The problem with this law, much like the DMCA, is that the computer world is changing rapidly, and it is often hard to draw lines as to what is or isn't spamming.
Here we go again, why do so many people keep buying into this spammer line? Spam is unsolicited bulk e-mail, i.e. if the e-mail is unsolicited (you didn't ask for it) and bulk (send in mass quantities), it's spam. How much easier to define can you get?
People license their code under the GPL because it protects their code from being commercialized. Nobody sells GPL code,
Bullfsckingshit. This obviously intentional lie gets modded up +5 Insightful?
In short, nobody can improve on your property and use those improvements to their exclusive benefit.
More nonsense. Nothing in the GPL forbids any entity from keeping their changes secret. Only when you distribute the changed package are you obliged to make the the source code available as well.
By the time I typed this comment, the number had not changed, so I'm probably getting a cached copy. What did it show when you hit it?
From where I sit, it's slashdotted already. Now they will probably think it's a Chinese-American conspiracy to censor the Taiwan media using DDoS-by-slashdot.
(BTW, if I had mod points, I'd mod you up "Insightful".)
Re:Torrent for the screenshots
on
Aethera 1.0
·
· Score: 1
TheKompany.com is slashdotted 24 hours a day. I swear it's running on a 386. How about a torrent for the whole site?
The site seems to be heavily dynamic. I tried wgetting a part of it but it doesn't seem to work at all for local browsing.
Torrent for the screenshots
on
Aethera 1.0
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The server is slow and may be totally slashdotted soon, so here is a torrent I made which contains all the 11 screenshots in.png format. Please use this instead of the main webserver. (Read about BitTorrent if you're not familiar with it.)
Fortunately, the next phase of the "war" is moving away from blacklists and focusing on technologies that are user-based and user-specific, such as Bayesian filtering.
On the contrary, spammers love Bayesian and any other kind of filtering because it doesn't stop them from sending their spam. They love it when people "just hit delete" either manually or in an automated fashion through filtering, instead of actively blocking their junk and getting their accounts shut down. They don't mind that you don't get their junk; they will just increase the amount of spam they send tenfold every year so they keep making money on those suckers that are born every minute, until e-mail has been completely destroyed. Blocking - aggressive, massive blocking and boycotting of spam supporting networks - is the only way to save e-mail.
Has anyone stopped to think that maybe it's not spammers who are doing this? I hate spam with a passion, but words cannot describe my pleasure in seeing these blacklists, especially SPEWS, shut down.
Bzzt. SPEWS has not been shut down. The DNS to their website is currently down due to the DDoS attacks, and in addition, one particular method of querying SPEWS (among others), i.e. relays.osirusoft.com, has been shut down.
The blocklist SPEWS itself is still operating and perfectly functional. There are plenty of other, still-functioning ways, of querying SPEWS. I won't post them here for obvious reasons, but anyone who is really interested can google for them in the appropriate newsgroups.
They are pure evil in their methods, and largely ineffective against spam while causing massive inconvenience for ISPs and legitimate users of the network.
On the contrary, they are very effective. They do exactly what they claim to do: list spam-supporting networks (not spammers), so that those who are so inclined can automatically refuse mail from them. They do so by choice; nobody is forcing them.
If they weren't effective at what they do, there wouldn't be so many spammers, spam supporters and clueless lusers bleating about how evil they are.
All of these centralized blacklists have made so many enemies in their history that any finger pointing is simply laughable. They have made powerful enemies, including the large ISPs who happen to be the only ones that in a position to stem these attacks.
ROTFLASTC. Would those include all the large ISPs cooperating in hosting the SBL, for instance? They have been under constant DDoS for months, and they aren't so much as slowed down. Osirusoft (which, again, is not SPEWS) was run off a DSL line by a single person and would have been relatively easy to shut down by the spammers or a pack of clueless luzer skript kiddies hired by them.
This is not your normal DDOS: it is not only the originators of the DDOS, but the very network itself that wants them destroyed!
No: spammers, spam supporters, and clueless lusers want them destroyed. The very network itself wants spam destroyed. The blocklists are the network's immune system, and they're now gearing up for the real war on spam, which is only just getting started.
