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• As a Californian it is in my Constitution
• As an American its in Amendments IV, IX and X of the Federal constitution. (no, just because "freedom of thought" isn't listed either doesn't mean IX and X don't cover it. And #I too: can you have freedom of association without privacy?).
• And as an American, I think the Constitution isn't just the law, its a Good Idea to be applied widely to all of life, not just narrowly to federal gov't actions.
• As a Human, I'm covered by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights articles 12 and 13 (including 13 because if you can't travel with privacy, you don't have true freedom of movement. 20- freedom of association- fits with this as well)
• from A Watched Populace Never Boils: "People often ask why a loss of privacy... is a restriction on freedom. ... Some welcome it, feeling that the extra surveillance will cut down on crime, and provide some increased level of safety or imagined safety. ...invasions of privacy invade our freedoms quite directly. This is true even if the surveillance isn't abused by the watchers, even though history shows that it always is. When we feel watched, we feel less free. We censor ourselves and our actions... Yet the mainstream will never fear monitoring that much, just as it is more comfortable with censorship. What civil rights protect is not the majority, but the fringe. "
• And there's the very important and unfortunately increasingly precient best essay ever on why privacy is a right, which includes a list of very specific harms from lost privacy [ for example the specific harms when mistakes are made (and they always are)]

From his essay: "A popular response is: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear... the truth is that we all do have something to hide, not because it's criminal or even shameful, but simply because it's private. We carefully calibrate what we reveal about ourselves to others... The right not to be known against our will - indeed, the right to be anonymous except when we choose to identify ourselves - is at the very core of human dignity, autonomy and freedom.

"If we allow the state to sweep away the normal walls of privacy that protect the details of our lives, we will consign ourselves psychologically to living in a fishbowl. Even if we suffered no other specific harm as a result, that alone would profoundly change how we feel. Anyone who has lived in a totalitarian society can attest that what often felt most oppressive was precisely the lack of privacy."

And continuing his argument:

"Now "September 11" is invoked as a kind of magic incantation to stifle debate, disparage critical analysis and persuade us that we live in a suddenly new world where the old rules cannot apply... If Parliament and the public at large have been slow to react, it is probably because for most people, most of the time, privacy is a pretty abstract concept. Like our health, it's something we tend not to think about until we lose it - and then discover that our lives have been very unpleasantly, and perhaps irretrievably, altered.

But though we tend to take it for granted, privacy - the right to control access to ourselves and to personal information about us - is at the very core of our lives. It is a fundamental human right precisely because it is an innate human need, an essential condition of our freedom, our dignity and our sense of well-being...."

"When people are worried about their safety, when we have seen the horrors of which toda

No, wrong.

10 Big Myths about copyright explained
1) "If it doesn't have a copyright notice, it's not copyrighted." This was true in the past, but today almost all major nations follow the Berne copyright convention. For example, in the USA, almost everything created privately and originally after April 1, 1989 is copyrighted and protected whether it has a notice or not.

We- the technical community- can demand a similar switch for email. Unfortunately the use rate of encryption for email is ridiculously low (less than 10% of incoming to Diffie or Zimmerman, they once said). So we've ended up in this strange zone where email could be encrypted as a matter of course, but it isn't. There is no inherent reason why email has to be public, but by our design (or lack thereof), this major massive system of communications is practically (and with this ruling- legally) public, and for what benefit? Why do people so casually accept the non-privacy of email? Its like we were still using party lines 120 years later.

At the core of it, because privacy is a fundamental human right every communication system we use should have privacy built in. If its not, there should be a very good reason why not. "Oh no, it will take extra computational cycles" is not a good reason (not with crypto like ECC around). "Oh, Ashcroft doesn't want it" is even a worse reason. "Perfect encryption is too hard for the public to use": also bad.

Crypto does need to become easier to use. As Templeton wrote here on what email crypto needs:

The key to deploying encrypted mail is to make it happen with close to zero involvement by the user. This is hard, and requires some security compromises that have made cryptographers uneasy in the past.

