Someone (read "I'm too lazy") should create a karma system for companies!
Nah. You shouldn't worry about any of that when you decide what product to buy. Buy from the company which charges the least, and donate the savings to charity if you really want to help the world.
A lot of people who would be getting these transplants are likely past child bearing age anyway, and would not have an exponential effect on population growth. And since they probably already reproduced, they don't have any evolutionary effect either.
Exactly! If anything technology has helped us to delay overpopulation. Just think how many more people we would have if it wasn't for the invention of the birth control pill.
Darwin stopped working when we started living in civilized societies. 10,000 years ago someone with bad eyesight would be lion food so only people with good eyes would be around long enough to breed.
Darwin didn't say anything about survival of those with the best eyesight. A hermit crab is a sitting duck without its shell, but that doesn't mean that evolution failed 500 million years ago.
The company sold pills via the Web that promised to increase penis length, bust size and body height. Enough people had spent $60 an order -- mostly for the "Longitude" treatments, with ingredients that included pumpkin seed, sarsaparilla and "oyster meat" -- that the state was able to seize more than $30 million in luxury real estate and a herd of Mercedes-Benzes, Rolls Royces and a Lamborghini.
Of course the libertarians want to abolish the FDA and make these scams legal, as long as the companies don't guarantee success.
I read that as an indirect request to repeal the law against junk faxes.
Yes, I think the law against junk faxes should be repealed. I think the repeal should take place in 5 years, over which time the phone companies may come up with technical and contractual solutions to the problem.
Perhaps you think they are going to pay my phone bill for me?
That's certainly one possible solution.
Sounds like you conceed my proof that there is no convievable way the spammer paid for this spam to be delivered.
Clearly the spammer paid, unless s/he stole the connection. Was the amount s/he paid for the connection times the number of bits in the message divided by the number of bits s/he sent during the billing period equal to the amount that the person on the receiving end paid for the connection times the number of bits in the spam divided by the number of bits received by the receiver during the billing period? Maybe not. But there's likewise plenty of U.S. Mail which is sent from or to difficult to reach U.S. locations which costs a lot more than $.32 to deliver.
#1 They don't know who who sent it until they receive it.
Really? I know who sent all my solicited hotmail before I receive it.
#2 Just because someone else pays more for service than you do doesn't give you the right to say they can't use E-mail.
They can do anything they want. But they clearly have to pay more for it.
#3 I maintain ALL mail delivery is paid for by the receiver. This case just makes it blatantly impossible that the spammer is paying it.
At this point I've completely lost your point. What if I read slashdot from my $15 billion per bit internet connection? What if I read a slashdot post which is stupid? Is the person who posted it somehow responsible for ther $379 trillion that I paid to read his stupid post?
What if my email account is hooked up to a device which explodes whenever it receives spam? Is the spammer now guilty of murder?
We seem to be arguing in circles here. Instead of cutting up my statements maybe you should try forming a complete argument.
My complete argument is simple. Spam is not forced upon anyone. You voluntarily set up a system to accept email from random strangers. Therefore, unless the spammer has specific knowledge that you do not want to receive the spam, s/he hasn't done anything wrong.
You seem to be saying that the fact that spammers shift the costs away from themselves isn't that important, because the costs get accounted for somewhere.
Not really. I'm saying that the spammers ddon't shift the costs away from themselves, or at least to the extent they do so it is a voluntarily entered into situation for both parties.
But the original design of the internet (I maintain my end, you maintain yours, it'll all work out) wasn't designed to account for spammers.
Just because the internet was designed poorly doesn't mean anything.
Yep, that's why I release my works under the QingPL. Anyone who wants to copy them and mirror them on an independent network is completely free to do so.
The costs of creating and sending a piece of mail far exceed the costs of recieving and disposing of a piece of unwanted mail.
But that cost isn't paid to the person receiving and disposing of the piece of unwanted mail. Are you suggesting that we should raise the price to send email? To a large extent I think this is already done, actually. Bandwidth prices for spammers are already very high.
You keep equating no spam with no e-mail, or no internet connection. As far as I can tell just about all your arguments are equally (valid/invalid) for junk faxes.
There are two major differences with junk faxes. First of all, there are actual costs of receiving a junk fax - paper, toner, etc. Further, at the time of the junk fax law, the phone company had a government granted monopoly on phone service. Now that this is not the case I think we should gradually move to eliminate government intervention in the phone system.
