Spammers bad. New laws good. Unfortunately, congress seems to only have two speeds when cranking out new laws: slow and dead slow. These laws are not without loopholes either, which get discovered and exploited.
I'm not sure how many/.ers are fans of Ernie's House of Whoopass, but this article he wrote about the do's and dont's of battling spam is definitely worth a read if you're interested in stopping or at least reducing the amount of spam flung at your inbox by those people who actually think sending spam is an effective marketing tool. Heh, I said tool.
The article debunks a lot of myths about dealing with spam, like how using the "valid unsubscribe address" (which is required by law to be included in any UCE) will actually hurt you more than it will help. Good stuf in there. Click, Read, Print, Save, Fight, Win, Take a nap.
Right on. It's just like in any sport. Those that play for the love of the game are often more difficult to defeat than those who are only concerned with muti-million dollar contracts and endorsement deals.
I think Microsoft is terrified of the fact that thousands of hard-working people go home each day and dive in to the guts of an already excellent operating system and try to make it even better by adding new components or improving upon existing ones. Why? Because they *want* to, not to pay the bills, not to buy a big house.
Microsoft still believes (and rightfully so, for the most part) that end users do not understand how software works, and they don't have to. As long as it works, "The customer will eat what he is given."
Problem with that belief is that every child born today is born into the digital age, and is more likely to be able to understand the inner workings of software than their predecessors, and at an increasingly earlier age. Not that all kids are going to be professional coders, rather they will be more equipped to choose the better os or application when given a choice because they will understand the underlying fundamentals better.
I think all that needs to happen is that Linux supporters need to chill on the knee-jerk "M$ sucks" reaction and let Microsoft continue to shoot themselves in the foot with ever increasing numbers of botched product launches and critical security flaws.
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Solaris is free. You do have to pay for the media, but you can install it on multiple machines and the source is also available.
IE is available for Solaris and HP-UX here - might be worth a try on linux.
I'm not sure how many /.ers are fans of Ernie's House of Whoopass, but this article he wrote about the do's and dont's of battling spam is definitely worth a read if you're interested in stopping or at least reducing the amount of spam flung at your inbox by those people who actually think sending spam is an effective marketing tool. Heh, I said tool.
The article debunks a lot of myths about dealing with spam, like how using the "valid unsubscribe address" (which is required by law to be included in any UCE) will actually hurt you more than it will help. Good stuf in there. Click, Read, Print, Save, Fight, Win, Take a nap.
That is all.
I think Microsoft is terrified of the fact that thousands of hard-working people go home each day and dive in to the guts of an already excellent operating system and try to make it even better by adding new components or improving upon existing ones. Why? Because they *want* to, not to pay the bills, not to buy a big house.
Microsoft still believes (and rightfully so, for the most part) that end users do not understand how software works, and they don't have to. As long as it works, "The customer will eat what he is given."
Problem with that belief is that every child born today is born into the digital age, and is more likely to be able to understand the inner workings of software than their predecessors, and at an increasingly earlier age. Not that all kids are going to be professional coders, rather they will be more equipped to choose the better os or application when given a choice because they will understand the underlying fundamentals better.
I think all that needs to happen is that Linux supporters need to chill on the knee-jerk "M$ sucks" reaction and let Microsoft continue to shoot themselves in the foot with ever increasing numbers of botched product launches and critical security flaws.
That is all.