Are you serious? I can walk into a Starbucks (a business) use the bathroom (provided no signs stating otherwise or locks/persons to stop me, which most don't have) and leave. Is it legally wrong? No. Is it morally wrong? Yes, I should have bought something to provide revenue to the establishment to maintain the bathroom properly.
And they're well within their legal rights to stop you from doing so either by locking the door or guarding it physically.
Starbucks establishments are not public buildings. Don't ever forget that. They are private property that offer goods to the public. You do not have any more right to be there than the baristas have to be in your living room or using your bathroom.
See folks, whether its a hack or not doesn't change the fact that its just wrong. There are too many people freeloading nowadays. The Internet makes it so much easier to freeload. And its becoming a disease. When MobiTV fixes their stuff, I'm sure a bunch of people in these forums will yell and scream about it, but few of them will actually starting paying for the service that they started to enjoy. I do agree though that MobiTV should be ashamed of themselves for leaving their service wide open.
It's not only a shame, but also indicative of the very thing you reference that you were modded down as flamebait. Why? Because there are a lot of freeloaders with moderator points right now, clearly.
The world has changed, and it's not for the better. It used to be when you looked around for a product you looked for good, quality service and value for your dollar. Nowadays people just look for how they can spend the fewest dollars possible. It's everywhere - entertainment media, clothing, electronics, cars, Internet service, restaurant and grocery store food - everywhere!
People are actually not only willing, but in some cases GLAD to accept sub-standard quality products that break and fail within a fraction of the expected lifespan because they got a big discount. Seriously; should a pair of jeans last 2 years or 20 years? Should a stereo system fail after 3-4 years or should you be able to pass it down to your children still sounding as good as the day you bought it? Or, wait, does it matter? This one was 50% off.
Should it be acceptable for cars to rot out or have failures in their major components after a few short years? Is it really a benefeit to save $4000 and get 0% financing on a vehicle if you're going to be forced to spend the same or more on repairs down the road, else just buy another one to replace it? Or would you rather get $1000 discount and 4% financing on a vehicle that'll actually last you ten years?
What about computers? Used to be you'd buy a computer and you could simply upgrade components every year or so and you'd be in good shape. Now you're not so much updating components as replacing failed components. How many of us have suffered PSU failure, CPU fan failure, motherboard capacitor failures, RAM parity errors or hard drive failures in the past few years? Is it REALLY beneficial to buy a computer for $499 if you know you're going to have to bin it in a year?!?
Internet services are probably one of the best examples - people will strive to get the highest Mbit/sec rate for the lowest dollar amount per month then complain when they're penalized for saturating it. Talk about "Waahhmbulance" territory. How many people do you think are prepared to shell out the dough for a fractional T3 to get dedicated bandwidth to run their torrent clients or UseNext clients on? "Wah, but the companies shouldn't be selling it if they can't deliver!" - hello! The idiot consumers they cater to are too damned stupid to understand SLA versus a high bitrate so what do they market? A high damned bitrate at a bargain basement price.
Well, all in all people, you get what you pay for, and those of you out there who bitch and moan and complain and freeload and get sent C&D letters and threats of lawsuits? Well, you should have thought of that. And hey, try to think about that if your boss ever decides they don't want to pay you for the work you do for them anymore, or they suddenly decide that your skills are such a commodity that they can pay you a fraction of your current salary. Damn, sucks when the shoe's on the other foot huh?
I can't wait for the torrent of responses I'm going to get about greedy corporations wanting to maintain their bottom lines, and information is destined to be free and all that other hogwash. Meanwhile price competition is hitting bottom lines to the point where the companies have to do what? Hey! Outsource to ${THIRD WORLD COUNTRY} at a fraction of the wages! Didn't you people ever consider the ramifica
Yes, but public buildings and private gyms have clear demarcations as to what is public and what is not. If the gym has a dozen rooms and the first one I happen upon has no lock, no ID check, and no sign stating the requirement that you be a member, I cannot know to stay out; it could be demo equipment put there to entice me to become a member.
Are you for real?
It has never been legally permissible to enter a building without the owners consent. There is no such thing as a "public building" - buildings are private property owned by individuals, companies or the government that in some cases deal with the public. You are not allowed to simply enter a building and start using the facilities provided.
This is just another example of the freeloading culture on the Internet and on Slashdot in particular. You are not entitled to everything the world has to offer. This television service made a mistake but they are well within their rights here and hopefully will learn a lesson and fix the hole. But what happens if another hole is discovered? At what point do we declare intent to be malicious rather than "weak security"?
Wow. You've called me several names and made false presumptions about me all in one posting.
No, I am not a network administrator at present; haven't been for a few years. I do, however, have a lot of experience implementing commercial, educational, ISP and residential networks and e-mail infrastructures which is a hell of a lot more experience than you have with your "three e-mail addresses". I have about 30, but my system allows me to check all of them in about 5 seconds. Parsed, sorted, and spam free I might add, though the odd one slips through from time to time.
Next, you make assumptions about how I filter e-mail. Well, my ill-informed friend, you've got it all ass backwards again. I don't know which ISP you're getting service from but here's a hint: either it's a bad one or you can't follow simple instructions. The goal of all my spam filtering is zero (0) false positives. Junk mail is filtered out and stored for later review. I haven't seen a single false positive in my own personal junk mail folder in atleast 3 years now but I still flip through every single junk message I get.
