One one hand we have the constant news of yet another security breech where an unknown amount of data is stolen, the time lapse of the disclosure, and another breech breaking the news later the same day. On the other hand we have every financial company up-selling a service they've rolled out to monitor credit scores, credit inquires, and social security numbers.
At what point are people going to clasp those hands together and just stop caring? Between social networking sites and the new lack of financial / gaming network security, most of “you” is digitized and already out there. Are these breeches just becoming another marginalized city hazard like Jay walking on a boulevard?
There are a lot of applications and environments that require any means of communication, storage, and media to be monitored. The three headed deity of Espionage: International, Industrial and Corporate, demand that you do so.
The people who are hired to "spy" on their fellow co-workers are generally looking for those types of violations and if somewhere in the middle someone is sending out porn, or using their employment at a prestigious company for ulterior motives, or any other myriad of the violations of common (or clearly stated at the time of your hire) corporate network use and they get caught, well... the flour sifter has caught a few more flies.
Despite the fact that we all work with them or are them, from the top tiers of management and from the shareholders viewpoint those violators are not the types of employees that you want to employ or want on the payroll.
Companies tent to benefit from firing these people because they show to their employees and clients that they are there to do business and just business.
If this was about ISP or the government spying on an individuals emails, then that would be a valid case and cause to rally the troops of the revolution, but when you are using someone elses network, someone elses resources, and being paid not to...well I don't really see the cause for concern.
Not necessarily the case, and from what I know of trademark laws there has to be more to the story than what we are seeing here.
For those in the know companies spend hundreds of thousands on trademark research with companies such as Namprotect and Thomson and Thomson who make millions from clients who research Trademarks, Service Marks, and Copyrights years (sometimes minutes) before they even plan on utilizing the mark. So that they can avoid situations like this.
Now who really wants to bet that Apple did not do their due diligence by using a trademark research firm?
I saw a documentary on AMC the other night about Clearplay, Cleanflicks, and the slew of other companies that have taken quite a foothold into this new market, which is called Film Sanitizing.
The directors that were interviewed argued that these companies were A) Tampering with the work and creative vision of the director, B) profiting on a product that was already sold, C) implying that the director or Directors Guild of America (DGA) has/had endorsed the editing of the film.
The DGA's point of view is that some scenes of the scenes, language and elements that are being removed from the film need to remain in that movie to show the movie as it was envisioned, and a rather good example that was given was the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan, which is full of the horrors of war and battle and thus is essential to the movie.
The Film Sanitizers point of view points to scenes like **SPOILER**SPOILER**
Matt Damon in Borne Supremacy where he views the bloodied body of the Russian agent after the agent was killed in a car crash. In the sanitized version of this film the camera shot of viewing the body is edited out and the viewer only sees Damon looking into the vehicle from the passengers side door sans close-up of the body. The viewer is none wiser to the editing.
**SPOILER**SPOILER**
Another set of arguments from both parties are the DGA's contention that these sanitizers are profiting immensely from their original product which the sanitizers argue is invalid under "fair use" and each DVD that is sold is purchased legally. A sale for a sale.
Marshall Herskovitz one of the directors fighting against the sanitizing of films, even goes so far as to argue about the broader nature of sanitizing such as when people will want movies with only Whites and no Blacks, or no Jews in the movie, etc....
It goes back to just what it is that the parents want to be seen in their homes by their children. While yes some scenes like the opening of Private Ryan, or the sex scene in Traffic are highly relevant to the film, they may not be suitable for younger viewers until the parent has possibly spoken to them about it, or is aware that they may have to answer a few questions about the film from their child.
But ultimately it allows the parent to set the conversation rather than having it shoved at them on different terms, to which raises another point from the DGA that the movies that are being sanitized are R rated movies.
A proprietary system that no one can post to coupled with a password needed to view said content sounds suspiciously like a static second level webpage or a ssl private network. Just...like...a...private forum. We do the same thing here at work for vendors who buy our products, a static page updated weekly by the sales department that only x amount of vendors have access to, they can read their mail "posted specials" and later send updates to the dmail admin "webmaster" or "sales".
