Harvard physicist Gerald Gabrielse said: "Our long experience with these
very difficult experiments warns that antihydrogen may not have really been produced."
"Shit! Those pesky Swiss folks got there first. Quick, let's discredit them. After all, that's what professional scientists do."
I see a lot of people complainig that 33 months in prison is excessive for "downloading a few files". I don't have the time or inclination to enumerate everything that's wrong with that argument, however I propose an alternative punishment.
Tresco should be forced to pay MIT, at retail rates, for all the bandwidth used by his servers. Heck, he'd have to pay an ISP for it. I think it's only fair.
Amen to that. The fact that the person who asked the question included an exclamation point next to "bacon grease" shows that they're just another victim of cuilinary brainwashing. The FDA, Surgeon General, and all these other people can't make up their minds as to what's good and what's bad. All they need to do is use common sense.
Yes, bacon grease is bad for you, if you chug a whole 20 oz bottle of it every day. However, it's the only way to get fried eggs crispy on the outside and still soft on the inside. Heck, I still use lard to prepare some dishes, but there is no subsitute for it. However, if you use a tablespoon of it, it won't kill you.
Substitutes are a waste of time. I'd venture that if you drank nothing but skim milk, and ate nothing but margarine, and snacked on nothing but aspartame, you'd probably die an early death too. If you want a desert dish, but don't want the cream and sugar that's in chocolate mousse, than don't make chocolate mousse. Have an apple instead or something.
Is this Iron Chef (the Japanese show), or Iron Chef USA that we're talking about? The latter is pretty damn funny, if for no other reason than to see William Shatner pretend like he knows what he's talking about, and the comments on food that he delivers in his classic melodramatic style. It's great!
The last two paragraphs of the parent post comprise one of the most insightful thoughts I've ever read on/. Kudos to you for helping to break the stereotype that all sysadmins are holier-than-thou bastards. I'd mod you up to 6 if that bug was still around that let you do that..
There is no such law. But what's your point? If Ashcroft or someone from the justice dept were pursuing them, and there was no law, then you'd have a point.
They did, however, sign a contact with ICANN, in which they agreed to have up to date data. They chose to take a big shit on that contract. That's why ICANN is pissed.
Personally, I'd love to see Verisign out of business. Someone stole my identity two years ago and bought $1000 worth of services from Verisign. Verisign took a YEAR to remove the domains, claiming they needed to verify with the registrant before they could be cancelled. (Thieves have more rights than I do, apparently). They still refuse to remove the bogus whois information that the thief supplied using my correct name and address, but a fake phone number and e-mail. They claim I can't remove it, because I told them I didn't enter it in the first place. They also don't answer the phone anywhere but the sales department.
They're a bunch of lying, thieving, ignorant wankers, who deserve to have the book thrown at them. Not that it'll happen, since ICANN will probably give up at the last minute (c.f. United States v. Microsoft).
"I think it should be noted, MS Works does include the full version of Word."
Um, no it doesn't. Works Suite 2002 does. MS Works 6.0, however, does not. Works Suite 2002 is a new and different program (I think it's designed to replace Office - Small Business Edition). MS Works, which is a fraction of the cost of Works Suite 2002, has always included scaled down word processor and spreadsheet - it's only recently that those two applets have started res. Trust me - I've been using Works since version 2.0 in the DOS days. It never has, and never will, include a full version of Word.
How exactly would medical records relate in any way, shape, or form to student loans?
The most obvious reason would be that if you have a physical disability (which requires medical documentation, even if it's something obvious, like, say, a missing limb), you are extremely limited in how much work you can do. Inability to work, for reasons of a physical disability, certainly affects the type of loan re-payment plan you're on.
I'd venture to say there are also special loans/grants, or special terms for loans if you're physically or mentally challenged.
Hop on over to (random example) ESRI's web site (www.esri.com) and then tell me that I have a choice of linux distributions if I want to run ESRI software.
