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Are you this guy? The Start64 malware site shows the following:

Company: Panisz Peter

Address: Kossuth Lajos u. 51 Dunabogdany 2023 HU

Phone: +36.203367173

Fax: +36.203367173

But I think he's living at his mother Jan Kowalski's basement at:

Alexander Peter Kowalski

903 East Division Street

Syracuse, N.Y. 13208

Apartment #1, Lower Level

At least, that's where he wants users of his hostfile manager to send him money.

Company: Panisz Peter

Address: Kossuth Lajos u. 51 Dunabogdany 2023 HU

Phone: +36.203367173

Fax: +36.203367173

But I think he's living at his mother Jan Kowalski's basement at:

Alexander Peter Kowalski

903 East Division Street

Syracuse, N.Y. 13208

Apartment #1, Lower Level

At least, that's where he wants users of his hostfile manager to send him money.

Company: Panisz Peter

Address: Kossuth Lajos u. 51 Dunabogdany 2023 HU

Phone: +36.203367173

Fax: +36.203367173

But I think he's living at his mother Jan Kowalski's basement at:

Alexander Peter Kowalski

903 East Division Street

Syracuse, N.Y. 13208

Apartment #1, Lower Level

At least, that's where he wants users of his hostfile manager to send him money.

Company: Panisz Peter

Address: Kossuth Lajos u. 51 Dunabogdany 2023 HU

Phone: +36.203367173

Fax: +36.203367173

But I think he's living at his mother Jan Kowalski's basement at:

Alexander Peter Kowalski

903 East Division Street

Syracuse, N.Y. 13208

Apartment #1, Lower Level

At least, that's where he wants users of his hostfile manager to send him money.

Company: Panisz Peter

Address: Kossuth Lajos u. 51 Dunabogdany 2023 HU

Phone: +36.203367173

Fax: +36.203367173

But I think he's living at his mother Jan Kowalski's basement at:

Alexander Peter Kowalski

903 East Division Street

Syracuse, N.Y. 13208

Apartment #1, Lower Level

At least, that's where he wants users of his hostfile manager to send him money.

Company: Panisz Peter

Address: Kossuth Lajos u. 51 Dunabogdany 2023 HU

Phone: +36.203367173

Fax: +36.203367173

But I think he's living at his mother Jan Kowalski's basement at:

Alexander Peter Kowalski

903 East Division Street

Syracuse, N.Y. 13208

Apartment #1, Lower Level

At least, that's where he wants users of his hostfile manager to send him money.

Company: Panisz Peter

Address: Kossuth Lajos u. 51 Dunabogdany 2023 HU

Phone: +36.203367173

Fax: +36.203367173

But I think he's living at his mother Jan Kowalski's basement at:

Alexander Peter Kowalski

903 East Division Street

Syracuse, N.Y. 13208

Apartment #1, Lower Level

At least, that's where he wants users of his hostfile manager to send him money.

Company: Panisz Peter

Address: Kossuth Lajos u. 51 Dunabogdany 2023 HU

Phone: +36.203367173

Fax: +36.203367173

But I think he's living at his mother Jan Kowalski's basement at:

Alexander Peter Kowalski

903 East Division Street

Syracuse, N.Y. 13208

Apartment #1, Lower Level

At least, that's where he wants users of his hostfile manager to send him money.

Company: Panisz Peter

Address: Kossuth Lajos u. 51 Dunabogdany 2023 HU

Phone: +36.203367173

Fax: +36.203367173

But I think he's living at his mother Jan Kowalski's basement at:

Alexander Peter Kowalski

903 East Division Street

Syracuse, N.Y. 13208

Apartment #1, Lower Level

At least, that's where he wants users of his hostfile manager to send him money.

Company: Panisz Peter

Address: Kossuth Lajos u. 51 Dunabogdany 2023 HU

Phone: +36.203367173

Fax: +36.203367173

But I think he's living at his mother Jan Kowalski's basement at:

Alexander Peter Kowalski

903 East Division Street

Syracuse, N.Y. 13208

Apartment #1, Lower Level

At least, that's where he wants users of his hostfile manager to send him money.

Company: Panisz Peter

Address: Kossuth Lajos u. 51 Dunabogdany 2023 HU

Phone: +36.203367173

Fax: +36.203367173

But I think he's living at his mother Jan Kowalski's basement at:

Alexander Peter Kowalski

903 East Division Street

Syracuse, N.Y. 13208

Apartment #1, Lower Level

At least, that's where he wants users of his hostfile manager to send him money.

