Interesting, but I think there were pre-existing efforts and publications in this area. I was peripherally involved in some systems that related to address matching - and one of the data points included in the barcodes was a "customer id" field that was going to be used for automatic unclaimed mail management - the sender of the mail would receive a list of returned mail from the post-office - and the postage would be destroyed.
There's even some of the original documentation around for parts of it (though not expressly for unclaimed mail) from 98 / 99.
Big corporate behind one public IP Address (probably not a problem, and would likely show up in their regular "true up" audits)
Small pirate with big volume registering unauthorized keys like crazy and either selling them somehow, or installing them onto machines in exchange for money.
Your employer must think they are more exposed to having to provide compensation, than they are to being able to prevent it.
I've mentioned this here before....
If you do wholesale deletion (sorry, "archiving/not retaining") of documents, it is also likely you are destroying documents that will prevent you from having to pay out - maybe this should be called the "smoking airbag". You might end up deleting documents where third parties accepted risks, provided evidence of good faith behaviour, or would otherwise have eliminated the exposure.
The only rational reason to run the risk of removing the documents that would protect you, that I can think of, is that the organisation feels that they are more likely to be exposed, rather than protected by the contents.
Which is enough to make someone worry about what they're up to!
I'm no expert, but it sounds like at least Linux is supported (though for all I know, the drivers could be next to useless - I've never used them) - the article does a poor job of mentioning this
The thing that really confuses me about this device is this: USB 2.0 full speed device - if you send USB 2.0 full speed data (at full rate) at a display that only has 80 characters to display, it will be every bit as completely unreadable as a USB 1.0 display also being sent at full rate.
I think you're right that this is great for headerless servers as you wander around the server room - but some of non 1U servers (especially compaqs) used to have something similar built in (I don't know if they still do).
This would be great for a normal desktop computer so you can check for new emails, or have admin reports of how many of the servers are down, etc - that you can see without having to turn your monitor on, or to avoid having to remote / kvm to a management machine. That way, you don't have to interrupt your lunchtime WolfET!
(as opposed to Southern Cross Network Cabling - in Golden, Colorado of all places!:)
The Southern Cross Cable Network provides the fastest, most direct, and most secure international bandwidth from Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii to the heart of the Internet in the USA.
Southern Cross is currently delivering 295 gigabit/s of fully protected bandwidth and has the potential as demand growth requires to increase to 1.2 Tbps using the existing 10 Gbps technology or 4.8 Gbps using 40 Gbps.
It is nice that you won't have incriminating emails around so that people can find them during discovery.
but what happens when you need those same emails that are over 180 days old that would have EXONERATED you?
I guess you just have to say... "oh well, sorry, we don't have a copy of the [warning/caution/acceptance] that puts us in the clear..., I guess we're screwed".
It wouldn't be that difficult to pass legislation doing just that. They could even just do it based on the panel size and your location (since the electricity generated could be roughly calculated from that information).
What are you going to do - hide your solar panels away out of sight of people and google earth?
Perhaps you might - but if you end up with some kind of hidden retracting solar collector, James Bond will probably come by and blow it up!
There have been some interesting discussions regarding the result of economic inequity or opportunity and racial distribution in sporting for a very long time.
The first one I recall was when I was at school, roughly 1992, focusing on swimming (I'm trying to find the article, but it was a long time ago)
The theory put forward is was that you see more people from economically challenged backgrounds in sports that require very little infrastructure and expense (running, soccer, football, basketball) compared to sports that require significant infrastructure or expense (swimming, ice hockey, skiing, equestrian)
Since (anecdotally, I'm not going to look it up) people from specific races (usually historically discriminated racial groups) have belonged the poorer, economically challenged sections of the community, they may tend to show up in specific sports that aren't expensive to learn / play
Of course, though, you could also make the argument that the theory above, coupled with a desiree to improve one's situation means people have a greater desire to compete well in the sports they have access to.
The article was in regards to swimming representation from African countries versus other events like track-and-field
I'm curious about this - what would happen if you used a phrase that was genuinely incriminating as your passkey?
For example, "Dead Body In Concrete Behind Shed" as your key?
Clearly, supplying this key is also supplying something that is incriminating - information - there is no way to seperate them.
