What do you get spam for that is applicable to me?
I have an entire domain so I see different spam for different addresses. Some of the addresses get spam from Brazil. Others get it from China. Others get it from the former USSR states. And some get it advertising products with prices in pounds and euros. In addition to porn spam, there is also no end of spam for online gambling and, if you've got a credit card, they're happy to take your money.
So by the same token you would consent to US companies being taken to court in Europe, the Far East of Australasia for sending spam to us?
Yes.
I receive vast numbers of spam emails every day, most of which is only applicable to US citizens. I very rarely get anything that is applicable to anyone in Europe...
My domain gets plenty of spam applicable to Europeans. Would you like me to forward it to you so that you have spam which is more appropriate for someone in your geographical region?;-)
Why exactly do we *need* OUTGOING SMTP servers? WHy can't mail clients pull the MX record for the destination domain on their own and just send it straight there?
Obviously we don't "need" outgoing SMTP servers since many spammers already use the method you describe for sending e-mail.
But there is a very good reasons to have outgoing SMTP servers: The ISP can block access to port 25 for their residential (i.e., non-business) subscriber base. This prevents the subscribers from exploiting open relays or directly sending spam using the method you describe above.
Instead of hijacking open relays, spammers would need huge-ass pipes because they'd be stuck sending the mail themselves.
Only partially true. If a spammer had 100,000 AOL addresses he was sending to, he would not need to send 10,000 messages. He could blind copy, say, 100 recipients on AOL at a time. Then AOL's servers would increase his effective throughput 100x. That's what most of the direct-to-SMTP spammers already do. It's only when the list of recipients are not clumped on ISPs and, are, instead, one or two to a domain, that the bandwidth limitations become an issue.
By the way, that's one reason why you tend to see more spam on big ISPs than on little ones. If a spammer finds three addresses on a small ISP, he spends a relatively large amount of bandwidth sending to those three addresses than if he blind copies 100 users on AOL (assuming direct, rather than relay-rape, spam).
Yeah, if you just put the spammers in Guantanamo Bay with out trial or a release date, then America (land of the free?) would be much better off!
I did not mean to suggest that we adopt that aspect of the Bush/Ashcroft "War on The Constitution." I simply wanted to suggest that we could put pressure on other countries to hand over suspected spammers, just as we do to make them hand over terrorists.
Once handed over, I would want to see them get a swift trial by a jury in a U.S. (civillian) court.
Spam is so easy to kill: add authentication to SMTP and create a new email network of authenticated email. Servers won't accept email from unauthenticated sources, and spammers will be unable to hide their tracks.
SMTP already supports authentication. My server won't send mail except from someone who has a username and password for it. How do you make everyone configure their mail servers that way? Hell, we can't even get everyone to turn off open relays.
The problem with what you propose is that it is sender-side. How will you know if the sender and/or his server are to be trusted? Will your server ask theirs if the sender is to be trusted? Will yours ask if the e-mail address is valid? It would take spammers about 20 minutes before they had something that mimmicked a legitimate e-mail server.
Or are you proposing something like the third-party system we have for secure web sites, where every person operating a mail server pay hundreds of dollars per year to Verisign (or a handful of other "trust" companies)? How would Verisign determine if a server operated by some guy in Argentina was to be trusted? Would you revoke his certificate if spam came from his server? What if it turned out to be a temporary configuration problem or a bug in his mail server that was exploited by a spammer? What if it was perpetrated by an ISP's customer -- one with legitimate access to that mail server? If I signed up for an AOL account and then started spamming from there, would AOL's mail certificate be revoked?
It's not an easy problem to solve through technology. If it was, a technological solution would have been implemented five years ago.
That's all very well, but for a large chunk of spam, identifying the spammer if difficult, and to it in a way that would hold up in court would be even harder..
The harder it is to catch a criminal, the stiffer you make the penalties. For (an ugly) example, let's say that the RIAA could only identify one out of every 10,000 people who traded copyrighted music. If the penalty for such copyright infringement was death, would you be on Kazaa?
Most of the spam that I receive comes from South Korea, Russia and China, not the United States.
If the spam is advertising goods or services sold by someone in the U.S., the spam came from the U.S., regardless of what physical server delivered it. As they say, "follow the money." I don't care that Alan Ralsky pays for his spam to be sent through Brazil. His spam still came from the United States. An effective anti-spam law will allow you to sue him for a significant sum of money ($1000 or more) and federal, state, and local law enforcement to prosecute him for a crime.
Want to deal with overseas firms sending spam to U.S. citizens? Then handle it like the "war on terror." Pressure other countries to turn over spammers for prosecution for violating U.S. laws. This can be done with multiple tools, including threats to revoke a country's "Most Favored Nation" trading status, reduction in aide to countries where we provide same, tariffs, and even federally-mandated blocking of Internet traffic to and from that country.
I thought that the term "large segment" was fairly obvious. It means a large percentage of the group. It is synonymous with "many", as in "many people in this town oppose building that road" or "many voters are distrustful of younger candidates."
The entire purpose of the GPL is to prevent companies from making money off the sale of software.
Apparently, you are a part of the "large segment" to which I referred earlier. But, as another poster so clearly explained, that is not the purpose of the GPL.
As an aside, why would anyone be opposed to companies making money by selling software? That's what keeps many companies in business. They, in turn, employ hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of software engineers and other tech workers, providing those workers with an income to invest in other goods and services (cars, homes, home improvements, repairs, food, clothing, shelter, etc.).
