Yes, but thats not my point. The poster mentioned the fact that there was only one person in the "To:" line and no "CC:" line and concluded that the message was only sent to one person, which is incorrect.
Nope. In both posts, my concern was that there wasn't enough evidence in the e-mail itself to show that it was sent to more than one person. I never concluded that only one was sent. I even said in my last post that "Sure, a spambot could collect a bunch of address and send out a bunch of individual-looking e-mails..." My point is that the recipient of one of these e-mails does not have enough evidence to prove that it was spam. In fact, such an e-mail would look exactly like any regular 'ol e-mail. So why did the e-mail prompt a reaction appropriate for a spam e-mail when it was not clear that the e-mail was spam (rather than a single unsolicited request)?
Of course it'd look pretty odd if someone received this message who wasn't in the "To:" line so I'm guessing he just used some sort of spambot to generate individual "To:" lines on a ton of messages (or SMTP may facilitate this, I can't remember).
Sure, a spambot could collect a bunch of addresses and send out a bunch of individual-looking e-mails (thus leading back to the original question, how many e-mails did Mr. Shifman send?) But if there's a different "To:" line on each message, and each message is actually going to the one person who is named in the "To:" line, then that's exactly the same as the usual use of the "To:" line, isn't it?
Yes, the usual defenition of 'spam' is when it is sent to multiple people. However, the legal defenition of 'UCE' or Unsolicited Commercial Email (as defined by the state of Washington, possibly others) is that the recipient did not ask for it (as Neil didn't), that it is commercial in nature (soliciting business is definitely commercial), and, of course, that it be email. It doesn't have to be bulk.
Also, are you sure that UCEs are illegal? Looking at Washington's anti-spam law here, it looks like UCEs are not illegal. Only misleading commercial e-mails (with forged headers, etc.) are illegal. Perhaps there are other anti-spam laws in Washington that I don't know about.
Other than guesses based on the impersonal content of the email and the recipient address not being associated with a typical resume-receiving operation, I don't think he could've known for sure.
Exactly. If Mr. Schwartzman had any other evidence, he would have mentioned it in the complaint to Mr. Shifman's ISP. Even then, how often are resumes sent in "personal" letters? They're supposed to be presented in a businesslike manner.
However, Mr. Schwartzman didn't close down Mr. Shifman's ISP account. If it was closed, it was closed by the abuse desk at Mr. Shifman's ISP. They should've been able to determine whether or not Mr. Shifman was sending out bulk email. It takes 30 seconds to do an fgrep on the mail logs for mail sent from Mr. Shifman's account. If they see tens of thousands of hits, they know something's not quite kosher.
True. I shouldn't have implied that Mr. Schwartzman himself "got Mr. Shifman's account closed".
Then again, I wonder if Mr. Shifman's ISP actually takes the time to look at their logs. My concern is that it's too easy to have a "knee-jerk" reaction on things like spam, even for the ISP. So the ISP loses one user. Who cares? Especially if it's a user who has been generating complaints, legitimate or not...
Besides, imagine this scenario: Mr. Shifman sends out many copies of his resume all at once. All but one of them go to people who really are soliciting resumes, and one goes to the wrong person. In the ISP's logs, this may look like spam. Sending 10,000 copies of a resume is certainly spam (and enough to clog the mail server if they all have Word Documents attached!), but how about 10? How about 100? (And again, remember that resume mailings don't particularly need to be "personal".)
The thing that bothers me about this is that I don't see anyone saying how many e-mails Mr. Shifman sent out. The original message posted on this site has one name in the "To:" line, and no mention of a "CC:" line. That suggests that it was sent to exactly one person. My question is, did Mr. Schwartzman know that Mr Shifman was sending out multiple e-mails when he made his complaint to Mr. Shifman's ISP. If so, how did he know? (I know that he found out later on when other people got involved, but at the time that he registered his complaint, how did he know?) From the page itself, it looks like Mr. Schwartzman got a single email (one sent to an inappropriate address, true) and got the sender's e-mail account cancelled. Is there more to the story? Because if not, it sounds like Mr. Schwartzman was in the wrong. Sending out one e-mail to the wrong person is annoying, but it's not spam.
Of course, there's no early-afternoon slowdown with DSL. One of my co-workers complains about this a lot. He loves getting 200K+ most of the time, but when he gets home from work and wants to use the computer, then it's more like 30-40KB/s (versus my steady 60-65K with DSL).
Also, I seem to recall that ADSL has better ping times than cable, though I'm not sure about that. SDSL sure does, though it's priced for the hardcore gamer only.
My DSL provider also allows servers, unlike the local cable people (until recently, Cox@Home). I'm paying $52/month total, but I'm pretty happy with my setup.
Where and when should developers draw the line? Shouldn't that be for them to decide?
Part of the problem is common to all software. There are competitors out there constantly raising the bar. If you planned your software to have a certain set of features, but it takes twice as long as anticipated, your competitors may have released something similar already. I suspect that this is particularly true of games. Games don't seem to be particularly original. They tend to be slight improvements of existing games. This is even more true of games which are sequels, where you're forced to at least keep some of the feel of the original.
Another part of the problem is that games, especially action games, need to have up to date eye-candy. If you release a 3-d shooter using an out-of-date 3-d engine, you're in trouble. (This was one of the major complaints about Daikatana, wasn't it?)
Your arguments remind me of the people who said the last tree would be cut down in 2001. Well it's 2002 now and I can see thousands of trees just from where I live alone.
Cute bon mot, but did you bother to read his references? Or, for example this page?
It's easy to be an expert as long as you don't have to back up your statements. Although I am not convinced that you're right, I would be interested in seeing some support for your point of view. Any references?
Re:Kids, don't learn English from reading this rev
on
Review: Impostor
·
· Score: 1
Hmmm.... Maybe it would be better if slashdot had a movie review policy that specified that movie reviews must be written in the most fluent language of the reviewer - like Perl or C++ instead of english.
Coming soon: a review of the software used to create the special-effects for the movie "Imposter"...
By this logic, DDOS attacks are legal. "Hey your port 80 is open, and I'm just using it..."
But in a DDOS, your specific intention is to cause a service interruption. In the case of spam, a clogged inbox is only a side effect.
