You know nothing about encryption or authentication.
You know nothing about what I know and don't know.
He has a whole section on how encryption is not authentication and why it isn't.
LMAO. When did I say it did?
You might want to go read RFC 2554 http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2554.html since you claim SMTP doesn't have authentication.
That's a terribly useless hack on top of SMTP. Could SMTP be hacked to provide useful authentication. Sure. But the standard protocol doesn't provide for it.
By choosing not to enumerate the rights that you feel are natural rights, you are neglecting to consider the ramifications of your statement.
Fair enough. We'll leave the question of whether or not copyright is a natural right open. You claim it is, I suggest it is not. Neither of us want to engage in a year long seminar on what does or doesn't constitute a natural right, so we'll leave such a question unanswered.
I agree with pretty much the rest of what you say. Copyright was created to resolve a free-rider problem. One thing I'd like to note though is that copyright was created to encourage the creation of artistic works, not productive works and certainly not ideas (to this day copyright is prohibited from being extended to ideas). But you seem to understand the general concept so this is really just a nit-pick.
I think we both have to agree that copyright has both positive and negative aspects. On the positive side, it encourages creation of some copyrighted works. There are indisputably some copyrighted works which would not be created without copyright. On the negative side, it discourages use and enhancement of some copyrighted works. It is indisputable that more people would utilize certain copyrighted works were it not for copyright law, and it is indisputable that there would be more enhancements made to certain copyrighted works were it not for copyright law.
It is my opinion, certainly with regard to software, that the negatives greatly outweigh the positives. In fact, the only category of software which I believe would greatly suffer from the abolishment of copyright is that of games. Perhaps not coincidentally, this category also consists of the the type of software which is most rooted in the original concept of copyright, that of artistic works.
Let me know if you want to argue either of those points. If not, then you admit that you were wrong.
Something can be increasing and still be small. Additionally, consider point #3: Corporate availability of bandwidth is increasing.
How many OC 48's do you believe there are?
Answer that.
First explain the relevance of the question.
Bandwidth is not an unlimited quantity.
Neither are zombies.
Actually, the zombies are responsible for most of the spam right now.
I never suggested otherwise.
There are far more linux servers running apache than windows servers running exchange server.
No, there are not.
Yes, there are.
You are confusing web sites with web servers.
No, I am not.
HTTPS only provides an encrypted channel so some other means of authentication can be used.
Same thing. Don't argue with me over semantics. HTTPS provides this. SMTP does not.
Netcraft counts domains. There are almost 60 million domains hosted on Apache boxes.
To you, that means there are lots of Linux boxes.
No, there are a lot of Linux boxes. Maybe it is theoretically possible to have all 60 million domains hosted on one T1, but this is not in fact the case.
Meanwhile, how many single Exchange servers do you know of that handle email for 100 different companies? None?
How many Exchange servers do you know of? 5? 10?
Oh, no comment on blaster or slammer?
Because it's irrelevant.
No, there just aren't enough Windows boxes on the Internet to cause problems with bandwidth, are there?
No. It's actually a rather large percentage of the average corporate traffic. And it is growing.
I guess all the corporations I've worked for have been the exception. Or are you now making shit up?
It doesn't matter how many companies because the backbone has been flooded. Again, those 10,000 could flood and OC 48.
Only if those 10,000 all used the same OC 48. And even then, like I've said, they'd be quickly shut down.
But discovering them and shutting them down is MY SOLUTION.
I see. You own a backbone internet provider?
You say that it doesn't need to be done.
I've never said that zombies don't need to be shut down. They do, but it really has very little to do with spam.
Are you saying that all of those Linux websites do NOT have firewalls?
They certainly don't have firewalls which disallow incoming connections, since they allow incoming connections by their very nature.
Go ahead and say that. If you won't, then your point about a firewall on a T-1 to an Exchange server is idiotic.
Exchange server? There are far more linux servers running apache than windows servers running exchange server.
Look at the "envelope". It will tell you which machine you're talking to.
The envelope is trivial to fake. If you want an IP address, you have to look at what IP address is connecting to you. But an IP address isn't an entity. Real authentication would be more like the way HTTPS works. You should identify a company, not an IP address. When (maybe if) IPv6 is rolled out, IP addresses will be even more useless as a means of authentication.
Yet you believe that a worm hitting the few Linux servers on the Internet would be very bad.
