Whenever a message is identified as spam, either by a server or by a recipient, that message should be registered in a database network shared among servers and recipients. Then all those servers and recipients in the network should automatically identify that message as spam.
So it sounds like you are advocating for devoting more resources to fighting spam - specifically more network and CPU resources.
Which leads me to the question of who will pay for this? As it is, companies are already buying dedicated anti-spam hardware, and individuals (and some companies) are paying for anti-spam software as well. But who would want to pay for a distributed collection of servers to spend their CPU time and bandwidth on processing email? And whose email would be processed? Would you process entire mail queues for users (which could be enormous and intrusive) or just the messages that they tag as spam (which would be consuming human time then too)?
It's an interesting idea, but in the end it sounds like you are just trying to push for an escalation in the spam arms-race. Unfortunately you will find that if you do that you are still way behind the spammers and their botnets, and you'll be much more invested (monetarily and time-wise) in it than they are.
If you really want to make a difference in spam, stop filtering and start going after the root of the problem.
...the amount of spam that actually makes it to an inbox, instead of being dumped into a junk folder or blocked outright?
That spam is, at the very least, equally as costly as spam that makes it to the inbox. Sure, it uses less of the users' time, but it still takes CPU time, network bandwidth, and storage (somewhere).
People who rely on their filters (or similar practices) upstream of their inbox to deal with the spam problem often overlook that very important point. That is part of why filters will never be the real solution to the spam problem.
The battle for clean e-mail should be fought on a number of fronts. Public awareness is the key weak link in the chain in my opinion. And as a new net savvy generation arises, that will come naturally.
That is a good idea, but it won't solve the problem - or even make a huge dent in it - on its own. Even with the new "net savvy" users, there are still plenty of users (including new users) who are uninformed and don't want to be informed. There are still plenty of technophobes who are getting on the internet because junior's teacher wanted him to look something up on wikipedia. And when mommy and daddy are both technophobes, junior won't likely be that much different.
That said, you almost hit the correct angle of attack for spam. The correct link to hit is profit. You need to break the connection between the spammer and the people who are paying him. You also need to go after the people who the spammer is paying and make their lives difficult. The end result should be dramatically increasing the cost of doing business for the spammer, while simultaneously reducing the flow of money to him. As profit is the main motivation behind spam, this will do more to drive spammers away from spamming than anything else.
As long as spammers can continue to make money through spam, they will continue to send out more spam. You can filter all you want, you won't do shit to reduce the volume until you address the motivation behind the spam itself.
I would like to see his standard deviation for the experiment he did. The article states:
The speed limit on Collier Boulevard, where she was cited, is 45 mph. According to county guidelines, the yellow light should be 4.5 seconds.
And that
Mogil said he tested it 15 times with an average of only 3.8 seconds
Thus the difference was reported as.7 seconds. While that does translate to a meaningful distance at 45mph, it still isn't much time. And if you're dependent on a person to see the yellow, click the stopwatch, then see the red and do the same, I'm not sure that you can count on a good set of measurements.
Of all the carriers I've had (and I've had all the big ones), I've liked T-Mobile the best. I always have service, I never get screwed on my bill for no reason, the network seems as fast (or usually faster) and AT&T and Verizon. Why does everyone seem to hate them so much?
Probably because their coverage is crap if you don't live in at least a medium-sized city. They know their coverage is crap, and they don't do crap to fix it, either. The T-Mobile approach to dead spots is to list them as "low signal" on their online maps and then ignore consumer complaints about dropped calls in that area.
I'm really more of an experienced Alpha user than an experienced Alpha engineer or support guru. I knew how to make it kick ass on the applications that were important to me, and that was about it.
I have this old peugeot sound data systems alpha
I've heard of a number of third-party vendors that sold Alpha systems, although I've never worked with of of those systems myself.
The case has a lock and I haven't been able to break the lock yet. I wanted to drill it out, but didn't want to get metal shavings all inside. I'm thinking that I have to though.
