What you mean is that there will be lots of people who die. These will probably be from the third world.
Don't be too sure of this. Individuals in developed areas tend to be very specialized and less self sufficient. If the shit hits the fan, who do you think will survive better, the IT professional who no longer has a job and few other skills to speak of, or the guy in the third world who knows how to grow food, build a house, and raise livestock? Don't assume that just because a group of people are less developed, they are somehow weaker. They know hardship. You, mostly likely, have no idea.
But tell me which is more likely, that a globabl distaster may cause chaos 100 years in the future, or drastic environmental regulations cripple the world economy an cause massive problems in the third world.
The third world is already crippled and it isn't by environmental regulations. It is by greedy capitalists like ourselves. What they need are environmental regulations (and labor regulations) to keep *OUR* corporations from killing the local populace with pollution. The only people who will suffer from envrionmental regulations in the third world is *US*, rhe people who depend on the ability to pollute freely and exploit the local population. We've worked long and hard to clean our own air. We owe it to the third world to help them clean their air. Our enonomy has managed to survive environmental regulations. So can theirs. I guarantee you that they will be better off for it. How *dare* you suggest that they not get the opportunity to breath freely. Why don't you visit Mexico City sometime. It is absolutely disgusting.
The poverty is only half of it.
Usually the more developed/higher specialised species has died out first.
Right.and among humans, the more developed/richer of the humans woudl actually die out first because a) the individuals are more specialized and less self sufficient and b) have adapted to a high standard of living and would find it more difficult to cope when the shit hits the fan. Less developed cultures are more accustomed to the shit hitting the fan. There is a definite downside to building a high standard of living for ourselves.
I use qmail on my server that does virtual domain hosting and Postfix for everything else. I just couldn't find anything for Postfix that compared to qmail virtualdomains and vmailmgr. To do virtual domains with Postfix I needed a MySQL backend (or worse, manage plain text files). Also, I couldn't find any simple tools for managing it. With Qmail, virtual domains are easy. Take a real unix user, assign a domain to that user in qmail/virtualdomains, run "vsetup" as that user, and you have a virtual domain ready to go. All domain info is maintained in that unix user's home dir. With oMail Admin (PHP web GUI for vmailmgr) that unix user can manage their own virtual domain (users, aliases, passwords, etc). If I didn't need to host virtual domains, I would ditch qmail in a heartbeat.
But he's conservative and always has been. He's never been afraid to express it either. Besides, most major media outlets have been parroting the Bush "news" without question since 9/11. This "liberal media" thing just doesn't hold water.
Most media outlets aren't willing to say anything positive about capitalism, it undermines their agenda.
ROFL! I'm sure that is why 1/3 of TV is advertisements for capitalists selling products.
The media outlets are capitalist. What do media outlets have to gain by undermining capitalism? Less advertising revenue? The "agenda" of most media outlets is to make money just like every other capitalist organization. ANd if you want to continue with this "liberal media" bullshit, why don't you explain Fox and Rupert Murdoch.
I was reading here some mentions of how the US government pays farmers not to grow crops. I've heard of it before and I was wondering what the rationale is. I guess we'd have a huge surplus if everyone grew as much as they could all the time, but isn't it a little more complicated than that? If we used all of our land all the time, wouldn't we deplete it faster? I mean, doesn't the soil need time to regenerate? I know people want to grow food at full capacity and feed the world or make fuel or whatever, but is that really sustainable? What about all the petroleum products used to make the fertilizers to grow the crops? Does that get figured into the amount of net energy the ethanol provides?
In a free society, people make informed personal decisions and consume what they want. There's nothing 'blind' about it. And if you know that 'too many' people are doing something that you don't like, how many is too many? Where do you get all this special knowledge ("too many", "what they need", etc.)?
The fact that we use such a large, disproportionate amount of the world's resources is where I get this "too many" figure.
What country do you live in? Those were just sped up tax refunds that the taxpayers would have gotten anyway at a later date. Everyone I know invested their checks. I encouraged no one to use their checks for anything. I couldn't care less what other people did with their checks. That's their own business, not mine.
Do you deny that the motive for giving people the "early refund" was to get people to spend more sooner? Do you deny that the pressure from the government and media is overwhelmingly towards consumption (rather than conservation)?
Who are these people you know that are going into massive debt?
Nobody you'd know, apparantly.
External control? You mean like prices? Prices that will rise when a resource is becoming depleted so as to signal to everyone that we should consume less of it?
Price is an internal (not tied directly to the environment) control, like hunger is to an animal.
THere is a relationship between price/resources and hunger/food, but they are not the same thing. Price controls how we consume resources internally. Our country as a whole can't (or won't without a fight) just start consuming less resources just because the price is going up. We're far more likely to go to war to secure more of the resources that ARE there for ourselves. Indeed, some suggest we're already doing it. When we are not going to war for resources, we simply exploit and intimidate smaller, poorer countries; essesentially stealing their resources. That is what empires do. Why do you think we have a military presence in most other contries of the world? 7 were added after 9/11. There are only about 46 where we don't have a military presence.
