I just tried sending myself an e-mail from my MSN profile (using the form). I thought it would go to my Hotmail address but no, it went straight to my 'main' e-mail (because I must have given it to MSN when I filled in my profile). There's one way of 'whitelisting' people who use a web-based system.
Have a 'web only' option for web-based e-mail services. The sender must visit the web page of the e-mail service they want to send to and type in a box (either get a user ID or login as Anonymous Coward). That would make the use of time and resources more equal between sender and recipient. MSN does this kind of thing but it's a closed system because a Passport is needed to send a message.
Without large file transfers, broadband isn't much different to what was there before it. Like we're all going to use it for downloading some legal pay-per-listen crap from Real networks. My flat-rate dial up ISP has just told me that I can't use their "off peak" service for more than 4 hours a day. Can't the "broadband" (the term ADSL is rarely mentioned these days, probably because asymmetric is not a consumer-friendly word) ISPs provide a service which is a ~100K DSL which has unlimited use if they are so worried about bandwidth costs? In some ways it would be better to have a good 24 hour connection with some improvement in speed rather than a broken >500K connection. At least it would free the telephone line for voice calls while allowing P2P at transfer rates which people can put up with.
Certain people in authority should have nothing to hide. Any government agent and politician should wear a distinctive see-through plastic overall when in public to reassure people that they are not carrying anything illegal. Law enforcement officers should be filmed while at home so that they can remain accountable to the public. When on duty they should dress in animal suits. This will have minimal effect on their job while making a more visible police presence (something UK politicians can't stop talking about). If our politicians have a problem with people seeing them naked or dressed in clown costumes then maybe they aren't suitable for representing our interests.
The problem of crap files on P2P could be partly solved by having users create two directories for their files. One upload and one download directory. Both directories are shared but the ones in the download directory are clearly marked as being copies. If you didn't want to be recognised as a large scale provider of free music, you could stick all your newly encoded mp3s in the "download" and people would think you had been spending months leeching them. You'll get more people to trust you if you actually put some stuff in the upload directory.
"There are lots of people that don't think money is worth the normal "work" effort it takes to "purchase" it... we call them robbers, thieves, scum. What's the difference with the property is something other than money?"
Downloading isn't the answer to everything. If a track cost 0.1 (of some random currency which may be either a $ or a £) and 120 of these could be fitted onto a CD, wouldn't it be cheaper for them to burn a custom CD and put it in the post? Bandwidth is always too small for what you want to do, that is a rule. You need a network for P2P because it's got to be kept kinda anonymous, otherwise you may as well knock on some guy's door and ask to plug a USB cable in the back of his machine.
Maybe about 5%. Not many people download music for themselves, I've seen a lot of people with very realistic looking copies of audio CDs (printed disc and cover) and they didn't do it themselves, it'll be a "friend who is good with computers". They probably weren't even done from mp3s as in this area most people still have 56k dial up connections.
Joe Average Hotmail User doesn't care enough about getting e-mails from strangers (he doesn't have a web site or if he does, it's at Geocities and the e-mail address displayed is an expired yahoo account he can't remember the password for). He can afford to delete the whole 2 MB inbox every week without even checking whether there are some useful messages in there (it's probably just used for the MSN Messenger user name and in case one of his friends sends him something funny). But Joe will read some of the spam before hitting Delete All.
Spam is spam is spam... it isn't the content which matters, it's all spam. HTML e-mail is the cause of most problems as there is a limit to how pornographic plain text can be.
If P2P is killing music then surely it will also kill porn in the end so why worry about spam? Of course this needs as much help as possible so get sharing pornography right away.
Just class anything with HTML tags in it as junk mail:) The repeated use of ! would also give it a high "spam value" if it was put through a plain text filter. How far could we take content filtering? I only want to get nice, friendly e-mails. All the others should have the sender's address automatically added to a spammers database before the message even reaches my inbox.
Whitelist people who send you messages with a certain subject and people who you have sent a message to. So anyone visiting your website and who wants to make a comment has to use the subject "satan rules" in order to be added to your list. Expire addresses if they don't send you anything for a while. The code could be changed every so often without much disruption. It still doesn't work with "verification" messages though.
I have a subdomain at cjb.net and although I get so much spam to it that I just ignore everything, it has never been attacked by brute force or with any common names. All spam is sent to firstname@subdomain (the address which I always gave out).
If you ordered some herbal viagra and your card was charged but you never received any goods then it might seem a good idea to rip someone else off for a change and start spamming. If the spam doesn't get you much money then you can run a few copies of your mailing list off and sell them to other people. I often see the exact same message subject appearing in spam every few weeks, it's as if the same "business" is being sold from person to person after they get no response.
"Who cares if it's still there? I can't just clone a CD player/TV/computer on the spot. If I could, wouldn't that be stealing too?"
