This is an interesting point, but I think on the grounds that, as a for instance, Target's ready-to-drink Weight Loss Shake is otherwise indistinguishable on the surface (or in the glass) from Slim-Fast(TM)'s RTD diet shake, they are probably two different things when broken down.
In short, I think it was decided a while back that "look and feel" alone (which, AFAICT, is the argument presented here) is not grounds for dispute.
Like everyone else said on here, Speakeasy provides elegant service.
For what it's worth, I'm getting ADSL, 1.5/256, and it comes with a shell account, 2 static IPs, 2 email addresses, 1 GB of Usenet per user courtesy of Giganews, Rhapsody access for music, and a few other bells and whistles. That package alone runs me $59.95 per month plus FUSF, and for an additional $9.95 per month they are also my primary DNS for my domains.
This is the same ISP who, when I was first interested in 2000, asked me if I wanted a shell account to go with my dialup. (I was unable to afford DSL at the time, as where I was living then would only have garnered me SDSL - so I went dialup.)
Expensive? For the package, very, but well worth it - last time I called support it was to ask a trivial question or three, and their network is rock solid. Even then, even their sales people know the difference between TCP and IP for the most part.
Several politicians carry or carried amateur radio licenses to their death. There was one significant congresscritter in Arizona who did, up until he died a few years ago. For the life of me, though, I can't think of his name.
Point being, there is room for a geek element (as ham radio is certainly geeky) in the halls of congress.
Now here's a counter point - people are right in commenting that we're probably not gregarious enough to be politicians, or at least stereotypical politicians. To take a career in politics, you can be corrupt and follow the stereotype, uber-moral and be like (say) Jesse Helms, and on and on.
As such, and no offense intended to Eric, but perhaps Eric Raymond could run for congress and get the foot in the door for the geeks. Worth a shot, wot?
Why don't the operators of the internet just sue these clowns and their product manufacturers and put a stop to this stupidity.
There is no one central operator of the internet. ARPA is long gone, and the closest you have to anything remotely resembling central control are the root servers - and their sole purpose in life is to attach names to numbers.
The versioning is still there, but the only ISOs that are available are for RC2. You have to dig for those, and I'm not convinced they're really a good thing since they're a release candidate rather than the shelf version.
I'm still pondering the idea of going silver with them, just to contribute to the cause, but...well, I'm broke.
Believe it or not, the FTC is charging a premium per year to use the list. Runs something like free for up to five area codes, $25/area code thereafter, not to exceed like $3000 per year or something like that.
If it means having the money from tax dollars for some other worthwhile program like, say, how to make better canned spagetti sauce (I wouldn't put that one past the FDA, believe me), then yeah, they should probably charge the TM companies for the usage of the list.
SCO will say "No license for j00!" to IBM, towhich they 900 lb gorrilla will walk up to them and basically say "revoke this" in response. I fail to see what this is going to achieve on SCO's part.
They *provide* a *service* on the *internet*, ergo are an ISP, right? Let's forget that ISPs have always been people that provide an internet connection as a service.
Frankly, the best prevention of HIV is not screwing around and putting yourself in danger of contracting. You know, like doing drugs via shared needles, illicit sex, or anything like that.
Then again, it's not like most readers of Slashdot here are inclined toward illicit sex.
''Click here,'' says my spamming mentor. Hovering over my chair, he points to the computer screen. ''Now click on that file of e-mail addresses there.'' I have been invited by a master for an education in spamming, the practice of blasting millions of unsolicited e-mail messages into the Internet in order to advertise everything from loans with easy terms to women of easy virtue.
''Let's go online and download some software,'' says my guide. His name is Richard Colbert. On the Rokso, or Register of Known Spam Operations (a kind of Most Wanted List for the Internet posted on an antispam Web site called spamhaus.org), Colbert is described plainly: ''Nonstop scam spammer, kicked off so many hosts and I.S.P.s'' -- or Internet service providers -- ''it's hard to count.''
Dressed in blue shorts and a purple T-shirt, Colbert, 31, has blondish hair stuffed under a baseball cap, a prominent diamond earring and a mild twang that betrays his Atlanta origin. He lights up a Monarch menthol as he shows me his computer room, an intimate homemade space built off the side of an aging two-tone mobile home -- robin's-egg blue and white -- which sits among hundreds of Airstreams and Miami Deco single-wides in the Sunset Colony Mobile Home Park in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Colbert claims that he's now on a sabbatical from spamming, but he's watching current events and weighing a return. During this interlude, he has agreed to help me learn how the avalanche of solicitations I receive winds up in my online mailbox every day. Who are these guys? Who hires them? How do they get legitimate e-mail addresses? And finally, can federal legislation currently under consideration actually stop them?
First off, Colbert doesn't think about spam the way I do (or, most probably, the way you do). He likes to call it ''bulk e-mailing,'' for starters. And he considers it just one of the many exciting new markets available on the Internet. He's the kind of guy who is always interrupting himself to tell you about some smart economic angle he has figured out, some new edge.
