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Co-Operative Systems
1. Lured into Microsoft's .NET
Microsoft weaving its own web ?
Even the industry analysts aren't sure, so it's not surprising that ordinary users are having a hard time understanding the raft of tools and technologies that Microsoft is attempting to put across as their vision for the future.
What will it do for me and my organisation?
Principally .NET comprises these strategies:
Examples All sounds wonderful - how does it get paid for?
Meanwhile, the foundations are already being laid in the everyday institutions and organisations we communicate with - shops, banks and anyone who can provide a service online will have to install .NET Enterprise servers to receive consumer communications.
Thirdly, developers are being provided with a new set of tools to write new applications. Part of the vision is to allow those developers to write in sub-set programming languages they are familiar with, but which can still communicate with other languages in the same runtime environment called Common Language Runtime (CLR).
Who are the competitors? Can I trust .NET with my/our information? Which technologies will .NET be built on?
.... and the set of Microsoft server technologies they will communicate with - called .NET Enterprise Servers - include ....
.... and finally developers will use this framework to build new applications ....
When will all this be ready? Will it succeed?
It's the video Beta-max versus VHS syndrome.
To succeed, .NET has to become universal. Basically it's a gamble.
Benefits Drawbacks
[Acknowledgements: Leon Erlanger, Gary Flood]
-IB-
2. Working on documents collaboratively
Doing it together So there's a better method ? The 'Track changes' function in Word option allows you to edit a word document in a way that shows all the changes you make, rather than simply the final version.
The default setting is to :
To activate or deactivate the track changes function, pull down the menu :
If at any stage you wish to deactivate the track changes facility (eg, you need to present a draft, but it's difficult to read or edit when the screen shows a lot of deleted text), go back to the “Highlight changes” dialogue box and remove the appropriate ticks. All changes will then disappear and your view of the document will return to normal.
Now you're all ready to go!
Simple document comparisons
Simply open one document (say MASTER.DOC) and from the menu select :
Collaborative editing by multiple contributors
Thus ...
If Steve then saved his SHARED.DOC in F:\COMMON\ on the network server and Louise made some further changes, Louise’s additions would appear blue and underlined and
If Ian then decided he wanted to get in on the editing act too, Ian’s additions would appear purple and underlined and
Different colours are automatically chosen for each editor (see "How it works"), but if you all choose your own, steer towards the darker colours (see "Printing" below). Alternatively, this option can be switched off so that all changes appear as a single specified colour, no matter who made them.
How to make it happen How it works Printing colours on a monochrome printer Benefits Drawbacks Develop a workflow technique
[Acknowledgements: Steve Brown]
-IB-
3. Could you choose a better phone operator?
What is it ?
Pardon?
Oftel, the Telecoms regulator, believes that consumers are now beginning to benefit from its policies: average quarterly fixed line bills have fallen by £5 and 200,000 more businesses are online.
Compare your phone bills
At http://www.phonebills.org.uk,
you just fill in a quick survey (postcode, operator you use, percentages of mobile calls, international calls etc, discount packages you have taken up).
This is everything you need to cost-justify a switch of operator or a new communications budget. The survey mechanism is good for 'what-ifs'. At the very least it helps do comparisons of BT's incredibly complicated tariffs without having a BT person on the other end of the phone doing the comparing - and subtly trying to pitch new services at you all the while.
Our rating: 'definitely worth a 10 minute look'
How good is your current operator? How connected are we?
SMEs (Small to Medium Enterprises) are still averse to broadband 'always-on' connections like ADSL. Dial-up access is still the most popular, followed by ISDN - a pattern unchanged over the last six months. Uptake of broadband has only increased 1.5% to 5% in the same period.
[Source: Oftel (as at end of October 2001)]
Contacts
ADSL fact sheet
Broad band and Internet fact sheet -IB-
4. Email confidentiality clauses: do they work ?
Who's reading your emails ? Benefits Drawbacks Why has all this become necessary ?
Unlike the Post Office/Royal Mail/Consignia, the Internet isn't legally bound to deliver email at all, let alone to the right place, although a few ISPs do now at least have service level agreements (SLA). So doesn't this lack of contractual binding seem to be confirmed by email clauses effectively saying "please inform me, the original sender, immediately if you have received this email in error because I won't know about incorrect deliveries, since no service provider has the duty to inform me"? This isn't about protecting secrets
Most countries make presumptions about certain relationships being privileged and based on confidentiality and will protect these in tort. If the information is privileged, such as that between lawyer and client, it cannot even be used as evidence in courtrooms unless both parties waive their right to privilege, or the court can be persuaded there is a very good reason for breach of privilege, e.g. someone's life is at stake.
