This whole "eye for an eye" thing assumes that the world is much more perfect and fair than it is. I suppose you can rationalize this idea as something that is "fair," but life wasn't meant to be fair. If you are innocently driving down the street when you are cut off by an inconsiderate driver, how do you react? Do you announce that this person is an asshole, then tailgate him or her? Do you do anything to harass this driver in the same way that you feel you were harassed? If so, then you've lost the "battle." You've allowed yourself to get angry (and most people would rather be happy than angry), and put yourself at risk of getting into an accident. Did that other driver piss you off? Wait until you rear-end him because you were so angry. Then you'll be mad and humiliated.
The key is to realize that everybody loses in a battle. You shouldn't waste your own time trying to make others miserable, because at best you'll break even (you spend time, and derive some pleasure at somebody else's suffering). At worst, your plan for revenge backfires (as is often the case) and you end up angrier at your target, as well as angry at yourself and anybody who may have assisted in screwing up your plan.
You have to realize that the world is not fair, and the best thing you can do is direct your efforts toward your own happiness, not somebody else's misery. It may be wrong for a spammer to flood your inbox, but all you have to do is find something else that makes you happy. Revenge is typically a waste of time, and just opens yourself up to more trouble. Go queue up some good music, chat with a friend, have a tasty snack, drink a tasty beverage, or, if it's your thing, spark up a joint. Dwelling on the bad people takes away from time you could spend being happy.
Has anybody noticed their website? It's just being parked right now, and the page lists anti-spam tools for sale! This is what happens when they aren't willing to put three megs of server space behind the domain, and instead they grab a cheap domain-registration-and-parking service!
Seriously, I would have thought that these spammers would have spent the extra $10 to actually get some disk space before filing a lawsuit that they should know will prompt many hits to their web site. I mean, there has got to be at least one person there who can whip up a quick page of html, and they should be able to split the cost amongst themselves.
"Should the Defendants, be allowed to continue their assult upon the Plaintiff and Plaintiff's industry, the plaintiff's industry will cease to exist. This will cause more Americans to become unemployed."
Wonder if they will be able to file for unemployment? Guess I won't be sending them my resume any time soon...
Not exactly related to your comment, but the above argument is ridiculous - it is based on the assumption that a business should be guaranteed by its government that if it can make a profit today, it must be able to make a profit tomorrow. If this lawyer's assertion is correct, then the spammers' businesses would cease to exist because their "customers" don't want to receive the product.
The spam blockers are selling/giving away a tool that lets system administrators and individual users ignore messages that they do not wish to receive. If I started a doorbell-removal business, would certain religious groups sue me for ruining their business?
Slashdot has always been against the use of the term "hacker" for someone that destroys or steals things. Slashdot and the geeks that read this site have seemed to always want to refer to these people as "crackers." A term that has been legitimately used to denigrate white people for ages. And yet here we have Roblimo, one of the slashdot founders advocating the use of the term "hacker" to describe someone who has stolen things, and inspired others to do the same.
I think "hacker" works in this case because this guy took a system, explored it, and figured out how to do undocumented crazy stuff with it. Like the hacker who first got Linux on a Dreamcast. The fact that he used this knowledge to then do illegal stuff is beside the point. Perhaps he could also be called a cracker, since he broke into a system and bypassed the security systems. But if you met a plumber who could fly planes, you'd still be able to call him a plumber, right? I don't think hacker and cracker are mutually exclusive.
But the nice thing about language is the fact that it isn't permanent, definitions can be flexible, and can even change outright. Computer geeks tend to be a bit annoyed with this aspect of language since it makes it harder for us to write computer programs where the meaning of a word might change one day.
It will be able to be shown everywhere from Japan to South America, Finland to the Maldives, without any more alteration than perhaps a change of the closing voiceover, currently delivered by laid-back Garrison Keillor, the American author, who announces: "Isn't it nice when things just work?"
Google turned search around....I think it will be difficult for Yahoo to attempt to compete with them. I think Yahoo will be better trying to be better at being Yahoo.
