...refusing to produce their proof of extraterrestrial inteligence untill the universe allows them to examine every electromagnetic quanta. Microsoft is likely funding them (via a skunk-works shop in Area-51) to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about us being the center of the universe.
GFS: How about a GMail Files System? I am not a programmer and don't geek down to that level, but it sounds plausible. Break your file system into say 256KB (encrypted) binary attachments with distinct subject lines for locating the the right message when you need it. You now have a huge store of email acting as the allocation units for a file system.
GFS RAID: Google is not the only one offering huge email stores. Get more than one of the huge accounts from Google or SpyMac and you have the equivelent of multiple HDDs. If you call each of those allocation emails a "stripe" and spread them across two or three different stores, you have a GMail RAID-1 or RAID-5 set.
This sounds like it would be easy to simulate and run on a local mail server, then simply point to your GMail/SpyMac/Whatever accounts bring online. High latency and low bandwidth, yes, but very distributed. Maybe good for remote backups.
My question: I can see that security holes that come from Windows OS code shouldn't effect the CrossOver Office Win98-like implementation of the APIs. Security holes that come from the MS application's code may or may not be present in that environment, but how do I know? What types of MS security updates apply to my CrossOver environment, and which don't? Are any of the security houses (like e-Eye) testing for vulnerabilities in the Linux/CrossOver (or Linux/WINE) space?
As to those who ask "WHY?": I run Office 2000 and IE under Crossover Office on Mandreake 9.2.1 because many functions at work require the MS apps. Our test report is generated by a template and macros under Word 2000 that do not run under OpenOffice. Several secure web sites I have to access are not supported for any browser except IE. I can't change these things, but I have the freedom to not run Win2K for my desktop OS. So Crossover Office is a great solution for me.
...when the answer was FLOOR MOUNTED servers the whole time! Next thing you know, we'll find out you can skip the expensive UPS and plug things straight into the wall...nah, that's crazy!
"...are also self-assembling, meaning that they can be manufactured with existing equipment used in the semiconductor industry."
OK, where are there existing semiconductor plants using nano-tech self-assembly techniques? That's an odd statement, implying the current UV light and mask etching equipment could just as easily do nano self-assembly.
"...lug around huge notebooks" is a flyer because so many small form factor laptops are available and good prices now.
It seems from your post that your primary value in a tablet comes from freehand doodling "diagrams, drawings, and weird flowcharts". A good point I had not considered. A secondary value seems to come from going walkabout with it -- "...often holding it or resting it on your arm".
Is that a fair summation of your two highest priorities? What would your opinion be of a smallish laptop that had a digital pen for freehand sketching and a good compatible PDA for walkabout notes and checklists? (Big hint to you VARs out there...)
Why a tablet??? Get a decent laptop. My PHB got a tablet with XP on it, and has had nothing but trouble with it. The WiFi is intermittent, the battery life is short, and the handwriting recognition is unusable. It also has lower specs and twice the price of a laptop with same weight/screen size. I just don't see the point in the things at all.
"...the Soyuz rockets that take like 90% of all stuff to and from ISS."
This is a significant problem. According to this NPR feature, bringing things DOWN is harder that bringing them UP, and some kind of shuttle (not necesarily manned) is the only way to that. The Soyuz does not have nearly enough RETURN capacity for what they want to do in the future.
"And did you know that to accomodate the Russians, the space station is in an orbit that makes it almost useless as a jumping off point to anywhere?"
Since THIS space station was never intended to be a "jumping off point", why is that a problem? Since the Russian capsule is the only way to get people there and back for now, accomodating thems seems like a good decision at this point. If we get to build a space station intended for "jumping off" in the future, it will be built in the required orbit, and I hope Russia, Japan, China, and lots of European countries join in on it!
Work around for thos of us stuck with M$ IE...
on
Another Serious MSIE Hole
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I was trying the DEMO PAGE, and noticed a minor work-around. The article says to save the file to disk before believing what it claims to be, which is sound advice, but you don't have to get that far to see something is wrong. As soon as you click on the link a "File Download" dialog is presented asking what to do with it. If you click on Open, based on the fake file extension displayed... your're screwed. If you click on Save, the next dialog box shows the true file type in the "Save as type" box.
"I wonder where the foreign manufacturer is though, and how easy they are to prosecute. Now I feel sorry for OCZ, because it looks like they're the ones getting the shaft."
