I've known many a user who refer to anything that isn't the monitor, mouse, keyboard, or printer as "the CPU". If someone says they have "CPU problems", that statement can support an incorrect assumption that the user did some sort of diagnostics to determine that their problem is indeed the CPU, and not memory, storage, video, sound, network card, etc...
Of course this also leads to interesting questions like "how do I hook up this new USB hooziwhatzit to my CPU?"
And given the rising failure rate of hard drives (and the disappointingly acceptably lower MTBF ratings in the industry), there is likely a better chance that a user is correct when they say "I have a hard drive problem" than when they say "I have a CPU problem".
I know from my experience I have had far more hard drives fail than CPUs. I can think of at least four hard drives that I have had fail on me, and only one CPU (which I overclocked).
the entire desktop market is now owned by the x86 architecture
Is almost accurate, your assertion that all RISC chips are gone is not. There are still companies building systems (servers in particular) using the SPARC chip.
And the PowerPC is not dead, either. Indeed the PowerPC has permeated many a living room as the Cell processor in the PS3 as well as the "Broadway" CPU in the Nintendo Wii. For that matter, the CPU in the XBox 360 - which of course is sold by a company that not many people would expect to be a supporter of RISC - has a PowerPC chip in it as well.
So RISC is not dead, it just isn't in the same part of the market where it used to be. But if you really want straight-line number-crunching performance, I can tell you from experience that the DEC Alphas can generally outrun the Intel chips dollar-for-dollar. I had a single DEC AlphaServer (4 CPUs at 667 MHz) a few years ago that could out perform a 20 CPU Intel cluster (each CPU at 2GHz) at BLASTP/BLASTX/TBLASTN; and by a significant margin at that.
We've seen plenty about projects to use modern GPUs for heavy-duty calculations. These old SGI's were roughly 50% GPU by volume, energy, and cost. Has anyone found a way to use the SGI GPU for computations?
Our techniques have even allowed us to extract proteins from Tyrannosaurus Rex as well as a Hadrosaur for proteomics approaches to analyzing extinct species.
Would be if there was actually a way to find out who owns a toll-free number. These robocalling bastards usually call from toll-free numbers, or they leave toll-free numbers as callbacks, never identifying themselves by name (or ever being required to). Of course they tend to change their numbers often as well to make it even more difficult to figure out who they are.
If there was something similar to WHOIS for toll-free numbers, this would help enormously. Instead, we currently have intentional obfuscation behind toll-free numbers. Numbers are sold by "Responsible Organizations" ("RespOrgs"), who know the identity of the company or person behind the number but have no obligation whatsoever to share that information with anyone.
It is generally pretty simple to find out who owns a regular phone number; in the case of a land line the phone company will sometimes tell you that themselves (or you can at least find out who the carrier is). Why on earth do we make it nearly impossible to find the identity of the owner of a toll-free? It is almost like giving them a license to make unsolicited calls. If we could get timely and accurate information on the owners of toll-free numbers we could at least serve them with cease and desist letters and establish a paper trail to demonstrate their activities.
No, their real innovation was in graphics and system architecture, IMO
Very true. However, if you look at their current products page, you'll be hard-pressed to find a system on there that uses a graphics card that they designed. It appears they have become more dedicated to raw speed above other things; though you can also buy storage appliances from them - which I suspect don't use their graphics technology either.
As best I understood, the SGI that was bought out hasn't made any new systems with MIPS chips for some time. If SGI is no longer innovating in CPUs then they are just a name in the industry. The last time I checked the SGI web site every new system available was using an Intel CPU of some sort.
I don't know that we need to maintain high-dollar names in that field anymore...
I may be mistaken, but doesn't a system use less power on a wired network than on a wifi? That could make a good argument for keeping the wired networks around (along with the usual of course).
sure you have a retail box version but >99% of computer buyers have never seen that box.
And this is different from MS Office, how?
Actually, the difference is enormous. Sure there are plenty of people who purchased a discounted copy of office, or "borrowed" a copy, or in some other mechanism did not pay for a retail boxed copy. But there are also a fair number of people who did pay for it at brick-and-mortar stores. And every Best Buy in the country has a copy of MS Office on the shelves in some way or another. Many Targets and Wal-marts do as well. Even if people aren't buying them, they are seeing them.
On the other hand, none of them have retail boxed copies of Open Office on their shelves. Customers are not seeing those.
