when 4/5 times there's an article bashing Microsoft, kdawson posted it, and of those articles he posts THE VAST MAJORITY of them are false or completely misleading
Well, I must admit that isn't the line I see people use most often when complaining about KDawson. Usually I see the slashdot conservatives complaining that KDawson is too liberal in his story selections.
it's not like Slashdot owners are going to listen to the users and can the jackass.
I think I have seen that label applied to about half of the people who are generally listed as slashdot employees. Hence if slashdot were to fire all of those "jackasses", I'm not sure there would be much of slashdot left.
... you can use your preferences to choose which authors you do or do not want to see stories from. If you dislike KDawson's choice of stories so much, you can opt to not display them. Hell, you have a lower UID than I do, and this feature has been available for the entire time I have been a member here. Why you don't know about it is beyond me; why you opt not to use it is even more of a mystery.
Or you can just continue trolling. The choice is yours.
What happens to these laptops when they are decommissioned? They mentioned these thinkpads are from 2002 (which makes them the same vintage as the ones I use for myself at home); will they be sold off when they are replaced? I would love for my next laptop to be one that spent several years in orbit!
... that an OS was just released with incomplete, unimplemented, undocumented, untested code? Has that ever happened in the history of computing before? This sounds incredible! Maybe MS can get a patent on it!
So then we are in agreement that you are arguing in favor of murdering more people. I'm glad we can at least agree on something.
I'm in favor of reducing the total number of spammers. I never claimed that murder was the solution nor the only way to accomplish that goal.
If you return to the start of this discussion you will find it was started by someone who voiced themselves in favor of murdering spammers.
I responded with my opposition to such a proposal, and pointed out that it has not been effective in the past.
You attempted to contradict my statements with your opinions. You have not offered up any ideas for dealing with spammers, in a discussion that has thus far been about whether or not to murder spammers. You certainly have not voiced opposition to murdering spammers, so it is reasonable to expect that you are in favor of murdering spammers.
Your assumption that murder will solve the problem is based upon the assumption that there is a small and finite supply of people who want to make money as spammers.
The only thing that I'm assuming is that right now the risk associated with spamming is far lower than the possible rewards. That is what needs to change. The risk that spammers face needs to be higher than the possible gains that they might see.
Care to suggest how you could make that possible?
You're fixated on murder being the only possible solution, but that's not the case either
Actually you are quite wrong there. I am pointing out that murder is not a possible solution. There is a profound difference here.
If you are opposed to murder, feel free to say so. But so far your argument has been staunchly pro-murder.
My argument has been in favor of reducing the total number of spammers. You're starting to sound like Glenn Beck. If I don't explicitly state that murder is not an option then you're going to assume that murder is my #1 option. Those aren't the only two possibilities.
As I stated before, this thread was started by someone who was in favor of murdering spammers. I pointed out why that won't work. You have suggested no alternatives to either murdering or not murdering spammers.
And on what side are you?
Since you asked, I think that people just running around murdering each other is not a good thing.
So then if we replace "each other" with "spammers", is your statement still true?
I suspect if you were to talk to someone involved in spam they would very strongly disagree with an assertion that they "only exists to damage society".
Yes, I am sure they would disagree with that. Much like Tony Soprano would say that he performs a valuable garbage disposal service.
One way to look at your statement could be that you are trying to de-humanize spammers by reducing them to fictional characters. I'm not sure if that is part of your strategy or not; however the truth of the matter is that spammers are not in business simply to "damage society". After all, wouldn't anarchists be more inclined to refuse payment? Spammers pull in significant payments for their services. Just because you may see them as sub-human doesn't mean that there is no demand for the work they do.
So then are you suggesting that if a little bit of criminal activity didn't solve the problem, somehow it could be aided by more criminal activity?
I'm suggesting that removing a single spammer isn't going to have a large impact on global spam, but if you remove many more spammers, then you will see more of an impact.
So then we are in agreement that you are arguing in favor of murdering more people. I'm glad we can at least agree on something.
It's some tough logic to follow, I understand.
