When I was a teenager many years ago, I was one of the fringe types that is frequently targeted as a potential shooter nowadays. And I had quite a temper, one that was manifested verbally on many occasions. But I never hurt anybody physically because I knew better. I knew that it would have been wrong for me to lay a hand on someone else just because I was angry with them. But there were many times when people had me enraged to the point where I uttered the words, "I'm gonna f'in kill you." I can't count the number of times that I have said those words in my younger days, even though I knew full-well that I wouldn't hurt anybody.
With today's modern zero-tolerance bullshit policies, I would have been locked away, expelled, and who knows what else. But instead I graduated from high school and went on to a good college. Finished college with a 4.0 GPA and am now rather successfully employed in the IT industry. I am a valuable and functioning member of society. I just had a temper when I was younger.
You are making the exact same mistake as the school administrators are. You are seeing black and white when it's really a big ball of grey. Nothing is that simple. Nothing is ever cut and dry.
Allow me to extend your example to fulfillment. You say:
I try to teach my kids two things on this subject. First, "I don't want to know if your sister bad mouths me when I'm not around." Second, "If your sister tells you she's going to strangle me in my sleep, I want to know about it."
To take your example to it's logical conclusion based on the situation that we are discussing, when your daughter tells her sibling that she's going to strangle you in your sleep your first response should be to ban her from the house and your property and then to have her arrested and tried for conspiracy to commit murder. Now, I hope that wouldn't be your actual response. I would hope that you would sit your daughter down and talk to her and find out if she really said that, and why. And if she truly did threaten to kill you in your sleep, then I would hope that you would have the good sense to talk to her about the problems that are causing her to have this desire and get counseling for her to help her overcome this problem.
That's what the response of the schools should be (with the assistance of the parents) in situations like the one we are discussing.
Hey, I saw that movie. It's called "Wild Things" and stars the very tasty duo of Denise Richards and Neve Campbell.
Really, this is all a big mess.
The schools current take (at least public ones) is that it is their job to pass through every student that comes in while avoiding responsibility for everything that could happen during the course of the 12 years of the educational process. Parents for some reason expect that schools should act as babysitters and role models and educators and so on ad nauseum and be responsible for the behavior of their children and other students.
This obviously cannot work because each sides expectations are in opposition. The first step is for schools to work together with parents to create and focus on common goals, which is currently not the case.
Parents need to take responsibility for actually raising their children. This cuts down on the number of potential shooters. Schools need to realize that zero-tolerance policies are not the answer and take a common sense/reasonable man standard approach to dealing with possible shooters. And between the two they can create and shape policies that not only make sense, but allow both sides to work together on dealing with those problems that a plagueing American kids.
Right now it's just a big game of finger pointing. Neither side wants to admit that it caused the problem. But they don't see that it doesn't matter who caused the problem as long as they work together to fix it.
The glowing hockey puck helped viewers enjoy the game?!?!? Please...that was quite possibly the worst idea in televised hockey ever. Fortunately, I'm not aware of any networks still using it...
Don't worry. You can still work on an Alaskan Crab boat. Those are supposed to be even more dangerous than mining...what with all the stormy seas and frozen decks and all...
I wondered what all the anti-VIA sentiment was about. I still don't see it though. I've used exclusively VIA chipsets for the past 5 years and I've been very happy with their performance. I've not had any problems with DMA33 or anything of the sort on any platform. I have never had any problems with VIA's chipset drivers for NT or 9x. I haven't seen anything on the Linux side of things (driver wise), but I've had no problems there either.
Re:A trick for helping with Spam
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Norway Bans Spam
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· Score: 1
Fantastic! Can you help me configure sendmail to do this on my machine? I'm running WindowsME...
OK, seriously tho, it's a great idea. I'll probably implement that on my Linux box once I get around to messing with sendmail. Unfortunately, very few people actually have this kind of access to their mailserver.
(and no, I'm not REALLY running WinME on anything)
The reason that it's more annoying to get it in your email is that you are paying for the email, while the junk mailers are paying for the snail mail. If someone wants to waste their money sending you junk mail that you just end up throwing away, then that's their problem. If someone wants to send you email that eats up your time and that you get charged for receiving, then obviously you'll get a little more upset. Especially as the signal-to-noise ratio decreases.
I don't know how it is in other parts of the world, but telemarketers are pretty bad here in the US. I used to have a phone number that appeared in phone directories and was available from directory assistance. I would only rarely get calls from friends, family or work associates but I would get telemarketing calls all the time (several every night!).
So I decided to pay the extra fees to keep my phone number unlisted in the directories and unavailable through directory assistance. Telemarketing calls decreased substantially...almost non-existant. Of course, people who had legitimate needs to contact me had a harder time doing so if they didn't know my phone number already. And I still only rarely got phone calls from people who had legitimate needs to contact me.
Then one day, I started getting telemarketing calls again. I can only assume that a company that I do business with (utility, credit card company, or perhaps landlord) sold my number as part of a calling list. At first it was only every once in awhile, but then the calls became more and more frequent. I found myself faced with a choice: Change my phone number and hope that it doesn't happen again, or cut off my telephone service altogether. I chose the latter. After all, why should I have to pay $25 per month just so I can receive marketing calls?
Now, I don't receive any telemarketing calls at all. I still have a mobile phone that my friends and family can contact me on if they need to, but it doesn't get used much unless I am travelling. And since I'm paying for incoming calls on the phone, the mobile company doesn't give out the number to anybody! I do have broadband access at home, so instant-messaging makes the situation much more bearable, and it's so quiet at my place in the evenings.
Unsolicited commercial messaging is a pain in the ass, whether it's email or otherwise. And that's not even beginning to touch on all the issues that come up when you consider mass mailings in the context of DoS attacks...
I've seen quite a few people point out that the situation isn't likely to get better until bandwidth costs go down. The assumption there is that once badnwidth is less expensive then sites will be able to better afford to exist on meagre advertising revenues. But I think that there's another reason that more bandwidth is one of the answers. Multimedia and interactivity. Once bandwidth becomes more plentiful and less expensive, web-based advertising can finally evolve from a stupid little flashing banner to something more effective, whether that be through integrated video/audio, etc. Regular commercial breaks might even someday make it into web sites.
