Each year, the ATA brings the industry together with Senators, Members of Congress, senior level regulators and state officials to ensure your voice is heard
Maybe it is because I am English, but I found the double entendre in this irresistable.
There is the technology available to avoid spam. Spam blacklists, Bayesian filters, and Challenge-Response systems will handle the vast majority of spam, if not all of it.
This is true. However, there is a downside. Spam blacklists, in practice, block lots of legitimate mail. Bayesian filters need tuning by the individual user, and I seriously doubt its usefulness to the typical investor in asset enhancement solutions. Challenge-Response systems are potentially effective without the cooperation of the users, but the implementation would need to be very robust and the costs should not be underestimated.
To rid ourselves of the spam menace, it is necessary to stop spam being profitable. Catching and fining spammers is one way this might be done. Technologies that stop spam arriving in the mailboxes certainly help those of us who have no interest in the spam's advertised services. They will do nothing to prevent continued stupidity by those who are stupid today.
OK, I think I understand your viewpoint. I disagree that it lends credibility: big companies do not freely assume legal responsibility in cases where they fear losing. IMHO, the PHBs will tend to be reassured by being told that HP will assume the legal risk. Perhaps it does make HP look a little tacky though: after all, they are doing something very similar to what Microsoft did a few weeks back (indemnifying customers against 3rd party license actions) and I find most things Microsoft does tacky!
I almost wonder if Microsoft (and other large organisations, politicians etc.) has a computer program to generate these press releases:
1)... based on consumer experiences Meaning consumers no longer want chat rooms?
2)... child protection Sure: get those kids away from the computer in their front room and out to the malls and parks.
3)... our strategic investment Meaning that they need to dramatically reduce chat room use in order to justify the developments in the software used for it; or meaning that they need to charge money for the service in order to make it pay and all talk of "consumers" and "child protection" is just spin.
They missed the opportunity to include anti terrorism, increased choice and lower TCO. Their inclusion would be nonsensical? No more so than those their spin utility actually selected.
First this may strengthen and not weaken SCO's claims ("If SCO is wrong as anybody claims why do they offer me indemnification?")
Sorry, but this is totally incomprehensible to me. How can HP saying "we are sufficiently confident of the weakness of SCO's case that we are willing to assume the supposed liability for free" possibly strengthen SCO's case?
"We will provide full indemnity across the entire suite for any SCO-related action," said HP vice president (Linux) Martin Fink... Fink said HP is not paying any Linux-related licensing fees to SCO.
The last sentence here is interesting. Many earlier posts were wondering if HP was protected by paying SCO.
However, I see nothing unreasonable about HP's position that they will indemnify only their own customers. What are they supposed to do: provide a contact e-mail address for free legal assistance, to be used by people who have downloaded Mandrake to run on their IBM PC and then subsequently received a threatening letter from SCO?
O'Reilly Developer News is reporting details of the newest Google programming contest
This must be some new meaning of the word details with which I an unfamiliar. The www.topcoder.com page certainly contains details in the normal sense. The O'Reilly page contains what I would call a brief summary. Interesting concept though.
A 100Mbs FTTH from NTT is connection is around $43 a month
Right! Now, a question to those who are explaining the lower average US-wide broadband adoption as caused by the difference in population density: what does 100Mbs fibre cost in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago?
One possible clue is a current consulting opportunity in Detroit, advertised on www.hotlinuxjobs.com:
Red Hat System Administrator - Advanced Server
Salary: 30-35/HR - Long Term Contract (1+ year)
Detroit, MI -
JOB DESCRIPTION:
Participate in developing the Ford global RedHat (RH)
Advanced Server (AS) 2.1 Linux load. ...
Re:Huge, Huge, Huge Problem for Microsoft
on
Ford To Move To Linux
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It does seem significant based on the headlines, but I am concerned that all the coverage of this so far comes from that one report in the Scotland on Sunday, and that report was not exactly bursting with details.
I am waiting to see some further independent coverage before getting too excited.
This supersedes kb823980 which was the rpc patch from a few weeks ago. Basically a roll up. So if you haven't ran kb823980, you can run this and kill 2 birds with one stone.
Alternatively, wait a few more weeks and install the next one.
Microsoft have another critical vulnerability in the Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 line of OSes, allowing a remote attacker to run arbitrary code.
So how is that different from normal Windows?
Actually, there are a lot of Unix utilities that do not run under cygwin. This could be pretty useful.
Consultancy opportunity
on
Back To SCO
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Dear Mr McBride,
I have a proposal to make to you that I believe could be in our mutual interests.
