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Two societies - one governed by The Little Red Book, the other by the Declaration of Independence.

Which one do you think will work?

What, A Modest Proposal but targeting the elderly?

Hahaha, that's by far the most humorous post I've read today.

You would think the moderators would realize that if a post starts with "I have a modest proposal ...", it's clearly meant to be satyrical. Apparently we need to get Swift's "A Modest Proposal" circulated to more people.

Your title threw me.

A modest proposal.

We were forced to read this "essay" in school, and will never, ever, ever forget it. Might be a good proposal today to reduce healthcare costs and cut taxes.

Slashdot is designed so that browsing at +5 means "show me the posts that have been seen by the largest number of readers with mod points."

When mod points get assigned, users are given six at a time (instead of the current five). Mode Points then may be used in one of two ways.

1. A "moderation" link, much like "meta-moderation". You're given 10 posts to look at; mod as many of them as you see fit, up to the number of mod points you have at the moment, or until they expire. If a post doesn't stands out as good or evil, you can mod it "normal" for free, and not see it again on your "moderation" page.

1. The current moderation interface... with a catch. If *you* pick the item you see while browsing as worth moderating, it takes three points. This diminishes the moderation importance of things seen because other people already thought it was interesting/insightful/funny/whatnot.

I'd also suggest increasing the "wretched" range from only -1 to go down as far as -3 in this event-- some of what's out there really ought be lower than -1. And of course there's the suggestion implied from my sig...

Great way to start of the week. Funny as hell obviously satirical post followed by the inevitable clueless replies thinking it's real followed by vain attempts to educate the clueless in the ways of sarcasm and irony. Ah the eternal dance of Slashdot poster and postee. BTW, this guy has some great ideas as well.

Okay, that's very reasonable. So is what Comcast is doing, in fact. But you didn't originally say that. You said "use your ISP's relay No Matter What!" and I tried to explain the reasons that using one's ISP server No Matter What can be a problem.

Just to reiterate: I have no problem with the view (using your numbers) "hey, okay, 4.3 million people don't need incoming SMTP, let's adopt a policy of "ask and ye shall receive"".

Mind you, I see you just complain about inadequate servers at the ISP. It's funny to see you tout Speakeasy as such a great ISP, but then say their mail servers have a 6 hour queue.

Actually, I've been very happy with Speakeasy's SMTP; I use it when I need to test something, and one of my consulting clients uses a business-class line and Speakeasy's outgoing mail server. They've never had a problem, and if they did, I would be on the phone to Speakeasy, saying "hey, guys, this is not normal, let's do something here, eh?"

But, as I mentioned in an earlier post, when $TELCO was the only game in town for high-speed Internet... not so very long ago, I regularly had said delays and lost mail (and I'm glad that you've never had mail lost, but I have, and it sets my teeth on edge).

That is, if you aren't just another mindless troll.

Eh, only sometimes in Nethack.

I assume you are because of the willy-nilly ports remark was just an over-the-top remark that blows everything well out of proportion here.

Ever read this? You should.

Personally, I would like to see you suggest a solution to the spam problem today. Don't have one? Didn't think so.

Client-side filtering. Tracing the spammers and killing them with large sharp objects. And yes, blocking port 25 unless requested otherwise.

But...

There is a world of difference between "block port 25 unless requested otherwise", and "everyone should use their ISP's mail server". Something I read elsewhere in the discussion about an ISP's policy was quite insightful: they open upon request and add your mail server to a list of ones to be checked for open relays. If the check catches you, then you have to have a damned good reason for them to open it again.

Once more to reiterate: I would have no problem with that, I have no problem with what Comcast is doing, and I have no issues with Speakeasy's SMTP service--and yet I still believe that people can have valid reasons for running their own mail server. Whatever the answer to spam is, it isn't to blindly state, "use your ISP's server no matter what", and that's what I was replying to in your original post.

Jeez, people, it's satire! This form of satire has been around for a long time. I love how someone can write a "punishments go up, never down" hyperbole and another can write "how can we compare human life to a dollar figure?" (Hint: It's done all the time) and it gets modded insightful. I hope the original posters were extending the joke, but somehow, I get the sense that they were posting in earnest.

