I can't tell if you're sincerely that stupid, or you just have to break anything you touch. You could be some kind of contrarian troll rather than a simple cretin.
As usual,/. fails badly to capture the richness of reality. You aren't worth a "foe" designation, but there isn't any flag for "ultra-fool".
I concur with the "political stunt" assessment. Lieberman knows his residual relevance is highly limited. The Democrats are being polite to him based on his seniority, but mostly because it's politically convenient to have parliamentary control over the Senate. If one there was one more Republican senator, many people believe Lieberman would become an official Republican the next day--and he would expect to be suitably rewarded for giving them the majority.
As it stands, after this coming election Lieberman will be persona non grata and politically irrelevant to everyone. Kind of a shame. From the party's V-P nominee to nothing, and it isn't even his fault. At this point I personally dismiss him as a crazed and unprincipled egotist of the worst stripe, but in 2000 I think he would have done a good job--under the rational control of Al Gore. As V-P, Lieberman could have gone to Israel and really pushed for a reasonable peace settlement without anyone accusing him of being an anti-Semite. Instead, look at the incredible mess...
Simple answer to your lengthy spiel is that I use many search engines and compare the results. Still quite a lot of competition in search. Google consistently provides the results that seem the most useful and balanced--but that may change. So far Google seems to be retaining their top position at least partly by merit.
I actually don't approve of Google's purchase of Doubleclick, but I have yet to see any evidence of abuse there. Just on principle I would even say that no company should be encouraged to purchase any competing company. It would be good if the tax code was strongly biased in favor of divestitures and against acquisitions. Creating more and smaller companies rarely reduces our freedoms, and smaller companies commit fewer and smaller abuses.
The rest of your spiel was vapid fears. Have you thought about going into American politics? The neo-GOP will need to recruit a fresh crop in a couple of months.
Some other mods or maybe powerful editors decided to remod it insightful, but you're right about the anonymous censorship on/. being harmful. I think that is the #1 problem that is pretty steadily driving good posters away and/. into the ground. The original idea of moderation wasn't too bad, but the gaming and abuse of the system, and especially of the anonymity of the system has destroyed its original value.
Waste of breath to repeat the dead suggestion, but I thought they should make it multidimensional and remove the anonymity from negative mods. It doesn't have to be universal, but you should know who gave you the bad mods so you would know if you have some basis to complain about them. The multi-dimensional thing would be something like dimensions for politeness, sincerity, accuracy, funny, and usefulness. Rather than a troll rating, a troll would be a poster whose posts tend to get negative politeness and negative sincerity ratings. The next stage of the idea was to extend the ratings of the posts to the posters themselves, including extra mod points for a posters highly righted dimensions. For example, if you have a big +funny rating, you would become empowered to award two mod points for funny, and if you have a big -polite rating, you might lose your ability to accuse other posters of being impolite.
I haven't figured out where I would fit. I'm in the increasingly intolerant of fools category, complicated by the fact that I'm increasingly convinced that we (including myself) are all more or less foolish. I think that would put me low in the funny and polite dimensions...
I acknowledge that Google is becoming potentially threatening--but so far they do not have the track record of abuse that Microsoft has. Do you care to cite any evidence of your concern? Actually, insofar as Google supports competing advertising in an impartial way, they are mostly acting to facilitate competition. However, I think Google's main service in support of competition is providing access to non-advertising information about the real value of products. To date, Google generates almost no content of their own, and their key service is linking us to other people's content.
I think you just don't want to talk about Microsoft. Why are you so eager to change the subject?
Basically Microsoft is using their cash clout to destroy the value of other companies. If you don't sell out when they ask nicely, then they'll just make you a worse offer once the turmoil sets in. Microsoft figures they asked nicely, eh?
Other times when their nice asking was refused, Microsoft just created an approximately equivalent service or product and swallowed the losses until the original company was destroyed. I think Palm was probably the best example of that, though it's quite a stretch to call Windows Mobile even vaguely similar. (Actually, in that case they did most of the damage by using advertising to drive Palm away from their original objectives.)
I love freedom and democracy, and therefore I conclude I must hate Microsoft. Freedom is about informed choices among real options, not limited to choosing today's flavor of Microsoft's poisonous cruft. They should cut Microsoft into four or five pieces and force them to compete against each other and against Linux and Apple. That would give us real choices and lead to much faster development of much better software. It would also prevent any part of Microsoft from getting so fat as to go around destroying other companies and other markets, Yahoo and online advertising merely being the latest targets.
I've only been using FF3 on Ubuntu 8.04, and it has been terrible on both of the machines I've used it on. Basically it has long and short hangs and random crashes. Well, not completely random, actually. Some of the problems are pretty clear related to JavaScript, and/. and Gmail are two of the most affected. I have a number of other machines to upgrade, but not yet, please.
