I still imagine that the best way to deal with spam is to find some way for folks to make money off the spammers.
My usual suggestion would be taxing spam, licensing it at non-viable rates, etc. The results would be used to help defray the cost of the infrastructure, and to compensate spam victims.
and of course, you would need bounty hunters to track down the ones who are using fraudulent information.
Licensing is to verify correct legal data on spammers.
Personally, I think spammers should wear their spam licenses out in the open in public, so everyone knows who they are. Extra bonus brownie points if the spam licenses are large bright orange tags attached to the ears.
I received these unusual documents from my uncle who -- perhaps inadvertently -- willed them to me along with an attic full of junk and dusty memorabilia. There were twenty-four books in all, every one of them labeled with a year on the spine and front cover. What captured my attention -- besides the mysterious code -- was that the years began with 1877.
Magnetron's books appeared to be a journal of some kind, as each entry was preceded by a date written in a bold block lettering. Below each date were as many as 4,408 small numbers and letters, packed 64 characters per square inch with no spaces or identifiable punctuation. The only characters used were the numerals 0 through 9 and the letters A through F, leading the cryptographers to deduce that the code utilized a hexadecimal, or base 16 numbering system.
KYOTO -- Buyers of a DVD version of the popular animated film "Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi" have launched a lawsuit against its retailer, Walt Disney Japan, claiming the color is "completely different" from movie theater showings.
The Kyoto District Court suit, launched by three buyers from Kyoto and Hyogo prefectures, claims that a heavy red tone persists throughout the DVD version, ruining the film.
They have demanded that the company replace the copies they bought with a better version, and pay them 10,000 yen each in compensation.
A total of 3 million copies of the DVD have already been produced, and Walt Disney Japan and consumer centers have reportedly fielded numerous complaints from other buyers.
Walt Disney Japan began selling DVD copies of the film through Buena Vista Home Entertainment in July. However, a red tone that buyers claim persists through the film makes the movie dark, and consumers say it is completely different from the movie version.
Buyers of the DVD reportedly analyzed the colors by computer and found that of the three primary colors, the red tone was extremely strong.
Buena Vista Home entertainment reportedly posted a home page message saying that the tone of the colors could vary depending on the playing environment, but the firm is reportedly refusing to exchange copies, saying the DVD is not a defective product.
Buena Vista officials said they would consider a response together with Studio Ghibli, the makers of the "Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi" film, but added that the DVD was an original product whose tones were produced while respecting the intentions of the producers. (Mainichi Shimbun, Dec. 3, 2002)
Ironic that this happened in a country with a reputation for a highly developed sense of artistry and aesthetics. What were they thinking?
When I worked selling computers though, there were two types of customers. There was the type that wanted the best hardware they could get, price be damned, and there was the type that just wanted to type stuff up and surf the net, and those people really only wanted to spend what they had to.
Of course there is the person who wants to get a 3000 dollar machine for 300 dollars, for someone who will need 3000 dollars worth of tech support hours, and want that tech support for free.
Those folks I send to a chain store or Gateway or something, where they can scream at a nice warm body in person.
Someone who has a clue I do not mind sending to a wholesale house.
I suspect that the seven layer model for data flow in networks could be applicable to this discussion of the mind.
In that, each layer is independant. What happens at the hardware layer is independent of the data flow.
While there is a great deal of intergration, I suspect that using this model would be useful.
In this regard, monitoring the blood flow would not be useful in assessing the problem of the girl I mentioned above.
Just like monitoring the flow of electrons in a computer would not help you address and correct a problem in a data base. You could eventually sort out which bits are located where, etc but it is really the long, slow, and wrong way to go about it. You do do not address a database via mechanical or basic electronic fixes.
I dont see this as being that big a difference from just showing the ads and asking people.
The difference is that they are trying to monitor the stimulus response mechanism of the people involved.