I never said READING the spam. I said one second to spot and delete it.
I would contend that it takes a lot less than one second to spot and delete spam. But still, I don't think you can factor that cost in. It's too incidental.
The money paid for the spammer's connection does not magicly follow the spam to pay for delivery at the target address. Proof: Spammer grabs the cheapest connection he can find. Maybe he finds a spam friendly ISP, maybe he plays wack-a-mole with cheap dial-up, maybe he abuses an open relay. In any case his cost-per-meg is the same or lower than a typical home connection.
I certainly don't condone breaking your contract with an ISP or abusing an open relay. In the first case, the reputation of the ISP will go down, and its costs to the parent ISP will go up. The ISP is then free to sue the spammer in court to recover those damages and punitive damages on top of that. In the latter case, the spammer could probably go to jail, in addition to a civil suit by the person running the open relay.
As for a spam-friendly ISP with a cost per meg anywhere near that of a typical home connection, I don't believe such a thing exists. If it does that spam-friendly ISP will surely go out of business very quickly, and if they breached the contract with their parent ISP (which they almost surely did), the parent ISP can sue them.
Now, lets assume today's random target domain is a mailserver for a scientific team in a remote area of africa. Their internet access is going to be quite costly per meg.
They shouldn't be accepting emails from random anonymous internet users.
They do not pay my friends to write my valued e-mail, nor do they pay for my friends' connections to send me valued e-mail.
They almost certainly do, because somewhere along the chain, either your friend's ISP, or the parent of your friend's ISP, or the parent of that ISP, etc. Somewhere along the chain there is an ISP which is profiting off of spam, and in turn that ISP is able to lower the costs to its non-spamming sibling ISPs, and so on down the chain.
Actually, a commons, as studied extensively after TOTC was written, can be owned by a family, a village, a neighborhood, or a nation. The important point is the change that occurs when N users become N+1, and the commons cannot sustain itself.
That's just not how the internet works, though. In a commons there is no limit to how much a single person can take from the whole. In the interenet, there are many limits. Spam is illegal under many contractual agreements. Bandwidth is commonly charged for, or at least limited. These are the solutions to the tragedy of the commons, and we are already implementing them. Yes, more pressure should be put on ISPs to refuse to allow spam on their networks, and to enforce contracts which state that. Major ISPs should insist that smaller ISPs keep their networks spam free, and insist upon insurance bonds to pay for the damages of spam. That'll get them to really quickly limit the amount of email that can be sent from bulk emailers or get a security deposit from those who do legitimate bulk emailing.
Most of this is already being done. The rest is not because people have come to accept spam, and aren't demanding more from their ISPs. Meanwhile, the ISPs are profiting off of spam, as the service contracts they give to spammers and others who profit off spam (such as referral programs) fetch them a lot of money, money which they commonly are forced to pay to their parent ISP, and their parent's parent ISP, etc, to the peering arrangement with the two megaISPs, both of which profit off spam in this manner.
What most certainly shouldn't be done is for anyone outside of the group of people sharing the commons to get involved, other than to enforce contracts.
Re:This project is more difficult than it appears
on
Speech For The Deaf
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Upon first look these 95% does not seem that impressive. 1 in 20 words wrong or every third sentence gives across the wrong meaning. This would not be useful for effective communication.
I think you're missing the point. 95% is certainly good enough for effective communication from one human to another. Alligator though one in twenty words is screwed up, the human on the other end is still going to understand water the signing human is saying.
Slashdot Mirror
Could anyone else find where Sarah Deutsch "argues against the [DMCA]?" I couldn't.
Someone (read "I'm too lazy") should create a karma system for companies!
Nah. You shouldn't worry about any of that when you decide what product to buy. Buy from the company which charges the least, and donate the savings to charity if you really want to help the world.
Yeah, but eye glasses might inhibit your ability to attract mates ;)
So there is an evolutionary bias towards better natural eyesight.
And yes eyesight to avoid predators, and assist in catching/gathering food or mates would count as a survivability trait.
Not if you have glasses. The ability to make glasses, or to convince others to make glasses for you counts as a survivability trait as well.
OK. That solves the food problem. Now what about the fact that there is only a finite amount of space on the planet?
