OBVIOUSLY WE WENT INTO IRAQ TO CONTROL THEIR OIL! THE VERY FIRST THING WE WENT AFTER WAS THE OIL WELLS! AND WHAT'S THE FIRST THING WE DID WITH THOSE WELLS??? SHUT OFF THE OIL TO SYRIA!
Ever hear of an oil well fire? You know, those thing Saddam set during the last war. Think maybe we were trying to keep him from doing it again?
Where's the WMD's? HMMMM?????
Beats me. I don't really care if we find any though. Saddam was actively seeking chemical and biological weapons. Hell, he used them in the Gulf War. Should we have waited until he had a nice big stockpile to use on us before we went in?
I don't like Bush. I don't like the way he tried to tie Al-Qaeda into this without strong evidence. I don't like the way his PR dept. works. As a diplomat, he's terrible. Clinton could have had UN backing for all of this.
That said. The war still turned out okay.
Heh, you know what....here's something I posted on a listserve a ways back: (Hopefully you'll get a laugh out of it.)
I suppose if I had my way, I'd have Bush ride a bomb a la Dr. Strangelove,
except the bomb would be conventional and would land on Saddam.
Then a UN security force would spend a year or two in both Iraq and in the US,
setting up a representative government (both places). Too bad assassinating
a foreign leader is illegal and US, UK, French and Russian oil interests
would stop this.
Seems you're missing the whole point of what that debate is all about.
Seems like you didn't read the post I was replying to. That post was taking issue specfically with the US' actions in Iraq.
Yes, there should be debate on the issue you're bringing up. The US shouldn't have to be the world's policeman, and there are certain situations it should stay out of.
As far as the actual topic of this article. I welcome a european GPS network. Some of the things I work with rely on the GPS network, and it would be nice to have an extra network, to improve accuracy and add redundancy. I just hope they're going to implement decent security measures, as good or better than the US system.
I'm sure I'll get blasted for this, but the US really showed it's true colours in this last war. They rode roughshod over every international organisation when the consensus didn't go their way and ultimately staged an invasion rather than liberation. I think under these circumstances the world needs another option.
What a bunch of bullshit.
The rest of the world should be embarassed that they were willing to leave Saddam in power.
The UN should be embarassed. They exist to take care of situations like this. The Gulf War was in 1994. The UN had been trying unsuccessfully to get Iraq to live up to the agreements it signed at the end of that war. They weren't doing their job.
Saddam was playing them like a violin. The U.S. was ready to do something about this whole situation years ago, after talks with Iraq failed and they weren't letting inspectors in. Then Kofi Anan went in, and somehow just took their word that they would let inspectors back in just for him. They were, of course, lying and any reasonable person could have noticed the pattern in Iraq's actions.
The UN totally fucked up the Iraq situation.
The US has managed to depose a brutal dictator, with a minmum of civilian casualties. More people would have died if Saddam had remained in office.
The US is not "stealing" Iraq's oil, nor are they claiming any territory.
You might think by now I'm a GWB supporter, but I'm not. I never really wanted this war to happen. My father was drafted his senior year of college, and I sure as hell didn't want that happening to me. I didn't trust GWB to do the right thing, and have a quick, respectible war, but....you know what?
He has. I think GWB is a tool, but I'm not going to make up bullshit reasons not to like the guy. There are plenty of real ones.
Your "invasion rather than liberation" comment is a lie. You have no proof that the US is doing anything but what's best for the Iraqi people. If that changes, you can expeect my views of this whole thing to change, but right now you're just making yourself look bad.
The Iraqi people, the US, and the World in general is better off due to the US' actions in Iraq. It's too bad some other countries couldn't see past their own petty oil interests, egos, and fears to make the world a better place.
Right now, I'm proud of what my country has done. In the past, we've had a tendency to prop up brutal dictators, in place of the original ones just so they'll do whatever we want. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, this has changed. I'm not about to go out an protest because my country is actually doing the right thing for once.
Why have lots and lots of PDA:s moved away from the graffit or similar type-in methods and moved onto the keyboard the size of two stamps overlapping?
