Doesn't this presuppose that RIAA allows a viable online sales model to develop? Given the overpriced, crippled vendors of music feebleware, I just don't see it happening.
The audio might not be as slick as a studio-produced album, but then again, the "live" albums seldom are.
For those bands that can put on a serious concert, I would think the CD sales would be very good. Unless of course, they manage to dumb-down the product with crippleware or Looney-Tunes pricing.
This is supposedly an excerpt of a letter sent "from the general public" to the DMA. Yeah, right.
"In this time of economic uncertainty, can we afford to put at risk the jobs of 6 million Americans? Telemarketing provides 6 million jobs throughout the U.S., and contributes $700 billion to our economy. The Federal Trade Commission is planning to impose harsh new rules on the teleservices industry that will put a halt to this economically vital employer."
Booo Hooo! Sniffle Sniffle! I haven't laughed this much since the Microsoft "switch" campaign!
"If they can write to your hard drive what makes you think they cannot change the attributes of the directory as well?"
Ah yes, a classic Microsoft problem. I assume they probably could reset the attribute, but I'm betting their install program does not have the logic to do it. They expect to create the directory, mine already exists. They expect to drop files into the newly created directory. I have thrown them a curveball by setting the read-only attribute. Could they get around this? Maybe. Will they? I'm not sure.
As a last resort, I could make a stupid script that would nuke the directory on system startup. Let's see them get around that.
Somewhere along the line, my browser must have been hijacked and I got stuck with this little piece of badware. I used Ad-Aware to detect and destroy, but I got a little creative. I kept the C:\Program Files\Xupiter directory, and set the attribute to read-only. I'm hoping that any future attempted hijackings will result in the installation failing due to the inability to create or write anything into the Xupiter directory.
Grade inflation has been around for a long time; this is not news. The standard excuse is that if you have a very selective admissions process, the students are far more likely to get good grades, because the admissions office screened out the marginal players. The problem is that a student who can pay full "list price" tuition (without financial aid) can get admitted to an amazing number of top-name schools, even if their grades & test scores are not all that hot. It's almost like a Sprint PCS commercial: "I thought the chancellor said to screen out all the marginal payers!"
The reality is that low grades elimintate current tuition-paying students, and discourage potential students. It certainly doesn't help the student loan default rate! It costs money to give low grades. Lost money means lost job security, and the profs don't like it, not one little bit. There is already a problem with schools that add required courses simply because certain departments need the enrollment. Students may tolerate some gratuitous requirements, but not if their transcripts are going to be "polluted" with low grades from courses that should not have been mandatory in the first place.
It would not be all that hard to convert the grading system to pass/fail. Grades, inflated or otherwise, have little meaning after you get that first job (and sometimes not even then). If you think about it, grades are of value to the school that issues them. The only real decisions to be made are as follows: (1) The "yes/no" decision to allow a student into a major, (2) the semester-by-semester "yes/no" decision about allowing them to stay in that major, and (3) the final "yes/no" about graduation.
I have hired a fair number of people for a variety of positions, and I have never chosen candidate X over candidate Y based on who had the better GPA. Grade inflation makes that comparison even more meaningless than it would be if the grades were "honest".
I don't think the quality of instruction has declined all that much, but the perceived value of grades or even a degree has been diluted. I think the education industry will address the problem with mere PR lip service, because they really don't want to accept the economic reality of fixing the problem.
It looks like Overpeer is owned by some kind of Korean conglomerate www.sk.com. Hardly any consumer products, but it would be worth a look to see if they have anything that can be effectively boycotted or tarrifed to death.
They appear to be running Win2K/IIS, just like RIAA. Not that I'm saying this is bad, or anything like that:-)
Be on the lookout for any of the following people:
As you say, we have 11 months to go. It's unusual to keep a lame duck CEO kicking around for that length of time. Then again, maybe they have an especially vile agenda and want her to act as the lightning rod for a while longer.
The search for a replacement ought to be interesting. RIAA leader is one of the toughest jobs in the world today; right up there with Saddam's travel agent.
