I know the whole article is a troll, but I can't resist commenting anyway:
10. Osborne I
No big deal. Not worthy of the list. It was neither the first portable (which was the IBM 5100) nor the best-selling. It has the distinction of being the goofiest portable with the most ridiculously-small display ever. The Kaypro II was more of a milestone, more useable and more practical and more widely available.
9. PCs Limited Turbo
If we're going to call attention to clone manufacturers, then Compaq should be here. And Compaq's 386 was the first 80386-based PC on the market. PC's limited was just one of the many clone manufacturers who's main distinction was that they didn't end up going out of business early on.
8. Tandy Sensation
It seems me and almost everyone else on the planet don't know what this computer is doing here. I have to assume Mr. Silverman has a warehouse full of these doorstops he's trying to inflate the value of.
7. Commodore Amiga A1000
Worthy of being on the list, mainly because, like many Apple models, what it lacked in large-scale consumer acceptance, it made up for in loyalty and user satisfaction. Computers like the Amiga (Apple Lisa, NeXT, Tandy 1000, etc.), if more widely accepted, might have set the industry in a different direction.
6. Commodore 64
Worthy of the list as well. This PC was many peoples' first introduction to the PC world.
5. MITS Altair 8800
No list would be complete without this computer, but the company with which it's included is inconsistent with whatever point Mr. Silverman is trying to make (beyond getting attention by inciting the tech community with his ignorance).
4. Apple II; 3. Apple Macintosh; 2. IBM PC 5150;
All worthy.
1. Compaq Portable PC.
This might be a worthy addition to the list, but not as the top spot and not at the expense of listing many more important computers, specifically the TRS-80 (Models I and III), or many of Tandy's innovations in this field including the Pocket Computer, PC100 (Kyocera), and Color Computer. Many people have listed a lot of early clones, such as the Leading Edge. And IBM's XT was also a pioneer in taking computing to the next level with its 10MB hard drive. As for portables, the Compaq Portable III was more "important" and truly more portable than the monster that was the Model I.
I also got several votes for the Texas Instruments 99/4A. These seemed to come largely from people who identified themselves as programmers, which is one reason I didn't put it on the list. It was a bigger influence on the geek community than on Joe & Jane User.
Mr. Silverman is really mischaracertizing his whole article, and statements such as above explemplify the distance between his knowledge and experience and the reality of the early computer industry.
In the early days, people purchased computers to "program" them. Part of the fun was taking a machine and teaching it to do new things. He should more-aptly rename his list to the, "Top 10 computer-controlled consumer devices of all time" because there is a difference.
Again, not listing the TRS-80 on the list is gross negligence. The TRS-80 was the most popular computer in the world for many more years than most of the other computer models were even around. Even if one panders to Mr. Silverman's goofball rationale of ignoring computers seemingly built for "nerds", more people used TRS-80s for business applications than Apple in most of the early years.
And what the hell is the MITS Altair doing on the list then? Make up your mind. Either you're going to give props to the computers that were most influential, or the ones who ran the most ads in Byte magazine that 7 people in Virginia actually purchased (namely the Tandy Sensation - a computer I still haven't ever seen even though I owned every other computer on his list, as well as dozens of others). But make up your mind. Your list isn't either.
It's amazing. I didn't think he could take his suck-ass list and make it even worse, but he did. If anything, this proves that dorks like this are yanking the chain of the tech community and laughing as they bask in their 15 minutes of attention.
Didn't Einstein prove that forward time travel is possible, if only on a potentially miniscule scale? The faster you move through space, the slower you move through time, so if you were to accelerate yourself close to the speed of light, you could theoretically slow back down and be in the future? I am of the belief that travelling back in time is theoretically improbable but not into the future.
This would be cool. With open-source biotech, it would likely be a matter of months before we'd have single-celled creatures capable of administering Quake servers!
The way I figure, the E.U. is going to take some cues from the U.S. in dealings such as this. They'll nod amiably, appear to agree to the terms, then do whatever the hell they want, and if they're caught, they'll find some insignificant person within the organization and say it was his fault.
The biggest problem with "sex crimes", specifically when it comes to pedophilia and statuatory rape, is the shame that the victim carries around with him/her. I've dated a few women who have been sexually abused by people in their family and parents' friends. It's totally sick, but they would never turn in the perpetrator, so they live with this shame and it results in distrust and dysfunction in every aspect of their lives.
Enforcement is important, but it's more important to talk about these crimes and encourage people to not feel shame if they've been a victim, seek professional help and deal with it. There are too many people who hide away with these dark secrets and the damage done after the fact makes the original action pale in comparison. Databases, tracking and harsher penalties will never help heal the damage done, which is a critical aspect of these crimes that needs to be brought to the forefront.
It doesn't matter whether we're talking about SCO, Microsoft, the DMCA, RIAA, or Michael Jackson. The new get-rich-quick or save-your-ass business model is now based on seeing who can legally travel the farthest on the gas they have in their tank.
