In Japan these things are already *everywhere*. Well they don't have cameras but LED's, solar panels, batteries etc. and not just Red but also yellow, blue, green. At night there are times when there are so many its actually confusing as to which direction the road goes. Over kill of course, but then Japan and its roads are nothing else.
I'm always on the look out for great tech journalists to read. My standards are pretty high though ( I'm an EE with an MBA - aren't we all?:( . I eagerly checked out Mossburg but came up feeling "where's the beef"?
right now I read only three guys: goodwins, dvorak and cringley but I'm always looking for others with a decent S/N.
Who are you guys reading on a consistent basis?
In my opinion the greater risk is the risk of not moving to open source in a dignified manner. As time goes by licensing from Microsoft is bound to get more restrictive, cumbersome and expensive. With open source your organization is secure in knowing that current apps will be continually improved and there won't be "licensing surprises" in the future.
As organizations gradually move to open source Microsoft will have fewer customers from which to derive its profits and, to maintain revenues, prices will go up - leading to yet more people moving to OSS. When the tipping point is reached every organization had better have an open source contingency plan in place. The longer they put it off the harder it'll be at crunch time.
In essence it comes down this. Looking into the future 5-10 years from now there are nothing but blue skies in the direction of open source and a lot of dark clouds and uncertainty in the direction of MS. Any large organization would be fool hardy indeed to stick their head in the sand while the predictable market forces play themselves out.
A MODEST PROPOSAL TO END EMAIL SPAM
Most of the discussion here is about legal approaches to stopping spam. While this sounds attractive I'm dubious that it will ever be effective given that spammers can relocate offshore. Here's simple technical fix which I admit is pretty simplistic and has other problems but might point in the direction of a different solution.
Any system that fights spam is going to have some inconvenience associated with it and this proposal is no exception. Is there a method whereby the benefits outweigh the costs? This proposed system might be close to being practical but if not, then perhaps others will come up with a better approach.
THE EASY PART
To thwart spammers this proposal is based on the very simple "code word" technique combined with forcing spammers to go through a manual process to get it. When you send an email to someone you attach their code word to it, perhaps in the subject line. If you have the right code word then the email is accepted, if not then the email never makes it to the inbox. What could be easier?
What about when the code word is wrong or missing? When the code word is wrong then the sender gets an automatically generated message back telling them how and where to get the correct code word. Here there would be server that simply has a list of email addresses with their associated code word. The sender goes to the server, gets the code word, adds it to the email and successfully sends the message.
In order to prevent this process from being automated, and therefore to prevent spammers from easily getting access to the code word, the server presents the recipients code word in a graphical format. Just like yahoo and slashdot (and perhaps others) currently use to prevent automated account generaton on their sites. The graphical format is simply the code word in an image which is just tricky enough to read that a live human needs to do it.
Now, after a while a users code word will get to be known so every couple of months, or whenever the spam build up gets intolerable, they just go to the "master email codeword server" and change it.
This may all seem simple enough but for this to really work there are some huge challenges.
THE HARD PART
In order for this to be used with the least inconvenience email programs would have to be "modified slightly" to add some new features. In particular they would need to:
- Automatically send a message back for rejected emails pointing the sender to the email codeword server.
- keep a record of everybody's codeword and automatically add it to outgoing emails.
- automatically update "authorised correspondents" of any changes in your code word. ie, you decide to change your code word and then all the people in your address book get a message that updates their code word for you automatically and transparently.
CONCLUSION
The technique outlined functions as a very simple 'immune system" that allows email to distinguish 'us' from 'them'. For a small effort it might eliminate 99% of unwanted spam without putting too much of a burden on legitimate but unknown correspondents who have to go and look up the code word at the server.
But would this really work and be practical? How can it be improved? Is there a simpler, better way altogether? If this works how to we get microsoft to change Outlook and hotmail to implement it?:) There will be security issues regarding how to stop me from updating your password etc. Will these be fatal to the idea?
I've been using linux (mandrake 8.1 and kde 2.0) for about 6mo now, and I've used windows for years before, and my top 2 complaints from a joe user perspective are:
1) After I install something new its not always clear where to *find* the the application. Many times they don't show up in the "k" menu or the desktop and I have to go spelunking through the directories to find it.
2) the fonts that come up with the work processors are butt ugly. I expect there's some way to fix this but, out of the box the word processor should at least look decent even if its not word compatible. This particularily puzzling since everything else seems to have decent fonts.
