Actually, if you honestly consider the events of the last decade... There were many CEOs doing and getting away with bad things under Democrats. It came to light and is being punished under a Republican administration.
Given that reality, how some people can blame the Republicans just goes to show how blind people can be when they want to be.
You, and someone else higher in the thread, seem to have completely misunderstood my post. I'm not saying that MySQL is going to take the enterprise DB market. That's not the case.
What I'm saying is that 90%--maybe even 99%--of all database installations do NOT require the features offered by some of the big boys. I would go so far as to say that many applications that are using "big boy" databases could get by quite well on MySQL. I know of at least several cases where companies are dumping MS SQL Server to go for a web-based, Linux/MySQL installation. For them that makes sense and I'd bet it makes sense for many other companies.
The point is not that the "big guys" don't have a place. They do. The question is whether or not they can remain profitable when those applications that don't NEED all their features go to a free database (MySQL) that gives them the features they need rather than paying big bucks for "big boys" that give them more than they need. A multi-national company with DB thousands of DB clients all over the world probably needs a "big boy." A company with a hundred DB clients most likely can do just fine with MySQL and can do it cheaper than going with the big boys...
Many of those "thousands of games" don't run on the latest version of Windows (XP). That was the ultimate in stupidity from Microsoft. They've had customers locked in because the customers had a library of software they wanted to keep using--now a lot of that software doesn't work under XP. At that point there's a good case for NOT upgrading to the latest XP or replacing XP on your new laptop with another OS... it could be Windows 98 or it could be Linux.
Thing is, the latest MS OS offering just isn't attractive. I, for one, finally took the dive and am now happily working on Linux. XP still exists on the old laptop HD (stored in my desk drawer) but at some point I'll probably format that with Linux, too, and install it on my wife's laptop...
I think the issue is that MySQL is very adequate for 99% of all users including most large enterprises and certainly most websites. Even if it is adequate for only 90% of them it's a huge threat to the big guys. There will always be a niche for the big guns that handle huge databases with many, many simultaneous updates. But that's a small fraction of the total universe of database installations and I don't think it's enough for the big guys to continue to be profitable.
Our present seems a little dismal to me right about now.
Trying times, but that tends to be when America has a history of buckling down and getting ahead. The 80s were the 80s, the 90s were a bubble. Things are a little dark right now but that's when there can be the most optimism. Or the most pesimism, if that's your game.
We, the country with the biggest guns in the world, are about to invade a very small and weak country.
It's not that small and is the militarily strongest country in the region. Also has a history of killing its neighbors and gassing its own citizens. Hardly worthy of pity.
And we consider ourselves brave for doing so.
Funny, I haven't heard anyone claiming "bravery" for doing this.
If we had more of a past we might have a clearer perspective of our future, and present.
So we are somehow less worthy because we've only been around a couple hundred years? Nah, that's nonsense. Most of the population of the world has been on the planet for less than 8 decades and we can learn from Europe's history just as easily as they can.
Right now we're just a bunch of hillbillies with the biggest gun at the hoedown.
I assume you mean you and your pals out there in Arkansas, right?:) If you are referring to the U.S. we might have the biggest gun but we also have the biggest economy, some of the most amazing technical achievements in history, and the Constitution that many other countries modeled theirs on. All these things don't happen because we happen to be lucky and have a big gun. Make no mistake, we aren't hillbillies. We might have the biggest gun but that doesn't mean we're not right or intelligent in using it.
On the other hand, Europe's best moments and triumphs lie in the past hence their desire to live there, so to speak. America's best moments lie in the present and, hopefully, the future.
American companies could save many millions of dollars per year by offshoring management jobs, but that never happens.
At that point it's debateable whether or not it's an American company. That would essentially mean American investment in foreign countries which is something different.
If I live in Texas and can buy a car for $30k but the same car costs $20k in Colorado, guess what? Screw the Texas economy and screw the Texas car dealership, I'm going to get my car in Colorado. If I want to get ahead I need to get as much as I can for as little as I can.
Companies are the same, but one of the things they buy is labor. But in the end the whole purpose of a company is to MAKE MONEY. If they can make more money by doing some stuff offshores then that's what they should do. They have no obligation to be less successful just so that their next-door neighbor can have a job.