Where do you see Linux products on ESRI's website? Talk about monopolies - ESRI does what it wants, since it has a monopoly on the GIS market - you couldn't have chosen a worse example had you tried. ESRI has a history of only offering support for Windows, Solaris, and the other Unicies (IRIX, DUX, etc). And now they've even punted that. The current version of ArcView is only available for Windows, and they punted their scripting language in favor of Visual Basic.
ESRI, like any monopoly, will offer the bare minimum necessary to get the largest number of people to STFU. If they offer RedHat support, it's only because it's the most popular distro, not because there's some zekr1t n1nj@ conspiracy going on. RedHat couldn't possibly convince them to offer LSB compliant packages, whether it wanted to or not. They could drop RedHat support in a second, and they really wouldn't lose any customers.
Yes, this was OT, but I had to set the record straight.
What PR firm do you work for? Your post is completly against the opinions of the tech/open source community, seems deliberatly misleading, starts by assuming that anyone could have the right to censor linking and that nobody should take their $deity given right away, and it contains no spelling errors.
Um, I develop open source software (which will be released under the GPL when it's finished). I don't work for a PR firm. Your only valid point is the lack of spelling errors. I admit it - I know how to spell. I realize this disqualifies me from ever being taken seriously in the software development industry. I guess that's just the price I have to pay for paying attention in school.
----------------
If a linking site suddely changes what they have to say about you, you tell them not to link to you anymore.
So if someone says something about you that you don't want them to say, you make them shut up? Riiight... Ever hear of the first amendment?
I realize on Slashdot you're not supposed to read the articles before you post, but I thought you were at least supposed to read the comment. There's nothing there about _making_ them shut up.
In fact, if you read my comment, I say explicitly "legal solutions to the linking problem won't work". I suggest learning to read, and perhaps taking some social-skill enhancement classes. Now go away.
I've seen a lot of emotion-filled comments and speculation about this topic, but let's try and consider this seriously for a second.
I'm not going to address the technical side of this - we all know how easy it is to prevent linking, or whatever. We also know, if you have static HTML pages, there's no way to prevent someone from linking to them.
Why, exactly, is any website _required_ to permit another page to link to it? I have yet to see a _real_ answer to this question. ("Because they should" is not a real answer, neither is "because they can't stop you".)
Suppose, for a second, that I run Joe's Widget Company. I sell widgets. Jack Sixpack has this great idea for a gadget which uses my widgets. He advertises this on his site, and provides a link back to my site. Suddenly, however, Jack's gadgets go horribly wrong and cause people bodily harm. People will think that I endorsed his use of my widgets. (People _will_ think that, regardless of how stupid it may seem). Sure, I could put a disclaimer on my site, saying "I do not endorse Jack's use of my widgets", but that assumes I know about it. Why should I have to search the web every week or so to find a new link to my site, check out the linking site, and see if I need to post a disclaimer? That takes time and time is money.
And in today's litigation-happy society, one needs to cover one's ass more than ever. If you know exactly who links to your site, you have a defense against any false endorsements, or incorrect statements or whatever. If a linking site suddely changes what they have to say about you, you tell them not to link to you anymore. Sure, they may do it anyway, but at least you can say "Sorry, your Honor, but we told them to remove that link."
Certainly attempting to use legal methods to enforce linking policies won't work. However, there's nothing wrong with asking people who desire to link to a site to fill out a form or email the webmaster. It's common courtesy. It also provides a paper trail if commercial activity is involved.
And then there's the bandwidth factor. Say I have this really cool Lego Mindstorms project that I want people to see. I put up some pictures on my web page and point some friends at it. Then it gets picked up by Slashdot, where thousands of people all attempt to view it at the same time, which uses up my monthly bandwidth allocation in exactly 2 minutes, and causes my computer to melt. That's quite unfortunate for me. I think I should have been asked beforehand, and then given the opportunity to maybe find some mirrors, or let Google cache it , or something.