Few Linux servers on the Internet? You should present this theory to Netcraft.
The notion that there is no intrinsic right to copyright is like saying that there no intrinsic right to freedom from slavery.
It's a similar notion, but I agree with the former and not the latter.
I'd like to see a list of what my supposed intrinsic right are before I buy such a statement.
A list? I'm afraid I can't dummy it down that well for you. You may want to look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_right for an introduction to the concept, though.
The problem with your argument is that you are happy to ignore the fact that the people who worked hard to make the software were under the impression that it would be protected by copyright after they finished it.
Please, as though the people who make the software ever hold the copyright on it. In the vast majority of cases those workers have already been paid. Maybe we could grant an exception in a few cases, but I don't feel sorry about those who took their chances on Microsoft stock.
The correct approach would be to challenge the constitutionality of copyright
Copyright is perfectly constitutional, though.
or start a public awareness campaign about the benefits of an alternative system.
There are already many of these. They're working to a large extent. I think we'll be free of copyright eventually. Maybe not in my lifetime, but I sure hope so.
Lots of people use the psudo-philosophical jargon in the FSF documentation to justify their hard drive full of Warez and downloaded music, hence all the talk of the immorality of copyright.
Right, because warez and "downloaded music" are perfectly legitimate.
What is more immoral is disregarding the rules that have existed thusfar and instead of trying to change the rules simply violating them.
There's nothing immoral about breaking bad laws.
The entire system that employs people to create copyrighted material is based on the existence of copyright, and so if you don't like copyright, then reverse the current situation in the courts (or through enough theft to make the producers go out of business) and watch the amount of material created slowly dwindle toward zero.
That's nonsense. People created things before copyright. They'll continue to create things after it is gone. Just look at all the free software out there. Other than my OS, I use pretty much exclusively free software. And if Microsoft stopped making Windows, I'm sure Linux would become just as good or more likely better in a year or two.
That quote from the FSF is just plain absurd. If the goal is to maximize hte benefit of humanity who is to decide how to do that?
The law should certainly help, and not hinder, such a goal.
Why has the FSF settled on software patents as the main source of harm to humanity instead of, say, disease, famine, illiteracy, infant mortality, etc.?
Why do you keep saying patents? Their focus is on software copyright. And they've focussed on software as opposed to those other problems because they're the Free Software Foundation. No foundation can focus on all the worlds problems at once. The FSF has focussed on the problem of the lack of free software, especially the infringement of our rights in the form of copyright law.
So since no single individual can possibly be fit (in a Democracy) to decide what is best for humanity, it makes sense for everyone to decide on his/her own.
But we don't have such a choice. The government has already decided for us that we are not allowed to copy works produced by someone else without their permission.
Again, if you oppose the notion of anarchy, then software license terms that are a condition of purchase must be respected.
I've never really had a problem with the copyright on software I've bought. In fact, I can only think of two or three software title's I've ever bought, and one of them was free software. But even then, requiring a meeting of the minds and agreement before a contract can be formed certainly doesn't imply anarachy. In fact, eliminate the notions of copyright and you'll pretty much never see a situation where someone can be considered to have agreed to a contract with a third party just by buying a product. If anyone my contract is with the store from which I purchased the product. Furthermore, breach of contract does not fall under criminal law, as copyright does, and you generally cannot sue for much beyond the actual damages you've caused.
Consider the idea that in nearly any business, particular prices come with particular terms. If you want to buy one CD for personal use you pay $14, but if you want to own the right to distribute the CD internationally you'd have to pay a lot more (since it's worth a lot more)...
You're using copyright to prove copyright. I reject the notion that one should have to respect restrictions on what they can do with a CD they have purchased.
In other words, any argument against software fees is an argument against the social contract and against the rule of law.
I'm not arguing against software fees, I'm arguing against software copyright (and copyright in general, for that matter). That's an argument against the current laws, perhaps, but copyright is by no means necessary for the rule of law. To quote the GNU Manifesto again, "People who have studied the issue of intellectual property rights carefully (such as lawyers) say that there is no intrinsic right to intellectual property. The kinds of supposed intellectual property rights that the government recognizes were created by specific acts of legislation for specific purposes."
Instead, 14 minutes are spent deleting spam, and the employee is paid for 40 hours of work, even though at most 39 hours and 46 minutes were spent going productive work for the employer. That's a productivity loss of 14 minutes, to the employer.
