Category Archives: Give me a break!

Stuff that makes me just throw up my hands in frustration.

Microsoft – More FUD

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At Microsoft’s Asian Government Leaders Forum, Steve Ballmer said …

Someday, for all countries that are entering the WTO (World Trade Organization), somebody will come and look for money owing to the rights for that intellectual property … Linux violated more than 228 patents

Reuters | Microsoft’s Ballmer Warns Asia of Linux Lawsuits

… with regard to government organizations that are switching from Windows to Linux. Of course he did not provide any detail on the alleged violations.

Uh huh … it’s a fine thing to slap down the threat of law suit … tends to scare top level people (which I’m sure is what SB was aiming for) … but put your money where your mouth is, Stevie baby. IDENTIFY the IP violations!

Wouldn’t it be a fine thing if people were required to provide documentation, for alegations made, within a reasonable time period … say 72 hours?

Alarm systems and passwords

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I got a call yesterday (actually, multiple times yesterday) from our alarm company.

Apparently one of the devices in our system was reporting a problem.

The guy calls, identifies himself as being with the security company, informs me that one of the devices in my alarm system is reporting a problem … and then asks me for my password.

Excuse me? You call me and ask for my password? Sorry dude… that violates rule number one of security procedures: NEVER GIVE YOUR PASSWORD OUT. Especially when you are approached for it.

I have no way of being certian that this person is actually with the security company … how do I know that he’s not some guy phishing for my password … so that he can break into my house in a week, set off the alarm … and call the security company say it’s a false alarm and give the correct password.

So I tell the guy that I won’t give him my password … explain why, thank him for calling, and then tell him that I will call the central station to check on what the problem was.

I start to call the central station … and then my cell phone rings. I hang up on the central station and answer the cell phone. It’s the same guy.

I explain again that I won’t give him my password … and ask to speak to his supervisor.

I talk the supervisor for a while … explaining why this procedure of theirs is so terribly wrong. He agrees, and promises to forward my comments to managment.
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AOL and TOS

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The other day, while upgrading SpamAssassin, I was watching the maillog scroll past.

I noticed that AOL rejected some of my mail … indicating a URL that I should visit for information.

Turns out some AOL subscriber had reported mail from my server for TOS violations.

Obviously in the mail log there is not useful information about who did the reporting … so I visited the URL. There was information available on how to sign up to be whitelisted by the AOL mail servers and participate in the TOS ‘feedback’ loop. This is where AOL will send a specific email address (an abuse address, generally) messages that are reported as TOS violations.

So I signed up for this and got confirmation that my servers were accepted.

I figure that the person who is reporting the list messages to TOS just wants to get unsubscribed from the list (and can’t read enough english to notice that unsubscribe instructions are at the bottom of every list message).

So today I got my first feedback loop message.

Unfortunately, there’s no indication in the reported message as to WHO reported it to TOS.
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Please send me the log file

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Last week I had an experience with a customer that took me aback.

I was trying to help them diagnose a problem … in order to diagnose this problem I needed to see the log file from a server.

This log file is plain text. It’s readable using notepad, or any other editor that can handle plain text files.

Here’s what the customer did …

  1. Opened the log file with notepad
  2. Did a screen capture (using ALT-PrtScr)
  3. Pasted the screen capture into a word document
  4. Emailed us the word document

Now I understand a certian lack of familiarity with PC’s … but this is kind of silly. Doing a simple file attachment is NOT rocket science.

Darl McBride is a Maniac

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Not my words … my friend Jim’s.

He pointed me to an article in TechWorld where they obviously omitted a small part of Darl’s statement (the obvious omission is in brackets) …

When people say SCO is just a litigation company, it really bugs me, [and I’ll sue the pants off of anyone who disagrees with me!]
– Darl McBride, CEO of SCO

Of course, the statement that got me was:

McBride also made clear his overriding goal – the destruction of the free software movement: “Wait until the SCO battles are over and let’s see if it’s free or not.” McBride has repeatedly said in the past that free software stifles innovation and harms the IT industry because companies can’t produce great products without any financial return. He continued to rant: “Keep your eye on the [court] filings. Over the coming year, one of the things that you’re going to see is that Big Blue has got big problems.”

Jim comment “that means destruction of the constitutional right of freedom of assembly” … and my only thought was that “People like McBride are against concepts of freedom … they want all the power themselves.”.

I guess McBride (and SCO) is a ‘corporate darwinist’ … he belives in survival of the fittest … ‘course cockroaches have survived for millions of years too.