Any comments in this story will be monitored by the 24th Air Force for suspicious activity. Suspicious activity includes disclosing the activities of... ow! hey! don't taze me... NO CARRIER
Another good test to use: assume for the moment you've created your own application for this platform. What's your way of testing it out on the device itself?
The trouble is that most journalists (particularly political and business journalists) are largely dependent on their sources' willingness to talk. Their sources know this, they know this, and the journalists know that if they press their sources too hard their sources are going to shut up, and then the value of the journalist to the news organization drops dramatically.
One of Jon's advantages over other journalists is that his sources aren't so much people in his interviews, but other journalist's reporting. So he can make fun of those other journalist's sources all he likes, because he's not ruining his career by doing so.
You know, there's a big massive flaw in your theory: you assume that the folks who passed this law plan that far ahead.
What really happens is much much simpler: Someone proposes a measure that they claim is to "stop child porn", and everyone supports it because otherwise their political opponents could claim they support child porn.
And I should also mention that given this standard, anyone viewing a Greek kouros statue (or for that matter many Madonna and Child paintings) is guilty of child porn in this jurisdiction. I hope none of their art galleries have that sort of thing.
And now thanks to the US Supreme Court, you can now have "this candidacy brought to you by Initech". The dissent by John Paul Stevens is something to behold. Although I'm in agreement with those who think Congresscritters should wear Nascar-style outfits, so everyone knows exactly who their corporate sponsors are.
My understanding was that the ultimate decisionmaking power in the EU was either the European Parliament (which you could have voted for as an EU citizen) or the European Commission (which has representation appointed by your government). So you either need to pay more attention to European elections, or hold your national government responsible for its role.
The EC is less democratic than the EP, certainly, but that's not to say you have no democratic controls over it.
Or alternately, "selling access to our user base to a corporation". I can guarantee you that's how Yahoo management is thinking about it.
Frankly, this was not what I signed up for when I used Ubuntu to create a largely MS-free environment at home. If need be, I'll roll my own desktop Linux to keep out of this sort of thing. I'm happy to donate time and cash to worthwhile projects, but not if they're going to turn around and get corporate sponsorship.
The old saw that seems applicable here: The difference between a software salesman and a used car salesman is that the used car salesman knows he's lying.
Absolutely true. And notice how much social reward and top of the career path a good mechanic gets, unless they also have a really funny NPR show or own their own shop.
If you listen to people who don't do tech work talk about techies, you'll quickly realize that a lot of them do in fact put techies on roughly the same level as mechanics or bricklayers. You can think of yourself as a "knowledge worker" all you want, but the fact remains that you are going to be treated like a bricklayer. My most educated guess on why this is true is that techies produce useful products. In most businesses, the act of producing something (rather than selling something or organizing other people to produce something) severely limits your chances for advancement past the equivalent of senior foreman.
There are 3 ways to avoid this fate that I know of: 1. Do some serious and visible work for your company about issues that aren't tech-related. For instance, if you provide intelligent input about pricing, the salespeople will respect you a lot more. 2. Work at a company who's business is technology, which is still run by a techie. Make sure to leave once the suits take over. 3. Start your own company, and watch out that you don't completely become a suit.
I don't know the entire history of the checklist (which can be found here). However, my understanding is that it solved a longstanding problem on various spam-fighting mailing lists where someone would post what sounded like a bright idea for fixing the spam problem once and for all, which invariably had several of the listed drawbacks to their proposal. So the checklist was created to provide a quick way to explain exactly why the proposed plans didn't work.
This group advocates a: (X) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. The idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to the particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses (X) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected ( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks ( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it (X) Users of email will not put up with it ( ) Microsoft will not put up with it ( ) The police will not put up with it ( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once (X) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists ( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it ( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email ( ) Open relays in foreign countries ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses (X) Asshats ( ) Jurisdictional problems ( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email ( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes (X) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches (X) Extreme profitability of spam ( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft ( ) Technically illiterate politicians ( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers ( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves (X) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering ( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to this are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation ( ) Blacklists suck ( ) Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud ( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually ( ) Sending email should be free (X) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? ( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses (X) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome ( ) I don't want the government reading my email (X) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about them:
(X) Sorry dudes, but I don't think it would work. ( ) This is a stupid idea, and they're a stupid people for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0les! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
Humans nearly went extinct during the nuclear missile crisis
In that event, I would not rule out the chance to preserve a nucleus of human specimens. It would be quite easy at the bottom of some of our deeper mine shafts. The radioactivity would never penetrate a mine some thousands of feet deep. And in a matter of weeks, sufficient improvements in dwelling space could easily be provided. Nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely. Greenhouses could maintain plant life. Animals could be bred and slaughtered. A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine sites in the country. But I would guess that dwelling space for several hundred thousands of our people could easily be provided. With the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present gross national product within say, twenty years.