I do not know of any scientific study or body of knowledge that directly studies the pathology of the stimulus response mechanism as a mechanism by itself. You have to go outside the mainstream sciences to see anything looking at the area. Psychoanlysis, for example, does not study this, and addresses it indirectly if ever. Psychiatry, with it's love affair for medication, is more of the same.
In fact this is the first such study that I have even heard of, and the use of it is not theraputic at all. Unless the therapy is that of weight reduction of an obese wallet.
A therapy would be interested in looking at stimulus response mechanisms, and learning to help people whose mechanisms are out of whack. {example: I knew a gal whose boy friends, each in turn, all that the same first name. creepy)
This is no such thing. It is research for better mind control of the consumer today.
You would thing that this would be a fruitful area for research if you actually wanted to help folks. But the money seems to be focused elsewhere. I wonder why?
Great! The Register, that bastion of great journalism has now resorted to plagiarizing [slashdot.org] material from Slashdot, that other bastion of great journalism without even attributing the material.
As seen in this report on the Register, Microsoft Sales Reps have even gone so far as to offer FREE Windows server software licenses to companies considering the move to Open Source.
Of Course, they have confused Free (as is speech) Software with free (as in beer) software, and didn't always realise that Linux is not the only free software out there.
and note: they didn't save the sale for Microsoft.
Michaelangelo, the guy who painted the Sistine chapel, had his own revenge. In many churchs of that era a traditional painting seen at one end the depiction of Judgement Day.
This usually requires the depiction of alot of damned souls be dragged off to eternal damnation. These need to be shown as they are transforming into beasts, they are getting ripped apart by demons, the usual.
On course, more than one of his critics are depicted there, in various forms of demonic torment. And they are remembered to this day only because they are in the painting
the digital data will have disappeared, and the testimony on your stone monuments will be one of the few surviving original source records from the era.
I can see it all now. LUGs getting together to make testimonial stone glyphs testifying to the Ages their opinions of the character of their least favorite politician or software company.
We have gathered together to have this monument built as a testimony to the ages of our opinion of Mr. X.
We recognise that much of what we know will not survive our age and our time. And therefore we want to make sure that the following is known to the ages.
That He was rich through the sale of inferior goods
That the inferiority was such as to cause many people to also become wealthy throught the repair and maintenance of these goods
that the time and effort wasted in the repair and maintenance of these goods was a sore and a parasite on the health of our whole community
that the loss of these resources are a curse upon the land.
That therefore we place a curse on him and his descendents for the damge done to the future of our lives, and that of our posterity.
You get the idea. Also applies to politicians.
have a blast. Have it placed on you tombstone or something. or in the side of a cliff.
The politcal implications of this are interesting.
It is very much easier to educate a person according to the curriculum you desire if contradictory information is not available, especially regarding the history of a place. The extreme example is that of the Pol Pot regime. But you also see it in a newspaper when they fire all of the old hands who know where the bodies are buried, and only the young bucks are around who can be easily stampeded. No institutional memory.
On another note - if you want to damn a politician to history, make sure to get those stone obelisk and stelli erected with heavy engraving. Make sure some are out in the desert so that they are properly preserved.
Archeologists will come by centuries later and will take what you say as truth. Or at least very seriously. Have a field day.
the digital data will have disappeared, and the testimony on your stone monuments will be one of the few surviving original source records from the era.
Critiques from persons knowledgable in the art
on
More on Longhorn
·
· Score: 2
Well, when you get old enough for your parents to start giving you an allowance, maybe you could *buy* a copy of a MS product!
Many people here prefer to roll their own operating system.
Critics tend to be of two classes. A musician's critique of another performer is often better informed in certain critical aspects than that of a fan, or your ordinary music user. They can spot certain cheats in technique that a non musician would not care about.
In this regard, criticism by people knowledgable in the art should not be so light dismissed.
and then, there is this detail:
As Seen in this Financial Times report Microsoft has revealed its profit margins for the first time. The client division, which markets Windows, generated operating profits last quarter of 2.48 billion dollars on revenues of 2.89 billion dollars, implying margins of 85 per cent. Most other remaining Microsoft businesses made losses, raising questions about the benefits of the group's costly efforts at diversification.