I have been following with interest your license dispute with IBM, together with your attempt to keep us all informed through regular press releases and interviews. Unfortunately, for all your efforts, the result has been unsatisfactory as the information you have presented has consistently contained rather severe inaccuracies. I can assure you that I (like most in the open source movement) am very symathetic to your problem. I understand that SCO originally did not have a copy of much of the source code it owns (that you believe has been copied wholesale into Linux). As such, it is understandable that you would know little about it.
I believe SCO has now managed to acquire a copy of the Unix V source code. This is a good first step, but not enough. I believe you now need access to someone who can evaluate where this code came from and which portions, if any, may be regarded as SCO intellectual propery. I would like to offer my services to assist your organisation in this matter. As someone who can read C code and knows how to use the google search engine I am eminently qualified for this task.
I am sure you will wish to take advantage of this offer without delay. It must be a matter of great concern to you that, for all your efforts, you have thus far been unable to accurately present the situation to your shareholders, customers and the general public.
The consensus seems to be that this will not work for most languages (including C) because of how modern compilers work. You cannot work back from object code to source code.
Trying to block spam by blocking email seeming to originate from specific servers just does not work. Email headers can too easily be forged. Further, even assuming you could identify where email originated, what do you do about, say, hotmail? Vast amounts of spam still start there. But, everyone I know also receives valid email from hotmail accounts.
Effective solutions to the problem of spam will need much more sophisticated approaches than just blocking based on the content of email headers. I have read some proposals, but none yet that seem both effective and easy to implement.
Equipment: 360/65 mainframe running OSMVT/ASP.
Problem description: At approximately the same time in the morning, on average about once a week, a job (different job each time) would fail with an I/O error on a specific 7-track tape drive.
It took over a year to track down the cause of this problem, which was very costly: the jobs were often time critical and mainframe computer time was costly anyway. We had top hardware CEs and systems programmers looking at this from every conceivable angle. Just about every component in the tape drive was changed.
The mystery was eventually solved by an observant computer operator. The tape drives were on the second floor of a building with a road passing just outside. At that hour in the morning, if the sun was shining, it was possible for the sun to reflect off the windscreen off passing cars and flash briefly on the read head of the tape drive. The tape drive interpreted this as invalid data.
Reminds me of an issue we encountered at an IBM education centre back in the 1970s. The computer room had an electronic door with a release button beside it. The room had three mainframes (370 models 145, 125 and 115) and appropriate peripherals. About two feet to the right of the door was a huge emergency power off button. Yes, you guessed it. One day, a very short sighted lady mistook the emergency power off for the door release: a bit embarrassing for her when she realised the reason for the sudden silence!
Re:I'm not sure how accurate this statement is.
on
MRAM in 2004?
·
· Score: 1
(spinning up the hard drive wears it down faster than anything).
wow nice piece of FUD.
I think you are probably right about the FUD, but do you know of any recent references, specific to harddrives, to back this up? It seems to me that there are at least two conflicting considerations here. Some of the harddrive components are non-mechanical and best kept as near as possible to a constant temperature. Others are mechanical and will tend to degrade based on the length of time they are in use. What actually fails in practice and why?
As currently designed, Shred would obviously not defeat deliberate source misappropriation. If (big if) the method could adapted such that it could not be easily fooled by a determined violator (and without revealing how the code works) then I believe registration of the results should be required by law. BUT...
In order that the method should not be fooled by simple changes, at least the following is required
* White space must be ignored
* Comparison must be at the statement level, not the code line level
* Variable names must be replaced by standard placeholders
* Routine names, other than standard library calls, must be replaced by standard placeholders
* (Probably difficult) logic will be needed in the tool to detect and ignore noops: how do you deal with
i++;
%include noop.i; a[i]=b[i];
The trouble is: a high proportion of the code sections thus simplified will fall into a relatively small number of possibilities, vulnerable to dictionary type attacks. Thus, most of the code could be reconstructed, though admittedly as obfuscated source code. IMHO this provides a valid objection to its use.
I find it quite disturbing that the EWeek article comes across as if linux does have SCO's IP in it, while this has still yet to be proved.
While I find this extremely aggravating, I fully expect the bulk of the press to take a pseudo neutral position (which this article unfortunately does). However weak SCO's case really is, the job of this journalist is to report on current events, not editorialise. Further, the journalist's employers will have no desire to unnecessarily antagonise any section of the IT industry, however scurrulous they may be.
Excellent citations! I especially agree with the criticism that English derived legal systems treat the law as a game played by a cartel, whereas most continental systems (and their derivatives) are focused on establishing the truth.
