One of his buddies had gotten a make-money-fast spam and Mack said 'I can come up with something better than that.'
I dunno about that. It sounds an awful lot like an urban legend to me. I mean, how reasonable is it that a couple of college kids sitting around just invented this hoax? It sounds outrageous, but then when you think about it, it's pretty reasonable. A little too reasonable. Kinda like the one where some guy gets seduced by a hot woman only to wake up in a tub of ice one kidney lighter. Could totally happen, right? So, I'm skeptical.
Even stranger, I'm pretty sure I saw this hoax (if that's really what it is) before 1997. It's more like a 1987 kinda thing... by 1997, the general population had at least some clue about e-mail.
Plus, it's not like Slashdot is famous for its fact-checking department. I'm sure CmdrTaco is a big fan of MythBusters, but that's not really the same thing. In its heyday, WIRED had a pretty good reputation in that department, but who knows what it's like over there these days with all the lightweight fluff those guys run? How do we know that this Bryan Mack really wrote this e-mail? (And does 'Bryan Mack' even sound like a real name?) Who's to say he's not just taking credit for someone else's work, work that the author was kind enough to place in the public domain, just to gain a few minutes of fame?
If Disney is 'donating' the patents involved to a non-profit corporation, why do they bother patenting the ideas in the first place? Why not just publish a few articles in the Journal of Entertainment Pyrotechnology or Popular Mechanics or whatever and tell the world about it? It's not like someone else could come along, patent the ideas, and prevent Disney from using them.
One can only imagine that Disney and its non-profit partner will continue to control who can and cannot use the technology, otherwise there'd be no need for patents, no need for licenses. This is not exactly open-source engineering.
N.B. they're not releasing this technology into the public domain. They're transferring the patents to a non-profit corporation so that they may be licensed (presumably on reasonable terms) to other pyrotechnic companies. But they'll still control the technology, else they wouldn't need to patent the ideas in the first place.
I have since sworn an oath that I will never, ever design or facilitate copy protection measures again, for one simple reason: There is no honor among thieves.
I have all kinds of respect for that position. It doesn't really solve the problem, though. Had you refused to make the changes that management required, they'd surely have fired you for that instead. Sounds like you just found yourself in a no-win situation. As you say, there is no honor among thieves.
If you're interested in either learning to take great aerial photographs with a kite, or else just seeing a bunch of terrific images, Charles Benton's KAP site is the place to go.
Benton is a professor of architecture at UC Berkeley. Living in northern California, he's got no end of interesting places to photograph. And I think his photography is probably aided by his architectural training and a strong ability to imagine what a shot will look like even though he's not looking directly through the camera.
Now when are Apple going to follow suit and up the paltry 15mb e-mail storage I get for $99 a year!!!
Unknown. But I think Apple is one company that probably realizes that they need to do more than just add a lot more space. What are you going to do with a gig of e-mail storage unless you also get some cool tools for sorting through it all?
Besides, I think most.Mac users read their mail at least part of the time with OS X's Mail.app. Can you imagine syncronizing the mail on your machine with your online account if you had anything close to 1GB of mail stored online? And on the flip side, if you're downloading your mail to your Mac at home, you can have as many gigabytes of stored mail as you like. It just won't be online and searchable from anywhere.
Don't get me wrong: I'm looking forward to the day when Apple increases the e-mail limit for.Mac users. But I can also see Gmail being a good thing for.Mac in the sense that at some point, more people may be willing to pay for a service like.Mac. Many people pay for premium cable channels like HBO, and non-premium, non-cable public broadcasting, because they like the higher quality content and they appreciate not having ads. If.Mac can become the HBO of online services, it'll be a very good thing for Apple.
I know you can already get these, but that detracts from both my geek-drive and my wallet, both of which I'd prefer to keep as full as possible.
If you want to build one for fun or as a learning project, great, by all means go for it. But if you value your time at all, you're absolutely kidding yourself if you think you can build any kind of decent (read: safe and reliable) autonomous lawnmower for less than the price of a Friendly Robotics RL-1000 ($1800 at Amazon) much less the far cheaper RL-800 ($800) and RL-550 ($600) models.
Right off the bat, you have to consider how you're going to power this thing. Gas? Electric? Electric will be easier to instrument and control, of course, but you've got that pesky power cord to consider. Wouldn't want to run over that, do ya now? You don't have to worry about the cord if you go with a self-propelled gas mower, but steering is a hassle. It may also be a little more difficult to make sure you can stop the blade quickly as soon as you encounter a dangerous situation. Batteries give you the best of both worlds, of course... separate motors can drive the blade and each rear wheel, giving good control over the blade, decent propulsion, and steering. And you can use the batteries to power the electronics, too. Of course, batteries will also add to both cost and weight.
