Spam could be outlawed once and for all worldwide, with harsh penalties for violation.
Good in theory, unlike to be enforced/agreed on in practice.
An international agreement of standards for content could bring freedom of information to places where there is a lack of information.
Again, good in theory, but I highly doubt the countries with serious human rights issues are likely to go along with it just because some UN body tells them to. I mean, the UN's been telling China to quit whacking political dissidents for years, doesn't seem to have had much effect.
Centralized taxation - an agreed upon method for providing revenue streams to the UN which would allow taxes to be paid across various countries.
Eh. Probably wouldn't be a bad thing.
Elimination of various objectively hateful websites from the internet, e.g., holocaust denial, neo-nazis, gun merchants.
Whoops! Apparently Number 2 was supposed to be "freedom of information, except information I don't like". I'm not particularly fond of Neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers, but then I'm not particularly fond of Marxists, either. They all have a right to speak. And gun merchants are "objectively hateful" eh?
This doesn't sound all bad to me, though admittedly there are some drawbacks. For example, the administrative costs might be fairly high, but these could be worked out I think. Perhaps an email tax on corporations?
I think you've just demonstrated exactly what the problems would be. Also, an email tax on corporations? Get real. Whos going to collect it, and how? For that matter, given that they're already paying for the bandwidth (And undoubtably taxes on that) why should they have to pay an additional tax to use it to send email? And who is this tax paid to, hmmm? Last time I checked the UN didn't have authority to levy taxes anywhere.
Cryptography IS security through obscurity... mathematical obscurity. You either choose a secret (a prime or a password) to encrypt something, or you choose a secret (which picture, which algorithm and settings) to hide something using stego.
No, not really. Thats not whats meant by "Security through obscurity". Security through obscurity is hiding the algorithm by which things are hidden. In crypto, security through obscurity would mean the the algorithm must remain hidden in order for the message to be secure. A good crypto algorithm can be shown to the world at large, and still remain secure.
Excuse me?? Japan, with a labor shortage? This is the same Japan w/ the huge unemployment rate, runaway deflation, and enormous national deficit, right? Or, is this some other Japan I haven't heard about yet?
This is the Japan with an extremely low birthrate and a population aging faster than any other in the first world. This is the Japan that not too many years down the road is going to have one retired worker for every productive one. This is the Japan where labor just costs too damn much to be able to justify doing manufacturing there.
I find this assanine, esepecially when I can move 14 miles to town, and have access to DSL, Cable, and WiFi. Out here, the only option for high speed data transfers is sattilite. Far too expensive for me.
So don't live in the middle of nowhere. Not running new lines out to you in the middle of nowhere has nothing to do with "monopolistic telephone companies", it wouldn't happen in a totally competitive market either, because it's simply not cost effective to rewire every few years for a few customers out in the sticks. The rest of us already subsidize your phone service by way of taxes added onto our phone bill (take a look next time you pay it), why the hell should we pay for you to have all of the benefits of living near civilization without the downsides. Next you'll be complaining because the "Monopolistic Walmart" won't build nearer to your house or that the "Monopolistic Dominos" won't deliver to you. Sheesh.
whole system is being gamed and gamed hardest by the Republicans.
I call bullshit. If you'd read all of the article (not just the top half) you'd notice quite a lot of references to Democrats doing the same thing. The parties have both been doing this for years. The only thing thats different now is that a couple states have started doing it in non-census years, and in the case of Texas thats happening because the Democrats managed to block it last time around. The system is being gamed, but both parties do it. (Not that I have any particular love for Republicans. But it's like seeing Charles Manson get off easy because hey, look how bad Jeffry Damer was...)
Well, Anonymous Fucktard, you point at a person, you make sure they are breathing and count "1". And then you pick a different person that is also breathing, and count "2". But you're American, so you won't get up to 21 unless you're naked. We stop when we reach 100,000 *people* (thanks for actually reading my post) and call that a 'riding'. Then candidates put their names forward, and those 100,000 *people* vote for those candidates.
Congradulations, you've just described our system as well - if you'd read the article, you'd know that redistricting plans have been rejected for differences in the number of voters as small as 17 people in districts of hundreds of thousands. The question is _which_ 100,000 voters vote on _which_ pair of candidates. But apparently you read about as well as you seem to think most Americans count.