The means that if the full version of Windows XP sells at retail for about $300.00, Microsoft could still sell it for $45 and still make a profit. The difference between what it could sell it for and what it does sell it for is what economists call "monopoly rents". You can see the SEC filing here, in incredibly tiny print. Microsoft was found guilty of illegally maintaining its monopoly in personal computer operating systems in 2000. Penalties in the case have been criticised as a hand slap. We now know where the Microsoft 40 billion dollar cash reserves came from.
Not that we should ever steal anything from Microsoft. It is not wise to steal from the mafia.
Bad Monopolies at play
on
Cringely on P2P
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I like this story
My favorite historical example of this phenomenon comes from the oil business. In the 1920s, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company had a monopoly on oil production in the Middle East, which they generally protected through the use of diplomatic -- and occasionally military -- force against the local monarchies. Then the Gulf Oil Company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, literally sneaked into Kuwait and obtained from the Al-Sabah family (who still run the place) a license to search for oil.
The Anglo-Persian Oil Company did not like Gulf's actions, but they were even more dismayed to learn that Gulf couldn't be told to just go to hell. Andrew Mellon, of the Pittsburgh Mellons, was the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and he wasn't about to let his oil company be pushed around by the British Foreign Office. So Anglo-Persian and the Foreign Office did their best to delay Gulf, which worked for several years. They lied a little, lost a few maps, failed to read a telegram or two, and when Gulf still didn't go away, they turned to acting stupid. As the absolute regional experts on oil exploration, they offered to do Gulf's job, to save the Americans the bother if searching for oil in Kuwait by searching for them.
The Anglo-Persian Oil Company searched for oil in Kuwait for 22 years without finding a single drop.
Remember that Kuwait is smaller than Rhode Island, and not only is it sitting atop more than 60 billion barrels of oil, it has places where oil has been known for more than 3,000 years to seep all the way to the surface. Yet Anglo-Persian was able to fulfill its contract with Gulf and keep two oil rigs continually drilling in Kuwait for 22 years without finding oil. To drill this many dry wells required intense concentration on the part of the British drillers. They had to not only be NOT looking for oil, they had to very actively be NOT LOOKING for oil, which is even harder.
[emphasis added] It sounds so very familiar. Just like something the RIAA or Microsoft would do, if they were an Oil company.
For those who do not remember, when Richard Nixon won the race for president against George McGovern, he won all of the states in the country except Massachusetts. Years later, when he was being investigated for various bits of criminal mischief in Watergate, a bumber sticker became popular there:
Don't Blame Me. I'm from Massachusetts
Somehow seems strangely appropriate in this context. [smile]
I wonder if we can get a Massachusetts only settlement?;-)
Everyone needs to get out of panic mode. The whole project, as of now, is a research effort to try to build intelligent query agents that can be given what kind of information to look for, to correlate, and to report. The queries go out, look around databases, and then report back to an analyst. The first phase research (which is just starting) will use a few existing government databases. Your credit card transactions are safe for now.
As usual, this is a matter of trust. How much do you trust the folks in charge. And even if you trust the folks in charge, what happens when they go away and someone less moral takes over?
I'm sure you can think of a few names that would make it to your worst nightmare list.
I seem to recall that the NSA has had problems over the past several years, trying to sort out the insane quantity of data to pick out the droplets of information they needed to know about. This has been likened to trying to drink from a fire house with a straw.
This was a major contributing fact in not getting enough warning in advance to stop September 11th.
Now they want everything in the USA, multiplying the effect by an order of magnitude or so. Multipying it in the wrong direction.
Imagine trying to find the one drop of pure water, while drinking with a straw, from a sewer pipe in Manhattan. Not a pretty picture.
This with an agency office with a research budget of a few million dollars. Obviously Poindexter is seeing this as a growth industry.