Fair enough. However, the findings in this case still state that spam does some damage (of various kinds, such as costs to the recipient). Side effect or not, this could still be a good reason for putting restrictions on the behavior. Basically the law is saying that you can't engage in an activity which harms others (even if you're not intending to cause harm) without having some restrictions on your actions. Seems reasonable to me.
Forging the "from" line and/or return address isn't fraudulent?
If the purpose is to deliberately mislead the recipient into believing the mail was sent by someone else, then possibly. But I don't think putting a non-existant return address on snail mail is illegal.
Actually, I don't think the postal service is supposed to send mail which does not have a valid return address. They want to be able to return the letter to somebody if it doesn't go through (e.g. the addressee has moved). While it is probably not illegal, sending out thousands of them in a way which causes trouble for the recipient and/or the postal service could get you in trouble. How about sending out a thousand copies of a letter with a fake return address, no contact info, and a warning that "If you don't reply, we will send you many more of these letters in the future?" With all the stress and complaints to the postal service that this would cause, I would bet that the sender would be in trouble. Sued for damages by the postal service? Maybe.
Of course, in the case the law in question, the "valid e-mail address" clause actually just says that some kind of valid contact address must be given for purposes of removing the recipient from the sender's e-mail list. So it's not even as bad as that. It could fall under a "Truth in Advertising" clause. You can tell people to visit www.whatever.com, but you have give them at least some small amount of information as to who you are. Again, seems fair enough. Isn't not saying who you are innately deceptive?
Of course, real mail could be thrown out easily, but e-mail is harder to deal with
That's preposterous. I don't know which e-mail client you use, but I find it easier to press the delete key, than to walk from my mailbox with an armload of multi-sized junk mail falling out of my hands to the trash can.
I was using the mailroom analogy here. If a mailroom gets 500 identical pieces of mail from some solicitor, they all go in the recycling bin before anyone ever sees them. Compare that to 500 people who each have to figure out what the heck this e-mail they just got is all about. The server could use a spam filter, of course, but they're not perfect. We don't have any at my job.
As for a single individual getting 10 junk mails vs. 10 e-mails, they're probably about equal in difficulty. I grab my mail on my way into my apartment complex, while I have to turn on my computer and start some programs to get my e-mail, so actually the snail mail would be a bit easier for me.
But death threats and scams are still illegal.
I'm not saying that they should be legal with e-mail. Only that e-mail shouldn't be subject to a lesser standard of 1st Amendment protection than snail-mail.
You miss my point. My point is that it's not enough to say that "it's speech, therefore it must be allowed without restriction", which is approximately what you're saying. First, the CA state law affects only commercial advertisements and affects both e-mails and faxes, so it's not about e-mail in general. And second, those advertisers can still speak. They simply have to follow a couple of simple rules.
As for the difference in how e-mail and faxes are being treated compared to snail-mail, remember that spam puts a burden on the recipient which snail-mail doesn't. That was the whole point of this case. Plus, there are ways to track your e-mail and fax receipt which aren't possible (cheaply) with snail-mail (send- and recieve- confirmations and images embedded in HTML for e-mail, standard fax confirmation messages for faxes). E-mail/fax are different than TV, radio and the like. Perhaps they should be treated differently?
Also, I think the restriction is on commercial mail only, not all internet mail.
But as I said in my post, it's the precedent which is scary here. This could make it easy to pass some ugly laws in the future.
There is no precedent here. California is legislating in an area which it already had the right to legislate (commerce) applying laws to a new medium (e-mail and faxes). Advertising is already regulated in several ways. Some kinds of ads aren't allowed in some places (cigarettes on TV, for example), and others have restrictions (that disclaimer before half-hour infomercials). California is finally regulating ads in all mediums. So what? The state is not giving itself any new powers over the internet or over commerce.
Besides, like I said before, there are other reasons why it would be hard to generalize this law to other forms of internet communication. The court ruled that spam e-mail causes damages, and placed the blame on the sender. This is a major restriction. Not only are damages required before restrictions can be applied, but it is the one who caused the damage who is fined. Thus anonymous remailers are quite safe. They are just tools. It's the user of that tool who is held responsible for the problem. If that's a precedent, then it's a good one. Blame the human, not the tool (and only if real damage is done).
Using anonymous remailers for sending advertising materials can be outlawed. It has been, in California. It's also illegal to send anonymous death threats, BTW.
I have no problem with making death threats by e-mail illegal. It probably already is as is the case for snail mail. But advertisements, unlike death threats, are generally afforded First Amendment protection. I'm concerned that ads by e-mail are being singled out here. I think that's a bad precedent.
Meanwhile, just because you're anonymous doesn't mean that you're not responsible for your actions.
But which actions are you referring to? If the "actions" are speech (commercial or non-commercial) then such speech should be protected by the First Amendment.
A new syntax? Wow, that's almost as bad as forcing you to put a valid return address on postal mail, or forcing you to put the stamp in the upper right corner of the envelope. Those bastards!
But the worst that happens if you forget a stamp or return address on snail-mail is that the mail doesn't get delivered. You don't get sued or go to jail! There's a huge difference. I have no problem with people using filters to filter out mail witha questionable return address. Getting the courts involved scares me.
To summarize what I'm saying: 1) Spam causes damage. I can see several reasons why this is so (e.g. shifting costs to the recipient, especially with faxes!), and the court in this case affirmed this -- see that section of the ruling that I mentioned before. 2) The First Amendment gives you the right to speak, but not the right to speak without restriction. 3) Regulating a form of speech which causes damage is reasonable. 4) The state government of CA already regulates advertising in every other medium anyway. (And as a side note, advertising in mediums such as TV, radio, and billboards don't do damage like spam does!)
So, to address these last three points. Advertisements may be free speech, but nobody's right to speak is being reduced. Commercial advertisers sending unsolicited messages are being asked to do some things (e.g. add "ADV:" to the subject line) when doing so because the type of speech they choose to use causes some damages (at least a slight cost incurred by the recipient). So the sender still has the usual First Amendment protections. For the first time, the recipient is also protected somewhat against incurring damages against their will.
The "actions" I refer to are in fact speech. You have every right to speak freely. You're still responsible for the consequences of your speech. The First Amendment gives you the right to speak. If your speech causes damage, you're responsible for that damage (e.g. fighting words -- you can say them, but legally you're held accountable for provoking the other person!). If your speech violates the law, you get punished. All that's happening here is that some damage-causing speech is being regulated. Not restricted, mind you. A protocol for it is being developed, that's all.