But don't worry too much. There are many hidden costs in exporting jobs to other countries, especially R&D type of jobs. You either move the entire thing overseas or the project is doomed. Most companies don't move the entire R&D project overseas and those cases of exporting jobs in the long run will probably end up costing more money or, at very least, costing about the same and producing shoddy work--not necessarily beacause people in India can't do the work but because they're on the other side of the world, they sleep while we're awake, communication costs, costs to visit on-site, language problems, lack of direct control and oversight, etc.
Also keep in mind that most of the U.S. economy is powered by SMALL businesses, not huge multi-nationals that can ship entire departments away. The small company in Dallas employing 5 programmers, 5 salesmen, a secretary/recepsionist, and an accountant won't be shipping any jobs overseas anytime soon--and THOSE are the companies that keep most people employed.
RICE: We have not made every piece of information available for -- for lots of reasons, having to do with source protection. But the -- the story is out there. I do not wanted anyone to think that the president is somehow holding back pieces of the story that are key to understanding this threat.
FIrst sentence: "We have not made every piece of information available." Then goes on to explain that "the story is out there."
The understanding there is that there is additional information that they have obviously not released, but that it doesn't fundamentally change the situation. That is, the world knows what the threat is. The first sentence in that quote essentially says they DO have more information that hasn't been released. Certainly it just reinforces or confirms what has been publically stated.
Me: after 12 years what good is another week, month or year?
You: A lot, apparently, given that the last four months have seen vastly more progress on disarmament than the four years before.
Uh huh. Because any amount of progress is infinitely better than the ZERO progress the four years before.
And have you noticed that the "progress" in the last 4 months has always occurred a day or two before a deadline or a report being made to the U.N.? It is blindingly obvious that Saddam is doing the absolute minimum necessary to keep the world "hoping" and, thus, draw this whole thing out. He knows that the French will cling to any bone he throws them... so he keeps throwing bones out without actually offering any meat.
The manner in which Saddam is "complying" with the U.N. is actually as damning as the prior 12 years. Doing the absolute minimum at the last possible moment keeps the political game going. Saddam knows what the French want and will keep throwing them just enough to keep them from going along with the U.S. line.
Fact is, Saddam is playing the French very, very well. That's not surprising. What is sad is that the French can't see the forest for the trees. They either can't or don't want to see that they are puppets doing exactly what Saddam wants them to. The French might not want to be U.S. puppets, so to speak, but which is worse--being U.S. puppets or being a puppet of Saddam? I'll leave that as a rhetorical question...
All the message is is a standard message header with no body but the above information. If a mail client sees the above it would have the option of retrieving it based on the address/port/ID information given. The checksum would be a self-declared checksum for the message that could be used to (optionally) check a central database to see if that message is blocked. Sure, the sender could lie about the checksum but if the mail client went out and got the message and the checksum didn't match it would be discarded immediately--hence there would be no reason for a spammer to even bother sending a faked CRC.
What would happen? Spammers wouldn't use it. Legitimate email would, slowly at first. At some point you just say (on a user by user basis) that you are only willing to accept the new type of email. As soon as that happens on a large scale the "call-back" approach will be the only approach to send email and spammers will be stuck because 1) They can't hit-and-run--their server has to be around long enough for users to retrieve the email. 2) They can be easily blacklisted. 3) If they use their provider's mail server, the provider will quickly be able to detect it and shut it down.
I haven't seen forged headers used extensively for some time. The only thing I really see being forced is the "From" address and the Reply-To address, along with the "HELO" command in the SMTP exchange. But forging "Received" headers seems to have become less frequent.
I think that's because spam is, by nature, evolutionary. What works for now is quickly picked up on and then they have to move on to something else. The only people really interested in "Received" headers are syadmin type people that are going to be able to recognize forgeries anyway so they don't gain anything by doing it.
What blows me away is how many are spamming directly from their DSL connections these days. They just don't care and apparently the DSL providers just don't do anything about it. I can see throw-away dial-ups being used to spam, but I find it amazing that someone would risk a DSL connection to spam. The fact that they DO risk their DSL connection suggests to me that it isn't really much of a risk.:(
I also think the anti-spam approach has come down more to filtering and looking for a new protocol than reporting spammers. While some spam reports actually result in action, most don't--and those that do you are seldom informed of that so it seems that you are making spam reports that go into a blackhole. I gave up on reporting spammers two years ago--except for extreme cases that border on DOS attacks.