I never cease to be amazed by the number of people who are either already software engineers, or who are getting an education in order to be, stridently opposing the concept of selling software for a profit. It's like auto workers picketing because they are opposed to the cars they make being sold for a profit. That will never happen, of course, because the average auto worker has more common sense than the average software engineer.
Let's consider the number of typos that make their way into Slashdot stories. Now think about the fact that the editor(s) had a chance to review those few sentences per story for quite some time before publishing them. Can you imagine the number of typos one would find in a live IRC conversation with these same editors?
Is the Redhat license in conflict with the GPL? I don't know and don't have the time, or legal credentials, to tell you.
What I see is a "free software" advocate raising a ruckus because he has found a clause that may require that he buy one copy of RedHat's Advanced Server (now called Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS) Linux for each PC on which he installs it.
Now this isn't a run-of-the-mill version of Linux designed for use on desktop PCs. It's described by RedHat as the "ultimate solution for large departmental and datacenter servers." Heaven forbid that a corporation which operates large departmental and datacenter servers has to pay for a version of Linux tailored to those applications!
A large segment of the Linux community seems hell-bent on using GPL to insure that no Linux vendor ever be able to devise a sustainable, viable business model. It's at times like these that I really appreciate the BSD license.
As Japanese teens are so used to typing one another messages on their cellphones, they are now more comfortable with one thumb typing than the old two handed QWERTY. So a Japanese company has come out with a one-thumb keypad that allows a user to enter alphanumberic text and control the mouse with only one thumb.
Translation: They've become adept at a grossly inefficient means of entering data. So, rather than teach them to touch-type efficiently, some numb-nuts company will make a keypad that lets them continue entering data in the same, stupid, one-thumb way.
I used to be really good at arcade video games and often got to enter my initials for high score, so I want a keyboard that has three buttons: Left, right, and fire. That makes just about as much sense.
I never said anything about the government turning a profit on those kinds of laws. I said it would be too costly, and the rest of the country shouldn't have to pay for little annoyances that good parents should be able to take care of.
Spam is not a "little annoyance." It's a big annoyance to most e-mail users (80% of whom support anti-spam legislation in a recent poll). And it's exacts a real and significant cost measured in the millions of dollars -- and growing constantly.
Now, how many fax machines in the country, on average? Maybe 10,000,000, if that?
You need to stop pulling numbers out of a body orifice. There are over 24 million businesses in the U.S. alone. The vast majority of them have fax machines. Many of those businesses have multiple fax machines. Many individuals have fax machines. According to junk faxers fax.com, they have "identified over 30 million untouched fax numbers." That's just the ones that they have "identified" that have, supposedly, not previously received ads.
My point was that the cost for junk faxes and junk e-mail to the economy is lower than the cost of having the government intervene and create more laws. I'm absolutely sure you completely missed that point in my previous post. Take a minute to consider it...
No, I did not miss your point. But I am convinced that you missed mine: Laws are not supposed to be passed based on a cost analysis. You don't rescind laws against rape because the dollar cost to society is higher to prosecute than to let rape take place. Laws are supposed to uphold basic values and legal principles that we, as a people, hold dear.
Really? $8.9 Billion? Wow... sounds like a great opportunity for a NEW INDUSTRY devoted to stopping spam! And there's no laws necessary! I could start a company that makes ANTI-SPAM software and sell it! If it's good software, I can sell it for $100, and after I sell thousands of copies, no more cost to the economy... instead, I'll create jobs for programmers and R&D people and give them large salaries, which they can go out and buy more goods from other companies.
That industry already exists and, frankly, if you could eliminate spam with a $100 software package, you'd be a rich man. But I don't want to pay you or your company to protect me from thieves.
Let's go back to the rape law example. We can rescind laws against rape and then you can start a nationwide chain of businesses that protect women. You can have personal bodyguard services. You can sell mace, pepper spray, tasers, stun guns, and personal alarms. Franchises can spring up all over the country and you'll employ thousands of people, from salespeople to bodyguards to clerical personnel to factory workers. Think how wonderful it would be for the economy! No more expensive trials that cost taxpayers millions of dollars each year. No more supporting rapists in jail. And the only people who would be raped would be poor women and, hey, if they can't afford your services, then I guess they are just getting what's coming to them, right?
See, something can be good for you and still be bad for the nation.
Why would a child be traumatized by something he/she doesn't understand?
I don't know. Why don't you ask a former victim of child sex abuse?
Because of the TCPA law, how many lawsuits were filed?
Aparently enough, since the number of junk faxes has been reduced to a trickle while the amount of spam has skyrocketed.
What you need to do is take the amount of money that's coming in from fines, subtract the amount of overhead for creating the law (salaries, paperwork, time, etc.) and see how well that law is REALLY doing.
NO, NO, NO!!! The idea of passing laws is not so the government can turn a profit. The idea of laws is to protect the rights of citizens. You don't make rape legal just because prosecuting rapists isn't a profit center for the government.
Let's say you have 1 million junk faxes, and only 1000 fines.
Let's say that you had no law against junk faxes and that, as a result of it being legal, every fax owner received an average of 50 of junk faxes per day. What is the cost to those owners for paper, toner/ink, and wear and tear on their fax machines to each receive over 18,000 pages of junk faxes per year?
It's fairly obvious that you see the court system as your personal savior, and that's fine if it works for you.
