It is called the Microsoft Baseline security analyzer. It will tell you which updates you need to get and even point you to the security bulletin page to download it
Unfortunately the MBSA's a bit hit and miss. I ran it at home and it did find a few patches I needed, nothing hugely critical (of course I use Windows Update regularly, so there shouldn't have been any critical ones), but some were false alarms. It recommended I install patches for products that weren't currently installed, basically adding something I didn't need to the system. No thanks, I'll pass on having extra MS crap laying around waiting for the next exploir in it.
At work it pretty much completely blew. I ran it on the Win2k machine I'm using (and I have admin rights before any asks) and it failed saying it coudldn't acess the security scan XML file. I really haven't had time to search out the answer, and the machine's already patched up from Windows Update.
One other note, MS needs to stop making you have the damn CD available to install Office updates. I can't find my CD at home, and at work no one seems to know where it is. Both machines have unpatched Office installs thanks to this. This is WITH valid licenses, so MS is essentially denying security updates to 2 paying customers of Office.
It isn't simply that they decided not to use it, it's that they conspired with other companies in an illegal anti-competitive manner.. essentially saying, "I won't license with them if you don't." Or, at least that's what RAMBUS is claiming they did.
Just like any company can decide they want to cell a doohickey for $1000 more than everyone else, but if they conspire with the other doohickey vendors to all raise their price by $1000 so they can make nice profit, it's illegal.
I think they'll have a hard time comparing this to price-fixing. Assuming the accusations are true, they just didn't license or make RDRAM. Obviously it wasn't the entire industry (RDRAM was getting made), so it wasn't a monopoly of companies doing it. Secondly Rambus claims their reason for doing this was to make SDRAM win out. SDRAM prices weren't price-fixed apparently, and they dropped much below RDRAM. So it's hard to make a case that the actions taken, even if they realy ocurred, caused consumers any financial harm. You could even argue they saved consumers money by pushing SDRAM and DDR-RAM after it to become the standard faster, thus ending the format war and increasing competition since everyone started making those two instead of RDRAM.
The article is stating that the reason the prices were higher is because the manufacturers illegally limited production...Please try and be objective.
I am, but I am having trouble seeing how the manufacturers could have illegally limited production unless RAMBUS had an agreement with them to produce X number of units. The market was demanding SDRAM more, so they shifted more production to it. Perhaps I'm just not getting the idea, but I can't see how independant companies can be held liable for NOT making something they didn't want to make -- for whatever the reasons.
I'm surprised no one else has commented on it so far, overlooking the color it appears to be quite rounded and I have to wonder if it'll stay sitting up nicely on a shelf without other DVDs/Boxsets around it to keep it upright. I'm glad they're giving us a boxset release finally, but I wish the studios would think about things like this as well.
If people want to keep buying them, then the studios are right to keep selling them, surely? There's no law that makes people buy these things. If you think they are a rip-off, then don't buy them. If enough people think they are a rip-off, then the studios will stop doing it.
I agree with you, but what will probably happen is people are going to catch on and stop buying the first releases of movies. I know of several who refused to by The Two Towers since they knew they'd release the box set later. How this will affect studio sales is anyone's guess right now, but I doubt it'll fit into their plan. (Which obviously seems to be to get you to buy the same movie multiple times with a few extra goodies thrown in each time.) I don't agree with the grandparent that it's a crooked way to do business, but it's certainly very irritating and disrespectful of customers. While most people are just sheep when it comes to consumerism, even sheep notice if you keep kicking them over and over again and react eventually.
It was basically the same as the original series, most of the same cast, with the actual TOS cast doing the voices. Some of the stories were able to be a bit more out-there since the animated medium allowed for doing things it would have been difficult (or impossible) to do on TV at the time.
It's not too surprising you don't remember it, I was a kid when it was airing, and I never saw it. From what I've gathered over the years it didn't see really wide-spread distribution viewing-area-wise. I found out about it first in the 90's myself. You can find it online in newsgroups, on torrent sites and P2P. If you like Star Trek I'd recommend you hunt down an episode or two to watch to see what you think about it.
The fact of the matter is, most CS-majors couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag -- much less solve a problem elegantly.
And even worse most of them can't administer even a windows box to save their lives. I was building my own PCs and doing consulting sysadmin work while I was in college in CS and my friends bugged me for tech support constantly. Granted the courses don't teach how to do any of the stuff most Sysadmins do regularly, but you'd think people smart enough to learn how to code (whether elegantly or not) could figure out how to do basic admin tasks like keep anti-virus updated and download security patches and apply them. (Especially for the windows users, windows update makes that pretty brainless, at least for the ones it deigns to show you.)
