A blank To: header would make filtering a no-brainer. I wouldn't even bother saving those in a bin for later false-positive searches.
There only seems to be two effective answers to spam that don't have collateral damage problems: 1) pay-per-send 2) whitelists.
Whitelists are more trouble to initiate than blacklists because you have to manually add all your "known good" automated sources (such as mailing lists and e-bill services) rather than simply accepting whatever default values the block lists supply. The up-side is that even your grandma can hit "Reply" when the automated confirmation message arrives.
So? The whole point of an average is that some people use more and some less. If three machines are using my connection, then I am using more than "average use", but that in and of itself doesn't give them the right to retaliate.
The problem with the argument "they gave it to me so why do they care what I do with it?" is that it intentionally ignores the principles under which the [insert generic asset here] was given in the first place. They don't cap your line because they *assume* your usage will be typical, and that their infrastructure will support N users at the calculated average rate. When someone decides to increase the number of users and thereby increases the demand on resources that is NOT simply a deviation from the average because there is little chance that there will be an offsetting reduction at a later point-- the average is changed in the process, invalidating the assumptions upon which the contract was based. The excess demand is taken directly from the commons (which is their bottom line). We all know what happens to the commons when too many people take advantage of an unregulated resource. The ISP has no choice but to react.
I was starting an ISP today I would bill on the bell curve-- the bottom 10% would have their bill waived entirely, the middle 80% would be billed according to the average usage estimates, and the top 10% would be billed by volume. Think of it as a tax on the commons....
I hope they sue the pants off and stop every other company from using them:-)
...including the oregonlive website that's carrying the article! What irony-- I go to read an article about the menace of pop-under advertising and get hit by a pop-under advertisement.
For those who haven't caught on yet, this is why the MPAA and RIAA dislike technology so strongly.
I'd like to dispell the common assumption that these copies are all made by smuggling a camcorder into a theatre. After many years of hearing about bootleg movies I finally had a chance to watch one recently. About 1/2 way through the movie there was a marquee crawling across the bottom that basically said "This video is provided to members of the Academy for consideration in the category of best [....]." In other words, it was an inside job. Considering the movie is still in theatres, I guess I have a scoop on next year's office Oscar pool....
My advice is that you should always pay down credit card debt before saving, you'll be better off in the long run.
Congrats for not falling into the "pay down the largest balance" trap. I've had so many arguments with people who thought every windfall should be applied against their mortgage. Most of them got that idea from a banker who showed them how making an extra $1000 payment would save them $10,000 in interest over the following 25 years. The banks love that one, of course, as mortgages are their least efficient source of income. If you're in a bill-paying mood, then the best bang for the buck is the debt with the highest rate, period.
Having said all that, however, I'll point out that The Wealthy Barber says you should pay yourself first. Pay off the debts, yes, but not if it means starving in a dark, cold, empty room. Aside from lifestyle, there is something to be said for "feel good money"-- having a five digit balance in your savings account will improve your morale and ultimately make you more confident and productive, making the debts much easier to handle.
You're peeved that "thelindsays.org" couldn't be replaced with "thelindsays.us"? Whatever happened to Joe-server-in-a-closet getting "thelindsays.smalltown.state.us"? Is your family (or family business) so famous that it deserves to take national priority over all other potential lindsay family sites? Good grief!
At the same time they bought us, they bought two other companies whose names elude me (one was a dealer in ultra-high-tech home stereo systems).
The name you are looking for is Future Shop. That chain is one of Canada's largest electronic retailers, and had been making inroads into Best Buy's territory in the USA. The details of the buy-out are here. Last I heard, the deal was still pending approval of the Canadian government's competition bureau and/or SEC blessing.
Have you tried the get a.us domain? The whole process is horribly crippled with this fucking retarded heiarchy system. Forget about mydomain.us, you'll have to settle for mydomain.mycity.mystate.us. instead... riiiiiight. To bad too, they're loosing a lot of business because of it.
Every country gets to write their own rules. Just because the USA has a cumbersome registration process for.us domains doesn't mean you should have preferred access to.com/net/edu adresses. I think the world would be a much better place if the non-geographical TLDs were eliminated entirely.
