It could be possible to make a steady fortune from pump'n'dump.
Here's how it would work - Write an app to model the behaviour of pump'n'dump stocks. Each time a pump spam comes in, enter the ticker symbol into the app. The app would then pull the current quote and some recent history through a yahoo finance API, then monitor the price in the background. The app would also need the original email, so it can perform some classification based on email headers, type of spam (image, text etc), time of day, sender IP address and subnet etc.
When the database starts to populate, set up a few genetic algos to paper trade.
It's possible that the genetic algos, before long, will start generating reliably good forecasts and recommendations, eg "buy immediately, sell if it drops 1%, sell if it gains 2.2%", and the paper trading will start heading clear north. That would be the time to jump on with real $$.
When the app is tuned well, someone with a few tens of thousands could make a reliable 50% return or more per year, by taking small salami slices from a large number of pumped stocks. Sadly, these slim margins would exclude smaller investors, since the trade fees would eat up all the gain.
It all depends on when you receive each given pump spam. If you get it early in the mail-out cycle, you can win, just so long as you get a return and sell well clear of the dump. If you get it late in the mail-out, you could short it instead. If you can't reliably determine where you are in the spamming mailout cycle, the returns would be tighter or nonexistent. The app could guess your position in the mailout cycle by determining how much growth happens, and how long it takes for the dump, after you receive the pump.
< For someone who has actually studied religions, I deem it ill-advised to continue describing any contrary policy about how to use a legal framework as "religion"
It's obvious you've never been in an IRC channel during a flamewar on vi versus emacs, or gtk+ versus qt etc.
FYI, the word 'religion' has grown a new usage, largely in technical circles, to describe a dogmatic adherence to a choice or set of choices of software tools or components, where the adherent steadfastly refuses to be 'converted' to another, possibly superior set of choices despite even the strongest evidence in favour of making the switch.
I've never seen such a thorough and methodical compilation of real-world evidence in favour of F[L]OSS.
However, the 'proprietary vs FLOSS' debate is a battle which each day seems to more resemble the 'biblical literalism versus evolution' debate. Just like the biblical literalists who hang on to their denials of evolution, despite the evidence, there'll be those who'll never be convinced about the benefits of FLOSS, and will always be there as suckers to sustain the likes of Microsoft.
Kinda puts an ironic twist on the old adage: "To those who believe, no proof is necessary. To those who disbelieve, no proof is possible."
Vivaldi's 'Winter' concerto - perfect choice of backing on the YouTube video presentation - highlighting the fact that free speech is presently suffering one very cold winter.
Hopefully the new Congress (pushed by enough pissed-off individuals and lobby groups) might bring back the sweet chirping of birds and fresh green buds on the trees of creativity.
Anyone want to speculate that RIAA might start taking action against credit card companies who process payments to websites such as AllOfMP3.com?
If AllOfMP3.com gets shut down permanently, another cheap MP3 site can just spring up in its place.
But if credit card companies are ordered to block payments to such sites, and regularly updated about each new naughty 'infringing' site, that just might start to seriously disrupt the business models of such sites.
archaeologists also discovered: hyroglyphs depicting a story called 'The Antikythera Mechanism is for Porn'.
Well, yes - in fact if you put a quill into the angled hole in the smaller cog next to the main one, and turn the handle, it inscribes the goatse.cx image...
She had a court order against her to turn over the disk. FFS!
What she should have done is:
do a disk search for all possible offending files
delete the offending files from her existing disk, uninstall the p2p apps and empty the recycle bin
buy a new drive and format it
have both drives plugged in, and do a file-by-file copy from the old disk to the new one
surrender the new drive
That would have maximised her chances, unless the app recorded downloads in the losedows registry. I've deliberately limited the above measures to those within the grasp of an average skilled PC user.
Oh, and she would have had an 'I stopped using that program before I even knew about legal action' defense.
I wish the Cruz family the best of success with their legal actions against the police. This will be an interesting test of the US Constitution and judiciary.
A GUI literate programming editor - can import sources in many languages, and break them down into classes/methods/functions. You then have ability to create all manner of 'views' of the code.
To fight terrorism effectively, what the UK needs is mandatory RFID implants in all existing residents and newborn babies, where the RFID chip sends back a key into a central database containing fingerprints, nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences, 3-D facial image and iris scans. RFID scanners monitoring movements of all people would need to be installed on every street, in every shop, home and workplace.
