...but that doesn't help me at all when I do business with a small business on the net who hired some dipshit to do their online store but didn't properly secure my database and suddenly someone is using my credit card number to buy lingerie for hookers...
Well, you should know the risks, and only give such information to reputable vendors. Giving your debit card number to random sites, is asking for trouble.
I have a much bigger problem with (for example) Pizza places who, as you read each 4-digit block to them on the phone, they read it aloud back to you. In a public store, where anyone can over-hear.
Or stores who print the CC# on the receipt (this is becoming more rare, luckily). Back in the day, it was all too easy to find receipts at gas stations ("pay at the pump") with customers' card numbers on them. Most now ask if you want a receipt, and don't include those details, so it's getting better.
My point is, you have to be careful no matter what you do. If you choose reputable vendors (online or off), you can be confident that they have in fact hired competent contractors to handle their computer and CC processing needs.
I'd recommend keeping an extra disk on hand from old machine...
Better yet, I'd recommend making sure the shop you take the machine to is reputable, and knows what they are doing (and understands the value of your data). Make sure they know not to touch your data without calling you first with backup options, etc.
Another significant reason to do this (and IMHO another ripe area for regulation) is that you aren't giving the guy in the repair shop access to your data...
I think any reputable shop won't go browsing through your pr0n or email. Again, research the shop first. Talk to the shop manager, or at least the person who's going to dig into the box. Or if it's a bigger shop, read their policies.
There is no need for regulation in my opinion. There are plenty of users who's data doesn't mean squat to them, and these users won't care to pay the extra fees to compensate for having to have "licenced PC repair persons". Like with anything else, some shops will be of higher quality and integrity than others. You get what you pay for...
A better question is.... why don't they back it up before they work on it and possibly fuck it up?
I did warranty repairs on Gatway PCs for a short-term contract. Before the PC was shipped to us, the user had to sign a paper, with one of two items checked:
[_] I have already backed up my data and you can fdisk/format blah blah [_] Please back up my data and charge me $outrageous_fee
About 5 (out of some 500) chose the backup option, and we just snagged certain file types/locations (My Documents, etc) in another PC and burned them to a CD.
We of course only charged the fee if a format was necessary, but since the majority of the "repairs" we had were Windows issues -- and we weren't allowed to spend time trouble-shooting that -- we just popped a restore disc in the machine and rebooted.
This is a bit OT, but why did HP put a "Do Not Remove" cap over the on-board VGA connector? There are perfectly valid reasons to run multiple monitors (especially on a "Media PC"), and there doesn't seem to be any reason to cap the connector off...
Obviously the GeForce is a better card, but... why use a board with onboard video, just to cap it off? Seems like a hack to me; perhaps a driver conflict caused concern, so they disabled it in the BIOS and capped it off.. but it's very unprofessional IMO.
But of those three, Mozilla and Opera were both developed by commercial companies (Netscape/AOL and Opera Software respectively).
First, I don't have a problem with them being commercial. Second, Mozilla is open source. The fact that its development was funded by a commercial company is irrelevant to me. Heck, lots of Linux kernel development is funded by corporations (even Linus has a job).
My reason for holding out was simply because I hate the idea that every computer needs Microsoft software to run. We don't need IE, we have plenty of fine browsers. I admit to not having used Konqueror much, and I don't personally care for Opera, but Mozilla in its current form is the best browser I've ever used, period.
Of course it's all subjective, and everyone's tastes vary quite a bit.
mplayer has poor video/audio synchronisation during DVD playback.
I haven't used its DVD playback, but on corrupted AVI files, it handles A/V sync better than WMP does in most cases. On non-corrupted files I've never seen an issue at all. Either DVD is handled differently, or perhaps it's specific to your system. I'll have to give it a try on my laptop (the only machine I have with a DVD drive)...
They're fine for the current typical Linux user and they get the job done, but for anybody who is looking for more mainstream adoption, all applications, including media players, need that extra refinement that tends to come with commercial applications.
Ah, I see where the problem is now. My argument was *not* about mainstream adoption. It was about the current typical Linux user. The current Linux user doesn't want IE, WMP, etc. We have no problem fiddling with config files for a few hours, writing wrapper scripts, etc. Once it's all set up of course, it's easy.
I personally use a custom front-end to MPlayer (and to mpg123) on the media box. Interface is on the television, and an ATI remote controls the system. My non-savvy girlfriend can play movies and listen to music, it's easier to use than a Tivo (and yes, once it's refined I'll release it, one of these days...)
Anyway, I'm not sure I want "mainstream adoption" of Linux on the desktop. Personally, I don't care what the average person uses. Linux has its purposes for me, as does Windows, and I'm okay with the current situation (aside from monopolistic practices, but even without that the average user will still use Windows, IMO).
I don't mean to sound elitist -- and it's not that I don't want Linux to succeed on the desktop. I just don't see an immediate need for it, when most users are perfectly fine with what they already have, already know, and their job requires them to know. They don't want or need to learn something new.
An interesting thought occurrs: if Microsoft got out of the business of pushing their Operating System (not necessarily stopping production, just playing nice), and got more into the applications-development side of things, what would we then think about Microsoft?
For example, they release Linux, Solaris and *BSD versions of Office, WMP, IE, and other software, all fully functional and roughly equal to (say) the Mac versions. Likewise, they no longer resort to monopolistic tactics to push their OS monopoly, realizing that they can do better selling applications, and not worrying about which OS you use. Perhaps they even focus more on security in their software products (ignoring the OS for now).
Would most of us reconsider how we think of Microsoft? If they slowly did away with the things we tend to hate the most, and focused on quality software, would they then be just another vendor (albeit extremely huge)?
I posted earlier answering "Not me" on the WMP issue, but it really isn't too late for Microsoft to wisen up. I believe they make more money from Office sales than OS sales, but the OS monopoly helped with that. Perhaps they realize they are losing/will lose the OS monopoly, and need to focus on quality cross-platform applications to stay in business. Maybe the free-as-in-beer WMP is a first step toward this, or a test project, or...
Or maybe I didn't get enough sleep and am still dreaming... Just random thoughts spewing out here. Resume normal discussion at this time;p
Years ago, I knew people who wanted very badly for Microsoft to release an IE for Linux, because at the time we had no decent browsers. At the time, even I considered IE to be superior.