It's so nice of you to pre-judge me out there behind your keyboard just because you can't get a handle on your own e-mail situation. Maybe that's the cause of your ire. Perhaps if you'd just sign up with a decent e-mail account (no, I won't take you on) you'd re-evaluate your opinions and maybe, just maybe, you'd be able to discuss this matter civilly with other people without calling them every name that comes across your finger tips.
If you're upset that I haven't spent more time carefully holding your hand throughout this discussion it's because, frankly, you're not worth the time I've spent penning this response but your message was in such poor taste and I just had a great Sunday so I figured I'd actually spare you the time of day to enlighten you, though I suspect it'll come to little good.
Yes, some people are out of a job temporarily whenever there is a regime change (think buggy whips). That is an argument for the status quo, not for junk mail [nor against junk mail, which I never claimed it was]. It just so happens those two are currently the same.
Weeellll.. Yes and no. Buggy whips went out when the car came in. {cough} Are you suggesting spam is replacing my weekly flyer dump?:)
Note that the argument works in reverse: if there were currently no junk mail allowed through the post office, but they were considering changing their rules to allow it, you could say there'd be layoffs like crazy in other areas of advertising that would be replaced by the superior targeted junk mail.
If the rabbit hadn't stopped to take a shit, the dog wouldn't have eaten him.
Look, the problem with advertising is that with rare exception, no one wants to see or hear it.
Much as I hate to roll out such a trite response; that's a typical isolationist attitude. Advertising is a billion dollar per year industry for a simple reason - it works. Direct mail campaigns have definite spikes on a company's sales graph which is why they continue to use them. Other forms of advertising have a marked and readily apparent effect on the company's overall annual sales performance. Spam continues to thrive because it's insanely profitable. Sorry, but I'm going to have to call bollocks on your argument.
Let there be layoffs then. Maybe these people can be rehired to fix crumbling bridges and overpasses, install 100 Mbps broadband lines to every home in America, or do something else that actually improves the world.
Maybe they can become artists. That would improve the world.
How will we advertise the campaigns to feed all the starving artists once you've eliminated commercial advertising?
As I said in my response the paid advertisements sent by the post office are there to serve a distinct benefit to the merchants who are sending them.
And a distinct lack thereof to mail recipients and the postal service.
If that were true, they'd have stopped accepting the business years ago. Unverifiable strawmen are fun and all but they don't contribute to the flow of the discussion.
Why don't you go repair a crumbling bridge or install an ethernet cable rather than wasting our time here? According to you, anything deemed not socially responsible and/or productive should be immediately ceased until consensus can be reached to find something more productive. Your post has annoyed the hundreds of people who had to skim their way past it; therefore it's a waste of time, energy and resources that could otherwise have been spent on more productive purposes.
Wow, that's an easy argument to make. I can see why it's been so popular thus far. I can do this all day.
Meanwhile you'd better find a way to pay for all these bridge repairs and ethernet cable installations; I'm sure the businesses who have to shut their doors and lay off their employees due to lack of exposure won't be paying for them. Their tax dollars certainly won't exist to contribute because they'll be on the dole while they try to find a job that doesn't require ad exposure to survive. Certainly not in the retail sector in which they're arguably the most qualified.
You have a lot of good ideas. As the saying goes, I'd like to subscribe to your magazine. Run with it. See how well it works. Let me know when you've made your economy sustainable with all these expensive new projects. I'm curious to see how this all works out in the end.
As someone else replied, the broken window fallacy has nothing to do with whether the act is legal or illegal.
Actually, the parable opens up thusly;
"The parable describes a shopkeeper whose window is broken by a little boy."
In this case it was the shopkeeper's careless son but it could be attributed to any act that results in a broken window legal or otherwise. Regardless, the legality of the act is mere semantics, the point of the parable is the window and the repercussions of replacing same, not the cause of the initial breakage.
How is it different? Whether or not junk mail is a "good thing," this particular justification for it is completely invalid.
No, actually, it's not. As I said in my response the paid advertisements sent by the post office are there to serve a distinct benefit to the merchants who are sending them. The broken window is something a homeowner would not do intentionally because, yes, they would have otherwise spent the money somewhere more productive, hence the nuisance of the "little boy". The parable of the broken window is merely a way to reassure and calm the shopkeeper / homeowner that the act is in fact helping the economy so it's not so terrible. The paid, targeted advertisements are in fact helping the economy for the reasons I spelled out in my previous post;
The postal worker gets a more steady, consistent flow of mail guaranteeing them work.
The postal service gets more predictable mail routes thereby allowing the system to flow smoothly rather than erratically making the system as a whole more efficient.
The printers, artists, paper and ink suppliers are all given work.
The business that sends the flyers gets an increase in traffic to their establishment creating work for their own employees and increasing their bottom lines.
The suppliers to the business itself gain a boon because of increased sale and therefore increased demand of products.
This isn't in any way a false economy. Flyer advertsing is far less expensive than radio and television and is more targeted which nets a far better cost:benefit ratio for their advertising dollar. Now, regardless of medium, that dollar will be spent in some way or another be it flyer circulation, newspaper flyers, newspaper/magazine adverts, radio/television spots, billboards, bus/bench advertising, direct telephone campaigns, door to door representation or any of a host of other means of getting their name out to the customer base in their target (surrounding) area.
