But most PC vendors include AV software and licenses for each system you buy anyway, so it's not really an added cost.
No kidding. Right now, I'm thinking "Hmm...wonder where I can find some pics of Anna Kournikova..." After just having shut off incoming mail at the firewall until we can get an update for our Exchange servers AV software.
I agree. An intelligent user who is familiar with precautions against virii will probably never be infected. Out of the 10+ years that I've been using MS OS's, I've only ever had a virus once. And that was long ago when a roommate of mine was bring home disks from work and using them on my PC. If you take reasonable precautions, you will be safe.
Unfortunately, the number of people in the world who fit the description above is approximately 12. Most end-users are so pig-headedly stupid that they wouldn't know a virus if it were wearing a neon sign around it's neck. We actually had one user at my company that opened 7 different messages that had the subject "I love you" on the day of the Love Bug outbreak. And this was that afternoon, when a high priority alert had been sent out by out AV response team that morning!
People are stupid. In the work environment, we have to try to protect them from themselves. Once they leave the office though, they're on their own.
Thats right they do have patents which means they were actually smart enough to get them no matter how much you want to bitch about it.
How do you figure they've monopolized it by getting their patents set as standards when they're not the committee to judge on what gets a patent and what doesn't? This is typical "I told you so speech". The fact remains, they captivated a segment of something and now there's some settling actions to pursue. Companies live for this no matter what you think, and if your too blind to think for a second most companies wouldn't dream of having themselves placed in a situation to dominate your mistaken.
Let's think about this for half a second. Do you really think that if Rambus had spoken up about the pending patents that SDRAM would have been adaopted as the JEDEC standard? No way on earth. So instead they knowingly kept quiet about it so that they could make money off of it later.
Now, I don't know what membership in JEDEC requires, but apparently one of the conditions is the disclosure of patents or pending patents that affect proposed standards. Rambus failed to do so, and is quite probably in breach of contract for failing to do so.
You state that Rambus "captivated a segment of something," but you are just plain wrong on this issue. JEDEC is who has captured the market. Rambus just came along for the ride.
Your incredilbe ignorance of this matter is only underscored by this statement that you made:
So where was your voice to strengthen your current arguement when their patents were being processed?
Patent applications are not made public until the patent has already been issued. Nobody had an opportunity to object to the pending patents. Their first opportunity came after the patents were approved. And that's exactly what they are doing now...challenging the patents.
Here's a sickening thought (and let me state that I think that Rambus is despicable anyways):
What if Rambus knew what was going on in the JEDEC meetings, but didn't disclose the substance of pending patents for fear that if the patents were not issued in the current form then their competitors would have access to the designs that they were trying to patent? If it came to pass that Rambus had to re-apply for some reason, then having a competitor who has access to your un-patented IP (via JEDEC) could seriously impact your ability to obtain the patent.
I mean, the whole reason that pending patents aren't published is to keep IP confidential before legal protection is obtained, isn't it? It almost makes sense, in a sick kind of way.
BTW, I sitll don't believe that this relieved Rambus of their obligation to disclose pending patents to JEDEC since JEDEC membership and participation was voluntary.
This is not just about RDRAM. This is about SDRAM. Rambus holds patents on technology that was incorporated into the SDRAM standard. That also means that they hold patents on technology that was incorporated into PC-100, PC-133, and DDR SDRAM.
It doesn't matter if RDRAM is used or not. If they win these lawsuits, they'll be getting royalties on SDRAM and RDRAM, and it won't matter what kind of memory you use since you'll still be paying the Rambus tax. Not to mention that memory manufacturers will end up having to cough up hundreds of millions of dollars in past royalties because they didn't just roll over and pay up when Rambus first served them notice of their patents.
Though I think that it is very telling that Rambus waited something like 5 years before contacting any memory manufacturers about the patent "infringements." Sounds to me like they were laying a trap in JEDEC sessions, and decided not to push the issue until the market was absolutely saturated with SDRAM and it was the de facto and de jur standard.