Same here. The first time it was funny. But now I seem to get one every day or two. Seems to promote a site called "SecureDiscounts.com" which has long since been added to my blacklist.
Thing is, I'm *guessing* that it isn't the anti-spam service that is spamming. I suspect they probably offer a "bounty" for every paying customer you signup and, as a result, there is an incentive for some idiot to spam everyone with his affiliate number.
Either way, they're still blacklisted on my system.
Yup. I'm putting the finishing touches on a spam filter that I've been writing. Among other things it is keeping statistics. I've found that 60% of my email is spam, too. And that's considering I have some hefty REAL mail traffic. A "typical" user that logs on to their email once a day to exchange mail with friends and family has GOT to be getting much more (percentage-wise).
That said, I finished the Bayesian filter on Monday and now I'm catching 99.1% of spam with a corpus of just 200 good and 400 spam mails. The problem doesn't goes away but at least it doesn't bother me on a minute-to-minute basis.
Prez and friends makes money out of Iraq war, due to easier access to oil.
This depends on the liberal conspiracy that the only reason Bush wanted to be and is president was to forward his own personal economic goals, or those of his friends. If you were to become president is that what you would do? Why do you think that Bush would?
Further, as a parent post already stated, it is far from clear that this war will actually help the oil industry. So you are gambling domestic and international political capital, the economy that could cost Bush his re-election, and tons of money and a budget deficit for something that is not even sure to help the oil business. Sorry, doesn't add up.
I'd love to see the reaction if the UN told the US to disarm all of their WMD and submit to inspections, "or else". Yet you expect it of other nations.
I agree this is unfair and I've oftened wondered why the "world powers" haven't been taken to task on this. That said, that's not the issue. The world is NOT insisting that the U.S. give up its nukes because it has a history of over half a century of RESTRAINT. Iraq does not. And the world has already declared through the U.N. that Iraq MUST disarm. Not just the U.S., the entire U.N. security council. The difference is that it is time to enforce that declaration and some countries aren't willing to backup their demands.
Iraq hasn't done shit to anyone internationally these past few years.
And we should wait until it does? Iraq has a history of bother its neighbors. It has a history of using WMDs on its neighbors (well, Iran) and internally. What do you think all those WMDs are for? Collecting? And if they're planning on using them, on who?
Don't try to tell me Iraq is the big bad threat to world peace and needs half a million troops on its borders, cos it's rubbish.
I'm not telling you that. The U.N. decided that many times over the last 12 years and again last November. If you have a problem with that, complain to the countries (the unanimous Security Council) that passed 1441 last November. Don't complain that some countries actually want to see that resolution acted upon.
And how exactly is a country thousands of miles away with no intercontinental missiles and no ties to domestic terrorism a threat to the United States?
It's called thinking proactively. It's clear that Saddam is not stable--he has a record of killing his own people and attacking his neighbors. It's known that he had chemical weapons because he's used it on his own people. They also tried to assassinate ex-president Bush in Kuwait during the Clinton administration so it's clear he is willing to resort to terrorism for "payback" or to achieve his goals.
So you have a dictator that kills his own people, attacks his neighbors, and ordered an attempted act of terror against an ex-president of the United States.
Whether he has ties to terrorism is a question mark. Some say yes, some say no. It is clear he can't launch a ballistic missile at the U.S. so the only way he could use it against the U.S. is via terrorist agents--be they Al Qaeda or home-brewed.
Regardless, after 9/11 I'm glad to see we're taking action BEFORE something happens. All the terrorists could get their hands on last time was 4 airplanes. What if they worked out a deal with Saddam and got some WMDs?
Practically all of the world (except for Britain and the US) see no impetus to invade Iraq
I suggest you review the news and see what countries are for and against the U.S. stance on Iraq. Most of Europe *DOES* support the U.S. position, and many European presidents/leaders signed a letter to that effect weeks ago. The president of France got in a hissy-fit over that.
No, the U.S. and England are not alone. France, Germany, and to some extent Russia are being very vocal, but they are by no-means the "norm."
