Those people who use the GPL to licence their software do so on the understanding that they are granting some particular rights to 3rd parties. However, for all we know, in some jurisdictions, the GPL may grant more rights (or fewer rights) than intended.
Therefore, contrary to you claim, court cases such as these do indeed "test the GPL". They test whether or not it has the desired effects.
Does this mean I can soon have a solar powered bulletproof jacket that enhances my strength, protects me from cell phone emissions, and displays DVDs?
Maybe, but with a description like this...
Producable at a rate comparable to commercial wool spinning, the transparent cloth has exceedingly high conductivity, flexibility, has huge surface area to volume ratios, can potentially be made into very effective OLEDs and thin-film photovoltaic cells, and outperforms even our best bulk materials (such as Mylar and Kevlar) at strength normalized to weight.
...it wouldn't surprise me if, just like the Emperor in Hans Christian Andersen's tale, you too could end up in the embarassing position of having a little boy declare "But he has nothing on at all".
See the Trusted Computing FAQ for the many reasons why this is a bad idea and why lock-in will in fact be a result, despite IBM's claims to the contrary. Written by Ross Anderson, Professor of Security Engineering at the UK's leading univeristy, this article is an excellent primer.
Maybe.ca by your homepage, but to 'can' something in US English vernacular means to throw it out or get rid of it. Not to be confused with packaging it up for distribution, as I'm guessing you're thinking.
Or more likely he was thinking it as in "you can spam" i.e. "you are allowed to spam". Whatever made him think it was a "good thing" though - I've no idea. With the opt-out rule rather than the opt-in rule, it may as well be the "you can spam" act (as many before me have suggested).
You always know a technology is doomed to failure when somebody suggests that their latest gimmik "could be useful for handicapped people". Really it's just another way of saying "really neat but no use to anybody at all".
On the other hand, those who start out by actually talking to handicapped people and finding out what it is that would make their life easier - they're the ones who come up with the useful inventions for handicapped people. Sadly, their produce tend not to get much press coverage.
you really think J Blow user is going to know to get his screensaver updated or are a large chunk of them going to run the initial screensaver as long as they ran Win 98 unpatched (forever)
You clearly haven't read the relevant articles. The screensaver downloads the target list from Lycos. Lycos gets the target list from various automated black-lists and then reviews the list by hand to ensure that the sites really are selling spamvertised products.
(I'm not saying I think this is a good idea - but reading the article before making bogus critical claims would seem like a wise plan to me.)
Do we let millions upon millions die _after_ they've matured into full humans, or do we save them by killing millions upon millions before they are anything more than a mass of cells?
To me the answer is obvious - but perhaps you don't mind killing people.
I would hope that, in a civilsed society, killing somebody in the hope that a treatment can be developed to allow somebody else to live longer is considered to be morally and legally wrong.
I know the parent is supposed to be a funny story but as an analogy it misses some very important points.
The buyer has been driving station wagons for years and he's quite familiar with them. On the other hand, he has never driven a tank and they're so different it's like learning to drive all over again.
The buyer has no idea whether Bullhorn is telling the truth or not. In fact, he has barely even heard of a tank.
Although not perfect, the station wagon has got everything the buyer wants from a vehicle. Okay, it breaks down - but don't all vehicles (he thinks)?
Trying to install the tank in your house is neigh on impossible. With a station wagon, you take it home and it just works.
Even the best reputation system is not instantly updated all the time. It's most likely many thousands of emails will get through to reader's eyes before they update the reputation data. After all, it's not like it takes a long time to send an email...
The expected use of GOSSiP goes something like this.
o Get MAIL FROM o Do SPF check o Do GOSSiP check o Receive email o Run through spam filter of choice o Send update to GOSSiP server based on result
The GOSSiP system does "online" checks so the data is up to date.
Very, very little. And you can use each one to spam a LOT of people.
Not with SPF + a reputation system (e.g. GOSSiP which was where this thread started). As soon as you've sent the first few spam, the reputation systems will have you as a bad guy and no more will get through. (The expected configuration will make GOSSiP a global reputation system.) Now rather than being able to spam several million per domain, you might get lucky and get a few hundred through. Even with inexpensive domains, spamming has just got much less cost effective.
Without SPF, you don't know who your email is really from so you can't do domain based reputation.
Yes, but with SPF, a spammer just has to register plenty of disposible domains, and have a bare-bones DNS server running. Then, the spam gets through, and it's always comming from a different domain...
Firstly, domains cost money. This drives up the cost of spamming, thereby making it harder (no pun intended) to earn a living from.
Secondly, who says that email from "no reputation" domains is going to get through?
All well and good, but the problem is that my domain hosting provider does not allow SMTP relay *at all*. Therefore, I use the SMTP relay service provided by my ADSL provider.
Obviously, neither my local qmail system nor my ADSL providers' SMTP relay will be listed in any SPF records; how will I be able to carry on locally managing my mail without automatically being rejected by SPF-aware mail servers?
You're in a rather unusual situation. It sounds like your provider allows you to receive email but provides no facility for you to send it.
Putting aside your own situation for one moment, do you think that it is better to have global email sender authentication or allow domain hosting companies to provide half an email solution?
Yes, some things will have to change for SPF but it has been designed such those are real minority cases where there are obvious and simple solutions. (Here, your provider, like many other providers, could provide you with access to an SMTP server.) We are already seeing this in the free DNS providers who didn't previously provide for TXT records but, as a result of SPF - which requires SPF, many do.
Furthermore, SPF enables domain reputation systems such as GOSSiP (currently under design) which enable domain's to be given a "spaminess" score based on their previous behaviour. MTAs could choose to reject unreasonably spammy domains because they'd know that the email really was from that domian and the reputation was based on emails that were known to be from that domain.
