"Using SMTP + AUTH requires a user name and password to ensure that only authorized users are using that server to send mail."
But SMTP+AUTH doesn't require that the "From:" field be correct, does it? So it may help those who are prepared to trace IP addresses and proxy logs, but it doesn't help those people who send me hundreds of bounce messages per day because I appear in the From: address.
"Assume they're a limited number of users. If they have a virus scanner it will be rounded up in the next batch of scans, hopefully."
Assume some of those billions of dollars of homeland security money is actually being spent at the FBI, instead of squandered on kickbacks, the spammers will hopefully be rounded up in the next bunch of scans and executed.
When the direct marketing industry resorts to cracking computers, these people need to be taken out of contact with the internet. If only the FBI spent as much time looking for criminal spammers as they did looking for Mitnick, we'd actually have a more secure infrastructure.
"In some countries, the suppression of dissent is explicit. In others, it's implicit"
The problem with invisiblog is that although users are anonymous, the publisher isn't. As some people have already noted, the publisher is succeptible to legal pressure to censor postings, which is not the case with a system like Freenet. Perhaps future iterations of invisiblog could address the need to allow distributed mirrors, such that no one entity has the power to prevent something being said.
"if a child find that putting in under 13 redirects them to disney.com what is to stop then just signing up again and changing their age?"
Cookies, apparently. MP3.com tries it, and it's damned annoying. Go to site, download music, oops you need to provide personal information. Fill in random crap, click okay, the site tells you "due to the CRAPPA act, you can't listen to music"
Go back later, and it's placed a cookie identifying you as under-age, so you can't sign-up without first deleting (or blocking) the cookie.
Perhaps in future they'll upgrade to a server-side system using IP addresses, so if I enter random information with a badly-chosen year of birth, nobody on my internet line can sign-up... smart.
p.s. Credit-card age checking. Thorughly unreliable to the point of excluding anyone from outside the US.
"Yeah, inflate your point by linking to the "Pro" version"
Is there a problem in comparing like with like? I used WinXP pro as the comparaison, because it's most similar, in terms of networking capability and security features, to GNU/Linux. If you're just buying a games machine, you might use the WinXP home, but many people building a computer may have plans to eventually use it as a server, or as a multi-user machine. (remember, XPHome is derived from toy operating systems, as opposed to XPPro, which was derived from NT which was designed to compete with Unix)
GNU/Linux is competing (quite favourably) with the $300 version of Windows in terms of features. Of course, it also competes with the toy version, and even unpaid versions of Windows in terms of price.
So how do you see the idea of a parallel system? Without even touching current email systems, someone could implement an "e-squared-mail" system with postage costs, certificates, etc. Getting too much spam in your email inbox? Simply direct your friends and family to use e2mail to contact you. No gateways or entry-points needed; if you want to contact someone without an e2mail address, you can just load your email program and use that. While you're there, take a moment to read all the unsecured email that people have sent using the old system.
If innovation should happen at the edges of the network, it makes sense that a new application would work better than trying to change legacy systems, no matter how simple that change may be. Give a few big companies their e2mail accounts, and see how they do with no spam to distract them.
On a sidenote, I think that anonymous email is probably more important now than ever, and shouldn't need to be a victim of anti-spam efforts. True anonymous email is typically a few emails per month, and there are plenty of people willing to fund the costs of it, although not in a personally-identifiable way.
"Real freedom would be simply releasing it into the public domain, where anyone can do anything at all with it"
Real freedom for a little while perhaps. Real freedom, until someone takes your program, makes an incompatible copy of it, and bundles it with Windows to millions of people, leaving you to compete with a non-free version of your own work.
No thanks, I have no desire to write Microsoft's programs for free, just so they can take it from me, never to be seen again. Anything worth writing is worth protecting with the GPL.
"[The GNU-FDL] specificaly prohibits modification of the invariant sections which is limiting speech."
Actually, it's limiting the modifications you can make to somebody else's speech. Debian would probably be happy if the license allowed invariant sections to be removed completely, as that would respect the authors' desire not to be misquoted, without forcing words into others' mouths. But would GNU allow their philosophy section to be removed from manuals?
"People who choose the FDL usually know little about its specifics -- they just want their documentation to be available under a copyleft license."