I don't want to hear of you filing a lawsuit against anyone for anything after that remark. If your kids are injured because of defective playground equipment, no lawsuits. If a plumber burns down your house by not being careful when soldering, you don't sue him. If a drunk driver kills or maims a member of your family, no court cases.
I prefer to be my own judge of what's acceptable and not acceptable to me and my family. The only real difference is that I pay for my own judgments, and the rest of the country pays for yours.
I just received a junk fax settlement. I threatened legal action against the junk faxer. They coughed up $500 and it never went to court. How, pray tell, did the rest of the country pay for my judgment? People who take the junk faxers to court and who threaten them with legal action are the biggest reason that junk faxing has not ballooned like spam. We are the ones who are keeping the rest of the country from facing the costs of being inundated with junk faxes.
What we are paying for is spam and one reason that we are paying for so much of it is because people like you get up in arms every time someone discusses anti-spam legislation. According to a Ferris Research report released in December of last year, spam costs U.S. businesses $8.9 billion per year -- and that figure is going up.
If you think that it's unacceptable for you and your family to receive spam with advertisements for web sites that have pictures of teenage girls being fucked by horses, what will you do about it? Chat with your traumatized child? ("Usually, girls ride ponies, but sometimes mean ponies ride bad girls...") Yeah, that will solve the problem. Then you can pay your ISP extra so that they can continue to receive and deliver the spam.
I thought that something more along the shrinkwrap vein was the way to go. I've considered mailing something like the following to software publishers:
This document is a legal agreement between your firm and [purchaser name here] for any and all software sold to [your name here], whether sold directly or through authorized resellers. By accepting payment, either directly or indirectly, for any such software, you agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.
If there is a conflict between the terms of any End User License Agreement ("EULA") or other agreement(s) enclosed with the software product and this document, the terms of this document will define the legal limits and obligations of the parties. Any changes to the terms of this agreement must be made in writing and must be signed and notarized by both parties to be considered binding.
Software Product License
Scope of License
[purchaser name here] may install software on as many computers as are under his/her control, so long as the software is in active use on only one such computer at a time.
Backup Rights
Our firm grants [purchaser name here] permission to make backup copies of and and all software and documentation and explicitly permits user to circumvent any technical means employed limit copying of said software and documentation.
Burden of Proof
[purchaser name here] will not be required to retain copies of original media, packaging, printed license, receipt, or any other documentation or materials in order to retain license to use said software. It is the responsibility of our firm to prove any claims that we make against user relating to copyright infringement or violation of the terms of any software license.
Sale or Transfer
If [purchaser name here] sells or transfers the software license, [purchaser name here] must convey or destroy any electronic or physical copies of software, license, and documentation.
Warranty
Software is guaranteed to perform as advertised and documented by our firm for a period of not less than one year after date of purchase by [purchaser name here].
Remedies
If software has defects which cause it to not perform as described within the warranty period (see above), [purchaser name here] may return software to place of purchase for a full refund.
If [purchaser name here] is denied a refund by seller for defective software, [purchaser name here] is granted permission to rent or sublicense software in order to recoup purchase price. Alternatively, [purchaser name here], is granted license to use later, corrected versions of software at no additional charge.
I didn't say that you don't have a right to post your opinions and you can't prove that I did. I think you do have reading problems as you won't find me writing any such thing.
Apparently you have the reading comprehension problems. Let's look at the sentence that's giving you problems:
Why do you think that [posting] you have a right to post your opinions on here and it's a "contribution" but when others do the same thing, it's "irrelevent"?
(Note that, through an editing error, I inadvertently left the bracketed word "posting" in the original message.)
Ignoring the aforementioned additional word, I asked why you felt that you had a right to post your opinions on here *AND* that those postings are "contributions" while others exercising the same right are considered to be posting "irrelevent" messages.
A lot of people have supported people like Hitler, Stalin, etc....
Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
A surer sign of a weak position does not exist.
after all it was implied that they would do it to only complain about how slow FreeBSD was.
No, I humorously (see +5 funny) asked
What's your goal here? Trying to slow down FreeBSD so that it doesn't make your Linux OS look bad?
Not real good at humor, are you?
You didn't at all try to address the question but warped it around to provide grounds for an attack.
This coming from someone whose initial message to me included you aren't a very smart BSD supporter...Learn to read...realize how stupid your response was. You are such a hypocrite.
Were you not humor-impaired, you would have recognized that it was good-natured kidding and, were you a little more astute, you would also have recognized that I was using a humorous remark to comment on the performance degradation that would occur.
From your other message: virtual threats.... hmmm a real loser...
Again, your apparently limited reading skills are causing you difficulties. A threat is an expression of an intent to do harm, not a claim of what someone would have done in the past had circumstances been different. "I will kill you if you eat that apple" is a threat. "I would have killed you if you had eaten that apple" is not. Are you even out of grade school?
Don't jump to any conclusions. It has nothing to do with popularity. The one that will succeed will be the one MS supports natively in the next service pack.
A good point, but Microsoft has a long history of killing third-party products by including the same, or similar, functionality in their OS. I don't think that Microsoft's native handling of.ZIP archives has helped the sales of either Winzip or PKZip.
But since PKWare is the one who is keeping their changes to the.ZIP format undocumented, they are the ones at risk. If Microsoft can get the specs for Winzip encryption, they can, and probably will, incorporate it. There is also healthy skepticism within the security community when a vendor comes up with a secret implementation of an encryption scheme. Without the ability to examine the code and/or specification, they are naturally wary -- having seen far too many flawed proprietary encryption methodologies (including storing the key in the encrypted file!).
