1. Don't allow MSN Messenger,AIM,Yahoo! in the office. Keep personal IM strictly separate from work IM.
Absolutely! There are several enterprise IM applications out there (e.g. Lotus Sametime) as well as enterprise versions of Yahoo and AIM that can be restricted to the company's intranet.
2. Use IM clients that restrict who talks to who. If you are working in a team, you should be able to talk to your team via IM, then e-mail/call other people to get their IM if necessary.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. If you are talking about something similiar to an ACL or "mailing list" type thing that requires an administrator or some other third party to determine who you can and can't talk to, that could become an administrative nightmare in a hurry. Its been my experience that people just don't have the time nor the inclination to send random messages to random people at work. Therefore its just not worth the considerable overhead of such a restriction.
3. For the love of God, get rid of custom away messages.
This I utterly disagree with. People use custom away messages to convey all kinds of useful information, such as "Away from desk, call cellphone to reach me" or "On a conference call, I'll be available at 3pm". Why, for the love of God, shouldn't an enterprise IM system have this useful feature?
theatre only makes around, you won't believe this...10 cents per ticket sold. The rest go to the movie studios.
You are right, I don't believe it. The grandparent's "up to 80% first week and decreasing every week after that" is more accurate. So assuming the worst of 80%, the theater will make $2.60 on the $13 ticket, not 10 cents. A week after opening, the theater might make $4.50 per ticket. A week after that will earn them $7.25 per ticket and so forth.
Also, those trailers that you see for 15 minutes before the movie? The studios are PAYING the theaters to show those. The theaters are getting paid to advertise films that will bring customers back to them. That's not a bad deal really.
The popcorn and sodas you buy? Almost pure profit for the theater. That's where the REAL money is made.
the DRM on Apple's AAC files may be about to be rendered useless
I'm of the opinion that it was already useless. iTunes allows you to purchase the DRM'ed music, burn it as an Audio CD, then rip it as AAC, MP3, whatever you want without any DRM on it at all. The cost is a blank CD-R that, once done, is perfectly playable in any CD player, so its not even a wasted CD.
All this is possible with iTunes right out of the box without any special tools. All this "FairUse" tool does is save you one step.. and one CD-R.
extreme version of this with the workflow: design the UI first, write the manual second, and implement it last
Its not really all that extreme at all. You'd be suprised at how common this approach is, and how well it works!
When you say "writing the manual", I substituted in "writing use cases", which translates pretty well in my opinion. If properly written, anyone (a user, developer, etc) should be able to pick up the use case entitled "Cut Pipe Segment", read it, and know exactly how to cut a pipe segment in the application, how cutting it will look, how cutting it will affect other things in the application, and what limitations there are on cutting it.
Having said that, UI design and use case writing are both a part of requirements gathering, something that should definately be done before any coding is done!
One BIG difference. The protections you enjoy on a credit card are established and maintained by law. The credit agency has no choice but to only keep you liable for the first $50 of the fraudulent charges. There is no such requirement on a debit card. You didn't have to deal with it because your bank decided out of the kindness of its heart (or whatever) that you didn't have to deal with it, not because there was a law requiring them to.
Sounds to me that you are a bit confused between Civil and Criminal as well.
1) Anything that results in jail time IS criminal -- by definition. There is no "maybe" about it.
2) If anyone has to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal proceeding, it is the government, NOT the MPAA. MPAA representatives can be witnesses, but they are NOT a party to the case.
3) There is no requirement to actually cause damages to be guilty of a crime. Committing the criminal act is enough.
Generally, the license for use on almost all software says the software maker, seller, seller's grandmother etc., cannot be held liable even of their software crashes, loses business, causes your computer to explode, or impregnates your dog.
This is true, but also irrelevant. These liablity waivers cover damages to the user of the software or service, not damages done to the service itself that may have been attributed to by their own neglience.
In other words, they can not say something like: "If you break our servers because there is a bug in our software or something else we did wrong, you are responsible -- not us."
Interesting view you have of Berkeley, and publishing secrecy. Berkeley professors have been placed in tough spots before [theatlantic.com], and I don't see any reason why this would be different.
Well, this is different for a number of reasons:
1. The article you quoted is talking about the privatization of university research and the nastiness of getting your academic research entangled with private enterprise. Neither the NSF nor the DHS are private organizations. They are federal government and they play by different rules. Maybe not better rules, but definately different.
2. $5.5 million is chump change, especially when its spread between multiple universities. If these universities thought they would get shafted on their research goals, they'd simply pass it up. The monetary value just isn't high enough to warrant the hassles of dealing with an oppressive sponsor.
