"I'd also like to think that it's due to the ISPs overwhelming desire to do the right thing and protect customer's privacy, but I'm having trouble reconciling this view completely with the generally held views of corporate entities and their desire to run profitably."
Big corporations don't have morals of any sort -- good or bad. If you want a corporation to behave as if it wanted to do the right thing then design the system such that it is in the corporation's interest to do the right thing.
The Telcos just happen to be in a position such that in this case the "right thing" is in their self interest. This is good for us.
"Of course Microsoft and the TCPA proponents will never accept my proposal (and the EFF's proposal) because the only real motivation for this hardware change is for DRM-type purposes. If owners maintain actual control over their machines and it can't be used for DRM systems then the entire project is a waste of time."
Actually, it only takes some owners. Let them implement remote attestation, but make sure it remains legal to build hardware with the EFF's owner override feature. If it's legal then there'll be a market nitch for the hardware, and the hardware will be available. I'd suggest that the value added would be about $50; which should be enough to make some currently small-time vendors drool (and probably make them large-time vendors).
More people might learn how to replace chips in their machines too...
"I bet even PDP-11 implementation looked a lot like other PDP-11 implementations by other PDP-11 programmers."
Of course, at least for those who knew the bit structure of ASCII. I imagine that people who didn't know about stuff like 040 and 060 would write stinking routines -- but even they would probably look a lot alike.
There might be a nearly infinite number of ways of coding a function, but almost all of them are rotten.
"The funniest thing is, that it probably WOULD take a huge effort by a master programmer to actually find an implementation of atoi(3) that was truely independent;-)"
Baugh. I wrote an ASCII to integer translation routine in PDP-11 Assembler in about half a day for a date function. It wouldn't take me more than a week to translate it into C. And since both the product and company are bust, there isn't anyone around to sue for copyright violation.
(Of course, reading to old tape and finding the routine would be harder than starting over...)
"... required of infomercials to uphold honesty and fair dealing."
There is no honesy and fair dealing. If you want honesty and fair dealing then start by breaking up the Big corporations. After they're gone we ought to be able to get small and medium sized businesses to behave.
Not exactly. If there is a fire it is not a crime.
More interesting in this regard are the decisions regarding insurection from the 1950s. Basically the Congress/states can make laws against speech which leads to immediate action, but not against speech which might in the future lead to action.
Very good! However, this is still not a completely settled issue. The Supreme Court has been very slow to allow any restriction of truthful speech, even commercial, based upon content -- as in, they've never done so except with regard to pornography (which they seem to be backing away from over time). At the same time, they have recognized a right to privacy (abortion clinic cases) and noted the right to free association.
The end result I'd like to see is a list various categories which I can elect to receive or not receive (e.g. commercial, religious, charitable cash, charitable other, political). I don't know how to fit this into the legal landscape, but I'd ban all but charitable other from my house. (I'm willing to give old clothes to charity, and that is about it.)
Google isn't all that good at history. Dig back to the 1700s.
Freedom of the press was an actual controversy when the Constitution was being writtem up. Some of the journalists of the day were just as bad as Rush Limpbaugh.
"Freedom is what enables you to share the truth. For some it is a goal, but for a journalist, it is a means to an end."
I can understand that, but I'd prefer to stick with "freedom of the press". If we attempt to define 'freedom' in terms of 'truth' then we shall have neither.
I'm serious about not believing in Truth, at a very fundamental level. I'd much rather talk about facts, and that which we know. I would certainly seek to censor a journalist who did not give the facts as they knew them, at least in good time -- but it would be to censor in the court of public opinion, not the court of law.
(The latinized Pali for my beliefs is anatta, anicca, dukkha. Without getting into a discussion of usual translations, I translate these as: No essence. No permanence. No perfection. As a collary, I do not believe in Truth.)
I'm inclined to think of Big Business (private interests) as the government, and thereby agree with the sentimate of not giving the government an inch.
I see business as government in two senses: 1) they are a creature created by statute, and 2) they exercize governmental control over their employees.
I have no brief against small business, and not even against medium sized business. As I see it, business is the cellular structure of society -- Big Business is cancer.
I actually know little about this Lamo, but if the government needs to invade other people's rights in order to convict him them I'm on his side -- if only for the other people's rights.
I'll let 100 guilty go free in order to avoid convicting 1 who is innocent.
I've got no problems with yellow dog journalism, but I do have problems with them claiming to be fair and balanced.
We all know that everyone has a viewpoint. I'll take someone who admits it over someone who pretends to be unbaised any day. (Of course, if their biases are different than mine I might not take them very far.)
"You must revere the truth above all else, because if you don't, you're just jerking off."
While I can see where you are coming from, I cannot agree with this statement. I think a good journalist must revere freedom before truth. Sometimes you've just got to forego printing that which you know is true in order to have the chance to explain the truth later. (Besides, due to my obscure religious beliefs, I don't believe there is such a thing as truth.)
