Now, the encoding scheme is complicated, but it just so happens that "0101" if treated as data on the left hand side would decode to the digit "6".
It's so complicted, in fact, that you don't understand it. Every digit in a UPC barcode consists of a total or 7 element widths (X) which are made up of 2 bars and 2 spaces of varying width. The left-side representation of the digit "6" is 0000101 which means a 4-wide space, a 1-wide bar, a 1-wide space, and 1-wide bar (for a total width of 7).
Using your definition of "0101" (space,bar,space,bar) or of 1010 (bar,space,bar,space), EVERY digit in a UPC-A barcode is the number of the beast since every digit consists of a space,bar,space,bar sequence or a bar,space,bar,space sequence--not just "6".
Hence every UPC bar code has "6...6...6" built into it.
Hence you don't know what you're talking about.
I suggest you read this page for an explanation of UPC-A and EAN-13 encoding since it is clear your understanding is lacking.
Agreed. Bayesian all by itself is not perfect. But Bayesian can do 95% of the work reliably, and a little extra filtering can take care of the rest.
I personally advocate Bayesian along with some simple keyword filters that contain mostly known spamvertised domains or spam sources. If it is kept up-to-date that helps.
It's been a few months now, and it's gotten worse. Much of my spam seems to be one-liners like "Here's that URL we were looking for:..." Others contain mis-spellings in common spam-related words, and slip by the filters.
First, with a sufficiently large corpus the mis-spellings shouldn't slip through. The fact that they slip through means your Bayesian filter is still "learning." At some point, "VIAGRA" might be a 98% chance of spam but V1AGRA will essentially be a 100% chance of spam. The mis-spellings often make it easier to detect spam with confidence and the rest of the email should generally be enough to let Bayesian calculate a good spam percentage.
The one-liners can be caught by improving the Bayesian filter itself: Perhaps a new characteristic considered by Bayesian is "Is the message 1-line long?" or "Is the line 2-lines long?" or "Is more than 40% of the body of the message used to convey an HTTP address?" Things like this are valuable characteristics that will help Bayesian catch even 1-liners. Perhaps 90% of your 1-line messages that have an http reference in it are spam--that's something Bayesian can work with.
Marking the ones that slip through as Junk causes more problems with false-positives.
Really shouldn't.
Plus, it's fairly easy for a spammer to tweak his message against a relatively common corpus. I believe that most people would come to the same conclusions as to whether or not something was spam -- and thus an "average" corpus is trivial to create, and tweak your spam against.
While pretty much everyone will agree on what IS spam, not everyone will agree on what isn't--and that's what's great about Bayesian. Sure, they might avoid the word "Viagra" or "slut" but the headers themselves can be damning, the fact that they have 15 images being loaded off an external site is damning, and the fact that a message with a 60-character body consists of a 30-character HTTP address is also probably damning. They're not going to know I have a best-friend named Fred (which is something that will lower the spam score when it is found in my email). As Paul Graham said, if spammers have to stop using all the words (viagra, porn, slut, etc.) and techniques (images loaded from external servers) that they are using to make their pitch, they're going to be significantly limited in what they can say.
If it gets to a point where they totally mangle their emails with SMS-like substitutions to convey their message, you can also add new characteristics for Bayesian: "Are more than 40% of the tokens unknown?" "Are more than 50% of the tokens unknown?" You can assume that if you have a halfway-decent corpus and more than X% of the tokens in an incoming message are unknown, that may be a good indication of a spammer trying to use mangled words to get their message accross.
Sure, Bayesian as proposed by Paul might not be the final solution. But the countermeasures that spammers use will end up being such that the simple use of those countermeasures will probably be something which can be considered a characteristic of the message which will be further used in identifying it as spam.
In my opinion, the trick will be keeping Bayesian "up to date" in terms of identifying new characteristics that can be used to identify spam. For now, tokens in the message are sufficient.
My filter has been catching those, too. I actually went to one of the pages to try to determine whether the spammer himself is actually the seller of the anti-spam software or if the anti-spam software is offering commissions to sell their product and some spammer decided to promote it with spam.
I'm not sure, but as far as I can tell "Spam Remedy" is made by spammers (SecureDiscounts) and they themselves are promoting it via spam. Yeah, right, I'm going to trust them.
I'd say I get 1 or 2 of their spams per day. Ironically, my Bayesian filter catches them nicely.
He's definitely not a troll and it blows me away that (supposedly) technical people have decided he is a troll and that a dictionary attack on grandma's account was probable.
your grandmother got hit with a bruite force attack - if you read the recent/. article about where spam comes from, the testers received emails to a@doamin.com, aa@domain.com, aaa@domain.com etc etc. So, she had an account with numbers in it - the spammers don't care - they set the email generator programs running and walk away. eventually they're going to generate a valid address.
Have you ever SEEN a dictionary attack? Watched the sendmail log grow as the spammer does a dictionary attack? I have NEVER seen one that tries to use numbers. Never. I've seen smith@domain.com, asmith@domain.com, bsmith@domain.com, etc. but I've never seen them try all the number permutations. Or even try a few of them.
On systems such as Yahoo I can see them using a few numbers on some commonly used names (tom_1, tom_2, etc.) but if you have an address such as ahg135tx3@yahoo.com it is NOT reasonable to believe that that would EVER be found with a dictionary attack. That would require trying every email address combination of 9 characters which is about 39 ^ 9 = 208,728,000,000,000 possible combinations. Assuming you can dictionary attack 1000 email address per second (very optimistic, I'm sure Yahoo would automatically throttle you long before that), it would still take 208,728,000,000 seconds to find Grandma's account--only about 6618 years.
So, yes, if you have a weird account name with embedded numbers like ahg135tx3@yahoo.com and you get spam within 2-3 days that's EVIDENCE that Yahoo is making your email address available to the public. There is no way spammers can find ahg135tx3@yahoo.com in 3 days, 3 years, or even 3000 years.
Parent is NOT a troll, he's right on the money and some people that responded need to learn something about spam, dictionary attacks, and understand just how big 39 ^ 9 really is.
I get upwards of 100 legit emails a day, with 4 ! very public addresses that are years old, and I never get more than 5 spams a day. WTF are you doing to get that much spam?
That seems hard to believe. If you have domain names registered with your email address, you'll get spam. If your email has been around more than a few years, you'll get spam.
My email has been active since 1994 and while I don't plaster it everywhere I don't make huge efforts to hide it since I feel that being able to send me email is what my email address is for. I get about 100 per day, although with my Bayesian filter now operating I only see one every couple of days.
I find it hilarious that MS and AOL is bitching about spam, their open relays enable most of it. My spam originates from MSN, sHotMail, AOL, Yahoo,
Me thinks you don't know much about spam. Most spam doesn't originate or go through MSN or Hotmail, they just claim to originate there so people like you are fooled into believing that MSN and Hotmail are the cause of the problem.