I think one of the most eloquent critics of English law was Charles Dickens. For instance, in his preface to Bleak House he states in part
A Chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under
any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought the judge's eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate. There had been, he admitted, a trivial blemish or so in its rate of progress, but this was exaggerated and had been entirely owing to the "parsimony of the public," which guilty public, it appeared, had been until lately bent in the most determined manner on by no means enlarging the number of Chancery judges appointed--I believe by Richard the Second, but any other king will do as well.
...
At the present moment (August, 1853) there
is a suit before the court which was commenced nearly twenty years ago, in which from thirty to forty counsel have been known to appear at one time, in which costs have been incurred to the amount of seventy thousand pounds, which is A FRIENDLY SUIT, and which is (I am assured) no nearer to its termination now than when it was
begun.
This is great writing, but it is depressing to note that, in 150 years, little has changed.
Condemns the plaintiffs to pay the costs of this suit, up to this moment on the part of defendants... estimated to be fl 2830.- each time, of which f 330.- is recording rights.
We are talking about legal costs for each ISP of less than US$1500. And the costs paid by the plaintiffs when the ISPs are found to do nothing wrong. Why cannot the US legal system be more like Holland's?
There is one way some individuals have done very well out of OSS: by using it as a proof of their skills. Some companies, when looking at retaining consultants or full-time employees, are willing to pay a significant premium to those who have established a reputation in the OSS area.
For organisations, as opposed to individuals, it is less clear how one can benefit. IBM seems to have a viable business plan: sales of hardware, services and add-on software products, using open source components as a means to reduce the customer's TCO. Many other organisations seem to have a business plan based largely on wishful thinking.
Slashdot Mirror
This is true. However, there is a downside. Spam blacklists, in practice, block lots of legitimate mail. Bayesian filters need tuning by the individual user, and I seriously doubt its usefulness to the typical investor in asset enhancement solutions. Challenge-Response systems are potentially effective without the cooperation of the users, but the implementation would need to be very robust and the costs should not be underestimated.
To rid ourselves of the spam menace, it is necessary to stop spam being profitable. Catching and fining spammers is one way this might be done. Technologies that stop spam arriving in the mailboxes certainly help those of us who have no interest in the spam's advertised services. They will do nothing to prevent continued stupidity by those who are stupid today.
OK, I think I understand your viewpoint. I disagree that it lends credibility: big companies do not freely assume legal responsibility in cases where they fear losing. IMHO, the PHBs will tend to be reassured by being told that HP will assume the legal risk. Perhaps it does make HP look a little tacky though: after all, they are doing something very similar to what Microsoft did a few weeks back (indemnifying customers against 3rd party license actions) and I find most things Microsoft does tacky!
I made another post (moderated as "redundant") that denies HP has bought a license.
1) ... based on consumer experiences Meaning consumers no longer want chat rooms?
2) ... child protection Sure: get those kids away from the computer in their front room and out to the malls and parks.
3) ... our strategic investment Meaning that they need to dramatically reduce chat room use in order to justify the developments in the software used for it; or meaning that they need to charge money for the service in order to make it pay and all talk of "consumers" and "child protection" is just spin.
They missed the opportunity to include anti terrorism, increased choice and lower TCO. Their inclusion would be nonsensical? No more so than those their spin utility actually selected.
Sorry, but this is totally incomprehensible to me. How can HP saying "we are sufficiently confident of the weakness of SCO's case that we are willing to assume the supposed liability for free" possibly strengthen SCO's case?
The last sentence here is interesting. Many earlier posts were wondering if HP was protected by paying SCO.
However, I see nothing unreasonable about HP's position that they will indemnify only their own customers. What are they supposed to do: provide a contact e-mail address for free legal assistance, to be used by people who have downloaded Mandrake to run on their IBM PC and then subsequently received a threatening letter from SCO?
This must be some new meaning of the word details with which I an unfamiliar. The www.topcoder.com page certainly contains details in the normal sense. The O'Reilly page contains what I would call a brief summary. Interesting concept though.
Right! Now, a question to those who are explaining the lower average US-wide broadband adoption as caused by the difference in population density: what does 100Mbs fibre cost in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago?
I am waiting to see some further independent coverage before getting too excited.
Alternatively, wait a few more weeks and install the next one.
So how is that different from normal Windows?
Actually, there are a lot of Unix utilities that do not run under cygwin. This could be pretty useful.
I have a proposal to make to you that I believe could be in our mutual interests. I have been following with interest your license dispute with IBM, together with your attempt to keep us all informed through regular press releases and interviews. Unfortunately, for all your efforts, the result has been unsatisfactory as the information you have presented has consistently contained rather severe inaccuracies. I can assure you that I (like most in the open source movement) am very symathetic to your problem. I understand that SCO originally did not have a copy of much of the source code it owns (that you believe has been copied wholesale into Linux). As such, it is understandable that you would know little about it.
