I guess that's the thing that most amazes me about the spam problem... Many of the big-time spammers are clearly large-scale criminals advertising their criminal wares, and apparently we are unable to do anything about it?
Just this week they apparently discovered a botnet larger than Storm. (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/07/kraken_botnet_menace/) The report says that the botnet was spewing out vast quantities of spam for the usual quasi-legal scams. So how the heck could they miss it? Possible answer: Because the filtering approach was mostly working.
Remember that the spammers are dividing by zero. At least that's how they think about it. If another million spams finds one more sucker to send them $39, then they think the RoI was $39/0 = infinity. They aren't concerned with your spam filters. If you're smart enough to filter their spam, then you probably aren't dumb enough to send them the money--but they're still hoping to catch you with their next scam.
I'm not too concerned about the false negatives in Gmail, though I see several of them per week. However, I am somewhat concerned with the false positives since they are hard to pick out of the spam. I can recall at least two cases of ham getting filed as spam by Gmail.
Perhaps you don't get enough email? Even if the spam detection is 99.9% accurate, if you get 1,000 pieces of non-spam email, then one them will be tossed in the spam folder. Based on my data, I'd say that Gmail is probably higher than 99% but definitely less than 99.9%--but possibly much lower. It's quite possible that I've simply lost some valid email because I didn't look carefully enough at the spam.
Quite familiar with it, and it doesn't really apply to this suggestion, though I could shoehorn it into several categories. The form is broad enough that it will absorb anything, including your lunch. If you think it does apply without the big shoehorn, then please say why.
That form was a funny joke the first few times it was used. Since thing it has simply become a generic excuse for "No, we cannot."
Actually, I don't think there is any way to truly address the spam problem without dealing with the TANSTAAFL problem. The creators of email pretended that it would be mutually beneficial, so they did not need to design any accounting into it. While I actually admire Al Gore, I feel like I have to blame him as the root of the spam problem. He kept telling them 'Don't worry about the money--I'll get it for you.'
Basically Gmail is losing value for all of us as it becomes spam soaked. Even their filtering is having troubles with false positives and false negatives--and the spam is just increasing. Therefore I think Google should act more aggressively to drive the spammers away from Gmail.
My latest anti-spam idea is a SuperReport option. (Kind of like SpamCop, but not so lazy.) If you click on the SuperReport option, Gmail would explode the spam and try to analyze it for you to help go after the spammers more aggressively. Here is one approach to implementing it:
The first pass analysis would be a low-cost quickie that would also act like a kind of CAPTCHA. This would just be an automated pass looking for obvious patterns like email addresses and URLs. The email would then be exploded and shown to the person making the report (= the targeted recipient of the spam AKA victim). The thoughtful responses for the second pass would guide the system in going after the spammers--making Gmail a *VERY* hostile environment for spammers to the point that they would stop spamming Gmail.
For example, if the first pass analysis finds an email address in the header, the exploded options might be "Obvious fake, ignore", "Plausible fake used to improve delivery", "Apparently valid drop address for replies", "Possible Joe job", and "Other". (Of course there should be pop-up explanations for help, which would be easy if it's done as a radio button. Also, Google always needs to allow for "Other" because the spammers are so damn innovative. In the "Other" case, the second pass should call for an explanation of why it is "Other".)
If the first pass analysis finds a URL, the exploded options should be things like "Drugs", "Stock scam", "Software piracy", "Loan scam", "419 scam", "Prostitution", "Fake merchandise", "Reputation theft", "Possible Joe job", and "Other". I think URLs should include a second radio button for "Registered Domain" (default), "Redirection", "Possible redirection", "Dynamic DNS routing", and "Other". (Or perhaps that would be another second-pass option?)
If the first pass finds an email address in the body, the exploded options should include things like "Fake opt-out for address harvester", "419 reply path", "Joe job", and "Other".
At the bottom of the expanded first pass analysis there should be some general options about the kind of spam and suggested countermeasures, and the submit SuperReport button. This would trigger the heavier second pass where Gmail's system would take these detailed results of the human analysis of the spam and use them to really go after the spammers in a more serious way. Some of the second pass stuff should come back to the person who received the spam for confirmation of the suggested countermeasures.
Going beyond that? I think Gmail should also rate the spam reporters on their spam-fighting skills, and figure out how smart they are when they are analyzing the spam. I want to earn a "Spam Fighter First Class" merit badge!