It is my fond desire that those contemplating on voting for Bush/Cheney in '04, will contemplate some of the less savory implications that would be sure to follow.
What, they might do exactly the same crap the Democrats do when they're in power? They're all a bunch of corrupt scum that make say, Microsoft look squeaky clean by comparison. Ross Perot 2008!
So, which nasty people did you give your email address to ?
Well, the real flood started about the time I listed it as the contact address for the local anime club. I don't think it's a cooncidence that a relatively high percentage of the pr0n spam is for "h0t t00ns".
Get a life : it's email, it won't kill you. Just use a decent mailer, some antispam filter and update it.
Why would you just physically hurt somebody ?
I can think of plenty of reasons. Like, say, promoting child and bestiality porn. To anyone, including children. Because they refuse to take no for an answer and mutate their mail around my spam filters. Because they hammer mailservers with dictionary attacks, wasting resources that aren't theirs. Because they pull the kind of crap referenced in this story. Because they file frivolous lawsuits against anti-spam organizations who are just trying to help people avoid their crap, so that they can try and drain their resources. Because the email address I've used as a public point of contact on my websites is so flooded with bestiality porn that I'm afraid to open it in public.
In short, I don't think it's the right response, but theres certainly plenty of motivation to do so. I'm not going to cry over it if someone takes a baseball bat to Alan Ralsky's head.
As much as I hate to side with the sex offenders, the study you just quoted shows that MOST sex offenders are never reconvicted...
Although a pretty large chunk are. And keep in mind, that particularly when you're talking about child molestation and even rape, a fairly large percentage of crimes committed are never reported.
The most famous, is never get involved in a litigation war with a company who has more lawyers than Linden, Utah has farmers.
While I imagine that involving Ellison would make the PR war a lot more interesting, when it comes to Lawyers SCO has already pretty much chosen to pick on the biggest kid on the block. IBM has a long history of using their (very large) legal department to great effect..
Still, it might be amusing to watch them try to do this on _even more_ fronts.
Yeah, right. I've always been amazed at how Big Science constantly rakes in billions and billions of dollars without any real applications on the horizon.
It always amazes me how amazingly shortsighted people can be about these sorts of things. At the turn of the century Rutherford's experiments, or special/general relativity had no real applications on the horizon. Look how totally worthless _that_ turned out to be. We only ended up with semi-conductors and synchrotrons that we could use to determine the molecular structure of compounds, giving us say, most of modern technology. So I can see how any additional basic research into the fundamental structure of matter could be viewed as just throwing good money after bad. Totally worthless!
Not to sound rude to the almighty slashdotters our there, but why the cyncism?
Because, as my Grandmother is fond of saying "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me". Micrsoft has a history of doing this sort of thing in the face of competition. Lessee, Incompatible Java VM's, 'Jscript", DR-DOS and Win 3.11...
If someone copied a Toyota Camry (or well, pick any other physical thing that is sold) and sold it to me, even if Toyota won a lawsuit againt the person who made it are you saying they could tell me to stop driving my Camry copy? I don't think so. IANAL, but I don't think that's how the law works. It's perverted it's been made to work that way in some IP cases.
Funny you should mention it...some of Henry Ford's competitors tried it back in the day.
Has anyone else thought that the most effective way to combat SPAM would be with education not filters/lawsuits/etc?
For a first timer spamming from their own mailserver, sure, educations great.
The bulk of the spam out there is put out by a relatively small number of people who will tell you where you can go shove it if you approach them with your reasoned approach about why Spam is wrong. At the point where these jackasses are operating form foriegn netblocks, hijacking open proxies, using virus infested hosts as spaming proxies, and DDOSing anti-spam sites into the ground, I'd say it's pretty much all out war.
Adding a pringles can antenna in most cases is even illegal.
ICBW, but I believe the FCC restrictions are on total output power - How you choose to direct that is totally up to you, leaving pringles cans in the distinctly legal catagory.
In response to the parents post about about amplifiers, most amateur installed amplifiers tend to be crap. They tend to spew radio energy all over the spectrum. I've seen amps that actually output less at the desired frequency than the unamped equipment. This would certainly explain problems with otherwireless devices, such as TV's.
Same with supsercomputers. Supercomputers are so 80s/80s. Decentralization is the thing of today, but say, creating a grid network of 10,000 computers is not so easy to compare to some Japanese mega-thingie.
