redtail1 writes: "You could use this tired Shatner-esque "Get a life!" argument to tell someone to stop doing anything you don't think is a worthwhile form of entertainment. Don't you have anything less mundane to do than attacking others? This isn't news."
What a bunch of crap. I'm pointing out the absurdity of playing a game that is an ever-more-accurate rendition of...real life! What's next? You'll be able to make the person in the game play a game...about real life?
Oh, the recursion hurts my head!
Yes, the fact that people are playing a game about mundane, everyday life is news. It's certainly a social commentary! And a lot more relevant than, say, Laci Peterson to your average Slashdot reader.
My general attitude toward just about anything people like doing is "hey, if it spins your needle, do it." Some people like to fish. I don't. Some people like to play with their PSX2 all day. I don't, more power to 'em though. Some people like to shove bits of metal into their face. I don't, but if that's something they're attracted to, I'm all for it. I'm a libertarian. Which is to say that I'm all for letting people do whatever the hell they want -- including stupid things -- so long as it does not harm me. This includes, for example, doing drugs.
But I'm not saying that people should not be able to play this game nor am I interested in stopping them. I'm lamenting the "why." You're trying to distort this into a "you don't like it so you want to bitch" discussion. I'm not biting.
I heard that Sims 2 was going to have full-immersion real-time rendering of a fairly complex physics model including lighting (ie, the ability to knock lights around and such, which would change the way the scene was drawn). I also heard that it would include not only some new never-before-seen haptic control devices and some new tactile feedback add-ons.
The best part is that this has already been released.
IT'S CALLED YOUR ACTUAL FUCKING LIFE. Go outside. Play with your kid or your dog for fucks sake. Ride a bike. Read a book. Wow! Look at those specular effects! Ooo! Ahhh!
I understand games where you get to be something else. But a game where you get to be a mundane human doing mundane things? Have you all gone positively fucking mad?
Vlad the Inhaler writes: "...it just smells of paranoia."
My only real point, the only aspect I'm really interested in is the notion that there are those inside the government who are willing and able to lie to the American people and, worse, able to convince themselves that they're acting patriotically when they do so.
If we can agree on that aspect then I consider all the rest just cruft that can go either way.
TamMan2000 writes: " You couldn't be more right (I too have been dismissesed as unpatriotic...)! Moderators: Mod down if what he said was wrong, or offensive, not insightful."
I don't say this to flame you, really, I understand your intent. But I have loooong since stopped giving a crap about what my posts are rated.
People that read slashdot who are interested in more than the "me too" crowd will read the death-by-moderation entries. As for the rest of 'em, fuck 'em. I'm baffled by people posting anonymously to save their goddamn karma.
IT'S A NUMBER! (yelling at them, not you. =)
Anyway, thanks for your reply. Not nearly enough conversation happening on Slash.
There are those who, in the wake of 9/11, felt that it was appropriate to point out all of our misdeeds around the world (and domestically) as being the source of this terrorism (let's not forget McVeigh and Waco). I am one of these people. HOWEVER....
It is shit like THIS that WE Americans slept through and let pass. When we have installed friendly dictators we did not tell our so-called leaders to piss off. These people do not work in a vacuum. They answer to us. And it is now, it is laws such as this which will go unchallenged which are the seeds of terrorism -- again, both here and abroad -- that will be sown into violent acts down the road.
So lets not deceive ourselves. If you don't like it, get off your ass and vote, protest, carry a sign, write a letter and most importantly talk to your friends and debate. WAY too much stifling of opinion these days and worst, justfied as being "patriotic."
And while I'm on a rant, I'll give an example. Our position in front of the UN was that Iraq was learning of the weapons team's destinations and playing a shell game with the WMD, right? We've now had unabated access to the entire country for a whole month with nobody left to move a goddamn thing. Where is it? Where are the WMD? Where is it, Bush? Where is it, Colon? Where is it, Blair? Thirty !@#$ing days in-country with thousands of military and private contractors looking for an OUNCE of banned weapons and nada. WMD requires infrastructre and we have half the deck in custody. Any of them would spill their guts in a second to get off light if there was anything to spill.