As much as the architecture of the Alpha is unique amongst most systems you'll see today, it isn't magic. If you decide that you need to drill it out, I doubt that a new level of hell will open up and swallow you whole at that moment. The inside of the Alpha may be a little different but there will be plenty of familiar parts in there as well. And just like any other computer if you opt to drill, make sure you do a very thorough job cleaning up the insides when you're done. If you can, I'd suggest trying to set up an inverted drilling rig so that you can drill from below, rather than from above - then the shavings should tend to fall back towards the drill rather than down towards the important computer bits.
Did I mention be very careful?:)
Do you know anything about a blue screen on alphas?
Personally, no. The Alpha I used was rock solid, I think the only time I had to reboot it was to troubleshoot some flaky RAM, but it wasn't doing anything too exotic in response to the RAM problem.
Couldn't tell you what OS it was running or anything
The Alpha I used originally ran Tru64 Unix; which IIRC was somehow related to HP-UX. I've heard of Alphas running VMS or OpenVMS as well. We later moved our Alpha to Linux - I think we did either RedHat (possibly Fedora) or SuSE, although it was some time ago now.
There are some support groups around for Alpha people. If you haven't found any you like yet, you might want to try Nekochan.net. They are actually focused more on SGI hardware and software, but there are some guys there running around with Alphas as well; the link I gave should go to the HP/Compaq/DEC forum there. I'd be surprised if nobody there had a suggestion for you that could spare you the trouble of drilling into your system.
The Blu-ray guys win the format war, and then they go and break compatibility within their own ranks. Fantastic job of shooting oneself in the foot, there. I'm surprised that the Blu-ray disc association doesn't include IBM, with a choice like that under their belt...
Therein lies the problem. Why were you running an OS originally written for x86 (as in 8086) on a RISC processor? An argument could be made that Microsoft never would have written NT for Alpha had they not been paid specifically to do so. And even at that point you were running a 64bit CPU on a 32bit extensions to a 16bit GUI to an 8bit OS... you know the rest.
The Alpha was supposed to run Unix - Tru64 Unix in particular. Running in a proper 64bit environment the Alpha was an incredible chip.
But then I must be mad, as I keep my Alpha running NT 4.0.
Trying real hard to think of a good reason to do that, especially knowing that there are Linux distros that run brilliantly on the Alpha... nope, can't think of any good reasons to run NT on an Alpha. Indeed you might be crazy.
The Alpha was a design that managed to do the absolute minimum per clock cycle in each pipeline stage
That is pretty much what RISC was about, in a nutshell.
and the high clock speeds made them hot and unreliable
I don't know what system you were running. I was using an AlphaServer ES40; four 667 Alphas with 8gb RAM. It was one of the most reliable systems I've ever used for HPC. There was a rack of intel x86 systems of the same era right next to it - something like 32 Intel Xeon CPUs - and the Alpha made the rack look silly and wasteful. On BLAST, the Alpha ran circles around the intel rack, and it became even more embarrasing for the intel rack when the data sets got larger. That was only one example, though; we found pretty much anything we could get source code for, the Alpha ran better. And that was going up against 1.8ghz Xeons.
By comparison, the Itanium wants to run native 32bit code (though it certainly doesn't do it well). The compilers aren't easy to setup (even in Linux) and it's hard to find a Linux distro that runs on one. I have an SGI cluster with Itanium2 CPUs in it; I know the care and feeding for this system well.
The DEC Alpha was a brilliant RISC processor that could outrun a closet full of x86 chips of the same era (or even the era after). The DEC Alpha was sold by a hardware company that distributed their own Unix-derived OS for it that had the proper compilers ready to go as soon as the system was booted. The Itanium, on the other hand, was an odd attempt by Intel to make a 64bit CPU that could - mostly - run 32bit code as well. Unfortunately by the time the Itanium was released the Intel-Microsoft pairing was well established for most consumers and people wanted it to run Windows Server; which it didn't do particularly well.
So the Itanium may end up killed by the combined factors of lack of a market, lack of consumer interest, lack of consumer knowledge, and poor deployment. The DEC Alpha, on the other hand, was killed by upper level management who didn't seem to know what they had.