I really feel that the Ubuntu people are losing it, and the failure of their project will be a major black eye for Linux. It's a good idea, but they are screwing it up by not figuring out how to manage their initial success. One example is relying on mirrors rather than BitTorrent as the default download. Some of the mirrors must be okay--but I sure have heck finding them. Certainly not the mirrors selected by their testing procedures for the best mirror.
Overall, I'd guess that their problem is that they are trying to be too aggressive about supporting new features for too many platforms. It's not like Apple's situation, where they can control the number of supported configurations. In theory, you'd suppose that Ubuntu could offset it by better testing, but in practice, their testing is evidently quite slipshod--and the result seems to be that each new release is worse than the previous one, though it has a few new bells and whistles. In conclusion, I can no longer recommend Ubuntu as a beginner's distro, and I'm thinking about switching to something else... My own employer is basically a RHEL shop, though I've never liked it much.
Sorry, but I think you're off on a pretty wild tangent as to what the Cell processor is really about... However, I don't feel that I'm in a position to do more than to refer you to the publicly available documentation. There's quite a bit available about the architecture of the Cell and the interfaces to external processors and resources.
In some ways it might help to think about the Cell in comparison with a CDC 6600--but they probably stopped production on those before the average/. reader was born. Seems to be a relatively young crowd around here.
It's called projection. Whatever they secretly know to be their own worst attributes, they turn it around and project those accusations on their opponents. Two glaring examples from the current case in point:
1. Dubya accusing Gore of dishonesty and hypocrisy.
2. Dubya claiming Gore was desperate to become the president and would do absolutely anything.
Lots of other examples, but this is already an obsolete thread... The/. halflife is about 8 hours.
A coprocessor for what? You do realize that each Cell already has 8 SPEs attached to it, and it's designed to be tightly paired with another Cell? It already delivers kind of ridiculous bang for the buck, so I'm curious what you're asking for.
(Usual disclaimer: I'm in the IBM food chain, but I don't speak for anyone and I don't know anything.)
I think they should have put it in the how-sweet-it-is department, not the i-thought-that-guy-was-done department. That should be a special circle of Hades reserved for the Darl McBride guy formerly over at the former SCO.
On the news itself, wonderful. However, it's not enough to go after the big fish. We need to destroy the little spammers, too. Basically, the spammer sends out 100 or 1,000 spams hoping to find one sucker--but I think we could really hurt the spammers if we made it really easy for any of the first 99 non-suckers to slam the money window in the spammer's face before the sucker can even try to throw money through it. Here is my currently pending suggestion on how to do that:
How to make Gmail the spam target of absolute last resort.
The goal of this suggestion is to intelligently leverage and focus Google's expertise and credibility against the spammers and their accomplices. But where will the intelligence come from? From me, from you, from *ANYONE* who has a Gmail account and who wants to help oppose the annoying evil that is spam. Aggressively implemented, it could make Gmail into Spammer Heck--maybe to the point where only a fool would send spam to Gmail. (Yeah, there are plenty of fool spammers--but at least we'd get the laughs without the serious spammers.) Less spam = more value in Gmail.
So do you want to fight against spam? You, too, could become a WSF (wannabee spam fighter).
SpamSlam is my 'working draft' label. The idea is roughly based on other anti-spam systems--but with more smarts. Almost all email systems include one level of feedback in a Spam/NotSpam button. (For relative brevity and because it simplifies the draft implementation, I'm focusing on Web-based email here.) Think of SpamSlam as a report-spam-button on steroids. SpamSlam would report the spam, but also do much more. Essentially this Gmail feature would do some of the automatic analysis that any spam fighter has to do, get some intelligent feedback, and hopefully be able to act immediately against the spammer. Speed of action is actually crucial--cutting off the spammers' income is a key goal of this proposal.
Here is an approach to implementing it:
Clicking on SpamSlam would first trigger a low-cost automatic analysis of the email, including the headers. Let's call this Pass 0. Basically this is just using regular expressions to find things like email addresses, URLs, and phone numbers. The results would be used to generate a Pass 0 webform with comments and options (and explanations and links). This pass should also look for obfuscation and ask the wannabe spam fighter (WSF) to help break the spammers' attempts to evade the spam filters. (This is leveraging the spam's features against the spam--if a human can't figure out the spam, then the human can't send money to the spammer.) In many cases, this Pass 0 analysis may be able to suggest answers. If something like "drop@dead.com" appears in the header, then the WSF should just click the option 'fake email'. Perhaps the WSF would only need to click a check box to confirm that "V/1/A/6/R/A" is a drug and categorize the spam. Other times the WSF can actually type in the answer to the spammer's quasi-CAPTCHA, and then the SpamSlam function can do something. At the bottom of the 'exploded email' in Pass 0, there will be the usual submit button.