However, if you want to try and establish an element of confidentiality outside of this, you need to include it as a term of a contract which will be binding on the other party, (but not on a third party who inadvertently receives your email). In the absence of any contractual relationship you would be well advised to at least put the other party on notice that the information is confidential and not for general publication. This then acts as a disclaimer/exclusion/limitation clause so that if the information is passed on - especially where it is defamatory or going to cause some sort of harm - you have made some attempt to limit your own liability for publication to the immediate recipient.
You may also want to limit or exclude your own liability for any potential negligence in passing that information on to someone who is unauthorised to receive it. Such a clause may also include wording that attempts to extend beyond mere publication, and to cover the situation where the information causes that person to act, or omit to act in a way that results in recognised harm to themselves or a third party. E.g. the passing on of computer viruses.
How to make it happen So these clauses are legally enforceable, right? What about free ISPs? Some 'upfront' protection measures
To put the confidentiality clause upfront, you could :
Acknowledgements
http://www.lawtutorsonline.co.uk -IB-
5. What's clogging the Internet?
Ever get the feeling the Internet is gradually jamming up?
ISPs are battling to keep up the Internet bandwidth while (we) customers are reluctant to pay for it, both in telecoms service charges and better performance computers (processor, memory, disc, network cards, terminal adaptors) to handle more data.
Net consumers are now generating a lot more high density traffic - like visiting Web sites that contain large amounts of graphics. This kind of Web browsing grabs a lot of continuous Internet time, as opposed to short-burst traffic like text emails.
Linx - the London Internet Exchange handling over 90% of the UK's Internet traffic - are anticipating a demand increase of 10 times in the next 2 years, for which they are planning a £2 million infrastructure upgrade. Recent flows have seen them processing the equivalent of 600,000 emails per second.
So which are the main contributors to 'Internet gridlock' ?
Jargon buster
What can you do to minimise the load ?
[Acknowledgements: Lawrence Griffiths]
-IB-
6. Telephone circles
BT rang the other day. Not the MD himself of course, but a fresh-faced recruit (FFR) probably from an outsourced telemarketing company - one of those whose scary determination to get their sales pitch across is matched only by the naïvety of its purpose.
Moral
Any resemblance to conversations, individuals, corporations or 'dead parrot sketches' in real-life is purely unintentional. That would be far too naïve.
[Paul Craig]
-IB-
7. Badtrans spells bad news
What's the bad news ?
The initials might well have stood for BadTrans as the 'B' version of the pervasive email-borne worm infected British Telecom at the end of November. Some tens of BT's customers were also infected when Badtrans-B picked up their addresses and auto-forwarded itself, though BT quickly shut down its email system and eradicated the virus.
Badtrans-B spread quickly on the Internet from mid-November infecting millions of users of Outlook and Outlook Express, both at home and in the office.
Our customers fared well with only half a dozen or so outbreaks recorded, indicating that their anti-virus (AV) protection systems are being kept up to date. It's also encouraging that the AV vendors managed to assemble and distribute the updates before the virus spread too quickly, which was not the case universally with the Nimda variant attacks.
What does Badtrans-B do ? What can I do about it ? More viruses
8. E-Baby is not just for Christmas
What is it ?
Unlikely scenarios, but if any of those suit you, a virtual baby could be just what you need to satisfy your maternal or paternal instincts.
Barnado's have launched an 'E-Baby' to be your continual (or incessant) screen companion to promote awareness of their work and raise funds. E-Baby's interactive features require it to be feed, watered, entertained and burped, as well as all the other unpleasantries!
Still can't resist it? Get the 800K download from : -IB-
9. Merry Christmas from all at Co-Operative Systems
The week ending Friday 21st December will be business as usual at Co-Op.
On the 24th, 27th, 28th and 31st December we will be providing basic emergency phone support.
Co-Op will be closed for the holidays on 25th/26th December and 1st January.
Drawn by Megan Friel, age 6.
-IB-
**** News Bytes **** News Bytes **** News Bytes ****
**** end of News Bytes ****
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So how do you define .NET ("dot net")?
You could be forgiven for thinking that we will become mere representations of our real selves ...
"It's virtual life Jim, but not as we know it!"
The ' second generation Internet experience ' ("2GI" perhaps?) will define the Internet as your personal network. Going beyond conventional Application Service Provision (ASP), you will store and use all your applications, data and preferences on it.