And that's all it does. The article itself doesn't have any new information, insight, or anything to help in the process of eliminating spam. But I guess it's good reading for someone who hasn't had an email account for the last 9 years and is just now becoming interested in what happened to the spam-free email of 1994.
but is this something that is going to ever stop?
This article won't as it doesn't provide anything new. Paul Graham's articles of last year and this year are, to-date, the best real work published on effectively eliminating spam. I've implemented his "plan for spam" and I can say it works as advertised. I'm getting better than 99.5% of spam caught with my only false positives being when my corpus was pretty dang small.
This article says that the real test for Bayesian filtering will be when it becomes so widespread that the spammers need to come up with countermeasures. I agree this will be interesting, even though Paul Graham thinks he already has the answer (see "A Plan For Spam"--find the link yourself). And it seems that if spammers try to implement countermeasures against Bayesian filters, the results are going to be messages for which the countermeasures themselves are going to be easy to add to "charactertistics" in the Bayesian filter. If the spam of the future is "Check this out: http://www.spammersite.com" then you start doing things like calling "Messages where 50% or more of the body are HTTP links" a characteristic, etc. Or you look for the countermeasures and call that a charactertistic.
Bayesian is the answer to spam. Once you try it you won't go back.:)
It's the characters that made the first Star Wars movies a hit. The characters in general and, specifically, Harrison Ford. If you take out Harrison Ford from the original movies you get, in all honesty, a pretty dull 6 hours of movies. Try to imagine it--he's really the only one with any charisma or humor whatsoever.
What's been lacking in Episode I and II isn't so much a really cool plot--the plots of the other 3 weren't that impressive, they were just fun to watch due to how the characters played it out. What's been lacking in the first two Episodes is someone(s) who is/are truly humorous and/or charismatic.
The college students on the other hand, were maintaining a database of locations of illegal songs, so they are liable.
And if Google happens to index the location of pirated MP3s that someone (stupidly) places on the web? Can Google be sued??
This whole line of thinking, since Napster, is screwed. Napster provided a search engine of content that others were sharing. Yes, they also handled the connection mechanism. But, in the end, the responsibility SHOULD be on the client that makes copyrighted content available from his PC and, perhaps, on the person that double-clicks to download something they know is copyrighted.
All Napster was doing was providing a search engine (=Google) and a shorthand method to reach that content.
While this case doesn't address the Napster issue, it'd be nice if this marked a turning point towards logic and common sense.
This sets a wonderful precedent for that nasty RIAA suit against the college students.
Why? Unless I'm mistaken, this is saying that the makers of the software (in this case) can't be responsible for what the users (the college students) do. But I don't see where this absolves the college students (?).
Well, I wasn't going to reply but I see I have you all riled up so what the heck, let's have some more fun.
If somebody commits acts of copyright infringement amounting to a value greater than $1,000 over a period of 180 days, then it becomes a CRIMINAL offense, and that person can be ARRESTED and put in JAIL for it.
Without the content owner even complaining? Can you cite a case? I've never ever heard of that happening, and I don't see how it could happen unless you are suggesting that the government would call me up and say, "You know, we've seen your song being copied a lot on Napster and we assume you don't agree, should we go ahead and take care of him?" I can't imagine that has ever happened or the government would be doing the RIAA's legal work instead of the RIAA.
All professional musicians want to sell their music
"All". Right. Not a single professional musician wants to share their music and be heard for the love of music or so people come to their shows. Not a single one in the whole world. Right, I'll just take your word on that since you obviously speak for all professional musicians.:)
There are more musicians who care about copyright issues and piracy than there are who don't.
You seem pretty dang sure of yourself. Do you have some references (preferably not from the RIAA) that backs that up?
Crack a fucking history book! The atomic pile in the basement at the University of Chicago!
It was a controlled reaction and it was self-sustaining. Its power WASN'T harnessed.
Don't know what ad hominem means, huh? Here's a quick lesson for you, shitface. Calling a person a name is not an ad hominem attack. It's an insult.
It's both. Here's a definition for you...
ad hominem adj. Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason.
Indicating that you might not have the qualifications to make an informed opinion is not an ad hominem attack--it's a logical observation entirely material to your ability to make such informed opinion. You calling me a "shitface" is ad hominem, however, since it gets down to "personal considerations" rather than anything that has to do with the issue at hand.
Have a nice day, glad I could help you with the history of nuclear power and the definition of ad hominem. Google is your friend.
So if you record yourself singing a song you made up and put that MP3 up on Kazooey or whatever, it's STILL illegal for anybody to download it without your explicit permission.
Wrong, sir. There is no such thing as automatic copyright enforcement (thank God!). Yes, I have an automatic copyright on my work. But if someone does something with my work that I don't agree with (like copying it) then *I* have the burden of taking them to court, and I'll only recover damages if I have actually registered my copyright with the government. The government isn't going to look at each song and make sure the author explicitly gave permission; rather, the burden is on me to protect my work, if I deem such protection is in my best interest.
So, no, it's not automatically illegal to copy someone elses work. It's only really illegal if the copyright owner defends his copyright. If he doesn't, no-one else is going to or even can defend the copyright. Let me put it another way: If the content owner doesn't make an effort to restrict copying of his content, it's essentially permissible to copy it because no-one besides the owner is in a position to take issue with it.
Oh, that's rich. Because Slashdot Idiot #7 doesn't know any professional recording artists, they must not exist.
I didn't say they don't exist. Of course they do.
But since you're being downright illogical on this, let me ask you point-blank: Do you really think there are more musicians that have been *signed* by the RIAA than musicians that have been rejected?
Of course not. It's a FACT that most musicians that try to get a record deal are rejected by the RIAA. So it can be logically concluded that there are more musicians and thus more potential music outside the realm of the RIAA than within. That many of them have not yet bothered to record because they didn't have a way to distribute without the RIAA doesn't mean they won't record now that P2P gives them a distribution medium outside of the RIAA.
The lack of P2P ensures that the RIAA retains a monopoly on the music people hear and that, yes, most of that music can't be legally copied. While P2P will allow piracy of RIAA music to occur, it will also lead to an explosion of independent music that can be legally copied--to the point that eventually the "pirated" music will actually be a small percentage of the pie.
Me: there are more artists that DON'T have deals with the RIAA than there are that do.
You: Yeah. If that were true, you might have a point here. Since it isn't... shut the fuck up.
Please, if you're trolling, tell me, because this is silly. Now read slowly... 100 artists go to the RIAA with their demo tape (recorded, no less). 99 of them are turned away and 1 of them gets a record deal. Everyone knows that very few musicians get signed by the RIAA. It's a fact. There are more musicians in the world that AREN'T with the RIAA than there are that are with the RIAA. This is not disputable.
Surely you aren't arguing that most (more than 50%) of the musicians in the world are signed with the RIAA? Heck, there are more bands playing in clubs worldwide any given night than ALL the currently signed RIAA artists.
Yes. That is EXACTLY what I'm saying. I'm saying that if a thing, X, has a legal use that is not particularly important to anybody and an illegal use that is widespread, then X has to go. Period.