Company: Panisz Peter

Address: Kossuth Lajos u. 51 Dunabogdany 2023 HU

Phone: +36.203367173

Fax: +36.203367173

But I think he's living at his mother Jan Kowalski's basement at:

Alexander Peter Kowalski

903 East Division Street

Syracuse, N.Y. 13208

Apartment #1, Lower Level

At least, that's where he wants users of his hostfile manager to send him money.

Company: Panisz Peter

Address: Kossuth Lajos u. 51 Dunabogdany 2023 HU

Phone: +36.203367173

Fax: +36.203367173

But I think he's living at his mother Jan Kowalski's basement at:

Alexander Peter Kowalski

903 East Division Street

Syracuse, N.Y. 13208

Apartment #1, Lower Level

At least, that's where he wants users of his hostfile manager to send him money.

Company: Panisz Peter

Address: Kossuth Lajos u. 51 Dunabogdany 2023 HU

Phone: +36.203367173

Fax: +36.203367173

But I think he's living at his mother Jan Kowalski's basement at:

Alexander Peter Kowalski

903 East Division Street

Syracuse, N.Y. 13208

Apartment #1, Lower Level

here.

Oopsie, I forgot to mention, you need a live plus account to be able to change settings at https://account.live.com/ManageSSL . But still visiting https://www.hotmail.com/ should still work for non-paying users. Here is a source if you are interested... http://lifehacker.com/5684326/hotmail-adds-always+on-secure-https-connection-option

It does work for me (with out using EFF's addon). Do try visiting https://account.live.com/ManageSSL , where you can set this up. Not sure why simply visiting https://www.hotmail.com/ does not work for you.

And I do understand what you looking for is https even beyond logon. The one I had mentioned (in this post and the prev post) is exactly for this purpose.

> https://www.hotmail.com/

Hmm...I get a warning thrown up by the SSLPasswdWarning FF plugin (actually on the hotmail-redirected login.live.com):

Warning!!!
The password field you have selected will transmit your information over an unencrypted and insecure connection.
The form submits to:
UNKNOWN (or handled in Javascript)

Anybody verified, that this actually gets handled via SSL (in JS or whatever)?

Hotmail has had HTTPS support for a while now. All you have to do is visit https://www.hotmail.com/ and as soon as it logs on click on always https (hotmails prompts you for it).

And most websites I use support https (if not they lose the tinfoil market)

Mr. Alexander Peter Kowalski
903 East Division Street
Syracuse, N.Y. 13208

Mr. Clone is not the one stalking you, AlecStaar.

Mr. Alexander Peter Kowalski
903 East Division Street
Syracuse, N.Y. 13208

We are watching you, AlecStaar.

Dear JeremyP,

My name is Bjorn Swedishguy and I am writing to inform you that the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to The Internet has so far gone unclaimed. As a user of The Internet I believe you can help me release the funds that constitute the prize. We will divide the funds 50/50.

Please send me your bank account details to enable the transfer of funds out of^H^H^H^H^H^Hinto your account.

Bjorn Swedishguy - Nobel Prize Administrator
mailto:scammer67548@hotmail.com

MSN/Hotmail's postmaster guidelines don't seem to mention DomainKeys, but do mention SPF:

http://postmaster.hotmail.com/Guidelines.aspx

"4. Authenticate your outbound e-mail: Publish Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records"

Here is a link which shows Microsoft doesn't use BSD for mail - hotmail.com

hotmail.com

I hate spam just as much as anyone else, but they should have the freedom to send me it, since I am not physically harmed.

Sorry, but you don't understand the spam problem. Spammers lie, cheat, and steal. They know we don't want to see their crap, and they continuously find new tricks to get us to see it anyway, despite our best efforts not to. The simple act of publishing a link to VeNoM0619@hotmail.com is going to get you added to a ton of mailing lists automatically, and the spammers will swear you opted in.

The harm isn't physical, but it is not insignificant; I run a very small little e-mail server out of my house which has to block a spam attempt every 45 seconds on average, 24 hours a day. This is a server hosting one domain, which is only used for my friends and family. Most of the machine's RAM is dedicated to running spam-fighting software. Imagine the cost when you scale that up.

If you've only checked your e-mail twice in the last six months, then of course e-mail spam isn't a problem for you, because you don't really use e-mail. Some of us actually use it. A lot. For business communication. We depend on it. Just because you don't, doesn't mean there isn't a problem.

