If you thought you’d never see the phrase”open-source” in a federal funding bill, think again. The House’s proposed National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009 (H.R. 5658) includes language that calls for military services to consider open-source software when procuring manned or unmanned aerial vehicles,…
Here in the states we are coming up on a very important election - the election of the President of the United States. And I would be remiss if I did not address this topic in a blog dedicated to the topic of open source.
The last two presidential elections proved that our system of voting is either broken or corrupt (or both). In August of this year Deibold (the maker of electronic voting machines) finally admitted their systems have been broken for ten years:
Chris Riggal (a spokesman for Deibold) says their system contained a:
“…critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point”
And then, you can hearken back back to 2003, a group discovered a version of Deibold’s secret software which contained numerous flaws. This software, of course, is proprietary. Of course shortly after that the then President of Deibold wrote in a letter to a presidential candidates supporters “I am committed to help Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President.”
In 2006 Deibold knew they were shipping out voting machines that had defective motherboards. They shipped them anyway. The machines were used.
With so much corruption and poorly written code I have to stop and ask myself “Why does this country put up with this system?”
I know that advocates of proprietary systems would quickly argue that using open source software on a system as critical as E-voting is a grievous mistake. Here’s why they are wrong: With open source software you have far more checks and balances than you have with proprietary. With a piece of closed-source software your code is only as good as the employees you can afford to pay. With open source software the checks and balances go beyond budgets and boards. And a system as critical as E-voting should have the largest peer-review system available. Think about it - a group of developers creates a voting system and releases it under the GPL (or some modified version). They release the code so that developers around the world can help with the process of making this software safe and error-free. Once the code is finalized another group of developers (open source developers) are selected to comb through the code to ensure its safety (make sure no back-doors, trojans, root-kits, etc were placed inside) and then the code is installed into the systems.
This type of system would put companies like Deibold out of business.
Ahh - there’s the rub. Business. But really - does business have any, well, business is the business of voting? Shouldn’t the system of elections be by and for the people (since that is, at least in the original US configuration) what elections were created for? Companies should not be making money on elections. And that’s where open source voting software makes perfect sense.
The Australians have done it. They started this in 2003 where a private company created the voting software and posted it online for all to see and evaluate. The system went from proof of concept to reality in six months. Here in the States we’d be lucky to have such a system up and running in six years. Why? Governmental red-tape that strangles such forward-thinking ideas as using open source for voting systems.
Obviously I am a big advocate of open source voting. Our government is ours and is there to serve and protect us…the people. But that doesn’t mean we should not become a part of this system. And as system administrators, developers, network and security pros we should consider it part of our duty to help further along a system that could ensure critical elections are handled properly. And what better way to ensure the propriety of such a system.
Do you think the US Presidential election should be handled by open source software?
Loading …Now might be as good a time as any to write your congressional leaders and insist they support open source voting systems. Deibold has had it’s chance and it failed. It’s time open source was given the chance to show the country that voting can be done without grievous error and code that my step-daughter would call “epic fail”.
The voting system is one of the most important piece of software that can be created. It should be given to the public. It should be open source.
Enterprise organizations are tapping the benefits not only of using open-source software, but of contributing to it by using the Eclipse model. The Eclipse Swordfish, Tigerstripe, Open Financial Market Platform and Open System Engineering Environment projects are all based on code contributed by enterprises that use open-source technology.
- As an indication that the open-source model is beginning to mature and move beyond just ISVs and into the enterprise, Eclipse Foundation leaders say a new trend in Eclipse indicates that enterprises are beginning to develop and contribute code to Eclipse projects.
This means the promise and princip…
Although open source software has gained a place in enterprise networks alongside proprietary software, it can’t seem to shake doubts about security and intellectual-property issues that have long dogged the movement.
Because Spam can be malevolent in nature, you do not want to run the risk of any malicious code being executed on your company’s systems.
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The Thunderbird e-mail client is an outstanding piece of cross-platform, open-source software. But one area where Thunderbird can use a little improvement is its Spam protection. Yes, by default, Thunderbird does have internal Spam protection, but I have found that protection to be less than stellar.
Enter Spambayes. Spambayes is a Bayesian spam filtering system written in Python. Spambayes classifies junk mail into three classifications: Spam, Ham, and Unsure. Spam is the obvious junk e-mail. Ham is non-Spam e-mail (not junk). Unsure is e-mail that you are not sure about. So instead of a lesser “on/off” system, you have an “on/pending/off” system. It’s actually more complex than that (making use of both Spam and Ham scores for each message), but you get the idea.
So it sounds like enabling a Spambayes filter for the Thunderbird mail client would be a difficult task. Not at all, thanks to the Thunderbayes extension. Thunderbayes adds a toolbar button to the Thunderbird client that allows the user to mark each message (to help the Bayesian system learn) as either Spam or Ham.
This blog post is also available in PDF format in a TechRepublic download.
