Your list of blonde jokes would not be covered by the anti-spam law, however annoying these kind of emails are.
The article isn't very specific, unfortunately. The Danish law is pretty specific, and leave out a lot of cases that are usually considered spam, such as non-commersial UBE, and UBE directed at companies rather than individuals.
It's not spam, its UCE that has been outlawed
on
Norway Bans Spam
·
· Score: 2
at least in Denmark. It is part of the marketing law, which regulates what you can do to advertize your products. One of the rules is that you cannot take direct electronic contact (email, fax or phone) with individuals for the purpose of sale without their prior agreement. At least in Denmark, you are still allowed to spam people with "Jesus loves you", and you are still allowed to spam companies with adds.
With regard to your friend, your prior contact with him would probably get you free, you are not selling anything so you would not be covered by the law, and finally, it is not criminal law in Denmark, so you would not get in jail (even though spammers should be shoot).
It is *not opt-out, it is opt-in.
on
Norway Bans Spam
·
· Score: 3
The submission text is misleading, you have to explicitly opt-in in order to get spam.
Denmark has a similar law, allthough it only covers UCE, not UBE, since it is part of the marketing law. We also have an opt-out system for snailmail, including a central list for direct snailmail.
This is an implementation of an EU regulation. Norway is not a proper EU member, but is a member of the broader EFTA group, and tend to implement EU regulations even more than most EU member.
> These totalitarian phrases remain totalitarian > no matter which language they are in
True, and in this case all the totalitarian phrases were in English. The German phrase was not totalitarian (is everything all right?), but was used to show what the author thought of the other phrases by association.
> The Soviet Union, not Russia, is associated
> with communism
But the language was Russian, which is why Russian-like phrases are effective in creating an association with totalitarian communism.
It isn't about where the ideas originated, but which countries became most associated with them. Fascism originated from Italy, not Germany, but if you switch to Italian in the middle of a list of totalitarian phrases, the point is totally lost.
It is supposed to indicate that the ideas are fascist/totalitarian, just like a switch to pseudo-Russian can be used to indicate that the ideas are communist/totalitarian.
This does not say anything about the current government in the two countries, only about their past.
Re:A year of Linux : Summery
on
A Year of Linux
·
· Score: 1
Some of them will always apply...
* Still not made it to version 2.4 of the kernel
Hopefully that one will be false.
* Seen some amazing infighting between [Gnome & Kde | Mozilla lovers & Mozilla Haters | Everyone else]
_Who_ is fighting may change, but there will always be people who argue publically. That's just human nature.
* Still not become much easier to use, dispite promises to the contrary by [Redhat | SuSe | Corel | Linus | Alan Cox | Everyone ]
Well, surely *something* has become easier for somebody, and I suspect that will be true next year as well. X configuration?
* Gained market share. Well, we think it has. We're still trying to count everyone...
We will never be able to count market share accurately for Linux, so this will be true until we start believing the share shrinks.
* Gained some really great software. At least, it will once it gets out of [beta | alpha | pre-alpha | planing | the mailing list ]
I'm sure some has left it. Xfree86 4.0 for example. The same will be true next year, some software will be released, a lot will be vapour.
He is probably complaining that the page is readable, unlike most web pages created after 1996. Or maybe he have configured his browser to make pages unreadable by default, and is complaining that this page doesn't overwrite his settings.
We (The Danish University of Agriculture) has a large number of students from developing countries, including Ghana. This is paid for mostly by foreign aid programs. I.e. we are helping to create native experts. We also have research programs in various devoloping nations, in order to finding ways to improve crop production using the locally available means, often paid through the same programs.
However, one problem is that we lose contact with out students once they graduate, so we can't use them to distribute information about new methods from the research programs to the national farming communities. An IT network would help them to stay in touch with us, and thus up to date with the research. It will also make it easier for them to use the specialized expertice of our people, and vice-versa.
The innocent victims are real victims, but not of MAPS but *their own ISP*. We had a similar case in Denmark, where a ISP refused to throw out a web hotel customer for spamming through other channels, and got a netblock blacklisted by MAPS. This was problematic, because one of the major Danish ISP's blocks all trafic to hosts listed by MAPS.
However the ISP in question they *did* move their other customers away from the netblock, while reconcidering the case. Thus, only the spammer was affected.