As for the new syntax, I have this to say. Commerce gets regulated sometimes. If a half-hour infomercial ran without that disclaimer at the beginning, they'd be fined. If a porn website didn't check the ages of its users, it would be fined. Likewise, the state of California is regulating spam. If you don't follow the protocol, you'll be fined because you caused some damages. (I don't see anything about jail time in the text of the law. Fines either, actually. There must be more to it.) California is just regulating some kinds of e-mail and fax advertisements, just like they do all other kinds of advertisements.
First of all, the idea that you're stealing someone's resources by sending them e-mail is absurd. When you connect a computer to the Internet, and have a mail transport agent listening on port 25 and accepting mail, you are inviting the public to send you mail.
By this logic, DDOS attacks are legal. "Hey your port 80 is open, and I'm just using it..." Fortunately, the court is smarter than that. Hell, it even says in the ruling that spam has a cost (see the paragraph which starts with "Like traditional paper "junk" mail, UCE...").
If someone sends you junk snail-mail, and it fills up your mailbox, you can't claim that you've suffered a denial of service because no new mail will fit in. The First Amendment protects junk mail, as long as it isn't fraudulent, etc. But this court says that a lesser protection is afforded to mail that travels on the Internet. In other words, Internet information has a lesser First Amendment protection than other forms of speech.
Forging the "from" line and/or return address isn't fraudulent?
Anyway, to continue the thought I started above, there certainly is a cost associated with spam. Sending a letter to a company is legal, but sending them 80,000 and making their mailroom do nothing but sort them for days is pretty questionable. (Of course, real mail could be thrown out easily, but e-mail is harder to deal with). Having a mail server is like having a mail box which accepts mail from the post office. Sure anyone can send you letters (as long as they follow the post office's guidelines). But death threats and scams are still illegal. Sure the server is saying "we want mail", but that doesn't mean that just anything is acceptible.
Also, I think the restriction is on commercial mail only, not all internet mail. The law states that it affects "advertising material" specifically. In fact, junk faxes are included in the same law, so the law is clearly is not entirely about internet mail.
The scariest part is the fact that spam is only allowed if you include a valid return address. Does this mean that anonymous remailers could someday be outlawed? This precedent would seem to support the consitutionality of such a law. I believe the U.S. Supreme Court has held (although I can't remember the precedent specifically) that anonymous speech is in fact protected by the First Amendment, and you don't lose any such protection just because you choose to be anonymous.
Using anonymous remailers for sending advertising materials can be outlawed. It has been, in California. It's also illegal to send anonymous death threats, BTW. The idea that the tool and its use are two different things (guns don't kill people... etc) is compatible with this ruling, and will doubtless be used to protect anonymous remailers, if needed.
Meanwhile, just because you're anonymous doesn't mean that you're not responsible for your actions. If your anonymous comments cause damage, you are responsible. Besides, this ruling doesn't do anything to stifle free speech. It does establish protocols for certain kinds, kinds which the government has the right to regulate (commerce). Big deal.
As the parent post states: To add insult to injury, this law defines new syntax for the Subject header! The government should not be defining the forms of e-mail headers. So now it's okay for the courts to be deciding Internet protocols. Think of all the damaging laws that can now be passed that will rest on this precedent. Limits on encryption, limits on anonymous remailers, God knows what else! And no First Amendment protection.
A new syntax? Wow, that's almost as bad as forcing you to put a valid return address on postal mail, or forcing you to put the stamp in the upper right corner of the envelope. Those bastards!
I just don't get it. Sorry for being so hard on your post specifically, but I just don't understand why some people are so worried. The law clearly says "for business purposes" and "advertising materials", so it only affects commercial ads. I'm fine with that. Spammers should be fine with the law since they are still allowed to shift costs to me as long as they do it properly. Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure that the government of California has the right to regulate commerce within the state, so it's not like they're overstepping their authority here. The law says that it applies to entities "conducting business in the state", so California isn't trying to tell other states what to do or anything.
You're not implying that it hurts though, are you? College might be overrated, but for someone with work experience but no college, it might be the best way to go. I suspect that anyone who has been working in IT for years but has no education past high school could be a bit more "well-rounded".
College has several advantages for a computer programmer/technician. In addition to being exposed to new techniques, programming languages and hardware architectures in your CS courses, you might just pick up some useful skills in other types of classes. Classes in Psychology, Cognitive Science, or even Education might teach you something about AI, about creating GUIs, about pattern-detection (e.g. speech recognition), or just in general about how to present information to the user. Studying a foreign language and culture (in more depth than in high school) would be good for anyone who has to internationalize their software beyond just translating a few menu items, or anyone who actually writes translation or foreign-language-learning software. College-level mathematics and/or statistics would be useful for some types of programming work, such as writing many kinds of scientific software, or some kinds of 3d-graphics programs. (Plus you'll learn why it's silly to base conclusions on a sample size of one:) And finally, if you actually bother to document your software, or you work with the people who do write the documentation, some English/Rhetoric study might be worth your while.
On top of that, you might just find another area which interests you! I'm always surprised when I hear about people who think they know what they want to do with their lives before they're even out of high school. With almost no knowledge about your options, how can you possibly know? Do you really like computers enough to spend fifty years working with them, or are they just the only interesting thing you've found so far? Go to college. Maybe you'll remain a programmer, but study Astrophysics (or Engineering?) and go to work for NASA. Or maybe you'll decide that you really like Marine Biology or Colonial American History. You'll never know for sure if there's something you might like better until you find out more about the world. I'd hate for anyone to find out at age 35 that they're burned out on computers because that's all they've been doing as long as they can remember, but still have that interest in Music that they never bothered to explore.
First, you don't have 5 years experience. Unless you started working 9-to-5 at age 14. Part-time at 14, which I doubt you did, doesn't count. Running a few linux machines at your high school or at your house doesn't count.
I totally agree that years spent doing a part-time, volunteer job (paid or not) will not get the same respect as years spent at a full-time carrer position. If nothing else, you just don't have the same level of responsibility in the former type of position.
