So they didn't think it'd be pertinent to inform their supervisor?
Reminds me of a school I work with - we provide T1 service to them.
One day their link goes down - I get paged immediately, and it looks like the T1 router lost power (which shouldn't happen, as it's got its' own UPS).. The place runs classes over the Internet, so it's important for the link to be up, and the teachers all call and scream at me..
I head down there to find out what's going on, it turns out that their maintenance guy had gone into the room where the T1 was, and heard the UPS beeping, so he turned it off, and decided it wasn't important enough to tell anyone.
MS would argue that when you buy Windows, you get a manual and CD..
So, by comaprison, you'd have to compare it to (say) a retail box of RH - $49.00 last I checked..
(However the RH comes with 30 days of support, so you'd have to add a number of 'incident' charges to the cost of MS..)
Of course, you can continue this along the lines of comparing the price for NT/W2K to a 'server edition' of RH (doesn't it run for $120 or something?).. compared to the $1000+ for NT.. (again, plus 'incident' charges for support)
Snapper has found it difficult to get Microsoft to recognize new systems as being part of that license, said Snapper CIO Howard Jones.
I guess he forgot that magic line "If you throw it all away.. things can only get better."
Seriously though, this is just the first "public" signs that MS is floundering.
Analysts said Microsoft is cracking down on licensees amid lackluster financials. After years of racking up spectacular earnings growth, Microsoft posted flat earnings in its most recent quarter
In the past, MS has been investigated by the SEC for maintaining a slush fund to cover up "bad" quarters.. (they allegedly stashed away cash during good years to pump back into the company during bad times, to 'even out' their chart..) the fact that they are scambling now shows that this slush fund has run dry... which means that they're in much worse shape than first appears..
Whether you're at the park or watching on TV at home, you're paying the bill somehow (tickets, cable bill, commercials, whatever).
Just like people are paying for their internet connection?
The problem is that they haven't stated that they will be turning off the advertisements.
TV and Radio broadcasts are subsidized through advertising. The current internet feeds are also subsidized through advertising.
what kind of moral/legal/ethical arguments can youpossibly make to condemn them?
The argument is simple: people shouldn't have to pay money to be forced to listen to advertising.
If the 'pay' feeds are advertising-free, then you're right - however nobody has said that this was going to happen.. (in all fairness, they haven't said it wouldn't either..)
including filtering software with computers does not constitute an infringement
No? How about forcing me to buy something I don't want.. Imagine if you went to buy a car, and the salesman said "I'm sorry, when purchasing a car, we have to bill you for these two child-seats. It doesn't matter if you don't have children, sir. It's the law."
provides choice for those who DO wish to filter content without having to purchase additional software
This does not give you a choice, it removes your ability to choose to purchase the software or not. You're purchasing it anyway - you think that the manufacturers are going to buy something and give it to you at no cost? No, they're going to charge you for it.
The impression management is under is that 'spam works'.
If management is this stupid, you'd better leave as soon as possible. Tell your boss that you won't work for a company that harasses people. (Spam is harassment.)
The only way to get them to rethink this is to get it through their thick skulls that spam is harassment, and that no business can survive by harassing it's potential customers.
Let them know that any ISP they use will prohibit this - and then go to the ISP's and tell them - get them to talk to your management, and to tell them why this is bad - have them use the word "lawsuit" as much as possible. (Large ISP's have successfully sued spammers in the past.)
If this doesn't work, post the email addresseses of your bosses here, so everyone at/. can politely inform them of how bad spam can be for business.:o)
In the article he's referring to, an important point was made:
Suppose you have two makes of car: One is completely and totally unsafe - any impact will cause it to violently explode; the other is completely and totally safe - it doesn't matter how hard you hit something, no damage would result whatsoever.
Now, if you were forced to drive both of these cars for a year, which one would you drive in the safer manner?
as soon as cars have exterior airbags as well as interior, or some kind of force fields or something, then look out, 'cause it's bumper car time and I intend to be a bumping mofo
I see we already have your answer - and it's the same as everyone else's.
If you limit the amount of trust given to the client, most of these problems go away..
Of course, this brings other problems to the server (which makes it more complex).. you have to maintain the client's state (as in everything the client can see) on the server - and only send that. You also need to send the client input events ("move forward 1 meter") to the server, and make sure that the 'character' is capable of moving/doing that.
All of which will increase bandwidth requirements..
In essence, the client becomes a 'dumb' terminal; it only displays what the server sends it, so someone can't write an 'aimbot', or make all of the walls transparent (well, they could make the walls transparent, but it wouldn't do them any good.)