Without SPF, you don't know who your email is really from so you can't do domain based reputation.
IANAL, but the text of this agreement seems to indicate that this implementation license applies to any products that "implement and are compliant with" Sender ID (section 1.2), and that Microsoft may subsequently terminate the license (section 3).
IANAL either but SPF predates Sender ID and the details were made public without licensing requirements. Therefore, I'm pretty sure that most jurisdications won't require you to have a license from Microsoft or anybody else to implement SPF.
Remember, there are already over 20,000 domains publishing with SPF plugins for the major MTAs. Just pop over to pobox for details.
Anybody familiar with this? Is there a RFC for Sender ID?
See the RFC background reading page for links to SPF RFCs. To the best of my knowledge there is no SenderID RFC yet.
In the mean time (and it may be some time), it is advised that SPF records are published since Microsoft has agreed that SenderID will be back compatible with such records.
So, we all have to set up SPF records for our domains or our emails will get rejected by some ISPs. Is my understanding right?
When SPF discovers that a domain doesn't have an SPF record, it returns a code that says just that. The recipient chooses what to do next. So it is conceivable that once SPF uptake is near universal, some people may choose to reject mail from domains without a record. However, that's some way off yet.
We must have deleted over 200 people trying to do Nigerian scams over the past few months.
Wow - that must some seriously sophisticated administration system you've got. To delete people just like that! I wouldn't go bragging about it if I were you though else the police will be round like a flash.
In order to prevent visual detection, the bottom of of the plane radiates light, so as to replace the light that it would normally block from the sky. (the tops of the planes are painted to resemble the ground).
That technology is 1000's of years old - various fish do exactly the same thing!
Slashdot Mirror
Those people who use the GPL to licence their software do so on the understanding that they are granting some particular rights to 3rd parties. However, for all we know, in some jurisdictions, the GPL may grant more rights (or fewer rights) than intended.
Therefore, contrary to you claim, court cases such as these do indeed "test the GPL". They test whether or not it has the desired effects.
Maybe, but with a description like this...
See the Trusted Computing FAQ for the many reasons why this is a bad idea and why lock-in will in fact be a result, despite IBM's claims to the contrary. Written by Ross Anderson, Professor of Security Engineering at the UK's leading univeristy, this article is an excellent primer.
Whatever made him think it was a "good thing" though - I've no idea. With the opt-out rule rather than the opt-in rule, it may as well be the "you can spam" act (as many before me have suggested).
On the other hand, those who start out by actually talking to handicapped people and finding out what it is that would make their life easier - they're the ones who come up with the useful inventions for handicapped people. Sadly, their produce tend not to get much press coverage.
Or perhaps this is Suprnova trying to make its Decentralised Bittorrent seem vital.
</Cynic>
(I'm not saying I think this is a good idea - but reading the article before making bogus critical claims would seem like a wise plan to me.)
To me the answer is obvious - but perhaps you don't mind killing people.
I would hope that, in a civilsed society, killing somebody in the hope that a treatment can be developed to allow somebody else to live longer is considered to be morally and legally wrong.
Would my tin foil hat work?
The expected use of GOSSiP goes something like this.
o Get MAIL FROM
o Do SPF check
o Do GOSSiP check
o Receive email
o Run through spam filter of choice
o Send update to GOSSiP server based on result
The GOSSiP system does "online" checks so the data is up to date.
Not with SPF + a reputation system (e.g. GOSSiP which was where this thread started). As soon as you've sent the first few spam, the reputation systems will have you as a bad guy and no more will get through. (The expected configuration will make GOSSiP a global reputation system.) Now rather than being able to spam several million per domain, you might get lucky and get a few hundred through. Even with inexpensive domains, spamming has just got much less cost effective.
Firstly, domains cost money. This drives up the cost of spamming, thereby making it harder (no pun intended) to earn a living from.
Secondly, who says that email from "no reputation" domains is going to get through?
You're in a rather unusual situation. It sounds like your provider allows you to receive email but provides no facility for you to send it.
Putting aside your own situation for one moment, do you think that it is better to have global email sender authentication or allow domain hosting companies to provide half an email solution?
Yes, some things will have to change for SPF but it has been designed such those are real minority cases where there are obvious and simple solutions. (Here, your provider, like many other providers, could provide you with access to an SMTP server.) We are already seeing this in the free DNS providers who didn't previously provide for TXT records but, as a result of SPF - which requires SPF, many do.
Furthermore, SPF enables domain reputation systems such as GOSSiP (currently under design) which enable domain's to be given a "spaminess" score based on their previous behaviour. MTAs could choose to reject unreasonably spammy domains because they'd know that the email really was from that domian and the reputation was based on emails that were known to be from that domain.
Without SPF, you don't know who your email is really from so you can't do domain based reputation.
IANAL either but SPF predates Sender ID and the details were made public without licensing requirements. Therefore, I'm pretty sure that most jurisdications won't require you to have a license from Microsoft or anybody else to implement SPF.
Remember, there are already over 20,000 domains publishing with SPF plugins for the major MTAs. Just pop over to pobox for details.
See the RFC background reading page for links to SPF RFCs. To the best of my knowledge there is no SenderID RFC yet.
In the mean time (and it may be some time), it is advised that SPF records are published since Microsoft has agreed that SenderID will be back compatible with such records.
When SPF discovers that a domain doesn't have an SPF record, it returns a code that says just that. The recipient chooses what to do next. So it is conceivable that once SPF uptake is near universal, some people may choose to reject mail from domains without a record. However, that's some way off yet.
Wow - that must some seriously sophisticated administration system you've got. To delete people just like that! I wouldn't go bragging about it if I were you though else the police will be round like a flash.
That technology is 1000's of years old - various fish do exactly the same thing!