Spamassassin still works well against most spams, but lately I have been getting spams which only set off the HTML_MESSAGE filter or maybe the NORMAL_HTTP_TO_IP filter once in a while. I use pine, and all that will be visible is a line of words as described in the article, which looks something like this:
Other than that junk, nothing else is visible in pine. Spamassassin is supposed to automatically feed a bayesian filter. Each time one of these spams slips through, I manually feed it to the Bayesian filter. I have been doing this for some time and it rarely seems to be catching the spam. I am getting more and more of these, so if slashdot readers have advice on bringing spamassassin back up to speed I would appreciate it. It is still much better with spamassassin than without but it is not as good as it was.
I am a retail clerk at a used book chain. You are right -- I do not verify the signature on the card matches the one on the credit card slip Instead I do verify that the card is signed at all. If the card is unsigned or says 'Check ID' I do not accept it without photo ID. This is the policy at my job and I follow it strictly unless I personally know the person (not even just one of our regulars).
Occasionally, people will actually get angry at me when I do this. This seems pretty dumb.
Supposedly, the Austin, TX PD also enforces the 'Check ID' policy, at least with cards that explicitly state it. Or so I am told, but I have seen no evidence of it. My check cards say 'Check ID' and I am rarely, if ever asked for ID. Mostly, my coworkers are the only ones who notice.
Now I am thinking about writing it on the front, but I don't think it would make much differance.
Human Pac-Man? They've done this at Burning Man
on
Human Pac Man
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Although it was nowhere near as high-tech, a human immersive pac-man has been brought to Burning Man at least one or two years. They set up a huge maze with pink PVC piping. The players would don head pieces that represented the characters in the game -- pac-man, the ghosts, or even the bonus fruit. Pac-Man ran around in the maze popping balloons which represented the dots. A DJ at an elevated station synchronized the sounds of the actual video game with actions in the maze. It was great! I camped down the block from them at Livejournal camp in 2002.
Unfortunately I have been unable to find pictures of the actual game maze or a game in progress on the web. However, you can see a photo of the giant Ms. Pac-Man dome the theme camp creators lived inside here
and here.
Dude! Get a faster modem. A 56k modem is like, what, $15?
There are a lot of places with shitty phone lines where you'd be lucky to get 28.8 no matter how fast your traditional modem.
I am aware that they oppose anti-spam legislation, and I disagree with their position on this. However, I would rather send them money when I agree with 99 out of 100 of their views. I do agree they lose some major geek points for that though.:(
I don't notice anyone mention the the ACLU. They were instrumental in stopping the Communications Decency Act, and they continue to work to protect our freedom of speech rights both online and in the 'real world.'
Even if this is an option, it still poses a problem to anyone producing scripts on a small scale. Example: Let's say I am an ISP, and I write a small script to configure a end-user's computer with the Internet. Obviously, I'm not going to spend the time & money to get it 'certified' by Microsoft, but my newbie end users will call endlessly because either: a) they don't want to run 'uncertified' code or b) they are afraid to because Papa Microsoft tells them it's bad. Remember, these are the people that click on those 'Your Internet Feed is Not Optimized!' banner ads, thinking they are real Windows errors.
The other problem is that Microsoft is doing this as a direct result of their own sloppy code writing -- the article states that it is at least partially in response to Melissa/I Love You viruses, which only work because of crappy code & programming on their own products (Outlook, et al). Rather than fixing those security holes, they are adding this nifty new 'feature.'
I can only speak for an ISP I used to work for here in Austin, Texas -- Illuminati Online. We had a standard response to people requesting personal information about a user: "We'd be happy to give that to you if you present us with a court order."
A lot of ISPs do censor their users from flaming. The one I work for now doesn't -- we have some of our favorite user flames sent in by their recipients on our walls. OTOH, another ISP in town is known for shutting off users that criticize it in Newsgroups.