You hear the saying that it's not important what you get a degree in but that you have one. That's very often true because in most fields the really useful things aren't taught in class, you have to learn them on your own. If you're resourceful enough to complete a degree (and you'll run into a few classes where the prof is worthless and you'll have to teach yourself or find friends to help you learn) then you're resourceful enough to learn how to do the things needed for a job -- any job. Yes I know there are some jobs out there that you need highly specialized training for, but in general this applies. I work in IT and I can count the CS courses I took that are useful to me in the real world on one hand, I have no reason to expect it to be any different for other majors.
Re:Cone of Silence? More like cone of annoyance.
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· Score: 2, Informative
If marketers had any interest whatsoever in this type of advertising, there would be bullhorns in public places already constantly exhorting everyone to Drink Coke or Join The Army or whatever. As it stands, only political candidates and ice cream trucks are willing to do this.
Depends on where you are, in Tokyo it's extremely common to see people paid to hand out tissues advertising a shop/resteraunt, or just stand out front and yell (well, yell's not the right word, but close enough) at passerby's to advertise the shop. This tech combined with some sensors to track moving objects (aka people) could cut out the need to pay a person to do that, and make sure you hit even more people going by with your message.
Cone of Silence? More like cone of annoyance.
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Directed Sound
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Seriously, marketers will be in heaven, able to target ads at passerbys. Now you can look forward to being inundated with directed sound ads while walking the street. It'll be far more annoying because it'll be harder to ignore than ambient noise (ads running on outside speakers, people hawking their businesses on the sidewalk).
who said that next generation music will have only 2 channels? RIAA are looking for a reason to have another generation of CDs. Improved quality is the reason to buy new CDS. Unless indi music really catches on, ppl will just be like sheep and do it.
But there has to be a compelling reason to upgrade, and that may hard to come by for the RIAA. As another poster has pointed out, quality doesn't seem to matter to the majority (better qualify audio formats than Mp3 are largely ignored). Also the average user has a cheapo boombox or glorified boombox dubbed a stereo from Wal-mart, most of those don't support true 5.1 surround, and are likely not to for the near future. Even if they do, the speakers they come with are so cheap the difference is likely to not be audible so people won't bother paying more for the "better" CD format.
Yup, you heard the man. Just visiting a website is enough to consent to receive spam. What these "various websites" are, or how a website determines a visitor's email address is left as an exercise for the reader.
I wonder if that would pass CAN-SPAM's muster, if not then he may have done the defense's job for them!
This is a slippery slope, people. You can make something illegal just because you don't like the idea of it. If people are installing this at-will, then there is nothing morally or ethically worng with it.
The only 'spyware' that is problematic is the kind that installs itself by exploiting software bugs in browsers, and that is already illegal: it's called a virus.
This is a rather optimistic view of things, I take it you've never run afoul of much ad/spy-ware. The issue isn't so much software that people willingly choose to install (although Gator and some others don't really warn you fairly about all the popup ads you'll be getting as a result) but about software that installs itself piggy-backed onto other software without warning. Most spy-ware especially is like this. Even once you find out it's there, getting rid of it takes an act of God, or at least 3rd-party software. Why? Because at best the company only provides a broken uninstaller, normally there is no uninstaller. Add in the fact they often don't show up under add/remove programs (let's face it, this is primarily a Windows-land issue) or even under program listings, and you have software that is NOT even trying to act like it's a legit install.
So sorry, this isn't a slippery slope, this is about making the software companies that put this crap out start playing nicely and acting like good citizens of the online world, as oppossed to their current shady, back-alley actions.
There's no mistaking a legitimate program that user chooses to install.
Exactly, while the spyware companies CLAIM that noone every installs their software without knowing about it, we all know the truth behind that claim. The issue with the legislation seems to be one of semantics more than anything, surely they can find a way to word it to only effect ad/spy-ware.
Since big companies are crying uncle over this, I suppose this tells us what directions they were planning to take with future product updates...
The FTC representatives countered by saying that while they were "outraged" by spyware, a careful approach was necessary. In addition, during an FTC workshop last week, a prosecutor noted that the Justice Department already had sufficient legal authority under existing computer crime laws to put the most noxious spyware makers in prison.
