No, he is not a spam king or a scammer, he is just a punk that was playing and embarresed some big guys. Russia and Nigeria would not even consider sending a punk like this to the US. I say forget him and charge the guys that are payed to secure those computer systems with fraud as they were taking the money and not doing their job.
The Spam kings work at what they do and are real criminals, as are the Nigerians. This guy did not even have to work at this. If someone looks at a football game through a hole in the fence do you take him to court or do you fix the fence. The hole is a problem with your security and the guy looking through it is an oportunist not a thief. This guy should not have been so lucky and we should be greatful that it was this guy that showed us the hole in the fence and not a real terrorist.
Forget him, he is nobody, certainly not someone worth all this trouble.
Is it so difficult when you sit in a country that can throw someone in prison for crossing the road in the wrong place or shoot someone for driving to fast past a police road block to imagine that other countries do not see the US as 'basking in freedom'. The US is now the home of the gulag (guantanamo etc.) and no longer seen by the world as the pilar of freedom and a place to aspire to. The US is not the place where free enterprise can flourish as it is hamstrung by IP law and the sort of red tape that once hamstrung countries like China.
The world has changed and despite these articles that give you the idea that China is a bad place they are changing fast. They have a free market that is huge and it is a place where free enterprise can flourish. All the while it has been becoming what the US used to represent the US has been becoming what China used to represent. It is the US that now kills people to impose their political ideals on them (Iraq, Afghanistan and soon Iran). It is the US that lies to its people about why it does those things (we knew that Iraq had no WMD and we know that Iran is not currently building a bomb). The world has changed and we are losing out to that change. In 10 years it will be Times Square where the tanks are crushing the protestors.
In China you are free to criticise the government and political satire is far more common in the media than in the US. When I fly in China the in-flight movie is about 75% of the time a political satire criticising the government in often an amusing way. Those that criticise the government will have that criticism recorded but guess what??? that is just what happens in the US.
I wish more people would go there. The people are much happier than I was led to believe before I went and the propaganda is in the US not there. They know that their government lies to them, it is us that are stupid enough to think we are being told the truth.
China under Mao can only be compared to McCarthy's America, they are both historic times. Recent history which we have all moved on from. The US is currently imposing its political correctness and censorship on the world by killing thousands of innocent people for today's crusade while you criticise Campus moderators as if they are somehow worse. The Chinese are wrong to restrict free speech but please do not kid yourself that because you get on a soapbox you are somehow better that them.
I live in Thailand which is a good friend of the US and everyone thinks it is a free democracy (unless they live here). Thailand actually means Free Land or Land of the Free.
If I try to go to www.proxy4free.com I get redirected to http://www.mict.go.th/ci/block.html, in fact any effort I make to get a free proxy redirects me there. Makes me want one even more...
It is not just China that is policing their citizens, it is every country. Do not think that you have more than an illusion of freedom in the US, you may have more freedom than some but that difference is being eroded fast.
Re:One Point For Gmail
on
Gmail vs Pine
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· Score: 1
The main thing I hate web clients for is that they assume that you have a rocket ship speed internet connection. Most of the planet is still using modems and copper wire and those with ADSL or better are too quick to forget the rest of us. I do have a Gmail account and while I am in the internet cafe I check it (like now) but the rest of the time I use pop and drop. Gmail seems to be the most bandwidth hungry of the web clients that I have tried and on a bad ADSL connection (like at work) I just cannot get through even though I can log into Yahoo etc. I have nothing against those that want, having, but don't knock the tools that keep the rest of us on the road.
My ex got remarried about 6 years ago and last year he left the country with various rumours about which country he had gone to. No forwarding address and no-one seemed sure where he had gone. Then at the same time she had a new patio laid out in the back garden... I am still wondering... (not wondering too much though as I now live in Thailand and can understand why he went:)
I don't just go and change shit in DNS. Not because I don't know how to, not because I don't have the root password, but because it's not my area.
I had the unfortunate luck to admin at a college where far too many had root and they all thought that they knew best what to do. No one told anyone else what they did because they all thought that it was obvious what was the right thing to do. I had no idea what was going on. I wish that more people understood that, leaving things to the guy who's job it is, is the only way to go. Then he knows what to roll back if something acts strange. If there are more than a couple of people making changes faults become buried beneath faults. It is one thing to offer advice and good advice is always welcome, even constructive criticism, but keep your fingers out.
When a government monitors emails, and builds networks of who knows whom, I find it extremely intrusive.
