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http://news.aol.com/story/_a/new-york-considers-anti-noose-law/20071023092909990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

The theory has not been proven. No theory can ever be proven. It could be disproved tomorrow if we observed some phenomenon that was at odds with the theory.

Relativity has however made lots of predictions which have withstood experimental testing and therefore has allowed us to better understand the world around us. It has certainly not been proven, it's predictions have been shown to hold out under most experimental conditions (although it does have a few flaws - e.g. http://members.aol.com/carmam1534/Hollings.html seems to have a few comments).

The problem as i understand it with string theory is that it doesn't make that many predictions that we can currently test. So it is a hard theory to disprove. Also because it tells us about phenomenon that we cannot observe it doesn't help us understand the universe that much better.
By a strict definition then it is not a good theory because we can't test it, nore does it make useful predictions, however as I understand it is still a developing field so this is not too much of a concern. I do wonder though why so many people are interested in it...

You do know that singingfish still works despite it being AOLy, right? Click the "More" link in the upper right-hand corner, and one of the options is Audio. Or just go directly here.

If you stay still and face toward one of these storms roughly when the cloud/sky boundry is directly over the beach you will feel the wind do a 180deg flip as if the storm is enhaling warm air and exhaling cold with a slight pause in between.

From some of the research on such phenomena (cloud dynamics), a small thunderstorm consists of a number of cells in which air is either moving upwards or downwards. This explains this visually

I see you haven't heard of AOL's In2TV which just happens to let you watch and stream every episode of Babylon 5, along with some other classic shows (you can even download high quality episodes of some shows). Check it out at http://television.aol.com/in2tv. (This is probably the only good thing I've ever seen come out of AOL.)

(I wrote this up for the bookpeople mailing list....)

The local Borders store set up a display w/ one of these yesterday and I spent a while playing with it. Initial impressions:

  - nice size, _very_ thin
  - crisp, sharp greyscale display --- very readable
  - uses GPL software (there's a list of utilities in the user manual as well as notes on where to d/l the source for the software)
  - decent interface w/ sensible buttons and okay layout
  - supports pdf, txt, rtf, bmp, jpeg, gif and png files as well as the proprietar? BBeB books (.lrf and .lrx)
  - plays mp3s
  - switches from portrait to landscape and back quite easily
  - nice magnification mode

On the downside:

  - ~2--3 seconds to switch from one page to another sometimes one gets a distracting flashing
  - sometimes one gets ``ghosting'' if the new page has a lot of white space where text or image was before
  - the text H&J when displaying text files and .rtfs is _awful_, allowing widows and orphans and pages to end on a hyphen
  - the font used for displaying rtfs uses oblique, not italic for emphasis
  - sidebars of some of the text font characters, ``i'' most egregiously is not good resulting in poorly spaced text
  - urls in .pdfs which break at a line end become two distinct hyperlinks (this may be a problem in how the user guide .pdf was created)
  - while one can play an mp3 while reading, controlling the mp3 functions require going all the way back to the main menu --- would've been better to've over-ridden the number buttons for use as audio controls while an mp3 is playing.

One can't help but wonder if the status bar at the bottom can be turned off --- it displays a persistent page number --- perhaps people will format .pdfs especially for this and leave page numbers off?

More information on the reader at:

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=16184

Apparently this is an updated model and the text updating used to be even slower.

Borders didn't seem to have a mechanism for selling BBeB books in their stores though which is strange since they can be stored on memory cards (Sony proprietary sticks and SD memory cards).

William
(who found it inspiring enough to want to put some more effort into getting his Fujitsu Stylistic to boot off of a compact flash card in a CF-IDE adapter, since he uses that to read a _lot_ of ebooks and the hard drive noise is distracting (and to make them, see http://members.aol.com/willadams/portfolio.html which includes my version of _The Book of Tea_ which is in the TeX Showcase))

AOL just needs to promote itself as a "Web 2.0" company.

