Writing software is an investment. You put money in, you get money back. This contest DOES require them to put more money in, but they will get more money BACK. It's "forced investment". Now if you'd rather write a piece of software and then spend the next 6 years merely putting out new-os-compatibility updates, (and how many of those have we seen? many!) you will fall behind, and no one will care about upgrading to version 7 because there's nothing in 7 that their version 5 can't already do, and your product will wither. But that's what some are afraid of, being forced to continually improve their product. Some developers will see this not as an investment in their cash cow, but as an expense.
It's things like this that cause "version 2" to mean something and make us want to buy it. Bug fixes and compatibility updates don't make updates attractive, they don't pay the bills. New features and new functionality do. If anything, Symantec should be happy this is happening.
but doesn't that tell everyone else in the world that it's OK to behave like this because there are no repercussions?
It's sooo much easier to say "hey, lets let bigons be bigons, forgive and forget, eh?" when you're the one that wants to be forgiven.
If they were more interested in repenting for their actions than busy chasing the dollar bills blowing by in the street, they'd do something like offer a bunch of music free or very cheap as an attraction into their new pricing model, as an apology to their fans. Fat chance of that though wouldn't you agree?
Starting with the most basic maths like multiplying something by 2, that looks like something you could discover. When you get into something like calculus or trig, this is not an intuitive process anymore, and has to be invented, and taught to the next generation. We went for centuries not knowing calculus, but how long have we as a people known addition? We teach our children how to add and multiply in school yes, but isn't that something that they could eventually figure out themselves?
It's a muddy line, but I'd speculate that simpler maths cannot be claimed to be invented, while more complex maths cannot be claimed to be merely discovered. Obvious = discovered. Unintuitive = invented.
I've seen it work both ways, but normally, archive companies are supposed to be more responsible than Joe Watercooler, and that's what you're paying them for so they should know what they're doing. Employees are sloppy with tapes and sometimes don't use common sense. They'll stop for groceries on the way home from work and leave the car unlocked. They'll toss the tapes on the floor when they get home and the dog will chew-toy them. They'll set them on top of the radiator or their computer monitor.
As far as trust goes, that could mean do you trust them not to violate your privacy of information, or trust them not to be reckless with it that it gets stolen, or trust them not to be reckless with it that it gets damaged.
For privacy, you'd be stupid to hand your data to anyone without it being encrypted. Really it shouldn't leave the building unencrypted, for any reason, so the issue of privacy is moot if you are being sensible.
For theft, you have to assume they will take reasonable precautions during transport. Really they should not be using a car without a car alarm and should not leave the vehicle unless necessary, and only for short periods of time. Preferably never while transporting your tapes. Once it gets to "the vault", it should be secured under lock and alarm.
For recklessness, they should be educated in proper handling of media and have common sense.
Random coworkers do not possess the training or education for the latter two, and that's why you pay professionals to do this important thing for you.
The vulnerability being exploited is documented here and shows it was "last updated" April 23. (two days ago)
My favorite amusement is:
Currently, Microsoft is not aware of any attacks attempting to exploit the potential vulnerability. Upon completion of this investigation, Microsoft will take the appropriate action to protect our customers, which may include providing a solution through a service pack, our monthly security update release process, or an out-of-cycle security update, depending on customer needs.
Thanks for that. Now that 500k servers got owned maybe you want to move on this sort of thing a little more seriously.
At the bottom they ask, How would you rate the usefulness of this content ? But there's no option for "a little late, eh?"
Though it DOES make me wonder if the publishing of this notice gave the idea to the makers of the malware. Makes a good case for not publishing a known vulnerability until either (1) its' in the wild already, or (2) you have a fix for it. Clearly neither of these were the case on Wednesday.