In general, users of ISP's who are both incompetent and refuse to cooperate in the fight against spam *will* get hurt. However, they will be in a position to do something about it, by using a competent ISP.
> If you come from NT, the graphics performance of
> X is scary.
When NT was nerd, a fellow nerd tried to show me how much faster it was than X. He took an NT application, moved the cursor back and forward over the menubar, and noticed how NT had no trouble drawing and removing the menus as fast as he could move the mouse. He then took an X11/Motif application, and moved the mouse over the menu bar. You could actually *see* the application draw the menus.
I was confused, because I had never seen X be that slow, but then again, I mostly uses xterm and Emacs. So I took Emacs, moved the mouse back and forward over the menubar (which I rarely use) and Emacs had no trouble at all drawing and removing the menus as fast as I could move the mouse.
The difference was that Emacs by default uses its own Xt based toolkit, rather than using Motif.
The morale is, despite being network transparant, X11 itself is not slow. However some of the toolkits are pure disasters.
Unless Gtk+ is as bad as Motif, it is unlikely that the performance alone will scare users away. The difference in Look&Feel are much more likely sources for nebie angst.
Of course, the issue is somewhat convoluted by the fact that X11 servers under Win often are much slower than "bare metal" X11 servers. I use an old version of Exceed, which is acceptable for text and GUI controls, but very slow for displaying images.
It still *doesn't*. It happens to outperform Linux 2.2 at a particular niche, namely medium-small servers (4-8 cpu ia32 boxes). As soon as you move above or below that that very limited range, NT fall behind Linux, or simply cease to be an option. This is the exeact opposite of being "scalable" means outside MS marketing department.
> It's not that Linux is driving this big huge
> mainframe, a more accurate picture would be
> that the mainframe is pretending that it's
> 30,000 minicomputers, each of which a single
> copy of Linux is familiar with.
Gee, you are describing the way VM *works*! Are you saying that IBM's range of VM based mainframe OS'es aren't running on mainframes after all?
> I don't see why NT, with heavy tweaking,
> couldn't do the same thing.
Of course it could, first "tweak" would be to port NT to the S/390 architechture.
Now let's see MS claim that NT scales better than Linux. NT scale from "large workstation" to "small server". Linux now *commercially* scale from embedded devices and hand-helds over cash-registers to mainframes and supercomputers.
If you have processor power enough to get good interactive performance with aa fonts, then yes it is worth it. If you don't have the processor power, then no, it is not worth it.
It will not affect non-interactive performance, like compiling, and since most Unix application are non-interactive, it doesn't really matter to them.
>> the selfish Christian idea that the main
>> purpose of charity is to save the soul of the
>> giver, not to help the receiver
> Sigh, another go at 'all X are Y' to which
> I am going to say. 'No, some X are Y'
That an idea is Christian, does not imply that all Christians subscribe to it. It just mean that the idea is derived from a Christian context. Although I can understand why you chose to assume the former, it is much easier to accuse me of bigotry, rather than argue against my point, that the moral focus on the donaters motivation causes less donaters, thus hurting the receivers.
Re:... to feed the hungry or to save your soul?
on
Geek Charities?
·
· Score: 1
> How can you think that the idea that charity
> should be voluntary is 'disgusting?'
That is not what I say. What I find disgusting is the condemnation of giving charity for the "wrong" reasons (tax-cut, prestige, TV time, whatever). Remember, the person I replied to called these reasons a _tradegy_, not less.
> After all, which is better: giving to a poor
> child because he is poor or giving to a poor
> child because then his attractive sister will
> be more likely to date you? Obviously one is
> charitable and the other is sickly manipulative.
With regard to the child, both reasons are equally valid. With regard to his sister, one action may be deceptive. I don't think deception is a good basis for a relationsship. If it is *not* deceptive, the action may be closer to prostitution than charity.
> As a Christian, I don't condemn those who give
> for essentially selfish reasons (like corps who
> give to enter a lower tax bracket), but I do
> consider it a plus if the giving is 'from the
> heart,' as would most people, I should think.
I'm glad you don't condemn selfish charity, which is my main point. That you are extra happy to see signs that another soul is closer to salvation doen't bother me. That most (western) people care about motivation is because most western people have been brought up in a christian culture, no matter what their personal belief are.