Because it's faster.
I have a Sharp Zaurus. I have a choice between:
Character recognition
Thumbboard
Pickboard
The keyboard, by far, is the fastest way to get data into it. Chacter recognition is just plain inefficient. Besides having to move your stylus backward after you write every single character, it's a lot more prone to mistakes.
I can see why it works on a Palm 5. I actually use it to enter addresses on my Zaurus sometimes. But for anything where you need to input more data than that (say using IM, which I do all the time) you want the keyboard. For sending IM's back and forth, the difference between the handwriting recognition and the keyboard is the difference between bearable and unbearable.
There are many reason why computers crash, but I think I can at least shed some light on his Zaurus problem.
There is a bug in all versions of the Zaurus ROM. If you reboot the Zaurus twice in a row without suspending it in between it will crash and the only way to get it running again is to perform a hard reset. The fix is availible here. Once I installed this fix, I've never had any more problems with lost data on my Z.
And what's the battery life of your blackberry with a wifi card in it and playing mp3s?
The batteries in my TI-89 last for months. That doesn't mean it's going to replace my Zaurus any time soon. They're fundamentally different devices.
If you just use it to play mp3s, you should be able to get 4-5 hours. Wifi kills the batteries in anything that small. It just takes a lot of power. If you want to use wifi all the time, I suggest you pick up an external battery pack. That, or consider bluetooth.
Right now I have an 802.11b access point that can do 22Mbps with other Dlink stuff. I recently installed newer firmware on it that supposedly made it even faster. The only problem is that the extensions to make it go faster are not standard. Thus, my Linksys card will never be able to connect at 22Mbps.
By dropping the 802.11g standard down to twice the speed of 802.11b they're just causing the market to fragment. Everyone is going to develop different propritary extensions to the standard so they can get the 54Mbps that they already printed on their boxes.
"802.11g" equipment is already shipping. They're just not going to get manufacturers to make their equipment slower. This means everyone's going to have their own proprietary standards and dealing with them in gonna be a bitch.
No, it doesn't. If SCO didn't explicitely choose to include the code in Linux (it really is stolen, as they claim), then SCO also didn't explicitely choose to license the code under the GPL.
Nope. Once they discovered the infingement, they continued to distribute the code under the GPL. At this point, they have willfully released their code under the GPL, even if they weren't before. (GPL copyright notices were included with the code distributed by them.)
Before they knew, they were unknowingly violation the GPL. Afterwards, they knew they were distributing the code, and they knew the terms of the GPL. This leaves two possibilities:
The therefore GPL'ed their code.
The were illegally distributing Linux, since the GPL is the only thing with gives them the right to do so.
Either way, SCO is fucked.
#1 leaves them with no damages. (Except possibly IBM, good luck.)
#2 leaves them willfully infringing on the copyright of the Linux kernel. This has all kinds of neat implications. I bet IBM owns the copyright on some part of the Linux code. They could sue SCO for more severe copyright infringement than SCO can sue them for.
After reading the story about Fyodor, a Slashdot-sponsored hacker who invaded the computer systems of other users, I came to realize some things.
Bullshit. Where's the proof? The only proof you trolls ever give are links to other troll's journals. I have never seen any proof, that Fyoror did anything illegal.
The "victim" however, admits that he knowingly made fraudulent statements.
I don't that challenge-response would work by itself. I don't think any anti-spam mechanism proposed so far works that well on it own. It the challenge response + some basic sanity checking (has this host just sent me 200 emails that generated challenges?) could work.
You are forgetting that spam is quickly becoming the MAJORITY of email being transferred. As you said, 1 challenge/response mail is being sent for every spam received. Challenge/response DOUBLES the number of spam, and since most spam isn't too big it's not impossible that challenge/response would double the VOLUME of traffic attributable to spam.
The thing is, each of those response messages can have an easily identifible tag in them. This allows and ISP to see that 500 challenges have to been sent to "foo@bar.com". This can automatically set off at ISP-level block of messages from "foo@bar.com" originating from host W.X.Y.Z, since they are obviously sending bulk UCE.
