or if it contains a nuclear bomb that detonates and vaporizes everything within 10 miles
Sounds fine, until the Sea People decide to return a 'probe' of their own;-)
Reminds me of a joke
on
Melting Europa
·
· Score: 4, Funny
When Jane initially met Tarzan of the Jungle, she was immediately attracted to him, and during her questions about his life, she asked him how he had sex.
"Tarzan not know sex," he replied.
Jane explained to him what sex was.
Tarzan said, "Oh... Tarzan use hole in trunk of tree."
Horrified, she said, "Tarzan you have it all wrong, but I will show you how to do it properly." She took off her clothes and laid down on the ground. Here" she said, "you must put it in here!"
Tarzan removed his loincloth...stepped closer with his huge manhood and then gave her an almighty kick right in the crotch.
Jane rolled around in agony for what seemed like an eternity Eventually she managed to gasp for air and screamed, "What in the Hell did you do that for?!"
Just because Microsoft has money, and this patent has initially been rejected (though the finality of that rejection remains to be seen), does not mean that Chewbacca came from Endor. Listen people, Ewoks are short and stumpy. Chewbacca may be hairy but he's really tall, therefore Chewbaca must be a Wookie. If Chewbacca is a Wookie, then Microsoft's money has absolutely nothing to do with this. What does Chewbaca have to do with this. Absolutely 100% nothing to do with this.
The real joke is that 500 years from now, someone will look back in an archive, find this website or a print of it and decide it is representative of the views of the people of our time. Just like we have done. If the people of the middle ages or renaissance believed the earth was flat, then please explain Atlas holding the globe on his shoulders.
Ok, I know I'm no black body, string theory genius like Mr. Hawking, so please point out what I'm missing. Black holes are very massive. So massive in fact that once close enough to the hole, nothing can escape it's gravitational pull. The point where even light is unable to escape from the hole is the 'event horizon'. The very foundation of this shrinking black hole theory depends on this mind boggling mass. So how is it that when it is only as massive as, say, our Sun that it is going to continue to suck in anti-particles to destroy itself? If this were the case, any body with mass in the universe would simple fizzle away in a flash of intense radiation, no? It seems to me that once the black hole dwindles to the point that it is no longer massive enough to capture light leaving it, you'll get a really big rock, ball of fire, super massive dust particle, ham, or whatever is left in there, available for all to see.
And were repeatedly declared 'legal' by Janet Reno during the Clinton administration. Either party would have done this, Al Gore would have simply made the destruction of the 2nd amendment priority where GWB chose to destroy 1 and 4. This is hardly the "People's will". The people generally do not vote. It is not because we are lazy. It is because the candidates we have are preselected by monied organizations who have their best interest in mind, and not that of the people. I have a suggestion to illustrate the true will of the people. Put "None of the above" on the ballot and then see who wins.
2. The provisions of the ICC would have been unconstitutional in the US. Therefore any such treaty would be null and void, and a crime against the american people.
The terms of the Berne Convention are too. So how is it that we not only accept it, but extend it with the Sonny Bono act?
Ours is going down -- the opposite of skyrocketing.
2000 - 4.0%, 2001 - 4.7%, 2002 - 5.8%, 2003 - 6.0% That doesn't look like it's going down to me sport.
Allow me to direct you to here and here. The first link gives yearly unemployment averages from 1948 to 2002. The second link, to the homepage, says the average unemployment numbers for 2003 are 6.0%. As for the "booming 90s", 1990-1999 yield a simple average of 5.75% Lower than present. Now if we take the numbers from 1994-2001, the years the Clinton administration is mostly responsible for, you get 4.925%.
Much of our country's history has been spent in debt, the key is the percentage of the debt versus the GDP of the nation. Debt is not the problem, its the ability of the nation to manage that debt and make the payments in relation to the country's ability to produce goods and services that people want to obtain.
A budget deficit doesn't paint the whole picture? Brilliant deduction! Let me guess, you went to college for an Economics degree, didn't you? 'The country's ability to produce goods and services that people want to obtain'... that sounds directly related to our trade deficit. Which is also at an all time high. In terms any American can understand, this country has lost it's job and is now living on the credit cards.