Walmart doesn't carry it, but there is a retail box version
Which feeds into my point; sure you have a retail box version but >99% of computer buyers have never seen that box. There are a great number of people who still haven't heard of open office; if they could get it into places where more people shop they could increase the familiarity of the brand and the product.
Ah, yeah, two words for you on the retail idea: Mandrake Linux.
Sorry, but I didn't exactly see their revenues soar through the roof when they hit the Best Buy shelves. As a matter of fact, where the heck are all those distros at Best Buy...
Indeed, Mandrake fizzled. However, there is a distinct difference between selling an OS at Best Buy, and selling an office suite.
After all, every computer sold at best buy comes with an OS. Almost none of them come with a functioning office suite. Very few customers at best buy have a need or desire to install an OS on their system beyond what is already on it; almost every customer will at some point need to read and write to an office file for something.
Hence since the customers there have already paid for an OS, but not yet paid for an office suite, there is a good chance of picking up some customers (and recognition) by having retail boxed open office on the shelves.
Wouldn't mind seeing a "retail" version of open office on the shelves at the local best buy or walmart, and the open office group would likely need a large corporation to launch such an effort. If open office was sitting on the retail shelf for, say $50 in a nice box with all the open office apps, next to MS office at $300 with all the apps, we could see its acceptance really start to soar.
Granted, I would still download it for free, because I'm cheap. But I would suspect plenty of people would be willing to dish out $50 or so for it, and being in a full retail box with a jewel case and printed manual adds "legitimacy" in the eyes of many consumers.
And I suspect Oracle could help bankroll such a push much better than the open office foundation themselves could.
Just replace "scientific research" in that sentence with any other cause that would be desirable, such as housing for the poor, health care for the sick, jobs for the unemployed etc etc and you will see why runaway spending of other people's money happens so easily.
Except that I already showed how every living person in this country who sees a doctor this year benefits directly from scientific research. Regardless of your opinion of the other cases that you may consider as "runaway spending", there is no getting around the fact that if you saw a doctor in this country this year, you benefited from scientific research. Unless you want to go back to seeing medicine men and shamans, you need scientific research for your health. If you are of the opinion that you are better than the underprivileged and that they don't deserve any government money, you are entitled to that opinion. However if you believe that scientific research doesn't help you, on that you are plain wrong.
Scientific research is "desirable" only in the same way that staying alive is "desirable". And in that case you could lump in military protection, law enforcement, education, fire protection, roads, and any of a number of other things as being simply "desirable" as well.
preventing oppression by physical force is a legitimate function of the government
So you are saying then that you are concerned about the government protecting you from foreign invaders? In that case I would think you would be opposed to the war that we started in Iraq, being as that ongoing conflict at best hinders the government's ability to protect you from legitimate threats by virtue of the resources (human, monetary, and equipment) that are invested over there that could instead be here preventing you from being "oppressed by physical force".
voluntary contract tax would more than cover the costs of the court system. It would be voluntary in the sense that only contracts on which the tax is paid would be enforceable through courts
So then if I sign an employment contract for which no voluntary tax was paid, and I rob the company blind, they can't use the courts to seek out damages?
Though more significant is that many people would try to get back the trivial portion of their income taxes that cover scientific research only because they are cheap (I specifically say cheap and not frugal). They don't realize that indeed scientific research in this country does have direct benefits to everyone in fundamental quality of life issues.
Anyone who is willing to say no to scientific research, to get $5 back on their income taxes, should be made more directly aware of what that is doing. And if your tax model from Rand says courts could be refused, we could do the same thing with research; anyone who wants that $5 so badly that they won't pay it should be barred from seeing board-licensed physicians for that entire year. Physicians are required to be familiar with research in their field in order to maintain their certification, and know how the current research effects their patients. If people who are too cheap to contribute a lousy $5 of their income each year to research are willing to forgo seeing qualified physicians (this includes emergency room visits as well) then they can have their $5.
In the case of Sun, you have a company that makes (some) useful and reliable products. In the case of peoplesoft, you have a company that makes an obscenely bloated, broken, overpriced software package that has caused havoc and pain across the continent. Peoplesoft was the most similar thing to Microsoft available for takeover for less money than the contents of Fort Knox, and Sun did to them what so many of us would love to do to Microsoft.
I have stated before why strategies like that are the wrong answer for spam, and will never solve the spam problem itself. But I don't need to go into detail on that here, you can read my journal entries on the matter.