Of course, all those years were not useless either. The main benefit of doing something like managing your school's computer lab or whatever is that you can back up the skills you list on your resume with real-world examples. For example, if you claimed on your resume that you can create web pages, you would add a few URLs to pages you've authored, right? Well, likewise if you claim you can set up and maintain mixed Linux/Win98 networks, include the phone number of that school computer lab or whatever so that a potential employer can verify that you have actually done this before.
Now, most people aren't going to care about this but those who are trying to build a quiet PC are -- if you put a P4 in your system you could conceivably cool it passively and take the performance hit.
The problem with this idea is that, clock-for-clock, the P4 is about the slowest CPU out there. That's why all the reviews say that AMD's "model number" (read: P-rating) system is accurate in measuring relative performance (see this review for example). Clock-for-clock, a P4 is very weak compared to an Athlon. For performance, clock speed is the main thing that the P4 has going for it.
I'm willing to bet that a slowed-down P4 would be in the same performance category as Via and Transmeta's new CPUs, which can also be run without a fan and which are doubtless cheaper than the P4! Or, perhaps you could get a P3, Duron or Celeron and run with a slow, quiet fan... or no fan at all? (I seem to recall that some of the slower Durons can run without fans, though it's not recommended.) Anyway, my point is that there are lots of CPUs out there which could run with noiseless cooling (no fan or a very quiet fan). They're not very powerful by today's standards, but they may well be faster (and cheaper!) than a slowed-down P4.
Yes, but how much does Microsoft ADVERTISE that they are innovative. How many times do you think the word innovate shows up on www.microsoft.com?
Exactly. Microsoft does occasionally innovate. Having to click twice on a menu entry in the menu bar to get all the options is an innovation! It's a lousy one, but still...
The real problem with MS is, as you said, their Real Innovations:Advertised Innovations ratio. It's pretty low. It's not that they're not creative, they're just not as creative as they say they are. If a person acted like that, you'd call them "full of themselves". You probably wonldn't like them very much either:)
But I feel there MUST be some preannouncement on such bugs, even if the details are minimal.
I have heard (on SlashDot) that a properly configured firewall can prevent a computer takeover. Such a pre-announcement should have included instructions on how to configure your firewall to prevent the problem. By the time a patch (and a detailed description of the problem) was released, people could have already protected themselves. That way, if the "black hats" find out about the exploit before the patch comes out, or if the patch doesn't work for someone's system (I remember some problems with the Code-Red related buffer-overflow patch to IIS, for example), the user is still protected.
How many inexperienced people will read that snippet (and other snippets) and forever think of Microsoft as an EVIL EVIL SCUM with no mind for security at all?
I would guess zero. Slashdot editors can say stuff like this exactly because they know that their audience is knowledgeable. SlashDot is quite clearly not a general-interest news service like the New York Times. It's more like The Economist or Mother Jones -- news presented from a particular perspective to readers who share that perspective. In this case, the perspective is "News for Nerds", which includes lots of tech news for technology-savvy individuals. How many people who don't know enough about computers to know something about MS would be interested in a "News for Nerds" website? How many would even find it in the first place? It is a website, you know, not a magazine found on every street corner.
Besides, it's not like the belief is that Microsoft is bad at security is limited to Linux demagogues. Their track record is public knowledge. No tech publication on the planet calls Microsoft security "good".
If anyone is interested in buying this sort of thing, I do remember seeing good deals on 64MB USB "drives" recently on the various "technology deals" websites. DealNews mentioned this one for $62 recently, and I think I remember seeing one for $49.95 mentioned on some site earlier this month.
I think that this fragment of a quote pretty much sums up the entire point of the class. There always have been, and still are, some philosophers who write philosophical tomes which are quite clearly philosophy. But philosophy presented in the form of entertainment is no less worthy of consideration.
Consider, for example, "Candide" (by Voltaire) or "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence". While they both take the form of a story, each is clearly a philosophical text as well. Likewise texts such as "Gulliver's Travels" and "Catch-22", while more focused on story, also contain plenty of social criticism, which is a form of philosophy.
Considering that "The Simpsons" is far more thoughtful than most of the rest of popular culture, I'm not at all surprised that someone decided to teach a class in it. Whether or not it lasts as part of the philosophical canon after it's off the air remains to be seen. It may not be good enough or philosophical enough to last, but I'm not surprised that it's being recognized in its time.
On a related note, Alan Moore (of "Watchmen" and "From Hell" fame, among other things) taught a class on comic books as literature at The University of California at Berkeley a few years back, and "Watchmen" is on the reading list for one Film/Rhetoric/English class there. This is another example of a "cartoon" that's being taken seriously. It has been known to happen:)
As a matter of comparison, my Windows 2000 box has no such vulnerability. The first time I went to Windows Update, I checked the box that said "always trust content from Microsoft Corporation." Therefore, only Microsoft's real certificate will be accepted by my machine. Even if the FBI forces Verisign to issue an impostor certificate, it will be detected and thwarted.
Why can't the FBI use Microsoft's real certificate? Why wouldn't Microsoft work with them? Are you so certain that "always trust content from Microsoft Corporation" is such a good idea?
Even then, the code which checks a newly-downloaded package against the MS certificate is on your computer, right? It could be modified by anything (say, a virus) which had the right permissions to do something different, like checking against a certificate on microsoft.fbi.com, correct? Perhaps this will be the next "I Love You" payload (or the last one).
This is humor right? You are joking, right? I do hope so.
Just in case you're not, here are a few facts from Encarta for you:
In both total area and geographic extent Russia is the largest country in the world. With an area of 17,075,200 sq km (6,592,800 sq mi), Russia constitutes more than one-ninth of the world's land area and nearly twice the area of the United States or China.
Notice that Russia is a country. It is not part of Europe.
And for christsakes, please look at a map before posing another comment.
Um, are you sure that version of Encarta is up to date? For one thing, the old U.S.S.R. was that size, but it's fragmented into multiple nations nowadays. Second, the most Western part of Russia has generally been considered part of Europe, at least up until the Cold War...
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but thats not my point. The poster mentioned the fact that there was only one person in the "To:" line and no "CC:" line and concluded that the message was only sent to one person, which is incorrect.
