It all boils down to the fact that when you use the file search tool, it connects you to the internet and downloads a privacy policy type of file.
I think it also downloads a few other files, but the privacy policy file is the one to worry about. How is the user supposed to stay informed when Microsoft's privacy policy can be changed every time you search for a file on your disk?
Me, I like to know what the policy is. I can decide whether I like it or not. I don't want a company changing it every day.
I already had yahoo.com messages flagged as spam. I thought with the move to a pay system they'd drive out the spammers, but instead they've decided to become spammers themselves. No problem, they can stay in the filters.
I am going to speculate that if they don't have enough fuel to make it back to an orbit where the shuttle can retrieve it, then they don't have enough fuel for re-entry either.
It's easier to achieve re-entry than to get back to a low orbit. They just need to make the orbit more eccentric, and it'll graze the atmosphere at perigee. It'll be going way too fast for the shuttle to catch it at that point. Slowing it down safely would take lots of fuel. (The atmosphere will slow it down, but the satellite is not likely to survive the experience!)
There's a lot of international traffic in garbage. For example, Kingston, Ontario has sent most of its garbage to landfills in Michigan (which is about 20 times further than New York State, but much more eager to receive it) for at least 5 years now. Toronto was set to do that too, but the Sept 11 events have made border crossing slower, so they're still keeping most of it locally.
If the government had to pay for heart transplants for everyone, we'd be living in a socialist state, and everyone would be lucky to have a roof over their heads, much less healthcare.
In the socialist country to the north of you, the government *does* pay for heart transplants for everyone who gets them. There are shortages of available organs here (as in the US, I think), so not everyone who needs a new heart gets one, but this particular procedure isn't one that is handled better in a pay-as-you-go system.
I also bought one of the tiny little ones, and still use it. Mine is labelled as per the subject line even though it doesn't have a Z-80 in it, and the keyboard layout is a little different than yours: see a picture of it here. According to that page, mine was introduced in 1980, but I bought it in 1983 when the line was discontinued for the whopping price of $CAD 65 (including the soft case and cassette interface).
There has to be someway of ascertaining the list, without DOS'ing the DB's website (sending 2^32 queries to their server is probably something that is not appreciated by anyone).
Why would you want to know every entry in a blackhole list? You want to know if you're in it, and all the reputable ones make it very easy to figure that out. I can only think of one reason why someone would want a complete list of all open relays on the net, and that's so they could abuse them.
Go to Google, search for "google advertising", and you'll get this page near the top of the search results. Basically, they're selling people "sponsored links".
They haven't said yet what the license is supposed to look like. They've just said that they accidentally put the wrong license in, and they're working on fixing it.
I suspect that GPL will stay, audit will go, but there are a number of other controversial clauses: you can't produce products that compete with Borland, you can only make one backup copy, you're required to register, you give up the right to a jury trial, you can't give away or sell your copy. I wouldn't want to guess what they'll do with those.
On the borland.public.kylix.non-technical newsgroup, John Kaster (of Borland developer relations) said,
No Borland representative will have anything to say on this subject until we hear from our legal department or executives, which will certainly not happen on the weekend.
This is reasonable, but it's too bad: by Monday this topic will have scrolled off, and Borland's only hope to undo the damage will be to show up in a Slashback. Does anybody read those?
Somehow this topic reminds me of those old generator lights for bicycles. Anyone remember those? They made it so hard to pedal.
Not if you oiled them! They weren't all that bad when they were properly maintained. I liked them better than battery-powered lights until the flashing LED lights came out, because the batteries ran out so fast. They're still the best if you actually want a headlight that you can see by; the LEDs let you be seen, but don't illuminate much.
I think there are plenty of people who want flat rate service: they're the heavy users. There are also plenty of people who would prefer to pay as they go: they're the light users.
About 5 years ago I bought some big block of minutes to set my mother up for email. I paid about $50 for it. A year or so after I did that, the ISP dropped that offering, but continued to honour her account.
About 6 months ago, she was 75% of the way through her minutes, and they just cut her off, and forced her to go to a $15/month subscription instead of what had worked out to be a $10/year
usage fee.
She's a light user. She's being ripped off by the heavy users, who force the monthly rate to be $15/month instead of $10/year.
I think the cable companies love flat rate charging, because then they don't have to provide you the bandwidth they promise.
If they charged by the megabyte, then their revenues would drop when they had a blackout, or when they didn't put enough bandwidth into your neigbhourhood, or whatever.
It was the same with dialup service. Last time I tried a couple of years ago, it was impossible to buy a fixed number of minutes of connection time, I could only buy flat rate monthly service. I got a lot of busy signals on that flat rate service, which cost *me* money, not the ISP.
When I contacted MAPS about it to find out what happened and how to fix it, the bottom line was this: MAPS lied to me about what they did and how it worked.
My experience with them is that they're extremely honest, that they bend over backwards to avoid listing someone, and they'll remove you from their list at the first sign that you've done something to fix the problem. However, they're overworked, and occasionally make mistakes.