BTW, I too hate animated.GIF's. When I first began playing with Flash animations, I created a simple logo for my own website. When saved as a flash animation, it was only 8k in size. For kicks, I saved it as an animated.GIF and it was 72k in size. Who wants to download a 72KByte logo on a 48Kbit connection? No wonder people hate banner ads!
Personally, what I think the wave of the immediate future in online advertising is in product sponsorship. And not just random junk either. My "other job" is as a crew member for an auto racing team. Big-time auto racing like NASCAR and Formula 1 only exists because of advertising. And they have a very effective sponsorship model. Many race fans would decide whether to buy a particular brand of product based on whether or not they sponsor auto racing (all else being roughly equal). It builds an extended sense of comraderie with the teams because the consumer knows that by purchasing product x they are supporting their racing team.
I've seen dozens of people point out that they buy stuff from ThinkGeek or other similar merchants who advertise on Slashdot, and that they would be more inclined to click-thru on ads if they knew that they had been hand-picked by the editors. Well isn't that what sponsorship is? It certainly has the potential to be that.
Let's do a hypothetical Slashdot sponsorhsip. ThinkGeek probably can't afford to be the sole sponsor of Slashdot, but they could afford to be an associate sponsor. So then Slashdot recruits a couple other sponsors. VA Linux, Sun, Cisco, etc. Companies whose target markets are the same as Slashdots. Then instead of banner ads, maybe they sponsor a certain section of the site. I dunno...the VA Linux Slashback page. Or they get prominent placement on certain types of Slashdot pages. Maybe they even have a tie-in...like 1% off the purchase price of a Sun Enterprise Server if you mention a special Slashdot discount code.
So what do the sponsors get? Targeted advertising that is much more likely to generate clickthrus and/or other revenue for the company. Their customers are Slashdot readers. In the case of marketing tie-in's, they even get statistics on how the sponsorship affects their sales.
What does Slashdot get? Money to pay the bills.
What do the readers get? Slashdot for one. And information on goods and services that likely interest them and that they are likely to make use of. I personally had never heard of ThinkGeek untill I saw their ad on Slashdot. But I have purchased from them twice in the past month. So targeted advertising does work for both advertisers and consumers.
The Register did an interesting "experiment" a year or so ago where they "sold their souls" to Compaq for a week. Basically, they only ran Compaq ads for that entire week in a pseudo-sponsorship deal. I never did hear how it worked out, but I'd be curious to find out.
Honestly though, when advertising on the net first came into being, I think that sponsorship was the way that it generally worked. And then people got lazy because nobody wanted to spend time and effort tracking down sponsors or sites to sponsor. It was easier to just join an ad network and get some generic crap. But now we're seeing that doing it the lazy way doesn't necessarily work. Like anything else, the readers can tell if you put any work into it...and if you haven't, they'll ignore it.
When I think of some of the sites that are still pretty successful though, I think that they do rely (to an extent) on sponsorhsip-style ads versus banner ads. It seems to me that Anandtech always has ads from the same hardware vendors. Same with Tom and many many others. Even Slashdot probably has direct relationships with companies selling products rather than companies placing ads. And you'll notice that they aren't the web sites complaining about the ad services cutting them loose.
Ironically, the thing that had the FCC the most worried was AOL acquiring the head ends of half the country's cable modems, when cable-based broadband figures to be a bit player in that industry (vs. 3G wireless and various DSLs) within the next few years.
People have been saying that telcos would beat cable for over 5 years now. It still hasn't happened. Heck, it hasn't even started. Telcos may never get their act together, and if they do it will not be anytime soon.
3G wireless doesn't exist in the US yet. DSL could be a contender, but it's still too confusing and fragmented for Joe Public (aka, AOL Arnie) to figure out. What does DSL mean to AOL Arnie? Where does it come from? It's just another TLA that he doesn't care about.
Now a Cable Modem he understands (or so he thinks). It's a modem that uses your cable TV line. Of course, it's not really a modem at all because it is a digital connection, but Arnie doesn't care because in his mind it "does what a modem does" and so it's familiar territory. Nobody has to install any special lines to his house. He doesn't have to do the math to find out if he lives close enough to the telco's switch. It's simple. Besides, when someone tries to tell him what DSL is they always start off with "It's like a cable modem, but..." so cable modems must be better.
It's going to be a long time before people start ditching cable modems in droves for DSL or 3G wireless. The costs have to come down, the service has to become more reliable, and the whole process needs to become more dummy friendly.
Umm...maybe you missed it...maybe I dreamt it, but didn't TW start announcing it's layoffs yesterday or the day before? The number 3000 comes to mind...but I don't recall all the details.
I do recall that the rationale was that the positions were going to be redundant after the merger. Most of the layoffs apparently were related to TW content (like CNN.com)...
I'm wondering just how much of a grasp on the facts of his statement you actually have here. The issue with the so-called "Windows Tax" (aka, Windows or some other MS software preloaded and paid for with every PC whether you like it or not) is not new. It's been going on since the 80's. That's long before there was ever such a thing as a Linux OEM.
In fact, if you do any research on the issue you will find that it's only been in the past 2 years or so that you have been able to get Linux support from any of the major OEM's at all (let alone purchase a system with it pre-installed and devoid of the Windows tax). And even today most of the OEM's do not discount a system that they pre-installed Linux on.
The only reason that this has even come about in the past couple years is because MS had to loosen the reins on OEMs because of the of the antitrust actions.
First off, IANAProgrammer. But it seems to me that 80% or more of the security advisories/exploits/etc that I've seen in the past year are exploits of buffer overflows/overruns that allow you to execute code. So even if the above-mentioned libraries are not applicable in this case, buffer overflows should still be tested.
