as long as the statement holds true that "it includes information that has always been available to investigators but brings it together and enables police to access it with extraordinary speed",
I wouldn't mind these things so much if a record of who accessed them and what queries they made were published in a public record.
You think claims that UNIX is in Linux are bad? Wait until every trumped up failure of a company starts claiming IP ownership of everything open source.
Why do that? It seems much easier to me to claim IP ownership of closed source code.
After all, if Microsoft didn't have anything to hide in IIS, then why are they keeping the source code a secret?
-- this is not a.sig
Re:Check out Internet Mail 2000
on
Replacing SMTP?
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· Score: 1
I did read your mails, and I would say that losing mailling lists would be too high a cost for the new email system. saying that being charged is a "no confirmation" would the death of legitimate mailling lists and I think that would be a very sad thing.
Nothing is lost, whitelisting mailing lists simply becomes an automatic part of the subscription process.
Only illegitimate mailing lists would be affected.
-- this is not a.sig
Re:Check out Internet Mail 2000
on
Replacing SMTP?
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· Score: 1
Ok, so that requires additional steps.
So, what, you thought forcing the sender to put money at risk was "step free"?
Compared to the problems of implementing a cash-based fee on internet mail, standarizing mailing list subscriptions so they include automatic whitelisting would be a piece of cake.
(And if you're charging money, you'd better have that forgery problem licked too, otherwise it won't just be mailing lists that get joe-jobbed.)
-- this is not a.sig
Re:Check out Internet Mail 2000
on
Replacing SMTP?
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· Score: 1
If, when you go to send them the confirmation, they try to charge you 10 cents, that's a clear indication of no confirmation.
well, yes, thats obvious, but what about the poor mailling list operator who's stung for 10 cents... per person signed up by j random loser? if they signed 1000 ppl up then our mailling list owner is $100 out of pocket.
Please re-read my last two posts on the subject. There is no such mailing list operator, because they don't send mail if it would cost them money.
-- this is not a.sig
Re:Check out Internet Mail 2000
on
Replacing SMTP?
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· Score: 1
Now, I've heard people propose that there should be a system whereby an "unknown" email is charged 10 cents (or whatever) unless the receiver subsequently tells the system "Yeah, I wanted that" at which point the 10 cents is effectively refunded and, presumably, all future emails from that source have the charge waived.
The problem is if someone starts signing up random email addresses on my mailing list. Each time the system sends out the single confirmation email I will be dinged 10 cents with the expectation that everyone will "refund" that back to me since they asked for it. But what if someone with a grudge and a lot of extra time goes to my site and starts signing up lots of people--people that have never heard of my site. The "confirmation email" is precisely to protect users from getting on my mailing list without asking for it, but I'm not at risk of having to pay to have that confirmation email delivered.
If such a system were imposed then how would a mailing list be able to send out confirmation emails without the risk of someone maliciously signing up random users just so that I get hit with a bunch of email charges?
Part of the subscription process is that they whitelist the mailing list so it doesn't pay. If, when you go to send them the confirmation, they try to charge you 10 cents, that's a clear indication of no confirmation.
If everybody charged strangers, then we could do away with confirmation emails altogether, since the fact that they've whitelisted you should be confirmation enough. We could probably do away with unsubscribe too.
-- this is not a.sig
Re:Will receive email for work.
on
Replacing SMTP?
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· Score: 1
This is just "sender pays" in a slightly less recognizable form. (As others have mentioned, we can improve this by adding a "friends fly free" white list)
Problem is, hashcash (or any other form of work) can be translated in to real $$. I can buy a PC at fry's for $200, and leave it running 24/7. Even if I buy a new PC every month, 2 seconds of it's time is less than $0.00001 If you want to have an impact, you need the sender to spend a few hours not seconds.
TLS doesn't work when the server you're connecting to has more than one domain per ip.
"Working out the details of an appropriate certificate policy" is not enough, you need to fundamentally modify the TLS protocol too.
-- this is not a.sig
Re:Check out Internet Mail 2000
on
Replacing SMTP?
·
· Score: 1
I'm even opposed to the "pay a dime, but I'll give it back if I wanted to hear from you" approach. Those of us running a mailing list would run the risk of having some idiot sign-up a bunch of accounts only to have that person say "No, I didn't want that" and collect the money.