After the WSF submits that Pass 0 form, more analysis can begin. The data is no longer raw, but partly analyzed, and the system can start checking domains, registrars, relays, fancier types of header forgery, MX records, categories of crime, email routings, and even things like countries hosting the spammer. This kind of analysis will probably take a bit of time, but a new Pass 1 form will be prepared for the WSF to consider. Basically, this would mostly be a confirmation step for the obvious counteractions. That's stuff like complaining to identified senders and webhosts, but also things like reporting open relays and spambots. It also needs more flexibility and 'other' options in t
Having read various chunks of the discussion, I'm still not sure where to put this, but I want to mention Paved with Good Intentions: The American Experience and Iran, circa 1981 by Barry M. Rubin. Review at:
Short summary is that we contributed a whole lot to the mess, though the British probably did more to set the stage. There are still some moderates in Iran, but we have done everything we could to marginalize them to the point where they probably want the bomb, too, just to keep us away.
However, all things considered, I think we already have enough to worry about with the bombs that we already know about--even including the possibility of a rogue Israeli bomb. Given the current state of affairs, I'd say the Pakistani bombs are the most dangerous threats, and we should be trying to get *SOME* kind of leverage there. Our puppet there can't last much longer...
So many lies, so little time. Where to begin? Perhaps the incredibly stingy long-term track record on foreign aid? That one's especially amusing in light of Dubya's offer to spend all of two-days worth of the war in Iraq to stave off mass starvation.
Naw, it would be a waste here.
I'll just mention the big problem. The people in the rest of the world aren't as stupid as you are. Heck, even most Americans aren't *THAT* stupid.
Yeah, that's right. So we should do everything we can possibly do to strengthen the Iranian extremists and convince them that they really need nuclear weapons. For example, we could invade Iraq.
Oh, wait.
Know what? That was a rhetorical question. You've already convinced me you don't know anything, which is quite an accomplishment for a few short paragraphs. Simple minded idiocy like that post is the main reason we are in this friggin' mess. I would suggest a couple of books to start with, but I'd obviously be wasting my time here. I'll put those comments on a thinking branch of the discussion.
I really can't understand what Microsoft wanted with Yahoo. Below is my summary of the situation, the piece I've been pasting in response to their quasi-robotic replies. The last item directly addresses the Microsoft bid.
Yahoo email = SPAM and *everyone* hates spam.
Yahoo claims to hate spam? Self-hate,eh?
The value of Yahoo is the value of spam = nothing.
I often have constructive suggestions. I send them to Google because Yahoo is obviously NOT very sincere about dealing with the spam problem. I even believe that Google has implemented a few of my suggestions--but regardless of the source of the improvements Google continues to increase their functional superiority over Yahoo. Here are just a few of the reasons why I think Yahoo has zero credibility (and the taint extends to the ads, too):
1. Stop denying that you received the full headers when you received the full headers of the spammer's spam and double the offensiveness when Yahoo's involvement is such that the full headers are irrelevant. (By the way, I'm convinced your response email is almost always lying about this, but it is simply the favored excuse of your least competent employees.) This is a very commonly proffered excuse, and it makes Yahoo look incompetent, lazy, stupid, and offensive.
2. Stop with the BS excuses about why you can't read your *OWN* attached email or why the problem belongs in one of your other pockets or why you can't figure out what your relationship to the spam is (especially in cases of privacy violations in Point 8 below).
3. Stop hosting the spammers' websites. (This is an area where Yahoo seems to be doing better these days, so congratulations.)
4. Stop accepting the spammers' email (for *MONTHS*--and even when routed from other accounts for fake opt-out claims (just used for harvesting valid email addresses per the warning in one of your own childish robotic replies). You are STILL helping the spammers by providing them with email services.
5. Stop ignoring complaints about failures in your so-called spam filtering. (You must be ignoring them since sometimes the same spam appears days or weeks later and is still not recognized as spam.)
6. Stop letting spammers route to their websites using faked Yahoo search requests. (Another one that Yahoo may have fixed, since it hasn't appeared recently--but Google fixed it first. Slightly related, but actually congratulations and thank you for the redirection trap that (only?) Yahoo Japan has recently added.)
7. Fix your CAPTCHA system so spammers can't get more spam delivered using the shreds of Yahoo's reputation. This one is especially annoying for the garbage that comes into my less polluted email accounts from Yahoo. It does *NOT* matter if you delete the accounts *AFTER* the spammer has already used them to flush the spam at the victims.
8. Stop letting (unusally incompetent) spammers violate your users' privacy by sharing Yahoo email addresses in the public address lines and headers of spam. Some of these morons will list 20 addresses in the CC: field.
9. Stop demanding or expecting that the regular users like me should have the technical expertise to deal with professional criminals. Hey, I can't even figure out if your own so-called 'forward as attachment' option includes the entire email with the headers. (If it doesn't, that's just another metric of your technical incompetence--and I'm not interested in hearing more of your childish excuses.) If you aren't forwarding the headers properly, then that's just *ANOTHER* thing you Yahoo people should fix.