I'm sure there are some ways around this, eg, Judge declaring that the information can't be used, or getting a 3rd party to hold the key and keep it away from the prosecution, but doing something like this would definitely raise "self incrimination" as an issue.
From the article:
The treasurer said she is now determined to try to write legislation that could prevent this kind of computer piracy.
* sigh *
Because people who would try and steal some $450,000 are going to be stopped by legislation making it even more illegal.
Maybe something like two factor authentication would be better? That way different numbers are needed every time. And better security on the laptop perhaps? Non administrator priviliges. Not allowing people to install software? All quite doable.
Sure, blame the criminals, but maybe the doors should be bolted too?
I don't really have any answers, just more questions - more detail about your response situations would really be needed to get into more specifics (and I'm not in this area this anyway).
Reading other posts here, I agree that the Marine angle may provide a good avenue for further investigation. Another option is to look at organisations in the 3rd world and see what they use. Another poster made a good point in contacting local HAM outfits to see what they use for emergency and mobile operation.
You could also try contacting other emergency services organisations in your region - there are sure to be some local ones, as well as groups like coast guards, chapters of Medicine Sans Frontiers, International Red Cross etc
.
I think that some of the key points are likely to be:
What is your energy budget (peak, average and duration - ie, do you need 50w 24x7, or a 100w startup with 2x2hr per day)
What is your deployment method (air, road, sea, rail, bicycle, foot, quad, motorbike, etc)
How much space / weight do you have available?
What is your expected deployment length (days, weeks, months, years)
What is your resupply situation (air drops, cars, trucks, walking)
What other resources do you have available (oil, fuel, crops, wood, people, rivers, waterfalls, sun)
What is your exposure to the equipment availablility
How critical is the availability / reliability of the equipment (how many die if its only working 8 hours a day?)
How rugged does the equipment need to be?
Who will be using the equipment?
What will be the field maintenance requirements?
Think further afield - you can go from a very primitive portable situation, to more of a long term field camp arrangement, to a permament station?
Less technological solutions and allowing for very small packages could be having a good crank generator hooked up to either a person peddling or to a domesticated animal of some kind (like a horse on a flour grinder)?
Someone else has already mentioned using Diesel generators - you could use biodiesel, take from visiting trucks tanks, or grow your own (too much like hard work)?
Do you have the ability to use 3rd party equipment? Eg, police, military, other peoples vehicles to charge batteries. What will the people who use your equipment have available that you might use / exchange?
If the deployment ends up being long term, can you request an additional deployment of equipment (eg, have a crisis kit with a diesel / fuel generator for short term, with a good solar kit to follow up)?
If the deployment ends up being long term, can you reduce the operating load on the system (eg, have fixed operating windows) to reduce fuel usage / improve solar effectiveness
Can you mix multiple energy sources (eg, very small generator for short term / emergencies, small solar for ongoing and possibly a crank generator of some kind.
How low can you get your energy budget? Are there lower power alternatives you can get?
In relation to the ICANN revoking domain name problem, isn't this happening because the defendants own the domain name?
Perhaps it would have been possible through some legal corporate shinnanigans for Spamhaus UK to sell the domain name to Suahmaps UK, an unrelated company that happens to have some (though not all) mutual shareholders with some common intent.
That way any claim against the organisation can't involve the domain name.
However, this is more complicated as the courts may somehow declare the transaction void (not a lawyer, so I am not sure of the correct terminology). In terms of valuing the asset for the transfer though, it should be really cheap - after all, its about to get revoked.
I'm sure there are some (large) flaws in this, however it is an interesting idea - and it could be worth other organisations with similar concerns looking into.
I think though that if someone suceeds in copyrighting (although they are talking about trademarks) a smiley, then the "sad face" will probably be ruled to have been an unauthorised derivative work of the original smiley face, and hence, violating copyright.
In fact, a lot of cartoon based facial expressions may be in trouble under this as derivatives.
Exploitation - if the pool of licence holders are in a disadvantaged position, and have no real comparative bargaining power then they will frequently be exploited.
Clearly no one can see that the entire reason behind the progress from shellac, to vinyl, to cassettes, to CDs, to electronic distribution has been the result of free market pressures and the "15%" breakage clause.
