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Online News – Liability or Asset?

Sep 24th, 2009
by Steve.
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Today I stumbled upon the idea that as we switch more and more towards getting news online, we also get less and less disagreeing or opposing views. This is mainly due to the fact that we can and mostly subscribe to things that interest and mostly agree with our personal views.

I think it is clear that only hearing what we want to hear can isolate us and put us out of touch with what is really going on. This may or may not be bad in itself, but certainly it is not true to say what we don’t know won’t hurt us.

Knowledge is a vital asset as truth is at once needed to properly solve problems.

Just look at elections. Throughout history we vote people into power and then turn around and complain over what they are doing. The missing ingredients is us being involved enough to not only know what is really going on, but to ensure it goes in a direction we want.

We want someone to do the “dirty” work so that we don’t have to. It is easier to pass the buck and hope that some government will care for us, than to make sure things are the way we want them to be.

It has gone so far that Congress is at the lowest approval, possibly in history, certainly in many decades. I think one reason Obama was voted in was because we really wanted an outsider, someone very unlike the last President, in hope that such a person would make good on our inner wishes.

The US was founded in a time where people needed a much higher level of involvement just to stay alive. That threat of imminent death had enough motivation to have a high level of awareness and control of our environment. It was very fortunate that we got such a decent constitution and did not go the way of Tsar Russia or any number of countries not known for their freedoms.

That freedom is also what created the Internet. A free to communicate world where everyone has equal rights.

This new digital world is also a place that can become very automated and require even less involvement by us, with more individuation.

Of course it can also facilitate more and wider range of information. The question is, will you use the Internet to crawl into a hole, or to spread out and seek more knowledge?

Posted in: Politics.

OSDial (Open Source Dialer) Ver 2.1.0 Released

Mar 7th, 2009
by Steve.
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Call Center Service Group, LC, Clearwater, FL, just released OSDial Ver 2.1.0 to the world. An exiting, mature and full feature predictive dialer with features like inbound, outbound and blended calling, internal or external agents, unlimited custom forms, unlimited campaigns, unlimited leads, and many many more (see website). Capacity of your server(s) is the only limiting factor. The dialer is available under the OpenSource license AGPL.

You can test drive it through a couple of LiveCD’s available on the website. Download the CD images and burn them to two CD’s. If you have a promotional code you get a limited VoIP account with BinFone to test with.

OSDial is available for you to download and build on your own. You can choose to have CCSG install it for you on your server(s), or buy a turnkey dialer certified to run OSDial. It comes with three years warranty, three years on-site, next business day hardware support. These dialers are built by Supermicro and are generally considered the best you can get. In fact our military uses the same model in the deserts of Iraq.

http://callcentersg.com

OSDial grew out of Vicidial, which was the first OpenSource dialer that was widely adopted. Having different goals we decided to fork Vicidial and create OSDial.

We are very exited to bring you this release as it marks a very steep departure of what the industry has been offering. (Mention this article and I’ll give you a promotional code for a BinFone VoIP account.)

Posted in: OSDial.
Tagged: ·

RIAA Lawsuits May Be Unconstitutional

Nov 19th, 2008
by Steve.
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I’ve said before that I don’t condone copyright abuses, but at the same time corporate abuse of citizens is no less acceptable.

The RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) has been waging a war against people it decides has unauthorized copies of their songs. Which often enough is found to be a mistake on their part. This is the same people who tried to lobby Congress to allow them to hack and erase the disk on any computer they thought were in violation of their copyright. To make things worse, the methods by which they identify who has unauthorized music is vague and fulled of flaws. (The fact that I think they steal from the musicians they represent themselves is another story.) I came upon this blog by known security consultant Schneier, which he in turn found on USA Today.

Briefly: “Harvard law professor Charles Nesson is arguing, in court, that the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999 is unconstitutional:

“He makes the argument that the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999 is very much unconstitutional, in that its hefty fines for copyright infringement (misleadingly called “theft” in the title of the bill) show that the bill is effectively a criminal statute, yet for a civil crime. That’s because it really focuses on punitive damages, rather than making private parties whole again. Even worse, it puts the act of enforcing the criminal statute in the hands of a private body (the RIAA) who uses it for profit motive in being able to get hefty fines.

