"2.You are permitted to read the HTML and PDF versions of Open Group publications using your HTML browser/Acrobat
software and to download them for your own personal use provided you have given your name and email address for each
publication requested. However, you are NOT permitted to amend, copy, reprint, offer for sale, or otherwise re-use material
from these documents without explicit permission from The Open Group.
I assume "otherwise re-use material" would include actually implementing the specification.
Should trap all such disclaimed messages and refuse to forward them to the intended recipients or bounce them to the senders until they receive written confirmation from an authorized executive of whatever company originated the mail.
Translation: Make the bozo that established the policy approve the transmission of every copy of every email sent with the disclaimer.
You're burnt-out-by-the-pager in a position in which you're the systems administrator, so you must keep getting paged by things you should have fixed long ago.
Yes, that's a simplistic view, but in the long run, no matter where you go or what you do in this industry, you'll have on-call "issues". Try changing your attitude about your current position. Keep track of the things that keep ringing your bell, and make them stop ringing. If processes are aborting, write a process monitor that restarts them and mails you to let you know it happened, then track down why and have the problem fixed. Running out of space? Find out how much is really needed and make the time (and the outage) to reconfigure properly. Add in automated cleanup. Setup a threshold monitor so you get paged in advance of a real problem, so you can clean up at your leisure.
What you have to do is fix the problems, but track done the root cause and make the problem stop happening. The last 3 positions I've held started out with the pager going off all hours every day. After a year or so, I get paged once every few months. When you do this, however, make sure your management knows what you are doing, why, and how successfull you are. You can find more money and more responsibility (and more free time!) by preventing problems, if management knows they are being prevented. If they don't, they may just think things are so good they don't need you.
I believe that the OS movement is the WORST thing to ever happen to the IT Software industry
You've got it. Open source is a dead on competitor with proprietary close source software. What you have to realize is that you can't win if all you are trying to do is sell software. In the business world, software is an expense, nothing more. It may give a company a competetive advantage, but if it does, I can gaurantee it is not off-the-shelf at Best Buy software. It's a high-investment internal development effort. Even if it does contain GPL code, no one is going to let it out the front door into their competitors houes.
Seriously, how many general ledger, accounts payable/receivable, and payroll applications do we need? How much profit does the latest and greates word processor contribute to the bottom line? If I can run my eCommerce site on Linux and Apache, why should I increase my expenses to by your software?
If you don't have an answer, don't try to compete. If you do have an answer, and it makes sense to me, and I can get that amazing functionality you described by investing half of what you charge for your product in custom enhancement of an open source product, I've cut my expense 50% over whatyou would have charged me for the first sale, PLUS I'll never have to pay your exhorbitant "upgrade" prices at arbitrary future dates.
The problem is not that those other vendors "have NOTHING to loose by supporting it", it's that I have nothing to lose and everything to gain by supporting it. Once businesses understand this, and further understand that the stronger their participation, to stronger their influence on the end product, the more they will realize that they really have no need of "software vendors". Custom development houses, maybe, but not software vendors.
"having a struggle trying to balance functionality and security" is not doing anything. If you think that was a straightforward answer, you where snowed.
Wouldn't it be great if your representative ran something like slashdot, with information about what's happening in congress this week and constituent discussions?
the DMCA does not allow someone to protect their
lawbreaking
Of course it doesn't. But this makes it such that, in order to prove that a law has been broken you have to break the law. Now, with probably cause a law enforcement agency can get a warrant and (maybe) force the encryption key out of someone, IF they have probable cause. If being encrypted is probable cause, then why are DVD's allowed to be encrypted? Are motion picture companies the only ones that have intellectual property to protect?
Beyond that, a private organizations, such as RIAA employed law rats and investigators cannot monitor traffic for known strings or file signatures, since they would first have to bypass the encryption, violating the DCMA as ruled in the DeCSS case: They are not breaking it to make a competing product. They are breaking it to gain access to protected intellectual property.
I like the argument of man for quick summaries and something else for manuals. I still say use html for what is currently in info. Then I can use lynx, links, w3m, Netscape, Konqueror, Opera,... whatever I want. Why must I be forced to use info?