What a terrible implementation you've described. The amount at risk should be set by the receiver, and they should tell the sender what it will cost. Friends fly free, and so should subscribed mailing lists.
A mailing list wouldn't pay a dime, because it wouldn't send email to people who demanded it put money at risk.
Every case is going to be different, but response rates for junk mail are typically claimed in the 2-4 per thousand range, and spam is estimated at 1-3 per ten thousand. (A response is not a sale, but the response to sale ratios are fairly high - usually double digits.)
A full color piece of junk mail costs about $1. A single spam costs less than $0.00001. That $500,000 mail campain would have cost less than $5 if done through email.
That, in a nutshell, is the real problem with spam. It doesn't have to work well because it's so cheap.
(for example you see much less pashion regarding IIS as being evil now that Apache exists and is strong)
Apache was released long before IIS. It has been the dominate server platform since 1996 (displacing NCSA for the title), and has continued to have a larger share than all other servers combined since 1999. (source - netcraft )
In spite of it's puny market share, there is still plenty of "pashion regarding IIS as being evil", and I've seen no signs of it's reduction, ever.
...or they should make the move of charging per megabyte after reaching a monthly traffic limit.
I favor a burst+constant approach. For example, if you had 64Kbps + 5 Gigabytes Burst, once you hit your 5 Gig cap your speed is limited to your guaranteed 64Kbsp rate.
(It might be a nightmare to implement, but it's what the typical consumer wants.)
The best case I can think of is InterTrust wins, demands that Microsoft recall all infringing software, a catastrophic software meltdown results driving most users to Linux short term, and long term leads to the revoking of all current and future software and business practice patents.
Ok, so it's a slim chance. I'm still rooting for it.
I always wondered why we do not confirm that the sending IP matches the MX record of a domain.
You might want to google for "spam" + "DHVP", "DMP", "RMX", "DRIP" or "SPF"
The closest would probably be DHVP. DHVP checks that the HELO from the sender either has a special "This is valid" record in DNS, or that an MX record for the HELO string matches the IP address, or some superset of the HELO's fully qualified domain name has an MX that matches the IP address.
We don't do this because it has a high false positive rate. Even if you personally would accept 5% of your email being discarded as "non-conforming", an ISP can't accept that high a false postive rate and stay in business.
IIRC, Fastload sent the data using a handshaked (clocked) protocol. Turboload used the standard (asynchronous) protocol built in, it just turned off the screen which prevented the 40 cycle drop out that occured when the C64 fetches a new character row. (It should have turn off sprites since they steal cycles too, but nobody's perfect.)
Vorpal on the other hand blanked the screen, turned off sprites, used both data lines to transmit in an asynchronous manor, and recorded the data in a different format, yielding a 25 to 1 speed improvement. (About 1/2 the speed of the IBM PC's 5.25" single denisty floppy) Timing was so precise that it had to account for the different clock speeds of the pal (.985 Mhertz) and the NTSC (1.0227 Mhertz) and 1541 (1.000 Mhertz) when transmitting the data.
To appreciate how stupid all this really is, you have to realize that the C64 has a custom chip that implements their serial protocol, and the clock and data lines weren't attached to anything. With a tiny amount of software, and two extra traces on the motherboard, the 1541 could have been 12 times faster than it was.
I don't really wan't my 0.7 cents back, I just want to make spamming expensive. Instead of a class action, how about a class punishment? I.e. Allow laywers to sue for reasonable fees, plus 5% of the punitive damage award that is paid to the the general fund.
If I have a company that manufactures low profit margin widgets, and I have a competitor who manufactures low profit margin widgets, and I devise a business process that streamlines my manufacturing to eke out more profits, I won't want my competitor to have that business process.
Bad example IMO. If you think it up, you have a strong incentive to implement even without a patent (it saves you money). Your competition has an incentive to copy you (it save's them money too) and the end result is lower prices for everybody.
Better example: You think of a way someone else can improve the manufacture of widgets. Without a patent, you have no incentive to tell them about it.
The question is, how likely is it that the idea would have been thought of independantly if you hadn't done it. And the key failing of software patents and business method patents, is that for most of them the answer is "very likely".
