Now, that's just silly. Sending something to an address that is clearly designated to receive that thing is never spam. If an address has 'send resumes here' and you send a resumes to a bunch of those addresses, it's not spam, period.
It's the same with real opt-in lists. I'm on a few lists that send commercial content out, and I don't consider them spam anymore then I consider apache-announce spam, because I a) signed up for them, and b) can get off them.
People who say spam is any bulk email are simpletons. Spam is unsolicted email, period. If you ask for it, it by defination is not spam, regardless of how many other people asked for the exact same thing and got it at the sametime.
Note 'ask for it' isn't literally 'send X type messages to my address'. If you post in on usenet about alt.car.fords (pretending that exists), using your email address, and don't have any qualifications for email in.sig, it's presumably okay to email you about things you said, like you would on the newgroup, but just privately. Presumably, people you knew at some time in RL have the okay to email you and say hi, also, if they happen to run across your name too. As do people who have a comment on your web page, etc.
So, there are 'implied consent' things, where if you happen to run across someone's email address in a certain context, it's okay to email them about something. Even if the HR email address didn't have 'send resumes' here, if they had a position open that required one, it's a safe assumption you should send them an resume there, etc.
The rules aren't hard and fast. But this idiot was just emailing harvested addresses. I can't think of a single time harvested addresses are a legit thing to email. Maybe if whirlpool has a recall and they harvest alt.dishwasher.whirlpool or http://www.whirlpoolfan.com/messages or something like that. But that's a fairly wacky example,it's much more logical to simple post the recall there.
The problem with the 'cleverness' of not numbering them in order is that for it to work in any way, you have to tell everyone except the counterfeits what numbers are valid.
In other words, it's security though obscurity, and very bad example of that. It would be like giving everyone except thieves master keys to everyone's house.
However, I do not keep valuables in your store. If I did, and you didn't have pillars to stop trucks, you can bet your ass I'd move them out of your store after you got hit by a truck.
And your analogy is taking something and pretending I would follow it to a faulty extreme, while I never said. If someone launches a million dollar heists to steal something out of the Most Secure Room On Earth(TM), I'm not going to suddenly move my valuables elsewhere, if they plug the hole the people came in though.
But if someone walks in though a door that they leave unlock a month after they've been warned, yes, I'm not going to listen to any whining how the cracker made them 'look bad'. Tough shit, and goodbye. You should have locked the fucking door.
And if I were a cracker who got arrested for it, I'd make sure their lax security came out at the trail if they didn't drop the case. I'd get some security experts to swear under oath about how long the hole's been known about. Sure, it wouldn't legally influence the case, but you can bet they'd drop it when they started looking like complete idiots.
And, of course, that is exactly my point, which you seemed to have missed. If people can casually stroll up to an (in use) armored truck and spraypaint on the side of it, I'm moving my money somewhere else. Likewise, if someone can casually run the newest script and deface a website, I'm taking my money somewhere else.
Sure, it's illegal, but I really consider the crackers as having done a service, to me at least. I know the people I was thinking of using are not security-minded in the least if someone can waltz in though a month old security hole.
(3) One of our business clients saw the defaced web page and decided that they didn't trust us to protect their data. They will no longer do business with us. We have lost all of the income they would have provided forever.
Erm..who's fault is that? You obviously did have poor security.
Companies complaining that a cracker made them look bad are idiots, as is anyone who listens to them. If a company can't do what it's being paid to do, it may hurt the comany when it comes out, but tough shit. If Brinks trucks started getting defaced while there are supposed to be armed security guards inside, does Brinks deserve any sympathy? No, the defacers deserve a round of thanks as we all leap to using another armored car company.
I usually don't defend crackers, but saying 'they made the company look bad, and thus cost money' is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Of course the company looks bad, it can't secure its network, which is hardly the cracker's fault!
There's not actually anything restrictive about the GPL at all. If the software you receives wasn't licensed under the GPL, and was instead just giving out straight copyright law, you couldn't do anything more with it, and a great deal less.
