The problem appears to have begun with an order to sell that was entered into a system that Gr8Trade, a subsidiary of Instinet Group, leases to brokerage firms. The system allows a firm's customers to enter their orders directly into the system, and sends them to markets for execution.
W3 R Gr8Trades. All U base R belong to us. Nyaaaaa.
(Anyone entrusting a company named "Gr8Trades" to buy 5000 shares at $40/share should be spanked. $200,000 was theirs, now it's not.)
Linus even manipulates this: he knows there is a big hurdle for people between an odd-numbered kernel and an even-numbered one, but he also knows that his quality improvements depend on getting the widest range of bug reports. That's why there's a 2.6.0-testN series.
So even though the code is the same, there's a tension between changing to even numbers to get more use and staying with odd numbers while it's still evolving.
That list is clearly meant to shine a light with a broad spectrum on privacy. Government is not supposed to be in our private lives.
But certainly, if the government is not supposed to compel us to divulge information to them, it shouldn't spread that information to others simply because it already has it. The damage isn't over when just one person learns the secret, but worsens as the information spreads.
The interesting thing to me is that the players in this are either universities, hardware vendors, or ISPs.
It's easy to see what the universities get out of it (no, it's not just p0rn). But the vendors? Aha! They get to do their R&D and call it a donation to a non-profit. They even get Slashdot to give them publicity for it.
Clever da5ebf%s^H^H^H^H^H^H ooops, sorry, my aluminum foil slipped off my head for an instant. Now I have to go shower again!
That would make spamming very efficient, and ironically less costly per message than ordinary email. Yes, I'd say that's a wonderful solution -- for the spammers, that is.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Privacy is a Right, like the Rights to Believe, to Communicate, to Move, to stay and Fight, and to Own Property. These are enumerated specifically, and it was the belief of the Framers that they are inherent in being a human. They set forth cases in which those rights could be limited, such as for convicts, slaves, and in time of war.
The issue is not whether you have a right to privacy. The issue is whether the government, having already collected the otherwise private information, is free to pass that information on to others.
Hmm, good point: very commonly spam is sent directly to the server which will deliver locally.
However, I think you're missing the other have of the alert system: detecting spam before accepting it. We don't notify the spammer that his recipient is good or bad, we just bounce him an alert for every single spam message.
Maybe I tried to be too nice by sending a simple alert back to the sender. Maybe an alert should also go to a spam alert center, to keep the blacklists updated. In fact, this could be used to keep people from dropping alerts: if someone sends and alert to you and to the alert center, and you don't send an alert to someone else and the alert center, you are the spammer.
There's nothing that says a sending host has to route mail via various intermediaries...willing ISP... drops
That's right, and we don't care. The alert goes back as close to the originator as it can. They still have to process the message to find out it's an alert. For spammers sending lots of messages, that generates lots of alerts for everyone nearby, and stops the flow at the first non-spam server.
The key is viewing spam as an error condition, and trying to notify the source of the error.
One thing I'd like is a way to deal specially with virus-laden messages or to tailor the alert to specific spam conditions. For instance, an ISP might tolerate 'legitimate email marketing', but draw the line at sending viruses, or poorn, or "hate mail", or whatever.
Cell phone jamming should be legalized, and it should become more widespread.
No. It should become mandatory, especially in:
theatres
schools
sporting events
restaurants with no backlit menu (if you're that important, use your precious cell phone to order a pizza)
church!
public transportation, where no one talks except to people who aren't there
There's nothing quite so torturous as being at a basketball game and listening to some drunk district sales manager slur his competitors, when he's not saying "What? Speak up, I can't hear you over the crowd noise."
We can hear you just fine, bub. By the way, you've got mustard on your tie.
I think I've come up with a better idea. See my proposal. (The basic idea is this: MTAs implement anti-spam filters. Spam generates a 'spam alert', sent to 'abuse' at the site attempting to send/forward spam. The spam alert message then retraces its route as defined in its headers.)
The advantages are
Zero overhead for non-spam messages (as compared to what we have now)
Disincentive to forward spam, as well as to create it
Works within existing RFCs for SMTP, and retains the spirit of the Free Internet.
O'course, there have to be flaws with it, but no one has pointed them out to me yet.
Under Yahoo's new architecture, a system sending an e-mail message would embed a secure, private key in a message header. The receiving system would check the Internet's Domain Name System for the public key registered to the sending domain.
If the public key is able to decrypt the private key embedded in the message, then the e-mail is considered authentic and can be delivered. If not, then the message is assumed not to be an authentic one from the sender and is blocked.
