The problem with spam isn't spam itself. It's that it's designed to be difficult to filter out.
This is what I've been saying all along -- the law needs to treat spam filters like any other computer security measure (i.e. wilfully crack one and you could spend the next 5-10 hoping like hell that your herbal v1agra and p3n1s enlargment products didn't work for your cell mate). This would leave spammers with only the options of "too dangerous" or "too easy to block".
Under the laws the RIAA has been pushing through, Michael Jackson can demand the name and address of your 12-year-old son on hia say-so, without having to go through a judge.
The war on drugs fails not only because people want drugs. Few people want international trafficking in women, nor trade in arms, nor trade in near-extinct animals... Yet none of these prohibited businesses do badly at all. In fact, they do very well.
The alternative to patronizing the international trafficking in women is to develop some personality and looks that will persuade women to boff you voluntarily. (If it's being dominant that you get off on, then you need to find women who willingly cater to that sort of thing.)
The alternative to patronizing the trade in arms is to abandon your political goals or to figure out a way to obtain them non-violently.
The alternative to patronizing the trade in near-extinct animals is to quit believing that having such artifacts makes a neat status symbol.
The alternative to spamming is to advertise via paper mail, billboards, broadcasts, etc.
Now, you will note that one of these things is not like the others. The first three require a major change in personal outlook and behavior, which is difficult or impossible for most people. The last one merely requires you to scrape up a bit more money. Thus, the last one is price and risk sensitive in a way that the first three are not -- when the risk of punishment pushes the price of spamming above the price of other forms of advertising, spammers will go out of business.
However, the difference between spam and booze is that the demand vs. price curve for booze remains fairly constant until the price gets very large, while the demand vs. price curve for spam rolls off VERY rapidly as soon as the cost of spamming rises (at least, I *HOPE* that to be the case!)
The demand for spam rolls off to near-zero (not quite zero, because some people just like to be assholes for the sake of it) when law enforcement and/or tech improvements push the cost of spamming above the cost of legitimate advertising methods.
now that I think about it, there is an inherent flaw in this line of reasoning. Think about it: the Ring corrupted Smeagol almost immediately to kill Deagol. This says that hobbits are not all created equal wrt to ring resistance, and therefore Gandalf letting Frodo inherit the ring was a fundamentally dangerous thing to do, with Frodo being Bilbo's cousin being his only reference point of his resistiveness
That would only be a flaw if Gandalf had an alternative option that wasn't "fundamentally dangerous". Sometimes, you just have to go with the least bad of the available options.
you forgot Option 3. the statement is false, but it is not the case that the company knows this (so they are not "lying")
If they make the assertion believing it to be false, then they're guilty of fraud even if by some odd chance the statement turns out to be true. For instance, some people who take a quack cancer cure will just happen to go into spontaneous remission, but that doesn't get the quack off the hook.
I really don't understand why so many individuals think this is a bad law.
Because it's grossly inadequate. A minimum requirement for an acceptable federal anti-spam law is to clarify that circumvention of spam filters is a form of computer cracking and carries the standard penalties for that crime (i.e. a few years of hoping that your cellmate didn't use your "herbal v1agra" and "p3n1s enhancer").
A proper paper ballot system displays the paper ballot to the voter (either by having the voter fill it out directly, or by printing it out based on inputs to the electronic system and displaying it before the vote is confirmed and cast). The voter should not be permitted (and ideally should not be able) to remove the paper ballot from the polling place, for precisely the reason you describe.
IMO, the best system is to have the votes entered electronically, printed out (in a font optimized for human and OCR readability, and dropped behind a window. The voter would then either confirm the ballot (at which point it is cast and the paper copy drops into a locked box) or not (in which case the paper copy would be indelibly marked as VOID and dropped into a locked box, preferably a separate one, and the voting process is restarted).
If I was a SCO sucker^h^h^h^h^h investor this would be a very troubling sign. In fact, Boise's presence is the only thing that really gave the lawsuit credibility - regardless of the fact that he lost the last two highly publized lawsuits.
If Al Gore had hired IBM's lawyers, he might have been President.
When you "short" a stock, you're (to simplify a bit) borrowing shares, selling them at their current price, and buying replacement shares later (at a lower price, if your speculation pans out) to return the loan.
Thus, when everybody and his brother is shorting a given stock, the short-term effect is to increase demand for that stock, because brokers can profit by obtaining shares to lend out to short-sellers. This generates a "short-squeeze" bubble that has the counterintuitive effect of temporarily increasing the target stock's price.
Re:I think my form of encryption is better
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RSA-576 Factored
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Trick is, you still need decent cryptography behind such a scheme, as it won't much matter to a cracker if you know he's there or not -- he'll still have your sensitive info if you didn't properly encrypt the actual message.
