The problems is that any system with the features we demand of email has the faults of email.
The crux of it is - do you want someone you haven't heard of before to be able to email you?
With SMTP, it's easy to forge identities. That's something that could at least theoretically be solved cleanly with a new system. SMTP forces the receiver to hold messages, which has numerous denail of service attacks. That's something that could at least theoretically be solved cleanly with a new system.
And the crux of the matter; SMTP has no good mechanismism for dealing with "strangers". you either accept the email, or reject it. A new system could provide for things like pennyblack, hashcash, challenge/response, or sender risks.
lol Yeah and we only need what 640k of memory right?
Even less - we don't need computers at all.
The key word you used being most...just like most people didn't chose cable or DSl when they first came out....but looking were we are today.
Yes, today you can get cable and DSL for about the same price as dial up.
The key word is "price".
Once people have enough bandwidth for 2 video streams, their desire for more goes way down. They want more, but not so much that they're willing to pay more to get it. Even if it's a little bit more money for a lot more bandwidth, IMO, people aren't going to pay the tiny amount more once they have enough for two simultaneous video streams.
That's why I predict a cutoff around 100Mbps. Not because we won't want more, but because we won't pay for more.
Frequency errors of 50-100 ppm or greater are common on the PCs that I have installed NTP on, and those are servers and workstations with non-braindead clock handling code in the operating system (Linux, FreeBSD). Just checking the PCs at hand, one has an error of -56 ppm and the other has an error of +141 ppm. Both are from first-tier vendors.
Did you check that by running the software, or by measuring the hardware?
Why do we really need this sort of insane bandwidth in ones home?
IMO, the cut-off point is around 100Mbps. Most consumers won't be willing to pay extra for more than that. Sure, they'll want more, but if it's a choice between $50 a month for 100Mbps, or $75 a month for 10Gbps, most are going to go with 100Mbps.
Can we use even 100Mbps? Yes. A four person household, streaming four different hi-def videos at the same time would do it.
the drift caused by the el cheapo crystal oscillator.
Even the "el cheapo" crystal oscillators are guaranteed accurate to better than 1 cycle per 100,000. PC clocks drift by more than 1 second a day because of poor software, not poor hardware
I really fail to understand this mentality. Even on dialup, downloading a 5K spam message would cost a few pennies at most; for those on broadband it doesn't cost a thing. Snail mail costs me - as you said - the time to pick it up, whereas email takes about a second to delete. Plus it takes up physical space in my mailbox.
So how can someone sending me spam possibly cost me money?
0.01 cents isn't free - spam does cost something. Bandwidth is a trivial part of the cost though - the time it takes you to throw it away is far more costly. (And bandwidth prices are going down.)
As for the mentality that can claim a 0.01 cent cost is theft punishable by death, well... claiming a cost far in excess of the measurable amount is not as crazy as it might seem.
If we always react uniformly, then the salami trick always works. If instead the formula is something like;
IF (random > amount-of-loss) THEN react negatively ELSE ignore. Then it doesn't.
Most people aren't rabid anti-spammers, but spam is so prevalent that it's generated more than a few "react with random excess" responses.
In short, there are some advertiser communications that we don't welcome into our lives and call "spam", while there are other advertiser communications that we invite into our lives when we go through the Sunday Newspaper looking for the ad circular from our favorite store so we can see what's on sale without having to go there.
There's a big difference between Push media and Pull media.
Spam is (mostly) push. Google is (mostly) pull.
Wording a rule set so that spam gets shut down but ads we want to see still get through is quite a tough task to do on a one-viewer basis. It becomes even more difficult to do that on a community basis. Some of us want to know what's on sale this week at Best Buy, others couldn't care less.
For Push it's not so easy. Our lives are better with some Push, (I want to be told when the theater is on fire) but currently we get way too much. Restricting the flow of information that is Pushing into us may be hard, but I don't think it's impossible. We might not be able please everybody, but we can please more people than the current situation does.
Where in the constitution or bill of rights does it say you have the right to travel anonymously.