10. Stop asking me to pay protection money to your protection racket for better protection from the spam you support. By the way, that's the proof you don't really want to stop spam, along with the money you make selling ads to show to people who get 95% spam email via Yahoo.
11. Stop sending childish and patronizing excuses that apparently assume I'm a perfect idiot. No one's perfect, eh? I know full well you will neve
Basically, whenever I see the spam topic come up I want to throw out the latest version of this suggestion--and so far it has been at least somewhat relevant in every case. It's a pretty broad suggestion, and I have already confessed my sin of tending to go off topic. Reality is like that. Anyway, the relevant part for this article is down there about how to get a spam fighter first class merit badge--which not even Cowboy Neal has.
How to make Gmail the spam target of absolute last resort.
The goal of this suggestion is to intelligently leverage and focus Google's expertise and credibility against the spammers and their accomplices. But where will the intelligence come from? From me, from you, from *ANYONE* who has a Gmail account and who wants to help oppose the annoying evil that is spam. Aggressively implemented, it could make Gmail into Spammer Heck--maybe to the point where only a fool would send spam to Gmail. (Yeah, there are plenty of fool spammers--but at least we'd get the laughs without the serious spammers.) Less spam = more value in Gmail.
So do you want to fight against spam? You, too, could become a WSF (wannabee spam fighter).
SpamSlam is my 'working draft' label. The idea is roughly based on other anti-spam systems--but with more smarts. Almost all email systems include one level of feedback in a Spam/NotSpam button. (For relative brevity and because it simplifies the draft implementation, I'm focusing on Web-based email here.) Think of SpamSlam as a report-spam-button on steroids. SpamSlam would report the spam, but also do much more. Essentially this Gmail feature would do some of the automatic analysis that any spam fighter has to do, get some intelligent feedback, and hopefully be able to act immediately against the spammer. Speed of action is actually crucial--cutting off the spammers' income is a key goal of this proposal.
Here is an approach to implementing it:
Clicking on SpamSlam would first trigger a low-cost automatic analysis of the email, including the headers. Let's call this Pass 0. Basically this is just using regular expressions to find things like email addresses, URLs, and phone numbers. The results would be used to generate a Pass 0 webform with comments and options (and explanations and links). This pass should also look for obfuscation and ask the wannabe spam fighter (WSF) to help break the spammers' attempts to evade the spam filters. (This is leveraging the spam's features against the spam--if a human can't figure out the spam, then the human can't send money to the spammer.) In many cases, this Pass 0 analysis may be able to suggest answers. If something like "drop@dead.com" appears in the header, then the WSF should just click the option 'fake email'. Perhaps the WSF would only need to click a check box to confirm that "V/1/A/6/R/A" is a drug and categorize the spam. Other times the WSF can actually type in the answer to the spammer's quasi-CAPTCHA, and then the SpamSlam function can do something. At the bottom of the 'exploded email' in Pass 0, there will be the usual submit button.
After the WSF submits that Pass 0 form, more analysis can begin. The data is no longer raw, but partly analyzed, and the system can start checking domains, registrars, relays, fancier types of header forgery, MX records, categories of crime, email routings, and even things like countries hosting the spammer. This kind of analysis will probably take a bit of time, but a new Pass 1 form will be prepared for the WSF to consider. Basically, this would mostly be a confirmation step for the obvious counteractions. That's stuff like complaining to identified senders and webhosts, but also things like reporting open relays and spambots. It also needs more flexibility and 'other' options in the responses at this point--we all know the spammers are constantly going to try to devise new tactics. Again there will be a submit option at the bottom for this Pass 1 form.
That will probably cover most of the responses, but in some cases there may still be a n
Oh wait, I just did. SCO has to be the ultimate metric of when a struggle has just gone on for too long.
(By the way, I don't really hate Hillary, and I don't like Obama all that much. I preferred Edwards quite strongly, and McCain is a kind of insult to the intelligence of the voters--but look at Dubya. I'm evidently wandering--but I did think of another point of comparison. Hillary has too many negatives--rather like Darl McBride, whereas I think Obama can generate the kind of positive enthusiasm I associate with Ubuntu Linux.
So now I've just donated to Obama (2nd donation--but never to Hillary), and I'd like to put it all behind me... Have I missed offending anyone yet? If you're a religious lunatic, how about if you just designate me as your "foe" now and save time?)
I'm an optimist. I believe changes average out for the better. However, the oscillations are dangerous, and we could well exterminate ourselves with one good oscillation that goes below zero. We've already passed the point where any significant nation could create a biotoxin that would exterminate all of us--and we're reaching the point where insane individuals could do it. Ergo, either we damp our negative oscillations or we go away.