Wow, struck a chord. Sorry you couldn't counter with logic and facts.
I did answer you with logic and facts. Example:
Why do you think that posting you have a right to post your opinions on here and it's a "contribution" but when others do the same thing, it's "irrelevent"?
I note that you did/could not answer that.
The person asked a question, you not only didn't answer the question, you've started flailing about and frothing.
I proposed a viable alternative and then you jumped in and with your insulting comment: Too bad you aren't a very smart BSD supporter. Learn to read and realize how stupid your response was. (Had you said that to me in person, your ass would still be bleeding from having passed tooth fragments in your stool.)
How Slashdot works isn't relevant to straight facts and logic.
Try dabbling in facts and logic before spouting this stuff. How Slashdot works is completely relevent to evaluating whether a posting is appropriate for that forum.
Tell me, what books have you authored that were published?
I have not written books. I authored an editorial for Car Audio & Electronics (at the request of their editor). I wrote a product review for Computer Shopper. I co-authored a technical article about using the Hitachi HD64180 in embedded systems for The Computer Journal (defunct). I also co-authored several professional technical papers and served as a consultant to Time Life Books for several books in their Understanding Computers series. But the point of that comment was solely to refute your insinuation that my reading skills were sub-par, not that I am a major, important, recognized author.
Who cares why they are popular? It's irrelevent from a business standpoint. Besides, many people believe that Phil Katz, the creator of PKZip, actually stole much of the code from his rival, System Enhancement Associates.
Your belief is irrelevant. {snip} Your points are irrelevant, they didn't answer the question. {snip} Once again, your reply was irrelevant.
Go f*** yourself. Are you really are so stupid that you don't even understand how Slashdot works? It's an open forum. People are free to ask questions, answer questions, and offer opinions and observations. Since my posting (unlike any of yours) was related to the topic being discussed (FreeBSD 5.1 Released), it was relevent and on-topic and, thus, was not moderated down. A reply to a question that suggests an alternative is relevent. Period.
My contribution was to point out that you made an irrelevant comment to the thread.
Why do you think that posting you have a right to post your opinions on here and it's a "contribution" but when others do the same thing, it's "irrelevent"? Dumbass.
Here's a clue for you: As I write this, you have posted 130 comments on Slashdot while I have exceeded 2,200. I post with a +1 Karma bonus because my postings consistently get modded up. If you want to know how Slashdot works and what comments are relevent, ask me. Otherwise, keep your opinions about other people's postings to yourself.
Frankly, with the popularity of Winzip, PKWare is making a grave error. PKZip, while perfectly good, is running a distant second in popularity based on my observations. Making their product produce incompatible ZIP files is a sure way of eroding their market share even further.
You do that sort of thing when you are the industry leader. This would be like Corel deciding that they were going to set a new standard for.DOC files that Microsoft would not be able to read. The result would be that Corel would lose their remaining six users of their word processor.
Wow, a grammar Nazi's retort, on Slashdot! If in doubt, avoid the argument, attack the grammar, I guess.
I prefer to do both.
Reading a few style guides, oh Published One, will reveal differing opinions on what punctuation to use at the end of rhetorical questions.
Read a reputable style guide like The Associated Press Stylebook or, if you prefer an online reference on this issue, click here. You will find that such sources agree that it is not proper to end a rhetorical question with a period. Just because the style guide for the Appleton Shopping Gazette permits it does not mean that it is correct.
And here we have a published writer who understands neither basic punctuation, nor hyperbole.
You are getting in way over your head. Hyperbole is a figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect, as in she ate a ton of cake. When you asked "what kind of poor bastard doesn't have 5 laptops and 10 spare HDDs lying around?", that was hyperbole. But your question "What kind of cheap Scot doesn't have a spare fucking helicopter...?" was drawing an analogy between having a spare hard drives and having a helicopter. Given how insanely cheap under-10GB hard drives have become, it was an absurd and flawed analogy, but it was an analogy nonetheless.
I damn well hope not, but I guess a criticism of women must mean I'm male, right? Wrong.
Gee, I guess neither of us is very good at identifying gender based on our preconceptions. Perhaps we should both stop trying to.
By the way, I'm sorry that the example I gave was targeted below you.
I did not say that it was "below me." I said that the show was aimed at a different demographic. To be blunt, it was created to appeal to a young, black audience. I am neither young nor black.
As a published author, would you prefer to be likened to haughty Shakespearean character?
Quit blowing one comment I made way out of proportion. I just mentioned that fact to refute the insinuation that my reading skills were below par. That's all. Period. Give it a rest.
But back to your argument that you want addressed: Just what was it? That I must be rich and insensitive to assume that the average Slashdot reader would have, or could afford, a spare hard drive? Come on! A used one big enough for a full install of FreeBSD can be had for under $10. Hell, for about $100, you can get a complete PC that would be more than adequate for running FreeBSD (Computer Geeks currently has a refurbished Dell PIII 500MHz PC with 128MB RAM, 10GB hard drive, and a CD-ROM for $99).
Slashdot Mirror
What do you get spam for that is applicable to me?
