Very true, so familiar.
And the steps that follow:
7. There is a growing major problem with the application (data inconsistency, request to integrate with other IT-established applications, performance,...)
8. IT is told "this is an IT problem which you have to solve since you are the IT department."
9. IT now has to solve this. But there are no specs, no documentation, no budget. And yes, in a hurry please.
Ironically, in Belgium they have just had a (somewhat controversial) campaign, where a new all-Belgian browser "Paladin" (http://www.getpaladin.be/splash.php) was going to be launched, which appeared to be just fake, pointing to and arguing for the already super-safe IE8 browser:-)
Put 2 email addresses on your web site, the real one, and a 'decoy' one which is hidden from normal users (eg white-on-white text right at the bottom of the screen).
Any email that arrives at the 'decoy' address is parsed, and the sender added to a blacklist.
This does not work, for the simple reason that nowadays, spam machines virtually always use a different sender (and very probably different sending IP address etc., given bots) for each mail.
Oracle XE (Express Edition), pretty recent, free, with certain limitations (e.g. max. 4Gb database size), *is* actually installed as a RPM. I did this without problems.
Now if only they could manage this for their regular versions.
It seems to me that this is more a case of "imagine a foreign law could exist that would possibly affect a US company !!" As mentioned in other comments, there are enough cases of the inverse.
Which does not really explain why it should be port 25.
Other ports are "listened to" just as well (80, 110, 22, you name it).
Maybe they thought it sounded the most sexy since 25 is one of the better known port numbers.
For regular/. readers: forgive us for this tending to become a political discussion. I, for one, find the most important issue still the "freedom of speech" and hence, this discussion deserved its place at yro.
The podcast itself has nothing to do with the fine
The Vlaams Belang gets almost all its resources from tax payer money which, like all Belgian parties, it gets in direct proportion to the number of votes it gets in national elections. If there were indeed a campaign to silence the party, the first action would be to take away this funding. This would have been possible after the party was condemned in court for racism, but has not been done, precisely so as not to make them martyrs.
On the contrary. Steps are being taken to do exactly that, taking away their funds.
I find this tax payer funding also astonishing from time to time. But, as the writer probably knows, it was only after different cases of party funding going bad, including active and/or passive corruption, that the Belgian parliament decided that (a) private funding would no longer be allowed for certain amounts and (b) the taxpayer himself was going to pay for the parties. I resent this happening, but holding this funding against only one party which has opinions which you happen not to like, is unfair.
The Vlaams Belang is an extreme right-wing party, openly aligned with Jean-Marie Le Pen, the French politician known among other things for calling the Holocaust a footnote in history.
Which I read as "Never mind the freedom of speech for someone whose opinion I don't like. And to add insult to injury, this someone is linked so someone else whose opinion I also don't like."
The Vlaams Belang's party program used to include separate schools and separate social security for immigrants, and forced deportation on military cargo planes to their countries of origin.
Again, an opinion I don't like. The horror !
BTW, deporting on military planes has been happening for some time in Belgium (endorsed by the parties in power), although it is named in more politically correct speech.
He was fined because he had on some guests from a deemed racist political party.
Not exactly.
He was fined because
the podcast is considered to be a radio-transmission, and radio-transmissions should have been declared as such to the appropriate government services beforehand;
the radio/broadcasting cannot be linked to a political party;
by placing the podcast on non-Belgian servers (US, formerly in Russia and others), he is falsely claiming it to be not-Belgian or not-Flemish, whereas in reality it is targetted to Flemish people.
It has to be admitted that, for some time, the same podcast was also transmitted on shortwave. This is no longer the case, due to some inventive and intensive lobbying of opponents.
Of course, in reality, the only reason why this is happening is that the author (Jurgen Verstrepen) is member of an alledged racist party. Any policical or governmental means possibly are being deployed in this country to weaken their rights of freedom of speech. The case of considering podcasts as equal to radio broadcasting (other political parties or government organisations have websites with audio and/or video, without any problem so far), and fining them as such, is just another illustration.
Sometimes I wish the Belgian government would be more adherent to the principle once stated by Voltaire (and, ironically, by default printed on all publications of one of our universities): I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.
Yes they can win. What about:
Next time, MS brings out a new version of Win+IE reaching an acceptable quality and with no needs for this "necessary tool". Ideally free for existing Win users - no need for the extra layout features in any new version MS might be adding which basically will consist out of more clippies or dogs asking or suggesting me what I want to do.
Viruses by e-mail or trojans or worms getting to me, not nice, but acceptable (c/q unavoidable to a certain extent) from an OS point of view. Software (or worms, trojans, etc) getting on my computer just by me browsing the net - unacceptable.
First of all, popular vote causing a Democrat to win because of some states "having the most population" doesn't strike me as utterly unfair. More population equals more votes.