The BBB (Better Business Bureau, for those not Stateside) is not a government agency. They have no real authority whatsoever. They are a voluntary alliance of businesses who agree to maintain standards of business practice. If you file a complaint with the BBB, they can call the offending company and try to guilt them into doing "the right thing" or otherwise resolve the issue. If the offending company is a BBB member, then their member status (and bragging rights about being a member) can be jeopardized if the situation isn't resolved according to BBB procedures. If the offending company is not a BBB member, they can completely ignore them with little more than a smidgen of bad publicity.
I assume that they keep records on previous offenders and make it difficult for them to join the BBB in order to clean up their reputation.
I really like that you used the word "granularity" as the title of your post. In the business world people are realizing that granular is good. Specifics are a good thing, and by being able to see things on their finest level you can make the best decisions for your business. "One size fits all" may be true if we're talking about a size 68 dress. But a variety of sizes fits more people better.
The more information the better. Information is power, and accumulating more relevant information on any given situation will make you more authoritative (powerful) with regards to that situation. Generally speaking, an informed decision is better than an un-informed decision.
This is the direction that the world is taking in business, research, even law. But not so where parenting meets education (and I assure you, parenting *IS* education). When it comes to schools, people want cookie-cutter responses to problems. They want fast and easy solutions. They want everyone to be treated exactly equally for any perceived offense, no matter how unique the situation. I just find it incredibly ironic that our future is coming from an educational background that operates in a way that is counter to the rest of our society. And your title did a good job of summing it up.
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If you refuse to believe that, then you obviously aren't working with secretaries. I have that unfortunate responsibility, as I do everything from desktop support up through LAN Admin and Network Engineer for my company's site. I work with secretaries, and they (generally) are cluelss. I think that perhaps 1 out of 10 here are actually competent enough to get their work done without bothering me twice a day about the same problem (because they're too thick to remember it).
Most of them are brain-dead, easily overwhelmed, and would cry if they had to learn how to use Gnome-on-Linux instead of Windows.
What this article neatly avoids mentioning is that this is the Killer App for the Echelon project. They've been scanning the communications of foreign countries for quite some time. Now they've finally admitted to having to the software to filter through the massive amount of data they acquire. It's only logical, isn't it?
The article referenced only mentions using it on TV and radio broadcasts. While I'm sure that it was probably developed and tested with TV and radio, it could just as easily be used to monitor cellular and private radio communications. This is, after all, a spy agency that we're talking about.
Now they don't need to have people whose job is to monitor the cellphone conversations of select suspected/known terrorists. Instead, they simply collect all the data and run it through OASIS. Then do a few keyword searches (using FLUENT if need be) for words like "bomb," "Iraq," "Jihad," or "assasination." They could maybe even do more complex searches (+bomb +embassy). Now that they've got a report, an agent looks over it to determine which conversations are interesting ("Did you get the bomb making supplies?" vs. "Yo! Kobe Bryant is da bomb!!!") and starts investigating.
Isn't technology wonderful?
When I was in school I took a couple law classes. That does not make me a lawyer. IANAL. Definitely am not a lawyer.
But what they always told us in the classes was that a price tag wasn't set in stone, it was merely an invitation to a potential buyer to make an offer. Sales prices are negotiated all the time, and not just on big-ticket items like houses and vehicles.
In that light, it seems to me that you could make a case for "Your honor, I wasn't hacking the system. I was merely making a counter-offer which his system accepted."
Still, it's pretty dodgy practice.
Well, the reason they had so much trouble tacking them was because they were using an invalid IP address to hack from. Or was I the only person who saw 256.x.x.x flash across the screen?
(tongue-in-cheek, of course)
Hey, my personal opinion is that we need MORE TV shows with people screaming, "Oh no! Our cookie's been compromised!"
Seriously man...just change your browsers settings to not accept cookies, then you don't have to worry about powerful, pseudo-governmental agents being able to track down your name and address from an old cookie.
Well, let's be honest here. IANAL, but more than likely your actions here are going to largely, if not completely, dictated by your actions in the past.
Since you have indicated that you stand to make a not insignificant amount of money for this product, it would seem economically reasonable to retain a lawyer who is familiar with contract negotiation and employment contracts. To be honest, regardless of your manager's or company's good intentions (assuming they have them), this issue will eventually make it's way to the company's legal department. And they will do everything within their power to make sure that the company gets rights to the software/IP that you have created just to cover their asses.