I have an entire domain so I see different spam for different addresses. Some of the addresses get spam from Brazil. Others get it from China. Others get it from the former USSR states. And some get it advertising products with prices in pounds and euros. In addition to porn spam, there is also no end of spam for online gambling and, if you've got a credit card, they're happy to take your money.
Spammers just suck.
So by the same token you would consent to US companies being taken to court in Europe, the Far East of Australasia for sending spam to us?
;-)
Yes.
I receive vast numbers of spam emails every day, most of which is only applicable to US citizens. I very rarely get anything that is applicable to anyone in Europe...
My domain gets plenty of spam applicable to Europeans. Would you like me to forward it to you so that you have spam which is more appropriate for someone in your geographical region?
Why exactly do we *need* OUTGOING SMTP servers? WHy can't mail clients pull the MX record for the destination domain on their own and just send it straight there?
Obviously we don't "need" outgoing SMTP servers since many spammers already use the method you describe for sending e-mail.
But there is a very good reasons to have outgoing SMTP servers: The ISP can block access to port 25 for their residential (i.e., non-business) subscriber base. This prevents the subscribers from exploiting open relays or directly sending spam using the method you describe above.
Instead of hijacking open relays, spammers would need huge-ass pipes because they'd be stuck sending the mail themselves.
Only partially true. If a spammer had 100,000 AOL addresses he was sending to, he would not need to send 10,000 messages. He could blind copy, say, 100 recipients on AOL at a time. Then AOL's servers would increase his effective throughput 100x. That's what most of the direct-to-SMTP spammers already do. It's only when the list of recipients are not clumped on ISPs and, are, instead, one or two to a domain, that the bandwidth limitations become an issue.
By the way, that's one reason why you tend to see more spam on big ISPs than on little ones. If a spammer finds three addresses on a small ISP, he spends a relatively large amount of bandwidth sending to those three addresses than if he blind copies 100 users on AOL (assuming direct, rather than relay-rape, spam).
Oh wait, so you mean, spammers do what they do for shits and giggles? I always thought THAT was their job.
Don't you know the difference between a job and a crime? Do you think consider bank robber, car thief, and burglar to be job titles?
Spamming is theft. It's theft of bandwidth. It's theft of storage. It's a trespass to chattels. It's not a job.
Yeah, if you just put the spammers in Guantanamo Bay with out trial or a release date, then America (land of the free?) would be much better off!
I did not mean to suggest that we adopt that aspect of the Bush/Ashcroft "War on The Constitution." I simply wanted to suggest that we could put pressure on other countries to hand over suspected spammers, just as we do to make them hand over terrorists.
Once handed over, I would want to see them get a swift trial by a jury in a U.S. (civillian) court.
Spam is so easy to kill: add authentication to SMTP and create a new email network of authenticated email. Servers won't accept email from unauthenticated sources, and spammers will be unable to hide their tracks.
SMTP already supports authentication. My server won't send mail except from someone who has a username and password for it. How do you make everyone configure their mail servers that way? Hell, we can't even get everyone to turn off open relays.
The problem with what you propose is that it is sender-side. How will you know if the sender and/or his server are to be trusted? Will your server ask theirs if the sender is to be trusted? Will yours ask if the e-mail address is valid? It would take spammers about 20 minutes before they had something that mimmicked a legitimate e-mail server.
Or are you proposing something like the third-party system we have for secure web sites, where every person operating a mail server pay hundreds of dollars per year to Verisign (or a handful of other "trust" companies)? How would Verisign determine if a server operated by some guy in Argentina was to be trusted? Would you revoke his certificate if spam came from his server? What if it turned out to be a temporary configuration problem or a bug in his mail server that was exploited by a spammer? What if it was perpetrated by an ISP's customer -- one with legitimate access to that mail server? If I signed up for an AOL account and then started spamming from there, would AOL's mail certificate be revoked?
It's not an easy problem to solve through technology. If it was, a technological solution would have been implemented five years ago.
If they are able to legally define spam (not that easy), the spammers will immediately find an alternative which is not illegal...
Okay, we've legally defined theft. What's the alternative? Oh, that's right: A job.
Maybe spammers would also consider that "alternative" if we legally defined spam and made it illegal.
That's all very well, but for a large chunk of spam, identifying the spammer if difficult, and to it in a way that would hold up in court would be even harder..
The harder it is to catch a criminal, the stiffer you make the penalties. For (an ugly) example, let's say that the RIAA could only identify one out of every 10,000 people who traded copyrighted music. If the penalty for such copyright infringement was death, would you be on Kazaa?
Most of the spam that I receive comes from South Korea, Russia and China, not the United States.
If the spam is advertising goods or services sold by someone in the U.S., the spam came from the U.S., regardless of what physical server delivered it. As they say, "follow the money." I don't care that Alan Ralsky pays for his spam to be sent through Brazil. His spam still came from the United States. An effective anti-spam law will allow you to sue him for a significant sum of money ($1000 or more) and federal, state, and local law enforcement to prosecute him for a crime.
Want to deal with overseas firms sending spam to U.S. citizens? Then handle it like the "war on terror." Pressure other countries to turn over spammers for prosecution for violating U.S. laws. This can be done with multiple tools, including threats to revoke a country's "Most Favored Nation" trading status, reduction in aide to countries where we provide same, tariffs, and even federally-mandated blocking of Internet traffic to and from that country.
What do you mean large segment?
I thought that the term "large segment" was fairly obvious. It means a large percentage of the group. It is synonymous with "many", as in "many people in this town oppose building that road" or "many voters are distrustful of younger candidates."
