Mr. Ng claims that spam is 'unsolicited commercial e-mail.' Unfortunately it seems this definition is held by all, but shouldn't we really say that spam is 'any unsolicited mass e-mail for personal gain?' That way, we cover political sharks, over-eager charities, AND commercial enterprises.
This story claims that it's all okay because a) it's within the law, and b) he provided an unsubscribe link. Hello? Does anyone actually EVER use unsubscribe links on unsolicited e-mail? I've learned that it's a great way for a spammer to validate your address is real and that some idiot is reading the mail. Even if the unsubscribe button isn't legit, aren't most tech-savvy folk going to think the same?
P.S: I got this e-mail when he sent it. What sending his political BS to someone sitting in the countryside in the United Kingdom achieved, I'm not sure.
Some people have asked whether we can have both systems and 'switch' between them. Sure you can, but it's not worth it.
As far as I recall (been a long time since I studied this), IPv6 and IPv4 can actually live and work together on the same network.. without being independent.
That is, IPv6 can be used on the backbones and to connect the larger networks, but IPv4 can still be used at a more local level. Gateways can be established that will translate addresses and the benefits of having far more addresses available can be realized.
However, one problem with running both protocols and using a gateway is that the only benefit you get is having more addresses.. but since we're running out of IP addresses with v4, this is kinda important. A local v4 and backbone v6 solution wouldn't help solve local DOS problems, or allow us to use any of v6's advanced features.
But is an Internet wide upgrade to IPv6 really a viable thing to do? It'd be like converting the US to drive on the left side of the road overnight. Even if you did it state by state, you're gunna have major troubles at the state borders.. converting the Net over to IPv6 will be the same.
That said, there is a network called the 6Bone which you can join up to and actually play with IPv6 stuff from your existing IPv4 network. Go, and get your own IPv6 address today!
(Disclaimer: As I said, I studied IP way too long ago, so any updates, corrections or just plain disagreements with my post are welcomed, and indeed encouraged.)
That might be, but I have personal reports that the government is funding similar efforts in other states.
For example, I know people in the *Yukon* who have broadband. You're talking an area at least a thousand miles away from any place that would be called a 'city' in European terms!
I am not quite so familiar with other provinces, but I hear that Ontario and Quebec also have broadband pretty far out into the sticks.
Canada is really good at showing up countries much higher up the GNP chain. Take a look at the G7.
First off we have the USA and Japan, broadband coverage isn't too bad in these countries, although rural coverage is somewhat patchy. Canada is one-uping both of these countries.
Germany is third. As of the start of 2002, Germany had 1.8 million DSL subscribers. For a country with a net population of something around 10 million, this is pretty good.
Next is the United Kingdom, my home country, which puts up the most pitiful broadband attempt of any of the top 20 countries by GNP. There are places 15 miles from LONDON that can't even get DSL yet. British Telecom has pretty much said that any telco exchanges not being converted to provide DSL by 2005 probably won't be done forever.. the demand is too low.
Unlike the Canadian government, the British government is keen for everyone to have broadband, but doesn't actually want to help. They believe that private enterprise will get there, and don't want to risk getting their hands dirty (a la Millennium Dome)
So, well done Canada. I think Canada will leapfrog us all, and with e-government and a 90%> wireup rate throughout the country, it could actually jump up the GNP tables and become a serious industrial contender this century. Heck, the tiny Netherlands did it in the 1700s.
I always wondered how in Star Trek they dealt with the privacy invasion of having your messages broadcasted within an entire room (they never wore headphones).. but this actually answers the question.
Now when you see Riker listening to a message from the Captain, you can be safe in the knowledge that Worf isn't listening in.
Really though, this technology is extremely cool. Anything that would have seemed like magic twenty years ago HAS to be cool. I mean, who wouldn't be freaked out by a system that can make one person in a room hear one thing, and another person hear another?
You're right.. the first intelligent post in this whole topic so far. People who sleep less obviously have more to get up for.. and people who have more to get up for are happier and more active people.
Wow, they really know their logic! Sleep longer, your days are shorter.. sleep less, your days are longer, hence you live for longer, wow!
Really though, I'm screwed. I sleep at least 10/11 hours every night, and my 'record' was 20. Start building my coffin.