The GNU-Free Documentation License certainly gives an impression of being overly complicated. I had wanted to publish a copyleft thesis, but the FDL had a lot of bulky wording over these invariant sections.
I eventually found and used the Design Science License (DSL), which looks and feels a lot more like the GPL applied to non-software. Perhaps this would be a more suitable style of license for free documentation?
"I've had good luck with rebates...I do remember to include everything that's asked for and not to scribble illegibly."
Uh, you consider it good fortune that you've not been severely overcharged on any of your purchases.
Bravo, guys. Keep up the good work. These customers consider themselves lucky that you're not stealing from them.
Re:rebates are NOT a total waste of time
on
Are Rebates Scandalous?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Perhaps someone could explain why this is tolerated [by consumers], but it does seem rather strange indeed.
Either it's "In order to purchase something here, you need to give us a $200 loan for 3 months" (the exact opposite of interest-free-credit, which is what most shops use)
Or, it's "Here's a computer for $1200, and by the way, we're lying about that price" which should certainly have the retailer shut-down by trading standards. The evidence in this article certainly indicates that they have little intention of paying this money back (what's the interest rate on a borrower who defaults on 30% of loans?)
If an advert says $1200 (inc rebate), I think the correct reponse should be "you can fsck off, and I'll choose a more reputable place to buy". Does that sound reasonable to anyone?
Slashdot Mirror
"Using SMTP + AUTH requires a user name and password to ensure that only authorized users are using that server to send mail."
But SMTP+AUTH doesn't require that the "From:" field be correct, does it? So it may help those who are prepared to trace IP addresses and proxy logs, but it doesn't help those people who send me hundreds of bounce messages per day because I appear in the From: address.
"Assume they're a limited number of users. If they have a virus scanner it will be rounded up in the next batch of scans, hopefully."
Assume some of those billions of dollars of homeland security money is actually being spent at the FBI, instead of squandered on kickbacks, the spammers will hopefully be rounded up in the next bunch of scans and executed.
When the direct marketing industry resorts to cracking computers, these people need to be taken out of contact with the internet. If only the FBI spent as much time looking for criminal spammers as they did looking for Mitnick, we'd actually have a more secure infrastructure.
"Why Do People Write Open Source Software?"
They don't. They write Free Software.
"Why not publish your blog on Freenet [freenetproject.org] instead ?"
The fact that nobody would ever see it? The 5-minute page-load time? That you have to upload all the data again every day?
"In some countries, the suppression of dissent is explicit. In others, it's implicit"
The problem with invisiblog is that although users are anonymous, the publisher isn't. As some people have already noted, the publisher is succeptible to legal pressure to censor postings, which is not the case with a system like Freenet. Perhaps future iterations of invisiblog could address the need to allow distributed mirrors, such that no one entity has the power to prevent something being said.
"if a child find that putting in under 13 redirects them to disney.com what is to stop then just signing up again and changing their age?"
Cookies, apparently. MP3.com tries it, and it's damned annoying. Go to site, download music, oops you need to provide personal information. Fill in random crap, click okay, the site tells you "due to the CRAPPA act, you can't listen to music"
Go back later, and it's placed a cookie identifying you as under-age, so you can't sign-up without first deleting (or blocking) the cookie.
Perhaps in future they'll upgrade to a server-side system using IP addresses, so if I enter random information with a badly-chosen year of birth, nobody on my internet line can sign-up... smart.
p.s. Credit-card age checking. Thorughly unreliable to the point of excluding anyone from outside the US.
"Do NOT register for the mailing list at www.emarketersamerica.org."
Register it where?
"This isn't advocating some sort of lynching"
No? Who isn't?
"Yeah, inflate your point by linking to the "Pro" version"
Is there a problem in comparing like with like? I used WinXP pro as the comparaison, because it's most similar, in terms of networking capability and security features, to GNU/Linux. If you're just buying a games machine, you might use the WinXP home, but many people building a computer may have plans to eventually use it as a server, or as a multi-user machine. (remember, XPHome is derived from toy operating systems, as opposed to XPPro, which was derived from NT which was designed to compete with Unix)
GNU/Linux is competing (quite favourably) with the $300 version of Windows in terms of features. Of course, it also competes with the toy version, and even unpaid versions of Windows in terms of price.
"If you want games, buy a machine that has games."
Sounds reasonable... $33 for a game, and $293 for an operating system to play it on. Now why didn't I think of that when I was choosing software?