I was browsing a local windows network I set up the other day and saw a shared folder that was NOT previously made shareable. It seems one of the new Windows patches re-enables the "shared documents" folder on the network, and in explorer it's misleading because it doesn't use the standard "hand-looking" shared folder icon. I am really sick of this intentional and misleading crap by Microsoft! Apple should set a higher standard in this area by making sure everything is straightforward and on high security by default.
IMO, the problem with "art" is that it becomes less creative expression and more financial transaction when money is the motivating factor.
We all want artists to be supported in their efforts, but I think part of what composes the integrity of many forms of creative expression is the lack of a clear subsidizing/transactional relationship.
In other words, true artists could care less about DRM.
Q. What is the plural of virus? A. Viruses. It is not viri, or (which is worse) virii. True, the word comes directly from Latin, but not all Latin words ending in -us have -i as their plural. Besides, viri is the Latin word for 'men' (plural of vir, man, the root the English virile). There is in fact no written attestation of a Latin plural of virus.
If you would like to pursue the subject further, see the excellent article What's the Plural of `Virus'? at Perl.com. If you have some knowledge of linguistics and Latin, you might be interested in the morphological analysis of the word from the Perseus Project.
As opposed to spending their valuable time posting to Slashdot, perhaps?
I'll have you know I'm posting this while waiting for the latest results from the petri dish cultures!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!! I'd write more but I think I'm on the verge of implementing the first cranberry-sauce-based forward-propagating neural net and I must get back to my research!
Several months back, I started noticing attempted DNS zone transfers originating from Netcraft. Some of their attempts to inventory the Internet are IMO, invasive and unethical. It's one thing to scan public IP addresses. It's another to pretend to be a secondary DNS and ask someone's system to send you a complete list of all their hosts and related information.
Yes, Spamcop, I remember that brilliant service. The biggest easiest email-DOS there is. Go over to their website and check out the fine print:
SpamCop administrators do not, and cannot verify the claims made by it's users. Not only are there simply far too many reports filed for anyone to manually review them, but even if we were to, there is no way for us to know whether a user actually did or did not solicit a message prior to reporting it as spam.
Therefore, it is trivial to DOS a domain:
You obviously know very little about Spamcop. Spamcop doesn't DOS anything. Spamcop's RBL encourages exactly the opposite. It keeps spammers from DOSing everyone else. It also helps id the real source of spam so innocent victims of forged spam are not DOS'd by bounces and the [responsible] ISP from which the spammer is operating can take action to stop this as quickly as possible.
As far as abusing the reporting system, every system can be abused. And Spamcop and other responsible services have means to deal with it. That's no excuse to deny the value of the service. Should we not use cars because some people have run down pedestrians? Should we dismantle the telephone system because people make crank calls? Get real.
Let me also add that in your case, you're talking about POP3 (inbound) services and not SMTP (outbound). The whole, "i can create my own temporary e-mail accounts to thwart spammers" is irrelevant. Sending and receiving mail are completely different systems. Anyone running an inbound, mail-receiving server would not be regulated. They would merely have the choice as to whether they wanted to accept only mail from whitelisted systems or not.
Unless you're an upper-level ISP, you probably are paying someone else for Internet connectivity, and therefore have the use of their outbound mail relays. It would be their responsibility to choose whether they wanted their server to be "registered" and if there was a centralized "whitelist", it would be of great benefit for them to participate.
What this basically boils down to is some TEETH that forces ISPs to actually enforce their Terms of Service. Almost all ISPs do not allow their customers to send out UCE. There is not way to regulate whether they enforce this or not. An SMTP whitelist would make sure they enforce their policies. If they choose not to, then at least other ISPs have the option of deciding if they want to deal with systems that have rejected the anti-UCE standard. It makes tons of sense and best of all, it has NOTHING to do with analyzing the content of mail and preserves the security and integrity of communication between parties. What other solution does that?
* Spread the word that the only realistic solution to spam is licensing outbound mail relays via a sanctioned body that is nowhere near as incompetent as ICANN. We need an opt-in, international SMTP mail relay whitelist with ethical rules for being included.
Sorry, I disagree. I (and by extension anybody) should be allowed to run whatever services they want so long as they do so in a responsible manner. For example I run my own incoming and outgoing mail server. I should not be prevented from running my own e-mail server simply because some individuals can not figure out (or care) how to set up their servers not to be an open relay.
I'm would never suggest you not have the freedom to run your own smtp server. But I bet you have your own domain, and how much hassle was it to get that registered? The same effort could be put into "registering" smtp relays (with perhaps a more substantive ethical enforcement). If you don't want to be part of the whitelist, that's your perrogative -- nobody's suggesting you can't still run your mail server, but some ISPs and other networks may choose to only accept mail from systems who are regulated and committed to not routing spam mail. If you don't intend on spamming, why would you have a problem with spending an extra five minutes to register with the whitelist and make a pledge that your participation in the list is contingent upon you not routing UCE? The whole process could be automated. And participation, both in terms of using the whitelist and subscribing would always be voluntary, but a central authority managing the list would have substantive power to impose such a very useful measure.
