You might wonder, as do some of my colleagues here at Techweb, why I’ve given so much space to coverage of ClamAV, the open source anti-virus filter technology. This is, after all Messaging Pipeline, and our focus here is on e-mail, instant messaging, and technology that promotes collaboration through messaging systems. Well, the answer is simple: virus transmission is a messaging phenomenon! In simple terms, we would not have the plague we have today without e-mail and instant messaging systems capable of wreaking havoc on a worldwide basis at the mere press of a button that sets off a virus transmission campaign.
. . . Full Story: "Why Focus On Viruses Here?"Posted by John Dickinson at 07:49 PM | Permalink | Comments
Acquisitions and mergers are a sometimes-wonderful, sometimes-painful fact of enterprise life, and they tend to happen at two distinctly different times in the life of an industry and in the lives of companies in that industry: at the beginning, and at the end. At the beginning, companies that are growing in related, but distinct arenas of a growing industry can often find growth-giving synergy by merging their technological, intellectual, and manufacturing assets. At the end, companies that are no longer growing in the same area of an industry that is no longer expanding, merge in order to survive by sheer numbers -- they think that if only they can get bigger in sales, in employees, in profits, they'll survive.
. . . Full Story: "Two Mergers, Two Circumstances, Two Results"Posted by John Dickinson at 07:53 PM | Permalink | Comments
MX Logix says that spammers will be the primary users of e-mail sender authentication schemes, such as SPF and Sender ID. Well, Duhhhhhh! Who ever thought it would be any different? Certainly not I! (See Weapons Of Spam Destruction and Depending On Sender ID Is Whistling In The Dark). Who else stands to benefit as much from getting their sending identity legitimized? It’s like asking who’ll be first in line at the business license window when a town imposes a licensing requirement on retail vendors: Used car salespeople! Who else would you expect? Well, maybe barristers, but . . .
Posted by John Dickinson at 07:55 PM | Permalink | Comments
Way back when, on 9/11, I was stunned and disappointed to see the poor performance of the Internet. In the midst of the most major and heinous attack ever launched on U.S. soil, the Internet more or less folded. In contrast to the 24x7 infrastructure that kept television news going, even in the physical midst of the chaotic aftermath of the attacks, the Internet news sites more or less collapsed, and messaging services seemed to all but stop.. About the only Internet source for news was AOL's Instant Messaging news service, and there wasn't much there. So it was heartening this week to see a much-improved news and messaging presence after the horrible subway and bus attacks in London this week.
Posted by John Dickinson at 07:58 PM | Permalink | Comments
"That's not worth the paper it's written on!" I don't remember when or why I first heard those words, but surely I was well under ten years old, and it was probably my father talking about some international treaty he didn't like, or perhaps even the dollar bill that his gold-standard-loving heart just plain hated. In any case, the point of the phrase -- which I still occasionally hear today -- is that paper isn't worth much money. But bits transmitted across the Internet are worth even less, which makes me wonder: why am I still getting so much paper in the postal mail? For that matter, why am I still receiving any postal mail at all?
. . . Full Story: "Damn You, Spammers!"Posted by John Dickinson at 08:00 PM | Permalink | Comments