But, on my Linux boxes, I gave it time, and sure enough we have several better-than-IE browsers (Mozilla, Konqueror, Opera, etc).
The same can be said about MS Office. We now have a few alternatives (though I *hate* that Open/StarOffice tries to mimic MS Office down to the last detail...)
Likewise, MPlayer for Linux is coming along quite nicely. Unlike WMP on my Windows box, MPlayer consistantly plays 98% of the video files I run across, where WMP likes to suddenly stop working for various reasons, or start refusing to play certain types of files (currently Divx 4 won't play, and MP3 audio is severely clipped).
Plus, I don't consider WMP to be a one-stop end-all solution even on Windows. For QuickTime I have to use Apple's player. Many Divx files need to be played in a Divx-specific application (I know WMP is *supposed* to work with various CODECS but in practice it gives meaningless error messages).
MPlayer on Linux, OTOH, is pretty good about playing the majority of file formats I wind up with. This is why my "media box" runs Linux/MPlayer (with no X; just using the vesa output gives nice results). At the moment, QuickTime with "compressed headers" won't play. All other files I have (300+ video files, various sources) play back nicely.
I personally don't want Microsoft invading my non-MS systems. I use Windows a lot, sure, but the oddities in IE/WMP/Office/etc are part of the reason I use Linux on other systems - the systems where I won't put up with odd, random behavior from software, like my media box.
And I won't even get started on the idea of having DRM on my Linux boxes...
Bayesian classification, by definition, cannot have a zero false-positive rate without a 100% false-negative rate except in the most trivial cases.
I should have clarified, but even in my experience there wasn't a zero false-positive rate. Early on, I did get a couple mailing list subscriptions (which I had legitimately subscribed to) marked as Junk.
But it is low, lower than any other type of filtering I have seen/used so far to date. The point is, as long as you double check (once per day perhaps) the classification, it can still save a lot of time.
...but I am quite certain that it wouldn't last very long if spammers were trying to avoid it.
Well, yes, but those of us using Bayesian filters aren't the target of the spammers. Those who actually make purchases as a result of SPAM aren't running Bayesian filters. See the patern? The spammers have nothing to gain by trying to circumvent our filtering, and everything to lose, since they will have modified their message quite a lot.
That's the beauty of Bayesian filtering. It's personal. Only the individual can implement the filter, it's not something that will be done at the ISP level. So the spammers have no reason to try and circumvent it. Anyone using it will, most likely, not ever make a purchase or otherwise respond to SPAM.
This article actually makes a similar point to yours. Read it through -- I responded to his challenge at the end, with a similar (but longer-winded) version of the above. Granted, he has a lot of good ideas, but I don't think spammers will put that much into defeating filtering that only those who are seriously against SPAM will use anyway.
I've always got the Errata to my Yahoo account. Are you sure you did not block them by mistake?
Actually, this only happened a few weeks ago (when I first downloaded RH 8.0). I told Yahoo to allow that specific address since then, as well as reported it as "Not SPAM". Possibly they fixed this since then.
And if I'm your customer, do I have a right to disable this blocking?
Of course not. But you do have the right to take your business elsewhere, if they don't give you that option.
This is why I like Yahoo mail's method. Though it uses BrightMail, which isn't perfect, mail classified as "Junk" goes in the Bulk folder. I can then scan the subject lines or, if warranted, the email itself, to see if I agree with the classification.
But if I found that my ISP were doing some sort of filtering, keeping me from seeing email sent to me, I'd be furious (luckily I run my own servers so this isn't an issue). It's more like censorship in my opinion.
At the very least it should be *optional* and opt-in. Simply rejecting mail coming from a particular country is rediculous (what if I have friends/relatives there?).
Anyway, I certainly hope this practice is clearly disclosed upon signup for Internet service... and not buried in an EULA-type of document.
...what happens when your filter is attuned to emails between you and your buddies, and suddenly a proposal comes in from an employer, or a partner, or a customer? This single lost email could be incredibly damaging...
Personally, I will always at least review the subjects of the 'junk mail' periodically. Currently the Mozilla implementation doesn't treat Junk any differently, other than setting the flag. When it's able to "Move to Junk Folder" I'll still double-check.
The difference is, I can do that once per day. A quick scan of subject lines will rule out the vast majority at a glance (mentions of Viagra, Toner Cartridges, etc) and the questionable ones will get opened for further examination. I estimate about two minutes out of my day, on my own time, to make sure no false positives are in the Junk bin.
Beyond that, Junk mail coming in won't interrupt me while I'm working. I do occasionally receive important mail that needs immediate attention, and the absolute worst case scenerio (in my plan) is that an important message will be marked as SPAM, and only be seen by me at the end of the day.
In practice this would be very rare. So far, I've only had a couple false positives in the early beginning, and these were mailing lists I'd agreed to receive messages from that otherwise may have sounded like SPAM. Now these are getting through no problem.
So, end result -- I don't think Bayesian filtering is the end-all solution, but to be able to classify email upon arrival, and later double-check its work, is the best solution I've seen yet. Sure, some users will end up "trusting" it and might get burned, but that's their fault for putting too much trust into Bayesian (or any) filtering.
If I'm an ISP, I damn well have a right to block all e-mail from China and Argentina and it has nothing to do with "geopolitics and democracy."
And if I'm your customer, do I have a right to disable this blocking? I sell shareware and a lot of support email (and, though infrequently, legit registrations) come from these countries.
This is why I'm all for Bayesian filtering, since it's customized to each individual user. Not all customers of any ISP, no matter how small, will have the exact same idea of what constitutes SPAM... I don't want my email blocked because it comes from an RBL or a particular country.
Crap, I've made quite a few posts with the double-S up to now... ugh! Gotta love Google Suggestions though:)
...the success of Bayesian Filtering is because it is rare:...
I'm not sure about this. The success of Bayesian filtering (rather, Classification) is that it learns what you, the end-user, considers SPAM. How does a SPAMmer learn what you, personally, don't consider to be SPAM?
Currently I get a TON of SPAM with "jm4n" in the subject (my most common email username), and often it sounds like a reply to a personal email ("thanks for your email! Look at my web site and see me naked!").
But the point is, since it learns, and it's completely based on individuals (rather than some generic description of what constitutes SPAM), it works rather well -- better than you might imagine. I suspect this will work in the future.
