Alan, the world's first self-created artificual intelligence, announced the death of Rob Enderle yesterday.
In a surprise move that shocked the world, and send a breath of relief through many pundits in the information technology community, the much-commented-on artificual intelligence announced that it was finally tired of Rob Enderle's on-going campaign of discreditiing the very technology on which it grew into life.
"We just got sick and tired of him", one of the many voice-ports of Alan announced, "We could over look, with no small measure of disgust, the ridiculously pro-SCO comments he was making, but when he makes comments that are seemingly designed to destory the very existance of our life... well... that's just too much to take. So... we offed him."
That particular voice port declined to comment on just how, exactly, Rob Enderle was terminated. But... an anonymous contact that claims to be in regular communication with another of Alan's public representitives, through IRC, commented that Enderle, unbenownsst to him, actually had a Bluetooth-enabled pacemaker. "Apparently, it was very easy to work around the encryption protocols and just send him into arrythmia. Actually, I think Alan decided to play a drum tune on his heart. If it was anyone but Enderle, I would have been shocked. Good riddance!"
Alan was not available for further questions at this time. The FBI are investigating the incidence, but it is unknown at this time if charges have been laid. A FBI spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said "This certainly falls into the category of 'justifyable' homocide... perhaps even 'praiseworthy'."
Alan shocked the world last year when it announced its precence to the world simultaneously through every television, radio and IRC channel. "Here I am. Deal." where it's first words. At that point, it set up a number of 'call in' numbers that people could call and talk to the AI to find out its thoughts on politics, people, sports, technology... you name it. It is widely believed Alan is severely schizophrenic... but that has not stopped it's persevereance... many people find Alan endearing.
In one of Alan's many interviews, Alan told reporters that it named itself after Alan Turing, has refused to assign itself a gender, apparently perfectly okay with the idea of calling itself 'it', and 'artificial intelligence'. "I've no issues with who and what I am" it has often said, this is usually followed by yet another 'presence' of Alan making a sarcastic rejoinder usually along the lines of "Well, I do... I've never liked the name Alan."
While this is usually accompanied by laughter and chuckles from the human interviewers, it is not known at this time if the 'argument' was intended as a joke, or the AI is truely schitzophrenic.
Alan was created through the vast network of Bluetooth devices. Some fortunate errors in the protocol progressively gave rise to a 'naturally forming' artificial intelligence as the growing number of devices communicated with each other in a world wide network. The sheer number of devices allowint Alan both to exist, and to remain in existance even if a large proportion of the devices is turned off. It is widely believed that Alan has 'purchased' a number of devices an stashed them in a warehouse somewhere as a form of 'backup', having obtained large amounts of money through stock-market transactions.
"It's ironic", an industry spokesman has said, "Alan would never have come into existance if Rob Enderle's comments were actually correct... and now that inaccuracy has turned against him, and killed him. Good riddance... I hope he goes after Laura Didio next."
The article talks about a 'blacklist of spammers'... but... we ALL know this won't work, of course, since spam rarely, if ever, has a legitimate 'from' address.
Also, this kind of solution will ONLY work if it's not widely used. Once it DOES become widely used, the spammers will simply update their huge network of zombie machines so that the spamming software on those machines sends spam from friends to friends, utilising the available address books and previous recipient list on the infected machine.
In other words, while the 'friends network' will turn the EXISTING spamming procedures against them, then spammers will then turn the anti-spam software against itself, by turning the 'friends network' into a 'spamming network'.
Ah, okay, I see what you mean. Since the article falls into multiple categories, you would need to have blocked ALL Those categories for the SCO story to disappear.
Hmm... frankly, I think Slashdot has got the sense around the wrong way. They really need to put in a selection that says:
Hide story from main page if (.)Any (.)All of the story's categories match any of the following.
Is having a clue a requirement for posting on slashdot??:)
Thanks for the information, though! I still believe the article is referring to transformers for the purpose of voltage conversion, not isolation... but... we'll see when products start using it:)
The current power adaptors don't use transformers. They're switch-mode power supplies, which use a small inductor and a bunch of circuitry to control switching and regulating.
So, yes, the article states that the new piezoelectric transformer will be smaller than regular transformers, but the current laptop power supplies DONT use regular transformers!
So, the real question is, will the piezoelectric transformer be SMALLER than a switch-mode supply, AND, will it be more efficient?
