Dude, the police state is here and its called the the patriot act Ashcroft is even coming to my state today to tell everyone how wonderful it is.
The problem with spam is that it is getting increasingly harder to deal with. I have one email account. Some spammy is sticking my email in his forged "return to" headers and DOSing my email account with delivery failure notifications. People with webmail accounts don't have the luxury of installing filters.
The real problem is not about creating a possible police state, but not recognizing the problem of spam as severe, which it is. Making spamming a felony and confiscating spammy's computers is not creating a police state.
What it's doing is saying that as a society at large we do not accept spamming and thus we create laws to deter it. Just like any other law that punishes stealing, forging, fraudulent activities -- all (that I might add) which is represented by the spam in my inbox.
I'd be willing to say that the majority of my fellow citizens would agree with me, with a few spammers and libertarian fanatics disagreeing with me (are you one of these?).
Or maybe you're saying that spammers should have the right of free speech no matter what. The problem of this is that a large amount of my spam consists of lies, scams and penis pills.
Should lies and scams be protected so that spammers can have "free speech"???
Concerning the penis pills, maybe the FDA should demand that they demonstrate the efficacy of giving me a 10" schlong overnight before they are sold. That represents a large chunk of spam right there. And as for the viagra varieties maybe the FDA needs to say that it is illegal to sell viagra without a real doctor's visit.
I don't see how any of these things I said creates a "police state". The police exist to provide a necessary service to citizens.
Or wuold you rather have a society ruled by outlaws???
As I said in my first sentence - the problem of escessive government damaging civil rights exists through the patriot act.
Not by throwing a few spamers in jail.
I really can't figure out your post unless you are a spammer too.
Logic doesn't come into it. It's an over powering human desire to explore, discover and just generally do cool shit.
Maybe when you see a homeless person sleeping on the street, you could think of a way that some of that cool shit could help find him a place to sleep.
One aspect is always that for media coverage it's not sexy enough to shoot couple of bots to orbit. Audience (excluding/. readers) wants to see people
Yes, you have single-handedly discovered NASA's great dilemma, the secret that they keep locked in a deep underground vault somewhere.
You have uncovered the secret of secrets grasshopper.
If they stopped sending men to orbit, they won't have any of those PR stunts like a press conference with the astronauts or a live call in with students from an elementary school somewhere.
No sexy PR means no funding from congress. Forget that the money might have been spent on a probe to detect gravity waves and thus discover the fundamental nature of the universe. That just is not sexy enough. Plus, they might as well dissolve NASA and turn it over to another governmental agency that might do more with less.
Yup, NASA means a man in space, all else be da***d.
Yeah, that HR#1342 nonsense was really annoying. They were like saying "see, we are law abiding citizens, we're doing you a favor" What BS
Scum of the earth.
I really believe that contrary to popular opinion, a tough federal spam law would make all the difference in the world.
When police catch drug runners, they seize the drug runners possesions (house and car). Why couldn't it be the same for spammy??
Think about it -- if they would lose their computers, they would have a difficult time spamming. Couple that with some pound-me-in-the-butt federal prison time, they might get the freakin' message the they are not liked
All you would need to do is catch a handful and make an example of them.
Sure, the remaining spammies might move to another country, but at least they would be on the run.
Yes, it's apparent that this ship is not manned. But the same rule applies -- what ever can be done in space, there will always be a cheaper more viable alternative on earth.
This is a knee jerk rant with all the stories of china/india other countries sending men to space.
not a pratical/scientific one. In a sense, by putting a man in space a government is saying "look at what our technical infrastructure can do." Nothing more.
This was the original reason behind the apollo program and winning the space race. Once NASA accomplished this, NASA was left with the difficult job of justifying itself, and arguably the reason why they have not had a sense of direction.
Many will not like this post with responses like;
1) We need to send a man to mars --
This would take a huge amount of money by anyone's standards. Once there, what does he do?? Plant another flag and take soil samples?? A robot could do this much cheaper. Before spending all that money on a mars mission maybe Dubya should give that prescription drug beneffit to the seniors that he promised.
2) We need man in space to mine exotic minerals from asteroids --
The fact is that it will always be economically cheaper to find those minerals on earth, no matter what. It would be cheaper to send a man to the bottom of the ocean to mine it there if need be. But why send a man to do a dangerous job when a robot can do it cheaper and more efficiently in the first place??