However, I have come down to the view that getting encryption widely deployed, even with some minor flaws, is better than getting perfectly designed encryption (if that's even possible) that hardly anybody uses.

The reason is that I exchange mail with tons of people, not just my closest linux-using nerd friends. If I want my mail to be private, I have to get the general public encrypting. This is a particular concern with new laws just passed granting U.S. law enforcment the power to read the "header" of a message -- including the subject lines of E-mails without a warrant. In addition, other nations have always had such powers, and on top of it all, most ISP backbones and mail servers are poorly secured from snooping by almost any system cracker trying to invade your privacy [now including the ISP itself!]...

We- the technical community- can demand a similar switch for email. Unfortunately the use rate of encryption for email is ridiculously low (less than 10% of incoming to Diffie or Zimmerman, they once said). So we've ended up in this strange zone where email could be encrypted as a matter of course, but it isn't. There is no inherent reason why email has to be public, but by our design (or lack thereof), this major massive system of communications is practically (and with this ruling- legally) public, and for what benefit? Why do people so casually accept the non-privacy of email? Its like we were still using party lines 120 years later.

At the core of it, because privacy is a fundamental human right every communication system we use should have privacy built in. If its not, there should be a very good reason why not. "Oh no, it will take extra computational cycles" is not a good reason (not with crypto like ECC around). "Oh, Ashcroft doesn't want it" is even a worse reason. "Perfect encryption is too hard for the public to use": also bad.

Crypto does need to become easier to use. As Templeton wrote here on what email crypto needs:

The key to deploying encrypted mail is to make it happen with close to zero involvement by the user. This is hard, and requires some security compromises that have made cryptographers uneasy in the past.

However, I have come down to the view that getting encryption widely deployed, even with some minor flaws, is better than getting perfectly designed encryption (if that's even possible) that hardly anybody uses.

The reason is that I exchange mail with tons of people, not just my closest linux-using nerd friends. If I want my mail to be private, I have to get the general public encrypting. This is a particular concern with new laws just passed granting U.S. law enforcment the power to read the "header" of a message -- including the subject lines of E-mails without a warrant. In addition, other nations have always had such powers, and on top of it all, most ISP backbones and mail servers are poorly secured from snooping by almost any system cracker trying to invade your privacy [now including the ISP itself!]...

Combining challenge/response with cpu stamps, java and other factors. It allows the problem to change over time, requires no new software at the sender's end (which is the big non-starter) and still allows anonymous mail.

It's at this page on cpu stamps and challenge response.

All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and

privacy.

That's California. I also have Amendments IV, IX and X of the Federal constitution. (And just because "freedom of thought" isn't listed either doesn't mean IX and X don't cover it.)

Plus the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Articles 12 and 13:

Article 12.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Article 13.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

I include 13 because if you have to give up your privacy entirely to travel, you don't have freedom of movement. And no, the ability to bicycle cross-country as a substitute for flying doesn't count.

In other person's words:

From A Watched Populace Never Boils:

"People often ask why a loss of privacy... is a restriction on freedom. ... Some welcome it, feeling that the extra surveillance will cut down on crime, and provide some increased level of safety or imagined safety.

But the truth is that invasions of privacy invade our freedoms quite directly. This is true even if the surveillance isn't abused by the watchers, even though history shows that it always is.

When we feel watched, we feel less free. We censor ourselves and our actions...

Yet the mainstream will never fear monitoring that much, just as it is more comfortable with censorship. What civil rights protect is not the majority, but the fringe. The fringe is usually feared by the majority, and most subject to its oppression. Yet the fringe is the lifeblood of a society's future. When I say a watched populace never boils, I refer to the ability to bubble with change and novelty. Yes, it also means unrest, for there are both positive and negative elements to the fringe. Yet the fringe today becomes the mainstream in the future. That is how a healthy, dynamic society works. That is how our society works...