Your theory about M$ influencing SCO to initiate this little adventure is interesting. It's easy enough to tell: If M$ is a named defendant in the first lawsuit, then they probably did NOT orchestrate this action. On the other hand, if everyone except M$ is named, then we know who is pulling the strings.
The decision to hire Boies is consistent with a "deep pockets first" strategy. Others have posted concerns about SCO's alleged GPL violations regarding patents, and besides, the Linux vendors don't really have the assets to make a lawsuit worthwhile. I predict that SCO will go after Microsoft. Either SCO wins big, or M$ prevails and the patent issue is dead. Either way, why should they bother with the Linux vendors and deal with the GPL issue? As an investment, a proposed lawsuit against Linux vendors fails to meet any reasonable risk/reward criteria. From a customer relations point of view, if SCO were so lucky as to drag M$ down the toilet, who would complain? On the other hand, using GPL and then attacking Linux -- that's a friendly-fire scenario they could do without.
Perhaps Verizon could copyright the DHCP logs, add some lame encryption (CSS?) and then offer each log file as a "product". The price, of course, would be rather steep ($1,000,000 each). Such a copyrighted work would naturally be protected by DMCA, right?
Of course, RIAA wants just one line, but they would have to buy the entire overpriced "album". If Verizon is forced to hand over their digital "log file product" because of a DMCA subpeona, then they make up a stupid song and then subpeona the entire RIAA catalog, so they can search for "infringing" uses of their song lyrics.
I think they lose more if people buy them, as opposed to keeping the unsold XBoxes stuck in the supply chain as "shelfware".
I guess it depends if you believe the story about each unit costing M$ more than the wholesale price. If true, you would want M$ to sell as many as possible. If they lose money on each individual unit, there is no such thing as "making it up on volume". The CueCat people pushed this concept to its logical conclusion and made vast amounts of money disappear.
On the other hand, if M$ is slowly-but-surely recovering something more than the direct production cost, then you would want as few sales as possible in the hopes of triggering a total write-off of the entire program.
No matter how you look at it, a non-gaming XBox produces little or no revenue for M$.
Sigs have nothing to do with the discussion, and are therefore exempt from the Godwin effect. Unless, of course, someone makes the sig part of the discussion (as you have done). As James T. Kirk so eloquently stated, "Double dumb-ass on you."
For compatibiity with the alien systems. There may very well be other aliens (using Windoze), but they can't get out of their own galaxy without rebooting or encountering BSOD. The resources these aliens could have used to improve and stabilize their systems were foolishly squandered on DRM.
As a current manager and former student, my opinion is that the CS curriculum beats the MIS curriculum in preparing people for the real world of IT.
As you say, IT!=CS. But if look at the total number of IT "applied technology" jobs vs. the total number of CS "hard-core engineering" jobs, the statistical reality is that (like it or not) most CS grads end up working in IT.
I agree. If M$ releases WMP for Linux, that shows just how desperate they are to fsck us with their DRM badware. Then again, porting WMP to Linux might trigger a direct assault on their DRM crap, as the heavy-duty hackers would have the "home field advantage".
Maybe the computer and consumer electronics manufacturers should cheerfully agree to implement DRM in all their products. But with a catch. Anything "flagged" for less than full user rights would be difficult or impossible to play. Pop-ups, klunky interfaces, using the good-old TV remote to dive into 8 levels of menus just to watch a single "protected" TV show. Give Hollywood all the "protection" they can stand, and then punish them brutally whenever they use it. After all, there will be no market for new computers or other electronic gizmos unless user rights are respected. Surely the manufacturers realize this.
Although "interesting" classes may be somewhat exempt from Wifi-based entertainment, it's really all about motivation. Wifi or no Wifi, some students are not all that motivated. How is Wifi surfing any worse than passing stupid little notes or just plain old sleeping. I suspect that Wifi doesn't change the percentage of students who fail to pay attention. On the other hand, it could be a real factor at exam time.
The people who say the second ammendment does not authorize private ownership of fireamrs usually base their argument on case law, instead of the precise text in the Bill of Rights.