Microsoft already provide an on-line email client for free, and have done for over 10 years now. You can try it out at http://www.hotmail.com/

Tell your friend to stop publishing SPF records

It's possible that his friend sends emails to people other than him - he may have set up SPF so that his mail DOES get delivered to those people.

For example, Hotmail (which I'm assured that some people still use!) recommends SPF use:

http://postmaster.hotmail.com/Guidelines.aspx

(although to say that mail delivery to Hotmail is a bit unreliable is a bit like saying that Saddam Hussein wasn't a nice bloke)

I am not 100% positive but I'm pretty sure that they were doing this even before the advent of GMail. I recall, I'm thinking 2002 as the era though it may have been earlier, that one was forced to click "load images" from untrusted senders and even from people in your address book (which was a much discussed bug in the newsgroups) sometimes. I realize that it is not appropriate to point to good choices made by Microsoft and Microsoft owns Hotmail but, well, yeah... They even had a limited trial of "AJAX" near that time for the MSN9 (Australian) users where they had things refresh live such as email counts and news etc... (I also seem to recall someone found a bug and published an exploit for an xSS vulnerability??? That is distant thinking/memory and might not have been them, at the time people were still dealing with the Slammer variations and so I was busy with more important tasks.)

Actually, if one can time the Slammer year and a half they could narrow it down because my perception of time is fatally flawed due to being way too overworked and spending the limited free time with my buddy beer.

As I recall, now we're getting into some REALLY fuzzy memories, hotmail's links in emails still even opened in a framed window at the time. It has been a LOT of years since then, at least in my memory, but clicking links was prohibited and we had to use a copy/paste to open them. We could right click and select to copy the link and then paste it into our address bar. The link would look something like:

http://s129.hotmail.com/foo/domain.com/trailinginformation.html

But, as I said, it has been a LOT of years but they actually did this fairly early on and have since worked on it. As a straight webmail client they're not too bad honestly. With Live Mail they kind of suck more than they sucked with Outlook Express as an option for your Hotmail accounts.

AS for the address you can get to Hotmail by typing http://www.hotmail.com/ or http://mail.live.com/.

I don't even have to do that. I just click that mail button on MSN Live Messenger and it opens directly to my inbox. I can also select recipient from Messenger, click send email and it opens to new email page. When I come to think of it I've never typed those addresses by hand in my life :)

Windows Live Mail has a very clean interface. After you log in it shows you the news highlights for the day and how much of you 5GB of storage that you are using. Once you click on Inbox the only ad that you see, note I said ad, is the banner ad at the top of the page. Unlike Gmail where there are ads down the side and the top of my messages. AS for the address you can get to Hotmail by typing http://www.hotmail.com/ or http://mail.live.com/. While it may redirect to http://by108w.bay108.mail.live.com/mail/mail.aspx you certainly do not need to type that whole address.

As for logging in and having to use the @hotmail.com, that allows them to have more addresses than Google could ever hope to. They can use addresses for any of their sites: @msn.com, @uk.msn.com or any other site.

I would have to say that Windows Live Mail currently kicks the crap out of Gmail.

Why not have different URLs for the different domains. http://hotmail.com/ for hotmail users, http://mail.msn.com/ for msn.com users and so on and so forth. Why in the fuck would you use hotmail for 6 different domans' users?

LK

Go to Hotmail. You will see that Hotmail now requires you to login with Windows Live ID. Now, take a look at this page. It's a login page. They want you to enter your ID and your password. This is what gives you access to all the different services that are currently integrated with Windows Live ID, and will be integrated in the future. It's basically your "master password". Thing I'm trying to stress here: you shouldn't just give this out to anyone who asks. Ok, you get the idea.

So, first check you should do whenever you're logging into a page is what? That's right, check the url. "http://login.live.com/login.srf?wa=wsignin1.0&rps nv=10&c...." etc. Great, login.live.com, that's what I expect. Cool. Ok, so what's the second thing I should check? Anyone? Come on, it's web password security 101 here people. What do I need to check before I enter a login/password on a web site? That's right.. I need to check I'm on an SSL secured page. The url should start with what? https right? And I should look for the little lock in my browser window.. and if I'm feeling especially paranoid I should check the security certificate to see whether or not it is valid, not expired, and for the site that I am expecting.

This page has none of those things. Well done Microsoft.