The entire purpose of the GPL is to prevent companies from making money off the sale of software.
Apparently, you are a part of the "large segment" to which I referred earlier. But, as another poster so clearly explained, that is not the purpose of the GPL.
As an aside, why would anyone be opposed to companies making money by selling software? That's what keeps many companies in business. They, in turn, employ hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of software engineers and other tech workers, providing those workers with an income to invest in other goods and services (cars, homes, home improvements, repairs, food, clothing, shelter, etc.).
I never cease to be amazed by the number of people who are either already software engineers, or who are getting an education in order to be, stridently opposing the concept of selling software for a profit. It's like auto workers picketing because they are opposed to the cars they make being sold for a profit. That will never happen, of course, because the average auto worker has more common sense than the average software engineer.
Let's consider the number of typos that make their way into Slashdot stories. Now think about the fact that the editor(s) had a chance to review those few sentences per story for quite some time before publishing them. Can you imagine the number of typos one would find in a live IRC conversation with these same editors?
Is the Redhat license in conflict with the GPL? I don't know and don't have the time, or legal credentials, to tell you.
What I see is a "free software" advocate raising a ruckus because he has found a clause that may require that he buy one copy of RedHat's Advanced Server (now called Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS) Linux for each PC on which he installs it.
Now this isn't a run-of-the-mill version of Linux designed for use on desktop PCs. It's described by RedHat as the "ultimate solution for large departmental and datacenter servers." Heaven forbid that a corporation which operates large departmental and datacenter servers has to pay for a version of Linux tailored to those applications!
A large segment of the Linux community seems hell-bent on using GPL to insure that no Linux vendor ever be able to devise a sustainable, viable business model. It's at times like these that I really appreciate the BSD license.
As Japanese teens are so used to typing one another messages on their cellphones, they are now more comfortable with one thumb typing than the old two handed QWERTY. So a Japanese company has come out with a one-thumb keypad that allows a user to enter alphanumberic text and control the mouse with only one thumb.
Translation: They've become adept at a grossly inefficient means of entering data. So, rather than teach them to touch-type efficiently, some numb-nuts company will make a keypad that lets them continue entering data in the same, stupid, one-thumb way.
I used to be really good at arcade video games and often got to enter my initials for high score, so I want a keyboard that has three buttons: Left, right, and fire. That makes just about as much sense.
Sorry, but I wasn't trolling and you weren't baited. But if it makes you feel better to dismiss my postings that way, go for it.
I never said anything about the government turning a profit on those kinds of laws. I said it would be too costly, and the rest of the country shouldn't have to pay for little annoyances that good parents should be able to take care of.
Spam is not a "little annoyance." It's a big annoyance to most e-mail users (80% of whom support anti-spam legislation in a recent poll). And it's exacts a real and significant cost measured in the millions of dollars -- and growing constantly.
Now, how many fax machines in the country, on average? Maybe 10,000,000, if that?
You need to stop pulling numbers out of a body orifice. There are over 24 million businesses in the U.S. alone. The vast majority of them have fax machines. Many of those businesses have multiple fax machines. Many individuals have fax machines. According to junk faxers fax.com, they have "identified over 30 million untouched fax numbers." That's just the ones that they have "identified" that have, supposedly, not previously received ads.
My point was that the cost for junk faxes and junk e-mail to the economy is lower than the cost of having the government intervene and create more laws. I'm absolutely sure you completely missed that point in my previous post. Take a minute to consider it...
No, I did not miss your point. But I am convinced that you missed mine: Laws are not supposed to be passed based on a cost analysis. You don't rescind laws against rape because the dollar cost to society is higher to prosecute than to let rape take place. Laws are supposed to uphold basic values and legal principles that we, as a people, hold dear.
Really? $8.9 Billion? Wow... sounds like a great opportunity for a NEW INDUSTRY devoted to stopping spam! And there's no laws necessary! I could start a company that makes ANTI-SPAM software and sell it! If it's good software, I can sell it for $100, and after I sell thousands of copies, no more cost to the economy... instead, I'll create jobs for programmers and R&D people and give them large salaries, which they can go out and buy more goods from other companies.
That industry already exists and, frankly, if you could eliminate spam with a $100 software package, you'd be a rich man. But I don't want to pay you or your company to protect me from thieves.
Let's go back to the rape law example. We can rescind laws against rape and then you can start a nationwide chain of businesses that protect women. You can have personal bodyguard services. You can sell mace, pepper spray, tasers, stun guns, and personal alarms. Franchises can spring up all over the country and you'll employ thousands of people, from salespeople to bodyguards to clerical personnel to factory workers. Think how wonderful it would be for the economy! No more expensive trials that cost taxpayers millions of dollars each year. No more supporting rapists in jail. And the only people who would be raped would be poor women and, hey, if they can't afford your services, then I guess they are just getting what's coming to them, right?
See, something can be good for you and still be bad for the nation.
Why would a child be traumatized by something he/she doesn't understand?
I don't know. Why don't you ask a former victim of child sex abuse?
Because of the TCPA law, how many lawsuits were filed?
Aparently enough, since the number of junk faxes has been reduced to a trickle while the amount of spam has skyrocketed.
What you need to do is take the amount of money that's coming in from fines, subtract the amount of overhead for creating the law (salaries, paperwork, time, etc.) and see how well that law is REALLY doing.
