I need some clarification on this. Isn't TV typically a broadcast medium and, as such, wireless by default? Perhaps I'm just stupid and have no clue what Taco is talking about.
I think it would be unfair to single out the United States in the way you suggest. If Britain, Russia (USSR), France, Germany or Japan had possed nuclear weapons during the second world war do you think they would have hesitated to use them? We must remember that the human carnage in WWII was imense. Russia alone lost literally millions of people. Given that do you think they really would have cared about killing a few hundred thousand of the enemy's citizens? When Japan or Germany were facing their ultimate demise do you think that they would have hesitated to use a nuclear weapons if they had them?
Debating whether using the bomb was the right thing to do or not is fine. However I don't think that a case can be made that the US is somehow "worse" or "different" than anyone else for using nuclear weapons. Had any other nation possesed the bomb at that time I don't think they would have hesitated to use it.
It would be wise to remember that members of the armed forces (and people in government service in general) are not remote controlled puppets who will blindly follow all orders. The individuals have the power for independent thougt and in times of trouble they, like any other group of people, will not take a unanimous stand. In Chinese history class I was told that most of the troops that the CCP used at Tianamin (sp?) square were brought in from outside of Beijing because it was feared that the troops in Beijing would be to sympathetic to the protestors.
It seems society may be taking the wrong approach to this whole spam thing. We keep focussing on the guy actually sending us the e-mail. We seem to be overlooking the fact that there is someone out there who is trying to sell something to us (or scam us). If it weren't for this seller/scammer the spammer would have no reason to send us anything. Instead of attacking the spammer why not attack the root of the problem: the guy who is paying the spammer to spam. The way I look at it the spammer isn't doing this out of the goodness of his heart. He's doing it on someone's behalf because they are paying him. The person doing the selling is likely much more accessable than the actual spammer because one would need to actually contact them to buy the product being advertised. In contrast to suing the spammer why has suing the company/person who has hired the spammer been cosidered?
I think the argument may be more valid than it seems on the surface. The consumer doesn't necessarily have to pay with money. In the example given, the customer may pay by getting one less pickle on their hamburger or by getting slightly weaker coffee as McDonalds attempts to compensate for the money paid out in the lawsuit. Even if the entire cost of such a judgement is not passed on to the consumer you can bet that the company will try to pass at least some of it along.
One has to be careful when using the anatomy example. The experiments that resulted in the knowledge that is used today were not rigorously debated in an open forum before they were carried out. Thus the debate surrounding those texts is: Should we use information that was unethically obtained? The debate surrounding stem cells is: We'd like to do this research is it ethical? At some point in the future (if stem cell research produces widely usable medical advances) we may be forced to ask the second question. However, at the present time I don't think the questions can be easily compared in a direct manner.
I really don't know the answer to your question. I was just pointing out that GPL software shouldn't have anything in it whose distribution is incompatable with GPL terms. Thus the patent debate should (theoretically) be moot as no patent with restrictive/monetary distribution terms should be included.
Acording to Prof. Eben Moglen (general counsel for the Free Software Foundation) in this Slashdot interview:
"Free software should be freely modifiable and redistributable by its users. Of course, any code once modified may practice claims of a patent about which the modifying user is uninformed. So anyone distributing free software is unable to assure his users that each and every modification they may want to make is noninfringing. But when someone distributes apparently-free software under actual but undisclosed legal restrictions preventing modification or redistribution, the software is not really free. GPL tries to deal with this problem through section 7, which says that if code you are distributing is actually under restriction that is incompatible with the terms of the GPL, you can't distribute under GPL at all. So if you have accepted a patent license that prohibits you from reusing some of your code, or code you have received from others, in different contexts, GPL section 7 means that you cannot distribute under GPL. " (Emphasis and URL added)
First, I've always personally associated a right to be secure in my person, papers, home and effects (Ammendment 4) to be a reference to privacy of some sort. Maybe I'm just weird.
Second, when thinking about privacy issues we would, I think, do well to distinguish privacy and anonymity.
I don't think this was a joke. I think the two pointst that the article really made was that this is the first comprehensive analysis of the problem and that it provides a formula for building a master key without disassembling the lock. Anyone given enough time and an actual lock to work with can certainly make a master key. The article indicated that using this approach it was not necessary to dissasemble the lock and that the number of iterations needed to arrive at a solution has been reduced when compared to a brute force attack. The article indicated that the attack has been executed by others but that this is the first formal analysis of the vulnerability.