A car can use a "counterintuitive" interface precisely because it's function and thus it's interface elements are so limited. There are only three pedals, a wheel and a stick - or even two pedals and a wheel. The UI of a car is NOT complex! On the other hand it IS consistant. No matter which make or model I buy a car from the pedals and the steering wheel all do the same thing and are in the same spot. It's not like Ford puts the clutch on one side and Chrysler puts it on the other - or a Taurus uses a steering wheel, Saturn uses a joystick and Yugo's use a rudder to steer the thing.
I have to point out that cars, even automatics, have a lot more controls then that. Leaving out all the extras you don't have to know to drive, like radio/AC, my car has:
1. a stick turn signals you push up or down
2. a wiper control that's an unlabeled sliding stick, for speed control and interval control
3. two buttons, one for just running the wipers once labeled 'mist' and one, which when you press it does the same as 'mist', but if you hold it it will also squirt the windshield with cleaner
4. A button on the gearshift, which I have to push to change from Park to anything, to reverse or park, etc, but oddly enough I can shift into neutral from reverse or drive and into drive from neutral or 2nd without pressing it.
5. A button for my parking lights, and one for my headlights that also depresses the parking light button.
6. A slider switch that controls the brightness of my internal lights, but only when my headlights are on. When they are off, my internal lights are off, except for my radio LEDs which remain on.
7. A switch under (6) that controls the dome light. Unless the door is open, or someone just opened the door, or a million other things caused the dome light to come on by itself, in which case this switch has no apparent effect until that condition is supposed to stop, then the dome light remains on.
8. If I push (1) forward, it flips my headlights from low to high, asssuming they are already on.
9. On (1), a switch which turns cruise control on and off, and if I push it farther it will accellerate me 2 miles an hour. If I hold it it will continue to accellerate me. However, if cruise control is on, but not 'active', it will return me to my cruise control speed, but not accellerate me.
9. On the end of (1), that is a button that slows me down my 2 miles MPH if I push it with cruise control on, and if I hold it it will decrease my speed continually. If I push it when cruise control is on, but not 'active', it will return me to my previous speed, just like hold (8) will.
10. Obviously, it also has a key in the ignition, which you left out of your 'two pedals and a circle'. These have at least three different possible positions for the key.
11. I can push the middle of the steering wheel to activate the 'horn'.
These are just the things you need to know to drive the car, period. I didn't mention the radio or AC. (And god knows the AC and radio interfaces suck.) It's actually rather a lot. And while a few things are standard (horn in middle fo steering wheel), most things on the list, like lights, cruise control, and wipers, are not.
Note that, if you still have it around, you can usually get it to work if you get something, like the aforementioned tycho brick, to hold the game all the way down.
Or, the easiest solution is to just use the game genie.;)
That wasn't the game genie's doing. The spring machanism that held the games in place on old NESs was a piece of crap. I know tons of people who's NES screwed up and they didn't even have a game genie. They had to hold the games down with a tycho brick to get them to play. (Like a lego brick but twice as big.)
No. Unlike RMS, I have no desire to make publishing software under a particular license illegal just because I don't like the license. Let me clarify myself. Joe Blow kernel hacker doesn't threaten me, not at all. What threatens me is RMS's statement to the effect that he can't support the "right to release under any license" espoused by O'Reilly et. al.
That's because RMS is completely insane. Free software owes him a debt, but he's completely insane.
When I speak of the Free Software movement, I am speaking of the radical element that has an agenda to make it illegal to write proprietary software, to wrest source code from Microsoft by government force, etc. OTOH, if the market determines that software should be free, I am just fine with that. The carriage analogy is a good one.
Well, okay, but that wasn't what the comment you were replying to wanted. It just wanted people to wake up and realize what they were paying for.
As for the PP not wanting to take away my rights, I doubt that he wouuld hesitate to vote for a representative who might sponsor a bill to regulate the software industry, with a long term view towards socializing it. This is what has me afraid, because the Republicans are way behind the curve on this one. Most of them don't even know what the FSF is. They need to be mobilized.