The short answer is that you'd write it just like you'd write any other secure app - you don't trust the client.
As someone who's designed websites (and shopping carts), the only thing I have to say is that it serves the company right..
This isn't anything like "price tag switching" - this is more like "not having price tags at all, and having the cashier ask the customer how much the sign said."
I mean come on, if you're stupid enough to send a price to the customer, and trust that he or she will send it back unmodifed, you deserve exactly what you get.
First rule of client/server computer security: you can't trust the client.
Perhaps next time one of these "30% of all online retailers" will hire someone who actually knows what they're doing, instead of Mr. "I know frontpage!"
When company X goes after Napster, they complain that Napster isn't breaking any laws--only some of the users are.
True so far...
When company Y goes after Napster users, they complain that they shouldn't be going after individual users
Where? Certainly not in this article.
The complaint is not that someone is going after Napster Users, but that they're illegally going after Napster Users, by violating their civil rights ("Innocent until proven guilty.")
In essence, "company Y" is saying that it's OK for them to break the law, but it's not OK for the Napster users to do the same.
Please don't distort the truth.
(And it's a sad, sad, day when a troll gets modded up to +5 as "informative")
How many times do we have to hear "music sales went up in 1999, therefore Napster is actually helping to sell CDs!"
As an argument on its' own, you're right this makes no sense.. there is no collaborating evidence..
However taken into account that the RIAA can claim the reverse (when again, there is no evidence) means (to me) that the "pirates" have license to thier claim.. (after all, the claim that Napster's existance has a causal relationship with CD sales was originated by the RIAA... since the RIAA claims that there is a causal relationship, then if the sales go up, then logically it must be because of Napster too, right?)
there are the marketing droids to upkeep, sound engineers too... a bunch of people in the recording process that need money
Actually, those costs aren't payed by the record company. In most cases, marketing costs are payed by the band that records the album, deducted from their royalties.
Teamsters need to get paid to drive those trucks from manufacturing to the stores.
Nope, they get paid by the retailers (in every retail store I've been in the cost of shipment is paid by the receiver, not the shipper.)
yes - send the output to a postscript printer that saves to a file instead of sending to printer port.
Technically yes.. but if you ever want to convert it to something else, not really..
I tried doing this a few times to make Hylafax cover pages (all of our existing coversheets are in WP or MSWord format).. after 'printing', there was no text (as in _no_ text) in the ps document it generated.. all of the text got converted to line commands..
Thus printing to a file will work, but only if you never need to do anything with the file but print it..
if I do pay somone when I buy equipment that enables me to copy copyrighted Items, do I gain rights to do so?
The answer (in Canada, at least) is yes - you do gain the rights.
The catch is that you can make a recording, but someone else can't make it for you.
It's legal to borrow an audio CD (from a friend, for example) and make a copy of it, but it would be illegal for your friend to make a copy and give it to you. (I know, the end result is the same, but that's the way the law is worded, and that's the way the copyright board interpreted it.)
To start, I work for a company that does this - it's not our primary focus, but it's something we do for some of our clients.
relying on them for the defense itself... I don't know about that.
This is a good attitude to have, but it misses one important fact - that not everybody knows how to secure a network (or even how to find out if they're secure or not.) You seem to know something about security, so you'd probably not be someone who needs this sort of thing.
This is especially true of firewalls--all too often you see someone just drop one in and assume that they're now safe from harm.
Yup - this is the biggest problem I encounter - in fact, some of our bigger clients clients called us because they did exactly this, and then got hacked. They need someone who can provide experience and knowledge, not just hardware.
first I make sure everything is locked down tightly enough that it doesn't need the firewall, then I put the firewall in.
Again, a very good mindset - but what if you can't lock it down? Take for example, someone who does web design & hosting - using IIS.. it's been my experience that this is something that _can't_ be locked down - there are just too many exploits waiting to happen..
In the IIS example, a firewall (a _real_ firewall, not a packet filter) is the best way to provide security - by setting up a secure reverse-web proxy, and filtering the connection streams at the application level. By having the proxy provide some basic filters (block any inbound request that contains the string 'cmd.exe', for example) you can provide protection against exploits before they happen. It's not fool-prof, but it goes a long way towards securing a system.
it wouldn't be a problem if law enforcement wasn't so hobbled in prosecuting cybercrime.
Sorry, but that's a poor damn excuse.
It's illegal to blow up buildings, but it didn't stop Little Timothy in Oklahoma.