The way around this is to send a one-time pad over the quantum link, and to echo it back. That guarantees that there was no interception in the middle (the only remaining hole to plug is to confirm that an interloper hasn't completely replaced your intended correspondent at the other end of the line).
You are not reading what I am writing. It is established in common law and written law in the United States that if I walk into a Best Buy, and a guy in a Best Buy shirt and nametag sells me a TV for $5, rings it up and everything, I have a valid contract with Best Buy to buy that TV for $5 because I have a reasonable expectation that the guy is a legal authorized Best Buy employee. I don't have to return the TV. This is called the Doctrine of Apparent Authority.
I think the point was that any reasonable person would know that Best Buy isn't going to sell you a TV for $5 (unless it's part of a special deal to get you to buy other stuff).
That said, if we change the $5 to something not obviously absurd like $100, the analogy holds. Certainly, SCO doesn't have any case for asserting that its Linux work was obviously unauthorized.
This renders any contractual issues (the basis of their case against IBM) moot and leaves them only one fallback - that the GPL is invalid and is trumped by their own copyright.
Avoiding the Scylla of admitting that they put the code into Linux themselves, they would then fall into the Charybdis of admitting that they had distributed the copyrighted works of many others without a valid license.
This whole SCO suit is all about keeping Linux from rapid adoption using FUD and legal tactics. With this strategy, Microsoft and allies have found a way to keep Linux away from the mainstream adopters. What's to stop Micosoft from using another puppet after SCO has lost it's case? They've got enough money to throw around and huge incentive to do it.
Hence the importance of getting the SEC to do its job. Even Microsoft's money can only buy so many CEOs who are willing to do 5-10.
Many effective non-lethal options are available; pepper spray and stun guns are an example of such non-lethal options. Yes you can buy weak and ineffective variants through the home shopping network, but extremely effective models have been tested and are on the market.
That won't do. Both are more difficult to use effectively (pepper spray, to the extent that it works at all, requires a square hit to the face), trivially blocked by moderately thick clothing, and ineffective against perps hopped up on drugs and/or adrenalin.
In any case, some of the jurisdicitons with gun rights infringements in force have banned those weapons as well.
Personally my morals state that killing people is bad.
That's nice, but no functional society has ever been based on this sort of absolute pacifist ethic.
I therefore think that guns should be regulated in much the same way that we don't allow any idiot to drive around with an 18 wheeler.
The bottom line is that it's become impossible to impose "competency" requirements on gun ownership for the same reason it's become impossible to impose "literacy" requirements for voting -- both ideas have accumulated too much history of being used as an excuse to cheat people out of their rights.
Sorry, but I fail to see a firearm as the only tool possible to secure your (and your family's) safety in your anecdote.
The simple fact is that if the would-be intruder is twice your size, a firearm is the only reasonably effective tool.
There aren't many people twice as big as me, admittedly, but I don't subscribe to the "I've got mine, Jack" ethic.
It seems to me that the blanket and a civil tongue were far more effective.
That's Plan A. Depending on the result, showing that you have a gun and are willing to use it might be Plan B.
I assume most folks have some moral framework, even if they haven't codified it and go weekly and hold hands in a special building.
My moral framework has no problem with killing in self-defense when necessary. Sure, there would be inevitable (no one is omniscient) second-guessing as to whether or not it was necessary, and it would fell rotten to work through that, but that's life.
The only way in which this would be any help is if 1)it is strictly interpreted so that ANY attempt to evade anti-spam filtering (e.g. offering to enlarge your "p3n1s") is prohibited, and 2)the law is energetically enforced.
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Bill Clinton called. He wants you to return his dictionary.
This is what I've been saying all along -- the law needs to treat spam filters like any other computer security measure (i.e. wilfully crack one and you could spend the next 5-10 hoping like hell that your herbal v1agra and p3n1s enlargment products didn't work for your cell mate). This would leave spammers with only the options of "too dangerous" or "too easy to block".
There are two, and only two, possible explanations: 1)stupidity or 2)greed.
Old Wizard of Id cartoon:
Under the laws the RIAA has been pushing through, Michael Jackson can demand the name and address of your 12-year-old son on hia say-so, without having to go through a judge.
The alternative to patronizing the international trafficking in women is to develop some personality and looks that will persuade women to boff you voluntarily. (If it's being dominant that you get off on, then you need to find women who willingly cater to that sort of thing.)
The alternative to patronizing the trade in arms is to abandon your political goals or to figure out a way to obtain them non-violently.
The alternative to patronizing the trade in near-extinct animals is to quit believing that having such artifacts makes a neat status symbol.
