You're right but it would take away spammer's anonimity.
It would also take away everyone else's anonymity. Given the number of people who get sued by corporations for telling truthful but disparaging things, and given the number of "whistle blowers" who end up out of a job, or worse, do you really think that we should give up the ability to send anonymous e-mail just to avoid the inconvenience of junk mail? I sure don't.
True, but as has been pointed out numerous times on Slashdot (please mod me up as "Redundant") Fair Use is a defence not an offence. If you copy a copyrighted work in a way that is protected by Fair Use, it will protect you from legal liability, but it places NO obligation on content producers to release their works to the public in a way which is easily copied. If I write a novel, I can simply lock it in a safe, denying you of your Fair Use "Right" to copy it. I'm under no obligation to make it easy for you to copy.
First, Philips probably won't press this claim too hard when they start protecting their own CDs. That's right. Philips does have its own classical music label (I have many of their CDs) and they are a part of the Universal Music Group along with other Polygram classical labels such as Deutsche Grammophon and London, as well as many other labels. And Universal Music Group has announced they will begin copy protecting all their CDs by the middle of 2002. When the hardware department at Philips realizes this, I'm sure they'll stop pressing this claim.
And secondly, who really gives a crap about the logo anyway? If the record labels don't mind labeling their CDs as copy protected, which it seems they don't, why do you think they would care too much about omitting the logo, and simply calling it a compact disc without the logo. And if they can't use the name compact disc, they could simply say CD, or something else that gets the point across as to what it is. Do you think they're concerned that sales will drop merely because their products which are so obviously CDs don't carry the familiar CD logo?
Before they give you a license, they will take and destroy your Canadian province's license (and notify the province via their linked computer systems).
That's only true if you don't want to take another road test. But in at least two states I've acquired licenses in (NJ and SC) they do ask you to state whether or not you currently hold a license from another state, but not from another country. So you can keep your Canadian license as long as you are willing to take another road test.
Yes, I'm aware that PHP can't be extended to higher dimensional spaces. It was a weak attempt at humor.
I guess PHP is a variation on the Axiom of choice , or maybe it's a consequence...
Actually, neither. The Axiom of choice deals with infinite sets, while the pigeonhole principle deals with finite sets. Basically the axiom of choice says there is at least one way to choose one element each from an infinite number of infinite or finite sets. The pigeonhole principle states that a finite set can't be mapped one-to-one into another finite set with fewer elements.
If I recall my set theory properly the "Pigeon Hole Principle" simply states that if you have 100 holes and 101 pigeons, when you distribute all the pigeons into all holes, there will be at least one hole with at least two pigeons.
You're absolutely right, however your version of the pigeonhole principle doesn't lend itself to extensions to higher dimensions and so is of less use when discussing transdimensional projective compression. Think of the pigeons being stored in Dr. Who's Tardis, as a better analogy if you like.
Am I the only Slashdot reader who realizes the entire article is either a joke, a scam, or written by a nut?
As I understand it, and I could be wrong, but isn't the Universal Music Group planning to protect all their CDs my the middle of 2002? And I had read in a previous post (sorry, didn't keep a reference) that that includes many labels including the Polygram classical labels: Deutsche Grammophon, London, and Philips.
So it's doubtful that they will press their standard claims too hard if at all when their standards department realizes their music distribution department is using this protection.
Does anyone know if Sony is planning to protect their disks?
By this logic, DDOS attacks are legal. "Hey your port 80 is open, and I'm just using it..."
But in a DDOS, your specific intention is to cause a service interruption. In the case of spam, a clogged inbox is only a side effect. A better port 80 analogy would be the so-called "Slashdot effect" that happens when a million Slashdot readers try to go to a site and bring the server to a crawl. The issue here is intent. I don't dispute that sending a bunch of spam to one address for the explicit purpose of bringing down their systems can and should be illegal.
Forging the "from" line and/or return address isn't fraudulent?
If the purpose is to deliberately mislead the recipient into believing the mail was sent by someone else, then possibly. But I don't think putting a non-existant return address on snail mail is illegal.
Of course, real mail could be thrown out easily, but e-mail is harder to deal with
That's preposterous. I don't know which e-mail client you use, but I find it easier to press the delete key, than to walk from my mailbox with an armload of multi-sized junk mail falling out of my hands to the trash can.
But death threats and scams are still illegal.
I'm not saying that they should be legal with e-mail. Only that e-mail shouldn't be subject to a lesser standard of 1st Amendment protection than snail-mail.
Also, I think the restriction is on commercial mail only, not all internet mail.