It's a Nigerian exporter who promised OCZ they had MILLIONS OF DOLLARS of unclaimed silver they need help get out of the country...
I am writing you in response to your letter dated January 19th, 2004 in which you advised that you would consider legal action if we failed to respond to your efforts to pursue a licensing arrangement. To date, I have yet to receive any information concerning our systems and what you allege violates your intellectual property rights. You have sent me letters that conflict with other statements made by representatives of the SCO Group concerning SCO's ownership of UNIX ABI's and their supposed (re)distribution under the GPL in the Linux kernel.
If you would like to detail directly which of our systems allegedly violate your copyrights, and specifically which code on said systems allegedly violates said copyrights, we will be happy to do an internal audit to verify your claims. Once the results of said audit are complete, we will be more than willing discuss any pending licensing issues with you.
Our current understanding of your legal situation is that your organization has yet to prove your claims of SCO intellectual property being included in the GPL based Linux kernel software that SCO itself has distributed under the GPL. While I understand your concerns regarding intellectual property and your desire to protect SCO's property, at this time, the legality and claims concerning SCO's ownership of code that exists in the 2.4 Linux kernel has yet to be determined by a court of law. I, speaking for myself,
follow with interest SCO Group's contortions in its lawsuits against Novell and IBM, and its defense against the lawsuit brought by Red Hat. In my study of the events that have transpired, it's my understanding that SCO Group has yet to produce any substantive evidence as to the claims regarding code misappropriation by IBM. I am requesting the SCO Group to provide to my organization substantive evidence of alleged copyright violations so that we may compare the alleged violations for the purpose of internal audit to determine if any licensing needs to indeed exist. I do, however, intend to publicly document the results of said audit and any communication with the SCO Group regarding this matter.
Before you waste any more of my time or yours, please detail exact information such as the offending lines of code and the kernel versions you contend this code is in. Alternatively if your organization agrees, we can re-address these issues after your current lawsuits regarding these issues are finalized.
Popped the.gif in Gimp and typed it out:
January 19, 2004
Gavin Roy
CIO
Just Sports USA
6261C Variel Ave.
Woodland Hills, CA 91367-2587
Dear Mr. Roy;
I am following up on the SCO letter dated December 19th, regarding the use of SCO copyright protected code that has been incorporated into Linux without our authorization. As statin in the letter:
[Underlined]"No one may use our copyrighted code except as authorized by us. ...Certain copyrighted application binary interfaces ("ABI Code") have been copied verbatim from our copyrighted UNIX code base and contributed to Linux for distribution, under the General Public License ("GPL") without proper authorization and without copyright attribution. While some application programming interfaces ("API Code") have been made available over the years through POSIX and other open standards, the
UNIX ABI Code has only been made available under copyright restrictions. AT&T made these binary interfaces available in order to support application development to UNIX operating systems and to assist UNIX licensees in the development process.[End Underline] [Italicized]The UNIX ABIs were never intended or authorized for
unrestricted use or distribution under the GPL in Linux.[End Italics]
[Underlined]...Use in Linux of any ABI Code or other UNIX Derived Files identified above constitutes a violation of the United States Copyright Act. Distribution of the copyrighted ABI Code, or binary code compiled using the ABI code, with copyright management information deleted or altered, violates the Digital
Milennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") codified by Congress at 17 U.S.C. [Section Symbol]1202. DMCA liability extends to those who have reasonable grounds to know that a distribution (or re-distribution as required by the GPL) of the altered code of copyright information will induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal an infringement of any right under the DMCA. In addition, neither SCO nor any predecessor in interest has ever placed an affirmative notice in Linux that the copyrighted code in question could be used or distributed under the GPL. As a result, any distribution of Linux by a software vendor or a re-distribution of Linux by an end user that contains any of the identified UNIX code violates SCO's rights under the DMCA, insofar as the distributor knows of these violations."[End Underline]
I am requesting a meeting so that we may discuss the alternatives that are available to your firm. WE
BELIEVE WE CAN PROPOSE SOLUTIONS THAT WILL BE AGREEABLE AND ECONOMICALLY FEASIBLE FOR YOU. I look forward to hearing from you. If you fail to respond to our efforts to pursue a licensing arrangement, WE WILL TURN YOUR NAME OVER TO OUR OUTSIDE COUNSEL FOR CONSIDERATION OF LEGAL ACTION.