Secondly, DO NOT WORK ON YOUR EMPLOYER'S PROJECT. Do not consult, brainstorm, collaborate, talk about, listen to discussions about, or otherwise become in any way involved (even peripherally) with your employer's project. Don't do anything that could result in cross-pollenization of your products. What you do on their time could very well be attributed to them when the dust settles.
Third, gather any and all documentation from your personal project's customers about the specs and requirements for this project. Make sure that you have documentation that shows that the project was something that they requested from you and that they have had you working on for some time before your employer offerered this project to you. Your lawyer will probably want it for documentation. (see step one)
Finally, get a copy of your employment agreement. You more than likely signed a non-disclosure and/or non-compete agreement when you started working for them. The wording of this agreement could be crucial in defending your rights to this project. You may have (even unknowingly) signed away your rights to any inventions made during your employment term with this company. Hopefully you have been smart enough to not work on this project on the company's time (coding, brainstorming, making contacts, negotiating with customers, etc). If you have, then it's going to be a very sticky situation. Even if provisions of your employment agreement that you agreed to are illegal or un-enforceable as they relate to this situation, it's going to take court time to prove it and get them thrown out. (see step one.)
Now here's the ugly part: even if you did no work on your side project on your employer's time, even if no provision of your employment agreement specifically prohibits this kind of work, even if you're done everything "right," you will still need a lawyer. (see step one) If you've done everything "right" you can make sure that you maintain your rights to the invention. But you'd probably still be better off to work out a deal with the company where they are either a reseller or licensed in some way. Your company stands to save a fair amount of money (in man-hours) by licensing it from you rather than paying a team to develop it from scratch without imfringing on your IP (assuming that you've copyrighted pr patented it). Also, it could be cheaper in the long-run for the company to work out a contract with your than to sue you. This is an area where your attorney (see step one) can help work out a deal that is beneficial to both sides.
I hate lawyers, but you can't really do business without them.
There used to be a great TV series on The Learning Channel called Connections that did just that. I think that the hosts name was James Burke.
At any rate, he'd start the show with a mosquito and then show how Malaria led to the development of the nuclear bomb or some such.
Well, not exactly. But he'd take two seemingly unrelated objects or events that are separated by a hundred years or more and show the chain of technological evolution that ties them both together. It was easily the best thing on TLC, and they did away with it.
The problem is that they are not selling you simply a specified bandwidth. They are selling you a line with the ability to go up to that bandwidth, with pricing on condition that you do not run servers or NAT. If you want to run servers or NAT, they offer pricing plans which allow that. It's rather disingenous to take the no-NAT pricing plan and then complain that no NAT is allowed.
That depends on how it is marketed, doesn't it? I've seen some DSL companies (Telocity for instance) that state that you can run servers from their residential service and encourage NAT.
Your first statement about selling a line with the ability to go to a specified bandwidth (rather than selling you a specified bandwidth) is a joke. I can buy a DSL line that is rated at 512kb/384kb. But that DSL company can also sell a 1.5Mb/512kb solution on that same line. So I am actually buying the advertised 512kb/384kb of bandwidth on a line that is capable of 1.5Mb/512kb.
You can't advertise a product based on what it's theoretically capable of and then expect people to know that realistically they will get much less. That's the same thing that unmetered ISP's in the UK are getting nailed for. It's the same thing that AOL got nailed for in the US. Unfortunately in the US the FTC is much less willing to get involved than the UK advertising standards authority (I think that's what they're called).
Actually, I'm 99% sure that the L2 cache on the Sparc chips have been on-die or on-module for years now. That's one of the reasons that the chips are so darned expensive.
This has been done for quite a while now in the Workstation/Server market. It wasn't untill several years ago with the Pentium Pro did Intel finally realize what it could do with a full-speed on-module L2 cache. But those chips mainly went into workstation and server products, so the higher price was justified. They didn't do well in the consumer market, so they came out with the Pentium II's that had on-module (but 1/2, then 1/3, then 1/4 speed) L2 cache. When they needed to really get back and compete in the workstation/server market, they came up with the Xeon, which was a Pentium II or III with a full-speed on-module cache ranging from 512K to 2MB.