Slashdot Mirror
In Japan these things are already *everywhere*. Well they don't have cameras but LED's, solar panels, batteries etc. and not just Red but also yellow, blue, green. At night there are times when there are so many its actually confusing as to which direction the road goes. Over kill of course, but then Japan and its roads are nothing else.
I'm always on the look out for great tech journalists to read. My standards are pretty high though ( I'm an EE with an MBA - aren't we all? :( . I eagerly checked out Mossburg but came up feeling "where's the beef"?
right now I read only three guys: goodwins, dvorak and cringley but I'm always looking for others with a decent S/N.
Who are you guys reading on a consistent basis?
In my opinion the greater risk is the risk of not moving to open source in a dignified manner. As time goes by licensing from Microsoft is bound to get more restrictive, cumbersome and expensive. With open source your organization is secure in knowing that current apps will be continually improved and there won't be "licensing surprises" in the future. As organizations gradually move to open source Microsoft will have fewer customers from which to derive its profits and, to maintain revenues, prices will go up - leading to yet more people moving to OSS. When the tipping point is reached every organization had better have an open source contingency plan in place. The longer they put it off the harder it'll be at crunch time. In essence it comes down this. Looking into the future 5-10 years from now there are nothing but blue skies in the direction of open source and a lot of dark clouds and uncertainty in the direction of MS. Any large organization would be fool hardy indeed to stick their head in the sand while the predictable market forces play themselves out.
A MODEST PROPOSAL TO END EMAIL SPAM Most of the discussion here is about legal approaches to stopping spam. While this sounds attractive I'm dubious that it will ever be effective given that spammers can relocate offshore. Here's simple technical fix which I admit is pretty simplistic and has other problems but might point in the direction of a different solution. Any system that fights spam is going to have some inconvenience associated with it and this proposal is no exception. Is there a method whereby the benefits outweigh the costs? This proposed system might be close to being practical but if not, then perhaps others will come up with a better approach. THE EASY PART To thwart spammers this proposal is based on the very simple "code word" technique combined with forcing spammers to go through a manual process to get it. When you send an email to someone you attach their code word to it, perhaps in the subject line. If you have the right code word then the email is accepted, if not then the email never makes it to the inbox. What could be easier? What about when the code word is wrong or missing? When the code word is wrong then the sender gets an automatically generated message back telling them how and where to get the correct code word. Here there would be server that simply has a list of email addresses with their associated code word. The sender goes to the server, gets the code word, adds it to the email and successfully sends the message. In order to prevent this process from being automated, and therefore to prevent spammers from easily getting access to the code word, the server presents the recipients code word in a graphical format. Just like yahoo and slashdot (and perhaps others) currently use to prevent automated account generaton on their sites. The graphical format is simply the code word in an image which is just tricky enough to read that a live human needs to do it. Now, after a while a users code word will get to be known so every couple of months, or whenever the spam build up gets intolerable, they just go to the "master email codeword server" and change it. This may all seem simple enough but for this to really work there are some huge challenges. THE HARD PART In order for this to be used with the least inconvenience email programs would have to be "modified slightly" to add some new features. In particular they would need to: - Automatically send a message back for rejected emails pointing the sender to the email codeword server. - keep a record of everybody's codeword and automatically add it to outgoing emails. - automatically update "authorised correspondents" of any changes in your code word. ie, you decide to change your code word and then all the people in your address book get a message that updates their code word for you automatically and transparently. CONCLUSION The technique outlined functions as a very simple 'immune system" that allows email to distinguish 'us' from 'them'. For a small effort it might eliminate 99% of unwanted spam without putting too much of a burden on legitimate but unknown correspondents who have to go and look up the code word at the server. But would this really work and be practical? How can it be improved? Is there a simpler, better way altogether? If this works how to we get microsoft to change Outlook and hotmail to implement it? :) There will be security issues regarding how to stop me from updating your password etc. Will these be fatal to the idea?
I've been using linux (mandrake 8.1 and kde 2.0) for about 6mo now, and I've used windows for years before, and my top 2 complaints from a joe user perspective are: 1) After I install something new its not always clear where to *find* the the application. Many times they don't show up in the "k" menu or the desktop and I have to go spelunking through the directories to find it. 2) the fonts that come up with the work processors are butt ugly. I expect there's some way to fix this but, out of the box the word processor should at least look decent even if its not word compatible. This particularily puzzling since everything else seems to have decent fonts.