Quotes
So, this outlaws quantum encryption then
Surely it makes matter itself illegal under the DCMA?
There's nothing for it. We must destroy the universe for the American Way to prevail!
I'm the author of the column under discussion.
So how do you see the idea of a parallel system? Without even touching current email systems, someone could implement an "e-squared-mail" system with postage costs, certificates, etc. Getting too much spam in your email inbox? Simply direct your friends and family to use e2mail to contact you. No gateways or entry-points needed; if you want to contact someone without an e2mail address, you can just load your email program and use that. While you're there, take a moment to read all the unsecured email that people have sent using the old system.
If innovation should happen at the edges of the network, it makes sense that a new application would work better than trying to change legacy systems, no matter how simple that change may be. Give a few big companies their e2mail accounts, and see how they do with no spam to distract them.
On a sidenote, I think that anonymous email is probably more important now than ever, and shouldn't need to be a victim of anti-spam efforts. True anonymous email is typically a few emails per month, and there are plenty of people willing to fund the costs of it, although not in a personally-identifiable way.
It is not the outlook client that is of most interest, it is replacing exchange as backend that we should replace first...
Kolab server already does this [replacing exchange servers]. It works with either Outlook clients, or KMail clients.
"But why then do you encourage people to write Redhat's programs for free?"
Err, because Redhat writes an awful lot of programs that I use, for free. It's a share-and-share-alike community. Which Microsoft isn't.
"Real freedom would be simply releasing it into the public domain, where anyone can do anything at all with it"
Real freedom for a little while perhaps. Real freedom, until someone takes your program, makes an incompatible copy of it, and bundles it with Windows to millions of people, leaving you to compete with a non-free version of your own work.
No thanks, I have no desire to write Microsoft's programs for free, just so they can take it from me, never to be seen again. Anything worth writing is worth protecting with the GPL.
"[The GNU-FDL] specificaly prohibits modification of the invariant sections which is limiting speech."
Actually, it's limiting the modifications you can make to somebody else's speech. Debian would probably be happy if the license allowed invariant sections to be removed completely, as that would respect the authors' desire not to be misquoted, without forcing words into others' mouths. But would GNU allow their philosophy section to be removed from manuals?
"People who choose the FDL usually know little about its specifics -- they just want their documentation to be available under a copyleft license."
The GNU-Free Documentation License certainly gives an impression of being overly complicated. I had wanted to publish a copyleft thesis, but the FDL had a lot of bulky wording over these invariant sections.
I eventually found and used the Design Science License (DSL), which looks and feels a lot more like the GPL applied to non-software. Perhaps this would be a more suitable style of license for free documentation?
"But are telecine/cam records really what's hurting the film industry? Sounds like a lot of effort for very little pay-off."
So with all of these fancy new digital camcorders... is it not possible to change the frame rate, thus rendering useless any crapness?
"This contest is not affiliated with the W3C"
It does look as if there are no plans to actually use this design on the W3C site... is it going to end up the waste of a design?
"I put in sweeties :-) they think 'Hey this is a nice guy...'"
Have you tried putting in fine white cornflour?
"I've had good luck with rebates...I do remember to include everything that's asked for and not to scribble illegibly."
Uh, you consider it good fortune that you've not been severely overcharged on any of your purchases.
Bravo, guys. Keep up the good work. These customers consider themselves lucky that you're not stealing from them.
Perhaps someone could explain why this is tolerated [by consumers], but it does seem rather strange indeed.
Either it's "In order to purchase something here, you need to give us a $200 loan for 3 months" (the exact opposite of interest-free-credit, which is what most shops use)
Or, it's "Here's a computer for $1200, and by the way, we're lying about that price" which should certainly have the retailer shut-down by trading standards. The evidence in this article certainly indicates that they have little intention of paying this money back (what's the interest rate on a borrower who defaults on 30% of loans?)
If an advert says $1200 (inc rebate), I think the correct reponse should be " you can fsck off, and I'll choose a more reputable place to buy ". Does that sound reasonable to anyone?
"this isn't really a bad thing if proper judicial controls are instituted. "
And what are the chances of that? Perhaps in a free country...
"I wonder exactly who the U.S. has employed in its counterterrorist operations."
Osama Bin Laden, as I recall. Next question?