If you don't see the humor in this article, I beg of you to abstain from watching Farrelly Brothers and Austin Powers movies and recommend you pick up some books and read some Jonathan Swift or Oscar Wilde, to name a couple. There's more to humor than dick and fart jokes, and if you understand that, I'm sure you'll live longer.

1. Don't anyone overreact and think he's seriously proposing that virus-authors be put to death, any more than John Swift wanted to eat babies. The article is just a conversation piece- by applying rational thought to some initial premises and arriving at an absurd conclusion, Sandburg has demonstrated that some of (or all) of those premises must be false. Garbage in, garbage out. The incorrect starting assumptions:
   1. Viruses/worms cause $50 billion in damage each year. In fact, they do much less, and even have beneficial effects (see below)
   2. The US inflicts capital punishment as a deterrent to crime. But they really do it for the refreshing feeling of vengenance. If they actually wanted to deter crime, then publically beating or maiming convicts (like in Saudi Arabia) would be not only more effective, but also more merciful.
   3. Criminal punishment has a rational basis. This is rarely if ever the case- it's mostly emotional/politcal propaganda.
2. As an intellectual exercise, Sandburg proposed an extreme punishment for virus writing and then examined the consequences. For a related mental exercise, suppose the punishment went towards the other extreme: writing a virus is a $10 fine and 8 hours of community service.
   
   What would be the consequence of the government refusing to punish virus-authors? It would amount to a privatization of software security. (And isn't privatization supposed to give us faster and more efficient results than government control?) Publishers like Microsoft would have no choice but to make security job #1, or be ruined in the marketplace. It'd be sink-or-swim... and those product-lines which survived would be hardened fortresses of supreme security.
   
   Reducing the punishment to virus-authors is equivalent to removing a government subsidy on sellers of insecure software- and cutting a subsidy always unleashes the free market to do it's optimizing work.
3. Virus/worm-writers are one subset of criminals who exploit insecure software. They're vandals or pranksters- they don't profit from their crimes, or work very hard to keep them secret. But there are frauds and gangsters who may also exploit those failures- and they'll try to do it without attracting much attention.
   
   Worm authors are like punk kids who break into corporate offices or bank vaults and kick over all the furniture before running away. Yes, they've caused some inconvenience in knocking stuff over, which can equate to lost chance for revenue, which is somewhat like damage. But they've also revealed a gaping security flaw in a way that the company can no longer deny and will thus fix before real thieves start to use it. Most of the "costs" attributed to worm-authors are actually spending to fix security holes that should've been done anyhow.
   
   Software is more secure today than it would be if nobody wrote worms and virues.
4. Sandburg says that virus-writers would be deterred by the prospect of the death penalty. Let's assume that's true... but can you think of some people who aren't afraid of execution? What about today's murderers? What about terrorists?
   
   If in 40 years Osama BinLaden Jr discovers a flaw in Microsoft(tm) WindowsGJ44(r), he might be able to cripple the world economy and kill thousands of people- and he's already accepted his own death, so the threat of one more execution won't stop him.
5. One of this same author's earlier columns was one of the most absurd things I've ever read. Look at it and laugh. Can you spot what's so wrong with this paragraph?
   1. $2 million a day. It's difficult for one to even imagine what it would be like to have that kind of pure income. But it won't be as difficult for your grandchildren. If U.S. per capi

Seriously, though, if there's anybody out there who thinks the ideas in this article are meant to be taken seriously, i'd say skip the Emerson and read Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal

One part of the problem is that the net's standards are controlled by bodies like Icann and the Web Consortium whose primary interest is technical stability and corporate interests.

[...]

Before we can change the net, and make it more able to reflect the real public interest, taking it under democratic control, we must remove it from the hands of these groups, whose time, like that of the elves in Middle-Earth, is over.

Note the excessively arrogant language, and the prevailing assumption that the author is already right, and the implication all that remains is to hammer out the implementation details of his perfectly reasonable proposal. This is pure flamebait. Thompson might as well have called this "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Internet from being a Burden to the Children and Despotic Governments of the World, and for making it Beneficial to Media Conglomorates."

I'm tempted to guess that he wrote it with the intention of raising the ire of slashdot readers, and getting the expected bazillion comments that every idiotic net-reform proposal gets.