Re:Remember that other DeCSS?
on
The DeCSS Haiku
·
· Score: 1
This is GREAT!
The MPAA lawyers filed against the WRONG DeCSS under penalty of perjury. If we can get enough of 'em disbarred, no more attorneys will work for the MPAA!
No, it's copy prevention. Copyright enforcement means it would only step in if I were to attempt a copyright violation. I have numerous good reasons to make copies, all valid under the "Fair use" doctrine. These are attempts to prevent me from making legal copies. If you want to call it enforcement, then you could also call frying someone in the electric chair because they might kill someone "enforcement".
I disagree. If taxpayer funded software is not GPL'ed, then there is no gaurantee that the taxpayers will receive the benefits of distributed enhancements. The GPL is perfect for making sure that tax funded software development does not get exclusively re-directed into corporate coffers.
Remember, nothing prevents commercial distribution of GPL'ed code. Companies can, and I'm sure will, take tax payer funded GPL'ed code, extend it and make those products available for sale. That's fine. The commercial linux distros are all available for sale, too. But taxpayers should not be required to pay for software they already funded. Paying for packaging and support is another matter.
I am not a GPL bigot. I believe that whoever writes the code gets to pick the license and in many cases the GPL is a bad idea. In this case, however, Microsoft should be scared. If government development is GPL'ed, they lose all access to it. If it's under a BSD-type license, they get it all for free. We need to educate our legislators on why Microsoft's stance is still wrong. The GPL is the best gaurentee that public code continues to benefit the public.
Actually his opinion is (more or less) the law. Work you do on your own time is yours, regardless of what the IP agreement claims.
That depends....
It actually depends not just on doing it on company time and with company equipment, but whether it is a "work for hire". (Oh wait: IANAL!) In order to be a work for hire, it must be performed by an "employee" (defined by the true relationship). Many (most?) contractors do not qualify -- no benefits, complete discression how the work is accomplished, etc. Also, the work must be performed according to the direction and specification of the employer "within the scope of the employement". If an accountant is instructed to "keep the books", and does so by developing spreadsheets or programs that accomplish that objective, the accountant owns the code.
Ed,
Maybe yesterday I would have agreed with you. This morning, however, my wife called me to tell me my son had just been suspended from high school for wearing a hat. (Although I'm in Florida, it was around 45 degrees this morning.)
Storming out of work and into the school, I discover that he wasn't even wearing the hat, just carrying it into the classroom. When I asked what the policy was, the senior administrator said that hats are 'contraband' and that this was announced clearly to all students yesterday. Hats and bandanas are worn by be gang members therefore hats present a danger in school. (I guess that's all gang members wear, since everyone is still allowed to wear clothes.)
I went round and round with the sr. admin and guess what he brought up: Columbine. He wasn't particuliarly happy he did since I quoted the FBI report and pointed him to a variety of authoritative sources showing Zero-Tolerance crap like this for what it is. I also pointed out that both he and I where sitting there in his office discussing this issue while both of use where wearing black leather jackets!
He offered to remove the suspension, if my son would not bring a hat to school in the future. I refused, and offered to remove my child from school until this policy was removed. He removed the suspension anyway, but my kids not going back until this BS stops.
Columbine/Hellmouth only seems like a dead horse here on/. To the rest of the world, it's a pivotal media event that still defines their perception of "students". No one seems to understand that the word "students"="our children". If re-hashing this on/. raises one more voice against the persecution of our children, it's worth the electrons spent.
p.s. I'm up to the area superintentent and I'm not stopping until the policy is changed. I'm already home-schooling one child, so keeping the other at home is not a big problem.
Regarding your concern about the "lack of future plans" for the linux kernel, you should understand you have 2 options. First, you can bring in proprietary vendors, ask them what their future plans are, pick the one that most closely matches where you want our company to go, commit to it and pray fervently that the vendor does what they say they will. Or, you can support open source participation by your employees, perhaps even hire a few more, and encourage, even direct, them to get involved and submit code that allows linux to support your own future plans. The first option is politically safe, since you transfer all blame for the risk to the vendor, but technically risky since their plans may not be realized the way we need. The second option is politically risky, since it requires you to take responsibility for the technical future of our company, but technically safe because we have the code and can make it do exactly what we need. Moreover, if others outside our company agree with our assesment of the future, they will provide free labor to help us achieve our goals.