It's been said before, I'll say it again: Grid Computing and distributed clusters are a nice on a small budget, but are not a suitable replacement for a real vector supercomputer in all applications, particularly simulation applications. Note the current Top 500: The "Japanese mega-thingie" is whomping the next closest competitor by a factor of about 2.5. A cluster with about 1.5 times as many processors. And thats been around for over a year now.
Do you really need a lawyer for a subpoena? Even if Linus was a US citizen, he's not being investigated or anything. Just answer a few stupid questions from SCO, and you're scot free.
Technically, no. Linus is not charged with anything, just needs to answer a few questions.
Realistically? I think anyone who's ever had any sort of serious dealings with the US (or really any) legal system would agree that at least talking to a lawyer in this situation is a really, really good idea.
Slashdot Mirror
Nintendo most certainly used to. I seem to remember them getting their hands slapped(legally) on that once upon a time.
Funny I thought thats what pretty much every developed nation was _already doing_.
Good in theory, unlike to be enforced/agreed on in practice.
An international agreement of standards for content could bring freedom of information to places where there is a lack of information.
Again, good in theory, but I highly doubt the countries with serious human rights issues are likely to go along with it just because some UN body tells them to. I mean, the UN's been telling China to quit whacking political dissidents for years, doesn't seem to have had much effect.
Centralized taxation - an agreed upon method for providing revenue streams to the UN which would allow taxes to be paid across various countries.
Eh. Probably wouldn't be a bad thing.
Elimination of various objectively hateful websites from the internet, e.g., holocaust denial, neo-nazis, gun merchants.
Whoops! Apparently Number 2 was supposed to be "freedom of information, except information I don't like". I'm not particularly fond of Neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers, but then I'm not particularly fond of Marxists, either. They all have a right to speak. And gun merchants are "objectively hateful" eh?
This doesn't sound all bad to me, though admittedly there are some drawbacks. For example, the administrative costs might be fairly high, but these could be worked out I think. Perhaps an email tax on corporations?
I think you've just demonstrated exactly what the problems would be. Also, an email tax on corporations? Get real. Whos going to collect it, and how? For that matter, given that they're already paying for the bandwidth (And undoubtably taxes on that) why should they have to pay an additional tax to use it to send email? And who is this tax paid to, hmmm? Last time I checked the UN didn't have authority to levy taxes anywhere.
No, not really. Thats not whats meant by "Security through obscurity". Security through obscurity is hiding the algorithm by which things are hidden. In crypto, security through obscurity would mean the the algorithm must remain hidden in order for the message to be secure. A good crypto algorithm can be shown to the world at large, and still remain secure.
This is the Japan with an extremely low birthrate and a population aging faster than any other in the first world. This is the Japan that not too many years down the road is going to have one retired worker for every productive one. This is the Japan where labor just costs too damn much to be able to justify doing manufacturing there.
So don't live in the middle of nowhere. Not running new lines out to you in the middle of nowhere has nothing to do with "monopolistic telephone companies", it wouldn't happen in a totally competitive market either, because it's simply not cost effective to rewire every few years for a few customers out in the sticks. The rest of us already subsidize your phone service by way of taxes added onto our phone bill (take a look next time you pay it), why the hell should we pay for you to have all of the benefits of living near civilization without the downsides. Next you'll be complaining because the "Monopolistic Walmart" won't build nearer to your house or that the "Monopolistic Dominos" won't deliver to you. Sheesh.
I call bullshit. If you'd read all of the article (not just the top half) you'd notice quite a lot of references to Democrats doing the same thing. The parties have both been doing this for years. The only thing thats different now is that a couple states have started doing it in non-census years, and in the case of Texas thats happening because the Democrats managed to block it last time around. The system is being gamed, but both parties do it. (Not that I have any particular love for Republicans. But it's like seeing Charles Manson get off easy because hey, look how bad Jeffry Damer was...)
Congradulations, you've just described our system as well - if you'd read the article, you'd know that redistricting plans have been rejected for differences in the number of voters as small as 17 people in districts of hundreds of thousands. The question is _which_ 100,000 voters vote on _which_ pair of candidates. But apparently you read about as well as you seem to think most Americans count.
What, they might do exactly the same crap the Democrats do when they're in power? They're all a bunch of corrupt scum that make say, Microsoft look squeaky clean by comparison. Ross Perot 2008!