Next, mandatory RFID chips in all banknotes, and a law that cash cannot be handed from one person to another without registering the transfer (which can be done conveniently at government-installed ATM-like or EFTPOS-like machines on every street and in every shop) which scan the cash and the ID cards of giver and receiver and register the transfer.
Given the 10k-100k endurance of the flash memory, even the act of booting up a machine with a main flash drive, or starting an application on it, is going to eat endurance cycles.
Worse if you runs Windows, where you can't even scratch yourself without causing a write to the registry. You'll find your 32GB drive shrinking over the months towards zilch.
Guess it's probably ok for portable use, where mechanical drives have a risk of sudden failure. And one can always buy a new flash drive and copy over the data when the old one gets too exhausted.
1) Professor Alice - teaching Economics 101 at College A. Retired KPMG executive, denies human contribution to global warming, attacks consumer protection, antitrust etc laws, advocates absolutely minimal government, no welfare...
2) Professor Bob - teaching Economics 101 at College B. Active member of ACLU, Part time EFF volunteer, longtime consumer advocate, successful small business owner, teaches the importance of balancing business expediency with human and social impacts.
Both professors are reported to this almumni group.
They receive very similar treatment and criticism from this group.
And in other news, veterinarians observe the spontaneous mutation of porcine front limbs into large powerful wings...
This law would have the exact opposite of the desired effect:
Parents are presently concerned about kids accessing unwholesome stuff - in the absence of government/isp-level censoring, many parents are actually doing the unthinkable - Spending Time With Their Kids
Kids love breaking rules, so the possibility of accessing illicit material will become more attractive
Two new words will be added to kids' vocabularies: CGI and proxy
For every cgi web proxy the ISPs detect and block, two more will spring up in its place.
Meanwhile, parents and teachers will doze off in a false sense of security that Big Nanny State is keeping their kids safe, while the kids meanwhile are actually seeing stuff that's as bad as ever, maybe worse, with much less parental oversight and guidance than before.
The only, repeat only way to police what kids see on the net is to have a human in the loop in real time, for every kid. And we could be waiting a while for that to happen.
Well, I guess the developers of Freenet, I2P and other anonymising networks will be grateful, as support, userbase and donations surge.
You should have planted the rootkits, trojans, xploits, backdoors, accounts salami slices, cron'ed funds transfers to anonymous overseas accounts etc long before you gave notice!
For many years, I've been a staunch supporter of the [L]GPL, as a playing-field leveller in the world of software.
However, I've taken advantage of the right to use GPL code in delivering web services, or other services across other client/server connections.
If this new principle comes in, we'll see the GPL hopping across server-client boundaries, just as bird flu is presently threatening to jump the species barrier and create a human pandemic.
I urge all software authors to think very carefully before adopting GPLv3, especially if your software is likely to be used in a server framework.
Unless I've misunderstood the concept, this new provision, if implemented (say) in MySQL, would require a website to disclose all its source code to anyone who can access it.
I wonder if it would be legal to stick up a website EULA, and require visitors to click onto it, and have provisions in this EULA whereby site visitors waive all GPLv3-specific claims before they are allowed to access the main site content.
Authors - if you really want to truncate your potential userbase, revoke your [L]GPLv2 licenses and switch to v3.
Set up a political blog intended for your political opponents to read.
Host it overseas under a false name, and be sure to use Tor when uploading stuff onto it
Populate it with political material, designed for repeat visits
Replace all full-stop characters on the page with img tags for child pr0n, sized to 1x1
A few days later, change the IMG tags back to full stops
A few days after that, rework the entire site to make it look like a typical pr0n site
Send emails to law enforcement agencies reporting the IP addresses of the visitors, and complaining that these people used false credit card info when accessing a legitimate adult site
Get a carton of beer, and gather round CNN, ABC, or Fox etc with a few friends and wait for the scandal to break
It's crossed my mind to run a Tor node myself, but I do have some questions/concerns.
Particularly related to situations where my node ends up last in the chain for given http hits.
From a low enforcement point of view, I am accountable for any and all outbound http hits from my network.
At worst case, if my node does the actual http hits to sites like www.some-secret-kiddie-pr0n-site.com or www.some-phishing-victims-bank.com, then in all likelihood I'll be getting a visit from the police.