If you're a programmer and you know how many security holes/exploits come about by this one method, it would seem to me that it would be one of the high priorities of QA to determine if such vulernabilities exist and to code around them. In most cases a patch or an upgrade comes out rather quickly that plugs the whole by eliminating the possibility of the overflow. How much extra work would it be to check the way the buffers are coded and used before releasing the software.
Again, IANAP, but this seems pretty obvious to me. Is there something that makes this unfeasable or are there that many crappy coders out there who don't know their butt from a hole in the ground?
Not really. It's a fairly expected raction. Here's a nice correlation:
During the spring and summer months, I work with an auto racing team. We're by no means a multi-million dollar operation. On the contrary, our division is low-end professional racers and high-end amatuers. We're the amatuers.
At any rate, we work hard building and perfecting our race cars. Making sure that everything is just right, that the paint job is perfect, that it's clean and is in prime working condition. We don't get paid for our efforts. All the race winnings goes back into parts for the cars. But during racing season I'm usually working at the shop 3 nights a week and out of town racing all weekend. And it's really a lot of fun. It's not a career, it's a hobby. It's a very involved game.
But every once in a while something happens. It's what we refer to as a "racing incident." Someone is driving in a way that they shouldn't be, or there is a mechanical failure somewhere and there is a wreck. And on more than one occasion our $60,000 race car has come home in the trailer a pile of twisted metal and fiberglass. It doesn't cost me anything. I don't have to pay to have it fixed. But it absolutely kills me to see something that I've worked so hard on destroyed.
Sure, the race car is a tangible object. It exists in the real world. But it's no different than the Hardcore Diablo II characters when you look at the effort that has been put into them. People don't mourn the loss of the characters as much as they mourn the loss of their effort and their creativity, and the product of the two of them coming together.
Emotionally, psychologically, it's no different. Even though one is just bits and the other is metal. That's why it's a big deal.
I'm sure that some of the over-arching themes were there. But certainly not the specifics. Even in the Lucas-sanctioned "The Making of Star Wars" video he basically admits in several places that they were making things up as they go along.
For example: Leia was never supposed to be Luke's sister until they realized that they needed Vader to say something that would make Luke mad enough to come out and fight.
There are other instances.
Ever wonder if Lucas just got lucky a couple times with the first movies? They just happened to coincide with a certain common mythos that people could identify with that made them popular. But just because he has other ideas to flesh out the story doesn't mean that they're good ideas.
Wow. And I thought I was the only one who actually read the article. I got from it that the movie was so-so, but that there was all of the effects work yet to do, and that the storyline needs some tweaking. Big deal, 90% of movies made today get juggled some post-production and storylines get changed. It hardly constitutes a "shambles."
The average consumer doesn't care. They all think MS is good because they don't know that there is any alternative out there. All they care about is "does my pointer move when I move the mouse." Or in more advanced consumers, "Can I work on this document from home the same way that I do at work."
Fortunately, Bush may not have any say in it yet. Sure, he can stack the DoJ any way he wants to, but the case has been tried and a verdict has been rendered. And Bush has no control over what the Judicial branch does with it.
If I'm not mistaken, it's too late for the DoJ to just decide to drop the case. The only way this should come into play is if MS wins their appeal. Then the Bush DoJ could decide not to appeal to the Supreme Court but instead levy a fine or some other half-assed settlement.
"It is a better solution than the US government has come up with. If you break up MS into the OS and applications then it will still be MS...just the application company will have a different label(But will have written all over it "Microsoft Windows only"). "
Huh? You don't really believe that do you? Once the company is broken up along the lines suggested by the courts, it would make so sense for MSApps to only support Windows. They could break out into the world of Unix and go further into Apple territory and then no matter what OS you ran everyone could run MS-Office and have compatible files!
You don't seem to understand the term "break up" as the court described it. When they said "break up," they meant it. They would have completely separate management, accounting, etc. None of the big-wigs could be shareholders in both companies, etc. The market incentive would be for MSApps to branch out and support everybody's OS (what few are left) and for MSWindows to make sure that everybody's apps ran well on their OS (maybe through open and published standards and API's???).
The article looks great. Really it does. But unfortunately, you would have to be absolutely ignorant of the way that Microsoft does business in order to even begin to believe this proposed "solution."
Open standards are great. They are wonderful things. They are also very common and popular things that are supported by just about every hardware and software company in existence. Including Microsoft.
Take for example the web browser. MSIE supports all the open standards regarding html, Java, etc. But then they go one step further an add additional functionality to the standards to create their own brand of "standard." Just look at the MS/Sun Java case. Microsoft's policy has always been "embrace and extend." Embrace the standard and extend it to meet their own ends. One could create an open standard for every Windows API, but that wouldn't stop Microsoft from extending the API ahead of any standards. (and while we're at it, isn't an API a standard anyway?)
The problem with standards is that standards bodies are usually too slow to react to rapidly changing market conditions. Even if you propose it yourself, you could end up waiting many months or years before a standard could be created and approved to deal with your specific issues or needs. In that same time, you could have written something to do it "your way" and gone through a couple revisions (especially with software). Is it really practical to have to always wait?
But ASS-uming that this suggestion of enforced open standards actually COULD have some effect, it's not the effect that we want. So Microsoft has "open standards and API's" and now everybody can write compatible code (as if they couldn't now). How does that address the real issues of the monopoly abuses? Access to undocumented API calls was just a small slice of the pie. MS would still have their dominant position. They would still be bundling products. They would still be forcing vendors to sell a Windows license with every PC sold, They would still be threatening vendors not to pre-install the competition's software. The proposed "standards resolution" does nothing to prevent all but the least significant of abuses brought forward in this case.
It's almost as if these two profs are arguing that if there were open standards created for everything in Windows that somebody would sit down and code a 100% compatible "windows clone". ASS-uming that there were a 100% compatible "windows clone," who would buy it when you're stuck paying for Windows and getting it pre-installed on your system anyways? If the the two OS's can do the same thing, then there is no incentive to switch, is there? IBM produced a version of OS/2 that was completely compatible with Windows (in fact, it basically had all the Windows code built-in), and how much of a market force did that become? It was a niche product at best.