A lot of people who would be getting these transplants are likely past child bearing age anyway, and would not have an exponential effect on population growth. And since they probably already reproduced, they don't have any evolutionary effect either.
Exactly! If anything technology has helped us to delay overpopulation. Just think how many more people we would have if it wasn't for the invention of the birth control pill.
Darwin stopped working when we started living in civilized societies. 10,000 years ago someone with bad eyesight would be lion food so only people with good eyes would be around long enough to breed.
Darwin didn't say anything about survival of those with the best eyesight. A hermit crab is a sitting duck without its shell, but that doesn't mean that evolution failed 500 million years ago.
Is this a case where the strongest no longer survive?
Was that ever the case? Are you stronger than a baboon?
Are we on our way to overpopulation?
Yes. See Tragedy of the Commons. "A finite world can support only a finite population; therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero."
Why do you want them more?
There's currently no federal law against sending spam to people that you know don't want it
No, but there is a law in every state against it, it's called harassment.
but if there were, that would be end of story.
Well, in this case it's only 10 by 10 pixels. Most of us aren't that ugly.
Spammers don't have specific knowledge that anyone doesn't want spam, but they have certain knowledge that 99+% of people don't want it, so it's ok?
Yep.
It probably doesn't work that way at all (as frames). Your eyes certainly don't.
The company sold pills via the Web that promised to increase penis length, bust size and body height. Enough people had spent $60 an order -- mostly for the "Longitude" treatments, with ingredients that included pumpkin seed, sarsaparilla and "oyster meat" -- that the state was able to seize more than $30 million in luxury real estate and a herd of Mercedes-Benzes, Rolls Royces and a Lamborghini.
Of course the libertarians want to abolish the FDA and make these scams legal, as long as the companies don't guarantee success.
The funny thing is I actually didn't think about linking to that story until after I had written the sentence.
Speech for the Deaf, Sight for the Blind, now all we need is Sex for the Ugly and I'll be all set.
I read that as an indirect request to repeal the law against junk faxes.
Yes, I think the law against junk faxes should be repealed. I think the repeal should take place in 5 years, over which time the phone companies may come up with technical and contractual solutions to the problem.
Perhaps you think they are going to pay my phone bill for me?
That's certainly one possible solution.
Sounds like you conceed my proof that there is no convievable way the spammer paid for this spam to be delivered.
Clearly the spammer paid, unless s/he stole the connection. Was the amount s/he paid for the connection times the number of bits in the message divided by the number of bits s/he sent during the billing period equal to the amount that the person on the receiving end paid for the connection times the number of bits in the spam divided by the number of bits received by the receiver during the billing period? Maybe not. But there's likewise plenty of U.S. Mail which is sent from or to difficult to reach U.S. locations which costs a lot more than $.32 to deliver.
#1 They don't know who who sent it until they receive it.
Really? I know who sent all my solicited hotmail before I receive it.
#2 Just because someone else pays more for service than you do doesn't give you the right to say they can't use E-mail.
They can do anything they want. But they clearly have to pay more for it.
#3 I maintain ALL mail delivery is paid for by the receiver. This case just makes it blatantly impossible that the spammer is paying it.
At this point I've completely lost your point. What if I read slashdot from my $15 billion per bit internet connection? What if I read a slashdot post which is stupid? Is the person who posted it somehow responsible for ther $379 trillion that I paid to read his stupid post?
What if my email account is hooked up to a device which explodes whenever it receives spam? Is the spammer now guilty of murder?
We seem to be arguing in circles here. Instead of cutting up my statements maybe you should try forming a complete argument.
My complete argument is simple. Spam is not forced upon anyone. You voluntarily set up a system to accept email from random strangers. Therefore, unless the spammer has specific knowledge that you do not want to receive the spam, s/he hasn't done anything wrong.
Every time you buy a product which is advertised on television, you pay a surcharge.
I'll gladly give up free television (how many people actually use antennas anyway) in return for access to the television airwaves.
You seem to be saying that the fact that spammers shift the costs away from themselves isn't that important, because the costs get accounted for somewhere.
Not really. I'm saying that the spammers ddon't shift the costs away from themselves, or at least to the extent they do so it is a voluntarily entered into situation for both parties.
But the original design of the internet (I maintain my end, you maintain yours, it'll all work out) wasn't designed to account for spammers.