What is the durability of these things? If there is one in the new (and most probably hideous) shirt that I bought will it survive a trip through the washer and the dryer? If these things aren't all that durable how would that affect the privacy concerns?
I would imagine that having a mouse that is particularly prone to cancer could be a boon to researchers. This would allow you to conduct a trial and be reasonably assured that a large portion of your experimental population will actually come down with the disease you're trying to study. By using more susceptible test subjects it probably makes the statistics a little easier since a small change (ie exposure to carcinogen X) would likely have a larger effect than would be observed with a "normal" experimental population.
In a way I guess it's kind of like using a honey pot. You put out a system that you know will be broken so that you can see how it is broken and hopefully how to fix it.
It's all about greed. Sure the day to day demographics of rush hour are probably pretty static. However, the advertisers want to maximize their exposure to sell more stuff. That means they want to be able to detect and capitalize on whatever irregularities there are.
Imagine that on a typical day you have a typical distribution of stations. Some people listen to country, others to R&B, others to NPR, etc. etc. Now imagine a day when there is a large sporting event or a conference in town that brings in a good number of people from outside the community. This influx of people may very well change the demographics at a particular time of day. This is what the advertisers are trying to detect. A statistical sampling will likely work MOST of the time. This is a method that is trying to fill in the gaps when averages don't quite cut it.
Quoting WillWare: For donors who prefer to be anonymous, he assigns them a number and emails a copy of the number to them, so they can verify that their donations have been counted.
I think it would be wise to use something a little more complex than a number. If just a number were used I could just send the same number to multiple people. Unless everyone who donated knew everyone else who donated it would be difficult for a contributor to verify that he was the only person counted under a particular number. A better solution perhaps would be to use the contributors public key to encrypt his name on the list. That way one could easily check that your donation is listed but could be reasonably assured that your name wasn't readily available. Of course the flaw there is that not everyone has a public key...
I think this is a situation where one must carefully select the correct tool for the job. Two cases (though there are undoubtedly more) come to mind.
Case 1: Embedded / Specific Use Software If your software interfaces with dedicated hardware (e.g. a radar) that hardware can only provide certain values. If you as a programmer know the boundries within which this hardware operates feel free to use this information. If this knowledge allows you to SAFELY use a static buffer and forgo some checking to gain speed, do it.
Case 2: User Software In any sufficiently large group of people most of them are idiots. This means you can't trust the input. Period. Dynamic buffers for user supplied input or bounds checking is a must. There is no excuse for not validating things a user might screw up. Whatever anti-idiot measures you include will be circumvented by the Next Generation Idiot but there is no reason to give This Generation Idiots free reign.
"Software" is a very broad catergory. Using the tool that is right for the job is important. Every technique used must be evaluated against the criteria for the project at hand.
Disclaimer: the scenarios outlined above are not meant to be exhaustive. They are merely intended to illustrate the point that different types of software development are, well, different.
What I gathered from the article is that they have done proof of concept testing/research using sound waves but would plan to use electromagnetic waves in space.
I would have to imagine that quality control on something like this would be a nightmare. I didn't see anything in the article that talked about refining the pulverized asteroid. One would think that if you had a non uniform mix of materials it would affect the structural integrity of whatever you're building. Still the idea is really intriguing:
1. Break Rocks 2. Compress with radio wave "force field" (now how cool is that?) 3. ??? 4. Profit
I know it's an overused joke but, in this case, it seems to me to be exactly what they're talking about.
Hmm...Another tax story, another reference to a national sales tax. It seems there would be some pitfalls to a national sales tax. In the first place unless implemented properly it would seem to be horribly regressive since lower income workers spend a higher percentage of their income than high income workers. Of course to get around this you could exempt necessities. But how do you decide what a necessity is? Food is an obvious choice and probably gas and electricty. However there are some items that are more difficult. Are books a necessity? How about an entry level computer? While these may be available elsewhere would it be beneficial for a low income family to have their own? Would we end up pricing them out of the market for these types of goods?
On the macro economoic side it seems this would promote savings since people do love to avoid taxes. In the long run this would be a good thing since it would lead to economic growth due to more available capital. However due to the paradox of thrift it would cause a short term economic loss since people would be spending less. This would generate some interesting policy questions and some interesting spin from the people who put the system in place. Although it would probably wreak havoc with corporate spending since you don't really need that new computer now do you?
