Perhaps, then the charger will store a large quantity of charge in high-capacity storag capacitors (you know... the multi-Farad ones) and then charge the batteries very quickly. Downside is you'd have to leave your charger plugged in while you weren't using it, and you could only charge a battery once in a while.
Then, one day, a student who had been left to sweep up the lab after a particulary unsuccessful party found himself reasoning this way:
If, he thought to himself, such amachine is a virtual impossibility, then it must logically be a finite improbability. So all I have to do in order to make one, is to work out exactly how improbable it is, feed that figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea... and turn it on!
He did this, and was rather startled to discover that he had managed to create the long sought after golden Infinite Improbability generater out of thin air.
It startled him even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynced by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn't stand was a smartass.
You're a little off here. It would be a breach of the canadian charter of rights and freedoms to *tax* the sales of blank media on the off chance that the media might be used for an illegal use. That's like convicting anyone who ever buys blank media of a crime without any trial of any sort, which is illegal in our country and most other western countries.
The relevant portion of the copyright act (sections 79-82 are of note for this discussion) describes the way that the tarrif works. What it ammounts to is that in Canada, it is legal to copy
(a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording,
(b) a performer's performance of a musical work embodied in a sound recording, or
(c) a sound recording in which a musical work, or a performer's performance of a musical work, is embodied
for personal use. However, with this concession against typical copyright law, comes a price. You have to pay a small tarrif on blank "audio recording media".
It's relatively simple to keep your parents surfing in safety. As many people have already mentioned, Firefox is a good start. But that's not where you need to stop. While Thunderbird is stil in alpha, it makes a nice email client, and has fewer glaring security holes than some of the more popular clients.
But where everything comes together is with the last two important pieces of software. I used to be a strong supporter of The Proxomitron, but it's very difficult to find now, and is no longer supported, so I've switched over to Privoxy which runs on most platforms, incidentally.
Privoxy is a local proxy that does filtering on all web content that you view, removing things like some ads, and all unrequested pop-ups. It filters virtually all malicious content I have seen.
A personal firewall is important to have now, and there are some reasonable free ones around. The ones I like take a bit of configuration, but they sure beat Zone Alarm. The two I use are Kerio Personal Firewall and Sygate Personal Firewall.
Sadly, both these products used to be completely free, but the same is no longer completely true.
Essentially, it is important to use a good browser, mail client, local proxy and firewall. With those in place a virus scanner is often somewhat redundant, though one of those might be a good idea too.
On the spam prevention front, I find Popfile to be an invaluable tool. It is, however, a wee bit advanced. I suspect that most parents wouldn't quite grok it. I've heard good things about SpamAssassin, though, and it might be worth the effort of teaching parents.
Why not just make email completely traceable to the isp level?
The only reduction in privacy would be that you could tell what ISP whoever sent the email from used. However, it would allow people to track where spam was coming from and forcibly block entire ISPs if they were recognized sources.
Naturally, someone will mention that somehting like this is already there... but it the existing system can be forged.
I think the way to handle it would be to force servers to append their IP to any email they relay. If any server encounters an email whos last appended IP doesn't match the source of the transaction, just dump it.
Sure, if you can fake the IP, then you can still bypass this, but I'd think it would help. Additional bits of authentication in server-server transactions might be able to compensate for forged IPs too.
Ok, so it needs some fleshing out, but is there anything obviously wrong with this?
And here I thought most telecom was AC coupled. I guess that's the problem right there! They used the wrong court.
Take this to the AC Circuit Court of appeals and see how the decision goes.
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Perhaps, then the charger will store a large quantity of charge in high-capacity storag capacitors (you know... the multi-Farad ones) and then charge the batteries very quickly. Downside is you'd have to leave your charger plugged in while you weren't using it, and you could only charge a battery once in a while.
If you're that concerned, encrypt your email, and don't bother deleting the cookie.
I can see it now...
"QT69FOu8iJNq" Aha! He might buy a Palm Pilot!
Yeah right.
The relevant portion of the copyright act (sections 79-82 are of note for this discussion) describes the way that the tarrif works. What it ammounts to is that in Canada, it is legal to copy for personal use. However, with this concession against typical copyright law, comes a price. You have to pay a small tarrif on blank "audio recording media".
The tarrif information can be found here.
It's relatively simple to keep your parents surfing in safety. As many people have already mentioned, Firefox is a good start. But that's not where you need to stop. While Thunderbird is stil in alpha, it makes a nice email client, and has fewer glaring security holes than some of the more popular clients.
But where everything comes together is with the last two important pieces of software. I used to be a strong supporter of The Proxomitron, but it's very difficult to find now, and is no longer supported, so I've switched over to Privoxy which runs on most platforms, incidentally.
Privoxy is a local proxy that does filtering on all web content that you view, removing things like some ads, and all unrequested pop-ups. It filters virtually all malicious content I have seen.
A personal firewall is important to have now, and there are some reasonable free ones around. The ones I like take a bit of configuration, but they sure beat Zone Alarm. The two I use are Kerio Personal Firewall and Sygate Personal Firewall.
Sadly, both these products used to be completely free, but the same is no longer completely true.
Essentially, it is important to use a good browser, mail client, local proxy and firewall. With those in place a virus scanner is often somewhat redundant, though one of those might be a good idea too.
On the spam prevention front, I find Popfile to be an invaluable tool. It is, however, a wee bit advanced. I suspect that most parents wouldn't quite grok it. I've heard good things about SpamAssassin, though, and it might be worth the effort of teaching parents.
Why not just make email completely traceable to the isp level?
The only reduction in privacy would be that you could tell what ISP whoever sent the email from used. However, it would allow people to track where spam was coming from and forcibly block entire ISPs if they were recognized sources.
Naturally, someone will mention that somehting like this is already there... but it the existing system can be forged.
I think the way to handle it would be to force servers to append their IP to any email they relay. If any server encounters an email whos last appended IP doesn't match the source of the transaction, just dump it.
Sure, if you can fake the IP, then you can still bypass this, but I'd think it would help. Additional bits of authentication in server-server transactions might be able to compensate for forged IPs too.
Ok, so it needs some fleshing out, but is there anything obviously wrong with this?
Like streaming audio, there is always a way around that. In the age of digital cable, and MPAA controlled TVs, the frame grabber reigns supreme.