I'm absolutely positive that part of the agreement was that Berkeley could publish their findings once the project was over. If absolute secrecy was important, then it wouldn't be done at Berkeley (and it wouldn't be reported on Slashdot). Its that simple.
Besides, in order to "shore up the US", there would need to be a lot of cooperation among the multitudes of private enterprises that actually run and maintain the network. Most of the big players in this arena are large, multinational companies that would be inclined to shore up ALL their networks, not just the ones in the US.
10,000 pissed off penguins shorting SCOX at the same time on the same day......would require enough other investors willing to loan and/or purchase enough SCOX stock for 10,000 penguins to short. See the problem?
What I've read is that they are in violation of the GPL right now. The main reason is that they have an additional SCO licence that attempts to cover the GPLed software as well as non-GPLed software and that licence claims ownership of the GPLed code and attempts to ignore the GPL.
Can you quote this license? I've been all over SCO's website and I can't find it.
The only thing I can find is a reference to "product license number" and "product license registration", which seem to be nothing more than a tracking system for those who have paid to use SCO's servers and those who have not. RedHat does the exact same thing. So does Mandrake. This is completely valid under the GPL. You can restrict downloads to only those people you choose to allow to download it. The GPL is very explicit about that. The webpage also claims the SRPMs are available for download to the same people they are distributing the binaries to. This is in compliance with the GPL as well. I can't find a GPL violation here at all.
Everyone is ASSUMING that there's this other license out there that is a great big GPL violation and the Register has accused SCO straight out for that, but no one (including the article) can actually PRODUCE THIS LICENSE!
SCO can SAY whatever they want. The GPL doesn't stipulate that it is null and void if the licensee trashes it in legal documents or screams vile things about it from the top of every hillside. So as long as SCO ACTS within the bounds of the GPL, no matter what they say, they are in compliance to its terms.
Restricting downloads to only those who have purchased the product is well within the bounds of the GPL.
they are now distributing Linux under *another* license, which affirms SCO's "intellectual property" rights. This is a violation of the GPL.
What other license? I can't find it. There's no mention of another license on the webpage. The Register doesn't quote any of the license in their article, but only makes vague references to it. Where's this license? Can you quote it for me?
It looks to me like SCO is restricting access to their servers to only those who paid money to use them. There are references to "product license numbers" on their webpage. This might be an unfortunate phrase, but is truly no different than what RedHat does with some of the services they reserve for paying customers only.
I really don't see any GPL violation here. The Register seems to have made one HELL of a jump.
Where have you worked? JC Penney and Walmart? Most engineering firms are very guarded and don't want pictures of their facilities distributed over the Internet.
I know you meant individual stores, but its been my experience that retail corporate offices have security policies that would put some engineering outfits to shame. Corporate espionage runs completely rampant in that sector and things like Memorial Day sale prices are kept like were the plans to nuclear weapons. Its absolutely stunning.
Did you ever consider the fact email which comes in HTML can have cookies which are tied to your email address?
bzzt! HTML does not contain cookies, therefore email that comes in HTML does not have cookies. Cookies are part of the HTTP protocol.
HTML in email can reference web servers that will serve a cookie to you, but the cookie is not in the body of the email itself. This is why its important to disallow HTML-capable email clients from loading anything from a web server.
Again.. I call bull to what you said: Cell phones tend to build up a static charge due to their emission of electromagnetic waves, which, in some cases, can cause a spark.
You say that statement as if it has been proven and a known fact... even though no one has been able to demonstrate it. If you can show me one place -- any place -- where someone has been able to "cause a spark", I'll back down.
I also don't trust Nokia and Ericsson's "risk assessment". They are tempered by lawyers who would claim that the sky might fall on your head if they thought they could possibly be sued for it.
Cell phones tend to build up a static charge due to their emission of electromagnetic waves, which, in some cases, can cause a spark. [...] It's a legitimate concern.
Slashdot Mirror
1. Don't allow MSN Messenger,AIM,Yahoo! in the office. Keep personal IM strictly separate from work IM.
Absolutely! There are several enterprise IM applications out there (e.g. Lotus Sametime) as well as enterprise versions of Yahoo and AIM that can be restricted to the company's intranet.