But as I said in my post, it's the precedent which is scary here. This could make it easy to pass some ugly laws in the future.
Using anonymous remailers for sending advertising materials can be outlawed. It has been, in California. It's also illegal to send anonymous death threats, BTW.
I have no problem with making death threats by e-mail illegal. It probably already is as is the case for snail mail. But advertisements, unlike death threats, are generally afforded First Amendment protection. I'm concerned that ads by e-mail are being singled out here. I think that's a bad precedent.
Meanwhile, just because you're anonymous doesn't mean that you're not responsible for your actions.
But which actions are you referring to? If the "actions" are speech (commercial or non-commercial) then such speech should be protected by the First Amendment.
A new syntax? Wow, that's almost as bad as forcing you to put a valid return address on postal mail, or forcing you to put the stamp in the upper right corner of the envelope. Those bastards!
But the worst that happens if you forget a stamp or return address on snail-mail is that the mail doesn't get delivered. You don't get sued or go to jail! There's a huge difference. I have no problem with people using filters to filter out mail witha questionable return address. Getting the courts involved scares me.
You're absolutely right. This is a very frightening precedent dealing with free speech rights on the Internet.
First of all, the idea that you're stealing someone's resources by sending them e-mail is absurd. When you connect a computer to the Internet, and have a mail transport agent listening on port 25 and accepting mail, you are inviting the public to send you mail. That's the purpose of standards like SMTP. If you want to have a private mail network, use a different port/protocol with authentication built in. Or at the very least, use a filter to block mail that doesn't come from a recipient that you know.
If someone sends you junk snail-mail, and it fills up your mailbox, you can't claim that you've suffered a denial of service because no new mail will fit in. The First Amendment protects junk mail, as long as it isn't fraudulent, etc. But this court says that a lesser protection is afforded to mail that travels on the Internet. In other words, Internet information has a lesser First Amendment protection than other forms of speech. I find this scary (as well as contradictory to the recent U.S. Supreme court case ACLU vs. Reno in which the CDA was struck down.) Think of all the other decisions that could follow this precedent.
The scariest part is the fact that spam is only allowed if you include a valid return address. Does this mean that anonymous remailers could someday be outlawed? This precedent would seem to support the consitutionality of such a law. I believe the U.S. Supreme Court has held (although I can't remember the precedent specifically) that anonymous speech is in fact protected by the First Amendment, and you don't lose any such protection just because you choose to be anonymous.
As the parent post states: To add insult to injury, this law defines new syntax for the Subject header! The government should not be defining the forms of e-mail headers. So now it's okay for the courts to be deciding Internet protocols. Think of all the damaging laws that can now be passed that will rest on this precedent. Limits on encryption, limits on anonymous remailers, God knows what else! And no First Amendment protection.
I hate spam as much as the next guy, but there are technological solutions. I sincerely hope this case reaches the U.S. Supreme Court and the decision is overturned on First Amendment grounds. This is scary stuff.
Correct, and not only that, the linking in the DeCSS case was barred not because of its speech aspect, but because of it's "functional" aspect, in that following the link resulted in traficking in the DeCSS program, contary to the DMCA. The link in the Ford case is clearly a speech issue, in that the "functional" aspect in this case is to disparage the Ford Motor Company by providing these links from a satirical page.
It's also important to note that it's not just users of IE as their browser that are affected by this bug. Lots of Windows programs took a shortcut (Eudora being a prime example)
Yikes!!!!! Can anyone confirm this? I've been using Eudora all this time thinking I was safe. I use Netscape Navigator for by web browsing. Am I still at risk running Eudora?
The patch mentions IE5.5 and 6.0 are affected. I have 5.0 installed, although I don't use it. Do I still need the patch?
Anybody who bought it with a credit card had better return it if they don't want a visit from the police.
This is precicely why I pay cash for most things. But the days of anonymous buying are numbered, as face recognition software and in-store video cameras become more prevalent. So sadly we may someday live in a world where we actually do have to return things that are later declared illegal.
It may be that "business-class" gives you a few perks such as static IP and better QOS, but if you don't need those, you simply want to run a VPN client and don't use any more bandwidth than the neighborhood kids downloading MP3s and movies, then why should you have to pay more?
Imagine this situation: you go to a supermarket and buy a loaf of bread. The person ahead of you is buying a loaf of the same bread also. The checkout person asks the person ahead of you what she is planning to use the bread for. "To make sandwiches for my kids' lunches," she replies. "That'll be $1.95," replies the checkout girl.