Much of the spam I see today is both sent from American machines and advertising American companies.
How are you defining "American machines" and "American companies"?
the rest from zombie machines
Which I would say are American only in the fact that they are owned by Americans. It is highly unlikely that Americans are profiting in any way (at least the owners of the machines) from the spam that is being sent through those machines. And more importantly, there is almost no chance that the spam really started at that machine, it was just relayed through it.
And I hope you aren't just lumping ".com" domains as "American"; we of course all know that you can live anywhere and find a registrar that speaks your language who will sell you a.com domain that you can host in any country you like. Really, it is more fair to run a WHOIS on the spamvertised domain, and take that record to decide what country it is from.
I advise you to be more cautious with your interpretation of that data. You said
You might wish to think that, but reality disagrees with you
However both of those lists were concerned with the ISPs that allow spam to pass through their networks. Which is of questionable significance to spamming, as a very significant portion of spam now passes through botnets that are composed of compromised systems spread all over the world. The fact that there happens to be a large number of ISPs in the US with systems that have been compromised says more to the number of ISPs available per capita in this country than it does to the prevalence of spam in this country compared to other countries.
The second list you linked to is essentially a more detailed look at the same data set; it lists which ISPs have the most "known spam issues" pending. Neither of those lists are concerned with where the spam actually originates, or who is making money from the operation.
The vast majority of source, either zombie or real servers, is from inside the United States
That depends on your application of the word "source". Yes, a lot of spam comes by way of systems that are located inside the US. That does not mean that it originated inside the US, or is intended to profit anyone inside the US. Nor does it even mean that the owner of the system inside the US is aware that their system is helping to propagate spam. Do you want to prosecute your neighbor for spam propagation because their system is part of a botnet, even though they aren't aware of it?
Look at the headers of the spam you received. Look at what mail relays they came through. You'll find that different spam (even different spam for the same spamvertised site) came from very different mail relays, often through a botnet. Those open relays (thanks to the botnets) are a meaningful part of the ISP complaints in the US.
Whether they can be extradited is an entirely different matter.
Even establishing a case for extradition is extremely difficult. The people whose prosecution would be most useful to deterring spam would be the botnet operators who are making money from the spam. But demonstrating clearly that they have anything to do with it is immensely difficult. The people whose involvement could be most clearly demonstrated are the ones who had the least to do with it and whose prosecution would be the least useful in trying to deter spam.
Naturally, the spammers are well aware of this.
In any case CAN-SPAM did in fact increase the amount of junk mail as it created a federal law wherein if you followed it you couldn't be prosecuted under the few existing state laws until those laws were rewritten.
You are free to that opinion. However ultimately you cannot study spam in a vacuum. The spam load increases every year and the impact that CAN-SPAM had on it is questionable at best. And being as most spam sent out is on behalf of internet sites that don't give a damn about CAN-SPAM anyways, I don't see how you can make that claim.
CAN-SPAM is so full of loopholes and toothless
I agree more so with the second part of that statement than I do with the first, though apparently for reasons that differ from yours.
So, we could change CAN-SPAM to close the loopholes, but what would be the point? There's still no enforcement, and until that changes, nothing else really matters.
I would say you are right, but for the wrong reasons, on that statement that CAN-SPAM has massive loopholes and is almost irrelevant.
However, I say that the problem is not limited to the fact that CAN-SPAM isn't enforced worth a damn. The problem has two other, and I say more significant, problems.
First is jurisdiction. If you want to write a law you need to of course keep in mind who it does (and more importantly does not) apply to. A US law has absolutely no significance to all the spammers in other countries. They can spam all they want and essentially never have to worry about our little spam law.
Second, spam is not a legal problem to begin with. Rather, spam is an economic problem. I have said this before, and I will say it again; the only way anyone will ever eliminate spam altogether is to remove the economic incentive. As long as spammers can make money as a result of their spamming operations, they will continue to send out spam. They will find ways around laws, filters, and anything else you want to throw their way. If you really want to end spam you need to work on the economics of the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
I've known many a user who refer to anything that isn't the monitor, mouse, keyboard, or printer as "the CPU". If someone says they have "CPU problems", that statement can support an incorrect assumption that the user did some sort of diagnostics to determine that their problem is indeed the CPU, and not memory, storage, video, sound, network card, etc...
