Unfortunately, SPF and DomainKeys (DKIM) are not the answer to verifying mail. Currently, as has already been discussed thoroughly, the adoption rate for both of these among legitimate senders of mail has been abysmal. Those few who have adopted these tools are in the minority, and as a result, it is impossible to rely upon these tools as definitive proof that a message is legitimate.
Compounding this problem is the fact that there is NOTHING in place to stop spammers from setting up a SPF record or perhaps a DKIM record for their domain. Some do not, but there are enough who do to make it nearly impossible to either accept or discard email specifically based upon these tools.
Spam is notoriously hard to identify. Unfortunately, the only way to totally resolve this issue would be to develop some sort of method by which to identify legitimate senders and also to preclude people sending spam from being identified as legitimate. Given our current technology, this is not currently possible.
The only way I can think of to eliminate spam on the internet would be for the Internet community to completely discard the current email structure and completely overhaul it to include some sort of sender verification, along with non-spam verification of mail.
I didn't say that all muggers or rapists sat on Myspace looking for women or children to attack. Nor did I suggest that this was the only purpose of myspace. However, I think you would find that such people use myspace to research their illegal activities a lot more than you give them credit for. The fact of the matter is that Myspace is (or can be, if you play the game right) quite anonymous.
And you additionally indicate that the criminal wouldn't leave a paper trail. What makes you think that they use *their* computer? What's to say that the criminal doesn't access Myspace from work or a library or someplace else which leaves their computer free of evidence. I grant that your average criminal wouldn't be that smart, but repeat offenders, particularly repeat sexual offenders, are pretty good at hiding their tracks. Otherwise, they wouldn't be still out there.
With respect to your implication that I believe that meeting people from the internet is extremely dangerous, I offer the fact that I married a woman whom I met through an online forum. She lived roughly 300 miles away from me in another state. Had the two of us not been members of this particular forum, I seriously doubt that we would have ever met. The fact of the matter is that, as you say, meeting someone from the internet is inherently no more dangerous than meeting someone from one of those phone dating services or a classified ad.
Today, we have online dating, message boards for everything, and web based chat everywhere. If a site isn't dynamic, it's quickly dropped by the online populace. The fact is, this is not unexpected. Myspace.com spent some time developing a site where people could blog and network. It worked for them.
The worrisome part of this is that people don't seem to understand how potentially dangerous this is. Consider the sheer volume of details some people (read: children) put on their myspace accounts. Parents SHOULD police this, but, all too often, they don't. The fact is that this service presents all too much possibility for children to get hurt. Consider also the single women all over who post their info online. Some of them realize that they shouldn't post that they live alone in an apartment in south-central LA, but others would very quickly post this sort of thing. Unfortunately, this again puts people at risk.
I don't think that the site should be stopped from operating, as I tend to be somewhat of the opinion that if you put your details out there for the world to see, it's your fault if something bad happens. OTOH, people need to think a bit more.
While I agree with the previous poster, I would also note that such a satellite would, almost certainly, also be very useful to have from an astronomical standpoint. Think VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry) or ULBI (ultra-long baseline interferometry). With enough of these satellites all working together and spread over an appropriate distance, we could potentially get a lot of information about neighboring solar systems. Add to that the possibility of using these sorts of devices for remote surveying of planets in neighboring solar systems (for identification of mineral/atmosphere conditions) and this technology could become extremely useful.
Granted, we are a few years off from interstellar travel, but it's certainly a thought.
Most media is initially Free or Public Domain. The fact of the matter is that most owners want to protect their rights to their IP. As such, most media becomes copyrighted in some manner or another. This tool just allows an easier method of preparing the necessary paperwork and adding the necessary information to the work to make the copyright stick. I do find it somewhat ironic that this is Microsoft who is purporting an allegedly alternative licencing scheme (non-all rights reserved).
Actually, I was suggesting that your chance of buying a lotery ticket and winning on that ticket was very low. As for numbers, I'll give you what I have... Here in Georgia, the chance of winning our "Big Game" lottery with the maximum prize is 1:76,275,360. If I assume that you buy 1 ticket each week of your life, and I assume you live for 80 years, that's ~4160 tickets...
All things considered, 4160:76,275,360 odds are still not good. As for the odds of getting hit by lightning in your lifetime, according to Stats Spotlight, "the odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 709,260". The probability of being struck twice is simply 1:1418520. Unless I miscount, that is STILL much smaller than the chance of being struck twice in your lifetime by lightning.
Actually, it's really easy... anytime you call somewhere, your phone number is recorded, unless it is unlisted or you have call anonymity on... SO all it would have to do is look at the originating phone number and allow in or out based upon telephone #...
Now, I am just waiting on someone to figure out how to route their calls through a telephone number in nevada and gamble that way...
And to think that people drive over state lines to buy tickets, and even frequently buy them over the phone...
And the lottery isn't even a decent investment... it's simply a tax on people who are bad at math.;-)
Frankly, you have better odds of being hit twice in your lifetime by lightning, going down in a plane crash, surviving it all, and then dying because you forgot that you had transferred the drain cleaner into the bottle the vinegar was in, because its original bottle sprang a leak...
Actually...
Diamonds do not contain solely carbon atoms. The main lattice structure is solely carbon atoms, but sometimes other atoms get in and get trapped inside the lattice. This is where we get colored diamonds from. For instance, if you got Sulfur in the diamond, it would look yellow. Chlorine might make it turn blue-green.