You've taken it completely out of context. My point was not that the RBL forced a company to secure it's servers. My point was that once the servers were secured, we still had a great deal of trouble getting off the list. And once we were off the list for awhile, we wound up back on the list again for no apparent reason.
I don't have a problem with asking people to secure their servers. But once it's done let it be done. The attitude that we got from the RBL people was more of a sarcastic, "sure you secured them...I bet. We may get around to taking you off the list sometime soon..." rather than a "thanks for fixing that problem, you're off the list." And since the company was a recognizable brand name that is essentially a household word, it should have neen obvious that our intentions were not to "deceive the folks at the RBL so we could spam some more."
The internet portion of our customers business hinged entirely on the goodwill of the people at the RBL, and this is wrong. They need to be accountable to someone other than themselves.
Lots of people think that the RBL is censorship. Others claim that it isn't because use of the RBL is voluntary on the part of the ISP, and use of the ISP is voluntary by the end user. However, this DOES cause a problem if the backbone provider uses the RBL, because even though none of the ISP's in the area implement it, if they all have the same backbone provider then there is no choice other than to set up your own connection to a different backbone provider, which we all know isn't going to happen because there is a financial barrier. Freedom to see whatever you want should not be made available only to those who can afford it.
Next point, people have blindly (and incorrectly) tried to make the case that the RBL only blocks mail, not traffic in general. Obviously this is not the case if you use the eBGP service. But the more crucial point is that out of all of the "nerds" and "techies" who posted to/., very few knew that the RBL can and is often used to block traffic at border routers. If *we* aren't aware of this fact (even after reading about it in the article), then what makes you think that average joe citizen is going to be smart enough to make those kinds of inquiries to a potential ISP, backbone provider, or web host? And how many people at the potential provider are going to know enough to say, "Yes, we subscribe to the RBL to block spam AND internet traffic in general"?
Third, the RBL DOES act as a vigilante. Sure, I hate spam and spammers. Sure, you can opt out of using the RBL, but how easy is it to opt out of addresses that you WANT to receive email or other traffic from? The problem is, the RBL isn't me making a conscious choice. It's my ISP management making a conscious choice when the ISP is formed and everything else is automated from there. How do you know what sites are being blocked? Hell, most/. users (who are by far more technical than average joe citizen) didn't even know that RBL has a border router service, let alone what specific addresses are blocked. In essence, someone else (ISP, backbone provider, etc) has opted you into this group that must blindly accept the judgement of a private, un-accountable organization as to who is a good netizen and who isn't.
Now from the side of someone who gets blackholed: how did I opt into it? If I'm not a spammer and didn't support spammers, I didn't voluntarily agree to be blocked. The comparison that every one of the posts that I've read so far has missed (and the most appropriate analogy) is this:
I use Ameritech for phone service. My friend in another state uses GTE. Telemarketers who use Ameritech for local phone service solicit business from my friend on GTE. My friend complains to the PhoneRBL. The PhoneRBL blackholes ALL traffic from Ameritech. My friend and I are no longer able to communicate. Yes, I *DO* have the option of using another company like CoreCOMM to get phone service, but should I have to? If Ameritech fails to deal with a phonespammer in a way that is "acceptable" to the PhoneRBL people, should I lose my ability to communicate?
The overwhelming majority of the people who I see coming out in support of the RBL in this instance aren't even aware of what kinds of services the RBL offers, let alone how it determines who ends up on their lists or how to get off of them. What *IS* an acceptable way for an ISP to deal with a spamming customer from RBL's perspective? What about someone who sells software to help spamming?
What about someone who LINKS to a site that sells spamming software? I saw a lot of support for DeCSS and sites who chose to link to it rather than offer it for download. I remember quite an outcry when they were forced to remove the *links* to sites that offered the file for download. Today the RBL is blocking an entire class C because one address offers the software for download. Tomorrow they'll be blocking it because they link to sites where you can get it.
This is vigilante censorhsip, and the worst thing is that so few people realize it. It's just another gradual step down the primrose path once we start letting other people think for us.
Now, solutions (didn't think anyone would mention that, did ya?):
I love the idea of the RBL. I do not like the unaccountability factor. While they have tried to set guidelines and tried to behave in a "good netizen" way, it's just not working out that way if you're blocking an entire subnet of innocent sites along with the one bad site.
There should be an industry organization that any ISP, backbone provider, MX operator, etc can be a member of. Each member would agree to the principle of blocking spam, not hosting spammers, securing open relays, etc. They would generally agree (but not be required) to implement the filters that the organization creates. They would set down guidelines as to what kind of behavior is considered spam and what isn't. They would determine what would be a black-hole-able offense. Members would have to ratify the constitution of this organization. Members would vote on ammedments any time new guidelines for acting against spam were implemented. In this way, the organization would be accountable to it's members (who are all service providers of some sort) rather than just being a group of guys who hated spam and decided to do something about it.
I honestly think that people use ORBS and MAPS for the same reason people use Windows. They're out there, ubiquitous, and for joe schmoe, a lot easier to implement than the alternatives. We just need an alternative organization that can do it better.