As an optimist, I guess that some civilizations do make it past that point. Therefore they must be watching us to see whether or not we reach that level. If we're not going to make it, then no sense in worrying about us, eh?
You're splitting hairs--or do you have trouble understanding the meaning of "were from"? Much better if you could say you punted them out.
Then again, I quite understand why you Mormons have so much to be defensive about. You've already forgotten about the Mormon polygamist they arrested a few months ago, right? I think the need-for-defensiveness item that personally offends me most is that it is only a couple of decades since the belated revelation that blacks were allowed to be 'real Christians' of the Mormon flavor.
However, I confess that I tend to regard the racist churches as the worst of the worst.
Interesting, and in some ways similar to my suggestion--but not quite motivating enough to motivate me back to Windows, methinks. I think the basic idea is good, but there are a lot of non-compliant registers, too.
I don't suppose the backbone people would agree to poison the DNS requests of the spam-supporting registrars? That would get their attention, at least.
I didn't mention SpamCop specifically, but I know it quite well, and several of the features of this suggestion are intended to address flaws and weaknesses of SpamCop's approach. However, I think the fundamental problem there is that they've been acquired and reaquired, and their current ownership is basically tied to the backbone people. As noted in the note near the bottom of the suggestion, the backbone people are quite happy to deliver spam packets as long as they get paid for doing so. Perhaps my perceptions are wrong, but I think one result is that the SpamCop people have become quite complacent about it.
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I can't tell if you're sincerely that stupid, or you just have to break anything you touch. You could be some kind of contrarian troll rather than a simple cretin.
/. fails badly to capture the richness of reality. You aren't worth a "foe" designation, but there isn't any flag for "ultra-fool".
As usual,
Really, I'd be downright gratified if you designated me a foe. Desperate shortage of clue-proof fools, you know.
So where the fuck does that leave you?
I concur with the "political stunt" assessment. Lieberman knows his residual relevance is highly limited. The Democrats are being polite to him based on his seniority, but mostly because it's politically convenient to have parliamentary control over the Senate. If one there was one more Republican senator, many people believe Lieberman would become an official Republican the next day--and he would expect to be suitably rewarded for giving them the majority.
As it stands, after this coming election Lieberman will be persona non grata and politically irrelevant to everyone. Kind of a shame. From the party's V-P nominee to nothing, and it isn't even his fault. At this point I personally dismiss him as a crazed and unprincipled egotist of the worst stripe, but in 2000 I think he would have done a good job--under the rational control of Al Gore. As V-P, Lieberman could have gone to Israel and really pushed for a reasonable peace settlement without anyone accusing him of being an anti-Semite. Instead, look at the incredible mess...
You hoping for a foe designation? Sorry, but you're just an excessively little piece of shite.
Simple answer to your lengthy spiel is that I use many search engines and compare the results. Still quite a lot of competition in search. Google consistently provides the results that seem the most useful and balanced--but that may change. So far Google seems to be retaining their top position at least partly by merit.
I actually don't approve of Google's purchase of Doubleclick, but I have yet to see any evidence of abuse there. Just on principle I would even say that no company should be encouraged to purchase any competing company. It would be good if the tax code was strongly biased in favor of divestitures and against acquisitions. Creating more and smaller companies rarely reduces our freedoms, and smaller companies commit fewer and smaller abuses.
The rest of your spiel was vapid fears. Have you thought about going into American politics? The neo-GOP will need to recruit a fresh crop in a couple of months.
Some other mods or maybe powerful editors decided to remod it insightful, but you're right about the anonymous censorship on /. being harmful. I think that is the #1 problem that is pretty steadily driving good posters away and /. into the ground. The original idea of moderation wasn't too bad, but the gaming and abuse of the system, and especially of the anonymity of the system has destroyed its original value.
Waste of breath to repeat the dead suggestion, but I thought they should make it multidimensional and remove the anonymity from negative mods. It doesn't have to be universal, but you should know who gave you the bad mods so you would know if you have some basis to complain about them. The multi-dimensional thing would be something like dimensions for politeness, sincerity, accuracy, funny, and usefulness. Rather than a troll rating, a troll would be a poster whose posts tend to get negative politeness and negative sincerity ratings. The next stage of the idea was to extend the ratings of the posts to the posters themselves, including extra mod points for a posters highly righted dimensions. For example, if you have a big +funny rating, you would become empowered to award two mod points for funny, and if you have a big -polite rating, you might lose your ability to accuse other posters of being impolite.
I haven't figured out where I would fit. I'm in the increasingly intolerant of fools category, complicated by the fact that I'm increasingly convinced that we (including myself) are all more or less foolish. I think that would put me low in the funny and polite dimensions...