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Unfortunately, SPF and DomainKeys (DKIM) are not the answer to verifying mail. Currently, as has already been discussed thoroughly, the adoption rate for both of these among legitimate senders of mail has been abysmal. Those few who have adopted these tools are in the minority, and as a result, it is impossible to rely upon these tools as definitive proof that a message is legitimate.
Compounding this problem is the fact that there is NOTHING in place to stop spammers from setting up a SPF record or perhaps a DKIM record for their domain. Some do not, but there are enough who do to make it nearly impossible to either accept or discard email specifically based upon these tools.
Spam is notoriously hard to identify. Unfortunately, the only way to totally resolve this issue would be to develop some sort of method by which to identify legitimate senders and also to preclude people sending spam from being identified as legitimate. Given our current technology, this is not currently possible.
The only way I can think of to eliminate spam on the internet would be for the Internet community to completely discard the current email structure and completely overhaul it to include some sort of sender verification, along with non-spam verification of mail.
I didn't say that all muggers or rapists sat on Myspace looking for women or children to attack. Nor did I suggest that this was the only purpose of myspace. However, I think you would find that such people use myspace to research their illegal activities a lot more than you give them credit for. The fact of the matter is that Myspace is (or can be, if you play the game right) quite anonymous.
And you additionally indicate that the criminal wouldn't leave a paper trail. What makes you think that they use *their* computer? What's to say that the criminal doesn't access Myspace from work or a library or someplace else which leaves their computer free of evidence. I grant that your average criminal wouldn't be that smart, but repeat offenders, particularly repeat sexual offenders, are pretty good at hiding their tracks. Otherwise, they wouldn't be still out there.
With respect to your implication that I believe that meeting people from the internet is extremely dangerous, I offer the fact that I married a woman whom I met through an online forum. She lived roughly 300 miles away from me in another state. Had the two of us not been members of this particular forum, I seriously doubt that we would have ever met. The fact of the matter is that, as you say, meeting someone from the internet is inherently no more dangerous than meeting someone from one of those phone dating services or a classified ad.
Consider...
Today, we have online dating, message boards for everything, and web based chat everywhere. If a site isn't dynamic, it's quickly dropped by the online populace. The fact is, this is not unexpected. Myspace.com spent some time developing a site where people could blog and network. It worked for them.
The worrisome part of this is that people don't seem to understand how potentially dangerous this is. Consider the sheer volume of details some people (read: children) put on their myspace accounts. Parents SHOULD police this, but, all too often, they don't. The fact is that this service presents all too much possibility for children to get hurt. Consider also the single women all over who post their info online. Some of them realize that they shouldn't post that they live alone in an apartment in south-central LA, but others would very quickly post this sort of thing. Unfortunately, this again puts people at risk.
I don't think that the site should be stopped from operating, as I tend to be somewhat of the opinion that if you put your details out there for the world to see, it's your fault if something bad happens. OTOH, people need to think a bit more.
While I agree with the previous poster, I would also note that such a satellite would, almost certainly, also be very useful to have from an astronomical standpoint. Think VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry) or ULBI (ultra-long baseline interferometry). With enough of these satellites all working together and spread over an appropriate distance, we could potentially get a lot of information about neighboring solar systems. Add to that the possibility of using these sorts of devices for remote surveying of planets in neighboring solar systems (for identification of mineral/atmosphere conditions) and this technology could become extremely useful.
Granted, we are a few years off from interstellar travel, but it's certainly a thought.
Most media is initially Free or Public Domain. The fact of the matter is that most owners want to protect their rights to their IP. As such, most media becomes copyrighted in some manner or another. This tool just allows an easier method of preparing the necessary paperwork and adding the necessary information to the work to make the copyright stick. I do find it somewhat ironic that this is Microsoft who is purporting an allegedly alternative licencing scheme (non-all rights reserved).
Actually, I was suggesting that your chance of buying a lotery ticket and winning on that ticket was very low. As for numbers, I'll give you what I have... Here in Georgia, the chance of winning our "Big Game" lottery with the maximum prize is 1:76,275,360. If I assume that you buy 1 ticket each week of your life, and I assume you live for 80 years, that's ~4160 tickets... All things considered, 4160:76,275,360 odds are still not good. As for the odds of getting hit by lightning in your lifetime, according to Stats Spotlight, "the odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 709,260". The probability of being struck twice is simply 1:1418520. Unless I miscount, that is STILL much smaller than the chance of being struck twice in your lifetime by lightning.
Now someone will just have to build a better fool.
Actually, it's really easy... anytime you call somewhere, your phone number is recorded, unless it is unlisted or you have call anonymity on... SO all it would have to do is look at the originating phone number and allow in or out based upon telephone #...
Now, I am just waiting on someone to figure out how to route their calls through a telephone number in nevada and gamble that way...
And to think that people drive over state lines to buy tickets, and even frequently buy them over the phone...
;-)
And the lottery isn't even a decent investment... it's simply a tax on people who are bad at math.
Frankly, you have better odds of being hit twice in your lifetime by lightning, going down in a plane crash, surviving it all, and then dying because you forgot that you had transferred the drain cleaner into the bottle the vinegar was in, because its original bottle sprang a leak...
Actually...
Diamonds do not contain solely carbon atoms. The main lattice structure is solely carbon atoms, but sometimes other atoms get in and get trapped inside the lattice. This is where we get colored diamonds from. For instance, if you got Sulfur in the diamond, it would look yellow. Chlorine might make it turn blue-green.