Hands up everyone out there who lets their email provider know what books they buy from Amazon.
Hands up everyone who believes that Amazon wouldn't sell your personal info, including a list of books bought, to some guy on the street for $.05.
If one of my users says "I'm having trouble sending mail to ", you better believe I end up "intercepting" and "examining" the email to figure it out. Not a problem; it's my job.
Amazon has spammed. They have hit mailing lists. Mostly, they spam customers, without waiting for permission. They occasionally "lose" opt-out requests. They stay solidly committed to opt-out spamming, rather than opt-in mailings. Amazon employees have posted to Usenet via DejaNews as "customers", without mentioning what you'd find if you did an nslookup on NNTP-Posting-Host.
They are scum, they are liars, and they are not worth your time.
http://www.powells.com/ (Powell's Books) is a better deal. I've never been spammed by them, and neither has my mom (I bought her a gift certificate there last year.) By contrast, she bought a book from Amazon, and has gotten a number of mailings.
If users are having trouble sending mail, you better believe sysadmins investigate the messages. That's not interception, any more than the post office is "intercepting" your mail when it examines the envelope.
From what I've been told, most of _The Day After_ was completely random. They ignored some effects, they invented others, they exaggerated still more.
Honestly, we don't know what a large nuclear war would be like, apart from "pretty bad". We do know that _TDA_ was about as accurate about it as we expect the Y2K movie to be about Y2K, and probably about as accurate as TV portrayals of love and romance.
Wanna bet it's *all* copyrighted by the FSF? I submitted a small patch once, and it was accepted, and I never signed any forms.
I would bet there's small chunks of code copyrighted by each of a few hundred hackers, most of them also under GPL.
This isn't a problem, as long as the whole thing stays under the GPL, but at this point, I don't think there exists *anyone* with the authority to change the licensing.
Just a side note: This has nothing to do with OpenBSD, this "modeline" thing.
It's nvi. Blame (or thank) Keith Bostic.
BSD/OS says "The modeline(s) option may never be set.". NetBSD says "set: the modeline option may never be turned on". (If you're curious, NetBSD is using nvi 1.66, BSD/OS is using 1.43.)
The comment in the code is particularly beautiful. Reproduced without permission; please don't kill me, Keith:
/* * f_modeline -- * This has been documented in historical systems as both "modeline" * and as "modelines". Regardless of the name, this option represents * a security problem of mammoth proportions, not to mention a stunning * example of what your intro CS professor referred to as the perils of * mixing code and data. Don't add it, or I will kill you. */
I still say I trust their judgement. I don't know how the new version is "faster", but I'd want to see a formal proof of the new code before I'd run it. (I'd also want to be sure that it avoids any known processor errata...)
The key here is that reproducibility is more important than speed. We have plenty of time; the information isn't going away, and we don't anticipate needing to respond in real time to any of it. But we do want to be as sure as possible that all the data we think we've checked have been checked *exactly* the same way.
It is *MUCH* more important that everyone run code which is *EXACTLY* equivalent, and has been tested to be equivalent, than that people be a few cycles faster.
Speeding the project up at the expense of a.01% chance that a given block is analyzed wrong would be unacceptable losses. Speeding the project up 10 times at the expense of a.0001% chance of getting a given block wrong is *still* unacceptable.
Would I run Linux? Yes. Would I bet a few million dollars on a given patch working perfectly the first time? No.
So why is it that everyone's pressuring these guys to take that risk?
If you don't like the terms of the project, don't play. If you want to help them out, follow their instructions.
It may come as a shock to people, but the scientists running Seti@Home are *not* idiots; they are experienced professionals with substantial relevant training who have carefully examined their options and made rational choices.
I thought you just had to have the switchbox and the new thing you're plugging in powered down to make new connections. I've been doing that and nothing is dead, knock on wood.
I'm using one of these, and I've been mostly happy. My only complaint is that the keyboard controls don't seem to work if the current system is dead, and the box won't display the monitor of a system which isn't using it for keyboard also. I guess it's trying to save me the trouble of seeing "blank" displays, or something.
With the older desktop omniview, I couldn't run a mouse through it - my PS/2 mouse would stop responding if I switched displays, until I rebooted my computer. With the 8-port, it's been fine, sharing keyboard and mouse among a handful of boxes.
I'm using it at 1280x1024, but only around 70 Hz, I think. Works well enough.
Spamcop generates more *TOTALLY* misdirected complaints than any other mechanism I'm aware of. I have talked to people who run *real* abuse desks who are thinking of just auto-binning anything that refers to Spamcop, because it's so hopelessly broken.
Sam Spade is pretty good.
(Disclaimer: I don't use any of 'em, I do it by hand.)
