We know the same way we know that are votes are actually counted; there are people who checked, and very severe penalties for fraud. It is certainly possible for someone to have machines not running the stated OS. It's also very possible that the tallies from the regular machine counts are replaced by other numbers, but you assume that will not occur. Why? This is really no different.
It's true. Someone could always trash the ballot box. It happens all of the time. Right? That's where all the problems were in 2000... people trashing the boxes. Nobody had any questions about verifying votes. and no-one was turned away in 2000 for lack of paper ballots. It didn't happen. Ergo, this system of recording on paper what occurred is a stupid idea, and top computer security experts all agree that it's useless.
What? I'm dead wrong on every single count? That's strange, MY UID isn't 767418...
It's funny, because I had never used "tabbed browsing" before firefox, and I actually only downloaded it because my web site was getting hits with it and I wanted to check out if the css looked ok... Tabbed browsing is quite possible the most useful thing about a web browser I have seen since the creation of plugins...
I really can't Im,agine that anyone who uses firefox can really say no-one will care about tabbed browsing.
The point, however, is that they somehow managed to, two hundred plus years ago, defeat the british and write a masterpiece of constitutional though, at an age that most of us here on/. were still getting made fun of my the senior class at our colleges...
Intellectual maturity. What a pseudo-intellectual, lame excuse for saying that you hit 21, and still haven't accomplished anything with you life except receive papers saying that one day you will.
I'm sorry, but RTFA! this is one of the most no-sequitor posts I have seen on/., and I cannot believe that you took so little time to investigate before condemning those who read the artcle, and are discussing in within a specified context.
Simply put, the book never claims that no-one comes out of the US (or any other) educational system unprepared, or incompotent, it simply says that the compentencies that are encouraged are polar opposites of the "values" that we espouse: thinking, independance, and freedom.
On the 4th of July 2005, NASA is creating a large explosion visible to amateur astronomers everywhere; you can even see a video of how the explosion will look, sending a 800 lb (iirc) probe into a comet at 10 m/s (I'm sure of the speed.)
But this isn't just flashy, no, we want to, uhhh to, AHA! See what the inside looks like, so we need to blow a hole in it. On July 4th. This coming year.
Simple issues have simple answers; This isn't simple, and both sides have a point.
CD's are not so "high priced" Imagine that you only listen to a CD three times. It costs $20, for three hours of entertainment. This is approximately the same price, per hour, as a movie in NYC costing $10. This is also about the same amount of value as buying a new hardcover novel for $20.
In addition, saying that MP3's are lower quality is a silly arguement. A 128 bit MP3 is a fine quality to listen to, and indistinguishable from a CD track on most CD player headphones. Most consumers don't care, and I certainly cannot tell the difference between a CD quality track and a 256 bit MP3.
Maybe you misunderstand. The RIAA may be stupid. I happen to beleive that they are. HOWEVER: your choices are your own. I think it's sad that you will not just admit that when you, and others, decide to steal, it is a question of personal gain. The fact that I can beat up the guy next to me does not constitute a moral justification.
This is a simple question of a mass prisoner's game. If everyone jumps the turnstyle to get on the subway, the subway goes away. If artists cannot make money (and it's getting harder, I know a couple who sell CD's, one through a major label, and 2 who sell personally) they will have to find other jobs. justify your theft any way you want, but calling it your duty to the people you steal from is one of the sadder, more pitiful excuses I have seen.
And I hope that most people don't see theft as a service to those they steal from. It would kind of ruin civil society.
Re:Good for the RIAA. This is capitalism at work.
on
RIAA's Nasty Easter Egg
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Sorry, this is one of the stupidest peices of crap I've heard in a long time. steal if you want. You can even call it passive resistance. please, however, don't try and pass off stealing as a duty. You have desires, as do I. I choose not to act on my desire to track you down and make the world one less person stupider, and you can resist your desire to steal, or listen to music you are morally opposed to.
Or is this about the free lunch that no-one wants to give you?
Sorry, "popular artists"? Who makes them "popular"? the RIAA that you so revile. If you truly thing bands cannot be competed with, you are silly. Capitalism isn't a theory describing an ideal product, in an idea market, it's a description of the world. No-one "deserves" any of my money, I choose to endow it on others in exchange for things I want. YOu can wish that the bad, bad, RIAA men will go away, but that's a bit silly. Maybe instead, people could choose not to promote things they disagree with, not only by not paying money for the songs, but by not acceding to the popularity that the RIAA creates for you.