3) We need man in space to establish the new frontier where people can go to live --
Again, it will always be cheaper to find places on earth for people to live than to shuttle them (and all the supplies they need) to outer space. Right now it's taking 1.5 billion dollars to maintain a couple people on the international space station. If this was meant to be, how much is it going to cost to shuttle a 100 million of their fellow Americans to orbit?? To say that it will be cheaper in the future is to ignore the obvious. NASA isn't asking for less money to do their job, they're asking for more money. As it is, there is no way for them to replace the aging shuttles that like to blow up every few years. Maybe it will be cheaper in the (very) distant future, but in the history of the space program the cost has never gone down to send a few people to orbit. Maybe they could use atomic rockets. We can only imagine the fun when something goes wrong there, not to mention all the radiation spewed into the enviroment. Fusion power remains a dream occasionally energized by lasers in buildings the size of small cities for a blink of an eye.
I bet all that money that would be spent on new and improved space planes to replace the shuttles could buy vast tracts of homes built by Habitat for Humanity for people to live in. Maybe thay could take a few dollars that they were going to spend on new spacesuits and spend it on saving the enviroment we have.
Everybody has lots of ways to conquer the laws of physics to get man into space. But nobody has a way to conquer the laws of economics.
Which they already have done, with the exception a few pesky mac and linux companies/users. They will all fall into line when users can't get the app they need for the OS they are running.
They probably have secretly bought the Vatican too.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, the police state is here and its called the the patriot act Ashcroft is even coming to my state today to tell everyone how wonderful it is.
The problem with spam is that it is getting increasingly harder to deal with. I have one email account. Some spammy is sticking my email in his forged "return to" headers and DOSing my email account with delivery failure notifications. People with webmail accounts don't have the luxury of installing filters.
The real problem is not about creating a possible police state, but not recognizing the problem of spam as severe, which it is. Making spamming a felony and confiscating spammy's computers is not creating a police state.
What it's doing is saying that as a society at large we do not accept spamming and thus we create laws to deter it. Just like any other law that punishes stealing, forging, fraudulent activities -- all (that I might add) which is represented by the spam in my inbox.
I'd be willing to say that the majority of my fellow citizens would agree with me, with a few spammers and libertarian fanatics disagreeing with me (are you one of these?).
Or maybe you're saying that spammers should have the right of free speech no matter what. The problem of this is that a large amount of my spam consists of lies, scams and penis pills.
Should lies and scams be protected so that spammers can have "free speech"???
Concerning the penis pills, maybe the FDA should demand that they demonstrate the efficacy of giving me a 10" schlong overnight before they are sold. That represents a large chunk of spam right there. And as for the viagra varieties maybe the FDA needs to say that it is illegal to sell viagra without a real doctor's visit.
I don't see how any of these things I said creates a "police state". The police exist to provide a necessary service to citizens.
Or wuold you rather have a society ruled by outlaws???
As I said in my first sentence - the problem of escessive government damaging civil rights exists through the patriot act.
Not by throwing a few spamers in jail.
I really can't figure out your post unless you are a spammer too.
Logic doesn't come into it. It's an over powering human desire to explore, discover and just generally do cool shit.
Maybe when you see a homeless person sleeping on the street, you could think of a way that some of that cool shit could help find him a place to sleep.
One aspect is always that for media coverage it's not sexy enough to shoot couple of bots to orbit. Audience (excluding /. readers) wants to see people
Yes, you have single-handedly discovered NASA's great dilemma, the secret that they keep locked in a deep underground vault somewhere.
You have uncovered the secret of secrets grasshopper.
If they stopped sending men to orbit, they won't have any of those PR stunts like a press conference with the astronauts or a live call in with students from an elementary school somewhere.
No sexy PR means no funding from congress. Forget that the money might have been spent on a probe to detect gravity waves and thus discover the fundamental nature of the universe. That just is not sexy enough. Plus, they might as well dissolve NASA and turn it over to another governmental agency that might do more with less.
Yup, NASA means a man in space, all else be da***d.
interesting. I have had a huge decrease in my hotmail account. You must be on a different list.
We just need to find your spammy and cap his butt.
Yeah, that HR#1342 nonsense was really annoying. They were like saying "see, we are law abiding citizens, we're doing you a favor" What BS
Scum of the earth.
I really believe that contrary to popular opinion, a tough federal spam law would make all the difference in the world.
When police catch drug runners, they seize the drug runners possesions (house and car). Why couldn't it be the same for spammy??
Think about it -- if they would lose their computers, they would have a difficult time spamming. Couple that with some pound-me-in-the-butt federal prison time, they might get the freakin' message the they are not liked
All you would need to do is catch a handful and make an example of them.
Sure, the remaining spammies might move to another country, but at least they would be on the run.
Yes, it's apparent that this ship is not manned. But the same rule applies -- what ever can be done in space, there will always be a cheaper more viable alternative on earth.