The problem is that Outlook (like other MS programs) will execute an attachment based on it's name when you click on it... combine this with the fact that the OS is squarely targetted at the "I don't know anything about computers" crowd, and this is just an accident waiting to happen.
The Melissa/ILOVEYOU authors could have been drawn and quartered live on national prime-time TV, but the root of the problem still remains; and until that's fixed, virus authors will continue to annoy/amuse the rest of the world.
I think I got the same spam you did, from "mygeek.com".
The first thing I did was blackhole the 204.176.122.0/24 network (this is the IP address where the spam originated from - this ensures I won't be getting any more from them - ever)
The next thing I did was track down marketsharerecovery.com, which is hosted by Verio.
Poking around Verio's site, it turns out that selling people's email addresses for spam is against their AUP. (http://home.verio.net/company/policies/aup.cfm states pretty plainly that "Advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available any software, program, product, or service that is designed to violate this AUP, which includes the facilitation of the means to spam" is a violation.) Selling bulk email addresses is a pretty clear facilitation of the means to spam.
I got a boilerplate reply from Verio, stating that they had taken "appropriate action" (but that they couldn't tell me what that action was, due to privacy concerns.)
Bitch to Verio - if enough people do it, they'll eventually shut them down. You have to be vocal.
But another tactic might be to shut down the spammer.. anyone for a class-action lawsuit against marketsharerecovery.com?
Slashdot Mirror
So they didn't think it'd be pertinent to inform their supervisor?
Reminds me of a school I work with - we provide T1 service to them.
One day their link goes down - I get paged immediately, and it looks like the T1 router lost power (which shouldn't happen, as it's got its' own UPS).. The place runs classes over the Internet, so it's important for the link to be up, and the teachers all call and scream at me..
I head down there to find out what's going on, it turns out that their maintenance guy had gone into the room where the T1 was, and heard the UPS beeping, so he turned it off, and decided it wasn't important enough to tell anyone.
MS would argue that when you buy Windows, you get a manual and CD..
So, by comaprison, you'd have to compare it to (say) a retail box of RH - $49.00 last I checked..
(However the RH comes with 30 days of support, so you'd have to add a number of 'incident' charges to the cost of MS..)
Of course, you can continue this along the lines of comparing the price for NT/W2K to a 'server edition' of RH (doesn't it run for $120 or something?).. compared to the $1000+ for NT.. (again, plus 'incident' charges for support)
Snapper has found it difficult to get Microsoft to recognize new systems as being part of that license, said Snapper CIO Howard Jones.
:o)
I guess he forgot that magic line "If you throw it all away.. things can only get better."
Seriously though, this is just the first "public" signs that MS is floundering.
Analysts said Microsoft is cracking down on licensees amid lackluster financials. After years of racking up spectacular earnings growth, Microsoft posted flat earnings in its most recent quarter
In the past, MS has been investigated by the SEC for maintaining a slush fund to cover up "bad" quarters.. (they allegedly stashed away cash during good years to pump back into the company during bad times, to 'even out' their chart..) the fact that they are scambling now shows that this slush fund has run dry... which means that they're in much worse shape than first appears..
All in all, I'd say this is cause to celebrate
Whether you're at the park or watching on TV at home, you're paying the bill somehow (tickets, cable bill, commercials, whatever).
Just like people are paying for their internet connection?
The problem is that they haven't stated that they will be turning off the advertisements.
TV and Radio broadcasts are subsidized through advertising. The current internet feeds are also subsidized through advertising.
what kind of moral/legal/ethical arguments can youpossibly make to condemn them?
The argument is simple: people shouldn't have to pay money to be forced to listen to advertising.
If the 'pay' feeds are advertising-free, then you're right - however nobody has said that this was going to happen.. (in all fairness, they haven't said it wouldn't either..)
including filtering software with computers does not constitute an infringement
No? How about forcing me to buy something I don't want.. Imagine if you went to buy a car, and the salesman said "I'm sorry, when purchasing a car, we have to bill you for these two child-seats. It doesn't matter if you don't have children, sir. It's the law."
provides choice for those who DO wish to filter content without having to purchase additional software
This does not give you a choice, it removes your ability to choose to purchase the software or not. You're purchasing it anyway - you think that the manufacturers are going to buy something and give it to you at no cost? No, they're going to charge you for it.
I value my job, and I was asked to do something similar.
I told my boss in no uncertain terms "NO!".
And (after a very long discussion,) he conceded.. he said that he thought that I was wrong, but if I felt that strongly about it, then he'd concede.
It's not impossible - you just have to be adamant.
The impression management is under is that 'spam works'.