Oh, but it gets better. There's this link that says "Use enhanced security". I would have thought that "enhanced" security was a sensible default, silly me. It's not underlined, so you don't know it is a link until you hover your mouse over it, but it will take you to a https:/// page. Of course, the certificate it offers you is not for login.live.com, it's for graphics.hotmail.com. If you accept this certificate then you are basically saying that you're ok with trusting this data that didn't come from graphics.hotmail.com as if it did come from graphics.hotmail.com. Just for the hell of it, let's fire up this "enhanced security" page in IE and see what happens. Oh.. I see. We get no warnings. In fact, if we double click on the padlock we see that the certificate now IS for live.login.com. Hmm, what's going on here. Ahh, I see, half the content on this page didn't come from live.login.com, it came from graphics.hotmail.com.. so this isn't a secure site *at all*, it's a mixed domain site and IE's pitiful support for multiple certificates on a single page is happy to just ignore this (and doesn't even warn you).

XSS anyone?

So how to set the setting to use POP in this lan? or cant use it?

I know this " http://oe.msn.msnmail.hotmail.com/cgi-bin/hmdata " can be use hotmail in this lan.

How about others mailbox? such as yahoo????

Thank you

Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com/

Do You Yahoo!?
  Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com/

There is this service out there ... I believe that it is called Hotmail or something. It is free and easy to use. You sign up for an account (maybe MySpamAccountForOnlineStuffandThings@hotmail.com), and then use it exclusively for online accounts, etc etc. Will it get flooded by SPAM? Absolutely. But who cares, it's your SPAM account.

Or Gmail.
Or Yahoo.
Or any of the free services.

This is easy stuff, folks, and you don't need a temporary address that will eventually be blocked by the majority of the verification systems to take care of it. One account for work, one for personal life (or two, because your 10-year old hotmail account is too full of V1@grA! adds), and one for junk. Not exactly hard to do, folks.

Not true. Indeed, I received this email only a few days ago:

DEAR SIR,

I know you do not no me but I have been told you are good christian man. My name is DARL MCBRIDE and I am CEO of SCO organisation.

My company is based in Nigeri^H^H^H^H^H^HUtah, where we make softwares. However, an evil called Irish Business Machines has been steeling our softwares. We have lots of evide... evid... proof of this, which we will be happy to shew ewe. We are going to sue Irish Business Machines for $1,000,000,000 (ONE BILLION DOLLARS).

However, many people have been buying the stolen softwares and ignoring ours. We therefore do not have money for to be paying our lawyers. I am therefore asking you for help.

In return for your help, I be offer you 30% of the final settelment.

I beg of you to kep thsi miel sekrit, nobody must no about it. If you are interested, plese email me back at cos@hotmail.com

Police and Secret Service never found the culprit. However, to most, it is obvious that they are not really trying.

20 years after (i.e. now), one TV and radio station is doing a retrospective of the events back then. And, lo and behold, "new" witnesses crawl out of the woodwork, testifying on air how they saw the suspect the day before one of the bombings, near the place of attack, in a car full of appropriate equipment. And testifying also how they were pressured by police and secret service into silence.

Government and police act scandalized and feign to be interested in the testimony. They even set up an e-mail address to which the public may submit other testimonies, if there are.

Predictably, the email address gets hax0red.

And now suddenly, police and secret service are all up in arms, and want to find the culprit. Non, not the bomber. The hax0r who had the gall to humiliate the police and secret service by typing in the obvious password for that account, and succeed! Major ISPs were raided. They took that new investigation much more seriously than the investigation into the bombings 20 years ago.

A couple of weeks later, some boy-scouts and ex-boyscouts took it upon themselves to moon their boyscout chieftain (... who also happens to be an investigator of the Luxembourgish spying agency ...). You can't imagine the flurry of activity that followed that heinous threat against national security!

Conclusion: terrorize the country during an entire year with your bombs => walk free!
moon an spy-service agent => go to jail!

I have beta tested both of these as well, and let me correct a few things here:

1. This is BS. I am on a Mac, and my domain is administered while I'm in Camino. I'm logged in right now, the URL is https://domains.live.com/Manage/managedomains.aspx and it works just fine.

2. I have used Google's domain hosting as well, and it's nice, but it's very minimalistic at this point. It is cool that you can change the Gmail logo to your company's logo though.