I agree with what you say and would like to further this arguement about a group of alleged terrorists, known in the UK as the Birmingham Six. There was a terrorist bomb and the police knew of some Irish guys going home to the funeral of a known terrorist. So they arrested those guys, as they must be terrorists if they know a terrorist, and made the evidence fit the guys they held. One of them died in prison before the rest managed to prove that the evidence was wrong. They lost several years of their lives and the real bomber went unpunished. In their minds all they were doing was going to the funeral of a guy that they grew up with in the village where they lived. They were not supporting or engaged in terrorism.
With laws like this there will be far more of this sort of miscarriage of justice. You may not even know (I accept that the Birmingham Six knew) that your friend is a bad person but you will get arrested for association rather than crime.
Most of us just accept that he is stupid without any special powers or the intelligence to be actively evil. As for how he got in, why did the other team front a donkey like Kerry in a 2 horse race when they had a head start? Just because they did something unbelievably stupid does not make Bushbaby any more intelligent though...
I accept your comments but still fail to see why the two have to be mutually exclusive. It does not add more to the overal cost than the KDE users contribute so it should be in the company's best interest to keep both. The tools are in place to run both side by side. I feel that Ximian wanted to turn their flavour of Linux into a commercial product. Novell want that as well and are taking it down the route that it is already on. In some ways this is a good thing as it improves the commercial viability of Linux and therefore the widespread acceptance of it but it is going away from what I, the enthusiast, wants.
The end result will be a stable, defined product that Novell can provide good customer support for. I want something that I can make do what I want it to do, otherwise I may as well install Windows. OK, I accept the horses for course bit but why not let people design their own horse and say 'but we only provide support for one type of horse'.
It was probably 'those smart guys at Ximian' that advised Novell to drop KDE. Many users, me amongst them, who have stayed with SuSE for years will now look elsewhere and I should think that Mantel is aware of this since he was there when the last 'should we drop KDE' debate was held and it was decided that it was best to keep KDE as a lot of users prefer it.
This guy did not call his product 'Windows', he called it 'Windows Defender'. I do not pretend to understand Ozzy law but in most countries that is fine because he is not claiming to represent or work for Microsoft or any subsidurary. He is not infringing on a trade mark as he did not call it 'Microsoft Defender'.
Next we will hear of Ford suing Range Rover because the word Range is similar the name of the Ford Ranger... Maybe the judge would tell them that they bought Land Rover already. Then when the judge does tell them, they will file case against Toyota because the 'Land Cruiser' uses the word 'Land' which Ford must own because they now own the name 'Land Rover'
Re:But will it be able to defend against...
on
Set PHASRs On Stun
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· Score: 1
I prefer the part about using against people that drive through road blocks....
Suspect drives fast through road block so you jump out in front of him to fire this into his face (I cannot see how it would work if fired from behind)... He cannot see to avoid you so even if he did care about your life so you are now roadkill...
What is this 'anti-American' tag that some Americans try to apply to anyone that argues with them? Sounds pretty paranoid.
I agree with what he said, in that/. is the only site I would miss if the US was cut adrift but given the amount of xenophobic rants that I have to wade through I would not miss it that much. The US sites too often forget that readers may not live in the US so anyone that wants a global view or market, even if they live in the US, will tend to look elsewhere.
Up until your last paragraph I supported your response to his post but I get so bored with that 'anyone that is against me must be a racist' b.s. I was even glad that you quoted 'invented' as it was a multi-national project which many of my old collegues worked on at the Royal Military College of Science in the UK. It does get tedious listening to so many Americans claim so many things that were never really theirs.
Since when did a movie plot have to come anywhere near to credable? I went to see Transporter 2 last night and the driver hit a ramp at high speed to cause the car to summersault and knock a bomb off the underside on a passing crane before landing on all four wheels and continuing and you say armed dolphins are unacceptably ficticous? Get out and see some of the movies they have on now... I could not bring myself to watch the one with the car that thinks (Herbie 2) but armed dolphins are too credable to make it into the movies. They will have to teach them some martial arts before they get the part.
I have been running an internet cafe in northern Thailand for about a year and have tried out most options on the same machines. I found that XP slows a machine right down, especially when switching into and out of games, and that W2K is much faster on exactlty the same machine. I image my machines so comparing different options is easy. W2K has all that I need and XP does not offer me any more yet makes the machine crawl. It does not matter what the supporters say, I would take XP off a machine and install W2K. My machine at home is SuSE with W2K as a second boot option for DVD authoring etc. I would not consider changing that to XP either as I need the stability that I have and do not want to start going through the teething problems of SP2 etc. What I have works well, far in excess of my needs, so why would I want to change that to something that I know is going to cause teething problems even if I know that I have the ability to resolve them?