THIS IS NEWS. But do you see it? Do you see the reporters reporting? Do you see the investigators investigating? No. The country isn't stifled, my ass.
It is said that that in a democracy, people get the government they deserve. Well I hate to phrase it like this but the rest of the world has been getting the government we deserve. And now that the so-called chickens are coming home to roost in the form of Patriot I and II, everyone is bellyaching. Welcome to the disaster that has been the last 20 years.
Maybe this explains a few things. But whatever you do, don't pretend like the evedence wasn't there all along.
I wrote: "Besides, in my book if your last name is "Biddle," you're automatically an asshole. "
cribcage replied: "Maybe there's a joke, there, that I'm missing. But FYI, Charles Biddle is not only a spectacular and legendary jazz bassist; he's also the owner of Biddle's Jazz & Ribs in Montreal, one of the premier jazz clubs in the world."
geekee writes: "Without the RIAA's consent Apple couldn't legally do what they're doing, so the 2nd part of your comment makes no sense. "
They're an industry group, not the labels themselves. Their role is to represent their inteirests. I speak of the RIAA as a collective, which is to say "all the labels and their legal, legislative and PR efforts."
Besides, at best, kicking and screaming.
"Prove to me that Apple's sales wouldn't be double their current rate if p2p didn't exist and maybe I'll buy your 1st point."
Why the hell would I be concerned with whether you believe me or not? Look at the situation and come to your own conclusion. If you find my argument unpersuasive, don't agree. *shrug
Can someone please clue me in? I happened to look in the "older stuff" area and found this article. It doesn't appear on my front page. I'm logged in. Checked my settings, I have *nothing* whatsoever checked off in the "Exclude Stories from the Homepage" checkbox area. So I don't know how to make them actually appear.
Further, the things that I am apparently never seeing are things I'd never have checked off to not see.
From the article: "...said Howard Ende, a Drinker Biddle, and Reath attorney representing..."
How do legal firms wind up with names this stupid? There is the oft-mentioned Dewey, Cheatham and Howe but maybe in this case they should have gone for Bendham, Ohver and Quick.
Besides, in my book if your last name is "Biddle," you're automatically an asshole.
Oh, that's cute. In other words, he's admitting that writing these patches really eats into Microsoft's bottom line and all of us need to be more vigilant about using aftermarket protection -- at our own expense -- to help them as much as possible.
That's awesome. The bullshit that sells best is the stuff they wave right in front of your face where you can get a good strong whiff of it, as Carlin would say...
I think this is going to be a major "stye in the eye" of all those who claim that Napster et al are nothing more than common theves. When people are clammoring to buy a product that can be stolen fairly safely, I think that's saying something (read; most people don't mind anteing up for what they use).
Interestingly enough, this could VERY easily be viewed as a Very Good Thing by all the IP-based companies. Proof-positive that people will climb over each other to buy your product if you just let them but they'll obtain it by other means if you don't.
But will the RIAA & company view it as such? No. Why? Because what they want more than revenue is control. Because control, in their current model, is equivalent to a sustainable business. When they start loosing control of how the product can get to market, when they lose their status as the so-called gatekeepers of IP whose ass you must lick to be heard, they're screwed. You can't abuse people when you aren't the only game in town.
Then it becomes a buyer's market. Which, trust me, is the last thing these people want.
rol7805 writes: " What are the benefits of this besides tripping out? Do blind people learn to see art by smelling it? Do deaf people learn concerts as colors?"
Well...what if you could?
We make connections between things and these connections seem obvious. We "smell" watermellon and we know there is some around. If this makes sense then why would "hearing" watermellon -- assuming you could -- be any less valid (assuming the connection had some basis in fact and not merely random).
In other words, why must one know the presence of a thing by only n senses? Because that's all you have now?