If this is true then why aren't they? There are certainly several spyware products "noxious" enough to warrant a prosecution. Sounds like a bluff to me.
While I understand the FTC needs to protect legitimate business interests along with consumer's interests, this is ridiculous. Yes there may be difficulty in wording the bill so that it doesn't hinder legit software, but that's something that can be resolved. Self-regulation sure as hell isn't going to work, the adware and spyware companies have shown little to no restraint in doing whatever they damn well please.
Don't believe that last sentence? Just check out how they all claim you have to opt-in to their software, that it's never installed without your permission. Then check out the ad/spy-ware infected software installs and see if they warn you about them. I've yet to see a warning when one of the buggers shows up, and I do read the info during my software installs.
And finally, just try to remove one without a 3rd-party utility, they're nearly impossible to remove. That alone makes them trespassers to me, since you can uninstall them but they're still partially there, cluttering up your hard drive and mucking with your OS.
Im getting very tired of this whole SCO thing. As such, I propose that this be solved via the famous "Trial By Stone," designed by Jim Henson.
In the movie "The Dark Crystal" The Skeksis decide who gets to be emperor by who could put the largest dent in a solid stone with the swing of a sword.
Ahh darn, I was hoping you meant drop a large stone, or throw lots of small ones on/at Darl.:)
With all this idiocy, it would seem SCO are doomed. How could any company maintain with this much erosion to their credibility?
As long as they can manipulate reports and spin things in a way that their stock price doesn't tank they can survive. IF this does get dismissed and the Autozone one as well it might impact their stock price. Actually this one might impact it because on the face of it, even to a lay person, having not used the software in question for 7 years makes the lawsuit look totally meritless.
SCO has survived a year now with huge animosity towards them, just in the past few weeks are we seeing signs that their whole campaign may fall apart. If they pull something that gets investors to drive the stock price back up again, they'll continue to survive. Once it drops to what is it's true value (next to nothing IMHO) then that'll signify the beginning of the end of SCO.
How can they make claims and drop them like that? No consequences??
There are corps that weren't choosing linux or delaying programs because of this.. there were real losses. It's just wrong that you can make risk free arbitrary claims and accusations as scare and/or FUD to try to advance your agenda.. without worry of consequences.
Actually there can be consquences, and there still may be. DaimlerChrysler can turn around and sue SCO for the corporate equivalent of defamation of character, etc. Filing a lawsuit without merit is always risky because you can be counter-sued. Given SCO's actions in the past I doubt they'll sensably drop this and will probably force DC to counter-sue them to get rid of the bad (and false) press SCO is causing them.
...is how it can be illegal to report illegal activity. I mean, if I use this service to, say, hire a killer to get rid of my annoying wife, then there's nothing they do about it?
Sorry but if that isn't fucked up then I don't know what is.
You seem to not realize what the service is intended for -- deaf Americans. To insure that deaf citizens are afforded the same privacy a non-deaf citizen would have on the phone the laws strictly forbid disclosing any information about the caller or call's contents. Yes that means someone could try to use it to setup a hit on their wife, but a non-deaf person can do the same thing on the phone (if they're dumb enough). If you were deaf you would want those protections so that personal information that comes up during a phone call isn't leaked to the world at large.
When the laws were passed no one foresaw this kind of abuse ocurring and congress and the FCC/FTC (whichever overseas this) are being their normal slow selves about reacting.
The other thing I do now (which I'd have done earlier, had I the resources) is give each company I do business with it's own address. While this doesn't cut the spam, it does allow me to track who's been selling my address, and who hasn't. Yahoo and Ebay (both previously mentioned in other threads) have been the main culprits thusfar, although there are a few smaller companies I've caught as having sold their email lists as well.
For those that don't have their own domain or ability to create new E-mail addresses at will, check out Spam Gourmet. It allows you to create disposable E-mail addresses on the fly. You can tell it how many E-mails will be allowed at that address (from 1 to 20). Once that many are received the address expires. Part of the brilliance of it is that when an address expires it doesn't start bouncing, any E-mail to it just gets/dev/nulled. Spam Gourmet does track how many E-mails get eaten so you can see how badly the spammers THINK they are spamming that address. It's much fun to check and see you've missed out on hundreds or thousands of spam mails.
There's more to it than that for those willing to dig into the advanced options. You can add trusted senders so if you're on a mailing list in archive form, you can use a disposable E-mail for it. None of the trusted sender's E-mails lower the counter of remaining E-mails to that address, and they will continue to get through to you even after the address has dropped to 0 remaining. You can set it up so the E-mails it forwards to you are ready for you to reply through Spam Gourmet, masking you real address so it looks like it came from the disposable one. You can also go in and adjust the remaining E-mails left on an address, both up and down.