As highlighted, there has been the progression of music techology from a time where breakage was very high (Shellac) to digital electronic distribution.
Even making the (extremely generous) assumption that the 15% damage rate was a genuine amount at the time the shellac records were produced, that 15% expense reduction that the record companies claimed clearly provided an economic incentive to try and improve the medium. After all, if they could reduce the amount of damage that occurred, the could ship fewer records and actually keep the difference themselves. In comes vinyl - now the companies can reduce their shipment volumes (since they can reduce the 15% to record stores to a lower amount, but retain the charge to licence holders) - presto - lower shipping costs, less damaged goods handling for record shops - and even consumers benefit too - because their own records were now sturdier and less likely to break (hmm question - did the increased sturdiness of records result in lower customer sales due to fewer replacements being needed).
Fastforward to cassette tapes. Similar motivations again - even lower breakage than records, but with the added benefit of occaisionally being chewed up (repeat sales anyone?). Plus, more versatility being a smaller, less temperamental device in areas experiencing shock, and sales go up. Even more of the 15% now goes to the record companies, and innovation continues. Problem is that due to the moving parts, these are still expensive to produce.
Fast forward to CDs. Cheaper to produce, similar packaging volumes to tapes, next to no breakage, still some scope for repeat purchases. And a bit more of that 15% is retained by the record companies.
Time moves on. And the earlier conspiring of the record labels and secret R&D proves fruitful. Thats right - The Internet. Unlike common belief, Al Gore did not create the internet, nor was it those scientists out at DARPA - it was a secret R&D project by the music industry, designed to maximise their profits by eliminating all distribution breakage, allowing them to retain the 15% breakage charge they levy on licence holders.
It now becomes a broader question though - how long do we let the conspiracy continue to reap the economic rewards for their improvement? Clearly, in a free-market situation, competitors would have entered the industry, used the technology but paid more to licence holders - resulting in the licence holders (who in some ways are also an economic entity that wishes to realise the maximum revue possible) flocking to those companies offering lower breakage restrictions, and hence making those companies more profitable through offering more music to music consumers.
The frequency with which these events are appearing in the media suggests that there has not been such a shift of licence holders to other record companies
Some thoughts on why this could be the case are:
Deep Pockets - Established record comapnies buy out or undercut any competitors using cash hoarded from earlier efficiences
Brass Knuckles - Established players use other underhanded tactics (court cases, lobbying for laws etc) to avoid competition
Genuine Advantage - the established players offer value such as marketing and promotion, career development, payola, etc that provides a greater benefit to musicians
Historical Bias - where this issue is only affecting older contracts and licence holders (hard to tell, because the media won't widely report on a small band/musician having this problem - its hard to know if it exists or not without some research)
Minor Monopoly - the music industry often relies of an almost "cult of personality" for many artists, since those artists are on contract, it forms a monopoly because the desired produc
I would think that Microsoft would have to be *very* careful if they tried to modify the APIs that google were using
Just imagine that the API's that were changed include ones used by some of the major backup software for live exchange backups (basically needing to read all the information), or the parts of the APIs used by Virus Scanner vendors
Given the possible side effects, and that there are a lot of other applications using exchange APIs / connectors, it would be extremely difficult to do without serious, publicity generating side-effects
NEWSFLASH!!!! Microsoft disables online backup of Exchange servers
...Microsoft denies all knowledge of said activities. Says that an unfortunate backup failure has resulted in the loss of all the relevent emails...
I wonder if being involved in, or sugesting the annoyance of someone could then be affected by this.
For example, I'm sure that the not-infrequent posting of names, phone number and email addresses in/. of silly people and organisations with the "let them know how you feel" tagline must seriously annoy the intended targets.
or could this be extended even further... "those pesky greenies are really annoying me (MegaCorp as a person) with thier internet activisim". Of course, the activists can't do anything because the annoying thing is in real life!
I think that this is only the case if you are the developer of the original open source application.
The situation that this change is probably aimed at is one where someone takes a FOSS web application (eg BugZilla - assume it uses GPL, though it may not), then modifies and enhances it and releases it as a commercial product that is hosted.
If the BugZilla licence has this clause in it, and you want to enhance it and provide it as a hosted service, then you will have to either release the source code, or, not use BugZilla as your base, or use an older version that does not have the licence clause in it.
