I can't help but wonder if this act would also include cable modems and DSL and other high-speed transmission methods. We all know that you don't really need broadband to surf the Web, send email, and IM. No, you need broadband to download lots of stuff. And generally, that means using some sort of P2P. So, clearly, companies that sell these big fat pips capable of downloading and, especially, uploading lots of data are clearly inducing copyright infringement. (Uploading? What, are you producing home movies and emailing them all to your family members? Bah! We all know you're stealing from some poor artist.)
The difference is, Christians do not take Bible as the literal words of God.
Go tell that to the Young Earth Creationists. Most Christians in the USA believe (or at least claim to believe) in the Bible as the literal Word of God. 61% believe in creation from Genesis. 60% believe in Noah's Flood.
Go look at the nutters at the Creation Science Fair, for example. (I was originally sure this site was a parody, but am becoming less and less convinced of that as time goes on.) Middle School level, 2nd place, "Women were designed for homemaking."
I'm Jewish and figured it out... might have to do with reading the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independance, noticing that 85% of Americans are Christian, and the whole "In God We Trust" thing...
The Federalist Papers, the DoI, and the Bible, while very important documents, do not have the force of law in this country. The Constitution, however, does. In God We Trust isn't a Christian saying, rather it was an anti-godless-Communism, McCarthy-era addition to our currency.
Christianity is not now, nor has ever been, a requirement for citizenship in the USA.
And I'd like to quote:
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion...
-- Treaty of Tripoli, ratified unanimously by the US Senate, June 7, 1797 and signed by President John Adams
I seem to recall that in the US, telemarketing to cellular phones was illegal, as the receiver often pays for it directly.
Wouldn't sms spam fall into the same category?
Yes, and we all know what sticklers spammers are in following the law.
That would apply to a survey, but that doesn't apply hear. These are the *actual* visitors to the websites that WebSideStory tracks. And it has held steady at 95.7% for quite a while.
Of course it applies here. All measurements have some margin of error. If the change is large with respect to your error bar, then the change is statistically significant. If it's not, then it's not.
I can't find any information on how they've collected these statistics, but this change could just be a change in the number of people that are spoofing the user-agent string. It could be some email circulating telling people to visit WebSideStory or one of the sites they track.
Without some measure of the accuracy of that 1% figure, it's hard to judge how significant this report is.
Great, the spammers have already started abusing it. I poked around and in the Harry Potter group, which was the the first non-Usenet one I came across. There are three messages there, the second of which is this, dated Jul 5:
"Community of singles looking for dates, friends, and relationships. Come and join, and meet your true love. http://www.cuteandsingle.com"
Software manufacturers lost $29 billion to piracy in 2003,
more than double the previous year's losses, according to an industry survey released Wednesday.
From the BSA report:
Because this year's study covered more categories of software and used a different methodology to compute piracy rates and losses,
the results from last year and this year are not comparable.
Yes, let's draw invalid but important-sounding conclusions and report them as news.
Ah yes, here it is - "Damage to the eyes comes predominantly from invisible infrared wavelengths, so the fact that you feel no discomfort while gazing at a partial eclipse does not guarantee that your eyes are safe"
I'm not sure where you got this, but I find it very hard to believe. Damage to the eyes in an eclipse comes primarily from ultraviolet, not infrared. Infrared light is rather low-energy, and is emitted in great quantities by anything that is, well, hot. Ultraviolet is high-energy. If it's deep enough UV (i.e. more than a black light), it's ionizing radiation, which is why sunlight can cause cancer.
Wow, that got me thinking. ISPs are not held liable for piracy, hacking, etc, because they are a "common carrier." Common carriers have no knowledge of the traffic they carry, they are simply moving things from point A to point B. That limits their liability.
There's a minor problem with your argument. ISP's are not common carriers
Nearly all web server operators pull spammer sites offline as soon as they realize what has hit them to cut off the money chain before the transaction even happens.
Unfortunately, not true. There are plenty of businesses happy to host a spamvertized website. China is notorious for it. Yahoo refuses to pull the site of a paying customer unless the spam was sent through Yahoo's mail servers.
