If this were about say drugs instead of music, would a person still be held accountable?
Example...
Lets say a friend asked me where to find some crack and I tell him to check the corner of 4th Avenue and Jefferson Street. How would I be charged in this case? Should I be charged? How about if I have absolutely no ties to the person/area I send the person?
Is telling a person where to obtain something illegal in itself illegal?
Likely this guy knew exactly what he was linking to and if illegal, he should be punished, but I would like to think it wouldn't be nearly as bad as the people actually hosting the illegal content. From what I've seen, the fines this guy faces exceed those mentioned in other settlements to the RIAA (yes, I realize these are settlements not fines).
I'm not asking so much on the issue of cost, but rather on protecting the information in your email. Would you be more comfortable with your company sensitive information if the information was being transmitted between company controlled email resources? If I put together a proposal with cost information or a business approach, I certainly wouldn't want a webmail system possibly letting the information out to unintended recipients (competitors). Webmail may be safe, but if it's not under your control in some manner (either internal servers or an ISP with a policy that matches your requirements), would you risk company sensitive data?
Just an example: Company A and B both use Hotmail and are competing for a project. Customer C handles request from both companies and accidently sends proposal from company A to both company A and B because they both use Yahoo for email (and customer C figures they both support the same company and use Yahoo). Now company B has access to company A's sensitive information (cost, business approach, etc...).
This may not be the best example for my above argument, but it does show a problem.
Your the perfect person to question on this then...
Do you have requirements to retain emails for a period of time?
Do you have requirements to ensure backups of mailboxes? I haven't read my Hotmail information lately, but I seem to recall that they don't necessarily offer recovery should their services go down.
Does using a free webmail solution create a positive impression to your business clients?
Like my original post indicated, I haven't worked for a very small IT company to necessarily understand all the challenges facing those who use free webmail services. I could see using an outsourced pay email service, but they would have to provide features (privacy, retention, recovery, etc...) I don't believe exist with free webmail services.
Outsourcing the email and using a free webmail service are really different solutions though. What you describe implies a paid service with levels of responsibility that aren't guaranteed by free email services.
Do businesses really rely on free web based email for communication? I've never worked for an IT company that had less than 100 employees so maybe I'm missing something here. Would small businesses really use communication systems that are outside their control (or through a pay service that provides corporate like email solutions) or ones that really don't have an obligation to protect their sensitive business data? I don't think I'd rely on Hotmail, Yahoo, etc... for anything beyond personal email. Just seems like too much of a risk.
About two years ago, my company delivered a complete solution (hardware, software, training) to Turkey and the equipment was purchased in the US to be preconfigured. This included the printers (HP) and (HP) plotters (no, they didn't need configured really but the customer wanted a thorough test of the system, including output) as part of the US purchased equipment list. Now I'm sure the end users would just be thrilled if they had to purchase replacment cartridges from the US rather then going to their local suppliers.
Region encoding consumable items just sounds like a greedy scheme without benefits for the consumers.
To get the same results of creativity, larger corporations wouldn't necessarily have to follow the process of just giving 20% free time for pursuing their own interest. I work for a large corporation and our process involves submitting a request for a research and development project. You submit info to justify the research as well as a budget request. If approved, you'll have a work package to charge against and that could essentially be your 20% (more or less depending on your research proposal). Tracking time then becomes an issue of meeting your deadlines and how much you hit the work package each weak/month as reported by the accounting offices.
VOIP may have issues with 911 service (power outages, network failure - Comcast in my case, etc...) but I'm not completely relying on VOIP. In my situation, my cell phone is my primary line and the home phone is a secondary line. I realize both phones in my case can have failure but will both fail at the same time?
Currently I'm still with Verizon for home service but I'm looking at SunRocket to replace it. The alternative for me would likely be Vonage but SunRocket has a $199/year deal that works out a bit better in price.
Does anyone know off hand if using a UPS is adequate to keep the router and modem online is adequate or does the cable service also draw from the power grid?