As for users signing in, yes, they do have to sign in via hotmail. It says so RIGHT IN THE ADMIN AREA. This guy couldn't find the big text on the left side that says "Users may access their email accounts by signing in to http://www.hotmail.com./"

WEAK. This review needs to be nixed. No digg.

[root@jboss html]# wget --save-headers -q -O- http://www.hotmail.com/ | grep "^Server:" 2>/dev/null Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0

FWIW:
Spamming alone doesn't warrant physical violence. However, spammers who are surprised by rulings like this lost the ability to feign shock with conviction (sorry) a couple years ago when the courts began catching spam. "-1, Troll"? Maybe. Or maybe someone with points was a bit frothy over recent unsolicited inbox fodder. Finally the "it" referenced above (...a bit excessive...) was the fine, not the beating.
/disclaimer

Is it the deviancy that bothers you, or is it the fact that the advertisements are misleading?
I worry that my grandmother--who's been introduced to a technology she can only partially understand--might lose her life savings to one greedy and malicious jerk. I can offer guidance, but time and distance prohibit regular, educational visits. Yes, I realize I'm mixing spamming with phishing, but the scourges are similar in impersonating legitimate correspondence, and she won't know the difference unless it's too late.

She would have a fair chance telling a door-to-door salesman she's not interested. She'd be polite but firm, and he'd go to the next house. Spam allows that same man to convincingly say he works for Ford, even if he really works for Amway. His card says he can be reached by phone, but the person who answers has never heard of "John Smith, Sales Representative" if it's a valid number at all. The comforting ambiguity provided by cyberspace affords thieves some frightening side benefits.

Anyone whose business model involves or depends on forging contact information is an asshole; I have no sympathy for those who prey on others' vulnerabilities... it's not the same as someone hiring me to repair their cable modem LAN; I've been asked to help them with knowlege they are aware they lack. If my toilet leaks on the floor, I will call a plumber. I have no issue with paying him well due to his years of learning what I can't do, but I will be furious if seemingly random contact with a stranger combines with my lack of plumbing skill to cheat me out of anything. There's no way to "click OK to close" a piece of junk mail and unwittingly garner oneself 10,000 more.

Misleading advertisement is a fact of life. You don't see many marketting firms being hauled in to court over false advertisement.
Agreed. But "Heinz 57 is better than A-1," while debatable, is a valid opinion. When an advertising claim simply can't be reinforced by the product or service it represents--Microsoft no longer excepted--the offending company is reprimanded.

And '<a href="http://67.comcast.spam.123/HAHA_j00_d1dn't_R 34D_the_URI">
http ://fair-mortgage.com </a>' is not an advertising claim.

Indeed, sometimes they design their advertisements so you don't even know what they're about until the end, if at all.
I hope I'm not the only consumer annoyed by these, but I don't think they're doing anything wrong. Then again, I have yet to scrutinize any product's packaging for the phrases, "BASF helped make this product better," or "without plastics, this product would suck total ass," before making a purchase.

If it's the deviancy that bothers you, uhm, keep in mind that America is supposed to be the land of the free, not the land of homogenized conformists.
I wholeheartedly agree--that'd be incredibly boring, among other things--but if I started handing out cards emblazoned with BetYouThoughtI'dBeHere@hotmail.com, I'd receive less repeat business. I don't expect to be spoon-fed; I only expect people to be honest with me; I return the same to everyone I meet, and it isn't too much to ask. It's not the "land of the feel free to help yourself to my wallet." If I girl scout sold me cookies on my porch, it's unsolicited, but it stops at cookies, and they don't tell the A

You can view your hotmail on Microsoft's Windows Live beta, displayed pretty similarly to the way that Gmail is displayed on your personalized Google homepage. Not quite the same as Google Desktop's version, but not bad, and much nicer than the bloated, ugly, and badly organized Hotmail.com web page.