If he isn't allowed to own or use a computer - ever - does that mean he can't own, drive, or even ride in, a car from the last 25 years? Is he allowed to use an ATM or can he only bank in person, at a physical bank? Is he allowed to ride in an elevator, or does he have to take the stairs everywhere for the rest of his life?
... I don't actually support a ban. Not because I would ever want someone to do it - I don't. Rather, because the ban is absurdly difficult to enforce. Cops can't easily tell when someone is really texting versus just dialing. And even if someone was sending a text message while driving it isn't easy to prove that they did it. AFAIK we already have provisions against "distracted driving" and "impaired driving" in most states, they should just charge people under those codes if they manage to catch any.
Instead we should alter the computers in cars to detect when drivers are texting while driving, and have the cars wrap themselves around phone poles. Then we wouldn't have to worry about repeat offenders.
And while we're at it I vote in favor of stripping the word "text" of its new verb status.
We know that one of the dumbest things anyone has ever done in the history of mankind, bar none, is typing a text message while attempting to drive a motor vehicle
We should probably instead make cars that automatically wrap themselves around phone poles when their drivers are engaged in such activities, to spare the rest of the driving public from their stupidity.
the BC of comparable Google renown is the Canadian province British Columbia, which isn't exactly a university
However, believe it or not, there is a University of British Columbia, so there could well be professors living somewhere in British Columbia who could be described as "BC Professor".
The summary said it is for people who pre-ordered the Disc (and service). This is probably therefore a staggered service like they did with PS3 streaming; they'll send out a certain number initially to make sure the bugs are worked out, and then later on open it up to those of us who didn't pre-order.
Slashdot Mirror
Whenever a message is identified as spam, either by a server or by a recipient, that message should be registered in a database network shared among servers and recipients. Then all those servers and recipients in the network should automatically identify that message as spam.
So it sounds like you are advocating for devoting more resources to fighting spam - specifically more network and CPU resources.
Which leads me to the question of who will pay for this? As it is, companies are already buying dedicated anti-spam hardware, and individuals (and some companies) are paying for anti-spam software as well. But who would want to pay for a distributed collection of servers to spend their CPU time and bandwidth on processing email? And whose email would be processed? Would you process entire mail queues for users (which could be enormous and intrusive) or just the messages that they tag as spam (which would be consuming human time then too)?
It's an interesting idea, but in the end it sounds like you are just trying to push for an escalation in the spam arms-race. Unfortunately you will find that if you do that you are still way behind the spammers and their botnets, and you'll be much more invested (monetarily and time-wise) in it than they are.
If you really want to make a difference in spam, stop filtering and start going after the root of the problem.
...the amount of spam that actually makes it to an inbox, instead of being dumped into a junk folder or blocked outright?
That spam is, at the very least, equally as costly as spam that makes it to the inbox. Sure, it uses less of the users' time, but it still takes CPU time, network bandwidth, and storage (somewhere).
People who rely on their filters (or similar practices) upstream of their inbox to deal with the spam problem often overlook that very important point. That is part of why filters will never be the real solution to the spam problem.
The battle for clean e-mail should be fought on a number of fronts. Public awareness is the key weak link in the chain in my opinion. And as a new net savvy generation arises, that will come naturally.
That is a good idea, but it won't solve the problem - or even make a huge dent in it - on its own. Even with the new "net savvy" users, there are still plenty of users (including new users) who are uninformed and don't want to be informed. There are still plenty of technophobes who are getting on the internet because junior's teacher wanted him to look something up on wikipedia. And when mommy and daddy are both technophobes, junior won't likely be that much different.
That said, you almost hit the correct angle of attack for spam. The correct link to hit is profit. You need to break the connection between the spammer and the people who are paying him. You also need to go after the people who the spammer is paying and make their lives difficult. The end result should be dramatically increasing the cost of doing business for the spammer, while simultaneously reducing the flow of money to him. As profit is the main motivation behind spam, this will do more to drive spammers away from spamming than anything else.
As long as spammers can continue to make money through spam, they will continue to send out more spam. You can filter all you want, you won't do shit to reduce the volume until you address the motivation behind the spam itself.
The speed limit on Collier Boulevard, where she was cited, is 45 mph. According to county guidelines, the yellow light should be 4.5 seconds.