It doesn't matter where the cache is located, on-die, on-module, or on the system board is fine, so long as it runs at the same speed as the CPU. External full-speed L2 cache was easy in the old days when CPU's ran up to 66 MHz. Now with 1.5 GHz CPU's, there really isn't reasonably priced cache memory available that runs at that speed. So to keep costs low on consumer models, they put the L2 cache into the CPU die. It decreases the yields only slightly so long as the on-die L2 isn't too big, but it's still cheaper than the alternative.
But they're not advertising based on "average use" (at least not where I live). They are advertising a full 640k or whatever connection. If a DSL company advertises to me that I can get a 640k downstream and 384k upstream (just pulling numbers out of my bum) for $49.95 a month, then I should be entitled to use every last drop of that bandwidth in any way that I see fit. After all, they are selling me (or renting me, whatever) a connection with a defined connection rate. If I want to run a web server or a Quake server or any other kind of server, then I should be allowed to. Otherwise, the DSL providers need to change their marketing so that they aren't misleading consumers about what they are providing.
As far as NAT/Firewall/IP Masqing goes, that should be OK too. After all, they are selling you bandwidth. How you use it should be up to you so long as you are not reselling it or something goofy like that. If I want to put my network up behind a NAT/Firewall device and have 3 PC's simultaneously connected PLUS a dial-up server for when I'm on the road with my laptop, then so be it. There is not increased demand on their network because I cannot exceed my badnwidth cap.
Now cable modems are a different issue because the bandwidth is shared. Time Warner's RoadRunner service (my ISP) is very careful to make no claims as to the amount of bandwidth that you get. They market it as "super fast" and "many times faster than a dialup modem." Then in the small print they point out that it's a shared system, available bandwidth varies according to utilization, etc. In that situation, I don't want Quake servers or Web servers on the network. I'm paying my $39.95/month for fast access and I don't want it torpedoed because the kid next door runs a game server, or has a web server with nude pics of his girlfriend on it (well...maybe THAT would be ok).
Someone above claimed that RoadRunner actually encouraged users to use NAT solutions. But in my RoadRunner ToS it says that it's forbidden to connect more than one machine to their service via "IP sharing". It says that if you want to connect a second machine then you HAVE to purchase a second IP address for the $10 or $15 per month that they charge. I still do it anyways because I don't eat up any more bandwidth with my PC's than I would if there were just one of them. I can only use one at a time effectively, and I live alone. So I guess that you could say that I don't agree with that provision, depending on how it's used.
Crap. I say something like this and then Napster comes out and says that they will put copyright protection on content traded through their service. The article I read even specifically mentions not being able to burn it to CD.
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http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-4850572.ht
I gotta quit my day job and become a prophet...
So maybe he's bluffing. Maybe he has no intention of doing what he's saying. Maybe his only motive is to whip the music industry (or should I say content distribution industry?) into enough of a frenzy that they finally start allowing music to be downloaded over the Internet. And maybe he actually manages to get them to do it without having to muck around with legislation that shouldn't exist anyway.
Hooray! Or not.
Just because it's available in a digital format over the Internet doesn't mean that we're any better off than we are now. What if the record companies produce a digital licensing system that requires that the music only be distributed in an SDMI or (even worse) SAP protected format? What if BMG and the others gang up on Napster and say "We will only allow you to exist if you distribute content protected with digital copyright (read: content control) devices."
Great. Now I can download it. But I can't do anything with it but play it on my PC. I can't (necessarily) copy it or make a backup of it. I can't burn it to CD for use in my home stereo (or car). I can't make a re-mix of it or alter it in any way. I can't sample it.
The DMCA will still exist. Content distributors and their cohorts (read: Microsoft) will continue to develop technology and legislation to maximize profits by reducing "piracy" and eliminating users rights. And Linux won't help you in this case if Napster is distributing SAP-protected music.