"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
Aside from the catch-all nature of the 10th ammendment, the entire Bill of Rights concerns the rights of the people. Not states, not the Federal government, the people. Courts may have attempted to substitute various government entities as surrogates for the people, but that's really just wishful thinking that the ammendment isn't really written as we all know it is.
Why would the government need to grant itself the right to bear arms? Why would the states need such authorization? The word "militia" is what it is, not a "state militia" or "municipal militia", just "militia" as in the original revolutionary "bring your own weapon" variety. If the intended benficiary of the 2nd ammendment was the Federal Government or the states, why aren't they mentioned? If the 2nd ammendment grants "the right to keep and bear arms" to someone other than the people, why doesn't it specify who that might be? How is it that ammedments 1 and 3-10 deal with rights of the people, except for ammendment 2, which somehow applies to an unnamed government entity, even though it specifically says the people?
The people who wrote the Constitution had a great deal of experience with an out-of-touch, nonresponsive, non-represtentative government (England). The militia was the organization that would form out of necessity in order to remain as a "free state". The concept was left vague, so that the militia could form and deal with whatever threat might be at hand. Today's Federal Government is too proud to admit that it may someday become the problem that a militia was intended to solve.
Reasonable people might argue that an armed population causes a bigger problem than it solves. Those who say we don't need a militia or privately owned weapons are free to make that argument and they can attempt to carry that argument to its logical conclusion: repeal of the 2nd ammendment. Twisting its interpretation into obscurity merely invites other special interests to use similar techniques on the parts of the Bill of Rights that we still care about.
Although potential employers might use Google to check you out, it's even easier for potential employees to check out the employer. Layoffs, turnover, negotiating tactics, benefits, employee unrest, managers to be avoided, all of this is fair game.
Considering the "perpetual retention" of Google Groups, a Usenet opinon carries a lot of weight for a long time. Although I would never make employment-related decisions based entirely on unsubstantiated/third-party/quasi-anonymous opinions, I would certainly know what questions to ask, and where to probe for additional detail.
I think the greatest pain from Googling will be employers who have obnoxious, hard-to-defend HR tactics. Before accepting my current position, I searched for the employer's name, looking for protest pages or other signs of employee unhappiness. Had I found anything, I would have asked many questions before accepting the job.
When I buy groceries, I look for the cheapest brand. I buy the biggest size of the cheapest brand, so as to achieve the lowest possible unit cost. Most of the time, this works great. There isn't much you can do to screw up a jar of peanut butter without triggering FDA intervention and a very expensive recall. If it tastes lousy, I'll buy a different brand next time. Those who make lousy peanut butter are quickly squeezed off the store shelves because people stop buying.
When people apply the same evaluation to consumer electronics, they encourage manufacturers to cut corners. Make no mistake about it, the manufacturers do this because consumers want the end result -- a cheap product with lots of features. The problem that when people buy a piece of junk the ability to buy something better next time is not going to be anytime soon.
I own an $89 VCR. Since all the brands are crap these days, my selection criteria was entirely based on price. In ancient times, I owned a $600 top-loader that weighed about 40 lbs. By the time the heads wore out on that beast, it was uneconomical to fix because the new "junk" VCRs were available for less than the cost of repair. In fact, there wasn't much you could fix on the old VCR without spending $89. If the new one breaks, it's disposable. My $600 boat anchor from 1982 would cost maybe $1500 or so in 2002 dollars, and I don't see anyone willing to pay $1500 for a no-frills, non cable-ready VCR.
If consumers really wanted reliability, the VCR market would have evolved toward enormous cast iron VCRs, with whopper power supplies, titanium heads that spin with a washing machine motor, connected with stainless steel gears, all at a Pentagon price. You would buy it once, take a few years to pay for it, and ultimately pass it down to future generations as a family heirloom.
The consumer electronics industry is unique in that even poorly made products will usually become obsolete before they die. The never-ending parade of new features and reduced cost means we tolerate all kinds of shortcuts because we'll get tired of that PDA in a year or two, and the replacement will cost less than the current model (maybe even less than repairing the current model). Compare this to the power tool market, where professionals cheerfully pay a premium for brands that last. Even non-professionals want the "good" brands.