The Canadian rules are simple: your company gets a domain that reflects the scope of the business. If I run a one-shop operation then I get a company.city.province.ca address. The guy who runs a chain of stores in British Columbia gets the company.bc.ca address, while companies operating in two or more provinces get the company.ca addresses.
In short-- if you can't get a company.us address hanging directly off your country's TLD then it's probably because you don't deserve one.
On the disk, the slower skiers would rise up toward the top, from which the down-hill path is toward the center where the track circumference is shorter. OTOH, faster skiers would move down the incline and be forced toward the outside where the surface is moving faster. The motor would turn the disk at a constant rate and provide the customer with a fully graduated range of speeds based on the radius of the skiers track. The geometry would ensure that the skier was always at the best location based on their current speed.
I would suppose that the best place to get on/off would be at the hub where the surface is moving the slowest. Getting flung off the outside edge or sucked over the top would be issues.
Unlike the tracks, the disk can have lumps, bumps and possibly jumps. It should also be able to handle quite a few people at once.
I live (and work) in Vancouver. I was giving a tour one day to a bunch of visitors and was mentioning the various routes that aircraft fly over the west coast. One of them (a complete stranger) then asked me how long ago I had moved away from Halifax (where I really did grow up). He said the word "route" gave me away. People out here on the west coast pronounce it "rowt" (and about is "abowt") whereas for me it's "root" (and "aboat"). That particular tourist was a westerner who had gone to university in Halifax and recognised the accent.
The synchronizing of the female reproductive cycle is thought to be the result of pheremones. I suppose it's some prehistoric competitive thing that ensures the male never has to resort to the less dominant females.
That has nothing to do with pendulums. The key point of the phenomenon is that the two clocks must be on a base which is wobbly enough to transmit the "equal and opposite reaction" of the pendulum from one clock to the other while being strong enough to prevent the pendulum from swinging the clock.
Eventually the various Asian admins that are causing this will get the clue and fix their mail systems.
Or maybe not.
I think we're well past the point where arguing with spam hosts makes any sense. We would do better spending our time developing a replacement for RFC822. When people started sniffing Telnet sessions we created SSH. When people started attacking FTP we gave HTTP the ability to do uploads. Now that spammers are killing the internet we simply have to abandon SMTP/POP and move to a more intelligent delivery system. For example, perhaps all email should be left on the originating server for pickup (with only the headers sent to the recipient) rather than filling mailboxes at the receiving end. If you're writing a completely new email protocol you can do whatever it takes. Of course, the hard part would be to introduce a new protocol without giving Microsoft the ability to embrace and extend it into a proprietary produce. I'd be surprised if MS and/or AOL aren't already working on it...
A friend of mine was the victim of repeated junk faxes from a telemarketing business. After several failed requests to be removed from their list he resorted to one that actually worked. Yes, he faxed them an entire roll of paper towel. It may have been a computer on the other end (saving them the expense of toner and paper) but it did at least block their telephone line for a significant period of time. He then told them that the next time he received a fax he would tape a sheet of paper into an endless loop and transmit all night long....
First "commercial" computer in orbit
on
Tandys Never Die
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· Score: 1
The M100 was the first consumer computer taken up in space. NASA replaced the plastic display cover with some sort of quartz window, but it was otherwise unmodified. I always thought it funny that the airlines wouldn't allow you to use a M100 in flight but NASA would....
Re:My friend had one in the early '80's
on
Tandys Never Die
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· Score: 1
A friend of mine once brought his M100 to the bar. We played with it all night as we got totally bloated on cheap beer. Then we all took the bus bak to my house and while everyone else crashed I grabbed the M100, propped myself against the wall, and wrote a complete game of Yhatzee. By the time I had sobered up (which was around the time the sun was peeking over the horizon) it was done, complete with graphical dice and sound. The most interesting hack was that I made use of the way in which the M100 treats storage and execution memory as the same (the more programs you install the less memory you have to run them). All constants (strings embedded within quotes in the code) are extracted from storage memory as required, and are never instantiated on the heap. I stored the high score list by starting the program with a string assignment, using VARPTR to get the address (which would be the location of the string in the BASIC code itself), and then used POKE to install new data into the variable. Persistant storage with no external files!