One of the reasons I run my own e-mail server is so that I can employ whatever blacklists and filters I want on the server side. Also, since I control the server, I can set-up 'throw-away' and temporary addresses for specific purposes. If I need to give an e-mail address to an entity I do not trust, I simply set up an alias specifically for that purpose. If I start receiving spam via that alias a.) I know where it came from and b.) I can get rid of the alias and avoid any future spam. Of course, if all smtp server had to be on a whitelist, I couldn't do this because I probably couldn't afford/meet the requirements for inclusion.
I do the same thing with my servers. Why do you think it would be so difficult participate in a SMTP whitelist? If you don't spam, and you don't run open relays, you register once and it's done. If you're running a rogue SMTP relay on non-static IPs, you're probably blacklisted already on dozens of open proxy servers, so it's in your best interest to "register" and agree to maintain ethical practices and be part of the whitelist. I don't see how it isn't a very practical, very effective solution.
I think the problem is ICANN has set a very bad example for how top-level Internet services should be managed and this has made everyone skeptical that any other regulatory bodies would be just as ineffective, but I disagree - we learn from the mistakes and uselessness of ICANN and improve upon it.
Not to downplay the problem, but I've always been able to manage spam simply by setting up a decent set of client-side filters (yes, I know this still causes problems on the server side). At least in my experiance, spam is not a big enough problem to warrant crippling e-mail.
The e-mail system is already crippled because of spam. Major ISPs have unnecessary delays because of the volume of noise-mail and the measure they have to put in place to deal with spam. Peoples' mailboxes reach their quota will crap and then reject all other (as well as legit) mail.
My idea is all about: a) making sure that legitimate mail gets through and b) bandwidth/resources are not stolen by spammers. This is the only solution I've found that actually can address the issue in a realistic manner. It's obvious you don't pay based on your bandwidth, but for
As I said in my message, the same advertising constructs apply to television that are being employed on TV: bombard the user with repetitive messages interrupting the content they're there in the first place to view. Not to mention the fact that in many cases, we're seing the same campaigns on tv as in spam (home mortgage offers, penis enlargement, porn/girls-gone-wild, "free" software deals, etc.) This issue is larger than the Internet.
Forgotten (or ignored) in the cited rant, the law before congress now also mandates a "Do Not Spam" list. This would make moot the question over how the spam was labeled, questions about opt-out, and everything else. It would make it illegal to spam you in any case.
1. Almost all spam is already illegal. This bill doesn't change the status quo. Header forging, relay hijacking, computer tampering, etc., are felonies in most areas.
2. The bill does not address the most important issue of how the 'illegal' activity would be enforced, or whether it would be. The authorities have a clear track record of not pursuing these cases and this bill doesn't address that problem one bit.
3. You'd be really naive to think an opt-out list would work. Spammers operate in anonymously and misrepresent themselves differently in each and every campaign. Tracking them down is the problem.
4. There's no provision to address international issues. An opt-out list would only apply to the U.S. and it would take 10ms for a spammer to get around that loophole.
5. You speak of whitelisting... yes, a whitelist would work, but an smtp whitelist, not an e-mail address whitelist. An e-mail opt-out list would be a veritible gold mine for spammers.
6. An opt-out list would also represent a huge privacy invasion, as demonstrated with the do-not-call list, which allowed AT&T to create a massive IP-based identity database. If anyone used a static IP connection to register for the do-not-call list, AT&T now can identify exactly who you are and what you do online like never before. An opt-out e-mail list would be just as bad.
The IP identity database is the biggest threat to online personal privacy ever. And worst of all, there are really no enforceable privacy laws for anyone over the age of 13. AT&T is now sitting on top of one of the most valuable and revealing databases ever created of online users, and they can likely sell or use this database however they'd like. Of course, they're probably not even going to acknowledge its existence but we all know they and several other companies, (like one starting with "Cyv") are doing just this.
The real solution is e-postage. But for that, a federal do-not-spam list is a good idea.
Why do people actually think there's any way such a system would ever work, much less be practical?
I think we're preaching to the choir complaining about the effectiveness of the bill here, but it might not be a bad idea to address what someone else mentioned, of using technology, but NOT to deal with the spam problem. In truth, this isn't a spam problem, this is a law-enforcement, political priority problem.
Maybe this has been done before, but if not, it seems like a great idea:
How about if we get everyone within their local calling region with the resources to hang a modem on their PC and map an e-mail address that goes directly to the fax machine of their local senators, representatives and district attorneys?
