You can't post anything "embarrassing"? That would elminate half the Internet! I guess posting on/. would be out of the question.
I do wish people would pay the extra $10 for an ISP that doesn't try to tell you how you can use your connection. The ISP's role should be no more than providing a utility to your home.
My electric company tried asking me what brand refridgerator I had in my home, etc,... They said that they offer "discounts" for those with energy efficient applicances. I said, so you charge a "penalty" for those that have unapproved applicances?
In economics 101, by the way, you learn that companies, and especially monopolies, increase their profits by charging tiered pricing. This is why phone companies have 10 million plans with endless combinations of features. If the electric company succeeded with this plan, it would surely increase their profits.
It's a slippery slope. Give them two inches and they'll eventually take the whole yard. If the electric company didn't get such a negative reaction from consumers over the privacy issues of practically having to "register" the items they plug into their outlets, I wouldn't be surprised if they started charing you a "business usage rate" for having more than two computers in your home, and other privacy invading schemes that would have nothing to do with conservation and everything to do with increasing their coffers.
This isn't to say that I don't believe in conservation. I just believe that the electric company's role should not go beyond the meter outside my house. I'll still choose the same energy saving appliances whether or not I have to report to an organization how I live inside my house.
Likewise, an ISP is just a utility that provides a connection to the Internet, much like a phone company. It should not have any say so whatsoever about the content in my communications. If it is legal, they should not be permitted to threaten us with fees and disconnection.
I don't believe any ISP should block ports. It's a slippery slope. The ISPs should be utilities, like electric companies, providing you an unhindered connection to the Internet.
I have two primary requirements for an ISP. (1) must not block any ports for any reason. (2) must provide at least one static IP.
AOL blocks game ports, so they can charge you $5 more per month for opening the ports. They were one of the first to change the role of ISP from utility to controlled collector of optimal revenue. I have for at least 5 years told everyone to get rid of AOL. Unfortunately, today, people have come to accept the idea that it's ok for an ISP to block ports.
As for the zombies, the ISPs should try:
Informing their customers that their machines are infected. Seems obvious, but it's obviously rarely done, as most users don't know they are infected.
Provide links to free virus detection and spyware removal software. There is a lot of it out there. If the users don't want to by Norton, they could at least try a free one. I bet most don't know that there are free options available.
That article was written in February 2003. The CAN-SPAM act was signed into law in December 2003 and took effect on January 1, 2004.
Due to this act, the percent that originates in the US is going to be very small this year and in the future. More importantly, because of the criminalization of SPAM in the US, the US is unlikely to be a contributor to the unprecedented growth in SPAM we're seeing this year.
Because of the outrage of Americans over SPAM, you can bet that the few that continue to operate here will be caught.
"Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court." -
The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890
I built M$ applications through the 90s, including all Visual Studio languages and both client/server as well as web applications using IIS and DCOM. I always told my clients the truth. When they asked me what tools and technologies I honestly believed were best for their business, what came out of my mouth was often in direct conflict with my career path.
This is not to say that I couldn't and still don't recommend M$ for some uses. But, for the large organizations I worked for, I could not honestly say it was the best thing for them. Large organizations need to really pay attention to open standards, as the cost of ignoring them can be very high in the long run. They also need to avoid vendor lock, as it can do a lot to decrease their competitiveness if their business model depends on IT.
Thus, there are many of us who develop using non-M$ solutions today that know the company very well from first-hand experience in the M$ world. You stereotype people that don't believe in M$'s strategies as people who know nothing about M$ and consider any business model that doesn't give everything away for "free". That simply isn't true. Some of us just prefer ethics and peaceful sleep over selling out; and care about our clients.
I talk to and am good friends with people who develop in the M$ world today. I can't tell you how many of them agree with me. They don't say it publicly, but share privately how much they completely agree. It's not easy to change your career path, though, when your resume is built on M$ technology. They know I understand that, and don't hold it against them, as I was once in their shoes. So, they are honest with me and agree that working for M$ makes you feel like a bit of a sellout of your basic principles.
We did complain to congress, and they passed a lawy making it illegal. Our FBI has pursued several cases, but can't pursue cases outside the US. Thus, the spammers don't have a whole lot of incentive to operate in the US.
The last I heard, 30% of spam was coming from China. I don't know where the other 70% is coming from. Given our CAN-SPAM act, any spam still coming from America is illegal. Being a federal crime (felony), it's not an insignificant one either.
As for the products being American, you should try shopping here. Virtually everything in every store is from China. I am blown away when I see something common made in the USA. Thus, it's hard to believe that the products are all from America.
