Related link: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1080754657038_76163857///?hu…

Canada’s Music Industry can go suck an egg. Well, that’s how I would have put it. A court Canadian court put it differently. It ruled against the Canadian Recording Industry Association finding that Canadian ISPs do not have to reveal the identities behind file sharing nicknames.

“…the music companies — through the Canadian Recording Industry Association — had identified 29 people who had traded music online using services like Kazaa, but only by their online nicknames.

They wanted the Internet service companies like Sympatico, Rogers and Shaw to give them the real identities of the individuals so they could sue them for copyright infringement. They were seeking a court order requiring the companies to provide the information.

But they didn’t get it, so the Internet companies don’t have to identify their clients and the music companies can’t proceed with their lawsuits.”

I’m sure that won’t stop them from trying something else…

Related link: http://www.paganini.net/ask/

My Inbox. The final frontier.

There is no perfect solution for spam, yet. That is the simple truth. You can bang your head against that simple truth as much as you want. It will not stop it from being true.

SpamAssassin is nice and has done its duty for me for over a year. Message filtering with Mail.app/Mozilla/Thunderbird has helped me out a bit as well. Thank you.

But, the time has come to implement what some others claim may be the most drastic measure short of cutting myself off from the internet itself. You must now be a real person to contact me and you must ‘hit reply’ when I check to see that you are.

What’s that, you ask. I installed Active Spam Killer.

Yup. I did it. When you email me henceforth, if you’re not already on my ‘whitelist’ of real people, you’ll get an email response back from my mail server asking you to reply to a short msg so it can confirm you are a real person who actually wants to email me. You do that once and you never have to do it again.

Drastic isn’t it? The internet is supposed to be open and free. Well that’s ok for the internet, but not for my inbox.

I have work to do! I have people with whom I have to and want to communicate with. I don’t want to waste anymore time with message filters, tweaking spamassassin day and night (not that I’d bother), losing the odd good email among the spam, deleting spam that gets through the filters, etc etc etc.

The world is an imperfect place and so is my inbox. Until now.

This morning, after 10 hours of having ASK installed I had one email in my inbox*. One!!!!!!

Let that sink in.

Did someone email me and get cheesed off that I asked them to confirm they’re real? Probably. If they can’t be bothered to do that once I really don’t care if I ever hear from them. Did someone try to spam me and a confirmation email went out into the ether to an email address that doesn’t exist? You bettcha!

What’s the downside to this? There is one, but I can live with it to offset not getting spammed to death. It puts a bit of an onus back on the legit emailer to prove they’re real.

That does suck a bit, but really… who doesn’t understand that you’re trying to take back your inbox from the scumbag viagra/penis-enlargement/pr0n/mortgage/Nigerian princes of the internet? Idealistic blunderheads and the above mentioned spammers.

So ends today’s sermon from the mount.

*Be careful setting up ASK if you do so. There are a lot of folks who you talk to now that you don’t want ASK to ping. Or maybe you do???

Related link: http://fossplanet.osdir.com

As a open source news-hound and RSS fiend. I have more than my fair share of sites and rss feeds in my newsreader. So I’ve combined them into one.

While I have further functionality plans… the mere aggregation of open source news & various personality’s blog post are keeping me well in the know. Viola: FOSS Planet!

It’s really interesting to see how the conversations and stories in FOSS space unfold in a timeline sequence. I’m more than sure I’m missing some feeds so please let me know if I am so I can add them. Enjoy!

Related link: http://news.osdir.com/article483.html

Lindows has been under siege from Microsoft lawyers in the Netherlands for the last few months over their controversial name. Despite a win in the US Lindows has been losing overseas. Now, it is appealing to a US Court asking them to stop Microsoft’s “Global Assault” against them.

Personally I shake my head with each new headline with Microsoft in the headline waiting for the latest and greatest unbelievable plot twist, but I really wonder over this one. Is Lindows just getting what it reasonably should have expected using the name as a marketing ploy or is it really being put upon?

I’m not so sure how I feel about it. What say you?