Only if those 14 minutes would have been spent doing productive work.
There is neither any need for fax, telephone, electrical power or express delivery services.
But fax, telephone, electrical power, and express delivery services were built with businesses in mind. Email was built by some hippies for non-commercial purposes. The protocol on which email runs was severely misdesigned, such that we have the spam problems we currently have.
Given that situation, loss of e-mail does result in loss of productivity.
Spam has always been a part of e-mail, at least since the commercialization of the internet. To say that spam therefore causes a loss of the productivity due to email, when that productivity never existed in the first place, seems to me to be improper economic thought.
True... Though that notion flies in the face of the basic social contract and civilization.
Are you high? Software has only been protected by copyright law for a few decades, certainly not from the dawn of civilization.
When someone agrees to particular terms to provide something, others operating under the rule of law abide by the law if they decide to take the item.
Not if they never agreed to the terms.
It is fine to disagree with the concept of copyright or to believe that everyone is entitled to all software
Damn straight it is.
but saying that a developer who worked hard on some code to put food on the table must give you that code free (after he spend his time working on it with the expectation that people would pay for it) is coercion and theft.
I'll quote the FSF directly for the response to this one:
There is nothing wrong with wanting pay for work, or seeking to maximize one's income, as long as one does not use means that are destructive. But the means customary in the field of software today are based on destruction.
Extracting money from users of a program by restricting their use of it is destructive because the restrictions reduce the amount and the ways that the program can be used. This reduces the amount of wealth that humanity derives from the program. When there is a deliberate choice to restrict, the harmful consequences are deliberate destruction.
The reason a good citizen does not use such destructive means to become wealthier is that, if everyone did so, we would all become poorer from the mutual destructiveness. This is Kantian ethics; or, the Golden Rule. Since I do not like the consequences that result if everyone hoards information, I am required to consider it wrong for one to do so. Specifically, the desire to be rewarded for one's creativity does not justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity.
So, it would only take 7 zombies (at 256Kb/s capped upload) to completely flood it.
Why would 7 zombies use all their bandwidth sending spam to a single company? Unless it's an intentional DDOS, they won't, they'll spread their spam out among all the millions of companies.
This has nothing to do with "email providers". Why do you even bring that up?
By "email providers" I mean simply providers of email accounts. Anyone who runs an SMTP server qualifies.
Again, it only takes 7 zombies to completely flood a T-1 line.
Again, only if those 7 zombies send solely to a single T-1 line.
WTF? There are fewer Linux boxes connected to the Internet than there are Windows boxes.
But the linux boxes tend to be on much higher bandwidth connections.
So the problem is how do we cut off the supply of spam at the source, rather than just filtering it once we've already received it.
The problem is that SMTP sucks. Spam, and not being able to cut it off at the source, is just one symptom of that problem.
No, it merely assumes that 100% of the time an employee is working is paid time
Quite simply, no it doesn't. If someone works 40 hours a week they don't work 40 hours and 14 minutes because they had to delete spam. The cost to the employer is the same either way.
If the employees of one company have so little to do that they read e-mail just to kill time, then sure spam isn't affecting their work.
Doesn't this contradict what you just said?
At another company, e-mail may constitute a crucial part of the corporate infrastructure.
That's such a terrible idea. If that's true about a company we should say "incompetant infrastructure designers cost US companies $22 billion annually".
And if my boss told me to use my spare time to delete junk mail from my office mailbox, I'd forward all my mail to him and ask him to print out anything I really should spend time on and leave it on my desk.
And if I were your boss I'd simply send your forwarded mail to/dev/null. There's just no need for email to be a crucial part of anyone's job. SMTP was never designed for critical business purposes.
If each employee costs $20 per hour then each employee costs $20 per week. If the company employs 2000 people then it's costing $40,000 per week.... and that's just one medium sized company
That assumes that these companies hire the employees for 12 minutes more per day due to spam. This is highly unlikely.
It doesn't take too many xDSL/cable zombies with 256Kb/s capped upload to flood a company's T-1 for email.
If all the zombies focussed on one company. Of course, that wouldn't be spam, that would be an intentional DDOS attack. As long as the combined bandwidth of all the zombies is kept to a small ratio of the combined bandwidth of all email providers, there isn't going to be a problem. It could happen, for instance if a spammer managed to write a worm exploiting a major hole in Linux, but spam would be the least of our worries at that point.