Now you approach the register. Same question. "I'll be making sandwiches for my lunch," you reply. "Will you be taking this lunch to work?" "Err, yes." "Okay. That'll be $4.95"
For one year, he has to not break American law WHILE HE IS LIVING IN RUSSIA.
Just for one year???? I thought you weren't supposed to break American law at all. Wasn't that the premise of the whole case against him in the first place?
Perhaps he wanted his bail money back? And if it wasn't his money then I'm sure his bail bondsman would want the money back, and international borders aren't much of a deterrent to bounty hunters.
Why? Because MIT doesn't see it as their job to act as policemen? Because they don't happen to feel, as many others do, that because they don't need a warrant to look all the data passing through their networks, they should do so in order to relieve the police of the pesky burden of obtaining a warrant?
And why should they stop at computers? Why shouldn't universities routinely search through student's desk drawers to look for illegal drugs? The police can't do so without a warrant, so if the universities were good citizens they should do so for them. That is the kind of logic you're proposing isn't it?
Err, am I the only one on Slashdot that realizes that this guy's post was meant to be funny?
He admits to sharing his bandwidth with all his neighbors using 802.11. (Some people do that but don't admit to it in a/. post.) If that didn't tip you off, everyone agreeing to back up their personal data to all their neighbors' hard drives should have.
If used CDs aren't available, well, consider spluring and buying new.
Wow! This is great news! I wasn't aware that everything that was ever released on LP is now available on CD! When did this happen?
One of the first things I did after buying my first CD player was to buy CDs of all my favorite LPs. Unfortunately less than 40% of my LP collection was ever released on CD. New or used isn't the issue. It's not a matter of saving a few bucks. Why do you think there are services available that transfer your LPs to CDs for sometimes upwards of $50 per LP? Do people use these services to save money?
The fact is that many people, especially older people whose primary interest isn't pop or even rock music, have beloved old LPs that are never likely to be issued on CD. And how much non-pop/rock stuff has there ever been on Napster?
Transferring to CD has two advantages: LPs continue to wear out as they are played continuously, CDs to not, and CD players are much more readily available and easier to deal with than turntables: they don't require pre-amps, you can have them in cars and in portable players, etc.
So there is a real need out there for reliable ways of transferring LPs to CDs while trying to preserve as much quality as possible.
There isn't nearly as much money to be made from web ads as there used to be. That's partly why so many dot.coms went under earlier this year. Too many were basing their profits soley on ad revenues.
And I'm somewhat surprised to hear you say that they owe us simply because we visit their site and see some ads. I guess I'll start driving around the city looking at billboards and bill the city for doing so.
You raise some good points. I was only half-serious about starting a Slashdot competitor, but part of my intention was to point out the fact that we are getting the service for free, so we really shouldn't complain so much.
As to your technical points, I agree that the perl-based slashcode is probably not ideal unless you have tons of CPU. Probably the best solution is to rewrite the code in C, possibly embedding it right in a web server, or vice versa. Having a high performance database that can deal with lots of text would be crucial as well, but I'm sure there are solutions out there. Frankly, given the immense popularity of Slashdot, I'm surprised they still run it all in perl. Imagine the performance improvement if it were all re-written in C.
Bandwidth would be the biggest hurdle, as it would be the most expensive component in a serious slashdot competitor, I would think. Does anyone know the real bandwidth requirements of slashdot? Would any serious academic or corporate sponsers be able to handle the load if it were hosted at a university or corporation, in exchange for advertising rights, for example?
I thought the slashcode used to run this site is publically available. If you don't like the way the editors run the site, start your own. If you can do it better than the Slashdot folks, maybe people will switch to using your site instead.
Slashdot Mirror
You (or he) can check this site for episode listings, broken down by season.
I suggest getting a second job so you can afford all seasons.
It would also take away everyone else's anonymity. Given the number of people who get sued by corporations for telling truthful but disparaging things, and given the number of "whistle blowers" who end up out of a job, or worse, do you really think that we should give up the ability to send anonymous e-mail just to avoid the inconvenience of junk mail? I sure don't.
And secondly, who really gives a crap about the logo anyway? If the record labels don't mind labeling their CDs as copy protected, which it seems they don't, why do you think they would care too much about omitting the logo, and simply calling it a compact disc without the logo. And if they can't use the name compact disc, they could simply say CD, or something else that gets the point across as to what it is. Do you think they're concerned that sales will drop merely because their products which are so obviously CDs don't carry the familiar CD logo?
So, this is really non-news, I'm afraid.