Of course this also leads to interesting questions like "how do I hook up this new USB hooziwhatzit to my CPU?"
And given the rising failure rate of hard drives (and the disappointingly acceptably lower MTBF ratings in the industry), there is likely a better chance that a user is correct when they say "I have a hard drive problem" than when they say "I have a CPU problem".
I know from my experience I have had far more hard drives fail than CPUs. I can think of at least four hard drives that I have had fail on me, and only one CPU (which I overclocked).
the entire desktop market is now owned by the x86 architecture
Is almost accurate, your assertion that all RISC chips are gone is not. There are still companies building systems (servers in particular) using the SPARC chip.
And the PowerPC is not dead, either. Indeed the PowerPC has permeated many a living room as the Cell processor in the PS3 as well as the "Broadway" CPU in the Nintendo Wii. For that matter, the CPU in the XBox 360 - which of course is sold by a company that not many people would expect to be a supporter of RISC - has a PowerPC chip in it as well.
So RISC is not dead, it just isn't in the same part of the market where it used to be. But if you really want straight-line number-crunching performance, I can tell you from experience that the DEC Alphas can generally outrun the Intel chips dollar-for-dollar. I had a single DEC AlphaServer (4 CPUs at 667 MHz) a few years ago that could out perform a 20 CPU Intel cluster (each CPU at 2GHz) at BLASTP/BLASTX/TBLASTN; and by a significant margin at that.
Well the shadows are all wrong for a start.
Did you mean the shadows, or the reflections?
Sure kid, I got one for ya.
Nice work there. Could also serve as a "how many things are wrong with this picture" shot.
We've seen plenty about projects to use modern GPUs for heavy-duty calculations. These old SGI's were roughly 50% GPU by volume, energy, and cost. Has anyone found a way to use the SGI GPU for computations?
Yes, I know DNA from something this old is practically impossible.
Actually that request is nowhere near as tall an order today as it was just a few years ago. You likely know that we have already partially reconstructed the Woolly Mammoth genome and are working with DNA from the (extinct) Tasmanian Tiger as well.
Our techniques have even allowed us to extract proteins from Tyrannosaurus Rex as well as a Hadrosaur for proteomics approaches to analyzing extinct species.
Would be if there was actually a way to find out who owns a toll-free number. These robocalling bastards usually call from toll-free numbers, or they leave toll-free numbers as callbacks, never identifying themselves by name (or ever being required to). Of course they tend to change their numbers often as well to make it even more difficult to figure out who they are.
If there was something similar to WHOIS for toll-free numbers, this would help enormously. Instead, we currently have intentional obfuscation behind toll-free numbers. Numbers are sold by "Responsible Organizations" ("RespOrgs"), who know the identity of the company or person behind the number but have no obligation whatsoever to share that information with anyone.
It is generally pretty simple to find out who owns a regular phone number; in the case of a land line the phone company will sometimes tell you that themselves (or you can at least find out who the carrier is). Why on earth do we make it nearly impossible to find the identity of the owner of a toll-free? It is almost like giving them a license to make unsolicited calls. If we could get timely and accurate information on the owners of toll-free numbers we could at least serve them with cease and desist letters and establish a paper trail to demonstrate their activities.
No, their real innovation was in graphics and system architecture, IMO
Very true. However, if you look at their current products page, you'll be hard-pressed to find a system on there that uses a graphics card that they designed. It appears they have become more dedicated to raw speed above other things; though you can also buy storage appliances from them - which I suspect don't use their graphics technology either.
As best I understood, the SGI that was bought out hasn't made any new systems with MIPS chips for some time. If SGI is no longer innovating in CPUs then they are just a name in the industry. The last time I checked the SGI web site every new system available was using an Intel CPU of some sort.
I don't know that we need to maintain high-dollar names in that field anymore...
Bah, let me know when we can trip in 4D. I want my trip to tell me when my refrigerator turns into a cheetah.
And on a related note, what is the message when you are tripping in 1D?
I may be mistaken, but doesn't a system use less power on a wired network than on a wifi? That could make a good argument for keeping the wired networks around (along with the usual of course).
our new energy interdependence
There, fixed that for ya.
Some Large Dinosaurs Survived the K-T Extinction
Abybody who knows CowboyNeal would see this as old news
An argument could be made for at least one other large dinosaur working at slashdot.
sure you have a retail box version but >99% of computer buyers have never seen that box.