“Imagine a statute which, in the name of deterrence, provides for a $750 fine for each mile-per-hour that a driver exceeds the speed limit, with the fine escalating to $150,000 per mile over the limit if the driver knew he or she was speeding. Imagine that the fines are not publicized, and most drivers do not know they exist. Imagine that enforcement of the fines is put in the hands of a private, self-interested police force, that has no political accountability, that can pursue any defendant it chooses at its own whim, that can accept or reject payoffs in exchange for not prosecuting the tickets, and that pockets for itself all payoffs and fines. Imagine that a significant percentage of these fines were never contested, regardless of whether they had merit, because the individuals being fined have limited financial resources and little idea of whether they can prevail in front of an objective judicial body.

Posted in: Legal.

Physical Security Maxims

Sep 26th, 2008
by Steve.
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Security whether physical, computer or any other area, is seldom understood. Arbitrary ideas that saves someone from doing something is usually chosen. It is next to impossible to overstate the amount of ignorance and stupidity demonstrated whenever security is considered. This list brings home the balance of secure vs insecure. Of course security is about balancing security vs useable and practical.

Here’s excerpts from a list of maxims produced and assembled by Roger G. Johnston, Ph.D., CPP in the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National Laboratory.

(You can see the whole list at  www.schneier.com)

Physical Security Maxims
Roger G. Johnston, Ph.D., CPP

Security Maxims
The following maxims, based on our experience with physical
security, nuclear safeguards, & vulnerability assessments, are
not absolute laws or theorems, but they will be essentially
correct 80-90% of the time.

Infinity Maxim: There are an unlimited number of security
vulnerabilities for a given security device, system, or program,
most of which will never be discovered (by the good guys or
bad guys).

Arrogance Maxim: The ease of defeating a security device
or system is proportional to how confident/arrogant the designer,
manufacturer, or user is about it, and to how often they use
words like “impossible” or “tamper-proof”.

Ignorance is Bliss Maxim: The confidence that people have in
security is inversely proportional to how much they know about it.

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid Maxim: If you’re not running
scared, you have bad security or a bad security product.

High-Tech Maxim: The amount of careful thinking that has
gone into a given security device, system, or program is
inversely proportional to the amount of high-technology it uses.

Schneier’s Maxim #1: The more excited people are about a given
security technology, the less they understand (1) that technology
and (2) their own security problems.

Posted in: Security.

September 24 Is World Day Against Software Patents

Sep 2nd, 2008
by Steve.
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Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, has a press release declaring Sep 24 World Day Against Software Patents:

Brussels, 2nd September 2008 — A global coalition of more than 80 software companies, associations and developers has declared the 24th of September to be the “World Day Against Software Patents”. Five years ago, on 24 September 2003, the European Parliament adopted amendments to limit the scope of patent law and thereby protect small software companies from the harmful effects of broad and trivial software patents. A global petition asking to effectively stop software patents worldwide will be launched on 24 September 2008, together with specific additional requests for certain regions such as Europe, the United States or India.

Full Press Release.

Posted in: Internet, Legal, O/S's.

The threat from email

Mar 17th, 2008
by Steve.
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TRACE (Threat Research and Content Engineering) is a group of Marshal security analysts who constantly monitor and respond to Internet security threats. TRACE provides a service to Marshal customers as part of standard product maintenance. The service includes updates to Marshal’s unique, proprietary anti-spam technology, SpamCensor. TRACE analyzes spam, phishing and Internet security trends and provides frequent automated updates to Marshal customers. TRACE also provides “Zero Day” security protection to secure Marshal customers against new email and virus exploits the day they emerge.

There are several terms that are typical in this area:

Phishing, is a play on the word fishing, and does pretty much the same but for information instead of fish. By gathering information from computers and or people they gain enough of an edge to gain access and control over others computers.

Malware is software which is written to basically help cyber-criminals gain information and access to other peoples computers and networks. It might be hiding in web code (html) or some attachment like an mp3 or pdf file.

A Botnet is a network of “contaminated” computers that are under the control of the cyber-criminals. It is used to send bulk emails and to conduct mass attacks.