You can easily find a way to discredit any or all of the above means of advertising thereby claiming each one in particular as a false economy but the fact remains that advertising remains the best way to garner attention to your business if done right and flyer advertising works and creates many dozens or hundreds of jobs in the process. It will never go away and the postal service will never refuse to deliver these ads so they're a part of our lives. Learn to live with it or suggest a better way to target an area of customers and present it to the local businesses and the post office and see how well it goes over.
If the post office wasn't delivering so much junk mail, their employees could be doing something else for which they would also get paid.
You mean the ones who are left after the massive rounds of layoffs. "More efficient" in this case means "fewer people on the payroll".
What else besides sorting, routing and delivering mail is a postal employee supposed to do? That's their job description; end of story. If you take away one of those areas there is less work to go around therefore fewer people required to do it.
If businesses did not advertise with junk mail, they could be advertising in some other way that would also pay people. Junk mail (and broken windows) do not create jobs. They merely divert those jobs
How are supermarket ads useful to anyone except someone who doesn't know the supermarket exists? At least around here, there's no coupons anymore. Actually it's pretty silly--everyone offers to double or triple their competitors' coupons, but none of them offer any so it's useless. As for the content of the ads.. well gee there's a special on turkey in mid-November? Thanks advertisement.
Our ads come out in the Friday paper around here which works nicely; two weekend days to do the grocery shopping at the beginning of the flyer period. We have about eight supermarket chains within a very brief drive from our house. Every week we sit at the table for 10-15 minutes browsing the flyers trying to decide which is the best bang for our buck. When things are on sale that we normally use, we stock up. When things are on sale we don't normally use we treat ourselves.
Now, this is different from mailbox advertisements. Those are typically for politicians, religious groups and small local businesses. If something catches our eye hey, what the hell. Otherwise the blue box is right below the mailbox.
how is it you believe spam constitutes protected speech?
It is my right to read email sent to me and decide what is and is not spam for myself.
Your right based on what? You're the one arguing constitutionality of spam here; please, provide some insight. Or as you said in a previous posting; do you have a link?
You either with us or you're against us, eh el presidente? You know the deal... just shout terrorist^W spammer and everyone will vote for you with their mod points. I have a vested interest in the right to speak freely.
Oh yeah? Then post your e-mail address(es) so everybody here can also exercise their rights.
As soon as you get it through your thick skull that spam is not freedom of speech you'll be better off. Really. But I'd be interested to know; how is it you believe spam constitutes protected speech? Please provide your interpretation of the first amendment - I'm just dying to hear that.
I don't want *any* unsolicited bulk email no matter who it's from. You add the addresses of the few people you do want to get email from, then everyone else gets rejected, since everyone else falls under the group of 'unsolicited'.
Nice try, poor strawman; you quoted the wording yourself. "unsolicited bulk e-mail". A message from grandma saying she changed her e-mail address is not by any stretch of the imagination "bulk".
BTW; relying solely in whitelists is possibly the worst spam prevention mechanism one can employ. When someone sends me important correspondence I don't want to have to filter my way through a few hundred UCE messages in order to find a gem. I want it to appear prominently in my inbox.
I didn't want to read your bullshit drivel, and it certainly took me far longer to respond to it than simply ignore it. That said, I'm not going to go all scientologist on you, hunt you down, and have you jailed for saying it just because you're acting like an annoying fucking prick. That's because I respect your right to say it. Wanker.
Sure. I'll just create a few million e-mail accounts and re-send all his postings to you several times/day; each one from different ISPs on different IP blocks. Then we'll see what you have to say about receiving his drivel. News flash; you can always close your browser window and not read Slashdot. Do the comments come directly to your inbox?
You're right on both counts: junk mail does provide jobs, and it does subsidize regular mail. The thing is, this is pretty close to a "broken glass" fallacy.
It's nowhere near a broken glass fallacy. This isn't a case of an illegal act, it's a case of a legitimate business model that employs many. If the postal service wanted to do away with it all they'd have to do is stop accepting it and it'd be over with. They don't. Why? Because it subsidizes their business model, it keeps their employees working, it fills in the gaps in their daily routes (eg; long stretches of houses that otherwise wouldn't receive any mail on a given day) thereby making the routes more predictable and efficient.
As to the inception; the ads you get in your mail are paid for by local businesses targeting specific areas of interest. A window company working in the area offering a promotion so they can employ their guys in a centralized area thereby keeping costs down and passing them along to the residents, a car dealership offering a sale for residents in their vicinity, a snow clearing service, etc. These businesses pay for this mail to be created thereby creating jobs in the printing and postal industry AND if they've done their homework and targeted properly they'll increase company revenues thereby creatinug work for their employees and increasing their own bottom line.
With recycling programs in high gear in most(?) heavily populated areas the resultant flyers are generally disposed of in the "blue bin" (or the local equivalent) and recycled to create new products and new employment opportunities.
There is no "broken window" fallacy here because the money was intended to be spent on targeted advertising in the first place. Try to do some research into retail outlets' advertising strategies and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Oh, I greatly disagree. Besides, the junk fax law is unconstitutional. An FTC-administered 'Do Not Fax' list would be far superior.