AOL Executive #1: Hey, we came out with AOL 2.0 in 1995, wayyyy before Web 2.0. Didn't you receive the CD? If not, do you want one? Or do you want another one? I'll slip a couple in the mail just in case you need one.

AOL Executive #2: Me too.

---

In all seriousness, AOL announced their Web 2.0 initiative in late 2006: http://dev.aol.com/node/86 . Although, their blog is almost a year out of date, despite the fact that he says "soon!"

I'll be writing another post about Web 2.0 and AOL's new openness soon!

Submitted by kevinfarnham1 on November 7, 2006 - 8:25pm.

and no mention of Nancy Luft?

Recall the mass media complaining about possible radioactive fallout over India, some years ago, from a Russian sputnik that was nuclear powered? Today's sputniks are far more powerful then the ones that caused that 1908 Tunguska Explosion because they are nuclear powered and the Russians are not using nuclear power to only spy, no way! Plus today's sputniks are fully computerized and do things much faster. The Special Sputnik Forces of the Russian Military tell me that they care very easily kill over 95% of all Americans, with their sputniks alone, no nukes, without any warning what so ever, in a matter of a few minutes, any time that they care to do so. But the Russians can only vaporize a limited number of cities and then they will cause a nuclear winter sort of event that will kill them, too. - And we couldn't have that now could we? Carrying a dire warning on the very first page that "USA to be annihilated!", this website, http://hometown.aol.com/nancyaluft/, is the home of dedicated net kook and certifiable paranoid Nancy Luft whom, with her genius level IQ (which would account for her excellent grasp of grammar and sentence construction) and her BA (whoo-hoo!) is trying desperately to warn us all of the terrible dangers of Russia's Special Sputnik Forces. Since time immemorial Russian sputniks (which, she tells us early in the piece, means "travelling companion") armed with gamma rays and ray guns have been causing earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, Presidential assassinations, space shuttle disasters and all sorts of plagues and pestilences. They've been at it for centuries, even before the invention of spaceflight and, heck, even before there was a Russia! The Tunguska impact in 1908 for example wasn't a meteor, it was caused by Russian sputniks! MS, cancer, heart attacks, crop circles and every air crash ever have all been carved out by an orbiting army of Russian killer satellites shooting everything that moves with an array of invisible ray beams. They were also responsible for Nostradamus making his predictions, Jesus walking on water, Edgar Cayce healing people by touch alone and Abe Lincoln winning the Civil War. Oh, and they also caused Mt St Helens to explode and shot down the space shuttle Challenger, which she tried to tell people about but they wouldn't listen. And how does Nancy know these things? The Russians are transmitting their thoughts to her by microwave. She's tried writing to various Presidents about all this but, strangely, they just don't take any notice.

From microsofts own webiste.
List of know applications that service pack 2 broke
Untest updates are always bad for business.