We need to start focusing on actually solving the problem rather than just filtering the effects.
Which is? Seriously, I have no idea which problem you're referring to.
most of the problems with Windows and Linux crashing is caused by buggy drivers running in kernel space
When was the last time you had your Windows or Linux system crash? Personally it's been years for me. Maybe this will make driver development easier, but other than that I don't really see the point in practical terms.
Of course, I think many slashdotters believe they are simply entitled to freely access all copyrighted works... This is an anarchistic twist on the FSF's notion that software patents are morally wrong.
More like an extension to the FSF's notion that everyone is entitled to freely access all software.
Exactly. Thanks to gmail spam takes up essentially zero time for me. I look at my inbox, see if there's anything interesting, and if not close the window. How much time this takes depends on how much interesting email I get, not on how much spam I get (I guess I have to make sure to check my email often enough that the interesting stuff doesn't scroll off, but I don't get enough spam for that to happen).
Using this same logic, I would guess that Solitaire, Minesweeper, etc. cost American businesses at least $200 billion per year.
Or for a timely analogy, that Super Bowl ads cost Americans $1.5 billion per year.
A much more accurate number would be the amount of time/money companies use to prevent spam from coming in and going out of their systems
That would be the cost of spam prevention, not the cost of spam.
the amount lost to phishing and other scams, etc.
That'd make as much sense as calling that a cost of email. Not all spam is a scam, after all.
What I love most of all is how there are 10 times as many people who point out the ridiculousness of "$X billion lost to software piracy" as there are who point out the ridiculousness of "$X billion lost to spam".
Right, because that's the solution to every problem.
No, just this one.
Driving does not consist of 100% following people.
It all depends. If you're driving at the speed limit on a highway in light traffic, driving consists 99.9999999% of following people.
Other events happen.
And if the one in a billion chance of an event happening where 5 feet of stopping distance matters, then you get into an accident. Sure, we could ban cell phones and cut out that 1 in a billion chance. While we're at it, we could lower the speed limit on a major highway to 20 miles per hour and cut out 99% of the rest of accidents.
You can't live life minimizing all risks, no matter how small. At some point there has to be a tradeoff.
Well, no, and if you drive without paying attention to what's going on, you probably need to make sure your will is updated, because your next of kin are going to need it.
Depends. You don't need to be paying 100% attention at all times.
There are far more unpredictable hazards found while driving than while eating.
I'd say it goes from slightly more unpredictable to far more unpredictable depending on the road conditions. I'm certainly not going to talk on my phone while I'm driving in New York City, but if I'm on a highway in light traffic there really isn't all that much that can happen. If I'm in a traffic jam and only moving at a couple miles per hour, well, I assume you don't even consider that driving.
sure, if there was no one else on the road at all but you, talking on a cellphone probably wouldnt be a problem
And as long as you've kept a safe (i.e. longer than standard) following distance behind the other cars, it's exactly the same thing. It's not like being drunk, where your judgement itself is impaired. You know what you're doing, you just have a slightly longer reaction time.
And it's significantly harder to do that when you're paying attention to what someone is saying on a phone.
According to the article I believe it's an 18% reduction in reaction time. This is the kind of factor which is already built into defensive driving. Hell, if you're in the right hand lane going the speed limit you only have to worry about what, 5 or 6 cars an hour? Yes, this argument is geared towards multilane highways, but that's where I tend to use my cell phone.
You can look at statistics, but that's a generality. It says nothing about how cell phone use affects me in the situations I use them in. Peanuts have a 0.01% chance of giving a random person an allergic reaction. Does that mean everyone should avoid peanuts?
Slashdot Mirror
You know nothing about encryption or authentication.
You know nothing about what I know and don't know.
He has a whole section on how encryption is not authentication and why it isn't.
LMAO. When did I say it did?
You might want to go read RFC 2554 http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2554.html since you claim SMTP doesn't have authentication.
That's a terribly useless hack on top of SMTP. Could SMTP be hacked to provide useful authentication. Sure. But the standard protocol doesn't provide for it.
By choosing not to enumerate the rights that you feel are natural rights, you are neglecting to consider the ramifications of your statement.
Fair enough. We'll leave the question of whether or not copyright is a natural right open. You claim it is, I suggest it is not. Neither of us want to engage in a year long seminar on what does or doesn't constitute a natural right, so we'll leave such a question unanswered.