It seems to be the closest that M$ have got to the real value of their OS. If they sold it in the stores at $1 then people would not bother to copy it.
Strange that you should mention Fascism and Socialism together as Hitler was a Socialist. His party was called the National Socialist Party and that was abreaviated to Nazi. The political spectrum turned full circle.
I think that this thread has missed the point about Soviet America. We are now at a time when Russia is travelling in one direction and America is travelling in the other. Those that say that Russia is not democratic are currently correct but that does not mean that they always will be. Russia a world apart from what it was 20 or even 10 years ago and so is the US. No one in the US would have dreamed this possible 20 years ago and here it is. America is rapidly losing the shread of democracy that it had and is becoming globally famous for forcing its political views on other countries at the point of a gun just as Russia once did. Democracy is an ideology just like Socialism as you do not really get a free vote, someone choses who you can chose between. It is not really different to the system in Russia or China. I did not meet anyone in China that was unhappy with their political system, yet before I went I read many stories of what it was like that turned out to be complete rubbish. The country was full of educated, happy people that would laugh at me for believing stupid propoganda. The main difference between us and them is that they know it is all propoganda yet most of us think that what we read is the truth.
Russia is making it easier to visit and the US is rapidly tightening its borders. It will soon be more closed than Russia was. I know that it was easier to get into Moscow last year than it is to get into the US today with fingerprints and photos etc. Russian people are getting new freedoms each day as quickly as US citizens are losing them.
We may not be there yet but do not shout too loudly as we are moving quickly.
You are partly right. I think that DVDs sound better on a real home theatre player but I do not know where you get DVDs that do not have stupid rubbish that you cannot skip past. I do see DVDeasy disks here in Thailand but they have a Thai sound track and are not set up the way I want. I really want a ripper that allows me to set up copies so that when I put the DVD in the player it just starts the movie with no FBI etc. warnings (that seem to think that I have not seen one before and that I actually care what they have to say), no adverts and no menu. I want a disk that just goes straight into 5.1 film or music vid without me having to touch anything.
When I can do this I will rip all my DVD collection without exception.
I would also like to be able to edit out parts of my music DVDs without having to change them to stereo. I cannot do this in 5.1. Then I can get rid of the stupid parts when a really good singer shows how dumb she really is by talking for 50% of the disk (see Christina Ag for example). Then I will set about doing a whole lot more ripping.
I agree with what you say and am not thinking that a log in system is in any way easier than pulling the plug but I do think that one would be a good idea. I do not have a phone line atm (temporary rented house) so I just ponce off the free wi-fi at the local computer mart. I know that I am free loading and am grateful to be able to but I can see the other side in that if someone is paying for something they can expect a return. I think a system whereby you get a login code printed on each receipt (so each purchase earns time) from a till that is connected to the router would be a great idea and is not beyond the realms of possibility given that most of the wi-fi routers now are really Linux boxes. I am going to purchase a drink every now and then so I would not be disadvantaged and anyone that thinks that they are entitled to a free ride can rumage through the rubbish bin for other people receipts.
I do not know the current law as I no longer live in the UK but when I applied for ISDN there (yes, that long ago) I was told that I had to have a normal phone connected to the analogue line by law as the digital would no work in the event of power cuts and you may need to contact the emergency services. It was law to have a phone that worked in power cuts... Why not simply have a similar rule in the US that puts the onus on the user to have a phone that can call the emergency services.
Broken from the start as if you use VoIP behind a NAT router you *MUST* use a proxy. So even here in Thailand my VoIP calls would appear to be coming from the US and a lot of good your 911 service would be to me. Can you send a car to Chang Klan Road, Soi 3 in Amphur Muang, Chiang Mai as fast as possible please... yeah right:)
Banks and credit card companies are not charitable institutions. You may not realise it but IT IS YOUR MONEY !!! and not thiers. Just because they hide the way they do it does not mean that it is not you that is paying. It is because the charge is hidden that it becomes easier for them to swallow so much and put the charge elsewhere. So they take on an insecure system because it does not matter to them because it is you that is paying and you are happy to pay. Smuck.