The question I have is, how do you know the products are from America? How do you know the spammers are in the US?
He really should have described his partitioning setup. Partitioning was the only complication I had with my first FreeBSD install, because it has a different philosophy than RH Linux. Took me hours to create a setup that both worked and seemed feasible in the long-term, since the long-term implications with an old limited size HD are always a concern for those elements you don't necessarily put in the/usr partition, such as/var.
You'd think this following statement he made would have been a clue that there was probably something wrong with the way he partitioned the 80 GB drive he claimed should have been able to handle the install:
I had the opportunity to try it on my laptop system and it seemed to work at first (JDS was recognized as a viable distribution to upgrade to SUSE 9.1 from) but I didn't have enough space to install all of the packages that I needed with the existing partition setup, so I had to repartition and thus lost the ability to test the upgrade further.
The guy says the partition configuration he used for the JDS didn't work for SUSE 9.1 either, and had to repartition it to have enough space to complete the install! It appears to me that the only difference between this and the problem he had with JDS was that it sounded like JDS gave the warning a bit earlier in the install.
I believe that a JDS install should alleviate the user as much as possible complications from partitioning. Yet, we don't know if he had used "advanced" options that permitted him to create the limitted partition sizes, or a default install. In fact, we know nothing about the options he was given and the options he chose for partitioning.
How do I find out if my IP is on a public rbl, and how I can get off it? I went to spamcop.com, and there's nothing there for checking or removing your IP.
I'm trying to understand why email I sent today to Compuware was rejected. It seemed to indicate that it didn't like that fact that the IP it communicated through resolved to a different domain than the IP it receives email on and identifies itself as.
I understand requiring that an IP resolve to a domain; but why do email servers reject it when this domain is different than the mail server?
This is a legitimate setup where an email server can connect through a proxied connection like any other internally initiated Internet communication. Another scenario is the initiation of a backup connection, where you can still send email, but perhaps can't receive it.
Separately, how are email servers that handle multiple domains impacted today? This means, they'll always send email for domains that are different than the mail server's domain, whether you resolve it through the mx record, or through reverse DNS.
I know one thing... I have experienced an unprecendented loss of business related email without any error notice. The only way I know is through phone conversations verifying that email was sent and not received. This applies to both incoming and outgoing email. Thus far, I have been able to receive incoming by telling the person to send it to me using a different account. I consider the restrictions on my mail server minimal, so usually presume they are having temporary DNS problems. Now, I'm not sure. It's clear that an seemingly obvious and simple restriction can have unintended consequences.
The pendulum is swinging to filter too much email today. Unfortunately, you can never know what you didn't receive, and cannot reasonably verify that all mail you sent was received. I have had to use the reliable phone a lot more because of the decreasing reliability of email communications.
LOL. If you're asking when Chemicals was created, it was created by Standard Oil of Ohio (SOHIO), which BP later created. I believe Standard Oil created it in the 60s.
It frusterates me greatly, because I see many features that I and others use and rely upon (like running my own mail server, being able to send things with a different return address than the machine I'm mailing from, not needing to own a domain to use such functionality, etc) being sacrificed for very little actual benefit against spam.
LOL, I might have just experienced that today. Basically, I got a response from Compuware's email server refusing to forward an email I'm trying to send to one of their employees. It rejected the client host, which in this case was the reverse DNS of the public IP my email server routes out of. Here's the error message:
Client host rejected:
Use your providers mailgateway 20020809
Unfortunately, since it didn't say what it didn't like about the client host, I can only speculate on the possibilities. Here are some of them:
Not matching mail host name. Based on what you said about being able to host your own email server and not needing to own a domain, I think you understand the difficulty of the IP of your outbound traffic not resolving to the domain of your mail server.
Blacklisted domain. Since it reverse DNS'd the public IP my network routes through, it obtained the domain of my ISP. I know for a fact that pleny of computers resolving to my ISP's domain have been infected, because I've had countless logs on my websites resolving to the domain.
Blacklisted IP. I used to have an compromised NT box, which I wiped out and replaced happily with FreeBSD. However, it may have never forgiven me since. I think I remember indications that I couldn't send Compuware email a long while back, so this could be a case where I was blacklisted for being compromised a long time ago, and Compuware does not have a forgiveness program in place.
Regardless, I currently created a new subdomain for that IP. As soon as it goes live, I'm going to create a reverse DNS for that IP. This way it will resolve to the same domain as my mail server. However, it won't actually resolve to the domain of 99% of my outgoing mail, as I use the email server to send and receive email for multiple domains, and the one the mail server is defined for my MX records is rarely used. The domain for my mail server is used primarily for infrastracture.
