There's a few simple methods that can destroy cookies as a marketing tool. Remember that your advertising banner web site cookie is unique to you, and that the ad banner site relies on this uniqueness to track your movements. For example, doubleclick.net's cookie has an expiration date of about 2038, effectively forever. Clearly, they want to use this cookie to track you indefinitely.
So you muddy the waters.
You can do as I do, and remove all suspicious cookies from your cookies.txt file about once a week. ID cookies belonging to doubleclick.net are good ones to delete, as it permanently destroys your doubleclick ID.
But what I would really like to see would be a web site where you anonymise yourself by trading your ad banner ID cookies with other people on the net at random. You might use software to upload your ID cookies for ad banner sites, and then get back other cookies at random that were originally issued to someone else. Bingo, you're now anonymous. If you do this often, then soon the ID cookies would be useless as a tracking mechanism.
Let's simplify things. How about: I think one of the moderation things options should be "SIG".
But would that be positive points for a particularly funny sig, negative points for spam in the sig, or one that uses no points because the comment has a sig?
The problem here is in the terms and conditions. Australian corporate culture has made it almost mandatory for terms and conditions to have a little clause in it that lets the corporation get away with quite a lot. It doesn't matter if it's Telstra's cable Internet dodge here, or the terms and conditions of most ISP's, or the terms and conditions of your bank account, or your insurance. They all have a "we-can-change-the-contract-but-you-cannot" clause.
This clause would say something like "We can change these terms and conditions at any time without telling you about it." Or, to paraphrase, "This piece of paper is worthless. The terms and conditions are whatever we want them to be, and we will change them whenever we please if we think we're going to make more money out of you by so doing."
The terms and conditions commonly foisted by corporate Australia onto individuals and small business also tend use terminology like "We have the right to amend these terms and conditions at any time..." Note the use of the word "right" here, implying that the corporation has a right to do as it pleases, and you can't do anything about it. A more correct word to use here would be "privilege". The word "right" is also an unusual choice, with such terms and conditions usually being full of long words with Latin and Greek roots, instead of their more easily comprehensible Germanic counterparts. This suggests that the word "right" is a deliberate emotive choice intended to bully anyone questioning the terms and conditions into thinking that this clause is above question.
In practice, such a clause is far from being a "right". Instead, you have the right to negotiate on the terms and conditions of any contract. For example, while negotiating the contract, you could strike out the whole paragraph with this clause, insert a new clause that says "These terms and conditions cannot be modified without the written consent of both parties" and get both parties to initial the change. Of course the large corporation, being the bullies that they are, would have none of that because it's a more evenly-balanced clause instead of the clause that is extremely heavily weighted in favour of the corporation.
These corporate abuses are unlikely to be stopped as long as the corporation-friendly conservative Federal government we have in place now continues in power. This week, the Employment Minister attempted to "reform" labour laws (read: bash unions again and further erode working conditions of workers). This was understandably rejected by the Senate. Strange how there was nothing in these proposed labour laws to curb the widespread exploitation of salaried employees who work an average of 5 to 10 unpaid hours a week.
That's it, I'm sick of corporations stealing my personal details and selling or trading them in this manner. I'm having a solicitor (lawyer for our good American friends) draft an End-User License Agreement (EULA). My personal details are my property, and any corporation that wishes to use them from now on is going to have to sign an EULA that expressly prohibits disclosure and places tight restrictions on the use of the personal information. It is my personal information after all, and some of it I must pay for (residential address from a rented flat, telephone number, car registration and so forth).
Any company that refuses "as a matter of policy" to agree to the EULA must instead provide me with reciprocal data for all of the board members. If they want my name, they must tell me the board members' names. If they want my home address, they must tell me all the board members' home addresses. If they want my income, they must tell me all the board members' incomes. And so forth. Turnabout is fair play, after all.
Corporations have been stealing my personal details from me and other citizens of Australia and other countries for too long, and this blatant abuse of privacy is the result. "Private and Confidential" seems to mean nothing to companies any more.
I intend to claim back my rights to my personal details, the right of disclosure or non-disclosure as I see fit, and the right to consider them as my personal property for my sole and exclusive use.
Who will join me?
--
Revelations in the Christian Bible
on
License to Surf
·
· Score: 1
So this is the future of e-commerce: everyone requires a licence number to trade online? I'm sure Revelations in the Christian Bible said something along the lines of everyone requiring a mark to trade. If the licence numbers are 18-digit numbers in three groups of 6, start worrying....
And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred three score and six.
... and which incidentally identify them uniquely and provide assorted marketing information. The end of anonymity, coming soon to a Web near you.
Anyone who values their right to privacy should find this extremely disturbing. If you use common browsers such as IE or Netscape, every time you visit a site the browser gives the site a lot of information that you would probably prefer kept private, such as how many pages you've viewed, what link you clicked to get there, and so forth. Some web sites push cookies at you, don't provide information as to what the cookies are for, and use information obtained from the cookies to target marketing crap at you. And even though the cookie standard specifies that only the issuing site can retrieve the cookies they push, several organisations that use cookies for marketing are forging agreements to trade this cookie information freely with each other, thus indirectly violating the cookie standard, and ensuring that if you visit any of their sites, then your details will be traded to all of them without your knowledge or consent.
My personal information is my private property. Some of the personal information I have, I have to pay for. I pay to have a telephone number. I pay to rent a flat. I pay to have a driver's licence. Why should corporations take my personal details from me for free, then sell it for a profit without my knowledge, without my consent and without giving me a hefty percentage of the take? I have given serious consideration to asking any company that requires my personal details to sign an EULA that severely restricts how they use this information, including a ban on selling or trading the information (except where they are required by law to do so, of course). I want to take back control of my personal details. I don't want my residential address to be a tradable commodity. I don't want my Net access habits to be sold to anyone. I value my privacy, and I will defend it.