While letting spammers hit these e-mails and bombard politicians' fax machines seems appealing, it might be even more effective to make it very easy for people within their regions to send an e-mail that goes to a politicians' fax machine. (We know most of them don't read e-mail)
I'd be willing to do this in my region. What if we got enough people to do this so we had a nationwide network of e-mail/fax gateways? It seems it would be much more effective to bombard a politician's fax machine with frustrated cries from their constitutients than home-mortgage scams.
Politicians are useless. Law enforcement bodies don't even have cyber-crime issues anywhere on their priority list, much less the resources to fight it.
I encourage the population to engage in a number of active efforts to negate the value all these advertisers have, and their tendency now to bombard us all into oblivion with their repetitive, misleading and obnoxious messages.
* When you get spam, report it to Spamcop. Don't even bother with cutting-and-pasting the html source, the web hosting companies of spammers don't care about complaints. Make sure the complaints go to the ISPs who manage the IP space the spammer is operating from. But more importantly, when you report spam to spamcop, the source gets immediately flagged as a spammer and thousands of systems around the world refuse to accept mail from the source. It's VERY effective and the sooner you report spam, the more effective it is. The crap messages don't even get to peoples' mail servers this way. It WORKS!
* Turn off your TV and refuse to let yourself be turned into a quivering ADHD blob with the constant barrage of commercial suggestions. If you must watch TV, do yourself a favor and get a TiVo (it will be the best money you ever spent) and record what you want, when you want, take back your life and best of all skip the commercials!
* If you're feeling the need to waste time complaining, send a letter to your congressman and senators telling them that if they don't put more resources into cyber-crime enforcement you'll make it the center of your life to ensure they can't get elected to anything ever again.
* Spread the word that the only realistic solution to spam is licensing outbound mail relays via a sanctioned body that is nowhere near as incompetent as ICANN. We need an opt-in, international SMTP mail relay whitelist with ethical rules for being included.
* If you've had any bad experiences with companies who've ripped you off, do us all a favor and put up a web page on it and list it with the search engines. Peoples' apathy towards getting railroaded encourges the continuation of these scams. Know someone who's been burned by home-mortgage scams? Publish it! Put it out there forever. Every little bit helps to educate the feebleminded populace,make them more skeptical of suggestions (as well as editorial packaged as "news") and negate the value of quantum advertising.
* Forget client-side e-mail filtering as a spam solution. It will never work and it is a black hole of resources, time and money. Filtering is good for viruses and idiots who still insist on clicking attachments, but it won't ever do much for the spam problem.
* Encourage your ISP to employ relay blacklisting to thwart spammers so they can't even connect to remote systems.
* If you still find yourself occasionally watching tv and are annoyed at misleading ad campaigns, do what I do: dial the 1-800 number repeatedly over the course of the commercial's airing, making the advertiser's efforts counterproductive and sending a message that you're tired of being bombarded, emotionally manipulated and lied to.
* Don't buy any products advertised in any manner in which you find offensive or annoying regardless of the quality/desireability of the product.
* If you still feel your penis isn't big enough, just go to the local store and buy some multi-vitamins or just deal with it. You don't need a bigger penis, newer car, a George Forman grill, closet organizer, no-money-down real estate, second mortgage, questionable mexican placebos packaged as drugs, or to see Holly hump a German Shephard. Pick up the phone and go hang out with friends who like you for who you are and don't buy into the media's constant message that you're inadequate and money will solve this.
He says he's ranking the most "important" PCs, but I don't even remember some of those systems. The "Tandy Sensation" at #8? What the hell was *that*?
I've never even heard of that PC. That's ridiculous.
Personally, the Tandy 2000 was way ahead of its time, with superior graphics and more innovation than its peers but they didn't sell enough so it floundered.
The article does not indicate the guy really was involved in the early days of computing - it seems he filled in the blanks based on research more than being out there in the field.
I'm not sure what he means by "most important" - that's the caveat. "Most important" based on him browsing through advertisements in old issues of Byte magazine probably.
Clearly, the TRS-80 should be among the list. It was the first successfully-marketed and mass-produced PC.
The Kaypro should also be listed - it was more "important" than the Compaq portable. Though I still have a Compaq portable III with the gas plasma display in a closet somewhere - that was an innovative computer for the time, but it was following in the footsteps of the Kaypro and earlier portables. NEC, from my memory came out with the first mass-produced computer that would be considered a "laptop" - I had one of those as well. I forget the name - but it's worthy of the list.
The Compaq worthy of mention in the list would be the Compaq 386 - the first at the time to take advantage of the faster processor - ahead of IBM.
I would also note that the TRS80 Model II was the first mass-produced PC that was geared for hard core business use, even though it didn't do well (and there were others like Cromemco that were popular - not sure if those were legiti microcomputers or minis - my memory isn't what is used to be).
Other notable mentions: Timex/Sinclair - the first ultra-cheap, bare bones PC; the Texas Instruments TI99/4a, the Commodore Pet, Tandy Color Computer, and probably many more I'm forgetting.