I also mentioned:
If some implementation were to add common word-groups instead of just word occurrances, it might even be more rock-solid
Currently Bayesian classification is extremely simplistic. It classifies word-counts, and figures if the word "Viagra" never appears in "real" mail, and often appears in "Junk" mail, then this is a key indicator that this is SPAM.
If this were extended to word groups (say, groups of words that appear together frequently, like "penis enlargement" or "work from home"), it could even be more effective. I'm tempted to work on some Perl scripts to implement this even further than what Mozilla does (and, being on the server-side, stop wasting bandwidth on my DSL; not to mention multiple-client compatibility)...
If a SPAM doesn't appear in my inbox, was it ever sent?
In my opinion? No.
See, my bandwidth isn't much of an issue. I have DSL that goes largely unused. My server sits on a DS3 that, again, goes largely unused.
So for me personally, and all 300+ clients on my servers, the biggest problem with SPAM is the time spent manually classifying it, and deleting it. And being interrupted in the middle of something when the 'new mail' notification sounds.
So for me personally, Bayessian filtering offers enough of a solution to eliminate the problem as I see it.
I don't think we will ever fix the problem any further than that. Stopping SPAM will only happen when everything is controlled and regulated -- and I don't want to see that happen. I don't what "white lists", and I don't want to approve each sender, and I don't want to have to "sign" emails through a trusted authority.
I want to decide what I personally want in my Inbox and what I don't, and let my client sort it out from there.
Band-Aid(TM)? Perhaps. But anything further can potentially take away freedoms we currently have (like being able to send an email to an address found on a web site to ask a question or propose a business opportunity, without fear of being labeled a SPAMMER).
...make it illegal to collaborate in financial transactions for companies that use spam. In other words VISA, MC, Discover, Amex etc, can't collect for any transaction for a product or service that used spam to advertise it.
So, put the burden on Visa, MC, Discover, Amex etc to research every one of their clients to determine whether that client may have, at some point, used SPAM advertising? Do you know what kind of extra hoops legitimate businesses would have to jump through to be approved to accept credit cards then?
Let's see... Second National Bank of FunkyTown, IL, receives money from Visa, who processed a transaction from an online CC processor gateway, who is acting on behalf of an online retailer, reselling for a product vendor, who's affiliate sold a product through his affiliate's Geocities web site, who may have at some point sent an email to someone who reported it as SPAM.
So, by your logic, everyone involved here is punished.
Legislation is not the answer. As long as SPAM is profitable, SPAM will be here. If you don't like SPAM, my recommendation is to use some form of Bayessian filtering/classification on your incoming email. Sure, it's not a complete solution (bandwidth/disk space is still being wasted) but it's certainly the best solution I've seen in quite some time.
When users wisen up (won't happen, ever), maybe SPAM will go away on its own. But the fact remains: Infomercials work, so they continue to appear. Annoying loud and obnoxious ass commercials work, so they will always be around. Product placement works, so we'll always see Sony TVs, Pepsi cola, and Apple Computers in movies/television shows.
Likewise, SPAM works, obviously, or it wouldn't be used as much as it is.
And we all know, educating Joe Sixpack isn't the answer. Joe will happily run the.exe attachment in Outlook, forward the latest hoax to his entire AOL list, insist that "InternetBOOST" really made his 56k modem scream, and buy "mini-RC cars" since they are, apparently, the lastest craze. Joe doesn't want to be educated...
Anyway, my point was simply that crazy legislation won't help, and I think there should be simple laws making unsolicited bulk commercial advertisements via email illegal, much like current FAX-SPAM laws. Anything more, and one becomes scared to send an email to someone we don't know, especially if it involves a business proposition.
Don't like what's coming into your Inbox? Use client-side filtering, not laws. We hate the DMCA, because we insist that technology should be embraced, instead of hiding behind laws. Why shouldn't that apply here as well?
Name one technological measure which has a zero false-positive rate
Bayessian Classification
a low false-negative rate
Bayessian Classification
and a snowball's chance in hell of being adopted.
Mozilla has (very preliminary) Bayessian classification. So far, that part works great - not a single false-positive in weeks of use (I've been using it since 1.3a was released), and once they add the ability to auto-mark-as-read and move/delete SPAM, I'm all set.
The problem should address spam at the server side, since it's already wasting space by the time it's allowed onto a client machine.
I'm not sure if you are referring to the origin server, or the receiving server (in which case it has already wasted space/bandwidth), but the receiving server could easily implement Bayessian filtering as well. It would take some work on the part of the clients to make it work (or perhaps simply forward junk mail to a local address that classifies it as SPAM?)...
I personally am okay with doing this in the client, as long as the Mozilla team continues to improve this feature. Currently I'm still interrupted and must mark the messages as "read", but eventually I won't have to ever see SPAM.
I'm normally not all that fanatic about software or software-ideas, but Bayessian filtering just plain works. If some implementation were to add common word-groups instead of just word occurrances, it might even be more rock-solid, but even as it stands in Mozilla's implementation, it has serious promise.
Implemented as a Perl script on the server-side, one could easily eliminate the problem all together for each user (since everyone has a different idea of what constitutes SPAM).
A classic example of this: Yahoo mail uses a more global approach to SPAM classification (BrightMail I believe). Unfortunately the RedHat Eratta mails fall into the Junk folder, since apparently many Yahoo users consider it SPAM. Similarly, I still get "notification@mailsweeps.com" SPAM in my inbox, no matter how many times I report it as SPAM.
This is where Bayessian filtering, which works on individual users, solves the problem.
Anyway, if it isn't obvious, I'm all for using technology to solve the problem, especially now that a very promising technology is currently available. Legislation won't help, unless it's globally enforced, and even then it still won't help much. Bayessian lets the user define what he or she considers SPAM, which will vary from user to user, making it the most logical approach IMO.
I think the current political climate in Germany is not in favor of new nuclear power plants, and more or less the same goes for Sweden.
I can't cite the source of where I read that at, so I could easily be wrong. But I still disagree with the policy myself...
To me it makes sense to avoid nuclear power, given that the resulting waste products are unquestionably very dangerous, and have to be safely stored for an extremely long time.
I know this is way off topic... but a nuclear power plant generates about 1.5 tons of waste (about a cubic meter) per *year* per reactor. In reality, this isn't that much, and the environmental impact isn't nearly as bad as, say, burning tons of coal every day.