At least two places;
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
And since I don't see anywhere in the constitution where it says you don't have the right to travel anonymously...
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Of course, a piece of paper means nothing unless we the people choose to enforce it.
I have yet to see a proposal for post-election voter verification that does not have some gaping huge hole for coercion. And that, boys and girls, is why the voting process itself must be so trustworthy. Something just "feels right" about dropping a piece of paper into a locked ballot box. Pressing a few buttons on an electronic machine just doesn't inspire nearly the same level of confidence.
I have yet to see evidence that coercion is a bigger problem than fraud.
If it's a choice between the two, I'd pick coercion. Having neither would of course be best, but that doesn't seem to be an option. Perhap a secret ballot that counts, and a non-secret one that doesn't. If the two tallies match, then we don't have a problem. If they don't match, then we'd know that either fraud of coercion happened, (even if we can't tell which) and further investigation becomes warrented.
One nasty rumour I heard during the Florida debacle was that some ballots were found where every single office was voted republican, including George W. Bush, but the hole for Al Gore was also punched. The insinuation was that somebody took a stack of votes and punched the "Gore" hole on every one of them, which would either have no effect (if was already a "Gore" ballot) or disqualify their non-Gore vote on the basis of it now being an overvote. With paper ballots, such an allegation could be investigated. Electrons are just a little harder...
I heard that a precinct cast a negative number of votes for one of the candidates. The error was fixed later, but because it was electronic, there's no way to know if it was "fixed" correctly.
I find it interesting that exit polls in Florida didn't track the election results.
"If we were to publish the patents, we've now put everyone on notice of those patents. For those who have tried to avoid them, we've forced them to know of them, so we've screwed the community," Ravicher said. "If someone really wants to know, they can do the search themselves."
How much to do a search for MS Windows and then publish the results?
[snip happens]
The economic paper... An Empirical Look at Software Patents" articulate in economic terms why software patents don't work.
I found this particularly choice;
Legal scholars sometimes argue that patent law should treat computer programs no differently than any other invention. This paper does not address arguments about legal consistency, but instead explores the economic effects of granting software patents in the U.S. during the 1990s. Our results are difficult to reconcile with the traditional incentive theory--that granting more patents will increase R&D investments. Rather, if legal changes have encouraged strategic patenting, the result might well be less innovation.
Perhaps software patents are exactly like other patents in this regard. Maybe it's the traditional incentive theory that's in error.
Patents, at times, actually are good things, so entirely doing away with the patent system wouldn't be a good idea, nor would adding more money to the patent office budget (the same problems we have now, just more of them), and making the patents harder to apply for would just benefit the offensive-patenting corporations with the money to hire expensive lawyers.
So what do we do about it?
Well, the question isn't "is doing away with the patent system a good idea?", it's "is doing away with the patent better than any other alternative that's available?" I've seen very little evidence that patents are good, and a lot of evidence that they are bad. Doing away with them might be better than living with them.
However, taking it as a given that eliminating the patent office is not an option, what then would be better?
IMO the real problem with the current system is one of risk. It's almost impossible to do real work without facing the possibility of being sued (successfully) for patent infringement and losing 100% of your efforts. I.e. you're constantly at risk of total ruin. And there doesn't seem to be any way to protect against this catastrophic failure.
One solution might be a compulsory licensing fee. If any patent filed could be released to the public domain by paying the holder 100 times the filing fee, then we could at least make a reasonable risk estimate, and patent insurance would be a realistic possibility.
Another possibility is a set of guidelines which if followed guarantee that you will not be infringing on a patent. For example, declare that software which runs on an unmodified computer built before a patent was filed does not infringe that patent.
IMO you should never secretly install spyware. If he'd announced that he was going to install this spyware on every computer and then got fired, I doubt anyone would have much sympathy for him. It may not technically violate the fourth amendment, but it's certainly counter to the spirit of it. Even non-secret surveillance should be done only with good reason.
I can't think of any reason that would justify this level of surveillance, but I wouldn't be surprised if some/.er could.