Buck2 writes: "What are you talking about? If you are referencing extracting a few trained words in a "cocktail party" environment then you might be correct. The level of recognition necessary for automated wiretapping of any value is still far beyond anything currently available AFAICT."
So in the opening sentence you admit not knowing precisely what I'm speaking about and then continue to debunk...it,...whatever that happens to be.
ces writes: "Sorry, but wiretaps really ARE expensive and aren't all that common. The tinfoil hat crowd may think the NSA/CIA/FBI is monitoring all of their phone and computer communications but, really, there just isn't the manpower or the time. I've heard the paranoids claim there is "s00per-s33kr1t" voice reconition to do automated monitoring, but based on what I know about computers and linguistics this just isn't currently possible."
Post grad-level students were using 30-node (not a typo) AI nets to extract voices out of a noisy environment +30dB above the base level of the sought-after voices a few years ago. By this I mean circa 1998.
But you kind of focused on what I went out of my way to stress specifically wasn't the point and glossed over what I emphasized was the point. Again, I never said this report was flawed or skewed. I said that for someone to claim that release of information by the government is not, inof itself, prima facie evidence that the government in question has the best interest of its citizenry in mind. In our case I'd more readily suspect that they merely learned how to play the game.
Jim Buzbee writes: "Make what you will about this report, but consider this for a moment: In what other country in the world would this report ever see the light of day?"
Oo! I know! A country whose government realized a long time ago that they could fool 99% of the population -- and simultaneously marginlize the remainder as leftists -- by releasing just enough and/or falsified data to make people think this is evidence of an open government?
Am I right? Do I get a lolipop?
Iran-Contra taught me everything I needed to know about the government's willingness to not only lie to the people and Congress itself but to be proud of doing so. For those who don't remember all the details, this was Oliver North being directed by Ronald Reagan to sell arms to Iran (despite a Congressional ban) and using the proceeds to fund the South American Contras (which was also specifically banned by Congress by way of the Boland Amendment). The Contras were fighting the Sandinistas, a democratically-elected government that wasn't kissing our ass).
Don't get me wrong here... I'm not claiming this data is either falsified or incomplete. But claiming that because we've recieved something from the government is prima facie evidence that we have a government that puts us before it's own perceived interests is nothing short of hilarious.
catfood writes (quoting Spafford): "Regularly, there are postings of questions that can be answered by the newusers articles, clearly indicating that they aren't being read."
This is because when you're a newbie, it is sometimes impossible to (a) not know what the right question to ask in the first place and (b) realize that people have anticipated your question and if they have, where to find it. Further, people are generally not interested in weeding through a few dozen pages of text in order to find out their question is not covered in any of it. Much easier to simply ask. He's railing against human nature on that one.
But I understand, appreciate and agree with everything else.
catfood then adds: "Is Usenet still useful? Is it worth maintaining?"
Are you kidding? Have you been to alt.binaries.cd.image any time lately?
Oh! You mean for actual coversation. Well then... The answer to that is "hell no." I stopped around 1997 when I returned after a 18-month hiatus only to find the exact same people arguing. Worse, it was about the exact same thread.
I went to talk.religion.buddhism the other day for Christ' sake and read a few threads of people being complete assholes. I said to myself, "if this is the current state of the Buddhist group..."
An AC writes: "If a road doesn't have a "dead end", then it doesn't actually have an end, now does it? All roads either continue, or have two dead ends. (Usually, they just change their name part way along.)"
I think a dead-end is defined as an end for which you must actually turn back around to exit. Most roads either bend, terminate in a T (you can go either left or right) or blend into/merge with another road.
I would imagine roads with one dead-end are somewhat rare in the grand scheme of things. Roads with dead-ends at both sides are even rarer. And the one on Elm St. (not Main, someone corrected me) is the largest such one on the face of the planet.
Little-known fact: Manchester, New Hampshire, has the distinction of owning the longest street in the world that is capped at both ends by dead-ends. Main St. So sayeth Guiness. No joke.
A lot of people immediately ask "well how the hell do you get on or off of it then?" It has streets coming off it, but both ends are dead-ends.