/. can politely inform them of how bad spam can be for business. :o)
If management is this stupid, you'd better leave as soon as possible. Tell your boss that you won't work for a company that harasses people. (Spam is harassment.)
The only way to get them to rethink this is to get it through their thick skulls that spam is harassment, and that no business can survive by harassing it's potential customers.
Let them know that any ISP they use will prohibit this - and then go to the ISP's and tell them - get them to talk to your management, and to tell them why this is bad - have them use the word "lawsuit" as much as possible. (Large ISP's have successfully sued spammers in the past.)
If this doesn't work, post the email addresseses of your bosses here, so everyone at
In the article he's referring to, an important point was made:
Suppose you have two makes of car: One is completely and totally unsafe - any impact will cause it to violently explode; the other is completely and totally safe - it doesn't matter how hard you hit something, no damage would result whatsoever.
Now, if you were forced to drive both of these cars for a year, which one would you drive in the safer manner?
as soon as cars have exterior airbags as well as interior, or some kind of force fields or something, then look out, 'cause it's bumper car time and I intend to be a bumping mofo
I see we already have your answer - and it's the same as everyone else's.
So you do believe it, you just don't want to.
I can't honestly believe that I can keep someone from saying what they want to say.
(stopping) Spamming has nothing to do with stopping someone from saying what they want to say.
It has everything to do with preventing someone from harassing you.
I mean, what if someone sends spam about a political situation or a crime being committed by a public figure? Should THAT be banned as well?
Yes, just like if someone wants to use a megaphone in a residential area at 4AM to broadcast the same message.
Spammers have the right to say what they want. They do not have the right to abuse someone else's computer resources to do it.
Speed limits are different since you can only hurt yourself,
Umm, yeah, as long as you're the only person on the road.
If you get into a collision at a higher speed, it means there is going to be more damage, both to you, and whatever (or whoever) you hit.
If you limit the amount of trust given to the client, most of these problems go away..
Of course, this brings other problems to the server (which makes it more complex).. you have to maintain the client's state (as in everything the client can see) on the server - and only send that. You also need to send the client input events ("move forward 1 meter") to the server, and make sure that the 'character' is capable of moving/doing that.
All of which will increase bandwidth requirements..
In essence, the client becomes a 'dumb' terminal; it only displays what the server sends it, so someone can't write an 'aimbot', or make all of the walls transparent (well, they could make the walls transparent, but it wouldn't do them any good.)
The short answer is that you'd write it just like you'd write any other secure app - you don't trust the client.
As someone who's designed websites (and shopping carts), the only thing I have to say is that it serves the company right..
This isn't anything like "price tag switching" - this is more like "not having price tags at all, and having the cashier ask the customer how much the sign said."
I mean come on, if you're stupid enough to send a price to the customer, and trust that he or she will send it back unmodifed, you deserve exactly what you get.
First rule of client/server computer security: you can't trust the client.
Perhaps next time one of these "30% of all online retailers" will hire someone who actually knows what they're doing, instead of Mr. "I know frontpage!"
When company X goes after Napster, they complain that Napster isn't breaking any laws--only some of the users are.
True so far...
When company Y goes after Napster users, they complain that they shouldn't be going after individual users
Where? Certainly not in this article.
The complaint is not that someone is going after Napster Users, but that they're illegally going after Napster Users, by violating their civil rights ("Innocent until proven guilty.")
In essence, "company Y" is saying that it's OK for them to break the law, but it's not OK for the Napster users to do the same.
Please don't distort the truth.
(And it's a sad, sad, day when a troll gets modded up to +5 as "informative")
How many times do we have to hear "music sales went up in 1999, therefore Napster is actually helping to sell CDs!"
As an argument on its' own, you're right this makes no sense.. there is no collaborating evidence..
However taken into account that the RIAA can claim the reverse (when again, there is no evidence) means (to me) that the "pirates" have license to thier claim.. (after all, the claim that Napster's existance has a causal relationship with CD sales was originated by the RIAA... since the RIAA claims that there is a causal relationship, then if the sales go up, then logically it must be because of Napster too, right?)
there are the marketing droids to upkeep, sound engineers too ... a bunch of people in the recording process that need money
Actually, those costs aren't payed by the record company. In most cases, marketing costs are payed by the band that records the album, deducted from their royalties.
Teamsters need to get paid to drive those trucks from manufacturing to the stores.
Nope, they get paid by the retailers (in every retail store I've been in the cost of shipment is paid by the receiver, not the shipper.)
Technically yes.. but if you ever want to convert it to something else, not really..