And this is different from MS Office, how?
Actually, the difference is enormous. Sure there are plenty of people who purchased a discounted copy of office, or "borrowed" a copy, or in some other mechanism did not pay for a retail boxed copy. But there are also a fair number of people who did pay for it at brick-and-mortar stores. And every Best Buy in the country has a copy of MS Office on the shelves in some way or another. Many Targets and Wal-marts do as well. Even if people aren't buying them, they are seeing them.
On the other hand, none of them have retail boxed copies of Open Office on their shelves. Customers are not seeing those.
Walmart doesn't carry it, but there is a retail box version
Which feeds into my point; sure you have a retail box version but >99% of computer buyers have never seen that box. There are a great number of people who still haven't heard of open office; if they could get it into places where more people shop they could increase the familiarity of the brand and the product.
Ah, yeah, two words for you on the retail idea: Mandrake Linux.
Sorry, but I didn't exactly see their revenues soar through the roof when they hit the Best Buy shelves. As a matter of fact, where the heck are all those distros at Best Buy...
Indeed, Mandrake fizzled. However, there is a distinct difference between selling an OS at Best Buy, and selling an office suite.
After all, every computer sold at best buy comes with an OS. Almost none of them come with a functioning office suite. Very few customers at best buy have a need or desire to install an OS on their system beyond what is already on it; almost every customer will at some point need to read and write to an office file for something.
Hence since the customers there have already paid for an OS, but not yet paid for an office suite, there is a good chance of picking up some customers (and recognition) by having retail boxed open office on the shelves.
Wouldn't mind seeing a "retail" version of open office on the shelves at the local best buy or walmart, and the open office group would likely need a large corporation to launch such an effort. If open office was sitting on the retail shelf for, say $50 in a nice box with all the open office apps, next to MS office at $300 with all the apps, we could see its acceptance really start to soar.
Granted, I would still download it for free, because I'm cheap. But I would suspect plenty of people would be willing to dish out $50 or so for it, and being in a full retail box with a jewel case and printed manual adds "legitimacy" in the eyes of many consumers.
And I suspect Oracle could help bankroll such a push much better than the open office foundation themselves could.
As a game that we can unlock with the Konami code inside Contra 6?
Just replace "scientific research" in that sentence with any other cause that would be desirable, such as housing for the poor, health care for the sick, jobs for the unemployed etc etc and you will see why runaway spending of other people's money happens so easily.
Except that I already showed how every living person in this country who sees a doctor this year benefits directly from scientific research. Regardless of your opinion of the other cases that you may consider as "runaway spending", there is no getting around the fact that if you saw a doctor in this country this year, you benefited from scientific research. Unless you want to go back to seeing medicine men and shamans, you need scientific research for your health. If you are of the opinion that you are better than the underprivileged and that they don't deserve any government money, you are entitled to that opinion. However if you believe that scientific research doesn't help you, on that you are plain wrong.
Scientific research is "desirable" only in the same way that staying alive is "desirable". And in that case you could lump in military protection, law enforcement, education, fire protection, roads, and any of a number of other things as being simply "desirable" as well.
preventing oppression by physical force is a legitimate function of the government
So you are saying then that you are concerned about the government protecting you from foreign invaders? In that case I would think you would be opposed to the war that we started in Iraq, being as that ongoing conflict at best hinders the government's ability to protect you from legitimate threats by virtue of the resources (human, monetary, and equipment) that are invested over there that could instead be here preventing you from being "oppressed by physical force".
voluntary contract tax would more than cover the costs of the court system. It would be voluntary in the sense that only contracts on which the tax is paid would be enforceable through courts
So then if I sign an employment contract for which no voluntary tax was paid, and I rob the company blind, they can't use the courts to seek out damages?
Though more significant is that many people would try to get back the trivial portion of their income taxes that cover scientific research only because they are cheap (I specifically say cheap and not frugal). They don't realize that indeed scientific research in this country does have direct benefits to everyone in fundamental quality of life issues.
Anyone who is willing to say no to scientific research, to get $5 back on their income taxes, should be made more directly aware of what that is doing. And if your tax model from Rand says courts could be refused, we could do the same thing with research; anyone who wants that $5 so badly that they won't pay it should be barred from seeing board-licensed physicians for that entire year. Physicians are required to be familiar with research in their field in order to maintain their certification, and know how the current research effects their patients. If people who are too cheap to contribute a lousy $5 of their income each year to research are willing to forgo seeing qualified physicians (this includes emergency room visits as well) then they can have their $5.
voluntary program where people can donate a share of their income to be used for purposes of their choice
So I oppose the military activities that our country is taking part in; could I choose to not pay for that?