Steve B writes: "Every single pyramid scam collapses at the point where B fails to convince C to buy into the scam -- and yet pyramid scams continue to arise and make money (for the original scammers)."
I don't see how this is so. The act of person B "buying in" to the pyramid scheme still benefits person A, who is providing the money for the spammer. All I'm saying here is that there must be profit (or the perception of possible profit) for the spammer to be paid to send spam. Stated another way, spammers aren't speculators. They get paid a lump sum to send some number of spam.
Anyway, the argument you've presented is a bit like saying that a linear motor (read; coil gun) isn't a motor because it is linear.
Further, even if for the sake of argument I am willing to grant you this special case, you've only invalidated the model for a small subset. It needent be the Grand Unified Theory of Spam Motivation to be useful. My gut (if you'll excuse the pun) instinct would be that pr0n, far and away, makes up the bulk of spam volume.
Steve B writes: "Spammers (the successful ones, anyway) get their money from the sleaze artists who pay them to vomit out advertisements for their dubious wares, not from the recipients of the flood."
Right. That's what I wrote. =)
To rephrase:
Person A: Has wares. Person B: Sends spam. Person C: Buys wares.
Step 1: A gives money to B to send info to C. Step 2: C then, ideally, buys from A.
The second step is the both the crux of the issue and impossible to not conclude because were it not for step 2, then step 1 would stop awful quick.
Therefore, spam is supply driven. People are inclined to look at spam as if there is no "pull." Were there no pull, there would be no spam. The point I am driving at is that the idea of "going after" the end-user is pointless and for obvious reasons this consortium has decided to go after the source of the spam rather than the end-user/consumer. Going after the consumer (read; their own customers) would be the same as what the government is doing in the War on (Some) Drugs.
Well...why? Why are over half of our prisons occupied with drug offenders? HALF. We don't have room for rapists and murderers but we have room for potheads?
This is kind of funny, the parallels between the spam wars and the so-called drug wars. I call say this because it is more appropriately labeled "war on some drugs." But that's another rant.
But isn't it interesting that they (meaning AOL et al) are going after the big offenders and not, say, THEMSELVES? After all, they are analagous to the street-level pushers of the spam. The big spammers ("kingpins") are the ones who create the spam and are the nexus for it's origin. The product is then filtered down until it reaches the local ISP of the client/user and finally handed to the target -- the customer.
You might object and say, "the difference between drugs and spam at this level is quite sharp because drug users want the drug. Spam receiptients do not." Well SOMEONE is buying. Spammers don't spam because they think their literature amounts to avant garde exercises in promotional haiku. They spam because someone pays them to. And someone pays them to because someone is buying. In other words, every nickel they spend on spam comes back to them dressed up as a dime. It's as simple as that. The only real difference between the two analogies when you consider it is that spam is less visible because of the inherant privacy and legality of spam. That's all. You still have a product, you still have a buyer and you still have a larger community that must deal with the fallout of that activity.
However, this is the point at which the analogy breaks.
The community normally goes after the street-level dealers and the users. Of course the dealers have little to lose because they're poor to begin with and there will always be someone to deal. Always. And users/buyers are always going to use/buy. So go after the source, right? This makes sense, right?
This would be like Microsoft and AOL suing themselves half to death and prosecuting the recipients of the email when they purchased wares sold by spam. Never mind the fact that buying after seeing a spam isn't illegal. That's not the point. The point is that even if it were, it is an obviously flawed and ineffective model. It just doesn't work.
Slashdot Mirror
RaboKrabekian writes:
"...quoth the regular Slashdot poster."
What makes you suspect that being active in an online community and being active in extra-computer activities are mutually exclusive?
redtail1 writes:
...real life! What's next? You'll be able to make the person in the game play a game ...about real life?
"You could use this tired Shatner-esque "Get a life!" argument to tell someone to stop doing anything you don't think is a worthwhile form of entertainment. Don't you have anything less mundane to do than attacking others? This isn't news."