It is your choice what to listen to, what to buy, and even (gasp) what to steal. Make your decisions, I've made mine.
Sorry, that's incorrect. They wish to maximize their profits on the 3 or 4 decent songs on the CD. If you have a better scheme that the one they are using, please let me know.
If you want the other songs, great. Buy the CD. You are saying that the record industry is doing the worng thing becasue the artists do a bad job. You are confused, as you refer to people by indefinite pronouns "they," because your mind has a generalization of people who want your money as the evil empire. It is their choice, and it is your choice not to buy. They do monopolize the market, but the independant labels, and the "go-it alone" artists charge no less.
I don't need your decency. Neither do they. What they need, and have, is an explicit social contract embodied by the corpus of laws of the state in shich you reside binding you to certain penalties, if you are caught.
Really, people, you can only play one side of the game. It is true that you CAN steal the music, but you can't appeal to the anarcho-capitalist notion of capitalism, or bentham's utilitarianism while still being outraged that they fight back, using whatever means they have at their disposal. The ONLY criticism of the RIAA that I will agree to is that they are stupid. Not that they are amoral, according to whatever criteria you wish. (since they are playing ball in the park, and you're "changing the system" by throwing beer bottles from tjhe stands) Not that they are "mercenary" (Because as you point out, so are you, and many other consumers.)
Basically, do what you want, but DON'T WHINE ABOUT IT when they "do unto others."
as well as being a quite possibly miserable business decision, if the alternative for the consumer is piracy. However, looking at any other industry, setting prices per song should be 3 or 4 times as expensive as the individual songs would be on a CD.
It makes no sense to sell a $15 or $20 CD's songs, of which there are between 10 and 20, for 99c each, simply because in that case, there is no incentive to buy the CD. Volume discounting makes perfect sense, andhaving a cheaper alternative if you buy per song is bad business for them, as much as you want to complain about it.
There is altogether too much whining about the RIAA deciding that it has a legitamite, legal rights to profits they generate through their research, promotion, and effort. While they may be robber barons, or jerks, they do have a right to protect themselves from the market that wants to pay nothing.
The Information may want to be free, but it also wants to be expensive, and it is clear that although the paradigm the RIAA works with is unfair, and failing, the fact that they are attempting to re-work it to be usable with technology is not a bad thing.
OK, now that I've said it, you can mod this post to hell. I have the Karma to burn. And no, I don't work for the RIAA, but I decided that I can live without illegal music, rather than steal it, or help out the RIAA.
Re:This is what is wrong with this idea.
on
ICANN Meets Annan
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I think the better point is about the "whether", not the how. The system is unfair as long as the control is centralized. Distribute the system, and DISBAND ICANN. It's a useless body, and once governments, or even corporations take control of their online feifdoms, like they do here in meatspace. (Let people buy and sell top level domains, why not... get all possible one out there and let the market take over...)
Why bother using the UN?
on
ICANN Meets Annan
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The question that I would have about the regulatory system in place is that if the government were to attempt to "force the disruption of internet traffic to entire countries by deleting them from central computers," would the commercial hosters and systems continue to accept dns information that would be bad for their customers? It seems that the internet is commercial enough that in leiu of government oversight, it might be better to allow a evolved commercial alliance govern the systems.
It is a bit silly to allow a small thing like DNS to create such a problem in the first place. When we go to IPv6, it might make more sense to use URL forwarding to IP's, and bypass most of the regulatory system in the first place... Allow other countries to maintain permanent fixed DNS servers for their own IP ranges, and have the assignations know, so that all other central controls are unneeded. If the US wants to control.com,.net,.gov,.org, let them. Sell off all remaining 2 and 3 letter combination top level domains using whatever system you want, and then dissolve ICANN. It just makes sense,if the internet is supposed to belong to the users.
If, in fact, this were a DDOS attack, I could understand the hesitancy, and thus the response that is is their problem.
However, it is not. What is being suggested (And you might want to read the post, if not the article...) is to resond with email, not in a multiple reply per person fashion, but rather just to reply, and make the spammer go through 5000 replies per spam attack, so that it takes several hours to find the one respondant that genuinely wants a morgage. This is NOT DDOS, or even flooding the server, but simply a function of the time of the spammer to get a genuine response since it is now 1%, or better.001%, of the total volume of mail he receives. It is suddenly economically unviable to attemt to sort through 1,000,000 emails to find a couple of genuine responses.
The only problem that I see is that the first 10,000 or so people that start doing this will really just be confirming the email address for the spammer, and will be burned for it.