But Bush doesn't care what anyone else thinks. He wants to skip the jury and convict anyway.
If I know my neighbor is collecting guns and I have information from people who have visited him that he is planning on torching my house, I'm going to take action BEFORE that happens even if a jury can't convict him until he does something. If Bush has intelligence that gives him reason to believe that inaction could lead to an attack on the U.S. then he is 100% right in taking action to stop it preemptively.
Why don't our country's internal values apply to how we conduct ourselves in world affairs? That's just sad.
No it's not. It's naive to think that personal civil rights can be applied to entire countries. They are not the same thing.
Which is why I've been wondering if the real reason for this war isn't really oil, as everyone has been saying, but ideological or religous.
Hmm, that liberal mind of yours is in overdrive, I see.
Perhaps the reason for war is not a business decision, not strictly for oil, not religous, and not idiological... Maybe, just maybe, the intelligence community has information that we are not privy too. Maybe, just maybe, the president has access to intelligence that we don't. Maybe, just maybe, it is not in the long-term interest of world peace to let a violent dictator thas has attacked Iran and Kuwait and killed thousands of its own citizens keep weapons of mass destruction.
The economic and, more importantly, political cost of this war is huge. Bush has taken a huge hit in the polls and the United States' political capital in the world is all but spent, and then some. If Bush is spending that economic and political capital, there's a reason. And, despite the beliefs of cynical liberals who believe Bush is just interested in oil, that's simply not the most logical or realistic answer.
Why everyone thinks they must go beyond the stated goals to determine the "real motive" behind the president is beyond me. Cynical liberals and anti-oil fanatics will say I'm naive when in reality they are simply being illogical. When you do the math and analyze the situation there is really only one explanation for all the effort being made on Iraq: Saddam is a dangerous dictator which intelligence information indicates is a threat to the world and to the United States. No other explanation, regardless of how cynical you are, makes sense.
Personally I'm not 100% in favor of the war. I'm not convinced that it's necessary right now. But the last 12 years have shown us that Iraq is NOT going to disarm--after 12 years what good is another week, month or year? If they wanted to disarm, they would have. Accepting that logic the question is WHEN do you take action? We have hundreds of thousands of troops over there now which is costing big money to support. The economy doesn't want to improve until the Iraq question is resolved. And it's going to start getting hot next month and will remain hot for a good 6 months.
My assumption--and I don't believe it's naive--is that the president has information that we don't. I believe he is right in that Iraq does not plan to disarm--this is based on the last 12 years as well as their (in)action since November when 1441 was passed. If we know something about their capabilities and they're not going to disarm, the time to do the work is now. So it's not too hot, we don't have to keep paying to keep troops deployed, the economy can start recovering immediately, and we can finally let France resume its typical importance in world affairs--zero.
Since 99% of unsolicited spam comes from somewhere outside the country, this list would mean precisely nothing.
Wow, what set of spamlists are YOU on? While I'll agree that EVERY message I get from South Korea and China is spam, I can't say that MOST of my spam comes from outside of the U.S. Most of it (more than 50%) actually comes from inside the country. What's interesting about South Korea and China isn't that that's where all the spam comes from (or is relayed through) but that all messages that I DO receive from those countries are spam.
It almost doesn't matter. My Bayesian filter is implemented and I'm loving life.:)
No, believe it or not I'm referring to the version that's been actively used and taught for more than a generation. Perhaps you salute the British flag because that's what we used 250 years ago, too.
Oh yes, I see the day when I no longer need the words 'rape, enlargement, mortgage, lolita, diploma and toner' in my filter list for 'Permanantly delete'.
At which point it will be very interesting to know who is sending you non-spam messages with those keywords.:)
You mean by standing around watching, applauding the effort? I know the Shuttle arm was built by Canada, some part of the ISS was built in Russia, the US did the ferrying via the shuttle, and Russia did resupply missions with their rockets. What exactly has Europe done? This is not a rhetorical question, I honestly don't know.
Lucky you. I just tried using Jabber yesterday. There wasn't an rpm for RedHat 7.3 and the Kopete Jabber plug-in crashed when I tried to register a new account. So I eventually downloaded a Windows Jabber client to create an account. It created the account and then immediately crashed--but at least it created the Jabber account. I then went back to Kopete and used the account I had already created. I logged in fine but after spending an hour on it with a contact in California we couldn't get Jabber to consistently report our online/offline status. Sometimes it would, sometimes it wouldn't.