Since I started using it I've had less spam problems, and I can tell you every company that sells my address. It's a great service and totally free!
We really wanted someone that once we've invested time, money, and training in to make a contribution to our projects for more than the time an intern would. Most !Dotcoms are similar in their opinions.
Just wanted to note that this is the same reason many employers want to see candidates with a degree (Bachelor's minimum generally, Associate's degrees don't get as much respect). Having the degree is more important than what field it's in because it shows you stick out what you start and finish it. Employers want that, especially in an economy like now where they can pick and choose more freely.
I get news from no fewer than about 15 sources a day between local, network, 24hr and international television news, radio stations, newspaper and the Internet. How does that really compare with one small foreign language newspaper or tv broadcast?
Not disagreeing with you, just wanted to add that I try to read a few non-US news sites a day as well. That helps detect the spin (and hidden info) the US media (to be fair, all country's media has a country-based bias to it generally) puts on things. I also happened across a weekly news magazine in a free sub that turned out to be a great source. It basically summarizes the last week's news for you using viewpoints from news sources world-wide. Each article has at least a couple of views, major items get more. It's called The Week in case anyone's interested.
In any case, I think you hit the nail on the head quite well about non-English speaking voters being "segregated". Kinda hard to be disenfranchised when you don't know what you're voting for/about/etc. (I do think all citizens should be able to vote, but losing a bit of privacy because of a handicap (I'm lumping non-English speaking as a handicap here) is a far cry from disenfranchisement!)
given more crackdowns of this size each year for four years, and i could imagine that pirates would bother to step up their crypto to this level.
except for their 100 cd spindles of backups.
Actually the CDs can be encrypted. I use a product called Best Crypt for encrypting my vritual memory and putting sensitive stuff on virtual encrypted drives. When I want to back anything up from those I create a 699MB virtual drive. Best Crypt uses files for its virtual drives, so that gives me a 699MB file to burn to CD. You have to know the master key to mount the file as a drive. Without the contents of the CD are just so much gibberish. I've also found this to be quite handy for doing backups of thousands of small files, even if they don't need encrypting, it makes the burn process easier to stuff them in a virtual drive file first.
True you can't keep a working install copy in that format, but especially with DVD+-RW becoming more commonplace, combined with virtual CD-ROM tools (like Daemon Tools), they could keep all their cracked programs on a DVD, just needing to mount the file as a drive, then the ISO in the virtual drive with Daemon Tools/etc. Sure that's a lot of steps, but I'm sure some of the die-hard pirates out there wouldn't mind it.
Sure, there are times when it can get stressful, but the stress isn't CONSTANT like it is with jobs in the business world. Managers aren't constantly worrying about the bottom line, just providing the best environment possible for students and researchers.
You experience is the polar-opposite of my University work experience. I was Sysadmin of an engineering dept. of a major university. The politics were so evil I believe Satan avoided the place. I was also unfortunately stuffed into the position as an hourly employee with no overtime allowed and had to build the entire IT infrastructure (alone) for the dept. No plans had been made, I had one brand new lab of 25 computers with only the vagaries of the proposal for it. Nothing I did was fast enough, no matter how many problems I overcame and what I got accomplished someone found fault with it. After a year at it the stress caused my health to deterioate badly. Another year and I lost my job thanks to the state's flakey funding.
Losing the job was stressful at the time, and it took till last month for me to find another job in the IT field, but it also took all that time for my health to get back to where it was when I took the University job. So in the long run it was probably for the best.
My advice? Find out what you're stepping into, if you'll be building the infrastructure or the only IT person run like hell. If it's already established and you'll be part of a team it might be worth it. I do miss the perks of lectures and such. (And yeah, I enjoyed seeing all the good looking women on campus too, not tha I got to leave my building much to see them though...)
Wait... it did say that it can look into student's emails and instant messages right? So basically it is giving the University free right to look into student's messages and claim that they are merely looking for illegal songs. There has got to be something that can be done by the students at these universities to block this. This is a total invasion of privacy. If any university tries to impose this onto the students attending, the students must do something. Hopefully we haven't lost all of our rebellious nature.