I don't see this as significantly different than say, a car insurance company jacking your rates for getting a ticket or causing an accident. Yes they're calculating odds and trying to predict how much a given customer is going to take in on claims, and it's nothing new. If my average accident payout is say, $70/yr, and then some schmuck that can't drive sober has more of a $2000/yr payout, I don't want to help pay his $2000, I want to chip in for my $70. Let HIM pay the higher rates, as it should be. I'm certainly the more profitable customer for the insurance company, AND I want lower rates so I think it's fair I get them.
This works for health insurance too. Unfortunately, people seem to flip out if you try to charge them higher rates if their odds are higher. I can't say I blame them though... if I had a condition that I knew was going to cost me a fortune in medical bills then of course I'd want to try to get it insured, knowing that it would save me a ton of money in the long run. Sadly, that means that someone else that is otherwise healthy is subsidizing my medical care. I don't think that's fair.
It's easier for me to take this position because I'm a good driver, and I'm healthy. I suppose if I had serious driving problems, or cancer or a bad genetic trait I might be tempted to climb the fence, but I hope I would hold my ground here. I just see a lot of people that want me to help subsidize their health care.
Even if you're not healthy, or do have a bad genetic trait, if you put forth effort to see an unbiased position you'll have to realize this is the fair way to go. Sure, it's not fair that you have a bad genetic deck, but why should that be my problem? I can appreciate that it's not fair, but that doesn't mean the world has to force the bad roll on the rest of us. Just as unfair as it is that you have bad genes, it's more unfair that I am having to pay for it.
The great majority of cases brought to the Supreme Court are denied certiorari (approximately 7,500 petitions are presented each year; between 80 and 150 are granted), because the Supreme Court is generally careful to choose only cases in which it has jurisdiction and which it considers sufficiently important to merit the use of its limited resources
I generally consider "a few" to be a much lower number than 80, but I suppose it's perspective.
Open source, he said, creates a license 'so that nobody can ever improve the software
That is an incomplete statement. How about we add a little bit to it: Open source, he said, creates a license 'so that nobody can ever improve the software to make money off the original work they got for free
There, that's more like it. When you realize that's the "complete sentence" that's running through his head, it makes sense. Fortunately, not everyone thinks that way. Just because you can't improve GPL'd software to make a profit, does not mean you cannot improve it.
The first captcha was to pick the center of an image, but of the seven or so images, at least two were melding well enough with an adjacent image to make it questionable as to whether they were parts of the same image, so finding the center of the image was not quite straightforward, given the amount of distortions present.
I passed the first one by clicking on the center of one image I was fairly certain was stand-alone, and went on to "annotate". Of the available options in the list, I looked in vane for "hairball". There were some vague shapes in the highly scribbled up image, but nothing I could make out. I picked wrong and was told I was not a human.
I think if they want to go this route they should make the user have to process the information. How about asking you 10 short questions - single sentences you have to either mark "fact" or "fantasy". That would require a small database of unambiguous statements, that could be randomly selected from. Miss any one and you lose. The odds of someone missing that would be much lower than this is.
I had a what, 1 in 10 chance of guessing the annotation correct. If that had been even 5 fact/fantasy questions, I would have had a 1 in 32 odds of guessing them all correctly. Easier to do, fewer false negatives, and lower odds of a correct guess. But so far I don't think anyone's tried "reading comprehension" as a test. That's something that's very hard for computers to simulate.
The knee-jerk reaction to this is "oh MS will just release an app to strip the DRM from your music". BUT... you know they have signed agreements from where they got the music, saying they can't DO that.
So, it should get much more interesting, because the only thing that can get them out of the pot is leaping into the fire.
continuing the lawsuit might mean new disclosures of insider e-mails, which could "jeopardize Microsoft's goodwill"
That soooo reminds me of one of the memorable quotes in LiarLiar (http://www.amazon.com/review/R2TISC7BK6BUTV)
Fletcher: Your honor, I object! Judge: Why? Fletcher: Because it's devastating to my case! Judge: Overruled. Fletcher: Good call!
