Wednesday, October 16, 2002

Using Google, I searched the name Jack Grubman, without quotation marks, and Google said it found 11,800 hits. Here are the first half dozen in the order that Google returned them to me: 1. www.internetnews.com/fina-news/ article.php/10795_1447961 2. news.findlaw.com/wp/docs/worldcom/70802jgtst.pdf 3. www.thestreet.com/markets/matthewgoldstein/ 10038108.html 4. www.thestreet.com/funds/smarter_up/10025058.html 5. www.forbes.com/2002/07/22/0722grubman.html 6. www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20020823-30093546.htm On Overture, I searched Jack Grubman, without quotation marks. Here are the first half dozen results: 1. www.wallstreetbaloney.com 2. www.publicinvestorsattorney.com 3. http://money.cnn.com/2002/07/22/news/grubman/ 4. fr.news.yahoo.com 5. http://sg.yahoo.com/notfound.html 6. http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20020815-103345-3605r.htm I tried Jack Grubman on Northern Light.com, which claimed 3,348 items for that search. Here are the first half dozen: 1. http://library.northernlight.com/MB20021013260000013.html?cb=0&sc=0#doc 2. http://library.northernlight.com/ED20020920710000043.html?cb=0&sc=0#doc 3. http://library.northernlight.com/FE20020930310000096.html?cb=0&sc=0#doc 4. http://library.northernlight.com/UU20020826070104435.html?cb=0&sc=0#doc 5. http://library.northernlight.com/FE20021014680000056.html?cb=0&sc=0#doc 6. http://library.northernlight.com/FC20020926310000120.html?cb=0&sc=0#doc Here are the results from Ask.com. The first result at Ask.com was a paid-for link to the same place as the first link on Overture.com. Here are the next half dozen URLs: 1. http://businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_25/b3737745.htm (from June 18, 2001) 2. http://jproxy.uol.com.ar/jproxy/http:/www.thestreet.com/funds/smarter_up/10...(an empty document or broken link) 3. http://www.adinfo.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_25/b3737745.htm (the same document as the first one, with a different URL) 4. biz.yahoo.com/prnews/020225/nym051_1.html ("Document no longer available") 5. http://rd.yahoo.com/finance/external/streetheadlines (from April 30,2002) 6. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/financial_markets/3051462.htm?te(From April 12, 2002) That so many links at Ask.com were out of date or broken seems troubling. That both Overture and Northern Light provided French language documents in the first six seemed peculiar. It also seemd peculiar that the No. 6 position in both Google and Overture comes from the Washington Times. These results raise lots of questions. I'll try to deal with them soon. Noel Humphreys 10:56:18 PM    comment []

Thanks to the SANS Institute[base ']s Newsbites, October 16, 2002: "--11 October 2002 Three New NIST Draft Guides The National Institute of Standards and Technology's Computer Security Division has released three draft guides" Selecting IT Security Products (SP800-36) IT Security Services (SP800-35) and Security Considerations in Federal IT Procurements (SP800-4A). Starting on page 29 of the "Procurements" report, the authors provide example contract language that clearly benefits the government or vendee but that may be hard for a vendor to satisfy. Provisions such as these, however, provide a good basis for an agreement, based on mutual understandings. To make that contract language wind up in a way that satisfies both parties, however, requires a substantial amount of conversation among the responsible people--both lawyers and non-lawyers. My recommendation is that both parties need counsel with knowledge in this contracting area and with enough time to focus on getting these provisions right. The "Procurements" report cogently sets forth security considerations that are useful for all who acquire systems, not merely governmental vendees. The guides are available on the NIST web site; comments are due by 11 November. http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2002/1007/web-nist-10-11-02.asp http://csrc.nist.gov/ 10:11:47 PM    comment []

From the SANS Institute Newsbites newsletter, October 15, 2002 edition: "--11 October 2002 U.S. Copyright Office Invites Public Comment on DMCA The United States Copyright Office is inviting public comment on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the controversial law that sent Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov to jail. The office is looking specifically for instances in which the law's restrictions cause actual problems in the marketplace. [Editor's Note (Schultz): It's ironic that no one in the government seems to be asking questions about how this Act can and has been used by security-negligent corporations to hassle people who discover vulnerabilities in their products.]" You would think that the rulemaking should permit individuals to make copies of portions of copyrighted works for their own use or for school or education or religious uses. Wholesale copying is obviously the thing Congress intended to prohibit, but when only a piece of a work is copied and used for a person's own, non-commercial purposes, the rulemaking should permit that. Although the record industry blames copying for the recent declines in revenues, copying of small bits of songs or movies would not reduce the entertainment industry's revenues. . I also heard an elequent person last night suggest that, where circumvention technology is used to make a copyrighted work more accessible to a person with handicaps such as deafness or blindness, then the circumvention measure should be permitted. Such an exception would be otherwise consistent with governmental policies on disabilities generally. http://news.com.com/2100-1023-961783.html http://www.copyright.gov/1201/fr2002-4.pdf 9:48:44 PM    comment []

Felten says that he has heard in Washington that the general purpose computer is a threat to our national future. I certainly hope that the attitutde he heard is not pervasive among our lawmakers. http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000148.html 9:27:59 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Noel D. Humphreys.