Slashdot Mirror

Not that most will care, but I first heard about Asterisk via the HTTP_REFERER data in the Web server logs for the OMR, which was apparently referenced as a place to get no-cost, pre-licensed (open licensed) on-hold music.

Now that the OMR has been shut down, the links to those songs are available in an XML dump of the music database that can be found on freality.org or my own site.

No, this is not a bleeding heart "what about the hungry" post... If we risk the assumption that funds are set aside in a budget for this and can only be used for this, wouldn't it be better to spend those funds on building a new email system and helping vendors provide easy migration to the new system? I think fighting spam is a lost cause as long as the technology allows it, and tacking on various odd bits to the technology doesn't really resolve the core problems.

If I have to suffer yet another misguided federal usage of my money, and it must be to hold our hands and try to fix our spam problems, then I'd rather know it was going toward a real solution, even if that just meant spending it on research into ways to build an email system that provides for impossibility of spam, cross-platform (and designed-to-be-safe) support for styled text and embedded images (i.e., "rich" documents), and protection of sender privacy (which may be at odds with preventing spam, thus the need for research rather than a slapdash quick fix).

(I take it from earlier posts that this is a dupe article so maybe it's pointless to post this here, but I'm bored this morning...

...you just have to pay attention long enough. My fiction is no exception -- the only thing that doesn't suck about it, after paying attention long enough, is that it's not only free as in beer but free as in speech.

Thanks for the feedback. The inline frame is relatively new and there is already an alternative for browsers that don't support inline frames. A way to manually bypass it for a browser that supports inline frames but does so in a troublesome way is a worthwhile idea (even if rudely presented). I'll add that when I get a chance. It might be useful for my short stories as well, as they gain illustrations.

Thanks for the feedback. The inline frame is relatively new and there is already an alternative for browsers that don't support inline frames. A way to manually bypass it for a browser that supports inline frames but does so in a troublesome way is a worthwhile idea (even if rudely presented). I'll add that when I get a chance. It might be useful for my short stories as well, as they gain illustrations.

I've been promoting this notion for a couple years at least, while at the same time offering a spam filtering tutorial for Pegasus users. I've seen others also promoting the same general concept, sometimes with more details. However...

"One's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into action[s]... which bring results."
Florence Nightingale

To see this happen, somebody needs to do it rather than talking about it. A technical demonstration, at the very least. And if I'm missing something and there's something like this in the works, it needs publicity, development support, testing, etc. to take it "out of the lab" and moving toward common use.