Also "obsolete" is not a proper term to use, at least not with the argument you're making.
1. You use a challenge-resonse system. 2. I use a challenge-resonse system. 3. You post a message in usenet. 4. I reply (privately) to your posting. 5. Your challenge-response system challenges me. 6. My challenge-response system let's the challenge through, since sending someone email automatically adds them to your whitelist.
First off the whole "propiska" thing, is very old.
Stalin used them, for example. It offends a lot of people that some of those in power wish to continue this system. Here's another interesting link.
Second the thing to see is not Checkpoint Charlie, but the differences you can see in the city when you look in each direction. They're very noticible, even today. It's pretty easy to see which side had the worse end of the bargain and that they haven't yet caught up.
Funny, I haven't seen any evidence that Fyodor did anything more than connect to an open X server on the public internet, that some poor troll left open. Where's the proof that he ever did anything that was actually illegal? (Actually, I haven't seen proof of him even doing anything at all.)
When you're accusing someone of a crime you typically want to have proof.
You also don't want to be someone that goes around posting fraudulent information.
Since this whole thing starts off with the troll admitting the he lied about who he was, he's destroyed his own credibility. I mean what's to say all these accusations aren't a troll as well?
You have provided no (functional) links to anything but a couple of troll's journals. Where the hell are the links to where Fyodor brags about all this?
What's her email address, name and street address?
These guys have a patent on everything!
on
OSI vs SCO
·
· Score: 1
It would be pretty funny if their included some of their patents like this:
US Patent #5,965,809, "Method of Bra Size Determination by Direct Measurement of the Breast
Maybe just to point out the silliness of the whole case.
The load increase is manageable. Challenge response would only need to happen a small percentage of the time for valid email. For spam, yes up to 1 email would be sent per spam recieved. I think the internet can handle that. It's not like there are going to be large attachments or anything.
everyone's challenge-response system will be different and incompatible
That's the whole point of the challenge response system. The idea is that the message can only get though if an actual person is willing to sit there and read how to make it get through. If if isn't worth this unknown sender's time to figure out how to make the email get through, they're probably just wasting my time anyways.
The other idea would be to make the response be the results of a computationally expensive task. With a new RFC, the format for this could be standardized, and it could all be made totally invisible to the user. Since CPU power costs money, it would still be effective at reducing spam.
businesses won't be able to send legitimate automated email(shipping notifications, confirmations, etc.) because everyone will be using different challenge-response systems. You think the average earthlink user is going to be smart enough to even REALIZE they need to whitelist a business, much less what address?
First off, they can just whitelist the whole domain of the business. Hey, the could even tell it to auto-whitelist any email addresses in that domain from which they recieve email in the next 2 hours. Second, yes I do think people will be able to maintain a whitelist. Using a whitelist would be voluntary, so if you can't use it, you don't have to. Once they get fed up with the amount of spam they're getting, it will provide them with enough incetive to learn. Most people can learn how to do simple things with their computer, they typically just don't see it as worth their time to do so. Beside you could make the whole "it's hard to use" argument about the WWW itself. People just eventually decided if was worth learning to use.
Loops when dealing with any of the dozens upon dozens of mailing list software, autoresponders, and legitimate automated email systems.
Other that implementing some basic sanity checking, these would be flaws on their end of the system. The should be no message I can send an automated mail system to make it go apeshit. All the challenge response software would need to do is ignore replies the weren't even attempting to respond correctly. This could be done for N hours after recieving the first message from a source.
The only really big problem I can see is what happens if someone sends out spam with your email address. It seems like a potential DOS-style attack. It seems that there's an obvious solution to this: Add a standard string to be include in all response requests.
This way your mail software can check to see if you've sent mail to that address, and ignore it if you haven't.
I looked at the comments in that story, but it still don't see why this idea is half baked. One of us must be missing something.
Re:GPL the best bet
on
OSI vs SCO
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Their argument for this claim will be "we didn't distribute it; we had no knowledge." Denying them this would do two things.