How would cloning a CD player be stealing? If you could magically replicate anything you saw then what is the offence? If you don't buy a CD but copy it off a friend then nobody loses anything. You saved $15 so you've got another $15 to spend on something. OK so it might not be music but why does it have to be? Isn't another industry allowed to do well instead? What does the RIAA want, people to spend 90% of their income on CDs?
"it should reduce the chance of accidental exposure to pornography and to other Web sites considered harmful to children"
Accidental exposure to pornography? Most people who take any notice of porn wanted to see it in the first place (that includes children). Everybody else is quite capable of thinking "that's a porn site, I didn't want to go here, I'll click Back".
"Averts aren't for Slashdot users". The people who make use of technology to skip adverts are the people who wouldn't take any notice of them anyway. If you don't care whether something is a well known brand then TV adverts can't affect you. Adverts obviously work on some people but if you see an advert and think "how can I get rid of this annoying crap" then it hasn't worked on you and no amount of "contracts" and "rights management" will get you to buy the product.
"More focus on communications like email, now that everyone else is online"
4 years ago I didn't need e-mail although I did surf the web from a college machine at least once a week for an hour at a time. At the weekend the internet was forgotten, it didn't matter because normal people didn't have it at home. In summer 1998 I went 2 months without web surfing (no college for the summer) I can hardly imagine it now. We got the 'net at home on Christmas day 1998. Surfing the web was like going to the library before that, like reading the newspapers in the reference section, the difference being you found people out there who were never mentioned in the traditional press. Not a social activity, neither is reading a book.
Dynamically updated sites trap web users in an endless cycle of reloading and revisiting. You know which ones I mean. This has taken over from the "I can do HTML, I'm cool" type web site which was once popular but was unlikely to ever get beyond the "under construction" phase. There are still thousands of Angelfire type sites out there which haven't changed since March 1999. Was there some kind of web building craze 3 years ago?
I got 10 spam messages last night to a non-Hotmail web-based account. 9 of them were from Korean businesses and all of them were in HTML format. Fancy HTML messages (Korean character set) from Korea have suddenly increased and the address they are sent to hasn't been used very much on web sites for over a year. The stuff I used to get when I had a Hotmail address (viagra, diplomas, porn) never gets to me now, it's mainly adverts for Korean travel agents and something called "Movie English".
Delete everything with ".com",".net" ".jp" and ".kr" in the message body. Delete anything with "!", "$", "xx" or "£"in the subject. That's most porn and URL spam gone.
Slashdot Mirror
I just tried sending myself an e-mail from my MSN profile (using the form). I thought it would go to my Hotmail address but no, it went straight to my 'main' e-mail (because I must have given it to MSN when I filled in my profile). There's one way of 'whitelisting' people who use a web-based system.
Have a 'web only' option for web-based e-mail services. The sender must visit the web page of the e-mail service they want to send to and type in a box (either get a user ID or login as Anonymous Coward). That would make the use of time and resources more equal between sender and recipient.
MSN does this kind of thing but it's a closed system because a Passport is needed to send a message.
Without large file transfers, broadband isn't much different to what was there before it. Like we're all going to use it for downloading some legal pay-per-listen crap from Real networks.
My flat-rate dial up ISP has just told me that I can't use their "off peak" service for more than 4 hours a day.
Can't the "broadband" (the term ADSL is rarely mentioned these days, probably because asymmetric is not a consumer-friendly word) ISPs provide a service which is a ~100K DSL which has unlimited use if they are so worried about bandwidth costs? In some ways it would be better to have a good 24 hour connection with some improvement in speed rather than a broken >500K connection. At least it would free the telephone line for voice calls while allowing P2P at transfer rates which people can put up with.
Certain people in authority should have nothing to hide. Any government agent and politician should wear a distinctive see-through plastic overall when in public to reassure people that they are not carrying anything illegal.
Law enforcement officers should be filmed while at home so that they can remain accountable to the public. When on duty they should dress in animal suits. This will have minimal effect on their job while making a more visible police presence (something UK politicians can't stop talking about).
If our politicians have a problem with people seeing them naked or dressed in clown costumes then maybe they aren't suitable for representing our interests.
The problem of crap files on P2P could be partly solved by having users create two directories for their files. One upload and one download directory. Both directories are shared but the ones in the download directory are clearly marked as being copies.
If you didn't want to be recognised as a large scale provider of free music, you could stick all your newly encoded mp3s in the "download" and people would think you had been spending months leeching them. You'll get more people to trust you if you actually put some stuff in the upload directory.
"There are lots of people that don't think money is worth the normal "work" effort it takes to "purchase" it ... we call them robbers, thieves, scum. What's the difference with the property is something other than money?"
You missed one off the list. Shareholders.
Once you start downloading mp3s, you reach a stage where you grab a song because it "could be useful" even if you don't really like it.
Downloading isn't the answer to everything. If a track cost 0.1 (of some random currency which may be either a $ or a £) and 120 of these could be fitted onto a CD, wouldn't it be cheaper for them to burn a custom CD and put it in the post?