I'm guessing it's just a slow news day on Slashdot.. this story was discussed several days ago on MetaFilter. Lots of interesting comments, check it out.
Which is exactly why I don't understand why we haven't got a base of some sort on the moon yet. Think of the benefits.. we could test all sorts of new space engines and thrusters, and perhaps perfect easy Moon -> Mars flights. We could also dig up any minerals that are there, and maybe even find the Monolith:-)
Am I just nuts, or would a moon base really be helpful as well as awe inspiring for the entire planet?
Sure, this will work.. but like everyone else you fail to realize that doing that takes WAY longer than just ripping the CD. I can rip at 12x on my crappy CD-ROM, and have high quality lame-encoded files of a whole CD within 15 minutes.. and I don't need to be present either.
If I had to do it the long way, I'd be sitting there for sixty minutes.. no way I'm wasting that amount of time, I just won't buy the CD.
Ex-squeeze me? Baking powder? Do you not recall the draconian Australian decency laws that went through a few years ago? Yup, the whole porn debacle.
And not only that, but you seem to think that a government spying in order to AFFECT AN ELECTION is somehow better than a government simply spying on its citizens? How twisted is that?
I'm British and live in Britain myself.. but due to the number of Americans I have to work with and know, you can't help but learn the culture.
I might not be 100% right, but the term 'soccer mom' refers to a mother whose kids play soccer, and who lives out their lives through their kids successes on the pitch. They generally drive SUVs (4x4's for us Brits) and are constantly driving their kids to soccer practice, school, Gap, and piano lessons. They are generally liberal in the US sense.. that is, they'll vote for anyone who will pass laws that will protect their children and damn any freedom lost in the process.
And, unlike in the UK, soccer in the US is as common with girls as boys, so the term 'soccer mom' can encompass mothers with children of either gender.
They're starting to become popular in the UK too, but we don't have a name for them yet. I'm sure you've seen plenty of tiny affluent mothers dropping their perfect kids off at schools in their gigantic 4 by 4s. That's them.
You're totally right. I was, of course, using the US meaning for everything I said, despite being British. It's totally pointless to use UK terminology on the Internet since a majority of Americans will never learn about anything outside of their own country.;-)
There is no libertarian movement in the UK as such. And the only 'liberal' party is called the 'Liberal Democrats' which adds further to the confusion! They seem to hold both libertarian views as well as a few socialist ideas.. so it's a bit of both.
It's hard to define all of these terms because a lot of people use the standard 'Left, Middle, Right' way of defining a party's 'position' in the political world. You could say that the Libertarians are smack bang in the middle.. but this ground is also covered by partly-left partly-right liberal parties who are in favor of big government (the Democrats).
Back in the old days, France used to be much like this. The government would be all high and mighty, and yet the peasants would actually be quite carefree and an open minded people.
Australia in recent years seems to have taken a turn for the worst. I'm a libertarian, but I can definitely say that Australia stinks of 'Liberalism' right now. Is the country run by a bunch of soccer moms who are scared their kids are going to be raped if everyone in the country isn't kept under constant surveillance? Probably.
Australia is advocating a 'no-privacy' state.. and I can't help but think that that stance will put off a lot of companies from doing business there.
Perhaps if the job market is so crap, it's time to go a-travelling or living the hermit life style in Sri Lanka until the market bounces back? Go backpacking around Europe and just work for your food and keep.. a lot of people do it, and it can be an enjoyable way of keeping out of the industry for a while.
Wow, I sure want one of those 'self-healing' OS.. perhaps it would:
* remove stupid 'product activation' features
* let me play any DVDs from any region as I should be able to
* erase the Microsoft logo from itself
* uhm.. not crash? And before you say.. XP! I have managed to crash XP several times already.
Because of the amount of songs mp3 allows us to carry around, indexing the songs we have with us is a tricky thing. There are numerous indexing methods on MP3 players at the moment.. playlists on the iPod, simple numeric 'album' jumps on MP3-CD players, search facilities on in-car units etc.. but voice definitely simplifies matters.
However, I spy a problem. Even if it doesn't require training to recognise a voice, I bet it's still limited to a subset of accents.