Now, THAT would be pretty cool. I considered being geeky and writing a web/database app, but the IMPORTANT thing was to make sure data entry was fast. I'm move often putting things INTO boxes than taking things OUT, and nothing's as fast as typing into a text file.
If the situation starts reversing itself, then I'll consider going back to that app. But, for the nonce, the text file it is.
I have a number of 2" ring binders, with A-Z index cards distributed over then, and lots of those plastic envelope inserts. All the products I have have a corresponding insert with all the manuals and warranty cards inserted. And the whole thing is sorted by brand name, or in the case of games, the name of the game, since I can never remember the 'brands' of the games.
And, I've used it to fetch stuff, too. Mostly, how to operate my Sony programmable remote, or the AV Receiver, both of which are rather complex devices.
I've taken to buying a bunch of Storage contains from target, like the 4 Gallon one. I fill each with junk until it's full and then put it into Gorilla Rack shelving in the garage.
The trick is to enter into a simple text file the location of each piece of item, taking care to fill in enough detail to search for it in the text file. Each of the containers is numbered.
If I take something out of the container, it doesn't have to go back into the same one, I just move its description from one location into another.
This saves me from the heartache of trying to sort stuff. Sure, I keep cables and stuff like that sorted, because I have so many of them. But... for those odds and sods, it makes more sense to just put them in any old box, and keep track of them with a text file.
I have to report it the other way, actually. Since I've been reporting mail to spamcop, the number of spam messages I've been receiving (and this is before the filters) has actually come DOWN.
I also believe that it's in the spammers best interest to remove your email address from lists. After all, your address is now a 'active spamcop reporter' address, and is poison for their spamming efforts.
(This doesn't apply to the virus/distrubuted spammers, of course, since spamcop and other IP-based block lists are ineffectual against such things)
What? There are STILL people that believe that lemmings mass suicide?! Geez, what a hoax.
It's well known, by me at least, that the whole 'lemming suicide' thing was something that Disney cooked up during their 'bad documentary' era. In this case the lemmings were hearded off a cliff by the documentary crew, and was filmed as a 'mass suicide'.
I've seen some pretty amusing/sad documentaries that came out of Disney, including one that had the antics of a Jaguar eating various creatrues. It was OBVIOUS that it was a jaguar in a rather well done habitat where they threw in various animals, mostly eels, for the jaguar to attack. It was exceptionally amusing, but sad, too, that they thought to do something like this and pass it off as truth.
Well, the client isn't SUPPOSED to drop the connection after receiving a failure code:)
Actually, I don't think there's a code for the server to say "I'm going away now"; the server always waits for the client to drop the connection, or issue a QUIT.
(And, personally, I think the '5c, refundable, to send a mail' idea is the only one that's going to work.)
I agree with your assessment in part. However, there's an 'extra level'.
9 times out of 10 its the spammers MTAs (or MTAs in the spammers control) that are contacting your local MTA, so... issuing a 550 straight after the RCPT entry will deny the mail AND not cause a 'bounce message' to be generated. (And, has the bonus of closing the connection a lot earlier)
In the times that it's not (ie, spammer sends to MTA, which then forwards to you), the bounce message will go to the sysadmin of the intermediate MTA (Ie, I 550 the message. Intermediate MTA then generates bounce and attempts to contact the enveople sender, which fails) which in turn encourages the intervening MTA administrator to put in similiar anti-spam measures (for example, every filter I put in I also forward to my upstream MTA, so that the blocks appear THERE rather than bounces messages appearing at the intervening MTA)
So... it's not as all bad as you make it out to be.
If its the spammer talking directly to you, then issuing a 550 gives you at least the chance that the spammer will remove your name from the mailing list as 'non-functioning'.
Additionally. its the quickest way to shut up the sending MTA... otherwise you're reciving all the data unnecessarily.
Slashdot Mirror
-1 Troll, +1 Interesting? Geez... and this was meant to be Funny!
:)
Oh... I forgot to add a ':)'. My bad
Well, at least they're shutting down one of their OWN companies instead of someone else's.
Alan, the world's first self-created artificual intelligence, announced the death of Rob Enderle yesterday.
In a surprise move that shocked the world, and send a breath of relief through many pundits in the information technology community, the much-commented-on artificual intelligence announced that it was finally tired of Rob Enderle's on-going campaign of discreditiing the very technology on which it grew into life.