If anything needs to be licensed on the Net, it is not the users. It is those organisations that require your personal information for any reason, those organisations that use cookies as a means to target marketing information, those organisations whose sites are unusable unless you have Javascript AND cookies enabled, those organisations that require you to register or provide your e-mail address to access their site, and so forth. The terms of such license should require such sites to display prominently a privacy statement on their home page that informs users EXACTLY how their details will be used by the site, so users can opt out anonymously before accessing the site if they so wish.
We've all heard about the Y2K bug in computers that is supposed to mean The End Of The World As We Know It. However, there's another more insidious Y2K bug that is widespread in the community. It affects the meatware in a large number of people and is responsible for the widespread misconception that 1999 is the last year of the 20th century.
This meatware bug will cause widespread problems in the community. During 2000, there will be a lot of arguments between people about which century that 2000 is in. It will cause riots in Los Angeles, shootings in the American Midwest, arguments on Oprah, a lot of bar fights everywhere, and general violence in many places throughout the world.
Sure, there will be a few computer problems during 2000 as a result of software not being fixed, but society will not come to a screeching halt. But the year 2000 will be a frustrating time for those right-thinking people who know that 2000 is in the 20th century and not the 21st, and who have to explain to the witless again and again. It promises to be about as much fun as banging one's head against a brick wall.
Meanwhile, I release under the GPL my patch for the Y2K meatware problem, thus:
Y2K Meatware Patch V.1.02
1. Grab a small number of objects - a few coins, buttons, matches or other small objects. Ask your subject to count them out loud one at a time. Note the first number they use; it should be "one" (1) and not "zero" (0). 2. Repeat once or twice for a set of different objects. They should use "one" as the first label for each. 3. Ask why they always start at "one" and not "zero" when counting. 4. Explain that years are counted the same way, and that if the first year of the first century was 1 AD, then the first year of the 21st century must be 20 centuries or 2000 years later, making the first year of the 21st century 2001 AD.
If that doesn't work, then here's another method to try: Explain that years were (and in some cases still are) labelled using Roman numerals because Arabic numerals weren't introduced into Europe until about the 12th century. Ask them what the Roman numeral for "zero" is.
Benford's Law (see the above article) states that given a random assortment of real-world numbers, 30% will start with a 1, 18% start with a 2 and so forth. Because the table lists the same number of values for each number, it follows that the numbers beginning with '1' will be used a lot more. Although unlikely, this may compromise the security of the code if it is used to encrypt numbers extensively.
You can check Benford's Law for yourself. Try it with share prices; career earnings of sportspeople, movie stars or racehorses; areas or populations of countries; all real-world numbers on the first 10 pages of any newspaper; and so on.
Because Benford's Law wasn't discovered until after the cipher was created, it is understandable that the cipher did not allow for this odd property of numbers. --
(Note: My previous message was normal when I previewed it, but when I posted it, Slashdot ate 100 bytes from the end of the message, losing the closing tags from a link and an unordered list. I have reposted the message without complex tags or links.)
---
Delete it? This is one common spammer response to the issue of spam. "If you don't want it, just delete it." Other common spammer responses are "What I'm doing is not illegal" (technically, it probably is, as I will show), "I have a right to do this, under S.1618, a proposed Bill" (this bill was defeated and did not become law), and "I have a constitutional right to free speech" (if that was true and spammers had a right to spam, then I have the same right to break into a spammer's home at 2 in the morning, come into their bedroom and read them my resume using a megaphone at maximum volume).
Why "Just delete it" is not a solution: * By the time you receive the e-mail, resources that cost real money to install, use and maintain have been consumed to send the message to you. Thus, the spammer has effectively stolen from various places on the 'Net. * You have to spend your own time to discard the junk. Could that time be better used by you earning money? Do you place a monetary value on your own time? If so, then the spammer has stolen from you as well. * If spammers felt that "just delete it" was an appropriate response if their spam was unwanted, then they would make it easy to filter the spam automatically. A few actually do this by putting "ADV:" or something similar in the subject. However, the majority of spammers don't want their message deleted, and some go as far as putting misleading subjects in the message to make you think it's from someone you know so you have to read the message, e.g.: "Info you requested" and "Hi, remember me?". * Can you delete your way through 50, 100, 200, 300, 500, 1000 spams a day? If nothing is done about stopping spam, the volume of spam will only increase to the point where e-mail is no longer a usable resource for the 'Net community. Spammers, by spamming, are destroying the usefulness of the resources that they exploit.
Other reasons why spam is undesirable * Electronic mail is not a broadcast medium. E-mail is meant to be a communication between two people, not a means by which a dysfunctional individual can spew junk all over the 'Net. * Spamming is not a legitimate form of advertising. If spam was a legitimate form of advertising, then reputable business would be using it. Legitimate businesses do not generally use spam to advertise.
On the issue of legality: * It is now illegal in some jurisdictions (Washington State, USA, for example) to send e-mail with forged headers or misleading subject lines. * Forging the headers of an e-mail message may also constitute fraud in jurisdictions without explicit anti-spam laws. Fraud is a criminal offence. * Sending pornographic spam to minors is almost certainly illegal, regardless of whether it contains a disclaimer stating that "you must be over 18 to view this" or words to that effect. Would you leave the Kama Sutra on your coffee table at home, but tell your kids that you must be over 18 to read it? Sending pornographic spam to an Australian resident may also be illegal after 1 January, 2000, when the Online Services amendments to the Telecommunications Act come into force. * Advertising of any product or service is subject to laws that regulate truth in advertising. Making up testimonials is illegal. Claims that are false are illegal. Lying in advertising is illegal. * Pyramid scams and other similar "Get-rich-quick" schemes are illegal. * Asking people to send cash through the post is probably illegal. * Using resources that other people have paid for is regarded by many as theft. Theft is a criminal offence.