That would be wonderful.
You didn't answer the question. What do you think would happen? Specifically, what do you think woudl happen to the environment if a few billion more people were driving (and buying) automobiles? BTW, you should visit Mexico City sometime.
Trade deficit? You mean the deal by which we send little pieces of green paper with U.S. presidents on them (something that literally grows on trees) to people in foreign countries, and in return they send us shiny new cars and computers? What a great deal.
Almost too good to be true, isn't it?
Where do you live? Next door to a coal-fired power plant?
I don't, but many people do. I have this strange ability to hear the plight of others.
Air and water get cleaner year after year.
Your air and water gets cleaner year after year. But air in general doesn't. You just push the polution father and farther away from your backyard. If the air is getter better in places other than your backyard, it is because of people like me who make a big deal out of it.
"We"? Speak for yourself. Cultures that I have suppressed, destroyed and assimilated: 0.
Did you support the invasion and susequent Americanization of Iraq?
Oh sure, come election day or terrorism it is "we we we." When it comes to taking responsibility for the horrible things that are going on in the world it is "'We'? Speak for yourself."
Greed is defined as someone desiring more than he needs or deserves. I don't see how people buying SUVs are 'greedy'. Unless you know better than they do what they 'need' or 'deserve'. Which would be a pretty arrogant thing to believe.
Are you are saying that greed doesn't really exist because nobody is in the position to make the judgement? Are you saying that you have never thought
Again, maybe you didn't get the memo: all resources are scarce. Are you proposing that we should try to conserve all resources equally no matter what their relative abundance is? Do you have any idea how costly that would be?
No, i'm proposing we all make a conscious effort to conserve all resources now rather than leave it up to "the market" or some future technlology. Unfortunately, active conservation is anti-thetical to our current system. But it is changing. Not because of market economics, but because of people like me who are becoming environmentally conscious.
Your arguments about people blindly consuming properly priced resources right and left until all the resources are gone has no basis in reality.
Too many people ARE blindly consuming "properly" priced resources right and left. What country do you live in? The IRS wrote people checks for $300 dollars (to be paid back later) and were encouraged (by conservatives like you) to spend it on something. It is the very foundation of our economy... consumption. The more people consume. the better the economy. Look around you. SUVs, disposable goods, wasteful packaging. People are going into massive debt just to consume more resources.
I dont' know if this will happen until all the resources are gone.. It happens to other animals in nature if left without an external control. ALthough we'd start to really suffer long before that. (indeed, many people around the world ARE suffering). What do you think would happen if all the people in the world had the standard of living we do? The US is using WAY more resources than it could supply domestically. Look at the trade deficit. We could probably grow enough food, but that is only a small fraction of the resources needed to sustain our standard of living.
[It is "worth it" in the long run.]
How do you know?
I don't. I just know the situation we are in now and wish people had thought (more) about all this 100 years ago while THEY were getting high on technology.
Ok, let's clear some things up here. There is no such thing as a 'market'. There is no such thing as a 'corporation'. These are abstract things that human beings have created. A 'market' is just a collection of people interacting with each other. A 'corporation' is a group of people with shared goals: the employees, the owners, and the customers. Corporations aren't 'short sighted' or 'greedy', people are.
Fair enough. Notice I am not suggesting a change in the structure of markets or corporations. I am talking about people. People need to make a conscious shift in attitude and thought. Hence, I am writing to you (an individual) and not addressing "the market" or a corporation.
And those terms are relative anyway - who made you the grand judge of what is short sighted or greedy?
I'm hardly a grand judge. Who made me a judge? Me. I did. I decided to start seeing beyond my own self-interest. I decided that I am tired of hearing about lakes/rivers that I can't eat fish from. I am tired of hearing about wars over oil and resources. I am tired of worrying about the quality of the air I breath. Technology and overconsumption have gotten us this far, and I am grateful, but it is time to shift gears. There is something to be learned from all those cultures we have suppressed, destroyed, and assimilated over the years.
What's the time frame for your judgement of short sightedness?
Depends on the resource/companies/people in question.
And why is your time frame any better than anyone elses?
Again, depends on the resources/companies/people in question.
Could you also explain to us benighted fools your rationale for calling someone greedy?
My "rationale?" Depends on the person. Don't act like you don't know what greed is.
Anyway, I believe I've made my point. Even you have agreed that our current economic system has nothing built in to conserve abundant reso
(Notice that in the above example you are not acting altruistically at all - yet the result of your self-interested actions leads to the conservation of the scarce resource.)
True Conservation means conserving BEFORE the resource is scarce. It is a choice, not a necessity or a byproduct of something else. Otherwise we are no better than every other animal on the planet that will expand to consume all natural resources until nature decides to strike back. "Oh, Mr. Lion, you ate all your food and overpopulated? Starve!"
[They just want to sell a product... as much of it as possible. Their drive to be efficient with resources only extends as far as profit demands.]