In such a case, there's no acceptable outcome:
If I encrypt my disks and refuse to hand over keys, I'm looking to do time for accessing the sites.
If I tell cops about the Tor node, and mount a 'plausible deniability' defense, there's the possibility of 'accessory' or 'contributory negligence/liability' charges.
Even if I beat all these charges and escape conviction, I still have to suffer:
stress from police harassment
time wasted in police interviews and court appearances
loss of my PC for a year or more, while computer forensics cops go through my hard disks with a fine tooth comb
From this Bill it seems that an important legal principle is being established - when code written by Alice runs on Bob's computer, then Alice has the same accountability for her (code's) actions that she would have if she were physically allowed into Bob's home or office.
If Alice was an interior decorator who, on gaining access to a client's home, did stuff like:
Changed all the speed-dial numbers on the telephone
Installed listening/recording devices in all the rooms
Modified the TV/video so it overlays ads of her choice over the top of programs (in addition to the regular ads screened by the station)
Duplicated door keys and alarm codes and sold these to others
etc
then Alice would be doing hard time at Club Fed or Her Majesty's.
So why should it be any different with software?
When someone runs your software on their computer, they have admitted you into their sovereign private space, and you have a responsibility to behave in a manner respecting this.
Well done, Washington. I note also that the Australian Democrats party has introduced similar legislation, which God-willing will also pass.
Privacy is a privilege temporarily granted by the State in times of peace, and may be rescinded at any time the State deems appropriate.
The appointment of a Gator executive is a perfect fit.
Computer users in the US be warned - any attempt to remove the new HomeSecure WebAssist software from your PC will be viewed as an act of terrorism. You will be arrested as an enemy combatant and incarcerated at Guatanemo Bay.
Software is machinery built in logic which can perform useful tasks, manage information, save lives, entertain, facilitate communication...
In contrast, unrestricted patents have no intrinsic usefulness, rather than the imposition of an artificial scarcity.
Unlimited-scope patents (eg patents on software concepts) could be useful if they actually facilitated innovation.
I can actually see how a non-technical lawmaker could imagine a developer tackling some design/coding issues, entering a few search words into a patent company website, and getting pages of concepts which this developer then uses to write a better program, or finish the task in less time.
However, I could see the Republican Party converting en masse to Islam before this happens.
This sweeping regime of unrestricted, increasingly fine-grained patents amounts to an historically unprecedented privatisation of the Astral Plane (which I define here as the space of all possible realities, imaginings, concepts, ideas).
Up till now, the Astral Plane has been traditionally honoured as a Public Common, except where expressed into the physical plane in concrete tangible form (eg specific text, music, machinery etc).
If my own (small) country makes any moves to legislate this Astral Plane land-grab, I'll do everything I can - even agitating for national strikes etc - to stop it.
Slashdot Mirror
It could be possible to make a steady fortune from pump'n'dump.
Here's how it would work - Write an app to model the behaviour of pump'n'dump stocks. Each time a pump spam comes in, enter the ticker symbol into the app. The app would then pull the current quote and some recent history through a yahoo finance API, then monitor the price in the background. The app would also need the original email, so it can perform some classification based on email headers, type of spam (image, text etc), time of day, sender IP address and subnet etc.
When the database starts to populate, set up a few genetic algos to paper trade.
It's possible that the genetic algos, before long, will start generating reliably good forecasts and recommendations, eg "buy immediately, sell if it drops 1%, sell if it gains 2.2%", and the paper trading will start heading clear north. That would be the time to jump on with real $$.
When the app is tuned well, someone with a few tens of thousands could make a reliable 50% return or more per year, by taking small salami slices from a large number of pumped stocks. Sadly, these slim margins would exclude smaller investors, since the trade fees would eat up all the gain.
It all depends on when you receive each given pump spam. If you get it early in the mail-out cycle, you can win, just so long as you get a return and sell well clear of the dump. If you get it late in the mail-out, you could short it instead. If you can't reliably determine where you are in the spamming mailout cycle, the returns would be tighter or nonexistent. The app could guess your position in the mailout cycle by determining how much growth happens, and how long it takes for the dump, after you receive the pump.
< For someone who has actually studied religions, I deem it ill-advised to continue describing any contrary policy about how to use a legal framework as "religion"
It's obvious you've never been in an IRC channel during a flamewar on vi versus emacs, or gtk+ versus qt etc.