Unconstitutional? In what world? Better yet - are you arguing that it's wrong? That people should be permitted to consume all of my company's toner and paper supply on a daily basis because they want me to take advantage of their training seminars or low cost vacation packages?!?
$42.95 a month, huh? Every month? As in flat rate... like most people... who will pay the same rate every month... whether they receive one email or 100... How are you paying for that spam again???
Because it's $42.95/month instead of $32.95 you blithering idiot.
Yes, I'm using ad-hominem because throughout this entire thread all you've done thus far is piss on all logic that's been presented to you. You have no idea about the costs of running a business, no idea of how an ISP works, no idea about the demands of a real-world e-mail server with or without spam protection measures and no idea of any of the costs involved. Those costs are passed on to the END USER along with the bottom line of the recipient ISP and all ISPs in the transit stream. This is ILLEGAL, and the proof is in all other mediums; fax spam and telemarketer calls to cell phones are illegal because the RECIPIENT pays, not the sender. Do you understand that?
You say the spammers pay for bandwidth? Do you know how SMTP works? That a spammer can send a single e-mail to HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE at THEIR EXPENSE? Do you understand that the majority of all spam e-mail comes from the bandwidth of other END USERS on compromised machines? That spam is such a large black market business that there are gangs of programmers out there creating trojans and bot-nets for the express purpose of creating armies of spam bots to satisfy the demands of pieces of garbage like the one on trial at the moment?
Do yourself a favour and shut up. You're embarrassing yourself and god are you ever annoying in that whiny brat in the supermarket cereal aisle kind of way.
Spammers don't pay for bandwidth like everyone else? What fairy land do you live in? ISP fees would be lower? How do you figure that?? Expense to the recipient? I pay a flat rate every month... it doesn't cost me a dime extra to receive spam... How does complete BS like this get an Insightful rating??
Have you ever created, or even conceived of a computer that can process some 10,000 e-mail messages per hour?
Until you figure out what the costs of a real world ISP are, please, stop posting on the subject.
Gah! I don't want software that fucking "learns"! I don't want software that tries to think for me. I want software that just fucking works in the first place!
It does. Your "just fucking works" is slightly different from my "just fucking works", so it learns how we each work and adapts accordingly. It not only learns your habits in entering URLs in the address bar, but it also learns from your browsing history and bookmark use. When I type "sl" lo and behold, Slashdot is the first entry. When I type "gl" the first entry is for my Globe And Mail portfolio listing, when I type "bm" my online banking page comes up #1. Now, if I wanted to view other pages that I select often I can scroll further down, but in general all I need is two letters, down, enter and I'm at the page I want based on my own browsing habits. Now, your online banking might start with "sc" or "ba" or any other combination so you wouldn't want "bm" associated with that. Maybe "bm" links to your social networking site or something else you want. Why bother with one-size-fits-all when you can have custom tailored for the same price?
Ignorance is not brainwashing. I generally do not keep careful track of exactly where I came across every idea in my head though your surmise is likely correct. But I do usually take the time to go educate myself at least minimally when I discover one of them is wrong.
Actually it is very akin to brainwashing. See, the concept you're looking for is metacognition which pretty literally means thinking about your thinking. Unless you know where your knowledge came from and why on a regular basis it becomes more and more easy to implant incorrect ideas into your head. If you don't know or care how information gets there or have some kind of filter as to what does and does not get it, you can see how easily you can be swayed into believing utter nonsense. Harsh though it may have been, the GP's point does hold somewhat true. You've allowed 'knowledge' gleaned from movies and television to seep into a debate as your primary argument.
FWIW, you should be attempting to educate yourself and think about your knowledge base constantly, rather than waiting for somebody to point out that you're incorrect. Otherwise, how will you know how much of your knowledge base is fundamentally flawed?
So why did he pick the kids up at school when nobody yet knew that Nina was missing, and it was Nina's day to pick them up? Sounds to me like the act of someone who had personal knowledge. There hasn't been any attempt to explain that one...
I've seen you ask this I swear half a dozen times now and it's driving me up the wall. Have you never done something irrational? Picked up the kids (or anything/anybody else for that matter) when it wasn't your turn? You've never come home with a jug of milk to find a fresh one in the refrigerator? Or you don't suppose he just wanted extra time with his kids? Or perhaps that the whole "Nina is missing" thing is a fabrication of sorts and/or that they could have made prior arrangements before the disappearance?
The point being there is only one way to interpret that action as one of guilt and a thousand interpretations of innocence. Your question is a strawman and a poor one at that. Let it drop, and leave the prosecution and the defence to their jobs already. As it stands I don't think any explanation, reasonable or otherwise will satisfy you at this point based on your extreme conviction to the idea that the kids are the crux of the entire investigation.
PS3's are still over-priced for a game system as far as I am concerned.
What are the relative prices where you are? To get a console unit with an integrated hard drive and a bundled game I'm looking at $399 for either system at Future Shop in Ontario, Canada. Sure, to get an "Arcade" XBox 360 without a hard drive and with no games will only cost me $279.99, but hell, I don't want to start buying memory cards! These new consoles are supposed to be about rich multimedia experience, not about slow antique technology that's easy to lose/damage.