You seem to be oblivious to the fact that the logic you present in favor of murder falls apart due to the assumption it is based on. Your assumption that murder will solve the problem is based upon the assumption that there is a small and finite supply of people who want to make money as spammers. There is no evidence to support either of those assumptions.
how many people do you know who would be willing to pull off an assassination in another country for your cause?
Considering that "my cause" is playing the Devil's advocate, I doubt many people would be willing to kill someone for the sake of argument. But I'm also not trying to recruit people for assassination missions, I'm just having a theoretical argument with you.
If you are opposed to murder, feel free to say so. But so far your argument has been staunchly pro-murder.
Some people see outright murder as just simply wrong.
Actually, I would say that the majority of people think that outright murder is wrong.
And on what side are you?
But I would also say that there are several people who think that it's not morally acceptable to allow someone who only exists to damage society to continue damaging society
I'm not sure who these people might be, those whom you claim "only exists to damage society".
Spammers make a lot of money. And money buys power, and influence. With the amount of money spammers pull in it is not difficult for them to get people to turn a blind eye to their work. I suspect if you were to talk to someone involved in spam they would very strongly disagree with an assertion that they "only exists to damage society".
The headline can be read to suggest that more ebook apps are sold than games, while the summary clarifies the matter that there are more ebook apps released than games in the past time period. The sales data would tell us more about which is more successful on this platform.
Which made no noticeable change in the global spam problem whatsoever.
You can't really prove that, maybe spam volume would have been larger if the guy remained alive
No evidence whatsoever has been presented to support the notion that the assassination of a spam king reduced global spam volume. Spam volume continues to rise worldwide, and no difference in the reported increase was seen after the previous assassination.
Hence it did not work if the goal was to make a difference in regards to the greater spamming problem;
Maybe the problem was that not enough spammers were given the same fate.
So then are you suggesting that if a little bit of criminal activity didn't solve the problem, somehow it could be aided by more criminal activity?
And are you aware of the fact that while much of the world's spam comes from systems within the US, many of the spammers are themselves in other countries? For that matter, the best known assassination of a spammer took place in Russia... how many people do you know who would be willing to pull off an assassination in another country for your cause?
why someone would ever feel killing is justified either way is beyond me.
Some things are just for the sake of argument.
Some people see outright murder as just simply wrong.
I can't wait for the next profitable action from ICANN that will improve spamming opportunities to take effect. Really, the current gTLDs are far too well regulated - we need something wide open so that domains are not traceable or accountable to anyone at all.
The pot money is used to by a hitman for the winner.
So you propose openly raising money to openly break the law (I'm not aware of any country where murder for hire is legal)? And who is going to fund the act of tracking down the actual whereabouts of the spammers? For example, Leo Kuvayev (frequently in the top 5) has been wanted for years, after failing to show up in court in MA back in 2005. Nobody who knows where he is (domain registrars in particular but other business partners as well) will tell us what they know about his whereabouts.
In other words the pot of money would be spent long before the hired gun would find the spammer, because the best spammers are hiding well (and have help doing so). In the meantime you are associating yourself with organized crime - smart move.
We don't have to kill them all, just make being a top sender an eventual death sentence.
That won't work, for the reasons that I just described, as well as others. You'll only prove the old saying "a fool and his money are soon parted". Meanwhile your spam-hunters would be enjoying nice vacations at varied locales while chasing down leads on spammers who they will never find.
If you'd like, I would happily fly to Finland and Tahiti on your dime to look for Kuvayev.
It would be far cheaper than the bandwidth and manpower expenses we pay now.
You're only throwing good money after bad. Although here you do have a bit of a point; indeed spam is an expensive - and also highly profitable - venture.
If you want to stop spam, you and the rest of the world will never accomplish it with guns or laws. You need to stop spam economically because spam is an economic problem. Until an economic solution is deployed, every other attempted solution will, at best, leave the situation just as bad. We already know that there are plenty of spammers in the world, and when you get rid of one (by laws, death, or whatever else you imagine) more will pop up in that person's place. And they do this because... they make money doing it.
Spammers have been killed in the past, and that didn't work either.
Sort of depends on how you define "work", doesn't it? Did one spammer dying stop the global spam problem? No. But that one guy's spam output has fallen quite a bit.