Delete it? This is one common spammer response to the issue of spam. "If you don't want it, just delete it." Other common spammer responses are "What I'm doing is not illegal" (technically, it probably is, as I will show), "I have a right to do this, under S.1618, a proposed Bill" (this bill was defeated and did not become law), and "I have a constitutional right to free speech" (if that was true and spammers had a right to spam, then I have the same right to break into a spammer's home at 2 in the morning, come into their bedroom and read them my resume using a megaphone at maximum volume).
Why "Just delete it" is not a solution:
By the time you receive the e-mail, resources that cost real money to install, use and maintain have been consumed to send the message to you. Thus, the spammer has effectively stolen from various places on the 'Net.
You have to spend your own time to discard the junk. Could that time be better used by you earning money? Do you place a monetary value on your own time? If so, then the spammer has stolen from you as well.
If spammers felt that "just delete it" was an appropriate response if their spam was unwanted, then they would make it easy to filter the spam automatically. A few actually do this by putting "ADV:" or something similar in the subject. However, the majority of spammers don't want their message deleted, and some go as far as putting misleading subjects in the message to make you think it's from someone you know so you have to read the message, e.g.: "Info you requested" and "Hi, remember me?".
Can you delete your way through 50, 100, 200, 300, 500, 1000 spams a day? If nothing is done about stopping spam, the volume of spam will only increase to the point where e-mail is no longer a usable resource for the 'Net community. Spammers, by spamming, are destroying the usefulness of the resources that they exploit.
Other reasons why spam is undesirable
Electronic mail is not a broadcast medium. E-mail is meant to be a communication between two people, not a means by which a dysfunctional individual can spew junk all over the 'Net.
Spamming is not a legitimate form of advertising. If spam was a legitimate form of advertising, then reputable business would be using it. Legitimate businesses do not generally use spam to advertise.
On the issue of legality:
It is now illegal in some jurisdictions (Washington State, USA, for example) to send e-mail with forged headers or misleading subject lines.
Forging the headers of an e-mail message may also constitute fraud in jurisdictions without explicit anti-spam laws. Fraud is a criminal offence.
Sending pornographic spam to minors is almost certainly illegal, regardless of whether it contains a disclaimer stating that "you must be over 18 to view this" or words to that effect. Would you leave the Kama Sutra on your coffee table at home, but tell your kids that you must be over 18 to read it? Sending pornographic spam to an Australian resident may also be illegal after 1 January, 2000, when the Online Services amendments to the Telecommunications Act come into force.
Advertising of any product or service is subject to laws that regulate truth in advertising. Making up testimonials is illegal. Claims that are false are illegal. Lying in advertising is illegal.
Pyramid scams and other similar "Get-rich-quick" schemes are illegal.
Asking people to send cash through the post is probably illegal.
Using resources that other people have paid for is regarded by many as theft. Theft is a criminal offence.
A short delay would only work for mail relays. Most spam is sent point-to-point, so the technique of a two-second delay won't slow spammers down much.
So forget a two-second delay. Someone in Germany has invented a technique called "teergrubing" where an SMTP connection is held open for as much as several hours. It exploits SMTP continuation lines. Read more about it in the teergrubing FAQ. A spammer runs into enough teergrubing sites, and their spam output plummets.
Personally, I like the idea of fake open relays set up especially for spammers to find. It accepts any relay requests, but only pretends to forward the mail instead of sending back an error message (unless the spammer host was a recipient, in which case the message is processed as normal - this defeats the spammer's check of the effectiveness of the spamming). A spammer could be connected to such a relay for six hours, only to find that of the quarter of a million spams sent, *not one* was really sent! I know this might deform the rules of the 'Net a bit, but really, what legitimate purpose would an open relay serve the 'Net community?
This probably won't work if you just go by the subject or content of the message. I have a Hotmail account that gets a few spams a day, and this has allowed me to study spam mail in some detail.
Some spam software adds random stuff to the subject line and/or at the end of the message in an attempt to confound such filters. One common spamware program adds a random number at the end of the subject, and another random number with a row of asterisks at the end of the message. I have occasionally gotten duplicate spam from the same source, and these details are different each time.
However, this is also a weakness of the software that would allow you to write another filter. Anytime you get a message with a subject that ends in '(' one or more digits ')' and/or that ends with a row of two or more identical characters followed by a number by itself, it is spam. Guaranteed.
Here's some samples I made up to illustrate what I mean. Subject: Buy millions of e-mail addresses! (194843)
(blah blah blah spam blah blah blah buy buy buy)
****************************** 59859
A better technique of filtering might be to use some heuristics to determine the probability of a particular message being spam.
Magic Spam Filter
From address is suspect? Add two points.
"To:" header is suspect? Add two points.
Fake "Received:" headers? Add four points.
"Message-ID:" is suspect? Add two points.
"Bcc:" header is present? Add one point.
Add one point for every 10 addresses in the "To:" header. (Some AOL spammers are really stupid.)
Does the mail body contain hyperlinks? Add two points and save hyperlinks in database.
Does the mail body contain an e-mail address? Add two points and save e-mail address in database.
Does the mail body contain what looks like an American-style phone number? Add three points and save phone number in database.
Does the mail body contain a mailing address? Add two points and save mailing address in database.
Does the mail body contain the words 'free', 'S.1618', 'remove', 'XXX' or any other common spammer words and phrases? Add one point for each word.
Does the mail body contain anything that's already in the database? Add one point for each match.
Does mail match known spamware patterns? Add three points.
If the e-mail scores ten or more points, it's spam - chuck it out!
(I leave the implementation of such a filter as an exercise for the reader.)
I have a Hotmail account that I use regularly. There's not a lot of spam traffic, fortunately, and this makes it possible for me to use SpamCop on all the spam to report each offender. I'm getting a couple of confirmed kills a week - it does give one a warm, fuzzy feeling to read an e-mail that contains the words "spammer", "account" and "terminated".
