However, I still say that spam filters will never solve the problem. Spammers will just keep finding new ways around them, and all the while we will continue having to pay the costs of transporting and filtering the junk email (in terms of bandwidth and cpu costs, in particular).
The only way to stop spam is to remove the reason why it exists in the first place:
Profit
If spammers can't make money off of sending out spam, they won't send it out to begin with.
Obviously, shutting down an ISP would have a negligible long-term effect on spam. Intelligent people realize that the people behind spam are themselves intelligent (at least intelligent enough to almost never get caught). Obviously they have contingency plans. If you shut down one mail relay they go to another. If you shut down one ISP they go to another. If you shut down one web hosting company they go to another.
If you shut down their favorite registrar they go find another.
Anyone who thought that shutting down one ISP would have any meaningful, long-term effect on the spam problem needs to read up on how spam works, and why it exists. In short, spam works because it is profitable. Spammers don't sent out spam just because it annoys people, they send it out because they make money off the products that they push through spam. Hence they will find new ways to push out spam, as long as they can still make money.
I can't afford Air Canada, so I don't know what their accommodations might or might not be like.
WestJet
I flew WestJet last spring, Ottawa -> Vancouver (and back). Possibly the most luxurious flight I've ever been on; certainly by far the nicest plane I've been on in at least 5 years. However I do not recall there being electric outlets available anywhere on the plane.
That said, on that particular flight I did not need to do any work while flying; so I wasn't looking for electric outlets anyways. I spent most of my time sleeping, reading, or watching the in-flight map of where we were.
My personal requirements are to not own a laptop that cannot last at least 5 hours on a battery during normal operation
I'm not sure where you can find such a laptop, unless you have a very low-impact definition of "normal operation". I suppose if your "normal operation" involves typing a novel in vi, and saving said novel to an SSD, then 5 hours might be feasible. From my own personal experience, even working on a presentation (which often is why I am carrying my laptop to begin with) is enough to drain the battery dramatically quicker. And my presentations generally have few (or more likely no) animations; though they are data-intensive, which means I often have a spreadsheet and one or more pdfs open at the same time.
And anyone who has owned a laptop for more than 1 or 2 years can tell you that the claim of lithium ion batteries in laptops not being subject to the "memory effect" is pure crap. So unless you buy a new laptop (or laptop battery) regularly, you likely are getting around 60-80% of the possible battery life out of your laptop battery.
What good is WiFi when most of the flights I fly on don't give me anything to plug my laptop in to anyways? I'd even consider paying a few dollars for electric service on a flight so I could plug in and use my laptop for the duration of the flight. As it is, my laptop run time on flights is strictly limited to the charge on my batteries before I get on the plane.
And if I'm going to use my latop with WiFi on, that would only drain by battery slightly quicker than without it.
Anyone who spends $1000 on a laptop for school is an idiot
Which unfortunately means we have an astonishing number of idiots in this country. Not sure whether or not that should surprise anyone.
Take notes on paper and build a desktop for $175.
I couldn't agree with you more on that that one. My cheap desktop worked just fine for my undergrad years, and anytime I needed more computational power I had access to that through the school for whatever project I was attached too that needed that power.
The reason why this is important is because many of the kids who just graduated high school and have convinced their parents to buy they a new laptop for college are the same ones who convinced their parents that they needed an iPod in high school. And of course for these kids, whose lives revolve around facebook and their iPod, the most important aspect of a laptop is iPod compatibility.
Sure, they could be a lam3r and use something other than a mac to sync their iPod, but on mommy & daddy's buck, why?
Indeed, laptops on campus often seem to end up used for that more than anything else
communications
That is assuming that wherever they are on campus, they have some way to connect to the campus network and/or the internet. Not always applicable for every corner of every campus.
education
I would say the educational value of a laptop is debatable at best. I know plenty of people who finished CSci degrees without ever owning one.
a bargain at twice the price
Not sure if you'd still be saying that after paying for licenses for the software that they "just have to have". Sure, plenty of people can do just fine with OpenOffice, GIMP, and Linux. But should your child's professor be expected to know how to handle files that pass through those?
You may end up buying the laptop for $1,000; but you'll probably end up spending another $1,000 on the software that your child has to have, and the hardware upgrades to make it work properly.
And meanwhile, you're now $2,000 futher in debt than you would have been had you told that child to just use the lab like you did back when you were in school.