Please contact me immediately so we may schedule a meeting. My telephone number is [Blank Line]
or email [Blank Line]
Yours truly,
[Signature]
Philip Langer
Regional Director, Intellectual Property Licensing
SCO
Encl: Letter December 19, 2003
Cc: Ryan E. Tibbits, SCO General Counsel
This quote confuses me (OK, that's not hard to do, just looking for some instruction here): "IBM has also signed up 300 vendors to provide software to run under Linux on Power processors."
Should this sentance end "run under Linux." without the "on Power processors" part? My question is this, once Linux is ported to the Power processors (that part's already done, right?) then would software be written to run on a Linux OS, but only on a Power processor? Would software written for Linux on i386 run on Linux with a Power? Does porting the kernel not bring all the existing software to the new platform? Does software on the new platform not run on the old one?
This was speculated on in an article at Groklaw, that this was the intent (aside from financing the anti-Linux FUD campaign) in M$ paying SCO for a license.
Exactly what I was thinking of, but it would have to be enforced by generally accepted policy (maybe from ICANN?). This is the hard part. There would have to be consequences from higher level domains for not enforcing valid WhoIs records on their lower level domains. And ICANN's history does not indicate a real interest in taking the end user's side over biz interests.
"Heck, we force one in the US for guns, among other things - a misused domain can be just as dreadful in terms of consequence."
That's just an absurd statement. Misuse of a gun (of which I own several), or a knife, or a claw hammer, or a car, has much more serious consequences than spam ever will. Let's get some perspective here, folks!
"I've never, ever seen a valid.biz domain. And very few valid.us domains."
This illustrates my earlier point about enforcement from the top. The.biz registry could only be forced to maintain a valid WhoIs database by the really big boys in a position to impose consequences, or customers who don't want their.biz domain to be synonymous with "scam site". If.biz INTENDS to be the haven of scams and spams, so legitamate business customers have no sway over them, then it's back to the big guns. BTW, I use several.us sites for local and state government and school stuff, so I'm not sure what your problem is there.
I don't think email needs to be, or even should be, the primary contact for a domain owner. A valid phone or fax number or snail mail address works, provided the responsible party can be reached and reply in a reasonable amount of time.
Getting spammed at the address used would be a small downside for a while, but also provides incentive for domain owners to cooperate in the anti-spamming effort. The verified WhoIs is about tracking down domain owners, not prevention of address mining. Again, not a complete solution but maybe something that would contribute to it.
Not a complete solution, but doesn't a valid WhoIs record make spam-killing easier and more practical? Doesn't registering a DNS domain require a valid WhoIs record (at least in theory)? It seems systematic verification of the existing WhoIs records, with consequences like loss of registration for unreachable or deceptive offenders, would help. This could even be done on an open source basis by volunteers. We scan the publicly available WhoIs database, find what we think are invalid records and flag them for double checking and possible enforcement with the registery companies. Tracking and publishing how they handle the reports then puts some pressure toward having an accurate, public, maintained, verified WhoIs database.
Our brainy heroine and penguin loving paralegal babe, PJ at Groklaw, posted an article covering some New Year's trend spotting. Some of the goodies:
1. Invester's Business Daily makes up its Top 10 Tech Stories of the year without mentioning Microsoft in any context.
2. A speculation comes from Chris Gulker in an IT Managers Journal article that Microsoft will introduce an MSLinux when Longhorn turns out to be unsellable. (Good thing or bad thing? I think good, if it happened.)
3. The example of Smart Displays, where per-user licensing inhibits even Microsoft's innovation, as cited in a Register article:
"The final nail in its coffin was Microsoft's absurd decision to kow-tow to the tin god of its licensing agreements. If you took your smart display downstairs, nobody in the den with the computer could use it. Single user licence, repeated Microsoft marketing droids. 'We can't compromise our standard licensing policy."
4. From the counter example of what can be, in the MagicBike project of the Parsons School of Design, PJ muses: "The idea is, when everyone gets to play, innovation is the result. Innovation doesn't come from money or walled-in projects, although money can help implement ideas. Innovation comes from people, and as George Bernard Shaw once pointed out, talent can show up simply anywhere, where you least expect it. The lower the barrier to entry, the more likely you are to get wonderful ideas. It's one reason I keep it possible to leave anonymous comments on Groklaw, despite the down side to that."