''These shorts are Dockers,'' he says, pointing at the clothes he has on. ''And I got them off eBay. Shirt? Tommy Hilfiger. EBay. Shoes? Nikes. EBay.''
Colbert and I dig around on the Internet until, under his direction, I find a piece of software that allows for mass e-mailing. These are common and legal, used legitimately by professional archaeologists, say, or chess enthusiasts to form an online group and conduct chats or exchange information.
Right away there's a problem. The software we've selected requires registration or payment. But Colbert says he once used this very piece of software, slightly altered, when he worked with some other spammers who live nearby. So he snatches his phone and calls a neighbor for support. A minute later, we are back in business. It turns out that an unusually large number of spammers live in this area, the stretch of beaches north of Miami that old-timers loosely call Boca and new-timers know as a staging ground for the smarmier characters in Carl Hiaasen's novels.
According to Steve Linford, who maintains the Rokso list, there's a good reason that so many spammers wind up on Spam Beach: ''Boca Raton is where they used to run those pump-and-dump investment scams and where the telemarketing sweatshops are.'' The phone scammers and infomercial wannabes of the 80's and 90's -- who themselves supplanted the land speculators who established Florida's earliest cities upon shifting sand and sinking swamps -- have been pushed aside by the new boys on the block, the bulk e-mailers of the Internet.
2. A SPAMMING PRIMER
How does a spammer obtain a million working e-mail addresses? Most simply, there are lists you can buy off the Internet. But there are also other, cheaper, ways. A ''dictionary attack,'' Colbert instructs, is when you blast reams of computer-generated potential
I concur. If you want to bother him, forward every free offer you can to him via snail mail. YOu know, like what we did with what's his face in Wisconsin.
Verisign now has not only ICANN telling them to stop, but three suits against them for doing this crap. They won't get the message, but perhaps they will stop this and remove the wildcard from their root if the suit is found not in their favor.
See my other comment in this thread to this effect, and rent yourself a PO box at your friendly neighborhood post office.
Another consideration - Joe Crackhead isn't necessarily going to know a ham radio callsign from a can of spam. Especially meth users - very few of them are really that clever, and tend more towards paranoia than simple deduction. Besides, a lot of mundanes will ask me "What's KE6ISF?" and actually try and pronounce it. These are people who are otherwise intelligent, and unless they've had some connection with ham radio, they won't know what the heck it is.
(Honestly, I can see why. I didn't know what N6OMS was either until I met the call sign's owner, *well* before I was licensed.)
Slashdot Mirror
In short, I think it was decided a while back that "look and feel" alone (which, AFAICT, is the argument presented here) is not grounds for dispute.
For what it's worth, I'm getting ADSL, 1.5/256, and it comes with a shell account, 2 static IPs, 2 email addresses, 1 GB of Usenet per user courtesy of Giganews, Rhapsody access for music, and a few other bells and whistles. That package alone runs me $59.95 per month plus FUSF, and for an additional $9.95 per month they are also my primary DNS for my domains.
This is the same ISP who, when I was first interested in 2000, asked me if I wanted a shell account to go with my dialup. (I was unable to afford DSL at the time, as where I was living then would only have garnered me SDSL - so I went dialup.)
Expensive? For the package, very, but well worth it - last time I called support it was to ask a trivial question or three, and their network is rock solid. Even then, even their sales people know the difference between TCP and IP for the most part.
Granted, other browsers also have popup killers these days....
At any rate, I hope the guys who settled have a good attorney who'll see them through getting a cut of the chapter 11 payout when the hearing comes.
Point being, there is room for a geek element (as ham radio is certainly geeky) in the halls of congress.
Now here's a counter point - people are right in commenting that we're probably not gregarious enough to be politicians, or at least stereotypical politicians. To take a career in politics, you can be corrupt and follow the stereotype, uber-moral and be like (say) Jesse Helms, and on and on.
As such, and no offense intended to Eric, but perhaps Eric Raymond could run for congress and get the foot in the door for the geeks. Worth a shot, wot?
Yes, what you said. I *thought* it was like that...
Now instead of a diamond ring, I just have to get her a number -9e-62 pencil! Now if I can only figure out where to get one....
Perhaps you can explain to us how it can be done then, in a cost effective fashion?
There is no one central operator of the internet. ARPA is long gone, and the closest you have to anything remotely resembling central control are the root servers - and their sole purpose in life is to attach names to numbers.
Comparatively speaking, it's a shiteload of money.
I'm still pondering the idea of going silver with them, just to contribute to the cause, but...well, I'm broke.
Believe it or not, the FTC is charging a premium per year to use the list. Runs something like free for up to five area codes, $25/area code thereafter, not to exceed like $3000 per year or something like that. If it means having the money from tax dollars for some other worthwhile program like, say, how to make better canned spagetti sauce (I wouldn't put that one past the FDA, believe me), then yeah, they should probably charge the TM companies for the usage of the list.
Old news. It's active again. Telemarketers who aren't compliant have until Friday to get their act together.