Sure, right now a lot of kids who just graduated from high school can convince their parents that they need their own computer in school (even if the school website says otherwise). Though as the economy continues to falter, parents should start taking a serious look at what their kids truly need for school (and realize that a computer of their own is not on that list).
Spend $1,000 on that new laptop, or instead use the same $1,000 to take out less in student loans? That should be a pretty easy choice.
You also seem to be unaware that the internet has sources for every piece of idiocy
No, I am well aware of that
providing sources doesn't settle anything
I disagree with that statement. If the original poster were to actually respond with sources (though I'm not holding my breath), it would show the source of their opinion. Often just seeing the domain of their sources tells a lot; if they cited these idiots or these other idiots as sources then we know they aren't thinking much about the actual science. On the other hand if they cited an academic or scientific source to support their claims, then there would be reason to believe the poster actually does think before spouting off rhetoric.
As it is, the poster is essentially just gossipping. They have provided nothing but noise, and I am asking them to support their statements (if they can).
Why that biased partisan rant posing as a comment was moderated to (+5, insightful) is beyond me.
Global Warmin is bad science, as a general rule
And that statement is bad English, as a general rule. The word is Warming, not Warmin. If you want to be taken seriously please avoid slang.
facts are thin, and or simply made up
Can you provide a specific example?
the Hocky-stick report was done with largely fictious data
OK, you gave an example, that is a start. Care to tell us why you call it "largely fictious" (sic) data? Can you point to a data set that specifically disproves it?
I don't understand how the public can stick behind this garbage
You aren't helping your cause when you just keep criticizing people without providing a reason to believe your argument.
their lord and master Barrack
You really are doing yourself a disservice, here.
And the first name of the current President of the United States is Barack. Please, learn to spell it correctly.
Queen of the Damned herself Nacy;
Cute. Her name is Nancy, if you are talking about the speaker of the house.
Though again you do yourself no service by going for insults rather than information.
pathetic pitchmand Gore says
I suspect you wanted the word pitchman?
You know he actually was quoted saying "I am not going to let science get in the way"
Do you have a source for that quote?
why anybody takes anything these people say seriously without first independantly verifying it is beyond me.
You would do yourself well to take your own advice and provide some verification for your own claims.
Dyson on the other hand is a great thinker who has done great science
It is one thing to oppose an idea because you dislike it or you distrust it. There is no shortage of people running around claiming global warming to be total FUD.
However, there is a distinct shortage of people who are actually able to provide DATA to support their opposition to it. There is a significant difference between saying "I don't agree with that data" and "I have this data set that shows that data set is wrong". Global warming, by definition, is based on the global mean temperature of the earth. Plenty of people try to go for statements like "it snowed in Atlanta, so global warming must be BS"; though of course a statement like that ignores the global aspect of global warming.
As I don't have a NY Times account, I could not read the article provided. Can anyone tell us, did he actually provide meaningful data, or is he just criticizing the existing data?
Do you still have to jail-break the phone yourself to use on another GSM carrier? If the phone is still locked into AT&T, then you aren't really gaining much here.
If (and this is a big if), on the other hand, it was a fully-unlocked iPhone, that could operate on any GSM carrier straight out of the box, then it might be worth the money. After all, what warranty obligations does Apple have for a hacked iPhone from the current lots? My guess would be none.
Considering churches get non-profit, and even some HMOs as well, I would say that newspapers have much more of the public interest in mind than either of the other two. Churches and HMOs generally pay their top employes more than most newspapers; but yet where does the non-profit status currently go?
This has to be the most offensive thing I did not read today.
Because the article did not actually offer up anything to support their claim of a "ban on black vehicles" or any other such nonsense. If you read the pdf that they link to - which is the only source they give - you won't find anything in it that resembles legislative suggestions or suggests a ban on anything at all.
I'm guessing the answer is no, since there was no part in the article where a ban on black cars was actually supported by anything.
This is an excellent example of extremely bad fear-mongering posing as reporting, subsequently distorted by people with an agenda. Furthermore, if you read the pdf that they link to, you'll find no proposed ban there, either.
If you are willing to promise to never, ever, test your code on anything other than your own workstation before unleashing it on the general public, you will be perfect to work here.
Large egos, poor communication skills, and inability to take criticism are a bonus as well, it appears.