This might be the fault of the clients we were using--I tried the Kopete and GAIM client and he tried the Jabber and GAIM client--but Jabber crashed for me under two different OSs and never worked completely when I finally got it "working" (i.e. not crashing).
In the end, my contact created a bogus hotmail account and we're using MSN plug-ins in Kopete and GAIM, respectively, and it's working fine. It's a shame, I'd love to ditch MSN for Jabber but after an hour of international long distance you just have to say "Screw it, let's use what works."
AIM basically took the same concept and simplified it, taking some of the unnecessary components out and adding something here and there.
Yeah, like adding advertisements.:( That's why when I was on Windows I always used to use Miranda. Nice, clean, IMing with various protocols in a small, tight package and no ads. Of course, I'm on Linux now: Yeah Kopete!
that the most trivial application of the internet is the most profitable?
No, the most trivial application of the Internet is arguably the most used and most useful. It isn't the most profitable--that's what the whole article is about: How to milk money out of something that virtually no-one is willing to pay for.
At least it seems they're aimed right--they want to try to sell different IM versions to corporations. Whether or not that will be successful remains to be seen; many companies already use IM as-is for free and about the only significant "add-on" could be security; and some independent IM clients already offer SSL encryption anyway. So I'm hard pressed to see where there's any motivation for a company to pay for it. Anything so important or sensitive so as to require SSL probably won't be discussed with a few instant messages anyway.
But it appears they're not stupid enough to want to charge users for what they already have for free. That'd kill IM in a heartbeat I bet.
Slashdot Mirror
Given that reality, how some people can blame the Republicans just goes to show how blind people can be when they want to be.
What I'm saying is that 90%--maybe even 99%--of all database installations do NOT require the features offered by some of the big boys. I would go so far as to say that many applications that are using "big boy" databases could get by quite well on MySQL. I know of at least several cases where companies are dumping MS SQL Server to go for a web-based, Linux/MySQL installation. For them that makes sense and I'd bet it makes sense for many other companies.
The point is not that the "big guys" don't have a place. They do. The question is whether or not they can remain profitable when those applications that don't NEED all their features go to a free database (MySQL) that gives them the features they need rather than paying big bucks for "big boys" that give them more than they need. A multi-national company with DB thousands of DB clients all over the world probably needs a "big boy." A company with a hundred DB clients most likely can do just fine with MySQL and can do it cheaper than going with the big boys...
That's all I'm saying. Don't get all defensive!
Thing is, the latest MS OS offering just isn't attractive. I, for one, finally took the dive and am now happily working on Linux. XP still exists on the old laptop HD (stored in my desk drawer) but at some point I'll probably format that with Linux, too, and install it on my wife's laptop...
Trying times, but that tends to be when America has a history of buckling down and getting ahead. The 80s were the 80s, the 90s were a bubble. Things are a little dark right now but that's when there can be the most optimism. Or the most pesimism, if that's your game.
We, the country with the biggest guns in the world, are about to invade a very small and weak country.
It's not that small and is the militarily strongest country in the region. Also has a history of killing its neighbors and gassing its own citizens. Hardly worthy of pity.
And we consider ourselves brave for doing so.
Funny, I haven't heard anyone claiming "bravery" for doing this.
If we had more of a past we might have a clearer perspective of our future, and present.
So we are somehow less worthy because we've only been around a couple hundred years? Nah, that's nonsense. Most of the population of the world has been on the planet for less than 8 decades and we can learn from Europe's history just as easily as they can.
Right now we're just a bunch of hillbillies with the biggest gun at the hoedown.
I assume you mean you and your pals out there in Arkansas, right? :) If you are referring to the U.S. we might have the biggest gun but we also have the biggest economy, some of the most amazing technical achievements in history, and the Constitution that many other countries modeled theirs on. All these things don't happen because we happen to be lucky and have a big gun. Make no mistake, we aren't hillbillies. We might have the biggest gun but that doesn't mean we're not right or intelligent in using it.
On the other hand, Europe's best moments and triumphs lie in the past hence their desire to live there, so to speak. America's best moments lie in the present and, hopefully, the future.
