keeping the community informed…

Please remember that by supporting our sponsors you are supporting DaniWeb and ensuring that it remains a free service. This month the DaniWeb Digest is sponsored by:

Virtualization: a black hole in your security?

Sophos's CTO Richard Jacobs discusses the security concerns around virtualization, explaining the risks associated with unmanaged virtual desktops and how administrators can control the unauthorized use of virtual software on the corporate network.


Stop Non-Compliant Endpoints from Accessing Your Network

Today, your network must be available to many different users, but allowing this access comes with an increased security risk. Unmanaged or unauthorized computers are obvious factors but even managed computers pose a security risk. Infection and data loss from missing security patches, loss of security compliance on roaming laptops, and unknown computers connecting to your network are among the risks you ace. Join Mark Beadles, Chief Technologist for Sophos, to learn the key steps to enforcing compliance and how to control managed, unmanaged and unauthorized computers.


Email Archiving 101: It's Not Just about Email Anymore

Would you like to reduce your company's Exchange storage by 50 to 60 percent? Do you need a more clearly defined email retention policy in your environment? Are HR-related requests to search email on backup tapes your worst nightmare? If you answered yes to any of these questions, join this webinar to learn how email archiving can help you solve these and other important problems. Learn why email archiving is the most efficient and reliable long-term solution for managing Microsoft Exchange.


Extend Your IT Budget with Service Oriented Architecture Strategies for Budget Optimization

Everyday more companies are using Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to improve margins and eliminate inefficiencies. They're applying SOA smartly from basic projects all the way through sophisticated, mission-critical systems. In all cases, they've realized how SOA creates smarter business outcomes.


Lean and Green: A Simpler More Cost-Effective Datacenter

Globalization and knowledge-based economies are forcing companies to embrace new business models and rapidly emerging technologies to stay competitive. Yet the day-to-day pressure to run the business more cost effectively while supporting business growth and innovation is very real. These changes demand that IT improve cost and service delivery, manage escalating complexity and better secure the enterprise. View this webcast to learn how the new enterprise datacenter can improve the integration of people, process and technology in your business to help you improve efficiency and effectiveness.

helping us to help you...

We understand that rules are often seen as being a pain in the neck, but the truth is that they are there to help us all by ensuring that DaniWeb remains a great place to come to share and learn, to be part of one of the fastest growing IT communities online. So please do take a moment to remind yourself what our very straightforward rules, which can be found here, are. This month we would like to remind everyone about the importance of keeping DaniWeb organized.

Please help us to keep the site organized by taking the extra minute to make sure you are posting in the correct place: discussions and computer support in the appropriate forums; IT news and editorial (no non-technology related musings please) in the blogs. Always obey specific policies contained within individual forum announcements. Do not post any support questions within any of the following forums: Mac Rumors and Reports; Hardware Swap; Community Introductions; Geeks' Lounge; IT Professionals' Lounge; all of the Business Exchange category.

Do not post homework problems expecting a quick answer without showing any effort yourself. This especially pertains to the software development forums. For easy readability, always wrap programming code within posts in [code] (code blocks) and [icode] (inline code) tags. If you post a question and it gets resolved, please use the Mark Solved link to mark your thread solved. Use [bbcode] only when it is necessary to the comprehension of your post. Avoid using an excessive amount of [bbcode] to alter font styles or to draw more attention to your post.

Do not post threads with generic subjects such as "HELP ME" or "PROBLEM". Instead, clearly state a phrase describing the problem as the thread's title. Do not flood the forum by posting the same question more than once (ie in multiple forums). Do not piggyback threads (aka "hijack" threads) by posting your question as a reply to another question.

every month one member makes the DaniWeb hall of fame…

Please welcome our newest member of the DaniWeb hall of fame, GrimJack, who has become something of a fixture over in our Geeks' Lounge with more than 1200 postings there. We thought it about time we find out a little more about the man behind the messages...

Where are you from originally, and where do you live now?

