I can't remember the last time I went to the theater to see a movie. It doesn't have so much to do with movies sucking (which most do) as it does with comfort and convenience. Why should I pay between $7 and $12 to watch a movie, with a bunch of people I don't know, where I have no control over the environment? Instead, I can rent the movie for $3 or less or grab it from the cable (either on demand or DVR). Furthermore, I can pause the movie to get up and use the bathroom, I don't pay $15 for soda, popcorn, and a candy bar, and the picture and sound quality is terrific.
With the quality of home theater equipment and the huge selection of things available at the video store or on cable/satelite I really see no reason to go anywhere else.
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses ( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected ( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks ( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it ( ) Users of email will not put up with it ( ) Microsoft will not put up with it ( ) The police will not put up with it (x) Requires too much cooperation from spammers (x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once ( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists ( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it (x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email (x) Open relays in foreign countries (x) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses (x) Asshats ( ) Jurisdictional problems ( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email (x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes (x) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches (x) Extreme profitability of spam (x) Joe jobs and/or identity theft ( ) Technically illiterate politicians (x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers (x) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves (x) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering (x) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation (x) Blacklists suck (x) Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud ( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually ( ) Sending email should be free ( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? ( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses (x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome ( ) I don't want the government reading my email (x) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work. ( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
Finland makes the news because the company that developed the equipment is based in Finland...contrary to the article summary which suggests that 100 MBps broadband will be available in Finland.
Although I'd be surprised to see 100 MBps in U.S. homes soon, the article only talks about equipment capable of providing that kind of service -- not about an actual deployment.
I wish people who submit articles to/. actually read them first...
Mod this down as offtopic or flamebait as you see fit, but/. should allow moderators to mod the orignal story post itself.
I find this story:
1) Interesting 2) Funny 3) Informative 4) Entirely misrepresentitive of the underlying story 4) Shameless self-promotion of an un-original idea that doesn't really work 5) Shameless self-promotion of lame artwork involving recycled hardware
It might exist but it isn't necessarily cheap. Tablet PC's can do all of this, and it can replace a laptop. Since it is a full-fledged PC, you can run anything you could on any other computer. On top of all that, it's thin, light, about the footprint of a pad of paper, and has a rechargeable battery.
Only downside is you pretty much have to run Win XP Tablet Edition, unless there's some port of Linux that I don't know about...
"Spyware is any software that installs, either with or without permission, to monitor the user and relay information to third parties, for the purposes of selling merchandise or services."
"XIII is 4 CDs and asks you to swap them ALL the time, in between levels, sometimes a couple times at a pop.. All for no good reason, the entire game is on the HDD.."
As a network admin at a small (50 desktops and 10 servers) technology solutions company, I have no reason to filter content. I feel as though the employees (including myself) are adults capable of making their own decisions about what they do online. If they're viewing inappropriate content and it becomes a problem for either their productivity or the office environment, then it is the responsibility of management to deal with the problem accordingly.
I also make it clear to my users that, while we don't routinely monitor network traffic, we certainly have the capability to do so. The only time I do this is when I am asked to or in passing while troubleshooting problems or performing maintenance.
In short, anynone who doesn't trust their employees needs to hire some new ones.
I think this story (or a new one linking to the website) should be posted on Slashdot every day. That way we can achieve a continuous Slashdot effect, and no one can read this bullshit. Wonder if that could be considered a DOS attack...
[2] NN is akin to getting high - and getting high is *NOT* a good idea when you're at 20m and breathing through a regulator! People who offer their regulators to passing fish, or loose track of time/depth die.
Trying to bring a shipwreck to the surface is kind of funny, too.
Unfortunately, not one part of that course involved any work on an actual computer. Just for fun you should check out the homework assignments posted on the website. There were many times when my solution to a problem looked someting like this:
Suppose there is an optimal solution O. Then my algorithm is as follows:
opt(n) {
return O; }
Proof of correctness: O is the optimal solution, opt(n) returns O, so opt(n) must return the optimal solution.
Running time analysis: Since opt(n) only does one thing (returns O) then it must have a O(1) time requirement.
