No, I do not "get it", if "getting it" means singling out a one form of an accepted practice simply because it differs in scope to its relatives.
Why not? You have two similar, but not entirely analogous actions. One is vastly more damaging than the other. Why SHOULDN'T they be treated differently?
Differences between spam and direct mail:
Direct mail: pays the Post Office more than it costs to mail, and subsidizes first class mail.
Spam: pays a fraction of its costs, and often pays nothing, and is in such quantity that the majority of the cost of running a mail server is dealing with spam.
Direct mail: is limited by economics. The costs of a direct mailing, including materials, postage, and mailing lists, is upwards of 50c per address... and often several dollars per target.
Spam: has no economic limits, since the cost is negligible... and if it's sent by a botnet that cost is born by secondary victims.
Not analogous at all, when you compare them. No reason to treat them the same.
Should I be against spam for any other reason than I am annoyed by them?
Your argument might have carried some weight back in the mid '90s when spam was new and "a lot of spam" meant 30 or 40 messages a week.
The damage caused by spam is not mere annoyance.
The direct cost of spam was already outrageous by the end of the century. At one point in the '90s I was being charged $750 a month for excess traffic, just from the overhead of *rejected* spam. i had to drop whole *countries* at my router to get that under control. It's gotten to the point where spam is the overwhelming majority of email out there: less than half of one percent of the email connections to my server are for legitimate mail. That is, for every legitimate message, over 200 spams have to be handled, one way or another.
And even the SECONDARY cost of spam... things like incorrectly bounced and dropped mail... has long since passed 'unacceptable' and is now accelerating full tilt for the edge of the economic universe.
Ten years ago "I don't think spam should be any more illegal than billboards, flyers, or direct mailings." was a bad analogy, mister "Bad Analogy Guy". Now... you're either trolling or improbably naive.
Back in the late '70s I bought a book, published by NASA, that described the planned followons to the shuttle... based on using the Shuttle engines and launch system in other configurations, including a heavy lifter. This scheme was never followed through, but it should be.
There's a group of NASA engineers working on it again. They call it DIRECT 2.0.
If your boss asks you to do something illegal, don't. If he doesn't agree, you should probably be looking for a new job, already. If he's willing to play these kinds of games with another company, what makes you think he won't do the same to you?
I pay for extra bandwidth at roughly the same rate I pay for normal bandwidth
Lucky bastard. In the US, when you pay for extra traffic you generally pay at a hell of a premium rate. You can easily go into hundreds of dollars in overcharges.
The worst case is being on Telstra Bigpond (ex-government owned monopoly infrastructure provider), they initially provided 200meg plans for $30AUD and will charge you $150 per gigabyte you go over.
That's the kind of thing capped providers in the USA do.:(
This is not necessarily true at all. Look at an existing technology such as X509 Certificates.
I explicitly distinguished between "open source DRM" and "open source copy protection" because there are technologies like X.509 certificates that can be categorised as DRM but are not useful for copy protection.
To use X.509 certificates for copy protection, the player application would need to have an X.509 certificate that was shared by all instances of the application, but was not available to anything other than the player. To make this work, the certificate has to be stored in the application in a way that it is difficult to extract it. If the source code of the copy protection component of the player is available, then the attacker can simply read that code to see how to extract the certificate from the executable.
If THAT source code is not available, then it's not open source.
Because on Vista you get a prompt: "Your computer is being hacked. Cancel or Allow?"
Windows Airlines: The terminal is very neat and clean, with security barriers every few meters. The attendants are attractive, even if it's kind of creepy how much they want to "help" (especially in the restrooms). The pilots are allegedly very capable, though nobody ever sees them and there's an armed guard by the cockpit door. The fleet of jets it operates are immense. Your jet takes off without a hitch, pushing above the clouds, and at 20,000 feet a message pops up on the seat back in front of you asking "Should this plane explode now?".
Copy protection is not just DRM, it's DRM used stupidly. Copy protection involves giving someone an encrypted document, the key to decrypt it, and the algorithm to decrypt it. It only works because the code that combines the key and the algorithm is obscure. Either the location of the key is hidden, or the key is encrypted with a second key hidden in the code. Make the code visible, and there's no place left to hide it.
Unfortunately there seems to be some kind of inherent corruption in the way the antivirus industry operates. I'm sure that most of the individuals involved are as honest and honorable as they can possibly be. The problem isn't really in the people, it's the way they have to operate.
But the result is the same. Anything that comes out of there has to be treated with extreme skepticism, whether it's antivirus software for operating systems where there's not even a credible infection vector, or attempts at taking over operating system responsibilities, or the way they tiptoe around huge lacunae in Windows security model...
I'm beginning to think that the real definition of bandwidth has become as quaint and obsolete as the '70s definition of "hacker" as a computer whiz.:(
And it's Australia that seems to have the most problem with bandwidth caps - so far as I can tell it's universal there: you can't get an uncapped connection down under.