By the time you filter it, you've already paid to recieve the message.
Anyway:
1. It won't work; spammers will change their headers to get around it, because That's How It Always Works. You can't control them like that. 2. Why should anyone have to be running filters?
You missed the point: Advertisers pay for television; spammers do *not* pay for the internet. Spammers, in fact, are a money-losing proposition even before you have complaints - they use much more bandwidth for their $15.00 account than real users would.
Spammers steal resources to deliver ads; it's exactly the opposite of how real advertising funds media.
Figure it this way: You had *one* message not go through. If the relay weren't on the RBL, hundreds of thousands of spams would have gone out, many of them filling mailboxes, and a much larger number of messages woulda been blocked.
Closing a relay takes all of five minutes.
Also, remember, they don't list you just because you're an open relay; they list you because you're an open relay, and *multiple* good faith efforts to get you to fix it have failed.
Is start pushing vendors (say, Linux vendors) and users (especially those of us who own DVD players) to publically come out and say "I would rather be able to play a DVD on a Linux system".
Point out to these people that many of us will buy *more* DVD's if we can use them on our Linux boxes.
Follow the money; if we make the "win condition" be to use an open standard and encourage people to write DVD players, we'll see the DVD industry admit that, maybe, not all users are pirates.
You, too, can contribute: Decapitate one person a week who pirates software or art.;)
I nominated Lennart Augustsson, because of the USB code. USB is a large, useful, piece of work, allowing free software to maintain device-driver parity with a lot of the commercial world.
Slashdot Mirror
Hands up everyone who believes that Amazon wouldn't sell your personal info, including a list of books bought, to some guy on the street for $.05.
If one of my users says "I'm having trouble sending mail to ", you better believe I end up "intercepting" and "examining" the email to figure it out. Not a problem; it's my job.
Summary for those who don't want to read:
Amazon has spammed. They have hit mailing lists. Mostly, they spam customers, without waiting for permission. They occasionally "lose" opt-out requests. They stay solidly committed to opt-out spamming, rather than opt-in mailings. Amazon employees have posted to Usenet via DejaNews as "customers", without mentioning what you'd find if you did an nslookup on NNTP-Posting-Host.
They are scum, they are liars, and they are not worth your time.
http://www.powells.com/ (Powell's Books) is a better deal. I've never been spammed by them, and neither has my mom (I bought her a gift certificate there last year.) By contrast, she bought a book from Amazon, and has gotten a number of mailings.
If users are having trouble sending mail, you better believe sysadmins investigate the messages. That's not interception, any more than the post office is "intercepting" your mail when it examines the envelope.
Hah! Amazon complaining about people not respecting privacy.
What next, TRUSTe complaining about ineffectual watchdog groups? eBay complaining about Usenet spam?
From what I've been told, most of _The Day After_ was completely random. They ignored some effects, they invented others, they exaggerated still more.
Honestly, we don't know what a large nuclear war would be like, apart from "pretty bad". We do know that _TDA_ was about as accurate about it as we expect the Y2K movie to be about Y2K, and probably about as accurate as TV portrayals of love and romance.
Wanna bet it's *all* copyrighted by the FSF? I submitted a small patch once, and it was accepted, and I never signed any forms.
I would bet there's small chunks of code copyrighted by each of a few hundred hackers, most of them also under GPL.
This isn't a problem, as long as the whole thing stays under the GPL, but at this point, I don't think there exists *anyone* with the authority to change the licensing.
I'll put in a vote for angband.
Just a side note: This has nothing to do with OpenBSD, this "modeline" thing.
It's nvi. Blame (or thank) Keith Bostic.
BSD/OS says "The modeline(s) option may never be set.". NetBSD says "set: the modeline option may never be turned on". (If you're curious, NetBSD is using nvi 1.66, BSD/OS is using 1.43.)
The comment in the code is particularly beautiful. Reproduced without permission; please don't kill me, Keith:
/*
* f_modeline --
* This has been documented in historical systems as both "modeline"
* and as "modelines". Regardless of the name, this option represents
* a security problem of mammoth proportions, not to mention a stunning
* example of what your intro CS professor referred to as the perils of
* mixing code and data. Don't add it, or I will kill you.
*/
You go, Keith.
I still say I trust their judgement. I don't know how the new version is "faster", but I'd want to see a formal proof of the new code before I'd run it. (I'd also want to be sure that it avoids any known processor errata...)
The key here is that reproducibility is more important than speed. We have plenty of time; the information isn't going away, and we don't anticipate needing to respond in real time to any of it. But we do want to be as sure as possible that all the data we think we've checked have been checked *exactly* the same way.