And as I just commented there's the best essay on privacy post 911:

"Now "September 11" is invoked as a kind of magic incantation to stifle debate, disparage critical analysis and persuade us that we live in a suddenly new world where the old rules cannot apply.

If Parliament and the public at large have been slow to react, it is probably because for most people, most of the time, privacy is a pretty abstract concept. Like our health, it's something we tend not to think about until we lose it - and then discover that our lives have been very unpleasantly, and perhaps irretrievably, altered.

But though we tend to take it for granted, privacy - the right to control access to ourselves and to personal information about us - is at the very core of our lives. It is a fundamental human right precisely because it is an innate human need, an essential condition of our freedom, our dignity and our sense of well-being...."

"When people are worried about their safety, when we have seen the horrors of which today's breed of terrorists are capable - and there may be more - it's easy to lose perspective. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that security is all that mat

This isn't the first such camera. They call this one a bargain because the PanoScan was around $27,000 for its first model.

Other people have made cameras like this for far less at home. You can make a basic one for $50 in parts. All you need is a single line (or 3 colour line) scanner element as found in most scanners, a camera to put it in with a big lens, and a stepper motor to spin it instead of rolling it along the scanner bed.

You can even spin it by hand if you have something measuring how you turn it to expose each scanline right.

Check out this guy who built one on the cheap.

My favourite application was the guy who took pictures of the moon using a single line scanner. He put the scanner into the eyepiece of a fixed telescope. Then, he had the earth rotate, thus passing the scanner over the surface of the moon to record an image.

The reason he could only do the moon is the scanner elements from hand scanners are not that light sensative. They expect a bright light to light up the object.

Of course, 70 megapixels is nothing. I have been doing giant stitched panoramas much bigger than that for a long time though I don't put them that size on the web.

However the first image of burning man on this page is 210 megapixels. You need to see it printed out, which you can if you come to Burning Man.

Yes, until a few centuries people didn't have anonymity if they stayed in the towns they were born in. They also didn't have voting rights, freedom of assembly / press / religion / petition / etc. That doesn't make those rights any less real- it just makes olden days seem barbaric. Privacy might be a younger right- but rights don't have an age of majority. And technology today can be used to take away other rights- but that doesn't make those rights "falsely expected," just in need of more guarding.

Yet even two centuries ago they knew the value of anonymity: from A Watched Populace Never Boils"

...the fringe today becomes the mainstream in the future. That is how a healthy, dynamic society works. That is how our society works.

You can't have the same sort of counterculture in a monitored society. It gets driven even further underground. You won't find the counterculture in the small towns where everybody knows one another. Usually the youth, full of anger and novelty and art and invention, leave those small towns to discover themselves in the city. Will they do it as well if mom, or big brother, is watching? ...The founders of the USA knew this. They wrote much of their founding doctrine anonymously in the Federalist Papers. That legacy exists today online... They are boiling, opening doors, and changing the world.

We might be safer if people had less privacy. We could be as safe as the people in the small towns, which have low crime rates. We would also be as lukewarm as the people in those towns; content but never boiling."

[and anecdotally, all those Westerns with the "tall dark stranger" coming to town couldn't have happened if you never had strangers. People could see you come to town or go to someone's house. But once you left town, or went around the corner- even the best gossipers weren't going to know too much more about you.]

But privacy is far more than whether or not you are recognized... quoting from my favorite essay...

"...But though we tend to take it for granted, privacy - the right to control access to ourselves and to personal information about us - is at the very core of our lives. It is a fundamental human right precisely because it is an innate human need, an essential condition of our freedom, our dignity and our sense of well-being...

...A popular response is: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."

By that reasoning, of course, we shouldn't mind if the police were free to come into our homes at any time just to look around, if all our telephone conversations were monitored, if all our mail were read, if all the protections developed over centuries were swept away. It's only a difference of degree from the intrusions already being implemented or considered.