FYI, the word 'religion' has grown a new usage, largely in technical circles, to describe a dogmatic adherence to a choice or set of choices of software tools or components, where the adherent steadfastly refuses to be 'converted' to another, possibly superior set of choices despite even the strongest evidence in favour of making the switch.
I've never seen such a thorough and methodical compilation of real-world evidence in favour of F[L]OSS.
However, the 'proprietary vs FLOSS' debate is a battle which each day seems to more resemble the 'biblical literalism versus evolution' debate. Just like the biblical literalists who hang on to their denials of evolution, despite the evidence, there'll be those who'll never be convinced about the benefits of FLOSS, and will always be there as suckers to sustain the likes of Microsoft.
Kinda puts an ironic twist on the old adage: "To those who believe, no proof is necessary. To those who disbelieve, no proof is possible."
Vivaldi's 'Winter' concerto - perfect choice of backing on the YouTube video presentation - highlighting the fact that free speech is presently suffering one very cold winter.
Hopefully the new Congress (pushed by enough pissed-off individuals and lobby groups) might bring back the sweet chirping of birds and fresh green buds on the trees of creativity.
Or is this the start of another Ice Age?
Anyone want to speculate that RIAA might start taking action against credit card companies who process payments to websites such as AllOfMP3.com?
If AllOfMP3.com gets shut down permanently, another cheap MP3 site can just spring up in its place.
But if credit card companies are ordered to block payments to such sites, and regularly updated about each new naughty 'infringing' site, that just might start to seriously disrupt the business models of such sites.
That makes sense of why the American presence is still not appreciated.
She had a court order against her to turn over the disk. FFS!
What she should have done is:
That would have maximised her chances, unless the app recorded downloads in the losedows registry. I've deliberately limited the above measures to those within the grasp of an average skilled PC user.
Oh, and she would have had an 'I stopped using that program before I even knew about legal action' defense.
> no instructions for Safari or Opera.
Maybe you'd like to contribute some
Police are fighting terrorism and crime, so therefore are above any kind of accountability?
No way!
Next, we could see the US military operating secret overseas prisons!
I wish the Cruz family the best of success with their legal actions against the police. This will be an interesting test of the US Constitution and judiciary.
Leo - http://leo.sourceforge.net/
A GUI literate programming editor - can import sources in many languages, and break them down into classes/methods/functions.
You then have ability to create all manner of 'views' of the code.
Damn, where are my mod points when I need them!
To fight terrorism effectively, what the UK needs is mandatory RFID implants in all existing residents and newborn babies, where the RFID chip sends back a key into a central database containing fingerprints, nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences, 3-D facial image and iris scans. RFID scanners monitoring movements of all people would need to be installed on every street, in every shop, home and workplace.
Next, mandatory RFID chips in all banknotes, and a law that cash cannot be handed from one person to another without registering the transfer (which can be done conveniently at government-installed ATM-like or EFTPOS-like machines on every street and in every shop) which scan the cash and the ID cards of giver and receiver and register the transfer.
Yep, that'll stop the terrorists. Sure.
Given the 10k-100k endurance of the flash memory, even the act of booting up a machine with a main flash drive, or starting an application on it, is going to eat endurance cycles.
Worse if you runs Windows, where you can't even scratch yourself without causing a write to the registry. You'll find your 32GB drive shrinking over the months towards zilch.
Guess it's probably ok for portable use, where mechanical drives have a risk of sudden failure. And one can always buy a new flash drive and copy over the data when the old one gets too exhausted.
1) Professor Alice - teaching Economics 101 at College A. Retired KPMG executive, denies human contribution to global warming, attacks consumer protection, antitrust etc laws, advocates absolutely minimal government, no welfare...
2) Professor Bob - teaching Economics 101 at College B. Active member of ACLU, Part time EFF volunteer, longtime consumer advocate, successful small business owner, teaches the importance of balancing business expediency with human and social impacts.
Both professors are reported to this almumni group.
They receive very similar treatment and criticism from this group.
And in other news, veterinarians observe the spontaneous mutation of porcine front limbs into large powerful wings...
The only, repeat only way to police what kids see on the net is to have a human in the loop in real time, for every kid. And we could be waiting a while for that to happen.