I agree with pretty much the rest of what you say. Copyright was created to resolve a free-rider problem. One thing I'd like to note though is that copyright was created to encourage the creation of artistic works, not productive works and certainly not ideas (to this day copyright is prohibited from being extended to ideas). But you seem to understand the general concept so this is really just a nit-pick.
I think we both have to agree that copyright has both positive and negative aspects. On the positive side, it encourages creation of some copyrighted works. There are indisputably some copyrighted works which would not be created without copyright. On the negative side, it discourages use and enhancement of some copyrighted works. It is indisputable that more people would utilize certain copyrighted works were it not for copyright law, and it is indisputable that there would be more enhancements made to certain copyrighted works were it not for copyright law.
It is my opinion, certainly with regard to software, that the negatives greatly outweigh the positives. In fact, the only category of software which I believe would greatly suffer from the abolishment of copyright is that of games. Perhaps not coincidentally, this category also consists of the the type of software which is most rooted in the original concept of copyright, that of artistic works.
#1. Corporate usage of email is increasing.
#2. Spam, as a percentage of email is increasing.
Let me know if you want to argue either of those points. If not, then you admit that you were wrong.
Something can be increasing and still be small. Additionally, consider point #3: Corporate availability of bandwidth is increasing.
How many OC 48's do you believe there are?
Answer that.
First explain the relevance of the question.
Bandwidth is not an unlimited quantity.
Neither are zombies.
Actually, the zombies are responsible for most of the spam right now.
I never suggested otherwise.
There are far more linux servers running apache than windows servers running exchange server.
No, there are not.
Yes, there are.
You are confusing web sites with web servers.
No, I am not.
HTTPS only provides an encrypted channel so some other means of authentication can be used.
Same thing. Don't argue with me over semantics. HTTPS provides this. SMTP does not.
Netcraft counts domains. There are almost 60 million domains hosted on Apache boxes.
To you, that means there are lots of Linux boxes.
No, there are a lot of Linux boxes. Maybe it is theoretically possible to have all 60 million domains hosted on one T1, but this is not in fact the case.
Meanwhile, how many single Exchange servers do you know of that handle email for 100 different companies? None?
How many Exchange servers do you know of? 5? 10?
Oh, no comment on blaster or slammer?
Because it's irrelevant.
No, there just aren't enough Windows boxes on the Internet to cause problems with bandwidth, are there?
I never said that.
No. It's actually a rather large percentage of the average corporate traffic. And it is growing.
I guess all the corporations I've worked for have been the exception. Or are you now making shit up?
It doesn't matter how many companies because the backbone has been flooded. Again, those 10,000 could flood and OC 48.
Only if those 10,000 all used the same OC 48. And even then, like I've said, they'd be quickly shut down.
But discovering them and shutting them down is MY SOLUTION.
I see. You own a backbone internet provider?
You say that it doesn't need to be done.
I've never said that zombies don't need to be shut down. They do, but it really has very little to do with spam.
Are you saying that all of those Linux websites do NOT have firewalls?
They certainly don't have firewalls which disallow incoming connections, since they allow incoming connections by their very nature.
Go ahead and say that. If you won't, then your point about a firewall on a T-1 to an Exchange server is idiotic.
Exchange server? There are far more linux servers running apache than windows servers running exchange server.
Look at the "envelope". It will tell you which machine you're talking to.
The envelope is trivial to fake. If you want an IP address, you have to look at what IP address is connecting to you. But an IP address isn't an entity. Real authentication would be more like the way HTTPS works. You should identify a company, not an IP address. When (maybe if) IPv6 is rolled out, IP addresses will be even more useless as a means of authentication.
Yet you believe that a worm hitting the few Linux servers on the Internet would be very bad.
Few Linux servers on the Internet? You should present this theory to Netcraft.
The notion that there is no intrinsic right to copyright is like saying that there no intrinsic right to freedom from slavery.
It's a similar notion, but I agree with the former and not the latter.
I'd like to see a list of what my supposed intrinsic right are before I buy such a statement.
A list? I'm afraid I can't dummy it down that well for you. You may want to look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_right for an introduction to the concept, though.
The problem with your argument is that you are happy to ignore the fact that the people who worked hard to make the software were under the impression that it would be protected by copyright after they finished it.
