When I actually got Mr. Rutman on the phone, he asked me to remove his home address, claiming that he had children and feared for their safety -- because he feared that people might engage in physical retribution in response to his repeated, irrational, illegal, and vicious retribution against joes.com and Hurricane Electric
Oh, puh-leeze. If a reporter finds out that some politician is on the take, should he refrain from identifying the crook because an enraged taxpayer might get medieval on him? Should we put a news blackout over the WorldCom mess because some wiped-out investor might snap and firebomb the CEO's house?
Hmmm... maybe the same concept could be applied to spamware. Write some fake spamware that doesn't actually work, but sends something else to generate the appearance of activity (e.g. send copies of Jack Chick's "Moon God" screed to random Middle Eastern addresses, with easily traced headers -- if we're lucky, the spammer could end up as the subject of a fatwa), and then does various nasty things to the scumball's system. Seed the trojan into spamware forums, giving some other known spammer's contact info for would-be purchasers.
Actually, if you treat spam as an Inefficiency, you'll see that it's actually providing jobs (admins to handle spam complaints) and driving demand for equipment and services (more switches to handle increased traffic, spam-filtering programs and services). From that viewpoint, spam is actually a "good" thing for the economy, as we spend more money to overcome this Inefficiency in the way of doing business.
This is a classic example of Bastiat's Fallacy of the Broken Window. If every spammer on earth dropped dead, the effort and resources devoted to warding off their garbage could instead be diverted to productive uses rather than spent to merely hold the line.
Remember the Supreme Court's example about screaming "Fire" in a crowded theater?
Indeed I do. It was offered by Oliver Wendell Holmes as a lame rationalization for suppression of free speech in Schenck v. United States.
The phrase, considering its source, should be understood as a metaphor for the old government scam of hyping a bogus crisis in order to justify tyrannical abuses.
No, of course not! But none of those things are examples of deliberately offensive speech that is just intended to upset and provoke. They are religious beliefs.
Your attempt to distinguish between the two is intellectually incoherent. For instance, it is a common religious belief that anyone outside the fold of one's own sect is en route to the eternal bonfires. Every so often, somebody puts up a billboard stating this more or less directly. Now, tell the class whether "You [heretics|papists|infidels|whatever] are going to Hell!" is "a religious belief" or "deliberately offensive speech that is just intended to upset and provoke".
I wouldn't ban copy protected CDs, provided that they were clearly labeled as such (and that any known risk of screwing up equipment is prominently disclosed).
However, I would require publishers to choose between copyright protection and anti-copying barriers, just as maufacturers have to choose between patent protection and trade secrecy. Either obtain government enforcement of a limited-time monopoly in exchange for full disclosure to the public domain when the time runs out, or else protect your monopoly by yourself and take your chances on how long it survives -- not both.
But when legitimate services were offered in this fashion, they are regarded as having identical value as the general world of spam.
When "legitimate" services are offered via unsolicited bulk e-mail, they are regarded as having identical value as the general world of spam -- because they are spam.
If the spam world isn't about fraud and shady dealings, but is instead about costing someone time and effort and money, do you have the same complaints about snail mail?
LOL -- you aren't even trying to hide the boilerplate spammer sophistries.
Spam *IS* about fraud and shady dealings
Yes, stealing other people's bandwidth is indeed fraudulent and shady.
Nope. Microsoft screwed up their product, and has thereby incurred an obligation to fix it. They may not attach extra strings to that obligation, any more than a bratty child may demand ice cream as the price for cleaning up the mess he just made.
Come on, being fired for having porn at work is not exactly discrimination.
Try to keep up with the class. The issue under discussion is the selective reporting and discipline in one case, as distinguished from "I just deleted it" in all other cases.
I'm glad you're doing your part to further the cause of litigating our society to death though.
Tomorrow's lesson will cover the difference between explaining how things work in the real world and expressing approval of them.
Try to keep up. The factor that elicited the responses is discriminatory treatment (merely deleting the porn in other cases, but firing the woman with the "lesbian porn"). Unless something critical was left out of the description, alen has left his employer's ass hanging naked in the legal breeze.