Just send your application in to/dev/null for prompt processing.
Combustion, suffocation, and perhaps severe hypothermia as well. I don't think I would call that luck; or at least not the kind of luck I would ever care to have myself.
Microsoft's Office 2007 Suite to run on your Ubuntu Linux Distribution
How could Office 2007's benefits possibly outweigh its costs and complications? This time MS has moved even further to break backwards-compatibility with earlier versions of office, which means you will find it even more difficult to share files with people you know who have older versions of the same.
And with the quality of the free office suites that can read and write the files of the previous versions without needing windows compatibility on non-windows systems, why even bother running the newest MS Office?
If we are going to use the Gregorian calendar, then we should probably see what Europe knew about Pi in 1592. According to Pi History, there was no significant contribution to the understanding of Pi in Europe after Archimedes until Ludolph van Ceulen came up with a 20-digit approximation, in 1596. I'm afraid he was 4 years to late for Pi day.
between awesome / expensive (a.k.a. complicated) or good enough / cheap (a.k.a. simple), cheap will win.
Considering the minimal amount of setup required, I think one could make an argument for NetWare having been the awesome and simple. If you already have a Novell tree, you can go from a system with no OS to a running NetWare print & file server in very little time; and if you don't yet have a tree it doesn't take much longer.
Really, Novell doesn't do marketing. They had the most reliable server OS for connecting windows boxes, and Microsoft came and ate their lunch with an inferior (and more expensive) product. Did someone really expect that all of a sudden, Novell would discover the secret to marketing and manage to sell something? Even after striking a deal with Microsoft, they still need to be able to sell their own product - or at least make it look like they are selling their own product.
Being as they won't likely be able to get (many of) the former Novell shops back to NetWare, if they are planning to revive their company by selling Linux, their goose is cooked.
Slashdot Mirror
Spam filtration is an arms race
That part I agree with.
However, I still say that spam filters will never solve the problem. Spammers will just keep finding new ways around them, and all the while we will continue having to pay the costs of transporting and filtering the junk email (in terms of bandwidth and cpu costs, in particular).
The only way to stop spam is to remove the reason why it exists in the first place:
If spammers can't make money off of sending out spam, they won't send it out to begin with.
...so I can come and smack you upside the head.
Obviously, shutting down an ISP would have a negligible long-term effect on spam. Intelligent people realize that the people behind spam are themselves intelligent (at least intelligent enough to almost never get caught). Obviously they have contingency plans. If you shut down one mail relay they go to another. If you shut down one ISP they go to another. If you shut down one web hosting company they go to another.
If you shut down their favorite registrar they go find another.
Anyone who thought that shutting down one ISP would have any meaningful, long-term effect on the spam problem needs to read up on how spam works, and why it exists. In short, spam works because it is profitable. Spammers don't sent out spam just because it annoys people, they send it out because they make money off the products that they push through spam. Hence they will find new ways to push out spam, as long as they can still make money.
Air Canada
I can't afford Air Canada, so I don't know what their accommodations might or might not be like.
WestJet
I flew WestJet last spring, Ottawa -> Vancouver (and back). Possibly the most luxurious flight I've ever been on; certainly by far the nicest plane I've been on in at least 5 years. However I do not recall there being electric outlets available anywhere on the plane.
That said, on that particular flight I did not need to do any work while flying; so I wasn't looking for electric outlets anyways. I spent most of my time sleeping, reading, or watching the in-flight map of where we were.
My personal requirements are to not own a laptop that cannot last at least 5 hours on a battery during normal operation
I'm not sure where you can find such a laptop, unless you have a very low-impact definition of "normal operation". I suppose if your "normal operation" involves typing a novel in vi, and saving said novel to an SSD, then 5 hours might be feasible. From my own personal experience, even working on a presentation (which often is why I am carrying my laptop to begin with) is enough to drain the battery dramatically quicker. And my presentations generally have few (or more likely no) animations; though they are data-intensive, which means I often have a spreadsheet and one or more pdfs open at the same time.
And anyone who has owned a laptop for more than 1 or 2 years can tell you that the claim of lithium ion batteries in laptops not being subject to the "memory effect" is pure crap. So unless you buy a new laptop (or laptop battery) regularly, you likely are getting around 60-80% of the possible battery life out of your laptop battery.