It is also interesting to see the most popular web sites. Start by typing www. into google suggest. The top 10 are:

1. www.yahoo.com - Search/Directory
2. www.hotmail.com - Email
3. www.google.com - Search
4. www.ebay.com - Shopping
5. www.msn.com - Portal
6. www.aol.com - Portal
7. www.ebay.co.uk - Shopping
8. www.irs.gov - Government
9. www.mapquest.com - Maps
10. www.amazon.com - Shopping

Typing one more letter shows you the top sites for that letter. Here is the top for each letter:

• a is for www.aol.com - Portal
• b is for www.bbc.co.uk - News
• c is for www.cnn.com - News
• d is for www.dictionary.com - Reference
• e is for www.ebay.com - Shopping
• f is for www.food.gov.uk - Government
• g is for www.google.com - Search
• h is for www.hotmail.com - Email
• i is for www.irs.gov - Government
• j is for www.juno.com - Internet service provider
• k is for www.kbb.com - Consumer information
• l is for www.lyrics.com - Music
• m is for www.msn.com - Portal
• n is for www.nick.com - Kids
• o is for www.orbitz.com - Travel
• p is for www.pogo.com - Games
• q is for www.qvc.com - Shopping
• r is for www.rotten.com - Information
• s is for www.sears.com - Shopping (sorry slashdot)
• t is for www.target.com - Shopping
• u is for www.usps.com - Government
• v is for www.verizon.com - Telephone service
• w is for www.weather.com - Weather
• x is for www.xanga.com - Blogs
• y is for www.yahoo.com - Portal
• z is for www.zappos.com - Shopping

This is some random commentary to make sure that my post has enough characters per line on average to get by the lameness filter. Just a few more words should do it. Then I will be over the limit. Maybe you would like to hear a bit about my projects: Attesoro - A internationalization editor for Java programs. Coinmill - A currency conversion website with many currencies, and features such as abilty to parse English sentences asking for currency conversion. Java Utilities - Utilities for common task in the Java programming language such as parsing CSV files and string manipulation.

It is also interesting to see the most popular web sites. Start by typing www. into google suggest. The top 10 are:

1. www.yahoo.com - Search/Directory
2. www.hotmail.com - Email
3. www.google.com - Search
4. www.ebay.com - Shopping
5. www.msn.com - Portal
6. www.aol.com - Portal
7. www.ebay.co.uk - Shopping
8. www.irs.gov - Government
9. www.mapquest.com - Maps
10. www.amazon.com - Shopping

Typing one more letter shows you the top sites for that letter. Here is the top for each letter:

• a is for www.aol.com - Portal
• b is for www.bbc.co.uk - News
• c is for www.cnn.com - News
• d is for www.dictionary.com - Reference
• e is for www.ebay.com - Shopping
• f is for www.food.gov.uk - Government
• g is for www.google.com - Search
• h is for www.hotmail.com - Email
• i is for www.irs.gov - Government
• j is for www.juno.com - Internet service provider
• k is for www.kbb.com - Consumer information
• l is for www.lyrics.com - Music
• m is for www.msn.com - Portal
• n is for www.nick.com - Kids
• o is for www.orbitz.com - Travel
• p is for www.pogo.com - Games
• q is for www.qvc.com - Shopping
• r is for www.rotten.com - Information
• s is for www.sears.com - Shopping (sorry slashdot)
• t is for www.target.com - Shopping
• u is for www.usps.com - Government
• v is for www.verizon.com - Telephone service
• w is for www.weather.com - Weather
• x is for www.xanga.com - Blogs
• y is for www.yahoo.com - Portal
• z is for www.zappos.com - Shopping

This is some random commentary to make sure that my post has enough characters per line on average to get by the lameness filter. Just a few more words should do it. Then I will be over the limit. Maybe you would like to hear a bit about my projects: Attesoro - A internationalization editor for Java programs. Coinmill - A currency conversion website with many currencies, and features such as abilty to parse English sentences asking for currency conversion. Java Utilities - Utilities for common task in the Java programming language such as parsing CSV files and string manipulation.

That metric is compression.

If there were funding for the C-Prize these guys might have walked away with a large chunk of it but then they might not have been able to acquire the monopoly rights they're pursuing via the patent application. The C-Prize description follows:

Since all technology prize awards are geared toward solving crucial problems, the most crucial technology prize award of them all would be one that solves the rest of them:

The C-Prize -- A prize that solves the artificial intelligence problem.

The C-Prize award criterion is as follows:

Let anyone submit a program that produces, with no inputs, one of the major natural language corpora as output.

S = size of uncompressed corpus
P = size of program outputting the uncompressed corpus
R = S/P (the compression ratio).

Award monies in a manner similar to the M-Prize:

Previous record ratio: R0
New record ratio: R1=R0+X
Fund contains: $Z at noon GMT on day of new record
Winner receives: $Z * (X/(R0+X))

Compression program and decompression program are made open source.

ExplanationA very severe meta-problem with artificial intelligence is the question of how one can define the quality of an artificial intelligence.