Disposal wouldn't be a big problem; the real concern is keeping the waste out of reach of those who might use it to make nuclear weapons (since it has a high Plutonium content). A secure storage facility could easily be built that would handle all nuclear power plant waste for many years, I would imagine.
In reality the pollution caused by coal-burning plants is far worse. It's a known fact that if you were to use the uranium that occurrs naturally in coal (as impurities) in a nuclear reactor, you'd get some thousand times the heat generation than you would by primitively burning the coal itself...
A good paper on the subject is available here. I recently read a much better one but I can't seem to find it... the above is something I dug up on a quick Google search, but it states many of the same things.
I'm not sure if this falls under Science, but what about Nuclear power? The US currently has a policy against building any new nuclear power plants, which is based on nonsense. We're the only country with such a policy, and I think it's rediculous...
I did a lot of reading on the subject after the Chernobyl article, facinating stuff. I never knew about this policy before.
Apparently the only reason noone wants to chance this policy is that it would be a bad political move (piss off all the ill-informed anti-nuclear people). If only people were willing to become educated on a subject before protesting against it (most anti-nuclear arguments are based on uninformed assumptions, it seems)...
Come to think of it, if I had an opportunity to influence political figures, the first thing I'd do is try to ban religious-based state laws, ruling them unconstitutional. Specifically, state laws that disallow alcohol purchase on Sundays are based purely on the beliefs of some particular religion. I like to relax with a beer on my "day of rest", and unfortunatly in GA I have to plan ahead, something I'm not very good at.
But that's me, my priorities are all screwed up:p I'll let someone else -- with actual scientific goals -- have this opportunity.
FYI: Ctrl+Esc has the same function as the Windows key.
Well, almost. I hated the Windows key at first, and made mine into "Any" keys (with a sharpie) on one keyboard.
But holding the Windows key and pressing 'D', for example, clears your desktop (minimizes all windows). Win+R gives you the Start --> Run box; Win+E pops up Windows Explorer, and there are others.
CTRL+ESC only gives you that stupid "Pop up the start menu" feature (and has since long before the Win-keys). I honestly hate that function being on the Windows keys, and wish I could have Win-keys that DIDN'T do that (but still provided the shortcut functions). Too many times I've hit the Win-key by accident, meaning to hit CTRL or ALT... and so I lose focus where I was typing and see the start menu. When I actually want to pop up the start menu, I'm still in the habit of hitting CTRL+ESC anyway.
On Linux they're handy. On my RedHat systems the Windows keys switch consoles (similar to ALT+left and right arrows), while the "right-click" key toggles between the current and previous consoles.
What I am impressed with is how quickly the admin responded to the load. I wonder what brought it to his attention?
Actually, my guess would be that this is their error handler - a generic message that the PHP script spits out on error. It seems to be sporadic at the moment, reload once or twice (but don't go crazy on the poor box) and it'll come up.
Much better to see that message (and think they are fixing the problem currently) than to see something like:
Warning: mysql_connect(): Too many connections in/home/foo/bar/connect.php line 121
Followed by numerous 0 is not a valid MySQL result index and similar, due to zero error handling... it's all too common these days.
I also didn't mention, but the access times and transfer speed on the TravelStar are quite good (perceived, not measured). I'm running tri-boot currently (Win2k, Win98, RH8), and have done more partitioning and OS installs than I can count (I do lots of testing on the laptop) -- never a problem with that drive.
The noises scared me at first, as it reminded me of the numerous WD Caviar drives -- they made similar noises before dying, which was quite frequent.
In the time I've had the laptop, I've had two desktop drives fail, neither of which made any odd noises at all (one Maxtor, one Quantum)... so I no longer worry (much) about the TravelStar (and I no longer cringe when it makes the sound).
Last year or so they have stopped selling that feature. Now you have to sign up, or the Tivo won't do anything.
Yeah, I was actually pretty pissed when they did that. I cancelled my service when I moved (decided not to get cable this time, not much need for Tivo), and it seems one of the software updates added nag screens if you don't have a service account. It spams you in the "Message Center", and gives you a nag screen every time you try to use certain functions -- functions that wouldn't have needed a service account. Very annoying.
If I were worried about it, I'd complain, since the Tivo I purchased was perfectly functional without service; now it's not, and I don't even have it connected anymore because of it. The worst part is, I've paid more in monthly fees by now than the lifetime subscription would have cost...
I plan to go Satellite eventually, and I'll make sure I get a good tuner with built-in PVR, which IMO is the next logical step in PVR technology (no subscription fees (I hope? Sat. tuners already have this data...), no clumbsy IR-blaster, dual-tuners, etc).
I have a Maxtor 80 GB drive (5400 RPM, and I suspect it's a relabeled Quantum) that is pretty much silent. It looks just like the 13.6 GB Quantum drive that came in the Tivo, which is also pretty quiet (but not as quiet as the newer 80 GB).
OTOH I had a Maxtor 7200 RPM 40 GB drive that I could hear spin up from two rooms over, and the idle (spinning) noise was pretty loud too. That drive died eventually, but all of Maxtor's 7200 RPM drives I've used (we used them in MySQL servers) were loud like that, though the Quantum Atlas 10k SCSI drives were like jets taking off on spinup...
I'm pretty sure they already know how to make quieter drives, and it depends on the target application. Some of the Tivo drives run at 4400 RPM, and I'm sure there are many other tweaks that can be done. For realtime MPEG video, there's quite a bit of room to trade-off performance for speed, so any set-top box application can easily find quieter drives I'm sure.
Going into a store (or a web site) and looking at drives, you rarely find any info on how much noise they make. But when you're building set-top boxes, planning to do a lot of business purchasing drives, I'm sure you will find that info quite easily...
The Tivo is a LOT quieter than my VCR. I keep them both in an enclosed entertainment center (glass doors etc), and I never hear the Tivo.
The IBM TravelStar drive in my notebook makes constant irritating noises, even when it's not doing anything.
I have the same issue. The original Toshiba (6 GB) in my laptop was dead silent; the TravelStar I replaced it with (20 GB) seems to always make click noises. I still can't tell audibly when it's accessing data -- it's just the random clunks and such.
IBM reports this as normal behavior, and it's been 18+ months and no problems yet...
