Maybe I'm reading too much into things, but it struck me as somewhat ironic that this story came up with a Sprint ad for "advanced wireless devices".:-)
Re:Remember when they bought the Dejanews archive?
on
Google Turns 5
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· Score: 1
Man, we've come a long way. Back when they bought the Dejanews Usenet archive, all comments I saw were of the "Who are these guys?"-"What do they want with our beloved archive?"-"Will they keep it public or they'll make it a paid service?"-"Is their search engine any good?" kind.
I guess you didn't read my comments, then. I said that Google rules and I defended them when people bitched about the temporary inconvenience when Deja News went offline...
It would not be worth overhauling the entire Internet email system to add a "Transmit-Path:" header that would provide no additional information beyond that available from "Received:" lines (which are already required in SMTP). Forged entries are just as much of a concern either way. So what would be the point? "Received:" lines aren't so difficult to parse as to justify such a drastic solution...
I don't see how the process of obtaining schedule data could be viewed as part of any copyright protection scheme. (Except maybe on that schedule data itself, but using substitute data wouldn't be breaching the copyright protection mechanism...) But IANAL, so...
And just to be pedantic, the DMCA is late 20th-century law, not a 21st-century law!
It's not to protect the mailing list, it's to protect the person that someone is trying to screw by signing them up against their wishes.
Yes, I said that the difference was in who it was trying to protect from unwanted mail, but in either case, it's about unwanted mail.
In that time I have not received a single complaint or report of that opt-in message being used to bomb someone with unwanted confirmation messages.
Perhaps because it wouldn't be done by sending 100 subscription requests to your list, but to yours and 100 others. Is the user going to bother to complain to each of 100 lists, or just be glad that they can ignore the messages and not get flooded with mailing-list traffic? Probably the latter.
I've received confirmation requests for bogus subscription requests that I never sent, but I've never complained to the list administrator; it's obviously not their fault, so what would be the point? The fact that you don't receive such complaints is no proof that your confirmation emails haven't been unwanted in someone's mailbox.
Users of challenge/response, such as you, know very well that they're receiving 200+ spams per day. You know full well that each of those spams is generating a challenge message and that many will be undeliverable and the rest will go to innocent third parties, filling up their inbox. THAT'S what's rude and you become part of the spam problem in the eyes of those innocent parties.
Firstly, you're jumping to conclusions. I do not use challenge/response at the moment, although I'm seriously considering it. Unlike you, I freely post my real email address on Slashdot and anywhere else. I don't hide my email address, because I don't believe obfuscation is a viable long-term solution. I'd rather see some sort of technical solution. But of course I receive tons of spam on a daily basis. That's the price I pay for my principles.
While you may not care for it, challenge/response is a legitimate technique which can plausibly make a difference in the "war on spam". We're already hearing of people who are giving up on email and the Internet because of spam -- is that really better for society than the hassle and "rudeness" of challenge/response?
Personally, I think it's more rude to refuse to provide your email address and/or to obfuscate it in obnoxious ways that make it hard to automatically utilize the email address, than to implement challenge/response. Either way, you're placing a burden on the legitimate sender, to figure out your email address or to respond (once) to a challenge message. How is one burden worse than the other?
As for adding to the flow of email by sending challenge messages to return addresses that are likely to be bogus, that's an unfortunate consequence, but the spammers are causing the problem by forging bogus return addresses in the first place -- so blame the source. Also, they generally spam tons of bogus target addresses, causing plenty of automatic undeliverable bounce messages.
Which brings us to filling people's inboxes with unwanted challenge messages -- this implies that a spammer forged a real email address (a "joe job") and that poor user is now getting unwanted challenge messages. This sucks, but they'll also be getting tons of unwanted bounce messages from all the bogus target addresses attempted. Again, blame the source of the problem, not innocent users who are trying to protect themselves.
Users are between a rock and a hard place here. Polite society depends on a certain level of self-restraint; when rudeness and antisocial behavior become too rampant, polite behavior becomes ineffective and rudeness begets rudeness and antisocial behavior begets antisocial behavior. Spamming is an entirely rude and antisocial behavior, and it forces people into rude and antisocial behavior in self-defense. (Like challenge/response, obfuscating email addresses, blackhole lists, etc.)