They complain that they would have to consider all of Vermont as having decided to "opt out" because it's too expensive to have two systems based on where the customer is located. The solution is obvious-- use the "opt in" system everywhere.
I'm getting tired of having to choose between a $75 book with 1200 pages and a $70 book with 1150 pages. Whatever happened to concise text? Doesn't anyone at the publisher actually try to carry these monsters around any more? Let's get back to basics and not have any more of these 2 kilogram wonders with 18 faces on the cover....
I used to open hard drives all the time back in the 80's. The company I was working at had bought about 40 Seagate hard drives (30Mb RLL,if memory serves). Most of them developed a problem within a year or two where the motor could no longer supply enough force to spin up when the PC was turned on in the morning (possibly due to sticky bearings in the platter axle). I would typically open the computer and pop the top off the drive. Then I would apply power to the PC and simultaneously twist the platter hub with my finger. Once the platter was turning the drive would spin up to speed normally. I'd pack it all back together with the drive still spinning. The drive would usually survive another week or two before it would stick again. Eventually I'd get a replacement and do one last "manual spin up" in order to make a disk-to-disk backup.
The lids on those drives weren't much thicker than aluminum foil, and it was quite common to hear the hub grinding away at the cover if even a little bit of pressure was applied to the cover.
I wonder if they'll talk at all about the trend of local cable companies to sell "Superbowl" commercials to local businesses. One of my local radio stations is reminding all the listeners to tune in to see their commercial. The cable company up here regularly inserts local advertising during international event coverage. They even replace advertising on CNN with ads for their own local news station.
When asked, Freiherr von Gravenreuth confirmed to have obtained a preliminary injunction against the name(3) of an Open Source program. He declined to name further details because his client would want "to settle with the opposition" and did not want to be named.
Would it be in SuSE's best interests to cooperate with Gravenreuth by negotiating in secret, or would they be better off issuing public statements that name the program involved and publicize the extortion tactics used by this lawyer?
It does however rule out any lunar-synchronous satellites since they would be well outside the quasi-stable region.
You could always put the relay satellite into the leading or trailing Lagrange points, as long as you were willing to displace the radio observatory far enough away from the center of the far side to put the Lagrange point above the horizon. You'd need some strong batteries in the birds to cover the distances involved.
Since we want the base on the dark side of the moon, we do in fact need some way to talk to it. One possibility is of course putting up a satellite around the moon, and whenever it flys over the telescope picking up the data and sending it back during it's next pass near the earth.
Using periodic satellites to perform store-and-forward relaying would imply a limited duty cycle on the observatory unless the transmission speeds (and orbit speed) are significantly higher than the dish's sampling rate. Continuous transmission would make more sense, and could be accomplished either by Lagrange relay or by routing the signal over the surface as you described. Surface routing is probably better as it's possible to set up redundant paths to reduce the potential for single-point failures.
to prevent manual moderation until a story line has generated at least 100 non-AC, non-troll messages. Otherwise the first (real) posts get modded up simply because they get more visibility in the expanded tree, while the later gems are lost in the collapsed tree.
-military personnel
-police personnel
-fire sqads
-paramedics, doctors and nurses
-lots of personnel in the transport industry
They're called "essential services".
I'm an Air Traffic Controller. I usually manage to get Christmas off (which I don't really care about) but have been forced to work Boxing Day morning every year (when I'd really rather be shopping). I've also been scheduled to work 8 of the last 10 New Year's Eve midnight shifts. Oh well.
My job ranks up there with IT in the pay and comfort categories, but at least I don't have to worry about stock market heebie-jeebies killing my employer and leaving me "dot-jobless".
The reason I suggested using the USB Flash device is that it cuts the "time to market" due to the fact that the hardware already exists and is small enough to fit on your key ring (no, the *other* key ring:-P). All we have to do is put together the software to use it. Using a combination of stored keys and PIN is obviously more secure, but the market for an intelligent hardware encryption device is going to be vary small, at least in the short term. It would be just as practical (but less portable) to carry a biometric device around and just use your thumb print to unlock your computer.