Let's just face it. Spam as much as I hate it is here to stay. Yes we can all agree that eventually the systems will get better at defeating spam and bulk mailings, but the brilliant minds that are developing the stopping systems have the brilliant minds that are bent on defeating those other brilliant minds.
But removing the system from the culprits is a novel approach, lets just not herald it as the end or even a stepping stone to stopping spam.
Good point, but there is only a matter of time or a matter of a new platform release before someone else devises another medium to push their product in an "In your face method".
Spam started out, how many years ago on Usenet(?) and despite the millions companies spend making software to block, and the millions of man hours it takes up to script them out and off our networks, that the chance of making a few hundred still shunts our efforts since these guys won't stop sending.
It'll just take time. But like the television commercial of today they'll be ranging far into the future.
We need to start stopping these guys at the gates earlier.
Indeed, and that applies towards any set of rules, guidelines or laws. But more so with the three concrete laws that Asimov put in place that are called laws but are actually rule sets for a logic trap, however as human nature and universal laws (irony, eh?) have shown: Logic traps only apply if you are in the same bubble.
I've got so much junk downstairs it's not even funny to the point where in my delusional state of "going to build it..." had me purchase a small bureau at a yard sale, just so I could sort all the equipment from their bins into drawers.
I want to keep some stuff, like kind of a small a museum for my kid later on, or just for the desperation midnight frontend server build, but with 8 sun lunchboxes, enough compaqs for a small business and more ISA/Tokens, and Ethernet cards than computers it's time to realize my dreams of folding/farming/rendering have only yeilded me the fruit of of a title: New-age-digital packrat.
Politically, the EU despite it's slow start and setbacks is stepping up in it's own right as blocks of countries merge to become a formidable competitor/ally/balance for the U.S.
Having them rely on an outside source for GPS, Military or other electronic systems places the disadvantage in their court. Also remember the havoc that went on in the EU when the US switched GPS channels for Iraq? Germany's reliance on the GPS system for their Mercedes cars were thrown off kilter for a bit.
Having read the article, I wonder what the 'open' system will be like? Competition is the friend of all technology, so hopefully we will benefit rather than have 1cm rfid's.:) We will see.
-eol
Good point, it's one thing to write things as open source and put then out in the field, but to see if the market will respond financially to it is a whole different angle; more so when the market can make those same tools and processes.
I may be hugely mistaken but I think I have seen a few other OSS projects which did a bit of tricky licensing for larger or development environments. It will be interesting to see where Xandros' take on this will lead them.
There is also the fine line between culpability and fair use once the message is out in the fields, unless the sending method is sent by a secured source to a trusted source, the email is free and wild. With the amount of sniffing and man in the middle attacks primed and waiting in the background on the internet it would be foolish to think otherwise.
One of the reasons a lot of companies automatically put the disclaimers / nonsense on the bottom of the email is that it provides them with somewhat of a means of liability protection from information that was sent or processed from their systems, lets not also forget the confidentiality or rather the breaches of, that email allow to happen so frequently and readily.
Lastly, later if heaven forbid (!) a scandal hits the office involving a lower or sometimes high level employee, emails (which like any segment of a well defined network) may be called up from archives for an investigation internally or externally in a court of law. Stating the MULA on the bottom of correspondence, while generally accepted in people_to_people terms as fodder, is actually a wise move for a corporation to show its partners, employees, and potential revenue sources the fact that they place internal memos and all communications in the same manner that they would (as any entity with a sense of self preservation) deem a legal document.
Indeed and the idea isn't even that well veiled for our crowd but for the plug and play consumer this is exactly what they are going to want, a computer that they can purchase or pick up at Best Buy that they can then take home, open the box, plug it into the wall via way of the large color coded wires and it comes with a tech in the box.
Best idea ever to impose and bring DRM into the mainstream market while simultaneously silencing the hardware modders, overclockers and OSS'ers under the threat of the law.
The only downsides for this with both MS and SUN are that they need to have the boxes run perfect software. The market would react horribly to a product that fails in this regard especially with MS's history of instability (old school) and Suns refusal to adopt or offer up (Java debacle). We could wind up with a legion of blue screened remote managed zombies or a legion of boxes that don't work with anything else. Interesting indeed.