I did read you correction, and I suspect the political party you want is 'Libertarian'.;)
But worrying congress is going to do something to destroy MS is crazy, especially under the current administration.;)
That is why proprietary software has, and must continue to maintain its right to exist. It is also why the Free Software movement is possibly the greatest threat to liberty in the new century.
Som...um...we shouldn't have the right to give out time and money away, because it hurts people who choose to sell it? Well, let's start by stopping Habitates for Humanity (stealing from legit builders), Amnesty Internation (hey, they could always pay people to lobby for them), the ACLU (people should just buy their own lawyers), etc.
Or is it only wrong, in your fantasty world, for software to be worked on for 'charity' (Which, often, isn't that charitable. You fix what you use. Giving it away after you've fixed it already isn't that amazing a feat.)
You, personally, may feel threatened, but I can give away sticks and yarn all I want, and you know what? They're going to stop buying them from you. And I don't care, because I like doing it.
And no one mentioned taking away anyone's right to make and sell software. He simply said it was a stupid thing for society to be putting up with, and it's time they said 'Hey, why am I even thinking about paying money for this crap?'. Society as a whole has decided, for example, it will not pay for owning horse drawn carriages. That's not a threat to any liberties, it's just how society is.
Erm, a quantum computer wouldn't factor numbers in 'quadratic time', whatever that is. They would factor numbers instantly. Peter Shor came up with a program to do this, I believe.
No, that would work just as well. The traveling salesmen works just as well with two salesmens, it just takes a lot longer to find the solution, but, hey, if you can solve NP complete problems, that shouldn't matter.
They can't possibly have a remote kill switch, they're only sending out one signal. Well, they can have firmware in the box that will erase your firmware if it detects an erase code and your serial number, but there's no possible way they've detected you've hacked the thing in the first place, as it is one-way.
In other words, it's CSS all over again. They're handing out a signal, and you have all the time in the world to hack it.
It's actually more comparable to satelite stuff, except for the fact that you don't have an upgradable-on-a-card firmware, so they can't just change the signal and mail all the legit people new cards.
As for keeping track of subscriptions...I have no idea how they even do that. I suspect it's entirely in the box, aka, you tell them your serial number, they run it though some magical formula using it and the amount of time you purchased, and send it out, eventually, over the 'license' channel, which your box detects and activates itself. I doubt they're doing deactivations this way, though, because it would be easy enough to just unplug your box for a week after you stop paying, then plug it in. Or just create interference on the license channel. The box probably just keeps track of the time, and time on your subscription will just run out.
Which means, to hack this things, all you may need is a radio transmittor and a simple to code key generator.;)
Except, as billions of people pointed out, the second T-800 also got his arm torn off, and left it behind.
Plus, duh, half the research was done already, and it's crazy to think they didn't have off-site backups. The loss of what's-his-name, the scientist, and the loss of their facilities would have just slowed Skynet, not stopped it.
Slashdot Mirror
Not that I'm saying all of them do, but it's a noticible demographic.
wget only checks robots.txt for recursive mode. Checking for robots.txt before getting a single page would be pointless and a waste of bandwidth.
It's the same with real opt-in lists. I'm on a few lists that send commercial content out, and I don't consider them spam anymore then I consider apache-announce spam, because I a) signed up for them, and b) can get off them.
People who say spam is any bulk email are simpletons. Spam is unsolicted email, period. If you ask for it, it by defination is not spam, regardless of how many other people asked for the exact same thing and got it at the sametime.
Note 'ask for it' isn't literally 'send X type messages to my address'. If you post in on usenet about alt.car.fords (pretending that exists), using your email address, and don't have any qualifications for email in .sig, it's presumably okay to email you about things you said, like you would on the newgroup, but just privately. Presumably, people you knew at some time in RL have the okay to email you and say hi, also, if they happen to run across your name too. As do people who have a comment on your web page, etc.
So, there are 'implied consent' things, where if you happen to run across someone's email address in a certain context, it's okay to email them about something. Even if the HR email address didn't have 'send resumes' here, if they had a position open that required one, it's a safe assumption you should send them an resume there, etc.