If you agree with these ideas--or have better ones, I suggest you try to call them to Google's attention. Google still seems to be an innovative and responsive company--and they claim they want to fight evil, too. More so if many people write to them? (I even think they recently implemented one of my suggestions to improve the Groups... However, it doesn't matter who gets credit--what matters is destroying the spammers.)
So in other words, they're angry at Google for pointing out their own stupidity?
I'm thinking of performing the experiment of looking through some of your posts and seeing if I can find something stupid to point out. Then we can see if you get angry at me.
Just a thought experiment. I actually think the lawsuit is incredibly stupid and a good example of how the American love of recreational lawsuits is destroying innovation in America, especially by larger companies. All you get for your innovative efforts is sued.
Do we have a song writer in the house? Can anyone convert "A boy named Sue" to "Innovation got me sued"?
You're looking at it sideways. Microsoft's overbearing presence will now create a completely new market of out-of-the-box-little-old PCs that are quite adequate to run XP. This is actually a major market opportunity for makers such as Lenovo who are already interested in low-end machines.
The way things are going, I'm hoping to leapfrog completely over Vista... If my employer makes it possible, I'll land in Linux Land and perhaps never have to use Microsoft products at all. (Dream on, Mr. Adequate.)
I think to make this work you'd need reliable local accounting so that you can make sure everyone is sharing resources reasonably equitably. You don't need perfect balance, but you need to prevent one leech from using infinite amounts of services and giving nothing back.
Of course the existing players will fight like hell against anything so revolutionary, but the basic idea would be a barter system. You might provide caching services or relay services or backup services for other computers that share other resources, and you would "do business" by listing local neighbors who would testify that you did, in fact provide those services and therefore deserved access to the services you were requesting. If you provide a critical service, such as the long-distance wired connection to share, then you would have big credit in the network and should be recognized and compensated appropriately.
Thanks for proving my point. I didn't even mention Dubya, but your ability to jump to the wrong conclusion amazes. Really, we didn't need more evidence. (If I was going to comment on causes, I'd say that most of the blame lies with Reagan's handlers.)
Possibly amusing personal story. I once spent a full school year researching the topic of public education and its relationship to money. No, money doesn't always buy quality education, but it certainly contributes and we spent a lot of time arguing about the significance of the contribution.
The punchline: Many years later I discovered that my own public school at that time was supposed to have been the second richest in the nation on a per student basis. Just a temporary thing, actually. It was a large area that had been zoned for residential use and the property taxes were pouring in, but the students were only trickling in--though when I visited many years later, the entire area was packed with houses and only average in funding and facilities. However, when I was there I didn't realize what a great deal I was getting. I thought it was just a fluke I then graduated from two highly ranked universities and wound up with an obscenely nice job with one of the top companies...
Actually, that reminds me of another funny story. Even though it was a rich school district, computers were seriously expensive in those days. My first computing experiences were therefore a fluke. There was a flood in a computer room with an HP 2000 computer in it, and the insurance company wrote the machine off... The wreckage was donated to the school district, but they cleaned it up and it ran without any problems, at least through my own school years. The school was able to afford the terminals and phone lines and 110 baud modems, but that was apparently justified after the computer fell into their laps...
This angle of impoverished schools in the Dubya era struck me as the most significant aspect of the story. Why am I not surprised it seems to be getting so little attention on/.?
Don't confuse challenge/response with whitelisting--but it doesn't matter since SMTP doesn't verify the sender. Any technical response to a fundamentally economic problem is only going to be a bandaid at best.
However, we're getting too far off topic, if'n you ask me. The part that is relevant to this discussion is how much of the spammers' costs are related to domain acquisition, and the answer is 'precious little' and there are always other ways to work around it. In particular, some of the most annoying spammers around here are hosting their own websites and using dynamic DNS services to route their suckers without ever buying any domains of their own.
This was exactly my first reaction to the article. Anything that increases the spammer's costs is a good thing, but it's basically too indirect to really matter. Rather Verisign is just acting to increase their own profits and using the spammers as an excuse.
Since we're on the topic of spam (and domains are included below), here's my latest suggestion to Gmail:
Basically Gmail is losing value for all of us as it becomes spam soaked. Even their filtering is having troubles with false positives and false negatives--and the spam is just increasing. Therefore I think Google should act more aggressively to drive the spammers away from Gmail.