OL Toolbar 1.13.2 AOL 32-bit and 64-bit (NX) http://www.aol.com/ The Information Bar blocks access to the tool's edit boxes.
PhotoShop CS 8.0 Adobe 64-bit (NX) http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/main.html Program installs, but will not start.
BlackICE 3.6 crj Internet Security Systems 64-bit (NX) http://www.iss.net/ When you use this program, you may receive a Stop error that causes the program to quit.
BootSkin All Stardock 32-bit and 64-bit (NX) http://www.stardock.com/ When you restart your computer during the Windows XP SP2 Setup program, a Stop error occurs. For more information, see the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;%5Bln%5D;873159.
Command Antivirus 4.9 Authentium 32-bit and 64-bit (NX) http://www.authentium.com/ This program does not start.
Encyclopedia Britannica 2000 Deluxe 1 Encyclopedia Britannica 32-bit and 64-bit (NX) http://www.britannica.com/ Java rendering does not function after you install this program.
eTrust EZ Armor 1 Computer Associates 64-bit (NX) http://www.ca.com/ The EZ Firewall part of this program generates a Stop error during installation.
Freedom Force 1 Electronic Arts 32-bit and 64-bit (NX) http://www.ea.com/ When you start the program, a message appears that points you to the following EA Web site: http://techsupport.ea.com./
Kaspersky Anti-Virus (German) 4.5 and 5.0 Kaspersky Labs 64-bit (NX) http://www.kaspersky.com/ Real-Time scanning does not work in version 4.5 or 5.0. The vendor's Web site has available product updates that are designed to address this issue.
Live Motion 1 Adobe 32-bit and 64-bit (NX) http://www.adobe.com/ This program displays various errors that prevent typical operation.
MapSend DirectRoute 1.0 Magellan 32-bit and 64-bit (NX) http://www.magellangps.com/ When you start the program, a message appears that points you to the following Web site: http://www.magellangps.com/en/support.
MPEGcraft DVD All Canopus 32-bit and 64-bit (NX) When you try to save an MPEG file, you receive a "Failed to Edit" error, and the file cannot be saved.
NBA LIVE 2000 1 Electronic Arts 32-bit and 64-bit (NX) http://www.ea.com/ This program does not start in certain systems.
NOD32 for Microsoft Windows 2.000.11 Eset 64-bit (NX) http://www.eset.com/ When this program is started on an AMD64-based computer, all network connectivity is lost. To resolve this issue, upgrade to NOD32 version 2.12.2 or higher.
Norman Personal Firewall 1.4 Norman 32-bit and 64-bit (NX) http://www.norman.com/ Norman Personal Firewall Assistant will not start.
Norman Personal Firewall 1.4 Norman 64-bit (NX) After this program installs and restarts, the desktop does not load correctly
Norton AntiVirus 2003 Symantec 32-bit and 64-bit (NX) http://www.symantec.com/ At system startup, Scheduled Tasks in Norton AntiVir

The focus in court was not on the end user - AOL and CompuServe were filing the lawsuit, not their users. The focus was on whether the data in the headers - including the SMTP HELO header, which is buried in down in the headers - were fooling AOL's servers.

In fact, there was another angle besides forgery - the Computer Fraud and Abuse act. I can't remember if that's a Virginia law or a federal law, but the argument (which IIRC was successful) was that if a spammer sent "HELO aol.com" to work around filters that were blocking his real domain, "iamaspammer.com", he was gaining access to the mail server by providing fraudulent information.

Similarly, if I'm a Comcast subscriber, Comcast is sending data that claims to originate from me in order to gain access to the torrent provider's computer that they would not otherwise have - in this case, the access to say "I'm hanging up".

I don't think that's much different than header-forging. But check http://legal.web.aol.com/ if you want to delve into the arguments - my memory's fuzzy.

Jay

Research into making more efficient and quieter propellers was conducted from the mid-70s to the mid-80s, because of the greater fuel efficiency of propellor-driven aircraft in light of the Arab oil embargo. This research led to the development of the 'propfan', a turboprop engine with wider, swept-back propeller blades. The Advanced Turboprop Project at NASA's Lewis Research Center's developed engine and propeller designs that would spark a resurgence of the turboprop era, but socio-economic factors -- primarily driven by a reduction in fuel costs, reducing the perception of any need for immediate and radical fuel conservation -- kept the new designs from making more than a peripheral entry to the aviation market. Many modern turboprop aircraft use propellers incorporating advances developed by the ATP, and the research contributed to the development of the high-bypass turbofan jet engines used in most modern airliners, but there was no significant return to the use of turboprop aircraft in commercial aviation. Research has continued, with some engine designs becoming more exotic, as in this image or this one, but commercial applications of the research continue to use ducted fan designs, such as the newest UHB (ultra-high bypass) turbofan designs. The designs produced by this research, however, bear sufficient similarities to the screw design in the satellite photo that it is clear that the same overall design considerations apply, subject to the differences in density, viscosity, and compressibility of the driving medium in each design case.