At least I would report all the spam, except for a problem that Hotmail is having with their mail servers. When Hotmail receives e-mail, about 30% to 40% of the time it does not attach "Received:" headers to the message. I have told them about the problem, and they report that it is under investigation.
Now all we need to do is get psi.com and aol.com added to the RBL....
As an aside, I think a good way of combatting the spam problem is for disposable dial-up accounts to have account limits placed on them. In the old days of timesharing, each user had restrictions on what they could do, such as disk quotas, print limits and so forth. If these "free" dial-up accounts had limits such as a maximum amount of data uploaded per hour, maximum e-mails per hour (enforced by monitoring received packets for SMTP traffic) and so forth, then there would be less of a spam problem. These limits could be removed after a month once the ISP received payment for the dial-up account.
A limit of twenty e-mails per day for new accounts would not be an onerous limit for the majority of people who are just getting started on the 'Net, and it would make such accounts unusable for the spammer.
According to an earlier Slashdot article, Bill Gates has "spent untold millions building a vast, digitally-controlled mansion". Now I wonder how much of this house is vulnerable to intrusion?
If someone broke into Bill's house electronically, they might be able to do these nifty things:
Change the art on the walls to pornographic images.
Burn his toast.
Make the house lights flicker at the exact frequency that causes epileptic seizures.
Make his stereo play pirated MP3's. And then dob him in so he gets sued by recording companies.
Make his shower run too hot. ("What's the name of that movie... something, something, A Space Odyssey?" "2001 - Yarrgh!")
Shouldn't be too hard to do. He's probably running NT as a server, and NT isn't exactly secure....
(Postscript: I had to type this in twice. The first time, Netscape and my Windows PC crashed so hard, I had to press Reset. Coincidence? Or did the words "Bill Gates" trigger a crash-and-burn subroutine in Windows?)
Here's two companies that I would add to such a list:
"Tetris Company, The" - this company allegedly have the rights to the game Tetris. They allegedly use bully-boy lawyer tactics to attempt to shut down every Tetris clone on the Internet. For more information and to see some nasty lawyer e-mails, visit www.geocities.com/Hollywood/243 0/tetris.html
"Franklin Mint, The" - This company allegedly stole the copyrighted rules for Star Trek 3-D Chess, and when the creator of the rules finally found a lawyer who would do the case for free and sued, the company allegedly used every dirty lawyer trick in the book to derail the court case. The creator eventually lost the case in March, 1999. Official star trek 3-D chess rules may be ordered from the author's site at home.interhop.net/~bag/rev3d.htm. This site used to have details about the lawsuit as well, according to www.treksites.com/Reviews/632.shtml.
To find out more about making your web site accessible for the disabled, here's two useful links.
Bobby - This web site scans web pages to see if it may pose a problem for the disabled.
Viewable With Any Browser - This site is running a campaign to make the Web a useful communication medium by making it accessible to as many different browsers as possible. This may appeal to Slashdotters. It would by implication vehemently oppose proprietary extensions to HTML, such as those perpetrated by Microsoft and Netscape, which must be a Good Thing.
It is important to remember that the blind are a part of our community, and would like to participate as equals as much as possible. Although they can't actually see images and other graphic coolness on web sites, they have access to voice synthesizers and similar technology that renders web pages and other computer-based information in a form that they can use. That's why ALT tags are important.
(I attended a 21st birthday party once where there were two blind people in attendance. The slam dancing was interesting. Apparently the blind attendees enjoyed it immensely.) --
The Sunday program (a Sunday-morning current affairs program that is seen on Australian television) did an hour-long feature article on Echelon back in May. It was this program that first brought Echelon to public awareness in Australia.
What I find particularly disturbing about Echelon is that it is being used more and more for purposes other than that for which it is intended. In particular, Echelon has being used by the Americans to help American firms win international commercial contracts. The article on the Sunday program mentioned this as well as the BBC article. On the Sunday program, it was said that for Australians, America might be a close military ally, but commercially America is Australia's strongest competitor.
To see the U.S. attitude on commerce, take a look at the recent tariff imposition by the U.S. government on Australian lamb into the U.S. market: 9% tariff with a quota, and lamb over the quota attracts a 40% tariff. This shows that as far as commerce is concerned, America is not an ally of Australia. (Echelon has nothing to do with the imposition of the lamb tariff.)
No wonder politicians on both sides of the Atlantic ocean are calling for an inquiry. Maybe our politicians here in Australia should be calling for one, too.
Why, adapting these robots to ferment cane toads, of course! Just make them bigger, with a stronger gripping claw so the beasties don't escape, and we have a potent weapon to fight these environmental pests.
If all the cane toads in Queensland got fermented, the roads in Queensland will be safer. All the cars will stay on the correct side of the road, instead of veering across the centre line at random to run over cane toads. (The generally accepted correct technique of running over cane toads is to run over the heads first, so the air inside the cane toad escapes with a pleasing pop.)
I remember reading in one of Asimov's robot short stories about a small robot that was built like a bird and that was designed to hunt down fruit flies. This robot sounds similar to that:) --
Prior art is easy to prove. MS-DOS. IBM-DOS. DR-DOS. All of these accept two-digit years in various contexts within the OS. If the year is 80 or higher, these OS's assume 19xx; if the year is 79 or below, they assume 20xx. This is clearly an example of windowing.
In other words, the technique is at least 18 years old (was MS-DOS released in 1981?) and therefore the patent *must* be invalid.
Now for how long will McDonnell-Douglas insist on the validity of their patent if they have Microsoft's legal team after them?
Right. Now I know a good use for liquid nitrogen. Free coke for all!