Related link: http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5173115.html

c|net has run a headline story entitled “Apple falling short of iTunes goal”.
Its sub heading states “Apple Computer said Monday that it has sold 50 million songs through its iTunes Music Store–a substantial number but far below its goal of distributing 100 million songs by April”.
This statement as well as the article’s title conveniently ignore the fact that their a key difference between ’selling’ and ‘distributing’, and also that the Pepsi/Apple promotion is designed to distribute 100 million songs. Steve Jobs specifically pointed out that the Pepsi deal was part of reaching the 100 million goal when he announced both in October.
Though the article later clarifies “Apple said the 50 million figure excludes the undisclosed number songs downloaded through a Pepsi giveaway, which itself was designed to account for 100 million songs.” this statement hardly excuses the rest of the article or its title.
c|net also attempts to tarnish the promotion by saying that “It has been reported that the specially marked Pepsi bottles that contain iTunes codes have been slow to reach store shelves in some areas. Customers have also found a way to determine which bottles are winners, by tilting the bottles at a particular angle.”

Congratulations to Apple for the most (if not only) viable online music store, despite sales figures and goals.

Related link: http://news.oreillynet.com/pub/n/P2PdraftCaliMPAA

“Wired has obtained a draft document written by California state attorney Bill Lockyer to fellow state attorneys describing P2P software as a dangerous product. Metadata from the Word document indicates it was either drafted or reviewed by a senior vice president at the MPAA.”

Related link: http://osdir.com/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t22-.phtml

Who is the bottleneck in open source adoption in the enterprise? One opinion is that it is the developers. Another is that management is the problem. The unspoken option is the code, but don’t be silly. What say you?

Related link: http://news.oreillynet.com/pub/n/CoalitionChatIM

And I thought Jabber was cool….

The Coalition forces in Iraq are using IM chat to speak and translate on the fly in Iraq. “…technology funded by the Office of Naval Research, among other DoD organizations, is helping to narrow that cultural gap by enabling U.S. and coalition forces to communicate more effectively with the Iraqis and among themselves. A ‘coalition chat line’ now being used at several U.S. and allied sites around Iraq enables commanders and operators who speak different languages to communicate rapidly and reliably, using the ‘instant messaging’ practices familiar to millions of teenagers. ”

yhadsfjh?

Related link: http://news.osdir.com/article463.html

Could this get any weirder? “Blake Stowell, SCO’s director of communications, acknowledged that the leaked memo is real.

But, Stowell claimed that pundits had mischaracterized the memo’s context. ‘We believe the e-mail was simply a misunderstanding of the facts by an outside consultant who was working on a specific unrelated project to the BayStar transaction and he was told at the time of his misunderstanding. Contrary to the speculation of Eric Raymond, Microsoft did not orchestrate or participate in the BayStar transaction.’”

Related link: http://news.oreillynet.com/pub/n/MS_SCOemail-leak

A leaked email to Eric Raymond, from SCO, suggests that Microsoft has been funding SCO group to the tune of up to $100 million.

If this is later verified (since it isn’t really - but Eric isn’t exactly stupid - will you continue using MS products?

Related link: http://news.osdir.com/article462.html

SCO has announced legal target number two: DaimlerChrysler.

“The lawsuit will be filed in the Oakland County Circuit Court in the State of Michigan today.”

Whew, I thought it might have been me.

Related link: http://diudau.tky.hut.fi/txt/random/dd-vs-sd.txt

I'm sure this isn't new, but it's new to me...
-------------------------        ---------------------------
Drug Dealers                     Software Developers
-------------------------        ---------------------------
Refer to their clients          Refer to their clients
as "users".                      as "users".

"The first one's free!"         "Download a free trial
                                  version..." 

Have important Asian             Have important Asian
connections.                     connections.

Strange jargon:                  Strange jargon:
       "Stick"                        "SCSI"
       "Rock"                         "RTFM"
       "Wrap"                         "Packet"
       "E"                            "C"
       "Stash"                        "Cache"
       "Drive-by"                     "CTRL ALT DEL"
       "Hit (LSD)"                    "Hit (WWW)"
       "Source"                       "Source-code"
       "The Pigs"                     "Microsoft" 

Realise that there's tons        Realise that there's tons
of cash in the 14- to            of cash in the 14- to
25-year-old market.              25-year-old market. 

Clients really like your        Clients really like your
stuff when it works.            stuff when it works.
When it doesn't work            When it doesn't work
they want to kill you.          they want to kill you.

... and the best...
Do your job well and             Damn!  DAMN!!!
you can sleep with
sexy movie stars who
depend on you. 

more

Can you think of any more humorous comparisons?