Out of curiosity, is that US total debt figure including or not including the portion owed to Social Security? See, there was a wonderful bait-and-switch pulled on the middle and working classes over the last 25 years or so that went like this: 1. Notice that Social Security will eventually be broke unless we do something about it. A commission led by Alan Greenspan is formed to figure out what to do about it. 2. The commission recommends raising FICA taxes to build up a surplus in the so-called Social Security Trust Fund, to reduce the risk of having to cut SS benefits. Congress follows the recommendations of the commission. 3. Fast forward about a decade, and lo and behold government is running a surplus if you include the extra SS revenue (but a deficit if you don't). So when George W Bush gets into office, he says "We'll send everyone a $300 check as their portion of the surplus, and also use the surplus to justify a nice hefty tax cut for the top tax brackets." 4. And lastly, since the SS Trust Fund "doesn't exist", the same people then argued that either benefits had to be cut, or the SS system privatized, because government couldn't afford it anymore.
The effect of this is that over the last 20 years overall tax burden is shifted from the progressive income taxes to the regressive FICA taxes.
Frequently, the same folks who argue that the SS Trust Fund doesn't exist and therefor SS shouldn't exist also include the T-Bills owned by Social Security in the "Total US debt" figure as a way to argue for cuts to other programs.
Hell yes, they could be in a worse situation than they are with their current government. I'd recommend reading a bit about the history of Haiti before you try to answer that question. Or if you want another idea about how much worse it can get, look at Somalia.
approach to fighting spam. The idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to this particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.) ( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses ( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected (X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks ( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it ( ) Users of email will not put up with it ( ) Microsoft will not put up with it ( ) The police will not put up with it (X) Requires too much cooperation from spammers ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once ( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists (X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, the plan fails to account for: ( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it ( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email (X) Open relays in foreign countries ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses (X) Asshats (X) Jurisdictional problems ( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email (X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes ( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches (X) Extreme profitability of spam (X) Joe jobs and/or identity theft ( ) Technically illiterate politicians ( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers (X) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves ( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering ( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply: (X) Ideas similar to this are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation ( ) Blacklists suck ( ) Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud ( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually ( ) Sending email should be free ( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? ( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses (X) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome ( ) I don't want the government reading my email (X) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about them: (X) Sorry dudes, but I don't think this will work. ( ) This is a stupid idea, and they're a stupid people for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0les! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your houses down!
Slashdot Mirror
In all seriousness, "eh" is an interjection.
They don't care. They don't have to care. They're The Phone Company.
stealth fighter flies YOU!
(sorry, I had to)
Any comments in this story will be monitored by the 24th Air Force for suspicious activity. Suspicious activity includes disclosing the activities of ... ow! hey! don't taze me ... NO CARRIER
Another good test to use: assume for the moment you've created your own application for this platform. What's your way of testing it out on the device itself?
The trouble is that most journalists (particularly political and business journalists) are largely dependent on their sources' willingness to talk. Their sources know this, they know this, and the journalists know that if they press their sources too hard their sources are going to shut up, and then the value of the journalist to the news organization drops dramatically.
One of Jon's advantages over other journalists is that his sources aren't so much people in his interviews, but other journalist's reporting. So he can make fun of those other journalist's sources all he likes, because he's not ruining his career by doing so.
You know, there's a big massive flaw in your theory: you assume that the folks who passed this law plan that far ahead.
What really happens is much much simpler: Someone proposes a measure that they claim is to "stop child porn", and everyone supports it because otherwise their political opponents could claim they support child porn.
And I should also mention that given this standard, anyone viewing a Greek kouros statue (or for that matter many Madonna and Child paintings) is guilty of child porn in this jurisdiction. I hope none of their art galleries have that sort of thing.
And now thanks to the US Supreme Court, you can now have "this candidacy brought to you by Initech". The dissent by John Paul Stevens is something to behold. Although I'm in agreement with those who think Congresscritters should wear Nascar-style outfits, so everyone knows exactly who their corporate sponsors are.
My understanding was that the ultimate decisionmaking power in the EU was either the European Parliament (which you could have voted for as an EU citizen) or the European Commission (which has representation appointed by your government). So you either need to pay more attention to European elections, or hold your national government responsible for its role.
The EC is less democratic than the EP, certainly, but that's not to say you have no democratic controls over it.
Or alternately, "selling access to our user base to a corporation". I can guarantee you that's how Yahoo management is thinking about it.
