[lobbying-org] Symantec patent

[David Singleton]

http://www.symantec.com/press/2002/n020320.html

Symantec have been granted a patent on heuristic virus scanning.  While no
one as yet
has actually marketed a product which does this already, surely it's a
completely obvious
idea: granted the implementation is damn hard, but you don't have to have an
implementation
to 'own' the idea.  I'm beginning to think that this Software Patent stuff
is much worse
than the copyright stuff.

David

--
David Singleton    _________________      St John's College, Cambridge
 C5 3rd Crt        +44(0)7980 641608  http://www.davidsingleton.co.uk/

> -----Original Message-----
> From: lobbying-org-admin@srcf.ucam.org
> [mailto:lobbying-org-admin@srcf.ucam.org]On Behalf Of Martin Keegan
> Sent: 04 April 2002 14:54
> To: lobbying-org@srcf.ucam.org
> Subject: Re: [lobbying-org] Homerton CO, privacy and Linux
>
>
>
> On Thu, 4 Apr 2002, Martin Keegan wrote:
>
> >
> > It is alleged that the CO of Homerton wants anyone who has a machine
> > plugged into the network to hand over the root password, and will only
> > allow Windows and MacOS.
> >
> > Can anyone confirm this?
>
> I have now phoned the head of computing at Homerton, and he has explained
> the situation.
>
> Students with machines plugged in in their bedrooms don't receive the same
> level of support unless they're using Windows or MacOS. Basically, the
> college offers support to those two operating systems (as those are the
> ones the COs grok), and everyone else is on a "if it breaks you get both
> parts" support scheme.
>
> This is more than Jesus College offers in practice.
>
> It looks like Homerton offers a lot more in the way of shared filespace
> and facilities internally, and that users of non-MS OSes (counting MacOS
> as an MS OS (think MS Office availability) have to work out how to get to
> these things themselves if they want to use them. It may be that you just
> can't get at them with Linux. TCP/IP network access is not restricted by
> OS, you just might have to set it up yourself. It looks like there's an
> ethos at Homerton of the COs setting up your personal machine to be on the
> LAN.
>
> With regard to requiring administrative access, this is a misunderstanding
> of some installation instruction dealing with the system privileges the
> user needs to configure his/her machine to get onto the network. If it's
> the CO doing this, you need to log them in as Administrator for a little
> while, but it doesn't go beyond that.
>
> Mk
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> lobbying-org mailing list
> lobbying-org@srcf.ucam.org
> http://www.srcf.ucam.org/mailman/listinfo/lobbying-org