NO, NO, NO!!! The idea of passing laws is not so the government can turn a profit. The idea of laws is to protect the rights of citizens. You don't make rape legal just because prosecuting rapists isn't a profit center for the government.
Let's say you have 1 million junk faxes, and only 1000 fines.
Let's say that you had no law against junk faxes and that, as a result of it being legal, every fax owner received an average of 50 of junk faxes per day. What is the cost to those owners for paper, toner/ink, and wear and tear on their fax machines to each receive over 18,000 pages of junk faxes per year?
It's fairly obvious that you see the court system as your personal savior, and that's fine if it works for you.
I don't want to hear of you filing a lawsuit against anyone for anything after that remark. If your kids are injured because of defective playground equipment, no lawsuits. If a plumber burns down your house by not being careful when soldering, you don't sue him. If a drunk driver kills or maims a member of your family, no court cases.
I prefer to be my own judge of what's acceptable and not acceptable to me and my family. The only real difference is that I pay for my own judgments, and the rest of the country pays for yours.
I just received a junk fax settlement. I threatened legal action against the junk faxer. They coughed up $500 and it never went to court. How, pray tell, did the rest of the country pay for my judgment? People who take the junk faxers to court and who threaten them with legal action are the biggest reason that junk faxing has not ballooned like spam. We are the ones who are keeping the rest of the country from facing the costs of being inundated with junk faxes.
What we are paying for is spam and one reason that we are paying for so much of it is because people like you get up in arms every time someone discusses anti-spam legislation. According to a Ferris Research report released in December of last year, spam costs U.S. businesses $8.9 billion per year -- and that figure is going up.
If you think that it's unacceptable for you and your family to receive spam with advertisements for web sites that have pictures of teenage girls being fucked by horses, what will you do about it? Chat with your traumatized child? ("Usually, girls ride ponies, but sometimes mean ponies ride bad girls...") Yeah, that will solve the problem. Then you can pay your ISP extra so that they can continue to receive and deliver the spam.
I thought that something more along the shrinkwrap vein was the way to go. I've considered mailing something like the following to software publishers:
This document is a legal agreement between your firm and
[purchaser name here] for any and all software sold to [your
name here], whether sold directly or through authorized
resellers. By accepting payment, either directly or
indirectly, for any such software, you agree to be bound by
the terms of this agreement.
If there is a conflict between the terms of any End User
License Agreement ("EULA") or other agreement(s) enclosed
with the software product and this document, the terms of
this document will define the legal limits and obligations
of the parties. Any changes to the terms of this agreement
must be made in writing and must be signed and notarized by
both parties to be considered binding.
Software Product License
Scope of License
[purchaser name here] may install software on as many
computers as are under his/her control, so long as the
software is in active use on only one such computer at a
time.
Backup Rights
Our firm grants [purchaser name here] permission to make
backup copies of and and all software and documentation and
explicitly permits user to circumvent any technical means
employed limit copying of said software and documentation.
Burden of Proof
[purchaser name here] will not be required to retain copies
of original media, packaging, printed license, receipt, or
any other documentation or materials in order to retain
license to use said software. It is the responsibility of
our firm to prove any claims that we make against user
relating to copyright infringement or violation of the terms
of any software license.
Sale or Transfer
If [purchaser name here] sells or transfers the software
license, [purchaser name here] must convey or destroy any
electronic or physical copies of software, license, and
documentation.
Warranty
Software is guaranteed to perform as advertised and
documented by our firm for a period of not less than one
year after date of purchase by [purchaser name here].
Remedies
If software has defects which cause it to not perform as
described within the warranty period (see above), [purchaser
name here] may return software to place of purchase for a
full refund.
If [purchaser name here] is denied a refund by seller for
defective software, [purchaser name here] is granted
permission to rent or sublicense software in order to recoup
purchase price. Alternatively, [purchaser name here], is
granted license to use later, corrected versions of software
at no additional charge.
LOL... should I clean you now?
Sure. What do you use for clean-up after your "Society of the Fist" get-togethers?
Apparently you have the reading comprehension problems. Let's look at the sentence that's giving you problems: Ignoring the aforementioned additional word, I asked why you felt that you had a right to post your opinions on here *AND* that those postings are "contributions" while others exercising the same right are considered to be posting "irrelevent" messages.
A lot of people have supported people like Hitler, Stalin, etc....
Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
A surer sign of a weak position does not exist.
after all it was implied that they would do it to only complain about how slow FreeBSD was.
No, I humorously (see +5 funny) asked Not real good at humor, are you?
You didn't at all try to address the question but warped it around to provide grounds for an attack.
This coming from someone whose initial message to me included you aren't a very smart BSD supporter...Learn to read...realize how stupid your response was. You are such a hypocrite.
Were you not humor-impaired, you would have recognized that it was good-natured kidding and, were you a little more astute, you would also have recognized that I was using a humorous remark to comment on the performance degradation that would occur.
From your other message: virtual threats.... hmmm a real loser...
Again, your apparently limited reading skills are causing you difficulties. A threat is an expression of an intent to do harm, not a claim of what someone would have done in the past had circumstances been different. "I will kill you if you eat that apple" is a threat. "I would have killed you if you had eaten that apple" is not. Are you even out of grade school?
Don't jump to any conclusions. It has nothing to do with popularity. The one that will succeed will be the one MS supports natively in the next service pack.
.ZIP archives has helped the sales of either Winzip or PKZip.