This makes me wonder if this could be the next spamming technique if it's not already in use? Wardrive through a neighborhood and jack into someone's network and send out spam.
Slashdot Mirror
I know the whole article is a troll, but I can't resist commenting anyway:
10. Osborne I
No big deal. Not worthy of the list. It was neither the first portable (which was the IBM 5100) nor the best-selling. It has the distinction of being the goofiest portable with the most ridiculously-small display ever. The Kaypro II was more of a milestone, more useable and more practical and more widely available.
9. PCs Limited Turbo
If we're going to call attention to clone manufacturers, then Compaq should be here. And Compaq's 386 was the first 80386-based PC on the market. PC's limited was just one of the many clone manufacturers who's main distinction was that they didn't end up going out of business early on.
8. Tandy Sensation
It seems me and almost everyone else on the planet don't know what this computer is doing here. I have to assume Mr. Silverman has a warehouse full of these doorstops he's trying to inflate the value of.
7. Commodore Amiga A1000
Worthy of being on the list, mainly because, like many Apple models, what it lacked in large-scale consumer acceptance, it made up for in loyalty and user satisfaction. Computers like the Amiga (Apple Lisa, NeXT, Tandy 1000, etc.), if more widely accepted, might have set the industry in a different direction.
6. Commodore 64
Worthy of the list as well. This PC was many peoples' first introduction to the PC world.
5. MITS Altair 8800
No list would be complete without this computer, but the company with which it's included is inconsistent with whatever point Mr. Silverman is
trying to make (beyond getting attention by inciting the tech community with his ignorance).
4. Apple II; 3. Apple Macintosh; 2. IBM PC 5150;
All worthy.
1. Compaq Portable PC.
This might be a worthy addition to the list, but not as the top spot and not at the expense of listing many more important computers, specifically the TRS-80 (Models I and III), or many of Tandy's innovations in this field including the Pocket Computer, PC100 (Kyocera), and Color Computer. Many people have listed a lot of early clones, such as the Leading Edge. And IBM's XT was also a pioneer in taking computing to the next level with its 10MB hard drive. As for portables, the Compaq Portable III was more "important" and truly more portable than the monster that was the Model I.
Mr. Silverman is really mischaracertizing his whole article, and statements such as above explemplify the distance between his knowledge and experience and the reality of the early computer industry.
In the early days, people purchased computers to "program" them. Part of the fun was taking a machine and teaching it to do new things. He should more-aptly rename his list to the, "Top 10 computer-controlled consumer devices of all time" because there is a difference.
Again, not listing the TRS-80 on the list is gross negligence. The TRS-80 was the most popular computer in the world for many more years than most of the other computer models were even around. Even if one panders to Mr. Silverman's goofball rationale of ignoring computers seemingly built for "nerds", more people used TRS-80s for business applications than Apple in most of the early years.
And what the hell is the MITS Altair doing on the list then? Make up your mind. Either you're going to give props to the computers that were most influential, or the ones who ran the most ads in Byte magazine that 7 people in Virginia actually purchased (namely the Tandy Sensation - a computer I still haven't ever seen even though I owned every other computer on his list, as well as dozens of others). But make up your mind. Your list isn't either.
It's amazing. I didn't think he could take his suck-ass list and make it even worse, but he did. If anything, this proves that dorks like this are yanking the chain of the tech community and laughing as they bask in their 15 minutes of attention.
Didn't Einstein prove that forward time travel is possible, if only on a potentially miniscule scale? The faster you move through space, the slower you move through time, so if you were to accelerate yourself close to the speed of light, you could theoretically slow back down and be in the future? I am of the belief that travelling back in time is theoretically improbable but not into the future.
This would be cool. With open-source biotech, it would likely be a matter of months before we'd have single-celled creatures capable of administering Quake servers!
The way I figure, the E.U. is going to take some cues from the U.S. in dealings such as this. They'll nod amiably, appear to agree to the terms, then do whatever the hell they want, and if they're caught, they'll find some insignificant person within the organization and say it was his fault.
The biggest problem with "sex crimes", specifically when it comes to pedophilia and statuatory rape, is the shame that the victim carries around with him/her. I've dated a few women who have been sexually abused by people in their family and parents' friends. It's totally sick, but they would never turn in the perpetrator, so they live with this shame and it results in distrust and dysfunction in every aspect of their lives.
Enforcement is important, but it's more important to talk about these crimes and encourage people to not feel shame if they've been a victim, seek professional help and deal with it. There are too many people who hide away with these dark secrets and the damage done after the fact makes the original action pale in comparison. Databases, tracking and harsher penalties will never help heal the damage done, which is a critical aspect of these crimes that needs to be brought to the forefront.
Is anyone surprised?
It doesn't matter whether we're talking about SCO, Microsoft, the DMCA, RIAA, or Michael Jackson. The new get-rich-quick or save-your-ass business model is now based on seeing who can legally travel the farthest on the gas they have in their tank.