This, of course, is where people might say "Don't post stuff on the web if you don't expect people to look at it." or "Get a connection that allows you more bandwidth." Any intelligent person knows that these are not acceptable answers for the average user. If I post something on a page, I expect a few people to look at it, but I don't expect (nor should I have to) a million people to attempt to view the page all at the same time, without prior warning.
All this "Fuck you, I'll link to whatever I want" attitude is lame and counter-productive. It will only serve to discourage people from posting cool things on computers that have slow connections or limited bandwidth. Sure, if it's something like cnn.com, or C|NET, or the New York Times, we know their servers can take a lot of hits. But if it's some guy who posted a cool case mod on his computer connected by MediaOne or whatever, then give him a break, and send him a quick e-mail before you link to it. It's just common courtesy. But then again, common courtesy seems to be non-existant these days.
Re:Chinese? Don't think so.
on
Haiku vs Spam
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Stupid formatting. Should have been:
Haiku poems are Japanese, not Chinese; shows what you know, Slashdot.
Chinese? Don't think so.
on
Haiku vs Spam
·
· Score: 2
Haiku poems are
Japanese, not Chinese; shows
what you know, Slashdot.
Enforce existing laws; get more support
on
Meet the Spammers
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Sure, I'd like an anti-spam law. We'd all like an anti-spam law. We also know it ain't gonna happen anytime soon.
So is there any reason why we can't use existing laws against them? It may not be a federal crime, but at least under some state laws, it's a crime to show objectionable material to minors. Get the information on the spammer and report it to your local law enforcement authorities.
What about wire fraud or mail fraud, or just plain old fraud? If these spammers are registering for accounts under false names, why can't they be prosecuted under fraud laws?
Vigilante tactics have their place too, of course. Any ISP that claims to have an anti-spam policy but in reality cooperates with these spammers should have their entire IP range blacklisted. After their legitimate customers (if they have any) can't get to websites or send e-mail, and cancel their accounts, those ISPs will either go out of business or rethink their policies.
Finally, grass-roots operations are all well and good, but the anti-spam movement won't make any serious progress until we get some money in our corner. Find some large corporation that hates spam as much as we do. You can't tell me that workers in these corporations aren't getting spam - some of them are probably even reading it. In an era where every dollar counts (especially if you overstated profits for the last two years), some corporation somewhere must want to put an end to this as much as Joe Everygeek does.
Seems like BSA followed usual business plan:
stage 1: Post biased annual piracy statistics in media
stage 2: ???
stage 3: PROFIT!!!
The underwear gnomes seem to be doing quite well with this business plan, however. Perhaps the BSA should switch from combatting software piracy to stealing underpants.
What email needs is a set up like SSL -- a trusted third party to verify the validity of an email
from a key generated by the sender when the receiver gets the mail.
Good idea. Who's the trusted third party? Microsoft? Not unless we only want e-mail on Windows. (And maybe a Mac release two years later). Verisign? 'Cause we all know how well they check the authenticity of certificate requests. A non-profit group? Like ICANN? They're proved themselves to be incompetent many times.
So what do we do?
Several things need to happen: It needs to be more difficult to get a free e-mail account. Some sort of authentication needs to happen. Something as minimal as a credit card check might suffice. Ideally, however, the company you sign up with (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc) should send a letter to the address you provide, with a document that you sign, and then return before your account can be activated. That's the way it worked with Freenets back in the day. Of course, it'll never happen, but it would solve the problem.
The biggest thing, however, is that open relays need to be shut down. Most of the open relays exist in countries where English is not the first language. The single biggest complaint has been that MTA documentation is in English (perhaps Spanish and French) and not in their native languages. I'd venture to say that within the anti-spam community, there are people who speak Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Ukranian, and many other languages. Instead of complaining or adding more and more domains to blacklists, people should take the initiative and start a project to translate sendmail documentation (and documentation for any other MTA) into these different langauges, and get them out on prominent sites where they will be noticed. Sure, there will always be people who run open relays because they feel it's their right (like that wanker whose name I can't remember but claimed it was some free as in speech thing), but a lot of the ones in Asia exist because of ignorance (which is different from incompetence). Let's fix that.
