Do you have to know a street vendor to buy a magazine from him? Does he have to know you to receive payment? No! Anonymity is only a barrier to regulation by reputation, but anonymity is still compatible with regulation by cost. I'll sit all day and delete spam from my inbox, if I'm paid $0.25 each to do so!
A universal, anonymous, low-cost micropayment system would have so many benefits - in Spam prevention but also so much more.
The paper boils down to the two paragraphs which I will quote below, which confirm what you said.
This proposal is extremely similar to Microsoft's propsal of email postage, only couched in more academic language and with more/better analysis! About the only difference is that the postage is refundable if the recipient likes the content of the message (in fact the refund is by defualt).
In the case of any sender who has a prior relationship with
a recipient, reputation systems work well. Such persons can
simply be "whitelisted" and their messages passed through
unchallenged. These lists could also be created for recipient inboxes based on the recipients own outbox or through
"letters of introduction" based on the CC: field of known
contacts.
In the case of strangers, the warranty mechanism is more
suitable. Analogous to a standard bond mechanism, delivering email to an inbox requires an unknown sender to place
a small pledge into escrow with a third party. In the case of
screening, recipients determine the size of this bond, which
they can dynamically adjust to their opportunity costs. The
email is delivered only after the recipient receives suitable
confirmation that the bond has been posted. When the re-
cipient opens the email, she may act solely at her discretion
to seize the pledge. Taking no action releases the escrow
after a period of time.
A lot of people, especially engineers such as yourself, assume that the CS curriculum consists mostly of programming - the same stuff that engineers pick up along the way. This is mostly false. In practice most CS grads get programming jobs that only relate tangentially to computer science - just as most BS graduates in physics, chemistry, and math never work squarely in their own fields.
Engineering degrees are somewhat different because they focus on an *applied* science, whereas CS and the others you listed are more theoretical. But times are changing, and some CS programs now offer two different specialties - one in "software engineering" which is more applied, and one in "computer science" which is for people working towards faculty and research jobs.
Not all digital watches are multipurpose. For instance, the $3 digital watches you can buy as favors for kids' parties do one simple thing: display the time.
The article says analog watches are more "intuitive," but are they really more intuitive than a simple LCD watch that says "4:15 PM" when the time is 4:15 pm? A watch with hands even has two different scales of measurement - one revolution of the short hand is 12 hours while one revolution of the long hand is 60 minutes, so when the short hand points to "4" it means "20" - huh?
I guess we can all argue about a nebulous word like "intuitive," but I'll bet you $5 I can teach a classroom full of Kindegardners to read a simple LCD watch faster than they can learn to read a Rolex.
So it's not a matter of functionality or intuition at all, but HABIT and STYLE!
This is a real eye opener for me. When I read "three decades," then double that (since it's a government estimate), I realize for the first time that I might *not* live to see mankind on mars.
Ah, but the Vikings only had a very small power requirement. The only things electricity were needed for were the intruments. The rovers need to move under their own power.
And everybody knows a lowly nuclear power plant can never pump out kilowatts like the mighty solar panel!
The owner of the compromised account will dispute the charge, therefore the mail won't ever be seen by the recipients, and everybody will be happy. That's the point.
I can't imagine the system is braindead enough not to verify the payment until AFTER the recipient sees the mail! That wouldn't be very postage-like at all, unless you think this proposal is for C.O.D. email!
The difficulty in answering your question is that you have to be able to predict 4 years into the future.
Perhaps you could visit a school you're interested in and see whether a lot of Indians and Chinese are in the program you're considering. If so, it's a good bet those countries are taking interest in the field. To me it seems that China, at least, is coming on strong in all technical fields, if a few years behind India in computer programming.
As a datapoint, apparently Intel's Pentium-M chip (the best CPU for laptops at the moment) was done in Israel and was the first chip Intel ever finished on time.
Their contribution was under GPL. They will have to disprove that first, which IMHO is he kernel of the case
After all these months and hot air, I'm *still* unclear on that point. Some days the case is just a contract dispute between IBM and SCO, other days Daryl is ranting about how the GPL is unconstitutional and we're all commies bent on wrecking capitalism.
Personally I think SCO's ownership and their backers believe the latter, but could only trump up a quasi-case for the former.
It should be obvious that you can't provide a dedicated "unlimited" 56K connection profitably at the $10-$15/mo market rate, but you will sell a lot more accounts if you say "unlimited".
That's not obvious to me. Sure, you'd lose money on a some people, but maybe it's worth it to get the business of all the other suckers who are attracted to "unlimited" even though they only need a few hours per week.
Losing money on some customers is just part of offering a fixed-rate plan.