... that doesn't mean that obscurity isn't important too.
That's exactly what it means.
Don't confuse obscurity with secrecy.
The issue is why all this information was so freely availble in the first place and whether power companies, telecoms, etc. should look at restricting access to certain types of data.
That's a step in the right direction, but consider how much other information needs to be secret in order to keep this information secret.
Do we need to back ground checks on ditch diggers before we can tell them where the cables are burried?
Claim 1. A method for renting items to customers, the method comprising the computer-implemented steps of:
receiving one or more item selection criteria that indicates one or more items that a customer desires to rent;
providing to the customer up to a specified number of the one or more items indicated by the one or more item selection criteria; and
in response to receiving any of the items provided to the customer, providing to the customer one or more other items indicated by the one or more item selection criteria, wherein a total current number of items provided to the customer does not exceed the specified number.
With a loose interpretation, this covers libraries, book of the month clubs, and possibly in-store exchanges.
With a stricter interpretation, the idea of implementing this entirely by computer becomes quite novel. I wonder how Netflix is providing DVDs via computer - AFAIK, they don't offer downloads of them. Seems like a shipping company with real people would have to be involved at some point.
Slashdot Mirror
link
I wouldn't mind these things so much if a record of who accessed them and what queries they made were published in a public record.
-- this is not a
Why do that? It seems much easier to me to claim IP ownership of closed source code.
After all, if Microsoft didn't have anything to hide in IIS,
then why are they keeping the source code a secret?
-- this is not a
Nothing is lost, whitelisting mailing lists simply becomes an automatic part of the subscription process.
Only illegitimate mailing lists would be affected.
-- this is not a
So, what, you thought forcing the sender to put money at risk was "step free"?
Compared to the problems of implementing a cash-based fee on internet mail,
standarizing mailing list subscriptions so they include automatic whitelisting would be a piece of cake.
(And if you're charging money, you'd better have that forgery problem licked too,
otherwise it won't just be mailing lists that get joe-jobbed.)
-- this is not a
Please re-read my last two posts on the subject.
There is no such mailing list operator, because they don't send mail if it would cost them money.
-- this is not a
Part of the subscription process is that they whitelist the mailing list so it doesn't pay.
If, when you go to send them the confirmation, they try to charge you 10 cents, that's a clear indication of no confirmation.
If everybody charged strangers, then we could do away with confirmation emails altogether,
since the fact that they've whitelisted you should be confirmation enough.
We could probably do away with unsubscribe too.
-- this is not a
This is just "sender pays" in a slightly less recognizable form.
.sig
(As others have mentioned, we can improve this by adding a "friends fly free" white list)
Problem is, hashcash (or any other form of work) can be translated in to real $$.
I can buy a PC at fry's for $200, and leave it running 24/7.
Even if I buy a new PC every month, 2 seconds of it's time is less than $0.00001
If you want to have an impact, you need the sender to spend a few hours not seconds.
-- this is not a
TLS doesn't work when the server you're connecting to has more than one domain per ip.
.sig
"Working out the details of an appropriate certificate policy" is not enough, you need to fundamentally modify the TLS protocol too.
-- this is not a
What a terrible implementation you've described.
The amount at risk should be set by the receiver, and they should tell the sender what it will cost.
Friends fly free, and so should subscribed mailing lists.
A mailing list wouldn't pay a dime,
because it wouldn't send email to people who demanded it put money at risk.
-- this is not a
Every case is going to be different, but response rates for junk mail are typically claimed in the 2-4 per thousand range,
.sig
and spam is estimated at 1-3 per ten thousand.
(A response is not a sale, but the response to sale ratios are fairly high - usually double digits.)
A full color piece of junk mail costs about $1.
A single spam costs less than $0.00001.
That $500,000 mail campain would have cost less than $5 if done through email.
That, in a nutshell, is the real problem with spam.
It doesn't have to work well because it's so cheap.
-- this is not a
Here's another estimate
.sig
Probably should double those numbers since the page is over a year old.
-- this is not a
Apache was released long before IIS.
It has been the dominate server platform since 1996 (displacing NCSA for the title),
and has continued to have a larger share than all other servers combined since 1999.