Slashdot Mirror
...but that doesn't help me at all when I do business with a small business on the net who hired some dipshit to do their online store but didn't properly secure my database and suddenly someone is using my credit card number to buy lingerie for hookers...
Well, you should know the risks, and only give such information to reputable vendors. Giving your debit card number to random sites, is asking for trouble.
I have a much bigger problem with (for example) Pizza places who, as you read each 4-digit block to them on the phone, they read it aloud back to you. In a public store, where anyone can over-hear.
Or stores who print the CC# on the receipt (this is becoming more rare, luckily). Back in the day, it was all too easy to find receipts at gas stations ("pay at the pump") with customers' card numbers on them. Most now ask if you want a receipt, and don't include those details, so it's getting better.
My point is, you have to be careful no matter what you do. If you choose reputable vendors (online or off), you can be confident that they have in fact hired competent contractors to handle their computer and CC processing needs.
I'd recommend keeping an extra disk on hand from old machine...
Better yet, I'd recommend making sure the shop you take the machine to is reputable, and knows what they are doing (and understands the value of your data). Make sure they know not to touch your data without calling you first with backup options, etc.
Another significant reason to do this (and IMHO another ripe area for regulation) is that you aren't giving the guy in the repair shop access to your data...
I think any reputable shop won't go browsing through your pr0n or email. Again, research the shop first. Talk to the shop manager, or at least the person who's going to dig into the box. Or if it's a bigger shop, read their policies.
There is no need for regulation in my opinion. There are plenty of users who's data doesn't mean squat to them, and these users won't care to pay the extra fees to compensate for having to have "licenced PC repair persons". Like with anything else, some shops will be of higher quality and integrity than others. You get what you pay for...
A better question is .... why don't they back it up before they work on it and possibly fuck it up?
I did warranty repairs on Gatway PCs for a short-term contract. Before the PC was shipped to us, the user had to sign a paper, with one of two items checked:
[_] I have already backed up my data and you can fdisk/format blah blah
[_] Please back up my data and charge me $outrageous_fee
About 5 (out of some 500) chose the backup option, and we just snagged certain file types/locations (My Documents, etc) in another PC and burned them to a CD.
We of course only charged the fee if a format was necessary, but since the majority of the "repairs" we had were Windows issues -- and we weren't allowed to spend time trouble-shooting that -- we just popped a restore disc in the machine and rebooted.
This is a bit OT, but why did HP put a "Do Not Remove" cap over the on-board VGA connector? There are perfectly valid reasons to run multiple monitors (especially on a "Media PC"), and there doesn't seem to be any reason to cap the connector off...
Obviously the GeForce is a better card, but... why use a board with onboard video, just to cap it off? Seems like a hack to me; perhaps a driver conflict caused concern, so they disabled it in the BIOS and capped it off.. but it's very unprofessional IMO.
Just a nitpick I guess...
But of those three, Mozilla and Opera were both developed by commercial companies (Netscape/AOL and Opera Software respectively).
First, I don't have a problem with them being commercial. Second, Mozilla is open source. The fact that its development was funded by a commercial company is irrelevant to me. Heck, lots of Linux kernel development is funded by corporations (even Linus has a job).
My reason for holding out was simply because I hate the idea that every computer needs Microsoft software to run. We don't need IE, we have plenty of fine browsers. I admit to not having used Konqueror much, and I don't personally care for Opera, but Mozilla in its current form is the best browser I've ever used, period.
Of course it's all subjective, and everyone's tastes vary quite a bit.
mplayer has poor video/audio synchronisation during DVD playback.
I haven't used its DVD playback, but on corrupted AVI files, it handles A/V sync better than WMP does in most cases. On non-corrupted files I've never seen an issue at all. Either DVD is handled differently, or perhaps it's specific to your system. I'll have to give it a try on my laptop (the only machine I have with a DVD drive)...
They're fine for the current typical Linux user and they get the job done, but for anybody who is looking for more mainstream adoption, all applications, including media players, need that extra refinement that tends to come with commercial applications.
Ah, I see where the problem is now. My argument was *not* about mainstream adoption. It was about the current typical Linux user. The current Linux user doesn't want IE, WMP, etc. We have no problem fiddling with config files for a few hours, writing wrapper scripts, etc. Once it's all set up of course, it's easy.
I personally use a custom front-end to MPlayer (and to mpg123) on the media box. Interface is on the television, and an ATI remote controls the system. My non-savvy girlfriend can play movies and listen to music, it's easier to use than a Tivo (and yes, once it's refined I'll release it, one of these days...)
Anyway, I'm not sure I want "mainstream adoption" of Linux on the desktop. Personally, I don't care what the average person uses. Linux has its purposes for me, as does Windows, and I'm okay with the current situation (aside from monopolistic practices, but even without that the average user will still use Windows, IMO).
I don't mean to sound elitist -- and it's not that I don't want Linux to succeed on the desktop. I just don't see an immediate need for it, when most users are perfectly fine with what they already have, already know, and their job requires them to know. They don't want or need to learn something new.
An interesting thought occurrs: if Microsoft got out of the business of pushing their Operating System (not necessarily stopping production, just playing nice), and got more into the applications-development side of things, what would we then think about Microsoft?
;p
For example, they release Linux, Solaris and *BSD versions of Office, WMP, IE, and other software, all fully functional and roughly equal to (say) the Mac versions. Likewise, they no longer resort to monopolistic tactics to push their OS monopoly, realizing that they can do better selling applications, and not worrying about which OS you use. Perhaps they even focus more on security in their software products (ignoring the OS for now).
Would most of us reconsider how we think of Microsoft? If they slowly did away with the things we tend to hate the most, and focused on quality software, would they then be just another vendor (albeit extremely huge)?
I posted earlier answering "Not me" on the WMP issue, but it really isn't too late for Microsoft to wisen up. I believe they make more money from Office sales than OS sales, but the OS monopoly helped with that. Perhaps they realize they are losing/will lose the OS monopoly, and need to focus on quality cross-platform applications to stay in business. Maybe the free-as-in-beer WMP is a first step toward this, or a test project, or...
Or maybe I didn't get enough sleep and am still dreaming... Just random thoughts spewing out here. Resume normal discussion at this time
Would anyone want to use MS WMP in Linux?
I certainly would not.
Years ago, I knew people who wanted very badly for Microsoft to release an IE for Linux, because at the time we had no decent browsers. At the time, even I considered IE to be superior.