"As someone else mentioned, the idea behind an ISP is that you get cheap Internet access at the expense of a little freedom. If you get your own leased line to the backbone, snag your own IP block from ARIN (or borrow one from your backbone), you can run your connection how-ever you want. When you buy service from an ISP, you are investing in their practices, nodding your assent with a credit card or check. You pay less, of course, but you are also giving up the freedom of running the connection yourself. If you disagree with their practices, there's nothing to stop you from using (or starting) another ISP"
This paragraph sounds oddly like you are stating that you can only have freedom if you have enough money to pay for it.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was a teenager many years ago, I was one of the fringe types that is frequently targeted as a potential shooter nowadays. And I had quite a temper, one that was manifested verbally on many occasions. But I never hurt anybody physically because I knew better. I knew that it would have been wrong for me to lay a hand on someone else just because I was angry with them. But there were many times when people had me enraged to the point where I uttered the words, "I'm gonna f'in kill you." I can't count the number of times that I have said those words in my younger days, even though I knew full-well that I wouldn't hurt anybody. With today's modern zero-tolerance bullshit policies, I would have been locked away, expelled, and who knows what else. But instead I graduated from high school and went on to a good college. Finished college with a 4.0 GPA and am now rather successfully employed in the IT industry. I am a valuable and functioning member of society. I just had a temper when I was younger. You are making the exact same mistake as the school administrators are. You are seeing black and white when it's really a big ball of grey. Nothing is that simple. Nothing is ever cut and dry. Allow me to extend your example to fulfillment. You say: I try to teach my kids two things on this subject. First, "I don't want to know if your sister bad mouths me when I'm not around." Second, "If your sister tells you she's going to strangle me in my sleep, I want to know about it." To take your example to it's logical conclusion based on the situation that we are discussing, when your daughter tells her sibling that she's going to strangle you in your sleep your first response should be to ban her from the house and your property and then to have her arrested and tried for conspiracy to commit murder. Now, I hope that wouldn't be your actual response. I would hope that you would sit your daughter down and talk to her and find out if she really said that, and why. And if she truly did threaten to kill you in your sleep, then I would hope that you would have the good sense to talk to her about the problems that are causing her to have this desire and get counseling for her to help her overcome this problem. That's what the response of the schools should be (with the assistance of the parents) in situations like the one we are discussing.
Hey, I saw that movie. It's called "Wild Things" and stars the very tasty duo of Denise Richards and Neve Campbell.
Really, this is all a big mess.
The schools current take (at least public ones) is that it is their job to pass through every student that comes in while avoiding responsibility for everything that could happen during the course of the 12 years of the educational process. Parents for some reason expect that schools should act as babysitters and role models and educators and so on ad nauseum and be responsible for the behavior of their children and other students.
This obviously cannot work because each sides expectations are in opposition. The first step is for schools to work together with parents to create and focus on common goals, which is currently not the case.
Parents need to take responsibility for actually raising their children. This cuts down on the number of potential shooters. Schools need to realize that zero-tolerance policies are not the answer and take a common sense/reasonable man standard approach to dealing with possible shooters. And between the two they can create and shape policies that not only make sense, but allow both sides to work together on dealing with those problems that a plagueing American kids.
Right now it's just a big game of finger pointing. Neither side wants to admit that it caused the problem. But they don't see that it doesn't matter who caused the problem as long as they work together to fix it.
The glowing hockey puck helped viewers enjoy the game?!?!? Please...that was quite possibly the worst idea in televised hockey ever. Fortunately, I'm not aware of any networks still using it...
Don't worry. You can still work on an Alaskan Crab boat. Those are supposed to be even more dangerous than mining...what with all the stormy seas and frozen decks and all...
I wondered what all the anti-VIA sentiment was about. I still don't see it though. I've used exclusively VIA chipsets for the past 5 years and I've been very happy with their performance. I've not had any problems with DMA33 or anything of the sort on any platform. I have never had any problems with VIA's chipset drivers for NT or 9x. I haven't seen anything on the Linux side of things (driver wise), but I've had no problems there either.
Fantastic! Can you help me configure sendmail to do this on my machine? I'm running WindowsME...
OK, seriously tho, it's a great idea. I'll probably implement that on my Linux box once I get around to messing with sendmail. Unfortunately, very few people actually have this kind of access to their mailserver.
(and no, I'm not REALLY running WinME on anything)
The reason that it's more annoying to get it in your email is that you are paying for the email, while the junk mailers are paying for the snail mail. If someone wants to waste their money sending you junk mail that you just end up throwing away, then that's their problem. If someone wants to send you email that eats up your time and that you get charged for receiving, then obviously you'll get a little more upset. Especially as the signal-to-noise ratio decreases.
I don't know how it is in other parts of the world, but telemarketers are pretty bad here in the US. I used to have a phone number that appeared in phone directories and was available from directory assistance. I would only rarely get calls from friends, family or work associates but I would get telemarketing calls all the time (several every night!).
So I decided to pay the extra fees to keep my phone number unlisted in the directories and unavailable through directory assistance. Telemarketing calls decreased substantially...almost non-existant. Of course, people who had legitimate needs to contact me had a harder time doing so if they didn't know my phone number already. And I still only rarely got phone calls from people who had legitimate needs to contact me.
Then one day, I started getting telemarketing calls again. I can only assume that a company that I do business with (utility, credit card company, or perhaps landlord) sold my number as part of a calling list. At first it was only every once in awhile, but then the calls became more and more frequent. I found myself faced with a choice: Change my phone number and hope that it doesn't happen again, or cut off my telephone service altogether. I chose the latter. After all, why should I have to pay $25 per month just so I can receive marketing calls?
Now, I don't receive any telemarketing calls at all. I still have a mobile phone that my friends and family can contact me on if they need to, but it doesn't get used much unless I am travelling. And since I'm paying for incoming calls on the phone, the mobile company doesn't give out the number to anybody! I do have broadband access at home, so instant-messaging makes the situation much more bearable, and it's so quiet at my place in the evenings.
Unsolicited commercial messaging is a pain in the ass, whether it's email or otherwise. And that's not even beginning to touch on all the issues that come up when you consider mass mailings in the context of DoS attacks...
Hmm...lots of interesting thoughts.
.GIF's. When I first began playing with Flash animations, I created a simple logo for my own website. When saved as a flash animation, it was only 8k in size. For kicks, I saved it as an animated .GIF and it was 72k in size. Who wants to download a 72KByte logo on a 48Kbit connection? No wonder people hate banner ads!
I've seen quite a few people point out that the situation isn't likely to get better until bandwidth costs go down. The assumption there is that once badnwidth is less expensive then sites will be able to better afford to exist on meagre advertising revenues. But I think that there's another reason that more bandwidth is one of the answers. Multimedia and interactivity. Once bandwidth becomes more plentiful and less expensive, web-based advertising can finally evolve from a stupid little flashing banner to something more effective, whether that be through integrated video/audio, etc. Regular commercial breaks might even someday make it into web sites.