I was browsing a local windows network I set up the other day and saw a shared folder that was NOT previously made shareable. It seems one of the new Windows patches re-enables the "shared documents" folder on the network, and in explorer it's misleading because it doesn't use the standard "hand-looking" shared folder icon. I am really sick of this intentional and misleading crap by Microsoft! Apple should set a higher standard in this area by making sure everything is straightforward and on high security by default.
IMO, the problem with "art" is that it becomes less creative expression and more financial transaction when money is the motivating factor.
We all want artists to be supported in their efforts, but I think part of what composes the integrity of many forms of creative expression is the lack of a clear subsidizing/transactional relationship.
In other words, true artists could care less about DRM.
mis-attributed the first reference to dictionary.com - my apologies... it's actually dictionary.reference.com
From dictonary.com:
Q. What is the plural of virus?
A. Viruses.
It is not viri, or (which is worse) virii. True, the word comes directly from Latin, but not all Latin words ending in -us have -i as their plural. Besides, viri is the Latin word for 'men' (plural of vir, man, the root the English virile). There is in fact no written attestation of a Latin plural of virus.
If you would like to pursue the subject further, see the excellent article What's the Plural of `Virus'? at Perl.com. If you have some knowledge of linguistics and Latin, you might be interested in the morphological analysis of the word from the Perseus Project.
As opposed to spending their valuable time posting to Slashdot, perhaps?
I'll have you know I'm posting this while waiting for the latest results from the petri dish cultures!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!! I'd write more but I think I'm on the verge of implementing the first cranberry-sauce-based forward-propagating neural net and I must get back to my research!
The greatest minds of our generation are too busy trying to get animatronic fish to sing, "Livin' La Vida Loco!"
Several months back, I started noticing attempted DNS zone transfers originating from Netcraft. Some of their attempts to inventory the Internet are IMO, invasive and unethical. It's one thing to scan public IP addresses. It's another to pretend to be a secondary DNS and ask someone's system to send you a complete list of all their hosts and related information.
Yes, Spamcop, I remember that brilliant service. The biggest easiest email-DOS there is. Go over to their website and check out the fine print:
SpamCop administrators do not, and cannot verify the claims made by it's users. Not only are there simply far too many reports filed for anyone to manually review them, but even if we were to, there is no way for us to know whether a user actually did or did not solicit a message prior to reporting it as spam.
Therefore, it is trivial to DOS a domain:
You obviously know very little about Spamcop. Spamcop doesn't DOS anything. Spamcop's RBL encourages exactly the opposite. It keeps spammers from DOSing everyone else. It also helps id the real source of spam so innocent victims of forged spam are not DOS'd by bounces and the [responsible] ISP from which the spammer is operating can take action to stop this as quickly as possible.
As far as abusing the reporting system, every system can be abused. And Spamcop and other responsible services have means to deal with it. That's no excuse to deny the value of the service. Should we not use cars because some people have run down pedestrians? Should we dismantle the telephone system because people make crank calls? Get real.
Let me also add that in your case, you're talking about POP3 (inbound) services and not SMTP (outbound). The whole, "i can create my own temporary e-mail accounts to thwart spammers" is irrelevant. Sending and receiving mail are completely different systems. Anyone running an inbound, mail-receiving server would not be regulated. They would merely have the choice as to whether they wanted to accept only mail from whitelisted systems or not.
Unless you're an upper-level ISP, you probably are paying someone else for Internet connectivity, and therefore have the use of their outbound mail relays. It would be their responsibility to choose whether they wanted their server to be "registered" and if there was a centralized "whitelist", it would be of great benefit for them to participate.
What this basically boils down to is some TEETH that forces ISPs to actually enforce their Terms of Service. Almost all ISPs do not allow their customers to send out UCE. There is not way to regulate whether they enforce this or not. An SMTP whitelist would make sure they enforce their policies. If they choose not to, then at least other ISPs have the option of deciding if they want to deal with systems that have rejected the anti-UCE standard. It makes tons of sense and best of all, it has NOTHING to do with analyzing the content of mail and preserves the security and integrity of communication between parties. What other solution does that?
I'm would never suggest you not have the freedom to run your own smtp server. But I bet you have your own domain, and how much hassle was it to get that registered? The same effort could be put into "registering" smtp relays (with perhaps a more substantive ethical enforcement). If you don't want to be part of the whitelist, that's your perrogative -- nobody's suggesting you can't still run your mail server, but some ISPs and other networks may choose to only accept mail from systems who are regulated and committed to not routing spam mail. If you don't intend on spamming, why would you have a problem with spending an extra five minutes to register with the whitelist and make a pledge that your participation in the list is contingent upon you not routing UCE? The whole process could be automated. And participation, both in terms of using the whitelist and subscribing would always be voluntary, but a central authority managing the list would have substantive power to impose such a very useful measure.