Well, crystalizing room temperature water is a little hard to swallow, (water's too simple a chemical to do much to it)
Do a little research on ice two, ice three and ice four and you might find ice nine more palitable. (maybe check out this site.)
Ice two, three and four can form under pressure. But the weird thing is that some of the higher ices can form in conditions where they normally wouldn't if you introduce a breeder crystal.
Ice nine is science fiction, but it is science fiction.
It is always expected that any encryption will be crackable given sufficient computing power, and with Moore's law, that will always eventually happen.
Moore's "law" will stop eventually. It might take 200 years, but eventually you hit speed of light limits, Heisenberg limits on distance, and quantum limits on energy usage. (Of course, non-fundamental limits are likely to put a stop to Moore's law first.)
56 bits isn't enough to prevent brute forcing, but 512 bits certainly is. At 256 bits, it's easier to look everywhere the key might be hidden, including inside the mind of the enemy.
Even if Moore's law continued to work, 128 bit keys should hold for another 100 years.
If ebooks were cheaper, had more texts available, were easier to use, were more portable, or lasted longer than paper books, there would be a market for them.
Pick one, (I recommend portable) and make that better than books.
I used to be pro nuclear power but after witnessing the amaturish and dishonest reaction during a crisis at the nuke plant near Rochester NY (with 1 million in the greater metropolitan area), and having a very disturbing cocktail party conversation with the head of safety for a nuke plant in Louisiana, I started to investigate more. Whatever the benefits of the technology, the culture of nuclear power is one of lies, coverup and other forms of deceit.
Lying bastards are not unique to the nuclear power industry.
Besides, TANSTAAFL. Nuclear power should be measured against the alternatives.
"If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"
This is not a problem. Not only is it not a problem, but it is at the core of getting great software out.
I think the authors point is, those that are best at seeing problems aren't necessarily the best at fixing them. Reporting problems is a valid contribution, and people should be allowed to do that.
But IMO, the remark is more likely to be used when someone is complaining about a problem rather than reporting on it.
I see it as a variation of the old saw "Put your money where your mouth is."
If only bugs and features could be voted on with dollars instead of words...
"Hash Cash" accomplishes the same thing without using real money...
They are not the same.
This is a "sender risks" system.
Hash Cash is a "sender pays" system.
The difference? With traditional hash cash the sender applies the hash-stamp to every email. I.e. they always "pay" for every email sent. (CAMRAM includes a "friends fly free" idea, but you still pay for every email sent to a stranger)
With a "sender risks" system, you only pay if the receiver says you should pay. This can be done after they read the email and decide (using whatever criterion they personally like) if the message was unwanted.
It may be that a hash-cash, sender always pays if they're a stranger, system works better but they do not do the same thing.
You could theoretically substitute hash-cash for real cash, but you still need an escrow system to do sender-risks.
2: Spam is by far the largest user of band width in e-mail. I've seen estimates of up to 80% e-mail is spam, and 15% of TOTAL interent traffic is spam. It's basically a check that can be performed with very little data sent, on the probably the ISPs machine.
There may be estimates that spam is as much as 15% of all traffic, but they aren't very good estimates.
Spam is less than 1% of the total traffic on the internet.
Video downloading is possible at 1 Mbps--although it takes longer to download than to view or consume--and more than feasible at wired 100 Mbps.
4.7 Gig for a 2 hour DVD is under 6Mbps. The average consumer probably won't buy more than 10Mbps. Sure, we'll all want 10Gbps, but not many would be willing to pay extra for it (unless someone comes up with something even more bandwidth intensive than video).
A publisher might need more overall, but they can probably get by just fine with 100Mbps and a contract that requires subscribers to run something like bit torrent.
Slashdot Mirror
With SMTP, it's easy to forge identities.
That's something that could at least theoretically be solved cleanly with a new system.
SMTP forces the receiver to hold messages, which has numerous denail of service attacks.
That's something that could at least theoretically be solved cleanly with a new system.
And the crux of the matter;
SMTP has no good mechanismism for dealing with "strangers".
you either accept the email, or reject it.
A new system could provide for things like pennyblack, hashcash, challenge/response, or sender risks.