I predict that if you consider your time at any reasonable hourly rate, you'll find that getting to the point where you've got a robot that you can drive around the yard via remote control will cost you a LOT more than the top-of-the-line RL-1000.
Incidentally, building a remote-controlled lawnbot is probably a good way to go. Put just enough electronics on the bot itself to communicate with a mother ship and to shut down the machine at the first sign of danger, like when someone lifts it up. Something like a BASIC Stamp with a RF package would be a good, cheap way to go. That way, you can build a human-operated remote control for testing and such, and a computer-operated one when you get to that point.
Again, I'm not trying to dissuade you if you're into building such a thing for fun. Just make sure you're paranoid about safety, or it might not end up being so much fun. But if you want to keep your wallet full, either buy a ready-made version or (as someone else already said) pay the kid next door to mow for you.
The primary issue to be feared is not that someone who isn't trusted with the data will get ahold of it, but that someone who is trusted with the data will turn out to be untrustworthy.
They're both major concerns.
In fact, they're just two sides of the same problem: that personal information can and will be used inappropriately. We worry about rogue employees and about black hats. But we also worry about entire corporations, and about the government. See today's story about airlines sharing far more data than they previously admitted with the TSA.
I don't mind so much that my employer can fire me for pretty much any reason they like. I can quit for pretty much any reason I like, too. But I sure don't want to live in a world where my employer can send me to prison.
I'm sure that whoever modded your post as flamebait did so because you added personal insult ("you idiot") for no reason whatsoever. You may find that your karma will increase (both on/. and in life) if you just relax a bit.
The cluster isn't on the list, period.
No shit, Sherlock. It says as much in the story summary:
Two sections of an IBM prototype took spots in the top 10 and the famous Apple cluster didn't make the list, because it was out of service for hardware upgrades.
There's no point in discussing it.
I disagree. The summary itself implies a distinction between "IBM" and "Apple." I merely pointed out that "Apple" is "IBM" for these sorts of purposes, and for that you saw fit to call me an idiot.
It's worth pointint out that if you're going to consider a given supercomputer to be "AMD" or "Intel" based on where the processors come from, then Virginia Tech's cluster of Apple Xserves is an "IBM" machine.
That's not to take anything away from Apple. Both Xserve and the G5 towers that came before them are a great design, reliable, run a great OS, yada yada yada. But the chips are IBM.
For the average user Windows is much easier to use. You can say "get a new OS" all you want, but unless you are willing to set it up so everything works perfectly, including their webcam with AIM, Yahoo, etc, and all their Windows games, then you can tell them to "get a new OS".
That's beside the point. This garbage shouldn't be installed, no matter what OS you use. It's installing a program without your permission, and that's wrong, whether you're running Windows, OS X, Linux, whatever.
No, that's exactly the point. When some malicious entity tries to install software on YOUR machine, and YOUR operating system permits that, there's a problem with the operating system. It's just that simple.
Yes, it's not very nice of the malicious entity to take advantage of weaknesses in your operating system. But that, frankly, is the nature of malicious entities. The only things you can do to reduce your exposure to these sorts of attacks are to 1) disconnect your machine from the network, 2) choose an OS that's less likely to yield to such attacks, or 3) get the manufacturer of your current OS to fix the problem ASAP.
#1 isn't much of an option, and Microsoft by most accounts hasn't done a very good job responding to #3, so that leaves #2. By the way, I'd take the same position against Linux or OS X if they allowed these sorts of shenanigans, but at least #3 has been a reasonable approach with those systems.
When I can't even listen to my music without worrying about what programs may be being installed on my computer, we've let them go too far.
When you can't even listen to your music without worrying about what programs may be installed on your computer, you need a different operating system.
If our government is, indeed, not repressive, they have no right to expect answers to such questions and he has a right not give answers.
Yeah, sort of. But you miss my point, which is that someone holding a green card is a permanent resident and has no obvious reason to fear the government, at least w.r.t. immigration issues. I didn't say such a person would be obliged to invite the CIA in for coffee, but at the same time they don't have to duck into a phone booth when a squad car approaches.
Do you understand what a right is?
I do, but thanks for checking.
He may give or withhold information to whomever he choses and for whatever reason he choses.
