After hearing Patrick Stewart's (from Deep Space 9?) thoughtful comments on the matter, I tend to agree that it is far more sane to clean up our planet before befouling others, even uninhabited ones.
Why we need to lob tin cans at Mars when people still go to bed hungry in this world is beyond me. It's all ego when you stop to think about it.
Your message certainly expresses the same sort of tone most of us who are dealing with the double whammy of this virus and the confusion sown by the erroneous antivirus bounce messages feel. In many ways, these messages are causing more damage than the virus itself; having to explain why these ominous messages keep appearing in mailboxes as replies to messages never sent and that they are NOT (necessarily) indicative of a virus on an employee's system is both wasteful and frustrating when every precaution is already being taken to prevent viruses on work systems.
However, if you don't mind a bit of constructive criticism, might I suggest you take into account that many of the administrators who will receive your mail are likely to be addressing the same sort of problem, and that rewording it to take some of the bite/threat out of it might be advantageous? This sounds like it might ruffle some feathers ("must stop immediately", "may be a violation of federal and/or state anti spam laws", "submittal of your \"replies\" to several major spam blocking services and black hole lists"), particularly among the system administrators who have more ego and less social.
Maybe a "we're all in the same boat, no doubt you've noticed the kind of effort it takes to calm co-workers receiving these messages" type of message would be more persuasive? The option to block and report them to RBL is still there, and certainly still worth exercising if they don't stop sending these blasted messages, but a little sugar never hurts.
I have a feeling the AV community is going to reevaluate their policy on this anyway. Best case in my opinion would be to standardize a AV bounce header across the companies (for filtering purposes) and eliminating the choice to send bounces unless the virus does not spoof the From: header.
I should make it clear I'm not accusing that there is any colluding going on. In fact, if you look at competitors not named in the article, it seems SDRAM prices are about the same across the board. So this does raise the question of whether this is actually going on and to what degree customers are being harmed, if any at all and if not where's the problem?
At the end of the day, the responsibility falls to the customer to buy or not buy. If you keep buying cheap electronics, don't get upset when you can't find quality anymore. If you've got a problem with somebody's business practices, buy somewhere else (in this case, there's probably a few SDRAM manufacturers that aren't colluding.)
Too many people are passive consumers. That's why you can't buy a TV that lasts more than three years anymore, that's why you can't legally play DVDs under Linux, and that's what's gonna get us all DRM in our hardware. Modding someone down who happens to believe in supporting your local economy instead of the multinational clusterfsck where we all work 80 hour weeks for $4/hr seems to be the action of someone in fundamental denial of our situation (and their power as a customer).
It's quite possible that the differentiation is made on the upload rather than the download -- P2P may be more likely to get you tagged and complained to, whereas pulling gigs of Linux software and Microsoft service packs and the like do not. Cable ISPs have a (technical) issue with upload bandwidth that DSL or analog modems do not, so I've heard from a few sources, although I'm quite curious to know what it is if anybody can tell me.
I don't think this is a good thing. The Internet relies as much on give as take, and pushing a download-only network is a horrible concept and would hurt everybody involved in the long run.
Thin clients have less hardware to break. By their nature, it isn't likely a person using a thin client can mess it up from the software side such that a reboot won't fix the problem. The whole setup is more centralized, making it easier to address Windows patches and virus updates.
The savings would be better with Linux, but they may very well be worthwhile anyway. Determine how much IT time you're going to save against the cost of the setup.
That second one was what I was going to suggest. I've started a system with CD-R backups where I give each a unique sequentially-assigned number and store them in the 100-pack spindles they came in. Under Linux, I copy the stuff to a staging area and create a locatedb from the staging directory using GNU locate, which I then store in the root of the disc and in a search directory I keep on my hard drive using the disc's number as the title of the database.
It does make it much easier to search through archives, and creating a file in the root of each disc using something similar to 'touch __DISCTITLE_2003-09-20_Backup1' allows locate to return a list of what each disc is as well when you run a locate for all __DISCTITLE_* files. It's been a while since I've actually used the search cluster, so I can't remember if locate will span all of the databases with one command... I might have used something like 'for X in *; do echo $X; locate -d $X "__DISCTITLE_*"; done' to do the job.
It is only becoming clearer that it is impossible to find a better way to compensate artists.