-- less is better.
Slashdot is a group, not an individual.
Some in that group are pro Microsoft.
Some are pro patents.
Some are anti porn.
"We" aren't hypocrites, "we" are quite literally of more than one mind.
-- less is better.
Even less - we don't need computers at all.
Yes, today you can get cable and DSL for about the same price as dial up.
The key word is "price".
Once people have enough bandwidth for 2 video streams, their desire for more goes way down.
They want more, but not so much that they're willing to pay more to get it.
Even if it's a little bit more money for a lot more bandwidth, IMO, people aren't going to pay the tiny amount more once they have enough for two simultaneous video streams.
That's why I predict a cutoff around 100Mbps.
Not because we won't want more, but because we won't pay for more.
-- less is better.
Did you check that by running the software, or by measuring the hardware?
-- less is better.
IMO, the cut-off point is around 100Mbps.
Most consumers won't be willing to pay extra for more than that.
Sure, they'll want more, but if it's a choice between $50 a month for 100Mbps, or $75 a month for 10Gbps, most are going to go with 100Mbps.
Can we use even 100Mbps? Yes.
A four person household, streaming four different hi-def videos at the same time would do it.
-- less is better
Even the "el cheapo" crystal oscillators are guaranteed accurate to better than 1 cycle per 100,000.
PC clocks drift by more than 1 second a day because of poor software, not poor hardware
-- less is better.
Because electric motors have maxium torque at minimum velocity.
I.e. it's much easier to get going from a dead start, a major problem for trains, but not such a big deal for cars.
-- less is better.
0.01 cents isn't free - spam does cost something.
Bandwidth is a trivial part of the cost though - the time it takes you to throw it away is far more costly.
(And bandwidth prices are going down.)
As for the mentality that can claim a 0.01 cent cost is theft punishable by death, well...
claiming a cost far in excess of the measurable amount is not as crazy as it might seem.
If we always react uniformly, then the salami trick always works.
If instead the formula is something like;
IF (random > amount-of-loss) THEN react negatively ELSE ignore.
Then it doesn't.
Most people aren't rabid anti-spammers, but spam is so prevalent that it's generated more than a few "react with random excess" responses.
-- less is better.
There's a big difference between Push media and Pull media.
Spam is (mostly) push. Google is (mostly) pull.
For Pull, it's simple. If you know you want to see the Best Buy ad, it's easy for you to Pull it. http://bestbuy.dailyshopper.com/index.aspx?pagena
For Push it's not so easy.
Our lives are better with some Push, (I want to be told when the theater is on fire) but currently we get way too much.
Restricting the flow of information that is Pushing into us may be hard, but I don't think it's impossible.
We might not be able please everybody, but we can please more people than the current situation does.
-- less is better.
At least two places;
And since I don't see anywhere in the constitution where it says you don't have the right to travel anonymously...
Of course, a piece of paper means nothing unless we the people choose to enforce it.
-- less is better.
I have yet to see evidence that coercion is a bigger problem than fraud.
If it's a choice between the two, I'd pick coercion.
Having neither would of course be best, but that doesn't seem to be an option.
Perhap a secret ballot that counts, and a non-secret one that doesn't.
If the two tallies match, then we don't have a problem.
If they don't match, then we'd know that either fraud of coercion happened,
(even if we can't tell which) and further investigation becomes warrented.
I heard that a precinct cast a negative number of votes for one of the candidates.
The error was fixed later, but because it was electronic, there's no way to know if it was "fixed" correctly.
I find it interesting that exit polls in Florida didn't track the election results.
-- less is better.
How much to do a search for MS Windows and then publish the results?
-- less is better.
I found this particularly choice;
Perhaps software patents are exactly like other patents in this regard.
Maybe it's the traditional incentive theory that's in error.
-- less is better.
Well, the question isn't "is doing away with the patent system a good idea?",
it's "is doing away with the patent better than any other alternative that's available?"
I've seen very little evidence that patents are good, and a lot of evidence that they are bad.
Doing away with them might be better than living with them.
However, taking it as a given that eliminating the patent office is not an option, what then would be better?