You notice it with voice-recognition computer programs here in the UK. You speak normally and it rarely works.. put on the dullest most monotone American-style accent you can, and hey presto, up and running!
So, to get one of these, is a prerequisite that I practice my 'dull American drone'?
A free cookie to whoever finds the aerial, steals it, takes pictures of it and sends a ransom note to Cringley. Come on, you know you want to. A great project for a bored geek in his area.. FAME AND FORTUNE AWAIT!
Get out of here. Anandtech and SharkyExtreme are the only tech review sites with decent layouts. Toms Hardware is a fixed-table mess that looks like it was cobbled together by a drunk 14 year old... constant horizontal scrollbars, fun.
Doom 3 (or whatever it'll be called) is only meant to be able to run at 30fps on the latest GeForce 3 stuff. GeForce 4 and onwards are really the only cards that will be able to run it at a decent speed 1024x768 and up. You think Doom 3 won't be a popular game? Hahaha.
These cards are not only necessary. They're going to be standard within the year.
They had this in Back To The Future 2! How cheesey was that! It was a face on a stupid 14" TV that flew around on an arm or something, and it served you up with coke. We laugh at the predictions of the future in 1950, but Back To The Future 2 was the worst.
I agree, that main post wasn't a troll.. but the post I'm replying to definitely is. You think that AMD beating Intel at a lower Mhz rate is balls? You either don't understand how AMD's processors work, or you just aren't reading the benchmark tests.
I dig old laptops playing Sim City (black and white) with the time slowed down to real-time... or on normal and let people check on the village when they come over and visit.
Whoa! That is a really cool idea. Just get an old Mac Classic or a nice looking ultra-old PC laptop, run up SimCity, and keep it running as a form of artificial life. Nice talking point for the living room;-)
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No, If it were written MacOs, then I'd say 'maK-oS', but it's "MacOS" and pronounced 'mak Oh Ess' because OS is an acronym. hence the capitals.
So I imagine you say 'gee eye eff' (GIF) and 'pee ee ahr ell' (PERL) then?
Mr. Ng claims that spam is 'unsolicited commercial e-mail.' Unfortunately it seems this definition is held by all, but shouldn't we really say that spam is 'any unsolicited mass e-mail for personal gain?' That way, we cover political sharks, over-eager charities, AND commercial enterprises.
This story claims that it's all okay because a) it's within the law, and b) he provided an unsubscribe link. Hello? Does anyone actually EVER use unsubscribe links on unsolicited e-mail? I've learned that it's a great way for a spammer to validate your address is real and that some idiot is reading the mail. Even if the unsubscribe button isn't legit, aren't most tech-savvy folk going to think the same?
P.S: I got this e-mail when he sent it. What sending his political BS to someone sitting in the countryside in the United Kingdom achieved, I'm not sure.
Some people have asked whether we can have both systems and 'switch' between them. Sure you can, but it's not worth it.
As far as I recall (been a long time since I studied this), IPv6 and IPv4 can actually live and work together on the same network.. without being independent.
That is, IPv6 can be used on the backbones and to connect the larger networks, but IPv4 can still be used at a more local level. Gateways can be established that will translate addresses and the benefits of having far more addresses available can be realized.
However, one problem with running both protocols and using a gateway is that the only benefit you get is having more addresses.. but since we're running out of IP addresses with v4, this is kinda important. A local v4 and backbone v6 solution wouldn't help solve local DOS problems, or allow us to use any of v6's advanced features.
But is an Internet wide upgrade to IPv6 really a viable thing to do? It'd be like converting the US to drive on the left side of the road overnight. Even if you did it state by state, you're gunna have major troubles at the state borders.. converting the Net over to IPv6 will be the same.
That said, there is a network called the 6Bone which you can join up to and actually play with IPv6 stuff from your existing IPv4 network. Go, and get your own IPv6 address today!
(Disclaimer: As I said, I studied IP way too long ago, so any updates, corrections or just plain disagreements with my post are welcomed, and indeed encouraged.)
That might be, but I have personal reports that the government is funding similar efforts in other states.
For example, I know people in the *Yukon* who have broadband. You're talking an area at least a thousand miles away from any place that would be called a 'city' in European terms!