2. Use IM clients that restrict who talks to who. If you are working in a team, you should be able to talk to your team via IM, then e-mail/call other people to get their IM if necessary.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. If you are talking about something similiar to an ACL or "mailing list" type thing that requires an administrator or some other third party to determine who you can and can't talk to, that could become an administrative nightmare in a hurry. Its been my experience that people just don't have the time nor the inclination to send random messages to random people at work. Therefore its just not worth the considerable overhead of such a restriction.
3. For the love of God, get rid of custom away messages.
This I utterly disagree with. People use custom away messages to convey all kinds of useful information, such as "Away from desk, call cellphone to reach me" or "On a conference call, I'll be available at 3pm". Why, for the love of God, shouldn't an enterprise IM system have this useful feature?
That's the most insightful thing I've ever read. That needs to be bumper sticker!
Time to feed.
Actually, there was nothing that was grammatically incorrect in my previous post.
Nothing wrong except for two sentences that started with a conjunction.
you prove that most Americans cannot spell
You proved that seing is not believing.
theatre only makes around, you won't believe this...10 cents per ticket sold. The rest go to the movie studios.
You are right, I don't believe it. The grandparent's "up to 80% first week and decreasing every week after that" is more accurate. So assuming the worst of 80%, the theater will make $2.60 on the $13 ticket, not 10 cents. A week after opening, the theater might make $4.50 per ticket. A week after that will earn them $7.25 per ticket and so forth.
Also, those trailers that you see for 15 minutes before the movie? The studios are PAYING the theaters to show those. The theaters are getting paid to advertise films that will bring customers back to them. That's not a bad deal really.
The popcorn and sodas you buy? Almost pure profit for the theater. That's where the REAL money is made.
I do have the best of intentions of putting more effort towards documentation, commenting, etc
How's that road to hell coming?
the DRM on Apple's AAC files may be about to be rendered useless
I'm of the opinion that it was already useless. iTunes allows you to purchase the DRM'ed music, burn it as an Audio CD, then rip it as AAC, MP3, whatever you want without any DRM on it at all. The cost is a blank CD-R that, once done, is perfectly playable in any CD player, so its not even a wasted CD.
All this is possible with iTunes right out of the box without any special tools. All this "FairUse" tool does is save you one step.. and one CD-R.
extreme version of this with the workflow: design the UI first, write the manual second, and implement it last
Its not really all that extreme at all. You'd be suprised at how common this approach is, and how well it works!
When you say "writing the manual", I substituted in "writing use cases", which translates pretty well in my opinion. If properly written, anyone (a user, developer, etc) should be able to pick up the use case entitled "Cut Pipe Segment", read it, and know exactly how to cut a pipe segment in the application, how cutting it will look, how cutting it will affect other things in the application, and what limitations there are on cutting it.
Having said that, UI design and use case writing are both a part of requirements gathering, something that should definately be done before any coding is done!
No different than a credit card.
One BIG difference. The protections you enjoy on a credit card are established and maintained by law. The credit agency has no choice but to only keep you liable for the first $50 of the fraudulent charges. There is no such requirement on a debit card. You didn't have to deal with it because your bank decided out of the kindness of its heart (or whatever) that you didn't have to deal with it, not because there was a law requiring them to.
To put it another way, "you got lucky."
Ryan --
I think you hit the nail on the head. Just wish I had points to mod you up.
Sounds to me that you are a bit confused between Civil and Criminal as well.
1) Anything that results in jail time IS criminal -- by definition. There is no "maybe" about it.
2) If anyone has to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal proceeding, it is the government, NOT the MPAA. MPAA representatives can be witnesses, but they are NOT a party to the case.
3) There is no requirement to actually cause damages to be guilty of a crime. Committing the criminal act is enough.
Oops... forget I said this.. I misread the grandparent. CTRL-Z, Edit>Undo, Crtl-Alt-Delete, *pull plug*.
Generally, the license for use on almost all software says the software maker, seller, seller's grandmother etc., cannot be held liable even of their software crashes, loses business, causes your computer to explode, or impregnates your dog.
This is true, but also irrelevant. These liablity waivers cover damages to the user of the software or service, not damages done to the service itself that may have been attributed to by their own neglience.
In other words, they can not say something like: "If you break our servers because there is a bug in our software or something else we did wrong, you are responsible -- not us."
Lol... So the real question is, are you hiring? :P
I think his position might become available soon.
Interesting view you have of Berkeley, and publishing secrecy. Berkeley professors have been placed in tough spots before [theatlantic.com], and I don't see any reason why this would be different.