5. Vince Cerf's vision of the ubiquitous net is cited, reaching even to other planets.
PJ concludes: "Yes, [Microsoft] must adapt in order to be part of the future. I think it's a given that no one wants a wireless product that can only legally connect to one PC predetermined during setup. Not after somebody sent the mayor an email from a bike in Union Square station in NYC. Or even read about it. Once you have the concept and you see what is possible, you know what you know, and Brand X doesn't work for you after that. Like the song says, there's nothing like the real thing."
I know most of these points have been previously featured on/., but I like the compilation of them as a converging threat to Microsoft's paradigms that may cause significant rethinking in 2004.
Another example of science by press release, or fishing for funding. There is a certain background level of all of these elements in humans, and the man-made compounds are being detected at levels far below active doses. Monitoring is worth it, but the tone is one of those wild-eyed fear mongerings based on a need for funding or intended to create a need for funding. What is the level over time? What is the variability based on geography, nationality, race, personal habits? How long before some Luddite does some specious calculation of how many thousands supposedly die every day due to "body pollution"?
I have always wondered at the absence of such things in the various SciFi universes. The crew of the Enterprise, locked in a cell by this week's bad guy, is always free to build a "sub-space anti-tachyon field inversion beacon", or some such, out of Jordy's visor because there are NO bugging devices in any of the plots. "Nanites" and other nano-tech stuff run through several episodes, but somehow never get married up with so much as a security cam and a microphone in the Enterprise's brig. When you confine the Ferengi to a stateroom for trying to blow up your ship, shouldn't you at least keep an eye on them?
Slashdot Mirror
A thousand processors...
A terrabyte of RAM...
Trillions of pixels per second...
Processed at multi-terraflop speeds...
Drawing the fastest BSOD ever!!!
But...nobody WANTS a Beowolf cluster of these...
...refusing to produce their proof of extraterrestrial inteligence untill the universe allows them to examine every electromagnetic quanta. Microsoft is likely funding them (via a skunk-works shop in Area-51) to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about us being the center of the universe.
GFS: How about a GMail Files System? I am not a programmer and don't geek down to that level, but it sounds plausible. Break your file system into say 256KB (encrypted) binary attachments with distinct subject lines for locating the the right message when you need it. You now have a huge store of email acting as the allocation units for a file system.
GFS RAID: Google is not the only one offering huge email stores. Get more than one of the huge accounts from Google or SpyMac and you have the equivelent of multiple HDDs. If you call each of those allocation emails a "stripe" and spread them across two or three different stores, you have a GMail RAID-1 or RAID-5 set.
This sounds like it would be easy to simulate and run on a local mail server, then simply point to your GMail/SpyMac/Whatever accounts bring online. High latency and low bandwidth, yes, but very distributed. Maybe good for remote backups.
My question: I can see that security holes that come from Windows OS code shouldn't effect the CrossOver Office Win98-like implementation of the APIs. Security holes that come from the MS application's code may or may not be present in that environment, but how do I know? What types of MS security updates apply to my CrossOver environment, and which don't? Are any of the security houses (like e-Eye) testing for vulnerabilities in the Linux/CrossOver (or Linux/WINE) space?
As to those who ask "WHY?": I run Office 2000 and IE under Crossover Office on Mandreake 9.2.1 because many functions at work require the MS apps. Our test report is generated by a template and macros under Word 2000 that do not run under OpenOffice. Several secure web sites I have to access are not supported for any browser except IE. I can't change these things, but I have the freedom to not run Win2K for my desktop OS. So Crossover Office is a great solution for me.
...when the answer was FLOOR MOUNTED servers the whole time! Next thing you know, we'll find out you can skip the expensive UPS and plug things straight into the wall...nah, that's crazy!
"...are also self-assembling, meaning that they can be manufactured with existing equipment used in the semiconductor industry."
OK, where are there existing semiconductor plants using nano-tech self-assembly techniques? That's an odd statement, implying the current UV light and mask etching equipment could just as easily do nano self-assembly.
Throw that system up there! I can't wait to hack THAT Jumbotron and put MY message across the whole sky!
ParadoxDruid,
"...lug around huge notebooks" is a flyer because so many small form factor laptops are available and good prices now.