I think with the recent developments in Mobile phones technology, smartphones and other types of PCDs (personal communication devices), Sony may be staying their hand for entry into another concept or approach to this market.
Their exit is extremely strange, but until we get more corroborating articles, I'm going to stick to that thought.
While this may force foreign firms to lower their patent fees, some experts warn that China risks isolating itself if it creates standards that are incompatible with the rest of the world."
Bullhockey, the rest of the world will cater easily to a market of possibly 1.3 billion consumers, let us not forget the system of capitalism which does not really care who is buying it as long as someone is buying it. If the cost of licensing and fees are so high in a market where the foothold was not that strong to begin with then it would only follow reason that people/corporations/governments will adapt to the fabrication of their own systems...which is the same argument we use in the OSS community.
Additionally, China does not like to follow foreign arrangements, they tangle with democracy and touches of capitalism too much as it is (their opinion), having them rely on those same foreign arrangements undermines the authority of the governing powers.
It's about time that China started doing these things, hopefully the push in the technology direction wont spark another arms race, but rather easier and open stream technology and systems for the lower end users.
Sadly I can't quote the exact book nor passage from it, but the story is set with a group of people in a cave at a time of war/experiment.
Anyhow, the coordinator of the group would report the status of the group to the outside via computer. However there was only one computer and she typed on the keyboard by setting her hands under a shelf that masked the users typing. There was no screen. She simply made her notes, requests, etc by typing blindly on that keyboard.
At an old networking facility I worked at we had a similar system in place to enter the server room, there was a keypad set into the wall next to the door and in order to enter your code for entry you had to place your hand inside the little 4X4 box that masked/overlayed the keypad. Add in the background noise from the HVAC systems outside the room and we pretty much had/have a secured system.
You raise an excellent point about treating all networks as foreign to one another. It's a change that we've recently implemented officially at my place of work, but has actually been in place for many years before so.
The question raises is there really any sense for your global network to allow the janitorial staff the same role access as other contractors?
No, read the question again.
When lazy/lesser administrators role access across entire networks with the example of the janitor being a background process, how much protection on your network do you really have?
Blocks should already be in place for the needed access vs. fire and forget access. Cisco, made an outstanding business decision of using that angle for PR for a smart network that simply shuts down traffic when it notices unusual or a spike in traffic; which is the same thing that an administrator should have done in the first place. Not to take away from them but I've done the same with cheaper routers, a segmented network and careful roles.
If any Cisco reps read this: I still love you guys, honest!
Other people are not happy that this guy was caught because you have to subtract the disappointment from the companies that profit from viruses, and adware, and spyware. Just another angle to look at.
I wonder if MS can keep up this effort and if we'll eventually start to see sponsored virii added to the real TCO for windows OS'. Oh wait.
The only comfortable allude I can see to this is the mirror that some companies take to fixing items or training new hires: It is more of a cost benefit to allow the problem or issue to continue than it is to delegate a $100pr hour tech to fix one PC or train one person. They can save more money by having that same $100 per hour tech fix 10 PCs or train 10 people.
The answer is going to come from the market who will decide in MS's case if they do not mind waiting for the plugs to fill the dyke, vs. OSS who have union guys who do nothing but hang around the dyke looking for work.
I wonder how long it will take the new watchdogs for communciation or other national internal organizations to receive a memo from a group like
SpamHaus to further push the drive for authentication in email and systems.
Having a system of communication in place that is normally resigned to 'chatter, junk, and immediate delete' allows for cell(terrorist/activist/..ist) communications right under the radar of those who are supposed to monitor such communications.
If that angle is approached I don't see them not pushing a better email system into place.
This also begs the question of who really pushed for this report/survey.
As the runaway thought process of the submitter suggested, they may be extremly interested in not who's data or the redunant data they inherit but instead the shear scope and depth of the information that will now become available to them. Let us not forget for a moment that a web search engine is only as good as the data it provides and Google is already one of the largest data collectors on the planet.
A project like this would take garbage and sift through it to find, make, stamp and press gold.