Nope. In both posts, my concern was that there wasn't enough evidence in the e-mail itself to show that it was sent to more than one person. I never concluded that only one was sent. I even said in my last post that "Sure, a spambot could collect a bunch of address and send out a bunch of individual-looking e-mails..." My point is that the recipient of one of these e-mails does not have enough evidence to prove that it was spam. In fact, such an e-mail would look exactly like any regular 'ol e-mail. So why did the e-mail prompt a reaction appropriate for a spam e-mail when it was not clear that the e-mail was spam (rather than a single unsolicited request)?
Of course it'd look pretty odd if someone received this message who wasn't in the "To:" line so I'm guessing he just used some sort of spambot to generate individual "To:" lines on a ton of messages (or SMTP may facilitate this, I can't remember).
Sure, a spambot could collect a bunch of addresses and send out a bunch of individual-looking e-mails (thus leading back to the original question, how many e-mails did Mr. Shifman send?) But if there's a different "To:" line on each message, and each message is actually going to the one person who is named in the "To:" line, then that's exactly the same as the usual use of the "To:" line, isn't it?
Yes, the usual defenition of 'spam' is when it is sent to multiple people. However, the legal defenition of 'UCE' or Unsolicited Commercial Email (as defined by the state of Washington, possibly others) is that the recipient did not ask for it (as Neil didn't), that it is commercial in nature (soliciting business is definitely commercial), and, of course, that it be email. It doesn't have to be bulk.
Also, are you sure that UCEs are illegal? Looking at Washington's anti-spam law here, it looks like UCEs are not illegal. Only misleading commercial e-mails (with forged headers, etc.) are illegal. Perhaps there are other anti-spam laws in Washington that I don't know about.
Other than guesses based on the impersonal content of the email and the recipient address not being associated with a typical resume-receiving operation, I don't think he could've known for sure.
Exactly. If Mr. Schwartzman had any other evidence, he would have mentioned it in the complaint to Mr. Shifman's ISP. Even then, how often are resumes sent in "personal" letters? They're supposed to be presented in a businesslike manner.
However, Mr. Schwartzman didn't close down Mr. Shifman's ISP account. If it was closed, it was closed by the abuse desk at Mr. Shifman's ISP. They should've been able to determine whether or not Mr. Shifman was sending out bulk email. It takes 30 seconds to do an fgrep on the mail logs for mail sent from Mr. Shifman's account. If they see tens of thousands of hits, they know something's not quite kosher.
True. I shouldn't have implied that Mr. Schwartzman himself "got Mr. Shifman's account closed".
Then again, I wonder if Mr. Shifman's ISP actually takes the time to look at their logs. My concern is that it's too easy to have a "knee-jerk" reaction on things like spam, even for the ISP. So the ISP loses one user. Who cares? Especially if it's a user who has been generating complaints, legitimate or not...
Besides, imagine this scenario: Mr. Shifman sends out many copies of his resume all at once. All but one of them go to people who really are soliciting resumes, and one goes to the wrong person. In the ISP's logs, this may look like spam. Sending 10,000 copies of a resume is certainly spam (and enough to clog the mail server if they all have Word Documents attached!), but how about 10? How about 100? (And again, remember that resume mailings don't particularly need to be "personal".)
The thing that bothers me about this is that I don't see anyone saying how many e-mails Mr. Shifman sent out. The original message posted on this site has one name in the "To:" line, and no mention of a "CC:" line. That suggests that it was sent to exactly one person. My question is, did Mr. Schwartzman know that Mr Shifman was sending out multiple e-mails when he made his complaint to Mr. Shifman's ISP. If so, how did he know? (I know that he found out later on when other people got involved, but at the time that he registered his complaint, how did he know?) From the page itself, it looks like Mr. Schwartzman got a single email (one sent to an inappropriate address, true) and got the sender's e-mail account cancelled. Is there more to the story? Because if not, it sounds like Mr. Schwartzman was in the wrong. Sending out one e-mail to the wrong person is annoying, but it's not spam.
Of course, there's no early-afternoon slowdown with DSL. One of my co-workers complains about this a lot. He loves getting 200K+ most of the time, but when he gets home from work and wants to use the computer, then it's more like 30-40KB/s (versus my steady 60-65K with DSL).
Also, I seem to recall that ADSL has better ping times than cable, though I'm not sure about that. SDSL sure does, though it's priced for the hardcore gamer only.
My DSL provider also allows servers, unlike the local cable people (until recently, Cox@Home). I'm paying $52/month total, but I'm pretty happy with my setup.
Where and when should developers draw the line? Shouldn't that be for them to decide?
Part of the problem is common to all software. There are competitors out there constantly raising the bar. If you planned your software to have a certain set of features, but it takes twice as long as anticipated, your competitors may have released something similar already. I suspect that this is particularly true of games. Games don't seem to be particularly original. They tend to be slight improvements of existing games. This is even more true of games which are sequels, where you're forced to at least keep some of the feel of the original.
Another part of the problem is that games, especially action games, need to have up to date eye-candy. If you release a 3-d shooter using an out-of-date 3-d engine, you're in trouble. (This was one of the major complaints about Daikatana, wasn't it?)
Your arguments remind me of the people who said the last tree would be cut down in 2001. Well it's 2002 now and I can see thousands of trees just from where I live alone.
Cute bon mot, but did you bother to read his references? Or, for example this page?
It's easy to be an expert as long as you don't have to back up your statements. Although I am not convinced that you're right, I would be interested in seeing some support for your point of view. Any references?
Hmmm.... Maybe it would be better if slashdot had a movie review policy that specified that movie reviews must be written in the most fluent language of the reviewer - like Perl or C++ instead of english.
Coming soon: a review of the software used to create the special-effects for the movie "Imposter"...
By this logic, DDOS attacks are legal. "Hey your port 80 is open, and I'm just using it..."
But in a DDOS, your specific intention is to cause a service interruption. In the case of spam, a clogged inbox is only a side effect.
Fair enough. However, the findings in this case still state that spam does some damage (of various kinds, such as costs to the recipient). Side effect or not, this could still be a good reason for putting restrictions on the behavior. Basically the law is saying that you can't engage in an activity which harms others (even if you're not intending to cause harm) without having some restrictions on your actions. Seems reasonable to me.
Forging the "from" line and/or return address isn't fraudulent?
If the purpose is to deliberately mislead the recipient into believing the mail was sent by someone else, then possibly. But I don't think putting a non-existant return address on snail mail is illegal.