I acknowledge that Google is becoming potentially threatening--but so far they do not have the track record of abuse that Microsoft has. Do you care to cite any evidence of your concern? Actually, insofar as Google supports competing advertising in an impartial way, they are mostly acting to facilitate competition. However, I think Google's main service in support of competition is providing access to non-advertising information about the real value of products. To date, Google generates almost no content of their own, and their key service is linking us to other people's content.
I think you just don't want to talk about Microsoft. Why are you so eager to change the subject?
It's like the vulture circling back to the corpse, except in the case of Microsoft it's the old joke: "Patience, hell. I want to kill something."
Basically Microsoft is using their cash clout to destroy the value of other companies. If you don't sell out when they ask nicely, then they'll just make you a worse offer once the turmoil sets in. Microsoft figures they asked nicely, eh?
Other times when their nice asking was refused, Microsoft just created an approximately equivalent service or product and swallowed the losses until the original company was destroyed. I think Palm was probably the best example of that, though it's quite a stretch to call Windows Mobile even vaguely similar. (Actually, in that case they did most of the damage by using advertising to drive Palm away from their original objectives.)
I love freedom and democracy, and therefore I conclude I must hate Microsoft. Freedom is about informed choices among real options, not limited to choosing today's flavor of Microsoft's poisonous cruft. They should cut Microsoft into four or five pieces and force them to compete against each other and against Linux and Apple. That would give us real choices and lead to much faster development of much better software. It would also prevent any part of Microsoft from getting so fat as to go around destroying other companies and other markets, Yahoo and online advertising merely being the latest targets.
I've only been using FF3 on Ubuntu 8.04, and it has been terrible on both of the machines I've used it on. Basically it has long and short hangs and random crashes. Well, not completely random, actually. Some of the problems are pretty clear related to JavaScript, and /. and Gmail are two of the most affected. I have a number of other machines to upgrade, but not yet, please.
I really feel that the Ubuntu people are losing it, and the failure of their project will be a major black eye for Linux. It's a good idea, but they are screwing it up by not figuring out how to manage their initial success. One example is relying on mirrors rather than BitTorrent as the default download. Some of the mirrors must be okay--but I sure have heck finding them. Certainly not the mirrors selected by their testing procedures for the best mirror.
Overall, I'd guess that their problem is that they are trying to be too aggressive about supporting new features for too many platforms. It's not like Apple's situation, where they can control the number of supported configurations. In theory, you'd suppose that Ubuntu could offset it by better testing, but in practice, their testing is evidently quite slipshod--and the result seems to be that each new release is worse than the previous one, though it has a few new bells and whistles. In conclusion, I can no longer recommend Ubuntu as a beginner's distro, and I'm thinking about switching to something else... My own employer is basically a RHEL shop, though I've never liked it much.
Sorry, but I think you're off on a pretty wild tangent as to what the Cell processor is really about... However, I don't feel that I'm in a position to do more than to refer you to the publicly available documentation. There's quite a bit available about the architecture of the Cell and the interfaces to external processors and resources.
/. reader was born. Seems to be a relatively young crowd around here.
In some ways it might help to think about the Cell in comparison with a CDC 6600--but they probably stopped production on those before the average
It's called projection. Whatever they secretly know to be their own worst attributes, they turn it around and project those accusations on their opponents. Two glaring examples from the current case in point:
/. halflife is about 8 hours.
1. Dubya accusing Gore of dishonesty and hypocrisy.
2. Dubya claiming Gore was desperate to become the president and would do absolutely anything.
Lots of other examples, but this is already an obsolete thread... The
A coprocessor for what? You do realize that each Cell already has 8 SPEs attached to it, and it's designed to be tightly paired with another Cell? It already delivers kind of ridiculous bang for the buck, so I'm curious what you're asking for.
(Usual disclaimer: I'm in the IBM food chain, but I don't speak for anyone and I don't know anything.)
I think they should have put it in the how-sweet-it-is department, not the i-thought-that-guy-was-done department. That should be a special circle of Hades reserved for the Darl McBride guy formerly over at the former SCO.
On the news itself, wonderful. However, it's not enough to go after the big fish. We need to destroy the little spammers, too. Basically, the spammer sends out 100 or 1,000 spams hoping to find one sucker--but I think we could really hurt the spammers if we made it really easy for any of the first 99 non-suckers to slam the money window in the spammer's face before the sucker can even try to throw money through it. Here is my currently pending suggestion on how to do that:
How to make Gmail the spam target of absolute last resort.
The goal of this suggestion is to intelligently leverage and focus Google's expertise and credibility against the spammers and their accomplices. But where will the intelligence come from? From me, from you, from *ANYONE* who has a Gmail account and who wants to help oppose the annoying evil that is spam. Aggressively implemented, it could make Gmail into Spammer Heck--maybe to the point where only a fool would send spam to Gmail. (Yeah, there are plenty of fool spammers--but at least we'd get the laughs without the serious spammers.) Less spam = more value in Gmail.
So do you want to fight against spam? You, too, could become a WSF (wannabee spam fighter).