I won't even bother to respond to the rest of your flamebait. How this post got modded 4 Interesting is beyond me. I'm beginning to think Slashdot is the target of astroturfing.
Here's how it works. Write up some flamebait about an OS with a legion of zealous followers. Submit link to said article to a few advocacy sites for that particular OS. Those site post, smaller sites follow their lead... Sit back and get swamped with traffic, driving up you banner money. Ask John Dvorak about his signature "This OS is doomed. I know, I used to use a Mac myself" opinion columns./. editors should be more careful about linking to articles like this. You only encourage more of it.
In short, don't feed the troll. The Mac sites wised up after a while. Learn from our experiences, and you can avoid our mistakes:-)
If someone wants to smoke and give themselves lung cancer, that's not my problem and I really don't care unless... they try to get the government to use my tax money to pay for their health care.
Hi Mr. Anti-Smoking. Could you please direct me to where smokers can opt out of Medicare/Medicaid taxes? Most smokers won't ever need to be treated for lung cancer, and would probably rather keep that money taken from each paycheck. Even with your biased research, the best you can do is say 1/3 of smokers will die a 'smoking related' death (Burn deaths? Give me a break). In the meantime, smokers pay taxes too. I'd be willing to wager that the 2/3 who never get a 'smoking related' disease easily pay for the treatment of smokers who do. As a matter of fact, with all the state taxes lumped on cigarettes, I can guarantee they do. So your precious tax money is safe from the smokers. Quite the opposite, our tax money is probably bankrolling your shitty ass state economy. I understand that my opinion is not a popular one, but it's based on fact, not theTruth.
Ahh, I stand corrected... somewhat. You can use it for methods defined in your own classes, but Opt-Esc does not work for the standard API's. [Yet!;-)]
but a lot of the sexy new features, like command completion (called Code Sense (tm)), aren't supported.
Pardon my ignorance if I'm incorrect, but isn't that the same thing as a Option-Esc in XCode? I've never used Eclipse, so I don't know of 'code sense', but if you simply want to auto complete a method name it's there in XCode. Other nice tricks in XCode are Command-double click on a method name to take you to that method or header, and Option-Double Click to take you to the docs. All of the above require that project indexing is not disabled...
a central body would decide what is spam and what isn't spam
That's happening already, whether you like it or not.
a central body would be somehow accountable for arbitrating disputes over whether a message was spam or not, whether a spamming complaint was valid or not, whether someone stole their cert and spammed with it, etc.
Except for the cert part, see above.
everyone who wanted to send mail would need to pay for a certificate
No, but if you're unsigned, you get dumped into the unsigned mailbox with all the unsigned spam. Fine if your receiver has you whitelisted in their filters, not so good when mailing strangers. No easier to find than it is now. Just incentive, nobody's going to force you.
everyone who wanted to check incoming mail would have to check a certificate revocation list very frequently, to avoid getting mail from spammers who had just gotten a new cert and spammed like crazy
Which takes longer, having your computer make one SOAP call per key, or inspecting for spam yourself? I'm betting on the machine, not John Henry.
There is a technique very much like this, and it's FREE, and it's called a relay blacklist. The difference is that there is no fancy crypto involved, but the same problems remain:
No, the main difference is you know where spam came from rather than who it came from. Where is trivial to spoof with zombied machines and open proxies/relays. Who is not when strong encryption and CAs are involved.
the third party is fallible when it comes to identifying spammers vs. non-spammers
Yes, but when something is positively identified as spam, the best you can do now is filter it and keep looking. Black list aol.com and you have a lot of legitimate mail not coming through. Blacklist a cert, and you only block a spammer. If you're fast enough, it starts to cost them lots of money in new certs.
spammers are happy to keep one step ahead of the blacklist, even if that means using a new identity (domain or cert) every day
Changing domain doesn't cost anything. New certs do. Changing once a day won't be fast enough. Not even once an hour. Most of the spam is generated by a very small group of people. They'll be forced to buy keys in bulk, because once a key is ID'ed, all spam everywhere sent with that key is canned.
the identity (domain or cert) that spammers use is actually one that someone else paid for, so the system punishes everyone EXCEPT the spammer
Huh? My private key is on my keychain. Should spambot.exe try to access it, I get a nice little dialog informing me of the fact. Script my mail client, and I'm gonna notice it pop open and start spewing spam as quickly as it can. If that actually becomes a problem, I can get my keychain nag me whenever I use my mail client too. If you don't know how to protect your key, maybe you'll decide it's worth figuring out when yours is stolen and then revoked for spamming.