The alternative to spamming is to advertise via paper mail, billboards, broadcasts, etc.
Now, you will note that one of these things is not like the others. The first three require a major change in personal outlook and behavior, which is difficult or impossible for most people. The last one merely requires you to scrape up a bit more money. Thus, the last one is price and risk sensitive in a way that the first three are not -- when the risk of punishment pushes the price of spamming above the price of other forms of advertising, spammers will go out of business.
The demand for spam rolls off to near-zero (not quite zero, because some people just like to be assholes for the sake of it) when law enforcement and/or tech improvements push the cost of spamming above the cost of legitimate advertising methods.
That would only be a flaw if Gandalf had an alternative option that wasn't "fundamentally dangerous". Sometimes, you just have to go with the least bad of the available options.
If they make the assertion believing it to be false, then they're guilty of fraud even if by some odd chance the statement turns out to be true. For instance, some people who take a quack cancer cure will just happen to go into spontaneous remission, but that doesn't get the quack off the hook.
Well, there you have it -- region coding is an unpatriotic scheme cooked up by people who are on the side of the terrorists!
Because it's grossly inadequate. A minimum requirement for an acceptable federal anti-spam law is to clarify that circumvention of spam filters is a form of computer cracking and carries the standard penalties for that crime (i.e. a few years of hoping that your cellmate didn't use your "herbal v1agra" and "p3n1s enhancer").
Finally, a story where the goatse.cx link would be relevant.
That's what jury nullification is for.
IMO, the best system is to have the votes entered electronically, printed out (in a font optimized for human and OCR readability, and dropped behind a window. The voter would then either confirm the ballot (at which point it is cast and the paper copy drops into a locked box) or not (in which case the paper copy would be indelibly marked as VOID and dropped into a locked box, preferably a separate one, and the voting process is restarted).
If Al Gore had hired IBM's lawyers, he might have been President.
Thus, when everybody and his brother is shorting a given stock, the short-term effect is to increase demand for that stock, because brokers can profit by obtaining shares to lend out to short-sellers. This generates a "short-squeeze" bubble that has the counterintuitive effect of temporarily increasing the target stock's price.
The way around this is to send a one-time pad over the quantum link, and to echo it back. That guarantees that there was no interception in the middle (the only remaining hole to plug is to confirm that an interloper hasn't completely replaced your intended correspondent at the other end of the line).
I think the point was that any reasonable person would know that Best Buy isn't going to sell you a TV for $5 (unless it's part of a special deal to get you to buy other stuff).
That said, if we change the $5 to something not obviously absurd like $100, the analogy holds. Certainly, SCO doesn't have any case for asserting that its Linux work was obviously unauthorized.
Avoiding the Scylla of admitting that they put the code into Linux themselves, they would then fall into the Charybdis of admitting that they had distributed the copyrighted works of many others without a valid license.
Hence the importance of getting the SEC to do its job. Even Microsoft's money can only buy so many CEOs who are willing to do 5-10.
That won't do. Both are more difficult to use effectively (pepper spray, to the extent that it works at all, requires a square hit to the face), trivially blocked by moderately thick clothing, and ineffective against perps hopped up on drugs and/or adrenalin.
In any case, some of the jurisdicitons with gun rights infringements in force have banned those weapons as well.
Personally my morals state that killing people is bad.
That's nice, but no functional society has ever been based on this sort of absolute pacifist ethic.
The bottom line is that it's become impossible to impose "competency" requirements on gun ownership for the same reason it's become impossible to impose "literacy" requirements for voting -- both ideas have accumulated too much history of being used as an excuse to cheat people out of their rights.
Yes, and if people were willing to work hard for collective rather than individual rewards, communism would work just fine.
Public policy needs to be based on the world as it is, not on an unattainable fantasy world.
The simple fact is that if the would-be intruder is twice your size, a firearm is the only reasonably effective tool.
There aren't many people twice as big as me, admittedly, but I don't subscribe to the "I've got mine, Jack" ethic.
It seems to me that the blanket and a civil tongue were far more effective.
That's Plan A. Depending on the result, showing that you have a gun and are willing to use it might be Plan B.
I assume most folks have some moral framework, even if they haven't codified it and go weekly and hold hands in a special building.
My moral framework has no problem with killing in self-defense when necessary. Sure, there would be inevitable (no one is omniscient) second-guessing as to whether or not it was necessary, and it would fell rotten to work through that, but that's life.
The only way in which this would be any help is if 1)it is strictly interpreted so that ANY attempt to evade anti-spam filtering (e.g. offering to enlarge your "p3n1s") is prohibited, and 2)the law is energetically enforced.