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Slashback: Bouncing, Taxing, Releasing

Tonight's Slashback brings you more on Florida's LAN-taxation proposal, the BBC's public archive (which won't be quite as big as you might have hoped), one user's plea to those who respond to viruses, and more. Read on for the details. They're taxing whatnow and hownow? Chad Eric Watt, author of the story posted yesterday on Florida's proposal to tax LANs, writes with a helpful clarification:
"The layout of our Web page doesn't do a great job of showing that the story continues on a second page. That's where I explain what is up for taxing.

Quoting the story now:

'...That brings them under the purview of the proposed rule, which includes computer networks as 'substitute communications systems' -- subject to a 9.17 percent state tax, plus local option taxes.

In Orange County, the local tax typically runs between 5.5 percent and 6.5 percent. That would bring the total tax to between 14-15 percent.

[end of first page, you hafta click to get to the rest of the story]

Computer networks would be taxed at that percent on either annual lease payments or depreciation.'"

He also provides this link to the full, uninterrupted text.

Willie Sutton has met his betters. Syphtor writes "DE Tech has responded to a reporters inquiries as to their patent claims (DE Tech refuses to say why NZ firms were targeted first) DE Tech appeared previously in the /. article, Australian Gov't Moves To Block E-commerce Patent. Latest: the patent has been just granted in Virginia 'after five years of making changes in the application.'
Legitimate protection of IP or a 'fishing expedition worthy of a Sicilian Mafia protection racket.'?"


Well, not releasing everything, No, not as such, that is, you see ... An anonymous reader writes "According to this press release from the BBC, the 'BBC creative archive' (earlier on slashdot) will not be as full as previously assumed. As the page says, 'The BBC Creative Archive would make selected BBC material universally available for private not commercial use in the UK.' (my emphasis) Looks like we won't be able to get the Hitchhiker's Guide and complete works of Monty Python after all, folks."

Who, really, is Peter Lynds, and how old is he? evil_one666 writes "You may remember that Slashdot reported a few weeks ago on ground-breaking work in the understanding of time. Well, it appears that it was all a hoax. While the Guardian is running a story that suggests several interesting conspiracy theories (although they seem to think that Peter Lynds is in fact legitimate), Museumofhoaxes.com present some convincing evidence that he is in fact a 17-year-old student at the same radio college at which he claimed to be a 27-year old-lecturer. Astute Slashdot readers rightly pointed out some big red flags, the first time the topic was aired, and Cesar Sirvent, a researcher in the field, has a list of links related to the controversy here."

Outlook Express not yet left out to rot. dr. electron writes "As stated previously on Slashdot, Outlook was to be slaughtered. Now MS says, in a article on Internet Magazine, it won't be, but developed further. They blame communication problem inside the company about the previous press release. Maybe the ongoing development of Outlook Express isn't the biggest news here, I find the reason 'communication problem' a bit odd (It's not a small decision to kill a product)."

Speaking of Outlook and anguish: caseywest, among others, has had enough blame redirected into his email box. He writes "This is my plea, my Public Service Announcement. Please, please stop bouncing email viruses! I don't run any windows computers, and /dev/null'ing viruses are trivial. I cannot, however, say that this problem is only a Windows-only menace. My email address is plastered all over the internet. As a result, I'm receiving thousands of bounced messages claiming I sent a virus. This is costly, let alone wrong! I didn't send you that virus! If you admin an email server, please answer chromatic's one question test. If you're bouncing email viruses, please reconfigure your filters to send viruses to /dev/null, and save us all money on bandwidth, hard disk space, and general anguish. Thank you."

4 of 343 comments (clear)

  1. Re:/dev/null is unacceptable by nightgeometry · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sorry, I just don't get what you are trying to say here: 1. Sending mail to dev/null is wrong, because people need to be able to use e-mail. 2. If an admin tries to be helpful (maybe misguidedly), you blacklist them, thus no more mail. This seems to be a contradiction, at least to me. Oh, and btw, usenet rocks.

    --
    The best is the enemy of the good
  2. Re:Question by C_nemo · · Score: 3, Informative

    RTFP, the Outlook and virus bouncing are distinct subjects.
    To spare you the trouble of reading the article:

    1: Outlook Express will not be killed off, to the delight of many of my non/semi computer literate friends.

    2: Getting bounced virus messages from mails you never sent is crap. I got one such mail last week from a email adress which is _never_ in use (.forward file in $home). when you are bouncing/retuerning warnings on email borne viruses, someone who is not infected will wake up one day and find 100 "your message contained a virus" mail in the inbox, almost like spam, it creates alot of uneccesary traffic.

  3. Re: Well, not releasing everything by esw · · Score: 3, Informative

    I have no problem with other countries using GPS, and that was paid for by American taxpayers.

    Is this case really any different?

  4. For those listening in... by ThePurpleBuffalo · · Score: 4, Informative
    Email needs to be reliable communication medium. If a message can not be delivered, it has to be returned to the sender. It is absolutely unacceptable to simply discard a message. Want a better idea? Try _blocking_ the message. When I see any executable attachment in a message, my server does not accept the message. It returns a 5xx series message and tells the person to resend it without the attachment. I do the same thing for common virus Subject: lines. The message is rejected with a 5xx error and the user is told to change the subject line.

    For the benefit of less SMTP-savy, here are a couple of things you need to keep in mind.

    Unless you want to open yourself to the rumplestiltskin attack, you must accept every message for delivery, and THEN decide on the action.

    In fact, returning a 5XX is a bounce. It's not blocking them from sending it. You have still received the data, and nothing is going to undo that.

    Beware TPB