Obviously, what you are stating is Monsato's position. The point I'm making is that these are all consequenses of unwillful possesion of the original seed.
In other words, if I own a farm, and choose to not use Monsato's seed. But, I choose to replant my own seeds every year, then the undesirable consequences of Monsato's genetic property landing on my property (the original seeds or pollen) is that I'll end up with crops that produce seeds that contain Monsato's patented genes. Thus, possession of original seeds or pollen is required to create the circumstances whereby "cultivation and reproduction" is inevitable! If I only replant seeds produced by my crops for 40 years, then the only way I will "cultivate and reproduce" Monsato's seed is if their genetic strains somehow infect my crops against my will, which can occur of no will of my own through the wind from a nearby farm that is using Monsato seed. This, transference of possession, whether by the wind, or truck, or willful act, is required before you can cultivate and reproduce, either intentionally or unintentionally.
So, it is about possession. You can't cultivate and reproduce what you do not possess.
His crime was intentionally cultivating the seeds, not being in posession of some of their plants.
He was never charged with a crime. This was a civil case. He was accused of not paying license fees for Monsanto patented technology.
Monsanto also dropped the claim of intent, instead insisting that it didn't matter if he did it intentionally or not.
The possession of the seed was proof that his crop contained the genes. Thus, the seed produced by his crop was the evidence. However, the claim was that the prior year's seed to create the crop included Monsanto's patented genes.
But, this is only one possible source of the 0-68% infection rate of the crop (according to independent tests). Cross-pollination and wind-blown contents of passing trucks were sighted as possible causes.
Monsanto addressed this by not addressing it. That is, they dropped their claim of HOW he got the genes that produced the crop that produced the seeds, simply stating that the seeds produced from his crops prove that his crops contained the genes, and thus patented technology.
By choosing not to claim how the crops were infected, or show intent, Monsanto effectively obtained the broadest ruling possible... one that effectively declares that you violate the patents through mere possession.
Thus, back to the analogy that the wind or a passing truck can plant patented property on my land against my will. Now, I can be sued for the licensing fees... for mere possession! Why should I have to weed out the tares from the wheat when I did absolutely nothing to bring your patented possession on my land, and moreover, I can't seem to be able to do anything to prevent it, short of retiring my land!
This could result in legalized extortion as it stands today. Monsanto can now extract licensing fees from farmers who are infected by the wind. They can simply let innocent farmers get infected who replant their seeds. Then, when they go to plant their seeds, they will be in possession of patented material, and have to pay fees, completely against their will. As the story said, most farmers simply settled to avoid the legal costs of court. Isn't this usually the case when a large corporation goes after a little guy?
I have to wonder, could Schmeiser have won if he had a multi-million dollar legal team? Given how unjust the ruling is, it seems likely that he could have had a better legal team. I'm guessing that he had a single lawyer that probably wasn't the best one to take on Monsanto.
Its worth noting that the website says that he intends to wait for the patent issue to be resolved in court before he presses his own lawsuit.
"Schmeiser's lawsuit against Monsanto won't be dealt with until the original lawsuit has been resolved. "We want to have the patent infringement hearings run their course, then we'll pursue this," said Schmeiser's lawyer Terry Zakreski."
It's not clear if he still intends to press his lawsuit against Monsanto now that the patent verdict turned out unfavorable; somehow I doubt it.
And what Certificate Authorities (CA) will your email server consider acceptable? The problem is that certificates cost hundreds of dollars a year because they are commercially controlled by a few CAs (e.g., Verisign). Why should people have to shell out $150/yr just to run an email server? It's bad enough to have to do it in order to use SSL on websites without the user getting a prompt "warning them".
This whole CA thing is out-of-wack IMHO. We need free CA's that can accomplish the same goal, namely verifying the integrity of part of certificate information. The theory is that if you used a credit card to purchase the certificate, then at least the info relating to your CC is valid. So, how do we fund free or low cost CA's and how do they verify that you do legally exist and are reachable via valid contact information?
It is possible, and much more feasible, to simply use public keys without digital cretificates. This is the old fashioned approach where the host itself verifies its own signatures. Hosts can verify they actually sent the email.
I'm not sure what this accomplishes though. If a PC is infected to become a spam bot, then why wouldn't its SMTP server sign its outgoing messages? How does it know that one of its clients is infected? And, if it signs the messages, then receiving email servers will validate the signature without a problem. Thus, spam will still get through because it is coming from a trusted client through a trusted SMTP server.