Actually, I don't think the postal service is supposed to send mail which does not have a valid return address. They want to be able to return the letter to somebody if it doesn't go through (e.g. the addressee has moved). While it is probably not illegal, sending out thousands of them in a way which causes trouble for the recipient and/or the postal service could get you in trouble. How about sending out a thousand copies of a letter with a fake return address, no contact info, and a warning that "If you don't reply, we will send you many more of these letters in the future?" With all the stress and complaints to the postal service that this would cause, I would bet that the sender would be in trouble. Sued for damages by the postal service? Maybe.
Of course, in the case the law in question, the "valid e-mail address" clause actually just says that some kind of valid contact address must be given for purposes of removing the recipient from the sender's e-mail list. So it's not even as bad as that. It could fall under a "Truth in Advertising" clause. You can tell people to visit www.whatever.com, but you have give them at least some small amount of information as to who you are. Again, seems fair enough. Isn't not saying who you are innately deceptive?
Of course, real mail could be thrown out easily, but e-mail is harder to deal with
That's preposterous. I don't know which e-mail client you use, but I find it easier to press the delete key, than to walk from my mailbox with an armload of multi-sized junk mail falling out of my hands to the trash can.
I was using the mailroom analogy here. If a mailroom gets 500 identical pieces of mail from some solicitor, they all go in the recycling bin before anyone ever sees them. Compare that to 500 people who each have to figure out what the heck this e-mail they just got is all about. The server could use a spam filter, of course, but they're not perfect. We don't have any at my job.
As for a single individual getting 10 junk mails vs. 10 e-mails, they're probably about equal in difficulty. I grab my mail on my way into my apartment complex, while I have to turn on my computer and start some programs to get my e-mail, so actually the snail mail would be a bit easier for me.
But death threats and scams are still illegal.
I'm not saying that they should be legal with e-mail. Only that e-mail shouldn't be subject to a lesser standard of 1st Amendment protection than snail-mail.
You miss my point. My point is that it's not enough to say that "it's speech, therefore it must be allowed without restriction", which is approximately what you're saying. First, the CA state law affects only commercial advertisements and affects both e-mails and faxes, so it's not about e-mail in general. And second, those advertisers can still speak. They simply have to follow a couple of simple rules.
As for the difference in how e-mail and faxes are being treated compared to snail-mail, remember that spam puts a burden on the recipient which snail-mail doesn't. That was the whole point of this case. Plus, there are ways to track your e-mail and fax receipt which aren't possible (cheaply) with snail-mail (send- and recieve- confirmations and images embedded in HTML for e-mail, standard fax confirmation messages for faxes). E-mail/fax are different than TV, radio and the like. Perhaps they should be treated differently?
Also, I think the restriction is on commercial mail only, not all internet mail.
But as I said in my post, it's the precedent which is scary here. This could make it easy to pass some ugly laws in the future.
There is no precedent here. California is legislating in an area which it already had the right to legislate (commerce) applying laws to a new medium (e-mail and faxes). Advertising is already regulated in several ways. Some kinds of ads aren't allowed in some places (cigarettes on TV, for example), and others have restrictions (that disclaimer before half-hour infomercials). California is finally regulating ads in all mediums. So what? The state is not giving itself any new powers over the internet or over commerce.
Besides, like I said before, there are other reasons why it would be hard to generalize this law to other forms of internet communication. The court ruled that spam e-mail causes damages, and placed the blame on the sender. This is a major restriction. Not only are damages required before restrictions can be applied, but it is the one who caused the damage who is fined. Thus anonymous remailers are quite safe. They are just tools. It's the user of that tool who is held responsible for the problem. If that's a precedent, then it's a good one. Blame the human, not the tool (and only if real damage is done).
Using anonymous remailers for sending advertising materials can be outlawed. It has been, in California. It's also illegal to send anonymous death threats, BTW.
I have no problem with making death threats by e-mail illegal. It probably already is as is the case for snail mail. But advertisements, unlike death threats, are generally afforded First Amendment protection. I'm concerned that ads by e-mail are being singled out here. I think that's a bad precedent.
Meanwhile, just because you're anonymous doesn't mean that you're not responsible for your actions.
But which actions are you referring to? If the "actions" are speech (commercial or non-commercial) then such speech should be protected by the First Amendment.
A new syntax? Wow, that's almost as bad as forcing you to put a valid return address on postal mail, or forcing you to put the stamp in the upper right corner of the envelope. Those bastards!
But the worst that happens if you forget a stamp or return address on snail-mail is that the mail doesn't get delivered. You don't get sued or go to jail! There's a huge difference. I have no problem with people using filters to filter out mail witha questionable return address. Getting the courts involved scares me.
To summarize what I'm saying: 1) Spam causes damage. I can see several reasons why this is so (e.g. shifting costs to the recipient, especially with faxes!), and the court in this case affirmed this -- see that section of the ruling that I mentioned before. 2) The First Amendment gives you the right to speak, but not the right to speak without restriction. 3) Regulating a form of speech which causes damage is reasonable. 4) The state government of CA already regulates advertising in every other medium anyway. (And as a side note, advertising in mediums such as TV, radio, and billboards don't do damage like spam does!)
So, to address these last three points. Advertisements may be free speech, but nobody's right to speak is being reduced. Commercial advertisers sending unsolicited messages are being asked to do some things (e.g. add "ADV:" to the subject line) when doing so because the type of speech they choose to use causes some damages (at least a slight cost incurred by the recipient). So the sender still has the usual First Amendment protections. For the first time, the recipient is also protected somewhat against incurring damages against their will.
The "actions" I refer to are in fact speech. You have every right to speak freely. You're still responsible for the consequences of your speech. The First Amendment gives you the right to speak. If your speech causes damage, you're responsible for that damage (e.g. fighting words -- you can say them, but legally you're held accountable for provoking the other person!). If your speech violates the law, you get punished. All that's happening here is that some damage-causing speech is being regulated. Not restricted, mind you. A protocol for it is being developed, that's all.