Let the flames begin... :)
At that point it's debateable whether or not it's an American company. That would essentially mean American investment in foreign countries which is something different.
If I live in Texas and can buy a car for $30k but the same car costs $20k in Colorado, guess what? Screw the Texas economy and screw the Texas car dealership, I'm going to get my car in Colorado. If I want to get ahead I need to get as much as I can for as little as I can.
Companies are the same, but one of the things they buy is labor. But in the end the whole purpose of a company is to MAKE MONEY. If they can make more money by doing some stuff offshores then that's what they should do. They have no obligation to be less successful just so that their next-door neighbor can have a job.
But don't worry too much. There are many hidden costs in exporting jobs to other countries, especially R&D type of jobs. You either move the entire thing overseas or the project is doomed. Most companies don't move the entire R&D project overseas and those cases of exporting jobs in the long run will probably end up costing more money or, at very least, costing about the same and producing shoddy work--not necessarily beacause people in India can't do the work but because they're on the other side of the world, they sleep while we're awake, communication costs, costs to visit on-site, language problems, lack of direct control and oversight, etc.
Also keep in mind that most of the U.S. economy is powered by SMALL businesses, not huge multi-nationals that can ship entire departments away. The small company in Dallas employing 5 programmers, 5 salesmen, a secretary/recepsionist, and an accountant won't be shipping any jobs overseas anytime soon--and THOSE are the companies that keep most people employed.
FIrst sentence: "We have not made every piece of information available." Then goes on to explain that "the story is out there."
The understanding there is that there is additional information that they have obviously not released, but that it doesn't fundamentally change the situation. That is, the world knows what the threat is. The first sentence in that quote essentially says they DO have more information that hasn't been released. Certainly it just reinforces or confirms what has been publically stated.
Keep on trolling, though.
You: A lot, apparently, given that the last four months have seen vastly more progress on disarmament than the four years before.
Uh huh. Because any amount of progress is infinitely better than the ZERO progress the four years before.
And have you noticed that the "progress" in the last 4 months has always occurred a day or two before a deadline or a report being made to the U.N.? It is blindingly obvious that Saddam is doing the absolute minimum necessary to keep the world "hoping" and, thus, draw this whole thing out. He knows that the French will cling to any bone he throws them... so he keeps throwing bones out without actually offering any meat.
The manner in which Saddam is "complying" with the U.N. is actually as damning as the prior 12 years. Doing the absolute minimum at the last possible moment keeps the political game going. Saddam knows what the French want and will keep throwing them just enough to keep them from going along with the U.S. line.
Fact is, Saddam is playing the French very, very well. That's not surprising. What is sad is that the French can't see the forest for the trees. They either can't or don't want to see that they are puppets doing exactly what Saddam wants them to. The French might not want to be U.S. puppets, so to speak, but which is worse--being U.S. puppets or being a puppet of Saddam? I'll leave that as a rhetorical question...
Consider emails are still sent as they are now. But we add a new "MIME Type" with something such as:
MIME-Content-Link: (address/port/ID information)
MINE-Content-Checksum: ABF41325123B13
All the message is is a standard message header with no body but the above information. If a mail client sees the above it would have the option of retrieving it based on the address/port/ID information given. The checksum would be a self-declared checksum for the message that could be used to (optionally) check a central database to see if that message is blocked. Sure, the sender could lie about the checksum but if the mail client went out and got the message and the checksum didn't match it would be discarded immediately--hence there would be no reason for a spammer to even bother sending a faked CRC.
What would happen? Spammers wouldn't use it. Legitimate email would, slowly at first. At some point you just say (on a user by user basis) that you are only willing to accept the new type of email. As soon as that happens on a large scale the "call-back" approach will be the only approach to send email and spammers will be stuck because 1) They can't hit-and-run--their server has to be around long enough for users to retrieve the email. 2) They can be easily blacklisted. 3) If they use their provider's mail server, the provider will quickly be able to detect it and shut it down.
I think that's because spam is, by nature, evolutionary. What works for now is quickly picked up on and then they have to move on to something else. The only people really interested in "Received" headers are syadmin type people that are going to be able to recognize forgeries anyway so they don't gain anything by doing it.