SpamSlam is my 'working draft' label. The idea is roughly based on other anti-spam systems--but with more smarts. Almost all email systems include one level of feedback in a Spam/NotSpam button. (For relative brevity and because it simplifies the draft implementation, I'm focusing on Web-based email here.) Think of SpamSlam as a report-spam-button on steroids. SpamSlam would report the spam, but also do much more. Essentially this Gmail feature would do some of the automatic analysis that any spam fighter has to do, get some intelligent feedback, and hopefully be able to act immediately against the spammer. Speed of action is actually crucial--cutting off the spammers' income is a key goal of this proposal.
Here is an approach to implementing it:
Clicking on SpamSlam would first trigger a low-cost automatic analysis of the email, including the headers. Let's call this Pass 0. Basically this is just using regular expressions to find things like email addresses, URLs, and phone numbers. The results would be used to generate a Pass 0 webform with comments and options (and explanations and links). This pass should also look for obfuscation and ask the wannabe spam fighter (WSF) to help break the spammers' attempts to evade the spam filters. (This is leveraging the spam's features against the spam--if a human can't figure out the spam, then the human can't send money to the spammer.) In many cases, this Pass 0 analysis may be able to suggest answers. If something like "drop@dead.com" appears in the header, then the WSF should just click the option 'fake email'. Perhaps the WSF would only need to click a check box to confirm that "V/1/A/6/R/A" is a drug and categorize the spam. Other times the WSF can actually type in the answer to the spammer's quasi-CAPTCHA, and then the SpamSlam function can do something. At the bottom of the 'exploded email' in Pass 0, there will be the usual submit button.
After the WSF submits that Pass 0 form, more analysis can begin. The data is no longer raw, but partly analyzed, and the system can start checking domains, registrars, relays, fancier types of header forgery, MX records, categories of crime, email routings, and even things like countries hosting the spammer. This kind of analysis will probably take a bit of time, but a new Pass 1 form will be prepared for the WSF to consider. Basically, this would mostly be a confirmation step for the obvious counteractions. That's stuff like complaining to identified senders and webhosts, but also things like reporting open relays and spambots. It also needs more flexibility and 'other' options in t
Having read various chunks of the discussion, I'm still not sure where to put this, but I want to mention Paved with Good Intentions: The American Experience and Iran , circa 1981 by Barry M. Rubin. Review at:
http://dubyaurb.blogspot.com/2007/04/paved-with-good-intentions-american.html
Short summary is that we contributed a whole lot to the mess, though the British probably did more to set the stage. There are still some moderates in Iran, but we have done everything we could to marginalize them to the point where they probably want the bomb, too, just to keep us away.
However, all things considered, I think we already have enough to worry about with the bombs that we already know about--even including the possibility of a rogue Israeli bomb. Given the current state of affairs, I'd say the Pakistani bombs are the most dangerous threats, and we should be trying to get *SOME* kind of leverage there. Our puppet there can't last much longer...
So many lies, so little time. Where to begin? Perhaps the incredibly stingy long-term track record on foreign aid? That one's especially amusing in light of Dubya's offer to spend all of two-days worth of the war in Iraq to stave off mass starvation.
Naw, it would be a waste here.
I'll just mention the big problem. The people in the rest of the world aren't as stupid as you are. Heck, even most Americans aren't *THAT* stupid.
Yeah, that's right. So we should do everything we can possibly do to strengthen the Iranian extremists and convince them that they really need nuclear weapons. For example, we could invade Iraq.
Oh, wait.
Know what? That was a rhetorical question. You've already convinced me you don't know anything, which is quite an accomplishment for a few short paragraphs. Simple minded idiocy like that post is the main reason we are in this friggin' mess. I would suggest a couple of books to start with, but I'd obviously be wasting my time here. I'll put those comments on a thinking branch of the discussion.
Basically, whenever I see the spam topic come up I want to throw out the latest version of this suggestion--and so far it has been at least somewhat relevant in every case. It's a pretty broad suggestion, and I have already confessed my sin of tending to go off topic. Reality is like that. Anyway, the relevant part for this article is down there about how to get a spam fighter first class merit badge--which not even Cowboy Neal has.
How to make Gmail the spam target of absolute last resort.
The goal of this suggestion is to intelligently leverage and focus Google's expertise and credibility against the spammers and their accomplices. But where will the intelligence come from? From me, from you, from *ANYONE* who has a Gmail account and who wants to help oppose the annoying evil that is spam. Aggressively implemented, it could make Gmail into Spammer Heck--maybe to the point where only a fool would send spam to Gmail. (Yeah, there are plenty of fool spammers--but at least we'd get the laughs without the serious spammers.) Less spam = more value in Gmail.
So do you want to fight against spam? You, too, could become a WSF (wannabee spam fighter).