(source - netcraft )
In spite of it's puny market share, there is still plenty of "pashion regarding IIS as being evil",
and I've seen no signs of it's reduction, ever.
-- this is not a
Gotta wonder how they got that past the examiner.
.sig
"No no, pkzip isn't prior art... the patent only covers the novel idea of using strong encryption"
-- this is not a
I favor a burst+constant approach.
For example, if you had 64Kbps + 5 Gigabytes Burst,
once you hit your 5 Gig cap your speed is limited to your guaranteed 64Kbsp rate.
(It might be a nightmare to implement, but it's what the typical consumer wants.)
-- this is not a
The best case I can think of is InterTrust wins, demands that Microsoft recall all infringing software,
a catastrophic software meltdown results driving most users to Linux short term,
and long term leads to the revoking of all current and future software and business practice patents.
Ok, so it's a slim chance. I'm still rooting for it.
-- Buy prevention, invest in cures.
You might want to google for "spam" + "DHVP", "DMP", "RMX", "DRIP" or "SPF"
The closest would probably be DHVP.
DHVP checks that the HELO from the sender either has a special "This is valid" record in DNS,
or that an MX record for the HELO string matches the IP address,
or some superset of the HELO's fully qualified domain name has an MX that matches the IP address.
We don't do this because it has a high false positive rate.
Even if you personally would accept 5% of your email being discarded as "non-conforming",
an ISP can't accept that high a false postive rate and stay in business.
-- this is not a
I couldn't care less about the size of the payments I can make,
.sig
it's that $0.35 per transaction + 2% that's killing me.
Anonymity and security is nice, but I prefer cheap.
-- this is not a
Wouldn't burning a two hour movie at 4x speed take at least 30 minutes?
IIRC, Fastload sent the data using a handshaked (clocked) protocol.
.sig
Turboload used the standard (asynchronous) protocol built in,
it just turned off the screen which prevented the 40 cycle drop out that occured when the C64 fetches a new character row.
(It should have turn off sprites since they steal cycles too, but nobody's perfect.)
Vorpal on the other hand blanked the screen, turned off sprites, used both data lines to transmit in an asynchronous manor,
and recorded the data in a different format, yielding a 25 to 1 speed improvement.
(About 1/2 the speed of the IBM PC's 5.25" single denisty floppy)
Timing was so precise that it had to account for the different clock speeds of
the pal (.985 Mhertz) and the NTSC (1.0227 Mhertz) and 1541 (1.000 Mhertz) when transmitting the data.
To appreciate how stupid all this really is,
you have to realize that the C64 has a custom chip that implements their serial protocol,
and the clock and data lines weren't attached to anything.
With a tiny amount of software, and two extra traces on the motherboard,
the 1541 could have been 12 times faster than it was.
-- this is not a
I don't really wan't my 0.7 cents back, I just want to make spamming expensive.
.sig
Instead of a class action, how about a class punishment?
I.e. Allow laywers to sue for reasonable fees,
plus 5% of the punitive damage award that is paid to the the general fund.
I'm sure congress would get behind that.
-- this is not a
Bad example IMO.
If you think it up, you have a strong incentive to implement even without a patent (it saves you money).
Your competition has an incentive to copy you (it save's them money too) and the end result is lower prices for everybody.
Better example:
You think of a way someone else can improve the manufacture of widgets.
Without a patent, you have no incentive to tell them about it.
The question is, how likely is it that the idea would have been thought of independantly if you hadn't done it.
And the key failing of software patents and business method patents,
is that for most of them the answer is "very likely".
-- this is not a
That's exactly what it means.
Don't confuse obscurity with secrecy.
That's a step in the right direction,
but consider how much other information needs to be secret in order to keep this information secret.
Do we need to back ground checks on ditch diggers before we can tell them where the cables are burried?
-- this is not a
Yes.
With a loose interpretation, this covers libraries, book of the month clubs, and possibly in-store exchanges.
With a stricter interpretation, the idea of implementing this entirely by computer becomes quite novel.
I wonder how Netflix is providing DVDs via computer - AFAIK, they don't offer downloads of them.
Seems like a shipping company with real people would have to be involved at some point.
-- this is not a