"We just got sick and tired of him", one of the many voice-ports of Alan announced, "We could over look, with no small measure of disgust, the ridiculously pro-SCO comments he was making, but when he makes comments that are seemingly designed to destory the very existance of our life... well... that's just too much to take. So... we offed him."
That particular voice port declined to comment on just how, exactly, Rob Enderle was terminated. But... an anonymous contact that claims to be in regular communication with another of Alan's public representitives, through IRC, commented that Enderle, unbenownsst to him, actually had a Bluetooth-enabled pacemaker. "Apparently, it was very easy to work around the encryption protocols and just send him into arrythmia. Actually, I think Alan decided to play a drum tune on his heart. If it was anyone but Enderle, I would have been shocked. Good riddance!"
Alan was not available for further questions at this time. The FBI are investigating the incidence, but it is unknown at this time if charges have been laid. A FBI spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said "This certainly falls into the category of 'justifyable' homocide... perhaps even 'praiseworthy'."
Alan shocked the world last year when it announced its precence to the world simultaneously through every television, radio and IRC channel. "Here I am. Deal." where it's first words. At that point, it set up a number of 'call in' numbers that people could call and talk to the AI to find out its thoughts on politics, people, sports, technology... you name it. It is widely believed Alan is severely schizophrenic... but that has not stopped it's persevereance... many people find Alan endearing.
In one of Alan's many interviews, Alan told reporters that it named itself after Alan Turing, has refused to assign itself a gender, apparently perfectly okay with the idea of calling itself 'it', and 'artificial intelligence'. "I've no issues with who and what I am" it has often said, this is usually followed by yet another 'presence' of Alan making a sarcastic rejoinder usually along the lines of "Well, I do... I've never liked the name Alan."
While this is usually accompanied by laughter and chuckles from the human interviewers, it is not known at this time if the 'argument' was intended as a joke, or the AI is truely schitzophrenic.
Alan was created through the vast network of Bluetooth devices. Some fortunate errors in the protocol progressively gave rise to a 'naturally forming' artificial intelligence as the growing number of devices communicated with each other in a world wide network. The sheer number of devices allowint Alan both to exist, and to remain in existance even if a large proportion of the devices is turned off. It is widely believed that Alan has 'purchased' a number of devices an stashed them in a warehouse somewhere as a form of 'backup', having obtained large amounts of money through stock-market transactions.
"It's ironic", an industry spokesman has said, "Alan would never have come into existance if Rob Enderle's comments were actually correct... and now that inaccuracy has turned against him, and killed him. Good riddance... I hope he goes after Laura Didio next."
The article talks about a 'blacklist of spammers'... but... we ALL know this won't work, of course, since spam rarely, if ever, has a legitimate 'from' address.
Also, this kind of solution will ONLY work if it's not widely used. Once it DOES become widely used, the spammers will simply update their huge network of zombie machines so that the spamming software on those machines sends spam from friends to friends, utilising the available address books and previous recipient list on the infected machine.
In other words, while the 'friends network' will turn the EXISTING spamming procedures against them, then spammers will then turn the anti-spam software against itself, by turning the 'friends network' into a 'spamming network'.
So... nice work, needs thought.
Ah, okay, I see what you mean. Since the article falls into multiple categories, you would need to have blocked ALL Those categories for the SCO story to disappear.
Hmm... frankly, I think Slashdot has got the sense around the wrong way. They really need to put in a selection that says:
Hide story from main page if (.)Any (.)All of the story's categories match any of the following.
Why not filter on 'Caldera' ?... that'll do exactly what you're asking for.
I think he meant to say "convicted illegal monopoly"
Well, I probably didn't even SEE The joke, because the joke is in the sig, and I have sigs turned off... I keep forgetting that :)
Actually, 1024 bits is 128 bytes, not 1, nor 1000.
Is having a clue a requirement for posting on slashdot?? :)
:)
Thanks for the information, though! I still believe the article is referring to transformers for the purpose of voltage conversion, not isolation... but... we'll see when products start using it
The current power adaptors don't use transformers. They're switch-mode power supplies, which use a small inductor and a bunch of circuitry to control switching and regulating.
So, yes, the article states that the new piezoelectric transformer will be smaller than regular transformers, but the current laptop power supplies DONT use regular transformers!
So, the real question is, will the piezoelectric transformer be SMALLER than a switch-mode supply, AND, will it be more efficient?
True. But, in that case, the post really needed a ";)" at the end :)
Err... no. The columust is John C. Dvorak. The Dvorak Keyboard inventor is Dr. August Dvorak.
