'If someone is new to linux, they might get the software for free, but then what about the time it takes to learn Linux?'
Well, here's a personal study from my PC experience.
I used to use DR-DOS and GEM but moved to Microsoft DOS and Windows when Windows 3 came out, I then moved to windows 3.11 when that came out (TCO was a ligit copy of MS-DOS, and a pirate copy of Windows) it didn't take too long to pick up windows (or DOS) but it took years of fiddling to get the best performance out of it.
After that I moved to Windows 95 and started writing Windows applications and continued writing DOS applications. Windows 95 didn't cost me anything either, except for the guilt of using pirated software.
After that I moved to Windows NT at work and Windows 98 was just being released. After trying someone is new to linux, they might get the software for free, but then what about the time it takes to learn Linux?g to get Windows 98 to work on the office network we decided not to bother with it and keep most of the clients running Windows 95, it was about this time that I discovered Linux and installed it on my home PC.
Since then I have never run Windows on my local machine, have all the software I want and run no pirated software. Since my switch my TCO is now far less than if I were running Windows I've never had a viruses or Trojans to clean up, I'm still running the same brand software as in 1998 and my administration times on Linux are a fraction of what they would be on Windows, especially if something starts playing up(from experience of working mainly with windows at work for most of my professional carear)
It took me quite a while to pickup Linux in the early days, mainly the time it took to work out how to read man pages properly but once started everything fitted into place nicely, it took less time to learn Windows but years to find out exactly how it worked and how to work with it.
The only TCO type problems I have with Linux are: 1: A new KDE always screws up my settings when I install a new version. 2: Sometimes it takes a while to find a working driver (including fixing them) 3: Good well polished software can be hard to come by (but then again a lot of companies use bispoke solutions so it doesn't matter too much, and they can get the source to the unpolished software and make it a little more usable)
For the record I have never formatted a HDD to re-install Windows, I usually install another version of windows and copy everything that's needed (license keys, settings etc...) from the defunct Windows registry. I have had to do a couple of complete reinstalls of Linux but my current setup has been going for about 5 years (across different Linux vendors!).
Like what happens when the copyright expires on the DRMed xyz, you won't be able to release xyz into the public domain because it's crippled by DRM and you won't be able to break the DRM because of the DMCA. Bye Bye copyright legislation.
I think it's defiantly time to start lobbying Euro MPs to make them aware that DRM breaks existing copyright and right of first purchase legislation.
IMHO Gimp becomes hideously ackward... when ever you try to do anything with it, something as simple as drawing straight lines is a major headache and don't even think about making them pixel perfect. I've also found it to be a nightmare to use a graphics tablet with.
'people spoiling plot points for those waiting to see a show on TV'
It's Dr Who... the plot is:
Dr Who is doing something (like trying to fix the tardis) only to discover that aliens are starting to overrun the planet and the only way to stop them is xyz. Dr Who, always finds xyz in the end and send the aliens back to where they came from. The End.
'just maybe it's because women are generally better at "reading" people'
Men are more prone to things like autism and asbergers than Women so you'd expect men to be worse at social interaction, but the same diseases can end up making people more 'intelligent' in that they are better at methodically working through a complex task. Why are 90%+ of programmers men? and why do the 10%- of women programmers not get so excited about coding as their male counterparts?
' if representatives were able to retain half the customers who called to cancel their service
Called? I used AOL for the free months internet connection whilst waiting for ADSL to be put on.
Registration was a doddle, but cancellation ahhhhh!!!!! I couldn't find anywhere on the site to cancel, I couldn't find any documentation on canceling and I don't have a phone so their contact number was useless. What could I do?
In the end I bounced their money order and got a nasty letter through the post that's been filed under, 'but I couldn't cancel easily so sue me'
They still send the odd bit of snail-spam to me even though I always make sure that my details will never be used for marketing.
The reason so many films are boring is because.... I've already seen them.
Most films nowadays are just a rehash of a film made a few years ago under a different name so after a few years you get to see almost all the films that have ever been made.
But books have been around for ages and people still read them! For a start a book costs a fraction of the cost of a movie so a publisher takes a small risk publishing a odd book that will only be read by a few people, films cost megabucks so an odd film that will only get a few viewers isn't going to make any money so it won't be made. Add that that it only takes a couple of hours at most to see a film but it takes much longer to read a book so you can get through far more films than books, and the type of story and the way you tell it in a film is far more limited that that of a book and it doesn't take long before you've seen almost every movie ever made (by only seeing a fraction of them).