Oh, what a free country this would be if what you said were true. Luckily, it's not. And there's a reason people like you aren't judges, too!
Me: Not to mention, the "other channels" you speak of are NOT available to 99% of the musicians out there.
You: Bullshit. Get a $19/month web site and put your MP3's on it. Host album parties and invite people to bring blank CD for you to burn for them. Give tapes away out of the back of your station wagon. Do whatever you like. Napster isn't needed for any of that.
First a $19/month website isn't going to give you t
On the other hand, it is necessary to take specific action in order to waive one's automatic copyright protection.
I see your argument, but there's a problem with it. IANAL so I can't tell you exactly where. All I know is that if I record some music and throw it up on Napster and let me people start to share it, that's my right. I can do that as an author. You might suggest that the people that download it ought to be careful since they don't know for sure whether the music has been released for sharing, but you can't say that I can't put my own music on Napster.
If the independent artist can legally put his own music on Napster, then the potential for significant non-infringing use exists. If there was lots of illegal music on Napster, the people that illegally shared that music should be targetted for lawsuits, not the technology or Napster.
Ergo: only a small subset of all the recordings out there CAN be legally copied.
I disagree. How many RIAA artists are there? Not many, relatively speaking, and I don't know a single one personally.
Now, how many people get together with friends or just by themselves record some music. MANY! My sister has a band, my dad writes and publishes music, and one of my friends in the UK has a band that is recording their music and sharing it online.
Now, in the past they haven't had a way to distribute that music but that doesn't mean they don't exist. With Napster you started seeing more of that kind of music. Granted, when Napster went away there was more RIAA music than independent music--but given time I can almost guarantee the scales would have tipped the otherway due to the simple fact that there are more artists that DON'T have deals with the RIAA than there are that do.
You're saying Napster was legitimate (and by extension all the other piracy havens are legitimate) because it could be used for legal distribution. I'm telling you that that's irrelevant, because there are other channels for legal distribution that do not facilitate piracy.
What world do you live on? Your argument is nonsencial. You're saying that if there's a new, cool, and more efficient way of doing something I must use another costly, obsolete channel because the new channel can also facilitate crime?
I'm a private pilot, are you telling me I must choose to walk because my preferred channel (plane) can also be used to run into tall buildings and kill people? I'm a musician, are you telling me I must perform live because by recording music it becomes possible to make illegal copies of the work?
Not to mention, the "other channels" you speak of are NOT available to 99% of the musicians out there. The RIAA does not distribute music just because an artist wants his music distributed--so your argument that "other channels" are available is questionable too.
Me: But why does that mean that P2P can't be used as a valid form of distribution?
You: Because it is far more commonly used for infringement.
Perhaps in the beginning, yes, because the only music recorded and "ready to go" was that which can't legally be copied. As I said, had Napster been allowed to prosper you would have definitely seen more and more legally copiable music appear as more and more independent artists became aware of the distribution medium. There are certainly artists that previously wouldn't have even bothered recording because they knew there was no way to distribute their music that WOULD record knowing they could reach the world via Napster.
Fact is, P2P stands for "pirate to pirate" and serves no non-trivial legitimate purpose.
Amazing how you can discredit an entire post in a single sentence.
VCR's have significant non-infringing use. The courts said so. The courts, using the EXACT SAME standard, said that Napster had no significant non-infringing use. Ta-da!
Ahhh.... Basically, a judge concluded that Napster had no significant non-infringing use so t
Why would I expect to recieve *third degree* burns from coffee I buy at a restaurant?
Ok, let's run with that. So you're saying that if you know it's going to cause third degree burns that you'll be careful but if it'll just hurt like hell and make your pants wet then you don't really avoid coffee spills?
Coffee is hot and wet. That's enough for most intelligent people to make an effort not to spill it. Ok, so this coffee was hotter. Temperature is a variable and anyone that drinks coffee knows that. Sometimes you get luke-warm coffee, sometimes it's damn hot which is why you take your first sip very carefully to measure the heat. There's no reason to assume that the coffee is at the same temperature as the coffee you make at home--and if she'd ever bought coffee at a McDonald's before then there's even less justification against McDonalds.
Millions of people enjoy McDonald's coffee on a daily basis. How many hundreds of millions of people have had McDonald's coffee over the years with no problems? Most people can handle the coffee--and those that don't, most recognize that the spill was their fault, not McDonald's.
The woman was careless, period. She was careless with a hot liquid object between her legs. McDonald's didn't make her careless, McDonald's didn't make her put the coffee between her legs. All McDonald's did was provide hot coffee. The nerve!
Not sure what Kazaa or the RIAA has to do with piracy which takes place on the high seas and usually results in death or threat of death by the pirates.
You: The primary-- indeed, sole-- purpose of Napster is to copy recordings.
Me: Something which is NOT illegal.
You: Uh. What country are you from? Yeah it is.
If I record music and put it on Napster and want it copied it can be copied legally. Period. Only a subset of recordings cannot be legally copied. There is an entire set of recordings that can. Stop listening to only RIAA trash and you'll realize how silly your comment was.
Because that's how it works. Deal with it, or start your own country where everything is allowed no matter how harmful it is.
Good argument. Never mind that we created this country so that we could debate issues and come up with a solution WITHOUT a revolution or having to move to another country.
Yeah. They could have just put their MP3's up on their web site and invited anybody and everybody to download them, too. Which wouldn't have facilitated widespread copyright infringement.
Now you're getting into a distribution argument. Could have, should have, would have.
Many DO put their music on websites. But that costs more money since the band has to pay for hosting and bandwidth when their fans may be more than happy to help distribute the music via Napster. Plus they have to build the website to start with, or pay someone to do it.
But why does that mean that P2P can't be used as a valid form of distribution? It's a better use of Internet resources than having the music on a single server that, when it fails, makes the music disappear, or when it is slashdotted does the same. Heck, there are efforts to make a P2P "web" where everyone is serving pages instead of just the main site. You don't even have to go that far--"mirrors" on FTP sites and on the web also address the fact that multiple points of distribution makes sense.
Fact is, P2P is a good technology for mass distribution and independent artists shouldn't have that technology denied to them just because the RIAA feels threatened by it.
It's silly that Napster should have been required to make sure that its service couldn't be used for widespread and anonymous piracy.
It is. Would you make the same requirement of VCRs? VCRs can--and HAVE been--used for widespread and quite anonymous piracy for 2 decades. The manufacturers are under no requirement to make sure that doesn't happen. Why should Napster?
Right. Which is why Napster is dead, dead, dead. No significant non-infringing use exists for Napster, or indeed for P2P at all.
You seem to be clueless. Or, more probably, it just so happens that the only thing YOU'VE used P2P for is to pirate music and you are basing your silly arguments on that.
I highly recommend you do some research on the topic. P2P is being researched as a way to help "load balance" websites. It would be much harder to slashdot a site if there were literally 1000 P2P clients also willing to serve up the pages.