Exactly! And since these corporations are constantly chasing profits, they will try to be as efficient as possible with (i.e. make best use of) their resources so as to maximize profits.
No. At some point efficiency becomes unprofitable (and operating cleanly is almost always unprofitable)
Notice I specified "efficiency only extends as far as profit demands." That is not good enough. That is NOT conservation.
[When resources are relatively plentiful and cheap, it is often more more profitable to waste resources than to conserve them.]
Obviously. Which is why you don't see people walking around in stillsuits. The cost of conservation of plentiful resources is not worth it.
It is "worth it" in the long run. It isn't, however, "worth it" to short sighted, greedy corporations. The faith you conservative types put into "the market" and corporations astounds me. It is like you have absolutely no ability see beyond your wallets.
The problem with that system is that conservation doesn't happen until AFTER the resource starts to become scarce.
That happens when the resource is not priced correctly, which comes about when profit is taken out of the system (usually by government action).
"not priced correctly"?? What is the "correct" price of something? The price is whatever the market will bare. If I have a resource, I am not going to sell it to you for the "correct" price. I am going to sell it for whatever you will pay for it (and still make a profit).
If the resources are owned by people and not governments, then the profit motive of the owners will drive them to steward the resources in the manner that puts them to best use.
What the heck are you talking about? Corporations don't care about "best use." They just want to sell a product... as much of it as possible. Their drive to be efficient with resources only extends as far as profit demands. When resources are relatively plentiful and cheap, it is often more more profitable to waste resources than to conserve them.
You're living in Los Angeles! Duh! I live in Chicago and it isn't quite so bad (New York is better). I think it has to do with sprawl. On this Earth, the further West you go, the worse public transportation gets. You, my friend, have hit rock bottom.;-) You'll need to go to Europe to get real pulic transportation. I've been to England, Spain, and Germany. Every major city has an awesome public transportation system. Not once did I ever need to take a bus. You're never more than a few blocks from a train station. Reliable, comfortable, and safe.
>You miss an important point: idle people consume more resources.
How do you figure this?
I work long hours, and don't have time to spend money. If I had more free time, I would use the time on expensive (both in $ and natural resources) hobbies.
Unless you were dragracing or something like that, I doubt it. Presumably you wouldn't be making that much money if you were idle. Besides, I don't think most people have that much money to burn. A good portion of the American population is in massive debt.
I suspect that simple boredom would become a problem if more people were idle. Personally, if I didn't have a job I would be incredibly bored all day. Not to mention that I wouldn't have learned half of what I know about computer without my job.
Yes there is; it's called "price". As a resource becomes scarce, demand exceeds supply and the price rises. This encourages both conservation and investigation of alternatives.
The problem with that system is that conservation doesn't happen until AFTER the resource starts to become scarce. What you get is a system that progressively depletes the environment with no real incentive to replenish or conserve it in the first place. It is a system that see's profit first, and the environment second (often in retrospect). Price doesn't measure wastage of natural resources. It only measures what people will pay for those wasted resources.
Upgradable CPUs are overrated (especially in a laptop). By the time you get around to doing the upgrade, current CPUs are usually using a different socket/slot. Probably just end up shortening your battery life with the extra Mhz anyway.:-P
No, i'm just questioning the overall value of this technology. Is heavy metal polution in the topsoil really a significant part of the problem? How do the metals in in top soil from mining? My complaint wasn't really with the technology, but with the way it was presented. Seems like whenever such a technology is presented in a conservative forum, it becomes ammunition for them to say "See, we're cleaning up the environment. No need to worry about heavy metal polution."
What about deeper down in, say, the water table? What about runoff into rivers and streams? What I dont' like about this process (or maybe just this article) is that it seems to give a green light to irresponsible mining and toxic watest disposal by saying... "It's OK. We have these plants now. You can go crazy with the heavy metal polution."
What I find curious is why the executable is 96k when it depends on DirectX. I would imagine that a good game engine written in assembly could easily be fit into 16kB. I would be more impressed with this particular effort if they had built their own graphics engine (with lighting effects, etc...)
That 96k contains all the scene data. It isn't just the engine. Why would you be impressed if they wrote their own graphic engine? How would you take advantage of hardware accelleration. Sheesh! Write a tight program that uses OpenGL/DirectX and you get criticized for not using assembly tuned to bare metal. Write aseembly tuned to bare metal and you get criticized for having a program that only runs on specific hardware (or doesn't take advantage of hardware acceleration).
Using SDL may be "absurd" if you want to write a Windows-only game, but it isn't absurd if you want to make it crossplatform. Whether you will admit it or not, SDL/OpenGL is a standard that many (good and fast) Linux games have been based on.
Why not subscribe to it yourself? You get an advanced preview copy of the spam this particular spammer is sending, and you can feed that into your servers' spam filters. Even if you don't get any money (well, it's hardly likely you will if you're not actually sending the emails out), it may still be worth.