Well, I guess the developers of Freenet, I2P and other anonymising networks will be grateful, as support, userbase and donations surge.
You should have planted the rootkits, trojans, xploits, backdoors, accounts salami slices, cron'ed funds transfers to anonymous overseas accounts etc long before you gave notice!
For many years, I've been a staunch supporter of the [L]GPL, as a playing-field leveller in the world of software.
However, I've taken advantage of the right to use GPL code in delivering web services, or other services across other client/server connections.
If this new principle comes in, we'll see the GPL hopping across server-client boundaries, just as bird flu is presently threatening to jump the species barrier and create a human pandemic.
I urge all software authors to think very carefully before adopting GPLv3, especially if your software is likely to be used in a server framework.
Unless I've misunderstood the concept, this new provision, if implemented (say) in MySQL, would require a website to disclose all its source code to anyone who can access it.
I wonder if it would be legal to stick up a website EULA, and require visitors to click onto it, and have provisions in this EULA whereby site visitors waive all GPLv3-specific claims before they are allowed to access the main site content.
Authors - if you really want to truncate your potential userbase, revoke your [L]GPLv2 licenses and switch to v3.
is one for freenet:<uri> URLs.
A Firefox plugin for supponting such URLs would be a huge boost for freenet.
www.freenetproject.org
...can't regenerate the Wallabies
Particularly related to situations where my node ends up last in the chain for given http hits.
From a low enforcement point of view, I am accountable for any and all outbound http hits from my network.
At worst case, if my node does the actual http hits to sites like www.some-secret-kiddie-pr0n-site.com or www.some-phishing-victims-bank.com, then in all likelihood I'll be getting a visit from the police.
In such a case, there's no acceptable outcome:
If I encrypt my disks and refuse to hand over keys, I'm looking to do time for accessing the sites.
If I tell cops about the Tor node, and mount a 'plausible deniability' defense, there's the possibility of 'accessory' or 'contributory negligence/liability' charges.
Even if I beat all these charges and escape conviction, I still have to suffer:
- stress from police harassment
- time wasted in police interviews and court appearances
- loss of my PC for a year or more, while computer forensics cops go through my hard disks with a fine tooth comb
None of these outcomes are very appealing.Any thoughts on this?
If Alice was an interior decorator who, on gaining access to a client's home, did stuff like:
- Changed all the speed-dial numbers on the telephone
- Installed listening/recording devices in all the rooms
- Modified the TV/video so it overlays ads of her choice over the top of programs (in addition to the regular ads screened by the station)
- Duplicated door keys and alarm codes and sold these to others
- etc
then Alice would be doing hard time at Club Fed or Her Majesty's.So why should it be any different with software?
When someone runs your software on their computer, they have admitted you into their sovereign private space, and you have a responsibility to behave in a manner respecting this. Well done, Washington. I note also that the Australian Democrats party has introduced similar legislation, which God-willing will also pass.
Privacy is a privilege temporarily granted by the State in times of peace, and may be rescinded at any time the State deems appropriate.
The appointment of a Gator executive is a perfect fit.
Computer users in the US be warned - any attempt to remove the new HomeSecure WebAssist software from your PC will be viewed as an act of terrorism. You will be arrested as an enemy combatant and incarcerated at Guatanemo Bay.
Software is machinery built in logic which can perform useful tasks, manage information, save lives, entertain, facilitate communication...
In contrast, unrestricted patents have no intrinsic usefulness, rather than the imposition of an artificial scarcity.
Unlimited-scope patents (eg patents on software concepts) could be useful if they actually facilitated innovation.
I can actually see how a non-technical lawmaker could imagine a developer tackling some design/coding issues, entering a few search words into a patent company website, and getting pages of concepts which this developer then uses to write a better program, or finish the task in less time.
However, I could see the Republican Party converting en masse to Islam before this happens.
This sweeping regime of unrestricted, increasingly fine-grained patents amounts to an historically unprecedented privatisation of the Astral Plane (which I define here as the space of all possible realities, imaginings, concepts, ideas).
Up till now, the Astral Plane has been traditionally honoured as a Public Common, except where expressed into the physical plane in concrete tangible form (eg specific text, music, machinery etc).
If my own (small) country makes any moves to legislate this Astral Plane land-grab, I'll do everything I can - even agitating for national strikes etc - to stop it.