Also understand that right now, most of our competition is likely to be taking the first option. If we choose the second option before any of our competitors do, our voice; e.g. our code; will be submitted before theirs increasing the likelihood of our guiding the technology towards our goals. Participating in open source development will transform our information organization from an off-the-shelf support organization to a driving force behind achieving our corporate objectives.
Your devoted and loyal subject^W employee.
Now if they buy this, you're also going to have to make sure they understand that "guiding the code" as they need it does NOT mean putting tripe in for a new whistly-bell they like, but providing real technical leadership for general purpose improvements, but that's another battle.
If the EULA says to return for a full refund of you don't agree, and the vendor refuses a refund because you didn't agree, aren't they violating the agreement? Wouldn't that void it, since you disagree and they disagree, there is no agreement. Now that the box is in your hands, with no licensing agreement you own it.
Elias Levy is refusing to publish "No Content Advisories" to the BuqTraq list. I agree with that decision. And advisory that says nothing is not an advisory and adds no value to the BugTraq mission.
Yes, the vulnerability can still be summarized and published, but that adds a layer between the true and only source of information (in the case of propriatry software) and the BugTraq audience. We will miss the dialog when BugTraq subscribers challenge the Microsoft advisories for failing to resolve, or even understand, the issues. This is a regular occurance when it comes to MS advisories.
Personally, I think they are doing this because they are tired of getting called on the carpet when their "fixes" aren't, their "workarounds" don't, and their downplaying of the real impact is trounced.
Has anything posted on the Microsoft site ever moved so you can't find it again?
Has anything on the Microsoft site ever been removed with no trace of it ever existing?
Has anything on the Microsoft site ever been changed so that the new content as little or no resemblence to the original?
If you don't follow the link immediately and save
the content for some future day when you might need it, you may never see it again.
For vendor security bulletins to have any real meaning, you must have some degree of trust for the vendor. This is one more violation of that trust by Microsoft.
So, on Windows you don't open an DOS command window and type 'dir|more'? Maybe you should look for a file explorer for Linux. I heard there was one or two available somewhere...
Slashdot Mirror
Of what? XP? Like that's gonna happen....
Get a unicycle. Fun, stress relieving and it works the lower back just right.
"2.You are permitted to read the HTML and PDF versions of Open Group publications using your HTML browser/Acrobat software and to download them for your own personal use provided you have given your name and email address for each publication requested. However, you are NOT permitted to amend, copy, reprint, offer for sale, or otherwise re-use material from these documents without explicit permission from The Open Group.
I assume "otherwise re-use material" would include actually implementing the specification.
Translation: Make the bozo that established the policy approve the transmission of every copy of every email sent with the disclaimer.
Yes, that's a simplistic view, but in the long run, no matter where you go or what you do in this industry, you'll have on-call "issues". Try changing your attitude about your current position. Keep track of the things that keep ringing your bell, and make them stop ringing. If processes are aborting, write a process monitor that restarts them and mails you to let you know it happened, then track down why and have the problem fixed. Running out of space? Find out how much is really needed and make the time (and the outage) to reconfigure properly. Add in automated cleanup. Setup a threshold monitor so you get paged in advance of a real problem, so you can clean up at your leisure.
What you have to do is fix the problems, but track done the root cause and make the problem stop happening. The last 3 positions I've held started out with the pager going off all hours every day. After a year or so, I get paged once every few months. When you do this, however, make sure your management knows what you are doing, why, and how successfull you are. You can find more money and more responsibility (and more free time!) by preventing problems, if management knows they are being prevented. If they don't, they may just think things are so good they don't need you.