But, on my Linux boxes, I gave it time, and sure enough we have several better-than-IE browsers (Mozilla, Konqueror, Opera, etc).
The same can be said about MS Office. We now have a few alternatives (though I *hate* that Open/StarOffice tries to mimic MS Office down to the last detail...)
Likewise, MPlayer for Linux is coming along quite nicely. Unlike WMP on my Windows box, MPlayer consistantly plays 98% of the video files I run across, where WMP likes to suddenly stop working for various reasons, or start refusing to play certain types of files (currently Divx 4 won't play, and MP3 audio is severely clipped).
Plus, I don't consider WMP to be a one-stop end-all solution even on Windows. For QuickTime I have to use Apple's player. Many Divx files need to be played in a Divx-specific application (I know WMP is *supposed* to work with various CODECS but in practice it gives meaningless error messages).
MPlayer on Linux, OTOH, is pretty good about playing the majority of file formats I wind up with. This is why my "media box" runs Linux/MPlayer (with no X; just using the vesa output gives nice results). At the moment, QuickTime with "compressed headers" won't play. All other files I have (300+ video files, various sources) play back nicely.
I personally don't want Microsoft invading my non-MS systems. I use Windows a lot, sure, but the oddities in IE/WMP/Office/etc are part of the reason I use Linux on other systems - the systems where I won't put up with odd, random behavior from software, like my media box.
And I won't even get started on the idea of having DRM on my Linux boxes...
Wrong.
...but I am quite certain that it wouldn't last very long if spammers were trying to avoid it.
Bayesian classification, by definition, cannot have a zero false-positive rate without a 100% false-negative rate except in the most trivial cases.
I should have clarified, but even in my experience there wasn't a zero false-positive rate. Early on, I did get a couple mailing list subscriptions (which I had legitimately subscribed to) marked as Junk.
But it is low, lower than any other type of filtering I have seen/used so far to date. The point is, as long as you double check (once per day perhaps) the classification, it can still save a lot of time.
Well, yes, but those of us using Bayesian filters aren't the target of the spammers. Those who actually make purchases as a result of SPAM aren't running Bayesian filters. See the patern? The spammers have nothing to gain by trying to circumvent our filtering, and everything to lose, since they will have modified their message quite a lot.
That's the beauty of Bayesian filtering. It's personal. Only the individual can implement the filter, it's not something that will be done at the ISP level. So the spammers have no reason to try and circumvent it. Anyone using it will, most likely, not ever make a purchase or otherwise respond to SPAM.
This article actually makes a similar point to yours. Read it through -- I responded to his challenge at the end, with a similar (but longer-winded) version of the above. Granted, he has a lot of good ideas, but I don't think spammers will put that much into defeating filtering that only those who are seriously against SPAM will use anyway.
I've always got the Errata to my Yahoo account. Are you sure you did not block them by mistake?
Actually, this only happened a few weeks ago (when I first downloaded RH 8.0). I told Yahoo to allow that specific address since then, as well as reported it as "Not SPAM". Possibly they fixed this since then.
Of course not. But you do have the right to take your business elsewhere, if they don't give you that option.
This is why I like Yahoo mail's method. Though it uses BrightMail, which isn't perfect, mail classified as "Junk" goes in the Bulk folder. I can then scan the subject lines or, if warranted, the email itself, to see if I agree with the classification.
But if I found that my ISP were doing some sort of filtering, keeping me from seeing email sent to me, I'd be furious (luckily I run my own servers so this isn't an issue). It's more like censorship in my opinion.
At the very least it should be *optional* and opt-in. Simply rejecting mail coming from a particular country is rediculous (what if I have friends/relatives there?).
Anyway, I certainly hope this practice is clearly disclosed upon signup for Internet service... and not buried in an EULA-type of document.
...what happens when your filter is attuned to emails between you and your buddies, and suddenly a proposal comes in from an employer, or a partner, or a customer? This single lost email could be incredibly damaging...
Personally, I will always at least review the subjects of the 'junk mail' periodically. Currently the Mozilla implementation doesn't treat Junk any differently, other than setting the flag. When it's able to "Move to Junk Folder" I'll still double-check.
The difference is, I can do that once per day. A quick scan of subject lines will rule out the vast majority at a glance (mentions of Viagra, Toner Cartridges, etc) and the questionable ones will get opened for further examination. I estimate about two minutes out of my day, on my own time, to make sure no false positives are in the Junk bin.
Beyond that, Junk mail coming in won't interrupt me while I'm working. I do occasionally receive important mail that needs immediate attention, and the absolute worst case scenerio (in my plan) is that an important message will be marked as SPAM, and only be seen by me at the end of the day.
In practice this would be very rare. So far, I've only had a couple false positives in the early beginning, and these were mailing lists I'd agreed to receive messages from that otherwise may have sounded like SPAM. Now these are getting through no problem.
So, end result -- I don't think Bayesian filtering is the end-all solution, but to be able to classify email upon arrival, and later double-check its work, is the best solution I've seen yet. Sure, some users will end up "trusting" it and might get burned, but that's their fault for putting too much trust into Bayesian (or any) filtering.
If I'm an ISP, I damn well have a right to block all e-mail from China and Argentina and it has nothing to do with "geopolitics and democracy."
And if I'm your customer, do I have a right to disable this blocking? I sell shareware and a lot of support email (and, though infrequently, legit registrations) come from these countries.
This is why I'm all for Bayesian filtering, since it's customized to each individual user. Not all customers of any ISP, no matter how small, will have the exact same idea of what constitutes SPAM... I don't want my email blocked because it comes from an RBL or a particular country.
Just as an aside it's "Bayesian".
:)
...the success of Bayesian Filtering is because it is rare:...
Crap, I've made quite a few posts with the double-S up to now... ugh! Gotta love Google Suggestions though
I'm not sure about this. The success of Bayesian filtering (rather, Classification) is that it learns what you, the end-user, considers SPAM. How does a SPAMmer learn what you, personally, don't consider to be SPAM?
Currently I get a TON of SPAM with "jm4n" in the subject (my most common email username), and often it sounds like a reply to a personal email ("thanks for your email! Look at my web site and see me naked!").
But the point is, since it learns, and it's completely based on individuals (rather than some generic description of what constitutes SPAM), it works rather well -- better than you might imagine. I suspect this will work in the future.