As for the new syntax, I have this to say. Commerce gets regulated sometimes. If a half-hour infomercial ran without that disclaimer at the beginning, they'd be fined. If a porn website didn't check the ages of its users, it would be fined. Likewise, the state of California is regulating spam. If you don't follow the protocol, you'll be fined because you caused some damages. (I don't see anything about jail time in the text of the law. Fines either, actually. There must be more to it.) California is just regulating some kinds of e-mail and fax advertisements, just like they do all other kinds of advertisements.
First of all, the idea that you're stealing someone's resources by sending them e-mail is absurd. When you connect a computer to the Internet, and have a mail transport agent listening on port 25 and accepting mail, you are inviting the public to send you mail.
By this logic, DDOS attacks are legal. "Hey your port 80 is open, and I'm just using it..." Fortunately, the court is smarter than that. Hell, it even says in the ruling that spam has a cost (see the paragraph which starts with "Like traditional paper "junk" mail, UCE...").
If someone sends you junk snail-mail, and it fills up your mailbox, you can't claim that you've suffered a denial of service because no new mail will fit in. The First Amendment protects junk mail, as long as it isn't fraudulent, etc. But this court says that a lesser protection is afforded to mail that travels on the Internet. In other words, Internet information has a lesser First Amendment protection than other forms of speech.
Forging the "from" line and/or return address isn't fraudulent?
Anyway, to continue the thought I started above, there certainly is a cost associated with spam. Sending a letter to a company is legal, but sending them 80,000 and making their mailroom do nothing but sort them for days is pretty questionable. (Of course, real mail could be thrown out easily, but e-mail is harder to deal with). Having a mail server is like having a mail box which accepts mail from the post office. Sure anyone can send you letters (as long as they follow the post office's guidelines). But death threats and scams are still illegal. Sure the server is saying "we want mail", but that doesn't mean that just anything is acceptible.
Also, I think the restriction is on commercial mail only, not all internet mail. The law states that it affects "advertising material" specifically. In fact, junk faxes are included in the same law, so the law is clearly is not entirely about internet mail.
The scariest part is the fact that spam is only allowed if you include a valid return address. Does this mean that anonymous remailers could someday be outlawed? This precedent would seem to support the consitutionality of such a law. I believe the U.S. Supreme Court has held (although I can't remember the precedent specifically) that anonymous speech is in fact protected by the First Amendment, and you don't lose any such protection just because you choose to be anonymous.
Using anonymous remailers for sending advertising materials can be outlawed. It has been, in California. It's also illegal to send anonymous death threats, BTW. The idea that the tool and its use are two different things (guns don't kill people... etc) is compatible with this ruling, and will doubtless be used to protect anonymous remailers, if needed.
Meanwhile, just because you're anonymous doesn't mean that you're not responsible for your actions. If your anonymous comments cause damage, you are responsible. Besides, this ruling doesn't do anything to stifle free speech. It does establish protocols for certain kinds, kinds which the government has the right to regulate (commerce). Big deal.
As the parent post states: To add insult to injury, this law defines new syntax for the Subject header! The government should not be defining the forms of e-mail headers. So now it's okay for the courts to be deciding Internet protocols. Think of all the damaging laws that can now be passed that will rest on this precedent. Limits on encryption, limits on anonymous remailers, God knows what else! And no First Amendment protection.
A new syntax? Wow, that's almost as bad as forcing you to put a valid return address on postal mail, or forcing you to put the stamp in the upper right corner of the envelope. Those bastards!
I just don't get it. Sorry for being so hard on your post specifically, but I just don't understand why some people are so worried. The law clearly says "for business purposes" and "advertising materials", so it only affects commercial ads. I'm fine with that. Spammers should be fine with the law since they are still allowed to shift costs to me as long as they do it properly. Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure that the government of California has the right to regulate commerce within the state, so it's not like they're overstepping their authority here. The law says that it applies to entities "conducting business in the state", so California isn't trying to tell other states what to do or anything.
College doesn't make you good in the IT field.
:) And finally, if you actually bother to document your software, or you work with the people who do write the documentation, some English/Rhetoric study might be worth your while.
You're not implying that it hurts though, are you? College might be overrated, but for someone with work experience but no college, it might be the best way to go. I suspect that anyone who has been working in IT for years but has no education past high school could be a bit more "well-rounded".
College has several advantages for a computer programmer/technician. In addition to being exposed to new techniques, programming languages and hardware architectures in your CS courses, you might just pick up some useful skills in other types of classes. Classes in Psychology, Cognitive Science, or even Education might teach you something about AI, about creating GUIs, about pattern-detection (e.g. speech recognition), or just in general about how to present information to the user. Studying a foreign language and culture (in more depth than in high school) would be good for anyone who has to internationalize their software beyond just translating a few menu items, or anyone who actually writes translation or foreign-language-learning software. College-level mathematics and/or statistics would be useful for some types of programming work, such as writing many kinds of scientific software, or some kinds of 3d-graphics programs. (Plus you'll learn why it's silly to base conclusions on a sample size of one
On top of that, you might just find another area which interests you! I'm always surprised when I hear about people who think they know what they want to do with their lives before they're even out of high school. With almost no knowledge about your options, how can you possibly know? Do you really like computers enough to spend fifty years working with them, or are they just the only interesting thing you've found so far? Go to college. Maybe you'll remain a programmer, but study Astrophysics (or Engineering?) and go to work for NASA. Or maybe you'll decide that you really like Marine Biology or Colonial American History. You'll never know for sure if there's something you might like better until you find out more about the world. I'd hate for anyone to find out at age 35 that they're burned out on computers because that's all they've been doing as long as they can remember, but still have that interest in Music that they never bothered to explore.
First, you don't have 5 years experience. Unless you started working 9-to-5 at age 14. Part-time at 14, which I doubt you did, doesn't count. Running a few linux machines at your high school or at your house doesn't count.
I totally agree that years spent doing a part-time, volunteer job (paid or not) will not get the same respect as years spent at a full-time carrer position. If nothing else, you just don't have the same level of responsibility in the former type of position.
Of course, all those years were not useless either. The main benefit of doing something like managing your school's computer lab or whatever is that you can back up the skills you list on your resume with real-world examples. For example, if you claimed on your resume that you can create web pages, you would add a few URLs to pages you've authored, right? Well, likewise if you claim you can set up and maintain mixed Linux/Win98 networks, include the phone number of that school computer lab or whatever so that a potential employer can verify that you have actually done this before.
Please, prove me wrong.
--- I do not moderate.