You've got it. Open source is a dead on competitor with proprietary close source software. What you have to realize is that you can't win if all you are trying to do is sell software. In the business world, software is an expense, nothing more. It may give a company a competetive advantage, but if it does, I can gaurantee it is not off-the-shelf at Best Buy software. It's a high-investment internal development effort. Even if it does contain GPL code, no one is going to let it out the front door into their competitors houes.
Seriously, how many general ledger, accounts payable/receivable, and payroll applications do we need? How much profit does the latest and greates word processor contribute to the bottom line? If I can run my eCommerce site on Linux and Apache, why should I increase my expenses to by your software?
If you don't have an answer, don't try to compete. If you do have an answer, and it makes sense to me, and I can get that amazing functionality you described by investing half of what you charge for your product in custom enhancement of an open source product, I've cut my expense 50% over whatyou would have charged me for the first sale, PLUS I'll never have to pay your exhorbitant "upgrade" prices at arbitrary future dates.
The problem is not that those other vendors "have NOTHING to loose by supporting it", it's that I have nothing to lose and everything to gain by supporting it. Once businesses understand this, and further understand that the stronger their participation, to stronger their influence on the end product, the more they will realize that they really have no need of "software vendors". Custom development houses, maybe, but not software vendors.
Try configuring Konqueror to report a "supported" User-Agent string to your bank's site. If your a 2.x, odds are it will work.
"having a struggle trying to balance functionality and security" is not doing anything. If you think that was a straightforward answer, you where snowed.
I'm sure my companies legal department will love this. Think I'll drop 'em a line....
Wouldn't it be great if your representative ran something like slashdot, with information about what's happening in congress this week and constituent discussions?
Would someone from Spinal Tap please mod this one up to an "11".
Of course it doesn't. But this makes it such that, in order to prove that a law has been broken you have to break the law. Now, with probably cause a law enforcement agency can get a warrant and (maybe) force the encryption key out of someone, IF they have probable cause. If being encrypted is probable cause, then why are DVD's allowed to be encrypted? Are motion picture companies the only ones that have intellectual property to protect?
Beyond that, a private organizations, such as RIAA employed law rats and investigators cannot monitor traffic for known strings or file signatures, since they would first have to bypass the encryption, violating the DCMA as ruled in the DeCSS case: They are not breaking it to make a competing product. They are breaking it to gain access to protected intellectual property.
I like the argument of man for quick summaries and something else for manuals. I still say use html for what is currently in info. Then I can use lynx, links, w3m, Netscape, Konqueror, Opera, ... whatever I want. Why must I be forced to use info?
The MPAA lawyers filed against the WRONG DeCSS under penalty of perjury. If we can get enough of 'em disbarred, no more attorneys will work for the MPAA!
No, it's copy prevention. Copyright enforcement means it would only step in if I were to attempt a copyright violation. I have numerous good reasons to make copies, all valid under the "Fair use" doctrine. These are attempts to prevent me from making legal copies. If you want to call it enforcement, then you could also call frying someone in the electric chair because they might kill someone "enforcement" .
Remember, nothing prevents commercial distribution of GPL'ed code. Companies can, and I'm sure will, take tax payer funded GPL'ed code, extend it and make those products available for sale. That's fine. The commercial linux distros are all available for sale, too. But taxpayers should not be required to pay for software they already funded. Paying for packaging and support is another matter.
I am not a GPL bigot. I believe that whoever writes the code gets to pick the license and in many cases the GPL is a bad idea. In this case, however, Microsoft should be scared. If government development is GPL'ed, they lose all access to it. If it's under a BSD-type license, they get it all for free. We need to educate our legislators on why Microsoft's stance is still wrong. The GPL is the best gaurentee that public code continues to benefit the public.
That depends....
It actually depends not just on doing it on company time and with company equipment, but whether it is a "work for hire". (Oh wait: IANAL!) In order to be a work for hire, it must be performed by an "employee" (defined by the true relationship). Many (most?) contractors do not qualify -- no benefits, complete discression how the work is accomplished, etc. Also, the work must be performed according to the direction and specification of the employer "within the scope of the employement". If an accountant is instructed to "keep the books", and does so by developing spreadsheets or programs that accomplish that objective, the accountant owns the code.