Paying them directly ignores the fact that they need marketing to be viable. This scheme could allow 'fake' artists and other undesirables to leech off the public. Ultimately, and perhaps ironically, the very scheme we've been railing against might be what we've been searching for all along: pay the middleman, who ensures the artists are promoted and paid in the end. The only damaging aspect to this are downloaders who compulse artists to let their music go for free, which helps nobody.
The thing is, I always thought there was a bit in there about having to create and demonstrate something that uses the patent you're applying for. How are some of these people racking up hundreds of patents without ever making a product?
Because it isn't worth it for the plugins. For half that, I could hire a team of patent lawyers and programmers and design a non-infringing plugin system. Then market that system and crush the company that is trying to get $521 million from me for a product I put all the work into implementing.
If you've gone through three PSX controllers before you got this to work, I'm going to go through something like five.
I appreciate the pioneering spirit here, but these things are far too expensive as it is. For the price of another controller I can get a peripheral that'll hook it to the computer.
Until I read in the article that it's just the download version. Hey, it's a better form of revenue generation from free products than spyware, I guess.
There might be other slow-loading free software projects that could benefit from this, too, such as KDE or Mozilla. As long as the ads are for techie/computer stuff that's interesting I'm cool with it.
I thought it was kind of rude to waltz into somebody else's system and take it over. Oh, and also illegal with penalties that are frightening in many countries.
Isn't anybody prosecuting, or at a minimum letting folks know when they've backtraced through all the compromised hosts they're hopping through that they're on to them?
Also interesting to note the number of hackers in Poland (well, it says you can't tell the nationality, so Polish machines I guess.)
Something like this, where contact information is available if you violate best Internet practices (such as by spamming) and people can get in touch with you if they need to let you know that your server has been taken over by a Russian junior high student, but if you are a good netizen you can get by without being hassled.
This site has the most enlightened approach, I think. You give them your information, they register the domain for you filling the contact information with their info, and only turn over your information if the law requires it. They'll also forward stuff sent to your contact information to you.
I imagine for most people who just want to run a regular website without the hassle of spam/telemarketers, this is the way to go.
Proving that a spammer took source addresses from WHOIS would be problematic. Taking a spammer to court over it wouldn't be cost-effective for the maintainers of any WHOIS server. Spammers have already shown themselves as a group to not be overly concerned about warnings, standards, or laws.
Maybe the rules shouldn't be relaxed for people leasing bandwidth... if you could always get at the ISP that's upstream from the attacking computer, it's likely your situation could be resolved while allowing others who want to host their family's webpage (or whatever) without releasing their address and home phone number into the general pool of IT telemarketing customers to do so.
Obviously a good solution will weigh the need for contact with the likelihood and degree of abuse of said contact information by others.
If you just want to hook a system to the Internet with DNS, it shouldn't take dumping your information out. The cases where this type of information would be useful it always seems to be faked by the domain holder, and for everybody else we get dumped on by every spammer and telemarketer in the book.
It used to be helpful for looking up abuse information, but that almost always goes ignored nowadays too. Now it's just useful for finding virus writers.
For something like the PS2, there are probably negligible improvements in using a compiled-from-source system over a prebuilt binary system. The hardware is mostly the same no matter which PS2 you're installing to.
For computers, the optimization can be quite noticable. Between Debian-i386 and Gentoo compiled specifically to my Athlon I do see a difference, although said difference is paid for by letting my system sit for a day or two the first time I install Gentoo to compile everything. I'd bet that if I optimized only my CPU-intensive binaries, such as the kernel, the compiler, glibc, XWindows, kde, perl, Java, X, wine, bochs, povray, and oggenc, the rest it wouldn't matter if it's i386.
As far as compatibility goes:
It's likely a great quantity of Gentoo packages can be compiled without modification on the PS2 if the development kit has been ported and the headers aren't confusing. A Debian-i386 disc doesn't do anything in the PS2 drive. If somebody wanted to sit down and compile a jillion packages to serve the PS2 community, more power to them; I like Debian, and would probably check such a thing out. But with Gentoo one doesn't have to wait on the benevolence of a developer with too much time on his hands to port an obscure package just to set the ID3 tag on an MP3 -- they can try 'emerge mp3info' and see if it compiles OK.
People that brag about using a particular distribution are sad, IMHO. Use what works, I say.
