I have, over the years, reviewed books from different UN (and OECD) offices. I don't go out of my way to find them, because, so far, they have been universally bland, basic, minimal, and generally of low utility. The authors usually seem to have more political science than actual science (or technology) backgrounds. Sometimes you wonder if these people know how to use computers at all. Still as a matter of completeness, I will review them when I find them.
Probably as a result of reviewing one such, I've been added to a mailing list for UNICRI, the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute. I've received occasional postings, although nothing of any particular interest. So far the postings have been few enough that I haven't bothered to find out what mailing list I've been put on, or how to get off it. Until this week. A couple of days ago, somebody sent out "Season's Greetings from UNICRI." Well, lots of the members of the list seemed to think that was a fine idea. I'm not saying that all members of UNICRI are totally ignorant about how email works. I'm just saying that a) some bright spark at UNICRI thought it would be a good idea for every member of the list to have the ability to post, without moderation, b) some bright spark at UNICRI thought it would be a good idea to set up a mailing list without an identifying list tag in the subject line, c) lots of people don't know the difference between replying to the list, or replying to sender, and d) lots of people are doing a "reply all." The resulting flurry of greetings, plus the angry demands that a) people stop replying all, and b) undefined "you"s have no right to send out spam and should stop it, have created a mailstorm the likes of which I've not seen in some years. With a clientele primarily in the law enforcement and legal fields, many of the messages are, of course, accompanied by the usual useless disclaimers such as: > "This e-mail and any attachments thereto may contain information which is > confidential and/or protected by intellectual property rights and are intended > for the sole use of the recipient(s) named above. Any use of the information > contained herein (including, but not limited to, total or partial > reproduction, > communication or distribution in any form) by persons other than the > designated > recipient(s) is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please > notify the sender either by telephone or by e-mail and delete the material > from > any computer. Thank you for your cooperation." Two lists seem to be mentioned in most messages, uni...@unicri.it and f3- conta...@unicri.it. I don't know which I'm on, but, from the fact that I get two or three copies of every message, I suspect I'm on both. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night! ====================== rsl...@vcn.bc.ca sl...@victoria.tc.ca rsl...@computercrime.org "If you do buy a computer, don't turn it on." - Richards' 2nd Law "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" 0-387-94663-2 "Viruses Revealed" 0-07-213090-3 "Software Forensics" 0-07-142804-6 "Dictionary of Information Security" Syngress 1-59749-115-2 ============= for back issues: [Base URL] site http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev/ CISSP refs: [Base URL]mnbksccd.htm PC Security: [Base URL]mnvrrvsc.htm Security Dict.: [Base URL]secgloss.htm Security Educ.: [Base URL]comseced.htm Book reviews: [Base URL]mnbk.htm [Base URL]review.htm Partial/recent: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/techbooks/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Slade http://www.infosecbc.org/links http://twitter.com/rslade http://blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/archives/author/p1/ _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