This is a knee jerk rant with all the stories of china/india other countries sending men to space.
not a pratical/scientific one. In a sense, by putting a man in space a government is saying "look at what our technical infrastructure can do." Nothing more.
This was the original reason behind the apollo program and winning the space race. Once NASA accomplished this, NASA was left with the difficult job of justifying itself, and arguably the reason why they have not had a sense of direction.
Many will not like this post with responses like;
1) We need to send a man to mars --
This would take a huge amount of money by anyone's standards. Once there, what does he do?? Plant another flag and take soil samples?? A robot could do this much cheaper. Before spending all that money on a mars mission maybe Dubya should give that prescription drug beneffit to the seniors that he promised.
2) We need man in space to mine exotic minerals from asteroids --
The fact is that it will always be economically cheaper to find those minerals on earth, no matter what. It would be cheaper to send a man to the bottom of the ocean to mine it there if need be. But why send a man to do a dangerous job when a robot can do it cheaper and more efficiently in the first place??
3) We need man in space to establish the new frontier where people can go to live --
Again, it will always be cheaper to find places on earth for people to live than to shuttle them (and all the supplies they need) to outer space. Right now it's taking 1.5 billion dollars to maintain a couple people on the international space station. If this was meant to be, how much is it going to cost to shuttle a 100 million of their fellow Americans to orbit?? To say that it will be cheaper in the future is to ignore the obvious. NASA isn't asking for less money to do their job, they're asking for more money. As it is, there is no way for them to replace the aging shuttles that like to blow up every few years. Maybe it will be cheaper in the (very) distant future, but in the history of the space program the cost has never gone down to send a few people to orbit. Maybe they could use atomic rockets. We can only imagine the fun when something goes wrong there, not to mention all the radiation spewed into the enviroment. Fusion power remains a dream occasionally energized by lasers in buildings the size of small cities for a blink of an eye.
I bet all that money that would be spent on new and improved space planes to replace the shuttles could buy vast tracts of homes built by Habitat for Humanity for people to live in. Maybe thay could take a few dollars that they were going to spend on new spacesuits and spend it on saving the enviroment we have.
Everybody has lots of ways to conquer the laws of physics to get man into space. But nobody has a way to conquer the laws of economics.
Yup, I have had a dramatic reduction in one of my throw away hotmail accounts.
I really thought that it was because microsoft got their act together. Boy, was I fooled.
....developing a robot with capabilities of a 5-year-old.
/insert other bad robot jokes here
Will we need to spank it?? Spare the rod spoil the robot??
law enforcement did what exactly?
They bought pr0n on ebay.
I really don't think we will know the true depth of ebay scams, unless there is legislation to make it public.
If that were to happen, ebay sales would decline drastically.
Sure maybe animals do sense many impending earthquakes, but their behavior is not interpreted as pre-earthquake behavior and goes unnoticed.
Hence, they are as reliable as grandma's old bones are at predicting the weather.
If that was not true, we would have earthquake prediction by animals on a regular basis (which we do not have).
Maybe if we could learn the ways of Dr. Dolittle and talk with them we would be able to do better in this area. But I'm not holding my breath.
Interestingly, a 1975 earthquake in China was successfully predicted due in large part to strange animal behavior. A large number of lives were saved.
Needless to say, this is an extreme exception to the rule, and is about as reliable as grandma's old bones are at predicting the weather.
Which they already have done, with the exception a few pesky mac and linux companies/users. They will all fall into line when users can't get the app they need for the OS they are running.
They probably have secretly bought the Vatican too.
If anybody can bust this patent, it's microsoft. They have 521 million reasons to.
yeah, no "as the SCO turns" on sunday, which is A Good Thing(tm).
Makes me wish somebody would drive a car bomb into SCO headquarters so we wouldn't hear anymore about it.
I stand corrected
In case you haven't noticed, sunday afternoons on
The British spell it nuclear, while we spell it nuculear
That's why you will start seeing contracts that will say "This contract is governed by the laws of Virginia" as they try to leech.
A stand needs to be made against this type of scumbag behavior.
If SCO wins, the GNU/Linux vs Linux arguement is over.
Actually, it's short for GNU/Perens.
---->see my other posts for insightful answers to these questions. Who needs Bruce Perens???
Well maybe, if the linux user uses his computer as a PVR to record back-episodes of the Next Generation
Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon???
--->see my other posts for more insightful answers that are sure to be modded down. Who needs Bruce Perens???
Everyone knows that Ham Radio operators use their expensive equipment to meet hot girls, much like truckers with CB radios around truck stops.
Geeks buy lots of expensive computer equipment thinking that this will impress the ladies.
Obviously they can help each other get dates.
---->see my other posts for more insightful answers to these questions, that are sure to be modded down. Who needs Bruce Perens????