IMO the real problem with the current system is one of risk.
It's almost impossible to do real work without facing the possibility of being sued (successfully) for patent infringement and losing 100% of your efforts.
I.e. you're constantly at risk of total ruin.
And there doesn't seem to be any way to protect against this catastrophic failure.
One solution might be a compulsory licensing fee.
If any patent filed could be released to the public domain by paying the holder
100 times the filing fee, then we could at least make a reasonable risk estimate,
and patent insurance would be a realistic possibility.
Another possibility is a set of guidelines which if followed guarantee that you will not be infringing on a patent.
For example, declare that software which runs on an unmodified computer built before a patent was filed does not infringe that patent.
-- less is better.
IMO you should never secretly install spyware.
/.er could.
If he'd announced that he was going to install this spyware on every computer and then got fired,
I doubt anyone would have much sympathy for him.
It may not technically violate the fourth amendment, but it's certainly counter to the spirit of it.
Even non-secret surveillance should be done only with good reason.
I can't think of any reason that would justify this level of surveillance, but I wouldn't be surprised if some
-- less is better.
Perhaps the author was thinking that since you can do essentially the same thing on IE,
switching wouldn't escape the vulnerability?
-- less is better.
A lot of the C++ projects are also C projects.
-- less is better.
Do a little research on ice two, ice three and ice four and you might find ice nine more palitable.
(maybe check out this site.)
Ice two, three and four can form under pressure.
But the weird thing is that some of the higher ices can form in conditions where they normally wouldn't if you introduce a breeder crystal.
Ice nine is science fiction, but it is science fiction.
-- less is better.
Moore's "law" will stop eventually.
It might take 200 years, but eventually you hit speed of light limits, Heisenberg limits on distance, and quantum limits on energy usage.
(Of course, non-fundamental limits are likely to put a stop to Moore's law first.)
56 bits isn't enough to prevent brute forcing, but 512 bits certainly is.
At 256 bits, it's easier to look everywhere the key might be hidden, including inside the mind of the enemy.
Even if Moore's law continued to work, 128 bit keys should hold for another 100 years.
-- less is better.
If ebooks were cheaper, had more texts available, were easier to use, were more portable, or lasted longer than paper books, there would be a market for them.
Pick one, (I recommend portable) and make that better than books.
-- less is better.
Lying bastards are not unique to the nuclear power industry.
Besides, TANSTAAFL.
Nuclear power should be measured against the alternatives.
-- less is better.
I think the authors point is, those that are best at seeing problems aren't necessarily the best at fixing them.
Reporting problems is a valid contribution, and people should be allowed to do that.
But IMO, the remark is more likely to be used when someone is complaining about a problem rather than reporting on it.
I see it as a variation of the old saw "Put your money where your mouth is."
If only bugs and features could be voted on with dollars instead of words...
-- less is better.
They are not the same.
This is a "sender risks" system.
Hash Cash is a "sender pays" system.
The difference?
With traditional hash cash the sender applies the hash-stamp to every email.
I.e. they always "pay" for every email sent.
(CAMRAM includes a "friends fly free" idea, but you still pay for every email sent to a stranger)
With a "sender risks" system, you only pay if the receiver says you should pay.
This can be done after they read the email and decide (using whatever criterion they personally like) if the message was unwanted.
It may be that a hash-cash, sender always pays if they're a stranger, system works better but they do not do the same thing.
You could theoretically substitute hash-cash for real cash, but you still need an escrow system to do sender-risks.
-- less is better.
There may be estimates that spam is as much as 15% of all traffic, but they aren't very good estimates.
Spam is less than 1% of the total traffic on the internet.
-- less is better.
4.7 Gig for a 2 hour DVD is under 6Mbps.
The average consumer probably won't buy more than 10Mbps.
Sure, we'll all want 10Gbps, but not many would be willing to pay extra for it (unless someone comes up with something even more bandwidth intensive than video).
A publisher might need more overall, but they can probably get by just fine with 100Mbps and a contract that requires subscribers to run something like bit torrent.
-- less is better.