Although most people will mainly use PCs, they will be able to get this ' 2GI ' experience in a more similar and consistent way on mobiles, PDAs and wearable devices too.
Speech and handwriting will supplement typing more easily as a means of IT communication.
The separation between your LAN and the Internet will disappear. You interact seamlessly with a Microsoft-dubbed 'constellation' of computers and services, exchanging objects and data. Applications are all 'Web-enabled'. Internet search engines and email with Web-sourced pictures have already blurred these boundaries for us in today's world.
The consumer will licence the .NET technology (literally) through the new platform it's all designed to take place on - Windows XP. This is Microsoft's bid to convince us XP is the gateway to one-stop online shopping, Net banking and all other online services we could possibly need.
Key to this is the lure to sign up to "Passport" - an identification technology that effectively gives you one identity on the Net.
It's arguable that .NET puts Microsoft head-up against every major IT and online provider - AOL/Netscape/Time Warner, Compuserve, IBM, Oracle, Sun Microsystems - especially those who are increasingly forced to charge for content and services. The vision is broad enough to affect all the current technologies and services supplied by these big players.
The $64,000 question. After all, if this globally-encompassing vision succeeds, a large proportion of the world's information could soon be "passing across the networks of just one company" - and we're talking about Cisco router boxes here.
If you have signed up for a Microsoft "Passport" identity, you've already started down that road.
Apart from Windows XP and Passport, these protocols will form the fundamental means of communication ....
Abbreviation
Protocol
Function
HTTP
HyperText Transfer Protocol
transports data and provide access to applications over the Internet
XML
EXtensible Markup Language
a common format for exchanging data stored in diverse formats and databases
SOAP
Simple Object Access Protocol
enables applications or services to make requests of other applications and services via the Internet
UDDI
Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration
DNS-like distributed Web directory that would enable services to discover each other and define how they can interact and share information
Microsoft server
Function
Exchange 2000
messaging, mail, calendaring
SQL Server 2000
extra support for XML, querying of relational data and retrieval of results
BizTalk Server 2000
exchange of data and documents in XML
Commerce Server 2000
Business-to-Customer (B2C) services
Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2000
proxy server with a full firewall
Application Center 2000
multi processor load balancing and server farm operations
Environment
Function
Common Language Runtime (CLR)
hierarchical set of unified class libraries
ASP.NET
an advanced version of Active Server Pages (ASP)
Visual Studio.NET.
includes C# (C-Sharp) a new hybrid programming language derived from C and C++ that includes much of the syntax, keywords and some features of Java
Microsoft is keen to emphasize that .NET is a long-term vision - more than just than a set of products, services, and tools. The fruition of this ambitious vision could take five years or more.
Unlike ratified standards which are proposed, hammered out and fine-tuned by a body of organisations - like W3C (responsible for the Web) or the conglomeration of drive manufacturers that agreed the DVD standard (Digital Versatile Disc) - .NET is entirely proprietary (Microsoft's).
While ratified standards take a long time to get companies to agree on, their eventual success is highly probable, since everyone is assured a slice of the commercial pie.
Conversely, proprietary standards are quicker to create because the innovating company can organise itself relative quickly, but commercial take up is more difficult to predict as there's little incentive for competitors. How consumers react to the company's new standard or technology depends largely on their response to marketing and advertising. Consumers may well be persuaded by the XP part of the equation, but every major service provider who trades on the Internet - not just IT and telecoms - need to be convinced they should install the .NET servers that we consumers would connect to.
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You're working on a document with a colleague, emailing it back and forth as an attachment, gradually refining the content and dotting the 'i's. This is fine for 2 people doing simple edits; it's an easy concept to understand - some people choose to mark their changes with asterisks to ease the reading.
However, this method is only good for a couple of 'rounds' of editing, otherwise you end up with multiple documents, attachments or emails and may become progressively more unsure about which version is the 'real' one.
When the changes are complex (deletions, additions, global text substitutions) or you have more than 2 contributors, this method rapidly runs out steam and has the whole team running in circles.
You bet. Once you get your head around the concept, it's a boon.
using red lettering crossed out (what Microsoft call the 'strikethrough' font effect)
Tools | Track changes | Highlight changes
There are 2 further tick boxes in this dialogue box that allow you to choose whether you want these changes to be shown on the screen or on the printed document or both (but see "Printing" below).
Click on the “Track changes while editing” tick box
if you want to see this happening 'live' while you type.