Generally innocent web sites only get blackholed when they're on the same netblock as a bunch of spammers. The idea is that blackholing each of the spammers' addresses is having no effect, so the host must be profiting from the spam: and MAPS blackholes the entire block to try to get the host to act more responsibly. If you happen to be innocent and in the same block, then you're obviously not going to be too happy about it, but you shouldn't have been dealing with sleazebag spam supporters.
I'd like to hear the details of what went wrong in your case. What did they tell you that was a lie?
Doesn't it make more sense to single out someone because he bears a striking resemblance to a known terrorist than to single out someone because he looks vaguely Middle Eastern ( which is what is happening today)?
Why do you think they'd stop singling out the Middle Eastern types? Even if the manufacturers are claiming that their systems are 99.9% accurate (when they're really 0.01% accurate on the positives), nobody would believe that the terrorist database was exhaustive. They'll still do profiling, and these days that's likely to be targeted at Arabs.
Of course, once you have the technology in place, you wouldn't stop with just terrorists in the database. Every wanted criminal would go in too, along with missing children, etc. This is going to affect the specificity of the system: when the database holds a million faces, it's much harder to be 99.9% accurate at rejecting non-members than when it holds a thousand.
The fact that only a few people will be inconvenienced isn't the real problem. The problem is that the users of the system will mistrust it.
If only one in 10000 positives is really a terrorist, then most airport security personnel will never see one. They'll stop and inspect a few people each day, and in every case, they will be false positives. That will lead to a tremendous mistrust of the system.
Imagine if you were running airport security, and every day the computer told you that you should detain someone because they looked like a terrorist, and in every case it turned out to be false. You'd feel like a fool.
It would be just like having false fire alarms a couple of times a day, every day. You wouldn't evacuate every time, would you?
In the same way, the airport security people would stop responding as diligently after months of false alarms. Then the system wouldn't work.
A system that people don't trust isn't worth having. It's just a waste of time and money.
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It all boils down to the fact that when you use the file search tool, it connects you to the internet and downloads a privacy policy type of file.
I think it also downloads a few other files, but the privacy policy file is the one to worry about. How is the user supposed to stay informed when Microsoft's privacy policy can be changed every time you search for a file on your disk?
Me, I like to know what the policy is. I can decide whether I like it or not. I don't want a company changing it every day.
Teacups have handles.
<whinge> I submitted this story 3 days ago </whinge>
They probably read your accompanying description and just found your tone of voice too irritating.
I already tried to set my alternate email address to abuse@yahoo, marketing@yahoo, and sales@yahoo - won't take any of them.
There are plenty of sites that offer free email addresses and would be happy to forward to one of those.
I already had yahoo.com messages flagged as spam. I thought with the move to a pay system they'd drive out the spammers, but instead they've decided to become spammers themselves. No problem, they can stay in the filters.
I am going to speculate that if they don't have enough fuel to make it back to an orbit where the shuttle can retrieve it, then they don't have enough fuel for re-entry either.
It's easier to achieve re-entry than to get back to a low orbit. They just need to make the orbit more eccentric, and it'll graze the atmosphere at perigee. It'll be going way too fast for the shuttle to catch it at that point. Slowing it down safely would take lots of fuel. (The atmosphere will slow it down, but the satellite is not likely to survive the experience!)
Bogasity's link was a press release from before the attempted slingshot; it worked.
There's a lot of international traffic in garbage. For example, Kingston, Ontario has sent most of its garbage to landfills in Michigan (which is about 20 times further than New York State, but much more eager to receive it) for at least 5 years now. Toronto was set to do that too, but the Sept 11 events have made border crossing slower, so they're still keeping most of it locally.
If the government had to pay for heart transplants for everyone, we'd be living in a socialist state, and everyone would be lucky to have a roof over their heads, much less healthcare.
In the socialist country to the north of you, the government *does* pay for heart transplants for everyone who gets them. There are shortages of available organs here (as in the US, I think), so not everyone who needs a new heart gets one, but this particular procedure isn't one that is handled better in a pay-as-you-go system.
I also bought one of the tiny little ones, and still use it. Mine is labelled as per the subject line even though it doesn't have a Z-80 in it, and the keyboard layout is a little different than yours: see a picture of it here. According to that page, mine was introduced in 1980, but I bought it in 1983 when the line was discontinued for the whopping price of $CAD 65 (including the soft case and cassette interface).
There has to be someway of ascertaining the list, without DOS'ing the DB's website (sending 2^32 queries to their server is probably something that is not appreciated by anyone).
Why would you want to know every entry in a blackhole list? You want to know if you're in it, and all the reputable ones make it very easy to figure that out. I can only think of one reason why someone would want a complete list of all open relays on the net, and that's so they could abuse them.
Go to Google, search for "google advertising", and you'll get this page near the top of the search results. Basically, they're selling people "sponsored links".
Microsoft is taking a lot of well-deserved flack because they're trying to defend indefensible terms in their EULA. They should learn from Borland:
When Borland had an unacceptable EULA in Kylix, they quickly backed down and posted a promise to change the EULA.
Then they didn't bother to do anything, and the problem was forgotten.
