As far as I am concerned the major factor in a spam filter should be zero false positives - personally I don't mind reviewing one or two spams a week but I get really annoyed if I were to lose a real message
I agree with you, but different people have different needs.
A parent, for example, might tolerate 5% false positives if they could guarantee 0% false negatives for their kids email.
Someone who gets 7000 spams a day might tolerate a few false positives.
When you consider that humans are only about 99% effective at identifying spam, a systems that has %0.01 starts to look a lot more acceptable.
Sell a R/W CD with a song recorded on it. This is a triple win; You beat the tax. You become a music distribution company eligible for a share of the tax (paid by your competitors no less) You can sell the title of your song to advertisers, since it's likely to be a #1 best seller. (How many recording artists can boast repeat sales?)
I won't be surprised if the Verisign defense plays their client as an unwitting victim.
That would be amusing. "Gee your honor, we didn't know he was the rightful owner, and didn't bother investigating because we can't be bothered with such trivial matters as doing our jobs."
Being duped into transfering the domain is one thing. Refusing to fix the mistake for three years is quite another.
Well, I'd be perfectly happy to pay the government tens of thousands of dollars to execute certain people that have pissed me off, but apparently the government doesn't want my money. Could it be that greed does not outweigh morality in every case?
Anything's possible, but I think that particular case is just because they put a higher value on their property (the people you want killed) than a few paltry tens of thousands. Even a minimum wage slave will produce more than that in tax revenues alone.
If you want government sanctioned murder, than you need to offer millions like big tobacco does
Let's see now... if I register a domain name with the intent of selling it to someone else instead of using it myself, I'm "cybersquating" and ICANN will forcibly take the domain name aways from me. However, if I register an idea with the intent of selling to someone else instead of using it myself, the US Patent Office will assist me in extorting money out of anyone who wishes to sell a product based on a simular idea? I find this curiously inconsistent.
It's perfectly consistent. Ask yourself which makes more money for the government, sales of trademarks or sales of domain names? And which makes them more, granting patents or disallowing them? It's only inconsistent if you assume the government is acting based on morality and not greed.
As long as people continue to accept the line that governments have the right to own, sell, and regulate ideas and concepts, it will continue to sell out to the highest bidder.
In certain very rare circumstances they are better than the alternative. In those cases, the best that can be said of them is they are the lessor of two evils.
I'm not convinced this is lessor evil. How do you know that what the money is earmarked for will really go there? What if they force schools or libraries to install censorware before than can have the money?
I've thought about this myself. The whole key to a slot machine or a fruit machine is that you need to be able to set the "payout" percentage, typically something high like 98%. 98% means that the player gets back $0.98 on every $1, assuming he plays an infinite amount of times.
The only way to guarantee this is by determining what the payout is as soon as the money's in the slot.
If you need to guarantee it, you have to decide before the money is in the slot. Imagine a pack of lottery tickets, each with a different payout. You put your coin in, and out pops a ticket. It's always going to be the same ticket, so in a sense, it's predetermined. And there are only so many winners and so many losers in the pack, so the machine is guaranteed to pay out an exact amount.
Now replace the physical "ticket" with an electronic version, and play a video clip of winning or losing based on what the e-ticket says. Welcome to the fruit machine.
In Nevada that machine would be illegal. But you could pick a ticket from the pack, play the appropriate video, put the ticket back into the pack, and then shuffle the pack.
Using "their" wheel is usually cheaper than inventing your own.
But sometimes, it's a disaster.
How can you tell if their wheel is any good? Including it with out evaluating it is a huge risk. It's not even easy to guess at the risk. Testing helps, but a good evaluation can be as hard if not harder than recreating it.
How can I know if Net::::Hesiod is the best thing since sliced bread, or buggy garbage that should have been fixed long ago? Maybe if some fitness/correctness/bugginess evaluations were made by someone (even say, comp. sci. students as a homework assignment... )
Scientists in California are working on a fast new Internet connection system that could enable an entire movie to be downloaded in a matter of seconds.
Come on, how can they defend their "free speech" and "fair use" rights if they openly call themselves "pirates"?
Perhaps they feel that "priacy" is a legitimate activity? The historical pirates usually operated under government sanction. Google for "Letter of Marque", you might be surprised at what you find.
Words can change meaning quickly, leading to lots of problems like this. Consider the term "hacker". Many continue to use the term in it's old meaning, and get ostracized for it.