And once broadband capability becomes more widespread, video will be the next to go.
Take it one step further: Because SAP won't exist for Linux and it will be illegal to create a SAP-compatible Linux player (remember DeCSS, anyone?), what consumers are going to be using Linux? By targetting the popular applications of PC's and the Internet and trying to create proprietary de facto standards to monopolize those markets, MS is effectively going to be able to wedge Linux out of a potentially large market.
And it's nothing that MS hasn't done before. Many times over.
Times are changing. Ms is gradually realizing what people have been saying since the Internet boom in the mid-1990's: content is king. MS is going through an idealogical shift right now. They are trying to re-mold their software into content rather than applications.
Content enjoys (generally) much greater protection than a software package that people can "buy". Most computer users still don't realize that they license software and buy copies of the installation media. So by shifting to a content/subscription model, they can break end-users of the annoying false notion that they actually own it just because they paid for it. And we all know that MS will make much more money from a subscription model anyway, so it's a double-win for them.
The MS anti-trust trial is too little too late. In the new MS model, the OS is just a point of authentication and a content display device, whether that content is audio, video, or an application. Sure, it's also a tidy revenue stream now, but in pales in comparison to what the future will bring.
Wow. Sorry, I didn't mean to turn this into an anti-Microsoft rant. But for the first time this afternoon it became clear to me what MS is doing before they were doing it. And it's tied to online media distribution, which is what we are talking about. It's all part of the same thing, and I don't think that it's a coincidence that we've been seeing a lot more about this topic in the past month than in previous months.
So in summary: we are heading down a very dark and dangerous path that is the erosion of our rights, and Orrin Hatch isn't doing as much to protect them as we think he is.
I have been using remote admin tools in various jobs for several years now, and I like them. We all know that it's time-saving, and time equals money, but let me spell it out just in case.
A user calls the helpdesk with a problem. The user is clueless as to how to operate a computer, otherwise they would have the problem. This is further complicated by the fact that most users don't have the knowledge/language necessary to express the nature of their problem in a way that is meaningful to technicians.
When I worked as a level 2 technician, I would have to call the user back on 90% of the tickets that I was issued simply because I couldn't make sense of what the user had told the helpdesk. No wonder the helpdesk couldn't help them and decided to send someone 'round to check it out. So I'd spend about 10 minutes on the phone with a user working through what exactly the user was doing that caused the problem only to realize that it was a user training issue rather than a support issue. Or that it could be fixed by changing a simple setting in a configuration screen. Something the helpdesk could have done had they comprehended what gobbledygook the user was spouting.
When we finally implemented a remote admin solution we gave the helpdesk access to it. The number of tickets that were escalated to the more expensive level 2 support people decreased dramatically. There's a cost saving right there.
But in my organization when a level 2 technician had to go "deskside," they would have to take an elevator (or the stairs) to the appropriate floor, which became an issue because our company spanned 21 floors of the office building. If something couldn't be done over the phone then it could take 20 minutes in travel time (waiting for elevators, making stops along the way), not to mention the time it took for the fix.
Once we had remote admin, even in most scenarios that did escalate to level 2 we could fix them remotely by logging into the user's system with a privileged account. Software installs typically required a deskside visit. With remote admin, I could just log into the machine while the user was at lunch and when they came back it would be working. I could do 5 installs at a time if I needed to without leaving my desk.
This obviously was a time-saver, which of course equates into a money saver. And in fact we did eliminate at about 25% of our level 2 support staff due to the "reduced workload". So it definitely can save money.
We also used remote admin tools to work on PC's at remote sites (which allowed us to not even have IT people at the remote site and still service the users adequately) via the WAN. We could even remotely troubleshoot systems from salespeople in the field who were logged in via dial-up. Sure was slow, but it worked. So there is significant savings attached to it.
As a sysadmin, I use remote admin tools all the time when working on servers. Makes it very convenient, especially if I need to work on several servers simultaneously.
In your situation with it being an ASP, obviously the issues are slightly different. I've seen a couple people here who've been pretty adamant about it not being a good idea in that kind of an environment. Someone even tried to claim that ASP just means a webserver with request forms. So with that in mind, it appears that we have to define what an ASP model actually is in your case.