Please, as though the people who make the software ever hold the copyright on it. In the vast majority of cases those workers have already been paid. Maybe we could grant an exception in a few cases, but I don't feel sorry about those who took their chances on Microsoft stock.
The correct approach would be to challenge the constitutionality of copyright
Copyright is perfectly constitutional, though.
or start a public awareness campaign about the benefits of an alternative system.
There are already many of these. They're working to a large extent. I think we'll be free of copyright eventually. Maybe not in my lifetime, but I sure hope so.
Lots of people use the psudo-philosophical jargon in the FSF documentation to justify their hard drive full of Warez and downloaded music, hence all the talk of the immorality of copyright.
Right, because warez and "downloaded music" are perfectly legitimate.
What is more immoral is disregarding the rules that have existed thusfar and instead of trying to change the rules simply violating them.
There's nothing immoral about breaking bad laws.
The entire system that employs people to create copyrighted material is based on the existence of copyright, and so if you don't like copyright, then reverse the current situation in the courts (or through enough theft to make the producers go out of business) and watch the amount of material created slowly dwindle toward zero.
That's nonsense. People created things before copyright. They'll continue to create things after it is gone. Just look at all the free software out there. Other than my OS, I use pretty much exclusively free software. And if Microsoft stopped making Windows, I'm sure Linux would become just as good or more likely better in a year or two.
But there aren't "millions" of companies with T-1's or better.
Perhaps, I don't know the numbers, but...
the part you keep missing (did you fail math?) is that the zombies have more bandwidth than the regular companies.
This part is definitely false. After all, spam takes up a very small percentage of corporate traffic.
10,000 zombies (capped at 256K) mean 2.56 BILLION bits/second potential for spam.
If they're capped at 512K, that means 5.12 BILLION bits/second potential for spam.
Spread out among how many companies? Even if the millions of companies don't have T1s, surely they have 5.12K to spare.
10,000 zombies (at only 256K) can flood an OC 48.
When the backbones are flooded, NO ONE gets any email.
Again you're assuming the 10,000 zombies are all using the same OC48, and without being discovered and shut down.
But the linux boxes tend to be on much higher bandwidth connections.
Bullshit. I don't see many companies paying for a T-3 or OC3 just because they're running a Linux box.
No, but webservers tend to be hosted on fast connections, and Linux has the most webservers.
I do see lots of companies running Exchange with T-1's.
Maybe, but these also tend to be behind firewalls.
And what's wrong with SMTP?
There is no method of authentication.
I've heard lots of fools make that claim, and they didn't know the first thing about how email flows.
Well now you've heard it from a fool who knows SMTP inside and out.
That quote from the FSF is just plain absurd. If the goal is to maximize hte benefit of humanity who is to decide how to do that?
The law should certainly help, and not hinder, such a goal.
Why has the FSF settled on software patents as the main source of harm to humanity instead of, say, disease, famine, illiteracy, infant mortality, etc.?
Why do you keep saying patents? Their focus is on software copyright. And they've focussed on software as opposed to those other problems because they're the Free Software Foundation. No foundation can focus on all the worlds problems at once. The FSF has focussed on the problem of the lack of free software, especially the infringement of our rights in the form of copyright law.
So since no single individual can possibly be fit (in a Democracy) to decide what is best for humanity, it makes sense for everyone to decide on his/her own.
But we don't have such a choice. The government has already decided for us that we are not allowed to copy works produced by someone else without their permission.
Again, if you oppose the notion of anarchy, then software license terms that are a condition of purchase must be respected.
I've never really had a problem with the copyright on software I've bought. In fact, I can only think of two or three software title's I've ever bought, and one of them was free software. But even then, requiring a meeting of the minds and agreement before a contract can be formed certainly doesn't imply anarachy. In fact, eliminate the notions of copyright and you'll pretty much never see a situation where someone can be considered to have agreed to a contract with a third party just by buying a product. If anyone my contract is with the store from which I purchased the product. Furthermore, breach of contract does not fall under criminal law, as copyright does, and you generally cannot sue for much beyond the actual damages you've caused.
Consider the idea that in nearly any business, particular prices come with particular terms. If you want to buy one CD for personal use you pay $14, but if you want to own the right to distribute the CD internationally you'd have to pay a lot more (since it's worth a lot more)...
You're using copyright to prove copyright. I reject the notion that one should have to respect restrictions on what they can do with a CD they have purchased.