.ZIP format undocumented, they are the ones at risk. If Microsoft can get the specs for Winzip encryption, they can, and probably will, incorporate it. There is also healthy skepticism within the security community when a vendor comes up with a secret implementation of an encryption scheme. Without the ability to examine the code and/or specification, they are naturally wary -- having seen far too many flawed proprietary encryption methodologies (including storing the key in the encrypted file!).
A good point, but Microsoft has a long history of killing third-party products by including the same, or similar, functionality in their OS. I don't think that Microsoft's native handling of
But since PKWare is the one who is keeping their changes to the
I did answer you with logic and facts. Example:
I note that you did/could not answer that.
The person asked a question, you not only didn't answer the question, you've started flailing about and frothing.
I proposed a viable alternative and then you jumped in and with your insulting comment: Too bad you aren't a very smart BSD supporter. Learn to read and realize how stupid your response was. (Had you said that to me in person, your ass would still be bleeding from having passed tooth fragments in your stool.)
How Slashdot works isn't relevant to straight facts and logic.
Try dabbling in facts and logic before spouting this stuff. How Slashdot works is completely relevent to evaluating whether a posting is appropriate for that forum.
Tell me, what books have you authored that were published?
I have not written books. I authored an editorial for Car Audio & Electronics (at the request of their editor). I wrote a product review for Computer Shopper. I co-authored a technical article about using the Hitachi HD64180 in embedded systems for The Computer Journal (defunct). I also co-authored several professional technical papers and served as a consultant to Time Life Books for several books in their Understanding Computers series. But the point of that comment was solely to refute your insinuation that my reading skills were sub-par, not that I am a major, important, recognized author.
that WinZIP is popular for no good reason.
Who cares why they are popular? It's irrelevent from a business standpoint. Besides, many people believe that Phil Katz, the creator of PKZip, actually stole much of the code from his rival, System Enhancement Associates.
Your belief is irrelevant.
{snip}
Your points are irrelevant, they didn't answer the question.
{snip}
Once again, your reply was irrelevant.
Go f*** yourself. Are you really are so stupid that you don't even understand how Slashdot works? It's an open forum. People are free to ask questions, answer questions, and offer opinions and observations. Since my posting (unlike any of yours) was related to the topic being discussed (FreeBSD 5.1 Released), it was relevent and on-topic and, thus, was not moderated down. A reply to a question that suggests an alternative is relevent. Period.
My contribution was to point out that you made an irrelevant comment to the thread.
Why do you think that posting you have a right to post your opinions on here and it's a "contribution" but when others do the same thing, it's "irrelevent"? Dumbass.
Here's a clue for you: As I write this, you have posted 130 comments on Slashdot while I have exceeded 2,200. I post with a +1 Karma bonus because my postings consistently get modded up. If you want to know how Slashdot works and what comments are relevent, ask me. Otherwise, keep your opinions about other people's postings to yourself.
Frankly, with the popularity of Winzip, PKWare is making a grave error. PKZip, while perfectly good, is running a distant second in popularity based on my observations. Making their product produce incompatible ZIP files is a sure way of eroding their market share even further.
.DOC files that Microsoft would not be able to read. The result would be that Corel would lose their remaining six users of their word processor.
You do that sort of thing when you are the industry leader. This would be like Corel deciding that they were going to set a new standard for
Wow, a grammar Nazi's retort, on Slashdot! If in doubt, avoid the argument, attack the grammar, I guess.
I prefer to do both.
Reading a few style guides, oh Published One, will reveal differing opinions on what punctuation to use at the end of rhetorical questions.
Read a reputable style guide like The Associated Press Stylebook or, if you prefer an online reference on this issue, click here. You will find that such sources agree that it is not proper to end a rhetorical question with a period. Just because the style guide for the Appleton Shopping Gazette permits it does not mean that it is correct.
And here we have a published writer who understands neither basic punctuation, nor hyperbole.
You are getting in way over your head. Hyperbole is a figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect, as in she ate a ton of cake. When you asked "what kind of poor bastard doesn't have 5 laptops and 10 spare HDDs lying around?", that was hyperbole. But your question "What kind of cheap Scot doesn't have a spare fucking helicopter...?" was drawing an analogy between having a spare hard drives and having a helicopter. Given how insanely cheap under-10GB hard drives have become, it was an absurd and flawed analogy, but it was an analogy nonetheless.
I damn well hope not, but I guess a criticism of women must mean I'm male, right? Wrong.
Gee, I guess neither of us is very good at identifying gender based on our preconceptions. Perhaps we should both stop trying to.
By the way, I'm sorry that the example I gave was targeted below you.
I did not say that it was "below me." I said that the show was aimed at a different demographic. To be blunt, it was created to appeal to a young, black audience. I am neither young nor black.
As a published author, would you prefer to be likened to haughty Shakespearean character?
Quit blowing one comment I made way out of proportion. I just mentioned that fact to refute the insinuation that my reading skills were below par. That's all. Period. Give it a rest.
But back to your argument that you want addressed: Just what was it? That I must be rich and insensitive to assume that the average Slashdot reader would have, or could afford, a spare hard drive? Come on! A used one big enough for a full install of FreeBSD can be had for under $10. Hell, for about $100, you can get a complete PC that would be more than adequate for running FreeBSD (Computer Geeks currently has a refurbished Dell PIII 500MHz PC with 128MB RAM, 10GB hard drive, and a CD-ROM for $99).