I'm sure this isn't the only Geospatial vendor but ESRI pretty much makes their software, technical support and data free to agencies supporting disasters. For the Indian Ocean disaster, check out this link.
In some cases now, counties are actually resorting to "leasing" data from the data collectors. In this case, the licensing of the data allows the county to avoid the issue of data handling to the public.
As for terrorist accessing the data, GIS data can provide a good bit of information for planning. Imagine having access to emergency response districts (often part of a counties base dataset), schools, building footprints (when combined with county assessor file can indicate quite a bit of details about the individual home owners), and transportation data. All these layers could be exploited in some way.
As for the "cop-out so they don't have to do any extra work to provide it to the public", the data is generally stored in a central spatial repository and writing to tape, CD, or DVD is not a difficult task and governments can generally charge a minimal fee for media and handling. It's not a matter of extra work.
I mostly agree with you but to some extent, free programs like AdAware and Spybot have exposed people to free software. If these users do a little more research, they start seeing alternatives to the Microsoft world and other commercial products. Once a user is comfortable with Spybot, how long till they try FireFox? One can almost see a slow acceptance by home users to open source software.
I wasn't so much trying to answer the "why" part of the question but rather a technical solution that would provide some level of privacy/protection while alive. As for sharing the emails while alive, sure, one can do that but I can also see where someone might want to account for what happens once they die (similar to leaving a will with instructions). Obviously some people have an interest in opening their email once they die but not necessarily when they are alive. About the only situation I can see that would be of interest to me (for as much interest as one can have when dead) is that if I was corresponding with someone only via email, they wouldn't necessarily know that I died and a family member could break the news to them. In this example, I'm picturing say former school friends who may live out of state but you keep in fairly regular contact via email.
I agree with most of the followups to my post though that likely very few people would want to read my email. If I really thought I had something important to say or received something important and relevant to another person, I'd have forwarded a copy to them.
I hadn't thought much about reading email once someone dies until this article. Personally I don't think I have any email that would really be of interest to anyone. Having a "password for once you die" would be a bit dark but some people may be interested in preserving their writings.
True if Yahoo made the decision on their own but if the user chooses to give the "secondary" password, that is the users choice, not the ISP's. The user could at any time change/disable the secondary access. Users have the choice on allowing access, similar to allowing others to know their only password. By having a secondary password that only works after some period of activity and the fact that the user obtained the secondary password from the user, I don't see how the ISP has an ethical issue. Please note, I'm not a lawyer.
A possible solution would be to change the authentication process a bit. Just throwing out this idea sort of quickly...
User creates an account
User defines a secondary password
Secondary password is only valid for authentication after 6 months (or some other reasonable time period) of inactivity (presumably death)
Something like this would hopefully allow for accounts to be secure until a person dies while allowing access after a defined period of time. I guess the flaws could be that most ISPs don't necessarily keep accounts active after a couple months non-payment or after a "X" days of inactivity. ISP's could offer some protection like this for an addition fee if a person really wanted to leave access after they depart the world.
there is such a thing as MULTIPLE users in Windows - NT, 2000, 2003, XP (Home & Professional) all have this facility
Just to be fair, multiple users on MS Win32 platforms typically does not mean that they can concurrently log into the system. Yes, I know that Terminal Services exist on the server versions of Windows but can you have 10 users concurrently working on all the platforms you listed (XP Home and Professional allow a RemoteDesktop, but unless I misunderstand your definition of "multiple user", that's a single user just accessing remotely). Terminal Services and RemoteDesktop certainly have made my life easier (I don't have to travel between company sites nearly as much) so understand that I am thankful that MS finally gave me capabilities that were available back when I first used Ultrix back in 1993 and others had access to earlier.
As for user access, your right, users could run as root or administrator but I'd guess you'll find a much larger percentage of MS Win32 users running their regular user accounts with elevated priviledges compared to those on other operating systems. Your right though that people can set user access levels. I just find that switching user access levels on MS Win32 systems is not as easy (try bringing up Windows Explorer under an administrator account while logged in as a regular user - now Terminal Services would allow this as a separate login but not all sites have Terminal Services).