The only system I see punishing everyone except the spammers is the one being hailed by Microsoft as the end of spam. This one, while not perfect, would go a long way toward alleviating the problem. And the cherry on top: We would all have fancy crypto protecting our privacy. I see no down side.
Free to who, exactly? First you have to pay the CA for the 'privlidge' of using their certificates, then the ISP recieving massive ammounts of e-mail has to get very serious systems to crunch the numbers needed to verify the certificates.
Parent said signatures are free, not certificates. Certificates, ideally, would be a small one time fee. Don't spam and your certificate never gets revoked. Spam, and well, be prepared to buy lots of certificates. Would it not be worth one dollar to you to abolish spam? And obviously, ISPs have to do absolutely nothing for this to happen. Signature verification could/should/would be done on the user's end. That way, we can still receive email from our white-listed 'poor as Kenny' friends. Now, before you start to think it is just some get rich quick scheme on behalf of CA's, who do you think is going to be dealing with the spam certificate revocation headaches? They'll earn every penny we pay.
I am writing this as a proposal for the geeks on this board who would like to take action against the **AA's of the world, yet don't want to be just another martyr. What I propose is a new kind of file sharing system that removes the need for the **AA's altogether. Although the system I envision will work nicely with music, it should translate fairly readily with books, movies, and other creative content as well. Done properly, it could be the 'killer app' Napster aspired to be and stand as incontrovertible proof that F/OSS systems pay off in ways other systems cannot. Please bear with me, because this will not be trite post.
1. If you can't join 'em, beat 'em.
We tried to be nice about it. We really did. We downloaded songs, books, and movies with a 'try before you buy' attitude. Buying what we liked, and declining what we didn't. But they didn't like that idea. Nooooo. God forbid we make an informed purchasing decision. They called us thieves, destroyed our centralized system, fought to strip us of our rights, crap flooded our networks, and took us to court. Well in the words of Bugs Bunny, 'Of course you realize this means war." So we've taken up the fight with new distributed systems, encryption, and plausible deniability. However, in our grand fight of "Us vs. Them" we've casually forgotten one of the 'Us'es. The artists, the creators, the people who produce what we download in the first place. Each and every one of our new distributed systems is just a more elaborate version of the one that came before. What we need is a system that gives the creators an incentive to share their works. We can continue to build better mice while they build better mousetraps, or we can start thinking of a ways to include the artists in our game plan. Kazaa, in a quest for legitimacy, is trying to do this. They are retrofitting a system onto a network that was designed with a single minded devotion to withstanding legal attacks. It wasn't meant to be what they want it to be and, as such, it is failing. As long as we exclude artists, they will continue to view us as the enemy. The entertainment industry is trying to pervert copyright through force of software, rather than law now. With DRM, the tables are turned. They're building mice and we're building mousetraps. Instead of focusing our efforts on breaking those systems, we should instead rectify those perversions by creating a system in the original spirit of copyright. Create a system that provides incentive to artists without stepping on the rights of the public. In doing so, we can create an open system in which the 'Them's can't compete, because the 'Them's aren't competitive anymore. We need the artists. What we don't need is the middleman.
2. Foundation for a new system.
Our new system has to perform three essential functions to supplant our much hated middlemen. Distribution, Marketing, Profit! By replacing the middleman's functionality, we can remove him from the process entirely. We are one third of the way there already. It's pretty obvious that we have distribution down to a science. Step two and three need more work.
3. Marketing
We need a way to 'spread the word' about content creators. I am convinced, as are a handful of others, that collaborative filtering is the way to go. A couple of notable mentions are iRate and AudioScrobbler. If you haven't used one of these systems, allow me to briefly describe iRate. When you launch the program, it downloads 20 'seed' songs. Songs that are popular across various groups of users. You rate these songs on a scale of 1 to 10 and it then tries to guess what songs you are likely to enjoy by comparing your ratings to the ratings of other users. It then sends you a few more songs, rinse, repeat. The longer you use it, the more accurate its guessing becomes. This is far superior
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." - US Constitution, Amendment 4.