I suppose the short summary of their appeal case was "We'd like you to stop digging because you'll probably find more dirt." No, the legal system is supposed to work that way, thank you. (care to borrow my shovel? how about my backhoe?)
I seem to recall the "Huston, we have a PROBLEM" mission (Appolo 13?) that they used duct tape to make the other CO2 filters mechanically compatible when they had to spend more time in orbit than they could manage just on the service module's filters. (one set was round and the other set was square)
I think I'd be more interested to find where the liability trail leads. Everyone has to answer to someone, and they to someone else. One would think that at some point before you reached the top, you'd encounter someone with common sense and integrity, that could start dropping some boulders to roll downhill.
This seems to be a popular route for PR to take though. Make a product, do not make it evolve for ages because "it would break things", as if they are not breaking things, for the good of the consumer. Then when we've finally had enough of this good treatment, change everything and break a bund of stuff in the process, but amazingly again it's for the good of the consumer.
Can't have it both ways. You have to admit fault at some point in the process. You can't blame the future on the past AND the past on the future, at the same time.
I see so many examples of this today where people made a mess in the past, and the fact that the fix is going to be unpleasant is not their fault because it's now an entrenched problem, like this was not their doing to begin with. They usually rationalize by saying "well we made a mess but we cleaned it up so it's nobody's fault". Wrong. You've wronged us twice, once by creating the problem and refusing to fix it for so long, and then a second time when you finally fixed it through an unpleasant means "because there were no other options left". (yet it was ye who got us to the "no other options" predicament)
Fixing your own mess is an apology, not a pardon. If you deliberately direct the problem into a corner from which there is no pleasant escape, you cannot claim innocence in the hardship it produces getting free of the problem, claiming helplessness that now "there's no other choice". There was choice, you had choice, you made the decisions that brought us here, you are responsible for the results, inevitable though they may be.
You should not be considered a savior as you try to dig the world out of the mess you created.
It would certainly reduce the number of machines to target, but if 50 machines are to cover the duties of 4,000, you know they will have some horsepower. The obvious reality is it will be a distributed load system, so each of those 50 gateways will be an entire building of machines.
Nothing new here really. Most of those 4,000 gateways are already at least several racks of hardware. I doubt that the vulnerability to distributed attacks will go up as a result of lowering the number of vectors. If anything, having 50 standardized and more carefully monitored gateways will probably further harden them against attacks. (is YOUR gateway patched?)
Of course the other viewpoint is if all 50 of them are being administrated by the same group or a group under central control, when a vulnerability DOES surface, (and they alway so) they will probably ALL be vulnerable since they are standardized.
Assuming they have their heads screwed on straight, they will at least be using somewhat of a variation of several hardware and software vendors to prevent this. As it is now, if a serious problem is discovered in a high end bit of router hardware, it may force downtime on maybe 300 gateways while traffic routes around them. If all 50 are using the same, what do you do then? Flip the kill switch and take down the entire country's internet whilst you fix it?
I want to hear that phonecall. "Hello, Cisco. We're calling in regard to this morning's zero-day bug 433-86b in regard to your model 822 enterprise gateways. We're down, we need a fix now. No, DOWN. The entire country. Yes, really."
I'd be interested to know how China handles their great firewall. Are there details posted anywhere? Somehow I don't think they'd terribly mind taking down the entire country's internet for a day or two for national security though. (and "for reasons of national security" is very loosely interpreted in China it would seem)
basically that's correct. "ballistic trajectory" means there is no course correction/adjustment/maintenance going on during the trip. Like firing a mortar, you initially set the angle and power, and fire it. If your math was good, it lands where you wanted it to. "ballistics" (or "dumb firing") more commonly refers to munitions firing.
He said the crew missed the target because they changed their landing plan at the last minute without telling mission control.