I believe SCO has now managed to acquire a copy of the Unix V source code. This is a good first step, but not enough. I believe you now need access to someone who can evaluate where this code came from and which portions, if any, may be regarded as SCO intellectual propery. I would like to offer my services to assist your organisation in this matter. As someone who can read C code and knows how to use the google search engine I am eminently qualified for this task.
I am sure you will wish to take advantage of this offer without delay. It must be a matter of great concern to you that, for all your efforts, you have thus far been unable to accurately present the situation to your shareholders, customers and the general public.
Yours etc.
The consensus seems to be that this will not work for most languages (including C) because of how modern compilers work. You cannot work back from object code to source code.
Effective solutions to the problem of spam will need much more sophisticated approaches than just blocking based on the content of email headers. I have read some proposals, but none yet that seem both effective and easy to implement.
Problem description: At approximately the same time in the morning, on average about once a week, a job (different job each time) would fail with an I/O error on a specific 7-track tape drive.
It took over a year to track down the cause of this problem, which was very costly: the jobs were often time critical and mainframe computer time was costly anyway. We had top hardware CEs and systems programmers looking at this from every conceivable angle. Just about every component in the tape drive was changed.
The mystery was eventually solved by an observant computer operator. The tape drives were on the second floor of a building with a road passing just outside. At that hour in the morning, if the sun was shining, it was possible for the sun to reflect off the windscreen off passing cars and flash briefly on the read head of the tape drive. The tape drive interpreted this as invalid data.
Reminds me of an issue we encountered at an IBM education centre back in the 1970s. The computer room had an electronic door with a release button beside it. The room had three mainframes (370 models 145, 125 and 115) and appropriate peripherals. About two feet to the right of the door was a huge emergency power off button. Yes, you guessed it. One day, a very short sighted lady mistook the emergency power off for the door release: a bit embarrassing for her when she realised the reason for the sudden silence!
wow nice piece of FUD.
I think you are probably right about the FUD, but do you know of any recent references, specific to harddrives, to back this up? It seems to me that there are at least two conflicting considerations here. Some of the harddrive components are non-mechanical and best kept as near as possible to a constant temperature. Others are mechanical and will tend to degrade based on the length of time they are in use. What actually fails in practice and why?
In order that the method should not be fooled by simple changes, at least the following is required
* White space must be ignored
* Comparison must be at the statement level, not the code line level
* Variable names must be replaced by standard placeholders
* Routine names, other than standard library calls, must be replaced by standard placeholders
* (Probably difficult) logic will be needed in the tool to detect and ignore noops: how do you deal with
The trouble is: a high proportion of the code sections thus simplified will fall into a relatively small number of possibilities, vulnerable to dictionary type attacks. Thus, most of the code could be reconstructed, though admittedly as obfuscated source code. IMHO this provides a valid objection to its use.
While I find this extremely aggravating, I fully expect the bulk of the press to take a pseudo neutral position (which this article unfortunately does). However weak SCO's case really is, the job of this journalist is to report on current events, not editorialise. Further, the journalist's employers will have no desire to unnecessarily antagonise any section of the IT industry, however scurrulous they may be.
I think one of the most eloquent critics of English law was Charles Dickens. For instance, in his preface to Bleak House he states in part
A Chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought the judge's eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate. There had been, he admitted, a trivial blemish or so in its rate of progress, but this was exaggerated and had been entirely owing to the "parsimony of the public," which guilty public, it appeared, had been until lately bent in the most determined manner on by no means enlarging the number of Chancery judges appointed--I believe by Richard the Second, but any other king will do as well.
At the present moment (August, 1853) there is a suit before the court which was commenced nearly twenty years ago, in which from thirty to forty counsel have been known to appear at one time, in which costs have been incurred to the amount of seventy thousand pounds, which is A FRIENDLY SUIT, and which is (I am assured) no nearer to its termination now than when it was begun.
This is great writing, but it is depressing to note that, in 150 years, little has changed.
We are talking about legal costs for each ISP of less than US$1500. And the costs paid by the plaintiffs when the ISPs are found to do nothing wrong. Why cannot the US legal system be more like Holland's?
For organisations, as opposed to individuals, it is less clear how one can benefit. IBM seems to have a viable business plan: sales of hardware, services and add-on software products, using open source components as a means to reduce the customer's TCO. Many other organisations seem to have a business plan based largely on wishful thinking.