“It would be incomplete to discuss spam without commenting on the
malware and criminal activity that sustains it. Distributing spam and
malware is firmly in the domain of professional criminals looking for
financial gain. In the last six months, cyber-criminals have, unfortunately,
reached new heights of sophistication and capability.

“Not only have the large botnets taken over in terms of spam volume, they
have also evolved to reach new levels of sophistication. During the middle
of 2007, the Storm botnet grew rapidly following mass spamming of emails
containing links to websites hosting malicious code. The websites not
only hosted executable files that could be downloaded by users, but they
also hosted malicious code that attempted to exploit a number of different
known browser vulnerabilities.

The above are quotes from www.marchal.com. The link points to a page where you can read the whole report, and others.

In the report Marshal talks about cyber-criminals, “They operate in a thriving underworld marketplace where services, software tools, and software development are freely bought and sold. Computer skills are no longer necessary to execute cybercrime.”

They point out that in a recent case a botnet was rented out for $200/week which a spammer can use to send 100 million spam messages. With the considerable income from naive Internet shoppers a lot of money can and is made, which is of course what is attracting people who feel unable to earn an honest income.

Big sites are also hacked to help distribute the malware. MySpace, monster.com are but two examples. By generating a large amount of accounts with gmail, hotmail and the like they are able to spam from these accounts in bulk.

I strongly recommend that if nothing else you read the conclusion and recommendations at the last two pages. (marshal.com)

Posted in: Security.

Microsoft offing up another good laugh!

Feb 27th, 2008
by Steve.
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With all the anti competitive activities Microsoft is guilty of, here’s yet another twist in the saga of a company that is trying to make believe that they too are supporting OpenSource.

“To benefit from this promise, You must be a natural or legal person participating in the creation of software code for an open source project. An “open source project” is a software development project the resulting source code of which is freely distributed, modified, or copied pursuant to an open source license and is not commercially distributed by its participants. If You engage in the commercial distribution or importation of software derived from an open source project or if You make or use such software outside the scope of creating such software code, You do not benefit from this promise for such distribution or for these other activities.”

What they are saying is that you cannot use almost any commercial software. Except for developing non commercial software. It is apparently OK to use let’s say Microsoft tools to write code, but you better not use any Windows unless for developing, or since I don’t use Windows and closer to my own vest, something like CrossOver Office under Linux. Using a commercial SQL engine for Linux would disqualify me.

If you do, why then you are not an OpenSource developer and should not be protected from their promise of not being sued for violating their imaginary patents. My oh my what a nice twist.

Of course I’m sure they would not even be at this game of pretending to be OpenSource friendly if it was not for all the legal trouble they are in.

What was not so funny was another story showing MS business practices. This author was involved in the creation of the XML standard. His name is Tim Bray. This is a note from his blog http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2007/01/24/Mixup

He refers to a friend of his who’s involved with OOXML.

“CNN picked up the story about Microsoft trying to retain Rick Jelliffe to
update the Wikipedia articles on ODF and OOXML for them, just as the ISO process around OOXML is getting in gear.

“Those with long memories might suggest a parallel between Rick’s position and mine when in 1997, I was sitting on the XML Working Group and co-editing the spec, on a pro bono basis as an indie consultant. Netscape hired me to represent their interests, and when I announced this, controversy ensued.

Which is a nice way of saying that Microsoft went berserk; tried
unsuccessfully to get me fired as co-editor, and then launched a vicious,
deeply personal extended attack in which they tried to destroy my career and took lethal action against a small struggling company because my wife worked there. It was a sideshow of a sideshow of the great campaign to bury Netscape and I’m sure the executives have forgotten; but I haven’t.

Posted in: Legal.

Luciano Pavarotti passing

Sep 6th, 2007
by Steve.
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Growing up I never had much interest in opera. As much as I loved music and dancing, it never did anything for me, except turn me off from it. Yes, I know it was a bit narrow minded, but alas, how I felt.

Then one day I caught a program about tenor voices and what made them different. It was a very technical study of their unique voices. Being an engineer I could easily follow and appreciate this approach to music.

I was immediately struck by the beauty in these tenors voices, especially Pavarotti!

Not long after there was a program about Pavarotti and I paid very close attention to his singing and before I knew it I had fallen in love with opera. Pavarotti was not just a voice, as PJ (of Groklaw fame) and others have pointed out. He clearly was in love with opera and people.