What a bunch of crap. I'm pointing out the absurdity of playing a game that is an ever-more-accurate rendition of
Oh, the recursion hurts my head!
Yes, the fact that people are playing a game about mundane, everyday life is news. It's certainly a social commentary! And a lot more relevant than, say, Laci Peterson to your average Slashdot reader.
My general attitude toward just about anything people like doing is "hey, if it spins your needle, do it." Some people like to fish. I don't. Some people like to play with their PSX2 all day. I don't, more power to 'em though. Some people like to shove bits of metal into their face. I don't, but if that's something they're attracted to, I'm all for it. I'm a libertarian. Which is to say that I'm all for letting people do whatever the hell they want -- including stupid things -- so long as it does not harm me. This includes, for example, doing drugs.
But I'm not saying that people should not be able to play this game nor am I interested in stopping them. I'm lamenting the "why." You're trying to distort this into a "you don't like it so you want to bitch" discussion. I'm not biting.
I heard that Sims 2 was going to have full-immersion real-time rendering of a fairly complex physics model including lighting (ie, the ability to knock lights around and such, which would change the way the scene was drawn). I also heard that it would include not only some new never-before-seen haptic control devices and some new tactile feedback add-ons.
The best part is that this has already been released.
IT'S CALLED YOUR ACTUAL FUCKING LIFE. Go outside. Play with your kid or your dog for fucks sake. Ride a bike. Read a book. Wow! Look at those specular effects! Ooo! Ahhh!
I understand games where you get to be something else. But a game where you get to be a mundane human doing mundane things? Have you all gone positively fucking mad?
Vlad the Inhaler writes:
"...it just smells of paranoia."
My only real point, the only aspect I'm really interested in is the notion that there are those inside the government who are willing and able to lie to the American people and, worse, able to convince themselves that they're acting patriotically when they do so.
If we can agree on that aspect then I consider all the rest just cruft that can go either way.
BTW, love your username. =)
TamMan2000 writes:
" You couldn't be more right (I too have been dismissesed as unpatriotic...)! Moderators: Mod down if what he said was wrong, or offensive, not insightful."
I don't say this to flame you, really, I understand your intent. But I have loooong since stopped giving a crap about what my posts are rated.
People that read slashdot who are interested in more than the "me too" crowd will read the death-by-moderation entries. As for the rest of 'em, fuck 'em. I'm baffled by people posting anonymously to save their goddamn karma.
IT'S A NUMBER! (yelling at them, not you. =)
Anyway, thanks for your reply. Not nearly enough conversation happening on Slash.
There are those who, in the wake of 9/11, felt that it was appropriate to point out all of our misdeeds around the world (and domestically) as being the source of this terrorism (let's not forget McVeigh and Waco). I am one of these people. HOWEVER....
It is shit like THIS that WE Americans slept through and let pass. When we have installed friendly dictators we did not tell our so-called leaders to piss off. These people do not work in a vacuum. They answer to us. And it is now, it is laws such as this which will go unchallenged which are the seeds of terrorism -- again, both here and abroad -- that will be sown into violent acts down the road.
So lets not deceive ourselves. If you don't like it, get off your ass and vote, protest, carry a sign, write a letter and most importantly talk to your friends and debate. WAY too much stifling of opinion these days and worst, justfied as being "patriotic."
And while I'm on a rant, I'll give an example. Our position in front of the UN was that Iraq was learning of the weapons team's destinations and playing a shell game with the WMD, right? We've now had unabated access to the entire country for a whole month with nobody left to move a goddamn thing. Where is it? Where are the WMD? Where is it, Bush? Where is it, Colon? Where is it, Blair? Thirty !@#$ing days in-country with thousands of military and private contractors looking for an OUNCE of banned weapons and nada. WMD requires infrastructre and we have half the deck in custody. Any of them would spill their guts in a second to get off light if there was anything to spill.
THIS IS NEWS. But do you see it? Do you see the reporters reporting? Do you see the investigators investigating? No. The country isn't stifled, my ass.