Students don't even need to be rebellious to fight this, just bring up the law. There are some pretty strict federal laws regarding releasing any personal identifying information on students, in fact several universities fought the fast-track supoenas the RIAA used citing those laws as the reason. If they start letting a program dig through student's personal E-mails and chat sessions and check that against an outside database the students have a good reason to say the university is releasing personal information about them without due process.
It should be interesting to see how this pans out, I wouldn't want to be the University who first lets this on my network!
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It is called the Microsoft Baseline security analyzer. It will tell you which updates you need to get and even point you to the security bulletin page to download it
Unfortunately the MBSA's a bit hit and miss. I ran it at home and it did find a few patches I needed, nothing hugely critical (of course I use Windows Update regularly, so there shouldn't have been any critical ones), but some were false alarms. It recommended I install patches for products that weren't currently installed, basically adding something I didn't need to the system. No thanks, I'll pass on having extra MS crap laying around waiting for the next exploir in it.At work it pretty much completely blew. I ran it on the Win2k machine I'm using (and I have admin rights before any asks) and it failed saying it coudldn't acess the security scan XML file. I really haven't had time to search out the answer, and the machine's already patched up from Windows Update.
One other note, MS needs to stop making you have the damn CD available to install Office updates. I can't find my CD at home, and at work no one seems to know where it is. Both machines have unpatched Office installs thanks to this. This is WITH valid licenses, so MS is essentially denying security updates to 2 paying customers of Office.
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It isn't simply that they decided not to use it, it's that they conspired with other companies in an illegal anti-competitive manner.. essentially saying, "I won't license with them if you don't." Or, at least that's what RAMBUS is claiming they did.
I think they'll have a hard time comparing this to price-fixing. Assuming the accusations are true, they just didn't license or make RDRAM. Obviously it wasn't the entire industry (RDRAM was getting made), so it wasn't a monopoly of companies doing it. Secondly Rambus claims their reason for doing this was to make SDRAM win out. SDRAM prices weren't price-fixed apparently, and they dropped much below RDRAM. So it's hard to make a case that the actions taken, even if they realy ocurred, caused consumers any financial harm. You could even argue they saved consumers money by pushing SDRAM and DDR-RAM after it to become the standard faster, thus ending the format war and increasing competition since everyone started making those two instead of RDRAM.Just like any company can decide they want to cell a doohickey for $1000 more than everyone else, but if they conspire with the other doohickey vendors to all raise their price by $1000 so they can make nice profit, it's illegal.
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The article is stating that the reason the prices were higher is because the manufacturers illegally limited production...Please try and be objective.
I am, but I am having trouble seeing how the manufacturers could have illegally limited production unless RAMBUS had an agreement with them to produce X number of units. The market was demanding SDRAM more, so they shifted more production to it. Perhaps I'm just not getting the idea, but I can't see how independant companies can be held liable for NOT making something they didn't want to make -- for whatever the reasons.I'm surprised no one else has commented on it so far, overlooking the color it appears to be quite rounded and I have to wonder if it'll stay sitting up nicely on a shelf without other DVDs/Boxsets around it to keep it upright. I'm glad they're giving us a boxset release finally, but I wish the studios would think about things like this as well.
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If people want to keep buying them, then the studios are right to keep selling them, surely? There's no law that makes people buy these things. If you think they are a rip-off, then don't buy them. If enough people think they are a rip-off, then the studios will stop doing it.
I agree with you, but what will probably happen is people are going to catch on and stop buying the first releases of movies. I know of several who refused to by The Two Towers since they knew they'd release the box set later. How this will affect studio sales is anyone's guess right now, but I doubt it'll fit into their plan. (Which obviously seems to be to get you to buy the same movie multiple times with a few extra goodies thrown in each time.) I don't agree with the grandparent that it's a crooked way to do business, but it's certainly very irritating and disrespectful of customers. While most people are just sheep when it comes to consumerism, even sheep notice if you keep kicking them over and over again and react eventually.It's not too surprising you don't remember it, I was a kid when it was airing, and I never saw it. From what I've gathered over the years it didn't see really wide-spread distribution viewing-area-wise. I found out about it first in the 90's myself. You can find it online in newsgroups, on torrent sites and P2P. If you like Star Trek I'd recommend you hunt down an episode or two to watch to see what you think about it.
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The fact of the matter is, most CS-majors couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag -- much less solve a problem elegantly.