One of the reasons I run my own e-mail server is so that I can employ whatever blacklists and filters I want on the server side. Also, since I control the server, I can set-up 'throw-away' and temporary addresses for specific purposes. If I need to give an e-mail address to an entity I do not trust, I simply set up an alias specifically for that purpose. If I start receiving spam via that alias a.) I know where it came from and b.) I can get rid of the alias and avoid any future spam. Of course, if all smtp server had to be on a whitelist, I couldn't do this because I probably couldn't afford/meet the requirements for inclusion.
I do the same thing with my servers. Why do you think it would be so difficult participate in a SMTP whitelist? If you don't spam, and you don't run open relays, you register once and it's done. If you're running a rogue SMTP relay on non-static IPs, you're probably blacklisted already on dozens of open proxy servers, so it's in your best interest to "register" and agree to maintain ethical practices and be part of the whitelist. I don't see how it isn't a very practical, very effective solution.
I think the problem is ICANN has set a very bad example for how top-level Internet services should be managed and this has made everyone skeptical that any other regulatory bodies would be just as ineffective, but I disagree - we learn from the mistakes and uselessness of ICANN and improve upon it.
Not to downplay the problem, but I've always been able to manage spam simply by setting up a decent set of client-side filters (yes, I know this still causes problems on the server side). At least in my experiance, spam is not a big enough problem to warrant crippling e-mail.
The e-mail system is already crippled because of spam. Major ISPs have unnecessary delays because of the volume of noise-mail and the measure they have to put in place to deal with spam. Peoples' mailboxes reach their quota will crap and then reject all other (as well as legit) mail.
My idea is all about: a) making sure that legitimate mail gets through and b) bandwidth/resources are not stolen by spammers. This is the only solution I've found that actually can address the issue in a realistic manner. It's obvious you don't pay based on your bandwidth, but for
As I said in my message, the same advertising constructs apply to television that are being employed on TV: bombard the user with repetitive messages interrupting the content they're there in the first place to view. Not to mention the fact that in many cases, we're seing the same campaigns on tv as in spam (home mortgage offers, penis enlargement, porn/girls-gone-wild, "free" software deals, etc.) This issue is larger than the Internet.
Forgotten (or ignored) in the cited rant, the law before congress now also mandates a "Do Not Spam" list. This would make moot the question over how the spam was labeled, questions about opt-out, and everything else. It would make it illegal to spam you in any case.
1. Almost all spam is already illegal. This bill doesn't change the status quo. Header forging, relay hijacking, computer tampering, etc., are felonies in most areas.
2. The bill does not address the most important issue of how the 'illegal' activity would be enforced, or whether it would be. The authorities have a clear track record of not pursuing these cases and this bill doesn't address that problem one bit.
3. You'd be really naive to think an opt-out list would work. Spammers operate in anonymously and misrepresent themselves differently in each and every campaign. Tracking them down is the problem.
4. There's no provision to address international issues. An opt-out list would only apply to the U.S. and it would take 10ms for a spammer to get around that loophole.
5. You speak of whitelisting... yes, a whitelist would work, but an smtp whitelist, not an e-mail address whitelist. An e-mail opt-out list would be a veritible gold mine for spammers.
6. An opt-out list would also represent a huge privacy invasion, as demonstrated with the do-not-call list, which allowed AT&T to create a massive IP-based identity database. If anyone used a static IP connection to register for the do-not-call list, AT&T now can identify exactly who you are and what you do online like never before. An opt-out e-mail list would be just as bad.
The IP identity database is the biggest threat to online personal privacy ever. And worst of all, there are really no enforceable privacy laws for anyone over the age of 13. AT&T is now sitting on top of one of the most valuable and revealing databases ever created of online users, and they can likely sell or use this database however they'd like. Of course, they're probably not even going to acknowledge its existence but we all know they and several other companies, (like one starting with "Cyv") are doing just this.
The real solution is e-postage. But for that, a federal do-not-spam list is a good idea.
Why do people actually think there's any way such a system would ever work, much less be practical?
I think we're preaching to the choir complaining about the effectiveness of the bill here, but it might not be a bad idea to address what someone else mentioned, of using technology, but NOT to deal with the spam problem. In truth, this isn't a spam problem, this is a law-enforcement, political priority problem.
Maybe this has been done before, but if not, it seems like a great idea:
How about if we get everyone within their local calling region with the resources to hang a modem on their PC and map an e-mail address that goes directly to the fax machine of their local senators, representatives and district attorneys?
While letting spammers hit these e-mails and bombard politicians' fax machines seems appealing, it might be even more effective to make it very easy for people within their regions to send an e-mail that goes to a politicians' fax machine. (We know most of them don't read e-mail)
I'd be willing to do this in my region. What if we got enough people to do this so we had a nationwide network of e-mail/fax gateways? It seems it would be much more effective to bombard a politician's fax machine with frustrated cries from their constitutients than home-mortgage scams.