Spamming continues because it's free, not because it works. Look at this doofus: 40 resumes sent, no bites, still seems to think it was a good idea.
They haven't said yet what the license is supposed to look like. They've just said that they accidentally put the wrong license in, and they're working on fixing it.
I suspect that GPL will stay, audit will go, but there are a number of other controversial clauses: you can't produce products that compete with Borland, you can only make one backup copy, you're required to register, you give up the right to a jury trial, you can't give away or sell your copy. I wouldn't want to guess what they'll do with those.
The license that was posted was for Kylix 2. Maybe the numbering is different for JBuilder, or there are regional variations?
Someone on the Borland newsgroups found the same clause in the Delphi 6 license, so it doesn't sound like a hoax.
On the borland.public.kylix.non-technical newsgroup, John Kaster (of Borland developer relations) said,
No Borland representative will have anything to say on this subject until we hear from our legal department or executives, which will certainly not happen on the weekend.
This is reasonable, but it's too bad: by Monday this topic will have scrolled off, and Borland's only hope to undo the damage will be to show up in a Slashback. Does anybody read those?
While it doesn't reflect well on the company, it almost certainly is the evil marketing conspiracy that everyone makes it out to be.
I guess you mean they should carry out their evil conspiracies more competently.
Somehow this topic reminds me of those old generator lights for bicycles. Anyone remember those? They made it so hard to pedal.
Not if you oiled them! They weren't all that bad when they were properly maintained. I liked them better than battery-powered lights until the flashing LED lights came out, because the batteries ran out so fast. They're still the best if you actually want a headlight that you can see by; the LEDs let you be seen, but don't illuminate much.
I think there are plenty of people who want flat rate service: they're the heavy users. There are also plenty of people who would prefer to pay as they go: they're the light users.
About 5 years ago I bought some big block of minutes to set my mother up for email. I paid about $50 for it. A year or so after I did that, the ISP dropped that offering, but continued to honour her account.
About 6 months ago, she was 75% of the way through her minutes, and they just cut her off, and forced her to go to a $15/month subscription instead of what had worked out to be a $10/year
usage fee.
She's a light user. She's being ripped off by the heavy users, who force the monthly rate to be $15/month instead of $10/year.
I think the cable companies love flat rate charging, because then they don't have to provide you the bandwidth they promise.
If they charged by the megabyte, then their revenues would drop when they had a blackout, or when they didn't put enough bandwidth into your neigbhourhood, or whatever.
It was the same with dialup service. Last time I tried a couple of years ago, it was impossible to buy a fixed number of minutes of connection time, I could only buy flat rate monthly service. I got a lot of busy signals on that flat rate service, which cost *me* money, not the ISP.
I didn't see anything from MAPS in that thread. Did you see MAPS's explanation for listing safesurf.com somewhere? If so, please post it.
When I contacted MAPS about it to find out what happened and how to fix it, the bottom line was this: MAPS lied to me about what they did and how it worked.
My experience with them is that they're extremely honest, that they bend over backwards to avoid listing someone, and they'll remove you from their list at the first sign that you've done something to fix the problem. However, they're overworked, and occasionally make mistakes.
Generally innocent web sites only get blackholed when they're on the same netblock as a bunch of spammers. The idea is that blackholing each of the spammers' addresses is having no effect, so the host must be profiting from the spam: and MAPS blackholes the entire block to try to get the host to act more responsibly. If you happen to be innocent and in the same block, then you're obviously not going to be too happy about it, but you shouldn't have been dealing with sleazebag spam supporters.
I'd like to hear the details of what went wrong in your case. What did they tell you that was a lie?
Doesn't it make more sense to single out someone because he bears a striking resemblance to a known terrorist than to single out someone because he looks vaguely Middle Eastern ( which is what is happening today)?
Why do you think they'd stop singling out the Middle Eastern types? Even if the manufacturers are claiming that their systems are 99.9% accurate (when they're really 0.01% accurate on the positives), nobody would believe that the terrorist database was exhaustive. They'll still do profiling, and these days that's likely to be targeted at Arabs.
Of course, once you have the technology in place, you wouldn't stop with just terrorists in the database. Every wanted criminal would go in too, along with missing children, etc. This is going to affect the specificity of the system: when the database holds a million faces, it's much harder to be 99.9% accurate at rejecting non-members than when it holds a thousand.
The fact that only a few people will be inconvenienced isn't the real problem. The problem is that the users of the system will mistrust it.
If only one in 10000 positives is really a terrorist, then most airport security personnel will never see one. They'll stop and inspect a few people each day, and in every case, they will be false positives. That will lead to a tremendous mistrust of the system.
Imagine if you were running airport security, and every day the computer told you that you should detain someone because they looked like a terrorist, and in every case it turned out to be false. You'd feel like a fool.
It would be just like having false fire alarms a couple of times a day, every day. You wouldn't evacuate every time, would you?
In the same way, the airport security people would stop responding as diligently after months of false alarms. Then the system wouldn't work.
A system that people don't trust isn't worth having. It's just a waste of time and money.