The truth is that we all do have something to hide, not because it's criminal or even shameful, but simply because it's private. We carefully calibrate what we reveal about ourselves to others. Most of us are only willing to have a few things known about us by a stranger, more by an acquaintance, and the most by a very close friend or a romantic partner. The right not to be known against our will - indeed, the right to be anonymous except when we choose to identify ourselves - is at the very core of human dignity, autonomy and freedom.

A camera tapes you. If one tape-reviewer doesn't know you, he can ask until he finds someone who does. The tape can be matched with other tapes to see where you were and where you're going. The tape will be stored and reviewed by ever better automatic recognition tech, and those results stored in ever larger and cheaper databases.

I think this is a quantitative change in the "expectation of privacy" one has in public.

We are getting very close to "P-day" (coined by Brad Templeton): the last day of privacy, because from then on all our actions will be tracked retroactively if not currently. Or, as he puts it: "So you're already being watched. The computer that is watching you just hasn't been born quite yet."

Two good essays on why this type of surveillance hurts society and violates our rights:

• From the Best Essay Ever on why privacy is a fundamental right: [Its not too long- just go read it]

  "[Talking about Canada...] If these measures are allowed to go forward and the privacy-invasive principles they represent are accepted [then before long] our movements through the public streets will be relentlessly observed through proliferating police video surveillance cameras. Eventually, these cameras will likely be linked to biometric face-recognition technologies ... [indentifying] us by name and address as we go about our law-abiding business in the streets... I am well aware that these scenarios are likely to sound, to most people, like alarmist exaggeration. Certainly, the society I am describing bears no relation to the Canada we know. But anyone who is inclined to dismiss the risks out of hand should pause first to consider that the privacy-invasive measures already being implemented or developed right now would have been considered unthinkable in our country just a short year ago."

  The place to stop unjustified intrusions on a fundamental human right such as privacy is right at the outset, at the very first attempt to enter where the state has no business treading. Otherwise, the terrain will have been conceded, and the battle lost...

  Imagine, then, how we will feel if it becomes routine for bureaucrats, police officers and other agents of the state to paw through all the details of our lives: where and when we travel, and with whom; who are the friends and acquaintances with whom we have telephone conversations or e-mail correspondence; what we are interested in reading or researching; where we like to go and what we like to do...

  If we allow the state to sweep away the normal walls of privacy that protect the details of our lives, we will consign ourselves psychologically to living in a fishbowl...Anyone who has lived in a totalitarian society can attest that what often felt most oppressive was precisely the lack of privacy.

• A Watched Populace Never Boils "People often ask why a loss of privacy... is a restriction on freedom. ... Some welcome it, feeling that the extra surveillance will cut down on crime, and provide some increased level of safety or imagined safety. But the truth is that invasions of privacy invade our freedoms quite directly. This is true even if the surveillance isn't abused by the watchers, even though history shows that it always is.

  When we feel watched, we feel less free. We censor ourselve

So we've ended up in this strange zone where email could be encrypted as a matter of course, but it isn't. There is no inherent reason why email has to be public, but by our design (or lack thereof), this major massive system of communications is public, and for what benefit?

I'm not saying that people must be forced to use encryption, but that the ability to choose it should be there. To me choice means the two alternatives are sitting there, equally available... If there were big "Send: This is Private" and "Send: This is Public" buttons. Right now the "choice" is "Send" vs "Spend hours retrofitting your system and writing to your recipient to explain to them how to read your email, and getting your grandpa to use it- just give up trying to go there..."

As an analogy, if I say "lets start building doors and doorjams with locks built in," I don't think that equals "force everyone to lock their door." To me it means "make it as easy to choose to lock your door as keep it unlocked."

Imagine an alternative history where we on "Exchange-Dot" are talking about telephone design...