He abandoned his failed attempt to say that they "polluted" his crops without his help
The article doesn't indicate he counter sued with this. It simply states that this is what he said, and was probably used in part of his legal defense. This is completely different from using it to actually counter sue offensively for "crop damage," which is what the poster you replied to suggested.
I agree with the original poster. OK, if they can patent it and enforce their patent, then what's my protection they won't plant their possession in my house, then call the cops claiming I stole it? How do farmers protect themselves from cross-pollenization of patented material? The issue of how to protect farmers from infection of patented crops doesn't appear to be adequately addressed with this case's ruling. Without such protection, patenting of crops will just resort to a new form of legalized extortion.
How did you calculate "today's dollars"? The trusted CPI or PPI? I believe inflation has been overstated for decades, largely because increases in value are largely unaccounted for. I read that the the fed has tried to address this in recent years, but it is a political hot potato because reducing the CPI by half a point impact fixed income recipients (e.g., social security). The last estimate I saw back when balancing the budget was the political trend was that the CPI was overstating inflation by 1/2 a point.
The VCR is one example. Today, for $60, you can get a 4-head hi fi stereo vcr with other features. If you go back to the 80s, there was a clear difference in price between a 4-head hi fi stereo and those lacking one or both of those features (e.g., $600 vs. $300), putting its price significantly above the "average" VCR price. The CPI was not designed to handle this type of product differentiation, so it doesn't account for the value that virtually all VCRs today are 4-head hi fi stereo, meaning that measuring true price change requires comparing them to those VCRs with those features in the 80s. But CPI statistics cannot do that, thus underestimating the deflation in the VCR market, overestimating inflation overall.
This has become a common problem as technology has permitted product development to grow at an astounding rate while prices drop in contrast to earlier history. Yesterday's luxury model is quickly becoming today's commodity in virtually everything that involves technology.
Thus, if you could truly recalculate today's dollar, I believe you would see a clear increase in the price of oil.
I actually believe this is a very viable business plan, because of my experience at BP Chemicals. BP Chemicals (originally part of Standard Oil), was created to process the waste of the oil business, in an attempt to at least recoup some of the costs, and possibly make a profit.
It turned out to be very lucrative, and became a major cash producer for BP. When oil income was down, they counted on Chemicals to keep cash and profits up.
One of their earliest less complex chemicals they produced happened to be nitrogen, used to create fertilizer. Later, they produce a lot more complex chemicals, and even sold their nitrogen facilities in the 90s. Their acrylonitriles business was booming, the last time I worked for them.
The bottom line is that a business created to reduce the cost of waste, and possibly even make a profit by processing it turned out to be a major industry success. Thus, I believe that since they are not merely producing oil through an unconventional means, but using the savings from waste management to drive the business, this could be a huge success and create a new industry.
I don't know if oil is the primary contributor. I still can't believe that a cow releases 100-200 liters of methane every day in the form of flatulance. Methane has 31x the "global warming" effect of CO2 on atmosphere, so think of that as 3000-6000 liters of CO2 every day.
I just wish I could put a cow on the back of my truck so I wouldn't have to pay the high price of gas today.
Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) has standard procedures for diagnosing problems when you call their 800 numbers (cue cards). The problem I had was with their proprietary authentication technology, which one of their more techinally skilled persons told me involved servers in Japan, so I had to call that hotline number.
Unfortuantely, they kept wanting me to go through steps to ensure I had connectivity. I tried to explain over and over that I am online, and that they can even ping me via the static public IP I used for my PS/2. They didn't know what ping was.
I tried to explain, but they kept stopping me, refusing to even let me explain what ping was, repeatedly saying, "we don't ping, sir!" I tried to explain it is harmless, and if they went to the command prompt, I could tell them how to ping my PS/2 so they'd know it is online. They refused, getting upset, saying they are not allowed to ping!
The only option they would give me, even after I spoke to the "manager", was to go through the connectivity steps, which, by the way, assume you only use their network adapter. It doesn't matter if you are online, or that you can prove it, or that the error is clearly from their authentication servers. They only know how to take you through the steps to be sure "your adapter is plugged in," etc.
I wasn't frustrated because they didn't know what ping was, but because they wouldn't even let me prove that my PS/2 was on the Internet, and connectivity was not the problem. It turns out, they can't help you at all when you have problems with their authentication servers, and don't even have a means to log that their is a problem with them so someone in Japan can fix them. Yet, you have to use the authentication servers to connect to their game servers. The bottom line is that SOE's 800 number support is virtually useless for any techy that knows he's online. You just have to wait until someone somehow realizes there's a problem and fixes it.