Suddenly, slashdot posters sound coherent and intelligent...
Incidentally, how did Google "turn search around?" In Soviet Russia, perhaps, web sites search for you?
I like to take the international approach - I read articles on CNN, Fox News, BBC, and a South African site, plus whatever else I can find. That way, you can see, based on what is repeated and what is changed, which stories are more likely to be true (or which nations' media have similar slants in their reporting).
The standard non-geek spends money on items that increase one's chance of getting a girlfriend, such as soap.
Geeks, on the other hand, forego soap and instead buy GeForce video cards and glowing PC cases, which actually decrease one's chance of getting a girlfriend.
For the same reason the size of hail is always compared to golf balls. Which leads one to wonder how people described hail before there were golf balls.
I believe they were described as "1/32 of a Volkswagen bug"
'Hotmail subscribers are now limited to sending only 100 messages a day "in an effort to prevent spammers from using Hotmail to spread spam," said Lisa Gurry, MSN lead product manager.'
This really isn't going to do anything worthwhile. Unless the spammers are actually logging into Hotmail, typing in the names, and pressing send, this sort of measure is pointless. It seems that the spammers are just throwing together random usernames + "@hotmail.com" and using their own smtp servers (or somebody else's, just not Hotmail's).
If they want to do something to cut down on spam, why not just limit the number of messages that a server can send to hotmail addresses? Meaning, if I want to send out spam and my list includes 100,000 hotmail adresses, hotmail's servers will reject every message I send to a them after the 100th. That just wiped out 99.9% of spam that hotmail users would receive.
Yes, it would take some work and the processing cost per message would be higher, but if it works, and cuts down on traffic by a higher percentage than the increased cost associated with the system, it would still be an amazing improvement.
I've always wondered why MS couldn't look at all incoming messages and spot spam based on vast numbers of similar messages.
Please,Please restrain your insensitive comments/sarcasm. New Yorkers should especially empathise with what's happening here--Is it funny when I talk about 7/11?
Actually, yes, that really was pretty damn hilarious. And I'm from New York, no less.
If all the sites I found that carry Suse 8.1 iso's, will they be carrying suse 8.2 iso's. It's hard to have to find new iso mirrors.
It's tough to find ISO's for the most recent SuSE distro, because (and I may be wrong) they don't make the ISO's available until the next version comes along. It's still possible to get an iso, but somebody has to make it and post it first.
I have 8.1 installed now, but to do that I downloaded the ftp-install iso image and installed via ftp. Unless you're going to install on a bunch of machines, it's quicker to do an ftp install anyway.
I like the idea of DRM. I'd love to register every piece of software on my hard drive. If a virus comes through my email filter, it can't run. That's the promise of DRM. The problem is that's not how it's going to be implemented. Someone else is going to hold the keys to my software for my own good.
Holy freakin' crap! Are you running Windows? Get the hell out of slashdot, you capitalist pig!
heh... just kidding... my afternoon crack shipment is late today...
That's a different service. TW uses boxes which they get from Scientific Atlanta, then they add some magic codes to it and rent it to customers. As you can see from the link above, TW is just rebranding the same box that SA makes - it looks like they just copy-and-pasted the image from SA's web site! The demo is even identical, except of course TW's logo swapped out with the SA logo.
In addition, I don't think they are testing the service at this point, I think it's just released - Scientific Atlanta would be the ones testing the box anyway. The box AOL-TW is going to be producing is probably going to be developed internally.
Re:Roots on Windows aren't as l337
on
Windows Rootkits
·
· Score: 0
Now, if you could install a hacked terminal server that lets users shadow the console user, you'd have something fun... "The mouse is moving! A hacker took over my computer!" You could open up notepad and tell them nasty things as they watched...