Certainly IS scary. You wouldn't expect the astronauts would have an overriding degree of control over their flight plan. Actually, I would have expected it to be nearly 100% determined from mission control. And even if they did elect to "fall different", it's simply amazing they would not notify mission control. I wonder what sort of reprimand the senior astronut is going to receive over this?
sort of what I was wondering. I suppose there's no escaping physics though, you have to use something for fuel. (ok "fuel" is a bad word for it, how about "mass"?) I was hoping ion drives could run without losing mass, but that's the only fundamental way to accelerate something in a vacuum isn't it? by throwing mass overboard, preferably at high speed? (the high speed part being what the ion drive specializes in)
I suppose the only way around this would be a solar sail, or perhaps such a thing powered by some sort of a beam (of mass, energy, or a combination of the two) from the origin.
Funny this topic should come up today. I run my own mailserver, and subscribe to a small set of the "safe" RBL filters. My mom emailed me yesterday complaining that she was not receiving mail from one person, and it turned out to be someone from the UAE, whose entire ISP had been blacklisted. I thought that was a bit extreme until I looked and saw that his ISP had over 2,700 active bulk spammers using it. (made it to UCEProtect's level 3 list) Ouch. She wanted me to unblock that. Um, no. I told her that he needs to find another ISP or use gmail or something else like that.
Use your dollar to help fix the problem instead of funding it.
I think that would depend on how much regular mail you receive. I receive very little postal mail. My bills are all on auto or electronic payment, so once a month I receive a receipt from my phone, insurance, and power, plus a direct deposit receipt from work. Those are the only regular postal mails I receive. I only receive junk mail about one every three days, which is not intolerable, which may make it look like a poor s/n ratio if you're just running numbers.
On the other hand, I know there are people that receive 2-4 junk mail per day. THOSE are people that have junk mail problems.
Slashdot Mirror
Writing software is an investment. You put money in, you get money back. This contest DOES require them to put more money in, but they will get more money BACK. It's "forced investment". Now if you'd rather write a piece of software and then spend the next 6 years merely putting out new-os-compatibility updates, (and how many of those have we seen? many!) you will fall behind, and no one will care about upgrading to version 7 because there's nothing in 7 that their version 5 can't already do, and your product will wither. But that's what some are afraid of, being forced to continually improve their product. Some developers will see this not as an investment in their cash cow, but as an expense.
It's things like this that cause "version 2" to mean something and make us want to buy it. Bug fixes and compatibility updates don't make updates attractive, they don't pay the bills. New features and new functionality do. If anything, Symantec should be happy this is happening.
(and yes, I'm a programmer)
but doesn't that tell everyone else in the world that it's OK to behave like this because there are no repercussions?
It's sooo much easier to say "hey, lets let bigons be bigons, forgive and forget, eh?" when you're the one that wants to be forgiven.
If they were more interested in repenting for their actions than busy chasing the dollar bills blowing by in the street, they'd do something like offer a bunch of music free or very cheap as an attraction into their new pricing model, as an apology to their fans. Fat chance of that though wouldn't you agree?
Napster BAD!
ok you had to see the video. I still yell "fire bad, FIRE BAAD!" from time to time.
Starting with the most basic maths like multiplying something by 2, that looks like something you could discover. When you get into something like calculus or trig, this is not an intuitive process anymore, and has to be invented, and taught to the next generation. We went for centuries not knowing calculus, but how long have we as a people known addition? We teach our children how to add and multiply in school yes, but isn't that something that they could eventually figure out themselves?
It's a muddy line, but I'd speculate that simpler maths cannot be claimed to be invented, while more complex maths cannot be claimed to be merely discovered. Obvious = discovered. Unintuitive = invented.
I've seen it work both ways, but normally, archive companies are supposed to be more responsible than Joe Watercooler, and that's what you're paying them for so they should know what they're doing. Employees are sloppy with tapes and sometimes don't use common sense. They'll stop for groceries on the way home from work and leave the car unlocked. They'll toss the tapes on the floor when they get home and the dog will chew-toy them. They'll set them on top of the radiator or their computer monitor.