If the signal bleeds and my traffic goes up a bit, who gives a fuck?
I give a fuck, because you're letting someone else get Internet access, who otherwise would have to pay for it. It's pure math. If it costs $100 to wire a neighborhood, and there are 5 people there with Internet access, they each pay $20. Now, one person mooches off your signal, because you're too fucking incompetent to RTFM and secure your access point. There are now 4 people with service, and the price goes up to $25. That sucks. Scale that for a city instead of a neighborhood, and it still sucks.
Incidentally, they're not saying you can't use 802.11. Go read the article.
They're saying you can't use 802.11 and let your neighbor use it. If you have an access point that authenticates somehow (MAC address, password, whatever), they're not going to know, and they're not going to care. But if you have one that lets your neighbor mooch off your signal, they will care.
I mean, my neighbors are nice and all, but I don't want to use my hard earned cash to pay for Internet access, and then have them mooch off me.
You wouldn't run an extension cord to your neighbor's house and let them mooch off your power, would you? Why would do you do the same for Internet access?
... even when there's no need for it. He said himself, the event is registered when a pin is grounded. Is there a reason why one can't use SPST switches (wired in series or parallel, depending on the switch type) for this? Who is this wanker, and why should we care? Personally, I find it hard to take any "security consultant" seriously if he uses l33t speak in his username. Basically what we have is a 14 year old editor being impressed by a 14 year old with a soldering iron.
I'm really curious to find out what the criteria is for accepting and rejecting articles. Perhaps the Slashdot editors would do well to include why an article was rejected (ie: duplicate, boring, can't be verified, etc). I think many people would be interested to see that.
Then again, this will get modded down before anyone has a chance to read it, I'm sure.
(Nevermind that Satellite is loaded with spy-ware...
good riddance).
They came for Napster, and I did not speak up, because I did not use Napster.
They came for Audiogalaxy, and I did not speak up, because it had spyware.
They came for Limewire, and I did not speak up, because I did not like the Java client.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up.
Just because E.B. White didn't like the 1936 version of TV doesn't mean that he was unimaginative. True, us nerds would have liked to see one of the early demonstratios of TV, but your average writer wouldn't necessarily be that interested in it. TV was hit or miss back then (in case you didn't get that from the article), and one of the greatest children's authors of the century would not so much be interested in which kinds of vacuum tubes were used, but rather why people would want to see this watery, blurry newsreel on a tiny screen when they could go to the local movie theater, and see it on a huge screen.
Hrm....
Matthew McConaughey: A Time To Kill, Amistad, Contact
Bill Paxton: Titantic, Twister, Apollo 13, True Lies, Tombstone, Aliens, Weird Science
Harvey Keitel: Pulp Fiction, Rising Sun, Reservoir Dogs, Thelma and Louise
(boldface indicates movies most people have heard of)
I wonder... If someone had posted a rant like that in the comments section, would it have been modded up to 5? Doubtful. Probably it would have been modded to -1, Troll or Flamebait.
It's always great to see people jump on the Bandwagon when they have no idea what they're talking about. Shortly after this movie premiered, one of the news agencies (probably CNN) reported that (drum roll please) this fictional movie was indeed not based in fact. What a shock! They said that in fact, the British did all the stuff depicted in the movie, and the Americans did squat. Therefore, they decided, this movie was a farce. However, those of us who watched the movie know that at the end not only does it say that the movie was fiction, but rather that the British did capture the Engima first, and that the Americans never did capture the coding material.