Yes, there would be a risk that the authorities would confiscate *any* device and unlock your system, but that assumes they have a reason to search you or your home/office. One of the concerns addressed by the USB device is the use of a virus to read your keystrokes. All we are really avoiding is the ability for someone to search your computer *without your knowledge*, such as might happen if the authorities were casting a wide net for suspects. This is the same reason people encrypt email-- not to prevent decryption in the case of arrest, but to prevent someone from evesdropping.
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A blank To: header would make filtering a no-brainer. I wouldn't even bother saving those in a bin for later false-positive searches.
There only seems to be two effective answers to spam that don't have collateral damage problems:
1) pay-per-send
2) whitelists.
Whitelists are more trouble to initiate than blacklists because you have to manually add all your "known good" automated sources (such as mailing lists and e-bill services) rather than simply accepting whatever default values the block lists supply. The up-side is that even your grandma can hit "Reply" when the automated confirmation message arrives.
The problem with the argument "they gave it to me so why do they care what I do with it?" is that it intentionally ignores the principles under which the [insert generic asset here] was given in the first place. They don't cap your line because they *assume* your usage will be typical, and that their infrastructure will support N users at the calculated average rate. When someone decides to increase the number of users and thereby increases the demand on resources that is NOT simply a deviation from the average because there is little chance that there will be an offsetting reduction at a later point-- the average is changed in the process, invalidating the assumptions upon which the contract was based. The excess demand is taken directly from the commons (which is their bottom line). We all know what happens to the commons when too many people take advantage of an unregulated resource. The ISP has no choice but to react.
I was starting an ISP today I would bill on the bell curve-- the bottom 10% would have their bill waived entirely, the middle 80% would be billed according to the average usage estimates, and the top 10% would be billed by volume. Think of it as a tax on the commons....
I'd like to dispell the common assumption that these copies are all made by smuggling a camcorder into a theatre. After many years of hearing about bootleg movies I finally had a chance to watch one recently. About 1/2 way through the movie there was a marquee crawling across the bottom that basically said "This video is provided to members of the Academy for consideration in the category of best [....]." In other words, it was an inside job. Considering the movie is still in theatres, I guess I have a scoop on next year's office Oscar pool....
Congrats for not falling into the "pay down the largest balance" trap. I've had so many arguments with people who thought every windfall should be applied against their mortgage. Most of them got that idea from a banker who showed them how making an extra $1000 payment would save them $10,000 in interest over the following 25 years. The banks love that one, of course, as mortgages are their least efficient source of income. If you're in a bill-paying mood, then the best bang for the buck is the debt with the highest rate, period.
Having said all that, however, I'll point out that The Wealthy Barber says you should pay yourself first. Pay off the debts, yes, but not if it means starving in a dark, cold, empty room. Aside from lifestyle, there is something to be said for "feel good money"-- having a five digit balance in your savings account will improve your morale and ultimately make you more confident and productive, making the debts much easier to handle.
You're peeved that "thelindsays.org" couldn't be replaced with "thelindsays.us"? Whatever happened to Joe-server-in-a-closet getting "thelindsays.smalltown.state.us"? Is your family (or family business) so famous that it deserves to take national priority over all other potential lindsay family sites?
Good grief!
The name you are looking for is Future Shop. That chain is one of Canada's largest electronic retailers, and had been making inroads into Best Buy's territory in the USA. The details of the buy-out are here. Last I heard, the deal was still pending approval of the Canadian government's competition bureau and/or SEC blessing.
Every country gets to write their own rules. Just because the USA has a cumbersome registration process for .us domains doesn't mean you should have preferred access to .com/net/edu adresses. I think the world would be a much better place if the non-geographical TLDs were eliminated entirely.
The Canadian rules are simple: your company gets a domain that reflects the scope of the business. If I run a one-shop operation then I get a company.city.province.ca address. The guy who runs a chain of stores in British Columbia gets the company.bc.ca address, while companies operating in two or more provinces get the company.ca addresses.