Slashdot Mirror
No, he is not a spam king or a scammer, he is just a punk that was playing and embarresed some big guys. Russia and Nigeria would not even consider sending a punk like this to the US. I say forget him and charge the guys that are payed to secure those computer systems with fraud as they were taking the money and not doing their job.
The Spam kings work at what they do and are real criminals, as are the Nigerians. This guy did not even have to work at this. If someone looks at a football game through a hole in the fence do you take him to court or do you fix the fence. The hole is a problem with your security and the guy looking through it is an oportunist not a thief. This guy should not have been so lucky and we should be greatful that it was this guy that showed us the hole in the fence and not a real terrorist.
Forget him, he is nobody, certainly not someone worth all this trouble.
Is it so difficult when you sit in a country that can throw someone in prison for crossing the road in the wrong place or shoot someone for driving to fast past a police road block to imagine that other countries do not see the US as 'basking in freedom'. The US is now the home of the gulag (guantanamo etc.) and no longer seen by the world as the pilar of freedom and a place to aspire to. The US is not the place where free enterprise can flourish as it is hamstrung by IP law and the sort of red tape that once hamstrung countries like China.
The world has changed and despite these articles that give you the idea that China is a bad place they are changing fast. They have a free market that is huge and it is a place where free enterprise can flourish. All the while it has been becoming what the US used to represent the US has been becoming what China used to represent. It is the US that now kills people to impose their political ideals on them (Iraq, Afghanistan and soon Iran). It is the US that lies to its people about why it does those things (we knew that Iraq had no WMD and we know that Iran is not currently building a bomb). The world has changed and we are losing out to that change. In 10 years it will be Times Square where the tanks are crushing the protestors.
In China you are free to criticise the government and political satire is far more common in the media than in the US. When I fly in China the in-flight movie is about 75% of the time a political satire criticising the government in often an amusing way. Those that criticise the government will have that criticism recorded but guess what??? that is just what happens in the US.
I wish more people would go there. The people are much happier than I was led to believe before I went and the propaganda is in the US not there. They know that their government lies to them, it is us that are stupid enough to think we are being told the truth.
China under Mao can only be compared to McCarthy's America, they are both historic times. Recent history which we have all moved on from. The US is currently imposing its political correctness and censorship on the world by killing thousands of innocent people for today's crusade while you criticise Campus moderators as if they are somehow worse. The Chinese are wrong to restrict free speech but please do not kid yourself that because you get on a soapbox you are somehow better that them.
I live in Thailand which is a good friend of the US and everyone thinks it is a free democracy (unless they live here). Thailand actually means Free Land or Land of the Free.
If I try to go to www.proxy4free.com I get redirected to http://www.mict.go.th/ci/block.html, in fact any effort I make to get a free proxy redirects me there. Makes me want one even more...
It is not just China that is policing their citizens, it is every country. Do not think that you have more than an illusion of freedom in the US, you may have more freedom than some but that difference is being eroded fast.
The main thing I hate web clients for is that they assume that you have a rocket ship speed internet connection. Most of the planet is still using modems and copper wire and those with ADSL or better are too quick to forget the rest of us. I do have a Gmail account and while I am in the internet cafe I check it (like now) but the rest of the time I use pop and drop. Gmail seems to be the most bandwidth hungry of the web clients that I have tried and on a bad ADSL connection (like at work) I just cannot get through even though I can log into Yahoo etc. I have nothing against those that want, having, but don't knock the tools that keep the rest of us on the road.
My ex got remarried about 6 years ago and last year he left the country with various rumours about which country he had gone to. No forwarding address and no-one seemed sure where he had gone. Then at the same time she had a new patio laid out in the back garden... I am still wondering... (not wondering too much though as I now live in Thailand and can understand why he went :)
I don't just go and change shit in DNS. Not because I don't know how to, not because I don't have the root password, but because it's not my area.
I had the unfortunate luck to admin at a college where far too many had root and they all thought that they knew best what to do. No one told anyone else what they did because they all thought that it was obvious what was the right thing to do. I had no idea what was going on. I wish that more people understood that, leaving things to the guy who's job it is, is the only way to go. Then he knows what to roll back if something acts strange. If there are more than a couple of people making changes faults become buried beneath faults. It is one thing to offer advice and good advice is always welcome, even constructive criticism, but keep your fingers out.
When a government monitors emails, and builds networks of who knows whom, I find it extremely intrusive.