The way ISPs cap usage seems to be more abusive in the US, though (when there is a cap, that is). From what I understand you simply get throttled in Australia once you hit the cap. In the US you start paying overcharge rates instead.
Corporate migration to Vista will just about stop. The people who need it have already converted, and nobody else needs to spend the money, especially if a hardware upgrade is required. Microsoft will cave on XP life extension until Windows 7 works.
Windows 7 is Vista. It's already been scaled back from the original "Totally modular, new clean API, runs legacy Windows apps in Classic emulation" to "We're gonna pull some of the bloat out of Vista".
Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk storage, a screen resolution of 4096 x 4096 pixels, relies entirely on voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300. What's the first question that the computer community asks?
This kind of product has been out for years. Oh, this one probably has some option that all the others don't, but it's about as much "news" as "Dell's next laptop will come in olive green".
It's a one button mouse. That's absolute fact. There is only one button serving for left- and right- click. The fact that if you're lucky the capacitance sensor can be used to synthesize a right-click doesn't mean there's a right mouse button.
Absolute proof: if it was a two button mouse, then you could press with your index and middle fingers concurrently on either side of the mouse, and get a left-right chord... the left button and the right button clicked concurrently.
Most of the people who really get exercised about Apple's weird hardware are the ones who have to use it because they like the software, but don't care whether the hardware it runs on is silver, white, beige, or black, so long as it does what they need.
If I click on one side, it does one thing. If I click on the other side, it does something different.
If I click on one side, it does one thing. If I click on the other side, it sometimes does the same thing, and sometimes does something else, depending on whether I remember that this is a Batfink mouse with its stupid capacitance sensor or not and lift my index finger from the mouse when I click the right side with my middle finger.
I have similar problems with the trackpad and its stupid two-finger right-mouse-button-emulation scheme, in this case it's in making sure I hit the pad with my fingers together.
If you're a hotshit gamer you don't have a problem with it. My fingers are almost half a century old by now and are no longer the ones that got me the world high score in "food fight", so it makes a huge bloody difference, kid.
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No, I do not "get it", if "getting it" means singling out a one form of an accepted practice simply because it differs in scope to its relatives.
Why not? You have two similar, but not entirely analogous actions. One is vastly more damaging than the other. Why SHOULDN'T they be treated differently?
Differences between spam and direct mail:
Direct mail: pays the Post Office more than it costs to mail, and subsidizes first class mail.
Spam: pays a fraction of its costs, and often pays nothing, and is in such quantity that the majority of the cost of running a mail server is dealing with spam.
Direct mail: is limited by economics. The costs of a direct mailing, including materials, postage, and mailing lists, is upwards of 50c per address... and often several dollars per target.
Spam: has no economic limits, since the cost is negligible... and if it's sent by a botnet that cost is born by secondary victims.
Not analogous at all, when you compare them. No reason to treat them the same.
Should I be against spam for any other reason than I am annoyed by them?
Your argument might have carried some weight back in the mid '90s when spam was new and "a lot of spam" meant 30 or 40 messages a week.
The damage caused by spam is not mere annoyance.
The direct cost of spam was already outrageous by the end of the century. At one point in the '90s I was being charged $750 a month for excess traffic, just from the overhead of *rejected* spam. i had to drop whole *countries* at my router to get that under control. It's gotten to the point where spam is the overwhelming majority of email out there: less than half of one percent of the email connections to my server are for legitimate mail. That is, for every legitimate message, over 200 spams have to be handled, one way or another.
And even the SECONDARY cost of spam... things like incorrectly bounced and dropped mail... has long since passed 'unacceptable' and is now accelerating full tilt for the edge of the economic universe.
Ten years ago "I don't think spam should be any more illegal than billboards, flyers, or direct mailings." was a bad analogy, mister "Bad Analogy Guy". Now... you're either trolling or improbably naive.
Illegal? Running a screen-scraper isn't illegal.
Neither is waving a gun around... on a film set, or in your own home. Try it in a busy street or place of business and see what happens.
This isn't just "running a screen scraper", and you know it.
Back in the late '70s I bought a book, published by NASA, that described the planned followons to the shuttle... based on using the Shuttle engines and launch system in other configurations, including a heavy lifter. This scheme was never followed through, but it should be.
There's a group of NASA engineers working on it again. They call it DIRECT 2.0.
If you can access it, it was designed to be accessed.
So you're totally behind email spam, you don't think spam should be considered unethical, let alone made illegal?
If your boss asks you to do something illegal, don't. If he doesn't agree, you should probably be looking for a new job, already. If he's willing to play these kinds of games with another company, what makes you think he won't do the same to you?
I pay for extra bandwidth at roughly the same rate I pay for normal bandwidth
Lucky bastard. In the US, when you pay for extra traffic you generally pay at a hell of a premium rate. You can easily go into hundreds of dollars in overcharges.