It is said that that in a democracy, people get the government they deserve. Well I hate to phrase it like this but the rest of the world has been getting the government we deserve. And now that the so-called chickens are coming home to roost in the form of Patriot I and II, everyone is bellyaching. Welcome to the disaster that has been the last 20 years.
Maybe this explains a few things. But whatever you do, don't pretend like the evedence wasn't there all along.
I wrote:
...well then he gets a pass. He's ok.
"Besides, in my book if your last name is "Biddle," you're automatically an asshole. "
cribcage replied:
"Maybe there's a joke, there, that I'm missing. But FYI, Charles Biddle is not only a spectacular and legendary jazz bassist; he's also the owner of Biddle's Jazz & Ribs in Montreal, one of the premier jazz clubs in the world."
Oh.
geekee writes:
"Without the RIAA's consent Apple couldn't legally do what they're doing, so the 2nd part of your comment makes no sense. "
They're an industry group, not the labels themselves. Their role is to represent their inteirests. I speak of the RIAA as a collective, which is to say "all the labels and their legal, legislative and PR efforts."
Besides, at best, kicking and screaming.
"Prove to me that Apple's sales wouldn't be double their current rate if p2p didn't exist and maybe I'll buy your 1st point."
Why the hell would I be concerned with whether you believe me or not? Look at the situation and come to your own conclusion. If you find my argument unpersuasive, don't agree. *shrug
Thanks much, Only.
Hi to everyone who reads this.
Can someone please clue me in? I happened to look in the "older stuff" area and found this article. It doesn't appear on my front page. I'm logged in. Checked my settings, I have *nothing* whatsoever checked off in the "Exclude Stories from the Homepage" checkbox area. So I don't know how to make them actually appear.
Further, the things that I am apparently never seeing are things I'd never have checked off to not see.
Help?
Thanks in advance.
From the article:
"...said Howard Ende, a Drinker Biddle, and Reath attorney representing..."
How do legal firms wind up with names this stupid? There is the oft-mentioned Dewey, Cheatham and Howe but maybe in this case they should have gone for Bendham, Ohver and Quick.
Besides, in my book if your last name is "Biddle," you're automatically an asshole.
Oh, that's cute. In other words, he's admitting that writing these patches really eats into Microsoft's bottom line and all of us need to be more vigilant about using aftermarket protection -- at our own expense -- to help them as much as possible.
That's awesome. The bullshit that sells best is the stuff they wave right in front of your face where you can get a good strong whiff of it, as Carlin would say...
I think this is going to be a major "stye in the eye" of all those who claim that Napster et al are nothing more than common theves. When people are clammoring to buy a product that can be stolen fairly safely, I think that's saying something (read; most people don't mind anteing up for what they use).
Interestingly enough, this could VERY easily be viewed as a Very Good Thing by all the IP-based companies. Proof-positive that people will climb over each other to buy your product if you just let them but they'll obtain it by other means if you don't.
But will the RIAA & company view it as such? No. Why? Because what they want more than revenue is control. Because control, in their current model, is equivalent to a sustainable business. When they start loosing control of how the product can get to market, when they lose their status as the so-called gatekeepers of IP whose ass you must lick to be heard, they're screwed. You can't abuse people when you aren't the only game in town.
Then it becomes a buyer's market. Which, trust me, is the last thing these people want.
rol7805 writes:
...what if you could?
" What are the benefits of this besides tripping out? Do blind people learn to see art by smelling it? Do deaf people learn concerts as colors?"
Well
We make connections between things and these connections seem obvious. We "smell" watermellon and we know there is some around. If this makes sense then why would "hearing" watermellon -- assuming you could -- be any less valid (assuming the connection had some basis in fact and not merely random).
In other words, why must one know the presence of a thing by only n senses? Because that's all you have now?
Buck2 writes:
...it, ...whatever that happens to be.
"What are you talking about? If you are referencing extracting a few trained words in a "cocktail party" environment then you might be correct. The level of recognition necessary for automated wiretapping of any value is still far beyond anything currently available AFAICT."