Why? I've already solved the spam problem on my end. Between RBLs and Bayesian filtering, i hardly get any spam in my inbox. The last thing I need is more spam to train my filter.
Hm... spamm-mails are not that huge... I think I still transmitt about 4 spam-mails per second over a 56k dial up connection. That would be about 350.000 mails per day.
You would give up use of the internet for such a small amount of money? You do understand that it is $1 per "CPU hour"... not "clock hour," don't ou? It would take you days to make a single dollar off of one dialup connection.
You mentioned costs? What costs' The cost for a dial-up line?... puh man, it takes me a few seconds to tap a line... the ones of public telephones can be tapped in less than 10 seconds, but the ones in the basements of a large apartment houses I would prefere for that kind of work;)
No only are you goign to waste your time for such a small amount of money but you would risk going to jail? Now that is foolish.
I am not sure, if you lack deep knowledge how a a "virtual MDA" works or if you lack knowledge what possibilities ISP have, to detect spam. (No offense!) Either an ISP catch me sending spam over their smtp-servers or they trace the my packets sent on transport layers. The first is circumvented with a virtual MDA, the second is technically nearly impossible for ISP's.
Sorry, but I work for an ISP. We dont' have to trace packets. We get emails from Spamcop when anyone on our IP range is sending spam. We find out about it within hours. Given an IP address, we can track down the user in seconds. We diconnect users who are infected with virtual MDAs all the time. We dont' usually cancel their service because they are generally not aware that their PC is sending spam. They are not allowed back on the internet until they fix the problem.
Anyway it is a good idea, to use a dial up connection on a tapped line, send out 666 mails, disconnect and dial in again, maybe even to a different ISP...
No, it is a waste of time.
It is not to difficult to spoof information in an email! Exactly that's what a _virtual MDA_ does... it is a _virtual mail transport agent_, because it mimics a _real mail transpüort agent_!
All information you find in emails, sent by such a program looks like it was sent by a real (and not blöacklisted!) mail transport agent!
No amount of SMTP spoofing can change the IP address that is connecting to my mail server. As long as that is blocked (and it will be if not by a global blacklist on all dialup IPs then by Spamcop), I don't get the spam.
(If the program is very clever, it even spoofs the IP packets sent out and there is nothing left, to differ between a real and a spoofed mail, not even on lower transport layers!)
Theoretically possible, but not practical. Spoofing a TCP connection is very difficult and requires knowledge of the OS on the other end.
It is difficult to maintain because you have to guess the right TCP sequence numbers. Also, you would never know if the spam was successfully sent because you can only send data on a spoofed connection, you can't receive.
You can blacklist the whole dynamic IP adressrange, but your mail-servers won't "see" any of these IP's, because the whoile mail (if not even the whole transport) contains false (the virtual) IP's.
The blacklist doesn't use any address inside the message. It uses the IP of the connecting MTA. That can't be spoofed as a general rule.
You receive mail from aomeone@aol.com and belive AOL is doing a good job in preventing spam, so you do not blacklist aol.com, but actually not even one byte of that mail ever passed any system that belongs to aol... you are perfectly fooled, buy some fools that just want to earn some extra bucks.
Actually, our servers verify that email claiming to be from an AOL user is actually coming from an AOL server. We do the same thing for Yahoo email and some other domains.
All this combined with decent Bayesian filtering and I hardly ever see a piece of spam in my inbox anymore. As far as I am concerned, the spammers have lost. This latest story about spammers paying users is nothing more than a desparate act of a dying breed.
That would be too easy. Have every 1 out of 1000 messages sent to a mailbox controlled by the spammer. No mail? Oops, no check.
I'm sure the sleazbags would find plenty of other reasons not to send you a check.
Re:CPU hour, not normal hour
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A service (when written correctly) is only going to use the CPU it needs. The rest goes the user and the "Idle system task" or whatever. I'm sure people who wrote the program did everythign they could to minimize CPU usage if only to limit the amount they have to pay out to users. Besides, sending email is largely I/O bound... not CPU bound. HOw much CPU do you need to send out email at 384kbit/sec (or whatever your cable modem limits your upload to)?
Do you realy think, it is possible to blacklist, all the dynamic IP's dial up users get?
For the most part, yes. You can subscribe to blacklists that already include the dynamic ranges for major residential broadband providers.
I dial up, spam, and spamcop blacklists, I am automatically disconnected after 24 hours, and reconnect, get a new, fresh I, rince&repeat.
Dialup??? You're not going to get much spamming done through a dialup connection. Besides, it wouldn't really be worth the effort (and potentially the cost) of staying dialed up 24/7, hanging up, and dialing again. Are you going to simply stop using the internet just so you can make $10/week sending spam? Yeah, I said $10 per week. You don't think they'd actually pay $1 per HOUR, do you? If you read it carefully, they say "CPU hour" which probably translates to a certain number of spams. In the case of dialup, it'll take many real hours to equal one "CPU hour."