1: Hackers can now put words in the mouth of corporations. (See? MSDN got hacked and folk downloaded GPL'd Windows, so now it's all free!)
2: Every piece of "FUD" about the GPL will be proven--it IS a viral license, that can irrevocably infect your code without your express wishes.
They did distribute it, they're a member of UnitedLinux fer chrissakes.
That they continued to release the code under the GPL, after they filed this lawsuit.
1 & 2 Combined means, that they knowingly distributed the code under the GPL, therefore agreeing to its terms.
How so?
It seems like a great solution to me (coupled with a whitelist).
I'd put all my friends on the whitelist. When anyone not on that list emails me for the first time, they get an automated message back telling them how to respond. If they do this, the message gets through and they go on my whitelist. If not, they have already been informed that their message will not reach me.
2. The Soviet Union dissolved in 1989. After 1989 there was no USSR, no repressive govt, no torture chambers for subversives or whatever else you might be implying. ... The repressive state they were 'a product of' ceased to exist when these boys were 13 and 8.
While the USSR no longer exists, it would be silly to think that everything that it had done was magically undone the day it ceased to be.
I suggest you take a trip to Berlin, stand at Checkpoint Charlie (or anywhere else along the wall), look left and look right.
I did this last Spring, on Spring Break. It's a very powerful experience. I was too young to understand the full implications of what was happening when the wall fell, but today I realize that the effects of the USSR live on and will for quite some time.
Whether or not the grandparent post was trolling, it's resonable to consider the USSR's effects on the people it controlled. It made a lasting impression on many societies.
Think about this one: How long did it take after abolition for the status of blacks in America to change? Where those born 20 years after abolition, able to live their lives blissfully unware that it had ever happened?
Maybe societies don't change instantly, even if you'd like to think so. If you want an example of this in relation to the topic at hand, I suggest you do a search on the word "propiska."
Slashdot Mirror
OBVIOUSLY WE WENT INTO IRAQ TO CONTROL THEIR OIL! THE VERY FIRST THING WE WENT AFTER WAS THE OIL WELLS! AND WHAT'S THE FIRST THING WE DID WITH THOSE WELLS??? SHUT OFF THE OIL TO SYRIA!
Ever hear of an oil well fire? You know, those thing Saddam set during the last war. Think maybe we were trying to keep him from doing it again?
Where's the WMD's? HMMMM?????
Beats me. I don't really care if we find any though. Saddam was actively seeking chemical and biological weapons. Hell, he used them in the Gulf War. Should we have waited until he had a nice big stockpile to use on us before we went in?
I don't like Bush. I don't like the way he tried to tie Al-Qaeda into this without strong evidence. I don't like the way his PR dept. works. As a diplomat, he's terrible. Clinton could have had UN backing for all of this.
That said. The war still turned out okay.
Heh, you know what....here's something I posted on a listserve a ways back: (Hopefully you'll get a laugh out of it.)
I suppose if I had my way, I'd have Bush ride a bomb a la Dr. Strangelove, except the bomb would be conventional and would land on Saddam. Then a UN security force would spend a year or two in both Iraq and in the US, setting up a representative government (both places). Too bad assassinating a foreign leader is illegal and US, UK, French and Russian oil interests would stop this.
So I was off by a few years. Sue me. I wasn't going to bother looking it up, as 1991 vs. 1994 doesn't change any of the points I was making.
If being a little off on a point peripheral to my argument makes me "ridiculously uninformed", you must have a stick ridiculously far up your ass.
Thank god I didn't misspell too many things. That would have made you really happy right?
Too bad you don't have anything worthwhile to say about the actual point I was making.
Seems you're missing the whole point of what that debate is all about.
Seems like you didn't read the post I was replying to. That post was taking issue specfically with the US' actions in Iraq.
Yes, there should be debate on the issue you're bringing up. The US shouldn't have to be the world's policeman, and there are certain situations it should stay out of.