• "Phone calls are on party lines, anyone can listen" (Score: 3 Just Delightful)
• Of course phone calls are public- if you want privacy send a telegram. Get over it (Score 5: A Pearl of Wisdom)
• "If you want privacy, get a private line and ask the person you wish to call to install a private line too."(Score: 2)
  • "But what if I know I might want to talk with more than that one person, wouldn't it be better if all phones were private lines? What if my elderly aunt cannot easily get a private line?"(Score 3: Quite)
  • "What, have you something to hide? What type of gentleman are You? (score 0: Moderately Scandalous)
  • "You should just refuse to talk with people on party lines: if your dear Aunt in Toledo is unable to install a private line then she isn't worthy of conversation" (Score: 1)
  • "You have the right to a private line, but demanding all lines are private? How about we let people choose?"(Score: 1)

"The key to deploying private phone calls is to make it happen with close to zero involvement by the user... The reason is that I converse with tons of people, not just my closest Bell/linux-using electrophilosopher friends. If I want my conversations to be private, I have to get the general public using private lines...."

It, in retrospect, wouldn't be such a bad request for consideration by Google / GoG&G.

"The key to deploying encrypted mail is to make it happen with close to zero involvement by the user. This is hard, and requires some security compromises that have made cryptographers uneasy in the past.

However, I have come down to the view that getting encryption widely deployed, even with some minor flaws, is better than getting perfectly designed encryption (if that's even possible) that hardly anybody uses.

The reason is that I exchange mail with tons of people, not just my closest linux-using nerd friends. If I want my mail to be private, I have to get the general public encrypting. This is a particular concern with new laws just passed granting U.S. law enforcment the power to read the "header" of a message -- including the subject lines of E-mails without a warrant. In addition, other nations have always had such powers, and on top of it all, most ISP backbones and mail servers are poorly secured from snooping by almost any system cracker trying to invade your privacy...

Current use of encryption for email is terribly low: I remember when Whitfield Diffie was asked at a Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference a few years back how many emails sent to him were encrypted. Because you'd expect him to be way up at the top of the list of people who get encrypted email... under 10% was his reply. Oh, and Zimmerman was also in the audience... same answer.

Anyways, if you're a geek who likes new blinking things [and BTempleton is obviously a geek who likes Akihabara and new technologies] you might want those technologies to be widely used without interference from, say, Ashcroft. Note that he isn't saying "lets create great new laws to apply to these new technologies." He is asking "what happens when old laws get applied to great new technologies, and are there ways to get around any obvious upcoming problems?" ECPA already exists, and ASP style email storage could run into ECPA's limitations. Don't we want to think about this now, not later?

Remember that one of the EFF's first cases happened when the US government thought it could seize an entire BBS in order to investigate one user's email? Or that the US government wanted everyone to use weakened encryption with backdoors built in? Or that unchallenged yet idiotic patents hurt technological development?

Its the job of technologists / groups like the EFF to watch for potential crashes at the intersections of rights-reducing governments (or technology-ignorant governments) with great new technologies. And then, as in this case, suggest ways to prevent the intersection from ever happening (built in encryption could be valuable for that). Because otherwise, court cases are very expensive, and the technologists don't always win.

Anyways, if you're a geek who likes new blinking things [and BTempleton is obviously a geek who likes Akihabara and new technologies] you might want those technologies to be widely used without interference from, say, Ashcroft. Note that he isn't saying "lets create great new laws to apply to these new technologies." He is asking "what happens when old laws get applied to great new technologies, and are there ways to get around any obvious upcoming problems?" ECPA already exists, and ASP style email storage could run into ECPA's limitations. Don't we want to think about this now, not later?

Remember that one of the EFF's first cases happened when the US government thought it could seize an entire BBS in order to investigate one user's email? Or that the US government wanted everyone to use weakened encryption with backdoors built in? Or that unchallenged yet idiotic patents hurt technological development?