Linux has gained enough acceptance in the server field to be deployed in large numbers and at high-visibility targets. Additionally, the level of competence of the people deploying Linux is probably dropping somewhat, as it's moving from something that is just installed by those who love it and are willing to take the time to monitor all of the security flaws to something that is installed by people who just want something that works.
Also, it has gained something of a reputation as a secure system, at least compared to IIS, and this may be undeserved in installations where best security practices are not followed (most of them). This is perhaps a wakeup call that it's important to patch, only set up services that are necessary, and use a firewall and intrustion detection system, but most people know that already.
The thing I always liked about Slackware was that I was able to grab just what I needed over a 9600 baud SLIP connection (A, AP, D, N, and sometimes Y). Thank you for that; I don't know if I would have gotten into Linux when I did otherwise.
Sadly, it was not a PS/2, but an Acer with 4MB of memory so that I could get UMSDOS working. However, should PS2 support find its way in, I will happily play your distribution alongside Grand Theft Auto 3 and Madden 2004.
If the demo plays as good as it looks and the game isn't priced at something exhorbitant, I'll be buying a copy anyway.
It's too bad they aren't doing something like releasing the engine now and releasing the game data under a license later if the given condition is met, as this could open the game to all sorts of fan-based addons if it catches on, but perhaps they'll eventually release everything whether or not they meet their 50,000 goal. It's retro, so even if it's five years from now it'll still be cool for the people who are into it.
Given the methodology of Gentoo's packaging system, I'm not surprised that it's the first mainstream Linux distribution that's making it over to the PS2. Compiling the whole system from source on-the-fly isn't just for optimization purposes.
Not that the process would be any fun on the platform, of course -- I imagine glibc being an overnight compile, for example -- but it does testify to the strength of the source distribution system's portability.
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Why we need to lob tin cans at Mars when people still go to bed hungry in this world is beyond me. It's all ego when you stop to think about it.
However, if you don't mind a bit of constructive criticism, might I suggest you take into account that many of the administrators who will receive your mail are likely to be addressing the same sort of problem, and that rewording it to take some of the bite/threat out of it might be advantageous? This sounds like it might ruffle some feathers ("must stop immediately", "may be a violation of federal and/or state anti spam laws", "submittal of your \"replies\" to several major spam blocking services and black hole lists"), particularly among the system administrators who have more ego and less social.
Maybe a "we're all in the same boat, no doubt you've noticed the kind of effort it takes to calm co-workers receiving these messages" type of message would be more persuasive? The option to block and report them to RBL is still there, and certainly still worth exercising if they don't stop sending these blasted messages, but a little sugar never hurts.
I have a feeling the AV community is going to reevaluate their policy on this anyway. Best case in my opinion would be to standardize a AV bounce header across the companies (for filtering purposes) and eliminating the choice to send bounces unless the virus does not spoof the From: header.
I should make it clear I'm not accusing that there is any colluding going on. In fact, if you look at competitors not named in the article, it seems SDRAM prices are about the same across the board. So this does raise the question of whether this is actually going on and to what degree customers are being harmed, if any at all and if not where's the problem?
Too many people are passive consumers. That's why you can't buy a TV that lasts more than three years anymore, that's why you can't legally play DVDs under Linux, and that's what's gonna get us all DRM in our hardware. Modding someone down who happens to believe in supporting your local economy instead of the multinational clusterfsck where we all work 80 hour weeks for $4/hr seems to be the action of someone in fundamental denial of our situation (and their power as a customer).
I don't think this is a good thing. The Internet relies as much on give as take, and pushing a download-only network is a horrible concept and would hurt everybody involved in the long run.
The savings would be better with Linux, but they may very well be worthwhile anyway. Determine how much IT time you're going to save against the cost of the setup.
It does make it much easier to search through archives, and creating a file in the root of each disc using something similar to 'touch __DISCTITLE_2003-09-20_Backup1' allows locate to return a list of what each disc is as well when you run a locate for all __DISCTITLE_* files. It's been a while since I've actually used the search cluster, so I can't remember if locate will span all of the databases with one command... I might have used something like 'for X in *; do echo $X; locate -d $X "__DISCTITLE_*"; done' to do the job.