As far as the actual topic of this article. I welcome a european GPS network. Some of the things I work with rely on the GPS network, and it would be nice to have an extra network, to improve accuracy and add redundancy. I just hope they're going to implement decent security measures, as good or better than the US system.
I'm sure I'll get blasted for this, but the US really showed it's true colours in this last war. They rode roughshod over every international organisation when the consensus didn't go their way and ultimately staged an invasion rather than liberation. I think under these circumstances the world needs another option.
What a bunch of bullshit.
The rest of the world should be embarassed that they were willing to leave Saddam in power.
The UN should be embarassed. They exist to take care of situations like this. The Gulf War was in 1994. The UN had been trying unsuccessfully to get Iraq to live up to the agreements it signed at the end of that war. They weren't doing their job.
Saddam was playing them like a violin. The U.S. was ready to do something about this whole situation years ago, after talks with Iraq failed and they weren't letting inspectors in. Then Kofi Anan went in, and somehow just took their word that they would let inspectors back in just for him. They were, of course, lying and any reasonable person could have noticed the pattern in Iraq's actions.
The UN totally fucked up the Iraq situation.
The US has managed to depose a brutal dictator, with a minmum of civilian casualties. More people would have died if Saddam had remained in office.
The US is not "stealing" Iraq's oil, nor are they claiming any territory.
You might think by now I'm a GWB supporter, but I'm not. I never really wanted this war to happen. My father was drafted his senior year of college, and I sure as hell didn't want that happening to me. I didn't trust GWB to do the right thing, and have a quick, respectible war, but....you know what?
He has. I think GWB is a tool, but I'm not going to make up bullshit reasons not to like the guy. There are plenty of real ones.
Your "invasion rather than liberation" comment is a lie. You have no proof that the US is doing anything but what's best for the Iraqi people. If that changes, you can expeect my views of this whole thing to change, but right now you're just making yourself look bad.
The Iraqi people, the US, and the World in general is better off due to the US' actions in Iraq. It's too bad some other countries couldn't see past their own petty oil interests, egos, and fears to make the world a better place.
Right now, I'm proud of what my country has done. In the past, we've had a tendency to prop up brutal dictators, in place of the original ones just so they'll do whatever we want. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, this has changed. I'm not about to go out an protest because my country is actually doing the right thing for once.
Because it's faster.
I have a Sharp Zaurus. I have a choice between:
The keyboard, by far, is the fastest way to get data into it. Chacter recognition is just plain inefficient. Besides having to move your stylus backward after you write every single character, it's a lot more prone to mistakes.
I can see why it works on a Palm 5. I actually use it to enter addresses on my Zaurus sometimes. But for anything where you need to input more data than that (say using IM, which I do all the time) you want the keyboard. For sending IM's back and forth, the difference between the handwriting recognition and the keyboard is the difference between bearable and unbearable.
All these claims are uncorroberated, and conflict with other accounts of the incident in subtle ways.
For example: the method AC claims was used to get the "victim's" IP address is different from that claimed in a different post.
I smell trolls.
There are many reason why computers crash, but I think I can at least shed some light on his Zaurus problem.
There is a bug in all versions of the Zaurus ROM. If you reboot the Zaurus twice in a row without suspending it in between it will crash and the only way to get it running again is to perform a hard reset. The fix is availible here. Once I installed this fix, I've never had any more problems with lost data on my Z.
Why not use a Zaurus?
$200 for the Zaurus plus $30 for the ethernet card and you're set.
And what's the battery life of your blackberry with a wifi card in it and playing mp3s?
The batteries in my TI-89 last for months. That doesn't mean it's going to replace my Zaurus any time soon. They're fundamentally different devices.
If you just use it to play mp3s, you should be able to get 4-5 hours. Wifi kills the batteries in anything that small. It just takes a lot of power. If you want to use wifi all the time, I suggest you pick up an external battery pack. That, or consider bluetooth.
Correction: All is well. The sky is not falling. Cowboyneal and the article were comparing apple to oranges.
This is a very bad choice.
