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Wednesday, December 15, 2004

NewsForge | Linux consultants find a niche in growing market - "Once the hallmark of a laid-off dot-commer, the job title "consultant" is now legitimately paired with "Linux." Linux consultants, often called in to supplement the in-house staff of large corporations, are also finding fertile ground in the growing number of small businesses seeking powerful and cost-effective IT solutions that let them compete with bigger firms.
Who

needs a Linux consultant? As it turns out, lots of people. Consultants we interviewed for this article are providing a range of services, largely focused on small businesses and small to medium-sized ISPs. Their service portfolios include Web and database design, system administration, networking and systems implementation, and programming projects."
3:12:43 PM

Slashdot | Do Unsubscribe Links Stop Spam?

Do Unsubscribe Links Stop Spam?

Posted by timothy on Wednesday December 15, @11:18AM
from the click-here-to-find-out dept.
Kaiten writes "Brian McWilliams of Spam Kings fame has just published a fascinating spammer expose' over at Salon. Using a pseudonym, he was hired to send junk email on behalf of a spam operation that has been burying people (me included) with spam for fake Rolex watches. The article details how the spammers handle the 200,000-plus unsubscribe requests they get each month. Seems that LOTS of geeks actually cross their fingers and click those remove links. And, surprise, surprise, the spammers usually ignore the unsubscribe requests."

12:39:20 PM

For a long, long time a question has nagged librarians: when will you take all of those dusty old books in the stacks and put them online? Answers where hard to come by. Digitizing existing collections is an expensive propostion with lots of pitfalls and few advantages. Who pays for it? How does it get done? What about access, indexing, copyright?

Then along comes Google. In a moment Google makes all of those questions evaporate, at least for a select few libraries. On Tuesday, December 14, 2004 Google announced that it is working with a few libraries to digitze all or portions of their collections and make them available through the Google search engine. Rather than getting into details, here is a list of links from press outlets and blogs about the new program.

Right, well that should give you some idea. As for me, well this seems like a good thing, but I'm still pondering the details, ramifications, etc. As it happens, I'll be giving a talk/paper about the future of access to information resources at a symposium in FL on March 10 & 11, 2004. This gives it a certain spin.

10:14:38 AM

Bugs Bring New Dangers to Acrobat Users - "Adobe Systems Inc. has warned of two serious security flaws affecting Windows, Mac OS X and Unix versions of its Acrobat software. The bugs could allow an attacker to execute malicious code on a user's system via a PDF file distributed via e-mail, according to security researchers." [Eweek]
9:49:01 AM

Seattle University - News and events - University news:"Kellye Y. Testy has been chosen to lead Seattle University's School of Law, one of the nation's top-tier law schools. Testy, 44, currently serves as the law schoolâ019s Associate Dean for Academic Administration and Faculty Director of the Center on Corporations, Law and Society. She succeeds Rudolph C. Hasl, who has served as dean for the past five years."
9:41:26 AM

NewsForge | NYSE announces new trading system with Linux inside - "The New York Stock Exchange announced its new TradeWorks trading system today, though portions of the system have been in place for months. Described as an "Extreme Availability" system by IBM, it includes up to 3,000 -- 650 are already in use on the floor of the NYSE -- custom made wireless handheld devices used by floor brokers. The handhelds talk to Linux-based workstations, which in turn talk to HP servers, and they speak to IBM Z-series mainframes running a DB2 backend. "
9:36:50 AM