I don't have enough time to comment on everything else that's wrong with the review (including several glaring "I wasn't watching the movie" errors), but suffice it to say that the reviewer has obviously never seen a war movie before. Go rent Tora, Tora, Tora. Go rent They Were Expendable. Go rent Twelve OClock High, or The Great Escape. You'll see the same hollow acting, predictable plots, and unlikely situations in those movies. Don't get me wrong, these are great movies, but you'll see lots of things in them that Hollywood put in to sell the movie. If you compare a war movie to the actual events, they will always come up short. Even the recent war movies, that tried to make things more accurate (Saving Private Ryan, and that piece of crap known as Pearl Harbor) failed miserably, and resulted in movies that were just as inaccurate as U-571 was.
Yet it was not cool to badmouth those two movies, so everyone loves them. If you want the facts about WWII, with no Hollywood crap, go watch the History Channel. If you want historical fiction; entertainment set in a certain time period, go rent a movie.
Slashdot Mirror
"Shit! Those pesky Swiss folks got there first. Quick, let's discredit them. After all, that's what professional scientists do."
Tresco should be forced to pay MIT, at retail rates, for all the bandwidth used by his servers. Heck, he'd have to pay an ISP for it. I think it's only fair.
Yes, bacon grease is bad for you, if you chug a whole 20 oz bottle of it every day. However, it's the only way to get fried eggs crispy on the outside and still soft on the inside. Heck, I still use lard to prepare some dishes, but there is no subsitute for it. However, if you use a tablespoon of it, it won't kill you.
Substitutes are a waste of time. I'd venture that if you drank nothing but skim milk, and ate nothing but margarine, and snacked on nothing but aspartame, you'd probably die an early death too. If you want a desert dish, but don't want the cream and sugar that's in chocolate mousse, than don't make chocolate mousse. Have an apple instead or something.
Is this Iron Chef (the Japanese show), or Iron Chef USA that we're talking about? The latter is pretty damn funny, if for no other reason than to see William Shatner pretend like he knows what he's talking about, and the comments on food that he delivers in his classic melodramatic style. It's great!
The last two paragraphs of the parent post comprise one of the most insightful thoughts I've ever read on /. Kudos to you for helping to break the stereotype that all sysadmins are holier-than-thou bastards. I'd mod you up to 6 if that bug was still around that let you do that..
That's 640k that's supposed to be enough for anybody.
There is no such law. But what's your point? If Ashcroft or someone from the justice dept were pursuing them, and there was no law, then you'd have a point.
They did, however, sign a contact with ICANN, in which they agreed to have up to date data. They chose to take a big shit on that contract. That's why ICANN is pissed.
Personally, I'd love to see Verisign out of business. Someone stole my identity two years ago and bought $1000 worth of services from Verisign. Verisign took a YEAR to remove the domains, claiming they needed to verify with the registrant before they could be cancelled. (Thieves have more rights than I do, apparently). They still refuse to remove the bogus whois information that the thief supplied using my correct name and address, but a fake phone number and e-mail. They claim I can't remove it, because I told them I didn't enter it in the first place. They also don't answer the phone anywhere but the sales department.
They're a bunch of lying, thieving, ignorant wankers, who deserve to have the book thrown at them. Not that it'll happen, since ICANN will probably give up at the last minute (c.f. United States v. Microsoft).
Um, no it doesn't. Works Suite 2002 does. MS Works 6.0, however, does not. Works Suite 2002 is a new and different program (I think it's designed to replace Office - Small Business Edition). MS Works, which is a fraction of the cost of Works Suite 2002, has always included scaled down word processor and spreadsheet - it's only recently that those two applets have started res. Trust me - I've been using Works since version 2.0 in the DOS days. It never has, and never will, include a full version of Word.
The most obvious reason would be that if you have a physical disability (which requires medical documentation, even if it's something obvious, like, say, a missing limb), you are extremely limited in how much work you can do. Inability to work, for reasons of a physical disability, certainly affects the type of loan re-payment plan you're on.
I'd venture to say there are also special loans/grants, or special terms for loans if you're physically or mentally challenged.