It seems from your post that your primary value in a tablet comes from freehand doodling "diagrams, drawings, and weird flowcharts". A good point I had not considered. A secondary value seems to come from going walkabout with it -- "...often holding it or resting it on your arm".
Is that a fair summation of your two highest priorities? What would your opinion be of a smallish laptop that had a digital pen for freehand sketching and a good compatible PDA for walkabout notes and checklists? (Big hint to you VARs out there...)
Why a tablet??? Get a decent laptop. My PHB got a tablet with XP on it, and has had nothing but trouble with it. The WiFi is intermittent, the battery life is short, and the handwriting recognition is unusable. It also has lower specs and twice the price of a laptop with same weight/screen size. I just don't see the point in the things at all.
"...the Soyuz rockets that take like 90% of all stuff to and from ISS."
This is a significant problem. According to this NPR feature, bringing things DOWN is harder that bringing them UP, and some kind of shuttle (not necesarily manned) is the only way to that. The Soyuz does not have nearly enough RETURN capacity for what they want to do in the future.
"And did you know that to accomodate the Russians, the space station is in an orbit that makes it almost useless as a jumping off point to anywhere?"
Since THIS space station was never intended to be a "jumping off point", why is that a problem? Since the Russian capsule is the only way to get people there and back for now, accomodating thems seems like a good decision at this point. If we get to build a space station intended for "jumping off" in the future, it will be built in the required orbit, and I hope Russia, Japan, China, and lots of European countries join in on it!
I was trying the DEMO PAGE, and noticed a minor work-around. The article says to save the file to disk before believing what it claims to be, which is sound advice, but you don't have to get that far to see something is wrong. As soon as you click on the link a "File Download" dialog is presented asking what to do with it. If you click on Open, based on the fake file extension displayed... your're screwed. If you click on Save, the next dialog box shows the true file type in the "Save as type" box.
"...and in the meantime it's fun to compare licenses."
You're a real fan of root canals and Britney Spears too, aren't you?
"I wonder where the foreign manufacturer is though, and how easy they are to prosecute. Now I feel sorry for OCZ, because it looks like they're the ones getting the shaft."
It's a Nigerian exporter who promised OCZ they had MILLIONS OF DOLLARS of unclaimed silver they need help get out of the country...
Text from the .pdf of the reply letter:
January 21, 2004
Mr. Philip Langer
Regional Director, Intellectual Property Licensing
SCO Group
355 South 520 West Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042
Dear Mr. Langer:
I am writing you in response to your letter dated January 19th, 2004 in which you advised that you would
consider legal action if we failed to respond to your efforts to pursue a licensing arrangement. To date, I
have yet to receive any information concerning our systems and what you allege violates your intellectual
property rights. You have sent me letters that conflict with other statements made by representatives of the
SCO Group concerning SCO's ownership of UNIX ABI's and their supposed (re)distribution under the
GPL in the Linux kernel.
If you would like to detail directly which of our systems allegedly violate your copyrights, and specifically
which code on said systems allegedly violates said copyrights, we will be happy to do an internal audit to
verify your claims. Once the results of said audit are complete, we will be more than willing discuss any
pending licensing issues with you.
Our current understanding of your legal situation is that your organization has yet to prove your claims of
SCO intellectual property being included in the GPL based Linux kernel software that SCO itself has
distributed under the GPL. While I understand your concerns regarding intellectual property and your
desire to protect SCO's property, at this time, the legality and claims concerning SCO's ownership of code
that exists in the 2.4 Linux kernel has yet to be determined by a court of law. I, speaking for myself,
follow with interest SCO Group's contortions in its lawsuits against Novell and IBM, and its defense against the lawsuit brought by Red Hat. In my study of the events that have transpired, it's my understanding that
SCO Group has yet to produce any substantive evidence as to the claims regarding code misappropriation
by IBM. I am requesting the SCO Group to provide to my organization substantive evidence of alleged
copyright violations so that we may compare the alleged violations for the purpose of internal audit to
determine if any licensing needs to indeed exist. I do, however, intend to publicly document the results of
said audit and any communication with the SCO Group regarding this matter.
Before you waste any more of my time or yours, please detail exact information such as the offending lines
of code and the kernel versions you contend this code is in. Alternatively if your organization agrees, we
can re-address these issues after your current lawsuits regarding these issues are finalized.