By now I eagerly followed everything that I noticed which included Pavarotti. Observing him on stage and interacting with the audience I noticed something else. He was singing _to_ people. Of course you may say, every singer does. Which is actually not entirely true. If you pay close attention, you can see how many sing to their piano, or some point immediately in front of them. I had seen another top artist do just this, and as seasoned as he was (a 30 year hit maker) he sang to his piano. But not Pavarotti, he was so much in communication with people around him you could not but feel included.

Pavarotti clearly loved singing, but he clearly also loved people. Much like Pope John Paul II he was on a mission to bring people together. Some months ago he had announced his world wide farewell tour. In spite of bad health and the trouble he had traveling, it was going to be his thank you to all his fans. As usual he was thinking more of others than himself.

For all of you who wish to find out more about this great man, I suggest getting Three Tenor. You get to see three great tenors interact and give you an insight into this man doing what he did best — Make you feel good!

With all my love,

Thank you, Luciano Pavarotti!

Steve Szmidt

Posted in: Other.

Microsoft vs Free Software Foundation

Aug 30th, 2007
by Steve.
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Cornered, Microsoft tries to say they don’t have to abide by the GPL3 license.

Lewis A. Mettler is an attorney who often comments on Open Source issues. In this article he’s explaining the use of the word believe when used by an attorney. Which is a direct response to Microsoft’s statement that they do not believe they have to follow GPL3.

He states:

“But, the B word was used by Microsoft and I do feel you need to understand under which circumstances lawyers use such terms. Their statement was:

“We do not believe that Microsoft needs a license under GPL to carry out any aspects of its collaboration with Novell, including its distribution of support certificates, even if Novell chooses to distribute GPL3 code in the future. “

I trimmed off the second part of that statement which you may read in my other article here.

But, I wanted to focus upon the use of the term “believe” when it comes from a lawyer. Of course they wanted to deny what they might refer to as the negative. But, they could have used other terms like “We do not think…”, etc.

Why did they use “We do not believe”?

Actually it is interesting and relates to how that term is used in religion as well as the courtroom. In most religions, the term “believe” relates to something that they can not prove but have to accept for one reason or another. And they normally have to do with miracles and all sorts of other stuff.

In the courtroom it is a true weasel word. ”

Posted in: Legal.

Matt Asay from CNET want’s us to turn the other cheek to Microsoft

Aug 22nd, 2007
by Steve.
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Today I read an article by Matt Asay in CNET’s news.com. In it he speaks up against the Open Source community for not welcoming Microsoft’s attempt to get their incompatible license approved. He proclaims the Open Source Initiative’s (OSI) is discriminating against MS which Matt thinks is “explicitly against the OSI’s Open Source Definition”.

That is a totally false assumption. Their purpose is to look out for the Open Source community’s best interest and not approve licenses that does not comply with it.

Further Mike calls it a “horse-whipping” and says “I don’t believe in discrimination of any kind…even of ‘bad people.'”

My response to him:

Mike I don’t know you from a hole in the wall, but judging from this article I sure would not consider you safe to keep around. Per your writing you would be the one letting some lunatic into my house with my children. Or a pyromaniac or something. After all you say one cannot discriminate against anyone, regardless!

People who cannot discriminate themselves are usually people that should be discriminated against due to some fatal flaw in their character. I’m not really trying to mount some attack against you, but your logic is so dangerous that not speaking up against your idea would be a dereliction to my community.

Your bio says you have “nearly a decade of operational experience with commercial open source and regularly speaks and publishes on open-source business strategy”.

Yet you now suggest throwing away all that experience based not only on inaccurate information (you really should read the OSI requirements, rather than guessing as it makes you look like an horse’s eh, butt, if you get my drift) and with a stunningly bad business advice.

Again, not knowing you one starts to wonder what are you really up to? What are your true intentions?

Then you have the stomach to call the community’s, which you have been making money on for nearly a decade, response as horse-whipping. I guess if you came to my door and asked to be let in and I turned you down you would call that horse-whipping too?

No Matt, I think your true colors are showing up, and anyone who listens to your advice should get their monies back. You either are that eh, naive, or you are up to no good. The result is still the same.

Posted in: O/S's, Other.

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