Not entirely true. For example, if the cops come to your door looking for your neighbor, who allegedly shot someone, you could be charged if you fail to tell them that he's hiding in your bathroom. Or, if you know that someone is about to commit certain crimes, you're obliged to let authorities know.
Even if actually charged with a crime (pre "PATRIOT", of course) he still retains the right to just shut the hell up and not utter a word.
You certainly have a right not to incriminate yourself or your spouse, but you don't have a right not to incriminate someone else. Just ask Susan MacDougal.
This is exactly why this law is being sought, to infringe upon that right and lend credence to the idea that he has not traveled very far from government repression.
I must be stupid, but I've read that last bit a dozen times and it just doesn't make any sense.
Actually, I do. And you're right, DC (like any large city) surely has plenty of illegals. Good thing, too, as Americans don't seem to want to do the work they do.
I'm sure it is hard to get them to admit it, though, unless you get intimate with them.
Yep, and you can guess that it'll be a lot harder for us to know anything about them if they think that every person who tries to ask them a question might be a government agent in disguise.
such as a green-card-holding professor of nanotechnology who formerly lived under a repressive government
Why should a professor holding a green card, having come here specifically because our government is at least less repressive than the one he/she left, fear a government agent who properly identifies him/herself and asks reasonable questions in the professor's area of expertise?
I'd think that such a person would welcome an honest approach, and only fear government agents masquerading as something other than what they are.
Now, an illegal alien obviously has something to fear in talking to a government agent, but such people are unlikely to be either easy to find or college professors. And if a government agent can find them, they can also offer to ignore the immigration issue in exchange for information, or possibly even help with that sticky immigration issue.
Sure you have. He had a hand in XML-RPC, SOAP, RSS, and more. For a long time, Frontier was the glue that integrated many web servers and databases. You may not have bought any products directly from UserLand or THINK, but you've most likely used products that were either influenced by or implemented using his stuff.
I'm concerned to hear that Dave Winer is suffering from health problems. Whatever you think of him and his various endeavors, Dave has been incredibly influential in the Macintosh software and Internet development communities for about as long as I can remember. Incredibly productive, too. I won't try to list all the stuff he's done, but we've all used the fruits of his labor. And he hasn't filed a single patent for any of it.
So screw the blogs and give Dave a break. If there's anyone out there who has earned a bit of understanding, Dave's the guy.
#1: Why the hash? Spammers obviously need an address to create a hash, and when it comes up rejected, they'll know they have a valid address.
The hash prevents spammers from using a do-not-spam list as a source for new addresses. As you say, the spammer must already have an address in order to check it against the list. Your point that they can still use the list to validate an address is a good one.
What we need is a way to ensure that e-mail comes from a verifiable source. HTTP has gone through a revision or two, HTML gets revised every few years, why hasn't SMTP been touched? It'd be good to see a solution that allows anyone to run their own mailserver as well...
Agreed. Given that the net extends beyond (geographically speaking) US law, a technical solution is clearly better than a legal one. PKI and a web of trust could be a solution, particularly if it could be added to protocols like SMTP. But the infrastructure that's the I in PKI doesn't yet exist.
'A national do-not-e-mail registry, without a system in place to authenticate the origin of e-mail messages, would fail to reduce the burden of spam and may even increase the amount of spam received by consumers,'
Keep a list of do-not-spam addresses, with each entry securely hashed. Bulk mailers would then hash each prospective recipient address, search for it in the list, and reject any that match. The main requirement here is that the hash function should work in only one direction.
So, it's not like you have to provide spammers with a list of actual live e-mail addresses in order to let them comply with a do-not-spam list.
Something along these lines should really be used for the national do-not-call list as well.
What, exactly, are they planning on charging for? The only resources that are really important to make chat systems work are connections at each end, and some sort of directory to tell you what computer to contact to reach a given person.
Now, I already pay for my connection, and my ISP thanks me for it once a month. The directory service can be implemented any of a bunch of different ways, including using existing protocols.
AOL cleverly inserted itself into instant messaging by designing AIM to make the AIM servers a sort of middleman (at least according to my limited understanding of AIM workings). They did a lot to make instant messaging easy to use and popular, and in return they got a lot of influence in that sector. But if they're going to charge, they're going to have to add some sort of greater value than what I see right now.
Slashdot Mirror
One of his buddies had gotten a make-money-fast spam and Mack said 'I can come up with something better than that.'