For every message, I have to check and unpack the header, go out to some PK server, and validate the keys, before I decide to accept/reject? That introduces a big latency into SMTP.
Also, this doesn't do anything to stop 'legitimate email marketers'. There's a death penalty (blacklist) for a site or particular sender's key, but nothing to stop a spammer from changing keys and starting over.
Or will everyone have to get their own key pair? Who's going to validate them, and at what cost per key pair?
This won't do a thing to stop spam, and imposes too big a burden on the infrastructure and on the 99% of us who don't spam.
As a consultant / system administrator / programmer in business for myself, I have one rule: all I sell is labor. Because of that, I don't sell software and I don't charge a markup on hardware I recommend. It makes everything so much simpler, and I never have to defend my choices as being self-serving. Here are some other suggestions, some of which I've learned the hard way:
Obey the Golden Rule. The real one, not 'who has the gold makes the rules'.
The customer is always right.
Be more honest than you have to be. If your employees and management team know ahead of time that honesty is expected and rewarded and dishonesty will result in dismissal, it will permeate your culture and spill over into your customer and supplier relationships.
Avoid debt. Owing money can make you somebody's whore.
Never force someone to accept new features to get bug fixes.
If you discover a flaw with your product:
Alert your customers, or be open about it, depending on the flaw
Fix it as completely or as quickly as possible, depending on the flaw
Make the fix available for free, and backport it to earlier versions if applicable
Remember that your business has a higher purpose than making money. Only you know what that purpose is. If your business existed solely to make money, you'd never have asked what you did. If money were your only objective, you would be in a pure financial market, not the software business. What is it that your business should accomplish besides making money? Put another way: what objective can you miss and consider your business a failure, even if you turn a profit? Answer those questions and your ethical decisions will be straightforward.
and orders a beer. The bartender kicks him out, saying "We don't allow no strings around here!"
Dejected and outmuscled, the string leaves. The same thing happens at the next place, "We don' allow yer kind here! This is a respectable joint!"
The string has an idea. He tossles up his end, makes a loop and pulls his tail through, and goes back in the first bar. The bartender eyes him. "Hey, aren't you that string I just bounced outta here?" Offended, the string answers him:
by receiving all versions and iterations of AIX and Dynix, SCO will have evidence of IBM's development of Linux in violation of its contractual and legal obligations.
In other words, SCO believes it owns AIX and Dynix, and that IBM used SCO's AIX and Dynix code to improve Linux.
On the other hand, SCO is or has been distributing software that was released under the GPL and BSD licences. They have voided their right to do so. They have allowed software released under BSD and almost certainly GPL licenses to be inserted into their Unix variant.
Under the DMCA and CA76, the FSF and UC can demand that they stop distribution of any Unix-like operating system until all GPL/BSD code is removed.
Suing SCO for violation of the Copyright Act might not be successful in court, but it could be. Even if the suit were to fail (or more likely, SCO go under before a trial), the publicity of such a suit would make it obvious that Open Source adherents are not anti-copyright. We just prefer a different EULA.
What's really wrong with SCO's position? I agree with Lessig:
... "copyright law celebrates the profit motive, recognizing that the incentive to profit from the exploitation of copyrights will redound to the public benefit by resulting in the proliferation of knowledge.... The profit motive is the engine that ensures the progress of science."...
Their argument is that the profit motive is what is important about copyrights. According to SCO, the intent of the author and his right to control the distribution of his work are a secondary side effect of the profit motive and our economy's need for him to profit from his work.
That twisted paradigm underpins SCO's business plan, their market strategy, and their case against IBM.
I believe it's time to sue SCO, in order to make clear that it's the author's right to control his work and who profits from it that matters, and not just his right to profit.
SCO is or has been distributing software that was released under the GPL and BSD licences. They have voided their right to do so. They have allowed software released under BSD and almost certainly GPL licenses to be inserted into their Unix variant.
Under the DMCA and CA76, the FSF and UC can demand that they stop distribution of any Unix-like operating system until all GPL/BSD code is removed.
Suing SCO for violation of the Copyright Act might not be successful in court, but it could be. Even if the suit were to fail (or more likely, SCO go under before a trial), the publicity of such a suit would make it obvious that Open Source adherents are not anti-copyright. We just prefer a different EULA.
... "copyright law celebrates the profit motive, recognizing that the incentive to profit from the exploitation of copyrights will redound to the public benefit by resulting in the proliferation of knowledge.... The profit motive is the engine that ensures the progress of science."...
Their argument is that the profit motive is what is important about copyrights. According to SCO, the intent of the author and his right to control the distribution of his work are a secondary side effect of the profit motive and our economy's need for him to profit from his work.