"A legal solution would require compatible laws in 100-odd countries. We don't even have a US law on it, good luck managing it globally."
I have the feeling a lynch mob would work better than a legal solution. I also have the feeling a lynch mob wouldn't be all that hard to get together.
"It would be much easier replace E-mail software with a system that can solve the problem. We just need someone like AOL or Microsoft or the US government to initiate a switchover."
Lessee... 100+ countries... 200+ million computers (extremely conservative estimate:)...
Please define 'easier'. (P.S. You just listed the three organizations I'm most likely to ignore. I might be more willing to change over if a Debian upgrade just happened to make the change when I wasn't looking, but then again, if one of AOL, Microsoft, or the US government was backing the change I might decide to abort the upgrade.)
"And when the money leads to any one of 120 different countries?
You can certainly make it inconvient for spammers with local laws, but you can't do squat about offshore companies. I just watched a documentary where the US tried outlawing internet gambling, they simply set up shop in the Cayman Islands."
The only countries where a spammer could safely setup a long-term operation are countries which don't have much email -- i.e. Internet. All you need to do to get them kicked out of most countries is start a rumor that they're spamming within the host country. It's not the same sort of issue as gambling. What's the percentage of email users who actually like receiving spam anyway?
"It's almost as hopless to look for a spam solution through laws because the internet is a global medium."
At least for commercial spam I think you are wrong. All that is necessary to stop commercial spam is to follow the money. If the people seeking the services of spammers are treated as equally guilty of the crime then commercial spam can be quite easily closed down.
Of course, if the purpose of the spam is not to make a sale then following the money will get nowhere. (Actually, this might not be so bad. Legally all spam is treated the same, but in effect commercial spam is stopped while political/religious spam is only slowed down.)
One of the first calculator chips had a HACF (Halt and Catch Fire) instruction. It was a bug which would make the chip pop if the instruction was executed.
I've heard rumors that some of the mil spec chips deliberately include a way to fry the chip.
Slashdot Mirror
"I'd also like to think that it's due to the ISPs overwhelming desire to do the right thing and protect customer's privacy, but I'm having trouble reconciling this view completely with the generally held views of corporate entities and their desire to run profitably."
Big corporations don't have morals of any sort -- good or bad. If you want a corporation to behave as if it wanted to do the right thing then design the system such that it is in the corporation's interest to do the right thing.
The Telcos just happen to be in a position such that in this case the "right thing" is in their self interest. This is good for us.
Want to buy a key?
How many million filesharers are currently taking a crash course in computer security?
"Of course Microsoft and the TCPA proponents will never accept my proposal (and the EFF's proposal) because the only real motivation for this hardware change is for DRM-type purposes. If owners maintain actual control over their machines and it can't be used for DRM systems then the entire project is a waste of time."
Actually, it only takes some owners. Let them implement remote attestation, but make sure it remains legal to build hardware with the EFF's owner override feature. If it's legal then there'll be a market nitch for the hardware, and the hardware will be available. I'd suggest that the value added would be about $50; which should be enough to make some currently small-time vendors drool (and probably make them large-time vendors).
More people might learn how to replace chips in their machines too...
Where can I buy a box with "owner override"?
It will only take one vendor doing it, and I'd pay a few extra bucks for my Linux owner override feature to work.
Ice, ice baby.
"I bet even PDP-11 implementation looked a lot like other PDP-11 implementations by other PDP-11 programmers."
Of course, at least for those who knew the bit structure of ASCII. I imagine that people who didn't know about stuff like 040 and 060 would write stinking routines -- but even they would probably look a lot alike.
There might be a nearly infinite number of ways of coding a function, but almost all of them are rotten.
"The funniest thing is, that it probably WOULD take a huge effort by a master programmer to actually find an implementation of atoi(3) that was truely independent ;-)"
Baugh. I wrote an ASCII to integer translation routine in PDP-11 Assembler in about half a day for a date function. It wouldn't take me more than a week to translate it into C. And since both the product and company are bust, there isn't anyone around to sue for copyright violation.
(Of course, reading to old tape and finding the routine would be harder than starting over...)
"... required of infomercials to uphold honesty and fair dealing."
There is no honesy and fair dealing. If you want honesty and fair dealing then start by breaking up the Big corporations. After they're gone we ought to be able to get small and medium sized businesses to behave.
OK, I admit it. I know what a TV is, but unless there's a 9/11 or something I watch far less than an hour a week of it.
What I want to know is this: When are we going to start getting product placements on slashdot?
"shouting fire in a crowded theater is a crime"
Not exactly. If there is a fire it is not a crime.
More interesting in this regard are the decisions regarding insurection from the 1950s. Basically the Congress/states can make laws against speech which leads to immediate action, but not against speech which might in the future lead to action.