I also mentioned:
If some implementation were to add common word-groups instead of just word occurrances, it might even be more rock-solid
Currently Bayesian classification is extremely simplistic. It classifies word-counts, and figures if the word "Viagra" never appears in "real" mail, and often appears in "Junk" mail, then this is a key indicator that this is SPAM.
If this were extended to word groups (say, groups of words that appear together frequently, like "penis enlargement" or "work from home"), it could even be more effective. I'm tempted to work on some Perl scripts to implement this even further than what Mozilla does (and, being on the server-side, stop wasting bandwidth on my DSL; not to mention multiple-client compatibility)...
If a SPAM doesn't appear in my inbox, was it ever sent?
In my opinion? No.
See, my bandwidth isn't much of an issue. I have DSL that goes largely unused. My server sits on a DS3 that, again, goes largely unused.
So for me personally, and all 300+ clients on my servers, the biggest problem with SPAM is the time spent manually classifying it, and deleting it. And being interrupted in the middle of something when the 'new mail' notification sounds.
So for me personally, Bayessian filtering offers enough of a solution to eliminate the problem as I see it.
I don't think we will ever fix the problem any further than that. Stopping SPAM will only happen when everything is controlled and regulated -- and I don't want to see that happen. I don't what "white lists", and I don't want to approve each sender, and I don't want to have to "sign" emails through a trusted authority.
I want to decide what I personally want in my Inbox and what I don't, and let my client sort it out from there.
Band-Aid(TM)? Perhaps. But anything further can potentially take away freedoms we currently have (like being able to send an email to an address found on a web site to ask a question or propose a business opportunity, without fear of being labeled a SPAMMER).
...make it illegal to collaborate in financial transactions for companies that use spam. In other words VISA, MC, Discover, Amex etc, can't collect for any transaction for a product or service that used spam to advertise it.
.exe attachment in Outlook, forward the latest hoax to his entire AOL list, insist that "InternetBOOST" really made his 56k modem scream, and buy "mini-RC cars" since they are, apparently, the lastest craze. Joe doesn't want to be educated...
So, put the burden on Visa, MC, Discover, Amex etc to research every one of their clients to determine whether that client may have, at some point, used SPAM advertising? Do you know what kind of extra hoops legitimate businesses would have to jump through to be approved to accept credit cards then?
Let's see... Second National Bank of FunkyTown, IL, receives money from Visa, who processed a transaction from an online CC processor gateway, who is acting on behalf of an online retailer, reselling for a product vendor, who's affiliate sold a product through his affiliate's Geocities web site, who may have at some point sent an email to someone who reported it as SPAM.
So, by your logic, everyone involved here is punished.
Legislation is not the answer. As long as SPAM is profitable, SPAM will be here. If you don't like SPAM, my recommendation is to use some form of Bayessian filtering/classification on your incoming email. Sure, it's not a complete solution (bandwidth/disk space is still being wasted) but it's certainly the best solution I've seen in quite some time.
When users wisen up (won't happen, ever), maybe SPAM will go away on its own. But the fact remains: Infomercials work, so they continue to appear. Annoying loud and obnoxious ass commercials work, so they will always be around. Product placement works, so we'll always see Sony TVs, Pepsi cola, and Apple Computers in movies/television shows.
Likewise, SPAM works, obviously, or it wouldn't be used as much as it is.
And we all know, educating Joe Sixpack isn't the answer. Joe will happily run the
Anyway, my point was simply that crazy legislation won't help, and I think there should be simple laws making unsolicited bulk commercial advertisements via email illegal, much like current FAX-SPAM laws. Anything more, and one becomes scared to send an email to someone we don't know, especially if it involves a business proposition.
Don't like what's coming into your Inbox? Use client-side filtering, not laws. We hate the DMCA, because we insist that technology should be embraced, instead of hiding behind laws. Why shouldn't that apply here as well?
a = law passed
b = law fails
c = i quit
(a ^ b) => c
Hm, more realistically would be:
a = law_passed;
b = law_fails;
c = iQuit();
if(a && b) c();
Name one technological measure which has a zero false-positive rate
Bayessian Classification
a low false-negative rate
Bayessian Classification
and a snowball's chance in hell of being adopted.
Mozilla has (very preliminary) Bayessian classification. So far, that part works great - not a single false-positive in weeks of use (I've been using it since 1.3a was released), and once they add the ability to auto-mark-as-read and move/delete SPAM, I'm all set.
The problem should address spam at the server side, since it's already wasting space by the time it's allowed onto a client machine.
I'm not sure if you are referring to the origin server, or the receiving server (in which case it has already wasted space/bandwidth), but the receiving server could easily implement Bayessian filtering as well. It would take some work on the part of the clients to make it work (or perhaps simply forward junk mail to a local address that classifies it as SPAM?)...
I personally am okay with doing this in the client, as long as the Mozilla team continues to improve this feature. Currently I'm still interrupted and must mark the messages as "read", but eventually I won't have to ever see SPAM.
I'm normally not all that fanatic about software or software-ideas, but Bayessian filtering just plain works. If some implementation were to add common word-groups instead of just word occurrances, it might even be more rock-solid, but even as it stands in Mozilla's implementation, it has serious promise.
Implemented as a Perl script on the server-side, one could easily eliminate the problem all together for each user (since everyone has a different idea of what constitutes SPAM).
A classic example of this: Yahoo mail uses a more global approach to SPAM classification (BrightMail I believe). Unfortunately the RedHat Eratta mails fall into the Junk folder, since apparently many Yahoo users consider it SPAM. Similarly, I still get "notification@mailsweeps.com" SPAM in my inbox, no matter how many times I report it as SPAM.
This is where Bayessian filtering, which works on individual users, solves the problem.
Anyway, if it isn't obvious, I'm all for using technology to solve the problem, especially now that a very promising technology is currently available. Legislation won't help, unless it's globally enforced, and even then it still won't help much. Bayessian lets the user define what he or she considers SPAM, which will vary from user to user, making it the most logical approach IMO.
I think the current political climate in Germany is not in favor of new nuclear power plants, and more or less the same goes for Sweden.
I can't cite the source of where I read that at, so I could easily be wrong. But I still disagree with the policy myself...
To me it makes sense to avoid nuclear power, given that the resulting waste products are unquestionably very dangerous, and have to be safely stored for an extremely long time.