You thought SPEWS was evil? You ain't seen nothing yet. You can't stop mail admins from protecting their network against criminals. If SPEWS is shut down, multiple, much nastier sons-of-SPEWS will pop up everywhere, ones that probably won't have any way of getting out of them.
Man it really kills me how words with Germanic roots have gotten such a bad name.
[snippety-snip]
Then one day, someone (maybe me?) refered to native South Africans. The prof got upset. "We just don't use that word," he said. The jist of his argument against the word was that many ignorant people use it to refer to stereotypic, primitive people who live in the jungle, hunt heads and dance around cauldrons.
These stereotypes are, of course, not encouraged by the academic community which studies Africa. But Jesus H. Fucking Christ, native just means someone who was born in a particular place or apeople which has resided in a location for a long time.
Well, "native" is a Latin word meaning "born", so by your own earlier argument you should really be saying "born South-Africans".
Quod erat demonstrandum -- er, I mean: It had to be said.
Most every porn type email I get can be traced back to servers in China or The Netherlands. I doubt those Cajuns will be going overseas anytime soon to prosecute.
Unless the spam you get is actually in Chinese (etc.), in most cases these are actually American spammers buying offshore "bullet-proof" hosting at premium prices in an attempt to prevent being tracked down and to prevent their sites from being shut down. Offshore hosting does not make one immune from prosecution.
Tracking them down is actually relatively simple; at some point a spammer will want to be paid, so it's a question of following the money. The offshore hosting problem can only be solved by beating the providers (and/or their uplinks) into submission by massive blocklisting.
(But, I am rather surprised to see how everyday-normal slashdotters are... there seem to be almost no anarchists, extremists, or serious rebels here, which is unforunate because I hate it when cool places are filled with normality, decency, and everything that escapists and surrealists despise. Where am I supposed to find my fantasy world where I can escape from everything? If the Internet is not the place for small, free communities, then where *is* the right place? Or am I just not looking in the right spots online?)
This restriction was not universal, it depended on the dialect (there was, and is, no such thing as a standardized BASIC language).
* Only data types are integers and strings
I'm pretty sure that all variants had floating point data types as well.
* No structured data types, only (fixed size) arrays
But you could DIM them dynamically using a variable.
* No names in control flow, just GOTO 100 and GOSUB 9000. No parameters for subroutines.
Mostly true, but control flow was a bit better than that: there was also ON X GOTO 10,20,50,80 (which would go to line 10 if X=1, line 20 if X=2, etc) as well as ON X GOSUB in the same way.
Also, there were user-defined one-line functions with parameters, which could even be recursive, as in: DEF FNX(P1,P2)=Y where X is the function name, P1 and P2 are parameters and Y is an expression.
* Plus, it was typically interpreted, for extra slowness at run time.
usenet is supposed to be distributed and resiliant to poor communications and have no choke points
Then it's failed, because the indescribably poor communication commonly called "spam" has all but choked it.
I haven't bothered with Usenet for several years simply because of the quantity of junk. Not to mention the quality:-(
If you use a decently run news server, you almost never have to see a single spam message. I use the public news server at DFN-CIS in Germany (requires free registration) and all I ever see are occasional replies to spam.
While many Usenet newsgroups are junk, most websites are also junk and nobody complains about not bothering with the Web because there are so many junk sites on it. It's nonsense to generalize. There are many active and vibrant groups about specific interests and if one of them matches your interest (which is easy to find out) then Usenet is valuable to you.
Since the Fish knows no Swedish, here is a quick translation... any errors are mine. NoT = Note of Translator.
- M.
Here is what the law says
SFS 2003:389, chapter 6. Integrity protection
18. Electronic communication networks may be used to store or gain access to information stored in a subscriber's or user's terminal equipment only if the subscriber or user of the personuppgiftsansvarige (NoT: "entity responsible for handling the personal data", i.e. the website) receives information about the operation's purpose and is given the opportunity to decline such operation. This shall not hinder such storage or access as is necessary to execute or facilitate to transfer an electronic message via an electronic communications network or as is necessary to provide a service that the user or subscriber has expressly requested.
Hard to comply with new law on electronic communication
(07/24/2003 4:24pm)
Today, many sites are becoming illegal, as the new law on electronic communication takes effect. It says that sites must communicate what the cookies' contents is used for. The users must also be given the option to refuse.