Anyhow, the reason I don't go to the cinema to watch films is because I've already seen them already. It's exactly the same reason why I no longer buy music, because 80% it seems to be covers and the other 20% sound just like something else from a few years ago.
'will the pulses keep travelling in a straight line'
Yes, but because the earth is circular all the plane has to do is aim up or even horizontally and the pulses will keep travelling in a straight line right off into space.
Its a good enough idea. Even with a captcha defeating library, a fairly skilled person would have to write a script or something to parse the webform (optionally over SSL which is a little more difficult) and programatically decode the captcha and then fill in the form and submit it.
It's fairly easy to work with the HTML dom over SSL or not using java,.net, perl and php (or even a firefox plugin)
Usernames and passwords are a bad idea, but we use them.
Agreed, only because of the human factor and the fact that it's impossible for most people to remember a different password and login for every site you need to register on, making you password only as secure as the weekest site.
If you go to somewhere like www.nationwide.co.uk and register they will send you a set of 8 random numbers and ask you to type in three of them every login making it impossible for some to steal you 'passcode' in one attempt.
Using cookies or special URLs like slashdot has (or had, not sure) to automatically login is a bad idea.
Well if you using a random number generator with a good entropy then a link with a 20 or so 7bit characters it would take 2^27 attempts to brute force and I guess that would take more time than the human race has left on earth so there fairly secure.
'somewhere there was a negotiated contract. A _bilateral_ affair. A sale-purchase affair. _That_ is what makes it different from spam, and that is why we tolerate them.'
And spammers don't pay for their internet connection, didn't sign a contract and don't help pay for the infrastructure of the internet?
Maybe billboards pay for the roads in the US but in the UK the money goes to the owner of the building or plot of land where the billboard is placed, the owner is taxed just like any other company. The owner is required to get permission from the local government to put the billboard up in the first place and the adds have to be U/E rated, but the same advertising laws can already be used against spammers.
I think your the lemming, and a blind one at that. 'legitimate' spammers the ones that pay for their connection and don't send out adds that violate trading standards are already covered to some extent by existing advertising laws and the ones that don't pay for their internet connection and use zombies to send out their spam are illegal under hacking laws and if no ones stopping them now then no one ever will.
'yeah, it paid for a part of the movie', no more than spam paid for part of the spammers (and therefore your) internet connection.
'The postal service controls and regulates bulk mail. The business and sending address are almost always known- if they're sending true bulk-rate mail, the sending business and address is known with certainty'
Wouldn't the answer then be to categorize spam along with bulk snail-mail so that is falls under the same legislation instead of making up new laws for the hell of it?
Spam isn't really a 'receiver-pays' system, the sender pays to send the span and the storage cost etc... of spam isn't that high (a 250GB HDD costs?) I would argue that it also takes more of my time to deal with snail-mail than it does to deal with spam weighting the costs of general junk mail in the direction of the receiver.
Bullshit. There is no such thing as "legitimate spam". Now maybe it's the same as junk mail, but sure as hell not as normal advertising.
Normal advertising works in that it pays for some service provided to me.....
Which normal advertising? Does the kiNe tick pay for peoples footwear, help keep people working in third world countries in well payed jubs with good working conditions or does it go into the pockets of the kiNe coporation?
What about product placement in films, do all those shots of krapples pay for the file? my every so comfey seat, less DRM on films or joe blogs £50 Million pay packet for playing the lead role?
And most billboards I've seen have nothing to do with helping out the community and everything to do with putting money into the pocket of one person/company.
etc..... You've completely narrowed down your perspective on advertising to the point where you cannot see that other forms of advertising are often just as intrusive, offensive etc... as spamm, so why only target spam and not all forms of unsolicited advertising?
'in fact it uses an NT kernel driver to do the authentication'
I'm using the ndiswrapper for my internet connection so I'm sure it would be possible to implement a mechanism for loading the NT kernel driver (I still think you'd require signed drivers though)
It should also be possible to use a kernel debugger to capture the unencrypted data.
'Sleep deprivation effects are there for a reason'
It looks like this drug is just stopping the 'feeling tired' effects, not the build up of toxins in the brain and the fsck + defrag (or whatever it is that sleep does). 30 odd hours isn't really sleep deprivation either it more like an increased fatigue level, I'm sure the monkeys would still be tripping out after a few days without sleep and dieing after a few months.