Frankly, this was not what I signed up for when I used Ubuntu to create a largely MS-free environment at home. If need be, I'll roll my own desktop Linux to keep out of this sort of thing. I'm happy to donate time and cash to worthwhile projects, but not if they're going to turn around and get corporate sponsorship.
The old saw that seems applicable here: The difference between a software salesman and a used car salesman is that the used car salesman knows he's lying.
C'mon man, at least give the Hawk-man his credit.
Absolutely true. And notice how much social reward and top of the career path a good mechanic gets, unless they also have a really funny NPR show or own their own shop.
If you listen to people who don't do tech work talk about techies, you'll quickly realize that a lot of them do in fact put techies on roughly the same level as mechanics or bricklayers. You can think of yourself as a "knowledge worker" all you want, but the fact remains that you are going to be treated like a bricklayer. My most educated guess on why this is true is that techies produce useful products. In most businesses, the act of producing something (rather than selling something or organizing other people to produce something) severely limits your chances for advancement past the equivalent of senior foreman.
There are 3 ways to avoid this fate that I know of:
1. Do some serious and visible work for your company about issues that aren't tech-related. For instance, if you provide intelligent input about pricing, the salespeople will respect you a lot more.
2. Work at a company who's business is technology, which is still run by a techie. Make sure to leave once the suits take over.
3. Start your own company, and watch out that you don't completely become a suit.
I don't know the entire history of the checklist (which can be found here). However, my understanding is that it solved a longstanding problem on various spam-fighting mailing lists where someone would post what sounded like a bright idea for fixing the spam problem once and for all, which invariably had several of the listed drawbacks to their proposal. So the checklist was created to provide a quick way to explain exactly why the proposed plans didn't work.
Sure, I'll bite:
This group advocates a:
(X) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. The idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to the particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(X) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(X) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(X) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
(X) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(X) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
(X) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to this are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
(X) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(X) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
(X) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about them:
(X) Sorry dudes, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and they're a stupid people for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0les! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
Humans nearly went extinct during the nuclear missile crisis
In that event, I would not rule out the chance to preserve a nucleus of human specimens. It would be quite easy at the bottom of some of our deeper mine shafts. The radioactivity would never penetrate a mine some thousands of feet deep. And in a matter of weeks, sufficient improvements in dwelling space could easily be provided. Nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely. Greenhouses could maintain plant life. Animals could be bred and slaughtered. A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine sites in the country. But I would guess that dwelling space for several hundred thousands of our people could easily be provided. With the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present gross national product within say, twenty years.
And a mere 6000 years ago too. All that business about 70,000 and 1.2 millions years ago is a distraction to test our faith.
Out of curiosity, is that US total debt figure including or not including the portion owed to Social Security? See, there was a wonderful bait-and-switch pulled on the middle and working classes over the last 25 years or so that went like this:
1. Notice that Social Security will eventually be broke unless we do something about it. A commission led by Alan Greenspan is formed to figure out what to do about it.
2. The commission recommends raising FICA taxes to build up a surplus in the so-called Social Security Trust Fund, to reduce the risk of having to cut SS benefits. Congress follows the recommendations of the commission.
3. Fast forward about a decade, and lo and behold government is running a surplus if you include the extra SS revenue (but a deficit if you don't). So when George W Bush gets into office, he says "We'll send everyone a $300 check as their portion of the surplus, and also use the surplus to justify a nice hefty tax cut for the top tax brackets."
4. And lastly, since the SS Trust Fund "doesn't exist", the same people then argued that either benefits had to be cut, or the SS system privatized, because government couldn't afford it anymore.
The effect of this is that over the last 20 years overall tax burden is shifted from the progressive income taxes to the regressive FICA taxes.
Frequently, the same folks who argue that the SS Trust Fund doesn't exist and therefor SS shouldn't exist also include the T-Bills owned by Social Security in the "Total US debt" figure as a way to argue for cuts to other programs.
Well, there's something reasonably similar already: the microLenat.
I was actually going to go with:
In Soviet Russia, Youtube watches you!
Hell yes, they could be in a worse situation than they are with their current government. I'd recommend reading a bit about the history of Haiti before you try to answer that question. Or if you want another idea about how much worse it can get, look at Somalia.
The court proposes a
( ) technical (X) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. The idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to this particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(X) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
(X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, the plan fails to account for:
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(X) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(X) Asshats
(X) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(X) Extreme profitability of spam
(X) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(X) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to this are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(X) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
(X) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about them:
(X) Sorry dudes, but I don't think this will work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and they're a stupid people for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0les! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your houses down!
the lag is really going to suck.
But seriously, good work, engineering types who worked on this.
More information about this story can be found here.