Right now I have an 802.11b access point that can do 22Mbps with other Dlink stuff. I recently installed newer firmware on it that supposedly made it even faster. The only problem is that the extensions to make it go faster are not standard. Thus, my Linksys card will never be able to connect at 22Mbps.
By dropping the 802.11g standard down to twice the speed of 802.11b they're just causing the market to fragment. Everyone is going to develop different propritary extensions to the standard so they can get the 54Mbps that they already printed on their boxes.
"802.11g" equipment is already shipping. They're just not going to get manufacturers to make their equipment slower. This means everyone's going to have their own proprietary standards and dealing with them in gonna be a bitch.
Nope. Once they discovered the infingement, they continued to distribute the code under the GPL. At this point, they have willfully released their code under the GPL, even if they weren't before. (GPL copyright notices were included with the code distributed by them.)
Before they knew, they were unknowingly violation the GPL. Afterwards, they knew they were distributing the code, and they knew the terms of the GPL. This leaves two possibilities:
Either way, SCO is fucked.
#1 leaves them with no damages. (Except possibly IBM, good luck.)
#2 leaves them willfully infringing on the copyright of the Linux kernel. This has all kinds of neat implications. I bet IBM owns the copyright on some part of the Linux code. They could sue SCO for more severe copyright infringement than SCO can sue them for.
Wow. That's a really good point!
If they're claiming the weren't distributing their code under the GPL, they had no right to distribute to Linux kernel at all.
The GPL is one damned clever license. I think it's probably the most important thing the FSF has ever done.
After reading the story about Fyodor, a Slashdot-sponsored hacker who invaded the computer systems of other users, I came to realize some things.
Bullshit. Where's the proof? The only proof you trolls ever give are links to other troll's journals. I have never seen any proof, that Fyoror did anything illegal.
The "victim" however, admits that he knowingly made fraudulent statements.
I don't that challenge-response would work by itself. I don't think any anti-spam mechanism proposed so far works that well on it own. It the challenge response + some basic sanity checking (has this host just sent me 200 emails that generated challenges?) could work.
You are forgetting that spam is quickly becoming the MAJORITY of email being transferred. As you said, 1 challenge/response mail is being sent for every spam received. Challenge/response DOUBLES the number of spam, and since most spam isn't too big it's not impossible that challenge/response would double the VOLUME of traffic attributable to spam.
The thing is, each of those response messages can have an easily identifible tag in them. This allows and ISP to see that 500 challenges have to been sent to "foo@bar.com". This can automatically set off at ISP-level block of messages from "foo@bar.com" originating from host W.X.Y.Z, since they are obviously sending bulk UCE.
Also "obsolete" is not a proper term to use, at least not with the argument you're making.
Wrong. You should have said:
1. You use a challenge-resonse system.
2. I use a challenge-resonse system.
3. You post a message in usenet.
4. I reply (privately) to your posting.
5. Your challenge-response system challenges me.
6. My challenge-response system let's the challenge through, since sending someone email automatically adds them to your whitelist.
First off the whole "propiska" thing, is very old.
Stalin used them, for example. It offends a lot of people that some of those in power wish to continue this system. Here's another interesting link.
Second the thing to see is not Checkpoint Charlie, but the differences you can see in the city when you look in each direction. They're very noticible, even today. It's pretty easy to see which side had the worse end of the bargain and that they haven't yet caught up.
Funny, I haven't seen any evidence that Fyodor did anything more than connect to an open X server on the public internet, that some poor troll left open. Where's the proof that he ever did anything that was actually illegal? (Actually, I haven't seen proof of him even doing anything at all.)
When you're accusing someone of a crime you typically want to have proof.
You also don't want to be someone that goes around posting fraudulent information.
Since this whole thing starts off with the troll admitting the he lied about who he was, he's destroyed his own credibility. I mean what's to say all these accusations aren't a troll as well?
You have provided no (functional) links to anything but a couple of troll's journals. Where the hell are the links to where Fyodor brags about all this?
Sounds like bullshit to me.
What's her email address, name and street address?
It would be pretty funny if their included some of their patents like this:
US Patent #5,965,809, "Method of Bra Size Determination by Direct Measurement of the Breast
Maybe just to point out the silliness of the whole case.