I was born and raised in Montana - the town is Roundup, most famous for the FreeHolders who were besieged by the FBI and ATF for 6 months before giving up. I Currently live in Seattle.

How old are you?

I am 60 years old, been a non-smoker for 20 years, and plan on taking it up again when I turn 99 (I will smuggle Cuban cigars down from CA for the wife - then she won't complain too much).

What is your current occupation, ever done anything unusual in the past?

I am currently unemployed but I have worked at Microsoft, the Playboy Mansion in Chicago, got thrown into jail in Smith Center KS, climbed Mt. Rainier 2 times, been to Australia, Fiji, Paris, and London.

What is your favorite operating system and why?

VMS - I can't explain why to anyone who has never worked on a VAX, it was a dream OS that could handle hundreds of users simultaneously. yadda,yadda,yadda.

What first brought you to DaniWeb?

I was having problems with the PC I built from scratch.

What makes you stay here?

Geeks' Lounge

What is your favorite forum and why?

Geeks' Lounge - I learn stuff there, people are sharp enough to catch me when I am bluffing, point out my errors when I am wrong, and don't take me too seriously when I point out their errors.

What are your interests outside of IT and outside of DaniWeb?

I play war games, mostly PBeM currently, practice QiGong (8 brocades/8 golden treasures), read math and science (especially if it comes as SciFi), I play first person shooters, and I am trying to put together a weekly half hour experimental music program for GlobalVortexRadio.com

Name the best thing about DaniWeb, and one thing you would change if it were in your power?

The sense of community I get from the discussions - I would be scared to try to change anything for fear of breaking what is already here.

Any fascinating facts about yourself that you would like to share with the DaniWeb community?

I was in the USMC in the 60s, a hippy in the 70s, played table-top war games with miniature armies in the 80s, followed my wife around the US in the 90s and have not had a steady job in the 00s!

by happygeek

It had to happen, and it has. Ever since the Internet Watch Foundation, a British charitable organisation that acts as the official watchdog to track and report illegal content online, in particular child pornography, introduced a blacklist we all knew it would get controversial one day. That day has come.

That blacklist is used by a number of leading Internet Service Providers in the UK, companies such as Virgin Media, Demon, O2, EasyNet and PlusNet to name but a few. So when someone reported that Wikipedia was displaying a 'potentially illegal' image of young naked girl with only a crack in the camera lens covering her below stairs area, the IWF sprung into action. It investigated and assessed the image "according to the UK Sentencing Guidelines Council" a spokesperson says. The result being that the content was "considered to be a potentially illegal indecent image of a child under the age of 18, but hosted outside the UK." because the IWF does not issue takedown notices to companies outside the UK, it instead notified a "law enforcement partner agency" and then added the specific Wikipedia URL to the blacklist in order that ISPs could "protect their customers from inadvertent exposure to a potentially illegal indecent image of a child."

Which all seems OK, after all nobody wants child porn popping up on their computer when they are browsing something educational such as Wikipedia. Trouble is, the whole notion that this is child porn is a dodgy one. Indeed, the notion that the image is illegal is equally debatable.

The image itself, in fact, is the cover of a forty year old album from the German rock band The Scorpions. The 1976 album, entitled Virgin killer, caused controversy at the time and the cover art was quickly replaced with a less controversial one. However, owning that original album does not, to the best of my knowledge, make you a paedophile or mean you are breaking the law. All it means is that you have criminal musical taste.

Even if you think that the actual censorship issue itself, in this particular case, was OK the story does not end there. Wikipedia users in the UK are apparently having problems in dealing with edits, while admins are having trouble blocking spam and banning users who need banning. Why so? because the way that the ISPs have managed traffic (with transparent proxies) courtesy of that blacklisting means that everything has been going through a relatively small number of IP addresses.

What's your take on this? Does Wikipedia need censoring, or should you simply stop searching for porn if it offends you? Does the image in question really constitute child porn? Is there a better way of handling such censorship issues?