What blows me away is how many are spamming directly from their DSL connections these days. They just don't care and apparently the DSL providers just don't do anything about it. I can see throw-away dial-ups being used to spam, but I find it amazing that someone would risk a DSL connection to spam. The fact that they DO risk their DSL connection suggests to me that it isn't really much of a risk. :(
I also think the anti-spam approach has come down more to filtering and looking for a new protocol than reporting spammers. While some spam reports actually result in action, most don't--and those that do you are seldom informed of that so it seems that you are making spam reports that go into a blackhole. I gave up on reporting spammers two years ago--except for extreme cases that border on DOS attacks.
Thing is, I'm *guessing* that it isn't the anti-spam service that is spamming. I suspect they probably offer a "bounty" for every paying customer you signup and, as a result, there is an incentive for some idiot to spam everyone with his affiliate number.
Either way, they're still blacklisted on my system.
That said, I finished the Bayesian filter on Monday and now I'm catching 99.1% of spam with a corpus of just 200 good and 400 spam mails. The problem doesn't goes away but at least it doesn't bother me on a minute-to-minute basis.
This depends on the liberal conspiracy that the only reason Bush wanted to be and is president was to forward his own personal economic goals, or those of his friends. If you were to become president is that what you would do? Why do you think that Bush would?
Further, as a parent post already stated, it is far from clear that this war will actually help the oil industry. So you are gambling domestic and international political capital, the economy that could cost Bush his re-election, and tons of money and a budget deficit for something that is not even sure to help the oil business. Sorry, doesn't add up.
I'd love to see the reaction if the UN told the US to disarm all of their WMD and submit to inspections, "or else". Yet you expect it of other nations.
I agree this is unfair and I've oftened wondered why the "world powers" haven't been taken to task on this. That said, that's not the issue. The world is NOT insisting that the U.S. give up its nukes because it has a history of over half a century of RESTRAINT. Iraq does not. And the world has already declared through the U.N. that Iraq MUST disarm. Not just the U.S., the entire U.N. security council. The difference is that it is time to enforce that declaration and some countries aren't willing to backup their demands.
Iraq hasn't done shit to anyone internationally these past few years.
And we should wait until it does? Iraq has a history of bother its neighbors. It has a history of using WMDs on its neighbors (well, Iran) and internally. What do you think all those WMDs are for? Collecting? And if they're planning on using them, on who?
Don't try to tell me Iraq is the big bad threat to world peace and needs half a million troops on its borders, cos it's rubbish.
I'm not telling you that. The U.N. decided that many times over the last 12 years and again last November. If you have a problem with that, complain to the countries (the unanimous Security Council) that passed 1441 last November. Don't complain that some countries actually want to see that resolution acted upon.
It's called thinking proactively. It's clear that Saddam is not stable--he has a record of killing his own people and attacking his neighbors. It's known that he had chemical weapons because he's used it on his own people. They also tried to assassinate ex-president Bush in Kuwait during the Clinton administration so it's clear he is willing to resort to terrorism for "payback" or to achieve his goals.
So you have a dictator that kills his own people, attacks his neighbors, and ordered an attempted act of terror against an ex-president of the United States.
Whether he has ties to terrorism is a question mark. Some say yes, some say no. It is clear he can't launch a ballistic missile at the U.S. so the only way he could use it against the U.S. is via terrorist agents--be they Al Qaeda or home-brewed.
Regardless, after 9/11 I'm glad to see we're taking action BEFORE something happens. All the terrorists could get their hands on last time was 4 airplanes. What if they worked out a deal with Saddam and got some WMDs?
Practically all of the world (except for Britain and the US) see no impetus to invade Iraq
I suggest you review the news and see what countries are for and against the U.S. stance on Iraq. Most of Europe *DOES* support the U.S. position, and many European presidents/leaders signed a letter to that effect weeks ago. The president of France got in a hissy-fit over that.
No, the U.S. and England are not alone. France, Germany, and to some extent Russia are being very vocal, but they are by no-means the "norm."
But Bush doesn't care what anyone else thinks. He wants to skip the jury and convict anyway.
If I know my neighbor is collecting guns and I have information from people who have visited him that he is planning on torching my house, I'm going to take action BEFORE that happens even if a jury can't convict him until he does something. If Bush has intelligence that gives him reason to believe that inaction could lead to an attack on the U.S. then he is 100% right in taking action to stop it preemptively.