Where do you see Linux products on ESRI's website? Talk about monopolies - ESRI does what it wants, since it has a monopoly on the GIS market - you couldn't have chosen a worse example had you tried. ESRI has a history of only offering support for Windows, Solaris, and the other Unicies (IRIX, DUX, etc). And now they've even punted that. The current version of ArcView is only available for Windows, and they punted their scripting language in favor of Visual Basic.
ESRI, like any monopoly, will offer the bare minimum necessary to get the largest number of people to STFU. If they offer RedHat support, it's only because it's the most popular distro, not because there's some zekr1t n1nj@ conspiracy going on. RedHat couldn't possibly convince them to offer LSB compliant packages, whether it wanted to or not. They could drop RedHat support in a second, and they really wouldn't lose any customers.
Yes, this was OT, but I had to set the record straight.
Um, I develop open source software (which will be released under the GPL when it's finished). I don't work for a PR firm. Your only valid point is the lack of spelling errors. I admit it - I know how to spell. I realize this disqualifies me from ever being taken seriously in the software development industry. I guess that's just the price I have to pay for paying attention in school.
----------------
So if someone says something about you that you don't want them to say, you make them shut up? Riiight... Ever hear of the first amendment?
I realize on Slashdot you're not supposed to read the articles before you post, but I thought you were at least supposed to read the comment. There's nothing there about _making_ them shut up.
In fact, if you read my comment, I say explicitly "legal solutions to the linking problem won't work". I suggest learning to read, and perhaps taking some social-skill enhancement classes. Now go away.
I've seen a lot of emotion-filled comments and speculation about this topic, but let's try and consider this seriously for a second.
I'm not going to address the technical side of this - we all know how easy it is to prevent linking, or whatever. We also know, if you have static HTML pages, there's no way to prevent someone from linking to them.
Why, exactly, is any website _required_ to permit another page to link to it? I have yet to see a _real_ answer to this question. ("Because they should" is not a real answer, neither is "because they can't stop you".)
Suppose, for a second, that I run Joe's Widget Company. I sell widgets. Jack Sixpack has this great idea for a gadget which uses my widgets. He advertises this on his site, and provides a link back to my site. Suddenly, however, Jack's gadgets go horribly wrong and cause people bodily harm. People will think that I endorsed his use of my widgets. (People _will_ think that, regardless of how stupid it may seem). Sure, I could put a disclaimer on my site, saying "I do not endorse Jack's use of my widgets", but that assumes I know about it. Why should I have to search the web every week or so to find a new link to my site, check out the linking site, and see if I need to post a disclaimer? That takes time and time is money.
And in today's litigation-happy society, one needs to cover one's ass more than ever. If you know exactly who links to your site, you have a defense against any false endorsements, or incorrect statements or whatever. If a linking site suddely changes what they have to say about you, you tell them not to link to you anymore. Sure, they may do it anyway, but at least you can say "Sorry, your Honor, but we told them to remove that link."
Certainly attempting to use legal methods to enforce linking policies won't work. However, there's nothing wrong with asking people who desire to link to a site to fill out a form or email the webmaster. It's common courtesy. It also provides a paper trail if commercial activity is involved.
And then there's the bandwidth factor. Say I have this really cool Lego Mindstorms project that I want people to see. I put up some pictures on my web page and point some friends at it. Then it gets picked up by Slashdot, where thousands of people all attempt to view it at the same time, which uses up my monthly bandwidth allocation in exactly 2 minutes, and causes my computer to melt. That's quite unfortunate for me. I think I should have been asked beforehand, and then given the opportunity to maybe find some mirrors, or let Google cache it , or something.
This, of course, is where people might say "Don't post stuff on the web if you don't expect people to look at it." or "Get a connection that allows you more bandwidth." Any intelligent person knows that these are not acceptable answers for the average user. If I post something on a page, I expect a few people to look at it, but I don't expect (nor should I have to) a million people to attempt to view the page all at the same time, without prior warning.