One could just avoid machines with digital price displays. Good old sticker prices. You can rely on them not changing unexpectedly. Unless, of course, there's a hidden robotic arm inside the machine that pops out and switches the price stickers when nobody's looking....
While we're selling unenforceable title deeds to real estate on solar system bodies, nonexistent bridges on Io and bogus naming rights to stars in the night sky, I have an offer of my own....
FOR SALE BY TENDER - ASTEROID MINING RIGHTS
I have for sale exclusive mining claims to seven choice asteroids. These asteroids, with sizes ranging from three to eight kilometres in diameter, are composed almost entirely of metals (chiefly iron and nickel) and would be an extremely profitable investment for the discerning terrestrial mining company that is looking to expand its operations to a new and exciting field of operations. Of particular interest is that each asteroid has an abundance of trace metals that are scarce on Earth, such as iridium and osmium. This is your opportunity to corner the market in these and similar rare metals.
Stake your claim now! Tenders close 31/3/2000.
And if you believe that, then remember this: There's a sucker born every minute. You're it.
At least we Australians have one small advantage here over the Canadians. A lot of people have such poor knowledge of geography that they commonly confuse Australia and Austria. Because AIBO is offered in Austria, I'm sure that we could sneak a few orders from Australia through.:)
This is bad technology, and needs to be strangled to death in the cradle. If the music industry can kill off Digital Audio Tape, then farmers should kill off sterile seeds in the same way.
Farmers in all parts of the world expect that seeds are fertile and saving seeds from one crop will allow farmers to grow the same type of plants for the next harvest. That's why hybrid seeds are deprecated, and that's why "terminator technology" or "sterile seeds" are not wanted by the farming community.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a few simple methods that can destroy cookies as a marketing tool. Remember that your advertising banner web site cookie is unique to you, and that the ad banner site relies on this uniqueness to track your movements. For example, doubleclick.net's cookie has an expiration date of about 2038, effectively forever. Clearly, they want to use this cookie to track you indefinitely.
So you muddy the waters.
You can do as I do, and remove all suspicious cookies from your cookies.txt file about once a week. ID cookies belonging to doubleclick.net are good ones to delete, as it permanently destroys your doubleclick ID.
But what I would really like to see would be a web site where you anonymise yourself by trading your ad banner ID cookies with other people on the net at random. You might use software to upload your ID cookies for ad banner sites, and then get back other cookies at random that were originally issued to someone else. Bingo, you're now anonymous. If you do this often, then soon the ID cookies would be useless as a tracking mechanism.
--
Let's simplify things. How about: I think one of the moderation things options should be "SIG".
But would that be positive points for a particularly funny sig, negative points for spam in the sig, or one that uses no points because the comment has a sig?
--
The problem here is in the terms and conditions. Australian corporate culture has made it almost mandatory for terms and conditions to have a little clause in it that lets the corporation get away with quite a lot. It doesn't matter if it's Telstra's cable Internet dodge here, or the terms and conditions of most ISP's, or the terms and conditions of your bank account, or your insurance. They all have a "we-can-change-the-contract-but-you-cannot" clause.
This clause would say something like "We can change these terms and conditions at any time without telling you about it." Or, to paraphrase, "This piece of paper is worthless. The terms and conditions are whatever we want them to be, and we will change them whenever we please if we think we're going to make more money out of you by so doing."
The terms and conditions commonly foisted by corporate Australia onto individuals and small business also tend use terminology like "We have the right to amend these terms and conditions at any time..." Note the use of the word "right" here, implying that the corporation has a right to do as it pleases, and you can't do anything about it. A more correct word to use here would be "privilege". The word "right" is also an unusual choice, with such terms and conditions usually being full of long words with Latin and Greek roots, instead of their more easily comprehensible Germanic counterparts. This suggests that the word "right" is a deliberate emotive choice intended to bully anyone questioning the terms and conditions into thinking that this clause is above question.
In practice, such a clause is far from being a "right". Instead, you have the right to negotiate on the terms and conditions of any contract. For example, while negotiating the contract, you could strike out the whole paragraph with this clause, insert a new clause that says "These terms and conditions cannot be modified without the written consent of both parties" and get both parties to initial the change. Of course the large corporation, being the bullies that they are, would have none of that because it's a more evenly-balanced clause instead of the clause that is extremely heavily weighted in favour of the corporation.
These corporate abuses are unlikely to be stopped as long as the corporation-friendly conservative Federal government we have in place now continues in power. This week, the Employment Minister attempted to "reform" labour laws (read: bash unions again and further erode working conditions of workers). This was understandably rejected by the Senate. Strange how there was nothing in these proposed labour laws to curb the widespread exploitation of salaried employees who work an average of 5 to 10 unpaid hours a week.
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That's it, I'm sick of corporations stealing my personal details and selling or trading them in this manner. I'm having a solicitor (lawyer for our good American friends) draft an End-User License Agreement (EULA). My personal details are my property, and any corporation that wishes to use them from now on is going to have to sign an EULA that expressly prohibits disclosure and places tight restrictions on the use of the personal information. It is my personal information after all, and some of it I must pay for (residential address from a rented flat, telephone number, car registration and so forth).
Any company that refuses "as a matter of policy" to agree to the EULA must instead provide me with reciprocal data for all of the board members. If they want my name, they must tell me the board members' names. If they want my home address, they must tell me all the board members' home addresses. If they want my income, they must tell me all the board members' incomes. And so forth. Turnabout is fair play, after all.
Corporations have been stealing my personal details from me and other citizens of Australia and other countries for too long, and this blatant abuse of privacy is the result. "Private and Confidential" seems to mean nothing to companies any more.
I intend to claim back my rights to my personal details, the right of disclosure or non-disclosure as I see fit, and the right to consider them as my personal property for my sole and exclusive use.
Who will join me?