I think that's pretty solid grounds for a suit right there.
AutoStart is still enabled by default in OS 9. It is still a potential threat if you are running OS X. If you would like a benign demonstration, start classic and click here. Classic remains the largest security hole in OS X. If someone were to produce Indeo codecs for OS X, I would have no reason left to keep my System Folder.
The fact remains that our rights were abused far more heinously during the War on Drugs and the term of Janet Reno as AG than they ever were under Ashcroft?
I don't know if I would agree with that, but you do imply that there are civil rights abuses happening. With that, I agree wholeheartedly. That should change, and repealing many parts of the Patriot Act would be a good start.
Just imagine if the word spread itself. That's what a system like iRate would do for artists. Upload your music, and the system spreads it around. Those who like a song rate it high. That song is then automatically referred to others who will probably like it based on their user profiles. Every band gets a fair shake and gets their music in front of those who are most likely to buy it. In contrast, the large record companies we have now would rather refer songs in order to maximize the strategic advantage of certain organizations and selected individuals;-)
Their 'marketing' involves getting a song with broad appeal in front of everyone. The military would call this a dumb bomb:-) An iRate-like system would be a smart bomb, delivering the song exactly where it's needed.
1) Banks and government as "trusted"? This sounds like a wonderful way for both of them track every e-mail you send with no problem.
Yeah, you know, like notaries. Maybe you've heard of them. Besides, they might know you emailed a transsexual prostitute, but with strong encryption it will take them three times the age of the universe to figure out what you said. Right now, they know you sent it and they can read it. Still like your method better?
2) "Voluntary" will rapidly become mandatory.
No, voluntary would mean voluntary. The only problem with voluntarily not signing your message is that you automatically get dumped into the unsigned inbox with all the unsigned spam. Good luck finding your message there.
No, for e-mail to remain useful and to ensure that those who need it can have privacy it is important that we develop technology that block the spammers while not further infringing on the privacy of users.
I think you are confusing privacy with anonymity. Right now your unencrypted mail is anything but private. It's not very anonymous either unless you send from behind an open wi-fi hotspot with a disposable address.
Unless of course the preceding message was a troll.
Trust me, encrypted email would be a very good thing. The NSA would have a stroke, but this would solve many problems at once. Having an email client that doesn't support or make use of s/mime or pgp should be regarded the same as a browser without SSL.
Shawn Fanning is an idiot. This is not a troll. He releases a PTP system that is so inherently unthought out and stupidly illegal and try to make a go of it. He wrote a program in VB that was what it was because he couldn't implement anything more complex. Sure, some of the beauty of Napster was its simplicity. But this is also the reason we are in a jam with PTP systems like we are today. Without Napster we would not have the RIAA court cases. We would have Gnutella systems, Bit Torrent etc free from lawyers and everyone would be happy.
The reason we have distributed systems in the first place is due to the destruction of Napster. If Napster had never existed, I'm inclined to believe P2P would be nowhere near as widespread as it is today, or that it would even exist at all.
That said, I see no need for any software that allows the recording industry to make money. We simply don't need the recording industry anymore. All we really need are artists, and fans. Woe be to the recording industry when the likes of iRate and CDBaby meet. It's clear that we've got the distribution thing covered with the internet. A system like iRate handles the task of getting the artist exposure with fans who will appreciate them, and a store like CDBaby handles the obvious financial needs of the artists. That's really all the current recording industry does now.
So why do we need to include the bastards who sue 12 year olds again?
However, I would prefer to see an Internet based voting system that gets rid of the electoral college system....
Yeah, me too! Then I can hold people at gunpoint while they vote the way I think they should. It's too darned hard to do that in public;-P
Seriously though, voting should be a very public event for many good reasons. Ballots should remain anonymous, paper should never be considered a 'backup', and votes should be counted immediately and publicly in the place they were cast. The ballot boxes should never be removed from public view until all the votes are tallied. It's the only way to keep it fair and trustworthy. As for the electoral college, all we have to do is split FL, CA, and NY into 6 states and the problem's solved;-)
And how exactly is this relevant to the subject at hand? Answer:
I am so sensible, Sir, of the kindness with which the House has listened to me, that I will not detain you longer. I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living. - Mr. Serjeant Talfourd
I think that thoroughly covers the connection I'm making.