Of course, there's always the chance that he really did think the proposal reasonable, and didn't intend to be trolling. If you believe that, check out his closing paragraphs:

Of course, one consequence of giving control of the net to governments is that some governments are bad, prying on their citizens, denying human rights and reneging on international obligations.

But not everywhere is the United States or China, and I would rather see the network in the hands of governments who can be lobbied, replaced and argued with, than leave it in the hands of the large corporations who develop the programs or standards bodies who are blind to people's real interests.

Lumping the United States with China on a list of countries that "[deny] human rights"? News flash, Thompson! Can you guess what would have happened to Dan Ellsberg if he'd stolen the Pentagon Papers from the British government and published them in the NY Times? He'd STILL be in jail under the Offical Secrets Act! (Of course, the real irony is that Thompson is complaing about the U.S.-controlled internet because it's too free.) Your flamebait counter should be redlined about now.

It's a troll. Nothing to see here, move along.

Does anyone here read The Onion, or any other satire? If you didn't get the joke, go read Swift's Modest Proposal.

Surely everyone is well aware of Swift's "Modest Propsal". If you haven't yet done so, give it a read before you mod flamebait.

"I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled ..."

"I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled ..."

Seems to me that you have read "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift.

Here is a link to the story for the uneducated

Hey loser- you may think it is funny to joke about shooting babies, but outside of your close-knit circle of pasty white, pear shaped, stinky nerd friends, that is not funny and it's rather offensive.

Oh my, yes. Can you imagine if everyone behaved that way? We might have famous writers who write books read by millions of school children doing something as tasteless as proposing the eating of babies under the claim that it's somehow "satire" and having "redeeming social value."

After all, it's not like baby killing hasn't had a long history of use in propaganda and literature.

Let's at least try to act like we are educated.

One of these days, Chairman Mao is going to call the President of the United States and tell him to surrender.

Chairmain Mao will explain that Chinese Corporations are the subcontactors to the subcontractors to the subcontractors of the Department of Defense Subcontractors and furthermore; China now makes ALL the key components for ALL of America's military weapons and machines.

Then he will let out an evil sounding Chineese Laugh! (The kind you hear in James Bond movies.)

How can the US maintain it's power if all it's strategic manufacturing capability is located offshore? Recently, we nearly lost the US Steel Industry and it's not over yet.

Sure we have rules and laws which on paper prevent this sort of problem, however as the FDA recently found out in the "Tainted Strawberry Harvest", these rules are not always followed. In this specific case the FDA had rules that all food used in school lunch programs must be grown in the United States. The subcontractors decided to ignore the rule and subcontract from Mexico and imported 1.7 million pounds of Hepatitis laced frozen Strawberries. The good news is that the fraudulent company was the lowest bidder and we saved tax dollars.

I won't even comment on the strategic technology which has been leaked to other countries by defense subcontractors.

Greed will destroy us!

Are you liable if you accidentally leave your car unlocked and it is used to commit a crime?

The car doesn't have to be actually used in a crime.

She gave me the specific example of how her next-door neighbor in the town of Fortune left her keys in her car parked on her driveway. The car was stolen by some joyriders and driven over a cliff. The neighbor was charged for leaving the keys in the car.

I leave it up to you to debate whether that was appropriate or not, but it makes a certain sense to me.

However, if your network is buttoned-down so no one can crack your hosts, but you provide free anonymous internet access to anyone who might happen to be in the neighborhood, I don't see how that could legitimately be considered negligence.

Instead, I see that as providing a valuable public service, for example to enable those working for legitimate political change to communicate among themselves without fear of reprisal.

That's not terrorism - at least not if what the folks are doing anonymously on the Internet is planning to win an election that would remove a despotic regime from office.

No, that's one of the basic principles upon which our great nation was founded.

Anonymous pamphleteering, for example, was one of the popular ways of promoting patriotic causes in the early days of the union.

It's been done elsewhere. I understand the British put a price on Jonathan Swift's head for writing A Modest Proposal.

My response to this was that this approach (the classical International Monetary Fund/World Bank interventions, as also seen throughout sub-equatorial Africa and much of South America) hadn't worked particularly well, citing Argentina as an example. I further posited that Argentina had been the golden child of the classical, Smithian, "roll-back-the-boundaries-of-the-state" economists found in Washington, as evidenced by the WB/IMF reports I linked, due largely to it's willingness to privatise the state and to open its borders to the free flow of both raw materials, goods and capital in exchange for the largesse of the WB/IMF (and yes, I do believe that conflating these two bodies is valid insofar as they have, for a long time, promulgated a unified viewpoint).