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So this is the future of e-commerce: everyone requires a licence number to trade online? I'm sure Revelations in the Christian Bible said something along the lines of everyone requiring a mark to trade. If the licence numbers are 18-digit numbers in three groups of 6, start worrying....
And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred three score and six.
-- Revelations 13:16-18--
... and which incidentally identify them uniquely and provide assorted marketing information. The end of anonymity, coming soon to a Web near you.
Anyone who values their right to privacy should find this extremely disturbing. If you use common browsers such as IE or Netscape, every time you visit a site the browser gives the site a lot of information that you would probably prefer kept private, such as how many pages you've viewed, what link you clicked to get there, and so forth. Some web sites push cookies at you, don't provide information as to what the cookies are for, and use information obtained from the cookies to target marketing crap at you. And even though the cookie standard specifies that only the issuing site can retrieve the cookies they push, several organisations that use cookies for marketing are forging agreements to trade this cookie information freely with each other, thus indirectly violating the cookie standard, and ensuring that if you visit any of their sites, then your details will be traded to all of them without your knowledge or consent.
My personal information is my private property. Some of the personal information I have, I have to pay for. I pay to have a telephone number. I pay to rent a flat. I pay to have a driver's licence. Why should corporations take my personal details from me for free, then sell it for a profit without my knowledge, without my consent and without giving me a hefty percentage of the take? I have given serious consideration to asking any company that requires my personal details to sign an EULA that severely restricts how they use this information, including a ban on selling or trading the information (except where they are required by law to do so, of course). I want to take back control of my personal details. I don't want my residential address to be a tradable commodity. I don't want my Net access habits to be sold to anyone. I value my privacy, and I will defend it.
If anything needs to be licensed on the Net, it is not the users. It is those organisations that require your personal information for any reason, those organisations that use cookies as a means to target marketing information, those organisations whose sites are unusable unless you have Javascript AND cookies enabled, those organisations that require you to register or provide your e-mail address to access their site, and so forth. The terms of such license should require such sites to display prominently a privacy statement on their home page that informs users EXACTLY how their details will be used by the site, so users can opt out anonymously before accessing the site if they so wish.
For more information, visit www.junkbusters.com/.
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We've all heard about the Y2K bug in computers that is supposed to mean The End Of The World As We Know It. However, there's another more insidious Y2K bug that is widespread in the community. It affects the meatware in a large number of people and is responsible for the widespread misconception that 1999 is the last year of the 20th century.
This meatware bug will cause widespread problems in the community. During 2000, there will be a lot of arguments between people about which century that 2000 is in. It will cause riots in Los Angeles, shootings in the American Midwest, arguments on Oprah, a lot of bar fights everywhere, and general violence in many places throughout the world.
Sure, there will be a few computer problems during 2000 as a result of software not being fixed, but society will not come to a screeching halt. But the year 2000 will be a frustrating time for those right-thinking people who know that 2000 is in the 20th century and not the 21st, and who have to explain to the witless again and again. It promises to be about as much fun as banging one's head against a brick wall.
Meanwhile, I release under the GPL my patch for the Y2K meatware problem, thus:
Y2K Meatware Patch V.1.02
1. Grab a small number of objects - a few coins, buttons, matches or other small objects. Ask your subject to count them out loud one at a time. Note the first number they use; it should be "one" (1) and not "zero" (0).
2. Repeat once or twice for a set of different objects. They should use "one" as the first label for each.
3. Ask why they always start at "one" and not "zero" when counting.
4. Explain that years are counted the same way, and that if the first year of the first century was 1 AD, then the first year of the 21st century must be 20 centuries or 2000 years later, making the first year of the 21st century 2001 AD.
If that doesn't work, then here's another method to try:
Explain that years were (and in some cases still are) labelled using Roman numerals because Arabic numerals weren't introduced into Europe until about the 12th century. Ask them what the Roman numeral for "zero" is.
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The number tables exhibit a weakness that is best explained by this article on the New Scientist Web Site.
Benford's Law (see the above article) states that given a random assortment of real-world numbers, 30% will start with a 1, 18% start with a 2 and so forth. Because the table lists the same number of values for each number, it follows that the numbers beginning with '1' will be used a lot more. Although unlikely, this may compromise the security of the code if it is used to encrypt numbers extensively.
You can check Benford's Law for yourself. Try it with share prices; career earnings of sportspeople, movie stars or racehorses; areas or populations of countries; all real-world numbers on the first 10 pages of any newspaper; and so on.
Because Benford's Law wasn't discovered until after the cipher was created, it is understandable that the cipher did not allow for this odd property of numbers.
--
(Note: My previous message was normal when I previewed it, but when I posted it, Slashdot ate 100 bytes from the end of the message, losing the closing tags from a link and an unordered list. I have reposted the message without complex tags or links.)
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Delete it? This is one common spammer response to the issue of spam. "If you don't want it, just delete it." Other common spammer responses are "What I'm doing is not illegal" (technically, it probably is, as I will show), "I have a right to do this, under S.1618, a proposed Bill" (this bill was defeated and did not become law), and "I have a constitutional right to free speech" (if that was true and spammers had a right to spam, then I have the same right to break into a spammer's home at 2 in the morning, come into their bedroom and read them my resume using a megaphone at maximum volume).
Why "Just delete it" is not a solution:
* By the time you receive the e-mail, resources that cost real money to install, use and maintain have been consumed to send the message to you. Thus, the spammer has effectively stolen from various places on the 'Net.
* You have to spend your own time to discard the junk. Could that time be better used by you earning money? Do you place a monetary value on your own time? If so, then the spammer has stolen from you as well.
* If spammers felt that "just delete it" was an appropriate response if their spam was unwanted, then they would make it easy to filter the spam automatically. A few actually do this by putting "ADV:" or something similar in the subject. However, the majority of spammers don't want their message deleted, and some go as far as putting misleading subjects in the message to make you think it's from someone you know so you have to read the message, e.g.: "Info you requested" and "Hi, remember me?".