Heck, if every ISP was white-hat, we wouldn't need SPEWS
Not so. Many forms of spam today have ZERO websites advertised like Diploma spam with phone numbers, Stock tips which simply advertise the ticker symbol, and a host of phishing and 419 scams. I do agree that sites should be shut down, but it is a secondary issue. We need to shut off the source of where the spam comes from and work back to the spammer him or herself.
A few, yes, but they're in the minority. (At least in my experience. I just checked the most recent dozen I received, and they're all advertising web pages.) I think the moral of this story is that spam is a many-headed beast, and we need to chop at all of them.
I understand that there is no silver bullet to end spam. But recommendation that this document does not address is the hosting of the web site advertised in the email. If spammers also could not find places to host their sites, the utility of spam (to the spammer) would significantly decrease.
The irony is that Yahoo appears to be fairly spammer-website friendly. They kill abusive Geocities pages fairly rapidly, but paying users appear to be basically bulletproof.
I've got one pet spammer (http://suburbanexpress.site.yahoo.net/) that's been hosted from Yahoo and spamming from an Ameritech DSL line since November, and neither will do anything about it.
Asked if that would hurt sales of competing products, such as Network Associates' McAfee and Symantec's Norton family of products, Nash said that Microsoft said that it would sell its anti-virus program as a separate product from Windows, rather than including it in Windows.
Sure, now they have no plans to integrate it into the OS. A version of Windows or two down the line, on the other hand, they may have an entirely different perspective. At which point, purchases of McAfee and Norton will plummet.
Abuse of a monopoly? Sure. But they can drag out the litigation, such that, by the time it's completed, the competitors are out of business and it's a moot point.
Machine A, Trys to hack machine B. In the combined code has the abilitys of both.. Repeat over and over again and in time it might be able to think and act on its own.
Yes, and then it will return to Earth to become one with it's Creator, to be stopped in the nick of time by some random guy and a bald chick.
(Am I the bigger geek for coming up with this, or are you the bigger one for getting the reference?)
Due to the global nature of the internet, the only way is to wait until the governments of China and Russia change due to public, internal pressure.
When the people of China get together and say, "Hey, you know? We'd actually like to have a democratic government," the Chinese government runs tanks over them.
Spam is probably not at the top of their priority list.
I once had a store owner get all over my case for taking photos inside her store. Apparently, those were proprietary photons I was recording. What I wonder is, would she have had a leg to stand on if I had taken the same photos from right outside her doorway? At what point do you own a photon, and at what point do you not?
I'm not sure either, and it's an interesting question. Now replace "inside her store" with "through her bedroom window using a zoom lens" and you might come away with a different opinion on who should be allowed to take photos where.
(Admittedly, store = semi-public place whereas bedroom = private, so it's not a perfect analogy.)
Yes, but as always, the world just can't be trusted to "use things properly", therefore the world doesn't deserve to have them.
Javascript does need to be eliminated, it has been put to far too much bad use to deserve to continue to exist.
Same with HTML. Does <BLINK> come to mind?
Same with email. Just think: spam.
Don't even get me started on embedded Java applets and Flash.
Just because Javascrips can be misused doesn't mean it's not useful. I can't imagine making use of the Web without Javascript. Just too many sites require it to effectively use them. And don't tell me not to visit sites that require it. I'm not changing my bank because their website requires Javascript.
I'm a scientist, and I use my HP 32S daily. I probably couldn't function without it. It's RPN, doesn't graph anything, and has fairly limited memory and programming abilities. But I like it. I have to say that I hate the idea of this calculator/PDA thing.
I don't want my calculator to be my PDA. I have a PDA for that. They're different devices with different interfaces and should be used for different things. I put an RPN calculator on my Palm and, although I can use it, it's awkward and clunky. I use it only when I have no other choice.
I don't want a graphing calculator. I like my one line of text. If I need to graph anything, then I'm probably doing it for a complicated reason, and I'll fire up Matlab or Origin at my desktop. My calculator is for, just that, calculating.