I found plenty of porn. Including some very sick stuff. I just deleted all the files.... At one point I found a female employee with lesbian porn in her home folder. She was fired.
You really should have posted this anonymously, if you insisted upon posting it at all. If the company's legal department finds out, they'll almost certainly recommend firing you before you get the company's lungs ripped out through its nose with a discrimination lawsuit.
Cans spam. Eventually, commercial pitches for recycled printer cartridges and barnyard porn can be stopped before they hit your inbox--while unsolicited mail sent by Microsoft "partners" can arrive if it has credentials that meet M$'s standards.
These "magnetic boots" are strong enough to keep them fastened to the ship, which as we all know is hurtling through space at several thousand kilometers per hour,
I take it that you never got the word to replace Aristotle 1.0 with Newton 1.0 (which should in turn by replaced by Einstein 1.0, but that step isn't relevant to this bug in your physics model).
But excusing The Matrix's hyped up physics ("But it's a computer simulation; they're supposed to be able to change reality!"), while simultaneously derided the physics of other fictional works is hypocritical.
Er, no. The simple fact is that the "virtual reality" rationale does justify any alterations whatsoever to the rules of reality, and most other forms of hand-waving don't.
it says right on the cd's jacket that "This disc is not intended for use in computer CD-ROM drives"
Nope; that's not a sufficient disclaimer. A reasonable person would interpret that to mean "if you put this disc in a computer CD-ROM drive, it won't play the music", not "if you put this disc in a computer CD-ROM drive, it will break your computer".
Next time you're in the store, look at the warning labels on any poisonous substance. They go well beyond "hey, don't drink this stuff". If anything, the warnings on these faux-CD discs need to be even stronger than those labels, because they address a danger that is completely unknown to the average consumer (as opposed to the danger of drinking something that everybody already knows is poison).
Are we humans so arrogant as to assume that life can only be found on planets that closely resemble our own?
We know enough about the form of life that exists on Earth to set out some clear parameters for speculation. Other forms of life, if there are any, are so profoundly unknown that there is simply no way to draw any conclusions -- it's like arguing the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.
No one in their right mind would choose a particular platform because this or that peripheral (iPod, big LCD monitor) has been crippled to only to work with that hardware, particularly in an age where you can wait for 6 months (maximum) and have it availabel for whatever platform you prefer.
Actually, I'm suprised that nobody has come out with something comparable (fits in a standard pocket, uses FireWire or USB 2.0) for Windows already. Judging from the latest Rio and Archos offerings, it looks like they've decided to compete on storage capacity rather than convenient form factor.
Try to keep up -- the latest generation of the Archos supports USB 2.0. I'd be inclined to get it myself if they'd design the AA battery compartments properly.
Realistically, the number of extra iPods they'd sell with Windows support is far greater than the number of extra computers they'd sell because of the iPod connection.
It's already been noted that letting third parties create the Windows hack gives them the best of both worlds -- they sell the iPods but don't have to support them.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, puh-leeze. If a reporter finds out that some politician is on the take, should he refrain from identifying the crook because an enraged taxpayer might get medieval on him? Should we put a news blackout over the WorldCom mess because some wiped-out investor might snap and firebomb the CEO's house?
Hmmm... maybe the same concept could be applied to spamware. Write some fake spamware that doesn't actually work, but sends something else to generate the appearance of activity (e.g. send copies of Jack Chick's "Moon God" screed to random Middle Eastern addresses, with easily traced headers -- if we're lucky, the spammer could end up as the subject of a fatwa), and then does various nasty things to the scumball's system. Seed the trojan into spamware forums, giving some other known spammer's contact info for would-be purchasers.
This is a classic example of Bastiat's Fallacy of the Broken Window. If every spammer on earth dropped dead, the effort and resources devoted to warding off their garbage could instead be diverted to productive uses rather than spent to merely hold the line.
Indeed I do. It was offered by Oliver Wendell Holmes as a lame rationalization for suppression of free speech in Schenck v. United States .
The phrase, considering its source, should be understood as a metaphor for the old government scam of hyping a bogus crisis in order to justify tyrannical abuses.