As far as trust goes, that could mean do you trust them not to violate your privacy of information, or trust them not to be reckless with it that it gets stolen, or trust them not to be reckless with it that it gets damaged.
For privacy, you'd be stupid to hand your data to anyone without it being encrypted. Really it shouldn't leave the building unencrypted, for any reason, so the issue of privacy is moot if you are being sensible.
For theft, you have to assume they will take reasonable precautions during transport. Really they should not be using a car without a car alarm and should not leave the vehicle unless necessary, and only for short periods of time. Preferably never while transporting your tapes. Once it gets to "the vault", it should be secured under lock and alarm.
For recklessness, they should be educated in proper handling of media and have common sense.
Random coworkers do not possess the training or education for the latter two, and that's why you pay professionals to do this important thing for you.
The vulnerability being exploited is documented here and shows it was "last updated" April 23. (two days ago)
My favorite amusement is:
Currently, Microsoft is not aware of any attacks attempting to exploit the potential vulnerability. Upon completion of this investigation, Microsoft will take the appropriate action to protect our customers, which may include providing a solution through a service pack, our monthly security update release process, or an out-of-cycle security update, depending on customer needs.
Thanks for that. Now that 500k servers got owned maybe you want to move on this sort of thing a little more seriously.
At the bottom they ask, How would you rate the usefulness of this content ? But there's no option for "a little late, eh?"
Though it DOES make me wonder if the publishing of this notice gave the idea to the makers of the malware. Makes a good case for not publishing a known vulnerability until either (1) its' in the wild already, or (2) you have a fix for it. Clearly neither of these were the case on Wednesday.
I don't see this as significantly different than say, a car insurance company jacking your rates for getting a ticket or causing an accident. Yes they're calculating odds and trying to predict how much a given customer is going to take in on claims, and it's nothing new. If my average accident payout is say, $70/yr, and then some schmuck that can't drive sober has more of a $2000/yr payout, I don't want to help pay his $2000, I want to chip in for my $70. Let HIM pay the higher rates, as it should be. I'm certainly the more profitable customer for the insurance company, AND I want lower rates so I think it's fair I get them.
This works for health insurance too. Unfortunately, people seem to flip out if you try to charge them higher rates if their odds are higher. I can't say I blame them though... if I had a condition that I knew was going to cost me a fortune in medical bills then of course I'd want to try to get it insured, knowing that it would save me a ton of money in the long run. Sadly, that means that someone else that is otherwise healthy is subsidizing my medical care. I don't think that's fair.
It's easier for me to take this position because I'm a good driver, and I'm healthy. I suppose if I had serious driving problems, or cancer or a bad genetic trait I might be tempted to climb the fence, but I hope I would hold my ground here. I just see a lot of people that want me to help subsidize their health care.
Even if you're not healthy, or do have a bad genetic trait, if you put forth effort to see an unbiased position you'll have to realize this is the fair way to go. Sure, it's not fair that you have a bad genetic deck, but why should that be my problem? I can appreciate that it's not fair, but that doesn't mean the world has to force the bad roll on the rest of us. Just as unfair as it is that you have bad genes, it's more unfair that I am having to pay for it.
Wikipedia has more details on that at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certiorari
The great majority of cases brought to the Supreme Court are denied certiorari (approximately 7,500 petitions are presented each year; between 80 and 150 are granted), because the Supreme Court is generally careful to choose only cases in which it has jurisdiction and which it considers sufficiently important to merit the use of its limited resources
I generally consider "a few" to be a much lower number than 80, but I suppose it's perspective.
Open source, he said, creates a license 'so that nobody can ever improve the software
That is an incomplete statement. How about we add a little bit to it: Open source, he said, creates a license 'so that nobody can ever improve the software to make money off the original work they got for free
There, that's more like it. When you realize that's the "complete sentence" that's running through his head, it makes sense. Fortunately, not everyone thinks that way. Just because you can't improve GPL'd software to make a profit, does not mean you cannot improve it.