I find it quite odd that you assume that the problem has to be my fault because I run a certain OS and criticize me for it then admit that it's illegal to take over someones PC without consent in most countries.
Well, you problem appeared to be a compromised email (emails being sent with you email address but not by you), if you email address isn't public then it's been taken from a zombie PC that has your email address on it, this isn't just the fault of the OS but people who run a certain OS that's well known for having security problems don't seem to be any good at keeping up with updates.
I don't see you complaining that you have to lock your doors and don't just have to press a button to start your car. People are always going to take you for a ride if possible and you have to be astute if you don't want to be, maybe that means not using a common word for your email address, maybe that means making sure you OS is up to data and secured and not a zombie.
By definition spam isn't legitimate.
Well, it depends on who's definition you use, but generally spam seems to be defined as unsolicited bulk email (the electronic equivalent of paper junk mail) and as far as I'm concerned it's no less legitimate than any other form of advertising, and I do know people who like the unsolicited bulk snail-mail that pops through the door so I'm sure someone somewhere likes spam.
Frankly if you're not a spammed I suspect you benefit from it in some manner or you wouldn't be doing this. equivalent of paper junk mail No, I'm able to see spamming from a critical point of view, next to no-one on/. would support spam, infact it's almost pointless having a discussion about it. So I thought I'd take the point of view of someone who uses spam for advertising within the law (no zombies etc...) and ask why spam should be treated differently than any other form of advertising, kind of a devils advocate.
The only two responses I seem to have had is that it costs the received more than the sender, they stole my email address and now it gets bounced around by zombies.
The second problem is already against the law and more legislation probably won't help, and the first problem can be solved relatively effectively by taxing spam.
You invent a drug patent it, right before it goes out of patent, you repackage the same drug as doing something slightly different and your patent has just been extended by 20 years.
I was under the impression that they patent the 'hard' way to make the drug, find out how to mass produce it during trials and then patent the mass production of the drug just before going to market so that they get another 20 years.
wait for the caps to age a bit, my PSU can't take the load at boot time anymore, so I have to warm boot once everythings span up for the drives &co. to work properly and it was completely choking under the hot weather (32+ deg C) near me this summer and switching off the whole PC!!
With junk mail, it's the companies who have to pay for the paper, envelope, and postage...and I have to pay for landfill, recycling or some other expensive way of disposing of this crap. I bet you landfill costs in real terms more than a few emails in you inbox.
If I could get away with it I would take some rubbish from my big (old fish heads are good) and posy them through the box of the people posting crap through my door.
Thanks to the spammers I've had to move away from my preferred E-mail usernames to avoid both dictionary attack spam and bounces.
This is probaby good for you and everyone else with your sirname too, I have an odd sirname but it's not odd enough that I can always use my sirname as a login and everyone knows don't use a dictionary word for anything you want to be secure, don't they?
bounced spam messages that pretended to be from MY account.
Do you run Windows? do you or have you ever have a bot using your email address, do friends that you have given you email address to run Windows? Security holes in Windows + baggage may be part of your problem.
Do you know of any legit company that uses hijacked zombie PCs, open proxies, etc. to send out their advertising? Spammers do.
I don't run Windows and I live behind a firewall so it's never been an issue, I surprised all those zombies are still running Windows.
Your lucky if you only get spam, some of the junk mail posted through my door uses a composite material that doesn't compost or recycle well so it ends up taking up REAL WORLD space in land-fill !!FOREVER!! (well almost).
Well, if you run Windows then your going to get all kinds of problems, spammers being just one of them. I don't think the NZ law WON'T DO ANYTHING TO STOP ZOMBIES since in most countries it is already illegal to take over someones PC without their conscent, I suppose it's the graffiti of the advertising world. 'legitimate' spam is still pretty much the same as other advertising mediums.
I suppose living right next to them and it all becomes too familia, I only get to see things billboards like that a few times a year in increadable density and their very anoying. (thankfully the t-shirt adds 'pop up' a little more often)
Slashdot Mirror
That's what they said about chess, and guess what their are computer that beat chess players hands down.
He could use the GPL variant that the Linux kernel uses that explicitly allows binary modules.
'If someone is new to linux, they might get the software for free, but then what about the time it takes to learn Linux?'
Well, here's a personal study from my PC experience.