I suppose instead of speculating wildly about this I should probaby consult google for a critique of national sales tax systems.
The preceding has been me rambling...read at your own risk.
I think in "covering your own ass" you may have severely weakened your originial point.
You say: "I'll admit there are some exceptions. But by and large, the UI on open-source sucks..."
It seems to me that if there are exceptions then the premise that open source NEEDS comercial models is misguided. If this was a true and inherrant need there would be no exceptions. This is not so say that some open sourced software doesn't have horible user interface. However, if you want to look at the other side of that coin there are commercial products with horrid user interfaces.
Usability for Random J User is also not a good metric for an UI design. For example, an average computer user being introduced to AutoCAD would not think about using the command line. Yet I have never seen a proficient user of that software that did not rely extensively on the command line. This indicate that user interfaces and their most efficient uses can be learned.
In short Random J User is not a good measure for the efficiency of an interface. (Random J User however is important from a marketing standpoint where out of the box usability is more important than long term efficiency.) Likewise since both open and closed source products can serve as examples of good and bad user interaces I think it is a stretch to conclude that one needs the other to produce good UIs.
Quoting reallocate: As I take it, his basic point seems to be that both Windows and Linux are based on OS concepts developed at least 30 years ago
When talking about technology we need to be careful about looking at when concepts were developed. Things like the wheel and agriculture are thousands of years old in concept and yet we are still finding new ways to improve on that original concept. While computer technology has seemingly improved at a very fast rate, I would submit that it is still in its infancy and that we ain't seen nothing yet.
Given the perceived speed of technology advancement and the age of the basic operating system paradigm it can be tempting, I think, to view OSes as dinosaurs. I'm all for people promoting new ideas but think that we should all be careful about knocking technology because of its age. Whatever you're knocking could be the new wheel, somthing that'll still be around long after you are dead. By the same token we should be careful also about knocking new ideas that may be the technology of the future that no else was able to see.
Personally I don't think that taxing VoIP calls is any kind of a solution. To often lately it seems like companies are doing all that they can to protect the old way of doing thing. This is normal. Most people fear change. However normal this is though, it's not good. If a companies can't compete with new technology they need to adapt or get out of the market. Besides, government intervention (ie taxes) should, in my not so humble opinion, be avoided whenever possible.
The preceding has been my 2 hundredths of your local currency unit.
From a technical standpoint agree with you. I'd love to see a 3D system that was viewable from all angles by multiple people without using tricks like eye tracking. Oh the many things I could do..the many games I could play...
However I think it would be wise to consider that technology development is a continuous process of improvement. This isn't the end of 3D development. It is only one step in the process. While this technology may not be particularly useful to the average user right now, it is good to see it being developed because it gives hope that future development will yield really cool toys...er um useful products. Just think about the computer on your desk. Its ancestors used punch cards and vacuum tubes and probably wouldn't have been much use to you personally as a user. They were, however, a necessary step in the development of the desktop computers we use today.
Depending on how you have the thing communicating between infected nodes I would think it might be possible to set up a scheme where the worm would ramdomly switch communication ports. If a tree like network were used each parent could send a message to each of its children saying "all future communication will now be on port X." The parent node would now be able to communicate with its children on the new port while still listening to its own parent on the old port. You may have some problems with losing a child node if the message to switch ports wasn't received but I'm sure one could find a way around that.
NOTE: I'm not a networking specialist/expert. If there is something about the above comment that is just absolutely wrong by all means speak up.
The intent was not to compare the ease of producing 1,000,000 spam messages to the cost of 1,000,000 cars. The point was to illustrate that there is little cost difference between producing 10,000 or 1,000,000 spam messages as opposed to the large cost difference between producing 10,000 or 1,000,000 cars. Producing a car is expensive and so you only want to produce cars that will be sold. Spam is cheap and so you don't care that 99.99999% of the messages you send out have no return. There was never any intent to compare the effort required to produce comparable numbers of spam messages or cars. I was trying to demonstrate the extremely low variable cost for spam production.
Hopefully this clarifies my original intent a bit.