Installing Thunderbayes is just like installing any extension for Thunderbird. In the Thunderbird client, click on the Tools menu and select Add-ons. In case you have never installed an extension with Thunderbird (it’s a bit different than Firefox), I will walk you through the process.
In the Add-ons window (Figure A), click on the Get Extensions link near the bottom right. This will open up Firefox (or a new tab if Firefox is already running) to the Thunderbird extensions page. Enter Thunderbayes in the search field and hit the Enter key.
Once you are on the Thunderbayes page, you do not want to click the Download button. Instead you want to right-click and select Save Link As and save the file to a location such as your Desktop. Once you have saved the file, go back to the Add-ons window and click the Install button. This will open a new window and ask you to locate the target extension. Find the Thunderbayes extension, select it, and click Open. Once it is installed, you will be required to restart Thunderbird.
Now notice there is no toolbar icon for Thunderbayes. This is because you are going to have to add the icon manually. Click on the View menu and then the Toolbars sub-menu. Select Customize. When the toolbar customization window is open (Figure B), click and drag the Spam icon to the toolbar (you can place it where you like), and then click OK. You are almost set.
The final setup is to enable Thunderbayes for an e-mail account. To do this, click on the Tools menu and select the Account Settings entry. As you can see in Figure C, Thunderbayes will be available for each e-mail account configured in Thunderbird.
Another important configuration is to create a Junk folder where Thunderbayes can place suspected Spam, unless you just want to have the e-mail automatically deleted. As you can see in Figure C, there are settings you can apply to the account. This is where you tell Thunderbayes what to do with Spam and Unsure messages.
Many people would prefer to have Spam simply deleted and Unsure sent to a Junk folder (where the mail can be sifted through). This is probably the smartest route to keep you from losing critical e-mail to a false-positive check. To do this, you will first need to create a Junk (or Unsure) folder for your account by right-clicking the Local Folders in the left pane and clicking New Folder. Name this folder whatever you prefer and make sure it is located in the Local Folders directory.
Now that you have created a folder where Unsure messages can be placed, go back to the Account Settings and click the Filter Spam Messages When They Arrive check box. Now click on the Configure button to set up Thunderbayes to automatically delete Spam when it arrives.
Now do the same for Unsure messages, only this time you will have the system automatically move Unsure messages to the Junk folder on Local Folders.
Once you have enabled Thunderbayes, you will want to add the Spam Status column in your message preview pane. You will see in the right-most column in the Preview pane, a small drop-down arrow (Figure D). Click on that arrow and make sure Spam Status is checked.
Once you have enabled the Spam Status column, you will see each e-mail with one of three icons associated with its Spam status: A gray question mark indicates the e-mail did not pass through a SpamBayes proxy and does not have an X-SpamBayes-Classification header. If an e-mail is Spam, it will have a red circle with a slash. If an e-mail is Ham, the indicator will be a gray dot. An Unsure e-mail have a yellow question mark beside it.
Configuration is complete. You are now ready to use Thunderbayes.
Using Thunderbayes is fairly straightfoward. If an e-mail comes in that is obviously tagged as Spam through a SpamBayes proxy, the Spam will be automatically deleted. If an e-mail does not get tagged, it will arrive in your inbox marked as Ham. If, however, you know that an e-mail is incorrectly marked and is definitely Spam, you simply have to select the message, click the Thunderbayes drop-down list, and mark the message as Spam. The message will automatically be deleted for you (one-upping the Thunderbird built-in Spam system).
Now if you go into your Junk folder (where you have directed Unsure messages), you can mark messages as either Spam or Ham by selecting the message and then choosing the correct type from the Thunderbayes drop-down list in the toolbar. If the messages is marked as Ham, it will automatically be placed back in your inbox. If the message is marked Spam, it will automatically be deleted.
And of course the system does learn as it goes. So once you mark a message as either Spam or Ham, most likely the next time one comes through that matches, it will be handled accordingly.
Thunderbayes filters messages as they arrive (before they are even placed in any folders), so you might notice a small slowdown in message retrieval time. And there have been some users who, over time, have noticed Thunderbird slowing down exponentially as more words and definitions are added to the Thunderbayes system. This has not been the case on my system (and I do see plenty of Spam — well, I used to until I started using Thunderbayes).
Thunderbayes is one Thunderbird extension you should not go without on a Windows system. Because Spam can be malevolent in nature you do not want to run the risk of any malicious code being executed on your (or your company’s) system. And considering Thunderbayes works infinitely better than the Spam protection built into Thunderbird, it’s a no-brainer of a decision.
Make Thunderbayes a requirement for all company Thunderbird e-mail clients. You’ll be glad you did.
The Netherlands Patent Office: “The Netherlands Patent Office is the first government authority to implement the ‘Nederland Open in Connection’ action plan and to switch a large number of its ICT systems to what is known as open source software.”