> So, anyway, check your facts and maybe consult
> some actual Christians before spouting off about
> the 'Christian mindset.'
So far, all the Christians who have answered, including you, have confirmed my assertion that Christanity promoted judging *motivations* instead of *actions*.
> If you've written a few hundred pages of > document with it, it doesn't matter whether it > is a bug -- you've still got to get that report > done, and an inexplicable error is a major
> problem.
And how is this different than any other bug? A bug that prevent saving the document is a major problem as well. Or a bug that causes &-signs to be written as %-signs on odd-pages when writting PDF output can cost you just as much work. Or a segfault that comes when you press SPACE after an underlined period. Bugs in software you use are time-consuming, period.
The question is whether code for generating TeX code is more likely to contain bugs, than code trying to duplicate the work done by TeX.
> The message of Christianity is not that
> you should do good works to save your soul.
> In fact, it's quite the opposite.
Correct, this is exeactly the problem I pointed out. To a Christian, the *motivation* matter more than the *action*. This leads to the disgusting mindset demonstrated by Dan Hayes, where he call it *tragic* that some people do the right thing (charity) for the wrong reasons (tax-deductions).
The person receiving the charity is unlikely to care about the motivations. Only the actions count.
> I very much doubt that a poor kid somewhere
> unsure where their next meal is coming from
> gives a flying fuck about whether software is
> free or proprietary.
He probably don't, but the world power structures determine whether his children may one day participate in an economic miracle like what happened to the SE Asian countries. IP will play a major role in these power structures in this century.
Slashdot Mirror
Your list of blonde jokes would not be covered by the anti-spam law, however annoying these kind of emails are.
The article isn't very specific, unfortunately. The Danish law is pretty specific, and leave out a lot of cases that are usually considered spam, such as non-commersial UBE, and UBE directed at companies rather than individuals.
at least in Denmark. It is part of the marketing law, which regulates what you can do to advertize your products. One of the rules is that you cannot take direct electronic contact (email, fax or phone) with individuals for the purpose of sale without their prior agreement. At least in Denmark, you are still allowed to spam people with "Jesus loves you", and you are still allowed to spam companies with adds.
With regard to your friend, your prior contact with him would probably get you free, you are not selling anything so you would not be covered by the law, and finally, it is not criminal law in Denmark, so you would not get in jail (even though spammers should be shoot).
The submission text is misleading.
The submission text is misleading, you have to explicitly opt-in in order to get spam.
Denmark has a similar law, allthough it only covers UCE, not UBE, since it is part of the marketing law. We also have an opt-out system for snailmail, including a central list for direct snailmail.
This is an implementation of an EU regulation. Norway is not a proper EU member, but is a member of the broader EFTA group, and tend to implement EU regulations even more than most EU member.
> These totalitarian phrases remain totalitarian > no matter which language they are in
True, and in this case all the totalitarian phrases were in English. The German phrase was not totalitarian (is everything all right?), but was used to show what the author thought of the other phrases by association.
> The Soviet Union, not Russia, is associated
> with communism
But the language was Russian, which is why Russian-like phrases are effective in creating an association with totalitarian communism.
It isn't about where the ideas originated, but which countries became most associated with them. Fascism originated from Italy, not Germany, but if you switch to Italian in the middle of a list of totalitarian phrases, the point is totally lost.
It is supposed to indicate that the ideas are fascist/totalitarian, just like a switch to pseudo-Russian can be used to indicate that the ideas are communist/totalitarian.
This does not say anything about the current government in the two countries, only about their past.
Some of them will always apply...
* Still not made it to version 2.4 of the kernel
Hopefully that one will be false.
* Seen some amazing infighting between [Gnome & Kde | Mozilla lovers & Mozilla Haters | Everyone else]
_Who_ is fighting may change, but there will always be people who argue publically. That's just human nature.
* Still not become much easier to use, dispite promises to the contrary by [Redhat | SuSe | Corel | Linus | Alan Cox | Everyone ]
Well, surely *something* has become easier for somebody, and I suspect that will be true next year as well. X configuration?
* Gained market share. Well, we think it has. We're still trying to count everyone...
