> The real costs of any effort of that type are > going to be people costs.
And coke-snorting record execs are _expensive_.
> Clearly the industry can't spend $500K+ on the > low budget albums that form the bulk of new > releases.
Of course not. They won't spend a dime over their best estimate of the band's gross royalties. Otherwise they might have to eat some of the "costs" themselves.
As long as the record companies are paying themselves to do the work and sticking the performers with the bill they are going to inflate the hell out of the costs. In the world of real businesses this is called a conflict of interest.
> Buy your own domain name so you have an unlimited > number of email addresses.
And so that you can receive an unlimited amount of spam. About half of my spam is addressed to randomly generated usernames.
I've said this before: bombarding a domain with identical messages addressed to randomly generated usernames would be deemed an illegal DOS attack if done by a 13-year-old in his mother's basement.
No, the messages are a tool for making money. There are probably 100 of them sent for every message sent by the suckers who buy into it, since most of the latter are instantly slapped down by their ISPs.
You'd better re-figure. According to some estimates 50% of Net traffic is spam. That means that 50% of the average ISPs transport expense goes to subsidise spam. Most ISPs are businesses.
> In retrospect, I'm gonna blame the sales people > who are too stupid or too blinded by their > commision check(s) to realize they are selling an > OC3 to a spammer.
"Stupid or too blinded"? You are either naive or much too charitible.
If you sending a spammer a bill for $50 for an email he laughs at you. If AOL bills him $500,000 for 10,000 emails their lawyers hound him into bankruptcy.
I'm not sure what tools you are talking about, but the usual reason why cool automatic hardware detection and configuration tools don't get added to the Debian installer is that they are x86-only. This does not prevent them from being packaged, however. There is a kudzu package, for example.
The problem with many GUI config tools is that they do not respect manual changes to config files.
It isn't that simple. These things are contracts of adhesion. The dominant party (i.e., the company) is obligated to make sure that the terms are clear and unambiguous and that anything that differs substantially from what a prudent person would expect is understood and assented to by the customer. Such an obvious effort to mislead the customer could result in the entire agreement being voided.
I don't have it either: I don't even have a cell phone. However, why would you expect reliability from a medium marketed for teenyboppers to use to exchange insults and love notes?
I think It's just about time for civil disobediance. Treat all works published more than fourteen years ago as if they were in the public domain. Do so openly and publically.
RFID tags have been used for years for identifying livestock and pets. The tags are the size of a (large) grain of rice. Each one responds with a unique number, and the defect rate hovers around zero.
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> The real costs of any effort of that type are
> going to be people costs.
And coke-snorting record execs are _expensive_.
> Clearly the industry can't spend $500K+ on the
> low budget albums that form the bulk of new
> releases.
Of course not. They won't spend a dime over their best estimate of the band's gross royalties. Otherwise they might have to eat some of the "costs" themselves.
As long as the record companies are paying themselves to do the work and sticking the performers with the bill they are going to inflate the hell out of the costs. In the world of real businesses this is called a conflict of interest.
> We're just trying to make it possible for us to
> discuss things on our bulletin board with
> passwords protected with SSL.
> We payed our money to Entrust.
What possible need do you have for a purchased certificate? Just self-sign and move on.
> Buy your own domain name so you have an unlimited
> number of email addresses.
And so that you can receive an unlimited amount of spam. About half of my spam is addressed to randomly generated usernames.
I've said this before: bombarding a domain with identical messages addressed to randomly generated usernames would be deemed an illegal DOS attack if done by a 13-year-old in his mother's basement.
> ...russia has the windows source code.
> i don't know which is worse.
It's not that bad. The russians are tough. They survived WWII and 70 years of communism. They'll survive looking at Windows source.
> And I don't think they will promptly erase all the
> source code that was provided to them.
Are they actually being allowed to make copies of the complete source, or just view portions of it under MS supervision?
> What a bunch of spoilsports...or are they? Any
> thoughts on this?"
Why should having more money than brains gain you the privilege of operating your toy on the sidewalk?
> Who can give a guarantee that nobody tampers with
> the results or creates a database with citizens
> voting information?"
That isn't good enough. Not only must the system be provably secure, an ordinary citizen must be able to examine it and see that it is so.
No, the messages are a tool for making money. There are probably 100 of them sent for every message sent by the suckers who buy into it, since
most of the latter are instantly slapped down by their ISPs.
You'd better re-figure. According to some estimates 50% of Net traffic is spam. That means that 50% of the average ISPs transport expense goes to subsidise spam. Most ISPs are businesses.
> In retrospect, I'm gonna blame the sales people
> who are too stupid or too blinded by their
> commision check(s) to realize they are selling an
> OC3 to a spammer.
"Stupid or too blinded"? You are either naive or much too charitible.
If you sending a spammer a bill for $50 for an email he laughs at you. If AOL bills him $500,000 for 10,000 emails their lawyers hound him into bankruptcy.
> If just AOL blocked port 25, this could reduce
> spam by 50% (I base this figure on close
> examination of the headers of the spam I
> receive).
Most of my spam comes from spamhouses with their own domains. Most of the header lines mentioning ISPs that I do see are forged.
I'm not sure what tools you are talking about, but the usual reason why cool automatic hardware detection and configuration tools don't get added to the Debian installer is that they are x86-only. This does not prevent them from being packaged, however. There is a kudzu package, for example.
The problem with many GUI config tools is that they do not respect manual changes to config files.
> Here's hoping public response has progressed
> beyond "Oh no! did he say nuclear?!"
It hasn't progressed that far. It's still "Oh no! did he say nuculer?!"
Such a restored work is a derivative of the original and therefor gets a brand-new copyright.
How many movies are rotting away right now because the copyright owners won't let anyone digitize or restore them and yet won't do it themselves?
So where do we go for a copy of Steamboat Willie?
I could care less about my karma, but it is confusing and irritating to Slashdot's behavior change like this without warning.
You're just wasting resources pointlessly. Use me@example.com.
It isn't that simple. These things are contracts of adhesion. The dominant party (i.e., the company) is obligated to make sure that the terms are clear and unambiguous and that anything that differs substantially from what a prudent person would expect is understood and assented to by the customer. Such an obvious effort to mislead the customer could result in the entire agreement being voided.
Which may very well make the clauses on the second page unenforcible.
I don't have it either: I don't even have a cell phone. However, why would you expect reliability from a medium marketed for teenyboppers to use to exchange insults and love notes?
I think It's just about time for civil disobediance. Treat all works published more than fourteen years ago as if they were in the public domain. Do so openly and publically.
You have heard of Moore's law, right? How long do you think it will be before 128 bit RFID tags sell for $.02 each?
> If you're that paranoid, pay with cash. Cash still
> works, as far as I know, as legal tender.
Try buying an airline ticket with cash.
> Extending their usefulness to include tracking
> based on who bought them would be a tremendous
> undertaking,
The only major expense will be the readers, which the stores will install to prevent theft. All that will be necessary then is to link the databases.
RFID tags have been used for years for identifying livestock and pets. The tags are the size of a (large) grain of rice. Each one responds with a unique number, and the defect rate hovers around zero.