My latest anti-spam idea is a SuperReport option. (Kind of like SpamCop, but not so lazy.) If you click on the SuperReport option, Gmail would explode the spam and try to analyze it for you to help go after the spammers more aggressively. Here is one way to implement it:
The first pass would be a low-cost quickie that would also act like a kind of CAPTCHA. This would just be an automated pass looking for obvious patterns like email addresses and URLs. The email would then be exploded and shown to the person making the report. The thoughtful responses for the second pass would guide the system in going after the spammers--making Gmail a *VERY* hostile environment for spammers to the point that they would stop spamming Gmail.
For example, if the first pass analysis finds an email address in the header, the exploded options might be "Obvious fake, ignore", "Plausible fake used to improve delivery", "Apparently valid drop address for replies", "Possible Joe job", and "Other". (Of course there should be pop-up explanations for help, which would be easy if it's done as a radio button. Also, Google always needs to allow for "Other" because the spammers are so damn innovative. In the "Other" case, the second pass should call for an explanation of why it is "Other".)
If the first pass analysis finds a URL, the exploded options should be things like "Drugs", "Stock scam", "Software piracy", "Loan scam", "419 scam", "Prostitution", "Fake merchandise", "Reputation theft", "Possible Joe job", and "Other". I think URLs should include a second radio button for "Registered Domain" (default), "Redirection", "Possible redirection", "Dynamic DNS routing", and "Other". (Or perhaps that would be another second-pass option?)
At the bottom of the expanded first pass analysis there should be some general options about the kind of spam and suggested countermeasures, and the submit SuperReport button. This would trigger the heavier second pass where Gmail's system would take these detailed results of the human analysis of the spam and use them to really go after the spammers in a more serious way.
I think Gmail should also rate the reporters on their spam-fighting skills, and figure out how smart they are when they are analyzing the spam. I want to earn a "Spam Fighter First Class" merit badge!
If you agree with these ideas--or have better ones, I suggest you try to call them to Google's attention. Google still seems to be an innovative and responsive company--and they claim they want to fight evil, too. More so if many people write to them? (I even think they recently implemented one of my suggestions to improve the Groups...)
I started working with Ubuntu pretty seriously a couple of years ago, and at this point I can say that Ubuntu is my OS of first choice, and I have no plans to adopt Vista. Ever.
I may get forced in the Vista direction at some point, and I'm pretty sure that at some point I'll be forced to at least support it, but so far I've been able to pretend it isn't there and just hope for it to go away. My company is the main locus of such possible force, but they are so far mostly avoiding Vista. Unfortunately the in-house Linux that they prefer is Red Hat... It might be more secure, but I feel Ubuntu is much closer to being ready for the masses to work with.
I've always been curious what people would say when I passed away--if anyone caed that much. It would be kind of nice if he was just checking and turned up again next week... But I doubt it.
I think he was a truly great man, and these days there's a serious shortage of those sorts.
(I read his "2061: Odyssey Three" in January as a reaction to hearing about his 90th birthday, though I hadn't heard about his good-bye video at that time. I read his book about the Titanic a couple of years earlier, and a total of about 15 of his books over the years.)
Freedom is about choice, and Microsoft is about eliminating any choice which is not Microsoft. Apple has basically the same philosophy, but they've simply been less successful in implementing it.
Ergo, I freely choose to use Linux.
Sorry, but fun is for kids, and I've grown past that stage. I have actual work to do these years.
This name sure rings a bell. Don't they reject all spam complaints using the Barracuda filtering system? Accounts like abuse@ and postmaster@ just bounce, RFCs be damned. Or maybe some spammer ISP is using a similar domain name? Perhaps the.net or something?
I think you need to study some basic biology. Get back to us when you finish.
On the other hand, if we are unlucky enough that a human-human form of bird flu appears, we may well be finished before your studies. Mostly finished as a nature-abuse civilization that is, though fortunately we do have enough genetic diversity that there probably will be some human survivors.
On the other hand, what if someone does it deliberately? I guess we have to just hope the terrorists don't believe in evolution?
Perhaps I should try to clarify the point from that perspective?
We humans do *NOT* do it that way. We try to produce large numbers of identical units, be they Pentium processors, copies of Microsoft's Windows OS, white lab mice, or even ears of corn. Essentially we're begging for viral disasters of every sort.