The skynet jokes while funny, don't do anything to curtain the tin foil wonderment at possibly the greatest data mining/data tool created to date.
This story is bigger than it appears.
((um...and greetings to the new data overlords:P)))
Considering the size of things that people want to email to eachother and the limits imposed by most free email hosters, IANAHU (hotmail user) of 15megs(?) The Gig is probably an attempt to broach the market of the students, peers that do not have usb zip drives and want to store stuff temporarily online until their next access point. That is certainly a market I would want to capture, more so since now I can offer them customized searches, news, email and all without being obtrusive. It's like a one click interface for the Lan/Line Geek.
One may also consider that if they are shelling out 1G of free storage, that the advertisers are going to foot the bills for the massive storage arrays. Think: Tagline: Goggle!
Indeed, unless the root (no pun) system is taken to the measure and redeveloped this solution is not something that I would want implemented or would want to live with. I gather that in all the time it takes to develop this system, mailboxes will now have spam from all the open-relays, and bundles of spam from the new systems that are online with their open relays due to admins just throwing the boxes online just for some measure of compliance.
It's just now that some ISP's are starting to manage their own open relays, and now to suggest that we give them another system to manage/muddle while the never got it right the first time just reeks of a mess waiting to happen. And I have to purchase a new domain name?
For email to really work we need to continue with the Keys or other authentication methods, like in the old Heinlein books; or now the emerging technology of telephone number authentication before the call is allowed to be routed. If the lowest level of technology can figure this out, why not the top?
It's insightful because it's a genuine human reaction to seeing that in the reality of the big picture (- pun) our idea of being kings/queens of the world means little or nothing when the scope is no longer limited to terra.
I think when looking at the image with an understanding of what it may mean can depending on ones mindset, conjour up feelings of insignificance or spark up that MetaEgo to make a difference.
Slashdot Mirror
One one hand we have the constant news of yet another security breech where an unknown amount of data is stolen, the time lapse of the disclosure, and another breech breaking the news later the same day. On the other hand we have every financial company up-selling a service they've rolled out to monitor credit scores, credit inquires, and social security numbers. At what point are people going to clasp those hands together and just stop caring? Between social networking sites and the new lack of financial / gaming network security, most of “you” is digitized and already out there. Are these breeches just becoming another marginalized city hazard like Jay walking on a boulevard?
The people who are hired to "spy" on their fellow co-workers are generally looking for those types of violations and if somewhere in the middle someone is sending out porn, or using their employment at a prestigious company for ulterior motives, or any other myriad of the violations of common (or clearly stated at the time of your hire) corporate network use and they get caught, well... the flour sifter has caught a few more flies.
Despite the fact that we all work with them or are them, from the top tiers of management and from the shareholders viewpoint those violators are not the types of employees that you want to employ or want on the payroll.
Companies tent to benefit from firing these people because they show to their employees and clients that they are there to do business and just business.
If this was about ISP or the government spying on an individuals emails, then that would be a valid case and cause to rally the troops of the revolution, but when you are using someone elses network, someone elses resources, and being paid not to...well I don't really see the cause for concern.
For those in the know companies spend hundreds of thousands on trademark research with companies such as Namprotect and Thomson and Thomson who make millions from clients who research Trademarks, Service Marks, and Copyrights years (sometimes minutes) before they even plan on utilizing the mark. So that they can avoid situations like this.
Now who really wants to bet that Apple did not do their due diligence by using a trademark research firm?
I saw a documentary on AMC the other night about Clearplay, Cleanflicks, and the slew of other companies that have taken quite a foothold into this new market, which is called Film Sanitizing.
The directors that were interviewed argued that these companies were A) Tampering with the work and creative vision of the director, B) profiting on a product that was already sold, C) implying that the director or Directors Guild of America (DGA) has/had endorsed the editing of the film.
The DGA's point of view is that some scenes of the scenes, language and elements that are being removed from the film need to remain in that movie to show the movie as it was envisioned, and a rather good example that was given was the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan, which is full of the horrors of war and battle and thus is essential to the movie.