Moreover, the PS3 gives me integrated WiFi Internet access and an integrated BluRay player which means at the very least I won't have to deal with games spread across multiple discs but it can also double as a free high definition movie player.
Not only that, but Sony's SIXAXIS controllers actually change the way you game which is a far cry above 'XBox with better graphics and sound'.
I've evaluated all three consoles (Wii, XBox 360 and PS3) and have decided that the best bang for my dollar hands down is the PS3. I really and truly felt that the XBox 360 was nothing more than a polish to the original XBox and therefore not worth another investment. My comparison was based solely on technical merits and improvements relative to previous generation of consoles but it doesn't help Microsoft's case when I'm constantly hearing of 360s heating up to absurd levels (including my friends' which felt damn close to scalding levels) and the dreaded red rings of death that are prevalent enough that MS were forced to extend their console's warranty coverage.
Note that I fully understand that both represent evil conglomerates, but by the same token my computer runs Windows XP and displays on my Sony HD television set so developer bias didn't enter into my decision in the slightest. Also, I do own an original XBox in the special translucent green colouring along with about 30-odd games.
Good parents who are illiterate (unable to read) generally want their children to have the best education possible. They encourage their child to learn how to read and read whenever possible because they don't want the child to have the same disadvantage they have. Other parents who are more concerned about looking stupid because their child can read when they can't tend to discourage learning. They cast around FUD about the appropriateness of the material the child might be reading.
Are you telling me the Internet and PCs are just as easy to understand as printed books? That's a pretty heavy strawman there my anonymous friend.
You know, I was going to say that it's perfectly reasonable to think that some children would have trouble remembering abstract passcodes, but there's little more abstract than the first passcode I every new: 416-731-9262. Then digits, certainly completely random to me, and certainly at the time. My postal code too -- L3T 6X7.
The annoying part is that I can remember these things twenty years after they were deprecated.
I'm surprised you had to remember the area code, though I suppose if you were travelling outside the GTA you'd have needed it, but damn, 416 used to be a pretty big area. You'd have had to be far from home to need 10 digits!
Slashdot Mirror
... say someone took a bad analogy and stretched it even further, charging an arbitrary fee to read it ... would you be opposed to gay marriage?
And they're well within their legal rights to stop you from doing so either by locking the door or guarding it physically.
Starbucks establishments are not public buildings. Don't ever forget that. They are private property that offer goods to the public. You do not have any more right to be there than the baristas have to be in your living room or using your bathroom.
See folks, whether its a hack or not doesn't change the fact that its just wrong. There are too many people freeloading nowadays. The Internet makes it so much easier to freeload. And its becoming a disease. When MobiTV fixes their stuff, I'm sure a bunch of people in these forums will yell and scream about it, but few of them will actually starting paying for the service that they started to enjoy. I do agree though that MobiTV should be ashamed of themselves for leaving their service wide open.
It's not only a shame, but also indicative of the very thing you reference that you were modded down as flamebait. Why? Because there are a lot of freeloaders with moderator points right now, clearly.
The world has changed, and it's not for the better. It used to be when you looked around for a product you looked for good, quality service and value for your dollar. Nowadays people just look for how they can spend the fewest dollars possible. It's everywhere - entertainment media, clothing, electronics, cars, Internet service, restaurant and grocery store food - everywhere!
People are actually not only willing, but in some cases GLAD to accept sub-standard quality products that break and fail within a fraction of the expected lifespan because they got a big discount. Seriously; should a pair of jeans last 2 years or 20 years? Should a stereo system fail after 3-4 years or should you be able to pass it down to your children still sounding as good as the day you bought it? Or, wait, does it matter? This one was 50% off.
Should it be acceptable for cars to rot out or have failures in their major components after a few short years? Is it really a benefeit to save $4000 and get 0% financing on a vehicle if you're going to be forced to spend the same or more on repairs down the road, else just buy another one to replace it? Or would you rather get $1000 discount and 4% financing on a vehicle that'll actually last you ten years?
What about computers? Used to be you'd buy a computer and you could simply upgrade components every year or so and you'd be in good shape. Now you're not so much updating components as replacing failed components. How many of us have suffered PSU failure, CPU fan failure, motherboard capacitor failures, RAM parity errors or hard drive failures in the past few years? Is it REALLY beneficial to buy a computer for $499 if you know you're going to have to bin it in a year?!?
Internet services are probably one of the best examples - people will strive to get the highest Mbit/sec rate for the lowest dollar amount per month then complain when they're penalized for saturating it. Talk about "Waahhmbulance" territory. How many people do you think are prepared to shell out the dough for a fractional T3 to get dedicated bandwidth to run their torrent clients or UseNext clients on? "Wah, but the companies shouldn't be selling it if they can't deliver!" - hello! The idiot consumers they cater to are too damned stupid to understand SLA versus a high bitrate so what do they market? A high damned bitrate at a bargain basement price.
Well, all in all people, you get what you pay for, and those of you out there who bitch and moan and complain and freeload and get sent C&D letters and threats of lawsuits? Well, you should have thought of that. And hey, try to think about that if your boss ever decides they don't want to pay you for the work you do for them anymore, or they suddenly decide that your skills are such a commodity that they can pay you a fraction of your current salary. Damn, sucks when the shoe's on the other foot huh?