If you just want to compare 2 documents - say, because it's too laborious to work out which one is the most up to date by reading them - you can simply use the "Compare Documents" feature.
Tools | Track Changes | Compare Documents
What you see is a series of additions in underlined text and deletions in
and open your document to compare EDITED.DOC, for example
strikethrough text which displays what you have to do to MASTER.DOC to arrive at EDITED.DOC.
The default settings allow a document to be circulated and edited by several different users with the changes made by each individual identified by a different font colour.
If contributor 1 (say Steve) edited a document, Steve's additions would appear red and underlined and
Steve's deletions would be red and crossed out.
Louise’s deletions blue and crossed out.
Ian’s deletions purple and crossed out.
The "Track Changes" dialogue box behind the Options button allows you to define how you would like to format any changes that you are tracking.
Tools | Track changes | Highlight changes | Options button
In the "Inserted text" and Deleted text" sections click on the down arrow in the colour box and change the selected option from "By author" to the colour you would like to see any changes appear.
Word gleans the username information (supplied in Tools | Options | User Information) to track editors and assign new colours to each user (assuming you are all using separate copies of Word OR have separate profiles/logins set up on one machine). It is important to ensure all the collaborating editors work on the same document. “Track changes” doesn't work if you forward documents via email for others to edit, as you have then made a copy.
If you are going to print documents containing colour on a mono (black & white) printer, then the only suitable colours are dark ones, ie black, dark blue, red, purple, dark grey. Bright colours will tend to print as very faint grey. If you never want to see the highlighted changes in monochrome print, just the finished document, this isn't a problem.
You can collaborate on editing documents across locations and time zones - it's great for part-timers, no-timers and colleagues in distant offices on the same network.
Don't make it a triumph of technology over common sense. Remember the idea is to produce a well-honed document that encompasses everyone's contributions. Sitting the contributors down together (if that's possible or efficient) around a double-spaced print out with a red pen will probably generate a near-final draft in half an hour as a good alternative.
If you can follow an established model like the Contributor, Sub-editor, Editor sequential model or the Auctioneer and Bidders model, the process will flow smoothly and those involved will be less likely to 'undo' the contributions of others. Having a good understanding of your contributory rôle helps to make the process efficient.
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The BT local loop began to be unbundled in July.
In English, this means the fixed apparatus of BT's telephone network (wires, exchanges, etc) began to be 'de-monopolised' so that other telephone operators and service providers are allowed to install equipment and run their service on the network to provide some competition - and hopefully, cheaper and better services.
One side effect of the 'opening up' is that you can start to compare operator services without sifting through brochures, staring at multiple web sites or tackling sales folk.
You are presented with a tailored dedicated report giving operator company summaries (their chance to pitch), the comparison parameters on which report is based and - the bit you're waiting for - tariffs and their prices from each operator.
Comparable Performance Indicators allow you to compare the prices and quality of service of operators. Their PDF document "How well did your telephone company do?" rates phone operating companies for No. of Faults, Order completion, Fault repairs, Complaint handling and Billing. Find this useful report at :
http://www.cpi.org.uk/operator/
Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) fact sheet
http://www.oftel.gov.uk/publications/local_loop/llufacts/llufacts1101.htm
http://www.oftel.gov.uk/publications/local_loop/adslsheet/adsl1101.htm
http://www.oftel.gov.uk/publications/internet/internet_brief/broad1101.htm
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How many times have you received an email that's a one-liner (like "Got the document - thanks.") followed by 3 paragraphs of footers saying "this message is confidential, etc" and disclaiming everything under the sun? The legal profession have got into the email business to protect us and our companies from the abuse of our own words resulting in a content-swelling of what was once a jot-it-down medium.
Email - the 'killer' application, as it's no longer called - has seeped into our lives and workplaces and has come under the scrutiny of business practice, like all other business tools do.
Since it's trivial to copy and forward on the text (or even the attachments) of emails and because the medium has become ubiquitous, the legal niceties of passing on the information to third parties had got lost along the way. As a salutary lesson, imagine photocopying bits of memos that pass across your desk and posting them off to your circulation list of friends or associates, just because you think those snippets may interest or amuse them!
Well, yes but ...
We have to remember that confidentiality clauses are a defence mechanism, aiming to protect us 'after the fact', eg when someone is trying to abuse the fact that they have received our email or fax inadvertently and without permission, even if that includes a third party forwarding it with the disclaimers missing. The prime reason for such clauses is not to enforce them or take action viz anyone passing that info on, but to limit or exclude your own liability if the info gets into the 'wrong hands'.