Paying them directly ignores the fact that they need marketing to be viable. This scheme could allow 'fake' artists and other undesirables to leech off the public. Ultimately, and perhaps ironically, the very scheme we've been railing against might be what we've been searching for all along: pay the middleman, who ensures the artists are promoted and paid in the end. The only damaging aspect to this are downloaders who compulse artists to let their music go for free, which helps nobody.
The thing is, I always thought there was a bit in there about having to create and demonstrate something that uses the patent you're applying for. How are some of these people racking up hundreds of patents without ever making a product?
Because it isn't worth it for the plugins. For half that, I could hire a team of patent lawyers and programmers and design a non-infringing plugin system. Then market that system and crush the company that is trying to get $521 million from me for a product I put all the work into implementing.
I appreciate the pioneering spirit here, but these things are far too expensive as it is. For the price of another controller I can get a peripheral that'll hook it to the computer.
There might be other slow-loading free software projects that could benefit from this, too, such as KDE or Mozilla. As long as the ads are for techie/computer stuff that's interesting I'm cool with it.
Isn't anybody prosecuting, or at a minimum letting folks know when they've backtraced through all the compromised hosts they're hopping through that they're on to them?
Also interesting to note the number of hackers in Poland (well, it says you can't tell the nationality, so Polish machines I guess.)
Unless they're filling the office pool with water, this sounds like something that missed its (.com) era.
If this is the Attorney General for California's website, why doesn't it have the form Microsoft-Antitrust.ca.us?
Something like this, where contact information is available if you violate best Internet practices (such as by spamming) and people can get in touch with you if they need to let you know that your server has been taken over by a Russian junior high student, but if you are a good netizen you can get by without being hassled.
I imagine for most people who just want to run a regular website without the hassle of spam/telemarketers, this is the way to go.
It's an empty threat.
Obviously a good solution will weigh the need for contact with the likelihood and degree of abuse of said contact information by others.
It used to be helpful for looking up abuse information, but that almost always goes ignored nowadays too. Now it's just useful for finding virus writers.
For something like the PS2, there are probably negligible improvements in using a compiled-from-source system over a prebuilt binary system. The hardware is mostly the same no matter which PS2 you're installing to.
For computers, the optimization can be quite noticable. Between Debian-i386 and Gentoo compiled specifically to my Athlon I do see a difference, although said difference is paid for by letting my system sit for a day or two the first time I install Gentoo to compile everything. I'd bet that if I optimized only my CPU-intensive binaries, such as the kernel, the compiler, glibc, XWindows, kde, perl, Java, X, wine, bochs, povray, and oggenc, the rest it wouldn't matter if it's i386.
As far as compatibility goes:
It's likely a great quantity of Gentoo packages can be compiled without modification on the PS2 if the development kit has been ported and the headers aren't confusing. A Debian-i386 disc doesn't do anything in the PS2 drive. If somebody wanted to sit down and compile a jillion packages to serve the PS2 community, more power to them; I like Debian, and would probably check such a thing out. But with Gentoo one doesn't have to wait on the benevolence of a developer with too much time on his hands to port an obscure package just to set the ID3 tag on an MP3 -- they can try 'emerge mp3info' and see if it compiles OK.
People that brag about using a particular distribution are sad, IMHO. Use what works, I say.
Also, it has gained something of a reputation as a secure system, at least compared to IIS, and this may be undeserved in installations where best security practices are not followed (most of them). This is perhaps a wakeup call that it's important to patch, only set up services that are necessary, and use a firewall and intrustion detection system, but most people know that already.
The thing I always liked about Slackware was that I was able to grab just what I needed over a 9600 baud SLIP connection (A, AP, D, N, and sometimes Y). Thank you for that; I don't know if I would have gotten into Linux when I did otherwise.
Sadly, it was not a PS/2, but an Acer with 4MB of memory so that I could get UMSDOS working. However, should PS2 support find its way in, I will happily play your distribution alongside Grand Theft Auto 3 and Madden 2004.
It's too bad they aren't doing something like releasing the engine now and releasing the game data under a license later if the given condition is met, as this could open the game to all sorts of fan-based addons if it catches on, but perhaps they'll eventually release everything whether or not they meet their 50,000 goal. It's retro, so even if it's five years from now it'll still be cool for the people who are into it.
Not that the process would be any fun on the platform, of course -- I imagine glibc being an overnight compile, for example -- but it does testify to the strength of the source distribution system's portability.