If I was a betting man, I'd put my money on the chickens. We've created vast flocks of chickens with almost identical genes, and they in turn have become hosts for vast infections of bird flu. By creating such vast stocks of viruses, we have greatly increased the chances of the appearance of a very serious human-human form of bird flu. But if not the chickens, there are other horses in the race, and right now I'm skeptical if we're liable to learn the big lessons from the disaster when (not if) it happens. Another thing about Ma Nature is that she's seriously patient.
From the summary there's no sign that the article says anything about what I regard as the largest misperception--but that might just be simple par for the/. course. On the other hand, if you take the time to read and consider the article carefully, then anything you post about it will be moot, because the EAS (Effective Attention Span) of/. is around 40 minutes. Ergo...
Ma Nature just doesn't care about the waste. Of course the anthropomorphism just obscures things more, but the basic thing about natural evolution is that anything goes--but almost all of the changes lead directly to death. Ma Nature's approach results in vast numbers of tiny variations of the same basic forms that are all scrabbling for survival in a tiny niche. She isn't betting on the existence of a benevolent mutation. She just doesn't care.
Lately I was thinking that one of the weirdest aspects is that things worked out so that every one of us humans is a unique permutation. It would be 2^46 possibilities if you just started with one set of distinct genes from the chromosomes of a single mother and father, but there are so many variations for each of the genes that the actual number of potential human beings is vastly larger than that. Insofar as our genes contribute anything to the situation, each of us could be uniquely suited for some niche on earth. Talk about over-engineering?
Of course the likelihood that we'd ever find such perfect niches is pretty much negligible--but again Ma Nature doesn't care. If we wipe ourselves out in our frustration, she'll just start over again with the surviving cockroaches. So have a nice day.
I actually don't think Lincoln was all that great, and I'm skeptical about the motivations underlying many of his decisions. From the long-term historical perspective, I think it quite likely that he will be regarded as the first American emperor. In particular, it would have been much better if slavery had been eliminated peaceably--and earlier.
The more I study the Civil War, the more convinced I am that the South was bankrupt, and the real motivation for the war was that the rich Yankee bankers weren't willing to let them default. I should do more research to find out if any of Dubya's ancestors were specifically included. Pretty sure the Walker side of the family was involved in banking in those days.
On the other hand, he wasn't as famous as Michael Jackson or Britney Spears. Says something about our sick priorities, eh?
Or maybe it's the third hand... He didn't want to be open and honest about the cause of his own death, apparently because he didn't want to embarrass his physician.
Oh well. I still regard him as the greatest American. Or maybe he doesn't count since he was an immigrant or the son of immigrants? Back to the sick priorities topic, eh?
Was that post a joke, or are you really as stupid as your sig makes you sound?
Do you really think that the Dick Cheney will ever get everything he wants no matter *HOW* big he makes the government? They don't make universes that big.
Actually just motivated to reply to your sig... I wish/. had an "AC dead to me" setting. If activated, it would make the anonymous troll posts completely invisible.
Then again, I'm getting less and less interested in/. in any case. I sometimes drop by to scan in large threads for so-called funny posts. Mostly they aren't, regardless of what the moderators say. Yours was a bit funny, but not +5 funny.
(Want to guess why I'm not going to hop over to help the meta-moderation? Hint: It's the opposite of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.")
Slashdot Mirror
I guess that's the thing that most amazes me about the spam problem... Many of the big-time spammers are clearly large-scale criminals advertising their criminal wares, and apparently we are unable to do anything about it?
Just this week they apparently discovered a botnet larger than Storm. (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/07/kraken_botnet_menace/) The report says that the botnet was spewing out vast quantities of spam for the usual quasi-legal scams. So how the heck could they miss it? Possible answer: Because the filtering approach was mostly working.
Remember that the spammers are dividing by zero. At least that's how they think about it. If another million spams finds one more sucker to send them $39, then they think the RoI was $39/0 = infinity. They aren't concerned with your spam filters. If you're smart enough to filter their spam, then you probably aren't dumb enough to send them the money--but they're still hoping to catch you with their next scam.
I'm not too concerned about the false negatives in Gmail, though I see several of them per week. However, I am somewhat concerned with the false positives since they are hard to pick out of the spam. I can recall at least two cases of ham getting filed as spam by Gmail.