Actually, there are some of those around already - PCAnywhere is a legit one, then there's a few others that aren't so legit...
story is posted for subscribers: target site gets 400 hits/minute
20 minutes later the story is publicly posted: target site gets 1000 hits/minute
Meaning: ~40% of the slashdotters are subscribed
Unfortunately, there are too many other factors to this: For example, how many of those hits are from early slashdotters, and not other visitors to the site? What if a subscriber sends a link to some of his/her favorite mailing lists? And what if the subscriber doesn't see the story before it goes live?
It's a nice idea, but too many other factors to know if the traffic rates are indicative of subscriber/non-subscriber ratio. Even if all that could be figured out, you'd need to get access to the number of hits that occurred, and to do that you need to be working at one of the high-traffic sites (after all, if the site gets slashdotted then you won't know how many hits there would have been). I think you'd have better luck putting up a poll:
Did you subscribe? * Yes * No * Who shot who in the what now? * My browser doesn't supprt forms, you insensitive clod! * CowboyNeal sends me all the stories in advance.
Speaking as a musician, I think it would be good for music as an art if we got away from a model that allowed people to come up with one "hit" song and then 10-15 crappy songs.
Think about this: Band "A" writes a hit song that sells 10 million copies. Band "B" releases an album of 10 songs, none of which are hits, but the whole album is solid, and it sells 2 million copies. With a per-song model, Band "A" sells 10 million copies of one song, yet Band "B" sells 2 million copies of each of their 10 songs. We're now rewarding the band who knows how to write good songs, instead of being lucky with one song. Yet at the same time, anybody who does get lucky and comes up with a hit by chance will still get to sell 10 million copies of that song.
I don't think the movie analogy works here because in most cases, the album isn't atomic - you can enjoy one song without hearing the songs before or after that track. Radio stations just play one song at a time (usually), and set lists rarely line up with the albums.
Slashdot Mirror
This whole "eye for an eye" thing assumes that the world is much more perfect and fair than it is. I suppose you can rationalize this idea as something that is "fair," but life wasn't meant to be fair. If you are innocently driving down the street when you are cut off by an inconsiderate driver, how do you react? Do you announce that this person is an asshole, then tailgate him or her? Do you do anything to harass this driver in the same way that you feel you were harassed? If so, then you've lost the "battle." You've allowed yourself to get angry (and most people would rather be happy than angry), and put yourself at risk of getting into an accident. Did that other driver piss you off? Wait until you rear-end him because you were so angry. Then you'll be mad and humiliated.
The key is to realize that everybody loses in a battle. You shouldn't waste your own time trying to make others miserable, because at best you'll break even (you spend time, and derive some pleasure at somebody else's suffering). At worst, your plan for revenge backfires (as is often the case) and you end up angrier at your target, as well as angry at yourself and anybody who may have assisted in screwing up your plan.
You have to realize that the world is not fair, and the best thing you can do is direct your efforts toward your own happiness, not somebody else's misery. It may be wrong for a spammer to flood your inbox, but all you have to do is find something else that makes you happy. Revenge is typically a waste of time, and just opens yourself up to more trouble. Go queue up some good music, chat with a friend, have a tasty snack, drink a tasty beverage, or, if it's your thing, spark up a joint. Dwelling on the bad people takes away from time you could spend being happy.
Has anybody noticed their website? It's just being parked right now, and the page lists anti-spam tools for sale! This is what happens when they aren't willing to put three megs of server space behind the domain, and instead they grab a cheap domain-registration-and-parking service!
Seriously, I would have thought that these spammers would have spent the extra $10 to actually get some disk space before filing a lawsuit that they should know will prompt many hits to their web site. I mean, there has got to be at least one person there who can whip up a quick page of html, and they should be able to split the cost amongst themselves.
The spam blockers are selling/giving away a tool that lets system administrators and individual users ignore messages that they do not wish to receive. If I started a doorbell-removal business, would certain religious groups sue me for ruining their business?
But the nice thing about language is the fact that it isn't permanent, definitions can be flexible, and can even change outright. Computer geeks tend to be a bit annoyed with this aspect of language since it makes it harder for us to write computer programs where the meaning of a word might change one day.
How was that offtopic? The quote was taken from the article.