The ability to define a term is arguably the most fundamental "speech" any of us has. Implying that a group doesn't have the right to use whatever terms it likes is double plus ungood.
We will actually be providing some of the evidence next month to various industry analysts,
The reaction to this story continues to amaze me. SCO makes a extraordinary claim without proving any evidence and people treat it seriously. If they really had something, they wouldn't be trying to get press coverage.
However, in all honesty, this is probably one of the few cases where everyone wins- for many of the reasons folks cited in the comments on the last article that mentioned Earthlink's move... challenge-reply is a VERY half-baked idea, and anything that supresses the market for that software(ie, patent) is a darn good thing in my book.
Grr..... Sure, let's just forget about advancing the human condition by experimenting.
All ideas are half-baked at some time in their developement. While I agree with Sturgeon's second law, I think I'll wait until after Earthlink's actually deployed something before deciding if it's 10% or 90%.
The best candidate so far (IMO) is this post to news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on 1996-11-17. I'd really like something prior to 1996-08-26 though.
I'm looking for anything prior to 1997-08-26 that;
compares the sender's address to a list of accepted senders; (friends list) -and- sends a challenge if the sender's address is not contained in the list -and- the challenge is designed to be answered by a person and not a machine.
Challenge-Response is the fundamental security mechanism for TCP,
US 6,199,102 has a number of claims, but generally speaking they all describe systems that;
compare the sender's address to a list of accepted senders; (friends list) -and- send a challenge if the sender's address is not contained in the list -and- the challenge is designed to be answered by a person and not a machine.
Sorry, but probably not. US 6,199,102 - Cobb patent. Filed: 1997-08-26
So the key date is 1996-08-26, which is before all the copies of TMS I've been able to find in the public record. Prior art between 1996-08-26 - 1997-08-26 may or may not be relevant, depending on the "date of invention" for US 6,199,102.
If you buy a can opener and it breaks, do you expect to get another can opener for free?
I don't expect the can opener company to replace it free, but I also don't expect to be sued for repairing it, nor prevented from taking pictures of it to assist in the repair, or from doing metalurgy on it to determine what sort of welding equipment is needed.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you, but different people have different needs.
A parent, for example, might tolerate 5% false positives if they could guarantee 0% false negatives for their kids email.
Someone who gets 7000 spams a day might tolerate a few false positives.
When you consider that humans are only about 99% effective at identifying spam,
a systems that has %0.01 starts to look a lot more acceptable.
-- this is not a
The same suggestion made for Canada works here.
.sig
Sell a R/W CD with a song recorded on it. This is a triple win;
You beat the tax.
You become a music distribution company eligible for a share of the tax (paid by your competitors no less)
You can sell the title of your song to advertisers, since it's likely to be a #1 best seller.
(How many recording artists can boast repeat sales?)
-- this is not a
That would be amusing.
"Gee your honor, we didn't know he was the rightful owner,
and didn't bother investigating because we can't be bothered with such trivial matters as doing our jobs."
Being duped into transfering the domain is one thing.
Refusing to fix the mistake for three years is quite another.
-- this is not a
Anything's possible, but I think that particular case is just because they put a higher value on their property
(the people you want killed) than a few paltry tens of thousands.
Even a minimum wage slave will produce more than that in tax revenues alone.
If you want government sanctioned murder, than you need to offer millions like big tobacco does
-- this is not a
It's perfectly consistent.
Ask yourself which makes more money for the government,
sales of trademarks or sales of domain names?
And which makes them more, granting patents or disallowing them?
It's only inconsistent if you assume the government is acting based on morality and not greed.
As long as people continue to accept the line that governments
have the right to own, sell, and regulate ideas and concepts,
it will continue to sell out to the highest bidder.
-- this is not a
I do not believe that patents promote science and the useful arts.
.sig
I propose we put a 10 year moratorium on filing patents.
-- this is not a
Taxes are always bad.
.sig
In certain very rare circumstances they are better than the alternative.
In those cases, the best that can be said of them is they are the lessor of two evils.
I'm not convinced this is lessor evil.
How do you know that what the money is earmarked for will really go there?
What if they force schools or libraries to install censorware before than can have the money?
-- this is not
Devices in Nevada can't. They also aren't required to.
They don't guarantee the percentages at the craps table or the roulette wheel either.
-- this is not a
If you need to guarantee it, you have to decide before the money is in the slot.
Imagine a pack of lottery tickets, each with a different payout.
You put your coin in, and out pops a ticket.