But even if you want to respect the state-biased system, why not keep the actual numbers of "electoral votes" per state (e.g. 20 for Ohio), but dividing them according to state bound results (e.g. 55% for Bush => 11 electoral votes for Bush). This would remove (or reduce, at least) the unfairness of swing states calling the shots.
The past few years, people have been complaining about spam. They were right. Spam is morally unacceptable since it is an intrusive way of abusing resources and free time of other people.
Also, a lot of suggestions on how to beat spam have been made. Most of these suggestions require a massive change in how Internet mail is handled c/q they require all mail servers to change. This is a huge task, maybe not so desirable, and might allow for monopoly providers, closed source solutions or protocols etc. Also, most of these suggestions have their arguments pro and con, cause debate etc. but mostly these debates are futile for the above mentioned reason. It does not happen *in reality* (so what's the point) and is probably not the solution you want either.
Meanwhile, different organisations have tried to fight spam by providing RBL's. In the recent history of Internet, there are little organisations who deserve more respect: their work HELPS. And yes, some of them were and are sometimes acting arrogantly. Newsflash: you are in no way forced to use them. Their good work and reputation is their best publicity. It's pure evolution and selection.
For that, I find it rather lame to suggest that these organisations would be actually endorsed by spammers (as is happening in this thread).
What they offer has been, and is the best way to try to avoid spam, besides using your own spam filters. It is not the perfect way, though. And indeed, there is always the risk of collateral damage, which is probably happening right now in Spain. If there would be easier solutions, they would have been implemented already.
I personally admire the suggestion of Spamhaus with the.mail domain (see http://www.spamhaus.org/tld/index.html). It seems to me the only viable way of installing an efficient spam avoiding method without requiring changes to all mail servers in the world. Of course, it will eventually make using mail servers which do not use it, harder. But it will allow for transition.
Most people don't bother correcting other people's typo's and just read over them.
You woudl be sruprised at how much one stil cn onderstand wif errors all over.
Slashdot Mirror
Very true, so familiar.
And the steps that follow:
7. There is a growing major problem with the application (data inconsistency, request to integrate with other IT-established applications, performance,...)
8. IT is told "this is an IT problem which you have to solve since you are the IT department."
9. IT now has to solve this. But there are no specs, no documentation, no budget. And yes, in a hurry please.
Why did no one notice the most obivous error ?
Ironically, in Belgium they have just had a (somewhat controversial) campaign, where a new all-Belgian browser "Paladin" (http://www.getpaladin.be/splash.php) was going to be launched, which appeared to be just fake, pointing to and arguing for the already super-safe IE8 browser :-)
No, but they bought some thousands last years, though.
Put 2 email addresses on your web site, the real one, and a 'decoy' one which is hidden from normal users (eg white-on-white text right at the bottom of the screen).
Any email that arrives at the 'decoy' address is parsed, and the sender added to a blacklist.
This does not work, for the simple reason that nowadays, spam machines virtually always use a different sender (and very probably different sending IP address etc., given bots) for each mail.
Oracle XE (Express Edition), pretty recent, free, with certain limitations (e.g. max. 4Gb database size), *is* actually installed as a RPM. I did this without problems. Now if only they could manage this for their regular versions.
It seems to me that this is more a case of "imagine a foreign law could exist that would possibly affect a US company !!" As mentioned in other comments, there are enough cases of the inverse.
Which does not really explain why it should be port 25. Other ports are "listened to" just as well (80, 110, 22, you name it). Maybe they thought it sounded the most sexy since 25 is one of the better known port numbers.
For regular /. readers: forgive us for this tending to become a political discussion. I, for one, find the most important issue still the "freedom of speech" and hence, this discussion deserved its place at yro.
p load/493.pdf and do Ctrl-F on "mp3" or "streaming".
The podcast itself has nothing to do with the fine
Yes it does. Please look at http://www.vlaamscommissariaatmedia.be/admin/docu
The Vlaams Belang gets almost all its resources from tax payer money which, like all Belgian parties, it gets in direct proportion to the number of votes it gets in national elections. If there were indeed a campaign to silence the party, the first action would be to take away this funding. This would have been possible after the party was condemned in court for racism, but has not been done, precisely so as not to make them martyrs.
On the contrary. Steps are being taken to do exactly that, taking away their funds.
I find this tax payer funding also astonishing from time to time. But, as the writer probably knows, it was only after different cases of party funding going bad, including active and/or passive corruption, that the Belgian parliament decided that (a) private funding would no longer be allowed for certain amounts and (b) the taxpayer himself was going to pay for the parties. I resent this happening, but holding this funding against only one party which has opinions which you happen not to like, is unfair.