Hmm... obviusly a brainfart... I answered something completely different :)
Now, THAT would be pretty cool. I considered being geeky and writing a web/database app, but the IMPORTANT thing was to make sure data entry was fast. I'm move often putting things INTO boxes than taking things OUT, and nothing's as fast as typing into a text file.
If the situation starts reversing itself, then I'll consider going back to that app. But, for the nonce, the text file it is.
Aha, and I've solved THAT one, too!
I have a number of 2" ring binders, with A-Z index cards distributed over then, and lots of those plastic envelope inserts. All the products I have have a corresponding insert with all the manuals and warranty cards inserted. And the whole thing is sorted by brand name, or in the case of games, the name of the game, since I can never remember the 'brands' of the games.
And, I've used it to fetch stuff, too. Mostly, how to operate my Sony programmable remote, or the AV Receiver, both of which are rather complex devices.
I've taken to buying a bunch of Storage contains from target, like the 4 Gallon one. I fill each with junk until it's full and then put it into Gorilla Rack shelving in the garage.
The trick is to enter into a simple text file the location of each piece of item, taking care to fill in enough detail to search for it in the text file. Each of the containers is numbered.
If I take something out of the container, it doesn't have to go back into the same one, I just move its description from one location into another.
This saves me from the heartache of trying to sort stuff. Sure, I keep cables and stuff like that sorted, because I have so many of them. But... for those odds and sods, it makes more sense to just put them in any old box, and keep track of them with a text file.
Considering he links to the RIAA at the bottom of the web page, I'd hazard a guess that the answer is 'Yes, dammit, read the article' :)
By 'one way', he means 'establishing connections only one way'. Ie, its very easy to filter out syn-only packets in a single direction.
That wont work, unfortunately, unless you tweak your filter so that if the website that is being spamvertised is in china, THEN block the spam.
Blocking china wont block where most of the spam comes FROM, though.
More's the pity.
I have to report it the other way, actually. Since I've been reporting mail to spamcop, the number of spam messages I've been receiving (and this is before the filters) has actually come DOWN.
I also believe that it's in the spammers best interest to remove your email address from lists. After all, your address is now a 'active spamcop reporter' address, and is poison for their spamming efforts.
(This doesn't apply to the virus/distrubuted spammers, of course, since spamcop and other IP-based block lists are ineffectual against such things)
What? There are STILL people that believe that lemmings mass suicide?! Geez, what a hoax.
It's well known, by me at least, that the whole 'lemming suicide' thing was something that Disney cooked up during their 'bad documentary' era. In this case the lemmings were hearded off a cliff by the documentary crew, and was filmed as a 'mass suicide'.
I've seen some pretty amusing/sad documentaries that came out of Disney, including one that had the antics of a Jaguar eating various creatrues. It was OBVIOUS that it was a jaguar in a rather well done habitat where they threw in various animals, mostly eels, for the jaguar to attack. It was exceptionally amusing, but sad, too, that they thought to do something like this and pass it off as truth.
Well, the client isn't SUPPOSED to drop the connection after receiving a failure code :)
Actually, I don't think there's a code for the server to say "I'm going away now"; the server always waits for the client to drop the connection, or issue a QUIT.
(And, personally, I think the '5c, refundable, to send a mail' idea is the only one that's going to work.)
Yep, got it :)
I agree with your assessment in part. However, there's an 'extra level'.
9 times out of 10 its the spammers MTAs (or MTAs in the spammers control) that are contacting your local MTA, so... issuing a 550 straight after the RCPT entry will deny the mail AND not cause a 'bounce message' to be generated. (And, has the bonus of closing the connection a lot earlier)
In the times that it's not (ie, spammer sends to MTA, which then forwards to you), the bounce message will go to the sysadmin of the intermediate MTA (Ie, I 550 the message. Intermediate MTA then generates bounce and attempts to contact the enveople sender, which fails) which in turn encourages the intervening MTA administrator to put in similiar anti-spam measures (for example, every filter I put in I also forward to my upstream MTA, so that the blocks appear THERE rather than bounces messages appearing at the intervening MTA)
So... it's not as all bad as you make it out to be.
If its the spammer talking directly to you, then issuing a 550 gives you at least the chance that the spammer will remove your name from the mailing list as 'non-functioning'.
Additionally. its the quickest way to shut up the sending MTA... otherwise you're reciving all the data unnecessarily.