I'm sorry, guy, but you're just plain wrong. Period. Yes, P2P can be used for illegal purposes just like most other things--but there are plenty of uses for P2P that are not illegal and downright desireable.
Bwah! That's a good one. What are you, like 16 years old?
No, I just stopped caring and following the case. I also have a life which means I'm not up to speed on every court case in the country.
You're fun to toy with--you truly have no clue and know not what you say. Either you are a troll or truly represent the lowest 1% on the intelligence curve of Slashdot.
I'd read the artcile in the past out of curiosity. I did not read it again this time. What I DID take out of it the previous time I read it, though, was that the lady was still being silly. I don't deny she was burned and had medical expenses. But making the leap that someone else is responsible for you spilling your coffee is where it is silly. You say "Dang, I spilled my coffee" the first reaction (or even second or third) SHOULDN'T be, "Well, sue the person that sold you that coffee, dang it!"
As others have said, once the coffee is in her possession it's her problem and her responsibility. And as I also said, even if a temperature change of 30 degrees or so would have possibly made a difference in the amount of burning, so what? Coffee is hot. Everyone knows that. Perhaps opening a hot liquid, whether it is 150 or 180 degrees, between your legs is not entirely wise. She did something stupid and got burned, literally. It's not like she knew whether her coffee was at 150 or 180 degrees and it's not like she knew that that difference in temperature would make a difference in burning. All she knew was the liquid was hot and, given that knowledge, did something stupid.
I'm sorry, but I can't stand to see lawsuits used as ways to avoid personal responsibility. As someone else in this thread, shit happens and you learn from that. Unless the person burned was a kid (in which case she probably wouldn't be drinking coffee and the warning would be of questionable value), what adult doesn't know that coffee is hot? What adult doesn't realize that if you open something hot between your legs you have a good potential of either burning yourself or causing yourself big pain.
This is the same logic that allows someone that trips and falls on the sidewalk in front of a business to sue that business because the person in question wasn't capable of walking. It's either a lack of taking personal responsibility, or it's greed. I'm not sure which is worse.
It's next to useless because it only runs Win9X? That's enough to run Quicken, Quickbooks, Office XP, Visual.NET, DevStudio6, etc. In fact, I've been wanting to upgrade my XP laptop back to Win98 since it (XP) came preinstalled on my laptop. I upgraded to Linux and Win4Lin instead.
To put it in persecptive for you: Under WinXP it took 10 seconds to open Word 2000. Word 2000 under Win4Lin under Linux takes about 1.5 seconds. I kid you not! All I wanted was the ability to run some Windows programs when I needed to and I didn't really care if it was clunky or slow. Little did I know at the time that using Win4Lin would actually speed up my Windows applications! Now I'm getting to use all the laptop I paid for!
Try Win4Lin before you knock it. Very little actually requires WinXP and everything else runs faster under Win4Lin (except QuickBooks which appears to be just as slow as always under Win4Lin. I'm wondering if they put an actual time-based delay in the QuickBooks startup code!).
The primary-- indeed, sole-- purpose of Napster is to copy recordings.
Something which is NOT illegal.
Sure, there are a few recordings out there that can legally be copied, but the VAST majority cannot.
A few recordings? There are more than a few. But by shutting down Napster that was essentially a move to make sure the number of such recordings would not increase--something that was legal but would hurt the RIAA, even if their music was not downloaded.
There is, in fact, no non-trivial legal use of Napster.
BS. First, if there is any reasonable legal use of something then why should it be illegal? There are hundreds, probably thousands, of independent artists that could have distributed their music via Napster. It's entirely possible that there are MORE such artists than those owned by the RIAA, and as the service matured you would've found more such legally-copyable material as indepedent artists got heard and proportionally less RIAA garbage. That's a very SIGNIFICANT legal use of Napster and it's downright disgusting that was ignored (actually it wasn't, I think that's the main reason the RIAA really wanted it shut down--not so much to keep its own stuff from being copied but making sure non-RIAA artists weren't easily heard).
Actually, it wasn't. Napster wasn't technically shut down by the courts. It was effectively shut down by making the unreasonable and technically impossible restriction that it must be 100% sure that no copyrighted music could be transferred with Napster. That's silly. The whole Sony videotape argument said that since there was significant non-infringing uses that it was legal. It DIDN'T say that since there are significant non-infringing uses that it was legal only if safeguards could be made to make 100% certain that no infringing uses take place.
The Napster case was a very awful double-standard. Did it ever get appealed to the Supreme Court? I don't see how the Napster decision can live in harmony with the Sony videotape decision. But I'm almost scared to think what would happen if the RIAA won against Napster at the Supreme Court level--all kinds of things could be made illegal with a precedent such as that.
When was Napster marketed for pirating music? Granted, many people used it for that, but I don't think it was ever marketed as that.
Marketing for the iMacs (what was it? "Download, listen, burn" or something like that) is a much more blatant marketing campaign aimed at promoting music "piracy." Granted, they'll say they mean "Download legal music" but we all know what they mean.
Yeah, I agree with you. They should be able to do the what the hell they want. Who cares about consumer safty?
Yeah, right. What about personal responsibility? Unless the coffee lid opened and the coffee spilled on the old lady as the cashier was handing her the coffee, it's her fault. Period. Coffee is hot, period. Now I know there was a big stink in the difference in burn potential between X degree coffee and X + 20 degree coffee--but the reality is, coffee is hot. If you aren't capable of drinking coffee and driving at the same time then don't buy the coffee in drive-thru. Or at least wait until you get home to drink it (one of the reasons McD's supposedly had the temperature so high, so it'd still be warm and drinkable when someone arrived at their destination).
Once upon a time I worked at McD's. I swear we'd get phone calls "The fries I ordered in drive-thru are cold!" We'd ask how long ago they'd made the purchase and they'd say, "20 minutes ago, and they were cold when I got home." DUH! You can't make fries any hotter because they'll burn, but at least a hot beverage can be made hot so that when they get home it's still warm and drinkable.
The best part about the McD lawsuit is the fact that all hot beverage cups now say "Beverage is hot": A daily reminder of the absurdity of frivolous lawsuits based on the complete lack of personal responsibility.
years, and I'd love to cut Microsoft loose altogether, but I just don't think I can do it yet. A few of the reasons:
Try Win4Lin. This is what allowed me to migrate finally to Linux. Win4Lin is kind of like a "light" version of VMWare that only costs $89, and I presume there would be volume discounts available if you migrate your whole company.
Point is, Win4Lin lets you run virtually every business-critical Windows program there is. I use it to run Word, Excel, Powerpoint, VB6, VC++, Quicken, Quickbooks, PaintShopPro, Metrowerks Codewarrior (for Palm development). Multimedia apps, such as Windows Media and RealPlayer, both work under IE under Win4Lin.