Sincerely,
Gavin M. Roy
Chief Information Officer
Just Sports USA
Popped the .gif in Gimp and typed it out:
...Certain copyrighted application binary interfaces ("ABI Code") have been copied verbatim from our copyrighted UNIX code base and contributed to Linux for distribution, under the General Public License ("GPL") without proper authorization and without copyright attribution. While some application programming interfaces ("API Code") have been made available over the years through POSIX and other open standards, the
UNIX ABI Code has only been made available under copyright restrictions. AT&T made these binary interfaces available in order to support application development to UNIX operating systems and to assist UNIX licensees in the development process.[End Underline] [Italicized]The UNIX ABIs were never intended or authorized for
unrestricted use or distribution under the GPL in Linux.[End Italics]
January 19, 2004
Gavin Roy
CIO
Just Sports USA
6261C Variel Ave.
Woodland Hills, CA 91367-2587
Dear Mr. Roy;
I am following up on the SCO letter dated December 19th, regarding the use of SCO copyright protected code that has been incorporated into Linux without our authorization. As statin in the letter:
[Underlined]"No one may use our copyrighted code except as authorized by us.
[Underlined]...Use in Linux of any ABI Code or other UNIX Derived Files identified above constitutes a violation of the United States Copyright Act. Distribution of the copyrighted ABI Code, or binary code compiled using the ABI code, with copyright management information deleted or altered, violates the Digital Milennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") codified by Congress at 17 U.S.C. [Section Symbol]1202. DMCA liability extends to those who have reasonable grounds to know that a distribution (or re-distribution as required by the GPL) of the altered code of copyright information will induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal an infringement of any right under the DMCA. In addition, neither SCO nor any predecessor in interest has ever placed an affirmative notice in Linux that the copyrighted code in question could be used or distributed under the GPL. As a result, any distribution of Linux by a software vendor or a re-distribution of Linux by an end user that contains any of the identified UNIX code violates SCO's rights under the DMCA, insofar as the distributor knows of these violations."[End Underline]
I am requesting a meeting so that we may discuss the alternatives that are available to your firm. WE BELIEVE WE CAN PROPOSE SOLUTIONS THAT WILL BE AGREEABLE AND ECONOMICALLY FEASIBLE FOR YOU. I look forward to hearing from you. If you fail to respond to our efforts to pursue a licensing arrangement, WE WILL TURN YOUR NAME OVER TO OUR OUTSIDE COUNSEL FOR CONSIDERATION OF LEGAL ACTION.
Please contact me immediately so we may schedule a meeting. My telephone number is [Blank Line]
or email [Blank Line]
Yours truly,
[Signature]
Philip Langer
Regional Director, Intellectual Property Licensing
SCO
Encl: Letter December 19, 2003
Cc: Ryan E. Tibbits, SCO General Counsel
This quote confuses me (OK, that's not hard to do, just looking for some instruction here): "IBM has also signed up 300 vendors to provide software to run under Linux on Power processors."
Should this sentance end "run under Linux." without the "on Power processors" part? My question is this, once Linux is ported to the Power processors (that part's already done, right?) then would software be written to run on a Linux OS, but only on a Power processor? Would software written for Linux on i386 run on Linux with a Power? Does porting the kernel not bring all the existing software to the new platform? Does software on the new platform not run on the old one?
This was speculated on in an article at Groklaw, that this was the intent (aside from financing the anti-Linux FUD campaign) in M$ paying SCO for a license.
For you /. types who need a reason to go outdoors, hook your solar-jacket up to one of these, and you'll never go back inside again!
"...require a documented verification process...
.biz domain. And very few valid .us domains."
.biz registry could only be forced to maintain a valid WhoIs database by the really big boys in a position to impose consequences, or customers who don't want their .biz domain to be synonymous with "scam site". If .biz INTENDS to be the haven of scams and spams, so legitamate business customers have no sway over them, then it's back to the big guns. BTW, I use several .us sites for local and state government and school stuff, so I'm not sure what your problem is there.
Exactly what I was thinking of, but it would have to be enforced by generally accepted policy (maybe from ICANN?). This is the hard part. There would have to be consequences from higher level domains for not enforcing valid WhoIs records on their lower level domains. And ICANN's history does not indicate a real interest in taking the end user's side over biz interests.