To avoid surprises, Massive programmers weeded out ineffective agents and duplicated ones that worked. About a dozen initial master characters formed the basic genetic blueprint for more than 50,000 digital creations, which were then individualized by adding random variables such as aggression or happiness. (A few update Tolkien; keep an eye out for a background character in The Two Towers who, in the middle of the battle, seems to take a call on his cellphone.)
At least they're not calling in an air strike, like Granada.
"all patent-infringement claims 'without prejudice'"
IANAL
but if I read this right, this means that if they feel like suing each other over this in the future because they have a falling out, they are completely free to call in the lawyers and have at it.
Sort of like two mafioso movie types, each with a shot gun at the throat of the other. Backing off might be a smart move.
Slashdot Mirror
My usual suggestion would be taxing spam, licensing it at non-viable rates, etc. The results would be used to help defray the cost of the infrastructure, and to compensate spam victims.
and of course, you would need bounty hunters to track down the ones who are using fraudulent information.
Licensing is to verify correct legal data on spammers.
Personally, I think spammers should wear their spam licenses out in the open in public, so everyone knows who they are. Extra bonus brownie points if the spam licenses are large bright orange tags attached to the ears.
The Admiral Poindexter Aerial Webcam
You are Correct. Pardon my brain fart.
reminds me of the royal in the movie "Mozart" : "There are too many notes"
To which the reply was: "Tell me which ones you want me to take out"
the secret journals of Phineas J. Magnetron
-
I received these unusual documents from my uncle who -- perhaps inadvertently -- willed them to me along with an attic full of junk and dusty memorabilia. There were twenty-four books in all, every one of them labeled with a year on the spine and front cover. What captured my attention -- besides the mysterious code -- was that the years began with 1877.
nicely done.Magnetron's books appeared to be a journal of some kind, as each entry was preceded by a date written in a bold block lettering. Below each date were as many as 4,408 small numbers and letters, packed 64 characters per square inch with no spaces or identifiable punctuation. The only characters used were the numerals 0 through 9 and the letters A through F, leading the cryptographers to deduce that the code utilized a hexadecimal, or base 16 numbering system.
- Disney red-faced over 'faulty' DVD
Ironic that this happened in a country with a reputation for a highly developed sense of artistry and aesthetics. What were they thinking?KYOTO -- Buyers of a DVD version of the popular animated film "Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi" have launched a lawsuit against its retailer, Walt Disney Japan, claiming the color is "completely different" from movie theater showings.
The Kyoto District Court suit, launched by three buyers from Kyoto and Hyogo prefectures, claims that a heavy red tone persists throughout the DVD version, ruining the film.
They have demanded that the company replace the copies they bought with a better version, and pay them 10,000 yen each in compensation.
A total of 3 million copies of the DVD have already been produced, and Walt Disney Japan and consumer centers have reportedly fielded numerous complaints from other buyers.
Walt Disney Japan began selling DVD copies of the film through Buena Vista Home Entertainment in July. However, a red tone that buyers claim persists through the film makes the movie dark, and consumers say it is completely different from the movie version.
Buyers of the DVD reportedly analyzed the colors by computer and found that of the three primary colors, the red tone was extremely strong.
Buena Vista Home entertainment reportedly posted a home page message saying that the tone of the colors could vary depending on the playing environment, but the firm is reportedly refusing to exchange copies, saying the DVD is not a defective product.
Buena Vista officials said they would consider a response together with Studio Ghibli, the makers of the "Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi" film, but added that the DVD was an original product whose tones were produced while respecting the intentions of the producers. (Mainichi Shimbun, Dec. 3, 2002)
Of course there is the person who wants to get a 3000 dollar machine for 300 dollars, for someone who will need 3000 dollars worth of tech support hours, and want that tech support for free.
Those folks I send to a chain store or Gateway or something, where they can scream at a nice warm body in person.
Someone who has a clue I do not mind sending to a wholesale house.
In that, each layer is independant. What happens at the hardware layer is independent of the data flow.