I used to use DR-DOS and GEM but moved to Microsoft DOS and Windows when Windows 3 came out, I then moved to windows 3.11 when that came out (TCO was a ligit copy of MS-DOS, and a pirate copy of Windows) it didn't take too long to pick up windows (or DOS) but it took years of fiddling to get the best performance out of it.
After that I moved to Windows 95 and started writing Windows applications and continued writing DOS applications. Windows 95 didn't cost me anything either, except for the guilt of using pirated software.
After that I moved to Windows NT at work and Windows 98 was just being released. After trying someone is new to linux, they might get the software for free, but then what about the time it takes to learn Linux?g to get Windows 98 to work on the office network we decided not to bother with it and keep most of the clients running Windows 95, it was about this time that I discovered Linux and installed it on my home PC.
Since then I have never run Windows on my local machine, have all the software I want and run no pirated software. Since my switch my TCO is now far less than if I were running Windows I've never had a viruses or Trojans to clean up, I'm still running the same brand software as in 1998 and my administration times on Linux are a fraction of what they would be on Windows, especially if something starts playing up(from experience of working mainly with windows at work for most of my professional carear)
It took me quite a while to pickup Linux in the early days, mainly the time it took to work out how to read man pages properly but once started everything fitted into place nicely, it took less time to learn Windows but years to find out exactly how it worked and how to work with it.
The only TCO type problems I have with Linux are:
1: A new KDE always screws up my settings when I install a new version.
2: Sometimes it takes a while to find a working driver (including fixing them)
3: Good well polished software can be hard to come by (but then again a lot of companies use bispoke solutions so it doesn't matter too much, and they can get the source to the unpolished software and make it a little more usable)
For the record I have never formatted a HDD to re-install Windows, I usually install another version of windows and copy everything that's needed (license keys, settings etc...) from the defunct Windows registry. I have had to do a couple of complete reinstalls of Linux but my current setup has been going for about 5 years (across different Linux vendors!).
You grab a drawing tool
click once
hold Shift
and click at the end of the line. Hold Ctrl if you need perfect horizontal, diagonal, or vertical lines.
Well, those last two operations are what makes is a major headache, a simple feature like drawing a straight line is hidded under keyboard modifiers.
You still haven't been able to answer how I would draw a line from exactly 10:30 to exactly 40:50
Like what happens when the copyright expires on the DRMed xyz, you won't be able to release xyz into the public domain because it's crippled by DRM and you won't be able to break the DRM because of the DMCA. Bye Bye copyright legislation.
I think it's defiantly time to start lobbying Euro MPs to make them aware that DRM breaks existing copyright and right of first purchase legislation.
IMHO Gimp becomes hideously ackward... when ever you try to do anything with it, something as simple as drawing straight lines is a major headache and don't even think about making them pixel perfect. I've also found it to be a nightmare to use a graphics tablet with.
'people spoiling plot points for those waiting to see a show on TV'
It's Dr Who... the plot is:
Dr Who is doing something (like trying to fix the tardis) only to discover that aliens are starting to overrun the planet and the only way to stop them is xyz. Dr Who, always finds xyz in the end and send the aliens back to where they came from. The End.
'just maybe it's because women are generally better at "reading" people'
Men are more prone to things like autism and asbergers than Women so you'd expect men to be worse at social interaction, but the same diseases can end up making people more 'intelligent' in that they are better at methodically working through a complex task.
Why are 90%+ of programmers men? and why do the 10%- of women programmers not get so excited about coding as their male counterparts?
'It may be that they don't have X running (though in theory they could be running Xgl if PS3 is really such an OpenGl bunny)'
Since ps3 will be running opengl 2 and their are no OpenGL 2 drivers running on linux at the moment this may be very good for linux.
' if representatives were able to retain half the customers who called to cancel their service
Called? I used AOL for the free months internet connection whilst waiting for ADSL to be put on.
Registration was a doddle, but cancellation ahhhhh!!!!! I couldn't find anywhere on the site to cancel, I couldn't find any documentation on canceling and I don't have a phone so their contact number was useless. What could I do?
In the end I bounced their money order and got a nasty letter through the post that's been filed under, 'but I couldn't cancel easily so sue me'
They still send the odd bit of snail-spam to me even though I always make sure that my details will never be used for marketing.
The reason so many films are boring is because.... I've already seen them.
Most films nowadays are just a rehash of a film made a few years ago under a different name so after a few years you get to see almost all the films that have ever been made.