Even this scheme is not adequate for all environments. I'm one of the unfortunate people who manage several different networks where passwords must not be duplicated between systems. Throw in that I have a regular user account, root, and administrator (domain, server, and clients all different) and slightly different password requirements (alpha numeric, mixed case, length, non-dictionary) and I have way to many to easily remember. I also have my home and online passwords different from any of my work versions (although I don't force myself to change these as often). I end up having to leave obscure clues that would be meaningless to anyone (example: "car#" could be a clue where it would translate to one of my cars and a significant number to me).
I for one would welcome a new authentification overlord if available.
Unfortunately it sounds like sneaking Linux under management's radar isn't a viable option in this case. The author has already stated that they are a Windows shop and they can't bring in a non-Windows solution.
As for your solution, I'm guessing you weren't doing any serious work involving company intellectual property (IP) or company/customer sensitive data. Does your company have IT staff who protect both company internal systems and your home system? Even though you may be a very careful administrator at home, I'm guessing most companies wouldn't be comfortable leaving anything important on an employee's home system. Even in the case of bug tracking, one could figure out project details based on tracked defects and affect the company's project (beat to market, highlight defects, etc...).
The real solution is to getting Linux into this guys shop is to work within the companies normal change process. If the process doesn't allow for that type of change, then the author would need to first change policies.
It's clearly unethical if the screensaver sends random data to these spammers web sites--that's clearly a DDoS attack
Wouldn't the fact that we've all gotten spam from a site constitute a previous business interaction (of course initiated by the spammer)? Maybe the screensaver just needs to send a unsubscribe link to another spammers site. Lycos could claim that the unsubscribe link was coded in error.
Now that's an interesting concept. Oddly enough, I've used a product called RemoteView from Sensor System's RemoteView. Doesn't have much to do with clairvoyant abilities to "view" though.
Remote Sensing is not just for military/intelligence use. Environmental (forest/crop management), planning (local government - land use, errosion), utility (vegetation management under power lines, heat loss from structures*), and many other applications exist. Multi-Spectral imagery is pretty interesting to look at once you start pulling out spectral signatures (particular leaf type, soil types, etc...).
* - I've read some interesting articles on utility companies that map the heat loss from individual buildings. The power company can use the data to identify homes that would benefit from additional insulation.
I'll have to disagree with you on the importance of the school, at least after you get your first job. As I've seen in many of the other post here, the school you choose may help in getting your first position, but after that, experience becomes much more of a discriminator. When I started looking for another job after my first, I consulted with a head hunter who actually helped rewrite my resume and the suggestion was to move the "education" section to the bottom of the resume in favor of highlightin experience over it. My degree is a BS in Geography (GIS, Remote Sensing, and Cartography) from Penn State and is applicable to the employers I look at, but still it's not all that impressive when you consider on the job experience.
Now I've done some resume reviews for positions and I personally don't care where the degree has come from if they have 2 or more years with a single employer. Experience from the first job on is what really matters.
One must consider that if people are willing to leave the comfort (and I mean from the typical user perspective) of Microsoft software for the browser, they may become more willing to consider other non-MS products too. If users become comfortable, in small steps, with open source software, that could be the beginning of a migration.
Not all people will give up their land line in favor of cell phones. I only recently gave up mine in favor of an additional cell phone to be left at home. My reasoning was that when my kids are with a sitter, they would need to reach us and assuming the sitter has a cell phone is not reasonable. I do agree with you though that pricing is making going to broadband more and more reasonable though. I guess another issue to consider though is that not everyone has cable TV (that's the case with my parents) so cable broadband isn't an option. DSL would probably work for them, but I'm not sure if they could give up a land line phone service in that case.
Slashdot Mirror
If this were about say drugs instead of music, would a person still be held accountable?
Example...