Most homeusers have no fixed IP, that can be blacklisted, think about it!
DSL and cable dynamic IPs tend to stay pretty constant when you comptuter is on 24/7.. ESPECIALLY if you have a broadband router.
Also, ISPs are getting wise to residential spamming. An ISP will disconnect you if they catch you repeatedly sending spam.
Spammers want normal users to spam, just for one reason... circumvent blacklists!
Sure, but it isn't sustainable. The net effect of this practice is to cheat a few greedy users out of an internet connection and CPU cycles for a couple bucks a week. It is a sign that spammers are getting desparate.
Anyway, as I said, my servers are not likely to catch much of the resulting spam. So I am not worried.
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Don't be too sure of this. Individuals in developed areas tend to be very specialized and less self sufficient. If the shit hits the fan, who do you think will survive better, the IT professional who no longer has a job and few other skills to speak of, or the guy in the third world who knows how to grow food, build a house, and raise livestock? Don't assume that just because a group of people are less developed, they are somehow weaker. They know hardship. You, mostly likely, have no idea.
But tell me which is more likely, that a globabl distaster may cause chaos 100 years in the future, or drastic environmental regulations cripple the world economy an cause massive problems in the third world.
The third world is already crippled and it isn't by environmental regulations. It is by greedy capitalists like ourselves. What they need are environmental regulations (and labor regulations) to keep *OUR* corporations from killing the local populace with pollution. The only people who will suffer from envrionmental regulations in the third world is *US*, rhe people who depend on the ability to pollute freely and exploit the local population. We've worked long and hard to clean our own air. We owe it to the third world to help them clean their air. Our enonomy has managed to survive environmental regulations. So can theirs. I guarantee you that they will be better off for it. How *dare* you suggest that they not get the opportunity to breath freely. Why don't you visit Mexico City sometime. It is absolutely disgusting. The poverty is only half of it.
-matthew
Right.and among humans, the more developed/richer of the humans woudl actually die out first because a) the individuals are more specialized and less self sufficient and b) have adapted to a high standard of living and would find it more difficult to cope when the shit hits the fan. Less developed cultures are more accustomed to the shit hitting the fan. There is a definite downside to building a high standard of living for ourselves.
-matthew
I use qmail on my server that does virtual domain hosting and Postfix for everything else. I just couldn't find anything for Postfix that compared to qmail virtualdomains and vmailmgr. To do virtual domains with Postfix I needed a MySQL backend (or worse, manage plain text files). Also, I couldn't find any simple tools for managing it. With Qmail, virtual domains are easy. Take a real unix user, assign a domain to that user in qmail/virtualdomains, run "vsetup" as that user, and you have a virtual domain ready to go. All domain info is maintained in that unix user's home dir. With oMail Admin (PHP web GUI for vmailmgr) that unix user can manage their own virtual domain (users, aliases, passwords, etc). If I didn't need to host virtual domains, I would ditch qmail in a heartbeat.
-matthew
But he's conservative and always has been. He's never been afraid to express it either. Besides, most major media outlets have been parroting the Bush "news" without question since 9/11. This "liberal media" thing just doesn't hold water.
ROFL! I'm sure that is why 1/3 of TV is advertisements for capitalists selling products. The media outlets are capitalist. What do media outlets have to gain by undermining capitalism? Less advertising revenue? The "agenda" of most media outlets is to make money just like every other capitalist organization. ANd if you want to continue with this "liberal media" bullshit, why don't you explain Fox and Rupert Murdoch.
-matthew
I was reading here some mentions of how the US government pays farmers not to grow crops. I've heard of it before and I was wondering what the rationale is. I guess we'd have a huge surplus if everyone grew as much as they could all the time, but isn't it a little more complicated than that? If we used all of our land all the time, wouldn't we deplete it faster? I mean, doesn't the soil need time to regenerate? I know people want to grow food at full capacity and feed the world or make fuel or whatever, but is that really sustainable? What about all the petroleum products used to make the fertilizers to grow the crops? Does that get figured into the amount of net energy the ethanol provides?
-matthew
The fact that we use such a large, disproportionate amount of the world's resources is where I get this "too many" figure.
What country do you live in? Those were just sped up tax refunds that the taxpayers would have gotten anyway at a later date. Everyone I know invested their checks. I encouraged no one to use their checks for anything. I couldn't care less what other people did with their checks. That's their own business, not mine.
Do you deny that the motive for giving people the "early refund" was to get people to spend more sooner? Do you deny that the pressure from the government and media is overwhelmingly towards consumption (rather than conservation)?
Who are these people you know that are going into massive debt?
Nobody you'd know, apparantly.
External control? You mean like prices? Prices that will rise when a resource is becoming depleted so as to signal to everyone that we should consume less of it?