The Film Sanitizers point of view points to scenes like **SPOILER**SPOILER**
Matt Damon in Borne Supremacy where he views the bloodied body of the Russian agent after the agent was killed in a car crash. In the sanitized version of this film the camera shot of viewing the body is edited out and the viewer only sees Damon looking into the vehicle from the passengers side door sans close-up of the body. The viewer is none wiser to the editing.
**SPOILER**SPOILER**
Another set of arguments from both parties are the DGA's contention that these sanitizers are profiting immensely from their original product which the sanitizers argue is invalid under "fair use" and each DVD that is sold is purchased legally. A sale for a sale.
Marshall Herskovitz one of the directors fighting against the sanitizing of films, even goes so far as to argue about the broader nature of sanitizing such as when people will want movies with only Whites and no Blacks, or no Jews in the movie, etc....
It goes back to just what it is that the parents want to be seen in their homes by their children. While yes some scenes like the opening of Private Ryan, or the sex scene in Traffic are highly relevant to the film, they may not be suitable for younger viewers until the parent has possibly spoken to them about it, or is aware that they may have to answer a few questions about the film from their child.
But ultimately it allows the parent to set the conversation rather than having it shoved at them on different terms, to which raises another point from the DGA that the movies that are being sanitized are R rated movies.
A proprietary system that no one can post to coupled with a password needed to view said content sounds suspiciously like a static second level webpage or a ssl private network. Just...like...a...private forum. We do the same thing here at work for vendors who buy our products, a static page updated weekly by the sales department that only x amount of vendors have access to, they can read their mail "posted specials" and later send updates to the dmail admin "webmaster" or "sales". Let's just face it. Spam as much as I hate it is here to stay. Yes we can all agree that eventually the systems will get better at defeating spam and bulk mailings, but the brilliant minds that are developing the stopping systems have the brilliant minds that are bent on defeating those other brilliant minds. But removing the system from the culprits is a novel approach, lets just not herald it as the end or even a stepping stone to stopping spam.
Spam started out, how many years ago on Usenet(?) and despite the millions companies spend making software to block, and the millions of man hours it takes up to script them out and off our networks, that the chance of making a few hundred still shunts our efforts since these guys won't stop sending.
It'll just take time. But like the television commercial of today they'll be ranging far into the future.
We need to start stopping these guys at the gates earlier.
Indeed, and that applies towards any set of rules, guidelines or laws. But more so with the three concrete laws that Asimov put in place that are called laws but are actually rule sets for a logic trap, however as human nature and universal laws (irony, eh?) have shown: Logic traps only apply if you are in the same bubble.
I want to keep some stuff, like kind of a small a museum for my kid later on, or just for the desperation midnight frontend server build, but with 8 sun lunchboxes, enough compaqs for a small business and more ISA/Tokens, and Ethernet cards than computers it's time to realize my dreams of folding/farming/rendering have only yeilded me the fruit of of a title: New-age-digital packrat.
Having them rely on an outside source for GPS, Military or other electronic systems places the disadvantage in their court. Also remember the havoc that went on in the EU when the US switched GPS channels for Iraq? Germany's reliance on the GPS system for their Mercedes cars were thrown off kilter for a bit.
Having read the article, I wonder what the 'open' system will be like? Competition is the friend of all technology, so hopefully we will benefit rather than have 1cm rfid's. :) We will see.
-eol
Can anyone provide a link or source to the kind of filters google has working on gmail?
I may be hugely mistaken but I think I have seen a few other OSS projects which did a bit of tricky licensing for larger or development environments. It will be interesting to see where Xandros' take on this will lead them.
I think the DOJ probes are politically based. It should be the DOD so that we can stay on the forefront of technology. :)
One of the reasons a lot of companies automatically put the disclaimers / nonsense on the bottom of the email is that it provides them with somewhat of a means of liability protection from information that was sent or processed from their systems, lets not also forget the confidentiality or rather the breaches of, that email allow to happen so frequently and readily.
Lastly, later if heaven forbid (!) a scandal hits the office involving a lower or sometimes high level employee, emails (which like any segment of a well defined network) may be called up from archives for an investigation internally or externally in a court of law. Stating the MULA on the bottom of correspondence, while generally accepted in people_to_people terms as fodder, is actually a wise move for a corporation to show its partners, employees, and potential revenue sources the fact that they place internal memos and all communications in the same manner that they would (as any entity with a sense of self preservation) deem a legal document.