SCO will say "No license for j00!" to IBM, towhich they 900 lb gorrilla will walk up to them and basically say "revoke this" in response. I fail to see what this is going to achieve on SCO's part.
Because the site's been slashdotted and we STILL can't get on, you insensitive clods!
They *provide* a *service* on the *internet*, ergo are an ISP, right? Let's forget that ISPs have always been people that provide an internet connection as a service.
They slap him with a fine and don't tell him to not send spam. I'm worried this is going to set a precedent.
I don't care what they say it'll be in 20 years or 20 centuries, it'll still be the same crap.
I've always been partial to Bic Cristal pens. They never need "inknition" strokes in my experience, and always write smoothly.
Then again, it's not like most readers of Slashdot here are inclined toward illicit sex.
Ah well.
Confessions of a Spam King
By JACK HITT
Published: September 28, 2003
1. MEET THE SPAMMER
''Click here,'' says my spamming mentor. Hovering over my chair, he points to the computer screen. ''Now click on that file of e-mail addresses there.'' I have been invited by a master for an education in spamming, the practice of blasting millions of unsolicited e-mail messages into the Internet in order to advertise everything from loans with easy terms to women of easy virtue.
''Let's go online and download some software,'' says my guide. His name is Richard Colbert. On the Rokso, or Register of Known Spam Operations (a kind of Most Wanted List for the Internet posted on an antispam Web site called spamhaus.org), Colbert is described plainly: ''Nonstop scam spammer, kicked off so many hosts and I.S.P.s'' -- or Internet service providers -- ''it's hard to count.''
Dressed in blue shorts and a purple T-shirt, Colbert, 31, has blondish hair stuffed under a baseball cap, a prominent diamond earring and a mild twang that betrays his Atlanta origin. He lights up a Monarch menthol as he shows me his computer room, an intimate homemade space built off the side of an aging two-tone mobile home -- robin's-egg blue and white -- which sits among hundreds of Airstreams and Miami Deco single-wides in the Sunset Colony Mobile Home Park in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Colbert claims that he's now on a sabbatical from spamming, but he's watching current events and weighing a return. During this interlude, he has agreed to help me learn how the avalanche of solicitations I receive winds up in my online mailbox every day. Who are these guys? Who hires them? How do they get legitimate e-mail addresses? And finally, can federal legislation currently under consideration actually stop them?
First off, Colbert doesn't think about spam the way I do (or, most probably, the way you do). He likes to call it ''bulk e-mailing,'' for starters. And he considers it just one of the many exciting new markets available on the Internet. He's the kind of guy who is always interrupting himself to tell you about some smart economic angle he has figured out, some new edge.
''These shorts are Dockers,'' he says, pointing at the clothes he has on. ''And I got them off eBay. Shirt? Tommy Hilfiger. EBay. Shoes? Nikes. EBay.''
Colbert and I dig around on the Internet until, under his direction, I find a piece of software that allows for mass e-mailing. These are common and legal, used legitimately by professional archaeologists, say, or chess enthusiasts to form an online group and conduct chats or exchange information.
Right away there's a problem. The software we've selected requires registration or payment. But Colbert says he once used this very piece of software, slightly altered, when he worked with some other spammers who live nearby. So he snatches his phone and calls a neighbor for support. A minute later, we are back in business. It turns out that an unusually large number of spammers live in this area, the stretch of beaches north of Miami that old-timers loosely call Boca and new-timers know as a staging ground for the smarmier characters in Carl Hiaasen's novels.
According to Steve Linford, who maintains the Rokso list, there's a good reason that so many spammers wind up on Spam Beach: ''Boca Raton is where they used to run those pump-and-dump investment scams and where the telemarketing sweatshops are.'' The phone scammers and infomercial wannabes of the 80's and 90's -- who themselves supplanted the land speculators who established Florida's earliest cities upon shifting sand and sinking swamps -- have been pushed aside by the new boys on the block, the bulk e-mailers of the Internet.
2. A SPAMMING PRIMER
How does a spammer obtain a million working e-mail addresses? Most simply, there are lists you can buy off the Internet. But there are also other, cheaper, ways. A ''dictionary attack,'' Colbert instructs, is when you blast reams of computer-generated potential
I concur. If you want to bother him, forward every free offer you can to him via snail mail. YOu know, like what we did with what's his face in Wisconsin.
Verisign now has not only ICANN telling them to stop, but three suits against them for doing this crap. They won't get the message, but perhaps they will stop this and remove the wildcard from their root if the suit is found not in their favor.
Guessing that IBM would have settled is like assuming that a bear would not shit in one particular acre of a woods because you told him not to.
Another consideration - Joe Crackhead isn't necessarily going to know a ham radio callsign from a can of spam. Especially meth users - very few of them are really that clever, and tend more towards paranoia than simple deduction. Besides, a lot of mundanes will ask me "What's KE6ISF?" and actually try and pronounce it. These are people who are otherwise intelligent, and unless they've had some connection with ham radio, they won't know what the heck it is.
(Honestly, I can see why. I didn't know what N6OMS was either until I met the call sign's owner, *well* before I was licensed.)