So Pixar wanted a bigger cut and Disney wasn't willing? Is that the gist of this? A business deal. One bunch of staggeringly wealthy white guys bickering with another bunch of staggeringly wealthy white guys.
Well, one rover is incapacitated completely. The other has problems that may (but hopefully not) be a major problem. "Perfect" would be if both rovers had been successfully deployed and functioned as planned. That's not what happened.
I certainly hope Spirit can be rehabilitated; that in itself would be a triumph. On the other hand, ith the Rover's lifespan of 90 days or so, each day on Mars costs several million dollars. Each nonfunctional day makes the mission a day shorter and that much less successful.
I'm sure you're not suggesting that these things shouldn't be reported, so what's the problem?
Well maybe grannie should set up a LLC to do the litigation on her behalf. Then if she looses she can just walk away, and if she wins the corp. can give here a golden parachute and fire her:)
Is months the shelf life, or the total operating time? Two months times 24 is 4 years, that means you could look at your PDA for an hour every day (i.e. 1/24th of your life) and it would last 4 years, which is ample.
Slashdot Mirror
A universal, anonymous, low-cost micropayment system would have so many benefits - in Spam prevention but also so much more.
This proposal is extremely similar to Microsoft's propsal of email postage, only couched in more academic language and with more/better analysis! About the only difference is that the postage is refundable if the recipient likes the content of the message (in fact the refund is by defualt).
Engineering degrees are somewhat different because they focus on an *applied* science, whereas CS and the others you listed are more theoretical. But times are changing, and some CS programs now offer two different specialties - one in "software engineering" which is more applied, and one in "computer science" which is for people working towards faculty and research jobs.
Yes, but they only taught me MIPS assembler, does that even count? X86 assembler almost makes MIPS assembler look like Visual Basic.
Personally I don't like random people crashing my servers, so I'd call it a hole!
The article says analog watches are more "intuitive," but are they really more intuitive than a simple LCD watch that says "4:15 PM" when the time is 4:15 pm? A watch with hands even has two different scales of measurement - one revolution of the short hand is 12 hours while one revolution of the long hand is 60 minutes, so when the short hand points to "4" it means "20" - huh?
I guess we can all argue about a nebulous word like "intuitive," but I'll bet you $5 I can teach a classroom full of Kindegardners to read a simple LCD watch faster than they can learn to read a Rolex.
So it's not a matter of functionality or intuition at all, but HABIT and STYLE!
This is a real eye opener for me. When I read "three decades," then double that (since it's a government estimate), I realize for the first time that I might *not* live to see mankind on mars.
In particular I think it's helpful to refer to the Stallman-oriented view as "Free Software" rather than open source or Open Source.
I can't imagine the system is braindead enough not to verify the payment until AFTER the recipient sees the mail! That wouldn't be very postage-like at all, unless you think this proposal is for C.O.D. email!
We're not talking "turbo button" slowdown here. Try dividing your MHz by 100. Okay, maybe VERY early 90's era performance.
Perhaps you could visit a school you're interested in and see whether a lot of Indians and Chinese are in the program you're considering. If so, it's a good bet those countries are taking interest in the field. To me it seems that China, at least, is coming on strong in all technical fields, if a few years behind India in computer programming.
As a datapoint, apparently Intel's Pentium-M chip (the best CPU for laptops at the moment) was done in Israel and was the first chip Intel ever finished on time.
Then again the convenience and low cost of digital photography were never important to high-end forgers in the first place.
Seems to me like he should stick to rev. 2 of his plan - buy cameras that use good old AAs.
Besides, it's just not the same now that the big fat lazy monopoly is history and long distance is only worth at most 5 cents per minute.
Personally I think SCO's ownership and their backers believe the latter, but could only trump up a quasi-case for the former.
Losing money on some customers is just part of offering a fixed-rate plan.
It doesn't matter what the Lego company thinks. Everybody knows what the word "legos" means, including you.
I certainly hope Spirit can be rehabilitated; that in itself would be a triumph. On the other hand, ith the Rover's lifespan of 90 days or so, each day on Mars costs several million dollars. Each nonfunctional day makes the mission a day shorter and that much less successful.
I'm sure you're not suggesting that these things shouldn't be reported, so what's the problem?
Well maybe grannie should set up a LLC to do the litigation on her behalf. Then if she looses she can just walk away, and if she wins the corp. can give here a golden parachute and fire her :)
Is months the shelf life, or the total operating time? Two months times 24 is 4 years, that means you could look at your PDA for an hour every day (i.e. 1/24th of your life) and it would last 4 years, which is ample.