That the Argentinian economy and, as a result, the Argentinian polity is in tatters is, I assume, taken as read.

The analysis you proffered had no relevance to the above - it appeared to be merely a statement of the worldview so beloved of those people who put dogma above observation: specifically, if the translation of an idea into practice fails to succeed then the translators weren't sufficiently rigorous in their application.

[This is, of course, a handy position beloved of social, political and economic theorists: since properly scientific (and I use the word here merely as a convenient shorthand to mean the sort of evidence obtained through rationalist post-Aristolian experimental approaches commonly known as "the scientific method") evidence is, for various reasons, hard to obtain in these fields, the most ridiculous theories can be posited without any need to match them to observed results. cf Dean Swift's 'A Modest Proposal' :-) Absolutist positions have long been a favourite of a) religious zealots, b) neo-liberal fruitcakes and c) Leninist/Trotskyist fruitcakes. Frankly, they're all as ridiculous as each other.] Comments? Or this could sensibly be taken to email before the /. discussion-closure hits.

"Another trekkie showed up for OJ trial jury duty in her Starfleet uniform." Actually it was the Whitewater trial, Jackass! "waaaay too seriously to wrap the mantle of Political Correctness around themselves." ...Then again. The origin of the term "Politically Correct" is Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward. Face it "political correctness" is no sort of mantel that any intellectually competent person who respects the free interchange of ideas and information would ever have an ounce of respect for. How on Earth can you derride enthusiam for a myth system as brainwashing while at the same endorsing that purile form of mind control you malodorous offal!

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A Modest Proposal

My hate, whose lash just Heaven had long decreed,
Shall on a day make sin and folly bleed.

Dear Moderators,

For a version of the adequacy troll that remembers to be amusing as well as ironic, see if you can prize this URL out of Slashdot's cold dead fingers.

Tee-hee. You have been trolled you dumb bitches

Well then, you had best not read Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal. Boy will you be in for a shock...

Is he suggesting we eat Irish children for more bandwith???

(If you don't get the above, you have never read this.)

Hey Rob,

The leaset you could have done is titled your editorial "A Modest Proposal", in light of it being as silly as Swift's solution to poverty in Ireland.

For those of you who haven't read it, check out: A Modest Proposal For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being Aburden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public

I thought Jonathan Swift put it rather more elegantly back in 1729. In particular:

"I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout."

TomV

Two comments: "politically correct "what's the big deal?" posturing"??? I'm not sure I agree with you there. That attitude is most decidedly not politically correct, especially in light of recent events. Anyway, on to my main point.

I have no problem with CAP rating movies. They can do what ever they want as long as it doesn't affect me. I do have a problem with statements like: "*South Park* is another movie straight from the smoking pits of Hell." I think that's rude and gratuitous(I also think the review as a whole was gratuitus, and I can almost guarantee that page would be blocked by filtering software) I also think that this group is way, way out of line from what can be considered reasonable. The fact is CAP is an extreme fundamentalist Christian organization. Look at the review of A Midsummer Nights Dream. I mean, C'mon, it's Shakespeare (everything they mention as bad ("other stuff") is in the script.) we should be teaching Children Shakespeare, not sheilding them from it. And in the review of Doug's 1st movie (which got a good score, by the way), one of the bad points listed was adolescent underware...what?!

Okay, hopefully that clarifies my point...On to the next one. Don't worry, this one's a little shorter. I don't expect you'll ever see the movie (and don't think you should if you will be offended by it) but let me assure you, it IS a sharp, political film, with wonderful satire. I would say it's in the same vein (but not nearly as subtle) as Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal". (Where swift proposes helping the poor Irish out by slaughtering and eating their children.) (If you want to read it, go here) Shocking? Yes. Especially for the time (1729) But, that's the point. Stone and Parker are sharp fellows, if you go beyond the language. They have real and important messages in South Park.

I'm going to stop now (self imposed limits, don't you know), but I hope you can see my point of view and respect it.

Thanks
Casey