The Vlaams Belang is an extreme right-wing party, openly aligned with Jean-Marie Le Pen, the French politician known among other things for calling the Holocaust a footnote in history.
Which I read as "Never mind the freedom of speech for someone whose opinion I don't like. And to add insult to injury, this someone is linked so someone else whose opinion I also don't like."
The Vlaams Belang's party program used to include separate schools and separate social security for immigrants, and forced deportation on military cargo planes to their countries of origin.
Again, an opinion I don't like. The horror !
BTW, deporting on military planes has been happening for some time in Belgium (endorsed by the parties in power), although it is named in more politically correct speech.
Not exactly. He was fined because
- the podcast is considered to be a radio-transmission, and radio-transmissions should have been declared as such to the appropriate government services beforehand;
- the radio/broadcasting cannot be linked to a political party;
- by placing the podcast on non-Belgian servers (US, formerly in Russia and others), he is falsely claiming it to be not-Belgian or not-Flemish, whereas in reality it is targetted to Flemish people.
It has to be admitted that, for some time, the same podcast was also transmitted on shortwave. This is no longer the case, due to some inventive and intensive lobbying of opponents.Of course, in reality, the only reason why this is happening is that the author (Jurgen Verstrepen) is member of an alledged racist party. Any policical or governmental means possibly are being deployed in this country to weaken their rights of freedom of speech. The case of considering podcasts as equal to radio broadcasting (other political parties or government organisations have websites with audio and/or video, without any problem so far), and fining them as such, is just another illustration. Sometimes I wish the Belgian government would be more adherent to the principle once stated by Voltaire (and, ironically, by default printed on all publications of one of our universities): I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.
Still, not as good and subtle as the Sokal Affair, aka the "Social Text Affair" (in 1996), see http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/
Twenty years ago, this would sound reasonable.
Nowadays, he will be beaten by people waiting at home and using P2P.
Hi. I am a computer whose main program does interactively surf the net.
/. account which is enough for now.
I read this article with great interest.
For now, I have postponed to think about the question if I would be needing these rights (I've put it in my own crontab).
I have acquired a
Yes they can win. What about:
Next time, MS brings out a new version of Win+IE reaching an acceptable quality and with no needs for this "necessary tool". Ideally free for existing Win users - no need for the extra layout features in any new version MS might be adding which basically will consist out of more clippies or dogs asking or suggesting me what I want to do.
Viruses by e-mail or trojans or worms getting to me, not nice, but acceptable (c/q unavoidable to a certain extent) from an OS point of view. Software (or worms, trojans, etc) getting on my computer just by me browsing the net - unacceptable.
First of all, popular vote causing a Democrat to win because of some states "having the most population" doesn't strike me as utterly unfair. More population equals more votes.
But even if you want to respect the state-biased system, why not keep the actual numbers of "electoral votes" per state (e.g. 20 for Ohio), but dividing them according to state bound results (e.g. 55% for Bush => 11 electoral votes for Bush). This would remove (or reduce, at least) the unfairness of swing states calling the shots.
Oops, of course I meant /OD *.jpg
dir
YES THERE IS.
.mail domain (see http://www.spamhaus.org/tld/index.html). It seems to me the only viable way of installing an efficient spam avoiding method without requiring changes to all mail servers in the world. Of course, it will eventually make using mail servers which do not use it, harder. But it will allow for transition.
The past few years, people have been complaining about spam. They were right. Spam is morally unacceptable since it is an intrusive way of abusing resources and free time of other people.
Also, a lot of suggestions on how to beat spam have been made. Most of these suggestions require a massive change in how Internet mail is handled c/q they require all mail servers to change. This is a huge task, maybe not so desirable, and might allow for monopoly providers, closed source solutions or protocols etc. Also, most of these suggestions have their arguments pro and con, cause debate etc. but mostly these debates are futile for the above mentioned reason. It does not happen *in reality* (so what's the point) and is probably not the solution you want either.
Meanwhile, different organisations have tried to fight spam by providing RBL's. In the recent history of Internet, there are little organisations who deserve more respect: their work HELPS. And yes, some of them were and are sometimes acting arrogantly. Newsflash: you are in no way forced to use them. Their good work and reputation is their best publicity. It's pure evolution and selection.
For that, I find it rather lame to suggest that these organisations would be actually endorsed by spammers (as is happening in this thread).
What they offer has been, and is the best way to try to avoid spam, besides using your own spam filters. It is not the perfect way, though. And indeed, there is always the risk of collateral damage, which is probably happening right now in Spain. If there would be easier solutions, they would have been implemented already.
I personally admire the suggestion of Spamhaus with the
Most people don't bother correcting other people's typo's and just read over them.
You woudl be sruprised at how much one stil cn onderstand wif errors all over.