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E-Mail Patent Roundup From The NYT
griffjon writes: "This NYT article details a new patent on getting spam to offline e-mail readers with popup ads and banners more annoying than your average spam. Fantastic. Also contains a funny patent about e-mailing stolen computers to retrieve them." I love the system that would let a predetermined e-mail subject line "initiate a predetermined security response, either locking the display screen so nothing would appear, showing only the name and contact information of the owner or erasing the laptop's hard drive." That one sounds foolproof, eh? (freeregistrationrequiredofcourse.)
SPAM Luncheon Meat is a Hormel product. Here's Hormel's official position of use of the term "spam" to refer to unsolicited bulk mail.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
ibot is right - follow simple practices for keeping spam out of your mailbox: don't post it in newsgroups, use a throwaway account for Barnes and Noble, etc. Get familiar with the D key. And don't spend too much time worrying about it.
now there's an opportunity for people to deny email service... just plug the.guy@i.dont.like.com into the spamnet and the guy isnt able to send email to anyone. bad idea.
There was a /. article a while back about someone whose laptop had distributed.net running on it.. the laptop got stolen... the theif logged on the net with that laptop... the blocks were uploaded... and with a bit of help from the d.net guys they found the IP address, ISP and identity of the bad dude! :)
- Chuq
What about your network provider, whose bandwidth is stolen well before the user ever retrieves that email? They incur the costs, and pass it down to their customers ... Meaning that you already paid for your bandwidth, at least partially.
While each letter is short, it's a matter of scale. Spam contributes a non-trivial amount of load on the 'net, and technological solutions have only helped to a certain degree.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
I'd love to know how they'd expect us to find a stolen machine in order to issue the "kill" email to it.
It's going to be on the net with a completely different ISP (if at all), and the new owner is not likely to access your email account even if the password is available; most ISPs I know of block POP3/IMAP connections that aren't coming from their own subnets.
Unknown IP address, no email connection, no points of contact... so how's this kill email supposed to be anything but a timebomb waiting to go off on the legitimate owner?
I'm just glad I don't have such an embarassing patent under my name. =)
---
Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
"Where shall the word be found, where will the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence." -T.S. Eliot
I would think some sort of GPS transmitter or other device such that you could track the thing would be more helpful.
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
I don't think that fortune quite fits the bill, since it doesn't download a new version customized to your usage. OTOH, it does sound very, very similar to something that Mattel did, discussed in this Slashdot article a couple of months ago.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
If you want freedom of speech online, and advertising is speech, then what the hell are you thinking?
The actual legal distinction here is that while the First Amendment guarantees you the right to say anything you want, it doesn't guarantee you the right to force anyone to listen to it.
Thus, you are allowed to publish a newspaper saying whatever you want (with some restrictions: libel, etc.), but you don't have the right to force the New York Times to print your screed against evil mind-hijacking black helicopters on the front page. Or, you can say whatever you want to whoever'll listen, but you don't have the right to take your own PA system to the Super Bowl and broadcast your views to millions of people who just want to watch a football game.
So, DeCSS is protected by the First Amendment because it is speech that is simply published on the web for anyone who wants to hear it to get it. The right to publish the phrase "Streaming Teen Sex Slumber Fest" with a hyperlink attached is similarly protected by the First Amendment. The "right" to place it in everybody's email inbox is not.
Founder's Camp
Founder's Camp
News for non-Nerds. Stuff that matters.
Then if someone steals your computer while it's active then it will do something nasty possibly involving thermite.
Respond to s
I understand that many people consider that spam as well, but that kind of spam is at least controlled more easily.
Here's the abstract of the patent:
By the way, I wonder why they included via a modem in there. It seems like an unnecessary limitation.
If it had a Built In Webcam (tm) you could tak3 pictures and send 7hem to y0u.
or what ab0ut a fing3rprin7 l0ck? so identific4ti0n c0uld be sent to the p0lic3 when the attempt to 0pen 1t h4pp3n5.
What if it had lazerz and 5m0ke b0mbs!! wouldn7 that be c0ol? I c4n get s0me p4r7z 4nd h4x0r 0n3 70g37h3r 0u7 0f 5p4r3 m07h3rb04rdz 4nd 9unp0wd3r!!!!!!! 7H47 WUD B3 1337!!!!
wow... I should go...
YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
Why in the world is it my civic duty to do the patent office's job? You let them off for granting obvious patents, and then shift the responsibility on these bad patents to me.
I'm sorry, but I have better things to do than monitor the patent office's patent applications. And you know what? I shouldn't have to. I pay to have someone do it for me.
The patent office probably received the applications, couldn't find anything in the library to contest Amazon's (and you ever so cleverly worded "Some obscure company's") claims?
Sorry, they're not getting off that easy. If they had so much as asked ONE PROFESSIONAL in the industry whether they'd ever heard of HYPERLINKING, they would have been told that not only is there prior art, but that the idea is already in widespread use! Again, why are you letting them off on a plea of innocent ignorance, when their job is not to be ignorant?
And don't tell me some tear-jerker story about how many patents these poor few people have to go through. Because if that's the case, it's congress's responsibility to hire more examiners. Likewise, that's what I pay them to do.
As for objection to the patents, would you consider it conspicuous objection if someone really high-profile like, say, the president of a major computer book publisher wrote an open letter to a company who filed an obvious patent like maybe a major online bookseller? And how about the article I read about the Amazon patent in Newsweek a few months later? And then the article I read in my local newspaper a few weeks after that?
