Curiously, why were open relays ever in existence?
I think it's because email was modeled after snail-mail, where you can drop a letter into any mailbox and it will be delivered. In general, you could trust the community not to abuse open relays, because the Internet was as easily accessible to every get-rich-quick moron. No one probably even foresaw the problem.
Why is typecasting bad? I think they should do it more. Actually, I think the studios should limit the number of major motion pictures a given actor is in. After too much exposure, and actor just isn't believable in any role. At least for me, that's true. I become aware that it's just an actor acting; I start to see the actor instead of the charactor he's portraying. It makes the movie less real to me.
I can see your point about showing respect. I certainly respect and appreciate the GNU project. The only thing I object to is Mr. Stallman's insistence that we should use "GNU/Linux." As I said, I feel the most he should do is suggest the GNU/Linux moniker, and if people want to show respect by using it, then fine. It means much more if they aren't bullied into it.
Personally I feel the phrase "GNU/Linux" is unwieldy and unnecessary. As others have pointed out, GNU/Linux/Xfree/etc. is probably a better way to refer to most Linux distributions. But we don't refer to every single component, because we already know they are there.
Yes, I know that the Linux kernel is built (mostly) with GNU compilers, and the other basic utilties in Linux distributions are from the GNU project. RMS can remind us of this all he wants, and it won't bother me. I think it's perfectly fair for GNU to get credit for that. It's just his grab for attention that seems over-the-line to me.
BTW, I'm not sure why you brought up Microsoft, but that is a funny picture.
Is there a clause in the GPL that says you must name distributions that include GNU utilities, "GNU/Whatever"? If there isn't, then anything anyone says on the subject, including RMS, is merely a suggestion. Even if such a clause were there, I wouldn't think it would be enforceable.
Often the explanations for this could be done in 5 minutes face-to-face...
Another thing I've noticed when composing emails, or web pages, or other "written" explanations of things, is that I often have to overexplain. The reason for this is that know I won't be getting any feedback on my explanation until it's done and sent out, so I'm not sure if my explanations are clear, or if I've missed a point, or if some side issues will arise, so I tend to try to cover all these things, and it takes time.
No kidding. A conversation takes about 5 times as long over IM as it would in person or on the phone. Plus, it's better to actually hear someone's voice, I think.
Yes, someone should tell George Lucas that this is an ability that was purposely included in the DVD format! Unfortunately, George Lucas likes to pretend that the original version of Star Wars is nothing more than a rough cut, never to be released [again].
Yeah, it's unfortunate that we had to put up with the original for twenty years. He doesn't give himself enough credit - or maybe he takes too much.
I used to use LRP on my router. Using such a stripped-down system was a great way to learn things. But eventually I switched to a minimal Debian install (once I got a hard drive for that old box).
I still have my landline because I absolutely hate talking on my cellphone for any length of time. The call quality is variable; I often have to repeat myself because of the "static" (digital garbling). If you are talking to someone else on a cellphone, that just compounds the problem, as there are now two over-the-air connections that can go wrong. Landlines, OTOH, are generally always clear.
My phone is a few years old, though (CDMA, Verizon). Are newer cell phones any better in sound quality?
Sorry, I thought I had all the essential info halfway through the article, so I only skimmed the rest. It looked like details that weren't really important to the overall concept (minimum subscription level, etc). In my defense the important info really should be up front.
Yeah, but even the common man wore a suit when going out. Have you ever seen old pictures of sporting events or other public gatherings. The crowds are all dressed up! Not in tuxedos or anything, but in casual suits and dresses.
Yes, a lot of predictions are flat out wrong. I always thought it was amusing that Asimov wrote stories about robots that could think with very advanced AI (though he never called it that), but that couldn't talk (at first).
As for space travel, Sci-Fi is predicting things that are impossible, if not very far off. Maybe it's impossible to travel faster than the speed of light. But, if it is possible, maybe some of our motivation to find the way will come from Science Fiction.
When did we start thinking about the future so much? Did people in the middle ages, for example, ever think much past the end of their own lives? I'm guessing they did, but I don't think they could have imagined a world much different than their own.
When we think of the future, we almost always think of technology. We think of starships and other things that are waaaaaay far off, so maybe the industrial revolution spurred this new way of thinking. Anyway, I'm justing typing randomly. I'll bet some historian will tell me I'm totally wrong.
If the bank owns the car, then why is MY name on the title? Yes, the bank's name is on the title too, but it's in the box marked "Lienholder." My point is that I actually own the car, and that the bank can only take it from me under certain conditions.
AFAIK, I could offer something else as collateral instead of the car itself. Let's say a $20,000 chunk of gold. If the bank accepts this, then if I default on the auto loan, the bank would get to keep my chunk of gold. And I would get to keep the car.