Tell that to the person that receives 100 challenge responses because a spammer used their email address and happened to hit 100 people that use the C/R system. The only reason C/R isn't being widely criticized is because it's not widely used. If it were to become widely used you'd see more and more people complaining about receiving the challenges, especially challenges that they're only receiving because a spammer used their email address as the return address.
How is that different from getting 100 confirmation emails from 100 mailing lists you've been "subscribed" to without your permission? Such confirmation emails are considered good; what's so bad about challenge/response? It mainly differs in who it is trying to save from unwanted email. The mailing list is trying to protect you by requiring confirmation; the challenge/response recipient is trying to protect himself/herself. Either way, it's generally a minor one-time nuisance. The spam problem, on the other hand, is a growing nightmare.
As for rudeness, I guess that's a judgement for society to make. Challenge/response isn't really much different from people who habitually screen all phone calls through their answering machine, and never answer unless they hear someone they want to talk to. Society seems to have accepted that practice, knowing those people are generally trying to escape the annoyance of telemarketing calls -- why shouldn't society accept challenge/response as a way to escape the annoyance of spam? It's only "rude" if society says so, and as more and more of society is becoming familiar with the nuisance of spam, attempts to defeat it will become increasingly accepted as necessary evils...
With guns and sanctions they dictate who can use what technology, because someone were "first". Come on! Most of us stopped such silliness in the kindergarden.
We need educational reform to stem the rampant use of guns and sanctions in kindergarten!
You aren't bothered by "religious spam" because you don't get flooded with it constantly. So it's no big deal to you. You do get flooded with commercial spam, so you feel that the commercial nature is the problem. Actually, the problem is that you're getting flooded with the spam. The fact that it's all commercial is immaterial.
You don't want to be flooded with crap you're not interested in. Non-bulk email (even commercial) isn't likely to flood your mailbox, so there's no reason why it should annoy you any more than that single religious spam message did. That's why you should be concerned about UBE, not UCE.
If companies put telemarketers to work sending personalized, hand-crafted emails to individuals instead of calling you on the phone, then it might be time to worry about non-bulk commercial email, if it's piling up. However, that would raise the costs of such "spamming" enormously, eliminating a major motivation of spammers -- that it's virtually free.
Also, targeting UBE instead of UCE allows you to claim that your "censorship" is content-neutral, and therefore not infringing on any free speech rights a spammer thinks they might have. (Nevermind that "free speech" doesn't obligate you to accept email from spammers!)
I was ready to post some really witty esoteric apropos joke, but I think I'll just keep it to myself.
Too late! So ironic...
Re:Check out Internet Mail 2000
on
Replacing SMTP?
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· Score: 1
I disagree. Unsolicited commercial email is the problem. I don't care how many other people received the same message, so bulk doesn't bother me. What bothers me is having commercials shoved in my face.
But it's only a problem because it happens in bulk. Non-commercial bulk email is just as much of a potential hassle as commercial email. I don't want religious fanatics, politicians or charities to get a free pass to spam me just because their bulk email is "non-commercial"...
On the other hand, some commercial email may actually be welcomed -- if you bought a piece of software, and registered it along with your email address, you might be happy to receive a notice that a new version of the software has been released. Of course, this might be considered "solicited" commercial email by some, but the point is that mass-mailings are the problem, moreso than any commercial intent of the email.
Even a cold-calling commercial email from a stranger might end up being welcomed if it was individualized. Suppose you posted online about how frustrated you were with a particular problem, and a company had a product/service which could solve your problem, and a representative crafted an individual message to you in direct response to your posted message, explaining what they offer and how it could help you. This is UCE, but not UBE, and you might even appreciate the information and choose to become a customer. Even if you don't desire a commercial solution to your problem, or feel the UCE is an intrusion, it's still not really a problem. How many personal, hand-crafted commercial emails do you really imagine you would get?
Put your money where your mouth is!
on
Replacing SMTP?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
A combination of white lists/black lists, and Baysian filtering stops so close to 100% of spam that it's really silly for anyone to be bitching about spam these days. I don't GET any spam anymore - 0. Not 0.001%, 0 - the integer 0, as in none. If I ever get another piece of spam, then I'll change my email address [...] Stop yer bitchin', people, and implement the technologies that are already out there and work great. Plus use yer freakin' brains for a change, and don't spew out your real e-mail address to everybody who asks for it.