Win4Lin is a great way to incrementally move away from MS. First you install Linux and Win4Lin throughout the enterprise, freeing yourself from Microsoft OS's. Then, as time goes on, you'll find that need fewer and fewer of the apps you thought you "needed" under Windows. I have Win4Lin for the applications I listed above but, to be honest, I use them very seldomly. But Win4Lin is a great idea for a company that would like to free itself from MS licensing but can't "risk" going cold-turkey.
Heck, try all your enterprise Windows apps on a single Linux machine with Win4Lin. If it doesn't work, oh well. If it does... Ready, set, deploy!:)
Your area of the country also tends to vote Democrat, so don't use that area of the country as a good barometer of wise decision-making.
Don't worry, the world is moving towards OSS. Period. I've seen it in job markets that I've reviewed in my markets of interest in the US. It's also happening big time in Mexico (everyone I know here in Mexico is either working with Linux or starting migration projects).
Me: Hmmm. But in a dictatorship it only takes one person to legally kill 49% of the population: the dictator and his decree.
You: Of course. A dictatorship, almost certainly by definition has no guarantee on human rights (such as being allowed to live). Anyway, was there some kind of point you were trying to make? I didn't catch it.
Which is roughly what I got from your tagline... what point are you trying to make?
Slashdot Mirror
It's so complicted, in fact, that you don't understand it. Every digit in a UPC barcode consists of a total or 7 element widths (X) which are made up of 2 bars and 2 spaces of varying width. The left-side representation of the digit "6" is 0000101 which means a 4-wide space, a 1-wide bar, a 1-wide space, and 1-wide bar (for a total width of 7).
Using your definition of "0101" (space,bar,space,bar) or of 1010 (bar,space,bar,space), EVERY digit in a UPC-A barcode is the number of the beast since every digit consists of a space,bar,space,bar sequence or a bar,space,bar,space sequence--not just "6".
Hence every UPC bar code has "6...6...6" built into it.
Hence you don't know what you're talking about.
I suggest you read this page for an explanation of UPC-A and EAN-13 encoding since it is clear your understanding is lacking.
I personally advocate Bayesian along with some simple keyword filters that contain mostly known spamvertised domains or spam sources. If it is kept up-to-date that helps.
It's been a few months now, and it's gotten worse. Much of my spam seems to be one-liners like "Here's that URL we were looking for: ..." Others contain mis-spellings in common spam-related words, and slip by the filters.
First, with a sufficiently large corpus the mis-spellings shouldn't slip through. The fact that they slip through means your Bayesian filter is still "learning." At some point, "VIAGRA" might be a 98% chance of spam but V1AGRA will essentially be a 100% chance of spam. The mis-spellings often make it easier to detect spam with confidence and the rest of the email should generally be enough to let Bayesian calculate a good spam percentage.
The one-liners can be caught by improving the Bayesian filter itself: Perhaps a new characteristic considered by Bayesian is "Is the message 1-line long?" or "Is the line 2-lines long?" or "Is more than 40% of the body of the message used to convey an HTTP address?" Things like this are valuable characteristics that will help Bayesian catch even 1-liners. Perhaps 90% of your 1-line messages that have an http reference in it are spam--that's something Bayesian can work with.
Marking the ones that slip through as Junk causes more problems with false-positives.
Really shouldn't.
Plus, it's fairly easy for a spammer to tweak his message against a relatively common corpus. I believe that most people would come to the same conclusions as to whether or not something was spam -- and thus an "average" corpus is trivial to create, and tweak your spam against.
While pretty much everyone will agree on what IS spam, not everyone will agree on what isn't--and that's what's great about Bayesian. Sure, they might avoid the word "Viagra" or "slut" but the headers themselves can be damning, the fact that they have 15 images being loaded off an external site is damning, and the fact that a message with a 60-character body consists of a 30-character HTTP address is also probably damning. They're not going to know I have a best-friend named Fred (which is something that will lower the spam score when it is found in my email). As Paul Graham said, if spammers have to stop using all the words (viagra, porn, slut, etc.) and techniques (images loaded from external servers) that they are using to make their pitch, they're going to be significantly limited in what they can say.
If it gets to a point where they totally mangle their emails with SMS-like substitutions to convey their message, you can also add new characteristics for Bayesian: "Are more than 40% of the tokens unknown?" "Are more than 50% of the tokens unknown?" You can assume that if you have a halfway-decent corpus and more than X% of the tokens in an incoming message are unknown, that may be a good indication of a spammer trying to use mangled words to get their message accross.
Sure, Bayesian as proposed by Paul might not be the final solution. But the countermeasures that spammers use will end up being such that the simple use of those countermeasures will probably be something which can be considered a characteristic of the message which will be further used in identifying it as spam.
In my opinion, the trick will be keeping Bayesian "up to date" in terms of identifying new characteristics that can be used to identify spam. For now, tokens in the message are sufficient.
I'm not sure, but as far as I can tell "Spam Remedy" is made by spammers (SecureDiscounts) and they themselves are promoting it via spam. Yeah, right, I'm going to trust them.
I'd say I get 1 or 2 of their spams per day. Ironically, my Bayesian filter catches them nicely.
He's definitely not a troll and it blows me away that (supposedly) technical people have decided he is a troll and that a dictionary attack on grandma's account was probable.
your grandmother got hit with a bruite force attack - if you read the recent /. article about where spam comes from, the testers received emails to a@doamin.com, aa@domain.com, aaa@domain.com etc etc. So, she had an account with numbers in it - the spammers don't care - they set the email generator programs running and walk away. eventually they're going to generate a valid address.
Have you ever SEEN a dictionary attack? Watched the sendmail log grow as the spammer does a dictionary attack? I have NEVER seen one that tries to use numbers. Never. I've seen smith@domain.com, asmith@domain.com, bsmith@domain.com, etc. but I've never seen them try all the number permutations. Or even try a few of them.
On systems such as Yahoo I can see them using a few numbers on some commonly used names (tom_1, tom_2, etc.) but if you have an address such as ahg135tx3@yahoo.com it is NOT reasonable to believe that that would EVER be found with a dictionary attack. That would require trying every email address combination of 9 characters which is about 39 ^ 9 = 208,728,000,000,000 possible combinations. Assuming you can dictionary attack 1000 email address per second (very optimistic, I'm sure Yahoo would automatically throttle you long before that), it would still take 208,728,000,000 seconds to find Grandma's account--only about 6618 years.
So, yes, if you have a weird account name with embedded numbers like ahg135tx3@yahoo.com and you get spam within 2-3 days that's EVIDENCE that Yahoo is making your email address available to the public. There is no way spammers can find ahg135tx3@yahoo.com in 3 days, 3 years, or even 3000 years.
Parent is NOT a troll, he's right on the money and some people that responded need to learn something about spam, dictionary attacks, and understand just how big 39 ^ 9 really is.
That seems hard to believe. If you have domain names registered with your email address, you'll get spam. If your email has been around more than a few years, you'll get spam.