On the other hand, think of how few people have been into space. The percentage of astronauts/cosmonauts who have died in the effort is relatively high.
Roughly 2% of space shuttle flights have ended in total loss of vehicle and crew. Two of a fleet of five spaceworthy shuttles have been destroyed.
With that said, I understand that space travel is risky. If I had the opportunity to go into space, I'd certainly be willing to take the risk. I think our space program should definitely continue.
However, if I could cryptographically sign my IM history, people couldn't weasel out when I cut 'n' pasted their words back to them (yes, I really am that petty; all New Yorkers live to say, "I told you so!").
Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but if you sign your IM history, it doesn't prove a darn thing about what other people have said to you. In order to do that, you'd have to get them to sign their messages.
This guy talks about how great a "sender pays" scheme would be because it creates revenue and "clarifies the legal situation." But he doesn't give any details as to how it would be implimented. I don't think it can be implimented. You'd have to set up Email2, with authenticated users, payment methods, billing, accounts, etc. AT ALL ISPs. It seems to me that it would be easier to try to get people to stop spamming voluntarily. That is, I don't think it'd be very easy!
You can rename an.RTF to.DOC and Word will still figure out what kind of document it is. Heck, I even tried this with my resume once, which was a.WPD (WordPerfect Document). Word opened it and converted it, but the conversion was terrible, so I never actually distributed the.wpd in disguise that way.
IIRC, you can bring a lawyer with you to small claims court, but the judges will tend to be very strict with you if you have that advantage. Also, you don't have to go to small claims court at all if someone sues you. It has something to do with the fact that you can't be forced to waive your right to a trial by jury. So, in this case, Sears could have gone to full-blown court if they had wanted.
Who says we have to track them by SMTP? There must be other ways. I don't read my SPAM, but I assume they must include contact info so you can buy whatever crap they are selling. We could track the spammer using THAT information.
It's not just the fact that they have your CC number on file that's worrisome. It's the fact that they also have all your purchases on file, tied to your credit card(s), tied to you, your address, etc. I saw on TV a few years ago a segment on some tech show about how Wal-Mart has a huge data warehouse of every sale ever made in one of their stores. (IIRC)
I'm not terribly worried if Wal-Mart, for example, is able to lookup exactly how many cucumbers I've purchased over the years. But, it's still unnerving, and I'm personally paying at least a little attention to privacy issues like this.
With a little effort, big stores like Wal-Mart could pool their data with other stores and reconstruct, say, my travel habits and who knows what else. This is more unnerving, but I'm not worried yet.
Are there any regulations governing what can be done with this data? That's what worries me. Could a private detective pay Wal-Mart for my shopping lists? Could the government demand them?
But why wouldn't you want each PC on your network to have a "real" IP address. With a firewall in place, you can still block traffic that you don't want in/out. And it'll be much easier if you ever have to open something up, you'll have much less headaches if all the internal machines have "real" IP addresses already.
If you really want to hide the internal structure of your network, you could still do NAT to translate the internal addresses to one external gateway address. But you don't neccesarily have to use the same local subnet as everyone else.
IMHO, the benefit of being able to see if you are behind NAT by looking at your IP address is rather small. It's not the only indicator anyway. I've got a "real" IP address here at work. But, for http, anyway, I go through a transparent proxy. So, to the outside world, it looks like I'm visiting from one of several proxy servers.
I only have experience with MS Word and Excel in this context so I don't know for certain if the applications play a part
It's almost certainly the applications. When you open a file in Word, it makes a little temp file with a similar name in the same directory. I'm not sure what's stored in there, but at least it allows other copies of Word to know if the file is already open.
I don't think Excel does the same thing, but it might.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's because email was modeled after snail-mail, where you can drop a letter into any mailbox and it will be delivered. In general, you could trust the community not to abuse open relays, because the Internet was as easily accessible to every get-rich-quick moron. No one probably even foresaw the problem.
The above applies to actresses as well.
Personally I feel the phrase "GNU/Linux" is unwieldy and unnecessary. As others have pointed out, GNU/Linux/Xfree/etc. is probably a better way to refer to most Linux distributions. But we don't refer to every single component, because we already know they are there.
Yes, I know that the Linux kernel is built (mostly) with GNU compilers, and the other basic utilties in Linux distributions are from the GNU project. RMS can remind us of this all he wants, and it won't bother me. I think it's perfectly fair for GNU to get credit for that. It's just his grab for attention that seems over-the-line to me.
BTW, I'm not sure why you brought up Microsoft, but that is a funny picture.