Perhaps you don't get enough email? Even if the spam detection is 99.9% accurate, if you get 1,000 pieces of non-spam email, then one them will be tossed in the spam folder. Based on my data, I'd say that Gmail is probably higher than 99% but definitely less than 99.9%--but possibly much lower. It's quite possible that I've simply lost some valid email because I didn't look carefully enough at the spam.
Quite familiar with it, and it doesn't really apply to this suggestion, though I could shoehorn it into several categories. The form is broad enough that it will absorb anything, including your lunch. If you think it does apply without the big shoehorn, then please say why.
That form was a funny joke the first few times it was used. Since thing it has simply become a generic excuse for "No, we cannot."
Actually, I don't think there is any way to truly address the spam problem without dealing with the TANSTAAFL problem. The creators of email pretended that it would be mutually beneficial, so they did not need to design any accounting into it. While I actually admire Al Gore, I feel like I have to blame him as the root of the spam problem. He kept telling them 'Don't worry about the money--I'll get it for you.'
Basically Gmail is losing value for all of us as it becomes spam
soaked. Even their filtering is having troubles with false positives
and false negatives--and the spam is just increasing. Therefore I
think Google should act more aggressively to drive the spammers away
from Gmail.
My latest anti-spam idea is a SuperReport option. (Kind of like
SpamCop, but not so lazy.) If you click on the SuperReport option,
Gmail would explode the spam and try to analyze it for you to help go
after the spammers more aggressively. Here is one approach to
implementing it:
The first pass analysis would be a low-cost quickie that would also
act like a kind of CAPTCHA. This would just be an automated pass
looking for obvious patterns like email addresses and URLs. The email
would then be exploded and shown to the person making the report (=
the targeted recipient of the spam AKA victim). The thoughtful
responses for the second pass would guide the system in going after
the spammers--making Gmail a *VERY* hostile environment for spammers
to the point that they would stop spamming Gmail.
For example, if the first pass analysis finds an email address in the
header, the exploded options might be "Obvious fake, ignore",
"Plausible fake used to improve delivery", "Apparently valid drop
address for replies", "Possible Joe job", and "Other". (Of course
there should be pop-up explanations for help, which would be easy if
it's done as a radio button. Also, Google always needs to allow for
"Other" because the spammers are so damn innovative. In the "Other"
case, the second pass should call for an explanation of why it is
"Other".)
If the first pass analysis finds a URL, the exploded options should be
things like "Drugs", "Stock scam", "Software piracy", "Loan scam",
"419 scam", "Prostitution", "Fake merchandise", "Reputation theft",
"Possible Joe job", and "Other". I think URLs should include a second
radio button for "Registered Domain" (default), "Redirection",
"Possible redirection", "Dynamic DNS routing", and "Other". (Or
perhaps that would be another second-pass option?)
If the first pass finds an email address in the body, the exploded
options should include things like "Fake opt-out for address
harvester", "419 reply path", "Joe job", and "Other".
At the bottom of the expanded first pass analysis there should be some
general options about the kind of spam and suggested countermeasures,
and the submit SuperReport button. This would trigger the heavier
second pass where Gmail's system would take these detailed results of
the human analysis of the spam and use them to really go after the
spammers in a more serious way. Some of the second pass stuff should
come back to the person who received the spam for confirmation of the
suggested countermeasures.
Going beyond that? I think Gmail should also rate the spam reporters
on their spam-fighting skills, and figure out how smart they are when
they are analyzing the spam. I want to earn a "Spam Fighter First
Class" merit badge!
If you agree with these ideas--or have better ones, I suggest you try
to call them to Google's attention. Google still seems to be an
innovative and responsive company--and they claim they want to fight
evil, too. More so if many people write to them? (I even think they
recently implemented one of my suggestions to improve the Groups...
However, it doesn't matter who gets credit--what matters is destroying
the spammers.)
I'm thinking of performing the experiment of looking through some of your posts and seeing if I can find something stupid to point out. Then we can see if you get angry at me.
Just a thought experiment. I actually think the lawsuit is incredibly stupid and a good example of how the American love of recreational lawsuits is destroying innovation in America, especially by larger companies. All you get for your innovative efforts is sued.
Do we have a song writer in the house? Can anyone convert "A boy named Sue" to "Innovation got me sued"?
You're looking at it sideways. Microsoft's overbearing presence will now create a completely new market of out-of-the-box-little-old PCs that are quite adequate to run XP. This is actually a major market opportunity for makers such as Lenovo who are already interested in low-end machines.