All this "Fuck you, I'll link to whatever I want" attitude is lame and counter-productive. It will only serve to discourage people from posting cool things on computers that have slow connections or limited bandwidth. Sure, if it's something like cnn.com, or C|NET, or the New York Times, we know their servers can take a lot of hits. But if it's some guy who posted a cool case mod on his computer connected by MediaOne or whatever, then give him a break, and send him a quick e-mail before you link to it. It's just common courtesy. But then again, common courtesy seems to be non-existant these days.
Stupid formatting. Should have been:
Haiku poems are
Japanese, not Chinese; shows
what you know, Slashdot.
Haiku poems are Japanese, not Chinese; shows what you know, Slashdot.
So is there any reason why we can't use existing laws against them? It may not be a federal crime, but at least under some state laws, it's a crime to show objectionable material to minors. Get the information on the spammer and report it to your local law enforcement authorities.
What about wire fraud or mail fraud, or just plain old fraud? If these spammers are registering for accounts under false names, why can't they be prosecuted under fraud laws?
Vigilante tactics have their place too, of course. Any ISP that claims to have an anti-spam policy but in reality cooperates with these spammers should have their entire IP range blacklisted. After their legitimate customers (if they have any) can't get to websites or send e-mail, and cancel their accounts, those ISPs will either go out of business or rethink their policies.
Finally, grass-roots operations are all well and good, but the anti-spam movement won't make any serious progress until we get some money in our corner. Find some large corporation that hates spam as much as we do. You can't tell me that workers in these corporations aren't getting spam - some of them are probably even reading it. In an era where every dollar counts (especially if you overstated profits for the last two years), some corporation somewhere must want to put an end to this as much as Joe Everygeek does.
"Microsoft said it plans to disclose 385 bits of computer code
That's it?! They really think disclosing ~48 bytes of code will get them out of hot water with the justice department? I think not...
You mean cracker-proof. Yeesh. You'd think with the combination of being aware of both the /. and MIT definition of hacker, you'd know better.
The underwear gnomes seem to be doing quite well with this business plan, however. Perhaps the BSA should switch from combatting software piracy to stealing underpants.
14% of all statistics are made up on the spot. Besides, statistics don't mean anything. 32% of all people know that.
Good idea. Who's the trusted third party? Microsoft? Not unless we only want e-mail on Windows. (And maybe a Mac release two years later). Verisign? 'Cause we all know how well they check the authenticity of certificate requests. A non-profit group? Like ICANN? They're proved themselves to be incompetent many times.
So what do we do? Several things need to happen: It needs to be more difficult to get a free e-mail account. Some sort of authentication needs to happen. Something as minimal as a credit card check might suffice. Ideally, however, the company you sign up with (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc) should send a letter to the address you provide, with a document that you sign, and then return before your account can be activated. That's the way it worked with Freenets back in the day. Of course, it'll never happen, but it would solve the problem.
The biggest thing, however, is that open relays need to be shut down. Most of the open relays exist in countries where English is not the first language. The single biggest complaint has been that MTA documentation is in English (perhaps Spanish and French) and not in their native languages. I'd venture to say that within the anti-spam community, there are people who speak Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Ukranian, and many other languages. Instead of complaining or adding more and more domains to blacklists, people should take the initiative and start a project to translate sendmail documentation (and documentation for any other MTA) into these different langauges, and get them out on prominent sites where they will be noticed. Sure, there will always be people who run open relays because they feel it's their right (like that wanker whose name I can't remember but claimed it was some free as in speech thing), but a lot of the ones in Asia exist because of ignorance (which is different from incompetence). Let's fix that.
I give a fuck, because you're letting someone else get Internet access, who otherwise would have to pay for it. It's pure math. If it costs $100 to wire a neighborhood, and there are 5 people there with Internet access, they each pay $20. Now, one person mooches off your signal, because you're too fucking incompetent to RTFM and secure your access point. There are now 4 people with service, and the price goes up to $25. That sucks. Scale that for a city instead of a neighborhood, and it still sucks.