Slashdot Mirror
or if it contains a nuclear bomb that detonates and vaporizes everything within 10 miles
Sounds fine, until the Sea People decide to return a 'probe' of their own ;-)
When Jane initially met Tarzan of the Jungle, she was immediately attracted to him, and during her questions about his life, she asked him how he had sex.
"Tarzan not know sex," he replied.
Jane explained to him what sex was.
Tarzan said, "Oh... Tarzan use hole in trunk of tree."
Horrified, she said, "Tarzan you have it all wrong, but I will show you how to do it properly." She took off her clothes and laid down on the ground. Here" she said, "you must put it in here!"
Tarzan removed his loincloth...stepped closer with his huge manhood and then gave her an almighty kick right in the crotch.
Jane rolled around in agony for what seemed like an eternity Eventually she managed to gasp for air and screamed, "What in the Hell did you do that for?!"
"Tarzan check for bees."
Have they consulted Google?
Does having a former NSA employee with security clearance count? I'm surprised no one else mentioned it.
;-)
The real joke is that 500 years from now, someone will look back in an archive, find this website or a print of it and decide it is representative of the views of the people of our time. Just like we have done. If the people of the middle ages or renaissance believed the earth was flat, then please explain Atlas holding the globe on his shoulders.
Ok, I know I'm no black body, string theory genius like Mr. Hawking, so please point out what I'm missing. Black holes are very massive. So massive in fact that once close enough to the hole, nothing can escape it's gravitational pull. The point where even light is unable to escape from the hole is the 'event horizon'. The very foundation of this shrinking black hole theory depends on this mind boggling mass. So how is it that when it is only as massive as, say, our Sun that it is going to continue to suck in anti-particles to destroy itself? If this were the case, any body with mass in the universe would simple fizzle away in a flash of intense radiation, no? It seems to me that once the black hole dwindles to the point that it is no longer massive enough to capture light leaving it, you'll get a really big rock, ball of fire, super massive dust particle, ham, or whatever is left in there, available for all to see.
And were repeatedly declared 'legal' by Janet Reno during the Clinton administration. Either party would have done this, Al Gore would have simply made the destruction of the 2nd amendment priority where GWB chose to destroy 1 and 4. This is hardly the "People's will". The people generally do not vote. It is not because we are lazy. It is because the candidates we have are preselected by monied organizations who have their best interest in mind, and not that of the people. I have a suggestion to illustrate the true will of the people. Put "None of the above" on the ballot and then see who wins.
Are posted here. It looks like this is all 'by the book' to me.
2. The provisions of the ICC would have been unconstitutional in the US. Therefore any such treaty would be null and void, and a crime against the american people.
The terms of the Berne Convention are too. So how is it that we not only accept it, but extend it with the Sonny Bono act?
Ours is going down -- the opposite of skyrocketing.
2000 - 4.0%, 2001 - 4.7%, 2002 - 5.8%, 2003 - 6.0% That doesn't look like it's going down to me sport.
Allow me to direct you to here and here. The first link gives yearly unemployment averages from 1948 to 2002. The second link, to the homepage, says the average unemployment numbers for 2003 are 6.0%. As for the "booming 90s", 1990-1999 yield a simple average of 5.75% Lower than present. Now if we take the numbers from 1994-2001, the years the Clinton administration is mostly responsible for, you get 4.925%.
Much of our country's history has been spent in debt, the key is the percentage of the debt versus the GDP of the nation. Debt is not the problem, its the ability of the nation to manage that debt and make the payments in relation to the country's ability to produce goods and services that people want to obtain.
A budget deficit doesn't paint the whole picture? Brilliant deduction! Let me guess, you went to college for an Economics degree, didn't you? 'The country's ability to produce goods and services that people want to obtain'... that sounds directly related to our trade deficit. Which is also at an all time high. In terms any American can understand, this country has lost it's job and is now living on the credit cards.
I won't even bother to respond to the rest of your flamebait. How this post got modded 4 Interesting is beyond me. I'm beginning to think Slashdot is the target of astroturfing.