On the other hand, if BugZilla's developers elect not to enforce this clause, then you could enhance it, provide it as a hosted service, and not have to release it.
Note: I don't even know what licence bugzilla uses - it may or may not be GPL, its more an example of a system that I know is FOSS and can be provided as a hosted web application.
Slashdot Mirror
There's even some of the original documentation around for parts of it (though not expressly for unclaimed mail) from 98 / 99.
a-guide-to-printing-the-4state-barcode-v31-mar2012.pdf - although the document is dated 2012 - that's just the most recent revision - the original dates back to the June 1998 (as listed on Page 2).
This 1999 document australia-post-addressing-standards-1999.pdf references "Specification Number 203-4-State Barcodes" - which likely would also contains the same information.
I've mentioned this here before....
If you do wholesale deletion (sorry, "archiving/not retaining") of documents, it is also likely you are destroying documents that will prevent you from having to pay out - maybe this should be called the "smoking airbag". You might end up deleting documents where third parties accepted risks, provided evidence of good faith behaviour, or would otherwise have eliminated the exposure.
The only rational reason to run the risk of removing the documents that would protect you, that I can think of, is that the organisation feels that they are more likely to be exposed, rather than protected by the contents.
Which is enough to make someone worry about what they're up to!
According to the article you posted, support for *nix is patchy:
According to the link for the product included in the article specs include:
* Linux drivers and OpenSource SDK
I'm no expert, but it sounds like at least Linux is supported (though for all I know, the drivers could be next to useless - I've never used them) - the article does a poor job of mentioning this
The thing that really confuses me about this device is this: USB 2.0 full speed device - if you send USB 2.0 full speed data (at full rate) at a display that only has 80 characters to display, it will be every bit as completely unreadable as a USB 1.0 display also being sent at full rate.
I think you're right that this is great for headerless servers as you wander around the server room - but some of non 1U servers (especially compaqs) used to have something similar built in (I don't know if they still do).
This would be great for a normal desktop computer so you can check for new emails, or have admin reports of how many of the servers are down, etc - that you can see without having to turn your monitor on, or to avoid having to remote / kvm to a management machine. That way, you don't have to interrupt your lunchtime WolfET!
(as opposed to Southern Cross Network Cabling - in Golden, Colorado of all places! :)
The Southern Cross Cable Network provides the fastest, most direct, and most secure international bandwidth from Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii to the heart of the Internet in the USA.
Southern Cross is currently delivering 295 gigabit/s of fully protected bandwidth and has the potential as demand growth requires to increase to 1.2 Tbps using the existing 10 Gbps technology or 4.8 Gbps using 40 Gbps.
Here is the thing I don't understand...
This is a double edged sword.
It is nice that you won't have incriminating emails around so that people can find them during discovery.
but what happens when you need those same emails that are over 180 days old that would have EXONERATED you?
I guess you just have to say... "oh well, sorry, we don't have a copy of the [warning/caution/acceptance] that puts us in the clear..., I guess we're screwed".
Great thing about the internet - almost everything has already been done
Scrapheap Challenge - Car Flinger
Remember, physics is the winner here...
It wouldn't be that difficult to pass legislation doing just that. They could even just do it based on the panel size and your location (since the electricity generated could be roughly calculated from that information).
What are you going to do - hide your solar panels away out of sight of people and google earth?
Perhaps you might - but if you end up with some kind of hidden retracting solar collector, James Bond will probably come by and blow it up!
There have been some interesting discussions regarding the result of economic inequity or opportunity and racial distribution in sporting for a very long time.
The first one I recall was when I was at school, roughly 1992, focusing on swimming (I'm trying to find the article, but it was a long time ago)
The theory put forward is was that you see more people from economically challenged backgrounds in sports that require very little infrastructure and expense (running, soccer, football, basketball) compared to sports that require significant infrastructure or expense (swimming, ice hockey, skiing, equestrian)
Since (anecdotally, I'm not going to look it up) people from specific races (usually historically discriminated racial groups) have belonged the poorer, economically challenged sections of the community, they may tend to show up in specific sports that aren't expensive to learn / play
Of course, though, you could also make the argument that the theory above, coupled with a desiree to improve one's situation means people have a greater desire to compete well in the sports they have access to.