Price is an internal (not tied directly to the environment) control, like hunger is to an animal. THere is a relationship between price/resources and hunger/food, but they are not the same thing. Price controls how we consume resources internally. Our country as a whole can't (or won't without a fight) just start consuming less resources just because the price is going up. We're far more likely to go to war to secure more of the resources that ARE there for ourselves. Indeed, some suggest we're already doing it. When we are not going to war for resources, we simply exploit and intimidate smaller, poorer countries; essesentially stealing their resources. That is what empires do. Why do you think we have a military presence in most other contries of the world? 7 were added after 9/11. There are only about 46 where we don't have a military presence.
That would be wonderful.
You didn't answer the question. What do you think would happen? Specifically, what do you think woudl happen to the environment if a few billion more people were driving (and buying) automobiles? BTW, you should visit Mexico City sometime.
Trade deficit? You mean the deal by which we send little pieces of green paper with U.S. presidents on them (something that literally grows on trees) to people in foreign countries, and in return they send us shiny new cars and computers? What a great deal.
Almost too good to be true, isn't it?
Where do you live? Next door to a coal-fired power plant?
I don't, but many people do. I have this strange ability to hear the plight of others.
Air and water get cleaner year after year.
Your air and water gets cleaner year after year. But air in general doesn't. You just push the polution father and farther away from your backyard. If the air is getter better in places other than your backyard, it is because of people like me who make a big deal out of it.
"We"? Speak for yourself. Cultures that I have suppressed, destroyed and assimilated: 0.
Did you support the invasion and susequent Americanization of Iraq?
Oh sure, come election day or terrorism it is "we we we." When it comes to taking responsibility for the horrible things that are going on in the world it is "'We'? Speak for yourself."
Greed is defined as someone desiring more than he needs or deserves. I don't see how people buying SUVs are 'greedy'. Unless you know better than they do what they 'need' or 'deserve'. Which would be a pretty arrogant thing to believe.
Are you are saying that greed doesn't really exist because nobody is in the position to make the judgement? Are you saying that you have never thought
No, i'm proposing we all make a conscious effort to conserve all resources now rather than leave it up to "the market" or some future technlology. Unfortunately, active conservation is anti-thetical to our current system. But it is changing. Not because of market economics, but because of people like me who are becoming environmentally conscious.
Your arguments about people blindly consuming properly priced resources right and left until all the resources are gone has no basis in reality.
Too many people ARE blindly consuming "properly" priced resources right and left. What country do you live in? The IRS wrote people checks for $300 dollars (to be paid back later) and were encouraged (by conservatives like you) to spend it on something. It is the very foundation of our economy... consumption. The more people consume. the better the economy. Look around you. SUVs, disposable goods, wasteful packaging. People are going into massive debt just to consume more resources.
I dont' know if this will happen until all the resources are gone.. It happens to other animals in nature if left without an external control. ALthough we'd start to really suffer long before that. (indeed, many people around the world ARE suffering). What do you think would happen if all the people in the world had the standard of living we do? The US is using WAY more resources than it could supply domestically. Look at the trade deficit. We could probably grow enough food, but that is only a small fraction of the resources needed to sustain our standard of living.
[It is "worth it" in the long run.]
How do you know?
I don't. I just know the situation we are in now and wish people had thought (more) about all this 100 years ago while THEY were getting high on technology.
Ok, let's clear some things up here. There is no such thing as a 'market'. There is no such thing as a 'corporation'. These are abstract things that human beings have created. A 'market' is just a collection of people interacting with each other. A 'corporation' is a group of people with shared goals: the employees, the owners, and the customers. Corporations aren't 'short sighted' or 'greedy', people are.
Fair enough. Notice I am not suggesting a change in the structure of markets or corporations. I am talking about people. People need to make a conscious shift in attitude and thought. Hence, I am writing to you (an individual) and not addressing "the market" or a corporation.
And those terms are relative anyway - who made you the grand judge of what is short sighted or greedy?
I'm hardly a grand judge. Who made me a judge? Me. I did. I decided to start seeing beyond my own self-interest. I decided that I am tired of hearing about lakes/rivers that I can't eat fish from. I am tired of hearing about wars over oil and resources. I am tired of worrying about the quality of the air I breath. Technology and overconsumption have gotten us this far, and I am grateful, but it is time to shift gears. There is something to be learned from all those cultures we have suppressed, destroyed, and assimilated over the years.
What's the time frame for your judgement of short sightedness?
Depends on the resource/companies/people in question.
And why is your time frame any better than anyone elses?
Again, depends on the resources/companies/people in question.
Could you also explain to us benighted fools your rationale for calling someone greedy?
My "rationale?" Depends on the person. Don't act like you don't know what greed is.
Anyway, I believe I've made my point. Even you have agreed that our current economic system has nothing built in to conserve abundant reso
So I guess we need to start a new trade deal between teh US and Canada. Send the sick Canadians to the US and the cheap drugs to the US. :P
True Conservation means conserving BEFORE the resource is scarce. It is a choice, not a necessity or a byproduct of something else. Otherwise we are no better than every other animal on the planet that will expand to consume all natural resources until nature decides to strike back. "Oh, Mr. Lion, you ate all your food and overpopulated? Starve!"