Starting today, Swedish websites may not utilise so-called cookies without explaining the purpose of the treatment of the data that's in them. I addition, users must be given the chance to stop the use of cookies.
This is one of the consequences of the new law on electronic communication, SDS 200:389, which is taking effect.
It is apparently not sufficient to set the web browser to automatically accept cookies. The website one visit must explain what the information will be used for and also give the user the option to refuse the use of cookies.
Hard for sites
This gives Swedish websites two options.
"One alternative is to stop using cookies, making the website's functionality suffer", says Jonas Eriksson at Webkonsulterna in Östersund.
The other option is one Jonas Eriksson doesn't even want to think about.
It means that the majority of Swedish sites that use scripting languages with session variables such as asp and php become illegal insofar as they don't rebuild the websites so that the users can approve of cookie use before they enter the site.
But it doesn't stop there.
"It isn't enough that people get a load of banner and popup ads every day. Now even all ad networks must first start a Javascript to ask people if they want to set a cookie before viewing the ad", he says.
PTS complies with the law
The (supervision authority? watchdog?) for the electronic communications law is Post- och Telestyrelsen, PTS, and on their website it says the following:
"Cookies are therefore used for purely technical reason and they are used today by most websites. According to the new electronic communications law, which takes effect starting July 25, 2003, all who visit websites shall be informed about cookie use and be given the option to refuse such use."
Fine threat
According to Charlotte Ingvar-Nilsson, biträdande rättschef (NoT: some high-up function that I don't know how to translate) at PTS, PTS will monitor how the market will act on the new law.
"If websites don't comply with the law, we have to start with educating about the changes", she says.
And if that doesn't work?
"If we suspect someone of not comlying with the law, that website will get at least a month to fix that. After that we have the option to issue an order which could be accompanied with a fine", says Charlotte Ingvar-Nilsson.
PTS also has the option to decide that people who neglect a debt entirely or partially shall cease operations if the infraction is not insignificant.
"It remains to be seen whether it can become applicable in this case", says Charlotte Ingvar-Nilsson.
So why hadn't you guys written it in C as a portable un*x application? It can be compiled and run on practically anything, even on Windows under cygwin.
Legislation may not be the answer to stopping spam. More than 30 states have anti-spam laws already, to no effect.
Good point. If only you had stopped right there.
And spam, like junk mail, is protected by the constitution.
::buzzz:: WRONG!! Thanks for playing, please try again. Spam is behavior, not speech. You are free to say anything you want, you are not free to shove it down my private inbox unsolicited.
[...]
Also, anti-spam laws tend to hurt small businesses far more than established companies.
Yes, justice is indeed for sale, but we knew that.
Hey, two out of three ain't that bad, for a spam apologist.
Referring to it as GNU/Linux gives the FSF more credit than they deserve. Sure they deserve a lot of credit, but there are many other things that go into a typical distro that deserve about as much credit, such as:
RedHat's ext2/ext3 filesystem
XFree86
GNOME or KDE
Mozilla
OpenOffice.org
Apache, PHP and MySQL or PostgreSQL
You are missing the point, which is that Linux is not an operating system but a kernel. Linus did not create XFree86, GNOME/KDE, or any other part of a typical Linux distro except the kernel, to say that he created the "Linux operating system" is therefore misleading and inaccurate, i.e. a lie, plain and simple.
Of course, the Slashbot anti-RMS crowd is perfectly fine with Linus spreading this lie (or at least doing nothing to stop it) and claiming/accepting credit where it is not due. After all, it's not like geeks (real geeks, not the fashionable Slashbot-type pop geek) deserve any respect or due credit.
service packs
on
Jaguar is Over
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· Score: 5, Informative
At least M$ does a few service packs for free before they ask for more money with a new OS.
Er, Mac OS X 10.2 has had 6 of them so far, from 10.2.1 to 10.2.6. That's not counting the Developer Tools updates (and M$ certainly doesn't give a world-class developer environment away for free with the OS).
I would either have to modify makefiles to use up to three different -L (path's to programming libraries), such as/usr/lib,/sw/lib and/usr/local/lib. It was bloody annoying.
So I welcome this move towards a unified ports system for Darwin, it was definitely needed.
RTFA:
While each project will continue to deliver software in their own way, [...]