SpamSlam is my 'working draft' label. The idea is roughly based on other anti-spam systems--but with more smarts. Almost all email systems include one level of feedback in a Spam/NotSpam button. (For relative brevity and because it simplifies the draft implementation, I'm focusing on Web-based email here.) Think of SpamSlam as a report-spam-button on steroids. SpamSlam would report the spam, but also do much more. Essentially this Gmail feature would do some of the automatic analysis that any spam fighter has to do, get some intelligent feedback, and hopefully be able to act immediately against the spammer. Speed of action is actually crucial--cutting off the spammers' income is a key goal of this proposal.
Here is an approach to implementing it:
Clicking on SpamSlam would first trigger a low-cost automatic analysis of the email, including the headers. Let's call this Pass 0. Basically this is just using regular expressions to find things like email addresses, URLs, and phone numbers. The results would be used to generate a Pass 0 webform with comments and options (and explanations and links). This pass should also look for obfuscation and ask the wannabe spam fighter (WSF) to help break the spammers' attempts to evade the spam filters. (This is leveraging the spam's features against the spam--if a human can't figure out the spam, then the human can't send money to the spammer.) In many cases, this Pass 0 analysis may be able to suggest answers. If something like "drop@dead.com" appears in the header, then the WSF should just click the option 'fake email'. Perhaps the WSF would only need to click a check box to confirm that "V/1/A/6/R/A" is a drug and categorize the spam. Other times the WSF can actually type in the answer to the spammer's quasi-CAPTCHA, and then the SpamSlam function can do something. At the bottom of the 'exploded email' in Pass 0, there will be the usual submit button.
After the WSF submits that Pass 0 form, more analysis can begin. The data is no longer raw, but partly analyzed, and the system can start checking domains, registrars, relays, fancier types of header forgery, MX records, categories of crime, email routings, and even things like countries hosting the spammer. This kind of analysis will probably take a bit of time, but a new Pass 1 form will be prepared for the WSF to consider. Basically, this would mostly be a confirmation step for the obvious counteractions. That's stuff like complaining to identified senders and webhosts, but also things like reporting open relays and spambots. It also needs more flexibility and 'other' options in the responses at this point--we all know the spammers are constantly going to try to devise new tactics. Again there will be a submit option at the bottom for this Pass 1 form.
That will probably cover most of the responses, but in some cases there may still be a n
Oh wait, I just did. SCO has to be the ultimate metric of when a struggle has just gone on for too long.
(By the way, I don't really hate Hillary, and I don't like Obama all that much. I preferred Edwards quite strongly, and McCain is a kind of insult to the intelligence of the voters--but look at Dubya. I'm evidently wandering--but I did think of another point of comparison. Hillary has too many negatives--rather like Darl McBride, whereas I think Obama can generate the kind of positive enthusiasm I associate with Ubuntu Linux.
So now I've just donated to Obama (2nd donation--but never to Hillary), and I'd like to put it all behind me... Have I missed offending anyone yet? If you're a religious lunatic, how about if you just designate me as your "foe" now and save time?)
No mention of Bruce Stirling's "Swarm"?
I'm an optimist. I believe changes average out for the better. However, the oscillations are dangerous, and we could well exterminate ourselves with one good oscillation that goes below zero. We've already passed the point where any significant nation could create a biotoxin that would exterminate all of us--and we're reaching the point where insane individuals could do it. Ergo, either we damp our negative oscillations or we go away.
As an optimist, I guess that some civilizations do make it past that point. Therefore they must be watching us to see whether or not we reach that level. If we're not going to make it, then no sense in worrying about us, eh?
Anyone want the pessimistic version?
You're splitting hairs--or do you have trouble understanding the meaning of "were from"? Much better if you could say you punted them out.
Then again, I quite understand why you Mormons have so much to be defensive about. You've already forgotten about the Mormon polygamist they arrested a few months ago, right? I think the need-for-defensiveness item that personally offends me most is that it is only a couple of decades since the belated revelation that blacks were allowed to be 'real Christians' of the Mormon flavor.
However, I confess that I tend to regard the racist churches as the worst of the worst.
Interesting, and in some ways similar to my suggestion--but not quite motivating enough to motivate me back to Windows, methinks. I think the basic idea is good, but there are a lot of non-compliant registers, too.
I don't suppose the backbone people would agree to poison the DNS requests of the spam-supporting registrars? That would get their attention, at least.
I didn't mention SpamCop specifically, but I know it quite well, and several of the features of this suggestion are intended to address flaws and weaknesses of SpamCop's approach. However, I think the fundamental problem there is that they've been acquired and reaquired, and their current ownership is basically tied to the backbone people. As noted in the note near the bottom of the suggestion, the backbone people are quite happy to deliver spam packets as long as they get paid for doing so. Perhaps my perceptions are wrong, but I think one result is that the SpamCop people have become quite complacent about it.