So in the opening sentence you admit not knowing precisely what I'm speaking about and then continue to debunk
God, I love you people.
ces writes:
"Sorry, but wiretaps really ARE expensive and aren't all that common. The tinfoil hat crowd may think the NSA/CIA/FBI is monitoring all of their phone and computer communications but, really, there just isn't the manpower or the time. I've heard the paranoids claim there is "s00per-s33kr1t" voice reconition to do automated monitoring, but based on what I know about computers and linguistics this just isn't currently possible."
Post grad-level students were using 30-node (not a typo) AI nets to extract voices out of a noisy environment +30dB above the base level of the sought-after voices a few years ago. By this I mean circa 1998.
But you kind of focused on what I went out of my way to stress specifically wasn't the point and glossed over what I emphasized was the point. Again, I never said this report was flawed or skewed. I said that for someone to claim that release of information by the government is not, inof itself, prima facie evidence that the government in question has the best interest of its citizenry in mind. In our case I'd more readily suspect that they merely learned how to play the game.
Jim Buzbee writes:
"Make what you will about this report, but consider this for a moment: In what other country in the world would this report ever see the light of day?"
Oo! I know! A country whose government realized a long time ago that they could fool 99% of the population -- and simultaneously marginlize the remainder as leftists -- by releasing just enough and/or falsified data to make people think this is evidence of an open government?
Am I right? Do I get a lolipop?
Iran-Contra taught me everything I needed to know about the government's willingness to not only lie to the people and Congress itself but to be proud of doing so. For those who don't remember all the details, this was Oliver North being directed by Ronald Reagan to sell arms to Iran (despite a Congressional ban) and using the proceeds to fund the South American Contras (which was also specifically banned by Congress by way of the Boland Amendment). The Contras were fighting the Sandinistas, a democratically-elected government that wasn't kissing our ass).
Don't get me wrong here... I'm not claiming this data is either falsified or incomplete. But claiming that because we've recieved something from the government is prima facie evidence that we have a government that puts us before it's own perceived interests is nothing short of hilarious.
Who gives a shit if you're on-topic. We're talking. =)
"Welcome to Woostah! That'll be a dollah twentee fyve." - Tollbooth Willie
catfood writes (quoting Spafford):
"Regularly, there are postings of questions that can be answered by the newusers articles, clearly indicating that they aren't being read."
This is because when you're a newbie, it is sometimes impossible to (a) not know what the right question to ask in the first place and (b) realize that people have anticipated your question and if they have, where to find it. Further, people are generally not interested in weeding through a few dozen pages of text in order to find out their question is not covered in any of it. Much easier to simply ask. He's railing against human nature on that one.
But I understand, appreciate and agree with everything else.
catfood then adds:
"Is Usenet still useful? Is it worth maintaining?"
Are you kidding? Have you been to alt.binaries.cd.image any time lately?
Oh! You mean for actual coversation. Well then... The answer to that is "hell no." I stopped around 1997 when I returned after a 18-month hiatus only to find the exact same people arguing. Worse, it was about the exact same thread.
I went to talk.religion.buddhism the other day for Christ' sake and read a few threads of people being complete assholes. I said to myself, "if this is the current state of the Buddhist group..."
An AC writes:
"If a road doesn't have a "dead end", then it doesn't actually have an end, now does it? All roads either continue, or have two dead ends. (Usually, they just change their name part way along.)"
I think a dead-end is defined as an end for which you must actually turn back around to exit. Most roads either bend, terminate in a T (you can go either left or right) or blend into/merge with another road.
I would imagine roads with one dead-end are somewhat rare in the grand scheme of things. Roads with dead-ends at both sides are even rarer. And the one on Elm St. (not Main, someone corrected me) is the largest such one on the face of the planet.
Useless, I'll grant you, but true nonetheless. =)
djhertz writes:
" Main Street? I thought it was Elm street in NH. All the 'kids' used to cruise up and down Elm for that reason I thought."