Its the job of technologists / groups like the EFF to watch for potential crashes at the intersections of rights-reducing governments (or technology-ignorant governments) with great new technologies. And then, as in this case, suggest ways to prevent the intersection from ever happening (built in encryption could be valuable for that). Because otherwise, court cases are very expensive, and the technologists don't always win.

Rant mode on...But enough with the body insults! Haven't you ever seen bodies in all their glorious colors and shapes before? If yours isn't in the top 1% of bodies, do you live in a Burka? The costumer is having fun- lots of other posters here seem to be having bitter parties out of some misguided idea that if you aren't perfect- don't be visible? If you don't have the equivalent of a 2004 Mercedes M-class body, don't show up on the road? Have you ever looked at the great minds in our field? You'd really forbid them from being in your hottub (California / silicon valley style) just because they're not the most aesthetically pleasing bodies? Bah! Rant mode sputtering off...

Rant mode on...But enough with the body insults! Haven't you ever seen bodies in all their glorious colors and shapes before? If yours isn't in the top 1% of bodies, do you live in a Burka? The costumer is having fun- lots of other posters here seem to be having bitter parties out of some misguided idea that if you aren't perfect- don't be visible? If you don't have the equivalent of a 2004 Mercedes M-class body, don't show up on the road? Have you ever looked at the great minds in our field? You'd really forbid them from being in your hottub (California / silicon valley style) just because they're not the most aesthetically pleasing bodies? Bah! Rant mode sputtering off...

Rant mode on...But enough with the body insults! Haven't you ever seen bodies in all their glorious colors and shapes before? If yours isn't in the top 1% of bodies, do you live in a Burka? The costumer is having fun- lots of other posters here seem to be having bitter parties out of some misguided idea that if you aren't perfect- don't be visible? If you don't have the equivalent of a 2004 Mercedes M-class body, don't show up on the road? Have you ever looked at the great minds in our field? You'd really forbid them from being in your hottub (California / silicon valley style) just because they're not the most aesthetically pleasing bodies? Bah! Rant mode sputtering off...

Rant mode on...But enough with the body insults! Haven't you ever seen bodies in all their glorious colors and shapes before? If yours isn't in the top 1% of bodies, do you live in a Burka? The costumer is having fun- lots of other posters here seem to be having bitter parties out of some misguided idea that if you aren't perfect- don't be visible? If you don't have the equivalent of a 2004 Mercedes M-class body, don't show up on the road? Have you ever looked at the great minds in our field? You'd really forbid them from being in your hottub (California / silicon valley style) just because they're not the most aesthetically pleasing bodies? Bah! Rant mode sputtering off...

Rant mode on...But enough with the body insults! Haven't you ever seen bodies in all their glorious colors and shapes before? If yours isn't in the top 1% of bodies, do you live in a Burka? The costumer is having fun- lots of other posters here seem to be having bitter parties out of some misguided idea that if you aren't perfect- don't be visible? If you don't have the equivalent of a 2004 Mercedes M-class body, don't show up on the road? Have you ever looked at the great minds in our field? You'd really forbid them from being in your hottub (California / silicon valley style) just because they're not the most aesthetically pleasing bodies? Bah! Rant mode sputtering off...

Brad needs a lawyer

As I pointed out elsewhere Brad is well aware of his rights (early online publisher, author of "10 Big Myths about copyright explained", Chairman of the Board of the EFF ), rather folks need to be more aware of their own rights.

Also for all the lip service paid to EFF on /. it's pretty telling that this story was up for an hour, your posting was +5, and nobody here had a clue as to who Brad is...

The text of the cease and desist letter can be found here.

1978: The first internet E-mail spam, sent by DEC Einar Stefferud, a longtime net hand, reports that DEC announced a new DEC-20 machine in 1978 by sending an invite to all ARPANET addresses on the west coast, using the ARPANET directory, inviting people to receptions in California. They were chastised for breaking the ARPANET appropriate use policy, and a notice was sent out reminding others of the rule. content of the first spam and response: http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamreact.html

This is correct. The first spam was not sent in 1994, but in 1978. It was sent by Gary Thuerk of Digital Equipment Corporation to a total of 320 recipents.