Interestingly, I found an example of the important of flames recently through this job as well. We received a complaint from another ISP -- it seems one of our users had repeatedly reported a spammer on their system and gotten no response. The response finally came when they resorted to harsh language and flaming. Until then, they were being dropped in/dev/null.
Not Hard SF, but Brilliant SF
on
Childhood's End
·
· Score: 1
I have to disagree with this review of Childhood's End. It has been a couple years since I last read it (maybe this review will spur me on to do so again:), but I think the book deserves more credit than the reviewer gives it. Although the science is not in any way accurate, I don't feel Childhood's End is meant to be Hard SF. Rather, it is 'people' SF, dealing with how changes we cannot grasp affect our society, how each generation changes, and an interesting look at the end of 'humanity,' but not the human race.
I am somewhat disturbed to learn of the alteration of the story, however. I have always respected my all time favorite SF author, Ray Bradbury, for consistently refusing to alter his works, even as elements within them become dated.
Here at the office -- yes, like many geeks I'm in the office today & tomorrow -- we're discussing with amusement how everything is going fine around the world.
OTOH, we're wondering if some problems couldn't have a time delay, and only crop up several days later? What do others think.
As an aside, I think the media frenzy around Y2K is interesting. When Y2K first surfaced in the media, everyone was discussing how it would cause problems in billing. Nowadays, the media has been predicting everything from nukes going off to terrorist attacks. Sheesh.
This is still a valid term. Hard science fiction is that in which science, especially science derived at least loosely from modern research, plays a major role in the books. Soft science fiction is along the lines of say Ray Bradbury, where the futuristic framework has little to do with actual science, but everything to do with character development.
I would argue that science fiction has been very predictive in many occasions, even where the 'hard' sf seemed implausible at the time. C.f many stories about cloning, prior to the advent of Dolly.
Oh, and just to be on topic, I do highly recommend Greg Bear, esp. the Queen of Angels series & Forge of God/Anvil of Stars (esp. the latter).
I saw an interesting and heavily targeted ad the other day. I'm afraid I can't remember where I saw it; suffice to say it was not a regional site nor a regional section of a larger national site.
However, I was surprised to see a banner ad for specials at Austin area stores -- a convenience store chain, I think -- on the banner. So either I had some very inventive cookies, or they were making a guess based on my ISP, Illuminati Online which only covers two cities in Texas, Austin & Houston, in terms of dialup.
The idea of patenting genes is truly offensive to my personal spiritual and political beliefs. How can anyone claim ownership of life itself?
I'm curious what legal outlets we have if a company does suceed in patenting genes -- is there a court of appeals for the patent office? Can a law be passed that invalidates certain patents?
My understanding has always been that Gates' first and foremost innovation was that he was the first, or perhaps one of the first, to charge for software. Before Gates, the idea of free software wasn't all that extraordinary.
With other registrants out there, are there alternate whois sources? I'd love to alias my 'whois' command so it queries a server without all that legal B.S. In terms of registration, I had a good experience registering both my domains, dogsplayingpoker.cx & vulpine.cx with nic.cx, which is the Christmas Island top-level domain. They were about $30 US for two years for each, although you have to pay with a credit card/in UK pounds. They helped me out a few times when I lost my registration handle like a moron, responding very quickly to my email. Plus, you can visit their website and dream about a tropical island vacation.
I'm sure I'll only be the first of many to say this, but while Amazon was a neat idea at first, they quickly became a juggernaut that began helping to kill off the independant bookstore, as much as Barnes Ignoble & Borders. Poke around and you can usually find a specialty bookstore that not only is friendly, easier to browse, but sometimes even *gasp* cheaper. An example is my source for O'reilly books here in Austin, Desert Books -- they give huge discounts and throw much better parties. No, I'm not associated with them, I just like 'em.
Amazon was handy for relatives sending gifts and the like, but they may now suffer for what is killing Yahoo -- too much added junk, not enough attention on what made them worth visiting in the first place.