PS. Maybe slashdot needs some kind of m3 program, where people who mod up stupidity, or off-topic responses are shot, or at least lose their ability to mod...
Having finally installed Mandrake over my windows partition on my computer, I have to say; What Software?
I mean, Under M$ WIndows, I had to find: An Office Suite (replaced by Open-office) A Programming Environment (Replaced by QT Designer) and about 30 small shareware/freeware managers for Zipfiles, PDF files, MP3's, Instant Messaging, IRC, Decent FTP Client, and A News reader.
Everything was Included in the ISO's for Mandrake I burned. The only problem people switching over will have is trying to understand that whatever it is they need, it's (Usually) already installed!
Re:Truly P2P if SOBIG.G contains the spam message
on
P2P Spam?
·
· Score: 1
I am actually more interested in the possible effect of the distributed spamming method as a check on different spam blocking ideas:
An approved sender list is suddenly worthless, as it is someone you know sending the virus/spam.
A checksum/hash stamp method, which requires computing time, would also be rendered useless, since the load would be distributed over all of the client/infected machines.
Outbound filtering would also not do the trick, because as long as someone has the virus, the spam gets sent. Especially in relation to the other article posted today This type of virus would be essentially unblockable, because it could send plain spam e-mails to those within these "blocked zones" and everyone would be spammed. The idea of Herd immunity for viruses also would not apply, since the vector does not need infectable computers to spread the spam! Essentially all computers (99.99%+) would need to be proofed for there to be any real slowdown.
The only method I could think of is a mutilated word recognition check like those used by sittes to prevent auto-registrations. (I hope people know what I'm referring to.) This check would have to be done per-email, since otherwise anyone on the approved list would be a potential spammer.
Of course, a method like this would not really work, since it is illegal and traceable, but if you want "viral marketing," it doesn't get better than this!
Re:Truly P2P if SOBIG.G contains the spam message
on
P2P Spam?
·
· Score: 1
In terms of association, possibly it would not be much more damaging, but I think that legally you would be on much shakier grounds if you were to commission someone to break into other people's computers with a virus to spread a message.
Remember; Virii are illegal, and spam is not (yet.)
Slashdot Mirror
If I can regiseter and vote illegally, I can cast 1 extra ballot.
If I can hack a voting machine, I can personally control the election results in my state.
We know the same way we know that are votes are actually counted; there are people who checked, and very severe penalties for fraud. It is certainly possible for someone to have machines not running the stated OS. It's also very possible that the tallies from the regular machine counts are replaced by other numbers, but you assume that will not occur. Why? This is really no different.
It's true. Someone could always trash the ballot box. It happens all of the time. Right? That's where all the problems were in 2000... people trashing the boxes. Nobody had any questions about verifying votes. and no-one was turned away in 2000 for lack of paper ballots. It didn't happen. Ergo, this system of recording on paper what occurred is a stupid idea, and top computer security experts all agree that it's useless.
What? I'm dead wrong on every single count? That's strange, MY UID isn't 767418...
I don't know... Stallman supposedly browses in Emacs.
Clearly he was using a neutral, 3rd party source.
No, really, he was. Try w3schools.com
It's funny, because I had never used "tabbed browsing" before firefox, and I actually only downloaded it because my web site was getting hits with it and I wanted to check out if the css looked ok... Tabbed browsing is quite possible the most useful thing about a web browser I have seen since the creation of plugins...
I really can't Im,agine that anyone who uses firefox can really say no-one will care about tabbed browsing.
The point, however, is that they somehow managed to, two hundred plus years ago, defeat the british and write a masterpiece of constitutional though, at an age that most of us here on /. were still getting made fun of my the senior class at our colleges...
Intellectual maturity. What a pseudo-intellectual, lame excuse for saying that you hit 21, and still haven't accomplished anything with you life except receive papers saying that one day you will.
I'm sorry, but RTFA! this is one of the most no-sequitor posts I have seen on /., and I cannot believe that you took so little time to investigate before condemning those who read the artcle, and are discussing in within a specified context.
Simply put, the book never claims that no-one comes out of the US (or any other) educational system unprepared, or incompotent, it simply says that the compentencies that are encouraged are polar opposites of the "values" that we espouse: thinking, independance, and freedom.
On the 4th of July 2005, NASA is creating a large explosion visible to amateur astronomers everywhere; you can even see a video of how the explosion will look, sending a 800 lb (iirc) probe into a comet at 10 m/s (I'm sure of the speed.)