The first captcha was to pick the center of an image, but of the seven or so images, at least two were melding well enough with an adjacent image to make it questionable as to whether they were parts of the same image, so finding the center of the image was not quite straightforward, given the amount of distortions present.
I passed the first one by clicking on the center of one image I was fairly certain was stand-alone, and went on to "annotate". Of the available options in the list, I looked in vane for "hairball". There were some vague shapes in the highly scribbled up image, but nothing I could make out. I picked wrong and was told I was not a human.
I think if they want to go this route they should make the user have to process the information. How about asking you 10 short questions - single sentences you have to either mark "fact" or "fantasy". That would require a small database of unambiguous statements, that could be randomly selected from. Miss any one and you lose. The odds of someone missing that would be much lower than this is.
I had a what, 1 in 10 chance of guessing the annotation correct. If that had been even 5 fact/fantasy questions, I would have had a 1 in 32 odds of guessing them all correctly. Easier to do, fewer false negatives, and lower odds of a correct guess. But so far I don't think anyone's tried "reading comprehension" as a test. That's something that's very hard for computers to simulate.
The knee-jerk reaction to this is "oh MS will just release an app to strip the DRM from your music". BUT... you know they have signed agreements from where they got the music, saying they can't DO that.
So, it should get much more interesting, because the only thing that can get them out of the pot is leaping into the fire.
Serves them right.
continuing the lawsuit might mean new disclosures of insider e-mails, which could "jeopardize Microsoft's goodwill"
That soooo reminds me of one of the memorable quotes in LiarLiar (http://www.amazon.com/review/R2TISC7BK6BUTV)
Fletcher: Your honor, I object!
Judge: Why?
Fletcher: Because it's devastating to my case!
Judge: Overruled.
Fletcher: Good call!
I suppose the short summary of their appeal case was "We'd like you to stop digging because you'll probably find more dirt." No, the legal system is supposed to work that way, thank you. (care to borrow my shovel? how about my backhoe?)
I seem to recall the "Huston, we have a PROBLEM" mission (Appolo 13?) that they used duct tape to make the other CO2 filters mechanically compatible when they had to spend more time in orbit than they could manage just on the service module's filters. (one set was round and the other set was square)
I think I'd be more interested to find where the liability trail leads. Everyone has to answer to someone, and they to someone else. One would think that at some point before you reached the top, you'd encounter someone with common sense and integrity, that could start dropping some boulders to roll downhill.
Does it not work that way in Norway?
This seems to be a popular route for PR to take though. Make a product, do not make it evolve for ages because "it would break things", as if they are not breaking things, for the good of the consumer. Then when we've finally had enough of this good treatment, change everything and break a bund of stuff in the process, but amazingly again it's for the good of the consumer.
Can't have it both ways. You have to admit fault at some point in the process. You can't blame the future on the past AND the past on the future, at the same time.
I see so many examples of this today where people made a mess in the past, and the fact that the fix is going to be unpleasant is not their fault because it's now an entrenched problem, like this was not their doing to begin with. They usually rationalize by saying "well we made a mess but we cleaned it up so it's nobody's fault". Wrong. You've wronged us twice, once by creating the problem and refusing to fix it for so long, and then a second time when you finally fixed it through an unpleasant means "because there were no other options left". (yet it was ye who got us to the "no other options" predicament)
Fixing your own mess is an apology, not a pardon. If you deliberately direct the problem into a corner from which there is no pleasant escape, you cannot claim innocence in the hardship it produces getting free of the problem, claiming helplessness that now "there's no other choice". There was choice, you had choice, you made the decisions that brought us here, you are responsible for the results, inevitable though they may be.
You should not be considered a savior as you try to dig the world out of the mess you created.
It would certainly reduce the number of machines to target, but if 50 machines are to cover the duties of 4,000, you know they will have some horsepower. The obvious reality is it will be a distributed load system, so each of those 50 gateways will be an entire building of machines.