The rules aren't hard and fast. But this idiot was just emailing harvested addresses. I can't think of a single time harvested addresses are a legit thing to email. Maybe if whirlpool has a recall and they harvest alt.dishwasher.whirlpool or http://www.whirlpoolfan.com/messages or something like that. But that's a fairly wacky example,it's much more logical to simple post the recall there.
In other words, it's security though obscurity, and very bad example of that. It would be like giving everyone except thieves master keys to everyone's house.
Not to mention that the US doesn't use paper either, it uses a kind of cloth. Paper would rot much too easily.
And your analogy is taking something and pretending I would follow it to a faulty extreme, while I never said. If someone launches a million dollar heists to steal something out of the Most Secure Room On Earth(TM), I'm not going to suddenly move my valuables elsewhere, if they plug the hole the people came in though.
But if someone walks in though a door that they leave unlock a month after they've been warned, yes, I'm not going to listen to any whining how the cracker made them 'look bad'. Tough shit, and goodbye. You should have locked the fucking door.
And if I were a cracker who got arrested for it, I'd make sure their lax security came out at the trail if they didn't drop the case. I'd get some security experts to swear under oath about how long the hole's been known about. Sure, it wouldn't legally influence the case, but you can bet they'd drop it when they started looking like complete idiots.
Sure, it's illegal, but I really consider the crackers as having done a service, to me at least. I know the people I was thinking of using are not security-minded in the least if someone can waltz in though a month old security hole.
Erm..who's fault is that? You obviously did have poor security.
Companies complaining that a cracker made them look bad are idiots, as is anyone who listens to them. If a company can't do what it's being paid to do, it may hurt the comany when it comes out, but tough shit. If Brinks trucks started getting defaced while there are supposed to be armed security guards inside, does Brinks deserve any sympathy? No, the defacers deserve a round of thanks as we all leap to using another armored car company.
I usually don't defend crackers, but saying 'they made the company look bad, and thus cost money' is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Of course the company looks bad, it can't secure its network, which is hardly the cracker's fault!
There's not actually anything restrictive about the GPL at all. If the software you receives wasn't licensed under the GPL, and was instead just giving out straight copyright law, you couldn't do anything more with it, and a great deal less.
I have to point out that cars, even automatics, have a lot more controls then that. Leaving out all the extras you don't have to know to drive, like radio/AC, my car has:
1. a stick turn signals you push up or down
2. a wiper control that's an unlabeled sliding stick, for speed control and interval control
3. two buttons, one for just running the wipers once labeled 'mist' and one, which when you press it does the same as 'mist', but if you hold it it will also squirt the windshield with cleaner
4. A button on the gearshift, which I have to push to change from Park to anything, to reverse or park, etc, but oddly enough I can shift into neutral from reverse or drive and into drive from neutral or 2nd without pressing it.
5. A button for my parking lights, and one for my headlights that also depresses the parking light button.
6. A slider switch that controls the brightness of my internal lights, but only when my headlights are on. When they are off, my internal lights are off, except for my radio LEDs which remain on.
7. A switch under (6) that controls the dome light. Unless the door is open, or someone just opened the door, or a million other things caused the dome light to come on by itself, in which case this switch has no apparent effect until that condition is supposed to stop, then the dome light remains on.
8. If I push (1) forward, it flips my headlights from low to high, asssuming they are already on.
9. On (1), a switch which turns cruise control on and off, and if I push it farther it will accellerate me 2 miles an hour. If I hold it it will continue to accellerate me. However, if cruise control is on, but not 'active', it will return me to my cruise control speed, but not accellerate me.
9. On the end of (1), that is a button that slows me down my 2 miles MPH if I push it with cruise control on, and if I hold it it will decrease my speed continually. If I push it when cruise control is on, but not 'active', it will return me to my previous speed, just like hold (8) will.
10. Obviously, it also has a key in the ignition, which you left out of your 'two pedals and a circle'. These have at least three different possible positions for the key.
11. I can push the middle of the steering wheel to activate the 'horn'.
These are just the things you need to know to drive the car, period. I didn't mention the radio or AC. (And god knows the AC and radio interfaces suck.) It's actually rather a lot. And while a few things are standard (horn in middle fo steering wheel), most things on the list, like lights, cruise control, and wipers, are not.