The ASP that I worked for generally had WAN links to all of our customers that they used to access the apps that we hosted for them. These were of course firewalled on both ends and only passed traffic between clients and the app server. In this situation it should be relatively simple to allow traffic from your remote admin tool between the client company and a specified pool of systems at your company. This can be a relatively secure solution and it would work pretty well from a technical standpoint.
But if your ASP is one that only provides browser-based front ends to an app server via the Internet, it is considerably more difficult to implement a secure remote admin tool.
And then there's the whole issue of customers letting an ASP have admin capabilities over their desktops. Or are we talking about remotely administrating the servers at their site (which their shouldn't be many of if it's an ASP model)?
So I guess the question is how are you defining yourself as an ASP? I worked for an ASP that evolved from an outsourcing model. We started as a company in 1995 with customers that outsourced their entire IT departments to us, including app servers and desktop support. When the ASP buzz hit, we shifted away from desktop support and more towards apps. We used to farm out a lot of applications via Citrix (someone else mentioned this) and we could shadow users sessions. But that's not so much remote admin since the session is executing on the app server anyway. Unless your company also is contracted to provide desktop support, it seems to me an odd way to go.
I think that you mean Novell's Zen Works. As near as I can tell, Norton/Symantec does not have a remote admin product unless you count PCAnywhere.
Zen Works really isn't that great to begin with.
Seems to me that they would only have to remove entries in their database/index for material upon request. I mean, If Metallica says "stop trading our stuff" then just put a block on any searches that include the word Metallica and don't return results with the word Metallica in it.
This also seems to be backed up by (note especially the third sentence):
we place the burden on plaintiffs to provide notice to Napster of copyrighted works and files containing such works available on the Napster system before Napster has the duty to disable access to the offending content. Napster, however, also bears the burden of policing the system within the limits of the system. Here, we recognize that this is not an exact science in that the files are user named. In crafting the injunction on remand, the district court should recognize that Napster's system does not currently appear to allow Napster access to users' MP3 files.
If your users have unbacked up data on their machines then it's not the fault of the virus, but of your IS department. We have file servers for a reason. It's our policy that they store everything on the server. If they fail to do so, it's their fault. And to be honest, I've deleted all of the files on a users local machine on more than one occasion just to prove the point. It only takes one or two incidents before word gets out not to store anything locally.
Licensing for AV software is just the cost of doing business these days. It's another piece of software, and if you are using preventative measures like AV software with hueristic scanning, then you are much more likely to fare well in an outbreak. But most PC vendors include AV software and licenses for each system you buy anyway, so it's not really an added cost.
No kidding. Right now, I'm thinking "Hmm...wonder where I can find some pics of Anna Kournikova..." After just having shut off incoming mail at the firewall until we can get an update for our Exchange servers AV software.
I agree. An intelligent user who is familiar with precautions against virii will probably never be infected. Out of the 10+ years that I've been using MS OS's, I've only ever had a virus once. And that was long ago when a roommate of mine was bring home disks from work and using them on my PC. If you take reasonable precautions, you will be safe.
Unfortunately, the number of people in the world who fit the description above is approximately 12. Most end-users are so pig-headedly stupid that they wouldn't know a virus if it were wearing a neon sign around it's neck. We actually had one user at my company that opened 7 different messages that had the subject "I love you" on the day of the Love Bug outbreak. And this was that afternoon, when a high priority alert had been sent out by out AV response team that morning!
People are stupid. In the work environment, we have to try to protect them from themselves. Once they leave the office though, they're on their own.
So how much of that loss is due to the virus and how much of it is actually due to the boneheaded over-reacting "fix" to the problem?
Thats right they do have patents which means they were actually smart enough to get them no matter how much you want to bitch about it.
How do you figure they've monopolized it by getting their patents set as standards when they're not the committee to judge on what gets a patent and what doesn't? This is typical "I told you so speech". The fact remains, they captivated a segment of something and now there's some settling actions to pursue. Companies live for this no matter what you think, and if your too blind to think for a second most companies wouldn't dream of having themselves placed in a situation to dominate your mistaken.