What good is WiFi when most of the flights I fly on don't give me anything to plug my laptop in to anyways? I'd even consider paying a few dollars for electric service on a flight so I could plug in and use my laptop for the duration of the flight. As it is, my laptop run time on flights is strictly limited to the charge on my batteries before I get on the plane.
And if I'm going to use my latop with WiFi on, that would only drain by battery slightly quicker than without it.
Perhaps that girl shares lineage with this woman?
Though really, if the lion was fed recently (and hence not hungry), the danger might not be all that great to the idiot who just paid for a ride.
That, of course, says nothing of the blatant disregard for animal welfare.
Anyone who spends $1000 on a laptop for school is an idiot
Which unfortunately means we have an astonishing number of idiots in this country. Not sure whether or not that should surprise anyone.
Take notes on paper and build a desktop for $175.
I couldn't agree with you more on that that one. My cheap desktop worked just fine for my undergrad years, and anytime I needed more computational power I had access to that through the school for whatever project I was attached too that needed that power.
Why do a college student need a $1000 laptop?
Good question, and the answer is simple.
$1,000 is the starting price for the macbook.
The reason why this is important is because many of the kids who just graduated high school and have convinced their parents to buy they a new laptop for college are the same ones who convinced their parents that they needed an iPod in high school. And of course for these kids, whose lives revolve around facebook and their iPod, the most important aspect of a laptop is iPod compatibility.
Sure, they could be a lam3r and use something other than a mac to sync their iPod, but on mommy & daddy's buck, why?
it's entertainment
Indeed, laptops on campus often seem to end up used for that more than anything else
communications
That is assuming that wherever they are on campus, they have some way to connect to the campus network and/or the internet. Not always applicable for every corner of every campus.
education
I would say the educational value of a laptop is debatable at best. I know plenty of people who finished CSci degrees without ever owning one.
a bargain at twice the price
Not sure if you'd still be saying that after paying for licenses for the software that they "just have to have". Sure, plenty of people can do just fine with OpenOffice, GIMP, and Linux. But should your child's professor be expected to know how to handle files that pass through those?
You may end up buying the laptop for $1,000; but you'll probably end up spending another $1,000 on the software that your child has to have, and the hardware upgrades to make it work properly.
And meanwhile, you're now $2,000 futher in debt than you would have been had you told that child to just use the lab like you did back when you were in school.
Sure, right now a lot of kids who just graduated from high school can convince their parents that they need their own computer in school (even if the school website says otherwise). Though as the economy continues to falter, parents should start taking a serious look at what their kids truly need for school (and realize that a computer of their own is not on that list).
Spend $1,000 on that new laptop, or instead use the same $1,000 to take out less in student loans? That should be a pretty easy choice.
You also seem to be unaware that the internet has sources for every piece of idiocy
No, I am well aware of that
providing sources doesn't settle anything
I disagree with that statement. If the original poster were to actually respond with sources (though I'm not holding my breath), it would show the source of their opinion. Often just seeing the domain of their sources tells a lot; if they cited these idiots or these other idiots as sources then we know they aren't thinking much about the actual science. On the other hand if they cited an academic or scientific source to support their claims, then there would be reason to believe the poster actually does think before spouting off rhetoric.
As it is, the poster is essentially just gossipping. They have provided nothing but noise, and I am asking them to support their statements (if they can).
Global Warmin is bad science, as a general rule
And that statement is bad English, as a general rule. The word is Warming, not Warmin. If you want to be taken seriously please avoid slang.
facts are thin, and or simply made up
Can you provide a specific example?
the Hocky-stick report was done with largely fictious data
OK, you gave an example, that is a start. Care to tell us why you call it "largely fictious" (sic) data? Can you point to a data set that specifically disproves it?
I don't understand how the public can stick behind this garbage
You aren't helping your cause when you just keep criticizing people without providing a reason to believe your argument.
their lord and master Barrack
You really are doing yourself a disservice, here.
And the first name of the current President of the United States is Barack. Please, learn to spell it correctly.
Queen of the Damned herself Nacy;
Cute. Her name is Nancy, if you are talking about the speaker of the house.
Though again you do yourself no service by going for insults rather than information.
pathetic pitchmand Gore says
I suspect you wanted the word pitchman?
You know he actually was quoted saying "I am not going to let science get in the way"
Do you have a source for that quote?
why anybody takes anything these people say seriously without first independantly verifying it is beyond me.