The way things are going, I'm hoping to leapfrog completely over Vista... If my employer makes it possible, I'll land in Linux Land and perhaps never have to use Microsoft products at all. (Dream on, Mr. Adequate.)
I think to make this work you'd need reliable local accounting so that you can make sure everyone is sharing resources reasonably equitably. You don't need perfect balance, but you need to prevent one leech from using infinite amounts of services and giving nothing back.
Of course the existing players will fight like hell against anything so revolutionary, but the basic idea would be a barter system. You might provide caching services or relay services or backup services for other computers that share other resources, and you would "do business" by listing local neighbors who would testify that you did, in fact provide those services and therefore deserved access to the services you were requesting. If you provide a critical service, such as the long-distance wired connection to share, then you would have big credit in the network and should be recognized and compensated appropriately.
Thanks for proving my point. I didn't even mention Dubya, but your ability to jump to the wrong conclusion amazes. Really, we didn't need more evidence. (If I was going to comment on causes, I'd say that most of the blame lies with Reagan's handlers.)
Possibly amusing personal story. I once spent a full school year researching the topic of public education and its relationship to money. No, money doesn't always buy quality education, but it certainly contributes and we spent a lot of time arguing about the significance of the contribution.
The punchline: Many years later I discovered that my own public school at that time was supposed to have been the second richest in the nation on a per student basis. Just a temporary thing, actually. It was a large area that had been zoned for residential use and the property taxes were pouring in, but the students were only trickling in--though when I visited many years later, the entire area was packed with houses and only average in funding and facilities. However, when I was there I didn't realize what a great deal I was getting. I thought it was just a fluke I then graduated from two highly ranked universities and wound up with an obscenely nice job with one of the top companies...
Actually, that reminds me of another funny story. Even though it was a rich school district, computers were seriously expensive in those days. My first computing experiences were therefore a fluke. There was a flood in a computer room with an HP 2000 computer in it, and the insurance company wrote the machine off... The wreckage was donated to the school district, but they cleaned it up and it ran without any problems, at least through my own school years. The school was able to afford the terminals and phone lines and 110 baud modems, but that was apparently justified after the computer fell into their laps...
This angle of impoverished schools in the Dubya era struck me as the most significant aspect of the story. Why am I not surprised it seems to be getting so little attention on /.?
Don't confuse challenge/response with whitelisting--but it doesn't matter since SMTP doesn't verify the sender. Any technical response to a fundamentally economic problem is only going to be a bandaid at best.
However, we're getting too far off topic, if'n you ask me. The part that is relevant to this discussion is how much of the spammers' costs are related to domain acquisition, and the answer is 'precious little' and there are always other ways to work around it. In particular, some of the most annoying spammers around here are hosting their own websites and using dynamic DNS services to route their suckers without ever buying any domains of their own.
Since we're on the topic of spam (and domains are included below), here's my latest suggestion to Gmail:
No, I didn't read the article,but I'm ready to bet a donut they're running Windows Mobile. That would explain everything.
Google should be allowed to rebid with an Android-based solution.
I started working with Ubuntu pretty seriously a couple of years ago, and at this point I can say that Ubuntu is my OS of first choice, and I have no plans to adopt Vista. Ever.
I may get forced in the Vista direction at some point, and I'm pretty sure that at some point I'll be forced to at least support it, but so far I've been able to pretend it isn't there and just hope for it to go away. My company is the main locus of such possible force, but they are so far mostly avoiding Vista. Unfortunately the in-house Linux that they prefer is Red Hat... It might be more secure, but I feel Ubuntu is much closer to being ready for the masses to work with.
Wow! ACC was known to a three-digit ID? He really was old!
Seriously, that 137 is the best number.
I've always been curious what people would say when I passed away--if anyone caed that much. It would be kind of nice if he was just checking and turned up again next week... But I doubt it.
I think he was a truly great man, and these days there's a serious shortage of those sorts.
(I read his "2061: Odyssey Three" in January as a reaction to hearing about his 90th birthday, though I hadn't heard about his good-bye video at that time. I read his book about the Titanic a couple of years earlier, and a total of about 15 of his books over the years.)
Freedom is about choice, and Microsoft is about eliminating any choice which is not Microsoft. Apple has basically the same philosophy, but they've simply been less successful in implementing it.
Ergo, I freely choose to use Linux.