I am not quite so familiar with other provinces, but I hear that Ontario and Quebec also have broadband pretty far out into the sticks.
Perhaps you missed the word 'net' in there. I didn't mean it in a gross and net kinda way, I meant it as in the Internet population.
Canada is really good at showing up countries much higher up the GNP chain. Take a look at the G7.
First off we have the USA and Japan, broadband coverage isn't too bad in these countries, although rural coverage is somewhat patchy. Canada is one-uping both of these countries.
Germany is third. As of the start of 2002, Germany had 1.8 million DSL subscribers. For a country with a net population of something around 10 million, this is pretty good.
Next is the United Kingdom, my home country, which puts up the most pitiful broadband attempt of any of the top 20 countries by GNP. There are places 15 miles from LONDON that can't even get DSL yet. British Telecom has pretty much said that any telco exchanges not being converted to provide DSL by 2005 probably won't be done forever.. the demand is too low.
Unlike the Canadian government, the British government is keen for everyone to have broadband, but doesn't actually want to help. They believe that private enterprise will get there, and don't want to risk getting their hands dirty (a la Millennium Dome)
So, well done Canada. I think Canada will leapfrog us all, and with e-government and a 90%> wireup rate throughout the country, it could actually jump up the GNP tables and become a serious industrial contender this century. Heck, the tiny Netherlands did it in the 1700s.
I always wondered how in Star Trek they dealt with the privacy invasion of having your messages broadcasted within an entire room (they never wore headphones).. but this actually answers the question.
Now when you see Riker listening to a message from the Captain, you can be safe in the knowledge that Worf isn't listening in.
Really though, this technology is extremely cool. Anything that would have seemed like magic twenty years ago HAS to be cool. I mean, who wouldn't be freaked out by a system that can make one person in a room hear one thing, and another person hear another?
You're right.. the first intelligent post in this whole topic so far. People who sleep less obviously have more to get up for.. and people who have more to get up for are happier and more active people.
All you folks have taken the bait and gone into the nerdy ways of solving this problem.. I have another solution.
Get a Web designer who's not color blind and can see whether a color is visible or not just by looking at it.
Wow, they really know their logic! Sleep longer, your days are shorter.. sleep less, your days are longer, hence you live for longer, wow!
Really though, I'm screwed. I sleep at least 10/11 hours every night, and my 'record' was 20. Start building my coffin.
I'm guessing it's just a slow news day on Slashdot.. this story was discussed several days ago on MetaFilter. Lots of interesting comments, check it out.
Which is exactly why I don't understand why we haven't got a base of some sort on the moon yet. Think of the benefits.. we could test all sorts of new space engines and thrusters, and perhaps perfect easy Moon -> Mars flights. We could also dig up any minerals that are there, and maybe even find the Monolith :-)
Am I just nuts, or would a moon base really be helpful as well as awe inspiring for the entire planet?
Sure, this will work.. but like everyone else you fail to realize that doing that takes WAY longer than just ripping the CD. I can rip at 12x on my crappy CD-ROM, and have high quality lame-encoded files of a whole CD within 15 minutes.. and I don't need to be present either.
If I had to do it the long way, I'd be sitting there for sixty minutes.. no way I'm wasting that amount of time, I just won't buy the CD.
Ex-squeeze me? Baking powder? Do you not recall the draconian Australian decency laws that went through a few years ago? Yup, the whole porn debacle.
And not only that, but you seem to think that a government spying in order to AFFECT AN ELECTION is somehow better than a government simply spying on its citizens? How twisted is that?
I'm British and live in Britain myself.. but due to the number of Americans I have to work with and know, you can't help but learn the culture.
I might not be 100% right, but the term 'soccer mom' refers to a mother whose kids play soccer, and who lives out their lives through their kids successes on the pitch. They generally drive SUVs (4x4's for us Brits) and are constantly driving their kids to soccer practice, school, Gap, and piano lessons. They are generally liberal in the US sense.. that is, they'll vote for anyone who will pass laws that will protect their children and damn any freedom lost in the process.
And, unlike in the UK, soccer in the US is as common with girls as boys, so the term 'soccer mom' can encompass mothers with children of either gender.