I tried doing this a few times to make Hylafax cover pages (all of our existing coversheets are in WP or MSWord format).. after 'printing', there was no text (as in _no_ text) in the ps document it generated.. all of the text got converted to line commands..
Thus printing to a file will work, but only if you never need to do anything with the file but print it..
for i in `seq 1 1000`; do
echo "Shell-script is not an effective tool for complex programming tasks."
done
if I do pay somone when I buy equipment that enables me to copy copyrighted Items, do I gain rights to do so?
The answer (in Canada, at least) is yes - you do gain the rights.
The catch is that you can make a recording, but someone else can't make it for you.
It's legal to borrow an audio CD (from a friend, for example) and make a copy of it, but it would be illegal for your friend to make a copy and give it to you. (I know, the end result is the same, but that's the way the law is worded, and that's the way the copyright board interpreted it.)
To start, I work for a company that does this - it's not our primary focus, but it's something we do for some of our clients.
relying on them for the defense itself... I don't know about that.
This is a good attitude to have, but it misses one important fact - that not everybody knows how to secure a network (or even how to find out if they're secure or not.) You seem to know something about security, so you'd probably not be someone who needs this sort of thing.
This is especially true of firewalls--all too often you see someone just drop one in and assume that they're now safe from harm.
Yup - this is the biggest problem I encounter - in fact, some of our bigger clients clients called us because they did exactly this, and then got hacked. They need someone who can provide experience and knowledge, not just hardware.
first I make sure everything is locked down tightly enough that it doesn't need the firewall, then I put the firewall in.
Again, a very good mindset - but what if you can't lock it down? Take for example, someone who does web design & hosting - using IIS.. it's been my experience that this is something that _can't_ be locked down - there are just too many exploits waiting to happen..
In the IIS example, a firewall (a _real_ firewall, not a packet filter) is the best way to provide security - by setting up a secure reverse-web proxy, and filtering the connection streams at the application level. By having the proxy provide some basic filters (block any inbound request that contains the string 'cmd.exe', for example) you can provide protection against exploits before they happen. It's not fool-prof, but it goes a long way towards securing a system.
The last thing Linux needs is a fully integrated mail client.
:o)
Too late, we already have EMACS!
/me ducks
it wouldn't be a problem if law enforcement wasn't so hobbled in prosecuting cybercrime.
Sorry, but that's a poor damn excuse.
It's illegal to blow up buildings, but it didn't stop Little Timothy in Oklahoma.
The problem is that Outlook (like other MS programs) will execute an attachment based on it's name when you click on it... combine this with the fact that the OS is squarely targetted at the "I don't know anything about computers" crowd, and this is just an accident waiting to happen.
The Melissa/ILOVEYOU authors could have been drawn and quartered live on national prime-time TV, but the root of the problem still remains; and until that's fixed, virus authors will continue to annoy/amuse the rest of the world.
I think I got the same spam you did, from "mygeek.com".
The first thing I did was blackhole the 204.176.122.0/24 network (this is the IP address where the spam originated from - this ensures I won't be getting any more from them - ever)
The next thing I did was track down marketsharerecovery.com, which is hosted by Verio.
Poking around Verio's site, it turns out that selling people's email addresses for spam is against their AUP. (http://home.verio.net/company/policies/aup.cfm states pretty plainly that "Advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available any software, program, product, or service that is designed to violate this AUP, which includes the facilitation of the means to spam" is a violation.) Selling bulk email addresses is a pretty clear facilitation of the means to spam.
I got a boilerplate reply from Verio, stating that they had taken "appropriate action" (but that they couldn't tell me what that action was, due to privacy concerns.)
Bitch to Verio - if enough people do it, they'll eventually shut them down. You have to be vocal.
But another tactic might be to shut down the spammer.. anyone for a class-action lawsuit against marketsharerecovery.com?
spam does have a much higher response rate than
you are estimating. It's probably about equal to that of a postal bulk mailing, which is 2%
Proof please?
I know a LOT of people who use the internet - most of them are "average" users.
_NONE_ of them (as in ZERO) have ever responded to spam.
Ever.
I have no formal studies, but that's enough to convince me that your 2% is just hot air.
So, please provide a link to some studies to back up your claim.
did gyre and gimble in the wabe,
:o) one of my favourite poems..
All mimsy, were the borogroves
and mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son,
the jaws that bite, the claws that catch."
"Beware the Jubjub bird and shun,
the frumious Bandersnatch."
Yes, I know the whole damn thing by heart
How would M$ know that QA or support costs money?
:o)
Simple, they looked into implementing them once, then decided they were too expensive