BTW, I too hate animated
Personally, what I think the wave of the immediate future in online advertising is in product sponsorship. And not just random junk either. My "other job" is as a crew member for an auto racing team. Big-time auto racing like NASCAR and Formula 1 only exists because of advertising. And they have a very effective sponsorship model. Many race fans would decide whether to buy a particular brand of product based on whether or not they sponsor auto racing (all else being roughly equal). It builds an extended sense of comraderie with the teams because the consumer knows that by purchasing product x they are supporting their racing team.
I've seen dozens of people point out that they buy stuff from ThinkGeek or other similar merchants who advertise on Slashdot, and that they would be more inclined to click-thru on ads if they knew that they had been hand-picked by the editors. Well isn't that what sponsorship is? It certainly has the potential to be that.
Let's do a hypothetical Slashdot sponsorhsip. ThinkGeek probably can't afford to be the sole sponsor of Slashdot, but they could afford to be an associate sponsor. So then Slashdot recruits a couple other sponsors. VA Linux, Sun, Cisco, etc. Companies whose target markets are the same as Slashdots. Then instead of banner ads, maybe they sponsor a certain section of the site. I dunno...the VA Linux Slashback page. Or they get prominent placement on certain types of Slashdot pages. Maybe they even have a tie-in...like 1% off the purchase price of a Sun Enterprise Server if you mention a special Slashdot discount code.
So what do the sponsors get? Targeted advertising that is much more likely to generate clickthrus and/or other revenue for the company. Their customers are Slashdot readers. In the case of marketing tie-in's, they even get statistics on how the sponsorship affects their sales.
What does Slashdot get? Money to pay the bills.
What do the readers get? Slashdot for one. And information on goods and services that likely interest them and that they are likely to make use of. I personally had never heard of ThinkGeek untill I saw their ad on Slashdot. But I have purchased from them twice in the past month. So targeted advertising does work for both advertisers and consumers.
The Register did an interesting "experiment" a year or so ago where they "sold their souls" to Compaq for a week. Basically, they only ran Compaq ads for that entire week in a pseudo-sponsorship deal. I never did hear how it worked out, but I'd be curious to find out.
Honestly though, when advertising on the net first came into being, I think that sponsorship was the way that it generally worked. And then people got lazy because nobody wanted to spend time and effort tracking down sponsors or sites to sponsor. It was easier to just join an ad network and get some generic crap. But now we're seeing that doing it the lazy way doesn't necessarily work. Like anything else, the readers can tell if you put any work into it...and if you haven't, they'll ignore it.
When I think of some of the sites that are still pretty successful though, I think that they do rely (to an extent) on sponsorhsip-style ads versus banner ads. It seems to me that Anandtech always has ads from the same hardware vendors. Same with Tom and many many others. Even Slashdot probably has direct relationships with companies selling products rather than companies placing ads. And you'll notice that they aren't the web sites complaining about the ad services cutting them loose.
Just some food for thought.
Seriously? Post the URL or email it to me. I'll make sure to link it from my offensive site.
Well...my site's not offensive yet, but I will sauce it up some just to piss in their cornflakes.
If it is disturbing, then it should be disturbing on it's own merits and not in conjunction with what little AOL brings to the table.
What really disturbs me most is that the same company that owns the most popular ISP in the world also owns Progressive Farmer magazine.
Ironically, the thing that had the FCC the most worried was AOL acquiring the head ends of half the country's cable modems, when cable-based broadband figures to be a bit player in that industry (vs. 3G wireless and various DSLs) within the next few years.
People have been saying that telcos would beat cable for over 5 years now. It still hasn't happened. Heck, it hasn't even started. Telcos may never get their act together, and if they do it will not be anytime soon.
3G wireless doesn't exist in the US yet. DSL could be a contender, but it's still too confusing and fragmented for Joe Public (aka, AOL Arnie) to figure out. What does DSL mean to AOL Arnie? Where does it come from? It's just another TLA that he doesn't care about.
Now a Cable Modem he understands (or so he thinks). It's a modem that uses your cable TV line. Of course, it's not really a modem at all because it is a digital connection, but Arnie doesn't care because in his mind it "does what a modem does" and so it's familiar territory. Nobody has to install any special lines to his house. He doesn't have to do the math to find out if he lives close enough to the telco's switch. It's simple. Besides, when someone tries to tell him what DSL is they always start off with "It's like a cable modem, but..." so cable modems must be better.
It's going to be a long time before people start ditching cable modems in droves for DSL or 3G wireless. The costs have to come down, the service has to become more reliable, and the whole process needs to become more dummy friendly.
Umm...maybe you missed it...maybe I dreamt it, but didn't TW start announcing it's layoffs yesterday or the day before? The number 3000 comes to mind...but I don't recall all the details.
...
I do recall that the rationale was that the positions were going to be redundant after the merger. Most of the layoffs apparently were related to TW content (like CNN.com)
I'm wondering just how much of a grasp on the facts of his statement you actually have here. The issue with the so-called "Windows Tax" (aka, Windows or some other MS software preloaded and paid for with every PC whether you like it or not) is not new. It's been going on since the 80's. That's long before there was ever such a thing as a Linux OEM.
In fact, if you do any research on the issue you will find that it's only been in the past 2 years or so that you have been able to get Linux support from any of the major OEM's at all (let alone purchase a system with it pre-installed and devoid of the Windows tax). And even today most of the OEM's do not discount a system that they pre-installed Linux on.
The only reason that this has even come about in the past couple years is because MS had to loosen the reins on OEMs because of the of the antitrust actions.
Microsoft??? Site license??? Puh-leaze. Microsoft doesn't do site licenses. They'd lose out on cash that way.
Maybe you're thinking of Microsoft Select...
That's fine. Just burn a copy of the Select CD's for Whistler...