They're starting to become popular in the UK too, but we don't have a name for them yet. I'm sure you've seen plenty of tiny affluent mothers dropping their perfect kids off at schools in their gigantic 4 by 4s. That's them.
You're totally right. I was, of course, using the US meaning for everything I said, despite being British. It's totally pointless to use UK terminology on the Internet since a majority of Americans will never learn about anything outside of their own country. ;-)
There is no libertarian movement in the UK as such. And the only 'liberal' party is called the 'Liberal Democrats' which adds further to the confusion! They seem to hold both libertarian views as well as a few socialist ideas.. so it's a bit of both.
It's hard to define all of these terms because a lot of people use the standard 'Left, Middle, Right' way of defining a party's 'position' in the political world. You could say that the Libertarians are smack bang in the middle.. but this ground is also covered by partly-left partly-right liberal parties who are in favor of big government (the Democrats).
Either way, politics.. it's all BS really.
Back in the old days, France used to be much like this. The government would be all high and mighty, and yet the peasants would actually be quite carefree and an open minded people.
Australia in recent years seems to have taken a turn for the worst. I'm a libertarian, but I can definitely say that Australia stinks of 'Liberalism' right now. Is the country run by a bunch of soccer moms who are scared their kids are going to be raped if everyone in the country isn't kept under constant surveillance? Probably.
Australia is advocating a 'no-privacy' state.. and I can't help but think that that stance will put off a lot of companies from doing business there.
Perhaps if the job market is so crap, it's time to go a-travelling or living the hermit life style in Sri Lanka until the market bounces back? Go backpacking around Europe and just work for your food and keep.. a lot of people do it, and it can be an enjoyable way of keeping out of the industry for a while.
Wow, I sure want one of those 'self-healing' OS.. perhaps it would:
* remove stupid 'product activation' features
* let me play any DVDs from any region as I should be able to
* erase the Microsoft logo from itself
* uhm.. not crash? And before you say.. XP! I have managed to crash XP several times already.
Because of the amount of songs mp3 allows us to carry around, indexing the songs we have with us is a tricky thing. There are numerous indexing methods on MP3 players at the moment.. playlists on the iPod, simple numeric 'album' jumps on MP3-CD players, search facilities on in-car units etc.. but voice definitely simplifies matters.
However, I spy a problem. Even if it doesn't require training to recognise a voice, I bet it's still limited to a subset of accents.
You notice it with voice-recognition computer programs here in the UK. You speak normally and it rarely works.. put on the dullest most monotone American-style accent you can, and hey presto, up and running!
So, to get one of these, is a prerequisite that I practice my 'dull American drone'?
A free cookie to whoever finds the aerial, steals it, takes pictures of it and sends a ransom note to Cringley. Come on, you know you want to. A great project for a bored geek in his area.. FAME AND FORTUNE AWAIT!
Get out of here. Anandtech and SharkyExtreme are the only tech review sites with decent layouts. Toms Hardware is a fixed-table mess that looks like it was cobbled together by a drunk 14 year old... constant horizontal scrollbars, fun.
Doom 3 (or whatever it'll be called) is only meant to be able to run at 30fps on the latest GeForce 3 stuff. GeForce 4 and onwards are really the only cards that will be able to run it at a decent speed 1024x768 and up. You think Doom 3 won't be a popular game? Hahaha.
These cards are not only necessary. They're going to be standard within the year.
They had this in Back To The Future 2! How cheesey was that! It was a face on a stupid 14" TV that flew around on an arm or something, and it served you up with coke. We laugh at the predictions of the future in 1950, but Back To The Future 2 was the worst.
Nice film though.
I agree, that main post wasn't a troll.. but the post I'm replying to definitely is. You think that AMD beating Intel at a lower Mhz rate is balls? You either don't understand how AMD's processors work, or you just aren't reading the benchmark tests.
I dig old laptops playing Sim City (black and white) with the time slowed down to real-time... or on normal and let people check on the village when they come over and visit.
;-)
Whoa! That is a really cool idea. Just get an old Mac Classic or a nice looking ultra-old PC laptop, run up SimCity, and keep it running as a form of artificial life. Nice talking point for the living room