Let's think about this for half a second. Do you really think that if Rambus had spoken up about the pending patents that SDRAM would have been adaopted as the JEDEC standard? No way on earth. So instead they knowingly kept quiet about it so that they could make money off of it later.
Now, I don't know what membership in JEDEC requires, but apparently one of the conditions is the disclosure of patents or pending patents that affect proposed standards. Rambus failed to do so, and is quite probably in breach of contract for failing to do so.
You state that Rambus "captivated a segment of something," but you are just plain wrong on this issue. JEDEC is who has captured the market. Rambus just came along for the ride.
Your incredilbe ignorance of this matter is only underscored by this statement that you made:
So where was your voice to strengthen your current arguement when their patents were being processed?
Patent applications are not made public until the patent has already been issued. Nobody had an opportunity to object to the pending patents. Their first opportunity came after the patents were approved. And that's exactly what they are doing now...challenging the patents.
Here's a sickening thought (and let me state that I think that Rambus is despicable anyways):
What if Rambus knew what was going on in the JEDEC meetings, but didn't disclose the substance of pending patents for fear that if the patents were not issued in the current form then their competitors would have access to the designs that they were trying to patent? If it came to pass that Rambus had to re-apply for some reason, then having a competitor who has access to your un-patented IP (via JEDEC) could seriously impact your ability to obtain the patent.
I mean, the whole reason that pending patents aren't published is to keep IP confidential before legal protection is obtained, isn't it? It almost makes sense, in a sick kind of way.
BTW, I sitll don't believe that this relieved Rambus of their obligation to disclose pending patents to JEDEC since JEDEC membership and participation was voluntary.
This is not just about RDRAM. This is about SDRAM. Rambus holds patents on technology that was incorporated into the SDRAM standard. That also means that they hold patents on technology that was incorporated into PC-100, PC-133, and DDR SDRAM.
It doesn't matter if RDRAM is used or not. If they win these lawsuits, they'll be getting royalties on SDRAM and RDRAM, and it won't matter what kind of memory you use since you'll still be paying the Rambus tax. Not to mention that memory manufacturers will end up having to cough up hundreds of millions of dollars in past royalties because they didn't just roll over and pay up when Rambus first served them notice of their patents.
Though I think that it is very telling that Rambus waited something like 5 years before contacting any memory manufacturers about the patent "infringements." Sounds to me like they were laying a trap in JEDEC sessions, and decided not to push the issue until the market was absolutely saturated with SDRAM and it was the de facto and de jur standard.
The BBB (Better Business Bureau, for those not Stateside) is not a government agency. They have no real authority whatsoever. They are a voluntary alliance of businesses who agree to maintain standards of business practice. If you file a complaint with the BBB, they can call the offending company and try to guilt them into doing "the right thing" or otherwise resolve the issue. If the offending company is a BBB member, then their member status (and bragging rights about being a member) can be jeopardized if the situation isn't resolved according to BBB procedures. If the offending company is not a BBB member, they can completely ignore them with little more than a smidgen of bad publicity.
I assume that they keep records on previous offenders and make it difficult for them to join the BBB in order to clean up their reputation.
I just read about a group in Laramie, Wyoming that did this. I believe the name of the group is Lariat.
I really like that you used the word "granularity" as the title of your post. In the business world people are realizing that granular is good. Specifics are a good thing, and by being able to see things on their finest level you can make the best decisions for your business. "One size fits all" may be true if we're talking about a size 68 dress. But a variety of sizes fits more people better.
The more information the better. Information is power, and accumulating more relevant information on any given situation will make you more authoritative (powerful) with regards to that situation. Generally speaking, an informed decision is better than an un-informed decision.
This is the direction that the world is taking in business, research, even law. But not so where parenting meets education (and I assure you, parenting *IS* education). When it comes to schools, people want cookie-cutter responses to problems. They want fast and easy solutions. They want everyone to be treated exactly equally for any perceived offense, no matter how unique the situation. I just find it incredibly ironic that our future is coming from an educational background that operates in a way that is counter to the rest of our society. And your title did a good job of summing it up.