Here's how it works. Write up some flamebait about an OS with a legion of zealous followers. Submit link to said article to a few advocacy sites for that particular OS. Those site post, smaller sites follow their lead... Sit back and get swamped with traffic, driving up you banner money. Ask John Dvorak about his signature "This OS is doomed. I know, I used to use a Mac myself" opinion columns. /. editors should be more careful about linking to articles like this. You only encourage more of it.
In short, don't feed the troll. The Mac sites wised up after a while. Learn from our experiences, and you can avoid our mistakes :-)
If someone wants to smoke and give themselves lung cancer, that's not my problem and I really don't care unless ... they try to get the government to use my tax money to pay for their health care.
Hi Mr. Anti-Smoking. Could you please direct me to where smokers can opt out of Medicare/Medicaid taxes? Most smokers won't ever need to be treated for lung cancer, and would probably rather keep that money taken from each paycheck. Even with your biased research, the best you can do is say 1/3 of smokers will die a 'smoking related' death (Burn deaths? Give me a break). In the meantime, smokers pay taxes too. I'd be willing to wager that the 2/3 who never get a 'smoking related' disease easily pay for the treatment of smokers who do. As a matter of fact, with all the state taxes lumped on cigarettes, I can guarantee they do. So your precious tax money is safe from the smokers. Quite the opposite, our tax money is probably bankrolling your shitty ass state economy. I understand that my opinion is not a popular one, but it's based on fact, not theTruth.
Oh what a little ad money can do....
NOT supported for Java.
Ahh, I stand corrected... somewhat. You can use it for methods defined in your own classes, but Opt-Esc does not work for the standard API's. [Yet! ;-)]
but a lot of the sexy new features, like command completion (called Code Sense (tm)), aren't supported.
Pardon my ignorance if I'm incorrect, but isn't that the same thing as a Option-Esc in XCode? I've never used Eclipse, so I don't know of 'code sense', but if you simply want to auto complete a method name it's there in XCode. Other nice tricks in XCode are Command-double click on a method name to take you to that method or header, and Option-Double Click to take you to the docs. All of the above require that project indexing is not disabled...
a central body would decide what is spam and what isn't spam
That's happening already, whether you like it or not.
a central body would be somehow accountable for arbitrating disputes over whether a message was spam or not, whether a spamming complaint was valid or not, whether someone stole their cert and spammed with it, etc.
Except for the cert part, see above.
everyone who wanted to send mail would need to pay for a certificate
No, but if you're unsigned, you get dumped into the unsigned mailbox with all the unsigned spam. Fine if your receiver has you whitelisted in their filters, not so good when mailing strangers. No easier to find than it is now. Just incentive, nobody's going to force you.
everyone who wanted to check incoming mail would have to check a certificate revocation list very frequently, to avoid getting mail from spammers who had just gotten a new cert and spammed like crazy
Which takes longer, having your computer make one SOAP call per key, or inspecting for spam yourself? I'm betting on the machine, not John Henry.
There is a technique very much like this, and it's FREE, and it's called a relay blacklist. The difference is that there is no fancy crypto involved, but the same problems remain:
No, the main difference is you know where spam came from rather than who it came from. Where is trivial to spoof with zombied machines and open proxies/relays. Who is not when strong encryption and CAs are involved.
the third party is fallible when it comes to identifying spammers vs. non-spammers
Yes, but when something is positively identified as spam, the best you can do now is filter it and keep looking. Black list aol.com and you have a lot of legitimate mail not coming through. Blacklist a cert, and you only block a spammer. If you're fast enough, it starts to cost them lots of money in new certs.
spammers are happy to keep one step ahead of the blacklist, even if that means using a new identity (domain or cert) every day
Changing domain doesn't cost anything. New certs do. Changing once a day won't be fast enough. Not even once an hour. Most of the spam is generated by a very small group of people. They'll be forced to buy keys in bulk, because once a key is ID'ed, all spam everywhere sent with that key is canned.
the identity (domain or cert) that spammers use is actually one that someone else paid for, so the system punishes everyone EXCEPT the spammer
Huh? My private key is on my keychain. Should spambot.exe try to access it, I get a nice little dialog informing me of the fact. Script my mail client, and I'm gonna notice it pop open and start spewing spam as quickly as it can. If that actually becomes a problem, I can get my keychain nag me whenever I use my mail client too. If you don't know how to protect your key, maybe you'll decide it's worth figuring out when yours is stolen and then revoked for spamming.