Bandwidth is always too small for what you want to do, that is a rule. You need a network for P2P because it's got to be kept kinda anonymous, otherwise you may as well knock on some guy's door and ask to plug a USB cable in the back of his machine.
Maybe about 5%. Not many people download music for themselves, I've seen a lot of people with very realistic looking copies of audio CDs (printed disc and cover) and they didn't do it themselves, it'll be a "friend who is good with computers". They probably weren't even done from mp3s as in this area most people still have 56k dial up connections.
Joe Average Hotmail User doesn't care enough about getting e-mails from strangers (he doesn't have a web site or if he does, it's at Geocities and the e-mail address displayed is an expired yahoo account he can't remember the password for). He can afford to delete the whole 2 MB inbox every week without even checking whether there are some useful messages in there (it's probably just used for the MSN Messenger user name and in case one of his friends sends him something funny). But Joe will read some of the spam before hitting Delete All.
Spam is spam is spam... it isn't the content which matters, it's all spam. HTML e-mail is the cause of most problems as there is a limit to how pornographic plain text can be.
If P2P is killing music then surely it will also kill porn in the end so why worry about spam? Of course this needs as much help as possible so get sharing pornography right away.
Limit outgoing mail bandwidth to 1 MB per day and reject any message with more than 10 recipients.
Just class anything with HTML tags in it as junk mail :)
The repeated use of ! would also give it a high "spam value" if it was put through a plain text filter.
How far could we take content filtering? I only want to get nice, friendly e-mails. All the others should have the sender's address automatically added to a spammers database before the message even reaches my inbox.
Whitelist people who send you messages with a certain subject and people who you have sent a message to. So anyone visiting your website and who wants to make a comment has to use the subject "satan rules" in order to be added to your list. Expire addresses if they don't send you anything for a while. The code could be changed every so often without much disruption.
It still doesn't work with "verification" messages though.
I have a subdomain at cjb.net and although I get so much spam to it that I just ignore everything, it has never been attacked by brute force or with any common names. All spam is sent to firstname@subdomain (the address which I always gave out).
Hotmail won't let you use the words spam or junk in any new addresses.
If you ordered some herbal viagra and your card was charged but you never received any goods then it might seem a good idea to rip someone else off for a change and start spamming.
If the spam doesn't get you much money then you can run a few copies of your mailing list off and sell them to other people.
I often see the exact same message subject appearing in spam every few weeks, it's as if the same "business" is being sold from person to person after they get no response.
"Who cares if it's still there? I can't just clone a CD player/TV/computer on the spot. If I could, wouldn't that be stealing too?"
How would cloning a CD player be stealing? If you could magically replicate anything you saw then what is the offence?
If you don't buy a CD but copy it off a friend then nobody loses anything. You saved $15 so you've got another $15 to spend on something. OK so it might not be music but why does it have to be? Isn't another industry allowed to do well instead? What does the RIAA want, people to spend 90% of their income on CDs?
"it should reduce the chance of accidental exposure to pornography and to other Web sites considered harmful to children"
Accidental exposure to pornography? Most people who take any notice of porn wanted to see it in the first place (that includes children). Everybody else is quite capable of thinking "that's a porn site, I didn't want to go here, I'll click Back".
"Averts aren't for Slashdot users". The people who make use of technology to skip adverts are the people who wouldn't take any notice of them anyway. If you don't care whether something is a well known brand then TV adverts can't affect you. Adverts obviously work on some people but if you see an advert and think "how can I get rid of this annoying crap" then it hasn't worked on you and no amount of "contracts" and "rights management" will get you to buy the product.
"More focus on communications like email, now that everyone else is online"
4 years ago I didn't need e-mail although I did surf the web from a college machine at least once a week for an hour at a time.
At the weekend the internet was forgotten, it didn't matter because normal people didn't have it at home. In summer 1998 I went 2 months without web surfing (no college for the summer) I can hardly imagine it now. We got the 'net at home on Christmas day 1998.
Surfing the web was like going to the library before that, like reading the newspapers in the reference section, the difference being you found people out there who were never mentioned in the traditional press. Not a social activity, neither is reading a book.
Dynamically updated sites trap web users in an endless cycle of reloading and revisiting. You know which ones I mean. This has taken over from the "I can do HTML, I'm cool" type web site which was once popular but was unlikely to ever get beyond the "under construction" phase.
There are still thousands of Angelfire type sites out there which haven't changed since March 1999. Was there some kind of web building craze 3 years ago?
I got 10 spam messages last night to a non-Hotmail web-based account. 9 of them were from Korean businesses and all of them were in HTML format. Fancy HTML messages (Korean character set) from Korea have suddenly increased and the address they are sent to hasn't been used very much on web sites for over a year. The stuff I used to get when I had a Hotmail address (viagra, diplomas, porn) never gets to me now, it's mainly adverts for Korean travel agents and something called "Movie English".
Delete everything with ".com",".net" ".jp" and ".kr" in the message body.
Delete anything with "!", "$", "xx" or "£"in the subject.
That's most porn and URL spam gone.