The article was in regards to swimming representation from African countries versus other events like track-and-field
Just watched this on DVD last night.
You can definitely see the explosion and much shiny fireworks.
You can't see any debris
Immediately prior to the explosion, you can see her reaching down towards the ejector / emergency release handle.
Plenty of ambiguity.
I'm curious about this - what would happen if you used a phrase that was genuinely incriminating as your passkey?
For example, "Dead Body In Concrete Behind Shed" as your key?
Clearly, supplying this key is also supplying something that is incriminating - information - there is no way to seperate them.I'm sure there are some ways around this, eg, Judge declaring that the information can't be used, or getting a 3rd party to hold the key and keep it away from the prosecution, but doing something like this would definitely raise "self incrimination" as an issue.
i.e. Nothing really.
However, if you have the CD or tapes signed and dated by the ops staff, then shipped to off site security, you've made it harder to falsify.
The interesting issue is that if you are organized enough, what's to stop you from intercepting the messages on the way to the printer / CDR?
The only way I could see around this is some kind of trusted computing style initiative.
In a price regulated environment, companies can't compete on price - so they compete on features and service.
* sigh *
Because people who would try and steal some $450,000 are going to be stopped by legislation making it even more illegal.
Maybe something like two factor authentication would be better? That way different numbers are needed every time. And better security on the laptop perhaps? Non administrator priviliges. Not allowing people to install software? All quite doable.
Sure, blame the criminals, but maybe the doors should be bolted too?
Apple NEEDS To Own the iPhone name outright if they want to call the phone/smartphone by that name.
There are some comments suggesting that due to the use of the name already by the public, that the trademark might already have been diluted.
This may well be valid, however would you want to name your trendy device by a name that doesn't have trademark protection?
After all, if the trademark has been diluted, then anyone can call their smartphone "iPhone" - not just apple.
Then I could post from my i-mate iPhone!
I don't really have any answers, just more questions - more detail about your response situations would really be needed to get into more specifics (and I'm not in this area this anyway).
Reading other posts here, I agree that the Marine angle may provide a good avenue for further investigation. Another option is to look at organisations in the 3rd world and see what they use. Another poster made a good point in contacting local HAM outfits to see what they use for emergency and mobile operation.
You could also try contacting other emergency services organisations in your region - there are sure to be some local ones, as well as groups like coast guards, chapters of Medicine Sans Frontiers, International Red Cross etc
. I think that some of the key points are likely to be:
Think further afield - you can go from a very primitive portable situation, to more of a long term field camp arrangement, to a permament station?
Less technological solutions and allowing for very small packages could be having a good crank generator hooked up to either a person peddling or to a domesticated animal of some kind (like a horse on a flour grinder)?
Someone else has already mentioned using Diesel generators - you could use biodiesel, take from visiting trucks tanks, or grow your own (too much like hard work)?
Do you have the ability to use 3rd party equipment? Eg, police, military, other peoples vehicles to charge batteries. What will the people who use your equipment have available that you might use / exchange?
If the deployment ends up being long term, can you request an additional deployment of equipment (eg, have a crisis kit with a diesel / fuel generator for short term, with a good solar kit to follow up)?
If the deployment ends up being long term, can you reduce the operating load on the system (eg, have fixed operating windows) to reduce fuel usage / improve solar effectiveness
Can you mix multiple energy sources (eg, very small generator for short term / emergencies, small solar for ongoing and possibly a crank generator of some kind.
How low can you get your energy budget? Are there lower power alternatives you can get?
How independent do you need to be?
Good Luck!
Perhaps it would have been possible through some legal corporate shinnanigans for Spamhaus UK to sell the domain name to Suahmaps UK, an unrelated company that happens to have some (though not all) mutual shareholders with some common intent.
That way any claim against the organisation can't involve the domain name.
However, this is more complicated as the courts may somehow declare the transaction void (not a lawyer, so I am not sure of the correct terminology). In terms of valuing the asset for the transfer though, it should be really cheap - after all, its about to get revoked.
I'm sure there are some (large) flaws in this, however it is an interesting idea - and it could be worth other organisations with similar concerns looking into.