In short-- if you can't get a company.us address hanging directly off your country's TLD then it's probably because you don't deserve one.
On the disk, the slower skiers would rise up toward the top, from which the down-hill path is toward the center where the track circumference is shorter. OTOH, faster skiers would move down the incline and be forced toward the outside where the surface is moving faster. The motor would turn the disk at a constant rate and provide the customer with a fully graduated range of speeds based on the radius of the skiers track. The geometry would ensure that the skier was always at the best location based on their current speed.
I would suppose that the best place to get on/off would be at the hub where the surface is moving the slowest. Getting flung off the outside edge or sucked over the top would be issues.
Unlike the tracks, the disk can have lumps, bumps and possibly jumps. It should also be able to handle quite a few people at once.
I live (and work) in Vancouver. I was giving a tour one day to a bunch of visitors and was mentioning the various routes that aircraft fly over the west coast. One of them (a complete stranger) then asked me how long ago I had moved away from Halifax (where I really did grow up). He said the word "route" gave me away. People out here on the west coast pronounce it "rowt" (and about is "abowt") whereas for me it's "root" (and "aboat"). That particular tourist was a westerner who had gone to university in Halifax and recognised the accent.
The synchronizing of the female reproductive cycle is thought to be the result of pheremones. I suppose it's some prehistoric competitive thing that ensures the male never has to resort to the less dominant females.
That has nothing to do with pendulums. The key point of the phenomenon is that the two clocks must be on a base which is wobbly enough to transmit the "equal and opposite reaction" of the pendulum from one clock to the other while being strong enough to prevent the pendulum from swinging the clock.
Or maybe not.
I think we're well past the point where arguing with spam hosts makes any sense. We would do better spending our time developing a replacement for RFC822. When people started sniffing Telnet sessions we created SSH. When people started attacking FTP we gave HTTP the ability to do uploads. Now that spammers are killing the internet we simply have to abandon SMTP/POP and move to a more intelligent delivery system. For example, perhaps all email should be left on the originating server for pickup (with only the headers sent to the recipient) rather than filling mailboxes at the receiving end. If you're writing a completely new email protocol you can do whatever it takes. Of course, the hard part would be to introduce a new protocol without giving Microsoft the ability to embrace and extend it into a proprietary produce. I'd be surprised if MS and/or AOL aren't already working on it...
A friend of mine was the victim of repeated junk faxes from a telemarketing business. After several failed requests to be removed from their list he resorted to one that actually worked. Yes, he faxed them an entire roll of paper towel. It may have been a computer on the other end (saving them the expense of toner and paper) but it did at least block their telephone line for a significant period of time. He then told them that the next time he received a fax he would tape a sheet of paper into an endless loop and transmit all night long....
The M100 was the first consumer computer taken up in space. NASA replaced the plastic display cover with some sort of quartz window, but it was otherwise unmodified. I always thought it funny that the airlines wouldn't allow you to use a M100 in flight but NASA would....
A friend of mine once brought his M100 to the bar. We played with it all night as we got totally bloated on cheap beer. Then we all took the bus bak to my house and while everyone else crashed I grabbed the M100, propped myself against the wall, and wrote a complete game of Yhatzee. By the time I had sobered up (which was around the time the sun was peeking over the horizon) it was done, complete with graphical dice and sound. The most interesting hack was that I made use of the way in which the M100 treats storage and execution memory as the same (the more programs you install the less memory you have to run them). All constants (strings embedded within quotes in the code) are extracted from storage memory as required, and are never instantiated on the heap. I stored the high score list by starting the program with a string assignment, using VARPTR to get the address (which would be the location of the string in the BASIC code itself), and then used POKE to install new data into the variable. Persistant storage with no external files!
They complain that they would have to consider all of Vermont as having decided to "opt out" because it's too expensive to have two systems based on where the customer is located. The solution is obvious-- use the "opt in" system everywhere.
Actually, the FAA is trying to port one of their air traffic management systems to Linux for the sole purpose of saving HP/UX license fees.