Don't make claims that the current technologies are "so close to 100%" if you're not willing to put your money where your mouth is. Post your email address far and wide, then see if you still don't get any spam. Otherwise, don't get up on your high horse and tell people they shouldn't worry about spam.
Security through obscurity sucks. We need a better solution for spam.
TLS doesn't work when the server you're connecting to has more than one domain per ip.
Considering that many domains can have the same MX, and that MX doesn't need to masquerade as each domain, why should this be a problem for email?
Re:Check out Internet Mail 2000
on
Replacing SMTP?
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· Score: 1
All that's needed -- really -- is a simple convention that may be used to designate whether a given E-mail message was solicited by its recipient, or not. That's it.
For most people, unsolicited email isn't the problem. Unsolicited bulk email is the problem. Generally, unsolicited, personalized, individually sent emails aren't sufficient to bother people.
I've been using the Internet since 1987. My current main email address is <deven@ties.org>. This is my real email address that I use every day, and I refuse to hide it, even on a high-profile site like Slashdot. I know it gets harvested routinely, but I don't care. I've had this email address since 1994 and I intend to keep it permanently. I also have it associated with several domains I own.
Unsurprisingly, I get tons of spam. Hundreds of junk mail messages daily. I've got some custom filters I wrote that do a reasonable job, but I'm planning to work on more effective solutions. Any solution which depends on security through obscurity (hiding my email address) or refusing unsolicited personal email from strangers, is unacceptable to me.
Back in 1987, the ability to spoof email addresses via SMTP was well known. As a rule, everyone knew about it, but nobody abused it. When people forged email addresses, it was as a joke, such as sending email from <president@whitehouse.gov>, years before that address actually existed! But there was no spam problem, because commercial interests were mostly kept off the Internet, and Internet users at large were responsible and valued the community. Random unsolicited email wasn't a nuisance -- more often, it added some variety to the day, because such messages were few and far between.
I don't consider the spam problem solved yet, but not all of the proposed solutions are desirable. Electronic "stamps" to charge real money for all email is undesirable. Having to hide your real email address and change it when discovered is undesirable. Blocking unsolicited personal email is undesirable, but many have become so sensitized to unsolicited bulk email that they come to hate all unsolicited email.
Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. UBE is the problem, and the solution needs to leave communication paths open between people, but closed to spammers...
Red Hat keeps getting better at this stuff. 4.x was relatively difficult to install hardware on, but each version has been noticably better than the last. You might have had trouble with 7.3, but try 9.0 and it might work like a charm. You never know!
The ends should never be used to justify the means in a question of law. This would make it acceptable to do random searches for no reason, imprison people based on shaky information, bomb countries based on falsified evidence, etc.
While I agree that DNA databases are ripe for abuse, this example does not seem particularly abusive. From the article, it sounds like they had probably cause to suspect this individual in this crime, and the DNA match only confirmed their suspicions. That's very different from trolling the DNA database hoping for a blind hit. If the military had refused, chances are that they could have gotten a court order to collect a DNA sample from the suspect anyway, if they had probable cause.
Is it proper to "Intellectual Property" as a term, given that copyrights and patents aren't really a property right (but only incentives to creation), and are meant to ultimately expire for the benefit of the public? Doesn't this term just encourage copyright/patent holders to believe these rights should persist forever?
Furthermore, if you intended to put your words into the public domain, be very clear. State that this is your work and creation, you are the legit holder, and that you now place it into the public domain. Trying to state this cleverly with a "This file deliberately has no copyright. It belongs to no one and everyone" means squat, since all rights are reserved to the holder, here the creator, regardless of whether you state "all rights reserved" or have a "(c)" symbol or not.
IANAL, but it seems likely that this statement would be interpreted by a court as placing the work into the public domain. After all, it's a clear statement of intent by the author. Of course, it would still be better to explicitly state that you intend to place the work into the public domain instead of tryin to be cute about it...