My email has been active since 1994 and while I don't plaster it everywhere I don't make huge efforts to hide it since I feel that being able to send me email is what my email address is for. I get about 100 per day, although with my Bayesian filter now operating I only see one every couple of days.
I find it hilarious that MS and AOL is bitching about spam, their open relays enable most of it. My spam originates from MSN, sHotMail, AOL, Yahoo,
Me thinks you don't know much about spam. Most spam doesn't originate or go through MSN or Hotmail, they just claim to originate there so people like you are fooled into believing that MSN and Hotmail are the cause of the problem.
And that's all it does. The article itself doesn't have any new information, insight, or anything to help in the process of eliminating spam. But I guess it's good reading for someone who hasn't had an email account for the last 9 years and is just now becoming interested in what happened to the spam-free email of 1994.
but is this something that is going to ever stop?
This article won't as it doesn't provide anything new. Paul Graham's articles of last year and this year are, to-date, the best real work published on effectively eliminating spam. I've implemented his "plan for spam" and I can say it works as advertised. I'm getting better than 99.5% of spam caught with my only false positives being when my corpus was pretty dang small.
This article says that the real test for Bayesian filtering will be when it becomes so widespread that the spammers need to come up with countermeasures. I agree this will be interesting, even though Paul Graham thinks he already has the answer (see "A Plan For Spam"--find the link yourself). And it seems that if spammers try to implement countermeasures against Bayesian filters, the results are going to be messages for which the countermeasures themselves are going to be easy to add to "charactertistics" in the Bayesian filter. If the spam of the future is "Check this out: http://www.spammersite.com" then you start doing things like calling "Messages where 50% or more of the body are HTTP links" a characteristic, etc. Or you look for the countermeasures and call that a charactertistic.
Bayesian is the answer to spam. Once you try it you won't go back. :)
What's been lacking in Episode I and II isn't so much a really cool plot--the plots of the other 3 weren't that impressive, they were just fun to watch due to how the characters played it out. What's been lacking in the first two Episodes is someone(s) who is/are truly humorous and/or charismatic.
And if Google happens to index the location of pirated MP3s that someone (stupidly) places on the web? Can Google be sued??
This whole line of thinking, since Napster, is screwed. Napster provided a search engine of content that others were sharing. Yes, they also handled the connection mechanism. But, in the end, the responsibility SHOULD be on the client that makes copyrighted content available from his PC and, perhaps, on the person that double-clicks to download something they know is copyrighted.
All Napster was doing was providing a search engine (=Google) and a shorthand method to reach that content.
While this case doesn't address the Napster issue, it'd be nice if this marked a turning point towards logic and common sense.
Why? Unless I'm mistaken, this is saying that the makers of the software (in this case) can't be responsible for what the users (the college students) do. But I don't see where this absolves the college students (?).
If somebody commits acts of copyright infringement amounting to a value greater than $1,000 over a period of 180 days, then it becomes a CRIMINAL offense, and that person can be ARRESTED and put in JAIL for it.
Without the content owner even complaining? Can you cite a case? I've never ever heard of that happening, and I don't see how it could happen unless you are suggesting that the government would call me up and say, "You know, we've seen your song being copied a lot on Napster and we assume you don't agree, should we go ahead and take care of him?" I can't imagine that has ever happened or the government would be doing the RIAA's legal work instead of the RIAA.
All professional musicians want to sell their music
"All". Right. Not a single professional musician wants to share their music and be heard for the love of music or so people come to their shows. Not a single one in the whole world. Right, I'll just take your word on that since you obviously speak for all professional musicians. :)
There are more musicians who care about copyright issues and piracy than there are who don't.
You seem pretty dang sure of yourself. Do you have some references (preferably not from the RIAA) that backs that up?
Crack a fucking history book! The atomic pile in the basement at the University of Chicago!
I refer you to the following two links:
The Fist Pile
The hHistory of Nuclear Energy
It was a controlled reaction and it was self-sustaining. Its power WASN'T harnessed.
Don't know what ad hominem means, huh? Here's a quick lesson for you, shitface. Calling a person a name is not an ad hominem attack. It's an insult.
It's both. Here's a definition for you...
ad hominem adj. Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason.
Indicating that you might not have the qualifications to make an informed opinion is not an ad hominem attack--it's a logical observation entirely material to your ability to make such informed opinion. You calling me a "shitface" is ad hominem, however, since it gets down to "personal considerations" rather than anything that has to do with the issue at hand.
Have a nice day, glad I could help you with the history of nuclear power and the definition of ad hominem. Google is your friend.
Wrong, sir. There is no such thing as automatic copyright enforcement (thank God!). Yes, I have an automatic copyright on my work. But if someone does something with my work that I don't agree with (like copying it) then *I* have the burden of taking them to court, and I'll only recover damages if I have actually registered my copyright with the government. The government isn't going to look at each song and make sure the author explicitly gave permission; rather, the burden is on me to protect my work, if I deem such protection is in my best interest.
So, no, it's not automatically illegal to copy someone elses work. It's only really illegal if the copyright owner defends his copyright. If he doesn't, no-one else is going to or even can defend the copyright. Let me put it another way: If the content owner doesn't make an effort to restrict copying of his content, it's essentially permissible to copy it because no-one besides the owner is in a position to take issue with it.
Oh, that's rich. Because Slashdot Idiot #7 doesn't know any professional recording artists, they must not exist.
I didn't say they don't exist. Of course they do. But since you're being downright illogical on this, let me ask you point-blank: Do you really think there are more musicians that have been *signed* by the RIAA than musicians that have been rejected?
Of course not. It's a FACT that most musicians that try to get a record deal are rejected by the RIAA. So it can be logically concluded that there are more musicians and thus more potential music outside the realm of the RIAA than within. That many of them have not yet bothered to record because they didn't have a way to distribute without the RIAA doesn't mean they won't record now that P2P gives them a distribution medium outside of the RIAA.
The lack of P2P ensures that the RIAA retains a monopoly on the music people hear and that, yes, most of that music can't be legally copied. While P2P will allow piracy of RIAA music to occur, it will also lead to an explosion of independent music that can be legally copied--to the point that eventually the "pirated" music will actually be a small percentage of the pie.
Me: there are more artists that DON'T have deals with the RIAA than there are that do.
You: Yeah. If that were true, you might have a point here. Since it isn't... shut the fuck up.
Please, if you're trolling, tell me, because this is silly. Now read slowly... 100 artists go to the RIAA with their demo tape (recorded, no less). 99 of them are turned away and 1 of them gets a record deal. Everyone knows that very few musicians get signed by the RIAA. It's a fact. There are more musicians in the world that AREN'T with the RIAA than there are that are with the RIAA. This is not disputable.
Surely you aren't arguing that most (more than 50%) of the musicians in the world are signed with the RIAA? Heck, there are more bands playing in clubs worldwide any given night than ALL the currently signed RIAA artists.
Yes. That is EXACTLY what I'm saying. I'm saying that if a thing, X, has a legal use that is not particularly important to anybody and an illegal use that is widespread, then X has to go. Period.