Which made no noticeable change in the global spam problem whatsoever. Hence it did not work if the goal was to make a difference in regards to the greater spamming problem; and why someone would ever feel killing is justified either way is beyond me.
Spam is a business and as such we need to hit it were it hurts. If we stop the flow of money to spammers we effectively stop the spammers
It seems there is an echo here...
I've been saying that about spammers for some time. That, however, doesn't change the fact that you will still have people yearning for blood over the matter - even though it would be a useless guesture.
There's a certain point where we need to consider the death penalty for this sort of thing.
Are you trying to actually accomplish something or are you just trying to make yourself feel better?
from a utilitarian perspective it is quite clear that people like Sanford Wallace are doing far more damage to society
OK, we'll go for the latter (much) more so than the former.
There are multiple reasons that any sensible person can quickly come up with as to why this would be a useless guesture:
There are too many spammers to kill them all (or even make a dent in the spam volume by trying)
Spammers are stateless, and will just flee to countries where spam laws don't exist - where they can continue to make money through spamming
There is too much money in spam to prevent people from going into it just because there is a remote chance of facing criminal charges in one country for it
And thats just getting started...
You'd might as well use a voodoo doll, it would be just as effective and far less expensive.
Just let them know where to send a check for zero dollars and zero cents to, and whom to bill for the postage. There is no reasonable chance of them collecting money from the spammer, so there won't be any money to distribute, either.
I shouldn't be feeding the trolls, but sometimes the low-hanging fruit needs to be knocked down...
You're obviously in the minority of people on this planet for whom English is their first language
If you honestly believe for some reason that ICANN is doing this out of the kindness of their hearts... well... I wish my world was as rosy-colored as yours. This has nothing to do with accessibility, and everything to do with money.
Also, going by your username, you have an axe to grind.
I wasn't discussing registrar problems in this topic. I was discussing ICANN problems. While registrar problems do in part come from ICANN being overly complacent, not all ICANN problems are inherently related to registrars.
And judging by your own username... oh, wait. You can't be bothered to even put a made-up name behind your comments.
Mod +1 Troll
Apparently you haven't been here long, or you would know that a "troll" mod automatically carries a "-1". A mod of "+1 troll" doesn't make any sense. But thank you for providing some amusement, my day was rather drab so far.
ICANN just made another move to make everyday life on the internet slightly more difficult for many users, while making life for con artists, spammers, phishers, etc, much much easier (and more profitable). It is safe to expect that someone (probably more than one actually) at ICANN made some money on the deal.
Hell it wouldn't surprise me if they were working with some financiers to try to find a way to sell internet subprime mortgages for profit as well.
There are letters in the Cyrillic alphabet that have different character codes than their look-alike letters in the Latin alphabet. I'm sure there are other collisions as well. I'm sure they accounted for this in the proposal, but the problem always lies in the implementation
This is a decision made by ICANN. We've known for some time that they will willingly approve really tremendously bad ideas, if enough money is presented to them. They recently moved on a motion to start selling gTLDs, after all.
From a security standpoint, this is a VERY bad idea without proper regulation of domain name registrations, and so far it has been demonstrated that we cannot manage them properly even with only the Latin alphabet
Security is not of any concern for ICANN. Never has been, never will be. As long as they keep making money they're happy; security, spam, phishing, etc, be damned.
The summary mentions that the terahertz waves "tear apart" strands of DNA. For those who might not remember their undergraduate biology, DNA strands are held together by hydrogen bonds - not covalent bonds. So the total amount of force to "tear apart" two strands is not as great as you might imagine. For that matter, strands have to be "torn apart" in order to be replicated for cell division.
I live in an area with an astonishing number of epically bad drivers. I figured the epically bad drivers were (unfortunately) surviving long enough to have children, who themselves grew up to be epically bad drivers. A genetic component to epically bad driving doesn't surprise me in the least.
Slashdot Mirror
when 4/5 times there's an article bashing Microsoft, kdawson posted it, and of those articles he posts THE VAST MAJORITY of them are false or completely misleading
Well, I must admit that isn't the line I see people use most often when complaining about KDawson. Usually I see the slashdot conservatives complaining that KDawson is too liberal in his story selections.
it's not like Slashdot owners are going to listen to the users and can the jackass.