Why don't our country's internal values apply to how we conduct ourselves in world affairs? That's just sad.
No it's not. It's naive to think that personal civil rights can be applied to entire countries. They are not the same thing.
Hmm, that liberal mind of yours is in overdrive, I see.
Perhaps the reason for war is not a business decision, not strictly for oil, not religous, and not idiological... Maybe, just maybe, the intelligence community has information that we are not privy too. Maybe, just maybe, the president has access to intelligence that we don't. Maybe, just maybe, it is not in the long-term interest of world peace to let a violent dictator thas has attacked Iran and Kuwait and killed thousands of its own citizens keep weapons of mass destruction.
The economic and, more importantly, political cost of this war is huge. Bush has taken a huge hit in the polls and the United States' political capital in the world is all but spent, and then some. If Bush is spending that economic and political capital, there's a reason. And, despite the beliefs of cynical liberals who believe Bush is just interested in oil, that's simply not the most logical or realistic answer.
Why everyone thinks they must go beyond the stated goals to determine the "real motive" behind the president is beyond me. Cynical liberals and anti-oil fanatics will say I'm naive when in reality they are simply being illogical. When you do the math and analyze the situation there is really only one explanation for all the effort being made on Iraq: Saddam is a dangerous dictator which intelligence information indicates is a threat to the world and to the United States. No other explanation, regardless of how cynical you are, makes sense.
Personally I'm not 100% in favor of the war. I'm not convinced that it's necessary right now. But the last 12 years have shown us that Iraq is NOT going to disarm--after 12 years what good is another week, month or year? If they wanted to disarm, they would have. Accepting that logic the question is WHEN do you take action? We have hundreds of thousands of troops over there now which is costing big money to support. The economy doesn't want to improve until the Iraq question is resolved. And it's going to start getting hot next month and will remain hot for a good 6 months.
My assumption--and I don't believe it's naive--is that the president has information that we don't. I believe he is right in that Iraq does not plan to disarm--this is based on the last 12 years as well as their (in)action since November when 1441 was passed. If we know something about their capabilities and they're not going to disarm, the time to do the work is now. So it's not too hot, we don't have to keep paying to keep troops deployed, the economy can start recovering immediately, and we can finally let France resume its typical importance in world affairs--zero.
Wow, what set of spamlists are YOU on? While I'll agree that EVERY message I get from South Korea and China is spam, I can't say that MOST of my spam comes from outside of the U.S. Most of it (more than 50%) actually comes from inside the country. What's interesting about South Korea and China isn't that that's where all the spam comes from (or is relayed through) but that all messages that I DO receive from those countries are spam.
It almost doesn't matter. My Bayesian filter is implemented and I'm loving life. :)
At which point it will be very interesting to know who is sending you non-spam messages with those keywords. :)
This might be the fault of the clients we were using--I tried the Kopete and GAIM client and he tried the Jabber and GAIM client--but Jabber crashed for me under two different OSs and never worked completely when I finally got it "working" (i.e. not crashing).
In the end, my contact created a bogus hotmail account and we're using MSN plug-ins in Kopete and GAIM, respectively, and it's working fine. It's a shame, I'd love to ditch MSN for Jabber but after an hour of international long distance you just have to say "Screw it, let's use what works."
Yeah, like adding advertisements. :( That's why when I was on Windows I always used to use Miranda. Nice, clean, IMing with various protocols in a small, tight package and no ads. Of course, I'm on Linux now: Yeah Kopete!
No, the most trivial application of the Internet is arguably the most used and most useful. It isn't the most profitable--that's what the whole article is about: How to milk money out of something that virtually no-one is willing to pay for.
At least it seems they're aimed right--they want to try to sell different IM versions to corporations. Whether or not that will be successful remains to be seen; many companies already use IM as-is for free and about the only significant "add-on" could be security; and some independent IM clients already offer SSL encryption anyway. So I'm hard pressed to see where there's any motivation for a company to pay for it. Anything so important or sensitive so as to require SSL probably won't be discussed with a few instant messages anyway.
But it appears they're not stupid enough to want to charge users for what they already have for free. That'd kill IM in a heartbeat I bet.