Is there a clause in the GPL that says you must name distributions that include GNU utilities, "GNU/Whatever"? If there isn't, then anything anyone says on the subject, including RMS, is merely a suggestion. Even if such a clause were there, I wouldn't think it would be enforceable.
Another thing I've noticed when composing emails, or web pages, or other "written" explanations of things, is that I often have to overexplain. The reason for this is that know I won't be getting any feedback on my explanation until it's done and sent out, so I'm not sure if my explanations are clear, or if I've missed a point, or if some side issues will arise, so I tend to try to cover all these things, and it takes time.
No kidding. A conversation takes about 5 times as long over IM as it would in person or on the phone. Plus, it's better to actually hear someone's voice, I think.
Yeah, it's unfortunate that we had to put up with the original for twenty years. He doesn't give himself enough credit - or maybe he takes too much.
I used to use LRP on my router. Using such a stripped-down system was a great way to learn things. But eventually I switched to a minimal Debian install (once I got a hard drive for that old box).
My phone is a few years old, though (CDMA, Verizon). Are newer cell phones any better in sound quality?
Sorry, I thought I had all the essential info halfway through the article, so I only skimmed the rest. It looked like details that weren't really important to the overall concept (minimum subscription level, etc). In my defense the important info really should be up front.
Nope. You can't post a comment until the story goes "live." I checked.
Yeah, but even the common man wore a suit when going out. Have you ever seen old pictures of sporting events or other public gatherings. The crowds are all dressed up! Not in tuxedos or anything, but in casual suits and dresses.
As for space travel, Sci-Fi is predicting things that are impossible, if not very far off. Maybe it's impossible to travel faster than the speed of light. But, if it is possible, maybe some of our motivation to find the way will come from Science Fiction.
When we think of the future, we almost always think of technology. We think of starships and other things that are waaaaaay far off, so maybe the industrial revolution spurred this new way of thinking. Anyway, I'm justing typing randomly. I'll bet some historian will tell me I'm totally wrong.
AFAIK, I could offer something else as collateral instead of the car itself. Let's say a $20,000 chunk of gold. If the bank accepts this, then if I default on the auto loan, the bank would get to keep my chunk of gold. And I would get to keep the car.
Roughly 2% of space shuttle flights have ended in total loss of vehicle and crew. Two of a fleet of five spaceworthy shuttles have been destroyed.
With that said, I understand that space travel is risky. If I had the opportunity to go into space, I'd certainly be willing to take the risk. I think our space program should definitely continue.
Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but if you sign your IM history, it doesn't prove a darn thing about what other people have said to you. In order to do that, you'd have to get them to sign their messages.
This guy talks about how great a "sender pays" scheme would be because it creates revenue and "clarifies the legal situation." But he doesn't give any details as to how it would be implimented. I don't think it can be implimented. You'd have to set up Email2, with authenticated users, payment methods, billing, accounts, etc. AT ALL ISPs. It seems to me that it would be easier to try to get people to stop spamming voluntarily. That is, I don't think it'd be very easy!
You can rename an .RTF to .DOC and Word will still figure out what kind of document it is. Heck, I even tried this with my resume once, which was a .WPD (WordPerfect Document). Word opened it and converted it, but the conversion was terrible, so I never actually distributed the .wpd in disguise that way.
That's the most succinct explanation of the situation I've seen yet.
Here I go...IANAL.
Who says we have to track them by SMTP? There must be other ways. I don't read my SPAM, but I assume they must include contact info so you can buy whatever crap they are selling. We could track the spammer using THAT information.
I'm not terribly worried if Wal-Mart, for example, is able to lookup exactly how many cucumbers I've purchased over the years. But, it's still unnerving, and I'm personally paying at least a little attention to privacy issues like this.
With a little effort, big stores like Wal-Mart could pool their data with other stores and reconstruct, say, my travel habits and who knows what else. This is more unnerving, but I'm not worried yet.
Are there any regulations governing what can be done with this data? That's what worries me. Could a private detective pay Wal-Mart for my shopping lists? Could the government demand them?
I have the same questions about Google.
If you really want to hide the internal structure of your network, you could still do NAT to translate the internal addresses to one external gateway address. But you don't neccesarily have to use the same local subnet as everyone else.
IMHO, the benefit of being able to see if you are behind NAT by looking at your IP address is rather small. It's not the only indicator anyway. I've got a "real" IP address here at work. But, for http, anyway, I go through a transparent proxy. So, to the outside world, it looks like I'm visiting from one of several proxy servers.
It's almost certainly the applications. When you open a file in Word, it makes a little temp file with a similar name in the same directory. I'm not sure what's stored in there, but at least it allows other copies of Word to know if the file is already open.
I don't think Excel does the same thing, but it might.