But this isn't just flashy, no, we want to, uhhh to,
AHA!
See what the inside looks like, so we need to blow a hole in it. On July 4th. This coming year.
FP!!
Simple issues have simple answers; This isn't simple, and both sides have a point.
CD's are not so "high priced" Imagine that you only listen to a CD three times. It costs $20, for three hours of entertainment. This is approximately the same price, per hour, as a movie in NYC costing $10. This is also about the same amount of value as buying a new hardcover novel for $20.
In addition, saying that MP3's are lower quality is a silly arguement. A 128 bit MP3 is a fine quality to listen to, and indistinguishable from a CD track on most CD player headphones. Most consumers don't care, and I certainly cannot tell the difference between a CD quality track and a 256 bit MP3.
Maybe you misunderstand. The RIAA may be stupid. I happen to beleive that they are. HOWEVER: your choices are your own. I think it's sad that you will not just admit that when you, and others, decide to steal, it is a question of personal gain. The fact that I can beat up the guy next to me does not constitute a moral justification.
This is a simple question of a mass prisoner's game. If everyone jumps the turnstyle to get on the subway, the subway goes away. If artists cannot make money (and it's getting harder, I know a couple who sell CD's, one through a major label, and 2 who sell personally) they will have to find other jobs. justify your theft any way you want, but calling it your duty to the people you steal from is one of the sadder, more pitiful excuses I have seen.
And I hope that most people don't see theft as a service to those they steal from. It would kind of ruin civil society.
Sorry, this is one of the stupidest peices of crap I've heard in a long time. steal if you want. You can even call it passive resistance. please, however, don't try and pass off stealing as a duty. You have desires, as do I. I choose not to act on my desire to track you down and make the world one less person stupider, and you can resist your desire to steal, or listen to music you are morally opposed to.
Or is this about the free lunch that no-one wants to give you?
Sorry, "popular artists"? Who makes them "popular"? the RIAA that you so revile. If you truly thing bands cannot be competed with, you are silly. Capitalism isn't a theory describing an ideal product, in an idea market, it's a description of the world. No-one "deserves" any of my money, I choose to endow it on others in exchange for things I want. YOu can wish that the bad, bad, RIAA men will go away, but that's a bit silly. Maybe instead, people could choose not to promote things they disagree with, not only by not paying money for the songs, but by not acceding to the popularity that the RIAA creates for you.
It is your choice what to listen to, what to buy, and even (gasp) what to steal. Make your decisions, I've made mine.
Sorry, that's incorrect. They wish to maximize their profits on the 3 or 4 decent songs on the CD. If you have a better scheme that the one they are using, please let me know.
If you want the other songs, great. Buy the CD. You are saying that the record industry is doing the worng thing becasue the artists do a bad job. You are confused, as you refer to people by indefinite pronouns "they," because your mind has a generalization of people who want your money as the evil empire. It is their choice, and it is your choice not to buy. They do monopolize the market, but the independant labels, and the "go-it alone" artists charge no less.
I don't need your decency. Neither do they. What they need, and have, is an explicit social contract embodied by the corpus of laws of the state in shich you reside binding you to certain penalties, if you are caught.
Really, people, you can only play one side of the game. It is true that you CAN steal the music, but you can't appeal to the anarcho-capitalist notion of capitalism, or bentham's utilitarianism while still being outraged that they fight back, using whatever means they have at their disposal. The ONLY criticism of the RIAA that I will agree to is that they are stupid. Not that they are amoral, according to whatever criteria you wish. (since they are playing ball in the park, and you're "changing the system" by throwing beer bottles from tjhe stands) Not that they are "mercenary" (Because as you point out, so are you, and many other consumers.)
Basically, do what you want, but DON'T WHINE ABOUT IT when they "do unto others."
as well as being a quite possibly miserable business decision, if the alternative for the consumer is piracy. However, looking at any other industry, setting prices per song should be 3 or 4 times as expensive as the individual songs would be on a CD.
It makes no sense to sell a $15 or $20 CD's songs, of which there are between 10 and 20, for 99c each, simply because in that case, there is no incentive to buy the CD. Volume discounting makes perfect sense, andhaving a cheaper alternative if you buy per song is bad business for them, as much as you want to complain about it.
There is altogether too much whining about the RIAA deciding that it has a legitamite, legal rights to profits they generate through their research, promotion, and effort. While they may be robber barons, or jerks, they do have a right to protect themselves from the market that wants to pay nothing.