That's only true if you don't want to take another road test. But in at least two states I've acquired licenses in (NJ and SC) they do ask you to state whether or not you currently hold a license from another state, but not from another country. So you can keep your Canadian license as long as you are willing to take another road test.
I guess PHP is a variation on the Axiom of choice , or maybe it's a consequence...
Actually, neither. The Axiom of choice deals with infinite sets, while the pigeonhole principle deals with finite sets. Basically the axiom of choice says there is at least one way to choose one element each from an infinite number of infinite or finite sets. The pigeonhole principle states that a finite set can't be mapped one-to-one into another finite set with fewer elements.
You're absolutely right, however your version of the pigeonhole principle doesn't lend itself to extensions to higher dimensions and so is of less use when discussing transdimensional projective compression. Think of the pigeons being stored in Dr. Who's Tardis, as a better analogy if you like.
Am I the only Slashdot reader who realizes the entire article is either a joke, a scam, or written by a nut?
So it's doubtful that they will press their standard claims too hard if at all when their standards department realizes their music distribution department is using this protection.
Does anyone know if Sony is planning to protect their disks?
But in a DDOS, your specific intention is to cause a service interruption. In the case of spam, a clogged inbox is only a side effect. A better port 80 analogy would be the so-called "Slashdot effect" that happens when a million Slashdot readers try to go to a site and bring the server to a crawl. The issue here is intent. I don't dispute that sending a bunch of spam to one address for the explicit purpose of bringing down their systems can and should be illegal.
Forging the "from" line and/or return address isn't fraudulent?
If the purpose is to deliberately mislead the recipient into believing the mail was sent by someone else, then possibly. But I don't think putting a non-existant return address on snail mail is illegal.
Of course, real mail could be thrown out easily, but e-mail is harder to deal with
That's preposterous. I don't know which e-mail client you use, but I find it easier to press the delete key, than to walk from my mailbox with an armload of multi-sized junk mail falling out of my hands to the trash can.
But death threats and scams are still illegal.
I'm not saying that they should be legal with e-mail. Only that e-mail shouldn't be subject to a lesser standard of 1st Amendment protection than snail-mail.
Also, I think the restriction is on commercial mail only, not all internet mail.
But as I said in my post, it's the precedent which is scary here. This could make it easy to pass some ugly laws in the future.
Using anonymous remailers for sending advertising materials can be outlawed. It has been, in California. It's also illegal to send anonymous death threats, BTW.
I have no problem with making death threats by e-mail illegal. It probably already is as is the case for snail mail. But advertisements, unlike death threats, are generally afforded First Amendment protection. I'm concerned that ads by e-mail are being singled out here. I think that's a bad precedent.
Meanwhile, just because you're anonymous doesn't mean that you're not responsible for your actions.
But which actions are you referring to? If the "actions" are speech (commercial or non-commercial) then such speech should be protected by the First Amendment.
A new syntax? Wow, that's almost as bad as forcing you to put a valid return address on postal mail, or forcing you to put the stamp in the upper right corner of the envelope. Those bastards!
But the worst that happens if you forget a stamp or return address on snail-mail is that the mail doesn't get delivered. You don't get sued or go to jail! There's a huge difference. I have no problem with people using filters to filter out mail witha questionable return address. Getting the courts involved scares me.
First of all, the idea that you're stealing someone's resources by sending them e-mail is absurd. When you connect a computer to the Internet, and have a mail transport agent listening on port 25 and accepting mail, you are inviting the public to send you mail. That's the purpose of standards like SMTP. If you want to have a private mail network, use a different port/protocol with authentication built in. Or at the very least, use a filter to block mail that doesn't come from a recipient that you know.
If someone sends you junk snail-mail, and it fills up your mailbox, you can't claim that you've suffered a denial of service because no new mail will fit in. The First Amendment protects junk mail, as long as it isn't fraudulent, etc. But this court says that a lesser protection is afforded to mail that travels on the Internet. In other words, Internet information has a lesser First Amendment protection than other forms of speech. I find this scary (as well as contradictory to the recent U.S. Supreme court case ACLU vs. Reno in which the CDA was struck down.) Think of all the other decisions that could follow this precedent.
The scariest part is the fact that spam is only allowed if you include a valid return address. Does this mean that anonymous remailers could someday be outlawed? This precedent would seem to support the consitutionality of such a law. I believe the U.S. Supreme Court has held (although I can't remember the precedent specifically) that anonymous speech is in fact protected by the First Amendment, and you don't lose any such protection just because you choose to be anonymous.