I'm working on a documentary based upon Michael Moore's strategy of confrontation to reduce these sometimes complex EU-related arguments into something more palatable to the audience. If this can be pulled off well enough to bring the general public up to speed, then within this context, the actions and statements of mainstream advocates like ScienceApologist and Tim Thompson will take on a totally different meaning. It is possible to fight pseudo-skepticism, but it requires a very specific response involving interviews, case studies, philosophy of science and a healthy dose of just plain common sense. It may take several hours to fully pull it off, but it won't require massive amounts of computer graphics to do it.

You may also appreciate this ...

http://members.aol.com/ddrasin/zen.html

I find this to be quite useful to understanding the Slashdot forum.

I used to think this. As I said in another comment, the reason there is so much starvation in, say, Africa has to do more with the legacy of European colonization destroying a hunter/gatherer and substance agriculture lifestyles (including by head taxers -- pay the tax or they'll kill or enslave you basically, and the only way to get money to pay the tax is to work all year on some European plantation).

Also, food aid via imported food destroys indigenous agricultural systems economically -- an Ethiopian example:
    "Does International Food Aid Harm the Poor?"
    http://www.nber.org/digest/mar05/w11048.html
"To carry out their study, Levinsohn and McMillan merge data from two nationally representative surveys and create a data set of 8,212 urban and 8,308 rural Ethiopian households. ... Levinsohn and McMillan estimate that, in the absence of food aid, the price of wheat in Ethiopia would be $295 per metric ton, compared to an actual price of $193 per metric ton in 1999. On average, the authors conclude, "the loss in consumer surplus works out to roughly 37 US dollars per household per year for households that consume wheat and the gain in producer surplus works out to roughly 157 US dollars per household per year for households that sell wheat." In a nation such as Ethiopia, where the poverty line is about $132 per year, the impact is therefore substantial."

You're right through that changes in population technology have big effects -- including driving people to change their lifestyles to continue to produce enough food for everyone. I hope that as we continue to invent cheaper solar panels and cheaper and more versatile 3D printers that we'll be able to eliminate a lot of "work"
    http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolitio n.html
and have a lifestyle which uses technology but feels a lot more like the best of hunter/gatherer society. See the ending of this story called "Manna":
    http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Also, we could support trillions of people in space habitats built out of asteroidal ore and powered by sunlight.
    http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/settle.htm

Talking about this case? Know if they got it back?

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/07/14/11838 33843064.html?from=top5 and a video

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/id/1439921521

OR it was because his mobile phone bills were too high, and I know I can relate to that.

That is an utterly preposterous idea. Not even the most depraved ISP would resort to that.

Get your free 500 HOURS OF INTERNET today!

In Pennsylvania, it sounds like it might fall under Theft of, or Diversion of Services.

It was the plot of an episode of Batman: The Animated Series:

Nothing to Fear

Jeffrey Combs as the voice of the Scarecrow.

Nothing to Fear

Jeffrey Combs as the voice of the Scarecrow.

The most compelling one to me is the black triangle incident with the Belgian Air Force, where the government has come right out and said that they have no terrestrial explanation for what all of their radar installations and two F16s witnessed, and that really leaves very few alternative explanations.

But you can play Pong!

It wouldn't have surprised me if they used the Corporate Bullshit Generator to come up with this crazy slogan!

AOL gives everyone that signs up for an IM account 100MB of web space, but the interesting thing is it's ssh accessible. That means that you can mount it with sshfs or sftp, making it a handy place to keep (encrypted) data that you access from multiple machines. For example,

sshfs userid@members.aol.com: /some/directory

The above (after responding to the password prompt) makes the 100MB available in your local "/some/directory/". The data is also web accessible at:

http://members.aol.com/userid/

I find the space, even though small, very handy for storing small amounts of useful information. Using encfs on the sshfs mounted space allows remote access to things like server status/logs in a secure fashion, even when the machine is not directly SSH accessible.