I can't wait for the torrent of responses I'm going to get about greedy corporations wanting to maintain their bottom lines, and information is destined to be free and all that other hogwash. Meanwhile price competition is hitting bottom lines to the point where the companies have to do what? Hey! Outsource to ${THIRD WORLD COUNTRY} at a fraction of the wages! Didn't you people ever consider the ramifica
Are you for real?
It has never been legally permissible to enter a building without the owners consent. There is no such thing as a "public building" - buildings are private property owned by individuals, companies or the government that in some cases deal with the public. You are not allowed to simply enter a building and start using the facilities provided.
This is just another example of the freeloading culture on the Internet and on Slashdot in particular. You are not entitled to everything the world has to offer. This television service made a mistake but they are well within their rights here and hopefully will learn a lesson and fix the hole. But what happens if another hole is discovered? At what point do we declare intent to be malicious rather than "weak security"?
No, I am not a network administrator at present; haven't been for a few years. I do, however, have a lot of experience implementing commercial, educational, ISP and residential networks and e-mail infrastructures which is a hell of a lot more experience than you have with your "three e-mail addresses". I have about 30, but my system allows me to check all of them in about 5 seconds. Parsed, sorted, and spam free I might add, though the odd one slips through from time to time.
Next, you make assumptions about how I filter e-mail. Well, my ill-informed friend, you've got it all ass backwards again. I don't know which ISP you're getting service from but here's a hint: either it's a bad one or you can't follow simple instructions. The goal of all my spam filtering is zero (0) false positives. Junk mail is filtered out and stored for later review. I haven't seen a single false positive in my own personal junk mail folder in atleast 3 years now but I still flip through every single junk message I get.
It's so nice of you to pre-judge me out there behind your keyboard just because you can't get a handle on your own e-mail situation. Maybe that's the cause of your ire. Perhaps if you'd just sign up with a decent e-mail account (no, I won't take you on) you'd re-evaluate your opinions and maybe, just maybe, you'd be able to discuss this matter civilly with other people without calling them every name that comes across your finger tips.
If you're upset that I haven't spent more time carefully holding your hand throughout this discussion it's because, frankly, you're not worth the time I've spent penning this response but your message was in such poor taste and I just had a great Sunday so I figured I'd actually spare you the time of day to enlighten you, though I suspect it'll come to little good.
Weeellll.. Yes and no. Buggy whips went out when the car came in. {cough} Are you suggesting spam is replacing my weekly flyer dump? :)
Note that the argument works in reverse: if there were currently no junk mail allowed through the post office, but they were considering changing their rules to allow it, you could say there'd be layoffs like crazy in other areas of advertising that would be replaced by the superior targeted junk mail.If the rabbit hadn't stopped to take a shit, the dog wouldn't have eaten him.
Much as I hate to roll out such a trite response; that's a typical isolationist attitude. Advertising is a billion dollar per year industry for a simple reason - it works. Direct mail campaigns have definite spikes on a company's sales graph which is why they continue to use them. Other forms of advertising have a marked and readily apparent effect on the company's overall annual sales performance. Spam continues to thrive because it's insanely profitable. Sorry, but I'm going to have to call bollocks on your argument.
Maybe they can become artists. That would improve the world.
How will we advertise the campaigns to feed all the starving artists once you've eliminated commercial advertising?
As I said in my response the paid advertisements sent by the post office are there to serve a distinct benefit to the merchants who are sending them.And a distinct lack thereof to mail recipients and the postal service.
If that were true, they'd have stopped accepting the business years ago. Unverifiable strawmen are fun and all but they don't contribute to the flow of the discussion.
Why don't you go repair a crumbling bridge or install an ethernet cable rather than wasting our time here? According to you, anything deemed not socially responsible and/or productive should be immediately ceased until consensus can be reached to find something more productive. Your post has annoyed the hundreds of people who had to skim their way past it; therefore it's a waste of time, energy and resources that could otherwise have been spent on more productive purposes.
Wow, that's an easy argument to make. I can see why it's been so popular thus far. I can do this all day.
Meanwhile you'd better find a way to pay for all these bridge repairs and ethernet cable installations; I'm sure the businesses who have to shut their doors and lay off their employees due to lack of exposure won't be paying for them. Their tax dollars certainly won't exist to contribute because they'll be on the dole while they try to find a job that doesn't require ad exposure to survive. Certainly not in the retail sector in which they're arguably the most qualified.
You have a lot of good ideas. As the saying goes, I'd like to subscribe to your magazine. Run with it. See how well it works. Let me know when you've made your economy sustainable with all these expensive new projects. I'm curious to see how this all works out in the end.
As someone else replied, the broken window fallacy has nothing to do with whether the act is legal or illegal.
Actually, the parable opens up thusly;
In this case it was the shopkeeper's careless son but it could be attributed to any act that results in a broken window legal or otherwise. Regardless, the legality of the act is mere semantics, the point of the parable is the window and the repercussions of replacing same, not the cause of the initial breakage.
How is it different? Whether or not junk mail is a "good thing," this particular justification for it is completely invalid.