So basically this will never catch on. The standard CD format is waaay to entrenched to be replaced. Other than for backup purposes, why would you want to burn a disc that's almost guaranteed not to work on another CD-ROM? The last thing need is another incompatible format of disc to worry about.. (DVD+RW, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, etc)
Wasn't the standard format equally entrenched when the MultiRead standard was invented and CD-RW came out? For quite a while, CD-RW discs had many compatibility problems (working primarily on CD-RW burners), but most newer CD readers have tended towards supporting MultiRead, so CD-RW discs are much more compatible now.
Who's to say the same thing couldn't happen with GigaRec? If it doesn't cost much to support reading the format, it's possible that it will become a common variation on the CD format. Sure, it could easily die out or land in a niche market, but you can't rule out the possibility that it could catch on.
As for a possible use for this format, I could imagine using it for multimedia. Portability might not be critical for such an application, and it might not be critical that the format become widely supported, but cramming 40% more onto a disc could be helpful. Sure, there's always DVD-R, but CD-R blanks are still a LOT cheaper...
Re:a "living" language is potentially dangerous...
on
Isn't It Ironic?
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· Score: 1
It is completely possible to actually change the way people think by playing around with the language.
Like the way RMS redefined "free" and "proprietary"? If you can reframe the debate, you can influence the outcome...
Re:a "living" language is potentially dangerous...
on
Isn't It Ironic?
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· Score: 1
Look at the absurd things France tries to do to control their language and you see how futile it is.
The point is that myid-nospam is my real address, so when I post to a newsgroup someone can reply to me. The harvesters drop the address, and I'm happy and spam-free.
If you're so confident that this works, why don't you make this email address visible on Slashdot? After all, studies have shown that posting your email address on a web page is far more likely to get you spammed. That might be an acid test of your theory that harvesters ignore such addresses.
Of course, don't be surprised if you start getting a flood of spam as soon as your email address is visible on slashdot!
Personally, I refuse to hide my email address -- I've been using the Internet since before spam became a problem, and I refuse to "let the spammers win" by obfuscating or hiding my address. Instead, I just deal with the flood of spam as best I can...
Not only are there no major changes, there are no changes at all. The files are exactly the same. 1.4-RC3 is 1.4.
This is the way release candidates should always be handled, yet it seems they rarely are. How many times have bugs snuck into an official "stable" Linux kernel release that weren't in the preceding "pre" kernel? A strict policy of only releasing final versions as re-releases of release candidates would reduce this danger...
(1) This Convention shall remain in force without limitation as to time.
(2) Any country may denounce this Act by notification addressed to the Director General. Such denunciation shall constitute also denunciation of all earlier Acts and shall affect only the country making it, the Convention remaining in full force and effect as regards the other countries of the Union.
(3) Denunciation shall take effect one year after the day on which the Director General has received the notification.
(4) The right of denunciation provided by this article shall not be exercised by any country before the expiration of five years from the date upon which it becomes a member of the Union.
[Emphasis added.]
In theory, we could get out of the Berne Convention (with a year's notice), without violating the treaty. In practice, it seems unlikely, given how much influence the content industry has on our government...
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe I'm reading too much into things, but it struck me as somewhat ironic that this story came up with a Sprint ad for "advanced wireless devices". :-)
Man, we've come a long way. Back when they bought the Dejanews Usenet archive, all comments I saw were of the "Who are these guys?"-"What do they want with our beloved archive?"-"Will they keep it public or they'll make it a paid service?"-"Is their search engine any good?" kind.
I guess you didn't read my comments, then. I said that Google rules and I defended them when people bitched about the temporary inconvenience when Deja News went offline...
It would not be worth overhauling the entire Internet email system to add a "Transmit-Path:" header that would provide no additional information beyond that available from "Received:" lines (which are already required in SMTP). Forged entries are just as much of a concern either way. So what would be the point? "Received:" lines aren't so difficult to parse as to justify such a drastic solution...
I don't see how the process of obtaining schedule data could be viewed as part of any copyright protection scheme. (Except maybe on that schedule data itself, but using substitute data wouldn't be breaching the copyright protection mechanism...) But IANAL, so...
And just to be pedantic, the DMCA is late 20th-century law, not a 21st-century law!
IANAL, but the DMCA does contains exceptions for reverse-engineering for compatibility reasons. Wouldn't this seem to qualify?
It's not to protect the mailing list, it's to protect the person that someone is trying to screw by signing them up against their wishes.