Sorry, but fun is for kids, and I've grown past that stage. I have actual work to do these years.
This name sure rings a bell. Don't they reject all spam complaints using the Barracuda filtering system? Accounts like abuse@ and postmaster@ just bounce, RFCs be damned. Or maybe some spammer ISP is using a similar domain name? Perhaps the .net or something?
I think you need to study some basic biology. Get back to us when you finish.
On the other hand, if we are unlucky enough that a human-human form of bird flu appears, we may well be finished before your studies. Mostly finished as a nature-abuse civilization that is, though fortunately we do have enough genetic diversity that there probably will be some human survivors.
On the other hand, what if someone does it deliberately? I guess we have to just hope the terrorists don't believe in evolution?
Perhaps I should try to clarify the point from that perspective?
We humans do *NOT* do it that way. We try to produce large numbers of identical units, be they Pentium processors, copies of Microsoft's Windows OS, white lab mice, or even ears of corn. Essentially we're begging for viral disasters of every sort.
If I was a betting man, I'd put my money on the chickens. We've created vast flocks of chickens with almost identical genes, and they in turn have become hosts for vast infections of bird flu. By creating such vast stocks of viruses, we have greatly increased the chances of the appearance of a very serious human-human form of bird flu. But if not the chickens, there are other horses in the race, and right now I'm skeptical if we're liable to learn the big lessons from the disaster when (not if) it happens. Another thing about Ma Nature is that she's seriously patient.
From the summary there's no sign that the article says anything about what I regard as the largest misperception--but that might just be simple par for the /. course. On the other hand, if you take the time to read and consider the article carefully, then anything you post about it will be moot, because the EAS (Effective Attention Span) of /. is around 40 minutes. Ergo...
Ma Nature just doesn't care about the waste. Of course the anthropomorphism just obscures things more, but the basic thing about natural evolution is that anything goes--but almost all of the changes lead directly to death. Ma Nature's approach results in vast numbers of tiny variations of the same basic forms that are all scrabbling for survival in a tiny niche. She isn't betting on the existence of a benevolent mutation. She just doesn't care.
Lately I was thinking that one of the weirdest aspects is that things worked out so that every one of us humans is a unique permutation. It would be 2^46 possibilities if you just started with one set of distinct genes from the chromosomes of a single mother and father, but there are so many variations for each of the genes that the actual number of potential human beings is vastly larger than that. Insofar as our genes contribute anything to the situation, each of us could be uniquely suited for some niche on earth. Talk about over-engineering?
Of course the likelihood that we'd ever find such perfect niches is pretty much negligible--but again Ma Nature doesn't care. If we wipe ourselves out in our frustration, she'll just start over again with the surviving cockroaches. So have a nice day.
I actually don't think Lincoln was all that great, and I'm skeptical about the motivations underlying many of his decisions. From the long-term historical perspective, I think it quite likely that he will be regarded as the first American emperor. In particular, it would have been much better if slavery had been eliminated peaceably--and earlier.
The more I study the Civil War, the more convinced I am that the South was bankrupt, and the real motivation for the war was that the rich Yankee bankers weren't willing to let them default. I should do more research to find out if any of Dubya's ancestors were specifically included. Pretty sure the Walker side of the family was involved in banking in those days.
On the other hand, he wasn't as famous as Michael Jackson or Britney Spears. Says something about our sick priorities, eh?
Or maybe it's the third hand... He didn't want to be open and honest about the cause of his own death, apparently because he didn't want to embarrass his physician.
Oh well. I still regard him as the greatest American. Or maybe he doesn't count since he was an immigrant or the son of immigrants? Back to the sick priorities topic, eh?
Was that post a joke, or are you really as stupid as your sig makes you sound?
Do you really think that the Dick Cheney will ever get everything he wants no matter *HOW* big he makes the government? They don't make universes that big.
No, but they certainly need more laws against that sort of weak alliteration. Why didn't you call yourself the "wondering wombat"?
Actually just motivated to reply to your sig... I wish /. had an "AC dead to me" setting. If activated, it would make the anonymous troll posts completely invisible.
/. in any case. I sometimes drop by to scan in large threads for so-called funny posts. Mostly they aren't, regardless of what the moderators say. Yours was a bit funny, but not +5 funny.
Then again, I'm getting less and less interested in
(Want to guess why I'm not going to hop over to help the meta-moderation? Hint: It's the opposite of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.")