Just because the internet was designed poorly doesn't mean anything.
Yep, that's why I release my works under the QingPL. Anyone who wants to copy them and mirror them on an independent network is completely free to do so.
is that all of their products are copyrighted.
The costs of creating and sending a piece of mail far exceed the costs of recieving and disposing of a piece of unwanted mail.
But that cost isn't paid to the person receiving and disposing of the piece of unwanted mail. Are you suggesting that we should raise the price to send email? To a large extent I think this is already done, actually. Bandwidth prices for spammers are already very high.
You keep equating no spam with no e-mail, or no internet connection. As far as I can tell just about all your arguments are equally (valid/invalid) for junk faxes.
There are two major differences with junk faxes. First of all, there are actual costs of receiving a junk fax - paper, toner, etc. Further, at the time of the junk fax law, the phone company had a government granted monopoly on phone service. Now that this is not the case I think we should gradually move to eliminate government intervention in the phone system.
I never said READING the spam. I said one second to spot and delete it.
I would contend that it takes a lot less than one second to spot and delete spam. But still, I don't think you can factor that cost in. It's too incidental.
The money paid for the spammer's connection does not magicly follow the spam to pay for delivery at the target address. Proof: Spammer grabs the cheapest connection he can find. Maybe he finds a spam friendly ISP, maybe he plays wack-a-mole with cheap dial-up, maybe he abuses an open relay. In any case his cost-per-meg is the same or lower than a typical home connection.
I certainly don't condone breaking your contract with an ISP or abusing an open relay. In the first case, the reputation of the ISP will go down, and its costs to the parent ISP will go up. The ISP is then free to sue the spammer in court to recover those damages and punitive damages on top of that. In the latter case, the spammer could probably go to jail, in addition to a civil suit by the person running the open relay.
As for a spam-friendly ISP with a cost per meg anywhere near that of a typical home connection, I don't believe such a thing exists. If it does that spam-friendly ISP will surely go out of business very quickly, and if they breached the contract with their parent ISP (which they almost surely did), the parent ISP can sue them.
Now, lets assume today's random target domain is a mailserver for a scientific team in a remote area of africa. Their internet access is going to be quite costly per meg.
They shouldn't be accepting emails from random anonymous internet users.
They do not pay my friends to write my valued e-mail, nor do they pay for my friends' connections to send me valued e-mail.
They almost certainly do, because somewhere along the chain, either your friend's ISP, or the parent of your friend's ISP, or the parent of that ISP, etc. Somewhere along the chain there is an ISP which is profiting off of spam, and in turn that ISP is able to lower the costs to its non-spamming sibling ISPs, and so on down the chain.
Actually, a commons, as studied extensively after TOTC was written, can be owned by a family, a village, a neighborhood, or a nation. The important point is the change that occurs when N users become N+1, and the commons cannot sustain itself.
That's just not how the internet works, though. In a commons there is no limit to how much a single person can take from the whole. In the interenet, there are many limits. Spam is illegal under many contractual agreements. Bandwidth is commonly charged for, or at least limited. These are the solutions to the tragedy of the commons, and we are already implementing them. Yes, more pressure should be put on ISPs to refuse to allow spam on their networks, and to enforce contracts which state that. Major ISPs should insist that smaller ISPs keep their networks spam free, and insist upon insurance bonds to pay for the damages of spam. That'll get them to really quickly limit the amount of email that can be sent from bulk emailers or get a security deposit from those who do legitimate bulk emailing.
Most of this is already being done. The rest is not because people have come to accept spam, and aren't demanding more from their ISPs. Meanwhile, the ISPs are profiting off of spam, as the service contracts they give to spammers and others who profit off spam (such as referral programs) fetch them a lot of money, money which they commonly are forced to pay to their parent ISP, and their parent's parent ISP, etc, to the peering arrangement with the two megaISPs, both of which profit off spam in this manner.
What most certainly shouldn't be done is for anyone outside of the group of people sharing the commons to get involved, other than to enforce contracts.
Upon first look these 95% does not seem that impressive. 1 in 20 words wrong or every third sentence gives across the wrong meaning. This would not be useful for effective communication.
I think you're missing the point. 95% is certainly good enough for effective communication from one human to another. Alligator though one in twenty words is screwed up, the human on the other end is still going to understand water the signing human is saying.