Yes, I said that the difference was in who it was trying to protect from unwanted mail, but in either case, it's about unwanted mail.
In that time I have not received a single complaint or report of that opt-in message being used to bomb someone with unwanted confirmation messages.
Perhaps because it wouldn't be done by sending 100 subscription requests to your list, but to yours and 100 others. Is the user going to bother to complain to each of 100 lists, or just be glad that they can ignore the messages and not get flooded with mailing-list traffic? Probably the latter.
I've received confirmation requests for bogus subscription requests that I never sent, but I've never complained to the list administrator; it's obviously not their fault, so what would be the point? The fact that you don't receive such complaints is no proof that your confirmation emails haven't been unwanted in someone's mailbox.
Users of challenge/response, such as you, know very well that they're receiving 200+ spams per day. You know full well that each of those spams is generating a challenge message and that many will be undeliverable and the rest will go to innocent third parties, filling up their inbox. THAT'S what's rude and you become part of the spam problem in the eyes of those innocent parties.
Firstly, you're jumping to conclusions. I do not use challenge/response at the moment, although I'm seriously considering it. Unlike you, I freely post my real email address on Slashdot and anywhere else. I don't hide my email address, because I don't believe obfuscation is a viable long-term solution. I'd rather see some sort of technical solution. But of course I receive tons of spam on a daily basis. That's the price I pay for my principles.
While you may not care for it, challenge/response is a legitimate technique which can plausibly make a difference in the "war on spam". We're already hearing of people who are giving up on email and the Internet because of spam -- is that really better for society than the hassle and "rudeness" of challenge/response?
Personally, I think it's more rude to refuse to provide your email address and/or to obfuscate it in obnoxious ways that make it hard to automatically utilize the email address, than to implement challenge/response. Either way, you're placing a burden on the legitimate sender, to figure out your email address or to respond (once) to a challenge message. How is one burden worse than the other?
As for adding to the flow of email by sending challenge messages to return addresses that are likely to be bogus, that's an unfortunate consequence, but the spammers are causing the problem by forging bogus return addresses in the first place -- so blame the source. Also, they generally spam tons of bogus target addresses, causing plenty of automatic undeliverable bounce messages.
Which brings us to filling people's inboxes with unwanted challenge messages -- this implies that a spammer forged a real email address (a "joe job") and that poor user is now getting unwanted challenge messages. This sucks, but they'll also be getting tons of unwanted bounce messages from all the bogus target addresses attempted. Again, blame the source of the problem, not innocent users who are trying to protect themselves.
Users are between a rock and a hard place here. Polite society depends on a certain level of self-restraint; when rudeness and antisocial behavior become too rampant, polite behavior becomes ineffective and rudeness begets rudeness and antisocial behavior begets antisocial behavior. Spamming is an entirely rude and antisocial behavior, and it forces people into rude and antisocial behavior in self-defense. (Like challenge/response, obfuscating email addresses, blackhole lists, etc.)
Until society as a whole de
As for rudeness, I guess that's a judgement for society to make. Challenge/response isn't really much different from people who habitually screen all phone calls through their answering machine, and never answer unless they hear someone they want to talk to. Society seems to have accepted that practice, knowing those people are generally trying to escape the annoyance of telemarketing calls -- why shouldn't society accept challenge/response as a way to escape the annoyance of spam? It's only "rude" if society says so, and as more and more of society is becoming familiar with the nuisance of spam, attempts to defeat it will become increasingly accepted as necessary evils...
But that's just a guess. :-)
With guns and sanctions they dictate who can use what technology, because someone were "first". Come on! Most of us stopped such silliness in the kindergarden.
We need educational reform to stem the rampant use of guns and sanctions in kindergarten!
You aren't bothered by "religious spam" because you don't get flooded with it constantly. So it's no big deal to you. You do get flooded with commercial spam, so you feel that the commercial nature is the problem. Actually, the problem is that you're getting flooded with the spam. The fact that it's all commercial is immaterial.
You don't want to be flooded with crap you're not interested in. Non-bulk email (even commercial) isn't likely to flood your mailbox, so there's no reason why it should annoy you any more than that single religious spam message did. That's why you should be concerned about UBE, not UCE.