Incidentally, they're not saying you can't use 802.11. Go read the article.
They're saying you can't use 802.11 and let your neighbor use it. If you have an access point that authenticates somehow (MAC address, password, whatever), they're not going to know, and they're not going to care. But if you have one that lets your neighbor mooch off your signal, they will care.
I mean, my neighbors are nice and all, but I don't want to use my hard earned cash to pay for Internet access, and then have them mooch off me.
You wouldn't run an extension cord to your neighbor's house and let them mooch off your power, would you? Why would do you do the same for Internet access?
... even when there's no need for it.
He said himself, the event is registered when a pin is grounded. Is there a reason why one can't use SPST switches (wired in series or parallel, depending on the switch type) for this? Who is this wanker, and why should we care? Personally, I find it hard to take any "security consultant" seriously if he uses l33t speak in his username. Basically what we have is a 14 year old editor being impressed by a 14 year old with a soldering iron.
I'm really curious to find out what the criteria is for accepting and rejecting articles. Perhaps the Slashdot editors would do well to include why an article was rejected (ie: duplicate, boring, can't be verified, etc). I think many people would be interested to see that.
Then again, this will get modded down before anyone has a chance to read it, I'm sure.
They came for Napster, and I did not speak up, because I did not use Napster.
They came for Audiogalaxy, and I did not speak up, because it had spyware.
They came for Limewire, and I did not speak up, because I did not like the Java client.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up.
Just because E.B. White didn't like the 1936 version of TV doesn't mean that he was unimaginative. True, us nerds would have liked to see one of the early demonstratios of TV, but your average writer wouldn't necessarily be that interested in it. TV was hit or miss back then (in case you didn't get that from the article), and one of the greatest children's authors of the century would not so much be interested in which kinds of vacuum tubes were used, but rather why people would want to see this watery, blurry newsreel on a tiny screen when they could go to the local movie theater, and see it on a huge screen.
Hrm.... Matthew McConaughey: A Time To Kill, Amistad, Contact
Bill Paxton: Titantic, Twister, Apollo 13, True Lies, Tombstone, Aliens, Weird Science
Harvey Keitel: Pulp Fiction, Rising Sun, Reservoir Dogs, Thelma and Louise
(boldface indicates movies most people have heard of)
I wonder... If someone had posted a rant like that in the comments section, would it have been modded up to 5? Doubtful. Probably it would have been modded to -1, Troll or Flamebait.
It's always great to see people jump on the Bandwagon when they have no idea what they're talking about. Shortly after this movie premiered, one of the news agencies (probably CNN) reported that (drum roll please) this fictional movie was indeed not based in fact. What a shock! They said that in fact, the British did all the stuff depicted in the movie, and the Americans did squat. Therefore, they decided, this movie was a farce. However, those of us who watched the movie know that at the end not only does it say that the movie was fiction, but rather that the British did capture the Engima first, and that the Americans never did capture the coding material.
I don't have enough time to comment on everything else that's wrong with the review (including several glaring "I wasn't watching the movie" errors), but suffice it to say that the reviewer has obviously never seen a war movie before. Go rent Tora, Tora, Tora. Go rent They Were Expendable. Go rent Twelve OClock High, or The Great Escape. You'll see the same hollow acting, predictable plots, and unlikely situations in those movies. Don't get me wrong, these are great movies, but you'll see lots of things in them that Hollywood put in to sell the movie. If you compare a war movie to the actual events, they will always come up short. Even the recent war movies, that tried to make things more accurate (Saving Private Ryan, and that piece of crap known as Pearl Harbor) failed miserably, and resulted in movies that were just as inaccurate as U-571 was.
Yet it was not cool to badmouth those two movies, so everyone loves them. If you want the facts about WWII, with no Hollywood crap, go watch the History Channel. If you want historical fiction; entertainment set in a certain time period, go rent a movie.