"Heck, we force one in the US for guns, among other things - a misused domain can be just as dreadful in terms of consequence."
That's just an absurd statement. Misuse of a gun (of which I own several), or a knife, or a claw hammer, or a car, has much more serious consequences than spam ever will. Let's get some perspective here, folks!
"I've never, ever seen a valid
This illustrates my earlier point about enforcement from the top. The
I don't think email needs to be, or even should be, the primary contact for a domain owner. A valid phone or fax number or snail mail address works, provided the responsible party can be reached and reply in a reasonable amount of time.
Getting spammed at the address used would be a small downside for a while, but also provides incentive for domain owners to cooperate in the anti-spamming effort. The verified WhoIs is about tracking down domain owners, not prevention of address mining. Again, not a complete solution but maybe something that would contribute to it.
Not a complete solution, but doesn't a valid WhoIs record make spam-killing easier and more practical? Doesn't registering a DNS domain require a valid WhoIs record (at least in theory)? It seems systematic verification of the existing WhoIs records, with consequences like loss of registration for unreachable or deceptive offenders, would help. This could even be done on an open source basis by volunteers. We scan the publicly available WhoIs database, find what we think are invalid records and flag them for double checking and possible enforcement with the registery companies. Tracking and publishing how they handle the reports then puts some pressure toward having an accurate, public, maintained, verified WhoIs database.
Our brainy heroine and penguin loving paralegal babe, PJ at Groklaw, posted an article covering some New Year's trend spotting. Some of the goodies:
/., but I like the compilation of them as a converging threat to Microsoft's paradigms that may cause significant rethinking in 2004.
:-)
1. Invester's Business Daily makes up its Top 10 Tech Stories of the year without mentioning Microsoft in any context.
2. A speculation comes from Chris Gulker in an IT Managers Journal article that Microsoft will introduce an MSLinux when Longhorn turns out to be unsellable. (Good thing or bad thing? I think good, if it happened.)
3. The example of Smart Displays, where per-user licensing inhibits even Microsoft's innovation, as cited in a Register article:
"The final nail in its coffin was Microsoft's absurd decision to kow-tow to the tin god of its licensing agreements. If you took your smart display downstairs, nobody in the den with the computer could use it. Single user licence, repeated Microsoft marketing droids. 'We can't compromise our standard licensing policy."
4. From the counter example of what can be, in the MagicBike project of the Parsons School of Design, PJ muses: "The idea is, when everyone gets to play, innovation is the result. Innovation doesn't come from money or walled-in projects, although money can help implement ideas. Innovation comes from people, and as George Bernard Shaw once pointed out, talent can show up simply anywhere, where you least expect it. The lower the barrier to entry, the more likely you are to get wonderful ideas. It's one reason I keep it possible to leave anonymous comments on Groklaw, despite the down side to that."
5. Vince Cerf's vision of the ubiquitous net is cited, reaching even to other planets.
PJ concludes: "Yes, [Microsoft] must adapt in order to be part of the future. I think it's a given that no one wants a wireless product that can only legally connect to one PC predetermined during setup. Not after somebody sent the mayor an email from a bike in Union Square station in NYC. Or even read about it. Once you have the concept and you see what is possible, you know what you know, and Brand X doesn't work for you after that. Like the song says, there's nothing like the real thing."
I know most of these points have been previously featured on
Besides, I think I have a crush on PJ...
Another example of science by press release, or fishing for funding. There is a certain background level of all of these elements in humans, and the man-made compounds are being detected at levels far below active doses. Monitoring is worth it, but the tone is one of those wild-eyed fear mongerings based on a need for funding or intended to create a need for funding. What is the level over time? What is the variability based on geography, nationality, race, personal habits? How long before some Luddite does some specious calculation of how many thousands supposedly die every day due to "body pollution"?
I have always wondered at the absence of such things in the various SciFi universes. The crew of the Enterprise, locked in a cell by this week's bad guy, is always free to build a "sub-space anti-tachyon field inversion beacon", or some such, out of Jordy's visor because there are NO bugging devices in any of the plots. "Nanites" and other nano-tech stuff run through several episodes, but somehow never get married up with so much as a security cam and a microphone in the Enterprise's brig. When you confine the Ferengi to a stateroom for trying to blow up your ship, shouldn't you at least keep an eye on them?