First off, IANAProgrammer. But it seems to me that 80% or more of the security advisories/exploits/etc that I've seen in the past year are exploits of buffer overflows/overruns that allow you to execute code. So even if the above-mentioned libraries are not applicable in this case, buffer overflows should still be tested.
If you're a programmer and you know how many security holes/exploits come about by this one method, it would seem to me that it would be one of the high priorities of QA to determine if such vulernabilities exist and to code around them. In most cases a patch or an upgrade comes out rather quickly that plugs the whole by eliminating the possibility of the overflow. How much extra work would it be to check the way the buffers are coded and used before releasing the software.
Again, IANAP, but this seems pretty obvious to me. Is there something that makes this unfeasable or are there that many crappy coders out there who don't know their butt from a hole in the ground?
Not really. It's a fairly expected raction. Here's a nice correlation:
During the spring and summer months, I work with an auto racing team. We're by no means a multi-million dollar operation. On the contrary, our division is low-end professional racers and high-end amatuers. We're the amatuers.
At any rate, we work hard building and perfecting our race cars. Making sure that everything is just right, that the paint job is perfect, that it's clean and is in prime working condition. We don't get paid for our efforts. All the race winnings goes back into parts for the cars. But during racing season I'm usually working at the shop 3 nights a week and out of town racing all weekend. And it's really a lot of fun. It's not a career, it's a hobby. It's a very involved game.
But every once in a while something happens. It's what we refer to as a "racing incident." Someone is driving in a way that they shouldn't be, or there is a mechanical failure somewhere and there is a wreck. And on more than one occasion our $60,000 race car has come home in the trailer a pile of twisted metal and fiberglass. It doesn't cost me anything. I don't have to pay to have it fixed. But it absolutely kills me to see something that I've worked so hard on destroyed.
Sure, the race car is a tangible object. It exists in the real world. But it's no different than the Hardcore Diablo II characters when you look at the effort that has been put into them. People don't mourn the loss of the characters as much as they mourn the loss of their effort and their creativity, and the product of the two of them coming together.
Emotionally, psychologically, it's no different. Even though one is just bits and the other is metal. That's why it's a big deal.
I'm sure that some of the over-arching themes were there. But certainly not the specifics. Even in the Lucas-sanctioned "The Making of Star Wars" video he basically admits in several places that they were making things up as they go along.
For example: Leia was never supposed to be Luke's sister until they realized that they needed Vader to say something that would make Luke mad enough to come out and fight.
There are other instances.
Ever wonder if Lucas just got lucky a couple times with the first movies? They just happened to coincide with a certain common mythos that people could identify with that made them popular. But just because he has other ideas to flesh out the story doesn't mean that they're good ideas.
Wow. And I thought I was the only one who actually read the article. I got from it that the movie was so-so, but that there was all of the effects work yet to do, and that the storyline needs some tweaking. Big deal, 90% of movies made today get juggled some post-production and storylines get changed. It hardly constitutes a "shambles."
The average consumer doesn't care. They all think MS is good because they don't know that there is any alternative out there. All they care about is "does my pointer move when I move the mouse." Or in more advanced consumers, "Can I work on this document from home the same way that I do at work."
Fortunately, Bush may not have any say in it yet. Sure, he can stack the DoJ any way he wants to, but the case has been tried and a verdict has been rendered. And Bush has no control over what the Judicial branch does with it.
If I'm not mistaken, it's too late for the DoJ to just decide to drop the case. The only way this should come into play is if MS wins their appeal. Then the Bush DoJ could decide not to appeal to the Supreme Court but instead levy a fine or some other half-assed settlement.
BTW, IANAL. Or a politician.
"It is a better solution than the US government has come up with. If you break up MS into the OS and applications then it will still be MS...just the application company will have a different label(But will have written all over it "Microsoft Windows only"). " Huh? You don't really believe that do you? Once the company is broken up along the lines suggested by the courts, it would make so sense for MSApps to only support Windows. They could break out into the world of Unix and go further into Apple territory and then no matter what OS you ran everyone could run MS-Office and have compatible files! You don't seem to understand the term "break up" as the court described it. When they said "break up," they meant it. They would have completely separate management, accounting, etc. None of the big-wigs could be shareholders in both companies, etc. The market incentive would be for MSApps to branch out and support everybody's OS (what few are left) and for MSWindows to make sure that everybody's apps ran well on their OS (maybe through open and published standards and API's???).
The article looks great. Really it does. But unfortunately, you would have to be absolutely ignorant of the way that Microsoft does business in order to even begin to believe this proposed "solution."
Open standards are great. They are wonderful things. They are also very common and popular things that are supported by just about every hardware and software company in existence. Including Microsoft.
Take for example the web browser. MSIE supports all the open standards regarding html, Java, etc. But then they go one step further an add additional functionality to the standards to create their own brand of "standard." Just look at the MS/Sun Java case. Microsoft's policy has always been "embrace and extend." Embrace the standard and extend it to meet their own ends. One could create an open standard for every Windows API, but that wouldn't stop Microsoft from extending the API ahead of any standards. (and while we're at it, isn't an API a standard anyway?)
The problem with standards is that standards bodies are usually too slow to react to rapidly changing market conditions. Even if you propose it yourself, you could end up waiting many months or years before a standard could be created and approved to deal with your specific issues or needs. In that same time, you could have written something to do it "your way" and gone through a couple revisions (especially with software). Is it really practical to have to always wait?
But ASS-uming that this suggestion of enforced open standards actually COULD have some effect, it's not the effect that we want. So Microsoft has "open standards and API's" and now everybody can write compatible code (as if they couldn't now). How does that address the real issues of the monopoly abuses? Access to undocumented API calls was just a small slice of the pie. MS would still have their dominant position. They would still be bundling products. They would still be forcing vendors to sell a Windows license with every PC sold, They would still be threatening vendors not to pre-install the competition's software. The proposed "standards resolution" does nothing to prevent all but the least significant of abuses brought forward in this case.