No, actually, it's not. As I said in my response the paid advertisements sent by the post office are there to serve a distinct benefit to the merchants who are sending them. The broken window is something a homeowner would not do intentionally because, yes, they would have otherwise spent the money somewhere more productive, hence the nuisance of the "little boy". The parable of the broken window is merely a way to reassure and calm the shopkeeper / homeowner that the act is in fact helping the economy so it's not so terrible. The paid, targeted advertisements are in fact helping the economy for the reasons I spelled out in my previous post;
This isn't in any way a false economy. Flyer advertsing is far less expensive than radio and television and is more targeted which nets a far better cost:benefit ratio for their advertising dollar. Now, regardless of medium, that dollar will be spent in some way or another be it flyer circulation, newspaper flyers, newspaper/magazine adverts, radio/television spots, billboards, bus/bench advertising, direct telephone campaigns, door to door representation or any of a host of other means of getting their name out to the customer base in their target (surrounding) area.
You can easily find a way to discredit any or all of the above means of advertising thereby claiming each one in particular as a false economy but the fact remains that advertising remains the best way to garner attention to your business if done right and flyer advertising works and creates many dozens or hundreds of jobs in the process. It will never go away and the postal service will never refuse to deliver these ads so they're a part of our lives. Learn to live with it or suggest a better way to target an area of customers and present it to the local businesses and the post office and see how well it goes over.
If the post office wasn't delivering so much junk mail, their employees could be doing something else for which they would also get paid.
You mean the ones who are left after the massive rounds of layoffs. "More efficient" in this case means "fewer people on the payroll".
What else besides sorting, routing and delivering mail is a postal employee supposed to do? That's their job description; end of story. If you take away one of those areas there is less work to go around therefore fewer people required to do it.
If businesses did not advertise with junk mail, they could be advertising in some other way that would also pay people. Junk mail (and broken windows) do not create jobs. They merely divert those jobs
Our ads come out in the Friday paper around here which works nicely; two weekend days to do the grocery shopping at the beginning of the flyer period. We have about eight supermarket chains within a very brief drive from our house. Every week we sit at the table for 10-15 minutes browsing the flyers trying to decide which is the best bang for our buck. When things are on sale that we normally use, we stock up. When things are on sale we don't normally use we treat ourselves.
Now, this is different from mailbox advertisements. Those are typically for politicians, religious groups and small local businesses. If something catches our eye hey, what the hell. Otherwise the blue box is right below the mailbox.
It is my right to read email sent to me and decide what is and is not spam for myself.
Your right based on what? You're the one arguing constitutionality of spam here; please, provide some insight. Or as you said in a previous posting; do you have a link?
Oh yeah? Then post your e-mail address(es) so everybody here can also exercise their rights.
As soon as you get it through your thick skull that spam is not freedom of speech you'll be better off. Really. But I'd be interested to know; how is it you believe spam constitutes protected speech? Please provide your interpretation of the first amendment - I'm just dying to hear that.
Nice try, poor strawman; you quoted the wording yourself. "unsolicited bulk e-mail". A message from grandma saying she changed her e-mail address is not by any stretch of the imagination "bulk".
BTW; relying solely in whitelists is possibly the worst spam prevention mechanism one can employ. When someone sends me important correspondence I don't want to have to filter my way through a few hundred UCE messages in order to find a gem. I want it to appear prominently in my inbox.
Sure. I'll just create a few million e-mail accounts and re-send all his postings to you several times/day; each one from different ISPs on different IP blocks. Then we'll see what you have to say about receiving his drivel. News flash; you can always close your browser window and not read Slashdot. Do the comments come directly to your inbox?
"Wanker."
It's nowhere near a broken glass fallacy. This isn't a case of an illegal act, it's a case of a legitimate business model that employs many. If the postal service wanted to do away with it all they'd have to do is stop accepting it and it'd be over with. They don't. Why? Because it subsidizes their business model, it keeps their employees working, it fills in the gaps in their daily routes (eg; long stretches of houses that otherwise wouldn't receive any mail on a given day) thereby making the routes more predictable and efficient.
As to the inception; the ads you get in your mail are paid for by local businesses targeting specific areas of interest. A window company working in the area offering a promotion so they can employ their guys in a centralized area thereby keeping costs down and passing them along to the residents, a car dealership offering a sale for residents in their vicinity, a snow clearing service, etc. These businesses pay for this mail to be created thereby creating jobs in the printing and postal industry AND if they've done their homework and targeted properly they'll increase company revenues thereby creatinug work for their employees and increasing their own bottom line.
With recycling programs in high gear in most(?) heavily populated areas the resultant flyers are generally disposed of in the "blue bin" (or the local equivalent) and recycled to create new products and new employment opportunities.
There is no "broken window" fallacy here because the money was intended to be spent on targeted advertising in the first place. Try to do some research into retail outlets' advertising strategies and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Unconstitutional? In what world? Better yet - are you arguing that it's wrong? That people should be permitted to consume all of my company's toner and paper supply on a daily basis because they want me to take advantage of their training seminars or low cost vacation packages?!?
Because it's $42.95/month instead of $32.95 you blithering idiot.