Slashdot Mirror
I need some clarification on this. Isn't TV typically a broadcast medium and, as such, wireless by default? Perhaps I'm just stupid and have no clue what Taco is talking about.
I think it would be unfair to single out the United States in the way you suggest. If Britain, Russia (USSR), France, Germany or Japan had possed nuclear weapons during the second world war do you think they would have hesitated to use them? We must remember that the human carnage in WWII was imense. Russia alone lost literally millions of people. Given that do you think they really would have cared about killing a few hundred thousand of the enemy's citizens? When Japan or Germany were facing their ultimate demise do you think that they would have hesitated to use a nuclear weapons if they had them?
Debating whether using the bomb was the right thing to do or not is fine. However I don't think that a case can be made that the US is somehow "worse" or "different" than anyone else for using nuclear weapons. Had any other nation possesed the bomb at that time I don't think they would have hesitated to use it.
It would be wise to remember that members of the armed forces (and people in government service in general) are not remote controlled puppets who will blindly follow all orders. The individuals have the power for independent thougt and in times of trouble they, like any other group of people, will not take a unanimous stand. In Chinese history class I was told that most of the troops that the CCP used at Tianamin (sp?) square were brought in from outside of Beijing because it was feared that the troops in Beijing would be to sympathetic to the protestors.
Just food for thought.
This is totally off the cuff but...
It seems society may be taking the wrong approach to this whole spam thing. We keep focussing on the guy actually sending us the e-mail. We seem to be overlooking the fact that there is someone out there who is trying to sell something to us (or scam us). If it weren't for this seller/scammer the spammer would have no reason to send us anything. Instead of attacking the spammer why not attack the root of the problem: the guy who is paying the spammer to spam. The way I look at it the spammer isn't doing this out of the goodness of his heart. He's doing it on someone's behalf because they are paying him. The person doing the selling is likely much more accessable than the actual spammer because one would need to actually contact them to buy the product being advertised. In contrast to suing the spammer why has suing the company/person who has hired the spammer been cosidered?
I think the argument may be more valid than it seems on the surface. The consumer doesn't necessarily have to pay with money. In the example given, the customer may pay by getting one less pickle on their hamburger or by getting slightly weaker coffee as McDonalds attempts to compensate for the money paid out in the lawsuit. Even if the entire cost of such a judgement is not passed on to the consumer you can bet that the company will try to pass at least some of it along.
One has to be careful when using the anatomy example. The experiments that resulted in the knowledge that is used today were not rigorously debated in an open forum before they were carried out. Thus the debate surrounding those texts is: Should we use information that was unethically obtained? The debate surrounding stem cells is: We'd like to do this research is it ethical? At some point in the future (if stem cell research produces widely usable medical advances) we may be forced to ask the second question. However, at the present time I don't think the questions can be easily compared in a direct manner.
I really don't know the answer to your question. I was just pointing out that GPL software shouldn't have anything in it whose distribution is incompatable with GPL terms. Thus the patent debate should (theoretically) be moot as no patent with restrictive/monetary distribution terms should be included.
Acording to Prof. Eben Moglen (general counsel for the Free Software Foundation) in this Slashdot interview:
"Free software should be freely modifiable and redistributable by its users. Of course, any code once modified may practice claims of a patent about which the modifying user is uninformed. So anyone distributing free software is unable to assure his users that each and every modification they may want to make is noninfringing. But when someone distributes apparently-free software under actual but undisclosed legal restrictions preventing modification or redistribution, the software is not really free. GPL tries to deal with this problem through section 7, which says that if code you are distributing is actually under restriction that is incompatible with the terms of the GPL, you can't distribute under GPL at all. So if you have accepted a patent license that prohibits you from reusing some of your code, or code you have received from others, in different contexts, GPL section 7 means that you cannot distribute under GPL. " (Emphasis and URL added)
Two quick thoughts (in no particular order):
First, I've always personally associated a right to be secure in my person, papers, home and effects (Ammendment 4) to be a reference to privacy of some sort. Maybe I'm just weird.
Second, when thinking about privacy issues we would, I think, do well to distinguish privacy and anonymity.
It takes you until 4 or 5? Man, you sure are slow.
I don't think this was a joke. I think the two pointst that the article really made was that this is the first comprehensive analysis of the problem and that it provides a formula for building a master key without disassembling the lock. Anyone given enough time and an actual lock to work with can certainly make a master key. The article indicated that using this approach it was not necessary to dissasemble the lock and that the number of iterations needed to arrive at a solution has been reduced when compared to a brute force attack. The article indicated that the attack has been executed by others but that this is the first formal analysis of the vulnerability.