Yes really. Thanks for illustrating my point.

Yes really. Thanks for illustrating my point.

"Tree shakers" have been used since the 1960s. A big net in two section is clamped around the tree, a big arm reaches out and grabs the tree trunk, and a vibrator shakes the tree while the fruit falls off. Some early versions damaged trees, but that was fixed. (Linear shaking good, orbital shaking bad.)

Tomato harvesting was partly mechanized back in the 1960s. A tougher tomato plus appropriate machinery did the job. This was controversial at the time. Today, it's established technology. Check out the Pik-Rite 190 Tomato Harvester. 30 tons of tomatoes an hour. And that's the small model. This still doesn't work all that well for the softer varieties of tomatoes intended for sale whole, but Roma and cherry tomatoes are routinely picked by machine now.

Picking machines are getting smarter. The newer ones have cameras, computers, and air jets to sort produce by size and color.

I got a couple hundred bouncebacks yesterday, despite having an SPF record. They don't seem to help much.

There are quite a few domains that have SPF records, like AOL, but having a record, and bit bucketing mail that SPF says is forged, are two very different things. Very, very few domains do the latter. It would be nice if more did. Does AOL? Well...
I'm still getting hammered.

One spam I received yesterday suggests:

A spammer tried to send spam
From: @elvey.com
To:@aol.com

AOL's response was:
554-: (ISP:B2) http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554ispb2.htm l
554 TRANSACTION FAILED

The spam was transmitted from/via mail2.infoquesthosting.net [65.61.1.49], a Barracuda Spam Firewall 3, which is broken by design.
You thought Barracuda was helping FIX email? They're making the problems worse! But let's keep on topic...

So, the Barracuda takes the spam and sends it to @elvey.com, the innocent victim forged in the From:, despite the elvey.com SPF record.

This is typical. Like I said, a couple hundred bounces yesterday...

If the server of a so-called leader in the antispam arena is sending me spam despite appropriate SPF records, what does that say?

Several ISPs use SPF, for example, AOL does.
http://www.postmaster.aol.com/spf/

Several ISPs don't.. For example, yahoo is busy pushing the competing standard of domainkeys.

Many open source spam scanners use it, ie: SpamAssassin.

However, even if not everyone supports SPF, at least some folks do, and that means if and when your domain does get forged by a spammer, there will be fewer folks receiving it, fewer mailservers accepting it and fewer bounces/complaints heading your way.

And of course, SPF is more-or-less cost free.. All you have to do is add a TXT record to your DNS, which probably won't cost you anything unless your DNS is hosted on some oddly billed 3rd party service.

I'd say the ROI on it is pretty good.

Many folks will immediately bash SPF as a poor spam control technology. Well, they're right, but that's not the point, and it's not what SPF is for, and it's not what your trying to get out of SPF.

SPF isn't a "cure-all" for spam that some folks think it is and others bash it for not being, but SPF IS a reasonable start at controlling forgery, and it's quite effective at it.

It's usually called "space settlement" http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/settle.htm

The numbers work for colonizing HEO, the asteroid belt, or a slow trip to mars and other planets.
That is, we could do it with current technology and billions of dollars.

-- Should you believe authority without question?

Vat-grown, or printed, meat products are produced using the same basic techniques as other forms of printed tissue culture. Tissue engineering of this type was first developed for medical use in the production of autologous tissue for organ replacement. However this sort of tissue culture was soon found to be useful for the direct production of meat for food on spacecraft and habitats in deep space. See bioforgery.

To achieve the goal of meat production, muscle and other flesh cells are grown on a specially constructed biopolymer scaffold, which replicates the natural extracellular matrix found in living animals. This scaffold is generally printed using a rapid 3d printer device, although several other related techniques such as foaming and self-assembly are also used. Cultured cells are then implanted into the scaffolding, and these cells are induced to bind together into muscle-like or vascular tissue. Once the meat block, known as `slab', is established, the tissue is supplied with nutrients and allowed to grow by as much as 400% by volume before harvesting. To ensure the slab has a healthy texture it is stimulated into regular contractions, simulating exercise; the slab is attached at each end to strain gauges to measure the force of contraction. Each slab is connected to a generous supply of nutrient fluid often closely resembling blood.