Oh, what a free country this would be if what you said were true. Luckily, it's not. And there's a reason people like you aren't judges, too!
Me: Not to mention, the "other channels" you speak of are NOT available to 99% of the musicians out there.
You: Bullshit. Get a $19/month web site and put your MP3's on it. Host album parties and invite people to bring blank CD for you to burn for them. Give tapes away out of the back of your station wagon. Do whatever you like. Napster isn't needed for any of that.
First a $19/month website isn't going to give you t
Yeah, that'd make more sense than just not spilling it.
I see your argument, but there's a problem with it. IANAL so I can't tell you exactly where. All I know is that if I record some music and throw it up on Napster and let me people start to share it, that's my right. I can do that as an author. You might suggest that the people that download it ought to be careful since they don't know for sure whether the music has been released for sharing, but you can't say that I can't put my own music on Napster.
If the independent artist can legally put his own music on Napster, then the potential for significant non-infringing use exists. If there was lots of illegal music on Napster, the people that illegally shared that music should be targetted for lawsuits, not the technology or Napster.
Ergo: only a small subset of all the recordings out there CAN be legally copied.
I disagree. How many RIAA artists are there? Not many, relatively speaking, and I don't know a single one personally.
Now, how many people get together with friends or just by themselves record some music. MANY! My sister has a band, my dad writes and publishes music, and one of my friends in the UK has a band that is recording their music and sharing it online.
Now, in the past they haven't had a way to distribute that music but that doesn't mean they don't exist. With Napster you started seeing more of that kind of music. Granted, when Napster went away there was more RIAA music than independent music--but given time I can almost guarantee the scales would have tipped the otherway due to the simple fact that there are more artists that DON'T have deals with the RIAA than there are that do.
You're saying Napster was legitimate (and by extension all the other piracy havens are legitimate) because it could be used for legal distribution. I'm telling you that that's irrelevant, because there are other channels for legal distribution that do not facilitate piracy.
What world do you live on? Your argument is nonsencial. You're saying that if there's a new, cool, and more efficient way of doing something I must use another costly, obsolete channel because the new channel can also facilitate crime?
I'm a private pilot, are you telling me I must choose to walk because my preferred channel (plane) can also be used to run into tall buildings and kill people? I'm a musician, are you telling me I must perform live because by recording music it becomes possible to make illegal copies of the work?
Not to mention, the "other channels" you speak of are NOT available to 99% of the musicians out there. The RIAA does not distribute music just because an artist wants his music distributed--so your argument that "other channels" are available is questionable too.
Me: But why does that mean that P2P can't be used as a valid form of distribution?
You: Because it is far more commonly used for infringement.
Perhaps in the beginning, yes, because the only music recorded and "ready to go" was that which can't legally be copied. As I said, had Napster been allowed to prosper you would have definitely seen more and more legally copiable music appear as more and more independent artists became aware of the distribution medium. There are certainly artists that previously wouldn't have even bothered recording because they knew there was no way to distribute their music that WOULD record knowing they could reach the world via Napster.
Fact is, P2P stands for "pirate to pirate" and serves no non-trivial legitimate purpose.
Amazing how you can discredit an entire post in a single sentence.
VCR's have significant non-infringing use. The courts said so. The courts, using the EXACT SAME standard, said that Napster had no significant non-infringing use. Ta-da!
Ahhh.... Basically, a judge concluded that Napster had no significant non-infringing use so t
Ok, let's run with that. So you're saying that if you know it's going to cause third degree burns that you'll be careful but if it'll just hurt like hell and make your pants wet then you don't really avoid coffee spills?
Coffee is hot and wet. That's enough for most intelligent people to make an effort not to spill it. Ok, so this coffee was hotter. Temperature is a variable and anyone that drinks coffee knows that. Sometimes you get luke-warm coffee, sometimes it's damn hot which is why you take your first sip very carefully to measure the heat. There's no reason to assume that the coffee is at the same temperature as the coffee you make at home--and if she'd ever bought coffee at a McDonald's before then there's even less justification against McDonalds.
Millions of people enjoy McDonald's coffee on a daily basis. How many hundreds of millions of people have had McDonald's coffee over the years with no problems? Most people can handle the coffee--and those that don't, most recognize that the spill was their fault, not McDonald's.
The woman was careless, period. She was careless with a hot liquid object between her legs. McDonald's didn't make her careless, McDonald's didn't make her put the coffee between her legs. All McDonald's did was provide hot coffee. The nerve!
Me: Something which is NOT illegal.
You: Uh. What country are you from? Yeah it is.
If I record music and put it on Napster and want it copied it can be copied legally. Period. Only a subset of recordings cannot be legally copied. There is an entire set of recordings that can. Stop listening to only RIAA trash and you'll realize how silly your comment was.
Because that's how it works. Deal with it, or start your own country where everything is allowed no matter how harmful it is.
Good argument. Never mind that we created this country so that we could debate issues and come up with a solution WITHOUT a revolution or having to move to another country.
Yeah. They could have just put their MP3's up on their web site and invited anybody and everybody to download them, too. Which wouldn't have facilitated widespread copyright infringement.
Now you're getting into a distribution argument. Could have, should have, would have.
Many DO put their music on websites. But that costs more money since the band has to pay for hosting and bandwidth when their fans may be more than happy to help distribute the music via Napster. Plus they have to build the website to start with, or pay someone to do it.
But why does that mean that P2P can't be used as a valid form of distribution? It's a better use of Internet resources than having the music on a single server that, when it fails, makes the music disappear, or when it is slashdotted does the same. Heck, there are efforts to make a P2P "web" where everyone is serving pages instead of just the main site. You don't even have to go that far--"mirrors" on FTP sites and on the web also address the fact that multiple points of distribution makes sense.
Fact is, P2P is a good technology for mass distribution and independent artists shouldn't have that technology denied to them just because the RIAA feels threatened by it.
It's silly that Napster should have been required to make sure that its service couldn't be used for widespread and anonymous piracy.
It is. Would you make the same requirement of VCRs? VCRs can--and HAVE been--used for widespread and quite anonymous piracy for 2 decades. The manufacturers are under no requirement to make sure that doesn't happen. Why should Napster?
Right. Which is why Napster is dead, dead, dead. No significant non-infringing use exists for Napster, or indeed for P2P at all.
You seem to be clueless. Or, more probably, it just so happens that the only thing YOU'VE used P2P for is to pirate music and you are basing your silly arguments on that.
I highly recommend you do some research on the topic. P2P is being researched as a way to help "load balance" websites. It would be much harder to slashdot a site if there were literally 1000 P2P clients also willing to serve up the pages.
I'm sorry, guy, but you're just plain wrong. Period. Yes, P2P can be used for illegal purposes just like most other things--but there are plenty of uses for P2P that are not illegal and downright desireable.
Bwah! That's a good one. What are you, like 16 years old?
No, I just stopped caring and following the case. I also have a life which means I'm not up to speed on every court case in the country.