Yes, I'm using ad-hominem because throughout this entire thread all you've done thus far is piss on all logic that's been presented to you. You have no idea about the costs of running a business, no idea of how an ISP works, no idea about the demands of a real-world e-mail server with or without spam protection measures and no idea of any of the costs involved. Those costs are passed on to the END USER along with the bottom line of the recipient ISP and all ISPs in the transit stream. This is ILLEGAL, and the proof is in all other mediums; fax spam and telemarketer calls to cell phones are illegal because the RECIPIENT pays, not the sender. Do you understand that?
You say the spammers pay for bandwidth? Do you know how SMTP works? That a spammer can send a single e-mail to HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE at THEIR EXPENSE? Do you understand that the majority of all spam e-mail comes from the bandwidth of other END USERS on compromised machines? That spam is such a large black market business that there are gangs of programmers out there creating trojans and bot-nets for the express purpose of creating armies of spam bots to satisfy the demands of pieces of garbage like the one on trial at the moment?
Do yourself a favour and shut up. You're embarrassing yourself and god are you ever annoying in that whiny brat in the supermarket cereal aisle kind of way.
Have you ever created, or even conceived of a computer that can process some 10,000 e-mail messages per hour?
Until you figure out what the costs of a real world ISP are, please, stop posting on the subject.
It does. Your "just fucking works" is slightly different from my "just fucking works", so it learns how we each work and adapts accordingly. It not only learns your habits in entering URLs in the address bar, but it also learns from your browsing history and bookmark use. When I type "sl" lo and behold, Slashdot is the first entry. When I type "gl" the first entry is for my Globe And Mail portfolio listing, when I type "bm" my online banking page comes up #1. Now, if I wanted to view other pages that I select often I can scroll further down, but in general all I need is two letters, down, enter and I'm at the page I want based on my own browsing habits. Now, your online banking might start with "sc" or "ba" or any other combination so you wouldn't want "bm" associated with that. Maybe "bm" links to your social networking site or something else you want. Why bother with one-size-fits-all when you can have custom tailored for the same price?
Do us a favour; go have sex then see if you still want to ask this question.
Actually it is very akin to brainwashing. See, the concept you're looking for is metacognition which pretty literally means thinking about your thinking. Unless you know where your knowledge came from and why on a regular basis it becomes more and more easy to implant incorrect ideas into your head. If you don't know or care how information gets there or have some kind of filter as to what does and does not get it, you can see how easily you can be swayed into believing utter nonsense. Harsh though it may have been, the GP's point does hold somewhat true. You've allowed 'knowledge' gleaned from movies and television to seep into a debate as your primary argument.
FWIW, you should be attempting to educate yourself and think about your knowledge base constantly, rather than waiting for somebody to point out that you're incorrect. Otherwise, how will you know how much of your knowledge base is fundamentally flawed?
I've seen you ask this I swear half a dozen times now and it's driving me up the wall. Have you never done something irrational? Picked up the kids (or anything/anybody else for that matter) when it wasn't your turn? You've never come home with a jug of milk to find a fresh one in the refrigerator? Or you don't suppose he just wanted extra time with his kids? Or perhaps that the whole "Nina is missing" thing is a fabrication of sorts and/or that they could have made prior arrangements before the disappearance?
The point being there is only one way to interpret that action as one of guilt and a thousand interpretations of innocence. Your question is a strawman and a poor one at that. Let it drop, and leave the prosecution and the defence to their jobs already. As it stands I don't think any explanation, reasonable or otherwise will satisfy you at this point based on your extreme conviction to the idea that the kids are the crux of the entire investigation.
What are the relative prices where you are? To get a console unit with an integrated hard drive and a bundled game I'm looking at $399 for either system at Future Shop in Ontario, Canada. Sure, to get an "Arcade" XBox 360 without a hard drive and with no games will only cost me $279.99, but hell, I don't want to start buying memory cards! These new consoles are supposed to be about rich multimedia experience, not about slow antique technology that's easy to lose/damage.
Moreover, the PS3 gives me integrated WiFi Internet access and an integrated BluRay player which means at the very least I won't have to deal with games spread across multiple discs but it can also double as a free high definition movie player.
Not only that, but Sony's SIXAXIS controllers actually change the way you game which is a far cry above 'XBox with better graphics and sound'.
I've evaluated all three consoles (Wii, XBox 360 and PS3) and have decided that the best bang for my dollar hands down is the PS3. I really and truly felt that the XBox 360 was nothing more than a polish to the original XBox and therefore not worth another investment. My comparison was based solely on technical merits and improvements relative to previous generation of consoles but it doesn't help Microsoft's case when I'm constantly hearing of 360s heating up to absurd levels (including my friends' which felt damn close to scalding levels) and the dreaded red rings of death that are prevalent enough that MS were forced to extend their console's warranty coverage.
Note that I fully understand that both represent evil conglomerates, but by the same token my computer runs Windows XP and displays on my Sony HD television set so developer bias didn't enter into my decision in the slightest. Also, I do own an original XBox in the special translucent green colouring along with about 30-odd games.
Are you telling me the Internet and PCs are just as easy to understand as printed books? That's a pretty heavy strawman there my anonymous friend.
The annoying part is that I can remember these things twenty years after they were deprecated.
I'm surprised you had to remember the area code, though I suppose if you were travelling outside the GTA you'd have needed it, but damn, 416 used to be a pretty big area. You'd have had to be far from home to need 10 digits!