If companies put telemarketers to work sending personalized, hand-crafted emails to individuals instead of calling you on the phone, then it might be time to worry about non-bulk commercial email, if it's piling up. However, that would raise the costs of such "spamming" enormously, eliminating a major motivation of spammers -- that it's virtually free.
Also, targeting UBE instead of UCE allows you to claim that your "censorship" is content-neutral, and therefore not infringing on any free speech rights a spammer thinks they might have. (Nevermind that "free speech" doesn't obligate you to accept email from spammers!)
I was ready to post some really witty esoteric apropos joke, but I think I'll just keep it to myself.
Too late! So ironic...
I disagree. Unsolicited commercial email is the problem. I don't care how many other people received the same message, so bulk doesn't bother me. What bothers me is having commercials shoved in my face.
But it's only a problem because it happens in bulk. Non-commercial bulk email is just as much of a potential hassle as commercial email. I don't want religious fanatics, politicians or charities to get a free pass to spam me just because their bulk email is "non-commercial"...
On the other hand, some commercial email may actually be welcomed -- if you bought a piece of software, and registered it along with your email address, you might be happy to receive a notice that a new version of the software has been released. Of course, this might be considered "solicited" commercial email by some, but the point is that mass-mailings are the problem, moreso than any commercial intent of the email.
Even a cold-calling commercial email from a stranger might end up being welcomed if it was individualized. Suppose you posted online about how frustrated you were with a particular problem, and a company had a product/service which could solve your problem, and a representative crafted an individual message to you in direct response to your posted message, explaining what they offer and how it could help you. This is UCE, but not UBE, and you might even appreciate the information and choose to become a customer. Even if you don't desire a commercial solution to your problem, or feel the UCE is an intrusion, it's still not really a problem. How many personal, hand-crafted commercial emails do you really imagine you would get?
A combination of white lists/black lists, and Baysian filtering stops so close to 100% of spam that it's really silly for anyone to be bitching about spam these days. I don't GET any spam anymore - 0. Not 0.001%, 0 - the integer 0, as in none. If I ever get another piece of spam, then I'll change my email address
[...]
Stop yer bitchin', people, and implement the technologies that are already out there and work great. Plus use yer freakin' brains for a change, and don't spew out your real e-mail address to everybody who asks for it.
Don't make claims that the current technologies are "so close to 100%" if you're not willing to put your money where your mouth is. Post your email address far and wide, then see if you still don't get any spam. Otherwise, don't get up on your high horse and tell people they shouldn't worry about spam.
Security through obscurity sucks. We need a better solution for spam.
TLS doesn't work when the server you're connecting to has more than one domain per ip.
Considering that many domains can have the same MX, and that MX doesn't need to masquerade as each domain, why should this be a problem for email?
All that's needed -- really -- is a simple convention that may be used to designate whether a given E-mail message was solicited by its recipient, or not. That's it.
For most people, unsolicited email isn't the problem. Unsolicited bulk email is the problem. Generally, unsolicited, personalized, individually sent emails aren't sufficient to bother people.
I've been using the Internet since 1987. My current main email address is <deven@ties.org>. This is my real email address that I use every day, and I refuse to hide it, even on a high-profile site like Slashdot. I know it gets harvested routinely, but I don't care. I've had this email address since 1994 and I intend to keep it permanently. I also have it associated with several domains I own.
Unsurprisingly, I get tons of spam. Hundreds of junk mail messages daily. I've got some custom filters I wrote that do a reasonable job, but I'm planning to work on more effective solutions. Any solution which depends on security through obscurity (hiding my email address) or refusing unsolicited personal email from strangers, is unacceptable to me.
Back in 1987, the ability to spoof email addresses via SMTP was well known. As a rule, everyone knew about it, but nobody abused it. When people forged email addresses, it was as a joke, such as sending email from <president@whitehouse.gov>, years before that address actually existed! But there was no spam problem, because commercial interests were mostly kept off the Internet, and Internet users at large were responsible and valued the community. Random unsolicited email wasn't a nuisance -- more often, it added some variety to the day, because such messages were few and far between.
I don't consider the spam problem solved yet, but not all of the proposed solutions are desirable. Electronic "stamps" to charge real money for all email is undesirable. Having to hide your real email address and change it when discovered is undesirable. Blocking unsolicited personal email is undesirable, but many have become so sensitized to unsolicited bulk email that they come to hate all unsolicited email.
Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. UBE is the problem, and the solution needs to leave communication paths open between people, but closed to spammers...
Oh, and this is with the boxed RH 7.3.
Red Hat keeps getting better at this stuff. 4.x was relatively difficult to install hardware on, but each version has been noticably better than the last. You might have had trouble with 7.3, but try 9.0 and it might work like a charm. You never know!
The ends should never be used to justify the means in a question of law. This would make it acceptable to do random searches for no reason, imprison people based on shaky information, bomb countries based on falsified evidence, etc.
While I agree that DNA databases are ripe for abuse, this example does not seem particularly abusive. From the article, it sounds like they had probably cause to suspect this individual in this crime, and the DNA match only confirmed their suspicions. That's very different from trolling the DNA database hoping for a blind hit. If the military had refused, chances are that they could have gotten a court order to collect a DNA sample from the suspect anyway, if they had probable cause.
Is it proper to "Intellectual Property" as a term, given that copyrights and patents aren't really a property right (but only incentives to creation), and are meant to ultimately expire for the benefit of the public? Doesn't this term just encourage copyright/patent holders to believe these rights should persist forever?
Furthermore, if you intended to put your words into the public domain, be very clear. State that this is your work and creation, you are the legit holder, and that you now place it into the public domain. Trying to state this cleverly with a "This file deliberately has no copyright. It belongs to no one and everyone" means squat, since all rights are reserved to the holder, here the creator, regardless of whether you state "all rights reserved" or have a "(c)" symbol or not.
IANAL, but it seems likely that this statement would be interpreted by a court as placing the work into the public domain. After all, it's a clear statement of intent by the author. Of course, it would still be better to explicitly state that you intend to place the work into the public domain instead of tryin to be cute about it...
So basically this will never catch on. The standard CD format is waaay to entrenched to be replaced. Other than for backup purposes, why would you want to burn a disc that's almost guaranteed not to work on another CD-ROM? The last thing need is another incompatible format of disc to worry about.. (DVD+RW, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, etc)
Wasn't the standard format equally entrenched when the MultiRead standard was invented and CD-RW came out? For quite a while, CD-RW discs had many compatibility problems (working primarily on CD-RW burners), but most newer CD readers have tended towards supporting MultiRead, so CD-RW discs are much more compatible now.
Who's to say the same thing couldn't happen with GigaRec? If it doesn't cost much to support reading the format, it's possible that it will become a common variation on the CD format. Sure, it could easily die out or land in a niche market, but you can't rule out the possibility that it could catch on.
As for a possible use for this format, I could imagine using it for multimedia. Portability might not be critical for such an application, and it might not be critical that the format become widely supported, but cramming 40% more onto a disc could be helpful. Sure, there's always DVD-R, but CD-R blanks are still a LOT cheaper...
It is completely possible to actually change the way people think by playing around with the language.
Like the way RMS redefined "free" and "proprietary"? If you can reframe the debate, you can influence the outcome...
Look at the absurd things France tries to do to control their language and you see how futile it is.
;-)
Isn't it ironic?
The point is that myid-nospam is my real address, so when I post to a newsgroup someone can reply to me. The harvesters drop the address, and I'm happy and spam-free.
If you're so confident that this works, why don't you make this email address visible on Slashdot? After all, studies have shown that posting your email address on a web page is far more likely to get you spammed. That might be an acid test of your theory that harvesters ignore such addresses.
Of course, don't be surprised if you start getting a flood of spam as soon as your email address is visible on slashdot!
Personally, I refuse to hide my email address -- I've been using the Internet since before spam became a problem, and I refuse to "let the spammers win" by obfuscating or hiding my address. Instead, I just deal with the flood of spam as best I can...
Not only are there no major changes, there are no changes at all. The files are exactly the same. 1.4-RC3 is 1.4.
This is the way release candidates should always be handled, yet it seems they rarely are. How many times have bugs snuck into an official "stable" Linux kernel release that weren't in the preceding "pre" kernel? A strict policy of only releasing final versions as re-releases of release candidates would reduce this danger...
In theory, we could get out of the Berne Convention (with a year's notice), without violating the treaty. In practice, it seems unlikely, given how much influence the content industry has on our government...