And that
Mogil said he tested it 15 times with an average of only 3.8 seconds
Thus the difference was reported as .7 seconds. While that does translate to a meaningful distance at 45mph, it still isn't much time. And if you're dependent on a person to see the yellow, click the stopwatch, then see the red and do the same, I'm not sure that you can count on a good set of measurements.
My T-Mobile phone rolls right over to AT&T's network when I leave T-Mobile's coverage zone in Hampton Roads
Where I live the AT&T coverage is marginally better, however I have yet to own a phone that can handle the switch during a call.
Palm Inc., creator of the Pre smartphone
A few (million) people own devices that Palm made prior to the Pre...
Of all the carriers I've had (and I've had all the big ones), I've liked T-Mobile the best. I always have service, I never get screwed on my bill for no reason, the network seems as fast (or usually faster) and AT&T and Verizon. Why does everyone seem to hate them so much?
Probably because their coverage is crap if you don't live in at least a medium-sized city. They know their coverage is crap, and they don't do crap to fix it, either. The T-Mobile approach to dead spots is to list them as "low signal" on their online maps and then ignore consumer complaints about dropped calls in that area.
You have definitely come to the right place!
Nobody sends email to my gmail address anyways. Seriously. I don't even have any spam in there currently, I guess I'm just not interesting...
You might be able to help me.
I'm really more of an experienced Alpha user than an experienced Alpha engineer or support guru. I knew how to make it kick ass on the applications that were important to me, and that was about it.
I have this old peugeot sound data systems alpha
I've heard of a number of third-party vendors that sold Alpha systems, although I've never worked with of of those systems myself.
The case has a lock and I haven't been able to break the lock yet. I wanted to drill it out, but didn't want to get metal shavings all inside. I'm thinking that I have to though.
As much as the architecture of the Alpha is unique amongst most systems you'll see today, it isn't magic. If you decide that you need to drill it out, I doubt that a new level of hell will open up and swallow you whole at that moment. The inside of the Alpha may be a little different but there will be plenty of familiar parts in there as well. And just like any other computer if you opt to drill, make sure you do a very thorough job cleaning up the insides when you're done. If you can, I'd suggest trying to set up an inverted drilling rig so that you can drill from below, rather than from above - then the shavings should tend to fall back towards the drill rather than down towards the important computer bits.
:)
Did I mention be very careful?
Do you know anything about a blue screen on alphas?
Personally, no. The Alpha I used was rock solid, I think the only time I had to reboot it was to troubleshoot some flaky RAM, but it wasn't doing anything too exotic in response to the RAM problem.
Couldn't tell you what OS it was running or anything
The Alpha I used originally ran Tru64 Unix; which IIRC was somehow related to HP-UX. I've heard of Alphas running VMS or OpenVMS as well. We later moved our Alpha to Linux - I think we did either RedHat (possibly Fedora) or SuSE, although it was some time ago now.
There are some support groups around for Alpha people. If you haven't found any you like yet, you might want to try Nekochan.net. They are actually focused more on SGI hardware and software, but there are some guys there running around with Alphas as well; the link I gave should go to the HP/Compaq/DEC forum there. I'd be surprised if nobody there had a suggestion for you that could spare you the trouble of drilling into your system.
Good luck
The Blu-ray guys win the format war, and then they go and break compatibility within their own ranks. Fantastic job of shooting oneself in the foot, there. I'm surprised that the Blu-ray disc association doesn't include IBM, with a choice like that under their belt...
Compiler for Windows
Therein lies the problem. Why were you running an OS originally written for x86 (as in 8086) on a RISC processor? An argument could be made that Microsoft never would have written NT for Alpha had they not been paid specifically to do so. And even at that point you were running a 64bit CPU on a 32bit extensions to a 16bit GUI to an 8bit OS ... you know the rest.
The Alpha was supposed to run Unix - Tru64 Unix in particular. Running in a proper 64bit environment the Alpha was an incredible chip.
But then I must be mad, as I keep my Alpha running NT 4.0.