In other words, any argument against software fees is an argument against the social contract and against the rule of law.
I'm not arguing against software fees, I'm arguing against software copyright (and copyright in general, for that matter). That's an argument against the current laws, perhaps, but copyright is by no means necessary for the rule of law. To quote the GNU Manifesto again, "People who have studied the issue of intellectual property rights carefully (such as lawyers) say that there is no intrinsic right to intellectual property. The kinds of supposed intellectual property rights that the government recognizes were created by specific acts of legislation for specific purposes."
Instead, 14 minutes are spent deleting spam, and the employee is paid for 40 hours of work, even though at most 39 hours and 46 minutes were spent going productive work for the employer. That's a productivity loss of 14 minutes, to the employer.
Only if those 14 minutes would have been spent doing productive work.
There is neither any need for fax, telephone, electrical power or express delivery services.
But fax, telephone, electrical power, and express delivery services were built with businesses in mind. Email was built by some hippies for non-commercial purposes. The protocol on which email runs was severely misdesigned, such that we have the spam problems we currently have.
Given that situation, loss of e-mail does result in loss of productivity.
Spam has always been a part of e-mail, at least since the commercialization of the internet. To say that spam therefore causes a loss of the productivity due to email, when that productivity never existed in the first place, seems to me to be improper economic thought.
True... Though that notion flies in the face of the basic social contract and civilization.
Are you high? Software has only been protected by copyright law for a few decades, certainly not from the dawn of civilization.
When someone agrees to particular terms to provide something, others operating under the rule of law abide by the law if they decide to take the item.
Not if they never agreed to the terms.
It is fine to disagree with the concept of copyright or to believe that everyone is entitled to all software
Damn straight it is.
but saying that a developer who worked hard on some code to put food on the table must give you that code free (after he spend his time working on it with the expectation that people would pay for it) is coercion and theft.
I'll quote the FSF directly for the response to this one:
So, it would only take 7 zombies (at 256Kb/s capped upload) to completely flood it.
Why would 7 zombies use all their bandwidth sending spam to a single company? Unless it's an intentional DDOS, they won't, they'll spread their spam out among all the millions of companies.
This has nothing to do with "email providers". Why do you even bring that up?
By "email providers" I mean simply providers of email accounts. Anyone who runs an SMTP server qualifies.
Again, it only takes 7 zombies to completely flood a T-1 line.
Again, only if those 7 zombies send solely to a single T-1 line.
WTF? There are fewer Linux boxes connected to the Internet than there are Windows boxes.
But the linux boxes tend to be on much higher bandwidth connections.
So the problem is how do we cut off the supply of spam at the source, rather than just filtering it once we've already received it.
The problem is that SMTP sucks. Spam, and not being able to cut it off at the source, is just one symptom of that problem.
No, it merely assumes that 100% of the time an employee is working is paid time
Quite simply, no it doesn't. If someone works 40 hours a week they don't work 40 hours and 14 minutes because they had to delete spam. The cost to the employer is the same either way.
If the employees of one company have so little to do that they read e-mail just to kill time, then sure spam isn't affecting their work.
Doesn't this contradict what you just said?
At another company, e-mail may constitute a crucial part of the corporate infrastructure.
That's such a terrible idea. If that's true about a company we should say "incompetant infrastructure designers cost US companies $22 billion annually".
And if my boss told me to use my spare time to delete junk mail from my office mailbox, I'd forward all my mail to him and ask him to print out anything I really should spend time on and leave it on my desk.
And if I were your boss I'd simply send your forwarded mail to /dev/null. There's just no need for email to be a crucial part of anyone's job. SMTP was never designed for critical business purposes.
If each employee costs $20 per hour then each employee costs $20 per week. If the company employs 2000 people then it's costing $40,000 per week.... and that's just one medium sized company
That assumes that these companies hire the employees for 12 minutes more per day due to spam. This is highly unlikely.
It doesn't take too many xDSL/cable zombies with 256Kb/s capped upload to flood a company's T-1 for email.
If all the zombies focussed on one company. Of course, that wouldn't be spam, that would be an intentional DDOS attack. As long as the combined bandwidth of all the zombies is kept to a small ratio of the combined bandwidth of all email providers, there isn't going to be a problem. It could happen, for instance if a spammer managed to write a worm exploiting a major hole in Linux, but spam would be the least of our worries at that point.