I dunno about that. It sounds an awful lot like an urban legend to me. I mean, how reasonable is it that a couple of college kids sitting around just invented this hoax? It sounds outrageous, but then when you think about it, it's pretty reasonable. A little too reasonable. Kinda like the one where some guy gets seduced by a hot woman only to wake up in a tub of ice one kidney lighter. Could totally happen, right? So, I'm skeptical.
Even stranger, I'm pretty sure I saw this hoax (if that's really what it is) before 1997. It's more like a 1987 kinda thing... by 1997, the general population had at least some clue about e-mail.
Plus, it's not like Slashdot is famous for its fact-checking department. I'm sure CmdrTaco is a big fan of MythBusters, but that's not really the same thing. In its heyday, WIRED had a pretty good reputation in that department, but who knows what it's like over there these days with all the lightweight fluff those guys run? How do we know that this Bryan Mack really wrote this e-mail? (And does 'Bryan Mack' even sound like a real name?) Who's to say he's not just taking credit for someone else's work, work that the author was kind enough to place in the public domain, just to gain a few minutes of fame?
If Disney is 'donating' the patents involved to a non-profit corporation, why do they bother patenting the ideas in the first place? Why not just publish a few articles in the Journal of Entertainment Pyrotechnology or Popular Mechanics or whatever and tell the world about it? It's not like someone else could come along, patent the ideas, and prevent Disney from using them.
One can only imagine that Disney and its non-profit partner will continue to control who can and cannot use the technology, otherwise there'd be no need for patents, no need for licenses. This is not exactly open-source engineering.
N.B. they're not releasing this technology into the public domain. They're transferring the patents to a non-profit corporation so that they may be licensed (presumably on reasonable terms) to other pyrotechnic companies. But they'll still control the technology, else they wouldn't need to patent the ideas in the first place.
I have since sworn an oath that I will never, ever design or facilitate copy protection measures again, for one simple reason: There is no honor among thieves.
I have all kinds of respect for that position. It doesn't really solve the problem, though. Had you refused to make the changes that management required, they'd surely have fired you for that instead. Sounds like you just found yourself in a no-win situation. As you say, there is no honor among thieves.
If you're interested in either learning to take great aerial photographs with a kite, or else just seeing a bunch of terrific images, Charles Benton's KAP site is the place to go.
Benton is a professor of architecture at UC Berkeley. Living in northern California, he's got no end of interesting places to photograph. And I think his photography is probably aided by his architectural training and a strong ability to imagine what a shot will look like even though he's not looking directly through the camera.
It's absolutley worth checking out.
Now when are Apple going to follow suit and up the paltry 15mb e-mail storage I get for $99 a year!!!
.Mac users read their mail at least part of the time with OS X's Mail.app. Can you imagine syncronizing the mail on your machine with your online account if you had anything close to 1GB of mail stored online? And on the flip side, if you're downloading your mail to your Mac at home, you can have as many gigabytes of stored mail as you like. It just won't be online and searchable from anywhere.
.Mac users. But I can also see Gmail being a good thing for .Mac in the sense that at some point, more people may be willing to pay for a service like .Mac. Many people pay for premium cable channels like HBO, and non-premium, non-cable public broadcasting, because they like the higher quality content and they appreciate not having ads. If .Mac can become the HBO of online services, it'll be a very good thing for Apple.
Unknown. But I think Apple is one company that probably realizes that they need to do more than just add a lot more space. What are you going to do with a gig of e-mail storage unless you also get some cool tools for sorting through it all?
Besides, I think most
Don't get me wrong: I'm looking forward to the day when Apple increases the e-mail limit for
Yo Apple, how about boosting the space us .mac PAYING subscribers get?
Have patience, friend. WWDC is next week, and there are typically a lot of interesting announcements then. Let's see what happens on Monday.
I know you can already get these, but that detracts from both my geek-drive and my wallet, both of which I'd prefer to keep as full as possible.
If you want to build one for fun or as a learning project, great, by all means go for it. But if you value your time at all, you're absolutely kidding yourself if you think you can build any kind of decent (read: safe and reliable) autonomous lawnmower for less than the price of a Friendly Robotics RL-1000 ($1800 at Amazon) much less the far cheaper RL-800 ($800) and RL-550 ($600) models.
Right off the bat, you have to consider how you're going to power this thing. Gas? Electric? Electric will be easier to instrument and control, of course, but you've got that pesky power cord to consider. Wouldn't want to run over that, do ya now? You don't have to worry about the cord if you go with a self-propelled gas mower, but steering is a hassle. It may also be a little more difficult to make sure you can stop the blade quickly as soon as you encounter a dangerous situation. Batteries give you the best of both worlds, of course... separate motors can drive the blade and each rear wheel, giving good control over the blade, decent propulsion, and steering. And you can use the batteries to power the electronics, too. Of course, batteries will also add to both cost and weight.