Or, the easiest solution is to just use the game genie. ;)
xyzzx wans't an easter egg, it was a needed code to finish the game.
That wasn't the game genie's doing. The spring machanism that held the games in place on old NESs was a piece of crap. I know tons of people who's NES screwed up and they didn't even have a game genie. They had to hold the games down with a tycho brick to get them to play. (Like a lego brick but twice as big.)
That's because RMS is completely insane. Free software owes him a debt, but he's completely insane. When I speak of the Free Software movement, I am speaking of the radical element that has an agenda to make it illegal to write proprietary software, to wrest source code from Microsoft by government force, etc. OTOH, if the market determines that software should be free, I am just fine with that. The carriage analogy is a good one.
Well, okay, but that wasn't what the comment you were replying to wanted. It just wanted people to wake up and realize what they were paying for.
As for the PP not wanting to take away my rights, I doubt that he wouuld hesitate to vote for a representative who might sponsor a bill to regulate the software industry, with a long term view towards socializing it. This is what has me afraid, because the Republicans are way behind the curve on this one. Most of them don't even know what the FSF is. They need to be mobilized.
I did read you correction, and I suspect the political party you want is 'Libertarian'. ;)
But worrying congress is going to do something to destroy MS is crazy, especially under the current administration. ;)
Som...um...we shouldn't have the right to give out time and money away, because it hurts people who choose to sell it? Well, let's start by stopping Habitates for Humanity (stealing from legit builders), Amnesty Internation (hey, they could always pay people to lobby for them), the ACLU (people should just buy their own lawyers), etc.
Or is it only wrong, in your fantasty world, for software to be worked on for 'charity' (Which, often, isn't that charitable. You fix what you use. Giving it away after you've fixed it already isn't that amazing a feat.)
You, personally, may feel threatened, but I can give away sticks and yarn all I want, and you know what? They're going to stop buying them from you. And I don't care, because I like doing it.
And no one mentioned taking away anyone's right to make and sell software. He simply said it was a stupid thing for society to be putting up with, and it's time they said 'Hey, why am I even thinking about paying money for this crap?'. Society as a whole has decided, for example, it will not pay for owning horse drawn carriages. That's not a threat to any liberties, it's just how society is.
Of course, none of those are still produced and sold anymore, but I believe that makes the case stronger.
Erm, a quantum computer wouldn't factor numbers in 'quadratic time', whatever that is. They would factor numbers instantly. Peter Shor came up with a program to do this, I believe.
Yeah, but we still don't know how Fermat did it.
No, that would work just as well. The traveling salesmen works just as well with two salesmens, it just takes a lot longer to find the solution, but, hey, if you can solve NP complete problems, that shouldn't matter.
In other words, it's CSS all over again. They're handing out a signal, and you have all the time in the world to hack it.
It's actually more comparable to satelite stuff, except for the fact that you don't have an upgradable-on-a-card firmware, so they can't just change the signal and mail all the legit people new cards.
As for keeping track of subscriptions...I have no idea how they even do that. I suspect it's entirely in the box, aka, you tell them your serial number, they run it though some magical formula using it and the amount of time you purchased, and send it out, eventually, over the 'license' channel, which your box detects and activates itself. I doubt they're doing deactivations this way, though, because it would be easy enough to just unplug your box for a week after you stop paying, then plug it in. Or just create interference on the license channel. The box probably just keeps track of the time, and time on your subscription will just run out.
Which means, to hack this things, all you may need is a radio transmittor and a simple to code key generator. ;)
I didn't mention the character's name, I was talking about the movie series called 'Indiana Jones'.
Hey, I'm not the one writing the illogical plots. ;)
(I never really figured out that 'only living organisms' anyway. It doesn't seem to make any sense. And people's hair isn't a living organism anyway.)
Plus, duh, half the research was done already, and it's crazy to think they didn't have off-site backups. The loss of what's-his-name, the scientist, and the loss of their facilities would have just slowed Skynet, not stopped it.
Or, of course, it's some sort of trans-temporal warning sent by the human rebellion.