The only system I see punishing everyone except the spammers is the one being hailed by Microsoft as the end of spam. This one, while not perfect, would go a long way toward alleviating the problem. And the cherry on top: We would all have fancy crypto protecting our privacy. I see no down side.
Free to who, exactly? First you have to pay the CA for the 'privlidge' of using their certificates, then the ISP recieving massive ammounts of e-mail has to get very serious systems to crunch the numbers needed to verify the certificates.
Parent said signatures are free, not certificates. Certificates, ideally, would be a small one time fee. Don't spam and your certificate never gets revoked. Spam, and well, be prepared to buy lots of certificates. Would it not be worth one dollar to you to abolish spam? And obviously, ISPs have to do absolutely nothing for this to happen. Signature verification could/should/would be done on the user's end. That way, we can still receive email from our white-listed 'poor as Kenny' friends. Now, before you start to think it is just some get rich quick scheme on behalf of CA's, who do you think is going to be dealing with the spam certificate revocation headaches? They'll earn every penny we pay.
I am writing this as a proposal for the geeks on this board who would like to take action against the **AA's of the world, yet don't want to be just another martyr. What I propose is a new kind of file sharing system that removes the need for the **AA's altogether. Although the system I envision will work nicely with music, it should translate fairly readily with books, movies, and other creative content as well. Done properly, it could be the 'killer app' Napster aspired to be and stand as incontrovertible proof that F/OSS systems pay off in ways other systems cannot. Please bear with me, because this will not be trite post.
1. If you can't join 'em, beat 'em.
We tried to be nice about it. We really did. We downloaded songs, books, and movies with a 'try before you buy' attitude. Buying what we liked, and declining what we didn't. But they didn't like that idea. Nooooo. God forbid we make an informed purchasing decision. They called us thieves, destroyed our centralized system, fought to strip us of our rights, crap flooded our networks, and took us to court. Well in the words of Bugs Bunny, 'Of course you realize this means war." So we've taken up the fight with new distributed systems, encryption, and plausible deniability. However, in our grand fight of "Us vs. Them" we've casually forgotten one of the 'Us'es. The artists, the creators, the people who produce what we download in the first place. Each and every one of our new distributed systems is just a more elaborate version of the one that came before. What we need is a system that gives the creators an incentive to share their works. We can continue to build better mice while they build better mousetraps, or we can start thinking of a ways to include the artists in our game plan. Kazaa, in a quest for legitimacy, is trying to do this. They are retrofitting a system onto a network that was designed with a single minded devotion to withstanding legal attacks. It wasn't meant to be what they want it to be and, as such, it is failing. As long as we exclude artists, they will continue to view us as the enemy. The entertainment industry is trying to pervert copyright through force of software, rather than law now. With DRM, the tables are turned. They're building mice and we're building mousetraps. Instead of focusing our efforts on breaking those systems, we should instead rectify those perversions by creating a system in the original spirit of copyright. Create a system that provides incentive to artists without stepping on the rights of the public. In doing so, we can create an open system in which the 'Them's can't compete, because the 'Them's aren't competitive anymore. We need the artists. What we don't need is the middleman.
2. Foundation for a new system.
Our new system has to perform three essential functions to supplant our much hated middlemen. Distribution, Marketing, Profit! By replacing the middleman's functionality, we can remove him from the process entirely. We are one third of the way there already. It's pretty obvious that we have distribution down to a science. Step two and three need more work.
3. Marketing
We need a way to 'spread the word' about content creators. I am convinced, as are a handful of others, that collaborative filtering is the way to go. A couple of notable mentions are iRate and AudioScrobbler. If you haven't used one of these systems, allow me to briefly describe iRate. When you launch the program, it downloads 20 'seed' songs. Songs that are popular across various groups of users. You rate these songs on a scale of 1 to 10 and it then tries to guess what songs you are likely to enjoy by comparing your ratings to the ratings of other users. It then sends you a few more songs, rinse, repeat. The longer you use it, the more accurate its guessing becomes. This is far superior
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." - US Constitution, Amendment 4.