It's almost as if these two profs are arguing that if there were open standards created for everything in Windows that somebody would sit down and code a 100% compatible "windows clone". ASS-uming that there were a 100% compatible "windows clone," who would buy it when you're stuck paying for Windows and getting it pre-installed on your system anyways? If the the two OS's can do the same thing, then there is no incentive to switch, is there? IBM produced a version of OS/2 that was completely compatible with Windows (in fact, it basically had all the Windows code built-in), and how much of a market force did that become? It was a niche product at best.
You've taken it completely out of context. My point was not that the RBL forced a company to secure it's servers. My point was that once the servers were secured, we still had a great deal of trouble getting off the list. And once we were off the list for awhile, we wound up back on the list again for no apparent reason.
I don't have a problem with asking people to secure their servers. But once it's done let it be done. The attitude that we got from the RBL people was more of a sarcastic, "sure you secured them...I bet. We may get around to taking you off the list sometime soon..." rather than a "thanks for fixing that problem, you're off the list." And since the company was a recognizable brand name that is essentially a household word, it should have neen obvious that our intentions were not to "deceive the folks at the RBL so we could spam some more."
The internet portion of our customers business hinged entirely on the goodwill of the people at the RBL, and this is wrong. They need to be accountable to someone other than themselves.
Lots of people think that the RBL is censorship. Others claim that it isn't because use of the RBL is voluntary on the part of the ISP, and use of the ISP is voluntary by the end user. However, this DOES cause a problem if the backbone provider uses the RBL, because even though none of the ISP's in the area implement it, if they all have the same backbone provider then there is no choice other than to set up your own connection to a different backbone provider, which we all know isn't going to happen because there is a financial barrier. Freedom to see whatever you want should not be made available only to those who can afford it.
/., very few knew that the RBL can and is often used to block traffic at border routers. If *we* aren't aware of this fact (even after reading about it in the article), then what makes you think that average joe citizen is going to be smart enough to make those kinds of inquiries to a potential ISP, backbone provider, or web host? And how many people at the potential provider are going to know enough to say, "Yes, we subscribe to the RBL to block spam AND internet traffic in general"?
/. users (who are by far more technical than average joe citizen) didn't even know that RBL has a border router service, let alone what specific addresses are blocked. In essence, someone else (ISP, backbone provider, etc) has opted you into this group that must blindly accept the judgement of a private, un-accountable organization as to who is a good netizen and who isn't.
Next point, people have blindly (and incorrectly) tried to make the case that the RBL only blocks mail, not traffic in general. Obviously this is not the case if you use the eBGP service. But the more crucial point is that out of all of the "nerds" and "techies" who posted to
Third, the RBL DOES act as a vigilante. Sure, I hate spam and spammers. Sure, you can opt out of using the RBL, but how easy is it to opt out of addresses that you WANT to receive email or other traffic from? The problem is, the RBL isn't me making a conscious choice. It's my ISP management making a conscious choice when the ISP is formed and everything else is automated from there. How do you know what sites are being blocked? Hell, most
Now from the side of someone who gets blackholed: how did I opt into it? If I'm not a spammer and didn't support spammers, I didn't voluntarily agree to be blocked. The comparison that every one of the posts that I've read so far has missed (and the most appropriate analogy) is this:
I use Ameritech for phone service. My friend in another state uses GTE. Telemarketers who use Ameritech for local phone service solicit business from my friend on GTE. My friend complains to the PhoneRBL. The PhoneRBL blackholes ALL traffic from Ameritech. My friend and I are no longer able to communicate. Yes, I *DO* have the option of using another company like CoreCOMM to get phone service, but should I have to? If Ameritech fails to deal with a phonespammer in a way that is "acceptable" to the PhoneRBL people, should I lose my ability to communicate?
The overwhelming majority of the people who I see coming out in support of the RBL in this instance aren't even aware of what kinds of services the RBL offers, let alone how it determines who ends up on their lists or how to get off of them. What *IS* an acceptable way for an ISP to deal with a spamming customer from RBL's perspective? What about someone who sells software to help spamming?
What about someone who LINKS to a site that sells spamming software? I saw a lot of support for DeCSS and sites who chose to link to it rather than offer it for download. I remember quite an outcry when they were forced to remove the *links* to sites that offered the file for download. Today the RBL is blocking an entire class C because one address offers the software for download. Tomorrow they'll be blocking it because they link to sites where you can get it.
This is vigilante censorhsip, and the worst thing is that so few people realize it. It's just another gradual step down the primrose path once we start letting other people think for us.
Now, solutions (didn't think anyone would mention that, did ya?):
I love the idea of the RBL. I do not like the unaccountability factor. While they have tried to set guidelines and tried to behave in a "good netizen" way, it's just not working out that way if you're blocking an entire subnet of innocent sites along with the one bad site.
There should be an industry organization that any ISP, backbone provider, MX operator, etc can be a member of. Each member would agree to the principle of blocking spam, not hosting spammers, securing open relays, etc. They would generally agree (but not be required) to implement the filters that the organization creates. They would set down guidelines as to what kind of behavior is considered spam and what isn't. They would determine what would be a black-hole-able offense. Members would have to ratify the constitution of this organization. Members would vote on ammedments any time new guidelines for acting against spam were implemented. In this way, the organization would be accountable to it's members (who are all service providers of some sort) rather than just being a group of guys who hated spam and decided to do something about it.
I honestly think that people use ORBS and MAPS for the same reason people use Windows. They're out there, ubiquitous, and for joe schmoe, a lot easier to implement than the alternatives. We just need an alternative organization that can do it better.
"As someone else mentioned, the idea behind an ISP is that you get cheap Internet access at the expense of a little freedom. If you get your own leased line to the backbone, snag your own IP block from ARIN (or borrow one from your backbone), you can run your connection how-ever you want. When you buy service from an ISP, you are investing in their practices, nodding your assent with a credit card or check. You pay less, of course, but you are also giving up the freedom of running the connection yourself. If you disagree with their practices, there's nothing to stop you from using (or starting) another ISP" This paragraph sounds oddly like you are stating that you can only have freedom if you have enough money to pay for it.