So far, these analogies are incredibly illogical. He's not doing it to try to get an insurance company to pay him money, so it isn't fraud.
The likelihood that he will have a problem could actually be remote. If he lives in a house, it's very unlikely that anyone would actually use his wireless network. Even if a neighbor does use it, it's quite possible that they will not do anything illegal.
I personally have never seen another wireless SSID broadcast in my neighborhood. WAPs also don't work from very far, so someone would have to actually be outside my house to even try to get on. I already tried unsuccessfully to use mine from next door.
Since I used my own WAP as an example, I'll note that I choose to use WEP and MAC filtering. Just because I understand what the author is saying, doesn't mean that it's something I'd choose personally. I simply understand that if anyone does use my WAP illegally, and another tries to hold me accountable, I'll have to explain how WEP and MAC filtering are easily cracked, which isn't easy for a lot of people to understand.
The author is choosing to increase one risk, that someone might use his network, to offset another risk, that his ISP might not accept the vulnerability of WEP and MAC filtering as probable, and that the burden of proving he's innocent just isn't worth the effort. He's picking heads, I'm picking tails. The point he's making is we really don't know which way the coin will fall, and he seems to feel that there's more than a 50% chance that the coin will land on heads. Although I respectfully continue to use all security features available, I cannot say that I am right, and he is wrong, because he has a good point.
Re:Let's play the substitution game, kids!
on
Safe and Insecure?
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I am blown away at how many people think that you can use a gun analogy for every legal question! I've read a lot of posts about this article, and you are about the 50th person to try it so far.
What is the difference between having an open internet connection that the public can share, which you can find at virtually all college campuses, and passing out free guns to children in the neighborhood?
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I do wish people would pay the extra $10 for an ISP that doesn't try to tell you how you can use your connection. The ISP's role should be no more than providing a utility to your home.
My electric company tried asking me what brand refridgerator I had in my home, etc,... They said that they offer "discounts" for those with energy efficient applicances. I said, so you charge a "penalty" for those that have unapproved applicances?
In economics 101, by the way, you learn that companies, and especially monopolies, increase their profits by charging tiered pricing. This is why phone companies have 10 million plans with endless combinations of features. If the electric company succeeded with this plan, it would surely increase their profits.
It's a slippery slope. Give them two inches and they'll eventually take the whole yard. If the electric company didn't get such a negative reaction from consumers over the privacy issues of practically having to "register" the items they plug into their outlets, I wouldn't be surprised if they started charing you a "business usage rate" for having more than two computers in your home, and other privacy invading schemes that would have nothing to do with conservation and everything to do with increasing their coffers.
This isn't to say that I don't believe in conservation. I just believe that the electric company's role should not go beyond the meter outside my house. I'll still choose the same energy saving appliances whether or not I have to report to an organization how I live inside my house.
Likewise, an ISP is just a utility that provides a connection to the Internet, much like a phone company. It should not have any say so whatsoever about the content in my communications. If it is legal, they should not be permitted to threaten us with fees and disconnection.
I have two primary requirements for an ISP. (1) must not block any ports for any reason. (2) must provide at least one static IP.
AOL blocks game ports, so they can charge you $5 more per month for opening the ports. They were one of the first to change the role of ISP from utility to controlled collector of optimal revenue. I have for at least 5 years told everyone to get rid of AOL. Unfortunately, today, people have come to accept the idea that it's ok for an ISP to block ports.
As for the zombies, the ISPs should try:
Are there just 140 drug users in the world?
Due to this act, the percent that originates in the US is going to be very small this year and in the future. More importantly, because of the criminalization of SPAM in the US, the US is unlikely to be a contributor to the unprecedented growth in SPAM we're seeing this year.
Because of the outrage of Americans over SPAM, you can bet that the few that continue to operate here will be caught.
I built M$ applications through the 90s, including all Visual Studio languages and both client/server as well as web applications using IIS and DCOM. I always told my clients the truth. When they asked me what tools and technologies I honestly believed were best for their business, what came out of my mouth was often in direct conflict with my career path.
This is not to say that I couldn't and still don't recommend M$ for some uses. But, for the large organizations I worked for, I could not honestly say it was the best thing for them. Large organizations need to really pay attention to open standards, as the cost of ignoring them can be very high in the long run. They also need to avoid vendor lock, as it can do a lot to decrease their competitiveness if their business model depends on IT.