But books have been around for ages and people still read them! For a start a book costs a fraction of the cost of a movie so a publisher takes a small risk publishing a odd book that will only be read by a few people, films cost megabucks so an odd film that will only get a few viewers isn't going to make any money so it won't be made. Add that that it only takes a couple of hours at most to see a film but it takes much longer to read a book so you can get through far more films than books, and the type of story and the way you tell it in a film is far more limited that that of a book and it doesn't take long before you've seen almost every movie ever made (by only seeing a fraction of them).
Anyhow, the reason I don't go to the cinema to watch films is because I've already seen them already. It's exactly the same reason why I no longer buy music, because 80% it seems to be covers and the other 20% sound just like something else from a few years ago.
only if that death occurs before they have children.
'will the pulses keep travelling in a straight line'
Yes, but because the earth is circular all the plane has to do is aim up or even horizontally and the pulses will keep travelling in a straight line right off into space.
Its a good enough idea. Even with a captcha defeating library, a fairly skilled person would have to write a script or something to parse the webform (optionally over SSL which is a little more difficult) and programatically decode the captcha and then fill in the form and submit it.
.net, perl and php (or even a firefox plugin)
It's fairly easy to work with the HTML dom over SSL or not using java,
Usernames and passwords are a bad idea, but we use them.
Agreed, only because of the human factor and the fact that it's impossible for most people to remember a different password and login for every site you need to register on, making you password only as secure as the weekest site.
If you go to somewhere like www.nationwide.co.uk and register they will send you a set of 8 random numbers and ask you to type in three of them every login making it impossible for some to steal you 'passcode' in one attempt.
Using cookies or special URLs like slashdot has (or had, not sure) to automatically login is a bad idea.
Well if you using a random number generator with a good entropy then a link with a 20 or so 7bit characters it would take 2^27 attempts to brute force and I guess that would take more time than the human race has left on earth so there fairly secure.
'somewhere there was a negotiated contract. A _bilateral_ affair. A sale-purchase affair. _That_ is what makes it different from spam, and that is why we tolerate them.'
And spammers don't pay for their internet connection, didn't sign a contract and don't help pay for the infrastructure of the internet?
Maybe billboards pay for the roads in the US but in the UK the money goes to the owner of the building or plot of land where the billboard is placed, the owner is taxed just like any other company. The owner is required to get permission from the local government to put the billboard up in the first place and the adds have to be U/E rated, but the same advertising laws can already be used against spammers.
I think your the lemming, and a blind one at that. 'legitimate' spammers the ones that pay for their connection and don't send out adds that violate trading standards are already covered to some extent by existing advertising laws and the ones that don't pay for their internet connection and use zombies to send out their spam are illegal under hacking laws and if no ones stopping them now then no one ever will.
'yeah, it paid for a part of the movie', no more than spam paid for part of the spammers (and therefore your) internet connection.
'The postal service controls and regulates bulk mail. The business and sending address are almost always known- if they're sending true bulk-rate mail, the sending business and address is known with certainty'
Wouldn't the answer then be to categorize spam along with bulk snail-mail so that is falls under the same legislation instead of making up new laws for the hell of it?
Spam isn't really a 'receiver-pays' system, the sender pays to send the span and the storage cost etc... of spam isn't that high (a 250GB HDD costs?) I would argue that it also takes more of my time to deal with snail-mail than it does to deal with spam weighting the costs of general junk mail in the direction of the receiver.
Bullshit. There is no such thing as "legitimate spam". Now maybe it's the same as junk mail, but sure as hell not as normal advertising.
Normal advertising works in that it pays for some service provided to me.....
Which normal advertising? Does the kiNe tick pay for peoples footwear, help keep people working in third world countries in well payed jubs with good working conditions or does it go into the pockets of the kiNe coporation?
What about product placement in films, do all those shots of krapples pay for the file? my every so comfey seat, less DRM on films or joe blogs £50 Million pay packet for playing the lead role?
And most billboards I've seen have nothing to do with helping out the community and everything to do with putting money into the pocket of one person/company.
etc.....
You've completely narrowed down your perspective on advertising to the point where you cannot see that other forms of advertising are often just as intrusive, offensive etc... as spamm, so why only target spam and not all forms of unsolicited advertising?
'in fact it uses an NT kernel driver to do the authentication'
I'm using the ndiswrapper for my internet connection so I'm sure it would be possible to implement a mechanism for loading the NT kernel driver (I still think you'd require signed drivers though)
It should also be possible to use a kernel debugger to capture the unencrypted data.