Lets say a friend asked me where to find some crack and I tell him to check the corner of 4th Avenue and Jefferson Street. How would I be charged in this case? Should I be charged? How about if I have absolutely no ties to the person/area I send the person?
Is telling a person where to obtain something illegal in itself illegal?
Likely this guy knew exactly what he was linking to and if illegal, he should be punished, but I would like to think it wouldn't be nearly as bad as the people actually hosting the illegal content. From what I've seen, the fines this guy faces exceed those mentioned in other settlements to the RIAA (yes, I realize these are settlements not fines).
I'm not asking so much on the issue of cost, but rather on protecting the information in your email. Would you be more comfortable with your company sensitive information if the information was being transmitted between company controlled email resources? If I put together a proposal with cost information or a business approach, I certainly wouldn't want a webmail system possibly letting the information out to unintended recipients (competitors). Webmail may be safe, but if it's not under your control in some manner (either internal servers or an ISP with a policy that matches your requirements), would you risk company sensitive data?
Just an example: Company A and B both use Hotmail and are competing for a project. Customer C handles request from both companies and accidently sends proposal from company A to both company A and B because they both use Yahoo for email (and customer C figures they both support the same company and use Yahoo). Now company B has access to company A's sensitive information (cost, business approach, etc...).
This may not be the best example for my above argument, but it does show a problem.
Do you have requirements to retain emails for a period of time?
Do you have requirements to ensure backups of mailboxes? I haven't read my Hotmail information lately, but I seem to recall that they don't necessarily offer recovery should their services go down.
Does using a free webmail solution create a positive impression to your business clients?
Like my original post indicated, I haven't worked for a very small IT company to necessarily understand all the challenges facing those who use free webmail services. I could see using an outsourced pay email service, but they would have to provide features (privacy, retention, recovery, etc...) I don't believe exist with free webmail services.
Outsourcing the email and using a free webmail service are really different solutions though. What you describe implies a paid service with levels of responsibility that aren't guaranteed by free email services.
Do businesses really rely on free web based email for communication? I've never worked for an IT company that had less than 100 employees so maybe I'm missing something here. Would small businesses really use communication systems that are outside their control (or through a pay service that provides corporate like email solutions) or ones that really don't have an obligation to protect their sensitive business data? I don't think I'd rely on Hotmail, Yahoo, etc... for anything beyond personal email. Just seems like too much of a risk.
How about punch cards or microfilm/microfiche? I'm sure both of those would be a pain to go through.
I'd guess that they'll have a requirement for a reasonable delivery method but thinking about making it difficult adds to the humor.
About two years ago, my company delivered a complete solution (hardware, software, training) to Turkey and the equipment was purchased in the US to be preconfigured. This included the printers (HP) and (HP) plotters (no, they didn't need configured really but the customer wanted a thorough test of the system, including output) as part of the US purchased equipment list. Now I'm sure the end users would just be thrilled if they had to purchase replacment cartridges from the US rather then going to their local suppliers.
Region encoding consumable items just sounds like a greedy scheme without benefits for the consumers.
To get the same results of creativity, larger corporations wouldn't necessarily have to follow the process of just giving 20% free time for pursuing their own interest. I work for a large corporation and our process involves submitting a request for a research and development project. You submit info to justify the research as well as a budget request. If approved, you'll have a work package to charge against and that could essentially be your 20% (more or less depending on your research proposal). Tracking time then becomes an issue of meeting your deadlines and how much you hit the work package each weak/month as reported by the accounting offices.
VOIP may have issues with 911 service (power outages, network failure - Comcast in my case, etc...) but I'm not completely relying on VOIP. In my situation, my cell phone is my primary line and the home phone is a secondary line. I realize both phones in my case can have failure but will both fail at the same time?
Currently I'm still with Verizon for home service but I'm looking at SunRocket to replace it. The alternative for me would likely be Vonage but SunRocket has a $199/year deal that works out a bit better in price.