Thus, there are many of us who develop using non-M$ solutions today that know the company very well from first-hand experience in the M$ world. You stereotype people that don't believe in M$'s strategies as people who know nothing about M$ and consider any business model that doesn't give everything away for "free". That simply isn't true. Some of us just prefer ethics and peaceful sleep over selling out; and care about our clients.
I talk to and am good friends with people who develop in the M$ world today. I can't tell you how many of them agree with me. They don't say it publicly, but share privately how much they completely agree. It's not easy to change your career path, though, when your resume is built on M$ technology. They know I understand that, and don't hold it against them, as I was once in their shoes. So, they are honest with me and agree that working for M$ makes you feel like a bit of a sellout of your basic principles.
We did complain to congress, and they passed a lawy making it illegal. Our FBI has pursued several cases, but can't pursue cases outside the US. Thus, the spammers don't have a whole lot of incentive to operate in the US.
The last I heard, 30% of spam was coming from China. I don't know where the other 70% is coming from. Given our CAN-SPAM act, any spam still coming from America is illegal. Being a federal crime (felony), it's not an insignificant one either.
As for the products being American, you should try shopping here. Virtually everything in every store is from China. I am blown away when I see something common made in the USA. Thus, it's hard to believe that the products are all from America.
The question I have is, how do you know the products are from America? How do you know the spammers are in the US?
If you tax only select companies in a competitive industry, then the company has to absorb most of the cost, as they can't change price theory.
You'd think this following statement he made would have been a clue that there was probably something wrong with the way he partitioned the 80 GB drive he claimed should have been able to handle the install:
The guy says the partition configuration he used for the JDS didn't work for SUSE 9.1 either, and had to repartition it to have enough space to complete the install! It appears to me that the only difference between this and the problem he had with JDS was that it sounded like JDS gave the warning a bit earlier in the install.
I believe that a JDS install should alleviate the user as much as possible complications from partitioning. Yet, we don't know if he had used "advanced" options that permitted him to create the limitted partition sizes, or a default install. In fact, we know nothing about the options he was given and the options he chose for partitioning.
The reverse DNS should be live by midnight tonight, so I'll test it then.
How do I find out if my IP is on a public rbl, and how I can get off it? I went to spamcop.com, and there's nothing there for checking or removing your IP.
I understand requiring that an IP resolve to a domain; but why do email servers reject it when this domain is different than the mail server?
This is a legitimate setup where an email server can connect through a proxied connection like any other internally initiated Internet communication. Another scenario is the initiation of a backup connection, where you can still send email, but perhaps can't receive it.
Separately, how are email servers that handle multiple domains impacted today? This means, they'll always send email for domains that are different than the mail server's domain, whether you resolve it through the mx record, or through reverse DNS.
I know one thing... I have experienced an unprecendented loss of business related email without any error notice. The only way I know is through phone conversations verifying that email was sent and not received. This applies to both incoming and outgoing email. Thus far, I have been able to receive incoming by telling the person to send it to me using a different account. I consider the restrictions on my mail server minimal, so usually presume they are having temporary DNS problems. Now, I'm not sure. It's clear that an seemingly obvious and simple restriction can have unintended consequences.
The pendulum is swinging to filter too much email today. Unfortunately, you can never know what you didn't receive, and cannot reasonably verify that all mail you sent was received. I have had to use the reliable phone a lot more because of the decreasing reliability of email communications.
Correction: ... which BP later PURCHASED [in the 80s]...
LOL. If you're asking when Chemicals was created, it was created by Standard Oil of Ohio (SOHIO), which BP later created. I believe Standard Oil created it in the 60s.
LOL, I might have just experienced that today. Basically, I got a response from Compuware's email server refusing to forward an email I'm trying to send to one of their employees. It rejected the client host, which in this case was the reverse DNS of the public IP my email server routes out of. Here's the error message:
Client host rejected: Use your providers mailgateway 20020809
Unfortunately, since it didn't say what it didn't like about the client host, I can only speculate on the possibilities. Here are some of them:
- Not matching mail host name. Based on what you said about being able to host your own email server and not needing to own a domain, I think you understand the difficulty of the IP of your outbound traffic not resolving to the domain of your mail server.
- Blacklisted domain. Since it reverse DNS'd the public IP my network routes through, it obtained the domain of my ISP. I know for a fact that pleny of computers resolving to my ISP's domain have been infected, because I've had countless logs on my websites resolving to the domain.
- Blacklisted IP. I used to have an compromised NT box, which I wiped out and replaced happily with FreeBSD. However, it may have never forgiven me since. I think I remember indications that I couldn't send Compuware email a long while back, so this could be a case where I was blacklisted for being compromised a long time ago, and Compuware does not have a forgiveness program in place.