The website brags that this thing has a whole month of battery life in it's low-power mode. Big fricking deal. I bought my HP in about 1990. I have replaced the batteries in it exactly ONCE. There's nothing more useless than a calculator that you've picked up and realized you forgot to plug it in last night to recharge it, and it's dead.
I don't want a fold-out keyboard that's probably fairly fragile and won't last too long. I want something sturdy that will stand up to significant, continuous use for years to come.
Why can't someone just build a good calculator that does what it's supposed to, and not some calculator / PDA / laptop / Borg monstrosity?
Is there a trademark here that's being infringed? Is it a copyrighted word? If neither of these is true, on what grounds could she possibly win a lawsuit? (Other than just suing and hoping for a fat settlement.)
This is like the decendents of Albert Einstein suing Einstein's Bagels.
I kid you not. A spammer who works for SpamCop. I can't post links to the freesite (that's kinda pointless), but at least the incriminating screenshots are safe on Freenet.
I'm sorry, but I call bullshit. I know of three employees of SpamCop, none of which are named Greg. If photos of John Kerry and Jane Fonda can be Photoshopped, so can a screenshot.
Why is that important? Do you list whether or not a person is heterosexual in an article or biography about someone? What about the color of their skin or hair.
Depends. Was he persecuted for being straight? Did he lose his security clearance, get forced to take massive doses of hormones, and be driven to suicide in spite of his contribution to the WWII war effort?
Any story that would try to talk about Turing but not even mention such details that were so critically important to his life wouldn't be complete.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't help but wonder if this act would also include cable modems and DSL and other high-speed transmission methods. We all know that you don't really need broadband to surf the Web, send email, and IM. No, you need broadband to download lots of stuff. And generally, that means using some sort of P2P. So, clearly, companies that sell these big fat pips capable of downloading and, especially, uploading lots of data are clearly inducing copyright infringement. (Uploading? What, are you producing home movies and emailing them all to your family members? Bah! We all know you're stealing from some poor artist.)
Go tell that to the Young Earth Creationists. Most Christians in the USA believe (or at least claim to believe) in the Bible as the literal Word of God. 61% believe in creation from Genesis. 60% believe in Noah's Flood.
Go look at the nutters at the Creation Science Fair, for example. (I was originally sure this site was a parody, but am becoming less and less convinced of that as time goes on.) Middle School level, 2nd place, "Women were designed for homemaking."
The Federalist Papers, the DoI, and the Bible, while very important documents, do not have the force of law in this country. The Constitution, however, does. In God We Trust isn't a Christian saying, rather it was an anti-godless-Communism, McCarthy-era addition to our currency.
Christianity is not now, nor has ever been, a requirement for citizenship in the USA.
And I'd like to quote:
Yes, and we all know what sticklers spammers are in following the law.
I can't find any information on how they've collected these statistics, but this change could just be a change in the number of people that are spoofing the user-agent string. It could be some email circulating telling people to visit WebSideStory or one of the sites they track.
Without some measure of the accuracy of that 1% figure, it's hard to judge how significant this report is.
Great, the spammers have already started abusing it. I poked around and in the Harry Potter group, which was the the first non-Usenet one I came across. There are three messages there, the second of which is this, dated Jul 5:
"Community of singles looking for dates, friends, and relationships. Come and join, and meet your true love. http://www.cuteandsingle.com"
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/harrypotter/br owse_thread/thread/b3165d2df0ef79c9#86fcd2ea1856d5 dd
From the CNET article: (emphasis mine)
From the BSA report:
Yes, let's draw invalid but important-sounding conclusions and report them as news.
I'm not sure where you got this, but I find it very hard to believe. Damage to the eyes in an eclipse comes primarily from ultraviolet, not infrared. Infrared light is rather low-energy, and is emitted in great quantities by anything that is, well, hot. Ultraviolet is high-energy. If it's deep enough UV (i.e. more than a black light), it's ionizing radiation, which is why sunlight can cause cancer.
There's a minor problem with your argument. ISP's are not common carriers
http://www.cctec.com/maillists/nanog/historical/00 10/msg00012.html
Unfortunately, not true. There are plenty of businesses happy to host a spamvertized website. China is notorious for it. Yahoo refuses to pull the site of a paying customer unless the spam was sent through Yahoo's mail servers.