Matter compilers in meat factories to produce foods. So, this looks like an interesting area of thought to explore further. Starting with cell culture techniques would be the smart thing to do, then confirming that we can identify particularly nutritious cells, and then working on some tissue growth techniques. Maybe this will start with burn victims?

Artificial cells, tissues, organs compilation,
Background notes on tissue engineering,
Engineering human tissue (paper),
An odd government website,
Obligatory Wikipedia article linkage,
Organ printing,
This source is claiming lab-grown meat in five years,
Fetal farming (what?),
New-Harvest.org for bringing cultivated meat closer to reality,

Depends on the statute. The way the one in Pennsylvania is worded (it came up in a /. article a day or two ago), no actual recording has to be made - "interception" is sufficient to run afoul of the law.

... and they are complete utter idiots/wankers. This does not even surprise me at all coming from them. While i am sure there exists some people with clue somewhere, someplace within the thing, most of the people manning the phones are ( as per past experience, numerous comments and dealing of associates, other occasions where i've kibbitzed with people having had to deal with them) :

- Insuficciently trained to deal with admins ( where a postmaster/mail line should)
- Don't have enough knowledge about how email works oin the network
- Limited network training
- No power to do shit all to REALLY help you
- Extremely bullshitty. they don't know what they're talking about, they'll just go with whatever.

This is just like their bullshit "mail report cards" they started sending back in the days. It's condescending, badly implemented ( and hence) mostly useless. ( included original rant on that lower behind supersnip). I think the whole " pay for delivery" is a dangerous slope to get onto for networked mail. At least the Sender Policy Framework makes more sense.

Shit man, it's times like these I don't miss working abuse@some.isp

==(supersnip)==

---(start idiotic message from AOL)---
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 09:04:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: postmaster@aol.com
Subject: AOL email concerns for isp-where-i-work-abuse.net
To: abuse@isp-where-i-work-abuse.net
X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.39

Dear isp-where-i-work-abuse.net,
You are receiving this message via our automated "Report Card" process (which helps analyze AOL's Internet inbound mail) because our available data indicate that isp-where-i-work-abuse has risen above the acceptable threshold for complaints:

Total number of AOL member complaints: 186

AOL takes proactive steps to contact owners of mail servers whose e-mail transmissions are impairing the functioning of AOL's proprietary e-mail system, or causing significant levels of AOL customer complaints.

AOL requests that you take immediate steps to resolve the issues identified in this AOL Report Card. In the absence of a satisfactory resolution, AOL reserves the right to take measures to protect its email network and its member goodwill from any possible damage. These measures may include declining to accept e-mail transmissions from isp-where-i-work-abuse.net through AOL's proprietary e-mail network.

AOL strives to provide the best online experience possible for our members, and we pride ourselves on being intensely focused on consumers and their needs. Email is a core feature of the AOL service, and the proper functioning of AOL's e-mail system is vital to our members' goodwill.

Please review AOL's e-mail policies and guidelines, as well as other technical details concerning e-mail on the AOL network, at http://postmaster.info.aol.com/
--(end message)--

Ooohhh, AOL's proprietary e-mail network. No information that is gonna be any use in determining WHY people are complaining at all. I guess this should not be a surprise, considering this crap is coming in from AOL! So i do the next available thing , i go to the website. Result : No information that is gonna be any use in determining WHY people are complaining at all. But there's a phone number.