I'm getting tired of having to choose between a $75 book with 1200 pages and a $70 book with 1150 pages. Whatever happened to concise text? Doesn't anyone at the publisher actually try to carry these monsters around any more? Let's get back to basics and not have any more of these 2 kilogram wonders with 18 faces on the cover....
I used to open hard drives all the time back in the 80's. The company I was working at had bought about 40 Seagate hard drives (30Mb RLL,if memory serves). Most of them developed a problem within a year or two where the motor could no longer supply enough force to spin up when the PC was turned on in the morning (possibly due to sticky bearings in the platter axle). I would typically open the computer and pop the top off the drive. Then I would apply power to the PC and simultaneously twist the platter hub with my finger. Once the platter was turning the drive would spin up to speed normally. I'd pack it all back together with the drive still spinning. The drive would usually survive another week or two before it would stick again. Eventually I'd get a replacement and do one last "manual spin up" in order to make a disk-to-disk backup.
The lids on those drives weren't much thicker than aluminum foil, and it was quite common to hear the hub grinding away at the cover if even a little bit of pressure was applied to the cover.
Ahh. Those were the days....
I wonder if they'll talk at all about the trend of local cable companies to sell "Superbowl" commercials to local businesses. One of my local radio stations is reminding all the listeners to tune in to see their commercial. The cable company up here regularly inserts local advertising during international event coverage. They even replace advertising on CNN with ads for their own local news station.
Would it be in SuSE's best interests to cooperate with Gravenreuth by negotiating in secret, or would they be better off issuing public statements that name the program involved and publicize the extortion tactics used by this lawyer?
You could always put the relay satellite into the leading or trailing Lagrange points, as long as you were willing to displace the radio observatory far enough away from the center of the far side to put the Lagrange point above the horizon. You'd need some strong batteries in the birds to cover the distances involved.
Since we want the base on the dark side of the moon, we do in fact need some way to talk to it. One possibility is of course putting up a satellite around the moon, and whenever it flys over the telescope picking up the data and sending it back during it's next pass near the earth.
Using periodic satellites to perform store-and-forward relaying would imply a limited duty cycle on the observatory unless the transmission speeds (and orbit speed) are significantly higher than the dish's sampling rate. Continuous transmission would make more sense, and could be accomplished either by Lagrange relay or by routing the signal over the surface as you described. Surface routing is probably better as it's possible to set up redundant paths to reduce the potential for single-point failures.
to prevent manual moderation until a story line has generated at least 100 non-AC, non-troll messages. Otherwise the first (real) posts get modded up simply because they get more visibility in the expanded tree, while the later gems are lost in the collapsed tree.
-military personnel
-police personnel
-fire sqads
-paramedics, doctors and nurses
-lots of personnel in the transport industry
They're called "essential services".
I'm an Air Traffic Controller. I usually manage to get Christmas off (which I don't really care about) but have been forced to work Boxing Day morning every year (when I'd really rather be shopping). I've also been scheduled to work 8 of the last 10 New Year's Eve midnight shifts. Oh well.
My job ranks up there with IT in the pay and comfort categories, but at least I don't have to worry about stock market heebie-jeebies killing my employer and leaving me "dot-jobless".
The reason I suggested using the USB Flash device is that it cuts the "time to market" due to the fact that the hardware already exists and is small enough to fit on your key ring (no, the *other* key ring :-P). All we have to do is put together the software to use it. Using a combination of stored keys and PIN is obviously more secure, but the market for an intelligent hardware encryption device is going to be vary small, at least in the short term. It would be just as practical (but less portable) to carry a biometric device around and just use your thumb print to unlock your computer.
Yes, there would be a risk that the authorities would confiscate *any* device and unlock your system, but that assumes they have a reason to search you or your home/office. One of the concerns addressed by the USB device is the use of a virus to read your keystrokes. All we are really avoiding is the ability for someone to search your computer *without your knowledge*, such as might happen if the authorities were casting a wide net for suspects. This is the same reason people encrypt email-- not to prevent decryption in the case of arrest, but to prevent someone from evesdropping.