While there is a great deal of intergration, I suspect that using this model would be useful.
In this regard, monitoring the blood flow would not be useful in assessing the problem of the girl I mentioned above.
Just like monitoring the flow of electrons in a computer would not help you address and correct a problem in a data base. You could eventually sort out which bits are located where, etc but it is really the long, slow, and wrong way to go about it. You do do not address a database via mechanical or basic electronic fixes.
The difference is that they are trying to monitor the stimulus response mechanism of the people involved.
I do not know of any scientific study or body of knowledge that directly studies the pathology of the stimulus response mechanism as a mechanism by itself. You have to go outside the mainstream sciences to see anything looking at the area. Psychoanlysis, for example, does not study this, and addresses it indirectly if ever. Psychiatry, with it's love affair for medication, is more of the same.
In fact this is the first such study that I have even heard of, and the use of it is not theraputic at all. Unless the therapy is that of weight reduction of an obese wallet.
A therapy would be interested in looking at stimulus response mechanisms, and learning to help people whose mechanisms are out of whack. {example: I knew a gal whose boy friends, each in turn, all that the same first name. creepy)
This is no such thing. It is research for better mind control of the consumer today.
You would thing that this would be a fruitful area for research if you actually wanted to help folks. But the money seems to be focused elsewhere. I wonder why?
Check the date time stamps next time
The Register article Posted: 02/12/2002 at 14:24 GMT
The Slash Dot Comment by Anonymous Coward on 12:51 PM (EST) -- Monday December 02 2002
The Slash comment was posted after the Reg Article.
how dare they plagarize a future article like that
Think about it.
Of Course, they have confused Free (as is speech) Software with free (as in beer) software, and didn't always realise that Linux is not the only free software out there.
and note: they didn't save the sale for Microsoft.
This usually requires the depiction of alot of damned souls be dragged off to eternal damnation. These need to be shown as they are transforming into beasts, they are getting ripped apart by demons, the usual.
On course, more than one of his critics are depicted there, in various forms of demonic torment. And they are remembered to this day only because they are in the painting
I can see it all now. LUGs getting together to make testimonial stone glyphs testifying to the Ages their opinions of the character of their least favorite politician or software company.
You get the idea. Also applies to politicians.
have a blast. Have it placed on you tombstone or something. or in the side of a cliff.
It is very much easier to educate a person according to the curriculum you desire if contradictory information is not available, especially regarding the history of a place. The extreme example is that of the Pol Pot regime. But you also see it in a newspaper when they fire all of the old hands who know where the bodies are buried, and only the young bucks are around who can be easily stampeded. No institutional memory.
On another note - if you want to damn a politician to history, make sure to get those stone obelisk and stelli erected with heavy engraving. Make sure some are out in the desert so that they are properly preserved.
Archeologists will come by centuries later and will take what you say as truth. Or at least very seriously. Have a field day.
the digital data will have disappeared, and the testimony on your stone monuments will be one of the few surviving original source records from the era.
Many people here prefer to roll their own operating system.
Critics tend to be of two classes. A musician's critique of another performer is often better informed in certain critical aspects than that of a fan, or your ordinary music user. They can spot certain cheats in technique that a non musician would not care about.
In this regard, criticism by people knowledgable in the art should not be so light dismissed.
and then, there is this detail:
As Seen in this Financial Times report Microsoft has revealed its profit margins for the first time. The client division, which markets Windows, generated operating profits last quarter of 2.48 billion dollars on revenues of 2.89 billion dollars, implying margins of 85 per cent. Most other remaining Microsoft businesses made losses, raising questions about the benefits of the group's costly efforts at diversification.
The means that if the full version of Windows XP sells at retail for about $300.00, Microsoft could still sell it for $45 and still make a profit. The difference between what it could sell it for and what it does sell it for is what economists call "monopoly rents". You can see the SEC filing here, in incredibly tiny print. Microsoft was found guilty of illegally maintaining its monopoly in personal computer operating systems in 2000. Penalties in the case have been criticised as a hand slap. We now know where the Microsoft 40 billion dollar cash reserves came from.