It's always going to be the same ticket, so in a sense, it's predetermined.
And there are only so many winners and so many losers in the pack,
so the machine is guaranteed to pay out an exact amount.
Now replace the physical "ticket" with an electronic version,
and play a video clip of winning or losing based on what the e-ticket says.
Welcome to the fruit machine.
In Nevada that machine would be illegal.
But you could pick a ticket from the pack,
play the appropriate video,
put the ticket back into the pack,
and then shuffle the pack.
-- this is not a
Using "their" wheel is usually cheaper than inventing your own.
.sig
But sometimes, it's a disaster.
How can you tell if their wheel is any good?
Including it with out evaluating it is a huge risk.
It's not even easy to guess at the risk.
Testing helps, but a good evaluation can be as hard if not harder than recreating it.
How can I know if Net::::Hesiod is the best thing since sliced bread,
or buggy garbage that should have been fixed long ago?
Maybe if some fitness/correctness/bugginess evaluations were made by someone
(even say, comp. sci. students as a homework assignment... )
-- this is not a
Sure it does. I'm thinking around 10000 seconds.
-- this is not a
To me, this sounds like a golden opportunity to make $5,000,000 with a $100,000 investment.
-- this is not a
Perhaps they feel that "priacy" is a legitimate activity?
The historical pirates usually operated under government sanction.
Google for "Letter of Marque", you might be surprised at what you find.
Words can change meaning quickly, leading to lots of problems like this.
Consider the term "hacker".
Many continue to use the term in it's old meaning, and get ostracized for it.
The ability to define a term is arguably the most fundamental "speech" any of us has.
Implying that a group doesn't have the right to use whatever terms it likes is double plus ungood.
-- this is not a
The reaction to this story continues to amaze me.
SCO makes a extraordinary claim without proving any evidence and people treat it seriously.
If they really had something, they wouldn't be trying to get press coverage.
-- this is not a
IOW, Novell claims SCO doesn't own the code they haven't disclosed.
.sig
SCO hasn't said what the code is.
They haven't said what the routines are in general.
They haven't even indicated the amount of code involved.
Wake me when SCO says something that can be [disproved|proved].
-- this is not a
This is really sad, I can't find any info on Mailbock's patents in any of the articles.
They are;
US 6,199,102 (the Cobb patent) Filed: 1997-08-26
and
US 6,112,227 (the Heiner patent) Filed: 1998-08-06
Grr.....
Sure, let's just forget about advancing the human condition by experimenting.
All ideas are half-baked at some time in their developement.
While I agree with Sturgeon's second law,
I think I'll wait until after Earthlink's actually deployed something before deciding if it's 10% or 90%.
-- this is not a
Do you have a reference to a published document?
.sig
I.e.. something that could be used in court,
or a patent re-examination case.
-- this is not a
I'm collecting prior-art for this.
.sig
If anyone has anything they think is relevant, please email a copy to prior-art@spamwolf.com
The relevant stuff (what I consider relevant) is being posted at http://www.spamwolf.com/patents/
The best candidate so far (IMO) is this post to news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on 1996-11-17.
I'd really like something prior to 1996-08-26 though.
I'm looking for anything prior to 1997-08-26 that;
compares the sender's address to a list of accepted senders; (friends list)
-and-
sends a challenge if the sender's address is not contained in the list
-and-
the challenge is designed to be answered by a person and not a machine.
-- this is not a
US 6,199,102 has a number of claims, but generally speaking they all describe systems that;
compare the sender's address to a list of accepted senders; (friends list)
-and-
send a challenge if the sender's address is not contained in the list
-and-
the challenge is designed to be answered by a person and not a machine.
TCP doesn't match that last part.
-- this is not a
Sorry, but probably not.
.sig
US 6,199,102 - Cobb patent. Filed: 1997-08-26
So the key date is 1996-08-26, which is before all the copies of TMS I've been able to find in the public record.
Prior art between 1996-08-26 - 1997-08-26
may or may not be relevant, depending on the "date of invention" for US 6,199,102.
-- this is not a
I don't expect the can opener company to replace it free,
but I also don't expect to be sued for repairing it,
nor prevented from taking pictures of it to assist in the repair,
or from doing metalurgy on it to determine what sort of welding equipment is needed.
-- this is not a
Just sign updates with the public key you include in the software.
.sig
Good practice for any auto-update, not just viruses.
-- this is not a
They should have taken over this one ;)
.sig
-- this is not a
I wish - we actually slashdotted icannwatch.