You said was.
Actually, since Hurricane Ike I've had one server temporarily relocated to a cardboard box. So I guess I'm still avant garde.
I'm guessing it burnt down your house.
Not yet.
Except I called mine "cardboard box and coat hangers". It was just as functional and a lot cheaper.
The worst case is being on Telstra Bigpond (ex-government owned monopoly infrastructure provider), they initially provided 200meg plans for $30AUD and will charge you $150 per gigabyte you go over.
That's the kind of thing capped providers in the USA do. :(
This is not necessarily true at all. Look at an existing technology such as X509 Certificates.
I explicitly distinguished between "open source DRM" and "open source copy protection" because there are technologies like X.509 certificates that can be categorised as DRM but are not useful for copy protection.
To use X.509 certificates for copy protection, the player application would need to have an X.509 certificate that was shared by all instances of the application, but was not available to anything other than the player. To make this work, the certificate has to be stored in the application in a way that it is difficult to extract it. If the source code of the copy protection component of the player is available, then the attacker can simply read that code to see how to extract the certificate from the executable.
If THAT source code is not available, then it's not open source.
Because on Vista you get a prompt: "Your computer is being hacked. Cancel or Allow?"
Copy protection is not just DRM, it's DRM used stupidly. Copy protection involves giving someone an encrypted document, the key to decrypt it, and the algorithm to decrypt it. It only works because the code that combines the key and the algorithm is obscure. Either the location of the key is hidden, or the key is encrypted with a second key hidden in the code. Make the code visible, and there's no place left to hide it.
Unfortunately there seems to be some kind of inherent corruption in the way the antivirus industry operates. I'm sure that most of the individuals involved are as honest and honorable as they can possibly be. The problem isn't really in the people, it's the way they have to operate.
But the result is the same. Anything that comes out of there has to be treated with extreme skepticism, whether it's antivirus software for operating systems where there's not even a credible infection vector, or attempts at taking over operating system responsibilities, or the way they tiptoe around huge lacunae in Windows security model...
I'm beginning to think that the real definition of bandwidth has become as quaint and obsolete as the '70s definition of "hacker" as a computer whiz. :(
In fact I've got up to ten times MORE awesome in my little finger than you have in your whole body.
It does ache a bit in cold weather, though.
That's in England, not the US.
And it's Australia that seems to have the most problem with bandwidth caps - so far as I can tell it's universal there: you can't get an uncapped connection down under.
The way ISPs cap usage seems to be more abusive in the US, though (when there is a cap, that is). From what I understand you simply get throttled in Australia once you hit the cap. In the US you start paying overcharge rates instead.
Watch the film. It sure looks like they're getting X-rays to me.
Now there's a second annoying hover-pop-up advertiser, Contentlink, used by Times of India (and I'm sure many others).
At least Contentlink lets you disable their popups. Click on the (?) and look near the bottom of the page for the link to disable them.
Corporate migration to Vista will just about stop. The people who need it have already converted, and nobody else needs to spend the money, especially if a hardware upgrade is required. Microsoft will cave on XP life extension until Windows 7 works.
Windows 7 is Vista. It's already been scaled back from the original "Totally modular, new clean API, runs legacy Windows apps in Classic emulation" to "We're gonna pull some of the bloat out of Vista".
Mojave anyone?
/me cries.
This kind of product has been out for years. Oh, this one probably has some option that all the others don't, but it's about as much "news" as "Dell's next laptop will come in olive green".
It's a one button mouse. That's absolute fact. There is only one button serving for left- and right- click. The fact that if you're lucky the capacitance sensor can be used to synthesize a right-click doesn't mean there's a right mouse button.
Absolute proof: if it was a two button mouse, then you could press with your index and middle fingers concurrently on either side of the mouse, and get a left-right chord... the left button and the right button clicked concurrently.
Because it's true in the vast majority of cases.
Not as often as that.
Most Windows users don't give a shit.
Most of the people who really get exercised about Apple's weird hardware are the ones who have to use it because they like the software, but don't care whether the hardware it runs on is silver, white, beige, or black, so long as it does what they need.
And all too often, Apple's hardware doesn't.
If I click on one side, it does one thing. If I click on the other side, it does something different.
If I click on one side, it does one thing. If I click on the other side, it sometimes does the same thing, and sometimes does something else, depending on whether I remember that this is a Batfink mouse with its stupid capacitance sensor or not and lift my index finger from the mouse when I click the right side with my middle finger.
I have similar problems with the trackpad and its stupid two-finger right-mouse-button-emulation scheme, in this case it's in making sure I hit the pad with my fingers together.
If you're a hotshit gamer you don't have a problem with it. My fingers are almost half a century old by now and are no longer the ones that got me the world high score in "food fight", so it makes a huge bloody difference, kid.