What is the durability of these things? If there is one in the new (and most probably hideous) shirt that I bought will it survive a trip through the washer and the dryer? If these things aren't all that durable how would that affect the privacy concerns?
I would imagine that having a mouse that is particularly prone to cancer could be a boon to researchers. This would allow you to conduct a trial and be reasonably assured that a large portion of your experimental population will actually come down with the disease you're trying to study. By using more susceptible test subjects it probably makes the statistics a little easier since a small change (ie exposure to carcinogen X) would likely have a larger effect than would be observed with a "normal" experimental population.
In a way I guess it's kind of like using a honey pot. You put out a system that you know will be broken so that you can see how it is broken and hopefully how to fix it.
It's all about greed. Sure the day to day demographics of rush hour are probably pretty static. However, the advertisers want to maximize their exposure to sell more stuff. That means they want to be able to detect and capitalize on whatever irregularities there are.
Imagine that on a typical day you have a typical distribution of stations. Some people listen to country, others to R&B, others to NPR, etc. etc. Now imagine a day when there is a large sporting event or a conference in town that brings in a good number of people from outside the community. This influx of people may very well change the demographics at a particular time of day. This is what the advertisers are trying to detect. A statistical sampling will likely work MOST of the time. This is a method that is trying to fill in the gaps when averages don't quite cut it.
Quoting WillWare: For donors who prefer to be anonymous, he assigns them a number and emails a copy of the number to them, so they can verify that their donations have been counted.
I think it would be wise to use something a little more complex than a number. If just a number were used I could just send the same number to multiple people. Unless everyone who donated knew everyone else who donated it would be difficult for a contributor to verify that he was the only person counted under a particular number. A better solution perhaps would be to use the contributors public key to encrypt his name on the list. That way one could easily check that your donation is listed but could be reasonably assured that your name wasn't readily available. Of course the flaw there is that not everyone has a public key...
I think this is a situation where one must carefully select the correct tool for the job. Two cases (though there are undoubtedly more) come to mind.
Case 1: Embedded / Specific Use Software
If your software interfaces with dedicated hardware (e.g. a radar) that hardware can only provide certain values. If you as a programmer know the boundries within which this hardware operates feel free to use this information. If this knowledge allows you to SAFELY use a static buffer and forgo some checking to gain speed, do it.
Case 2: User Software
In any sufficiently large group of people most of them are idiots. This means you can't trust the input. Period. Dynamic buffers for user supplied input or bounds checking is a must. There is no excuse for not validating things a user might screw up. Whatever anti-idiot measures you include will be circumvented by the Next Generation Idiot but there is no reason to give This Generation Idiots free reign.
"Software" is a very broad catergory. Using the tool that is right for the job is important. Every technique used must be evaluated against the criteria for the project at hand.
Disclaimer: the scenarios outlined above are not meant to be exhaustive. They are merely intended to illustrate the point that different types of software development are, well, different.
What I gathered from the article is that they have done proof of concept testing/research using sound waves but would plan to use electromagnetic waves in space.
I would have to imagine that quality control on something like this would be a nightmare. I didn't see anything in the article that talked about refining the pulverized asteroid. One would think that if you had a non uniform mix of materials it would affect the structural integrity of whatever you're building. Still the idea is really intriguing:
1. Break Rocks
2. Compress with radio wave "force field" (now how cool is that?)
3. ???
4. Profit
I know it's an overused joke but, in this case, it seems to me to be exactly what they're talking about.
Hmm...Another tax story, another reference to a national sales tax. It seems there would be some pitfalls to a national sales tax. In the first place unless implemented properly it would seem to be horribly regressive since lower income workers spend a higher percentage of their income than high income workers. Of course to get around this you could exempt necessities. But how do you decide what a necessity is? Food is an obvious choice and probably gas and electricty. However there are some items that are more difficult. Are books a necessity? How about an entry level computer? While these may be available elsewhere would it be beneficial for a low income family to have their own? Would we end up pricing them out of the market for these types of goods?