I predict that if you consider your time at any reasonable hourly rate, you'll find that getting to the point where you've got a robot that you can drive around the yard via remote control will cost you a LOT more than the top-of-the-line RL-1000.
Incidentally, building a remote-controlled lawnbot is probably a good way to go. Put just enough electronics on the bot itself to communicate with a mother ship and to shut down the machine at the first sign of danger, like when someone lifts it up. Something like a BASIC Stamp with a RF package would be a good, cheap way to go. That way, you can build a human-operated remote control for testing and such, and a computer-operated one when you get to that point.
Again, I'm not trying to dissuade you if you're into building such a thing for fun. Just make sure you're paranoid about safety, or it might not end up being so much fun. But if you want to keep your wallet full, either buy a ready-made version or (as someone else already said) pay the kid next door to mow for you.
The primary issue to be feared is not that someone who isn't trusted with the data will get ahold of it, but that someone who is trusted with the data will turn out to be untrustworthy.
They're both major concerns.
In fact, they're just two sides of the same problem: that personal information can and will be used inappropriately. We worry about rogue employees and about black hats. But we also worry about entire corporations, and about the government. See today's story about airlines sharing far more data than they previously admitted with the TSA.
He should have sent to prison for 25 years too!
For breaking what law?
I don't mind so much that my employer can fire me for pretty much any reason they like. I can quit for pretty much any reason I like, too. But I sure don't want to live in a world where my employer can send me to prison.
I'm sure that whoever modded your post as flamebait did so because you added personal insult ("you idiot") for no reason whatsoever. You may find that your karma will increase (both on
The cluster isn't on the list, period.
No shit, Sherlock. It says as much in the story summary:
There's no point in discussing it.
I disagree. The summary itself implies a distinction between "IBM" and "Apple." I merely pointed out that "Apple" is "IBM" for these sorts of purposes, and for that you saw fit to call me an idiot.
It's worth pointint out that if you're going to consider a given supercomputer to be "AMD" or "Intel" based on where the processors come from, then Virginia Tech's cluster of Apple Xserves is an "IBM" machine.
That's not to take anything away from Apple. Both Xserve and the G5 towers that came before them are a great design, reliable, run a great OS, yada yada yada. But the chips are IBM.
UNICS was released nearly 40 years ago...
According to Grokline, "UNICS" was released Dec. 31, 1969. I guess that could be "nearly 40," but it's not quite.
For the average user Windows is much easier to use. You can say "get a new OS" all you want, but unless you are willing to set it up so everything works perfectly, including their webcam with AIM, Yahoo, etc, and all their Windows games, then you can tell them to "get a new OS".
Apple has done exactly that, and more.
That's beside the point. This garbage shouldn't be installed, no matter what OS you use. It's installing a program without your permission, and that's wrong, whether you're running Windows, OS X, Linux, whatever.
No, that's exactly the point. When some malicious entity tries to install software on YOUR machine, and YOUR operating system permits that, there's a problem with the operating system. It's just that simple.
Yes, it's not very nice of the malicious entity to take advantage of weaknesses in your operating system. But that, frankly, is the nature of malicious entities. The only things you can do to reduce your exposure to these sorts of attacks are to 1) disconnect your machine from the network, 2) choose an OS that's less likely to yield to such attacks, or 3) get the manufacturer of your current OS to fix the problem ASAP.
#1 isn't much of an option, and Microsoft by most accounts hasn't done a very good job responding to #3, so that leaves #2. By the way, I'd take the same position against Linux or OS X if they allowed these sorts of shenanigans, but at least #3 has been a reasonable approach with those systems.
When I can't even listen to my music without worrying about what programs may be being installed on my computer, we've let them go too far.
When you can't even listen to your music without worrying about what programs may be installed on your computer, you need a different operating system.
If our government is, indeed, not repressive, they have no right to expect answers to such questions and he has a right not give answers.
Yeah, sort of. But you miss my point, which is that someone holding a green card is a permanent resident and has no obvious reason to fear the government, at least w.r.t. immigration issues. I didn't say such a person would be obliged to invite the CIA in for coffee, but at the same time they don't have to duck into a phone booth when a squad car approaches.
Do you understand what a right is?
I do, but thanks for checking.