I think I have seen that label applied to about half of the people who are generally listed as slashdot employees. Hence if slashdot were to fire all of those "jackasses", I'm not sure there would be much of slashdot left.
... you can use your preferences to choose which authors you do or do not want to see stories from. If you dislike KDawson's choice of stories so much, you can opt to not display them. Hell, you have a lower UID than I do, and this feature has been available for the entire time I have been a member here. Why you don't know about it is beyond me; why you opt not to use it is even more of a mystery.
Or you can just continue trolling. The choice is yours.
... couldn't find sufficient system resources to run?
What happens to these laptops when they are decommissioned? They mentioned these thinkpads are from 2002 (which makes them the same vintage as the ones I use for myself at home); will they be sold off when they are replaced? I would love for my next laptop to be one that spent several years in orbit!
... that an OS was just released with incomplete, unimplemented, undocumented, untested code? Has that ever happened in the history of computing before? This sounds incredible! Maybe MS can get a patent on it!
So then we are in agreement that you are arguing in favor of murdering more people. I'm glad we can at least agree on something.
I'm in favor of reducing the total number of spammers. I never claimed that murder was the solution nor the only way to accomplish that goal.
If you return to the start of this discussion you will find it was started by someone who voiced themselves in favor of murdering spammers.
I responded with my opposition to such a proposal, and pointed out that it has not been effective in the past.
You attempted to contradict my statements with your opinions. You have not offered up any ideas for dealing with spammers, in a discussion that has thus far been about whether or not to murder spammers. You certainly have not voiced opposition to murdering spammers, so it is reasonable to expect that you are in favor of murdering spammers.
Your assumption that murder will solve the problem is based upon the assumption that there is a small and finite supply of people who want to make money as spammers.
The only thing that I'm assuming is that right now the risk associated with spamming is far lower than the possible rewards. That is what needs to change. The risk that spammers face needs to be higher than the possible gains that they might see.
Care to suggest how you could make that possible?
You're fixated on murder being the only possible solution, but that's not the case either
Actually you are quite wrong there. I am pointing out that murder is not a possible solution. There is a profound difference here.
If you are opposed to murder, feel free to say so. But so far your argument has been staunchly pro-murder.
My argument has been in favor of reducing the total number of spammers. You're starting to sound like Glenn Beck. If I don't explicitly state that murder is not an option then you're going to assume that murder is my #1 option. Those aren't the only two possibilities.
As I stated before, this thread was started by someone who was in favor of murdering spammers. I pointed out why that won't work. You have suggested no alternatives to either murdering or not murdering spammers.
And on what side are you?
Since you asked, I think that people just running around murdering each other is not a good thing.
So then if we replace "each other" with "spammers", is your statement still true?
I suspect if you were to talk to someone involved in spam they would very strongly disagree with an assertion that they "only exists to damage society".
Yes, I am sure they would disagree with that. Much like Tony Soprano would say that he performs a valuable garbage disposal service.
One way to look at your statement could be that you are trying to de-humanize spammers by reducing them to fictional characters. I'm not sure if that is part of your strategy or not; however the truth of the matter is that spammers are not in business simply to "damage society". After all, wouldn't anarchists be more inclined to refuse payment? Spammers pull in significant payments for their services. Just because you may see them as sub-human doesn't mean that there is no demand for the work they do.
So then are you suggesting that if a little bit of criminal activity didn't solve the problem, somehow it could be aided by more criminal activity?
I'm suggesting that removing a single spammer isn't going to have a large impact on global spam, but if you remove many more spammers, then you will see more of an impact.
So then we are in agreement that you are arguing in favor of murdering more people. I'm glad we can at least agree on something.
It's some tough logic to follow, I understand.
You seem to be oblivious to the fact that the logic you present in favor of murder falls apart due to the assumption it is based on. Your assumption that murder will solve the problem is based upon the assumption that there is a small and finite supply of people who want to make money as spammers. There is no evidence to support either of those assumptions.
how many people do you know who would be willing to pull off an assassination in another country for your cause?