I know this is way off topic... but a nuclear power plant generates about 1.5 tons of waste (about a cubic meter) per *year* per reactor. In reality, this isn't that much, and the environmental impact isn't nearly as bad as, say, burning tons of coal every day.
Disposal wouldn't be a big problem; the real concern is keeping the waste out of reach of those who might use it to make nuclear weapons (since it has a high Plutonium content). A secure storage facility could easily be built that would handle all nuclear power plant waste for many years, I would imagine.
In reality the pollution caused by coal-burning plants is far worse. It's a known fact that if you were to use the uranium that occurrs naturally in coal (as impurities) in a nuclear reactor, you'd get some thousand times the heat generation than you would by primitively burning the coal itself...
A good paper on the subject is available here. I recently read a much better one but I can't seem to find it... the above is something I dug up on a quick Google search, but it states many of the same things.
I'm not sure if this falls under Science, but what about Nuclear power? The US currently has a policy against building any new nuclear power plants, which is based on nonsense. We're the only country with such a policy, and I think it's rediculous...
:p I'll let someone else -- with actual scientific goals -- have this opportunity.
I did a lot of reading on the subject after the Chernobyl article, facinating stuff. I never knew about this policy before.
Apparently the only reason noone wants to chance this policy is that it would be a bad political move (piss off all the ill-informed anti-nuclear people). If only people were willing to become educated on a subject before protesting against it (most anti-nuclear arguments are based on uninformed assumptions, it seems)...
Come to think of it, if I had an opportunity to influence political figures, the first thing I'd do is try to ban religious-based state laws, ruling them unconstitutional. Specifically, state laws that disallow alcohol purchase on Sundays are based purely on the beliefs of some particular religion. I like to relax with a beer on my "day of rest", and unfortunatly in GA I have to plan ahead, something I'm not very good at.
But that's me, my priorities are all screwed up
FYI: Ctrl+Esc has the same function as the Windows key.
Well, almost. I hated the Windows key at first, and made mine into "Any" keys (with a sharpie) on one keyboard.
But holding the Windows key and pressing 'D', for example, clears your desktop (minimizes all windows). Win+R gives you the Start --> Run box; Win+E pops up Windows Explorer, and there are others.
CTRL+ESC only gives you that stupid "Pop up the start menu" feature (and has since long before the Win-keys). I honestly hate that function being on the Windows keys, and wish I could have Win-keys that DIDN'T do that (but still provided the shortcut functions). Too many times I've hit the Win-key by accident, meaning to hit CTRL or ALT... and so I lose focus where I was typing and see the start menu. When I actually want to pop up the start menu, I'm still in the habit of hitting CTRL+ESC anyway.
On Linux they're handy. On my RedHat systems the Windows keys switch consoles (similar to ALT+left and right arrows), while the "right-click" key toggles between the current and previous consoles.
Actually, my guess would be that this is their error handler - a generic message that the PHP script spits out on error. It seems to be sporadic at the moment, reload once or twice (but don't go crazy on the poor box) and it'll come up.
Much better to see that message (and think they are fixing the problem currently) than to see something like:
Followed by numerous 0 is not a valid MySQL result index and similar, due to zero error handling... it's all too common these days.
I also didn't mention, but the access times and transfer speed on the TravelStar are quite good (perceived, not measured). I'm running tri-boot currently (Win2k, Win98, RH8), and have done more partitioning and OS installs than I can count (I do lots of testing on the laptop) -- never a problem with that drive.
The noises scared me at first, as it reminded me of the numerous WD Caviar drives -- they made similar noises before dying, which was quite frequent.
In the time I've had the laptop, I've had two desktop drives fail, neither of which made any odd noises at all (one Maxtor, one Quantum)... so I no longer worry (much) about the TravelStar (and I no longer cringe when it makes the sound).
Last year or so they have stopped selling that feature. Now you have to sign up, or the Tivo won't do anything.
Yeah, I was actually pretty pissed when they did that. I cancelled my service when I moved (decided not to get cable this time, not much need for Tivo), and it seems one of the software updates added nag screens if you don't have a service account. It spams you in the "Message Center", and gives you a nag screen every time you try to use certain functions -- functions that wouldn't have needed a service account. Very annoying.
If I were worried about it, I'd complain, since the Tivo I purchased was perfectly functional without service; now it's not, and I don't even have it connected anymore because of it. The worst part is, I've paid more in monthly fees by now than the lifetime subscription would have cost...
I plan to go Satellite eventually, and I'll make sure I get a good tuner with built-in PVR, which IMO is the next logical step in PVR technology (no subscription fees (I hope? Sat. tuners already have this data...), no clumbsy IR-blaster, dual-tuners, etc).
I have a Maxtor 80 GB drive (5400 RPM, and I suspect it's a relabeled Quantum) that is pretty much silent. It looks just like the 13.6 GB Quantum drive that came in the Tivo, which is also pretty quiet (but not as quiet as the newer 80 GB).
OTOH I had a Maxtor 7200 RPM 40 GB drive that I could hear spin up from two rooms over, and the idle (spinning) noise was pretty loud too. That drive died eventually, but all of Maxtor's 7200 RPM drives I've used (we used them in MySQL servers) were loud like that, though the Quantum Atlas 10k SCSI drives were like jets taking off on spinup...
I'm pretty sure they already know how to make quieter drives, and it depends on the target application. Some of the Tivo drives run at 4400 RPM, and I'm sure there are many other tweaks that can be done. For realtime MPEG video, there's quite a bit of room to trade-off performance for speed, so any set-top box application can easily find quieter drives I'm sure.
Going into a store (or a web site) and looking at drives, you rarely find any info on how much noise they make. But when you're building set-top boxes, planning to do a lot of business purchasing drives, I'm sure you will find that info quite easily...
The Tivo is a LOT quieter than my VCR. I keep them both in an enclosed entertainment center (glass doors etc), and I never hear the Tivo.
The IBM TravelStar drive in my notebook makes constant irritating noises, even when it's not doing anything.
I have the same issue. The original Toshiba (6 GB) in my laptop was dead silent; the TravelStar I replaced it with (20 GB) seems to always make click noises. I still can't tell audibly when it's accessing data -- it's just the random clunks and such.
IBM reports this as normal behavior, and it's been 18+ months and no problems yet...