- increased load on mail servers
The load increase is manageable. Challenge response would only need to happen a small percentage of the time for valid email. For spam, yes up to 1 email would be sent per spam recieved. I think the internet can handle that. It's not like there are going to be large attachments or anything.- everyone's challenge-response system will be different and incompatible
That's the whole point of the challenge response system. The idea is that the message can only get though if an actual person is willing to sit there and read how to make it get through. If if isn't worth this unknown sender's time to figure out how to make the email get through, they're probably just wasting my time anyways.The other idea would be to make the response be the results of a computationally expensive task. With a new RFC, the format for this could be standardized, and it could all be made totally invisible to the user. Since CPU power costs money, it would still be effective at reducing spam.
- businesses won't be able to send legitimate automated email(shipping notifications, confirmations, etc.) because everyone will be using different challenge-response systems. You think the average earthlink user is going to be smart enough to even REALIZE they need to whitelist a business, much less what address?
First off, they can just whitelist the whole domain of the business. Hey, the could even tell it to auto-whitelist any email addresses in that domain from which they recieve email in the next 2 hours. Second, yes I do think people will be able to maintain a whitelist. Using a whitelist would be voluntary, so if you can't use it, you don't have to. Once they get fed up with the amount of spam they're getting, it will provide them with enough incetive to learn. Most people can learn how to do simple things with their computer, they typically just don't see it as worth their time to do so. Beside you could make the whole "it's hard to use" argument about the WWW itself. People just eventually decided if was worth learning to use.- Loops when dealing with any of the dozens upon dozens of mailing list software, autoresponders, and legitimate automated email systems.
Other that implementing some basic sanity checking, these would be flaws on their end of the system. The should be no message I can send an automated mail system to make it go apeshit. All the challenge response software would need to do is ignore replies the weren't even attempting to respond correctly. This could be done for N hours after recieving the first message from a source.The only really big problem I can see is what happens if someone sends out spam with your email address. It seems like a potential DOS-style attack. It seems that there's an obvious solution to this: Add a standard string to be include in all response requests.
This way your mail software can check to see if you've sent mail to that address, and ignore it if you haven't.
I looked at the comments in that story, but it still don't see why this idea is half baked. One of us must be missing something.
1: Hackers can now put words in the mouth of corporations. (See? MSDN got hacked and folk downloaded GPL'd Windows, so now it's all free!)
2: Every piece of "FUD" about the GPL will be proven--it IS a viral license, that can irrevocably infect your code without your express wishes.
challenge-reply is a VERY half-baked idea.
How so?
It seems like a great solution to me (coupled with a whitelist).
I'd put all my friends on the whitelist. When anyone not on that list emails me for the first time, they get an automated message back telling them how to respond. If they do this, the message gets through and they go on my whitelist. If not, they have already been informed that their message will not reach me.
How is this half-baked!?
2. The Soviet Union dissolved in 1989. After 1989 there was no USSR, no repressive govt, no torture chambers for subversives or whatever else you might be implying.
...
The repressive state they were 'a product of' ceased to exist when these boys were 13 and 8.
While the USSR no longer exists, it would be silly to think that everything that it had done was magically undone the day it ceased to be.
I suggest you take a trip to Berlin, stand at Checkpoint Charlie (or anywhere else along the wall), look left and look right.
I did this last Spring, on Spring Break. It's a very powerful experience. I was too young to understand the full implications of what was happening when the wall fell, but today I realize that the effects of the USSR live on and will for quite some time.
Whether or not the grandparent post was trolling, it's resonable to consider the USSR's effects on the people it controlled. It made a lasting impression on many societies.
Think about this one: How long did it take after abolition for the status of blacks in America to change? Where those born 20 years after abolition, able to live their lives blissfully unware that it had ever happened?
Maybe societies don't change instantly, even if you'd like to think so. If you want an example of this in relation to the topic at hand, I suggest you do a search on the word "propiska."
Here's a link from about a month ago.