If the information or email or fax is incomplete, etc, such a clause may also act as a disclaimer to limit or exclude any liability for negligent misstatement, (tort - Hedley Byrne v. Heller 1963); misrepresentation, (re- the Misrepresentation Act 1967), or breach of contract.
What should a confidentiality clause say?
A good example to use is shown here. The colours refer to the intentions (discussed above) that they implement:
CONFIDENTIALITY:
Unless expressly stated otherwise, this message, and any attachment, is confidential and may be privileged. It is intended for the addressee(s) only. Access to this e-mail by anyone else is unauthorised. If you are not an addressee, any disclosure or copying of the contents of this e-mail, or any action taken (or not taken) in reliance on it is unauthorised and may be unlawful. If you are not an addressee, please inform the sender immediately and then delete the e-mail or any copies of it.
SECURITY:
There is no guarantee that this transmission is secure, therefore any information contained could be destroyed or incomplete. We cannot accept liability for any errors, delay, corruption or viruses caused by its interception by others. Should you require confirmation or verification of the contents of this message, please request the same.
Legal experts often say 'enforceability' is a real-life problem that has nothing to do with law. For instance, many people have very good legal cases, but do not pursue them for all sorts of practical reasons. An obvious one with email abuse is the practical difficulty of identifying those responsible, further compounded by the problems of pursuing legal actions across different geographical jurisdictions.
Practically all so-called 'free' ISPs (where no subscription or fee is charged for Internet access) don't have legally binding requirements, so your 'contract' with them (see their terms and conditions) is usually pretty limited. If you're concerned about using a confidentiality clause to pursue a legal case of abuse, then avoiding them altogther may be wisest, since they're unlikely to be able to offer any logs tracking emails that have passed through their system.
One of the problems with making the confidential nature clear is that the 'rider' is usually attached as a footer, so by the time any 'unprivileged' reader has got to it, they have already scanned through the valuable contents of your message anyway, whether it's a fax or an email.
The last is probably the least intrusive method of 'putting another party on notice' without compromising on having alerted 'unprivileged' readers.
We are indebted to Debbie Chay, LLB (Honours), MA for help and advice in compiling this article. Debbie is Principal Lecturer in Law and Director of LAW TUTORS ONLINE
Inter-active Distance Learning in Law
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Abbreviation
What it means
.asp
Active Server Pages (Microsoft)
.cfm
Cold Fusion (Allaire)
.jsp
Java Script Pages (Sun MicroSystems)
.php
Personal Home Page
.pl
PERL - Practical Extraction and Report Language (Larry Wall)
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If you're offering something new, are you really serving your audience or just 'pulling the wool'?
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This month, it was a virus with BT's name on it.
The worm characteristically uses your existing email addresses to send from and picks up existing lines of unanswered messages to insert into the subject header, so is difficult to spot. It also drops a password-stealing Trojan on to the infected PC in an attempt to record user keystrokes. This record is then mailed back to a Web email address with the potential risk of hacking computer and bank accounts that were accessed from the infected PC.
The worm is executed by reading or previewing the attachment unless there is a vulnerability in Outlook or Outlook Express on the PC under attack in which case the virus exploits that. Even the attachment is assembled with deception in mind and appears as a combination of double file extensions of either .doc, .zip or .mp3 followed by .pif or .scr. We saw a few like FUN.mp3.pif and HUMOR.doc.pif.
Two steps are necessary:
You can also remove Badtrans-B manually from Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP versions. It's mighty tedious stuff, but the instructions are here :
http://www.sophos.co.uk/support/faqs/w32badtransb.html
If you are a home PC user without a firewall, consider using something like the excellent but free ZoneAlarm as a first step to prevent keystroke loggers and other Trojans.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-027.asp
Co-Operative Systems was also hit during November with the "nasty cold virus" resulting in some support delays - our sincere apologies. Unfortunately, automatic updates to combat these aren't available yet - it's still a manual process of going to the doctor or crawling into bed.
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Need something to fill desktop space?
Are your own tots too well behaved?
Fancy babysitting from the comfort of your screen?
So - just as much trouble as the real thing then.
http://www.barnardos.org.uk/
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Business will resume as normal from 2nd January 2002.
Merry Christmas from all of us at Co-Operative Systems to all of you
We asked the children of Corpus Christi School, Brixton to design a Christmas card for us and they selected this card.
Click here for the full size version
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