[They just want to sell a product... as much of it as possible. Their drive to be efficient with resources only extends as far as profit demands.]
Exactly! And since these corporations are constantly chasing profits, they will try to be as efficient as possible with (i.e. make best use of) their resources so as to maximize profits.
No. At some point efficiency becomes unprofitable (and operating cleanly is almost always unprofitable) Notice I specified "efficiency only extends as far as profit demands." That is not good enough. That is NOT conservation.
[When resources are relatively plentiful and cheap, it is often more more profitable to waste resources than to conserve them.]
Obviously. Which is why you don't see people walking around in stillsuits. The cost of conservation of plentiful resources is not worth it.
It is "worth it" in the long run. It isn't, however, "worth it" to short sighted, greedy corporations. The faith you conservative types put into "the market" and corporations astounds me. It is like you have absolutely no ability see beyond your wallets.
-matthew
That happens when the resource is not priced correctly, which comes about when profit is taken out of the system (usually by government action).
"not priced correctly"?? What is the "correct" price of something? The price is whatever the market will bare. If I have a resource, I am not going to sell it to you for the "correct" price. I am going to sell it for whatever you will pay for it (and still make a profit).
If the resources are owned by people and not governments, then the profit motive of the owners will drive them to steward the resources in the manner that puts them to best use.
What the heck are you talking about? Corporations don't care about "best use." They just want to sell a product... as much of it as possible. Their drive to be efficient with resources only extends as far as profit demands. When resources are relatively plentiful and cheap, it is often more more profitable to waste resources than to conserve them.
-matthew
You're living in Los Angeles! Duh! I live in Chicago and it isn't quite so bad (New York is better). I think it has to do with sprawl. On this Earth, the further West you go, the worse public transportation gets. You, my friend, have hit rock bottom. ;-) You'll need to go to Europe to get real pulic transportation. I've been to England, Spain, and Germany. Every major city has an awesome public transportation system. Not once did I ever need to take a bus. You're never more than a few blocks from a train station. Reliable, comfortable, and safe.
How do you figure this?
I work long hours, and don't have time to spend money. If I had more free time, I would use the time on expensive (both in $ and natural resources) hobbies.
Unless you were dragracing or something like that, I doubt it. Presumably you wouldn't be making that much money if you were idle. Besides, I don't think most people have that much money to burn. A good portion of the American population is in massive debt.
I suspect that simple boredom would become a problem if more people were idle. Personally, if I didn't have a job I would be incredibly bored all day. Not to mention that I wouldn't have learned half of what I know about computer without my job.
-matthew
Yes there is; it's called "price". As a resource becomes scarce, demand exceeds supply and the price rises. This encourages both conservation and investigation of alternatives.
The problem with that system is that conservation doesn't happen until AFTER the resource starts to become scarce. What you get is a system that progressively depletes the environment with no real incentive to replenish or conserve it in the first place. It is a system that see's profit first, and the environment second (often in retrospect). Price doesn't measure wastage of natural resources. It only measures what people will pay for those wasted resources.
-matthew
Upgradable CPUs are overrated (especially in a laptop). By the time you get around to doing the upgrade, current CPUs are usually using a different socket/slot. Probably just end up shortening your battery life with the extra Mhz anyway. :-P
No, i'm just questioning the overall value of this technology. Is heavy metal polution in the topsoil really a significant part of the problem? How do the metals in in top soil from mining? My complaint wasn't really with the technology, but with the way it was presented. Seems like whenever such a technology is presented in a conservative forum, it becomes ammunition for them to say "See, we're cleaning up the environment. No need to worry about heavy metal polution."
-matthew
What about deeper down in, say, the water table? What about runoff into rivers and streams? What I dont' like about this process (or maybe just this article) is that it seems to give a green light to irresponsible mining and toxic watest disposal by saying... "It's OK. We have these plants now. You can go crazy with the heavy metal polution."
-matthew
That 96k contains all the scene data. It isn't just the engine. Why would you be impressed if they wrote their own graphic engine? How would you take advantage of hardware accelleration. Sheesh! Write a tight program that uses OpenGL/DirectX and you get criticized for not using assembly tuned to bare metal. Write aseembly tuned to bare metal and you get criticized for having a program that only runs on specific hardware (or doesn't take advantage of hardware acceleration).
-matthew
Umm, it is a lot considering how little practical functionality exists in that 1.5GB C:\Windows directory.
Using SDL may be "absurd" if you want to write a Windows-only game, but it isn't absurd if you want to make it crossplatform. Whether you will admit it or not, SDL/OpenGL is a standard that many (good and fast) Linux games have been based on.
Why? I've already solved the spam problem on my end. Between RBLs and Bayesian filtering, i hardly get any spam in my inbox. The last thing I need is more spam to train my filter.
-matthew
You would give up use of the internet for such a small amount of money? You do understand that it is $1 per "CPU hour"... not "clock hour," don't ou? It would take you days to make a single dollar off of one dialup connection.