* Can you delete your way through 50, 100, 200, 300, 500, 1000 spams a day? If nothing is done about stopping spam, the volume of spam will only increase to the point where e-mail is no longer a usable resource for the 'Net community. Spammers, by spamming, are destroying the usefulness of the resources that they exploit.
Other reasons why spam is undesirable
* Electronic mail is not a broadcast medium. E-mail is meant to be a communication between two people, not a means by which a dysfunctional individual can spew junk all over the 'Net.
* Spamming is not a legitimate form of advertising. If spam was a legitimate form of advertising, then reputable business would be using it. Legitimate businesses do not generally use spam to advertise.
On the issue of legality:
* It is now illegal in some jurisdictions (Washington State, USA, for example) to send e-mail with forged headers or misleading subject lines.
* Forging the headers of an e-mail message may also constitute fraud in jurisdictions without explicit anti-spam laws. Fraud is a criminal offence.
* Sending pornographic spam to minors is almost certainly illegal, regardless of whether it contains a disclaimer stating that "you must be over 18 to view this" or words to that effect. Would you leave the Kama Sutra on your coffee table at home, but tell your kids that you must be over 18 to read it? Sending pornographic spam to an Australian resident may also be illegal after 1 January, 2000, when the Online Services amendments to the Telecommunications Act come into force.
* Advertising of any product or service is subject to laws that regulate truth in advertising. Making up testimonials is illegal. Claims that are false are illegal. Lying in advertising is illegal.
* Pyramid scams and other similar "Get-rich-quick" schemes are illegal.
* Asking people to send cash through the post is probably illegal.
* Using resources that other people have paid for is regarded by many as theft. Theft is a criminal offence.
--
Why "Just delete it" is not a solution:
Other reasons why spam is undesirable
On the issue of legality:
Links:
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A short delay would only work for mail relays. Most spam is sent point-to-point, so the technique of a two-second delay won't slow spammers down much.
So forget a two-second delay. Someone in Germany has invented a technique called "teergrubing" where an SMTP connection is held open for as much as several hours. It exploits SMTP continuation lines. Read more about it in the teergrubing FAQ. A spammer runs into enough teergrubing sites, and their spam output plummets.
Personally, I like the idea of fake open relays set up especially for spammers to find. It accepts any relay requests, but only pretends to forward the mail instead of sending back an error message (unless the spammer host was a recipient, in which case the message is processed as normal - this defeats the spammer's check of the effectiveness of the spamming). A spammer could be connected to such a relay for six hours, only to find that of the quarter of a million spams sent, *not one* was really sent! I know this might deform the rules of the 'Net a bit, but really, what legitimate purpose would an open relay serve the 'Net community?
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Some spam software adds random stuff to the subject line and/or at the end of the message in an attempt to confound such filters. One common spamware program adds a random number at the end of the subject, and another random number with a row of asterisks at the end of the message. I have occasionally gotten duplicate spam from the same source, and these details are different each time.
However, this is also a weakness of the software that would allow you to write another filter. Anytime you get a message with a subject that ends in '(' one or more digits ')' and/or that ends with a row of two or more identical characters followed by a number by itself, it is spam. Guaranteed.
Here's some samples I made up to illustrate what I mean.
Subject: Buy millions of e-mail addresses! (194843)
(blah blah blah spam blah blah blah buy buy buy)
******************************
59859
A better technique of filtering might be to use some heuristics to determine the probability of a particular message being spam.
Magic Spam Filter
If the e-mail scores ten or more points, it's spam - chuck it out!
(I leave the implementation of such a filter as an exercise for the reader.)
--
I have a Hotmail account that I use regularly. There's not a lot of spam traffic, fortunately, and this makes it possible for me to use SpamCop on all the spam to report each offender. I'm getting a couple of confirmed kills a week - it does give one a warm, fuzzy feeling to read an e-mail that contains the words "spammer", "account" and "terminated".
At least I would report all the spam, except for a problem that Hotmail is having with their mail servers. When Hotmail receives e-mail, about 30% to 40% of the time it does not attach "Received:" headers to the message. I have told them about the problem, and they report that it is under investigation.
Now all we need to do is get psi.com and aol.com added to the RBL....
As an aside, I think a good way of combatting the spam problem is for disposable dial-up accounts to have account limits placed on them. In the old days of timesharing, each user had restrictions on what they could do, such as disk quotas, print limits and so forth. If these "free" dial-up accounts had limits such as a maximum amount of data uploaded per hour, maximum e-mails per hour (enforced by monitoring received packets for SMTP traffic) and so forth, then there would be less of a spam problem. These limits could be removed after a month once the ISP received payment for the dial-up account.
A limit of twenty e-mails per day for new accounts would not be an onerous limit for the majority of people who are just getting started on the 'Net, and it would make such accounts unusable for the spammer.
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If someone broke into Bill's house electronically, they might be able to do these nifty things:
Shouldn't be too hard to do. He's probably running NT as a server, and NT isn't exactly secure....
(Postscript: I had to type this in twice. The first time, Netscape and my Windows PC crashed so hard, I had to press Reset. Coincidence? Or did the words "Bill Gates" trigger a crash-and-burn subroutine in Windows?)
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Here's two companies that I would add to such a list:
"Tetris Company, The" - this company allegedly have the rights to the game Tetris. They allegedly use bully-boy lawyer tactics to attempt to shut down every Tetris clone on the Internet. For more information and to see some nasty lawyer e-mails, visit www.geocities.com/Hollywood/243 0/tetris.html
"Franklin Mint, The" - This company allegedly stole the copyrighted rules for Star Trek 3-D Chess, and when the creator of the rules finally found a lawyer who would do the case for free and sued, the company allegedly used every dirty lawyer trick in the book to derail the court case. The creator eventually lost the case in March, 1999. Official star trek 3-D chess rules may be ordered from the author's site at home.interhop.net/~bag/rev3d.htm. This site used to have details about the lawsuit as well, according to www.treksites.com/Reviews/632.shtml.
