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User: wmspringer

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  1. Re:The Art of Deception... on Best and Worst Books of 2003? · · Score: 1

    Well, I can tell you I bought it at the very end of 2002...it was required reading for a computer security class last spring. I thought it was interesting but kind of repetitive; Mitnick's basically saying over and over: Don't Trust Anyone.

  2. Re:2 cents. on Best and Worst Books of 2003? · · Score: 1

    Aside from leaving the country, what do you believe Saddam could have done to appease Bush?

    I'm not defending Saddam by any means; I'm glad he's gone. But we basically gave him two choices: he could turn over the WMD that he probably didn't have, or we'd come in and take them.

  3. Re:2 cents. on Best and Worst Books of 2003? · · Score: 1

    So your opinion is that you can only dislike someone based on his moral status?

    I dislike George Bush because I believe his economic policy is a disaster for my country.

    I dislike Jim Carrey because he's annoying.

  4. Re:How about... none. on Digital Music Stores Reviewed · · Score: 1

    Who says you have to get your music through the RIAA?

    The last few CDs I got were from an independant band. The RIAA didn't see a penny :-)

  5. Re:Head in the Sand on "H-Bomb Secret" Now Online · · Score: 1

    Depends on how fast I, and they, can shoot :-)

  6. Re:Threat of e-voting fraud not a big deal on More E-Voting SNAFUs · · Score: 1

    Burns? The Florida ballots were eventually recounted by the media..

  7. Re:solving a non-problem on More E-Voting SNAFUs · · Score: 1

    There's always the option of voting for the least bad candidate. Even if I don't like anybody running, I'll still vote for whoever I think will do the least amount of damage. (Granted, that often means a wasted vote, especially if the best candidate is a 3rd party..but at least it's an ethical vote)

    I'm not sure people not voting is a problem, though. I mean, if people can't bother to stay informed of the issues, do you really want them to vote?

  8. Re:solving a non-problem on More E-Voting SNAFUs · · Score: 1

    Responding to both the parent and the grandparent here...

    I think you should really separate the two (high salaries and education) Although they often go together, that's not always true. While I would expect the rich to vote republican, my experience has been that those with more education tend to vote democratic. Since there's quite a bit of correlation between the two, I'd expect them to cancel each other out to some extent.

  9. Who supports which site? on Giant International Fusion Reactor Draws Nearer · · Score: 1

    According to the linked BBC article, everyone except the EU is backing Japan.

    On the other hand, Reuters says that China and Russia are backing France.

    Anybody know which is accurate?

  10. Re:Even Donald Rumsfeld..... on Giant International Fusion Reactor Draws Nearer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Right on!

    Heck, most people in the US don't agree with Bush; what makes them think that the French agree with Chirac?

  11. Re:Censorship on Wal-Mart Music Download Service Launches · · Score: 1

    I would think that if a town is big enough to support a wall-mart, it should be big enough to support a library with internet access. If not, there's always mail order. (Yes, old-fashioned paper catalogs...they're still around!)

    In any case, they obviously can't sell ALL music that comes out, so they have to choose what they want to carry. You seem to be mad that what they've chosen to sell doesn't agree with what you think they should sell; your post seems to imply that you would like to force them to carry certain CDs simply because you think they should be available.

  12. Re:Censorship on Wal-Mart Music Download Service Launches · · Score: 1

    >To me it's the equivalent of having the biggest and cheapest ISP around censoring the content of the net (content that they didn't produce).

    Which some of them do; they filter out what they consider to be offensive sites, and they advertise that they do that; it's marketing to parents of small children. You may not find such a service useful (I certainly wouldn't; I don't want my access filtered) but apparently many people do, and they're providing a service that's in demand.

    Similarly, Wal-mart has absolutely no obligation to sell any particular type of music/movie/whatever. In no way are they keeping you from getting that type of music; you can go online, go to another store, whatever. They're just exercising their right to not sell what they've deemed to be offensive. Would you advocate forcing them to sell such things?

  13. Re:Let the games begin! on New York Spam Ring Lawsuits · · Score: 1

    >you can choose not to go where people smoke

    I can't; people smoke where I go to school :-p

    But that's a rant for another day..

  14. TLC needs captioning on TV For Nerds: Cable Science Network? · · Score: 1

    I've never watched TLC, simply because almost everything they show is not close-captioned. Hopefully this new science channel won't make that mistake.

  15. Re:Opt-in for all email... on U.S. Spam Law to Take Effect Jan. 1 · · Score: 1

    Sounds like a fair summary. Sorry to be (apparently) unclear.