Best idea ever to impose and bring DRM into the mainstream market while simultaneously silencing the hardware modders, overclockers and OSS'ers under the threat of the law.
The only downsides for this with both MS and SUN are that they need to have the boxes run perfect software. The market would react horribly to a product that fails in this regard especially with MS's history of instability (old school) and Suns refusal to adopt or offer up (Java debacle). We could wind up with a legion of blue screened remote managed zombies or a legion of boxes that don't work with anything else. Interesting indeed.
Their exit is extremely strange, but until we get more corroborating articles, I'm going to stick to that thought.
Bullhockey, the rest of the world will cater easily to a market of possibly 1.3 billion consumers, let us not forget the system of capitalism which does not really care who is buying it as long as someone is buying it. If the cost of licensing and fees are so high in a market where the foothold was not that strong to begin with then it would only follow reason that people/corporations/governments will adapt to the fabrication of their own systems...which is the same argument we use in the OSS community.
Additionally, China does not like to follow foreign arrangements, they tangle with democracy and touches of capitalism too much as it is (their opinion), having them rely on those same foreign arrangements undermines the authority of the governing powers.
It's about time that China started doing these things, hopefully the push in the technology direction wont spark another arms race, but rather easier and open stream technology and systems for the lower end users.
Anyhow, the coordinator of the group would report the status of the group to the outside via computer. However there was only one computer and she typed on the keyboard by setting her hands under a shelf that masked the users typing. There was no screen. She simply made her notes, requests, etc by typing blindly on that keyboard.
At an old networking facility I worked at we had a similar system in place to enter the server room, there was a keypad set into the wall next to the door and in order to enter your code for entry you had to place your hand inside the little 4X4 box that masked/overlayed the keypad. Add in the background noise from the HVAC systems outside the room and we pretty much had/have a secured system.
The question raises is there really any sense for your global network to allow the janitorial staff the same role access as other contractors?
No, read the question again.
When lazy/lesser administrators role access across entire networks with the example of the janitor being a background process, how much protection on your network do you really have?
Blocks should already be in place for the needed access vs. fire and forget access. Cisco, made an outstanding business decision of using that angle for PR for a smart network that simply shuts down traffic when it notices unusual or a spike in traffic; which is the same thing that an administrator should have done in the first place. Not to take away from them but I've done the same with cheaper routers, a segmented network and careful roles.
If any Cisco reps read this: I still love you guys, honest!
I wonder if MS can keep up this effort and if we'll eventually start to see sponsored virii added to the real TCO for windows OS'. Oh wait.
The answer is going to come from the market who will decide in MS's case if they do not mind waiting for the plugs to fill the dyke, vs. OSS who have union guys who do nothing but hang around the dyke looking for work.
Having a system of communication in place that is normally resigned to 'chatter, junk, and immediate delete' allows for cell(terrorist/activist/..ist) communications right under the radar of those who are supposed to monitor such communications. If that angle is approached I don't see them not pushing a better email system into place.
This also begs the question of who really pushed for this report/survey.
A project like this would take garbage and sift through it to find, make, stamp and press gold.
The skynet jokes while funny, don't do anything to curtain the tin foil wonderment at possibly the greatest data mining/data tool created to date.
This story is bigger than it appears. ((um...and greetings to the new data overlords :P)))
One may also consider that if they are shelling out 1G of free storage, that the advertisers are going to foot the bills for the massive storage arrays. Think: Tagline: Goggle!
It's just now that some ISP's are starting to manage their own open relays, and now to suggest that we give them another system to manage/muddle while the never got it right the first time just reeks of a mess waiting to happen. And I have to purchase a new domain name?
For email to really work we need to continue with the Keys or other authentication methods, like in the old Heinlein books; or now the emerging technology of telephone number authentication before the call is allowed to be routed. If the lowest level of technology can figure this out, why not the top?
I think when looking at the image with an understanding of what it may mean can depending on ones mindset, conjour up feelings of insignificance or spark up that MetaEgo to make a difference.