Unfortunately, the free market has not been kind to the electronics manufacturers who used to make things that last. We [consumers] have mostly ourselves to blame.
The problem is not size. People refuse to click the ads because nobody wants all the funky Javascript and browser tricks that interfere with going back to the original page.
I expect all kinds of shenanigans if I click a banner, therefore I don't do it. Any ads that cannot be suppressed with a proxy filter will be ignored. Making the ads larger will not change anything.
The tokens would be single-use only; generated on-the-fly. You could checksum the entire message, and then hash it against the current date/time using a suitably long key. Checking the token's authenticity does not involve a list of pre-stored tokens; it is the ability to decrypt the received token that matters. If the token is successful, it gets appended to the "obsolete token" list -- never to be accepted again.
Granted, the encryption key is what the crackers would go after, but that would not be readily available to the average spammer. Given the miniscule success rate of spam, the spammers cannot dedicate much time to cracking anyone's token scheme.
Unfortunately, impersonating the "white list" senders would be much more feasible. As it is, we have spammers guessing the e-mail addresses to receive the spam. Once they guess and verify a valid e-mail address at xyz.com, it wouldn't be hard to use that as a fake sender for all the other successful guesses at xyz.com.
Of course, there is always the "spam yourself" scam, where the spammer guesses your address, and then uses it as a bogus sender. You become the sender of your own spam. Anyone who whitelists their own address is as vulnerable as they were before.
Either way, it looks like the whitelist is more vulnerable than the tokens.
We waste time on many things, spam being only one of them. In order (worst first):
Telemarketers (we need a commercial statewide "do not call list"!)
Virus hoaxes, cleanup & prevention (yes, we have multiple layers of defense)
Fraudulent invoice scams (phone, fax, e-mail and snail mail)
Spam
Junk faxes
Spam is only #4 on my list of unnecessary time wasters. The telephone will die as a business tool before e-mail does, because it's much easier to filter e-mail than it is to pre-screen a phone call.
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't this presuppose that RIAA allows a viable online sales model to develop? Given the overpriced, crippled vendors of music feebleware, I just don't see it happening.
The audio might not be as slick as a studio-produced album, but then again, the "live" albums seldom are.
For those bands that can put on a serious concert, I would think the CD sales would be very good. Unless of course, they manage to dumb-down the product with crippleware or Looney-Tunes pricing.
This is supposedly an excerpt of a letter sent "from the general public" to the DMA. Yeah, right.
"In this time of economic uncertainty, can we afford to put at risk the jobs of 6 million Americans? Telemarketing provides 6 million jobs throughout the U.S., and contributes $700 billion to our economy. The Federal Trade Commission is planning to impose harsh new rules on the teleservices industry that will put a halt to this economically vital employer."
Booo Hooo! Sniffle Sniffle! I haven't laughed this much since the Microsoft "switch" campaign!
"If they can write to your hard drive what makes you think they cannot change the attributes of the directory as well?"
Ah yes, a classic Microsoft problem. I assume they probably could reset the attribute, but I'm betting their install program does not have the logic to do it. They expect to create the directory, mine already exists. They expect to drop files into the newly created directory. I have thrown them a curveball by setting the read-only attribute. Could they get around this? Maybe. Will they? I'm not sure.
As a last resort, I could make a stupid script that would nuke the directory on system startup. Let's see them get around that.
Somewhere along the line, my browser must have been hijacked and I got stuck with this little piece of badware. I used Ad-Aware to detect and destroy, but I got a little creative. I kept the C:\Program Files\Xupiter directory, and set the attribute to read-only. I'm hoping that any future attempted hijackings will result in the installation failing due to the inability to create or write anything into the Xupiter directory.
attrib +r "C:\Program Files\Xupiter"
Grade inflation has been around for a long time; this is not news. The standard excuse is that if you have a very selective admissions process, the students are far more likely to get good grades, because the admissions office screened out the marginal players. The problem is that a student who can pay full "list price" tuition (without financial aid) can get admitted to an amazing number of top-name schools, even if their grades & test scores are not all that hot. It's almost like a Sprint PCS commercial: "I thought the chancellor said to screen out all the marginal payers!"