I think the most interesting thing about the press release -- as we all seem to agree DIVX sucked and was doomed anyway -- is the disclaimer at the bottom. 'Forward-looking statements?' It basically reads like 'In case the world ends tommorow, please do not sue us.' Yeesh.
How common is this becoming on press releases? Would someone really want to buy from a company this worried about their Y2K future that they have to put this kind of statement in?
"In response to questions about privacy concerns, Bank United said the iris pictures will not be distributed to anyone outside the bank."
Call me backwards, but I don't buy it. Reading Hackernews on a daily basis makes me suspicious about statements like this. I wonder how hard it would be to make a 'replica eye' or some such. I think I'll stick to my ATM for now, thanks.
Yes, its true. Movie SF is lacking in female leads, but then that's probably true in much of Hollywood. Written SF has plenty of them, but while we've had increasingly strong women -- Fifth Element, etc. -- we still haven't gotten much better. Witness the worthless love interest role in Armageddon. Sheesh.
Trinity in The Matrix is pretty strong. She's not so much scrawny as buff, though the movie poster downplays it. She has some serious muscles in some scenes and can be real tough. OTOH, she is still to some degree the love interest, despite being one of the top cr/h/ackers in the movie. She's also not the lead, bet certainly heroic. Oh well. Maybe when they make a movie of Queen of Angels...
Close. But the scene at the end when Neo sees the datastream is much more crucial then a simple rote -- he's scene the Digital Web's kernal. In Digital Web (1.0, I don't have 2 yet) there is a disucssion of the famous 'kernal' of the Web, and when you find it you see everything as the data and numbers that make up it. It only proves Neo's massive Destiny.
Apocalypse Imminent, News at 11
on
Slashdot:Mark 2
·
· Score: 1
The world could end on April Fools, and we'd all go down laughing. That's a beautiful thing, IMHO.
I am not one of the Katz haters amongst the slashdot crowd. This was a literate and well thought out article. I enjoyed reading it, and I agree the Internet is an important and striking development.
Still, I wonder -- every generation thinks there's will be 'the big one.' They will change everything and make the world a new place. In the 60s, the counter culture movement had very high, and often admirable, ambitions for the world, most of whivch petered out when they all became chartered accountants, lawyers, (not to mention mathematicians & carpenter's wives, to quote Dylan). Although the 'net is by no means generation-specific, I still wonder if it isn't some kind of fad.
Tom Standage recently published a book called The Victorian Internet, which chronicles the rise and fall of the telegraph system. I haven't read the book yet -- I hope to soon -- but I heard him interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air. Really fascinating stuff. Exactly what is happening socially now due to the Internet happened then -- romances, complaints due to the increasing speed of business, worries about its pervasiveness, etc. Yes, the telegraph definetly changed the world, but now we are all back where we started and making the same accolades and complaints about the 'next big thing.'
On a final side note, I think whether or not Katz 'belongs here' is a moot point. His articles create tons of back and forth conversation, and that is exactly what Commander Taco wants.
Slashdot Mirror
Other than that junk, nothing else is visible in pine. Spamassassin is supposed to automatically feed a bayesian filter. Each time one of these spams slips through, I manually feed it to the Bayesian filter. I have been doing this for some time and it rarely seems to be catching the spam. I am getting more and more of these, so if slashdot readers have advice on bringing spamassassin back up to speed I would appreciate it. It is still much better with spamassassin than without but it is not as good as it was.
The study was actually performed at the Juan Valdez Memorial School of Public Health.
Oh, wait, you said gong ! I guess I was confused.
I am a retail clerk at a used book chain. You are right -- I do not verify the signature on the card matches the one on the credit card slip Instead I do verify that the card is signed at all. If the card is unsigned or says 'Check ID' I do not accept it without photo ID. This is the policy at my job and I follow it strictly unless I personally know the person (not even just one of our regulars).
Occasionally, people will actually get angry at me when I do this. This seems pretty dumb.