I agree with what you say and would like to further this arguement about a group of alleged terrorists, known in the UK as the Birmingham Six. There was a terrorist bomb and the police knew of some Irish guys going home to the funeral of a known terrorist. So they arrested those guys, as they must be terrorists if they know a terrorist, and made the evidence fit the guys they held. One of them died in prison before the rest managed to prove that the evidence was wrong. They lost several years of their lives and the real bomber went unpunished. In their minds all they were doing was going to the funeral of a guy that they grew up with in the village where they lived. They were not supporting or engaged in terrorism.
With laws like this there will be far more of this sort of miscarriage of justice. You may not even know (I accept that the Birmingham Six knew) that your friend is a bad person but you will get arrested for association rather than crime.
Most of us just accept that he is stupid without any special powers or the intelligence to be actively evil. As for how he got in, why did the other team front a donkey like Kerry in a 2 horse race when they had a head start? Just because they did something unbelievably stupid does not make Bushbaby any more intelligent though...
:)
OK, now I will look for a rock to hide under
I accept your comments but still fail to see why the two have to be mutually exclusive. It does not add more to the overal cost than the KDE users contribute so it should be in the company's best interest to keep both. The tools are in place to run both side by side. I feel that Ximian wanted to turn their flavour of Linux into a commercial product. Novell want that as well and are taking it down the route that it is already on. In some ways this is a good thing as it improves the commercial viability of Linux and therefore the widespread acceptance of it but it is going away from what I, the enthusiast, wants.
The end result will be a stable, defined product that Novell can provide good customer support for. I want something that I can make do what I want it to do, otherwise I may as well install Windows. OK, I accept the horses for course bit but why not let people design their own horse and say 'but we only provide support for one type of horse'.
It was probably 'those smart guys at Ximian' that advised Novell to drop KDE. Many users, me amongst them, who have stayed with SuSE for years will now look elsewhere and I should think that Mantel is aware of this since he was there when the last 'should we drop KDE' debate was held and it was decided that it was best to keep KDE as a lot of users prefer it.
This guy did not call his product 'Windows', he called it 'Windows Defender'. I do not pretend to understand Ozzy law but in most countries that is fine because he is not claiming to represent or work for Microsoft or any subsidurary. He is not infringing on a trade mark as he did not call it 'Microsoft Defender'.
Next we will hear of Ford suing Range Rover because the word Range is similar the name of the Ford Ranger... Maybe the judge would tell them that they bought Land Rover already. Then when the judge does tell them, they will file case against Toyota because the 'Land Cruiser' uses the word 'Land' which Ford must own because they now own the name 'Land Rover'
I prefer the part about using against people that drive through road blocks....
Suspect drives fast through road block so you jump out in front of him to fire this into his face (I cannot see how it would work if fired from behind)... He cannot see to avoid you so even if he did care about your life so you are now roadkill...
Very good use that...
You certainly come across as anti-American,
/. is the only site I would miss if the US was cut adrift but given the amount of xenophobic rants that I have to wade through I would not miss it that much. The US sites too often forget that readers may not live in the US so anyone that wants a global view or market, even if they live in the US, will tend to look elsewhere.
What is this 'anti-American' tag that some Americans try to apply to anyone that argues with them? Sounds pretty paranoid.
I agree with what he said, in that
Up until your last paragraph I supported your response to his post but I get so bored with that 'anyone that is against me must be a racist' b.s. I was even glad that you quoted 'invented' as it was a multi-national project which many of my old collegues worked on at the Royal Military College of Science in the UK. It does get tedious listening to so many Americans claim so many things that were never really theirs.
Since when did a movie plot have to come anywhere near to credable? I went to see Transporter 2 last night and the driver hit a ramp at high speed to cause the car to summersault and knock a bomb off the underside on a passing crane before landing on all four wheels and continuing and you say armed dolphins are unacceptably ficticous? Get out and see some of the movies they have on now... I could not bring myself to watch the one with the car that thinks (Herbie 2) but armed dolphins are too credable to make it into the movies. They will have to teach them some martial arts before they get the part.
I have been running an internet cafe in northern Thailand for about a year and have tried out most options on the same machines. I found that XP slows a machine right down, especially when switching into and out of games, and that W2K is much faster on exactlty the same machine. I image my machines so comparing different options is easy. W2K has all that I need and XP does not offer me any more yet makes the machine crawl. It does not matter what the supporters say, I would take XP off a machine and install W2K. My machine at home is SuSE with W2K as a second boot option for DVD authoring etc. I would not consider changing that to XP either as I need the stability that I have and do not want to start going through the teething problems of SP2 etc. What I have works well, far in excess of my needs, so why would I want to change that to something that I know is going to cause teething problems even if I know that I have the ability to resolve them?
or how about get a spare time job in a mall where they have air con and *earn* enough money to buy a real air con unit of his own?