Very good! However, this is still not a completely settled issue. The Supreme Court has been very slow to allow any restriction of truthful speech, even commercial, based upon content -- as in, they've never done so except with regard to pornography (which they seem to be backing away from over time). At the same time, they have recognized a right to privacy (abortion clinic cases) and noted the right to free association.
The end result I'd like to see is a list various categories which I can elect to receive or not receive (e.g. commercial, religious, charitable cash, charitable other, political). I don't know how to fit this into the legal landscape, but I'd ban all but charitable other from my house. (I'm willing to give old clothes to charity, and that is about it.)
"Google seems to agree too."
Google isn't all that good at history. Dig back to the 1700s.
Freedom of the press was an actual controversy when the Constitution was being writtem up. Some of the journalists of the day were just as bad as Rush Limpbaugh.
"Freedom is what enables you to share the truth. For some it is a goal, but for a journalist, it is a means to an end."
I can understand that, but I'd prefer to stick with "freedom of the press". If we attempt to define 'freedom' in terms of 'truth' then we shall have neither.
I'm serious about not believing in Truth, at a very fundamental level. I'd much rather talk about facts, and that which we know. I would certainly seek to censor a journalist who did not give the facts as they knew them, at least in good time -- but it would be to censor in the court of public opinion, not the court of law.
(The latinized Pali for my beliefs is anatta, anicca, dukkha. Without getting into a discussion of usual translations, I translate these as: No essence. No permanence. No perfection. As a collary, I do not believe in Truth.)
I'm inclined to think of Big Business (private interests) as the government, and thereby agree with the sentimate of not giving the government an inch.
I see business as government in two senses: 1) they are a creature created by statute, and 2) they exercize governmental control over their employees.
I have no brief against small business, and not even against medium sized business. As I see it, business is the cellular structure of society -- Big Business is cancer.
I actually know little about this Lamo, but if the government needs to invade other people's rights in order to convict him them I'm on his side -- if only for the other people's rights.
I'll let 100 guilty go free in order to avoid convicting 1 who is innocent.
I've got no problems with yellow dog journalism, but I do have problems with them claiming to be fair and balanced.
We all know that everyone has a viewpoint. I'll take someone who admits it over someone who pretends to be unbaised any day. (Of course, if their biases are different than mine I might not take them very far.)
"You must revere the truth above all else, because if you don't, you're just jerking off."
While I can see where you are coming from, I cannot agree with this statement. I think a good journalist must revere freedom before truth. Sometimes you've just got to forego printing that which you know is true in order to have the chance to explain the truth later. (Besides, due to my obscure religious beliefs, I don't believe there is such a thing as truth.)
Gee... I always thought FBI stood for Female Body Inspection.
You also don't have the FBI -- at least, not much.
Rather close to my reaction of "So what?".
I used to hate Acrobat with a passion, but KDE's PS/PDF viewer acts like a normal app, and I just don't care anymore.
"A legal solution would require compatible laws in 100-odd countries. We don't even have a US law on it, good luck managing it globally."
I have the feeling a lynch mob would work better than a legal solution. I also have the feeling a lynch mob wouldn't be all that hard to get together.
"It would be much easier replace E-mail software with a system that can solve the problem. We just need someone like AOL or Microsoft or the US government to initiate a switchover."
Lessee... 100+ countries... 200+ million computers (extremely conservative estimate:)...
Please define 'easier'. (P.S. You just listed the three organizations I'm most likely to ignore. I might be more willing to change over if a Debian upgrade just happened to make the change when I wasn't looking, but then again, if one of AOL, Microsoft, or the US government was backing the change I might decide to abort the upgrade.)
"And when the money leads to any one of 120 different countries?
You can certainly make it inconvient for spammers with local laws, but you can't do squat about offshore companies. I just watched a documentary where the US tried outlawing internet gambling, they simply set up shop in the Cayman Islands."
The only countries where a spammer could safely setup a long-term operation are countries which don't have much email -- i.e. Internet. All you need to do to get them kicked out of most countries is start a rumor that they're spamming within the host country. It's not the same sort of issue as gambling. What's the percentage of email users who actually like receiving spam anyway?
"It's almost as hopless to look for a spam solution through laws because the internet is a global medium."
At least for commercial spam I think you are wrong. All that is necessary to stop commercial spam is to follow the money. If the people seeking the services of spammers are treated as equally guilty of the crime then commercial spam can be quite easily closed down.
Of course, if the purpose of the spam is not to make a sale then following the money will get nowhere. (Actually, this might not be so bad. Legally all spam is treated the same, but in effect commercial spam is stopped while political/religious spam is only slowed down.)
One of the first calculator chips had a HACF (Halt and Catch Fire) instruction. It was a bug which would make the chip pop if the instruction was executed.
I've heard rumors that some of the mil spec chips deliberately include a way to fry the chip.
"...ended up at SiteFinder when they expected to find something else."
In this case, the something else is nothing; which is exactly what you want to find when checking an invalid return address.