Supposedly, the Austin, TX PD also enforces the 'Check ID' policy, at least with cards that explicitly state it. Or so I am told, but I have seen no evidence of it. My check cards say 'Check ID' and I am rarely, if ever asked for ID. Mostly, my coworkers are the only ones who notice.
Now I am thinking about writing it on the front, but I don't think it would make much differance.
Unfortunately I have been unable to find pictures of the actual game maze or a game in progress on the web. However, you can see a photo of the giant Ms. Pac-Man dome the theme camp creators lived inside here and here.
Dude! Get a faster modem. A 56k modem is like, what, $15? There are a lot of places with shitty phone lines where you'd be lucky to get 28.8 no matter how fast your traditional modem.
I am aware that they oppose anti-spam legislation, and I disagree with their position on this. However, I would rather send them money when I agree with 99 out of 100 of their views. I do agree they lose some major geek points for that though. :(
I don't notice anyone mention the the ACLU. They were instrumental in stopping the Communications Decency Act, and they continue to work to protect our freedom of speech rights both online and in the 'real world.'
Even if this is an option, it still poses a problem to anyone producing scripts on a small scale. Example: Let's say I am an ISP, and I write a small script to configure a end-user's computer with the Internet. Obviously, I'm not going to spend the time & money to get it 'certified' by Microsoft, but my newbie end users will call endlessly because either: a) they don't want to run 'uncertified' code or b) they are afraid to because Papa Microsoft tells them it's bad. Remember, these are the people that click on those 'Your Internet Feed is Not Optimized!' banner ads, thinking they are real Windows errors.
The other problem is that Microsoft is doing this as a direct result of their own sloppy code writing -- the article states that it is at least partially in response to Melissa/I Love You viruses, which only work because of crappy code & programming on their own products (Outlook, et al). Rather than fixing those security holes, they are adding this nifty new 'feature.'
Then again, IO, formerly part of Steve Jackson Games knows all about abuse of the law.
A lot of ISPs do censor their users from flaming. The one I work for now doesn't -- we have some of our favorite user flames sent in by their recipients on our walls. OTOH, another ISP in town is known for shutting off users that criticize it in Newsgroups.
/dev/null.
Interestingly, I found an example of the important of flames recently through this job as well. We received a complaint from another ISP -- it seems one of our users had repeatedly reported a spammer on their system and gotten no response. The response finally came when they resorted to harsh language and flaming. Until then, they were being dropped in
I have to disagree with this review of Childhood's End. It has been a couple years since I last read it (maybe this review will spur me on to do so again :), but I think the book deserves more credit than the reviewer gives it. Although the science is not in any way accurate, I don't feel Childhood's End is meant to be Hard SF. Rather, it is 'people' SF, dealing with how changes we cannot grasp affect our society, how each generation changes, and an interesting look at the end of 'humanity,' but not the human race.
I am somewhat disturbed to learn of the alteration of the story, however. I have always respected my all time favorite SF author, Ray Bradbury, for consistently refusing to alter his works, even as elements within them become dated.
Here at the office -- yes, like many geeks I'm in the office today & tomorrow -- we're discussing with amusement how everything is going fine around the world.
OTOH, we're wondering if some problems couldn't have a time delay, and only crop up several days later? What do others think.
As an aside, I think the media frenzy around Y2K is interesting. When Y2K first surfaced in the media, everyone was discussing how it would cause problems in billing. Nowadays, the media has been predicting everything from nukes going off to terrorist attacks. Sheesh.
I would argue that science fiction has been very predictive in many occasions, even where the 'hard' sf seemed implausible at the time. C.f many stories about cloning, prior to the advent of Dolly.
Oh, and just to be on topic, I do highly recommend Greg Bear, esp. the Queen of Angels series & Forge of God/Anvil of Stars (esp. the latter).
However, I was surprised to see a banner ad for specials at Austin area stores -- a convenience store chain, I think -- on the banner. So either I had some very inventive cookies, or they were making a guess based on my ISP, Illuminati Online which only covers two cities in Texas, Austin & Houston, in terms of dialup.