You mentioned costs? What costs' The cost for a dial-up line? ... puh man, it takes me a few seconds to tap a line ... the ones of public telephones can be tapped in less than 10 seconds, but the ones in the basements of a large apartment houses I would prefere for that kind of work ;)
No only are you goign to waste your time for such a small amount of money but you would risk going to jail? Now that is foolish.
I am not sure, if you lack deep knowledge how a a "virtual MDA" works or if you lack knowledge what possibilities ISP have, to detect spam. (No offense!) Either an ISP catch me sending spam over their smtp-servers or they trace the my packets sent on transport layers. The first is circumvented with a virtual MDA, the second is technically nearly impossible for ISP's.
Sorry, but I work for an ISP. We dont' have to trace packets. We get emails from Spamcop when anyone on our IP range is sending spam. We find out about it within hours. Given an IP address, we can track down the user in seconds. We diconnect users who are infected with virtual MDAs all the time. We dont' usually cancel their service because they are generally not aware that their PC is sending spam. They are not allowed back on the internet until they fix the problem.
Anyway it is a good idea, to use a dial up connection on a tapped line, send out 666 mails, disconnect and dial in again, maybe even to a different ISP ...
No, it is a waste of time.
It is not to difficult to spoof information in an email! Exactly that's what a _virtual MDA_ does ... it is a _virtual mail transport agent_, because it mimics a _real mail transpüort agent_!
All information you find in emails, sent by such a program looks like it was sent by a real (and not blöacklisted!) mail transport agent!
No amount of SMTP spoofing can change the IP address that is connecting to my mail server. As long as that is blocked (and it will be if not by a global blacklist on all dialup IPs then by Spamcop), I don't get the spam.
(If the program is very clever, it even spoofs the IP packets sent out and there is nothing left, to differ between a real and a spoofed mail, not even on lower transport layers!)
Theoretically possible, but not practical. Spoofing a TCP connection is very difficult and requires knowledge of the OS on the other end. It is difficult to maintain because you have to guess the right TCP sequence numbers. Also, you would never know if the spam was successfully sent because you can only send data on a spoofed connection, you can't receive.
You can blacklist the whole dynamic IP adressrange, but your mail-servers won't "see" any of these IP's, because the whoile mail (if not even the whole transport) contains false (the virtual) IP's.
The blacklist doesn't use any address inside the message. It uses the IP of the connecting MTA. That can't be spoofed as a general rule.
You receive mail from aomeone@aol.com and belive AOL is doing a good job in preventing spam, so you do not blacklist aol.com, but actually not even one byte of that mail ever passed any system that belongs to aol ... you are perfectly fooled, buy some fools that just want to earn some extra bucks.
Actually, our servers verify that email claiming to be from an AOL user is actually coming from an AOL server. We do the same thing for Yahoo email and some other domains.
All this combined with decent Bayesian filtering and I hardly ever see a piece of spam in my inbox anymore. As far as I am concerned, the spammers have lost. This latest story about spammers paying users is nothing more than a desparate act of a dying breed.
-matthew
I'm sure the sleazbags would find plenty of other reasons not to send you a check.
A service (when written correctly) is only going to use the CPU it needs. The rest goes the user and the "Idle system task" or whatever. I'm sure people who wrote the program did everythign they could to minimize CPU usage if only to limit the amount they have to pay out to users. Besides, sending email is largely I/O bound... not CPU bound. HOw much CPU do you need to send out email at 384kbit/sec (or whatever your cable modem limits your upload to)?
-matthew
For the most part, yes. You can subscribe to blacklists that already include the dynamic ranges for major residential broadband providers.
I dial up, spam, and spamcop blacklists, I am automatically disconnected after 24 hours, and reconnect, get a new, fresh I, rince&repeat.
Dialup??? You're not going to get much spamming done through a dialup connection. Besides, it wouldn't really be worth the effort (and potentially the cost) of staying dialed up 24/7, hanging up, and dialing again. Are you going to simply stop using the internet just so you can make $10/week sending spam? Yeah, I said $10 per week. You don't think they'd actually pay $1 per HOUR, do you? If you read it carefully, they say "CPU hour" which probably translates to a certain number of spams. In the case of dialup, it'll take many real hours to equal one "CPU hour."
Most homeusers have no fixed IP, that can be blacklisted, think about it!
DSL and cable dynamic IPs tend to stay pretty constant when you comptuter is on 24/7.. ESPECIALLY if you have a broadband router.
Also, ISPs are getting wise to residential spamming. An ISP will disconnect you if they catch you repeatedly sending spam.
Spammers want normal users to spam, just for one reason ... circumvent blacklists!
Sure, but it isn't sustainable. The net effect of this practice is to cheat a few greedy users out of an internet connection and CPU cycles for a couple bucks a week. It is a sign that spammers are getting desparate.
Anyway, as I said, my servers are not likely to catch much of the resulting spam. So I am not worried.
-matthew