That twisted paradigm underpins SCO's business plan, their market strategy, and their case against IBM.
I believe it's time to sue SCO, in order to make clear that it's the author's right to control his work and who profits from it that matters, and not just his right to profit.
In 1989 I read on Usenet that the Internet was growing at 8% per month. A coworker looked up from his NetWare manual, did some mental arithmetic, and said "In a few years, your toaster will be on the Net." I told him no, only geeks will ever use the Internet. It couldn't possibly keep growing.
The Microsoft patents cover only their specific implementation of how to map long file names to short file names. Some of the earlier patents they reference are:
Xerox (#5,307,494) : File name length augmentation method
Time-Warner (#5,313,646): Method of creating CD-ROM image of files of different format with proper directories to be read by respective operating systems
AT&T (#5,412,808): System for parsing extended file names in an operating system
Many others seem to hold precedence, but IANAPL.
If you looked up Microsoft's patent and wrote code based on it, then you could infringe. If you looked at Winders and tried to do long and short filenames the same way it does, then you could infringe.
Having your MP3 player use FAT and just long file names doesn't infringe, if I'm on the jury.
Slashdot Mirror
W3 R Gr8Trades. All U base R belong to us. Nyaaaaa.
(Anyone entrusting a company named "Gr8Trades" to buy 5000 shares at $40/share should be spanked. $200,000 was theirs, now it's not.)
That's right.
Linus even manipulates this: he knows there is a big hurdle for people between an odd-numbered kernel and an even-numbered one, but he also knows that his quality improvements depend on getting the widest range of bug reports. That's why there's a 2.6.0-testN series.
So even though the code is the same, there's a tension between changing to even numbers to get more use and staying with odd numbers while it's still evolving.
That list is clearly meant to shine a light with a broad spectrum on privacy. Government is not supposed to be in our private lives.
But certainly, if the government is not supposed to compel us to divulge information to them, it shouldn't spread that information to others simply because it already has it. The damage isn't over when just one person learns the secret, but worsens as the information spreads.
The interesting thing to me is that the players in this are either universities, hardware vendors, or ISPs.
It's easy to see what the universities get out of it (no, it's not just p0rn). But the vendors? Aha! They get to do their R&D and call it a donation to a non-profit. They even get Slashdot to give them publicity for it.
Clever da5ebf%s^H^H^H^H^H^H ooops, sorry, my aluminum foil slipped off my head for an instant. Now I have to go shower again!
It's an inherent right, subject to the same limitations of other inherent rights. You can
The issue is whether the government must protect your privacy after you'vre shared your secrets with them, since the government requires you to do so.
That would make spamming very efficient, and ironically less costly per message than ordinary email. Yes, I'd say that's a wonderful solution -- for the spammers, that is.
The Fourth Amendment would tend to disagree:
Privacy is a Right, like the Rights to Believe, to Communicate, to Move, to stay and Fight, and to Own Property. These are enumerated specifically, and it was the belief of the Framers that they are inherent in being a human. They set forth cases in which those rights could be limited, such as for convicts, slaves, and in time of war.
The issue is not whether you have a right to privacy. The issue is whether the government, having already collected the otherwise private information, is free to pass that information on to others.
Hmm, good point: very commonly spam is sent directly to the server which will deliver locally.
However, I think you're missing the other have of the alert system: detecting spam before accepting it. We don't notify the spammer that his recipient is good or bad, we just bounce him an alert for every single spam message.
Maybe I tried to be too nice by sending a simple alert back to the sender. Maybe an alert should also go to a spam alert center, to keep the blacklists updated. In fact, this could be used to keep people from dropping alerts: if someone sends and alert to you and to the alert center, and you don't send an alert to someone else and the alert center, you are the spammer.
That's right, and we don't care. The alert goes back as close to the originator as it can. They still have to process the message to find out it's an alert. For spammers sending lots of messages, that generates lots of alerts for everyone nearby, and stops the flow at the first non-spam server.
The key is viewing spam as an error condition, and trying to notify the source of the error.
One thing I'd like is a way to deal specially with virus-laden messages or to tailor the alert to specific spam conditions. For instance, an ISP might tolerate 'legitimate email marketing', but draw the line at sending viruses, or poorn, or "hate mail", or whatever.
No. It should become mandatory, especially in:
There's nothing quite so torturous as being at a basketball game and listening to some drunk district sales manager slur his competitors, when he's not saying "What? Speak up, I can't hear you over the crowd noise."
We can hear you just fine, bub. By the way, you've got mustard on your tie.
The advantages are
O'course, there have to be flaws with it, but no one has pointed them out to me yet.