As the parent post states: To add insult to injury, this law defines new syntax for the Subject header! The government should not be defining the forms of e-mail headers. So now it's okay for the courts to be deciding Internet protocols. Think of all the damaging laws that can now be passed that will rest on this precedent. Limits on encryption, limits on anonymous remailers, God knows what else! And no First Amendment protection.
I hate spam as much as the next guy, but there are technological solutions. I sincerely hope this case reaches the U.S. Supreme Court and the decision is overturned on First Amendment grounds. This is scary stuff.
Yikes!!!!! Can anyone confirm this? I've been using Eudora all this time thinking I was safe. I use Netscape Navigator for by web browsing. Am I still at risk running Eudora?
The patch mentions IE5.5 and 6.0 are affected. I have 5.0 installed, although I don't use it. Do I still need the patch?
This is precicely why I pay cash for most things. But the days of anonymous buying are numbered, as face recognition software and in-store video cameras become more prevalent. So sadly we may someday live in a world where we actually do have to return things that are later declared illegal.
Imagine this situation: you go to a supermarket and buy a loaf of bread. The person ahead of you is buying a loaf of the same bread also. The checkout person asks the person ahead of you what she is planning to use the bread for. "To make sandwiches for my kids' lunches," she replies. "That'll be $1.95," replies the checkout girl.
Now you approach the register. Same question. "I'll be making sandwiches for my lunch," you reply. "Will you be taking this lunch to work?" "Err, yes." "Okay. That'll be $4.95"
Just for one year???? I thought you weren't supposed to break American law at all. Wasn't that the premise of the whole case against him in the first place?
Err, here's a thought...
Perhaps he wanted his bail money back? And if it wasn't his money then I'm sure his bail bondsman would want the money back, and international borders aren't much of a deterrent to bounty hunters.
Just like it was in the recent result of 2600's appeal?
Why? Because MIT doesn't see it as their job to act as policemen? Because they don't happen to feel, as many others do, that because they don't need a warrant to look all the data passing through their networks, they should do so in order to relieve the police of the pesky burden of obtaining a warrant?
And why should they stop at computers? Why shouldn't universities routinely search through student's desk drawers to look for illegal drugs? The police can't do so without a warrant, so if the universities were good citizens they should do so for them. That is the kind of logic you're proposing isn't it?
Err, am I the only one on Slashdot that realizes that this guy's post was meant to be funny?
He admits to sharing his bandwidth with all his neighbors using 802.11. (Some people do that but don't admit to it in a /. post.) If that didn't tip you off, everyone agreeing to back up their personal data to all their neighbors' hard drives should have.
Wow! This is great news! I wasn't aware that everything that was ever released on LP is now available on CD! When did this happen?
One of the first things I did after buying my first CD player was to buy CDs of all my favorite LPs. Unfortunately less than 40% of my LP collection was ever released on CD. New or used isn't the issue. It's not a matter of saving a few bucks. Why do you think there are services available that transfer your LPs to CDs for sometimes upwards of $50 per LP? Do people use these services to save money?
The fact is that many people, especially older people whose primary interest isn't pop or even rock music, have beloved old LPs that are never likely to be issued on CD. And how much non-pop/rock stuff has there ever been on Napster?
Transferring to CD has two advantages: LPs continue to wear out as they are played continuously, CDs to not, and CD players are much more readily available and easier to deal with than turntables: they don't require pre-amps, you can have them in cars and in portable players, etc.
So there is a real need out there for reliable ways of transferring LPs to CDs while trying to preserve as much quality as possible.
And I'm somewhat surprised to hear you say that they owe us simply because we visit their site and see some ads. I guess I'll start driving around the city looking at billboards and bill the city for doing so.
As to your technical points, I agree that the perl-based slashcode is probably not ideal unless you have tons of CPU. Probably the best solution is to rewrite the code in C, possibly embedding it right in a web server, or vice versa. Having a high performance database that can deal with lots of text would be crucial as well, but I'm sure there are solutions out there. Frankly, given the immense popularity of Slashdot, I'm surprised they still run it all in perl. Imagine the performance improvement if it were all re-written in C.
Bandwidth would be the biggest hurdle, as it would be the most expensive component in a serious slashdot competitor, I would think. Does anyone know the real bandwidth requirements of slashdot? Would any serious academic or corporate sponsers be able to handle the load if it were hosted at a university or corporation, in exchange for advertising rights, for example?
I thought the slashcode used to run this site is publically available. If you don't like the way the editors run the site, start your own. If you can do it better than the Slashdot folks, maybe people will switch to using your site instead.