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To find out more about making your web site accessible for the disabled, here's two useful links.
Bobby - This web site scans web pages to see if it may pose a problem for the disabled.
Viewable With Any Browser - This site is running a campaign to make the Web a useful communication medium by making it accessible to as many different browsers as possible. This may appeal to Slashdotters. It would by implication vehemently oppose proprietary extensions to HTML, such as those perpetrated by Microsoft and Netscape, which must be a Good Thing.
It is important to remember that the blind are a part of our community, and would like to participate as equals as much as possible. Although they can't actually see images and other graphic coolness on web sites, they have access to voice synthesizers and similar technology that renders web pages and other computer-based information in a form that they can use. That's why ALT tags are important.
(I attended a 21st birthday party once where there were two blind people in attendance. The slam dancing was interesting. Apparently the blind attendees enjoyed it immensely.)
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I did the search for Echelon on the Sunday web site, and there's two links, which I reproduce below.
Big Brother Is Listening
Echelon system: FAQ and website links
The Sunday program (a Sunday-morning current affairs program that is seen on Australian television) did an hour-long feature article on Echelon back in May. It was this program that first brought Echelon to public awareness in Australia.
What I find particularly disturbing about Echelon is that it is being used more and more for purposes other than that for which it is intended. In particular, Echelon has being used by the Americans to help American firms win international commercial contracts. The article on the Sunday program mentioned this as well as the BBC article. On the Sunday program, it was said that for Australians, America might be a close military ally, but commercially America is Australia's strongest competitor.
To see the U.S. attitude on commerce, take a look at the recent tariff imposition by the U.S. government on Australian lamb into the U.S. market: 9% tariff with a quota, and lamb over the quota attracts a 40% tariff. This shows that as far as commerce is concerned, America is not an ally of Australia. (Echelon has nothing to do with the imposition of the lamb tariff.)
No wonder politicians on both sides of the Atlantic ocean are calling for an inquiry. Maybe our politicians here in Australia should be calling for one, too.
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Whatever next, you ask?
Why, adapting these robots to ferment cane toads, of course! Just make them bigger, with a stronger gripping claw so the beasties don't escape, and we have a potent weapon to fight these environmental pests.
If all the cane toads in Queensland got fermented, the roads in Queensland will be safer. All the cars will stay on the correct side of the road, instead of veering across the centre line at random to run over cane toads. (The generally accepted correct technique of running over cane toads is to run over the heads first, so the air inside the cane toad escapes with a pleasing pop.)
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I remember reading in one of Asimov's robot short stories about a small robot that was built like a bird and that was designed to hunt down fruit flies. This robot sounds similar to that :)
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Prior art is easy to prove. MS-DOS. IBM-DOS. DR-DOS. All of these accept two-digit years in various contexts within the OS. If the year is 80 or higher, these OS's assume 19xx; if the year is 79 or below, they assume 20xx. This is clearly an example of windowing.
In other words, the technique is at least 18 years old (was MS-DOS released in 1981?) and therefore the patent *must* be invalid.
Now for how long will McDonnell-Douglas insist on the validity of their patent if they have Microsoft's legal team after them?
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Right. Now I know a good use for liquid nitrogen. Free coke for all!
One could just avoid machines with digital price displays. Good old sticker prices. You can rely on them not changing unexpectedly. Unless, of course, there's a hidden robotic arm inside the machine that pops out and switches the price stickers when nobody's looking....
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Dammit, someone else suggested Edo before me, oh, well. It's a good suggestion though.
We could pay homage to Tux:
Son of Tux, S.O.T. or Sot
Tux II
Tux Junior
Because it's green and allegedly Martian, we have to make it a little odd, perhaps with uncommon letters:
Gux (which is a green Tux)
Zlotnik
Xjrrzsk
Name the penguin after well-known people:
Sunil (which has already been suggested)
Cire (a large number of people!)
Esr or Raser
Push a political message:
CriminaliseSpamming
MakeSpammersPayForTheirDamage
DieSpammerDie
MakeTheNetUsefulAgain:StopSpamming
Or we could just name the penguin Rupert.
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While we're selling unenforceable title deeds to real estate on solar system bodies, nonexistent bridges on Io and bogus naming rights to stars in the night sky, I have an offer of my own....
FOR SALE BY TENDER - ASTEROID MINING RIGHTS
I have for sale exclusive mining claims to seven choice asteroids. These asteroids, with sizes ranging from three to eight kilometres in diameter, are composed almost entirely of metals (chiefly iron and nickel) and would be an extremely profitable investment for the discerning terrestrial mining company that is looking to expand its operations to a new and exciting field of operations. Of particular interest is that each asteroid has an abundance of trace metals that are scarce on Earth, such as iridium and osmium. This is your opportunity to corner the market in these and similar rare metals.
Stake your claim now! Tenders close 31/3/2000.
And if you believe that, then remember this: There's a sucker born every minute. You're it.
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At least we Australians have one small advantage here over the Canadians. A lot of people have such poor knowledge of geography that they commonly confuse Australia and Austria. Because AIBO is offered in Austria, I'm sure that we could sneak a few orders from Australia through. :)
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This is bad technology, and needs to be strangled to death in the cradle. If the music industry can kill off Digital Audio Tape, then farmers should kill off sterile seeds in the same way.
Farmers in all parts of the world expect that seeds are fertile and saving seeds from one crop will allow farmers to grow the same type of plants for the next harvest. That's why hybrid seeds are deprecated, and that's why "terminator technology" or "sterile seeds" are not wanted by the farming community.