In other words,it's as clear as mud.
Storming out of work and into the school, I discover that he wasn't even wearing the hat, just carrying it into the classroom. When I asked what the policy was, the senior administrator said that hats are 'contraband' and that this was announced clearly to all students yesterday. Hats and bandanas are worn by be gang members therefore hats present a danger in school. (I guess that's all gang members wear, since everyone is still allowed to wear clothes.)
I went round and round with the sr. admin and guess what he brought up: Columbine. He wasn't particuliarly happy he did since I quoted the FBI report and pointed him to a variety of authoritative sources showing Zero-Tolerance crap like this for what it is. I also pointed out that both he and I where sitting there in his office discussing this issue while both of use where wearing black leather jackets!
He offered to remove the suspension, if my son would not bring a hat to school in the future. I refused, and offered to remove my child from school until this policy was removed. He removed the suspension anyway, but my kids not going back until this BS stops.
Columbine/Hellmouth only seems like a dead horse here on /. To the rest of the world, it's a pivotal media event that still defines their perception of "students". No one seems to understand that the word "students"="our children". If re-hashing this on /. raises one more voice against the persecution of our children, it's worth the electrons spent.
p.s. I'm up to the area superintentent and I'm not stopping until the policy is changed. I'm already home-schooling one child, so keeping the other at home is not a big problem.
- Dear PHB,
Now if they buy this, you're also going to have to make sure they understand that "guiding the code" as they need it does NOT mean putting tripe in for a new whistly-bell they like, but providing real technical leadership for general purpose improvements, but that's another battle.Regarding your concern about the "lack of future plans" for the linux kernel, you should understand you have 2 options. First, you can bring in proprietary vendors, ask them what their future plans are, pick the one that most closely matches where you want our company to go, commit to it and pray fervently that the vendor does what they say they will. Or, you can support open source participation by your employees, perhaps even hire a few more, and encourage, even direct, them to get involved and submit code that allows linux to support your own future plans. The first option is politically safe, since you transfer all blame for the risk to the vendor, but technically risky since their plans may not be realized the way we need. The second option is politically risky, since it requires you to take responsibility for the technical future of our company, but technically safe because we have the code and can make it do exactly what we need. Moreover, if others outside our company agree with our assesment of the future, they will provide free labor to help us achieve our goals.
Also understand that right now, most of our competition is likely to be taking the first option. If we choose the second option before any of our competitors do, our voice; e.g. our code; will be submitted before theirs increasing the likelihood of our guiding the technology towards our goals. Participating in open source development will transform our information organization from an off-the-shelf support organization to a driving force behind achieving our corporate objectives.
Your devoted and loyal subject^W employee.
Or locking up the DVD pirate and locking up the author of DECSS...
If the EULA says to return for a full refund of you don't agree, and the vendor refuses a refund because you didn't agree, aren't they violating the agreement? Wouldn't that void it, since you disagree and they disagree, there is no agreement. Now that the box is in your hands, with no licensing agreement you own it.
Yes, the vulnerability can still be summarized and published, but that adds a layer between the true and only source of information (in the case of propriatry software) and the BugTraq audience. We will miss the dialog when BugTraq subscribers challenge the Microsoft advisories for failing to resolve, or even understand, the issues. This is a regular occurance when it comes to MS advisories.
Personally, I think they are doing this because they are tired of getting called on the carpet when their "fixes" aren't, their "workarounds" don't, and their downplaying of the real impact is trounced.
Has anything posted on the Microsoft site ever moved so you can't find it again?
Has anything on the Microsoft site ever been removed with no trace of it ever existing?
Has anything on the Microsoft site ever been changed so that the new content as little or no resemblence to the original?
If you don't follow the link immediately and save the content for some future day when you might need it, you may never see it again.
For vendor security bulletins to have any real meaning, you must have some degree of trust for the vendor. This is one more violation of that trust by Microsoft.
Short term investment for long-term gain? Sounds like a sound business proposal.
So, on Windows you don't open an DOS command window and type 'dir|more'? Maybe you should look for a file explorer for Linux. I heard there was one or two available somewhere...