Considering that "my cause" is playing the Devil's advocate, I doubt many people would be willing to kill someone for the sake of argument. But I'm also not trying to recruit people for assassination missions, I'm just having a theoretical argument with you.
If you are opposed to murder, feel free to say so. But so far your argument has been staunchly pro-murder.
Some people see outright murder as just simply wrong.
Actually, I would say that the majority of people think that outright murder is wrong.
And on what side are you?
But I would also say that there are several people who think that it's not morally acceptable to allow someone who only exists to damage society to continue damaging society
I'm not sure who these people might be, those whom you claim "only exists to damage society".
Spammers make a lot of money. And money buys power, and influence. With the amount of money spammers pull in it is not difficult for them to get people to turn a blind eye to their work. I suspect if you were to talk to someone involved in spam they would very strongly disagree with an assertion that they "only exists to damage society".
The headline can be read to suggest that more ebook apps are sold than games, while the summary clarifies the matter that there are more ebook apps released than games in the past time period. The sales data would tell us more about which is more successful on this platform.
Which made no noticeable change in the global spam problem whatsoever.
You can't really prove that, maybe spam volume would have been larger if the guy remained alive
No evidence whatsoever has been presented to support the notion that the assassination of a spam king reduced global spam volume. Spam volume continues to rise worldwide, and no difference in the reported increase was seen after the previous assassination.
Hence it did not work if the goal was to make a difference in regards to the greater spamming problem;
Maybe the problem was that not enough spammers were given the same fate.
So then are you suggesting that if a little bit of criminal activity didn't solve the problem, somehow it could be aided by more criminal activity?
And are you aware of the fact that while much of the world's spam comes from systems within the US, many of the spammers are themselves in other countries? For that matter, the best known assassination of a spammer took place in Russia... how many people do you know who would be willing to pull off an assassination in another country for your cause?
why someone would ever feel killing is justified either way is beyond me.
Some things are just for the sake of argument.
Some people see outright murder as just simply wrong.
I can't wait for the next profitable action from ICANN that will improve spamming opportunities to take effect. Really, the current gTLDs are far too well regulated - we need something wide open so that domains are not traceable or accountable to anyone at all.
The pot money is used to by a hitman for the winner.
So you propose openly raising money to openly break the law (I'm not aware of any country where murder for hire is legal)? And who is going to fund the act of tracking down the actual whereabouts of the spammers? For example, Leo Kuvayev (frequently in the top 5) has been wanted for years, after failing to show up in court in MA back in 2005. Nobody who knows where he is (domain registrars in particular but other business partners as well) will tell us what they know about his whereabouts.
In other words the pot of money would be spent long before the hired gun would find the spammer, because the best spammers are hiding well (and have help doing so). In the meantime you are associating yourself with organized crime - smart move.
We don't have to kill them all, just make being a top sender an eventual death sentence.
That won't work, for the reasons that I just described, as well as others. You'll only prove the old saying "a fool and his money are soon parted". Meanwhile your spam-hunters would be enjoying nice vacations at varied locales while chasing down leads on spammers who they will never find.
If you'd like, I would happily fly to Finland and Tahiti on your dime to look for Kuvayev.
It would be far cheaper than the bandwidth and manpower expenses we pay now.
You're only throwing good money after bad. Although here you do have a bit of a point; indeed spam is an expensive - and also highly profitable - venture.
... they make money doing it.
If you want to stop spam, you and the rest of the world will never accomplish it with guns or laws. You need to stop spam economically because spam is an economic problem. Until an economic solution is deployed, every other attempted solution will, at best, leave the situation just as bad. We already know that there are plenty of spammers in the world, and when you get rid of one (by laws, death, or whatever else you imagine) more will pop up in that person's place. And they do this because
This isn't brain surgery.
Spammers have been killed in the past, and that didn't work either.
Sort of depends on how you define "work", doesn't it? Did one spammer dying stop the global spam problem? No. But that one guy's spam output has fallen quite a bit.
Which made no noticeable change in the global spam problem whatsoever. Hence it did not work if the goal was to make a difference in regards to the greater spamming problem; and why someone would ever feel killing is justified either way is beyond me.