'Sleep deprivation effects are there for a reason'
It looks like this drug is just stopping the 'feeling tired' effects, not the build up of toxins in the brain and the fsck + defrag (or whatever it is that sleep does). 30 odd hours isn't really sleep deprivation either it more like an increased fatigue level, I'm sure the monkeys would still be tripping out after a few days without sleep and dieing after a few months.
I find it quite odd that you assume that the problem has to be my fault because I run a certain OS and criticize me for it then admit that it's illegal to take over someones PC without consent in most countries.
/. would support spam, infact it's almost pointless having a discussion about it. So I thought I'd take the point of view of someone who uses spam for advertising within the law (no zombies etc...) and ask why spam should be treated differently than any other form of advertising, kind of a devils advocate.
Well, you problem appeared to be a compromised email (emails being sent with you email address but not by you), if you email address isn't public then it's been taken from a zombie PC that has your email address on it, this isn't just the fault of the OS but people who run a certain OS that's well known for having security problems don't seem to be any good at keeping up with updates.
I don't see you complaining that you have to lock your doors and don't just have to press a button to start your car. People are always going to take you for a ride if possible and you have to be astute if you don't want to be, maybe that means not using a common word for your email address, maybe that means making sure you OS is up to data and secured and not a zombie.
By definition spam isn't legitimate.
Well, it depends on who's definition you use, but generally spam seems to be defined as unsolicited bulk email (the electronic equivalent of paper junk mail) and as far as I'm concerned it's no less legitimate than any other form of advertising, and I do know people who like the unsolicited bulk snail-mail that pops through the door so I'm sure someone somewhere likes spam.
Frankly if you're not a spammed I suspect you benefit from it in some manner or you wouldn't be doing this.
equivalent of paper junk mail
No, I'm able to see spamming from a critical point of view, next to no-one on
The only two responses I seem to have had is that it costs the received more than the sender, they stole my email address and now it gets bounced around by zombies.
The second problem is already against the law and more legislation probably won't help, and the first problem can be solved relatively effectively by taxing spam.
You invent a drug patent it, right before it goes out of patent, you repackage the same drug as doing something slightly different and your patent has just been extended by 20 years.
I was under the impression that they patent the 'hard' way to make the drug, find out how to mass produce it during trials and then patent the mass production of the drug just before going to market so that they get another 20 years.
wait for the caps to age a bit, my PSU can't take the load at boot time anymore, so I have to warm boot once everythings span up for the drives &co. to work properly and it was completely choking under the hot weather (32+ deg C) near me this summer and switching off the whole PC!!
With junk mail, it's the companies who have to pay for the paper, envelope, and postage. ..and I have to pay for landfill, recycling or some other expensive way of disposing of this crap. I bet you landfill costs in real terms more than a few emails in you inbox.
If I could get away with it I would take some rubbish from my big (old fish heads are good) and posy them through the box of the people posting crap through my door.
Thanks to the spammers I've had to move away from my preferred E-mail usernames to avoid both dictionary attack spam and bounces.
This is probaby good for you and everyone else with your sirname too, I have an odd sirname but it's not odd enough that I can always use my sirname as a login and everyone knows don't use a dictionary word for anything you want to be secure, don't they?
bounced spam messages that pretended to be from MY account.
Do you run Windows? do you or have you ever have a bot using your email address, do friends that you have given you email address to run Windows? Security holes in Windows + baggage may be part of your problem.
Do you know of any legit company that uses hijacked zombie PCs, open proxies, etc. to send out their advertising? Spammers do.
I don't run Windows and I live behind a firewall so it's never been an issue, I surprised all those zombies are still running Windows.
Your lucky if you only get spam, some of the junk mail posted through my door uses a composite material that doesn't compost or recycle well so it ends up taking up REAL WORLD space in land-fill !!FOREVER!! (well almost).
Well, if you run Windows then your going to get all kinds of problems, spammers being just one of them. I don't think the NZ law WON'T DO ANYTHING TO STOP ZOMBIES since in most countries it is already illegal to take over someones PC without their conscent, I suppose it's the graffiti of the advertising world. 'legitimate' spam is still pretty much the same as other advertising mediums.
I suppose living right next to them and it all becomes too familia, I only get to see things billboards like that a few times a year in increadable density and their very anoying. (thankfully the t-shirt adds 'pop up' a little more often)