Does anyone know off hand if using a UPS is adequate to keep the router and modem online is adequate or does the cable service also draw from the power grid?
I'm sure this isn't the only Geospatial vendor but ESRI pretty much makes their software, technical support and data free to agencies supporting disasters. For the Indian Ocean disaster, check out this link.
In some cases now, counties are actually resorting to "leasing" data from the data collectors. In this case, the licensing of the data allows the county to avoid the issue of data handling to the public.
As for terrorist accessing the data, GIS data can provide a good bit of information for planning. Imagine having access to emergency response districts (often part of a counties base dataset), schools, building footprints (when combined with county assessor file can indicate quite a bit of details about the individual home owners), and transportation data. All these layers could be exploited in some way.
As for the "cop-out so they don't have to do any extra work to provide it to the public", the data is generally stored in a central spatial repository and writing to tape, CD, or DVD is not a difficult task and governments can generally charge a minimal fee for media and handling. It's not a matter of extra work.
I mostly agree with you but to some extent, free programs like AdAware and Spybot have exposed people to free software. If these users do a little more research, they start seeing alternatives to the Microsoft world and other commercial products. Once a user is comfortable with Spybot, how long till they try FireFox? One can almost see a slow acceptance by home users to open source software.
I wasn't so much trying to answer the "why" part of the question but rather a technical solution that would provide some level of privacy/protection while alive. As for sharing the emails while alive, sure, one can do that but I can also see where someone might want to account for what happens once they die (similar to leaving a will with instructions). Obviously some people have an interest in opening their email once they die but not necessarily when they are alive. About the only situation I can see that would be of interest to me (for as much interest as one can have when dead) is that if I was corresponding with someone only via email, they wouldn't necessarily know that I died and a family member could break the news to them. In this example, I'm picturing say former school friends who may live out of state but you keep in fairly regular contact via email.
I agree with most of the followups to my post though that likely very few people would want to read my email. If I really thought I had something important to say or received something important and relevant to another person, I'd have forwarded a copy to them.
Jim
I hadn't thought much about reading email once someone dies until this article. Personally I don't think I have any email that would really be of interest to anyone. Having a "password for once you die" would be a bit dark but some people may be interested in preserving their writings.
True if Yahoo made the decision on their own but if the user chooses to give the "secondary" password, that is the users choice, not the ISP's. The user could at any time change/disable the secondary access. Users have the choice on allowing access, similar to allowing others to know their only password. By having a secondary password that only works after some period of activity and the fact that the user obtained the secondary password from the user, I don't see how the ISP has an ethical issue. Please note, I'm not a lawyer.
User creates an account
User defines a secondary password
Secondary password is only valid for authentication after 6 months (or some other reasonable time period) of inactivity (presumably death)
Something like this would hopefully allow for accounts to be secure until a person dies while allowing access after a defined period of time. I guess the flaws could be that most ISPs don't necessarily keep accounts active after a couple months non-payment or after a "X" days of inactivity. ISP's could offer some protection like this for an addition fee if a person really wanted to leave access after they depart the world.
there is such a thing as MULTIPLE users in Windows - NT, 2000, 2003, XP (Home & Professional) all have this facility
Just to be fair, multiple users on MS Win32 platforms typically does not mean that they can concurrently log into the system. Yes, I know that Terminal Services exist on the server versions of Windows but can you have 10 users concurrently working on all the platforms you listed (XP Home and Professional allow a RemoteDesktop, but unless I misunderstand your definition of "multiple user", that's a single user just accessing remotely). Terminal Services and RemoteDesktop certainly have made my life easier (I don't have to travel between company sites nearly as much) so understand that I am thankful that MS finally gave me capabilities that were available back when I first used Ultrix back in 1993 and others had access to earlier.
As for user access, your right, users could run as root or administrator but I'd guess you'll find a much larger percentage of MS Win32 users running their regular user accounts with elevated priviledges compared to those on other operating systems. Your right though that people can set user access levels. I just find that switching user access levels on MS Win32 systems is not as easy (try bringing up Windows Explorer under an administrator account while logged in as a regular user - now Terminal Services would allow this as a separate login but not all sites have Terminal Services).