Slashdot Mirror
Heh. Too bad I can't take credit, I stole that shamelessly from nanae.
(BTW, if I had mod points, I'd mod you up "Insightful".)
The server is slow and may be totally slashdotted soon, so here is a torrent I made which contains all the 11 screenshots in .png format. Please use this instead of the main webserver. (Read about BitTorrent if you're not familiar with it.)
Bzzt. SPEWS has not been shut down. The DNS to their website is currently down due to the DDoS attacks, and in addition, one particular method of querying SPEWS (among others), i.e. relays.osirusoft.com, has been shut down.
The blocklist SPEWS itself is still operating and perfectly functional. There are plenty of other, still-functioning ways, of querying SPEWS. I won't post them here for obvious reasons, but anyone who is really interested can google for them in the appropriate newsgroups.
On the contrary, they are very effective. They do exactly what they claim to do: list spam-supporting networks (not spammers), so that those who are so inclined can automatically refuse mail from them. They do so by choice; nobody is forcing them.
If they weren't effective at what they do, there wouldn't be so many spammers, spam supporters and clueless lusers bleating about how evil they are.
ROTFLASTC. Would those include all the large ISPs cooperating in hosting the SBL, for instance? They have been under constant DDoS for months, and they aren't so much as slowed down. Osirusoft (which, again, is not SPEWS) was run off a DSL line by a single person and would have been relatively easy to shut down by the spammers or a pack of clueless luzer skript kiddies hired by them.
No: spammers, spam supporters, and clueless lusers want them destroyed. The very network itself wants spam destroyed. The blocklists are the network's immune system, and they're now gearing up for the real war on spam, which is only just getting started.
You thought SPEWS was evil? You ain't seen nothing yet. You can't stop mail admins from protecting their network against criminals. If SPEWS is shut down, multiple, much nastier sons-of-SPEWS will pop up everywhere, ones that probably won't have any way of getting out of them.
Well, "native" is a Latin word meaning "born", so by your own earlier argument you should really be saying "born South-Africans".
Quod erat demonstrandum -- er, I mean: It had to be said.
Unless the spam you get is actually in Chinese (etc.), in most cases these are actually American spammers buying offshore "bullet-proof" hosting at premium prices in an attempt to prevent being tracked down and to prevent their sites from being shut down. Offshore hosting does not make one immune from prosecution.
Tracking them down is actually relatively simple; at some point a spammer will want to be paid, so it's a question of following the money. The offshore hosting problem can only be solved by beating the providers (and/or their uplinks) into submission by massive blocklisting.
- Usenet
- IRC
Have fun.Also, there were user-defined one-line functions with parameters, which could even be recursive, as in: DEF FNX(P1,P2)=Y where X is the function name, P1 and P2 are parameters and Y is an expression. No argument there!
If you use a decently run news server, you almost never have to see a single spam message. I use the public news server at DFN-CIS in Germany (requires free registration) and all I ever see are occasional replies to spam.
While many Usenet newsgroups are junk, most websites are also junk and nobody complains about not bothering with the Web because there are so many junk sites on it. It's nonsense to generalize. There are many active and vibrant groups about specific interests and if one of them matches your interest (which is easy to find out) then Usenet is valuable to you.
- M.
Yeah, we couldn't have that. A president with a 6 feet male apparatus would have been somewhat embarassing.
So why hadn't you guys written it in C as a portable un*x application? It can be compiled and run on practically anything, even on Windows under cygwin.
Hey, two out of three ain't that bad, for a spam apologist.
No.
www.apple.hu
store.apple.hu (Apple Store in Hungary)
Have fun. Bring someone who reads Hungarian. :)
You are missing the point, which is that Linux is not an operating system but a kernel. Linus did not create XFree86, GNOME/KDE, or any other part of a typical Linux distro except the kernel, to say that he created the "Linux operating system" is therefore misleading and inaccurate, i.e. a lie, plain and simple.
Of course, the Slashbot anti-RMS crowd is perfectly fine with Linus spreading this lie (or at least doing nothing to stop it) and claiming/accepting credit where it is not due. After all, it's not like geeks (real geeks, not the fashionable Slashbot-type pop geek) deserve any respect or due credit.
RTFA:
While each project will continue to deliver software in their own way, [...]