Incidentally, how did Google "turn search around?" In Soviet Russia, perhaps, web sites search for you?
I like to take the international approach - I read articles on CNN, Fox News, BBC, and a South African site, plus whatever else I can find. That way, you can see, based on what is repeated and what is changed, which stories are more likely to be true (or which nations' media have similar slants in their reporting).
The standard non-geek spends money on items that increase one's chance of getting a girlfriend, such as soap.
Geeks, on the other hand, forego soap and instead buy GeForce video cards and glowing PC cases, which actually decrease one's chance of getting a girlfriend.
Does your average linux user actually have any finances to manage?
Since the average linux user has no girlfriend, yes, he does still have some money.
If they want to do something to cut down on spam, why not just limit the number of messages that a server can send to hotmail addresses? Meaning, if I want to send out spam and my list includes 100,000 hotmail adresses, hotmail's servers will reject every message I send to a them after the 100th. That just wiped out 99.9% of spam that hotmail users would receive.
Yes, it would take some work and the processing cost per message would be higher, but if it works, and cuts down on traffic by a higher percentage than the increased cost associated with the system, it would still be an amazing improvement.
I've always wondered why MS couldn't look at all incoming messages and spot spam based on vast numbers of similar messages.
You want a name for this war?? how about...
YAGW: Yet Another Gulf War,
KPersianGulf,
GNIraq, or
TAWY: Tawy Ain't a War Yet
and happy birthday.
If all the sites I found that carry Suse 8.1 iso's, will they be carrying suse 8.2 iso's. It's hard to have to find new iso mirrors. It's tough to find ISO's for the most recent SuSE distro, because (and I may be wrong) they don't make the ISO's available until the next version comes along. It's still possible to get an iso, but somebody has to make it and post it first.
I have 8.1 installed now, but to do that I downloaded the ftp-install iso image and installed via ftp. Unless you're going to install on a bunch of machines, it's quicker to do an ftp install anyway.
heh... just kidding... my afternoon crack shipment is late today...
That's a different service. TW uses boxes which they get from Scientific Atlanta, then they add some magic codes to it and rent it to customers. As you can see from the link above, TW is just rebranding the same box that SA makes - it looks like they just copy-and-pasted the image from SA's web site! The demo is even identical, except of course TW's logo swapped out with the SA logo.
In addition, I don't think they are testing the service at this point, I think it's just released - Scientific Atlanta would be the ones testing the box anyway. The box AOL-TW is going to be producing is probably going to be developed internally.
Now, if you could install a hacked terminal server that lets users shadow the console user, you'd have something fun... "The mouse is moving! A hacker took over my computer!" You could open up notepad and tell them nasty things as they watched...
Actually, there are some of those around already - PCAnywhere is a legit one, then there's a few others that aren't so legit...
It's a nice idea, but too many other factors to know if the traffic rates are indicative of subscriber/non-subscriber ratio. Even if all that could be figured out, you'd need to get access to the number of hits that occurred, and to do that you need to be working at one of the high-traffic sites (after all, if the site gets slashdotted then you won't know how many hits there would have been). I think you'd have better luck putting up a poll:
Speaking as a musician, I think it would be good for music as an art if we got away from a model that allowed people to come up with one "hit" song and then 10-15 crappy songs.
Think about this: Band "A" writes a hit song that sells 10 million copies. Band "B" releases an album of 10 songs, none of which are hits, but the whole album is solid, and it sells 2 million copies. With a per-song model, Band "A" sells 10 million copies of one song, yet Band "B" sells 2 million copies of each of their 10 songs. We're now rewarding the band who knows how to write good songs, instead of being lucky with one song. Yet at the same time, anybody who does get lucky and comes up with a hit by chance will still get to sell 10 million copies of that song.
I don't think the movie analogy works here because in most cases, the album isn't atomic - you can enjoy one song without hearing the songs before or after that track. Radio stations just play one song at a time (usually), and set lists rarely line up with the albums.
didn't use the preview button!