Here it is: http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamreact.html

In the comments of 39 days ago, this story from a year earlier was mentioned- it celebrated the 25th anniversary of spam, and the 10th of the first description of Usenet spam as "spam." So now we're up to the 11th and 26th anniversaries!

The traditional gift for the 11th anniversary is steel (knives? axes?), and while I'm not seeing one for the 26th, I'm thinking a hand carved wooden stake would be appropriate, given just how evil spam is... assuming that current spammers even have hearts through which a stake could cure their demonic afflictions.

In the comments of 39 days ago, this story from a year earlier was mentioned- it celebrated the 25th anniversary of spam, and the 10th of the first description of Usenet spam as "spam." So now we're up to the 11th and 26th anniversaries!

The traditional gift for the 11th anniversary is steel (knives? axes?), and while I'm not seeing one for the 26th, I'm thinking a hand carved wooden stake would be appropriate, given just how evil spam is... assuming that current spammers even have hearts through which a stake could cure their demonic afflictions.

The Canter and Siegel spam was not the first spam, nor the first commercial abuse, nor the first to be called a spam. (The term SPAM had been used to describe flooding on MUDS since the early 90s, and had been applied to USENET floods about a year before.)

The C&S spam had two firsts to it. One, they were the first to not turn tail and run after seeing the anger of the net. Prior spammers had quickly given up. C&S fought back.

That leads to first #2, they caused a lot of conversation and awareness, and that led to the term going mainstream, away from just lesser use in newsgroups and MUDS.

A while ago I wrote a history of the term spam and the early spam events. You may find it useful in tracing the history of this and other events.

Two of the big anniversaries were about a year ago. The 25th anniversary of the first E-mail spam I found, and the 10th anniversary of the term SPAM being used to describe a USENET flooding.

The first really big USENET spam was january of 94, it was religious. A big commercial spam dates back to the 80s, and jj@cup.portal.com.

actually, This was the first spam.

Brad Templeton writes "This Saturday marks the 25th anniversary of the first spam I was able to find, and one month ago was the 10th anniversary of the first time a USENET posting was called a spam and the birth of the term (at least beyond mudds)." Templeton was also cited in the American Scientist article featured last Sunday.

• It turned the largest and most vibrant public space into a perceived sleazy and "can't recommend you go there" backwater of the internet.
• It hurt the future development of the internet: there are many "walled garden" discussion sites on the WWW which could have been better located on a open, fast and worldwide Usenet.
• And of course spam is just plain evil

Brad Templeton writes "This Saturday marks the 25th anniversary of the first spam I was able to find, and one month ago was the 10th anniversary of the first time a USENET posting was called a spam and the birth of the term (at least beyond mudds)." Templeton was also cited in the American Scientist article featured last Sunday.

• It turned the largest and most vibrant public space into a perceived sleazy and "can't recommend you go there" backwater of the internet.
• It hurt the future development of the internet: there are many "walled garden" discussion sites on the WWW which could have been better located on a open, fast and worldwide Usenet.
• And of course spam is just plain evil

Brad Templeton writes "This Saturday marks the 25th anniversary of the first spam I was able to find, and one month ago was the 10th anniversary of the first time a USENET posting was called a spam and the birth of the term (at least beyond mudds)." Templeton was also cited in the American Scientist article featured last Sunday.

• It turned the largest and most vibrant public space into a perceived sleazy and "can't recommend you go there" backwater of the internet.
• It hurt the future development of the internet: there are many "walled garden" discussion sites on the WWW which could have been better located on a open, fast and worldwide Usenet.
• And of course spam is just plain evil

If you do some digging at Brad Templeton's Home Page, his History of Spam has a different version of the history. DEC may have not been the first!

If you do some digging at Brad Templeton's Home Page, his History of Spam has a different version of the history. DEC may have not been the first!