Even this scheme is not adequate for all environments. I'm one of the unfortunate people who manage several different networks where passwords must not be duplicated between systems. Throw in that I have a regular user account, root, and administrator (domain, server, and clients all different) and slightly different password requirements (alpha numeric, mixed case, length, non-dictionary) and I have way to many to easily remember. I also have my home and online passwords different from any of my work versions (although I don't force myself to change these as often). I end up having to leave obscure clues that would be meaningless to anyone (example: "car#" could be a clue where it would translate to one of my cars and a significant number to me).
I for one would welcome a new authentification overlord if available.
Unfortunately it sounds like sneaking Linux under management's radar isn't a viable option in this case. The author has already stated that they are a Windows shop and they can't bring in a non-Windows solution.
As for your solution, I'm guessing you weren't doing any serious work involving company intellectual property (IP) or company/customer sensitive data. Does your company have IT staff who protect both company internal systems and your home system? Even though you may be a very careful administrator at home, I'm guessing most companies wouldn't be comfortable leaving anything important on an employee's home system. Even in the case of bug tracking, one could figure out project details based on tracked defects and affect the company's project (beat to market, highlight defects, etc...).
The real solution is to getting Linux into this guys shop is to work within the companies normal change process. If the process doesn't allow for that type of change, then the author would need to first change policies.
It's clearly unethical if the screensaver sends random data to these spammers web sites--that's clearly a DDoS attack
Wouldn't the fact that we've all gotten spam from a site constitute a previous business interaction (of course initiated by the spammer)? Maybe the screensaver just needs to send a unsubscribe link to another spammers site. Lycos could claim that the unsubscribe link was coded in error.
Now that's an interesting concept. Oddly enough, I've used a product called RemoteView from Sensor System's RemoteView. Doesn't have much to do with clairvoyant abilities to "view" though.
Osama is at: 33 00 N, 65 00 E
World Factbook for Afghanistan (CIA).
Remote Sensing is not just for military/intelligence use. Environmental (forest/crop management), planning (local government - land use, errosion), utility (vegetation management under power lines, heat loss from structures*), and many other applications exist. Multi-Spectral imagery is pretty interesting to look at once you start pulling out spectral signatures (particular leaf type, soil types, etc...).
* - I've read some interesting articles on utility companies that map the heat loss from individual buildings. The power company can use the data to identify homes that would benefit from additional insulation.
I'll have to disagree with you on the importance of the school, at least after you get your first job. As I've seen in many of the other post here, the school you choose may help in getting your first position, but after that, experience becomes much more of a discriminator. When I started looking for another job after my first, I consulted with a head hunter who actually helped rewrite my resume and the suggestion was to move the "education" section to the bottom of the resume in favor of highlightin experience over it. My degree is a BS in Geography (GIS, Remote Sensing, and Cartography) from Penn State and is applicable to the employers I look at, but still it's not all that impressive when you consider on the job experience.
Now I've done some resume reviews for positions and I personally don't care where the degree has come from if they have 2 or more years with a single employer. Experience from the first job on is what really matters.
One must consider that if people are willing to leave the comfort (and I mean from the typical user perspective) of Microsoft software for the browser, they may become more willing to consider other non-MS products too. If users become comfortable, in small steps, with open source software, that could be the beginning of a migration.
Not all people will give up their land line in favor of cell phones. I only recently gave up mine in favor of an additional cell phone to be left at home. My reasoning was that when my kids are with a sitter, they would need to reach us and assuming the sitter has a cell phone is not reasonable. I do agree with you though that pricing is making going to broadband more and more reasonable though. I guess another issue to consider though is that not everyone has cable TV (that's the case with my parents) so cable broadband isn't an option. DSL would probably work for them, but I'm not sure if they could give up a land line phone service in that case.