Regardless, I currently created a new subdomain for that IP. As soon as it goes live, I'm going to create a reverse DNS for that IP. This way it will resolve to the same domain as my mail server. However, it won't actually resolve to the domain of 99% of my outgoing mail, as I use the email server to send and receive email for multiple domains, and the one the mail server is defined for my MX records is rarely used. The domain for my mail server is used primarily for infrastracture.In other words, if I own a farm, and choose to not use Monsato's seed. But, I choose to replant my own seeds every year, then the undesirable consequences of Monsato's genetic property landing on my property (the original seeds or pollen) is that I'll end up with crops that produce seeds that contain Monsato's patented genes. Thus, possession of original seeds or pollen is required to create the circumstances whereby "cultivation and reproduction" is inevitable! If I only replant seeds produced by my crops for 40 years, then the only way I will "cultivate and reproduce" Monsato's seed is if their genetic strains somehow infect my crops against my will, which can occur of no will of my own through the wind from a nearby farm that is using Monsato seed. This, transference of possession, whether by the wind, or truck, or willful act, is required before you can cultivate and reproduce, either intentionally or unintentionally.
So, it is about possession. You can't cultivate and reproduce what you do not possess.
He was never charged with a crime. This was a civil case. He was accused of not paying license fees for Monsanto patented technology.
Monsanto also dropped the claim of intent, instead insisting that it didn't matter if he did it intentionally or not.
The possession of the seed was proof that his crop contained the genes. Thus, the seed produced by his crop was the evidence. However, the claim was that the prior year's seed to create the crop included Monsanto's patented genes.
But, this is only one possible source of the 0-68% infection rate of the crop (according to independent tests). Cross-pollination and wind-blown contents of passing trucks were sighted as possible causes.
Monsanto addressed this by not addressing it. That is, they dropped their claim of HOW he got the genes that produced the crop that produced the seeds, simply stating that the seeds produced from his crops prove that his crops contained the genes, and thus patented technology.
By choosing not to claim how the crops were infected, or show intent, Monsanto effectively obtained the broadest ruling possible... one that effectively declares that you violate the patents through mere possession.
Thus, back to the analogy that the wind or a passing truck can plant patented property on my land against my will. Now, I can be sued for the licensing fees... for mere possession! Why should I have to weed out the tares from the wheat when I did absolutely nothing to bring your patented possession on my land, and moreover, I can't seem to be able to do anything to prevent it, short of retiring my land!
This could result in legalized extortion as it stands today. Monsanto can now extract licensing fees from farmers who are infected by the wind. They can simply let innocent farmers get infected who replant their seeds. Then, when they go to plant their seeds, they will be in possession of patented material, and have to pay fees, completely against their will. As the story said, most farmers simply settled to avoid the legal costs of court. Isn't this usually the case when a large corporation goes after a little guy?
I have to wonder, could Schmeiser have won if he had a multi-million dollar legal team? Given how unjust the ruling is, it seems likely that he could have had a better legal team. I'm guessing that he had a single lawyer that probably wasn't the best one to take on Monsanto.
Its worth noting that the website says that he intends to wait for the patent issue to be resolved in court before he presses his own lawsuit.
"Schmeiser's lawsuit against Monsanto won't be dealt with until the original lawsuit has been resolved. "We want to have the patent infringement hearings run their course, then we'll pursue this," said Schmeiser's lawyer Terry Zakreski."
It's not clear if he still intends to press his lawsuit against Monsanto now that the patent verdict turned out unfavorable; somehow I doubt it.
This whole CA thing is out-of-wack IMHO. We need free CA's that can accomplish the same goal, namely verifying the integrity of part of certificate information. The theory is that if you used a credit card to purchase the certificate, then at least the info relating to your CC is valid. So, how do we fund free or low cost CA's and how do they verify that you do legally exist and are reachable via valid contact information?
It is possible, and much more feasible, to simply use public keys without digital cretificates. This is the old fashioned approach where the host itself verifies its own signatures. Hosts can verify they actually sent the email.
I'm not sure what this accomplishes though. If a PC is infected to become a spam bot, then why wouldn't its SMTP server sign its outgoing messages? How does it know that one of its clients is infected? And, if it signs the messages, then receiving email servers will validate the signature without a problem. Thus, spam will still get through because it is coming from a trusted client through a trusted SMTP server.
The article doesn't indicate he counter sued with this. It simply states that this is what he said, and was probably used in part of his legal defense. This is completely different from using it to actually counter sue offensively for "crop damage," which is what the poster you replied to suggested.