The Information may want to be free, but it also wants to be expensive, and it is clear that although the paradigm the RIAA works with is unfair, and failing, the fact that they are attempting to re-work it to be usable with technology is not a bad thing.
OK, now that I've said it, you can mod this post to hell. I have the Karma to burn. And no, I don't work for the RIAA, but I decided that I can live without illegal music, rather than steal it, or help out the RIAA.
I think the better point is about the "whether", not the how. The system is unfair as long as the control is centralized. Distribute the system, and DISBAND ICANN. It's a useless body, and once governments, or even corporations take control of their online feifdoms, like they do here in meatspace. (Let people buy and sell top level domains, why not... get all possible one out there and let the market take over...)
The question that I would have about the regulatory system in place is that if the government were to attempt to "force the disruption of internet traffic to entire countries by deleting them from central computers," would the commercial hosters and systems continue to accept dns information that would be bad for their customers? It seems that the internet is commercial enough that in leiu of government oversight, it might be better to allow a evolved commercial alliance govern the systems.
.com, .net, .gov, .org, let them. Sell off all remaining 2 and 3 letter combination top level domains using whatever system you want, and then dissolve ICANN. It just makes sense,if the internet is supposed to belong to the users.
It is a bit silly to allow a small thing like DNS to create such a problem in the first place. When we go to IPv6, it might make more sense to use URL forwarding to IP's, and bypass most of the regulatory system in the first place... Allow other countries to maintain permanent fixed DNS servers for their own IP ranges, and have the assignations know, so that all other central controls are unneeded. If the US wants to control
Two (russian budgetary) Words;
Massive money overruns that break ability working goodly.
Over the last couple weeks, I've found myself using lynx, just because xf86 takes SOOO long to load on my 486 laptop...
If, in fact, this were a DDOS attack, I could understand the hesitancy, and thus the response that is is their problem.
.001%, of the total volume of mail he receives. It is suddenly economically unviable to attemt to sort through 1,000,000 emails to find a couple of genuine responses.
However, it is not. What is being suggested (And you might want to read the post, if not the article...) is to resond with email, not in a multiple reply per person fashion, but rather just to reply, and make the spammer go through 5000 replies per spam attack, so that it takes several hours to find the one respondant that genuinely wants a morgage. This is NOT DDOS, or even flooding the server, but simply a function of the time of the spammer to get a genuine response since it is now 1%, or better
The only problem that I see is that the first 10,000 or so people that start doing this will really just be confirming the email address for the spammer, and will be burned for it.
PS. Maybe slashdot needs some kind of m3 program, where people who mod up stupidity, or off-topic responses are shot, or at least lose their ability to mod...
Having finally installed Mandrake over my windows partition on my computer, I have to say; What Software?
I mean, Under M$ WIndows, I had to find:
An Office Suite (replaced by Open-office)
A Programming Environment (Replaced by QT Designer)
and about 30 small shareware/freeware managers for Zipfiles, PDF files, MP3's, Instant Messaging, IRC, Decent FTP Client, and A News reader.
Everything was Included in the ISO's for Mandrake I burned. The only problem people switching over will have is trying to understand that whatever it is they need, it's (Usually) already installed!
I am actually more interested in the possible effect of the distributed spamming method as a check on different spam blocking ideas:
An approved sender list is suddenly worthless, as it is someone you know sending the virus/spam.
A checksum/hash stamp method, which requires computing time, would also be rendered useless, since the load would be distributed over all of the client/infected machines.
Outbound filtering would also not do the trick, because as long as someone has the virus, the spam gets sent. Especially in relation to the other article posted today This type of virus would be essentially unblockable, because it could send plain spam e-mails to those within these "blocked zones" and everyone would be spammed. The idea of Herd immunity for viruses also would not apply, since the vector does not need infectable computers to spread the spam! Essentially all computers (99.99%+) would need to be proofed for there to be any real slowdown.
The only method I could think of is a mutilated word recognition check like those used by sittes to prevent auto-registrations. (I hope people know what I'm referring to.) This check would have to be done per-email, since otherwise anyone on the approved list would be a potential spammer.
Of course, a method like this would not really work, since it is illegal and traceable, but if you want "viral marketing," it doesn't get better than this!
In terms of association, possibly it would not be much more damaging, but I think that legally you would be on much shakier grounds if you were to commission someone to break into other people's computers with a virus to spread a message.
Remember; Virii are illegal, and spam is not (yet.)