Well, the real flood started about the time I listed it as the contact address for the local anime club. I don't think it's a cooncidence that a relatively high percentage of the pr0n spam is for "h0t t00ns".
Just use a decent mailer, some antispam filter and update it.
Why would you just physically hurt somebody ?
I can think of plenty of reasons. Like, say, promoting child and bestiality porn. To anyone, including children. Because they refuse to take no for an answer and mutate their mail around my spam filters. Because they hammer mailservers with dictionary attacks, wasting resources that aren't theirs. Because they pull the kind of crap referenced in this story. Because they file frivolous lawsuits against anti-spam organizations who are just trying to help people avoid their crap, so that they can try and drain their resources. Because the email address I've used as a public point of contact on my websites is so flooded with bestiality porn that I'm afraid to open it in public.
In short, I don't think it's the right response, but theres certainly plenty of motivation to do so. I'm not going to cry over it if someone takes a baseball bat to Alan Ralsky's head.
Although a pretty large chunk are. And keep in mind, that particularly when you're talking about child molestation and even rape, a fairly large percentage of crimes committed are never reported.
Verbing Weirds the Language.
Shamelessly stolen from Calvin & Hobbes...
What an interesting choice of product designations...Who else parsed it as Down, Not Across?
While I imagine that involving Ellison would make the PR war a lot more interesting, when it comes to Lawyers SCO has already pretty much chosen to pick on the biggest kid on the block. IBM has a long history of using their (very large) legal department to great effect..
Still, it might be amusing to watch them try to do this on _even more_ fronts.
Who cares? At the $10 Billion-ish price of say, the last supercollider canceled by congress, either would have been a bargin.
Semi-conductors. Synchrotron Radiation and X-Ray Crystallography. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
It always amazes me how amazingly shortsighted people can be about these sorts of things. At the turn of the century Rutherford's experiments, or special/general relativity had no real applications on the horizon. Look how totally worthless _that_ turned out to be. We only ended up with semi-conductors and synchrotrons that we could use to determine the molecular structure of compounds, giving us say, most of modern technology. So I can see how any additional basic research into the fundamental structure of matter could be viewed as just throwing good money after bad. Totally worthless!
Because, as my Grandmother is fond of saying "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me". Micrsoft has a history of doing this sort of thing in the face of competition. Lessee, Incompatible Java VM's, 'Jscript", DR-DOS and Win 3.11...
If someone copied a Toyota Camry (or well, pick any other physical thing that is sold) and sold it to me, even if Toyota won a lawsuit againt the person who made it are you saying they could tell me to stop driving my Camry copy? I don't think so. IANAL, but I don't think that's how the law works. It's perverted it's been made to work that way in some IP cases.
Funny you should mention it...some of Henry Ford's competitors tried it back in the day.
For a first timer spamming from their own mailserver, sure, educations great.
The bulk of the spam out there is put out by a relatively small number of people who will tell you where you can go shove it if you approach them with your reasoned approach about why Spam is wrong. At the point where these jackasses are operating form foriegn netblocks, hijacking open proxies, using virus infested hosts as spaming proxies, and DDOSing anti-spam sites into the ground, I'd say it's pretty much all out war.
Yes. Although it didn't have anything to do with a fear of asteroid strikes.
ICBW, but I believe the FCC restrictions are on total output power - How you choose to direct that is totally up to you, leaving pringles cans in the distinctly legal catagory.
In response to the parents post about about amplifiers, most amateur installed amplifiers tend to be crap. They tend to spew radio energy all over the spectrum. I've seen amps that actually output less at the desired frequency than the unamped equipment. This would certainly explain problems with otherwireless devices, such as TV's.
It's been said before, I'll say it again: Grid Computing and distributed clusters are a nice on a small budget, but are not a suitable replacement for a real vector supercomputer in all applications, particularly simulation applications. Note the current Top 500: The "Japanese mega-thingie" is whomping the next closest competitor by a factor of about 2.5. A cluster with about 1.5 times as many processors. And thats been around for over a year now.
Technically, no. Linus is not charged with anything, just needs to answer a few questions.
Realistically? I think anyone who's ever had any sort of serious dealings with the US (or really any) legal system would agree that at least talking to a lawyer in this situation is a really, really good idea.