And even worse most of them can't administer even a windows box to save their lives. I was building my own PCs and doing consulting sysadmin work while I was in college in CS and my friends bugged me for tech support constantly. Granted the courses don't teach how to do any of the stuff most Sysadmins do regularly, but you'd think people smart enough to learn how to code (whether elegantly or not) could figure out how to do basic admin tasks like keep anti-virus updated and download security patches and apply them. (Especially for the windows users, windows update makes that pretty brainless, at least for the ones it deigns to show you.)You hear the saying that it's not important what you get a degree in but that you have one. That's very often true because in most fields the really useful things aren't taught in class, you have to learn them on your own. If you're resourceful enough to complete a degree (and you'll run into a few classes where the prof is worthless and you'll have to teach yourself or find friends to help you learn) then you're resourceful enough to learn how to do the things needed for a job -- any job. Yes I know there are some jobs out there that you need highly specialized training for, but in general this applies. I work in IT and I can count the CS courses I took that are useful to me in the real world on one hand, I have no reason to expect it to be any different for other majors.
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If marketers had any interest whatsoever in this type of advertising, there would be bullhorns in public places already constantly exhorting everyone to Drink Coke or Join The Army or whatever. As it stands, only political candidates and ice cream trucks are willing to do this.
Depends on where you are, in Tokyo it's extremely common to see people paid to hand out tissues advertising a shop/resteraunt, or just stand out front and yell (well, yell's not the right word, but close enough) at passerby's to advertise the shop. This tech combined with some sensors to track moving objects (aka people) could cut out the need to pay a person to do that, and make sure you hit even more people going by with your message.And we think spam is bad...
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who said that next generation music will have only 2 channels? RIAA are looking for a reason to have another generation of CDs. Improved quality is the reason to buy new CDS. Unless indi music really catches on, ppl will just be like sheep and do it.
But there has to be a compelling reason to upgrade, and that may hard to come by for the RIAA. As another poster has pointed out, quality doesn't seem to matter to the majority (better qualify audio formats than Mp3 are largely ignored). Also the average user has a cheapo boombox or glorified boombox dubbed a stereo from Wal-mart, most of those don't support true 5.1 surround, and are likely not to for the near future. Even if they do, the speakers they come with are so cheap the difference is likely to not be audible so people won't bother paying more for the "better" CD format.People may be sheep, but they're cheap sheep.
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Yup, you heard the man. Just visiting a website is enough to consent to receive spam. What these "various websites" are, or how a website determines a visitor's email address is left as an exercise for the reader.
I wonder if that would pass CAN-SPAM's muster, if not then he may have done the defense's job for them!-
This is a slippery slope, people. You can make something illegal just because you don't like the idea of it. If people are installing this at-will, then there is nothing morally or ethically worng with it.
This is a rather optimistic view of things, I take it you've never run afoul of much ad/spy-ware. The issue isn't so much software that people willingly choose to install (although Gator and some others don't really warn you fairly about all the popup ads you'll be getting as a result) but about software that installs itself piggy-backed onto other software without warning. Most spy-ware especially is like this. Even once you find out it's there, getting rid of it takes an act of God, or at least 3rd-party software. Why? Because at best the company only provides a broken uninstaller, normally there is no uninstaller. Add in the fact they often don't show up under add/remove programs (let's face it, this is primarily a Windows-land issue) or even under program listings, and you have software that is NOT even trying to act like it's a legit install.The only 'spyware' that is problematic is the kind that installs itself by exploiting software bugs in browsers, and that is already illegal: it's called a virus.
So sorry, this isn't a slippery slope, this is about making the software companies that put this crap out start playing nicely and acting like good citizens of the online world, as oppossed to their current shady, back-alley actions.
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There's no mistaking a legitimate program that user chooses to install.
Exactly, while the spyware companies CLAIM that noone every installs their software without knowing about it, we all know the truth behind that claim. The issue with the legislation seems to be one of semantics more than anything, surely they can find a way to word it to only effect ad/spy-ware.Since big companies are crying uncle over this, I suppose this tells us what directions they were planning to take with future product updates...
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The FTC representatives countered by saying that while they were "outraged" by spyware, a careful approach was necessary. In addition, during an FTC workshop last week, a prosecutor noted that the Justice Department already had sufficient legal authority under existing computer crime laws to put the most noxious spyware makers in prison.
If this is true then why aren't they? There are certainly several spyware products "noxious" enough to warrant a prosecution. Sounds like a bluff to me.While I understand the FTC needs to protect legitimate business interests along with consumer's interests, this is ridiculous. Yes there may be difficulty in wording the bill so that it doesn't hinder legit software, but that's something that can be resolved. Self-regulation sure as hell isn't going to work, the adware and spyware companies have shown little to no restraint in doing whatever they damn well please.