Politicians are useless. Law enforcement bodies don't even have cyber-crime issues anywhere on their priority list, much less the resources to fight it.
I encourage the population to engage in a number of active efforts to negate the value all these advertisers have, and their tendency now to bombard us all into oblivion with their repetitive, misleading and obnoxious messages.
* When you get spam, report it to Spamcop. Don't even bother with cutting-and-pasting the html source, the web hosting companies of spammers don't care about complaints. Make sure the complaints go to the ISPs who manage the IP space the spammer is operating from. But more importantly, when you report spam to spamcop, the source gets immediately flagged as a spammer and thousands of systems around the world refuse to accept mail from the source. It's VERY effective and the sooner you report spam, the more effective it is. The crap messages don't even get to peoples' mail servers this way. It WORKS!
* Turn off your TV and refuse to let yourself be turned into a quivering ADHD blob with the constant barrage of commercial suggestions. If you must watch TV, do yourself a favor and get a TiVo (it will be the best money you ever spent) and record what you want, when you want, take back your life and best of all skip the commercials!
* If you're feeling the need to waste time complaining, send a letter to your congressman and senators telling them that if they don't put more resources into cyber-crime enforcement you'll make it the center of your life to ensure they can't get elected to anything ever again.
* Spread the word that the only realistic solution to spam is licensing outbound mail relays via a sanctioned body that is nowhere near as incompetent as ICANN. We need an opt-in, international SMTP mail relay whitelist with ethical rules for being included.
* If you've had any bad experiences with companies who've ripped you off, do us all a favor and put up a web page on it and list it with the search engines. Peoples' apathy towards getting railroaded encourges the continuation of these scams. Know someone who's been burned by home-mortgage scams? Publish it! Put it out there forever. Every little bit helps to educate the feebleminded populace,make them more skeptical of suggestions (as well as editorial packaged as "news") and negate the value of quantum advertising.
* Forget client-side e-mail filtering as a spam solution. It will never work and it is a black hole of resources, time and money. Filtering is good for viruses and idiots who still insist on clicking attachments, but it won't ever do much for the spam problem.
* Encourage your ISP to employ relay blacklisting to thwart spammers so they can't even connect to remote systems.
* If you still find yourself occasionally watching tv and are annoyed at misleading ad campaigns, do what I do: dial the 1-800 number repeatedly over the course of the commercial's airing, making the advertiser's efforts counterproductive and sending a message that you're tired of being bombarded, emotionally manipulated and lied to.
* Don't buy any products advertised in any manner in which you find offensive or annoying regardless of the quality/desireability of the product.
* If you still feel your penis isn't big enough, just go to the local store and buy some multi-vitamins or just deal with it. You don't need a bigger penis, newer car, a George Forman grill, closet organizer, no-money-down real estate, second mortgage, questionable mexican placebos packaged as drugs, or to see Holly hump a German Shephard. Pick up the phone and go hang out with friends who like you for who you are and don't buy into the media's constant message that you're inadequate and money will solve this.
Let's not forget:
HEATHKIT H8 - (if I got the model number correct) that should be on the list...
He says he's ranking the most "important" PCs, but I don't even remember some of those systems. The "Tandy Sensation" at #8? What the hell was *that*?
I've never even heard of that PC. That's ridiculous.
Personally, the Tandy 2000 was way ahead of its time, with superior graphics and more innovation than its peers but they didn't sell enough so it floundered.
The article does not indicate the guy really was involved in the early days of computing - it seems he filled in the blanks based on research more than being out there in the field.
I'm not sure what he means by "most important" - that's the caveat. "Most important" based on him browsing through advertisements in old issues of Byte magazine probably.
Clearly, the TRS-80 should be among the list. It was the first successfully-marketed and mass-produced PC.
The Kaypro should also be listed - it was more "important" than the Compaq portable. Though I still have a Compaq portable III with the gas plasma display in a closet somewhere - that was an innovative computer for the time, but it was following in the footsteps of the Kaypro and earlier portables. NEC, from my memory came out with the first mass-produced computer that would be considered a "laptop" - I had one of those as well. I forget the name - but it's worthy of the list.
The Compaq worthy of mention in the list would be the Compaq 386 - the first at the time to take advantage of the faster processor - ahead of IBM.
I would also note that the TRS80 Model II was the first mass-produced PC that was geared for hard core business use, even though it didn't do well (and there were others like Cromemco that were popular - not sure if those were legiti microcomputers or minis - my memory isn't what is used to be).
Other notable mentions: Timex/Sinclair - the first ultra-cheap, bare bones PC; the Texas Instruments TI99/4a, the Commodore Pet, Tandy Color Computer, and probably many more I'm forgetting.
This makes me wonder if this could be the next spamming technique if it's not already in use? Wardrive through a neighborhood and jack into someone's network and send out spam.