I haven't called the police department in my community, can I choose to not fund that?
I don't have kids, can I choose to not fund schools?
I haven't used the court system for anything either, can I choose to not fund that?
In the case of Sun, you have a company that makes (some) useful and reliable products. In the case of peoplesoft, you have a company that makes an obscenely bloated, broken, overpriced software package that has caused havoc and pain across the continent. Peoplesoft was the most similar thing to Microsoft available for takeover for less money than the contents of Fort Knox, and Sun did to them what so many of us would love to do to Microsoft.
(I fight spam commercially.)
I have stated before why strategies like that are the wrong answer for spam, and will never solve the spam problem itself. But I don't need to go into detail on that here, you can read my journal entries on the matter.
Much of the spam I see today is both sent from American machines and advertising American companies.
How are you defining "American machines" and "American companies"?
the rest from zombie machines
Which I would say are American only in the fact that they are owned by Americans. It is highly unlikely that Americans are profiting in any way (at least the owners of the machines) from the spam that is being sent through those machines. And more importantly, there is almost no chance that the spam really started at that machine, it was just relayed through it.
.com domain that you can host in any country you like. Really, it is more fair to run a WHOIS on the spamvertised domain, and take that record to decide what country it is from.
And I hope you aren't just lumping ".com" domains as "American"; we of course all know that you can live anywhere and find a registrar that speaks your language who will sell you a
You might wish to think that, but reality disagrees with you
However both of those lists were concerned with the ISPs that allow spam to pass through their networks. Which is of questionable significance to spamming, as a very significant portion of spam now passes through botnets that are composed of compromised systems spread all over the world. The fact that there happens to be a large number of ISPs in the US with systems that have been compromised says more to the number of ISPs available per capita in this country than it does to the prevalence of spam in this country compared to other countries.
The second list you linked to is essentially a more detailed look at the same data set; it lists which ISPs have the most "known spam issues" pending. Neither of those lists are concerned with where the spam actually originates, or who is making money from the operation.
The vast majority of source, either zombie or real servers, is from inside the United States
That depends on your application of the word "source". Yes, a lot of spam comes by way of systems that are located inside the US. That does not mean that it originated inside the US, or is intended to profit anyone inside the US. Nor does it even mean that the owner of the system inside the US is aware that their system is helping to propagate spam. Do you want to prosecute your neighbor for spam propagation because their system is part of a botnet, even though they aren't aware of it?
Look at the headers of the spam you received. Look at what mail relays they came through. You'll find that different spam (even different spam for the same spamvertised site) came from very different mail relays, often through a botnet. Those open relays (thanks to the botnets) are a meaningful part of the ISP complaints in the US.
Whether they can be extradited is an entirely different matter.
Even establishing a case for extradition is extremely difficult. The people whose prosecution would be most useful to deterring spam would be the botnet operators who are making money from the spam. But demonstrating clearly that they have anything to do with it is immensely difficult. The people whose involvement could be most clearly demonstrated are the ones who had the least to do with it and whose prosecution would be the least useful in trying to deter spam.
Naturally, the spammers are well aware of this.
In any case CAN-SPAM did in fact increase the amount of junk mail as it created a federal law wherein if you followed it you couldn't be prosecuted under the few existing state laws until those laws were rewritten.
You are free to that opinion. However ultimately you cannot study spam in a vacuum. The spam load increases every year and the impact that CAN-SPAM had on it is questionable at best. And being as most spam sent out is on behalf of internet sites that don't give a damn about CAN-SPAM anyways, I don't see how you can make that claim.
CAN-SPAM is so full of loopholes and toothless
I agree more so with the second part of that statement than I do with the first, though apparently for reasons that differ from yours.
So, we could change CAN-SPAM to close the loopholes, but what would be the point? There's still no enforcement, and until that changes, nothing else really matters.
I would say you are right, but for the wrong reasons, on that statement that CAN-SPAM has massive loopholes and is almost irrelevant.
However, I say that the problem is not limited to the fact that CAN-SPAM isn't enforced worth a damn. The problem has two other, and I say more significant, problems.