Result of calling 1-888-212-5537:
*dials phone*
"The holding time for the next available consultant will be more than ten minutes." ...( silence )
"Thank you for calling America online ..."
*spits water all over desk, workdesk and papers*
(musak)
(an hour later)
"Hello, this is postmaster helpdesk, can i help you?" ...And here i am explaining to the bloke on the phone the situation, namely that we are getting "Report cards" without any kind of information as to why people are complaining, with no headers or anything at all to help us.
REP:"oh, that's because you don't currently have a feedback loop with us."
ME : "huh? but we received your repor

The statute reads, in part:

18 Pennsylvania Statutes Sec. 5703. Except as otherwise provided in this chapter, a person is guilty of a felony of the third degree if he:
      1. intentionally intercepts, endeavors to intercept, or procures any other person to intercept or endeavor to intercept any wire, electronic or oral communication;

There are exceptions listed in the next section, only one of which applies to a private citizen who violates Section 5703:

Sec. 5704. It shall not be unlawful under this chapter and no prior court approval shall be required for:
      4. A person, to intercept a wire, electronic or oral communication, where all parties to the communication have given prior consent to such interception.

Did the officer give consent to his own interception? Sure. But the statute indicates "such interception", where the interception is that of a person of [...] oral communication, and the officer obviously didn't consent to the other fellow's videotaping.

Sadly, Pennsylvania is several years behind the times and doesn't have its full statutes available online, including criminal law. However, someone else has made most of it available, including the relevant section.

While your argument falls flat (it was a weak attempt to split hairs to start with), there may be some Constitutional issues regarding press freedom involved. Guess we'll see how it goes in court, assuming the prosecutor decides to continue with the case or the officer decides to file a civil claim ($1000 plus court/legal costs minimum if successful).

Well, you can read it for yourself (sec 5703). It sure reads like the act of making the recording is the illegal act. But the big-box places don't record sound, so they're OK. And, I guess you'd be OK, too, if you disabled the audio capability.

there really isn't any filtering that can be done on reverse DNS without MASSIVE false-positives.

Anything below res.rr.com or adsl.tpnet.pl [east|dsl-w|fios].verizon.net (for example) are residential dynamic IP allocations.

Many, many valid businesses are running mailservers without rDNS or with generic rDNS based on their IP number.

And they can expect to have mail rejected until they find an admin who has enough of a clue to comply with widely praticed receiver policies.

Also, manu valid servers send bogus names in their EHLO/HELO, including domain names ending in .local or servernames not present in external DNS.

Which is wrong according to RFC2821:

The domain name given in the EHLO command MUST BE either a primary
host name (a domain name that resolves to an A RR) or, if the host
has no name, an address literal as described in section 4.1.1.1.

Actually being Goodmail requires *fewer* complaints than even regular white listing. The point of Goodmail is NOT that the ISP will not blacklist you regardless of how many complaints you get -- exactly the opposite. If you get a lot of complaints you won't even qualify for CertifiedEmail: http://www.postmaster.aol.com/whitelist/certifiede mail.html : How is eligibility determined for participation in the CertifiedEmail Program? The CertifiedEmail program is open to qualified, accredited senders with a history of good sending behavior. These senders will be further accredited to make sure the sender's programs conform to CertifiedEmail acceptable use policies. Senders accepted into the Certified Email Program will maintain status in the program by keeping complaint rates below threshold across recipient mailbox providers. Violation of complaint thresholds will result in the sender being placed on probation or excluded from the CertifiedEmail Program.

The Boston Bruins did something like that back in 1979 at Madison Square Garden. A Rangers fan reached over the glass and stole Stan Jonathan's stick and started hitting him with it. Needless to say the Bruins took umbrage at this and hilarity ensued. The video is in Flash, sorry about that but it's not my site.

The idiots in charge want to add a Las Vegas NHL team.

Vegas and pro hockey. Yeah, there's a winning combination. Apparently a big reason for lack of any pro sports teams is a conflict of interest with sports gambling, obviously allowed in Vegas. The last thing the NHL needs to get itself into is a scandal... OTOH, these days, what better way to make people take an organization seriously...