]
] The SCO Group, which has spent the last few months suing
] I.B.M., a leading supporter of the Linux operating
] system, and warning that Linux violates its copyright,
] announced plans yesterday for profiting from Linux rather
] than trying to fight it.
]
] SCO, a small software marketer, said that it would offer
] the large corporations that use Linux a license so they
] can continue to use it without any worries about lawsuits
] that accuse them of copyright infringement.

Extortion by any other name...

SCO Changes Tactics in Dispute Over Linux

] Who owns Unix? To read much of the recent news coming out
] of Lindon, Utah, you might think that it's SCO Group, the
] company currently suing IBM Corp. over Big Blue's alleged
] donation of Unix code to the Linux community. But you'd
] be wrong.

Open Group on UNIX trademark, etc.

SearchEnterpriseLinux.com, a TechTarget Web site

Decius wrote:
] I thought I would post and see what people's experience has
] been with various spam filtering tools. A few comments:
]
] 1. I see spam as a law enforcement problem. The VAST majority
] of the spam I receive contains forged headers and is being
] relayed through systems without permission. If the government
] simply enforced the laws it already has, it could prosecute
] these people for computer fraud. This would eliminate most of
] the problem that I see. The reason that I get all this spam is
] because the government won't enforce their laws. (Although
] they are happy enough to raid internet "bong" dealers. Gosh
] I'm glad to be safe from them.)

Agreed. The big problem is that a lot of it comes from abroad and you need to get the US govt to armtwist Korea, China, Russia, etc.


] 6. This morning I was considering implementing Challenge
] Response for all of my email. This sounds like an effective
] solution. Unfortunately, its not. The problem is that there
] are a number of bots out there, mostly related to ecommerce
] sites, that I probably do need to see email from. I can try to
] list them in my whitelist, but I risk missing something.

PGP is a similar solution -- only accept signed mails -- but lacks critical mass to work. A little weaker than this: I use qmail and often give ecommerce sites addresses like bucy-amazon@gloop.org, etc. Sendmail supports bucy+amazon ... don't know about other MTAs.

] What systems are you using? How effective are they?

I've been using SpamAssassin for awhile now. With a threshhold of 5, I don't think I've gotten a single false positive and I'd guess that the false negative rate is maybe 10%.

RE: Spam Filtering

] Under a system deployed on the White House Web site for
] the first time last week, those who want to send a
] message to President Bush must now navigate as many as
] nine Web pages and fill out a detailed form that starts
] by asking whether the message sender supports White House
] policy or differs with it.

ummmmm...

White House E-Mail System Becomes Less User-Friendly

] Advanced scanning technology makes it possible to
] reconstruct documents previously thought safe from prying
] eyes, sometimes even pages that have been ripped into
] confetti-size pieces. And although a great deal of
] sensitive information is stored digitally these days,
] recent corporate scandals have shown that the paper
] shredder is still very much in use.

Wow!

Picking Up the Pieces

] "AOL is divesting itself of something that was a bad
] decision in the first place. They found that the time,
] effort and money required to develop their own browser
] was just insurmountable in a world where the vast
] majority of Internet users use Internet Explorer," Smiley
] said.

About what I figured...

InfoWorld: AOL layoffs take Netscape browser to deathbed: July 16, 2003: By : Application Development

] The Recording Industry Association of America said
] Wednesday it sent out subpoenas to Internet service
] providers prior to filing lawsuits against hundreds of
] individuals who illegally distribute songs over the Web.

Sigh...

Wired News: RIAA's Flurry of Subpoenas

] Internet chat groups, particularly those using a format
] called Internet relay chat, or I.R.C., now play an
] important and growing role in online credit card fraud,
] according to a report released last week by a group of
] Internet security experts who form the Honeynet Project.
] The project sets up computer systems called honeynets
] that are intended to be easy to infiltrate in order to
] monitor and record how hackers work.

Pfffft.

Internet Chat Seen as Tool to Teach Theft of Credit Cards

How do they think this will possibly help them? The music industry seems to be trying to sell itself out for next quarter's numbers and is going to find in just a few more years that it is so widely reviled that noone will do business with them!

RE: Music labels to sue hundreds of music sharers

] Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled what he claimed was "the
] world's fastest personal computer" today, ending more
] than six months of speculation over whether the Mac maker
] would use IBM's 64-bit PowerPC 970 processor.

Neat.

The Register