Well, this is different for a number of reasons:
1. The article you quoted is talking about the privatization of university research and the nastiness of getting your academic research entangled with private enterprise. Neither the NSF nor the DHS are private organizations. They are federal government and they play by different rules. Maybe not better rules, but definately different.
2. $5.5 million is chump change, especially when its spread between multiple universities. If these universities thought they would get shafted on their research goals, they'd simply pass it up. The monetary value just isn't high enough to warrant the hassles of dealing with an oppressive sponsor.
I'm absolutely positive that part of the agreement was that Berkeley could publish their findings once the project was over. If absolute secrecy was important, then it wouldn't be done at Berkeley (and it wouldn't be reported on Slashdot). Its that simple.
Besides, in order to "shore up the US", there would need to be a lot of cooperation among the multitudes of private enterprises that actually run and maintain the network. Most of the big players in this arena are large, multinational companies that would be inclined to shore up ALL their networks, not just the ones in the US.
Yeahup... that'd do it. :)
:)
Man... why couldn't that have been easier to find!?
10,000 pissed off penguins shorting SCOX at the same time on the same day... ...would require enough other investors willing to loan and/or purchase enough SCOX stock for 10,000 penguins to short. See the problem?
What I've read is that they are in violation of the GPL right now. The main reason is that they have an additional SCO licence that attempts to cover the GPLed software as well as non-GPLed software and that licence claims ownership of the GPLed code and attempts to ignore the GPL.
Can you quote this license? I've been all over SCO's website and I can't find it.
The only thing I can find is a reference to "product license number" and "product license registration", which seem to be nothing more than a tracking system for those who have paid to use SCO's servers and those who have not. RedHat does the exact same thing. So does Mandrake. This is completely valid under the GPL. You can restrict downloads to only those people you choose to allow to download it. The GPL is very explicit about that. The webpage also claims the SRPMs are available for download to the same people they are distributing the binaries to. This is in compliance with the GPL as well. I can't find a GPL violation here at all.
Everyone is ASSUMING that there's this other license out there that is a great big GPL violation and the Register has accused SCO straight out for that, but no one (including the article) can actually PRODUCE THIS LICENSE!
If you reject the GPL...
SCO can SAY whatever they want. The GPL doesn't stipulate that it is null and void if the licensee trashes it in legal documents or screams vile things about it from the top of every hillside. So as long as SCO ACTS within the bounds of the GPL, no matter what they say, they are in compliance to its terms.
Restricting downloads to only those who have purchased the product is well within the bounds of the GPL.
they are now distributing Linux under *another* license, which affirms SCO's "intellectual property" rights. This is a violation of the GPL.
What other license? I can't find it. There's no mention of another license on the webpage. The Register doesn't quote any of the license in their article, but only makes vague references to it. Where's this license? Can you quote it for me?
It looks to me like SCO is restricting access to their servers to only those who paid money to use them. There are references to "product license numbers" on their webpage. This might be an unfortunate phrase, but is truly no different than what RedHat does with some of the services they reserve for paying customers only.
I really don't see any GPL violation here. The Register seems to have made one HELL of a jump.
Where have you worked? JC Penney and Walmart? Most engineering firms are very guarded and don't want pictures of their facilities distributed over the Internet.
I know you meant individual stores, but its been my experience that retail corporate offices have security policies that would put some engineering outfits to shame. Corporate espionage runs completely rampant in that sector and things like Memorial Day sale prices are kept like were the plans to nuclear weapons. Its absolutely stunning.
Did you ever consider the fact email which comes in HTML can have cookies which are tied to your email address?
bzzt! HTML does not contain cookies, therefore email that comes in HTML does not have cookies. Cookies are part of the HTTP protocol.
HTML in email can reference web servers that will serve a cookie to you, but the cookie is not in the body of the email itself. This is why its important to disallow HTML-capable email clients from loading anything from a web server.
Again.. I call bull to what you said: Cell phones tend to build up a static charge due to their emission of electromagnetic waves, which, in some cases, can cause a spark.
You say that statement as if it has been proven and a known fact... even though no one has been able to demonstrate it. If you can show me one place -- any place -- where someone has been able to "cause a spark", I'll back down.
I also don't trust Nokia and Ericsson's "risk assessment". They are tempered by lawyers who would claim that the sky might fall on your head if they thought they could possibly be sued for it.
Cell phones tend to build up a static charge due to their emission of electromagnetic waves, which, in some cases, can cause a spark. [...] It's a legitimate concern.
Ummmmm.... bull.
The only industry when I was there was a Pepsi bottling plant.
There you have it! Proof that Pepsi came from aliens!