We need to start focusing on actually solving the problem rather than just filtering the effects.
Which is? Seriously, I have no idea which problem you're referring to.
most of the problems with Windows and Linux crashing is caused by buggy drivers running in kernel space
When was the last time you had your Windows or Linux system crash? Personally it's been years for me. Maybe this will make driver development easier, but other than that I don't really see the point in practical terms.
Of course, I think many slashdotters believe they are simply entitled to freely access all copyrighted works... This is an anarchistic twist on the FSF's notion that software patents are morally wrong.
More like an extension to the FSF's notion that everyone is entitled to freely access all software.
The GPL, BSD license and the like all use the underlying copyright laws. If copyright laws are not enforced then those licenses are worthless as well.
I think unnecessary is the word you're looking for.
Degree's don't mean crap.
'Nuff said.
Exactly. Thanks to gmail spam takes up essentially zero time for me. I look at my inbox, see if there's anything interesting, and if not close the window. How much time this takes depends on how much interesting email I get, not on how much spam I get (I guess I have to make sure to check my email often enough that the interesting stuff doesn't scroll off, but I don't get enough spam for that to happen).
Using this same logic, I would guess that Solitaire, Minesweeper, etc. cost American businesses at least $200 billion per year.
Or for a timely analogy, that Super Bowl ads cost Americans $1.5 billion per year.
A much more accurate number would be the amount of time/money companies use to prevent spam from coming in and going out of their systems
That would be the cost of spam prevention, not the cost of spam.
the amount lost to phishing and other scams, etc.
That'd make as much sense as calling that a cost of email. Not all spam is a scam, after all.
What I love most of all is how there are 10 times as many people who point out the ridiculousness of "$X billion lost to software piracy" as there are who point out the ridiculousness of "$X billion lost to spam".
Have fun living life with no regard for anything but safety.
Right, because that's the solution to every problem.
No, just this one.
Driving does not consist of 100% following people.
It all depends. If you're driving at the speed limit on a highway in light traffic, driving consists 99.9999999% of following people.
Other events happen.
And if the one in a billion chance of an event happening where 5 feet of stopping distance matters, then you get into an accident. Sure, we could ban cell phones and cut out that 1 in a billion chance. While we're at it, we could lower the speed limit on a major highway to 20 miles per hour and cut out 99% of the rest of accidents.
You can't live life minimizing all risks, no matter how small. At some point there has to be a tradeoff.
at 60 mph you can go quite a distance in 50ms. Makes the difference between a near-hit and a bad wreck.
Depends how closely you're following the person in front of you. If you give yourself an extra 5 feet following distance, you're fine.
Other drivers benefit when you are safe, and you benefit when you are safe.
Maybe, and maybe not. There is such a thing as being too safe. After all, if we wanted to be perfectly safe, we wouldn't drive at all.
Well, no, and if you drive without paying attention to what's going on, you probably need to make sure your will is updated, because your next of kin are going to need it.
Depends. You don't need to be paying 100% attention at all times.
There are far more unpredictable hazards found while driving than while eating.
I'd say it goes from slightly more unpredictable to far more unpredictable depending on the road conditions. I'm certainly not going to talk on my phone while I'm driving in New York City, but if I'm on a highway in light traffic there really isn't all that much that can happen. If I'm in a traffic jam and only moving at a couple miles per hour, well, I assume you don't even consider that driving.
sure, if there was no one else on the road at all but you, talking on a cellphone probably wouldnt be a problem
And as long as you've kept a safe (i.e. longer than standard) following distance behind the other cars, it's exactly the same thing. It's not like being drunk, where your judgement itself is impaired. You know what you're doing, you just have a slightly longer reaction time.
And it's significantly harder to do that when you're paying attention to what someone is saying on a phone.
According to the article I believe it's an 18% reduction in reaction time. This is the kind of factor which is already built into defensive driving. Hell, if you're in the right hand lane going the speed limit you only have to worry about what, 5 or 6 cars an hour? Yes, this argument is geared towards multilane highways, but that's where I tend to use my cell phone.
You can look at statistics, but that's a generality. It says nothing about how cell phone use affects me in the situations I use them in. Peanuts have a 0.01% chance of giving a random person an allergic reaction. Does that mean everyone should avoid peanuts?
I'd disagree here. Driving is more like eating than like the task you've described. Neither is a perfect analogy, though.