And in the real world, it's been proven many, many times that it is far cheaper to keep someone in prison
I think the state of Texas claims otherwise.
Oh, wait, we're talking about the real world. Nevermind.
You'd might as well use a voodoo doll, it would be just as effective and far less expensive
Been tried. Apparently it doesn't work: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1425321&cid=29926417
Thanks for proving my point. Spammers have been killed in the past, and that didn't work either.
Spam is a business and as such we need to hit it were it hurts. If we stop the flow of money to spammers we effectively stop the spammers
It seems there is an echo here...
I've been saying that about spammers for some time. That, however, doesn't change the fact that you will still have people yearning for blood over the matter - even though it would be a useless guesture.
There's a certain point where we need to consider the death penalty for this sort of thing.
Are you trying to actually accomplish something or are you just trying to make yourself feel better?
from a utilitarian perspective it is quite clear that people like Sanford Wallace are doing far more damage to society
OK, we'll go for the latter (much) more so than the former.
There are multiple reasons that any sensible person can quickly come up with as to why this would be a useless guesture:
And thats just getting started...
You'd might as well use a voodoo doll, it would be just as effective and far less expensive.
Just let them know where to send a check for zero dollars and zero cents to, and whom to bill for the postage. There is no reasonable chance of them collecting money from the spammer, so there won't be any money to distribute, either.
... waiting to see a collection on that. Most likely he won't pay a dime of that fine. There is no reason to expect otherwise.
You're obviously in the minority of people on this planet for whom English is their first language
If you honestly believe for some reason that ICANN is doing this out of the kindness of their hearts ... well ... I wish my world was as rosy-colored as yours. This has nothing to do with accessibility, and everything to do with money.
Also, going by your username, you have an axe to grind.
I wasn't discussing registrar problems in this topic. I was discussing ICANN problems. While registrar problems do in part come from ICANN being overly complacent, not all ICANN problems are inherently related to registrars.
... oh, wait. You can't be bothered to even put a made-up name behind your comments.
And judging by your own username
Mod +1 Troll
Apparently you haven't been here long, or you would know that a "troll" mod automatically carries a "-1". A mod of "+1 troll" doesn't make any sense. But thank you for providing some amusement, my day was rather drab so far.
... Yeah, I didn't think so.
ICANN just made another move to make everyday life on the internet slightly more difficult for many users, while making life for con artists, spammers, phishers, etc, much much easier (and more profitable). It is safe to expect that someone (probably more than one actually) at ICANN made some money on the deal.
Hell it wouldn't surprise me if they were working with some financiers to try to find a way to sell internet subprime mortgages for profit as well.
There are letters in the Cyrillic alphabet that have different character codes than their look-alike letters in the Latin alphabet. I'm sure there are other collisions as well. I'm sure they accounted for this in the proposal, but the problem always lies in the implementation
This is a decision made by ICANN. We've known for some time that they will willingly approve really tremendously bad ideas, if enough money is presented to them. They recently moved on a motion to start selling gTLDs, after all.
From a security standpoint, this is a VERY bad idea without proper regulation of domain name registrations, and so far it has been demonstrated that we cannot manage them properly even with only the Latin alphabet
Security is not of any concern for ICANN. Never has been, never will be. As long as they keep making money they're happy; security, spam, phishing, etc, be damned.
The summary mentions that the terahertz waves "tear apart" strands of DNA. For those who might not remember their undergraduate biology, DNA strands are held together by hydrogen bonds - not covalent bonds. So the total amount of force to "tear apart" two strands is not as great as you might imagine. For that matter, strands have to be "torn apart" in order to be replicated for cell division.
If you really want to get fancy you could write with erasable ink or (gasp) a pencil in case you make mistakes in your notes.
Then invest a little money in a scanner with a sheet feeder so you can digitize your notes quickly after every lecture.
I live in an area with an astonishing number of epically bad drivers. I figured the epically bad drivers were (unfortunately) surviving long enough to have children, who themselves grew up to be epically bad drivers. A genetic component to epically bad driving doesn't surprise me in the least.