© J R Stockton, ≥ 2010-03-03
Links within this site :-
General PC links, including "The Timing FAQ" and others by Kris
Heidenstrom, are in PC Links Reference.
- UK :-
- EU :-
- USA :-
- Elsewhere :-
- World :-
- Mathematics :-
- Weights and Measures :-
- BIPM :-
- NPL :-
- NWML
- Information on when various definitions of metric units were
adopted by the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM),
in NIST Special Publication 330, The International System of
Units (SI), (1991) in a fairly long document in .pdf format at the
NIST SI pages
- Fundamental Constants, CODATA 1998
- Markus Kuhn :-
- Gene
Nygaard page & links
- UK Metrication
- Chris Keenan, USMA UK correspondent
- Chris Kaese :-
- metre.info -
Modern weights and measures - A complete reference
- ISO/IEC 80000
- Wikipedia - style guide for the use of physical quantities and
units of measurement
- Electricity
(N.B. I no longer do EMC-related work) :-
- There is an EMC Usenet newsgroup sci.engr.electrical.compliance
(s.e.e.c), though it no longer has a maintained FAQ
- I have heard that there is a much more active but rather
Americocentric mailing list (freely subscribable)
emc-pstc@ieee.org, which is now the most useful
off-web discussion forum for EMC and allied matters
- Some information relating to energy saving and
European Supply Voltage Harmonisation may be found on the
Claude
Lyons Group site
- Science :-
- IoP
- Dihydrogen Monoxide -
DHMO Homepage
- References :-
- Net :-
- Computing :-
The Universal Copyright Convention requires "©", name, date.
But UK/EU law is stronger, applying in any case
- UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 and
EU Council Directive 93/98/EEC, 1993-10-29.
Copyright of published material, and putting on the Net is
publication, is automatic. In the EU, from copyright harmonisation
1996-01-01, it lasts for 70 years after the death of the author, with
other terms for anonymous work.
I read that in the USA, almost anything originated privately
after 1989-01-01 is protected whether or not it has a notice.
The copyright holder has the right to control or set conditions
for any form of copying in excess of short extracts.
- World :-
- WIPO : seek for
"International Protection of Copyright and Neighboring Rights",
"Berne Convention" and/or similar.
- UK :-
- USA :-
- Unclassified :-
- General :-
- Any adequate Public Library
- Your legal advisers
See on my index page.
I may report annoying cases of Internet abuse to the relevant
authorities. Service providers with an appropriate Acceptable Usage
Policy will terminate the accounts of abusers, and where the facilities
of a University or an employer are used, even stronger action may be
taken. The IRS likes to hear about fraudulent schemes.
The following is a non-exhaustive list of Abuses :-
- Pyramid schemes, whether or not disguised as MLM,
in Mail or News
- Begging for money - or for coursework-on-a-plate
- Offensive Mail or News
- Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UCE)
- Unsolicited "Broadcast" or "Bulk" E-mail (UBE)
- Excessive Multiple Posting, of any form (EMP)
- Excessive Cross Posting, of any form (ECP)
- Spew (unintended repetition by malfunction)
- Binaries and other non-plaintext in a non-binary group
- Viruses
- and Trojans, Worms, etc.
- Forgeries in the user's name, use of unauthorised domain
- Unauthorised reproduction of copyrighted
material
- Chain Letters, of any form
- Off-topic or utterly pointless articles are indeed misuse;
but single instances are not 'spam',
and should not be counted as abuse, unless intended as such
I want concise and complete definitions of the terms, including UBE,
UCE, ECP, EMP, Spam, Velveeta, Jello, Troll, MLM, Pyramid, UDP,
Breidbart Index - attempt follows :-
Mostly derived from the "Net Abuse FAQ", usenet/spam-faq,
and from postings by CHL :-
- UBE = Unsolicited Bulk E-mail
- UCE = Unsolicited Commercial E-mail
- EMP = Excessive Multiple Posting
- Spam = EMP
- ECP = Excessive Cross Posting
- Velveeta = ECP
- Jello = large/combined EMP/ECP (rarely used term)
- Phishing - trying for account details etc.
- MLM = Multi-Level Marketing (?)
- Pyramid = as MLM, without the pretence of utility
- Troll = controversial posting intended merely to cause reaction ?
- Spew = repetition, often unintended and by malfunction
- UDP = Usenet Death Penalty - a facility permitting abuse by its
users may be ostracised, and messages from it may not be transmitted
- B.I. = (Seth) Breidbart Index :
Take the square root of the number of cross-posted groups for each
article (ECP) and sum it over all the separate copies of the article
(EMP). The generally accepted Usenet cut-off is a B.I. exceeding 20
during a sliding window of 45 days.
Four posts each to nine groups : BI = 4×3=12;
nine posts each to four groups : BI = 9×2=18.
You get caught if you cross-post a single article 400 times,
or send 4 copies each cross-posted 25 times,
or send 20 copies not cross-posted at all.
For terms relating to financial groups, see S R Hinsley.
Web Site Abuse
Frequent robotic access to a Web site of limited bandwidth is an
abuse of resources; many personal sites, including this one, are
limited.
Newsgroup Abuse
The kill-rule is one defence against some forms of newsgroup abuse;
a shorthand for its application to an author is *plonk*.
It can be useful to accept only :-
(i) from all two-letter TLDs (e.g.*.uk, but not *.com),
(ii) threads marked for interesting subject,
(iii) trusted authors in the group.
To protect oneself against having
viruses, trojans, and other malware,
get and use a good virus scanner, regularly and frequently updated.
To protect oneself against receiving attacks :-
- Don't use Microsoft software for handling News and/or Mail;
it is the most common target. I use Turnpike
- Don't view News or Mail articles with a Web Browser. Use a limited
viewer, such as that in Turnpike, which cannot execute code or scripts
other than pure HTML. Don't view or execute any binaries, unless
expected and from a trustworthy source. Don't trust extensions
- Turn off any facilities in your Web Browsers that allow general code
to be executed; but JavaScript should be fairly safe
- For writing to News, use a spam-trap From address (but one which you
are entitled to use) and a valid Reply-To address (but, if possible, a
disposable one); From, unlike Reply-To, can be cheaply harvested
- Read news:comp.risks (moderated digest)
- Take expert advice
Many items of UCE say "to be removed from the list, mail remove@...".
It is widely believed that this is used as a source of known-valid
E-mail addresses, and that it is usually best not to respond (except by
robotic rejection).
©
Dr J R Stockton, near London, UK.
All Rights Reserved.
These pages are tested mainly with Firefox 3.0
and W3's
Tidy.
This site,
http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/,
is maintained by
me.
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