I agree with the original poster. OK, if they can patent it and enforce their patent, then what's my protection they won't plant their possession in my house, then call the cops claiming I stole it? How do farmers protect themselves from cross-pollenization of patented material? The issue of how to protect farmers from infection of patented crops doesn't appear to be adequately addressed with this case's ruling. Without such protection, patenting of crops will just resort to a new form of legalized extortion.
The VCR is one example. Today, for $60, you can get a 4-head hi fi stereo vcr with other features. If you go back to the 80s, there was a clear difference in price between a 4-head hi fi stereo and those lacking one or both of those features (e.g., $600 vs. $300), putting its price significantly above the "average" VCR price. The CPI was not designed to handle this type of product differentiation, so it doesn't account for the value that virtually all VCRs today are 4-head hi fi stereo, meaning that measuring true price change requires comparing them to those VCRs with those features in the 80s. But CPI statistics cannot do that, thus underestimating the deflation in the VCR market, overestimating inflation overall.
This has become a common problem as technology has permitted product development to grow at an astounding rate while prices drop in contrast to earlier history. Yesterday's luxury model is quickly becoming today's commodity in virtually everything that involves technology.
Thus, if you could truly recalculate today's dollar, I believe you would see a clear increase in the price of oil.
It turned out to be very lucrative, and became a major cash producer for BP. When oil income was down, they counted on Chemicals to keep cash and profits up.
One of their earliest less complex chemicals they produced happened to be nitrogen, used to create fertilizer. Later, they produce a lot more complex chemicals, and even sold their nitrogen facilities in the 90s. Their acrylonitriles business was booming, the last time I worked for them.
The bottom line is that a business created to reduce the cost of waste, and possibly even make a profit by processing it turned out to be a major industry success. Thus, I believe that since they are not merely producing oil through an unconventional means, but using the savings from waste management to drive the business, this could be a huge success and create a new industry.
I just wish I could put a cow on the back of my truck so I wouldn't have to pay the high price of gas today.
Unfortuantely, they kept wanting me to go through steps to ensure I had connectivity. I tried to explain over and over that I am online, and that they can even ping me via the static public IP I used for my PS/2. They didn't know what ping was.
I tried to explain, but they kept stopping me, refusing to even let me explain what ping was, repeatedly saying, "we don't ping, sir!" I tried to explain it is harmless, and if they went to the command prompt, I could tell them how to ping my PS/2 so they'd know it is online. They refused, getting upset, saying they are not allowed to ping!
The only option they would give me, even after I spoke to the "manager", was to go through the connectivity steps, which, by the way, assume you only use their network adapter. It doesn't matter if you are online, or that you can prove it, or that the error is clearly from their authentication servers. They only know how to take you through the steps to be sure "your adapter is plugged in," etc.
I wasn't frustrated because they didn't know what ping was, but because they wouldn't even let me prove that my PS/2 was on the Internet, and connectivity was not the problem. It turns out, they can't help you at all when you have problems with their authentication servers, and don't even have a means to log that their is a problem with them so someone in Japan can fix them. Yet, you have to use the authentication servers to connect to their game servers. The bottom line is that SOE's 800 number support is virtually useless for any techy that knows he's online. You just have to wait until someone somehow realizes there's a problem and fixes it.
The likelihood that he will have a problem could actually be remote. If he lives in a house, it's very unlikely that anyone would actually use his wireless network. Even if a neighbor does use it, it's quite possible that they will not do anything illegal.
I personally have never seen another wireless SSID broadcast in my neighborhood. WAPs also don't work from very far, so someone would have to actually be outside my house to even try to get on. I already tried unsuccessfully to use mine from next door.
Since I used my own WAP as an example, I'll note that I choose to use WEP and MAC filtering. Just because I understand what the author is saying, doesn't mean that it's something I'd choose personally. I simply understand that if anyone does use my WAP illegally, and another tries to hold me accountable, I'll have to explain how WEP and MAC filtering are easily cracked, which isn't easy for a lot of people to understand.
The author is choosing to increase one risk, that someone might use his network, to offset another risk, that his ISP might not accept the vulnerability of WEP and MAC filtering as probable, and that the burden of proving he's innocent just isn't worth the effort. He's picking heads, I'm picking tails. The point he's making is we really don't know which way the coin will fall, and he seems to feel that there's more than a 50% chance that the coin will land on heads. Although I respectfully continue to use all security features available, I cannot say that I am right, and he is wrong, because he has a good point.
What is the difference between having an open internet connection that the public can share, which you can find at virtually all college campuses, and passing out free guns to children in the neighborhood?