The reality is that low grades elimintate current tuition-paying students, and discourage potential students. It certainly doesn't help the student loan default rate! It costs money to give low grades. Lost money means lost job security, and the profs don't like it, not one little bit. There is already a problem with schools that add required courses simply because certain departments need the enrollment. Students may tolerate some gratuitous requirements, but not if their transcripts are going to be "polluted" with low grades from courses that should not have been mandatory in the first place.
It would not be all that hard to convert the grading system to pass/fail. Grades, inflated or otherwise, have little meaning after you get that first job (and sometimes not even then). If you think about it, grades are of value to the school that issues them. The only real decisions to be made are as follows: (1) The "yes/no" decision to allow a student into a major, (2) the semester-by-semester "yes/no" decision about allowing them to stay in that major, and (3) the final "yes/no" about graduation.
I have hired a fair number of people for a variety of positions, and I have never chosen candidate X over candidate Y based on who had the better GPA. Grade inflation makes that comparison even more meaningless than it would be if the grades were "honest".
I don't think the quality of instruction has declined all that much, but the perceived value of grades or even a degree has been diluted. I think the education industry will address the problem with mere PR lip service, because they really don't want to accept the economic reality of fixing the problem.
They appear to be running Win2K/IIS, just like RIAA. Not that I'm saying this is bad, or anything like that
Be on the lookout for any of the following people:
As you say, we have 11 months to go. It's unusual to keep a lame duck CEO kicking around for that length of time. Then again, maybe they have an especially vile agenda and want her to act as the lightning rod for a while longer.
The search for a replacement ought to be interesting. RIAA leader is one of the toughest jobs in the world today; right up there with Saddam's travel agent.
Your theory about M$ influencing SCO to initiate this little adventure is interesting. It's easy enough to tell: If M$ is a named defendant in the first lawsuit, then they probably did NOT orchestrate this action. On the other hand, if everyone except M$ is named, then we know who is pulling the strings.
The decision to hire Boies is consistent with a "deep pockets first" strategy. Others have posted concerns about SCO's alleged GPL violations regarding patents, and besides, the Linux vendors don't really have the assets to make a lawsuit worthwhile. I predict that SCO will go after Microsoft. Either SCO wins big, or M$ prevails and the patent issue is dead. Either way, why should they bother with the Linux vendors and deal with the GPL issue? As an investment, a proposed lawsuit against Linux vendors fails to meet any reasonable risk/reward criteria. From a customer relations point of view, if SCO were so lucky as to drag M$ down the toilet, who would complain? On the other hand, using GPL and then attacking Linux -- that's a friendly-fire scenario they could do without.
Perhaps Verizon could copyright the DHCP logs, add some lame encryption (CSS?) and then offer each log file as a "product". The price, of course, would be rather steep ($1,000,000 each). Such a copyrighted work would naturally be protected by DMCA, right?
Of course, RIAA wants just one line, but they would have to buy the entire overpriced "album". If Verizon is forced to hand over their digital "log file product" because of a DMCA subpeona, then they make up a stupid song and then subpeona the entire RIAA catalog, so they can search for "infringing" uses of their song lyrics.
I think they lose more if people buy them, as opposed to keeping the unsold XBoxes stuck in the supply chain as "shelfware".
I guess it depends if you believe the story about each unit costing M$ more than the wholesale price. If true, you would want M$ to sell as many as possible. If they lose money on each individual unit, there is no such thing as "making it up on volume". The CueCat people pushed this concept to its logical conclusion and made vast amounts of money disappear.
On the other hand, if M$ is slowly-but-surely recovering something more than the direct production cost, then you would want as few sales as possible in the hopes of triggering a total write-off of the entire program.
No matter how you look at it, a non-gaming XBox produces little or no revenue for M$.
Sigs have nothing to do with the discussion, and are therefore exempt from the Godwin effect. Unless, of course, someone makes the sig part of the discussion (as you have done). As James T. Kirk so eloquently stated, "Double dumb-ass on you."