We will never be able to count market share accurately for Linux, so this will be true until we start believing the share shrinks.
* Gained some really great software. At least, it will once it gets out of [beta | alpha | pre-alpha | planing | the mailing list ]
I'm sure some has left it. Xfree86 4.0 for example. The same will be true next year, some software will be released, a lot will be vapour.
He is probably complaining that the page is readable, unlike most web pages created after 1996. Or maybe he have configured his browser to make pages unreadable by default, and is complaining that this page doesn't overwrite his settings.
We (The Danish University of Agriculture) has a large number of students from developing countries, including Ghana. This is paid for mostly by foreign aid programs. I.e. we are helping to create native experts. We also have research programs in various devoloping nations, in order to finding ways to improve crop production using the locally available means, often paid through the same programs.
However, one problem is that we lose contact with out students once they graduate, so we can't use them to distribute information about new methods from the research programs to the national farming communities. An IT network would help them to stay in touch with us, and thus up to date with the research. It will also make it easier for them to use the specialized expertice of our people, and vice-versa.
The innocent victims are real victims, but not of MAPS but *their own ISP*. We had a similar case in Denmark, where a ISP refused to throw out a web hotel customer for spamming through other channels, and got a netblock blacklisted by MAPS. This was problematic, because one of the major Danish ISP's blocks all trafic to hosts listed by MAPS.
However the ISP in question they *did* move their other customers away from the netblock, while reconcidering the case. Thus, only the spammer was affected.
In general, users of ISP's who are both incompetent and refuse to cooperate in the fight against spam *will* get hurt. However, they will be in a position to do something about it, by using a competent ISP.
> If you come from NT, the graphics performance of
> X is scary.
When NT was nerd, a fellow nerd tried to show me how much faster it was than X. He took an NT application, moved the cursor back and forward over the menubar, and noticed how NT had no trouble drawing and removing the menus as fast as he could move the mouse. He then took an X11/Motif application, and moved the mouse over the menu bar. You could actually *see* the application draw the menus.
I was confused, because I had never seen X be that slow, but then again, I mostly uses xterm and Emacs. So I took Emacs, moved the mouse back and forward over the menubar (which I rarely use) and Emacs had no trouble at all drawing and removing the menus as fast as I could move the mouse.
The difference was that Emacs by default uses its own Xt based toolkit, rather than using Motif.
The morale is, despite being network transparant, X11 itself is not slow. However some of the toolkits are pure disasters.
Unless Gtk+ is as bad as Motif, it is unlikely that the performance alone will scare users away. The difference in Look&Feel are much more likely sources for nebie angst.
Of course, the issue is somewhat convoluted by the fact that X11 servers under Win often are much slower than "bare metal" X11 servers. I use an old version of Exceed, which is acceptable for text and GUI controls, but very slow for displaying images.
In case it isn't a joke:
1.5 week to port Gnome to UWIN (i.e. make the necessary changes to Gnome to make it compile under UWIN).
3 month to port UWIN to Gnome (i.e. make the necessary changes to posix.dll to make it actually run the (newly compiled) Gnome).
Cygwin being GPL'ed and comming from one of large Gnome supporters would seem to be more "politically correct". Is UWIN techincally superior?
> Jack of all trades, master of none.
:-) I'm sure MS marketing will find a new slogan for discrediting Linux, but I doubt they will chose that one!
> I'm afraid it still does.
It still *doesn't*. It happens to outperform Linux 2.2 at a particular niche, namely medium-small servers (4-8 cpu ia32 boxes). As soon as you move above or below that that very limited range, NT fall behind Linux, or simply cease to be an option. This is the exeact opposite of being "scalable" means outside MS marketing department.
> It's not that Linux is driving this big huge
> mainframe, a more accurate picture would be
> that the mainframe is pretending that it's
> 30,000 minicomputers, each of which a single
> copy of Linux is familiar with.
Gee, you are describing the way VM *works*! Are you saying that IBM's range of VM based mainframe OS'es aren't running on mainframes after all?
> I don't see why NT, with heavy tweaking,
> couldn't do the same thing.
Of course it could, first "tweak" would be to port NT to the S/390 architechture.
Now let's see MS claim that NT scales better than Linux. NT scale from "large workstation" to "small server". Linux now *commercially* scale from embedded devices and hand-helds over cash-registers to mainframes and supercomputers.