I'd say we have plenty of bandwidth here (Cornell). I believe it's an OC-3, but I'm not sure.
Anyway, this woman (Eva Tardos) was one of my professors for an algorithms course (CS 482). She definitely liked to talk about this stuff in lecture...
Needless to say, I didn't think she was a very good teacher.
I realize this is getting off-topic, but I'm curious nonetheless. I took an intro to digital systems class and a computer architecture class (the final project was to "build" a MIPS pipelined processor) and managed to make all the finite state machines I needed without ever hearing the word "automata." We never learned it in those classes. We didn't need to. I suppose that drawing a state transition diagram for a digital circuit is basically designing an automaton, but the point is that I didn't need to learn about automata to do the assignments.
So onto regular expressions, then. What are they used for? For instance, I know that a language is regular if it can be computed by some automaton. I know that regular expressions are used to define regular languages. Great. But what the hell do I care if a language is regular or not?
Basically, I'm still struggling to find the value of this stuff. Any further info (from anyone) would be appreciated.
The misconception at Cornell is that CS majors want to do research after they graduate. Unless you're building compilers (or doing research) how useful are finite automata (or anything else I'm learning in this god-awful class.
For some reason, they insist that you take classes in automata theory and scientific computing, among others. While they should offer such courses, they should, by no means, be required. There is nothing worse than going to class everyday (if you still do that thing) and sitting through a lecture where you can't find a single thing that might be useful later.
While I understand the need for theory and only have a limited perspective (I haven't graduated yet and don't have a job), this is certainly the way things feel.
I wish I had an answer to your question. If you figure it out, let me know, too.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't remember the last time I went to the theater to see a movie. It doesn't have so much to do with movies sucking (which most do) as it does with comfort and convenience. Why should I pay between $7 and $12 to watch a movie, with a bunch of people I don't know, where I have no control over the environment? Instead, I can rent the movie for $3 or less or grab it from the cable (either on demand or DVR). Furthermore, I can pause the movie to get up and use the bathroom, I don't pay $15 for soda, popcorn, and a candy bar, and the picture and sound quality is terrific.
With the quality of home theater equipment and the huge selection of things available at the video store or on cable/satelite I really see no reason to go anywhere else.
This is the follow up article to the one posted a month or two ago:
1 2/11/2327239
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/
This article advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative (x) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(x) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(x) Open relays in foreign countries
(x) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(x) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
(x) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(x) Extreme profitability of spam
(x) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
(x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(x) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
(x) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
(x) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
(x) Blacklists suck
(x) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
(x) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
There are even tools out there that document code for you:
http://www.cenqua.com/commentator/
>How many sprinkle cupcakes should you make?
14
Finland makes the news because the company that developed the equipment is based in Finland...contrary to the article summary which suggests that 100 MBps broadband will be available in Finland.
/. actually read them first...
Although I'd be surprised to see 100 MBps in U.S. homes soon, the article only talks about equipment capable of providing that kind of service -- not about an actual deployment.
I wish people who submit articles to
NYT Style:
Email: ac@slashdot.org
Pass: password
Mod this down as offtopic or flamebait as you see fit, but /. should allow moderators to mod the orignal story post itself.
I find this story:
1) Interesting
2) Funny
3) Informative
4) Entirely misrepresentitive of the underlying story
4) Shameless self-promotion of an un-original idea that doesn't really work
5) Shameless self-promotion of lame artwork involving recycled hardware
The advantage is that the big universities have a dedicated network, without napster and all that crap bogging it down.
I thought napster and all that crap was the reason for Internet2 in the first place.
Of course, if you subscribe to MSDN, you can maintain your MS applications and avoid all those licenses completely.
Booya!
Umm...the AP physics exam was entirely in mathematical symbols and formulae.
It might exist but it isn't necessarily cheap. Tablet PC's can do all of this, and it can replace a laptop. Since it is a full-fledged PC, you can run anything you could on any other computer. On top of all that, it's thin, light, about the footprint of a pad of paper, and has a rechargeable battery.