Heck, if every ISP was white-hat, we wouldn't need SPEWS
What makes you think the password won't be written on the back cover of the Blackberry?
Seems to me this becomes more likely if "strong" passwords that rotate often are used.
I understand that there is no silver bullet to end spam. But recommendation that this document does not address is the hosting of the web site advertised in the email. If spammers also could not find places to host their sites, the utility of spam (to the spammer) would significantly decrease.
The irony is that Yahoo appears to be fairly spammer-website friendly. They kill abusive Geocities pages fairly rapidly, but paying users appear to be basically bulletproof.
I've got one pet spammer (http://suburbanexpress.site.yahoo.net/) that's been hosted from Yahoo and spamming from an Ameritech DSL line since November, and neither will do anything about it.
Go with something other than broadband. Send your mail through some other server. Call your recipient and ask them to whitelist your IP address.
There are plenty of alternatives. There's no reason I should be inundated with spam because your ISP is unethical.
Sure, now they have no plans to integrate it into the OS. A version of Windows or two down the line, on the other hand, they may have an entirely different perspective. At which point, purchases of McAfee and Norton will plummet.
Abuse of a monopoly? Sure. But they can drag out the litigation, such that, by the time it's completed, the competitors are out of business and it's a moot point.
Yes, and then it will return to Earth to become one with it's Creator, to be stopped in the nick of time by some random guy and a bald chick.
(Am I the bigger geek for coming up with this, or are you the bigger one for getting the reference?)
When the people of China get together and say, "Hey, you know? We'd actually like to have a democratic government," the Chinese government runs tanks over them.
Spam is probably not at the top of their priority list.
I'm not sure either, and it's an interesting question. Now replace "inside her store" with "through her bedroom window using a zoom lens" and you might come away with a different opinion on who should be allowed to take photos where.
(Admittedly, store = semi-public place whereas bedroom = private, so it's not a perfect analogy.)
Same with HTML. Does <BLINK> come to mind?
Same with email. Just think: spam.
Don't even get me started on embedded Java applets and Flash.
Just because Javascrips can be misused doesn't mean it's not useful. I can't imagine making use of the Web without Javascript. Just too many sites require it to effectively use them. And don't tell me not to visit sites that require it. I'm not changing my bank because their website requires Javascript.
I don't want my calculator to be my PDA. I have a PDA for that. They're different devices with different interfaces and should be used for different things. I put an RPN calculator on my Palm and, although I can use it, it's awkward and clunky. I use it only when I have no other choice.
I don't want a graphing calculator. I like my one line of text. If I need to graph anything, then I'm probably doing it for a complicated reason, and I'll fire up Matlab or Origin at my desktop. My calculator is for, just that, calculating.
The website brags that this thing has a whole month of battery life in it's low-power mode. Big fricking deal. I bought my HP in about 1990. I have replaced the batteries in it exactly ONCE. There's nothing more useless than a calculator that you've picked up and realized you forgot to plug it in last night to recharge it, and it's dead.
I don't want a fold-out keyboard that's probably fairly fragile and won't last too long. I want something sturdy that will stand up to significant, continuous use for years to come.
Why can't someone just build a good calculator that does what it's supposed to, and not some calculator / PDA / laptop / Borg monstrosity?
Allow me to rephrase: I believe there ARE only three employees of Spamcop, none of which are named Greg.
Is there a trademark here that's being infringed? Is it a copyrighted word? If neither of these is true, on what grounds could she possibly win a lawsuit? (Other than just suing and hoping for a fat settlement.)
This is like the decendents of Albert Einstein suing Einstein's Bagels.
Evidence, please.
Well, yes,
but that
doesn't
mean that
there isn't
such a
thing as
*too* short
of a
line of
text.
Depends. Was he persecuted for being straight? Did he lose his security clearance, get forced to take massive doses of hormones, and be driven to suicide in spite of his contribution to the WWII war effort?
Any story that would try to talk about Turing but not even mention such details that were so critically important to his life wouldn't be complete.