Trying real hard to think of a good reason to do that, especially knowing that there are Linux distros that run brilliantly on the Alpha ... nope, can't think of any good reasons to run NT on an Alpha. Indeed you might be crazy.
The Alpha was a design that managed to do the absolute minimum per clock cycle in each pipeline stage
That is pretty much what RISC was about, in a nutshell.
and the high clock speeds made them hot and unreliable
I don't know what system you were running. I was using an AlphaServer ES40; four 667 Alphas with 8gb RAM. It was one of the most reliable systems I've ever used for HPC. There was a rack of intel x86 systems of the same era right next to it - something like 32 Intel Xeon CPUs - and the Alpha made the rack look silly and wasteful. On BLAST, the Alpha ran circles around the intel rack, and it became even more embarrasing for the intel rack when the data sets got larger. That was only one example, though; we found pretty much anything we could get source code for, the Alpha ran better. And that was going up against 1.8ghz Xeons.
By comparison, the Itanium wants to run native 32bit code (though it certainly doesn't do it well). The compilers aren't easy to setup (even in Linux) and it's hard to find a Linux distro that runs on one. I have an SGI cluster with Itanium2 CPUs in it; I know the care and feeding for this system well.
The DEC Alpha was a much better chip than the Intel Itanium; and not just in the way that Johnny Mathis is way better than Diet Pepsi.
The DEC Alpha was a brilliant RISC processor that could outrun a closet full of x86 chips of the same era (or even the era after). The DEC Alpha was sold by a hardware company that distributed their own Unix-derived OS for it that had the proper compilers ready to go as soon as the system was booted. The Itanium, on the other hand, was an odd attempt by Intel to make a 64bit CPU that could - mostly - run 32bit code as well. Unfortunately by the time the Itanium was released the Intel-Microsoft pairing was well established for most consumers and people wanted it to run Windows Server; which it didn't do particularly well.
So the Itanium may end up killed by the combined factors of lack of a market, lack of consumer interest, lack of consumer knowledge, and poor deployment. The DEC Alpha, on the other hand, was killed by upper level management who didn't seem to know what they had.
If he isn't allowed to own or use a computer - ever - does that mean he can't own, drive, or even ride in, a car from the last 25 years? Is he allowed to use an ATM or can he only bank in person, at a physical bank? Is he allowed to ride in an elevator, or does he have to take the stairs everywhere for the rest of his life?
... find out what the anonymous coward looks like?
... this would fit right in with all the other crappy non-features that have been forced into slashdot lately.
... I don't actually support a ban. Not because I would ever want someone to do it - I don't. Rather, because the ban is absurdly difficult to enforce. Cops can't easily tell when someone is really texting versus just dialing. And even if someone was sending a text message while driving it isn't easy to prove that they did it. AFAIK we already have provisions against "distracted driving" and "impaired driving" in most states, they should just charge people under those codes if they manage to catch any.
Instead we should alter the computers in cars to detect when drivers are texting while driving, and have the cars wrap themselves around phone poles. Then we wouldn't have to worry about repeat offenders.
And while we're at it I vote in favor of stripping the word "text" of its new verb status.
Yale Moves to Destroy GMail
Which would probably make a somewhat more interesting read.
We know that one of the dumbest things anyone has ever done in the history of mankind, bar none, is typing a text message while attempting to drive a motor vehicle
We should probably instead make cars that automatically wrap themselves around phone poles when their drivers are engaged in such activities, to spare the rest of the driving public from their stupidity.
the BC of comparable Google renown is the Canadian province British Columbia, which isn't exactly a university
However, believe it or not, there is a University of British Columbia, so there could well be professors living somewhere in British Columbia who could be described as "BC Professor".
document our times to posterior generations
I don't know about you, but I would prefer to keep my posterior out of this ...
But without any hope of HD, whats the point?
Last I heard Netflix streaming on PS3 and Xbox 360 are both in 480p - same resolution as the Wii.
The summary said it is for people who pre-ordered the Disc (and service). This is probably therefore a staggered service like they did with PS3 streaming; they'll send out a certain number initially to make sure the bugs are worked out, and then later on open it up to those of us who didn't pre-order.