Nothing new here really. Most of those 4,000 gateways are already at least several racks of hardware. I doubt that the vulnerability to distributed attacks will go up as a result of lowering the number of vectors. If anything, having 50 standardized and more carefully monitored gateways will probably further harden them against attacks. (is YOUR gateway patched?)
Of course the other viewpoint is if all 50 of them are being administrated by the same group or a group under central control, when a vulnerability DOES surface, (and they alway so) they will probably ALL be vulnerable since they are standardized.
Assuming they have their heads screwed on straight, they will at least be using somewhat of a variation of several hardware and software vendors to prevent this. As it is now, if a serious problem is discovered in a high end bit of router hardware, it may force downtime on maybe 300 gateways while traffic routes around them. If all 50 are using the same, what do you do then? Flip the kill switch and take down the entire country's internet whilst you fix it?
I want to hear that phonecall. "Hello, Cisco. We're calling in regard to this morning's zero-day bug 433-86b in regard to your model 822 enterprise gateways. We're down, we need a fix now. No, DOWN. The entire country. Yes, really."
I'd be interested to know how China handles their great firewall. Are there details posted anywhere? Somehow I don't think they'd terribly mind taking down the entire country's internet for a day or two for national security though. (and "for reasons of national security" is very loosely interpreted in China it would seem)
Acrobat Pro lets you edit PDF documents, and from there you can export to a different format.
MS Works is currently the #1 trouble child for us to do data migration from older systems.
basically that's correct. "ballistic trajectory" means there is no course correction/adjustment/maintenance going on during the trip. Like firing a mortar, you initially set the angle and power, and fire it. If your math was good, it lands where you wanted it to. "ballistics" (or "dumb firing") more commonly refers to munitions firing.
He said the crew missed the target because they changed their landing plan at the last minute without telling mission control.
Certainly IS scary. You wouldn't expect the astronauts would have an overriding degree of control over their flight plan. Actually, I would have expected it to be nearly 100% determined from mission control. And even if they did elect to "fall different", it's simply amazing they would not notify mission control. I wonder what sort of reprimand the senior astronut is going to receive over this?
Don't we already have this at 2am on most channels? At least this sounds very similar.
sort of what I was wondering. I suppose there's no escaping physics though, you have to use something for fuel. (ok "fuel" is a bad word for it, how about "mass"?) I was hoping ion drives could run without losing mass, but that's the only fundamental way to accelerate something in a vacuum isn't it? by throwing mass overboard, preferably at high speed? (the high speed part being what the ion drive specializes in)
I suppose the only way around this would be a solar sail, or perhaps such a thing powered by some sort of a beam (of mass, energy, or a combination of the two) from the origin.
in other news, ISO starts the process of ratifying the new MS10G(tm) specifications.
Funny this topic should come up today. I run my own mailserver, and subscribe to a small set of the "safe" RBL filters. My mom emailed me yesterday complaining that she was not receiving mail from one person, and it turned out to be someone from the UAE, whose entire ISP had been blacklisted. I thought that was a bit extreme until I looked and saw that his ISP had over 2,700 active bulk spammers using it. (made it to UCEProtect's level 3 list) Ouch. She wanted me to unblock that. Um, no. I told her that he needs to find another ISP or use gmail or something else like that.
Use your dollar to help fix the problem instead of funding it.
I think that would depend on how much regular mail you receive. I receive very little postal mail. My bills are all on auto or electronic payment, so once a month I receive a receipt from my phone, insurance, and power, plus a direct deposit receipt from work. Those are the only regular postal mails I receive. I only receive junk mail about one every three days, which is not intolerable, which may make it look like a poor s/n ratio if you're just running numbers.
On the other hand, I know there are people that receive 2-4 junk mail per day. THOSE are people that have junk mail problems.
looking at the numbers, maybe it was a decimal slip? looks to be off by 100.