And what happens if the 3DNow!-accelerated version turns out to get different results in, oh, say, one case in a hundred million?
That's harmless in a video game, where no one cares about the bottom N bits. It's not so harmless in science.
Just adding my voice to the choir:
.01% chance that a given block is analyzed wrong would be unacceptable losses. Speeding the project up 10 times at the expense of a .0001% chance of getting a given block wrong is *still* unacceptable.
It is a *FEATURE* that this is closed-source.
It is *MUCH* more important that everyone run code which is *EXACTLY* equivalent, and has been tested to be equivalent, than that people be a few cycles faster.
Speeding the project up at the expense of a
Would I run Linux? Yes. Would I bet a few million dollars on a given patch working perfectly the first time? No.
So why is it that everyone's pressuring these guys to take that risk?
If you don't like the terms of the project, don't play. If you want to help them out, follow their instructions.
It may come as a shock to people, but the scientists running Seti@Home are *not* idiots; they are experienced professionals with substantial relevant training who have carefully examined their options and made rational choices.
Note that they also ignored eBay's recent spam and privacy abuses.
The RBL, of course! Although, to be fair, he's mostly handed that off already; it's run by the employees these days.
Nice service. http://www.mail-abuse.org/rbl/
I thought you just had to have the switchbox and the new thing you're plugging in powered down to make new connections. I've been doing that and nothing is dead, knock on wood.
I'm using one of these, and I've been mostly happy. My only complaint is that the keyboard controls don't seem to work if the current system is dead, and the box won't display the monitor of a system which isn't using it for keyboard also.
I guess it's trying to save me the trouble of seeing "blank" displays, or something.
With the older desktop omniview, I couldn't run a mouse through it - my PS/2 mouse would stop responding if I switched displays, until I rebooted my computer. With the 8-port, it's been fine, sharing keyboard and mouse among a handful of boxes.
I'm using it at 1280x1024, but only around 70 Hz, I think. Works well enough.
Spamcop generates more *TOTALLY* misdirected complaints than any other mechanism I'm aware of. I have talked to people who run *real* abuse desks who are thinking of just auto-binning anything that refers to Spamcop, because it's so hopelessly broken.
Sam Spade is pretty good.
(Disclaimer: I don't use any of 'em, I do it by hand.)
Please, think this through.
Do you want them to have support for the claim that only terrorists and the sorts of people who harass third parties are opposed to spam?
Be, at all times, polite, honest, above-board, and forthright. Otherwise, why should you expect anyone to take you seriously?
Forwarding all your spam to the DMA is just plain childish.
By the time you filter it, you've already paid to recieve the message.
Anyway:
1. It won't work; spammers will change their headers to get around it, because That's How It Always Works. You can't control them like that.
2. Why should anyone have to be running filters?
Blame the victim mentality won't work here.
You missed the point: Advertisers pay for television; spammers do *not* pay for the internet. Spammers, in fact, are a money-losing proposition even before you have complaints - they use much more bandwidth for their $15.00 account than real users would.
Spammers steal resources to deliver ads; it's exactly the opposite of how real advertising funds media.
Figure it this way: You had *one* message not go through. If the relay weren't on the RBL, hundreds of thousands of spams would have gone out, many of them filling mailboxes, and a much larger number of messages woulda been blocked.
Closing a relay takes all of five minutes.
Also, remember, they don't list you just because you're an open relay; they list you because you're an open relay, and *multiple* good faith efforts to get you to fix it have failed.
Well, someone on a mailing list I'm on said he played part of a DVD successfully under NetBSD.
It's *way* too late to argue this one; the movie industry lost, by betting on the wrong model for "security".
Is start pushing vendors (say, Linux vendors) and users (especially those of us who own DVD players) to publically come out and say "I would rather be able to play a DVD on a Linux system".
;)
Point out to these people that many of us will buy *more* DVD's if we can use them on our Linux boxes.
Follow the money; if we make the "win condition" be to use an open standard and encourage people to write DVD players, we'll see the DVD industry admit that, maybe, not all users are pirates.
You, too, can contribute: Decapitate one person a week who pirates software or art.
I figured USB would become a vital feature. Isn't
it nice that there's a good, well-designed, free, set of drivers in the world?
I've been using USB devices on my laptop for months.
Doesn't matter what it is, it's spam, and they sent it to people who had told them never to send *any* email to them again.
Sorry, but:
1. You always get to say "go away", and mean it.
2. You never, ever, get to send bulk unsolicited messages.
MS was wrong on two counts, and the first one was a violation of their privacy policy.
I nominated Lennart Augustsson, because of the USB code. USB is a large, useful, piece of work, allowing free software to maintain device-driver parity with a lot of the commercial world.