For compatibiity with the alien systems. There may very well be other aliens (using Windoze), but they can't get out of their own galaxy without rebooting or encountering BSOD. The resources these aliens could have used to improve and stabilize their systems were foolishly squandered on DRM.
As a current manager and former student, my opinion is that the CS curriculum beats the MIS curriculum in preparing people for the real world of IT.
As you say, IT!=CS. But if look at the total number of IT "applied technology" jobs vs. the total number of CS "hard-core engineering" jobs, the statistical reality is that (like it or not) most CS grads end up working in IT.
I agree. If M$ releases WMP for Linux, that shows just how desperate they are to fsck us with their DRM badware. Then again, porting WMP to Linux might trigger a direct assault on their DRM crap, as the heavy-duty hackers would have the "home field advantage".
Maybe the computer and consumer electronics manufacturers should cheerfully agree to implement DRM in all their products. But with a catch. Anything "flagged" for less than full user rights would be difficult or impossible to play. Pop-ups, klunky interfaces, using the good-old TV remote to dive into 8 levels of menus just to watch a single "protected" TV show. Give Hollywood all the "protection" they can stand, and then punish them brutally whenever they use it. After all, there will be no market for new computers or other electronic gizmos unless user rights are respected. Surely the manufacturers realize this.
Although "interesting" classes may be somewhat exempt from Wifi-based entertainment, it's really all about motivation. Wifi or no Wifi, some students are not all that motivated. How is Wifi surfing any worse than passing stupid little notes or just plain old sleeping. I suspect that Wifi doesn't change the percentage of students who fail to pay attention. On the other hand, it could be a real factor at exam time.
The people who say the second ammendment does not authorize private ownership of fireamrs usually base their argument on case law, instead of the precise text in the Bill of Rights.
"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
Aside from the catch-all nature of the 10th ammendment, the entire Bill of Rights concerns the rights of the people. Not states, not the Federal government, the people. Courts may have attempted to substitute various government entities as surrogates for the people, but that's really just wishful thinking that the ammendment isn't really written as we all know it is.
Why would the government need to grant itself the right to bear arms? Why would the states need such authorization? The word "militia" is what it is, not a "state militia" or "municipal militia", just "militia" as in the original revolutionary "bring your own weapon" variety. If the intended benficiary of the 2nd ammendment was the Federal Government or the states, why aren't they mentioned? If the 2nd ammendment grants "the right to keep and bear arms" to someone other than the people, why doesn't it specify who that might be? How is it that ammedments 1 and 3-10 deal with rights of the people, except for ammendment 2, which somehow applies to an unnamed government entity, even though it specifically says the people?
The people who wrote the Constitution had a great deal of experience with an out-of-touch, nonresponsive, non-represtentative government (England). The militia was the organization that would form out of necessity in order to remain as a "free state". The concept was left vague, so that the militia could form and deal with whatever threat might be at hand. Today's Federal Government is too proud to admit that it may someday become the problem that a militia was intended to solve.
Reasonable people might argue that an armed population causes a bigger problem than it solves. Those who say we don't need a militia or privately owned weapons are free to make that argument and they can attempt to carry that argument to its logical conclusion: repeal of the 2nd ammendment. Twisting its interpretation into obscurity merely invites other special interests to use similar techniques on the parts of the Bill of Rights that we still care about.
Although potential employers might use Google to check you out, it's even easier for potential employees to check out the employer. Layoffs, turnover, negotiating tactics, benefits, employee unrest, managers to be avoided, all of this is fair game.
Considering the "perpetual retention" of Google Groups, a Usenet opinon carries a lot of weight for a long time. Although I would never make employment-related decisions based entirely on unsubstantiated/third-party/quasi-anonymous opinions, I would certainly know what questions to ask, and where to probe for additional detail.
I think the greatest pain from Googling will be employers who have obnoxious, hard-to-defend HR tactics. Before accepting my current position, I searched for the employer's name, looking for protest pages or other signs of employee unhappiness. Had I found anything, I would have asked many questions before accepting the job.