You're fun to toy with--you truly have no clue and know not what you say. Either you are a troll or truly represent the lowest 1% on the intelligence curve of Slashdot.
I'd read the artcile in the past out of curiosity. I did not read it again this time. What I DID take out of it the previous time I read it, though, was that the lady was still being silly. I don't deny she was burned and had medical expenses. But making the leap that someone else is responsible for you spilling your coffee is where it is silly. You say "Dang, I spilled my coffee" the first reaction (or even second or third) SHOULDN'T be, "Well, sue the person that sold you that coffee, dang it!"
As others have said, once the coffee is in her possession it's her problem and her responsibility. And as I also said, even if a temperature change of 30 degrees or so would have possibly made a difference in the amount of burning, so what? Coffee is hot. Everyone knows that. Perhaps opening a hot liquid, whether it is 150 or 180 degrees, between your legs is not entirely wise. She did something stupid and got burned, literally. It's not like she knew whether her coffee was at 150 or 180 degrees and it's not like she knew that that difference in temperature would make a difference in burning. All she knew was the liquid was hot and, given that knowledge, did something stupid.
I'm sorry, but I can't stand to see lawsuits used as ways to avoid personal responsibility. As someone else in this thread, shit happens and you learn from that. Unless the person burned was a kid (in which case she probably wouldn't be drinking coffee and the warning would be of questionable value), what adult doesn't know that coffee is hot? What adult doesn't realize that if you open something hot between your legs you have a good potential of either burning yourself or causing yourself big pain.
This is the same logic that allows someone that trips and falls on the sidewalk in front of a business to sue that business because the person in question wasn't capable of walking. It's either a lack of taking personal responsibility, or it's greed. I'm not sure which is worse.
To put it in persecptive for you: Under WinXP it took 10 seconds to open Word 2000. Word 2000 under Win4Lin under Linux takes about 1.5 seconds. I kid you not! All I wanted was the ability to run some Windows programs when I needed to and I didn't really care if it was clunky or slow. Little did I know at the time that using Win4Lin would actually speed up my Windows applications! Now I'm getting to use all the laptop I paid for!
Try Win4Lin before you knock it. Very little actually requires WinXP and everything else runs faster under Win4Lin (except QuickBooks which appears to be just as slow as always under Win4Lin. I'm wondering if they put an actual time-based delay in the QuickBooks startup code!).
Something which is NOT illegal.
Sure, there are a few recordings out there that can legally be copied, but the VAST majority cannot.
A few recordings? There are more than a few. But by shutting down Napster that was essentially a move to make sure the number of such recordings would not increase--something that was legal but would hurt the RIAA, even if their music was not downloaded.
There is, in fact, no non-trivial legal use of Napster.
BS. First, if there is any reasonable legal use of something then why should it be illegal? There are hundreds, probably thousands, of independent artists that could have distributed their music via Napster. It's entirely possible that there are MORE such artists than those owned by the RIAA, and as the service matured you would've found more such legally-copyable material as indepedent artists got heard and proportionally less RIAA garbage. That's a very SIGNIFICANT legal use of Napster and it's downright disgusting that was ignored (actually it wasn't, I think that's the main reason the RIAA really wanted it shut down--not so much to keep its own stuff from being copied but making sure non-RIAA artists weren't easily heard).
Actually, it wasn't. Napster wasn't technically shut down by the courts. It was effectively shut down by making the unreasonable and technically impossible restriction that it must be 100% sure that no copyrighted music could be transferred with Napster. That's silly. The whole Sony videotape argument said that since there was significant non-infringing uses that it was legal. It DIDN'T say that since there are significant non-infringing uses that it was legal only if safeguards could be made to make 100% certain that no infringing uses take place.
The Napster case was a very awful double-standard. Did it ever get appealed to the Supreme Court? I don't see how the Napster decision can live in harmony with the Sony videotape decision. But I'm almost scared to think what would happen if the RIAA won against Napster at the Supreme Court level--all kinds of things could be made illegal with a precedent such as that.
Marketing for the iMacs (what was it? "Download, listen, burn" or something like that) is a much more blatant marketing campaign aimed at promoting music "piracy." Granted, they'll say they mean "Download legal music" but we all know what they mean.
Yeah, right. What about personal responsibility? Unless the coffee lid opened and the coffee spilled on the old lady as the cashier was handing her the coffee, it's her fault. Period. Coffee is hot, period. Now I know there was a big stink in the difference in burn potential between X degree coffee and X + 20 degree coffee--but the reality is, coffee is hot. If you aren't capable of drinking coffee and driving at the same time then don't buy the coffee in drive-thru. Or at least wait until you get home to drink it (one of the reasons McD's supposedly had the temperature so high, so it'd still be warm and drinkable when someone arrived at their destination).
Once upon a time I worked at McD's. I swear we'd get phone calls "The fries I ordered in drive-thru are cold!" We'd ask how long ago they'd made the purchase and they'd say, "20 minutes ago, and they were cold when I got home." DUH! You can't make fries any hotter because they'll burn, but at least a hot beverage can be made hot so that when they get home it's still warm and drinkable.
The best part about the McD lawsuit is the fact that all hot beverage cups now say "Beverage is hot": A daily reminder of the absurdity of frivolous lawsuits based on the complete lack of personal responsibility.
Try Win4Lin. This is what allowed me to migrate finally to Linux. Win4Lin is kind of like a "light" version of VMWare that only costs $89, and I presume there would be volume discounts available if you migrate your whole company.
Point is, Win4Lin lets you run virtually every business-critical Windows program there is. I use it to run Word, Excel, Powerpoint, VB6, VC++, Quicken, Quickbooks, PaintShopPro, Metrowerks Codewarrior (for Palm development). Multimedia apps, such as Windows Media and RealPlayer, both work under IE under Win4Lin.
Win4Lin is a great way to incrementally move away from MS. First you install Linux and Win4Lin throughout the enterprise, freeing yourself from Microsoft OS's. Then, as time goes on, you'll find that need fewer and fewer of the apps you thought you "needed" under Windows. I have Win4Lin for the applications I listed above but, to be honest, I use them very seldomly. But Win4Lin is a great idea for a company that would like to free itself from MS licensing but can't "risk" going cold-turkey.
Heck, try all your enterprise Windows apps on a single Linux machine with Win4Lin. If it doesn't work, oh well. If it does... Ready, set, deploy! :)
Don't worry, the world is moving towards OSS. Period. I've seen it in job markets that I've reviewed in my markets of interest in the US. It's also happening big time in Mexico (everyone I know here in Mexico is either working with Linux or starting migration projects).
You: Of course. A dictatorship, almost certainly by definition has no guarantee on human rights (such as being allowed to live). Anyway, was there some kind of point you were trying to make? I didn't catch it.
Which is roughly what I got from your tagline... what point are you trying to make?
Hmmm. But in a dictatorship it only takes one person to legally kill 49% of the population: the dictator and his decree.