The idea of patenting genes is truly offensive to my personal spiritual and political beliefs. How can anyone claim ownership of life itself?
I'm curious what legal outlets we have if a company does suceed in patenting genes -- is there a court of appeals for the patent office? Can a law be passed that invalidates certain patents?
My understanding has always been that Gates' first and foremost innovation was that he was the first, or perhaps one of the first, to charge for software. Before Gates, the idea of free software wasn't all that extraordinary.
With other registrants out there, are there alternate whois sources? I'd love to alias my 'whois' command so it queries a server without all that legal B.S. In terms of registration, I had a good experience registering both my domains, dogsplayingpoker.cx & vulpine.cx with nic.cx, which is the Christmas Island top-level domain. They were about $30 US for two years for each, although you have to pay with a credit card/in UK pounds. They helped me out a few times when I lost my registration handle like a moron, responding very quickly to my email. Plus, you can visit their website and dream about a tropical island vacation.
Amazon was handy for relatives sending gifts and the like, but they may now suffer for what is killing Yahoo -- too much added junk, not enough attention on what made them worth visiting in the first place.
Oh, and nice article Jon. :)
I think the most interesting thing about the press release -- as we all seem to agree DIVX sucked and was doomed anyway -- is the disclaimer at the bottom. 'Forward-looking statements?' It basically reads like 'In case the world ends tommorow, please do not sue us.' Yeesh.
How common is this becoming on press releases? Would someone really want to buy from a company this worried about their Y2K future that they have to put this kind of statement in?
Call me backwards, but I don't buy it. Reading Hackernews on a daily basis makes me suspicious about statements like this. I wonder how hard it would be to make a 'replica eye' or some such. I think I'll stick to my ATM for now, thanks.
Yes, its true. Movie SF is lacking in female leads, but then that's probably true in much of Hollywood. Written SF has plenty of them, but while we've had increasingly strong women -- Fifth Element, etc. -- we still haven't gotten much better. Witness the worthless love interest role in Armageddon. Sheesh.
Trinity in The Matrix is pretty strong. She's not so much scrawny as buff, though the movie poster downplays it. She has some serious muscles in some scenes and can be real tough. OTOH, she is still to some degree the love interest, despite being one of the top cr/h/ackers in the movie. She's also not the lead, bet certainly heroic. Oh well. Maybe when they make a movie of Queen of Angels...
Close. But the scene at the end when Neo sees the datastream is much more crucial then a simple rote -- he's scene the Digital Web's kernal. In Digital Web (1.0, I don't have 2 yet) there is a disucssion of the famous 'kernal' of the Web, and when you find it you see everything as the data and numbers that make up it. It only proves Neo's massive Destiny.
The world could end on April Fools, and we'd all go down laughing. That's a beautiful thing, IMHO.
I am not one of the Katz haters amongst the slashdot crowd. This was a literate and well thought out article. I enjoyed reading it, and I agree the Internet is an important and striking development.
Still, I wonder -- every generation thinks there's will be 'the big one.' They will change everything and make the world a new place. In the 60s, the counter culture movement had very high, and often admirable, ambitions for the world, most of whivch petered out when they all became chartered accountants, lawyers, (not to mention mathematicians & carpenter's wives, to quote Dylan). Although the 'net is by no means generation-specific, I still wonder if it isn't some kind of fad.
Tom Standage recently published a book called The Victorian Internet, which chronicles the rise and fall of the telegraph system. I haven't read the book yet -- I hope to soon -- but I heard him interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air. Really fascinating stuff. Exactly what is happening socially now due to the Internet happened then -- romances, complaints due to the increasing speed of business, worries about its pervasiveness, etc. Yes, the telegraph definetly changed the world, but now we are all back where we started and making the same accolades and complaints about the 'next big thing.'
On a final side note, I think whether or not Katz 'belongs here' is a moot point. His articles create tons of back and forth conversation, and that is exactly what Commander Taco wants.