He may give or withhold information to whomever he choses and for whatever reason he choses.
Not entirely true. For example, if the cops come to your door looking for your neighbor, who allegedly shot someone, you could be charged if you fail to tell them that he's hiding in your bathroom. Or, if you know that someone is about to commit certain crimes, you're obliged to let authorities know.
Even if actually charged with a crime (pre "PATRIOT", of course) he still retains the right to just shut the hell up and not utter a word.
You certainly have a right not to incriminate yourself or your spouse, but you don't have a right not to incriminate someone else. Just ask Susan MacDougal.
This is exactly why this law is being sought, to infringe upon that right and lend credence to the idea that he has not traveled very far from government repression.
I must be stupid, but I've read that last bit a dozen times and it just doesn't make any sense.
You obviously don't live near Washington, D.C.
Actually, I do. And you're right, DC (like any large city) surely has plenty of illegals. Good thing, too, as Americans don't seem to want to do the work they do.
I'm sure it is hard to get them to admit it, though, unless you get intimate with them.
Yep, and you can guess that it'll be a lot harder for us to know anything about them if they think that every person who tries to ask them a question might be a government agent in disguise.
such as a green-card-holding professor of nanotechnology who formerly lived under a repressive government
Why should a professor holding a green card, having come here specifically because our government is at least less repressive than the one he/she left, fear a government agent who properly identifies him/herself and asks reasonable questions in the professor's area of expertise?
I'd think that such a person would welcome an honest approach, and only fear government agents masquerading as something other than what they are.
Now, an illegal alien obviously has something to fear in talking to a government agent, but such people are unlikely to be either easy to find or college professors. And if a government agent can find them, they can also offer to ignore the immigration issue in exchange for information, or possibly even help with that sticky immigration issue.
Sure you have. He had a hand in XML-RPC, SOAP, RSS, and more. For a long time, Frontier was the glue that integrated many web servers and databases. You may not have bought any products directly from UserLand or THINK, but you've most likely used products that were either influenced by or implemented using his stuff.
I'm concerned to hear that Dave Winer is suffering from health problems. Whatever you think of him and his various endeavors, Dave has been incredibly influential in the Macintosh software and Internet development communities for about as long as I can remember. Incredibly productive, too. I won't try to list all the stuff he's done, but we've all used the fruits of his labor. And he hasn't filed a single patent for any of it.
So screw the blogs and give Dave a break. If there's anyone out there who has earned a bit of understanding, Dave's the guy.
Speedy recovery to you, Dave.
#1: Why the hash? Spammers obviously need an address to create a hash, and when it comes up rejected, they'll know they have a valid address.
The hash prevents spammers from using a do-not-spam list as a source for new addresses. As you say, the spammer must already have an address in order to check it against the list. Your point that they can still use the list to validate an address is a good one.
What we need is a way to ensure that e-mail comes from a verifiable source. HTTP has gone through a revision or two, HTML gets revised every few years, why hasn't SMTP been touched? It'd be good to see a solution that allows anyone to run their own mailserver as well...
Agreed. Given that the net extends beyond (geographically speaking) US law, a technical solution is clearly better than a legal one. PKI and a web of trust could be a solution, particularly if it could be added to protocols like SMTP. But the infrastructure that's the I in PKI doesn't yet exist.
'A national do-not-e-mail registry, without a system in place to authenticate the origin of e-mail messages, would fail to reduce the burden of spam and may even increase the amount of spam received by consumers,'
Keep a list of do-not-spam addresses, with each entry securely hashed. Bulk mailers would then hash each prospective recipient address, search for it in the list, and reject any that match. The main requirement here is that the hash function should work in only one direction.
So, it's not like you have to provide spammers with a list of actual live e-mail addresses in order to let them comply with a do-not-spam list.
Something along these lines should really be used for the national do-not-call list as well.
I'm sure he takes full responsibility for his actions, too, right?
What, exactly, are they planning on charging for? The only resources that are really important to make chat systems work are connections at each end, and some sort of directory to tell you what computer to contact to reach a given person.
Now, I already pay for my connection, and my ISP thanks me for it once a month. The directory service can be implemented any of a bunch of different ways, including using existing protocols.
AOL cleverly inserted itself into instant messaging by designing AIM to make the AIM servers a sort of middleman (at least according to my limited understanding of AIM workings). They did a lot to make instant messaging easy to use and popular, and in return they got a lot of influence in that sector. But if they're going to charge, they're going to have to add some sort of greater value than what I see right now.