Your attempt to distinguish between the two is intellectually incoherent. For instance, it is a common religious belief that anyone outside the fold of one's own sect is en route to the eternal bonfires. Every so often, somebody puts up a billboard stating this more or less directly. Now, tell the class whether "You [heretics|papists|infidels|whatever] are going to Hell!" is "a religious belief" or "deliberately offensive speech that is just intended to upset and provoke".
However, I would require publishers to choose between copyright protection and anti-copying barriers, just as maufacturers have to choose between patent protection and trade secrecy. Either obtain government enforcement of a limited-time monopoly in exchange for full disclosure to the public domain when the time runs out, or else protect your monopoly by yourself and take your chances on how long it survives -- not both.
No, and this post illustrates why /. needs a "-1, Author Didn't Do Basic Research" moderation option.
When "legitimate" services are offered via unsolicited bulk e-mail, they are regarded as having identical value as the general world of spam -- because they are spam.
What part of this concept eludes you?
LOL -- you aren't even trying to hide the boilerplate spammer sophistries.
Spam *IS* about fraud and shady dealings
Yes, stealing other people's bandwidth is indeed fraudulent and shady.
If they buy a crobar for $24.98 (cost based on size), fine, let him burgle.
Nope. Microsoft screwed up their product, and has thereby incurred an obligation to fix it. They may not attach extra strings to that obligation, any more than a bratty child may demand ice cream as the price for cleaning up the mess he just made.
Try to keep up with the class. The issue under discussion is the selective reporting and discipline in one case, as distinguished from "I just deleted it" in all other cases.
I'm glad you're doing your part to further the cause of litigating our society to death though.
Tomorrow's lesson will cover the difference between explaining how things work in the real world and expressing approval of them.
Try to keep up. The factor that elicited the responses is discriminatory treatment (merely deleting the porn in other cases, but firing the woman with the "lesbian porn"). Unless something critical was left out of the description, alen has left his employer's ass hanging naked in the legal breeze.
You really should have posted this anonymously, if you insisted upon posting it at all. If the company's legal department finds out, they'll almost certainly recommend firing you before you get the company's lungs ripped out through its nose with a discrimination lawsuit.
I see somebody's new sigline.
Cans spam. Eventually, commercial pitches for recycled printer cartridges and barnyard porn can be stopped before they hit your inbox--while unsolicited mail sent by Microsoft "partners" can arrive if it has credentials that meet M$'s standards.
Evidently there is some definition of the word "talent" with which I have not been familiar.
I take it that you never got the word to replace Aristotle 1.0 with Newton 1.0 (which should in turn by replaced by Einstein 1.0, but that step isn't relevant to this bug in your physics model).
Er, no. The simple fact is that the "virtual reality" rationale does justify any alterations whatsoever to the rules of reality, and most other forms of hand-waving don't.
Nope; that's not a sufficient disclaimer. A reasonable person would interpret that to mean "if you put this disc in a computer CD-ROM drive, it won't play the music", not "if you put this disc in a computer CD-ROM drive, it will break your computer".
Next time you're in the store, look at the warning labels on any poisonous substance. They go well beyond "hey, don't drink this stuff". If anything, the warnings on these faux-CD discs need to be even stronger than those labels, because they address a danger that is completely unknown to the average consumer (as opposed to the danger of drinking something that everybody already knows is poison).
We know enough about the form of life that exists on Earth to set out some clear parameters for speculation. Other forms of life, if there are any, are so profoundly unknown that there is simply no way to draw any conclusions -- it's like arguing the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.
Actually, I'm suprised that nobody has come out with something comparable (fits in a standard pocket, uses FireWire or USB 2.0) for Windows already. Judging from the latest Rio and Archos offerings, it looks like they've decided to compete on storage capacity rather than convenient form factor.
Try to keep up -- the latest generation of the Archos supports USB 2.0. I'd be inclined to get it myself if they'd design the AA battery compartments properly.
It's already been noted that letting third parties create the Windows hack gives them the best of both worlds -- they sell the iPods but don't have to support them.
Huh? Last I heard he was still alive.