It seems to be the closest that M$ have got to the real value of their OS. If they sold it in the stores at $1 then people would not bother to copy it.
Strange that you should mention Fascism and Socialism together as Hitler was a Socialist. His party was called the National Socialist Party and that was abreaviated to Nazi. The political spectrum turned full circle.
I think that this thread has missed the point about Soviet America. We are now at a time when Russia is travelling in one direction and America is travelling in the other. Those that say that Russia is not democratic are currently correct but that does not mean that they always will be. Russia a world apart from what it was 20 or even 10 years ago and so is the US. No one in the US would have dreamed this possible 20 years ago and here it is. America is rapidly losing the shread of democracy that it had and is becoming globally famous for forcing its political views on other countries at the point of a gun just as Russia once did. Democracy is an ideology just like Socialism as you do not really get a free vote, someone choses who you can chose between. It is not really different to the system in Russia or China. I did not meet anyone in China that was unhappy with their political system, yet before I went I read many stories of what it was like that turned out to be complete rubbish. The country was full of educated, happy people that would laugh at me for believing stupid propoganda. The main difference between us and them is that they know it is all propoganda yet most of us think that what we read is the truth.
Russia is making it easier to visit and the US is rapidly tightening its borders. It will soon be more closed than Russia was. I know that it was easier to get into Moscow last year than it is to get into the US today with fingerprints and photos etc. Russian people are getting new freedoms each day as quickly as US citizens are losing them.
We may not be there yet but do not shout too loudly as we are moving quickly.
You are partly right. I think that DVDs sound better on a real home theatre player but I do not know where you get DVDs that do not have stupid rubbish that you cannot skip past. I do see DVDeasy disks here in Thailand but they have a Thai sound track and are not set up the way I want. I really want a ripper that allows me to set up copies so that when I put the DVD in the player it just starts the movie with no FBI etc. warnings (that seem to think that I have not seen one before and that I actually care what they have to say), no adverts and no menu. I want a disk that just goes straight into 5.1 film or music vid without me having to touch anything.
When I can do this I will rip all my DVD collection without exception.
I would also like to be able to edit out parts of my music DVDs without having to change them to stereo. I cannot do this in 5.1. Then I can get rid of the stupid parts when a really good singer shows how dumb she really is by talking for 50% of the disk (see Christina Ag for example). Then I will set about doing a whole lot more ripping.
I agree with what you say and am not thinking that a log in system is in any way easier than pulling the plug but I do think that one would be a good idea. I do not have a phone line atm (temporary rented house) so I just ponce off the free wi-fi at the local computer mart. I know that I am free loading and am grateful to be able to but I can see the other side in that if someone is paying for something they can expect a return. I think a system whereby you get a login code printed on each receipt (so each purchase earns time) from a till that is connected to the router would be a great idea and is not beyond the realms of possibility given that most of the wi-fi routers now are really Linux boxes. I am going to purchase a drink every now and then so I would not be disadvantaged and anyone that thinks that they are entitled to a free ride can rumage through the rubbish bin for other people receipts.
I do not know the current law as I no longer live in the UK but when I applied for ISDN there (yes, that long ago) I was told that I had to have a normal phone connected to the analogue line by law as the digital would no work in the event of power cuts and you may need to contact the emergency services. It was law to have a phone that worked in power cuts... Why not simply have a similar rule in the US that puts the onus on the user to have a phone that can call the emergency services.
Broken from the start as if you use VoIP behind a NAT router you *MUST* use a proxy. So even here in Thailand my VoIP calls would appear to be coming from the US and a lot of good your 911 service would be to me. Can you send a car to Chang Klan Road, Soi 3 in Amphur Muang, Chiang Mai as fast as possible please... yeah right :)
Banks and credit card companies are not charitable institutions. You may not realise it but IT IS YOUR MONEY !!! and not thiers. Just because they hide the way they do it does not mean that it is not you that is paying. It is because the charge is hidden that it becomes easier for them to swallow so much and put the charge elsewhere. So they take on an insecure system because it does not matter to them because it is you that is paying and you are happy to pay. Smuck.