Don't believe that last sentence? Just check out how they all claim you have to opt-in to their software, that it's never installed without your permission. Then check out the ad/spy-ware infected software installs and see if they warn you about them. I've yet to see a warning when one of the buggers shows up, and I do read the info during my software installs.
And finally, just try to remove one without a 3rd-party utility, they're nearly impossible to remove. That alone makes them trespassers to me, since you can uninstall them but they're still partially there, cluttering up your hard drive and mucking with your OS.
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Im getting very tired of this whole SCO thing. As such, I propose that this be solved via the famous "Trial By Stone," designed by Jim Henson.
Ahh darn, I was hoping you meant drop a large stone, or throw lots of small ones on/at Darl.In the movie "The Dark Crystal" The Skeksis decide who gets to be emperor by who could put the largest dent in a solid stone with the swing of a sword.
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With all this idiocy, it would seem SCO are doomed. How could any company maintain with this much erosion to their credibility?
As long as they can manipulate reports and spin things in a way that their stock price doesn't tank they can survive. IF this does get dismissed and the Autozone one as well it might impact their stock price. Actually this one might impact it because on the face of it, even to a lay person, having not used the software in question for 7 years makes the lawsuit look totally meritless.SCO has survived a year now with huge animosity towards them, just in the past few weeks are we seeing signs that their whole campaign may fall apart. If they pull something that gets investors to drive the stock price back up again, they'll continue to survive. Once it drops to what is it's true value (next to nothing IMHO) then that'll signify the beginning of the end of SCO.
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How can they make claims and drop them like that? No consequences??
Actually there can be consquences, and there still may be. DaimlerChrysler can turn around and sue SCO for the corporate equivalent of defamation of character, etc. Filing a lawsuit without merit is always risky because you can be counter-sued. Given SCO's actions in the past I doubt they'll sensably drop this and will probably force DC to counter-sue them to get rid of the bad (and false) press SCO is causing them.There are corps that weren't choosing linux or delaying programs because of this .. there were real losses. It's just wrong that you can make risk free arbitrary claims and accusations as scare and/or FUD to try to advance your agenda .. without worry of consequences.
...is how it can be illegal to report illegal activity. I mean, if I use this service to, say, hire a killer to get rid of my annoying wife, then there's nothing they do about it?
You seem to not realize what the service is intended for -- deaf Americans. To insure that deaf citizens are afforded the same privacy a non-deaf citizen would have on the phone the laws strictly forbid disclosing any information about the caller or call's contents. Yes that means someone could try to use it to setup a hit on their wife, but a non-deaf person can do the same thing on the phone (if they're dumb enough). If you were deaf you would want those protections so that personal information that comes up during a phone call isn't leaked to the world at large.Sorry but if that isn't fucked up then I don't know what is.
When the laws were passed no one foresaw this kind of abuse ocurring and congress and the FCC/FTC (whichever overseas this) are being their normal slow selves about reacting.
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The other thing I do now (which I'd have done earlier, had I the resources) is give each company I do business with it's own address. While this doesn't cut the spam, it does allow me to track who's been selling my address, and who hasn't. Yahoo and Ebay (both previously mentioned in other threads) have been the main culprits thusfar, although there are a few smaller companies I've caught as having sold their email lists as well.
For those that don't have their own domain or ability to create new E-mail addresses at will, check out Spam Gourmet. It allows you to create disposable E-mail addresses on the fly. You can tell it how many E-mails will be allowed at that address (from 1 to 20). Once that many are received the address expires. Part of the brilliance of it is that when an address expires it doesn't start bouncing, any E-mail to it just getsThere's more to it than that for those willing to dig into the advanced options. You can add trusted senders so if you're on a mailing list in archive form, you can use a disposable E-mail for it. None of the trusted sender's E-mails lower the counter of remaining E-mails to that address, and they will continue to get through to you even after the address has dropped to 0 remaining. You can set it up so the E-mails it forwards to you are ready for you to reply through Spam Gourmet, masking you real address so it looks like it came from the disposable one. You can also go in and adjust the remaining E-mails left on an address, both up and down.
Since I started using it I've had less spam problems, and I can tell you every company that sells my address. It's a great service and totally free!
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We really wanted someone that once we've invested time, money, and training in to make a contribution to our projects for more than the time an intern would. Most !Dotcoms are similar in their opinions.