Under Yahoo's new architecture, a system sending an e-mail message would embed a secure, private key in a message header. The receiving system would check the Internet's Domain Name System for the public key registered to the sending domain.
If the public key is able to decrypt the private key embedded in the message, then the e-mail is considered authentic and can be delivered. If not, then the message is assumed not to be an authentic one from the sender and is blocked.
For every message, I have to check and unpack the header, go out to some PK server, and validate the keys, before I decide to accept/reject? That introduces a big latency into SMTP.
Also, this doesn't do anything to stop 'legitimate email marketers'. There's a death penalty (blacklist) for a site or particular sender's key, but nothing to stop a spammer from changing keys and starting over.
Or will everyone have to get their own key pair? Who's going to validate them, and at what cost per key pair?
This won't do a thing to stop spam, and imposes too big a burden on the infrastructure and on the 99% of us who don't spam.
Go ahead. Make my day.
As a consultant / system administrator / programmer in business for myself, I have one rule: all I sell is labor. Because of that, I don't sell software and I don't charge a markup on hardware I recommend. It makes everything so much simpler, and I never have to defend my choices as being self-serving. Here are some other suggestions, some of which I've learned the hard way:
Dejected and outmuscled, the string leaves. The same thing happens at the next place, "We don' allow yer kind here! This is a respectable joint!"
The string has an idea. He tossles up his end, makes a loop and pulls his tail through, and goes back in the first bar. The bartender eyes him. "Hey, aren't you that string I just bounced outta here?" Offended, the string answers him:
"I'm a frayed knot."
Student: Given your theory, how do you explain cows?
Prof: Consider for a moment a perfectly spherical N-dimensional cow....
... mod the article into /dev/null. In fact, mod this comment there, too.
Yawn.
In other words, SCO believes it owns AIX and Dynix, and that IBM used SCO's AIX and Dynix code to improve Linux.
On the other hand, SCO is or has been distributing software that was released under the GPL and BSD licences. They have voided their right to do so. They have allowed software released under BSD and almost certainly GPL licenses to be inserted into their Unix variant.
Under the DMCA and CA76, the FSF and UC can demand that they stop distribution of any Unix-like operating system until all GPL/BSD code is removed.
Suing SCO for violation of the Copyright Act might not be successful in court, but it could be. Even if the suit were to fail (or more likely, SCO go under before a trial), the publicity of such a suit would make it obvious that Open Source adherents are not anti-copyright. We just prefer a different EULA.
What's really wrong with SCO's position? I agree with Lessig:
In SCO's open letter [slashdot.org], they say:
Their argument is that the profit motive is what is important about copyrights. According to SCO, the intent of the author and his right to control the distribution of his work are a secondary side effect of the profit motive and our economy's need for him to profit from his work.
That twisted paradigm underpins SCO's business plan, their market strategy, and their case against IBM.
I believe it's time to sue SCO, in order to make clear that it's the author's right to control his work and who profits from it that matters, and not just his right to profit.
SCO is or has been distributing software that was released under the GPL and BSD licences. They have voided their right to do so. They have allowed software released under BSD and almost certainly GPL licenses to be inserted into their Unix variant.
Under the DMCA and CA76, the FSF and UC can demand that they stop distribution of any Unix-like operating system until all GPL/BSD code is removed.
Suing SCO for violation of the Copyright Act might not be successful in court, but it could be. Even if the suit were to fail (or more likely, SCO go under before a trial), the publicity of such a suit would make it obvious that Open Source adherents are not anti-copyright. We just prefer a different EULA.
What's really wrong with SCO's position?
In SCO's open letter, they say:
Their argument is that the profit motive is what is important about copyrights. According to SCO, the intent of the author and his right to control the distribution of his work are a secondary side effect of the profit motive and our economy's need for him to profit from his work.
That twisted paradigm underpins SCO's business plan, their market strategy, and their case against IBM.
I believe it's time to sue SCO, in order to make clear that it's the author's right to control his work and who profits from it that matters, and not just his right to profit.
It all started with adding the sales tax to an item's advertised price to make up the real cost to purchase it.
That still annoys me.
It's been way too many yarons since I've been able to see Our Hero.
Maybe some digital recreation of LG could allow him to reprise his role.
The Microsoft patents cover only their specific implementation of how to map long file names to short file names. Some of the earlier patents they reference are:
If you looked up Microsoft's patent and wrote code based on it, then you could infringe. If you looked at Winders and tried to do long and short filenames the same way it does, then you could infringe.
Having your MP3 player use FAT and just long file names doesn't infringe, if I'm on the jury.
That was supposed to say:
All your base are belong to us.