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=1, Insightful=4, Interesting=1, Informative=1, Overrated=2, Total=9.
You may not moderate, but I think you may have set the record for being moderated! Somebody give this guy a no-prize...
Now, most people aren't going to care about this but those who are trying to build a quiet PC are -- if you put a P4 in your system you could conceivably cool it passively and take the performance hit.
The problem with this idea is that, clock-for-clock, the P4 is about the slowest CPU out there. That's why all the reviews say that AMD's "model number" (read: P-rating) system is accurate in measuring relative performance (see this review for example). Clock-for-clock, a P4 is very weak compared to an Athlon. For performance, clock speed is the main thing that the P4 has going for it.
I'm willing to bet that a slowed-down P4 would be in the same performance category as Via and Transmeta's new CPUs, which can also be run without a fan and which are doubtless cheaper than the P4! Or, perhaps you could get a P3, Duron or Celeron and run with a slow, quiet fan... or no fan at all? (I seem to recall that some of the slower Durons can run without fans, though it's not recommended.) Anyway, my point is that there are lots of CPUs out there which could run with noiseless cooling (no fan or a very quiet fan). They're not very powerful by today's standards, but they may well be faster (and cheaper!) than a slowed-down P4.
I know I'm going to lose all my Karma because this is the "cool" "tech" thing to do..
:)
Where did you get that idea? Don't you recognize a bunch of civil libertarians when you seem 'em?
Yes, but how much does Microsoft ADVERTISE that they are innovative. How many times do you think the word innovate shows up on www.microsoft.com?
:)
Exactly. Microsoft does occasionally innovate. Having to click twice on a menu entry in the menu bar to get all the options is an innovation! It's a lousy one, but still...
The real problem with MS is, as you said, their Real Innovations:Advertised Innovations ratio. It's pretty low. It's not that they're not creative, they're just not as creative as they say they are. If a person acted like that, you'd call them "full of themselves". You probably wonldn't like them very much either
But I feel there MUST be some preannouncement on such bugs, even if the details are minimal.
I have heard (on SlashDot) that a properly configured firewall can prevent a computer takeover. Such a pre-announcement should have included instructions on how to configure your firewall to prevent the problem. By the time a patch (and a detailed description of the problem) was released, people could have already protected themselves. That way, if the "black hats" find out about the exploit before the patch comes out, or if the patch doesn't work for someone's system (I remember some problems with the Code-Red related buffer-overflow patch to IIS, for example), the user is still protected.
While everyone's busy downloading the Quake II source code, maybe I can mange to download kernel 2.4.17!
How many inexperienced people will read that snippet (and other snippets) and forever think of Microsoft as an EVIL EVIL SCUM with no mind for security at all?
I would guess zero. Slashdot editors can say stuff like this exactly because they know that their audience is knowledgeable. SlashDot is quite clearly not a general-interest news service like the New York Times. It's more like The Economist or Mother Jones -- news presented from a particular perspective to readers who share that perspective. In this case, the perspective is "News for Nerds", which includes lots of tech news for technology-savvy individuals. How many people who don't know enough about computers to know something about MS would be interested in a "News for Nerds" website? How many would even find it in the first place? It is a website, you know, not a magazine found on every street corner.
Besides, it's not like the belief is that Microsoft is bad at security is limited to Linux demagogues. Their track record is public knowledge. No tech publication on the planet calls Microsoft security "good".
If anyone is interested in buying this sort of thing, I do remember seeing good deals on 64MB USB "drives" recently on the various "technology deals" websites. DealNews mentioned this one for $62 recently, and I think I remember seeing one for $49.95 mentioned on some site earlier this month.
The Simpsons, albeit a cartoon show
:)
I think that this fragment of a quote pretty much sums up the entire point of the class. There always have been, and still are, some philosophers who write philosophical tomes which are quite clearly philosophy. But philosophy presented in the form of entertainment is no less worthy of consideration.
Consider, for example, "Candide" (by Voltaire) or "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence". While they both take the form of a story, each is clearly a philosophical text as well. Likewise texts such as "Gulliver's Travels" and "Catch-22", while more focused on story, also contain plenty of social criticism, which is a form of philosophy.
Considering that "The Simpsons" is far more thoughtful than most of the rest of popular culture, I'm not at all surprised that someone decided to teach a class in it. Whether or not it lasts as part of the philosophical canon after it's off the air remains to be seen. It may not be good enough or philosophical enough to last, but I'm not surprised that it's being recognized in its time.
On a related note, Alan Moore (of "Watchmen" and "From Hell" fame, among other things) taught a class on comic books as literature at The University of California at Berkeley a few years back, and "Watchmen" is on the reading list for one Film/Rhetoric/English class there. This is another example of a "cartoon" that's being taken seriously. It has been known to happen
As a matter of comparison, my Windows 2000 box has no such vulnerability. The first time I went to Windows Update, I checked the box that said "always trust content from Microsoft Corporation." Therefore, only Microsoft's real certificate will be accepted by my machine. Even if the FBI forces Verisign to issue an impostor certificate, it will be detected and thwarted.
Why can't the FBI use Microsoft's real certificate? Why wouldn't Microsoft work with them? Are you so certain that "always trust content from Microsoft Corporation" is such a good idea?
Even then, the code which checks a newly-downloaded package against the MS certificate is on your computer, right? It could be modified by anything (say, a virus) which had the right permissions to do something different, like checking against a certificate on microsoft.fbi.com, correct? Perhaps this will be the next "I Love You" payload (or the last one).
Does anyone else notice that this story has been posted before, many times, with only slight variations each time?
:)
We're definately stretching the meaning of the word "news" here
This is humor right? You are joking, right? I do hope so.
Just in case you're not, here are a few facts from Encarta for you:
In both total area and geographic extent Russia is the largest country in the world. With an area of 17,075,200 sq km (6,592,800 sq mi), Russia constitutes more than one-ninth of the world's land area and nearly twice the area of the United States or China.
Notice that Russia is a country. It is not part of Europe.
And for christsakes, please look at a map before posing another comment.
Um, are you sure that version of Encarta is up to date? For one thing, the old U.S.S.R. was that size, but it's fragmented into multiple nations nowadays. Second, the most Western part of Russia has generally been considered part of Europe, at least up until the Cold War...