(And I have a couple of patents, and busted my ass to get them... so I can tell you how difficult it is to obtain one of these puppies.)
Right, I hope this isn't too presumptuous, but I'm assuming you're not the CEO of a multinational corporation with teams of lawyers?
--
Since you risk a two year sentence if you dont want to give the authorities the key to the PGP encrypted 733n pr0n on your laptop, you can send a killer e-mail instead after THEY come for you...
All opinions are my own - until criticized
and here's why:
US Code Title 35 (regarding patents)
"Sec. 103. Conditions for patentability; non-obvious subject matter
(a) A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made."
If you all would stop whining, and put together a letter to the patent office detailing why this is obvious to us (since we ARE in the trade), you might be surprised that they pull the damn thing!
Interesting comment. Perhaps lawsuits are the first step in natural selection toward the end of a species? That might be a bit hopeful for everything from spammers to the RIAA, but who knows?
Of course, if the RIAA/MPAA are any indication, the spammers will just unite into a giant "standards" organization, get a good set of lawyers to stop spammers that are spamming using their *innovative* techniques for free, and charge people to spam them.
intent isnt sufficient. a newspaper is intended to be read, but newspapers are also used to roll up and swat flies. They may not like it, but they cant stop it. If they want a server for authorized use only, protect it.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
EGN has already been there, done that, some 2 years ago. EGN is an ICQ clone by BrainScan specifically targeted at gamers that never really got off the ground. I've beta tested it, so incidentally my EGN ID# is 108, but that all is beside the point. Thing is, EGN displayed a little ad in the top part of the window, usually advertising some gaming site on the BrainScan network. A whole batch of those would be downloaded off the server when you're offline, and the ads would keep cycling when you were offline or lost connection.
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
Years ago I set up a unix box (at&t 3b2) to auto dail its own number very few days.
The box was stolen. When I spoke to the police, I mentioned that it would dial if it was hooked up. The phone company helped out and the police found the person who had the machine.
It turns out the only ones that knew it was stolen were the police and the insurance company.
>It's not your God-given right to be able to access their site.
and it's not the NY times godgiven right to know the demographics of all their readers.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
In addition I think there should be a spammer tax id number included with every spam sent out, so that everyone can bill the spammer as appropriate for loss of bandwidth.
Only when the cost of spam is higher than the cost of doing business, then will the spam dis-appear
(gotta find a better way to say that)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
A lojack type device would be better. Think about it when the computer turns on no matter where it is it send a signal and you can decide on what you can to it. Let the police capture then guy who had it. no e-mail no internet needed.
So /dev/microphone | speach-to-text | email_client someone@somewhere.com
cat
gets you a patent? surely there would be plenty of prior art of being read your email - isn't that what email clients for the blind do? and dictation isn't a new idea either, don't the ads for it mention dictating email?
it doesn't sound very novel to me.
the other patents don't sound to great either...
I never paid for newspapers I read for free in a coffee-shop, newscafe or bar. I dont see why I should start now. so I'm getting for free what I always got for free. If NYT didn't intend for the non-reg servers to be used they wouldn't have them.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
All you have to do is configure procmail to reject any E-Mails not encrypted to your public key. If everyone did this, mass E-Mailing would require enough hardware to make spam unprofitable and the RBL would block the spammer out within the first couple of thousand addresses in his list, if one was so foolish as to try.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Basicaly numbers get rounded somewhere.
2.4 wold get rounded to 2.
2.4 + 2.4 = 4.8
of course 4.8 gets rounded _up_ to 5
so yes. For suficently large values of 2
2 + 2 dose = 5
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Wait a minute... does this mean that melissa and iloveyou were... spam?
2 1337 4 u!
5. Vegitarians shouldn't have to deal with meat products getting mailed to them.
4. Handeling pork products violates many religions.
3. Nobody really knows what the hell "SPAM" stands for anyway.
2. Spam is the leading cause of traded lunches in elementry schools in the US.
And the #1 reason Spam should be banned:
Spam, like its E-mail counterpart, has very little wholesome content, and is mostly junk fillers.
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
I hope many, many means of spamming are discovered and patented! Then there will be:
I say, let the spammers make it as hard as they can for each other. No skin off our nose, and it may actually reduce the amount of spam out there.
Steve
Don't Turn Your Computer On, or it May Turn Itself Off
The ability to send an email to a computer, have it erase its hard drive, send out additional emails so you know it was successful, and then stop the machine from working.
:-)
:-)
Oh, wait! We already have that
Its called M$ Outlook.
I understand Pitr is working on a linux port this week
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Oh, wait! We already have that :-)
Its called M$ Outlook.
I understand Pitr is working on a linux port this week :-)
Actually he finished and released it. Poor trusting movie watchers. :-}
Yeah, they got rid of the other two. But you can use this new one(and try to keep this a little more low-key, huh guys?):
i ztech/articles/07pate.html
http://channel.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/08/b
Perhaps better though would be a co-operative system that did just that. If you have your own personal spam list, what if you had your service tell other services when you received something that you considered spam, and they could then filter. Only you would get like spam conflicts where sometimes you want that particular, but hey we're engineers we can solve anything right?! ;)
Everyone is living in a personal delusion, just some are more delusional than others.
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
The abstract, background, and preferred embodiment sections of a patent have little if any legal force. Only the claims define the scope of the patent. And my Dr. Mario clone (like all Dr. Mario clones) falls well within the claims of Nintendo's patent 5,265,888 on Dr. Mario.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?