Just wanted to note that this is the same reason many employers want to see candidates with a degree (Bachelor's minimum generally, Associate's degrees don't get as much respect). Having the degree is more important than what field it's in because it shows you stick out what you start and finish it. Employers want that, especially in an economy like now where they can pick and choose more freely.-
Lego Starts Suing?
Depends, do they have their lawyers on speed-dial?-
I get news from no fewer than about 15 sources a day between local, network, 24hr and international television news, radio stations, newspaper and the Internet. How does that really compare with one small foreign language newspaper or tv broadcast?
Not disagreeing with you, just wanted to add that I try to read a few non-US news sites a day as well. That helps detect the spin (and hidden info) the US media (to be fair, all country's media has a country-based bias to it generally) puts on things. I also happened across a weekly news magazine in a free sub that turned out to be a great source. It basically summarizes the last week's news for you using viewpoints from news sources world-wide. Each article has at least a couple of views, major items get more. It's called The Week in case anyone's interested.In any case, I think you hit the nail on the head quite well about non-English speaking voters being "segregated". Kinda hard to be disenfranchised when you don't know what you're voting for/about/etc. (I do think all citizens should be able to vote, but losing a bit of privacy because of a handicap (I'm lumping non-English speaking as a handicap here) is a far cry from disenfranchisement!)
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given more crackdowns of this size each year for four years, and i could imagine that pirates would bother to step up their crypto to this level.
Actually the CDs can be encrypted. I use a product called Best Crypt for encrypting my vritual memory and putting sensitive stuff on virtual encrypted drives. When I want to back anything up from those I create a 699MB virtual drive. Best Crypt uses files for its virtual drives, so that gives me a 699MB file to burn to CD. You have to know the master key to mount the file as a drive. Without the contents of the CD are just so much gibberish. I've also found this to be quite handy for doing backups of thousands of small files, even if they don't need encrypting, it makes the burn process easier to stuff them in a virtual drive file first.except for their 100 cd spindles of backups.
True you can't keep a working install copy in that format, but especially with DVD+-RW becoming more commonplace, combined with virtual CD-ROM tools (like Daemon Tools), they could keep all their cracked programs on a DVD, just needing to mount the file as a drive, then the ISO in the virtual drive with Daemon Tools/etc. Sure that's a lot of steps, but I'm sure some of the die-hard pirates out there wouldn't mind it.
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Sure, there are times when it can get stressful, but the stress isn't CONSTANT like it is with jobs in the business world. Managers aren't constantly worrying about the bottom line, just providing the best environment possible for students and researchers.
You experience is the polar-opposite of my University work experience. I was Sysadmin of an engineering dept. of a major university. The politics were so evil I believe Satan avoided the place. I was also unfortunately stuffed into the position as an hourly employee with no overtime allowed and had to build the entire IT infrastructure (alone) for the dept. No plans had been made, I had one brand new lab of 25 computers with only the vagaries of the proposal for it. Nothing I did was fast enough, no matter how many problems I overcame and what I got accomplished someone found fault with it. After a year at it the stress caused my health to deterioate badly. Another year and I lost my job thanks to the state's flakey funding.Losing the job was stressful at the time, and it took till last month for me to find another job in the IT field, but it also took all that time for my health to get back to where it was when I took the University job. So in the long run it was probably for the best.
My advice? Find out what you're stepping into, if you'll be building the infrastructure or the only IT person run like hell. If it's already established and you'll be part of a team it might be worth it. I do miss the perks of lectures and such. (And yeah, I enjoyed seeing all the good looking women on campus too, not tha I got to leave my building much to see them though...)
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Wait... it did say that it can look into student's emails and instant messages right? So basically it is giving the University free right to look into student's messages and claim that they are merely looking for illegal songs. There has got to be something that can be done by the students at these universities to block this. This is a total invasion of privacy. If any university tries to impose this onto the students attending, the students must do something. Hopefully we haven't lost all of our rebellious nature.
Students don't even need to be rebellious to fight this, just bring up the law. There are some pretty strict federal laws regarding releasing any personal identifying information on students, in fact several universities fought the fast-track supoenas the RIAA used citing those laws as the reason. If they start letting a program dig through student's personal E-mails and chat sessions and check that against an outside database the students have a good reason to say the university is releasing personal information about them without due process.It should be interesting to see how this pans out, I wouldn't want to be the University who first lets this on my network!