If you do some digging at Brad Templeton's Home Page, his History of Spam has a different version of the history. DEC may have not been the first!

If you do some digging at Brad Templeton's Home Page, his History of Spam has a different version of the history. DEC may have not been the first!

Look here for the exact message and the reaction of the community to the first SPAM message being send by email.

I have a much earlier spam. And I bet people here could reply with even earlier ones.

Our firm is discussing the possibility of setting up a "caller ID" type of system.

Then your firm is trying to re-invent the wheel.

This idea is not new and has been around for a while. It's called "challenge/response" and has already been implemented by ISPs, corporations, and individuals. There are a number of freely available packaged solutions that are much more robust than anything a single IT department is likely to produce. But if you're intent on rolling your own, you should probably read:

Proper principles for Challenge/Response anti-spam systems.

I have always felt the right trick to system management would be to divide up changes and components not just by what they are but who (as in which class of person) provides, installs, maintains and configures them.

Thus you should be able to compartmentalize all of "your" changes, your company's, your distro's into independent units. To upgrade, just replace the parts the distro maintains, keep your part. To move to another environment, move your part.

More details at this essay

...if I can sue the person who let out the code because it will increase the time I have to spend securing my system
You'll probably get more cash suing the perpetrator of the security holes in the system in the first place. I hear they have a lot of money(TM).

> from what I understand copyright restricts the act
> of copying (duplicating). You can study someone's
> implimentation of something as much as you like,
> then go impliment something similiar yourself.
> As long as you do not copy the code verbatim
> you are not in violation of copyright law.

What you're saying about copyright is correct;

[ snip ]

No, it isn't, and I don't know why I said it was. Too much crack today or something. The law on derivative works would make this not true, at least according to my understanding of Brad Templeton's 10 Big Myths about copyright.

I working out a way to break up ICANN and allow lots of competing, innovating domain registrars, I designed the following way to allow the governing body to exist independent of any country.

No government would have the power to change its policies, other than by passing laws on its own citizens.

I working out a way to break up ICANN and allow lots of competing, innovating domain registrars, I designed the following way to allow the governing body to exist independent of any country.

No government would have the power to change its policies, other than by passing laws on its own citizens.

No, this real star wars car or this older landspeeder would really fit the bill.

No, this real star wars car or this older landspeeder would really fit the bill.

If Episode 2 naming is any judge:

Star Wars Episode 7: Revenge of the Mutant Ewoks
Star Wars Episode 8: The 20-Foot Tall Love Slave from Venus
Star Wars Episode 9: Jar Jar Binks vs. The Lost Dragon Vampire Ninjas

Jedi Binks?

check this out

Is that it gives us great screen captures like this one which you could never have gotten people to believe when the movie came out.

"Dark Sith" should that be moderated redundent? Or are there happy-go-lucky-smiley-face-Siths I'm unaware of?

Yes. Be afraid.

No, you ignorant fuck

Spoken like a true genius. It takes real intelligence to provide us all with such profundity and splendor!

If it means anything, as a sysadmin, I've been served with a DMCA request because a client was doing as the original poster did - copying materials and displaying them where the materials were protected by a trivially obtainable login/pw.

The only way that copying a NYT article to Slashdot could even remotely be construed as an affront to coypyrights is if the poster did not credit NYT or if the poster changed the text.

Let's see - copyright belongs to the author. "A copyright provides its holder several exclusive rights to control the reproduction, import and export of a work of authorship.".

Copyrights protect, among other thing, the the GPL: "Proprietary software developers use copyright to take away the users' freedom; we use copyright to guarantee their freedom."

Perhaps you should read 10 Big Myths about copyright explained?

You know, I can't believe I've written this much in reply to a post as lame as this one....

Use the techniques I outline on How to read an electronic book particularly on a big monitor, to try it out. It's better than you think. Of course PDAs and laptops are better but you can do much with an ordinary PC.