Only downside is you pretty much have to run Win XP Tablet Edition, unless there's some port of Linux that I don't know about...
"Spyware is any software that installs, either with or without permission, to monitor the user and relay information to third parties, for the purposes of selling merchandise or services."
So Doubleclick cookies would be illegal? Booya!
"XIII is 4 CDs and asks you to swap them ALL the time, in between levels, sometimes a couple times at a pop.. All for no good reason, the entire game is on the HDD.."
You mean, you don't have 4 CDROM drives?
As a network admin at a small (50 desktops and 10 servers) technology solutions company, I have no reason to filter content. I feel as though the employees (including myself) are adults capable of making their own decisions about what they do online. If they're viewing inappropriate content and it becomes a problem for either their productivity or the office environment, then it is the responsibility of management to deal with the problem accordingly.
I also make it clear to my users that, while we don't routinely monitor network traffic, we certainly have the capability to do so. The only time I do this is when I am asked to or in passing while troubleshooting problems or performing maintenance.
In short, anynone who doesn't trust their employees needs to hire some new ones.
I think this story (or a new one linking to the website) should be posted on Slashdot every day. That way we can achieve a continuous Slashdot effect, and no one can read this bullshit. Wonder if that could be considered a DOS attack...
[2] NN is akin to getting high - and getting high is *NOT* a good idea when you're at 20m and breathing through a regulator! People who offer their regulators to passing fish, or loose track of time/depth die.
Trying to bring a shipwreck to the surface is kind of funny, too.
What exactly was this an advertisement for?
Unfortunately, not one part of that course involved any work on an actual computer. Just for fun you should check out the homework assignments posted on the website. There were many times when my solution to a problem looked someting like this:
Suppose there is an optimal solution O. Then my algorithm is as follows:
opt(n) {
return O;
}
Proof of correctness: O is the optimal solution, opt(n) returns O, so opt(n) must return the optimal solution.
Running time analysis: Since opt(n) only does one thing (returns O) then it must have a O(1) time requirement.
I'd say we have plenty of bandwidth here (Cornell). I believe it's an OC-3, but I'm not sure.
Anyway, this woman (Eva Tardos) was one of my professors for an algorithms course (CS 482). She definitely liked to talk about this stuff in lecture...
Needless to say, I didn't think she was a very good teacher.
Here is a link to the space shuttle news reference manual and specifically the section on "ditching".
The site is kind of busy right now for obvious reasons.
Here is the scoop from CNN:
p /index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/07/25/yale.princeton.a
I've used this on several of my assignments in my algorithms class. And the beauty is, it solves any problem!
Assume there exists an optimal solution O. Then we have:
Opt()
return O
end
Proof of Correctness:
O is the optimal solution.
The algorithm returns O.
Therefore, the algorithm returns the optimal solution.
Running Time Analysis:
The algorithm returns O, which can be done in constant time. Therefore, the entire algorithm is O(1).
This answer generally recieves minimum credit.
I realize this is getting off-topic, but I'm curious nonetheless. I took an intro to digital systems class and a computer architecture class (the final project was to "build" a MIPS pipelined processor) and managed to make all the finite state machines I needed without ever hearing the word "automata." We never learned it in those classes. We didn't need to. I suppose that drawing a state transition diagram for a digital circuit is basically designing an automaton, but the point is that I didn't need to learn about automata to do the assignments.
So onto regular expressions, then. What are they used for? For instance, I know that a language is regular if it can be computed by some automaton. I know that regular expressions are used to define regular languages. Great. But what the hell do I care if a language is regular or not?
Basically, I'm still struggling to find the value of this stuff. Any further info (from anyone) would be appreciated.
For some reason, they insist that you take classes in automata theory and scientific computing, among others. While they should offer such courses, they should, by no means, be required. There is nothing worse than going to class everyday (if you still do that thing) and sitting through a lecture where you can't find a single thing that might be useful later.
While I understand the need for theory and only have a limited perspective (I haven't graduated yet and don't have a job), this is certainly the way things feel.
I wish I had an answer to your question. If you figure it out, let me know, too.