Not that we should ever steal anything from Microsoft. It is not wise to steal from the mafia.
-
My favorite historical example of this phenomenon comes from the oil business. In the 1920s, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company had a monopoly on oil production in the Middle East, which they generally protected through the use of diplomatic -- and occasionally military -- force against the local monarchies. Then the Gulf Oil Company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, literally sneaked into Kuwait and obtained from the Al-Sabah family (who still run the place) a license to search for oil.
[emphasis added] It sounds so very familiar. Just like something the RIAA or Microsoft would do, if they were an Oil company.The Anglo-Persian Oil Company did not like Gulf's actions, but they were even more dismayed to learn that Gulf couldn't be told to just go to hell. Andrew Mellon, of the Pittsburgh Mellons, was the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and he wasn't about to let his oil company be pushed around by the British Foreign Office. So Anglo-Persian and the Foreign Office did their best to delay Gulf, which worked for several years. They lied a little, lost a few maps, failed to read a telegram or two, and when Gulf still didn't go away, they turned to acting stupid. As the absolute regional experts on oil exploration, they offered to do Gulf's job, to save the Americans the bother if searching for oil in Kuwait by searching for them.
The Anglo-Persian Oil Company searched for oil in Kuwait for 22 years without finding a single drop.
Remember that Kuwait is smaller than Rhode Island, and not only is it sitting atop more than 60 billion barrels of oil, it has places where oil has been known for more than 3,000 years to seep all the way to the surface. Yet Anglo-Persian was able to fulfill its contract with Gulf and keep two oil rigs continually drilling in Kuwait for 22 years without finding oil. To drill this many dry wells required intense concentration on the part of the British drillers. They had to not only be NOT looking for oil, they had to very actively be NOT LOOKING for oil, which is even harder.
Microsoft Oil. RIAA Petroleum. Really.
Don't Blame Me. I'm from Massachusetts
Somehow seems strangely appropriate in this context. [smile]
I wonder if we can get a Massachusetts only settlement? ;-)
Too bad each network has a few dozen shows to run each week.
This really gets back into the short term success syndrome that trashed Wall Street, among other things.
As usual, this is a matter of trust. How much do you trust the folks in charge. And even if you trust the folks in charge, what happens when they go away and someone less moral takes over?
I'm sure you can think of a few names that would make it to your worst nightmare list.
This was a major contributing fact in not getting enough warning in advance to stop September 11th.
Now they want everything in the USA, multiplying the effect by an order of magnitude or so. Multipying it in the wrong direction.
Imagine trying to find the one drop of pure water, while drinking with a straw, from a sewer pipe in Manhattan. Not a pretty picture.
This with an agency office with a research budget of a few million dollars. Obviously Poindexter is seeing this as a growth industry.
-
To avoid surprises, Massive programmers weeded out ineffective agents and duplicated ones that worked. About a dozen initial master characters formed the basic genetic blueprint for more than 50,000 digital creations, which were then individualized by adding random variables such as aggression or happiness. (A few update Tolkien; keep an eye out for a background character in The Two Towers who, in the middle of the battle, seems to take a call on his cellphone.)
At least they're not calling in an air strike, like Granada.vs the september that never ended, when AOL first gave internet access.
even in a large forum, most of the key players only number in the large handfuls.
Some folks had gone into a panic:
No! No! Not the the pr0n!
Aeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
We could go on, but you get the idea.
IANAL
but if I read this right, this means that if they feel like suing each other over this in the future because they have a falling out, they are completely free to call in the lawyers and have at it.
Sort of like two mafioso movie types, each with a shot gun at the throat of the other. Backing off might be a smart move.
The biggest danger from Hurricanes would be the flying Debris, quite possibly.
The Aircraft is certified as not being able to fly, due to control serfaces, etc being removed, etc. Check out the Owner's Flight Manual