  16. Re:Opt-in for all email... on U.S. Spam Law to Take Effect Jan. 1 · · Score: 1

    See my response to sweetooth; I'm not claiming this will do anything whatsoever about spam. I'm disputing Shimmer's post saying that opt-in would block legitimate email. I think it's safe to say that everyone here knows stopping spam will require a technilogical solution, not a political one.

  17. Re:Opt-in for all email... on U.S. Spam Law to Take Effect Jan. 1 · · Score: 1

    Suppose it's opt-out instead of opt-in. How do you determine if it's spam then?

    Are you really failing to get my point? If the same message is going to 30 million people, it's spam. Can I prove that it went to 30 million people? Not without going to some effort, but that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm providing a simple definition of spam.

    Backing up: the start of the debate was when shakamojo said we should have opt-in for email and Shimmer said that it's a lousy idea because you still want to be able to get email from people you've never met. I pointed out that it works just fine if you restrict it to mass emails. Does that give you a way to filter out the spam? No. But neither does the opt-out. Either way, spammers can (and will) ignore the law. All I'm saying is that, LEGALLY, required opt-in for messages meeting the above condition (going to more than X people) wouldn't affect anybody who isn't spamming.

    So far the responses have been that we can't use this to block spam, but that was never the point; the point was to make spam illegal without affecting legitimate email. The fact that you can disguise the number of messages sent out by sending them one at time doesn't change the total number.

    Now, if you want a technological solution to spam (as your message implies) then I don't have one. I'm only saying that this way doesn't hurt legitimate email, as Shimmer's post said.

  18. Re:Opt-in for all email... on U.S. Spam Law to Take Effect Jan. 1 · · Score: 1

    But we're not talking about technological solutions, we're talking about legal solutions. The original post said that all spam should be opt-in, then the post I replied to said that wouldn't work.

    If the law was enacted as suggested, spam would be illegal but it wouldn't affect legitimate email. That doesn't mean the spam is going to stop, but it wouldn't anyway; it just means that all spam (since I won't opt in to anything I would consider spam) is now illegal.

  19. Re:Opt-in for all email... on U.S. Spam Law to Take Effect Jan. 1 · · Score: 1

    And if I'm on a mailing list, either I opted in (which is what's required for me to legally get it, if we require opt-in) or I didn't opt in, in which case it's spam and I shouldn't be getting it because I didn't opt in.

    So no exception for mailing lists needs to be made.

  20. Re:Opt-in for all email... on U.S. Spam Law to Take Effect Jan. 1 · · Score: 1

    So it's one at a time; the same email is still going out to millions of addresses. Therefore, it is spam.

  21. Re:Opt-in for all email... on U.S. Spam Law to Take Effect Jan. 1 · · Score: 1

    If you're not sending the message (or slight variations on it) to more than one person, it's probably not spam.

    I can't think of a case where I'd get a legitimate email (except from a mailing list) that goes out to more than 30 people.

  22. Re:What is going on in the US? on U.S. Spam Law to Take Effect Jan. 1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    People complain about the bill because, due to the way it is written, it is likely to actually increase spam as people reply to spams believing they'll actually be removed.

    And the parent is NOT flamebait :-p
    It's a valid question.

  23. Re:Opt-in for all email... on U.S. Spam Law to Take Effect Jan. 1 · · Score: 1

    Is the person who wants to email you about your website going to send an identical mail to 30 million other people?

    If a message is noncommercial and is going to only one person, I wouldn't say that needs an opt-in. On the other hand, if you're selling herbal viagra or whatever's hot this week, that IS commercial email and you probably want to send it to a lot more than just one person..

  24. Re:hotmail on U.S. Spam Law to Take Effect Jan. 1 · · Score: 1

    I wouldn't think so. Even if the bill scares off some spammers, I'd expect them to keep spamming right up through Dec 31st.

    There are a lot of doubts around about whether the bill will have much effect, but I'll bet a lot of people here are calculating thier chances of landing one of those rewards :-)

  25. More on bounties on U.S. Spam Law to Take Effect Jan. 1 · · Score: 5, Informative

    For those looking, the section on bounties is on page 19 of the pdf file: Improving Enforcement by Providing Rewards etc

    It basically says that within 9 months of the enactment of the act, the commission is to set forth a system for rewarding those who supply information about violators; the first person who supplies the required information is to recieve a reward of not less than 20% of the total civil penalty collected.

    I only scanned the file and I'm not sure how large the fines are expect to be; it does say that all property traceable to illegal spamming proceeds and all equipment used for such is forfiet.