Go ahead, steal my sig. I forgot where I stole it from; it's probably all over the net anyway.
Warning: Using this sig will draw occasional sniper fire from M$ zealots, as will the use of "M$" as an abbreviation for Microsoft.
When I buy groceries, I look for the cheapest brand. I buy the biggest size of the cheapest brand, so as to achieve the lowest possible unit cost. Most of the time, this works great. There isn't much you can do to screw up a jar of peanut butter without triggering FDA intervention and a very expensive recall. If it tastes lousy, I'll buy a different brand next time. Those who make lousy peanut butter are quickly squeezed off the store shelves because people stop buying.
When people apply the same evaluation to consumer electronics, they encourage manufacturers to cut corners. Make no mistake about it, the manufacturers do this because consumers want the end result -- a cheap product with lots of features. The problem that when people buy a piece of junk the ability to buy something better next time is not going to be anytime soon.
I own an $89 VCR. Since all the brands are crap these days, my selection criteria was entirely based on price. In ancient times, I owned a $600 top-loader that weighed about 40 lbs. By the time the heads wore out on that beast, it was uneconomical to fix because the new "junk" VCRs were available for less than the cost of repair. In fact, there wasn't much you could fix on the old VCR without spending $89. If the new one breaks, it's disposable. My $600 boat anchor from 1982 would cost maybe $1500 or so in 2002 dollars, and I don't see anyone willing to pay $1500 for a no-frills, non cable-ready VCR.
If consumers really wanted reliability, the VCR market would have evolved toward enormous cast iron VCRs, with whopper power supplies, titanium heads that spin with a washing machine motor, connected with stainless steel gears, all at a Pentagon price. You would buy it once, take a few years to pay for it, and ultimately pass it down to future generations as a family heirloom.
The consumer electronics industry is unique in that even poorly made products will usually become obsolete before they die. The never-ending parade of new features and reduced cost means we tolerate all kinds of shortcuts because we'll get tired of that PDA in a year or two, and the replacement will cost less than the current model (maybe even less than repairing the current model). Compare this to the power tool market, where professionals cheerfully pay a premium for brands that last. Even non-professionals want the "good" brands.
Unfortunately, the free market has not been kind to the electronics manufacturers who used to make things that last. We [consumers] have mostly ourselves to blame.
The problem is not size. People refuse to click the ads because nobody wants all the funky Javascript and browser tricks that interfere with going back to the original page.
I expect all kinds of shenanigans if I click a banner, therefore I don't do it. Any ads that cannot be suppressed with a proxy filter will be ignored. Making the ads larger will not change anything.
The tokens would be single-use only; generated on-the-fly. You could checksum the entire message, and then hash it against the current date/time using a suitably long key. Checking the token's authenticity does not involve a list of pre-stored tokens; it is the ability to decrypt the received token that matters. If the token is successful, it gets appended to the "obsolete token" list -- never to be accepted again.
Granted, the encryption key is what the crackers would go after, but that would not be readily available to the average spammer. Given the miniscule success rate of spam, the spammers cannot dedicate much time to cracking anyone's token scheme.
Unfortunately, impersonating the "white list" senders would be much more feasible. As it is, we have spammers guessing the e-mail addresses to receive the spam. Once they guess and verify a valid e-mail address at xyz.com, it wouldn't be hard to use that as a fake sender for all the other successful guesses at xyz.com.
Of course, there is always the "spam yourself" scam, where the spammer guesses your address, and then uses it as a bogus sender. You become the sender of your own spam. Anyone who whitelists their own address is as vulnerable as they were before.
Either way, it looks like the whitelist is more vulnerable than the tokens.
- Telemarketers (we need a commercial statewide "do not call list"!)
- Virus hoaxes, cleanup & prevention (yes, we have multiple layers of defense)
- Fraudulent invoice scams (phone, fax, e-mail and snail mail)
- Spam
- Junk faxes
Spam is only #4 on my list of unnecessary time wasters. The telephone will die as a business tool before e-mail does, because it's much easier to filter e-mail than it is to pre-screen a phone call.