I think that's pretty solid grounds for a suit right there.
AutoStart is still enabled by default in OS 9. It is still a potential threat if you are running OS X. If you would like a benign demonstration, start classic and click here. Classic remains the largest security hole in OS X. If someone were to produce Indeo codecs for OS X, I would have no reason left to keep my System Folder.
I don't know if I would agree with that, but you do imply that there are civil rights abuses happening. With that, I agree wholeheartedly. That should change, and repealing many parts of the Patriot Act would be a good start.
Just imagine if the word spread itself. That's what a system like iRate would do for artists. Upload your music, and the system spreads it around. Those who like a song rate it high. That song is then automatically referred to others who will probably like it based on their user profiles. Every band gets a fair shake and gets their music in front of those who are most likely to buy it. In contrast, the large record companies we have now would rather refer songs in order to maximize the strategic advantage of certain organizations and selected individuals ;-)
Their 'marketing' involves getting a song with broad appeal in front of everyone. The military would call this a dumb bomb :-) An iRate-like system would be a smart bomb, delivering the song exactly where it's needed.
1) Banks and government as "trusted"? This sounds like a wonderful way for both of them track every e-mail you send with no problem.
Yeah, you know, like notaries. Maybe you've heard of them. Besides, they might know you emailed a transsexual prostitute, but with strong encryption it will take them three times the age of the universe to figure out what you said. Right now, they know you sent it and they can read it. Still like your method better?
2) "Voluntary" will rapidly become mandatory.
No, voluntary would mean voluntary. The only problem with voluntarily not signing your message is that you automatically get dumped into the unsigned inbox with all the unsigned spam. Good luck finding your message there.
No, for e-mail to remain useful and to ensure that those who need it can have privacy it is important that we develop technology that block the spammers while not further infringing on the privacy of users.
I think you are confusing privacy with anonymity. Right now your unencrypted mail is anything but private. It's not very anonymous either unless you send from behind an open wi-fi hotspot with a disposable address.
Unless of course the preceding message was a troll.
Trust me, encrypted email would be a very good thing. The NSA would have a stroke, but this would solve many problems at once. Having an email client that doesn't support or make use of s/mime or pgp should be regarded the same as a browser without SSL.
Shawn Fanning is an idiot. This is not a troll. He releases a PTP system that is so inherently unthought out and stupidly illegal and try to make a go of it. He wrote a program in VB that was what it was because he couldn't implement anything more complex. Sure, some of the beauty of Napster was its simplicity. But this is also the reason we are in a jam with PTP systems like we are today. Without Napster we would not have the RIAA court cases. We would have Gnutella systems, Bit Torrent etc free from lawyers and everyone would be happy.
The reason we have distributed systems in the first place is due to the destruction of Napster. If Napster had never existed, I'm inclined to believe P2P would be nowhere near as widespread as it is today, or that it would even exist at all.
That said, I see no need for any software that allows the recording industry to make money. We simply don't need the recording industry anymore. All we really need are artists, and fans. Woe be to the recording industry when the likes of iRate and CDBaby meet. It's clear that we've got the distribution thing covered with the internet. A system like iRate handles the task of getting the artist exposure with fans who will appreciate them, and a store like CDBaby handles the obvious financial needs of the artists. That's really all the current recording industry does now.
So why do we need to include the bastards who sue 12 year olds again?
However, I would prefer to see an Internet based voting system that gets rid of the electoral college system....
Yeah, me too! Then I can hold people at gunpoint while they vote the way I think they should. It's too darned hard to do that in public ;-P
Seriously though, voting should be a very public event for many good reasons. Ballots should remain anonymous, paper should never be considered a 'backup', and votes should be counted immediately and publicly in the place they were cast. The ballot boxes should never be removed from public view until all the votes are tallied. It's the only way to keep it fair and trustworthy. As for the electoral college, all we have to do is split FL, CA, and NY into 6 states and the problem's solved ;-)
And how exactly is this relevant to the subject at hand? Answer:
I am so sensible, Sir, of the kindness with which the House has listened to me, that I will not detain you longer. I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living. - Mr. Serjeant Talfourd
I think that thoroughly covers the connection I'm making.