Ah, shit. I did write Main, didn't I? Yes, it's Elm.
I suck.
Little-known fact: Manchester, New Hampshire, has the distinction of owning the longest street in the world that is capped at both ends by dead-ends. Main St. So sayeth Guiness. No joke.
A lot of people immediately ask "well how the hell do you get on or off of it then?" It has streets coming off it, but both ends are dead-ends.
How is that for a useless bit of info?
Steve B writes:
"Every single pyramid scam collapses at the point where B fails to convince C to buy into the scam -- and yet pyramid scams continue to arise and make money (for the original scammers)."
I don't see how this is so. The act of person B "buying in" to the pyramid scheme still benefits person A, who is providing the money for the spammer. All I'm saying here is that there must be profit (or the perception of possible profit) for the spammer to be paid to send spam. Stated another way, spammers aren't speculators. They get paid a lump sum to send some number of spam.
Anyway, the argument you've presented is a bit like saying that a linear motor (read; coil gun) isn't a motor because it is linear.
Further, even if for the sake of argument I am willing to grant you this special case, you've only invalidated the model for a small subset. It needent be the Grand Unified Theory of Spam Motivation to be useful. My gut (if you'll excuse the pun) instinct would be that pr0n, far and away, makes up the bulk of spam volume.
Steve B writes:
...why? Why are over half of our prisons occupied with drug offenders? HALF. We don't have room for rapists and murderers but we have room for potheads?
"Spammers (the successful ones, anyway) get their money from the sleaze artists who pay them to vomit out advertisements for their dubious wares, not from the recipients of the flood."
Right. That's what I wrote. =)
To rephrase:
Person A: Has wares.
Person B: Sends spam.
Person C: Buys wares.
Step 1: A gives money to B to send info to C.
Step 2: C then, ideally, buys from A.
The second step is the both the crux of the issue and impossible to not conclude because were it not for step 2, then step 1 would stop awful quick.
Therefore, spam is supply driven. People are inclined to look at spam as if there is no "pull." Were there no pull, there would be no spam. The point I am driving at is that the idea of "going after" the end-user is pointless and for obvious reasons this consortium has decided to go after the source of the spam rather than the end-user/consumer. Going after the consumer (read; their own customers) would be the same as what the government is doing in the War on (Some) Drugs.
Well
This is kind of funny, the parallels between the spam wars and the so-called drug wars. I call say this because it is more appropriately labeled "war on some drugs." But that's another rant.
But isn't it interesting that they (meaning AOL et al) are going after the big offenders and not, say, THEMSELVES? After all, they are analagous to the street-level pushers of the spam. The big spammers ("kingpins") are the ones who create the spam and are the nexus for it's origin. The product is then filtered down until it reaches the local ISP of the client/user and finally handed to the target -- the customer.
You might object and say, "the difference between drugs and spam at this level is quite sharp because drug users want the drug. Spam receiptients do not." Well SOMEONE is buying. Spammers don't spam because they think their literature amounts to avant garde exercises in promotional haiku. They spam because someone pays them to. And someone pays them to because someone is buying. In other words, every nickel they spend on spam comes back to them dressed up as a dime. It's as simple as that. The only real difference between the two analogies when you consider it is that spam is less visible because of the inherant privacy and legality of spam. That's all. You still have a product, you still have a buyer and you still have a larger community that must deal with the fallout of that activity.
However, this is the point at which the analogy breaks.
The community normally goes after the street-level dealers and the users. Of course the dealers have little to lose because they're poor to begin with and there will always be someone to deal. Always. And users/buyers are always going to use/buy. So go after the source, right? This makes sense, right?
So why are over half (55%) of all federal prisoners drug offenders?
This would be like Microsoft and AOL suing themselves half to death and prosecuting the recipients of the email when they purchased wares sold by spam. Never mind the fact that buying after seeing a spam isn't illegal. That's not the point. The point is that even if it were, it is an obviously flawed and ineffective model. It just doesn't work.