Fortunately there is an objective technique for ranking the quality of artificial intelligence:

Kolmogorov Complexity

Kolmogorov Complexity is a mathematically precise formulation of Ockham's Razor, which basically just says "Don't over-simplify or over-complicate things." More formally, the Kolmogorov Complexity of a given bit string is the minimum size of a Turing machine program required to output, with no inputs, the given bit string.

Any set of programs which purport to be the standards of artificial intelligence can be compared by simply comparing their Artificial Intelligence Quality. Their AIQs can be precisely measured as follows:

Take an arbitrarily large corpus of writings sampled from the world wide web. This corpus will establish the equivalent of an IQ test. Give the AIs the task of compressing this corpus into the smallest representation. This representation must be a program that, taking no outside inputs, produces the exact sample it compressed. The AIQ of an AI is simply the ratio of the size of the uncompressed writings to the size of the program that, when executed, produces the uncompressed writings.

In other words, the AIQ is the compression ratio achieved by the AI on the AIQ test.

The reason this works as an AI quality test is that compression requires predictive modeling. If you can predict what someone is going to say, you have modeled their mental processes and by inference have a superset of their mental faculties.

Mechanics The C-Prize is to be modeled after the Methusela Mouse Prize or M-Prize where people make pledges of money to the prize fund. If you would like to help with the set up and/or administration of this prize award similar to the M-Prize let me know by email.

I don't think monopoly means what you think it does.

Marcus Hutter's AIXI paper provides a proof that if an agent is a good model for human behavior, and the universe is computable, that the most intelligent program is the smallest program that losslessly compresses the set of observations of the universe.

I've formalized a prize competition based on this criterion as the C-Prize, modeled after the Methusela Mouse Prize. The big difference is that instead of lifespan the metric is intelligence. Here is the currently published C-Prize criteria:

Since all technology prize awards are geared toward solving crucial problems, the most crucial technology prize award of them all would be one that solves the rest of them:

The C-Prize -- A prize that solves the artificial intelligence problem.

The C-Prize award criterion is as follows:

Let anyone submit a program that produces, with no inputs, one of the major natural language corpora as output.

S = size of uncompressed corpus
P = size of program outputting the uncompressed corpus
R = S/P (the compression ratio).

Award monies in a manner similar to the M-Prize:

Previous record ratio: R0
New record ratio: R1=R0+X
Fund contains: $Z at noon GMT on day of new record
Winner receives: $Z * (X/(R0+X))

Compression program and decompression program are made open source.

Explanation A very severe meta-problem with artificial intelligence is the question of how one can define the quality of an artificial intelligence.

Fortunately there is an objective technique for ranking the quality of artificial intelligence:

Kolmogorov Complexity

Kolmogorov Complexity is a mathematically precise formulation of Ockham's Razor, which basically just says "Don't over-simplify or over-complicate things." More formally, the Kolmogorov Complexity of a given bit string is the minimum size of a Turing machine program required to output, with no inputs, the given bit string.

Any set of programs which purport to be the standards of artificial intelligence can be compared by simply comparing their Artificial Intelligence Quality. Their AIQs can be precisely measured as follows:

Take an arbitrarily large corpus of writings sampled from the world wide web. This corpus will establish the equivalent of an IQ test. Give the AIs the task of compressing this corpus into the smallest representation. This representation must be a program that, taking no outside inputs, produces the exact sample it compressed. The AIQ of an AI is simply the ratio of the size of the uncompressed writings to the size of the program that, when executed, produces the uncompressed writings.

In other words, the AIQ is the compression ratio achieved by the AI on the AIQ test.

The reason this works as an AI quality test is that compression requires predictive modeling. If you can predict what someone is going to say, you have modeled their mental processes and by inference have a superset of their mental faculties.

Mechanics The C-Prize is to be modeled after the Methusela Mouse Prize or M-Prize where people make pledges of money to the prize fund. If you would like to help with the set up and/or administration of this prize award similar to the M-Prize let me know by email.

Good lord! And here I thought me getting a thousand spam a day was bad! (This from the days when I had Hotspam as my email provider.) That kinda got me a bit upset at them. I did really well controlling spam on my personal accounts since then, well enough for me to write a spam prevention how-to of my own.

They should have simply supplied the link in a non-discrinating sort (such as alpabetical) and a very brief description of the site's theme. The ranking should not have been displayed until after the contest was completed.

dirty tongue!!