In fact, a lot of cartoon based facial expressions may be in trouble under this as derivatives.
Here is the thing I forgot....
Clearly no one can see that the entire reason behind the progress from shellac, to vinyl, to cassettes, to CDs, to electronic distribution has been the result of free market pressures and the "15%" breakage clause.
As highlighted, there has been the progression of music techology from a time where breakage was very high (Shellac) to digital electronic distribution.
Even making the (extremely generous) assumption that the 15% damage rate was a genuine amount at the time the shellac records were produced, that 15% expense reduction that the record companies claimed clearly provided an economic incentive to try and improve the medium. After all, if they could reduce the amount of damage that occurred, the could ship fewer records and actually keep the difference themselves. In comes vinyl - now the companies can reduce their shipment volumes (since they can reduce the 15% to record stores to a lower amount, but retain the charge to licence holders) - presto - lower shipping costs, less damaged goods handling for record shops - and even consumers benefit too - because their own records were now sturdier and less likely to break (hmm question - did the increased sturdiness of records result in lower customer sales due to fewer replacements being needed).
Fastforward to cassette tapes. Similar motivations again - even lower breakage than records, but with the added benefit of occaisionally being chewed up (repeat sales anyone?). Plus, more versatility being a smaller, less temperamental device in areas experiencing shock, and sales go up. Even more of the 15% now goes to the record companies, and innovation continues. Problem is that due to the moving parts, these are still expensive to produce.
Fast forward to CDs. Cheaper to produce, similar packaging volumes to tapes, next to no breakage, still some scope for repeat purchases. And a bit more of that 15% is retained by the record companies.
Time moves on. And the earlier conspiring of the record labels and secret R&D proves fruitful. Thats right - The Internet. Unlike common belief, Al Gore did not create the internet, nor was it those scientists out at DARPA - it was a secret R&D project by the music industry, designed to maximise their profits by eliminating all distribution breakage, allowing them to retain the 15% breakage charge they levy on licence holders.
It now becomes a broader question though - how long do we let the conspiracy continue to reap the economic rewards for their improvement? Clearly, in a free-market situation, competitors would have entered the industry, used the technology but paid more to licence holders - resulting in the licence holders (who in some ways are also an economic entity that wishes to realise the maximum revue possible) flocking to those companies offering lower breakage restrictions, and hence making those companies more profitable through offering more music to music consumers.
The frequency with which these events are appearing in the media suggests that there has not been such a shift of licence holders to other record companies
Some thoughts on why this could be the case are:
I would think that Microsoft would have to be *very* careful if they tried to modify the APIs that google were using
Just imagine that the API's that were changed include ones used by some of the major backup software for live exchange backups (basically needing to read all the information), or the parts of the APIs used by Virus Scanner vendors
Given the possible side effects, and that there are a lot of other applications using exchange APIs / connectors, it would be extremely difficult to do without serious, publicity generating side-effects
NEWSFLASH!!!! Microsoft disables online backup of Exchange servers
...Microsoft denies all knowledge of said activities. Says that an unfortunate backup failure has resulted in the loss of all the relevent emails...
Lawrence and His Laboratory
For example, I'm sure that the not-infrequent posting of names, phone number and email addresses in /. of silly people and organisations with the "let them know how you feel" tagline must seriously annoy the intended targets.
or could this be extended even further... "those pesky greenies are really annoying me (MegaCorp as a person) with thier internet activisim". Of course, the activists can't do anything because the annoying thing is in real life!
I think that this is only the case if you are the developer of the original open source application.
The situation that this change is probably aimed at is one where someone takes a FOSS web application (eg BugZilla - assume it uses GPL, though it may not), then modifies and enhances it and releases it as a commercial product that is hosted.
If the BugZilla licence has this clause in it, and you want to enhance it and provide it as a hosted service, then you will have to either release the source code, or, not use BugZilla as your base, or use an older version that does not have the licence clause in it.
On the other hand, if BugZilla's developers elect not to enforce this clause, then you could enhance it, provide it as a hosted service, and not have to release it.
Note: I don't even know what licence bugzilla uses - it may or may not be GPL, its more an example of a system that I know is FOSS and can be provided as a hosted web application.
Boricle
Boricle