On the macro economoic side it seems this would promote savings since people do love to avoid taxes. In the long run this would be a good thing since it would lead to economic growth due to more available capital. However due to the paradox of thrift it would cause a short term economic loss since people would be spending less. This would generate some interesting policy questions and some interesting spin from the people who put the system in place. Although it would probably wreak havoc with corporate spending since you don't really need that new computer now do you?
I suppose instead of speculating wildly about this I should probaby consult google for a critique of national sales tax systems.
The preceding has been me rambling...read at your own risk.
I think in "covering your own ass" you may have severely weakened your originial point.
You say:
"I'll admit there are some exceptions. But by and large, the UI on open-source sucks..."
It seems to me that if there are exceptions then the premise that open source NEEDS comercial models is misguided. If this was a true and inherrant need there would be no exceptions. This is not so say that some open sourced software doesn't have horible user interface. However, if you want to look at the other side of that coin there are commercial products with horrid user interfaces.
Usability for Random J User is also not a good metric for an UI design. For example, an average computer user being introduced to AutoCAD would not think about using the command line. Yet I have never seen a proficient user of that software that did not rely extensively on the command line. This indicate that user interfaces and their most efficient uses can be learned.
In short Random J User is not a good measure for the efficiency of an interface. (Random J User however is important from a marketing standpoint where out of the box usability is more important than long term efficiency.) Likewise since both open and closed source products can serve as examples of good and bad user interaces I think it is a stretch to conclude that one needs the other to produce good UIs.
Quoting reallocate: As I take it, his basic point seems to be that both Windows and Linux are based on OS concepts developed at least 30 years ago
When talking about technology we need to be careful about looking at when concepts were developed. Things like the wheel and agriculture are thousands of years old in concept and yet we are still finding new ways to improve on that original concept. While computer technology has seemingly improved at a very fast rate, I would submit that it is still in its infancy and that we ain't seen nothing yet.
Given the perceived speed of technology advancement and the age of the basic operating system paradigm it can be tempting, I think, to view OSes as dinosaurs. I'm all for people promoting new ideas but think that we should all be careful about knocking technology because of its age. Whatever you're knocking could be the new wheel, somthing that'll still be around long after you are dead. By the same token we should be careful also about knocking new ideas that may be the technology of the future that no else was able to see.
Personally I don't think that taxing VoIP calls is any kind of a solution. To often lately it seems like companies are doing all that they can to protect the old way of doing thing. This is normal. Most people fear change. However normal this is though, it's not good. If a companies can't compete with new technology they need to adapt or get out of the market. Besides, government intervention (ie taxes) should, in my not so humble opinion, be avoided whenever possible.
The preceding has been my 2 hundredths of your local currency unit.
From a technical standpoint agree with you. I'd love to see a 3D system that was viewable from all angles by multiple people without using tricks like eye tracking. Oh the many things I could do..the many games I could play...
However I think it would be wise to consider that technology development is a continuous process of improvement. This isn't the end of 3D development. It is only one step in the process. While this technology may not be particularly useful to the average user right now, it is good to see it being developed because it gives hope that future development will yield really cool toys...er um useful products. Just think about the computer on your desk. Its ancestors used punch cards and vacuum tubes and probably wouldn't have been much use to you personally as a user. They were, however, a necessary step in the development of the desktop computers we use today.
Depending on how you have the thing communicating between infected nodes I would think it might be possible to set up a scheme where the worm would ramdomly switch communication ports. If a tree like network were used each parent could send a message to each of its children saying "all future communication will now be on port X." The parent node would now be able to communicate with its children on the new port while still listening to its own parent on the old port. You may have some problems with losing a child node if the message to switch ports wasn't received but I'm sure one could find a way around that.
NOTE: I'm not a networking specialist/expert. If there is something about the above comment that is just absolutely wrong by all means speak up.
The intent was not to compare the ease of producing 1,000,000 spam messages to the cost of 1,000,000 cars. The point was to illustrate that there is little cost difference between producing 10,000 or 1,000,000 spam messages as opposed to the large cost difference between producing 10,000 or 1,000,000 cars. Producing a car is expensive and so you only want to produce cars that will be sold. Spam is cheap and so you don't care that 99.99999% of the messages you send out have no return. There was never any intent to compare the effort required to produce comparable numbers of spam messages or cars. I was trying to demonstrate the extremely low variable cost for spam production.
Hopefully this clarifies my original intent a bit.