You would do yourself well to take your own advice and provide some verification for your own claims.
Dyson on the other hand is a great thinker who has done great science
Again, a source would be nice.
It is one thing to oppose an idea because you dislike it or you distrust it. There is no shortage of people running around claiming global warming to be total FUD.
However, there is a distinct shortage of people who are actually able to provide DATA to support their opposition to it. There is a significant difference between saying "I don't agree with that data" and "I have this data set that shows that data set is wrong". Global warming, by definition, is based on the global mean temperature of the earth. Plenty of people try to go for statements like "it snowed in Atlanta, so global warming must be BS"; though of course a statement like that ignores the global aspect of global warming.
As I don't have a NY Times account, I could not read the article provided. Can anyone tell us, did he actually provide meaningful data, or is he just criticizing the existing data?
Do you still have to jail-break the phone yourself to use on another GSM carrier? If the phone is still locked into AT&T, then you aren't really gaining much here.
If (and this is a big if), on the other hand, it was a fully-unlocked iPhone, that could operate on any GSM carrier straight out of the box, then it might be worth the money. After all, what warranty obligations does Apple have for a hacked iPhone from the current lots? My guess would be none.
Considering churches get non-profit, and even some HMOs as well, I would say that newspapers have much more of the public interest in mind than either of the other two. Churches and HMOs generally pay their top employes more than most newspapers; but yet where does the non-profit status currently go?
This has to be the most offensive thing I did not read today.
Because the article did not actually offer up anything to support their claim of a "ban on black vehicles" or any other such nonsense. If you read the pdf that they link to - which is the only source they give - you won't find anything in it that resembles legislative suggestions or suggests a ban on anything at all.
Except that as it has already been pointed out, the governator wants to return his Tesla roadster and get back in his hummer.
I'm guessing the answer is no, since there was no part in the article where a ban on black cars was actually supported by anything.
This is an excellent example of extremely bad fear-mongering posing as reporting, subsequently distorted by people with an agenda. Furthermore, if you read the pdf that they link to, you'll find no proposed ban there, either.
This is 100% pure FUD.
If you are willing to promise to never, ever, test your code on anything other than your own workstation before unleashing it on the general public, you will be perfect to work here.
/dev/null for prompt processing.
Large egos, poor communication skills, and inability to take criticism are a bonus as well, it appears.
Just send your application in to
We all die deaths. Most of them are pointless meaningless wasted deaths that no one will know about, let alone remember
If you want to focus on being remembered for how you die, that is your choice. I would rather be remembered for what I do while I am still alive.
Lucky fucker
Combustion, suffocation, and perhaps severe hypothermia as well. I don't think I would call that luck; or at least not the kind of luck I would ever care to have myself.
Microsoft's Office 2007 Suite to run on your Ubuntu Linux Distribution
How could Office 2007's benefits possibly outweigh its costs and complications? This time MS has moved even further to break backwards-compatibility with earlier versions of office, which means you will find it even more difficult to share files with people you know who have older versions of the same.
And with the quality of the free office suites that can read and write the files of the previous versions without needing windows compatibility on non-windows systems, why even bother running the newest MS Office?
The last one was March 14, 1592.
If we are going to use the Gregorian calendar, then we should probably see what Europe knew about Pi in 1592. According to Pi History, there was no significant contribution to the understanding of Pi in Europe after Archimedes until Ludolph van Ceulen came up with a 20-digit approximation, in 1596. I'm afraid he was 4 years to late for Pi day.
between awesome / expensive (a.k.a. complicated) or good enough / cheap (a.k.a. simple), cheap will win.
Considering the minimal amount of setup required, I think one could make an argument for NetWare having been the awesome and simple. If you already have a Novell tree, you can go from a system with no OS to a running NetWare print & file server in very little time; and if you don't yet have a tree it doesn't take much longer.
Really, Novell doesn't do marketing. They had the most reliable server OS for connecting windows boxes, and Microsoft came and ate their lunch with an inferior (and more expensive) product. Did someone really expect that all of a sudden, Novell would discover the secret to marketing and manage to sell something? Even after striking a deal with Microsoft, they still need to be able to sell their own product - or at least make it look like they are selling their own product.
Being as they won't likely be able to get (many of) the former Novell shops back to NetWare, if they are planning to revive their company by selling Linux, their goose is cooked.