If you have processor power enough to get good interactive performance with aa fonts, then yes it is worth it. If you don't have the processor power, then no, it is not worth it.
It will not affect non-interactive performance, like compiling, and since most Unix application are non-interactive, it doesn't really matter to them.
> I have to use LaTeX in my EE classes, and I
.tex code > after you type it in Emacs.
> have to say that it is NOT superior to HTML.
Correct, it is optimized for different purpose. LaTeX is for describing documents, HTML for describing web pages.
> First of all the syntax is hard to type. Where
> are in HTML, you use tags, in LaTeX, you have
> to use \blah{foo} tags.
I find the \blah{foo} easier to type and read than <blah>foo</blah>.
> This wouldn't be so bad if the tags were
> standarized.
They are, there have been *one* major revision of LaTeX in the same time as HTML has went through 4 major revisions.
> There are 2-3 tags sometimes for one same
> function, and these tags are based on certain
> builds of the compiler.
What are you talking about?
> That's right, you have to compile the
Just like with HTML, this depends on the software you use.
>> the selfish Christian idea that the main
>> purpose of charity is to save the soul of the
>> giver, not to help the receiver
> Sigh, another go at 'all X are Y' to which
> I am going to say. 'No, some X are Y'
That an idea is Christian, does not imply that all Christians subscribe to it. It just mean that the idea is derived from a Christian context. Although I can understand why you chose to assume the former, it is much easier to accuse me of bigotry, rather than argue against my point, that the moral focus on the donaters motivation causes less donaters, thus hurting the receivers.
> How can you think that the idea that charity
> should be voluntary is 'disgusting?'
That is not what I say. What I find disgusting is the condemnation of giving charity for the "wrong" reasons (tax-cut, prestige, TV time, whatever). Remember, the person I replied to called these reasons a _tradegy_, not less.
> After all, which is better: giving to a poor
> child because he is poor or giving to a poor
> child because then his attractive sister will
> be more likely to date you? Obviously one is
> charitable and the other is sickly manipulative.
With regard to the child, both reasons are equally valid. With regard to his sister, one action may be deceptive. I don't think deception is a good basis for a relationsship. If it is *not* deceptive, the action may be closer to prostitution than charity.
> As a Christian, I don't condemn those who give
> for essentially selfish reasons (like corps who
> give to enter a lower tax bracket), but I do
> consider it a plus if the giving is 'from the
> heart,' as would most people, I should think.
I'm glad you don't condemn selfish charity, which is my main point. That you are extra happy to see signs that another soul is closer to salvation doen't bother me. That most (western) people care about motivation is because most western people have been brought up in a christian culture, no matter what their personal belief are.
> So, anyway, check your facts and maybe consult
> some actual Christians before spouting off about
> the 'Christian mindset.'
So far, all the Christians who have answered, including you, have confirmed my assertion that Christanity promoted judging *motivations* instead of *actions*.
> If you've written a few hundred pages of > document with it, it doesn't matter whether it > is a bug -- you've still got to get that report > done, and an inexplicable error is a major
> problem.
And how is this different than any other bug? A bug that prevent saving the document is a major problem as well. Or a bug that causes &-signs to be written as %-signs on odd-pages when writting PDF output can cost you just as much work. Or a segfault that comes when you press SPACE after an underlined period. Bugs in software you use are time-consuming, period.
The question is whether code for generating TeX code is more likely to contain bugs, than code trying to duplicate the work done by TeX.
> The message of Christianity is not that
> you should do good works to save your soul.
> In fact, it's quite the opposite.
Correct, this is exeactly the problem I pointed out. To a Christian, the *motivation* matter more than the *action*. This leads to the disgusting mindset demonstrated by Dan Hayes, where he call it *tragic* that some people do the right thing (charity) for the wrong reasons (tax-deductions).
The person receiving the charity is unlikely to care about the motivations. Only the actions count.
> I very much doubt that a poor kid somewhere
> unsure where their next meal is coming from
> gives a flying fuck about whether software is
> free or proprietary.
He probably don't, but the world power structures determine whether his children may one day participate in an economic miracle like what happened to the SE Asian countries. IP will play a major role in these power structures in this century.